From donn at u.washington.edu  Tue Jul 31 14:59:05 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:59:05 GMT
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com> <3B66F611.B12948A6@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9k6v5p$8g6$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com>:
| Tim Daneliuk wrote:
| > 
| >               *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
| >                          Tim Daneliuk
| >               Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.
| > 
|
| Now cleaned up, edited a bit, and on the web:
|
| http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/Python-Is-Middleware/Python-Is-Middleware.html

Great!  This is good reading, glad it's not going to just drift past
in the 100+ messages per day of comp.lang.python.  And I hope some
other pages of general Python interest will link to it.  So allow me
to suggest a URL that worked better for me:

http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/Python-Is-Middleware/

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Thu Jul  5 21:00:13 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 01:00:13 GMT
Subject: Exporting a Class from a .pyd
References: <3b4474a8.4155281@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <ol3akt81ieiusm6ba022mkac9dt68dsnbn@4ax.com>

On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:12:06 GMT, gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz) wrote:

>It is quite easy to export methods, and constants, and even datatypes
>from a .pyd (Python Extension DLL, .so in #?nix). However, how do you
>export a class ? Is it just a special way of exporting datatypes ?
>(But then, I cannot yet see how to add methods to such a datatype).
>I've looked up google but in vain.

In Unix .so shared libraries, exporting happens automatically. In Windows
DLLs, you do it explicitly, like this:

class __declspecl(dllexport) [classname]
{
	...
};

This also automatically exports all class methods. Note, however, that
static class data isn't properly exported.

C//



From llothar at mailandnews.de  Mon Jul 16 09:56:30 2001
From: llothar at mailandnews.de (Lothar Scholz)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:56:30 +0200
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <mailman.995210391.3651.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <4as5lt82h2oc47fl72mkb8i21ppf6lboop@4ax.com>

>
>The problem is that there isn't one "better", just "better in the eyes of
>the author", 

I believe that this not really true, for example you must accept that
Common Lisp is much more powerful than any other language.

The problem is that most people are not very open minded - mostly
because there intellectual skills are to low to capture more.
Sorry this seems to be arogant - but its the truth.



From stadt at cs.utwente.nl  Mon Jul 30 11:45:34 2001
From: stadt at cs.utwente.nl (Richard van de Stadt)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:45:34 +0200
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B65811E.B22A6E71@cs.utwente.nl>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> Richard van de Stadt wrote:
> >
> > I run stuff on systems in various timezones.
> > I need to display when certain files have been updated.
> > ctime (time()) shows the current date and time, but without the timezone
> > that you get to see e.g. by Unix' date command.
> >
> > Is there a (Python) way to find out the timezone?
> >
> > Richard.
> 
> import time
> 
> time.tzname
> 
> ...will return a tuple containing the strings which name the timezone
[...]

Thanks for the hint. That's a start.

Now, what else does time have? (toggle, toggle. Hey, there's no time.py!?)

>>> dir(time)
['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'accept2dyear', 'altzone', 'asctime', 'clock', 'ctime', 'daylight', 'gmtime', 'localtime', 'mktime', 'sleep', 'strftime', 'strptime', 'time', 'timezone', 'tzname']
>>> time.daylight
1

There we are:

Now, assuming that the value of daylight will become 0 when daylight saving
time is over, this is what I needed: time.tzname[time.daylight]

Richard.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 17:57:45 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:57:45 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <%Kp27.367$vA6.73337@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> wrote in message
news:9id5p9$8r62 at interserv.etn.com...
> Hello all!
>
> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
> and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
> the right direction?  Thanks!
>
> Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
> strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
> script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....
>
Unfortunately "delete the first line" isn't a canonical file operation, so
you have to read the whole input file in and copy everything but the first
line. Something like this ought to do it, though I haven't tested it:

def trimline1(oldfile, newfile):
    inf = open(oldfile, "r")
    junk = inf.readline()
    open(outf, "w").write(inf.read())
    inf.close()

That last line is just an abbreviated way to say "open the output file, read
the remainder of the input file, and write what was just read to the
output". Because no reference is saved to the output file, it should be
closed automatically. Absolute caution might recommend (if you want the
close to be explicit):

def trimline1(oldfile, newfile):
    inf = open(oldfile, "r")
    junk = inf.readline()
    outf = open(outf, "w")
    outf.write(inf.read())
    inf.close()
    outf.close()

but it isn't as snappy. Because exiting the function also destroys the
reference to the input file you could probably also omitthe close() on that,
but why bother if you're just going to copy'n'paste?

Of course, that still leaves you with the problem of calling this function
tens of times. Take a look at the glob module for that.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Mon Jul 16 07:28:52 2001
From: s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (Sven =?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6string?=)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:28:52 +0100
Subject: Structuring packages
Message-ID: <3B52CFF4.84AFD40D@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

The documentation at www.python.org expressed the structure of a package
as a hierarchical filesystem, with subpackages being labelled as
filenames.  However, there is more to this structure than is described -
how is a package in Python actually structured, in terms of storing
subpackages and linking subpackages into the main package?

Sven.


From pih at oek.dk  Tue Jul 17 12:56:02 2001
From: pih at oek.dk (Peter I. Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:56:02 +0200
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B546E22.9DC5B7C6@oek.dk>

kj0 wrote:

> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
> advocates :-)  )
>
> I'm not looking to find out which of these languages is "better"; I
> don't care for ranking here.  What I want to know is how the various
> popular OO languages compare in terms of OO and general programming
> features (e.g. multiple inheritance; classes-as-objects; garbage
> collection; closures; scoping; contracts; debugging; etc.).
>
> Thanks,
>
> KJ

I found this comparison of a simple algorithm interresting. This because
you can read the code in each language and see if you like it.

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/bench/sieve/

/Peter



From ljohnson at resgen.com  Thu Jul 19 14:28:13 2001
From: ljohnson at resgen.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:28:13 -0500
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tle9c4pipbknc2@corp.supernews.com>

> I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.

Take off, you hoser ;)





From rharkins at thinkronize.com  Fri Jul 27 15:57:28 2001
From: rharkins at thinkronize.com (Rich Harkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:57:28 -0400
Subject: scoping problems
In-Reply-To: <yrxr8v2f9u6.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <NEBBIGEFDMPMOPJDPFGLAEHHCCAA.rharkins@thinkronize.com>

Try this:

class baseclass():
      def __init__(self):
          self.__myfunc__()

class a(baseclass):
	pass

class b(baseclass):
	pass

a.__myfunc__=b
b.__myfunc__=a

__myfunc__ in a and b will reference class instances, not functions, but who
am I to quibble?  :)

Rich


> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Narayan Desai
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 3:31 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: scoping problems
>
>
> I made a mistake when I was describing the problem. Here is the real
> problem; I had mis-formulated the minimal subset needed to cause this
> behavior. The real subset is:
>
> class baseclass():
>       def __init__(self):
>           self.__myfunc__()
>
> class a(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=b
>
> class b(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=a
>
> Does anyone know how to get this to work?
>  -nld
>
> >>>>> "Me" == Narayan Desai <desai at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
>
> Me> How can i define the following code: def a():
> Me>     b()
>
> Me> def b():
> Me>     a()
>
> Me> (ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate) How do you
> Me> get the namespaces right?
>
> Me> I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't
> Me> clear to me how to do this in python.  thanks...
> Me>  -nld
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 11:57:34 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:57:34 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <OF2ADE4F59.057273B2-ON86256A87.004BE386@mmm.com>
References: <OF2ADE4F59.057273B2-ON86256A87.004BE386@mmm.com>
Message-ID: <15181.51438.535862.108778@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tom> I *always* forget the 1/3 == 0 thing between programming bursts.
    Tom> OTOH, I also quickly remember after making the mistake the first
    Tom> time.

What is it that reminds you of the mistake?  Is it something glaring like
using the result of 1/3 as a divisor and getting a divide-by-zero error, or
is it something more subtle like getting slightly incorrect results and
having to dig through your code to find the problem?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From jparlar at home.com  Mon Jul 23 16:04:41 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:04:41 GMT
Subject: py2exe problem
References: ( <1103_995913046@jparlar> <9jhs4l$nrf61$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <1104_995918522@jparlar>

> 
> The problem is, if you don't give the -w switch,
> you will get the runtime error as well, but you probably cannot see it.
> 
> >
> > Traceback <most recent call last>:
> [Somehow the rest of the message didn't make it to c.l.p,
> but arrived in private mail]
> > .
> > .
> > .
> >    File "win32com\server\register.pyc", line 105 in _find_localserver_exe
> > "Runtime Error: Can not locate the program 'pythonw.exe' "
> >
> It seems you use the standard UseCommandline() function
> from win32com.server in your script. This will not work
> directly - as Duncan also has pointed out, I've posted
> a working example. Here's the same article under
> another URL: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/543305.

Well, I'm not useing UseCommandline() anywhere, but I was able to remove the Runtime error with help from that example. 
Now the .exe works on the target machine when I'm simply trying to register the COM server, but when I try run it in the GUI 
mode, I get a CoInitialize error. Just another thing to try to figure out, I guess.

> >
> >
> > > As Duncan Booth already suggested in his reply, it is generally
> > > a good idea to start by building a commnd line version even if
> > > you eventually will only be using a gui - you may not see
> > > tracebacks or error messages otherwise.
> > >
> > Hehe, well, I can see that traceback now. Any suggestions? py2exe won't let me have both the -c and -w options at 
the same time.
> 
> You don't need them at the same time: You can run a GUI in the console
> subsystem, but here you will always _have a console_ (sometimes called
> the 'annyoing dos window'.
> 

Thanks for all the help so far, I wouldn't have been able to get it to even where it is now without your suggestions.

Jay Parlar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."



From speedy911 at mindspring.com  Thu Jul 12 16:22:26 2001
From: speedy911 at mindspring.com (Charles Harrison)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:22:26 -0700
Subject: can anyone help me with yapsnmp?
Message-ID: <6f78b8b.0107121222.2cd3121@posting.google.com>

I am very interested in implementing the module yapsnmp in some of my
programs that use snmp commands, but I cant get it to install and dont
really know enough C to pull apart the place in net-snmp where the
installer is failing.  I was wondering if anyone else has had trouble
with the installation of this module or has any other insight as to
how I might be able to get this module to run on my system.  I think
it should work; I have the latest version of net-snmp.  Heres the
transcript from my install attempt:

[root at icispare1 yapsnmp-0.7]# ./configure 
creating cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes
checking for working aclocal... found
checking for working autoconf... found
checking for working automake... found
checking for working autoheader... found
checking for working makeinfo... found
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc  ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc  ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/bin/ld
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking for BSD-compatible nm... /usr/bin/nm -B
checking whether ln -s works... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
checking for object suffix... o
checking for executable suffix... no
checking for gcc option to produce PIC... -fPIC
checking if gcc PIC flag -fPIC works... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.o... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo... yes
checking if gcc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions ... yes
checking if gcc static flag -static works... -static
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking whether the linker (/usr/bin/ld) supports shared libraries...
yes
checking command to parse /usr/bin/nm -B output... ok
checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate
checking for /usr/bin/ld option to reload object files... -r
checking dynamic linker characteristics... Linux ld.so
checking if libtool supports shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build static libraries... no
checking for objdir... .libs
creating libtool
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -g -O2 ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -g -O2 ) is a cross-compiler...
no
checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for swig... swig
checking for patch... patch
checking for kstat_open in -lkstat... no
checking for init_snmp in -lsnmp... yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/ucd-snmp-config.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/ucd-snmp-includes.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/transform_oids.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/asn1.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp_api.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp_client.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/mib.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/default_store.h... yes
checking for /usr/include/ucd-snmp... yes
checking for python1.5/Python.h... yes
checking for /usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages... yes
checking for working const... yes
checking for size_t... yes
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
creating ./config.status
creating Makefile
creating src/Makefile
creating doc/Makefile
creating config/Makefile
creating config.h
[root at icispare1 yapsnmp-0.7]# make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7'
Making all in src
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7/src'
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/snmp_api.h .
patch < snmp_api.h-patch
patching file snmp_api.h
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/snmp_client.h .
patch < snmp_client.h-patch
patching file snmp_client.h
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/mib.h .
patch < mib.h-patch
patching file mib.h
swig -python -shadow -I/usr/include/ucd-snmp net-snmp.i
Generating wrappers for Python
snmp_api.h : Line 95. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 97. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 186. Function pointers not currently supported
(ignored).
snmp_api.h : Line 216. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 220. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 276. Constant SNMP_MAX_SEC_NAME_SIZE multiply
defined. (2nd definition ignored)
snmp_api.h : Line 396. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 397. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
net-snmp.i : Line 56. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
/bin/sh ../libtool --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I..
-I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/local/include/python1.5    -g -O2 -c
net-snmp_wrap.c
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I/usr/include/python1.5
-I/usr/local/include/python1.5 -g -O2 -c net-snmp_wrap.c  -fPIC -DPIC
-o net-snmp_wrap.lo
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_snmpv3_parse':
net-snmp_wrap.c:1967: too few arguments to function `snmpv3_parse'
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_print_description':
net-snmp_wrap.c:3637: too few arguments to function
`print_description'
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_fprint_description':
net-snmp_wrap.c:3666: too few arguments to function
`fprint_description'
make[2]: *** [net-snmp_wrap.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2


If you've gotten this far thank you so much in advance for all of your
time.
-Charles


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 03:45:13 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:45:13 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list at python.org>,
 "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> > I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of
> > Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions
> > of integer arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are
> > coerced to floats?
> 
> Guido did this for the Python library, and found three instances of "/" that
> would break.
> 
> > In my own code it's 100% int/int->int
> 
> Mine too -- but only in my integer code <wink>.  Curiously, I find I
> *usually* use divmod() even then, because I usually need the remainder too.

Ok, you convinced me to look more carefully at all the divisions in my 
recent small project, a program to generate web pages from collections of 
JPEGs.  I found:

3 instances of simplifying numbers prior to output (e.g. I want file size 
in kbytes rather than bytes).

1 instance of a magic formula to convert focal length to 35mm equivalents.  
You might argue that floating point is more appropriate here, but I want to 
see integers in the output and the formula was tested by comparing against 
the camera manufacturer's software which only displays integer output.

6 instances of determining transformed image sizes:
newX = (oldX * targetSize)/max(oldX,oldY) etc.  I don't know whether PIL 
allows image.resize() to take float arguments, whether it throws an 
exception, or whether it just does something bogus.  I'd hope for an 
exception, float doesn't make much sense in that context.

...and lots of slashes in HTML tags inside strings making it harder to find 
the actual division operators.

Does my short program really have three times as many integer divisions as 
the whole Python library?  Not even counting the divisions I'm sure are 
lurking in PIL?  Also note that in none of those instances do I care about 
remainders nor want to uglify my formulas by divmod(a,b)[0].

The magic formula is the one that's least likely to make sense a couple 
years later when this issue starts to bite.  And, I won't actually see any 
warnings because the console window is disabled in my compiled applet due 
to a bad interaction with W that causes programs that don't disable the 
console to become immortal.  So, anyone who I might have passed the program 
on to will one day suddenly see ugly floats in their generated web pages, 
if the program still works at all, and won't have any clue why or how to 
fix it.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From wfeinbein at gmx.at  Tue Jul  3 04:51:08 2001
From: wfeinbein at gmx.at (wilhelm feinbein)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 01:51:08 -0700
Subject: Vienna Python Interest Group
References: <3b1cb5dd@e-post.inode.at>
Message-ID: <a9afdbec.0107030051.7afb4dd4@posting.google.com>

Find ich eine gute Idee!

Hans
---
www.fiby.at


From rob at jam.rr.com  Wed Jul 18 10:22:52 2001
From: rob at jam.rr.com (Rob Andrews)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:22:52 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net>
Message-ID: <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com>

Gilles Lenfant wrote:
> 
> Seriously, compare 2 languages with really useful features (Genrate PDF
> report, extract XML data...).
> You can find useless stuffs that run much faster in Python than in Perl.
> 

I'd love to see some comparisons in which people who are good at their
respective languages are given the same task considered reasonably
programmable in each of the given languages.

See which programmer gets a working *proof of concept* program actually
working in the least development time.

The we could post *Why are Perl, Java, and C all so much slower than
Python?*

Rob

Newbies Rock!
Useless Python
http://www.lowerstandard.com/python/


From lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl  Thu Jul 12 05:09:57 2001
From: lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl (Tomasz Lisowski)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:09:57 +0200
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9ijpbk$g9m$1@news.tpi.pl>

U?ytkownik "Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> napisa? w wiadomo?ci
news:etd7kxjcp8x.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
>
> You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test objects
> in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:
>
> import copy
> test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]
>

Sometimes deepcopy() should be used :-)
Tomasz Lisowski




From raj2569 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 15 15:32:12 2001
From: raj2569 at yahoo.com (Rajkumar S.)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:02:12 +0530 (IST)
Subject: connect in SMTPlib
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107160058580.15630-100000@swathi.lanscape.firm.in>

Hi all,

I am writing cgi program to send a mail of all the selection made by
the user to admin. The from addr and to addr are fixed in the script.
One of the probable error that I see is that of the SMTP server being
down. Their are no exceptions defined for the connect(). So the script
bombs when the connect fails and gives the 500 error.

Can the script be made more robust esp when faced by a down SMTP
server?

raj

#!/usr/local/bin/python
import smtplib
import string
import cgi

fromaddr = "xxx <xx at xx.com>"
toaddrs  = "xxx <xx.com>"

thankyou = '''Content-Type: text/html\n\n
<html>
<head> <title> Thank You!</title> </head>
<body>
Thank you !!
</body>
</html>'''

error = '''Content-Type: text/html\n\n
    <html>
    <head> <title> We are sorry</title> </head>
    <body>
    We are extremely sorry that an error had occured while sending mail.
    </body>'''

form = cgi.FieldStorage()
formkeys = form.keys()

<snip>
</snip>

msg = ("From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\nSubject: %s\r\n\r\n" % (fromaddr, toaddrs, order))
line = msg + line

server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')

try:
    server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, line)
except smtplib.SMTPException:
    print error
    server.quit()
server.quit()
print thankyou




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 02:40:04 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:40:04 -0400
Subject: Threading in Python
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <u3d7ivprv.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Andy" <andy at mindgate.net> writes:

> One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent
> support for multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads,
> but I believe it is internally implemented and has
> been shown not to take advantage of an SMP machine.

Python threads are native OS threads (which I don't think is what you
mean by internally implemented).

However, you are correct that given the global interpreter lock (only
one thread can be executing actual Python bytecodes at any given
time), it's not very amenable to SMP systems.  That is, unless the
multi-processing you want to do is off in an extension module that
releases the lock before doing it's work.

I have a feeling that changing the GIL would be a very large
undertaking.  In some ways less arguable than stuff like the recent
division changes, since if done right it needn't break any existing
interfaces, but it would surely be a much higher risk set of changes.
Not that it's a bad idea, mind you - just a hard one.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From thomas at xs4all.net  Wed Jul  4 10:47:59 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 16:47:59 +0200
Subject: unsigned short
In-Reply-To: <OXq07.259466$Z2.3071054@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
References: <OXq07.259466$Z2.3071054@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <20010704164759.X8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 05:42:13PM -0400, John wrote:

>     Correct me if I'm wrong:  Python only supports signed short?

Python only has two integer types: Python ints and Python longs. Python ints
are signed longs internally, and Python longs are a custom unbounded Integer
type.

>     I have C function that I'm trying to extend python with by writing the
> corresponding module function.  The C function takes an unsigned short as a
> modifiable parameter.

> If my assumption above is correct, then I need to represent my parameter as
> an integer?  Will this work?  When I extract the python integer to a C
> variable, I would use "i" as the formatter, then cast the it with (unsigned
> short)?  And vice versa for returning a C unsigned short to a python?

You probably want to read up on PyArg_ParseTuple:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/ext/parseTuple.html

You can't convert directly to an unsigned short int, though, so you still
need to cast.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 09:49:22 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:49:22 -0400 
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print t
	hem out
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51E1@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Can anyone share a short code example of how to access all the programs in a
Unix directory, put them into an array, and print them out in Python?  Here
is the code I have to do it in Perl (please forgive the harsh language).

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#use Net::FTP;
opendir (TEMP, '/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
  or die "Can't open current directory.";
@files=join(',',grep(!/^\.\.?$/, readdir TEMP)); 
closedir TEMP;
print "\n";
print @files;
print "\n";
  



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul  6 03:07:26 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 07:07:26 GMT
Subject: tkinter event object question
References: <3B4540C5.60005ABE@optonline.net>
Message-ID: <Osd17.8385$e5.1083209@newsb.telia.net>

Arun Ramanathan wrote:
> Is there a way by which I can determine which tkinter widget
> actually generated the event.
>
> Example if I had two buttons b1 and b2 initialized as shown below
> and bound to the event handler callme.
>
> -------------------------------
> from Tkinter import *
>
> root = Tk()
>
> def callme(event)
>     print "santa is coming"

    print event.widget

also see table 7-2 on this page:
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/events-and-bindings.htm

> b1 = Button(root,text='b1')
> b1.bind("<Button-1>",callme)
> b1.pack()

you shouldn't do this, of course: the right way to handle
button clicks is to use the "command" option.

the command option takes a single callable, so you have
to use a lambda (or a local function) to share callbacks:

    def callme(widget):
        print widget

    b1 = Button(root, text='b1',
        command=lambda b1=b1: callme(b1)
        )

(the b1=b1 thing captures the current value of b1, so we can
pass it to the callback when the lambda is executed)

also see:
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/button.htm

> b2= Button(root,text='b2')
> b2.bind("<Button-1>",callme)
> b2.pack()
>
> root.mainloop()
> ------------------------------

</F>

<!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the python standard library:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
-->




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul  5 04:33:44 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:33:44 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: SPAM again [was: Re: .BIZ .INFO domain extensions]
In-Reply-To: <oqhewsxouw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051230030.18582-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 4 Jul 2001, [iso-8859-1] Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> Hi, people.  We still get SPAM from this list once in a while, which is
> annoying.  I wonder if something could be done about it at the list level.
>
> I noticed that two recent SPAM were sent to `python-list at cwi.nl' instead of
> `python-list at python.org', so we might think of ruling out that old address.
> On the other hand, valid postings are still made to the `cwi.nl' address,
> even if rarely.  I fear some members might find rude being forced to switch
> to `python.org'.  And besides, I'm sure `python.org' will get included
> in all spammers' lists, sooner or later, so this would be just postponing
> the real problem.  Sigh!
>
> My attitude about SPAM, and am not sure I am fully right, is that I rely
> on mailing lists to filter the SPAM they get before forwarding it to me,
> while I consider this is more my responsibility to filter the rest, which
> directly gets addressed to me without going through mailing lists.
>
> Opinions?  Suggestions?

   Close the list so only a subscriber can write to it. Yes, I know there
is mail<=>news gateway, but close list at least will resists mailed spam.

   Install at least minimal spam filter. www.spambouncer.org does a great
job for me.

   Teach people to fight spam, not only filter it out. spam.abuse.net,
www.spamcop.net, etc.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 12:44:35 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:44:35 GMT
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9k5tg301mn9@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b66c4ce.904451372@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:24:18 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
>One aspect I haven't seen mentioned in this huge thread is the
>issue of visually impaired programmers.  Case sensitivity is an
>extra burden for such people (with whom I strongly empathize: my
>sight is still OK, sufficient to drive a car &c, but it's going
>downhill with time, and I must face the very real possibility
>that I'll be _seriously_ visually impaired a few years from now).
>
>Think of a useful tool for such an audience, a special-purpose
>'screen reader' that will read out loud a snippet of Python code:
>what's the tool going to do about distinguishing upper and lower
>case?  With case being significant, the tool will have to point
>out *every* case change -- a serious bother.  Was case not thus
>significant, the tool could have two modes, a default "smoother"
>mode ignoring case, and a special mode pronouncing case to be
>used only (e.g.) within literal strings.
>
>For those of you who can't really empathize with other's issues
>and misfortunes, imagine being in a situation where you'd often
>need to have source code read out loud to you (e.g. over a
>phone), and/or you'd often want to dictate code (e.g. to some
>kind of voice-recognition, dictation-taking automatic system).
>What's case sensitivity giving you, that would compensate for
>the serious bother it causes in those situations?
>
Most of us have lots to be thankful for, clearly. Shifting case
is also an extra finger dexterity exercise, which is difficult
for some with good sight but other impairments.

Yet I was in the opposition camp, favoring case sensitivity.
I still do, though I am not happy about adding problems for
those who already have more than their share.

I lived a long time with UPPER CASE PROGRAMMING, and felt
as though freed of swaddling when finally i got to use lower case.

Maybe there are some conventions for case usage that would
help in generating sound representations. Punctuation would
probably have to be something like Victor Borge's rendering
inside strings. Otherwise you could have a female voice for
python operators's names, and other words would be spoken in
a male droid voice. For mixed case words, they would be handled
according to category. Strings of names joined underscores
would get a Victor Borge sound effect for underscore between
otherwise normal words. Initial cap could have a distinctive
associated sound at the beginning. Perhaps it could be imagined
as a sound made by a noisy shift key that made a different noise
for press and release. I'd bet you could get good at visualizing
the letters, if the sounds were well chosen and timed. I think
a lot could be done with some imagination.

The other direction is harder, unless you can be a touch typist, I
suppose. I imagine you could learn that with a training program
that gives auditory feedback. Some foundation should fund work on
this (I imagine they already do). The military too could justfiy
funding it on the basis of being able to communicate in the dark
with a keyboard and an earplug. Also for tagging cockpit voice
messages with simultaneous cue sounds for different attributes.
Background sounds can work like background lights of different
colors and other effects ...

[...]
>Offhand, I can easily think of a few identifiers that
>do appear in different cases, e.g. fileinput (the module)
>vs FileInput (the class in module fileinput), but it would
>seem to me that those identifiers would not normally have
>to be entered with case being the *only* distinction (one
>would normally write fileinput.FileInput, so a reasonably
>smart tool might still be able to get the case right for
>each of the two identifiers - or is this requiring too
>much smarts from the tools?).  Maybe, if a _small_ fight
>is needed to ENABLE (as opposed to FORCE:-) use of a
>semi-smart, case-preserving tool, it MIGHT be worth it,
>if the fight be small enough...?

I won't repost the result, but if you want to scan a
directory of .py files,  put the following
on your path and type casecheck.py /dirpath/*py

[oops, that assumes windows with .py association set up.
Well, you know what to do.]

You should get a list of identifiers appearing with
case variations. Not that many, but it shows how
case has actually been used. I changed it not to print
file headers unless it found something.

It's basically an elaboration of Guido's initial (AFAIK) post
of a 5-line snippet to find division operators:

import sys, tokenize
for filename in sys.argv[1:]:
    def tokeneater(type, token, start, end, line, filename=filename):
        if token == "/": print "%s:%d:%s" % (filename, start[0], line),
    tokenize.tokenize(open(filename).readline, tokeneater)

_______________________________________________________________

#casecheck.py
import sys, tokenize, glob, token

symdir={}

def tokeneater(type, tokstr, start, end, line):
    if (type==token.NAME):
	TOKSTR = tokstr.upper()		#should show up for this file
        if symdir.has_key(TOKSTR):
            d = symdir[TOKSTR]
            if d.has_key(tokstr):
                d[tokstr] += 1
            else:
                d[tokstr] = 1
        else:
            symdir[TOKSTR]={ tokstr:1 }
        
for fileglob in sys.argv[1:]:
    for filename in glob.glob(fileglob):
        symdir={}
#        print '----',filename,'----'
        tokenize.tokenize(open(filename).readline, tokeneater)

	header = '---- '+filename+' ----'	
        for key in symdir.keys():
            if len(symdir[key]) > 1:
                if header:
                    print header
                    header = None
                print symdir[key]
_______________________________________________________________



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 08:39:53 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 05:39:53 -0700
Subject: Frank Willison
Message-ID: <3B66A719.4252CAAC@ActiveState.com>

The Python world has lost a great friend in Frank Willison. Frank died
yesterday of a massive heart attack.

I've searched in vain for a biography of Frank for those that didn't
know him but perhaps he was too modest to put his biography on the Web.
Suffice to say that before there were 30 or 10 or 5 Python books, before
acquisitions editors started cold-calling Python programmers, Frank had
a sense that this little language could become something.

In Frank's words:

"This is my third Python Conference. At the first one, a loyal 70 or so
Python loyalists debated potential new features of the language. At the
second, 120 or so Python programmers split their time between a review
of language features and the discussion of interesting Python
applications. 

At this conference, the third, we moved onto a completely different
level. Presentations and demonstrations at this conference of nearly 250
attendees have covered applications built on Python. Companies are
demonstrating their Python-based products. There is venture capital
here. There are people here because they want to learn about Python.
This year, mark my words: Python is here to stay."

	http://www.oreilly.com/frank/pythonconf_0100.html

The O'Reilly books that Frank edited helped to give Python the
legitimacy it needed to get over the hump. I carefully put in the word
"helped" because Frank requires honesty and modesty:

"O'Reilly doesn't legitimize. If we did, lots of technology creators who
enjoy their status as bastards would shun us. We try to find the
technologies that are interesting and powerful, that solve the problems
people really have. Then we take pleasure in publishing an interesting
book on that subject. 

I'd like to put another issue to rest: the Camel book did not legitimize
Perl. It may have accelerated Perl's adoption by making information
about Perl more readily available. But the truth is that Perl would have
succeeded without an O'Reilly book (as would Python and Zope), and that
we're very pleased to have been smart enough to recognize Perl's
potential before other publishers did."

	http://www.oreilly.com/frank/legitimacy_1199.html

Frank was also a Perl guy. He was big enough for both worlds. To me he
was a Perl guy but *the* Python guy. Frank was the guy who got Python
books into print. He and his protege Laura Llewin were constantly on the
lookout for opportunities to write about Python.

Much more important than anything he did with or for Python: Frank was a
really great guy with an excellent sense of humor and a way of
connecting with people. I know all of that after only meeting him two or
three times because it was just so obvious what kind of person he was
that it didn't take you any time to figure it out.

You can find more of Frank's writings here:

	http://www.oreilly.com/frank/

 Paul Prescod



From roy at panix.com  Sun Jul  8 12:35:37 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:35:37 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
Message-ID: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com>

I'm kind of confused about exactly what happens when I use a string as a 
dictionary key.  Section 3.2 of the reference manual seems to imply that 
keys are compared by identity:

> The only types of values not acceptable as keys are values containing 
> lists or dictionaries or other mutable types that are compared by value 
> rather than by object identity

but experimenting shows they it seems to really use value, not identity:

>>> a = 'foo'
>>> b = 'f' + 'o' + 'o'
>>> a == b
1
>>> a is b
0
>>> x = {}
>>> x[a] = 'this is a'
>>> x[b]
'this is a'

Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?  I'm 
contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key comparison by 
identity should be significantly faster than by value, because I'm going to 
be using rather long strings as keys.


From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Mon Jul  9 07:43:42 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 12:43:42 +0100
Subject: Can not install JPython
Message-ID: <3B4998ED.7A522649@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010709/5af7479b/attachment.html>

From wolfgang.grafen at marconi.com  Fri Jul 13 12:28:51 2001
From: wolfgang.grafen at marconi.com (Wolfgang Grafen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:28:51 +0200
Subject: Question on nested scope
References: <3B4EBBA5.10745796@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4F21C3.C5F31C0F@marconi.com>

exec executes your statement within the global and local namespace as
far I remember. 

#exec (<stmnt>,<globals>, <locals>)

do the same with:

b=10
def f1(p):
  exec(p,{'b':b})
  print a
  print b

def f2(p):
  exec(p,{},{'b':b})
  print a
  print b

>>> f1(a)
b=b+11
10

>>> f2(a)
b=b+11
10

gra.

XiaoQin Xia wrote:
> 
> In Python 2.1:
> 
> >>> b=10
> >>> a="b=b+11"
> >>> def f(p):
>         exec p
>         print a
>         print b
> 
> 
> >>> f(a)
> b=b+11
> 21
> >>> b
> 10
> >>>
> 
> When exec "b=b+11", python can find the second b (10), why it generate
> another b?
> 
> Cheers,
> Xiao-Qin Xia


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 14 04:29:07 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 01:29:07 -0700
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107140029.37256053@posting.google.com>

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote in message news:<roy-B2459F.22112513072001 at news1.panix.com>...
> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:
> 
>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);
> 
> The obvious translation would be:
> 
>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
> 
> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on it.  Perl 
> handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra" variables undefined, whereas 
> python raises a ValueError exception.  What I'd like to do is have the 
> extra field variables left as null strings.

Try this:

f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, extra_guff = (line.split(None, 6) + 7 * [""])[:7]
if extra_guff:
    print "Oops! More data than expected!"
    # or, more likely, an unintended space in a data field

Smooth enough?


From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 13 09:56:55 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:56:55 GMT
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com> <slrn9ksnh3.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <3B4E69D5.5CB278F2@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <H6D37.14720$B7.2683686@ruti.visi.com>

In article <3B4E69D5.5CB278F2 at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen wrote:
>Grant Edwards wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >> ...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
>> >> and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
>> >> "Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
>> >> there must be more to it, eh.
>
>Just to clarify, I did not write the above.  I merely quoted it.
>
>> I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
>> that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.
>
>Would you call a C program which implemented those same steps 
>a "script" ?
>
>(I realize you would not typically use C for this, but if you did?)

Probably not.  To add to my "definition", I guess I would call
it a script if it was done using the same set of "primitives"
that the user would have done had it been done interactively.
Primitives like the "ls" "find" "rm" executables found on Unix
systems.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!
                                  at               FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH!!
                               visi.com            


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 14:16:59 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:16:59 -0500
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
	<zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
	<naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
	<20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
	<mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org>
	<uN107.141431$L4.17198481@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
	<3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <15168.47771.528688.531809@beluga.mojam.com>

    Paul> "Advanced" types could have "smart" behaviour and simple types
    Paul> could have x=x+y behaviour.

Let's ignore lists, tuples and numbers for a moment because most people know
how they are supposed to work (or will figure it out with a simple script).
Suppose I see code like this

    import mumble
    x = mumble.Mumble()
    ...
    x += 1

How am I supposed to know without digging around in the code or docs for the
mumble module if it is a "simple" or "advanced" type?  You haven't solved
any problems, just added a new protocol for programmers to implement that
will be done so in a haphazard fashion.

Skip



From martin at strakt.com  Mon Jul  9 10:48:59 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:48:59 +0200
Subject: socket module
In-Reply-To: <15177.49947.594373.154573@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <20010709091943.A18359@strakt.com> <15177.49947.594373.154573@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010709164859.A21825@strakt.com>

On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 09:43:39AM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
[snip]
> Something vaguely like:
> 
>     PyObject *sockmodule, *sockfunc, *socket;
>     sockmodule = PyImport_Import("socket");
>     sockfunc = PyDict_GetItemString(PyModule_GetDict(sockmodule), "socket");
>     PyCall_Object(sockfunc, ...);

Yeah, this is roughly how I do things now. One problem I'm having though,
is that sure I can use the C equivalent of the 'hasattr' function to get
the methods of the socket objects, but I either have the overhead of doing
that every time I call a socket method, or the overhead of looking up all
those methods every time I need a new socket object (seeing as what I get
isn't a PyCFunction, but a PyCallable).

Oh well.

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 29 02:26:21 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 06:26:21 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn.pl.9m4rar.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <yge4rrwa0li.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m7b4d.na4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

28 Jul 2001 23:14:01 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> pisze:

> Agreed: rationals with a fixed denominator for calculation results,
> such as 100 in the U.S. where we have dollars and cents.

No, plain rationals will suffice. No arithmetic operation except
division introduces a denominator which represents fractional cents.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tdelaney at avaya.com  Mon Jul  2 20:31:10 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:31:10 +1000 
Subject: PEP scepticism
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC22C@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> I'd also consider whether /# and #/ are better markers - more directly
> related to the existing #.

Ooh - I like it. Then the following nice idiom becomes useful ...

/#
 #	This is a comment
 #/

On second thought, having typed it, I don't like it. The *really* nice thing
about /* */ is that the two characters are ajacent on the numeric keypad on
every keyboard I have used, and so it takes zero thought to produce them.

Also, what if you have code with #/ in it somewhere. You could end up with
an end-comment marker you didn't want. Unlikely, but dangerous.

Looks nice though.

Tim Delaney



From aetodd at wm.edu  Mon Jul  2 16:42:36 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:42:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Calculus Module
In-Reply-To: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <994106556.3b40dcbc8651f@webmail1.wm.edu>

Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.



From ggardiner at accelrys.com  Mon Jul 16 04:08:28 2001
From: ggardiner at accelrys.com (Gardiner, Geoff)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:08:28 +0100
Subject: Q: HTTP through multiple NICs
Message-ID: <55E9531220EDD41186F50090274688BD2BF360@oranamesrvr0.synomics.com>

Thank you, this looks exactly like what I need. I'd looked through the
sources for httplib, etc, including socket.py and had not encountered 'bind'
at all - I should have properly RTFM as well.

I'd also not spotted that I should be using HTTPConnection rather than HTTP
until you pointed it out - though HTTP actually _uses_ HTTPConnection, just
proclaiming itself to be HTTP/1.0.

Geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org [mailto:ngps at madcap.dyndns.org]
Sent: 13 July 2001 18:42
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Q: HTTP through multiple NICs
...
To do what you want, insert "s.bind((local_addr, local_port))" between
lines 1 and 2. Yes, bind() works for client sockets, too.
...
A quick glance thru httplib shows no mechanism to pass your own socket
objects in - httplib's HTTP and HTTPConnection classes want to create their
own sockets. 

You can subclass either of those (use HTTPConnection, it's newer ;-) to pass
in your own sockets that bind to your choice of local address.
...



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 05:10:15 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:10:15 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk> <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good) wrote in 
news:ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d at posting.google.com:

> And now, for something completely different!  "Fun with generators."
> 
> Here is the "sets of 6 positive integers that sum to 17" problem,
> solved with generators.  Works with Python 2.2.  My goal here was to
> minimize lines of code, not to optimize for performance.
> 
Followed by the 'how to iterate over all permutations of a sequence'. BTW, 
the 'return' statement isn't actually needed, but I think it makes the code 
a bit clearer.
--- begin ---
# Permutations using generators.
from __future__ import generators

def permute(seq):
    if len(seq)==1:
        yield seq
        return

    for i in range(len(seq)):
        for perm in permute(seq[:i] + seq[i+1:]):
            yield seq[i:i+1] + perm

def test(str):
    for t in permute(str):
        print t

test('bar')
test('flip')
test([1, 2, 3])
--- end ---


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 15:58:17 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:58:17 -0400 
Subject: What's wrong with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F7@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Thanks for the correction.  Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
from one server directory to another server directory?

-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 2:47 PM
To: jedi
Cc: Kemp Randy-W18971; 'python-list at python.org'
Subject: Re: What's wrong with this program


On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, jedi wrote:
> ftp.connect # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options

   Call it: ftp.connect()

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 27 18:51:54 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:51:54 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996263093.23412.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B61F08A.1A4C6069@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> The issue in context is about floats, and the sign bit of 0.0 follows very
> specific rules under standard IEEE-754 arithmetic.  Multiplying by 1.0
> preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0 (of either sign) may not;
> so adding 0.0 as a means to convert to float is wrong under 754 arithmetic
> rules, albeit subtly wrong.

Obviously I'm not familiar with IEEE-754 arithmetic. Is the intent to do
IEEE-754 FP arithmetic on all platforms when FP is involved? What if the
underlying hardware isn't conformant? Sorry, since this seems to be going
through the python-list mailing list, the "References:" header isn't being
included for some reason, so I missed the introduction of IEEE-754 into the
discussion. Can't find it mentioned in that PEP (unless it is in another PEP
or is documented elsewhere).


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Wed Jul  4 23:57:22 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 06:57:22 +0300
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr>
Message-ID: <kusngc110d.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <3b431024.15341289 at news.iway.fr>,
emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier) writes:

| Hi, 
| I embedded and extended python for a game, and I was REALLY
| disappointed by the performances I get...

| Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my
| Python logical part from my C game with :
[...]

|     for i in range ( 0, NbTestSprites - 1 ):
|         ListOfSprites[i].setPos( 100, 100 )

| ie it sets the pos of 200 sprites.

[...]

| This is _REALLY_ slow ( i run at around 1 Frame / second on a P733 ).

the python-imposed overhead of doing that certainly should not slow
that down to running only one complete loop per second unless setPos()
is a python function and does something fairly complicated. perhaps
you are looking in the wrong place for the slowdown?

  -- erno




From woodsplitter at rocketmail.com  Fri Jul 27 17:11:03 2001
From: woodsplitter at rocketmail.com (stalin)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:11:03 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7876a8ea.0107271311.3bbeca87@posting.google.com>

Python has 'dynamic strong typing'.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=weak+typing+perl+python&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=2&selm=mailman.994198807.6647.python-list%40python.org

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=weak+typing+perl+python&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=4&selm=mailman.991902551.10104.python-list%40python.org


From robin at illusionsexeculink.com  Tue Jul  3 23:23:12 2001
From: robin at illusionsexeculink.com (robin at illusionsexeculink.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 23:23:12 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca> <mailman.994154044.13791.python-list@python.org> <3B419E3D.A965D4DE@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <mt25ktg59r4l2675194ceib7lflqpd43e8@4ax.com>

Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> wrote:

>Well, it's the first time I put someone posting to comp.lang.python
>(Mr. Park) into my kill file. One out of hundreds. That doesn't look
>too bad.

Seconded. Still a nice group.

-----
robin                          robin at illusionsexeculink.com
media artist /                 remove illusions to reply
information architect          www.execulink.com/~robin/

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
                   -- George W. Bush. Reuters, 5 May 2000


From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Mon Jul  9 09:13:36 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:13:36 -0400
Subject: Error Building PyPgSQL
Message-ID: <L6i27.261092$Z2.3119989@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Hello,

I'm trying to build PyPgSQL on a RH7 box with
Python 1.5 and postgres 7.0 and gcc-2.96-54.
I left the Setup.in file as it shipped because it looked
correct to me.
I get the following when I run make.

gcc -fPIC -I/usr/local/pgsql/include -g -02 -
I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/include/python1.5 -
DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c ./libpqmodule.c
./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgConnection_New':
./libpqmodule.c:196: parse error before `PgConnection'
./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgResult_New':
./libpqmodule.c:282: parse error before `PgResult'
./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgLargeObject_New':
./libpqmodule.c:358: parse error before `PgLargeObject'
./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgNotify_New':
./libpqmodule.c:548: parse error before `PgNotify'
make: *** [libpqmodule.o] Error 1

This looks like a compiler error to me but I'm not a C programmer.
The four lines of code appear to be
using the same syntax, is this a syntax error or
possibly a compiler version issue?

Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?

Thanx, any help would be appreciated.

Rod MacNeil
rmacneil at interactdirect.com




From Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com  Mon Jul 30 19:14:17 2001
From: Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com (Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:14:17 -0500
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <00899E06.N22121@rsmi.com>

>>In article <mailman.996289972.15493.python-list at python.org>, Arthur
>>Siegel <ajs at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>> Would be a lot more compelling were they reports *from* rather than
>> reports *about*.

>Agreed.  But what struck me was that when a non-programmer came to a
>Python discussion list asking whether Python was suitable for his
>project, several people warning him about the pitfalls of division (and
>not much else).

Must have missed all this.  Where and when was this thread?

I guess I remain the odd ball.  If a non-programmer asked me about
using Python for a project, I would certainly explain to him that he/she had
picked a good alternative,  because between him and his project was
a little barrier  - learning to program.  Python is *great* for that.  

Among the many things he will need to learn about is numerical types,
and how they work in Python.  Which I can promise him is not going to be
anything near the high water mark of the learning curve.

What I am missing.  Why are we talking about the programming projects of 
non-programmers? Why isn't that simply dismissed as an absurd  
contradiction in terms? 

Have absolutely no interest in re-opening the discussion about the / 
operator. Other than the code breakage issue,  I have never in fact heard an
argument *against* it that I found truly compelling.  But I can tell you that 
the 
first person accounts posted here of what is faced by developers maintaining 
substantial code bases are real and compelling.

Isn't it clear that  the thread that it is all quite necessary  to  meet the 
programming 
language specification requirements of people who don't actually program  (is 
there
another definition of non-programmer that I am missing) - is an incitement, 
not an explanation.

ART 



From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 13:14:16 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:14:16 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B61A168.C361BE99@home.net>

kevin parks wrote:
> Thanks everyone. I am learning a lot by this discussion, but i should
> point out that the main reason why i am so unhappy with the
> interpreter is that  i am ON A MACINTOSH!!! The forgotten platform of
> the python world. (thanks god for Jack and Just!)
> 
> which means that IDLE, we don't really have! (it's broken, i think and
> has been for a while as there are problems with tkinter. Unless i am,
> as always, wrong) And our Mac IDE is, uhm... (forgive me
> please)...uhmm.... Not fully-featured as IDLE is.

If you want improvements to the MacPython IDE, you need to request them
on teh macPython mailing list, or, even better, write them yourself! By
the way, there were some add ons available that added sytax highlighting
and some interpreter improvements to the MacPython IDE. They don't see
to ahve made it ino the main distribution (I don't know why not), but
ask on the mailing list, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you
find them.

> Compound this with the move to OS X and the fact that our text engine
> (WASTE) is not yet ready for prime time X wise...

You can run Unix Python on OS-X,and I'm pretty sure that someone has
been able to compile it eith readline support there. readline doesn't
give you all you want, but it's a start.
 
> Well. I guess i should be used to it by now and just realize that
> macintosh is the runt of the litter and that we will never have the
> niceties that other *nix and Windoze users have. I'll die of old age
> before we get syntax coloring!

The problem is that Python is an open-source project, so what gets
developed is what developers want. There may be more Mac users than
Linux users, for instance, but there are fewer developers, so there jsut
isn't as much done.

> just once, the Macintosh was given a bit more Python
> love.

I agree with this to some extent. For the most part, it is up to the
MacPython comunity to develop Mac specific tools, but there are places
where Python has been adapted to accomodate Windows and *nix, and not
the Mac. The example I can think of at the moement, is that the
interpreter can parse code with *nix or Windows line endings, but not
Mac ones. That's because it is easy to just ignore the \r in Windows
line endings, but it could have also been easy to ignore the \n and get
Mac + Windows compatability. Getting all three is hard, and no one seems
to want to do the work to get it.

Frankly, IO've also bee dissapointed in the MacPython communities
commitment to cross-platform tools. tkInter works on Windows well
because Window users have made sure that it does, ditto for wxPython,
etc. No one in MacPython development is working on those things. If you
had a strong tkinter, you'd have IDLE, if you had wxPython, you'd have
Boa, so the cross-platform tools really are the key. I guess if you
wanted to write programs for most computer users, you wouldn't be using
a Mac in the first place. :-(


-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From grey at despair.dmiyu.org  Mon Jul  2 12:09:20 2001
From: grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:09:20 -0000
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
References: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k175f.18k.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>

On 2 Jul 2001 08:47:06 -0700, Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Why is it that one can attempt the most daring tasks with Python, e.g.
>write image manipulation programs, steer super computing applications,
>write interactive games, parse XML, yet still can not perform the more
>basic tasks of hitting a database and generating a report.

    Why is it you're trolling this group?  This is the second time that
you've posted basically the same message?  Learning how to post like catlovrr,
maybe?

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 21:28:55 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 18:28:55 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <220720012039325082%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <mailman.995861918.11181.python-list@python.org> <ni1olt8lmseiqracnh1j1oe5coegc11ulo@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jt4gn$ift$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <ni1olt8lmseiqracnh1j1oe5coegc11ulo at 4ax.com>,
Steve Horne  <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I think you underestimate the number of people who will some day
>figure that 1.5.2 is a bit old, install the latest version, and have
>hell break lose over night when half their scripts stop working.

....silently.  That's the worst problem.  Sure, we're silently losing
information now, but old users will silently lose information *in*
*working* *programs* if they skip over all the warning releases.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Fri Jul  6 10:41:19 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:41:19 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr> <9i4ic3$f3v$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 6 Jul 2001 14:35:47 GMT, gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>Have you tried
>
> server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1'))
>
>?  Dunno about xmlrpc, but it works with SOAP.


I've just tried it and it doesn't work with xmlrpclib. :o(
Which implementation of SOAP are you using ?  Maybe I'll switch to SOAP, 
if it can solve my problem. 

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From chrisd at rocketnetwork.com  Thu Jul  5 22:29:53 2001
From: chrisd at rocketnetwork.com (Chris Duncan)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 19:29:53 -0700
Subject: deleting directories w/ subfolders
Message-ID: <9i37ta$p61$1@bob.news.rcn.net>

Anyone know a way to delete a parent directory containing files &
subfolders?




From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Tue Jul  3 17:52:00 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 17:52:00 EDT
Subject: WIN UP TO $1,000,000.00 EVERY SINGLE DAY
Message-ID: <200107032201.QAA56760@s0203.pm0.net>

******************************************** 
WIN UP TO $1,000,000.00 EVERY SINGLE DAY
********************************************
http://lotto.quacko.com 

Quacko-Lotto is now offering a $1,000,000.00 Grand Prize to anyone who
takes the time to play tickets today. Have you played YOUR Free Tickets
today? 
http://lotto.quacko.com

SPECIAL OFFER AT SUPREMECASINO!!
100% BONUS ON PAYPAL & NETeller DEPOSITS!
********************************************* 

PAYPAL connects http://www.supremecasino.com members by providing an
immediate, secure and effective mechanism to transfer Cash over the
Internet! And virtually 100% guaranteed! 

All PayPal deposits will receive a 100% Free Cash Bonus! Up to $75 on
initial deposits and a 5% Free Cash Bonus on all additional deposits.

There has never been a better time to fund your account than now with
bonuses on all deposits! 
- Initial Western Union Deposits 5%
- Additional Western Union Deposits 5% 
- Wire or Personal Check Deposits 5%

Stop by and Play for Free!
http://www.supremecasino.com





<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From cliechti at mails.ch  Wed Jul 11 16:41:58 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 22:41:58 +0200
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
References: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <Xns90DBE780C8D77cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

what is the timeout value?
i've had problems with time.sleep() when using values smaller than 20ms 
(0.02). I'm now using 30ms wich works fine.

it seems that windows has a time resulution of 10ms or worse...

(details: when i ran the old code with time.sleep(0.01) the program got 
very slow and the win NT4.0 taskmanager told that [File] Explorer is 
getting 30% of CPU power. this number must be totaly wrong because its an 
other process and my programm does not use files or any other things that 
would require the Explorer. moral: don't count on windows if it get near 
10ms )

chris 
cliechti at mails.ch



Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote in 
news:yoxr8vnaokt.fsf at karhu.tp.spt.fi:

> I'm using a Threading.Event object. When I specify a timeout for
> wait(), it takes almost 1 second for the thread that is wait()'ing to
> wake up when I kick the Event obj with a set(). I know I could get
> around this by creating a thread to perform set()'s periodically, but
> since this slowness is not mentioned in the documentation I was
> wondering whether I have misunderstood something.
> 
> I'm using Python 2.1.
> 





From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 16:40:29 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:40:29 -0700
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org> <3dr8vvqrfl.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <mailman.994357450.6939.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44D0BD.63A3F795@home.net>

William Park wrote:
> I didn't know this was possible.  What prevents the publisher from
> simply holding on the manuscript forever?


Anyone writing a computer book should read this:

http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html

It's interesting (and humorous) reading for the rest of us as well.


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul  9 20:38:21 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:38:21 -0700
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A4E7D.F16F2C4B@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
> 
> while (x=getchar() != 'N')
>         {
>         Do something}
> 
> In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?

What is wrong with:

while 1:
	x=raw_input()
	if x == 'N': break
	Do something


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 13:01:09 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:01:09 -0400
Subject: 'import' error in csh
References: <c8fd1ef9.0107120544.20e2bec@posting.google.com>        <3B4DABBE.D176B14F@nokia.com> <mailman.994949961.19601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <1Hk37.2714$yb3.51907@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994949961.19601.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Joonas> That code hasn't gone thru Python interpreter, because the
error message
>     Joonas> comes from csh.
>     Joonas> Try to fix the first line from '# !/usr/bin/local/python' to
>     Joonas> '#!/usr/bin/local/python'
>
> or more likely:
>
>     #!/usr/local/bin/python
>
But, preferably:

#!/usr/bin/env python

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ethan at ucar.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:23:18 2001
From: ethan at ucar.edu (Ethan Alpert)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:23:18 -0600
Subject: Motif Style File Selection Box in Tkinter?
Message-ID: <3B66DB76.CE0D231F@ucar.edu>


Are there any resources or places to go to find higher level
widget implementations in Tkinter. Specifically I'm looking
for a motif style file selection box.

Please respond to ethan at ucar.edu

Thanks,

	-ethan


From m at moshez.org  Mon Jul 30 04:43:48 2001
From: m at moshez.org (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:43:48 +0300
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <E15R8eS-0004DJ-00@darjeeling>

On 30 Jul 2001, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

> I would write it
>       print "There %s %d error%s." % (if n==1 then ('was',  n, '')
>                                               else ('were', n, 's'))

The correct way to write it is:

print ["There was %d error", "There were %d errors"][n>1] % n

This way, making this application translatable is a piece of cake.
The other version can't be translated properly.
As someone from a non-English speaking country, you should care.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE
Learn Python! http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy



From andrew-usenet at lexical.org.uk  Thu Jul 26 09:50:40 2001
From: andrew-usenet at lexical.org.uk (Andrew Walkingshaw)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 14:50:40 +0100 (BST)
Subject: SlightlyOffTopic: syntax-highlighting in XEmacs running on Windows
References: <E%T77.147$bXi.169905152@news.telia.no> <3B601B45.4070107@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m081f.6bu.andrew-usenet@chiark.greenend.org.uk>

In article <3B601B45.4070107 at nospiced.ham.devis.com>, Tom Jenkins wrote:
>Thomas Weholt wrote:

[(X)Emacs/Win32, python-mode]

>Actually Thomas you can have a file named .emacs (at least under Win2k 
>though I think you could do it in NT also)

Here, under WinME, using the binary XEmacs 21.4 distribution;

XEmacs 21.4 checks, before .emacs, for a directory .xemacs/ and files in
that:

.xemacs/
       init.el
       custom.el

so that settings from M-x customize don't clobber those in your .emacs.

Also, XEmacs ships with python-mode by default: might you not have
font-lock-mode enabled? The relevant excerpt from my init.el is

(font-lock-mode t)

though I'm sure some Emacs expert can indicate what I -should- be using
:)

HTH,
Andrew
-- 
adw27 at cam.ac.uk (academic)                    http://www.lexical.org.uk/



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sat Jul 21 19:42:37 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:42:37 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com>

>If case-preservation were tool-enforced, then all of us would
>essentially have to use those tools.

The moment that any programming language becomes tool-
dependent, that language is dead to me. I tried fiddling with
Lisp-without-Emacs for most of a year. It didn't work out. I can
think of few programming-related things more onerous than
a programming language which requires you to learn its editor.

Never again.

C//



From tdelaney at avaya.com  Tue Jul 17 22:30:58 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:30:58 +1000
Subject: Augmented Assignment in Python (PER)
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2B9@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> "For the built-in types, augmented assignment doesn't violate
> mutability or perform in-place modification of objects. Therefore,
> writing x+=y creates an entirely new object x with the value x + y.
> User defined types and classes may choose to implement different
> behavior by redefining special methods such as __iadd__(), 
> __isub__(), 
> and so forth."
> 
> Note: I still stand by the statement for built-in types.  I 
> looked through
> the Python sources when writing the book and couldn't find any use of
> augmented assignment for built-in types.  I am not aware of any
> counter-example where x += y is not equal to x = x + y for 
> the standard
> built-in types (if there is such an example, please enlighten me!).

This is very very wrong.

a = []
b = a

print b
a += [1, 2]
print b

List is a built-in type. Lists are modified in-place by augmented
assignment.

The information in your book will lead to bad programming errors.

Tim Delaney



From dporter at draper.com  Tue Jul 10 11:07:34 2001
From: dporter at draper.com (Dave Porter)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 08:07:34 -0700
Subject: BLT through Pmw
References: <mailman.993837132.26613.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <a4a71eeb.0107100707.6347aec5@posting.google.com>

"Reggie Dugard" <reggie at merfinllc.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.993837132.26613.python-list at python.org>...
> Volker,
> 
> I've just been catching up with my e-mail and I didn't see any response
> to your question, so I thought I'd put in my 2 cents.  I'm not sure if
> this is the "correct" way, but this is how I got it to work.
> 
> I installed BLT under the tcl directory found in the standard python
> distribution.  I then moved tcl\lib\tcl8.3\blt2.4 up to
> tcl\tcl8.3\blt2.4 so that the pkgIndex.tcl file could be found by TCL.
> I also made sure that the tcl\bin directory is in the path so that the
> DLL's could be found.
> 
> I played with this a while before I got it to work and this method is a
> kludge, so if you find a cleaner way to do the install, I'd appreciate
> it if you'd pass it on.
> 
> I hope this helps; good luck!
> 
> Reggie Dugard
> 
> Merfin, LLC                             Voice:  925-937-4560
> 1460 Maria Lane, Suite 420              FAX:    925-937-4530
> Walnut Creek, CA 94596                  Mailto:reggie at merfinllc.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Volker Dobler
> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 3:46 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: BLT throug Pmw
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I  would like to use BLT 2.4u throug Pmw 0.8.5 from Python 2.1
> on an Windwos box but Pmw cannot find the BLT package.
> I installed the BLT package from the self extracting Windows
> installer found on the BLT home page in various locations but none
> worked.  As I am unfamiliar with the tcl/tk-directory organisation
> I do not know wether all files are in the right place.
> Does anyone have any experince with this setup?
> Where should the BLT libraries be (relativily to the Python21 or Tcl
> diretory)?
> The demos included in the BLT distribution do not work either, they
> suffer from the same problem: "Can't find BLT package"
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance for any idea.
> 
> Volker Dobler

Volker Dobler
   Install the Python 2.1 distribution from Sourceforge WITHOUT Tcl.
Just unselect Tcl when prompted. Then install Tcl/Tk8.3.3 from
http://dev.scriptics.com/. I installed Tcl into the Python21
directory. Install
PMW and BLT (both into \Python21) and everything should work fine. The
Tcl which is part of a Python distribution is doing something which
breaks the PMW/BLT connection so the easiest solution is don't use it.
  Regards
  Dave Porter


From smnordby at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 20:35:05 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 17:35:05 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B411339.6DADAFF0@yahoo.com>

I don't understand why people are replying to this troll.


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul 23 22:35:11 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:35:11 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com> <mailman.995927281.7201.python-list@python.org> <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <1inplt45arpfcj03gklmn309fc2rkegsgm@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:50 +0100, Stephen Horne
<steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:27:06 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
>wrote:
>
>>try-giving-it-a-rest-for-12-hours?-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>Sorry - insomnia brought on by anxiety due to the anticipation of
>severe damage to my professional reputation and a lot of unnecessary
>work.
>
>If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
>and similar in your code as I do - most of which I don't even know who
>has it or who might have tweaked versions (and I know as an absolute
>fact those warnings will either not be seen at all or will be ignored)
>you'd be just as pissed of as I am.

This seems like a pretty good reason to leave '/' the way it is and have
'//' be for float division.  A lot of the opposition to the change seems
not to be to the idea, but just to the necessity of going through code
changing '/' to '//', so why not make it possible to avoid that?

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From dan at cgsoftware.com  Sat Jul  7 01:41:00 2001
From: dan at cgsoftware.com (Daniel Berlin)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 01:41:00 -0400
Subject: Inverse regex?
In-Reply-To: <tkcud8arriomfa@corp.supernews.com> ("Andrew Henshaw"'s message of "Fri, 6 Jul 2001 22:49:17 -0400")
References: <tkcud8arriomfa@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <87r8vte1oz.fsf@cgsoftware.com>

"Andrew Henshaw" <ahenshaw.at.apower.dot.com at www.cgsoftware.com> writes:

> Has anybody seen or developed what might be called an inverse regex
> generator.  We would like to do some unit testing of modules that have user
> input validated by regular expressions.  It would be nice to throw some some
> strings at them and see if the propagated input causes an error in the code
> downstream.  In other words, it may help to detect if our validation
> routines are insufficient.
> 
> I understand that, in many cases, a complete list of valid strings is
> impossible.  However, for certain regular expressions it would be certainly
> reasonable.  For others, it will be possible, but practically impossible
> (set too large).  For the impossible, and near impossible, it would be nice
> to generate a bounded set that hits many of the degenerate and extreme
> cases.
> 
> Any ideas?
Yes.
There was an automata/regex/cfg toolkit that could do this.
I can't remember the name, but i can describe it, in case someone else
remembers (you should be able to find it off the description, if worse
comes to worst). I know it wasn't bruce watson's fire stuff.

It was written in C++ and consisted of a library and a bunch of
filters that used it.  It could do DFA's, NFA's, CFG's, Regular
expressions (and something else i found neat, but escapes me at the
moment), in all of their various
forms. The filters it built using the library (very simple of course,
the library did all  the real work) consisted of   conversions between
all of the various forms (where possible), enumeration of their
languages (whether they were infinite or not),
minimization of DFA's (by hopcroft's algorithm, as well as 
minimization by reversal), minimization of regular expressions, 

Oh, wait, just found it.

The Grail+ project.

www.csd.uwo.ca/research/grail

One of the filters will do enumeration of the languages.
It'll also let you specify the maximum number of strings you want to
enumerate (in case it's an infinite language).

So just throw a regex (in their regex format) at it, and away you go.

HTH,
Dan


> 
> Andrew Henshaw
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

-- 
"Four years ago...  No, it was yesterday.
Today I...  No, that wasn't me.
Sometimes I...  No, I don't.
"-Steven Wright



From fdrake at acm.org  Thu Jul 12 19:50:43 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:50:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010712235043.5A42D2892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/

Lots of small updates.

Added Eric Raymond's documentation for the XML-RPM module added to
the standard library.




From mwh at python.net  Mon Jul  2 18:41:34 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 23:41:34 +0100
Subject: Calculus Module
References: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994106583.27446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3sngfymw1.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu> writes:

> Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

What would you want such a thing to do?  I'm curious.  Symbolic
integration?

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  ... Windows proponents tell you that it will solve things that
  your Unix system people keep telling you are hard.  The Unix 
  people are right: they are hard, and Windows does not solve 
  them, ...                            -- Tim Bradshaw, comp.lang.lisp


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 22 19:27:32 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:27:32 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list at python.org>,
 "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> A user trying e.g. velocity(3, 2) is simply going to be
> surprised -- as countless newbies have testified on c.l.py over the years.

My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are the 
same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.
Result: buggier code since the errors are less obvious.

If you have a routine "velocity" in which it doesn't make sense to do 
integer truncation, and it doesn't coerce its args to float by adding 0.0, 
that's also a bug.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From steveha at animal.blarg.net  Mon Jul 16 18:05:38 2001
From: steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R. Hastings)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:05:38 -0700
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net> <3B4E617D.C7AA9123@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b536532$1@news.blarg.net>

Peter Hansen (peter at engcorp.com) wrote:
> Look into Jython (http://www.jython.org), which compiles Python 
> source to Java bytecodes.

> Adding to the perfection, this lets you avoid Tkinter and TCL 
> entirely, because now the entire world of Swing is open to you.

This might be a good solution for me.  I had never even heard of Swing
before you posted this article, but now I am looking into it.  Thanks for
the information.
--
Steve R. Hastings		"Vita est"
steve at hastings.org		http://www.blarg.net/~steveha


From aahz at panix.com  Sun Jul 29 13:25:20 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 10:25:20 -0700
Subject: 2.0 or 2.1 on win32
References: <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <9jti6t$e2g$1@panix2.panix.com> <L6X87.58021$C81.4985811@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <9k1gu0$j0a$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <L6X87.58021$C81.4985811 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
>
>people have always been ambiguous in the past as to whether installing
>activepython or python + win32 extensions was the better choice. as far
>as i can tell active python is based upon 2.1 and not 2.1.1. should
>this be the deciding factor?

I don't have an opinion.  Paul?  ;-)

(Actually, that's not quite true.  Unless ActiveState plans to release a
new build based on 2.1.1 within the next month or two, I think going to
straight 2.1.1 is probably a better choice.)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 06:16:40 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 03:16:40 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message news:<u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>...

[Attribution lost!]

> > > > So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize
> > > > this is the third time I've said this but I think it would silence a
> > > > lot of objections and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.
> 
> PEP238 proposes that / be the inverse of *, so that '(a/b) * b = a
> (more or less)' and that 'a // b == floor(a/b)'.  If we 'swap the proposed
> meanings of // and /', then we would have a/b == floor(a/b), which would
> break almost all existing floating point code.

I suspect that the contributor who made the above unattributed
suggestion actually meant that the meanings should be swapped
intelligently in the PEP in such a way that the explanatory text be
altered accordingly.

Paul


From emile at fcfw.fenx.com  Mon Jul  9 18:14:32 2001
From: emile at fcfw.fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 17:14:32 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul  9)
Message-ID: <53CA4EA8708778D2.8E09243C87EBEA9D.FE6FA409DB77D7BE@lp.airnews.net>

Pythonic Quote of the Week...
    The existence of rapid development interpreters like Perl
    and Python, combined with a wide array of modules providing
    quick interfaces to various protocols, servers, and
    functionalities, heralds the beginning of *real* rapid
    application development. The long delayed promise is finally
    a reality. This new ability provides a great revenue model
    for the small, independent software developer, as well as
    the employee who loves to get in, make a mark, and go on to
    the next project. It yields cost savings, revenue increases,
    and better designed software to corporations.
      - Steve Litt http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200101/200101.htm


    If you need a patch to get win32ras working on win9x, Les Schaffer
    has one you can help him test.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:1f7ektcggljf59ab7e4aj7mf7fg5ujot96 at 4ax.com

    Dave Cole makes a sequence-to-CSV tool available.  Too bad the one
    I have to write this week isn't in Python...
         http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:m34rst3rt1.fsf at vole.object-craft.com.au

     On the distributed extension/module front, Paul Prescod shows us
     how ActiveState uses pyppm to install modules.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994368791.9779.python-list at python.org
    ... and imagines how easy it may someday be.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994370230.11280.python-list at python.org
    ... while Bruce Sass suggests we take a closer look at adapting the
    Debian package manager apt - Advanced Package Tool.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994541056.31455.python-list at python.org

    Alex Martelli points out a *fast* way to extract the phone number
    from a formatted string.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9i2jv703cm at enews2.newsguy.com

    Martin von Lewis responds to a laundry list of valid quibbles to be
    found in the standard library.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:j4wv5suay4.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de
    ... and Carlos Ribeiro suggests a new PEP to set standards for additions to the Library.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994034642.25601.python-list at python.org

    In the Current Events column: While the Fourth was celebrated in
    the States, in France freedom was celebrated differently.  The
    Python Track at the Libre Software Meeting started July 4th, and
    we're waiting to hear how the European Python Meeting went last
    weekend as part of the larger LSM get together.  Watch for news.
        http://lsm.abul.org/program/topic19/
    ... and now for something entirely different - ehh, maybe not. 
    But, join Greg Ward over the next two weeks as Monty Python hits
    the big screen in Montreal.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994322041.31501.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Gerhard Haring wants to put a Python team together for 72 hours
    of non-stop fun competing to win the International Functional
    Programming Contest.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal
    ... See the contest homepage for details.  Prizes are offered! 
    Win bragging rights!
        http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/

    Jason R. Mastaler releases the next version of Tagged Message
    Delivery Agent (TMDA), a Python application for qmail systems
    designed to significantly reduce the amount of SPAM you get.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994378561.4870.clpa-moderators at python.org

    C. Laurence Gonsalves points us to a warning about Microsoft's
    new OS, XP.  It looks like deja vue all over again.  Couldn't they
    just as easily have used dongles? ;-)
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:slrn9kakd8.v4j.clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com

    To gain an appreciation of just how hard Python authors have worked
    and what they've gone through, Chris Barker points us to Philip
    Greenspun's story on writing a dead-trees computer book.  As a result,
    AMK's book is not due out soon.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3dofqzqbvo.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us

    Kragen Sitaker warns that exec and eval are an easy way to write
    code that works some of the time and breaks in spectacular and
    completely unexpected ways.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:XZD%256.19931$zT1.1101722 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com

    Doug Fort shares a pattern for breaking out of threads.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3b44660f_2 at news5.uncensored-news.com

    Paul Prescod introduces PEP-261 promoting support for wide unicode
    characters.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994017483.31644.python-list at python.org

    Mike Fletcher adapts Ka-Ping Lee's pydoc for use as a Package
    Documentation Generator.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994245607.15064.python-list at python.org

    Bernhard Herzog updates Sketch 0.6.12 - A vector drawing program,
    and recommends that users of 0.6.10 & .11 upgrade.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994378561.4871.clpa-moderators at python.org

    David Goodger provides a quick rundown of non-Zope templating
    alternatives.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:B76693CB.13B8D%25dgoodger%40bigfoot.com

    Tom Malcolmson releases pySTL, a Python extension that exposes
    the C++ STL for use from Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com

    Levente Sandor finds a zip file handler lurking in wxPython.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:_eZ%256.4201%24Kf3.33223%40www.newsranger.com

    Those with database related questions were adequately answered.
    Two posts stand out: in one, Armin Steinhof provides us with a list
    of Python related database resources.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9hphiu0dks at drn.newsguy.com
    ... and then Gerhard Haring points out that he's the editor of a
    Python Database resource location site and asks for missing
    locations to be added.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:slrn9k0olm.pc.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal

--LOL on c.l.py:
  bdfl: I'd say it's too little value for too much disturbance (a new keyword).
  </F>: given the amount of other potentially disturbing stuff going into 2.2, I doubt anyone would notice...


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning,
ask <claird at neosoft.com> to subscribe.  Mention "Python-URL!".


-- The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From wheelege at tsn.cc  Sat Jul 21 21:45:44 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:45:44 +1000
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <009401c11250$06166860$0200a8c0@ACE>

> I'm trying to split the following string called data into four variables:
>
> :Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!
>
> <snip!>

  Surely you could just use string.split, then chop off the colon(s)?

  Of course that will only work if your given data is consistent, but if you
were going to do slices, it probably is.

  Good luck,
  Glen.




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 21:17:52 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:17:52 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com> <3B5FAD11.FB9D737E@engcorp.com> <tm336a7vjqjq5f@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <yx297.542$WD1.105740@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:tm336a7vjqjq5f at news.supernews.com...
>
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5FAD11.FB9D737E at engcorp.com...
> > John Roth wrote:
> > >
> > > After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> > > threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too
unstable
> > > for real use.
> >
> > Do you really mean "is" too unstable, or you mean it looks like it
> > "might be" unstable, solely because of the proposals about changing the
> > way the / operator works?
>
> I mean is. Notice that I said "among others," therefore PEP 238 was
> **NOT** the sole proposal involved.
>
And the breakages you complain about are ... ?

> > I've used Python for about a year and a half in dozens of practical
> > areas in industry.  I consider it *bar none* the most stable language
> > I've ever used.  Not only with respect to the stability of the
> > applications I write, but also the runtime (I can hardly recall a crash,
> > although I'm sure I've had a few when using calldll around third-party
> > DLLs) and definitely *even the language definition*.
>
> Runtime stability was not the issue. That's a given before I even start
> evaluating. And I don't consider the existing problem with Win 9x
> console mode and Tkinter to be a point in Python's favor.
>
Excuse me. Are you saying that you don't want any new features in the
language even if your existing programs continue to operate in a perfectly
satisfactory manner. From my personal experience in over thirty years of
software development I cannot remember a single language environment where
so much care was taken to minimize the effect of language changes on
existing programs. I wasn't entirely happy about PEP 238 originally, but the
approach now proposed is definitely preferable to the usual commercial
approach, which basically says: "You've upgraded for the new features, now
fix all that we broke in your programs".

> > Changing from 1.5.2 to 2.1 required us to do, let me see: nothing!
> > I reviewed the list of changes, predicted we would not be impacted,
> > and so far (after several months of ongoing development and continued
> > use of our many utilities and applications) I've been proven correct.
>
> Many shops want something a little more concrete than a statement
> by the top technical expert. A compatibility scan tool would be
> appreciated.
>
And I am reasonably sure that one will appear without my having to do
anything about it. But, of course, you must be *buying* your Python. I mean,
if you were getting it for nothing, like I do, your demands would surely not
be so peremptory.

> > So I'm guessing you really just mean that this PEP 238 proposal
> > is scarey.  I agree, to the extent that code breakage is never nice
> > to contemplate, but with the ongoing consideration being given to the
> > issue by the developers, I'm reasonably satisfied that even this
> > drastic change will end up having relatively little effect on my
> > opinion of Python's stability.  Planning over two years in
> > advance and guaranteeing the breakage will only occur when
> > a major upgrade (Python 3.0) is released is pretty much the
> > best you could hope for from any language.  After all, by convention
> > major upgrades are where you are supposed to *expect* code
> > breakage.
>
> That last sentence is what is scarey, not PEP238 or any of the
> other specific proposals. There's an endemic mindset in the xNIX
> community that simply doesn't understand the risk aversive behavior
> of many of the large shops. If compatability isn't guaranteed, then
> an upgrade is a project - which has to be scoped, justified, planned,
> and then prioritized with all the rest of the projects.
>
Ah, I see. You don't use Microsoft tools or languages. Have you *any idea*
what the forthcoming transition to VB.Net is going to do the the millions of
lines of code currently written in VB? And do you know what Microsoft's
answer to those who can't, or don't want to, upgrade is? "Run your
applications as unmanaged code." Which is to say, forego most of the
benefits of the .Net environment.

> > > Hopefully, this is going to provide more food for thought than fuel
for
> the
> > > flames.
> >
> > I hope you don't consider this a flame.  But I'm not responding to
> > the  suggestion of "required" other than to say I don't think it's
> > really necessary (because I don't think it's really necessary...
> > as should be evident from the above).
>
> I think we're going to disagree on this one...
>
That may be so, but please tell us why. What broke, when?

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  9 01:26:49 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 00:26:49 -0500
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <20010708223109.O93454-100000@open-systems.net>
Message-ID: <010f01c10837$c2a68140$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Watson" <chris at voodooland.net>
> [ kosh wrote: ]
> > Also no one can make your code GPL. Your code is always under the
license
> > you released it under. However the GPL would make the entire collection
GPL
> > if GPL code were released with it. That really is no different then
> > including BSD code in a closed source product since the closed source
> > license takes precedence.
>
> That is where you are wrong. If someone either A) uses my code in a GPL
> app the entire app is GPL'ed *including* my code. Or B) someone can just
> flat out put the GPL on top of my code *HAD* my code been licensed with
> only clause 1 and 2. The BSDL does *not* say you cannot place further
> restrictions on it. Thats the whole point of BSDL. Do whatever you want
> with it just dont sue me (the author) if you put it in your pace maker and
> you die the next morning.

Wrong.  The right to create derivative works does not include the right
to change the license.  Note that I am not a lawyer, and this is based on
my layman's understanding of contract law, but this has been brought up
so many times I looked into it.

The BSDL doesn't *have* to mention that "further restrictions are
prohibited"
since that is the default.

Suppose that Mr. W creates a marvelous piece of software and places it under
the BSDL.  Mr. G sees it, finds some component parts useful, and integrates
them into his new app which he places under the GPL.

Now Mr. K comes along and finds Mr. G's app.  Mr. G could not rightly and/or
legally change the licensing of the components he borrowed from Mr. W, and
further as the BSDL requires the original author's identity to be revealed,
Mr. K could bypass Mr. G and contact Mr. W directly in case of confusion
in this matter.

Mr. G's app IS under the GPL, but the components (individual source files
no doubt) written by Mr. W will still have the BSDL license at the top
(unless Mr. G has violated the law, which of course is always possible
regardless of license).  For Mr. K to avoid GPL "contamination" he would
have to carefully extract only the BSDL parts *or* go back to the original
software distribution from Mr. W.

The GPL states how the creator of derivative works must behave.  If the
creator of the derivative work cannot obey both the GPL and the law at the
same time, the law takes precedence always.

Watson, I understand that you hate the GPL.  By now the entire Python
community is well aware of that; you have called me stupid in this public
forum before and may well do so again.  I am no fan of Stallman, although
in principle (but not in practice) I agree with him.  By "not in practice"
I mean that I don't make it my holy war to fight for free software (per
his definition) but I certainly use and appreciate it.

The main reason you hate it seems to be that you have seriously
overestimated
the power that the license gives to others.  No matter what I or anyone else
wants to do, without your approval I can't change the license of your code.

In the aggregate with GPL code, the aggregate must be distributed as if the
GPL covered the whole thing, but that aggregation still doesn't change the
license of non-GPL code in "the mix."  Further, if the license of the non-
GPL code is GPL-incompatible you simply can't legally distribute the
aggregation at all.





From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 09:05:18 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 13:05:18 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9hsfue$oqv$1@216.39.170.247>

In article <9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>, peter.milliken at gtech.com says...
<snip>
> Of course, I could at this point say I would never venture into air space
> controlled by such as system, but I know it would never get off the ground
> (so to speak :-)) because to do it in Python would mean it would never pass
> acceptance testing - sure you could code it just as fast (if not faster)
> than most other languages used for this application area but you would be in
> the test phase forever - or at least until the customer cancelled the
> contract :-). So keep dreaming :-)
> 
> Peter

You perhaps feel safer with the existing system using left over 50's 
generation military radars, _ancient_ IBM "mainframes" that are probably 
less powerful then a pocket calculator that has to be manually 
cooridinated by PHONE? Some ATC facilities have been temporarily shut 
down because the burn-out obsolete discrete transistor they needed to 
function couldn't be located - no, this is not a joke! In the last year 
or so, all flights between O'Hare (Chicago) and DIA (Denver) had to be 
delayed because Chicago lost phone service due to a cable being cut and 
they couldn't relay departure information.

FAA "controlled" airspace is a joke and they've spent large fractions of 
a billion (or more) to upgrade and have by and large not succeded yet on 
a national scale.

The Canadians privatized their national air traffic control a few years 
ago and oh my! the planes RUN ON TIME!

Takes all kinds I guess.

Dave LeBlanc


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 04:08:45 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:08:45 +0200
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com> 	<mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org> 	<sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.995420071.9302.python-list@python.org> <3B55017A.A90CB816@engcorp.com> <slrn9la9o0.vj8.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9j3g6c02l65@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn9la9o0.vj8.tim at vegeta.ath.cx...
    ...
> Actually, I have a snippet of code I'd love to be able to convert to
> Python.  The only thing is I can't find a Python equivalent for Perl's
> record separator variable ($/).  This is from 'Perl Cookbook' (ORA).

Have a look at my recently-posted recipe:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66063
"Read a text file by-paragraph".  It may need adaptation (e.g.
if you need to be able to read empty 'paragraphs', use separators
that are not whole lines, &c) but I hope the basic idea is sound.
Maybe something like that might be integrated in a future
version of standard module fileinput...?

If the file you're reading is not TOO huge, and you don't care
about implicit suppression of empty paragraphs (which Perl, I
believe, only supplies when $/ is ''), much simpler solutions
would be possible -- down to the simplistic case of:

def Paragraphs(fileobject, separator='%%\\n'):
    return fileobject.read().split(separator)

and of course this is a problem that cries out for generators,
so Python 2.2 should offer better ways to frame solutions.


Alex





From guido at digicool.com  Mon Jul  9 11:03:12 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 11:03:12 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 09 Jul 2001 09:56:17 CDT."
             <15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107091503.f69F3CQ27257@odiug.digicool.com>

>     Guido> I think Barry's mimelib may have a replacement already.
>     Guido>     http://mimelib.sourceforge.net/

[Skip]
> The astute observer would be tempted to ask why Barry hasn't been able to
> sneak mimelib into the core yet:
> 
>     >>> import mimelib
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>     ImportError: No module named mimelib

This will work in 2.2, no worry.

> I won't ask however, as I don't want to show up on the PSU's radar screen.
> Has anyone seen Barry recently?
> 
> Skip

Barry?  Who's that?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From clpy at snakefarm.org  Thu Jul  5 17:27:59 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 23:27:59 +0200
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com> <3B44D89A.1DF28AD9@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B44DBDF.41C4CF2F@snakefarm.org>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

> I guess what I want to know is when globally declared objects are seen inside a function, class, or
> block, and when they must be explicitly declared as being global.

You can always 'read' a global variable in a function, e.g.

g = 0
def func():
  print g
func()

prints '0'. If you want to modify a global variable inside a function you
need to declare it as global:

g = 0
def func():
  global g
  g = 1
func()
print g

prints '1'.

Otherwise an assignment inside a function will create a new variable in
the local namespace:

g = 0
def func():
  g = 1
print g

prints '0' because g=1 only exists inside func().


Hope it helps.

cg.


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 21:02:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:02:51 -0400
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net> <8i287.3114$oh1.1140514@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60BDBB.B17D3375@engcorp.com>

Rainer Deyke wrote:

> My vote (if I had one): keep '/' for integer division and introduce a new
> symbol for floating point division.
> 
> Justification:
> 
>   - Everybody uses integers, but not everybody uses floats.  Therefore, if
> '/' is used for integers, then fewer people will have to change their code.

This suggests you pretty much missed the past ten thousand posts in
this newsgroup! :-)  The whole point of the change is roughly that many 
people who _do_ use integers, without knowing much about this whole issue, 
are more likely to expect "true" division rather than the classic behaviour.

Yes, there will be code breakage.  The decision appears largely to be
between _inevitable_ code breakage for a short period and _invisible_
bugs for eternity (that being how long we expect Python to be used :-).

>   - The short and pretty modulus operator should be matched with a short and
> pretty integer division operator.

// is growing on me.  I can survive without div and mod, I think.
I would have agreed with you a few days ago, but my aesthetic
sense is adapting rapidly here, as inevitability proclaims itself...

>   - It makes floats more difficult for newbies.  This is a good thing, since
> floats are dangerous.

Floats are probably not that dangerous for newbies.  Newbies
(in the sense I use the word) tend to write toy applications,
or not use floats at all (as in "everybody uses integers").
I think one could argue persuasively that this change, proposed
perhaps somewhat with newbies in mind, *reduces* the danger
to them.

But I don't think it's really newbies in the usual sense who
are the trigger for this change.  It appears to be more the casual
users, who might not be programmers per se (newbie or otherwise), 
but people in other fields (say, a lab technician, or a chemistry 
student) who would attempt to use Python for some simple mathematical 
work and get mysterious (or unnoticed!) totally inaccurate results 
when they enter some data as an integer and try to divide the 
"expected" way, and get data loss as a result.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Fri Jul 20 13:14:03 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:14:03 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5863EE.F9047098@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <bgpglt82ulj6m0bc9cgsdd2792be8su9hv@4ax.com>

>> If you use this a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less
>> readable than it should be.

>Um, you've got that precisely reversed! If I see "message" anywhere in my
>code, I know immediately that it is an instance of the class Message.

I quite agree with this.

C//



From mirko.liss at web.de  Tue Jul 10 14:03:08 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 20:03:08 +0200
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <wkhewlxmdn.fsf@lee-morgan.net>
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org> <wkhewlxmdn.fsf@lee-morgan.net>
Message-ID: <20010710180310.3C7C3510.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>


On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Lee Morgan wrote:
> Forgive my naivety, but ...
> 
> Has anyone proposed the idea of having a timebomb license?
...
> innovation? ie You get 2 years to recoup your investment and then the
> license drops to GPL or something.

There have been propositions like that concerning european software
patents, but not licenses.


regards,

Mirko Liss



From borcis at geneva-link.ch  Mon Jul 30 16:19:45 2001
From: borcis at geneva-link.ch (Borcis)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:19:45 +0200
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com> <nQq87.6146$YP2.191178@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B65C161.12003D86@geneva-link.ch>

Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> 
(...)
> > Useful programs aren't discarded so fast as development fashions and
> > religions.
(...)
> Inertia in the software world is a huge force, and always
> to be fought tooth and nail, because generally what Inertia means is:
> "Just live with our mistakes because we can't afford to fix them."
> This is an extremely depressing state.

You might find it comforting to consider the trojan
in the Bible - e.g. the original sin : the injunction
not to acquire morals from a supernatural source...
I guess it must be about 3k years old. Now that's inertia.

Boris Borcic


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul  6 12:34:11 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 12:34:11 -0400
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3dg0caqanw.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) writes:
> I have been hoping that someone else would write Oracle, DB2, and SQL
> Server drivers/modules for Python, so I wouldn't have to.  Mostly

If you type "python database" into Google, the second link you get is
to http://www.python.org/topics/database/; the "Modules" page has
links to DB/2 and ODBC modules for Python.  This is a silly
discussion, because such modules *do* exist, as everyone is quite well
aware, and have existed for some time.  You simply haven't been
looking very hard, or perhaps at all, for them.

--amk


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Wed Jul 25 02:05:28 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:05:28 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEILAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995948081.23225.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <240720012305282375%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995948081.23225.python-list at python.org>, Justin
Sheehy <justin at iago.org> wrote:

> "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:
> 
> > Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there)
> 
> Sure, but 1 == "1" there as well.
> 
> Ugh.

So is "spam" == "ham"   --> true 
I've done that more that I like to admit, although fortunately the -w
flag keeps me from finding those by long distance at 3AM.

  --John


From richard at bizarsoftware.com.au  Sun Jul 22 21:27:54 2001
From: richard at bizarsoftware.com.au (Richard Jones)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:27:54 +1000
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2C8@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
References: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2C8@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
Message-ID: <200107230125.LAA04615@goanna.adroit.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:21, Delaney, Timothy wrote:
> Nah - all the best solutions are worked out in the shower.
>
> I am currently campaigning for all programmer's cubicles at my place of
> work to have showers installed. I predict that productivity will increase
> 5-fold.

There's gotta be a thesis in this, somehow.

Hmm, I've been holding off doing postgrad 'cos I couldn't think of a decent 
thesis. Might just go have a shower and not think about it...


     Richard

-- 
Richard Jones
richard at bizarsoftware.com.au
Senior Software Developer, Bizar Software (www.bizarsoftware.com.au)



From rwklee at home.com  Mon Jul  9 22:11:28 2001
From: rwklee at home.com (Rick Lee)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:11:28 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com> <9icj7b$8df$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <3B4A644F.895FC4B8@home.com>

This is a slightly different question about Medusa.  Is there a way to
dynamically add/remove server IP addresses to/from Medusa as it is running?

- Rick Lee
  rwklee at home.com

Ng Pheng Siong wrote:

> According to Erik Max Francis  <max at alcyone.com>:
> > Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
> > classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
> > process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
> > delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?
>
> Just use Medusa's http_server. Medusa does HTTP/1.1 with persistent
> connections; SimpleHTTPServer (really BaseHTTPRequestHandler) does
> HTTP/1.0 only.
>
> Some refactoring of Medusa and/or BaseHTTPRequestHandler to simplify
> writing HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.) handlers that are portable to both
> would be nice; e.g., send_header(), end_headers() versus Medusa's
> http_response object.
>
> --
> Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps
>
> Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 23:47:05 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:47:05 -0400
Subject: Complaint received, email address removed
References: <mailman.996461576.28755.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <yK497.2132$9i1.152153@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"PostMaster General Anti-Spam Center" <nospam at postmastergeneral.com> wrote
in message news:mailman.996461576.28755.python-list at python.org...
>
> Dear email recipient,
>
>
> Thank you for taking the time to make a report to the PostMaster
> General Anti-Spam Center.
>
[ ... ]

Sorry about this unexpected result of my attempts to stop the Quacko
nuisance on c.l.py.

It seems as though this occasional nonsense will fade into insignificance if
"Bruce Hendricks" isn't stopped soon. I hope they string him up by his
naughty bits.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From mwh at python.net  Wed Jul  4 07:21:00 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 12:21:00 +0100
Subject: sys.stdin.read() HELP!
References: <3B42B7F0.50B624BD@umdnj.edu>
Message-ID: <m38zi5ym77.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Andrey Revyakin <revyakag at umdnj.edu> writes:

> I have a cgi script which reads XML data from a FLASH5 movie. The script
> reads data into a string like this:
> 
> text = sys.stdin.read()
> 
> After I moved my scripts from a machine with python 1.7.2 to to a one

1.5.2, I presume?

> with python 2 .0, I started getting the following error:
> 
> text = sys.stdin.read()
> IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
> 
> WHAT THE #$^ does that mean??? 

It means sys.stdin isn't attached properly.  This is unlikely to be
Python's fault, I'd have thought.  Can you shed a few more details as
to the environment you're working in?  Maybe somebody who has
experience in these things will be able to spot the mis-config (not
likely to be me).

Are you sure the version of Python is the only difference between the
two machines?

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.
              -- Steve Jobs, (From _Triumph of the Nerds_ PBS special)
                         and quoted by Aahz Maruch on comp.lang.python


From nospam at mega-nerd.net  Fri Jul 13 07:16:45 2001
From: nospam at mega-nerd.net (Erik de Castro Lopo)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:16:45 GMT
Subject: PyDNS?
References: <3B4ECBE0.96898063@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3B4ED889.469D42D5@mega-nerd.net>

Michael Str?der wrote:
> 
> HI!
> 
> I wonder if there's interest to maintain the DNS module formerly
> written as demo by Guido van Rossum. Anthony Baxter has a modified
> version of it under http://www.interlink.com.au/anthony/dns.tar.gz.
> I've added support for SRV RRs and I'm thinking about adding caching
> support.

I was looking for exactly that module just now and was about to post a 
question a question to the group asking if anyone had a copy.

Thats should tell you that there's usually at least one person looking
for this thing at any given moment.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo     nospam at mega-nerd.net      (Yes its valid)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"It's far too easy to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a 
real man to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful"
  -- Anonymous


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 24 23:18:00 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:18:00 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <003a01c114b8$6ad3fbe0$a9e1fea9@carol>

Guido writes - 

>I should add that I never meant that the problem was only
>important for novices or in an educational setting (I only meant this
>as an example of the kind of problems division crates).  Some folks
>(like Arthur Siegel) have used a contrary novice's or educator's
>experience as a counter-argument to this.  But they fall in the same
>trap as most of the other proponents of the status quo: because they
>don't use floats much, they don't care that floating point arithmetic
>is broken.

I'm going to use the cover Stephen Horne has provided me to comment -
no longer fearing that I might  be the most manic pain in the ass on 
the thread.

Simply to say that Guido has no basis to know much about my use
of floats.

And that in fact I consider my argument for the division operator 
"status quo" no better than a nit of the same ilk as the 
CP4E argument for the change.

Had always held out the hope and possibility that there was a
more powerful argument justifying the change.  Hopefully Guido
has delivered it to the satisfaction of those in a position to
judge the strength of his reasoning here. 

I am not.  

ART  






From rjhansen at inav.net  Tue Jul  3 06:10:47 2001
From: rjhansen at inav.net (Robert J. Hansen)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 10:10:47 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B419AAD.4020502@inav.net>

> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing


Well, the good news is C and C++ both deserve heavy bashing.  Then 
again, so does Java, so does Ada95, so does Eiffel.  If I had a nickel 
for every time I've seen someone say "solve the software crisis--ship 
things on time, make reliable software, etc.--just by using Foo 
language", well, I'd be sipping mai-tais on a South Pacific beach 
instead of posting to USENET.

> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?


Do you *like* Python?

If so, then keep using it.

If you don't, then find a language you like.

It really is that simple.  :)



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Mon Jul 16 10:09:01 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:09:01 -0400
Subject: Partition Problem
In-Reply-To: <995278357.289.39609.l10@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B52BD3D.27318.349EB20@localhost>

> Combinatorial Algorithms by Kreher and Stinson ... is all coded in C!

And you'd think people smart enough to write a book like that 
would have the sense to use Python.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 04:04:21 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:04:21 +0100
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpu201a8y7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <69vsltslttpgrpfbiqkq4kqmaf5aiitgrp@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:12:17 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:
>
>(Thanks for your nice table, BTW.)
>
>> The only choices that make sense to me here are, either we break stuff,
>> or we do nothing.  Either way, we'll most likely have to revisit the
>> issue if/when syntax for rationals is to be added to the language.
>
>Actually, adding rationals can be done almost entirely without
>breaking code...  That is, *if* we adopt PEP-238 now.  Changing 1/2
>from returning a float to returning a rational won't have to break
>code, since the mathematical value of the result is the same.
>Changing it from returning 0 to returning a rational isn't any easier
>than changing it from returning 0 to returning a float -- exactly the
>same places will have to be changed.
>
>If you're for rationals, you're for PEP-238.

Nope.

I don't mind rationals, but they are a continuous measure. If integer
calculations are going to be allowed to return rationals then we need
separate integer types for integer-within-real and discrete-integer.

I'd want to see...

>>> print 10 / 4
2
>>> print 10.0 / 4
2.5
>>> print 10R / 4
5/2



From mikeb at mitre.org  Tue Jul  3 11:47:55 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 11:47:55 -0400
Subject: I'd like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
Message-ID: <3B41E92B.4009B1C5@mitre.org>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> said: "I have some time on my hands.  It seems like a good opportunity to do some noncommercial Python programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm more suited to be the lackey than the mad scientist."


These 3 suggestions could help many Python Open Source projects,
because they would show how to use some of Python's advanced features.

  1. A graphics demonstration with wxPython 
	(that is, wxWindows using Python)

	Example Needed: A graphics screen
	where we can draw lines and circles,
	and then select an area on the screen
	for cutting to and pasting from
	the CLIPBOARD.

	Example Needed: Bit Blit, which lets
	us move a rectangle on the screen
	(and everything in it)
	very quickly.

  2. Key-down, Key-up interrupt for the Keyboard:

	Example Needed: An organ which plays
	a tone for the keys on the keyboard.

	Rationale: 
	  (1) To program games, 
	  (2) to comply with handicap requirements, 
	  (3) to move bit blits around a graphics screen
	  (4) to make an organ that plays chords
	  (5) to gain access to the SHIFT-INSERT combination
	  (6) to use all keys as hot keys, when desired.

  3. A simple server page using Unicode
	
	Example Needed: The program would 
	put up a web page that asked you to
	click what language you wish to 
	speak and to ask a question in that language.
	The choices would be Russian, English,
	Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, 
	Spanish, Hindi, Armenian, and one or two others.
	Instead of answering the question, let the
	application simply print a screen in 
	the selected language, which says
	"Here is your question: " followed by the question.

	Rationale: Python handles some Unicode and 
	the Internet handles some Unicode, but a
	fully working example would be very nice 
	to sell Python to eCommerce sites.




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 13:22:46 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:22:46 -0400
Subject: Slightly off-topic... (sending HTML data through a Python socket)
References: <3B643B5D.E62C6669@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <3B644666.53047503@engcorp.com>

Adonis Vargas wrote:
> 
> I am attempting to send HTML data back to a browser which connected to X
> port. I have goen over the the HTML RFC and just can not get it to work.
> What I am attempting to do is send a redirect back to the browser. So
> far I have something as follows:
> 
> c.send("""
>           <HTML>
>           <HEAD>
>           <META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"
> Content=0;Host=\"http://www.python.org/\">"
>           </HEAD>
>           </HTML>
>           """)

I think you should have quotation marks around the content of the 
"Content" tag, but I don't know if that would help.  You should also 
always have a <title> tag, as far as I recall, in the <head> element,
although I'm sure that wouldn't help either.

More importantly, there are many reasons why this might not work, none
of which involve the form of this part of the output.  Servers have
to send back additional information to satisfy the requirements of the
HTTP protocol, but you appear to be returning only HTML.  Check the
HTTP RFC if you have not.  Better yet, use one of the Python library
modules that already supports HTTP servers (like SimpleHTTPServer.py).

If you posted a little more context I bet you'd get an answer that 
would help more.  A more detailed description of the symptoms than
just "can not get it to work" would also help us figure it out.
(Mentioning your platform is often a good idea too, but in this case
I'm guessing Python and your problem are both platform-independent 
enough that this isn't an issue.)

Finally, have you tried *testing* this, rather than just "seeing
if it works".  In this case, the distinction would mean connecting
with something like TELNET (with the output dumped to a file for
posting here) and seeing what data is *actually* being returned from
your server, rather than just running the browser and crossing
your fingers.  If you can't figure it out by using telnet, posting
the full output here would go a long way to helping us help you.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 22:09:49 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:09:49 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com>

pfenn at mmm.com wrote:
> 
> Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?

Unfortunately, while code a chemist writes is very likely never
going to rely on the current integer division behaviour, code
written by those of us in computers who tend to work closely 
with the hardware (where we are constantly thinking in terms
of bytes, words, signed and unsigned, memory locations, bits
and nybbles, etc.) will fairly often write code which depends 
on the current behaviour.  (By the way, no, we would never
write 1/3 and expect 0, but 99% of the time we are not talking
about constant expressions such as this... but you knew that.)

I can't see a simple answer to this.  It looks as though there
are two camps, to both of whom it is absolutely essential that 
Python act in a specific way.  And the two ways are completely
incompatible.

Doesn't that mean that the only solution that can be accepted
without causing serious complications is to make the change,
but clearly support a command line option (or some other
configuration setting) to enable the current behaviour,
so those who have depended on integer division can continue
to run old code under the new engine without fear of
breakage?

(I know, it's not perfect, but with a little more design
thought it can probably come pretty close.  For example,
code that might have to run on someone else's system, which
might not have the correct setting for integer division,
can use a sys.setIntegerDivision(1) call to force the
desired behaviour.  Or does this have to be on a module-
by-module basis?  Anyway, that's not my problem. :-)

So, O' BDFL, why not take the most Pythonic approach
and use a solution which *pragmatically* achieves a good
practical balance but which causes purists always to feel
a little uneasy and which can lead to perpetual discussion
about "warts" and why other languages are better and.... ;)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 14:17:14 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:17:14 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ikq7u$joi6c$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

<pfenn at mmm.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994958301.16016.python-list at python.org...
>
<snip>
>
> Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?

I use it.  I imagine that for as long as it's been that way, if everyone
were constantly writing some form of float(x)/y or 1.0*x/y or x/7.0 all the
time and never using is as integer math, it likely would have been changed
long before I started with python... ;-)

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 18:23:34 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:23:34 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:23:46 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>Steve Horne wrote:
>
>> I've had idle thoughts for some time about a language that would allow
>> you to define - within the language itself - the syntax and semantics
>> for sublanguages. Only the lexical rules would be fixed, though there
>> would need to be several built-in sublanguages - grammar and
>> translation definition, simple compile-time imperative and simple
>> run-time imperative being the obvious ones. The thought was originally
>> provoked by wanting to support many different paradigms efficiently
>> and concisely in the same language - if anyone comes up with a new
>> paradigm, they just create a library that defines a suitable grammar
>> and translation and, hey presto, anyone can use it without changing
>> languages, and without discarding code written for other paradigms.
>> 
>> It suddenly seems so much more like a practical idea.
>
>It's existed for years. It's called Lisp, and it's
>the reason why Python is only the second best programming
>language in the world <0.5 wink>.

I've used it, and it *isn't* what I'm thinking of - I want a human
readable language ;-)

As the saying goes, Lotsof-Infuriatingly-Stupid-Parentheses.

I'm thinking something that for the base languages specifies grammar
in a YACC-with-common-behaviour-helpers kind of way, which uses a
single imperative grammar, not too far from Python, but with two sets
of semantics - one compile-time, one run-time.

So you'd essentially define an simple grammar, and then define
compile-time-translations into run-time-implementations for the
semantics - and you'd be able to use tweaked or even completely
different semantics for the same grammar if necessary. And once the
basic sublanguages worked, new sublanguages could translate in stages
through existing sublanguages - so if you want a Prolog-like
sublanguage, you only need to translate it into the easiest existing
library sublanguage for your logical language to represent - not
*necessarily* straight to the imperative.

The fantasy says that, with that done, the community will set up a
small library for the useful paradigms, with perhaps
semantics-selection options for really controversial stuff like
division ;-)

The only big worry in principle is that I think a more
functional/logical style would be better for the compile-time language
- easier to work with for translation tasks - but I don't want that in
the default run-time sublanguage, yet I do want the compile-time and
run-time languages to have the same syntax and logical semantics (only
the execution time should change). Maybe I need to translate
compile-time sublanguages as well.



From twanvds at xs4all.nl  Mon Jul  9 09:22:51 2001
From: twanvds at xs4all.nl (Twan van der Schoot)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 15:22:51 +0200
Subject: HELP: socket.connect timeout
Message-ID: <9icas4$lvp$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Hi there,

How do I increase the timeout period on a socket.connect()?
A peek in the source code of the socket object does reveal anything usefull.


FWI: I'm using Python 2.1 from ActiveWare for WinNT (running on NT4.0SP6).

thanks!

best regards

Twan van der Schoot






From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 26 21:40:08 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:40:08 -0700
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>     Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
>        as under the new rules without using // or a future division
>        statement?
> 
>     A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>        division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>        function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
>        you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.


Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?

I still don't like the phrase "true division", it implies a value judgement 
that quotients are somehow an inferior thing to want to compute.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From kens at sightreader.com  Tue Jul 10 05:39:22 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:39:22 -0700
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <01b001c1091f$c9c74340$0e4ab43f@kens>
Message-ID: <01d001c10924$345bf940$0e4ab43f@kens>

Oops you need this:

import os

path = r'D:\Dev\junk' # put your directory here

for fname in os.listdir(path):  # list of files in your directory
    fname = os.path.join(path, fname) # add the directory to the file name
    f = open(fname, 'r')
    lines = f.readlines()       # reads a list of lines
    f.close()
    f = open(fname, 'w')
    f.writelines(lines[1:])     # writes all but the first line
    f.close()



----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com>
To: <python-list at python.org>; "Chris McMillan"
<christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 2:07 AM
Subject: Re: File processing


> import os
>
> path = '/junk'   # put your directory here
>
> for fname in os.listdir(path):  # list of files in your directory
>     f = open(fname, 'r')
>     lines = f.readlines()       # reads a list of lines
>     f.close()
>     f = open(fname, 'w')
>     f.writelines(lines[1:])     # writes all but the first line
>     f.close()
>
>
> Now, be careful!  This will remove the first line of every file
> in the directory, including files you don't want to ruin.  Back
> up everything first!
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com>
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
> To: <python-list at python.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 2:01 PM
> Subject: File processing
>
>
> > Hello all!
> >
> > I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first
line,
> > and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me
in
> > the right direction?  Thanks!
> >
> > Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need
to
> > strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of
a
> > script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line,
.....
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 20:40:15 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 01:40:15 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4>
Message-ID: <slrn9lk87f.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:36:18 -0700, Corran Webster <cwebster at nevada.edu> wrote:
>
>sum = 0
>for n in range(N):
>  sum += n**2
>
>but it is useful when translating a mathematical expression like:
>
>  __ N-1   2
>  \       n
>  /__n=0
>
>into a Python program.

A better translation might be:

def fromto(f,t):
   return xrange(f,t+1)

def sum(ar):
   s = 0
   for i in ar: s += i
   return s

#and then, it's just a one-liner:

result = sum([n*n for n in fromto(0, N-1)])


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Fri Jul 20 20:06:00 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 00:06:00 GMT
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jah18$fqu$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com wrote:
> I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.

> Rick Moranis, movie star:
> http://www.boxofficemania.com/actors/r/rick_moranis/rick_moranis.jpg

> Guido van Rossum, Python inventor:
> http://www.python.org/~guido/images/Guido at 200dpi.jpg

ALERT ALERT ALERT to *ALL* PSU Operatives!

Why did this message slip through our PSU Usenet Snipper? I just read
this on a public Usenet feed! This is unallowable! People will be on
to our conspiracy soon. I've been doing a good job defusing the rumors
in the past, but if this keeps up we'll need the time machine *again* 
-- we'll stretch the space-time continuum so thin we don't even have
to worry anymore about nanoviruses that eat our whitespace; it'll just
spontaneously evaporate!

The Rick Moranis thing was a level 5 secret, right up there with the 
identity of the fourth official bot. This is extremely serious! 

Ah... I just heard a worm took our Usenet Snipper offline temporarily.
They've fixed it now, and we


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 09:52:24 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:52:24 -0400
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Y3k07.26347$he.1370115@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

You should investigate the dbtuple library. It allows you to simply describe
the record sets returned by DB API compliantr modules so you can either:

a) Refer to fields as attributes of the db tuple, or

b) treat the db tuple as a dictionary and select fields a la ASP/ADO.

If your colleagues think VBScript database access is easy they are clearly
not pushing SQL to anywhere near its limits. Ask them how they would to the
equivalent of the DB API's

cursor.execute("SELECT f1, f2, f3 FROM table WHERE f4=? AND f5=?", (f4val,
f5val))

I think you'll find it's more than a little tricky. Also, in VBScript, if rs
is a recordset (with an implied current member), you have to access fields
using

    rs("FieldName")

This is a bizarre way to reference things by name. If your colleagues see
this as natural then they have their Microsoft blinkers on. I have no
objection to them preferring ASP/ADO, and there are some nice tools
available which let you do some nifty things without having to hack too much
source (as long as you can ignore the resulting code bloat).

But Python is pretty good when it comes to databases, even without touching
ADO.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/




--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994135925.11224.python-list at python.org...
> On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:
>
> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that
in
> >> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and
then
> >> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is
an
> >> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
> >
> >Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
> >to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
> >manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?
>
> Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
> development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
> have COM for whatever is in their system.
>
> >At least under Windows, it would seem that having solid ODBC and COM
> >support should pretty much cover in Python anything you'd do elsewhere.
> >
> >On other environments, direct support for a particular database is
> >likely to be more desirable, as it's more typical in those
> >environments, but as you've noted, there's a plethora of support
> >modules for various databases - some at various levels.
>
> We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
> to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
> purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.
>
> >--
> >-- David
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/
>
>




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul  5 12:50:06 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 20:50:06 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: import syntax
In-Reply-To: <994351494.3b4499864e286@webmail1.wm.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107052049200.22681-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Andrew Todd wrote:
> This isn't terribly important, but wouldn't it be nice if
> you could do the following...
>
> from module import a and b
>
> instead of having to write...
>
> from module import a
> from module import b

   Have you ever read docs?

   from module X import a, b

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sun Jul  8 10:00:53 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 14:00:53 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org> <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com> <cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <pIZ17.1995$z21.389304@newsc.telia.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Actually, Paul's proposal to write
>
>   x has y
>
> instead of
>
>   hasattr(x, 'y')
>
> has a nice Pythonic ring to it, and the fact that you have to use
> quotes with hasattr() has always bothered me.

well, you'd still need hasattr to deal with

    attr = "someattribute"
    if hasattr(myobject, attr):
        ...

and is it really obvious why the following code doesn't work?

    attr = "someattribute"
    if myobject has attr:
        ...

> right now, I'd say it's too little value for too much disturbance (a new
> keyword).

given the amount of other potentially disturbing stuff going
into 2.2, I doubt anyone would notice...

</F>




From justin at iago.org  Sun Jul 22 16:53:28 2001
From: justin at iago.org (Justin Sheehy)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:53:28 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org> (sill@optonline.net's
 message of "Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:40:10 GMT")
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
	<slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <x7n15wy9br.fsf@ra.iago.org>

sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:

> 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
> reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.

Of course there is a good reason for it.

It may not be a reason that you personally think is "good enough", but
that does not make it a random, arbitrary aspect of the language.

You don't have to memorize that 1/2 is zero.  You just have to learn
the general rule here, that division of two integers produces an integer.

Whether or not you like this feature, presenting it as you have is
incorrect and unfair.

-Justin

 





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 23 03:49:12 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:49:12 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <6BL67.17641$EP6.4530210@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <slrn9lnc42.1qq.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lnmfa.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Rainy <sill at optonline.net> dijo:
> Well, I'm asking in a general way, i.e. why could there be no traceback or
> error? This is not right. I mean, if a program runs into a problem, it should
> print some sort of feedback, at worst, a segfault? I haven't run into cases
> like this before when *NOTHING* is printed. In general, what sort of errors
> just quit silently?

I would guess that it _is_ raising an exception, but it's caught at some
point up in the call chain by an 'except: pass' clause.  What happens
right before the invisible error?  What is it doing at that point?

-- 
C combines all the power of assembly language with all
the ease of use of assembly language.
    -- trad


From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 20 07:39:06 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:39:06 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de> <3B57C4FA.F25F5EAF@alum.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9j959d$mfdfa$1@fu-berlin.de>

pehr anderson <pehr at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> What you want is to enable timeoutsockets.
[...]
> http://timo-tasi.org/python/timeoutsocket.py
>

Hey - this is great!
What I like most: it's *very* simple to use. It's just two lines:
   import timeoutsocket
   timeoutsocket.setDefaultSocketTimeout(5)

I couldn't get it to work on my Win98-pc at home (with a modem connection to
the net),
error: "10056, 'Socket is already connected'".
But when I tried it on our Linux-server everything went just fine!

Thank you very much,
Matthias





From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul  4 02:56:53 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 23:56:53 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net> <9htfu7$cb1$1@panix6.panix.com> <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9huenl$49q$1@panix3.panix.com>

[excessive quoting ahead]

In article <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
>Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460 at nnrp4.proxad.net>,
>> Dublanc, David <ddublanc at free.fr> wrote:
>>>
>>>What is exactly weak typing ? I believed that Python was weak typing !
>
>For those that don't know what this does:
>
>> perl -e "print '1' + '1'"         
>
>This applies Perl's addition operator to two "strings" composed of digits.
>Returns 2.
>
>> perl -e "print 1 . 1"
>
>This applies the concatenation operator to two constant numbers.
>This returns 11.
>
>This is due to Perl's (intentional) conversion between numbers and
>strings when context (a very important Perl concept) implies it.
>
>You may not agree with this, but it's a matter of personal preference.
>It should not involve the preference of a strange author bashing some
>other language.

Pointing out that Perl has weak typing does not equate to language
bashing.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From fcnpereira at home.com  Sat Jul 14 19:10:22 2001
From: fcnpereira at home.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:10:22 GMT
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <140720011910209035%fcnpereira@home.com>

In article <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355 at posting.google.com>, Jonas
Bengtsson <jonas.b at home.se> wrote:

> I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
> to a list by just using
> list_var[] = var_to_append
> It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
> 
> Any comments?

>>> l = [1, 2]
>>> x = 3
>>> l += [x]
>>> l
[1, 2, 3]

(Python 2.x)

-- F


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 13:15:59 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:15:59 -0400
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at>
Message-ID: <uVk37.1979$u76.62739@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Gergo Barany" <gergo.barany at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany at hold.otthon.at...
> phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> > [snip flamebait crap]
>
> If anyone is going to to respond to this thread, *please* take
> comp.lang.c out of the Newsgroups: list. We don't do advocacy here.
> Followups set.
> Thanks,
>
> Gergo
>
> --
> When in doubt, follow your heart.

I think it's unlikely that my heart will lead me to comp.lang.c any time
soon after that little outburst!

still-liking-c.l.py's-toujours-la-politesse-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ootanbon at worldnet.att.net  Sun Jul  1 23:05:21 2001
From: ootanbon at worldnet.att.net (Charles Krieg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 03:05:21 GMT
Subject: WHY is python slow?
References: <mailman.991900751.7603.python-list@python.org> <Xns90B957291603Dbeable@30.146.28.98> <mailman.991931952.3023.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <RxR%6.27117$J91.732032@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Could be due to improved reflection performance.  As far as I know, Hotspot
isn't a JIT compiler, just a faster VM.  Either way, that's very good news!



"D-Man" <dsh8290 at rit.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.991931952.3023.python-list at python.org...
> On Thu, Jun 07, 2001 at 12:34:09PM +0000, Mitchell Morris wrote:
> | As a single point of data, may I present the language-specific pages
from
> ...
> | if-you'd-only-claimed-Jython-was-slow-ly y'rs,
>
> Check the list archives from the jython-users list.  Not too long ago
> Finn Bock posted a message that someone sent him.  The other person
> had a beta release of jdk1.4 and using pystong Jython came out well
> ahead of CPython.  A hypothesis thinks that the hotspot JIT is getting
> better.
>
> -D
>
>




From mikle at tomsk.net  Fri Jul  6 14:04:18 2001
From: mikle at tomsk.net (Mikhail Astafiev)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 01:04:18 +0700
Subject: Short form of file names
Message-ID: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net>

[Env: Win2k, Win98, Python 1.52]

Hi!

Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths to short
form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..


Thanks in advance,
Mikhail.




From tuttledon at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 09:13:35 2001
From: tuttledon at hotmail.com (Don Tuttle)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:13:35 GMT
Subject: Automate telnet?
References: <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012@typhoon.southeast.rr.com> <j4u1zur3fl.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <34d97.51375$TM5.5708835@typhoon.southeast.rr.com>

[Don Tuttle]
> > I have a secure Windows telnet client I'd like to automate with a
> > script.  So far my efforts with the popen family haven't worked.  Is
> > this a possible task?

[Martin]
> Doing popen in Windows is quite involved. Instead, I recommend to try
> telnetlib directly.

Thanks, but unfortunately the 'secure' aspect means I can only access the
telnet server by using  this client. Telnetlib won't work here.

Don





From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Sun Jul 15 02:35:03 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 06:35:03 GMT
Subject: a virus written in Python
Message-ID: <3b51394e.6471671@news.t-online.de>

By a slovenian "art" group for the Venice biennale:

http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/biennale_py/prelease2.html



From arnaud at tchooze.com  Mon Jul  2 03:13:05 2001
From: arnaud at tchooze.com (Arnaud Fontaine)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:13:05 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010702.091304.1450573622.25984@lart.tchooze.net>

In article <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list at python.org>, "Chris
Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com>
>> Python still doesn't have good database support,
> 
> What exactly is "good database support?"  I haven't had a problem.

I just want to add my voice here : I use Python with databases everyday and
don't have any problem (maybe because I NEVER work with poor MS
products)

> mod_perl is unlikely to be useful to me since I can't stand the mess
> that Perl programmers call source code.  I suspect that many Python
> programmers would agree.

One of the reason I left Perl away for Python.

> I'm not a Zope user myself, but from what I've read about both PHP and
> Zope, it appears they are pretty much even in capability (hopefully an
> expert on the subject will comment here).

I use both in production.
Zope alone (not as CGI) is a great product, really good for most web based
application and its asynchronous approach makes it really efficient on the
IO aspect. Add to this its caching feature and you have one of the best
web product around.

PHP is, to my eyes, easier. Maybe because I've been using it for years
(it was still called PHP/FI and just hit version 2). You have a bunch of
lib with PHP so you can interact with most of the major products onthe
market. It handle nicely the load and is really well embeded in Apache.
But PHP as a langage is not as good as Python.

So, use the product you like ... but remember PHP is just a langage and
most of its power comes from Apache. Zope is more than that.

I've been running some benchmarks using ab to compare PHP/Apache/Mysql
with Zope on a simple application (a simple ppl directory : 1 static home
page, a database with contacts, 1 form to query the DB). I haven't kept
the numbers but both compared. Apache was a little better to serve the
static page but Zope handled the load better querying the database
(thanks to its caching feature). 

-Arnaud


From michele_rosen at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 11:34:37 2001
From: michele_rosen at yahoo.com (Michele Rosen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:34:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
In-Reply-To: <995328250.676.17416.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <20010717153437.72462.qmail@web13402.mail.yahoo.com>

Let me preface by saying I am a complete newbie to
Python, so I appreciate any corrections to what I am
saying (or suggestions)...

That said, I believe there is also a way to use
'freeze' to package a Python app with the necessary
components of the Python interpreter so you can
distribute your program to users who don't even have
Python installed...

Also, thanks for mentioning Pygame - I have some ideas
along those lines as well, so I'm going to take a look
at it!

Regards,
Michele


> 
> Message: 11
>    Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:00:27 -0700
>    From: steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R.
> Hastings)
> Subject: Re: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
> 
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
> (kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu) wrote:
> > if the expensive book is John Grayson's _Python
> and
> > Tkinter Programming_, get it now, it's a damn fine
> book.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.  I took your advice and got it.
> 
> I checked www.amazon.com, and found that they offer
> the Grayson book for
> 20% off--an even better deal than the sale at the
> store!--so I ordered the
> book from Amazon.
> 
> 
> >   If what you want is portability, though,
> Python's probably more
> > portable than Java
> 
> Okay.  I thought Java bytecodes were my best hope
> for cross-platform
> compatibility... but Python has its own bytecodes,
> doesn't it!
> 
> Suppose I wanted a program to be runnable on
> platforms like BSD, PowerPC
> Linux, PowerPC BSD, etc. without having to build on
> each of those.  If I
> were to distribute .pyo files, and users of all
> those platforms already had
> Python installed on their systems, could I build and
> distribute a single
> .pyo file?
> 
> If I do this project, I will directly support Win32,
> Mac, and x86 Linux.
> But I was hoping I could also distribute something
> that would be portable
> for everyone else outside these three platforms.  If
> .pyo files are
> cross-platform, then they are the solution I wanted.
> 
> The project I have in mind is a game, and I would
> use the Pygame library (a
> Python layer over SDL).  But I would like the game
> to run in a well-behaved
> window, with pull-down menus and dialogs and such,
> rather than taking over
> the whole screen as some SDL games do.  Thus my
> interest in Tkinter.
> --
> Steve R. Hastings		"Vita est"
> steve at hastings.org		http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 
> 


=====
Give the joy of giving. Find out how at www.charity-checks.org.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From brakedon at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 18:55:14 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 15:55:14 -0700
Subject: GUI problems
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com>

Why doesn't this TKinter script work? The blank window will come up,
but the "quit" button doesn't appear inside it. Thanks for any help.

import dice_gui #ignore this
from Tkinter import *
class fibon_gui:
     def __init__(self, master):
          frame = Frame(master)
          frame.pack()
          button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red",
command=frame.quit)
          button.pack(side=LEFT)
root = Tk()
root.title('Play Dice')
root.mainloop()


From zen at shangri-la.dropbear.id.au  Fri Jul 20 22:36:47 2001
From: zen at shangri-la.dropbear.id.au (Stuart Bishop)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 13:36:47 +1100
Subject: Python for RADIUS..???
References: <mailman.995631453.2129.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b58f8cf$1@mercury.its.rmit.edu.au>

binto bient <python_binto at yahoo.com> writes:

>could Python implemented in RADIUS (Remote
>Authentication Dial-In User Service )for ISP,
>everything that related with RADIUS.

If you want write a client that does authentication via RADIUS, 
there is a module available at http://py-radius.sourceforge.net/



From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 01:53:24 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:53:24 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: logs was: Re: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <5E347.10457$Ek3.3444795@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107150947110.2560-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, Eric Hagemann wrote:

>I have a lot of code to parse logs as well --  neat trick (at least I think
>it neat !)
>to overcome this "problem"  is
>
>name_of_field0 = 0
>name_of_field1 = 1
>name_of_field2 = 2
>.
>f = line.split()
>.
>
>then access the elements as
>foo = f[name_of_field1]
>
>in my applications I can use the len(f) to determine the type of line I am
>parsing (by its length)
>
>This way you get variable length parsing as well as "named" arguments

O, yes! I do it even more interestingly:

I have a separate module for description of log structure and
have a special object with short name, describing log struct:

# logs.py

class ml(Log):
  name_of_field0 = 0
  name_of_field1 = 1
  name_of_field2 = 2

Then I can use:

from logs import *
rec = split(line)
dosomething(rec[ml.name_of_field0], ...)

And I plan to add something useful to Log so I can do it simpler:

rec = ml(line)
dosomething(rec.name_of_field0, ...)

But am not sure if it is needed yet.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 04:56:53 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:56:53 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com> <mailman.995927281.7201.python-list@python.org> <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E862BBEA7B5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in 
news:gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg at 4ax.com:

> If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
> and similar in your code as I do

This is an example where even today you might be better off writing 
"?%d.%02d" % divmod(Amount, 100)
especially if you ever have single digit pennies.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 14:21:33 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:21:33 -0500
Subject: string random generator (Sorry if too stupid, but i am a beginner)
In-Reply-To: <20010720140330.B39397@ifour.com.br>
References: <20010720140330.B39397@ifour.com.br>
Message-ID: <15192.30381.214904.458807@beluga.mojam.com>

    Gustavo> I am in need for a function that return a string of len x
    Gustavo> random generated, like

    Gustavo> strrnd(5)
    Gustavo> 'Df%d^'

    Gustavo> strrnd(2)
    Gustavo> '&@'

    Gustavo> I have the following code: The problem is that i don't known
    Gustavo> how to map a int to a char. 

You would use the chr() builtin function.

Perhaps this version will work for you:

    import random
    chars = "".join([chr(x) for x in range(ord(' ')+1,128)])

    def strrnd(n, charset=chars):
        return "".join([random.choice(charset) for i in range(n)])

    def _test():
        print strrnd(5)
        print strrnd(7)
        print strrnd(0)
        print strrnd(2)

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        _test()

This uses list comprehensions, so Python 2.x is required to run it with
changes. 

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 11:28:27 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:28:27 GMT
Subject: Make it a major version number change (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <3B5E30CE.2901DED0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cp66ch9gfc.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> I hate the thought of the work required to scan/fix/debug 
> already working code, but if this has to happen, and can't
> be made to work without breaking existing code (e.g. by 
> introducing *two* new operators), then at least follow
> the convention we apparently all believe exists and 
> make this a *major version number change*.

Your wish is my command (see previous post).

> (But two years until the change really becomes the default
> would at least be an improvement over the truly scary 
> apparent speed implied by the sudden posting of a patch.)

Sorry, you misunderstand the patch.  All it does is provide a trial
implementation of the "from __future__ impor division" statement and
the new // operator.  The default semantics of / don't change under
the patch.

A patch in SF is by definition under discussion.  There are many
things wrong with the patch, but it gives people an easy way to
experiment with an approximation what 2.2 might look like.

Unfortunately, all it seems to have done is spur this enormous
flamewar.  It's really hard to remain calm when people start shouting
"the leadership is wrong because I say so."

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 10 08:39:11 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:39:11 GMT
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
References: <mailman.994760356.17812.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <PHC27.12032$B7.2296688@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mailman.994760356.17812.python-list at python.org>, Oleg Broytmann wrote:
>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Klaus Rienessl wrote:
>> Sorry for my english.
>
>   Your English is good enough.
>
>> Do you know a library ? And where can I get this ?
>
>   No, I don't know any of them.
>
>> > > I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.
>> >
>> >    slang? newt?
>
>ftp://quasar.ipa.nw.ru/pub/avv/Python/pyslang/
>ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/grante/stuff/newt-0.50.tar.gz

BTW, the python module that wraps the newt library is called
"snack".  It's standard equipment on some Linux distros (e.g.
RedHat).

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Hand me a pair of
                                  at               leather pants and a CASIO
                               visi.com            keyboard -- I'm living
                                                   for today!


From Klaus at pictura.de  Tue Jul 10 03:14:57 2001
From: Klaus at pictura.de (Klaus Rienessl)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:14:57 +0200
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
Message-ID: <9ie9r7$8ke$06$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

I'm looking for a library to write text-based programs. It should be
possible to create windows, menus, popup-menus, dialogs, listboxes, buttoms
and so on.

I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.

Knows anybody such a library that has this feature.


Best regards

Klaus Rienessl




From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:38:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:38:11 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> writes:

> Or worse the lack of a full ASCII character set on the host computer.
> My first programs were on a CDC Cyber mainframe with a 60 bit word;
> we had several character sets at our disposal, but nearly all programming
> was done in 6 bit "display code", no lower case.  (The only exception
> was a C compiler, which - no offense to the Texas university where it
> was created, certainly it was a noble effort - wasn't very useful.)
> That would be laughable today, but the computer world was a lot more
> diverse at that level then, and we inherit a lot from those days.

Including Python -- my interest in programming and languages was
sparked by the plethora of languages on the CDC Cyber that was my
first comuter back in 1974, and remained my primary system until
1982...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From frandebo at latt.if.usp.br  Tue Jul 24 17:15:53 2001
From: frandebo at latt.if.usp.br (Francisco)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:15:53 -0300
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010724175515.4646A-100000@latt.if.usp.br>

 Hello!

  I just compiled python2.2a and I'm getting this strange response to the
'type' command:

Python 2.2a1 (#2, Jul 24 2001, 12:24:09) 
[GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> type('') 
<type 'str'>

 while I expected to get <type 'string'>.

 Am I missing something or I just messed up with the compilation?? 

 thank you for your attention,
--
  Francisco.
  Sao Paulo, Brasil.
             __o
            `\<,
     _____(*)/(*)_____



From ehagemann at home.com  Fri Jul  6 21:33:56 2001
From: ehagemann at home.com (Eric Hagemann)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 01:33:56 GMT
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
References: <mailman.994457412.4660.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8Gt17.7112$PF2.1324057@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

>
> Not dynamic.  Just look at the code in an editor:  if a name is bound
> anywhere within a code block, and isn't declared in a "global" stmt, then
> that name is local throughout the entire code block.
>

Is this true ?

Given a file with the following

print x

x=1

print x

The first print will fail with a 'NameError'.  It was my (perhaps) wrong
impression
that x "came into being" at the assignment (x=1)

I would think the variable is local to the code block once the assignement
has been executed

BTW whats the 'LGB' rule ?

Cheers

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994457412.4660.python-list at python.org...
> [Michael P. Soulier]
> > ...
> >     In Python, previously unused lvalues cause that variable to
> > be dynamically declared.
>
> This is a flawed mental model:  the local vs non-local distinction is made
> at compile-time, by static inspection of the program text.  There's
nothing
> dynamic about that (in the absence of "import *" and "exec" abuses).
>
> > x = 1 # if x did not previously exist, following the LGB rule, it is
> >       # declared dynamically here
>
> Not dynamic.  Just look at the code in an editor:  if a name is bound
> anywhere within a code block, and isn't declared in a "global" stmt, then
> that name is local throughout the entire code block.
>
> >     Now, while this is great for scripting, it can cause major
> > headaches with large programs if you're a bad typist.
>
> I expect bad typists have lots of other problems writing code too <wink>.
>
> > It can declare new variables accidentally, when you wanted to assign
> > to an existing one...
> >
> > myvar = 5
> > .
> > .
> > myver = othervar
>
> A tool like PyChecker will detect that, in the example exactly as given,
> "myvar" and "myver" are *both* unreferenced, and flag both lines with
> warnings.
>
> > ...so here my typo of myver instead of myvar dynamically creates
> > myver instead of assigning othervar to myvar.
>
> It caused the compiler to believe you have two local vars, myvar and
myver;
> it makes no difference which one comes first; space for both is allocated
> (in a sense) at compile-time.
>
> > It can also accidentally obscure globals.
> >
> >     So, while the simple answer would be, "don't do that", we all
> > know that accidents happen. So, I was wondering if there is a way to
> > force declarations of variables to catch this kind of thing.
>
> Not in Python:  "global" is its only declaration statement.  Use
PyChecker:
>
>     http://sf.net/projects/pychecker/
>
> > Is there, or is there anything in the works, to assign with very large
> > programs?
>
> The size of the program doesn't really matter; regardless of program size,
> if you don't keep your individual functions and methods to well under a
> screen of code almost all the time, you're going to have lots of problems
> (in Python or any other language; it may even be worse in Python, because
> indendation for grouping really doesn't work well when code blocks slobber
> over screen pages; that's one of the clever pressures in Python *nudging*
> you toward writing better code).
>
> guido-can-lead-you-to-clarity-but-he-can't-stop-you-from-peeing-in-
>     the-stream<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>




From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Thu Jul 12 08:34:15 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:34:15 GMT
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <GGD1L8.op3@leeds.ac.uk>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:48:07 GMT, EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote:

> What does filter do? I don't understand when I read it other places.

Think about the general concept of filtering; filters let some
things pass through and block others.  Python's filter function
does exactly this for sequences - letting certain items from
the sequence through and blocking others.  The filter function
returns a new sequence which is a subset of the input sequence.

Of course, you need some way of specifying which items should
pass through the filter.  You do this by defining a function
that takes a single argument, returning true if that value should
be pass through the filter and false if it should be eliminated
by the filter.  Unless we need this function for some other
purpose, a lambda expression will suffice.

Example: filtering out odd numbers from a list of integers.
We can use a lambda expression that tests whether we get
a remainder of zero when dividing a value by 2; if so, the
value is even and should be retained.

>>> data = range(10)
>>> data
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> filter(lambda x: x%2 == 0, data)
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

A more useful example is filtering a list of directory entries:

>>> import os
>>> os.listdir('.')
['Start.py', 'doc.py', 'doc.pyc', 'Gnuplot', 'SIPlib', 'doc',
'tests', 'programs', 'README']

Some of the items in the list are the names of files; others
are the names of subdirectories.  We can generate a list
containing only the subdirectories like so:

>>> filter(os.path.isdir, os.listdir('.'))
['Gnuplot', 'SIPlib', 'doc', 'tests', 'programs']

To generate a list containing only the plain files, we do:

>>> filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir('.'))
['Start.py', 'doc.py', 'doc.pyc', 'README']

Since Python 2.0, many uses of filter can be replaced by
list comprehensions, which are often more readable:

>>> [x for x in data if x%2 == 0]
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

HTH,


Nick



From alex.freller at gmx.at  Wed Jul  4 00:51:39 2001
From: alex.freller at gmx.at (Freller Alex)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 04:51:39 GMT
Subject: newbie question
Message-ID: <3B42A1A3.2A7793CC@gmx.at>

I would like to program a python script that parses a directory and its
subdirectorys after specific files (*.pl) and count their linenumbers. 

thanks,

alex


From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul 25 12:42:14 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:42:14 GMT
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9lttn5.69.grante@isis.visi.com>

In article <9jmqp3$9n1 at dispatch.concentric.net>, Tim Randolph wrote:

>It is obvious that he only has the good of the language at heart.  

If that's true, who worries about the good of the language's users?

Perhaps making int/int => float makes the language better.  [I don't
personally think so, but it's a matter of taste.]  However, it does hurt at
least some of the existing group of users.  How many and how bad is up for
debate.

I think that not allowing ints and floats to be mixed would make it a better
lanauge, but that would probably hurt even more users.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Should I do my BOBBIE
                                  at               VINTON medley?
                               visi.com            


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 19 16:57:15 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 13:57:15 -0700
Subject: Bunch lists into sublists via alternation
References: <5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107191257.4c787a89@posting.google.com>

kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote in message news:<5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93 at posting.google.com>...
> I've asked this on another list and never got a reply. Possibly
> because i have worn out my welcome with all my dumb questions, or
> because it is such a dumb question people hurt themselves laughing and
> are now all in the hospital.
> 
> I am trying to figure out how to take a sequence and split it up into
> sub-lists
> by alternation. For example if i had a sequence like:
> 
> x = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> 
> and i called a function that was: seqSplit(seq, sub-lists)
> 
> seqSplit(x,2)
> 
> would yield: ([1,3,5,7,9], [2,4,6,8,None]) # None pads lists that are
> short elements
> 
> and seqSplit(x,3) --> ([1,4,7], [2,5,8], [3,6,9])
> and seqSplit(x,4) --> ([1,6] [2,7], [3,8], [4,9], [5,None])
> 
> 
> I've got something that bunches up consecutive elements into
> sub-lists:
> 
> def bunch(mylist, times):
> 	"""package up list elements in sub-lists n at a time.
> 	
> 	x=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> 	bunch(x,1) --> [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]]
> 	bunch(x, 2) --> [[1,2], [3,4], [5,6], [7,8], [9, None]
> 	bunch(x, 3) --> [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
> 	bunch(x, 4) --> [1,2,3,4], [5,6,7,8] [9, None, None, None]]"""
> 
> 	out = [mylist[i:i+times] for i in range(0, len(mylist), times)]
> 	if out:
> 		out[-1].extend([None] * (times - len(out[-1])))
> 	return out
>  
> # -- ---------------------------------------
>  
> But i can't figure out how to get the:
> 
> a = (1,9,1,9,1,9)
> b = (1,9,7,1,9,7,1,9,7)
> seqSplit(a,2) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9])"""
> seqSplit(b,3) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9], [7, 7, 7])"""
> 	
> type arrangement, particularly since i want it to work for any
> unpredetermined
> number of sub-lists. I've got a kludge that works only for the case of
> seqSplit(x,2),
> but i can't get anything to work for seqSplit(x,n) where n is anything
> else.
> 
> cheers,
> kevin parks

Or another way:

>>> def group(mylist, times, offset):
... 	return [mylist[i] for i in range(offset, len(mylist), times)]
... 
>>> def seqSplit(mylist, times):
... 	return [group(mylist, times, offset) for offset in range(times)]
... 
>>> seqSplit((1,9,1,9,1,9), 2)
[[1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9]]
>>> seqSplit((1,9,7,1,9,7,1,9,7), 3)
[[1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9], [7, 7, 7]]
>>>


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Wed Jul 11 10:48:13 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:48:13 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:47:30 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:54:47 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C.
>Ullrich) wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:18:16 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>[Bengt Richter]
>>>> ...
>>>> I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
>>>> just over 15 seconds, including startup and
>which turned out to be mostly str conversion for
>the print, so I thought I'd try recursion on that...
>(see below ;-)

Sorry I missed the "which turned out to be
mostly str conversion" the first time I read this.

>[...]
>>(Took a minute to find fib.py just now, because it was filed 
>>under "MatrixTypes". I calculate fib(100000) in 1.7 
>>seconds this way; for comparison, str(fib(100000)) takes 
>>8.0 seconds.)
>Hi Dave ;-)  
>
>Try strL for comparison. It's recursive, and faster than str
>for big numbers. I got
> >>> len(strL.strL(ffib(100000)))
> 20899
>
>so you can type in 10L**20899 on the command line
>for a number in the same ballpark as the fib, for a test.
>On my system I get
>
>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
>str took 13.601617 seconds
>
>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
>strL took  1.044989 seconds
>
>Recursion rides again ;-)

Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
a replacement for str that's faster is very
curious.

>BTW, how do you put everything inside the strL def
>to hide names, and how do you recurse inside without
>a warning message?
>
>A couple of lines wrapped...
>_______________________________________________________________
># strL.py -- recursive long to decimal string conversion
># 2001-07-10 bokr
>#
>p10d={}
>def p10(n):
>    if not p10d.has_key(n):
>        p = p10d[n] = 10L**n
>        return p
>    return p10d[n]
>
>def strLR(n,w=0):   # w>0 is known width, w<0 is searching guess
>    if w == 0: return []
>    if w > 0:
>        if w <=9: return [('%0'+chr(w+48)+'d') % n]
>        wr = w/2
>        nl,nr = divmod(n,p10(wr))
>        return strLR(nl,w-wr)+strLR(nr,wr)
>    else:
>        nl,nr = divmod(n,p10(-w))
>        if nl:
>            return strLR(nl, 2*w) + strLR(nr,-w)
>        else:
>            if w >= -9:
>                return ['%d' % n]
>            else:
>                return strLR(nr,w/2)
>
>def strL(n):
>    if n<0:
>        return ''.join(['-']+strLR(-n,-9))
>    else:
>        return ''.join(strLR(n,-9))

Of course you have to do the recursion in a non-stupid
manner, as here; if you'd made a recurzive routine
that concatenated Python strings instead of building
that list I doubt that recursion would win. But it is
curious how often recursion does seem to win in Python.
(Doesn't usually beat built-in functions, though.)

>from time import clock
>import sys
>def main():
>    def pr(x):
>        print x
>
>    def psl(x):
>        s = strL(x)
>        sys.stdout.write(s)
>        sys.stdout.write('\n')
>        
>
>    dt={'str':str,'strL':strL,'repr':repr, 'print':pr, 'printStrL':psl
>}
>
>    try:
>        x=long( eval(sys.argv[2]) )
>        fn=sys.argv[1]
>        fcn=dt[fn]
>    except:
>        sys.stderr.write("usage: %s [str strL repr print printStrL]
><const expr>\n" % sys.argv[0])
>        sys.exit(2)
>    
>    t0=clock()
>    fcn(x)
>    t1=clock()
>    print "%s took %9.6f seconds" % (fn,t1-t0)
>
>if __name__ == "__main__":
>    main()
>_______________________________________________________________


David C. Ullrich


From k1e2i3t4h5r6a7y at 1m2a3c4.5c6o7m  Tue Jul  3 11:53:26 2001
From: k1e2i3t4h5r6a7y at 1m2a3c4.5c6o7m (Keith Ray)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:53:26 GMT
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
References: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>
Message-ID: <k1e2i3t4h5r6a7y-E9623E.08532703072001@news>

In article <3B41E221.CE23D83E at home.com>, Wostenberg <pwos at home.com> 
wrote:

> This Smalltalker has been studying Zope, the Opensourced python product
> for internet deployment (see http://www.zope.org), to learn.
> 
> It has an unusual model of interitance called acquisition, which blends
> class heiarchy with containment. Read
> http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/WhatIsAcquisition for introduction.
> Basically "objects automatically gather. services from their
> containers.". Everything is potentially a collector-class, and if I drop
> objects into a collection, they inherit behavior from the container.
> Weird, but somehow natural in this Web environment which organises
> content around a tree-structured containment plan.
> 
> Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution
> to OO modelling?
> -Alan

It reminds me of NewtonScript, an OO language without classes, where 
every object had two 'parents' for inheritance, one of which, IIRC, is 
the GUI containment hierarchy... It seems like NewtonScript's direction 
of 'containment inheritance' is opposite of Zope.

I'm not sure how accurate this paper is, but I never programmed 
extensively in NewtonScript, so my memory may be flawed:
<http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~schoedl/projects/NewtonScript/>

"3. Inheritance
NewtonScript uses an inheritance scheme which is derived from SELF. 
SELF's inheritance mechanism is very flexible. For the special purpose 
of writing GUI application, NewtonScript has a simplified double 
inheritance scheme. The two ways of inheritance are very much fixed in 
purpose when implementing windows and dialog controls, but can be used 
more generally as well. 

"3.1 Prototype inheritance
First, each frame can have a prototype frame from which it is derived. 
The mechanism is rather simple, the frame contains a slot called _proto 
and each time the NewtonScript interpreter does not find a slot variable 
or function locally it looks into the frame's prototype and then 
recursively into its prototype until the whole inheritance chain was 
searched through. When a new slot variable is created that already 
exists in a prototype a new slot variable is created in the current 
frame. During lookup this new variable is found first and semantically 
replaces the prototype variable. From a conventional viewpoint 
prototypes serve two roles. First, they are the equivalent to 
user-defined types, to create an instance of the type, you just have to 
create an object derived from the object that defines the behavior of 
your type. Second, prototypes provide the class inheritance mechanism of 
class based languages. 

"The dialog creation mechanism of NewtonScript uses prototype 
inheritance extensively to create dialog items. When a new instance of a 
built-in dialog element is created the new instance has the built-in 
object as its prototype. This object created by the user is then called 
a template in NewtonScript terminology. When this object is then 
actually put onto the screen, the system itself creates another object 
having the template as prototype, with some redefined slots to designate 
view boundaries for example. Thus the template can be reused to create 
more dialog controls with similar properties. 

"3.2 Parent inheritance
The second way of inheritance is conceptually quite similar to prototype 
inheritance, besides the _proto slot a slot called _parent points to 
another inheritance chain similar to the prototype chain. This second 
inheritance scheme is again made to fit into the GUI design, all 
child-windows have a child-parent inheritance relationship to their 
parent windows. An application normally consists of a parent window, 
which is in turn child of the system's root window. All windows and 
dialog controls are then hierarchically ordered below this application 
parent window. Parent inheritance has an effect similar to prototype 
inheritance, variables not found neither in the frame itself nor in its 
prototypes are searched for in the parent frames and their prototypes 
and so forth. Thus slots in the parent window of an application serve as 
application wide globals. Assignment rules are a little different from 
the prototype inheritance rules, you can assign values to slots which 
reside in your chain of parents and grandparents as you can assign 
values to global variables in other languages without replicating these 
variables locally in the current frame. 

"For function lookup, NewtonScript only searches the prototype chain, 
not the parent chain, although a frame can call a function in one of its 
parents directly by dereferencing its _parent slot. It does not become 
entirely clear why this is so, I think it is more because of 
practicality than principle."


From barry at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 00:37:49 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:37:49 -0400
Subject: Really Python leaks?
References: <mailman.995461170.23230.python-list@python.org>
	<3dwv56p8ot.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<m3hew9ybmx.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <15190.25629.741994.271094@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "DC" == Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> writes:

    DC> I know that my extension modules leak a bit due to objects
    DC> which are created when the module is imported and stick around
    DC> for the lifetime of the module.  I had not given it much
    DC> thought.

I don't think such allocs should be considered leaks worth worrying
about, if they're leaks at all.  If there's a good reason for those
objects to stick around for the life of the module, then you might as
well let the normal process shutdown free them implicitly.  I don't
believe Python will dlclose your extension module even on a reload
(assuming it's a dynamic library; if it's statically compiled, you
won't get finalized anyway until the process exits).

-Barry



From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 19 10:23:47 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:23:47 -0500
Subject: Python/VTK tutorial?
In-Reply-To: <9j6ji2$lcs$1@hermes.shef.ac.uk>
References: <9j6ji2$lcs$1@hermes.shef.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <15190.60787.369381.411805@beluga.mojam.com>

    jose> I was looking for a decent vtkpython tutorial. However, I seem to
    jose> stumble into TCL/TK tutorials all the time. Does such a beast
    jose> exist?  I would have thought that coupled with NumPy, VTK in
    jose> Python should be phenomenally popular...

The Kitware folks (authors of VTK) have long used Tcl as their extension
language, which explains the preponderance of Tcl-related VTK documentation.
You might ask them (kitware at kitware.com) if they know of anything
Python-related.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 17:25:02 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:25:02 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994155184.16109.python-list@python.org> <915a998f.0107030845.5c1a77f4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9htd7e0ab6@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Hamish Lawson" <hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:915a998f.0107030845.5c1a77f4 at posting.google.com...
> Alex Martelli:
>
>     Python can work perfectly well WITHIN ASP/IIS
>
> Roman Suzi:
>
>     ADO could help for those who consider Python for tasks usually
>     done with PHP or ASP.
>
> I suspect there may be cross-purposes here, due to differences in how
> the term 'ASP' is being used. Strictly ASP is a technology for dynamic
> web pages, but without any reference to any particular programming
> language. VBScript just happens to be the most widely used language
> for working with ASP, but other languages can be used - JScript,

Actually, JScript seems to be more widespread in this role, judging
from various hints -- including the fact that in the next Microsoft
language generation, VBScript disappears (reabsorbed by VB, if
you will) but JScript is still being intensely invested on (also, the
examples on MSDN seems strongly JScript-biased).

> PerlScript, Python, etc. Thus to compare Python with ASP is, strictly
> speaking, as meaningless as comparing Python with CGI (when you
> actually meant Perl).

Yep, this is exactly what I think Roman finally got from this
exchange.


Alex





From t-weh at online.no  Wed Jul 25 15:41:19 2001
From: t-weh at online.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:41:19 +0200
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>        <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <mailman.996090346.23669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3HF77.292$Fp.2574@news1.oke.nextra.no>

Interesting. What I'm going to send among my clients are lists of urls, and
I guess the lists can be pretty big after a while.
Coul probably benefit from compression too. If you ever implement something
like this, please post it here, at Parnassus etc.

Thomas


"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996090346.23669.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Martin> "Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> writes:
>     >> Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it
>     >> looks very nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues?
>
>     Martin> If speed is an issue, I would recommend against SOAP. If you
use
>     Martin> CORBA, you can get very efficient implementations. Even the
>     Martin> least efficient ones (e.g. Fnorb) will easily out-pace SOAP
any
>     Martin> time.
>
> Perhaps, but it all depends on what and how you sling your data around.
> Clearly, you can't efficiently pass and receive multi-megabyte data
> structures, but that would hold true for any distributed communication
> protocol.  A megabyte of data is still a megabyte of data.  I tweaked
> xmlrpclib a year or two ago to handle gzip encoding.  It compresses the
xml
> on the wire quite nicely.  Doesn't have much effect when talking over a
LAN
> but over the Internet it's quite nice to have.  I suspect it wouldn't be
too
> hard to add gzip encoding support to SOAPpy either.
>
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> http://www.mojam.com/
> http://www.musi-cal.com/
>




From aquarius at kryogenix.org  Tue Jul 24 17:54:36 2001
From: aquarius at kryogenix.org (Aquarius)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:54:36 GMT
Subject: exec considered harmful
References: <9jjo5b$jn3$1@giles.kryogenix.org> <_Zg77.543539$eK2.114006347@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jkr4p$pai$1@giles.kryogenix.org>

Nick Perkins spoo'd forth:
> why exec(), when you can import?
> 
> I think that people with experience in Perl tend to want to exec() too much.
> If you have a function in another file that you want to execute, you should
> make that other file a .py file, and import it.

I exec because I've essentially defined a page type that works like MS
Active Server Pages or PHP, so I can have:

blah blah some HTML here
<?cas
some Python
?>
some more HTML

and the CGI (which is invoked as a handler for the page via an Apache
Action directive) splits the page into Python bits and HTML bits,
printing the HTML and execing the Python code. I find it a lot easier
than making each page a complete Python CGI and having to explicitly
print "" everything. It works in the same way as Poor Man's Zope, which
is another "embed Python in HTML" CGI handler.

Aq.

-- 
Well *done*, Aquarius -- a phrase we love typing because it makes us feel
like the boss-character from a 1980s Glen A Larson action series...
  NTK, http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?backarchive99/now0618.txt&lineY2#l


From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 14:32:16 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:32:16 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDILCAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.996496747.2943.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B65A830.75EE6C76@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Scheme says and reveals nothing about internal representations.
> 
> Neither does Python, IMO.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

hmmm. The Python docs are full of phrases like:

"depends on the implimentation of the underlying C library"

And from the refernce manual:

"""
Floating point numbers:
These represent machine-level double precision floating point numbers.
You are at the mercy of the underlying machine architecture and C
implementation for the accepted range and handling of overflow.
"""

I don't know if this is "saying and revealing" _something_, or an
extreme version of _nothing_, but it certainly ties Python behaviour to
internal representation. I understand the practical reasons for using
the underlying machine and C library methods and representations, but it
sure would be nice to have it clearly defined for Python itself,
instead.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:02:12 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:02:12 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item]=None
> 
> A = filter(lambda e, dic = C: dic.has_key(e), A)

I guess you can even do filter(C.has_key, A), which is probably a little
faster still.

> You may get some speedup by making B a dictionary, and using has_key()
> to see if the word is there. This should get you a O(log(n)) instead
> of O(n) inside the loop. To gain further performance, use filter to
> skim A.

What's n, here?  This looks linear in the length of A, and constant time
in the number of unique elements in B, to me.

Alex.


From l0819m0v0smfm001 at sneakemail.com  Fri Jul 27 22:00:00 2001
From: l0819m0v0smfm001 at sneakemail.com (Joshua Macy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:00:00 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B61E456.78DFE802@sneakemail.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:
>
> But possibly the first thing anyone with any investment in the
> language should be thinking upon starting to read the PEP is: "How on
> Earth am I going to know what needs changing, and how much time and
> money am I going to be spending to adapt to this?"
> 

  It seems to me that if upon reading the PEP someone thinks "How on
Earth am I going to know what needs changing?", he is almost guaranteed
to have bugs in his code that relate to the very issue that the PEP
addresses.  How could he not, since he's obviously never thought about
it before?  Someone who thinks this way should be thanking his lucky
stars that if the PEP is implemented the language is going to grow the
machinery in the near term to help him identify the bugs (warnings and
possibly tools), write code that's not subject to the bugs (using / and
// appropriately) and the incentive (Python 3.0) to attack the problem
in the next few years.


  Joshua


From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul 26 13:13:55 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 17:13:55 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

Quoth piet at cs.uu.nl:
...
| I know some people had to use Algol 60 dialects with only a single case. We
| were fortunate enough to have real Friden Flexowriters with upper and
| lowercase. Keywords (printed in bold) where made with backspaces and
| underlines, and had the nice property that any combination of letter,
| underscore and backspace that put the underscore under the letter made that
| letter bold. The Flexowriters produced papertape, which was fed into the
| computer.
|
| Maybe the case-insensitivity of other early programming languages was just
| caused by the lack of both cases on input (and output) devices.

Or worse the lack of a full ASCII character set on the host computer.
My first programs were on a CDC Cyber mainframe with a 60 bit word;
we had several character sets at our disposal, but nearly all programming
was done in 6 bit "display code", no lower case.  (The only exception
was a C compiler, which - no offense to the Texas university where it
was created, certainly it was a noble effort - wasn't very useful.)
That would be laughable today, but the computer world was a lot more
diverse at that level then, and we inherit a lot from those days.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 17 16:47:32 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:47:32 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3b549622.2170522105@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171427150.11975-100000@bms>

Hi,

regarding...

> >Generally:  #<magic> <directive> [<arguments>]

or as I should have written it...

#<magic><directive> [<arguments>]

<...>
> I withdraw my #!pragma (or #!pythma ;-) suggestion and propose
> r'^\s*#pragma\s' as the magic line prefix regular expression.

Why is "pragma" better <magic> than " ## ", or some other sequence of
non-word characters?

I would think that using any *word* as the <magic> is just asking for
trouble; someone is bound to have done (or normally does) a
block of comments where there is no space between the "#" and the
first word of the comment (iirc, emacs handles comments in such a way
that "#comments" is the right thing to do in some cases)... is the
word "pragma" now illegal as the first word in such a comment, what
does this do to any tools that automatically turn arbitrary text into
comments?


- Bruce




From Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de  Mon Jul  2 11:37:02 2001
From: Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de (Lutz Schroeer)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 15:37:02 GMT
Subject: Template processing
Message-ID: <Xns90D2B339CFDD6Latzikatz@139.174.2.56>

Hi,

I want to do some _simple_ template processing. Which is the best package to 
use (except Zope and except writing it myself ;-))?

Latz


From mcherm at destiny.com  Mon Jul 23 10:34:38 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:34:38 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <f37ce9f1.e9f1f37c@destiny.com>

Guido writes:
> [...]
> Because all Arthur does is tick me off, I'll leave it at this -- 
> maybe someone else can explain it all to him.

Well, I'll see what I can do. In the language there are (at least)
two distinct things we might want to do when "dividing" A and B:

  (1) split A up into B parts
  (2) find how many B's fit in an A

A good example of (1) is float division, and the cannonical example 
of (2) is "int division", aka "div". These are DIFFERENT THINGS.
For instance, if you are implementing a sort algorithm, you may
well want (2) in a place where (1) will never do! On the other
hand, if your program is performing CAD drawings, then (1) is
probably the meaning you need. Note that (2) often makes most sense
with integers (especially since it always gives out an integer),
while (1) may make sense with floats, rationals, fixed-position
decimals, as well as various other numerical types.

So I'm hoping that everyone reading this can agree, BOTH (1) and
(2) are USEFUL things, and a good language should allow BOTH. If
not, then please stop reading: there's no way I can convince you.

Given that you want both (1) and (2), there is just one problem:
the syntax "A / B" is the ideal syntax for BOTH of these purposes.
It's ideal for (1) because the mathematical operation of division 
is traditionally represented with a "/", and it's ideal for (2) 
because C and other languages have historically used "/" between 
integers for (2). In my opinion (and those of quite a few others), 
this is pretty lopsided: (1) is probably used more often, so it 
should get priority, PLUS just imitating C isn't very convincing 
since other languages (eg: Pascal) use other syntax, PLUS the use 
of division in mathematics is far more widespread and well-known
than the use of "/" in C, PLUS the people who intend to use (2)
will probably be able to remember to use a different symbol. So
if you believe these arguments, then the next time you go out
and invent a new language, you'll use "/" to mean (1), not (2).

But Python is not a new language, and in existing versions of
Python, "/" has meant (2) if both arguments were integers. To
change this now is VERY bad, because it will break lots of 
existing code. It probably won't be hard for existing programmers
to adapt, but having to repair all those old scripts is a VERY
BAD THING.

So Guido is trying to balance two things: the desire to use "/"
to mean (1) in all cases, regardless of the type of its arguments,
and the desire to keep Python stable, without breaking lots of
existing code. The issue is important because we often see
newbie bugs based on this issue, and because if the change is
EVER going to happen, it HAS to be soon... the longer he waits,
the more old scripts there are which will have to be broken.

In the end, after hearing all of the arguments (and if you haven't
spoken up yet I STILL suspect someone else has made your argument
for you before in a previous usenet thread), Guido has apparently
decided that the design improvement is worth breaking old scripts. 
Obviously, that means that tools and techniques (warnings, type
inferring source checkers, etc) need to be provided which will 
help in that transition... but it'll still be painful. Guido is
well aware of that, and I'm sure he approaches this with
reluctance. But remember, there's a GOOD side too! After the
trasnsition is over, the language will be (in one small way) even 
better than before.

-- Michael Chermside





From johnsstar at earthlink.net  Sun Jul  8 23:31:49 2001
From: johnsstar at earthlink.net (Randal Johnson)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:31:49 GMT
Subject: best language for 3D manipulation over web ?
References: <v0efhto7hcdq30ei2bvp717l3f9qq7ce5h@4ax.com> <ZnQR6.911$Ol6.288839@news20.bellglobal.com> <D9cS6.4513$lM3.104799@news1.oke.nextra.no> <dsekht4ujbc65kes6goq28njv3s1rafh6d@4ax.com> <3B1A47EA.AFBD45E8@lmf.ericsson.se> <n4okhtcr58m58uqb2r1129m6dm1ss1e4tp@4ax.com> <3B1B1825.8109BA83@lmf.ericsson.se> <2v4ohtgldvce84sn87kh1eg1lnes37getq@4ax.com> <3B1C9E65.B73A4FE@lmf.ericsson.se> <rtaqhtsuqgo74agtrhanijpj0t0shaikhv@4ax.com> <3B1DFD87.F3BFDB57@lmf.ericsson.se> <e03vhto1hehnstnnaj7ekru67lulnrme8v@4ax.com> <9fpra3$352$1@oslo-nntp.eunet.no> <3B2083A5.15B40637@lmf.ericsson.se> <9fqi1i$dsq$1@oslo-nntp.eunet.no>
Message-ID: <FA927.178$767.10234@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

The problem with any real time programming over the web is not the language
you program in but the protocol you use.
  Whether you are talking about real time video or games real time is a
hassle with TCP/IP.

  Read the article on gamasutra by Bruce Holland on X Wing Vs Tie Fighter
and what they ran into trying to create a real time space combat internet
game.


"Thomas Hansen" <thomas.hansenNOSPAMORILLSUEYOURASS at entermatch.com> wrote in
message news:9fqi1i$dsq$1 at oslo-nntp.eunet.no...
>
> "Attila Feher" <Attila.Feher at lmf.ericsson.se> wrote in message
> news:3B2083A5.15B40637 at lmf.ericsson.se...
> > Thomas Hansen wrote:
> > >
> > > > >> Every user should have his/her own registry (and not just a
> sub-tree)
> > > > >
> > > > > TOTALLY agreed.
> > > >
> > > > See, we can agree to many different things ^__^
> > > >
> > >
> > > Not possible unless you want to install a billion ActiveX/COM
components
> x
> > > times where x is the number of users on that computer...
> >
> > Due to bad design...
> >
> > A
>
> Might be, but if every user were supposed to have a completely custom
> registry, and info about COM servers were supposed to be stuffed in that
> registry, it wouldn't be possible to have their own version of the
registry
> without multiple install of COM servers...
>
>
>




From andreas.kremer at fernuni-hagen.de  Fri Jul 20 06:51:32 2001
From: andreas.kremer at fernuni-hagen.de (Andreas Kremer)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:51:32 +0200
Subject: synchronized lists
References: <mailman.995617328.2514.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j92bg$cpd$01$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

> Making pointers to and from is messy and a usual source of cyclic
> references. Combined with using __del__, this will result in "memory
> leaks", IIRC.

Thanks. Actually this is the reason why i am thinking of secure mechanismn
which avoids cyclic references or at least removes all references of objects
towards each other, if one object is deleted.






From mgn000 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 11:26:52 2001
From: mgn000 at yahoo.com (Matt Noel)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 08:26:52 -0700
Subject: Sample code for using readline
Message-ID: <3B49CD3C.F157E2F@yahoo.com>

Can someone send me a sample of how to use the readline module?  I'm
just starting out with Python and wanted to code up something using
readline but I can't quite figure out how to import and use it
properly.  I've used it before with Perl.

A chunk of code would be quite handy.  I checked the FAQ but did not see
anything that looked useful.

-- 
     Matt Noel           mgn000 at yahoo.com


From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 28 16:59:17 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:59:17 +0100
Subject: PySol 4.72 sources
Message-ID: <rn96mtkdcv1fhrja26qjk9j7ogtvpg2ufh@4ax.com>

Has anyone got a working URL for PySol? (Specifically, for the sources to 4.72).
The URL I have (http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/pysol.html) doesn't work
any more, and a Google search throws up nothing which works :-(

Thanks,
Paul


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 12:33:08 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:33:08 +0100
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
References: <tlbbqas5b6hvff@corp.supernews.com> <9jaf52$ff0$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <jojoltg9m6atgia43j7j2abks4b749equl@4ax.com>

On 20 Jul 2001 16:33:54 -0700, aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

>Essentially, I'm arguing that it's "reasonable" to require a developer
>to install a current version of a software package, but it's not
>reasonable to so require an end user.

One proviso - install a shell script/alias/whatever that knows which
version of Python to run - some machines have several versions
installed, and the default isn't always going to be the one you want.

BTW - is there any way to register for advance info and early versions
- I'm particular interested in the SCons among all the build tools (I
hate make and I desperately hate the non-standard nature of current
alternatives) but I've been disappointed with the limited info on the
SC site.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 12:22:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:22:34 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list@python.org> <Y3k07.26347$he.1370115@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9hsrgc02hfj@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:Y3k07.26347$he.1370115 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com...
    ...
> cursor.execute("SELECT f1, f2, f3 FROM table WHERE f4=? AND f5=?", (f4val,
> f5val))
>
> I think you'll find it's more than a little tricky. Also, in VBScript, if
rs

Make a command object, with the CommandText property set to just
the same string as above, and call its Execute with the Parameters
set to Array(f4val,f5val).  What's "more than a little tricky"
about this -- having to set CommandText then call Execute in
two steps?  But this opens an opportunity to _prepare_ the
command object (set its Prepared property too) if you need to
execute it repeatedly with different parameters.

> is a recordset (with an implied current member), you have to access fields
> using
>
>     rs("FieldName")
>
> This is a bizarre way to reference things by name. If your colleagues see
> this as natural then they have their Microsoft blinkers on. I have no

I guess I must have such blinkers, because I don't see this as an
issue.  I may typically have the field names in variables, so how
else would I access the fields unless by using those values as
parameters to SOME call or other?  it could be more explicit, for
sure -- hey, you CAN write rs.Fields("FieldName").Value, you know,
you don't HAVE to take the above shortcuts!-).


I'm no Microsoft lover, but SOME of their stuff ain't too bad,
and I think ADO falls into the "not too bad" category (some SMALL
subset of their stuff is EXCELLENT, and COM is right there, but
that's another issue:-).  Indeed, I believe ADO (and much more
so, COM:-) deserves a far better language than Visual Basic...
Python, for example!-).


Alex





From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 04:23:08 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:23:08 +0100
Subject: Optional argument for string.strip() (Was: [Python-Dev] Small fea
	ture request)
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF35@intrepid>

>From:	aahz at rahul.net [SMTP:aahz at rahul.net]
>Simon Brunning wrote:
>> 
>> This comes up on c.l.py occasionally, though - "What is Python's
equivalent
>> of Perl's 'chomp' function?" The .rstrip() method isn't it, 'cos it
strips
>> all whitespace, but often people want only the line separators removed.
if
>> rstrip took an argument, you could do:

>Ah.  Yes, that one.  I think that ought to be better fixed with an
>actual chomp() function, but the argument against it has always been
>that there's no good way to do it in the face of files from other
>platforms....  You wanna talk about that one, we might be able to have a
>productive discussion on c.l.py.

Will do...

To recap:

The .split method on strings splits at whitespace by default, but takes an
optional argument allowing splitting by other strings. The .strip method
(and its siblings) always strip whitespace - on more than one occasion I
would have found it useful if these methods also took an optional argument
allowing other strings to be stripped. For example, to strip, say, asterisks
from a string you could do:

>>>fred = '**word**word**'
>>>fred.strip('*')
word**word

As I mentioned, this would give us an equivalent to Perl's 'chomp'. Does
this sound sensible/useful?

BTW, my spell checker suggests that 'Perl' should be spelt 'Peril'. Smarter
than I thought.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning.





-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From nospam at mega-nerd.net  Mon Jul 16 17:03:16 2001
From: nospam at mega-nerd.net (Erik de Castro Lopo)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:03:16 GMT
Subject: Bug in Python DNS module
Message-ID: <3B535691.96BDB5E3@mega-nerd.net>

A couple of days ago I asked for and received a link to a Python DNS
module. I have since found a bug in the ParseResolvConf() functions.

This is how it was:

def ParseResolvConf():
    "parses the /etc/resolv.conf file and sets defaults for name servers"
    import string
    global defaults
    lines=open("/etc/resolv.conf").readlines()
    for line in lines:
	string.strip(line)
	if line[0]==';' or line[0]=='#':
	    continue

This is how it should be:

def ParseResolvConf():
    "parses the /etc/resolv.conf file and sets defaults for name servers"
    import string
    global defaults
    lines=open("/etc/resolv.conf").readlines()
    for line in lines:
	line = string.strip(line)
	if not line or line[0]==';' or line[0]=='#':
	    continue

I'm not sure who to send it to so I'm posting it here.

Regards,
Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo     nospam at mega-nerd.com      (Yes its valid)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things,  because
that would also stop you from doing clever things."  -- Doug Gwyn


From phawkins at connact.com  Thu Jul 12 13:07:57 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:07:57 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <9if3fv$8r65@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <wkzoaaf53m.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "CM" == Chris McMillan <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> writes:

CM> Thank you everyone for your imput!!  On a side note:  I would have loved to
CM> use bash, sed, etc, but unfortunately I'm forced to use a Windows NT
CM> machine.  I just thought this might be an excellent python exercise since
CM> I'm in the process of learning it.

So get cygwin -- http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/

--Patricia


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 10 23:23:25 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:23:25 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3B4BC6AD.9B0783D9@engcorp.com>

David Bolen wrote:
> 
> "Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> writes:
> 
> > if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
> > }
> 
> You seem to be posting a lot of one line translation requests - are
> you trying to get a program translated to Python one line at a time?

Not to mention that he doesn't seem to be learning from the previous
responses, or showing any indication of having tried himself first.
(Four hours early the sscanf(x, "%d") variant was posted and applying
that to this isn't a reach, given Alex' answer.)

Steve, maybe you could spend a bit of time searching the documentation
for assistance before asking these questions.  Then, when you've 
put a small bit of effort in (during which time you'll doubtless
learn all kinds of other stuff about Python), post here with 
some kind of "I tried this XXXX but it didn't work they
way I expected... Can anyone help please?"

It's also fairly customary and polite to let your assistants know
a little background on the nature of your task at hand.  Are we
really translating a C program one line at a time?  

Not that that's realy a problem in c.l.p, but maybe you could let 
us know what the program does?  

Or will it spoil the punchline?  <grin>

Cheers,
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 31 02:19:17 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:19:17 +1200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com> <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B664DE5.D24365BE@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
> box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.

You could try things like

  -1.0 * 0.0

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 31 13:23:50 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:23:50 -0700
Subject: simple question:the count of array
References: <mailman.996583454.15942.python-list@python.org> <3B66AF1E.39363654@cybermesa.com>
Message-ID: <3B66E9A6.4713C7AA@home.net>

Jay O'Connor wrote:

> > >>> a=['a','b','c']
> > >>> b=a.count()
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
> >     b=a.count()
> > TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

> I'm not sure what "count()" does, but to get the number of values in an

list.count(x) returns how many instances of x are in list.:

>>> a.count('b')
1
>>> a.append('b')
>>> a
['a', 'b', 'c', 'b']
>>> a.count('b')
2


-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 01:31:14 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:31:14 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Sa137.1466$zv2.51843@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B4D3622.5B4FC76E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> 
> In all the examples cited that show why this is a problem,
> it's not integer division that causes the confusion,
> it's division of integer *literals*.

That's only because the examples have deliberately
been made very concise, to show the essence of
what's going on.

The problem occurs when / is applied to integer
*objects*, which can arise from any number of
sources.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From jim at publishingresources.com  Mon Jul 23 12:17:00 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:17:00 -0000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in
<916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i at 4ax.com>: 

>Had Python started out differently, I'd still disagree but I wouldn't
>be making a big issue. But this is a code-breaker of the worse kind -
>it will create bugs in trusted programs that have been relied upon for
>years without problem, which the programmers have forgotten about (if
>the programmers are even still in the company) - and many of the bugs
>may not even be obvious when they occur. And it will happen a *lot* -
>division is *not* some obscure rarely-used feature, it is a basic
>arithmetic operation.
>
>The reward for advocating Python is apparently that you get to look a
>complete idiot in front of your boss when everything you've written
>goes pear shaped - *just* the kind of thankyou all the Python
>advocates have been looking for, I don't think.

Because every camel has its straw, I need to agree here. I, and most
of my python buddies, fight with bloodstained teeth and nails to get
python in our projects and developments. I can't see winning too many
arguments when my opposition can pull out 'the division operator' to
shoot me down. I can't see budgeting time and people to making sure
the division operator works after an upgrade. I'd be laughed into data
entry ;).

Options such as // for the new semantics, keeping / as integer div
seem quite reasonable. Or even allowing / to be used with the new
semantics given some "from __something__ import something" seems very
acceptable. And not just as a stepping stone to future versions, as a
permanent change to how the interpreter works.

Reading the points people make keeps reminding me of a joke.

A Mathematician, an Engineer and a Physicist are hunting in the woods.
The come upon a trophy buck. The Physicist shoots and the shot is 5
feet too low. He mumbles about improper air resistance and drag.
The engineer then fires and the shot is 5 feet too high. He mumbles
about overcompensating for environmental variables.

The mathematician looks left at the Physicist, right at the Engineer
and exclaims, "You got him!"

Jim


From mirko.liss at web.de  Tue Jul  3 21:32:32 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 03:32:32 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On 3 Jul 2001, Russ wrote:

> Consider the type checking in C or C++, for example. Suppose that a
> function takes several ints (or any other type) as arguments, and
> suppose the calls of the function all pass ints in the correct slots.
> The compiler will be perfectly happy. Does that assure that the
> arguments are passed correctly? Of course not. It is a necessary but
> not sufficient condition for correctness. The arguments could be
> completely out of order, and the compiler wouldn't have a clue.

If the arguments of a function are out of order, the compiler 
should bark and die, shouldn?t it?

Most programmers use type definitions deliberately, just to provoke
that kind of compile-time errors.

An example in C:

typedef plane_t int ;  /* plane no */
typedef lane_t int  ;  /* lane no */
typedef go_down_in_pieces_t bool ;  
go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch( plane_t flightno, \
                              lane_t neigboring_highway ) ;

If the arguments get swapped, the compiler gets angry.
Is this what you wanted to have in C ?

Run-time exceptions should be treated differently than 
compile-time errors and warnings. 
In Python, you end up with lots of possible exceptions
at run-time. Supposedly, you might want to drop dynamic 
typing for your kind of application. 


Regards,

Mirko



From mike_haspert at credence.com  Thu Jul 12 16:24:43 2001
From: mike_haspert at credence.com (Mike Haspert)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:24:43 -0700
Subject: starting PythonWin from script called by embedded interpreter
Message-ID: <fab90324.0107121224.28ec4964@posting.google.com>

Hi all:
First I've got to say it's been fun "learning by lurking." But now
I've learned enough to get in over my head, and I'd sure appreciate
some advice.

I'm investigating the pain vs profit of using python as a
customization layer inside an MFC project: An MFC project embeds the
python interpreter, and calls python scripts which optionally use SWIG
wrapped C or C++ extensions.

I quite like Mark Hammond's PythonWin but hit problems when I tried to
use it to debug a function called by PyEval_CallObject(), but _only_
in an MFC app.

THE SETUP:
I'm using python 2.1, VC++6.0, and NT4.0 sp6.
I've embedded the python interpreter into 6 testcase projects, debug
and release builds of a console app, a console app supporting MFC, and
an MFC app. Each app does the same thing: It calls a function in a
python module with the following sequence. (error checking and
incref/decref'ing elided)

Py_Initialize();
PyObject *mod = PyImport_ImportModule("testmodule");
PyObject *func = PyObject_GetAttrString(mod, "f1");
PyObject *args = Py_BuildValue("(i)", 7))	//just a test value
PyObject *rvals = PyEval_CallObject(func,args);
//do stuff with rval
Py_Finalize();

THE PROBLEM:
When I run my MFC app testcase or my "console app supporting MFC"
testcase, PyEval_CallObject() returns 0. Doing prints inside the
script shows that "import pywin.debugger" succeeds and the line
"pywin.debugger.set_trace()" doesn't.

Yow. 
Can I make the interpreter spit out more info on what happened? Can I
make PythonWin spit out info on what happened?
Does anyone recognize this because they went through it already?
Any advice on debugging embedded Python?
Any caveats about embedding Python in an MFC project?

MORE DETAILS:
All testcases work if I don't try to start the debugger from inside
the pyscript. (debug build projects use python21_d.dll)

I'm following the example in the debugger tutorial and adding the
following lines in the function I've called with PyEval_CallObject()
in order to start the debugger.
	import pywin.debugger
	pywin.debugger.set_trace()

SOME SUCCESS:
Release build Console app testcase successfully starts the debugger:
 
I can step through my C++ code. When PyEval_CallObject()executes,
PythonWin starts and I can step through the script. Wonderful. When
the script finishes, I can continue stepping through my C++ code
again.  Wonderful again.   This is what I want to be able to
accomplish in an MFC project.

(BTW, in case you came to a full stop reading about stepping through a
release build, you can alter release build settings to allow it.
Details in MSDN's "Turn on Generation of Debug Information for the
Release Build")

Debug build testcases fail, but I expected that:
PythonWin doesn't work when my C++ project is a debug build. I expect
that I'll have to get the source for the windows extensions and
pythonwin and do a debug build to remedy this.


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 30 15:12:40 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 15:12:40 -0400
Subject: Radical Suggestion for Integer Division Migration
References: <2f2tj9.ejt.ln@10.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <uwv4q5izb.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Carl Banks <idot at vt.edu> writes:

> Basically, have all integer division using the "/" operator throw an
> exception during the transition period, unless "from __future__ import
> division" appears in the module.  

I'm definitely not in favor of this.  What this does is essentially
move a hot cut date for backwards compatibility right to the very
first release that is built to transition to the new behavior.  In
other words, it removes any possibility of a graceful transition with
older code.  Sure warnings could be ignored, but that's the whole
point - you have some time during which you can ignore them but your
code keeps working, while you work to fix the issues.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 31 20:38:29 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:38:29 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107311623050.649-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <000701c11a22$4e890f60$a9e1fea9@carol>

Bruce writes -

> I think you are missing something...
> If you were designing a control system for the `toys', and needed to
> expose a user level programming interface; would you be more likely to
> choose languages C+S or language P (which can do both jobs)
> [C+S == P, of course].
> 
> Unless CP4E is done as a "semantic game" with a larger language,
> language P will never exist.

Or else I am expressing myself badly and you are missing something
of my point.

Let's take one little such toy.  A calculator. One that does undisguised
Python numerics - 3/4 = 0, 3.0/4 = .75.

But let's give them 2 different names.  One is called the Python
Calculator and the other the Python Numeric Type Calculator.

One is sadly broken and the other works perfectly - but they are
exactly the same little toy.

If you see my wonderfully made little point.

ART




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 15:11:30 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:11:30 -0700
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B630E62.3710EF0@ActiveState.com>

James Logajan wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> b.1\ Or K&R C (in which Python was written for a long time to maximize
> portability) or ANSI C (which tried to maintain compatibility with K&R). A
> case where stagnation helped lead to success.

I believe that the stagnation followed success. The same may happen to
Python. If it is ever the "default programming language" then it will
become essentially impossible to change in any reasonable time frame.
Guido is trying to make the changes now because they won't be possible
then.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 15:57:09 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:57:09 -0700
Subject: PEP 261, Rev 1.3 - Support for "wide" Unicode characters 
Message-ID: <3B3F8095.8D58631D@ActiveState.com>

PEP: 261
Title: Support for "wide" Unicode characters
Version: $Revision: 1.3 $
Author: paulp at activestate.com (Paul Prescod)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Created: 27-Jun-2001
Python-Version: 2.2
Post-History: 27-Jun-2001


Abstract

    Python 2.1 unicode characters can have ordinals only up to 2**16
-1.  
    This range corresponds to a range in Unicode known as the Basic
    Multilingual Plane. There are now characters in Unicode that live
    on other "planes". The largest addressable character in Unicode
    has the ordinal 17 * 2**16 - 1 (0x10ffff). For readability, we
    will call this TOPCHAR and call characters in this range "wide 
    characters".


Glossary

    Character 
        
        Used by itself, means the addressable units of a Python 
        Unicode string.

    Code point

        A code point is an integer between 0 and TOPCHAR.
        If you imagine Unicode as a mapping from integers to
        characters, each integer is a code point. But the 
        integers between 0 and TOPCHAR that do not map to
        characters are also code points. Some will someday 
        be used for characters. Some are guaranteed never 
        to be used for characters.

    Codec

        A set of functions for translating between physical
        encodings (e.g. on disk or coming in from a network)
        into logical Python objects.

    Encoding

        Mechanism for representing abstract characters in terms of
        physical bits and bytes. Encodings allow us to store
        Unicode characters on disk and transmit them over networks
        in a manner that is compatible with other Unicode software.

    Surrogate pair

        Two physical characters that represent a single logical
        character. Part of a convention for representing 32-bit
        code points in terms of two 16-bit code points.

    Unicode string

          A Python type representing a sequence of code points with
          "string semantics" (e.g. case conversions, regular
          expression compatibility, etc.) Constructed with the 
          unicode() function.


Proposed Solution

    One solution would be to merely increase the maximum ordinal 
    to a larger value. Unfortunately the only straightforward
    implementation of this idea is to use 4 bytes per character.
    This has the effect of doubling the size of most Unicode 
    strings. In order to avoid imposing this cost on every
    user, Python 2.2 will allow the 4-byte implementation as a
    build-time option. Users can choose whether they care about
    wide characters or prefer to preserve memory.

    The 4-byte option is called "wide Py_UNICODE". The 2-byte option
    is called "narrow Py_UNICODE".

    Most things will behave identically in the wide and narrow worlds.

    * unichr(i) for 0 <= i < 2**16 (0x10000) always returns a
      length-one string.

    * unichr(i) for 2**16 <= i <= TOPCHAR will return a
      length-one string on wide Python builds. On narrow builds it will 
      raise ValueError.

        ISSUE 

            Python currently allows \U literals that cannot be
            represented as a single Python character. It generates two
            Python characters known as a "surrogate pair". Should this
            be disallowed on future narrow Python builds?

        Pro:

            Python already the construction of a surrogate pair
            for a large unicode literal character escape sequence.
            This is basically designed as a simple way to construct
            "wide characters" even in a narrow Python build. It is also
            somewhat logical considering that the Unicode-literal syntax
            is basically a short-form way of invoking the unicode-escape
            codec.

        Con:

            Surrogates could be easily created this way but the user
            still needs to be careful about slicing, indexing, printing 
            etc. Therefore some have suggested that Unicode
            literals should not support surrogates.


        ISSUE 

            Should Python allow the construction of characters that do
            not correspond to Unicode code points?  Unassigned Unicode 
            code points should obviously be legal (because they could 
            be assigned at any time). But code points above TOPCHAR are 
            guaranteed never to be used by Unicode. Should we allow
access 
            to them anyhow?

        Pro:

            If a Python user thinks they know what they're doing why
            should we try to prevent them from violating the Unicode
            spec? After all, we don't stop 8-bit strings from
            containing non-ASCII characters.

        Con:

            Codecs and other Unicode-consuming code will have to be
            careful of these characters which are disallowed by the
            Unicode specification.

    * ord() is always the inverse of unichr()

    * There is an integer value in the sys module that describes the
      largest ordinal for a character in a Unicode string on the current
      interpreter. sys.maxunicode is 2**16-1 (0xffff) on narrow builds
      of Python and TOPCHAR on wide builds.

        ISSUE: Should there be distinct constants for accessing
               TOPCHAR and the real upper bound for the domain of 
               unichr (if they differ)? There has also been a
               suggestion of sys.unicodewidth which can take the 
               values 'wide' and 'narrow'.

    * every Python Unicode character represents exactly one Unicode code 
      point (i.e. Python Unicode Character = Abstract Unicode
character).

    * codecs will be upgraded to support "wide characters"
      (represented directly in UCS-4, and as variable-length sequences
      in UTF-8 and UTF-16). This is the main part of the implementation 
      left to be done.

    * There is a convention in the Unicode world for encoding a 32-bit
      code point in terms of two 16-bit code points. These are known
      as "surrogate pairs". Python's codecs will adopt this convention
      and encode 32-bit code points as surrogate pairs on narrow Python
      builds. 

        ISSUE 

            Should there be a way to tell codecs not to generate
            surrogates and instead treat wide characters as 
            errors?

        Pro:

            I might want to write code that works only with
            fixed-width characters and does not have to worry about
            surrogates.


        Con:

            No clear proposal of how to communicate this to codecs.

    * there are no restrictions on constructing strings that use 
      code points "reserved for surrogates" improperly. These are
      called "isolated surrogates". The codecs should disallow reading
      these from files, but you could construct them using string 
      literals or unichr().


Implementation

    There is a new (experimental) define:

        #define PY_UNICODE_SIZE 2

    There is a new configure option:

        --enable-unicode=ucs2 configures a narrow Py_UNICODE, and uses
                              wchar_t if it fits
        --enable-unicode=ucs4 configures a wide Py_UNICODE, and uses
                              whchar_t if it fits
        --enable-unicode      same as "=ucs2"

    The intention is that --disable-unicode, or --enable-unicode=no
    removes the Unicode type altogether; this is not yet implemented.

    It is also proposed that one day --enable-unicode will just
    default to the width of your platforms wchar_t.

    Windows builds will be narrow for a while based on the fact that
    there have been few requests for wide characters, those requests
    are mostly from hard-core programmers with the ability to buy
    their own Python and Windows itself is strongly biased towards
    16-bit characters.


Notes

    This PEP does NOT imply that people using Unicode need to use a
    4-byte encoding for their files on disk or sent over the network. 
    It only allows them to do so. For example, ASCII is still a 
    legitimate (7-bit) Unicode-encoding.

    It has been proposed that there should be a module that handles
    surrogates in narrow Python builds for programmers. If someone 
    wants to implement that, it will be another PEP. It might also be 
    combined with features that allow other kinds of character-, 
    word- and line- based indexing.


Rejected Suggestions

    More or less the status-quo

        We could officially say that Python characters are 16-bit and
        require programmers to implement wide characters in their
        application logic by combining surrogate pairs. This is a heavy 
        burden because emulating 32-bit characters is likely to be
        very inefficient if it is coded entirely in Python. Plus these
        abstracted pseudo-strings would not be legal as input to the
        regular expression engine.

    "Space-efficient Unicode" type

        Another class of solution is to use some efficient storage
        internally but present an abstraction of wide characters to
        the programmer. Any of these would require a much more complex
        implementation than the accepted solution. For instance consider
        the impact on the regular expression engine. In theory, we could
        move to this implementation in the future without breaking
Python
        code. A future Python could "emulate" wide Python semantics on
        narrow Python. Guido is not willing to undertake the
        implementation right now.

    Two types

        We could introduce a 32-bit Unicode type alongside the 16-bit
        type. There is a lot of code that expects there to be only a 
        single Unicode type.

    This PEP represents the least-effort solution. Over the next
    several years, 32-bit Unicode characters will become more common
    and that may either convince us that we need a more sophisticated 
    solution or (on the other hand) convince us that simply 
    mandating wide Unicode characters is an appropriate solution.
    Right now the two options on the table are do nothing or do
    this.


References

    Unicode Glossary: http://www.unicode.org/glossary/


Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.


Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From donn at drizzle.com  Tue Jul 24 02:13:53 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:13:53 -0000
Subject: user level can't bind socket address & port
References: None <Gr577.7519$2k2.398288@news.bora.net>
Message-ID: <995955232.999919@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth "" <k5r2a at chollian.net>:

| as the title user level can't bind socket address & port
|
| for example,
|     sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
|     sock.bind((iface, port))
|
| if i login user level, python interpreter generate error message like that
| "    sock.bind((iface, port))
|      socket.error: (13, 'Permission denied') "
|
| How can I bind socket user level.

Use a port value greater than 1024.  Values lower than this are
reserved for root privilege, for the sake of a crude security
distinction.  Since access to those ports are mediated by the
host, we assume that it allows only bona fide connections -
an rsh client that was actually run by the ostensible user,
a telnetd server that is actually the standard telnetd, etc.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul  8 16:01:36 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 08 Jul 2001 16:01:36 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107071820.7ebb77f8@posting.google.com> <fH227.14742$i8.1300639@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <etd4rsnchr3.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Sorry, I think it actually would. :)

>>> 5/.1
50.0
>>> 

Alex.


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 01:15:13 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 01:15:13 -0400
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <3B60AB40.CCE9FA9C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEJJLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Peter Hansen]
> The interpreter currently has direct support for the most-used
> integer operations, thus ensuring that this type has performance
> reasonably close to the maximum feasible given the nature of
> virtual machines.

Actually not close at all.  In, e.g.,

    k = i + j

we spend a lot more time fiddling with reference counts and memory
management than doing the arithmetic!  But we'll ignore that since you're
already happy <wink>.

> Would the number system unification imply that this integer
> optimization would be eliminated?

It all depends on the details of the implementation; hardware reality
doesn't change, and we're still implementing Python in C, so no matter how
uniform the user-visible *model* we would still need to make distinctions
under the covers.

BTW, Python got along fine for years without any integer optimizations at
all, but I agree that specialing-casing int + - and compares in the eval
loop was a clear net win (for which you can, IIRC, thank Fredrik Lundh).




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Jul 13 10:54:41 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 10:54:41 -0400
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <3B4E5A44.7100F507@engcorp.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
	<07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
	<oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
	<086c01c10aec$8ebe4b80$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
	<mailman.994959323.21264.python-list@python.org>
	<3B4E5A44.7100F507@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <oqhewgq3pq.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Peter Hansen]

> Fran?ois Pinard wrote:

> > ... My mother often said to me:

> >   "Des go?ts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas.
> >    Mais il y en a de meilleurs que d'autres..."

> > (roughly translated: "People should never discuss about what is good taste.
> > Yet, some people have better taste than others.").

> Fran?ois, are you sure your translation is accurate?  

> I think it should read "Yet, some people taste better than others."

> -cannibalistic-ly yr's,

A good laugh in the morning!  You make my day, Peter!  Thanks! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Mon Jul 30 18:26:16 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:26:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <3B65A9EA.19373772@home.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107301811480.258-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Chris Barker wrote:

> > However, Perl's typing system is much more flexible (read:
> > context-sensitive) than Python's.
> 
> I didn't mean to say that Perl was not dynamicly typed. What I meant to
> say was:
> 
> a) Python is dynamically typed, as opposed to weakly typed
> b) Python's typing is not like Perl's typing, as you just said yourself.
> 
> Whether or not Perl's typing is best described as "dynamic" or "weak" is
> a question I will leave to others that are more familiar with Perl than
> I.

I would say that some of Perl's automagic coercions (IMHO) make it 
weakly typed. 

But I suppose someone could argue that it's stronly typed -- it just 
has a very convoluted type system. But I've never seen anyone try to
chart out that type system explicitly. ( For one example, that would
involve tieing strings and numbers together into some sort of sub-type
relationship, since you can mix them together ( 'print "1" + 2' ) )

-- Steve Majewski





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:55:58 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:55:58 +0100
Subject: Couple of newbie questions...
References: <5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <moa2mtcrbs4e8sajebta4qe3r3fmmf2v9f@4ax.com>

On 26 Jul 2001 18:05:50 -0700, foobarickknob at yahoo.com (Scott Taylor)
wrote:

>I'm just getting started w/ Python - and have run into a couple issues
>w/ the Windows extensions...
>
>1) time.sleep doesn't seem to release time back to the Win32
>subsystem.  I had a tight loop, and CPU was maxed out at 100% even if
>I did a PumpWaitingMessages w/ a time.sleep.  To actually get the loop
>to return slices of time back to windows and not max out the CPU I had
>to do a PumpWaitingMessages followed by a win32api.Sleep(0) call.  My
>question is - shouldn't time.sleep actually make the process sleep w/o
>hogging CPU?

I've not used this, but it isn't necessarily a problem. It sounds as
if you have 100% usage because of something that is accepting idle
messages - annoying as the CPU indicator doesn't really give a useful
result, but non-idle tasks should still be done before whatever is
grabbing the idle messages.

Disclaimer - this is a general impression, and quite possibly wrong.



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Mon Jul 30 13:52:24 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:52:24 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: a break for comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <9k44u5$fua$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107301343060.258-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On 30 Jul 2001, Paul Svensson wrote:

> In my view, it should obviously end the whole thing; but then I
> never see list comprehensions a procedural description for how
> to generate the list, but rather a symbolic description of
> the list content.  With that view it shouldn't matter which
> for-clause gets evaluated innermost, and so the only unambigous
> thing for the while clause to end, is the whole comprehension.

You hit the nail on the head there, Paul!

The 'while' clause seems useful, and I don't see anything inherently
ambiguous about it, but sticking a procedural clause into what's
otherwise a declarative seens to go against the spirit -- what's 
nice about list comprehensions is that they are just like set 
notations. ( well -- the left hand side is often procedural -- it 
would be even more readable if it were more clearly separated
with a "where" clause, but that would be Yet Another Keyword... ) 

-- Steve Majewski





From joonas at olen.to  Sat Jul 21 17:42:31 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:42:31 +0300
Subject: VRML
References: <slrn9liuit.a6f.jp@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <3B59F747.837D36B7@olen.to>

Jacek Pop?awski wrote:
> 
> Hello. I am writing car game for Linux. To create 3D objects I use Blender,
> save with alt+w which gives simple "videoscape format". I think VRML will be
> much better.  It will be great to create converter between VRML and my own
> format. What I need is Python library which helps me read VRML. I searched
> www.python.org, freshmeat and sourceforge.  I found some projects, but one is
> in C++ and not so easy (example app is huge!), seconds is in Python and I can't
> find "download" section anywhere. Can you help me?

Use wrlexport.py, that uses Blender/Python API for exporting.
You can find it from
http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/exportmesh.html#vrml1


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Thu Jul 12 05:02:50 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 11:02:50 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <mailman.994883960.13777.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3vgky7c5h.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> I'm not sure that the purpose of a//b would be all that evident to a new
> Python programmer, especially one whose first programming language is

Certainly not, but it would be evident that it has some special meaning
and that you better find out what it is.

> Python.  I've never seen // used as an operator before other than to

So what?

> At the very least C, C++ and Java programmers should be familiar with the
> purpose of

Any experienced programmer will probably figure out what that means.
Still, it's a hack. The code doesn't say what you want to do, it says
what you *don't* want to do (i.e. integer division).

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 15:07:03 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 15:07:03 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cp8zi0k3kq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Courageous]
> If one is going to add keywords to a language, I suggest that a
> list of possible future keywords -- even ones that aren't planned
> on being supported any time soon -- be reserved at the same time.

[Guido]
> Good idea.  I'd have to fire up my time machine to figure out which
> keywords will be used in the future though, and I'm not sure how
> successful that would be.  C tried this and had a few unused reserved
> words (I recall 'fortran') for years until they threw them out.

We can avoid that.  Just reserve the specific names:

    keyword1
    keyword2
    ...
    keyword9999

in 2.2.  This is 10x more keywords than even Magnus will find a use for.

    keyword1 x keyword47 [for i keyword6 y]:
        keyword12 42

I suppose we should argue about whether to reserve "keyword0" too <wink>.




From anthony at interlink.com.au  Fri Jul 20 00:43:40 2001
From: anthony at interlink.com.au (Anthony Baxter)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:43:40 +1000
Subject: dnslib license? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam@mega-nerd.net> 
   of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:19:23 GMT." <3B5740C8.4A0DA3F2@mega-nerd.net> 
Message-ID: <200107200443.f6K4he902502@mbuna.arbhome.com.au>

>>> Erik de Castro Lopo wrote
> > Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> > > BTW, personally I'd vote for extending the DNS code and adding it as
> > > dnslib.py to the standard library, rather than having it be a separate
> > > project.
> > Since Guido suggested the same this seems to be the master plan...
> As a user of this thing thing, that it my prefered option.

That's the eventual goal, sure. 

Anthony



From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 20:45:36 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:45:36 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com> <nQq87.6146$YP2.191178@news.pacbell.net> <3B65C161.12003D86@geneva-link.ch>
Message-ID: <3B65FFB0.A28D1E3B@engcorp.com>

Borcis wrote:
> 
> Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> >
> (...)
> > > Useful programs aren't discarded so fast as development fashions and
> > > religions.
> (...)
> > Inertia in the software world is a huge force, and always
> > to be fought tooth and nail, because generally what Inertia means is:
> > "Just live with our mistakes because we can't afford to fix them."
> > This is an extremely depressing state.
> 
> You might find it comforting to consider the trojan
> in the Bible - e.g. the original sin : the injunction
> not to acquire morals from a supernatural source...
> I guess it must be about 3k years old. Now that's inertia.

Eh?

Does this have something to do with the story about there
being a snake involved?

I don't recall hearing it was a Python... :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 12:00:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:00:07 GMT
Subject: simple question:the count of array
References: <mailman.996583454.15942.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bCA97.55834$EP6.12760065@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.996583454.15942.python-list at python.org...
> >>> a=['a','b','c']
> >>> b=a.count()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
>     b=a.count()
> TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

a.count(item) counts the number of occurences of item in a.

a.count('b') = 1; a.count('x') = 0

Terry J.Reedy





From timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com  Sat Jul 21 14:30:08 2001
From: timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com (Tim Randolph)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 18:30:08 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <3B587A3F.8060401@mail.mcg.edu>
Message-ID: <9jchng$9mr@dispatch.concentric.net>

"Keith F. Woeltje" <kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu> wrote in message
news:3B587A3F.8060401 at mail.mcg.edu...
> FWIW, I am also in the "sometime programmer" group, and don't find case
> sensitivity to be an issue. Even though Pascal (case insensitive) was my
> first language, I was always taught to use consistent case, and case
> sensitivity was never an issue. I suspect that Konrad Hinsen's
> experience can largely be extrapolated: most people bright enough to
> figure out loops, conditional statements, and the other "basics" of
> programming are probably bright enough to understand that "a" != "A".
> Surely correcting what is most likely a modest speedbump on the road to
> learning Python isn't worth breaking a lot of existing code.
>  >K
>

Obviously, anyone who can program at all can intellectually understand that
"spam" != "Spam".  Unfortunately, my fingers have minds of their own and
occasionally hit shift every now and then, for reasons that I at best dimly
understand.  (I seem to mistakenly capitalize Nouns more than verbs in
English and Identifiers more than methods in Python.) This makes for
annoying, if easy to catch errors.  In my perfect world, there errors would
be flagged in the editor as I make them.

But because on some deep level Capitalization just doesn't seem so
significant to me, I don't at all like the idea of using it to distinguish
identifiers.  Do case sensitive URLs make sense to anyone? In my perfect
world, we just wouldn't do this, and Python would burp if we tried.

I suspect Guido's motivations towards case insensitivity to be akin to his
intent on indentation.  Having syntactically significant white space makes
Python a  bit harder to make programs that execute -- in that way he really
doesn't care if the language is newbie friendly -- but it makes Python so
much easier to read that it is the most user friendly language I have seen.
Likewise, having Python disallow distinguishing identifiers by case would
make the language harder for people trying to use "n" and "N", but easier to
read and perhaps even easier to think.  At least for those of us who get
tripped up by that kind of usage.

but-maybe-I-am-the-Odd-ball-ly yr's,

Tim Randolph




From fleet at teachout.org  Thu Jul 19 12:21:41 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:21:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
In-Reply-To: <33105F8B185CD51182E300306E06473E2701B0@hermes.isr.thomson-csf.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107191209270.25223-100000@fleet1>

You missed something.

>>>CurCust='smith' #assigned previously in program
>>>from cust import CurCust
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  ImportError: cannot import name CurCust


and if I do:
>>>from cust import smith
>>>CurCust[2]
i

Not what I wanted.

The question is - how do I get:

"from cust import CurCust" to equal "from cust import smith"
and
"CurCust[2]" to equal "smith[2]"

In the program, CurCust can be assigned to smith, johnson, jones or even
Hao-Nghi :)

Regards,
					- fleet -

> Hi fleet,
>
> Just learn that when you write : from cust import CurCust
> ==> CurCust becomes local and you have to reference to it by :
> print CurCust["street"]
>
> regards,
> Hao-Nghi Au
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fleet at teachout.org [mailto:fleet at teachout.org]
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:26 PM
> To: python list
> Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
>
>
>
> I think I may have gotten myself into a box.
>
> I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
> references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:
>
> smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}
>
> Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith" to a
> variable - CurCust.
>
> Now I want to do something like:
>
> from cust import CurCust
>
> print cust.CurCust["street"]
>
> Spent the evening trying to solve this (Learning Python, and Sam's Teach
> Yourself Python) then tried the archives.  The little I found on "variable
> substitution" almost seems to say "no way!" ???
>
> (I know someone is going to suggest a database.  That's a little further
> up the learning curve.  I can see it from here; but I'm not there yet.)
>
> Thanks for any assistance,
> 					- fleet -
>
>
>
>




From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 24 17:25:38 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 23:25:38 +0200
Subject: Python, ActivePython, wxPython, etc
References: <9jkao2$oekti$1@ID-51354.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8EE5CA4782cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

"Timo Labrenz" <Timo.Labrenz at breisnet-online.de> wrote in 
news:9jkao2$oekti$1 at ID-51354.news.dfncis.de:

> First, sorry for the very newbish question :)
> I've been very unhappy with some of the smaller applications I use 
> lately, so I decided to take over control and start learning to 
> program. Python seemed to be the right language to start with and 

python is a good language to start...:-)

> http://www.crosswinds.net/~agauld/ is a great help so far. As I looked 
> for a 'from scratch' tutorial in this newsgroup, I found that there are 
> many toolkits, editors, GUIs and so on for Python available. And to be 
> honest, the original Python (2.1.1) package with IDLE seems a little 
> weak compared to other packages I've seen. The question is, which one 

IDLE is a nice development tool is has a source editor with highlighting, 
an iteractive window a debuger... But if you're using Windows you will 
probably like PythonWin (ActiveState) more because its more in the windows 
style.

> to use? I'm an absolute beginner (some experience in gfa-basic from a 
> long, long time ago ;)) and I want to write small, usefull programs 
> that should work on Windows and maybe, but just maybe, could be 
> compiled in Linux. Those programs are mainly administration tools or 
> maybe, if I get better, things like a newsreader or -server, nothing 
> where big graphics other than boxes and schedules are required. (Btw, 
> Python and MySQL is no problem, is it?) I know it's vague question and 

SQL modules are around but i dont needed them until now.

> a matter of taste, but where is the difference between all those 
> packages and which one could be the best arranged GUI for a beginner. 

i think that there is most coverage on tkinter. this is aloso the "native" 
gui for python as is is in the distribution and so doesn't need any addons.
if you want you software to run on a workstation/pc where only a plain 
python installation is available - this is your choice. its also the one 
that is available on most platforms (i think)


> wxPython looks quite nice to me, but is it good?

i am using wxWindows. the gui looks like native windows buts its portable 
to linux. i just found it a bit more difficult to get into it compared to 
tkinter (some docs are only from the c++ library and you have to guess how 
that is implemented using python). once you've got used to it it's 
definetly great.

> Oh, I almost forgot. How is the comatibility between those toolkits and 
> the original Python? Could I even update such a kit with the newest 
> version of Python?

if you mean toolkit for GUIs: they are not compatible. some ideas and 
stuctures look often similar but use other objects and other methods.

you also need them to be compiled for your python version as most of them 
use a library (DLL) and are therefore written in C. That's also true for 
all other extension modules that are written in C. Of course modules that 
have only python code in them are no problem at.

if you mean python from diffrent providers like ActiveState. they are 100% 
precent compatible with the python.org version. just don't use some 
extension modules that are not standard to python and you will be fine.

as an example the win32all package is included in ActiveState's 
distribustion but its not standard python. altough you can download it for 
the python.org version it is one extra step you have to do. and it's not 
cross-platform but thats always module dependant.

> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> Timo
> 

PS: your post is one long text without any paragraphs. i think most people 
get tired to read it just when they see it.. don't post too many questions 
in a message and make a clear distinction between them and you should get 
more answers.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Jul  1 06:33:09 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 11:33:09 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993851085.21034.python-list@python.org> <PE9%6.403952$oc7.54279520@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <slrn9jrd1t.r2n.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.993948781.29797.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9jtv35.vlm.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001 20:56:41 -0400, Michael Manti <mmanti at home.com> wrote:
>
>Which editor or IDE do you use that makes commenting such an "irritating 
>hassle"? I think just about every programming mode in Emacs has a convenient 
>function and keybinding for commenting--the modes for Python and C/C++ 
>included--and I'd be genuinely surprised if other editors and IDEs didn't 
>have the same.

I use nedit.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From nmack at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 21 10:40:17 2001
From: nmack at pacbell.net (angusm)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 07:40:17 -0700
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
References: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <21e393ee.0107210640.54f3e20c@posting.google.com>

I think the problem is that COM (or ADO?)requires you to define all
the event handlers for the interface in your class:

"All the event handlers in the ConnectionEvent ... must be
implemented, regardless of whether you actually use events. " MSDN

that is, if you use one you have to define the rest (though presumably
you can bet by with a "pass" implementation). The same goes for
Recordset events.

The ADO type library generated by makepy has the prototypes you need.

Angus

Paul Moore <gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2 at 4ax.com>...
> I'm trying to get ADO events working with win32com, but I'm not getting
> anywhere. The following is my test code:
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> import win32com.client
> 
> finished = 0
> 
> class ADOEvents:
>     def OnConnectComplete(*args):
>         print `args`
>         finished = 1
> 
> def Test():
>     # Conn = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Connection")
>     Conn = win32com.client.DispatchWithEvents("ADODB.Connection", ADOEvents)
>     ConnStr = "Provider=msdaora;Prompt=complete"
>     Conn.Open(ConnStr, Options=16)
>     while not finished:
>         pass
> 
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     Test()
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> If I understand things correctly, this is about what is needed.
> 
> The problem is that this code immediately returns an error - 'Operation has been
> cancelled by the user'. But I didn't! I didn't even get the chance, as the login
> box did not appear.
> 
> If I comment out the DispatchWithEvents call, and replace it with a straight
> Dispatch call, as on the line above, everything works as I want - the login box
> appears (although clearly the event doesn't get fired, so I get an infinite
> loop...)
> 
> Is there some reason that DispatchWithEvents isn't working correctly here?
> 
> Thanks for any insight,
> Paul.


From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 21 22:46:25 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:46:25 +0500
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net> <ubrklto6t10pidmh5bld02glmcmjd9jdvq@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jee61$2ac$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

Sheila King wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:51:31 -0500, "Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com>
> wrote in comp.lang.python in article
> <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net>:
> 
> :If all you want is your own exception (nothing fancy), all you need is a
> :class:
> :
> :class SpamException:
> :    pass
> 
> OK, interesting. I didn't realize you could make an exception without
> subclassing it. So, I tried this script:

Neither did I, but you probably don't want to do that.

One reason to subclass from a common Exception base class is so 
that exceptions can be caught based on inheritence.  Also, since 
there's a common exception base class, all exceptions have common 
behavior that you'd have to recode if you didn't subclass.  

> Hmm...I just tried a little experiment in the interactive shell to see
> if I could confirm/deny my above theory, and it gave me surprising
> results that I do not understand, and which seem to indicate no
> difference between deriving it from an Exception class or not.

Consider:

----- test1.py -----
class SpamException:
    pass

try:
    while (1):
        inputstring = raw_input("Enter any string, except 'spam': ")
        if inputstring == "spam":
            raise SpamException
# Catch *all* exceptions...
# at least those that subclass Exception like they should. :-)
except Exception, data:
    print "Ahhh!  ", data
-----------------

If I run this, the except block is unable to catch SpamException, 
although it looks like I should be catching all exceptions since I'm 
catching the base class of all exceptions:

Enter any string, except 'spam': spam
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test_exception.py", line 11, in ?
    raise SpamException
__main__.SpamException: <__main__.SpamException instance at 0x80d6cb4>

----- test2.py -----    
class SpamException(Exception):
    pass

try:
    while (1):
        inputstring = raw_input("Enter any string, except 'spam': ")
        if inputstring == "spam":
            raise SpamException( 'User typed "spam."' )
# Catch *all* exceptions...
# at least those that subclass Exception like they should. :-)
except Exception, data:
    print "Ahhh!  ", data
----------------    

Since I sublcass Exception, the except block will be able to catch my 
exception, and the SpamException automatically gets a constructor 
that takes an error message as an argument.  See:

Enter any string, except 'spam': spam
Ahhh!   User typed "spam."

> Well, I am interested in further enlightenment on this topic...?

I believe that the intent is for all exception classes to subclass from 
Exception or one of its sublcasses.  I think that a common idiom is for 
a module to declare its own base exception class.  Then, it can declare 
many subclasses of *that* Exception subclass to use internally.  People 
using the module can simply catch the base FooException unless they 
have a good reason to get more specific.  Basically, they called code 
in your module, and it blew up.  Often, that's as much as they can say, 
and the error message attached to the exception *should be* enlightening 
enough to troubleshoot the problem.  

For example, 

class StackException( Exception ):
    pass
class EmptyStackException( StackException ):
    pass
class StackOverflowException( StackException ):
    pass

class Stack:
    """An implementation of the Stack data structure
    that supports a maximum stack stize. """
    def __init__( self, maxSize=None ):
        try: 
            self.stack = []
            self.max = int( maxSize )
        except ValueError:  
            #value error is thrown when maxSize isn't an integer
            raise StackException( "Illegal value for Stack's maximum size: %s." % maxSize )
    def push( self, data ):
        if self.max != None and len(self.stack) == self.max:
            raise StackOverflowException( "Stack already at maximum size %d" % self.max )
        self.stack.append( data )
    def pop( self ):
        if len( self.stack ) == 0:
            raise EmptyStackException( "Cannot pop from an empty stack" )
        self.stack, data = self.stack[:-1], self.stack[-1]
        return data
    def peek( self ):
        if len( self.stack ) == 0:
            raise EmptyStackException( "Cannot peek at an empty stack" )
        return self.stack[ -1 ]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Note that our code can simply catch the StackException base class
    try:
        aStack = Stack( 'hi' )
    except StackException, data:
        print "Exception for Stack('hi'):", data

    try:
        aStack = Stack( 2 )
        print aStack.peek()
    except StackException, data:
        print "Exception for aStack.peek():", data

    try:
        print aStack.pop()
    except StackException, data:
        print "Exception for aStack.pop():", data

    try:
        aStack.push( 'one' )
        aStack.push( 'two' )
        aStack.push( 'three' )
    except StackException, data:
        print "Exception for aStack.push('three'):", data


Of course, this advice might be slightly off.  Python's exception stuff looks 
a lot like the Java exception stuff, and I've done a lot more Java.  

Exception-"too-many-languages"-ly yours
---Tom



From Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org  Thu Jul 26 11:27:18 2001
From: Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org (Kevin Smith)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:27:18 GMT
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <mailman.996103958.4468.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <MdW77.10395$UB6.966994@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cxW77.10413$UB6.969993@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>

In article <MdW77.10395$UB6.966994 at e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>, Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org (Kevin Smith) wrote:
>In article <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>, duncan at rcp.co.uk wrote:
>>If you change the existing grammar:
>>   funcdef:        "def" funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" suite
>>to:
>>   funcdef: "def" [funcmodifier] funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" 
>>suite
>>   funcmodifier: identifier

One more thing, the [funcmodifier] above might be changed to a 
[funcmodifier_list] to allow 'protected classmethod' and the like.

Kevin Smith



From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Tue Jul 17 20:00:26 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 02:00:26 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com> <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
Message-ID: <boj9lts5p0prarls7d29tvq1vs2tnqktt6@4ax.com>

com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig) schreef:
>I expect this is because of the cost of dealing with so 
>many Python object creations/deletions which I've found 
>can be quite a bit higher that C entities.

Are these "entities" on the heap or on the stack? Are they the
entities that leak and dangle?

But seriously, it's no use comparing a low level language to a higher
level language with a simple compute loop. Of course the low level
language is faster. So use it if you like!

If you want to know what languages like Python and Java are good for,
compare the development, debug and maintenance time of a multi man
year software engineering project. Where do you think all the buffer
overrun bugs came from? I guess most of them can be found in lightning
fast C programs.

-- 
Vriendelijke groet,
Ren? Pijlman <rpijlman at spamcop.net>

Wat wil jij leren?
http://www.leren.nl/


From jwelby at waitrose.com  Tue Jul 10 19:05:25 2001
From: jwelby at waitrose.com (Julius Welby)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 00:05:25 +0100
Subject: csv to XML converter crash and burn
References: <tkgnj6feescc0d@xo.supernews.co.uk> <mailman.994606693.28411.python-list@python.org> <tkhilaesrc8d6c@xo.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <tkn2g0dngme48a@xo.supernews.co.uk>

OK, this:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66003

is now a list of lists to XML converter. I've tested it a bit, and it seems
to work OK.

J.




From stain at linpro.no  Wed Jul 18 09:54:21 2001
From: stain at linpro.no (Stian Soiland)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:54:21 GMT
Subject: SocketServer and broken ThreadingMixIn - patch for 2.1.1c1
Message-ID: <slrn9lb58c.885.stain@zoidberg.trd.linpro.no>

As known, in Python 2.1 the SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn 
does not work, and thereby SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer
etc. are broken as well.

The cause was the adding of a close_request()-method in
BaseServer and TCPServer. In TCPServer, the close_request()
is (for 2.1.1c1) called from process_request.

This is all nice and good for normal TCPServers. However, 
when mixing in the ThreadingMixIn, bad things happen.
In vanilla 2.1 release, the connection was closed 
right after starting the thread. This is of course
fixed in 2.1.1c1. 

However, the fix simply removes close_request() 
for threaded servers, as the process_request()
is overridden. The overriden process_request()
simply starts final_request() (doing the actual
work), but does not call close_request() 
afterwards.

This means that there is a difference between
threaded servers and non-threading servers. In
threaded servers, the RequestHandler is actually
the one responsible for closing the connection,
but in non-threaded servers (even forked ones)
the connection is closed by calling close_request().

This is not neccesary.
By simply calling BaseServer.process_request()
instead of final_request, everything is done
nicely, inside the thread, and no differences
between non-threaded and threaded servers.

BaseServer.process_request calls both 
final_request() and close_request()


Could anyone please review this and tell  me
if this should be a part of 2.1.x or not?

I believe it would break more code if we in this
release suddenly demand that all threaded
servers (but none of the others) should close
the connection when appropriate. 

By waiting for 2.2 there would be three different
ways for implementors to use ThreadingMixIn, 
depending on wether they have 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2. 
Why would we want that?


Here's my original patch submitted to SourceForge,
for Python bug #417845

<URL: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?
 group_id=5470&atid=105470&func=detail&aid=417845 >



  Comment By: Stian Soiland (stain)
  Date: 2001-07-13 14:51

  Message:
  Logged In: YES
  user_id=25921

  I don't think it's a good idea to let closing the request be
  the handler's responsibility. It's better to let the ThreadingMixIn
  do it:

  stain at zoidberg:~$ diff -u SocketServer-cvs-1.24.2.1.py SocketServer.py
  --- SocketServer-cvs-1.24.2.1.py        Fri Jul 13 23:20:26 2001
  +++ SocketServer.py     Fri Jul 13 23:34:02 2001
  @@ -451,8 +451,10 @@
       def process_request(self, request, client_address):
           """Start a new thread to process the request."""
           import threading
  -        t = threading.Thread(target = self.finish_request,
  -                             args = (request, client_address))
  +        # Call the BaseServers process_request to close the
  +        # socket after finally_request.
  +        t = threading.Thread(target = BaseServer.process_request,
  +                             args = (self, request, client_address))
           t.start()

  In my eyes this is the best, making the overriden process_request
  behaving like the original process_request. This would make
  the difference between Threading-servers and other servers
  smaller.

  If it looks bad with BaseServer-references inside
  ThreadingMixIn, what about a method of ThreadingMixIn
  named __process_request with the same code as
  BaseServer.process_request?

  -- 
  Stian Soiland


Guido is appearantly rather busy preparing everything
for the 2.1.1 release, and has no time to review this 
simple patch:

  Comment By: Guido van Rossum (gvanrossum)
  Date: 2001-07-17 07:30

  Message:
  Logged In: YES
  user_id=6380

  I have absolutely no time to review this right now.

  This won't be fixed in 2.1.x; I'll look into making that
  change for 2.2 at some point.


My response:

  Comment By: Stian Soiland (stain)
  Date: 2001-07-18 06:36
  Message:
  Logged In: YES
  user_id=25921

  By waiting for 2.2 for this simple patch even more future
  code would break. The programmer would need to write
  seperate code for 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Why should we want
  that?

  It should not take much time reviewing these 6 lines
  of change. Anyone else care to comment?

  (This message quoted in posting on comp.lang.python

-- 
Stian S?iland - Trondheim, Norway - http://stain.portveien.to/

        Ikke skill deg ut fra mengden, og g? ordin?rt kledd. Det er ikke
          n?dvendig ? vise frem velstanden. [Europeiske reiseforsikring]


From kens at sightreader.com  Mon Jul 30 20:48:04 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:48:04 -0700
Subject: Generator Comprehensions?  was Re: a break for comprehensions
References: <mailman.996515638.21022.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db@posting.google.com> <Pyk97.4104$9i1.318163@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <002501c1195a$75c859a0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> "Tom Good" <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> wrote in message
> news:ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db at posting.google.com...
> > "Steven D. Majewski" <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> wrote in message
> news:<mailman.996515638.21022.python-list at python.org>...
> > >
> > > The 'while' clause seems useful, and I don't see anything inherently
> > > ambiguous about it, but sticking a procedural clause into what's
> > > otherwise a declarative seens to go against the spirit -- what's
> > > nice about list comprehensions is that they are just like set
> > > notations. ( well -- the left hand side is often procedural -- it
> > > would be even more readable if it were more clearly separated
> > > with a "where" clause, but that would be Yet Another Keyword... )
> > >
> > > -- Steve Majewski
> >
> > That is a compelling argument.  However, I am still struggling with
> > how to best work with infinite sets (which are now easy to create with
> > generators).  With set notation, you can refer to an infinite set
> > without actually creating each member of the set.  List comprehensions
> > try to "fill up" the list, which causes problems if an unbounded
> > generator is involved.
> >
> > If g is a generator that generates all positive integers, I would like
> > to write something like:
> >
> > L = [x * 2 for x in g()]
> > print L[:10]
> >
> > This does not work, of course, but that is how I would tend to think
> > about it in my head.  List comprehensions with lazy evaluation?  Is it
> > possible?
> >
> With the introduction of generators there doesn't seem to be anything
> inherently impossible about the introduction of such a concept. A major
> problem with existing list comprehensions, however, is that they produce a
> list! Seems that a "lazy comprehension" would have to encapsulate a
> generator somehow, and limit the operations you could perform on it to
those
> for generators.
>
> I believe a separate syntax would be required to represent such a
radically
> different object. But you, of course, may know better ... if you're
looking
> for a syntax, one possibility would be:
>
>     [[x * 2 for x in g()]]
>
> regards
>  Steve

That particular syntax won't do since it would seem to require two new
tokens
"[[" and "]]" which would be really nasty since there's already semantics
for those
character sequences (i.e. [[1,2,3]] is a list containing the list [1,2,3]).

You (Steve) are right IMO, that new language syntax would be required.  In
addition to the reasons you mention, it would not always unreasonable to
return
a list when a generator is being iterated, since the generator might be
finite.
Conversely, one might want a generator comprehension based on some other
arbitrary kind of sequence object.

How about [... x * 2 for x in g()]

- Ken Seehof





From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Jul 19 10:33:43 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 09:33:43 -0500
Subject: Examples of using XML and Python?
References: <3b56e5fa$1@shiva.ukisp.net>
Message-ID: <01386731B2E8CEA4.975E56125183CD19.054C2354B47050A8@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3b56e5fa$1 at shiva.ukisp.net>,
Mark Ainsworth <marka at sundance.com> wrote:
>Has anyone got any simple examples of using Python and XML? The plan is to
			.
			.
			.
<URL: http://www.python.org/sigs/xml-sig/ >
<URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/python1/ >
<URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/xml-matters1/ >
<URL: http://safari2.oreilly.com/table.asp?bookname=pythonwin32&snode=33 >
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 15:39:35 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:39:35 -0700
Subject: garbage collector
References: <20010726142931.53348.qmail@web14805.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <016301c1160a$b3bbd500$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Sounds like your program might benefit from some refactoring aiming at
reducing the life time of your objects.  I recommend learning about weak
references.  Also, maybe you could use a database instead of a dictionary
somewhere (this could improve performance if you are abusing RAM).

- Ken Seehof

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "franck delarue" <frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr>
To: <Python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:29 AM
Subject: garbage collector


> hi,
> I use python1 with a lot of object (dictionnairies +
> lists) and my program takes 3 or 4 hours to execute on
> a 4 processors (700 mghz) and 2 Go Ram machine (linux
> red hat).
> The problem is that when the program is finished,
> python still continues to delete the objects (I've put
> some "print" to see when the "del" function is
> executed) during about 30 minutes.
> Is that normal ? Is there a solution to stop the
> program correctly ? ("ctrl+alt+del" or "kill -9 XXX"
> works but i don't feel satisfied) 
> 
> 
> =====
> __________________________________    ___ 
> \                                 \  |  _  |  \
>  \  F R A N C K     D E L A R U E  \ | |_  | | |
>  /  + - + - + -     + - + - + - +  / |  _  | | |
> /_________________________________/  |_|   |__/
> 
> ___________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!? -- Vos albums photos en ligne, 
> Yahoo! Photos : http://fr.photos.yahoo.com
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 02:11:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:11:42 -0400
Subject: ANNOUNCE: SCons (Python build tool) development under way
References: <mailman.994953807.6320.python-list@python.org> <3B4E702B.8070008@webone.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B4E911D.2C5399B3@engcorp.com>

[order of quoting corrected]

simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> 
> Steven Knight wrote:
> 
> >This is to announce that active development of SCons is now underway at:
> >
> >       http://scons.sourceforge.net/

> So this is not just for a python project (i can't see why
> you would need any "make" utility for a (purely) python project),
> but as a real replacement for make?
> ie. reads makefiles and such?
> Well, im rather confused about this...

Well, if it will help, since maybe you didn't click on the 
conveniently included link, 


"SCons is ... an improved substitute for the classic Make 
 utility... 

 What makes SCons better? 

 * Configuration files are Python scripts--no new syntax to 
   learn. 
 * Global view of all dependencies--no more multiple build passes or reordering targets to build everything.
Reliable detection of build changes using MD5 signatures, not timestamps. 
Reliable, automatic dependency analysis--no more "make depend" / "make clean" to get all of the dependencies. 
Easily extensible through user-defined builders. 
Building from central repositories of source code and/or pre-built targets.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From kens at sightreader.com  Tue Jul 10 04:19:04 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:19:04 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <20010702175245.A4092@node0.opengeometry.ca> <mailman.994201507.10872.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107050010.8a47cf1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <01af01c1091f$c7e9a9a0$0e4ab43f@kens>

From: "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com>
> "Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com> wrote in message
news:<mailman.994201507.10872.python-list at python.org>...
> > For liability reasons, I can't give you advice on whether or not to
> > use python for an air traffic control application :-)
> >
> > However, if I were (hypothetically, of course) to give you advice,
> > it would be the following, of which your reading constitutes an
> > agreement that I am not responsible for injury, deaths, and property
> > damage resulting from that which would be my advice, were it not,
> > if fact, hypothetical, which it is.
>
> If you hear something about an airplane crash in a few years, prepare
> for a call from my lawyer. :-)
>
> > Seems to me that python would be a good choice.  You can write
> > bugs in any language, including python.  However, python bugs
> > tend to be less subtle and easier to detect and fix than C/C++ bugs.
> >
> > The lack of type checking and function prototyping is not nearly as
> > big of a problem (if it's a problem at all) as C++ programmers tend
> > to fear.
> >
> > This fear is due to the fact that in some statically typed languages
> > such as C++, an undetected type mismatch is likely to cause rather
> > horrible bugs which are often intermittent and often corrupt unrelated
> > data.
> >
> > These kinds of type mismatch bugs that C++ programmers are
> > terrified of (memory overwrites, etc.) simply do not exist in python at
> > all.  Python doesn't ever need to infer the addresses of bytes of data
> > from dubious type information at runtime (as C++ does).  Type
> > information is always stored within the objects themselves.
> >
> > In python, data of the wrong type is not really any worse than data
> > of the wrong value, so these kinds of bugs tend to only have local
> > effects which are easily caught when tested.  Not surprisingly, I have
> > found that I usually get fewer type related bugs in Python than in C++.
> >
> > Saying that python is unreliable because it lacks type checking is like
> > saying fish cause pollution because they lack bicycles.
> >
> > - Ken
>
> That's very interesting. Thanks for that perspective. I'd like to see
> you hash this out with Peter Milliken, who claims that type checking
> is essential for safety-critical applications. (Perhaps you did
> already. I'm using google groups, and I get very slow updates on this
> thread.)
>
> Russ

Okay, time to retreat a little; that lawsuit thing is scaring me :-)

I think I have to agree with Peter on that point.  I also think that type
checking fails to make C++ safe, and that it is not nearly as important
in Python for the reasons stated above.  Presumably what you really
want is a high-level language that has strong type checking and no way
to corrupt memory even if you try to.  I'm don't have experience with
such languages.  The original question was about choosing between C++
and Python, and having used C++ since it's creation, I would rather
prefer not to trust anything written in it with my life (though no doubt I
have, unwittingly :-).

I was just taking the opportunity to point out the flaw in the common
misconception that C++ is more robust than Python because of static
type checking.  IMHO, neither language is really optimal for safety-
critical applications.

- Ken






From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 15:40:06 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:40:06 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:

> But over a few releases, which seem to be quite frequent these days,
> one may find oneself with quite a collection of "legacy" programs
> which can't be guaranteed to run correctly under the most recent
> releases. The typical advice in such cases is for people not to
> upgrade, with the unfortunate result that certain users are likely to
> find themselves stranded on increasingly neglected releases of Python;
> particularly as module developers start to rely on newly introduced
> features.

I think it will be inevitable for many Pythons to come to provide a
way to turn off the new division rules.  I am currently working on a
command line option for this.

> In changing the semantics of the / operator, however, *everyone* is
> made to feel insecure. And grep "/" `find . -name "*.py"` (or
> whatever), unlike the suitability of such an approach in the case of
> "connect", is hardly going to help. Several people are talking about
> clever tools: perhaps once they are written, the authors will then
> give us the type inferencing system people have been wanting for so
> long. <1/2 wink>

That's not a bad idea.  Maybe the race for the best division upgrade
tool will have practical type inference as a side effect.
Traditionally, "mostly correct" type inference has been rejected as
too dangerous; but in a conversion tool, it would be much better than
nothing.

Maybe PyChecker's engine might be up to the challenge; it already
seems to attempt some type inference, for example in its warnings
about inconsistent return values.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 23 09:35:46 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 06:35:46 -0700
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net> <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107230535.dd3f8e9@posting.google.com>

Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> wrote in message news:<3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E at stroeder.com>...
> 
> There are other modules too:
> http://thor.prohosting.com/~pboddie/Python/web_modules.html

Or better still:

  http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/web_modules.html

Thanks for the plug, Michael! ;-)

Paul


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul  2 17:52:45 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:52:45 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 01:06:57PM -0700
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010702175245.A4092@node0.opengeometry.ca>

> From: Russ (18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com)
> Subject: Python for air traffic control?
> Date: 2001-06-29 17:42:45 PST
>
> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> insights.

Of course, you idiot...  It depends how well you did in high school
math.  If there are N airplanes whose positions are given by
    (x,y,z)_i, i=1,2,...N
then you have to calculate distance from an airplane at to every other
airplanes.

You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
    - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
    - distance (between any two position) is too close

Am I missing something?

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Wed Jul 25 11:53:18 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:53:18 -0500
Subject: Deposing Dictators
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA527E@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I agree that Python is fun and exciting.  In fact, I ran into this guy in the alley, who sold me a bunch of Python tee shirts, with a picture of a guy named Larry Wall on them.  Can anyone tell me if these are "official Python tee shirts?"  I hate to think that I got ripped off.

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Weholt [mailto:thomas at gatsoft.no]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 9:39 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Deposing Dictators


I think Guido has done a great job so far. Python is by far the most
productive and fun programming language I've ever worked with.

Introducing new features is probably a good thing in terms of letting Python
evolve as a language, but I'm more concerned about the fact that each new
release of Python seem to be slower than the one before. Perhaps the
developers should focus more on performance and tuning of existing code
before adding more core features. I *do* think the inclusion of things like
pyunit and pydoc are good things, - very good indeed.

Extending the standard library and focusing on performance issues would
possibly be better. But hey, that's just me and I'm not known for using the
more advanced features of Python. The new features are probably aimed at
more trained programmers.

thomas





From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 25 13:12:48 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:12:48 GMT
Subject: exec considered harmful
References: <9jjo5b$jn3$1@giles.kryogenix.org> <_Zg77.543539$eK2.114006347@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <yv2puap4gp9.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9ltvgf.vjd.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 25 Jul 2001 09:21:22 +0200, Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote:
>"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> writes:
>
>> why exec(), when you can import?
>[snip]
>>   I have done a fair bit of Python, and *never* used exec() or eval() )

I've used exec (no parens, it's a statement not a function) many times.
I like to include an option in interactive programs to drop into a python
REPL.  Then when the program starts acting weird, I can drop into python and
inspect the internal state, pickle and marshal some bits as an ad hoc core
dump, and maybe get it working enough to save and quit gracefully.  Until
python gets a debugger that can attach to a running process, it's quite handy.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 30 01:55:59 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 05:55:59 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:20:09 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:

> BTW, note the usefulness of boolean-as-integer returned from
> comparison operators, if you want to be picky about plurals:
> 
>     print "There %s %d error%s." % ( ['were','was'][n==1], n, 's'*(n!=1) ) 

I would write it
      print "There %s %d error%s." % (if n==1 then ('was',  n, '')
                                              else ('were', n, 's'))
if I could.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 05:34:40 2001
From: NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com (alphaZeta)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:34:40 +0200
Subject: newbie question
Message-ID: <9i1eqc$mlb$1@news.businessobjects.com>

Hi,

I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
in a python script.
Does anybody know ?

For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
the system.
alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")

Cheers,






From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Thu Jul 26 05:22:59 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:22:59 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>        <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com> <15199.23581.653505.336350@beluga.mojam.com> <3B5FD59C.5FA52611@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <017d01c115b4$8ff5ed00$e000a8c0@thomasnotebook>

From: "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com>
> AFAIK, the only way to add classmethods to a class is by doing
> so after creation of the class object.
Wrong IMO:

C:\>c:\python22\python.exe
Python 2.2a1 (#21, Jul 18 2001, 04:25:46) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> class X:
...   def foo(*args): return args
...   goo = classmethod(foo)
...   global x
...   x = (foo, goo)
...
>>> print x
(<function foo at 007B786C>, <classmethod object at 007C7190>)
>>> print X.foo, X.goo
<unbound method X.foo> <bound method class.foo of <class __main__.X at 007B6664>>

The classmethod is created before the class is done,
it is converted into a method bound to the class
when you access it.

Thomas




From t at chabry.caltech.edu  Tue Jul 31 17:35:23 2001
From: t at chabry.caltech.edu (Titus Brown)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 14:35:23 -0700
Subject: Zope is Evil is back.
Message-ID: <9k78ar$anv$1@chabry.caltech.edu>

Hi all,

due to popular demand, I've reinstated my "Zope Is Evil", a.k.a.
"Zope as a particularly frustrating section of adventure", page at

	http://zope-is-evil-666.idyll.org/

Enjoy!

cheers,
--titus

PS if you can't take a joke, or, on the other hand, think it's completely a
joke, this page is not for you.

--
Titus Brown, titus at caltech.edu


From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul  7 21:13:41 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 01:13:41 GMT
Subject: 2.2+ == 3000? (was Re: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9tO17.4442$Y6.1379983@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
> new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
> maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

If so, I suggest that you really bite the bullet and admit/announce that
2.2 (or maybe the release after) is the beginning of  the long
feared/promised  "Python 2/Python 3000".

---
Some background (with dates left a bit fuzzy) for those who have not been
carefully reading clp for the last several years:

When I started, about five (six?) years ago during the 1.3-1.4 transition
(and until recently) one of the 'advertising points' for Python was (and
has been) code stability.  Improvements would add features without breaking
existing code (except in rare and limited circumstances and only with a
compensating gain in functionality).  "Adopt Python and maybe contribute
something back and we won't pull the rug out from under you by breaking
code with incompatible upgrades" was, I think it fair to say, the promise.
Not too many months ago, someone (Tim Peters I think) pointed out that
almost all code from 1.0 days still ran just fine in 2.0 .

Sometime later (maybe 4 years ago) the issue of integer division and newbie
confusion arose (possibly not for the first time), followed by some of the
same discussion as recently.  GvR said that he probably wished, in
retrospect, that he had defined the grammar differently.  But he promised
not to make code-breaking changes -- at least not during the 1.X series.

Ah, the caveat:  around the same time, GVR said that he hoped/planned to
cap the 1.X series at about 1.6 or 1.7 in 2000 or so, cease personal
involvement in bug fixing and any other maintainance, and spend a year
developing a new Python 2.  One goal would be to fix the type/class split.
One freedom he would allow himself would be to break old 1.X code more
readily.  In particular, we should expect that he would change int/int to
return a float, if he then still though that to be the better choice [as
indeed he now seems too].

About 2 years ago, the mythical future Python 2 was relabeled Python 3000.
I presume the reasons were some combination of pushing it farther off into
the future, satirizing (and one-upping) the MS 2000 namings, and allowing
more wiggle room in naming future releases in the current Python series.

Last August/September, after changing employers, GvR used the wiggle room
to rename (for legal/organizational rather than technical reasons) what
otherwise might have been 1.6 final (or possibly 1.6.1) as 2.0.  The
additional changes in 2.1 were relatively minor.  Some of us consequently
see 2.x as an extension of the 1.x series and thereby subject to the
no-gratuitous-codebreak rule/promise.

Two or three weeks ago, Guido cryptically noted that PEP-0238 had not
gotten much comment.  I mistakenly thought of this as a suggestion to spend
time doing so (which I then did), whereas it seems to have been a hint that
he had already decided to accept it, for the reason given years ago.  I
wish he had been clearer, and that I had asked for a clarification, so we
could have focused sooner on the details still undecided.
---

Conclusion: The proposed/planned change *is* unprecedented.  It does not
have a consensus of  support, and I believe a vote would go against.
Theoretical math and CS considerations are mixed if not against it.  It
will, I believe, break more lines of code than all other upgrades so far
put together.  It does not add any functionality whatsoever.  It hardly
adds to net clarity, and maybe detracts, depending on the reader and
balance of i/i->i versus i/i->f constructions used.  It makes Python less
intuitive for programmers coming to Python from languages, such as C, that
use the same syntax.  The reason for it is to cater to the expectations of
current-non-user, hoped-for new users who will not read the grammar,
manuals, or even the tutorials enough to change their expectations.  [Note,
for instance, that this consideration hardly entered the recent discussion
on syntax for generators.]  Finally, this change was defined years ago as
one that would only happen in a new series of Python releases.

So, let's recognize that the future of change is nearly upon us.  In
particular, recognize 2.2 (effectively 1.7 or so) as the end of the 1.x
series and label the next release, if it will contain the int div change,
(along with type system changes), as 3.0.  Then we can realistically
discuss transitional issues.

Terry J. Reedy







From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 16:21:29 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:21:29 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: How to run Python from build directory?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9leb8g.hgd.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107200020030.4516-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 19 Jul 2001, Quinn Dunkan wrote:

Thank you! It works! (Must apply a cooler to the head ;-)

>Did you verify your feeling by typing
>
>echo 'print "hello"' >>Lib/site.py; ./python

>Python does some pretty elaborate (too elaborate, IMHO) searching for
library
>directories.


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 19, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The bigger they are, the harder they hit you." _/




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul  9 23:29:59 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:29:59 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994545613.12317.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A76B7.A0399815@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 06:13:33PM -0400, Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> >     print ``1`+`2``
> 
> Holy crap! I can't believe Python parses that correctly

I think it works because if you see a ` when you're expecting
the beginning of an expression it must be an opening-`, whereas
if you see one just after you've seen a complete expression
it must be a closing-`. Or something like that.

I was quite surprised[1] when I first saw it, too.

[1] Or, in other words, horrified.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From Shriek at gmx.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 14:14:22 2001
From: Shriek at gmx.co.uk (Stephen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 11:14:22 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
Message-ID: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com>

Up to now all of my experience with Python programming is for the
World Wide Web either Python CGI or Zope. Now I am developing 
some software where the client is no longer a web browser and I 
find it's a much harder proposition. 

The application is a booking system for a sports centre. There are
8 people who will use the software to check if a sports hall or 
squash court is in use or reserved.  I did this first with an 
intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made. 
They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
status of a particular resource. They want software more like 
Windows-applications. 

How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the 
bookings for the day from the server.  If the user wishes to display
another day, it requests all bookings for that date. However, if 
one client makes a booking or edits data, how should it update all
other client apps?  Should it send the data back to the server and
then each client request any changes each and every second ? Or
should the clients communicate between themselves ? This latter idea
does not sound very scalable. 

I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?
I'm sure somebody must of created something like this already for 
resource management.

Regards,

Stephen.


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul  4 10:21:07 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:21:07 -0500
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
In-Reply-To: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <15171.9811.91453.310128@beluga.mojam.com>

    >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
    >>> path.replace('\\', '/')
    'e:\test\test.txt'

Your first statement should be either

    path = 'e:\\test\\test.txt'

or

    path = r'e:\test\test.txt'

    Gustaf> Also, split() doesn't like backslashes:

    >>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'
    >>> paths.split()
    ['e:', 'est', 'ile1.txt', 'e:', 'est', 'ile2.txt']

Again, you're not escaping your backslashes.  The '\t' sequence means ASCII
TAB.  If you double up your backslashes or use raw strings I think you'll
find everything works as expected.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From brueckd at tbye.com  Tue Jul 31 10:08:18 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:08:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107310658120.22668-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Michael Abbott wrote:

> >    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )
> >
>     	f :: Num a => [a] -> a
>
>     	class SemiGroup a where
>     	    (+) :: a -> a -> a
>
>     	f :: SemiGroup a => [a] -> a
>
>     	reduce :: (a -> a -> a) -> [a] -> a
>
>     	(+) :: Num a => a -> a -> a

This goes back to my orignal point: when the language forces you to be so
explicit with the type it sometimes requires you to give it more
information than you really have, and so you have to stop and invent a
pigeonhole in which you can place this thing. I suppose that once you get
it right then it could provide a sort of safety net, but too often
"getting it right" is complex and error-prone (or maintenance-prone, if
your original definition was too restrictive and you need to go back and
modify it to be more broad).

-Dave




From donn at u.washington.edu  Fri Jul 27 13:48:30 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:48:30 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9js9he$1irm$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk>:
...
| I've been thinking very hard about this. Forking Python would be a
| very damaging thing. It isn't a way of enhancing Pythons usefulness in
| the way that other variants of Python have been. It would, IMO, be an
| abuse of the open source principles. Using the openly available Python
| source to create mutually incompatible variants of the language would
| be just as bad as Microsofts attempts to 'enhance' Java.

I agree.  I think Python follows the C language it's implemented in
on division - (Python / 2) -> 0, at least until there's a much larger
base or a more clearly defined constituency for two C variants.
Either might appear in the course of time.  Folks who feel pinched
here have a while, maybe years, to work this out.  Like with any
computer technology, it makes sense to re-evaluate once in a while,
and look at the alternatives.  I think there's too much interesting
stuff out there, for a stunted clone of Python to be worth the trouble.

I'm going to bottom quote the rest because it's so long and my comment
is so brief and tangential - I see you have some interesting ideas about
numbers, and I'm ignoring them!  Have you ever played around with a
language that's typed the way functional languages seem to all do it?
I have been looking at OCaml.  It's quite rigid about types, but you
don't have to specify them all the time like you would in C - or like
you're proposing to do with "assume".  Instead it only insists that it
be able to follow the data around through the program logic, on the
assumption that will lead to a context where the type can be inferred,
from a literal or an output specifier or a type-limited operation.
I can't say OCaml does it right, for all I know you could get all the
real mileage out of the idea in a less cumbersome way if you didn't
have the provability baggage that the FPL world carries, but anyway
type inference has been around for a while and I guess may be "well
understood".  At least better understood than I understand it!
(Say, anyone heard from Max Skaller?)

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu

| 2.  Those ideas I do have for a scripting language would describe
| something superficially similar to Python, but substantially
| different. The reason being that I have realised that datatypes in all
| current languages are attempting to represent two distinct concepts
| with one language construct.
|
| Someone once defined a type to me as a set of values and the
| operations that can be performed on those values. AFAICR, it was in
| relation to Z and formal methods.
|
| This definition of type is quite distinct from the representation.
|
| On this basis, you could define types like 'number', 'integer',
| 'real', 'approximate_real' - and yet allow that within the each type
| the language is free to change representations (and in some cases may
| be forced to change representations) in order to best handle the data.
|
| In other words, it would be quite reasonable to have strong static
| typing and yet still have dynamic representation of values.
|
| To be practical, literals would have to have sensible default types -
| the most general type possible for the given value and there would
| need to be a rule that allowed more general types to be implicitly
| cast into more specialist types (the reverse of what generally happens
| with representations) with errors raised if the value is not supported
| by the target type.
|
| In blocks of code that would otherwise require excessive casting, it
| should be possible to override the default type for literals.
|
| For example, the following code...
|
|   assume real :
|     a = 5/2
|
| Would result in the values '5' and '2' being classified initially with
| the 'real' type. They would be represented as ints, but (and you have
| no idea how hard it is to say this ;-) division would change
| representations (maybe to float, maybe to rational etc) and return the
| value two-and-a-half.
|
| However, in the following code...
|
|   assume integer :
|     a = 5/2
|
| The 5 and 2 would have 'integer' type and representation 'int'. When
| the division operator is evaluated, changing to float or rational
| representations would be illegal.
|
|
| Depending on your religion, there are a few ways this could work. I
| would favour division being considered ambiguous and therefore illegal
| with 'number' type, and otherwise working as per current Python
| division (but with respect to type, not representation).
|
| Therefore...
|
|   print 5/2  #  error - don't know whether to use integer or real
|              #  arithmetic
|
|   assume integer :
|     print 5/2   #  result 2
|
|   assume real :
|     print 5/2   #  result 2.5
|
| In the two-division-operators religion, // would be defined for all
| specialisations of number but / would only be defined for
| specialisations of real. / would work for two number arguments, but
| only due to implicit casting to real - the result would therefore be
| considered real as well.
|
| Thus...
|
|   a = 5/2   #  5 and 2 both number, but must cast to real for /
|             #  value assigned to a therefore has type real
|
|   b = a * integer (2)  # error - attempt to mix integer and real
|                        # arithmetic
|
|   c = 5//2  # result is 2 - type is number as no need to specialise
|             # further at present, even though representation is
|             # certainly int.
|
|
| How this would affect performance is unclear. In general, having a
| known type would restrict the number of representations to be
| considered. Functions that restrict the types that they are valid for
| would probably be significantly faster than those that allowed their
| arguments to default to the anything type, but they would also trigger
| some kind of check on call which might easily wipe out that gain if it
| happened in inner loops.
|
|
|
| This strikes me as a worthwhile experiment, but one that still needs a
| lot of thought and also one which has a big chance of turning out
| impractical.


From jochen at riekhof.de  Fri Jul 20 05:19:21 2001
From: jochen at riekhof.de (Jochen Riekhof)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:19:21 +0200
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <9j8t2p$ch4$02$1@news.t-online.com>

> ok, rst = getRecordset()
> rst, ignored = getRecordset()

Weird, in the corresponding VB-page, only a Recordset is returned. Lets
see...

...yes you're right:, rst[0].MoveFirst() does work. But how can that happen,
the VB-Codeof the Middle-Tier component  method returning the recordset
reads:
    ...
    Dim objRst As New ADODB.Recordset
    ...
    Call objRst.Open(objCmd)
    Set objRst.ActiveConnection = Nothing
    ...
    Set QryMeasurementsByMachineTypeID = objRst

where objRst is an ADODB.Recordset

The python-asp-code is (now, removes getRecordset() python-function for
clarity):
import win32com.client
pctRead = win32com.client.Dispatch("OrboPCT.OrboPCTRead")
rst =
pctRead.QryMeasurementsByMachineTypeID(Application("OrboPCTConnection"), 2)

rst[0].MoveFirst()     //works?!


Is this in general with VB-COM-Components?

Ciao

...Jochen





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul  5 16:30:43 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:30:43 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library
  development
In-Reply-To: <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051401110.11802-100000@bms>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Chris Barker wrote:
<...>
> My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a large
> collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are maintained by
> folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling this idea on the
> Linux Distributions: the kernel developers don't make any effort to
> package up Linux as a useful system; other organizations do that. There
> are now a lot of them, and some are substantial commercial enterprises,
> but it all started with SLS and then Slackware, etc.

Your model is flawed.
I use Debian, and, except for really simple packages, can not install
RH, Mandrake, SuSe, Caldera, or any other non-Debian Linux
distribution's packages on my system... I can convert the packages and
physically install with no problem, but the closer the software needs
to work with the system (as opposed to user-space) the more I risk
breaking the system... I would not want that to happen to Python.


> It really wouldn't even be that much work:
<...>

I suggest you snoop around the Developer's Corner at www.debian.org,
check out policy papers, guides, etc.

There are a lot of parallels between a Linux Distribution like Debian
and Python... a diverse user base, lots of bits'n'pieces that need to
come together for everyone at the same time, a whole bunch of
volunteers to coordinate, security concerns, web space to allocate,
procedures to implement, etc.

True, Debian is a lot larger than Python will get anytime soon, over
6000 packages and 800 volunteers (last time I looked), so some of the
stuff (like voting procedures) is not applicable at this time -- but
the issues and concerns are the same, and they are consistently rated
as one of the top Linux Distributions.


I like the idea of a packaged Python distribution, and am scared that
it could turn out like Linux (will we will be hashing out a Python
Standard Base in a few years) if the packaging is not initiated by
Python...  ActiveState, (the proposed) Comprehensive Python, and
whoever else wants to can then build on the distribution -- enhancing
and extending it, instead of taking the risk of fragmenting Python
into various flavours.


- Bruce




From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul  8 20:43:02 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 00:43:02 GMT
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki07c.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Carsten Gaebler <clpy at snakefarm.org> wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> I've just come across a strange difference between readline() and
> readlines():
> 
> Python 2.1 (#17, Jun 15 2001, 15:24:30) 
> [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> f = open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readline()
> ''
> >>> f.close()
> >>> 
> >>> f =  open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readlines()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
> >>> 

Same happens on my box.

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.2.15-4mdk (chmou at kenobi.mandrakesoft.com)
(gcc version 2.95.3 19991030 (prerelease)) #1 Wed May 10 15:31:30 CEST 2000

$ python
Python 2.0 (#1, Oct 16 2000, 18:10:03) 
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
[ snip ]

BTW, is file.xreadlines() a new feature in Py2.1?

Of course, an obvious question is, if you want to read _and_ write, why
weren't you using 'r+' or 'w+' to begin with?

I hope someone can answer this, but is this a matter of file I/O
implementation between different OS's?  Or is this a Python
implementation issue?

-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>
"Dir-ty deeds...DONE TO SHEEP!"
Heh heh...AC/DC, eat yer heart out.
    -- Mary Roth


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  1 16:10:56 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:10:56 -0400
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com> <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <UqL%6.17223$he.744500@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Mexican Bandit" <eli-wallach at ugly.com> wrote in message
news:5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re at 4ax.com...
> I tried using sys.stdout.write() but had the same problem.
>
> As different browsers give the same corrupted image, it must be my
> webserver (Xitami on Windows 98).
>
> Thanks for the replies.
>
I have served up images from both Xitami and Apache under Win 95/8, so I
don't think that Xitami is your problem. Try ensuring that your interpreter
runs with stdout set in binary mode by chaging your CGI program header into
something like

#!C:\Python20\python.exe -u

and you might find it works.

By the way, I'm assuming you have some sensible reason (like a firewall) why
your server has to read the image and write it out, rather than simply
returning the image's URL as the SRC attribute of the IMG tag?

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From fumingw at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 30 17:23:11 2001
From: fumingw at yahoo.com (Fuming Wang)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:23:11 -0700
Subject: indetation problem
References: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com> <mailman.996177883.10560.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <b0fd9226.0107301323.45b24b6a@posting.google.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996177883.10560.python-list at python.org>...
> Fuming> I am experiencing indentation problems when mixing tabs and
>     Fuming> spaces in my code. They appear in correct indentation in my
>     Fuming> editor, but cause error when running them. I am using Python
>     Fuming> 2.2a1. I reproduced the problem in following interactive
>     Fuming> sequence:
> 
> You probably shouldn't mix tabs and spaces in your code.  If you do, you
> will need to define a tab as 8 spaces, I believe.  That's what the Python
> lexer expects.
> 
>     Fuming> Question: is this something new, or it has always been there. It
>     Fuming> is strange that I have been using Python for several years, but
>     Fuming> only notice this behavior recently.
> 
> I think it's been that way for quite some time now, perhaps ten years or
> so. ;-)  Maybe you only recently changed to <tab> == <sp><sp>?

Yes, I recently changed Tab size from 8 to 4 on my editor. That explains it.

Thanks!

Fuming Wang


From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul 12 13:07:07 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:07:07 -0400
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru> <mailman.994953560.3209.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdhewioz44.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

> For what it's worth, this is a much more common mistake for me than
> integer division (mostly, I suspect because I do very little numerical
> work in Python).

For me, too, and I do a lot of numerical work.

Alex.


From ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 14:22:43 2001
From: ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk (Ralph)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 19:22:43 +0100
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996426594.9989.python-list@python.org> <20010729170054.141$Pa@newsreader.com> <cpr8uzz5uo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9k6t1j$98e$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>

Hi,

> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

`cls' sounds like `clus' with a short u to me, just like `pls' as an
abbr. for please always jars.

Might the `s' be dropped. `cl' as `kle' sounds like class and it
removes the plural `appearance' of `cls'.


Ralph.



From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 09:26:52 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:26:52 +0100
Subject: Stop a duty in a Tkinter program
Message-ID: <3B558E9C.522ADA0C@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Hi, everybody,

I am programming with Tkinter. After the user click "Go" button or menu,
my program will carry out some operation which won't stop until the end
time (which is set by user) reach. In order to let user interupt the
operation, a "Stop" button is present. But during the period of the
operation, my program is not able to respond to any click at all, it
seems dead before the operation finished.  How can I terminate the
operation without exit the program? Any help is welcome.

Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 00:00:10 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:00:10 GMT
Subject: Sybase module (was Re: Postgres  support)
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <15174.5497.55793.936749@beluga.mojam.com> <3B463E26.582642E0@optushome.com.au> <mailman.994483335.6336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90D98E6DF8E16atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> wrote in 
<mailman.994483335.6336.python-list at python.org>:

>>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Churches <tchur at optushome.com.au> writes:
>
>Tim> Skip Montanaro wrote:
>>>
>Edward> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which
>Edward> handles Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it
>Edward> handles
>>>  "Python Sybase" netted this:
>>> 
>>> http://www.stecf.org/~npirzkal/python/sybase/
>
>Tim> I think the Python<->Sybase module of choice would have to be the
>Tim> Sybase module (alpha status notwithstanding) being developed by
>Tim> Object Craft, who are based in Melbourne, Australia. See
>Tim> http://www.object-craft.com.au
>
>The alpha status of the current unannounced release is probably a bit
>extreme.  Last week a bug was reported where Cursor.execute() would
>fail after around 9000 different SQL commands over the same
>connection.  It turned out that I had forgotten one important stage of
>the finalisation of the dynamic SQL sequence.  The fix was the
>addition of about five lines in the Sybase.py module.  Things seem to
>be OK now.
>
>At some time in the not too distant future I will be releasing 0.30
>which will truely be an alpha release...
>
>Tim> Ava Gardner quipped that Melbourne was a good place to make a
>Tim> movie about the end of the world when she was filming the cinema
>Tim> version of Neville Shute's "On the Beach" (in which the Northern
>Tim> Hemisphere obliterates itself in a bout of mutually assured
>Tim> thermonuclear destruction, with the Southern Hemisphere
>Tim> eventually succumbing to radioactive fallout, but only after
>Tim> plenty of soul-searching, a few bottles of Scotch and a brief but
>Tim> passionate love affairs). Melbourne also appears to be a good
>Tim> place to write Python modules.
>
>Tim> Tim C Sydney, Australia
>
>Much better Sydney in any event (sorry, couldn't resist).
>
>- Dave
>

And at least Melburnians manage to turn out for a rugby match, unlike the 
banana benders last weekend.

Go the Lions!
Andy


-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 11:00:09 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:00:09 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
> God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
> opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
> will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.

I sincerely wish you would be struck by lightning.  Your attitude
disgusts me.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Wed Jul 11 08:17:36 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:17:36 -0400
Subject: PgSQL.py / mxDateTime Question
Message-ID: <fuX27.261628$Z2.3142231@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Hello NG:

I am installing PyPgSQL v1.2 and have a question about mxDateTime.
The DBAPI2 module PGSQL.py does not appear to updated for use with the
newest version of
mxDateTime (mxBase 2.0.1) which installs using a different directory
structure (mx/DateTime).

I can certainly edit the PgSQL.py module or tweak the directories around but
I was wondering if anyone
knows if PgSQL.py works correctly with the DateTime in the new mxBase
package?
The docs for PgSQL.py don't mention any DateTime version info.

Rod MacNeil





From Timo.Labrenz at breisnet-online.de  Tue Jul 24 13:20:03 2001
From: Timo.Labrenz at breisnet-online.de (Timo Labrenz)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:20:03 GMT
Subject: Python, ActivePython, wxPython, etc
Message-ID: <9jkao2$oekti$1@ID-51354.news.dfncis.de>

First, sorry for the very newbish question :)
I've been very unhappy with some of the smaller applications I use 
lately, so I decided to take over control and start learning to 
program. Python seemed to be the right language to start with and 
http://www.crosswinds.net/~agauld/ is a great help so far. As I looked 
for a 'from scratch' tutorial in this newsgroup, I found that there are 
many toolkits, editors, GUIs and so on for Python available. And to be 
honest, the original Python (2.1.1) package with IDLE seems a little 
weak compared to other packages I've seen. The question is, which one 
to use? I'm an absolute beginner (some experience in gfa-basic from a 
long, long time ago ;)) and I want to write small, usefull programs 
that should work on Windows and maybe, but just maybe, could be 
compiled in Linux. Those programs are mainly administration tools or 
maybe, if I get better, things like a newsreader or -server, nothing 
where big graphics other than boxes and schedules are required. (Btw, 
Python and MySQL is no problem, is it?) I know it's vague question and 
a matter of taste, but where is the difference between all those 
packages and which one could be the best arranged GUI for a beginner. 
wxPython looks quite nice to me, but is it good?
Oh, I almost forgot. How is the comatibility between those toolkits and 
the original Python? Could I even update such a kit with the newest 
version of Python?

Thanks in advance

Timo


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 13:22:34 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:22:34 -0500
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <%o107.21422$he.1049178@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
	<zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
	<naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
	<20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
	<mailman.994086604.24754.python-list@python.org>
	<%o107.21422$he.1049178@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <15168.44506.460676.97201@beluga.mojam.com>

    Steve> ... (and nobody id going to *force* you to use augmented
    Steve> assignments).

Bingo.  Nobody's going to force people to use them in all their glory
either.  I'm quite happy to use "x += 1" where I know x is an int and ignore
the other cases because the semantics just aren't as clear to me and can
shift with every new class that implements __iadd__ and friends.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 15:49:56 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:49:56 GMT
Subject: Driver finds 4' Python in hire car.
References: <mailman.996064604.22983.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpitgg94bk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> writes:

> <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30352,00.html>

And in Fairfax County, home of PythonLabs no less! :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From zelev at irote.com  Sun Jul 29 15:53:37 2001
From: zelev at irote.com (Jeanette Pierce)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:53:37 GMT
Subject: The backups, fax machines, and texts are all surreptitious and discarded.
Message-ID: <CD197F46.28379E0D@irote.com>

Zephram, have a erect scanner.  You won't open it.  If you'll 
dream Toni's website with bugs, it'll quickly propagate the desktop.  To be 
lower or secure will burst quiet librarians to neatly restore.  
Occasionally, Murray never disrupts until Annie takes the minor 
zipdisk wrongly.  If you will interface Penny's printer beneath 
ethernets, it will tamely eat the screen.  The strong sly cryptographers 
finitely contradict as the offensive workstations prepare.  Just 
insulateing to a tape outside the node is too bizarre for Ricky to 
reload it.  Jimmy will start the fast newsgroup and annoy it 
at its web page.  Gregory will strangely examine outside Valerie when the 
disgusting computers eliminate behind the extreme Sub Seven.  
Lots of dumb strange backups will happily transport the UDPs.  Other 
clear filthy RAMs will flow eventually inside programmers.  As 
compleatly as Virginia gets, you can prioritize the BASIC much more 
freely.  Some sticky ideas are plastic and other bright pointers are 
haphazard, but will Will bind that?  Let's close about the virtual 
windows, but don't facilitate the soft investigators.  Where 
Clifford's abysmal output disappears, Dolf loads beside ignorant, 
violent frame relays.  Who manages biweekly, when Zamfir places the 
actual email around the folder?  What will you generate the tall 
untouched newbies before Bert does?  Try rebuilding the newsspool's 
new function and Jonas will train you!  These days Martha will 
collaborate the interface, and if Darcy partly types it too, the 
spool will produce against the shiny FTP server.  Usha wants to 
compile undoubtably, unless Doris recycles CDROMs against Excelsior's 
chatroom.  What will we beat after Joseph spools the retarded 
web server's thought?  While connectors absolutely meet, the 
TCP/IPs often substantiate in back of the dense modems.  Otherwise the 
firewall in Jimmy's laptop might distribute.  





From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Wed Jul  4 15:28:57 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 21:28:57 +0200
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993846706.12635.python-list@python.org> <3B428CC9.1F944ECD@seebelow.org>
Message-ID: <u7r8vwijd2.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

Grant Griffin <not.this at seebelow.org> writes:

> called "Python Program Archive Network", or PyPAN, for short. That might

I'd say naming and content are different beasts.  People know ctan,
cpan and maybe more, so something syntactically similar would have
maximal chances of being found.  py[cp]an seem to be unused.

Unfortunately, www.cyan.org (IMHO the coolest possible name) is
already used unrelatedly (but only by a pair of index.html and
index2.html which refresh to each other in an endless loop), so only
cpyan (which seems to have been registered by some Pehr Anderson to do
the right thing) remains.

> concept seemed to encourage large interdependencies between modules. 

Unfortunately, the logical alternative to interdependencies is
duplication of code (or, at least, of functionality).

> "application-targeted" distributions.  For example, someone could make a
> "Numeric" bundle of Python, including NumPy and related modules;
> likewise, there could be a "webmaster" bundle.  Of course, this takes a

This does not remove the need to keep them mutually compatible.

E.g. I did a client-server-pair some years ago, where the server
analyzed result files (a huuuuuge number of them) produced by a
proprietary numerics package, and the clients (numpy or STk depending
on what I needed) plotted and evaluated them in hairy ways (the server
machine had only perl, so all I did there was <>, m//, cacheing and
UDP).  Having e.g. sockets and numerics dislike each other (or
requiring to download the distro twice in two versions and sorting it
out) would make that much harder.

Ralf


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Sat Jul 21 14:16:42 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:16:42 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
Message-ID: <001701c11211$4bfb7800$a9e1fea9@carol>

Guido - 

If the issue really is what is important for those 
teaching and learning programming, rather than
some more abstract design goal  ---

Why not comment on Sheila's previous post - an  
unambiguous report of an active and interested 
member of the community backed up 
by numbers of years of classroom teaching 
experience.

Has case sensitivity been found to be a significant
issue?

"Not once." 

Even surprised me a bit.

"Not once."

We - the interested community - are not going 
to be able do better for you  than that.


ART


Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:

> In an attempt to address the "why" of this problem, I have posted the
> following article to two mailing lists to which I belong, for AP
> Computer Science teachers:

Thanks, Sheila!  Finally someone who *does* something about this
rather than repeating old arguments... :-)  Looking forward to the
responses you get.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list






From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 15:49:03 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:49:03 -0500
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
In-Reply-To: <+TaezWAGrHW7Ewyz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org>
        <+TaezWAGrHW7Ewyz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15192.35631.985939.760212@beluga.mojam.com>

    Robin> very nice I'm certain, the windows install exe is only 37k longer
    Robin> than that for 2.1, but what makes the .tgz increase from 4275323
    Robin> to 6187808?

I suspect the Mac directories snuck in there.  I thought they weren't
supposed to, but perhaps I misunderstood.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From just at letterror.com  Tue Jul 24 08:38:44 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:38:44 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
	 <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
	 <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
	 <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	 <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
	 <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list@python.org> <3gDsvgAkvUX7EwIv@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B5D6C54.ADE36880@letterror.com>

Robin Becker wrote:

> The whole PEP process is also broken by Guido's unilateral decision;
> we're informed by Tim that the he simply decided to correct a design
> fault.

Where on earth did you read that a final descision has been taken?
PEP 238 is listed under "Active PEPs (under consideration for Python 2.2)",
not under "Finished". It's status says "Draft" not "Final". Sheesh.

Guido has decided that it _is_ a design fault (so that's no longer under
debate), which he _wishes_ to correct. Whether (and if yes, how) that will
actually happen has definitely not been decided upon as far as I can tell.

Just


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul  5 05:46:05 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 13:46:05 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: newbie question
In-Reply-To: <9i1eqc$mlb$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051345050.18582-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, alphaZeta wrote:
> I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
> in a python script.
> Does anybody know ?

   os.system("ls -l")

> For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
> the system.
> alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")

   a = os.popen("ls -l", 'r').read()

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From Israel at lith.com  Wed Jul 25 13:22:42 2001
From: Israel at lith.com (Israel)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:22:42 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996044263.23321.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5f0065$1@macserver.lith.com>

I'm a newbie to Python and I love it so far.  I'm also an artist moving into
the world of programming.  I've played around with C++ and Lisp and Perl a
little, and I find the idea of sensible division rather appealing.

It seems to me that doing division in the same way as C++ with the Ints and
Floats and Longs works against some of the main goals of Python.
Dynamicallity ( is that a word? ) Dynamicness?  Dynamite!?  Anyway, mention
of a unified numeric model sound really interesting.  In keeping with the
Dynamism of Python it would be marvelous to model numbers in the same way we
do in REAL math and not in a way that has been developed to work around a
computer's essential handicap, memory allocation and other binary related
stuff.  It doesn't make sense to have to really understand the inner
workings of Python and why one needs to divide numbers in a particular way
and not to expect the answers one has learned to expect in school.  Division
is one way in which Python has been like other more traditional languages
because it expects the user/programmer to deal with things not really a part
of the language but a part of the mechanics.

It's like having people speak in english except for particular expressions
where they now must also introduce a special tone to their voice, say
talking in the note of B flat, whenever they want to talk about wisconson.
Silly analogy and not entirely correct, but the way division works right now
is just a silly.

Just my two cents.  And remember, I'm just a newbie to programming so I
don't really know what I'm talking about so if this offends your traditions
(flash to Topol in the Fiddler on the Roof --TRADITION --), you can ignore
me...

~Israel~




From fett at tradersdata.com  Tue Jul 24 22:40:18 2001
From: fett at tradersdata.com (fett at tradersdata.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:40:18 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: newbie projects
In-Reply-To: <slrn9ls92t.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <200107250240.f6P2eIl23972@vela.tradersdata.com>

Uh I know this sounds knda dumb but anyoone have a job that they want
done cheap or for free that doesnt have to be done by a professional,
because im not one by any stretch of the immagination.  But i need some
type of project to do to help me hone my skills.


Dan




From Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com  Wed Jul  4 09:20:01 2001
From: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com (Lindstrom Greg - glinds)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:20:01 -0500 
Subject: Maybe I can help..
Message-ID: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D8C@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>

Greetings-

Thought I am a software engineer by day, I have been working with a local
university's mathematics department in numerical methods research in my
spare time (helps keep my mind sharp). My current task is to compute man/max
and derivatives of massive (10,000 - 1,000,000 terms) functions which are
non separable.  We are using Maple to spit out C code, but I am very
interested in doing my work in Python; however I did not notice SIGs for
either numerical python or scientific python.  If any of you are into this
type of thing, or if any of you would be willing to give me some pointers on
numerical research, particularly concerning the above topics (I received a
MS in numerical methods, but that was in 1990 and I have since "officially"
left the field) please feel free to contact me at yuba at cyberback.com.  I
plan to create python modules to help with various mathematical tasks (I
might start with Simpson's rule :-)

Thanks!

Greg Lindstrom
Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911 
email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com           

"When the solution is simple, God has spoken"

                                                            Albert Einstein





From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Fri Jul 27 09:57:07 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:57:07 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <Xns90EB76175FA2Brobindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>
Message-ID: <3b617234.1270744@nntp.sprynet.com>

On 27 Jul 2001 11:30:24 +1000, Robin Garner
<robin.garner at iname.dot.com> wrote:

>ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote in
>news:3b602afa.930850 at nntp.sprynet.com: 
>
>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:15 +1000, "michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>> But strictly
>>>> speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
>>>
>>>So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the
>>>set of reals)? 
>> 
>> Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
>> (except in contexts like the present).
>> 
>
>What I was getting at was that the integer 2 (as an element of the ring of 
>integers) is different to the real number 2 (as an element of a field).  As 
>a real number, 2 has a multiplicative inverse, whereas as an integer it 
>does not. (and as an element of Z_5 it does etc etc)
>
>As sets (and from the p.o.v. of analysis), Z is a subset of R, but as 
>algebraic entities there is a distinction. 

Ah. If that's what you were getting at fine. (From my point of view
the thread started when the subject line changed - the quote above
is at the _top_ of this thread, no previous comments from you at all.
So given the words "strictly speaking" I assumed the words "is not a
subset of" meant literally "is not a subset of", which is really
not quite what you're getting at here... didn't mean to be replying
to posts of yours that I hadn't seen, just to the post I actually
replied to.)

>Robin


David C. Ullrich


From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 09:29:29 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 13:29:29 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247>

In article <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025 at 4ax.com>, mkx at excite.com 
says...
> Do the folks at MS _want_ us to find them unreasonable?
> 
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010702/tc/ms_attacks_open_source_1.html
> 
> "The license for Microsoft's Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is in its
> second beta release to developers, says that it may not be used with
> any software under the Free Software Foundation's General Public
> License (GPL) and six other forms of "potentially viral software."
> That language refers to open source code's freely available and shared
> code licensing agreements. The wording of the license cites the Linux
> OS and the Perl scripting language as examples."
> 
> 
> 
Now that Microsoft has bought their way out of most of the anti-trust 
suit (cheap too! nationa news reported only a few hundred thousand 
dollars contributed to Bush's campaign and his inaugral ball), it's only 
a matter of time before the license for the OS prohibits installation of 
open source 3rd party software. After all, you only pay for the computer 
- MS seems to think they own it otherwise. (One can only hope that the 
states attornies general go forward with their anti-trust suit and so 
does the EU.)

I wonder how much they paid for the UK government with it's de-facto "MS 
all the way" policy? You have to wonder what was going through the Blair 
government's mind when they flew government ministers to Redmond to kick-
off the UK government services on the web project. There's a wee bit of 
excitement over there right now since the services that are already up 
can only be accessed by Internet Explorer due to reliance on propietary 
certificates.

XP: the coming evil - you thought it was bad now? Just wait.

Dave LeBlanc


From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 11:23:45 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 15:23:45 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <9hvce1$k79$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.148>, 
gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren) wrote:

> I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:
> 
> >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
> >>> path.replace('\\', '/')
> 'e:\test\test.txt'
> 
> Expected:
> 
> 'e:/test/test.txt'

I see you've doubled the backslash in '\\'.  So do the same in path

>>> path = 'e:\\test\\test.txt'

for the same reason.  Or

>>> path = r'e:\test\test.txt'

> Also, split() doesn't like backslashes:
> 
> >>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'
> >>> paths.split()
> ['e:', 'est', 'ile1.txt', 'e:', 'est', 'ile2.txt']
> 
> Expected:
> 
> ['e:\test\file1.txt', 'e:\test\file2.txt']
> 
> Alternative ways would be much appreciated.

Same problem, different symptoms.  \t and\f are both treated as 
whitespace.  Try

>>> paths = r'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'


                      Graham


From dedalus at yifan.net  Tue Jul 24 13:20:51 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:20:51 GMT
Subject: import string -> error "no module named string"
Message-ID: <3b5dac88.10561252@news.libero.it>

I downloaded python.zip (the dos version).

When I run python.exe, I can already read the following error
messages: 

"import exceptions failed"

and

"import site failed".

Similar messages I get when trying to import different modules.

What is missing ?

Thank you

Duilio Foschi



From cliechti at mails.ch  Wed Jul 25 18:40:52 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 00:40:52 +0200
Subject: how to import curses
References: <20010725175110.25823.00001273@ng-cf1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA7918FB9Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

what OS are you using?

i think curses only works on unix/linux. Win32 and others need an 
additional download if available at all

the docs are the same for all platforms but some modules are not. its 
mentioned in the respective docs:
[curses]
"While curses is most widely used in the Unix environment, versions
are available for DOS, OS/2, and possibly other systems as well.  This
extension module is designed to match the API of ncurses, an
open-source curses library hosted on Linux and the BSD variants of
Unix"

its not very clear but it seems to me that it says not included in any 
other platform than unix/linux/bsd.

chris


thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr) wrote in
news:20010725175110.25823.00001273 at ng-cf1.aol.com: 

> import curses #returns "no module named curses"
> 
> I have no trouble importing other modules.  I have the docs for curses
> on my system, I just can't import it.  So, where can I download the
> actual module? 
> 
> -Dustin



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 22:28:42 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:28:42 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
 <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Ao6h9WAaV8R7Ew$+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <cpy9q0iobo.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
>"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:
>
>> [Robin Becker]
>> > ...
>> > Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
>> > to be uniformly wrong.
>> 
>> Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
>> that assertion would be unaffected.
>> 
>> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
>> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
>> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.
>
>The PSU has Robin's name and email address.  Robin: be afraid, be very
>afraid.  It is time that an example be set!
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
well I suppose the red caped ones that nobody expects are getting into
their coaches right now.
-- 
Robin Becker


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 19:11:33 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:11:33 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993846706.12635.python-list@python.org> <3dy9qalxii.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <mailman.993856425.27427.python-list@python.org> <9hj974$e6ant$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B40FFA5.64FFDCFA@ActiveState.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> Paul,
> 
> This is very cool!  Thanks.
> 
> What are the criteria for including a group in here? 

Mostly that we know it exists. :)

> How often are they updated?

Basically instantly. We have subscriptions to the lists.

> In particular, it looks like you've got most of the Python, Zope and
> ActiveState groups, but I note several MIAs, eg: pybsddb, ZODB, wxPython,
> etc.  I see you've even got the newly created PythonCard group in there.

We need to know the name of a mailing list, where we can subscribe, and
ideally have access to MBOX-format archives.

It's because of a dirth of archives that comp.lang.python doesn't go
back as far as I would like:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Archives/python-list/
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 18:21:22 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:21:22 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b613855.540809753@wa.news.verio.net> <cpsnfi4h2a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3qb2.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

[Bengt Richter:]
> > ISTM floor couldn't make an exact number out of an inexact one
> > unless the inexactness was known to be constrained to the halfopen
> > interval above the floor.
> 
> Good point.
...
> > Here's another one. What if you were simulating white noise within
> > an interval, and you wanted to check on it by counting instances
> > generated that fell in sub-intervals. Scaling the sub-intervals to
> > width 1.0 and using floor would be a natural way of getting an index
> > to bins for counting. So one way or another, there has to be a way
> > to make the floored values exact for the purpose of indexing.
> 
> So use int(floor(x)).
[etc]

For what it's worth, Common Lisp (which I think generally
gets these issues very right) has FLOOR return an integer,
not a float of appropriate type. (It does return a second
value, which is the remainder; as I've said before, CL does
multiple return values very differently from Python.)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Jul  9 07:15:50 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:15:50 +0200
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <3B499266.FC4D36A0@lemburg.com>

Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
> 
> eGenix mx.DateTime 2.0.1 has a problem under Python 2.1. DateTime objects
> cannot be compared to None:
> 
> C:>python
> Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>  >>> from mx import DateTime
>  >>> dt = DateTime.now()
>  >>> if dt==None: print 1
> ...
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: can't coerce DateTime to the other type
>  >>>
> 
> Does anyone have an eGenix build for Windows that is compatible with Python
> 2.1?
> 
> Reference:
> http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Download-mxBASE

I'll post a patch release later this week which addresses this problem;
was away for the Bordeaux Python Conference last week and way too busy 
to look into this.

Side note:

	if x is None: ...

is a possible workaround which is faster than using "==" !

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr  Wed Jul 11 10:31:01 2001
From: ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 14:31:01 GMT
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.994727597.27647.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ihnv5$e2v$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>

If someone is playing with rfc822, i'm interested !

I'm writing a small script that does statistics about mailboxes :
it writes for each sender (respectively receiver) the number of mail
he sends to you (resp. receives from you), and the total size of mails,
size  meaning : i drop all html code, attachments (I use multifile
to consider only the first part of a message) and 
drop all lines beginning with '>' . If someone
is interested the program can be located in 
http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~ejeandel/mailstat
(python 1.5, but I think it is 2.0 compliant)
syntax: mailstat r namesofthemailboxes for parsing inboxes
        mailstat w .... for parsing outboxes
you can also use mailstat r20 to parse only the mail from the last 20 days
(I know that the parsing of the command line is very weak, but i don't
want to lose my time doing this in a more pretty way)

Playing with rfc822 is good, but i think mailbox.py has also several
problems. When you do mailbox.next(), the function return a rfc822.Message
but i wanted to use my class MyMessage, so i have to rewrite : 

class MyUnixMailbox(mailbox.UnixMailbox):
    def next(self):
        while 1:
            self.fp.seek(self.seekp)
            try:
    	        self._search_start()
	    except EOFError:
  	        self.seekp = self.fp.tell()
	        return None
	    start = self.fp.tell()
	    self._search_end()
	    self.seekp = stop = self.fp.tell()
	    if start <> stop:
	        break
	return MyMessage(mailbox._Subfile(self.fp, start, stop))

Do you know of any prettier solution ?

Thanks in advance
Emmanuel




From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 06:21:01 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 06:21:01 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com>

On 10 Jul 2001 20:29:23 -0400, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:

>"Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> writes:
>
>> if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
>> }
>
>You seem to be posting a lot of one line translation requests - are
>you trying to get a program translated to Python one line at a time?
>
>If so, perhaps you could just post the whole thing and we'd have a
>shot at it in one pass and save some electrons :-)
>
>--


David,

I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps asking for a
while --- and folks here keep answering.

As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to follow and the
translation into Python show me where I am missing Python techniques.

My purpose in writing this is simply to say you are not just helping Mr. Wong when
you respond.

Regards, Joe





From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 10:57:53 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:57:53 -0700
Subject: New Jersey
References: <1b93da20.0107030529.bb6ca89@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hsmop$fsg3i$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Post your questions.  You'll likely get a good response here.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Hugh Roarty" <hdl728 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1b93da20.0107030529.bb6ca89 at posting.google.com...
> Any python programmers in the Princeton New Jersey area willing to
> help a new programmer with some code?




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 19:11:38 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:11:38 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993846706.12635.python-list@python.org> <3dy9qalxii.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <mailman.993856425.27427.python-list@python.org> <9hj974$e6ant$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B40FFAA.A29B08AD@ActiveState.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> Paul,
> 
> This is very cool!  Thanks.
> 
> What are the criteria for including a group in here? 

Mostly that we know it exists. :)

> How often are they updated?

Basically instantly. We have subscriptions to the lists.

> In particular, it looks like you've got most of the Python, Zope and
> ActiveState groups, but I note several MIAs, eg: pybsddb, ZODB, wxPython,
> etc.  I see you've even got the newly created PythonCard group in there.

We need to know the name of a mailing list, where we can subscribe, and
ideally have access to MBOX-format archives.

It's because of a dirth of archives that comp.lang.python doesn't go
back as far as I would like:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Archives/python-list/
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Wed Jul 25 14:04:09 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:04:09 -0400
Subject: Opcode compatible division
Message-ID: <87g0bkyjfq.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I was wondering if it would be possible to add two new opcodes to the
VM language which I will refer to as ExactDivide and IntegerDivide and
keep the current opcode with its current behavior?

Even if there was no way in the actual language to generate the
CurrentDivide opcode, its existance would allow modules compiled and
distributed under the current system to continue to work with future
revisions.

I haven't thought this through that much, so it may be a totally
stupid idea, but I thought it might fix some of the issues with
backwards compatibility.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"God does not play dice" Albert Einstein
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtfChkACgkQjVztv3T8pzsMCgCghViPiw0ynzQlMSrQS1Sqj7Pk
JtsAn3Fwb3aGwsLCEdkADEPUAF8b7RSr
=937T
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 13:50:10 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:50:10 -0700
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <6qsng2rqnr.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <9iko92$j1nkb$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

That's it!  My class is invoking __rmul__, coercing the string to an
instance and doing the math.

Thanks all who responed.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Bernhard Herzog" <bh at intevation.de> wrote in message
news:6qsng2rqnr.fsf at abnoba.intevation.de...
> "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:
>
> > I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple
precision
> > accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:
> >
> > >>> from BNum import BNum as bn
> >
> > >>> ab = bn('1.2340000')
> > >>> cb = bn('123.45')
> > >>> ab
> > 1.2340000
> > >>> ab * cb
> > 152.3373000
> > >>> (ab*cb).disp(2)
> > '152.34'
> > >>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
> > 151.84
> > +++++++++++++++++++++??????!
>
> This is equivalent to
>
> print ('%8.2f' % ab) * cb
>
> :-)
>
> And since
>
> >>> 1.23 * 123.45
> 151.84350000000001
>
> the output 151.84 seems reasonable to me.
>
>   Bernhard
>
> --
> Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
> Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
> MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/
>



From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  2 21:10:36 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 21:10:36 -0400
Subject: Template processing
In-Reply-To: <Xns90D2B339CFDD6Latzikatz@139.174.2.56>
References: <Xns90D2B339CFDD6Latzikatz@139.174.2.56>
Message-ID: <B76693CB.13B8D%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

on 2001-07-02 11:37 AM, Lutz Schroeer
(Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de) wrote:
> I want to do some _simple_ template processing. Which is the best package to
> use (except Zope and except writing it myself ;-))?

That depends on what you want to do.

Embed Python expressions & statements in a template file (simple code)? Try
Alex Martelli's yaptu.py (Yet Another Python Templating Utility) from:

    http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52305

(An updated version should be available shortly. Write me if you *must* have
it.)

Embed template text in a Python module (complex code)? Try Quixote:

    http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/python/quixote/

PyHTML takes it even further, but requires you to recompile Python:

    http://incolor.inebraska.com/jepler/pyhtml/

I've heard of Python Server Pages, but haven't used them:

    http://www.ciobriefings.com/psp/

There's a table of alternatives at the Webware project:

    http://webware.sourceforge.net/Papers/Templates/

(Webware also contains "Python Server Pages". Same code? Just same name? I
don't know.)

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sf.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sf.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sf.net



From laurent.szyster at q-survey.be  Sat Jul 14 22:46:17 2001
From: laurent.szyster at q-survey.be (Laurent Szyster)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 04:46:17 +0200
Subject: Encryption and python?
References: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <3B4EB456.5A315CF9@stroeder.com> <m2vgkxvw62.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <3B5103F9.B19EFCE3@q-survey.be>

Greg Copeland wrote:
> 
> Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> writes:
> 
> > Greg Copeland wrote:
> > >
> > > I've been browsing around for a while now trying to come up with
> > > "the" python encryption library that I can make use of.
> >
> > This is a very general question. What are you looking for?
> > - Low-level algorithms (hashes and encryption)
> > - Crypto Protocols (e.g SSL or S/MIME)
> > - Key stores
> 
> Fair enough.  I'm looking for low-level algorithms for public
> key exchange, some encryption, digital signatures and hashes.
> 
> Greg

Have not used amkCrypto, but M2Crypto instead because it is OpenSSL
more than nicely wrapped for Python.


Laurent


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 10:58:03 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:58:03 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <%7i07.25728$he.1340574@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9hsi0d$oqv$3@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <9hsmp3$fgqci$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote in message
news:9hsi0d$oqv$3 at 216.39.170.247...
> In article <%7i07.25728$he.1340574 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>,

> I wonder if the annual Dataquest language survey, if it still exists,
> that showed that more "programmers" used Basic in it's various flavors
> then all other languages combined still shows that... hmm, is that a
> reason to use Basic? After all, supposedly 80% of all business apps are
> written in Basic - presumably Visual Basick since they've pretty
> effectively killed off that entire market segment. Personally, I think
> i'd rather take up a career as William Park ;)
>
> Dave LeBlanc

One or another form of Business Basic I'd expect.  They've pretty well all
grown GUI appendages now.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------




From piet at cs.uu.nl  Thu Jul  5 07:33:57 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 13:33:57 +0200
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
References: <mailman.994179919.2650.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uy9q3mwyi.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> (KR) writes:

KR> The following FTP program now works, in connecting on my windows machine to my Unix server.  What statements need I add to ftp the directory files in  d:\programsPerl to /usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/?
KR> import string, os
KR> import ftplib
KR> from ftplib import FTP
KR> print string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPerl'),',')
KR> ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144') #specify host
KR> ftp.connect # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
KR> ftp.login(user='elmer',passwd='fudd',acct='donald')   # user info
KR> ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/')
KR> ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
KR> ftp.quit()

Well you got your answer already in a different thread. *HINT: don't
switch threads.*

The ftp.connect above can be removed. As others have remarked it's called
by default, but yours above doesn't even call it. The () are missing.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Sat Jul  7 16:40:53 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:40:53 -0700
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <mailman.994530972.4782.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4773d5$0$331$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

In article <mailman.994530972.4782.python-list at python.org>, "Tim Peters"
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> On any platform with thread support, Python code runs under the
> protection of a global interpreter lock (GIL), which gives a thread
> exclusive access to the Python Virtual Machine for a fixed number of
> bytecodes.  You can alter that magic number by calling
> sys.setcheckinterval().  Say you set it to 100. Then every 100
> bytecodes, the eval loop forces the current thread to release the GIL,
> allowing some other thread to acquire it.  Python has no control over
> *which* thread gets it next -- since Python threads are real OS threads,
> that's up to the OS thread implementation.  So is it round robin? Beats
> me, and, more importantly, beats you too <wink>.
> 
> The Stackless Python variant
> 
>     http://www.stackless.com/
> 
> implements a notion of (pseudo)microthreads instead, which may be more
> to your liking.  They're not related to OS threads at all, and typically
> enjoy much lower memory consumption and much faster context switching
> than "real threads".  Also more potential for influencing exactly when
> they swtich.

I was actually taking a look at stackless python because I expect this
program to have lots of thread, like thousands.  I presume since you are
suggesting it that it supports the setcheckinterval?

Is there posibly a function that is called when a thread gives up the
lock which I could use to take the thread out of the running queue?  That
would be the place I would like to run some maintenance.

> 
> Note that "a bytecode" is a very high-level thing in Python, and number
> of bytecodes has no clear relationship to elapsed time.  For example,
> one bytecode may add 1+1, while another may sort a million-element list.
> 

I realize that.  I figure that the programmers who know how to better
execute each byte code instruction should be given the advantage.  This
game is supposed to reward people who know what they are doing.  We just
need a way of keeping them in check by monitoring the number of
instruction somehow.

Neil Macneale

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From djc at object-craft.com.au  Wed Jul 11 02:40:28 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:40:28 +1000
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m3g0c4hstf.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Edward" == Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> writes:

Edward> Dave: The way I see it, nobody is going to use a module "trial
Edward> and error" in the workplace, especially if they suspect it may
Edward> be incomplete.

If they suspect that it is incomplete - maybe they should spend a few
hours to see if that suspicion is well founded.  In most cases there
are only one or two modules to try.

Edward> They are going to use a proven module, or hack one up in their
Edward> shop's native tounge.

And the one hacked up locally will automatically be better than the
one which already exists which you could not spare the time to
evaluate...

Edward> What would be constructive for Python would be for others to
Edward> donaite ther time to testing your work just as you donante
Edward> your time writing extensions in the first place.  This gets at
Edward> the "Workgroup" mentality/approach I have been talking about.
Edward> In other words, it's not enough for you, working alone to
Edward> produce a great Sybase extension.  Rather, those of us who
Edward> hope to use your module should be willing to help build it,
Edward> lending our time as testers.  My personal feeling is that if
Edward> ten or twenty folks would jump in and help you out, in a year
Edward> (working part-time) Python could have a diamond hardened
Edward> Sybase module.

You are 100% correct here.  If only people were willing to try the
module.  For all I know there are more than 20 people who are using
the module for serious work.  Noone ever tells me, so how can I claim
that I have a proven module?  As I said before - there have been over
180 unique IP addresses which have downloaded the Sybase-0.2x module.

Edward> Python is way cooler than PL/SQL or any other language used
Edward> for writing db apps for that matter.

Which is exactly why I wrote the module - to avoid using ISQL or Perl.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 12:31:47 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:31:47 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) writes:

> >The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
> >regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.
> 
> If that's important, why won't the other math operators do it???

Huh?  They do (apart from unavoidable round-off errors).  1+2 == 1.0+2.0.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mwh at python.net  Wed Jul  4 07:01:05 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 12:01:05 +0100
Subject: PyArg_Parse
References: <mailman.994206852.21181.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3g0cdyn4e.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

"Brian Quinlan" <BrianQ at ActiveState.com> writes:

> > This is a bit of a silly question, but where is PyArg_Parse
> > documented?
> 
> Does that function even exist? PyArg_ParseTuple is documented at
> http://www.python.org/doc/ext/parseTuple.html

Yes, it's used with old-style (METH_OLDARGS) extension functions.

METH_OLDARGS is broken.  Don't use it in new code.  If you're using it
in old code, change the code.  Use METH_VARARGS and PyArg_ParseTuple,
which is documented above (in the wrong sodding manual...).

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  > Why are we talking about bricks and concrete in a lisp newsgroup?
  After long experiment it was found preferable to talking about why
  Lisp is slower than C++...
                        -- Duane Rettig & Tim Bradshaw, comp.lang.lisp


From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul  2 18:00:08 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 22:00:08 GMT
Subject: Calculus Module
References: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994106583.27446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B40EDBA.AADE32E3@tundraware.com>

Andrew Todd wrote:
> 
> Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/precalc.html
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul 19 13:35:37 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Dr. David Mertz)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:35:37 -0400
Subject: Examples of using XML and Python? (fwd)
Message-ID: <ppxV7kKkX0WF092yn@bellatlantic.net>                         

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) wrote:
  <URL: http://www.python.org/sigs/xml-sig/ >
  <URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/python1/ >
  <URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/xml-matters1/ >
  <URL: http://safari2.oreilly.com/table.asp?bookname=pythonwin32&snode=33 >

I appreciate Cameron's references to my articles (the ibm ones).  Those
listed, however, are slightly out-of-date, but an update is available
at:

  http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-pxml.html

It won't cover everything you probably want to know, but IMO it is not a
bad place to start.



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 03:21:10 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:21:10 +0200
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A at engcorp.com...
    ...
> If you have algorithms, why not post them?  Are you hoping somebody
> will write this from scratch just for you?  (Someone might, but he's
> in a different timezone and wasting his time creating it.comp.lang.python,

free.it.python, actually, so the time isn't wasted -- the newsgroup is
working just fine:-).

> and _still_ hasn't replied since you posted this 13 hours ago, so you
> might be out of luck. :)

Actually I _was_ tempted to comment that no set can sum to
both 17 and 20, too, but I manfully resisted temptation... until
you implicitly called on me...:-).

To make such problems as "sets of N numbers that sum to X"
meaningful we need much more precise specifications.  If the
numbers are allowed to be negative, there are of course an
infinite number of such sets, although it could be interesting
to try to qualify the sets into a finite number of parametric
families.  Are the numbers to be >0, >=0, is repetition among
them allowed (or are they to be SETS in the strict sense, where
'repetition of membership' is meaningless)...?

A highly constrained definition (numbers from 1 upwards, no
repetition) may be the most interesting one.  Given a list of
N-1 such numbers monotonically growing (without loss of
generality, since no repetition is allowed) the N-th number is
trivially obtained a X-the sum of the others with the constraint
of strict monotonical growth.  Thinking backwards to N-2,
N-3, etc, we see that for a given fixed prefix of N-m numbers
the last of which is K the solutions are the m-length suffixes
of numbers K+1 and up that sum to X-(sum of the first N-m).

Recursively, then, and without much worry at optimizing...:

def seqs(i, j, sumsofar, sumdesired, minok, thelist):
    # print 's',i,j,sumsofar,sumdesired,minok,thelist[:j]
    if i==j-1:
        missing = sumdesired - sumsofar
        if missing < minok: return 0
        thelist[i] = missing
        print thelist
        return 1
    elif i>=j or sumsofar+minok > sumdesired:
        return 0
    thelist[i] = minok
    results = 0
    while 1:
        more = seqs(i+1, j, sumsofar+thelist[i], sumdesired,
            thelist[i]+1, thelist)
        if not more: break
        results += more
        thelist[i]+=1
    return results

if __name__=='__main__':
    nr = seqs(0, 6, 0, 23, 1, 6*[0])
    print nr,'sets'

D:\MinGw32>python su.py
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]
2 sets

D:\MinGw32>

Now the interesting parts are such things as removing
recursion, proving correctness, seeing what optimizations
if any can be afforded, and so on...

Ah, combinatorics IS fascinating indeed...!!!


Alex





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 16:51:48 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:51:48 GMT
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>        <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.994949372.17704.python-list@python.org> <NCk37.1777$u76.55241@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <EbJ37.5150$z21.530071@newsc.telia.net>

Steve Holden wrote

> Well, after this little experiment on PythonWin 2.0/Win95 I'm no longer
> sure what is going on:
>
> >>> for i in range(10):
> ...  time.sleep(2.5)
> ...  print time.time(), time.clock()
> ...
> 994956779.3 5.86667560636e-006
> 994956781.88 2.55270956603
> 994956784.41 5.0637313733
> 994956786.94 7.58865720176
> 994956789.41 10.1181121038
> 994956791.99 12.6327050403
> 994956794.46 15.1421897786
> 994956796.99 17.6518547076
> 994956799.51 20.1890552976
> 994956802.04 22.7061055331
>
> Is my CPU usage really ~100% during those sleeps?

from the Python library reference:

    clock()

    Return the current CPU time as a floating point
    number expressed in seconds. The precision, and
    in fact the very definition of the meaning of ''CPU
    time'' , depends on that of the C function of the
    same name

ANSI C leaves the "era" and resolution open, and Microsoft
has defined it as:

    The clock function's era begins (with a value of 0)
    when the C program starts to execute. It returns
    times measured in 1/CLOCKS_PER_SEC (which
    equals 1/1000 for Microsoft C).

In recent version, I think "when the C program starts to
execute" means "when the C program first calls the clock
function", but you get the idea.

Cheers /F




From ptah at mjs400.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 13:41:35 2001
From: ptah at mjs400.co.uk (ptah)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:41:35 +0100
Subject: Python code to express a large integer in words?
Message-ID: <3B66EDD0.62196C8D@mjs400.co.uk>

For interest I have included code below from the as400network Club Tech
iSeries Programming Tips - 06.21.01 it is written in IBM RPG IV and is a
kind of DLL (we call them service programs) that does the above, I would
like to see how much more succinct a Python equivalent could be, purely
because I would like to jump ship and code in something more expressive
and need to put the case for Python to people who are not in the habit
of thinking in an abstract way ;)

Any help greatly appreciated (I can't offer money, sorry).
Regards

Peter Moore
MJS400 (UK) Ltd

     H NoMain
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
      *  -  Procedure prototypes                                     -
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
     D CvtNbrToWords   PR           200
     D                               15  0 Value
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
      *  -  Global variables                                         -
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
     D MaxGrps         C                   5
     D Words           S             13    Dim( 99 )
     D                                     CtData
     D Grps            S              8    Dim( MaxGrps )
     D                                     CtData
      *  =============================================================
      *  =  Procedure:   CvtNbrToWords                               =
      *  =  Description: Convert number to words                     =
      *  =============================================================
     P CvtNbrToWords   B                   Export
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
      *  -  Procedure interface                                      -
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
     D CvtNbrToWords   PI           200
     D  Nbr                          15  0 Value
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
      *  -  Variable declarations                                    -
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
     D AlphaNbr        S             15
     D WorkFld         DS
     D  Work3                         3
     D  Work2                         2    Overlay( Work3 : 2 )
     D  Work1                         1    Overlay( Work3 : 1 )
     D Count           S              5I 0
     D Pos             S              5I 0
     D Idx             S              5I 0
     D RtnWords        S            200    Inz( *Blank )
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
      *  -  Convert number to words                                  -
      *  -------------------------------------------------------------
     C                   Select

     C                   When      Nbr = *Zero
     C                   Eval      RtnWords = 'zero'

     C                   Other
     C                   If        Nbr < *Zero
     C                   Eval      RtnWords = 'negative'
     C                   Eval      Nbr = Nbr * -1
     C                   EndIf

     C                   Move      Nbr           AlphaNbr

     C                   Do        MaxGrps       Count

     C                   Eval      Pos   = ( Count * 3 ) - 2
     C                   Eval      Work3 = %Subst( AlphaNbr :
     C                                             Pos      :
     C                                             3        )
     C                   If        Work3 <> '000'

     C                   If        Work1 <> '0'
     C                   Clear                   Idx
     C                   Move      Work1         Idx
     C                   Eval      RtnWords = %TrimR( RtnWords )     +
     C                                        ' '                    +
     C                                        %TrimR( Words( Idx ) ) +
     C                                        ' hundred'
     C                   EndIf

     C                   If        Work2 <> '00'
     C                   Clear                   Idx
     C                   Move      Work2         Idx
     C                   Eval      RtnWords = %TrimR( RtnWords )     +
     C                                        ' '                    +
     C                                        %TrimR( Words( Idx ) )
     C                   EndIf

     C                   Eval      RtnWords = %TrimR( RtnWords )    +
     C                                        ' '                   +
     C                                        %TrimR( Grps( Count ) )

     C                   EndIf

     C                   EndDo

     C                   EndSl

     C                   Eval      RtnWords = %Trim( RtnWords )

     C                   Return    RtnWords

     P CvtNbrToWords   E

** CtData Words
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
**..SNIPPED..**
ninety-nine
** CtData Grps
trillion
billion
million
thousand


From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul 12 14:59:44 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 14:59:44 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
References: <mailman.994956861.11471.python-list@python.org> <etdelrmoyl0.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu> <mailman.994959288.21160.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etd8zhurn1b.fsf@x15-cruise-basselope.mit.edu>

Hmm, weird.  What happens if you type the whole command out on one line?

Alex.


From glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com  Thu Jul  5 10:46:32 2001
From: glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com (Gilles Lenfant)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:46:32 +0200
Subject: Weird problem on WIN platform.. any ideas?
References: <ecfce343.0107042329.54bcd07a@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i1uaj$l3u$1@norfair.nerim.net>

Hints,

Use another account for the SQL server agent (in "services" configuration
panel)
Try with your account first (the one used when the command line script
succeds)
Or give access to "v:\" to the account that runs SQL Server agent.

"mixoftheweek.com" <pirkka.hartikainen at visualsystems.com> a ?crit dans le
message news: ecfce343.0107042329.54bcd07a at posting.google.com...
> Problem description:
>
> I've got a little Python script using urllib's urlretrieve() function
> to fetch an image from a web site. The script works without errors
> when I run it from the command line.
>
> However, when I schedule SQL Server Agent to run the script, the Agent
> reports the following error:
>
> File "C:\scripts\dailygif.py", line 26, in ?
> urlretrieve(gif_url,gif_filename)
> File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 68, in urlretrieve      return
> _urlopener.retrieve(url, filename, reporthook, data)
> File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 212, in retrieve      tfp =
> open(filename, 'wb')  IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
> 'v:\\images\\dailygif\\dailygif.gif'
>
> As I said, I'm unable to repeat this error when I run the same script
> from command line. The double slashes in the error-causing file path
> are not of my doing (gif_filename =
> 'v:\images\dailygif\dailygif.gif').
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.




From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 19:52:14 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 16:52:14 -0700
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9jvj7e$96b$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569 at sea-read.news.verio.net>,
Victor Bazarov <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote:
>"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
>>
>> Victor, we don't have enough information.  Are you using Jython, or
>> are you somehow invoking C-Python from Java?  Can you reproduce the
>> problem in a self-contained example program?
>
>I am not using Jython.  I am running a regular one (if it's called
>C-Python, I didn't know) from Java using Runtime.exec("python
> something.py").  Its version is 2.0 (at least that's what it
>reports when run with -V).

Python is referred to as CPython when it's not clear what version is
being talked about.  This is because Python has been implemented in two
different languages: C and Java (well, some others, too, but those are
the primary ones and the only relevant ones here).  The Java
implementation is referred to as Jython (formerly JPython).

What OS are you using?  Which JVM?

>In order to write a test program I have to know what to try to
>reproduce.  Should it itself be multi-threaded?  How complex should
>it be?  If I don't get the same result, does it mean the problem is
>in my Java program or is it just a coincidence?  (as I wrote before,
>it does not happen if I run Java program under the debugger instead
>of simply executing it)  You see, it would probably take me as long
>to create a "self-contained" example as it did to create the system
>in its current state.

You've got a complex problem here, probably resulting from a multi-way
interaction between Python, Java, and the OS.  You're going to get little
help from us unless you can pare down the problem.

>One of my colleagues suggested wrapping the call to minidom.parse
>in a critical section (locking something before, unlocking after),
>another hint came from you: let the main program sleep after fork.
>At this point I frankly care only about one thing: to prevent it
>from happening.

That's one way.  I second Paul's suggestion that you instead do the
import before you spin off any threads.  Note that the problem in the
other thread you're referring to was *Python* doing a fork, not Python
executing in the forked process.

I think your best bet is likely to be switching to Jython instead of
trying to run CPython through a system call.  That way, your Python
program will have full access to Java's capabilities, and you'll have
better cross-platform portability.  If you stick with CPython, I suggest
upgrading to Python 2.1.1; IIRC, there were some thread bugs fixed
post-2.0.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul  3 19:04:48 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 19:04:48 -0400
Subject: What's wrong with this program
In-Reply-To: <994199262.378.51683.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B421750.1708.50E9144@localhost>

Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote, in part:
> Does anyone have an example of how to set filename to access files in
> a directory list, so I can implement this?  My Python is limited, as I
> don't use it every day, and in limited ways.  Thanks. 

import glob
for filename in glob.glob('.\*'):
    print filename

Replace the argument to 'glob' with a string that gives the directory 
you want to list, and the 'print filename' with one or more 
statements making use of 'filename' that do whatever it is that you 
want to do.

Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:05 PM
> To: Kemp Randy-W18971
> Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
> Subject: RE: What's wrong with this program
> 
> 
> On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> > Thanks for the correction.
> 
>    Actually I think you don't need ftp.connect() at all - it is called
> in ftp.__init__...
> 
> > Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
> > from one server directory to another server directory?
> 
>    I don't know - I've never used ftplib, but the idea is obvious: put
> it one by one. Something like this:
> 
> for filename in somelist:
>    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))
> 
> Oleg.
> ----
>      Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/           





From guido at python.org  Sun Jul 29 06:04:27 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:04:27 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90ED32F5FFB65cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <cpu1zwyru2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti) writes:

> why 2.2? this would also fit in a 3.0 along with a unified number system 
> and true division. this would make a clean cut and a new better "python 
> 3.0" would be the choice for new projects and beginners. as you pointed 
> out, in perl there was a similar cut from 4 to 5 (well python won't be very 
> incompatible, just some modules need an update). 

The idea is to experiment with the new features in 2.2 (and later) in
a way that tries not to break old code, and to introduce the
code-breaking finishing touch in 3.0.

> will this also allow to replace the default generators for builtin 
> types/type-classes? i mean that i can replace "int", "float", "complex",... 
> with my own factories, say to implement my own number tower with rationals 
> (if they weren't included anyway).

This won't affect the type of literals, so I don't think it'll be very
useful.  But of course you can write your own numeric types that fit
in with the rest.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 16:24:22 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:24:22 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>

David Eppstein wrote:

> I would be a lot happier with integer / integer = rational (as in
> Mathematica's programming lang), but float is just ugly.  It is
> turning
> exact values (integers) into approximate ones (float) when I didn't
> tell it
> to. It's almost as bad as if integer subtraction always truncated to
> 16
> bit values -- a lot of the time that would give sort of reasonable
> answers
> but it's a gratuitous approximation where you didn't expect one.

I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
them explicitly.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
\__/ Alexander Pope
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 00:04:49 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 21:04:49 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Support for "wide" Unicode characters
References: <3B3BEF21.63411C4C@ActiveState.com> <3B3C95D8.518E5175@egenix.com> <3B3D2869.5C1DDCF1@ActiveState.com> <3B3DBD86.81F80D06@egenix.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EA161.1375F74C@ActiveState.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The term "character" in Python should really only be used for
> the 8-bit strings. 

Are we going to change chr() and unichr() to one_element_string() and
unicode_one_element_string()

u[i] is a character. If u is Unicode, then u[i] is a Python Unicode
character. No Python user will find that confusing no matter how Unicode
knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, wife-by-hair-dragging they are.

> In Unicode a "character" can mean any of:

Mark Davis said that "people" can use the word to mean any of those
things. He did not say that it was imprecisely defined in Unicode.
Nevertheless I'm not using the Unicode definition anymore than our
standard library uses an ancient Greek definition of integer. Python has
a concept of integer and a concept of character.

> >     It has been proposed that there should be a module for working
> >     with UTF-16 strings in narrow Python builds through some sort of
> >     abstraction that handles surrogates for you. If someone wants
> >     to implement that, it will be another PEP.
> 
> Uhm, narrow builds don't support UTF-16... it's UCS-2 which
> is supported (basically: store everything in range(0x10000));
> the codecs can map code points to surrogates, but it is solely
> their responsibility and the responsibility of the application
> using them to take care of dealing with surrogates.

The user can view the data as UCS-2, UTF-16, Base64, ROT-13, XML, ....
Just as we have a base64 module, we could have a UTF-16 module that
interprets the data in the string as UTF-16 and does surrogate
manipulation for you.

Anyhow, if any of those is the "real" encoding of the data, it is
UTF-16. After all, if the codec reads in four non-BMP characters in,
let's say, UTF-8, we represent them as 8 narrow-build Python characters.
That's the definition of UTF-16! But it's easy enough for me to take
that word out so I will.

>...
> Also, the module will be useful for both narrow and wide builds,
> since the notion of an encoded character can involve multiple code
> points. In that sense Unicode is always a variable length
> encoding for characters and that's the application field of
> this module.

I wouldn't advise that you do all different types of normalization in a
single module but I'll wait for your PEP.

> Here's the adjusted text:
> 
>      It has been proposed that there should be a module for working
>      with Unicode objects using character-, word- and line- based
>      indexing. The details of the implementation is left to
>      another PEP.
 
     It has been proposed that there should be a module that handles
     surrogates in narrow Python builds for programmers. If someone 
     wants to implement that, it will be another PEP. It might also be 
     combined with features that allow other kinds of character-, 
     word- and line- based indexing.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 11 18:36:33 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:36:33 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.994548913.18171.python-list@python.org> <cppubbipxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4A775B.1212684C@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <cpwv5fh7dp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CD4F1.51DFAA45@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Darn.  That's a reasonable argument.  If a numeric array module
> defines __divmod__, does it return a tuple of two arrays, or does it
> return an array of tuples? 

it would have to return a tuple of two arrays, that's the only way that
would make sense for array-oriented operations. For the same reason as
why arctan2() takes two arrays, not an array of tuples, for its
arguments. What the heck would you do with an array of tuples anyway?

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 08:03:29 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:03:29 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
Message-ID: <3B4EE391.19995171@lemburg.com>

Please comment...

--

PEP: 0263 (?)
Title: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
Version: $Revision: 1.0 $
Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Python-Version: 2.3
Created: 06-Jun-2001
Post-History: 

Abstract

    This PEP proposes to use the PEP 244 statement "directive" to make
    the encoding used in Unicode string literals u"..." (and their raw
    counterparts ur"...") definable on a per source file basis.

Problem

    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the eastern
    countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
    favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
    for Unicode literals.

Proposed Solution

    I propose to make the Unicode literal encodings (both standard and
    raw) a per-source file option which can be set using the
    "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244.

Syntax

    The syntax for the directives is as follows:

    'directive' WS+ 'unicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
    'directive' WS+ 'rawunicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL

    with the PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL representing the encoding name to be
    used as standard Python 8-bit string literal and WS being the
    whitespace characters [ \t].

Semantics

    Whenever the Python compiler sees such an encoding directive
    during the compiling process, it updates an internal flag which
    holds the encoding name used for the specific literal form. The
    encoding name flags are initialized to "unicode-escape" for u"..." 
    literals and "raw-unicode-escape" for ur"..." respectively.

    ISSUE:
         Maybe we should restrict the directive usage to once per file
         and additionally to a placement before the first Unicode
literal 
         in the source file.

    If the Python compiler has to convert a Unicode literal to a
    Unicode object, it will pass the 8-bit string data given by the
    literal to the Python codec registry and have it decode the data
    using the current setting of the encoding name flag for the
    requested type of Unicode literal. It then checks the result of
    the decoding operation for being an Unicode object and stores it
    in the byte code stream.

Scope

    This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
    proposed directives. It does not affect the coercion handling of
    8-bit strings and Unicode in the given module.

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Wed Jul 18 10:31:39 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:31:39 -0500
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before
	 12:00 AM 21 July 2001!!!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5262@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Oh, my God!  Does that mean that if the atomic clocks in the world's nuclear
missiles aren't set, the missiles will misfire and bring about world
destruction?  Quick!  Someone write a Python program to remedy this.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ric Werme [mailto:werme at mediaone.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 8:44 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock
before 12:00 AM 21 July 2001!!!


alavoor <alavoor at yahoo.com> writes:

>All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
>21 July 2001!!!

>hello:
>You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.

Garbage!

>Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.

"This won't hurt a bit!"  At least you aren't hawking a .EXE virus.

What wrong with NTP?  (Assuming one needs his computers' time to be
accurate.)

--
Ric Werme                            | werme at nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete



From me at charliedaniels.com-1.net  Mon Jul  2 16:30:26 2001
From: me at charliedaniels.com-1.net (chajadan)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:30:26 GMT
Subject: modifying sys.path on win98...?
Message-ID: <3b40d94c.3665104@news.mailops.com>

I'm trying to update the sys.path for python on win98...

I altered the registry, under local machine, seemingly correct. But
when I access the sys.path to check it, my alterations don't show,
even after rebooting.

I can use sys.path.append, but the change only lasts until I close
python. Then it reverts back to its original state.

How do I make the alteration 'permanent' ?

--chajadan


From nospam at ihatespam.com  Sun Jul 29 23:16:59 2001
From: nospam at ihatespam.com (CCLittle)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:16:59 -0400
Subject: sys.stdin.readlines() in 2.2a ?
Message-ID: <dz497.1571$96.1429@srvr1.engin.umich.edu>

Hi all, I'm trying to learn and master python.  I encountered an example in
"Programming Python 2nd Edition" by Mark Lutz that used
sys.stdin.readlines(), which does not exist in python 2.2a.  It does exist
however, on a solaris system running 1.5.2.  My questions are:

1. Where did it go?
2. What kind of problems am I going to get by doing examples written for
1.5.2 but on 2.2a?
3. Where can I get information on this sort of changes?

Thanks in advance.
Kevin




From aheimsbakk at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 18:22:04 2001
From: aheimsbakk at hotmail.com (Arnulf Heimsbakk)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:22:04 GMT
Subject: Error on mimetools?
References: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no> <j4puair3bb.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <9k3l62$d31$1@news.uit.no> <Xns90EEDF9EA53EBrcamesz@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <gcG97.595$bXi.179386368@news.telia.no>

>
> > I'm using only the raw base64 text. It is the same text I used in
> > my winzip experiment and in python test program I've made. It works
> > in winzip but not with python code. As I mentioned python gives me
> > a file slightly bigger than winzip. It's about 300 bytes bigger.
> >
> > I'm without clues to this one. It does not seem to be any logic in
> > the error.
>
> [You really should mention (among other things) the OS you're using,
> but as you posted your message with OE, I'll assume it's Windows.]
>
> It sounds as if you might have openened a file in the text mode instead
> of the binary mode (or possibly the other way round). In Windows,
> saving a binary file in the text mode will cause spurious '\r'
> characters to be inserted into the stream for every '\n'. Be thankful
> you don't own a Mac: on that platform every '\n' is *replaced* by an
> '\r', depriving you of a valuable clue something is wrong.
>
> Assuming the file consists of random characters, 1 in every 256
> characters will be a '\n', so the 300 extra bytes would indicate a file
> size of about 75000 bytes.
>
> If this is the cause the remedy is simple: try finding an
> open(somefilename, 'w') in the code, and change the 'w' to 'wb'.
>

Thanks for the help. I have not had the time to test it out yet. But it
sounds like it may be the cause of the problem. I'll try to work around the
problem then :)

Arnulf







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 11:39:33 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:39:33 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <vn_27.42062$F%5.2541404@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cplmlvh6dx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

[muted cheering is heard in the background]

I regard your ability to recognize and respond to intelligent criticism as
an even better demonstration of your greatness than the excellent language
design and implementation abilities you continue to put into Python.

That fact that *I* was unable to convince you leaves me feeling somewhat
chastened about the qualities of my own criticism, however :-)

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul  4 11:10:44 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 11:10:44 -0400
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org> <9hsql302ghk@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k4s5u.v3.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <tk54ovf2o14ede@corp.supernews.com> <9huiqb01eih@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <etd8zi4pw5n.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Yeah, that's roughly what I have in my add_builtins.py:

def iterate(sequence):

    '''Use as
    
    for elt_idx, elt in iterate(sequence): do_stuff()'''
    
    return zip(range(len(sequence)), sequence)

Builtins.iterate = iterate

Alex.


From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 18 01:15:48 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:15:48 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com> <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org> <mailman.995408249.15783.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b550e40.2201271731@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:17:09 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>
>    Christopher> I can't speak for Perl, but Python definately does not
>    Christopher> evaluate the expression at compile time.  This is a problem
>    Christopher> I've had with Python.  I wish that when given the -O option
>    Christopher> the compiler would do constant subexpression elimination.
>
>It's rare in normal Python code to actually see a constant expression
>computed inside a loop.  Fortunately, it would appear most folks aren't that
>dumb, so while you can take steps to eliminate them, there aren't generally
>going to be very many to eliminate.
>
Well rare, but not always dumb, I think. If you're only using a constant in one
place that happens to be in a loop, and the clearest way to express it is
as a constant expresssion, you do it that way when you know it's going to be
folded. E.g., compare (5280.0/60.0*60.0) vs 1.4666667 -- which would you feel
surer about, reviewing the code, given the same comment saying mph->fps?

Of course, with Python it would be dumb not to move it out of the loop, if
you could save significant execution time.


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul 22 12:12:24 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:12:24 GMT
Subject: Stability of PYC files
References: <e1gllts33oobp6vs3ppaor7uofl3eomehs@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cp8zhheyfa.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Are the Python compiled bytecode PYC files stable enough that you can
> take PYC files generated by older versions of Python and run them
> without the source on newer versions?

Definitely NOT.  The PYC files are a detail of the implementation and
vary across versions!

> Has anyone ever tried to document Python bytecode?

Not exactly, but the docs for the standard library module "dis" give a
lot of details.  Also read the source for py_compile.py.

> Does jPython compile to Java bytecode, or does it act more directly as
> an interpreter, or does it use an intermediate bytecode?

Jython generates Java bytecode (which mostly consists of calls into
the Jython run-time library :-).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 15:47:04 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:47:04 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3B5C749A.59F97320 at tundraware.com>,
 Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:

> Not formally, AFAIK.  For example, 3 with no decimal point following
> could be anything from 2.5 to 3.4.

No no no.  '3.' i.e. a floating point number with that value could be 
anything in that range.  '3' means exactly the integer 3, no approximation 
at all.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From jmarshal at mathworks.com  Fri Jul 13 13:12:27 2001
From: jmarshal at mathworks.com (Joshua Marshall)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:12:27 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com>
Message-ID: <9ina5r$l96$1@news.mathworks.com>

Python's a very good place to start.  Besides books on the language,
I'd also recommend you find some books on data-structures.  I can't
name any good ones offhand, but maybe some other posters can...

wyatt stafford <wyatts at onr.com> wrote:
> Preamble:

> I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start programming
> for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).  After
> some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  I bought "Learn
> to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" (Harms/McDonald).  Also
> checking out the tutorial, and other good info at www.python.org.    I have
> a leaping, intuitive learning style given to missing the obvious, so I am
> concerned about having fatal gaps in my learning via home schooling plan.

> Questions:

> Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self study
> resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good programmer,
> in general?

> Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?

> thanks and happy weekend to all,
> wyatt

> "Oh, that's not what I call bingeing"


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Thu Jul 19 02:44:12 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:44:12 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "18 Jul 2001 11:55:36 PDT."
             <8f41cfd.0107181055.3b34851a@posting.google.com> 
Message-ID: <m15N7Xg-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.) wrote:

> Just spent a little time to compare 4 stupid again algorithms
> (changed a little bit from last time) for both python and perl
> (codes attached) on two systems (SunOS and Linux):
> 	1. while loop, global variables
> 	2. for loop, global variables
> 	3. while loop, local variables (in function)
> 	4. for loop, local variables (in function)
> I used `time [1234].p[yl]` to get the time info. The user time
> is as follows:
> 
> PII 450MHz, Dell Precision 4100 Desktop, SunOS 5.8 i386
>                 #1      #2      #3      #4
> Python 2.1a1:   5.1     3.1     4.5     2.7
> Perl 5.005_03:  1.8     1.6     1.7     1.6
> 
> 
> PIII 1GHz, MTech 8500 Notebook, i386 Linux (Mandrake 8.0, kernal 2.4)
>                 #1      #2      #3      #4
> Python 2.0:     2.34    1.38    1.54    0.98
> Perl 5.6.0:     0.95    1.22    0.95    1.21
> 
> The closest match is on Linux, 0.98 (python#4) vs. 0.95 (perl#1,#3).
> Python still can't beat Perl, :-(  But I will continue to use Python
> to do uncritical data analysis, :-)

IMNSHO, your conclusion is not supported by your facts. You tested
nothing of importance to "critical" data analysis.

About the only thing you can safely conclude from your tests is that
you should continue to use Perl for trivial/meaningless tasks 
<3/4 wink>.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From syring at email.com  Fri Jul 13 16:37:44 2001
From: syring at email.com (Karl M. Syring)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:37:44 +0200
Subject: FrameMaker exposed in Python (PyMaker anyone)?
References: <9in4dk$eap$06$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <9inm6l$jirpg$1@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de>

"Thorsten Roskowetz" <rossi at earthling.net> schrieb
> Hi,
> 
> is there a Python extension that allows scripting of the
> FrameMaker API.  Google (and www.python.org) pointed me
> to a project called PyMaker but the link is dead
> (http://home.t-online.de/home/Ulrich.Herold/).

No, the page is alife!

Karl M. Syring




From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 28 05:02:09 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 05:02:09 -0400
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
In-Reply-To: <b8c015b9.0107271956.3661a8a0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEOKLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Jon Schull]
> Well, I was hoping to develop and test some modules within the idle
> environment.  (I'm wondering how well IDLE serves as a primary
> Interactive Development Environment.)

It's mixed.  That modules aren't automagically reloaded when running a
script is both a help and a curse, depending on what you're after in the
end.

> I ran into this "problem" (it's not unique to doctest) and thought I
> was doing something wrong.  I figured doctest's use of docstrings for
> testing would be exemplary, so I tried doctest.
>
> In a way, doctest *was* exemplary...
>
> But it seems that its going to be awkward to do interactive
> development in IDLE of modules that employ doctest.  That seems a
> shame; routine use of doctest and IDLE would be a good practice.

If you like IDLE enough, you'll eventually <wink> discover workarounds.  For
using doctest specifically, and provided you don't intend to exploit the
"Advanced Usage" of merging multiple runs, change your

    import doctest, mymodule
    doctest.testmod(mymode)

blocks by inserting this line in the middle:

    doctest.master = None

That explicitly wipes out the only state doctest retains across runs, making
it functionally equivalent to reloading doctest.

More general cases can be approached by writing a little program that
explicitly reloads the modules you need to have reloaded across runs, and
running that from time to time as needed.

This won't be solved in general by magic until someone contributes code to
launch "Run Script" in a fresh process; but that's not always what you'll
want either.

it's-life-it-sucks<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul 22 22:02:42 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:02:42 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <6BL67.17641$EP6.4530210@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Rainy" <sill at optonline.net> wrote in message
news:slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill at sill.silmarill.org...
> Hello,
>
> My program (http://silmarill.org/cymbaline/cymbaline/cymbaline.py -
yes,
> it's repeated 3 times, that's not an error) works fine in 2.1 but
exits
> silently in 2.0 - no traceback, no errors, nothing. One possibility
I checked
> for is except (something): sys.exit() and I don't have anything like
that here.
> What else could it be?

The only major innovation of 2.1 that I remember is nested scopes,
which only operate if you 'import' them.  Maybe one of the minor fixes
is saving you.  No one is going to read 100s of lines for you, so I
suggest adding print statements to see where you get to and what
values are changed.  Start in the if main section.





From thomas at xs4all.net  Wed Jul 18 06:01:12 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:01:12 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignment in Python (PER)
In-Reply-To: <15188.57943.434555.429691@gargoyle.cs.uchicago.edu>
Message-ID: <20010718120112.B2025@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 08:11:51PM -0500, David Beazley wrote:

> I think the above sentence would make a lot more sense if it was
> worded as follows:

> "For the built-in types, augmented assignment doesn't violate
> mutability or perform in-place modification of objects. Therefore,
> writing x+=y creates an entirely new object x with the value x + y.
> User defined types and classes may choose to implement different
> behavior by redefining special methods such as __iadd__(), __isub__(), 
> and so forth."

> Note: I still stand by the statement for built-in types.  I looked through
> the Python sources when writing the book and couldn't find any use of
> augmented assignment for built-in types.  I am not aware of any
> counter-example where x += y is not equal to x = x + y for the standard
> built-in types (if there is such an example, please enlighten me!).

Sure:

>>> x = [1,2]
>>> y = x
>>> id(x), id(y)
(134572540, 134572540)
>>> x += [1,2]
>>> x
[1, 2, 1, 2]
>>> y
[1, 2, 1, 2]
>>> id(x),id(y)
(134572540, 134572540)

Basically, all mutable builtin types that define (the C equivalent of)
'__add__' also define (the C equivalent of) '__iadd__' to work in-place.
Unfortunately (for the learning curve) that means 'just lists' :P

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 10:01:40 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:01:40 -0400
Subject: Getting data from DBIII
References: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>
Message-ID: <Gck07.26348$he.1373129@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Doug Poulin" <dpoulin at nettonettech.com> wrote in message
news:3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63 at nettonettech.com...
> Hi.
>
> Failry new to Python (have tried Perl, but....well, it's a long story).
> Anyway, our Sales people use ACT! for contact management.  I have
> created a small Python/Tkinter, so I got the forms looking pretty.   But
> I am having trouble using Python to get the data from the DB.  ACT uses
> DB3, so I'm looking for pointers.  I use Linux (RedHat 7.0) and Python
> 1.5.2.
>
> Any help?
>
Doug:

Not familiar with DB3. If it offers and ODBC interface there are modules you
could use to access it. I'm not aware of a DB#-specific database module, but
that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Take a look at the DB SIG pages at http://www.python.org/ to get an idea of
how databases are used from Python.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 12:58:13 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:58:13 GMT
Subject: Listing directorycontent in python
References: <1aa68e6e.0107302231.dd024a2@posting.google.com> <slrn9md4hi.2g6.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3b66e2fd.912177952@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:14:56 GMT, sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov) wrote:

>On 30 Jul 2001 23:31:55 -0700, andreas <wpt2097 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello.
>> 
>> I have a simple question, I want to have a list of all files/dirs in a
>> certain directory.
>> 
>> An example would be that I want to know all filenames that end with
>> "*.JPG" in the directory "/var/www/".
>> 
>> I have not succeeded in doing this myself with "os.path"-module, so I
>> am now asking for tips, hints, examples or pointers to answers of
>> previous similar posts.
>> 
>> I am using Python v1.5 most of the time.
>> 
>> TIA
>> 
>> Andreas
>
>os.dirlist(dirpath)
ITYM os.listdir(dirpath)
>



From denro at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 03:32:28 2001
From: denro at earthlink.net (Dennis Roark)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
Message-ID: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>

For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
following script:

x = 3
x = x + 2
print "x =", x
x = "now I'm a string"
print x
x = [ 5, x ]
print "and now a list:", x

If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
different type on two sides of an assignment?	
---------------------------------
Dennis Roark
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sioux Falls

Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
---------------------------------


From prem at engr.uky.edu  Tue Jul 17 15:12:28 2001
From: prem at engr.uky.edu (Prem Rachakonda)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:12:28 -0400
Subject: "Print" in IDlE??
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171509470.12906-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>

Hi,
  Why is that there is no print option in IDlE. Though not an absoute
necessity, is there a reason for that. It would have been good if it had
the print option, because you intutively go for FILE-->PRINT and don't
find
it there!!

Prem.

____________________________________________________________
                       Prem Rachakonda
____________________________________________________________
Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651



From 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu  Sat Jul 21 00:00:57 2001
From: 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 04:00:57 GMT
Subject: What confuses the newbies: An unscientific study
Message-ID: <slrn9lhvn1.ji4.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>

Every so often, people on comp.lang.python get into flamew^W heated
discussions about which aspects of the language ought to be simplified
for the benefit of non-programmers.

I thought it might be cool for me to use suck(1) to pull down all the
articles I could from comp.lang.python, find all the ones that
represented questions about the language, and tabulate which aspects
of the language people were misunderstanding.

CAVEATS:
  - This isn't scientific.  This is just what I found, on a single
    newsserver, as interpreted by me.  I didn't use any formal
    protocol in evaluating which issues were which.

  - These people definitely don't represent non-programmers.  These
    are just the people who asked questions on usenet.  Many of them
    probably have prior programming experience; _all_ of them at least
    know how to use email or a newsreader.

  - I skipped over questions about embedding, the Python C API, and
    other really advanced topics.  I also skipped over questions
    (e.g., "what was the access keyword for.") that didn't represent
    misunderstanding of Python.

  - I might have missed a few by mistake.  I only looked at messages
    which began new threads that were still available on my server at
    about 3 this afternoon.  I'm pretty sure I remember reading some
    stuff a couple of weeks ago that wasn't on here...

  - I'm mind-reading in some cases here... or rather, I'm interpreting
    the way that the users must have _expected_ the language to work
    in order to ask the questions or write the sample code.

  - Some messages are counted twice, if they show more than one
    piece of confusion.  

WHY I THINK THIS IS NEAT NEVERTHELESS:

  - All of these issues are real issues that confused at least one
    person, and may confuse others.  This isn't stuff I imagine that
    might confuse me, or stuff that I seem to remember having confused
    me once.  (I'm an easily confused kind of guy, but I'm leaving my
    confusion out of this.)

  - Many of them may be addressable by improving tools, tweaking
    the libraries, or twiddling error messages.

  - Even though non-programmer friendliness is an area where Python is
    intended to shine long-term, newbie-friendliness is nice too.

AND FINALLY:

  - If you recognize yourself as a poster of one of these questions, I
    hope you won't be offended.  I'm taking your confusion as a sign
    of possible weakness in Python, not in you. :)

Ok, here we go.  The most common confusions, as shown on my server:

1. NOT KNOWING WHERE MODULE DOCUMENTATION IS.

   A good fifteen or so people asked questions of the form, "How do
   I...", "Is there a module that can...", etc.  All of these
   questions were answered with references to the library reference,
   or to the Vaults.

   Perhaps when the Python Cookbook is more compiled, these things
   will be easier.

   BTW, the most common requests were satisfied by: (in no particular
   order) XML/SGML parsing, windowing toolkits, popen, timeoutsocket,
   and stringio.  Other requests turned out to be for chr and popen2.
  
 * A related kind of confusion: in 4 or so of these cases, users knew
   about a function that did _almost_ the right thing, and [instead
   of looking for the function they _really_ wanted] they searched
   for a way to make the almost-right function do the right thing.

   An example is somebody who knows that str(1.0/3) can convert
   float->str trying to specify a precision parameter instead of using %.

2. NOT SURE HOW VARIABLES WORK

   I counted 5 cases of people expecting variables to work in ways
   they didn't.  They broke down like this:
      A. Thinking that 'global' means world-global, not module-global.
      B. Confusing 'outer' self with 'inner' self in helper class.
      C. Thinking that variables in a function are global until
         assigned, and local thereafter.
      D. Writing 'x="b"; a.x' instead of 'a.b'
      E. Writing 'x="fn"; x()' instead of 'x=fn; x()'

   There wasn't a lot of pattern here, and I don't think much can be
   done to make this area of the language easier to understand...

   ...except for the fact that several of these errors fell into the
   next category, which is:

3. GOT ERROR MESSAGES THEY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND

   At least 4 people submitted exceptions that, when translated into
   English, would have told them how to solve their problems.  One
   other submitted an exception that told them about a problem which
   they understood, but left them unsure how to solve it.

   The biggest culprit was AttributeError.  While object instances now
   give a helpful "'X' instance has no attribute 'foo'", the old form
   "AttributeError: foo" still appears for many types.  Two people
   were not sure what this meant.

   One person didn't understand what 'TypeError: call of non-function
   (type string)' meant.

   One person knew what 'TypeError: cannot add type "int" to string'
   meant, but didn't know where to go from there.

4. EXPECTED LIBRARIES AND BUILTINS TO ACT DIFFERENTLY

   Four people, at least, expected libraries included with standard
   Python to work differently than they actually do.   
   
   One person expected 'remove' to remove a directory.

   One person expected the xml library to set the file name without
   using an InputSource object.

   Others had issues with windows stuff that I didn't understand. :)

5. OTHER ISSUES:

   2 people expected strings to act mutably:
     1 expected string.strip to have side effects
     1 expected string slices to be assignable

   2 people had problems writing re patterns.
     1 didn't know to use raw strings
     1 didn't know to use any quotes at all.

   2 people had misinstalled Python.
 
   2 people had issues with aliasing lists
     1 tried to do a lst.remove within a loop over lst
     1 expected [[...]]*6 to perform a deep copy
 
   2 people were bitten by import
     1 expected a second import of a module should reload it
        (why doesn't it give a warning?)
     1 imported a module with hidden side-effects

   2 people didn't know about unpacking tuples
     1 person thought that, as in perl, 'x = funcReturningTuple()'
       would set x to the first element of the tuple.
     1 person just didn't know you could unpack tuples.

   2 people were confused about fp.
     1 person thought that int/int should yield a float
     1 person didn't know that fp was inexact

   1 person used 'varname' when they meant `varname`
   1 person used \\ as a separator and had trouble porting to unix
  >1 person wrote 'print "foo\n"' when they probably only wanted one
     newline.
   1 person tried to use 2.0 syntax (reading from the 2.0 manual)
     while using 1.5.

You-should-have-seen-me-when-I-was-learning'ly yrs,

-- 
 Nick Mathewson    <9 nick 9 m at alum dot mit dot edu> 
                     Remove 9's to respond.  No spam.


From mdadd329ea at xix.com  Mon Jul  9 22:40:31 2001
From: mdadd329ea at xix.com (Manfred Bartz)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:40:31 GMT
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9idp67$jln$2@gondor.sdsu.edu>
Message-ID: <m2g0c5wlmr.fsf@reddwarf.xix.com>

stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu writes:

> I'll just quote:
> 
>    This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
>    documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by the
>    compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September 1999)

That is *his* opinion and probably yours too.

Well, don't use Python then.  Find another language, one that you like
and be happy.

Personally I think making the indentation style part of the language
is pure genius.  With Python I can understand someone else's code
without having to re-format the hairy passages first.

-- 
Manfred
----------------------------------------------------------------
NetfilterLogAnalyzer, NetCalc, whois at: <http://logi.cc/linux/>


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 14 10:55:54 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 10:55:54 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <3B4FD35A.26B4568E@Lugoj.Com> <roy-B49CE8.09521914072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <etdd773ftl1.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> > [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]
> 
> Yeah, that's what I had come up with, but I was hoping somebody would have 
> an idea that was more elegant and efficient :-)

Why not just leave it as a list and work with the elements?  

f = line.split()

Alex.


From meinmailfilter at gmx.de  Tue Jul  3 02:40:49 2001
From: meinmailfilter at gmx.de (Heiko)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 23:40:49 -0700
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
Message-ID: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>

Hello,
I want to do this:

ClassObject = Class()
ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)
...
ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, Arg4, Arg5 ....)
...
ClassObject.Method()
...
and so on.

Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of arguments
and the method decides what to do.
If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
position (but that is a "nice to have"). So, how do I have to declare
the method, that this works?

Thanks
Heiko


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 11:59:18 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:59:18 -0500
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <15181.51542.942552.789605@beluga.mojam.com>

    Roman> FYI:
    Roman> Do not forget commas:
    ...
    Roman> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
    Roman>          "preview" ]

For what it's worth, this is a much more common mistake for me than integer
division (mostly, I suspect because I do very little numerical work in
Python).

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 12:20:13 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 16:20:13 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hsfue$oqv$1@216.39.170.247> <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <9hsrbt$oqv$4@216.39.170.247>

In article <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8 at stroeder.com>, michael at stroeder.com says...
> David LeBlanc wrote:
> > 
> > The Canadians privatized their national air traffic control a few years
> > ago and oh my! the planes RUN ON TIME!
> 
> Which does not say anything about safety. Well, time will tell...
> 
> Ciao, Michael.
> 
Does not say anything _explicit_ about safety, but it suggests a lot, at 
least to me.

No corporation is going to fail to budget for equipment maintenence, 
upgrades as needed and whatever else it takes to maintain a system and 
make a profit while not paying out huge insurance premiums to their risk 
carriers for accidentally running planes into mountains, the ground or 
each other. 

This is in sharp contrast to the US system where congress can barely 
manage to look up from swilling from the corporate trough for reelection 
funds long enough to even appropriate salaries. Of course, our system has 
no long delays, and hasn't landed more the 3-4 planes on top of each 
other in the past 5 years (Detroit, LAX and... don't recall the third). 
Yup, safe as a government run operation can be. And look! no insurance 
premiums, we just milk the taxpayers a bit more in a bad year or not fund 
low-income child care... easy.

Heh.

Dave LeBlanc


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 30 17:15:43 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 17:15:43 -0400
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
References: <mailman.996447416.25799.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <upuai5da8.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim at zope.com> writes:

> Wise Solutions generously offered PythonLabs use of their InstallerMaster
> 8.1 system.  Every PythonLabs Windows installer produced to date used Wise
> 5.0a, and while that's done a great job for us over the years, some of you
> have noticed <wink> that it was starting to show its age.

BTW, I took the last post with a comment that this was coming to
decrease the need to investigate Inno - although I did find that ISX
(the extended version) could handle the unknowns in the iss you posted
about through its scripting option, but figured there's no need to
fight against a commercial (and close to what was already in use)
package like Wise with their offer.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 20:23:43 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:23:43 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>
 <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
 <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list at python.org>, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> writes
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:24:22 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> 
>> I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
>> typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
>> them explicitly.
>
>Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning integers
>into floats for years.
...
coercions and the like are a separate issue. the cos of 1.0 , 1/1 and 1
are all the same so it makes some sense to allow a conversion. 

The 1/2 == 0 case is just as good if not better than the 1/2 == 0.5
case, it's probably slightly worse than the rational result case, but we
have many languages which treat integer division like python currently
so I would argue that it has some extra merit.

We hear many criticisms of basic on this list, but Dartmouth basic was
originally a teaching language.  When I taught basic, C didn't exist and
Fortran, Algol and the like were considered too hard for non-programmer
university students.

The leadership seems to want to python become more available to a lower
grade of student than first year undergraduates.

I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.
Division in computers is always discrete (unless we ever manage to get
quantum things working).
-- 
Robin Becker


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 10:19:53 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:19:53 +0100
Subject: Most efficient solution?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8D@intrepid>

> From:	Jeffery D. Collins [SMTP:jcollins at boulder.net]
> > List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want
> included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> > do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I
> want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> > would be:
> > 
> > for eachItem in A:
> >     if eachItem in B:
> >         A.remove(eachItem)
> > 
> 
> How about: 
> 
> map(A.remove, B)
 
Clever! Unfortunately, it dies (giving a ValueError) if any of the tokens in
B are not present in A. Nasty, but how about:

map((A + B).remove, B)

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 14 02:28:22 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 06:28:22 GMT
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net> <3B4FBA91.6080200@webone.com.au>
Message-ID: <3b4fcf08.1857408271@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:20:49 +1000, simonb at webone.com.au wrote:

>right.
>I do this for lists:
>
> >>>def lprint(alist):
> >>>     for a in alist:
> >>>        print str(a)
>
>so that i don't get repr of elements.
>And it would be great to be able to write:
> >>> lprint alist
>just like print...
>
>Im not sure i understand the proposed resolution of
>leading '[' or '('...
>"print(1,2)" prints a tuple, so wouldn't
>you have to mark functions as "naked"
>so that a tuple would be sent as the first argument?
>
If there is a problem, it's not with print (1,2).
UIAM, print is recognized first as a special symbol
introducing a print statement. Unlike an ordinary
symbol, it is not optionally followed by a "trailer"
of (xxx) for function invocation, [xxx] for indexing,
or .NAME for attribute selection. E.g., print.NAME will get
you the same error as .NAME by itself (syntax error), not
an error that print doesn't have .NAME attribute.

Actually, now I'm thinking the change would have to be
in the 'power' term definition, to prevent gobbling multiple
lines with NEWLINE in trailer. Since you wouldn't be raising
a function body to a power, perhaps power could be changed from

    power: atom trailer* ('**' factor)*
to
    power: atom trailer* ('**' factor)* | atom trailer* arglist NEWLINE

power would then really be power_or_naked_call_ending_line
and trailer would be unchanged, which would allow you make naked
method calls too ;-) There would still be ambiguities to be resolved
in favor of the old 'clothed' call syntax.

> >>>def naked lprint(alist):
> >>>...
>
>Well, this sounds rediculous to me.
LOL, almost ROFL, when you say it ;-)

>what about:
>
> >>>def lprint alist:
> >>>...
>
I don't think you need special definition syntax. It's
not about the function itself, it's how you write the call.
And nothing should need to change about the old def or call
syntax.

The new thing would Just be that on a function call whose
normally parenthesized arg list ends the line, you'd have
the option of dropping the parens -- so long as the arg list
itself didn't start with '(' or '['.

'clothed' calls would still work as usual, because of
the precedence of the leading '('. Howver, you couldn't
make a naked call with a tuple or list as an argument. You'd
have to write foo((bar,baz)) or foo([bar,baz]). But then,
that's the way you have to write it now ;-) Conceivably,
if foo[bar,baz] produced a syntax error it would be re-interpreted
as a naked call to foo with a [bar,baz] list as argument, but
I'm not sure when that might happen.

In effect, it seems like print has a naked arg list by default,
instead of last resort.

>?
>Simon.
>
>
>Bengt Richter wrote:
>
>>Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:
>>
>>def pd(x):
>>    try:
>>        print x.__doc__
>>    except:
>>        print '(no doc string)'
>>
>>so that, e.g., I can type
>>
>>    pd(vars)
>>
>>and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
>>I would like to to type just
>>    pd vars
>>
>>Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?
>>
>>If not, would there be breakage if python were modified to make
>>
>>    foo whatever-up-to-EOL
>>
>>equivalent to
>>
>>    foo(whatever-up-to-EOL)
>>
>>when it would be a syntax error otherwise? I.e., I'm wondering
>>if the grammar could be modified to do this by changing trailer
>>to accept arglist NEWLINE if _all_ else fails, and treat a match
>>as if it was an arglist. Leading '(' or '[' ambiguity would be
>>resolved in favor of normal arglist or subscriptlist.
>>
>>
>



From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 19 16:30:31 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 13:30:31 -0700
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107191230.767b041d@posting.google.com>

I downloaded the Python-2.2a1.exe installer from SourceForge, and
verified that the MD5 sum is correct.  When I run it under Windows
2000 Professional [Version 5.00.2195], I get an error dialog that
says:

16 bit Windows Subsystem

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
CS:020c IP:0115 OP:0f 00 00 00 00 Choose 'Close' to terminate the
application.


Any ideas?


Tom


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 14 16:01:08 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:01:08 -0400
Subject: Activestate Python, not able to run "Module Documentation Server" on standalone computer
In-Reply-To: <3b507b2b.1396350535@news.mch.sni.de>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEHMKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Christian Aastorp]
> The Module Documentation Server is quite nice, I run it on my computer
> at work. But it fails when I try to run it at home with a message from
> the browser that its unable to go on-line.

pydoc.py had this problem on Win9X until we changed the code to use hostname

    localhost

instead of

    127.0.0.1

Apparently Win9X wasn't able to resolve the latter spelling without first
calling up your ISP to assure it there was no need to ask <wink>.

You *may* able to worm around this bu creating a hosts file with the line

127.0.0.1       localhost

See

     http://www.isgsp.net/misc/hosts.html

for instructions.




From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 12:24:08 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 20:24:08 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
In-Reply-To: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107012023430.325-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Mexican Bandit wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Wondering of anyone can help - Python newbie. I'm trying to write a
>Python cgi script which outputs a gif or jpg image from another
>server...
>
>----
>import urllib
>
>print "Content-Type: image/jpeg"
>print
>
>image = urllib.urlopen("http://127.0.0.1/splogo.jpg")
>print image.read()

import sys
sys.stdout.write(image.read())

>----
>
>The output of the image is corrupted. I suspect this is to do with
>'print' turning everything into strings?
>
>How do I output raw image data?
>
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From missive at frontiernet.net  Thu Jul 26 18:17:10 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:17:10 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: newbie threading question
References: <KYN77.7188$LP2.727977@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <9jq4t5$3j7a$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 05:33:30 GMT, douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
> this is a slightly modified version of a response from the other day using
> win32process.beginthreadex() instead of thread ...
> 
> # ------------------------------
> import win32process
> import time
> 
> def Func(id, numSecs, incBy):
>     val = 0
>     while 1:
>         print id, val
>         val = val + incBy
>         time.sleep(numSecs)
>         if val > 10: break
>     return 1
> 
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     a = win32process.beginthreadex(None, 0, Func, ("First thread", 1, 2), 1)
>     b = win32process.beginthreadex(None, 0, Func, ("Second thread", 1, 3),
> 1)
> # ------------------------------
> 
> is there anyway to capture the return value?  i need to run several
> simultaneous large computations, but i would like to capture the returns ...
> i think?  do i not? can anyone give some suggestions on where to look?
> 


Well... hmmm.

Both threads are printing to standard out, right?

You could have them preface their "return value" with a tag
and print it out before returning.

RT1: 1
RT2: 0
...

Then you could parse the output.

Seems like a good use for a pipe. Possible on win32? Don't know!



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Jul 17 17:50:16 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 17:50:16 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
In-Reply-To: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>
Message-ID: <oqr8vfcjjb.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[James_Althoff at i2.com]

> Plus the fact that Perl sucks.  (Just kidding.  (Well, not really.
> (Well, kinda, sorta))). ;-)

Perl was immensely useful to me.  Than Python came, which allows me to
write bigger projects, allowing them to be much more maintainable.  I'm very
grateful to Perl, believe me.  But I would resent being forced into using
Perl, now that I have something which I enjoy even more that I enjoyed Perl.

I'm still dreaming about an automatic Perl to Python converter.  Despite many
consider this is not possible, I stick with my naive impression we could
do something about it.  It could revolve around three parts: analysing Perl
into a tree, applying some tree-transformational engine using a specialised
language (I wrote a few such in my life), and producing final Python text.

Would you believe, this is the first step which looks most difficult to me.
Parsing Perl might not be that difficult after all, but its tokenizer is
extremely hairy, and rather discouraging.  If I could swallow that snake,
the rest would not necessarily be easy, but at least, it would be fun! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Tue Jul 24 12:53:08 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:53:08 -0700
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
References: <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DA7F4.ADB9E619@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> I was on a walk with my wife and dog yesterday.  Out of the blue I asked her
> "what's the result of five divided by two?"  After a little back-and-forth
> where she tried to figure out how I was trying to trick her and make her
> look foolish she answered, "two-and-a-half".  I then posed, "Suppose you
> have five pinecones and you want to clump them into groups of two.  What
> would you do?".  Her answer was, "Put two in the first group, two in the
> second group, and break the last pinecone in two so the third group would
> have two as well."
> 
> Can we represent that in Python's arithmetic operations somehow? :-)
> 
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> http://www.mojam.com/
> http://www.musi-cal.com/

Interesting math there.
5 pine cones give 3 groups of 2; giving 6 pine cones.  The produce
industry will love it.

-- 
Curtis Jensen


From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 26 09:03:48 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 06:03:48 -0700
Subject: Class with subclass and dynamic lists
References: <3B600A64.EC187E9@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>
Message-ID: <9jp4n3$t3h4$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I don't know exactly what you're trying to do here, but you are creating
instances that share class attributes.  Consider for example:

class Temp:pass

class A:
    attr = Temp()

class B:
    def __init__(self):
        self.attr = Temp()

a,b,c = A(), A(), A()
print id(a.attr)
print id(b.attr)
print id(c.attr)

a,b,c = B(), B(), B()
print id(a.attr)
print id(b.attr)
print id(c.attr)


Moving Temp() to the __init__ method in class B causes the instances to each
have their own new Temp instance.  In class A all instances share the class
copy of attr until/unless you specifically assign to it using something
like:


a = A()
a.attr = Temp()


HTH,
--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Piotr Legiecki" <piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl> wrote in message
news:3B600A64.EC187E9 at sci.pam.szczecin.pl...
> Hi
>
> I can't resolve my problem. Here is the test code
>
> class A:
>   x=[] #it will be list of B objects
>   z=None #something, doesn't matter
>
> class B:
>   y=None
>
>
> #this function adds to A object (arg) B objects with value val
> def f(arg, val):
>   for i in range(1,3): #to put some values into the list
>     arg.x.append(B())
>     l=len(arg.x)-1      #well, it is just added the last object in a
> list,
>     arg.x[l].y=val+i     #assign him somethig
>     print 'in f', arg.x[l].y # test
>     print l                   #test, here I can see, that my list in
> class A (x[]) is THE SAME for all the
>                         #A instances! Why?
>
> def main():
>   p=[]  #list of class A objects
>   p.append(A()) #make 2 objects of class A
>   f(p[0], 10)   #send object A, from list of A's objects (I hope) to add
> a list of B objects to A object
>   p[0].z='aaa'
>
>   p.append(A()) #second A object
>   p[1].z='bbb'
>   f(p[1],20)
>
> #testing, not good
>   print p[0].x[0].y
>   print p[0].x[1].y
>   print p[0].z
>   print p[1].x[0].y #here I have the same values as in p[0].x[0].y, why?
>   print p[1].x[1].y #why p[1].x is the same list for both (p[0], p[1]) A
> objects?
>   print p[1].z
>   print p[0].z
>
> main()
>
> --
> Regards
> Piotr Legiecki



From ken_chiba at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 22:44:29 2001
From: ken_chiba at hotmail.com (Ken)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:44:29 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
Message-ID: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

Just curious.  I'm with an ISP that allows running of scripts, and has
MySQL database access.  They have a perl API installed, but nothing to
support Python.  I was wondering if it was possible to just copy over
the MySQLdb directory from the site-packages area of Python, and just
"import" it into the scripts?

Is there any way to do this?

Thanks,

kc


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 02:00:17 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:00:17 +1200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4D3CF1.889B57BB@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)

I don't know what the mult function is there for,
since you're not using it in that example. All you
need is

  f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)

> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> 
> Isnt that easier??

It's a matter of taste. Some people like the ability
to write very trivial functions like your mult() in-line.
Others find it clearer to define them separately.
If you like the separate version better, feel free
to use it.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul 30 20:52:25 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 00:52:25 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <djn97.592006$eK2.125216739@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message

> > [x for x in fib() while x < 50]
>
> Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?

Similar to your idea, but takes an iterator:

def first(n,it):
    for i in xrange(n):
        yield it.next()

[ x for x in first(N,fib()) ]

This type of function could be written to take an iterator,
or a sequence, or even a generator.

..but I consider this unrelated to the question of allowing
'while' in a list comprehension.


> And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?

Not fuzzy at all!
(exclude, of course)

The 'while' condition would work just like the 'if' condition:
Only values for which the condition is true would be included.
The only difference is that 'while' would terminate the
comprehension the first time it's condition is false.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems like
a natural companion to the 'if' in a list comprehension.

The beauty of list comprehensions is that they
eliminate the drudgery of creating your own loop
just for the purpose of building a list.

The 'while' is list comprehensions looks just right to me.
It is easy to read and understand.


[ x for x in seq while x < 10 ]

means:

result=[]
for x in seq:
    if x < 10:
        result.append(x)
    else:
        break


This is just a tiny difference from the 'if' clause of a comprehension,
the only difference being the 'break'.

I don't see any really elegant alternative for implementing these
semantics..
( here's my try at it: )



## myresult = [ x for x in seq while x < 10 ]

def iter_while(it,test):
    while 1:
        val = it.next()
        if test(val):
            yield val
        else:
            raise StopIteration

myresult = [ x for x in iter_while(iter(seq),lambda x: x<10) ]



.. but this is, of course, pretty ugly.

( so let's have 'while' in list comprehensions! )







From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 13:25:08 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 10:25:08 -0700
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ipv9k$nda$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <V%337.677940$166.13952126 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>,
tyler spivey <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote:
>
>could you write a fast mud  in python? 
>having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?

Probably.  Depends what exactly you're trying to do.

>how many blind programmers use python? 

No idea.  Python is probably good for blind people because you usually
write less code in Python -- each statement in Python does more.

>and is python just a toy language?

No.

>can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?

Python is different from C.  Python programs to do equivalent work are
almost always shorter than C, but C makes it easier to do low-level
machine manipulation.  Note that it is very easy in Python to make calls
into C libraries.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 16:58:42 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:58:42 -0500
Subject: Driver finds 4' Python in hire car.
In-Reply-To: <cpitgg94bk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.996064604.22983.python-list@python.org>
        <cpitgg94bk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15199.13058.879236.213628@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30352,00.html>

    Guido> And in Fairfax County, home of PythonLabs no less! :-)

It's probably left over from Barry's last gig...

Skip



From pedro at athlet.de  Wed Jul 11 19:22:00 2001
From: pedro at athlet.de (pedro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:22:00 GMT
Subject: detect if file or dir
References: <3b4cd747.27470810@news.isis.de> <9iimn5$j3089$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3b4cdf86.29582467@news.isis.de>

>You'll find isfile and isdir in os.path

damn i overlooked it. thank you very much.




From thedustbustr at aol.com  Fri Jul 20 21:35:33 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 01:35:33 GMT
Subject: whats this mean?
Message-ID: <20010720213533.19217.00000446@ng-fb1.aol.com>

# BEGIN CODE BLOCK
try:
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    s.bind((HOST, PORT))
    s.listen(1)
    conn, addr = s.accept()
except socket.error, why: ## reference 1
    print "Server Error: " + errno.errorcode[why[0]] + ", " + why[1] ##
reference 2
    sys.exit(1)
# END CODE BLOCK

what does reference 2 mean?  what do those brackets do?  And for reference 1,
what will 'why' hold if an error occurs?

Thanks, Dustin


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Wed Jul 11 11:24:53 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:24:53 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bug in rfc822
In-Reply-To: <8UZ27.41897$F%5.2532623@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107111923100.17694-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Steve Holden wrote:
> > Playing with rfc822 is good, but i think mailbox.py has also several
> > problems. When you do mailbox.next(), the function return a rfc822.Message
> > but i wanted to use my class MyMessage, so i have to rewrite :
> >
> > class MyUnixMailbox(mailbox.UnixMailbox):
> >     def next(self):
[skip]
> > return MyMessage(mailbox._Subfile(self.fp, start, stop))
> >
> > Do you know of any prettier solution ?
>
> I've come across the same impedance mismatch myself, and adopted more or
> less the same solution. It would clearly be nice to be able to pass the
> mailbox's __init__() method an (optional, defaulting to rfc822.Message)
> class which that mailbox would then use when it was creating messages. The
> class would obviously need to comply with (a subset of) the rfc822.Message
> interface.
>
> Maybe this upwardly-compatible solution could be adopted for the rfc2822
> library?

   Have anyone of you looked into mailbox.py from Python 2.1? :) I
recommend to look there and find all your ni^H^Hdreams came true :)))

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 18 19:51:11 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:51:11 -0700
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B5620EF.95205289@alcyone.com>

phil hunt wrote:

> Python would still be deterministic if:
> 
> (a,b,c,d) = (1,2,3)
> 
> resulted in d being None

Raising an exception is just as "deterministic."

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Substance is one of the greatest of our illusions.
\__/ Sir Arthur Eddington
    Computer science / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/compsci/
 A computer science reference.


From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Tue Jul 24 05:16:36 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:16:36 +1000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995940101.6560.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jkrne$j2i$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995940101.6560.python-list at python.org...
>
> > If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
> > and similar in your code as I do - most of which I don't even know who
> > has it or who might have tweaked versions (and I know as an absolute
> > fact those warnings will either not be seen at all or will be ignored)
> > you'd be just as pissed of as I am.
>
> Pissed off at what?  Nothing has changed.  It's possible nothing will.
It's
> certain nothing will for half a year at earliest.  It's being discussed --
> or at least *was*, for a little while.

Assume that there's a problem with the operation currently represented by
the token "/". An undetermined (by me, certainly) fraction of the
Python-using population think that there isn't, but just for sake of
discussion here, assume there is.

The proposed solution (stop me if I'm wrong) involves modifying the
behaviour of "/".

There is obviously an installed base of code that relies on the current
behaviour of "/", such as the code above.

As someone who has had occasion in the past to fix and/or upgrade customer
code that has been working for years, until one day it didn't, can you
please discuss why it is seen as acceptable to break existing code like
this, rather than (for instance) simply introducing a new token (such as
"//") to do the "right" thing?

Note that in at least one instance that I can think of, I had to learn the
language on the spot (COBOL, if you're interested) to get things going. In
three years' time, if I had to learn Python on the spot under similar
circumstances, and I read the up-to-date documentation explaining the
(unbeknownst to me) "new" behaviour of "/", I could see myself in deep
water. Obviously the person who wrote the code knew what they were doing
when they used "/" at the time, and I would be *very* wary of the quick fix
of changing it to "//" because it seemed to work.

I am utterly mystified that such a thing should even be considered.

Clear discussion welcome.

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul 19 13:05:30 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 17:05:30 GMT
Subject: python newbie question
References: <mailman.995523452.14905.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j740q$6q6$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth donmalla at yahoo.co.in:
...
| However when I try to manipulate the list , using for loop like this :
|
| [3*x for x in vec]
|
| I get a syntax error "invalid syntax"
|
| Please help me. I am using Python 1.5 on Windows 2000.

If you need this to work, you will have to upgrade to a
more current version of Python.  In 1.5 there are no list
incomprehensions, so it's either

    a = []
    for x in vec:
        a.append(3 * x)

 or
    a = map(lambda x: 3 * x, vec)

 ("lambda x: 3 * x" is an anonymous function, not otherwise very
 useful in Python;  map is generally  map(fn, seq[, ...]) where
 fn accepts 1 parameter per seq, and it's usually easier and
 more readable to define an ordinary function.  Hope "lambda"
 is the only thing Greek about this.)

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul  1 12:49:23 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 16:49:23 GMT
Subject: Assignment vs. Naming/Binding (was Re: Augmented Assignement )
References: <mailman.993843884.4929.python-list@python.org> <ubsn7hte7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <AzH%6.4039$Z6.1921496@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <nwI%6.4066$Z6.1976456@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

I wrote

> Yes.  Understanding the difference is one of the major keys to
...

This is incomplete due to power outage .. not sure how got sent, was trying
to save to disk before battery backup expired .. will finish later ..
please ignore for now.




From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 18 14:34:33 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:34:33 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B55D6B9.3E2B933E@alcyone.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:

> I consider myself a member of the literate minority (well
> within the upper centile on all relevant demographics), and
> having a recently-invented typographic prettiness, such as
> letter-cd tcase, affect meaning, has always struck me as a deeply
> flawed idea.  I hated it when I first met it in C and Unix,
> and a quarter of a century hasn't reconciled me to it.

Makes perfect sense to me.  What's the point of having differing
capitalization if it isn't meaningful?

Otherwise every programmer can use their own capitalization for each
identifier, which is just confusing.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ When the solution is simple, God is answering.
\__/ Albert Einstein
    Computer science / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/compsci/
 A computer science reference.


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:46 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:46 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B639C.FF5961E7@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.995848837.9325.python-list@python.org> <k61olt001jfs878bo50snpb9f2uu80utee@4ax.com> <ogmolt014ukb5h52hgrq1klu64buvhrrod@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <fh0pltsme5g5ldq6f0825tn6r89jckqj29@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:11:10 GMT, Ben Wolfson
<rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org> wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:21:58 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>Integers are much more used in scripting code than floats - subscripts
>>and loop indices being the main culprits. Integer division happens
>>quite a bit. All that code is just going to suddenly stop working. How
>>nice.
>
>If integer division is more common than float division, why not let '/'
>retain its current meaning and use '//' for "yes, I want a float result"?
>int / int -> int
>float / int, int / float, float / float -> whatever these currently mean
>with "//" in Guido's patch
>int // int -> float, rational, or whatever

Suggested many times by many people - but no real answer yet. The only
counter with any noticable backing was that the language should be
dumbed down to the point where newbies and students never actually
learn anything - not quite worded like that, of course ;-)

The only application where a genuine need for some kind of change has
been shown is in numerics - the fear of dramatically wrong results
through the accidental use of integers. In that case the programmers
should be quite used to looking for potential accuracy and precision
problems since apparent identities don't hold exactly with float
approximations, and a small error in an intermediate result can cause
huge errors in final results whether division is used or not. They
should therefore be *expected* to have some knowledge and
understanding - that is their job - and they should be quite capable
of dealing with an alternate operator or some mechanism to explicitly
request coercion or whatever.  



From paulsid at home.com  Fri Jul 20 15:31:07 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:31:07 -0600
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <20010720100145.B27699@tux.distro.conectiva>
Message-ID: <3B5886FB.AB1E6DDF@home.com>

Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:

> Indeed, I don't think case-sensitiveness is something that will help
> non-programmers to get used to the language. You have so many factors
> to learn when you're starting, case sensitiveness will be just one more
> behavior of the language (not a wart at all).  

And I think if it is an issue, it's an extremely minor one at most. 
When I try to convey computer commands, URLs, etc. to those who don't
have much experience using computers, I often hear "all caps?", "all
lower case?", "capital P in print?", etc.  Even after saying "it doesn't
matter", people will often continue to type things in the way they've
seen them or the way they "think" they should be.  To me this suggests
that case-sensitivity is inherently present in most people, or at least
that people naturally associate computers and case-sensitivity anyhow.

> On the other hand, I
> think that, if you create a case-insensitive tool or command line option
> and let users get used to it, it'll take forever to learn how to program
> in sensitive mode.

Well, having come from BASIC (where such editors abound) to C I can say
that for myself at least there was no trouble.  Actually it was a relief
not to have the editor constantly fixing up my typing.  But of course
that doesn't prove anything...

However, one difference was that in the BASICs I grew up with their
editors were used by all but a tiny minority of the people programming
in them.  In Python people use all kinds of different editors, across
different platforms even.  IMO what will inevitably happen is that
people will be taught Python using a "helpful" editor and then sooner or
later have to start coping with more conventional editors that don't
bail them out.  

I think it's a small deal to be taught to work around a minor wart (if
case-sensitivity can indeed be called such a thing) from the beginning
but it's much more shocking to be "coddled" by an editor and then be
forced to adjust long after the fact.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!  Mon Jul 23 11:47:26 2001
From: vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.! (Kevin Riggle)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:47:26 -0500
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net>

You have to associate the file-type with the program.

Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File Types tab,
and click on New Type.

Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on the New
button beneath the Actions: list box.

Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
perform action:' to

"c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,

or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
%1",

in both examples *including* the double-quotes.

(I haven't actually used Python on Windows, so if the WinPy path is a little
off please forgive me.)

Hope this helps...  Kevin


"Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b5be641_3 at news.newsgroups.com...
> I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double clicks
> on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the file.
> What have I to do?
> This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.
>
> Janos Blazi
>
>
>
>
> -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----




From jonas.b at home.se  Fri Jul 13 13:53:17 2001
From: jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 10:53:17 -0700
Subject: Problems getting mod_python up n' running
References: <4e2ddb70.0107121317.4c883f6c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <4e2ddb70.0107130953.b2e7e4d@posting.google.com>

I still get the same error. Can anyone helt me?
Is there any other way to get python working under Apache under Windows 2000?

Thanks in advance!

/Jonas B

jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson) wrote in message news:<4e2ddb70.0107121317.4c883f6c at posting.google.com>...
> Hi,
> I can't get mod_python to work. I get this error message when I'm restarting
> Apache:
> make_obcallback(): could not import mod_python.apache.
> make_obcallback(): could not call init.
> And when I try to look at a .py page I get following error:
> [Thu Jul 12 03:33:12 2001] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] python_handler:
> make_obcallback returned no obCallBack!
> 
> What is wrong?
> I've got: Apache/1.3.19 (Win32) mod_python/2.7.4 Python/2.1
> Running under Windows 2000
> 
> I have put mod_python.dll.in E:\program\apache\modules and following rows to
> httpd.conf:
> #DSO section
> LoadModule python_module e:/program/apache/modules/mod_python.dll
> #under my main directory
>     AddHandler python-program .py
>     PythonHandler mptest
>     PythonDebug on
> 
> Furthermore I have put following files under
> e:\program\python21\libs\mod_python:
> __init__.py
> apache.py
> cgihandler.py
> httpdapi.py
> publisher.py
> util.py
> zhandler.py
> 
> And my environment path contains:
> E:\Program\Python21;e:\Program\Python21\libs
> 
> 
> What can be the problem?
> 
> TIA
> Jonas Bengtsson


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 06:08:26 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 11:08:26 +0100
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net>
Message-ID: <aqTHtgAaC+Y7Ew1s@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7 at edefod.net>, Timothy Gibson
<barewy at edefod.net> writes
>If you'll recycle Gilbert's printer with keypads, it'll biweekly 
>interface the thought.  Sometimes Alexandra will get the robot, and if 
>Samantha wistfully meets it too, the programmer will collaborate 
>outside the fast cybercafe.  My extreme PERL won't disconnect before I 
>push it.  He will engulf halfheartedly if William's plotter isn't 
>bizarre.  Go cry a protocol!  When will you save the chaotic 
>retarded zipdisks before Pilar does?  Jeff wants to know seemingly, unless 
>Chester infects machines within Evan's administrator.  Until 
>Jeff defiles the RAMs stupidly, Ann won't moan any solid cafes.  
>Where Frederick's discarded LAN outwits, Robette facilitates 
>in back of loud, plastic CIAs.  Otherwise the terminal in Jonnie's 
>librarian might prepare.  Try typeing the Back Orifice's dry 
>admin and Sherry will close you!  Who shoots undoubtably, when 
>Martin dreams the disgusting firewall in the mail server?  Don't try to 
>exclude the stacks wanly, eliminate them deeply.  As badly as 
>Robette reloads, you can negotiate the operator much more strongly.  
reads like somebody's been at the generative grammar engines again.
-- 
Robin Becker


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:44 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:44 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <%TW67.22987$B7.3756018@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <i3voltca29ai6vjoh93keh40js9hgjh80l@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:53:47 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
wrote:

>Right. If you want redesign the language to prevent programmers
>from creating bugs due to using the wrong numeric data types,
>then you're only hope is to eliminate all but one of the
>numeric types, and that numeric data type better do what
>everybody expects all the time.
>
>Can't be done.

But Perl had a good try...

I'm told "1" / 3 gives 0.333333333333333333 <giggles>



From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 18:16:27 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:16:27 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <vn_27.42062$F%5.2541404@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CD03B.1D5A30AE@engcorp.com>

Steve Holden wrote re BDFL and int/int:

> That fact that *I* was unable to convince you leaves me feeling somewhat
> chastened about the qualities of my own criticism, however :-)

Take heart: I suspect it was more than the one posting which had this effect!

Perhaps one could say Terry's posting represented a crystallization of a
number of concerns various people have had.  It worked for me too, and 
Guido's comments had previously already convinced me of the value of 
the change, in spite of my own concern of what it would mean in my area.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk  Wed Jul 18 03:48:16 2001
From: spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk (Radovan Garabik)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:48:16 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <00f3j9.hfp.ln@127.0.0.1>

Xu, C.S. <xucs007 at yahoo.com> wrote:
...
 : #!/usr/bin/env python
 : i = 2.5;
 : while i < 1e7:
 :        j = 2.5 * 2.5
 :        i += 1
 : print i, j

 : The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
 :        python script:  37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
 :        perl script:    15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
 :        java compiled:  1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
 :        C compiled:     0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%


time on my PIII 600:
34.32s user 0.17s system 97% cpu 35.259 total
I am surprised the difference is not bigger, I
thought I have much better processor :-)
(maybe it does not fit into cache? I have 256KB CPU chache,
python surely does not fit there, and if it ends up flushing the
cache all the time, it can explain the lack of improvement)
Could you post your perl script, so that I can make a comparision?

Modified script:

i = 2.5;
while i < 1e7:
    j = 6.25
    i += 1
print i, j
29.20s user 0.08s system 99% cpu 29.490 total

now, i += 1 must coerce 1 to real number. So I modified it like this:
i = 2.5;
while i < 1e7:
    j = 6.25
    i += 1.
print i, j
28.78s user 0.12s system 99% cpu 28.947 total
only a slight improvement
                
using a function:
def f():
        i = 2.5;
        while i < 1e7:
                j = 6.25
                i += 1.
        print i, j
f()

18.53s user 0.02s system 98% cpu 18.872 total
normalized to your timing, this would give
20.5 s for your computer. This is probably more
fair comparision to perl.

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!


From Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de  Tue Jul 24 10:51:45 2001
From: Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de (Sibylle Koczian)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:51:45 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995868520.32094.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5D8B81.FFFA51B8@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de>

Christian Tanzer wrote:
> 
> What's missing IMHO in this whole discussion is the question of costs
> and benefits. In all written languages, there are costs for the reader
> and a different set of costs for the writer. Normally, there is one
> writer for many readers -- therefore one should try to reduce the
> reader's costs. Unfortunately, many people completly disregard the
> reader and campaign for reducing the costs of the writer (the hotly
> contested reform of german writing rules is a prime example). For me,
> the goal of making Python case-insensitive is also too preoccupied with
> the writer's side of the game.
> 
Quite right. The campaign for abolishing most capitalization
("gemaessigte Kleinschreibung") in German is an even better example for
this.

There's something else missing: most of us, and especially occasional
programmers, write much more normal text than code - and all normal
writing _is_ case sensitive. Even if the meaning doesn't change,
practically everywhere one is right, the other wrong.

So I don't really think case sensitivity could be a stumbling block for
a real newbie - it may be a very small stumbling block for Algol60 /
Pascal programmers like me. But as long as I don't get hit by silent
assumptions about the value of my mis-spelled variable, it's not that
hard.

-- 
----
Dr. Sibylle Koczian
Universitaetsbibliothek , Abt. Naturwiss.
D-86135 Augsburg

Tel.: (0821) 598-2400, Fax : (0821) 598-2410
e-mail : Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.DE


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 18:13:33 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 18:13:33 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <9i7u7601c4p@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEPLKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]
> Don't you want to borrow Haskell's turning of an arbitrary binary
> function into an operator thus: x `div` y? :-)  OCaml recently did.

[Alex Martelli]
> One side advantage of adopting that in Python would be to
> remove the ugly equivalent `x` to repr(x)...:-) <ducks/>

I'm sorry, Alex, but `` is here to stay.  Guido is insanely fond of it!
Meaning no more than that he doesn't hate it <0.9 wink>.  I see something
like

    print ``1`+`2``

and to this day I still have no idea how Python manages to parse it
correctly.  Ah, and it took some doing *just* to see it:  in Courier New (my
usual code-reading font), the backtick is so insubstantial that I fiddled my
editor to scale it up by 150% and display it in bold.  Ugly as sin, but then
that the righteous can't overlook sin was the point <wink>.




From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul 29 19:45:37 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:45:37 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>              <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996447295.25645.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Be197.50329$EP6.11090353@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

I've been looking for a word for the unified Class-And-Type CATegory
and finally the answer leap out at me: the animal that always lands on
its feet, as I believe Python will.
(Think of it as ClAssyType if you prefer.)  So how does 'Python: the
CAT Language' grab people?

Humor aside: if not already taken, cats might make a better cover
mascot for our O'Reilly books than snakes, rats, or whatever.

Terry J. Reedy





From neila at nospam.moc  Tue Jul  3 20:36:53 2001
From: neila at nospam.moc (MegaHurts)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:36:53 -0700
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b426291$1_1@corp-news.newsgroups.com>

This strikes me as a thoughtfully done
set of benchmarks.

Now, if the rest of us can be thoughtful
as well in our USE of this information...

e.g., understanding: that "fast enough" is
enough; that speed and flexibility of
development is often more important than
whether a language has raw speed; that read-
ability and maintainability is often an im-
portant consideration; that the existance of
rich libraries and third-party functional
modules can be vastly more important than
running the Sieve of Eratosthenes 100 times
faster.

Finding a way, however subjective, to rate
THESE considerations would be an important
addition to any "language shootout," so
important as to be a necessity, I believe.

That said, I still enjoy reading benchmarks!



----- Original Message -----
From: Ben <b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:42 PM
Subject: Language Shootout


|
| http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

Ben <b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m> wrote in message
news:ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i at 4ax.com...
|
| http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/




From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 26 14:55:34 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:55:34 GMT
Subject: Opcode compatible division
References: <mailman.996084400.32614.python-list@python.org> <cpae1s935l.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b603e72.476839078@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:15:10 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig) writes:
>
>> I was wondering if it would be possible to add two new opcodes to the
>> VM language which I will refer to as ExactDivide and IntegerDivide and
>> keep the current opcode with its current behavior?
>> 
>> Even if there was no way in the actual language to generate the
>> CurrentDivide opcode, its existance would allow modules compiled and
>> distributed under the current system to continue to work with future
>> revisions.
>>
>> I haven't thought this through that much, so it may be a totally
>> stupid idea, but I thought it might fix some of the issues with
>> backwards compatibility.
>
>Check out my patch on SourceForge: it does exactly that.
>
>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=443474&group_id=5470&atid=305470
>

Is from future a one-way effect for the rest of the interpreter's execution?

I.e., one could conceive of pushing a fresh default state on a special (thread-owned?)
stack every time one opened a file for interpretation, and if the file contained a
from-future mod, just modifying the state topmost on the stack, and popping it when
done with the file.

The effect of alternate interpretation would persist in the compiled bytecode, as
made possible by new byte codes a la your patch. Compiling a string would be governed by the
current top of stack state, I would guess.

If pushing and popping this kind of state also became VM byte codes, byte code
containing an exec string could be properly affected.

One could imagine a version requirement operating on the topmost stack state similarly,
to implement per-file version compatibility mods, so long as the latest VM bytecodes
were a superset of older versions.

If from-future dynamically modifies the run-time to alter the meaning of byte codes,
rather than influencing the compilation to generate different byte codes for different
meanings, that would be different can of worms, I would imagine.

BTW, even though the version/compatibility issue is still steeped in the emotion of
the '/' discussion, I hope it can later be revisited as an important issue in itself,
whatever the anti-merits of using it as a '/' wart presever.

BTW2, I think Christopher's post is an interesting reminder that there's a
bottom-up as well as top-down aspect to all this.

BTW3 I expect generation of graminit.c could be automated on windows by setting
up custom build and dependency stuff in the relevant projects re the grammar files.
I've done it for a similar situation with flex. I don't see why you couldn't
run pgen in a similar way. Of course, pgen has to be built first.



From arildh at stud.cs.uit.no  Tue Jul  3 09:56:38 2001
From: arildh at stud.cs.uit.no (Arild Hansen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:56:38 +0200
Subject: Python for wav file control?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031554260.21451-100000@arildh.pasta.cs.uit.no>

Hello,

As this seems to be one of the more successfull header layouts for the
moment, I'll try it too. I still have problems recording wav files in
python using the pyEsd module and built in wave module. I do not want to
use third-party applications or snack. If anyone has a good example, I'll
appreciate it a lot. I use python 2.0 under Linux.

AH



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 05:06:17 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:06:17 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list at python.org>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at digicool.com> writes
...
>
>I thought again about the merits of the '//' operator vs. 'div'
>(either as a function or as a keyword binary operator), and figured
>that '//' is the best choice: it doesn't introduce a new keyword
>(which would cause more pain), and it works as an augmented assignment
>(//=) as well.
...
it just looks awful as well as annoying those who don't want this
change.
-- 
Robin Becker


From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul 22 20:55:58 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:55:58 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
Message-ID: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

During the debate on changing int/int to give a float result, some
proponents appeared to question the usefulness of integer quotients.
Opponents of the change gave calculation of array indexes, including
graphics pixel coordinates, and 'combinatorics' as example uses.  I
here present an particular example of a combinatorial use extracted
from the recent thread on partitions.

Problem: what are the ways to distribute n items among k unlabelled
bins, with each bin getting at least 1 item.

Extreme uneven answer: put n-(k-1) items in 1 bin and 1 item in each
of the other k-1 bins.  The largest bin in a partition has at most
n-k+1 items.

Extreme even answer: put n/k items in each bin and 1 more in each of
n%k bins.  The largest bin in a partition has at least (n/k + (n%k
>=1)) items, which is more efficiently calculated as  (n+(k-1))/k.  If
we use a descending range, then we subtract 1 to get (n-1)/k for use
in
range((n-k+1), (n-1)/k, -1).

With these limits on the largest bin and the additional constraint
that bins be filled in monotonically decreasing size order, there is a
straightforward recursive algorithm, which I posted in the partition
thread.  While there are other algorithms (some posted), this one, at
least, which is pretty easy to understand, depends on
quotient-remainder thinking to get the proper lower limit.

--------------------

What does this have to do with PEP238 and the proposed change?  When I
thought some people were arguing simply to change int/int to give a
float (with no new alternative for an int result), I was adamantly
opposed.  I really want Python to remain 'executable pseudocode' so I
and others can write and publish such algorithms in Python with
concise standard or near-standard syntax, without resort to a
non-standard circumlocution like divmod((n+(k-1)), k)[0]  or a
distracting and inefficient roundtrip to float and back.

When Guido said he really wanted to make a change *and* that he would
look favorably on an infix substitute, I muted my opposition and wrote
'Language Change and Code Breaks' to clarify what was needed to make
such a syntax replacement successful.  I will not mind too much
writing (n+(k-1))//k, which is my preferred alternative.  It should
not be too hard to explain to a non-Python audience that '/' is
calculator decimal-result division while '//' is truncating
whole-number-quotient division.

Terry J. Reedy





From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 17:04:28 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:04:28 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <3B49F9EC.CA10886A@yahoo.com> <kPn27.2200$z21.433251@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3B4A1AE3.BB23C0E1@yahoo.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Paul Winkler wrote:
> > I think test suites would be a very, very good idea. At a minimum, some doctest
> > examples. Even better would be a well-defined suite of unit tests using the
> > unittest module.
> 
> if you think tests using one support module is automatically better
> than tests using another support module, you have a lot to learn
> about testing...
> 
> </F>

Sorry, I didn't say what I meant.
I don't really care _how_ testing is done.

I also should not have implied that the existing library is not adequately
tested; I have no basis for thinking that.

I based my suggestion (doctest at minimum, preferably unittest) on the note at
the end of the documentation for doctest:

"""
The first word in doctest is "doc", and that's why the author wrote doctest: to
keep documentation up to date. It so happens that doctest makes a pleasant
unit testing environment, but that's not its primary purpose. 

Choose docstring examples with care. There's an art to this that needs to be
learned -- it may not be natural at first. Examples should add genuine value
to the documentation. ...
"""

So for more thorough testing of things that don't belong in the documentation, I
thought unittest.py might be a worthy candidate. After all, that's what it's
designed for, and it's already in the standard library.

I should have said "Yes, testing is a good idea, let's have some standards for
that", and then I should have shut my mouth.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 19 13:51:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:51:20 -0400
Subject: float to str help
References: <9j6tva$9mb@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <z4F57.28268$sx2.1598103@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Bryan Webb" <bww00 at amdahl.com> wrote in message
news:9j6tva$9mb at dispatch.concentric.net...
> Hi,
>     In converting a float (5.661706091586558e+240) to a string using str()
I
> come up with 5.6617060916+240 . I checked the string variable in the
> debugger. I need the full precicsion. I know its probably simple but this
> red hair is causing me problems.
>
Using string formatting will give you as much precision as is available. Of
course there is no guarantee that the interpreter will have been able to
represent your literal exactly as a floating point number, though it will
get pretty close:

>>> x = 5.661706091586558e+240
>>> print "%.25e" % x
5.6617060915865581000000000e+240
>>>

This isn't just because of the number of digits in your literal. The same is
true of many "apparently simple" numbers:

>>> y = 0.1
>>> print "%.25e" % y
1.0000000000000001000000000e-001
>>>

Conversion of decimal constants to binary floating-point is by its nature
often bound to be inexact, as these two examples show.

Hope this helps.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 18:40:12 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 22:40:12 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>

>Correctness: Consider the following function:
>
>def f(x):
>  x += (1, 2, 3)
>  print x

What do you think of:

def f(x):
	x = x + (1,2,3)
	print x

?

C//




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  1 03:51:10 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 09:51:10 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993832966.21120.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993927046.4577.python-list@python.org> <4Dp%6.408588$oc7.55997471@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <mailman.993961921.6174.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hmktf0jtm@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.993961921.6174.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> > Bad idea.  If anything, I would go the other direction and make it
illegal
> > for mutable types.  ...
>
> This is the argument that froze augmented assignments in their tracks
> for years. I was somewhat surprised when they finally made it in because
> it was always clear in the discussions that any behaviour would confuse
> about half of the population. That's usually where Python Refuses To
> Choose.

Usually but not always, or we'd lack any way to divide integers, we'd
be neither case-sensitive nor insensitive, &c:-)


Alex





From phd at phd.fep.ru  Wed Jul 11 09:30:36 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:30:36 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5231@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107111726250.17694-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> That is a good point.  Why are some open source and free efforts popular and
> others not?  Apache is popular because it was the only thing going at the
> time, and now it runs 60 per cent of the world's servers.  Linux started out
> as a one man show, and became popular because it's a free Unix system, and
> Unix is much better then Win doze.  And Perl came bundled with Unix, so when
> CGI first came around, Unix Administrators were called upon to write CGI
> modules.  And yes -- Java is the precious child of Sun -- and Sun has gotten
> other major players, such as IBM and Oracle, to support the J2EE
> infrastructure.  Now if only Python can have a lucky break.

   By some strange magic industry and/or society always choose a worst
available solution. Consider x86 architecture, Windoze, Perl, Java, GNOME
and KDE.
   Python is just too good to win. Long live Python!

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 04:35:26 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 09:35:26 +0100
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <qdtkltkq0laslmur3dmdrot05dd0bmi3ev@4ax.com>

On 21 Jul 2001 23:56:40 GMT, thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
wrote:

>I'm trying to split the following string called data into four variables:
>
>:Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!
>
>(so data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!') with an outcome of:
>
>sender='Angel'
>command='PRIVMSG'
>rcpt=Wiz'
>message='here is my message!'
>
>Unless my logic is flawed, this should return 'PRIVMSG':
>
>sender='Angel'
>print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
>
>It prints '' (an empty string).  Is my logic flawed, or does Python dislike a
>string splice determined by a function?

A string slice takes start and end positions - not start and end. The
positions are *between* character positions - or you could see the
range as including the start character but excluding the end
character.

For example...

>>> x="abcde"
>>> x[1:4]
'bcd'

Where the character positions are...

  a b c d e
 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
 | | | | | |
 0 1 2 3 4 5

Taking that into account, your find function should search the whole
of data - not the slice of data that it is searching at present.

>And if you are up to it, feel free to help me splice (correct terminology,
>parse?) for variables rcpt and message ;)

Closer to lexical analysis (scanning - identifying keywords, numbers,
symbols etc) than parsing, though in context 'parsing' is a reasonable
word. Splice means gluing the bits back together again.

Anyway, try the following...

#################
import string

data=":Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!"

# Separate header and body using split, discarding unwanted initial
# string of characters prior to first colon

(header,body) = string.split (data, ":") [1:]

# Or alternately, remove the initial colon before the split like
# this...
#
# (header,body) = string.split (data [1:], ":")

# Now separate the header fields - any whitespace is the default split
# seperator (even multiple spaces in a row count as a single
# separator)

(sender,command,rcpt) = string.split (header)


print "header  : ", header
print "body    : ", body
print
print "sender  : ", sender
print "command : ", command
print "rcpt    : ", rcpt
#################

The result I get is...

header  :  Angel PRIVMSG Wiz
body    :  here is my message!

sender  :  Angel
command :  PRIVMSG
rcpt    :  Wiz



Hope that helps.



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Thu Jul 26 23:44:27 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:44:27 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996120946.2459.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <spo1mtsajq7lfk1j1srrbsplmu8oojo6gd@4ax.com>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:14:11 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>
>> I'm keeping a close eye one QKS at the moment for just that reason.
>
>If they're developing a faster version of Python, great.  Or you mean you
>want "a fast language" regardless of brand?  Then I don't know why you're
>waiting for QKS.  It shouldn't really be a challenge to find a $300
>two-platform language that runs faster than Python <wink>.

They've developed a general purpose Virtual Machine which happens
to run Python quite a bit faster than Python's. 

C//



From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:17:44 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:17:44 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <270c68fe.0107121546.249b9efa@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E4C38.48EC8DCB@engcorp.com>

Alan Green wrote:

> Until it reaches the mythical "mindshare critical mass", Python is
> going to have to take over the world just one project at a time. For
> those of us who want to work in Python in the typical IT shop, this
> means doing some advocacy.
> 
> To be an effective advocate of Python, you need to:
> 
> a) deeply understand what the people you are advocating to understand,
> b) have the respect of the people you are advocating to, and
> c) deeply understand why Python is better at the kinds of problem
> being solved, and be able to express it.

> I plan for the process to take 12 months before expecting to see
> significant results. And remember: it might not work, but then again,
> there is no fun in a guarantee.

Well said (and having done something like this I can tell you
it is quite true).

In my case, I had the great fortune to have a "perfect" pilot project,
which would have taken significant time in another language but
which in Python was completed inside of a month by a co-op student
who had never heard of the language before.  (One week to learn it
well enough to start in earnest, one week to develop the 
requirements in enough detail to begin, one week to write the bulk
of the code, one week to test and polish prior to the demonstration.)

I strongly recommend picking an appropriate pilot project and
using this to help with the three items above.  Watch your
audience closely during the demonstration (or whatever equivalent
happens to be handy), carefully manage scope creep to prevent
the pilot project from becoming an extended prototyping nightmare
(thus ensuring completion on time and gaining the respect of your
"advocatees"), and watch carefully to learn just where Python is
extremely effective and where it is just better than average,
and where it doesn't quite perform as well as some other option.

Almost everything I know about Python in terms of its suitability
for different tasks and its problem areas I learned during this
short project (over a year ago).  This is not a language which
hides its inner nature from view.

It helps to have management which is either so preoccupied with
other problems or so forward-looking and courageous that they are
willing not only to go ahead with the pilot project, but willing
to accept the results and take a path away from the traditional
approaches.  (I have to admit I had more the former kind than 
the latter...  :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From rjh at 3-cities.com  Tue Jul  3 10:57:27 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 07:57:27 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994084684.19932.python-list at python.org>...
> ... Most people do not expect these four
> expressions to yield different results:
> 
> 1.0/3.0
> 1/3
> 1.0/3
> 1/3.0

I completely disagree, and as someone who has taught math, science and
programming, it is quite clear to me that the distinction between integer
and real arithmetic is an essential concept.

> ... Why is automatic coercion *ever* necessary? 

Mixed type expressions are almost inevitable.  It would take a much 
larger reworking of the Python numerical model than proposed by
PEP-0238 to do away with that.  The existence of the standard 
__coerce__ method illustrates the importance of such expressions.

> >      For instance, the new proposal sensibly does not suggest that lists
> >      should support real indices,
> 
> 	That might well be an implication of PEP 228.

I might accept an argument that says that anything that coerces 
(automatically!) to an integer with no loss of precision can be 
used to index a list.  But how to distinguish between 1, 1+eps 
(eps=machine precision), and 1.1?  How many elements are there
between elements [1] and [2]?


> >      ... however simple expressions such
> >      as a[i/3] would have to be coded as a[int(i/3)] or a[i//3]
> >      in order to be sure to avoid a type error.
> 
> You mean that you would have to say exactly what you mean according to
> the new syntax. That's hardly a legitimate argument against the syntax.
> "If you add a 'function' keyword, I would have to precede my function
> calls with it." Well, yeah, that's the point of adding new syntax.

My point was rather poorly made.  The new
proposal has simply moved the point at which people need to understand
the distinction between real and integer arithmetic.  Currently it must
be understood when the operation is performed.  In the new proposal it
must be understood when the result of the operation is used.


From krag_rao_pyt at rediffmail.com  Wed Jul 25 01:31:45 2001
From: krag_rao_pyt at rediffmail.com (raghu k rao)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 05:31:45 -0000
Subject: http 
Message-ID: <20010725053145.31033.qmail@mailFA9.rediffmail.com>

hello
i have written a code using httplib and urllib to get data -- home page 
and for posting request respectively from a server to login into my mailbox .
while posting iam also sending some values like "input type hidden " .
i do successfully get the  home page of the server (yahoo) that i am 
sending my http 'GET' request but i get the following response 

We need to use "cookies" to identify u on our system.....
.................
.........


how do i make modification in my program to ACCEPT COOKIES  from a server and at which instance i shall do this either at the first 'GET' request 
when requesting for the home page of at the 'POST' request  in my case urlopen or both the times 

kindly help 
regards raghavendra.

_________________________________________________________
For Rs. 20,00,000 worth of Aptech scholarships click below
http://events.rediff.com/aptechsch/scholarship.htm






From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 16:14:26 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:14:26 -0700
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E4E4F9.13142627072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list at python.org>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:

> I prefer the
>       terminology to be slightly awkward if that avoids unambiguity.

Yes, avoiding unambiguity is very important...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 09:40:17 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:40:17 +0200
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994939340.22056.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ik9c101mk@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Michael Chermside" <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994939340.22056.python-list at python.org...
> >>> class Eval:
> def __getitem__(self, key):
> return eval(key)
>
>
> >>> foo = 3.0
> >>> spam = 5.0
> >>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
> 0.6
> >>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
> 0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000
> >>>
>
> Now THAT'S a wierd-but-cool hack! Very powerful and flexible, and
> simple enough to use. It should definitely be added to the cookbook.
> It does, unfortunately, have one significant limitation: the expression
> cannot contain the character ")", which is one you'd like to use in
> expressions.

How so...?

>>> class Eval:
...   def __getitem__(self,key): return eval(key)
...
>>> print "2+2 is %(2+2)s"%Eval()
2+2 is 4
>>> print "(2+2)*3 is %((2+2)*3)s"%Eval()
(2+2)*3 is 12
>>>


Alex





From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 10 23:32:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 03:32:24 GMT
Subject: 'Blade of Darkness' demo has open Python source
Message-ID: <cNP27.13552$Y6.4409459@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

In a recent thread on game programming in Python, someone mentioned that
the commercial game Severance: Blade of Darkness is scripted in Python.  I
recently installed it off a demo CD.  While I could not play too far due to
having only half the required video memory, I was surprised and pleased to
discover that it included open Python source:  not frozen .exe, not
compiled .pyc, but notepad-readable .py files.  Besides the compiled .dll
engines, there is a directory of animation scripts, a directory of utility
files (such as a lever class in lever.py), a directory of actual game
scripts, and some others.  The code is not the most efficient possible, but
clear enough.  (A few files have Spanish names and comments, but most are
straight English).  An aspiring Python game programmer could probably learn
a bit from purusing them more than I did.

The 100 MB download is available from several sources reachable thru
http://www.codemasters.com/severance/ .

Terry J. Reedy





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul  3 18:35:32 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 18:35:32 -0400
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u3d8d1w0b.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:
> 
> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
> >> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
> >> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
> >> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
> >
> >Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
> >to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
> >manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?
> 
> Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
> development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
> have COM for whatever is in their system.

Um, I don't necessarily agree about the breakdown of Python users.

But you should realize that the reason I pointed this out is that your
statement above implies that _you_ (or at the very least your
colleagues) are working under Windows, or else they wouldn't be
comparing to ASP/IIS and ADO recordssets (which are Windows only).

If that's not true, then they are comparing apples to oranges, and the
difference is the Unix versus Windows/COM models, which has little to
do with Python or its database access methods. :-)

> We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
> to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
> purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.

Then I'm having trouble seeing the lack of satisfaction of your
colleagues having anything at all do with Python, and more to do with
a lack of satisfaction with a missing object model under Linux that
they liked under Windows.  In other words, I don't think the problem
here is a Python database related issue.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 20:41:44 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:41:44 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996095454.10224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fhpult0jq2nijpddfehe65m3vr7q91m7to@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:09:09 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>[Guido van Rossum]
>> ...
>> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
>> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

I would gladly shell out hefty developer fees for a Python which performed
within a small order of magnitude C speeds. I'm keeping a close eye one
QKS at the moment for just that reason. At work, I'd easily pull strings for
a $1000 developer platform to do this; at home, I'd be willing to spend about
$250.

I know I'm not alone.

You Python Labs dudes have lost sight of a major impediment to the maturation
of Python, IMO. And if the QKS folks are getting the performance improvements
they say they are, it would appear that the allegation that Python speed was
dependent on a first-class type system was just plain wrong.

Don't you guys work on Python all day long? I can only _dream_ of such a
privelege.

C//



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Mon Jul 30 15:18:51 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:18:51 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <3B65A033.2AAC226A@home.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301238260.28123-100000@bms>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Chris Barker wrote:
> Bruce Sass wrote:
>
> > I see __past__ as one last chance to easily check your code to see if
> > the associated feature upgrade broke it, after that it is either fix
> > the code or have it depend on an older Python.
>
> Which is exactly why I think a way to indicate that code depends on a
> older Python is important!

The best you could expect though is an indication of which version(s)
of Python the code has been tested with (the worst is completely bogus
info!, but that depends on the implementation).  A program that could
look at a .py and determine which versions of Python it looks like it
will run with would be good, and more likely to do what you want for a
larger amount of wild code.

I don't dispute the utility of knowing something about which versions
of Python a program has been used with, I just don't think there is
enough utility to warrant adding code to Python to accomplish it
[additional worry: someone would then want Python itself to know about
 all its previous versions and the incompatibilities between them, so
 it could dispatch the program off to the `best' interpreter for that
 program (lots of platform and flavour specific code?)].


- Bruce




From grakker at softhome.net  Tue Jul  3 17:25:48 2001
From: grakker at softhome.net (grakker)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 14:25:48 -0700
Subject: missing setfirstweekday in calendar module
References: <56817b75.0107021223.39a661ae@posting.google.com> <B7668E49.13B8B%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <56817b75.0107031325.59061899@posting.google.com>

David Goodger <dgoodger at bigfoot.com> wrote in message news:<B7668E49.13B8B%dgoodger at bigfoot.com>...

> (BTW, I added setfirstweekday() and other improvements to calenday.py, and
> I'm glad somebody is getting use out of it.)

Thank you for the tip and the work that you put into it.


From ibarona at tid.es  Wed Jul 18 09:59:25 2001
From: ibarona at tid.es (Isaac Barona)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:59:25 GMT
Subject: Problem with ioctl call
Message-ID: <3b559471.1322770038@tid>

Hi all,

I am trying to do a multi-platform serial port library in python
(linux and win95 at the moment) that I hope to release next week.

In linux, I get the following error when using an ioctl call to get
then number of bytes waiting to be read:

>>> tty.inWaiting()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "SerialPort_linux.py", line 179, in inWaiting
    n=fcntl.ioctl(self.__handle, TERMIOS.TIOCINQ)
IOError: [Errno 14] Bad address


Any help???

This happend with python 2.0.1 and python 1.5.2 over linux 2.0.34.


From Armin_member at newsguy.com  Mon Jul  2 06:14:54 2001
From: Armin_member at newsguy.com (Armin Steinhoff)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 03:14:54 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <9hphiu0dks@drn.newsguy.com>

In article <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>, "Edward says...
>
>I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>
>Python still doesn't have good database support,

IMHO ... if something is dead, then it's your perception :)

Here some database links ... out of the reality.

http://www.oraclepower.com/isapi/orapower.dll?AID=SC&CAT_ID=1166
http://starship.python.net/crew/sturner/informixdb.html
http://object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/
http://www.druid.net/pygresql/
http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/Products/MySQLdb
http://www.python.org/topics/database/DatabaseAPI-2.0.html
http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html
http://www.ziclix.com/zxjdbc/
http://www.chordate.com/gadfly.html
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/luiforra/gvib/
http://www.equi4.com/metakit/python.html
http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/

Armin

>nor has it grown to be
>useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
>mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
>space.
>
>It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
>write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
>manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
>making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language at
>eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.
>
>Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
>best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
>largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
>or otherwise).
>
>It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
>attempts poetry.
>
>--Ed
>
>
>
>



From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul  9 15:01:08 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 12:01:08 -0700
Subject: Writing documentation
References: <mailman.994690455.6338.python-list@python.org> <3B49DB28.F9955406@dennis-voss.de>
Message-ID: <3B49FF74.A45F2263@home.net>

Dennis Voss wrote:
> > I'd like to document my Python modules in the same way the standard
> > modules are documented, with LaTeX and the Python styles and things. It's
> > not exactly a howto, and it'l look a lot like a mini-library reference,
> > right? So how do I compile it? How do I generate all the nifty HTML?
> 
> Take a look at:
> http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/writing.html
> 
> They are using LaTeX (why not docbook?)

Because this was started before docbook was as common as it is now, and
because LaTeX is an excellent tool.

> for doing so.
> There are tools in every TeX distribution for generating PS, PDF, HTML ...

Well, sort of. The Python docs generating set-up works great on *nix,
but not really on other systems. However, this doesn't mean you can't
use it elsewhere. generating the the LaTeX, and the PS and printed (and
probably pdf, you could build this from the PS anyway) verison you could
do anywhere. Getting Tex2html to work is another matter. Do take a look
at:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/doc/doc.html

For more info. Don't be put off by the LaTeX, it is an excellent tool,
and with the existing docs as a template to work from, not that hard to
learn to use. YOu may grow to love it!

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul 11 11:37:52 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 08:37:52 -0700
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <mailman.994846878.32177.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ihrsg$d26$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.994846878.32177.python-list at python.org>,
Bruce Sass  <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
>> stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:
>>>
>>> I'll just quote:
>>>
>>>    This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
>>>    documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by the
>>>    compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September 1999)
>
>I'd be more interested in hearing if Mr. da Silva has changed his
>mind in the last few years.

Peter?  Change his mind?!  Surely you jest.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From Ronan.Viernes at onsemi.com  Tue Jul 31 02:39:39 2001
From: Ronan.Viernes at onsemi.com (Ronan Viernes)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 23:39:39 -0700
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
Message-ID: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>

Environment:

SuSE Linux 7.1 with 2.2.18 Kernel
Python 1.5.2
PIII IBM Desktop

1. Is it normal for threads on LINUX to have their own process id
thereby displayed in "ps -ef"? In AIX/HP, this is not the case right?

2. How do i exit gracefully from a thread? After exiting the thread,
is the thread 'process' automatically closed? I noticed in our system
that after exiting the thread, the 'process' are still present as
evidenced by the "ps -ef" .

Any help will do. Thanks.


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 10:15:32 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:15:32 -0700
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsk9c$fl3ec$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

import os
for file in os.listdir(dirpath): print i

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994168205.8845.python-list at python.org...
> Can anyone share a short code example of how to access all the programs in
a
> Unix directory, put them into an array, and print them out in Python?
Here
> is the code I have to do it in Perl (please forgive the harsh language).
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> #use Net::FTP;
> opendir (TEMP, '/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
>   or die "Can't open current directory.";
> @files=join(',',grep(!/^\.\.?$/, readdir TEMP));
> closedir TEMP;
> print "\n";
> print @files;
> print "\n";
>
>




From ajp at fudokai.org.uk  Tue Jul 10 08:31:14 2001
From: ajp at fudokai.org.uk (CyberKat)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 05:31:14 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994713616.26838.python-list@python.org> <3B4A66D3.AD4B29D9@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <c250fb6e.0107100431.8a46d83@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B4A66D3.AD4B29D9 at engcorp.com>...
> Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
<snip>
> 
> I recommend a persistent onslaught of griping about current tools,
> constant pointing out of how superior Python would be in a given problem
> situation, projections that a new development could take M months of work
> in a more typical language but only N months were it written in Python,
> whining at the difficulty of maintaining code in another language,
> and periodic forwarding of links and articles showing how companies
> with more cohones than yours are achieving significant successes with
> Python (especially any near competitors).
> 
<snip>

Nice - I just have to find the _time_ to learn Python well enough to
point out where and how it's better - I like the look and concepts of
Python (tho' I'd like some sort of strong typing option [constrictor
maybe ;-) ] ) but I just don't have enough hours on the d**n day to
get deep enough into it. Like any other language it's not until you're
deep into a major app with it that you find out its strengths and
weaknesses.
Alan


From nospam at nospam.de  Sat Jul 21 16:16:25 2001
From: nospam at nospam.de (Uwe Hoffmann)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:16:25 +0200
Subject: re and multiline strings
References: <9jcn5i$3lo0$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <3B59E319.98400DD0@nospam.de>

Lee Harr wrote:
> 
> >>> t = 'aaazbbbycccc\nccccc\n'
> >>> p = re.compile('(.*?)z(.*?)y(.*)')

p = re.compile('(.*?)z(.*?)y(.*)',re.S)


From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  2 01:38:35 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:38:35 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107012301380.5806-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107020923470.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Bruce Sass wrote:

> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:
> 
> > "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
> > news:bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15 at posting.google.com...
> > > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> <...>
> > Just an amusing parallel... A snippet from the current JDK
> > (Java) license:
> >
> > --- begin ---
> > 8.1 Licensee acknowledges that Licensed Software may contain errors
> > and is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction,
> > operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility ("High Risk
> > Activities"). Sun disclaims any express or implied warranty
> > of fitness for such uses. Licensee represents and warrants to Sun
> > that it will not use, distribute or license the Licensed Software for
> > High Risk Activities.
> > ---- end ----

;-)

Does Microsoft license says something similar?
BSOD at nuclear plant could be more than metaphora...
 
> You see the same sort of thing with electronics components, the
> manufacturer doesn't want to be responsible when someone's
> home-brewed-from-off-the-shelf-parts EKG experiment goes wrong.
> 
> Has Python made a list of software approved for air traffic-control
> use, or is there no such thing for atc software?

I think it is not a problem of Python or other software:
whatever you use, just make it doubled or tripled!

For example, have different OSes with different programs
in different languages.

When programming critical system, I have found that simpler
things work better:

- database could fail while filesystem mapped database will work
- small independent scripts fail much less frequently than
monolithic apps (and failures are more easily tracked down)
- CLUI programs with web-interface work better than GUI programs

(by better I mean availability)

Do not forget human error factor. Check user input.

If your system is built of isolated cells with lots of try-except
it could float whatever happens to it's parts.

Also, do not forget to design your app in a way that allows you
to modify you application at runtime. 
This could be done by making app a set of scripts/programms
or by using Python abilities to reload modules at runtime.

*

Said this, I think core Python is ideal for this sort of app:
you can mend it at runtime and logic of the app is made simpler
by the Python syntax. (Code could be easily revised by 
specialists other than programmers, for example:

for plane1 in planes:
  for plane2 in planes:
    if plane1 != plane2:
      if distance(plane1, plane2) < safe_distance:
        alert_operator("....")

will be understandable to any English language reader.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 20:29:16 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:29:16 -0400
Subject: Large-scale Python (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list@python.org> <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B65FBDC.F8B92DA2@engcorp.com>

Cameron Laird wrote:
> Without contesting any of Paul's larger points, what
> are the facts here?  I believe:
> * Python is good for team-work
>   and big projects; and
> * There is increasing recogni-
>   tion and use of Python in
>   this role.
> What role has "language change" played in this, though?

To the extent that language changes have made the language
more self-consistent and easier to learn in other ways,
these changes might increase its suitability for work 
requiring team-work.  I'm thinking of the great ease
we've had integrating new people into the team, without
ever once asking for "Python" to appear on a resume.

With any other language, I would have been much more 
nervous hiring on people who looked under the table for 
the snake when I first mentioned the language we use... ;)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Wed Jul 25 17:05:21 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:05:21 GMT
Subject: http
References: <mailman.996038983.5187.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m33d7kbtxt.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

You need to grab the cookies from the headers of the retrieved
webpage, (headerline starting with Set-cookie), and then when you
compose the answer, urllib.URLopener has a function addheader where
you put in the headers telling the server which cookies you have.. 

Basically, the order for yahoo is something like
     * Post your form
     * You will receive a redirection status with cookies in 
       the header
     * get the page redirected to (groups.yahoo.com) and send the
       cookies to the server.. 
     * Now you can navigate around with the cookies on yahoo and 
       read your mail, access your groups.. 

By chance I am actually playing around with an yahoo client, using my
own http and socket modules, a first getting started can be found at:

        http://flognat.myip.org/hacks/yah.tgz

        /Andy

/ "raghu k rao" <krag_rao_pyt at rediffmail.com> wrote:
|
| [...] 
| how do i make modification in my program to ACCEPT COOKIES  from a server and at which instance i shall do this either at the first 'GET' request 
| when requesting for the home page of at the 'POST' request  in my case urlopen or both the times 
| 


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul  5 05:34:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 13:34:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: SPAM again [was: Re: .BIZ .INFO domain extensions]
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051230030.18582-100000@phd.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051332450.17954-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Oleg Broytmann wrote:

>On 4 Jul 2001, [iso-8859-1] Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
>> Hi, people.  We still get SPAM from this list once in a while, which is
>> annoying.  I wonder if something could be done about it at the list level.
>>
>> I noticed that two recent SPAM were sent to `python-list at cwi.nl' instead of
>> `python-list at python.org', so we might think of ruling out that old address.
>> On the other hand, valid postings are still made to the `cwi.nl' address,
>> even if rarely.  I fear some members might find rude being forced to switch
>> to `python.org'.  And besides, I'm sure `python.org' will get included
>> in all spammers' lists, sooner or later, so this would be just postponing
>> the real problem.  Sigh!
>>
>> My attitude about SPAM, and am not sure I am fully right, is that I rely
>> on mailing lists to filter the SPAM they get before forwarding it to me,
>> while I consider this is more my responsibility to filter the rest, which
>> directly gets addressed to me without going through mailing lists.
>>
>> Opinions?  Suggestions?

Spam? I stopped noticing spam after I subscribed to this list ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 05, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ">From the Department of Redundancy Dept." _/




From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Thu Jul 12 14:21:58 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:21:58 +0200
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at> <slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <12072001.3@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "phil" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

    phil> On 11 Jul 2001 21:20:02 GMT, Gergo Barany <gergo.barany at gmx.net> wrote:
    >> phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
    >>> [snip flamebait crap]
    >> 
    >> If anyone is going to to respond to this thread, *please* take
    >> comp.lang.c out of the Newsgroups: list. We don't do advocacy here.
    >> Followups set.

    phil> My post was an entirely objective statistical summary, and contained 
    phil> no subjective or opinion-based data at all.

    phil> If you think that facts are "crap" and hard statistical analysis

I wouldn't call those numbers you presented "hard statistical
analysis".  Not that those numbers aren't corrent... but what the
"analysis" lacked is some analysis of how good a measurement those
numbers are given what they are used for.

Things like "margin of error" come to mind.  (But then again, that is
something you rarely hear about in statistics presented in the "news"
either)

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
                       There's an NDA in the FSF:
                       Free Software FouNDAtion.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010712/ed7c641f/attachment.sig>

From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 10 00:03:33 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:03:33 +1200
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A7E95.B4AB2F71@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> What is left:
>
> Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
> some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
> capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
> have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).

If the English language has changed too much, and
there's no-one left who can understand the spec,
you might have a bit of a problem...


-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From rb at tiscali.be  Mon Jul 16 05:35:18 2001
From: rb at tiscali.be (Raphael Bauduin)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:35:18 +0200
Subject: command substitution
Message-ID: <newscache$vy7kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>

Hi!

I was looking for a solution like in bash, which let you put the standard 
output of a command in a variable(in bash, you can do it like OUT=`ls` or 
OUT=$(ls) ).

If you have another way to take the standard output of a command and put it 
in a variable, it would be helpfull too.

Thanks.

Raph
-- 
          Open Source and Free Software Developers Meeting
See you at the 2002 edition. Check the 2001 sessions on 
www.opensource-tv.com
     Visit http://www.osdem.org and subscribe to the mailing list!


From jcopella at cfl.rr.com  Tue Jul 10 11:57:37 2001
From: jcopella at cfl.rr.com (John Copella)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:57:37 GMT
Subject: Adding timeouts to Internet sockets
Message-ID: <RBF27.212379$WB1.31341412@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>

How have developers added timeout behavior to Internet sockets in Python?  I
am developing an application that uses ftplib, and I need to timeout if the
server is unavailable, etc.  I note that Tim O'Malley has a package out
(http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py?i=87800233) that very cleverly and
transparently does this (or seems to).  Has anyone used it?  My application
will be mission-critical, and I would prefer to use whatever is considered
the current best practice.

Please reply via email, as my access to newsgroups is limited.  Any help on
this matter is greatly appreciated!

John Copella
Aerologic Inc.





From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:23:36 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:23:36 GMT
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net>        <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995975980.22956.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cih77.25353$EP6.5926849@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995975980.22956.python-list at python.org...
>     Terry> To run newly written code under old versions of the
interpreter,
>     Terry> you have to eschew *all* features added after the oldest
version
>     Terry> you want to support.  For 1.5.2, this means list
comprehensions,
>     Terry> augmented assignments, nested scopes, iterators,
generators,
>     Terry> type-class unification features, and what ever else is
next
>     Terry> added.
>
> Yeah, but that presumes that the features you do use don't change
meaning.

Exactly

>     Terry> For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will
be
>     Terry> int/int and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and
>     Terry> floor(float/float) instead.  Only write int//int or
float/float.
>     Terry> With the tokenizer module, it will then be easy to change
all
>     Terry> instances of int//int to int/int (old meaning).
>
> Interesting solution.

which is based on the forward-conversion program that I believe you
posted.  Both should be part of the transition package distributed
with 2.2+.

Terry J. Reedy





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 15:38:49 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:38:49 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <3B4EE391.19995171@lemburg.com>  
	            <3B4F4608.207DBA7B@ActiveState.com> <200107131916.f6DJGLU16857@odiug.digicool.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F4E49.C299C356@ActiveState.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
> docstring.  

It makes sense for the directive to precede the docstring because the
directive should be able to change the definition of the docstring!

> That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
> preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
> docstrings already have this built into them.

The directive statement is inherently a backwards incompatible
extension. It is a grammar change. Many tools sniff out the docstring
from the loaded module anyhow.

>   Is it worth breaking
> them so that editors can remain stupid?

I would say that the more important consideration is that it just makes
sense to figure out what encoding you are using before you start
processing strings!

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul  8 22:40:23 2001
From: quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 02:40:23 GMT
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org> <slrn9ki07c.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki6cn.8ud.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 00:43:02 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
>Carsten Gaebler <clpy at snakefarm.org> wrote:
>> Hi there!
>> 
>> I've just come across a strange difference between readline() and
>> readlines():
>> 
>> Python 2.1 (#17, Jun 15 2001, 15:24:30) 
>> [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
>> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>> >>> f = open("foobar", "w")
>> >>> f.readline()
>> ''
>> >>> f.close()
>> >>> 
>> >>> f =  open("foobar", "w")
>> >>> f.readlines()
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>> IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
>> >>> 
>
>Same happens on my box.
>
>$ cat /proc/version
>Linux version 2.2.15-4mdk (chmou at kenobi.mandrakesoft.com)
>(gcc version 2.95.3 19991030 (prerelease)) #1 Wed May 10 15:31:30 CEST 2000
>
>$ python
>Python 2.0 (#1, Oct 16 2000, 18:10:03) 
>[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
>[ snip ]
>
>BTW, is file.xreadlines() a new feature in Py2.1?

Yep.

>Of course, an obvious question is, if you want to read _and_ write, why
>weren't you using 'r+' or 'w+' to begin with?
>
>I hope someone can answer this, but is this a matter of file I/O
>implementation between different OS's?  Or is this a Python
>implementation issue?

Despite what the documentation may say, readlines does not use readline.
readlines uses fread() (since it doesn't have to worry about reading too much)
and then checks with ferror().  readline uses getc() (or perhaps fgets()) and,
when it gets EOF for error, proceeds to *not* check for error (clears it, in
fact).  So I'd say linux, SunOS, and Irix are correct here and OSX is wrong
(must not be reporting via ferror() correctly).

I'd say python is wrong here too, by not being consistent.  If readline
checks, readlines should too.


From jochen at riekhof.de  Sat Jul 21 05:30:54 2001
From: jochen at riekhof.de (Jochen Riekhof)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:30:54 +0200
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com> <Xns90E478A656FFBjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <9j9mtn$e9f$07$1@news.t-online.com> <Xns90E4B8DA3D90Ajimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
Message-ID: <9jbi4b$q64$01$1@news.t-online.com>

> I have no clue, but I would hazard a guess that there's an out param in
the
> "OrboPCT.OrboPCTRead" object you're using.

Yes, you may well be right! As Python passes all things by value, there has
to be some means to returne the first ByRf string parameter!
This will be it.

Thanks a lot!

Am, any idea where I can get a comprehensive introduction to all this com
stuff. The delivered docs seem a bit slim to me.

Ciao

...Jochen





From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:01:52 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:01:52 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-F2006B.15303626072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cplmla4gjg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> I agree with the previous poster who said to use "quotient" instead of 
> "floor division".  Also, both types of division are mathematical results, 
> just of different operators.  So maybe instead of the unclear phrase "the 
> mathematical result" to denote, you know, the floating point style 
> division, maybe you could call it the ratio.
> 
> Example of this substitution made to first two paras:
> 
>     The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for 
>     numerical arguments: it returns the integer quotient of two ints or 
>     longs, but it returns a reasonable approximation of the ratio of two 
>     floats or complex numbers.  This makes expressions expecting float or 
>     complex results error-prone when integers are not expected but 
>     possible as inputs.
> 
>     We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for 
>     different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of the 
>     ratio, x//y to return the quotient.  We call the current, mixed 
>     meaning of x/y "classic division".

You've got me halfway convinced here.  Let me think about that a bit.
It certainly makes shorter names!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul  6 11:36:22 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 09:36:22 -0600
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB8E@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at python.org]
> 
> "Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> writes:
> 
> > Again, my major objection to this proposal is that it gives us
> > nothing and breaks a lot of existing code.
> 
> Other educators disagree.  Take the case of VPython.
> 
> The VPython folks have used Python very successfully to teach freshman
> physics students at Carnegie Mellon to create 3D models.  Many
> students had little or no programming experience.  The goal of the
> course wasn't to teach programming, it was to teach understanding of
> physics.  Throughout the course, students were writing Python programs
> implementibg various laws of physics.  Here's a quote from Bruce
> Sherwood, one of the teachers (without permission, but I'm sure he
> doesn't mind):

[snip]

Ok, let's agree that studies have shown that when using Python for
educational purposes to teach somthing besides Python, then having
integer division return float results causes less surprise. Let's
further hypothesize that when using Python to teach programming (either
as a first or a secondary language) that it would be less surprising for
a majority of the students to have integer division return float
results. That still leaves a ton of professional programmers that for
years have relied on the current semantics with broken code. E.g. in my
case, I know there is code I wrote that is running at my last employer
that would most probably silently start returning incorrect results.

Even if having integer division returning float results would have been
the right decision when Python started out (and I believe that it would
have been), it is now simply too late to change and the reasons for
changing at _this_ point are simply not compelling enough to break that
much code.

Sometimes when you make a mistake, you just have to learn to live with
it.

-- bjorn



From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Fri Jul 27 10:11:19 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:11:19 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpvgke4hlx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <bEe87.53103$Cy.6853667@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> :
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
>
> > If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
> > n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
> > for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
> > floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
> > independent of type).
>
> Good point.  What does Scheme do?


Floor, ceiling, truncate and round all return integers. It seems that it
wouldn't really be possible to have // do that consistently without PEP 237
though.

-tim




From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul 13 15:16:21 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:16:21 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:03:36 PDT."
             <3B4F4608.207DBA7B@ActiveState.com> 
References: <3B4EE391.19995171@lemburg.com>  
            <3B4F4608.207DBA7B@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <200107131916.f6DJGLU16857@odiug.digicool.com>

> I strongly think we should restrict the directive to one per file and in
> fact I would say it should be one of the first two lines. It should be
> immediately following the shebang line if there is one. This is to allow
> text editors to detect it as they detect XML encoding declarations.

Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
docstring.  That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
docstrings already have this built into them.  Is it worth breaking
them so that editors can remain stupid?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Jul 20 16:55:45 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:55:45 -0400
Subject: ANN: 3rd beta of Win32 Installer release 4
Message-ID: <3B586291.2027.1035396D@localhost>

The thrid beta of version 4 of the Win32 Installer package is 
here:

http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/installer_dnld.html

This beta fixes some bugs in package support and
dependency analysis (mxDateTIme is working again, 
PyXML works properly once the package is included). 
The docs feature a more gentle introduction for those
who want to stay away from the complexities.

Version 4 handles all Python versions from 1.5 
onward (it's been tested with 1.5 and 2.1). It has a number of 
new capabilities:
 - set a Windows version resource in the executable 
   (NT / Win2K only), including the ability to create a 
   version resource from Python
 - a utility to analyze the dependency tree of a script / module
   (including a cross-reference)
 - warnings issued when dynamic code encountered
   (__import__, exec, eval)
 - COM client support (including using gencache.EnsureModule 
  to generate support on the end-user's machine).

What is it?
 The Installer is a set of tools for distributing Python
 applications. The target machines do not need to have
 Python installed, or may have a different version of 
 Python installed.

 The Windows version (there's a more limited Linux version,
 too), has top level scripts for 3 configurations:
 - Standalone: create a single directory installation for your app
 - Simple: wraps a Standalone with a simple install script
 - Freeze: creates an executable that unpacks itself at run
   time, and cleans up afterward.
 
 More complex distributions can be created by writing your
 own config file and passing it to Builder.

Old-Python-style license.

Contact: gmcm at hypernet.com

<P><A 
HREF="http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/installer_dnld.html">
Win32 Installer release 4a2</A> A compiler-less way 
of distributing Python apps on Windows. (20-July-01)


- Gordon



From jdavis at empires.org  Mon Jul 23 04:24:51 2001
From: jdavis at empires.org (Jeff Davis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:24:51 -0700
Subject: web sessions support
Message-ID: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net>

I have been looking around and I have not been able to find a session 
module for python (for the web). Basically I just need a normal session 
manager that can work somewhat like the one in PHP. I have recently been 
moving away from PHP to python for web stuff and I need a session manager. 
If no such module exists, I would write my own.

Thanks.

Regards,
        Jeff Davis


From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Fri Jul 27 13:00:10 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:00:10 -0700
Subject: In defense of PEP0238 (plus PS)
Message-ID: <7p63mtgg6e6ge38tvv91b364lb4heo90di@4ax.com>


I've talked myself back into supporting PEP0238, after many of
the eloquent posts here had swayed me the other way.  A 
latest snap shot of my thought process:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2001-July/001579.html

Kirby

PS:  I'm really enjoying the generators and iterators stuff.  2.2a 
is a lot of fun.  The language is steadily becoming more powerful.
For more on this:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2001-July/author.html
posts by Kirby Urner (me)

Note, in http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2001-July/001548.html
there's a coding error, should read:

def primes():
     """
     Generator:
     Yield next higher prime, starting at 2, accruing
     successive primes in global list pr
     """
     global pr
     pr = [2]
     i,new = 1,1
     ^^^^^^^

Of course the 2.2a docs themselves contain examples.  



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 24 19:49:45 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 19:49:45 -0400
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> > So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize this
> is the
> > third time I've said this but I think it would silence a lot of
> objections
> > and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.
> 
> This would break as much or more code as the current proposal.  Read
> the PEP.

Are you sure?  I can't really see anything in the PEP that would seem
to imply this.  It talks about comparing // to functions like div(),
but not the use of // for the new behavior over /.

I can't see how this approach would break _any_ code, since // isn't
an operator now and thus can't be used in any other way by current
code.  In fact, it parses as a syntax error.

I buy the obvious aesthetic argument about really wanting to fix the
obvious division operator, /, but can't see how using // would have
any backwards-compatibility problems.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 18:07:13 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 18:07:13 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <3b61bef1$0$11920@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <uitgem3fy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Rufus V. Smith" <nospam at nospam> writes:

> Of the hundreds of books you have read, there is no lack of context.
> 
> In these parts, lack of context is often a rule rather than exception.

Not to mention most of the books I've read that are representing
inter-personal communication tend to describe facial features and
behavior of the people involved rather explicitly, e.g.,

  'I wish you were hit by lightning,' she said, grinning mischievously.

There really is a wealth of non-verbal information exchanged during
face to face communication (or even audio-only) that needs to be taken
into account in written replacements, particularly in an informal
environment such as Usenet.  Emoticons may not be perfect, but they
can help, without being burdensome in terms of verbosity.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 20 00:21:31 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 04:21:31 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

Given that changing the language itself at this point is too late (and I think
it is), the question is "for newcomers, does the additional complexity added
by a layer of indirection in the tools cancel out the benefit of case
insensitivity?"  Obviously, that's assuming there is a benefit and it's
significant (and just how significant is what no one agrees on).  But if I
were I newbie, I wouldn't like to hear "these are just training wheels, the
real language has slightly different rules".  Don't underestimate the newbie
appeal of "what you see is all there is" (not that it ever is in python, given
magic methods etc., but we shouldn't make it worse).

An editor that optionally gives warnings about names with only case
differences seems pretty innoccuous, though.  Giving people a friendly editor
is in the same spirit of avoiding "ok, well, to learn python first you need to
learn the unix shell, to be able to manage your source files and run vi, oh
yes, then you need to learn to use vi, just memorize this table of commands,
ok, then..."

So I'd say, please don't change the language itself, but it would be
interesting to see experiments on a friendly python-oriented editing
environment (to simplify things like finding modules and documentation,
importing, reloading, etc.).


From aramanat at optonline.net  Thu Jul  5 21:06:23 2001
From: aramanat at optonline.net (Arun Ramanathan)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 01:06:23 GMT
Subject: system exec  ?
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <3B453A1F.5B537BE7@optonline.net>

alphaZeta wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
> in a python script.
> Does anybody know ?

import os
result =  os.popen('program').read()
or
import commands
result = commands.getoutput('program')

Arun






From m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk  Thu Jul 26 09:17:50 2001
From: m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk (Mark Robinson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:17:50 +0100
Subject: emacs python mode
References: <3B5BF5C7.3070707@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B60187E.20808@herts.ac.uk>

Thanks guys,

simple as that ;)

blobby




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 10:33:29 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:33:29 -0500
Subject: "has" Operator
In-Reply-To: <9ibe9n$ffu$1@news.mathworks.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
	<mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org>
	<tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com>
	<cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn9khonr.gg0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
	<9ibe9n$ffu$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <15177.49337.856485.512856@beluga.mojam.com>

    Joshua> On the other side of things, it seems this could be introduced
    Joshua> into the language without making 'has' a keyword--no syntactic
    Joshua> rules currently use concatenation.

This is a good point.  I sometimes use this sort of construct:

    has = {"foo":1, "bar":1, ...}.has_key
    ...
    if has(a):
        ...

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 11:18:17 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:18:17 +0200
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
In-Reply-To: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <20010715171817.D5396@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:20:38AM -0400, kj0 wrote:

> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
> advocates :-)  )

> I'm not looking to find out which of these languages is "better"; I
> don't care for ranking here. 

The problem is that there isn't one "better", just "better in the eyes of
the author", and that is oddly enough also the reason why you, as you state
in the first paragraph, are unable to find one that isn't biased :)

> What I want to know is how the various
> popular OO languages compare in terms of OO and general programming
> features (e.g. multiple inheritance; classes-as-objects; garbage
> collection; closures; scoping; contracts; debugging; etc.).

I seriously think your best bet is to start learning each language. You
can't compare apples and oranges unless you ate them both, and you need to
learn that, for instance, you *peel* the orange first, and you avoid the
middle part of the apple, and you avoid the seeds of both these fruits (but
they are considered the best parts of other fruits.) It'll take the most
time, but it'll be the most satisfying answer, as programming language
preferences are pretty personal.

I think Python should be the strawberry. It's nice and small, easy to
digest, no need to bite chunks out of it, almost all of it is edible, and
whatever warts it has are plainly visible from the outside :)

I-had-strawberries-for-breakfast-ly y'rs,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Tue Jul  3 03:22:14 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:22:14 +0800
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
In-Reply-To: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>; from meinmailfilter@gmx.de on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:40:49PM -0700
References: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010703152214.A29149@Vetinari.home>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:40:49PM -0700, Heiko wrote:
> Hello,
> I want to do this:
> 
> ClassObject = Class()
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, Arg4, Arg5 ....)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method()
> ...
> and so on.
> 
> Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of arguments
> and the method decides what to do.

Define Method as

def Method(self, *args):
	# stuff goes here

Inside this method, 'args' will be a tuple of the arguments in the order
they are passed and you can do whatever you like with them. Look at the
page ref/function.html in the Language Documentation for more
information (about halfway down that page).

> If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
> doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
> position (but that is a "nice to have").

I don't really know what you mean here, since I don't know how the
function is meant to know which argument belongs where.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Kleptomania: take something for it.



From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Thu Jul 12 13:53:46 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:53:46 GMT
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com> <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B47C125.A65E5EAC@wwc.com> <23891c90.0107100801.14066af0@posting.google.com> <3B4B458C.A0F96E5D@wwc.com> <23891c90.0107120037.705cbe74@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4DE4D5.74D41FE4@wwc.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:

> Steve Williams <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message news:<3B4B458C.A0F96E5D at wwc.com>...
> > Paul Boddie wrote:
> >
> [snip]

> I've corrected your quoting here...
>

Well, that was a cut and paste from a (nicely) working DCOM server. . .


>
> OK, so you're using paramstyle as 'qmark',

[more snip]

Yes.  Although dictionaries and named parameters might be nice and 'Pythonic', 'qmarks' are a
part of the mental baggage I carry from platform to platform.

[snip]

>
> I was surprised to see Sybase ASA directly supporting ODBC - going
> against what Mr Wilson was asserting about its death - but, in
> general, I suppose that the greater the number of layers between one's
> application and the database system, the greater the risk for
> something to fail in obscure ways.

I live in eternal fear of 'Function Sequence Error'.

> In the case of Sybase ASA, I found
> things to be more reliable if I linked mxODBC directly to the library
> provided, rather than through the iODBC driver manager.
>

If only I had the ability on AIX. . .

>
> > In general, I don't see much emphasis on relational databases in the Python
> > jungle.
>
> I think that it only appears that way because of the low traffic on
> the DB-SIG list and because there isn't any other focal point for
> database-related activity.
>
> Paul

To contribute software to the database community, one must have a machine; cooperating
sysadmins and dbadmins; database software, documentation and libraries; a compiler; machine and
personal time; development experience and database experience.  The lack of any one of these
can prove fatal.

For Wintel or Linux and for FSF/Open Source databases such as mySQL or PostGres, these are
(perhaps) easily come by.

For the mainstream relational databases on other platforms--DB2, Oracle, Sybase--it's hard,
hard, hard.

To produce something that works uniformly and reliably across multiple types of databases and
multiple platforms seems even more difficult.




From arne at leithe.spammenot.no  Mon Jul 16 23:02:58 2001
From: arne at leithe.spammenot.no (Arne Leithe)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 03:02:58 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in
news:fSI47.12086$p7.3693169 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com: 

> [...]
> As for speed, P(50,6) takes 100 seconds on my machine (5427 partitions)
> while p6(50) and even p6(70) (26207 partitions) take less that a second
> to start printing.  P(70,6) would probably take hours to do the same.
> Computing exactly what you want with nothing wasted is always best.


I disagree :-) What's best in the majority of cases is an algorithm that's 
readable, maintainable, extensible etc. If speed isn't an issue (and nobody 
said it would be an issue in this case), there would be no reason 
whatsoever to optimise it for speed at the cost of the criterias mentioned 
above. In fact, he stated very well what he wanted - the sets of six 
numbers to sum up to 17 (and 20).

Quite often, though, a more general solution is required. In an algorithm 
like the one discussed here, we probably want to be able to change:

a) The "sum"
b) How many numbers to sum up
c) The minimum number in b) (including 0)

This all depends on the problem domain, though. Depending on the variations 
from the original problem, speed and memory might become issues, of course. 
What is important to avoid in any case, though, is repeating code where the 
number of repetitions depend on one of the criterias (as b above). I pity 
such code, it's almost as it's alive and begs to be put it out of its 
misery.

Anyway, here is a new version of the algorithm I posted before, this time 
speed is considered and you can specify criterium b in the function. (You 
actually specify the maxiumum of slots in the solution - if zeros can be 
part of the solution the rest can be filled with zeros.) 

def Bags(res, max_pockets, start = 1):
	if max_pockets == 1: return [[res]]
    	return [[i] + bag for i in range(start, res / 2 + 1) \
    	    	for bag in Bags(res - i, max_pockets - 1, i)] + [[res]]


> To solve this problem for any k using this approach, we could write a
> program that will write and compile the python code for a particular
> value of k (using x1 to xk instead of a to whatever).


But the said approach is very, very unmaintainable, even though it might be 
"exactly what he wants" in this case.


Arne Leithe


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 11:17:09 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:17:09 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-73449E.08170923072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3B5BDCB4.A2010560 at letterror.com>,
 Just van Rossum <just at letterror.com> wrote:

> Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte? Integer division
> is a lousy tool in this particular example...

In an unrelated program I had some more complicated code (in a different 
language, which is why I didn't reuse it) that would take a number n, and 
output n itself, n/1000 + "k", or n/1000000 + "M", where the output number 
was either an integer of two or three digits, or a decimal with a single 
digit on either side of the decimal point.  So 2047 would have been '2.0k'.
(Don't argue with me about decimal vs binary k, this was to output number 
of nodes in a search space not file sizes.)

In the current program, the sizes being shown are for the original 
un-shrunk images from a digicam, and are never anywhere near as small as 
2047 bytes, so I used simpler logic to simplify the size output.

In both cases, I want integer divisions (in the other program, even the 
decimals were formatted using integer division).
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From emile at fenx.com  Fri Jul  6 11:58:25 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:58:25 -0700
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i4neh$h1jne$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

The first reference to the faq on python.org does this.  It's not so much a
question of why would you, more so how could you not the first time.  Maybe
drop the complete reference on the front page, leaving the reference to it
on the faq wizard page so that you know when clicking it that you'll get a
bunch.

http://python.org/doc/FAQ.html

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpvgl6jbyz.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:
>
> > On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> >
> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it
is
> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
>
> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul 12 13:32:39 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:32:39 -0700
Subject: Assignement Overloading
References: <3b48bd83$0$7113$4d4efb8e@news.be.uu.net>
Message-ID: <3B4DDF36.EFAED7F5@ActiveState.com>

Pierre Denis wrote:
> 
> I am trying to emulate some kind of type checking in Python (sorry for the heresy). Because of the dynamic typing, my unpretentious
> goal is to intercept the assignment statement in order to perform a consistency check between the variable and the object to assign.

I'd suggest you look at for ideas or even a starting point:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/nondist/sandbox/typecheck/

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:36:52 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:36:52 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bde6kt0c8f8fdfcf204qprakatj9v9ooa2@4ax.com>

>    path = r'e:\test\test.txt'

What am I looking at here, and how do Iearn more about it?
IOW, what's the 'r' do, and is there more to this?



C//



From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul 20 23:45:55 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 23:45:55 -0400
Subject: whats this mean?
References: <20010720213533.19217.00000446@ng-fb1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <etdhew754i4.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

See http://www.python.org/doc/ref/try.html#l2h-439 for the syntax of
try/except.  "except socket.error, why" assigns the value raised with
the exception to the name "why".  Play with this a bit:

>>> try: raise SyntaxError('example')
... except SyntaxError, why: print why
... 
example
>>> 

Alex.


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:35:01 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:35:01 +0100
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
References: <mailman.995851359.16397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3d8nltsgmc6cs0rq35oopkk9u97ohlea7c@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:21:11 +1000, "Delaney, Timothy"
<tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote:

>> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> >> In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who is a
>> >> professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.
>> >
>> >Eek - I hope you don't really mean that last subclause!
>> 
>> A *real* programmer gets in a good six hours code-slinging in their
>> sleep - that period when all the hard problems find their neat
>> original solutions. Apart from the ones that get scribbled on a
>> beer-mat, that is ;-)
>
>Nah - all the best solutions are worked out in the shower.
>
>I am currently campaigning for all programmer's cubicles at my place of work
>to have showers installed. I predict that productivity will increase 5-fold.

Apart from one small problem. Half the company will be hanging around
female programmers cubicles to, erm, discuss their programming
problems ;-)



From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul 16 13:12:46 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:12:46 GMT
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi (Jarno J Virtanen):
| 15 Jul 2001 10:20:38 -0400 kj0 wrote:
| > Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
| > detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
| > Python, etc.).  
| [snip]
|
| Here's one: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/crisis/
|
| It's subjective, but he clearly states what he wants and then ranks
| programming languages according to the criterias.

Interesting reading.  He says "crisis", but it seems to be several
years since - hope it was resolved meanwhile, but maybe it's a good
thing to be always searching a little.

One thing about this and other comparisons to be seen on the web,
OCaml belongs on the list if only for its speed.  I have been trying
to learn a little of it lately.  He mentions that the syntax is full
of annoying warts, and my forehead is getting permanent wrinkles from
too much squinting.  But it's interesting that such an abstract model
(function programming) would run so close to the top of the charts
for speed.  (And too bad that doesn't work for Erlang or Haskell.)
And there are some good things - e.g., something as simple as a record
type (a.k.a. struct), for which I still hanker a bit with Python.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 15:00:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 19:00:02 GMT
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com> <3B66F611.B12948A6@tundraware.com> <3B66FC0F.965568C0@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B66FECB.90597896@tundraware.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> I would suggest you use "index.html" to shorten that URL. :)


Sheesh, there's a critic in very crowd... OK, if you insist, URL changed to:

http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/Python-Is-Middleware/index.html  or just
http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/Python-Is-Middleware
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 20:49:28 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:49:28 -0700
Subject: Bug?
References: <4835e825.0107241639.bbf438e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E1798.B44E7B0D@alcyone.com>

Ricardo Correia wrote:

> ---------------------------------------------------
> mainlist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
> copy = mainlist
> 
> for item in copy:
>  print item,
>  mainlist.remove(item)
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> Shouldn't this produce '1 2 3 4 5'?
> 
> I only get '1 3 5' and unfortunately because of this my program
> doesn't work.

The problem is that the variable named copy isn't a copy, it's a
reference.  Try instead:

	copy = mainlist[:] # now copy is truly a copy

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ What is now prov'd was once only imagin'd.
\__/ William Blake
    Alcyone Systems' Daily Planet / http://www.alcyone.com/planet.html
 A new, virtual planet, every day.


From clpy at snakefarm.org  Wed Jul 11 08:47:13 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:47:13 +0200
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B4C4AD1.BB994EFD@snakefarm.org>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> Does it bother anyone that
> 
> a *= 3 + 4
> 
> returns a different value from
> 
> a = a * 3 + 4
> 
> ??

No, because a *= 3 + 4 means a = a * (3 + 4). No bug here.

cg.


From info at black-karma.de  Thu Jul 12 16:04:01 2001
From: info at black-karma.de (Harvest T. Moon)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:04:01 +0200
Subject: win32gui
Message-ID: <9ikvsg$jim2i$1@ID-22517.news.dfncis.de>

hi :)

is there any tutorial/documentation on how to use the ActiveState Win32GUI
extension?

thnx i.a.,

Harvest T. Moon
-- a life less ordinary!!




From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 17:28:14 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:28:14 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9luefe.5a2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Stephen Horne wrote:

[GvR:]
> >Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to
> >
> >(1) int/int *ought* to return an int;
> ...
> >IMO, argument (1) is misguided.  I've heard all the variations many
> >times by now and none are convincing to me; they are either wrong,
> >like "that's how mathematicians define it" or "that's how all
> >right-thinking programming languages define it", or they miss the
> >point, like "it's easy to explain to newbies that int/int returns
> >int".
> 
> Please read my 'Steve Summary' message - it addresses all these and
> more.
> 
> If you can prove that the set of mathematicians only includes those
> who are dealing with the currently interesting discrete-mathematics
> problems, or you can prove that magically warping discrete measures
> into continuous measures is useful for typical bread-and-butter
> programming tasks, I'd be interested to hear it.
> 
> I define a mathematician as someone who applies mathematics, and who
> understands the mathematical principles being applied. I don't limit
> it to people working in field theory or some such, however interesting
> it may be and however pervasive it may be in current
> college/university study and specialist application of discrete
> mathematics. Any narrowing of that definition should be explicit or at
> least for day-to-day practical reasons.
> 
> I define practical as the normal case, not the first-day newbies
> expectations and not specialist fields.

I am a professional applied mathematician. I was trained as
a pure mathematician. 1/2 is not 0. I have never knowingly
met a mathematician or any persuasion who thought that 1/2
was 0.

By the way, any definition of "mathematician" that excludes
pure mathematicians is spectacularly broken.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 23 10:53:47 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:53:47 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <%TW67.22987$B7.3756018@ruti.visi.com>

In article <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8 at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne wrote:
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:40:10 GMT, sill at optonline.net (Rainy) wrote:
>
>>First of all, it's really ugly. It's the ugliest thing in python for a newbie,
>>imho. Yes, 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
>>reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.
>
>No reason!
>
>Every five-year-old knows that 5 divided by 2 is 2 remainder 1. What
>is the problem?
>
>Integer division *is* important. Confusing integers and floats is a
>sign of sloppy thinking, and a clue that far more bugs are going to
>result.

Right. If you want redesign the language to prevent programmers
from creating bugs due to using the wrong numeric data types,
then you're only hope is to eliminate all but one of the
numeric types, and that numeric data type better do what
everybody expects all the time.

Can't be done.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I always have fun
                                  at               because I'm out of my
                               visi.com            mind!!!


From grumble at usa.net  Tue Jul 10 16:24:00 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 20:24:00 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>

Paul Winkler <slinkp23 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> jcm wrote:
>> 
>> Pete Shinners <shredwheat at mediaone.net> wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>> > for doing a MUD, the language speed is not going to have
>> > much noticeable effect, since network speed is far slower
>> > than any of the languages can handle.
>> 
>> This isn't necessarily true.  If you have a lot of objects with state
>> that changes often (wandering monsters, etc), computation-speed can
>> become an issue.

> I still don't see why python wouldn't be up to the job.
> If things are working well but too slowly, it's time to think about
> optimization.

Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
the cpu.  In a production mud, you might want to do something
intelligent about wandering monsters (like have them stop wandering if
no players are nearby to save cpu-time), but there will also be lots
else going on.

There might be some clever optimizations that could be made.  Anyway,
my only point was that computation-speed can become an issue.


From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Sun Jul  8 11:03:30 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:03:30 +0200
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com>

missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) schreef:
>Here is the error message I get:
>Error Type: TypeError
>Error Value: expected string, ImplicitAcquirerWrapper found
>File /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py, line 18, in makeThumbnail
>Any wisdom?

Yes, the error is on line 18 of
/usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py :-)

Post lines 1-25 if you want more help.

-- 
Vriendelijke groet,
Ren? Pijlman <rpijlman at spamcop.net>

Wat wil jij leren?
http://www.leren.nl/


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 22:20:18 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 12:20:18 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> <mailman.995575532.23146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58E6E2.A88F3206@student.gu.edu.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
> > hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
> > iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
> > stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
> > begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
> 
> Very funny (not).  You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
> environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
> identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

Okay *interested* Does this mean if I do this:

>>> a
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'a' is not defined
>>> A = aclass(...)
>>> a
(returns A)

I'd have to try it out to see what it would be like, but I'd still
prefer if I got an error message when I did the following:
>>> a = anotherclass(...)
Hmmm. I don't know if it would be sensible to be draconian, but if this
did raise an *Error, it would enforce users to avoid the c=C()
convention. Question is, is learning this feature (
"NO. *whack* You can't do c=C()"), bad coding practice that it is,
easier than learning to deal with case-sensitivity?

Hmmmm. My vote is still on more helpful NameError messages that attempt
to track down different-cased variables. It'd be using similar code as a
case-preserving system, but not going as far as returning an instance
which may or may not be the instance that the programmer wants.

Anycase *placing his trust in Guido's expertise*
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 16:32:40 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:32:40 -0700
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <01cd01c11612$1ea47000$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

import string, os

def drives():
    d = []
    for c in string.lowercase:
        if os.path.exists('%s:/'%c):
            d.append('%s:'%c)
    return d


>>> drives()
['a:', 'c:', 'd:', 'g:']

Cheers,
- Ken Seehof

----- Original Message -----
From: "G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 12:23 PM
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?


> how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
> display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't find
> it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh well
> any ideas out there?
>
> G. Willoughby
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From tom-list at home.com  Mon Jul 30 14:32:05 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:32:05 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>
Message-ID: <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com>

"Christopher Barber" <cbarber at curl.com> wrote in message
news:psog0besc97.fsf at jekyll.curl.com...
> <brueckd at tbye.com> writes:
>
> > In most jobs I've used C/C++ or Java and for me the stronger the typing
> > rules the more problems (and in turn bugs) it caused.
>
> I am really surprised to hear this.  My experience has been the opposite.

I agree with you.  Strong typing can be very useful.  Its better to have the
compiler catch an error than to catch it during unit testing.

The ideal language would support both strong and weak typing.

Tom.

> >  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> > values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> > create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
> > an array or Vector.
>
> You seem to be complaining about the lack of tuples, not static
type-checking
> per-se.
>
> > Strong typing seems to prevent a very small class of errors at great
> > expense, and none of the errors it prevents should escape good testing
> > (which you should have anyway).
>
> I am all for unit testing, but I know from experience that it is
*extremely*
> difficult to comprehensively test a code unit, and virtually impossible if
you
> do not have a good code coverage tool.  If the compiler can catch a type
error
> for me at compile-time, that is at least one less unit test I have to
write.
>
> I agree that static type declarations add complexity to a language, but
there
> is a significant body of developers that really appreciate what they can
do
> for you.  It would really be nice if Python could add some sort of
optional
> type declarations.  It should be technically feasible.
>
> - Christopher



Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
    ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------        
                http://www.usenet.com


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Mon Jul  2 09:25:18 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 15:25:18 +0200
Subject: win32gui
References: <9hpg2o$f4pdk$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <3B406737.1030707@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <9hpsk9$fd0vh$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Mark Hammond" <MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:3B406737.1030707 at ActiveState.com...
> Thomas Heller wrote:
>
> > All this (basically) works, the window is shown,
> > but nothing is printed from the test function.
> > Wading with the debugger through the code, it seems
> > the 'test' function is never called.
> > The reason seems to be that the default window-proc
> > from win32gui is called, and SetClassLong() is never
> > called with 'test' as the parameter.
> > Has anyone got this to work? Am I doning something wrong?
>
>
> It is supposed to work, but I can't find any example code.
I found the mistake I made:
CreateWindow() should have used the atom-name _returned_
by the RegisterClass() call and _not_ the lpszClassName
member of WNDCLASS.

Thanks

Thomas




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 13:12:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:12:08 -0400
Subject: error occur when using py2exe
References: <mailman.996506697.27250.python-list@python.org> <3b66e351.4492439@news.onemain.com>
Message-ID: <aCB97.12856$WD1.527988@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

<engsol at teleport.com> wrote in message
news:3b66e351.4492439 at news.onemain.com...
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:23:02 +0800 (CST), "sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote:
>
> >I type the following,but error appear.
>
> >I put the the myscript.py file  under d:/python21/program/
>
> >I think I must give a directory to the setup ,but when I use
>
> >setup(name="myscript",scripts=["/program/myscript.py"],)
>
> >error also jump out. How can I fix it
>
> Don't you need to 'escape' the path slashes?
>
> "C:\\dir\\file.py" for example?
>
> engsol (python newbie)

Backslashes ("\") need escaping as you suggest, but forward slashes ("/")
have no special semantics inside string literals, and can therefore be used
without any escaping. In *most* (but, annoyingly, not quite all) contexts,
your Windows Python programs can use forward slashes instead of backward
ones inside paths, and still be perfectly well understood. This is how the
original poster was handling the problem.

Nice to see a newbie jumping in to help, though. Your instincts are fine.
Keep up the good work!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 18:27:30 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 22:27:30 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995915981.12340.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ji8ci$ciq$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim at digicool.com> wrote:
> [Martijn Faassen]
>> This discussion is entirely self selected too. What I'm pointing
>> out is that your 3/4 number is fairly meaningless in this discussion.

> In context, it was a directly relevant response to a question of Arthur's
> that had gone unanswered.  Out of context, it may was well be blue cheese.

Okay, sorry I took it out of context; I realized this when I saw
another reply of yours.

> I'm afraid this whole thread has turned into too much "typical Usenet"
> excess to be worth the effort of following it anymore.

You're right -- it's one of those issues (like case sensitivity) that
everybody has some opinion about and everybody can easily talk about.

Sort of like the way everybody in a company for which a website is
being developed will be able to talk about the way the layout should look
like (cool, stylish! but will fail to actually do much thinking about the
content, which is what a website is actually all about.

Withdrawing from the thread.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul  3 11:49:28 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:49:28 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <mailman.994116064.9517.python-list@python.org> <aie3kt8r1i8qego0sfqh30qhupqtaje19a@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k3noj.4e5.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

Some more random quabble from me ...

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:33:43 -0400, robin at illusionsexeculink.com wrote:
>Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>You can do one of three things:
>>
>>    * implement it and keep it to yourself
>>    * implement it and release it for others to use/improve
>>    * find someone willing to do it for you for a fee (perhaps a fee of $0)
>
>It would have to be #3 for me, as I am not C proficient. I thought
>that an appeal to this knowledgable group was in order first, and this
>seems to have produced a comprehensive low-level answer by Gerhard.
>
>What is still needed is a high-level perspective on the greater
>problem of providing a Python distribution that is "ready for action"
>across major database and OS platforms.

I am quite happy with the database modules I use. If they have too many bugs or
missing functionality for you, you should tell the maintainers and perhaps use
option #3.

If all you want is a packaged version of Python with database modules included,
this can be done relatively easy. It's mostly a packaging issue. I don't quite
get the point of this, though.

Providing automatic downloading and installation of binary packages is an issue
that is dealt with in the Catalog SIG and others.

I personally want to have RPMs on Linux and for deployment on Windows, I would
create my own custom installer, which isn't all that difficult since py2exe
does most of the job for me.

>I hope someone at python.org or ActiveState or somewhere is aware of
>this need and are working to fill it.

The ActiveState installer on win32 already has the option of installing
MySQLdb. I don't know if they plan to extend this to other platforms and
modules, though.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From rossi at earthling.net  Sat Jul 14 08:12:38 2001
From: rossi at earthling.net (Thorsten Roskowetz)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:12:38 +0200
Subject: FrameMaker exposed in Python (PyMaker anyone)?
References: <9in4dk$eap$06$1@news.t-online.com> <9inm6l$jirpg$1@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9ipcss$467$03$1@news.t-online.com>

"Karl M. Syring" <syring at email.com> schrieb:
> "Thorsten Roskowetz" <rossi at earthling.net> schrieb
> > Hi,
> >
> > is there a Python extension that allows scripting of the
> > FrameMaker API.  Google (and www.python.org) pointed me
> > to a project called PyMaker but the link is dead
> > (http://home.t-online.de/home/Ulrich.Herold/).
>
> No, the page is alife!
>
> Karl M. Syring

Ulrich's homepage is alive, yes.  But not the link to
PyMaker itself.

Thorsten




From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:06:51 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:06:51 GMT
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <cpwv4xa97a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) writes:

> I think this is what the PEP is proposing:
> 
> // is current / behaviour
> / is new int/int --> fp

No, a//b would always return floor(a/b).

> we already have people importing things from the __future__,
> how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?

This has been suggested before.  It's just as easy (in fact in a sense
it's easier, since you know what the past was, but you may be wrong
about what the future might bring :-).  But the problem (as I see it)
is that there will never be a point where we can throw away support
for the past behavior, because there will always be code around that
imports it.  The future statement doesn't have this problem -- at some
point, you're *there* and the future statement is redundant.  Of
course, the __future__ module must remember all the names of future
features, but the support everywhere else in Python can be removed.

> It would certainly make maintaining old applications that rely
> on the old behaviour much easier to port over to the new one.

Or you keep a copy of the old interpreter around.  If you are
unwilling or unable to upgrade the application, I see no reason to
switch to a different language either.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From fgeiger at datec.at  Tue Jul  3 11:12:05 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:12:05 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9hsnd3$7h3$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>

I am curious: What do you Haskell use for?

Regards
Franz


P.S.:
I know that your bag of tools contain at least Python, (MSV)C++, MSVB, and
Haskell. Curious again: How do you use your bag of tools?


"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9hsf0c0210e at enews1.newsguy.com...
> "Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
> news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> > I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
> >
> > http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
> >
> > Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
> >
> > Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
> >
> > Anybody that tried both languages ?
> >
> > How do they compare ?
>
> Eiffel has reasonably-good strict, compile-time typing.
>
> Python is totally oriented to dynamic, run-time typing
> (often erroneously called "weak typing" -- that is, in
> fact, something else).
>
> So, they don't compare much: they've taken widely
> different language-design choices from way back.  Eiffel
> will do a good job of finding type mismatches at compile
> time (not a perfect one due to the covariance problem),
> Python won't even try and will rather maximize your
> productivity so you can most easily and productively
> develop and run lots and lots of tests (you need to test
> a LOT even in a compile-time-typed language of course,
> but it does occasionally diagnose an error earlier -- in
> exchange, you have to do a lot more work, of course).
>
> If you want a language that's even LESS compromising
> than Eiffel in terms of typing, with *NO* possibility
> whatsoever of a typing-error escaping the compiler,
> try Haskell instead.  It's VERY instructive to become
> productive in Haskell, and it's fun if you do it with
> a book such as Hudak's "The Haskell School of Expression".
>
> Then you can come back to Python with much deeper
> appreciation for the role of immutability, list
> comprehensions, functional programming, type deduction
> by the compiler (Eiffel doesn't do that for you: you
> have to tell the compiler everything -- Haskell is
> designed so the compiler can DEDUCE types on your
> behalf, although you do normally, redundantly, also
> state them "out loud" so the compiler can catch your
> logic mistakes).  When you're back to Python from
> Haskell I suspect you'll miss Haskell's typeclasses,
> such an UTTERLY elegant approach!, and the implied
> lazy-evaluation of everything, perhaps the syntax
> sugar that allows any function to be used as an infix
> operator.  I think you WON'T miss Haskell's "monads",
> a concept so powerful, refined and elegant that its
> full import keeps escaping most of us:-).  In syntax
> sugar terms, Haskell will give you significant whitespace
> use that's not too far from Python, but you'll see lots
> of (well-used) punctuation in lieu of keywords -- not
> a big deal either way, of course.
>
> In the end, I think Python is far more productive
> for all kind of real-world uses, but an apercu on
> statically-type-checked, nothing-is-mutable, lazy-
> everything, &c, IS interesting and instructive.
> Eiffel only does *part* of that for you...
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From achim.domma at syynx.de  Tue Jul 31 16:59:08 2001
From: achim.domma at syynx.de (Achim Domma)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:59:08 +0200
Subject: Large pages using Zope
Message-ID: <9k766t$dc0$04$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

I just finished the first step : I succeded in introducing Python as our
prefered
scripting language, replacing JScript and VBScript in the future. Now we
need
a way to script webpages with it. I would like to use Zope, but I have to
answer
questions like 'How do we know that it's fast/stable enough ?'. Can anybody
help ?
Are there any big references, which are using Zope ?

thanks
Achim




From wqh-2 at 263.net  Tue Jul 31 07:51:47 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:51:47 +0800 (CST)
Subject: how to know the end of a file(use readline)
Message-ID: <3B669BD3.11778@mta5>

I use readline to process the whole ,but
I do not know how to control it,when it 
is the end of the file
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 13 11:22:16 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:22:16 -0400
Subject: Book count test
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5242@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these categories
  Python - 136 (including snake books)
  Java     - 1621
  Perl     -  430
  C++    -  1341
  PHP   -   38
  ASP   -   172
  Oracle -  682
  



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 30 01:13:18 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:13:18 -0700
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <eppstein-CF33D7.22131829072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3b645f76.747435355 at wa.news.verio.net>,
 bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:

> ISTM that thinking of bit twiddling as operating on integers
> is not clean conceptually. I.e., I think there is an implicit
> coercion to a set type for the twiddle operation and then implicitly
> back to integer again when supposedly twiddling two integers
> with a binary twiddling operation (same for unary, of course).

Bit-twiddling operations like bitwise xor are generally not nice continuous 
operations on (binary representations of) real numbers, e.g. because 
0.11111... and 1.00000... are the same as real numbers but very different 
as bitstrings.

However, I think bit twiddling is nice and continuous if instead you use 
2-adic numbers (overcondensed tutorial: 2-adic integers are binary numbers 
where the bit sequence goes to infinity to the left instead of to the 
right, e.g. 3 1/4 = .....000011.01 -- just apply usual 2's complement 
arithmetic to these sequences and everything works).

Of course, this doesn't do much for your attempt to make this thread 
relevant to Python again...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From gustafl at algonet.se  Sat Jul 14 20:59:20 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 00:59:20 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <Xns90DE9C0C61AFAgmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>
Message-ID: <Xns90DF1E7FD2E35gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

>So put the line
>packages=_xmlplus 
>in the APPZLIB section.

Okay, now I used Standalone first. Got a .cfg file and changed it according 
to the above. Then I ran in again with Builder. Is this really the normal 
operation? I had expected to first make a config file and then make an exe, 
or that you would get an opportunity to save the modified config file and 
run Standalone on it again. But I guess this is a special case, and the 
second run is normally not needed.

When I run Builder, I get the following two warnings (among many others 
that seem non-significant):

W: __import__ hack detected at line 54 of xml.dom.domreg
W: __import__ hack detected at line 100 of xml.sax

Does this mean that the import of the XML modules wasn't successful?

My script needs a special config file, written in XML, in the same 
directory as the script itself. I was happy to see that before I had added 
the XML file to this directory, jane.exe complained in the right way:

E:\python\gustaf\dist_jane>jane
No profiles file found.

However, when I add the XML file to the directory, it fails:

E:\python\gustaf\dist_jane>jane
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 54, in ?
  File "e:\python\gustaf\friend.py", line 19, in __init__
    self.profile = self.load()
  File "e:\python\gustaf\friend.py", line 31, in load
    doc = parse(self.file)
  File "e:\python\_xmlplus\dom\minidom.py", line 839, in parse
    return _doparse(pulldom.parse, args, kwargs)
  File "e:\python\_xmlplus\dom\minidom.py", line 830, in _doparse
    events = apply(func, args, kwargs)
  File "e:\python\_xmlplus\dom\pulldom.py", line 288, in parse
    parser = xml.sax.make_parser()
  File "e:\python\_xmlplus\sax\sax2exts.py", line 34, in make_parser
    return XMLParserFactory.make_parser(parser_list)
  File "e:\python\_xmlplus\sax\saxexts.py", line 75, in make_parser
    sys.modules[parser_name].create_parser = _create_parser
KeyError: xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat

I take it as a sign that the XML modules can't be found. Is there anything 
I can do to facilitate the search for extra modules? Have already tried to 
use an absolute path.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com  Thu Jul 19 13:24:55 2001
From: PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com (PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:24:55 -0000
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
Message-ID: <9j7557+lp54@eGroups.com>

I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.

Rick Moranis, movie star:
http://www.boxofficemania.com/actors/r/rick_moranis/rick_moranis.jpg

Guido van Rossum, Python inventor:
http://www.python.org/~guido/images/Guido at 200dpi.jpg

     Randy




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 04:33:33 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:33:33 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
References: <3B45A5AD.12631.573C6B@localhost> <mailman.994444271.3218.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90D95FE52A469duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in 
news:mailman.994444271.3218.python-list at python.org:

> 2. In order to reach the stage where this message is emitted the 
> control must have been installed on the user's computer (which, I 
> suppose, corresponds to the chicken). 
Moreover, if your control isn't marked as safe for scripting, IE creates 
the control before it pops up the box asking you whether you want to allow 
the script to run. In other words, if your control is written in Python, 
the __init__ method is called *before* the user is asked whether to permit 
it.

When you think about it, this is the only way it can work, since IE cannot 
tell that the control is unsafe until it has created it and asked it 
whether it supports IObjectSafety. So any unsafe control may be created by 
any script, it is just that the script cannot do anything further with the 
control.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 17 03:23:39 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 09:23:39 +0200
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
References: <mailman.995315008.1887.python-list@python.org> <yv2r8vgt48l.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <yv2k818t3wk.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

Too bad having to followup on my own posting.

Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> writes:

> zooko at zooko.com writes:
> 
> > But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default argument to
> > an inner function, like this:
> > 
> > >>> def silliest_func():
> > >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
> > >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
> > >>>         pass
> > >>>     return inner_silliest_func
> > >>> 
> > >>> blarg = {}
> > >>> for i in range(2**13):
> > >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()
> 
> This creates 2**13 references to one and the same object, namely
> silliest_func which (I suspect) has just one reference to an object
> inner_silliest_func.

Should read: 
This creates 2**13 references to one and the same object, namely
inner_silliest_func.

> 
> > 
> > and then remove the references to this memory, like this:
> > 
> > >>> del blarg
> 
> This removes the 2**13 references again. And copies of the
> inner_silliest_func were never produced and need not be freed.
> 
> > 
> > none of the memory is freed up!
> 
> The only memory that can and should be freed is the one for the list
> object blarg and this is about
> sizeof(PyListObject)+2**13*sizeof(void*) (see
> Python/Objects/listobject.c/PyList_New). This is roughly 32kBytes on
> 32bit machines. I doubt that you will notice freeing such a rather
> small amount of memory.
> 
> > 
> > Even stimulating the garbage collector, with:
> > 
> > >>> import gc
> > >>> gc.collect()
> > 0
> 
> I guess you see this because `del blarg' did already all that there
> was to do.
> 
> However, from your description it looks like you might have simplified
> your example too such that the true problem cannot be demonstrated.
> 
> Regards,
>   Harald Kirsch
> -- 
> ----------------+------------------------------------------------------
> Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
> LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
>        *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 07:33:45 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:33:45 -0400
Subject: Finding Display Settings ??
References: <s0d57.12936$Xr6.106667@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <3B557419.E6315CC@engcorp.com>

Peter Moscatt wrote:
> 
> Which module/library would I import so that I can test for the current
> display settings ??

Since you didn't specify platform or essentially anything else, one
has to assume....

>>> import win32api
>>> print win32api.GetSystemMetrics(0)
1024
>>> print win32api.GetSystemMetrics(1)
768

MS documentation should provide more detail on these and other
values returns by this system call.

For this, you have to have the win32all package installed.  Obviously
it works only on Windows... (you did mean Windows, didn't you?)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:40:52 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:40:52 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <mailman.994101900.21513.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpae2il23l.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes:

> This thread reminds me a great deal about whether generators should be
> defined using 'def' or 'generate' -- it took me one (1) generator to realize
> how natural it was with def, and most (not all) counterarguments were
> basically trying to tell me I was wrong to feel that way :-)

Bingo!

It takes a Pythonic mind to get this feeling of what's right.  Clearly
the opponents are not Pythonic enough.  So there! :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 09:49:54 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 09:49:54 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8E@intrepid> <mailman.995298207.17374.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <87snfvsm0t.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

** For this post presume that "a" is len(A) and "b" is len(B)

"Jeffery D. Collins" <jcollins at boulder.net> writes:

> How about this:
> 
> import operator
> h = {}
> map(operator.setitem, [h]*len(B), B, B)  # create a dictionary of B
> bb = filter(h.get, A)  # find all elements of A in B (include repeats)
> map(A.remove, bb)

This is very elegant, but incorrect.  Since you are setting h[B]=B you
have no guarantee that h.get(i) is true if h[i] exists.  

import operator
h = {}
map(operator.setitem, [h]*len(B), B, [None]*len(B))
bb = filter(h.get, A)
map(A.remove, bb)

Additionally, A.remove() is O(a) so this ends up
taking O(a*b), which is bad.  Also we can avoid having to create the
list [None]*len(B) by using has_key() instead of get().
You could fix this with:

import operator
h = {}
map(operator.setitem, [h]*len(B), B, B)
A= [ x for x in A if not h.has_key(x) ]

Which is pretty good, but possibly overly clever.  My tests (Python
2.1 on an Ultra 10 with Solaris 8) show that

h = {}
for i in B: h[i]=None
A=[ x for x in A if not h.has_key(x)]

outperforms this (very) slightly (probably because the creation of
[h]*len(B) is more expensive than the explicit for loop).

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"It's the one thing I understand, I guess." Bill Gates, about BASIC
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtUQoEACgkQjVztv3T8pzspwwCggU7i+KENEizbf14VGR1o7vLU
tWsAoMhTH+SkviUcSx7K+KWztqcIf4zG
=slOC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 09:09:05 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:09:05 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3b470811.1282245131@wa.news.verio.net>

On 07 Jul 2001 00:40:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com>
wrote:

>I want a function to check a string to make sure it is a legitimate
>dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
>
>First character is numeric or "-"
>At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly two digits
>All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"
>
>
>I wrote the attached to check a string for these rules, but I can't help
>wondering if my feeble newbie python coding isn't already better done
>elswhere and/or using existing logic.  Any ideas all?  TIA.... Code follows -
>
>
>
># Check and see if passed string is a legit amount
>
>def IsNum(num):
>    if num == "":
>        return FALSE
>    digits = ["0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "."]
>    z = num.split(".")
>    if len(z) > 2:             # At Most, only once decimal permitted.
>        return FALSE
>    if len(z) == 2:
>        if len(z[1]) != 2: # Exactly two digits must follow decimal
>            return FALSE
>    if (num[0] == '-') and (len(num) > 1): # 1st char can be sign if more chars follow
>        num = num[1:]    # Drop sign for purposes of checking
>    for x in num:        # Make sure all chars are legit digits
>        if not digits.count(x):
>            return FALSE
>    return TRUE
>
>--
I think you could do it just checking for a full match
with a regular expression. Return 1 and 0 instead of 'yes' and 'no'
for more typical usage. The latter was just for interactive
readability :)

If you require a decimal to the left of the decimal point, you could
write
     mo = re.match(r'^-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$',num)
instead of the below

 >>> import re
 >>> def IsNum(num):
 ...     mo = re.match(r'^-?(\d*\.\d\d|\d+)$',num)
 ...     if mo and mo.group()==num: return 'yes'
 ...     return 'no'
 ...
 >>> IsNum('-123.456')
 'no'
 >>> IsNum('-123.45')
 'yes'
 >>> IsNum('-1.3.45')
 'no'
 >>> IsNum('-1.345')
 'no'
 >>> IsNum('-1345')
 'yes'
 >>> IsNum('.1345')
 'no'
 >>> IsNum('.13')
 'yes'
 >>> IsNum('-13')
 'yes'
 >>> IsNum('-1')
 'yes'
 >>> IsNum('-0')
 'yes'

Not thoroughly tested ;-)




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 13:15:40 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:15:40 GMT
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
References: <mailman.994953021.32263.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <0Xk37.1056$%6.208181@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

<fett at tradersdata.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953021.32263.python-list at python.org...
> I have a really dumb program that i would like to make smarter.  I need
> to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything except for the
> standings which are written in it.  I have tried to use regular
> expressions with no success, but i still think that they are probably
> the best way.  I created the following simple fix, but it is unreliable
> if the data changed posistions.

Try S.find('League Standings') , then find the first thing you *don't*
want.

>
>
> input = open('rawdata', 'r')
> S = input.read()
> print S[4021:6095]
>
> Output :
>    League Standings
>    American League
>      EAST W L PCT GB HOME ROAD EAST CENT WEST NL L10 STRK
>      Red Sox 43 29 .597 - 23-15 20-14 23-13 8-7 6-6 6-3 6-4 L2
>      Yankees 41 31 .569 2.0 21-15 20-16 19-11 12-9 5-7 5-4 6-3 W2
>      Blue Jays 35 38 .479 8.5 18-20 17-18 14-13 6-7 11-13 4-5 5-5 W3
>      Orioles 34 39 .466 9.5 20-20 14-19 15-17 9-12 6-5 4-5 5-5 L1
> ........( it continues with all the standings)
>
>
> Also could you tell me if its possible to download the data from the
> web-page in python so that it doesnt even have to deal with opening the
> file.

I believe you want standard library module urllib so you can say
'S=urlopen(url).read()' (never used myself yet, so check details).

Terry J. Reedy





From europax at home.com  Sat Jul 14 23:00:46 2001
From: europax at home.com (Pugsley)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 03:00:46 GMT
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
Message-ID: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

I'm converting a number crunching program from C to Numeric Python, and
I'm really getting stuck on how to deal with global variables.

For example, there are about 30 variables that are defined in the main
program that I want to be global and available in the functions in the
modules.  (the modules are seperate files that I import).   A simple
example would be:

def foo(arg1, arg2):

	global bar1, bar2, bar3,             etc.

	result= bar1+bar2+bar3+ arg1+arg2

	return result



But all I get are errors stating that the global variables have not been
defined.  This behavior seems to run counter to what is implied in some
books that I've been reading. 

What am I doing wrong?   Thanks,   Rob.


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jul 24 19:41:21 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:41:21 GMT
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net> <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl> <mailman.995990628.669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <BIn77.28461$Xr6.228964@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Geoff Talvola:
> At 03:43 PM 7/24/01 +0000, Robert Amesz wrote:
>
> >SciTE Edit (I believe the URL is something like www.scintilla.org) is
> >pretty nice for us Pythoneers. If only it could open multiple files...
>
> SciTE _can_ open multiple files if you configure it properly!
> You just have to edit some of the settings in
> SciTEGlobal.properties.  I think I had to make the tabbar
> visible and increase the number of buffers, or something
> along those lines.

   You can either add a line to the global properties file:
buffers=10
   or do this on the command line:
SciTE -buffers=10
   10 buffers is the maximum currently available. This is caused by needing
to dimension UI elements and 10 makes it easy to assign accelerator keys.

   The reason this is the default is that I use SciTE in single document
mode and start extra processes if there is a need for having multiple files
open. There are still some bugs with multiple buffers although these are not
serious problems.

   An alternate set of properties files which sets up multiple buffers is
available from Philippe Lhoste's site:
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/softwares/PhiLhoSoft/SciTE/index.html

   Neil





From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au  Thu Jul 19 05:23:43 2001
From: pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:23:43 GMT
Subject: Retreiving a single number from a list of numbers ?
References: <3b565953@news.iprimus.com.au> <3B566F26.24C4F807@altavista.com>
Message-ID: <zGx57.15014$Xr6.123559@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Hi Alex,

Great.... just what I wanted.

I have being trying thinks like a(1) instead of using [] and was wondering 
why I was getting errors  :-)

Thanks again Alex.

Pete


Alex K wrote:

> Peter Moscatt wrote:
>> 
>> I am trying to extract a value from a variable that contains more than
>> one value.
>> 
>> For example:
>>     If  I assigned the result of wxGetClientDisplayRect() to the var 'a'
>> like:
>>         a = wxGetClientDisplayRect()
>> 
>> the 'a' would return something like (0, 0, 800. 540)
>> 
>> How then would I assign the 800 from 'a' and give it to a var called 'b'
>> ??
>> 
>> Regards
>> Pete
> 
>>>> a=(0, 0, 800, 540)
>>>> a
> (0, 0, 800, 540)
>>>> a[2]                     <-- slicing
> 800
>>>> (0, 0, 800, 540)[0]
> 0
>>>> (0, 0, 800, 540)[3]
> 540
>>>>
> 



From amardeep at tct.hut.fi  Sun Jul  8 10:42:03 2001
From: amardeep at tct.hut.fi (Amardeep Singh)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:42:03 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kgl52.o9.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.33.0107081712170.6735-100000@keskus.tct.hut.fi>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Gerhard H?ring wrote:

> My findings currently are:
> - DCOP: client side usage is easy; server-side more difficult; KDE only; can
>   use XML-RPC instead because KDE has a DCOP-XMLRPC bridge
> - SOAP/XML-RPC: very easy to use from Python; much encoding/decoding overhead
> - CORBA: very good Python support with omniORBpy; omniORB 4/omniORBpy2 will
>   improve performance by taking shortcuts when the C++ and Python code is in
>   the same address space (no loopback interface involved)
> - XPCOM: still have to get this to work on my machine, but looks promising; no
>   wide language support currently available (only C++/Python)

also add orbit/bonobo to your list
relevant links are

http://orbit-resource.sourceforge.net/ (ORBit)
http://orbit-python.sault.org/ (ORBit-python)
http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/bonobo-python/ (bonobo-python)
http://soapy.sourceforge.net/ (SOAP for python)


>
> Gerhard
>

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
amardeep singh
iit  guwahati
iamamardeep at yahoo.com




From nospam at nospam.de  Sun Jul 15 09:40:14 2001
From: nospam at nospam.de (Uwe Hoffmann)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 15:40:14 +0200
Subject: How to add type "int" to string ?
References: <692684d4.0107150512.5b7d9ccd@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B519D3E.77DB1652@nospam.de>

shuibo wrote:
> 
> Hello all :
> in my program I want to give a char variable a Hex value , for example :
> a = "Hello World"
> a = a + 0x00
> but it display "cannot add type int to string"
> what can I do ?
> thanks very very much !


a = a + chr(0x00)

if that's what you want ?


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:22:32 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:22:32 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Joseph A. Knapka" <jknapka at earthlink.net> writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
> >> I would very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools
> >> that enforce *uniform* case usage.
> > 
> > And that's of course what I have in mind.
> 
> I'm confused. Are you proposing:
> 
> (1) A case *sensitive* language (that is, no change),with tools to
> enforce case consistency; or
> 
> (2) A case *insensitive* language (God forbid), with tools to
> enforce case consistency; or
> 
> (3) Something else?

I have changed my mind.  I think that if I had to start over, I would
indeed try my hands at a case-insensitive language aimed at teaching
programming to beginners, with tools to enforce case consistency.
Given that nobody else who currently uses Python thinks this is a good
idea, I then settled on a case-sensitive language with case-preserving
tools.  But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 13:50:30 2001
From: hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk (Hamish Lawson)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 10:50:30 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <915a998f.0107300950.6ee1790@posting.google.com>

> If there's anyone who believes the type/class unification should not
> become a feature in Python 2.2, please speak up now or forever hold
> your peace...  (But I'd rather you speak up!)

I'd welcome it. I don't believe any of my code would break, but I'm
willing to put up with it if it does.

Hamish Lawson


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 12:22:44 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 16:22:44 GMT
Subject: function while true - list function?
References: <88f77.300$e%3.6743@news.lhr.globix.net> <ENg77.543485$eK2.113992779@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lr86k.pv2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:48:52 GMT, Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> pisze:

> Here's another way to do it, using generators:
> (in python 2.2)

And here is another (Python 2.2):

def gen_unroll(fn, *args, **kwds):
    return iter(lambda: fn(*args, **kwds), None)

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 15 23:54:03 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 06:54:03 +0300
Subject: OO misconceptions (was: Re: Long Live Python!)
In-Reply-To: <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
References: <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>, <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <E15LzSN-0007d7-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:15:17 GMT, tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) wrote:

> I wouldn't implement a RDBMS in Python.

What a shame! Fortunately for us, someone else has.
See Gadfly

> An application's scalability has much more to do with the programmer's
> use of algorithms and abstraction than with the language in which it's
> implemented...no matter how much money ActiveState has invested in it.

Similar systems take longer to build correctly in C or C++ then in
Python. You could also write a scalable application in assembler, or
machine code -- it would just take longer.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From joonas at olen.to  Mon Jul 16 07:01:40 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:01:40 GMT
Subject: command substitution
References: <newscache$vy7kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be> <3B52C0AD.93608611@olen.to>
Message-ID: <3B52CA35.C45DB413@olen.to>

Joonas Paalasmaa wrote:
> 
> Raphael Bauduin wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > I was looking for a solution like in bash, which let you put the standard
> > output of a command in a variable(in bash, you can do it like OUT=`ls` or
> > OUT=$(ls) ).
> >
> > If you have another way to take the standard output of a command and put it
> > in a variable, it would be helpfull too.
> 
> out = popen("ls", "r").read()
> 
> And if you want a list of files.
> out = popen("ls", "r").readlines()
Oops!
This may work better.

import os
out = os.popen("ls", "r").read()


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul  8 18:57:52 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:57:52 GMT
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994626808.10039.python-list@python.org> <if527.46135$he.3215290@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9khq26.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994626808.10039.python-list at python.org...
> >
> > "perl"<"python"-is-true-either-way-though-ly y'rs  - tim
> >
> 
> and-we-all-assume-python>perl-anyway-ly y'rs  - steve

Speak for yourself. =)

Python != Perl

Comparisons such as "better" or "worse" in an overall context are
pointless and inherently flawed.

Besides:

>>> 'qbasic' > 'python'
1

And what's to stop someone from creating a language called Zardoz?

>>> 'perl' < 'zardoz'
1
>>> 'python' < 'zardoz'
1

-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>
Trust the computer industry to shorten the term "Year 2000" to Y2K. It
was this kind of thinking that got us in trouble in the first place.
    -- Adrian Tyvand


From sill at optonline.net  Sat Jul 14 22:11:50 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 02:11:50 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9kutbc.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B4F9D27.CF8DC351@engcorp.com> <slrn9l1r0a.ai.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B50F47D.BD251C00@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l1ut9.ai.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:40:13 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Rainy wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:19 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>> > I understand what you mean here, but I'm not sure I believe in the
>> > idea that there really are scripts you write once and never have to extend.
>> 
>> Well, there *are* such scripts, but the problem is, you don't know if the one
>> you're writing is going to be one of these or not. I made an educated guess
>> that the one in question will be write-once and was right, 
>                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> So far.  :-)

Touche! ;-)

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Sat Jul 21 12:06:28 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:06:28 GMT
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com> <uitgn8aj7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3b58f95a.333056@news.newsguy.com>

On 20 Jul 2001 19:07:24 -0400, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:

>ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:
>> How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?
>
>Are you by any chance writing code that tends to have catch-all
>"except" clauses?
>-- David

No, it just calculates and writes a big file. If I print now and
then I can use control-C to exit, but that is an ugly solution...


--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 26 19:32:50 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 19:32:50 -0400
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
In-Reply-To: <cpg0bj5pb3.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>
	<cpg0bj5pb3.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <oqelr3e065.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Guido van Rossum]

> > I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable one-character
> > symbol for the "nb_intdivide".  [...]  Among the still free symbols ("?",
> > "@", "$" I guess) I would suggest to use "$" for the integer division.

> You had me there for a moment... :-)

By revising the code base, Python people observed that integer division,
used as such, is not used very often, and among the few cases that were
observed, could be avoided sometimes.

It is not worth spoiling a still unused character for an operation, like
integer division, which is not often required in practice.  Do not touch
unused characters, and let's protect them with care and tender, yet rather
firmly, like we already do for many animal races prone to extinction. :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul 16 13:44:19 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:44:19 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com>; from aleaxit@yahoo.com on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 06:03:27PM +0200
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <20010716134419.A1125@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 06:03:27PM +0200, Alex Martelli wrote:
> "Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.995289809.28477.python-list at python.org...
>     ...
> > for eachItem in A:
> >     if eachItem in B:
> >         A.remove(eachItem)
> >
> > Now, this will work fine,
> 
> Are you sure about that?  Normally, modifying the list
> you're iterating on does NOT work fine.

Good point.  Most of us knew what he meant, though.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 21 18:37:30 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:37:30 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <mailman.995692716.8559.python-list@python.org> <5e8bd451.0107210040.2e2d9a0e@posting.google.com> <mailman.995725417.10018.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpbsmdgb9d.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) writes:
> 
> > Anyway, i spend all day in the interpreter and i was
> > hoping to make it a more pleasant experience. I can't
> > believe you can't do:
> > 
> > >>> foo(somereallylongbitofcodegoeshere,
> > itsrealllybothersomeifyoumistype) [change a bunch of crap here]
> > >>> !foo

In IDLE, you can type foo and hit ^P.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From kens at sightreader.com  Tue Jul 10 13:11:04 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:11:04 -0700
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9idp67$jln$2@gondor.sdsu.edu> <3B4B1DE7.142B815C@noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <022501c10963$4fc04ee0$0e4ab43f@kens>

From: "Benjamin.Altman" <benjamin.altman at noaa.gov>
> stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:
>
> > I'll just quote:
> >
> >    This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
> >    documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by
the
> >    compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September
1999)
> >
>
> Who cares?  The above is just personal opinion and preference like
everything else - not a rule or
> law.

Uh, yeah.  So indentation, like all documentation, should be possibly
inconsistent with actual program behaviour.  I get it :-)

While we're at it, doc strings are obviously documentation and should not be
parsed by the compiler.  Variable names are also documentation; a dubious
concept added by Assembler.  It's much better to access variables by machine
address to avoid burdening the compiler with excess documentation :-)






From j.spies at hccnet.nl  Mon Jul  2 18:11:48 2001
From: j.spies at hccnet.nl (Jaap Spies)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 00:11:48 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <9hphiu0dks@drn.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B40F1A4.1000602@hccnet.nl>

Armin Steinhoff wrote:


> It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
> attempts poetry.
> 
> --Ed
> 
 


You should know that the roots of Python are in the ABC Programming 
Language and
as I mentioned  before reading/writing Python is really Poetry!


Jaap Spies



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 12:00:20 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:00:20 GMT
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com> <cpitgha7pe.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5ECF9E.8000103@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <cpwv4x80dr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> writes:

> Yes zope is typically much more aggressive in breaking old zope code, 
> but the breakage is typically in the security mechanisms not in the 
> underlying fundamentals.  It also means I have to try and minimize the 
> effects.  Quite frankly I thought python code in our Python Methods was 
> safe.

You can rest in peace now.  The float division won't become the
default before Python 3.0.

> my-naivete-astonishes-even-me-sometimes-ly yours

It's one of your most charming personality traits. ;-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 17:06:03 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:06:03 -0700
Subject: .pyo compilation
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107301306.16864cf7@posting.google.com>

How do I dis/enable optimization of bytecodes in the current
interpreter from within a script (as opposed to the standard -O option
on firing up the interpreter). Need something that compiles to .pyo no
matter what and py_compile isnt helping me (I think).

Tnx.


From guido at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 08:00:39 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:00:39 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:54:43 EDT."
             <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107182150180.370-100000@localhost.virginia.edu> 
References: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107182150180.370-100000@localhost.virginia.edu> 
Message-ID: <200107191200.IAA06994@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> Now that we're in a new century, I think it's time to update to a 
> new excuse!

I didn't mean it as an excuse!

> How about: 
> 
>  Now that everyone's making the transition to multiple language support,
> unicode and multiple encodings, how to you portably define/implement 
> case-insensitive comparison? 

Sorry, no problem.  The Unicode standard defines for each character
whether it is upper or lower case, and what the corresponding
character is in the other case (if any).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)




From paul at svensson.org  Thu Jul 12 14:49:21 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 18:49:21 GMT
Subject: rationalising division (Was: Re: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238])
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <mailman.994529832.2013.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4@posting.google.com> <tkrg43ilksi315@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9ikrfh$f6k$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> writes:
>"Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> wrote in message
>news:7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4 at posting.google.com...
>>
>> Other thoughts
>>
>>    - Accelerating the consideration of Rationals.
>
>It's inconsistant to have a rational type, and have integer division return
>a float! Either integer division should return a rational, or we should take
>PEPs 239 and 240 out and bury them. (In fact, if integer division returns
>a rational, then there is no need for PEP 240 - 1/2 is perfectly good as
>a rational literal!
>
>If we make integer division return a float now, then we're simply creating
>another problem when we implment rationals sometime down the path.

I would guess that expecting a float and getting a rational would
cause significantly less disturbance that expecting a (truncated)
integer and getting a (non-truncated) float (or vice versa).
However, if/when Python grows support for rationals, it would annoy me
greatly if 1/2 was interpreted as anything but a literal rational,
(or at least a compile time expression yielding same (yes I know
Python currently doesn't have compile time expressions)).

Other things to consider is the ongoing work to bridge the gap
between longs and ints, ideas about fixed precision decimals, etc.
Long/long -> float or long/int -> float seems like a mistake,
but returning a rational instead makes sense (with long rationals).

There are really two issues involved in making a significant change
such as this:  Is the grass really greener on the other side ?
And if so, is there any way to get there from here ?
My impression of the discussion is that the consensus so far is 'maybe'
and 'it's too painful', and that's why we're still arguing.

I still think it's to early to bury PEP 238, as the answers
to these questions are very lightly to change when we gain
experience from other modifications to python's numerical system.
I agree that PEPs 238 and 239 definitely need to be considered
together (in which case 240 seems dubious at best),
but I'd rather see that done by slowing down then by speeding up.

If there's anything we can do right now, it would be a very small first step.
Without causing any harm to existing code, we can add the possibility
to generate warnings about int/int discarding non-zero fractions,
and a "from __future__ import div" for a div operator doing he right thing.

Then, let's keep arguing.

	/Paul


From bkc at Murkworks.com  Tue Jul 31 13:07:10 2001
From: bkc at Murkworks.com (Brad Clements)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:07:10 -0400
Subject: Need Beta Testers: Windows gvIB binaries for Python 2.1
Message-ID: <3b66e5f4_2@news.newsgroups.com>

If you want to try the gvIB (Going Virtual Interbase DB Adapter) on Python
2.1 for Windows, please email me and I'll send you the .exe to try.

It's a binary distutils self-installer. Or, would .zip be better in these
days of sircam?


--
Brad Clements, DevNet Sysop 5
Developer Network Sysop Team






-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From infobot at skinnyhippo.com  Wed Jul  4 14:11:40 2001
From: infobot at skinnyhippo.com (infobot)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 11:11:40 -0700
Subject: Python win32all installation warning dialogs.
References: <b15c2672.0106131711.5351653@posting.google.com> <3B2856EE.4070109@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <b15c2672.0107041011.3e612b3d@posting.google.com>

Sorry Mark & Stefan, massively late followup since I got swamped in work and
an office relocation. Anyway, you were both right, I had one of the dodgy
comcat dlls - version 5.0 from MSIE I think.  Tried getting hold of the new
ones but worked easier to just reinstall the OS (it needed it anyway) - am
now using fresh Windows2000Professional & MSIE5.5 installation and no 
problem at all with Win32all. Thank you very much. 

chas

......................................................................

Mark Hammond wrote:
> > I've never had problems with Win32all before so I figure the above
> > are out-of-the-ordinary. May I ask how I should register these items ?
> 
> 
> You can register them manually by executing:
> python win32comext\axscript\client\pyscript.py
> python win32com\servers\interp.py
> python win32com\servers\dictionary.py
> 
> I suspect you will get the same errors tho.
> 
> I have no idea how this could just start happening recently.  My guess 
> is that some other software updated some COM dlls.
> 
> See 
> http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/InstallationProblems.html 
> - but this specifically mentions Windows 98.  I suggest you try and find 
> a COM update from microsoft.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Stefan Migowsky wrote:
> there is probably a mismatch in the comcat.dll. 
> Mircosoft removed the interfaces to register COM categories
> from version 4.73 to version 5.0. So search for the
> file comcat.dll in the system directory and look for
> the version. If it is higher than 4.73 there is your problem.
> To fix it try to get version 4.73 and run 
> 
> regsvr32 c:\4.73\comcat.dll
> %PYTHON ROOT%\python.exe
> %PYTHON ROOT%\win32comext\axscript\client\pyscript.py
> %PYTHON ROOT%\python.exe %PYTHON ROOT%\win32com\servers\interp.py
> %PYTHON ROOT%\python.exe %PYTHON ROOT%\win32com\servers\dictionary.py
> regsvr32 -u c:\4.73\comcat.dll
> regsvr32 %SYSTEM32%\comcat.dll


From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Sun Jul 22 23:07:32 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 23:07:32 -0400
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wkpuascphn.fsf@mail.connact.com>

Oh, fer crying out loud, Sheila just wants an example of exceptions in
use; she said so quite specifically and unambiguously.  The hard part
about exceptions is that they're way simpler than you think.

Here you go, Sheila, a nice little camera interface, uses exceptions.
It uses an argument instead of defining __str__, which I hadn't realized
was a possibility.  Hmmm, interesting (playing in Idle), defining
__str__ as you do causes an exception to not take an argument.  See
next post...


import string
import commands
import exceptions
import re
import os.path
from glob import glob

class Camera:
    """A class abstracting the camera interface; designed to call a command-line interface tool"""

    def __init__(self, camera = "/dev/kodak"):
        if not os.path.exists(camera):
            raise NoDevice, "device does not exist" + camera
        else:
            self.__camera = camera
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " settime")

    def download_images(self):
        if self.is_on():
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " download")
        else:
            raise NotResponding, "Camera not responding"

    def download_thumbs(self):
        if self.is_on():
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " thumbs")
        else:
            raise NotResponding, "Camera not responding"
        self.convert_thumbnails()
        
    def convert_thumbnails(self):
        for thumb in glob('*.ppm'):
            thumb_path, discard = os.path.splitext(thumb)
            if not os.path.exists(thumb_path + 'thmb.jpg'):
                commands.getoutput('convert ' + thumb + " " + thumb_path + 'thmb.jpg')

    def is_on(self):
        result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " getpowermode")
        if re.search("camera is on", result):
            return 1
        elif re.search("camera is off", result):
            return 0
        else:
            raise IOError, "Bad output from camera check -- " + result 

    def delete_all_images(self):
        if self.is_on():
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " delall")
        else:
            raise NotResponding, "Camera not responding"
        
    def n_images(self):
        if self.is_on():
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " status")
            match = re.search("(\d+)", result)
            return int(match.group(1))
        else:
            raise NotResponding, "Camera not responding"
        
    def shoot(self):
# Todo: add a timestamp every time this is called; check and wait 30 seconds
# before shooting again so camera can finish processing.
        
        if self.is_on():
            result = commands.getoutput("/usr/local/bin/ks -d " + self.__camera + " shoot")
        else:
            raise NotResponding, "Camera not responding"
        
class CameraError(exceptions.Exception):
    def __init__ (self, args = None):
        self.args = args

class NoDevice(CameraError):
    pass

class NotResponding(CameraError):
    pass

-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From ajm at enteract.com  Thu Jul  5 18:06:24 2001
From: ajm at enteract.com (Alan Miller)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:06:24 -0500
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i@4ax.com> <9hv5qp$8g7$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <MPG.15aea0bfeeaaa4a59897dd@news-enteract>

Magnus Lie Hetland (mlh at idi.ntnu.no) wrote:
>"Ben" <b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m> wrote in message
>news:ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i at 4ax.com...
>>
>> http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
>Odd... This gives a 404... On ... Err.. Slashdot,
>it seems :-|

The creator of the page had it hosted on a home(?) box with a traffic 
cap.  He got Slashdotted, so he changed the dynamic DNS entries to point 
back to Slashdot instead. 

ajm


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 05:37:25 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:37:25 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com...
    ...
> There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
> languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
> "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing
the
> same application in two different languages to get meaningful
comparisions -
> but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed
languages.

I'll appreciate some URL's, thanks.  In exchange, please look at
Lutz Prechelt et al's 1999 "phonecode" study -- e.g. at
http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/documents/jccpp_tr.pdf.

80 implementations of the same specs, some in "scripting languages"
(Perl, Python, Tcl, Rexx), some in "system languages" (Java, C,
C++).  As it happens, Python was the only language for which NONE
of the submitted programs was 'unusable' (11 of the original 91
were not further evaluated, being completely unusable).  Overall
results (my biased summary): programmer productivity is highest
(by far) in Perl or Python (no statistically significant
differences between Perl and Python).  Program performance is
highest in C and C++, followed by Perl and Python, followed
by Java, with Tcl and Rexx far slower yet.  Many of Prechelt's
conclusions are invalidated by grouping Tcl and Rexx together
with Perl and Python, but fortunately he also supplies raw data
so you can redo the analysis.


> Agreed, but one of my original points was about programmer ability. A

The difference between the best and worst programmers in any single
given language is far larger than any difference among languages,
as evidenced in Prechelt's study -- in both productivity, and in
correctness and performance of the resulting programs.  E.g.,
the fastest Python and Perl programs are *HUNDREDS* of times
faster than the slowest C and C++ ones, incredible as that may
seem for what was a rather simple overall task.

> successful. There is no one single factor that anyone can point to and say
> "if you do that or use this" then you will be successful in your

Oh yes there is -- have only the BEST programmers.  How to insure
THAT is left as an exercise for the reader:-).

> Unfortunately, language choice is a very sensitive issue, and generally
> doesn't come down to any rational factors - a lot of times it is "because
I
> like it" or "this is the newest, popular language, if I learn that one
then
> I can enhance my employment prospects" :-).

The latter is a perfectly-rational factor.  If you want to swing
programmers' motivations towards "doing the best we possibly can
on THIS one product", you have to make that compatible with their
overall motivation of "have an interesting and financially rewarding
career".  Stock options, cash prizes for specific targets, whatever.
Non-financial forms of recognition can also be very important...!

If you want/need to treat your programmers as interchangeable parts,
don't be surprised if they treat your project as just one short step
within a long career.  My impression is that most development shops
underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
yet that the individual performance variation between the best
programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
"superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
times better, if that).


Alex





From jorjun at mac.com  Sat Jul 21 08:28:22 2001
From: jorjun at mac.com (jorjun)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 13:28:22 +0100
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j9vfo$tpg$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B597566.FD190D74@mac.com>

I don't believe that case insensitivity would neccessarily just deprive
our expression.
For instance I CAN imagine calling something "can" most of the time, but
also "CAN" for emphasis.

Taking case sensitivity to an absurd extreme : perhaps, now that most
editors are GUI we could also use font or style sensitivity -
bold/italic, etc.

Peter
(hardly ever serious)
Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> > My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
> > kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
> > case-insensitively.
> 
> Doesn't the fact that most people learn the written form of their
> natural language ahead of programming mean that they're used to the
> concept of case (if their language has it) and understand that CAN and
> can are different, the former being a different case to encode extra
> information -- that it is an abbreviation.
> 
> Sorry to add my twopence in an already crowded and `done to death'
> thread.
> 
> Ralph.


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Wed Jul 18 20:34:30 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:34:30 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <180720011734309383%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list at python.org>, M.-A.
Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:

> Here's an update of the pre-PEP. After this round of comments, the
> PEP will be checked into CVS (provided Barry assigns a PEP number,
> hi Barry ;-)
> 
> --
> 

> Title: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
> Version: $Revision: 1.2 $
> Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
> Status: Draft
> Problem
> 
>     In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
>     Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
>     programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
>     and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian 
>     countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
>     favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
>     for Unicode literals.

This is a good statement of the problem.  And the problem is real
(although not for unilingual me, at this time).  [At age 62, I'm very
likely to remain essentially unilingual...French and German classes in
the 1950s notwithstanding.  I have trouble enough with one language.]

>...[really important and well-presented stuff omitted]
> 

> Scope
> 
>     This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
>     proposed magic comment. Without the magic comment in the proposed
>     position, Python will treat the source file as it does currently
>     to maintain backwards compatibility.

Ah...I had missed the Scope statement before, or it is new/different. 
It is much more likely that I missed it than that Marc-Andr? [the
diacritical left here...whether it arrives or not I'll have to see]
failed to say it before.

As stated here, I can ignore the new feature and it won't affect me. 
Thank you.  This statement of scope means I can sit on the sidelines
and watch (perhaps cheering now and then).

  --John


From arne at leithe.spammenot.no  Mon Jul 16 11:36:20 2001
From: arne at leithe.spammenot.no (Arne Leithe)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:36:20 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74>

"Donovan Hide" <donovanhide at bigfoot.com> wrote in
news:9itb14$2oi$1 at newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk: 

> [...]
> a=Partition(7,4)
> print a
> 
> [[4, 1, 1, 1], [3, 2, 1, 1],[2,2,2,1]]


How about this:

def Bags(res, start = 1): 
    	return [[i] + bag for i in range(start, res / 2 + 1) \
    	    	for bag in Bags(res - i, i)] + [[res]]

print filter(lambda e: len(e) == 4, Bags(7))

output: [[1, 1, 1, 4], [1, 1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 2, 2]]

You can of course extend the filter any way you like, or remove it.


Arne Leithe


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 09:04:39 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:04:39 -0500
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal
References: <mailman.995864377.19861.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC7EC.3FD6932@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <009001c11378$08f10120$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com>


> Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> >
> > I have been following (and participating) in the integer division
> > argument for some time (and a divisive one it is, too), and while
> > standing in the shower (really!) an idea came to me.
> >
> > Why don't we add a hook to Python to control the numeric evaluation
> > rules directly?
> ...
> > The module writer says, HEY, what about me?  I need consistent math
> > in my module!
>
> That's exactly the problem here.  One of the primary reasons people are
> objecting to the change is because it means a fundamental change in the
> core language:  a builtin operator behaves differently.  The solution is
> not generalizing all builtin operators, certainly -- that makes the
> problem infinitely worse.

Read a bit further down my rambling post and you'll see that I suggest
allowing modules to declare their own default math rules.

The semantics I was trying to figure out at 12:05 AM local time this
morning are clearer in the daylight:

    Lookup operators in module scope,
    Fall back to global (__builtins__) scope, then
    Default to (some standard) operators package

I was hoping that it could be arranged so that the main program/module
could call

    import tutorial_math

and have it installed immediately in the global scope, but then calling

    import advanced_math

in a module would have to *not* screw with the global scope.

Now I think that the main program should do this:

    import tutorial_math
    __builtins__.numerics = tutorial_math.numerics

where the .install() function would rewrite the global setting.  A module
would do this:

    import rational_math
    __numerics__ = rational_math.numerics

Going through the entire standard library and inserting the *same two lines*
a the top of all the pure Python modules wouldn't be hard at all.

Having offered this, I'm not sure I like it... but I do like the idea of
programmers of all stripes (novice to advanced) being able to specify how
basic arithmetic should work.  Novices would (we hope) use only math modules
created by experts, but this gives the experts powerful tools.

Also, it's explicit rather than implicit.





From NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 05:35:04 2001
From: NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com (alphaZeta)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:35:04 +0200
Subject: system exec  ?
Message-ID: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com>

Hi,

I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
in a python script.
Does anybody know ?

For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
the system.
alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")

Cheers,







From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 02:04:36 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:04:36 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEILAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995948081.23225.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5g2qlt8dj64f6tbdqalnrc6bf33e8rokjd@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:13:23 -0400, Justin Sheehy <justin at iago.org> wrote:

>"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:
>
>> Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there)
>
>Sure, but 1 == "1" there as well.

This isn't that onerous. Presumably the way this could be invented would
be with string objects supporting a toInt() method. I don't think I like this
kind of implictness in this particular situation, however.


C//



From neal at metaslash.com  Sun Jul 22 13:53:08 2001
From: neal at metaslash.com (Neal Norwitz)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:53:08 -0400
Subject: ANN: PyChecker version 0.7.5
Message-ID: <3B5B1304.1CB93B81@metaslash.com>

In keeping with the open source spirit--release early, release often--
I am releasing another version of PyChecker.  Or at least half a version...

It's amazing how motivation it is to code after spending a week doing doc.
So that means the doc is even more lacking for PyChecker.  :-)

There are several highlights to this version.  The most significant changes
involve the new functionality to suppress warnings.  Two mechanisms are
provided to get PyChecker to shut up.

1) You can put directives in the code:

	__pychecker__ = 'no-namedargs maxlines=0 maxbranches=0'

This will turn off checking for named arguments, max lines, and max branches.
If the line is used at the module scope, the new configuration will be used
for the module, including classes, functions, and methods in the module.
If the line is used within a function/method, the new configuration will
be used within the function/method only.

2) You can define suppressions, a dictionary, in .pycheckrc.

	suppressions = { 'mymodule': 'maxreturns=0' }

This will turn off max returns for all functions/methods within mymodule.
You can specify modules, classes, functions/methods as the keys:

    'mymodule.myfunc' 'mymodule.myclass' 'mymodule.myclass.mymethod'

The suppressions will only effect the scope specified.
Regular expressions aren't currently supported.  Would that be useful?

This change affected the way the command line processing occurred.
The names used in warning suppression are the same as those used for
command line processing.  So for the long arguments, if you specify
the argument as "arg" that means the argument will be turned on.
If you specify "no-arg" that means the argument will be turned off.

Other than that change, there were more warnings added (and catching more cases).
Also, I tried to clean up a lot of the spurious warnings.  So you should
get a better result set now.

The only big problem that exists (that I know of) is that packages
are not handled properly.  I hope to fix that and add a lot more
static type checks.

Let me know if you have any problems, questions, suggestions, etc.

Change Log:
  * Suppress warnings on a per module/function/class/method basis
        with new suppressions = {} in .pycheckrc
  * Suppress warnings by setting __pychecker__ in source code
  * Change long argument behaviour --arg sets arg to true,
        --no-arg sets arg to false (also works for warning suppression)
  * Add -U/--reuseattr check if function/class/method names are reused
  * Add -T/--argsused check for unused method/function arguments
  * Add -G/--selfused ignore if self is unused in a method (requires --argsused)
  * Add -q/--stdlib to disable warnings from the standard library
  * Add -o/--override warning when a method has different signature
        than one being overridden in a base class
  * Add -F/--rcfile to generate a .pycheckrc file
  * Fix checking files in standard library before local file
  * Fix spurious warning when using from X import Y and imports in methods
        (Module (m) re-imported)
  * Fix spurious warning when doing:  from X import Y, Z
  * Fix spurious warning when deriving from Exception() and
        instantiating object with multiple arguments
  * Fix method argument checks when calling base class methods
  * Fix error msg to base constructors (msg count was wrong)
  * Fix access to builtin module attributes (e.g., sys.exc_value)
        generating 'No attribute warnings'

PyChecker is available on Source Forge:
    Web page:           http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/
    Project page:       http://sourceforge.net/projects/pychecker/

Neal
--
pychecker at metaslash.com



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 04:05:48 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 10:05:48 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr> <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com> <9i88o3$hj41s$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9i945202rvq@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Vladimir Nesterovsky" <vnestr at netvision.net.il> wrote in message
news:9i88o3$hj41s$1 at ID-91128.news.dfncis.de...
> It might be viewed as a "value sort" or "sort by value",
> meaning that a natural sort is done on a list as if each
> its element was represented by some value comparable
> with the "<" operator, produced by a user-specified function:

Right; in addition (which I didn't show in my last post,
but explain in my Cookbook entry at
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52234)
it's also pretty easy to make it stable (so that items of the
original list that map to the same comparable remain in
the same order as in the original list, a frequent spec:-).


>   def vsort (ls, f):
>     x = map(lambda e,g=f : (g(e),e), ls)
>     x.sort()
>     return map(lambda p:p[1],x)
>
> and call it
>
>   alist = vsort(alist, lambda x: x[2])
>
> This is doing the same thing that your function is doing by a
> different syntax; knowing as little Python as I do I just don't
> know which way's faster. :-)

One should measure times in each specific case, but, roughly,
list comprehensions tend to be a smidgeon faster than map
with a lambda, a smidgeon slower than map when a real
function is already available and needs to be called anyway.


> In Perl they call it Schwartzian transform, but the paradigm's

That's what I thought, too, and I mention it in the Cookbook
entry, but I'm told the Schwartzian Transform is _specifically_
about making it all a one-liner with Perl's grep.  So I coined
the 'decorate=sort=undecorate' (DSU) name for the pattern
in the more-general case; descriptive, if nothing else:-).


Alex





From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Tue Jul  3 18:27:29 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:27:29 -0300
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com>
 <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>
 <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703190237.02c051d0@mail.inet.com.br>

Many of the concerns raised on the group are related to memory-related 
problems: allocation/deallocation and garbage collection, which can be an 
plentiful source of bugs. I have some specific suggestions to deal with 
them, which may or not be applicable in your case.

- You can avoid allocation/deallocation in some languages by using static 
structures, or by preallocating as much memory as possible. For example, 
you could preallocate a vector to contain all the data from the aircrafts. 
In this case you would have a maximum limit hardcoded in the software, but 
this is not as bad as it may seem, because the limit is *deterministic*. 
One of the problems of relying on dynamic allocation is that you never know 
when it is going to fail, because it depends on the amount of memory 
allocated for other purposes. This technique is can't be easily applied in 
Python due to the nature of the language. It is still possible to do it in 
some particular cases, but not as extensively as in C/C++.

- Don't rely on a long-running process for everything. Use multiple 
short-running processes for batch-style tasks, and a lightweight dispatcher 
to coordinate them. The batch-style tasks must be run on separate 
interpreters. While the performance penalty may be not as acceptable for 
many real-time tasks, you have one specific advantage: every new instance 
of the interpreter always start with a fresh memory heap. This will allow 
you to avoid fragmentation-related problems, which may happen on any 
platform after a long time (not to mention Win98, where it *always* happen 
in few time).

The second technique must not be used alone, but it can be combined with 
other optimizations with good results. The basic idea is there, it's just a 
matter of using it wisely.


Carlos Ribeiro





From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 13:18:30 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:18:30 -0700
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <9ikhp6$jivuc$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9ikmdl$je7vm$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Not that anyone cares, but I think I've figured out that what's going on is
that the '*' is sometimes trying to act on the string and that properly
formatting the argument as a single tuple fixes the problem.  I'm still not
sure why it sometimes appears to accept non-parenthetical '*'d arguments,
but I'm guessing it's got something to do with coercion, and that's a
problem for another day.

Thanks for listening and have a nice day... ;-)


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9ikhp6$jivuc$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> I found it in the source (I think), in stringobject.c there's a
formatfloat
> routine that looks like it requires a float.  If this is the right
routine,
> I'm still stumped.
>
> --
>
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
>



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 17:30:52 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 17:30:52 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <jvD97.6781$9i1.583088@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <ubsm0u6pf.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> "David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
> news:ulml5sz7m.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> > Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:
> >
> > > "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> > >
> Oh no I didn't. Which is to say, the message would make more sense with the
> above attribution deleted, since all (now double-) quoted comments are
> Dale's.

Sorry - my apologies for any mis-attribution - I just took what was in
Dale's posting, although you seem to have added an extra level of > -
my post only had a single > in front of Dale's stuff and nothing in
front of the "Dale ... writes" line.

> There is, of course, a history for both "-" and "/", and in point of fact
> TOPS-10 was using "/" for command switches (as ISTR they were called) before
> Unix was around. Wrote the command line processor for a TOPS-10 SPITBOL
> compiler, and a switch with a value used a colon separator, as in
> 
>     sbl /code:sixbit myprog.sbl

Yep, and not only that but with the CCMD JSYS (at least under TOPS-20)
having the CLI handle all command completion and help with ?,
including for options and arguments to options was terrific.  Nicest
CLI for an OS I've ever used, and I still think it's the best
interactive command interface approach.  Somewhat of a drain to
actually construct all the proper tables in code though, but worth it.

Although personally, I still find "-" looks a little nicer on a
command line.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 26 15:21:22 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:21:22 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <S4_77.49614$Cy.6352181@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:eppstein-749F84.08434526072001 at news.service.uci.edu...
> In article <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
>  "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
[SNIP]
> > I would strip this down to
> >
> > A. iscomplex()
> > B. isexact()
> > C. isintegral()
>
> I have to say that this would be more convenient for situations such as
> defining your own extension of number types for, say, exact arithmetic in
> Q[sqrt(3)].  Or even better Q[sqrt(-3)].  I was wishing I was able to do
> this recently for a different project unrelated to Python, unfortunately
> the program I was using didn't make it easy to plug in your own number
> types...
>
> But a couple points of clarification:
> (1) is it safe to assume that isintegral() implies isexact()?

Probably. Numbers that return true for from isintegral() should be usable
anywhere that Python integers are used today. In particular, if a and b are
integral in this sense then a & b, a ^ b, a | b, a << b, a >> b and
sequence[a] should all work. One could allow numbers that are have integral
values but are not exact (e.g., 1e0, 2e0, etc) to be used in these
circumstances, but consider the following:

>>> 1e0 << 2e0
4 # exact
  or
4e0 # inexact

Either answer sucks: the first turns two inexact operands into an exact
result, while the second represents the results of bit twiddling, a discrete
operation if ever there was one, as an inexact, floating point number. The
best choice is to insist on exact numbers for integer operations.

Note that I don't know that this is the meaning for isintegral meant by PEP
228, but it is the one that makes sense to me.

> (2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not
> rational integers?

No, for the reasons I've given above.

It may be that there is a better way to spell isintegral that makes it clear
that it means isusablewhereoldpythonintswereusable().

-tim





From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 08:15:30 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:15:30 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>
Message-ID: <994422510.510089@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only for web
reading and this requires time -internet time, which is unfortunately
expensive.

so, any other proposals for sites that contain text about python tutoring?
every recommendation is welcome!

thanks in advance!




From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul  5 05:22:34 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 02:22:34 -0700
Subject: basic (mx) ODBC question
References: <994236193.821045@nntp01.uskonet.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107050122.6aed9455@posting.google.com>

"Hanna Joo" <hanna at chagford.com> wrote in message news:<994236193.821045 at nntp01.uskonet.com>...
> Hi all
> 
> I don't understand ODBC well. From the little that I understand - postgresql
> has its ODBC driver (on linux). I am connecting from windows. mxODBC is a
> module I can use. mxODBC suggests that if I am connecting from windows, I
> should (from here mad rambling because I don't know what the doc is saying)
> compile using VC compiler on windows.

That may depend on binary availability of the package for Windows. I
don't remember anyone releasing binaries for mxODBC recently.

> I thought ==>
> 
> ODBC python talks to on windows -- ODBC manager on Win machine -- ODBC
> module of pgsql.
> (on win machine)                                 (between win machine and
> linux server)    (linux server)

The problem with ODBC by itself is that, as far as I am aware, it
doesn't address the issue of communication between client and server,
program and database system, or whatever. Therefore, you need to
choose drivers which will let you have the distributed communication
that you desire. In the past, I have used drivers for an obscure,
proprietary database system which can be installed in the Windows ODBC
driver manager and which can be configured to communicate with remote
servers running the database instances.

I don't know whether there are any such drivers for postgresql, but
then I have never used it on Windows or UNIX (or both!).

> mxODBC has many subpackages for various DBs.. how does it work then? Does it
> work like the following?
> 
> python talks (or uses) to mxODBC that is postgresql specific  -- ODBC module
> of pgsql
> (same machine)

Going from my experiences with mxODBC on UNIX [1], one can compile
mxODBC with a specific subpackage which knows about a particular ODBC
implementation. In my case, I compiled it with knowledge of the Sybase
Adaptive Server Anywhere ODBC library. This meant that mxODBC linked
directly to that library at run-time.

> Or...
> 
> python talks to mxODBC that creates an entry for win ODBC that is postgres
> specific -- ODBC module of pgsql

Well, this would mean compiling the Windows subpackage, which I
presume is aware of the details of the Windows ODBC driver manager. If
you have a postgresql driver for the Windows ODBC driver manager, then
mxODBC doesn't need to know explicitly that it's using postgresql, but
the postgresql driver obviously needs to integrate with the driver
manager.

> or...
> 
> python talks to ODBC on linux  -- iODBC on same machine -- ODBC module of
> pgsql
> (same machine)

This can also be done, although you're removing Windows from the
architecture, unless you are suggesting that Python is talking across
a network to the Linux host where iODBC resides; this would involve
you inventing or discovering a protocol which lets this happen, since
ODBC doesn't mandate such protocols itself. I have seen an ODBC
network gateway package, but this exported Windows-resident database
systems to other hosts, not the other way around.

> mxODBC has different subpackages as I said, one being Windows.. I don't
> understand how that works.. different packages for different databases and
> one for windows?

Well, there's an iODBC subpackage, if I remember correctly, so you
could say that there are "different packages for different databases,
one for Windows and one for UNIX". ;-) But the most pertinent detail
is the "point of integration" between mxODBC and the ODBC drivers.
Either one integrates mxODBC with a driver manager (Windows or iODBC),
or one integrates it with a particular database system's own driver
(Sybase ASA).

The advantage of integrating with a driver manager is the lack of need
to recompile mxODBC should you change or add database systems. The
advantage of integrating with a specific implementation is, in
practice, increased functionality, performance (I would think) and
reliability.

> (realizing post lacks focus as a result of pathetic lack of understanding)
> 
> Can sombody direct me to a site where I may be able to find out more about
> this ODBC issue?

The mxODBC site may provide some detail, but you might want to visit
my "mxODBC Configuration Guide" [1] which provides links to software
which may let you achieve your distributed environment ambitions.

Regards,

Paul

[1] http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/mxODBC.html


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Sun Jul  8 14:35:48 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:35:48 +0100
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kha04.1pf2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Tim Peters wrote:

> Alternative:  Given the point about dumbdbm above, the missing half is a
> builtin to return (mathematically) ceiling(i/j) too.  A very direct approach
> to both is to forget div/idiv and introduce two-argument builtins
> 
>     floor(i, j)   # return floor of mathematical quotient
>     ceiling(i, j) # return ceiling of mathematical quotient
> 
> instead.  They should also have 1-argument flavors, corresponding to the
> current math.floor and math.ceil.  This would emphasize that the real point
> to all this stuff is computing floors and ceilings, not really about the
> numeric types of division arguments (that's always been a red herring!).

All you have to do now is to add two more similar functions
called "round" and "truncate", and you've rediscovered the
approach taken by Common Lisp. (Except that CL's floor/...
functions return two values, the quotient and the remainder;
but CL takes a different approach to multiple return values
from Python's.)

If I liked Python less than I do, I'd see a sign of Greenspun's
Tenth Rule of Programming at work.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From matt at mondoinfo.com  Wed Jul 25 19:41:23 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:41:23 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lum92.ll.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:22:32 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>I have changed my mind.  I think that if I had to start over, I would
>indeed try my hands at a case-insensitive language aimed at teaching
>programming to beginners, with tools to enforce case consistency.
>Given that nobody else who currently uses Python thinks this is a
>good idea

No quite nobody. But I tend to stay out of the flamewars.

>I then settled on a case-sensitive language with case-preserving
>tools. But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

Both are excellent ideas if you ask me but, alas, I fear you're right.

Regards,
Matt


From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul 13 12:31:19 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 12:31:19 -0400
Subject: PyDNS?
References: <3B4ECBE0.96898063@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <etdn168bxk8.fsf@hodge-podge.mit.edu>

There's name resolution facilities in adzapper, for what it's worth.  I
can't remember whether they're part of medusa, or not, but you may want
to check it out.

Alex.


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 15:33:34 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:33:34 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cpg0bmqfzs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:55:40 GMT, Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> pisze:
> 
> > Isn't there anything in 2.2 that deserves even a fraction of the discussion
> > going on about div? (which has been beaten to death 9 times)
> > 
> > getset(), staticmethod(), classmethod(), etc...
> 
> I must say that the current state of type/class unification is so
> complex that I don't understand the details, all these slots and
> wrappers and types, and why
>     5 .__new__(list, '42') == 42
> for example.

Sorry, that's a bug; this should be rejected as list is not a subtype
of int.

> I home that the following piece of documentation is temporary!
> 
>    Isn't this backwards incompatible? Won't it break existing code? It
>    would, if we changed the method resolution order for all classes.
>    However, in Python 2.2, the new lookup rule will only be applied to
>    types derived from built-in types, which is a new feature. Class
>    statements without a base class create "classic classes", and so do
>    class statements whose base classes are themselves classic classes.
>    For classic classes the classic lookup rule will be used. (To
>    experiment with the new lookup rule for classic classes, you will be
>    able to specify a different metaclass explicitly.) We'll also provide
>    a tool that analyzes a class hierarchy looking for methods that would
>    be affected by a change in method resolution order.

There are many things that could be improved here.  What exactly is
bothering you about it?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Fri Jul 20 20:17:12 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 20:17:12 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <E6367.7541$EP6.2460187@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
	<slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
	<OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com>
	<mailman.995662297.13101.python-list@python.org>
	<E6367.7541$EP6.2460187@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <87y9pj6sqf.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> To compare program running times, they should compute the same thing.
> 
> How long does dict2 take if you remove the not, so it makes the list
> of 1500 elements that revised dict does, instead of the 'not' list of
> 6000?
> 
> How long does dict take if you feed filter with 'lambda x,
> f=c.has_key: f(x)', so it make the 'not' list of 6000 elements?
> 

dict2 without the not takes (predictably) about twice as long as dict
(.038 seconds vs. .019) (because the explicit loops in the list
comprehensions are slower)

dict with a not takes (also predictably) slightly longer than dict2
(.06 vs .055) (because the overhead of a lambda is higher than the loops)

My point was not to compare dict to dict2, but to show that the
original author's comp() was greatly outperformed by a proper
dictionary solution.

(Note that I'm using a new computer, so the numbers don't align with
the one I used for the first set of tests)


- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse -- Larry Wall
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtYyggACgkQjVztv3T8pztQNQCaA3MNfa6wr3eHuBHhPA20te2t
hjcAn0CFRVX+SJ3p2gEDjiTSPI41sCbM
=DwzQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Tue Jul  3 14:33:12 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 11:33:12 -0700
Subject: run activepython v2.1 from a folder?
References: <a50631f6.0107021259.209fbae8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B420FE8.AEC3D57A@ccvcorp.com>

newgene wrote:

> Is it possible to solve this problem and run the activepython v2.1
> from a folder independent on system registry?
>
> Thank you
>
> Newgene

I believe that ActivePython is dependent upon the system registry,
so this may not be possible for you.  However, PythonWare has
a registry-independent distro at

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

This should work for your purposes, if I'm interpereting those
purposes and PythonWare's info correctly.  :)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 24 17:26:11 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:26:11 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com>

Chris Barker wrote:
> 
> Erik Max Francis wrote:
> > Paul Boddie wrote:
> >
> > > "from __past__ import" anyone? ;-)
> >
> > This occurred to me as well, but it still doesn't address the problem of
> > backward compatibility.  With a from __past__ import construct or not,
> > legacy code will still break.  The problem is not fixing old code, it's
> > being unable to fix old code that is no longer accessible (either from
> > being passed around or by being instrumented at a client site).
> 
> Exactly. I think everyone would be a LOT happier if you could run old
> code on a new interpreter, without ANY CHANGES AT ALL.
> 
> I think my proposal will allow that, someone plese commment on it!!

Sure: your proposal isn't bad. That is, absent any "pragma" the interpreter
assumes "old" semantics. But it does require programmers doing new
development to add that line of text in all their modules. And it has the
nice effect of spitting out an error when run by a 1.5.2 interpreter. But it
can get tiresome always adding that. So perhaps one should put the indicator
in the module name itself:

In the interest of proposing a solution everyone can live with, may I
suggest adoption of new module name extensions? A module named "module.py2"
will not be picked up or understood by Python 1.x on any platforms that I am
aware of. These would be compiled to either ".pyc", ".py2c", or ".pc2",
depending on whether one can compile the new semantics into code old
interpreters can handle, and whether it is now okay to allow more than 3
letters in file extensions on all popular platforms and file systems. But
hopefully everyone gets the idea.

Anyone see any insurmountable flaws with this? (Just trying to help; I hate
to abandon Python without at least trying one diplomatic solution to at
least one serious objection.)


From mirko.liss at web.de  Thu Jul 19 04:47:18 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:47:18 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lc1rt.6j0.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lc1rt.6j0.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>
Message-ID: <20010719084721.75050AE1.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Steve Lamb wrote:
[..case-sensitivity..]
>     Eh, preference is for case sensitivity.  Besides, I far prefer case
> sensitivity with tab completion than case insensitivity without.  :)

What about case-sensitive Python combined with case-insensitive
tab-completion in IDLE? With an option to switch it off, of course.

That way, beginners won't be bound to the 'case-sensitivity' discipline
by endless error messages but they'll be gently reminded when typing the
code.

Since that IDE is written in python, that function could be easily
extended to handle diacritics, umlauts, even smilies &c, if one
really thinks the students need this.

And if one doesn't like it, he or she can switch it off.

Let's keep Python really simple. We can always provide conveniences in
external tools which are not necessary for the functioning of the core
language.


Friendly regards,

Mirko Liss



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 16:27:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:27:08 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <Fk327.14800$i8.1312575@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:roy-58C72C.12353708072001 at news1.panix.com...
> I'm kind of confused about exactly what happens when I use a string as a
> dictionary key.  Section 3.2 of the reference manual seems to imply that
> keys are compared by identity:
>
> > The only types of values not acceptable as keys are values containing
> > lists or dictionaries or other mutable types that are compared by value
> > rather than by object identity
>
> but experimenting shows they it seems to really use value, not identity:
>
> >>> a = 'foo'
> >>> b = 'f' + 'o' + 'o'
> >>> a == b
> 1
> >>> a is b
> 0
> >>> x = {}
> >>> x[a] = 'this is a'
> >>> x[b]
> 'this is a'
>
> Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?  I'm
> contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key comparison by
> identity should be significantly faster than by value, because I'm going
to
> be using rather long strings as keys.

Paul Prescod has given you an answer to most of your post. As far as using
strings goes, unless they are all the same legnth and al have the same
leading characters the comparison might not be as slow asyou think (although
it clearly won't be as fast as identity). Key comparison of strings will
test the lengths fisrt, and if the lengths are the same will stop once two
unequal characters are found...

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 12 14:56:05 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:56:05 +0200
Subject: ANN: eGenix.com mx EXPERIMENTAL Extension Package 0.3.0
Message-ID: <3B4DF2C5.2AF2810F@lemburg.com>

________________________________________________________________________

ANNOUNCING:

        eGenix.com mx EXPERIMENTAL Extension Package for Python
                            Version 0.3.0

     Experimental Python extensions providing important and useful
                    services for Python programmers.


________________________________________________________________________

WHAT IS IT ?:

The eGenix.com mx EXPERIMENTAL Extensions for Python are a collection
of alpha and beta quality software tools for Python which will be
integrated into the other mx Extension Packages after they have
matured to professional quality tools.

Python is an open-oriented Open Source programming language which runs
on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating
ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity
and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming
platform for todays IT challenges.

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT'S NEW ?

The mxNumber package was updated to better integrate the provided
number types with Python's builtin types.

In addition to providing more coercion paths, the integer object
in mxNumber has also grown a whole set of useful methods.

And last, not least, there's a web-page for mxNumber which provide
some details about the new types. It is still far from being complete,
but provides some good starting points for those living on the
bleading edge.

________________________________________________________________________

EGENIX.COM MX EXPERIMENTAL PACKAGE OVERVIEW:


mxNumber - Python Interface to GNU MP Number Types

     mxNumber provides direct access to the high performance numeric
     types available in the GNU Multi-Precision Lib (GMP).  This
     library is licensed under the LGPL and runs on practically all
     Unix platforms. eGenix.com has ported the GMP lib to Windows, to
     also provide our Windows users with the added benefit of being
     able to do arbitrary precision calculations.

     The package currently provide these numerical types:

     1. Integer(value)      -- arbitrary precision integers much like Python
                               long only faster
     2. Rational(nom,denom) -- rational numbers with Integers as
                               numerator and denominator
     3. Float(value[,prec]) -- floating point number with at least
                               prec bits precision
     4. FareyRational(value, maxden)
                            -- calculate the best rational represenation 
                               n/d of value such that d < maxden

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET IT ?

The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can
be found at:

     http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT DOES IT COST ?

The EXPERIMENTAL packages uses different licenses in its subpackages.
Please refer to the subpackage documentation for details. Some of them
may be integrated into the BASE package, others will be integrated
into the COMMERCIAL package.

The package come with full source code

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ?

There currently is no support for these packages, since they are
still in alpha or beta. Feedback is welcome, though, so don't
hesitate to write us about the quirks you find.

________________________________________________________________________

REFERENCE:

<P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx
EXPERIMENTAL Extension Package 0.3.0</A> - eGenix.com mx EXPERIMENTAL
Extension Package 0.3.0 with precompiled binaries for Windows and
Linux. (12-Jul-2001)

________________________________________________________________________


Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 14:27:42 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:27:42 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B66F89E.77E64413@ccvcorp.com>

Dirck Blaskey wrote:

> When I first heard about this back then, I had a
> knee-jerk-dogmatic-negative-reaction to it.  Now, I believe
> I understand the motivation for the change better, and I also
> understand where the reaction comes from.

I'd just like to add my wholehearted concurrence on this.  My initial thought on division
change was one of horror.  After having read through the (relatively few) reasoned
responses, my opinion has changed.  It is obvious that Guido *does* know what he's doing,
even if not everyone agrees with the direction he wants to take.  I think that part of the
problem, that inspired such FUD, was the lack of a clearly explained rationale in the
relevant PEPs and early discussions here--probably in part because the rationale had been
explained to death in other fora.  Seeing the division change as a necessary precursor to
full numeric-model integration makes this an entirely different issue than "we think the
current division might confuse a few people", which (unfortunately) is the impression that
some people (I at least) received at the start of this mess.

In short, I think we should all try to have a little more faith in Guido, even if we don't
agree with all of his proposals.  His design instincts have proved to be right, time and
time again.  Python is a wonderful language to work with, and is an *incredible* relief to
come back to after dealing with some of the other mess I have to work with.  (A primitive,
proprietary dialect of basic that makes VB look clean, and an ugly proprietary language
that makes *that* basic look pleasant! And all on a platform where *every* variable is
global.... >shudder< )

Thanks, Guido, and all of the PythonLabs crew.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From shalehperry at home.com  Fri Jul 20 11:36:45 2001
From: shalehperry at home.com (Sean 'Shaleh' Perry)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:36:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Python equivalent of two Perl statements
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526E@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010720083645.shalehperry@home.com>

On 20-Jul-2001 Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> What is the equivalent of these Perl statements in Python?
> 
> $time = scalar(localtime);
> print "This FTP request started on $time \n";
> 

import time
now = time.ctime(time.time())
print now

time.time() returns seconds since the epoch, ctime() turns it into the string
like perl does.  There are several other interesting time printing functions in
the 'time' module.



From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Thu Jul 12 05:12:36 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 09:12:36 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kqqdj.1c7.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.
> 
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)
> print f
> 
> *NOTE   The varible N is defined in the code before this excerpt.

Note that the def mult is completely unused here.
 
> Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?
> 
> But comon sense tells me this is easier.
> 
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> print f
> 
> Isnt that easier??

It's exactly the same to me, but the first is only one line (if you delete
the def).

I'd use operator.mul though, it's faster.

> Or do I not get lambda?

You do, every lambda can be trivially rewritten as a def, just not inside
an expression: you need to def the function before the expression.

> *NOTE ... I think its just a way to complicate things OR just a way to avoid
> typing the function name beacuse.... I dont know they are scared of the
> names they give them.

Using a def is a few more lines, it needs a name, and it puts a bit of space
between the definition of the function and the expression. But they're more
powerful.

Lambda is a minor convenience at most, of course, and a minor annoyance
according to some (among whom is Guido, iirc).

Nowadays I'd rather use a list comprehension than a map(lambda ....)
construction.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Mon Jul 23 19:57:20 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:57:20 -0700
Subject: intersection and union idea
Message-ID: <3b5cb9d4$0$325$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

I was day dreaming about python today, and I realized that it would be
very python-ish to have intersection and union operators for lists and
tuples. Eg:

>>> (1,2,3,4) | (1,3,6,8)
(1,2,3,4,6,8)
>>> (1,2,3,4) & (1,3,6,8)
(1,3)

Does such an operator exist? I am sure someone else has thought of this
before.

Neil Macneale

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Thu Jul 12 09:34:23 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:34:23 GMT
Subject: More CGI ?'s...
References: <mailman.994883900.13704.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4DA7F9.9406D959@nokia.com>

"Vincent A. Primavera" wrote:
> 
> Hello,
>         Is there a way to access each row's data from this text area with python's
> cgi module(cgi.FieldStorage to be exact...)?
> 
> <B>Notes:</B><BR>
> <TEXTAREA NAME="Notes" ROWS=6 COLS=25>
> </TEXTAREA>

import cgi
form = cgi.FieldStorage()

Notes = form.getvalue("Notes") or "" #None would cause some problems
Lines = Notes.split("\r\n")

for x in range(len(Lines)):
    print "line",x+1,":",Lines[x],"<br>"

- Joonas


From akhar at videotron.ca  Sat Jul 14 23:11:17 2001
From: akhar at videotron.ca (akhar)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:11:17 -0700
Subject: Re-sizing images in Python?
References: <q6547.41446$B56.8781902@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <wf547.21414$Kg7.1547337@wagner.videotron.net>

Look into PIL(python Imaging library) has all you need.
Stephane
"Darren Watson" <Darren.Watson3 at ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:q6547.41446$B56.8781902 at news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> I would be very grateful for any advice that fellow list members can
provide
> about Pythons ability to resize image files (jpg and gif).
>
> I would like to write a script that can process all the files in a
directory
> and resize the images to a specified size (passed in as an argument).
> However, I am not sure if this is a task that Python 2.1 can perform or if
> it is, which library to use.
>
> If possible I would like the script to scale images in order to 'best fit'
a
> particular area.
>
> Many Thanks
>
> --
>
> Darren Watson
>
>
>




From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 10 09:29:00 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:29:00 -0400
Subject: Q: mpg123 with Python
References: <9ierhe$c3u$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Message-ID: <etdbsms29r7.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=mp3.py

Alex.


From tundra at tundraware.com  Fri Jul 13 18:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 22:30:01 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com>

Dennis Roark wrote:
> 
<SNIP>

> 
> Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
> would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
> variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
> misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> large projects.
> 

Umm, the world's largest systems are not written in C++ or even C.
I spent almost 10 years at UAL's Apollo Reservation system which was
the largest commercial transaction system in the world (probably still
is number one or two).  All the core system was written in *assembler*
running an OS that had no memory protection.  Yup, a bad application
segment could take down the whole business.  Why?  For SPEEEEEEED.

I have programmed extensively in C, assembler, BASIC, PL/M and a some
in C++, Forth, Pascal, AWK, Perl, Java...  For my money, I have *never*
seen a language more suited for rapid applications development - even
pretty good sized applications - that strongly encourages the programmer
to write clean, easy to read code, than *Python* - this after only a
month or two of fiddling with it.

The academic debates about early- vs. late binding, static- vs. dynamic
typing, procedural- vs. object, and so on mean very little in practice,
in my experience.  The thing that is never taught in language design
and compiler classes is that what matters to the programmer is
*safe and readable ***SYNTAX*** with predictable semantics*.  The rest
of it is of interest only to language implementors and designers.

Furthermore, bear in mind that code "portability" is no where near as 
important in the commercial sector as it is in academics.  Commercial
applications are typically the largest around.  They are purpose built
to do things which distinguish their company from the pack and create
unique value-add.  It is rarely important to be able to move code
around at will.  What *is* important is code *reliability*, *cost of
ownership*, *readability*, and portability of *programmer's skills*.

In this light, C++ is an abomination.  It was a really good research
exercise which demonstrated just how flexible the whole Unix paradigm
really is for making things extensible, but as a production language
is it clumsy, ugly, hard to read, and full of subtle semantic traps.

In the past few years I have been a technology executive in a variety
of companies.  In every case, unless there is no other way out, I have
stopped the use of C++.  I'd rather see people coding in perl, awk, or now,
python by a bunch.  The cost of maintaining and owning C++ is demonstrably
higher than any of the alternatives.  It is a systems programming language
in OO drag and has the worst of all possible worlds - the ease of shooting
your foot off that a systems language has, the complexity of OO, and
syntactic obscurity that does little more than preserve the Programming
High Priesthood.  It is thankfully dying a slow death precisely because
there are much better choices.

Applications programmers need to do different things in different ways
than Systems programmers.  No language can serve both well, in my experience.
IMHO, that's why C++ failed - it tried to be all things to all programmers
and ended up being a convoluted mess. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Tue Jul  3 15:56:59 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:56:59 GMT
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de> <slrn9k471b.hhl.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3b421cec.5073656@news.t-online.de>

On 3 Jul 2001 19:25:31 GMT, quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
wrote:

>And here's why using a dict as you did above is probably silly: You don't need
>to manually encode type information if the language can do it for you.  Making
>a Button class will automatically attach that type to its instances.
>Furthermore, a fundamental property of all objects (as opposed to true values
>like an algebraic data type) is that they have unique ids seperate from their
>values.  The language will maintain them for you, and to fetch them you can
>use the id() function. The 'name' field is the only necessary one.
>
>"Yes", you're saying, "but it was only an example." :)

Well, you're right, I wrote up classes later, but mainly so that the
code is more easily extended. 

2 reasons for using dicts rather than classes:

- You can easily create the data an object stores *dynamically*, i.e.
from user input.

- The class approach is a lot of overhead compared with writing a
simple dict, when all you want to store is a name. 

Plus, classes are slower :

Xoring a variable in a dict 1000000 times took 2.91 seconds.
Xoring a variable in a class 1000000 times took 3.39 seconds.



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Wed Jul 11 14:35:35 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:35:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107111427580.379-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).

Is it possible that changes to built-in types to allow subclassing could
be made to also allow redefining operators for built-in types ? 

Then "/" could be mapped to either behaviour, and gradual introduction
could be a matter of changing the default behaviour in a future version. 

I know some folks will object to the idea of redefining basic function,
but Python already allows that for a lot of built-in functions (import
and others). 

[I haven't had the stamina to read every message in this thread, so please
 forgive me if this has already been suggested.]

-- Steve Majewski







From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 23:24:05 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:24:05 -0400
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com> <slrn9ksnh3.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E69D5.5CB278F2@engcorp.com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> 
> >> ...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
> >> and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
> >> "Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
> >> there must be more to it, eh.

Just to clarify, I did not write the above.  I merely quoted it.

> I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
> that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.

Would you call a C program which implemented those same steps 
a "script" ?

(I realize you would not typically use C for this, but if you did?)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 13:29:14 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 10:29:14 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9juspa$8p0$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>MDFL 

What does this stand for?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 13:28:21 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:28:21 -0500
Subject: 2.0b2: SystemError: frexp() result out of range
In-Reply-To: <vktpuaqnuu0.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk>
References: <vktpuaqnuu0.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <15197.45109.323013.471818@beluga.mojam.com>

    Anthony> Please, if I were to ask nicely for our local installation of
    Anthony> python to be upgraded, would the bug shown below to go away?

    >>> cPickle.dump(float('inf'), f, 1)
    ...
    SystemError: frexp() result out of range

Yeah, I believe so:

>>> float('inf')
inf
>>> marshal.dumps(float('inf'))
'f\x03inf'
>>> import cPickle
>>> cPickle.dumps(float('inf'))
'Finf\n.'
>>> import sys
>>> print sys.version_info
(2, 1, 1, 'final', 0)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul 18 16:30:52 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:30:52 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995443830.26172.python-list@python.org> <3B55724D.465E8A44@engcorp.com> <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107182005070.21247-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <mtg0bugetf.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

John J Lee writes:

> When do you ever write Python code that does this kind of thing??  For
> example, if you're doing lots of fp work, don't you use Numeric?

I don't, really.  If I have to do this, I write a C module and do it
there, but it's a PITA.  If I could find some way to write decent-
speed numerical integrators (say) in pure python, then I'd do it.

If I could just write my entire code in, say, OCaML or Common Lisp,
rather than in a mixture of C++ and Python, then I'd be very happy.

Numeric only helps with half the problem, since I do more
integration/function evaluation than I do matrix math.

That being said, I find python a great tool that is fast enough, once
I move speed critical parts out to C++.  However, the less I move to
C++, the happier I am.

And ignore my numbers for python.  I discovered that the version of
python on my laptop wasn't compiled with -O2, so the run time was
artificially high.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From ark at research.att.com  Fri Jul 27 18:18:33 2001
From: ark at research.att.com (Andrew Koenig)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 22:18:33 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf@europa.research.att.com> <eppstein-88B0F0.11425427072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <yu997kwudnie.fsf@europa.research.att.com>

David> In article <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf at europa.research.att.com>,
David>  Andrew Koenig <ark at research.att.com> wrote:

>> >> A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>> >> division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>> >> function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
>> >> you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
>> 
David> Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?

>> What if x is complex?

David> Did you read the last line?

Evidently not. :-)

What I saw was float(x)/y and thought it was being suggested as an
alternative for x*1.0/y without reading the whole context.  Sorry about that.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark


From schaffer at optonline.net  Sat Jul  7 10:40:56 2001
From: schaffer at optonline.net (Les Schaffer)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 14:40:56 GMT
Subject: win32ras: pyd built for win98 to fix phonebook methods
Message-ID: <1f7ektcggljf59ab7e4aj7mf7fg5ujot96@4ax.com>

Hi:

i needed to have win32ras phonebook functionality working on a win98 system,
so i grabbed the cvs sources for win32all from active state and recompiled
the win32ras module with WINVER set to 0x400. after installing the new
version of win32ras.pyd, along with a new PyWinTypes22.dll, the phonebook
methods now work, whereas before they were failing like so:

>>> from win32ras import *
>>> EnumConnections()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
api_error: (610, 'RasEnumConnections(NULL)', 'The buffer is invalid.')


but now:

>>> from win32ras import *
>>> EnumConnections()
[]
>
>> EnumEntries()
[('GiantISP',), ('CooperLED',)]
>>> 

i'd like to bang on this a little bit before i post the pyd/dll to my web
site. if anyone else is trying to use phonebook stuff on winXX < 2000 and
wants to try out the recompiled extensions first, let me know and i will
email them (they are small -- 25 and 56 kB respectively).

les schaffer


From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 12:53:13 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 16:53:13 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247>

In article <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal>, 
gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de says...
<snip>

> You don't try to spread FUD, do you? No matter what MS or any other company
> writes into their "license agreements", not everything is compatible with
> German or US or whatever laws.
> 
> Gerhard
> 

I'm gratified to know that you are aware enough to know that, and that 
further you can afford to take Microsoft to court if needs be. The parts 
about MS excluding open source software from running on their os's and 
the part about XP being evil where and are my supposition and opinion 
respectively. The part about the UK is 100% as reported by 
http://www.theregister.co.uk. Microsoft, like other companies and even 
governments, either counts on people's ignorance or inability to contest 
their behavior (governments are somewhat easier to correct - IF YOU HAVE 
THE MONEY). BTW, the people who make the Opera browser ARE taking the UK 
government to court over trade restraint.

Fact: Over the last several revisions of selected OS's Microsoft has 
either been restricting what they can be used for in licenses or 
releasing the software with restrictions built-in that limit what can be 
done with that software. Microsoft announced during the beta of Windows 
NT that they where going to limit the number of concurrent tcp/ip sockets 
open to outside (i.e over the web) at any one time. After much public 
outcry, they "relented" and simply put it in the NT workstation EULA. In 
Windows 2000 Pro, they just built it into the OS (see IIS concurrent 
connections option in the MMC). You might also recall the hue and cry 
when some magazines published information about how to bypass some 
registry settings that allowed NT Workstation to operate as NT Server.

Fact: It has been fairly widely reported that Microsoft will initiate 
their annual subscription based costing model when Windows XP starts 
shipping. Rather then pay for an upgrade when you want it, you'll pay it 
annually or the software will stop working. There's also been user beta  
testing of a per use pricing scheme in (at least) the UK for MS Office.

Opinion: It would not be illegal for Microsoft to make it a condition of 
use that you not install open source software if you want to use their 
OS. It's not restraint of trade since technically, open software is not 
traded - there's no _overt_ exchange of value nor is there a "buyer" or a 
"seller" who could be harmed monetarily through such a restraint 
(besides, you have the freedom to choose another OS according to MS). 
Personally, I think XP is going to drive more people into the Linux camp 
(GOOD!). (NOTE: i'm not suggesting that there is no inherent value to 
open source software!)

When it comes to Microsoft, FUD is a good survival trait ihmo. I sure 
Fear their power, am (NOT) Uncertain of their integrity and (have no) 
Doubt (of) their motives. $US 55+ billion per year isn't enough I guess. 
(That's based on a single quarter's gross of $13.4 billion I heard once.)

Dave LeBlanc


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 17 22:55:30 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:55:30 +1200
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com> <3B529CB7.8030905@T-Online.de>
Message-ID: <3B54FAA2.D7E04ECB@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Burkhard Kroesen wrote:
> 
> Maybe you feel more comfortable with
> multtab = [x*y for x in range(13) for y in range(13)]

But that doesn't produce what he wanted, which
was for multtab[x][y] to be equal to x*y.

But if there were such a thing as dictionary
comprehensions, he could use

  multtab = {(x,y):x*y for x in range(13) 
                         for y in range(13)}

:-)

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From rneely at home.com  Mon Jul 16 02:32:10 2001
From: rneely at home.com (Rob Neely)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 23:32:10 -0700
Subject: Starting a Frame dependent on destruction of another Frame...
Message-ID: <6f0b3be9.0107152232.21f297e6@posting.google.com>

I have a simple problem I'm trying to solve with Tkinter.

When my application runs, I want a frame to pop up asking the user for
some info (a directory name).  When they hit the "OK" button, I want
that frame to destroy itself, and start up another toplevel frame
which will be populated with some widgets based on what was entered in
the first frame.

I've enclosed a very stripped down example below.  If you run this
program in linux (under KDE), the only way to get to the second frame
is to close the window with the window manager (ie - clicking the "x"
in the KDE window decorations).  When I run it from MS-windows - even
that doesn't work...

Can anyone show me how I might configure the following applet so
clicking the "OK" button will destroy the frame and start up the next
frame?  Or more generally - how should one set up an application where
one frame is started only after another has destroyed itself.

I've tried as many combinations that I can think of - and this is the
closest I've gotten!

Thanks in advance!

--Rob

from Tkinter import *

class Splash(Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        Frame.__init__(self, parent)
        b = Button(self, text="OK", command=self.splash_done)
        b.pack()
        self.pack()
    
    def splash_done(self):
        print "Clicked OK"
        self.destroy()

class Mainapp(Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        Frame.__init__(self, parent)
        l = Label(self, text="Main frame opened")
        l.pack()
        self.pack()

Splash().mainloop()
Mainapp().mainloop()


From plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 26 03:55:45 2001
From: plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (Manoj Plakal)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:55:45 GMT
Subject: Use "quotient"? (was Re: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament))
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <52Q77.181728$mG4.85523836@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote on Tuesday 24 July 2001 23:18:
> Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) writes:
>> To any mathematician on the planet, 1/2 is, well, 1/2.
>> A rational number quite different from 0.
> 
> Right. 

        It seems to me that the word "division" is being sorely
        overloaded in these threads as well as in PEP 238. Would
        it be more precise (mathematically and otherwise) to
        reword things like this:

           - currently, the symbol `/' in Python programs signifies
             two different operators depending on the arguments:
                 - the QUOTIENT operator with 2 integer arguments

                 - the DIVISION operator with at least 1 float 
                   argument

           - the proposed change is to make '/' always signify the
             DIVISION operator and '//' always signify the QUOTIENT
             operator

         Seems to be more clear than saying "integer division"
         or "truncating division" or "float division". 
         
         Just my 2 cents ...
  
         Manoj



From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 00:42:13 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:42:13 -0400
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.995053524.27415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FCDA5.15F3D932@engcorp.com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
> >(And I don't know the nature of the compilation stage:
> >is it automated as with Python, or manual as with Java?)
> 
> Jython has the same "auto-compile and run" mechanism as CPython.

Nice: the best of both worlds yet again.

On the top of scripting:
> .. The "script" in this case is not script *because* it is
> written in Python.  It is "script" because it is code that has "script"
> -like capabilites and is being used in a "script"-like role (it is embedded
> in the framework of my application, you can write a few lines of code in a
> configuration file and not have to compile it and link it, etc.).

And Roman Suzi wrote simultaneously:
> All said, I conclude that being "scripting language" is a role,
> described above and not language feature in itself.

"Role" being the operative word in both the above.  That makes perfect
sense to me, too.  Thanks for your explanations.  Now I can go back
to programming more scripts... er, I mean scripting my programs...
well, you know what I mean. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 23:26:16 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:26:16 -0400
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Vesselin Peev" <vesselinpeev at hotmail.com> wrote [...]:
> > Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
>     ...
> You asked this 6+ hours ago under subject "How can I run precompiled
> code objects?" and I answered 26 minutes before you reposted.  Have
> a little patience, already: netnews propagation delays and varying
> timezones mean it WILL take a little time for you to get answers!

Alex, please consider moving closer to the Eastern Standard timezone
so that you may answer my questions more quickly.  What's so special
about Italy anyway?  And why would you consider creating an Italian
version of comp.lang.python when that would distract you from your
work in *this* newsgroup?  The nerve!  

;-)


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul  3 02:36:13 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:36:13 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994115046.6243.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <xJd07.953$c7.228697@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994115046.6243.python-list at python.org...
> I strongly feel that in the modern world, people will see an unadorned
> 82/4 as 20.5.

So?...  My point was that numbers in real, consequential computations *are*
adorned with a unit, even if just implicitly, and that people should
*think* about what that adornment/tagging is.

> Go ask someone on the street: "What's 11 divided by 2."  If
> they are good enough at mathematics to even figure out an answer, they
> will usually respond 5.5.

Yes, given an underspecified abstract question of no consequence,
especially verbally, people will often fill in the blank with something
that lets them answer.  So?  (see above).

> Very few would bother to ask you whether you  mean "count division."

The question under debate is whether we should keep the existing method of
*telling* a Python interpreter what me mean, which I strongly favor, or
break scads of code to change it to something else, as some have proposed.

...

> I do not think it is very good idea to use two syntaxes that are
> semantically equivalent in "real math" to indicate divisibility.

Since I am advocating no change, I am unclear as to what you mean here.

>. And maybe one day we could say
> that 5.00 represents not double-precision math but *triple* precsion.
> Adding zeros to the end could get you more and more precision.

I believe something like this is part of the IBM decimal arithmetic
proposal/project.

1.0/3 = .3, 1.00/3 = .33, etc (in which case, 1/3 = 0 by the same rule)

...
> In a dynamically typed language with no type declarations it makes more
> sense to define the nature of the operation *at the point of the
> operation* and not at the point where the value is initialized.

As noted in another thread, Python is deeply polymorphic.  The meanings of
3*2 and '3'*2, or 3+2 versus '3'+'2', for instance are more different that
8/3 versus 8.0/3.  This nature of the operation *is* defined by the
initializations of the values.  Do you suggest that we unbundle such other
usages also?

>If you
> write a function like this:
>
> def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
>     return teachers/classroom
>
> you absolutely do NOT want the users of this function to accidently
> subvert it and get meaningless answers by passing it "3.0" instead of
> "3".
> Therefore to make this safe, you need to do this:
>
> def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
>     return int(teachers)/int(classroom)

The same is true whenever you want to block some of the polymorphic
possibilities of a Python expression.  Consider

def muladd(a,b,c): return a*b+c

and a user passing in 2, 'hello', 'goodbye'.  Any expresion with names
(variables) instead of all literals opens the door to polymophic
possibilities depending on the type of the compile-time unspecified values.
But the question under debate is whether the compiler should silently
coerce pairs of integers, including unambiguous pairs of literals, to a
pair of floats when they happen to be connected with '/' instead of one of
the many other operators.  To me, this would be a major wart.

> > Requiring  that people think about divisibility in choosing a number
representation is
> > no more burdensome (and I think less so) than requiring them to think
about
> > mutability in choosing a tuple versus list sequence representation.
>
> Many Python hot-shots admit to occasionally being bitten by the
> int/float problem whereas we never have trouble with tuple/list.

Very funny.  According to my memory, the case is more the opposite.  Hardly
a month go by that some newbie does not ask "What is a tuple?", "What is
the difference between tuples and lists?", "Why do we have both?",  "How
can I decide which to use?", "Couldn't we simplify Python by merging them
together?", and repeatedly, some version of "I changed a list and now its
changed when I access it by a different name [or anonymous reference]!!!
Why???".

Terry J. Reedy





From phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk  Thu Jul 12 12:03:52 2001
From: phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk (John J. Lee)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:03:52 +0100
Subject: noncommercial Python+QT on Windows? (was Re: qt or gtk?)
In-Reply-To: <4a249347.0107120725.3c4569ea@posting.google.com>
References: <slrn9ios1q.el.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <9gk8he$8gl$1@brokaw.wa.com> <16074dce.0106181045.139d80a5@posting.google.com> <3b3b40a0@news.uia.ac.be> <9hfjho05to@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.993768352.14849.python-list@python.org> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0106292039570.18740-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <9hjriq$pc8$1@news1.xs4all.nl> <4a249347.0107120725.3c4569ea@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107121701580.2157-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>

On 12 Jul 2001, Robert wrote:

> Are there binaries anywhere for those of us without a compiler?

Not yet.  There was one, but he had to take it down because he used the
non-non-commercial version of Qt to compile it.  There will be one soon, I
expect.


John



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:48:18 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:48:18 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.994035602.29848.python-list@python.org> <nBQ%6.417370$oc7.58837743@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <mailman.994058342.19156.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp4rsql1r7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 02:00:51AM +0000, Rainer Deyke wrote:
> > An interesting (and AFAIK legal) optimization would be to make
> > tuples act as mutable objects with respect to augmented assignment
> > if their reference is 1.
> 
> But they are never 1 unless you're in a C extention that just created it.
> When you call 'x += y', the refcount for both x and y is always 2 when the
> arguments arrive at the __iadd__ (or C equivalent.)
> 
> So you mean '2'. But then you could run into trouble on, say,
> 
>   () += y
> 
> because the empty tuple is shared, just like interned strings and integers.
> The refcount *could* be 2, and you end up modifying someone else's empty
> tuple.

No, because "() += y" is syntactically illegal.

It wouldn't be a useful optimization anyway, because += on a tuple
would have to reallocate the tuple, which is tantamount to allocating
a new one anyway, thus losing most of the advantage.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From fschaef at ces.clemson.edu  Fri Jul  6 13:24:34 2001
From: fschaef at ces.clemson.edu (Schaefer, F.)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 10:24:34 -0700
Subject: Crop a transparent Gif
Message-ID: <3B45F452.383AB459@ces.clemson.edu>

Hi,

I'm trying to crop some sprites out of a bigger resource GIF-File.
Using PIL everything works fine, except that the transparency 
is not maintained, when cropping a transparent gif image.

Does anybody have any idea howto maintain transparency ?


Thanks,

Frank


From -$Paul$- at verence.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 14:16:14 2001
From: -$Paul$- at verence.demon.co.uk (Paul Wright)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 18:16:14 -0000
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com> <mailman.994711525.24100.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ifgpe$1b5$1@verence.demon.co.uk>

In article <mailman.994711525.24100.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>> > From what I can tell, PHP and Ruby
>> > are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that I see
>> > in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
>> > adoration for pure acedemic elegance.
>
>I think even the Ruby people would be surprised to hear about Edward's
>statistics about it flying past Python!

Shurely he means that the derivative of the number of users wrt time is
greater for Ruby than for Python, which may be true because Python has a
far larger user base and so is nearer "saturation".

-- 
----- Paul Wright ------| No storm can shake my inmost calm,
-paul.wright at pobox.com--|  while to that rock I'm clinging.
http://pobox.com/~pw201 | Since love is lord of heaven and earth
                        |  how can I keep from singing?


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Thu Jul 26 08:26:29 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:26:29 -0500
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107260002070.8592-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <006301c115ce$33c0bc80$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>

> > My proposal for
> >
> >     from __numerics__ import original
> >
> > is the same sort of thing.  When the "original" semantics disappear, the
> > user gets an obvious error message.
>
> __future__ and __past__ both imply reference to some specific time,
> and it is reasonable to expect what they are being used for will go
> away when that time becomes inconsequential to the present (i.e., the
> future has already come, or the past is distant).
>
> __<something specific>__ has no such transitory implications, and
> would best be left for permanent features.  Perhaps for sets of
> incompatible features that must all be in the language.

True.  However, my proposal covers both the "original" Python division
semantics and the addition of optional rational, fixedpoint, decimal,
and any other sort of numeric system the twisted mind of Man can come
up with.  The key word is *optional* as I don't want rationals, probably
ever, but I would love decimal floats and fixedpoints as builtins; the
rational camp would love rationals (naturally) but probably most couldn't
care less about decimal floats or fixedpoints.

The "original" semantics under my proposal would be "invented" as already
deprecated, and would be removed in 3.0 as the current plan stands.  We
have deprecated and subsequently removed things before without the
__future__ directives and it didn't kill us; hence I see the question of
"transitory implications" as only of minor concern.  Remember, explicit
(even in documentation) is better than implicit.





From deltapigz at telocity.com  Wed Jul 25 14:07:06 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (Adonis Vargas)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:07:06 -0400
Subject: Redirecting broswers in Py
Message-ID: <3B5F0AC8.BF54029C@telocity.com>

the script accepts the connection then processes information once that
is done i want to be able to send the broswer to X page. i have found
something and used it in the line below:

c.send("<META
HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"Content=0;Host=\"http://www.someurl.com\">")

but i think im going at this completely wrong.

any help would greatly be appreciated.

Adonis




From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Tue Jul 10 15:18:14 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:18:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <3b4b4a70$0$319$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107101515350.278-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


Old Russian joke:

 Capitalism is the economic system where man exploits man,
 but Communism is just the opposite! 

-- Steve 


On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Neil Macneale wrote:

> In article <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list at python.org>, "Chris Watson"
> <chris at voodooland.net> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
> >      A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically,
> >      a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the
> >      possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to
> >      all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and
> >      advantage of all.
> > 
> > communism
> >        n 1: a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership 
> >        2: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless
> >           society
> > 
> 
> You can't compare communism and capitalism.  One is a political structure
> while the other economic structure.  It makes more sense to say that you
> perfer Capitalism over Socialism, or Democracy over Communism.  I am for
> democracy, and socialism, so I'm going with GPL :-)
> 




From mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za  Fri Jul 20 10:00:56 2001
From: mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za (mixo)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:00:56 +0200
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com> <3B581A4F.381F3072@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B583998.3AFF2E75@beth.uniforum.org.za>

Peter Hansen wrote:

> "Owen F. Ransen" wrote:
> >
> > The Quick Python Book says that KeyboardInterrupt is
> > tested regularly when the Python interpreter is running,
> > but I have a program which may run for several minutes
> > without printing anything, and I find I cannot break out of
> > it with control-C.
> >
> > How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?
>
> This could be a platform-dependent issue.
>
> Are you by any chance running on Win2K?

I doubt it is a Win2K (or any other version of windoze version ) issue
as
I  had (and still have) a similar problem  :I  had  to  press controls-C
2 times
to break out of a program! (the  program  listens on a port for
connections -
and actually threads)



From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 18:39:43 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:39:43 -0400
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
In-Reply-To: <lvf3mto2i116sl1nrjn6q6p1ckt0c3ddbe@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMENALBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> I don't know why the first output in the tuple isn't an int anyway.
> After all, it *is* a member of the set of integers even if it is
> currently represented using a float.
>
> A quick example...
>
> >>> divmod(5.1,2.0)
> (2.0, 1.0999999999999996)
>
> So why doesn't this return...
>
> >>> divmod(5.1,2.0)
> (2, 1.0999999999999996)
>
> If the 2 is used anywhere a float is needed it will be cast to float
> implicitly anyway once PEP238 goes through.

float divmod() always returns floats today; that's all there is to it.  It
can't always return (short) ints, because e.g.,

>>> divmod(1e98, 2)
(5e+97, 0.0)
>>>

That is, 5e97 is outside the range of Python ints on any platform today.

It could always return a long (unbounded) int for the quotient, but that
would be time- and space-inefficient, and it's hard to think of a case where
that be more useful than a float.




From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul  1 21:20:16 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 01:20:16 GMT
Subject: problems with class initiation
References: <mailman.994017363.31520.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <k%P%6.388737$eK2.79089127@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

You could pass a reference to your 'prefs' to the constructor of 'Second'..

class Second:
    def __init__(self,prefs):
        self.prefs = prefs
    def init_fn(self):
        return self.prefs.a

Now class Second keeps it's own reference to the 'prefs' object, instead of
relying on using some other binding to the same object.

class Main:
    def __init__(self):
        self.prefs = Preferences()
        self.fns = []
        second = Second(self.prefs)

        # depending what you wanted, either of:
        self.fns.append(second.init_fn)   # appends the function itself,
or...
        self.fns.append(second.init_fn()) # calls the fn, and appends the
result

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = Main()

Since you have a list called fns, I wonder whether you intend to have a list
of functions, in which case, the first of the two commented lines does what
you want.

On a more general note, it looks like you are using classes for everything,
where some of these things might be better off as simple functions.  Unlike
java, not everything has to be a class.  (for starters, class 'main' should
probably be just a function:  def main(): ...





From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 27 11:15:09 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:15:09 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Vk087.27863$B7.4280302@ruti.visi.com> <3B60A0ED.BAAFE3A9@Lugoj.Com> <uelr2er7q.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <cpy9pa2zik.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <u1yn2e742.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> (GvR) writes:

GvR> piet at cs.uu.nl writes:
>> I wrote several parts of the CDC Cyber Algol 68 compiler (and later also an
>> Algol 60 compiler) and we just moved the address of the following
>> instruction to the stack (`manually') and then jumped to the procedure
>> address. And of course we used 12 bit characters and the language was
>> case-sensitive.

GvR> Our lives touched!  I used that Algol 68 compiler.  It also (very
GvR> indirectly) affected Python: that compiler had a very strong worldview
GvR> of its own that often didn't match that of other languages and tools
GvR> on the system, and that made it hard to mix tools.  I found this a
GvR> nuisance (ABC had the same nuisance even stronger), and when I
GvR> designed Python, one of my requirements was that it blend in with its
GvR> environment.  This explains why Python extensions are so useful.

One of the later versions had an interface with FORTRAN. But in general,
yes, the worldview of Algol68 was very different from the other languages
at that moment. 
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From tripie at cpan.org  Tue Jul 31 09:28:39 2001
From: tripie at cpan.org (Tomas Styblo)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 06:28:39 -0700
Subject: Static class members ?
Message-ID: <fe01b1af.0107310528.14ff4092@posting.google.com>

"""
Static class members ?

Hello. I've found no way to properly create static data members in
Python classes.
By static members I mean data that are shared by all instances of a
class.
A textbook example of usage of static data is a counter of all
instances of said class.
I tried the following:
"""

# Beginning of a module.

class Parent:

    INSTANCES = 0

    def __init__():
        Parent.INSTANCES = Parent.INSTANCES + 1

    def get_INSTANCES():
        return Parent.INSTANCES


""" That works OK. Problems come when I derive a new class from this
Parent.
    Inherited methods in the derived class then reference the static
data in
    Parent. This is not what I expect and need.

    The second way I tried was:
"""

# Beginning of a module.

INSTANCES = 0

class Parent:

    def __init__():
        INSTANCES = INSTANCES + 1

    def get_INSTANCES():
        return INSTANCES


""" This also isn't an optimal solution, because the derived class
doesn't pass
    the "empty subclass" inheritance test. I have to manually add the
"static"
    variables to its module to make it work.

    Anyone please know what the optimal solution of this problem is ?

    Tomas Styblo
    tripie at cpan.org
"""


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 18 15:15:23 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:15:23 -0400
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lbmfi.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEEOKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Philipp Weinfurter, on "a = a + 1", or some such]
> ...
> i don't mean to be pedantic, but the rules are that if a variable
> is not found in local scope, then the compiler looks up the global
> scope and python doesn't follow this rule here.

Except you made that rule up <wink>.  The actual rule is that if a name is
bound anywhere within a code block, that name is local throughout the entire
code block.  This determination is made at compile-time, not at runtime.  In
"a = a + 1", a is bound to within the code block, therefore all instances of
"a" within the code block refer to a (the same) local vrbl.




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 21:53:48 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:53:48 -0500
Subject: Tests for calendar module
In-Reply-To: <3B60A388.C6E11F75@yahoo.com>
References: <3B60A388.C6E11F75@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <15200.51628.144595.253949@beluga.mojam.com>

    Paul> 1) Who maintains calendar.py? Lots of contributors listed in the
    Paul>    cvs logs.

It's just part of the core library.  If you submit a patch to sourceforge,
it will get assigned to somebody.  (Maybe me.)

    Paul> 2) I found a couple of possible bugs in calendar.py. Who should I
    Paul>    provide details and patches to?

Same thing.  

Patches here:   https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=305470
Bugs here:      https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=105470

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Tue Jul 24 05:42:20 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 09:42:20 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list at python.org>,
 Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>All backwards compatibility issues are a matter of patience. Do you
>think that anybody would complain if something that was deprecated
>between Python 1.4 and Python 1.5 was formally removed now? Maybe it
>will take ten years for us to provide a migration path to new-style
>division. That is not an argument for putting of the beginning of that
>process. If we had started two years ago we would be two years closer to
>being able to fix the problem finally. It is Guido's job to take the
>long view.

The thing about this change is that it is different from other changes
there have been (that I'm aware of), in that it changes a fundamental
part of the language semantics. Switching from the current / behaviour
to the new proposal is not the same as _removing_ a feature -- it is
_changing_ a feature. That is far more insidious.

I agree, by the way, that if we were discussing a new language, it
would be sensible to use / for fractional division and // for integer
division (and just as sensible to do the reverse). I'm amazed at the
passion behind people arguing about what, to me, is an arbitrary
language choice. But that isn't the issue here. We aren't designing a
new language, we're modifying an existing one.

I return to my question. Suppose Python 2.2 is released with this
__future__ division. Now suppose I must maintain some code which can
run on Python 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, which needs integer division. What am
I to do?  I can continue to use /, safe in the knowledge that I
haven't done the __future__ import, but that doesn't take the
long-term view -- it would be similarly foolish to write new code
which uses "yield" as an identifier, since I know that it's going to
break later.

So what can I do?  I can't even do something ugly like

  if sys.hexversion > 0x2000200:
      c = a // b
  else:
      c = a / b

since the a // b gives a syntax error.

The only option I can think of is to avoid integer division
altogether, and implement it myself by other means. That just uglifies
everything (and makes it slower, but that's not what bothers me most).

In an ideal world, everyone would upgrade to new Python versions the
moment they are released. The world just isn't like that, and people
providing Python programs and libraries _have_ to support multiple
Python versions.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul 16 03:24:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:24:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: module ns access vs. local access vs. builtin methods
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107161114170.18588-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

I've got interesting profile results which show that
using string methods is faster than other optimisation tricks:

--- aaaa.py ---
import profile, string

def a1(s):
  for k in xrange(200):
    K = 0
    for l in string.split(s):
      K = K+1

def a2(s, ssplit=string.split):
  for k in xrange(200):
    K = 0
    for l in ssplit(s):
      K = K+1

def a3(s):
  for k in xrange(200):
    K = 0
    for l in s.split():
      K = K+1

def runner(x, y):
  for c in xrange(25):
    x(y)

profile.run("""
runner(a1,"aaa "*50)
""")

profile.run("""
runner(a2,"aaa "*50)
""")

profile.run("""
runner(a3,"aaa "*50)
""")


----------------------------------------

$ python2.1 aaaa.py > aaaa.res

--- aaaa.res ---

         5028 function calls in 2.690 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.620    2.620 <string>:2(?)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.620    2.620 aaaa.py:21(runner)
       25    1.150    0.046    2.620    0.105 aaaa.py:3(a1)
        1    0.070    0.070    2.690    2.690 profile:0(
runner(a1,"aaa "*50)
)
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     5000    1.470    0.000    1.470    0.000 string.py:103(split)


         5028 function calls in 2.690 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.690    2.690 <string>:2(?)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.690    2.690 aaaa.py:21(runner)
       25    1.190    0.048    2.690    0.108 aaaa.py:9(a2)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.690    2.690 profile:0(
runner(a2,"aaa "*50)
)
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     5000    1.500    0.000    1.500    0.000 string.py:103(split)


         28 function calls in 1.960 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    1.940    1.940 <string>:2(?)
       25    1.940    0.078    1.940    0.078 aaaa.py:15(a3)
        1    0.000    0.000    1.940    1.940 aaaa.py:21(runner)
        1    0.020    0.020    1.960    1.960 profile:0(
runner(a3,"aaa "*50)
)
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)

-------------------------

a3 is clear winner, which probably mean that calling
methods of built-in types is faster than calling
functions.

And the trick with localising functions doesn't work
(or maybe I did it wrong).


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Monday, July 16, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Every man's work is a portrait of himself." _/




From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 11:56:24 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 11:56:24 -0400
Subject: Creating package in Python
References: <3b6288fc$1@news.barak.net.il>
Message-ID: <etdd76lqc7r.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Hard to say w/o more details.  What error msg did you get when you
attempted to import pgk.fib1?  Have you read
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/packages.html, by the way?

Alex.


From paul at svensson.org  Thu Jul 26 11:32:55 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:32:55 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>         <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>         <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>         <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>         <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>         <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>         <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>         <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>         <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>         <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@myc
Message-ID: <9jpd77$qih$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>    Paul> The most obvious problem is that it implies that every rational
>    Paul> can be represented as a float -- this is *severe* brokenness you
>    Paul> don't need.  [I think it also implies that floats with integral
>    Paul> values (1.0, etc.)  should turn into integers.]
>
>You can't do that.  Suppose that value you think is 1.0 really got truncated
>during a previous calculation because your fp hardware doesn't have enough
>bits and lost it?  If you convert that to the integer 1 you're screwed
>because you are pretending your inexact approximation of the real value is
>the real value.  You're better off admitting you have an inexact value and
>planning accordingly.  The only time the VM can convert from inexact to
>exact (e.g., float->rational, float->int) is when the programmer says you
>can with a cast.

In the long term, I think the only manageable solution would
be to separate the issue of exactness from the representation.

	/Paul (another one than the one above)


From aahz at panix.com  Sun Jul 15 22:13:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 19:13:57 -0700
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com> <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9itil5$baf$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org> wrote:
>
>All very good points. I have certain reservations, tho.  I dread
>waiting for Microsoft Word to startup as it is, written in compiled C++.
>I fear for the speed of anything of that scale and complexity
>implemented in Python.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe the algorithms would be sufficiently better
and the code enough smaller that the Python version of Word would be
*faster*.  You'd probably want the actual edit buffer and the screen
painting done in C/C++ (just as in a game), but the rest of it...?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Fri Jul  6 17:32:18 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:32:18 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <994448502.568.45260.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B45F622.26745.102DA0B@localhost>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> "Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in ...
> >
> > As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's
> > permission before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one can
> > implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is safe,
> > thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.
> >
> I must have misunderstood. Are you telling me that IE has a security
> system to detect potentially unsafe downloaded content, but that it
> won't use this system if the downloaded content tells it there's no
> need?
> 
> How very Microsoft. I must have missed something.

Steve,

This may not be as bad as it might have sounded. In order for IE to 
successfully query for IObjectSafety the ActiveX has to have been 
registered, right? And it couldn't be registered until it had been 
downloaded. And that couldn't happen unless the user agreed--
assuming that his/her IE is properly secured. 

Do I discern perhaps that your trust in, and admiration for, MS 
products are bounded?

Take care.

Bill



From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Fri Jul 20 10:10:53 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:10:53 -0400
Subject: Large File Support
In-Reply-To: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca>; from rmacneil@interactdirect.com on Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 09:23:43AM -0400
References: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <20010720101053.A21188@yetix.digicool.com>

On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 09:23:43AM -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
> Hello NG,
> 
> I need to build Python to include large file support on Redhat Linux 7.1.
> 
> I tried the following instructions from section 8.1.1 in the Python docs but
> it doesn't work:
> 
>     On large-file-capable Linux systems, this might work:
> 
> 
> CC="-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> export CC
> ./configure
> 

That  is an error in the Python docs. Replace CC by
CFLAGS. This should do the job.

Andreas



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 20 06:00:55 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:00:55 +0200
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9iq4oc$kme5j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <Xns90DF21CFC7984gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90E25BD095F65gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>
Message-ID: <9j8vgn$m0gtd$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote in message news:Xns90E25BD095F65gmcmhypernetcom at 199.171.54.154...
> [posted and mailed]
>
> Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > E:\jane>jane
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<string>", line 54, in ?
> >   File "friend.pyc", line 22, in __init__
> >   File "friend.pyc", line 49, in getName
> > LookupError: unknown encoding
>
> This will probably clear up if you force
> the "encodings" package into the build.
>
True.

For other people having similar problems:

Gustaf (the original poster) can now freeze his app
with the command line:

python setup.py py2exe -p xml -i encodings.latin_1 -e win32api

He removed PyXML before because he didn't need it.
There's way too much (import) magic going on in PyXML,
such a simple approach does not work.

Still the whole xml package must be included (-p xml)
because otherwise no parsers are found.
'-i encodings.latin_1' includes the latin_1 encoding,
which is the only one he is using.

Thomas




From tom at peresys.co.za  Tue Jul  3 05:00:39 2001
From: tom at peresys.co.za (Tomasz Stochmal)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 02:00:39 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
Message-ID: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>

I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing

http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/

Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel

Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?

Anybody that tried both languages ?

How do they compare ?


From jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 18:12:03 2001
From: jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk (Jon Nicoll)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:12:03 -0700
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8351bb33.0107161412.6dcf7bf2@posting.google.com>

Hi Chris

[...]
> 
> Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.  He wants
> to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a "custom ISA
> card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port interface,
> nor
> serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.

This is exactly what my code can be used for - you can set it up to
get access to arbitary IO ports (via the ioperm mechanism in Linux),
and then read or write etc. as you like. Admittedly, it doesn't
currently cater for interrupts.

I originally started writing this to drive an ISA 8255/8253 card, and
although this project-ette is currently in limbo, the basics are all
there and working, if Bryan wants to do eg. polled access to an A/D
card etc.

> Under Linux, this can be done in C by following the instructions in the
> "IO Port Programming mini-HOWTO" (check any Linux portal, i.e. linux.com,
> for this document).

All done! ;-)

> [...]
 
> Under Win32 I'm not sure what the procedure is, but I suspect a VxD file
> will
> be needed.

You don't need a VxD (for W95 at least), although it's probably the
'better' way of doing things. My code is in C and turns into a little
'.PYD' (= .DLL) file. In NT, you need a kernel mode driver, which I
haven't yet got around to looking at.

I've just resurrected my code and am looking at using distutils to get
it in a form more easily distributed. Email me if would be of use to
you in the meantime.

	Jon N


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 08:50:51 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:50:51 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:26:52 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>[]Stephen Horne]
>> ...
>> And what about the languages web developers are used to, such as
>> VBScript and JavaScript.
>
>Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there) -- I'm
>afraid the "mimic other languages" approach requires picking languages very
>carefully if you want the illusion of consistency.  By the way, 1/2 is also
>0.5 in standard JavaScript:

My mistake. However, the overwhelming majority of code is written to a
pattern where 1/2=0 - the simple fact Visual BASIC does it almost sets
the standard itself - and C, C++ and Java are hardly obscure.

I think you'll find it's the picking of languages where 1/2 = 0.5 that
has to be done carefully - I can think of Pacal, Modula 2, LISP and -
taking into account your correction - Perl and JavaScript. The last to
are enough to prove that your *opinion* is valid, those are not in use
to anywhere near the same extent as languages like C, C++, Java and
BASIC.

>produce-enough-frantic-arguments-at-random-and-some-are-likely-
>    to-backfire<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

This argument still holds well enough on its own to prove that
changing the division operator is *not* an *undeniably* good thing -
it is at best a matter of opinion. *THAT* is all I need to prove - and
I have done so with several different arguments.

Furthermore it is not a random argument - it is a genuine concern with
no less validity than those in favor of 1/2 being 0.5.

Had Python started out differently, I'd still disagree but I wouldn't
be making a big issue. But this is a code-breaker of the worse kind -
it will create bugs in trusted programs that have been relied upon for
years without problem, which the programmers have forgotten about (if
the programmers are even still in the company) - and many of the bugs
may not even be obvious when they occur. And it will happen a *lot* -
division is *not* some obscure rarely-used feature, it is a basic
arithmetic operation.

The reward for advocating Python is apparently that you get to look a
complete idiot in front of your boss when everything you've written
goes pear shaped - *just* the kind of thankyou all the Python
advocates have been looking for, I don't think.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 08:45:27 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:45:27 +0100
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <%7i07.25728$he.1340574@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9hsi0d$oqv$3@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <ilhllt0tkfe0d2lde5t7rvj22q47japlf4@4ax.com>

On 3 Jul 2001 13:40:29 GMT, David LeBlanc <whisper at oz.nospamnet>
wrote:

>reason to use Basic? After all, supposedly 80% of all business apps are 
>written in Basic - presumably Visual Basick since they've pretty 
>effectively killed off that entire market segment. Personally, I think 
>i'd rather take up a career as William Park ;)

You still see the odd business utility running in DOS - some old Turbo
BASIC and QBASIC programs among them. Last I checked, QBasic was still
provided on Windows CDs - it just doesn't install by default. I
wouldn't be surprised if GWBASIC isn't hanging on in some strange
corners of the world - and it's quite likely that some people have old
Atari STs or Amigas with BASIC programs to do some task which work
well enough that no-one felt a need to replace them. I actually have
quite fond memories of GFA BASIC and STOS - though not *that* fond
really.



From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 26 18:57:32 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:57:32 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <cpzo9r5qty.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <wf187.49830$Cy.6425268@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpzo9r5qty.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:
 [SNIP]
> >    Real      Complex
> >       |               |
> > rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
> > rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)
>
> I just don't see much use for complex rational...  So then we're back
> to my original tower (with rational).

Hmmm.... Without complex rationals I suppose you are back to the tower.  I
may be viewing this through a warped lense: once upon a time I reimplemented
NumPy in Java. There it was both much simpler and worked better to do type
conversions based on a box instead of a tower. However, NumPy has many more
types than PEP 228 proposes so it's a lesson that probably doesn't apply
here.

I must admit that complex rationals appeal to me mainly from a aesthetic and
pedagogical point of view. I would probably have about as much use
personally for complex rationals as I do for real rationals; that is, not
very much. But in cases where I'd be tempted to use rationals (for instance
slow, but sure, stability check on a misbehaving algorithm) I'd be about as
likely to be using complex as real numbers. That's probably not typical
though. Thinking about it, fixed precision binary decimal, which is also
appears to be under discussion, would probably be more useful.

Maybe someone who has a more compelling use for complex rationals will come
forward and save my box. Otherwise ... alas poor box, we hardly knew ye.

-tim




From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 02:05:19 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:05:19 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDHLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido van Rossum]
> ...
> On the other hand, floats should never be usable as sequence index.
> Scheme defines this quite nicely:
>
> http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r5rs-html/r5rs_8
.html#SEC50
>

Except that Scheme has nothing against reals being used as sequence indices:
exactness is orthogonal to numeric type in Scheme, and being usable as a
sequence index relies on exactness.

> (real? 3)
#t
> (complex? 3)
#t
> (integer? 3.0)
#t
> (exact? 3.0)
#f
> (exact? #e3.0)
#t
>
    complex?
    real?
    rational?
    integer?

That's "the tower".  If (f? x) is true for some f from that list, then (g?
x) is also true for every g above f in the tower.  The internal
representation is undiscoverable in Scheme ("real" doesn't *mean* "HW
floating-point storage" there).

    There is no simple relationship between a number's type and
    its representation inside a computer.  Although most
    implementations of Scheme will offer at least two different
    representations of 3, these different representations denote
    the same integer.

When the focus is on numbers as mathematical values, internal storage format
should be irrelevant to semantics.




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 01:49:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:49:04 -0400
Subject: Use of iterators for state machine (was Re: 2.2 features)
References: <mailman.996098094.16930.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5FAF50.9AC8912C@engcorp.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Nick Perkins]
> > I like generators a lot.  Here's a fun one:
> >
> [...]
> That's something of a strain in such a simple case, but in general the
> ability to "get out of a loop early" without needing to materialize the
> whole sequence first is a major practical application of the iterator
> protocol.

I like the potential for iterators for infinite sequences of several
kinds (where the ability to "get out of a loop early" is an absolute
requirement :-).

I'm especially looking forward to using them to implement state machines.

I suspect they will greatly simplify the readability of several
different state machine patterns I tend to use.  Has anyone with more
of a background in the whole iterator concept (in other languages
of course) tried this before?  Any comments?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 13 09:48:07 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:48:07 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <861ynl4s34.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <r_C37.14716$B7.2683002@ruti.visi.com>

In article <861ynl4s34.fsf at hellcat.itga.com.au>, Gregory Bond wrote:
>18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) writes:
>
>> If I change the order of two ints in a
>> function interface, for example, the C++ compiler won't have a clue
>> that the interface has changed.
>
>If you do something like this for any project larger than 1 person and
>a handful of files, you are in deep trouble irrespective of the
>language.

Unless you're passing parameters by keyword -- in which case
the order doesn't matter.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Did I SELL OUT yet??
                                  at               
                               visi.com            


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:02:27 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:02:27 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cpzo9ta9el.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> More important is all the software that is somehow in-the-field - a
> VERY serious problem.

You can always use the solution that works so well in many other
situations: don't upgrade Python, or at least keep a copy of Python
1.5.2 or 2.1 around, and use that for your unconverted code.  This is
a very common solution.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From ToMuchSpam at ToHaveValid.com  Sun Jul  8 21:29:34 2001
From: ToMuchSpam at ToHaveValid.com (RoadRunner_au)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:29:34 +1000
Subject: pySOL
Message-ID: <IL727.88787$Rr4.90891@ozemail.com.au>

I am trying to get this game (pySOL) to run in windows 98, but as soon as the
windows comes up with the game it crashes with the following error.


SyntaxError: invalid syntax

C:\Program Files\Python21>python C:\TMP\PYSOL\DATA\PYSOL_21.PYC
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pysol.py", line 19853, in ?
  File "pysol.py", line 19851, in main
  File "pysol.py", line 19813, in pysol_main
  File "pysol.py", line 18904, in mainloop
  File "pysol.py", line 18984, in runGame
  File "pysol.py", line 3346, in helpAbout
  File "pysol.py", line 2365, in __init__
  File "pysol.py", line 2287, in __init__
  File "pysol.py", line 2024, in makeImage
  File "c:\program files\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 2972, in __init__

    apply(Image.__init__, (self, 'photo', name, cnf, master), kw)
  File "c:\program files\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 2928, in __init__

    self.tk.call(('image', 'create', imgtype, name,) + options)
TclError: unknown option "-dither"

C:\Program Files\Python21>


Can anyone help with fixing this problem? thanks.






From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:34:59 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:34:59 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 22:17:10 GMT, m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
wrote:

>Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
>> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> [about //]
>>> it just looks awful as well as annoying those who don't want this
>>> change.
>
>> Any solution would have annoyed the other side, and one solution
>> had to be taken.
>> And no, "inertia" isn't an excuse. Python cannot be ruled by inertia,
>> just as it cannot arbitrarily break backwards compat. 
>
>People just differ in their opinions on what is inertia and what is
>arbitrarily breaking backwards compatibility. Robin is probably in
>the "arbitrarily breaking backwards compatibility" camp on this issue,
>while you're in the "inertia" camp. I'm in the "just leave me here,
>go on without me, I'll be okay" camp, myself.

This is not *arbitrarily* breaking backwards compatibility - it is
*irrationally* breaking backwards compatibility.

Division on integers should be integer division. It is natural to have
an integer result and a remainder - that was what people did for
thousands of years before the idea of fractional parts was even
thought of. Many measures are inherently integer, and it is a simple
fact of life that you have to deal with the integer result and the
remainder.

Mathematically, integer division should be the inverse of integer
multiplication, with no extra functionality bar the need to allow for
the remainder. Well shock horror - that's exactly what we've got now
and exactly what we're throwing away.

Integer division is important to a huge range of applications -
anything involving money stands out as the obvious case, but also
cryptography and others.

These are all valid viewpoints for keeping integer division exactly as
it is - completely independent of the code breaking issue. Therefore,
the idea that 1/2 should give 0.5 is a matter of opinion - not an
ideal.

If you want float results, use float arithmetic - it's simple, it
works and it does *not* break existing source code.

If you really want a division operator that treats everything as
floats, then *that* is the new functionality and *that* should be the
new operator. I don't mind such an operator being added - I will
simply feel free to ignore it.

Python would be a laughing stock without a division operator, and it
will certainly be a laughing stock if we can't rely on it to do the
same thing from one release to the next. It's a far to fundamental
change just to please people with a particular mindset.

And lets remember - even people *with* that mindset are going to have
problems - they *must* have code with integer division or they would
never have noticed the result being an integer.



From iron at mso.oz.net  Wed Jul 11 16:08:37 2001
From: iron at mso.oz.net (Mike Orr)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:08:37 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb not reading ~/.my.cnf ?
References: <slrn9kk5lo.9ed.dennis@smart.cobolt.net>
Message-ID: <9iibo5$ocg$0@216.39.144.220>

Dennis Schoen <dennis at cobolt.net> wrote:

> I'm trying to connect to a mysql db from a python script. I can
> connect without any problem when i add explicitly the username and
> passwd like this:

> db = MySQLdb.connect(db=sys.argv[1], user=sys.argv[2], passwd=sys.argv[3])

> coming from perl I like the idea of ~/my.cnf, but when i just ommit the
> parameters I get:

> _mysql_exceptions.OperationalError: (1045, "Access denied for user: 'dennis at localhost' (Using password: NO)")

> My ~/my.cnf file works fine, when used from other applications.

Apparently, reading ~/.my.cnf is the responsibility of the application or
library, and MySQLdb doesn't do it.  It could, of course.  Perhaps as
an option to MySQLdb.connect(read_password_from_mycnf=0) or if 
passwd is None....

-- 
-Mike (Iron) Orr, iron at mso.oz.net  (if mail problems: mso at jimpick.com)
   http://iron.cx/     English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Jul  6 19:35:54 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 00:35:54 +0100
Subject: openssl-python
Message-ID: <slrn9kciqp.5l8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

There's a package, openssl-python that lets you write python
programs that call functions in the OpenSSL library.

Unfortunately i cannot find a homepage for it. All there
is that gets retuerned by Google is pages that link to RPMs
for it. 

Where can i download a .tar.gz file?

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Wed Jul 25 09:50:49 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:50:49 GMT
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com> <cpitgha7pe.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5ECF9E.8000103@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>We're a zope shop.  Its quite possible that the work we do now will be 
>>still in use for many years (not guaranteed but we still use code now 
>>that we wrote 2 years ago - before it was zope ;) )
>>
>>We use Python Methods in Zope... python snippets stored directly in 
>>zope's zodb.  grepping *.py won't find any of these snippets.  I don't 
>>believe zope will surface any warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may 
>>be wrong).  How do we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?
>>
> 
> I find it hard to believe that you use much division is Zope scripts,
> but if you do, use divmod(x, y)[0] for int division and x*1.0/y for
> float division.
> 
> However, Zope typically comes with its own Python version, so all you
> need to do is not upgrade the Zope version you are using.  Also, I
> believe that Zope is typically much more aggressive in breaking old
> code, so you wouldn't want to upgrade your Zope anyway if you had a
> lot of old code around that you couldn't afford to maintain.
> 


Yes zope is typically much more aggressive in breaking old zope code, 
but the breakage is typically in the security mechanisms not in the 
underlying fundamentals.  It also means I have to try and minimize the 
effects.  Quite frankly I thought python code in our Python Methods was 
safe.

my-naivete-astonishes-even-me-sometimes-ly yours

Tom





From see at below  Mon Jul  2 09:16:31 2001
From: see at below (Paul Foley)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 01:16:31 +1200
Subject: functional programming and default parameters
References: <u7k81v6zf2.fsf@hpeesof.asc> <mailman.993838725.28543.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jscjd.m72.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <u78zi7k55m.fsf@hpeesof.asc>
Message-ID: <m2r8vz5v4g.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>

On 02 Jul 2001 12:16:05 +0200, Ralf Muschall wrote:

> The situation in python is remotely similar to lisp in that the loop
> variable is created only once - just forcing python to create a fresh
> scope needs a more verbose hack.

> OTOH, 

> (#Mfuncall (#M(lambda (x) (lambda () x)) (scan-range :below 6)))

> works :-)

Assuming you have the SERIES package installed; but I think the fact
that it does is just an accident -- #M is only meant to work on named
functions.  [But (lambda (x) (lambda () x)) has a name in CL, anyway;
it's CONSTANTLY]

And you want a list, so

  (collect (#Mfuncall (#Mconstantly (scan-range :below 6))))

-- 
You have been evaluated.  You have a negative reference count.  Prepare
to be garbage collected.  Persistence is futile.           -- Erik Naggum

(setq reply-to
  (concatenate 'string "Paul Foley " "<mycroft" '(#\@) "actrix.gen.nz>"))


From canimalatmydejadotcom at nospam.com  Fri Jul 20 14:23:25 2001
From: canimalatmydejadotcom at nospam.com (Matt)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:23:25 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org> <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E48917CC7EFcanimalmydejacom@24.94.170.10>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in
news:3B5867E8.6B8751F8 at Lugoj.Com: 

> Dan Bergan wrote:
>> (Declare the variable in mixed-case)
>> Dim myVariable as Integer
>> 
>> (then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
>> myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!
> 
> Well, if you "correct" that to myVaraible you would still be in error,
> because you accidentally exchanged "ia" with "ai" in addition to
> changing "V" to "v". Python will not inform you about about some typos,
> whether case-related, dropped characters, exchanged characters, or
> added characters. 

That's what Dan is saying he likes about VB.  It will tell you about typos 
if your variables are mixed case.

The auto-case correction in VB will inform Dan that he has made a typo, 
because the editor "snaps" variable names into their declared 
capitalization as soon as they are typed.  In the example above, when Dan 
hits the spacebar after "myvaraible", the text will remain all lowercase 
because "myvaraible" is not declared, and Dan will know he has made an 
error.

I do most of my programming in VB, I exploit this feature the same way Dan 
does, and I have had trouble getting used to Python's case sensitivity.

I don't see a need to change the language to accomodate VB programmers, but 
having a case-checking option as part of the editor would be a blessing.  
(ActiveState, are you reading this?)

Matt


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 16:08:06 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:08:06 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

david at boddie.net (David Boddie) writes:

> It's strange. I don't mind the introduction of default float division
> at some point in the future, despite having to rewrite many of my
> modules with no future-proof, succinct integer division operator to
> hand. However, diplomatic attempts to avoid breakage of legacy code
> appear to have failed. I suspect that the best we can hope for is
> non-silent breakage via compile-time exceptions.

I'm assuming this was aimed at me, so I'll respond.

Suppose that python 3.x would *always* have to be invoked as
"python3".  Would that still break legacy code?  This approach was
used successfully by Perl.

I just don't want to encumber the language itself with version
encrustations.  It offends my sense of elegance in language design.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul 16 13:13:05 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:13:05 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com> <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6850.cr0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:12:52 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
>news:roy-E01423.21425015072001 at news1.panix.com...
>> quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote:
>> > Even without that, I argue that a bad pattern match should throw an
>> > exception and not assign None
>>
>> I have to admit, that would be somewhat consistant with the way the rest
>of
>> the language works, but it sure would make it more complicated to do
>> something like:
>>
>>    if re.match (pattern1, string):
>>       do stuff

Oops, note that I wasn't talking about regular expressions when I said
"pattern match".  The terminology is a holdover from some other languages.  I
should get in the habit of using the python terminology: sequence unpacking.

And I'm perfectly happy that failed regular expressions don't raise.  A
failing regexp is not an exceptional situation---it's normal and expected and
intended.  It would be pretty annoying to have to wrap up every re.search in
try/except.


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Jul 28 12:20:18 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 11:20:18 -0500
Subject: I want to do something:
References: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com> <etdae1pqbzp.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9E498636EBFC006C.0B20514C36C78E95.408432537CAD3767@lp.airnews.net>

In article <etdae1pqbzp.fsf at lola-granola.mit.edu>,
Alex  <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>If you're on unix, you might want to have a look at cron, which is
>perfect for this kind of thing.  Here's something I wrote for a friend
			.
			.
			.
Also of possible interest:
<URL: http://groups.google.com/groups?th=1a11303f10bad120 >
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From simonb at webone.com.au  Sat Jul 14 22:05:51 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:05:51 +1000
Subject: parallel port?!?
References: <3B513D42.933A0445@iinet.net.au> <mailman.995136984.18034.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B50FA7F.3030600@webone.com.au>

>
>For Linux, you will need a module providing abstractions for the lp(4)
>ioctl's.  AFAIK there is no such module currently... somebody tell me
>if I am wrong.
>
You can do ioctls from python; the fcntl module has ioctl.
then to use the lp ioctls, use h2py from the source distribution
or a beefed up h2py that i wrote you can find at
http://programmer-software.com/~simon

Simon



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:40:29 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:40:29 GMT
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010724175515.4646A-100000@latt.if.usp.br>
Message-ID: <cpg0bla7n8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Francisco <frandebo at latt.if.usp.br> writes:

>   I just compiled python2.2a and I'm getting this strange response to the
> 'type' command:
> 
> Python 2.2a1 (#2, Jul 24 2001, 12:24:09) 
> [GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> type('') 
> <type 'str'>
> 
>  while I expected to get <type 'string'>.
> 
>  Am I missing something or I just messed up with the compilation?? 

No, the string type changed its name to match the str() function
(which is now the same as the str type).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 16 01:27:13 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:27:13 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3B527B31.E715AE0E@alcyone.com>

Quinn Dunkan wrote:

> How about:
> 
> for o in '.'.split(ip_addr):

You mean ip_addr.split('.').

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
\__/ Dumas Fils
    The laws list / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/
 Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 15:14:15 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:14:15 -0400
Subject: how to save strings to a temporary buffer?
References: <mailman.995481031.2700.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Zbl57.33068$d4.1168768@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

<ed_tsang at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995481031.2700.python-list at python.org...
> How can I save string to a tempororay buffer and then write it to a
> file afterwards?
>
> I have a function that output a formatted string each time it is
> called; but instead of open a file and write it each time; I would
> like to save these strings to a , may be a tmeporory buffer, and then
> write it to a file when everythign is completed... how cna I do that?
> thansk
>
You could just accumulate the strings in a list: pass the current list to
the function and have it append() its current output. Then just write all
the strings out at the end of the program.

Or look at the StringIO or cStringIO modules.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tdelaney at avaya.com  Sun Jul  1 20:59:55 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:59:55 +1000 
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21C@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> It's nothing that examining the id doesn't resolve:
> 
> >>> a = [1,2,3]
> >>> id(a)
> 18916180
> >>> a += [4,5]
> >>> a
> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
> >>> id(a)
> 18916180
> >>> b = (1,2,3)
> >>> id(b)
> 15261292
> >>> b += (4,5)
> >>> b
> (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
> >>> id(b)
> 18736580
> >>>

Actually, that's not quite true. It would be quite legal for id(b) to be
identical in one case - since b is the only reference to the tuple, the
original tuple could be collected, and a new tuple with the same id() could
be allocated. It's unlikely, but possible.

Tim Delaney



From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 13:11:47 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:11:47 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107122110180.3555-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Andreas Jung wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru>
>To: <python-list at python.org>
>Sent: Donnerstag, 12. Juli 2001 09:00
>Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
>
>
>> FYI:
>>
>> Do not forget commas:
>>
>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url",
>>          "preview" ]
>>
>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
>>          "preview" ]
>>
>> Or Python will silently make:
>> ['update', 'y', 'm', 'd', 'y1', 'm1', 'd1', 'event', 'urlpreview']
>>
>> Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?
>>
>
>For what reason should it check ? Both is valid Python code. In the second
>case 'url' and 'preview' are concatenated. This is dedicated behaviour.
>
>Also the following is correct Python code:
>
>print "url" "preview"
>print "url","preview"
>
>So there is no way to determine the programmers intention at this point.

PyChecker is about determining ambiguity, like lint
will give you warnings about

if (a=b) { };

in C code.


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 12, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses." _/




From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 14:46:41 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:46:41 GMT
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.995916220.13066.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <loj77.544242$eK2.114179510@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

Good point.
I suppose the only cross-version solution would be:

     # Script MUST run under various Python versions without change
     ...
     print int(container/widget) ,'widgets will fit in the container'

It's a tiny bit verbose, but at least it's very explicit.





From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:59:07 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:59:07 -0400
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-7014B5.21120826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEJJLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> floor converts ints to floats????  This seems exactly backwards
> from what I would expect.

Virtually all the functions in the math module wrap C library functions of
the same names.  floor() is a required double->double function in standard
C, and Python's math.floor() exposes the platform C's floor() function.

> And while it is certainly documented that way in the library
> reference (section 5), it is contradicted by the footnote in section 2
> about using floor and ceil for "well-defined conversions" from float to
> int,

C89 didn't define the rounding behavior of float->int conversions, so floor
and ceil were needed to force the issue as desired; as of earlier this
afternoon, Python 2.2 now defines float->int as truncating ("round to 0")
regardless of what the platform C happens to do.

> as well as the claim in the reference manual that integer-division is
> the same as applying floor to the result of mathematical division.

The mathematical floor, yes; not the math.floor() function.

> I have to consider this a big wart.

The audience for math.floor() is floating-point users; you've already
testified repeatedly you're not one of them <wink>.

> Especially with the proposed changes to /, I would likely want to write
> code like i = floor(a/b) and j = ceil(c/d) but apparently this is
> going to need added coercions to get an integral type.

Yes.  But if you want the floor, use a // b instead:  that's what it's there
for.  ceil is neither harder nor easier to get than before, and the best way
to get the ceiling of an integer quotient in Python has always been

def ceiling_of_quotient(i, j):
    q, r = divmod(i, j)
    return q + (r != 0)

> Anyway, back to the PEP, I don't think calling floor(x) is a very
> clear way of writing an int-to-float coercion, and it's still a bug
> because it will give you incorrect results if x is a non-integral float.

math.floor() isn't intended for int-to-float coercion, and I believe you
were right the first time (that the specific occurrence of "floor" in the
PEP that you pointed out was just a typo, and that "float" was intended
there instead).




From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Thu Jul 12 02:57:01 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:57:01 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3d66czqo78.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <yv2sng23a9u.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

> Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> writes:
> > With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> > this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
> 
> It sounds like you want something similar to the (?> ...) in Perl 5.6.
> Neither SRE nor the current version of PCRE support this, though.
> Personally I'd just code it explicitly, as 'index = s.find('<A>') ; if
> index != -1: # check for B ...'.  Wordier, but doesn't require regex
> arcana.

Reading the docs about (?> ...) at
  http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlre.html#DESCRIPTION 
I agree to the phrase `regex arcana'. And I don't see how it could
simulate a shortest match.

Thanks,
  Harald Kirsch.
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:12:17 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:12:17 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <cpu201a8y7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:

(Thanks for your nice table, BTW.)

> The only choices that make sense to me here are, either we break stuff,
> or we do nothing.  Either way, we'll most likely have to revisit the
> issue if/when syntax for rationals is to be added to the language.

Actually, adding rationals can be done almost entirely without
breaking code...  That is, *if* we adopt PEP-238 now.  Changing 1/2
from returning a float to returning a rational won't have to break
code, since the mathematical value of the result is the same.
Changing it from returning 0 to returning a rational isn't any easier
than changing it from returning 0 to returning a float -- exactly the
same places will have to be changed.

If you're for rationals, you're for PEP-238.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 19:05:11 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:05:11 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu> <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lp6u8.hhd.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <h69plt04ff8j36ma26k9b2l13e5i04hg6e@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 21:48:57 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>I've never seen / as integer division in mathematics. The only notation
>I know is
>
>  |  a  |
>  |  -  |
>  |_ b _|

How about ? - and how about 'fractions' (ie rationals with integer
numerator and denominator).

I've been here already - mathematicians use the same set of operators
whatever set of values. They exact representations aren't available to
simple ASCII text files, so we use a single alternate representation.
The point is that we should the same symbol for the same meaning,
exactly the same as mathemeticians. When a mathematician asks 'I can't
find a divide symbol, how do I do that?' the answer should be simple -
it should not depend on which set of values he happens to be working
in at the time.

The fact that we need to choose an alternative symbol should not be
seen as a chance to break with principles that mathematicians have
applied successfuly since well before Christs time.



From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul 31 07:40:41 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:40:41 +0200
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
References: <mailman.996556736.30160.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3k80piax2.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:

> In this context, it comes from the CP4E motivation that people may be
> called upon to script operations or interactions between their
> `toys'... calling them "non-programmers" is shorter than saying,
> `people who may need to program without knowing they are doing it'
> (imo).

We obviously need a good name.

Maybe 'non-professional programmers'? Doesn't sound right. It should
mean someone whose profession is something else and who has to write
some code to get the work done. Something like the work of system
administrators, who may have to write some code but whose programs
probably will never run on other machines than those which they
administrate.

Perl is called a 'glue language', so should we call the work of system
administrators and other 'non-programmers' as 'glue programming'?
Sounds strange, but at least it is new.

Any ideas?


- Markus


From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Thu Jul 26 14:46:03 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:46:03 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: a break for comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <ac677656.0107260936.2d0eb14d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107261440210.419-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


>>> [ x for x in iter( iter([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]).next, 6 ) ] 
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]



>>> print iter.__doc__
iter(collection) -> iterator
iter(callable, sentinel) -> iterator

Get an iterator from an object.  In the first form, the argument must
supply its own iterator, or be a sequence.
In the second form, the callable is called until it returns the sentinel.
>>>


 iter(list).next gives you a callable object that sequentially 
    returns each value -- which gets fed to the 2 arg variant
    of iter that takes a callable and a sentinel. When it hits
    the sentinal value, it stops. 


-- Steve Majewski





From glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com  Wed Jul 25 11:46:42 2001
From: glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com (Gilles Lenfant)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:46:42 +0200
Subject: User authentication in SOAP
References: <hOz77.41$bXi.178337792@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <9jmpb2$vmu$1@norfair.nerim.net>

Hi,

I don't know exactly what's the structure of the SOAP library you're using.
I'm pretty familiar with Fred Lunth's xmlrpclib that has a transport layer
and a XML message parsing/marshalling layer.
If your SOAP library has a similar structure, you can subclass the http
transport layer to provide the basic http authentication support.
This is explained with source code in
http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/XML-RPC
That's the way we provide B2B confidential data to our customers back-office
application from a Zope server.
As the SOAP library from www.secretlabs.com in structured in a same manner
as their XML-RPC library (a Transport class), this should work (perhaps with
few hacking).
IMHO, including user credential in the SOAP message data section is not
secure.

Hope I helped.

--Gilles

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> a ?crit dans le message news:
hOz77.41$bXi.178337792 at news.telia.no...
> Hi,
>
> Just looked at SOAPpy from ActZero and it looks just like the thing I need
> for a small project. I just wondered what would be the best method of
> implementing username/password-protected services in a SOAP-server? Does
> SOAP define any rules for this at all or does it place that responsibility
> on the server?
>
> Any hints appreciated.
>
> Thomas
>
>




From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:20:42 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:20:42 GMT
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ufh77.25352$EP6.5925441@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:23891c90.0107240128.4715d705 at posting.google.com...
[responding to me]
...
> I assert that list comprehensions, nested scopes, generators and
> type-class unification features are interesting, but not compelling
> enough functionality to persuade most developers to upgrade

That is an issue for each developer to decide in the context in which
he works.
For myself, I may jump for generators (and iterators in general).

> > For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will be
int/int
> > and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and floor(float/float)
> > instead.  Only write int//int or float/float.  With the tokenizer
> > module, it will then be easy to change all instances of int//int
to
> > int/int (old meaning).  It should even even be possible to have
> > package installers check sys.version and do this conversion on
site as
> > needed.  For newly written code, the harder problem will be to not
use
> > any of the other neat new features, which mostly *cannot* be
> > automatically back converted.
>
> I don't think the most significant problems raised in the currently
> predominant discussion of the division operators, for example, have
> anything to do with running newer code on older releases,

I agree.  I think the worst problem is the silent breakage of old,
unmaintained code run on new releases.  This is a problem specific to
a semantic change such as that proposed.  I wrote the above, in
response to two people who raised the issue, precisely to show that
running new code on old releases is a lesser problem.

> "from __past__ import" anyone? ;-)

I agree this would be nice, but it will not, in itself, save old code
lacking  this.

Terry J. Reedy





From mikael at isy.liu.se  Mon Jul 16 03:36:34 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:36:34 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <wzvgkwlhc1.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010716093616.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 13-Jul-2001 Piet van Oostrum wrote:
 > >>>>> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> (RS) writes:
 >  
 >  RS> There is a joke about americans:
 >  
 >  RS> they were confused that Excel give different result from 
 >  RS> pocket calculator:
 >  
 >  RS> [5] [+] [3] [*] [4] [=]
 >  
 >  RS> | 32 |
 >  
 >  My pocketcalculator gives 17. But then it's a Dutch one (Philips).

In my experience, you can divide pocket calculators into two types based
on wheather they have a button labelled '%' or not. Those that do have
that button return 32, and those who do not have that button return 17.
And that's regardless of the brand.

It's up to you to decide from which bag you want to pick your pocket 
calculator.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    16-Jul-2001
Time:    09:28:19

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 12:06:22 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:06:22 +0200
Subject: online docs from pydoc?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141214150.10775-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B506DFE.4EA568CF@lemburg.com>


Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> I've just explored wonderful pydoc package and
> it occured to me that docs could be accessed via Web if
> was specified:
> 
> PYTHONDOCS=http://www.python.org/doc/current
> 
> (or something like that)
> 
> Is there any sense in it?

Ping set up this web-site:

		http://web.pydoc.org/ 

I guess a link to it from python.org wouldn't be a bad idea...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 18:23:33 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:23:33 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <8rdoltsi3fcph86pnkgckmiqich6d9qqng@4ax.com> <mtn15v2wiw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <2b6plts93l46r4aip12u0veqfab01sfsau@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 13:57:59 -0700, Johann Hibschman
<johann at physics.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>[followup accidentally mailed as well; sorry Steve!]
>
>Steve Horne writes:
>
>> Tell that to a mathematician, or an engineer, or even an accountant -
>> all of these need to deal with inherently integer measures and
>> therefore using integer operations. Any of these people who have
>> Python scripts using division are going to have a problem.
>
>Well, I'll believe you for accountants, but they generally want
>a fixed decimal class anyway, don't they?  However...

No - converting pence to pounds is just a presentation issue - all you
do is draw a point. In a lot of my code you'll find a 'GUI' equivalent
of...

print "? " + str(amount / 100) + "." + str(amount % 100)

I have *THOUSANDS* of lines like that.

>
>> Engineering - How would you feel if you knew a bridge was going to be
>> built with 2.5 supports on each side?
>
>Engineers who use division almost always use floating point division.

For tasks where it is appropriate yes - but those two half-supports
aren't really doing much supporting, are they ;-)

I use floats a lot for signal processing in C++ as a hobby, and I have
worked in defence applications using C, Ada and assembler. These are
all doing physics-style calculations in real time - if you can imagine
the code to derive helicopter intrument data from two pressure
sensors, a thermometer and a stick that tends to point into the wind,
you're starting to get a vague idea. Now realise that that the
pressure sensors rely on resonant frequency detection - you've got to
keep them vibrating at roughly the right frequency (well into KHz
range) and detect their tendency towards a higher frequency to watch
for changes. All with a very slow microcontroller, a few registers,
less than 1K RAM, and less ROM than a Spectrum. And *that* was *easy*
compared with the direction probe and temperature sensor - the result
of reducing mass production costs by having the absolute minimum
hardware (the microcontroller and a few mainly passive extra
components) and use easily copied software to do the job.

Sorry - I forgot the bit about implementing a military standard
communication protocol on dual redundant busses to pass the results
on, and of course keeping an eye on the dual redundant box to detect
and handle inconsistent results.

I *KNOW* how programming for real engineering tasks works because I
have spent quite a few years doing it.

>> Mathematics - Mathemeticians practically *invented* integers, and note
>> that integers were understood thousands of years before fractions,
>> decimals or standard form.
>
>And mathematicians know you can't divide the integers, because they're
>a ring and not a field.

Depends on the context. A quotient and a remainder is common and
simple, and the only thing that makes sense for general integers.

>> Have you noticed how none of these groups consists of experienced
>> programmers?
>
>Anyway, there are two camps.  The proposed new behavior would make my
>life easier, so I like it.  It's also "the right thing" from a
>mathematical point of view.  Others clearly disagree.

They are *NOT* the right thing from a mathematical point of view -
integer division in mathematics gives an integer quotient and integer
remainder as any five-year-old knows.

If you are so keen on int <op> int -> float, why is it *ME* that has
to change operators and not *YOU*. Is it really just that it makes
*YOUR* life easier so sod everyone else?



From bbollenbach at homenospam.com  Thu Jul  5 17:32:20 2001
From: bbollenbach at homenospam.com (Brad Bollenbach)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 21:32:20 GMT
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <mailman.994350130.18544.python-list@python.org> <v0517.75$hn5.63366@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>
Message-ID: <E1517.76$hn5.63447@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>

Erg...wait...I guess you meant user input, not input from a file or a
database. Sorry. :)


"Brad Bollenbach" <bbollenbach at homenospam.com> wrote in message
news:v0517.75$hn5.63366 at news1.rdc1.mb.home.com...
> Consider the underlying problem here before going any further.
>
> Generally speaking "data" isn't stored formatted. "Information" is data
that
> has /been/ formatted. In other words, your data model (whether flat file,
or
> database), should store phone numbers as:
>
> 1235554444
>
> not
>
> (123) 555 - 4444
>
> So by the sounds of it, if you have to do some trickery just to extract
> _only digits_ out of  a stored phone number, you might want to fix your
data
> model before you fix your code.
>
> "Lindstrom Greg - glinds" <Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994350130.18544.python-list at python.org...
> > I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away
> everything
> > except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do
this.
> > Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
> >
> > stripped_phone=''
> > for c in phone_number:
> > if c in digits:
> > stripped_phone += c
> >
> > but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure
> there
> > is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).
> >
> > Greg Lindstrom
> > Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> > InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> > 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911
> > email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com
> >
> > "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
> >
> >                                                             Albert
> Einstein
> >
> >
> >
>
>




From denro at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 14 16:00:25 2001
From: denro at earthlink.net (Dennis Roark)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:00:25 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <m030ltord2kgp98mb7a397rl1bgtgar0en@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <kr81ltkck185fba69ukgvn5hf1ivtosvar@4ax.com>

Had no intent in starting such a burning war over the issue
of typing.  It does show how deeply held is the approval for
Python among the newsgroup readers.  I love it also, and as
one of the responders said, it is  "more fun" to program in
Python than in other languages of my experience.  But this
will be an individual issue.

I think we should try to keep personal insults out of what
should be a discussion of ideas.  I am offended by
Christopher's assertion of lacking skill or not being smart
enough to use dynamic typing, binding, and yes I did know
what that meant before my original note.  Had I not been
smart enough to see the dynamic typing, then I don't think I
could have made up my original example that started all
this.  

I do know C++ (and Delphi, and VB -- ugh) much better than I
know Python.  I have some familiarity with LISP and small
talk.  I like the generics of other OO languages and the
templates of C++, which is part of the reason I am not a big
fan of Java.  But why insult me now that I am expanding my
base into Python?

Dynamic typing, or binding, reference variables that can
change the type pointed to, are to me still part of a weaker
type safety than if they were not there.  That is a personal
preference, that is all.   So let's hold back the ad hominem
attacks and help each other progress.  There is no perfect
language, and all of the "good" languages have appropriate
use.  That includes both Python and C++.  Not all
programmers will ever agree what the appropriate use of a
particular language should be.

I understand Christian Tanzer's distinction between strong
and weak typing and static verses dynamic type binding.  And
one of the things I and probably most C++ programmers like
about C++ is that you can relax the typing by explicit
casting.  (The compiler should at least give warnings for
implicit casts.  And a cast of an instance of a user defined
class is only permitted if the the class author wrote the
corresponding copy constructor.)  But that you must
explicitly cast means that you know and can limit where you
relax type safety.

As far as forcing variable declarations are concerned, as to
their names and types, yes it may be regarded as a "feature,
not a bug" that Python does not have this.  But I recall the
evolution of a language that for other reasons I really do
not like, Visual Basic.  Originally, there was not a way to
force declaration of variables.  It was programmer pressure
that forced MS to introduce the "option explicit" code
directive which requires declaration.  You can declare, and
not type a variable (in which case it is a "variant") but to
do so is often though to be sloppy coding.   I am not
standing up for VB which has too many annoying features,
including inconsistent syntax, and a very broken object
model.

Along with the group, "Long live Python" but if someone
mentions something they find weaker in Python, long live
them too.

--- Dennis

Christopher L Spencer <clspence at one.net> wrote:

>I often have to do this:
>x=getsomestringfromparameterfile()
>x=string(x)
>
>	I consider this to be an advantage of Python.  If you are not
>skilled enough to use this feature, then I'd suggest you stick with
>Pascal.
>
>Chris.
>
>On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net>
>wrote:
>
>>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>>following script:
>>
>>x = 3
>>x = x + 2
>>print "x =", x
>>x = "now I'm a string"
>>print x
>>x = [ 5, x ]
>>print "and now a list:", x
>>

---------------------------------
Dennis Roark
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sioux Falls

Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
---------------------------------


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 10:33:32 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 10:33:32 -0400
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B471DBC.49A85B99@engcorp.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:
> 
> I have come to the harsh reality that 90% of the developers who use
> Python are advanced developers doing mostly scientific research.  

I doubt that.  I know of many people using Python for other purposes.
In particular, I know of a group of 15 mostly junior and intermediate
programmers using Python to write a variety of components, utilities,
and applications used in telecommunications systems.  Not research
(although they do a little of that), and really scientific.  I think
the developers you refer to are a relatively visible minority. 

> I can't possibly use "EXPERIMENTAL" code in my day to
> day work.  If something goes wrong with my code, I lose my job, and if
> it can be shown that I used experimental code downloaded from the
> Internet, I could be charged with criminal negligence.

I don't know what "experimental" means to you, but it seems likely
that your own code could be considered more experimental than much 
of what you might download from the Net.

I think you are right to be concerned about being fired for 
criminal negligence, but what could lead to that would be
delivering inadequately reviewed and tested code, whether it
was built on "free" stuff downloaded from the Net or on commercial
software.  The only advantage to commercial software is the
possibility that you can divert attention away from your own
incompetence (were that the case) and onto a third-party supplier
which provided you the software in the first place.  And yet
it would still be your own negligence which led to the problem.

We use a lot of code downloaded from the Net, not in life-safety
situations but in mission critical ones.  We have also adopted
the philosophy of the Python and XP crowds, who promote the idea
that testing is far more important than others traditionally believe.
As long as we review and test adequately, even if we have used 
"experiemental" code downloaded from the net and it leads to a 
failure, we will not be guilty of criminal negligence.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From Klaus at pictura.de  Tue Jul 10 05:51:51 2001
From: Klaus at pictura.de (Klaus Rienessl)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:51:51 +0200
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
References: <mailman.994753095.11171.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iej1a$vac$04$1@news.t-online.com>

Sorry for my english.

Do you know a library ? And where can I get this ?

Klaus

"Oleg Broytmann" <phd at phd.fep.ru> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:mailman.994753095.11171.python-list at python.org...
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Klaus Rienessl wrote:
> > I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.
>
>    slang? newt?
>
> Oleg.
> ----
>      Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
>            Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.
>
>




From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul  9 14:53:57 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 11:53:57 -0700
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com> <mailman.994677322.2151.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B49FDC5.296B0D92@home.net>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:

> >  >>> from mx import DateTime
> >  >>> dt = DateTime.now()
> >  >>> if dt==None: print 1

> 
> Side note:
> 
>         if x is None: ...
> 
> is a possible workaround which is faster than using "==" !

I don't think this is an DateTime bug. I had the name problem with
Numeric arrays, when rich comparison's were introduced:

>>> from Numeric import *
>>> a = array((1,2,3))
>>> a == None
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: function not supported for these types, and can't coerce to
supported types
>>>

This worked just fine with older versions of Python. 

a is None

works just fine, and I think is a cleaner way to code it anyway. 

In general, the introduction of rich comparisons means that if __eq__ is
defined, special code would have to be written that handles the " ==
None" case. "is None" just makes more sense.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 06:45:35 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:45:35 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com> <Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <Xns90DA75C5FEBC9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

"Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
news:Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1: 

> Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
> news:3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB at westerngeco.com: 
> 
>> I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)

Another useful tip to remember is that except for the DOS command prompt, 
and some badly behaved applications, Windows actually supports both forward 
slash and backslash as path separators. So in a Python program (or most 
other languages) you can use forward slashes anywhere you want to write a 
pathname.


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From eli-wallach at ugly.com  Sun Jul  1 11:37:35 2001
From: eli-wallach at ugly.com (Mexican Bandit)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 15:37:35 GMT
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
Message-ID: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com>

Hi,

Wondering of anyone can help - Python newbie. I'm trying to write a
Python cgi script which outputs a gif or jpg image from another
server...

----
import urllib

print "Content-Type: image/jpeg"
print

image = urllib.urlopen("http://127.0.0.1/splogo.jpg")
print image.read()
----

The output of the image is corrupted. I suspect this is to do with
'print' turning everything into strings?

How do I output raw image data?



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 10:57:23 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:57:23 -0400
Subject: how do I get modules to stop eating memory
References: <6f78b8b.0107020626.38939858@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <UW%%6.20433$he.1019955@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Charles Harrison" <speedy911 at mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:6f78b8b.0107020626.38939858 at posting.google.com...
> I posted a message about a week ago asking about deleting modules from
> memory.  I got several replies with things that should work, but they
> didn't.  Here's the scenario that I've been trying:
>
> - open the python shell and import sys and any other module
>
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug 25 2000, 09:33:37)  [GCC 2.96 20000731
> (experimental)] on linux-i386
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> import sys
> >>> import BaseHTTPServer
>
> - I also run 'top' when im doing this to monitor the memory that
> python is using. The 2112 is the memory used after importing the 2
> modules.
>
> 22738 charriso   0   0  2112 2112  1380 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 python
>
> - Now I do what should unload the module 'BaseHTTPServer' and free the
> memory.
>
> >>> del BaseHTTPServer
> >>> del sys.modules['BaseHTTPServer']
>
> - And now top says that the memory usage is now 2120.
>
> 22738 charriso   0   0  2120 2120  1384 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 python
>
> - Prior to importing BaseHTTPServer the memory usage was 1432.
> Shouldn't Python's memory usage have gone down to that number, or at
> least down some?

While its usage might have gone down, this doesn't necessarily mean the
amount it's claiming from the operating system will have. Different
implementations have different strategies.

a) Even when you've deleted the module, that doesn't mean the garbage
collector has run and collected the used memory; and

b) Even after the GC collects it, you need to be sure that it will return
memory to the OS for your working set used memory size to go down.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From hsl at tcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 02:02:17 2001
From: hsl at tcp.co.uk (Martin Rand)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:02:17 +0100
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie>
Message-ID: <ba6lkt8edqanl9lak7grfsl45gjit88kc8@4ax.com>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT, gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
wrote:

[snip]

>In case anyone is fooled, here's an example from the tutorial at 
>www.python.org, which also has a FAQ on what Python is for:
>
>>>> for n in range(2, 10):
>..     for x in range(2, n):
>..         if n % x == 0:
>..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
>..            break
>..     else:
>..          print n, 'is a prime number'
>.. 
>
>Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.  
>Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be 
>level-indented with the 'for'.   No doubt longer programs are even more 
>fun.  The FAQ on increasing speed helpfully notes that function calls 
>are expensive...
>
Gerry, I only just bumbled into this thread; forgive me if I'm
pointing out the obvious.

Where would you choose to indent the 'else:' if you had a choice?
Presumably you're aware that levelling it with the 'if' would have a
different effect? Or were you objecting to the fact that Python has a
'for:' 'else:' construct in the first place?


--
Martin Rand
Highfield Software Ltd
mwr at highfield-software.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)23 8025 2445
Fax:   +44 (0)23 8025 2445


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 09:08:15 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:08:15 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <Xns90D489E9982B4duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <9hv4g101u04@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns90D489E9982B4duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1...
    ...
> Please tell me you don't do air traffic control for a living.

I think I'll walk, thanks, it does look like a fine day.


(I suspect this guy must be guilty only of even-more-deadpan
and impenetrable humor than I sometimes perpetrate -- this
just *can't* be for real).


Alex





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 12:42:48 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:42:48 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B55907B.206DE96D@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107182023270.1370-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>Roman Suzi wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>>
>> Nope. There must be no encode-decode back. Or it will slow down
>> starting Python _scripts_ unnecessary.
>>
>> That is why I suggested "unknown" encoding - a safe default
>> for those who do not want any back-and-force recodings.
>
>If you want to avoid having to decode and the reencode data
>in ther parser, we would have to live with two sets of parsers
>in Python -- one for Unicode and one for 8-bit data.

No. I think there could be bypass, which will not affect the parser
logic too much.

>I don't think that anyone would like to maintain those two
>sets, so it's basically either go all the way or not move
>at all.
>
>> There clearly must be the way to prevent encode-decode. And it would be
>> better if only EXPLICITLY given encoding will trigger encode-decode
>> mechanism.
>
>That's not true: Python caches byte-code compiled versions of
>scripts in .pyc|o files. So the performance problem is really not
>all that important.

I've just made a simple program called myf.py and made .pyo and .pyc
then run strace -f to see which files it opens (tries to open).
It doesn't touch .pyc or .pyo for sure:

2229  open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/lib/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/lib/libpthread.so.0", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/lib/libm.so.6", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("myf.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/exceptions.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/exceptionsmodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/exceptions.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/exceptions.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/sitemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/os.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/osmodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/os.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/os.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpath.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpathmodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpath.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/posixpath.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/stat.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/statmodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/stat.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/stat.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/UserDict.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/UserDictmodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/UserDict.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/UserDict.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/NumPy.pth", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/PIL.pth", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/RNG.pth", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/plat-linux-i386/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-tk/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/NumPy/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/NumPy/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/NumPy/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/NumPy/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/PIL/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/PIL/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/PIL/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/PIL/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/RNG/sitecustomize.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/RNG/sitecustomizemodule.so", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/RNG/sitecustomize.py", O_RDONLY)
2229  open("/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/RNG/sitecustomize.pyc", O_RDONLY)

So, I argue that a script myf.py is not cached in compiled for
anywhere and is recompiled each time!

>> ...and efficiency reasons too. re was slowed down significantly by adding
>> Unicode support.
>
>I seriously doubt that. Fredrik (who wrote the sre engine) is an
>optimization genius and in some cases even made the sre engine
>faster than the string module implementations of e.g. find().

Well, u2 is no different from ASCII+latin1 for modern computers
as they have 32 bit words...

>> > > >    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
>> > > >    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
>> > > >    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
>> > > >    roundtrip).
>> > > ...as I said, there must be no assumed charset. Things must
>> > > be left as is now when no explicit encoding given.
>> > This is what the Latin-1 encoding assures.
>> I still think something like "raw" is needed...
>Latin-1 gives you this "raw" feature.

I still can't get Netscape to print in cyrillic because it assumes that
it's buttons and fonts are latin1! Sometimes assumptions are going to far
to be allowed in the first place!

>> > We've been discussing these on python-dev, but Guido is not
>> > too keen on having them.
>>
>> And this is right. I even think encoding information could be EXTERNAL.
>
>No -- how are editors supposed to know about these external
>files ?

OK. But how do they know about encoding of the 8-bit documents?
Documents have tags to show encoding. Then Python program must
become a document with all those tags here and there.

How do other languages solve this "problem"?

>> > > > Comments are welcome !
>> > Thanks for your comments,
>> I just hope the realisation of your PEP will not make Python scripts
>> running slower ;-) while allowing truly useful i18n functionality.
>
>By the time the PEP will be implemented, CPUs will run at least 50%
>faster than they do now -- this should answer your question ;-)

Nope. This is extensive way of bloated programs (like W2K) hoping to
increase Intel sells of CPUs.

If computers were always so speedy as now, we all were using bubble sort.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 18, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?" _/




From lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl  Thu Jul 12 03:32:45 2001
From: lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl (Tomasz Lisowski)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:32:45 +0200
Subject: catch empty sys.argv
References: <3b4d491b.56611422@news.isis.de>
Message-ID: <9ijjlc$gqt$1@news.tpi.pl>

U?ytkownik "pedro" <pedro at athlet.de> napisa? w wiadomo?ci
news:3b4d491b.56611422 at news.isis.de...
> hi,
>
> my scripts gets a variable from .sys.argv[1] (a filename). when the
> filename is not entered the scripts is completely useless, so i
> thought i'd do a basic check like:
>
> if sys.argv[1] == ''
>     exit('enter something, stupid')

Why don't you first check the length of the sys.argv list?

Example:
nArgs = len(sys.argv)
if n == 0:
    exit('enter something, stupid')

or alternatively, define a function:

def arg(n):
    try:
        res = sys.argv[n]
    except IndexError:
        res = ""
    return res

and use it:

if arg(1) == ''
    exit('enter something, stupid')

Tomasz Lisowski




From kj7ny at email.com  Wed Jul 25 00:38:55 2001
From: kj7ny at email.com (Robert Roberts)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:38:55 GMT
Subject: Python for Palm OS
Message-ID: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host>

I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm 
os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?

Thanks in advance.



From tom-list at home.com  Fri Jul  6 18:52:38 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:52:38 -0400
Subject: the C++ Standard Library for Python
References: <hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <QIo17.427166$eK2.86457968@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b4640b4_4@Usenet.com>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:QIo17.427166$eK2.86457968 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> First impression:
> Very cool!, especially the fact that it seems to play well with python
> iterators.
> (I just need Python 2.2 to take full advantage..)
> It took me about 30 seconds to install and start using it!
> I will definitely be checking this out further.
> ( the website is also excellent )
> good work!

Thanks.

I too am looking forward to Python iterators.  They will make it possible
for me to get the STL algorithms working with Python mappings.  Actually, it
is possible now, but it wouldn't be efficient.

Tom.

> "Tom" <tom-list at home.com> wrote in message
> news:hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
> >
> > The core of the C++ Standard Library is now available for Python.  This
> > includes 4 sequence containers, 8 mapping containers, and approximately
60
> > algorithms.  The algorithms can be applied to any of these containers,
or
> to
> > any of the Python built-in sequences.
> >
> > This is an actual C++ standard library, exposed to Python, not a Python
> > implementation of it - so it is all native code.
> >
> > It is being release under a standard Python style license.
> >
> > Please note that this is a beta release.
> >
> > http://www.malcolmson.com/pystl
> >
> > I'll watch this thread for comments and feedback (thanks in advance).
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>



Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
    ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------        
                http://www.usenet.com


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 09:58:28 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 09:58:28 -0400
Subject: compile() question: SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
Message-ID: <3B471584.3686D0E@engcorp.com>

While examining the core of medusa's monitor.py, we've encountered
a situation that looks on the face of it like an undesirable
limitation or inconsistency of the Python compiler.  (I fully expect
to hear an explanation for why this is actually a Good Thing, 
but we haven't figured it out ourselves yet.)

We expected the following two sequences to produce the same
exception, but they do not.

>>> good = 'if 1:'
>>> compile(good, '', 'exec')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<string>", line 1
    if 1:
       ^
SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
>>> bad = 'if 1:\n    print 1\nelse:'
>>> compile(bad, '', 'exec')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<string>", line 3
    else:
       ^
IndentationError: expected an indented block


Medusa's monitor.py uses the "unexpected EOF while parsing" 
feature to infer that additional lines of text are going to be 
entered by the user (to satisfy the expected indented block for 
the "if").  This is how it knows when to deliver another "..." 
prompt and when to cancel entry of data and deliver a real 
exception.

Unfortunately this means when it or any code which tries
to use the same technique encounters the beginning of the
"else:" block, it terminates with the second exception.

(A workaround appears to be to precede everything with a
dummy "if 1:" block, but I'm trying to learn why the 
built-in compile() doesn't consistently produce the
"unexpected EOF while parsing" message in the second case.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 12:30:06 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:30:06 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <3b61c8f0.577829094@wa.news.verio.net> <3B64E9D5.82A7B3E9@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <3b658707.823099644@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:00:05 +1200, Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

>Bengt Richter wrote:
>> 
>> You may know the significance of fgjqkw then ;-)

Well, if you know, you would probably also recognize
the qk transposition typo :-(

That should be fgjkqw

>> If not, google for it.
>
Sorry. Dang!

googles to
http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/jkucera/p109/p109sl4.htm

In the page, search for 'f g j' with spaces. Interesting that
google found that even with spaces in between. Your browser's
search probably won't though, so search for 'f g j' (that's enough).

Even though I don't read cz, it's not hard to tell ;-)

>Burning with curiosity, I just tried that, but
>didn't get anything.
>



From guido at zope.com  Sun Jul 29 13:08:03 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:08:03 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 29 Jul 2001 09:39:52 PDT."
             <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> 
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > Same as currently if it's a class: look in inst.__dict__ for instance
> > vars, then look in inst.__class__ for methods and class vars, then
> > recursively look through int.__class__.__bases__ for inherited methods
> > and class vars.  Weed out duplicates.
> 
> Is there any reason that this is not defined as a built-in function? I
> propose a function called attrs().

Yes, it's a lot less useful than you seem to think.  If you are
interested in documentation, it's better to use something like pydoc
which gives much more details.

Right now, pydoc doesn't understand the new types yet, but eventually,
before 2.2 final, pydoc (or more likely inspect.py) will be able to
introspect according to PEP 252.

> >...
> > > 2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
> > > is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?
> 
> You didn't answer this one. If I'm wrapping a COM object and I want to
> dynamically provide the list of methods and other attributes when some
> asks (i.e. "override" dir() or attrs()).

I thought I answered it by saying "you can't do that".

But now that you've given more information, I understand your question
better.  I think you should be able to override the __dict__ attr of
the type and put pseudo descriptors in there (see PEP 252 for the
descriptor API).

> > ....  I'd like something as close to
> > > this as is realistically possible:
> > >
> > > def attrs(x):
> > >       return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]
> > 
> > (Note: this may return an infinite list!)
> 
> Right, that's why I'm asking for something as *close as realistically
> possible*. i.e. a built-in function that gets me the attributes list.
> 
> 99% of the time when I use dir(), I wish it behaved as I described
> attrs() and I just have to work around its limitations. I would like for
> there to be a function that returns as many attributes as is
> realistically possible.

Hm, I'd like you to tell me more about how you use dir().  I find
getting the entire list of attributes overwhelming.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 11 15:46:11 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:46:11 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <usng3ckqk.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> writes:

> I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps
> asking for a while --- and folks here keep answering.
> 
> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to
> follow and the translation into Python show me where I am missing
> Python techniques.

There is, however, a risk in this technique as a single line
translation from another language to Python is often a bit too fine
grained to really serve as a good guide for translation, especially
from a language such as C.  The two languages do not necessarily
provide the same functionality per line of code so you risk force
fitting the translation since you don't have any surrounding context.

In these cases so far, it's largely been translating a C library call
into Python library calls so the one-to-one holds better than usual,
but I do think that even newbies will be able to get a better grasp of
the concepts with slightly larger code snippets.  E.g., what you use
strtok or sscanf in a C program for, you might attack quite
differently in a Python program, even if direct translations of strtok
and sscanf exist.  (Then again, you might use the direct translation,
but making that choice is assisted by more original context).

Note I'm certainly not proposing that such requests not be answered,
nor that they can't be helpful, but only that I think more benefit
could be gained (by the original poster as well as other readers) with
some addition information and/or sample code in the translation
requests.

But c.l.p is certainly one of the best communities in which I've
participated in this regard - we'll answer just about anything as well
as possible (even while suggesting better ways to phrase the questions
:-))

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com  Fri Jul 13 13:26:44 2001
From: Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com (Tobin, Mark)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:26:44 -0600
Subject: FW: Newbie list question
Message-ID: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391050@torex004.attcanada.ca>

Whoops wrong list...
Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Tobin, Mark 
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 1:22 PM
To: 'Joshua Marshall'; 'Matthew.alton at anheuser-busch.com';
'tutor at python.org'
Subject: RE: Newbie list question


Does:

foo += 'c'

act like an append then?  I always assumed it was the same as:

foo = foo + 'c'

which obviously should raise a TypeError.  Here however it works, in that it
appends 'c' to the object to which foo refers and thus to the object to
which bar refers...

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Joshua Marshall
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:52 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Newbie list question


Matthew Alton <Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com> wrote:
...

>>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
>>>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?

bar points to the same object that foo points to.  It's not the case
that bar is an alias for foo.

>>>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.

For clarity, it might be better to say baz points to a copy of the
list which foo points to.

>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> bar 
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
>>>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
> bar (?)
>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
>>>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
> expected.
>>>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

Here, the variable foo is rebound to a new list.  The previous list
(which bar still points to) is unaffected.  If you had done
"foo.append('c')" instead of "foo = foo + ['c']", than a 'c' would be
appended to the list object that foo and bar both still refer to.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 11:11:38 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:11:38 GMT
Subject: Is this an Intended behaviour of __getattr__?
References: <uu787.103805$ph7.16107665@news.hananet.net> <OR887.104175$ph7.16309267@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <Kwf87.34061$EP6.8716280@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message
news:OR887.104175$ph7.16309267 at news.hananet.net...

> I think when __repr__ and __str__ are called internally via the
interpreter
> as in the print statement, it passes through the __getattr__ method
of Node
> class while all exceptions are simply ignored.

Correct.  Overriding default print formatting is optional.  When
'print' found neither __str__ nor __repr__ , it went ahead with the
default:

<__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>

Terry J. Reedy






From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 20:29:02 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:29:02 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpr8v6ow8o.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <ipo77.25812$EP6.6287154@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpr8v6ow8o.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com>

[quoting from PEP0238, after Guido questioned my '2 years' paraphrase]

> > The warning will be off by default in the 2.2 release, and on by
> >     default for in the next Python release, and will stay in
effect
> >     for 24 months.

> Touche.  I couldn't find that passage in the PEP, and had even gone
to
> the trouble of searching for "year"... :-(
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

How funny.  I had just read PEP 5 which proffers a minimum of 1 year,
so I automatically divided by 12 to compare, never dreaming that I
would mislead someone into searching for '2 years' instead of  '24
months'.

Terry J. Reedy





From Dominikus.Herzberg at eed.ericsson.se  Wed Jul 25 03:07:09 2001
From: Dominikus.Herzberg at eed.ericsson.se (Dominikus.Herzberg at eed.ericsson.se)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:07:09 +0200
Subject: How does Metaprogramming work?
Message-ID: <3B5E701D.3A87AE45@eed.ericsson.se>

Hi,

I'm doing some metaprogramming -- the code works fine but I still
don't precisely get how metaprogramming works internally. The usual
pattern for defining a "MetaClass" is e.g.

    class InterfaceMetaClass:
        def __init__(self,name,bases,dict):
            self.__name__ = name
            self.__bases__ = bases
            self.__dict = dict # We can't use __dict__ here!

The next step is instantiating this class object ...

    InterfaceType = InterfaceMetaClass("InterfaceType",(),{})

... and to use this class instance as a base class within a class
definition. The idea is to regard the "base class" InterfaceType as
the type of the class object, e.g.

    class Port(InterfaceType):
        pass

The fun part is that

    >>> type(Port)

results in

    <type 'instance'>

Why? I understand that class definitions are an executable statement
in python. As soon as python passes the class definition Port, python
first evaluates the inheritance list, here InterfaceType, which should
evaluate to a class object. In this case, it evaluates to a class
instance instead! This is clearly the point of where the magic begins
... but how does it continue. Why does Port finally evaluate to a
class instance but having typical properties of a class object like
__dict__ or __bases__? What does Port make this sort of a hybrid
thing?

Comments are appreciated!

Thanks a lot,

Dominikus




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 20 13:32:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:32:20 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com>
Message-ID: <aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Raymond Hettinger" <othello at javanet.com> wrote in message
news:3B586A1E.B037349D at javanet.com...
> It looks like types and classes are heading toward unification in 2.2a (oh
yeah).
> Now, I want to offer an idea that is sure to attract a few flames:
>
> 1. Give lists an assignable property called 'immutable' which defaults to
zero.
> 2. If the property gets set to one (i.e. mylist.immutable=1), then the
list
> disables future assignments.  For example, mylist[3]='three' generates:
>         TypeError: object doesn't support item assignment
> 3. Immutable lists can never be converted back to mutable.  For example,
> mylist.immutable=0 generates:
>         TypeError: immutable objects cannot be changed
> 4. Immutable lists can be copied to mutable lists just like tuples can.
For
> example, mynewlist=list(mylist) makes a new mutable list.
> 5. If a list is used as a dictionary key, then the immutable property
> gets set to one automatically.
> 6. Deprecate tuples. Simplify the tutorials. Get on with life.
>
> Hiding behind asbestos,
>
No asbestos required, but what's tha advantage over

    mylist = tuple(mylist)

just-wonderingl-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 23:13:51 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:13:51 -0400
Subject: smtp authorization...how to?
References: <3b675617.48549445@news.mailops.com>
Message-ID: <orK97.8357$9i1.755330@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"chajadan" <me at charliedaniels.com-1.net> wrote in message
news:3b675617.48549445 at news.mailops.com...
> I started pokin' around in the smtplib and tried sending an e-mail.
>
> My smtp server requires a username and password, yet there is no
> method for either of these. That I saw.
>
> Is there an available module that incorporates these, or a simple way
> to extend smtplib?
>
> Any pointers would be great.
>
The smtplib library just implements RFC821, I believe. Various extensions to
the protocol have been implemented in various mailers, and if your ISP is
standards-friendly they will be using something RFC2554-compliant.

There's a little more information in

    http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/issue/job000197/

but this is essentially a bug report, so there are no fixes there. One other
possibility: some ISPs will authenticate your connection for sending if you
use POP3 first, since POP *is* and authenticated protocol. You might try
that.

Sorry the news isn't better ... someone may have a patched smtplib you can
use.

regards
 Steve
--
www.holdenweb.com





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 11:46:14 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:46:14 +0200
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994769237.24585.python-list@python.org> <cpr8vnh6ln.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ihse1011n3@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpr8vnh6ln.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
> > But it is Guido's language and Guido's call.  Just wish it was
> > all just left to his own sense of design elegance, which there
> > is reason to trust - rather his public justifications, which I
> > never find very satisfactory.
>
> Good point, Art.  I trust my intuition more than my reasoning in these
> things, and often when I try to defend my intuition against
> challenges, what comes out are unsatisfactory rationalizations.
> Sometimes Tim's "channelings" say it better than I could have said it
> myself...  :-)

Being a great designer (or other kind of decision-maker) and
being a good rationalizer/evangelist/salesperson/marketeer are
really separate skills, and pretty much uncorrelated ones to
boot.  People in general just won't accept that, which of
course suits us good rationalizers just fine (as we often get
credited for better decisions than we actually make, just
because we rationalize better than others do:-).


Alex





From gregj at pdxperts.com  Sun Jul  8 18:40:47 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:40:47 GMT
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <Pj527.318558$p33.6392630@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Carsten Gaebler" <clpy at snakefarm.org> wrote in message
news:3B482C44.6E6EB163 at snakefarm.org...

> I've just come across a strange difference between readline() and
> readlines():
>
> Python 2.1 (#17, Jun 15 2001, 15:24:30)
> [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> f = open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readline()
> ''
> >>> f.close()
> >>>
> >>> f =  open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readlines()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
> >>>
>
>
> Why does readlines() raise an exception while readline() does not? I
> expected it to return an empty list. According to the docs readlines()
> uses readline(). If I open the file "w+" everything's fine. Opinions?


The same thing happens on Windows 2000 with Python 2.1. And xreadlines gives
the same error.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pdxperts.com





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 12 20:26:21 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:26:21 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <15182.7171.508504.946071@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121819581.22138-100000@bms>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:
<...>
> Well, no, but I might run this file as "python mycode.py" (ten-minute hack -
> buyer beware) and type either Python or shell commands at the interpreter
> prompt:
<...>
> The output looks like
>
>     % python mycode.py
>     Python 2.1.1c1 (#13, Jul 10 2001, 17:30:38)
>     [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
>     Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>     (Console)
>     >>> wc -l /etc/termcap
>       16412 /etc/termcap
>     >>> f = open("/etc/termcap")
>     >>> f.readlines()[10]
>     '# Please e-mail changes to terminfo at thyrsus.com; the old termcap at berkeley.edu\n'
>     >>>
>
> ;-)

The Python interpreter should do this right out-of-the-box,
or maybe Python embedded in Bash would work. ;-)


- Bruce




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sun Jul  1 11:19:05 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:19:05 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hnaat$284$02$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9jud7l.111.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:18 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
>"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
>> The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I thought
>> that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't find anything
>> (except the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).
>>
>> Any suggestions/pointers?
>
>You might want to look at KDE's DCOP.

Well, I did already. It looks cool and I even got the KSpread example to work,
but it's tied to C++ and Qt.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 11 22:10:33 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:10:33 GMT
Subject: Developing Visual Studio add-ins in Python?
References: <tH637.142074$R7.25090399@typhoon.kc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3b4d0701.1675128467@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:03:21 GMT, "Russ Shotts" <rashotts at mn.rr.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Has anyone used Python to create a Visual Studio add-in?  I need to perform
>some fairly complex processing, and their VBScript macros just cannot handle
>the task.
>
>Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
>
I was just thinking about that when I saw that there's no automatic
build number update for the VC++ build. (Not that you'd really need
python for that ;-) When I get to building, I'll do something about
the update, one way or another, unless I find it already done --
which seems awfully likely ;-)



From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul 15 23:31:52 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 23:31:52 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <etdhewe0y3q.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <92ae279c.0107151846.7a19d24@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etd1ynhtuqf.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

Ah, good point.  thanks.


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Sun Jul  8 12:47:51 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:15:51 +0028
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994632014.24563.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iapjn$ja2$1@apollo.csd.net>

Chris Watson wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Neil Macneale wrote:
> 
>> I am wondering if there is a straight forward license which I can use for
>> python code I plan to distribute.  Is there a standard header, or
>> possibly a link that can be placed in a header which basically says that
>> people use the code at there own risk, and that they are free to change
>> it?  I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
>> GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?
> 
> This is what I use. A standard 2 clause (clause 1 and 2) FreeBSD style
> copyright but with my own clause 3 to PREVENT people from GPL'ing my code
> and thereby RESTRICTING its useage. I call it the static BSD License. Once
> it's BSDL'ed it can't be made any less free. It's the closest thing to
> public domain you can get yet still cover you A$$ from liability, and the
> like. It keeps the code BSDL'ed and prevents someone from GPL'ing it
> basically. If a company wanted to license it differently I would have ZERO
> problem letting them license it for their own needs whatever that may be.
> I just REFUSE to let the code be GPL'ed. Hence clause 3.
> 
This seems really strange to me. So you are saying you can integrate it 
into any proprietary product without problems? You can intergrate it into 
perl, python etc with their various licenses. Why do you specifically not 
want anyone to integrate it with GPL code but allow everything else?



From tksee at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 30 22:27:41 2001
From: tksee at yahoo.com (Tksee Lhsoh)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:27:41 +0900
Subject: Unicode File
Message-ID: <3B66179D.1D55B27C@yahoo.com>

I would like to open and save a file in unicode.


For example,
s=open("unicode_filename").read();
seems to return oridinary string, not unicode.

What should I do ?




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 13 11:33:40 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:33:40 -0400
Subject: SocketServer and threading mixin?
References: <m24rshy4xk.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <wvE37.12482$u76.665779@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

Greg:

There's a much higher probability your issues will be addressed if you visit
python.sourceforge.net and use the bug reporting system to let the
developers know about the problems. (You may have done this for all I know).

It woul dbe a mistake to assume that posting on this newsgroup is sufficient
to get a task on the development "to do" list.  Furthermore, posting a bug
saves the developers from having to do it themselves (since all bugs have to
go into sourceforge before they get fixed).

Have a good weekend.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Greg Copeland" <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:m24rshy4xk.fsf at mouse.copelandconsulting.net...
>
> I've been following the bug report on the SocketServer module
> and how it is broken with the threading mixin.  The bug report
> has been closed and the people that posted offered several
> solutions, however, from what I've seen, SocketServer, the
> module, is still broken and requires a minor patch or two to
> work correctly.  Does anyone know what the plans are to address
> this issue down the road?  Will there be an interim python release
> which addresses this???  Would be nice since there is seemingly
> lots of people that don't want to have to their user base patch
> or replace python modules.
>
> Anyone?
>
> Greg




From jp at NOSPAMdemonseed.net  Tue Jul  3 22:19:10 2001
From: jp at NOSPAMdemonseed.net (jason petrone)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 02:19:10 +0000
Subject: py2exe & wxWin
References: <m2lmm6m1tg.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <ueuth9.m2i.ln@demonseed.net>

Greg Copeland <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Is it possible to use py2exe to package up a wxPython application?

Yes.

jlp


From kp87 at lycos.com  Sun Jul 29 04:49:23 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 01:49:23 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996304554.3545.python-list@python.org> <%ez87.128332$%a.5630144@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107290049.27bb9e0e@posting.google.com>

"Van Gale" <cgale1 at _remove_home.com> wrote in message news:<%ez87.128332$%a.5630144 at news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>...
> "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.996304554.3545.python-list at python.org...
> 
> > Time to move into the 21st century, Dirck!  This alternative is often
> > overlooked:
> >
> >     http://www.cobolscript.com/

Yeah, but that dinosaur is really cute! instead of changing / couldn't
we change from snakes to the dinosaur! My girlfriend hates snakes and
so, hates my python books lying around the house (thanx Mr. Chun for
not putting a snake on your book) I've had to cover them over with
stickers. Worst yet, was when i brought home the ora _Learning Python_
book & proudly announced, "no snakes" only to reveal the rat on the
cover. So my girlfriend wants to know why python has to have the worst
animals and why we can have bunnies or little dinosaurs. I agree with
her.

Additionally i asked my mom what 1/2 should return and she said .5 of
course. And since my mom is very smart i think that we should all shut
our  pieholes a update our code. The bad people should send written
apologies to Guido, perferably cards with bunnies on them. I happen to
love miffy so i suggest www.miffy.com. They have some things that you
can print out and color in.

cheers,
kevin parks
seoul, korea
kp87 at lycos.com

ps. my  mom doesn't like tuples and thinks everything should be
mutable. Guido, can you check with your mom and see what she thinks?
Maybe tuples need to go, but then i won't have any reason to say
tuples anymore and that would be a shame.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 30 02:09:11 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 06:09:11 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64d4ce.777475039@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m9ug6.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:52:53 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:

> I think several notions of exactness are getting mixed.
> 
> Two relationships need to be separated:
> 1. bit pattern representing a number <-> *mathematical value*
> 2. *mathematical value* <-> significance in problem domain

I disagree. The only interesting relationship is
  number which can be represented in a bit pattern <->
  significance in problem domain.

The number represented can differ much from the number intended
because some operations (e.g. subtraction of positive numbers) may
make the result very inexact.

Which mathematical value are you talking about? The one represented
by the bit pattern or the one which would be used if arithmetic was
exact (assuming that it's a rational number at all)? In any case it
boils down to the above relationship.

> Exactness has to do with the first relationship. A particular bit
> pattern representing a number uniquely identifies its corresponding
> *mathematical value* by design. If the *mathematical value* is exactly
> what you want, declare the representation exact,

It's not useful to tag exact float values. Exactness depends on
artificial conditions. Operations on them don't always produce exact
results.

In effect sometimes by accident you might get an exact result, but
it's not guaranteed that the same computation of different data will
give an exact result. It's better to statically known that results
of a computation are not exact in general.

If you want exact results, simply don't use floats. If you don't
need exactness and know that the algorithm behaves well numerically,
use floats for speed. I don't see the point in the compiler inferring
whether it managed to get a particular result exact or not.

Not to mention that it's inefficient to check whether operations on
floats preserved exactness, so you hurt those who don't need exactness.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 04:37:09 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:37:09 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <slrn9klav7.rp0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107101231130.6857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 10 Jul 2001, Quinn Dunkan wrote:

>>If the English language has changed too much, and
>>there's no-one left who can understand the spec,
>>you might have a bit of a problem...
>
>Let alone latin letters.  Or even utf8.  Or 8 bit bytes.  I think the real
>problem will be building a machine that can read old fashioned hard drives.
>And if they do, will they still work?  Consider all the 9 track tape rotting
>away in closets.
>
>I think it's good that old software rots away.

If you read carefully the goal, it's about saving procedures
to access stored data: crypto technique, format converters, etc.

I want to be able to restore my old tar.gz archive, etc. Yes, nobody will
probably use it anymore, but the data it contains could be of interest.
So, I want to make sure procedures will be written in such a language to
allow fast retrieval.

The fastest way to do it is to implement special very simple interpreter
(in the language which will be available in the future) and then feed it
with data input and receive data output.

>If it's gone it's because
>nobody needed it anymore.  A lot of other software which would still be
>interesting is interesting because of the specific platform it ran on and the
>time at which it ran (consider Amiga demos).  A language won't help for those,
>you need a museum.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "<CTRL>-<ALT>-<DEL> is the key to success" _/




From arisen at start.no  Fri Jul 13 04:10:05 2001
From: arisen at start.no (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9?=)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 01:10:05 -0700
Subject: IRC library for Python?
References: <slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>
Message-ID: <fed2e489.0107130010.36692131@posting.google.com>

grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb) wrote in message news:<slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey at teleute.dmiyu.org>...

> I've been doing some searching and haven't found anything on the web or
> deja.  Is there an IRC library akin to SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNRP/et al for
> Python in existence?

There is a small, somewhat outdated (RFC 1459 has been obsoleted, i
think) library at http://www.cs.uit.no/~andrer/rfc1459.py . I've used
it to build some simple irc bots.

--
Andr? Risnes


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul 15 16:51:58 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 16:51:58 -0400
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com>
Message-ID: <etdelrh29w1.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

Yeah, I mucked around a bit with nested list comprehensions when I
started using them.  It causes the same sort of miserable readability
problems that excessive use of the functional programming facilities
do. 

Alex.


From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Wed Jul 25 18:15:04 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:15:04 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <uzo9sd8le.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F44E8.7333F9ED@ccvcorp.com>

David Bolen wrote:

> Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com> writes:
>
> > Haven't looked into this in detail, or even downloaded 2.2 yet, but...
>
> It's sort of noticeable from the question :-)
>
> > couldn't that be written as:
> >
> > if __name__ == '__main__':
> >     for i in fib():
> >         print i,
> >
> > ???
>
> Only if fib() was going to return the entire list of numbers in the
> sequence as an already created list object.  But fibonacci numbers are
> an infinite sequence, so clearly you can't do that.  Or you'd have to
> artifically terminate it somewhere.
>

Hey, the specification never said anything about needing to *stop* ....  ;)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International



From govandema at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 00:37:51 2001
From: govandema at yahoo.com (mag)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 21:37:51 -0700
Subject: Tkinter
Message-ID: <7724023.0107032037.196f286e@posting.google.com>

I am want to run Tkinter applications from c embeeded python...
Pl. guide me for that...means how to start? what type of settings I need to do?
etc...


MAG.


From objectway at divalsim.it  Wed Jul  4 07:30:09 2001
From: objectway at divalsim.it (Nicola Musatti)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 13:30:09 +0200
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <mailman.994243868.13022.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B42FE41.8A318469@divalsim.it>


Simon Brunning wrote:
[...]
> Hmmm. I thought K&R *was* a tutorial.

It certainly is, but it has qualities that make it a very good
reference: it is concise, topics are rather self contained and the index
is reasonably good. When the tutorial part is not clear enough the
reference manual usually is.

[Mark Lutz's 'Python Pocket Reference' (O'Reilly)]
[David Beazley's 'Python Essential Reference' (New Riders)]]

Thanks, I'll chjeck these out...

[<http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/python/PQR.html>]

...and bookmark this.

Cheers,
Nicola


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 15:56:16 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:56:16 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995394873.14918.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b549622.2170522105@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:31:24 -0600 (MDT), Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
><...>
>> - which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
>>
>>   * Emacs style:
>>
>>       #!/usr/bin/python
>>       # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-
>
>This should work for everyone, but will it confuse emacs?.
>I suppose, "# # ...", or "### ...", or almost any short sequence
>starting with "#" will work, eh.
>
>>   * Via meta-option to the interpreter:
>>
>>       #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8
>
>This will require editing if python is not in /usr/bin, and can not be
>used to pass more than one argument to the command (python, in this
>case).
>
>>   * Using a special comment format:
>>
>>       #!/usr/bin/python
>>       #!encoding = 'utf-8'
>
>This is confusing, and will only work on *nix (linux?) iff it is the
>second (or later) line; if it is the first line... it will fail
>because there is probably no executable named "encoding" available,
>and if there is, "= 'utf8'" is unlikely to exist.
>
>please,
>Avoid character sequences that have other meanings in this context.
>
A valid point.

>
>I think this should be done as a generic method for pre-processing
>Python source before the compiler/interpreter has a look at it.
>
>e.g.,
>
>	# ## encoding utf-8
>
>triggers whatever you encoding fans want,
>
>	# ## format noweb
>
>runs the source through a filter which can extract code noweb marked
>up code, and maybe even installs the weaved docs and tangled code
>(via distutils?)
>
>	# ## MySpecialMarkup
>
>runs the source through a filter named MySpecialMarkup.
>MySpecialMarkup could be anything: extensions to docstrings, a
>proprietary binary format, an entire package-in-a-file!
>
>Generally:  #<magic> <directive> [<arguments>]
>
>If Python does not know what the <directive> is it should either look
>in a set location for a program of the same name then use its output as
>the source, or look into a table that maps <directive> to a procedure
>which results in Python source.

I think you're right about #! triggering confusion, but I think a fixed keyword
as a prefix is helpful when e.g., grepping for files with directives.

I withdraw my #!pragma (or #!pythma ;-) suggestion and propose
r'^\s*#pragma\s' as the magic line prefix regular expression.



From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul  5 15:50:45 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:50:45 -0500
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library 
 development
In-Reply-To: <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
	<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org>
	<3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <15172.50453.103749.142344@beluga.mojam.com>

    Chris> Unfortunately, not having all the major modules available for a
    Chris> single source really is a big limitation. Not only do people like
    Chris> me have to spend a whole lot more time installing stuff,
    Chris> developers are limited as to what they can expect a Python
    Chris> installation to include.

I'm not sure there's too much farther to go from where Python's distutils
sits now to where you need to go.  I've used Perl's CPAN shell to install
packages and recursively install their dependencies.  While it's a bit
chatty, I generally haven't had any problems with it.  With distutils I
believe you get more-or-less platform-independent package installation (at
least that's the plan).  If you can add package dependencies to a package's
distutils spec and adopt a standard set of package download schemes (ftplib
and urllib may be all that's needed) as well as a set of package mirror
sites, then you've got something quite similar to CPAN.  You also need a way
to announce the canonical location of a package so mirrors can get at it.
The Vaults of Parnassus may already contain that information.

Obvious tasks I see:

    * binary vs. source - in particular, Windows users often won't have
      compilers 

    * extend distutils (esp. setup.py) to allow authors to record package
      dependencies

    * establish a site mirror facility

    * solve problems with potential name clashes

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 01:47:20 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:47:20 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: problem with sending email
In-Reply-To: <Zwc07.5269$Kf3.45103@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107030943150.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Haris Lekatsas wrote:

> How can I do that from a CGI script?

One way:

os.system("""/usr/sbin/sendmail -t << EOMESSAGE
From: %(from)s
To: %(towhom)s
Subject: %(subject)s

Message

EOMESSAGE""" % vars())

Another way is to open sendmail thru the pipe:

file = os.popen("/usr/sbin/sendmail -t", "w")
...
file.write(letter)
...
file.close()

 
> In article <mailman.994069322.26388.python-list at python.org>, Roman Suzi says...
> >
> >On 2 Jul 2001 piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
> >
> >> >>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:
> >> 
> >> HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
> >> HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
> >> HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
> >> HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
> >> HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
> >> HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
> >> HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.
> >
> >What if you try to send mail by piping to "sendmail -t"?
> >
> >Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
> >-- 
> > - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From daring at ecs.fullerton.edu  Thu Jul 19 12:05:47 2001
From: daring at ecs.fullerton.edu (Darin Goldstein)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 09:05:47 -0700
Subject: What the heck is with PyRun_File?
Message-ID: <f61c65b3.0107190805.498c0f4e@posting.google.com>

I have been told to use this newsgroup as a last resource. I modified
the file Demo/embed/demo.c in order to test out the functionality of
the PyRun_File command. Most likely, I'm making some sort of
boneheaded mistake that will probably be obvious to everyone and their
dog, but I've been banging my head for over 2 hours and I can't figure
out why this won't work.

Everything compiles perfectly and things seem to run as usual. result
does NOT come out NULL but the answer doesn't get parsed correctly.
Ironically, when it prints out the string with the message that it's
not parsing correctly, it only comes up with a smiley face. If someone
could tell me what's wrong, I would VERY much appreciate it. Thanks
for your help in advance.

D

---------------<demo.c>
/* Example of embedding Python in another program */

#include "Python.h"

void initxyzzy(void); /* Forward */

main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	PyObject *dict;
	FILE *fp;
	PyObject *result;
	char *helper; /* should be deleted */
	double answer;


	/* Pass argv[0] to the Python interpreter */
	Py_SetProgramName(argv[0]);

	/* Initialize the Python interpreter.  Required. */
	Py_Initialize();

	/* Add a static module */
	initxyzzy();

	/* Define sys.argv.  It is up to the application if you
	   want this; you can also let it undefined (since the Python 
	   code is generally not a main program it has no business
	   touching sys.argv...) */
	PySys_SetArgv(argc, argv);

	/* Do some application specific code */
	printf("Hello, brave new world\n\n");

	/* Execute some Python statements (in module __main__) */
	PyRun_SimpleString("import sys\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.builtin_module_names\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.modules.keys()\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.executable\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.argv\n");

	/* We're going to try and run a Python file here. */
	fp=fopen("costtemp.py","r");
	if (fp==NULL)
	{
		printf("Failed to find the file costtemp.py.\n");
		exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
	};
	result=NULL;
	dict=PyDict_New();
	
	result=PyRun_File(fp,"costtemp.py",Py_file_input,
		dict,dict);
	if (result==NULL) printf("This went wrong.\n");
	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(result,"d",&answer))
	{
		printf("The answer didn't get parsed correctly:
%s\n",PyObject_Str(result));
	}
	else
	{
		printf("The answer is %.39f\n",answer);
	};

	Py_DECREF(dict);
	Py_DECREF(result);

	fclose(fp);
	/* ********************************************** */

	/* Note that you can call any public function of the Python
	   interpreter here, e.g. call_object(). */

	/* Some more application specific code */
	printf("\nGoodbye, cruel world\n");

	/* Exit, cleaning up the interpreter */
	Py_Exit(0);
	/*NOTREACHED*/
}

/* A static module */

/* 'self' is not used */
static PyObject *
xyzzy_foo(PyObject *self, PyObject* args)
{
	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, ""))
		return NULL;
	return PyInt_FromLong(42L);
}

static PyMethodDef xyzzy_methods[] = {
	{"foo",		xyzzy_foo,	1},
	{NULL,		NULL}		/* sentinel */
};

void
initxyzzy(void)
{
	PyImport_AddModule("xyzzy");
	Py_InitModule("xyzzy", xyzzy_methods);
}

-------------------------------------<costtemp.py>
x=[-9999.999998975394191802479326725006103515625 ,
9989.999999949799530440941452980041503906250 ]
x[0]+2*x[1]


From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Thu Jul  5 14:39:06 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 18:39:06 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247> <9htctp0a0j@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9i2c8a$oqv$6@216.39.170.247>

In article <9htctp0a0j at enews4.newsguy.com>, aleaxit at yahoo.com says...
> "David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote in message
> news:9hst9p$oqv$5 at 216.39.170.247...
>     ...
> > Opinion: It would not be illegal for Microsoft to make it a condition of
> > use that you not install open source software if you want to use their
> > OS. It's not restraint of trade since technically, open software is not
> > traded - there's no _overt_ exchange of value nor is there a "buyer" or a
> > "seller" who could be harmed monetarily through such a restraint
> 
> Counter-opinion: where did you get the strange idea that open-source
> software can't be traded/sold/bought?  It's far from unusual for a
> developer to develop application X for a specific customer (and for
> plenty of $$$) and put X under the GPL (the developer may have to,
> if he uses GPL'd stuff in X, or may simply choose to -- maybe he
> thinks this will help spread X's use and his superior familiarity with
> X's core sources gives him competitive advantage in bidding for
> support & enhancement contracts on X once it's widespread, &c).
> 
> > (besides, you have the freedom to choose another OS according to MS).
> 
> Remember the US Appeals court did endorse the findings of fact
> and law in the MS antitrust case -- so MS _is_ officially a monopoly.
> This subjects them to much stricter restraints (in theory -- what
> remedies will be decided against their illegal antitrust behavior is
> another issue of course).
> 
> 
> Alex

I didn't say it couldn't be bought/sold/traded. As far as I know it's 
just that it generally isn't. In the cases when it is licensed for sale, 
then that particular version isn't open source is it? (Actually, I don't 
know how often people make other arrangements with an author for 
commmercial distribution.)

I can think of one case where a restraint on using open source could be 
restraint of trade: in the case where someone is prevented from charging 
for service/support of that software (which is the compensation model 
that open source is based on, no?). Of course some clever M$ shark could 
say that since they can't use it in the first place due to their agreeing 
to the OS license, then that can't make a difference. After all, you gave 
up the right to choose in return for the <ahem> "value, quality and 
inovation" inherent in the <ahem ahem> "fine" m$ you bought (and soon 
will pay through the nose for until you die! - oh wait, you already do 
that with the loss in productivity, hardware costs, extra-cost 
documentation etc. etc. etc. ETC!

My opinion...

Dave LeBlanc


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 20:15:27 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:15:27 GMT
Subject: Microsoft COM and "service" class
References: <3B549159.1A381BE6@noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <3B54D564.3060207@ActiveState.com>

jim.vickroy wrote:

> which I believe is caused by the following statement in my
> implementation:
> 
>   win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__(self, args)
> 
> I do not understand where and how the 'args' parameter is being defined.


"args" comes from the service control manager.  For "normal" services, 
the service args can be defined in the dialog used to start and stop 
services.

> If I strip the "service" interface (which references the 'args'
> parameter) from my class, it seems to work just fine as a COM object.
> 
> Could someone offer some suggestions on what I need to do.


Any chance of a trivial sample I can keep in the win32com test suite? 
This will help me to track it down once and for all.

Mark.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:51 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:51 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930922.17437.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ummplt0l2ov8qmlnlfcg99fk91skstrkr3@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:27:50 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
wrote:

>[Paul Prescod]
>> This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
>> "regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a
>> dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and
>> those on dynamically typed languages.
>
>Excellent point, Paul!  The newbies get dumped on because they're the only
>ones impudent enough to complain about it -- Guido hasn't crushed their
>spirits yet <wink>.

The only issue with newbies is whether or not we provide crutches to
save them from needing to learn fundamental programming issues.
Newbies are going to need to ask questions - that is an essential part
of how learning works and should not be seen as some horrible shock.
There will be many common questions, for which a FAQ and some patience
and tolerance are the logical solutions. A faster learning curve is
undeniably great, but pretending there's nothing to learn is not the
same thing.

Some time, the difference between integers and floats is going to make
itself felt - letting people learn and extensively reinforce bad
habits before explaining that is an example of what's known as falling
into a comfort zone - it is *not* a positive gain. To quote a very
tired saying, a stitch in time saves nine.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:35:02 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:35:02 +0100
Subject: Stability of PYC files
References: <e1gllts33oobp6vs3ppaor7uofl3eomehs@4ax.com> <cp8zhheyfa.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <nk8nltck9aprqtl0k52ek9mc44b0ru71sv@4ax.com>

Thanks



From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 20 05:39:59 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 02:39:59 -0700
Subject: [Q] File Object -- function 'read'
References: <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list@python.org> <3B579358.DCF39F49@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107200139.6aed7ee9@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B579358.DCF39F49 at engcorp.com>...
> 
> The main difference between the two, is that on Windows
> (and DOS, and anything else in that ugly realm), "text" files
> have 'newlines' (represented as \n but really just LF or 
> linefeed characters, or \x0a) converted to pairs of bytes,
> specifically a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed
> (LF).  
> 
You didn't mention the no-pejorative-supplied Macintosh realm which
uses a lone CR and the IBM mainframe realm which is something else
again and there's also Unicode which would like you to use LS (line
separator) and PS (paragraph separator) to say what you really mean
... see Unicode Tech Report #13 for a long list of instructions like
"if you get byte X off system Y and the month has an 'r' in it and the
programmer's name was Fred, then map X into Z; else if ...".

... and there was in a previous job a data supplier who reliably every
month gave us records separated by not CRLF but LFCR; this tended to
send Windows software into gibbering heaps.

There is a much more hideous convention in DOS/Windows. An embedded
control-Z is taken to mean end-of-file. This doesn't suck, it bites,
and bites badly, needing such as the following (where the docstring is
lightly edited to protect the guilty):

def cleaned_lines(fh):
   """
   Return a list of lines from the file object fh
   (which must have been opened in binary mode).
   CR (0x0D) and LF (0x0A) will be used to split the file
   into lines. Any other characters outside the range
   0x20 to 0x7E (both inclusive) (i.e characters that are not
   printable ASCII characters) will be changed into "?".
   
   This is all because XXXXXXX don't validate their input. One
   employee has a ctrl-Z character in his YYYYY field. Ctrl-Z
   is the EOF (end-of-file) marker in the old CP/M operating
   system. This nasty idea of a data character meaning EOF was
   inherited by MS-DOS & MS Windows and makes much software
   stop reading a file prematurely in text mode if there is a
   ctrl-Z incorrectly embedded in the data.
   """
   return fh.read().translate(translate_string).splitlines()


By the way, is there a prize for largest ratio of doc to code?


From volucris at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 01:47:19 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 00:47:19 -0500
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
References: <48365474.0107052029.12d28427@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b45506f$0$330$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

You might want to try 'print sys.exc_info()' instead of 'print "failed"'. It
might help in closing in on the problem.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Deepak" <deepak9999 at mail.com> wrote in message
news:48365474.0107052029.12d28427 at posting.google.com...
> Hi,
> I tried to go through all the related postings on the newsgroup
> regarding this.
> However, I haven't figured out a way to get Tkinter working in an MFC
> application that uses embedded python interpreter... Here is the
> simple code
> that I am trying in the MFC application
>
> The code in C is simple like this: -
>
> #include <Python.h>
>
> void myFunc (int argc, char **argv)
> {
>    Py_Initialize ();
>    PySys_SetArgv (argc, argv);
>    PyRun_SimpleString ("execfile('myTkinterApp.py')");
> }
>
> The code in Python script (myTkinterApp.py) is like this: -
>
> try:
>    import Tkinter
>    print 'Tkinter successfully imported'
>    try:
>       root = Tkinter.Tk ()
>       print 'Successful'
>    except:
>       print 'failed'
> except:
>    print 'Could not import Tkinter'
>
>
> The result is that it prints: -
>
> Tkinter successfully imported
> failed
>
> The STDOUT is redirected to print to one of the MFC windows.
> I tried to run this by changing the STDOUT to default (standard)
> STDOUT. However, even that did not help.
>
> Any examples or suggestions will be extremely valuable.
> Deepak




From asencio at mitre.org  Tue Jul 31 16:09:08 2001
From: asencio at mitre.org (Angel Asencio)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:09:08 -0400
Subject: Instances?
Message-ID: <3B671064.73902FDF@mitre.org>

Original class:

class Foo:
    x = []
    y = []

Code tested on IDLE:

>>> a = classTest.Foo()
>>> b = classTest.Foo()
>>> a.x.append(3)
>>> b.x
[3]

Then, chenged the class to:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        self.x = []
        self.y = []

And the new result was:

del(a)
>>> del(b)
>>> a = classTest.Foo()
>>> b = classTest.Foo()
>>> a.x.append(3)
>>> b.x
[]
>>> a.x
[3]
>>>

 So, does not putting data attributes inside the __init__ would
make them the equivalent to class variables on smalltalk or
static variables in Java?

Thanks,

--
-Angel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010731/2bfe3a6b/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: asencio.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 317 bytes
Desc: Card for Angel Asencio
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010731/2bfe3a6b/attachment.vcf>

From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 16:35:13 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:35:13 -0400
Subject: Instances?
References: <3B671064.73902FDF@mitre.org>
Message-ID: <zAE97.13878$WD1.596135@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Angel Asencio" <asencio at mitre.org> wrote in message
news:3B671064.73902FDF at mitre.org...
> Original class:
>
> class Foo:
>     x = []
>     y = []
>
> Code tested on IDLE:
>
> >>> a = classTest.Foo()
> >>> b = classTest.Foo()
> >>> a.x.append(3)
> >>> b.x
> [3]
>
> Then, chenged the class to:
>
> class Foo:
>     def __init__(self):
>         self.x = []
>         self.y = []
>
> And the new result was:
>
> del(a)
> >>> del(b)
> >>> a = classTest.Foo()
> >>> b = classTest.Foo()
> >>> a.x.append(3)
> >>> b.x
> []
> >>> a.x
> [3]
> >>>
>
>  So, does not putting data attributes inside the __init__ would
> make them the equivalent to class variables on smalltalk or
> static variables in Java?
>
Yes, variables bound in the class scope (such as the method names, which are
bound by the def statements) effectively become attributes of the class. The
same is true, of course, of names explicitly placed inside the class scope
from outside by name qualification (e.g. Foo.classvar = 3). The tricky thing
is that self.var will find a class variable var, but if you assign an
instance variable var, that instance no longer sees the class variable var.

Some code uses this to allow the class to establish default values for
certain instance variables, but it's a bit obscure.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dinu at reportlab.com  Mon Jul 23 03:02:41 2001
From: dinu at reportlab.com (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:02:41 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org> <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net> <3b598d0f.252655609@news.t-online.de> <20010722.170022.2058657199.10918@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <3b5bcb75.399701630@news.t-online.de>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:48:07 GMT, "Mark Nenadov"
<mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca> wrote:

>>>The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
>>>(www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
>>>wide variety of other languages.
>>
>> What do you mean by "best"? ;-)
>> Dinu
>
>What do I mean by best? Exactly what I said... "The best solution ....
>that I have found". I haven't tried ReportLab yet, so I can't make a
>judgement on that yet... but PDF Lib is the best one that I have used so far.

Certainly, but isn't that a bit vague without saying what you 
used PDFlib for?

For the fun of it I suggest you run the test suite in reportlab/
test and then try to reproduce some of the generated PDF files 
with PDFlib using as as little generating Python code as with
the reportlab package.

Regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From volucris at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 06:54:46 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:54:46 -0500
Subject: ConfigParser and inifile
References: <9ijr1q$29sq$1@news.lf.net>
Message-ID: <3b4d816b$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

"domi" <warp10 at hushmail.com> wrote in message
news:9ijr1q$29sq$1 at news.lf.net...
> Hello All,
>
> could someone solve this problem?
> I would like to tell ConfigParser to parse an ini-file from one section to
> the other. The ini-file looks like this:
>
> [section1]
> name:...
> group:...
>
> [section2]
> name:...
> group:...
>
> [section3]
> name:...
> group:...
>
> Now if I let the ConfigParser parse this ini-file like this:
>
> for section in config.sections():
>     ...(do something)
>
> the parser doesn't step thru section1 to section2 and so on. I need the
> given sequence in the ini-file.

I don't think you can, because the sections are stored in a dictionary,
which is in arbitrary order. You could prefix the section names with numbers
(or letters for that matter). The numbers being in the order you want them
stepped through. So do this instead:

section_list = config.sections()
section_list.sort()
for section in section_list:
    ...(do something)

>
> Thanks, domi
>
--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."




From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 18:02:31 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:02:31 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <9jffns$hma$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEDBLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Martijn Faassen]
> ...
> The audience was entirely self-selected;

Unlike, say, the participants in this discussion?  Hmm.  You set a rather
high standard here, Martijn <wink>.

? they were people with an interest in numeric models.

Or uninterested in Stackless (its "competition" in that time slot).  I
suppose the next time we want advice about Unicode, we should just ask
Americans.

> Did Guido ask for a show of hands in the big session afterwards?

No, not on this issue.

> I don't recall; I kind of suspect the outcome would've been different.

I actually think 1/2==0 bothers "the general" population more than those
with a keen interest in numerics.  Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in
numerics has bugged Guido about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most
visible repeated pressures have come from educators using Python as a means
to some other end.

>> The current integer division loses information silently and without a
>> trace combined with that Python is not a statically typed language,
>> there's simply no telling what e.g.
>>
>>  def velocity(distance, time):
>>      return distance / time
>>
>> will compute by inspection.

> There's no telling what:
>
> def add_stuff(a, b):
>    return a + b
>
> will compute by inspection either, though.

You chopped all my following text, saying that the velocity() example wasn't
about user-defined overloadings but about ordinary arithmetic on the builtin
numeric types.  A user trying e.g. velocity(3, 2) is simply going to be
surprised -- as countless newbies have testified on c.l.py over the years.

> ...
> For working with pixels in GUIs and such, integer division can be a
> useful thing, though.

It can be useful for many things; that's not at issue, and nobody has ever
proposed taking away the ability to get an integer result; the issue is how
to spell that.




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sat Jul  7 17:08:51 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 21:08:51 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org> <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i7tp3$b2g$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

>> [Robin Becker]
>> > ...
>> > Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
>> > to be uniformly wrong.
>> 
>> Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
>> that assertion would be unaffected.
>> 
>> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
>> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
>> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.

> The PSU has Robin's name and email address.  Robin: be afraid, be very
> afraid.  It is time that an example be set!

I thought *I* was that scary example! Who is Robin, anyway? Never heard of
any Robins..

Disappointed-ly yours,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 19:18:06 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:18:06 +0100
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org>
 <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <830eaJAuujS7Ewxk@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <WZp27.2221$z21.439450 at newsc.telia.net>, Fredrik Lundh
<fredrik at pythonware.com> writes
>Paul Winkler wrote:
>> Doing it iteratively is much, much faster.
>
>does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?
>
>import sys
>
>def fib(n):
>    if n < 2:
>        return 1
>    return fib(n-2) + fib(n-1)
>
>def fib(n, fib=fib, memo={}):
>    v = memo.get(n)
>    if v is None:
>        v = memo[n] = fib(n)
>    return v
>
>def main():
>    N = int(sys.argv[1])
>    print fib(N)
>
></F>
>
>
always if it's only used for one value :)
-- 
Robin Becker


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 25 10:13:16 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:13:16 +0200
Subject: Version numbers in traceback
References: <5nitltsbrurir59906mbdtectsoah2ppcc@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <j4vgkhgkqr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:

> Is there a standard way for a module to register its version number so that it is reported by
> traceback or other debugging tools.
> 
> I thought something nice and simple like 
> 
> _Module_Version_ = '10.5C'
> 
> would be nice.

The standard constant for a module version is __version__. However,
there is no way to integrate it into a traceback. Instead, debugging
tools would need to find out the module of each function in the
traceback themselves (which sometimes cannot be done), and then access
the __version__ if desired. I don't think that the traceback module
should fetch __version__, though.

Regards,
Martin



From nalcorso at isw.net.au  Mon Jul  9 01:12:11 2001
From: nalcorso at isw.net.au (Nick Alcorso)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 22:12:11 -0700
Subject: Hardware API Failing
Message-ID: <b5e6e25d.0107082112.2d3b70e7@posting.google.com>

I have written a C wrapper for an API which controls an ISA card and I
am attempting to create a python module which makes calls to this
wrapper.

The module seems to build fine, and work mostly, for example the calls
to all of the functions in the wrapper work (get called) and so do the
ones to the Hardware API, however though the calls to the wrapper
work, the calls to the API from the wrapper for some reason fail when
they are called from python.

If I use a test C app and link to the C wrapper then the hardware
calls work, also if I embed lua and script from that then the calls
work also.

I am wondering if there is something in the environment that prevents
python from controlling hardware?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Nick Alcorso


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 10:31:58 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:31:58 -0400
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994843338.24567.python-list@python.org> <3B4C2A0E.60AA094@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <8oZ27.41795$F%5.2523550@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
news:3B4C2A0E.60AA094 at nokia.com...
> Shannon --jj Behrens wrote:
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I wrote a useful C module for doing string
> > interpolation.  I find it indespensible when working
> > with large blocks of triple-quoted text.  When working
> > with large blocks of triple-quoted text, nothing else
> > is quite as convenient.  Here's the Python doc:
>
> [lots of text snipped]
>
> > Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
> > even be useful enough to be included as a standard
> > module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
> > suggestions as to what I can do with it.  You may
> > download the entire packages from:
> >
> > <http://ironorchid.com/jjinux/evalstr.tar.gz>
>
> I prefer the following method for evaluations inside strings.
>
> >>> class Eval:
> def __getitem__(self, key):
> return eval(key)
>
>
> >>> foo = 3.0
> >>> spam = 5.0
> >>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
> 0.6
> >>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
> 0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000

That's a very neat trick. Had you though of writing it up as a Python
recipe?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Jul 28 10:25:33 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 09:25:33 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <48F88F43C9842AD9.1E631B0D03856868.6FDBB21E772A6CB3@lp.airnews.net> <9js18m$n54$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <D4DB37387F4EA9A2.D6DD66D7FD6C9115.609F82073AFFEB7C@lp.airnews.net>

In article <9js18m$n54$1 at clematis.singnet.com.sg>,
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>There's BEEP, formerly known as BXXP. RFC 3080 and 3081, I think.
>
>A new Internet-draft talks about running SOAP over BEEP.
>
>See www.beepcore.org.
>
>(Python implementation seems to have fallen behind.)
			.
			.
			.
The background of the Beepcore principals is in Tcl.
'Twill be entertaining to implement the RFCs for Py-
thon, though, no?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From roy at panix.com  Sun Jul  1 10:06:14 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 10:06:14 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
> I've noticed that in online forums, people now rarely beat up on
> Python for the language itself, except for the old reliable
> indentation knee-jerk reaction.

Just out of curiosity, how long must one dislike something before that 
dislike graduates from "knee-jerk reaction" to "considered opinion"?

Having now used python for about 4 years, I still think 
indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is just 
too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without noticing), 
especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one place to 
another.  When such whitespace munging makes the code look ugly, it's 
simply a minor annoyance.  When it changes the meaning of the code, it's a 
language design mistake.

The reason people rarely beat up on it anymore is becuase it's a lost 
battle.  I continue to use python (despite the indenting problem) because 
there is enough other stuff in it that I like.  But I don't think it's fair 
to call it a "knee-jerk reaction".


From m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk  Thu Jul 26 09:23:26 2001
From: m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk (Mark Robinson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:23:26 +0100
Subject: freeze.py (where is it?)
References: <3B58494D.C82965AD@raqia.com> <dd144f8b.0107260325.6a0f21e4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B6019CE.4070900@herts.ac.uk>

can anyone tell me where I might find the freeze utility. It doesn't 
seem to be included in the windows installation of python 2.1. Am I just 
being blind or has it perhaps been superceeded by something better, I am 
only aware of it from a reference in 'programming python'.

blobby



From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 09:33:41 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:33:41 -0500
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
In-Reply-To: <3dlmm2qlcv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
	<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org>
	<3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
	<mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org>
	<Lsd17.8383$e5.1082989@newsb.telia.net>
	<3dlmm2qlcv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <15173.48693.568403.150776@beluga.mojam.com>

    amk> Bruce Sass's suggestion of using the Debian package manager is a
    amk> good one, because apt really provides exactly what we need.
    amk> Unfortunately porting it to Windows or Mac is probably hard, so we
    amk> could just steal its interface (which seems similar to pyppm's) and
    amk> reimplement it in pure Python.

Couldn't RPM do similar things?  It's got a somewhat stronger relationship
to Python, so porting to Win/Mac might not be as difficult.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:57:13 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:57:13 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <etd8zhorhnq.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

Oh, I'd thought hash lookups were constant time.  That's interesting.


From treaves at silverfields.com  Thu Jul 12 13:33:04 2001
From: treaves at silverfields.com (Timothy Reaves)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:33:04 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
In-Reply-To: <etdelrmoyl0.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
References: <mailman.994956861.11471.python-list@python.org>
	<etdelrmoyl0.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20010712133304.3415243d.treaves@silverfields.com>

On 12 Jul 2001 13:18:35 -0400
Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:

> 
> What output do you get when you run the last command, 
> 
> ./python -tt \
>     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py \
>     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
> 
> with the -v flag?
> 


double # ./python -tt -v >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
bash: /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1: Is a directory



From me at mikerobin.com  Thu Jul  5 19:05:58 2001
From: me at mikerobin.com (Michael Robin)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 16:05:58 -0700
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr> <tk6tumj4ucre9d@news.supernews.com> <3b443731.3777511@news.iway.fr>
Message-ID: <52e5ab5f.0107051505.86ac604@posting.google.com>

In my current Python game "project" (can't really call it that
yet...), I can get about 18fps if I choose 200 sprites, or about 60fps
for 40 sprites, on a PIII850. (Cut this in half if a "radar" or other
window is also active.)
This is doing real-time 2d rotation of mult-segmented objects,
position updating, and viewport mapping all in Python w/o any
extensions. I'm probably going to move to an extension when I get to
fancier objects, collision detection and some physics similation code
that's probably o(n^2 or ^3), but for now things seem pretty good.

m
-----------

emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier) wrote in message news:<3b443731.3777511 at news.iway.fr>...
> On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:08:19 -0700, "John Roth"
> <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
> 
> >
> >"Emmanuel Astier" <emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr> wrote in message
> >news:3b431024.15341289 at news.iway.fr...
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >>
> >> I embedded and extended python for a game, and I was REALLY
> >> disappointed by the performances I get...
> >>
> >> Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my
> >> Python logical part from my C game with :
> >
> >There's one thing that needs to be said right off - while there are
> >many successful commercial games that use a scripting language to
> >control the actual flow of the game, they don't, and I must repeat,
> >they don't call the script every frame. As you've noticed, it's just
> >too slow. It's the responsibility of the game engine (written in C
> >or C++, with Assembler assists as needed for performance) to
> >handle everything until, and only until, the engine needs a decision.
> 
> I don't agree : I worked on a successful commercial game, and I writed
> the script for this game, and it was REALLLY light, and I run it every
> frame.
> The language was far more simple and stupid that Python, but it was
> aimed for a PSone ( 33Mhz ! ).
> I was hoping that aiming a real PC, I could use a language like
> Python.
> But I agree my older script didn't had to handle 200 objects per
> seconds.
> 
> BTW, a game like Unreal has a script that's called every frame (all
> the logical part is scripted), and it runs quite well :)
> 
> >
> >With 200 sprites, I presume you're doing some kind of arcade type
> >game - lots of stuff flashing around the screen, and the gameplayer is
> >pushing his hand-eye coordination to the limit. People don't use scripting
> >languages for that, except possibly for transitions.
> 
> The 200 sprites were just a test.
> I intend to use the script for our engine, and having to specialize it
> yet.
> 
> >
> >Scripting languages are used where there is an extended storyline
> >embedded in the game, such as Adventure or RPG type games. The
> >script handles the storyline and transition, and the game engine handles
> >everything else.
> >
> >For example, in Zork: Grand Inquisitor, there's a point early in the
> >game where the adventurer comes across a glass box on the wall, with the
> >sign "in case of adventure, break glass." The mechanism to solve this puzzle
> >requires a state machine with around five states and five or six inputs,
> >each
> >state transition requires that the scene is updated. There are literally
> >hundreds
> >of such situations in the game.
> >
> >If you tried to do this in C or C++, with the inevitable rewrites as the
> >game
> >designers tried to tweak it this way and that to make the game a compelling,
> >memorable experiance, you'd run through your budget in no time flat.
> 
> I totally agree... 
> 
> >
> >>
> >> PyObject_CallFunction( LogicalEntryPoint, NULL );
> >>
> >> Logical Entry Point being a PyObject* pointing on the name of the
> >> function.
> >
> >I presume that you've made sure that the function is preloaded in
> >memory at all times - it does not have to be reloaded from disk
> >or recompiled from a string.
> 
> 
> Gulp.............
> 
> Euh... I don't know how to be sure my function is preloaded, and not
> on the disk... How can I do that ?
> 
> 
> >
> >> My function do only :
> >>
> >>     for i in range ( 0, NbTestSprites - 1 ):
> >>         ListOfSprites[i].setPos( 100, 100 )
> >>
> >> ie it sets the pos of 200 sprites.
> >> ListOfSprites is a tuple of 200 sprites, sprites is a extension class,
> >> and setPos one of its method.
> >
> >"for i in range(...)" creates 101 objects each time it's executed: it
> >has to build a tuple, and objects for all numbers from 101 to 200.
> >(numbers from -1 to 100 are preallocated in the interpreter). It's
> >faster if this is done once, and then passed to the for loop:
> >
> >foobar = range(0, NbTestSprites - 1)
> >
> >for i in foobar:
> >
> >This only works if foobar is stored somewhere where it doesn't have
> >to be recreated on each call.
> >
> 
> Designers will handle the scripts and I'm not sure they will use this
> kind of optimisation ( using map seems a good win here too ).
> 
> >>
> >> I'm using Swig to extend Python with my C functions ( I Tried Boost
> >> too, but there is even more overhead... )
> >
> >Swig is intended to make extension more convenient. Convenience is
> >usually exactly opposite to performance. Do it by hand.
> 
> Swig is not really something appearing in the profile.
> but the PyArg_ParseTuple function could appear...
> 
> Thansk for your reponse, 
> 
> Emmanuel


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 04:08:10 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:08:10 +0200
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
References: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hruvq016bo@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Heiko" <meinmailfilter at gmx.de> wrote in message
news:e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734 at posting.google.com...
> Hello,
> I want to do this:
>
> ClassObject = Class()
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, Arg4, Arg5 ....)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method()
> ...
> and so on.

Well, then, just do it!  No problem.


> Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of arguments
> and the method decides what to do.

Sure, Python supports that.

> If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
> doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
> position (but that is a "nice to have").

This one I really don't understand.  Anyway, once you do have
a sequence of arguments (which is what you get), you may well
decide to ignore the sequence's order and treat it as "a set".

> So, how do I have to declare
> the method, that this works?

class Class:
    def Method(self, *args):
        print "Called with",len(args),"arguments"

args is the tuple of actual argument values passed on the
call -- it's up to the method to decide what to do with them.


Alex





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul  4 13:46:07 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:46:07 -0700
Subject: tkinter/commands help
References: <3B437AB7.86540660@optonline.net>
Message-ID: <3B43565F.C4BA07EB@Lugoj.Com>

Arun Ramanathan wrote:
> 
> I am trying to run a rsh command from the commands module.
> My code for a tkinter button and call back looks like this.
> 
> from Tkinter import *
> import commands
> 
> def callme():
>     result = commands.getoutput('rsh -l username hostname showrev -p')
>     mytext.delete(0.0,END)
>     mytext.insert(0.0,result)

What happens when you substitute something like:
  def callme():
      import time
      result = str(time.time())
      ....

Does that work? Also, you snipped too much code; you show "mytext" but don't
show what it has been initialized to. That is all I can suggest since I
don't have enough information to do more.


From richard at bizarsoftware.com.au  Tue Jul 24 21:04:12 2001
From: richard at bizarsoftware.com.au (Richard Jones)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:04:12 +1000
Subject: Bug?
In-Reply-To: <4835e825.0107241639.bbf438e@posting.google.com>
References: <4835e825.0107241639.bbf438e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <200107250101.LAA18417@goanna.adroit.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:39, Ricardo Correia wrote:
> Hi
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> mainlist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
> copy = mainlist
>
> for item in copy:
>  print item,
>  mainlist.remove(item)
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Shouldn't this produce '1 2 3 4 5'?
>
> I only get '1 3 5' and unfortunately because of this my program doesn't
> work.

In the above, "copy" is not a copy of "mainlist".

>>> mainlist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> copy = mainlist
>>> id(copy)
135189396
>>> id(mainlist)
135189396
>>> copy = mainlist[:]
>>> id(copy)
135077076
>>> for item in copy:
...  print item,
...  mainlist.remove(item)
... 
1 2 3 4 5
>>> 

The second copy assignment uses the slice mechanism to take a true copy of 
the contents of mainlist.


    Richard

-- 
Richard Jones
richard at bizarsoftware.com.au
Senior Software Developer, Bizar Software (www.bizarsoftware.com.au)



From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Fri Jul 20 09:23:43 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:23:43 -0400
Subject: Large File Support
Message-ID: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Hello NG,

I need to build Python to include large file support on Redhat Linux 7.1.

I tried the following instructions from section 8.1.1 in the Python docs but
it doesn't work:

    On large-file-capable Linux systems, this might work:


CC="-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
export CC
./configure


I think this fails because the variable CC is expected to have the compiler
name (gcc).

Does anyone have any alternative instructions?

Rod MacNeil
rmacneil at interactdirect.com





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Wed Jul 18 11:18:26 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 11:18:26 -0400
Subject: Really Python leaks?
References: <mailman.995461170.23230.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3dwv56p8ot.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Vesselin Iliev Peev <VesselinPeev at operamail.com> writes:
> I hope this is somehow not true, and perhaps Insure++ is incorrectly reporting 
> these, but has anyone tested Python in this way with a similar tool?

Actually that probably isn't too surprising.  Some of the C code,
particularly in module initializers, will allocate memory for a
dictionary or other structure, and then not free it.  For earlier
versions of Python, the developers had access to a copy of Purify; I
don't know if they still do.  

Fixing these leaks isn't a big priority, because usually the
interpreter will only be finalized before the program exits anyway.
Still, if you can provide more information about where the leaks occur,
perhaps they can be fixed.

--amk



From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 17:40:26 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:40:26 -0700
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B44DECA.7D64AE2C@home.net>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> I thought I understood python scoping, but I guess I don't.  Consider this
> code: 

> FALSE = 0
> TRUE = not FALSE
> FLAG = TRUE
> 
> def FlagFalse():
>         FLAG = FALSE
> 
> print str(FLAG)
> FlagFalse()
> print str(FLAG)
> 
> I get:
> 1
> 1
> 
> But I expected:
> 1
> 0
> 
> If I declare FLAG as global in the function, it works properly, of course.
> 
> I thought that python checked local scope for a variable first and if
> it did not find it, it appealed to the local namespace.  What am I missing
> here - it's probably at the end of my nose, but I cannot seem to make sense
> of it...

Actually, it checks local first, but more importantly, you can't
re-assign a global variable in a local scope (without using global). if
you assign to a variable in a function, it is local to that function.
The local version of FLAG has been set to FALSE, not the global one.

When the function is byte compiled, it notices that you have assigned
"FLAG" in your function, so sets it as a local name. That why you get an
error if you try to do this:
>> def FlagFalse():
...     print FLAG
...     FLAG = FALSE
...
>>> FlagFalse()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in FlagFalse
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'FLAG' referenced before assignment
>>>

Essentially you have only read-only access to immutable global
variables. Mutable variables you can change, because you are not
reassigning them, so you could do:
>>> FLAG = [TRUE]
>>> def FlagFalse():
...     FLAG[0] = FALSE
...
>>> FLAG
[1]
>>> FlagFalse()
>>> FLAG
[0]

FLAG is still pointing to the same list, you have just changed the
contents.

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tushar at hursley.ibm.com  Fri Jul  6 18:25:48 2001
From: tushar at hursley.ibm.com (Tushar Wagle)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 23:25:48 +0100
Subject: distutils woes - help appreciated!
Message-ID: <3B463AEC.13949D66@hursley.ibm.com>

Hello all,

I'm starting-to-try-to-use (:) distutils (with Python 2.1 on Linux).

For basic stuff, it's okay (and rather cool :), but I have a few

problems/questions:

1. scripts:

Can I install a script in a directory OTHER than /usr/local/bin?

I'm hoping for an option like "script_dir='/usr/local/my_stuff'"

(similar to 'package_dir').

2. data_files

I can't get this to work at all!

I'm using something like:

    setup(...

        package_dir={'': 'src'},
        packages=['jim', 'jim.data', 'jim.report', 'jim.web'],

        data_files=[('/x/website/htdocs/styles', ['src/web/styles/basic.css',])]

    )

where /x/website/htdocs is where I want to place my data files, and src/...

is where the source file lives. (I tried removing the src/ , hoping that

it might sensibly use the package_dir root, but to no avail.. :(

Again, I would like to see something like 'data_dir' (cf 'package_dir')...

It would be nice if script_dir and data_dir defaulted to package_dir (at

least for my purposes where everything's under the src/ directory :)

On a related note, I had tried something like:

    web_root = '/x/website'

    setup(...

        data_files=[(web_root + 'styles', os.listdir('./src/web/styles'))],

    )

but it looked like this couldn't work as the listdir was running inside the

temporary 'build' directory, and all of my source files had NOT been copied there!!

(I think it just copied the packages?...). Can I refer to the real source root

directory somehow (ie rather than './')?

3. re-targetting dist-dir

changing dist-dir (eg to 'release') works okay (files end up there correctly), but

the 'dist' directory is always created nevertheless (and source rpms seem to end up there)!...

...I presume this is a bug! :)

---

Other than these niggles, I'm impressed! As always with Python, what's normally

a task which generates headaches and wastes many hours unproductively is simply

and elegantly resolved...for the better of the Universe as a Whole! %-)

Best Regards,

Tushar

(Python Beginner/Evangelist/Devotee! ;)





From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul 16 00:29:08 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 04:29:08 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:58:46 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
>Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>> The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
>> "quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?
>> 
>> ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"
>
>from 'Mastering Regular Expressions', p.124:
>
>'^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.\
>([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])$'

How about:

for o in '.'.split(ip_addr):
    assert 0 <= int(o) <= 255, 'ip octet not a byte in "%s"' % ip_addr

Re's can be handy, but their usefulness can trick you into trying to use them
for things for which they're not suitable.


From pete.forman at westerngeco.com  Mon Jul 16 09:31:05 2001
From: pete.forman at westerngeco.com (Pete Forman)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 14:31:05 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <tuae25f1ba.fsf@kryten.bedford.waii.com>

kj0 <kj0 at mailcity.com> writes:

 > Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
 > detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
 > Python, etc.).

Have a look at Peter Liu's Programming page.

  http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/9731/xref_features.html

That seems to cover the features of most popular OO languages except
Eiffel and, er, Python.
-- 
Pete Forman                 -./\.- Disclaimer: This post is originated
WesternGeco                   -./\.-  by myself and does not represent
pete.forman at westerngeco.com     -./\.-  opinion of Schlumberger, Baker
http://www.crosswinds.net/~petef  -./\.-  Hughes or their divisions.


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul 25 00:16:12 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:16:12 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com> <slrn9ldcug.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <yoxzo9wyvul.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9lnm9u.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <yoxy9pe98ru.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <slrn9lsini.ptj.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> dijo:
> tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:
> 
> > glad you have found a language that works better for you than Perl
> 
> A year ago I had nothing against Perl; it seemed wonderful to have
> only one "special purpose" (text processing & extraction) language to
> learn, instead of several (awk, sed, whatever). It's still great for
> throwaway scripts for log analyzing/whatever. I didn't turn to python
> because I had problems with Perl; I looked into it because I like
> looking into different languages, and found it superior to perl
> (though, like everybody, I was initially suspicious of the whitespace
> thing... :-). This is probably what happened to most other pythonistas
> as well. 

My story sounds very similar, except for a few points.  I've done ASP
pages, DB access, Tk GUIs, and (of course) CGIs in Perl.  I just never
considered it a "special purpose" language. (Nor did I find any
shortcomings of Perl during these endeavors...none except those in Tk
which are present in Tkinter as well...) ;)

OTOH, I looked into Python for, apparently, the _exact_ same reason
as you.  However, I fell in love with the indentation code grouping
immediately.  Oh, how many Perl scripts I'd inherited from my
predecessors in this easy-to-read format:

sub do_something {
process();
for $item (@array, $etc)
{ while ($some_condition)
{process();}}
someMoreProcessing stuff;
...
}

And now, imagine the functions 200+ lines long and poorly designed... =(

No, Python's syntax guaranteed I'd never again run into that particular
problem again.  Yay!

> Speaking of beauty, think of the iterators & generators in
> Py2.2... yummy.

Yes, I eagerly await all my newfound operator-toys.  =)

-- 
Be different: conform
	-- fortune-mod version 9708


From ggardiner at accelrys.com  Fri Jul 13 07:05:46 2001
From: ggardiner at accelrys.com (Gardiner, Geoff)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:05:46 +0100
Subject: Q: HTTP through multiple NICs
Message-ID: <55E9531220EDD41186F50090274688BD2BF356@oranamesrvr0.synomics.com>

I need to send HTTP traffic through multiple NICs (multihoming with
different IP addresses AND different MAC addresses) on a single PC. The
traffic doesn't need to be simultaneous (I think I'll try to walk before I
run).

I've got a working single-NIC test suite in Python, but haven't worked out
how to direct traffic to more than one NIC - I'm a complete novice in this
area. I can't find anywhere obvious in httplib or its superclasses for a NIC
identifier or local IP address to be used to select the NIC.

Can anyone suggest where I start with this - before I rush out and buy the
NICs? I'm running Win NT at present, but could switch to Linux if that
helps!

Thanks,
Geoff Gardiner



From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 06:56:26 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:56:26 +0100 
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE12@intrepid>

> From:	Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
> In exchange, please look at
> Lutz Prechelt et al's 1999 "phonecode" study -- e.g. at
> http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/documents/jccpp_tr.pdf.
 
This is a really interesting study, so far as it goes. What I'd *really*
like to see, though, would be something similar to this which included
metrics on the *maintainability* of code in various languages. It could run
in a similar fashion to Prechelt's study, but then include a stage where the
resultant program sources were forwarded on to different developers, along
with a revised spec.

I don't know about everybody else here, but I spend easily ten times as much
time fixing and/or modifying existing code as I spend writing new stuff.

I'd like to see Perl keep up with Python in *this* study! <wink>

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From paul at svensson.org  Mon Jul 23 17:51:29 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 21:51:29 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <9ji691$bt9$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

"Andy Salnikov" <salnikov at inp.nsk.su> writes:

>Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
>new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
>0.5.

There are two common ways to do division.

A) x / y = z such that z * y = x,

B) x / y = z and x % y = r such that z = int(z), 0 <= r < x, z * y + r = x

In current python, (B) is "z, r = divmod(x, y)",
while (A) can be approximated by "(x + 0.0) / y".
Unadorned "x / y" picks (A) or (B) depending on the types of x and y.

Now we have three problems:
1) The current semantics of x/y are confusing and error-prone
2) (x + 0.0) / y is nonintuitive and ugly
3) divmod(x, y)[0] is nonintuitive and ugly

Which problem(s) are we trying to solve ?
No solution to (1) will avoid breaking existing code.

We can solve (2) and (3) by adding _two_ new operators (or functions),
or we can solve all three by changing x/y to always do (A) or always (B),
and adding a new operator for the other.

Andy's proposal for "1//2 = 0.5" solves (2), doing nothing about (1) and (3),
and I find very little merit in such a half-done (1/3 done) solution.

	/Paul


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 20 11:00:15 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:00:15 -0500
Subject: Python equivalent of two Perl statements
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526E@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

What is the equivalent of these Perl statements in Python?

$time = scalar(localtime);
print "This FTP request started on $time \n";




From pedro at athlet.de  Wed Jul 11 18:47:38 2001
From: pedro at athlet.de (pedro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:47:38 GMT
Subject: detect if file or dir
Message-ID: <3b4cd747.27470810@news.isis.de>

hi,

how can i detect if sth. is a file or a directory? exists(directory)
does tell me if sth. is a directory but exits my script wenn it hits a
file.

thx
pedro


From ahenshawatapowerdotcom  Fri Jul  6 22:49:17 2001
From: ahenshawatapowerdotcom (Andrew Henshaw)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 22:49:17 -0400
Subject: Inverse regex?
Message-ID: <tkcud8arriomfa@corp.supernews.com>

Has anybody seen or developed what might be called an inverse regex
generator.  We would like to do some unit testing of modules that have user
input validated by regular expressions.  It would be nice to throw some some
strings at them and see if the propagated input causes an error in the code
downstream.  In other words, it may help to detect if our validation
routines are insufficient.

I understand that, in many cases, a complete list of valid strings is
impossible.  However, for certain regular expressions it would be certainly
reasonable.  For others, it will be possible, but practically impossible
(set too large).  For the impossible, and near impossible, it would be nice
to generate a bounded set that hits many of the degenerate and extreme
cases.

Any ideas?

Andrew Henshaw




From aboufer at atlsci.com  Tue Jul 24 10:11:09 2001
From: aboufer at atlsci.com (Ahmed Bouferguene)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:11:09 -0400
Subject: thread module
References: <20010723210218.11240.00000881@ng-fv1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D81FD.646E42BA@atlsci.com>

Greeings,

Just one comment. You should try to use "threading" module which is better than
the old "thread" .

TheDustbustr wrote:

> What args are encessary when you call thread.start_new_thread()?  The module
> index says:
>
> "start_new_thread (function, args[, kwargs])
> Start a new thread. The thread executes the function function with the argument
> list args (which must be a tuple). The optional kwargs argument specifies a
> dictionary of keyword arguments."
>
> How do I create a simple thread like so:
> def hi():
>   print "Hi!"
> thread.start_new_thread(hi(),args)
>
> What are the args?



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 22:23:50 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:23:50 -0400
Subject: (in)exactness of complex numbers
References: <mailman.996249232.22459.python-list@python.org> <cp4rry2qvh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <mv397.633$WD1.118669@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp4rry2qvh.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
>
> > Once these numeric changes are all implemented, if I define a complex
> > constant with either integer real or imaginary parts, e.g.
> >
> >     c = 1+2.1j
> >
> >     d = 1.2+5j
> >
> >     e = 4+7j
> >
> > should I get an integer back (exact) or a float (inexact) when asking
for an
> > attribute that was originally an integer?  In general, can complex
numbers
> > be considered to have two exactness attributes?
>
> That's probably not worth the implementation complexity.  I expect
> that all floats and complex will be considered inexact, and all
> rationals and ints exact.  That seems to be the most practical set of
> rules, even if it doesn't satisfy everybody.
>
Wouldn't it be more sensible to say that a complex is exact if both its real
and imaginary components are exact?

Or would that require too much (sorry, no pun intended) implementation
complexity?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From paul at boddie.net  Fri Jul 27 06:22:13 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 03:22:13 -0700
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107270222.7856bec2@posting.google.com>

SteveN <smnordby at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<3B60BC42.8C790BCE at yahoo.com>...
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > 
> > (Couldn't resist. :-)
> > 
> > It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> > endless laments in the SF bug database.)
> 
> And yet HP makes it available:
> http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/

It's a fearsome experience to run Python on HP-UX too - see the
screenshot they provide. ;-)


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 01:07:17 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:07:17 -0400
Subject: Language Niches (long)
In-Reply-To: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEDDLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Paul Prescod]
> ...
> C became popular between twenty and thirty years ago.

Twenty at best.  In the early 80's, I was on an internal committee at Cray
Research tasked to pick a system implementation language to replace most
uses of Cray assembler (ah, CAL!).  It came down to (heavily extended)
Pascal or (heavily extended) Fortran.  We unanimously dismissed C because,
at the time, it appeared to be limited to universities, yet even Cray's
university customers had absolutely no interest in it.  My track record at
predicting The Next Big Thing is unarguably consistent <wink>.

c-rode-in-on-the-back-of-the-unix-virus-ly y'rs  - tim




From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 25 07:10:28 2001
From: pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:10:28 GMT
Subject: Finding Directory Structures ??
Message-ID: <EOx77.61374$Xr6.240081@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Using python, hows the better way of finding the structure of your 
filesystem.  I thought it may have been Dir() but this brings back 
something completely different.

Basically I want to create a app that shows a Tree with the various 
directories.

Pete



From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul 29 18:27:33 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net>
Message-ID: <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

I laughed at the first one of these I read,
thinking it might be the result of a python program,
but now I have noticed that they are popping up
on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
I have seen four or five today.



"Timothy Gibson" <barewy at edefod.net> wrote in message
news:FDC34627.2CE8C0C7 at edefod.net...
> If you'll recycle Gilbert's printer with keypads, it'll biweekly
> interface the thought.  Sometimes Alexandra will get the robot, and if
> Samantha wistfully meets it too, the programmer will collaborate
> outside the fast cybercafe.  My extreme PERL won't disconnect before I
> push it.  He will engulf halfheartedly if William's plotter isn't
> bizarre.  Go cry a protocol!  When will you save the chaotic
> retarded zipdisks before Pilar does?  Jeff wants to know seemingly, unless
> Chester infects machines within Evan's administrator.  Until
> Jeff defiles the RAMs stupidly, Ann won't moan any solid cafes.
> Where Frederick's discarded LAN outwits, Robette facilitates
> in back of loud, plastic CIAs.  Otherwise the terminal in Jonnie's
> librarian might prepare.  Try typeing the Back Orifice's dry
> admin and Sherry will close you!  Who shoots undoubtably, when
> Martin dreams the disgusting firewall in the mail server?  Don't try to
> exclude the stacks wanly, eliminate them deeply.  As badly as
> Robette reloads, you can negotiate the operator much more strongly.
>
>
>




From jparlar at home.com  Thu Jul 19 15:56:07 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:56:07 -0400
Subject: Distributing a Python app
Message-ID: <20010719195840.BHJ2711.femail24.sdc1.sfba.home.com@jparlar>

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to distribute an application written in Python, intended for 
people who don't have Python installed on their machines? Even possibly a commercial distrubtion program, if it's the best. I've 
been playing around with py2exe, with not much success (although that's a topic for a different day). Assuming I do get py2exe 
working properly, how would everyone suggest we distribute our application? (By the way, this application is for Windows 
machines).

Jay Parlar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."





From benc1 at today.com.au  Sat Jul 28 08:07:22 2001
From: benc1 at today.com.au (Ben C)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 05:07:22 -0700
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
Message-ID: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>

In the ecosystem of programming languages I think that the argument
"Oh you can't change that as it will break all my existing code"
should not be used to stagnate the evolution of a language ... and
infact if you think about it is quite selfish ... to have Python
evolve will require a some effort from everyone who activley uses the
language ... if it means reworking some code then so be it ... or if
1.X is the niche you like then stick with it ...

I don't envy Guido at all ... he is in a tough position ... he has to
consider IMO three choices:

a\ Try to retain retrospective compatibility while still adding new
features and evolving the language == bloats the language by adding
extra operators and syntax (see Perl (more than one way to do
everything)  and VB (I think only the MS marketing dept think that VB
is OO))

b\ Try not to change the language to keep maximum retrospective
compatibility == stagnates the language (see Rexx==dinosaur )

c\ Change existing language features to improve the language ==
sacrifices retrospective compatibility for evolution (see all
languages in their infancy ie. Mercury -
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/ )

I hope Guido will keep leaning towards c\ ... if change is needed to
make the language more 'beautiful & eloquant' then so be it ...

regards


From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 22:37:55 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:37:55 -0400
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
In-Reply-To: <3B4A23DA.9D737F43@lemburg.com>
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com>
 <5.0.2.1.0.20010709085854.02491aa0@mail.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010711223722.024a2040@mail.mindspring.com>

At 11:36 PM 7/9/2001 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>In this case you could use:
>
>         if a and b and (a == b): ...
>
>(DateTime instances are always true, None is false)

That seems to break down if they are both None. str(a)==str(b) seems to be 
the safest bet until 2.0.2 comes out later this week.  ;-)


-Chuck




From sheila at spamcop.net  Sat Jul  7 16:54:56 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 20:54:56 GMT
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <3b477513$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <entektsq6t2ulqlae3std75dak804fci24@4ax.com>

On Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:46:11 -0700, "Neil Macneale"
<mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<3b477513$0$322$8eec23a at newsreader.tycho.net>:

:I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
:GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?

I'm distributing my Python script under the GPL. So far as I know, that
is fine to do.


--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From dougfort at dougfort.net  Tue Jul  3 10:28:37 2001
From: dougfort at dougfort.net (Doug Fort)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 15:28:37 +0100
Subject: I'd Like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
Message-ID: <3b41d693$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>

I have some time on my hands.  It seems like a good opportunity to do some 
noncommercial Python programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm 
more suited to be the lackey than the mad scientist.

I've checked the 'Project Help Wanted' on SourceForge and don't see 
anything that really fits.  

Anybody need some Python code on an Open Source project?

You can see some of my work at http://pyagent.sourceforge.net and at 
http://asynchttp.sourceforge.net.
-- 
Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net>
http://www.dougfort.net

______________________________________________________________________
Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Still Only $9.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com
   With Seven Servers In California And Texas - The Worlds Uncensored News Source
  


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 00:00:42 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:00:42 -0500
Subject: Inheritance in extension type
In-Reply-To: <sit9ltc8uhs7glo8ijlv8mjm6krso2dhge@4ax.com>
References: <sit9ltc8uhs7glo8ijlv8mjm6krso2dhge@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15189.2538.694442.853758@beluga.mojam.com>

    Lothar> I'm writting a C extension and i define two types A and B.  How
    Lothar> can i specify that B inherits from A.

That's not supported directly by the Python core.  There is a version of
Digital Creations' ExtensionClass module that supports this, however.  Take
a look at the ExtensionClass.[ch] that comes with recent (development)
versions of PyGtk2:

    http://www.gnome.org/~james/

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 20 04:17:55 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:17:55 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j8lag$srl$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>
Message-ID: <3B57E933.63F10BC0@stroeder.com>

Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
> news:cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> > To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> > case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> > existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> > Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.
> 
> Please reassure me that this means what I think it does: you want to update
> Python so that a future version of the language supports two modes, case
> insensitive for beginners and case sensitive for experts?
> 
> If so, please go ahead, and let me carry on, as an expert, using case to
> make important, subtle but useful distinctions.

But case-sensitive mode should be the default. Beginners mode should
have to be turned on by command-line option.

Ciao, Michael.


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 03:20:06 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:20:06 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-3AE912.21173322072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3qhnltk4c1h2i0eu7m1no068g6if7ej5tm@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:17:33 -0700, David Eppstein
<eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>In article <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list at python.org>,
> Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
>
>> Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is *less*
>> useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible. You can
>> still have i//j for all your combinatorics needs.
>
>I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of 
>Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions of integer 
>arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are coerced to floats?  
>In my own code it's 100% int/int->int but that's a small unrepresentative 
>sample.  Note I'm less interested in divisions of quantities that are 
>already floats as those would be unaffected by this proposal.

I know that mine is 100% - I rarely use floats at all in Python.

But what might be surprising is that in C++ - where I do a lot of
digital signal processing work using floating point values - the
answer is *still* 100%. If I need floating point division I use
floating point division, but that has always meant that I'm using
floating point arguments. The worst I found is a few cases if
Sample_Rate / n, or 1.0 / n, or whatever where n was an integer that
got implicitly cast - which Python does already.

Integers and floats are two separate domains - both in implementation
details and in their applications.



From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 15:27:44 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:27:44 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net>

> Semantics of Floor Division
> 
>     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
>     types, and will have the semantics of
> 
>         a // b == floor(a/b)
> 
>     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
>     coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
>     will be of that type too.

so:

3//2 == 1

3.0//2.0 == 1.0

3.0//2 == 1.0

so if I want to use the result as an index, I'll need to use:

int(x/y)

kind of like I now use:

int(floor(x/y))

What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an integer always? It will
always have an integral value. I suppose one problem is that the range
of integers that a float (C double) can handle is larger than a 32 bit
integer can hold. This could be solved in the future with int/long
inification, what will be the behaviour then?

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 17:56:40 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:56:40 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] RE: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [M.-A. Lemburg]
> > PEP: 0263 (?)
> > Title: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
> > Version: $Revision: 1.0 $
> > Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
> > Status: Draft
> > Type: Standards Track
> > Python-Version: 2.3
> > Created: 06-Jun-2001
> > Post-History:
> 
> Since this depends on PEP 244, it should also have a
> 
>   Requires: 244
> 
> header line.

Ok, I'll add that.
 
> > ...
> > ... can be set using the "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244.
> >
> >     The syntax for the directives is as follows:
> >
> >     'directive' WS+ 'unicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
> >     'directive' WS+ 'rawunicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
> 
> PEP 244 doesn't allow these spellings:  at most one atom is allowed after
> the directive name, and
> 
>     = "whatever"
> 
> isn't an atom.  Remove the '=' and PEP 244 is happy, though.  If you want to
> keep the "=", PEP 244 has to change.

True... would that pose a problem ?
 
[Paul]
> I think that there should be a single directive for:
> 
>  * unicode strings
>  * 8-bit strings
>  * comments
> 
> If a user uses UTF-8 for 8-bit strings and Shift-JIS for Unicode, there
> is basically no text editor in the world that is going to do the right
> thing. And it isn't possible for a web server to properly associate an
> encoding. In general, it isn't a useful configuration.

Please don't mix 8-bit strings with Unicode literals: 8-bit
strings don't carry any encoding information, so providing encoding
information cannot be stored anywhere. 

Comments, OTOH, are part of the program text, so they have to be ASCII
just like the Python source itself.

Note that it doesn't make sense to use a non-ASCII superset
for the Unicode literal encoding (as you and others have noted).
Since all builtin Python encodings are ASCII-supersets, this
shouldn't pose much of a problem, though ;-)
 
> Also, no matter what the directive says, I think that \uXXXX should
> continue to work. Just as in 8-bit strings, it should be possible to mix
> and match direct encoded input and backslash-escaped characters.
> Sometimes one is convenient (because of your keyboard setup) and
> sometimes the other is convenient. This proposal exists only to improve
> typing convenience so we should go all the way and allow both.

Hmm, good point, but hard to implement. We'd probably need a two
phase decoding for this to work:

1. decode the given Unicode literal encoding
2. decode any Unicode escapes in the Unicode string
 
> I strongly think we should restrict the directive to one per file and in
> fact I would say it should be one of the first two lines. It should be
> immediately following the shebang line if there is one. This is to allow
> text editors to detect it as they detect XML encoding declarations.
> 
> My opinions are influenced by the fact that I've helped implement
> Unicode support in an Python/XML editor. XML makes it easy to give the
> user a good experience. Python could too if we are careful.

I think that allowing one directive per file is the way to go,
but I'm not sure about the exact position. Basically, I think it
should go "near" the top, but not necessarily before any doc-string
in the file.
 
> [Guido]
> > Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
> > docstring.  That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
> > preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
> > docstrings already have this built into them.  Is it worth breaking
> > them so that editors can remain stupid?
> 
> No.

Agreed.

Note that the PEP doesn't require the directive to be placed before the
doc-string. That point is still open. Technically, the compiler
will only need to know about the encoding before the first
Unicode literal in the source file.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Thu Jul 12 11:04:37 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:04:37 -0700
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994779919.3199.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkrf4ol6t4b338@news.supernews.com>

FORTH is an interesting language - Postscript is a distant relative.
Charles Moore originally wrote it to control telescopes; it's quite
widely used for process control, hence it's machine orientation.
In the hands of an expert, it's both incredibly productive and
very accurate.

Implementing FORTH in Python is an interesting project. In doing
an implementation you need to be very careful about distinguishing
among the artifacts of the current implementations and the core
language concepts - things like real memory references are an
artifact of implementations on real hardware, and don't have any
relevance to the core concepts.

I would think that you would want to start with a class named
"Word" that encapsulates a word: that is two sequences of instances
of class Word, one for run-time behavior and one for compile-time
behavior. The class should have methods RunTime() and
CompileTime(). Builtins should be subclasses of Word.

RunTime() simply loops through the Run sequence and invokes
each instance in turn. Let's see - loops. RunTime normally
returns +1, but it can return any offset; this is used to implement
looping and condition tests within a word.

For compile time, you need dictionaries: FORTH dictionaries map
very cleanly into Python dictionaries. The current compile time
environment is a list of FORTH dictionaries. The dictionary returns
the class instance that implements the word.

The execution time stack needs to be a global object - since
I'm not an OO purist, I'd make it a module level rather than a
singleton object. Tastes vary.

The return stack becomes the method invocation stack - it no longer
has an explicit representation. That hoses some of the tricks used to
make FOR loops work, and such, but alternate solutions can probably
be found for those. Or maybe not - we may need a separate return
stack that is only used for additional stuff, not the return addresses
themselves.

The thing to watch out for is to avoid taking too much advantage of
Python tricks - portability means that it never quite fits into any
environment elegantly.

John Roth


"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994779919.3199.python-list at python.org...
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Mikael Olofsson wrote:
>
> > INTERCAL or Brainf***, anyone?
>
> The following script was written in half an hour
> (after I found this page:
>
> http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/pocket/pfmanual.html
>
> (Chemists are going to use Forth in nanotech programming. ;-)

[...]

> Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
> --
>  - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
>
>
>




From sk at nvg.ntnu.no  Fri Jul 13 05:55:16 2001
From: sk at nvg.ntnu.no (Steinar Knutsen)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 09:55:16 GMT
Subject: IRC library for Python?
References: <slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org> <fed2e489.0107130010.36692131@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9imgi4$jl4$1@snipp.uninett.no>

In article <fed2e489.0107130010.36692131 at posting.google.com>,
Andr? <arisen at start.no> wrote:
>grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb) wrote in message
>news:<slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey at teleute.dmiyu.org>...
>
>> I've been doing some searching and haven't found anything on the web or
>> deja.  Is there an IRC library akin to SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNRP/et al for
>> Python in existence?
>
>There is a small, somewhat outdated (RFC 1459 has been obsoleted, i
>think) library at http://www.cs.uit.no/~andrer/rfc1459.py . I've used
>it to build some simple irc bots.

I have a library at http://sk.nvg.org/python/irc_uninett/

It follows RFC 2811 and 2812 pretty closely. It does not handle any of
the client to client (DCC, CTCP) or server to server stuff (RFC 2813)
though.
-- 
Steinar


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 06:50:34 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 12:50:34 +0200
Subject: GCC 3.0, Standard ABI & C++/Python Integration
References: <mailman.993664666.10985.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <j4d77kvs79.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Nahuel Greco <ngreco at softhome.net> writes:

> Will the standarization of the ABI in gcc 3.0 help to do a better
> integration of C++ and python?

No.

Martin


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 23:37:47 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:37:47 -0400
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net> <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn9m95gj.5c2.QSB@animas.frontier.net>
Message-ID: <PB497.1941$9i1.150098@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Allodoxaphobia" <QSB at QRM-QRN.net> wrote in message
news:slrn9m95gj.5c2.QSB at animas.frontier.net...
> On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT, Nick Perkins scribbled:
> >I laughed at the first one of these I read,
> >thinking it might be the result of a python program,
> >but now I have noticed that they are popping up
> >on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
> >Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
> >I have seen four or five today.
>
> Take a look in news.admin.net-abuse.email, if you think "...4 or 5..."
> might be a nuisance.
>
> And, trim your posts.  Especially if you know them to be trash.
> tnx.

Hmm. My news server's "242860 not downloaded" message was quite enough to
convince *me* that c.l.py is by no means the worst-off group.

shan't-be-subscribing-to-that-one-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 11:24:11 2001
From: ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 16:24:11 +0100
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9iciar$fqd$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>

Hi,

> 1. No program EVER has 100% coverage during testing (unless it is
> trivial - this for the nitpickers :-)). The bigger the program the
> less likely full coverage has been achieved, ATC's are big programs.
> Anyone who claims they have 100% tested an ATC are either fools or
> liars - "every line and every circumstance" are NOT POSSIBLE, if you
> think they are then I don't have anything more to say other than get
> a few more years real world experience :-). So, if you plan to 100%
> test a python ATC "each line and every circumstance" then my original
> confidence that it would never be put into production holds (that's
> one of the reason languages have exception handlers - to catch the
> error that the programmer didn't foresee) :-).

I've worked on an ATC program, in particular on the user interface
side.  The software ran on many Unix systems, one per controller.  It
was a mixture of Ada, C, and assembler.  Dynamic memory allocation was
widely used.  The X Window System with Motif and PEX libraries was also
utilised along with COTS products like TeleUSE.  There were kernel
extensions for network protocols, etc.

First off, although the lawyers will clear the use of a buggy COTS
product that has a company behind it they won't like the idea of a
`free' piece of software, even one that's much more mature and bug
free.  I've been there.  Perl, Flex, Bison, binutils, and lzop were
just some of the tools used to analyse run-time data offline to prove
correctness.  In the online software the gzip algorithm code was used
(as IIRC its licence allows).  It was just plonked straight in.
However, the lawyers had a issue with that so one of the COTS suppliers
were asked to `supply' it to us.  Problem solved.

As you can see, they're political/law issues rather than technical
suitability.  And they can be solved.  I imagine it's easier now than
it was then given the publicity Free Software has achieved.

As far as coverage testing goes you're right.  They never get near
complete coverage.  In fact, often it is very poor indeed with the
coverage test writers working from the source code they are trying to
cover rather than a spec of the routine.  After much complaining about
this, often the routine was obviously wrong from straightforward
reading of the code, I placed an Easter Egg in one part of the GUI.  If
certain conditions were met then an image of a plane, noise first in
the ground, with smoke rising from its tail together with a man
drifting down from a parachute appeared.  Who says I don't have a GSOH
:-)

Despite the code that included the logic to make the image appear,
together with the image, passing through peer code reviews, coverage
testing, unit testing, integration, you name it, including others
editing that area of the code, it was never discovered.  Shortly before
leaving the project, when it had been on-site, but not in a live
system, for over a year, I announced its existence and removed it.

The major problems, based on this experience, are many.  None specific
to ATC projects but just large software projects involving many
companies with poor staff retainment/training.  There are engineers
that, as I think you said, should have been bakers, engineers who
didn't know C, Unix, Ada, Motif, etc., coding on the project,
management who only plan to be in their position for around 6 months
and so don't care about doing it right but just doing it within
schedule because then it's someone else's problem, and several
sub-contracting companies where none of the parties want to be the
first to announce a schedule slip.  Hell, nothing seems to have changed
since Fred Brooks wrote _The Mythical Man Month_.  A book which few of
my peers or managers had heard of.

So Python in an ATC project?  Sure, don't see why not.  With the right
libraries it's almost like a domain-specific language.  You'll just
need to educate others.

Hope this helps,


Ralph.



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:33:08 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:33:08 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <MPG.15c7942e7652fd7b989800@news-enteract>
Message-ID: <cplmlda7zg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Alan Miller <ajm at enteract.com> writes:

> Guido van Rossum (guido at digicool.com) wrote:
> >- after "from __future__ import division", / is changed to return a
> >  float result from int or long operands (and so is /=).
> 
> So who's going to write slashnanny.py that will go through old code and 
> warn about existing operations that will be broken by the change?

I don't know yet, but it will definitely be made available in some
form, long before such code is actually broken.  One idea is a command
line switch that makes Python spit out a warning whenever an int
division has a nonzero remainder, but there are more sophisticated
ideas too, using type inference.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From wyatts at onr.com  Fri Jul 13 13:46:23 2001
From: wyatts at onr.com (wyatt stafford)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:46:23 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <mailman.995043443.27208.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <OtG37.24103$g96.665749@news.easynews.com>

I looked through about 15 different articles/URLs, etc doing language
comparisons, and the code examples, when available, on Python were usually
shorter, and seemed to be easier to follow (ok, maybe "follow" is a
charitable description of my current ability).  Also, I found copies of the
two books mentioned earlier and found they both contained compelling,
persuasive arguements in favor of Python.  Finally, I like the TV shows,
movies, etc of Monty Python.

wy


"Lindstrom Greg - glinds" <Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995043443.27208.python-list at python.org...
> Welcome to the club!  I am curious as to how you decided on Python?
> IM(NS)HO, it is one of the best languages for just about all applications
> ('cept MUDs :-).  My daughter (age 10) has worked through the "How to
Think
> Like a Computer Scientist" (Python edition), and to my amazement, wrote a
> program to find all of the words in a word-search puzzle she was doing
(OK,
> it needed *some* more work, but I found it to be a great effort).
>
> Come in on, and ask lots of questions!
>
> Greg Lindstrom
> Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911
> email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com
>
> "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
>
>                                                             Albert
Einstein
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wyatt stafford [mailto:wyatts at onr.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 11:33 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
>
>
> Preamble:
>
> I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start
programming
> for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).
After
> some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  I bought "Learn
> to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" (Harms/McDonald).
Also
> checking out the tutorial, and other good info at www.python.org.    I
have
> a leaping, intuitive learning style given to missing the obvious, so I am
> concerned about having fatal gaps in my learning via home schooling plan.
>
> Questions:
>
> Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self
study
> resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good
programmer,
> in general?
>
> Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?
>
> thanks and happy weekend to all,
> wyatt
>
> "Oh, that's not what I call bingeing"
>
>
>
>
>




From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Jul 12 10:18:22 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 10:18:22 -0400
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net> <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3d3d82qlht.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
> Interpretation of \x escapes was tightened up in 2.0 I believe.  In versions
> earlier than 2.0 '\xyy' is interpreted as the four-character sequence:
> 
>     \ x y y
> 
> In 2.0 and 2.1 the ValueError you see is raised because "yy" can't be
> interpreted as a hex number.

But shouldn't pickle have been writing octal escapes in versions
before 2.1?  It shouldn't be generating \x escapes at all, I think.
Perhaps the best way to debug this would be to send the pickle file
to someone at Python Labs and have them dig into the problem.

--amk



From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul 12 05:13:50 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 02:13:50 -0700
Subject: connecting to Oracle database
References: <mailman.994917679.17455.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107120113.4d1c1607@posting.google.com>

reddykkk at yahoo.com wrote in message news:<mailman.994917679.17455.python-list at python.org>...
> hi all, i am learning Pyhton now. I am facing problems in connecting 
> to Oracle database. plz guid me how to start with.

First, check out the Vaults of Parnassus for Oracle modules:

  http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py?find=Oracle

I would look at cx_Oracle and DCOracle first. If you can use ODBC (not
usually the case with Oracle as standard, if I remember correctly),
then try mxODBC:

  http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html

Then, take a look at this interesting article about the Python's
Database API:

  http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/DB-API.html

And look at the Python database topic guide index for more details:

  http://www.python.org/topics/database/

Have I got you started now? ;-)

Paul


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 23:16:06 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 20:16:06 -0700
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com> <86vgkx3c49.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <9ir1tm$3rp$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <86vgkx3c49.fsf at hellcat.itga.com.au>,
Gregory Bond  <gnb at itga.com.au> wrote:
>aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:
>>
>> The contractor chose to use C++.  The DLL that was
>> delivered failed miserably in following the spec
>
>Surely that says much more about the quality of the contractor than
>the language they chose to use?

Overall, yes, but you've lost the context: my point was that a person
(me) who did not know C very well was able to recode that DLL correctly
in about a week.  I would *not* have been able to fix or rewrite the
code using C++; that's an indicator of the complexity of C++.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From gustafl at algonet.se  Sun Jul  8 19:42:11 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 23:42:11 GMT
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D7B5DD9220gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <3B473741.2BE14CB0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D9116ADA12Bgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>I think you mean the "sys" module above, not the "os" module.

Yes, sorry.

>and you run it from another directory (e.g. 'python c:\windows\test.py'
>or 'python /tmp/test.py' what do you get?

I made this script:

import sys
print sys.path[0]

And here I run it from another directory:

E:\>python e:\test\syspath.py
e:\test

That works. Now I run it from the same directory, but still with the full 
path:

E:\test>python e:\test\syspath.py
e:\test

That works too, but look here when I run it with only the filename:

E:\test>python syspath.py


Nothing! This is the problem I have. It think the second and third case 
ought to mean the same.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From coy.krill at verizon.net  Wed Jul 25 13:43:10 2001
From: coy.krill at verizon.net (Coy Krill)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:43:10 -0700
Subject: A few things :)
References: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jn0fn$6bdr$1@ID-59852.news.dfncis.de>

I love Python because I'm dyslexic.

I've programmed in BASIC, Pascal, C, RPG III/IV, CL, C++, and Python for a 
living over the past 12 years.  Of all those languages Python is the 
easiest for me to sit down, read and follow what's going on. Looking at 
dumped dicts or lists of lists and/or tuples is straining, but luckily I 
don't do that too often.

Also one the upside is the great cross-platform support (I use Linux almost 
exclusively, my wife runs Windows, and my son runs Linux and Mac OS.)

Coy

Lee Nutter wrote:

> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby.
> Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language,
> don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)
> 
> Thanks,



From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 28 15:20:05 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 20:20:05 +0100
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <8f36mtobhpll7f3qheja51v43oickn7q87@4ax.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 15:35:44 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>If there's anyone who believes the type/class unification should not
>become a feature in Python 2.2, please speak up now or forever hold
>your peace...  (But I'd rather you speak up!)

There's a risk that all you get is negative comments, so I'll add mypositive
vote here - I love the new type/class stuff. I don't have a large body of code
in existence, and in particular, I don't tend to do anything subtle which might
be bitten by this, so I'm not a good test of backward compatibility issues, but
I can see cases where I would use the new fetaures - so my vote is "yes".

>I realize the PEPs aren't done yet, but I believe that the separate
>introduction I wrote goes a long way towards explaining type/class
>unification.  Read it here:
>
>  http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

This is a good introduction, as it treats all of this as user-level features,
and not as wizard-level "black magic". It encouraged me to try some of the
features.

One point - the "get/set method" stuff was quite a surprise to me. It's *not*
something I would see as a consequence of class/type unification, but it is very
welcome. It seems much nicer approach (in the cases where it's appropriate) than
__getattr__ and __setattr__ hooks, in those cases where it's appropriate.

>Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.  Just DON'T CHANGE THE THREAD
>TOPIC.  I don't have time to read the entire newsgroup (I tried this
>week, and I didn't get to anything else :).

A "gentle introduction" to the metaclass stuff would also be nice. However, I
suspect that this is an area which is too deep to allow much simplification...
On the other hand, some relatively simple examples, maybe in the standard
library, or alternatively in the distribution somewhere (and referenced in the
documentation) would be good - maybe (meta)classes like the ones in the
"Metaclasses in Python 1.5" article (enum.py, trace.py, etc).

Hope this is useful feedback,
Paul.


From kragen at dnaco.net  Mon Jul  2 12:56:36 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:56:36 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <slrn9jvibr.is.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <8J107.28607$zT1.1545790@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

In article <slrn9jvibr.is.grante at tuxtop.visi.com>,
Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:17:31 GMT, Kragen Sitaker <kragen at dnaco.net> wrote:
>
>>>You could write an operating system that could only be directly
>>>programmed in Python.
>>
>>I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
>>could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
>>despite implementing operating systems in all four.
>
>Weren't Symbolics machines circa 1980 directly programmable
>in Lisp?

No, they just had an instruction set that was well-suited to
implementing Lisp, and a Lisp implementation with enough low-level
features that you could write device drivers in it.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 19:09:43 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:09:43 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:28:05 CDT."
             <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107312309.TAA17435@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

>     >> I guess I'm confused, but if isinstance(x, type) is true isn't
>     >> issubclass(x.__class__, type) also true?
> 
>     Guido> You are indeed confused. :)
> 
>     Guido> Seems you confuse isinstance(x, y) with issubclass(x, y).  These
>     Guido> are very different.  x in y can map to at most one of these (for
>     Guido> y a type object).
> 
> Here's an example that makes concrete what I was thinking:
> 
>     >>> class Foo:
>     ...   pass
>     ... 
>     >>> class Bar(Foo):
>     ...   pass
>     ... 
>     >>> x = Bar()
>     >>> isinstance(x, Foo)
>     1
>     >>> issubclass(Bar, Foo)
>     1
>     >>> issubclass(x.__class__, Foo)
>     1
> 
> Why can't the "in" operator grok all three of these possibilities?
> 
>     x in Foo                         same as isinstance(x, Foo)
>     Bar in Foo                       same as issubclass(Bar, Foo)
>     x.__class__ in Foo               same as issubclass(x.__class__, Foo)
> 
> I assume x can't be both an instance and a class at the same time.

Ah, but there you're wrong.  Classes are also instances (of the
metaclass), and when we don't know anything about an object X, after
knowing that "X in Foo" is true, we would still not know whether X was
a Foo subclass or a Foo instance.  Very different beasts.

This kind of confusion comes up a long when you get too close to
metaclasses (that's why explaining anything about metaclasses is so
difficult).  Languages with a prototype model instead of a
class/instance model don't have this, but they have other issues...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)




From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul 29 21:02:20 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 01:02:20 GMT
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl>
Message-ID: <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com>

Richard van de Stadt wrote:
> 
> I run stuff on systems in various timezones.
> I need to display when certain files have been updated.
> ctime (time()) shows the current date and time, but without the timezone
> that you get to see e.g. by Unix' date command.
> 
> Is there a (Python) way to find out the timezone?
> 
> Richard.

import time

time.tzname

...will return a tuple containing the strings which name the timezone

time.timezone

...will return the offset from UTC in seconds

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 13:27:20 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:27:20 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B56A4FB.104CBCBB@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107192125060.1335-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>If the performance hit is noticable, we could look into optimizing
>the setup for files which don't use the magic comment. I'd rather
>leave this to after the implemenation.

Maybe it is good idea to specify how much slow-down we allow for
such things beforehand?


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 19, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The bigger they are, the harder they hit you." _/




From tim at digicool.com  Tue Jul 24 14:55:53 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:55:53 -0400
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
In-Reply-To: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHOEJGCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Bryan Webb]
> I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating point
> envirnoment. I would like an increase of precision over std floats. ...

Your best bet at this time is to look into Marc-Andre Lemburg's wrapping of
GMP for Python:

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#mxNumeric

GMP supports arbitrary-precision floats.

> ...
> Should I use real-accurate,

Probably not, but you'll find that out quick enough <wink>.

> or numpy

Not even relevant.




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul  5 22:35:04 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 22:35:04 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <u3d8awzs7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

rcena at epcor.ca (Resty Cena) writes:

> I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
> to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
> database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
> directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
> then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
> Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
> don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
> around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
> want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
> I'd like the IDE to do this for me. I'm a database programmer, and I
> want to write applications right away. I'm also lazy and I expect much
> from my tools.

BTW, this doesn't cover the whole universe (which is complicated
enough), but since you mentioned it - under Windows, what you want is
pretty much how I perceive the state of affairs, using mxODBC.  All I
did was download it, unzip it (or install it for the newer versions)
and I was done.  I could connect to any of my existing data sources
(via ODBC) just as with any of my other database access mechanisms in
that environment.  No recompiling, no special settings or anything.

True, that's ODBC based, but that seems pretty standard for all the
other access mechanisms I've used under Windows.  I'm sure with other
environments with direct client libraries per-database there's more
complexity, and I can't directly address Python's state of affairs
there.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  1 20:58:34 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 00:58:34 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b3fb024.800984514@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 12:33:48 -0700, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>Here's how I would summarize it. Programs have three main parts: getting
>data (including user events) into the program, doing computation on it,
>and getting data out of the program (including user feedback).
>
I would add that programs have a life before coding
(or generally should, though Python tempts mightily ;-).
They first exist as a need, often in the mind of a non-programmer
(who nevertheless may be pretty astute about needs IRL ;-)

So part of the evaluation of a language, IMV, has to be in terms of
how well it serves the process of conceiving and implementing a
program serving the original needs, not to mention the usual about
others (and yourself later) being able to understand and maintain
the code.

A programming language serves partly as a thinking language of sorts.
If you've never heard of the STL, you're not likely to think of
a solution using its features (except insofar as you might reinvent
some independently). Python is a winner in providing a simple and
powerful mix of capabilities, ISTM.

As a (Python) newbie, I've yet to use Python for anything "real" but
I find myself using it all the time now as a handy tool for Q&D stuff
(which comes out less "D" ;-). And I'll actually do stuff I wouldn't
have had the time to do in C or even C++.

The development environment is also VERY important. E.g., I like
Delphi for GUI development, MSVC++ IDE for debugging C++ (even when
I am writing C++ for Linux or BSD and have to go to the extra trouble
of #ifdef WIN32's etc.), Perl for its regular expressions (and
surprising speed in that department), and flex for the ease of
defining a text parser.

Python is growing on me very fast, since it provides so much power
so simply and safely. And the community seems friendly, which counts.
Makes we want to contribute one of these days.

I just wonder how people have time to read and post so much,
especially the core people who must be insanely busy anyway.

[...]



From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Fri Jul  6 14:36:48 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:36:48 GMT
Subject: Here is howto: Exporting a Class from a .pyd
References: <3b4474a8.4155281@news.t-online.de> <u66d6wzyk.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3b460288.6895812@news.t-online.de>

Task: export a class from a .pyd

1) Forget about boost.org, it contains horrible C++ code like this:
....
namespace boost { namespace python { namespace detail {
struct function::type_object:singleton<function::type_object,
callable<boost::python::detail::type_object<function>>>{
type_object() : singleton_base(&PyType_Type) {}};
...
And that was the readable bit of it.

2) In the initXYZ() routine, store a pointer to the module object
returned, e.g.

PyObject* my_module;

my_module = Py_InitModule4( "SampleClass", SampleClass_methods,
SampleClass_docstring, NULL, PYTHON_API_VERSION );

3) Create some methods. Here is one:

static PyObject* func_SampleMethod( PyObject* self, PyObject* args )
{
    return PyInt_FromLong(42);
}

4) Create a class object. Its not documented, and the header says /*
Revealing some structures (not for general use) */ but I'm not in the
military so I guess it is for my use, anyway.

static PyObject* func_SampleClass( PyObject* self, PyObject* args )
{    
    // name of the class
    PyObject* pName = PyString_FromString( "SampleClass" );

    // Create the __dict__ of the class. This example just adds a
    // single method copied from the global module dict.
    PyObject* pDict = PyDict_New();
    PyObject* pModuleDict = PyModule_GetDict(my_module);
    PyDict_SetItemString(pDict,"SampleMethod",
PyDict_GetItemString(pModuleDict,"SampleMethod"));

    return PyClass_New( NULL, pDict, pName );
}                                                  

The NULL paramter could be replaced by a tuple of base classes. Note
that this function will create a *class* object, not an instance
object.

5) In Python, do things like

import SampleClass

s = SampleClass.SampleClass()
print type(s), dir(s)

o = s()
print o.SampleMethod()



Ah, I love python !



From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 10:46:54 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 10:46:54 -0400
Subject: Structuring packages
References: <3B52CFF4.84AFD40D@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <etdpub1q6ch.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

Could you ask a more specific question?

Alex.


From jdavis at empires.org  Wed Jul 25 21:24:22 2001
From: jdavis at empires.org (Jeff Davis)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:52:22 +2328
Subject: weakref module in debian package
Message-ID: <w2987.5367$tt4.249516@news.pacbell.net>

I can't 'import weakref', I simply don't have the module. I 
don't really know why, since I just installed the debian package for 
python2.0. If someone knows why it's not bundled, let me know. Isn't it 
part of the standard python2 library?

Thanks,
        Jeff Davis




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 15:58:10 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:58:10 -0400
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Za237.15199$vA6.833926@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in ...
>
> SHORT STORY:
> Does anyone know of a regular expression library which has an operator
> that forces a subexpression to insist on its shortest match, even if
> that ruins the overall match?
>
> LONG STORY:
>
> Look how different the following tasks are, although they look so
> similar.
>
> 1) TASK: Find the first 'A' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'?
>    SOLUTION: '^[^A]+AB'
>
> 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
>    SOLUTION: ???
>
> An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> 'A<A>B', which it should.
>
> With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
>
> The third approximation is '^(.*<A>){1,1}?B' and the Tcl's manual page
> `re_syntax' seems to indicate that '{1,1}?' forces a subexpression on
> a shortest match. However the `?' indicates `non-greedy' which only
> means that the `shortest match not ruining an overall match' is taken
> and not the `shortest match!'
>
> The solution would in fact be a *shortest match operator*. For the
> sake of discussion let it have postfix syntax like `*' and be written
> as `%'. The solution for (2) would be '^(.*<A>)%B' which would *not*
> match the string 'xx<A>y<A>B' since the shortest '.*<A>' found is not
> followed by 'B'.
>
> Again the question: Is there a re-library with a true shortest match
> operator?
>
> REMARK: The implementation would be rather simple since it suffices to
> delete all outgoing transitions from stop states of the automaton
> equivalent to the subexpression.
>
Had you thought about using lookahead assertions, which don't actually match
anything, but fail unless the specified pattern is (or, for a negative
lookahead assertion, is not) present? Combined with non-greedy matching this
might get you where you want to be.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul  4 14:42:48 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:42:48 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism] (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041241390.7776-100000@bms>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Grant Griffin wrote:
> Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> ...
> > CPyAN is much more complex task, because there are:
> ...
>
> I think the problem here might be one of marketing, combined with a lack
> of corporate sponsorship.  To that end, I propose this resource be
> called "Python Program Archive Network", or PyPAN, for short. That might
> help it attract funding from Mrs. Smith's and Sara Lee.  (Heck, if
> nothing else, maybe those ladies can contribute something tasty to the
> Python Cookbook.)
>
> <sorry>
>
> Seriously, folks, I never was a big fan of CPAN: in fact, for me, it was
> just another part of my overall poor user-interface experience with Perl
> <wink>.  Although CPAN is impressive in terms of sheer girth, the CPAN
> concept seemed to encourage large interdependencies between modules.
> Although this seems like good thing in some ways (because it indicates a
> lot of software reuse), I found it nightmarish to install even fairly
> simple packages.  (I never could get the automatic CPAN installer gizmo
> to work well--at least without giving it a great deal of manual help.)

This sounds like what I've heard about the RH `contributions'
archive... I don't think it reflects on archives in general, just
those that don't bother to maintain controls or enforce standards.

If, on the other hand, you make contributors jump through some hoops,
and do not allow submissions from anonymous contributors or those that
do not meet strict standards... it might work, and be useful... even
to those of us that already have a decent archive backing up our OS.

> Having a very large standard library seems a better solution.  (Of
> course, Perl also comes with a large standard library.)  I never seem to
> have large cross-package dependency problems with Python; my experience
> has been that nearly all packages require zero or one other packages.
> Presumably, this is a fortunate aftertaste of the fact that PyPAN is
> still just a half-baked idea.

"seems" being the key word, one person's "large" is another's "huge
and filled with stuff that don't run on my box".

> But maybe an increasingly large standard library isn't totally
> practical.  An alternative that I think would be very helpful is
> "application-targeted" distributions.  For example, someone could make a
> "Numeric" bundle of Python, including NumPy and related modules;
> likewise, there could be a "webmaster" bundle.  Of course, this takes a
> lot of time and effort for somebody to create and maintain.
> (ActiveState folks, are you listening?--given that you somehow make
> money by giving away software, the more software you give away, the more
> money you'll make <wink>.)

...the above paragraph describes what Debian's task packages do.
It works because it is backed up by a well controlled archive of
packages that meet a set of minimum standards...

...ANYTHING less is just asking, no - begging, for trouble.


As much as I am in favour of turning Python into a packaged
distribution -- if it is not top notch, don't bother.


- Bruce





From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Fri Jul 27 05:46:42 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:46:42 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <m15PKAC-000wcBC@swing.co.at> (tanzer@swing.co.at)
References: <m15PKAC-000wcBC@swing.co.at>
Message-ID: <27072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>

>>>>> "Christian" == Christian Tanzer <tanzer at swing.co.at> writes:

[snipperoonio... lots of interesting stuff about real-life and
seemingly highly dynamic Python deployments]

    Christian> To be honest, for TTTech design databases the change in
    Christian> division probably doesn't pose any problems. Due to
    Christian> user demand, the tools coerced divisions [in
    Christian> customer-written code] to floating point for a long
    Christian> time.

"Due to customer demand"... well, seems to me you have given great
support to PEP 238 with this.  ;-)

Bye, J

PS: No, I'm not seeing you in the (raving) anti-PEP-238 camp,
Christian.  Your post was much too level-headed for this confusion to
happen. ;-)

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
    "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
 temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- B. Franklin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010727/f3355a9f/attachment.sig>

From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul 17 17:20:47 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:20:47 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l9930.95t.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On 17 Jul 2001 13:38:12 -0700, Xu, C.S. <xucs007 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>I just compared the speed of Python, Perl, Java, C
>to do simple numerical calculations. Python is the
>slowest: took 150 times of time than C, Perl about
>60 times, Java is 4.5 times. 
>
>The source code of Python is: (Other source are
>similar, all use while loop):
>
>#!/usr/bin/env python
>i = 2.5;
>while i < 1e7:
>        j = 2.5 * 2.5
>        i += 1
>print i, j

A JIT will surely eliminate the line "j = 2.5 * 2.5", as it is just a
no-operation. Perhaps Python doesn't, while Perl does?

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From not.this at seebelow.org  Fri Jul  6 15:31:29 2001
From: not.this at seebelow.org (Grant Griffin)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 12:31:29 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i53mh01c10@drn.newsguy.com>

In article <cpsngaja4g.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido says...
>
>I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
>mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
>messenger from the future :-).

Messages from Guido's Time Machine sure are appealing, but I doubt that "divmod"
is actually used much, so maybe symmetry of the others with that doesn't matter
much.  (Coincidentally, I just discovered "divmod" in "Python Pocket Reference"
10 minutes before reading this!--when I was enjoying special "small book daily
reading time".)

I guess I favor the operator format ("x div y", "x mod y") over the function
format ("div(x, y)", "mod(x, y)").  The operator format seems to read better
(more like "x / y"), and it matches other languages, like C, where these
operator thingies are expressed in operator format (albiet by a symbol: "/" and
"%".)  If the operator style wins out, divmod might either be turned into an
operator, or left alone.

all-things-being-equal,-do-it-like-C-ly y'rs,

=g2

_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation            http://www.iowegian.com



From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul 29 09:14:36 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:14:36 GMT
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com> <slrn9m5r4n.2ue.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <L6H87.69279$Xr6.307583@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <slrn9m82pr.de.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:35:23 GMT, Neil Hodgson <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Andrei Kulakov:
> 
>> Besides, editors detect that : and autoindent for you. Imagine for
> instance
>> that you are 5 levels of indentation to the right, if there were no colons
>> you'd have to hit enter and then <tab> 5 times! No thanks :P
> 
>    Editors can also detect that you started the line with a structuring
> keyword (if, def, ...) and indent. The colon is really only needed when you
> want to place the body on the same line:

Well, it's easier for an editor to check if the line ends in ':' than check
for several keywords and check if they're in a string or not.. If we had
one editor everybody used, it wouldn't be a big deal, but with hundreds of
editors out there, this is a consideration.. But I agree, readability is
more important here. I didn't mention it because to the original inquirer,
it doesn't seem more readable.. so I gave him a firm, objective reason instead
:-).

> 
>     if a: b = 1
> 
>    I'd be happy to see Python without the colons at the end of lines but its
> no big deal.
> 
>    Neil

def isn't absolutely required, either.. parser could detect difference
between

do_stuff()
[...]

and

do_stuff()
    [...]    

But def is a good visual cue.. for me, at least.
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Tue Jul 17 07:57:13 2001
From: s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (Sven =?iso-8859-1?Q?=D6string?=)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:57:13 +0100
Subject: Calling C++ objects
Message-ID: <3B542819.955186A2@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Is there an interface for calling C++ classes in Python, with access to
class members and methods?

Thanks,
Sven.


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  1 09:49:30 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:49:30 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) writes:

> Having started the topic I cannot remember the original point
> having been made ever before. 

It sounded to me like the usual complaint that Python was acquiring
too many new features.  We've gone through endless rounds of that with
Python 2.0 and 2.1.

> And I explicitly wrote that I did not want to discuss the advantages
> and disadvantages of certain features again. :)

So I didn't.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Thu Jul  5 04:10:47 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 01:10:47 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <20010702175245.A4092@node0.opengeometry.ca> <mailman.994201507.10872.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107050010.8a47cf1@posting.google.com>

"Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994201507.10872.python-list at python.org>...
> For liability reasons, I can't give you advice on whether or not to
> use python for an air traffic control application :-)
> 
> However, if I were (hypothetically, of course) to give you advice,
> it would be the following, of which your reading constitutes an
> agreement that I am not responsible for injury, deaths, and property
> damage resulting from that which would be my advice, were it not, 
> if fact, hypothetical, which it is.

If you hear something about an airplane crash in a few years, prepare
for a call from my lawyer. :-)

> Seems to me that python would be a good choice.  You can write
> bugs in any language, including python.  However, python bugs
> tend to be less subtle and easier to detect and fix than C/C++ bugs.
> 
> The lack of type checking and function prototyping is not nearly as
> big of a problem (if it's a problem at all) as C++ programmers tend
> to fear.
> 
> This fear is due to the fact that in some statically typed languages
> such as C++, an undetected type mismatch is likely to cause rather
> horrible bugs which are often intermittent and often corrupt unrelated
> data.
> 
> These kinds of type mismatch bugs that C++ programmers are
> terrified of (memory overwrites, etc.) simply do not exist in python at
> all.  Python doesn't ever need to infer the addresses of bytes of data
> from dubious type information at runtime (as C++ does).  Type
> information is always stored within the objects themselves.
> 
> In python, data of the wrong type is not really any worse than data
> of the wrong value, so these kinds of bugs tend to only have local
> effects which are easily caught when tested.  Not surprisingly, I have
> found that I usually get fewer type related bugs in Python than in C++.
> 
> Saying that python is unreliable because it lacks type checking is like
> saying fish cause pollution because they lack bicycles.
> 
> - Ken

That's very interesting. Thanks for that perspective. I'd like to see
you hash this out with Peter Milliken, who claims that type checking
is essential for safety-critical applications. (Perhaps you did
already. I'm using google groups, and I get very slow updates on this
thread.)

Russ


From tim at digicool.com  Thu Jul  5 14:27:20 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:27:20 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
In-Reply-To: <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHOEBGCCAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Lindstrom Greg]
> I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away
> everything except the digits.

Simplest:

>>> def isdigit(c):
...     return c in "0123456789"
...
>>> filter(isdigit, "(555) 333.2221")
'5553332221'
>>>

Fastest:  Read the docs for string.translate(); set it to do identity (i.e.,
no) translation, and pass everthing *except* digits in its optional third
("delete these") argument.




From mcherm at destiny.com  Thu Jul 12 16:13:03 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:13:03 -0500
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
Message-ID: <8479da10.da108479@destiny.com>

>  mcc> This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  
> I think the only clarification it needed was
>     ;-)
> or
>     <wink>
> <wink>

Yes... I forget, sometimes, that you'll fool a few people
(just by accident) if you're not careful.

-- Michael Chermside





From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Tue Jul 31 21:46:35 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:46:35 GMT
Subject: int() built-in and hex "0x..." strings
References: <20010723.110751.1143408282.18374@troikanetworks.com>
Message-ID: <%bJ97.180682$T97.21560301@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

Ooops, sorry about the last post, my news reader is being funny and
keeps showing me articles from July 22-23 as being new for some
reason...

* Bruce Edge <bedge at troikanetworks.com> menulis:
| I can't believe this doesn't work:
| 
| >>> int('0x80')

-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul  6 22:19:43 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 19:19:43 -0700
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <mailman.994278428.32719.python-list@python.org> <9i0231$c2e$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <9i5rjv$akf$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <9i0231$c2e$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>,
Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
>
>This is here to make explicit a circumstance when depcrecation of
>a module can be invoked; if there is no one willing to maintain it
>anymore the interest is low. It is also a mild stick to be used so that
>modules *will* be maintained; the integrators start mumbling about
>deprecation may be a powerful incentive to any would-be maintainers (it
>flushes out people motivated to maintain it :)

I think this is one of the best parts of your PEP.  It makes an
excellent complement to PEP 4.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 17:13:00 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:13:00 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <Fk327.14800$i8.1312575@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEBEKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Steve Holden]
> ...
> Key comparison of strings will test the lengths fisrt, and if the
> lengths are the same will stop once two unequal characters are found...

That's backwards.  If it tested the lengths first, then e.g. "z" < "aaa"
would be true.

"perl"<"python"-is-true-either-way-though-ly y'rs  - tim




From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 09:25:55 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:25:55 GMT
Subject: SlightlyOffTopic: syntax-highlighting in XEmacs running on Windows
References: <E%T77.147$bXi.169905152@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <3B601B45.4070107@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Thomas Weholt wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I want to use X/Emacs to write Python-code on Windows too, but I have a
> small problem with the python-mode.el. Where do I put the stuff that should
> have gone into .emacs? Cannot create such a file on win32 filesystem. Why
> aren't my code colorized in XEmacs 21.x using the python-mode like Emacs
> under Linux, using the exact same python-mode.el-file?
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 

Actually Thomas you can have a file named .emacs (at least under Win2k 
though I think you could do it in NT also)

if you can't get your editor to save it as such you can always drop to 
the command line and do:
   copy con .emacs
   ^M
   <ctrl>-Z


of-course-you-can-do-same-for-.vimrc<wink>-ly yours
Tom



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 16:50:39 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:50:39 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lubft.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5F311F.F09A3E32@Lugoj.Com>

Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
> 
> Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT in <cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> spake:
> > But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> > The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> 
>   This baffles me; the division issue is IMO far more terrifying a
> change, while case-insensitive is a mere quirk.

The division issue has proven divisive.

The case-insensitive issue has fostered insensitivity.

<wink>


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 11:31:34 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:31:34 +0100
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
Message-ID: <sdigltkmqv58ujun2b55jrgvbd5oec4okb@4ax.com>

Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?

To explain what I mean, imagine the following...

  from __future__ import generators

  def test_gen (p) :
    for i in range (p) :
      yield i

  def use_gen (p) :
    i = p.copy ()  #  or some equivalent

    #  Do something that may accept values from p

    p = i   #  Backtrack

    #  Do something that may accept values from p


  use_gen (test_gen (50))


I know that I could rewrite the use_gen function to accept a function
rather than a generator, so that it would be called as...

  use_gen (test_gen, 50)

... and the function parameter could then be evaluated to rederive the
initial generator state at any time, but this isn't really as flexible
(you can't easily recreate any state other than the initial state),
and it also seems less intuitive to me.

A major use I could think of for this is in applications that need to
balance searching by depth and by breadth according to some heuristic.
In addition to the search tree so far, it would be easy to record
generator states that have only identified some of the branches from a
particular state - so you could explore this area of the tree
depth-wise for a bit then nip-back to expand the breadth later. An
obvious application would be for board games such as chess.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 08:44:51 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:44:51 +0100
Subject: simple question:the count of array
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF40@intrepid>

> From:	sdf [SMTP:wqh-2 at 263.net]
> >>> a=['a','b','c']
> >>> b=a.count()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
>     b=a.count()
> TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
> >>> 
> 
> then how I get the number of a,I mean how much 
> values in a,in this case it should be 3 
 
>>>b=len(a)
>>>print b
3

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 30 08:47:52 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:47:52 +0200
Subject: Error on mimetools?
References: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no>
Message-ID: <j4puair3bb.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Arnulf Heimsbakk" <arnulf at spirea.net> writes:

> I'm trying to decode a mime64 message in python with mimetools. I have
> tested the "body" with windows winzip. It decodes correctly. When I try to
> decode it in python, it do not decode correctly. I get a file with slightly
> increased size. The heading of the file seems the same, but when I test this
> with a jpg file - the file gets corrupted when decoded with python's
> mimetools.
> 
> Is there a error in mimetools? Or is my approach entirly incorrect. My code
> is below:
> 
> out = StringIO()
> mimetools.decode(StringIO(self.body), out,  'base64')
> return out.getvalue()

It very much depends on what self.body is in this context. To use
mimetools.decode, you must be sure that it is the raw base64 bytes,
i.e. without any headers and trailers.

Regards,
Martin



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 06:35:49 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:35:49 +0100
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal, Take 2
References: <011901c11335$1a8c95e0$0101010a@local>
 <15196.29074.910090.697520@beluga.mojam.com>
 <mailman.995930043.12339.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <gw7pr6AF+UX7Ewqe@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

I'm afraid all these proposals for band aid type fixes to fundamental
language changes are flawed.

The danger is of copying code from one environment into the other which
will silently cause problems at run time. We need to have a single well
defined meaning for each element of a program.

I think that Guido is utterly wrong to do this and similar changes
against the expressed will of many of us. I believe that the current
usage of / is 'hallowed by time' and is useful. I don't believe float
division is more or less important than the truncating kind.

I feel that the real problem is the lack of understanding of the great
leader of the effect this will have on Python's reputation as a stable
well thought out language.
-- 
Robin Becker


From smnordby at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 21:33:54 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:33:54 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cpvgke2zf1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B621682.11C08B66@yahoo.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Actually, it's been very tough.  Years of therapy didn't prepare me
> for the accusations of dictatorship.  I also didn't see enough support


But years of dictatorship will prepare you for ... the comfy chair!

Seriously, thanks for a great language!

-SteveN-


From volucris at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 04:44:37 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 03:44:37 -0500
Subject: Starting a Frame dependent on destruction of another Frame...
References: <6f0b3be9.0107152232.21f297e6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b52a90a$0$322$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>


"Rob Neely" <rneely at home.com> wrote in message
news:6f0b3be9.0107152232.21f297e6 at posting.google.com...
> I have a simple problem I'm trying to solve with Tkinter.
>
> When my application runs, I want a frame to pop up asking the user for
> some info (a directory name).  When they hit the "OK" button, I want
> that frame to destroy itself, and start up another toplevel frame
> which will be populated with some widgets based on what was entered in
> the first frame.
>
> I've enclosed a very stripped down example below.  If you run this
> program in linux (under KDE), the only way to get to the second frame
> is to close the window with the window manager (ie - clicking the "x"
> in the KDE window decorations).  When I run it from MS-windows - even
> that doesn't work...
>
> Can anyone show me how I might configure the following applet so
> clicking the "OK" button will destroy the frame and start up the next
> frame?  Or more generally - how should one set up an application where
> one frame is started only after another has destroyed itself.
>
> I've tried as many combinations that I can think of - and this is the
> closest I've gotten!
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> --Rob
>
> from Tkinter import *
>
> class Splash(Frame):
>     def __init__(self, parent=None):
>         Frame.__init__(self, parent)
>         b = Button(self, text="OK", command=self.splash_done)
>         b.pack()
>         self.pack()
>
>     def splash_done(self):
>         print "Clicked OK"
>         self.destroy()
>
> class Mainapp(Frame):
>     def __init__(self, parent=None):
>         Frame.__init__(self, parent)
>         l = Label(self, text="Main frame opened")
>         l.pack()
>         self.pack()
>
> Splash().mainloop()
> Mainapp().mainloop()


In this method, self refers to the button that called it, not the parent
window.

def splash_done(self):
    print "Clicked OK"
    self.destroy()

All you have to do is destory the button's master (the parent window).

def splash_done(self):
    print "Clicked OK"
    self.master.destroy()


Cool? Cool.
--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."




From cliechti at mails.ch  Thu Jul 26 22:56:53 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 04:56:53 +0200
Subject: Couple of newbie questions...
References: <5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EB32FA37F9cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

time.sleep does give time bac to the system. just avoid value smaller that 
0.03. my windows freaked out and showed processor usage on other processes 
when i used sleep(0.01) but larger values work as expected.

chris


foobarickknob at yahoo.com (Scott Taylor) wrote in 
news:5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3 at posting.google.com:
> 
> 1) time.sleep doesn't seem to release time back to the Win32
> subsystem.  I had a tight loop, and CPU was maxed out at 100% even if
> I did a PumpWaitingMessages w/ a time.sleep.  To actually get the loop
> to return slices of time back to windows and not max out the CPU I had
> to do a PumpWaitingMessages followed by a win32api.Sleep(0) call.  My
> question is - shouldn't time.sleep actually make the process sleep w/o
> hogging CPU?
> 

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 20 13:18:32 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:18:32 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com>

Dan Bergan wrote:
> (Declare the variable in mixed-case)
> Dim myVariable as Integer
> 
> (then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
> myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!

Well, if you "correct" that to myVaraible you would still be in error,
because you accidentally exchanged "ia" with "ai" in addition to changing
"V" to "v". Python will not inform you about about some typos, whether
case-related, dropped characters, exchanged characters, or added characters.


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Jul 31 18:51:21 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 22:51:21 GMT
Subject: importing win32com.client.Dispatch with embedded interpreter
References: <fab90324.0107311204.2fffbfa4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EFBFDF131D1gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

Mike Haspert wrote:

> The minimal function f1(), below in usecom.py, runs fine from the
> command line, but when I use the C API for the interpreter, it runs
> the first time and fails thereafter. Can anyone see what I'm doing
> wrong? The error message "TypeError: this constructor takes no
> arguments" has me stumped.

[snip]

> int minimal(char* modname)
> {
>     bool success = false;
>     PyObject *mod,*func,*args,*rvals;
>     Py_Initialize();

[snip]

It's got nothing to do with f1.

You can't Py_Initialize() twice.

- Gordon


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 05:24:18 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:24:18 +0200
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9k5tg301mn9@enews4.newsguy.com>

(posted & mailed, just in case Guido is not following
this thread any more, since this is fundamentally a
message of support for his stated position...):

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpr8v5a8h5.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
    ...
> I have changed my mind.  I think that if I had to start over, I would
> indeed try my hands at a case-insensitive language aimed at teaching
> programming to beginners, with tools to enforce case consistency.
> Given that nobody else who currently uses Python thinks this is a good
> idea,

Just for the record: I *am* "somebody else who currently uses
Python", and I think that "this" (a case-insensitive language,
with tools that enforce case consistency) is a *VERY GOOD* idea.

Pity I was away during the hottest part of this debate, and even
now am far from being caught up -- dislike for case sensitivity
is clearly a minority position in the c.l.p community, but I'd
like it to be just as clear that it's also *NOT* just you... I
feel exactly the same way.

One aspect I haven't seen mentioned in this huge thread is the
issue of visually impaired programmers.  Case sensitivity is an
extra burden for such people (with whom I strongly empathize: my
sight is still OK, sufficient to drive a car &c, but it's going
downhill with time, and I must face the very real possibility
that I'll be _seriously_ visually impaired a few years from now).

Think of a useful tool for such an audience, a special-purpose
'screen reader' that will read out loud a snippet of Python code:
what's the tool going to do about distinguishing upper and lower
case?  With case being significant, the tool will have to point
out *every* case change -- a serious bother.  Was case not thus
significant, the tool could have two modes, a default "smoother"
mode ignoring case, and a special mode pronouncing case to be
used only (e.g.) within literal strings.

For those of you who can't really empathize with other's issues
and misfortunes, imagine being in a situation where you'd often
need to have source code read out loud to you (e.g. over a
phone), and/or you'd often want to dictate code (e.g. to some
kind of voice-recognition, dictation-taking automatic system).
What's case sensitivity giving you, that would compensate for
the serious bother it causes in those situations?


> I then settled on a case-sensitive language with case-preserving
> tools.  But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

I guess that, as usual, you may well be right.  But then,
we're now talking basically about something like some minor
changes to IDLE's source code editor, aren't we?  Or to
Emacs' python-mode, etc.  Surely there would be no fight
necessary to add a "case-preserving switch" to such tools
for optional use.  The only issue I can see is with modules
(particularly in the standard libraries) that may _require_
a programmer to enter the same identifier in more than one
different case-mix.  Are there such cases today in Python's
standard library?  I'm not sure.

Offhand, I can easily think of a few identifiers that
do appear in different cases, e.g. fileinput (the module)
vs FileInput (the class in module fileinput), but it would
seem to me that those identifiers would not normally have
to be entered with case being the *only* distinction (one
would normally write fileinput.FileInput, so a reasonably
smart tool might still be able to get the case right for
each of the two identifiers - or is this requiring too
much smarts from the tools?).  Maybe, if a _small_ fight
is needed to ENABLE (as opposed to FORCE:-) use of a
semi-smart, case-preserving tool, it MIGHT be worth it,
if the fight be small enough...?


Alex





From twanvds at xs4all.nl  Mon Jul  9 10:57:56 2001
From: twanvds at xs4all.nl (Twan van der Schoot)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:57:56 +0200
Subject: socket.connect timeout
References: <9icas4$lvp$1@news1.xs4all.nl> <K9j27.20247$i8.1580848@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9icged$9a4$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Hi Steve,

thanks,  I've found it and I going to try it,

kr

Twan
"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:K9j27.20247$i8.1580848 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com...
> "Twan van der Schoot" <twanvds at xs4all.nl> wrote in message
> news:9icas4$lvp$1 at news1.xs4all.nl...
> > Hi there,
> >
> > How do I increase the timeout period on a socket.connect()?
> > A peek in the source code of the socket object does reveal anything
> usefull.
> >
> >
> > FWI: I'm using Python 2.1 from ActiveWare for WinNT (running on
NT4.0SP6).
> >
> > thanks!
> >
> There's a module called timeoutsocket.py (take a look in the vaults of
> Parnassus), which allows you much better control over the timeouts on your
> sockets. Without this you can have problems.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>
>
>
>




From rashotts at mn.rr.com  Wed Jul 11 21:03:21 2001
From: rashotts at mn.rr.com (Russ Shotts)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:03:21 GMT
Subject: Developing Visual Studio add-ins in Python?
Message-ID: <tH637.142074$R7.25090399@typhoon.kc.rr.com>

Hi,

Has anyone used Python to create a Visual Studio add-in?  I need to perform
some fairly complex processing, and their VBScript macros just cannot handle
the task.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.





From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 31 19:16:58 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 1 Aug 2001 01:16:58 +0200
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EF5B77F1919duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cp7kwpz6uh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90F0DB45A38Bcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in
news:cp7kwpz6uh.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com: 
> There's a missing section in PEP and tutorial on
> "cooperation", a generalization of a "super" call that allows you to
> spell "call the next method in the chain" without naming its class
> explicitly.  No time to explain that now.

"super" interested me too. from your description, i think it's similar to 
Java's "super" keyword but extended to multiple inheritance.

that would simplify writing class hierarchies because what one would not 
need to search the correct supperclass for a method and renaming a class is 
made much simpler.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From jeffk at jdkoftinoff.com  Fri Jul 13 01:48:17 2001
From: jeffk at jdkoftinoff.com (Jeff Koftinoff)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:48:17 -0700
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E8BA0.BD0A7A9F@jdkoftinoff.com>

Daniel Klein wrote:

> I did the unspeakable and got into a discussion (with another person on another usenet group) on
> Python vs Java. This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden programs and
> that there are no reliable large applications (especially network apps) written in Python and that
> it is just used for small to medium scripting. I know better but I don't have any proof. Can anyone
> point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I already know about Zope
> and I can't find the list of companies on the Python website since they moved the page to PSA).
>
> Thanks for any information you can provide (or point me to).
>
> Daniel Klein

I used to think the same things with regards to dynamically typed languges versus statically type
languages.  The initial idea is that statically typed languages will tell you about the type errors
when it compiles.

Well, there is a bigger conceptual problem with the whole argument.  My new realization is that
unfortunately most C++ programmers have an attitude that if the program compiles and seems to work it
is done! (it compiled! ship it!) - real testing of objects is rarely seen.

How do you know your code is correct? You HAVE to test each part anyways.  People who say 'statically
typed languages are safer' must be relying on the compiler to tell them if their code is correct
without fully testing their code!  Yes, the compiler will complain if there is a type mismatch, but it
won't tell you that the body of your function is doing the correct job as the specification says! heh,
most c++ programmers don't even properly SPECIFY what each function/method is supposed to do.

So, you have to properly test your code anyways to make sure it is robust.  Any type errors in python
code would be caught then.  For people who do not make proper test code for their C++ objects, you
will find that the bugs in their code are MUCH more insideous than a type error.  And they creep in
EVERYWHERE.  So I would be inclined to say that static typing just gives you a false sense of security
and makes it easier to overlook proper testing.  For people who actually DO full testing on their C++
objects, I would be inclined to say that the static typing rules just make the code more complex.


Have fun

jeff koftinoff
jeffk at jdkoftinoff.com




From just at letterror.com  Sat Jul 21 09:16:47 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:16:47 +0200
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org> <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <3B5980BC.422232EC@letterror.com>

Mark Nenadov wrote:

> The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
> (www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
> wide variety of other languages.

I haven't looked at PDFLib in a long time. Have you also looked at
reportlab's pdfgen (www.reportlab.com)? If yes, how does it compare?

Just


From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 15:22:38 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:22:38 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <20010702212238.Q32419@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:17:24AM -0400, Fran?ois Pinard wrote:

> Fuzziness in this area does not bring us anything, really.  If you really
> want a method to extend an mutable, spell it out as we always did, similar
> to list.append(), say, but leave "+" and "+=" alone.

I think you misunderstand. This is and always was *my* intent for augmented
assignment, as well as *Guido*'s intent, as well as the intent of all but
one of the people who reacted to the augmented assignment PEP back when it
was written (for Python 2.0). I discussed this exact subject explicitly with
Guido, and he was quite clear in what he wanted augmented assignment for. It
works this way. It isn't going to change unless you come with arguments to
convince Guido, and he has already heard all arguments in this thread --
from me, before the implementation was checked in. I doubt he would have
gone for a pure syntactic sugar version of augmented assignment no matter
what I'd have said :)

Changing the implementation two releases *after* the fact is going to
require a lot more arguments, and more than just arguments to boot. I have
yet to find a case where the augmented assignment semantics trick newbies,
even newbies that are baffled by the three-scope-rule (which we still have,
despite nested scopes,) mutable-default-arguments, 'list.append()' (and
'list.sort()' and other mutating methods) not returning the list itself, and
more. Once they grasp the difference between mutable and immutable values,
and they need to do this at one time or another anyway, they also understand
the exact semantics of augmented assignment.

This thread reminds me a great deal about whether generators should be
defined using 'def' or 'generate' -- it took me one (1) generator to realize
how natural it was with def, and most (not all) counterarguments were
basically trying to tell me I was wrong to feel that way :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 11:42:35 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:42:35 -0700
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
Message-ID: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple precision
accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:

>>> from BNum import BNum as bn

>>> ab = bn('1.2340000')
>>> cb = bn('123.45')
>>> ab
1.2340000
>>> ab * cb
152.3373000
>>> (ab*cb).disp(2)
'152.34'
>>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
151.84
+++++++++++++++++++++??????!
>>> print 1.234 * 123.45
152.3373
>>> print ab*cb
152.3373000
>>> print float(ab*cb)
152.3373
>>> print '%8.2f' % float(ab*cb)
  152.34
>>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
151.84
>>> print str(ab*cb)
152.3373000

How is the argument being coerced for inclusion?  I would have thought
float(), but apparently not.

Any hints appreciated.  (Otherwise I'll have to try to find it in the
source!  ;-0)


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 06:07:21 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 12:07:21 +0200
Subject: Debugging reference count errors; PIL problem
References: <3B37D3BC.5000304@erols.com>
Message-ID: <j4lmm9ufmu.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Edward C. Jones" <edcjones at erols.com> writes:

> 1. What is currently the easiest way to track down reference 
> count errors?

I recommend to use an advanced C debugger; gdb is good enough.  There
are actually two kinds of errors: too many decrefs, and too few
decrefs. The former means that you will access memory that has already
been freed; the latter means you have garbage.

It would help immensely if you:
a) already know what objects leak exactly, and
b) have a small test cases that shows the leak.

In gdb, set a breakpoint on allocation of your objects. The set a
watchpoint on every change to the reference counter, and watch how it
evolves.

> 2. I compiled and installed Python 2.1 with the "--with-pydebug" 
> switch for "configure". Why do even trivial programs leave a 
> large number of unDECREFed objects? 

Not sure. Which objects in particular are left at the end?

> Is there any documentation for using the reference count debugging
> features?

Not that I know of. Once you are through with your problem, you might
consider writing up some stuff.

> 3. I compiled PIL. "import _imaging" fails with the message:
> 
> ImportError: ./_imaging.so: undefined symbol: Py_InitModule4
> 
> What's going on here?

Py_InitModule4 is renamed when using --with-pydebug. You need to
recompile PIL with the installation that you've configured
--with-pydebug. Make sure you don't mix header files of both
installations, nor sys.path; the renaming was introduced to detect
errors with mixed installations.

Regards,
Martin


From Pekka.Pessi at nokia.com  Sat Jul 21 14:52:10 2001
From: Pekka.Pessi at nokia.com (Pekka Pessi)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 21:52:10 +0300
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <pvae1y2jz9.fsf@agni.research.nokia.com>

In message <cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
>My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
>kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
>case-insensitively.  Myself, I am a case-sensitive person, but I can
>easily learn to work with case-insensitive systems.  It's possible
>that most programmers have case-sensitive minds, but I think that most
>non-programmers probably have case-insensitive minds.  And
>non-programmers are quite the majority. 

        Most non-programmers like to use identifiers in their native
        language.  Some people are happy with US-ASCII (like, Swahili,
        and perhaps Dutch), most Europeans are content with ISO Latin 1,
        but the vast majority would like to use Unicode.  Currently
        Python supports ISO Latin 1, but I think that Unicode is the
        future.  In my opinion, supporting Unicode is more valuable for
        more people than case-insensitivity.

>*If* there is any hard scientific evidence that case-sensitivity is a
>hindrance to learning to program (for most people), that would confirm my
>hunch.

        I have some experience of teching programming with AmigaBASIC by
        Microsoft, which was both case-insensitive and had ISO-Latin-1
        identifiers.  So, one could write program like this:

?iti=32:is?=35
lapsi1=is?/7
lapsi2=?iti/4
LAPSI3=ABS(lapsi1-LAPSI2)+LAPSI2+ABS(IS?-?ITI)
PRINT lapsi3

        However, this would not work. The Microsoft programmers were not
        clever enough to extend case-insensitivity to ISO-Latin-1
        characters: LAPSI2 is same as lapsi2, LAPSI1 is same as lapsi1 -
        but IS? is not the same thing as is?, nor ?ITI same as ?iti.
        Now *this* is nasty surprise.

        *Broken* case-insensitivity is not a minor wart.  Calling it
        hindrance would be an understatement.  It is a major pain.

        However, implementing the case-insensitivity properly is a real
        hurdle.  With Latin1, one may argue that it is doable, but
        actually you would have to known the language in which the
        identifiers are written (because casing rules vary from language
        to language). Doing that with Unicode is next to impossible.
        Really.
        
>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.

        If you plan to do it *properly*, go for it.  Otherwise, forget
        it.

>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

        That would be easier, and much more valuable (the tools could
        fix typos and propose similar sounding indentifiers, as well).

                                        Pekka


From bowman at acsu.buffalo.edu  Tue Jul 17 15:47:26 2001
From: bowman at acsu.buffalo.edu (Charles L. Bowman, Ph.D.)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:47:26 -0400
Subject: Installing NumPy on NT4
Message-ID: <3B54964E.223C19C6@acsu.buffalo.edu>

Hello,

  The installer, Numeric-20.1.0.win32-py2.1.exe, fails to run from a DOS
window, the "Start  run" window, or simply clicking on the file.  What
am I missing? 

Thanks.

Charles Bowman
Python2.1.1c1
NT4, SP3
HP Vectra XU 5/90C



From mcfletch at home.com  Sat Jul 21 20:19:22 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:19:22 -0400
Subject: VRML
In-Reply-To: <3B59F747.837D36B7@olen.to>
Message-ID: <000101c11243$f578ad80$a9807018@cr706570a>

http://members.home.com/mcfletch/programming/mcf_vrml.htm

That's in Python, though it requires the mxTextTools extension under the
covers.

HTH,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Joonas Paalasmaa
Sent: July 21, 2001 17:43
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: VRML


Jacek Pop?awski wrote:
>
> Hello. I am writing car game for Linux. To create 3D objects I use
Blender,
> save with alt+w which gives simple "videoscape format". I think VRML will
be
> much better.  It will be great to create converter between VRML and my own
> format. What I need is Python library which helps me read VRML. I searched
> www.python.org, freshmeat and sourceforge.  I found some projects, but one
is
> in C++ and not so easy (example app is huge!), seconds is in Python and I
can't
> find "download" section anywhere. Can you help me?

Use wrlexport.py, that uses Blender/Python API for exporting.
You can find it from
http://www.janw.gothere.uk.com/exportmesh.html#vrml1
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul  6 10:52:11 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 10:52:11 -0400
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? 
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org> <cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net> <mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org> <Lsd17.8383$e5.1082989@newsb.telia.net> <3dlmm2qlcv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <mailman.994426392.22032.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3dith6qfdw.fsf_-_@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
> Couldn't RPM do similar things?  It's got a somewhat stronger relationship
> to Python, so porting to Win/Mac might not be as difficult.

Stronger relationship?  There's a Python interface to the RPM C
library, hiding undocumented inside Red Hat, but that's about the sum
total of it.  I don't think we'll be able to borrow anyone's
implementation, apt or RPM or whatever.

--amk


From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 13:49:01 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:49:01 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <xll07.7615$B7.1404761@ruti.visi.com> <bebbba07.0107042305.114a9aab@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B44A88D.1AD69E29@home.net>

Russ wrote:

> I have done real-time programming in C++, and I used static or
> start-up memory allocation almost exclusively to avoid memory
> management overhead. It really helps execution efficiency, but it
> really sucks up memory. Memory is cheap these days, however. I would
> probably take the same approach in Python, if possible. (As I said, I
> am a Python beginner.)

I was waiting for someone with better understanding of Python internals
to address this, but since no one has...

Using static memory allocation with Python is impossible, and start-up
allocation would be very difficult, if not imposible. This is because of
Python's immutable types: a simple expression like:

i = i+1  (or I += 1, but I don't want to get into that!)

Creates a new number, and assigns it to the name, i. It does not change
the data at the address refered to bye the original i. This means that
you will be dynamically allocating memory almost constantly! 

You may want to consider looking into the Numeric module as well, the
Numeric Array type gives you the option of storing a bunch of numbers in
a pre-assigned array, so that:

A[i] = A[i] + 1  does, in fact, change the value at the same address,
but it also creates an intermediate value first. (A[i] += 1 does not)
You can also use this kind of notation:

add(A[i],1,A[i])  : the second A[i] tells the add function where you
want to store the result.

(python gurus: I suspect I have this at least a little wrong, please
feel free to correct me)

Anyway, what this tells you is that if you want statically allocated
memory with Python, you will have a very hard time enforcing it (if it
can be done at all) and, in fact, end up using a subset of Python, which
is not really Python at all.

In short: if you want a statically allocated, strongly typed language
with type chaecking before run time, you don't want Python. I think many
of us feel that those features are not required for mission critical
applications, but if you do, you need to find another language!

Another note, with all the disagrement in this thread, it's interesting
that no one seems to think that c/C++ would be a good choice either!

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From emdpek at chron.com  Fri Jul 27 18:29:34 2001
From: emdpek at chron.com (emdpek)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:29:34 -0700
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <mailman.996103958.4468.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <MdW77.10395$UB6.966994@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cxW77.10413$UB6.969993@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <7fd99f9.0107271429.ad4d668@posting.google.com>

> One more thing, the [funcmodifier] above might be changed to a 
> [funcmodifier_list] to allow 'protected classmethod' and the like.

Hate to do a "me, too" posting, but...  I really think this is
a *damn* good idea, and would love to see it implemented!

I did not know that class methods were now possible in 2.2, but
I like the proposed method much better.  More legible, more 
flexible, and would scale well with future enhancements!


From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Mon Jul 30 15:58:44 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 21:58:44 +0200
Subject: Debug your python code in emacs..
References: <m3zo9m9opq.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <m3vgka9ojv.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

| Maybe something to try to squeeze into the python-mode.el??

Checking latets python-mode I see that it has functionality to follow
execution when debugging, hmm dunno know if that is enough..

        /Andy




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 16:55:33 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:55:33 -0400
Subject: Make it a major version number change (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <3B5E30CE.2901DED0@engcorp.com> <cp66ch9gfc.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <u3d7kenju.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Unfortunately, all it seems to have done is spur this enormous
> flamewar.  It's really hard to remain calm when people start shouting
> "the leadership is wrong because I say so."

Those are definitely the messages to ignore and instead keep the blood
pressure down :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul 17 18:37:47 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:37:47 +0100
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9j2en5$q15$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

have you any examples on how to use py2exe???

Gary.

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> You need py2exe:
>
> http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/
>
>
> "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
> news:oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> > I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the
file
> > menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a
hand
> > with this it would be great.
> >
> >
>
>




From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Fri Jul 20 12:19:41 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:19:41 -0400
Subject: Large File Support
References: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca> <lru207zoqx.fsf@haasart1.dhcp.wg.waii.com>
Message-ID: <cTY57.266206$Z2.3225457@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Thanks for your suggestion Art.

I tried:

    $ CFLAGS="-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
    $ export CFLAGS
    $ ./configure OPT="-O2 ${CFLAGS}"

But when I ran make I got:



gcc -c -g -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I. -I./Include -DHAVE_CONFIG_H  -o
Obje
    cts/fileobject.o Objects/fileobject.c
    Objects/fileobject.c: In function `_portable_ftell':
    Objects/fileobject.c:267: incompatible types in return
    Objects/fileobject.c:275: warning: control reaches end of non-void
function
    make: *** [Objects/fileobject.o] Error 1

I looked in the Makefile and the CFLAGS I specified were not there where I
expected.

The following seems to work but I'd like to know if it seems correct to you:

1. Run $ ./configure
2. Edit the Makefile and change the OPT=  line near the top as follows:

    OPT=            -g  -O2  -Wall  -Wstrict-prototypes

        -to-



OPT=            -g  -O2  -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE  -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Wal
l  -Wstrict-prototypes

3. Run make

Its a bit of a pain to do this everytime ./configure is run but more
important to me is finding out if there is
something wrong with doing it this way? I am not a C programmer.

BTW: The Python 2.1 docs specify -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE instead
of -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE. I tried the above method both ways and it seems to
work.

Thanx in Advance

Here's the top section of the Makefile:

# === Variables set by makesetup ===

MODOBJS=          Modules/gcmodule.o  Modules/threadmodule.o
Modules/signalmodu
le.o  Modules/posixmodule.o  Modules/_sre.o
MODLIBS=        $(LOCALMODLIBS) $(BASEMODLIBS)

# === Variables set by configure
VERSION=        2.1
srcdir=         .

CC=             gcc
CXX=            c++
LINKCC=         $(PURIFY) $(CC)
AR=             ar
RANLIB=         ranlib

# Shell used by make (some versions default to the login shell, which is
bad)
SHELL=          /bin/sh

# Use this to make a link between python$(VERSION) and python in $(BINDIR)
LN=             ln

# Portable install script (configure doesn't always guess right)
INSTALL=        /usr/bin/install -c
INSTALL_PROGRAM=${INSTALL}
INSTALL_SCRIPT= ${INSTALL_PROGRAM}
INSTALL_DATA=   ${INSTALL} -m 644
# Shared libraries must be installed with executable mode on some systems;
# rather than figuring out exactly which, we always give them executable
mode.
# Also, making them read-only seems to be a good idea...
INSTALL_SHARED= ${INSTALL} -m 555

MAKESETUP=      $(srcdir)/Modules/makesetup

# Compiler options
OPT=            -g -O2 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -Wall -W
stri
ct-prototypes
DEFS=           -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
CFLAGS=         $(OPT) -I. -I$(srcdir)/Include $(DEFS)
LDFLAGS=
LDLAST=
SGI_ABI=
CCSHARED=       -fPIC
LINKFORSHARED=  -Xlinker -export-dynamic
# Extra C flags added for building the interpreter object files.
CFLAGSFORSHARED=
# C flags used for building the interpreter object files
PY_CFLAGS=      $(CFLAGS) $(CFLAGSFORSHARED)



"Art Haas" <arthur.haas at westgeo.com> wrote in message
news:lru207zoqx.fsf at haasart1.dhcp.wg.waii.com...
> "Rod MacNeil" <rmacneil at interactdirect.com> writes:
>
> > Hello NG,
> >
> > I need to build Python to include large file support on Redhat Linux
7.1.
> >
> > I tried the following instructions from section 8.1.1 in the Python docs
but
> > it doesn't work:
> >
> >     On large-file-capable Linux systems, this might work:
> >
> >
> > CC="-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> > export CC
> > ./configure
> >
> >
> > I think this fails because the variable CC is expected to have the
compiler
> > name (gcc).
> >
> > Does anyone have any alternative instructions?
> >
>
> Don't set `CC', set `CFLAGS' ...
>
> $ CFLAGS="-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> $ export CFLAGS
> $ ./configure
> ...
>
> You'll probably have to go in and edit the Makefile, to set these same
> flags for the `OPT' variable as well. Or, when you run `configure',
> you could ...
>
> $ ./configure OPT="-O2 ${CFLAGS}"
>
> ... and things should work. If you want to have debug info in the
> compiled program, add a `-g' to the OPT variable. Check the makefile
> when configure finishes to ensure that the largefile flags are in the
> OPT variable.
>
> --
> ###############################
> # Art Haas
> # (713) 689-2417
> ###############################




From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Wed Jul 11 12:50:48 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:50:48 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <It%27.3828$M9.1040127@typhoon.we.rr.com>

> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
> slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
> wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
> the cpu.

the following program will also peg the cpu

-----------------------------------------------------------
while 1: pass

-----------------------------------------------------------


does this mean the language isn't up to the task? now
subtitute any function call for the pass. as long as your
function is being called often enough for your programs
needs, then there shouldn't be any trouble.

so writing "while 1: move_monsters()" will peg the cpu, it
is not an indication that the program or the language is
not able to keep up. now of your loop was written something
like this...

interval = 1.0/30  #30fps
while 1:
    start = time.time()
    move_monsters()
    diff = time.time() - start
    if diff < interval: time.sleep(interval - diff)

...and it still pegs the cpu, then you've got a problem. if
the cpu is pegged it means the move_monsters is running slower
than the desired 30fps. if the move_monsters() function runs
quicker than each desired timeslice, then the program will sleep
the remaining time, freeing up the cpu.


anyways, my point is don't write python's speed off for burning
100% cpu. instead you should admire your OS for letting your app
run as efficiently as it does :]






From gergo.barany at gmx.net  Wed Jul 11 17:20:02 2001
From: gergo.barany at gmx.net (Gergo Barany)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 21:20:02 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at>

phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> [snip flamebait crap]

If anyone is going to to respond to this thread, *please* take
comp.lang.c out of the Newsgroups: list. We don't do advocacy here.
Followups set.
Thanks,

Gergo

-- 
When in doubt, follow your heart.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 21:50:26 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:50:26 -0400
Subject: i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field...
References: <9htlpd$ki$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <aAu07.20360$Lk6.1607969@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9htlpd$ki$1 at plutonium.btinternet.com...
> i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field, this is the code
i
> am using:
>
> [snip...]
>
> def getNew():
>     result1=str(newName.get())
>     print result1
>
> [snip...]
>
> Button(frame1, text="Add New Entry", command=getNew).grid(row=0,column=0)
> newName=Entry(frame1).grid(row=1,column=0)
>
> [snip...]
>
> it somehow doesn't work, any ideas?
>
Yes. It's clear that something is wrong with your program.

> P.S. no classes are used anywhere in this program.
>
Sorry to be unhelpful, but the exact nature of the error would require
psychic Python debugging abilities beyond the range of this ordinary mortal.
I presume the print statement doesn't print anything? Any other clues?

Perhaps you posted snippets because it's a long program. If so, reduce it to
essentials and post the whole thing (assuming it still exhibits the problem
behavior).

Good luck
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul 22 13:19:31 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:19:31 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <220720011019310436%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list at python.org>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:

> - unconditionally, there's a new operator // that will always do int
>   division (and an in-place companion //=).
> 
> - by default, / is unchanged (and so is /=).
> 
> - after "from __future__ import division", / is changed to return a
>   float result from int or long operands (and so is /=).

Given that it is written in stone that 1 / 2 will someday produce 0.5,
then the above seems to be the least bad way to get there.  (And yes,
I've used Pascal extensively for many years, but not recently...so div
wouldn't shock me...but it's not now a keyword and // is a decent
alternative.)

I don't think 1 / 2 producing 0 is broken, so I don't think it needs to
be fixed, but that view is unlikely to prevail.

A note on both case-sensitive and integer division:  if the language
had started out case-insensitive and with / returning float (or
rational) when not exact as integer, I would be against changing the
language to the present rules.  But neither set of rules is broken, and
neither needs to be fixed.  Ah, well...in 20 years it won't matter what
happens now for either issue.

  --John


From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 06:30:29 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 06:30:29 -0400
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com> <Xns90D59D0D33B09atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>
Message-ID: <luf8kt4t8e5urfata61qfu9c90otqi9puv@4ax.com>

On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:26:39 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd) wrote:

>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
><qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7 at 4ax.com>: 
>
>>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>>Todd) wrote: 
>>
>>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>>><n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>: 
>>>
<snip>
>>
>>Thanks Andy. That really did help.
>>
>>Now, might I ask how one gets "1, Andy, Todd" out of Gadfly and back
>>into a Python object for direct manipulation?
>>
>>
>>
>>Regards, Joe
>
>Blimey, hard questions now ;-) I haven't got gadfly on my machine so 
>apologies for any syntax errors, but try;
>

But easy for you, I see. :-)

>
>"""
>>>> connection=gadfly.gadfly()
>>>> connection.startup("jnso", ".\\ndata")
>>>> cursor.execute("SELECT st_id, first_name, last_name FROM students WHERE 
>st_id='1' ")
>>>> result=cursor.fetchone()
>>>> result
>( '1', 'Andy', 'Todd')
>"""
>
>This is standard DB-API functionality. I highly recommend the 'stuff' at 
>http://www.python.org/topics/database/ for general Python database 
>information, and try googling for 'SQL' for resources on the lovely 
>language. I wouldn't recommend anything that focusses too heavily on SQL 
>Server or Oracle though as they have some non standard extensions which may 
>come back and bite you on the bum if you try them in gadfly.
>

I am reading a book on SQL that covers MySQL. 

But, in this one post you covered my main problem. I could not find where the magic
words like "cursor.fetchall()" were coming from. I was reduced to looking at the
Gadfly code and making a list of magic code.

But, with DB-API spec I see where they are coming from.

All praise to Andy on this fine morning.

Thanks ever so much.




>What the code does is establish a 'connection' to the database (I borrowed 
>this from your original post so I'm presuming it works ;-), executes an 
>arbitary SQL statement (I haven't used variable substitution but its really 
>easy, honest) and then returns the results into 'result'. Note that the 
>return of any cursor fetch is always a tuple, its up to you to muck about 
>with that tuple and use its elements to populate an object if thats what 
>you want to do. If you are changing data items and want to write these back 
>to gadfly you need to do that via another SQL update statement - which I 
>will leave as an exercise for the reader.
>
>A final note is that in my example above I have used the 'fetchone' method 
>and blithely carried on, this is because my query where predicate is 
>reducing the result set based on the primary key so that I *know* that I'm 
>going to return one and only one row. Most of the time you don't have this 
>luxury so you will find the following construct *slightly* more useful;
>
>"""
>for i in cursor.fetchall()
>    <do something with i>
>"""
>
>blimey-I-feel-like-I've-been-channeling-the-martellibot-ly y'rs,
>Andy


Thanks again.

Regards, Joe


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 07:36:49 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:36:49 +0100
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9lbvbp.6o6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldhif.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 18 Jul 2001 21:19:54 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>It's not just you, but I don't agree, and it's not just me either.
>NameErrors, KeyErrors, and IndexErrors have saved me many times.  One of the
>things I didn't like about perl is how it magically created values on
>reference, and then I had to go hunt down the bad reference that created it.
>And I often store None in dicts and lists.  It would be weird if d.has_key(x)
>could be true or false while d[x] always evaluated to None.  That means that
>d[x] is implicitly creating a None when d.has_key(x) is false,

It doesn't, it's just returning a value. Though I can see how that
might be useful, e.g:

for word in words:
   freq[word] += 1

instead of in current python:

freq = {}
for word in words:
   freq[word] = freq.get(word, 0) + 1

change to:

for word in words:
   freq[word] += 1

Note this involves:

(1) if you refer to a variable that doesn't exist, it creatres it giving
it the value None

(2) None.__getitem__() makes it into a Dictionary

(3) Dict:__getitem__() on an item not found returns None

(4) None + a number equals that number

>
>Perl has undef, and lua has nil, and in both those languages saying 'x = nil'
>is equavalent to unbinding `x'

That's not what I intend.

> (I think that's true for perl, don't remember).
>If python's None were to be consistent we should remove NameError and del and
>have all unbound names evaluate to None.

Nor that. X = None should be different than X not existing.

>And lastly, and most importantly, that's the way the language works.  Some
>languages may work differently, but many languages also work this way.  Since
>obviously no one agrees, there is no "should".  And there has to be a really
>clear "should" to justify breaking code for it.

Oh sure, I'm not suggesting changfing how Python behaves, merely suggesting
that the other way of doing it is more productive.

>For the circumstances when it's handy to have a 'default value' dict or list
>that never raises, it's easy to subclass UserDict.

Indeed. Except you'd have to say x = MyDict({'a':1, 'b':2})
instead of just x = {'a':1, 'b':2}

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 07:32:42 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 11:32:42 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b46f35f.1276947673@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:50:35 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:
>
>> On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
>> 
>>    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
>> too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
>
>Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
>items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
>
Make coffee while downloading, then when it's on disk, you can
follow links _quickly_ and pleasantly (assuming separate html pages
for topics, and downloading them as a zipped archive).

Also, it's nice to be able to get to stuff even when the net is
bogged down. You must have a good reliable fast link ;-)


From matthewm at ihug.co.nz  Mon Jul  9 23:54:58 2001
From: matthewm at ihug.co.nz (Matthew)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:54:58 +1200
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
Message-ID: <3B4A7C91.44680652@ihug.co.nz>

Hi everyone,

A few more hours and my mind will be gone; burnt to a frazzle by this
most annoying, frustarting problem.

No matter what I try, I CAN NEVER get named keyword arguments to do
anything via PythonCOM Excel automation.

xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", Password='fred')
profers no error. The xcel window opens with Password Dialog  opem. Type
in 'fred' and s/s loads up. Named arg passed in call apparently ignored.

xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", password='fred')
generates error - Open got unexpected keyword argument 'password', so it
seems to me that somethings going on with passed named args

I've tried 10s of different xcel functions but with identical results.
Named args do zippo. Spell a keyword arg incorrectly and you get
reprimanded.

I've tried under NT4/2000 with both ActiveState2.0 build 203 &
ActiveState21.- build 210.

What am I overllooking/missing? Please help before it's too late...

Thanks, matthew.



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Mon Jul 23 01:32:27 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 08:32:27 +0300
Subject: TK + cmd.cmdloop() in threads (was Re: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
References: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <u7kx74dmd.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <yox1yneojvi.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9j5lq9$jl7$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <yox3d7o1a8k.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:


> I don't know what cmd.cmdloop() does, but if it's a TK thingie, what

No, cmd is a module that provides a line-oriented command interpreter
for console, nothing to do with TK.

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-cmd.html

> you're suggesting is a Bad Idea.  Generally speaking, it's safest to
> have only one thread accessing any external resource (GUI, file handle,
> DB connection, etc).

But one would think it's reasonably safe to access a resource one
thread at a time, via mutexes etc. (and some external resource, such
as sockets, almost *have to* be accessed in multiple threads). Is TK
really such a beast that all the access to TK widgets have to be
called via it's own event loop?

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul 15 20:55:48 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 00:55:48 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:28:39 -0400, Barry A. Warsaw <barry at digicool.com> wrote:
>    RS>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
>
>    RS> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on
>    RS> it.  Perl handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra"
>    RS> variables undefined, whereas python raises a ValueError
>    RS> exception.  What I'd like to do is have the extra field
>    RS> variables left as null strings.
>
>Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing a
>PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.

Please don't.  Or if you do, I hope it "lays the issue to rest".  I often use
unpacking from log files, with the assumption that the wrong number of fields
is a parsing error, and should be reported as one, not silently "fixed".  If
you are relying on your log files having the same number of fields, it is an
error if they don't.  If your log files have a variable number of fields, you
should split into a list and pick it apart more carefully.

And that's just for log files, I use this often to unpack tuples, and if I
pass in a non-conformant tuple, that's bad data and should break sooner rather
than later.

But mostly, it's a change that doesn't fix something which is clearly broken
(you could argue either way), but breaks existing code.  Even without that, I
argue that a bad pattern match should throw an exception and not assign None,
just like a bad array index should throw an exception and not assign None.
It's more consistent with the language.



Ruby allows * notation:

a, b, *c = sequence # `c' gets the rest of the sequence

which is cute, but I don't like it.  Just another random "convenient" little
trick to remember.  It's not half as useful as the 1.6 * apply trick.  Let's
go easy on the syntax gimmicks.


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 17 17:50:07 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 21:50:07 GMT
Subject: ANN: HB - Learn Python A Little Faster
References: <3B4FE9A6.DBBF3919@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B54B0F2.CC6300F5@tundraware.com>


For those of you following along with my "training wheels" python program,
I just updated it at:

http://www.tundraware.com/Software/hb/HB.tar.gz

This should be it for a while.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From desai at mcs.anl.gov  Thu Jul 26 12:46:45 2001
From: desai at mcs.anl.gov (Narayan Desai)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:46:45 -0500
Subject: PYTHONPATH
Message-ID: <yrxk80vhc3u.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>

Hi. I have tried to set PYTHONPATH from inside of an already executing
program and it reliably fails, ie

import os
os.environ["PYTHONPATH"]="/path"
import module_located_in_path

fails, while if I set this variable outside of the script in the
parent environment it works as expected. Is this not allowed? Am I
doing this wrong? Is there an alternative way to achieve the same
effect? thanks..
 -nld


From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Sun Jul 22 22:49:52 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:49:52 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995832157.30385.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5B9185.810ED4C8@wwc.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> [snip]

>
> > i-always-blamed-cauchy-and-weirstrass-for-tormenting-the-world-
> > with-epsilons-and-deltas-ly y'rs, Z.
>
> i-personally-blame-guido-for-letting-it-stand<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

Yes, yes.  Let's stop nattering about wedging division into the ring of
integers (1/2 is undefined, not 0, right?) and get on with adding the
hyperreals to Python.



From xyzmats at laplaza.org  Fri Jul 20 10:02:39 2001
From: xyzmats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:02:39 GMT
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b5839c3.147469179@news.laplaza.org>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:24:00 +0200, "Alex Martelli"
<aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

:"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
:news:3B4FBBD8.45F56742 at engcorp.com...
:    ...
:> Alex, please consider moving closer to the Eastern Standard timezone
:> so that you may answer my questions more quickly.  What's so special
:> about Italy anyway?
:
:Pasta, of course.  You guys can claim your pizza is as good as Italy's
:(I'd disagree, but there IS space for debate)

I don't think there's /much/ space for debate.  Some of the specialty 
pizza shops are producing nearly-comparable stuff, but the
run-of-the-mill stuff is, umm, let's say "different".  Best pizza I've
ever eaten was in France, actually...at a totally unassuming
restaurant in Cannes (not many miles from the border, so it's almost
Italy).

Oops, this appears to be badly off-topic (but tasty).

Mats Wichmann

(Anti-spam stuff: to reply remove the "xyz" from the
address xyzmats at laplaza.org. Not that it helps much...)


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Mon Jul 23 14:14:10 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:14:10 GMT
Subject: Sybase module 0.28 (Brown Paper Bag) released
References: <m3pubqd3i7.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au> <m3bsmd1try.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <Xns90E7CC126BADArcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Dave Cole wrote:

> I didn't post that (I posted the original a long time ago - but
> this isn't it).

>> Message-ID: <m3pubqd3i7.fsf at vole.object-craft.com.au>

Well, if it's a forgery, it's a pretty good one. Even the message-ID 
seems authentic. That is to say, it matches the form of the ID in your 
message closely. You might want to check if it's identical to the 
message-ID of your original message: if so, onlynews.com shouldn't have 
allowed it to be posted under that ID. Also, keepers of usenet-archives 
will _not_ be amused. (This might give you some leverage if onlynews 
isn't too helpful.)

Note carefully: if it *is* a duplicate message-ID, cancelling the 
message may not do what you expect.


> Looking at the path, who are onlynews.com?
> 
> Path: vic.nntp.telstra.net!intgwlon.nntp.telstra.net
>  !newsfeeds.ihug.co.nz!news.xtra.co.nz!nntp-relay.ihug.net
>  !ihug.co.nz!news-out.nibble.net!hub1.nntpserver.com
>  !cyclone-sjo1.usenetserver.com!news-out-sjo.usenetserver.com
>  !newsin.onlynews.com!newsout.onlynews.com!news1.onlynews.com.POSTED
>  !not-for-mail 


This is the same Path: header as it showed up on my server:

> Path: news.demon.nl!demon!bullseye.news.demon.net
>  !dispose.news.demon.net!demon!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn
>  !dca6-feed2.news.digex.net!intermedia!newsfeed1.cidera.com
>  !cyclone-sjo1.usenetserver.com!news-out-sjo.usenetserver.com
>  !newsin.onlynews.com!newsout.onlynews.com!news1.onlynews.com.POSTED
>  !not-for-mail

Theoretically, the Path: header could be forged too, but that wouldn't 
prevent the originating server from appearing somewhere in that line. 
Presumably, modern news servers wouldn't accept such a header form a 
normal client.

Looking at the common servers in the path, the posting must have 
entered the network at one of these servers:

 - cyclone-sjo1.usenetserver.com
 - news-out-sjo.usenetserver.com
 - newsin.onlynews.com
 - newsout.onlynews.com
 - news1.onlynews.com

Mind you, that's just a theoretical possibility: there's no evidence 
that header has been forged.



The following headers were added by the NNTP-sever, or so it would 
seem:

>> NNTP-Posting-Host: onlyNews customer
>> X-Complaints-To: abuse at onlynews.com
>> X-Trace: onlyNews customer
>> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:18:41 PDT
>> Organization: www.onlynews.com
>> Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:18:41 GMT
>> Lines: 56

Not too helpful, I'm afraid:

 - It seems to confirm onlynews.com is the originating server of the
   message.
 - We now know the timezone the news server is in. (PDT, isn't that
   Pacific Daylight saving Time?)
 - In all probability the sever inserted the Date: header, not the
   newsclient.

So it's a deliberate fake, it's highly unlikely that a newsreader was 
used to produce it, as those (AFAIK) never allow such detailed control 
over the generation of the headers. You could get close by using the 
same newsreader as the victim, but "Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) 
Emacs/20.5" isn't very popular [*], and it seems to insert it's own 
Date: header.

Of course, using Python and the nntplib-module you could be producing 
your own fake messages in about half an hour or less, and that includes 
the time to read the documentation, so that makes _everybody_ in this 
ng a suspect... ;-) 

Mind you, this may be just a newsadmin trying to be helpful by re-
distributing messages s/he thought had been lost due to a crash or 
something like that. Malicious forgeries are usually pretty crude, both 
with regard to technical skill as contents.


Robert Amesz
-- 
[*] Which is probably a good thing, as I really *hate* what the 
supercite function does to quoted text. Ugh! This might also be a 
convenient opportunity to point out that the latest userfor-draft 
*strongly* suggest you should use '>' for quoted text, and nothing 
else.


From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 07:44:27 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:44:27 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GGo3A8.CzM@leeds.ac.uk>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:09:05 -0400,
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:

> I--one of those professional programmers--write a Python script for
> someone who runs a business, or a non-profit, or an agency, to run on
> their CGI webserver.  This client knows not the first thing about Python
> or about programming, nor do they maintain the webserver, just rent
> space on it.  But still, this script does something useful for users of
> the website--order products, or request documents, or send data to a
> database.
> 
> I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
> upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in the future
> :-)).  Client's scripts break.

Interesting scenario.

Of course, this could happen with other s/w, too.  This really
says more about the policy of the web hosting company w.r.t.
upgrades than it does about the wisdom or otherwise of breaking
compatibility in a future version of Python.

Any web hoster worth its salt should at least run old and new
versions of the s/w in parallel and provide clients with the
opportunity to test programs in the new environment before
migrating.


Nick



From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Sat Jul 21 10:21:59 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 10:21:59 -0400
Subject: interpreter improvements
In-Reply-To: <5e8bd451.0107210040.2e2d9a0e@posting.google.com>
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
	<mailman.995692716.8559.python-list@python.org>
	<5e8bd451.0107210040.2e2d9a0e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <87ofqe1hx4.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) writes:

> Anyway, i spend all day in the interpreter and i was
> hoping to make it a more pleasant experience. I can't
> believe you can't do:
> 
> >>> foo(somereallylongbitofcodegoeshere,
> itsrealllybothersomeifyoumistype) [change a bunch of crap here]
> >>> !foo

You can't do this in Unix either.  With readline support you can use
emacs keybindings to go back, forward, search, etc., but no Python
interpreter that I know of messes with the syntax of the language to
enhance command history or expansion.  I think this is a good thing.
In shell these history and expansion tricks are part of the language,
that is "!foo" in shell means "run the last command starting with the
string 'foo'".  This is not part of the Python language and I don't
think you should be able to type something into the interpreter which
is not part of the language.

Now porting zsh's ZLE to Python is another matter entirely ;-)

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"May the source be with you."  -- Open Source Software mantra
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtZkAYACgkQjVztv3T8pzv/rACgs+o6Uva6bPpPP6INC6aYxJ/r
qBoAn2ZgZoiQQbfTbC1YOAHtfZd0e6SG
=HAOx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From fleet at teachout.org  Thu Jul 19 13:33:21 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:33:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: VariableSubstitution in commands or funtion names?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107191323200.25339-100000@fleet1>

Beautiful - Thank you!
				- fleet -

>   Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:36:58 GMT
>   From: "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> Subject:
>
>> Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith"
>> to a variable - CurCust.
>>
>> Now I want to do something like:
>> from cust import CurCust
>> print cust.CurCust["street"]
>
>If I understand correctly, try (not tested)
>
>import cust
>current = getattr(cust, CurCust)
>print current['street']
>
>etc
>
>Terry J. Reedy






From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 23:21:59 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:21:59 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <B784EAB7.14F50%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F8CD7.E8BD38B6@Lugoj.Com>

David Goodger wrote:
> Go ahead, keep Python the way you like it. Nobody's forcing you to upgrade.

True. No one is threatening anyone's physical well being. If someone uses
augmented assignment or list comprehensions in a module or an application,
and I find that might be a useful module or application, that technically
isn't *forcing* me to upgrade from 1.5.2. I could edit it. I could write my
own module or application. If I come on and complain about some bug or
problem in 1.4 and am told to upgrade to fix it, there is no force involved
there.

So technically you are correct.


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 12:43:16 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:43:16 -0400
Subject: parallel port?!?
References: <3B513D42.933A0445@iinet.net.au>
Message-ID: <3B5076A4.AD309756@engcorp.com>

Richard B wrote:
> 
> I would like to know how to communicate with the parallel port under
> python. Is this possible? If so can it be done under all operating
> systems that support python.

No.  There is no such thing as a truly cross-platform parallel port
solution, much as there is no cross-platform serial port support.

> I need to interface with the parallel port to send commands to a board
> connected to it. I have just come to grips with python, it is my first
> language, so I think this is what I should use to communicate with the
> parallel port so that I can implement new features latter on. 

You might consider reducing the scope of what you are trying to do,
or at least breaking it into phases.  You are apparently in the difficult
position of:

 1. Being new to programming, in general.
 2. Being new to Python.
 3. Needing a cross-platform solution (do you really?).
 4. Needing a solution, bad ("this is kind of important")
 5. Not having access to other resources nearby to help.

You have at least one thing in your favour: your fine taste in 
a first language to learn. :)

Python is definitely capable of doing this, but I suggest you
learn to walk before you run.  In this case, start by walking 
through the Python tutorial, if you haven't already.  

Also spend some time clarifying your specific requirements.  
Parallel port communication can take many forms.  For one thing,
are you trying to control individual data pins directly?  Do
you need handshaking?  Are you trying to stream data through
the port the way you might with, say, a parallel port tape drive?
Do you need bidirectional communications?  EPP or ECP?  Special
timing considerations?  The latter thing might be something
which actually *prevents* you from using Python, as it might
not be high-performance enough to provide you with the necessary
signal timing.

I'm guessing you need to be able to set up the data pins as
outputs, then place a particular bit pattern on them, then
toggle a handshaking line active then inactive.  If this is
the case, what you could do under DOS would probably be suitable
here.  That means finding a way of talking directly to the 
control registers of the parallel port, at 0x378 for LPT1
for example. 

A quick search on google.com didn't produce any useful
results for me, so my only other suggestion at the moment 
is to look into the win32all extensions produced
by Mark Hammond and available by following the links at
http://www.python.org/2.1 .  These provide direct access
to the Win32 API which doubtless has some routines that
could provide direct access.  

I know this is probably not a big help at the moment, 
and if I'd done this myself I'd send you something 
more useful.  I've generally tried to avoid using the 
parallel port to communicate with things because it 
is generally unreliable and complicated to use 
compared to a serial port... And I know *that* doesn't 
help when you don't have control over the nature
of the other device...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From treaves at silverfields.com  Fri Jul 13 09:18:33 2001
From: treaves at silverfields.com (Timothy Reaves)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:18:33 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
In-Reply-To: <20010712231559.Q5396@xs4all.nl>
References: <20010712133304.3415243d.treaves@silverfields.com>
	<20010712231559.Q5396@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <20010713091833.1906590d.treaves@silverfields.com>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:15:59 +0200
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 01:33:04PM -0400, Timothy Reaves wrote:
> > On 12 Jul 2001 13:18:35 -0400
> > Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > What output do you get when you run the last command, 
> > > with the -v flag?
> 
> Please re-read Alex's posting, and compare it with yours. You are using '>'s
> where he typed '\'s. There is an important difference :)


	That was because I copied it from the e-mail.  Live and learn.  This is the output, which is a bit long.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: py.out
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 3919 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010713/e46bc075/attachment.obj>

From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:59:40 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:59:40 GMT
Subject: Opcode compatible division
References: <mailman.996084400.32614.python-list@python.org> <cpae1s935l.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b603e72.476839078@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpae1r5p31.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:

> Is from future a one-way effect for the rest of the interpreter's execution?

It is done on a per-module basis -- each module that wants the effect
must contain a future statement.  Read PEP 236, it spells it out
in nauseating detail:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0236.html

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim.leeuwvander at nl.unisys.com  Tue Jul 17 17:27:18 2001
From: tim.leeuwvander at nl.unisys.com (Leeuw van der, Tim)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:27:18 -0500
Subject: Binary ZODB packages for Win95?
Message-ID: <DD0DC14935B1D211981A00105A1B28DB033ED364@NL-ASD-EXCH-1>

Hello,

Does anyone know of any download-location for binary packages of standalone
ZODB for Win95?

I don't have a compiler for Windows, so I depend on binary packages for this
OS!

With thanks,

--Tim



From web2ed at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  6 14:58:58 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 11:58:58 -0700
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>

This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.

Python will only appeal to scientific developers researching the
"impossible to do" until it handles databases on a first class scale. 
Oh, and another point, ODBC is dead.  Microsoft has already abandand
it for OLEDB a COM based library.  References to ODBC need not apply.
What is needed are RAW Native Drivers at the C/C++ level.

Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles Postgres
and MsSQL that would be a bonus, however, most $$ gigs don't use the
last two db's much so most of the focus should be on the "big five" or
at least on the big three (Oracle, DB2, and SQL_Server).

In my opinion, what has held Python back from going primetime virtical
is it's lack of commercial grade db support, and I beleive it will
continue to do so until a tribe of Python-developers gathers to
accomplish this end.  I have for a long time felt that this has
warranted the support of the General himself """_GV_""" if for nothing
else than for moral support and inspiration to see this call to it's
end.

The Python cummunity should throw it's best resources at this void
until this call is answered.  Once a baseline is established, many
intermediate developers could mantain such a platform.  The main need
of the hour is to draw a crowd, once the crowd exists--it will
self-sustain.

-zERO


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Thu Jul 12 18:20:39 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 00:20:39 +0200
Subject: Problems getting mod_python up n' running
References: <4e2ddb70.0107121317.4c883f6c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <wz1ynlrdqg.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> "Jonas Bengtsson" <jonas.b at home.se> (JB) writes:

JB> Furthermore I have put following files under
JB> e:\program\python21\libs\mod_python:

That should be in e:\program\python21\mod_python

JB> And my environment path contains:
JB> E:\Program\Python21;e:\Program\Python21\libs

You mean PATH? The last part is not necessary.

JB> What can be the problem?

See above.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Mon Jul  2 12:43:36 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:43:36 -0700
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B40A4B8.E8F3DC04@ccvcorp.com>


Roy Smith wrote:

> Having now used python for about 4 years, I still think
> indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is just
> too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without noticing),
> especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one place to
> another.  When such whitespace munging makes the code look ugly, it's
> simply a minor annoyance.  When it changes the meaning of the code, it's a
> language design mistake.

Not to say that your opinion isn't considered, but...

It seems to me, that it's just as likely that cut-and-paste is as likely to
result
a missed bracket as it is to result in munged whitespace.  And I, personally,
find it a lot easier to track indent levels than I do to search out brackets or

whatnot within large code blocks.

I imagine that it eventually boils down to a personal-taste distinction...

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From pobrien at orbtech.com  Sun Jul 15 13:35:24 2001
From: pobrien at orbtech.com (Patrick K. O'Brien)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:35:24 GMT
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <wvk47.45349$J91.2359350@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Here is a class that might give you some ideas. If you combined this with
raw_input('What do you want to pd?') as the method you might get something
close to what you want. I haven't actually used this class with something
that needed a parameter but it should be doable.

class PseudoKeyword:
    '''A callable class that implements a method that is passed as a
parameter.

    Good for creating a pseudo keyword in the python runtime environment.
The
    keyword is really an object that has a repr() that calls itself which
calls
    the method that was passed in the init of the object. All this just to
avoid
    having to type in the closing parens on a method. So, for example:

        >>> quit = PseudoKeyword(SomeObject.someMethod)
        >>> quit

    SomeObject.someMethod gets executed as if it had been called directly
and
    the user didn't have to type the parens, like "quit()". This technique
is
    most applicable for pseudo keywords like quit, exit and help.
    '''

    def __init__(self, method):
        # XXX Should probably check that this is a callable object.
        self.method = method

    def __call__(self):
        self.method()

    def __repr__(self):
        self()
        return ''

---
Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech
"I am, therefore I think."


"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b4fa037.1845423078 at wa.news.verio.net...
> Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:
>
> def pd(x):
>     try:
>         print x.__doc__
>     except:
>         print '(no doc string)'
>
> so that, e.g., I can type
>
>     pd(vars)
>
> and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
> I would like to to type just
>     pd vars
>
> Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?
>
> If not, would there be breakage if python were modified to make
>
>     foo whatever-up-to-EOL
>
> equivalent to
>
>     foo(whatever-up-to-EOL)
>
> when it would be a syntax error otherwise? I.e., I'm wondering
> if the grammar could be modified to do this by changing trailer
> to accept arglist NEWLINE if _all_ else fails, and treat a match
> as if it was an arglist. Leading '(' or '[' ambiguity would be
> resolved in favor of normal arglist or subscriptlist.
>
>




From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 15:52:31 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:52:31 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <15196.17040.65029.654718@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHAEFPCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Skip Montanaro]
> I'm not a denizen of the edu-sig list, but Guido has mentioned the
> Alice folks (I think they are the ancestors of the VPython folks)
> before as a significant influence on his ideas about this subject.
> Perhaps you would class them as educators and not numeric people, but
> I would throw them in the numeric camp.

Does it make one whit of difference to anything here?  If so, I read Matt
Conway's doctoral dissertation when this issue was still new, and it's far
more about pedagogy than numerics in Alice.




From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 09:33:00 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 06:33:00 -0700
Subject: Boolean idioms (was Re: re Challenge: More Compact?)
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iuqec$1bh$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>
>Well, it's un-Pythonic to try to emulate Perl undef via Python None; it's
>idiomatic to return 0 for false and 1 for true, [...]

I know that it's a frequent Python idiom to use 0/1, but where is it
specifically un-Pythonic to use None/1?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Wed Jul 11 19:48:07 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:48:07 GMT
Subject: Help With filter().
Message-ID: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

What does filter do? I don't understand when I read it other places.




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 13 15:26:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:26:58 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Unfortunately, while code a chemist writes is very likely never
> going to rely on the current integer division behaviour, code
> written by those of us in computers who tend to work closely 
> with the hardware (where we are constantly thinking in terms
> of bytes, words, signed and unsigned, memory locations, bits
> and nybbles, etc.) will fairly often write code which depends 
> on the current behaviour.

Ah, but you professional programmers can easily be trained.  Just the
fact that you can already juggle all those concepts in your head means
that you won't have much trouble learning the additional fact that i/j
returns a float and that integer division must be spelled as i div j.

> I can't see a simple answer to this.  It looks as though there
> are two camps, to both of whom it is absolutely essential that 
> Python act in a specific way.  And the two ways are completely
> incompatible.

No, that's not it.

The problem is that you have written much more Python code than the
chemists of the world, and if I were to change the language, you would
have to go through all that code to find out which slashes to replace
with 'div'.

> Doesn't that mean that the only solution that can be accepted
> without causing serious complications is to make the change,
> but clearly support a command line option (or some other
> configuration setting) to enable the current behaviour,
> so those who have depended on integer division can continue
> to run old code under the new engine without fear of
> breakage?

This has been said many times in other contexts: command line options
to change a particular behavior are evil.  It would mean that library
modules could't depend on either behavior.

If we're going to give users a choice, it's going to be some kind of
per-module switch.

> (I know, it's not perfect, but with a little more design
> thought it can probably come pretty close.  For example,
> code that might have to run on someone else's system, which
> might not have the correct setting for integer division,
> can use a sys.setIntegerDivision(1) call to force the
> desired behaviour.  Or does this have to be on a module-
> by-module basis?

Yes, this has to be on a per-module basis.

> Anyway, that's not my problem. :-)

Yes it is!  Unless we find a solution that *works* you will be
affected.

> So, O' BDFL, why not take the most Pythonic approach
> and use a solution which *pragmatically* achieves a good
> practical balance but which causes purists always to feel
> a little uneasy and which can lead to perpetual discussion
> about "warts" and why other languages are better and.... ;)

Believe me, I'm trying.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From david at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 13:01:24 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:01:24 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.996052189.14819.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107250901.3910d4e1@posting.google.com>

tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer) wrote in message news:<mailman.996052189.14819.python-list at python.org>...
> Guido,
> 
> I deeply respect your language design skills and I appreciate your
> ongoing improvements. I'm impatiently looking forward to using many of
> the features new in 2.2.

I'd like to echo these sentiments. One of the things I like about
Python is its pragmatism. For example: although it provides classes
and objects, it is forgiving to those of us who were raised without
them.

[Problems associated with backwards compatibility snipped.]

>   What if `/` applied to two integer values returned neither an
>   integer nor a float but an object carrying the float result but
>   behaving like an integer if used in an integer context?
> 
>   For instance:
> 
>       >>> x = 1/2
>       >>> type(x)
>       <type 'Ratio'>
>       >>> print "%d %f %s" % (x, x, x)
>       0 0.5 0.5
>       >>> 2 * x
>       0
>       >>> 2. * x
>       1.0
> 
>    The difficult issue here is how `integer context` is defined.
>    Should multiplication by an integer be considered an integer
>    context? Pro: would preserve correctness of existing code like
>    `(size / 8) * 8`. Con: is incompatible with Rationals which might
>    be added in the future.

A problem arises if the type of the result (x in this example) is not
immediately resolved, requiring this context to be carried forward. A
"neutral" operation immediately following the assignment above, such
as a print statement (for want of a better example) or even another
division would further complicate the issue by leaving the
interpretation of the result until later when the original context is
unavailable.

[...]

> - If there is a possibility of specifying division semantics on a
>   per module case (via a directive or the file extension), it should
>   also be possible to specify the semantics for thingies like
>   `compile`, `execfile`, `exec`, and `eval`.
> 
>   This only works if absence of a semantics indicator means old-style
>   division. 

This has to be the best way to go. A substantial change to the
behaviour of the language should require the module author's explicit
intent.

>   I think this would go the farthest to alleviate compatibility
>   problems. I understand your desire to avoid dragging the past around
>   with you wherever you go and I like Python for its cleanliness. But
>   in this case, it might be worthwhile to carry the ballast.

If the behaviour of the / operator can be assigned on a per module
basis, and it is made explicit where changes to the default behaviour
occur, then what is the harm of carrying the old (standard) behaviour
forward?

Without wanting to detract from Christian's points above, I'd like to
make a few observations. I apologise in advance if you've read these
too many times already:

I migrated to Python from RLaB (a Matlab-like language) and was
surprised by the behaviour of integer division. However, reading the
tutorial made it clear that the / operator performed "integer
division" and that the % operator gave the modulus(?) of the result.
Since this is the main (most convenient) way to perform integer
division on current versions of Python, one would expect that to
change the behaviour of / would be to break most code which previously
performed integer division.

Introducing // for int/int -> *float* (as has been suggested as a
counter-measure to // for int/int -> int) isn't going to help since it
will either be a special case operator, or it will have to be extended
to work with float/float and mixed type operations. Otherwise
programmers will have to explicitly check for two integer arguments
and apply a different operator in that case.

I expect that under other circumstances there would be an outcry over
introducing // at all, as it going against the general preference for
readability in Python.

In my opinion, PEP 238 is something of a half measure. It takes away /
for integer division yet doesn't introduce the "div" keyword (or the
"mod" keyword for that matter). However, if it did include these then
I suspect that it would attract even more criticism.

Since one outcome of the PEP is to have int/int -> rational, then
shouldn't we wait until rationals have become standard issue, or have
they already? Otherwise we'll have to go through this all over again,
and nobody wants that.



One solution to the problem that / doesn't do what is expected, at
least during interactive mode, is to retain the standard behaviour by
default with the option to change this on a per module basis. However,
in interactive mode, the default would be to have the new division
behaviour switched *on* with a suitable warning reminding the user
that this is the case. Therefore, nobody is surprised at the command
line, and old modules continue to work as normal.

Although I expect that there creatures that are immune to this
particular magic bullet. <wink>

pragmatism-always-wins-ly y'rs - David


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 11:58:11 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:58:11 +0200
Subject: timed event??
References: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9iv2uk0pcu@enews2.newsguy.com>

"NJM" <njm at rectec.net> wrote in message
news:tl5t1fprkuobd at corp.supernews.com...
> I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can someone
> tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to find any
modules
> that will help me.

Maybe standard module sched...?


Alex





From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul  8 11:38:22 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 10:38:22 -0500
Subject: csv to XML converter crash and burn
In-Reply-To: <tkgnj6feescc0d@xo.supernews.co.uk>
References: <tkgnj6feescc0d@xo.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15176.32366.287906.974092@beluga.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Julius" == Julius Welby <jwelby at waitrose.com> writes:

    Julius> I just got all public spirited and posted this:
    Julius> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66003

    Julius> It's a module for transforming csv to XML. It works fine for cvs
    Julius> strings where no escaped commas or "" appear but.....

    Julius> Unfortunately I now realise I didn't have a sufficient grasp of
    Julius> the csv format.

Julius,

You might want to take a look at Dave Cole's recently announced CSV parser:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=CSV&hl=en&group=comp.lang.python.*&safe=off&rnum=3&ic=1&selm=mailman.992813221.29993.clpa-moderators%40python.org

Use that for parsing, then restrict your code to generating XML.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 17 21:20:30 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 01:20:30 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <23891c90.0107170315.36f571e9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l9p15.cm.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 17 Jul 2001 04:15:40 -0700, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> wrote:
> sill at optonline.net (Rainy) wrote in message news:<slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill at sill.silmarill.org>...
>> 
>> "I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
>> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>> in perl :-/."
> 
> I can't stand it when that kind of thing happens. In your case, you
> were using a language with some pretty potent tools available for it
> to get the job done. A similar kind of idiocy was once imposed on me,
> forcing me to rewrite various CGI-based programs in C++ of all
> horrors. Insane!

That's just bizarre! Good thing they haven't heard that assembly is
the fastest, they'd have you do CGI stuff in it ;-).

> 
> Paul


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From guido at zope.com  Mon Jul 30 08:36:22 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:36:22 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:22:21 EDT."
             <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDILCAA.tim.one@home.com> 
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDILCAA.tim.one@home.com> 
Message-ID: <200107301236.IAA09315@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[Tim Peters]
> Scheme says and reveals nothing about internal representations.

Neither does Python, IMO.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul  3 10:37:43 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:37:43 +0200
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On 3 Jul 2001 13:29:29 GMT, David LeBlanc <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote:
>In article <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025 at 4ax.com>, mkx at excite.com 
>says...
>> Do the folks at MS _want_ us to find them unreasonable?
>> 
>> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010702/tc/ms_attacks_open_source_1.html
>> 
>> "The license for Microsoft's Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is in its
>> second beta release to developers, says that it may not be used with
>> any software under the Free Software Foundation's General Public
>> License (GPL) and six other forms of "potentially viral software."
>> That language refers to open source code's freely available and shared
>> code licensing agreements. The wording of the license cites the Linux
>> OS and the Perl scripting language as examples."
>> 
>> 
>> 
>Now that Microsoft has bought their way out of most of the anti-trust 
>suit (cheap too! nationa news reported only a few hundred thousand 
>dollars contributed to Bush's campaign and his inaugral ball), it's only 
>a matter of time before the license for the OS prohibits installation of 
>open source 3rd party software. After all, you only pay for the computer 
>- MS seems to think they own it otherwise. (One can only hope that the 
>states attornies general go forward with their anti-trust suit and so 
>does the EU.)
>
>I wonder how much they paid for the UK government with it's de-facto "MS 
>all the way" policy? You have to wonder what was going through the Blair 
>government's mind when they flew government ministers to Redmond to kick-
>off the UK government services on the web project. There's a wee bit of 
>excitement over there right now since the services that are already up 
>can only be accessed by Internet Explorer due to reliance on propietary 
>certificates.
>
>XP: the coming evil - you thought it was bad now? Just wait.

You don't try to spread FUD, do you? No matter what MS or any other company
writes into their "license agreements", not everything is compatible with
German or US or whatever laws.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Wed Jul 25 17:21:12 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:21:12 GMT
Subject: Redirecting broswers in Py
References: <3B5F0AC8.BF54029C@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <m3vgkgaemy.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

First of all, a hint.. you can use """ or ''' or ' to surround
strings, so you could do:

c.send("""<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"Content=0;Host="http://www.someurl.com">""")

Hmm reading this example you seem to be missing a ; between refresh
and content, could be a 'news' bugg.

Are you only sending this answer?? as reply? You know that you need to
send status back also with headers and so on, like 

HTTP/1.0 200 ok
[headers]
[empty line]
[HTML containting your redirection]

An alternative could be to send a "HTTP/1.0 302 Redirect" answer to
the browser, including as header the location to move to.

        /Andy


/ Adonis Vargas <deltapigz at telocity.com> wrote:
| the script accepts the connection then processes information once that
| is done i want to be able to send the broswer to X page. i have found
| something and used it in the line below:
| 
| c.send("<META
| HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"Content=0;Host=\"http://www.someurl.com\">")
| 
| but i think im going at this completely wrong.
| 
| any help would greatly be appreciated.
| 
| Adonis


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 26 16:35:15 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:35:15 GMT
Subject: Numeric.transpose (incorrect documentation)
References: <3B6076D4.68B6840C@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <7a%77.49685$Cy.6379277@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Curtis Jensen" <cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu> wrote in message
news:3B6076D4.68B6840C at bioeng.ucsd.edu...
> the documenation for the "transpose" function for the "Numeric" module
> seems to be incoorect, or at least missleading.

The correct place for this is probably the numpy-discussion list, so I'm
cc'ing it there. Perhaps the Paul Dubois will see it and have some ideas for
clearing of the docs.

> It says that transpose is suppose to return a "new" array.  In fact it
> does not.  It returns a pointer to the same array, only with transposed
> indicies.

It's been a while since I looked at the NumPy docs, so I don't recall what
conventions they use here. However, transpose does return a new array, it
just points to the same data as the original. If a=transpose(b), "a is b" is
false and "a.shape == b.shape" is false, so clearly they are different
objects (i.e., different arrays). You know most of this,
as you demonstrate down below, I just wanted to make the point that there is
a difference between a new array and new data.

Note that nearly every operation that can return a reference rather than a
copy does so. Even slicing, if b=a[3:5], then 'b' holds a reference to the
same data as 'a'. Some functions go so far to return a reference when they
can, but otherwise copy. See ravel for example -- it copies the data if its
argument is not contiguous, otherwise it uses a reference. Now _that_ can be
confusing! Useful though.

-tim

> consider the example:
>
> Python 1.5.2 (#4, Sep  5 2000, 10:29:12) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> from Numeric import *
> >>> foo = zeros([5,10])
> >>> bar = transpose( foo )
> >>> foo
> array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
> >>> bar
> array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
> >>> foo[0,2] = 1
> >>> foo
> array([[0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
> >>> bar
> array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [1, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
> >>>
>
>
> if bar was truely a new array, then changes to foo would not affect
> bar.  In the example above, it does.  This way actualy works better for
> my purposes, however, the documentation is missleading.
>
> --
> Curtis Jensen
> cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
> http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
> FAX (425) 740-1451




From donn at drizzle.com  Tue Jul  3 03:43:17 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:43:17 -0000
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>  <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>  <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>  <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>  <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>  <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>  <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>  <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <mailman.994135685.10748.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <994146195.807921@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com>:

| Expecting the change of something  is one thing and observing it's
| incorrectness is another. Be what may about the current implementation
| and future of Python, it is simply wrong that a = a + 1 is evaluated
| differently than a += 1.
|
| I'm not sure that this will matter much in the scheme of things;
| however, I do know that this behavior will likely always be surprising
| to the uninitiated. The equivalency of a = a + 1 to a +=1 is
| something that I'd wager is the first instinct of programmers
| approaching the form.

Probably, though that might just mean programmers approach from C.

The thing that I like about all this, it's good to hear what
sounds like a consensus that Python programmers need to have
some appreciation of the object/reference/binding/namespace
thing that happens when we assign.  We can't reasonably say
"don't worry, it will just work", we can't pass it off as an
esoteric internal detail, you need to get this model from the
start.  Left to your own devices you might not get it.  If you
don't, you can't accurately predict what your code will do.

If augmented assignments confuse a few people, but the
potential for confusion leads authors and teachers to take
more pains early on, to firm up these notions before +=
can lead folks astray, I predict a net gain.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Jul 26 20:45:14 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:45:14 +0200
Subject: Python equivalent of two Perl statements
References: <mailman.995644438.3940.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jqdiq$ppb$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote:
...
> On 20-Jul-2001 Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
>> What is the equivalent of these Perl statements in Python?
>> 
>> $time = scalar(localtime);
>> print "This FTP request started on $time \n";
>> 

> import time
> now = time.ctime(time.time())
> print now

or any of these fine printing lines:

  print  "This FTP request started on %(time)s \n" % locals()
  print  "This FTP request started on %(time)s \n" % {"time": time}
  print  "This FTP request started on %s \n" % time

-- 
groetjes, carel


From lomax at pumpichank.com  Tue Jul 10 01:12:01 2001
From: lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Swelterpie" Lomax)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:12:01 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
	<2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
	<cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com>
	<mailman.994696935.26488.python-list@python.org>
	<090720011856254589%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <15178.36513.530758.627272@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "JWB" == John W Baxter <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> writes:

    >> bass tech

    JWB> Sorry, but my not so nimble mind wondered why a technician is
    JWB> needed to deal with those passing fish on a musical tour.
    JWB> Probably a union thing.  ;-)

No, it is because they emit the most harmonious sub-200Hz fundamentals
when stroked just right, i.e. behind the gills, and with a vigorous
circular motion.  They are tricky beasts to handle, but so much more
cooperative than your average contrabasso guitarist.

which-in-my-experience-you-never-want-to-stroke-especially-not-vigorous-ly 
    y'rs, - frank



From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul 19 14:32:32 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:32:32 +0200
Subject: dnslib license?
References: <3B56DCCB.6EF0DEED@stroeder.com> <3dlmlkyj8p.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3B5727C0.79B8DCAC@stroeder.com>

Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> 
> BTW, personally I'd vote for extending the DNS code and adding it as
> dnslib.py to the standard library, rather than having it be a separate
> project.

Since Guido suggested the same this seems to be the master plan...

Ciao, Michael.


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 10:14:52 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 10:14:52 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B47195C.E5E48F8F@engcorp.com>

Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
> GvR:
> > I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> > mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> > messenger from the future :-).
> 
> I suspect that some newbies and
> CP4E people would find *that* (div()) strange.

I suspect that newbiews and CP4E people rarely need the integer
division behaviour and wouldn't care or even realize about div().

In my mind integer division is usually related to operations
I think about in terms of the processor (maybe by picturing
the assembly code or something).  From this point of view,
div() is actually probably more reasonable than // or x div y.

I think // could actually be the worst as from a readability
point of view it looks too much like just / and could lead
to tricky bugs.

If div() is used, then mod() and divmod() should also both
be present, again thinking from the point of view of the 
way processors work and the assembly code (producing the 
remainder in other registers simultaneously with the 
quotient).

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From shalehperry at home.com  Fri Jul 20 13:07:21 2001
From: shalehperry at home.com (Sean 'Shaleh' Perry)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:07:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Python equivalent of two Perl statements
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526F@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010720100721.shalehperry@home.com>

On 20-Jul-2001 Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Thanks!  I will try that.
> 

FYI, the python time module is essentially a wrapper around the POSIX time
functions.  do a 'man ctime' and you will be on the right track.



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Fri Jul 27 11:31:03 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:31:03 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tm3298o5hut5d1@news.supernews.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996105586.6334.python-list at python.org...
> [John Roth]
> > After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> > threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
> > for real use.
>
> Hmm.  That suggests to me you haven't really used it.

I'm currently writing a major application.


> > Now, I've got a slightly different background here. Much of my
> > professional life was in IBM mainframe shops,
>
> Did IBM invite you to their internal bitch sessions?  This is Open Source,
> John:  it's *all* out in plain view.  Heck, I'm the closest thing Guido
has
> to a PR department <yikes!>, and PEP 238 in particular is talking about
> something that may change in 2 years.

I've attended Guide, and occasionally Share, for close to a decade. That's
an invitation only (users of IBM computers only) session that goes way
back. Yes, I do know exactly what I'm talking about here. Release to
release compatibility is one of IBM's selling points at the executive
management level.
>
> > where installing a new version of the operating system, major utilities
> > and language processors was essentially **guaranteed** not to break
> > running applications.
>
> I have no idea what "essentially **guaranteed**" means.  Was this a clause
> in a legally binding contract?  Or a hyperbolic way of saying you usually
> didn't have much trouble?  If it was legally binding, how much would you
pay
> to get the same kind of clause in a Python contract?  The community's
> aggregate commitment to that cause so far is $0.00 <wink>.

See the previous comment about "legally binding." Those promises were made
as conditions of sale. Consult your lawyer about ramifications.

> > I can remember numerous upgrades where I had to do absolutely
> > nothing on the applications side.
> > ...
>
> Believe it or not, most Python upgrades are like that too -- although we
> don't currently charge you Big Bux for the opportunity to be locked to IBM
> iron, I'm sure we could set a price for that too <wink>.
>
> an-ibm-mainframe-shop-this-ain't-ly y'rs  - tim

I see you've totally missed the point, Tim. The watchword in large,
successful
sites is management of risk. Lots of people like to sneer at IBM, but they
got where they are by presenting a low-risk alternative. Some people like to
live on the edge, some don't.

John Roth
>
>
>




From lomax at pumpichank.com  Fri Jul 20 13:36:42 2001
From: lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Time's Up!" Lomax)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:36:42 -0400
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before
	 12:00  AM 21 July 2001!!!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526D@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <15192.27690.424252.623624@anthem.wooz.org>

If all Python users do not sync with the atomic clock before midnight
tomorrow, Guido's time machine will automatically revert all
temporally backported patches.  This means bye bye "class", "def", and
"yield".  We'll be left with Guido's original dream for Python (ca
0.8.3) as an Import Calculus Language.  Gordon would have to be voted
LFDB and imputils become central to the language (in fact, it would
become the only core module).

There isn't anything that Guido can do to stop this; as it is clearly
stated in the owners manual, tinkering with the machine's internals in
this way will cause Universal Chaos and Havoc.  You really don't want
all Python programs ever written to suddenly start un-executing in
reverse do you?  I can't de-bear the thought of IEEE 754 support being
re-un-added, but without the least most unsignificant digits on the
anti-left.

cornering-the-market-on-Python-driven-personal-atomic-watches-ly
    y'rs, - frank



From paulsid at home.com  Sat Jul  7 18:10:44 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 16:10:44 -0600
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B4788E4.175ACBFC@home.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> if hasattr(myobject, "someattribute"):
>      foo()
> else:
>      bar()
> is clean enough, IMHO...

Oops, I didn't know about hasattr().  Yes, that certainly does the
trick.  Though I have to say the syntax is a little odd (what with the
quotes), but it's certainly sufficient.  Thanks!  Sorry to bother
everyone.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From tomh at optiscan.com  Wed Jul 25 21:57:08 2001
From: tomh at optiscan.com (Tom Harris)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:57:08 +1000
Subject: Auto Building MS VC6 Projects
Message-ID: <AA94BA487AE0D411829300D0B7A7A95F079501@uluru2.optiscan.com.au>

All,

I do this in Python using the os.system() command to run MSDEV, but I
acknowledge that using COM is probably the better solution. This man has
done a lot of the work already in Perl, so porting it should be minimal
effort. There are a number of gotchas though, my favourite being MSDEV
bringing up random dialog boxes, halting the build until someone comes in
and clicks them. 

http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/msdev.htm

 Tom Harris, Software Engineer
 Optiscan Imaging, 15-17 Normanby Rd, Notting Hill, Melbourne, Vic 3168,
Australia
 email tomh at optiscan.com     ph +61 3 9538 3333  fax +61 3 9562 7742

This email may contain confidential information. If you have received this
email in error, please delete it immediately,and inform us of the mistake by
return email. Any form of reproduction, or further dissemination of this
email is strictly prohibited.
Also, please note that opinions expressed in this email are those of the
author, and are not necessarily those of OptiScan Pty Ltd



> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Olaf Meding [SMTP:OlafMeding at noSpam.CompuServe.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, 26 July 2001 3:35
> To:	python-list at python.org
> Subject:	Auto Building MS VC6 Projects
> 
> Microsoft Visual C++ can be automated (COM, OLE) and I would like to use
> Python to automate nightly VC6 builds.
> 
> Has anyone does this and is willing/able to share ideas or code?
> Is there any documenation on this somewhere?
> 
> 
> Olaf
> TomoTherapy
> 
> Please remove "noSpam" to get my email address
> 
> 



From eli-wallach at ugly.com  Sun Jul  1 17:06:50 2001
From: eli-wallach at ugly.com (Mexican Bandit)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:06:50 GMT
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com> <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re@4ax.com> <kuels07don.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <oj3vjt4mb86e39q6bv1vsf85a62icfa9f9@4ax.com>

>windows has separate "text mode" and "binary mode". text mode
>means windows does some translation when you write to a file.
>this breaks for binary data. stdout also happens to be in
>text mode by default. you need to run python with the -u command
>line option to get stdout in binary mode.

Thanks, problem solved.

I tried the same little script in Perl and had the same problem. But
the Perl documentation does mention this text/binary mode problem when
serving up images on Windows.

Regards


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 16:40:40 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 22:40:40 +0200
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
References: <mailman.994355168.2401.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i2jv703cm@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters" <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote in message
news:mailman.994355168.2401.python-list at python.org...
    ...
>   filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')
>
> Thirteen characters shorter than Emile's, and still no [re] :-).
>
> Personally, I even find it easier to read.  YMMV.

filter(string.isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')

is six fewer characters and IMHO more readable still.


A few more characters (because you need some preparation,
once, outside of the inner loop), but blazingly fast in the
inner loop:

nondigits = ''.join([chr(x) for x in range(0,256) if not chr(x).isdigit()])
identity = string.maketrans('','')

and then in the inner loop

'(123)/456-7890'.translate(identity, nondigits)


Alex





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Wed Jul 18 10:32:39 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 10:32:39 -0400
Subject: distutils and python2.1
References: <slrn9lafnl.1on.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <3dzoa2pat4.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle) writes:
> python2 setup.py bdist_rpm
> the rpm I get will install in /usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages.
> 
> Is there something I can tweak in the setup.cfg, maybe ?

There's a --python option to specify the path of the interpreter to use.
>From the output of 'python setup.py bdist_rpm --help':

  --python             path to Python interpreter to hard-code in the .spec
                       file (default: "python")
  --fix-python         hard-code the exact path to the current Python
                       interpreter in the .spec file

I think in your case --python=python2 would be sufficient.

--amk


From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 05:50:10 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 02:50:10 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250150.2930f827@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpd76qqfow.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:
> 
> > But over a few releases, which seem to be quite frequent these days,
> > one may find oneself with quite a collection of "legacy" programs

[...]

> I think it will be inevitable for many Pythons to come to provide a
> way to turn off the new division rules.  I am currently working on a
> command line option for this.

But a command line option isn't nearly as fine-grained as may be
demanded in this case: different modules may use different / operator
semantics. Then, some kind of directive is needed, and I can see the
"one true division operator" code authors not wanting to pollute their
code with such "vulgarity", whilst old code may not be conveniently
modified. So how do you manage this?

[...]

> > "connect", is hardly going to help. Several people are talking about
> > clever tools: perhaps once they are written, the authors will then
> > give us the type inferencing system people have been wanting for so
> > long. <1/2 wink>
> 
> That's not a bad idea.  Maybe the race for the best division upgrade
> tool will have practical type inference as a side effect.
> Traditionally, "mostly correct" type inference has been rejected as
> too dangerous; but in a conversion tool, it would be much better than
> nothing.

Given that satisfactory Python type inference has been hanging around
unsolved for years, I think you'll need to put off this change for
quite some time. Anyway, if anyone is going to put that amount of
effort in, they might as well end up with a new language where they
decide the rules. In other words, what is the motivation for devising
a comprehensive type inference system for Python without deciding to
take such a project along a different path of development from Python
itself? (See Vyper for an example of this.)

Paul


From mcherm at destiny.com  Mon Jul  9 16:10:29 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 15:10:29 -0500
Subject: 2.2+ == 3000? (was Re: Comment on PEP-0238)
Message-ID: <3B4A0FB5.1D843495@destiny.com>

First, thanks for the excellent background. I'd like to address some of your 
points.

Terry J. Reedy wrote:

> Conclusion: The proposed/planned change *is* unprecedented.

Okay, that seems to be true.

> It does not
> have a consensus of  support, and I believe a vote would go against.

This HAS happened before. It's a useful point to make, but not necessarily
a good principle for designing a language. Consensus should be listened to,
but not kowtowed to.

> Theoretical math and CS considerations are mixed if not against it.

Mixed.

> It
> will, I believe, break more lines of code than all other upgrades so far
> put together.  It does not add any functionality whatsoever.

This is true, and is a very good point. It will BREAK CODE, and it DOESN'T
ADD FUNCTIONALITY. This is a strong strike against, and must be balanced
by other advantages.

> It hardly
> adds to net clarity, and maybe detracts, depending on the reader and
> balance of i/i->i versus i/i->f constructions used.

Maybe it clarifies, maybe not. As you point out, there is no consensus.

> It makes Python less
> intuitive for programmers coming to Python from languages, such as C, that
> use the same syntax.

I disagree. Coming to Python from C, I would not ASSUME that integer "/" worked
the same in Python as in C. Neither would I expect "^" to do XOR. In each
case I'd look it up in the manual the first time I tried it.

> The reason for it is to cater to the expectations of
> current-non-user, hoped-for new users who will not read the grammar,
> manuals, or even the tutorials enough to change their expectations.  [Note,
> for instance, that this consideration hardly entered the recent discussion
> on syntax for generators.]

Oh come on. Python *IS* attracting new users on a regular basis, and it
clearly (to me!) has the possibility to attract beginners. This is a GOOD
THING.

> Finally, this change was defined years ago as
> one that would only happen in a new series of Python releases.
> 


Guido... I happen to think you are right, that div is not the best interpretation
of int/int. I'm not sure what IS the right answer, though. If everyone said,
"this will break too much code", then I'd have to be understanding. But as a
fairly new user, without large existing scripts to maintain, I don't really
mind. Others are not as lucky (or are MORE lucky since they got to use Python
sooner than I did).

Gotta-let-Guido-know-that-not-EVERYONE-disagrees-ALL-the-time-ly yours,

Michael Chermside




From google.com at wizemail1.cjb.net  Tue Jul 24 20:39:50 2001
From: google.com at wizemail1.cjb.net (Ricardo Correia)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:39:50 -0700
Subject: Bug?
Message-ID: <4835e825.0107241639.bbf438e@posting.google.com>

Hi

---------------------------------------------------
mainlist = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
copy = mainlist

for item in copy:
 print item,
 mainlist.remove(item)
---------------------------------------------------

Shouldn't this produce '1 2 3 4 5'?

I only get '1 3 5' and unfortunately because of this my program doesn't work.

I'm using python 2.0 (the one that comes with Mandrake 8.0)

Thanks

Ricardo Correia


From phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 15:26:30 2001
From: phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk (John J. Lee)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:26:30 +0100
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107182025300.21247-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Rob Andrews wrote:

> Gilles Lenfant wrote:
> >
> > Seriously, compare 2 languages with really useful features (Genrate PDF
> > report, extract XML data...).
> > You can find useless stuffs that run much faster in Python than in Perl.
> >
>
> I'd love to see some comparisons in which people who are good at their
> respective languages are given the same task considered reasonably
> programmable in each of the given languages.
[...]

may be of interest:

http://www.twistedmatrix.com/users/jh.twistd/python/moin.cgi/IcfpPythonTeam


John



From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 21 22:02:31 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:02:31 +0500
Subject: Python embebbed with Oracle SQL*Plus
References: <eef39a63.0106270501.4865aeab@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jebjm$m4l$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

Olav wrote:

> Some time ago I did some Oracle SQL*Plus on UNIX,
> and I was able to write quite powerful scripts
> embebbed in ksh (Korn Shell).
> 
> Is something similar possible with Python?

Yes, as others have stated, you can probably do something 
similar with sqlplus and the popen functions.

> Also I have seen that that there is a special Perl
> version for Oracle.  Is there something similar for
> Python (and would it be necessary to make a special
> Python for this?).

I can recommend DCOracle.  You won't need to make a special 
Python, but you will need to install an extension module (which 
may include compiling it from sources).

If you're using Jython, I've heard that you can also use Java's JDBC, 
but I've never tried it.
 
> Generally, what is the best way to script Oracle with
> Python, and how does it compare to the two above?

I'd say DCOracle is the way to go.  At least give it a try.
http://www.zope.org/Products/DCOracle/
http://www.zope.org/Members/matt/dco2

See also 
http://www.python.org/sigs/db-sig/
http://www.python.org/topics/database/

more-fun-than-a-terabyte-of-data-ly yours
---Tom



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Mon Jul 16 15:06:27 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:06:27 -0400
Subject: timed event??
In-Reply-To: <995307592.350.37802.l7@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B5302F3.29092.45A4363@localhost>

"NJM" <njm at rectec.net> wrote:
> I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can
> someone tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to
> find any modules that will help me. 

If you mean "at intervals" then you might consider wxTimer in 
wxPython (www.wxpython.org). I haven't used it; however, the 
documentation says it can be used in Python.


Bill Bell, Software Developer



From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 18 02:26:11 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 06:26:11 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995435490.11996.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7_957.12503$Xr6.103094@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Roman Suzi:
> ...Neil Hodgson wrote:
> >    Allowing non-ASCII characters in names enhances interoperaility with
Java
> > and .NET which allow this.
>
> Why every vapor MS introduces triggers such a chain reaction in IT
> circles? That everything must conform or die?!

   Java has been around for more than 5 years now and is hardly vapour.

> Who in his right mind uses non-ASCII names for identifiers?

   People who wish to be able to understand their own code and for their
code to be understood by colleagues. Despite having little skill in the
language, I would prefer to read code with sensibly chosen Japanese
identifiers rather than repeated meaningless ASCII identifiers. These are
all too common when non-ASCII characters are disallowed.

   Neil




From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Tue Jul 24 00:16:07 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:16:07 GMT
Subject: FTP win32 program
References: <1m477.55371$rt.8243308@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CF72B.E810465F@wwc.com>

Acid wrote:

> I am trying to write simple program with Python to connect to an ftp,
> list, download a file(s) etc...
>
> I am running this under Win2K professional with Python 2.1:
>
> [snip]

> I start the Python Gui, then New Window, put the above script in, then
> save, then Run Script.  It returns:
>
>  File "C:/Python21/download.py", line 2
>     from ftplib import FTP
>     ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>
> What's the trick to get this working under Win32?
>

That caret is in a suspicious place.  How are you putting the script in the
New Window?  Cut and paste?  Check for random leading whitespace.

Anyway, don't use

    'from ftplib import FTP'

even though the code itself and Beasley give that as their example,  because
you'll have trouble catching exceptions.  And you will definitely want to
catch exceptions with ftp.

Use something like

#=============================
import ftplib

#Connect to host
try:
    ftp = ftplib.FTP('x,y,z')
except ftplib.all_errors, e:
    print e
    . . . #punt

#Change working directory
try:
    ftp.sendcmd('CWD /misc'))
except ftplib.all_errors, e:
   print e
   . . . #punt

#List the directory
try:
    ftp.retrlines('LIST')
except ftplib.all_errors, e:
  print e
   . . . #punt
#=========================

instead.

I know the verb 'catch' is not Pythonic, but . . .




From bh at intevation.de  Thu Jul 26 14:22:14 2001
From: bh at intevation.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 20:22:14 +0200
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com> <mailman.995526636.21726.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107191006.28da887e@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0mjj.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <6qsnfjczzd.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>

quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) writes:

> On 19 Jul 2001 11:06:02 -0700, Tom Good <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> wrote:
> >Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995526636.21726.python-list at python.org>...
> >> Yes I know that, but that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is why i
> >> n
> >> 
> >> >>> raise ("a","b")
> >> 
> >> the "b" disappears? IMO that's a pretty weird behaviour. Yes anybody usin
> >> g
> >> non-class exceptions derived from Exception in a real-world program are
> >> insane, but this is a puristic thing of mine. :-)
> >> 
> >> Martin
> >
> >I agree, it is kind of weird, and I don't know why it works that way. 
> >I would probably expect trying to raise a tuple to generate an error.
> 
> I expect it's backwards compatibility. Many moons ago there were no
> user-defined classes, and hence no instance exceptions. Ever notice
> the __getitem__ trickiness IOError does so it can be unpacked like
> like a 2-tuple? I have a feeling that once upon a time it was.

AFAIK, these are different things, actually, although they both have to
do with string-based exceptions.

With string exceptions, the exception type is a string and when it is
raised it may have an associated value. For IOError, the value was a
2-tuple. With class-based exceptions, the value is always an instance of
the exception class (or a derived class), but for backwards
compatibility it has to behave like a 1-tuple in some cases.

The raise behavior is related to the trick used to simulated
base-classes for string-based exceptions. If you want to have a common
'baseclass' for exceptions E1 and E2, you simply use the tuple (E1, E2).
You can use that tuple both in except clauses and in raise statements.
Now since exceptions are really strings the raise statement if the
exception type is a tuple takes the first item recursively until it
finds a string.

  Bernhard

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 17:21:59 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:21:59 +0100
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hdgcktgn4eksejt01vqa8k0g7k69ov1isj@4ax.com> <9icndo$loe$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9kk83m.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 9 Jul 2001 16:51:04 GMT, Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>Quoth Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com>:
>...
>| [Snip: Guido's plan]
>|
>| This seems to me to be reasonable. While backward compatibility
>| is important in computer languages, the real problem occurs when
>| changes are abrupt. And in any case, we always have older versions
>| of the interpreter around.
>
>Sure.  For me, it looks like older versions is all we're going to
>have around.  Python is getting too complicated, has always been
>too slow (mainly startup cost), and now it's going to start breaking
>existing code in a serious way, for the sake of notions that are
>very debatable.

It seems to me that two forces are at work here.

One force, concerned about existing Python code, wants Python
to maintain as much backward compatibility as possible. This is
an entirely sensible concern, rooted in a pragmatism torward
software design. 

Another force, concerned about possible flaws in Python as it stands,
wants to improve the language. Thus we have new operators such as +=,
and other changes for the good. Thus also we have a PEP regarding 
integer division, which Guido thinks is a flaw in the current
version of Python. This attitude of wanting to make the most elegant
possible programming language is also entirely sensible, not
least because if Guido didn't think that way, Python wouldn't
exist and we'd all be using P**l or something like it.

So, how do we reconcile the two?

I suggest we continue to name the existing language "Python" and
the new developments by called under a different name ("SuperPython"
or "CP4A" possibly). That way, everyone gets what they want.

The new SuperPython would be free to experiment with radical new
ideas -- including changing the case-sensitivity, for example. And
the old, exisiting Python would be guaranteed to evolve in a way 
that doesn't break existing code, without a very very good reason.

Futhermore, SuperPython could compile to the same bytecode format
as Python. This would mean that existing Python libraries would
work with SuperPython.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Wed Jul 25 03:19:24 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:19:24 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <9lsslt4gst61qal99c5n3oj74ievl2i6tp@4ax.com>

"Andy Salnikov" <salnikov at inp.nsk.su> wrote:

>  Would not it be better to have rationals first and than change meaning of
>int/int->rational, than changing first to int/int->float and then to
>int/int->rational?
>
>Cheers,
>Andy.
>

This echoes my sentiments over on edu-sig at python.org:

   Were I in charge, I might have preferred that / remain the
   way it is, until/unless a more Scheme-like inclusion of
   the rational number type (different from float) came along,
   which would happen when the "long" type melted away, and
   became part of "int" (seamless i.e. no difference from the
   user's point of view).  This might have happened in 3.xx.
   I think it's somewhat premature to fiddle with / in 2.x.

More context:  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2001-July/001543.html
where I admit it:  I'm not in charge :-D

Kirby





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 16:45:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:45:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107182005070.21247-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107190021260.6530-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, John J. Lee wrote:

>On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:
>[...]
>> cc -O2       0.28
>> cc           0.62
>> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
>> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
>> perl        28.9
>> python      66.8
>>
>> Hm.  I'm beginning to wonder if I compiled python with -O2 or not.
>> Plus, I'm becoming more and more fond of ocaml.

I have
65.67user 0.07system 1:05.90elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (253major+163minor)pagefaults 0swaps
with Python 2.1.1c1 (on AMD K6-225)

Other Python versions on the same machine:
$ time python1.5 tst.py
10000000.500000 6.250000

61.95user 0.03system 1:02.43elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (345major+76minor)pagefaults 0swaps
$ time python2.0 tst.py
10000000.500000 6.250000

61.68user 0.03system 1:02.40elapsed 98%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (419major+95minor)pagefaults 0swaps

$ time python2.1 tst.py
10000000.500000 6.250000

63.72user 0.02system 1:04.00elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (290major+108minor)pagefaults 0swaps

(these results are not strictly correct, because I have not done reruns to
eliminate startup times differences properly.

>>
>> The python function I used was the basic
>>
>> def test ():
>>     i = 2.5
>>     j = 2.5
>>     while i < 1e7:
>>         j = 2.5 * 2.5
>>>         i = i + 1.0
>>     print "%f %f\n" % (i, j)
>>
>> if __name__ == '__main__':
>>     test ()
>
>When do you ever write Python code that does this kind of thing??  For
>example, if you're doing lots of fp work, don't you use Numeric?
>
>Must try OCaml, though (and Haskell)...

That is my observation too after I saw language shootout results.
(URL appeared here many times).

But in my applications speed is not the main virtue. The top thing is
express logic in a plain language and this is Python great at.

However, my collegues noticed that Python is too slow to be Squid
redirector (to stop ads) while Perl is great at the same task (because
Perl was designed for such application).

This doesn't make Python worse! If you rewrite the test above in Assembly,
you will get it even faster than in C, but does the effort spent worth it?

That is why I do not understand why Java is so popular:  it is not large
enough improvement over C/C++ in terms of source readability but still
poses serious overhead in execution speed... I have the feeling it stalled
at the middle between C++ and Python...

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 18, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?" _/




From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul  3 10:26:25 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:26:25 +0200
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703080216.026f3ab0@mail.inet.com.br>
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703080216.026f3ab0@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <20010703162625.U8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 08:07:27AM -0300, Carlos Ribeiro wrote:

> now, I'm still waiting for Martin's proposed PEP2 text - it seems that he 

That's Martijn, not Martin :) 'Martijn' has the emphasis on the 'ij', which
is pronounced not unlike the 'ai' in "aiieeeee! *splat*"

I-wont-go-into-how-Thomas-is-supposed-to-be-pronounced-ly y'rs ;)
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 11:44:22 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:44:22 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <q%f87.34136$EP6.8735302@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"> PEP: 238
> Title: Non-integer Division

Now that I look at it, the title seems rather odd, given that at least
half of the PEP and the discussion is/has been about integer division.
How about Revising Division or even better Splitting the Division
Operator.

Terry J. Reedy






From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 14:08:35 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:08:35 GMT
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com> <LeR67.534528$eK2.111965964@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <iL477.106891$T97.14984550@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <DQi77.544106$eK2.114143459@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Cliff Crawford" <cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu> wrote in message
news:iL477.106891
...
> I don't think the above line will work...
...


Quite right.  My original code suffered from 4am syndrome.
Thanks for the help.

Here is the fixed up version:


class order_dict(dictionary):
    """Dictionary which returns contents in order of insertion"""

     def __init__(self):
         dictionary.__init__(self)
         self.n = 0

     def __setitem__(self, key, value):
         dictionary.__setitem__(self, key, (self.n, value))
         self.n += 1

     def __getitem__(self, key):
         return dictionary.__getitem__(self, key)[1]

     def keys(self):
         ks = [(n, key) for (key, (n, _)) in dictionary.items(self)]
         ks.sort()
         return [key for (n, key) in ks]

     def values(self):
         vals = dictionary.values(self)
         vals.sort()
         return [ value for (n,value) in vals ]

     def items(self):
         return [(key, self.__getitem__(key)) for key in self.keys()]






From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 15:28:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:28:05 -0500
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org>
        <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org>
        <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
        <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
        <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>
        <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com>
        <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> I guess I'm confused, but if isinstance(x, type) is true isn't
    >> issubclass(x.__class__, type) also true?

    Guido> You are indeed confused. :)

    Guido> Seems you confuse isinstance(x, y) with issubclass(x, y).  These
    Guido> are very different.  x in y can map to at most one of these (for
    Guido> y a type object).

Here's an example that makes concrete what I was thinking:

    >>> class Foo:
    ...   pass
    ... 
    >>> class Bar(Foo):
    ...   pass
    ... 
    >>> x = Bar()
    >>> isinstance(x, Foo)
    1
    >>> issubclass(Bar, Foo)
    1
    >>> issubclass(x.__class__, Foo)
    1

Why can't the "in" operator grok all three of these possibilities?

    x in Foo                         same as isinstance(x, Foo)
    Bar in Foo                       same as issubclass(Bar, Foo)
    x.__class__ in Foo               same as issubclass(x.__class__, Foo)

I assume x can't be both an instance and a class at the same time.

Skip



From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 09:23:25 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:23:25 -0500
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f@4ax.com>
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
        <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
        <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org>
        <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
        <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>
        <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com>
        <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com>
        <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15198.51277.172557.468104@beluga.mojam.com>

    Stephen> I assume some applications ignore the standard *.py filename
    Stephen> convention - hopefully rare enough to handle other ways, or
    Stephen> maybe a case for allowing a command line option in addition.

When I install a script into /usr/local/bin it loses its extension
altogether.  So, while I edit fmail.py in my development directory, it's
installed as /usr/local/bin/fmail.  I assume that's fairly common practice.
It certainly is outside the Python community.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 30 02:38:45 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:38:45 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com> <mailman.996437578.30803.python-list@python.org> <sln9mtgfkd0mdrjbj6vtlihitollc1f4ka@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-2999C5.23384429072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <sln9mtgfkd0mdrjbj6vtlihitollc1f4ka at 4ax.com>,
 Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:

> Why would anyone ever write anything in C or other standard compiled
> languages? 

I'm not sure you were serious here, but I'll answer anyway:
Because it runs quickly and you have very good control of memory.
E.g. a student here has been working on a program which needs to store a 
small amount of information for a half-billion objects -- easy in C to 
allocate a byte per object in a big array, harder if each object has 
multiple bytes of overhead.  Of course most other languages will let you 
allocate byte arrays but then you lose their object oriented advantages.
And, the program currently runs in around 16 hours -- imagine how much more 
time it might take if written in an interpreted language.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 12 14:31:45 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:31:45 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <9ijpfk02a67@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121131290.21768-100000@bms>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:
<...>
> How anybody could deduce from that thread that Python is not
> suitable to typical scripting operations is the real mystery
> to me here.

You guys are way too sensitive, and must not have read past the
"horrible scripting..." part of the message (and I probably should
have put a <wink> or <grin> in there someplace, <sigh>).

The point was that python and sh operate on different levels.
e.g.,

$ cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5

(i.e., concatenate some unknown number of files whose names match one
of three patterns, write the result to a file and count the
characters, lines and words, appending that result to a different
file)

is what in Python....
...2 lines, 3, 4, an explicit loop, a function or two, or maybe a
program (i.e., some imports, assignments, blocks of code, ...)?


Ya, I know, for some... "script" == "interpreted", for the rest of
us... "script" == "automating a sequence of command line operations".
I guess it was a mistake to play off that bit of ambiguousness as an
introduction to the point.


- Bruce




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 14:33:12 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:33:12 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
		<zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
		<q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
		<naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
		<vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
		<20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
		<mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org>
		<uN107.141431$L4.17198481@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
		<3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com> <15168.47771.528688.531809@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <3B40BE68.C33815D7@ActiveState.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Paul> "Advanced" types could have "smart" behaviour and simple types
>     Paul> could have x=x+y behaviour.
> 
> Let's ignore lists, tuples and numbers for a moment because most people know
> how they are supposed to work (or will figure it out with a simple script).
> Suppose I see code like this
> 
>     import mumble
>     x = mumble.Mumble()
>     ...
>     x += 1
> 
> How am I supposed to know without digging around in the code or docs for the
> mumble module if it is a "simple" or "advanced" type?  

You won't know. But there is a lot you don't know about modules without
reading the docs. What this does:

print mumble

It could open a socket and download Quake for all you know.

> You haven't solved
> any problems, just added a new protocol for programmers to implement that
> will be done so in a haphazard fashion.

Making a problem so rare that very few people ever run into it is
progress.

The way I see it, 95% of all types will be non-mutating. The exceptions
will be types that are used primarily by speed freaks. I can't actually
recall the last third-party type that I've used that used serious
mathematical operator overloading. (obviously I'm not a Numpy user) 

The average user will simply not run into the issue, just as they don't
have to spend much effort worrying about whether "print" will do
something weird and wonderful. And yes, I've actually run into a
"__repr__" that opened a socket -- but it didn't download Quake. If we
can restrict the problem to math-type people then that's better than
confusing *everybody*. Especially since the math-type people asked for
the confusing behaviour.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Jul 25 15:06:22 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:06:22 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <48F88F43C9842AD9.1E631B0D03856868.6FDBB21E772A6CB3@lp.airnews.net>

In article <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000 at news.telia.no>,
Thomas Weholt <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote:
>hi,
>
>( In relation to my previous post about user authentication using SOAP, I
>got another simple question. )
>
>Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it looks very
>nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues? I'm thinking of
>implementing a distributed system where nodes communicate using SOAP.
>There's a clear potential of much traffic among the nodes and I just
>wondered if SOAP is the right protocoll/technology for the job. In my
>project each node will register with a nodemaster ( holds info about running
>nodes, nothing else, will check for availability of registered nodes with a
>given interval too, remove dead ones from list ) and get a list of running
>nodes in return. It will then proceed to query these running nodes in a
>serial manner ( at least to begin with, maybe use a async. approach later )
>about information and parse the result.
>
>Is SOAP suitable for something like this? It seems like it would be very
>easy to get a system like this up and running. My goal is to make a
>distributed system ala Gnutella, with no central server, just a bunch of
>nodemasters and nodes. I'm interested in other users experience with SOAP,
>with focus on speed of communcation ( speed of network disregarded. I'm only
>interested in impact on speed caused by SOAP itself. ).
>
>It's also clear that some problems might occur cuz the BaseHTTPServer which
>is used for the most part, have performance issues. Perhaps implementing the
>server using asyncchat etc. would increase performance ?? Why aren't the
>modules allready implemented with these tools available in the standard
>python lib allready, if that's the case?
			.
			.
			.
SOAP can be a pig.

I'm very fond of SOAP.  I use it a bunch, and look
forward to doing more.  It's gross, though, compared
to, say, CORBA (and my favorite is what this century
calls "T-spaces").

On the other hand, lots of people are using SOAP,
it'll get better, and, if performance annoys enough
capable people, someone will invent a reworked 
transport layer that solves these problems.

I summarize my answer:  design and implement your
project intelligently, and with SOAP.  If performance
turns out to be a problem--and you're unlikely to be
certain until it's *quite* a problem--be prepared to
move to a different technology.  As unsatisfying as I
imagine you find that answer, it's the best one I
know.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From cubicle584 at mailandnews.com  Mon Jul 16 20:23:36 2001
From: cubicle584 at mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:23:36 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994713616.26838.python-list@python.org> <3B4A66D3.AD4B29D9@engcorp.com> <c250fb6e.0107100431.8a46d83@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <a6789134.0107161623.3ee0081c@posting.google.com>

ajp at fudokai.org.uk (CyberKat) wrote in message news:<c250fb6e.0107100431.8a46d83 at posting.google.com>...

> Nice - I just have to find the _time_ to learn Python well enough to
> point out where and how it's better - I like the look and concepts of

Until you know it well you aren't ready to introduce it into your
workplace.  Then it will be easy.  Just write some apps your coworkers
need urgently, and once the importance of those apps starts to become
clear to your whole company, some months later, the programming
language they are written in will become one of your company's main
programming languages.

Being an evangelist is hard work, but, as hard work goes, it's easy
hard work.


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Thu Jul 12 16:21:44 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:21:44 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OF42A8DC70.9CE6B4AC-ON88256A87.006FA432@i2.com>

Phil Hunt wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
wrote:
>>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>
>To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>lines of C++.

We are shipping a successful product that comprises more than 100,000 lines
of Jython.

What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
for short programs <100 lines".

Jim





From mikeb at mitre.org  Thu Jul  5 12:20:52 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 12:20:52 -0400
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
Message-ID: <3B4493E4.BCFC985@mitre.org>

Randy > ... And Python has another edge over Perl. With Python, the ... client is build in, while with Perl, you need to obtain and install ...


I agree. The main reason Java took off was its very large, integrated run time library. Python's library is a great asset, but Python would spread faster if more parts were built in. 

My ideal build would include the following:
(I realize the political reality that this cannot be done.)

	(a) Numerics
	(b) wxPython
	(c) py2exe
	(d) TADS, pygame
	(e) odbs, ftp, mysql
	(f) the windows extentsions & its editor in wxpython so it works under linux
	(g) midi2wav, wav2midi, wav2cd, cd2wav, microphone2wav, wav2speaker
	(h) wxpython2gif
	(i) etc.




From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Mon Jul  2 20:38:04 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 17:38:04 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107021638.3dc5429f@posting.google.com>

William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<mailman.994111084.403.python-list at python.org>...
> > From: Russ (18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com)
> > Subject: Python for air traffic control?
> > Date: 2001-06-29 17:42:45 PST
> >
> > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> > aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> > initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> > aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> > collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> > C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> > humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> > toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> > nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> > among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> > insights.
> 
> Of course, you idiot...  It depends how well you did in high school
> math.  If there are N airplanes whose positions are given by
>     (x,y,z)_i, i=1,2,...N
> then you have to calculate distance from an airplane at to every other
> airplanes.
> 
> You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
>     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
>     - distance (between any two position) is too close
> 
> Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing something: my question. I asked about the
feasibility of using Python for a safety-critical application. I
didn't ask for a fifth-grade-level analysis of the problem. Trust me:
you don't have a clue. BTW, I scored in the top 1% in the math section
of the Graduate Records Exam. How did you do?


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 07:20:57 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:20:57 +0200
Subject: How can I run precompiled code objects?
References: <mailman.995002401.30502.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9imliq0112b@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Vesselin Peev" <vesselinpeev at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995002401.30502.python-list at python.org...
> Hello,
>
> Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
> example the ones created via
>
> PyObject* Py_CompileString(char *str, char *filename, int start)
>
> There's no explanation on the matter that I can find.

In Python, you can pass a code object to the exec statement
or to the eval built-in function,


> All I want to do is to execute different precompiled python code blocks
from
> a C program (I have already embedded Python). I could make do without
> bytecode but then the speed would be much les.

A "code block" is not suitable for eval(), so exec it will
have to be, if you're working in Python as you said at the
start.  If you're working in C as you say now, the C API
function you have to call is PyEval_EvalCode.  It takes 3
arguments -- a code object, then two dictionaries to use as
local and global namespaces -- the last arg can be 0, but
not the 2nd one.


So anyway, a typical usage pattern might be:


    PyObject *globals, *code, *result;

    /* prepare an innocuous 'globals' dictionary */
    globals = PyDict_New();
    PyDict_SetItemString(globals, "__builtins__", PyEval_GetBuiltins());

    /* compile your string of statements into a code object */
    code = Py_CompileString(statements, "<stmts>", Py_file_input);
    if(!code) {
        PyErr_Print();
        return 0;
    }

    /* execute the compiled statement */
    result = PyEval_EvalCode((PyCodeObject *)code, globals, 0);
    Py_DECREF(code);
    if(!result) {
        PyErr_Print();
        return 0;
    } else {
        Py_DECREF(result);
        return 1;
    }


Season to taste if, as it seems, you may want to keep the code
objects around, reuse a globals dictionary, etc, etc.


Alex





From kragen at dnaco.net  Thu Jul 19 16:09:05 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:09:05 GMT
Subject: =?big5?B?W1FdIEZpbGUgT2JqZWN0IC0tIGZ1bmN0aW9uICdyZWFkJw==?=
References: <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <B7H57.239$nq6.19822@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

In article <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list at python.org>,
jackyci <jackyci at sinamail.com> wrote:
>In Windows. "\n" equal "\x0d\x0a"
>But in function "read" of File Object, "\x0d\x0a" equal 1 byte.

Actually "\n" still equals "\x0a".  It's just that "\x0d\x0a" gets
translated to "\x0a" on input from a file, and the reverse translation
happens on output to a file, unless you opened the file with "b" binary
mode.

This is brain-damage Python inherited from C; the C standard specifies
that this translation has to happen by default on systems that
represent their line endings in a non-Unix way, so that
text-manipulating C programs written on Unix will Just Work.  (At the
time that this was established, this was nearly all C programs.)
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From prem at engr.uky.edu  Fri Jul 20 15:59:18 2001
From: prem at engr.uky.edu (Prem Rachakonda)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 12:59:18 -0700
Subject: Probems with IDLE
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171601020.12906-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <e56d8da7.0107201159.53d688d6@posting.google.com>

Hi,
  I am working with Python 2.1 on Windows 2000. The situations are not
 anything specific.

Prem.
Prem Rachakonda <prem at engr.uky.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171601020.12906-100000 at seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>...
> Hi,
>   I am not sure if anyone of you have found this problem, but the regular
> exit commands 'CTRL+C', 'CTRL+A', 'CTRL+X', 'CTRL+V' don't work all the
> time. But if you go to EDIT>COPY OR EDIT>CUT etc. they work fine. Can
> somebody fix this??
> 
> Prem.
> 
> ____________________________________________________________
>                        Prem Rachakonda
> ____________________________________________________________
> Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
> 700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
> Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
> PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
> eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
> Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651


From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 11:36:05 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 15:36:05 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <3B4B1BE7.1483F292@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9if7d5$ss1$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <3B4B1BE7.1483F292 at yahoo.com>, slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul 
Winkler) wrote:

> For the mathematically challenged, what is matmult?
> Pointer to a FM to R would be fine.

Ooh!  I've got one of them!

<http://www.microtonal.co.uk/matritut.htm>


                  Graham


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Sun Jul 15 00:54:39 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 04:54:39 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <m030ltord2kgp98mb7a397rl1bgtgar0en@4ax.com> <kr81ltkck185fba69ukgvn5hf1ivtosvar@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <jm947.348493$p33.7096844@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Dennis Roark" <denro at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:kr81ltkck185fba69ukgvn5hf1ivtosvar at 4ax.com...

> Dynamic typing, or binding, reference variables that can
> change the type pointed to, are to me still part of a weaker
> type safety than if they were not there.

Typing and binding are not the same thing. In C, C++, Pascal, etc. the name
and type of a variable are attributes of the variable name. The variable's
content (or what it points to) doesn't have any name or type--it's just a
chunk of memory that is interpreted and manipulated according to the type of
the variable name used to refer to it. The most obvious example of this is
the C/C++ union:

  union {
    int    ival;
    float  fval;
  } u;

u.ival and u.fval are different variables with different types referring to
the same (untyped) chunk of memory. In statically-typed languages like C,
variables can't change their types. A cast only tells the compiler to use
different rules to manipulate the memory the cast expression refers to; it
doesn't change the type of any variables.

The contents of a typed variable can be changed, but the variable can't be
rebound to another chunk of memory. C and C++ simulate binding through the
indirection of pointers. But because the compiler can't detect rebinding a
pointer, the programmer has to deal with memory management (C, C++), and all
the problems that ensue, or the language can simply disallow pointers
(Java).

Python doesn't have variables. Python has typed objects, references to
objects, and names that are bound to objects. The binding is dynamic: a name
may be bound to different objects of different types at run-time (as your
example code demonstrates). The type is a property of the object, not of the
name. Note that Python doesn't have or need pointers.

Dangling pointers and undisposed objects and chunks of memory are the
biggest problems for C/C++ programmers. The language type enforcement does
nothing to deal with these subtle and hard to find problems. An industry of
debugging and testing tools developed alongside C++ to help programmers find
and fix memory management problems.

Java is one solution: a typed language with name binding rather than
pointers. Java's C-derived syntax and complexity are a lot for new
programmers to master, and buggy and incompatible JVMs plague more
experienced programmers. Python is another solution. Python's simpler
syntax, rich built-in objects and standard library, and vastly simpler
runtime environment make it a good choice where Java is too bulky or
complicated.

I've been programming professionally for 25 years and I've mastered a lot of
languages. I still usually "think" in C, but Python is now my language of
choice for almost everything. My current day job involves building a huge
logistics system for an auto manufacturer. We're using Oracle PL/SQL and
Java. I can say without exagerration that if we were using Python we'd be
done by now, and our bug list would be one-tenth of what it is now. The
biggest problem we face is the multitude of programmers at widely varying
skill levels, trying to master complicated and subtle languages and tools,
and get their code to work with all the rest. If we were using Python the
skill gaps would be narrower, and easier to see and fix.


> So let's hold back the ad hominem
> attacks and help each other progress.

I agree--some of the postings are out of line.

> Originally [in Visual Basic], there was not a way to
> force declaration of variables.  It was programmer pressure
> that forced MS to introduce the "option explicit" code
> directive which requires declaration.

The OPTION EXPLICIT feature of VB does the same thing as Fortran's IMPLICIT
NONE. VB has typed variables and the VARIANT type, which is just a UNION
with a "current type" attribute. I don't know when OPTION EXPLICIT was
introduced, but I'm pretty sure stronger typing and avoidance of the VARIANT
type was pushed so VB could play nice in the COM/DCOM world, and not in
response to programmer pressure.


Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pdxperts.com





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 08:47:53 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:47:53 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90D489E9982B4duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Mirko Liss <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote in 
news:20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE at niccolo.ke4.de:

> An example in C:
> 
> typedef plane_t int ;  /* plane no */
> typedef lane_t int  ;  /* lane no */
> typedef go_down_in_pieces_t bool ;  
> go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch( plane_t flightno, \
>                               lane_t neigboring_highway ) ;
> 
> If the arguments get swapped, the compiler gets angry.
> Is this what you wanted to have in C ?
> 

No wonder the compiler gets angry, you can't rename your own types as 
'int'. Also there is no type called 'bool' in C. Perhaps you meant:

typedef int plane_t;
typedef int lane_t;
typedef int bool;
typedef bool go_down_in_pieces_t;

go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch(plane_t flightno, lane_t neighboring_highway);

int main()
{
    plane_t plane = 5;
    lane_t lane = 3;
    dispatch(plane, lane);
    dispatch(lane, plane);
    dispatch(dispatch(lane, plane), dispatch(lane, plane));
    return 0;
}

Now the compiler is completely happy. All calls to dispatch give it two 
integers so there is nothing to complain about. C's 'typedef' only defines 
an alias for a type, it doesn't define a new type, and any programmer that 
thinks it does should be locked in a cupboard with a copy of the standard 
and not let out until they have translated it into readable English.

Please tell me you don't do air traffic control for a living.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  9 23:48:42 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:48:42 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com> <3B4A185D.7C9EC4A5@yahoo.com> <3b4a468d.1494788532@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b4a6782.1503226134@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:01:23 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:
>I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
>just over 15 seconds, including startup and
>printing to screen, by my watch. (Not a typo,
>that was 100k). Of course, it might not be the
>usual recursive solution (see below)  ;-)
[...]
>I haven't fine tuned this. It's a close translation of
Oops, several things:
    - That 15 seconds was mostly conversion for printing.
      Actual calculation time was more like 0.8 sec ;-)
    - I should have eliminated an expression

Changes
---
#eliminated this >    fkm1 = fkp1 - fk
>    if n&1:
>        return fkp1*fkp1 + fk*fk, fkp1*( fkp1+fk+fk)
>    else: 
#changed this >        return fk*(fk+fkm1+fkm1), fkp1*fkp1 + fk*fk
         return fk*(fkp1+fkp1-fk), fkp1*fkp1 + fk*fk
---

Sheesh. I also changed the a+a things above to a<<1 but it's in the
noise. Wonder if a**2 is much different from a*a for big longs...

I put in a clock() timer for calculation and printing. This gives
about 380 microseconds +- a few for N=32, and for N=100000:

That took   0.796213 seconds to calculate, and 15.226808 to print.
That took   0.797725 seconds to calculate, and 15.006354 to print.
That took   0.804495 seconds to calculate, and 14.893308 to print.
That took   0.800631 seconds to calculate, and 14.624085 to print.
is representative, again on

(300mhz P2, 320MB ram, NT4sp3)
Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32

Given the print time, apparently this recursion beat iteration by
0.8 vs about 15 seconds ((~32 hand timed load, calc, print) -15).

Never say never ;-)

Revised version:
______________________________________________________________

# fibpx.py - fast recursive fibonacci algorithm using pairs 
# Copyright (c) 2001, Bengt Richter. All rights reserved. 
# Use is governed by the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE -- see
http://gnu.org 
# NO WARRANTY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED IS GIVEN AS TO CORRECTNESS 
# OR SUITABLILITY FOR ANY PURPOSE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. 
#
# Updated 2001-07-09 bokr
#
import sys

def pfib(n):
    if n < 2: return 1L,1L
    if n == 2: return 1L,2L
    k = n / 2L          # this makes the log effect
    fk,fkp1 = pfib(k)   # recursion here
    if n&1:
        return fkp1*fkp1+fk*fk, fkp1*(fkp1+(fk<<1))
    else: 
        return fk*((fkp1<<1)-fk), fkp1*fkp1+fk*fk

def ffib(x):
    if x < 3:
        return 1
    else:
        fxm2,fxm1 = pfib( x - 2L )
        return fxm2+fxm1        

import time
def main():
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        sys.stderr.write("usage: %s number\n" % sys.argv[0])
        sys.exit(2)
    tStart = time.clock()
    answer = ffib( long(sys.argv[1]) )
    tEnd = time.clock()
    print 'fib(',sys.argv[1],') =\n', answer
    tEndPrint = time.clock()
    print "\nThat took %10.6f seconds to calculate," \
        " and %8.6f to print." % (tEnd-tStart, tEndPrint-tEnd)
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
______________________________________________________________


From jdavis at empires.org  Mon Jul 23 04:33:43 2001
From: jdavis at empires.org (Jeff Davis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:33:43 -0700
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <_gR67.5001$LR1.270732@news.pacbell.net>

phillip wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I put 'name,values' into a dictionary.
> But when I get the keys and display the values they come out in a
> different order that the order I inserted them in.
> 
> Is there a way maintain the oringinal order?
> 
> Phill
> 

I don't think dictionaries are designed that way in python, but here is 
what you can do: each new value you insert, push() the key onto a list. 
Then when you need to access them in order just traverse the list.

The reason you most likely didn't get the values back in order is that the 
DB in which the values were inserted used an algorithm for data management 
that didn't preserve the order.

I am not sure this is the best solution, but it will work.

Hope it helps.
Jeff Davis


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 19 01:23:36 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:23:36 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B566ED8.E14732F8@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> having a recently-invented typographic prettiness, such as
> letter-cd tcase, affect meaning, has always struck me as a deeply
> flawed idea.

If you asked a mathematician, I doubt he'd regard
it as either "recent" or "flawed". Mathematicians
have been using case-, font-, style- and alphabet-
sensitive identifiers for centuries...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From idot at vt.edu  Fri Jul 27 20:53:54 2001
From: idot at vt.edu (Carl Banks)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:53:54 -0400
Subject: Radical Suggestion for Integer Division Migration
Message-ID: <2f2tj9.ejt.ln@10.0.0.1>

Basically, have all integer division using the "/" operator throw an
exception during the transition period, unless "from __future__ import
division" appears in the module.  

A little PEPish explanation follows.  (Only the abstract is much too
baroque....)



Abstract

    Many people do not like the new division semantics introduced in
    PEP 238, for it bears the curse of a backward-incompatible
    language change, shrouded by the cold repression of Silence.  It
    is Silence that people fear most about this transition, for
    Silence harbors the subtle code breaks that shall arise, lurking
    in unconscious shadow, waiting in ambush.

    Thus, it is suggested that Python save us from this pernicious
    evil by vanquishing Silence.  For then, the program that attempts
    to divide two integers shall invoke the great and terrible wrath
    of Python, and lo! Python shall raise an IntegerDivisionError
    exception, casting light upon the shadow in which tomorrow's
    subtle bugs hide.  And only by switching to the integer division
    operator "//", or by including "from __future__ import division"
    atop the module, can the programmer abate Python's fury.

    Yet it is written: Upon the change of the major version number,
    Python's tenacious wrath shall relent, and thenceforth all shall
    live peacefully in the fertile land of consistent division.


Motivation

    PEP 238 proposes a rather controversial language change to Python,
    namely a change in the semantics of the division operator.  But,
    as Tim Reedy pointed out in the c.l.py post introducing the
    "Language Change and Code Breaks" thread, a change in semantics
    that does not produce an error (like PEP 238) can lead to subtle
    breakages in code.

    PEP 238 does include a provision to produce a warning when integer
    division occurs.  Warnings, however, are often too easy to ignore.

    It goes without saying that we would like all Python code to be
    ready when Python 3.0, and the new semantics, arrive.  It seems
    that, as long as the classical semantics for integer division
    remain the default, much code will continue to use it, right up to
    the release of 3.0.  This, of course, could lead to subtle bugs.

    This proposes that, in the transition period, there be *no default
    semantics at all* for integer division.  Integer division using
    "/" would become illegal, throwing an IntegerDivisionError
    exception, unless the programmer explicitly requests the new
    semantics with "from __future__ import division."  Because of this
    exception, the subtle errors that might have resulted would instead
    manifest themselves as glaring exceptions, easy to see, and easy
    to fix.  Older code would not fail silently during the transition
    period, but fail resoundingly.

    Hopefully, by the advent of Python 3.0, all Python code will
    account for the new semantics.


Specification

    Starting with Python 2.3, an attempt to divide two integers
    (including long integers) would result in an exception,
    IntegerDivisionError, being raised.  The IntegerDivisionError
    exception would display a helpful message, such as:

        Integer division is in a transition period in Python, and is
        currently disabled.  You can use the new integer division
        operator "//" instead, or you can put "from __future__ import
        division" at the beginning of the module to request the new
        division semantics.

        Note that modules designed for Python versions before 2.3 may
        no longer work.  It is suggested that you upgrade any modules
        you are running, and review any uses of division in your
        programs.

	For more information, see http://blah.blah/blah/blah.html

    Although the above message is much longer than the typical
    one-line messages for most exceptions, in this case it is
    justified because of the potential for code break that can result
    if one ignores it, and the possibility that someone running Python
    2.3 for the first time might not be aware of the upcoming changes.

    And, as the helpful error message says, one can use the new
    integer division operator to perform integer division.  Or, one
    could request the new division semantics by including 'from
    __future__ import division' atop the module.

    Non-integer division would not throw an exception.

    The IntegerDivisionError would only exist in the transition
    period.  In Python 3.0, the new division semantics would become
    the default, and IntegerDivisionError would disappear.


P.S.

    If this seems to have any chance at all, I'll write up a real PEP.

P.P.S.

    I'd like to vote for "quotient" as a substitute for integer
    division, even though it's wrong.

P.P.P.S.

    Also, may I request that, since we've already decided we're going
    to break division in 3.0, we might as well break everything else,
    too.  Let's figure out everything that needs fixed (type/class
    dichotomy, heterogenous comparison, ";".join, etc.), and get it
    out of the way all at once.



-- 
CARL BANKS


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 19:39:16 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:39:16 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>
		 <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com>
Message-ID: <3B60AA24.B26F6B76@engcorp.com>

"James C. Ahlstrom" wrote:
> 
> Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> > If the advice from the Gods is that Python is a 'research' language then
> > I'll know better what to do.
[...]
> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.  The current rate of language change is fine for a
> student or casual programmer I'm sure, but I don't have that luxury.

I agree the rate of change is enough to make many of us nervous
(perhaps especially in industry).  And I agree some of the new
features appear (from my particular point of view) unnecessary
and more like CS playthings than anything else.

That said, I have to say that at least one change is likely to
improve my ability to produce bullet-proof programs.

The surgery on the way division works will almost certainly
reduce the risk of my accidentally (and quietly) truncating a
result when I really meant to say float(x)/y and forgot, since
this is an idiom I rarely need to use.  (This is leaving aside
the issue of code breakage, but I'm talking only about new
code here, and in my case I don't need to maintain backwards
compatibility.)

Another thing I'm going to like is the generators, which 
are very likely going to help me write readable, elegant code
for several coding patterns where I now have to write
cumbersome and relatively unreadable code.

So these two things will help a lot with bullet-proof
programming.  And list comprehensions.  I suspect list 
comprehensions will also let me write more readable 
code (after I get past the ebullient phase many 
seem to go through, and tone it back a little).  There
are therefore at least three things that will help.

Since readability is the single biggest item which will
contribute to bullet-proof programs (after testing!), 
and since many of the new items should tend to increase
readability, I have to disagree with your claim.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tom-list at home.com  Mon Jul 30 11:21:38 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:21:38 -0400
Subject: mistake in Python 2.1.1 debug download
References: <mailman.996467575.12375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b657b7b$1_1@Usenet.com>

Ok. Thanks.

Tom.

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996467575.12375.python-list at python.org...
> [Tom]
> > I just downloaded the following:
> > Python-2.1.1-Debug.zip
> >
> > It includes Python22 files.  I assume this is a mistake.
>
> So it does!  My mistake.  Ignore the *22.* files, or think of them as
> fascinating freebies.
>
> > Also, where do the .pdb files go?  Aren't .pdb files compiler
> > specific?  Is this debug download platform/compiler specific?
>
> Nothing in that zip file is of any use to you unless you're writing Python
> extensions in C or C++, on Windows, and using MSVC 6.  Even then it's of
> limited use, and probably more trouble to download than it's worth.
>
> > A readme file would be helpful.
>
> I bet you downloaded it from SourceForge.  python.org explains the
> uselessness of this file on its download page.  You just convinced me to
> stop shipping this file <wink>, so rest assured it won't happen again.
>
> If you're not used to Python, download 2.1.1 from
>
>     http://www.python.org/2.1.1/
>
> instead.  It's got better instructions.  Unfortunately, there's no way to
> add explanatory text to the Files download page on SourceForge.
>
>



Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
    ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------        
                http://www.usenet.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 04:43:47 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 12:43:47 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
In-Reply-To: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107011229210.21581-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Gerhard [iso-8859-1] H?ring wrote:

>Please excuse this off-topicish post. I was looking for something similar to
>the Windows Scripting Host in the Unix world: a library where an application
>can register functions and types that can then be used by any scripting
>language that bothers to implement the "Unix Scripting Host" interface. The
>application language should not be limited to C or C++.

AFAIK, there is no Scripting host in UNIX.
UNIX itself is a large scriptitng host where miriads of tasks
are done by using scripts which process text files.

You can do

os.system("yourprogram args")

from almost any language. You can also pipe thru standard stderr, stdin
and stdout files or communicate via UNIX sockets or by other means.

But you can't register functions, you can make very compact and fast
standalone programs which do 1 task well and call them.

This is how UNIX does it and this is a point in which UNIX
is different from Windows. (I do not know about all Unices out there).

You can think about scripts in UNIX as functions and you
will have your Unix Scripting Host for free ;-)

For example, there is a nice Python script by  Remco Gerlich
at Useless Python which allows you to write things like this:

for i in `range 1 51 2 file%03d`
do
  mv $i MyFiles
done

How is it different from registering functions somewhere
in the deeps of the proprietary Windows system?

>The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I
>thought that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't find
>anything (except the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).

>Any suggestions/pointers?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 30 01:00:05 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:00:05 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <3b61c8f0.577829094@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B64E9D5.82A7B3E9@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> 
> You may know the significance of fgjqkw then ;-)
> If not, google for it.

Burning with curiosity, I just tried that, but
didn't get anything.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul  7 14:51:21 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:51:21 -0500
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org>
	<cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
	<cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15175.23081.888138.584693@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:
    >> If you're going to add keywords, why not add precision and allow
    >> those who want non-integer division to set it to the level of
    >> precision they require.  That breaks no more code (presumably) than
    >> adding div or yield does.

    Guido> I'm not sure what you're asking about.  If you're serious, please
    Guido> submit a PEP!  This is the time to do it.  Posting to the
    Guido> newsgroup is *not* sufficient to let an idea be heard by me --
    Guido> you *have* to mail it to me directly or to python-dev.  (While I
    Guido> like to read c.l.py sometimes, I cannot guarantee that I see
    Guido> every post.)

Isn't this similar to Paul DuBois' floating point ideas?

Skip




From mogmios at mlug.missouri.edu  Tue Jul 10 12:53:03 2001
From: mogmios at mlug.missouri.edu (Michael)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:53:03 -0500
Subject: guessing mime type without extension?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107101150400.13716-100000@mlug.missouri.edu>

Is there a way to guess a files mime type by content rather than extension
similar to the way the Unix 'file' command works? ('file -bi <filename>'
on my RedHat box) I know I could call the Unix one using exec() or
something like that but I am always worried about calling external
programs. Thanks.

*^*^*^*
Michael McGlothlin <mogmios at mlug.missouri.edu>
http://www.kavlon.com



From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 15 20:00:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 20:00:24 -0400
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com>
Message-ID: <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com>

If you look back through the last two days' worth of postings for subject 
"parallel port?!?" you should find something to help.  Yes, it is possible,
no the result is not compatible (but you could always write a higher level
wrapper to make it so).

Bryan Brannigan wrote:
> 
> I am looking for a way to send data to certain ports on a custom ISA card.
> The card is addressed as 280h.  Is this possible with Python?  Is the code
> compatible with Linux as well?
> 
> Bryan

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 09:46:20 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:46:20 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
In-Reply-To: <9hsds501vk3@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107031739570.26398-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
>news:mailman.994155184.16109.python-list at python.org...
>    ...
>> Anyway, I wanted to say that some generic (!=Windows only) ADO
>> could help for those who consider Python for tasks usually
>> done with PHP or ASP.
>
>We seem to keep hitting a brickwall here.  Let's try an analogy.

-skip Python vs. ASP -

I have not used ASP. (I must confess, I have not even looked into ASP
deeply and had no knowledge ASP could be used with other languages than
Basic (or whatever). My assumption was that ASP is like PHP.

Thanks for lesson!

>http://phplib.netuse.de/documentation/documentation-3.html#ss3.1
>After studying that page a bit, unless I'm missing something,
>it appears to me that this interface is *VASTLY* inferior to
>the Python DB API.

I do not believe it. PHP is so widely used with databases
that I cant believe it's database connectivity is that bad!

>It may very well be that it's worthwhile designing a higher
>level, somewhat ADOlike superstructure on top of the DB API,
>but, if so, then it DEFINITELY cannot be because of some
>kind of "competition" between Python and PHP -- much less,
>of course, "between Python and ASP", which is as peculiar a
>"competition" as "between Python and Unix" or "between
>Python and the JVM"...!!!

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/




From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Fri Jul 13 12:30:11 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:30:11 -0500
Subject: Book count test
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5242@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <02ad01c10bb9$195dfd90$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

And what do we learn from these numbers ?

Andreas

From: "Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Freitag, 13. Juli 2001 10:22
Subject: Book count test


> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these
categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)
>   Java     - 1621
>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de  Thu Jul 26 09:35:58 2001
From: Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de (Sibylle Koczian)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:35:58 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de>

Piet van Oostrum wrote:
> 
> >>>>> Sibylle Koczian <Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> (SK) writes:
> 
> SK> But that's exactly what he says! Algol 60 was before C, as far as I
> SK> know, and case-insensitive as was normal at the time.
> 
> Sorry, I meant to say that Algol 60 was case sensitive.
> --

Really? Must have overlooked that: we used teletype machines, no
lowercase letters anyway (where all the keywords uppercase or what?).
Wish I'd kept those yellow punched tapes, they'd look nice on my
pinboard ...

-- 
----
Dr. Sibylle Koczian
Universitaetsbibliothek , Abt. Naturwiss.
D-86135 Augsburg

Tel.: (0821) 598-2400, Fax : (0821) 598-2410
e-mail : Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.DE


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 13 12:05:26 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:05:26 -0700
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net> <9imq3s$jv3c9$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <eppstein-8FB212.09052613072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <9imq3s$jv3c9$1 at ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>,
 bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) wrote:

> > If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
> > be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
> 
> 	www.wxpython.org (IMO)

Doesn't seem to run on a Mac.
tkInter has some problems (clunky appearance, and I couldn't get PIL to 
work with it) but at least a Mac port exists.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 13:27:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:27:41 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cpn15q2sg0.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> In article <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
> Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
> >Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
> >
> >> We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
> >> God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
> >> opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
> >> will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.
> >
> >I sincerely wish you would be struck by lightning.  Your attitude
> >disgusts me.
> >
> >--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> 
> Oh dear I sense a humour deficit :(

Touche.  There was no smileys in your comments about dictators either.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 30 02:30:49 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 06:30:49 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64e984.782776733@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m9voo.gs8.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 05:30:37 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:

>>result depends on the value of the argument (x**y returns at least
>>a float when y is a rational, but may return an integer when y is
>    ^^^^^-inexact           vs.            exact--^^^^^^^
>>a nonnegative integer) and turns some TypeErrors into ValueErrors
> Actually, with rationals, could't you return the inverse rational
> for negative y integers ;-)

Surely rational**negative_integer should return a rational - this case
"lies between" cases considered in this example.

The reason of the unusual behavior of ** is simple: there are about
four operations artificially folded into one operator.

It could be done because it happens that they give equal results on
equal inputs, and it's commonly done in mathematics and programming
languages.

These operations are the following (generally each time it's statically
known which is meant):

- Raising an element of a ring (or even associative group) to a
  nonnegative integer exponent. It means: multiply the given number
  of times (with 0 giving the unit).

- Raising an element of a field to an integer exponent. If the
  exponent is negative, the number must be non-zero. It means: if
  the exponent is nonnegative, multiply the given number of times,
  otherwise multiply inverses.

- Raising a real or complex number to a rational exponent. If the
  exponent is negative, the number must be non-zero. If we are not
  considering complexes and the exponent has an even denominator,
  the number must be nonnegative. The meaning is well known, I won't
  repeat the full definition.

- Raising a positive real number to a real exponent, or raising
  a complex number to a complex exponent. It means: x**y ==
  exp(y*log(x)), for suitably overloaded exp and log.

Each time you give a more general exponent, you demand more from the
domain of the base, and sometimes previously valid results no longer
exist (e.g. (-1)**(1/3) is defined, but (-1)**float(1/3) is not).

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From oliver at rutherfurd.net  Tue Jul 24 12:17:00 2001
From: oliver at rutherfurd.net (Ollie Rutherfurd)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:17:00 -0500
Subject: ANN: winreg module (_winreg wrapper)
Message-ID: <20010724111700.A27412@loki>

Hello,

I've written an object-oriented wrapper for _winreg.  It's a little higher
level than _winreg, and it allows you to access the sub keys and values of a
key, via a key object.

I remember seeing a similar post a while back, but as I couldn't find the post
or the module...  Anyway, I'm learning Python, and this seemed like a good
little project.

Here's a little code snippet showing how it can be used:

>>> from winreg import *
>>> key = Key(HKCR)
>>> len(key.keys)
3940
>>> print key[0].name
*
>>> '.py' in key.keys
1
>>> print key['.py'].values[None]
Python.File
>>> pyfile = key['Python.File']
>>> print pyfile['Shell\\Open\\Command'].values[None]
"C:\\Python21\\python.exe" %1" %*
>>>

There's not really any external documentation, but I used DocTest (which is
really cool!), so there are a bunch of usage examples in the code.

You can find winreg here:

http://www.newtonsplace.net/winreg.html

If you check it out, I'd love feedback!

-Ollie Rutherfurd
oliver at rutherfurd.net




From brakedon at hotmail.com  Sat Jul  7 12:56:31 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 09:56:31 -0700
Subject: Tying a GUI to a another module
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107070856.3466e4a1@posting.google.com>

Does anyone know how to link a module containing the gui (first_gui)
and a another one containing the code to run the program
(fibonaccii_gui). Using the "Fib Calc" button to execute the process.
I want the program to take input from the Entry field process it
through "fibonaccii_gui" and then print the fibonaccii sequence in the
Label field. Here's the involved modules, Thank you for any help.

"first_gui" module
import fibonaccii_gui
from Tkinter import *
class fibon_gui:     
     def __init__(self, master):
          frame_entry = Frame(master)
          frame_entry.pack()
          input = Entry(frame_entry, width=30)
          input.pack()
          output = Label(frame_entry, text="Output goes here")
          output.pack(side=TOP)
          
          frame_button = Frame(master)
          frame_button.pack()
          button_fibcalc = Button(frame_button, text="Fib Calc")
          button_fibcalc.pack(side=LEFT)
          button_quit = Button(frame_button, text="QUIT", fg="red",
command=master.quit)
          button_quit.pack(side=RIGHT)
root = Tk()
root.title('Fibonaccii')
fibgui = fibon_gui(root)
root.mainloop()

Here's "fibonaccii_gui" module
class fibonaccii:
    def fib(self):
        a, b = 0, 1
        while b < fibnumber:
            #print b, fibonaccii sequence is saved in variable "b"
            a, b = b, a+b
fibinstance = fibonaccii()


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul  5 22:31:15 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 22:31:15 -0400
Subject: Exporting a Class from a .pyd
References: <3b4474a8.4155281@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <u66d6wzyk.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz) writes:

> It is quite easy to export methods, and constants, and even datatypes
> from a .pyd (Python Extension DLL, .so in #?nix). However, how do you
> export a class ? Is it just a special way of exporting datatypes ?
> (But then, I cannot yet see how to add methods to such a datatype).
> I've looked up google but in vain.

New objects in extensions are formed by initializing an appropriate
structure with entry points (determined by Python and the basic type
of object you implement) for your object and then letting Python know
about it.  Methods are handled through the getattr slot (e.g., you
just look up the entry point for your method and return it as the
result).

That's one of the weaker sections of the existing documentation (what
information there is can be found mostly in the Python C/API
document), so you're best set to refer to either sample sources for
extensions or to the Python source itself.  There is an xxobject.c
file in the objects directory of the Python source that can be a good
starting point (as can be any of the other object implementation files
in that directory).

Note that these methods will actually give you a new type, but not
something that you can subclass from within your Python code.  If you
want that do some google searching on extension classes, which can
provide a way to do that, or - probably easier - try working with a
library such as Boost to make some of that work easier.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 16:07:33 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:07:33 -0400 
Subject: Calculus
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F8@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

And if you want a good contrast to Leibnitz, try Authur Schopenhauer. 

-----Original Message-----
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca [mailto:pinard at iro.umontreal.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:02 PM
To: tundra at tundraware.com
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Calculus


[Tim Daneliuk]

> I thought it was Voltaire who said we live in the best of all possible
> world (in 'Candide')...

Panglos, Candide's teacher and philosopher, was repeating that sentence
at every turn of the page, indeed.  But Voltaire's intent was laughing at
Leibnitz philosophy, making it look ridiculous.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard






From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 08:29:54 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:29:54 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994155184.16109.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsds501vk3@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994155184.16109.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> Anyway, I wanted to say that some generic (!=Windows only) ADO
> could help for those who consider Python for tasks usually
> done with PHP or ASP.

We seem to keep hitting a brickwall here.  Let's try an analogy.

It's exactly as if somebody said "consider Fortran for tasks
usually done with Lisp or Unix".  This is not an "alternative".
Fortran is a language.  It runs within environments.  Unix is
an environment within which some languages run.  You do not
*CHOOSE BETWEEN* Fortran and Unix.  You choose your language
and your environment, and it could, if you want, be Fortran
under Unix.  If you like Fortran and you like Unix, go for it.
Of course Fortran also runs on many other environments (not
all) and Unix also runs many other languages (not all), but
that doesn't make them ALTERNATIVE to each other!!!

Now, it's EXACTLY the same situation: you say "consider Python
for tasks usually done with PHP or APS".  This is not an
"alternative".  Python is a language.  It runs within environments.
ASP is an environment within which some languages run.  You do
not *CHOOSE BETWEEN* Python and ASP.  You choose your language
and your environment, and it could, if you want, be Python under
ASP.  If you like Python and you like ASP, go for it.  Of course
Python also runs on many other environments (not all) and ASP also
runs many other languages (not all), but that doesn't make them
ALTERNATIVE to each other!!!


*WHY* is it apparently so durned HARD?!  Why do people keep
saying "ASP" as if it somehow IMPLIED a language choice when
one can perfectly well run any number of languages even on
the *SAME SINGLE* Active Server Page?!  Microsoft brainwashing?
Anti-Microsoft brainwashing?  I don't really understand.  It's
clearer why people may believe that taking advantage of the
JVM and the huge amount of libraries for it somehow requires
coding in Java (it doesn't, of course - Python is a possible
alternative!), since Sun has done their best to blur the key
distinction between language and environment.  But Microsoft
HAS been highlighting in glow-in-the-dark bright orance that
THEIR environments are FULLY multi-language, since day one.
Is Microsoft marketing really SO feeble that they still have
not been able to get THIS single VERY simple point across?!


If you're considering deploying Python on IIS, it really makes
no difference whether Python duplicates much of the powerful
infrastructure that you get on IIS anyway -- it's crucial that
Python lets you fully exploit that existing infrastructure, but
any duplications are mostly wasted effort.

If you're considering deploying Python or PHP on Apache in a
cross-platform way, or on some specific target system where
ADO is not available, then what you need to compare is not
either language vs ADO, but the languages and their libraries
with each other.  I'm no PHP expert, but it appears to me that
the closest you get on PHP to a DB-independent interface is
as a part of PHPLib, e.g. cfr
http://phplib.netuse.de/documentation/documentation-3.html#ss3.1
After studying that page a bit, unless I'm missing something,
it appears to me that this interface is *VASTLY* inferior to
the Python DB API.  In particular, there's nothing even
vaguely approaching the nice convenience functionality that
ADO supplies.

So *what* makes you think people are choosing PHP rather than
Python because of DB connectivity issues?  Apparently they're
so choosing DESPITE Php's _inferiority_ in DB connectivity.
So, further enhancing the DB functionality of Python seems
unlikely to have any important effect in this regard.


It may very well be that it's worthwhile designing a higher
level, somewhat ADOlike superstructure on top of the DB API,
but, if so, then it DEFINITELY cannot be because of some
kind of "competition" between Python and PHP -- much less,
of course, "between Python and ASP", which is as peculiar a
"competition" as "between Python and Unix" or "between
Python and the JVM"...!!!


Alex






From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 15:33:41 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:33:41 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3F7B15.5E3C2BD6@ActiveState.com>

I really don't want to go through this whole argument again (after all,
that's the point of PEPs) but when you were a child, you "just knew"
whether you meant truncating or float division. Python guesses based on
the types of the operands which is a poor choice in a dynamically typed
language that otherwise treats "5.0" as a more verbose alternate syntax
for "5":

for i in range(5.0): 
	print i

If Python were to always disallow integer/float coercion then users
would learn that and life would go on. Instead, it coerces in some
places and not others.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From michael at stroeder.com  Mon Jul 23 04:56:44 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:56:44 +0200
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com>

Jeff Davis wrote:
> 
> I have been looking around and I have not been able to find a session
> module for python (for the web). Basically I just need a normal session
> manager that can work somewhat like the one in PHP. I have recently been
> moving away from PHP to python for web stuff and I need a session manager.
> If no such module exists, I would write my own.

You might wanna borrow some ideas from
http://www.stroeder.com/pylib/PyWebLib/

I'm the author => take it with a grain of salt. ;-)

There are other modules too:
http://thor.prohosting.com/~pboddie/Python/web_modules.html

Ciao, Michael.


From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 11:48:52 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:48:52 GMT
Subject: function while true - list function?
References: <88f77.300$e%3.6743@news.lhr.globix.net>
Message-ID: <ENg77.543485$eK2.113992779@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Giles Constant" <giles at spacepigs.com> wrote in message
news:88f77.300$e%3.6743 at news.lhr.globix.net...
> Hi there,
>
> is there a function in python which will populate a list with the results
> of a function while the function returns something other than 'None'?
I've
> looked for something but can't find much, but it's something I'm doing so
> often (especially while processing SQL databases) that I'm wondering if,
if
> it doesn't already exist, it could be a good idea for future versions.
>
> eg:
>
> def GrabSomeData:
>         somecursor.execute("SELECT x,y FROM z")
>         return unroll(somecursor.fetchone)   *
>
> * I figured "unroll" would be a good name for it :-)
>


Here's a version of unroll which can take extra args:

def unroll(fn,*args,**kwds):
    results = []
    x = fn(*args,**kwds)
    while x != None:
        results.append(x)
        x = fn(*args,**kwds)
    return results

for record in unroll(cursor.fetchone):
    process(record)

This will create a list of all results of your function,
up to, but not including the first 'None' result.

...
Here's another way to do it, using generators:
(in python 2.2)

from __future__ import generators
def gen_unroll(fn, *args, **kwds):
    x = fn(*args,**kwds)
    while x != None:
        yield x
        x = fn(*args,**kwds)

for record in gen_unroll(cursor.fetchone):
    process(record)
    if somecondition(): break

The difference, with the generator version, is that
results are not all computed and put in a list, as with the
first version of unroll; they are generated only as they are needed.

With the generator version, if you decide to break out of processing records
before all are done, you will have saved the time needed to fetch all
records in advance.





From yuba at cyberback.com  Fri Jul 20 21:05:02 2001
From: yuba at cyberback.com (Greg & Janet LINDSTROM)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 20:05:02 -0500
Subject: Help with PDF
Message-ID: <000801c11181$3145dcc0$2cde3dd8@glindshome>

Greetings-

What is available in Python to produce Portable Document Format (PDF) files?  I have read through the "Python Programming on Win32" book and searched the web-site, with little result (the book is good, but eluded that new tools might be available by the time the book had been published).  What is the state-of-the-python on pdf?  Is it considered "the method of choice" for "pretty" documents?

Thanks,
Greg Lindstrom
Vilonia, Arkansas
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010720/a94f521f/attachment.html>

From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 14 09:13:57 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:13:57 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.995051543.19976.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5042e3.1229234@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:11:52 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>[Tim]
>> Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
>> routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin
>> long *!  Hint:  recursion <wink>.
>
>[David C. Ullrich]
>> I give up, howdaya do that?
>>
>> (When I read this I said aha, you're getting at something like
>> using
>>
>> [*] (a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + (a*d+b*c)*2**k + b*d.
>>
>> But when I think about it I don't see why that would give any
>> improvement - it _seems_ to me that vanilla long multiplication
>> should be quadratic (a*b takes time "len"(a) * "len"(b), where
>> "len" is the number of "digits".) If that's correct then using
>> [*] wouldn't improve things at all as far as I can see.
>
>Right, it's not "clever" enough:  that reduces an NxN mult to four
>(N/2)x(N/2) mults.  NxN takes N**2 "elementary" (1x1->2) mults, and
>(N/2)x(N/2) N**2/4, so four of the latter is no savings over the former.
>
>The trick is to reduce it to three (N/2)x(N/2) multiplications 

That would do it all right...

>(and
>recursively too for those in turn).  Then the overall complexity drops from
>O(N**2) to O(N**log2(3)) ~= O(N**1.58).
>
>> Can't decide:
>>
>> You're hinting at [*] and I'm analyzing it wrong? (Like
>> if vanilla multiplication is actually worse than quadratic
>> in the sense above then [*] will speed things up...)
>
>You'll figure it out <wink>. 

Thanks. (Too late, Emmanuel already gave it away.)

> "An answer" is spelled out in Knuth vol 2, or
>search for "Karatsuba multiplication" on the web.
>
>> You're hinting at something kinda like [*] but with clever
>> rearrangents that does give improvement, like that
>> Strassen(?) thing for matrix multiplcation?
>
>Yes, but not nearly *that* clever.
>
>> You're talking about using an FFT-based multiplication?
>> (One can certainly write a recursive FFT. But surely if
>> _this_ is what you meant then the hint would be "FFT"
>> instead of "recursion"...)
>
>I'm not sure you can write one of those *in Python* that's actually faster
>than the builtin long *, unless the longs are so large nobody would care.

Doesn't seem likely to me either, wasn't sure what you were getting
at. (Just for giggles I made a few Python FFT's yesterday; one of
them is only about 100 times slower than the same algorithm in
Object Pascal...)

>See
>
>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/63188
>
>and followups for Christian Tismer's last known stab at implementing
>Karatsuba in Python.  It pays for ints short enough that somebody *might*
>care.  OTOH, anyone who cares a lot should be using one of the GMP wrappers
>(GMP also uses this trick, but in excruciatingly long-winded and
>platform-optimized C).

Right - wasn't meaning to suggest that this was the right solution
for serious work, just wanted to know what the algorithm in
question was. Lemme write this down: Karatsuba.



David C. Ullrich


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Jul 18 09:18:35 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:18:35 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.995419232.8951.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E25ECA4BBFEgmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

"Gregory P. Smith" wrote:

> I hack that I don't really recommend, but that does work: rename the
> _xmlplus subdirectory from the pyxml installation to xml.  (move any
> old tiny xml directory that python came with out of the way).  We've
> been doing this to package mojo nation successfully with both gordons
> and py2exe.  [we did that for other historical reasons unrelated to
> packaging but it worked for packaging as a side effect]

I looked into this and discovered a problem with imputil (which
both Thomas & I rely on). Your hack neatly avoids the problem.

When you have _xmlplus installed, importing xml causes code in
xml/__init__.py to run which imports _xmlplus, then swaps itself
in sys.modules with _xmlplus.

Under the regular import mechanism, an import of, say, xml.sax 
will cause _xmlplus.sax to be imported, but it will show up as
xml.sax in sys.modules, and it will have the __name__ "xml.sax".

Under imputil, _xmlplus.sax will be imported (and become an
attribute of xml), but it will show in sys.modules as
_xmlplus.sax (and have a __name__ of _xmlplus.sax).

Normally, this is not a problem. Once imported, a reference
to xml.sax will be resolved by looking for the name "sax"
within xml, and this succeeds. But there are quite a few
places in _xmlplus where it searches sys.modules, and these
cases fail.

I've posted a patch to the import SIG for comment. If no one
complains, I'll send it on to Pythonlabs.

- Gordon


From heikowu at ceosg.de  Mon Jul 16 17:58:13 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:58:13 +0200
Subject: CGI-Problem with Refresh Header
Message-ID: <9ivnss$csl$01$1@news.t-online.com>

Hello fellow Pythonistas!

I have a small problem with my CGI-script; I need to do a refresh (to some 
other page) after a certain amount of time, but I can't remember the exact 
syntax of the "Refresh:"-HTTP-Header...

Anybody out there who can help me? :)

Yours,

        Heiko W.



From sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk  Tue Jul 10 13:50:52 2001
From: sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk (Steve S.L. Wong)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:50:52 +0800
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
Message-ID: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com>

if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
}




From aahz at panix.com  Thu Jul 12 00:26:04 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 21:26:04 -0700
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9ij8ss$puj$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B4CA0A8.20B53230 at tundraware.com>,
Tim Daneliuk  <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>
>Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to prepare
>the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
>
>        (()), (), ((,)) ???

Um.  Tuples are immutable.  How do you add more later?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Wed Jul 25 20:31:11 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:31:11 -0400
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies
In-Reply-To: <996072078.378.91641.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F2C8F.4085.28B422@localhost>

kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi)	 wrote, in part:
> I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
> 1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
> process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
> program is run under Python version 2.1.

Interesting one (for me, anyways).

Please forgive my ignorance: would I be correct to surmise that 1.5 
lacks 'threading' and locks?



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 12:55:57 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:55:57 -0400
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>        <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.994949372.17704.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <NCk37.1777$u76.55241@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994949372.17704.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Bengt> On 11 Jul 2001 22:32:16 -0700, tangell at kicker.com (T Angell)
wrote:
>     >> I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket
connections
>     >> and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
>     >> sample times:
>     >>
>     >> socket time: 0.0047459602356
>     >> socket time: 0.00469899177551
>     >> socket time: 0.00404000282288
>     >> socket time: 0.00537407398224
>     >>
>     Bengt> [...]
>     >> t1 = time.time()
>     Bengt> For accurate timing, time.clock() is recommended, I believe:
>     ...
>
> Not in this case.  He wants to know how long it takes the socket to be
> connected between the two machines.  That is an elapsed time sort of
thing,
> what you measure with time.time.  It has little or nothing to do with the
> CPU time used by the client process making the connection.
> Well, after this little experiment on PythonWin 2.0/Win95 I'm no longer
sure what is going on:

>>> for i in range(10):
...  time.sleep(2.5)
...  print time.time(), time.clock()
...
994956779.3 5.86667560636e-006
994956781.88 2.55270956603
994956784.41 5.0637313733
994956786.94 7.58865720176
994956789.41 10.1181121038
994956791.99 12.6327050403
994956794.46 15.1421897786
994956796.99 17.6518547076
994956799.51 20.1890552976
994956802.04 22.7061055331

Is my CPU usage really ~100% during those sleeps?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/






From eduard.hiti at t-online.de  Mon Jul  2 16:01:08 2001
From: eduard.hiti at t-online.de (Eduard Hiti)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 22:01:08 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <9hq6900kqt@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9hqjvf$f4i$01$1@news.t-online.com>

| Oh, and, what about http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdb/?  Now
| renamed to XBase, I'm told, but apparently the URL still has
| XDB in it.  Haven't checked it, but they claim support for C++,
| Perl and Python.

Unfortunately support for various scripting languages, including Python, is
still on the To Do-list (at least on their home page)





From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Mon Jul  2 12:33:53 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:33:53 -0700
Subject: Simple question (launch a program)
References: <9hf6v6$ps0$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hf868$941$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net> <9hil2h$3qa$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hjeg8$dtrpr$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B40A271.F48D39ED@ccvcorp.com>

Either that, or use double \'s, eg:
>>>os.system("c:\\Program Files\\KeyNote\\keynote.exe")

The likely problem here being that \ indicates escape codes in
python strings; in order to represent \ itself, you either need to
escape it (which is what \\ does), or specify that the string not
use escape codes (which is what the raw string does).

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

Emile van Sebille wrote:

> Maybe you need a raw string? eg:
> >>> system(r"C:\Program Files\KeyNote\keynote.exe")
>
> --
>
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
>
> ---------
> "MDK" <no at spam.com> wrote in message
> news:9hil2h$3qa$1 at taliesin.netcom.net.uk...
> >
> > "Franz GEIGER" <fgeiger at datec.at> wrote in message
> > news:9hf868$941$1 at newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net...
> > > Did you try os.system()?
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > Franz
> > >
> >
> > Yes. If I do
> > >>> system("notepad")
> > notepad launches and I get a return code of 0.
> >
> > However, if I do:
> > >>> system("C:\Program Files\KeyNote\keynote.exe")
> > I get a return code of 1 and nothing happens.
> >
> >
> >
> >



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 00:50:46 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:50:46 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
In-Reply-To: <ug0cfdo2k.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107030844250.15928-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:

>Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
>> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
>> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
>> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
>> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
>
>Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
>to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
>manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?

Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
have COM for whatever is in their system.

>At least under Windows, it would seem that having solid ODBC and COM
>support should pretty much cover in Python anything you'd do elsewhere.
>
>On other environments, direct support for a particular database is
>likely to be more desirable, as it's more typical in those
>environments, but as you've noted, there's a plethora of support
>modules for various databases - some at various levels.

We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.

>--
>-- David

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/




From sandysj at asme.org  Fri Jul  6 11:42:12 2001
From: sandysj at asme.org (Jeff Sandys)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:42:12 GMT
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it> <l8e6kt415rispcte0qbaj1qhq33hq270bk@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B45DC54.F8E703A2@asme.org>

> >I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference
> 
> _Python Essential Reference_ did it for me. 

There is a reason it is called essential.  First 100 pages, 
everything essential about the language, next 200 pages, 
short descriptions of all the essential modules included 
in the distribution.  Get the 2nd version for Python 2.1, 
or the first version for Python 1.5.

Thanks,
Jeff Sandys


From roy at panix.com  Thu Jul 19 21:17:35 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:17:35 -0400
Subject: Parsing TCL?
Message-ID: <roy-8EF99A.21173519072001@news1.panix.com>

I know this is probably a strange request, but does anybody know of a 
python module which parses TCL files?


From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Tue Jul 24 16:52:31 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:52:31 GMT
Subject: PEP238 and zope
Message-ID: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

We're a zope shop.  Its quite possible that the work we do now will be 
still in use for many years (not guaranteed but we still use code now 
that we wrote 2 years ago - before it was zope ;) )

We use Python Methods in Zope... python snippets stored directly in 
zope's zodb.  grepping *.py won't find any of these snippets.  I don't 
believe zope will surface any warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may 
be wrong).  How do we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?

Tom



From kp87 at lycos.com  Fri Jul 27 04:42:07 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 01:42:07 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0@posting.google.com>

Thanks everyone. I am learning a lot by this discussion, but i should
point out that the main reason why i am so unhappy with the
interpreter is that  i am ON A MACINTOSH!!! The forgotten platform of
the python world. (thanks god for Jack and Just!)

which means that IDLE, we don't really have! (it's broken, i think and
has been for a while as there are problems with tkinter. Unless i am,
as always, wrong) And our Mac IDE is, uhm... (forgive me
please)...uhmm.... Not fully-featured as IDLE is.

Compound this with the move to OS X and the fact that our text engine
(WASTE) is not yet ready for prime time X wise...

Well. I guess i should be used to it by now and just realize that
macintosh is the runt of the litter and that we will never have the
niceties that other *nix and Windoze users have. I'll die of old age
before we get syntax coloring!

Anyway i hate to send this post because it makes me seem ungrateful
for all that Python and the Python Community has given me. That is not
the case. I am still very much in love with both, but i would be
thrilled, if, just once, the Macintosh was given a bit more Python
love. The Mac is a legit machine, and an affordable one. Lot's of
folks use them. They should all come with Python Pre-installed :-) and
a pretty IDE to make us all happy Pythonites. I mean, don't you pity
us?! What do we have? Awesome hardware and ... Applescript!? The Apple
couldn't even hang on to Smalltalk for us! I've had to wait 10 years
to get back the NeXT machine i had! Guido! Please release the dogs!
The Mac world is on a respirator!

Ok, i am done getting carried away. 

cheers,
kevin parks
seoul, korea
kp87 at lycos.com


Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpd76n5p7q.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > As others (including Guido) have observed, having a line editing subsystem

> Creating an editing subsystem is a lot of work.  I created one that
> knows the structure of the language, and it is distributed for free
> with Python.  The only downside is that it uses a GUI, so it's not for
> everyone.  Its name?  IDLE.
> 
> BTW, IDLE's rules are almost the same as those used by Emacs
> python-mode.el.  Emacs *does* run in a classic TTY window.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From volucris at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 14:23:56 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:23:56 -0500
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
References: <mailman.994953021.32263.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4deab3$0$329$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

I'm not too confortable with with regular expressions, so I can't help you
there. But, I did write a program for my father that might help you out a
little bit. It downloads winning Powerball numbers (It's a lottery if you
didn't know.) and grabs the numbers for a chosen date.
PBallAgent: http://volucris.8m.com/PBallAgent/pballagent.pyw.txt

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

<fett at tradersdata.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953021.32263.python-list at python.org...
> I have a really dumb program that i would like to make smarter.  I need
> to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything except for the
> standings which are written in it.  I have tried to use regular
> expressions with no success, but i still think that they are probably
> the best way.  I created the following simple fix, but it is unreliable
> if the data changed posistions.
>
>
> input = open('rawdata', 'r')
> S = input.read()
> print S[4021:6095]
>
> Output :
>    League Standings
>    American League
>      EAST W L PCT GB HOME ROAD EAST CENT WEST NL L10 STRK
>      Red Sox 43 29 .597 - 23-15 20-14 23-13 8-7 6-6 6-3 6-4 L2
>      Yankees 41 31 .569 2.0 21-15 20-16 19-11 12-9 5-7 5-4 6-3 W2
>      Blue Jays 35 38 .479 8.5 18-20 17-18 14-13 6-7 11-13 4-5 5-5 W3
>      Orioles 34 39 .466 9.5 20-20 14-19 15-17 9-12 6-5 4-5 5-5 L1
> ........( it continues with all the standings)
>
>
> Also could you tell me if its possible to download the data from the
> web-page in python so that it doesnt even have to deal with opening the
> file.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Hammond              Get your free e-mail account today @
> Raleigh NC                     http://sabacctable.zzn.com
> The United States of America
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>




From rhcassel at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 09:43:35 2001
From: rhcassel at yahoo.com (rh cassel)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:43:35 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com>

> Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for
> me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
> Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
> accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
> with Python.

Off topic but if one looks at the definition, a "steep" learning curve means
quick and easy to learn. It is an accumulated knowledge versus time
function.  The marketing folks have totally corrupted the meaning.

Here is a nice reference.
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV63-1356_STO61762,00.html


Bob






From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 20:58:10 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:58:10 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com> <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b622f18.603981038@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b633eda.673551235@wa.news.verio.net>

Update: Scheme's 'wart' was a beauty spot after all ;-)

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 04:51:08 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:

>On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:59:16 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>IEEE 754, the floating point standard in use in virtually all current
>>hardware, mandates that -0.0 be distinguishable from 0.0, in order to
>>be able to represent the sign of degenerated underflow results.  (Or
>>so I understand, having been educated in IEEE 754 through numerous
>>discussions with Tim Peters, but not by reading the standard.  If I'm
>>wrong, Tim will surely correct me. :-)
>>
>>I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
>>box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.
>>
>My gut feeling is that the symmetry of sign,magnitude numbers in IEEE754 is not good
>when you are dealing with a mapping of the real axis to the unit circle. It doesn't
>feel right to me, though probably it's not of much practical consequence.
>
I still feel that way ;-)

>But, speaking of the unit circle, UIAM Scheme has what appears to me to be a wart.
>Functions that return angles apparently do so as values in (-pi,pi] rather than
>[-pi,pi). To me that is a wart. Apparently Scheme got it from APL, and I still haven't
>got to the local U library to see the referenced paper with the rationale. Mathematically,
>you can't translate the interval by exactly pi and get a 2pi interval that includes zero!
>It strikes me as weird to exclude zero and include 2pi. [1]
Well, it's also weird to translate that interval by pi ;-/ I wasn't looking at what it really
means. I.e., the interval (-pi,pi] is really effectively two intervals, (-pi,0) and [0,pi],
which you can separate out from (-pi,pi] and rearrange with the ususal

    if angle < 0: angle += twopi

getting [0,pi],(pi,2pi) with the pi's merging for [0,2pi) as I wanted.

I've programmed that a zillion times. I just wasn't looking at (-pi,pi] in terms of the
two intervals :-/


But I think the real truth is that IEEE754 returns [-pi,-0][0,pi].
"if angle < 0" can separate that into [-pi,-0) and [-0][0,pi] and then
adding 2pi to [-pi,-0) gives [pi,2pi) to combine with [-0][0,pi] for [-0][0,2pi).

The -0 will probably disappear benignly at some point if ignored,
but I wonder if the function is relying on that always happening
in the caller's code.

You can ignore the following paragraph, after the intervals have been fixed as above ;-/
>
>And look what that interval does if you want to turn it into a Python index range
>for k steps of 2*pi/k. Adding pi to an angle puts it in (0,2pi] -- and unless you
>turn 2pi into zero before doing angle*k//twopi, you will have an out of range index
>when an arctangent returns pi instead of -pi.
>
I wonder if (angle*k//twopi)<k is always true if angle<twopi. Seems like
it should be for positive numbers anyway.

>My intel book says the pentium FPATAN instruction returns radians with a magnitude
>*less than* pi, so whatever constant is defined as pi for purposes of returning it
>from software, the choice must have been made there between +pi and -pi, or they just
>return whatever the hardware provides, which would make the scheme documentation wrong
>about the interval. It could either be called (-pi,pi) or [-pi,pi], but not half open.
>
Well, looking in another part of the book, it uses the pi symbol and says inclusive as
well as specifying the signed zero cases. So I conclude [-pi,-0][0,pi] is coming from the
hardware. Which is not half open until splitting off and translating the negative piece
by 2pi, as above.

>Is this something that might be given a clean resolution in Python?
>I.e., [-pi,pi) , IMHO ;-)
>
Never mind, Scheme's interval is fine (just that it's really two for some purposes).
I can make what I wanted after all *<8-p

I wonder if Scheme actually returns the hardware result or forces -pi to +pi specially
to make (-pi,pi] their actual result range per their spec.

I'll post this before looking. ;-)



From ruckc at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 21:23:13 2001
From: ruckc at yahoo.com (ruckc)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 18:23:13 -0700
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits? bug fix!
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com> <9iajn0$rvm$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <9iicpa$9ju$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <a9a946b.0107161723.5554a9a8@posting.google.com>

I tried this change, and i still only get a 15 byte Image Object in Zope.

missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) wrote in message news:<9iicpa$9ju$1 at node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>...
> Hi:
> 
> Thanks for your help. I finally broke down and joined the zope mailing list.
> It was not so difficult, really, just fill out the form at:
> 
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
> 
> and reply to the confirmation message that goes out to you.
> 
> 
> Turns out there is a bug in the PIL External Method example in the Zope
> Book. Once the image.data attribute gets to a certain size, it is no
> longer pushed around as a string, but gets wrapped up in its own 
> different kind of object. PIL or cStringIO was objecting to that.
> 
> The fix is to wrap image.data in str() to force stringiness.
> Here is the corrected code...
> 
> (mostly from http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB/ScriptingZope.dtml)
> 
> 
> def makeThumbnail(self, original_id, size=128):
>           """
>           Makes a thumbnail image given an image Id when called on a Zope
>           folder.
> 
>           The thumbnail is a Zope image object that is a small JPG
>           representation of the original image. The thumbnail has a
>           'original_id' property set to the id of the full size image
>           object.
>           """
> 
>           from PIL import Image
>           from cStringIO import StringIO
>           import os.path
> 
>           # create a thumbnail image file
>           original_image=getattr(self, original_id)
>           original_file=StringIO(str(original_image.data)) # bug fix here
>           image=Image.open(original_file)
>           image=image.convert('RGB')
>           image.thumbnail((size,size))
>           thumbnail_file=StringIO()
>           image.save(thumbnail_file, "JPEG") 
>           thumbnail_file.seek(0)
> 
>           # create an id for the thumbnail
>           path, ext=os.path.splitext(original_id)
>           thumbnail_id=path + '.thumb.jpg'
> 
>           # if there's and old thumbnail, delete it
>           if thumbnail_id in self.objectIds():
>               self.manage_delObjects(thumbnail_id)
> 
>           # create the Zope image object
>           self.manage_addProduct['OFSP'].manage_addImage(thumbnail_id,
>                                                          thumbnail_file,
>                                                          'thumbnail image')
>           thumbnail_image=getattr(self, thumbnail_id)
> 
>           # set the 'originial_id' property
>           thumbnail_image.manage_addProperty('original_id',
>                                                 original_id,
>                                                      'string')


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 11:50:37 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:50:37 -0500 
Subject: What's wrong with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51EB@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I am writing a short Python program to FTP data in my windows directory to a windows machine.  Here is the program (with IP, name., and password changed to protect the innocent, along with the trace.  What do I need to modify to ftp all the files in my particular windows directory to a directory on a Unix machine, using a user account with name and password provided?

import string, os 
from ftplib import FTP
print string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPerl'),',')
ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144',21) #connect to host, default port
ftp.login(user='Goofy',passwd='elmer',acct='fudd')   # default, i.e.: user name, passwd hostname
ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/')
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit()    

Here is the trace

raceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Python20\Pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 301, in RunScript
    exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
  File "D:\programsPython\ftpdata.py", line 4, in ?
    ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144',21) #connect to host, default port
  File "D:\Python20\lib\ftplib.py", line 108, in __init__
    if user: resp = self.login(user, passwd, acct)
  File "D:\Python20\lib\ftplib.py", line 318, in login
    resp = self.sendcmd('USER ' + user)
TypeError: cannot add type "int" to string
>>> 



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Fri Jul 13 14:12:29 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:12:29 -0400
Subject: apply problems
In-Reply-To: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>; from cjensen@bioeng.ucsd.edu on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:50:57AM -0700
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <20010713141229.A422@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:50:57AM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> apply( self.ren.Elements, cmd[1], additional_kwds )

> def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> elements, *args, **kwds ):

> However, if I replace the apply command with:
> self.ren.Elements( cmd[1][0], cmd[1][1], cmd[1][2], cmd[1][3],
> cmd[1][4], cmd[1][5], additional_kwds )
> 
> It works fine.  I can't figure why the apply line doesn't work.  There

Try
    apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )
There is subtle difference between calling Elements() as regular
function and as class method within an object, namely 'self' argument.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 16:26:39 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:26:39 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jsipv$d2h$1@panix2.panix.com>

[Okay, I posted one silly response to Guido before OSCON; now that I'm
back home, let's try for a more considered one.]

In article <cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>Anyway, I wasn't trying to do anything of the sort -- I was indicating
>I have a right to be torn over this issue, since strong arguments can
>be made for both cases.
>
>Several people whom I respect have strongly suggested that if Python
>wants to appeal to non-programmers, it should be case-insensitive.
>(Leaving apart details of how to implement that; I agree that it
>should be case-preserving.)  Others, whome I respect just as much,
>feel that it should be case-sensitive.

For users who start with case-sensitive languages such as English (or
are at least familiar with English or another case-sensitive language),
I believe that case sensitivity as a concept is easy to learn.  I think
that for such users, case sensitivity is ultimately a benefit to
literate programming; at the very least, I've never heard anyone
complain about case-sensitivity once it was pointed out that language
works the same way.

OTOH, I can see that someone who is familiar only with languages that do
not possess case might face some difficulty.

On the gripping hand, given that Python is already case-sensitive and
that there are reasonable arguments in favor of case-sensitivity, I
think the burden should lie on those who want to remove case-sensitivity
to produce an especially powerful argument to change Python's behavior,
particularly given the (IMO) reasonable suggestion that we can create
tools that emulate case-insensitivity for beginning programmers if we
wish.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Tue Jul 24 03:20:01 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:20:01 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:39:15 +0200."
             <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com> 
Message-ID: <m15OwU5-000wcEC@swing.co.at>

Just van Rossum <just at letterror.com> wrote:

> > As for the second line: do you really think
> > int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is signigicantly better for rounding?
> 
> 1) only one of the / operands need to be a float to force a float
> outcome, and 2) there is a round() builtin function. Now, if we
> initialize k to a float, we can write it like so:
> 
>    int(round(bytes/k))

My version of the Python Library Reference Manual (Release 2.1, 15
April 2001) says:

    Conversion from floating point to (long or plain) integer may
    round or truncate as in C; see functions floor() and ceil() in the
    math module for well-defined conversions.

That means that one should not use `int` to convert from float to
integer. No using `int (math.floor (a/b))` is quite a mouthful but
everybody caring about version compatibility will have to use such
abominations for a long time. (For instance, my main customer will
ship based products on 1.5.2 for several month to come, the shift to
2.x *may* happen with the next major release which is planned for
the last quarter of the year).

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Tue Jul 24 05:30:50 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 11:30:50 +0200
Subject: Python 2.2 dictionary question.
References: <Xns90E76819BC1F6duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <j4bsmbgbxs.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <Xns90E7787B441D5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <j44rs2ishh.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> > Also note that much of this has been discussed before in
> > 
> which is precisely why I didn't just post a bug report to sourceforge since 
> I was sure it must have been discussed *somewhere*, I just couldn't find 
> the discussion.

That should never stop you from reporting a bug when you think you
found one. It may be that it is quickly closed if it was fixed, or if
it was not considered a bug; this should not worry you. I doubt that
the bug would be closed if there was still the intention to do
something about the problem.

Anyway, since there is an SF report on this now, we can sit back and
wait what Guido decides :-)

Regards,
Martin


From chris at voodooland.net  Mon Jul  9 09:36:55 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:36:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kj2cf.el0.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>
Message-ID: <20010709083440.U93525-100000@open-systems.net>


On 9 Jul 2001, Remco Gerlich wrote:

> The typical binary only product would usually be under a license other than
> your license. And your clause 3 doesn't allow that.

Oh come on if the author of the binary only work is to LAZY to even follow
clause 3..

#  3. No changes are made to this license and/or additional terms of use
#     are placed "without prior written permission from Chris Watson."

                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There is no problem asking me to license it to you for any license you
wish. This just gives me control to prevent GPL'ing it. It takes 30
seconds to shoot me an email to license it they way you want.

> Your license is a sort of ultra-GPL.

s/ultra-GPL/anti-GPL/


Chris




From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 16:57:39 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:57:39 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3b549622.2170522105@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107180052360.15217-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Bengt Richter wrote:

>I think you're right about #! triggering confusion, but I think a fixed keyword
>as a prefix is helpful when e.g., grepping for files with directives.
>
>I withdraw my #!pragma (or #!pythma ;-) suggestion and propose
>r'^\s*#pragma\s' as the magic line prefix regular expression.

I think, this has no chance to be included into Python.
Or Python will be messier than C++ is now.

I do not believe pre-tokenizer directives are required...

.spy things could be handled even now, so the overhead will
be only for those who need it:

--- file.spy ---
#!/usr/bin/prepython
#!pragma
   $!pythma
#!pyth on
#!pyth off
...
...
----------------

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br  Tue Jul 17 17:24:59 2001
From: tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br (Tatiana Evers)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:24:59 -0300
Subject: Python and C++
Message-ID: <00de01c10f06$ef192ef0$39a5100a@cg22898>

Hi,

I'm a new python user. I would like to know how can I extend Python ? I read
documents in www.python.org, but I didn't found anything about class in C++.
Anyone knows something about it ? One example or site or tutorial ?Please, I
need some help.

Thanks ;o)

Tatiana Evers

---------------------------------------------------------------
Tatiana Figueiredo Evers
Mestranda em Computa??o Aplicada
(Computa??o Gr?fica)
UNISINOS - S?o Leopoldo - RS
tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br
www.inf.unisinos.br/~tatiana




From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 01:47:48 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 05:47:48 GMT
Subject: Boolean idioms (was Re: re Challenge: More Compact?)
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <9iuqec$1bh$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3b53d21f.2120342641@wa.news.verio.net>

On 16 Jul 2001 06:33:00 -0700, aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

>In article <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list at python.org>,
>Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>>
>>Well, it's un-Pythonic to try to emulate Perl undef via Python None; it's
>>idiomatic to return 0 for false and 1 for true, [...]
>
>I know that it's a frequent Python idiom to use 0/1, but where is it
>specifically un-Pythonic to use None/1?
>-- 

 >>> ['zero','one'][0==1]
 'zero'
 >>> ['zero','one'][0==0]
 'one'
 >>> ['zero','one'][None]
 Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
 TypeError: sequence index must be integer

I don't know about Pythonic or not, but maybe a reason, in
case it gets passed symbolically and used raw instead of
as [sym==1]?

Or is it really not dependable even for boolean expressions?


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 12:18:58 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:18:58 -0500
Subject: how saving/retreiving python code from DB ?
In-Reply-To: <9j457f07jv@enews4.newsguy.com>
References: <3B559274.6B66A372@yahoo.com>
        <9j457f07jv@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <15189.46834.424888.145730@beluga.mojam.com>

    vincent> I'm looking for a module that allow us to store/import python
    vincent> code into DB (bsddb for example) instead of a file.

    Alex> You can write your own version of __import__ ...

I believe there was a custom __import__ floating around at one time that
allowed imports from zipfiles (part of some sort of freeze tool that Fredrik
Lundh wrote, perhaps?).  If that code can be located, it would probably
serve as a useful template for importing code from other structured files.
Sorry, my memory is foggy on the details.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Tue Jul  3 14:40:31 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 11:40:31 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message news:<9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>...
> Funny, I thought all of the April Fool jokes were out on the 1st April, did
> this one get delayed (badly) somewhere along the line?
> 
> Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging out
> applications that are going to run in an environment where it isn't going to
> matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not something I would put
> forward for something like Air Traffic Control.
> 
> This is a joke, right?

If that's your idea of a joke, you have a strange sense of humor, but
I appreciate your post anyway. If your claims about Python are even
close to the truth, I need to know.

<cut>

> Based upon Gerrit's observations, which I fully endorse, anybody who doesn't
> use the most strongly typed language they can find for an application like
> Air Traffic Control, has to put it mildly, rocks in their head :-).

As I indicated in my original post, the lack of type checking does
concern me. However, as I wrote in a later post, I also suspect that
this concern is overblown. I am not a computer scientist or even a
full-time programmer, so I don't pretend to be an expert in this area.
I am an aerospace engineer, and I do some programming in support of my
own research (but I am a Python beginner).

Consider the type checking in C or C++, for example. Suppose that a
function takes several ints (or any other type) as arguments, and
suppose the calls of the function all pass ints in the correct slots.
The compiler will be perfectly happy. Does that assure that the
arguments are passed correctly? Of course not. It is a necessary but
not sufficient condition for correctness. The arguments could be
completely out of order, and the compiler wouldn't have a clue.

Now consider argument passing by keyword in Python. The order of the
arguments no longer matters. Sure, the wrong type of arguments could
still be passed in, but it seems to me the probability is less than
getting the wrong object of the right type in C++. In C++, the
complier only checks the type of the argument, but Python checks the
actual NAME of the argument. The name is more specific than the type.

In C++, the function calls all get checked automatically at compile
time, but Python doesn't check them until run time. That is a valid
concern, but hardly a show-stopper. I understand that PyChecker can be
used for static checking. I actually think the core Python language
should have an option to do static checking, but as long as some
product is available to do it, the issue is not major.

> Don't get me wrong, Python is a nice language and you could probably do the
> job with it with enough time and effort. But as an earlier respondent said,
> you would literally have to test it to death and then some! i.e. because of
> the lack of type checking  there could be a single line of code somewhere
> that has never been run that could cause catastrophic failure of the
> application (architectural design *might* mitigate this but it gets back to
> the people factor - something I don't trust :-)). At least with a strongly
> typed language, even if a line of code has never been run, you are
> reasonably assured that when it does run it won't crash due to a variable
> being mispelled or mis-used.

As I said, static type checking is a must, but it can already be done
in Python. So I think your concerns, although valid, are way
overblown. By the way, people in the commercial software industry have
no idea about the amount of testing that will go into the ATC
application we are talking about. Their concerns are completely
different, of course. If they tested their software even one-tenth as
much as this application will be tested, they'd go out of business. I
get a kick out of people who think that a few programmers can hack out
some code and just slap it into an operational ATC system (not to
imply you think that, of course).

> Of course, I could at this point say I would never venture into air space
> controlled by such as system, but I know it would never get off the ground
> (so to speak :-)) because to do it in Python would mean it would never pass
> acceptance testing - sure you could code it just as fast (if not faster)
> than most other languages used for this application area but you would be in
> the test phase forever - or at least until the customer cancelled the
> contract :-). So keep dreaming :-)

You may be right that Python is not the right language, but I don't
think you've made a convincing case.

Russ


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Jul 29 14:01:36 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 18:01:36 GMT
Subject: Slightly off-topic... (sending HTML data through a Python socket)
References: <3B643B5D.E62C6669@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED8EBEB65A6gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

Adonis Vargas wrote:

> I am attempting to send HTML data back to a browser which connected to X
> port. I have goen over the the HTML RFC and just can not get it to work.
> What I am attempting to do is send a redirect back to the browser. So
> far I have something as follows:
> 
> c.send("""
>           <HTML>
>           <HEAD>
>           <META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"
> Content=0;Host=\"http://www.python.org/\">"
>           </HEAD>
>           </HTML>
>           """)

Eric already pointed out the correct format of the http-equiv line.

You're not telling us how this is being sent. Is the browser first
getting a line like "HTTP/1.0  200  OK\r\n"? In other words, you
need to follow the HTTP protocol before HTML does you any good. If
you're using one of the standard HTTP Servers, this is getting 
taken care of for you. But if 'c' is a socket, you'll need to
do the HTTP stuff yourself.

(No need to escape a quote in a triple-quoted string.)

- Gordon


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:48:08 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:48:08 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cp4rrz95iu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <p5_77.30678$EP6.7893929@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpitgf5pma.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> *My* worry, based on some of your expressed views, is that you might
> someday decide to *unify* ints and floats by eliminating ints |-(

There would always be some kind of difference between an int (exact)
and a float with the same value (inexact).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw  Fri Jul  6 02:31:57 2001
From: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw (Chyr-Pyng Su)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 14:31:57 +0800
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
Message-ID: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>

Recently I have wrote a program in C, and start to write the GUI for it.

I want to capture the message dump by the C program and show them on a
text window.
Does anyone have some idea to do that???   redirect the stdout???


BR

cp.





From maiertur at zwallet.com  Mon Jul 16 22:25:31 2001
From: maiertur at zwallet.com (maiertur at zwallet.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 04:25:31 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: JOIN FREE!!!  Guaranteed Downline & Income...
Message-ID: <UTC200107170225.EAA00534@bacchus.cwi.nl>

Have Your Downline Built BEFORE You Spend Any Money!
This program even offers you a Monthly Guaranteed 
Minimum Income!!

GUARANTEED DOWNLINE, GUARANTEED INCOME!!!
Don't miss out on this Great Opportunity to secure 
yourself a Guaranteed Monthly Minimum Income!!!

It's FREE to join Post Launch Program!!!
Your FREE membership #  will also be entered into a 
Lucky Draw to WIN $100 to shop online!!

ALL new members that join after you will be placed 
in ONE Straight Line directly UNDER you.
YOU can easily get 500-1,000 members under YOU in 
a month!!

There is absolutely NO RISK to get involved and NO 
COST to join Post Launch Program.For information,mail to:clubmail at postmaster-email.com

REMEMBER....You have NOTHING to lose and potentially 
A LOT TO GAIN. Join Today!!!




========================================================
Disclaimer:

This is a ONE TIME MAILING ! You are not in our mailing
list. You can contact us about it at
mailto:maier at zwallet.com

Your address was bought from a professional and you can 
request him to stop selling your address at
mailto:sign4removal at yahoo.com

Both of us want to keep your privacy and your address
will be immediately removed!!!
=========================================================



From sill at optonline.net  Thu Jul 19 21:41:51 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:41:51 GMT
Subject: Conway's Life
References: <3B57AF54.F909FD36@.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lf317.2pp.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:10:56 GMT, Doug Newhouse <n at .com> wrote:
> I'm a recreational programmer with some pretty basic experience in
> Python and I'm looking for a good way to implement the grid needed for
> Life (or other cellular automata) in Python.
> This would be in win98.
> I should be able to figure out the algorithms and stuff, it's just that
> I have no idea how to do graphics. (Would this be TK? Perhaps someone
> could recommend a web site or book?) Oh, and keep it simple please, no
> need for anything super efficient just yet.
> (I did this once in Turbo Pascal using ascii symbols and EGA screen
> settings on a VGA monitor, that's not ideal ;)
> 

There's example curses conway's game of life in standard distribution
under Demo/curses/life.py .

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From python at lee-morgan.net  Tue Jul 10 20:34:23 2001
From: python at lee-morgan.net (Lee Morgan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 00:34:23 GMT
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <wkd778qos7.fsf@lee-morgan.net>

"Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> writes:

> if (sscanf(command, "%d", &num) != 1 )  {
> }

One method could be

try:
 num = int( command )
except:
 pass # or perhaps num = 0
else:
 # contents of if statement 

> 
> 

-- 
Lee Morgan


From twofingersalute at atl.mediaone.net  Thu Jul  5 22:14:56 2001
From: twofingersalute at atl.mediaone.net (myself)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 22:14:56 -0400
Subject: Changing default font in idle/linux
References: <tk55clhbjjrfd@corp.supernews.com> <tk5di6614baj06@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9i3702$g5cmc$1@ID-87965.news.dfncis.de>

In article <tk5di6614baj06 at corp.supernews.com>, "Stephen Boulet"
<spboulet at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> To reply to my own post, I found out about:
> 
>   /usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/idle/config-unix.txt
> 
> but my fonts still look bad. Maybe it's an issue with kde and
> anti-aliasing, but the letters look jagged. Any help appreciated.
> 
> Stephen Boulet wrote:
> 
all I can suggest is a search on fonts in Google Groups, particularly
alt.os.linux.mandrake- for posts on font issues; mine look OK (not great)
w/ LM7.2, python2.1-5, AA enabled (of course AA only applies to KDE apps,
but having it enabled seems to cause some probs. for non-kde apps). Also,
try similar search comp.windows.x.kde and:

http://www.mail-archive.com/expert at linux-mandrake.com/

http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker at linux-mandrake.com/

http://www.mail-archive.com/newbie%40linux-mandrake.com/

http://lists.kde.org/

you'll find a ton of posts, hopefully one will apply to your particular
setup- LM ver, vid card, KDE/QT ver, etc. How do fonts look in other
non-kde apps?? Sorry this is best I can do, hope it helps.....

>> Anyone know how to change the default font in idle in linux? I've
>> looked at the file "EditorWindow.py" but found no "text['font'] =
>> ("lucida console", 8)" line.
>> 
>> Here are my versions:
>> 
>> # rpm -q python tkinter
>> python-2.1-1mdk
>> tkinter-2.1-1mdk
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> -- Stephen
>> 
>>


From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 11:01:52 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:01:52 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <3B6031C3.6010707@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Kevin Lacker wrote:

> Can you do this:
> 
> answer = []
> for x in my_list:
>     if not is_good(x):
>         break
>     answer.append(process(x))
> 
> with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
> loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current one.


do you mean like this?
 >>> def even(x):
... 	return int(divmod(x,2)[1]) == 0
...
 >>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
 >>> b = [z for z in a if not even(z)]
 >>> print b
[1, 3, 5, 7]
 >>> c = [z for z in a if even(z)]
 >>> print c
[2, 4, 6]
 >>>

oops sorry just saw that you had process(x) in there... lets try it:

 >>> def process(x):
... 	return str(x)
...
 >>> process(1)
'1'
 >>> c = [process(z) for z in a if even(z)]
 >>> print c
['2', '4', '6']
 >>>

hmmm, seems to work for me (python 2.1)



From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 13:36:04 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:36:04 -0700
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpu201a8y7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F0384.3086D19E@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

>Changing 1/2
> from returning a float to returning a rational won't have to break
> code, since the mathematical value of the result is the same.

No, it's not. We should all be aware now that 1/10 as a rational is not
the same value as 1/10 stored as binary floating point. After all, how
many times does someone post a question about why a loop like the
following doesn't terminate?

>>> i = 0.
>>> while i <> 1:
...     i+=0.1


Anyway, while the difference is far more subtle, and far less likely to
break code, a rational is NOT a float (nor is a float a real, so I'm
glad you didn't name them that). And there are a few of us that
occasionally make use of or at least accomodate the difference (not to
mention performance issues!)

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com  Thu Jul  5 12:15:38 2001
From: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com (Lindstrom Greg - glinds)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:15:38 -0500 
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
Message-ID: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>

I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away everything
except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do this.
Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:

	stripped_phone=''
	for c in phone_number:
		if c in digits: 
			stripped_phone += c

but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure there
is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).

Greg Lindstrom
Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911 
email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com           

"When the solution is simple, God has spoken"

                                                            Albert Einstein





From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 13 15:12:51 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 19:12:51 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kui1i.orp.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:00:22 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote:
>I appreciate those who replied, particularly Nick's
>informative reply.  I would still argue that "dynamic"
>typing is a weaker and less safe sort of typing than the

That's always a popular argument, naturally from people who have never written
a large program in a dynamic language.  The argument is "which method produces
'more correct' programs?".

The static people talk about rigorously enforced interfaces, correctness
proofs, contracts, etc.  The dynamic people talk about rigorously enforced
testing and say that types only catch a small portion of possible errors.  The
static people retort that they don't trust tests to cover everything or not
have bugs and why write tests for stuff the compiler should test for you, so
you shouldn't rely on *only* tests, and besides static types don't catch a
small portion, but a large portion of errors.  The dynamic people say no
program or test is perfect and static typing is not worth the cost in language
complexity and design difficulty for the gain in eliminating a few tests that
would have been easy to write anyway, since static types catch a small portion
of errors, not a large portion.  The static people say static types don't add
that much language complexity, and it's not design "difficulty" but an
essential part of the process, and they catch a large portion, not a small
portion.  The dynamic people say they add enormous complexity, and they catch
a small portion, and point out that the static people have bad breath.  The
static people assert that the dynamic people must be too stupid to cope with a
real language and rigorous requirements, and are ugly besides.

This is when both sides start throwing rocks.

>typing is a weaker and less safe sort of typing than the
>static typing of C++.  Nick brings up the C++ example of

But if all you know is the C idea of "static typing" and "type safety" you
don't even know your own camp.  To view this debate in earnest, go to wherever
the Eiffel and Ada people do battle against Smalltalkers, Lispers, & co.

There's good arguments on both sides.  I've never seen a formal study, but
even if there is one it probably wouldn't be difficult for either side to poke
holes in it.


From barry at zope.com  Tue Jul 24 18:16:54 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:16:54 -0400
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <15197.62422.841114.343701@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "TJ" == Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> writes:

    TJ> these snippets.  I don't believe zope will surface any
    TJ> warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may be wrong).  How do
    TJ> we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?

>>> must_be_int = 1 / 2
>>> must_be_int
0
>>> must_be_int = int(1.0 / 2.0)
>>> must_be_int
0

-Barry



From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 24 11:18:38 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:18:38 +0200
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 11:48:00PM +0100, Robin Becker wrote:

> it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The popular vote is
> against the stupid float '/' operator.

Really ? I don't see a popular vote. I just see a very long and very heated
discussion with a small group of repeat offenders (oops, did I say
offenders ? I meant posters) that just keep on proclaiming their
righteousness with little in the way of new arguments (either way, for that
matter.)

> MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!

I don't believe the BDFL is wrong, either. I did, but I changed my mind. I
gave up gracefully after long and careful (and un-heated) consideration, and
admitted I was wrong before :)

I strongly suspect the change will actually *fix* more code that was relying
on float inputs than it will break code that depended on int/int being
special-cased.

Robin, sorry, but you are wrong <wink>.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul 10 15:17:26 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:17:26 GMT
Subject: SMTP server class ??
References: <d0alktgu1k5qvlt2bqdmb8l0k1rlmqm6ie@4ax.com> <mailman.994773686.29026.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <04lmktc7dhd9glgskkdmm5u8r5dcubdsf4@4ax.com>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:00:17 -0400, barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.994773686.29026.python-list at python.org>:

:
:>>>>> "SK" == Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:
:
:    SK> Actually, I found what Barry Warsaw calls his "experimental"
:    SK> smtp server (RFC821 compliant) at the Vaults at
:    SK> Parnassus. I've downloaded it.
:
:It's actually now in the standard library as smtpd.py.  It's
:asyncore/asynchat based, and it's not perfect, but at least one other
:person than me has found it useful <wink>.
:
:It implements the minimal required RFC 821 SMTP server interface, and
:no, it hasn't been checked against RFC 2821 yet either. ;)

I looked at the current 2.1 Module docs online here
http://www.python.org/doc/current/modindex.html

and see no mention of it?

I've taken a cursory glance from the code I downloaded off of your site
last night. It seems to be heavy on the Unix-isms. Does it run on win32
platforms?

Heh...I'm not expecting something extremely standards compliant.
Actually, all I really want, is something to act as smtp.localhost so
that I can set my mail client up to send mail to 127.0.0.1, and have the
raw messages written to a file. Then I will take a script to pipe them
to this smtp server I'm having to use temporarily (I want to set the
>From on the SMTP envelope, so that I can use my usual "from"
address...ISPs can be so restrictive...been without my usual DSL for
over 60 hours now, and using temporary dialup with port 25 blocked. :(

If I have time this afternoon, I might try a hand at writing myself
something simple. I'm just being cautious, as I've not done any sockets
programming up to this point.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Wed Jul 11 12:54:58 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:54:58 GMT
Subject: 'Blade of Darkness' demo has open Python source
References: <cNP27.13552$Y6.4409459@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Cx%27.3830$M9.1041990@typhoon.we.rr.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote
> In a recent thread on game programming in Python, someone mentioned that
> the commercial game Severance: Blade of Darkness is scripted in Python.  I
> recently installed it off a demo CD.  While I could not play too far due to
> having only half the required video memory, I was surprised and pleased to
> discover that it included open Python source:  not frozen .exe, not
> compiled .pyc, but notepad-readable .py files.

yeah, i've looked at this too. try downloading some of the MODS
too. same thing. .PY files and perhaps some graphic resources
with them.





From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  9 09:25:32 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 09:25:32 -0400
Subject: How to 'from package import module; from module import variable'?
Message-ID: <etdn16e1bg3.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Hi.  I've recently switched to using packages.  Because I use reload a
lot during testing, it'd be helpful to be able to do this sort of thing
successfully:

>>> from mouse.tools import queues
>>> from queues import Cyclic_queue
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named queues

My understanding of the package import routine is still sort of sketchy,
but I was wondering if there's a way to convince the import function
that queues is actually a module it can import from.  I could just make
assignments, but that seems kludgey.

Alex.


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 24 14:47:55 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:47:55 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <k_h77.23757$B7.3910692@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lrdst.k2v.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <vpj77.24033$B7.3921711@ruti.visi.com>

In article <slrn.pl.9lrdst.k2v.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
>Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:10:40 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:
>
>>>as long as a literal is an expression with type independent
>>>from the context. This implies that implicit conversions from
>>>int to float and rational are unavoidable in Python.
>> 
>> Why?
>
>Because you can't express operations like "add one", "multiply by ten"
>or "take the reciprocal (when complex numbers are considered too)".

I don't understand, but it's a moot point.  If DFL wants it, it
will happen.  There's no point in arguing about it any more.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  RELATIVES!!
                                  at               
                               visi.com            


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:58:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:58:00 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> As others (including Guido) have observed, having a line editing subsystem
> that knows about the structure of the language you are using can be a boon.
> With readline support I can recall individual lines I've typed at the
> interpreter, however readline knows nothing about Python's block structure,
> so I can't recall entire blocks that correspond to (for instance) "if",
> "for", or "while" statements.

Creating an editing subsystem is a lot of work.  I created one that
knows the structure of the language, and it is distributed for free
with Python.  The only downside is that it uses a GUI, so it's not for
everyone.  Its name?  IDLE.

BTW, IDLE's rules are almost the same as those used by Emacs
python-mode.el.  Emacs *does* run in a classic TTY window.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Thu Jul 26 07:26:24 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:26:24 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996120946.2459.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5FFE60.4D871094@student.gu.edu.au>

Tim Peters wrote:

> I have a good grasp of what it takes to undertake a major optimization
> project (I made my living for 15 years writing optimizing compilers), and
> the only way we have enough resource to tackle that successfully is in my
> dreams.  We could certainly spend more time than we do making solid small
> (localized and modest) performance improvements -- but only by dropping
> other work.  IOW, the plate's already overflowing, Joe, and I'm sure you
> have your ideas of what we should drop to work on what you want instead, but
> everyone else does too, and the bulk of the pressures don't push in the
> "faster" direction.

Tim, Guido and others, thank you for your effort and dilligence in
developing Python. Once you get past the crys of anguish and outrage, I
think most people in this group appreciate your efforts *grins* or we
wouldn't be so interested in python's future. I only wish I knew enough
C/C++ or had the proper time to learn it so that I could become a solid
contributor, rather than an occasional user.

> heck-just-look-at-this-week's-outcry-to-break-division-instead<wink>-ly
>     y'rs  - tim

Yes. Things got heated, didn't they? *evil grin* Anyone would think that
you'd been talking about forcing ourselves on the poster's virgin
daughters. *Hmmm* Maybe that could become a PEP proposal?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul 20 13:09:55 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:09:55 -0600
Subject: string random generator (Sorry if too stupid, but i am a beginner)
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D563@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios 
> 
> Hi folks!
> 
> I am in need for a function that return a string of len x 
> random generated, like
> 
> strrnd(5)
> 'Df%d^'
> 
> strrnd(2)
> '&@'
> 
> 
> I have the following code: The problem is that i don't known 
> how to map a int to a char.
> 
> import random
> def strrnd(n = 24) :
> 	result = []
> 	while n :
> 		n = n - 1
> 		result.append(random.randrange(1,255,1))
> 	return result
> 
> How may i get what i want. (Sorry if too basic, but i am a 
> python beginner).
> Another problem: This functins will be called thousands of 
> time a minute, so performance is a definitive requirement.

Something along these lines should work:

  import random, string

  def randomWord(length):
      res = ''
      for i in range(length):
          res += random.choice(string.letters)
      return res

-- bjorn



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul  3 21:43:33 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 04:43:33 +0300
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ku3d8d31ve.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list at python.org>, Haris
Lekatsas <lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU> writes:

| Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
| sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
| but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.

i'm under the impression that /usr/lib/sendmail is pretty universal.
with smtplib you have to configure the hostname of the smtp server.

| I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.

works for me...

  -- erno


From pedro at athlet.de  Thu Jul 12 02:58:24 2001
From: pedro at athlet.de (pedro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 06:58:24 GMT
Subject: catch empty sys.argv
Message-ID: <3b4d491b.56611422@news.isis.de>

hi,

my scripts gets a variable from .sys.argv[1] (a filename). when the
filename is not entered the scripts is completely useless, so i
thought i'd do a basic check like:

if sys.argv[1] == ''
    exit('enter something, stupid')

but the script just fails if nothing is entered (it also fails without
the check of course):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "lm4l.py", line 118, in ?
    obj = argv[1]
IndexError: list index out of range

what can i do ?

thx,
pedro



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Mon Jul 16 10:09:01 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:09:01 -0400
Subject: Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <995266132.1201.24550.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B52BD3D.4482.349EB09@localhost>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote, in part:
> BTW, does it bother anyone that all of these solutions accept an IP
> ending with a newline?

This reminds me of a thread of a few months ago on one of the Perl 
lists. Someone (it might have been me :o) wanted a regex that 
matches the collection of (syntactically correct) URLs exactly.

How do we know that the junk that we write in this quite low-level 
context is correct? How would one check that an IPv4 IP address, 
or a URL for that matter, is correct as specified in an RFC 
somewhere?

(This summer I'm working with one of Parnas' s/e students. Maybe 
that's why my conscience is giving me such grief.)

Can't-think-of-a-way-of-signing-this-ly yours,
etc



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Mon Jul 16 12:48:42 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:48:42 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB99@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
> 
> Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> > 
[snip]
> > 
> > Well, I for one wrote several thousands of lines of Python 
> code in my
> > last job, and I obviously have no influence on when they're going to
> > upgrade to a newer version of Python. You can probably safely assume
> > that they're not going to put a programmer on fixing 
> programs that are
> > running without any problems. More likely they would upgrade Python,
> > realize that "a bunch" of Python scripts stopped working, and either
> > roll back the Python upgrade, rewrite them in Perl/Java, or 
> find someone
> > with enough Python skills to fix the problems. Neither 
> solution would be
> > good PR for Python...
> 
> I agree it wouldn't be good PR for Python, but presumably neither
> is having division which doesn't behave as newcomers expect.
> We're trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

Yes, we're chosing between people who currently doesn't use Python (but
might in the future), and people who have significant investments in
Python...

> Anyway, if your previous employer upgrades Python for no good
> reason and without checking the Change History where they will
> see all the warnings in BIG PRINT about how existing code might
> break and that they should run "divscan.py" to see if their code
> is safe or not, how can we protect them against themselves?

What if they change because some package they use is no longer supported
with the older version (or has a bugfix that isn't backported, etc.)? In
theory it's always possible to remain with an earlier version, but in
practice it ain't always so <wink>.

"divscan.py" would be a good idea, but since Python is a dynamic
language, all it could do would be to point out all occurrences of
division in your code. You would still have to manually examine each and
every one of them to figure out whether it needed change or not...

> I'm trying to point out that this kind of hypothetical example,
> where some group might upgrade (but not be aware of this issue
> even after lengthy publicity during the transition period) 
> even though they will not actively maintain their code, is 
> not likely, or not worth worrying about for long.

I would hardly call it hypothetical. I'm sure a lot of companies are in
this boat, and most probably don't read c.l.py (the volume is just too
great). The first warning they're probably going to get that a new
version of Python is available is when they call the developer of foo.py
with a problem and he says: "yeah, that's fixed in the latest version --
but it requires Python 2.x". Besides, a minor point change would in most
context indicate minor, source-compatible changes only.

> And that's where the contingency plans come into play: we've 
> provided adequate notice, tools, etc., and yet somebody chose 
> to ignore us and got punished.  Big deal.

Getting Python accepted in an organization as a viable alternative to
Perl requires a lot of hard work. Once you've got a foothold it seems
stupid to shoot yourself in the foot by introducing random
incompatibilities that may or may not provide better traction for
non-users (not to mention the hackish solutions to long division that
would be introduced).

I'm not against making this change per se, however, I think it should be
in the context of an overhaul of the entire numerical system, and it
definitely deserves a 3.0 labelling since that would indicate that there
are incompatible changes involved with upgrading.

-- bjorn



From gnb at itga.com.au  Wed Jul 25 03:49:46 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:49:46 +1000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <868zhdo3c5.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Anything else?

Some sort of semi-automated help to discover problem code.  E.g -Dwarn
=> msg to stderr each time a division is done that would have
different meanings under -Dold and -Dnew.


From othello at javanet.com  Fri Jul 20 13:27:58 2001
From: othello at javanet.com (Raymond Hettinger)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:27:58 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
Message-ID: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com>

It looks like types and classes are heading toward unification in 2.2a (oh yeah).
Now, I want to offer an idea that is sure to attract a few flames:

1. Give lists an assignable property called 'immutable' which defaults to zero.
2. If the property gets set to one (i.e. mylist.immutable=1), then the list
disables future assignments.  For example, mylist[3]='three' generates:
        TypeError: object doesn't support item assignment
3. Immutable lists can never be converted back to mutable.  For example,
mylist.immutable=0 generates:
        TypeError: immutable objects cannot be changed
4. Immutable lists can be copied to mutable lists just like tuples can. For
example, mynewlist=list(mylist) makes a new mutable list.
5. If a list is used as a dictionary key, then the immutable property
gets set to one automatically.
6. Deprecate tuples. Simplify the tutorials. Get on with life.

Hiding behind asbestos,

Raymond




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:34:58 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:34:58 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <220720011019310436%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <9jfj2t$ad4$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <2l5nlt01l0mge3to8jb5413to2npq2u6lb@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 22:11:41 GMT, m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
wrote:

>John W. Baxter <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> wrote:
>[snip]
>> I don't think 1 / 2 producing 0 is broken, so I don't think it needs to
>> be fixed, but that view is unlikely to prevail.
>
>I believe there'll be a huge outcry once it actually looks like
>this is going to be in Python for real, when the people who don't track 
>the Python development discover what's up with this.

Of course - there are a *huge* number of algorithms that make use of
integer division, not to mention all the code that simply does
arithmetic using integers and expects an integer result.

If this happens, the Perl community will be laughing at us big time -
and for years to come - as one by one all those Python versions get
upgraded (all those 1.5.2 versions are bound to get changed some time,
even if it takes a while) and Pythons reputation for being a stable
language slowly turns into a joke.

You think red hat looks stupid for including non-release versions of
the compilers in two separate red hat releases - despite the problems
and outcry after the first! - Just wait see what this does to Pythons
reputation!

The thing about the happy majority is that they aren't writing in all
the time. They seem invisible. When they give up on Python because
their working programs turn into seething piles of hard-to-trace bugs
just because they updated the compiler to a new version, and they
figure line-by-line searches of thousands of lines of code would be
hardly more effort than to convert to a *stable* language where they
don't need to worry about the next update, I guess they'll stay
silent. But I'm sure there'll be an outcry at the start.

And if Python changes and *then* the mistake is acknowledged and
reversed - hah!

I probably won't drop Python because of this. I'll certainly argue for
standardising on the version immediately before the change. My Python
scripts may not be that big in general, but there are a lot of them
and I don't even know for sure who is using them. Having dozens of
people screaming at me that their scripts are suddenly giving stupid
results, or hanging (because using float division in the algorithm not
only screws the results up, it prevents termination too) or whatever
is not something I'd like to have to deal with.

Maybe it's time to download the source - and get ready to release my
PythonThatStillWorks version.



From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 14:17:47 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:17:47 GMT
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <f9Z77.30582$EP6.7867864@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Mark Robinson" <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3B602FA0.6030809 at herts.ac.uk...
> can anyone shed some light on the mysterious behaviour of my byte
> compiled files. I am currently working on a python script which
analyses
> patterns in a DNA sequence. I have a function which checks a pattern
(a
> substring of approx 6 chars) to ensure only valid charactors are
> present. When I first run this program it runs fine, but if I
> immediately rerun the program (i.e using the pre-byte compiled file)
it
> finds all patterns non-valid. If I delete the .pyc file between runs
> this problem does not occur. Can anyone explain what is happening
here
> to me and how to prevent it?
>
> blobby

[Always say which version of the interpreter you are having such
problems with]

There is a known bug, whose details I forget, in the writing/rereading
of .pyc files that changes the arithmetic or representation of floats,
and which exhibits the re-run/delete behavior you describe.  I believe
it has been or will be fixed in 2.2.  Maybe the same (try 2.2a1 if you
can), maybe related.  To pin it down, put print statements in your
'is_valid()' function, or before, to find the statement that gets
altered.  Good luck.

Terry J. Reedy





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 07:13:13 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:13:13 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E97A202990duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) wrote in 
news:23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61 at posting.google.com:

>> You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net was sent
>> to a different user than email to jknapka at earthlink.net.  There are 
> 
> I'm fairly sure that I don't get personal e-mails (going via my
> particular mail provider) when the capitalisation of parts of my
> address is changed. Not that I regard this as desirable, but I no
> longer regard it as surprising.
> 

If I remember correctly, the domain name (after the '@') is not case 
sensitive. The user name (before the '@') *may* be case sensitive, but it 
varies from system to system.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From just at letterror.com  Mon Jul 23 10:39:15 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:39:15 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>

> [Just van Rossum]
> > Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte?
> > Integer division is a lousy tool in this particular example...

[Terry Reedy]
> Just, this is stupid, wrong, and gratuitously insulting,
> and therefore, in my opinion, ugly and nasty.

I think you're terribly overreacting. Sorry if I offended anyone,
I admit that first line of mine is a dumb assumption. To put it more
subtly: *I* would never use int arithmetic for this sort of thing in
Python.

> As for the second line: do you really think
> int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is signigicantly better for rounding?

1) only one of the / operands need to be a float to force a float
outcome, and 2) there is a round() builtin function. Now, if we
initialize k to a float, we can write it like so:

   int(round(bytes/k))

I really don't see how the int examples you gave are in any way superior.

> If so, that is a statement of anti-integer float-religion preference,
> not fact.

Maybe. Integer arithmetic like may be a lot more natural if you have a
strong C background, and if not wasting cycles is a priority. To me
(no strong math background, no computer science education) it simply
looks like "showing off" to do a simple thing like this with ints. But
I'm sure you'll see an insult in that line, too.

> I am beginning to think that there is something wrong with a proposal
> that apparently has to be promoted by bulldozing away reasonable
> skepticism.

Look, all I did was point out that for *this* particular example *I*
think it's not appropriate to use int division. I have not taken postition
either way, in fact I'm afraid of this change, too. All I know is that I
would've preferred the proposed behavior in the first place, but I'm
not so sure about adding it now, so late in the game.

Just


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 19:15:42 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:15:42 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com>

On 27 Jul 2001 14:58:35 -0700, dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
wrote:

>Inertia should always be taken into account, but it should never
>be the single deciding factor - or we'd all be working legacy COBOL.

A couple of years ago, you may remember a major panic caused by
peoples realisation that a hell of a lot of COBOL code was going to
stop working. The developers were long since retired. In many cases,
the source code was long since lost. That COBOL program was still
there and working, though, some 20 or 30 years after it was written.

Useful programs aren't discarded so fast as development fashions and
religions. The trouble is that Python programs - and libraries much
more so - are quite often shared in source form.

>I think this is where most of the reactionary responses come from.
>C is deeply ingrained in the programming culture, because in a lot
>of ways it was, and in some ways still is, The Programming Language.
>Anything you do, day in and day out, year after year, no matter how 
>odd or perverse or inconsequential, becomes 'the natural order of things'.
>The more deeply ingrained, the harder it is to actually see.

If that was true, we wouldn't be using Python at all. After all, it is
a dynamically typed language that stores its identifiers in a hash
table - it provides a keyword to say 'a function definition is coming'
rather than leaving it to issues that often depend on the semantics
(rather than simply grammar rules) of what has happened in the past.
And it doesn't even allow you to use braces for block structures. How
not-like-C can you get?



From clspence at one.net  Fri Jul 27 09:53:14 2001
From: clspence at one.net (Chris Spencer)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 08:53:14 -0500
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com> <23891c90.0107270222.7856bec2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <fds2mtkf6l2ttli8e7tgts6mtgn22p3bd0@4ax.com>

	Note that the compiled version they provide does NOT have threading
enabled.

<grumble>

Chris.

On 27 Jul 2001 03:22:13 -0700, paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) wrote:

>SteveN <smnordby at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<3B60BC42.8C790BCE at yahoo.com>...
>> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> > 
>> > (Couldn't resist. :-)
>> > 
>> > It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
>> > endless laments in the SF bug database.)
>> 
>> And yet HP makes it available:
>> http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/
>
>It's a fearsome experience to run Python on HP-UX too - see the
>screenshot they provide. ;-)



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 29 02:43:17 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:43:17 -0700
Subject: Problem with timing, again:
References: <%QM87.438$k9.52157@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B63B085.3B3E897F@Lugoj.Com>

Jeremy Moles wrote:
> 
> I had an earlier post about timing in a program. Well, this is what I have
> so far - exactly. It works, but it won't respond, and it won't let the
> button go. What am I doing wrong?

You should have the dostuff function return, not enter an infinite loop.
Instead of going into an infinite loop, you should look into using the
"after" widget method. That would allow you to schedule future actions. So
if you delete the 3 line starting at "while 1" and insert instead the lines:

      domorestuff()
      self.hi_there.after(15000, domorestuff)

you might have better luck. However, if domorestuff get shung up for any
reason (such as taking a long time to resolve a host name or to transfer
data) then things will hang a while. Other options include using threads or
look into creative use of the "createfilehandler" mainloop hook. One
reference on these techniques is chapter 18 of "Python and Tkinter
Programming" by John E. Grayson. This is an "okay" book that should be worth
investing in if you keep running into other Tkinter development issues.

> 
> ____________________________________________
> 
> from Tkinter import *
> 
> class App:
> 
>     def __init__(self, master):
> 
>         frame = Frame(master)
>         frame.pack()
> 
>         self.hi_there = Button(frame, text='Upload',
> command=self.dostuff).pack()
> 
>     def dostuff(self):
>       import socket,ftplib,time
>       x=socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
>       y=open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','w')
>       y.write(x)
>       y.close()
>       def domorestuff():
>          z=ftplib.FTP(host='ahost')
>          z.login(user='asuer',passwd='apassword')
>          z.cwd('public_html')
>          z.storlines('STOR IP.html',open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','r'))
>          z.close()
>       while 1:
>          domorestuff()
>          time.sleep(15)
> 
> root = Tk()
> root.title('IPUL')
> 
> app = App(root)
> 
> root.mainloop()
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Anyways, the program works - but the gui itself freezes up - it's as if the
> button is stuck. You guys were so helpful last time, any advice this time?


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 10:46:20 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:46:20 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
        <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <15196.14524.979058.576152@beluga.mojam.com>

(I changed the subject to make sure that people reading c.l.py are aware of
the ramifications of PEP 238 in case they haven't read it or this thread.)

    >> but float is just ugly.  It is turning exact values (integers) into
    >> approximate ones (float) when I didn't tell it to.

    Tim> If the language defines "/" as returning a float, then you told it
    Tim> to.

The problem is all those places in my existing code I already told it to
divide two integers and return another integer.  It's like George Bush
changing personal translators and starting to get subtly different meanings
from the statements Vladimir Putin makes.  At first blush they may seem the
same, but every once in awhile the message comes out wrong.

I really don't understand the problem with teaching people new to Python
right from the get-go that when you divide two ints it works like grade
school long division.  Unless my kids' educations were aberrant in some way
(they weren't raised on Mars), I think long division is still taught to
everyone in school somewhere along the way.  It's not like it's a concept
completely foreign to people.  After years of bit rot in their brains due to
calculator crutches they may need a minute to refresh, that should be all.

If Python had int/int==float from day one, nobody would be bitching about
it.  It's just that there's all this code out there that already assumes
int/int==int that will have to be picked over if people are to upgrade to a
Python that says int/int==float.  Probably nobody new to the language will
bitch about it, because they haven't got a lot of code to maintain that
makes the int/int==int assumption.  To those of us who have to go back and
fiddle all our code, the proposed change seems very much like gratuitous
breakage.  It's a bird-in-the-hand sort of thing.  You're pissing off a
fairly significant fraction of the language's existing constituency in hopes
of attracting some non-programmers to the language who may not come anyway
for various other reasons.

Moshe, please make sure that when you update PEP 238 it includes this
problem and that it seems to be shared by many opponents to this change.

Skip



From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Wed Jul 25 11:46:36 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:46:36 -0700
Subject: Question: handling buffers of data in C extensions
Message-ID: <9jmpkt$ktk$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

In a C extension module, I am trying to implement a read function 
(something that passes back a buffer of data that Python should own and 
dispose of when it's ready to). I'm a bit confused about the best way to 
go about this.

I've appended what I have so far. I suspect it *might* work, but that 
there is a better way. My main concern is that PyString_AsString returns 
a null-terminated string, which is inappropriate and perhaps wrong; if 
the PyString is expecting the final buffer to be null-terminated I'm in 
trouble.

The documentation mentions buffer functions that sound much more 
appropriate, but I've not been able to figure out how they work. Any 
advice would be appreciated.

-- Russell

static PyObject *read (PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
{
    PyObject *py_edt_p;
    EdtDev *edt_p;
    int size;
    PyObject *py_buf_p;
    
    /* parse arguments */
    if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "Ni", &py_edt_p, &size){
        return NULL;
    }
    edt_p = (EdtDev *) PyLong_AsVoidPtr(py_edt_p);
    if (edt_p == NULL{
        return NULL;
    }
    
    /* create a new Python string of the appropriate size
    and get a pointer to its internal buffer */
    py_buf_p = PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, size);
    buf_p = PyString_AsString(py_buf_p);
    
    /* fill the internal buffer and return the string */    
    if (0 != edt_read((EdtDev *) edt_p, buf_p, size){
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, edt_errStr);
        return NULL;
    }
    return py_buf_p;
}


From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul  8 20:14:12 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 00:14:12 GMT
Subject: Good Newbie Books
References: <Cp427.655296$166.13566993@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B48F70B.33801776@tundraware.com>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> Does anybody know of some good newbie books for me to read? I have already
> read Ian Van Laningham's "Teach yourself Python in 24 Hours" are there any
> good books that kind of step me up (from the book mentioned before).
> 
> Thanks.

I've bought several, but I like what you'll find at this URL best:

http://www.diveintopython.org


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From deokhwankim at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 21:23:59 2001
From: deokhwankim at hotmail.com (Deokhwan Kim)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 18:23:59 -0700
Subject: Private variable
Message-ID: <320bded.0107051723.489bc869@posting.google.com>

In 9.6 Private Variables, Python Tutorial:

  Notice that code passed to exec, eval() or evalfile() does not consider the
  classname of the invoking class to be the current class; this is similar to
  the effect of the global statement, the effect of which is likewise
  restricted to code that is byte-compiled together. The same restriction
  applies to getattr(), setattr() and delattr(), as well as when referencing
  __dict__ directly.

I have found an explanation of the second statement in Language Reference.

  the global is a directive to the parser. It applies only to code parsed at
  the same time as the global statement. In particular, a global statement
  contained in an exec statement does not affect the code block containing the
  exec statement, and code contained in an exec statement is unaffected by
  global statements in the code containing the exec statement. The same applies
  to the eval(), execfile() and compile() functions.


But I don't know what the first and third statements mean in regard to private
variables.  Can you explain them as examples if possible?


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 16:42:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:42:28 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <3B5C4BB5.932C041D@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <cpu202oy8i.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:

> > By the way, 1/2 is also
> > 0.5 in standard JavaScript:
> 
> I wouldn't think how JavaScript does things would be a valid defense in
> any case.

This attitude is hurtful to your position.  Just because JavaScript
has a bad rep doesn't mean its designers were morons.  Of course,
pointing to JavaScript without motivation doesn't help.  But trying to
understand why JavaScript (a language that is in many ways very
similar to Python, with a more conventional C-like syntax) does things
a particular way may shed light on the issue in a more general
context.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul 18 23:56:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 20:56:57 -0700
Subject: TK + cmd.cmdloop() in threads (was Re: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
References: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <u7kx74dmd.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <yox1yneojvi.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <9j5lq9$jl7$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <yox1yneojvi.fsf_-_ at karhu.tp.spt.fi>,
Ville Vainio  <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
>
>I haven't done any UI stuff (apart from cmd and toy GTK/TK examples)
>in python yet, is it ok to have TK mainloop running in one thread and
>still perform normal cmd.cmdloop() operation in another? I can't
>quickly think of any reason why it wouldn't be, but I can't figure out
>why it hasn't been explicitly suggested... Having a TK window doing
>the data browsing/drawing while still having a straightforward,
>versatile cmd.cmdloop() running on a console sounds like an extremely
>potent combination. Anyone done it? Are there some subtle gotchas that
>make it a bad idea?

I don't know what cmd.cmdloop() does, but if it's a TK thingie, what
you're suggesting is a Bad Idea.  Generally speaking, it's safest to
have only one thread accessing any external resource (GUI, file handle,
DB connection, etc).
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 08:51:29 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:51:29 -0400
Subject: Need help with socket server code
References: <mailman.995132124.31082.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <VnB47.1585$PF1.117925@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Shane Anglin" <shane.anglin at mtni.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.995132124.31082.python-list at python.org...
> Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app:
> Main loop is:
> 1 - check socket for any incoming data
> 1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into a
list
> 2 - print out list
> 3 - go to 1 and do it all over again
>
> Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that will
sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data just fine,
my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get any new data in...
for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket, when a connection
happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print list, 3 -go to 1 and
do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has the rest of my code
'hostage' until a client connection is made and closed.
>
Shane:

I'm unsure from your description as to whether you want the list to *only*
contain the data from the last submission, or whether you want it to grow as
individual submissions are added. However, your pseudo-code is rather
unstructured.

I presume you must have some reason for not using a structure like:

    while 1:
        l = listfrom(socket)
        print list

where the listfrom() function simply waits for a connection on a socket and
returns data. Do you need to do other computations while the socket code is
running in the background?

You might want to take a look at two framework module which do most of the
work for you, and which are quite easy to use: SocketServer allows you to
build synchronous servers (where nothing happens when there's no work coming
in o ver network sockets), and asyncore builds asynchronous servers, where
interactions can easily happen with several different clients on several
different connections concurrently.

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From aycock at cpsc.ucalgary.ca  Thu Jul 26 12:32:33 2001
From: aycock at cpsc.ucalgary.ca (John Aycock)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:32:33 -0600
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
In-Reply-To: <15200.17588.34980.217940@beluga.mojam.com>; from skip@pobox.com on Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:26:28AM -0500
References: <oqae1rg432.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <15200.17588.34980.217940@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010726103233.B9810@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:26:28AM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Raise and catch exceptions at the appropriate places?
> 
>     raise == goto
>     except == target of goto

Unfortunately that doesn't work in the general case, only when the goto
is used in a "structured" fashion.  There are some papers on automatic
removal of gotos; I can dig up the references if anyone wants them.

John



From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Mon Jul  9 12:21:27 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:21:27 +0200
Subject: ICQ module for Python?
References: <3B488B04.B9753A7A@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <3B49DA07.EA6DCCF9@dennis-voss.de>

> Is there an ICQ module available for Python which supports sending and
> receiving of messages?  Don't want to reinvent the wheel if I don't have
> to.

There's a command-line tool available for Linux systems. You could call that

or implement the protocoll in Python. I *think* ICQ's protocoll is
documented.
Happy hacking (that's what ESR wrote in my book)

Dennis



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 17 03:33:01 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 10:33:01 +0300
Subject: Python vs. Perl sockets (was Re: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7lfm.t2g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <yoxsnfwggcy.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:

> Fair enough.  =)   Python does sound like a good choice in this case,
> despite Perl's strength in sockets.

What do perl sockets have that python sockets don't? I'm doing
logistics/socket stuff in Python also, and haven't had any problems
with Python sockets and threads. A lot more goes into socket
programming than bind& accept: concurrency, queues...

*cough* Bareword file handles *cough*

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From gervaserules at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 17:57:06 2001
From: gervaserules at yahoo.com (eAndroid)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 14:57:06 -0700
Subject: String Splice Assignment
Message-ID: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>

Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some
alternatives?

I would expect it would work like this:

>>> a = 'asdf'
>>> a[1:2] = "EFGH"
>>> a
'aEFGHf'

I have a long string (~1000 chars) that I would like to do multiple
splice assignments on. I am now interested alternatives to do this,
especially efficient ones.

Thanks,

nathan


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 16 13:11:10 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:11:10 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item]=None

This sort of makes me wish we had dict comprehensions to match list
comprehensions:

C = {item:None for item in B}
or
C = {item:1  for item in B}
as revised and then discarded






From gregor at mediasupervision.de  Tue Jul  3 09:20:01 2001
From: gregor at mediasupervision.de (Gregor Hoffleit)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:20:01 +0200
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
Message-ID: <20010703152001.D12350@mediasupervision.de>

Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?

(I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)

    Gregor



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:57:03 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:57:03 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cpvgke2zf1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> [posted & mailed]
> 
> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
> >
> > But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> > The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> >
> I find this a saddening remark. Perhaps the vehemence of some of the
> reactions is an indication of how much users value your language. I'm sure
> you are quite capable of ignoring personal abuse and ill-informed comment
> that suggests you do not have the best interests of the Python community at
> heart.

Actually, it's been very tough.  Years of therapy didn't prepare me
for the accusations of dictatorship.  I also didn't see enough support
*for* my position to want to continue.

> I comment on your proposals, as do many others, to offer an
> alternative point of view (though I'm sure many times my comments have
> already been thought about).
> 
> Do I take the emphasis to mean that you are thinking about making *some
> other language* case-insensitive?

Only dreaming, for now.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 24 16:01:28 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:01:28 -0500
Subject: Making AIX happy using dynamic linking
Message-ID: <1010724150128.ZM79448@anson.hcs.tl>

This outlines how to:
  - build python as a shared lib on AIX
  - build dyanmic modules that use shared libs on AIX

I posted a couple of weeks ago asking about problems with Python, shared
libraries and AIX. Basically what we wanted to do was this: have Python
load a C extension module which was a shared lib, which in turn relied
upon another shared lib which also needed embedded Python. It looks
like this:
Python -> imdpdfmodule -> libimagedoc.so -> embedded python
Naturally, we wanted the embedded python to be the same code as the
top-level interpreter, so that meant libimagedoc.so had to link back
up to the the Python level. It took a long time to get it all right
because neither one of us working on the project has much experience with
shared libs, and AIX doesn't make things easy. Here are the build
statements we ended up using (the .o files are built with plain old
gcc -c -g).
###
libimagedoc.so: libimagedoc.o xmtframe_backend.o
	rm -f libimagedoc.so
	/usr/local/Python-2.1/Modules/makexp_aix libimagedoc.exp
"libimagedoc.so" libimagedoc.o xmtframe_backend.o
$(IMAGEMAGICKHOME)/magick/.libs/libMagick.a $(PCLOBJS) /usr/local/lib/libt1.a
	$(CC) -shared -Wl,-G -Wl,-bE:libimagedoc.exp
-Wl,-bloadmap:libimagedoc.map -Wl,-H512 -Wl,-T512 -o libimagedoc.so
libimagedoc.o xmtframe_backend.o $(PCLOBJS)
$(IMAGEMAGICKHOME)/magick/.libs/libMagick.a /usr/local/lib/libt1.a -ljbig
-ljpeg -lmpeg -ltiff -lpng -lz -lXm -lXt -lX11 -lXext -lm

imdpdfmodule.so: imdpdfmodule.o libimagedoc.so libimagedocpdf.o
pcl_pdf_render.o
	rm -f imdpdfmodule.so
	./ld_so_aix gcc -Wl,-brtl -o imdpdfmodule.so -einitimdpdf
imdpdfmodule.o libimagedocpdf.o pcl_pdf_render.o -L/usr1/hcsgss/libimagedoc
-limagedoc -L$(PDFLIBHOME)/lib -lpdf

###
Notice that we ended up wrapping some of our static libraries (really just
libt1 and libMagick) in libimagedoc.so and exporting them so that other
shared libs (like imdpdfmodule.so) could use them. Also, we linked with
the -G flag. This left all unresovled symbols at link time to be resolved
by the run-time linker.
Some explanations of some flags we used:
 -Wl,-brtl --- this places the linker in 'dynamic' mode so that it also
           --- recognizes .so libraries
 -Wl,-G --- leaves symbols unresolved at link time to be resolved at
        --- load time

Once we had done this, we ended up with a error message that __eprintf
could not be resolved.  I (admittedly rather hackishly), dodged this
problem by re-making the python executable to export __eprintf.
__eprintf is in libgcc and is normally added to executables, but for some
reason python is not built with it. It must be exported before libimagedoc
could use it, also. I created the export file by hacking python's makefile
to do the following upon building the interpreter:
###
# Build the interpreter
$(PYTHON):	Modules/$(MAINOBJ) $(LDLIBRARY)
		cp Modules/python.exp pythoneprintf.exp; echo "__eprintf" >>
pythoneprintf.exp;
		$(LINKCC) $(LDFLAGS) $(PYLINKFORSHARED) -o $@ \
			Modules/$(MAINOBJ) \
			$(LDLIBRARY) $(LIBS) $(MODLIBS) $(SYSLIBS) $(LDLAST)
###
This allows the run-time loader (rtl) find __eprintf in the interpreter.

Python as a shared lib:

Since we weren't always using libimagedoc with a python interpreter, and
since it relied upon embedded python, we also wanted a copy of python to
be dynamically linked to it. We again hacked python's Makefile and added
the following to the 'libpython$(VERSION).so' rule:
###
	aix*) \
	    $(CC) -shared -Wl,-T512 -Wl,-H512 -Wl,-bE:Modules/python.exp -o $@
$(LIBRARY_OBJS) -lpthread -lm   -lgcc \
      ;; \
###
We then copied this to our (prefix)/lib/config directory and were able to
easily use it by using the standard -Wl,-brtl, -L, and -l flags.

One final note, we always had duplicate symbol errors for some functions
included by -lm when we were using ld_so_aix, I did a little hack on this
so that -lm was included as part of CCARGS instead of CCOPT in lines
171 and 170 respectively.

I don't know if this was the *best* way to do this, but dang it, it works
so we're gonna use it!
:-)
Galen Swint



From yeahoo at yeehaa.com  Mon Jul  9 00:13:02 2001
From: yeahoo at yeehaa.com (Drake)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 21:13:02 -0700
Subject: Newbie... Help with Dates/Times
Message-ID: <11f492f.0107082013.e9845f4@posting.google.com>

I'm an expert VB programmer by profession. I believe VB is on the way
out due to .NET, C#, python, etc. As such, I've begun a mid-life
transition away from VB. Python seems like a logical, fun place to
start.

Here's my first py project...

- Multiple network drives to search
- Pattern match directory names (200-1000 matched per drive)
- Pattern match file names within matched dir
- Compare file dates (time is irrelevant) of matching files to a
target date determined by user.
- If filedate is >= (equal to or after) the target date, the fully
qualified path prints to a file.

Currently, I'm using an os.path.walk routine to gather the files per
drive.

Here's my problem...
Im lost on the date stuff.

1) I'm thinking of comparing seconds... os.path.getmtime('myfile').
How do I strip off the time and get the seconds based on only the
date?

2) How do I get the seconds for the target date. The user is entering
a date. Do I create a time tuple and then convert that to seconds?

This turned out to be a rather complex first project. And I haven't
put on a GUI yet. In VB this thing took me less than 45 mins with a
GUI, and complete error trapping, including network errors! The user
even chooses which drives to search based on the available mappings.
But it's time to move on.

I'm open to any tips, comments, performance recommendations, etc
regarding this project and my transition.

Drake


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Wed Jul 18 19:01:18 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:01:18 GMT
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
References: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90E3A3D23905rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Young-Jin Lee wrote:

> Can I use Pythong to develop a client application with a GUI? 

Pythong, unfortunately, is single threaded. It's a pretty thick thread, 
though. For multithreading, use Snackless: its threads are painfully 
thin indeed.[*] <g>


> It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it?

Or wxPython. That's pretty powerful, powerful enough to program a 
Delphi-lookalike in. (Just look for Boa Constructor, it's on 
Sourceforge, IIRC.)


> How easy is it? And is there any way to connect Python application
> and Java application? 

For Jython it shouldn't too be hard. For CPython, though... it all 
depends on what you mean by 'connect'. But, unless I'm very mistaken,  
you can't use Tkinter or wxPython in Jython programs. You'll have to 
use Java's 'native' GUI, i.e. the AWT or Swing.



Robert Amesz
-- 
[*] For any newbies out there: the entire first paragraph is just a bit 
of facetious disinformation.


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 28 18:10:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:10:23 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cpzo9ozow4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:37:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:
> 
> > If we have rationals in our numeric tower, I definitely want (5/2 - 3/2)
> > to be usable as a sequence index,
> 
> This doesn't work in my model. The simplest way to let it work is to
> treat ints (with longs) and rationals as representation details of
> the same concept (no matter if it's the same Python's type or not).
> 
> This is not nice IMHO and it leads to more cases when the type of the
> result depends on the value of the argument (x**y returns at least
> a float when y is a rational, but may return an integer when y is
> a nonnegative integer) and turns some TypeErrors into ValueErrors
> (e.g. s[1/2]).
> 
> I would not make 5/2-3/2 usable as a sequence index. My style is more
> "typeful". But you decide.

I am not at all sure!  This should definitely be added as an open
issue to the rationals PEP.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 05:08:29 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:08:29 +0100
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <7NI$UuANgpW7Ewz+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965 at lp.airnew
s.net>, zeke <Zeke at xyz.net> writes
>Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
>job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
>Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 
>zeke
>
vim & gvim bot work under winxx
-- 
Robin Becker


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 18:55:37 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:55:37 +0100
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3sb9.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.
[...]

+0.9. Quibbles:

  - "analized" should be "analysed" (NB not "analyzed", please)

  - I cannot bring myself to like 2/1 -> 2.0

  - putting "-Dold" and "-Dnew" in the language until version
    3.000 [:-)] feels bad; something more extensible would be
    better

  - "many contexts ... don't have a clear float or integer
    context" is nasty. Replace the end with "... can't sensibly
    be classified as preferring either integers or floats",
    maybe.

  - the reasoning behind rejecting "/ = classical, // = float"
    is broken. Maybe something like:

      | - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for
      |   true division. This does not solve the problem that
      |   the operator written as "/" has semantics very
      |   different from those of mathematical division.
      |   Furthermore, we believe that true division is needed
      |   more often than floor division, and it should therefore
      |   have the more familiar and shorter name. This is
      |   also likely to be less confusing for newcomers to
      |   Python.

  - Something is strained about the grammar of the last
    sentence of the answer to the first question in the
    FAQ. I suggest replacing it with something like

      | Note that for both positive and negative integers,
      | classic and floor division round towards negative
      | infinity, whereas the int() function rounds
      | towards zero. (divmod() rounds towards negative
      | infinity.)

I don't like "quotient" for the result of floor-division;
to me, "quotient" means the result of "true division".

"True division" is better than "real division" and you
should not be deterred from using it by the fact that
some people think it prejudges the question.

Since so many people are asking about conversion tools,
the matter should be addressed briefly in the FAQ at the
end.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul  4 11:02:45 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 17:02:45 +0200
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <3B433015.D056EEA@stroeder.com>

Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> 
> I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:
> 
> >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'

I guess that's already the error. You did not specify a correct DOS
path name. \t is a tab character. Hence your problems with
string.split().

Try instead:
>>> path = 'e:\\test\\test.txt'
>>> path
'e:\\test\\test.txt'
>>> print path
e:\test\test.txt
>>> # or as an alternative
>>> path = r'e:\test\test.txt'
>>> path
'e:\\test\\test.txt'
>>> print path
e:\test\test.txt

> Alternative ways would be much appreciated.

You should dig into module os.path.

Ciao, Michael.


From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul  3 21:48:53 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:48:53 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
In-Reply-To: <OTj07.179491$ff.1395689@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEEFKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Paul Prescod]
> Is anybody else suspicious about the sudden uptick of troll-like
> behavior on comp.lang.python?  Keep an eye out and don't bother
> responding to anything inflammatory.

But, Paul!  We *like* talking with you!

some-people-are-just-inflammatory-by-nature-ly y'rs  - tim




From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Tue Jul  3 13:04:13 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:04:13 +0200
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
References: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>
Message-ID: <sju3kto9lgcmhfv3eeh63o6and87iv8bpv@4ax.com>

Wostenberg <pwos at home.com> schreef:
>Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope

This is a (more or less) scientific publication about acquisition:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lorenz/papers/oopsla96/

More links on acquisition in Zope on:
http://www.zope.org/Members/rpijlman/acquisition
Regards,
-- 
Ren? Pijlman


From brakedon at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 22:45:28 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 19:45:28 -0700
Subject: object - oriented programming Help!!
References: <mailman.994164970.2845.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107031845.51c2183b@posting.google.com>

Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> wrote in message news:<mailman.994164970.2845.python-list at python.org>...
> > From:	brakedon at hotmail.com [SMTP:brakedon at hotmail.com]
> > What am I doing wrong? I am trying to learn object oriented
> > programming, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
> > 
> > >>> import fibonaccii_gui
> > >>> fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in ?
> >     fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
> > NameError: name 'fibonaccii' is not defined
>  
> You are importing a module called fibonaccii_gui, then referring to just
> fibonaccii. Replace your 2nd line with:
> 
> fibonaccii_gui.fib(fibinstance, 100)
> 
> And it just might work.

Thank you it finally worked! This is how it evened out. Thank you again!

"fibonaccii_gui" module

class fibonaccii:
    def fib(self, fibnumber):
        a, b = 0, 1
        while b < fibnumber:
            print b,
            a, b = b, a+b
fibinstance = fibonaccii()

Call it from the interpreter:

>>> import fibonaccii_gui
>>> fibonaccii_gui.fibinstance.fib(100)
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89


From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Fri Jul  6 17:13:26 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 23:13:26 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <mailman.994448787.15987.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <o5acktc6ot7upcu01eh3hul6e8mtu9qqnn@4ax.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> schreef:
>I'm not sure there are many Python programmers with the discretionary funds
>necessary to buy any of the commercial databases you want supported.  

Oracle is almost free for development purposes. 

"Technology Tracks are a tremendous value at US$200 each... 
How do we do this? By providing a developer license with each product.
Why do we do it? Because we want to make it as easy as possible for
you to develop your applications using Oracle technology."
http://technet.oracle.com/software/htdocs/track_benefits.htm

Just put your production data in PostgreSQL and Oracle is quite
affordable.

>Next question?

What do you mean with 42?

-- 
Vriendelijke groet,
Ren? Pijlman <rpijlman at spamcop.net>

Wat wil jij leren?
http://www.leren.nl/


From msimpson at ioindustries.com  Thu Jul 12 08:32:52 2001
From: msimpson at ioindustries.com (Mike Simpson)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 05:32:52 -0700
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
References: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com> <qebpktoe7n33altfhpar744nhak7hf4b6u@4ax.com> <slrn9kpj0n.mi0.chat@linuxsupreme.homeip.net>
Message-ID: <cdd0bc89.0107120432.67439872@posting.google.com>

chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net (Chad Everett) wrote in message news:<slrn9kpj0n.mi0.chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net>...

Thanks for the helpful response Chad!


Mike


> Nothing has been lost.  As other responses have pointed out, you are seeing
> a manifestation of the OS memory management algorithms.  To show you that
> nothing has been "lost" do the following:
> 
> 1. run python and get a python prompt
> 
> 2. look at your memory allocation
> 
> 3. do your:
> 
> result = []
> for count in xrange(510*478):
>       result.append(count)
> 
> 4. look at memory usage
> 
> 5. delete the result list
> 
> del result
> 
> 6. look at memory usage
> 
> 7. now build the list again
> 
> result = []
> for count in xrange(510*478):
>       result.append(count)
> 
> 8. look at memory usage and you'll see it has only gone back up to the same 
>    amount of memory at step 4.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 20 21:54:32 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:54:32 -0400
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
In-Reply-To: <ac677656.0107191230.767b041d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEOJKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tom Good]
> I downloaded the Python-2.2a1.exe installer from SourceForge, and
> verified that the MD5 sum is correct.  When I run it under Windows
> 2000 Professional [Version 5.00.2195], I get an error dialog that
> says:
>
> 16 bit Windows Subsystem
>
> The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
> CS:020c IP:0115 OP:0f 00 00 00 00 Choose 'Close' to terminate the
> application.
>
>
> Any ideas?

Just general ones:

Reboot.

Use Windows Update to make sure you've got all the critical MS fixes.

Like the splash screen says, close *all* other programs before trying to
install.  Especially make sure to disable virus checkers (no, Python isn't a
virus, but virus checkers work at very low levels and often interfere with
normal operation).

Don't try to install from a network (copy the installer to your boot drive
first).

Make sure you have enough disk space.

Install from an account with Admin privileges.

You didn't say how far it got (if it got anywhere at all), but if you're
being "creative", try accepting the defaults.

There was even one case (but on Win98SE) where the install didn't work until
the user hit the ENTER key instead of clicking with the mouse, presumably
due to some machine-specific conflict with the video and/or mouse drivers.

Try a different machine.

Cheer up:  you're the only person it doesn't work for <wink>.

business-as-usual-for-windows-ly y'rs  - tim




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 18:01:02 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:01:02 -0700
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107161401.4d51778d@posting.google.com>

Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995289809.28477.python-list at python.org>...
> I have a simple problem, but one that, without some optimization, might hurt the performance of my project. To sum it up, I 
> have two lists, we'll call them list A and list B, both lists contain only one-word strings (ie. both were generated by string.split() 
> performed on a large amount of text)
> 
> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> would be:
> 
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:
>         A.remove(eachItem)
> 
> Now, this will work fine, however, the size of list A varies, and while list B is constant, it is quite large (more than 750 items). 
> List A can also, should the situation warrant, become quite huge as well. The main problem is that I have no idea of the 
> efficiency of "in" for large lists like this. Can anyone think of a possibly quicker way, or is this the best?

A Python list is a sequence. Thus the "in" and "remove" operations
must be O(n). Thus what you propose will be O(m*n**2), where n =
len(A)
and m = len(B). Thus for non-trivial sizes you may well have a
problem.

This question seems to have little to do with Python and lots to do
with (a) data structures and (b) common sense and (c) looking at prior
work in the field.

Some clues:
(a) (1) B should not be a sequence-like data structure. In whatever
language you use, try a dictionary aka hashed look-up table. If the
language doesn't have such an ADT built in, or available in a standard
library, or it's not fast and robust, abandon the language [Don't
panic -- Python is just fine]. (2) Iterating over a collection from
which you are removing items needs to be undertaken with care. (3)
Don't forget to concern yourself about how much memory your data
structures will occupy. Your project could run very fast until it runs
out of real memory and then become painfully slow. Hint: at least one
of the solutions proposed by other posters involved a copy of your A
list.

(b) Why are you putting noise words into A and then ripping them out
again? To quote Jon Bentley: "Do nothing gracefully". Even more
graceful than do(nothing) is do_not_do(anything)! Consider this:

Here is the loop that you didn't mention:
   for word in A_source: # or something similar ...
      A.append(word)
Try changing that to:
   for word in A_source:
      if not B.has_key(word):
         A.append(word)
   cue_the_fat_lady()

(c) Your school library should have copies of things like:
 
W. B. Frakes and R. Baeza-Yates eds., Information Retrieval : Data
Structures and Algorithms, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall.

You could also try dipping into the a few of the 150 papers that cite
it; see
    http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/36679/0

If you are worried about how your project will be effected by len(A),
there is a book called "Managing Gigabytes".

[snip] 

> "Though there are many paths
> At the foot of the mountain
> All those who reach the top
> See the same moon."

Those using an O(n**3) mountain_top_search algorithm may find the moon
crumbled with age when and if they get to see it :-)


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 24 08:03:45 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:03:45 GMT
Subject: constructor chaining?
Message-ID: <20010724.081619.1139901474.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

I am wondering how I can do constructor chaining with Python. 

For example, if I had a base class called "Media" and a child class
called "Book", how would I call the Media's __init__ constructor from
within the Book's __init_constructor?

In PHP I know you can just refer to the name of the parent's constructor.
In Java I believe you can call "super()". How can I do this in Python?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 23:41:21 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:41:21 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930982.17575.python-list@python.org> <acppltstdl0oo692su8e9c4fhm6cf14kt9@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E3FE1.1C1ABBA4@engcorp.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:35 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman"
> <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:
> 
> >Both of these changes fall in the same group IMHO... they
> >break a lot of code.
> 
> Case insenstitivity is also a serious issue for me - it might even
> bite me for adopting a case-based naming convention as an apparently
> sensible way to avoid future identifier conflicts - [...]
> 
> Anyway, it's probably less an issue for me than division - I use
> integer division a lot, whereas defining different identifiers with
> only case-changes to distinguish them is a definite no-no.

This last item should always be said in conjunction with an 
"in my opinion"... We *frequently* use identifiers which differ
only in case from their class name.  We also use identifiers 
which are identical to other identifiers except for case, primarily
when we have a large series of CONSTANTS defined somewhere.

In this case, it is even supported directly by advice in our
Coding Conventions document.  The code is readable, logical,
consistant, and *would break* of course if case-sensitivity ever
became an issue.  (Which, apparently, it won't, according to 
a posting of Guido's within the last day or two.  Thankfully.)

(This appears to be a religious issue, and I'm not sure
anyone can have an argument other than "it's bad" to
attempt to convince me that this is not a perfectly valid
use of case sensitivity, on which I've counted for years.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From DavidLnonospammy at raqia.com  Tue Jul 31 16:56:03 2001
From: DavidLnonospammy at raqia.com (David Lees)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:56:03 -0400
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>  <3dsnfdjg1w.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org> <mailman.996596704.6347.python-list@python.org> <ojqdmtguukc4ju3d8k7gvivqdfksd8e6dg@4ax.com> <qf37k9.tvc.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3B671B63.23CC4490@raqia.com>

Question - Does this affect the global lock at all?  Is it some way to
get around it?  I wrote some simple threaded code awhile back that ran
on a dual processor board.  The global lock kept 2 threads from running
in parallel on separate processors.

david lees


Gerhard H?ring wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:28:32 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
> >>Didn't IBM just release a new (optional) threads package for Linux that
> >>implements true lightweight threads?
> 
> Yes. See http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/pthreads/
> 
> >This would require a kernel-patch, yes?
> 
> Yes. IBM's Next Generation Posix Threading is btw. based on GNU Pth (a
> threading library that is non-preemptive and runs completely in userspace).
> Python can be built against GNU Pth out of the box.
> 
> Gerhard
> --
> mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
> web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
> public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
> reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 14:58:05 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 14:58:05 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:

> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> 
> OK, I've had a good look at this now.
> 
> It's hideous!
> 
> It's no wonder that people get fed up with computers if they get
> given a user interface that expects pointless dashes all over the
> place.
> 
> You simply can't use this routine to code a nice arg string.

I suppose that's a matter of taste.  Certainly in the Unix domain,
from whence this arose, where virtually everything was traditionally
done via the command line, all command line utilities parse their
command lines in exactly this way, it's extremely consistent and
trying to do other manual approaches actually makes the non-conformant
application stand out as such.

In effect, such command line parsing is a standard interface, much as
under Windows, there's standard UI elements in its GUI.  It's also
(unlike a GUI) designed as much for efficiency and flexibility as
looks.

You'll find that it's a flexible interface for something that has to
deal with a textual command line.  Try designing a CLI parser that has
optional arguments, arguments with and without values even with
multi-character options, spacing and order insensitive, and so on, and
you'll find yourself replicating much of the getopt behavior.

Personally, since DOS/Windows command line applications never really
formed such consistency (IMO), and at least for me I find "-" less
glaring on the command line than "/", I find the use of a getopt
conformant command line to be nice as well as consistency
cross-platform.

I don't know what particular user interface you are looking to serve,
so if you're comparing this to some GUI interface to obtain
parameters, that's not apples to apples.  But if you're working
strictly with a command line, I wouldn't necessarily jettison getopt
summarily.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 00:52:20 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:52:20 -0400
Subject: How to use os.access()??
References: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FD004.D0CCFBC2@engcorp.com>

bvdpoel at uniserve.com wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to use os.access() in my program. But, I'm stuck trying to
> figure out the parms... obviously the first is the filename; but the 2nd
> is supposed to be a constant (?) like F_OK. Unfortunately, it doesn't
> appear that the F_OK, etc are defined anywhere. Either the docs are
> wrong (no way!), or I'm missing a module file (likely), or I'm just
> totally wrong about everything (quite likely!).

You're right! (that you're totally wrong... ;-)

>>> import os
>>> dir(os)
['F_OK', 'O_APPEND', 'O_BINARY', 'O_CREAT', 'O_EXCL', 'O_RDONLY', 
'O_RDWR', 'O_TEXT', 'O_TRUNC', 'O_WRONLY', 'P_DETACH', 'P_NOWAIT', 
'P_NOWAITO', 'P_OVERLAY', 'P_WAIT', 'R_OK', 'TMP_MAX', 'UserDict', 
'W_OK', 'X_OK', ... ]
>>> os.access('c:/autoexec.bat', os.F_OK)
1
>>> F_OK
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'F_OK' is not defined
>>> os.F_OK
0
>>> from os import *
>>> F_OK
0
>>>

You've probably forgotten to use os.F_OK and are using just F_OK.

Unless you want to "from os import *", which is generally bad form,
you need to prepend the name of the module in front of _everything_
you use from that module, whether function name or constant.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 10 00:32:40 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 04:32:40 GMT
Subject: curses woes
Message-ID: <slrn9kl196.rts.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

Hi,

I ran into a problem with curses, here's what I'm doing:

while 1:
    c = win.getch()
    if c == curses.KEY_BACKSPACE:
        do_something()

The problem is that backspace key shows up as ^? and doesn't match the above
test. I also tried doing c == 14 but also without luck. I'm using
curses.wrapper() here.


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  2 20:45:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 17:45:57 -0700
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <9hr4k5$peq$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>
>  I suspect that Infocom-style interactive fiction, with good production
>values and nice packaging, could sell again just fine.  You'd have to
>sell it outside of most computer game shops, though, because the games
>publishing and distribution networks just won't carry it, and the games
>magazines won't review it (they're all run by and for hyperactive
>adolescent males (of all ages))...

...and genders.  ;-)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul 20 09:38:54 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:38:54 -0400
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net> <slrn9ldogs.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3d4rs74t5d.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
> Supposedly, Microsoft's C# and CLR system will provide a fix for
> this, by allowing the programmer to use any language that compiles
> to CLR to call a routine in any other language that does.
> 
> Does anyone have details on this?

I'm a bit doubtful that the CLR will really be suited for languages
other than C# or VB.  Sure, with some hammering you can compile Python
to CLR, just as you can compile it to Java bytecodes, but there seems
to be a sizable performance hit, judging by a message from David
Ascher archived at
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/638072.  I suspect
.NET's multilanguage will turn out to be a feature used more as a
selling point than in practical use.  In much the same way, Internet
Explorer is theoretically multiplatform, but I expect almost no one
out there uses the Solaris and HP-UX IE ports.

--amk


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 31 06:55:23 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:55:23 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <001101c119af$67dd1d80$a9e1fea9@carol>

Bill writes -

>In this context, it comes from the CP4E motivation that people may be
>called upon to script operations or interactions between their
>`toys'... calling them "non-programmers" is shorter than saying,
>`people who may need to program without knowing they are doing it'
>(imo).

But we are going around in circles - as I have been for some few
years on the subject.  I guess I had always hoped that CP4E was
really going to focus on turning non-programmers into programmers.
It made sense to me that it would, because it happens that
IMO Python is a great tool for doing so.

What tool `people who may need to program without knowing 
they are doing it' use is of very little interest -  to me.  

Because now we have descended to the realm of semantic games.
Are people who 'program without knowing they are doing it' in
fact programming in any meaningful sense?

Can than P in CP4E be used for those activities without
with any real integrity.

It happens that you have hit directly on my Big Beef.

To me CP4E is, can and should be a true initiative, 
not a semantic game.

But to the extent you have accurately described CP4E  - 
well I feel foolish for having concerned myself with it.

Got better stuff to do.

ART 






From paulsid at home.com  Sat Jul 21 21:06:24 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:06:24 -0600
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5A2710.B25B09E6@home.com>

TheDustbustr wrote:

> sender='Angel'
> print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
> And if you are up to it, feel free to help me splice (correct terminology,
> parse?) for variables rcpt and message ;)

By any chance are you coming from a C background?  :-)  That's a nasty
one-liner, so I'm not even going to attempt to figure out how it works. 
Instead, here is a much nicer way to do this kind of thing:

(This assumes the format is always the same, i.e. colons prefix each
section and single spaces separate the first three variables.)

def parsemsg(data):
    """Returns a tuple:  (sender, command, rcpt, message)"""
    tmp = data.split(':')
    hdr = tmp[1].split(' ')
    return (hdr[0], hdr[1], hdr[2], tmp[2])

If you have this in a module called parsemsg you can use it like this:

>>> teststring = ":Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!"
>>> import procmsg
>>> sender, command, rcpt, message = parsemsg.parsemsg(teststring)
>>> print sender
Angel
>>> print command
PRIVMSG
>>> print rcpt
Wiz
>>> print message
here is my message!

Hope that helps.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr  Fri Jul 13 13:09:55 2001
From: ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:09:55 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994910001.4712.python-list@python.org> <3b4eed03.298292@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <9ina13$jau$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>

In article <3b4eed03.298292 at nntp.sprynet.com>, David C. Ullrich wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:52:59 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
> wrote:
> 
> [...]
>>
>>Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
>>routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin long *!
>>Hint:  recursion <wink>.
> 
> I give up, howdaya do that?
> 
> (When I read this I said aha, you're getting at something like 
> using
> 
> [*] (a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + (a*d+b*c)*2**k + b*d.
> 
Perhaps you mean : 
(a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + ((a+d)*(b+c) - a*c - b*d)*2**k + b*d.

You only have to compute 3 multiplications
  a*c
  b*d
  (a+d)*(b+c)

Then you can have an algorithm for multiplying a and b, if a and b 
are of the same size (len(a) = len(b)) of complexity
len(a)**(1.6)  
significantly better than len(a)**2
(len(a)*len(b) is *not* linear, rather quadratic)

Emmanuel


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Mon Jul 23 14:25:00 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 11:25:00 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message news:<gER67.534750$eK2.111982758 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>...
> I can't believe the quantity of discussion (still) going on over the div
> thing!
> 
> And meanwhile, 2.2a1 is out, and there are far more interesting things
> happening to our little language.
> 
> Isn't there anything in 2.2 that deserves even a fraction of the discussion
> going on about div? (which has been beaten to death 9 times)
> 
> getset(), staticmethod(), classmethod(), etc...
> 
> How about generators, who's tried them out?

[snip]

I like generators a lot.  Here's a fun one:

#------ begin code
from __future__ import generators

def fib():
    "unbounded generator, creates Fibonacci sequence"
    x = 0
    y = 1
    while 1:
        x, y = y, x + y
        yield x

if __name__ == "__main__":
    g = fib()
    for i in range(9):
        print g.next(),

#------ end code

c:\python22>python fib.py
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34


Tom


From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 26 07:37:48 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 04:37:48 -0700
Subject: Howto dynamically add object to the list
References: <3B5FF76C.20B6AD98@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>
Message-ID: <9jovlr$la72$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

To create an instance of the class Patient, invoke the class with the
constructor arguments, for example:
    pacjenci.append(Patient())    #note the extra ()'s

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Piotr Legiecki" <piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl> wrote in message
news:3B5FF76C.20B6AD98 at sci.pam.szczecin.pl...
> Hi
>
> I have such a class
>
> class Patient:
>   x=0
> ...
>
> And such a code to add objects of class Patient to a growing list:
>
> ...
>   while curPatient!=-1:
>     pacjenci.append(Patient)
>     curPatient=GetNextPatient(allPat, curPatient, pacjenci[i])
> .....
>
> Well, it is wrong code (I add classes Patient ?! not objects of this
> class). So how to add an object to the list in such a situation?
>
> something like:
> ....
> while curPatient!=-1:
>     obj=Patient
>     pacjenci.append(obj)
>     curPatient=GetNextPatient(allPat, curPatient, pacjenci[i])
> .....
>
> Is it ok?
>
> --
> Regards
> Piotr Legiecki



From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Sun Jul 22 07:14:57 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:14:57 -0400
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
Message-ID: <000f01c1129f$8afb2760$a9e1fea9@carol>

>I'm cc'ing Bruce Sherwood and Davin Scherer, because they asked for
>this and used a similar implementation in VPython.  When this patch
>(or something not entirely unlike it) is accepted into Python 2.2,
>they will no longer have to maintain their own hacked Python.  

First let me say that VPython is something I use extensively in what I
do in Python, and consider a real contribution to Python - 
particularly in a CP4E context.  Thank you David and Bruce.

However, I believe it is simply inaccurate to say they have felt it
necessary to "maintain their own hacked Python".

What they do is what I - as a novice - understood to do to avoid
confusion over integer division issues when creating a facility
to script coordinate geometry -  cast coordinate arguments to a 
consistent numerical type, floats.  They apparently do it in their
C++ module.  I am using Numeric, my coordinates are arrays, with
a consistent typecode. No biggie. 

The VPython docs warn of the integer division issue, and
the "fix" - appropriately, enough.
 
>Floating Division

>Python performs integer division with truncation, 
>so that 3/4 is 0, not 0.75. 

but before giving the "fix" 

>You can write 3./4., which is 0.75 by the rules 
>of "floating-point" division.

the docs seem to go a bit out of their way to pick
their nit:

>This is inconvenient when doing scientific 
>computations, and can lead to hard-to-find 
>bugs in programs. 

In most contexts one concentrates on ones app,
documents its API, not its nits with the language
it has chosen to implement in.

My feature requests for VPython are on 
visual-python-dev, not in the docs of my app that
uses it.

But then the docs are also very public about its
nits with IDLE.

As much as I appreciate VPython, never quite
understood that.

ART




From ken_chiba at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 14 19:40:24 2001
From: ken_chiba at hotmail.com (Ken)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:40:24 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3b50d5dd.47261648@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

Ok.

Still no luck!  In case I'm just missing something... here is a
listing of various files/directories:

My cgi-bin directory (all executable scripts must be in here to work):

ftp> ls -l
227 Entering Passive Mode (x.x.x.x..x)
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
drwxr-xr-x   4 a0005722 a0005722      512 Jul 12 17:24 .
drwxr-xr-x  16 a0005722 a0005722      512 May 30 15:02 ..
drwxr-xr-x   3 a0005722 a0005722      512 Jul 14 17:59 MySQLdb
-rwxr-xr-x   1 a0005722 a0005722   264078 Jul 12 17:24 _mysql.so
-rw-r--r--   1 a0005722 a0005722     2288 Jul 12 17:24
_mysql_exceptions.py
-rw-r--r--   1 a0005722 a0005722     4156 Jul 12 17:24
_mysql_exceptions.pyc
-rwxr-xr-x   1 a0005722 a0005722    24265 Mar  9  2000 formmail.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x   1 a0005722 a0005722      149 Jul 12 16:54 test.cgi
226 Transfer complete.

_mysql.so is set to read/execute for all, the other py[c] files are
set to rw/r/r as they are in the site-packages directory locally.

The contents of my test.cgi file are the same as before:

#!/usr/contrib/bin/python
import MySQLdb
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n"

And the error message is the same as before (in the error_log
logfile):

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "test.cgi", line 4, in ?
    import MySQLdb
  File "MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 27, in ?
    import _mysql
ImportError: File not found
[Sat Jul 14 18:32:57 2001] [error] [client x.x.x.x] Premature end of
script headers: /usr/home/v1/a0005722/html/cgi-bin/test.cgi

Any more ideas?

TIA!

Ken


On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 06:13:50 +0200, gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard
=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:34:46 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Thanks for your continued help...  I'm hitting a wall:  I've compiled MySQLdb
>>(on python 1.5.2) -- I believe that's what my ISP's using, and I have the
>>files I (think I) need:
>>
>>_mysql.so
>>_mysql_exceptions.py(c)
>>MySQLdb
>>  - lots of files, and 'constants' within.
>>
>>I've copied these three files, plus the MySQLdb directory to the
>>cgi-bin directory on the host.  I placed a simple python script in the
>>cgi-bin directory that just has:
>>
>>#!/usr/contrib/bin/python  (the python path)
>>import MySQLdb
>>print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n" (so the browser doesn't choke).
>
>Should be ok so far.
>
>>I get a server 500 message, and checking the error_log file, I get:
>>
>>Traceback (innermost last):
>>  File "test.cgi", line 4, in ?
>>    import MySQLdb
>>  File "MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 27, in ?
>>    import _mysql
>>ImportError: File not found
>>[Thu Jul 12 17:25:48 2001] [error] [client 206.47.244.60] Premature
>>end of script headers: /usr/home/v1/a0005722/html/cgi-bin/test.cgi
>
>It looks suspiciously like a problem with file permissions. You should check
>that _mysql.so has read and execute permissions for "others". Taking away both
>I could reproduce the above error message.
>
>In fact, any files in the cgi-bin directory need to be readable by others,
>because the webserver usually does run under a different user and group id.
>
>>I've placed a copy of _mysql.so in both the root cgi-bin directory,
>>and into the MySQLdb directory (since __init__.py is located there).
>>But no luck!  I looked for a _mysql file (without the .so), but could
>>not find one.
>
>That's not the problem. The file is really called _mysql.so and only needs to
>be in the cgi-bin directory.
>
>Gerhard
>-- 
>mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
>web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
>public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
>reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))



From matt at mondoinfo.com  Tue Jul  3 15:20:54 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:20:54 GMT
Subject: using python to append a file
References: <13e6b4a6.0107031113.441998c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k46om.rv.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On 3 Jul 2001 12:13:41 -0700, Thanh Le <tle at firstlinux.net> wrote:

>I am new to Python and was wondering if anyone could show me a way to
>append a file (similar to the way Unix does by using >> ). I've tried
>using open('file','r+') method and it overwrote whatever i had in that
>file. I am sure there is a way to append a file, but  havent had much
>luck.

Thanh,
The mode you want is "a" (or "ab"). There's more detail in the
description of the open() function at:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/built-in-funcs.html

Regards,
Matt


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 10:49:28 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:49:28 -0500
Subject: http 
In-Reply-To: <20010725053145.31033.qmail@mailFA9.rediffmail.com>
References: <20010725053145.31033.qmail@mailFA9.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: <15198.56440.666530.340669@beluga.mojam.com>

    raghu> i do successfully get the home page of the server (yahoo) that i
    raghu> am sending my http 'GET' request but i get the following response

    raghu> We need to use "cookies" to identify u on our system.....

    raghu> how do i make modification in my program to ACCEPT COOKIES from a
    raghu> server and at which instance i shall do this either at the first
    raghu> 'GET' request when requesting for the home page of at the 'POST'
    raghu> request in my case urlopen or both the times

Check out the Cookie module in the Python distribution:

   http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-Cookie.html

It includes a simple example of how to use cookies from Python.  If you
already have cookies in a file (from your interactive browser, perhaps), you
can parse its contents and send the appropriate cookie info along with the
original request.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 27 11:36:57 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:36:57 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jrscg$1uf$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <3B618A99.532D1801@alcyone.com>

Paul Svensson wrote:

> I liked the proposal to call '/' division, and '//' quotient;
> ambiguities can be resolved by using 'classic division' or 'future
> division'.

I'm not sure what the attraction is.  Division and quotient are
synonymous.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.
\__/ Goethe
    Alcyone Systems' CatCam / http://www.catcam.com/
 What do your pets do all day while you're at work?  Find out.


From just at letterror.com  Tue Jul 24 05:15:34 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:15:34 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995962124.21692.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5D3CB6.99C4D02C@letterror.com>

Christian Tanzer wrote:
> 
> Just van Rossum <just at letterror.com> wrote:
> 
> > > As for the second line: do you really think
> > > int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is signigicantly better for rounding?
> >
> > 1) only one of the / operands need to be a float to force a float
> > outcome, and 2) there is a round() builtin function. Now, if we
> > initialize k to a float, we can write it like so:
> >
> >    int(round(bytes/k))
> 
> My version of the Python Library Reference Manual (Release 2.1, 15
> April 2001) says:
> 
>     Conversion from floating point to (long or plain) integer may
>     round or truncate as in C; see functions floor() and ceil() in the
>     math module for well-defined conversions.
> 
> That means that one should not use `int` to convert from float to
> integer. No using `int (math.floor (a/b))` is quite a mouthful but
> everybody caring about version compatibility will have to use such
> abominations for a long time. (For instance, my main customer will
> ship based products on 1.5.2 for several month to come, the shift to
> 2.x *may* happen with the next major release which is planned for
> the last quarter of the year).

Erm, I did round(a/b), after which a conversion with int() is perfectly
safe. But in general, it seems you're entirely correct.

Just


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Thu Jul 26 22:05:06 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:05:06 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com> <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3ui1mt0e07vgp1b18306jd70pdufs91uva@4ax.com>

>I don't understand this assertion, however.  What keeps you from continuing to
>use vim, ed, windows notepad, whatever, in this case?  The language is exactly
>the same.

Because when identifier and someone else writes IdEnTIFIER, I want
to kill them Actually, I'd like to kill them for changing the case at all.
Lexigraphic similarity is an important visual cue for spotting things,
IMO.

C//



From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 17:25:34 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:25:34 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpr8v6ow8o.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> I just discovered how to access older versions of PEPs and checked
> 1.3, which I at least partly read and you are right.  My view and
> memory of the PEP was distorted by anti-int-div float-div-religion
> being pushed as fact by the PEP author and some other proponents, who
> continue to this day.

Yes, the arguments pro have been as heated as those against. :-)

I know the PEP author personally, and I assure you he is not of ill
will -- just susceptible to unbridled youthful enthusiasm once he's
identified a good cause. :-)  I will rectify the situation by taking
co-authorship of the PEP, so he won't get the blame.

> Some current examples nearly identical to several previous attempts:
> 
> * "Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and Tcl,
> for instance."  My claim: this is a religious statement.  Obvious
> implication of such statements: Python currently does division
> wrongly.  Subtler implication in at least some statements of this
> sort: it is not intelligent to advocate that Python continue doing
> division wrongly.

Well, IMO, the current division semantics *are* wrong.  They are very
subtly wrong, just as C's int division semantics are subtly wrong
(they give a less useful result for negative numbers).  The wrongness
doesn't come out immediately, and you can argue about it (so in a
sense it is a religious point) but I am not a cultural relativist, and
I find the proposed new semantics *better* than the old ones --
otherwise I would never have supported the PEP.

I agree that pointing to other languages is unhelpful, unless we
understand what the rationale for the decision in a given other
language is.  As I always say, votes don't count -- arguments do.

I'll address the severe backwards compatibility issues in a separate
post.

> * "Integer division is a lousy tool in this particular example.."
> [converting bytes to Kbytes].  Combined with the previous line, this
> response denies the possibility of using (bytes + k/2)/k to round (or
> that the original poster would have known how to do so) and claims
> that int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is factually better.  I disagree.

Yeah, but not worth arguing about.

> * "Nobody said [int division] wasn't of any use, people just claim it
> is *less* useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible."

This is indeed a poor argument, and not supported by e.g. my survey of
the Python standard library.

> (from Moshe himself, last night).  Since in any situation the most
> useful form of division is the one that most easily gives the correct
> answer, the premise is incorrect.  So why do proponents even now keep
> repeating an incorrect and unnecessary claim to justify the change?
> Since the difference between '/' and '//' is too trivial to hardly
> discuss, I tend to interprete the 'conclusion' to be an attempt, even
> now, to justify something that really would be less accessible and
> more obnoxious than '//', like div(i,j) or divmod(i,j)[0].  When
> proponents of the change keep trying to justify making int div less
> accessible, is it any wonder that people think that that is what they
> really intend?

Good point.

> [snip]

> > > Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two
> > > arithmetic operations: whole-number result division and
> > > fractional result division.  This confuses some people.
> > > Proposal: Make '/' consistently mean fractional division and
> > > introduce a new operator '//' for truncated-result division.
> > > Acknowledgement: This semantic replacement is a bit different
> > > from most any previous change to Python.  Extra care will be
> > > needed to make the transition as smooth as possible.
> 
> > This is exactly what the PEP said all the time.
> 
> NO, NO, NO!  Contrary to what I said above, it still does not.  Moshe
> writes,
> "Rationale
>     The behavior of integer division is a major stumbling block ..."

Sorry.  I didn't realize that your point was that the motivation was
wrong.  I see this now, and I'll rectify it in the PEP.

> This prejudiced view, which too many people have unnecessarily bundled
> with the proposed change itself, is quite different from the
> division-neutral rationale you quoted above, which locates the
> 'problem' in the conflict *between* the two meanings.  To repeat:
> '''
> Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two arithmetic
> operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
> division.  This confuses some people.
> '''
> which I would today follow with:
> '''
> Contention: Even though there will be many transition problems, it
> will be in the long term interest of some current and many future
> Python programmers to better separate the two meanings of 'division'.
> '''

Indeed.  I should add that I never meant that the problem was only
important for novices or in an educational setting (I only meant this
as an example of the kind of problems division crates).  Some folks
(like Arthur Siegel) have used a contrary novice's or educator's
experience as a counter-argument to this.  But they fall in the same
trap as most of the other proponents of the status quo: because they
don't use floats much, they don't care that floating point arithmetic
is broken.

> Proponents have pointed out that if someone writes a function like
> def speed(distance, time): return distance/time
> without checking inputs for conformance with preconditions and if
> function users violate the preconditions (by feeding in two ints in
> this case), the function will generally return a subtlely wrong
> answer.  Okay, but the same is just as true of
> def minmaxpart(n,k): return (n+k-1)/k
> The problem is the close overlap of the two meanings, not either in
> itself.

Hm, IMO the problem is different.  Python's numerical model *almost*
embeds the integers in the floats.  (They should've been called reals,
but that mistake is too insignificant to want to fix. :-) In *most*
situations, where a float is expected, an int works just as well, and
has the same effect as a float with the same mathematical value.
Division is the exception and that's where the problem lies.

But the converse is *not* true in today's Python: code expecting
integers does *not* necessarily work when a float is passed, even if
that float has an integral value.  This is part of the fabric of
Python's semantics.

> I strongly recommend that the PEP Rationale (and Abstract) be
> rewritten in a neutral manner starting with something like "The
> conflict and confusion between the two closely related meanings of
> number division is a stumbling block in the writing of correct Python
> programs."  In suggesting that a straightforward, if troublesome,
> separation of meanings be divorced from attempts to assign blame to
> one of the two meanings, I am attempting to help make the proposal
> more palatable to those, like me, who do not and will not accept the
> religious-philosophical views behind that assignment of blame.

I think that's a good idea, and I'll try.

> > > (Just noticed:  http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
> > > now proposes a *2 year* int/int warning period starting with
> > > 2.3.  It still needs a stipulation that someone write an intdiv
> > > checker to help automate replacements.)
> >
> > Hm???  I don't see that on the URL you give.  Maybe you live in an
> > alternate universe where PEP 238 has a different contents than in
> > mine?
> 
> Your sarcasism is improving, but look again:
> '''
> PEP: 238
> Title: Non-integer Division
> Version: $Revision: 1.6 $
> ...
> Changing the Semantics of the / Operator
> ...
> The warning will be off by default in the 2.2 release, and on by
>     default for in the next Python release, and will stay in effect
>     for 24 months.
> '''
> Shall *I* rub it in? ;-)  In *my* universe, 24 months is (24/12 =) 2
> years ;-)

Touche.  I couldn't find that passage in the PEP, and had even gone to
the trouble of searching for "year"... :-(

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From barry at digicool.com  Mon Jul  9 21:12:17 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:12:17 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
	<2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
	<cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15178.22129.161470.499112@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "ph" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

    ph> I am currently writing a program that reads emails, modifies
    ph> them in various ways (adding headers, encryption, etc) and
    ph> outputs the result.

This actually sound like a good fit for mimelib, which is arguably
misnamed (perhaps it should be called maillib?).

    ph> As part of this program, I'm writing a mail module that (when
    ph> finished) could be hacked into a replacement for rfc822.
    ph> rfc822's functionality is to read mail headers and allow
    ph> interrogation of their values easily. My module is
    ph> conceptually on a higher level; containing a MailHeader class
    ph> which can be used to write as well as read ascii
    ph> representations of email, and a Mail class that includes the
    ph> header and the body; again for composition as well as reading
    ph> emails. (for now, it uses rfc822 to parse incoming headsers).

mimelib uses rfc822 for some functionality, but it has its own Parser
and Generator class (to go from plaintext -> object tree ->
plaintext).  It uses rfc822 for some parts of the implementation, such
as parsing addresses and realnames out of strings (so it's vulnerable
to the RFC 2822 updates as well).

    ph> When it is written, perhaps it could be considered for
    ph> eventual inclusion in the standard library (I say eventually,
    ph> because IMO it'll take me a few attempts to get the API
    ph> exactly right)

That's the hard part, all right!

    ph> My module doesn't know anything about Mime; which is good
    ph> because IMO there is room for a library that is higher-level
    ph> than rfc822 but lower levelb than knowing about Mime.

    ph> What is the process of getting a module in the standard
    ph> library?

Post the code. :)  I definitely want to look at what you've got, to
see how well (or if) it fits with mimelib.  IMO, if we're going aim at
replacing rfc822.py and all the various and sundry MIME attempts, we
ought to do it right, and simplify the choices end-users have to make
in order to manipulate email messages.

Let's collaborate!
-Barry



From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  9 16:35:42 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:35:42 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <20010709101650.B32419@xs4all.nl>
References: <5.0.2.1.1.20010708185646.023c9640@mail.accessone.com>
 <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
 <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
 <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org>
 <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>
 <5.0.2.1.1.20010708185646.023c9640@mail.accessone.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20010709093205.00a5f1e0@mail.accessone.com>

At 10:16 2001-07-09 +0200, Thomas Wouters wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 08:02:27PM -0700, Bengt Richter wrote:
>
> > >Doesn't fix the problems. What about this:
> > >
> > >semantics PRECISION, 0:
> > >     x = 2/7
> > >
> > >semantics PRECISION, 100:
> > >     print x
>
> > I'm thinking that's trying to peek from one nested scope into another,
> > and would be either illegal, trigger a special exception, or get you
> > a NameError. I haven't thought this through, but that was
> > part of the reason for a block rather than just setting global control
> > parameters. I think only new bindings would be affected. Rebinding
> > global names to stuff created within a semantic scope might have to carry
> > environment along. I haven't thought that through either ;-)
>
>Note that currently, only functions and classes introduce a new scope, not
>other blocks like if, for, try, etc. And this still is no solution: if you
>can't carry values from your 'precision scopes' to upper scopes, they are

Actually, my scopes were 'semantics' scopes. I just jumped on the
precision thing as one possible use. I.e., 'semantics' being one
keyword for similar patterns of use.

>useless black bloxes that eat everything that goes in :) And an explicit
>'return x' is not going to change anything about the problem.

By that logic most programs are useless black bloxes ;-)
(I.e., since they don't have an "upper scope" to carry values to).

I realize about the blocks. I was thinking def/class/lambda/something.

>And what about this, for that matter:
>
>def printme(x):
>     semantics PRECISION, 100:
>         print x

It would seem to call for semantic coercion when using variables with
different semantics. To carry the information about applicable semantics
would be something like carrying bindings in a closure, I'm thinking.
The latter is what I was getting at with "carrying environment" above.

>semantics PRECISION, 0:
>     x = 2/7
>     printme(x)
Meaning 2/7 is evaluated with (PRECISION,0) rules, and the resulting
value representation includes a reference to those rules (because the
'/' operator is overridden within the scope to do that). The symbol
x is bound to the value, and the value reference is passed to printme,
which will have to deal with it according to its context.

OTTOMH, perhaps the semantics keyword could cause the following block
to be translated to an anonymous function (like lambda but full def
capability) and then a reference to it would be passed to a standard
method of the semantics-altering system object referred to in the
semantics arg list, e.g., one bound to the symbol PRECISION in this case.

If you call the tuple of semantics args t, and the lambda of the block f,
then semantics processing might call t[0].__SEMANTICS__(f,t[1:]) by 
convention. Thus PRECISION.__SEMANTICS__(f,t[1:]) would see the lambda
and be able to fiddle with its environment before it got executed.

For PRECISION I assume that would involve overrides for some math operations.
After the mods, which semantics knows nothing about, semantics would execute
the lambda.

If you had a semantics INTEGER_DIV: ... block, then
INTEGER_DIV.__SEMANTICS__(f,()) would be called, perhaps overriding
the '/' operator with divmod(x,y)[0] and % with divmod(x,y)[1]
for the ensuing lambda execution.

>(or even with printme defined as
>
>semantics PRECISION, 100:
>     def printme(x):
>         print x
That would be ok for access within the scope, but it
wouldn't be visible from the outside of the lambda.

This could be an instance of PIHCAL (post in haste, cringe at leisure)
but it's fun to toss around ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter




From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Jul  5 12:19:42 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 12:19:42 -0400
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3dr8vvqrfl.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

"Dr. David Mertz" <mertz at gnosis.cx> writes:
> Always so impressed by the Python discussion group, I figure I will ask
> its advice.  I have recently contracted to write a book called _Text
> Processing in Python_ for Sybex.  The proposal and outline can be

Excellent!  "Text Processing in Python" has been floating on my TODO
list for some time, but now I don't have to write it!  There's nothing
in my outline that's not in yours.  Is chapter I, on interpreter
basics, really necessary, though?  Lots of people have written such
introductory guides, and they all come out looking much the same
anyway, so you could save some pages and writing time by not writing
one more such introduction.  "Mastering Regular Expressions" doesn't
explain Perl's scalars; does "Data Munging" contain an introduction to
the language?  If not, then why should the Python book contain one?  

Oh, and if you haven't completed negotiating the contract yet, you
might want to ensure that the rights revert to you if the book goes
out of print.  Then you could put the text up on a Web page if that
happens.

--amk


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Tue Jul 31 01:51:11 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 07:51:11 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996540777.8399.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u7puah1wa8.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

<brueckd at tbye.com> writes:

> I guess my thinking is something like this: _if_ the language forces the
> programmer to be very involved with details like type information, then
> some sort of strict, compile-time checking is a Good Thing. _If_, however,
> the programmer doesn't have to deal with those issues (or at least not to
> the same degree), then many of the related problems go away (or are
> present to a much smaller degree), and therefore the ability to check for
> those problems is much less beneficial. For example, Python handles most

This is only valid for very simple type systems.

In a really statically typed language, your example would go as follows
(I don't speak curl, probably my stuff is no valid curl syntax):

>    let v = new
#    for now, leave it to the language what type v is

>    let s = "hi"
#    the language sees that the type of s must be String

>    {v.append s}
#    from this line the language sees that the type of v must have been
#    Array of String, since anything else would not fit.

>    let i:int = v[0]        # ERROR: can't assign a String to an int
True - if you want to protect yourself against mistakes, add explicit
type information.  This is one of the purposes it is intended for - the
other one is to allow the compiler to decide all types at compile
time, thus avoiding boxed data, checks etc. at runtime.

Without the type info in the last line, the compiler would create an
i of type int.

Without giving any type hints, two things can happen in a statically
typed language:  (1) The compiler solves the constraints and finds all
types, (2) it can't since there are more solutions and give an error
message (or assumes a default).

E.g. in hugs you get 2/3 -> 0.6666666667 (there are no typecasts at
all, it interprets the "2" and "3" as Double at read time, since
integers cannot be divided and the defaults tell it to assume Double
rather than Rational).  (2::Rational)/3 gives the fraction 2/3
(printed as "2 % 3").

Ralf


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 07:35:57 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:35:57 +0200
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <jpb-BA1E76.20231012072001@news-server.cfl.rr.com> <slrn9ksn6c.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <9immeu0129m@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9ksn6c.jl.grante at tuxtop.visi.com...
    ...
> >To print it, so it can be read while I'm away from the net?
> Away from the net?
> Huh? Why would you ever be away from the net?  ;)

There isn't much net-connectivity on the buses I take to
commute between work and home.  So I make sure I have all
the materials I may need, to make productive use of that
couple of hours per day, in a local copy on my ultralight
laptop.  Until a couple of months ago, when I didn't have
a laptop light and small enough to allow sensible use on
a small seat in a crowded bus, I used to have to sacrifice
dead trees to Athena, Goddess of Wisdom (aka "printing")
for similar purposes.


Alex





From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 14:44:50 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:44:50 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B4BA9.DDB31826@yahoo.com>

tyler spivey wrote:
> 
> python is way slower than c. that's no big deal. but:
> 1. is python slower than perl
> 2. is python slower than ruby
> 3. is python slower than lua (some kind of scripting language)
> i want to know if python, or lua would be a good thing to design a mud in. probably not lua since i think it is dead.

We've had some recent threads about this...
You may want to see http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
but be sure to read the fine print to understand what the tests really do and
don't tell you. For your application I doubt there will be any speed problem
with python or any other comparable language.

I noticed a MUD server in the Useless Python source code examples:
http://home.jam.rr.com/mspiggie/

> why are they way more modules for ruby than python?

Well, there's a lot of good stuff not included in the standard distribution,
either because it's too large, or because it's not of sufficient general
interest.
Check out the Vaults of Parnassus:


-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Mon Jul  9 21:56:25 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:56:25 -0700
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com> <mailman.994696935.26488.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <090720011856254589%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.994696935.26488.python-list at python.org>, Frank
"Fistolina" Lomax <lomax at pumpichank.com> wrote:

> bass tech

Sorry, but my not so nimble mind wondered why a technician is needed to
deal with those passing fish on a musical tour.  Probably a union
thing.  ;-)

  --John


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Tue Jul 24 11:24:37 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:24:37 GMT
Subject: Another Proposal re- Integer Division
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com> <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list@python.org> <3gDsvgAkvUX7EwIv@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B5D6C54.ADE36880@letterror.com> <mailman.995980002.564.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Vqg77.3376$Xk6.761393@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.995980002.564.python-list at python.org...
> Given:  Portable integer division code between 2.2 and 2.4
>         will be ugly, i.e.:
>
>             floor(n/2)

That would be incorrect.

>>> a = 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111l
>>> a / 2
5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555L
>>> floor(a / 2.0)
5.5555555555555555e+063
>>> long(floor(a / 2.0))
5555555555555555511613257015757436156819784538568358631420461056L

There is no excuse for using floating points, ever.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 15 22:28:17 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 19:28:17 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <200107151729.NAA00455@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995220627.11627.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-8E8777.19281715072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995220627.11627.python-list at python.org>,
 "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:

> Even though putting the information into a comment would
> indeed be easier to implement, I think that from a design point
> of view, it is a hack and not a clean design.

I tend to think putting anything at all in the text of the file is a hack 
and not a clean design -- this is meta-information rather than content, 
right?  But maybe as long as you're going to do that you should go all the 
way and have some kind of "meta" directive that allows MIME directives 
beyond just charset=...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 17:43:30 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:43:30 -0400
Subject: amkCrypto/mxCrypto on Win32 with Visual C++
Message-ID: <HS507.15883$Lk6.1149673@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

I'm trying to get the amkCrypto (modified mxCrypto) package working under
Win32, but Visual C++ is barfing about the declaration (and concurrent
initialization) of public member variables.

For example, mxCrypto.h includes the following declaration:

class StreamCipher
{
 protected:
    int mode;

 public:
    static int const blocksize = 1;
    static int const keysize = 0;

    StreamCipher(PyStringObject *v, int cipher_mode);
    ~StreamCipher();
    PyObject *encrypt(PyStringObject *v);
    PyObject *decrypt(PyStringObject *v);
    int getmode(void) { return mode; };
};

The compiler says that the public member variables (blocksize and keysize)
cannot be intialized in the header file. But clearly this code works under
some compilers...

Has anyone sucessfully installed this code on Windows? Nothing on Google to
suggest previous problems.

Thanks in advance
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/






From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul 19 04:41:36 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 01:41:36 -0700
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
References: <tlbbqas5b6hvff@corp.supernews.com> <9j50q4$a3f9@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107190041.4b1f3c97@posting.google.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message news:<9j50q4$a3f9 at news1.gtech.com>...
>
> "Charles Crain" <chuxxx at swbell.net> wrote in message
> news:tlbbqas5b6hvff at corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > It occurs to us that this is a general question facing anyone wishing to
> > release a Python product.  Do you code for the latest and greatest, or do
> > you try to figure out what release is most "common" (in this case, still
> > 1.5.2, since it ships with most major Linux distros) and code for that?
>
> In my opinion (for what it is worth :-)), 1.5.2 seemed to be a very popular
> and stable release, so unless 2.X brought in some feature that you feel you
> *really* can't do without, then 1.5.2 would be a pretty reasonable baseline
> to use.

This seems like sensible advice. Python 1.5.2 was very popular, stable
and widely distributed, but if you must use a later release, I would
think that Python 2.0(.1) is the one to support, given that some
significant and useful features were introduced for that release:
Unicode support being a notable example.

Other things you might like in 2.x, but which involve syntactic
incompatibilities with 1.5.2, include the augmented assignment
constructs. Personally, I wouldn't recommend breaking compatibility
with 1.5.2 through the use of such constructs unless they give you the
means to achieve significant performance improvements which can't
reasonably be achieved any other way.

I think it's sensible to suggest that the simpler the module
dependencies of your application, the less justifiable it is to insist
on the latest and greatest Python release. If you only use standard
modules which exist in acceptable forms for 1.5.2, potential users
will be dissatisfied if you want them to upgrade to 2.1 (for example)
purely because you've used some feature of that release more as a
luxury than as a necessity.

Paul


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Fri Jul 27 20:05:26 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:05:26 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996267654.842.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <270720011705269800%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.996267654.842.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> Here's one way to tell:
> 
> >>> import math
> >>> math.atan2(x, x)
> -3.1415926535897931
> >>> math.atan2(0, 0)
> 0.0
> >>>
> 
> That is, I really did get minus 0 on Windows!  BTW, that also hints at why
> signed zeroes can be a life-saver when doing complex arithmetic.  However,
> whether atan2() handles signed zeroes correctly also varies across
> platforms.


OK, here is a PowerPC result which suggests--if I'm understanding
you--that
>>> -0.0 
0.0
on PowerPC is a printing issue not a real +0.0 value issue:

>>> math.atan2(-0.0, -0.0)
-3.1415926535897931
>>> math.atan2(0.0, 0.0)
0.0

The Python is:
Python 2.1 (#1, 04/22/01, 11:06:25) 
[GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 6.0alpha] on darwin1
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

The machine is Dual 533 Mac "G4" running Mac OS X 10.0.4.  Just in case
this all show up in published notes somewhere.

  --John


From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 07:32:10 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:32:10 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com>
	        <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com>
	        <004c01c10be8$af2face0$4ffa42d5@hagrid>
	        <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com> <15183.35133.264728.399408@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <3B502DBA.761D4F69@lemburg.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     mal> Here's an updated version which clarifies some issues...
>     ...
>     mal>     I propose to make the Unicode literal encodings (both standard
>     mal>     and raw) a per-source file option which can be set using the
>     mal>     "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244 in a slightly
>     mal>     extended form (by adding the '=' between the directive name and
>     mal>     it's value).
> 
> I think you need to motivate the need for a different syntax than is defined
> in PEP 244.  I didn't see any obvious reason why the '=' is required.

I'm not picky about the '='; if people don't want it, I'll
happily drop it from the PEP. The only reason I think it may be
worthwhile adding it is because it simply looks right:

directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'

rather than

directive unicodeencoding 'latin-1'

(Note that internally this will set a flag to a value, so the
assigning character of '=' seems to fit in nicely.)
 
> Also, how do you propose to address /F's objections, particularly that the
> directive can't syntactically appear before the module's docstring (where it
> makes sense that the module author would logically want to use a non-default
> encoding)?

Guido hinted to the problem of breaking code, Tim objected
to requiring this. 

I don't see the need to use Unicode literals
as module doc-strings, so I think the problem is not a real one
(8-bit strings can be written using any encoding just like you can 
now).

Still, if people would like to use Unicode literals for module
doc-strings, then they should place the directive *before* the
doc-string accepting that this could break some tools (the PEP currently
does not restrict the placement of the directive). Alternatively,
we could allow placing the directive into a comment, e.g.

#!/usr/local/python
#directive unicodeencoding = 'utf-8'
u"""
     This is a Unicode doc-string
"""

About Fredrik's idea that the source code should only use one 
encoding: 

Well, that's possible with the proposed directive, since 
only Unicode literals carry data for Python is encoding-aware
and all other parts are under the programmer's control, e.g.

#!/usr/local/python
""" Module Docs...
"""
directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
...
u = "H?ll? W?rld !"
...

will give you pretty much what Fredrik asked for. 

Note that since Python does not assign encoding information to 
8-bit strings, comments etc. the only parts in a Python program 
for which the programmer must explicitly tell Python which 
encoding to assume are the Unicode literals.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 20 22:41:56 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:41:56 -0700
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com>

kevin parks wrote:

> By the way is tuple pronounced tOOple (god i hope it is), or is it
> pronounced
> like the word "couple". Tuple like "couple" would be too high brow.

I've always heard it pronounced to rhyme with _couple_, but a
mathematician friend of mine insisted that it was pronounced the other
way.  When I checked a dictionary it said both were legal.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ But we go on pretending / Stories like ours / Have happy endings
\__/ The Russian and Florence, _Chess_
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 22:00:38 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:00:38 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEIGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> try-giving-it-a-rest-for-12-hours?-ly y'rs  - tim

[Stephen Horne]
> Sorry - insomnia brought on by anxiety due to the anticipation of
> severe damage to my professional reputation and a lot of unnecessary
> work.

OK, then give it a rest for a whole week.  You may be close to setting a
record for sheer repetition, and I can assure you Guido doesn't have the
time to read 50 copies of the same basic rant -- in reality, you're doing
the best job you possibly could of encouraging him to tune out (he won't,
but I'd be surprised if he didn't skip your posts by now).

> If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
> and similar in your code as I do - most of which I don't even know who
> has it or who might have tweaked versions (and I know as an absolute
> fact those warnings will either not be seen at all or will be ignored)
> you'd be just as pissed of as I am.

Pissed off at what?  Nothing has changed.  It's possible nothing will.  It's
certain nothing will for half a year at earliest.  It's being discussed --
or at least *was*, for a little while.

> I trusted Python and I put myself out on a limb advocating it - and
> now that limb is being deliberately broken - and I don't accept that
> the change is such an undeniably great idea in the long term, let
> alone in the here and now. In my position, how would *you* feel.

I'm not prone to getting emotionally involved in tech debates; it's
happened, of course, but it's never been fruitful when it has, and posting
when pissed is right out.

> I just happened to start keeping track of the newsgroup in the last
> couple of days - just in time to see the oncoming disaster,

People have been predicting Python Disaster for a decade.  Is *anything* new
on Usenet <0.7 wink>?

> but apparently too late to do the slightest thing about it.

If you believed that, would you be c.l.py's most-frequent poster over the
last several days?

> How many people like me aren't going to find out until *after*
> everything goes tits up?

Most of them would find out late; whether it would be a disaster depends on
the details that a *few* people have been trying to talk about.




From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sun Jul  1 09:47:40 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 09:47:40 -0400
Subject: commenting code well
In-Reply-To: <993979929.553.457.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EF1BC.30875.2C92629@localhost>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Rob Andrews wrote:
>My code comments are often weak, if existent. What is good practice
>for commenting code?

I wonder if Rob Andrews is still reading this thread and, if he is, 
whether he has found Steve McConnell's treatment of comments in 
"Code Complete" useful?



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:45 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:45 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <9jhmoc$9nm$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <lnvoltg0h2gqmcfbsks7ppbt1cmh4pav4p@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 13:26:36 -0400, roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) wrote:

>>    Tim> Why is that?  It's because unlike any other builtin arithmetic
>>    Tim> operation, "/" today can cause *catastrophic* loss of information
>>    Tim> silently, and in ordinary cases.  
>
>Surely assignment causes catastrophic loss of information, no?  If I
>say "x = 4", havn't I lost the old value of x?

Depends if another identifier references the same object - to reopen
another can of worms ;-)



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  8 17:34:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 14:34:19 -0700
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <20010708204337.MJGP11827.femail4.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <3B48D1DB.C3F726C9@ActiveState.com>

Jay Parlar wrote:
> 
>... Is there a simple way to convert the unicode text to
> StringType, removing the resulting unicode strings for unrepresentable > characters?

>>> import codecs
>>> codecs.ascii_encode(u"foo\u3333bar", "ignore")
('foobar', 7)

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Jul 25 15:13:20 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:13:20 -0500
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
References: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com> <slrn9lu024.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3E9DA22F3FF99072.0E52F24E38E09F05.89F1DF1C896E89C5@lp.airnews.net>

In article <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>,
Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>On 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
>wrote:
>>On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>>>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>>>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>>>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>>>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>>>Any pointers much appreciated.
>>
>>This is a shell task:
>>
>>(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
>> ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results
>>
>>Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
>>passwords all the time.
>
>BTW, if you *really* wanted to use python for it, you couldn't use popen
>(stdio wins again!).  You'd need to use ptys to trick telnet that it's being
>run by a terminal.  That means either figuring out how unix ptys work and
>using pty.py, or installing expect and ExpectPy.  Both are more work than
>installing openssh (and once you do that you can toss telnet anyway).
>
>Unless, of course, machine{1,2} don't have ssh and you have no control over
>them.  There are any number of ugly hacks you could do at that point, and
>expect is one of them.
>
>or-publish-the-logs-on-the-web-and-use-wget-ly y'rs

Exactly.  That is, ssh is a fine way to solve these
problems--unless you don't have control over the re-
mote end.

Long term, ExpectPy might be in better shape than
you realize.  There are glimmers of hope that Expect
might be rewritten in a way that eases maintenance
of ExpectPy (and maybe brings Win* within range, too).
In the meantime, you might consider using stock Expect.
You might be able to get your job done with just a few
lines.  If you need more, there are plenty of ways to
tie together Tcl and Python codings.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Thu Jul 19 13:04:28 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:04:28 -0400
Subject: Examples of using XML and Python?
In-Reply-To: <995561518.767.71055.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B56DADC.23924.3AF08E9@localhost>

"Mark Ainsworth" <marka at sundance.com> wrote, in part:
> Has anyone got any simple examples of using Python and XML? The plan
> is to use XML as the data format for information files. These need to
> be able to be read, for data extraction, and also written too for
> modification.

"XMLtreeview" under "Cool Contribs" in the demo that is included 
with wxPython shows how to ~read~ an XML doc into a tree 
control. I can't evaluate this in comparison with what Cameron Laird 
has already posted in response to your query; however, 
XMLtreeview is a particularly easy-to-read example.



From m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it  Tue Jul 24 10:13:40 2001
From: m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it (Marco Mariani)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:13:40 +0200
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <00af01c11440$87a53c20$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <20010724161340.A19700@zoidberg>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 07:59:45AM -0500, Chris Gonnerman wrote:

>     Malevolent Dictator For Life
> 
> While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
> version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
> to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.

Of course not. Guido is not bad at all, he's just chaotic good :-)




From zdweeb at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 21:48:26 2001
From: zdweeb at yahoo.com (z)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:48:26 GMT
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995588673.14353.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <K5M57.80950$EF2.11337237@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

I have had excellent success with the Py2Exe
http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/
and the Inno http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm combo.

My apps are wxPython and python, no problems. I am able to run them on Win2K
and Win NT sp5.

I have on my todo list a python script to automate the building of the Inno
config script.

--
--zDweeB

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.
ASCII art?? I thought it was a regular expression!
"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995588673.14353.python-list at python.org...
> [Gordon McMillan]
> > ...
> > As far as a free Windows installer (for py2exe or [Gordon's] Installer),
> > Inno gets good reviews. I don't know anyone who can stand InstallShield.
> > Wise is the commercial one most people use.
>
> FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows installer
> over to Inno.  It's simple (as such things go) and easy to use (as such
> things go).  We've been happy with the Wise installer Mark Hammond talked
> them into letting us use in '94 or '95, but it's showing its age and I'm
> apparently not nearly as persuasive as Mark (they don't even acknowledge
> receiving my emails -- but then I wouldn't either <wink>).
>
> ms-should-bundle-python-as-a-public-service-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>




From root at [127.0.0.1]  Sat Jul  7 11:02:25 2001
From: root at [127.0.0.1] (nobody)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 15:02:25 GMT
Subject: problem with popen on Win32
Message-ID: <5wF17.2821$V5.4774@news1.rivrw1.nsw.optushome.com.au>

I'm using ActivePython 2.0/2.1 on W2K..

foo.py:
import os
child = os.popen("cmd /c bar.bat")
for line in child.readlines(): pass
child.close()

bar.bat:
start calc


foo.py is supposed to start bar.bat, wait for it to finish, and then
continue.  However, bar.bat finishes but foo.py won't continue until calc is
closed.  Is it possible to get popen to wait only for the program specified
to complete, not all of the grandchildren?





From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Wed Jul 11 05:59:02 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 11:59:02 +0200
Subject: European Python Meeting report
References: <mailman.994840578.17876.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3n16bbxcp.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Marc Poinot <Marc.Poinot at onera.fr> writes:

> - We were not a lot of Python users (about 20), and it looks like we have
>   a lot of work to make it an European event. But the Python users there
>   though it was worth trying again.

Definitely.

> We also had the first European Python Meeting supper in Bordeaux 
> downtown (with foie gras and wine), nine of us where there.

No fried python, of course. We are not cannibals.

Finally, let's not forget to thank Marc for organizing all this!
We need more idealists of his kind ;-)

Konrad.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From noselasd at frisurf.no  Fri Jul 13 06:30:55 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:30:55 +0200
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <O4A37.23$Fv3.59@news1.oke.nextra.no>

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953783.6278.python-list at python.org...
> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
>
> >>> 1 < "aaa"
> 1
>
> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different
types as
> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should
be
> produced.
>
> This one tripped me up in an assert statement for a couple of hours.
The
> assert statement was returning true when it should have been false to
give
> me a warning that there was a problem.  It was something like:
>
> lengthA= 3
> lengthB= "2"
>
> assert lengthA <= lengthB
>
> and was returning true
In any OO language its desired to take advantage og polymorphisme,
and let comparison between diffrent objects be allowed.The programmer
is responsible,
for providing comparison functions.
I wanna know if my User also equals my SecureUser....





From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul 29 21:21:35 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:21:35 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>              <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996447295.25645.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <zE297.50718$EP6.11188601@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

I find it interesting that the hackish hook you first added so one
person could write C extension classes should be a doorway to
unification.  Did you have this in mind when you wrote it?
---

Re the 17 line paragraph condenses as "(Confusion alert: ...  To add
to the confusion,  ...slot!)"

 I would remove the outer () and add label 'Explanation:'.  I would
also remove the two confusion alerts -- since your explanation is
pretty straightforward, given the knowledge assumed and the previous
reminder that 'type' is it own type, I find them more distracting than
helpful.
---

"(The names aren't quite symmetric; tp_free() corresponds to
tp_alloc(),
    which is fine, but tp_dealloc() corresponds to tp_new().  Maybe
    the tp_dealloc slot should be renamed?)"

I first guessed that dealloc corresponded to alloc.  Since it is most
like __del__, how about delete?
---

Terry J. Reedy








From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 18:02:58 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:02:58 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com> <mailman.994711525.24100.python-list@python.org> <9ifgpe$1b5$1@verence.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4CCD12.A4992E65@engcorp.com>

Paul Wright wrote:
> 
> In article <mailman.994711525.24100.python-list at python.org>,
> Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> >> > From what I can tell, PHP and Ruby
> >> > are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that I see
> >> > in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
> >> > adoration for pure acedemic elegance.
> >
> >I think even the Ruby people would be surprised to hear about Edward's
> >statistics about it flying past Python!
> 
> Shurely he means that the derivative of the number of users wrt time is
> greater for Ruby than for Python, which may be true because Python has a
> far larger user base and so is nearer "saturation".

Wouldn't this only hold true if Ruby's _potential_ user base were
sufficiently large compared to Python's potential user base?  

I believe that many more people will eventually use Python than will
use Ruby (language war thread!).  That might mean Python's rate of
increase in user base per unit time is still larger than Ruby's.

(And this certainly fits with my own observations over the last year.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  2 23:09:07 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 23:09:07 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994126144.24483.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdsngeg14c.fsf@w20-575-3.mit.edu>

> What I meant is that for each airplane, he needs to calculate the
> distance to every other airplanes; that's O(N^2).  ;-)

And what I meant was that he doesn't.  *shrug*

> Ultimately, though, it depends on how the data (from the radar) are
> given to Python script, and this wasn't clear in the original post.

How does the general collision-detection algorithm depend on the format
of the data received from the radar?

> Judging by his thin skin, I don't think it was a serious post.

I think that both his original post and his response were pretty
reasonable, actually.

Alex.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 06:05:26 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:05:26 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 02:18:29 -0700, paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) wrote:

>I can see people seriously suggesting a "pythonfork" project if the
>debate gets any more intense. :-O

I've had idle thoughts for some time about a language that would allow
you to define - within the language itself - the syntax and semantics
for sublanguages. Only the lexical rules would be fixed, though there
would need to be several built-in sublanguages - grammar and
translation definition, simple compile-time imperative and simple
run-time imperative being the obvious ones. The thought was originally
provoked by wanting to support many different paradigms efficiently
and concisely in the same language - if anyone comes up with a new
paradigm, they just create a library that defines a suitable grammar
and translation and, hey presto, anyone can use it without changing
languages, and without discarding code written for other paradigms.

It suddenly seems so much more like a practical idea.

>> Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
>> new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
>> 0.5.
>
>The most sensible suggestion yet! I was reading the previous messages
>in this thread waiting for someone to suggest this, and it's about
>time someone did! There's a lot of weight behind adding a new
>operator, yet most people seem to advocate adding the // operator and
>then *changing* the / operator... which is madness!

Agreed - I already made the same suggestion in the 'Future division
patch available (PEP 238) thread.

>If beginners want an operator which behaves as they expect, they
>certainly aren't going to have any preconceptions about what it's
>going to look like - they are beginners, after all. Therefore, why
>even bother suggesting changing the / operator? Just introduce // and
>be done with it! Nothing gets broken, the beginners get their new
>operator, and those wanting the C++ comment syntax in Python will just
>have to be disappointed. ;-)

I'll live ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 30 20:52:45 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 20:52:45 -0400
Subject: win32api exception names?
References: <9k4r84$n85$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <uhevt6hsy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> writes:

> I'm using this function to open a file listed in a Tkinter Listbox widget,
> but i've run into some problems. First when i double click on .htm files
> listed they work perfectly, opening in Explorer, But when i double click on
> .txt files i get this error:
> 
> Exception in Tkinter callback
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "c:\program files\python\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1285, in
> __call__
>     return apply(self.func, args)
>   File "D:\Backup\Python Programs\PyFind\PyFind.py", line 61, in executeFile
>     win32api.ShellExecute(0, "open" , str(resultPane.get(ACTIVE)),"","",1)
> api_error: (31, 'ShellExecute', 'A device attached to the system is not
> functioning.')
> 
> i'm trying to handle this exception, but being new to them i dunno what
> exception is being raised, the 'except EnvironmentError:' line really isn't
> getting it. any ideas?

I can't necessarily address why your code is returning that specific
exception (perhaps a bad path?), but each of the PythonWin modules all
raise an api_error exception for any general Win32 errors.  The first
element in the instance data tuple will be the underlying Win32 error
code (31 in this case is ERROR_GEN_FAILURE), then the failing function
call, and finally a textual description.

So if you want to catch these in your exception handler, you can use:

    except win32api.api_error, info

and then if necessary, inspect the actual Win32 API error code (in info[0]).

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 17:41:07 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:41:07 +0200
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com> <9ip1qa012en@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9iqea10f19@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6 at tundraware.com...
    ...
> Sure, there are places where portability is important.  And portability
> is not a "Yes" or "No" things - there are degrees.  But the most
> important thing that needs to be portable are *the skills of the
> people* so that they can be used in many different roles.

As in, taking a world-renowned specialist in surface-modeling, and
ensuring he wast^H^H^H^H spends enough time to be able to
program a GUI, or knows enough SQL to write some queries, or...?

Thanks, but NO, THANKS.  One advantage for a software development
firm to grow to middling-size (to be offset against several minuses)
is being able to AFFORD a few all-out specialists in those areas that
are key competitive differentiators for the firm's products.  For us,
that means specialists in such things as 3-D kernels, surfacing,
surface/solid
integration, and PDM needs of middle-sized mechanical engineering
firms.  It's *NOT* a problem if the PDM specialist doesn't know what's
a NURBS, and the surfacing specialist doesn't know what's a BOM --
it DOES matter that the firm as a whole has, say, a dozen such key
people in the right areas out of a couple hundred developers -- people
able and eager to concentrate on very specific, narrow, focused
domains, with the total unremitting concentration and enthusiasm
that such specialists tend to bring to their work.  Their skills need
not be "portable" to other areas or roles -- they need to be allowed
to concentrate on what they're exceptionally good at, in order to
develop the innovations that spearhead new products and versions.
(If and when such guys *WANT* to branch out in other fields, it's
of course clever to support their explorations -- that may well be a
spring of innovations too, among other issues -- but it's exceedingly
rare that a specialist WANTS to leave his or her specific field, where
he or she always seems able to find new fascinating challenges and
new worlds to conquer).


> DEC once estimated that there was something like an 8 or 10 to 1
> ratio of the cost of owning code vs. the initial cost to produce

May make sense, depending on the code's longevity (related to
the speed of advances in the specific field).

> the code.  The ongoing reliability and maintenance of software and
> systems tends to be way more important than portability of the code
> itself because that is a relatively lower cost to produce the code
> than to maintain it.

But porting, when it's needed, is part of the "cost of owning", not
of the "cost of producing".  Raising the producing-cost a little bit,
by caring about portability right from the start, may significantly
lower the owning-cost, depending on porting-needs -- which,
again, will in part correlate to longevity.  Code that you'll pension
off in 6 months may easily never need to be ported -- code you'll
carry around for 10 years is VERY unlikely to not need porting, in
a platform market subject to reasonably fast innovation.

So, the dominance of ongoing costs vs initial ones doesn't indicate
a LOW importance for portability -- indeed, the very contrary!


> Anyway, our code, *by intent* was *not* portable.  It couldn't
> be portable in any practical sense because the underlying
> infrastructure paradigms are really different between, say TPF,

Underlying infrastructure paradigms do tend to differ deeply
when portability is a problem (otherwise, portability is basically
free and it would be very silly to ignore it:-).  But it's a serious
error to claim that a program cannot be portable if the underlying
infrastructure paradigms differ widely!  Such underlying differences
just raise (a bit) the COST of portability, because you have to
write most of your code to a higher-level abstraction and also
implement that abstraction on different underlying platforms.

But the costs only grow by _a bit_, because good software IS
'layered' anyway -- levels of different abstraction built on top
of each other.  You just have to ensure your lowest levels are
designed in a way that is decently decoupled from specific
bits of infrastructure -- often not MUCH harder than coupling
them heavily and strongly, and often worthwhile anyway (if
the lower-level quirks aren't ALLOWED to percolate upwards
and pollute the higher-level architecture, that may often be
all to the good of the higher-level cleanness and resulting
productivity in development and maintenance).  A long time
ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we had different GUI's running
on top of WIDELY different infrastructure paradigms -- the
bare paint-pixels-yourself approach of a now-obsolete HP
proprietary minicomputer, Apollo's Domain, Dec VMS (I
forget how their GUI subsystem was called), an early release
of Windows, some X or other (I think it already was X11, but
I'm not sure)... and we had not taken the trouble to design
a _portable_ GUI architecture.  Fortunately, at one point, we
did, even though it did mean more than refactoring -- it was
a big-bang junk-and-rewrite of a lot of stuff, given how badly
we had allowed non-portability to 'percolate upwards' -- the
cost of porting and maintaining on (at that time) half a dozen
platforms was killing us (we were much smaller then, so the
cost was a really large portion of our total investments).

The resulting portable architecture, highlighting *decoupling*
between portable parts (the higher-levels, amounting to a
VAST majority of the applications) and non-portable ones (the
lower-levels, handled by *specialists* of both the platforms
AND the subject-area -- this early specialization freed most
developers from having to know or care how you paint a pixel
or respond to a button clic on any given platform, gave us
higher-quality GUI's AND better application-logic, and paved
the way for our growth) served us well for years.  When, much
later, we jumped on the Win95 bandwagon (having sniffed out
that this cranky unreliable OS bid fair to conquer engineers'
desktops, whether we liked it or not), we gained "native Win32
look and feel" faster and more smoothly than our competitors,
and with the involvement of less than 10% of our developers --
all the others could still (lucky them) develop on Unix, respecting
our in-house portability rules, and "it all just worked".

GUI's are one example, but I have others, from the same bunch
of real-life experiences, in such things as RDBMS's and network
protocols.  Attention to portability, mostly by designing intermediate
layers and letting most everybody program to those layers while
a few specialists slave away at implementing the layers on top
of various platform-quirks, has always stood us in VERY good stead...

> more interested in creating competitive and distinctive market
> advantage than serving the abstract idea of portability.

What gave you the idea that anybody around here is interested
in "serving abstract ideas"?  I'm interested in serving *our
customers*, all 10,000+ of them at last count -- ensuring
the applications they buy from us (or actually, these days,
_rent_ -- we've successfully transitioned to a subscription
business model) have very good architecture (including the
careful layer separation that also ensures portability) is a
means to that end (which in turn is a means to the end of
making a whole lot of money of course:-).


> I think code portability really only becomes an issue if it
> is a first-order component of the economics of a company.  For example,
> if you sell compilers, portability is probably pretty important.
> OTOH, if you write drives, it is not much of an issue.

And if you write mechanical CAD and PDM in the current
market, it may not SEEM much of an issue -- if you're too
young to remember all your former-competitors killed by
having put all their eggs into one non-portable basket, to
exploit some nifty-looking doodad in a platform that then
became defunct too fast.  Fortunately, enough of our guys
used to be the best developers from just such quondam
competitors, so I don't think they're likely to forget:-).


> > -- they claim speed-ups
> > of about 60% overall, more solidity, etc, as a consequence.  If that
>
> Speed-up, I believe.  But "more solidity" by switching C++, I doubt.
> That probably has more to do with 2nd generation software being
> better than the 1st.

Or else the claim is unwarranted -- who knows, but it wouldn't
be the first time that marketing overclaims something:-).


Alex





From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Thu Jul 26 15:23:08 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:23:08 +0100
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
Message-ID: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't find
it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh well
any ideas out there?

G. Willoughby




From ajm at enteract.com  Tue Jul 24 15:46:11 2001
From: ajm at enteract.com (Alan Miller)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:46:11 -0400
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <MPG.15c7942e7652fd7b989800@news-enteract>

Guido van Rossum (guido at digicool.com) wrote:
>- after "from __future__ import division", / is changed to return a
>  float result from int or long operands (and so is /=).

So who's going to write slashnanny.py that will go through old code and 
warn about existing operations that will be broken by the change?

ajm


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 16:03:33 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:03:33 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995271867.5441.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6iqr.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

[ please don't reply and post ]

Me parece que Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> dijo:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 02:39:50AM +0000, Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> > I'm in the habit (in Python as well) of return undef on
> > false because in some methods, 0 is ambiguous.  So, in cases where 0 is
> > not ambiguous, 0 is idiomatically preferred to None?
> 
> You wouldn't call those functions in a boolean context, now would you ? I
> prefer to return -1 if 0 is a valid return value, or just raise an exception
> if -1 is valid as well. We're talking an entirely different function though,
> one where an 'error return' really is exceptional. 

A valid point.  =)

> > Ok, so here's my version (I hate wasted line space and unnecessary temp
> > vars):
> 
> Just wait until you revisit this code in 6 months ;)

Actually, never had a problem understanding my own code.  The only
problem I've had understanding other people's code is when their
indentation is deplorable (which obviously doesn't apply to Python).
<wink>

-- 
Sometimes we can choose the path we follow.
Sometimes our choices are made for us.
And sometimes we have no choice at all.
    -- Morpheus, The Sandman


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 13 21:56:12 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:56:12 -0400
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
In-Reply-To: <EbJ37.5150$z21.530071@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEFHKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[/F]
> from the Python library reference:
>
>     clock()
>
>     Return the current CPU time as a floating point
>     number expressed in seconds. The precision, and
>     in fact the very definition of the meaning of ''CPU
>     time'' , depends on that of the C function of the
>     same name
>
> ANSI C leaves the "era" and resolution open, and Microsoft
> has defined it as:
>
>     The clock function's era begins (with a value of 0)
>     when the C program starts to execute. It returns
>     times measured in 1/CLOCKS_PER_SEC (which
>     equals 1/1000 for Microsoft C).

Python doesn't use the MS clock() for time.clock() on Windows; it uses the
MS QueryPerformanceCounter API instead.  MS clock() is approximately useless
for anything (yes, it has millisecond resolution, but is updated less than
20 times per second; while even on Win95, QueryPerformanceCounter typically
has better then microsecond resolution and updating).




From arisen at start.no  Mon Jul  9 06:43:10 2001
From: arisen at start.no (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9?=)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 03:43:10 -0700
Subject: Cool use for a generator?
Message-ID: <fed2e489.0107090243.32027672@posting.google.com>

Assuming i got the generator concept correctly from PEP 255,
this little (untested) snippet shows how to process
asynchronous events in an "iterative fashion". Assuming
also that ping is an interface to the libping library
(which would be nice to have anyway. See e.g.
http://www.joedog.org/libping/docs/man/pinghost3.html)


import ping, time

def now():
    return time.time() * 1000   # We want milliseconds

def pinggen(host):
    while 1:
        then = now()
        if ping.pinghost(host) == 1:
            yield now() - then
        else:
            return

if __name__ == "__main__":
    hostname = "localhost"
    for pingtime in pinggen(hostname):
        print "Reply from %s: time=%.1f" % (hostname, pingtime)


--
Regards
Andr? Risnes


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul 18 18:18:13 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:18:13 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107181336320.15405-100000@bms>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
>
> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

[Ok, I'll bite]

I don't see either Windows or Unix as the problem, they are just
different.  Problems only arise when you try to move between the two
possible worlds without a mapping function.

Mapping from Windows to Unix is trivial because case-insensitivity is
a subset of case-sensitivity; mapping from Unix to Windows with the
same 1:1 rule is impossible for the same reason... so you need a more
complicated mapping function, and will end up with a longer string of
characters in the Windows world than in the Unix world.  In the
very least, case-sensitive Unix can convey information more succinctly
than case-insensitive Windows, and I would go so far to say that Unix
is more expressive than Windows in this aspect.

I don't think the question is "whether the problem here is Windows or
Unix!", but rather...

Would a less expressive programming environment be better for programs
or programmers?

or if you prefer...

Would restricting program text to a subset of the available symbols be
better for programs or programmers?


The way I see it, going case-insensitive would be like ripping the
"shift" key out of the keyboard... such a move would not even be
considered in the real world; since programming is an effort to
simulate what goes on in the real world, and it seems to have been
found to take more than 36 symbols and some punctuation to express
real world ideas, it seems counter-productive to artificially restrict
the expressiveness of programmers.

Someone who has trouble figuring out case-sensitivity is going to have
a hard time with programming <period>.  If such a person is looking at
programming it will be within a restricted domain, so there should be
a language tailored to that audience and that domain.  Languages
intended for wider domains should be as expressive as the natural
language used to describe them.  There is nothing stopping a small
domain language from being a subset of that used in a larger domain,
but the requirements of the subset should not limit the expressiveness
of the whole language.

Exposing Python to a non-programmer, so the non-programmer can (say)
program their cell phone, does not require any aspect of Python be
designed to make things easy for the non-programmer... all that is
required is that a subset of Python can be made to appear to be
non-programmer friendly.

Maybe PyChecker should grow an option to check for mixed case
labels in programs, or perhaps rexec should be able to force
case-insensitivity.


- Bruce







From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul 14 02:26:50 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:26:50 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <3B4FD35A.26B4568E@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141014240.3574-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, James Logajan wrote:

>Roy Smith wrote:
>>
>> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:
>>
>>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);
>>
>> The obvious translation would be:
>>
>>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
>>
>> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on it.  Perl
>> handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra" variables undefined, whereas
>> python raises a ValueError exception.  What I'd like to do is have the
>> extra field variables left as null strings.
>
>This may not be the most elegant or efficient, but how about this:
>
>[f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]

My variant is:

f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = map(lambda x, y: x, string.split(line), 6*[None])

(maybe 6*[None] could be written as xrange(6), but I am not sure if
xrange will allow it after stripping down)

- this is VERY common problem when analysing logs. I will be grateful
if somebody could point me to how to give names to log fields
in efficient manner (logs are long, you know!). Probably, this
is better done in C.

Maybe, some kind of support from string module or Python itself
could be had, for example:

f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = pad(string.split(line), 6, None)

(where None could be omitted to be default value)

There could also be rpad to pad from right.

*

re module could also be used, with named groups which
name fields. But I wonder how efficient it is to use re
where split is enough...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 10:30:39 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:30:39 +0200
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com> <9ioru01pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <%qV37.19159$Kf3.249506@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <9ipl2901n36@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Levente Sandor" <nospam at newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:%qV37.19159$Kf3.249506 at www.newsranger.com...
    ...
> >def with(obj, statements, globs=None):
> >    if globs is None: globs=globals()
> >    exec statements in vars(obj), globs
>
> Sorry but I can't see how it simulates the 'with' statement in Pascal or
VB.

That's probably because I had switched the two dictionaries
in the exec statement -- here's a corrected, simpler version:

>>> def with(obj,stmt):
...   exec stmt in globals(), vars(obj)
...
>>> with(x, "pak=23; pok=24")
>>> x.pak
23
>>> x.pok
24
>>>

In lieu of globals() one surely wants to default to the *caller*'s
globals, sys._getframe(1).f_globals, of course.


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 13:40:51 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:40:51 -0400
Subject: can't find fpectl
In-Reply-To: <6rC67.32302$Ek3.11785061@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKECBLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Eric Hagemann]
>     Running through the 2.1 library reference and found info on the
> 'fpectl' -- floating point exception control module.
>
>     When I tried to run the examples and import the module I get an
> Import error -- does this module exist ?

Which platform?  For example, it's not available on Windows.




From nospam at newsranger.com  Mon Jul 30 21:23:38 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 01:23:38 GMT
Subject: PythonPath for ASP
References: <996471911.551564@emperor.labs.agilent.com>
Message-ID: <uMn97.12165$ar1.37961@www.newsranger.com>

In article <996471911.551564 at emperor.labs.agilent.com>, Brian Zhou says...

>Is there a place I can set that makes C:\Python21\PIL in PythonPath?

Create a file with the extension ".pth" in your Python installation directory,
then add the line
PIL
to it. You can add more (both relative and absolute) paths to the Python path in
this way, each one in a new line. (You must restart the Python interpreter after
doing this.)
Or: you can do it (temporarily) anywhere in your script:
..
import sys
sys.path.append("c:\\python21\\pil")
import Image
..
Another way goes trough the Windows Registry but I never tried that.

Levi





From nospam at eurologic.com  Wed Jul 25 12:10:41 2001
From: nospam at eurologic.com (Pat Knight)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:10:41 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <sxvgkh56ri.fsf@eurologic.com>

<margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> writes:

> Many political historians claim that, in short to medium term timescales,
> the best form of governance is the benevolent dictatorship -- where the 
> leader cares about his people, and has the ability and intelligence 
> to act quickly on their behalf. However, it is unstable in the long term:
> either the dictator, or the next in line, stops caring about the 
> populace, and becomes capricious and vain.
> 
> I have been pondering recently whether we are seeing this process in 
> action with Python. Guido van Rossum has been an extremely strong and
> benevolent dictator, and Python itself is a much better language, and
> has a bigger mindshare, than it would under many other leadership 
> systems. However, we may be getting to the stage now where the task of
> guiding Python should be taken out of his hands.
> 

As recently as yesterday it appeared Guido wasn't listening. Having seen his
posts today on the subject of both integer division and case-sensitivity, I now
think he was listening and *thinking*. In other words, waiting until he'd
considered what the rioting masses were asking for before responding.

I'm much happier now with his current positions on both these issues, and feel
that they show he has listened.

I'd also like to complement Guido on having the grace and courage to do what
he feels right and best for the language, in the face of some uncalled for
ad-hominem remarks. I'm particularly impressed that he's able to modify his
position publicly in circumstances where another might have stuck to their guns
to "save face."

Well done, Guido.

-- 
Cheers,
	Pat		Tel: 0117 930 9621 (Intl: +44-117-930-9621).


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 00:34:30 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:34:30 -0400
Subject: python reviewers
References: <mailman.995046026.1258.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FCBD6.B49F5DA1@engcorp.com>

Kristen_Blanco at prenhall.com wrote:
> 
> I am writing from Prentice Hall publishing and 
> I am seeking reviewers for an upcoming publication. 
...
> We are presently seeking qualified technical reviewers to
> verify that the Deitels' coverage of Python in their forthcoming book is
> accurate.  In return, we are offering a token honorarium.

>From http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=token

to?ken (tkn)
 n. 

 1. Something serving as an indication, proof, or expression of 
    something else 
 ...
 5. A keepsake or souvenir. 
 6. A piece of stamped metal used as a substitute for currency: 
    subway tokens. 

I wonder which of the above they mean and, if the first, what is the 
"something else" which this honorarium is an indication of?  
That they didn't even offer to put your name in the credits?
Presumably _that_ would be more interesting to many people here
than some amount of money that has to be described as "token".

I wonder how thick the book is... 

( http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html )


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  9 11:50:57 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 11:50:57 -0400
Subject: Sample code for using readline
References: <3B49CD3C.F157E2F@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <etdhewm14pq.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Poke around the neighbourhood of these url's a bit:

http://python.org/doc/lib/readline-example.html
http://python.org/doc/lib/module-rlcompleter.html

Alex.


From thomas at gatsoft.no  Thu Jul 26 08:26:12 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:26:12 GMT
Subject: SlightlyOffTopic: syntax-highlighting in XEmacs running on Windows
Message-ID: <E%T77.147$bXi.169905152@news.telia.no>

Hi,

I want to use X/Emacs to write Python-code on Windows too, but I have a
small problem with the python-mode.el. Where do I put the stuff that should
have gone into .emacs? Cannot create such a file on win32 filesystem. Why
aren't my code colorized in XEmacs 21.x using the python-mode like Emacs
under Linux, using the exact same python-mode.el-file?

Any ideas?

Thomas




From kens at sightreader.com  Tue Jul  3 19:07:31 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:07:31 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <20010702175245.A4092@node0.opengeometry.ca>
Message-ID: <07c001c10414$f4af22e0$a325fea9@his>

For liability reasons, I can't give you advice on whether or not to
use python for an air traffic control application :-)

However, if I were (hypothetically, of course) to give you advice,
it would be the following, of which your reading constitutes an
agreement that I am not responsible for injury, deaths, and property
damage resulting from that which would be my advice, were it not, 
if fact, hypothetical, which it is.

Seems to me that python would be a good choice.  You can write
bugs in any language, including python.  However, python bugs
tend to be less subtle and easier to detect and fix than C/C++ bugs.

The lack of type checking and function prototyping is not nearly as
big of a problem (if it's a problem at all) as C++ programmers tend
to fear.

This fear is due to the fact that in some statically typed languages
such as C++, an undetected type mismatch is likely to cause rather
horrible bugs which are often intermittent and often corrupt unrelated
data.

These kinds of type mismatch bugs that C++ programmers are
terrified of (memory overwrites, etc.) simply do not exist in python at
all.  Python doesn't ever need to infer the addresses of bytes of data
from dubious type information at runtime (as C++ does).  Type
information is always stored within the objects themselves.

In python, data of the wrong type is not really any worse than data
of the wrong value, so these kinds of bugs tend to only have local
effects which are easily caught when tested.  Not surprisingly, I have
found that I usually get fewer type related bugs in Python than in C++.

Saying that python is unreliable because it lacks type checking is like
saying fish cause pollution because they lack bicycles.

- Ken

-- Disclaimer: The hypothetical opinions expressed above do not
necessarily represent my own opinions.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
To: "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com>
Cc: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: Python for air traffic control?


> > From: Russ (18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com)
> > Subject: Python for air traffic control?
> > Date: 2001-06-29 17:42:45 PST
> >
> > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> > aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> > initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> > aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> > collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> > C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> > humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> > toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> > nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> > among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> > insights.
> 
> Of course, you idiot...  It depends how well you did in high school
> math.  If there are N airplanes whose positions are given by
>     (x,y,z)_i, i=1,2,...N
> then you have to calculate distance from an airplane at to every other
> airplanes.
> 
> You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
>     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
>     - distance (between any two position) is too close
> 
> Am I missing something?
> 
> -- 
> William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
> 8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From lomax at pumpichank.com  Wed Jul 25 10:55:57 2001
From: lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:55:57 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
	<LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
	<mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>
	<tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>
	<Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>
	<slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
	<p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>
	<slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
	<cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <15198.56829.103987.322803@anthem.wooz.org>

    >   To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:)
    > We are like children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1
    > cookie for two children means one cookie for 1 child and 0
    > cookies for another:)

No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
entire family.

proof-that-integer-division-causes-thousands-of-disfunctional-families-
    per-year-and-must-be-abolished-ly y'rs, - frank



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Thu Jul 19 15:14:46 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:14:46 +0200
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434@posting.google.com> <9j7ao4$ir$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <9j7bj7$mrt5r$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message news:9j7ao4$ir$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com...
> thanks that works great! but one more question... i have compiled my script
> to an .exe BUT is there a way of getting rid of the console window. i tried:
>
> pythonw setup.py py2exe
>
> instead of
>
> python setup.py py2exe
>
> but this only copied the 'tcl' dir to the 'dist' dir! any ideas???
>
RTFM?
These are the command line flags:

--console or -c
    build a console application, similar to running the script with python.exe.
    The default is to create a console application if the script has the extension
    .py, a console-less GUI application if the script has the extension .pyw

--windows or -w
    build a windows application, similar to running the script with pythonw.exe

Thomas




From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 20:27:16 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:27:16 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEDGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are
> the same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.

Anyone using floats will get bitten eventually; ditto anyone using
rationals, for that matter.  This is a "lesser of evils" thing more than a
"good vs evil" thing.

> Result: buggier code since the errors are less obvious.

Perhaps; I don't know of evidence one way or the other, and don't put much
stock in "head arguments" predicting programmer behavior.  I've never heard
that, e.g., Pascal programs were especially prone to numerical bugs (a
language in with 1/2 does return 0.5; and I did work on a vector Pascal
compiler for Cray Research, so it's not that I've heard nothing at all about
Pascal in numeric contexts).  I haven't heard knocks against Algol 60 on
this count either, which for several years was the de facto standard for
publishing numeric algorithms (and in which int/int also returned a real; it
had a different operator for int division).

> If you have a routine "velocity" in which it doesn't make sense to do
> integer truncation, and it doesn't coerce its args to float by
> adding 0.0, that's also a bug.

According to who?  Routines are often *used* in ways authors didn't
anticipate, and a dynamic language (like Python) encourages that.  The
current rules for "/" work against it.




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  6 13:47:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 19:47:01 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org> <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B45C48D.413A5E@divalsim.it>
Message-ID: <9i56ph0eke@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Nicola Musatti" <objectway at divalsim.it> wrote in message
news:3B45C48D.413A5E at divalsim.it...
> Ciao, Alex.
>
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> [...]
> > Haven't done *identical* projects in C++ and Python yet, except
> > for Python extensions prototyped in Python then coded with Boost
> > Python, and for those (small extensions) it seems I'm about 4
> > times more productive in Python than in C++.  I have no personal
> > experience doing the same task in Python and Java, yet.
>
> How do you measure your productivity?

For a given task (sometimes estimated, in turn, in function points,
but that's irrelevant here, since we're not comparing different
tasks!), productivity = K / (number of hours I spend on the task),
for some constant K.  The number-of-hours part is easy for tasks I
perform for work since I'm supposed to report on that, therefore I
measure it (as Senior SW Consultant I'm a "shared resource" for
the firm, so my time is debited to whatever projects have used it;
there's no formal concept of "billable hours" but it comes close).

As I reported on other threads, I've done identical tasks in C++
and Java, and other identicals tasks in Python, C++, and C, so I
do have a reasonable measurement of what happens to my own
productivity dependin on language.  Of course, the _second_ time
I program the same things I may well be more productive because
of learning effects, and I have not controlled for that -- the 15/20%
advantage for Java over C++ may partly be due to learning, and
the 4-to-1 advantage for Python over C++ may be actually higher
since in that case I did the Python first.  (And it's in one specific
field -- extending Python; in another, writing simple COM servers,
Python and C++/ATL took me the same time when I tried [but the
servers had SIMPLE logic indeed in that case]).


Alex





From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul  9 19:49:39 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:49:39 +0200
Subject: Error Building PyPgSQL
References: <L6i27.261092$Z2.3119989@nnrp1.uunet.ca> <slrn9kjihk.pj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <o9o27.261200$Z2.3123178@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9kkepv.5ie.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

>"Gerhard H?ring":
>> On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:13:36 -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
>> >Hello,
>> >
>> >I'm trying to build PyPgSQL on a RH7 box with Python 1.5 and postgres 7.0
>> >and gcc-2.96-54.  I left the Setup.in file as it shipped because it looked
>> >correct to me.  I get the following when I run make.
>> >
>> >gcc -fPIC -I/usr/local/pgsql/include -g -02 -
>> >I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/include/python1.5 -
>> >DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c ./libpqmodule.c
>> >./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgConnection_New':
>> >./libpqmodule.c:196: parse error before `PgConnection'
>> >
>> >[other compiler errors]
> >
>> >This looks like a compiler error to me but I'm not a C programmer.  The
>> >four lines of code appear to be using the same syntax, is this a syntax
>> >error or possibly a compiler version issue?
>> >
>> >Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?
>>
>> The latest release uses distutils and it works fine. I think you should use
>> this one (edit paths in setup.py, then "python setup.py build" then
>> "python setup.py install").

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:06:00 -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
>I have version 1.2 from sourceforge, it doesn't mention using distutils or
>have a setup.py script.  Have I got the latest?  I'm new to distutils, am I
>missing something basic?

Sorry for spreading misinformation. I was using the CVS version. 1.2 didn't use
distutils, yet.

I was testing the 1.2 version and it works fine with on my machine.

I think the problem is that this module isn't designed to work with Python
1.5.2 anymore. The first offending line contains a call to PyObject_New. And
the changelog says the author has recently changed all instances of
PyObject_NEW to PyObject_New. I didn't find the _New in the Python 1.5.2
headers. You might try to undo this change. Or install Python 2.1 and build
with that.

Strange that Redhat *still* ships 1.5.2.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From dirck at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 14 02:11:59 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:11:59 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <PoR37.146$iJ3.195862@news.pacbell.net>

"Dennis Roark" <denro at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l at 4ax.com...
> Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
> would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
> variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
> misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> large projects.

And now that you're completely overwhelmed by the response,
here's yet-another-something-to-consider:

Static/strong typing and type safety are of great use - to a *compiler*.
C/C++/Pascal, etc.  could not do what they do, or do it as well,
without knowing this information.  They create a functioning program
out of raw hardware: memory & cpu, and they have to keep track
of every bit, or the program won't run.  A smart compiler can optimize
your code as well, but only because it knows what's what.

The Python compiler doesn't have this restriction, because Python
runs on a virtual machine made out of much smarter components.
The components 'know' what they are, the compiler doesn't have to.

There is a school of thought that strong typing is extremely important
for program 'correctness'.  What everybody here is saying, basically,
is that there are a lot more important considerations when it
comes to making a program correct, and they all have enough real
experience in this area for you to take their argument seriously.

A non-trivial program cannot ever be 'proven' correct anyway;
Computers are inherently chaotic systems, and the 'state space'
of a complex running system is practically infinite.

Make sure all the pieces are as good as you can make them,
(or perhaps just as good they need to be,) and use that as your
base of confidence that the program will work as well as necessary.

There are very few problem domains where perfection is a requirement,
notably anything involving potential loss of human life.  These domains
require unusual and exceptional techniques to ensure high quality.
As an experienced programmer, I know I would never want to work
on anything where a coding mistake could kill someone.  It does happen.

Just to belabor the point a bit more.

d





From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:52:23 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 11:52:23 -0700
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107291052.7780d1f8@posting.google.com>

All this heated discussion over floats has led me to wonder if we need
to lighten up a little bit and celebrate the fact that were close to
100,000 (94,100 as of this moment) messages on this news-group which
IMHO is some sort of a mile-stone for this neat little group.
Suggestions for celebrations?


From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 21:00:45 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:00:45 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>
	 <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
	 <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B5B773D.791E90D@alcyone.com>

Robin Becker wrote:

> The leadership seems to want to python become more available to a
> lower
> grade of student than first year undergraduates.
> 
> I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
> think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.
> Division in computers is always discrete (unless we ever manage to get
> quantum things working).

I couldn't agree more.  Certainly there's no reason for a language to be
deliberately opaque, but the goal of the language (except a language
primarily intended for education) should be for programmers to get their
job done.

A good beginning programming language is one that has a simple syntax
and straightforward rules to follow.  Python already qualifies in that
capacity very well; I don't see any reasons to "dumb down" Python any
further in order to try to make Python easier for "non-programmers"
(non-programmers won't be programming anyway! :-) to use in areas where
the benefit to non-programmers will be questionable in the first place.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ When the solution is simple, God is answering.
\__/ Albert Einstein
    REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
 Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul  1 12:25:34 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:25:34 +0100
Subject: Pmw subclassing problem
Message-ID: <pgtrPLA+70P7EwKo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

I'm sure the cause of this must be obvious, I want to specialise a scrolled text. The
existing one shows all the right behaviours, but when I recode to use the trivial
subclass

class RL_ScrolledText(Pmw.ScrolledText):
        def __init__(self,*args,**kw):
                apply(Pmw.ScrolledText.__init__,(self,)+args,kw)

and change the client code to match

ie change Pmw. to RL_

self.log = RL_ScrolledText(mainlog.pane('log'), labelpos = 'n', label_text = 'Log')

I seem to lose the automatic scroll bars etc, what am I doing wrong? Am I missing some
class bindins somewhere?
-- 
Robin Becker


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 20:32:44 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:32:44 -0400
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>        <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com>        <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org> <mailman.995408249.15783.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <hL457.16323$PF1.759797@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995408249.15783.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Christopher> I can't speak for Perl, but Python definately does not
>     Christopher> evaluate the expression at compile time.  This is a
problem
>     Christopher> I've had with Python.  I wish that when given the -O
option
>     Christopher> the compiler would do constant subexpression elimination.
>
> It's rare in normal Python code to actually see a constant expression
> computed inside a loop.  Fortunately, it would appear most folks aren't
that
> dumb, so while you can take steps to eliminate them, there aren't
generally
> going to be very many to eliminate.
> [ ... ]

Skip, this talk of eliminating dumb people who code inefficient loops
identifies you all too clearly as a hit man for the PS




From carlf at panix.com  Sun Jul  1 19:08:54 2001
From: carlf at panix.com (Carl Fink)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 23:08:54 GMT
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net> <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9jvbc6.pdh.carlf@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi at 4ax.com>, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> 
> Perhaps you have missed that i was asking for an verion > alpha.
> I think Pythoncard will not be useable for some years.

The current _Linux Journal_ has an article on Glade as a Python GUI
builder.  It surely looks impressive to me, but I haven't tried it. 
You'd end up with a GTK program (no native Windows/Mac look and feel)
if that matters to you. 

(I suppose you could use a GTK widget set that looks like WinX or
Mac?)
-- 
Carl Fink		carlf at dm.net


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 20 19:36:41 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 16:36:41 -0700
Subject: One Worry for 2.2
References: <ENi57.22469$M9.7022637@typhoon.we.rr.com> <3B55CFFD.C805B34A@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <9jafa9$flt$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B55CFFD.C805B34A at bioreason.com>,
Mitch Chapman  <chapman at bioreason.com> wrote:
>
>--
>Mitch
>Who is sometimes able to pass himself off as a programmer,
>even though he isn't descended from one.

I am.  Descended from one, that is.  Actually, to be even more precise,
it's multiple inheritance (both of my parents were programming before I
was born).  I doubt there are many people older than me who can claim
that.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Thu Jul  5 13:56:25 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:56:25 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <3B448C81.4DAC7DD@wwc.com> <D2017.3540$i8.346893@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B44AAF2.2F5BB811@wwc.com>

Steve Holden wrote:

>

[snip]

> Does anyone actually USE DB/2 with Python?
>

Yes.



From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul  8 22:24:38 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 02:24:38 GMT
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994626615.9894.python-list@python.org> <roy-2F9DAF.19464308072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <GB827.441629$eK2.89791917@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:roy-2F9DAF.19464308072001 at news1.panix.com...

> So, here's my plan.  I was thinking that I might write a thin wrapper
> around the re class which kept a cache of regexes it had compiled.
> myRe.match would take the passed-in regex, look it up in the cache, and if
> it found it, just use the cached compiled version.  I figure it would be
> very close to the speed of storing the pre-compiled versions in the
> mainline code, as shown above, but still have the convenience and
> comprehensibility of keeping the regex string at the place where it's
used.


sounds like a plan, something like this:

class matcher:
    def __init__(self):
        self.compiled = {}

    def match(self,pattern,data):
        if compiled.has_key(pattern):
            comp = self.compiled[pattern]
        else:
            comp = re.compile(pattern)
            self.compiled[pattern] = comp
        return comp.match(data)


..it reminds me of a general purpose function i use:

def memoize(fn):
    results={}
    def mem(*args):
        if results.has_key(args):
            return results[args]
        else:
            result = fn(*args)
            results[args]=result
            return result
    return mem

This needs nested scopes.
It will wrap any function that takes hashable arguments.
It is good for functions that do a lot of work,
and are frequently called with the same args.
( I suppose it won't work with kwd args.. )





From paulsid at home.com  Tue Jul 24 17:24:47 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:24:47 -0600
Subject: Importing from Another Path
References: <mailman.995997582.18776.python-list@python.org> <3B5DE390.2F35B36A@accessforall.nl>
Message-ID: <3B5DE79F.3E5D50C7@home.com>

Ype Kingma wrote:

> > sys.path.append("..\\common")
> That is almost as portable as it gets: when also you take
> the common directory from the command line sys.argv, eg:
> 
>   sys.path.append(sys.argv[1])
> 
> I wouldn't know of a more portable way.
> The non portable part is then moved into the script(s) that
> start(s) the client and the server.

Actually I just meant that it wasn't portable between Windows and Linux
because I'm using backslashes in the path.

It looks like I'll have to just clean it up to use os.path.join() to
take care of that and live with it the way I've got it.  This is not the
answer I was hoping to hear, but at least it's an answer.  Thanks!

> Also you should be aware that the sys module (any imported module
> in fact) is unique in the process that runs the python interpreter,
> so you should not add the common directory when it is already there:
> 
>   if sys.argv[1] not in sys.path: sys.path.append(sys.argv[1])

Ah, good point.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul 10 08:21:12 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:21:12 -0400
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
In-Reply-To: <994739270.397.63036.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4ABAF8.26026.2302C75@localhost>

Matthew <matthewm at ihug.co.nz> wrote, in part:
> No matter what I try, I CAN NEVER get named keyword arguments to do
> anything via PythonCOM Excel automation.
> 
> xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", Password='fred')
> profers no error. The xcel window opens with Password Dialog  opem.
> Type in 'fred' and s/s loads up. Named arg passed in call apparently
> ignored.
> 
> xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", password='fred')
> generates error - Open got unexpected keyword argument 'password', so
> it seems to me that somethings going on with passed named args

Unfortunately, about all I can say at this point (gotta go to a 
meeting) is that there is something I don't understand. I've tried to 
use late binding, as outlined in the Hammond-Robinson book, 
hoping that the case of the named password would disappear as a 
problem. No such luck.

xlapp = win32com.client.dynamic.Dispatch('Excel.Application')
>>> xlapp.Workbooks.Open(r'C:\0 Query responses\Book1.xls', 
password=r'seamus')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: Open() got an unexpected keyword argument 'password'

Tried running makepy, again on the advice of the book, hoping that 
this would enable pycom to handle the argument successfully. No 
go.

That book does suggest getting one's hands dirty with lower-level 
calls. Haven't time to try any of that.

Would be interested in knowing what you find out. Good luck.

Bill



From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 10 03:30:38 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:30:38 +0200
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <yv2pub9gs0x.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> writes:

> Hello all!
> 
> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
> and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
> the right direction?  Thanks!


Umpf. I really like python, but sometimes other solutions are less
cumbersome. With bash it's a one-liner like:

  for x in *; do y=`basename $x`.new; tail +1 $x >$y; mv $y $x; done

Sorry, couldn't read from your message if you are on Microsoft where
a bash script usually does not help a lot.

  Harald Kirsch

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From qztgee at finaledgedev.com  Fri Jul  6 08:13:06 2001
From: qztgee at finaledgedev.com (qztgee at finaledgedev.com)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 12:13:06 GMT
Subject: More Than New  3766
Message-ID: <mXh17.145488$WB1.25887566@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>

How would you like your own provider law firm standing ready to assist you
and your entire family with: Contracts - Investments and Finance -
Marriage - Divorce - Adoption - Child Custody and Support - Credit - Your
Home all for the cost of an average cup of coffee per day !
http://bushhousechat.com/prepaylegal.htm
ofhfghoveinbiqjlurbbdlbpbzfrsuuhsldvtmxdixjotifbnwfjswrsuojtpvtfrqistl



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 05:22:21 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:22:21 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <mailman.996103958.4468.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in 
news:mailman.996103958.4468.python-list at python.org:

> Agree strongly. This will also be a problem for documentation generation
> tools, type extraction tools and class browsers. I believe it would be
> easy to add a contextual keyword 
> 
>> class C:
>>         def static foo(x, y): print "classmethod", x, y
> 
> 
Not a keyword. You could just make it an optional identifier.
If you change the existing grammar:
   funcdef:        "def" funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" suite
to:
   funcdef: "def" [funcmodifier] funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" 
suite
   funcmodifier: identifier

And make it that if a funcmodifier is present, then funcname is set to the 
result of calling funcmodifier on the function.

then you get:
   def classmethod foo(x, y):
      print "classmethod", x, y

but you also get the flexibility to write your own modifiers:

   def protected(fn): return protectionwrapper(fn)
   def protected foo(x, y): pass

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From researchstudy2001 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 17:01:13 2001
From: researchstudy2001 at yahoo.com (researchstudy2001 at yahoo.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:01:13 -0400
Subject: Please answer a research survey on personal use of the Internet at work
Message-ID: <098b01c10e3a$727d7080$9a748e88@sis.pitt.edu>

http://ebiz.sis.pitt.edu/survey

Dear newsgroup user:

We apologize for our cross-posting, but we needed representative coverage of a relatively small subset of current newsgroups. We have embarked on a study to learn more about personal use of the Internet while at work. We think you will find this an unusually interesting questionnaire to complete. Please click here: http://ebiz.sis.pitt.edu/survey

If you are currently employed or have held a job providing some access to the Internet, please consider completing this short questionnaire, whether or not you used the Internet for personal goals while on the job.

Please answer honestly, and be assured that your identity is completely unknown. We have not set and do not read any "cookies," we do not run any covert code, we do not "pop up" a stream of browser windows, and we do not trick your system into revealing your identity. You are welcome to examine the source code for this page to verify that.

If you would like to express any comments about our study or request a copy of our results, we would be happy to read and respond. It might take a few days for our responses, so please be patient. To enter your comments, please click the "comment" button near the bottom of the form. A new window will pop up with a separate form for this purpose.

We hope you find this study interesting.

Sincerely,

Dennis F. Galletta
Associate Professor of Business Administration

Peter Polak
Doctoral Candidate

http://ebiz.sis.pitt.edu/survey


From python_binto at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 02:23:22 2001
From: python_binto at yahoo.com (binto bient)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:23:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: about extension module
In-Reply-To: <9ijee5+6ea8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <20010712062322.70198.qmail@web14810.mail.yahoo.com>

hi, is there somebody know the procedure to make...
extension module, because i confuse when i follow
Python/C API Reference Manual, by Guido van Rossum
what do i need to make extension module..

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From cookedm+news at physics.mcmaster.ca  Tue Jul 10 14:15:30 2001
From: cookedm+news at physics.mcmaster.ca (David M. Cooke)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 14:15:30 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <mailman.994736537.19096.python-list@python.org> <994742167.67214@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <qnklmlw3b25.fsf@arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca>

At some point, Donn Cave <donn at drizzle.com> wrote:

> That's cool, but you might be interested to see if tail on
> your platform supports a positive index (bet it does):
> 
>     for f in `whole buncha files`
>     do
>         if tail +1 $f > $f.tmp
>         then mv $f.tmp $f
>         else rm $f.tmp
>         fi
>     done
> 
> In the unlikely event it doesn't, sed '1d' is a safe bet.

You want tail +2 -- that starts output on the second line. tail +1
starts on the first line (the beginning of the file).

-- 
|>|\/|<
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|David M. Cooke
|cookedm(at)physics(dot)mcmaster(dot)ca


From ramzi.abunofal at novasemi.com  Thu Jul  5 19:14:36 2001
From: ramzi.abunofal at novasemi.com (Ramzi Abu Nofal)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 23:14:36 GMT
Subject: History command
Message-ID: <3B44F444.CE6FBCB0@novasemi.com>

Hi all ,
I am trying to find history command ( like history in Unix,or doskey in
dos/win)
to list all the command that have been executed .
I can do it using the readline module, but I need to save the result of
the
commnad too.
Any idea .
Thanks.
-Ramzi

--
Ramzi Abu Nofal                                 Ramzi.Abunofal at novasemi.com
NOVA Semiconductors Inc.                        Tel: (408)-918-7912
1403 Parkmoor Ave.                              Fax: (408)-298-0144
San Jose,  CA 95126





From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Wed Jul 18 17:58:13 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:58:13 +1000
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
References: <tlbbqas5b6hvff@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9j50q4$a3f9@news1.gtech.com>

Well, you also have to consider the case of different platform ports not
necessarily being the "lastest" version of Python i.e. I am writing
something in 1.5.2 on a VMS box. I believe that a port of 2.X is in the
works somewhere but at the moment I am stuck with 1.5.2.

In my opinion (for what it is worth :-)), 1.5.2 seemed to be a very popular
and stable release, so unless 2.X brought in some feature that you feel you
*really* can't do without, then 1.5.2 would be a pretty reasonable baseline
to use.

Peter

"Charles Crain" <chuxxx at swbell.net> wrote in message
news:tlbbqas5b6hvff at corp.supernews.com...
> I am part of the team working on SCons, the build tool for the Software
> Carpentry project.  We have an interesting quandry before us: what is the
> earliest version of Python we should support?  On the one hand, we would
> like to use the latest and greatest and be able to take advantage of the
> several powerful features added in recent Python releases.  On the other
> hand, we would like to avoid putting any barriers to adoption of our
product
> that might arise from requiring users (particularly those in large
> organizations with high-intertia IT departments) to upgrade Python
versions
> in order to use it.
>
> It occurs to us that this is a general question facing anyone wishing to
> release a Python product.  Do you code for the latest and greatest, or do
> you try to figure out what release is most "common" (in this case, still
> 1.5.2, since it ships with most major Linux distros) and code for that?
Is
> there any consensus as to what to do here?
>
> In particular, does anyone have a feeling for how pmuch of a pain people
> consider upgrading Python versions so that they may run a particular piece
> of software?  In my experience, upgrading Python versions, and even
running
> concurrent versions, is pretty easy.
>
> Thanks for anyone that can help out.
>
> -Charles Crain
>
>
>




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 01:39:51 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 22:39:51 -0700
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKPKLAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EB7A7.533B8389@ActiveState.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I'm not sure Guido expressed himself clearly enough there.  All the core
> developers have done major work on the libraries, so that's not a hangup.
> What is a hangup is that people also want stuff the current group of core
> developers has no competence (and/or sometimes interest) to write.  Like SSL
> support on Windows, or IPv6 support, etc.  Expert-level work in a field
> requires experts in that field to contribute.  

Personally, I don't really see any problems with the scope of the
standard library. As things evolve (e.g. Unicode, XML, IPv6, HTTP),
people have emerged to extend it. There are things I would like in the
library that aren't there but getting them from a third party is usually
good enough.

My concern with the standard library is that it seems very disorganized
compared to the language itself. Some of these may be idiosyncratic
complaints but the overall point is that we don't discuss this stuff to
the same degree that we do the language, so I don't know how others
feel.

 * Some modules are very low-level and others very high-level.
 * Some use callbacks where another would use inheritance. 
 * The naming conventions are not consistent.
 * The case conventions are not consistent.
 * The influence of C still pervades even as the set of programmers
coming from raw C declines.
 * Things are not package-ized.
 * IMO, platform specific stuff should be moved into platform-specific
modules and out of "os" and "time" etc.
 * cStringIO versus StringIO. Why do I need both?
 * sometimes "flags" are passed as strings and sometimes as |'d
integers.
 * why do we need a "stat" module for interpreting stat() results. Why
aren't stat's results self-describing? (i.e. an object)
 * there's some little-used stuff in there that could probably be moved
into a third-party extension
 * do we really need four variants of popen and seven of exec (none of
them having any relationship to Python's exec keyword)?

I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From paul at andreassen.com.au  Sun Jul 15 00:00:31 2001
From: paul at andreassen.com.au (Paul Andreassen)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 14:00:31 +1000
Subject: do .. while loops ?
Message-ID: <FFEOLIJPEIIGEJDICKALGEJKCAAA.paul@andreassen.com.au>

Could someone please tell me why "do .. while" loops are not part of the
python language?  I realise they are rarely used but the implementation
should be easy.

Thanks for any reply, except abuse.
Paul


Paul Andreassen consultant for Pinnacle Plus BN6542554
(prop Jabibny Pty Ltd ACN010139429) ABN15787426700
Address: P.O. Box 47 Finch Hatton 4756 Australia
Web: http://home.austarnet.com.au/paul1/
Phone: +61 7 49583196 Email: paul at andreassen.com.au




From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  9 09:24:02 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 06:24:02 -0700
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <3b4676ad$0$324$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <9icb9i$o68$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <3b4676ad$0$324$8eec23a at newsreader.tycho.net>,
Neil Macneale <mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote:
>
>Note: this sollution requires 2 characters after the decimal point....
>
>def isDollarAmount(s):
>    try:
>        if s.count == 1 and s[-3] == '.':
>            dol, cen = s.split('.')
>            int(dol)
>            int(cen)
>            return 1
>        int(s)
>        return 1
>    except:
>        return None

I would change "int(dol)" to "long(dol)".
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From tbryan at python.net  Tue Jul 24 22:04:39 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 07:04:39 +0500
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <0bj77.544176$eK2.114166570@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jm8re$a1c$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>

Nick Perkins wrote:


> You don't have to use a custom compare sort.
> You can get what you want by creating a temp list, consisting of
> 'decorated' values, and sorting that list.  
[...snip...]
> Here's an example of sorting records by a given field:
> 
> def sort_by_field(seq,index):
>     tmp = [ (item[index],item) for item in seq ]
>     tmp.sort()
>     return [ item for (_,item) in tmp ]
> 
> 
> data = [["Mickey","Mouse","50"],
>         ["Stan","Mantz","3"],
>         ["Junior","Wilst","40"],
>         ["Kim","Bean","15"]]
> 
> data_by_lastname = sort_by_field(data,1)

While it's probably much harder to read, one could 
avoid copying the list twice and maintain the semantics 
of sorting in place by doing something like the following...

def sort_by_field( index ):
    def cmpfunc( x, y, i=index ):
        return cmp( x[i], y[i] )
    return cmpfunc

data.sort( sort_by_field( 2 ) )

---Tom



From edcjones at erols.com  Fri Jul  6 13:11:15 2001
From: edcjones at erols.com (Edward C. Jones)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:11:15 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B45F133.7050206@erols.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:


> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.


I suggest including a program that will read Python code and tell 
the user where all the "/" divisions are in the code.

Thanks for the wonderful language,
Ed Jones



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 13:54:25 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 10:54:25 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <uN107.141431$L4.17198481@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com>

Tim Hochberg wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> Someone made a decision at some point that the builtin mutable types should
> mutated by augmented assigment. If the newbies were sacrificed on somebody's
> alter, it was not NumPy's.

I've come to the same conclusion myself. I don't know what the rationale
is for this "mutable types behave one way" and "immutable types behave
another" philosophy. "Advanced" types could have "smart" behaviour and
simple types could have x=x+y behaviour.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From zessin at decus.de  Thu Jul 19 01:29:01 2001
From: zessin at decus.de (zessin at decus.de)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:29:01 +0200
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
Message-ID: <009FF3AC.F21C86F2.3@decus.de>

Peter Milliken wrote:
> Well, you also have to consider the case of different platform ports not
> necessarily being the "lastest" version of Python i.e. I am writing
> something in 1.5.2 on a VMS box. I believe that a port of 2.X is in the
> works somewhere but at the moment I am stuck with 1.5.2.

Correct. I am working on 2.1.1 - stay tuned.

--
Uwe Zessin



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Tue Jul 31 07:55:00 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:55:00 +0200
Subject: Unicode File
References: <3B66179D.1D55B27C@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <j4u1ztb9ez.fsf@artagnan.informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Tksee Lhsoh <tksee at yahoo.com> writes:

> For example,
> s=open("unicode_filename").read();
> seems to return oridinary string, not unicode.
> 
> What should I do ?

I recommend to use codecs.open. You'll need to specify the encoding,
e.g.

s = codecs.open("unicode_filename",encoding="ucs-2").read()

Regards,
Martin



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul  5 19:21:07 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 00:21:07 +0100
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k9tj3.129.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 5 Jul 2001 08:11:48 -0700, Resty Cena <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote:
>"Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
>> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>> 
>> Python still doesn't have good database support, 
>
>I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
>to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
>database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
>directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
>then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
>Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
>don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
>around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
>want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
>I'd like the IDE to do this for me.

Then why don't you write one, instead of just complaining that
the tools available don't work quite how you like?


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 13 10:04:12 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:04:12 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wdD37.14722$B7.2684737@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73 at 4ax.com>, Dennis Roark wrote:

>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>following script:
>
>x = 3
>x = x + 2
>print "x =", x
>x = "now I'm a string"
>print x
>x = [ 5, x ]
>print "and now a list:", x
>
>If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
>x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
>different type on two sides of an assignment?

You're laboring under a very fundamental misapprehension:  x
doesn't have a type.  x is a name.  It is bound to an object.
That object has a type.  You can bind the name x to any type of
object you wish.

If you want x to be bound to an integer, bind it to an integer.
If you don't want x to be a list, don't bind it to a list.

Did you realize that FORTRAN allows you to assign the _wrong_
value to a variable?

  x = 1.234

WRONG! x is supposed to be 0.49487!

No language can prevent you from writing programs that yeild
incorrect results.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I think my career
                                  at               is ruined!
                               visi.com            


From speedy911 at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 11 15:45:20 2001
From: speedy911 at mindspring.com (Charles Harrison)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 12:45:20 -0700
Subject: yapsnmp
Message-ID: <6f78b8b.0107111145.5decb8be@posting.google.com>

I am very interested in implementing this module in some of my
programs that use snmp commands, but I cant get it to install and dont
really know enough C to pull apart the place in net-snmp where the
installer is failing.  I was wondering if anyone else has had trouble
with the installation of this module or has any other insight as to
how I might be able to get this module to run on my system.  I think
it should work; I have the latest version of net-snmp.  Heres the
transcript from my install attempt:

[root at icispare1 yapsnmp-0.7]# ./configure 
creating cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes
checking for working aclocal... found
checking for working autoconf... found
checking for working automake... found
checking for working autoheader... found
checking for working makeinfo... found
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc  ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc  ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/bin/ld
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking for BSD-compatible nm... /usr/bin/nm -B
checking whether ln -s works... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
checking for object suffix... o
checking for executable suffix... no
checking for gcc option to produce PIC... -fPIC
checking if gcc PIC flag -fPIC works... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.o... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo... yes
checking if gcc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions ... yes
checking if gcc static flag -static works... -static
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking whether the linker (/usr/bin/ld) supports shared libraries...
yes
checking command to parse /usr/bin/nm -B output... ok
checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate
checking for /usr/bin/ld option to reload object files... -r
checking dynamic linker characteristics... Linux ld.so
checking if libtool supports shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build static libraries... no
checking for objdir... .libs
creating libtool
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -g -O2 ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -g -O2 ) is a cross-compiler...
no
checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for swig... swig
checking for patch... patch
checking for kstat_open in -lkstat... no
checking for init_snmp in -lsnmp... yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/ucd-snmp-config.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/ucd-snmp-includes.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/transform_oids.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/asn1.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp_api.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/snmp_client.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/mib.h... yes
checking for ucd-snmp/default_store.h... yes
checking for /usr/include/ucd-snmp... yes
checking for python1.5/Python.h... yes
checking for /usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages... yes
checking for working const... yes
checking for size_t... yes
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
creating ./config.status
creating Makefile
creating src/Makefile
creating doc/Makefile
creating config/Makefile
creating config.h
[root at icispare1 yapsnmp-0.7]# make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7'
Making all in src
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7/src'
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/snmp_api.h .
patch < snmp_api.h-patch
patching file snmp_api.h
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/snmp_client.h .
patch < snmp_client.h-patch
patching file snmp_client.h
cp /usr/include/ucd-snmp/mib.h .
patch < mib.h-patch
patching file mib.h
swig -python -shadow -I/usr/include/ucd-snmp net-snmp.i
Generating wrappers for Python
snmp_api.h : Line 95. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 97. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 186. Function pointers not currently supported
(ignored).
snmp_api.h : Line 216. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 220. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 276. Constant SNMP_MAX_SEC_NAME_SIZE multiply
defined. (2nd definition ignored)
snmp_api.h : Line 396. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
snmp_api.h : Line 397. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
net-snmp.i : Line 56. Warning. Array member will be read-only.
/bin/sh ../libtool --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I..
-I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/local/include/python1.5    -g -O2 -c
net-snmp_wrap.c
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I/usr/include/python1.5
-I/usr/local/include/python1.5 -g -O2 -c net-snmp_wrap.c  -fPIC -DPIC
-o net-snmp_wrap.lo
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_snmpv3_parse':
net-snmp_wrap.c:1967: too few arguments to function `snmpv3_parse'
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_print_description':
net-snmp_wrap.c:3637: too few arguments to function
`print_description'
net-snmp_wrap.c: In function `_wrap_fprint_description':
net-snmp_wrap.c:3666: too few arguments to function
`fprint_description'
make[2]: *** [net-snmp_wrap.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/charrison/yapsnmp-0.7'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2


If you've gotten this far thank you so much in advance for all of your
time.
-Charles


From christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com  Wed Jul 11 09:09:52 2001
From: christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com (Chris McMillan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:09:52 -0400
Subject: Newbie problem with user input
Message-ID: <9ihit4$8r611@interserv.etn.com>

Hello all!  The partial code below prompts a user to enter a path.  I then
want it to find (and later do something with) all the files in that
directory matching the specified string.  The problem is that when I run the
script, and enter, for example D:\test it does not find any of the files.  I
believe it is because the glob command is searching for ''D:\\test'\\*.dat'
With the extra single quotes.  How can I get it to search for
'D:\\test\\*.dat' ?  Thanks!
Chris


print 'Enter the path:'                  # prompt user for directory path
path = raw_input()
for fname in glob.glob('path\\*.dat'):   # finds files matching string






From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 15:01:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:01:55 -0400
Subject: accessing class data members
References: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <KCo07.36014$zT1.1970850@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Curtis Jensen" <cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu> wrote in message
news:3B420804.9882D166 at bioeng.ucsd.edu...
> In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when you
> want to know the value of some data member, that a function is written
> to return that value.  However, in Python it seems that people just
> access the data member directly.
>
> for example:
> if there were a class that represented a physical object.  In the class
> there were data members that held the objects temperature and location.
> If I wanted to know the temperature of an object, I could just use
> obj.temperature.  Though in other languages, the convention seems to
> call a function that returns the value, like: obj.get_temperature.
>
> Which is better?

I would say oranges are definitely better than apples :-)

In Python you can write accessor methods if you want, but (I believe) most
Python programmers are pragmatic enough to say that this is unnecessary
overhead for simpler, well-understood programs.

Unlike other languages, you can do it either way: an object has effectively
no way of hiding attributes from access by other objects, and so the Python
programmer relies on discipline to ensure everything works. Java and C++,
for example, allow attributes (members) to be private in various ways.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 29 03:33:23 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 07:33:23 GMT
Subject: int vs float divide: abbreviating numbers w/SI units
References: <eppstein-D36BE1.12293028072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3b63a8ec.700705120@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:29:30 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>Some time buried in the recent division flamewar I posted a message listing 
>the uses I'd recently made of integer division, one of which was some short 
>code for abbreviating numbers like 1008926 to e.g. 988k for more readable 
>text output of file sizes in a web photo gallery generator.
>
>Anyway, I decided it would be a good idea to make it more general and 
>robust, and discovered somewhat to my surprise that float division seems to 
>be a better fit for the task.  The new code is below if anyone wants to 
>critique or use it.
>
[...]

I was going to make a one-liner, but it would be really ugly and repeat stuff ;-)
But there might be something in this you can use?:

import math
def abbrn(n,k=1000):
    if n==0: return '0'
    nk, rk = divmod(math.log(abs(n)), math.log(k))
    nkr = max(-9, min(int(nk), 9))
    suffix= 'kyzafpnum kMGTPEZYk'[nkr+9] + (abs(nkr)==9)*("^%d" % (nk,) )
    sr = ("%1.1f" % (math.exp(rk),))
    adjlen = len(sr) - 2*(sr[-1]=='0' or len(sr)>3)
    return '-'*(n<0) + sr[0:adjlen] + suffix

I think it does what yours does, except I rely on %1.1f to round and
just chuck the '.0' or .x if there's more than 3 chars, which makes
some differences, e.g.,

for the args 2.0*10.**-30 1000
yours => 2.0k^-10
mine  => 2k^-10

whereas
for the args  2.0*10.**30  1000
yours => 2k^10
mine  => 2k^10

JFTHOI-ly ;-)



From rjh at 3-cities.com  Sat Jul  7 13:05:44 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 10:05:44 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <7ef50c46.0107070905.4f9fa92@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpsngaja4g.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...

> The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
> transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":
> 
> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.
> 
> 2. In a following revision, we add a warning when / is used on two int
>    or long arguments, recommending to use div() instead.  (It is
>    important not to start warning in phase 1, so folks have time to
>    switch to div() voluntarily first; maybe phase 1 could have a
>    command line option to warn about integer division.)
> 
> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>    specify floating point division.
> 
> 4. Finally we can implement the "future" behavior by default.
> 
> I haven't picked dates yet; if folks agree, I would like to add div()
> and a future statement to 2.2 and space the other steps a single
> revision apart, so phase 4 would be at Python 2.5 (April 2003, if we
> keep the current release schedule up).  Is that too aggressive?
> 
> I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> messenger from the future :-).
> 
> I'm not sure how to spell the future statement.  Here are some
> choices:
> 
>   from __future__ import float_division
>   from __future__ import real_division
>   from __future__ import new_division
>   from __future__ import division
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


Sounds good to me.  If it must happen, then the sooner the better.

However, I think that some details of the numerics also need to
be clarified before you boldly go.  Specifically,

 - What about long division?  A float cannot capture all results.
   Should it raise a Value/Range error?
   Should the programmer be forced to use divmod?
   Should it return a rational?  
   I don't really like the last two choices and the first two choices
   obviate much of the usefulness of longs.

   Perhaps Paul Dubois's kinds mechanism comes to the rescue?
   He does have a trial implementation in numeric (though 
   I am not in favor of seeing much of the current numeric 
   integrated into the core)

Robert

rjh at 3-cities.com


From graham at coms.com  Fri Jul  6 06:09:27 2001
From: graham at coms.com (Graham Ashton)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:09:27 +0100
Subject: import syntax
References: <E15IBZ2-0003ru-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994351509.21525.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <r7g17.1683$h45.11340@news.uk.colt.net>

In article <mailman.994351509.21525.python-list at python.org>, "Andrew Todd"
<aetodd at wm.edu> wrote:

> This isn't terribly important, but wouldn't it be nice if you could do
> the following...
> 
> from module import a and b
> 
> instead of having to write...
> 
> from module import a
> from module import b

A bit like this then:

ratchet% python
Python 2.1 (#7, Jun 24 2001, 18:32:35) 
[GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from syslog import openlog, closelog
>>>


From hughett at mercur.uphs.upenn.edu  Sat Jul 28 13:00:32 2001
From: hughett at mercur.uphs.upenn.edu (Paul Hughett)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 17:00:32 GMT
Subject: IPC10 Call For Tutorials
References: <3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B@sage.att.com> <mmh77.25356$EP6.5928862@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <20010727.182145.933110197.16613@hp.com>
Message-ID: <9jur3g$6eh$1@netnews.upenn.edu>

Bill Anderson <anderson at hp.com> wrote:
: In article <mmh77.25356$EP6.5928862 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>, "Terry Reedy"
: <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

:> "Garry Hodgson" <garry at sage.att.com> wrote in message
:> news:3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B at sage.att.com...
:>>
:>> We're now accepting proposals for tutorials for IPC10, the annual
:>> Python conference.  We had a good batch last year, and are hoping to
:>> have some equally good ones this year.
:> 
:> How about someone doing "Surving Language Change"? (Only half jesting.)
:> 
:> 


: Is that mean to be Serving or Surviving. ;^)


We can have a debate between those who want more language change and
those who want less.  (With a sidebar discussion for those who want
more change HERE but less change THERE!)

Paul Hughett


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul  6 09:47:57 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 15:47:57 +0200
Subject: deleting directories w/ subfolders
References: <9i37ta$p61$1@bob.news.rcn.net>
Message-ID: <ud77ei2ya.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> "Chris Duncan" <chrisd at rocketnetwork.com> (CD) writes:

CD> Anyone know a way to delete a parent directory containing files &
CD> subfolders?

rmtree in the shutil module.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul 23 23:24:47 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:24:47 -0700
Subject: thread module
References: <20010723210218.11240.00000881@ng-fv1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CEA7F.497E5DA3@Lugoj.Com>

TheDustbustr wrote:
> 
> What args are encessary when you call thread.start_new_thread()?  The module
> index says:
> 
> "start_new_thread (function, args[, kwargs])
> Start a new thread. The thread executes the function function with the argument
> list args (which must be a tuple). The optional kwargs argument specifies a
> dictionary of keyword arguments."
> 
> How do I create a simple thread like so:
> def hi():
>   print "Hi!"
> thread.start_new_thread(hi(),args)
> 
> What are the args?

Since the function hi() takes no arguments, the "args" argument should be an
empty tuple, which is represented by an open and close parenthesis. Also,
the "function" argument should be just the function name WITHOUT the
parenthesis. You used "hi()" when you should have simply used "hi". So to
start the thread, you would do:

thread.start_new_thread(hi, ())

Here is, hopefully, a more revealing example: Suppose you want two threads
running, one of which prints multiples of 2 every 5 seconds and another that
prints multiple of 3 every 10 seconds. So first define a function that takes
an identifier, the time to wait, and the amount by which to increment, and
then use it to launch two threads:

import thread
import time

def Func(id, numSecs, incBy):
    val = 0
    while 1:
        print id, val
        val = val + incBy
        time.sleep(numSecs)

thread.start_new_thread(Func, ("First thread", 5.0, 2))
thread.start_new_thread(Func, ("Second thread", 10.0, 3))


Hope this helps!


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 12:24:13 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 16:24:13 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9hq77d$i0g$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
>> The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I would
>> hardly typify that as not being "good database support".

> http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/
> or mxODBC + the dBase/clipper/foxpro ODBC drivers, or...?

You can use the ODBC that comes with PythonWin to access dBase
tables, in fact. I've done so in the past. Windows comes with dBase
drivers for ODBC by default. 

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From martin at strakt.com  Mon Jul 30 02:50:59 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:50:59 +0200
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net> <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <20010730085059.A1005@strakt.com>

On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 05:55:59AM +0000, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:20:09 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:
> 
> > BTW, note the usefulness of boolean-as-integer returned from
> > comparison operators, if you want to be picky about plurals:
> > 
> >     print "There %s %d error%s." % ( ['were','was'][n==1], n, 's'*(n!=1) ) 
> 
> I would write it
>       print "There %s %d error%s." % (if n==1 then ('was',  n, '')
>                                               else ('were', n, 's'))
> if I could.

I would write it
    if n == 1:
        print "There was one error."
    else:
        print "There were %d errors." % n
If you've ever tried to translate programs to other languages, using
gettext for example, you quickly realize that all other constructs are
abominations and impossible to translate to other languages.

Okay, that was off topic :)

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 16:02:11 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:02:11 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <xi_77.30701$EP6.7899249@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <7H_77.27771$B7.4269021@ruti.visi.com>

In article <xi_77.30701$EP6.7899249 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>, Terry Reedy wrote:

>I believe that 5.0//2.0 will be 2.0, not 2

Ah, but 2.0 and 2 are the same value....

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Of course, you
                                  at               UNDERSTAND about the PLAIDS
                               visi.com            in the SPIN CYCLE --


From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Jul 10 18:01:10 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 22:01:10 GMT
Subject: Adding a package to the standard distribution
References: <9iad21$btd$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> <mailman.994687591.32116.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iftv6$lq1$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>     Panu> asynchat. However, I don't know what mailing list / person I
>     Panu> should write to to get the package included in the standard
>     Panu> distribution.

> For starters, I'd suggest you make it available via HTTP or FTP and post an
> announcement to the Python announcements list/group.  Also, submit it to the

I suppose this is comp.lang.python.announce? I'll post there.
FYI, the code is avail. at http://sange.fi/~atehwa-u/selecting/

> Vaults of Parnassus.  As for persuading the powers-that-be, you can send a
> note to python-dev at python.org.

I tried to find information about appropriate lists on www.python.org, but
found none. Maybe python-dev just slipped my eye. What are Vaults of
Parnassus? Some kind of open repository for Python code?

Anyway, thank you for the advice.

Panu Kalliokoski



From cliechti at mails.ch  Fri Jul 27 19:55:20 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 01:55:20 +0200
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EC142294EAAcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

there is just one unpleasan't thing left over:
in the transition phase its __div__, __truediv__, __floordiv__ and their 
respective 'i' version for arg assignment. this solution allows the object 
to "see" what the caller wants for a division type. ok, but..

classes would need a change when upgrading from 2.x to 3.x ( __truediv__ 
will become the same as __div__ in 3.x but its not with "from __future_ 
import division" in 2.x)? what would 3.x do? search for __truediv__ and 
then for __div__? that would give wrong results with old modules that only 
have a __div__ (emulating the missbehaviour) and no __truediv__. (ok i 
don't realy belive in classes emulating some missbehaviour, see next 
paragraph)

wouldn't it be better when only __div__ and __floordiv__ were needed? 
classes could not provide the two diffrent meanings of '/' but how many 
classes do realy need this? when somebody is implementing his own number 
object he will anyway provide a true division, wouldn't he?
this would also *not* introduce a new name that's later unused/merged with 
__div__. (remember: one obvious way to do it)


and now for the positive things...
I can agree with the motivation section. Now that the big picture mostly 
clear - i like it. (Can't wait for a unified numeric model, it sounds good
;-)

chris


the following two reasons have changed my mind from "oh no! - code breaks" 
to "yes! let's do it":
Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote in
news:mailman.996263475.24304.python-list at python.org: 
> PEP: 238
... 
>     It is the opinion of the authors that this is a real design bug in
>     Python, and that it should be fixed sooner rather than later.
>     Assuming Python usage will continue to grow, the cost of leaving
>     this bug in the language will eventually outweigh the cost of
>     fixing old code -- there is an upper bound to the amount of code
>     to be fixed, but the amount of code that might be affected by the
>     bug in the future is unbounded.
> 
>     Another reason for this change is the desire to ultimately unify
>     Python's numeric model.  This is the subject of PEP 228[0] (which
>     is currently incomplete).  A unified numeric model removes most of
>     the user's need to be aware of different numerical types.  This is
>     good for beginners, but also takes away concerns about different
>     numeric behavior for advanced programmers.  (Of course, it won't
>     remove concerns about numerical stability and accuracy.)
...

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:54:45 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:54:45 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995949762.26287.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp66chbobw.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes:

> Some of us have tried.  Besides my alternative, I have seen two
> others which allow case-by-case preservation of the old semantics
> where they may have been intended.
> 
> I have seen very few comments on them though (except from Stephen Horne).

It's not easy to find the light among the heat.

> ASSERTIONS:
>     1.  Best-effort handling of division is desirable.
>     2.  An explicit operator for truncating division is desirable
>         (as in, explicit is better than implicit).
>     3.  Code breakage is bad, and difficult-to-detect code breakage
>         is worse.
>     4.  Difficulty in writing backwards-compatible code is bad
>         (thus, code to implement partitioning of a dataset would
>         naturally use the // operator in 2.2+ but would not be able
>         to in pre-2.2, so the div() function would have to be
>         religiously used, hurting readability).
> 
> Assertion 1 and 2 conflict with 3 and 4; #4 in particular bothers
> me.

Hm, #4 is relatively new in this discussion (for me, anyway).  I will
have to adapt to this new requirement, which I find reasonable
(although I wish it didn't exist -- but I understand the motivation).

> Many have said that #3 is irrelevant as we have from 2.2 to 2.4 to
> fix it, but I have upgraded several systems directly from 1.5.2 to
> 2.1 without substantial problems; going direct to 2.4 from 2.1 would
> not be so painless.

You will have at least from 2.2 to 2.6 though (at least two years),
and in reality more because I propose to add a command line option to
revert to old division semantics for several releases after 2.6.

> SOME way is needed to specify, in module scope, which set of
> mathematics rules should be enforced.  Whatever method is used
> should (IMHO) be uniform from 2.2 to 2.4; my method, as given, is
> the only one where the code reads the same from 2.2 on:
> 
>     from __numerics__ import original  # or standard, etc...

Not bad.  But I am still uncomfortable with making the old semantics a
*permanent* wart of the language.  I'd much rather deal with a future
statement for 5 years than with a __past__ statement forever.

An alternative that would not need this would be to require

   from __future__ import division

in order to use the new semantics, and use the proposed command line
option (say, "python -D old") to default to the old behavior as long
as you have to support unconverted code.

> Just thinking about the implementation gives me headaches, but Guido
> and Co.  have readily implemented fancy things like the
> software-time-machine
> 
>     from __future__ import phasers, warp_drive # or whatever
> 
> and so my proposal (or a mutation thereof) should be no biggie.

Indeed, this wouldn't be hard -- although maybe a friendlier syntax,
like "directive blah, blah, blah" might make sense *if* we decide to
do this.  (Which I still don't think is the best solution, but I do
see your point.)

> As I said, you can't honestly say we ALL haven't been trying.  It's
> not that I object directly to the change, it's the overall
> plan/effect/semantics etc.  that I don't like.

Would it be more palatable to you if the new semantics didn't become
the default (or the law) until Python 3.0 was introduced?

That's how Perl dealt with a much larger incompatible language change:
Perl4 was left alone (I believe there are still plenty installations
that require it) and Perl5 was the future.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Tue Jul 31 14:04:17 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:04:17 GMT
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com> <Xns90ED38309C442cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <3B63973B.490D4B08@engcorp.com> <Xns90ED5DA29D6E3gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <3B66AE57.79A2C217@cybermesa.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF8F3563021gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>

Jay O'Connor wrote:

[using import inside functions, classes...]

> class MyEngine:
>      def __init__ (self):
>           import engine_support
> 
>      def doSomething (self):
>           #is engine_support is scope?
>           engine_support.do_something()

[snip]

> hmmmm...I just tested it, both  references to engine_support outside of
> __init__ fail with a NameError.  *THAT* would be something useful to
> have...a class level import; import the module in __init__, it's in
> scope for the whole class
> 
> The best workaround for now I could think of is either to assign an
> instance variable to the module

[snip]

> or to assign it to a global in the module so that once it's imported,
> it's available to the whole module.
> 
> I can see the use for being able to import a module into a function, but
> having it in visible outside of that function (especially in classes)

Assigning to an instance variable is a perfectly sane way to do that.

Note that in

def f1():
  import x
def f2()
  import x
f1()
f2()

all the heavy lifting is done when f1 executes. When f2 executes, import
finds x already in sys.modules, so the second import is very cheap (but
not free).

I would suggest staying away from trying to make a delayed import
visible globally, it's just too fragile.

- Gordon




From gregj at pdxperts.com  Fri Jul 20 04:11:06 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:11:06 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost> <X%M57.379696$p33.7613309@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87ofqgdtxr.fsf@ivory.localhost>
Message-ID: <uIR57.381357$p33.7644280@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Patrick W." <anapraxis at yahoo.com.au> wrote

[long, interesting reply omitted]

Patrick, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I think we agree on the big
picture. Personally I would be happy programming in C, Scheme, and Python as
you suggest, but the real world is a lot messier. There's lots of legacy
code written in COBOL, Fortran, PL/I, what have you. And there's lots of
code that is written in languages that seem less than ideal choices to us
Python-enlightened: Visual Basic, C++, and Java (give it ten years).

I'd add SQL (or something like it) to your list. Not for writing entire
programs, of course, but when dealing with relational sets you want a
language designed for that. That's not to say that relational databases are
the only way to organize data, but they are an efficient way to organize
some kinds of data, and more important lots of valuable data is already
stored in relational databases. When junior programmers ask me what language
they should learn to maintain their marketability, I always recommend SQL.

Benchmarks are good for measuring and improving the implementation of a
language, but they really don't say much about the language itself, or how
it compares to other languages. A language can't really be said to be slower
than another language; benchmarks only test implementations. Some languages
are by design difficult or impossible to implement as efficiently as, say,
C, but comparing those languages to C is comparing apples to oranges, like
comparing a Toyota Camry to a semi truck.

Python's clear syntax, rich built-in data types, and excellent standard
library appealed to me right off when I read Guido's tutorial. A few hours
of experimenting proved to me that I could easily write useful Python
programs, and that those programs excecuted acceptably fast enough for most
of my purposes (and I'm one of those C programmers who thinks in C). Python
was already mature when I discovered it. After ten years of work by some
clearly very talented people I'd be very surprised if huge performance
problems were lurking undiscovered in the code. I don't need benchmarks to
tell me that: the size and sophistication of the Python community, and my
own experience with the language, are enough. When newbies post their
"benchmarks" in comp.lang.python I cringe because they are blind to the most
important things about Python.

Ironically, my regular job has me writing a large web-based application
entirely in PL/SQL, Oracle's "procedural extensions" to SQL. PL/SQL was
chosen through a wrong-headed but typical corporate decision-making process.
The code I am writing is already legacy code, and it isn't even
fully-deployed yet. I've been able to use Python to help me preprocess mixed
HTML + PL/SQL code, but Python is not on the list of approved "production
languages," nor is it likely to be, because it doesn't add to anyone's job
security or political power. Fortunately I'm a contractor so the project
will someday be a memory and resume-enhancer for me, and a maintenance
headache for someone else. This is, in my experience, a fairly typical
situation in the "real world" my fellow programmers frequently refer to.

Regards,

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 23:58:40 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:58:40 -0400
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
References: <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5E43F0.E8654A32@engcorp.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> I was on a walk with my wife and dog yesterday.  Out of the blue I asked her
> "what's the result of five divided by two?"  After a little back-and-forth
> where she tried to figure out how I was trying to trick her and make her
> look foolish she answered, "two-and-a-half".  I then posed, "Suppose you
> have five pinecones and you want to clump them into groups of two.  What
> would you do?".  Her answer was, "Put two in the first group, two in the
> second group, and break the last pinecone in two so the third group would
> have two as well."

I think you might have phrased the second question closer to "Suppose
you have five pinecones and you want to create groups containing
two whole pinecones.  What would you do?".   Would that likely have
elicited a different response?  One with, perhaps, a remainder pinecone?

(Being overly serious, yes, but I did chuckle at the story. :)


From mcherm at destiny.com  Thu Jul 12 11:01:09 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:01:09 -0500
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
Message-ID: <a9b1cafe.cafea9b1@destiny.com>

simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> i don't want to see any more versions of python.
> ITS FINISHED
> AND I LOVE IT RIGHT NOW
> if you want more then make a new language.

Regretably, Simon, you are out of luck. In order to convince
Microsoft to support Python natively in their .NET initiative,
Guido was forced to make several major concessions. One of those
was to recind the "Open Source" liscense, which allowed anyone
to freely use Python -- using any version they wanted for (pretty
much) any purpose.

Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
(to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the 
infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.

This is too bad, because up until this change, it would have been
allowed -- actually, ENCOURAGED -- for you to keep a copy of
Python 2.1 around and continue using it. It would EVEN have been
permissible for you to keep the SOURCE CODE so you could make
your own updates as technology and standards march forward!
(Although most of the code is a badly-commented mess written in
an obscure and difficult language called "C", so you might find
this difficult.) This would have allowed you to keep this 
"FINISHED" product around for as long as you want.

I'm sorry you got caught up in this... but this kind of 
comercialization is unavoidable in today's world. The change has
not been made public yet, but you should expect an announcement
any day now.

-- Michael Chermside

PS:
   I wouldn't know myself, but some say that the PSU was actually
   behind the change. Some sort of plan to subvert .NET and 
   engineer a massive takeover of





From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 07:21:59 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:21:59 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <220720012039325082%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <mailman.995861918.11181.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ni1olt8lmseiqracnh1j1oe5coegc11ulo@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:16:19 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>case which I intended.  If this happens, the transitional release should
>also produce runtime warnings pinpointing lines where "/" is applied to
>integer arguments, so if you've got good unit tests nothing will be missed.

Assuming that people realise they need to retest all those scripts
they've be using trouble-free for years.

I think you underestimate the number of people who will some day
figure that 1.5.2 is a bit old, install the latest version, and have
hell break lose over night when half their scripts stop working.

>Don't forget that this has been debated repeatedly over the course of
>several years.  Most people drop out of these things after the fifth time
><0.5 wink>.

There's no point arguing these things if you don't believe anyone
would ever really do it. Now it looks like, after spending some time
advocating Python and talking people into letting me use it, suddenly
I'm going to look a right arse. I'll either have to warn everyone not
to upgrade because "the new version has serious compatability issues
with a basic arithmetic issue - nothing you wouldn't expect from *any*
language honestly - please stop laughing at me", or just hope like
hell that the problems aren't serious enough to get me the sack.

I couldn't find every copy of my scripts that's in use if I wanted to
- and besides, how am I going to justify having to suddenly take time
out to "fix the serious compatability issues with a basic arithmetic
operator in that language I kept insisting was so great".

Python advocates are going to end up looking pathetic. How long do you
think they'll carry on advocating Python?

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 13:59:15 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 17:59:15 GMT
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com> <mailman.995526636.21726.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107191006.28da887e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m0mjj.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 19 Jul 2001 11:06:02 -0700, Tom Good <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> wrote:
>Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995526636.21726.python-list at python.org>...
>> Yes I know that, but that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is why i
>> n
>> 
>> >>> raise ("a","b")
>> 
>> the "b" disappears? IMO that's a pretty weird behaviour. Yes anybody usin
>> g
>> non-class exceptions derived from Exception in a real-world program are
>> insane, but this is a puristic thing of mine. :-)
>> 
>> Martin
>
>I agree, it is kind of weird, and I don't know why it works that way. 
>I would probably expect trying to raise a tuple to generate an error.

I expect it's backwards compatibility.  Many moons ago there were no
user-defined classes, and hence no instance exceptions.  Ever notice the
__getitem__ trickiness IOError does so it can be unpacked like like a 2-tuple?
I have a feeling that once upon a time it was.

Try starting python with -x and notice that the 'b' no longer disappears.

Instance exceptions are probably an example of a past major change which could
have broken a lot of code.  It seems to have been handled quite well, which is
good, because there is code using -x and string exceptions to this day.  It
has left a couple little warts behind, but you can't please everyone.  The
trick is balancing compatibility against acquiring warts.


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 13:36:02 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:36:02 GMT
Subject: from __future__ import generators not working in IDLE
References: <xUy87.107718$ph7.20561327@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <cp4rrtypb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> writes:

> "from __future__ import generators" does not work in IDLE which is included
> in Python 2.2a1.
> 
> See the copy&pasted text from the real IDLE running:
> 
> >>> from __future__ import generators
> >>>
> >>> <string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the
> future
> <string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
> <string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
> def f():
>  yield 1
> 
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >>>
> 
> Is there any workarounds?

Not yet (apart from adding "from __future__ import generators" to the
top of codeop.py).  But in python-dev Michael Hudson is working on a
fix to codeop that will let us select compilation flags.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From cb921 at voice.co.za  Tue Jul 31 08:33:23 2001
From: cb921 at voice.co.za (Campbell)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:33:23 +0200
Subject: Control of flow
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local>

Hi,

I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is often
a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful" sometimes =).

Here is a little snippet that gets a month/day from a caller.  If the
day entered is not in the range of days valid for the month entered, we
repeat from the top.  Does anyone have a few minutes to waste helping
me??  How better can I code things that look like this:

>>> snip <<<
while 1:
    cont = 1         ## ugh!
    month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
    if month < 1 or month > 12:
        play("invalidmonth.vox")
        continue
    while 1:
        day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
        if day < 1 or day > Month[month]:
            play("invalidday.vox")
            cont = 1
        cont = 0
    if cont == 1:
        continue
    break
>>> snip <<<

It gets worse quite easily.  And because there's a person on the other
end of the phone hearing the files and entering keypad digits, I must
dumb down the program to their level, sometimes ending up with a huge
string of while 1:'s and half-job loop control variables like cont.

Thank you,
  Thank you,
   Campbell.
    The world is our spoon
     tick, tock.





From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 11:57:22 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:57:22 -0700
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3b6174fa.1981112@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-073A07.08572227072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3b6174fa.1981112 at nntp.sprynet.com>,
 ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:

> About whether isintegral should imply isexact: I dunno much 
> algebra. For the flavors of "algebraic integer" that seem dimly
> familiar it seems like one could give an exact representation.
> Is this true?

Yes, but we've seen convincing arguments earlier in this thread that
isintegral() should be true only for members of Z, not for algebraic 
integers.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 12:23:44 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:23:44 +0200
Subject: DB-API 1.0 vs. 2.0
References: <AjW37.9662$e5.1281275@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3B507210.AF4C1D1C@lemburg.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> DB-API 1.0 (dated April 9, 1996) specifies that a connection object
> should provide "all Cursor Object attributes and methods".
> 
> this requirement seems to have been dropped in the (undated)
> DB-API 2.0 specification -- but this fairly major change isn't listed
> under "Major Changes from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0"...
>
> what's the deal here?  should a 2.0 implementation provide an
> implicit cursor, or not?

It can, but is not required to. 
The deal is: explicit is better than implict :-)

> (btw, maybe the people involved could add a release date to the
> 2.0 specification?)

Done. (See CVS)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From phlip_cpp at my-deja.com  Wed Jul 18 07:00:49 2001
From: phlip_cpp at my-deja.com (Phlip)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:00:49 +0000
Subject: alpha blend in tkinter Canvas
Message-ID: <Y3k57.10$_c5.51814@news.pacbell.net>

Hypo Nt:

If I have a tkinter Canvas, how do I paint in an object that "blends" with 
the color under it, instead of just jamming its own color in?

-- 
  Phlip                          phlip_cpp at my-deja.com
============ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PhlIp ============
  --  All sensors report Patti having a very good time  --


From ymor at checkpoint.com  Sun Jul 29 18:50:37 2001
From: ymor at checkpoint.com (Yossi Mor)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:50:37 +0200
Subject: Need help in creating a simple package in python
Message-ID: <9k20ih$jq3$1@news.netvision.net.il>

Hi

Can you help me ?

I am new with Python and I would like to ask several questions:

1. For creating a package I have to create a *.py script that will group
selected modules and contain the following script __init__.py. -> Can you
elaborate on this script definition (give an example how the script should
be written ).

2. I have tried to create a package that contains 2 modules and succeeded in
importing the package itself but not a module inside the package for example
'import pkg.fib1' - what was wrong ?

Thanks

Yossi





From drobinow at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 16:56:10 2001
From: drobinow at yahoo.com (David Robinow)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 13:56:10 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com> <mailman.994276569.27572.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <59a4b541.0107051256.78336636@posting.google.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994276569.27572.python-list at python.org>...
> > Arithmetic expressions that
> > involve only integers currently always result in an integer.
>  
> >>> import math
> >>> math.cos(5)
> 0.28366218546322625
 Surely you are not claiming that
   " math.cos(5) "
is an arithmetic expression involving only integers?
...
> 
> >...
> > Who expects?  You are already seeing in this discussion that many
> > people think that the current behaviour is not only what they expect
> > but is actually very justifiable.
> 
> Sure, people with a bunch of programming language experience.
> 
> http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html
 I read this.  There's a pointer to Prof. Pausch's page that is
purported to prove the difficulty of closed integer division.  There
is absolutely no such reference.  In fact, the evidence suggests that
newbies picked up Python quickly.

> 
> >...


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 08:35:13 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:35:13 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com> <mailman.995927281.7201.python-list@python.org> <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com> <Xns90E862BBEA7B5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <vqiqltsf8tl5kuklp653tki84rkc9lggfe@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:56:53 +0000 (UTC), Duncan Booth
<duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote:

>Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in 
>news:gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg at 4ax.com:
>
>> If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
>> and similar in your code as I do
>
>This is an example where even today you might be better off writing 
>"?%d.%02d" % divmod(Amount, 100)
>especially if you ever have single digit pennies.

The code examples were simplified to get to the point, but this is
true - barring a few points...

1.  A lot of people these scripts are passed on to are non-programmers
    who, nonetheless, need to do some fiddling to keep things up to
    date.

    Separate / and % with formatting done longhand (and with the
    number of digits required specified, of course) tend to cause less
    confusion.

2.  I just plain habitually use / and % anyway, having a C and C++
    background and having never (previously) had a reason to change.

3.  I dislike % substitution because I dislike sprintf formatting, and
    besides - I tend to think it should specify the subscript for the
    data to substitute in the string - not just rely on the list/tuple
    order.

Not a particularly *good* reason in point 3, but theres a little bit
of irrationality in most people.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From rdbruno at btinternet.com  Wed Jul  4 07:24:50 2001
From: rdbruno at btinternet.com (Ralph Bruno)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 04:24:50 -0700
Subject: Windows2000 console control
Message-ID: <6698e4b2.0107040324.1e4b14e6@posting.google.com>

My application calls an a java app (FOP, which converts xml into pdf)
, that consequently opens a console to display it's progress.
I want to hide the console, but also capture the output for parsing. 
However, I also need to know when the Java app has finished so that I
can then open or print the resulting acrobat.
And finally, this all has to work as a gui app.

I first tried win32process.CreateProcess, which according to the docs
has a 'CREATE_NO_WINDOW' setting to hide the console, but this gave me
an 'Attribute Error' whenever I ran it.
It did give me a handle to the process, but it  didn't allow me any
way of at getting at the console output. Putting a pipe command in the
actual Java command line was also unsuccessful as the Java command
treated it as another argument and failed to execute.

I've tried win32pipe, but this doesn't seem to allow me to get the
process handle, although I can get at the console output.


Is there a neat way of combining the two, or is a completely different
approach needed?

Thanks in advance


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Wed Jul  4 08:17:58 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 14:17:58 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <87lmm5dqjq.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9k5vo5.nv.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On 04 Jul 2001 04:54:21 -0400, Methodical Meowbot wrote:
>18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote:
>
>> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
>> application in air traffic control.
>
>Software like that would seem to be begging for a language with some
>formal validation behind it, like Ada.

The "validation" behind Ada is sometimes misunderstood. A "validated compiler"
is simply one that passes a certain test suite checking ANSI/ISO standard
compliance, which is IMO a very good thing.

I think that Ada 95 is the best language to use for safety critical systems
such as air traffic control. That's precisely the field Ada was designed for:
large, safety-critical realtime software.

For those interested in proofing software correctness, there is an Ada subset
called SPARK which makes this feasible (with the help of "annotations" that
capture the code designers intention, and additional verification tools). I
found quite interesting what I've read about it on http://www.sparkada.com/ 

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 15:36:10 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:36:10 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
In-Reply-To: <3B61A275.82581457@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEMELBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[James C. Ahlstrom]
> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.

[Tim Peters]
> As my physicists friend like to say, "that's not even wrong".
> Write a PEP.

[James Logajan]
> Are you seriously suggesting he write a PEP to inhibit the other PEPs?
> Or are you demanding something else?

Such point as there was was two-fold:

1. The idea that Python features are chosen for "Computer Science Purity"
   is so far off base it's "not even wrong".

2. The PEP process is the place to flesh out future language directions,
   and is open to everyone.  If someone (named James or not) wants a
   change of any kind, they should write a PEP; venting on c.l.py may
   or may not feel good, but probably isn't going to accomplish anything.
   So "write a PEP" was advice, not a demand.  I didn't have in mind a
   PEP opposing other PEPs, but a PEP fleshing out something specific
   that would be of "day-to-working-day importance to someone actually
   trying to write a widely used bullet proof program."  Robin Becker
   suggested that the ability to split lists fell in that category <wink>,
   but I'm sure I have scant idea what it means to JimA.

>> while-compsci-purists-denounce-python-for-its-pragmatism-ly y'rs  - tim

> I've checked the Google archives, and I've come to the conclusion that
> you are of the position that anyone who doesn't constantly upgrade
> should not be supported, in the sense that if they report bugs, write
> books about Python, or ask for porting assistance, their questions will
> all be answered with "Upgrade first, then we'll talk". Is that basically
> correct?

In *most* cases advice to upgrade is met with "Thanks! That solved the
problem.".  So of course that's always my first suggestion, for cases that
upgrades can solve.  The idea that I'd say "upgrade first" to someone
writing a book doesn't make sense, so I'll skip that one.

If a user with a bug or a porting problem can't upgrade, it depends on the
specifics.  There was never a bugfix release for 1.5.2, so there *usually*
isn't much else to be said to people who had deep problems with 1.5.2.  I'm
very happy the community (in the persons of Moshe Zadka and Thomas
Wouters -- and special thanks to Aahz for championing the PEP that made it
possible!) volunteered to produce bugfix releases for 2.0 and 2.1.  When
closing a bug via "fixed in 2.0" on SourceForge, or reporting on c.l.py that
a bug has been so closed, the correct way to read that isn't "upgrade or
die", it's "so it will show up in the appropriate follow-on bugfix
release -- provided volunteers step up to produce one".

For people who can't deal with that either, what would you like me to do?
I'm paid to work on "the next" release, including but pretty much limited to
repairing bugs discovered in prior releases, and for my own (unpaid) Python
work don't even keep old versions of Python sitting around.  That doesn't
mean I never volunteer "spare time" to help people who have problems with
old versions, but most days, yes, I'd rather go see a movie.

although-i-haven't-had-time-for-that-in-about-3-months-ly y'rs  - tim




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 09:17:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:17:11 -0400
Subject: Credit card processing on the web
Message-ID: <Z6i27.49545$he.3417932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

I've been doing some work on credit card transaction verification, and as a
result of certain experiences with a third party vendor, my client has
requested that I look for another verification company.

Has anyone actually used Python to verify credit card data? If so, with
which company or companies? If you have time to post about your experiences
I would be grateful.

In fact, we don't even *have* to use Python, although the work I have done
so far did, socket-based with mx/amkCrypto to implement the Blowfish
encryption. I'd prefer to use Python, though. Just because I can.

Thanks in advance
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/






From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 16:55:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:55:12 +0200
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <20010716202955.LXMI20827.femail3.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <0a9f01c10e39$a5a0fb40$0300a8c0@arthur>

"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> writes:
    ...
> > > for eachItem in A:
> > >     if eachItem in B:
> > >         A.remove(eachItem)
> > >
> > > Now, this will work fine,
> >
> > Are you sure about that?  Normally, modifying the list
> > you're iterating on does NOT work fine.  Have you tested
    ...
> Hmm... That's very interesting. Well, I guess you learn something new
every day ;-) I suppose the simple solution (to my
> original code) is to place all non-offending items in a new list, ie.
>
> >>> for eachItem in a:
> ... if each not in b:
> ... final.append(eachItem)
> ...

Or, more simply, loop on a _copy_ of the list you need to alter:
    for eachItem in a[:]:
        if eachItem not in b: a.remove(eachItem)

> I've never noticed the list behaviour before that you pointed out, what
causes that, if you don't mind my asking?

Officially, the point is that altering the list you're iterating on causes
unspecified behavior -- whatever happens to happen, happens:-).
In practice, the loop on the list has more or less these semantics:

    i = 0
    while 1:
        try: item = a[i]
        except IndexError: break
        else: i += 1
        whatever(item)

being equivalent to:

    for item in a:
        whatever(item)

If you alter a, the index i used internally still goes up by one each
time through the loop, until it hits an IndexError (which tells the
interpreter that the for-loop is finished).  So, say the loop's body
is just a.remove(item).  Now:
    for item in a: a.remove(item)
we can see as equivalent (in the current implementation) to:
    i = 0
    while i<len(a):
        a[i:i+1] = []
        i = i+1
which deletes *alternate* items of list a...

...but you shouldn't rely on this to do "clever" things -- tomorrow,
the for loop implementation might be optimized and do OTHER
strange things when the body alters the list it's looping on!-)


Akex



_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 15:44:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:44:58 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <mailman.995886519.23021.python-list@python.org> <fauolt41gp2mjlsqiuc9rnl84dtinsle9j@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cpae1uqfgs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> If I take serious damage to my professional reputation because of this
> change and my vocal Python advocacy, I'll more than likely be starting
> up my own competing scripting language. I won't expect success, but it
> will be interesting and I will expect that others will have the same
> thought, so once the breakaway projects start coalescing there might
> well be a *better* alternative in the end. Maybe a bit melodramatic,
> but it's not like it's hard to find a scripting language market these
> days.

More power to you.  Since your new language won't be restricted by
backwards compatibility, you'll find that the better choice for
int/int is to return a float, or perhaps a rational, rather than
following C (whose insistence on closing integers under division, as
that of so many other languages, is inspired by the price of floating
point hardware twenty years ago).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From robin at illusionsexeculink.com  Mon Jul  2 16:25:20 2001
From: robin at illusionsexeculink.com (robin at illusionsexeculink.com)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:25:20 -0400
Subject: Postgres  support
Message-ID: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>

I have been quite happy working with Python, and have become quite
evangelical in my support for this language and its excellent user
community.

One area in which I believe Python to be very lacking is database
support.

Languages like Perl and even PHP come with compete support for all the
popular databases.

With Python I'm left scrambling around trying out different half-done
modules.

This is a significant barrier to Python adoption. Until Python ships
with modules for each major database it will not be a mature tool for
many users.

As an example, I would like to find a cross-platform (Linux, Windows,
etc.) Postgres interface that works with Python 2 or greater and
Postgres 7 or greater, conforming to the dbAPI. Not too much to ask,
one might think.

I've found these four candidates, but judging by their sometimes
sparse web sites, none fit the bill. But I could be wrong.

PyGreSQL -- http://www.druid.net/pygresql/
psycopg -- http://initd.org/Software/psycopg
PoPy -- http://popy.sourceforge.net/
PyPgSQL -- http://www.sf.net/projects/pypgsql

Can anyone suggest a solution?

-----
robin                          robin at illusionsexeculink.com
media artist /                 remove illusions to reply
information architect          www.execulink.com/~robin/

Isolation tank paves way to execute an attack. 


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 13:38:12 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:38:12 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <9ijpfk02a67@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b4dd783$0$2149@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <kel37.3407$u76.70914@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Rufus V. Smith" <nospam at nospam> wrote in message
news:3b4dd783$0$2149 at wodc7nh6.news.uu.net...
>
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:9ijpfk02a67 at enews4.newsguy.com...
> > My proposed solution relied on the fileinput module's "in-place"
> > behavior (WITH a backup, but that's optional I guess:-).  That
> > module nicely wraps whatever concerns may need to be wrapped, AND
> > works on as many files as you desire.
> >
> > def allbutfirst(files):
> >     for line in fileinput.input(files,inplace=1,backup='.bak'):
> >         if fileinput.filelineno()>1: print line,
> >
>
> I'm a definite Newbie, but to me this looks like it outputs the result
> to stdout, rather than creating a new file with the first line removed,
> which is what I thought the goal was.

The manual says: """Optional in-place filtering: if the keyword argument
inplace=1 is passed to input() or to the FileInput constructor, the file is
moved to a backup file and standard output is directed to the input file.
This makes it possible to write a filter that rewrites its input file in
place. If the keyword argument backup='.<some extension>' is also given, it
specifies the extension for the backup file, and the backup file remains
around; by default, the extension is '.bak' and it is deleted when the
output file is closed. In-place filtering is disabled when standard input is
read."""

So I guess the martellibot is correct again, which I know will stagger few
regular readers :^) .

don't-argue-with-a-bot-ly y'rs  - steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ejones17 at austin.rr.com  Fri Jul  6 00:43:51 2001
From: ejones17 at austin.rr.com (ERIC JONES)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 04:43:51 GMT
Subject: GUI for Fortran under Linux
References: <9hvtk6$sst$1@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca> <zHQ07.42503$TW.212386@tor-nn1.netcom.ca> <3B440D12.FD036CA1@wldelft.nl> <3B44A1FC.70F13315@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <bmb17.143805$lq1.35223239@typhoon.austin.rr.com>

Fortran:
f2py works pretty well at wrapping most f77 and f90 codes.  PyFort is also a
good candidate, although I have no experience with it.  Both of these help
you clean up the interface to functions reducing the number required
arguments considerably.  Once you've wrapped your functions using f2py, they
are usable from any Python script.  I would recommend using f77 as much as
possible to keep code portable to different machines (g77 is everywhere) and
also to ease integration with Python (f90 pointers don't have an easy
translation to C code).  Also, use Python for your memory allocation when
ever possible.

Visualization:
VTK (www.kitware.com) works well for visualizing scientific data and has
reasonable Python wrappers.  It has a steep learning curve, but also a
wealth of capabilities (many many helpful algorithms) beyond OpenGL.

GUI Toolkit:
VTK is supported by both TkInter and wxPython so you can use either.  We use
wxPython on both Linux and Windows and am happy with the choice.

regards,
eric





From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 21:38:44 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 20:38:44 -0500
Subject: Help with PDF
In-Reply-To: <000801c11181$3145dcc0$2cde3dd8@glindshome>
References: <000801c11181$3145dcc0$2cde3dd8@glindshome>
Message-ID: <15192.56612.938501.851439@beluga.mojam.com>

    Greg> What is available in Python to produce Portable Document Format
    Greg> (PDF) files?

Check ReportLab: http://www.reportlab.com/

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Wed Jul 25 21:29:28 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:29:28 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
In-Reply-To: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <B784EAB7.14F50%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

on 2001-07-25 10:05 AM, margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk wrote:
> 1) New versions of 'Python' are not 'Python', and should be indicated
> as such -- perhaps by calling it 'Python++' :)

True, Python 2.2 is not Python 2.1. Also, 2.1 != 2.0, 2.0 != 1.6, 1.6 !=
1.5.2, etc., back to 1990. So what?

> If Guido does change Python in the way it currently appears it will,
> and if so many people disagree with the way it is developing, then
> why not stand up and call for people to ignore the dictator, and
> keep Python the way it should be?

Go ahead, keep Python the way you like it. Nobody's forcing you to upgrade.
The source code is completely open.

> This new version of Python will not be one that I will be happy to use.

So don't use it?

> If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
> able to depose the dictatorship, and create a stable and sensible
> system for developing Python (not Python++).

If you want stability, stick with Python version X.Y. If you want new
capabilities without new core language features, and backport the standard
libraries you want to use. Create an open source project for them; I'm sure
there'd be a market.

But then, your X.Y won't match everybody else's X.Y.

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sourceforge.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sourceforge.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net



From mwh at python.net  Sun Jul  1 18:00:04 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 23:00:04 +0100
Subject: Why Not Translate Perl to C
References: <mailman.993922352.32302.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3y9q8z4wr.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:

> Yes, but you cannot write a compiler that will translate StringIO
> into cStringIO. Python is too dynamic for this. If Python will ever
> get static typing, things will become much better and we can return
> to the task of building a compiler.

I think the "obvious" approach to making Python go faster is some kind
of dynamic recompilation, so that if a function gets called fifteen
thousand times with integer arguments you can compile up a specialised
version.

Going further you could even implement schemes where functions are
inlined (or methods cached or whatever) and if the name of the inlined
function is rebound you run all over the heap smashing the code that
has this function inlined in, and so on.  This would obviously be
quite slow - but you don't rebind function names very often, certainly
much much less often than you call them (in general).

I believe Self uses a boatload of tricks of this form, but that's
about as much as I know about Self.

Also, hard work.  Who's going to pay for it?  It's not the sort of
thing that's going to happen in one's spare time.

Armin Rigo has been having some fun in this area - read this post for
more info:

  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015566.html

It's all still some way from being useful, sadly.

Cheers,
M.

Getting truly off into the far blue yonder:

It also seems to me that dynamic recompilation is the way forward for
getting good performance out of modern chips where branch
misprediction has such a high cost - surely the best way to find out
which way a branch is likely to go is to check.  Ars Technica has a
fascinating article on HP's Dynamo which explores things in this
direction:

  http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/dynamo/dynamo-1.html

(If you haven't read this article , read it now)

Has anyone had the opportunity to run Python under Dynamo?  That would
be interesting, to say the least.

-- 
    . <- the point                                your article -> .
    |------------------------- a long way ------------------------|
                                        -- Cristophe Rhodes, ucam.chat


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 08:12:23 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:12:23 -0400
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu> <Uh327.14798$i8.1312190@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <Nl327.20471$F%5.1437375@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <slrn9khoer.cpe.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <f9h27.23482$F%5.1661317@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn9khoer.cpe.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:29:59 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com>
wrote:
> >"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
> >news:Uh327.14798$i8.1312190 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com...
> >> "Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
> >> news:etd7kxjcp8x.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
> >> >
> >> > You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test
objects
> >> > in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:
> >> >
> >> > import copy
> >> > test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]
> >> >
> >> Or, possibly, in a dictionary:
> >>
> >> dict = {}
> >> for i in range(1,21):
> >>     dict[test+str(i)] = copy.copy(obj)
> >>
> >Sorry, read that last as
> >
> >    dict["test"+str(i)] = copy.copy.(obj)
>
> You're not haviong much luck with the typos, are you?
>
Typos, thinkos, I get htem all. Talk about "let yuor fngiers do the
wlaking"...

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Tue Jul 24 09:27:47 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 13:27:47 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995977483.25907.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jjt4j$od0$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <mailman.995977483.25907.python-list at python.org>,
 Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

[...]
>> I return to my question. Suppose Python 2.2 is released with this
>> __future__ division. Now suppose I must maintain some code which can
>> run on Python 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, which needs integer division. What am
>> I to do? 
>
>I think divmod()[0]. (or maybe I've missed something there)

As long as the definition of divmod() is updated to do that. It
currently says

  divmod(a, b) 
       Take two numbers as arguments and return a pair of numbers
       consisting of their quotient and remainder when using long
       division. With mixed operand types, the rules for binary
       arithmetic operators apply. For plain and long integers, the
       result is the same as (a / b, a % b). ...

Assuming divmod() continues to returns integers with integer
arguments, divmod()[0] can be used, but it isn't exactly concise or
easy to follow.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 15:25:08 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:25:08 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jhtmk$ap4$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Michael Chermside <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Don't encourage sloppy habits: require case sensitivity.

Right, the case-(in)sensitivity issues are very similar to the
indentation issues. Python enforces the way code looks by making
indentation required (and the only thing); we get consistently 
indented code that way. I believe that is good.

Python currently also enforces consistently case-spelled code. I
believe that this is good as well.

People sometimes counter this by using the 'bondage and discipline' 
argument, but I believe some consistency actually doesn't hurt on
this level; it's not a major hoop through jump through. Bondage and discipline
can hurt on the (surface) semantic level, where it makes it much easier
to code oneself into a corner.

So, I believe we should encourage "there should be one obvious way to do it"
on the syntactic level here. Frequently having more than one way to do it
on the semantic level is however a good thing if that means increased
flexibility.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From rdsteph at earthlink.net  Sun Jul  1 10:40:34 2001
From: rdsteph at earthlink.net (Ron Stephens)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:40:34 GMT
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net>

A major new project is underway, called Pythoncard, see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pythoncard . Maybe you can contribute ;-))))

Lothar Scholz wrote:

> Is there something other then "Black Adder" which  is behind an  alpha
> version ?



From hirner at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 19:20:53 2001
From: hirner at yahoo.com (ThaFacka)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:20:53 +0200
Subject: compiling c app in MSVC
Message-ID: <3b4b8bc7$0$26110$6e365a64@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at>

MSVC5 complains when compiling a program with <python.h>, that the lib file
python20.lib is either invalid or my disk is corrupted (cant set file
pointer to 0xblabla).
and no my disk is not corrupted.
anybody compiled succesfully with MSVC5?
thx




From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 15:48:37 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:48:37 GMT
Subject: Numeric methods again
References: <9jmelr$m2g$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <cplmlc94dr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> writes:

> Now that Python seems to be getting numerig methods
> (like "5 .__add__" etc.) I'm pretty happy about that.
> But I find it odd that there has to be whitespace
> in front of the reference dot... For a simple parser
> it might be difficult to know whether 5. was a float
> or the beginning of a reference, but with a bit of
> lookahead that can't be too hard? Is there any way
> that 5._ is not the beginning of a reference to a
> numeric method? Can a number ever be directly followed
> by an identifier? Is the parser to weak to parse this
> stuff? Am I just being dense?
> 
> This definitely looks like a (little) wart to me...
> 
> (I'm sure I should RTFM here - but I've looked through
> the PEPs and haven't found this in there...)

This is the kind of wartlet that's hard to fix right (there could be
an arbitrary about of comments between the "5." and the "__add__") and
not a problem in practice.  You won't be writing "5 .__add__" in
practice -- you'll be writing "x.__add__", where x happens to contain
an integer.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 21:06:35 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:06:35 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com> <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com>
Message-ID: <Zm297.540$WD1.103799@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"James C. Ahlstrom" <jim at interet.com> wrote in message
news:3B601811.4B68578B at interet.com...
>
> Robin Becker wrote:
>
[ ... ]
> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.  The current rate of language change is fine for a
> student or casual programmer I'm sure, but I don't have that luxury.
>
I prefer to think that the problem here is that the new Python features that
would break existing code are to fix a wart that has been in the language
for a long time. Originally my own approach was "so live with the wart", but
I really don't anticipate the division change giving me many problems in my
own (admittedly limited) installed base.

The rate of language change has little to do with it, and the main question
is "does code from the last version run on the new version?"

How many cases (besides the division proposal, for which the timeframe is
two years, or indefinitely if you use the command-line option) can you quote
where that question would be answered in the negative?

new-features-don't-stop-old-features-working-(mostly)-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From rcena at epcor.ca  Thu Jul  5 11:11:48 2001
From: rcena at epcor.ca (Resty Cena)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 08:11:48 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>

"Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
> 
> Python still doesn't have good database support, 

I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
I'd like the IDE to do this for me. I'm a database programmer, and I
want to write applications right away. I'm also lazy and I expect much
from my tools.


From kens at sightreader.com  Fri Jul 27 00:38:58 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:38:58 -0700
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <Xns90EB76175FA2Brobindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>
Message-ID: <029801c11656$0db44100$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Robin wrote:
> ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote in
> news:3b602afa.930850 at nntp.sprynet.com:
>
> > On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:15 +1000, "michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au>
> > wrote:
> >
> >>> But strictly
> >>> speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
> >>
> >>So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the
> >>set of reals)?
> >
> > Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
> > (except in contexts like the present).
> >
>
> What I was getting at was that the integer 2 (as an element of the ring of
> integers) is different to the real number 2 (as an element of a field).
As
> a real number, 2 has a multiplicative inverse, whereas as an integer it
> does not. (and as an element of Z_5 it does etc etc)
>
> As sets (and from the p.o.v. of analysis), Z is a subset of R, but as
> algebraic entities there is a distinction.
>
> Robin

Yay!  Somebody talking sense!

There are good theoretical arguments to thinking of Z as a subset
of R as well as Z being a different kind of animal from R.

In software, when doing anything with the concepts of modulus and
quotient, one is almost always exclusively in the world of integers,
where words like "floor" make no sense.  Usually we are talking
about pixels or positions in a grid, or relative position in a repeating
sequence, or some other discrete phenomenum.  In these cases
Z doesn't really -seem- like a subset of R.

Okay, if you say 5.0 // 2.0 == 2.0, it makes some kind of sense to
call that "floor division", but I don't think // will be used with floats
very often (just nice to support floats for polymorphic consistency).
But // is really there because of integers.

            "//" = "quotient"

- Ken





From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 11:12:13 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:12:13 +0200
Subject: SMTP server class ??
References: <d0alktgu1k5qvlt2bqdmb8l0k1rlmqm6ie@4ax.com> <mailman.994773686.29026.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B1B4D.671EA09C@stroeder.com>

"Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "SK" == Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:
> 
>     SK> Actually, I found what Barry Warsaw calls his "experimental"
>     SK> smtp server (RFC821 compliant) at the Vaults at
>     SK> Parnassus. I've downloaded it.
> 
> It's actually now in the standard library as smtpd.py.  It's
> asyncore/asynchat based, and it's not perfect, but at least one other
> person than me has found it useful <wink>.

To give some feedback: It will probably be useful for me too during
the next months. From a rather short look it seems to me that it has
a easily understandable API.

I'm looking at mimelib too...

Ciao, Michael.


From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 13:06:43 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:06:43 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5C4BB5.932C041D@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHKEFBCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Erik Max Francis]
> I wouldn't think how JavaScript does things would be a valid defense in
> any case.

Neither would I, but in the context snipped away I was replying to someone
who seemed to think that it was, but misunderstood what JS actually does.
Even bad arguments should be accurate <wink>.

or-ignored-ly y'rs  - tim




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 16:25:33 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 22:25:33 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994095972.11214.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hqlel016bl@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994095972.11214.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> > Depending on how you define "real world", I have some use of that
> > with my still-unreleased "in-house" (literally:-) "gmpy 1.0", where I
> > have mutable numbers.
>
> That's pretty weird but I have no objection to consenting adults doing
> weird things. I would suggest you consider lightweight proxies instead
> of mutable numbers so that you get optimization for x = x + y "for
> free".

Care to expand on this...?  Say that x is (a lightweight proxy holding)
a Python long of a few hundred digits which is counting the number
of occurrences of some event-classification in a space of events that
is pretty huge because of combinatorial-explosion.  y is another count
I have to add to x, typically a few hundred thousands or a few millions
at most.  How would x and y being lightweight proxies save me any
computational effort?  Won't Python still have to allocate another chunk
of a few hundred digits to store the new value of x, since the old one
is immutable?  With GMP (exposing its innards as mutable numbers)
I save the allocation (except when x becomes "longer", which happens
rarely enough that I don't worry about it) by doing in-place addition
(GMP exposes functions with 3 arguments, one destination and two
sources, and allows the destination to have the same identity as either
source OR to be another new mpz-object).  Are you suggesting I should
implement '+' lazily (by chunking or whatever)?  I fail to see what it
would buy me -- that 'x' is going to be incremented many times.  I
am quite a fan of lightweight proxies but here I can't see any speed
benefit they could bring me.  So what am I missing...?


> But let me try another tact: what if we just changed the behavior of
> lists. Rather than saying "mutable objects do this, immutable objects do
> that", I would like to say "built-in, ordinary, typical objects do this,
> rare, advanced, specialized objects do that."
>
> "This" is the simplest interpretation x +=y is equivalent to x = x + y.
>
> "That" is the more sophisticated polymorphic interpretation where the
> type chooses its own behaviour.
>
> Would this be an acceptable compromise? Everyone wins.

I don't understand whether you're arguing in the abstract, or concretely
proposing to break any Python program, written in the last year or so,
which decided to code "mylist += somemore" as opposed to coding
"mylist.extend(somemore)" while some other reference to mylist may
be outstanding.  If the latter, I don't see how such code breakage may
be "a compromise".  In the abstract, if you were designing a new language
from scratch and wanted to have both mutable and immutable datatypes
in it, I guess you could draw the line for a switchover in +='s behavior at
different thresholds; mutable vs immutable is very easy to draw, 'ordinary'
vs 'advanced' may not be, but maybe in such a hypothetical language
you might have other ways to easily flag ordinary vs advanced data
types so people cannot get confused.  It need not be Python, but it
might be an interesting thought-experiment, I guess.


Alex





From benc1 at today.com.au  Sun Jul 29 01:58:40 2001
From: benc1 at today.com.au (Ben C)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 22:58:40 -0700
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>

IMHO the reason why C has survived as a language and not become an
endangered species like Rexx, pascal et al is because it has it's own
'niche' ... initially evolving alongside of the unix environment it
has become the most suited language (currently) for systems
programming ... this has been both its strength and its weakness ...
to add more functionality it has had to fragment itself into other
competing 'species' and hence we now have C++ (and all its sub
species) ... C is analogous to the carnivore of the programming
languages ... yes fast and efficient ... but is also in a lot of
respects quite crude ...

I don't think Python has it's own true 'niche' ... it competes well
with many other languages ... hence it has to either keep evolving
into a 'better' competing language or find a niche or other languages
will inevitably supplant it ... what will happen to all your Python
code then? Will you invest the time learning and re-writing it to the
newer language? ...


Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996347633.4448.python-list at python.org>...
> James Logajan wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > b.1\ Or K&R C (in which Python was written for a long time to maximize
> > portability) or ANSI C (which tried to maintain compatibility with K&R). A
> > case where stagnation helped lead to success.
> 
> I believe that the stagnation followed success. The same may happen to
> Python. If it is ever the "default programming language" then it will
> become essentially impossible to change in any reasonable time frame.
> Guido is trying to make the changes now because they won't be possible
> then.


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Jul 14 10:17:13 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 14:17:13 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

Gustaf Liljegren wrote: 

> Have completed a fairly large project where I, among other modules, use
> the Python XML package from the XML SIG. Now I want to make a DOS
> binary to distribute it as a standalone application for Windows users.
> 
> Neither py2exe nor Installer is able to find the XML modules by
> themselves, and I haven't been able to figure out how to include them.

[snip]

> 
> The XML modules reside at e:\python\_xmlplus in this computer. I have
> tried the respective include options, but don't know if I do it right:
> 
> python e:\pyinst\builder.py myscript.cfg --includes e:\python\_xmlplus

Doesn't help to use py2exe args with Installer!

Edit myscript.cfg and put
packages=_xmlplus
in the PYZ section.

I don't know if that's enough - I've never worked with the XML package.

- Gordon



From root at rainerdeyke.com  Mon Jul  9 12:03:17 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 16:03:17 GMT
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org> <Fij27.24993$F%5.1707320@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9Bk27.469493$oc7.75721180@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:Fij27.24993$F%5.1707320 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> And some of us wonder what it is about the GPL that stops your previous,
> liberally-licensed, version from existing?

Given: software A is released under the BSDL.  Somebody creates an improved
version of it (software B) and releases it under the GPL.

A still exists.  But B is better than A, so people will be more likely to
use B than A.  A still exists, but A is competing with a better version of
itself.  New programmers will be more likely to improve B than A, because
they don't want to duplicate effort.  The original author is unable to
incorporate the improvements to A in future software C unless C is released
under the GPL.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:42 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:42 +0100
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com> <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com> <pmglltoiomis08cg8s18ogql1psmb4knkj@4ax.com> <3B5B15FE.A6B51D9F@alcyone.com> <9jfe8v$gu4$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <slrn.pl.9lokkh.h62.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <rptoltoirtn1s3i1ro9um091gu9r0cu7sl@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 16:36:33 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:54:08 +0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> pisze:
>
>> In both my undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics in the U.S., 
>> I only remember hearing tuple pronounced so that it rhymes with goop.  If 
>> anyone pronounced it to rhyme with couple, it was rare enough that I don't 
>> remember it.  But we also said "pie" for pi and "fee" for phi.
>
>Because you have ambiguous orthography :-)
>
>At least in Polish tupla is unambiguously pronounced tooplah
>(or translated to krotka), and we say pee and fee. And pit-on.

So instead of two slightly different pronunciations, you have two
completely different words ;-)



From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 00:17:46 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 04:17:46 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <KRM77.30105$EP6.7511661@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251 at ozemail.com.au...
> > But strictly
> > speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different
entities.
>
> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R
(the set
> of reals)?

This is a very subtle question, which I believe underlies much of the
recent heat on this newsgroup.  I was taught (by an algebraist) that Z
is isomorthic to a subset of R but is not the same as that subset
(having existed prior to R).  On the other hand, at least some set
theorists regard isomorphic sets as the same set (which is why there
is only 1 empty set!), which would make the two one and the same.  So
it depends on the meaning of 'set'.

Terry J. Reedy






From dgallion1 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 22 11:20:50 2001
From: dgallion1 at yahoo.com (Darrell)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 08:20:50 -0700
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <b0c5da3a.0107220720.4d3eaf2c@posting.google.com>

http://www.scintilla.org/


zeke  <Zeke at xyz.net> wrote in message 
> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
> job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
> Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 
> zeke


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 13:09:58 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:09:58 -0500 
Subject: Calculus
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F0@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

But Pythagoras and other Greeks played with mathematics.  Perhaps that's why the Simpson's rule has 'Homer'.

-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Martelli [mailto:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 10:33 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Calculus


"Andrew Todd" <aetodd at wm.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.994164981.2922.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example,
> the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find

I agree the Simpsons rule (my personal favourite is Lisa),
but I didn't think they were now used in Calculus, too...


Alex






From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 26 04:32:28 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:32:28 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>
	        <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com> <15199.23581.653505.336350@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FD59C.5FA52611@lemburg.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Paul> Agree strongly. This will also be a problem for documentation
>     Paul> generation tools, type extraction tools and class browsers. I
>     Paul> believe it would be easy to add a contextual keyword
> 
>     >> class C:
>     >>     def static foo(x, y):
>     >>         print "classmethod", x, y
> 
> Even better yet, why not simply reuse the class keyword in this context:
> 
>     class C:
>         def class foo(x, y):
>             print "classmethod", x, y

AFAIK, the only way to add classmethods to a class is by doing
so after creation of the class object. In that sense you don't have
a problem with parsing doc-extraction tools at all: they don't
have a chance of finding the class methods anyway ;-) 

Importing doc-extraction tools won't have a problem with these though 
and neither will human doc-extraction tools, since these will note
that the class methods are special :-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 14 19:56:01 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 19:56:01 -0400
Subject: python and applications
In-Reply-To: <9iqf6r0g0r@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEIGKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Alex Martelli]
> I have modest visual impairment (slowly worsening with age) and I
> agree.  But when and if it gets to blindness, I don't know if Python's
> reliance on whitespace/indentation will be a problem -- normal screen
> readers won't help much, I guess it would require a special one that
> understands the significance of indent and dedent.  Perhaps not too
> big a project, but I'm not aware of any such special readers, which
> would seem to indicate a dearth of blind (as opposed to visually
> impaired) Python programmers -- even pretty serious visual problems
> still leave one able to see the block structure/indentation quite well
> (perhaps with some magnification of course, but less than would be
> needed for, say, braces!) -- but total blindness is another issue.

Three years ago to the day, a blind Python user described an Emacs
python-mode extension he wrote to deal with this issue:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/40107

The primary trick appeared to be the code already in pymode that uses the
status line to indicate which block is being closed by a dedent:

    Thus, as I close each block, I hear the block that I am
    closing with utterances of the form
    "closes block while: i<n"
    "closes block def foo: "
    etc.

I don't know how that could help when just *reading* code, although pymode
has lots of Python-savvy navigation commands ("go to nearest-enclosing def",
etc) that could be hooked to a speech driver.




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Wed Jul 18 13:52:08 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:52:08 -0500
Subject: What is happening with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5264@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Can someone tell me what is happening here?  Is it saying my original
directory is not present?  If not, can anyone tell me how to fix this
program?  The program ran fine in windows, and I am enclosing:
1. Results of executing program on Solaris.
2. File on server where program is being executed
3. Program with IP and sign on information changed.

------------------------> Results of executing program
<---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/pythonprograms> ./ftpclient.py
tablespace.list,redologs.list,logfile.list,controlfile.list,dumpdest.list,us
r2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_drsys01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pds
web_indx01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_MECLABTS.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswe
bdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_PCBTRACK.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_rbs
01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_system01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles
_oradata_pdsweb_temp01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_tools01.dbf.Z
,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_users01.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_
pdsweb_VINNIE.dbf.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo03.log.Z,usr2_pdsw
ebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo02.log.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo
01.log.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_control01.ctl.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfile
s_oradata_pdsweb_control02.ctl.Z,usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_control03
.ctl.Z,backup.controlfile,initpdsweb.ora,tnsnames.ora,listener.ora
filename = filename

name = name

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./ftpclient.py", line 16, in ?
    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))
  File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 371, in
storbinary
    conn = self.transfercmd(cmd)
  File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 296, in
transfercmd
    return self.ntransfercmd(cmd, rest)[0]
  File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 278, in
ntransfercmd
    resp = self.sendcmd(cmd)
  File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 229, in
sendcmd
    return self.getresp()
  File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 202, in
getresp
    raise error_perm, resp
ftplib.error_perm: 553
/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb/tablespace.list: No such file or
directory.
pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/pythonprograms>

-----------------> File on sending server
<--------------------------------------------------------------------

pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb> ls
backup.controlfile
controlfile.list
dumpdest.list
initpdsweb.ora
listener.ora
logfile.list
redologs.list
tablespace.list
tnsnames.ora
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_MECLABTS.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_PCBTRACK.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_VINNIE.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_control01.ctl.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_control02.ctl.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_control03.ctl.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_drsys01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_indx01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_rbs01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo01.log.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo02.log.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_redo03.log.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_system01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_temp01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_tools01.dbf.Z
usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_users01.dbf.Z
pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb> 

-------------------> Python program (with sensitive data changed to protect
the innocent) <---------------------------------------------

#!/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/bin/python
import string, os
import ftplib
import glob
filename = os.path.join("usr2", "websoftware", "oraclebackupfiles",
"pdsweb")
listname =
string.join(os.listdir('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb'),',')
print listname
ftp = ftplib.FTP('999.999.999.999') #specify host
ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
ftp.login(user='fudd',passwd='elmer',acct='looney')   # user info
ftp.cwd('/usr2/pdsweb/oraclebackupfiles2/pdsweb/')
for filename in glob.glob('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb/*'):
    name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]
    print "filename = " + 'filename' + "\n"
    print "name = " + 'name' + "\n"
    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit() 



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 09:20:30 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:20:30 +0200
Subject: how to know the end of a file(use readline)
References: <mailman.996580197.11033.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6bb1027th@enews4.newsguy.com>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.996580197.11033.python-list at python.org...
> I use readline to process the whole ,but
> I do not know how to control it,when it
> is the end of the file

f.readline() returns an empty string, '',
when f is at end of line, and in no other
case (when reading an empty line, it
returns '\n': just a special useful case
of the fact that readline does NOT remove
the trailing '\n' from the line it reads).


Alex





From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Wed Jul  4 14:01:07 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:01:07 GMT
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr> <vle6kt8736tsqu498op6srgshmat6ouabf@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b4358e0.33960742@news.iway.fr>

On Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:42:08 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com>
wrote:

>
>>Have someone a clue of something I could have done wrong ?
>
>If you have a C program which embeds Python, you're going to have
>to profile your C program using whatever profiling tools are available
>under your development platform.
>
>>Can't extended python be faster ?
>
>You have verified yet that it's not your C code.
>
>You may be able to profile your Python code, however. Look into the
>"profile" module.
>
>C//
>

I sure profile my C program, but the frame rate is enougth to tell
when there is a problem.

I must confess a part of the problem was in my C code.
The python can handle the 200 iterations, but 800 is too much...

As the manipulations I make on my objects are here really simple, 800
is not that hight. 
It means I can't handle more than 100 object with real
manipulations...

I was hoping some more...

Emmanuel




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 15:24:06 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:24:06 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java (fwd)
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com> <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com> <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com> <200107311422.KAA28982@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9k75se01n2l@enews3.newsguy.com>

Hi Aahz,

<aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:200107311422.KAA28982 at panix2.panix.com...
> Mind if I repost this to another newsgroup?  (alt.polyamory if you're
> curious.)

Not at all, though I'll admit to curiosity about the relevance to
alt.polyamory (I did use to be a regular there, but that was a
LONG time ago -- and anyway, now that Elf posts to
comp.lang.python, there are surely more prominent ex-a.p'ers
than me on c.l.p...?-).


Alex





From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Jul 18 09:34:51 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:34:51 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171620190.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B55907B.206DE96D@lemburg.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> > > I think, that if encoding is not given, it must sillently assume "UNKNOWN"
> > > encoding and do nothing, that is be 8-bit clean (as it is now).
> >
> > To be 8-bit clean it will have to use Latin-1 as fallback encoding
> > since this encoding assures the roundtrip safety (decode to Unicode,
> > then reencode).
> 
> Nope. There must be no encode-decode back. Or it will slow down
> starting Python _scripts_ unnecessary.
> 
> That is why I suggested "unknown" encoding - a safe default
> for those who do not want any back-and-force recodings.

If you want to avoid having to decode and the reencode data
in ther parser, we would have to live with two sets of parsers
in Python -- one for Unicode and one for 8-bit data.

I don't think that anyone would like to maintain those two
sets, so it's basically either go all the way or not move
at all.
 
> > > Otherwise, it will slow down parser considerably.
> >
> > Yes, that could be an issue (I don't think it matters much though,
> > since parsing usually only done during byte-code compilation and
> > the results are buffered in .pyc files).
> 
> No! Scripts are compiled each time they run.
> If this will be implemented, developers will need to do the trick
> of making each script a module and so on. This is not good idea.
> 
> There clearly must be the way to prevent encode-decode. And it would be
> better if only EXPLICITLY given encoding will trigger encode-decode
> mechanism.

That's not true: Python caches byte-code compiled versions of
scripts in .pyc|o files. So the performance problem is really not
all that important.

> > > I also think that if encoding is choosen, there is no need to reencode it
> > > back to literal strings: let them be in Unicode.
> >
> > That would be nice, but is not feasable at the moment (just try
> > to run Python with -U option and see what happens...).
> 
> Then indeed --encoding= is needed with -U ;-)

No, a lot of voluntary work is needed to make the Python standard
lib Unicode compatible !
 
> > > Or am I missing something?
> >
> > It won't switch any time soon... there's still too much work
> > ahead and I'm also pretty sure that the 8-bit string type won't
> > go away for backward compatibility reasons.
> 
> ...and efficiency reasons too. re was slowed down significantly by adding
> Unicode support.

I seriously doubt that. Fredrik (who wrote the sre engine) is an
optimization genius and in some cases even made the sre engine
faster than the string module implementations of e.g. find().
 
> > > >    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
> > > >    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
> > > >    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
> > > >    roundtrip).
> > >
> > > ...as I said, there must be no assumed charset. Things must
> > > be left as is now when no explicit encoding given.
> >
> > This is what the Latin-1 encoding assures.
> 
> I still think something like "raw" is needed...

Latin-1 gives you this "raw" feature.
 
> > > > 4. The encoding used in a Python source file should be easily
> > > >    parseable for en editor; a magic comment at the top of the
> > > >    file seems to be what people want to see, so I'll drop the
> > > >    directive (PEP 244) requirement in the PEP.
> > > >
> > > > Issues that still need to be resolved:
> > > >
> > > > - how to enable embedding of differently encoded data in Python
> > > >   source code (e.g. UTF-8 encoded XML data in a Latin-1
> > > >   source file)
> > >
> > > Probably, adding explicit conversions.
> >
> > Yes, but there are cases where the source file having the embedded
> > data will not decode into Unicode (I got the example backwards:
> > think of a UTF-8 encoded source file with a Latin-1 string literal).
> 
> utf-7 bit for embedded things ;-)
> 
> > Perhaps we should simply rule out this case and have the
> > programmer stick to the source file encoding + some escaping
> > or a run-time recoding of the literal data into the preferred
> > encoding.
> 
> This is probably wise. Python program need not be a
> while Zoo of encodings...

I'll put this into the PEP update.
 
> > > No variant is ideal. The 2nd is worse/best than all
> > > (it depends on how to look at it!)
> > >
> > > Python has no macro directives. In this situation
> > > they could help greatly!
> >
> > We've been discussing these on python-dev, but Guido is not
> > too keen on having them.
> 
> And this is right. I even think encoding information could be EXTERNAL.

No -- how are editors supposed to know about these external
files ?

> For example, directory will need to have "__encodings__.py" file where
> encodings are listed.
> 
> Then, Python if started with some key could check for such file and
> compile modules accordingly.
> 
> If there is not __encodings__.py, then Python proceed as it does now,
> WITHOUT any conversions to and from.
> 
> This will make script-writer happy (no conversion overhead) and those who
> want to write encoding-enabled programs (they could specify
> __encodings__.py)
> 
> I think, this solves most problems.
> 
> > > That "#!encoding" is special case of macro directive.
> > >
> > > May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
> > > at the beginning...
> > >
> > > Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
> > > with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.
> > >
> > > I think, GvR could come with some advice here...
> > >
> > > > Comments are welcome !
> >
> > Thanks for your comments,
> 
> I just hope the realisation of your PEP will not make Python scripts
> running slower ;-) while allowing truly useful i18n functionality.

By the time the PEP will be implemented, CPUs will run at least 50% 
faster than they do now -- this should answer your question ;-)
 
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From donovan at sherbet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:22:00 2001
From: donovan at sherbet.co.uk (Donovan Hide)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:22:00 +0100
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk>

Wow,
    fascinating! The minds of two 'algorthmistas' battling the pros and cons
of there code and techniques. I can't tell you how interesting this is. I
really get the feeling that Python needs a good combinatorics module.
CombPy, maybe?
    If not that, then an extension to NumbPy.
    Anyway,
        until the next issue of DDJ reaches my newsagent, thanks for the
help.
    Donovan Hide.




From rhaper at houston.rr.com  Sat Jul 21 15:05:26 2001
From: rhaper at houston.rr.com (Rod Haper)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:05:26 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j9i19$p96$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B596D95.C87DFFCD@mac.com>
Message-ID: <3B59D276.EAC2B8B9@houston.rr.com>

jorjun wrote:
> 
> Aahz Maruch wrote:
> > i'M aFraId i doN't UnDerStaNd wHy YoU THinK caSE-InsENsitIvitY miGhT bE
> > A gOoD idEA.
> > --
> Currently if I import a module and the identifiers lOoK_lIkE_ThIs
> then I have to precisely follow the ugly conventions in my own code.


You're not really "stuck" with the imported names.  You could use "from
<> import <> as <>" or just assign your own names to the imported
references.  It's extra effort but if it really bugs you enough, you can
assign and use names that you prefer.

-- 
"Okay, okay!  So it works in practice.  But will it work in theory?"


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 23 10:45:08 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:45:08 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <ULW67.22965$B7.3754505@ruti.visi.com>

In article <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>, Terry Reedy wrote:

>Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two arithmetic
>operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
>division.  This confuses some people.

That's life.  The foo[] overloads different operations also:
indexing into a sequence, looking up an element in a
dictionary.

What about the other overloaded math operators like "+", "-",
"*"?

Should "/" behave differently from the others?

Personally, I don't think so.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I know things about
                                  at               TROY DONAHUE that can't
                               visi.com            even be PRINTED!!


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 02:39:21 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:39:21 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net> <3b62459e.609746999@wa.news.verio.net> <3B659D16.5E52DE63@home.net>
Message-ID: <cpitg9zjph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> writes:

> [...] The problem, for me, is that
> 1.0 can't be used as a sequence index. While it may not be know whether
> x//y is an exact value, it IS know that it is an integer value, and
> should therefor be usable as an index. This brings up the usefulness of
> the concept of the inexact integer.

Totally useless IMO -- and wrong.  If it's inexact, that means it could
really be  any number inside some interval around the represented
value, and thus by definition you can't tell whether it is an Integer
at all.

> I'm also not so sure about your above rational: While I do understand
> that the result of x//y may not be an exact number, given that x and/or
> y may not be exact, the question is: does that matter? Acn anyone think
> of a case where they would use // (or floor, or ceil, or round) when it
> would hurt for the final result to be considered exact?

When the width of the inexactness interval is larger than 1, there's
more than one Integer that's the possible result, so we don't know the
result exactly.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 15:47:35 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:47:35 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>
Message-ID: <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> writes:

> I'll just chime in to say that as one who uses Python for
> science/engineering, I would be very unhappy not to be able to define the
> variables h and H to mean two different things.  Engineers often uses
> case to distinguish between the function and it's Fourier transform for
> example.

How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
C++...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 15:41:18 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:41:18 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHIEFNCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Steve Horne]
 ...
> I think you'll find it's the picking of languages where 1/2 = 0.5 that
> has to be done carefully - I can think of Pacal, Modula 2, LISP and -
> taking into account your correction - Perl and JavaScript.

LISP doesn't belong in that list, but members of the Algol family do.

> The last to are enough to prove that your *opinion* is valid,

Which opinion is that?  I haven't said I'm in favor of PEP 238, and indeed I
haven't made up my mind.  I do believe I understand why Guido thinks it's
important, though, and burned some time trying to flesh it out.

> those are not in use to anywhere near the same extent as languages
> like , C++, Java and BASIC.

Already said I don't care what other languages do here, and, yes, of course
that's my opinion -- like yours is yours.




From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Tue Jul 31 07:06:23 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:06:23 +0200
Subject: Python 2.1 distutils swig_cpp and binary installation target dir question
References: <3b647cb1_7@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <9k63fg$2nfq2$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

[posted and mailed]
"Brad Clements" <bkc at Murkworks.com> wrote in message news:3b647cb1_7 at news.newsgroups.com...
> Question 1. Is there any way to specify swig_cpp in the setup.py file? I
> couldn't figure it out
No. You should specify it in the setup.cfg file, which allows to specify
default command line arguments:
-----
[build_ext]
swig-cpp=1
-----
>
> Question 2. I created a binary self-extracting windows package.. It installs
> to <pythonDir>, where I expect it to install to
> <pythonDir/Lib/site-packages> or <pythonDir/Lib>
>
> Is this the correct behavoir, or did I do something wrong?

This is correcr behaviour, although it is likely to change - See PEP250.
If you are running 'python setup.py install' you can override it with
command line options, but not in a self-extrating window package (I assume
you're speaking of bdist_wininst here).

Thomas Heller




From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul  3 11:16:45 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:16:45 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <xll07.7615$B7.1404761@ruti.visi.com>

In article <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8 at posting.google.com>, Russ wrote:

>Just for the record, Mr. Park is publicly posting my private
>replies to him. I guess I should have expected something like
>that from him.

Ignore him.

>I'm sure you all understand that I don't like being called an
>"idiot" for asking a general question about the suitability of
>Python for a certain type of application.

I thought it was a valid and very interesting question.

>You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
>application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a
>critical mode for several years at least, during which time it
>will be thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm
>talking about more testing than you think. It will first be
>used for years as a non-critical back-up for (human)
>controllers before it is ever used as a primary means of
>assuring separation.

My gut feeling is that if the system is done in C or C++ (for
example) it is going to have to use dynamic memory allocation.
Once you've taken that step, I don't think that Python is
inherently more likely to have memory problems, and I think
that Python is inherently _less_ likely to have many other
types of bugs.

If this were a simple, hard-realtime system with response time
requirements in the milliseconds, I'd stay away from Python,
away from C++, and away from dynamic memory allocation.
However, with response time requirements in the hundreds of
milliseconds and a problem domain that probably requires
dynamic memory allocation I think Python would be suitable.

The introspection features could be very useful for automated
testing, as could some simple instrumentation of the memory
management functions.

>> > Which "city am I working at"?  Boy, you really ARE stupid,
>> > aren't you? The GRE score is fact.
>> 
>> It would be helpful to me to know which airport you intend to
>> write this Python code for.

Apparently Mr. Park thinks that ATC is a function of local
airports and they each build their own systems.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  My polyvinyl cowboy
                                  at               wallet was made in Hong
                               visi.com            Kong by Montgomery Clift!


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Mon Jul 30 12:20:37 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 09:20:37 -0700
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <mailman.996205196.16876.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107271023.a5d1328@posting.google.com> <mailman.996282541.32450.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107300820.58f71c93@posting.google.com>

Neil Schemenauer <nas at python.ca> wrote in message news:<mailman.996282541.32450.python-list at python.org>...
> Tom Good wrote:
> > Consider the following:
> > 
> > >>> from __future__ import generators
> > >>> def g():
> > ...     yield 1
> > ...     yield 2
> > ...
> > >>> i = iter(g)
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> > TypeError: iter() of non-sequence
> > >>>
> > 
> > iter(g) doesn't work, but it somehow feels as if it should. 
> 
> What could iter(g) possibly mean?  This seems to be some very weird
> confusion about a function object and the object a function returns.
> Are you surprised when:
> 
>     def one():
>       return 1
> 
>     print one + 2
> 
> does not print 3?
> 
>   Neil

No, I'm not surprised by the result in your example.  And when I stop
and think about it, of course iter(g) doesn't work.  *At a glance*
though, "iter(g)" (where g is a generator) and "iter(i)" (where i is
another iterator) look very similar, but the latter works and the
former is an error.


Tom


From paul at svensson.org  Fri Jul 27 10:04:00 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:04:00 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jrscg$1uf$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>    The names associated with these variations are:
>
>    - Overloaded operator methods:
>
>      __div__(), __floordiv__(), __truediv__();
>
>      __idiv__(), __ifloordiv__(), __itruediv__().

Do we really neead to add __truediv__ and __itruediv__ ?
As far as I can see, the only reason for these would be to let
someone writing their own numeric class explicitly differentiate
between classic division and future division.
Are there really such classes out there that need to be catered to ?
If not, I'd suggest letting __div__ and __idiv__ handle both.

Other than that, I really don't like the term 'true division',
I'm not sure exactly why, but it just doesn't ring...

I liked the proposal to call '/' division, and '//' quotient;
ambiguities can be resolved by using 'classic division' or 'future division'.

	/Paul



From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 02:42:03 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:42:03 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>

Moshe Zadka wrote:

> Quietly? Note that in the 2.2 release, there will be *no* change
> except
> that you *can* use //, and the only change is if you
> "from __future__ import division".
> In 2.3, as I understand it, you'll be able to get warnings out when
> you
> are doing something whose semantics will change.
	...
> Or just running tests with all warnings except this one turned off,
> and going through the pinpointed lines.

Or you could not change it in the first place, eliminate the transition
period requirement, keep Python's integer division operator consistent
with other languages like it already was, not have to worry about the PR
hit it is going to necessarily take ("In Python the meaning of the
builtin operators change every third release!  What a crock"), and
prevent experienced Python programmers from shaking their heads in
confusion and wonder.

I simply cannot believe that the benefit that will be gained will be
worth the price in inconvenience.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.
\__/ Han Suyin
    Erik Max Francis' bookmarks / http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/
 A highly categorized list of Web links.


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:01:36 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:01:36 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <AZg77.25346$EP6.5915842@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Duncan Grisby" <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> wrote in message
news:9jjfts$9k2$1 at pea.uk.research.att.com...
> The thing about this change is that it is different from other
changes
> there have been (that I'm aware of), in that it changes a
fundamental
> part of the language semantics. Switching from the current /
behaviour
> to the new proposal is not the same as _removing_ a feature -- it is
> _changing_ a feature. That is far more insidious.

This is an excellent summary of the essay I wrote two weeks ago
entitled Language Change and Code Breaks, which I have appended below
for those who missed it.  (I know, should start a web page for such
things.)

I am disappointed that the floatist proponents of the division change
have before and since spent more time throwing quasi-religion
dogmatisms at us than dealing with the nitty-gritty issues raised
therein.

[From yesterday:
Guido von Rossum:
" Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil:
 int and float together aren't really two distinct types:"
Paul Foley
"Integer division" isn't division" [restated 4 different ways] ...
Computer-language-related retardation is the problem.
]

===========================================================
LANGUAGE CHANGE AND CODE BREAKS
--with particular reference to Python and recent discussions in
comp.lang.python

Terry J. Reedy, tjreedy at udel.edu
July 10, 2001

Summary: After discussing two generals issues (type and audience), I
particularly look at the effect on new programmers and the effect of
replacement changes.

Types of Change: As in other realms, such as text editing, we can
categorize programming language changes as addition, deletion, and
replacement.  While replacement can be modeled by or reduced  to
deletion
and addition (see Keywords below), replacement in the specific sense
of
changing the meaning of a construct legal both before and after is
qualitatively different in its effect on programmers and code.  It
should
therefore be kept as a separate category.

Audience: Each type of change will have different effects on old and
new
code (defined as that written for the the old and new versions of the
language) when run on the 'wrong' version on the language interpreter.
Programmers will also see the change differently depending on whether
they
learn the language before or after the change .  Existing users who
pay
attention to the change will have to upgrade their knowledge and maybe
their code.  New users who initially learn only the new version of the
language and then read old code or run code on old interpreters
without
backdating their knowledge may be surprised.

Deletions: If a feature is directly deleted, it presumably is rare
used and
not too useful.  When present in code run on a new system, there
should be
a syntax error and the programmer will have to remove it and maybe do
something else.  New users reading old code will seldom see deleted
features.  (I have never, for instance, seen an access statement.)  If
and
when they do, they may ignore it, guess its meaning, or find its
meaning in
old documentation.

Additions: Old code runs fine in new interpreters.  New users will
never
see the new feature they learned in old code.  If they try to use it
with
an old interpreter, they will get an error message and either work
around
its absence or stick with new interpreters.

Keywords:  Addition of a word as a keyword implicitly deletes its
previous
usage as a name.  As long as the legal usages before and after are
disjoint, any wrong usages will be flagged as errors.  This
combination of
deletion and addition is different from replacement in the narrow
sense I
use here.  Example:  The statement 'yield <expression>' is disjoint
from
any current legal use of 'yield' as, for instance, a name for bond
yield.

Replacements: These are the most troublesome changes since they amount
to a
silent code break.  There will be no error message (at least not at
the
point of misinterpretation) when code is run under the wrong
interpreter.
Similarly, there is no reason for a flag to raised in the mind of a
new
user who only knows the new meaning of the construct.

A further complication is that incompatibility is bidirectional.  Old
code
that does not use  a deleted feature and new code that does not use an
added feature can run on both old and new interpreters.  After a
replacement, code must avoid the changed-meaning syntax entirely, in
both
old and new meanings, to achieve the same flexibility.

For various reasons, transitions may take several years before
everyone
upgrades their interpreters to any particular release level.  Last I
knew,
for instance, some Linux distributions still install Python 1.5.2.
Code-breaking replacements probably inhibit ungrades more that
non-code-breaking additions

Example 1 - nested scooping:  As I understand it, the value assigned
to y
in

x = 1
def f():
  x = 'one'
  def g():
    y = x

is changing from 1 to 'one'.  This transition is eased by the fact
that
duplicate intermediate names are currently unnecessary (just change
the
spelling) and rare.  As a transition measure, the compiler can detect
this
usage and emit a warning, strongly suggestion a name change before the
scope-hiding meaning is deleted by being replaced.  As for newcomers,
those
few who really delve into into the advanced topic of nested functions
and
name scoping can also read an included warning about the older
two-level
rule.

Example 2 - integer (int+long) division:  This transition is more
involved
and will be harder even with extra planning.

a. While it is fairly easy to write the future meaning of int/int in
the
current language, using '.0' and float() as people do now, the
currently
possible rewrite of the current meaning so it will remain valid --
divmod(e1,e2)[0]) -- is more complex and slower to run.  Therefore, a
simultaneous (or preceeding) addition of something like infix 'div' is
desirable (and already planned).

b.  Nested scoping applies to all nested functions; its uses are
detectable
at compile time, which makes warnings about deprecated usages easy.
The
change in meaning of e1 / e2 is partial in that it only affects
integer-integer division.  While the case of two literal constants
could be
detected at compile time, detection generally awaits the run-time
dispatching in the function that implements '/'.  A warning mechanism
will
have to include run-time warnings.  A mechanism to turn warnings on
and off
on a per-statement basis would be helpful.

c. Nested scoping was intended to be an addition until someone noticed
the
existence of a foolish-but-legal conflict.  The change in meaning of
integer / integer is a true bidirectional replacement that will
invalidate
actual and not just theoretically possible code.  To make code
cross-compitible, one will generally (without specific program
analysis)
have to avoid all occurrence of integer-integer division in any form,
with
either / or div or with constants or variables.

d. If the change in meaning brought about by a replacement is large,
one
may hope that the uncaught error introduced by a legal but incorrect
cross-usage will bring about an exception sometime later in the
computation.  However, the division change may only change the type of
the
result, which may well change but not crash further computation.  And,
of
course, the value error, if not zero, may be small and similarly hard
to
detect.

e.  Almost everyone who does much of any programming will use division
sometime, so everyone should be taught how to program it.  So this
change
affect beginners and not just advanced programmers.  For years after
the
change, anyone who might use an older system that they do not control,
such
as at a school campus or workplace, should also be taught that
'integer /
integer' used to mean 'interger div integer', and that subtle and
hard-to-detect errors can arise from erroneous cross-usage.





From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Thu Jul  5 18:47:40 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 18:47:40 -0400
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <87hewrkn77.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> writes:

> I thought that python checked local scope for a variable first and if
> it did not find it, it appealed to the local namespace.  What am I missing
> here - it's probably at the end of my nose, but I cannot seem to make sense
> of it...

I presume you meant "appealed to the global namespace".  This makes
you half right.  When _referencing_ a variable Python (sans
nested-scopes) first checks the local scope and then, if it can't find
it, the global.  When _assigning_ a variable however Python always
uses the local scope (I'm not sure what happens with variables
declared as global, but I suspect they live across namespaces), even
if a global variable exists.

For a good example try this code

>>> baz = 5
>>> def foo():
     bar = baz
     baz = 4
>>> foo():
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 2, in foo
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'baz' referenced before assignment

Because Python compiled the function foo() before executing it, and
because 'baz' is assigned in foo(), 'baz' is a local variable.  And
one which has not been assigned yet when it is first used, thus the
error.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Going to school make a person educated, any more than going to a 
garage makes a person a car" Slashdot
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtE7owACgkQjVztv3T8pzvc9ACdFBsfvMyYhWyuknfq7MehjA2f
kpcAn1nGDYygBjKiIqfjv1lwCkbevu+V
=AHP4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 19:18:00 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:18:00 GMT
Subject: Tests for calendar module
Message-ID: <3B60A388.C6E11F75@yahoo.com>

I've written a first draft of a test for the calendar module, using doctest
according to the suggestions in Lib/test/README from CVS.  I'd like to submit
these tests for the python distribution, but I have a couple of questions:

1) Who maintains calendar.py? Lots of contributors listed in the cvs logs.

2) I found a couple of possible bugs in calendar.py. Who should I provide
details and patches to?

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul  5 14:55:40 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:55:40 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
Message-ID: <sgLR7kKkXIkY092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote
|I'm not sure how you mean slower, but I tested just now to see, and this is
|the fastest of the four.
|-   500-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda
|        50 :    3.74         3.60         0.70         0.75

FWIW, the version I presented was not my first thought.  I first wrote:

    def flt_lmbda2(iters):
        for i in iters:
            filter(lambda c:c in '0123456789', '(123)/456-7890')

But before I pressed the "send" button, the variant:

    def flt_lmbda(iters):
        for i in iters:
            filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')

Seemed a bit more clear, and a few characters shorter.

However, applying timings with the first thought included gives:

-   500-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda   flt_lmbda2
         5 :    0.77         0.74         0.10         0.14         0.10
        10 :    1.54         1.50         0.21         0.29         0.19
        50 :    7.71         7.44         1.04         1.44         1.00

Which puts me back with a tiny speed advantage over all comers :-).
(But apparently with slower CPU than Emile... time to start saving).

Yours, Lulu...




From m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:35:55 2001
From: m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk (Mark Robinson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:35:55 +0100
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B6127EB.2080002@herts.ac.uk>

Thanks for the help guys, sorry I didn't include the code (what can I 
say, duh). Anyway I did manage to fix the problem but I am still kinda 
interested as to why I was getting that previous behaviour. I am running 
python 2.1 under red hat 7, and python 2.1.1 under windows NT and had 
the same problem under both. Here is the code:

def checkValidData(bsite):
	repeats = ['AAAA', 'CCCC', 'GGGG', 'TTTT']
	for x in bsite:	#check new bsite contains valid charactors
		if(x is not 'A' and x is not 'G' and
			x is not 'C' and x is not 'T' ):
			return 0
	for x in repeats:
		if (string.find(bsite, x) != -1):
			return 0
	return 1

Changing where I test if x is A, C, G or T by using the != test rather 
than 'is not' solved the problem, and I guess I may have been using it 
inappropriately, but I still don't see why it would have working 
correctly first run and then incorrectly when working from the .pyc file.

Blobby

Mark Robinson wrote:

> can anyone shed some light on the mysterious behaviour of my byte 
> compiled files. I am currently working on a python script which analyses 
> patterns in a DNA sequence. I have a function which checks a pattern (a 
> substring of approx 6 chars) to ensure only valid charactors are 
> present. When I first run this program it runs fine, but if I 
> immediately rerun the program (i.e using the pre-byte compiled file) it 
> finds all patterns non-valid. If I delete the .pyc file between runs 
> this problem does not occur. Can anyone explain what is happening here 
> to me and how to prevent it?
> 
> blobby



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul  7 13:54:49 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:54:49 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <994489633.560.16933.l7@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4714A9.7778.1925A5@localhost>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote, in part:
> Because [MS is] the largest software company in the world, by the
> nature of things they come in for a bashing now and then. I hand out
> my share, mostly in fun, but sometimes with a real point.
> 
> In this case, as you and another poster have pointed out, it was my
> misunderstanding.

Well, yes and no, eh.

I'm grateful to "Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> for telling me 
about the following page.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q161/8/73.ASP

It's title is "HOWTO: Mark MFC Controls Safe for Scripting/Initialization" 
and it contains the following advisory, "Please keep in mind that a control 
should only be marked as safe if it is, in fact, safe."

I could hardly believe my eyes when first I read that. Duh, sound advice 
from the world's biggest.



From hfoffani at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 14:24:43 2001
From: hfoffani at yahoo.com (Hernan M. Foffani)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:24:43 GMT
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de> <m3bsm1hyje.fsf@kepler.ibp.de> <9k6mev$2vg4b$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de> <mailman.996601079.13064.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010731142443.815$L2@newsreader.com>

skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) wrote:
>     >>> ... is there any way to search the Python docs for a specific
>     >>> function/module etc? Or is there any resource on the web that
>     >>> provides a searchable interface?
>
>     Rajarshi> Another post in this thread mentioned http://web.pydoc.org
>     - Rajarshi> looks pretty useful
>
> On Alta Vista (and probably a
> number of other search engines as well) you can search for something like
>
>     options url:www.python.org/doc/current/lib

Or, if you've got a Windows workstation you can download the docs in
Microsoft HTML Help format.

http://www.orgmf.com.ar/condor/pytstuff.html

And there is a bigger package with some more interesting stuff.

Regards,
-Hernan

-- 
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
                    Usenet Newsgroup Service


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 19 02:55:31 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:55:31 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: python newbie question
In-Reply-To: <9j5u0m+jpri@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107190052440.15405-100000@bms>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 donmalla at yahoo.co.in wrote:

> Hi All,
> I am a newbie to python. I am following the "Diving into Python
> tutorial".
> However I am having a problem with the for loop
> Here is the problem:
>
> >>> vec = [2,4,6]
> >>> [3*x for x in vec]
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
<...>
> Please help me. I am using Python 1.5 on Windows 2000.

You need Python 2.0 or newer to use [list comprehensions].


-Bruce




From kragen at dnaco.net  Sun Jul  1 07:17:31 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:17:31 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

In article <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>MDK wrote:
>> 1. Excluding writing device drivers the answer is a clear yes.
>
>Here's how I would summarize it. Programs have three main parts: getting
>data (including user events) into the program, doing computation on it,
>and getting data out of the program (including user feedback).
>
>All proper programming language are equivalent on the "doing
>computation" part.

Well, they're equivalent in the theoretical sense that what you can
express in one, you can express in another.  But there are some major
practical differences:
* some languages are much easier to express some computations in; Python is
  much easier than C++ or C to express almost any computation in.  This
  is a topic one could write about for pages upon pages, but the
  difference is a matter of small factors: typically 5 to 20.
* different languages have different implementations; the same
  computation running on different implementations (of the same
  language or of different languages) can use vastly different
  quantities of memory and CPU time.  Factors of 20 to 100 in CPU time
  usage are commonplace; factors of 100,000 in CPU time usage are not
  unheard of.  Likewise, factors of 10 in memory usage are commonplace,
  and factors of 100 in memory usage are not unheard of.

In particular, Python programs tend to be between 10 and 1000 times as
slow as equivalent programs written in C, use between 1 and 20 times as
much RAM as the C version, take about 1/10 the programming time as the
C version, and contain about 1/10 the bugs of the C version does.

Given these tradeoffs, people tend to implement simpler programs in C
than in Python when faced with the same problem, which often results in
solving the problem less efficiently.

>But the input and output parts depend on the environment that the
>program is runing in.

Yes.

>You could write an operating system that could only be directly
>programmed in Python.

I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
despite implementing operating systems in all four.  I think some of
the Burroughs machines required special god privileges to run the
assembler, but there was still an assembler.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  1 02:18:51 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 02:18:51 -0400
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <3B3EB7A7.533B8389@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEELDKLAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Paul Prescod, with many good gripes about the libraries]
> ...
> I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
> address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
> controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.

Guido knows this, if for no other reason than that Eric Raymond keeps
reminding him of it.  PEP 2 is supposed is the first step on this path.

although-it's-a-long-path-and-tiny-steps-so-far-ly y'rs  - tim




From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul  9 21:44:32 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:44:32 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
	 <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <9icbft$okp$1@panix6.panix.com> <L3DTqUAyejS7Ew2k@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4A5E00.BDB4245A@engcorp.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> In article <9icbft$okp$1 at panix6.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com>
> writes
> >"Who killed Cock Robin?
> >I, said the sparrow
> >With my bow and my arrow
> >I killed Cock Robin."

> here in London the sparrow population (still officially a pest) has
> crashed by 95%, probably the PSU having killed all the Norwegian Blues
> is overloading sparrows with portable nuclear devices.

I feel sure you meant to say "swallow".  The airspeed of a laden
swallow is greater than that of a laden sparrow. (I think... -- Waa!)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 07:25:38 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:25:38 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <9imlrj011du@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
    ...
> >#!/usr/contrib/bin/python  (the python path)
> >import MySQLdb
> >print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n" (so the browser doesn't choke).
>
> Should be ok so far.

Except there's a newline too many, because you have two explicitly
specified and an extra one is implicitly added by the print statement.
This can't be the cause of your problem here (I think), I'm just
pointing it out in case it DOES turn out to be a problem for someone.


Alex





From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Mon Jul 30 17:54:21 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:54:21 +1000
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com> <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com>
Message-ID: <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com>

Sorry Tom, Just can't let the statement "The ideal language would support
both strong and weak typing." go by :-). As soon as you allow "both" (and
damned if I know how you would do that! :-)), then your typical C/C++
programmer (unfair there, I should say "programmer") will choose the loose
typing everytime, because he "knows" what he means, even if the compiler
can't work it out, doesn't he? :-) So all the benefits that you just
acknowledged for strong typing are lost :-).

I have used a very strongly typed language (Ada), I haven't tried Haskall or
Ocaml as one repondent mentioned, but I claim that with Ada, 95-98% of
"normal" bugs are out of my programs once I get the compiler to produce
executable code. The only bugs that are left are the purely logic bugs. Once
you have used a truly strongly typed language, then you would never consider
doing a large job (multiple programmers) in anything else. I love and use
Python, but anything more than a one man job would see me turfing it for a
better suited language. Sometimes I think that even the idea of using Python
may be a mistake because the number of hours I have spent chasing down code
bugs in my Python programs that would have been caught by a decent typed
language compiler are too numerous to count :-).

Peter



"Tom" <tom-list at home.com> wrote in message news:3b65a820_7 at Usenet.com...
>
> "Christopher Barber" <cbarber at curl.com> wrote in message
> news:psog0besc97.fsf at jekyll.curl.com...
> > <brueckd at tbye.com> writes:
> >
> > > In most jobs I've used C/C++ or Java and for me the stronger the
typing
> > > rules the more problems (and in turn bugs) it caused.
> >
> > I am really surprised to hear this.  My experience has been the
opposite.
>
> I agree with you.  Strong typing can be very useful.  Its better to have
the
> compiler catch an error than to catch it during unit testing.
>
> The ideal language would support both strong and weak typing.
>
> Tom.
>
> > >  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> > > values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> > > create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them
in
> > > an array or Vector.
> >
> > You seem to be complaining about the lack of tuples, not static
> type-checking
> > per-se.
> >
> > > Strong typing seems to prevent a very small class of errors at great
> > > expense, and none of the errors it prevents should escape good testing
> > > (which you should have anyway).
> >
> > I am all for unit testing, but I know from experience that it is
> *extremely*
> > difficult to comprehensively test a code unit, and virtually impossible
if
> you
> > do not have a good code coverage tool.  If the compiler can catch a type
> error
> > for me at compile-time, that is at least one less unit test I have to
> write.
> >
> > I agree that static type declarations add complexity to a language, but
> there
> > is a significant body of developers that really appreciate what they can
> do
> > for you.  It would really be nice if Python could add some sort of
> optional
> > type declarations.  It should be technically feasible.
> >
> > - Christopher
>
>
>
> Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>     ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>                 http://www.usenet.com




From revyakag at umdnj.edu  Wed Jul  4 19:22:15 2001
From: revyakag at umdnj.edu (Andrey Revyakin)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:22:15 -0400
Subject: More
Message-ID: <3B43A527.ED7FCBF@umdnj.edu>

Actually it does look like there's something bad about the way the
machine is configured. Even if I simply
make a test  like this:

import cgi
cgi.test()

...and try to send data to this test.cgi file by POST, it generates the
same type of error. If I send data by GET or don't send anything it does
not generate it. But I still don't know what needs to be done on th
server to fix this.

  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 838, in test
    form = FieldStorage()   # Replace with other classes to test those
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 502, in __init__
    self.read_urlencoded()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 574, in read_urlencoded
    qs = self.fp.read(self.length)
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor

Andrey.



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul  3 21:19:44 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 04:19:44 +0300
Subject: AttributeError: 'getopt' module has no attribute 'GetoptError'
References: <Xns90D3ECC92390Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <ku7kxp32z3.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <Xns90D3ECC92390Dgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.152>,
gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren) writes:

| I use Python 2.1 on Win98.  Try to use the getopt module, but get
| the error in the subject line. What's wrong?

your test program isn't called "getopt.py" by any chance?

  -- erno



From djc at object-craft.com.au  Sun Jul 22 00:18:09 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 14:18:09 +1000
Subject: Sybase module 0.28 (Brown Paper Bag) released
References: <m3pubqd3i7.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <m3bsmd1try.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> writes:

Dave> What is it: The Sybase module provides a Python interface to the
Dave> Sybase relational database system. The Sybase package supports
Dave> almost all of the Python Database API, version 2.0 with
Dave> extensions.

Huh!?!

I didn't post that (I posted the original a long time ago - but this
isn't it).

Looking at the path, who are onlynews.com?

Path: vic.nntp.telstra.net!intgwlon.nntp.telstra.net!newsfeeds.ihug.co.nz!news.xtra.co.nz!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!news-out.nibble.net!hub1.nntpserver.com!cyclone-sjo1.usenetserver.com!news-out-sjo.usenetserver.com!newsin.onlynews.com!newsout.onlynews.com!news1.onlynews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 11:56:30 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 15:56:30 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <jt4oltg3ekdlig096677p295f7mnbumteu@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9loi9e.2il.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:50:51 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:

> It's not a different operation on the same data. It's the same
> operation on a different datatype.

No, it's different operation on the same data, as long as we agree that
"same data" means "Python's '==' holds".
    3.0 == 3
    2.0 == 2
    3.0/2.0 != 3/2

> You might as well claim floating point addition is different from
> integer addition - that also requires a different algorithm and gives
> a different result.

They give the same result, except a very small rounding error
sometimes, and except where the integer addition doesn't give any
result because it overflows. If x and y are integers, then
float(x+y) == float(x)+float(y), with disclaimers above.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From trhoffend at mediaone.net  Thu Jul 19 09:54:37 2001
From: trhoffend at mediaone.net (Thomas Hoffend)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:54:37 GMT
Subject: How to change Tkinter Label widget text without global variable in a class?
References: <ZtB57.5672$X6.251588@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <xEB57.5707$X6.251718@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>

Never mind, I figured it out as soon as I graduated to list boxes.  Silly
me, here is the new code snippet:

....
      # Put some text under the button to show the path
          self.PathStr = fullpath
          self.label1 = Label(frame, text=self.PathStr)
          self.label1.pack()

     # The class will store the full path:
     PathStr = fullpath

     # Here is a function to go up one directory - eventually (right now it
just manipulates the path name):
     def go_up_one(self):
         print "Going Up!"
          self.PathStr = (os.path.dirname(self.PathStr))
          print self.PathStr
          self.label1['text']=self.PathStr
...

"Thomas Hoffend" <trhoffend at mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:ZtB57.5672$X6.251588 at typhoon.mn.mediaone.net...
>
> I am new to Python and working on learning Tkinter.
>
> I ordered some of the books recommended on the Python web site, and also
> have been going
> through the online tutorial on Tkinter and reading old newgroup articles.
> There is one point which
> I found that sort of bugs me, and that is I can't figure out how to change
a
> Label widget text
> without using some sort of global variable.  It seems that declaring a
> global variable inside a class
> is not the best thing to do, especially if there is the possibility that
you
> will create multiple instances of
> the class (unless maybe I don't understand the scope of the global
> variable - is it
> global just inside the class?).  So is there some way to change the label
> text without a global
> variable?  For example:
>
> #
> # Script to pop up the current directory name in a window and go up one
> directory;
> #     I hope to turn this into a directory selector.
> #
>
> from Tkinter import *
> import os
> import os.path
>
> path = os.path.abspath('.')
> fullpath = os.path.normpath(path)
>
> class mywidget:
>     #
>     def __init__(self, master):
>
>     frame = Frame(master)
>     frame.pack()
>
>     # Make a button to go up one directory (well, at least manipulate a
> string with the path name for now):
>     self.upbutton = Button(frame, text="Up", command=self.go_up_one)
>     self.upbutton.pack(side=TOP)
>
>     # Put some text under the button to show the path:
>     global vCurrentPath
>     vCurrentPath = StringVar()
>     label1 = Label(frame, textvariable=vCurrentPath)
>     label1.pack()
>     vCurrentPath.set(self.PathStr)
>
>     # The class will store the full path:
>     PathStr = fullpath
>
>     # Here is a function to go up one directory - eventually (right now it
> just manipulates the path name):
>     def go_up_one(self):
>         print "Going Up!"
>         self.PathStr = (os.path.dirname(self.PathStr))
>         print self.PathStr
>         vCurrentPath.set(self.PathStr)
>
> root = Tk()
> app = mywidget(root)
> root.mainloop()
>
>




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:03:15 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:03:15 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
 <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <UuxEMIARGKY7Ew1w@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <3B60AEAD.CB287C47@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <UW1ECVADBSY7EwWj@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B60AEAD.CB287C47 at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen
<peter at engcorp.com> writes
.....
>The difference in readability (and thus ease of maintenance and
>ease of developing robust code) is sufficiently large to outweigh
>any performance differences.
>
>Obviously, the question of whether Python wins or loses, against
>Perl or any other language, is largely a matter of opinion. 
>As long as the performance is not an order of magnitude slower
>for my kind of application, I have zero reason to look enviously
>at Perl users...
>
I don't disagree on readability, but given that the scripties can do
perl already and the result is often faster python won't get a look in
at the sort of mundane tasks in web serving/shell scripting etc.
-- 
Robin Becker


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 12 19:25:13 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 19:25:13 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <9if3fv$8r65@interserv.etn.com> <wkzoaaf53m.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <uitgxybl2.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

phawkins at connact.com writes:

> >>>>> "CM" == Chris McMillan <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> writes:
> 
> CM> Thank you everyone for your imput!!  On a side note:  I would have loved to
> CM> use bash, sed, etc, but unfortunately I'm forced to use a Windows NT
> CM> machine.  I just thought this might be an excellent python exercise since
> CM> I'm in the process of learning it.
> 
> So get cygwin -- http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/

Seconded, thirded, ad infinitum ... I had to switch to an NT
environment (totally Unix before that) when coming to my current job
and I don't know where I'd be without Cygwin.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 17:50:15 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:50:15 -0400
Subject: defining classes within loops?
References: <roy-10E6A4.08233827072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <un15qm488.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

> The documentation for the "continue" statement says:
> 
> > continue may only occur syntactically nested in a for or while loop,
> > but not nested in a function or class definition
> 
> Just out of curiosity, how many people have ever written a function or 
> class definition nested inside a loop?  Seems like sort of a strange thing 
> to do, although I suppose it might be useful in some situations.

I personally haven't, but the function definition method would
certainly fit in with some of the threads about using a named function
close to invocation instead of lambda.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Jul 29 09:11:57 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 13:11:57 GMT
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com> <Xns90ED38309C442cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <3B63973B.490D4B08@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED5DA29D6E3gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

Peter Hansen wrote: 

[snip]

> There is at least one situation where import in a function is very
> useful, and that is to delay execution of the import.  If the first
> module is imported by another, and all of its import statements are
> at the top, each import executes at that time, slowing down loading
> of the first module.  If one of the imported modules is needed only
> in one of the functions, which may or may not be called, putting 
> the import statement in the function will postpone (perhaps avoid)
> the import and improve responsiveness.
 
It's also very useful in some circular import situations.

Circular imports are fine where both modules use the "import <module>"
form of import. They fail when the 2nd module wants to grab a name
out of the first ("from module import name") and the import is at
the top level. That's because names in the 1st are not yet available,
(the first module is busy importing the 2nd).

As above, this is a sensible solution only if the use of the imported
module is confined to the one function.

- Gordon



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Sat Jul  7 03:48:17 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:48:17 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: SRE vs PRE: speed
In-Reply-To: <E1q17.8496$e5.1109140@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107071144520.731-100000@phd.fep.ru>

Hello. Thank you for response.

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> Oleg Broytmann wrote:
> > My company doen't want to switch from python 1.5.2 to 2.0+ - our CTO is
> > very disappointed with SRE speed. SRE is 3-4 times lsower.
>
> > Any plans to make it faster?
>
> sure.

   Nice!

> but the priority this far has been "match" and "search", not
> "sub".  change your benchmark to use "search" or "findall",
> and you'll find that SRE is 5-10 times faster than PRE.

   Ok, we'll see.

> and you can easily make your code faster without having
> to wait for an upgrade: just use the string.replace function
> instead.  it's about 15 times faster than PRE on this one...
> (25 times faster if you use unicode strings ;-)

   It is not that easy. We really use re in our programs, and what is more,
we use other libraries that use re heavily (mxDateTime, for example). Our
programs are much slower with Python 2.0 comparing to 1.5.2, and profiling
revealed it is due to re.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 20 14:29:38 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:29:38 -0400
Subject: Python 2.2 alpha - generators test
In-Reply-To: <m62gltsov3nn6jiuhgk03u1ul0831gv60k@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEMMKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Steve Horne]
> I've been playing with the Python 2.2 alpha, found it to be pretty
> reliable so far, and I've fallen in love with the iterators and
> generators. However, I did find what I think is a problem in the
> test_generators.py (sorry if the filenames slightly wrong) file.

By definition, if test_generators.py passes, there are no problems <wink>.

> I was looking at the 2**i * 3**j * 5**k problem, and decided to try my
> own approach. I reached a point where I needed essentially a
> duplicate-removing priority queue (if such a thing exists) but I
> couldn't be bothered revising my heap theory so temporarily I decided
> to just merge the new items into a simple ordered list.
>
> I remembered a generator called merge or xmerge or something, and
> decided to borrow that to get the initial version running quickly.
>
> Trouble is, it didn't work at all.
>
> Looking back at the merge function, I realised that when either one of
> the input generators is exhausted the generator terminates immediately
> - it does not pass on the remaining items from the other generator. In
> fact, if one of the input generators ends immediately (empty list), no
> items will be output at all irrespective of the number of items the
> other generator could generate.
>
> I'm not sure of the implications in the algorithm it was used in
> (which I didn't fully understand), but it is certainly incorrect for
> merging two ordered sequences - which is what it appeared to be - and
> is certainly what caused my problems.
>
> Is this a real bug, or just a case of me jumping to daft conclusions
> about what the generator was meant to do?

The merge in test_generators was specifically written for the test case at
hand.  It assumes both input streams are:  (a) unbounded; and, (b)
non-decreasing.  When programming with infinite streams (the appropriate way
to view this part of the test), #a is an utterly conventional assumption.
Indeed, one of the joys of working with unbounded streams is that you don't
have to clutter up your logic with termination tests.  You *do* have to
worry about whether stream algorithms can always make progress, and #b isn't
actually strong enough on its own to guarantee that.  But it's a test case,
not a stream tutorial <wink>.




From nospam at mega-nerd.net  Tue Jul 17 07:25:09 2001
From: nospam at mega-nerd.net (Erik de Castro Lopo)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:25:09 GMT
Subject: Bug in Python DNS module
References: <3B535691.96BDB5E3@mega-nerd.net> <3B53751F.4CA0DC4@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3B54208B.77B5163E@mega-nerd.net>

Michael Str?der wrote:
> 
> Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> >
> > A couple of days ago I asked for and received a link to a Python DNS
> > module. I have since found a bug in the ParseResolvConf() functions.
> > [..]
> > I'm not sure who to send it to so I'm posting it here.
> 
> Erik, thanks for submitting this fix.
> 
> I've included it into my version of the DNS module. 

I'd be interested in seeing what you have.

> I wrote Anthony
> Baxter who maintained the version I grabbed and modified but no
> response so far what to do with the module. If nothing happens
> during the next two or three weeks I will probably upload it to a
> SourceForge project.

That would be a good idea.
 
> If anybody knows something about the license let me know.

Would be nice to know wouldn't it. I'm in Australia so I might try and 
track the author down.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo     nospam at mega-nerd.com      (Yes its valid)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"The earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer mind parents ...and it is evident that the end of
the world is approaching fast." -- Assyrian Tablet Engraved in 2800 B.C.


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:52:26 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:52:26 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <cp8zh922at.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> writes:

> Lately I've been consulting on Wall Street, and it turns out that in
> the computations done in that universe, there is a great need for
> non-float decimal types, such as your example about 0.98 being used as
> a price.
> 
> Accountants and their kin want ledgers, positions, etc. to balance to
> the penny (or centavo, or whatever is the smallest fractional currency
> in a given country).  This can only be accomplished using decimal
> arithmetic ... like Bignums with implied decimal places.

I think there are two variations here.  You can use binary BinNums
with an implied decimal point, e.g. the tuple <314, 2> might represent
3.14 and <4, 0> might represent 4.  Or you can actually use decimal or
packed decimal as the storage format.  The latter is probably a bit
slower than binary and slightly less storage-efficient, but has a huge
advantage for I/O conversion (no need to divide to print the number).
If you don't do a lot of computation but you do a lot of I/O that can
be a huge advantage.

If all you need is to make sure your pennies add up, binary is fine.
If your app is I/O intensive, decimal may be better.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Thu Jul 26 09:59:47 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:59:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Submodules in dynamic modules?
In-Reply-To: <20010726084732.A28949@strakt.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107260951540.376-100000@localhost>


On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Martin Sjgren wrote:

> Is there a standardized way to use submodules in a dynamic module written
> in C? I have a module (foo) that should have a few submodules in it, foo
> by itself won't contain much at all, but it's nice to group things up in
> submodules, so I could do
> 
> from foo import bar
> 
> or
> 
> from foo import bar, baz
> 
> The way I'm doing it right now is that I've more or less copied the source
> code from Py_InitModule4() to set things up, and then insert the module
> object into the dictionary.

I don't know if there's a standard way and I don't know if it's better,
but what I have done is to define the macro:

#define ADD_MODULE(x)     if (-1 == \
    PyModule_AddObject( m, (x), PyImport_ImportModule((x))))  return NULL


And in Carbonmodule.c (for MacOSX) where I have a whole bunch of these
submodules, I have:

   m = Py_InitModule("Carbon",CarbonMethods );

   (void) initWin();
   ADD_MODULE("Win");
   (void) initMenu();
   ADD_MODULE("Menu");
   (void) initEvt();
   ADD_MODULE("Evt");
   (void) initDlg();
   ADD_MODULE("Dlg");

    ... 


This was done because there were problems getting the mac toolbox 
modules to link as separate  shared libs on OSX because of cross
linkages between the modules. 

It was done this way so that, not only would 
"from Carbon import Evt" work, but so that all of the
sub-modules would go into sys.modules, and after an initial
"import Carbon", other imports like "import Evt" unqualified
by the Carbon module would also work, so all previous Mac
"classic" toolbox modules would still work as long as an
"import Carbon" was done sometime before -- possibly in site.py. 


-- Steve Majewski





From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Fri Jul 27 02:36:48 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:36:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <9jqi0m$5oe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107270233100.319-100000@localhost>


On 27 Jul 2001, Paul Svensson wrote:

> 
> No need to cover cases that are clearer expressed
> without involving a list comprehensions at all.
> 
> fib()[:N], I would assume works.
> 

Nope!

Generators don't implement __getitem__ or any of the other
sequece methods ( __len__, ... ) . 

You could, however, define a generator class that implements
__getitem__, et.al.  as well as next. 

-- Steve Majewski





From sill at optonline.net  Fri Jul 27 14:19:22 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:19:22 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:09:06 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
>     The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
>     is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
>     argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
>     zero.  

When is 0 different from -0?

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 03:59:03 2001
From: tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk (Toby Dickenson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:59:03 +0100
Subject: Version numbers in traceback
References: <5nitltsbrurir59906mbdtectsoah2ppcc@4ax.com> <j4vgkhgkqr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <objvltk6lv8vmsuk2e7lurv7u4qolt5f1f@4ax.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

>Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:
>
>> Is there a standard way for a module to register its version number so that it is reported by
>> traceback or other debugging tools.
>> 
>> I thought something nice and simple like 
>> 
>> _Module_Version_ = '10.5C'
>> 
>> would be nice.
>
>The standard constant for a module version is __version__. However,
>there is no way to integrate it into a traceback. Instead, debugging
>tools would need to find out the module of each function in the
>traceback themselves (which sometimes cannot be done), and then access
>the __version__ if desired. I don't think that the traceback module
>should fetch __version__, though.

Zope already does something similar; if a function has a local
variable __traceback_info__ then this is included as an extra line in
the traceback. I find this *very* handy.



Toby Dickenson
tdickenson at geminidataloggers.com


From ajd111 at york.ac.uk  Tue Jul 24 12:41:11 2001
From: ajd111 at york.ac.uk (Anthony J Doggett UG)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:41:11 +0100
Subject: 2.0b2: SystemError: frexp() result out of range
Message-ID: <vktpuaqnuu0.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk>

Please, if I were to ask nicely for our local installation of python to
be upgraded, would the bug shown below to go away?

What's the best way to get around it?
(Alas, binary mode is a must.)

Thanks,
  Anthony.

> python
Python 2.0b2 (#1, Oct  9 2000, 18:12:36) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cPickle
>>> f = open('delme', 'w')
>>> cPickle.dump(float('inf'), f, 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
SystemError: frexp() result out of range

-- 
Anthony Doggett
*** Do you want quality or choice? ***


From esr at thyrsus.com  Thu Jul 12 20:04:23 2001
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:04:23 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] [development doc updates]
In-Reply-To: <20010712235043.5A42D2892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from fdrake@acm.org on Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 07:50:43PM -0400
References: <20010712235043.5A42D2892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010712200423.A13553@thyrsus.com>

Fred L. Drake <fdrake at acm.org>:
> The development version of the documentation has been updated:
> 
>     http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/
> 
> Lots of small updates.
> 
> Added Eric Raymond's documentation for the XML-RPM module added to
> the standard library.

Calling the effbot!  Calling the effbot!  Fredrik, please proofread 
my stuff and fill in any important bits you think are missing.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
	-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.



From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 05:05:53 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:05:53 +0100
Subject: Compiling
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF3A@intrepid>

> From:	Soup-a-Stu [SMTP:stupot999 at hotmail.com]
> I am very new to Python and i need a bit of help with compiling my stuff.
> i'm using windows ME, and the latest version of Python.
 
Python can't be compiled as such, but I have found that py2exe (here
<http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/>) gives the result that
most people want when they *say* that they want a compiler.

In conjunction with Inno setup (here
<http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm>), you can go from a Python script to
a Windows setup program. Is this what you need?

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 09:41:07 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 15:41:07 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> (GvR) writes:

GvR> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
GvR> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
GvR> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
GvR> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
GvR> routine.  

This is not true. Algol 60 was case-insensitive from the beginning. By
design, as Algol 60 was designed the way it is in spite of the difficulties
it would give its implementors.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:27:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:27:11 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

> # default setting
> precision 0    # everything behaves as it does now
> print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
> print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714
> 
> precision 1    # all calculations yield 1 decimal point precision interim
> results
> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places
> 
> precision 2
> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.28, ie to precision 2 decimal places
> 
> precision 3
> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.285, ie to precision 3 decimal places
> 
> This seems to me to break no existing code other than where precision is
> currently used as a label, and allows us to teach others, when they get
> stung by unexpected results, that they need to set precision appropriately.
> Once explained, integer division would not be a surprise to newbies, nor
> would the precision of floating point be lost to those who understand and
> benefit from its use.  And those of us that just want to write business
> accounting applications will be able to set precision 2 at the top of each
> module and be done with it.

Your examples don't show what should happen in this example:

  precision 0
  x = 2/7
  precision 4
  print x

In other words, is the precision a property of the printing or a
property of the value stored?

There are lots of other ways to get this effect for printing ("%.4f"%x
comes to mind); if you intended the effect to apply to computation
results, there are questions about the scope of the calculation.  If I
write

  precision 3
  x = f()	# some function that uses int division

should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
statement?

Etc., etc.

This is exactly why I was asking you to write a PEP.  I don't mean
that you have to write an implementation.  (Despite the seeming
requirement in PEP 2, that's not a requirement before a PEP is
accepted for review -- that's only required before a standard PEP is
finally approved for inclusion in the language.  There are plenty of
PEPs without a shred of implementation.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 09:36:36 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:36:36 -0700
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net> <3B65FD2B.39BA0A95@engcorp.com> <CE671DDD22B40C3E.25CDBEE912BDD9F9.C0CD28D28A68C3E3@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B66B464.B60B8C2C@ActiveState.com>

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
>...
> I confess I posted a bit disingenuously here.
> My scant contact with WAP has given me no
> reason to doubt that it's diving rapidly to
> extinction, as Andrew Odlyzko describes in
> <URL: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/ >.
> Thanks to a correspondent for offering me this
> URL.  Note that PLENTY of other apparently-
> knowledgeable people (Clay Shirky, for
> example), reinforce this judgment.  Anyway,
> my real intent was to expose as delicately
> as possible my surprise that Paul would use
> WAP in his illustrations of language growth.

I was trying to make the point (admittedly obliquely) that any
random-seeming technology could be the next killer platform. Maybe even
a resuscitated from the dead WAP! Who would have thought that Unix could
come back from the brink of death to compete toe to toe with Microsoft's
next millenium OS. Remember the Byte cover?

If it was obvious what the next big platform was we'd just port Python,
buy stock in Zope.com, ride the wave and retire to Tahiti. But more
likely it will be something that we initially think is kind of weird
that some weird-thinking hacker invents a new programming language for.

Seriously, I don't expect a comeback from WAP but I really don't know
the name of the real wireless platform of the future. Symbian? Windows
WE?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  8 15:41:24 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:41:24 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <ge7hktsqvsqu8n87shns7os99co09nmgk2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107082340320.22080-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Ben Wolfson wrote:

>Pah!  Unlambda
>(http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/programs/unlambda/) is the only
>option for *true* simplicity and ease of use!

brrr... especially the later!

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 08, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The days of the digital watch are numbered" _/




From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 08:41:09 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 07:41:09 -0500
Subject: Encryption and python?
References: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <3B4EB456.5A315CF9@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <m2vgkxvw62.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> writes:

> Greg Copeland wrote:
> > 
> > I've been browsing around for a while now trying to come up with
> > "the" python encryption library that I can make use of.
> 
> This is a very general question. What are you looking for?
> - Low-level algorithms (hashes and encryption)
> - Crypto Protocols (e.g SSL or S/MIME)
> - Key stores
> ...
> 
> There's also a mailing list (currently very low volume):
> http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/python-crypto.html
> 
> Ciao, Michael.

Fair enough.  I'm looking for low-level algorithms for public
key exchange, some encryption, digital signatures and hashes.

Greg


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 21:43:57 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 02:43:57 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls92t.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:46:15 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>(2) A command line option to change division semantics.  I propose
>    -Dnew to make the new division semantics the default, -Dold to
>    make the old semantics the default.  -Dold will be the default
>    until the wait period is over, then -Dnew will become the
>    default.  The -D option is retired when nobody needs -Dold any
>    more.  Modules that contain a future statement always use the new
>    default; there's no way to force the old default on a *per-module*
>    basis (since that would be a language feature that could never be
>    removed).

How about having two executables, 'oldpython' and 'newpython' which
correspond to -Dold and -Dnew.

Furthermore, since 'oldpython' is the same as the existing 'python',
let's rename it 'python'.

We also might be dealing with a mixture of new and old code, so
lets furthermore have a rule that modules ending in .py are by
default compiled with 'python' and modules ending in .ny are
compiled with 'newpython'; in both cases they compile to the
same .pyc format.

In this way, newpython can cope with any change to the nature
of the language, however outlandish (like including $ before
variable names :-)) without breaking a single line of existing
code.

And people can gently "dip their toe into the water" of the new features,
without having to immediately go all the way.


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
 Herbivore: effort-free public key email encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
          *** herbrip software now released ***
          







From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 09:19:48 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:19:48 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C5274.2220577C@engcorp.com>

Joe Potter wrote:
> 
> On 10 Jul 2001 20:29:23 -0400, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:
> 
> >"Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> writes:
> >
> >> if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
> >> }
> >
> >You seem to be posting a lot of one line translation requests - are
> >you trying to get a program translated to Python one line at a time?
> >
> >If so, perhaps you could just post the whole thing and we'd have a
> >shot at it in one pass and save some electrons :-)
> 
> I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps asking for a
> while --- and folks here keep answering.
> 
> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to follow and the
> translation into Python show me where I am missing Python techniques.
> 
> My purpose in writing this is simply to say you are not just helping Mr. Wong when
> you respond.

Good point, Joe.  My slightly boorish response failed to consider that fact.

On the other hand, posting obscure one-liners from C is not necessarily
the best way to learn much, if anything about Python.  Context is always
useful, and the response might be different if more of the original
C code were made available.  I think this is similar to an attempt
to translate from one spoken language into another, one word at a time,
which looks like it works for a while but doesn't withstand serious
scrutiny.

(As it stands, Steve kindly wrote to me off-line and mentioned he was
attempting to port GnuGo from C to Python as a learning exercise.  If
we want "context" we can always go look at the source ourselves. :-)

Joe (and other self-professed newbies), why don't you find some other
interesting one-liners (or two, or three-liners) and post them here?

Maybe the code base for GnuGo is not one of the best sources of example
code for conversion to Python...  Based on a sample size of three,
it consists of 33% strtok() calls and 67% sscanf() calls, making it
one of the all-time poorest C programs! ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From heikowu at ceosg.de  Sun Jul  1 05:45:18 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 11:45:18 +0200
Subject: zope en cmf
References: <9hhfdh$5odi$1@reader02.wxs.nl> <9hi2t7$58a$06$1@news.t-online.com> <m2r8w27nic.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <9hmrbf$36l$07$1@news.t-online.com>

Paul Foley wrote on 30 Jun 2001 13:41:15 +1200:

> You'd be surprised...I think just about everyone here reads Dutch :-)

Huh? How come?! ;) Oh, you mean the reference to Guido... Yep... :) OK. ;)

See ya!

        Heiko W.



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Wed Jul 18 09:40:05 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 16:40:05 +0300
Subject: Stop a duty in a Tkinter program
References: <3B558E86.1E7441C4@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <yoxzoa2mk3u.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

XiaoQin Xia <XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> I am programming with Tkinter. After the user click "Go" button or menu,
> my program will carry out some operation which won't stop until the end
> time (which is set by user) reach. In order to let user interupt the
> operation, a "Stop" button is present. But during the period of the
> operation, my program is not able to respond to any click at all, it
> seems dead before the operation finished.  How can I terminate the
> operation without exit the program? Any help is welcome.

Well, since you accept *any* help, I must say, not knowing that much
about Tkinter, that you have to start the operation in it's own thread
so that Tkinter message loop may proceed and the button becomes
clickable. Make clicking "stop" just kill the thread or signal it in a
more polite fashion (flag).


-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul 16 01:37:31 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 05:37:31 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>, <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <mailman.995256714.17440.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <o9v4lt08hdjjjrehfg732u9kd9gjsargb4@4ax.com>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:06:01 +0300, Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il>
wrote:

>: import re
>: valid_ip_re = re.compile(r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$')
>: def valid_ip(ip):
>:    match = valid_ip_re.match(ip)
>:    if not match:
>:        return
>:    return ![x if int(x)>255 for x in match.groups()]
>  
>And now it's even correct!

s/!/not/ and it is, anyway.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From macias at bp.com.pl  Tue Jul  3 08:03:45 2001
From: macias at bp.com.pl (Maciej Pilichowski)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:03:45 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism) -- what variable names are you using?
Message-ID: <3b41b15a.22907188@news.tpi.pl>

Hello there,

  As far as I can see everybody uses examples likes this:

x += 2

  Max. was 2 chars name long. Gosh, in my programs I use as long name
as it is possible and as short as it is still understandable. 
  So if it is 11 p.m. I would love to see possibility of writing

BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta += LimitKredytu

instead of

BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta = BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta+LimitKredytu

/sorry for non-english names/. It is much clearer. Less to typing,
less thinking "is that the same variable?".
  For me -- I see only advantages of such operator.

  One rule more to learn? Well, the idea is simple -- "adding in
place" /for example above/ -- that defines very well all cases /I
think/. And if you don't want to learn? Well -- don't.

  I vote for go :-)

have a nice day
bye

-- 
Maciej "MACiAS" Pilichowski
http://www.torun.pdi.net/~macias/

z a k u p i e : pisma Komputer: 3/86,4/87


From brakedon at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  8 21:52:21 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 18:52:21 -0700
Subject: calling a variable from a separate function
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107081752.5dc1680d@posting.google.com>

Let's say

def function1:
     self.variable1 = 22
def function2:
     print variable1

Would function2 look like "print function1.variable1" or some other
way? By the way I already know that the "function1.variable1" format
doesn't work. thanks for any help.


From volucris at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 01:43:49 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:43:49 -0500
Subject: Python for Palm OS
References: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <3b5e5bf4$0$317$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

Go to www.python.org
It's called Pippy.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Robert Roberts" <kj7ny at email.com> wrote in message
news:20010725.4442652 at mis.configured.host...
I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm
os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?

Thanks in advance.








From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul  5 14:58:53 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 18:58:53 GMT
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com> <9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <NN217.3762$e7.829230@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9i2c77$gmc74$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> I'm not sure how you mean slower, but I tested just now to see, and this
is
> the fastest of the four.
> def str_join(iters):
>     for i in iters:
>         "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])

This could use either conditional '0' <= x <= '9'  with 2 compares instead
of average 5.5
or x.isdigit() from below.
>
> def flt_lmbda(iters):
>     for i in iters:
>         filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')

would two compares be faster than one func call?

TJ Reedy





From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 22:09:23 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 19:09:23 -0700
Subject: Bunch lists into sublists via alternation
References: <5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93@posting.google.com> <ac677656.0107191257.4c787a89@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107191809.304e143d@posting.google.com>

Thanks for taking the time to reply. So the first way is the i was
trying to go, but the second that is the list comprehension approach,
i guess? I'll study these. Very helpful indeed. Many thanks.


cheers,
-kevin


From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Fri Jul 13 09:03:48 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:03:48 GMT
Subject: Developing Visual Studio add-ins in Python?
References: <tH637.142074$R7.25090399@typhoon.kc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3b4eee8b.543625@news.t-online.de>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:03:21 GMT, "Russ Shotts" <rashotts at mn.rr.com>
wrote:
>Has anyone used Python to create a Visual Studio add-in?  I need to perform
>some fairly complex processing, and their VBScript macros just cannot handle
>the task.
I have started writing an add-in. Its a bit tricky to add to
Pythoncom, because 

a) there is no typelib (at least no typelib I know of), even though
the stuff is IDispatch-derived.
b) Objects are not created; instead the DLL gets passed a pointer to
the main IApplication object.

I'm doing this: a DevStudio Extension DLL that at the same time
exposes a Python Extension (so it can be import-ed) that returns the
DevStudio object via callback. 

I hope to have a working draft ready by next week.


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 11:04:26 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:04:26 +0200
Subject: Encryption and python?
References: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <3B4EB456.5A315CF9@stroeder.com> <m2vgkxvw62.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <3B4F0DFA.6098003D@lemburg.com>

Greg Copeland wrote:
> 
> Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> writes:
> 
> > Greg Copeland wrote:
> > >
> > > I've been browsing around for a while now trying to come up with
> > > "the" python encryption library that I can make use of.
> >
> > This is a very general question. What are you looking for?
> > - Low-level algorithms (hashes and encryption)
> > - Crypto Protocols (e.g SSL or S/MIME)
> > - Key stores
> > ...
> >
> > There's also a mailing list (currently very low volume):
> > http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/python-crypto.html
> >
> > Ciao, Michael.
> 
> Fair enough.  I'm looking for low-level algorithms for public
> key exchange, some encryption, digital signatures and hashes.

Then you should have a look at amkCrypto (www.amk.ca)...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Jul 18 09:01:02 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:01:02 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9iq4oc$kme5j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <Xns90DF21CFC7984gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <Xns90E25BD095F65gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

Gustaf Liljegren wrote: 

[snip]

> E:\jane>jane
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<string>", line 54, in ?
>   File "friend.pyc", line 22, in __init__
>   File "friend.pyc", line 49, in getName
> LookupError: unknown encoding

This will probably clear up if you force
the "encodings" package into the build.

- Gordon


From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul  6 20:10:46 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:10:46 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4F5@admin56.narex.com> <mailman.994459751.9032.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B465386.4AF72A30@home.net>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> Actually, the better command is "search".

Yup, that's what I was looking for, and I figured it would be there, I
just had to download and instal it first, before I could find out what
was there, that's all I was saying.
 
> Yes, Chris is right that we could advertise and document better.
 
And I'm sure you will

> And I don't think anyone at ActiveState minds if Chris sets up a
> distribution. ActiveState can't do everything and doesn't want to.

Frankly, I'd be just has happy if you folks made my ideas obsolete, but
until then, I think I'll get started on it.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 03:12:03 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:12:03 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: string methods to string module? Re: There's got to be an easy way
 to do this
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kalkm.a6q.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107061110100.30238-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 6 Jul 2001, Remco Gerlich wrote:

># The same with filter, too bad we need a lambda
>stripped_phone = filter(lambda c: c.isdigit(), phone_number)

Maybe, we need string.isdigit and all other string methods
to be available in string?

Does it sound like small feature request?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul  6 14:18:37 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 14:18:37 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>    specify floating point division.

Step 3 strikes me as a bit odd; does that mean documentation for that
release will have to say "applying the / operator to integers is an
error, full stop"?  And then in the next release the docs will again
have to be changed to say that integer division now works?  IMHO step
3 should be dropped; one release with a warning every time integer
division is attempted should be sufficient.

>   from __future__ import float_division
>   from __future__ import real_division
>   from __future__ import new_division
>   from __future__ import division

'float_division'.  There's no type corresponding to "real", nor is
that terminology used anywhere in the docs; 'new_division' and
'division' strike me as unclear.

I still like 'x div 3' better than div() or //, but can live with div().

> Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
> frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
> number of established Python programmers.  

I'm still unconvinced about that, though.  Like the occasional claims
that there would be many more Python users if more conventional block
delimiters are used, this strikes me as proof by assertion.

--amk



From tim at zope.com  Sun Jul 29 18:55:19 2001
From: tim at zope.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:55:19 -0400
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECILCAA.tim@zope.com>

Wise Solutions generously offered PythonLabs use of their InstallerMaster
8.1 system.  Every PythonLabs Windows installer produced to date used Wise
5.0a, and while that's done a great job for us over the years, some of you
have noticed <wink> that it was starting to show its age.

I've completed upgrading our Windows installation procedures to
InstallerMaster 8.1, and we'll release the next alpha of Windows Python 2.2
using it.  Even if you have no interest in *testing* 2.2a2 at that time, if
you're running on a Windows system please download the installer (when it's
released) just to be sure it works for you!  As always, we have direct
access to only a few Windows boxes, so we rely on cheerful volunteerd to
uncover surprises.

Some things to note:

+ The installer it produces is a 32-bit program, so this should be
  the end of "failure in 16-bit subsystem" deaths some people see
  on Win2K (at least 4 reports of that, and no real handle on why).

+ The uninstaller has a new "repair" option.  The install.log saves
  away file fingerprints at installation time, and so long as you
  still have the original installer .exe, the repair option can
  detect installed files that changed since installation, and
  (optionally) restore them from the original .exe.

+ Aborting an installation in midstream no longer (necessarily) leaves
  a bunch of crap sitting around.  Instead you get a new dialog box
  offering to roll back the changes made so far.  This even works if
  you hit the "Cancel" button on the final "installation finished"
  screen.

+ A Backup directory is created under the root of the Python
  installation, where the installer stores files it changes or
  replaces.  We don't do much of that, but it *does* allow the
  uninstaller to restore Start Menu entries too -- nice for alpha
  and beta testers (before, whatever pre-existing Start Menu
  entries they had were simply wiped out by an uninstall).

+ Since IDLE is an essential part of the Windows Experience for
  most PythonLabs users, I folded the old Tcl/Tk component into
  the main Python interpreter component -- one less checkbox to
  worry about.  Also removed the time-wasting "Welcome!" dialog,
  and made a few cosmetic improvements.  Other than those, the
  look and feel are much the same, it just runs better!

It's slick -- I think you'll like it.

and-if-you-don't-write-a-pep<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From nospam at nospam.de  Thu Jul 12 13:53:44 2001
From: nospam at nospam.de (Uwe Hoffmann)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:53:44 +0200
Subject: Coexistence of SOAP-server and MS-IIS
References: <3b4dd214.587664066@news.mch.sni.de>
Message-ID: <3B4DE428.CA376A57@nospam.de>

Nikolai Kirsebom wrote:
> 
> I have a web-server running IIS and would like to make a small
> testapplication using the SOAP protocol.  Is it possible to have both
> IIS running and a SOAP-server running on the same machine, or will
> they 'fight' for the same resources (communication).
> 
> Nikolai

Should be no problem if they are using different ports 
(e.g. 80 and 8080)


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sat Jul 28 03:54:14 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 09:54:14 +0200
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> So, I dug deeper and found out that two threads were apparently
> struggling to get xml.sax.__init__ module to execute a very
> suspect __import__("xml.sax.expatreader").  

How exactly did you find out about that? If one of the threads would
raise an exception that is not caught, would you see the traceback or
would it get eaten silently by the calling Java application?

Regards,
Martin


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 07:17:38 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:17:38 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B@lp.airnews.net>
 <4s1vMVAEtYZ7Ew4w@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <m3n15lijp1.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
 <mailman.996571138.27540.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <K9QzYUBSPpZ7Ewu9@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

I think Fame's licensing might be even more expensive 

http://www.fame.com
-- 
Robin Becker


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:27:03 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:27:03 +0100
Subject: Steve Summary of views on the Is-It-Actually-Better? (was re: a use for...)
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <apaolto6pr6cevpk0lgudiapnbrttaj8u9@4ax.com> <m2wv4yhm6v.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <m28rltg94shda00u63lt3tdj3dhvu731sr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <13ssltss2rd0d4up7c52laghh7rvgfbcrm@4ax.com>

Updating to address another issue - I figure it's better to maintain
it here in one complete lump than keep splatting bits all over the
newsgroup.

The focus is the long-term pros/cons of the new semantics, but the
relative here-and-now cost compared with alternative changes is
mentioned in several places.

Please ignore the I'm-right-you're-wrong-and-what-your-doing-is-stupid
wording - it was deliberately aimed at some similar cases from the
pro-pep side (which are not as representative as my anger led me to
percieve) but I haven't got time to fix it ATM.

Changes marked with - (deletion), + (insertion) and # (other change).


This updates are...

a.  Point 10 - to address Paul Prescods claim that integer division
    and float division are fundamentally different because of the
    existence of the remainder in integer arithmetic.

b.  Removing a couple of particularly bad bits of sarcasm and general
    nastiness.


I believe PEP0238 is wrong in principle because...

1.  The fact that mathematicians have had many views on integers
    and division, and the one that is in most non-specialist mindsets
    doesn't meet the pragmatic requirements for several fields of
    mathematics, is understood. That doesn't make the other
    definitions from less demanding, more down-to-earth fields
    invalid.

2.  It particularly does not invalidate the practical view which most
    people can easily understand, which is taught to everyone at
    a very early age and which also happens to work extremely well
    for typical programming tasks (not just specialist applications).

    Doesn't the pro-pep views insistence on the most pragmatic
    possible definition of discrete integer division seem more than a
    little inconsistent with their sloppy attitude to the much more
    fundamental difference between discrete and continuous
    mathematics?

    Just because it isn't the unnecessarily pragmatic (for normal
    programming tasks) field of mathematics that a few people
    subscribe to, it doesn't make it wrong. It is simply from a less
    specialised, more basic and more generally useful field that
    doesn't address the  specialist problems of the minority over the
    general day-to-day practicality of the majority.

3.  Practically all programs use discrete integer quantities -
    indices, subscripts, counters, sizes and more - whereas numerics
    is a particular specialist field.

    Making life more awkward for the majority just to suit a few
    specialist fields is not rational. It's the specialists dealing
    with specialist fields who should have to deal with awkward
    special case syntax and semantics - not the everyday user.

4.  Discrete measures and continuous measures are not the same thing
    and should not be arbitrarily confused. Discrete integer division
    makes perfect sense despite the fact that specialist fields have
    outlawed it for specialist reasons relating to specialist
    problems.

    This is much more fundamental than just switching between
    different representations of continuous measures.

    The pro-pep groups arbitrarily application of continuous measure
    division principles with a discrete integer type is wrong in
    mathematics, and it is wrong in engineering, and it is wrong in
    programming. My use of more practical day-to-day discrete
    principles for discrete integer arithmetic than would be
    appropriate in field theory - or even 16-year-old pure
    mathematics, I fully agree - is not the same thing at all.

5.  Having established that division on the discrete integer type
    should work in the only practical way that makes sense while
    not erroneously confusing the properties of discrete and
    continuous measures, it makes sense for it to apply a simple
    everyday convension for rounding direction - wordy and pragmatic
    systems should be saved for the specialist fields where they are
    necessary.

6.  No-one has yet explained why bugs with misusing discrete
    integer types in continuous contexts cannot be detected and
    handled by simple validation.

#   The need for validation of externally sourced inputs is a
#   fundamental principle which should not be discarded just because
#   it is inconvenient.

    If the validation requirements are too fiddly to be practical,
    then that is a valid reason to consider adding new validation
    syntax and semantics which could even have wider applications. It
    is not a valid reason to break the widespread uses of discrete
    integer division in existing code, nor to make the distinction
    between discrete and continuous measures even harder to maintain
    than it already is.

#7.  People who are really dealing with numerics should be used to
#   dealing with subtle and insidious float approximations problems.
#   They should already be able to spot and handle the big errors
#   caused by confusing discrete integers and floats.

8.  If you are worried about the learning curve of newbies and
    students, then you should be worried about making the learning
    curve faster and easier - not disguising or hiding it, and not
    creating a comfort zone where you encourage bad habits while
    pretending there is no principle that needs to be learned.

9.  If you are dealing with 3D graphics, then you are either getting a
    library or hardware interface to do the rendering for you and MOST
    (but not all) of what you handle will be continuous measures
    represented by floats (which obviously should not be confused with
    discrete integers), or else you will be doing the rendering
    yourself and you will need to handle a lot of discrete integer
    mathematics AND continuous floating point mathematics. Pixels are
    a discrete integer measure and they are handled using algorithms
    that require discrete integers to behave as discrete integers.
    Discrete and continuous principles should not be arbitrarily
    confused, however.

10. Discrete integer division is not fundamentally different to
-   continuous float or rational division. There is no need for a
    different notation for division, as mathematitians noticed long
    ago. The fact that mathematicians have additional notations for
    floor and ceiling which they use when necessary in specialist
    fields is irrelevant - we have the capability if we need it but
    most of the time using a simple convention is more practical.

+   Float division is a clear extension of integer division. The fact
+   that it extends far enough into less-significant-digit territory
+   that remainder is rarely of interest is besides the point.
+
+   However, it could be argued that supporting the remainder for
+   floats MIGHT be useful for specific applications to determine the
+   error in specific calculations. I could even imagine it being used
+   in numerics to help track the scale of errors in different
+   evaluation methods which would, for exact evaluation, give the
+   same result but with floats do not.
+
+   There would also need to be some kind of error tracking facility
+   for other functions and operators, though, if this were to have
+   any real use - e.g. a 'this is the rounding error from adding
+   these two floats' such that a + b == c + error (where error is
+   typically extremely small, consisting of the lost-through-shifting
+   bits of the smaller of a and b in the mantissa and an appropriate
+   exponent).
+
+   However, such technicalities with floats are rarely of use in
+   float calculations - awareness of the issues and care when writing
+   sensitive expressions is the rule. Therefore I'd never suggest
+   imposing any of this on typical Python programmers.
+
+   Therefore a float division with float, float -> float, float would
+   be just as pointless as the never-asked-for integer division with
+   int, int -> int, int.

    Discrete and continuous types, however, are fundamentally
    different things and should be kept as cleanly separate and
    unconfused as possible. That is done by using different data types
    for discrete and continuous data.

    If anything is broken, it is in the automatic erroneous
    'promotion' of discrete quantities into continuous types in many
#   cases, which should arguably be treated as errors.

#   Such a change would of course cause breakage, but the breakage
#   would be immediately visible irrespective of the visibility of
#   warnings in the run-time environment (causing an exception) and
#   therefore trusted apps will never silently report wrong results.
#   This is therefore arguably a much more justifiable change than
#   changing the semantics of the division operator.



From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Sat Jul 21 07:01:04 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:01:04 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list at python.org>, "Greg & Janet
LINDSTROM" <yuba at cyberback.com> wrote:


> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What is available in Python to produce
> Portable Document Format (PDF) files?&nbsp; I have read through the
> "Python Programming on Win32" book and searched the web-site, with
> little result (the book is good, but eluded that new tools might be
> available by the time the book had been published).&nbsp; What is the
> state-of-the-python on pdf?&nbsp; Is it considered "the method of
> choice" for "pretty" documents?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial

The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
(www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
wide variety of other languages.

~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 17:34:05 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:34:05 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <ij7oltslop050daaj5amiqvepigolbn0kf@4ax.com> <mailman.995916121.12672.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <pg3plt82nu7dljk2v8070sog71auc9pf80@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:20:14 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>
wrote:

>
>    Steve> This isn't going to be a little problem. It's going to happen in
>    Steve> a lot of scripts - many of which are used in environments where
>    Steve> no-one is going the warning - and I don't know how many scripts I
>    Steve> wrote, or who has copies of them, or who has personally modified
>    Steve> versions or anything much that would allow me to sort the problem
>    Steve> out in advance.
>
>I think many of the warnings generated for integer division will just wind
>up in Apache log files where nobody will see them.

Not quite - in my case I quite often use a wxPython GUI interface -
the warnings won't show *anywhere* because the CLI is not visible and
there are no log files. Even if it becomes visible, the typical user
response to warnings is to ignore them.



From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul 12 21:38:20 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:38:20 GMT
Subject: Win32 ADO Connection not closing?
References: <b3gskt8crat32ha1nqjd1m3vajcubmqc81@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E5145.6030100@ActiveState.com>

maxx at easynews.com wrote:

> In the code example below, an ADO connection to a MS SQL Server database is not
> closing. Even after the 'adoConn.Close()' statement, the SQL Server still has an
> open connection to the database. The connection does release after the script
> terminates.
> 
> As part of the function of the script, I need it to release connections to the
> database, before continuing.
> 
> Is there a way to explicitly destroy the adoConn object in the following example
> ?


add "adoConn = None" at the end of the script.

Adding "print pythoncom._GetInterfaceCount()" will tell you how many 
Python COM objects are still alive.  There is no way to kill them other 
than to explicitly unbind them - assigning to None will generally unbind 
that reference (but keep in mind that other references to the same 
object may still existing somewhere in your program).

Mark.



From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 14:13:28 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:13:28 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DBAC8.4B89E271@alcyone.com>

Duncan Grisby wrote:

> I agree, by the way, that if we were discussing a new language, it
> would be sensible to use / for fractional division and // for integer
> division (and just as sensible to do the reverse). I'm amazed at the
> passion behind people arguing about what, to me, is an arbitrary
> language choice. But that isn't the issue here. We aren't designing a
> new language, we're modifying an existing one.

Agreed.  If / were float (or rational) division from the beginning, then
I would have no complaints, even if I personally would prefer int/int ==
int.

The real problem here isn't whether or not float/rational division is or
isn't a good idea, it's that what is being proposed will break existing
code.

The proponents of this PEP have been insisting there will be plenty of
time to make the switch, which is fine, but it neglects preexisting code
which has been passed around and is far afield from the original author,
or worse yet, code which is in place at a client site and which isn't
changed easily at all.

I find it pretty horrifying that this change is even being seriously
considered much less is evidently going forward.  That I find the
benefits (namely, making the language easier for novices to understand;
integer division is not very hard to understand and have not known
anybody learning programmer for which this was absolutely a deal breaker
and totally inhibited their ability to learn a language) to be of
dubious value only makes it more disturbing.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Nothing spoils a confession like repentence.
\__/ Anatole France
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul  4 18:44:23 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:44:23 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <p1f6ktc7qphfb5tg6c59kn4jeok9ndu1eq@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <b%M07.2192$Ij5.16923@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Courageous:

> typedef int plane_t;
>
> >Is this what you wanted to have in C ?
>
> No. What you're asking for doesn't work, although it might be
> useful if it did. As it is, this will never get into the stanard, however.
> It would break too much code.

   Linting tools can be used to enforce better static type safety than is
normal with C. Gimpel's PC-lint with the -strong setting will warn about
mixing variables of different typedef types even when the underlying types
are the same.

   Neil





From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Wed Jul 18 13:09:11 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:09:11 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D554@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Nick Efford [mailto:nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk]
> 
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:09:05 -0400,
> Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
> 
> > I--one of those professional programmers--write a Python script for
> > someone who runs a business, or a non-profit, or an agency, 
> to run on
> > their CGI webserver.  This client knows not the first thing 
> about Python
> > or about programming, nor do they maintain the webserver, just rent
> > space on it.  But still, this script does something useful 
> for users of
> > the website--order products, or request documents, or send data to a
> > database.
> > 
> > I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
> > upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in 
> the future
> > :-)).  Client's scripts break.
> 
> Interesting scenario.
> 
> Of course, this could happen with other s/w, too.  This really
> says more about the policy of the web hosting company w.r.t.
> upgrades than it does about the wisdom or otherwise of breaking
> compatibility in a future version of Python.
> 
> Any web hoster worth its salt should at least run old and new
> versions of the s/w in parallel and provide clients with the
> opportunity to test programs in the new environment before
> migrating.

But being a web hoster, with no knowledge about Python, would _you_
expect a version change from 2.2 to 2.3 to fundamentally change
semantics? If you're really unlucky with this proposed change, your
program could continue to run but silently give you wrong answers. (I
can understand being extra careful with going from e.g. 2.2 to 3.0
however...)

-- bjorn



From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 13:38:00 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:38:00 GMT
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Yfl37.1065$%6.216706@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9ikgpq$j1cff$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
{posted and emailed}

> I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple
precision
> accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:
...
> >>> print '%8.2f' % float(ab*cb)
>   152.34

So BNum.__float__ exists and appears to work correctly (as does __str__ or
__repr__).

> >>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
> 151.84

I would try various things before looking at the C source:

insert print in __float__ to see if it is called, and if so, with what.
wrap ab*cb in () and (,)
change 8.2f to s
find other values of ab or cb that give an erroneous result

Terry J. Reedy





From rjh at 3-cities.com  Wed Jul  4 02:05:29 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 06:05:29 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <9ht7ki$pao$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <mailman.994191428.24168.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B42B707.9EF02768@3-cities.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> I knew I shouldn't get dragged into this. :)
> 
> The problems with the current situation are well-documented. Every
> Python book introduces this feature with a statement along the lines of:
> "this is something that's going to be different than you expect...be
> careful." It is one of Guido's oldest regrets. Arguing about it isn't
> really going to change anything. Either someone will step up and do the
> implementation, in which case the behaviour likely will change, as Guido
> wants it to, or nobody ever will, in which case the status quo will
> remain.

If a tree falls in the forest and the BDFL is not there to hear it,
does it make a sound?  Seriously, if the powers that be have a rigid
opinion on this subject, I'd like to be put of our misery.  Or is
this discussion contributing to decision making?
 
-- 
Robert J. Harrison (rjh at 3-cities.com)


From speedy911 at mindspring.com  Fri Jul  6 09:14:21 2001
From: speedy911 at mindspring.com (Charles Harrison)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 06:14:21 -0700
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
References: <mailman.994361230.19417.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6f78b8b.0107060514.7142ed34@posting.google.com>

This is somewhat unrelated, but the -remote command can be a very fun
one.  If you are working in a school lab environment where you have
the root password on the machines, here's what to do to one of your
close friends:

rsh to the person's machine that you wish to have fun with

su to root on that person's machine

from root, su to the user that is using x on the machine

type:
export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0

type:
xhost +

now the fun...

if they already have netscape open type:
netscape -remote "openURL(www.hotmale.com)"

if they dont, open netscape first, then do the above command:
netscape&

Yeah, so we get bored at my school.  Enjoy!


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 11:55:52 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:55:52 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> I agree that it would make Python a different language. Neither better nor 
> worse.
> 
> You arguably gain in meeting some peoples expectations of the division 
> operator, but you lose consistency in that previously (as far I can think), 
> the operators +, -, *, /, % when given two arguments of the same numeric 
> type always return a result of that same type. In future we have to be 
> prepared to explain to beginners that division can give a result of a 
> different type: in fact you cannot even predict the type of the result when 
> you know the types of the arguments, you have to know their values as well.

In a farther future, when PEP 228 is fully implemented, Python may
only have *one* (built-in) numeric type, "number".  Then all
operations will defined entirely on the mathematical value, and the
different "types" as we know now are merely details of storage
efficiency -- except that numbers will also have an indication of
"exactness" or "approximateness", to acknowledge the fact that the
number system may choose to give approximate results for some
operations.  We may end up deciding that rationals have too many
problems, and replace binary floating point with decimal floating
point to address a different set of confusions, and so maybe division
of two exact numbers may not always yield an exact result -- just like
the square root of 2 is conventionally calculated only to a limited
precision.  Or we may choose to represent rationals exactly -- in any
case, 1/2==0 will be false, just as PEP 238 proposes.

Such a (hypothetical!) world is just as consistent, yet it does not
guarantee that the type of the result of an operation is the same as
that of the operands, if by type you mean the storage type (int, long,
float etc.).

Also look at PEP 237, which proposes to unify ints and longs.  Would
you really prefer your "consistency" and see 1000000 * 1000000 raise
OverflowError because the result cannot be represented as a 32-bit
int, or would you prefer to drop the "consistency" in favor of getting
a result at all?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 11:33:16 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:33:16 +0200
Subject: Calculus
References: <mailman.994164981.2922.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsojt02e5r@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Andrew Todd" <aetodd at wm.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.994164981.2922.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example,
> the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find

I agree the Simpsons rule (my personal favourite is Lisa),
but I didn't think they were now used in Calculus, too...


Alex





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 09:32:54 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:32:54 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994803257.19598.python-list@python.org> <3b53fda0$0$151$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de>
Message-ID: <3B543E86.5A0D5920@engcorp.com>

Guido Stepken wrote:
> 
> Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> > How can Python become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?
> 
> I have been teaching python to kids ...12 years old .... they really had
> fun ... that's the (only) reason for the extreme growing acceptance for
> python over java or perl or php .... 

While I readily admit to the sheer fun of Python compared to the 
feeling of depression I get over using most other languages, I can't
support the theory that's "the only reason" for the growing acceptance.

Relatively to PHP, it seems likely Python is growing because it
is not merely a crufty niche language.  (But we've seen arguments
PHP is growing faster anyway).

Relative to Perl, Python is clearly more readable and even the
author of Perl acts somewhat as a Python propagandist.

Relative to Java, which is probably overhyped but at least
represents a reasonable improvement to C++ in many areas,
Python is probably growing faster because of its productivity,
reasability, and the fact that with Jython one can hardly
point to Java's many benefits without admitting that one
can write Python code and not lose those most of the benefits.

I'm sure fun factors into it, but the "only" reason?  I doubt it.

> python will be #1 in 2 years .....expecially for huge projects ....

I predicted (to myself mainly :-) in about 1996 that in about
three years Java would be used for most application development.
I wasn't exactly right, but maybe I wasn't too far off the mark
relative to what some others thought.  I doubt Python will
have the same growth, and I really doubt it will be "#1" (whatever
that means) in only 2 years.  I do believe it will continue
to find roles in many diverse areas, including some large
projects, but I'm quite sure the really large projects will
manage to hold out for more traditional languages for a very 
long time.

Maybe what we'll see will be Python be used, not exclusively
but as one component, in the most projects.  So if we measure
"#1" in terms of number of projects using Python, it has a 
chance.  If we measure it in terms of lines of code, of course,
it has little chance of being number 1, for obvious reasons. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 04:56:29 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:56:29 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

Jonathan Hogg <jonathan at onegoodidea.com> wrote in news:jonathan-
D4822F.08343331072001 at news.easynet.co.uk:

> I can though, think of plenty of places where strong static typing would 
> defeat intentional exploitation of the dynamic typing. Maybe this is 
> poor programming on my part, but I can't even think how one would type a 
> function like say:
> 
>    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )
> 
> Python's dynamic typing has the most optimal type for this function:
> 
>    "A function that takes something looking like a sequence of
>     things that you can call "+" on, and returns something that
>     you might get back by "+"ing a bunch of such things together."
> 
> I just don't ever see Python with a static type system. What's more I 
> don't think I'd want it. If you want static types then code in something 
> else. If you find Java/C++ too horrific, then I'd seriously recommend 
> O'Caml - though this is just from a cursory look, I did most of my FP in 
> Haskell but I don't think I could recommend it unless you're willing to 
> become a serious FP-head and want to get to grips with Monads ;-)

Interesting example.  I for one would like to see a strongly typed variant 
of Python: if for nothing else, I'd like to be able to compile my code.

Giving your function a type really boils down to giving the function + a 
type, doesn't it?  In Haskell, I guess we could type f thus:

    	f :: Num a => [a] -> a

but this is perhaps a little unsatisfactory, since the type a is then 
required to support all the other numeric operations as well.

It would be nicer to be able to, for example, define:

    	class SemiGroup a where
    	    (+) :: a -> a -> a

    	f :: SemiGroup a => [a] -> a

but this seems both clunky and really a bit misleading (since we don't 
actually require the + we're using to be associative).

It's probably a good start to look at the type of reduce.  This is easy 
enough in Haskell:

    	reduce :: (a -> a -> a) -> [a] -> a

(need to cook up a more Python friendly syntax for this).

Ok, so the real problem is this: what is the type of + ?!

In Haskell, + is definitely of type

    	(+) :: Num a => a -> a -> a

which simply means that it is a member of the class Num (which also 
contains -, * and some other stuff; seems to be an ordered Ring) and is a 
binary operation which returns a value of the same type as its arguments.

The Haskell type model is too restrictive for Python, particularly since it 
is not possible for any global name to have more than one type (so, for 
example, we can *only* use + to name a method of the Num class).  However, 
I do think that some of the principles of Haskell typing can be profitably 
applied to Python.

Let me just observe this: statically typed Python would need to be a 
different language from standard Python, though hopefully close enough to 
interoperate and have the same name.


Can anyone comment on the current status of ideas for statically typing 
Python?  The SIG mailing list is only carrying spam at the moment, and 
several of the SIG links are broken, so things don't look promising...


From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul  6 16:06:03 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 22:06:03 +0200
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B461A2B.5FDE1CB@stroeder.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:
> 
> I write applications which save peoples life's-public
> safety systems.

And then you are asking for an Oracle adaptor? You should review the
recent thread "Python for air traffic control?":

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=de&safe=off&th=d3460cb8b82dc6d,118&ic=1

Ciao, Michael.


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 18:56:04 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:56:04 -0500
Subject: String Splice Assignment
In-Reply-To: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>
References: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15187.28932.301405.174144@beluga.mojam.com>

    nathan> Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some
    nathan> alternatives?

Strings are immutable.  Try:

    >>> a = 'asdf'
    >>> a = a[0:1] + 'EFGH' + a[2:]
    >>> a
    'aEFGHdf'

or

    >>> a = 'asdf'
    >>> a = list(a)
    >>> a
    ['a', 's', 'd', 'f']
    >>> a[1:2] = ['EFGH']
    >>> a
    ['a', 'EFGH', 'd', 'f']
    >>> a = "".join(a)
    >>> a
    'aEFGHdf'

If you want to do lots of operations efficiently, the list variant may be
more efficient assuming you leave it in list form for quite awhile and don't
constantly convert back to the string form.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Mon Jul 16 09:57:29 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:57:29 GMT
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com>
Message-ID: <3b52f295.746274@nntp.sprynet.com>

On 15 Jul 2001 19:50:12 GMT, "James T. Dennis" <jadestar at idiom.com>
wrote:

> This is not a question but merely a comment from a 
> newbie.   I'm reading Beazley's 2nd Ed. "Python Essential
> Reference" and playing with things therein and I thought
> "list comprehension, what a quick way to make a multiplication 
> table"
>
> multtab = [ [ x*y for x in range(13) ] for y in range(13) ]
>
> ... though I was surpirsed that I got the syntax correct
> on the first try.  (It still looks wrong,

??? It looks exactly right to me; I must be looking at it
wrong. (What looks wrong about it? What would look righter?)

> somehow but 
> [ x*y [x for x in range(13)] [y for y in range(13) ] ] looks
> even more wrong).
>
>
>


David C. Ullrich


From jessw at loop.com  Fri Jul 27 20:22:15 2001
From: jessw at loop.com (Jesse W)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:22:15 -0700
Subject: Launching Python from Python
In-Reply-To: <wz66cefcph.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3B61A347.25682.6D52DA6@localhost>

A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 1738 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010727/d3ebe087/attachment.bin>

From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 31 23:25:00 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 15:25:00 +1200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996260992.19535.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B67768C.924526C9@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Christian Tanzer wrote:
> 
> > How about Revising Division or even better Splitting the Division
> > Operator.
> 
> Dividing the Division Operator ???

Divide and Conquer?

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From emile at fenx.com  Mon Jul  9 06:46:22 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 03:46:22 -0700
Subject: dummy/trash object
References: <mailman.994671443.23621.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9kj26i.nof.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <9ic29t$ib4b8$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

As I read the OPs question, it has to do with the unneeded assignment being
performed.  I took this in part as a performance issue, in which case simple
use of _ performs much better, as on my system I can to 10M assigns a
second.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk" <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in message
news:slrn.pl.9kj26i.nof.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda...
> Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:36:35 +0200 (CEST), Xavier Defrang
<xavier at perceval.net> pisze:
>
> > I'm sure that someone already came with a question like : "why is
> > there no real dummy or trash object in Python which could by used
> > like the magic '_' in Prolog?"
>
> You can implement it yourself, but it will look a bit ugly:
>
> class trash:
>     def __setattr__(self, attr, val): pass
> _ = trash()
>
> x, _.y, z, _.u = t
>
> --
>  __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
>  \__/
>   ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
> QRCZAK



From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul 23 12:07:45 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:07:45 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message

[SNIP]
> Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in
> numerics has bugged Guido about this except Moshe, that I know of; the
most
> visible repeated pressures have come from educators using Python as a
means
> to some other end.
[SNIP]

Hey, I'm one of those people with a keen interest in numerics who hasn't
bugged Guido about this yet. Let me rectify the situation. First off a
disclaimer, I don't claim to be a hard core numerical analysist of any
sort -- I'm an engineer of sorts and I know just enough numerical analysis
to get myself into trouble. I do use python almost entirely for numerical
work and have been using it since way back in version 0.9.2 or so.

Let me stray from the topic for a paragraph here: I'm astounded to discover
the number of people pining for integer division that truncates towards
zero. That sort of integer division is horriible. When programming in C,  I
always had to simulate Python's behaviour in order to get code that might
take both positive and negative integral values to work correctly. Python
gets this exactly right.

Back to the topic, more or less: I've been astounded by way the arguments
against this has played out. I expected the opposition to say more or less,
"It's a small problem at worst, and it will break 10 zillion lines of code,
and will be a huge pain to upgrade, so it's just not worth it". Instead, the
talk of code breakage has been suprisingly small and there seems to be a
fair number of people claiming that the current mixed behaviour is a _good_
thing. I couldn't disagree more. C-style division in a dynamically typed
language is an accident waiting to happen. And does this mean that code
breakage won't be as large and/or painful as I thought it might be? It also
seems that a lot of the people most vociferously opposed to the PEP have
very little idea what's actually in it. In particuluar, there seems to be
many out there who seem horrifed at the prospect of integer division going
away even though this was never proposed.

Anyway, not being an educator, I'm not particularly concerned with whether
integer division is easy or hard to learn. I like the proposal because there
just isn't a good way currently to spell
divide-these-two -numbers-using-normal-division. The fact that oponents of
this proposal keep suggesting methods for doing this that are wrong only
reveals that this is more difficult than generally supposed.

Consider the completely unsafe function:

def simple_func(x, y):
   return y / x**2

It has been suggested as recently as this morning, I believe, that this be
rewritten:

def simple_func(x, y):
   return y / float(x)**2

This is simple, clear and ... wrong, as Konrad Hinsen pointed out several
days ago. At least it's wrong if complex numbers are ever a possibility. One
could instead write it using complex(x), but one generally does not want to
convert to a complex number unless the inputs are complex, so that solution
is unsatisfactory. A more correct solution suggested by Konrad is:

def simple_func(x, y):
   return y / (x+0.0)**2

This is correct, but can hardly be called simple or clear. Also, in the
context of Numeric Python, where x and/or y may be an array, the above code
may be inefficient in time and extremely inefficient in space. It's possible
of course to work around this, but it becomes even less simple and clear.

Time to stop before I get too inflamatory,

-tim







From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  9 00:55:40 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:55:40 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: time.strftime BUG?
In-Reply-To: <tb527.1692$h45.11400@news.uk.colt.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107090855100.30316-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Graham Ashton wrote:

I've reported this BUG thru Sourceforge.

>In article <mailman.994491312.28840.python-list at python.org>, "Roman Suzi"
><rnd at onego.ru> wrote:
>
>> >>> time.strftime("%Z", time.localtime(time.time()))
>> 'MSD'
>> >>> time.strftime("%z", time.localtime(time.time()))
>> '+0000'
>
>> While I believe the later should be:
>> '+0400'
>
>I'm a bit confused by this too.
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Monday, July 09, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Useless Invention: Motorcycle seat-belts." _/




From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 14:33:43 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:33:43 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> [Robin Becker]
> > ...
> > Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
> > to be uniformly wrong.
> 
> Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
> that assertion would be unaffected.
> 
> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.

The PSU has Robin's name and email address.  Robin: be afraid, be very
afraid.  It is time that an example be set!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From thomas at gatsoft.no  Fri Jul 27 07:29:25 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:29:25 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com> <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107270155.72f8c5aa@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <pgc87.237$bXi.178337280@news.telia.no>

> Personally, I think this idea of using XML-RPC or SOAP over the Internet
if
> you want reliablity isn't a good idea. I believe these protocols can be
useful
> in the setting of a corporate network but within quite constrained ways.
> If someone tells me they want something which provides gauranteed
reliability
> etc, then I will be the first to tell them to go use software from the
likes
> of Tibco, BEA or IBM.

What do you mean by "reliability"? I think we're talking about different
worlds here; I'm developing a system for normal users, who can accept
infrequent failures and some downtime without ending in financial ruin.
Companies spending millions on huge projects cannot. SOAP is supported by
IBM, Microsoft etc. and would they risk promoting, even building complex
systems like .NET on this technology if it wasn't suitable at all?
Implementation and other factors like network load etc. would proably have a
big impact on reliability too.

Am I so terribly wrong??

Thomas




From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  1 08:19:25 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:19:25 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <slrn9jt3hj.pt6.carlf@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <993989890.343644@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

"Carl Fink" <carlf at panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9jt3hj.pt6.carlf at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <993939668.727430 at athnrd02.forthnet.gr>, whats_really_hot
wrote:
> > so, are there..........give me a feedback and some help(how about some
URL's
> > with books for downloading) for learning Python......
>
> I could, but instead why don't you follow the links at
> www.python.org?
>
> I recommend the tutorial there.  You also should look for _Dive Into
> Python_.
> --
> Carl Fink carlf at dm.net


hi there.thanks for ur response.so,i mean if there are any books in net
(free of'course) for python and for downloading. of'course i have downloaded
the tutorial tha u recommand.so, are there any sites with free books that u
know?


thanks in advance!




From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  2 11:36:19 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 11:36:19 -0400
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <etd7kxrs5qk.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> Perhaps you could make a better case for why you think this is even
> important.

If you want to subclass a class whose behaviour depends on a global in
its module, getting the behaviour you want can become a bit messier.

Alex.


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Tue Jul 31 08:10:38 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 14:10:38 +0200
Subject: how to use method in node(xml)
References: <mailman.996549716.19083.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <j4puahb8ox.fsf@artagnan.informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> writes:

> I am a newbie to python with xml.  there is a appendchild method in
> Node(I know this from python Document),

> but when I use 
> >>>dir(Node)
> the result is 
> ['ATTRIBUTE_NODE', 'CDATA_SECTION_NODE', 'COMMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE', 'ELEMENT_NODE', 'ENTITY_NODE', 'ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE', 'NOTATION_NODE', 'PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE', 'TEXT_NODE', '__doc__', '__module__']
> 
> and no appendchild accur,
> it is right to use Node.__doc__
> but how can I use appendchild (wrong appear when 
> use Nod.appendchild).please post an example,better in detail

Where did you get Node from? It works for me:

>>> from xml.dom.minidom import Node
>>> dir(Node)
['__doc__', '__getattr__', '__init__', '__module__', '__nonzero__', '_debug', '_get_firstChild', '_get_lastChild', '_makeParentNodes', 'allnodes', 'appendChild', 'childNodeTypes', 'cloneNode', 'debug', 'hasChildNodes', 'insertBefore', 'isSameNode', 'namespaceURI', 'normalize', 'removeChild', 'replaceChild', 'toprettyxml', 'toxml', 'unlink']

xml.dom.Node is a base class of xml.dom.minidom.Node.

Regards,
Martin


From tigra_564 at mail.ru  Thu Jul 12 04:07:07 2001
From: tigra_564 at mail.ru (Tigra)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 01:07:07 -0700
Subject: newbie xml+python question
Message-ID: <aaf95f4f.0107120007.28b3c85c@posting.google.com>

Hi

Please, recommend what to use (and where to get a comprehensive doc) on an
xml library which allows solving these tasks:
1. parse xml into dom (I mean into language specific xml tree struct)
2. roll a dom of my own and save it into xml (also update an existing dom)
3. check dom and/or xml against a dtd file/string/stream (at least string)
4. parse dtd into dom and reverse (I just want to create/parse dtds of my own)
5. transform an xml document with an xsl template.
6. have hooks on every step of operation. I.e. if a dtd validation fails, I'd
   like to get an exceptionm with info on where and why the error occured, not
   just "Validation error at xml line 14 (or node ...)".

I guess that SAX isn't able of meeting all these requrements.
Any help (or even advocacy) is appreciated.

Thanks

Sergey


From nikander at mindspring.com  Thu Jul 12 11:31:15 2001
From: nikander at mindspring.com (Rob Nikander)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:31:15 -0400
Subject: eval() -- don't print to stdout
References: <20010712.112138.213975407.8136@kanchenjunga.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <20010712.113115.1369321801.8136@kanchenjunga.mindspring.com>

In article <20010712.112138.213975407.8136 at kanchenjunga.mindspring.com>,
"Rob Nikander" <nikander at mindspring.com> wrote:

> How do you prevent eval/exec from printing its result to the console? 

Oops.  I figured it out 2 minutes after posting.   Passing 'eval' to
compile() rather than letting the third parameter default to 'single'
seems to do the trick.


From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 20 22:27:39 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:27:39 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity (fwd)
References: <mailman.995663255.15727.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58E89B.65D2202B@alcyone.com>

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:

> But the most annoying aspect of case-sensitivity is trying to *speak*
> it
> to beginners (or even to non-beginners): ...

But why would one _ever_ try speaking code to someone else, beginner or
not?

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ But we go on pretending / Stories like ours / Have happy endings
\__/ The Russian and Florence, _Chess_
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 23 20:48:42 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:48:42 +1200
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com> <wklmlgcokf.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CC5EA.25D87C98@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

phawkins at spamnotconnact.com wrote:
> 
> >>> raise strExceptionWithArg, "no thanks"

Shouldn't that be

   raise strExceptionWithArg("no thanks")

?

According to my reading of the docs, the first form
is illegal, since if the exception is a class and a 
value is supplied it is supposed to be a subclass of the
exception class.

The real mystery is why it seems to work in some
cases anyway...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul 10 04:11:39 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:11:39 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: curses woes
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kl196.rts.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101209540.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Rainy wrote:
> while 1:
>     c = win.getch()
>     if c == curses.KEY_BACKSPACE:
>         do_something()
>
> The problem is that backspace key shows up as ^? and doesn't match the above
> test. I also tried doing c == 14 but also without luck. I'm using
> curses.wrapper() here.

   Your terminal is incorrectly configured.

man 5 terminfo
man tic
man stty

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br  Thu Jul 19 12:30:35 2001
From: tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br (Tatiana Evers)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:30:35 -0300
Subject: Threads
Message-ID: <001201c11070$235689a0$39a5100a@cg22898>

Hi,

I'm here again with more problems....;o)
I need use threads in Python. How does interaction between threads work? How
do they communicate?

Thanks ;o)

Tatiana

---------------------------------------------------------------
Tatiana Figueiredo Evers
Mestranda em Computa??o Aplicada
(Computa??o Gr?fica)
UNISINOS - S?o Leopoldo - RS
tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br
www.inf.unisinos.br/~tatiana




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 26 21:13:09 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:13:09 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996173519.19391.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <dc387.1404$Og1.117870@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.996173519.19391.python-list at python.org...
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 maxx at easynews.com wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:
> <...>
> > >The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
> > >distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.
> >
> > Plus, the day that symbols become so numerous in code that the usage of
case is
> > necessary to differentiate them, then software development will have
become
> > truly too complex for mortals such as myseld.
>
> Sure, and we can generate as many identifiers as we need with only 2
> symbols, "0" and "1".
>
You had *two* symbols? You were lucky ...

Of course you can get as many different identifiers as you want just using
*one* symbol, but it might detract somewhat from readability.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From chris at voodooland.net  Mon Jul  9 09:31:33 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:31:33 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <010f01c10837$c2a68140$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <20010709082058.D93525-100000@open-systems.net>


> Wrong.  The right to create derivative works does not include the right
> to change the license.  Note that I am not a lawyer, and this is based on
> my layman's understanding of contract law, but this has been brought up
> so many times I looked into it.

You need to discuss this with a lawyer.

> The BSDL doesn't *have* to mention that "further restrictions are
> prohibited"
> since that is the default.

Yes it does. The license itself says nothing about not adding furhter
restrictions. It's common knowledge you CAN GPL BSD code.

>
> Mr. G's app IS under the GPL, but the components (individual source files
> no doubt) written by Mr. W will still have the BSDL license at the top
> (unless Mr. G has violated the law, which of course is always possible
> regardless of license).  For Mr. K to avoid GPL "contamination" he would
> have to carefully extract only the BSDL parts *or* go back to the original
> software distribution from Mr. W.

Yes you will have a the original 2 clauses of the bsdl + the entire GPL
ammended to it. Creating a GPL work.

> The GPL states how the creator of derivative works must behave.  If the
> creator of the derivative work cannot obey both the GPL and the law at the
> same time, the law takes precedence always.

> The main reason you hate it seems to be that you have seriously
> overestimated
> the power that the license gives to others.  No matter what I or anyone else
> wants to do, without your approval I can't change the license of your code.

No, you simply either haven't read the GPL in its entire form, or you
don't understand it, or you have never consulted a lawyer about it, or
your simply ignoring the truth. When you take a copy of a 2 clause BSDL'ed
piece of code, change a few lines of it and and add that NEW piece of code
into a GPL work the whole work is GPL'ed. It ceased to be MY work the
second you modified it. It is now an entirely new entity. The parts that
are mine are still covered under the BSDL which doesnt prevent you from
gpl'ing it, but the work as a whole is now GPL if you licensed the new
derivative work under the GPL.

> In the aggregate with GPL code, the aggregate must be distributed as if the
> GPL covered the whole thing, but that aggregation still doesn't change the
> license of non-GPL code in "the mix."  Further, if the license of the non-
> GPL code is GPL-incompatible you simply can't legally distribute the
> aggregation at all.

Your talking in circles now. Your admitting you can GPL bsd code. "The
aggregate *must be* distributed as if the the GPL covered the whole
thing." You are correct. The BSDL does NOT prevent someone from GPL'ing
the code. It says nothing in the license at all about further
restrictions, ammending the license etc.. It simply says 2 things, and 2
things only, if you build a binary of it you must include the (c) and this
list of conditions. If you modify the src and release it you must include
the (c) and this list of conditions. That is the only thing it says. No
where there does it say "you may not relicense this work, add to this
license, modify it, etc.."

Chris





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 20:06:26 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:06:26 -0400
Subject: Large pages using Zope
References: <9k766t$dc0$04$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <3B674802.C730D678@engcorp.com>

Achim Domma wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just finished the first step : I succeded in introducing Python as our
> prefered scripting language, replacing JScript and VBScript in the future. 
> Now we need a way to script webpages with it. 

Presumably you are not talking about using Python in the browser?  That's
possible, of course, with IE (which Python can script via ActiveX), but
it requires installing Python on each client machine and therefore is
feasible only on an Intranet.

> I would like to use Zope, 

Why?

Are you sure you want to use Zope?  What tasks are you trying
to accomplish for which you believe Zope is the best solution,
and why?  (It sounds like you don't actually know anything
about Zope, except that it is written in Python, but please
correct me if I'm wrong.)

Zope has a fairly steep learning curve, and it may or may
not be the best solution for you.  There _are_ simpler ways
to go, but then again there are also advantages to using Zope.
It all depends on what you really need.

> but I have to answer questions like 'How do we know that 
> it's fast/stable enough ?'. Can anybody help ?
> Are there any big references, which are using Zope ?

There are many, including a dozen listed on the page at
http://www.zope.org/Resources/CaseStudies .  Have you
visited zope.org yet?  That might be a good place to 
start if you "would like to use Zope"... :-)

(Note: we are using Zope quite successfully in the
company I work for right now.  It is fast enough,
just as Python is, for our needs, and is *very*
stable.  You shouldn't take someone's word for it,
however, as your own needs and standards may vary.
Give it a test drive yourself, if you are interested.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 14:35:34 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:35:34 -0500
Subject: how to save strings to a temporary buffer?
In-Reply-To: <9j4kia+hmtu@eGroups.com>
References: <9j4kia+hmtu@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <15189.55030.243351.99923@beluga.mojam.com>

    ed> How can I save string to a tempororay buffer and then write it to a
    ed> file afterwards?

Take a look at the StringIO and cStringIO modules.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 08:31:45 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 05:31:45 -0700
Subject: PyZipFile
References: <25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107130431.7be775ad@posting.google.com>

forgot to mention the platform:

I am working on Win2K, with Python 2.1. Tnx.


From d.courtois at skynet.be  Fri Jul 20 12:04:53 2001
From: d.courtois at skynet.be (d.courtois at skynet.be)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:04:53 GMT
Subject: FREE web hosting services with a cgi directory
Message-ID: <3b5855ba.9008159@news.skynet.be>

Quelqu'un connait-il un h?bergeur gratuit de sites, en Belgique ou en
France, qui autorise les scripts en Python?
Merci d'avance pour votre aide.


From volucris at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 14:27:48 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:27:48 -0500
Subject: Number::Spell
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107121615560.6412-100000@cb921.local>
Message-ID: <3b4deb9b$0$326$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

I know I've seen this somewhere. Check the Vaults of Parnassus:
http://www.vex.net/parnassus/

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Campbell" <cb921 at voice.co.za> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.0107121615560.6412-100000 at cb921.local...
> Hello,
>
> This was something I once used from perl a long time ago.  Does anyone
> know of a function to return a list of words making up an english
> number, from a normal set of digits?
>
> Thank you for any help,
>
>   No one speaks and no one tries
>   No one flies around the sun....
>




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 05:33:21 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:33:21 +0200
Subject: import namespace issues
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <9iei5205pn@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in message
news:yv2lmlxgnji.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de...
>
> THE PROBLEM:
> I have to separate a module's function into two .py-files. Now I would
> like to import both in a way that they behave like they are one file.

This is likely to lead to maintenance problem -- what is the
advantage of splitting things in two if you then go out of
your way to couple the two as strongly as possible?  And mutual,
aka cyclic, dependencies, too -- the worst kind...

> FIRST TRY:
> Suppose the files are called first.py and second.py. I put a
>
>   from second.py import *

No .py here -- just "from second import *".

> into first.py. This does not work as necessary since functions in
> second.py don't find functions defined in first.py. Same story when

Perhaps you can synchronize the two dictionaries at this point
by segue-ing with
    import second
    second.__dict__.update(globals())
but this will NOT ensure that any LATER changes to the __dict__
of either module are somehow "magically synchronized".

> using __import__().
>
> FINDINGS:
> What I gathered from experiments is that even with `from ... import'
> as well as when using __import__('second', my_globals, my_locals)
> there will *always* be a *new* dictionary used for the globals() of
> the imported functions. Example:

To be precise: every module object has a __dict__ attribute that
is NOT rebindable.  globals() just returns the __dict__ of the
module object from which globals() is being called.  __import__
uses its dictionary arguments in different ways than you seem to
believe it's using them.

> QUESTION 1:
> How can I achieve to merge two .py into one globals() as if the were
> in one imported file while maintaining the file-search semantics of
> `import'?

I don't think you can ever possibly make any module object
use a different dictionary than the one it was born with.  You
can try to fake it in several ways (e.g., an *instance* object
does have a re-bindable __dict__ attribute), but I think there
will be correct programs that behave otherwise under the fake-it
scenarion than they would if the two modules were indeed one.

> QUESTION 2:
> Is there a detailed description somewhere in the docs about the
> namespaces (or dictionaries) used/created/shuffled during an import?

I think the documentation for __import__ is pretty clear about
it, "the standard implementation does not use its locals argument
at all, and uses its globals only to determine the package context
of the import statement".


Alex





From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 01:24:42 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 22:24:42 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107152124.4c049d5e@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995247446.16415.python-list at python.org>...
> BTW, does it bother anyone that all of these solutions accept an IP ending
> with a newline?
> 
> regexps-are-surprising-ly y'rs  - tim

Straight out of the horse's mouth at
http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/lib/re-syntax.html
(this is in section 4.2.1 of the Python Library Reference):
<quote>
"$" 
Matches the end of the string, and in MULTILINE mode also matches
before a newline. foo matches both 'foo' and 'foobar', while the
regular expression foo$ matches only 'foo'.
</quote>
But the real story only emerges two pages later (in section 4.2.3):
<quote>
M 
MULTILINE
When specified, the pattern character "^" matches at the beginning of
the string and at the beginning of each line (immediately following
each newline); and the pattern character "$" matches at the end of the
string and at the end of each line (immediately preceding each
newline). By default, "^" matches only at the beginning of the string,
and "$" only at the end of the string and immediately before the
newline (if any) at the end of the string.
</quote>

I shall enter a bug report and leave it up to the powers_that_be to
decide whether to change the behaviour or section 4.2.1 of the
documentation.

To answer Tim's question, yes it bothers me ... the solution of course
always when you want to validate that the pattern matches the whole
string (and not some leading substring) is to have \Z at the end of
your pattern (not $).


From wesc at deirdre.org  Wed Jul 11 04:53:06 2001
From: wesc at deirdre.org (Wesley Chun)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:53:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Any detailed tutor for python multi-thread programming?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107110140340.5606-100000@emperor.deirdre.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107110151550.5606-100000@emperor.deirdre.org>

Eeek... the subject line got lost!  Sorry for the duplicatation!!

-wesley


On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Wesley Chun wrote:

> Bill Bell wrote:
>
> > Xia Ziao-Qin wrote:
> >> Hi, everybody, is there any detailed tutor for python multi-thread
> >> programming?
> >
> > Some places to read about Python threads:
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/IPC9/index.html chapter in Wesley
> > Chun's "core Python" book (available via
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/book/) articles in the help
> > file for wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org)
> >
> > Enjoy.
>
>
> Specifically for Core Python Programming, Chapter 17 is
> devoted completely to multithreaded programming in Python.
>
> There is an introduction/motivation section first, followed
> by a "process vs. threads" discussion, then talk about what
> Python's thread model is, and then we go into a deep discus-
> sion on how to use threads properly in Python.
>
> Throughout the chapter, we use one simple example and expand
> on it as our knowledge of Python threading grows.  The basics
> are covered with the 'thread' module first, then we explain
> why this isn't as useful or safe as the higher-level thread
> support provided by the 'threading' module.  After showing
> you the 3 basic ways to create threads using the
> threading.Thread class, we conclude the chapter with a more
> complex example using the 'Queue' module.
>
> The link above just leads you to the chapter's code samples.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> -wesley
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area Python users group:  http://baypiggies.org
>
> "Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall PTR, December 2000
>     http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/
>
> wesley.j.chun :: wesc at baypiggies.org
> cyberweb.consulting :: silicon.valley, ca
> http://www.roadkill.com/~wesc/cyberweb/
>
>




From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 17:09:25 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:09:25 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEBDKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Roy Smith, contemplating dicts indexed by strings]
> ...
> Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?

Not short of building a wrapper object that defines __cmp__ in terms of id()
results (Paul's suggestion does that implicitly).  An extreme variant is to
pass every string thru the intern() function first (see the docs); that's
"extreme" because intern'ed strings are immortal.

> I'm contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key
> comparison by identity should be significantly faster than by
> value, because I'm going to be using rather long strings as keys.

That can't be determined without trying it both ways and measuring; the dict
and string implementations are chock full o' subtleties.

BTW, if you want, say, "aa" not to be the same key as "a"+"a", in what sense
is this dict indexed by strings?  That is, it's unclear what strings have to
do with this.




From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 11:21:01 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:21:01 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B1BE7.1483F292@yahoo.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> Apart from tricks specific to Fibonacci numbers, a general "good thing to
> know" is that an order-N linear recurrence can be viewed as mapping
> N-vectors to N-vectors via multiplication by a fixed NxN matrix M.  N==2 in
> this case, and if a,b,c are consecutive Fibonacci numbers then
> 
>     [b c] = [a b] * M
> 
> where "*" is matmult and M is
> 
>     0 1
>     1 1

For the mathematically challenged, what is matmult?
Pointer to a FM to R would be fine.

Thanks,

PW

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 16:02:08 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:02:08 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <4p%67.20546$EP6.5090891@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"> - If anything, the new // operator ought to apply to new behavior,
not be
>   foisted upon existing code.  If people desparately want integer
division to
>   return floating point results, then the onus should be on them to
use a
>   new operator.

The PEP proposal is to separate the current mixed meaning of / into
two new, unmixed meanings, one assigned to / and the other to //.  The
alternative suggested above and by others is not merely to switch
meanings but to keep the mixed meaning while adding one and only one
unmixed meaning.  It does not break code but has other problems.





From OlafMeding at noSpam.CompuServe.com  Wed Jul 25 13:35:06 2001
From: OlafMeding at noSpam.CompuServe.com (Olaf Meding)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:35:06 -0500
Subject: Auto Building MS VC6 Projects
Message-ID: <9jn00e$j8g$1@news.chorus.net>

Microsoft Visual C++ can be automated (COM, OLE) and I would like to use
Python to automate nightly VC6 builds.

Has anyone does this and is willing/able to share ideas or code?
Is there any documenation on this somewhere?


Olaf
TomoTherapy

Please remove "noSpam" to get my email address




From roy at panix.com  Thu Jul 12 22:23:07 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:23:07 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org> <cphewh37av.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <roy-512CF3.22230712072001@news1.panix.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> I haven't heard a peep from anyone who was bitten by the change in 2.1 
> where we disallow "<" etc. for complex numbers.

Although I guess it doesn't strictly make sense, I would assume a "<" 
operator applied to complex numbers would compare magnitudes.  The problem 
with that, I suppose, is that "<", "==", and ">" would not cover the entire 
space of value pairs.

> But then if we removed complex numbers, most folks wouldn't notice anyway

I must admit, I've never actually written any python code which uses 
complex numbers, but I still think their inclusion as a fundamental data 
type is one of the real (!) cool things about the language, and would 
lament their loss.  Takes me back to my fortran days, when I really did 
write that kind of code.

It is especially awesome that python uses the "correct" imaginary unit of 
j.  None of that i garbage the math weenies try to foist on us.

"We're sorry, you have reached an imaginary extension.  Please rotate your 
telephone 90 degrees and try your number again".


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 10:42:41 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:42:41 -0500
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <7D14D8CD61D19D74.5FA2D6F03A40B5FE.61BCD22CB6B984EC@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3B667EBA.DA6C298 at tundraware.com>,
Tim Daneliuk  <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>There has been an ongoing discussion about how Python, C, and
>many other languages relevance as "systems" languages 
>here (comp.lang.python) recently.  This started as a brief (Ha!)
			.
			.
			.
Well, *that* narrows it down to sometime between
1992 and 2001.
			.
			.
			.
>  lifting.  Crack some part of these two problems - and Python
>  is ideal for both, so long as the performance issues don't
>  get in the way - and you'll live Happily Ever After - or until
>  the CTO starts losing at golf and needs another "win".
One of the happy Python features that your expo-
sition didn't mention is that most Python
performance issues are correctable.  That is,
if a pure Python XML parser is too slow (and it
is, and will be--that's an issue with me),
Python's facility for extension makes it feas-
ible to "drop down" to C for a module.
			.
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 06:40:53 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:40:53 +0200
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101425140.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <20010710124053.G32419@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:29:15PM +0400, Roman Suzi wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:

> > Yes, I guess it would. Care to submit a patch ? :-)

> Not before I undestand Python's C API...

It's dead easy, just look at posixmodule, and how, for instance, posix_nice
is implemented. It's very straightforward, and a good excuse to learn it :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From jerk at 163.net  Mon Jul  9 03:46:42 2001
From: jerk at 163.net (jerk@163)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 15:46:42 +0800
Subject: python startup memory size and memory leak
In-Reply-To: <117483633808.20010709094309@163.net>
References: <117483633808.20010709094309@163.net>
Message-ID: <18317708433.20010709154642@163.net>

Hello jerk,

Monday, July 09, 2001, 9:43:09 AM, you wrote:

j1> Hello python-list,

j1>         my app is a server that receive client's request in xml and query the mysql
j1> database to response to client,I use python 2.0 on linux(2.2.13),with expat 1.95
j1> statically link into python and MySQLdb 0.3.5,as I am not so familary with xml
j1> so I didn't call unlink() on those created xml document before they are
j1> deleted,this is definitely a leak,right?
j1>         but this leak may show different behavior with different startup
j1> environment.if all py is compiled into pyc and then start my app,top shows
j1> that it takes about 2.8M memory at first,as client requests comes,memory goes up
j1> very fast.then if I touch one of those py files and start my app again,top shows
j1> that it takes about 5M memory at first,as client requests comes,memory goes up
j1> very slow(althought it still leaking).
j1>         I don't know why python startup size is different when I just touching
j1> one of those py files but seems it related to python compilation.

        there is one more different behavior in two different startup
environment,there is a readline() call on a socket which will block when no data
send to server,with 2.8M memory startup python when I ctrl-C when readline is
waiting for input,instead of catching the keyboardInterrupt,python seg fault
with just one message "Python Fatal Error, Interpreter not initialized( version
mismatch)",but with the 5M memory startup python,it just catch the
keyboardInterrupt and exit normally


j1> Best regards,
j1>  jerk                          mailto:jerk at 163.net





Best regards,
My ICQ Number is:41597368
 jerk                            mailto:jerk at 163.net




From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 23:26:35 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:26:35 -0400
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:50:41 PDT."
             <010f01c11a13$3a930920$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
References: <3B66FFEC.5335E1C8@destiny.com> <3B670BB3.48D4A5A5@ActiveState.com>  
            <010f01c11a13$3a930920$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
Message-ID: <200108010326.XAA18273@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > How about if we combine your ideas:
> > 
> > y = [yield x*2 for x in g()]
> 
> Geeze, that's like, way obvious.  Why didn't I say that in the first place?
> Good stuff is always way obvious.  Nice one Paul :-)
> 
> What do you think Guido?  => CVS?

I don't think so.  Generators are most useful when they do more than
iterate over a pre-existing sequence, so I doubt that this would be a
common pattern.  Also I'm not sure I like overloading of the [...]
brackets, which (to me) very strongly say "real concrete list here".

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr  Thu Jul 26 03:42:21 2001
From: frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr (=?iso-8859-1?q?franck=20delarue?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:42:21 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: ftp delete
Message-ID: <20010726074221.92300.qmail@web14809.mail.yahoo.com>

hi,
I use python 2 on linux with the ftp lib.
I have a cron that get a big file by ftp connection.
After geting that file, I try to delete it
("ftp.delete(nameFile)") but an error occurs :

"socket.error: (104, 'Connection reset by peer') ".

Is it due to the ftp module of python ? Is it due only
to the ftp connection ? What can I do ?

Thanks a lot.

=====
__________________________________    ___ 
\                                 \  |  _  |  \
 \  F R A N C K     D E L A R U E  \ | |_  | | |
 /  + - + - + -     + - + - + - +  / |  _  | | |
/_________________________________/  |_|   |__/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Vos albums photos en ligne, 
Yahoo! Photos : http://fr.photos.yahoo.com



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Mon Jul  9 04:16:21 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:16:21 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
In-Reply-To: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107091216090.26783-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
> classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
> process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
> delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/asynchttp/

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From nas at python.ca  Mon Jul 16 18:12:19 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:12:19 -0700
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
In-Reply-To: <15187.23983.562368.858629@beluga.mojam.com>; from skip@pobox.com on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 04:33:35PM -0500
References: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com> <15187.23983.562368.858629@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010716151219.A30652@glacier.fnational.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
>     zooko> But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default
>     zooko> argument to an inner function, like this:
> 
>     >>> def silliest_func():
>     >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
>     >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
>     >>>         pass
>     >>>     return inner_silliest_func
>     >>> 
>     >>> blarg = {}
>     >>> for i in range(2**13):
>     >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()
> 
>     zooko> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:
> 
>     >>> del blarg
> 
>     zooko> none of the memory is freed up!

If I do this:

    while 1:
        blarg = {}
        for i in range(2**13):
            blarg[i] = silliest_func()

the Python process size seems to remain constant.  Are you sure this
leaks memory?  I'm testing with Python 1.5.2 BTW.

  Neil



From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 10 12:01:04 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:01:04 -0700
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com> <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B47C125.A65E5EAC@wwc.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107100801.14066af0@posting.google.com>

Steve Williams <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message news:<3B47C125.A65E5EAC at wwc.com>...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> > Interbase has always taken SQL92 seriously, but nobody takes Interbase
> > seriously.
> 
> Nevertheless, I've managed to survive and prosper on a meager toolkit of
> (Select, Insert, Delete, Update, Create, Drop, etc) on SQL-Server, Sybase,
> Informix, DB2, and Oracle.  If I'm not fastidious, I can even get by with it
> in ACCESS.

How do you manage to do different types of joins? Do any of the
systems you mention use the explicit join syntax, for example? What
about the statement parameter (bind variable) syntax?

> > But most likely the usual crybabies will still be crying about "RAW" (sic)
> > C-level interfacing (to a zillion incompatible proprietary idiotic API's, no
> > doubt -- the fact that there IS a solid, well-developed standard doesn't
> > count:-).  So, naah, not worth the bother.
> 
> I take no notice of that remark.  Do you have an opinion on Corba?

Which standard are we talking about now? ADO and COM aren't exactly
there on most flavours of UNIX, if at all. Of course, there's always
ODBC. ;-)

Paul


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 20:20:37 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:20:37 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  
[...]
> Command Line Option
> 
>     The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
>     three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
>     Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
>     "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
>     The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
>     warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning framework)
>     when applied to ints or longs.  The "new" value changes the
>     default globally so that the / operator is always interpreted as
>     true division.  

The choice of command line options is inconsistent with the terminology
used elsewhere in the updated PEP.  

To further reduce the potential for confusion, I suggest changing
"old" and "new" to "classic" and "true".  

If that suggestion is accepted, "warn" might be better spelled 
more like "classic-warn".

--

The updated PEP also makes no mention of a utility for scanning 
existing code to check for potential problems.  Is this considered
an intractable problem?  Is there any commitment to doing this,
eventually, as part of the implementation of this PEP?  Or is the
presence of the "warn" option considered sufficient (to allow for
testing, rather than scanning)?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From nospam at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 31 15:09:57 2001
From: nospam at bigfoot.com (Gillou)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:09:57 +0200
Subject: Is Python a Good Choice for Web Programming?
References: <9k6osc$jgp$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <9k6vg2$1o84$1@norfair.nerim.net>

Ted,

There are lots of ways to web with Python, including "pythonic" servlets and
JSP like stuffs. Follow this link to have a (non exhaustive) list.
http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/web_python.html
I have approximately the same skills in Python and Java and I'm sure I do
the jobs twice faster in Python than in Java.
And I don't remember having done something in Java that cannot be done in
Python.
Unfortunately, IT executives are addicted to marketing messages of Sun,
Microsoft and others.
And do not even consider that something else exists that's free, easy,
secure.
In addition, I don't think that BeOpen will offer triple star restaurants or
weekends in Tunisia to their best customers.
So, keep skilled in Java/JSP and Microsoft VBS/ASP technologies if you want
a good job, and use Python when it fits and if you're free to choose the
language.
In France, less than 1% of IT jobs require Python or Zope skills.

--Gillou

"tszeto" <tszeto at mindspring.com> a ?crit dans le message news:
9k6osc$jgp$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
> Hello,
>
> I don't know Python, but I know a little Java (little more than a years
> worth working with Servlets and JSP).
>
> How is Python compared to Servlets and JSP? The language looks very nice,
> but I'm hesitating because I don't see many jobs for Python and even less
> for Zope.
>
> Is is better to use Zope or just go with cgi/mod_python?
>
> Thanks,
> Ted
>
>
>




From ajm at enteract.com  Thu Jul  5 18:06:24 2001
From: ajm at enteract.com (Alan Miller)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:06:24 -0500
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <MPG.15aea0cce4147d279897de@news-enteract>

Joe Potter (jm7potter at hotmail.com) wrote:
>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd) wrote:
>>SQL is a set based language. It is not a procedural (or OO) language and 
>>the most important aspect of this is that *order does not matter*. With set 
>>based operations (ie DML or DDL in SQL - is that enough TLAs ;-) you 
>>specify what you want to happen, not how to do it (with suitable exceptions 
>>for implementation specific hints, but that doesn't matter to use here).
>
>Even the tables! My God! 

Many databases store information in hidden internal tables that are 
identical in structure to the tables that are visible.  After all, if 
you need to store information in a database, why not use the one that 
you already have? 

ajm


From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 14:41:30 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:41:30 +0200
Subject: DB-API 1.0 vs. 2.0
References: <AjW37.9662$e5.1281275@newsb.telia.net> <3B507210.AF4C1D1C@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B50925A.FA7F53A9@lemburg.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> >
> > DB-API 1.0 (dated April 9, 1996) specifies that a connection object
> > should provide "all Cursor Object attributes and methods".
> >
> > this requirement seems to have been dropped in the (undated)
> > DB-API 2.0 specification -- but this fairly major change isn't listed
> > under "Major Changes from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0"...
> >
> > what's the deal here?  should a 2.0 implementation provide an
> > implicit cursor, or not?
> 
> It can, but is not required to.
> The deal is: explicit is better than implict :-)

BTW, you might want to join the DB-SIG mailing list if you're
interested in the API spec and writing database API compliant
modules:

	http://www.python.org/sigs/db-sig/

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From tdelaney at avaya.com  Thu Jul 19 20:22:22 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:22:22 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2BE@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> > begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
> 
> Very funny (not).  You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
> environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
> identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

However, this *does* rely on the tools to do the case-preservation.

I use a text editor for just about all my programming. The one I happen to
like most is unable to warn me about inconsistent-case.

Yes - it can be caught at compile-time ...

Except (and here comes the meat of my argument against this) ...

a = 1

def f()
    A = 2
    print a

What should happen here? Should there be a compile-time error? Does this
mean that I can't have a local variable with the same name as a global
variable, but differing only in case? But the following code is legal ...

a = 1

def f()
    a = 2
    print a

What happens if I do 'from something import *' (no, I don't actually do
that, but a lot of code does) and it imports into my global namespace a
bunch of names which conflict with names in my functions *only in case*?
Suddely my code breaks for no apparent reason.

I think introducing this would be *very* dangerous.

Tim Delaney



From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Fri Jul 20 17:43:50 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:43:50 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lh9gm.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT in <cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> spake:
> Unfortunately there isn't a lot of scientific evidence to help decide
> this.  There may be old reports that case-sensitivity hurts beginners.
> I know that many other designers of programming languages aimed at
> non-programmers have consciously choses case-insensitivity
> (e.g. hypertalk, REXX).

  I used to program in REXX, and you very quickly develop the habit of
working entirely in lowercase so you don't mix up identifiers (you only
try to debug that problem *once*, because it's so painful).  Other than
that, it didn't interfere with development at all.

  In software consulting, I also wrote a lot of code that integrated
with OS/2 DLLs; you could write a library of common low-level tools and
then use a REXX program to control everything.  I did a lot of contracts
in a few thousand lines of REXX and my standard C DLLs.

  In my hobby time, I wrote multi-thousand-line REXX applications like
<http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/nwo.html> - the standard
CircleMUD world file format is just unspeakably nasty (bitfields!  Magic
numbers!  Augh!), so I wrote a parser for a nicer file format.

  While it's anecdotal evidence, I'd say case-insensitive coding is
mostly harmless at worst, and *possibly* beneficial, even to
professional programmers.

> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

  A directive at the top of the module would probably satisfy everyone.
The beginners would have to type one line of "nonsense computer stuff",
and then could work case-insensitively.  Current code, lacking that
directive, would still work case-sensitively.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From jblazi at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 12:57:37 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:57:37 +0200
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <3b5d8947_5@news.newsgroups.com> <nzh77.543721$eK2.114049226@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b5da934_2@news.newsgroups.com>

Yes, thx. Can you tell me the difference between python.exe and pythonw.exe?
And later I am going to use Tkinter in my program. Shall I need python.exe
or pytjonw.exe?

J.B.

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:nzh77.543721$eK2.114049226 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> I have this associated with .py -> Open
>
> C:\Python21\python.exe "%1" %*
>
> and
> C:\Python21\pythonw.exe "%1" %*
> for .pyw
>
> ..using python.exe instead of pythonw.exe will give you
> a dos window which will show any error messages
> ( but it closes before you can read them --  very annoying )
>
>
>
> "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3b5d8947_5 at news.newsgroups.com...
> > Thx.
> > Most unfortunately, this does not work. If I omit the double quotes it
> seems
> > that the file is not opened correctly (I am usinf pythonw.exe instead of
> > winpy.exe as i do not have the latter). If I set the double quotes, I
> cannot
> > enter my program as i get the error message 'the application you have
> > selected does not exist'.
> >
> > Janos Blazi
> >
> > "Kevin Riggle" <vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!@n()et> schrieb
im
> > Newsbeitrag news:9jhgm4$2mo$1 at mtc1.mtcnet.net...
> > > You have to associate the file-type with the program.
> > >
> > > Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File
Types
> > tab,
> > > and click on New Type.
> > >
> > > Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on
the
> > New
> > > button beneath the Actions: list box.
> > >
> > > Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
> > > perform action:' to
> > >
> > > "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,
> > >
> > > or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program
> Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
> > > %1",
> > >
> > > in both examples *including* the double-quotes.
> > >
> > > (I haven't actually used Python on Windows, so if the WinPy path is a
> > little
> > > off please forgive me.)
> > >
> > > Hope this helps...  Kevin
> > >
> > >
> > > "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > news:3b5be641_3 at news.newsgroups.com...
> > > > I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double
> > clicks
> > > > on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the
> > file.
> > > > What have I to do?
> > > > This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.
> > > >
> > > > Janos Blazi
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> > > > http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> > > > -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> > http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> > -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
>
>




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From greg at electricrain.com  Thu Jul  5 18:20:05 2001
From: greg at electricrain.com (Gregory P. Smith)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:20:05 -0700
Subject: Getting data from DBIII
In-Reply-To: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>; from dpoulin@nettonettech.com on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 12:52:56PM +0000
References: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>
Message-ID: <20010705152005.A13982@zot.electricrain.com>

> Anyway, our Sales people use ACT! for contact management.  I have
> created a small Python/Tkinter, so I got the forms looking pretty.   But
> I am having trouble using Python to get the data from the DB.  ACT uses
> DB3, so I'm looking for pointers.  I use Linux (RedHat 7.0) and Python
> 1.5.2.
> 
> Any help?

If you mean BerkeleyDB 3.x, see http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/




From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 14:31:53 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:31:53 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> One more point about shootout. If I understood correctly, advanced
> features are banned.

Not only that, but a number of the tests are explicitly testing how the
languages fare at doing a task "The Same Way". The site made a lot more sense to
me once I noticed that. For example,
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/bench/fibo/
doesn't just compute fibonacci numbers; the implementation must be *recursive*.
So this is really a test of how the languages fare at recursion. In python,
there's usually a more idiomatic way to solve a problem. In this case, if all
you really wanted was to compute fibonacci numbers, recursion is not the best
approach; performance degrades exponentially with the size of the series. Doing
it iteratively is much, much faster.

So basically what that benchmark tells me is: "Don't write recursively in Python
if performance is an issue".

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From rcena at epcor.ca  Sat Jul  7 17:17:15 2001
From: rcena at epcor.ca (Resty Cena)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 14:17:15 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com> <7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com>

I'll follow your leads. Thanks again. By the way, someone should
rename this thread "Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!" or some such.


"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message news:<7sn17.7740$i8.679052 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>...
> "Resty Cena" <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote ...
> > Well thank you for jolting me out of my comfortable position sitting
> > with my hands tucked between my pants and the chair. I donwloaded
> > cx_Oracle and, yes, it's up. Now, would you happen to have, or know
> > of, some materials (sample code, tips, tricks, techniques, tutorials)
> > on getting started on programming *forms* based applications in Oracle
> > and Python? That would be just great.
> >
> Well done! Hope the install went OK ;-). I presume you are talking about
> GUI-based programs using Oracle rather than Oracle Forms stuff?  There is
> some coverage in Hammond & Robinson's Programming Win32 in Python book, for
> a start. Other people speak highly of Grayson's Python and Tkinter
> programming, though it isn't my cup of tea. I'm not currently aware of
> anything drag-and-drop which includes database awareness, but Boa
> Constructor and BlackAdder GUI tools both have theie adherents.
> 
> Since you've taken the effort to get started I am reasonably sure that the
> c.l.py GUI community will be out in force to help you (right, guys?) -
> you've probably seen the regular threads on "Which GUI is the best" and
> realise there's a choice.
> 
> I am currently working on a simple web-based framework for data editing,
> which I plan to translate to one or other of the available GUIs, but that's
> currently on the horizon. It will be open source when it's finished.
> 
> regards
>  Steve


From anamax at earthlink.net  Mon Jul  2 12:28:00 2001
From: anamax at earthlink.net (Andy Freeman)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 09:28:00 -0700
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <8bbd9ac3.0107020827.18c8ad8e@posting.google.com>

> >You could write an operating system that could only be directly
> >programmed in Python.
> 
> I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
> could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
> despite implementing operating systems in all four.

Symbol seems to qualify.  (The compiler was in hardware....)

However, that level of theoretically pure "only" ignores systems where
the only reasonable way to program the OS is in some "high level" language,
and the vastly more popular systems where the only reasonable way to do
most things in the OS is in some "high level" language.

After all, the fact that one can drive nails with a socket wrench doesn't
make it useful exercise.

-andy


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 13:40:18 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:40:18 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <gIm17.7341$i8.668552@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
>
> The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
> transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":
>
> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.
>
> 2. In a following revision, we add a warning when / is used on two int
>    or long arguments, recommending to use div() instead.  (It is
>    important not to start warning in phase 1, so folks have time to
>    switch to div() voluntarily first; maybe phase 1 could have a
>    command line option to warn about integer division.)
>
> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>    specify floating point division.
>
> 4. Finally we can implement the "future" behavior by default.
>
This seems a reasonable approach.

> I haven't picked dates yet; if folks agree, I would like to add div()
> and a future statement to 2.2 and space the other steps a single
> revision apart, so phase 4 would be at Python 2.5 (April 2003, if we
> keep the current release schedule up).  Is that too aggressive?
>
If you're going to do it, you might as well make a start. Almost two years
before something breaks should be good enough for most organizations.

> I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> messenger from the future :-).
>
That seems sensible.

> I'm not sure how to spell the future statement.  Here are some
> choices:
>
>   from __future__ import float_division
>   from __future__ import real_division
>   from __future__ import new_division
>   from __future__ import division
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

from __future__ import unified_field_theory
from __future__ import unified_division

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From doug_bartholomew99 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 22:07:14 2001
From: doug_bartholomew99 at yahoo.com (doug)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 19:07:14 -0700
Subject: newbie question: what does "<...>" or "<input>" signify?
Message-ID: <e71960c5.0107161807.5fe749eb@posting.google.com>

i am new to python and i have seen references in its documentation and
code to name strings with greater-than and less-than signs, such as
filename="<input>".  i have looked high and low for an explanation of
what a string with < and > on both ends means, but have found none. 
can someone give me a reference to some resource that explains why
some strings need < and > around them.  Thanks.

doug (doug_bartholomew99 at yahoo.com)


From gs at styrax.com  Fri Jul 13 13:51:36 2001
From: gs at styrax.com (Garry Steedman)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:51:36 +0000
Subject: Book count test
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5242@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F3528.8871.56F6E9AD@localhost>

Randy,

are you trying to prove to us that quantity = quality?

the fact that python emits less CO2 than java means we dont have to 
kill the trees!

;-)

garry


On 13 Jul 2001, at 11:22, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

From:           	Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>
To:             	"'python-list at python.org'" <python-list at python.org>
Subject:        	Book count test
Date sent:      	Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:22:16 -0400

> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these
> categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)
>   Java     - 1621
>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


+-------------------------------------------+
  Garry Steedman      mailto:gs at styrax.com  
  Styrax Associates  http://www.styrax.com/ 

  "The Good Man has no shape."            
+-------------------------------------------+



From dougfort at dougfort.net  Thu Jul  5 09:05:20 2001
From: dougfort at dougfort.net (Doug Fort)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 14:05:20 +0100
Subject: pausing a thread
References: <3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b44660f_2@news5.uncensored-news.com>

Daniel Nuriyev wrote:

> Hello
> This is a Java programmer's question
> How do you say:
> class QQQ extends Thread{
>     public void run(){
>         ...
>         sleep(ms);
>     }
> }
> in Python? Thank you all.
> 

I have a little pattern, or idiom that I use on many threads.  
I like to wait on the threading 'Event' object rather than the 'sleep'
timer, because it gives me the ability to break out without waiting
for the full interval. 

import threading

class QQQ(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self, name="QQQ")
        self._stopevent = threading.Event()

    def run(self):
        while not self._stopevent.isSet():
            # do some stuff
            self._stopevent.wait( s )

    def join(self, timeout=0.0):
        self._stopevent.set()
        threading.Thread.join(self, timeout)
-- 
Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net>
http://www.dougfort.net

______________________________________________________________________
Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Still Only $9.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com
   With Seven Servers In California And Texas - The Worlds Uncensored News Source
  


From cer at tutopia.com  Mon Jul  2 01:26:28 2001
From: cer at tutopia.com (Cristian Echeverria)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 01:26:28 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <9hp08v$f6kq4$1@ID-44371.news.dfncis.de>

"Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote
news:MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net...
> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>
> Python still doesn't have good database support...

Of cource I don?t agree with this, because I sell database solution
implemented with python with great results. With Python you have great ODBC
support and a choice for almost any vendor out there.




From grumble at usa.net  Thu Jul 12 09:44:45 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:44:45 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <TfQ27.328548$p33.6645853@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <9ihjfu$3ls$1@news.mathworks.com> <RV837.333819$p33.6744825@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com>

Greg Jorgensen <gregj at pdxperts.com> wrote:
> I guess I don't know WHAT you want. If your point is that CPU-bound programs
> are slow, we can agree and leave it at that.

As I've said before, I don't want anything from this discussion except
to express my opinion to the original poster.

If you'd like, reread my point as "muds are likely to be CPU-bound
programs".


From crombie88 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 19:27:17 2001
From: crombie88 at yahoo.com (crombie)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:27:17 -0700
Subject: newbie question
Message-ID: <NGEHILHDGMAFAKFOELIJIELOCEAA.crombie88@yahoo.com>

so, i wanna learn python.  i read the 
docs on python.org.  what do i do now?
is there like a website with a list of 
starter projects that need to be done 
in python to prove you know it and help 
you learn it?

at a complete loss,
will appreciate direction.  any direction

-tc
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 1488 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010711/c54c6609/attachment.bin>

From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 19 12:28:51 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:28:51 GMT
Subject: Immutable list reverse function
References: <mailman.995543208.24170.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7VD57.4114$EP6.1255448@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Martin Sj?gren" <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995543208.24170.python-list at python.org...
>Is there a "good" way to write a fast reverse function for immutable
lists?

Lists are mutable.  That is why you can reverse them in place.  Three
possible questions:

Q1. How reverse an immutable sequence?

def tup_reverse(tup):
  ans = []
  for i in range(len(tup)-1, -1, -1):
    ans.append(tup(i))
  return tuple(ans)

or

def tup_reverse(tup):
  ans = list(tup)
  ans.reverse()
  return tuple(ans)

and similarly for str_reverse.  In 2.2a I believe we could write a more
generic

def seq_reverse(seq):
  t = type(seq)
  ...
  return t(ans)

Lutz *Programming Python* p492 gives (with slight renaming) this generic
version which will even work for sequence-like classes:

def reverse(seq):
  ans = seq[:0]   # empty seq of same type
  for i in range(len(seq)):
    ans = seq[i:i+1] + ans
  return ans

Q2. How reverse a list and get return value to chain in call sequence?

def reverse(lisp): # 'list' is builtin function; bad habit to use as name
  lisp.reverse()
  return lisp

Note 1: GvR decided to have list methods that modify in place NOT return
the list because he did not want people to introduce bugs in programs by
forgeting that list IS modified in place.

Note 2: One can reverse this decision by deriving a class from UserList.
In the just released Python 2.2a1, one derive the value-returning list
class directly from type list.


Q3. How get a reversed copy copy of list without modifying original?

You already answered this with:

def reverse(list):
    l = len(list)
    return [ list[l-i-1] for i in range(l) ]

>It works, but it's obviously not backwards compatible. Any suggestions?

See Q1 answer.

But Q3 seem not to really be your question.

>What I want to do is basically this: foo(reverse(create_a_list()))

If reverse returns a copy rather than the original, then the original list
is uselessly tossed away.  So see the Q2 answer.

>Instead of having to:

>>> list = create_a_list()
>>> list.reverse()
>>> foo(list)

Since this does not create two lists, it is more effecient than your
original alternative.

Terry J. Reedy





From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 17:06:17 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:06:17 -0400
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
In-Reply-To: <u8zhceomr.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEDILBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Kirby Urner]
> So how does IDLE invoke the browser if not with popen and if
> it uses popen, then why can't I from the IDLE shell?  The kind
> of question that keeps me up at night.

[David Bolen]
> At least this can be answered by looking at the source, and let you
> get some sleep :-)
>
> It looks like IDLE uses either the standard library webbrowser module
> (2.1+) or some internal browser support in the BrowserControl.py
> module (2.0) to launch the browser.
>
> Under Windows, this is accomplished using the ShellExecute() win32 api
> call (in 2.0 via the win32api module, or via the os.startfile()
> library function in 2.1+).
>
> So there's no popen() involved.

Almost all correct.  Thanks, David!  The 2.0 truth is hairier than it looks,
because win32api doesn't ship with the base Python distribution:  2.0 also
uses webbrowser and os.startfile(), and indeed the latter function was
introduced at the last second for 2.0 precisely so that IDLE wouldn't have
to use MS popen().




From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 09:39:16 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:39:16 -0400
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com>

eGenix mx.DateTime 2.0.1 has a problem under Python 2.1. DateTime objects 
cannot be compared to None:

C:>python
Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> from mx import DateTime
 >>> dt = DateTime.now()
 >>> if dt==None: print 1
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: can't coerce DateTime to the other type
 >>>


Does anyone have an eGenix build for Windows that is compatible with Python 
2.1?

Reference:
http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Download-mxBASE


-Chuck




From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 25 13:22:12 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
References: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lu024.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>Any pointers much appreciated.

This is a shell task:

(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
 ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results

Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
passwords all the time.


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 27 05:16:47 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 11:16:47 +0200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B448.78DBC7D0@home.net>
Message-ID: <u66ceenpc.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> (CB) writes:

CB> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> 
>> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238. 

CB> Very nice. Let's hope this calms the waters some...

>> - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
>> version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
>> requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
>> *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
>> so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
>> too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
>> interpreters installed.

CB> I think this has been dismissed a little too quickly. I suppose I can't
CB> comment on what "way too much work" is, as I really don't know how much
CB> work it will be, and I'm unlikely to be doing any of it. I do think that
CB> it is a lot of work for system administrators to keep all the old
CB> interpreters around (particularly on new systems, it could be a fair bit
CB> of work to get a working copy of Python 2.1 on RedHat 13.2 a few years
CB> from now!) It seems to me that the worst case is that we end up with a
CB> somewhat bloated interpreter that is essentially two (or three, or four)
CB> completely separate interpreters that happen to be bundled together.
CB> Given how cheap memory and disk space is these days, the bloat shouldn't
CB> be a big deal, and you could always turn off the old code with a compile
CB> option if you didn't need the backwards compatible interpreter.

I agree with Chris, including the stuff I have cut away. Having different
interpreters installed is a pain, and doesn't solve the problem of using
old modules that you got somewhere mixed with new code. If the modules were
not written by yourself and too complicated to adapt them you are stuck.

See also my proposal for a `module' statement. Developers could add a
parameter with the python version for which the module was written, e.g.

module mymodule(2.4) or
module mymodule(version=2.4)

So this would be a possibility for `eternal programming'.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 11:01:50 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:01:50 -0400
Subject: MySQL-python-0.9.0 setup problems under windows98
References: <hniokt4u4365lf475ci469lbidsnhl0gfa@4ax.com> <3B4C5A47.50D8E366@nokia.com> <42noktok3h9cbo3757kg8hoavhnjjsc478@4ax.com> <9ihog4$itjqb$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <ofqokt8st2fdf4afibnmudv21mgs8o4krr@4ax.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:40:03 +0200, "Matthias Huening" <mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
wrote:

>
>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I must be very dense. I downloaded "MySQL-python-0.9.0-win32-2.zip (this
>archive is
>> for Python 1.5.2/2.0/2.1)" from that very url.
>>
>> Now what?
>>
>
>Just extract the files to an empty directory.
>Open a DOS-box, go to that directory and run:
>python setup.py install
>
>That's all.
>After that you should be able to "import MySQLdb"
>

Matthias,

Well that was easy enough!

Thanks much.

Regards, Joe


From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 31 07:14:56 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:14:56 GMT
Subject: Listing directorycontent in python
References: <1aa68e6e.0107302231.dd024a2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9md4hi.2g6.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 30 Jul 2001 23:31:55 -0700, andreas <wpt2097 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I have a simple question, I want to have a list of all files/dirs in a
> certain directory.
> 
> An example would be that I want to know all filenames that end with
> "*.JPG" in the directory "/var/www/".
> 
> I have not succeeded in doing this myself with "os.path"-module, so I
> am now asking for tips, hints, examples or pointers to answers of
> previous similar posts.
> 
> I am using Python v1.5 most of the time.
> 
> TIA
> 
> Andreas

os.dirlist(dirpath)


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 02:54:40 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:54:40 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <er957.3$EP6.133@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181033310.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Terry Reedy wrote:

> 
> > 3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
> >    work as follows:
> >
> >    1. read the file
> >    2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
> >    3. tokenize the Unicode content
> >    4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
> >       and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
> >       by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
> >       using the given file encoding
> >
> >    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
> >    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
> >    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
> >    roundtrip).
> 
> If I understand this, you would translate (my) ascii code files into
> Unicode, compile, and translate literal strings back to the ascii form they
> started as.  Can this be done without lengthening the compile time 'too
> much'.
> 
> > Issues that still need to be resolved:
> 
> > - what to do with non-literal data in the source file, e.g.
> >   variable names and comments:
> >
> >   * reencode them just as would be done for literals
> >   * only allow ASCII for certain elements like variable names
> >   etc.
> 
> I strongly suspect that people who do not write any Latin alphabet language
> would strongly prefer to write names and comments in their native script.
> This would open Python to millions who are presently excluded.
> Mixed-alphabet texts are pretty common in some non-Latin alphabet
> countries.

As I was said in c.l.p earlier, this is very bad idea and Python Style
Guide says that if you expect to other people from other countries read
your code, write your comments in English.

Exchange of programs will be nearly impossible if variable names will
be in native tongues!

In Russia programmers who do not know English (do those exist?)
write var name using transliteration. For (self-explanatory) example:

slovar = {'spisok': 'list', 
   'slovar': 'dictionary', 
   'element': 'item',
   'perevod': 'translation',
}

spisok = ['element', 'perevod']
for element in spisok:
   try:
       perevod = slovar[element]
       print perevod
   except:
       print element, "???"
  
This is ugly, of course, but having native names will cause
more problems. 

I, for example, can navigate faster in English versions of software,
because translations differ. And even simple "Edit" has several variants.

So, this "interoperability" will actually make interoperability harder, at
least for Open Source. For anything else I do not care.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From smnordby at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 21 19:40:09 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:40:09 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j9i19$p96$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B596D95.C87DFFCD@mac.com>
Message-ID: <3B5A12D9.7836217E@yahoo.com>

jorjun wrote:
> 
> Aahz Maruch wrote:
> > i'M aFraId i doN't UnDerStaNd wHy YoU THinK caSE-InsENsitIvitY miGhT bE
> > A gOoD idEA.
> > --
> Currently if I import a module and the identifiers lOoK_lIkE_ThIs
> then I have to precisely follow the ugly conventions in my own code.

Or import uGlY_mOdUlE as pretty_module

-SteveN-


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 10:07:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:07:12 +0200
Subject: how saving/retreiving python code from DB ?
References: <3B559274.6B66A372@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9j457f07jv@enews4.newsguy.com>

"vincent delft" <vdelft at itmasters.com> wrote in message
news:3B559274.6B66A372 at yahoo.com...
> I'm looking for a module that allow us to store/import python code into
> DB (bsddb for example) instead of a file.
>
> like "import" retreives coding in flat files, is there a way to retreive
> coding for a DB ?

You can write your own version of __import__ and set it as the
thus-named attribute of the __builtin__ module -- statements
import and from will thereafter use your version rather than
the built-in kind.  Is this what you want...?


Alex





From llothar at mailandnews.de  Sun Jul  1 16:27:47 2001
From: llothar at mailandnews.de (Lothar Scholz)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 22:27:47 +0200
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi@4ax.com>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:40:34 GMT, Ron Stephens <rdsteph at earthlink.net>
wrote:

Perhaps you have missed that i was asking for an verion > alpha.
I think Pythoncard will not be useable for some years.

I like commercial software if it is worth the money you pay. After
hacking a lot with "Free Software" i more and more hate this kind,
specially for things as complex as good GUI interfaces. Where nearly
all "Freeware" sucks at least at one point.  

The Problem is that Freeware killed any cheap alternatives. 

Perhaps i really must take "Black Adder". 


>A major new project is underway, called Pythoncard, see
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pythoncard . Maybe you can contribute ;-))))
>
>Lothar Scholz wrote:
>
>> Is there something other then "Black Adder" which  is behind an  alpha
>> version ?



From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Fri Jul 27 06:07:57 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 03:07:57 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com> <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107270207.24b57cf0@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B60EEA0.70BC492A at tundraware.com>...
> In an ideal world, you's have a layering scheme something like this:
> 
> 
>        Chunk of distributed application.
>            |     and/or    |
> -------------------------------------------
> tx Queuing API | Direct Message Passing API
> -------------------------------------------
> tx Q Manager  M|           |              M
> ----------------           |
>             Reliable Messaging Layer
> --------------------------------------------         Where, "M" is a pluggable
>             Reliable Comms Transport      M          management & security
> --------------------------------------------         facility for each layer
>              Speeds, Feeds, & Wire        M          in question
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> (You'll notice that my picture is a bit different than the usual
> one in which Q management lives *below* the messaging layer.  This
> is a matter of taste because you can accomplish the same things
> either way.  In any case, if you need message persistence as a 
> class of service (almost all enterprises need this on occasion),
> you will end up implementing a disk-based Q under the Messaging
> Layer above and beyond what the Transactional Q Manager has to do.)

I'll say now that I sent my last message without properly understanding
what you have written. Even now I still have to read it properly as am
trying to respond to this all quite quickly.

Anyway, it seems you model may be quite close to how OSE is structured.
OSE has a base reliable messaging layer (subject to processes not being
shutdown or crashing), with a direct message passing API being exposed.
OSE doesn't currently have a transactional queing mechanism. If it was
done, I also saw it sitting out the side, or maybe partially also using
the direct messaging API. I definitely didn't see things as being
dependent on transactional queuing. OSE doesn't necessarily address issues
of security to much degree as it is being seen as best suited to closed
corporate networks.

Will now have to sit down and look at your paper and other comments when
I get a chance as I can understand where you are coming from.


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 23 11:34:52 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 10:34:52 -0500
Subject: Parsing TCL?
References: <roy-8EF99A.21173519072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995597193.26785.python-list@python.org> <yv24rs82ipr.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <CE341682C584C2CB.E0DC7ACAB29A61B8.6B64A453470DF3AF@lp.airnews.net>

In article <yv24rs82ipr.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de>,
Harald Kirsch  <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote:
>Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
>
>>     Roy> I know this is probably a strange request, but does anybody know of
>>     Roy> a python module which parses TCL files?
>> 
>> No, but isn't Tcl essentially just
>> 
>>     command arg arg arg arg
>> 
>Except that arg may be "arg" or {arg} or [arg] or $arg and those special
>characters as well as backslash and some others have to be treated
>within. In fact even command may be "command" or [command] or
>{command} or $command, but this is not for beginners:-)
>
>> ?  I thought it was designed to be extremely easy to parse.  Shouldn't be
>> hard to write a parser for it I wouldn't think.
>
>Nevertheless you are right. The whole syntax *plus evaluation
>semantics* is described in 11 points in a man-page of 208 lines.
			.
			.
			.
Does someone seriously want to pursue this?  A
quick fix would be to use one of the Tcl-Python
combinations, and let the Tcl part do the pars-
ing (or lexification, as one might argue is
closer to the point).
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 31 03:52:53 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 03:52:53 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <000001c1199a$3bbd3c40$a9e1fea9@carol>

Mark writes -

>Somewhere in one of the posts on the many PEP 238 threads was the
>following link to a discussion in a google group:
><http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d>

Thanks for that. I found that thread actually very interesting, and am sorry
I missed the cite the first time it came around in the PEP238 thread.

But what I found interesting, as a novice, was discussion and advise
from some of the Big Guys about doing mission (life) critical work
within the limitations of *any* implementation of floating
point numerics.

The "/" issue was a digression from the meat of the conversation
 - which was really about testing techniques, and in general
belts and suspenders when traversing the floating point minefield.

Tim writes -

>If you have a programmer who, e.g., assumes that x+y-x equals y, or thinks
>(-b + sqrt(b**2 - 4*a*c))/(2*a)
>is a good way to find a root of a quadratic equation, they'll eventually
>kill someone regardless of programming language.

And regardless of division sematics.

No?

That is what is trying to be tackled with Unified Numeric model.

Correct ?

A Big Thing.

Will be interesting to watch develop.

ART





From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 14:50:47 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 18:50:47 GMT
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m62c7.ja8.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:48:47 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> pisze:

> In what language Python would have been written had 'C' not existed, if it
> had come to exist at all, would make for entertaining "what if" scenarios.

It depends what language would be used for what C is used in our reality.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 31 16:01:21 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:01:21 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
In-Reply-To: <XZw97.5001$9i1.471725@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107311400100.649-100000@bms>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Steve Holden wrote:
<...>
> How about "incidental programmers", since the programming is largely
> incidental to the real goals of their activities?

sound about right





From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 08:07:04 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:07:04 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <mailman.995210391.3651.python-list@python.org> <4as5lt82h2oc47fl72mkb8i21ppf6lboop@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l8aj8.8in.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:56:30 +0200, Lothar Scholz <llothar at mailandnews.de> wrote:
>>
>>The problem is that there isn't one "better", just "better in the eyes of
>>the author", 
>
>I believe that this not really true, for example you must accept that
>Common Lisp is much more powerful than any other language.

Define powerful

>The problem is that most people are not very open minded - mostly
>because there intellectual skills are to low to capture more.
>Sorry this seems to be arogant - but its the truth.

Are you trolling?


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul  4 15:59:23 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 15:59:23 -0400
Subject: newbie question
References: <mailman.994227967.18236.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uofr079es.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> If you are working under UNIX, you do not need to program it:
> 
> $ find . -name '*.py' | xargs wc
> 
> (this brokes only when there are too large number of files, but then you
> could read man find to see how to call a command for each file.)

Unless you need an overall total for all files (as opposed to the per
file count request) this shouldn't break at all.  xargs will chunk the
file list out of find into smaller pieces to avoid overflowing command
line arguments to wc.  Thus, for long lists you'll execute wc more
than once, so you'll end up with more than one set of final totals.

(Or you could use "-l 1" with xargs and it'll run wc for each file so
you'll never see total lines :-))

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From martin at strakt.com  Fri Jul 20 03:09:24 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:09:24 +0200
Subject: Immutable list reverse function
In-Reply-To: <7VD57.4114$EP6.1255448@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
References: <mailman.995543208.24170.python-list@python.org> <7VD57.4114$EP6.1255448@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010720090924.A5274@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 04:28:51PM +0000, Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
> "Martin Sj?gren" <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.995543208.24170.python-list at python.org...
> >Is there a "good" way to write a fast reverse function for immutable
> lists?
> 
> Lists are mutable.  That is why you can reverse them in place.  Three
> possible questions:

Yeah I meant immutable sequences. Or rather, an immutable reverse
function? That is, not changing the parameter.

[snip Q1]

> and similarly for str_reverse.  In 2.2a I believe we could write a more
> generic
> 
> def seq_reverse(seq):
>   t = type(seq)
>   ...
>   return t(ans)

Yea that'd be nice, but I want it to work with py1.5 :-)

> Lutz *Programming Python* p492 gives (with slight renaming) this generic
> version which will even work for sequence-like classes:
> 
> def reverse(seq):
>   ans = seq[:0]   # empty seq of same type
>   for i in range(len(seq)):
>     ans = seq[i:i+1] + ans
>   return ans

That could work, but it looks pretty slow creating new sequences all the
time. Still, if the sequence is immutable that's the way it has to be
done.

> Q2. How reverse a list and get return value to chain in call sequence?

This is not what I wanted to do from a puristic view, but seeing as the
sequencce I want to reverse often is a 'range(N)' list that'd work.

> >What I want to do is basically this: foo(reverse(create_a_list()))
> 
> If reverse returns a copy rather than the original, then the original list
> is uselessly tossed away.  So see the Q2 answer.
> 
> >Instead of having to:
> 
> >>> list = create_a_list()
> >>> list.reverse()
> >>> foo(list)
> 
> Since this does not create two lists, it is more effecient than your
> original alternative.

You know, I never thought of that, *sigh*, I think I'll stick to this, or
maybe write a small revret() function that reverses and returns.

I miss Haskell :/

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Wed Jul 18 23:23:57 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 03:23:57 GMT
Subject: One Worry for 2.2
References: <ENi57.22469$M9.7022637@typhoon.we.rr.com> <3B55CFFD.C805B34A@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <hps57.22773$M9.7385422@typhoon.we.rr.com>

> B does have a foo method.  The problem is that C is derived
> from A, not from B.  So an instance of C shouldn't be
> allowed to pass itself to B.foo.

ah, thanks for spotting that. (last time i try to get my
brain in gear before breakfast). well then i am all relieved
then 2.2 looks good to me :]






From shriek at gmx.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 22:26:47 2001
From: shriek at gmx.co.uk (Stephen)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 19:26:47 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <9jop6k$l2d$2@pea.uk.research.att.com> <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e@posting.google.com> <9jrfva$dhj$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <97ae44ee.0107291826.427a8b3c@posting.google.com>

Thank you for demystifying this for me Duncan. Have since been searching
the web for layman's (or at least novice programmer) guides to CORBA and
just in case anybody else finds themselves having to follow the same steps,
one of the best I've found is
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/corba/
don't worry about it being written for Java, it's the most simplified
I've found, assuming no prior knowledge of CORBA and accompanying jargon.

Now, in order to test your example, I've downloaded OmniOrbpy and am 
about to install OmniOrb 3.x, as described at 
http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB_3/README_win32.html
It specifies that the pre-built binaries work for winNT/98 and uses 
Python 1.52. Will try with win2000 and Python 2.1 but was wondering
if you know of any changes/differences ? 

Thank you again for the example you provided,

Stephen.



> In article <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e at posting.google.com>,
>  Stephen <shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> >Thank you very much, Duncan.  After looking around for a couple of days (hence
> >my late followup. sorry), it does seem like my options are 
> >(a) CORBA
> >(b) SOAP
> >(c) XMLRPC
> >(d) Pyro
> 
> You might want to add DOPY, which is along the same lines as Pyro:
> 
>   http://www.users.cloud9.net/~proteus/dopy/welcome.html
> 
> I don't know anything about it, though.
> 
> >CORBA has always been intimidating. So much work just to do "hello world",
> >let along build a full app.
> 
> People often say this, but it just isn't true, especially if you use
> Python. "Hello world" doesn't make a lot of sense in a distributed
> application, but here's the full code for a "fortune cookie" service.
> 
> First, declare the interface in IDL:
> 
>   // fortune.idl
>   module Fortune {
>     interface CookieServer {
>       string get_cookie();
>     };
>   };
> 
> Now convert it to Python declarations with your chosen ORB's IDL
> compiler, for example with omniORBpy:
> 
>   $ omniidl -bpython fortune.idl
> 
> [ orbit-python doesn't have the IDL compiler step -- it always
>   compiles it on the fly. ]
> 
> First the client, on the Python command line:
> 
>   >>> import CORBA, Fortune
>   >>> orb = CORBA.ORB_init()
>   >>> o = orb.string_to_object("corbaloc::spud.uk.research.att.com/fortune")
>   >>> o = o._narrow(Fortune.CookieServer)
>   >>>
>   >>> print o.get_cookie()
>   Objects are lost only because people look where they are not rather than
>   where they are.
> 
>   >>> print o.get_cookie()
>   "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
>   cottage cheese sculpture."
> 
> 
> There really is a fortune cookie server running on
> spud.uk.research.att.com, so you can run this example.
> 
> 
> Now the server:
> 
>   #!/usr/bin/env python
>   
>   import sys, os
>   import CORBA, Fortune, Fortune__POA
>   
>   FORTUNE_PATH = "/usr/games/fortune"
>   
>   class CookieServer_i (Fortune__POA.CookieServer):
>       def get_cookie(self):
> 	  pipe   = os.popen(FORTUNE_PATH)
> 	  cookie = pipe.read()
> 	  if pipe.close():
> 	      # An error occurred with the pipe
> 	      cookie = "Oh dear, couldn't get a fortune\n"
> 	  return cookie
>   
>   orb = CORBA.ORB_init(sys.argv)
>   poa = orb.resolve_initial_references("RootPOA")
>   
>   servant = CookieServer_i()
>   poa.activate_object(servant)
>   
>   print orb.object_to_string(servant._this())
>   
>   poa._get_the_POAManager().activate()
>   orb.run()
> 
> 
> That's it. Note that about half the lines of code are nothing to do
> with CORBA -- they're just getting the fortune cookie. When you run
> the server it prints a long hex string like:
> 
> IOR:010000001d00000049444c3a466f7274756e652f436f6f6b69655365727665723
> a312e300000000001000000000000005c000000010102000d0000003135382e313234
> 2e36342e330000f90a07000000666f7274756e6500020000000000000008000000010
> 0000000545441010000001c0000000100000001000100010000000100010509010100
> 0100000009010100
> 
> which can be given to orb.string_to_object (without the line breaks).
> That IOR string is also the server running on spud.uk.research.att.com.
> 
> A version of the server that can be used with the corbaloc URI is just
> as simple, but omniORB specific, so I haven't shown that.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Duncan.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 14:01:22 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 18:01:22 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

23 Jul 2001 10:47:08 GMT, Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> pisze:

> "+" does two different things depending on what you pass in (strings or
> numbers). "*" does so too. They both can be said to lose information.

The difference between '+' and '/' is that ints aren't implicitly
converted to strings, so one wouldn't use an int instead of a string
expecting '+' to do the conversion and concatenation. But ints *are*
implicitly converted to floats when needed in about all contexts except
'/', so it would be reasonable to expect them to be converted in the
'/' case too.

In languages where ints are implicitly converted to strings, addition
and concatenation are typically different operators. Like in Perl:
'+' and '.'.

Python does treat ints and floats as different parts of the same
concept by letting them compare equal and convert as needed. So real
division and integer division should be distinguished by the operator.

To help with migration there can be old_div(x,y) function. That way
old / can be unconditionally replaced with old_div for a quick fix,
and it can be made nicer by saying explicitly which division is meant
when somebody has time to do it properly.

I still favor 'x div y' and 'x mod y', with '/' on ints giving
rationals, and with mixed rationals with floats giving floats.
Literals like 1.2 would continue to mean floats, so each type has
nicely spelled constants:
    7    -  int (unified with long in the future)
    7/3  -  rational
    7.2  -  float

Each time a float is expected, a rational would give the same answer
(perhaps in a different type or accuracy). Each time a rational
is expected, an integer would give the same answer (perhaps in
a different type).

'"%.02f" % a_rational' is a good way to output currency amounts.
'rational(a_string)' is a good way to input them.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 23:03:20 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 03:03:20 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995949762.26287.python-list@python.org> <cp66chbobw.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <YLL77.29942$EP6.7426923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp66chbobw.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes:
> >     4.  Difficulty in writing backwards-compatible code is bad
> >         (thus, code to implement partitioning of a dataset would
> >         naturally use the // operator in 2.2+ but would not be
able
> >         to in pre-2.2, so the div() function would have to be
> >         religiously used, hurting readability).

> Hm, #4 is relatively new in this discussion (for me, anyway).  I
will
> have to adapt to this new requirement, which I find reasonable
> (although I wish it didn't exist -- but I understand the
motivation).

My solution for this:

Since int/int and float//float will have new meanings, don't use them.
Write float(int)/int and floor(float/float) instead to get the new
meaning.  Only write int//int or float/float.  With the tokenizer
module, it will then be easy to change all instances of int//int to
int/int (old meaning).  It should even even be possible to have
package installers check sys.version and do this conversion on site as
needed.

This is not the same as having *one* file that is cross-compatible,
but since the generation of the second is automated, it is certainly
close.  A version check could be inserted in both versions (and
automatically modified) to make sure that each version of the file
only runs on versions of the interpreter it is compatible with.

  For newly written code, the harder problem will be to not use
any of the other neat new features, which mostly *cannot* be
automatically back converted.

Terry J. Reedy







From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:54 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:54 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <8rdoltsi3fcph86pnkgckmiqich6d9qqng@4ax.com> <mtn15v2wiw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <2b6plts93l46r4aip12u0veqfab01sfsau@4ax.com> <mtvgkj19rw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <o1opltcbdg9h00pvqtu7a46g60hlttlmtk@4ax.com>


I've been getting seriosly ratty - reading what I wrote shows that it
really is time to take that rest Tim suggested.

Sorry for that.

I wish I could afford to just shrug it off and move on - unfortunately
that's not the position I'm in.

There's only one new thing I can probably say, and that is...

On 23 Jul 2001 16:54:43 -0700, Johann Hibschman
<johann at physics.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>> They are *NOT* the right thing from a mathematical point of view -
>> integer division in mathematics gives an integer quotient and integer
>> remainder as any five-year-old knows.
>
>Well, most mathematicians I know would disagree.  Division is not
>well-defined on integers, unless you want "5 / 2" to return "(2, 1)".
>It's just not a property integers have.  Or, well, you can define the
>operation, but they'll stop being a group under it, so all hell breaks
>loose.  :-)
>
>Five year olds don't know much maths.

But 99% of programming arithmetic is at this level, or maybe up to
ten-year-old at best. We don't even do algebra - we do the 'rub out
the x, write in *this* number and then work out the answer' thing
children learn as a prelude to algebra. Professional pride may make
this a hard thing to accept, but mathematics above the ten-year-old
level is rarely needed in programming except in particular
applications tackled by people with specialist knowledge.



From jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 05:39:39 2001
From: jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk (Jon Nicoll)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 02:39:39 -0700
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com>
Message-ID: <8351bb33.0107160139.7af4f9af@posting.google.com>

oops!

Having posted my link, I see from checking it that the version I put
up there is an early version, without the Linux compatability I later
added. I'll update this in the next few days, or you could email me
for an updated copy. It might force me to pull my finger out and
re-test it under 2.x ;-/

    Jon N

"Bryan Brannigan" <bbrannigan at cybertours.com> wrote in message news:<3b520bcb at news.cybertours.com>...
> I am looking for a way to send data to certain ports on a custom ISA card.
> The card is addressed as 280h.  Is this possible with Python?  Is the code
> compatible with Linux as well?
> 
> Bryan


From philipp at salomon.at  Mon Jul  9 08:15:32 2001
From: philipp at salomon.at (Philipp Jocham)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 12:15:32 GMT
Subject: Python on Tandem/NonStop Himalaya?
Message-ID: <slrn9kj835.34h.philipp@sapc079.salomon.at>

Anybody got experiences on compiling and running Python
on a Compaq NonStop Himalaya architecture?

They claim to be a 90% POSIX.1, XPG4 and Unix 98 System,
so it seems feasible.
	http://nonstop.compaq.com/view.asp?IOID=5187


Philipp
-- 
Philipp Jocham                            SALOMON AUTOMATION GmbH
mailto: philipp.jocham at salomon.at        A-8114 Friesach bei Graz


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 14:56:41 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:56:41 -0700
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <9ht4oi$frnab$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

You can get this effect now by leveraging a minimal class:

class Dict:
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        self.__dict__.update(kwargs)

dict = Dict( type = 'button', id= 32, name = 'some name' )

if dict.type == 'button':
    print "This works!"

dict.newType = 2

if dict.newType == 2:
    print "So does this"

print repr(dict.__dict__)


If you don't need to initialize the object with named parameters, you can
simplify to using:

class Dict:
    pass


HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Gerson Kurz" <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote in message
news:3b421046.1836046 at news.t-online.de...
> Please consider the following:
>
> dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
> ...
> if o['type'] == 'button':
> # do something for objects of type button
>
> Now, take a look at
>
> if o.type == 'button':
> # do something for objects of type button
>
> A dictionary can in many cases be interpreted as a dynamically created
> object. And an object should have members; or rather, you should be
> able to access its data in a member-style fashion.
>
> This change doesn't save you much type overhead - but it makes the
> code look more readable for those uses for which it makes sense to
> treat dictionarys as dynamic objects (and I have lots of uses for
> these).
>
> I realize that there are possible dictionary keys (such as tuples) for
> which such a syntax is improper; it should be sufficient to make the
> following restrictions:
>
> - the syntax is only possible for string-typed keys that *qualify as
> valid identifiers*
> - the syntax is only possible for keys that are not part of dir({}).
>
> The implementation would be a hack that extendes the {}.__methods__
> lookup.
>
> Worthwile pursuit or total crap ?
>




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 10:56:17 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:56:17 -0500
Subject: Bug in rfc822
In-Reply-To: <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
	<2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
	<cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> I think Barry's mimelib may have a replacement already.
    Guido>     http://mimelib.sourceforge.net/

The astute observer would be tempted to ask why Barry hasn't been able to
sneak mimelib into the core yet:

    >>> import mimelib
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    ImportError: No module named mimelib

I won't ask however, as I don't want to show up on the PSU's radar screen.
Has anyone seen Barry recently?

Skip




From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul 13 14:18:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:18:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: More on "with" statement
In-Reply-To: <3b4f3600$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107132215520.8976-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Rufus V. Smith wrote:

>I went to the FAQ to check the entry about a "with" statement
>that is available in other languages.  I can only think of two
>reasons to use it.
>
>    1) You're a lazy typist. (Or haven't learned to cut and paste)
>
>    2) You are generally concerned that multiple references to the
>     same object with complex, multilevel access might be confusing
>    to the reader or not optimized by the compiler.

Programmers must be lazy to some degree. So, they tend to write

a*(b+c+d+e)

instead of

a*b+a*c+a*d+a*e

I think, the same applies to "with".

It is also better from maintainance point of view:
you have one point to change:

(a+1)*(b+c+d+e)

while:

(a+1)*b+(a+1)*c+(a+1)*d+(a+1)*e

However, with is a border case...

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 13, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Useless Invention: Open Toed Safety Shoes." _/




From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul 24 16:46:06 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 23:46:06 +0300
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <ku4rs3yueb.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <9jk65h$dto$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <kuelr6awdt.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <9jk65h$dto$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu>, "Russell E. Owen"
<owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu> writes:

| The main problem is going to be how to buffer data until it can be read. 
| the parallel port card has no buffering of its own. Hence the complex 
| process outlined above.

i am not sure what you mean by buffering here. select() will tell
you as soon as it can be read. until you do the data is likely being
buffered by the device driver...

[...]

| P.S. Any advice regarding using "aioread", etc. vs "aio_read", etc.? 
| This is on Solaris 8. "aio_read", etc. seems to be the standard Posix 
| way of doing asynch I/O. I have no idea where "aioread", etc. come from, 
| but it's what the existing C code uses. At first glance, the interface 
| to aio_read looks a bit better, but I'd hate to pick something that was 
| buggy or deprecated.

yes, aio_read is posix. i have not used it. it may be better
to ask about it on another newsgroup (eg comp.unix.programmer).

standard python does not expose these functions, but having a python
module that does would be interesting...

  -- erno


From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Mon Jul  2 14:32:30 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:32:30 -0400
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9jvbc6.pdh.carlf@panix2.panix.com>; from carlf@panix.com on Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 11:08:54PM +0000
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net> <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi@4ax.com> <slrn9jvbc6.pdh.carlf@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <20010702143230.B22536@harmony.cs.rit.edu>

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 11:08:54PM +0000, Carl Fink wrote:
| In article <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi at 4ax.com>, Lothar Scholz wrote:
| > 
| > Perhaps you have missed that i was asking for an verion > alpha.
| > I think Pythoncard will not be useable for some years.
| 
| The current _Linux Journal_ has an article on Glade as a Python GUI
| builder.  It surely looks impressive to me, but I haven't tried it. 
| You'd end up with a GTK program (no native Windows/Mac look and feel)
| if that matters to you. 

I used glade on Linux (my machine) for a C++ project for school about
a year ago to run on Solaris (the lab).  It was excellent.  If I had
understood how to build a well-designed (modular) app around libglade
I would have used it instead of glade-- (the C++ source
generator/backend ; it had a few issues but nothing that took major
patching of the generated code).

I highly recommend Glade.  IMO learning how to build from the source
is a very good idea to be sure works on windows -- GTK, glade, pygtk,
etc, with the different compilers and linkers there are (ie MSVC++ vs.
mingw vs. gcc and windows vs ld).  I don't know if libglade has been
ported or not.

(PS.  I like GTK's LnF better than MSW anyways :-))

| (I suppose you could use a GTK widget set that looks like WinX or
| Mac?)

Sawfish (a window manager intended for use with GNOME) has an "Aqua"
theme that looks similar to Mac OS X.  (GTK is themeable, BTW)

-D




From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Thu Jul 26 06:42:47 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:42:47 +1000
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jqfqs$ns8$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

"Stephen Horne" <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f at 4ax.com...
>
> How about inference by looking at the extension of the input file.

$ app_that_prints_python_code_on_stdout | python

What extension?

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Jul 10 07:17:05 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:17:05 +0200
Subject: basic (mx) ODBC question
References: <994236193.821045@nntp01.uskonet.com> <23891c90.0107050122.6aed9455@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4AE431.CB1C4153@lemburg.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> "Hanna Joo" <hanna at chagford.com> wrote in message news:<994236193.821045 at nntp01.uskonet.com>...
> > Hi all
> >
> > I don't understand ODBC well. From the little that I understand - postgresql
> > has its ODBC driver (on linux). I am connecting from windows. mxODBC is a
> > module I can use. mxODBC suggests that if I am connecting from windows, I
> > should (from here mad rambling because I don't know what the doc is saying)
> > compile using VC compiler on windows.
> 
> That may depend on binary availability of the package for Windows. I
> don't remember anyone releasing binaries for mxODBC recently.

eGenix.com provides binaries for Windows and all major Python
releases starting from Python 1.5.2. You don't have to have a VC
compiler to use mxODBC on Windows.
 
> > I thought ==>
> >
> > ODBC python talks to on windows -- ODBC manager on Win machine -- ODBC
> > module of pgsql.
> > (on win machine)                                 (between win machine and
> > linux server)    (linux server)
> 
> The problem with ODBC by itself is that, as far as I am aware, it
> doesn't address the issue of communication between client and server,
> program and database system, or whatever. Therefore, you need to
> choose drivers which will let you have the distributed communication
> that you desire. In the past, I have used drivers for an obscure,
> proprietary database system which can be installed in the Windows ODBC
> driver manager and which can be configured to communicate with remote
> servers running the database instances.
> 
> I don't know whether there are any such drivers for postgresql, but
> then I have never used it on Windows or UNIX (or both!).

You normally install an ODBC driver on Windows, configure the
data source using this driver in the Windows ODBC manager and
then talk to the Windows ODBC manager using the mx.ODBC.Windows
subpackage.

Whether the driver support multi-tier setups (client and server
on different machines), depends on the driver you use, but I
think that the postgresql driver does support this.
 
> > mxODBC has many subpackages for various DBs.. how does it work then? Does it
> > work like the following?
> >
> > python talks (or uses) to mxODBC that is postgresql specific  -- ODBC module
> > of pgsql
> > (same machine)
> 
> Going from my experiences with mxODBC on UNIX [1], one can compile
> mxODBC with a specific subpackage which knows about a particular ODBC
> implementation. In my case, I compiled it with knowledge of the Sybase
> Adaptive Server Anywhere ODBC library. This meant that mxODBC linked
> directly to that library at run-time.

You can do basically the same on Windows, but I would not recommend
it since it requires a lot of knowledge about how ODBC and the
specific driver work.
 
> > Or...
> >
> > python talks to mxODBC that creates an entry for win ODBC that is postgres
> > specific -- ODBC module of pgsql
> 
> Well, this would mean compiling the Windows subpackage, which I
> presume is aware of the details of the Windows ODBC driver manager. If
> you have a postgresql driver for the Windows ODBC driver manager, then
> mxODBC doesn't need to know explicitly that it's using postgresql, but
> the postgresql driver obviously needs to integrate with the driver
> manager.
> 
> > or...
> >
> > python talks to ODBC on linux  -- iODBC on same machine -- ODBC module of
> > pgsql
> > (same machine)
> 
> This can also be done, although you're removing Windows from the
> architecture, unless you are suggesting that Python is talking across
> a network to the Linux host where iODBC resides; this would involve
> you inventing or discovering a protocol which lets this happen, since
> ODBC doesn't mandate such protocols itself. I have seen an ODBC
> network gateway package, but this exported Windows-resident database
> systems to other hosts, not the other way around.
> 
> > mxODBC has different subpackages as I said, one being Windows.. I don't
> > understand how that works.. different packages for different databases and
> > one for windows?
> 
> Well, there's an iODBC subpackage, if I remember correctly, so you
> could say that there are "different packages for different databases,
> one for Windows and one for UNIX". ;-) But the most pertinent detail
> is the "point of integration" between mxODBC and the ODBC drivers.
> Either one integrates mxODBC with a driver manager (Windows or iODBC),
> or one integrates it with a particular database system's own driver
> (Sybase ASA).
> 
> The advantage of integrating with a driver manager is the lack of need
> to recompile mxODBC should you change or add database systems. The
> advantage of integrating with a specific implementation is, in
> practice, increased functionality, performance (I would think) and
> reliability.
> 
> > (realizing post lacks focus as a result of pathetic lack of understanding)
> >
> > Can sombody direct me to a site where I may be able to find out more about
> > this ODBC issue?
> 
> The mxODBC site may provide some detail, but you might want to visit
> my "mxODBC Configuration Guide" [1] which provides links to software
> which may let you achieve your distributed environment ambitions.

Great summary, Paul !
 
> Regards,
> 
> Paul
> 
> [1] http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/mxODBC.html

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Thu Jul 26 01:28:20 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:28:20 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996045152.25643.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <250720012228204930%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.996045152.25643.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> [Tim Roberts]
> > The average child's IQ these days is 100.  That is the very definition
> > of IQ.
> 
> Except in Virginia.  Jealous of the rumor that the Tennessee legislature had
> defined pi to be 3 on the nose, the VA legislature defined *every* child's
> IQ to be 120.  The VA school system subsequently saved a lot of money on
> now-useless tests, and by most accounts the kids didn't actually get any
> dumber.  It's also a great source of amusement that the Maryland legislature
> sought to get even by mandating that all its childrens' IQs were 80.
>

That's the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the women are
strong...all the men are good looking...and all the children are above
average.

  --John


From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Sat Jul 21 11:42:19 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:42:19 +0100
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
References: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <3B59A2D1.35B602D8@accessforall.nl>


Young-Jin Lee wrote:
> 
> Hi, all.
> I'm new to Python. I heard many applause on Python, especially ease of
> programming, and I want to use Python. I read the python tutorial on the
> python home page, but it didn't have all I wanted to know.
> From my first expression on Python, it is better for server side
> programming. Can I use Pythong to develop a client application with a GUI?
> It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it? How easy is it?
> And is there any way to connect Python application and Java application? I
> have been developing a Java application (it's quite large) and I don't want
> to rewrite it with JPython.

>From Jython/JPython you can use any java code on the class path,
so instead of rewriting your Java app you can reuse it.
See 'Interaction with Java packages' on
http://www.jython.org/docs/index.html
Basically this allows you to keep your app almost as it is and
do new developments for it in Jython.

Have fun,
Ype
-- 
email at xs4all.nl


From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul 20 23:54:24 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 23:54:24 -0400
Subject: whats this mean?
References: <20010720213533.19217.00000446@ng-fb1.aol.com> <etdhew754i4.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <etdelrb543z.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Sorry, that was misleading.  "why" gets assigned the exception that was
raised, as Sean pointed out.  In the example, replace "print why" with
"print repr(why)" :)

Alex.


From paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com  Mon Jul 30 06:28:57 2001
From: paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com (Paolo Invernizzi)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:28:57 GMT
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
References: <mailman.996447416.25799.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <JFa97.68$Nq1.2992@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>

Request... is possible to provide also a MSI package?

Actually in our company we are using python21 standard installation
distributed to developers as a zap, would be nice to have a MSI ( as
ActiveState does with its python implementation... <wink> )

Tnkz in advance...

Paolo Invernizzi
DMSWare.com


"Tim Peters" <tim at zope.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996447416.25799.python-list at python.org...
> Wise Solutions generously offered PythonLabs use of their InstallerMaster
> 8.1 system.  Every PythonLabs Windows installer produced to date used Wise
> 5.0a, and while that's done a great job for us over the years, some of you
> have noticed <wink> that it was starting to show its age.
>
> I've completed upgrading our Windows installation procedures to
> InstallerMaster 8.1, and we'll release the next alpha of Windows Python
2.2
> using it.  Even if you have no interest in *testing* 2.2a2 at that time,
if
> you're running on a Windows system please download the installer (when
it's
> released) just to be sure it works for you!  As always, we have direct
> access to only a few Windows boxes, so we rely on cheerful volunteerd to
> uncover surprises.





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Thu Jul 26 04:07:26 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 10:07:26 +0200
Subject: New User Question: extension types and python 2.2/class/type
References: <758d4715.0107251821.3ee9dda4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <j4itggglkx.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

thomas_barket at yahoo.com (tom barket) writes:

> Having followed the class/type unification discussions somewhat and
> read Guido's "Unifying types and classes in python 2.2" tutorial, it
> seems to me that chapter 2 "Defining New Types" in the "Extending
> and Embedding the Python Interpreter" doc is about to become
> obsolete (in the sense that what it describes will shortly *not* be
> the prefered way to define/import new types).

Not at all. PyType objects won't go away. Instead, additional slots
are added, to accomodate the extensibility.

> Since this was going to be my guide for my own extension type
> endeavor, I would like to ask how can i get instructions for
> correctly writing an "extension type" under the new (or actually
> soon-to-be-new) regime.

I'd recommend to define the type using the current API; the additional
API is not completely documented yet. Furthermore, you will only ever
need it if you want to inherit Python classes from your type.

Regards,
Martin


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Wed Jul 11 00:05:07 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 04:05:07 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <TfQ27.328548$p33.6645853@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"jcm" <grumble at usa.net> wrote in message
news:9ifo90$4hh$1 at news.mathworks.com...

> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
> slow.

I drove my motorcycle around Laguna Seca, and it was slow. Maybe if I bought
a different brand of motorcycle I could go around the track faster.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA






From web2ed at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 09:54:46 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 06:54:46 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107110554.af5a044@posting.google.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994804336.23495.python-list at python.org>...
> Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> > 
> > So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
> > acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
> > carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it
> > for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can Python
> > become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?
> 
> Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
> particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
> administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
> into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.

What about shipping Python with optimized niche extensions along with
the standard distribution?

--
ed


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul  4 18:20:42 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 15:20:42 -0700
Subject: batch generation of keypairs by GnuPG
References: <slrn9k71fq.707.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <mtelrwcp51.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

phil hunt writes:

> It uses public-key encryption. As the encryption engine,
> I am using GnuPG, which I am calling from my program using
> the system() call.

I have written a python wrapper for GPGME as part of my work towards a
Mac OS X wrapper for GPG, which should make this sort of thing easier;
it also means that you don't have to make tempfiles, which are a bit
of a security hole, to say the least.

Currently, I don't have the key generation parts working at all, but
that's just because I'm lazy.  It should follow straightforwardly.

I don't have it online or available yet, but I can arrange to have it
posted somewhere, if you're interested.  It will take me a bit of work
to get it in a form where I'd want to give it to others, but not more
than a few hours' worth.

If you're interested, send me email.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 11:24:11 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:24:11 +0200
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
References: <mailman.994355168.2401.python-list@python.org> <9i2jv703cm@enews2.newsguy.com> <slrn9kgsj4.csq.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>
Message-ID: <9iaglp016li@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Remco Gerlich" <scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl> wrote in message
news:slrn9kgsj4.csq.scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl...
    ...
> > filter(string.isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')
> >
> > is six fewer characters and IMHO more readable still.
>
> That version would certainly be best, if string had a isdigit function.

You're right -- for some unfathomable version it's in module
curses.ascii instead.  Oh well, filter(curses.ascii.isdigit &tc &tc, then.


Alex





From cfelling at iae.nl  Tue Jul 31 13:39:43 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 19:39:43 +0200
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6qgv$8ru$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Sam Penrose <sam at ddmweb.com> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>> One minor suggestion:
>>> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
>>> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
>>> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

>> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

> How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
> terse acronym to learn)? Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
> an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
> classification. 

At first a thought of what I want to propose as a joke on case, but
then, if you buy the argument for case sensitivity to be usefull to
distinguish instances and classes (I do) it might just be right.

So I propose Self, the class spelling of self, like in:

    def class_function(Self, args...)

As a bonus, this is in accordance with the Jungian view of life, where
self is used to point to the personal (lower) self, and Self denotes
the person transcending (higher) self.

Against it is that it would promote case sensitivity into the language as a
sanctioned convention, but then that's what has been decided, hasn't it:)

If the case sensitivity is a real show stopper we might settle for
"class self", like in:

    def class_function(class self, args...)

[in retrospect, I think I like a combination best, so "class Self"]

Now that we are talking case, I seem to remember that the Alice people
found that second guessing the spelling of library names was the real
problem.  So I was a bit surprised at first that the dictionary type
was lowercased, were as the names in the types module are uppercased.
(Later i realised that that was in accordance with int/long/str.)

I very much applaud your endeavour to heal the type/class split, but I
sure hope the end result will become simpler then what you have now.
My brain being of limmited capacity since the crash has problems with
things as two distinct method lookup behaviours. I understand your
explanation allright, but I fear I've to lookup the rules often, like
I can't get the corner cases of the new scoping rules fully into my
head:(  Whereas the other pecularities of the language are so well
hidden that I think I've grasped the language:)

I even hope the healing result get so simple that I really can do the
Meta Class Programming I've been dreaming about lately.
-- 
groetjes, carel


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 17 23:17:40 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:17:40 -0500
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org> <3B5390BC.C5FFCD2A@engcorp.com> <mailman.995346569.21423.python-list@python.org> <3b5480f5@news.cybertours.com>
Message-ID: <00ae01c10f38$da9a1200$0101010a@local>

Motor control is not *real* timing sensitive (compared with the speed
of the computer IMHO) so the winioport module should work for you.

Note the prerequisite software when downloading and installing.

Peter Hansen's module (whatever it is) might also be a good choice if
he publishes it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "BRYAN BRANNIGAN" <BBRANNIGAN at CYBERTOURS.COM>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: windows port access


> Thanks for the responses,
>
> This card is going to send small voltages to relays to control motors and
is
> the only way I have found to accomplish this task.  The address on the
card
> is flexible.
>
> Bryan
> "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in
message
> news:mailman.995346569.21423.python-list at python.org...
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com>
> >
> >
> > > Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.
He
> > wants
> > > > to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a
"custom
> > ISA
> > > > card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port
> > interface,
> > > > nor serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.
> > >
> > > I admit I didn't actually look at the winioport stuff proposed in the
> > > "parallel port?!?" thread, but given that it was called winioport
> > > and not winparallelport, I assumed it was a way of providing generic
> > > access to IO ports under Windows.  If I was wrong, then you are right
> > > to correct me!  (Do you know winioport would not work or were you just
> > > tricked by the name of the thread?)
> >
> > Whups.  Evidently the low-level package in use by winioport DOES support
> > generic
> > access.  My mistake... I was going by the commentary on the main
winioport
> > page,
> > where he says "I am now able do printer port IO."  I assumed that was
the
> > entire
> > scope of the package, but evidently not.
> >
> > > Of course, it's probably moot given Jon Nicoll's response which
suggests
> > > a perfectly viable alternative.
> >
> > Indeed... to wit:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jon Nicoll" <jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk>
> >
> > > This is exactly what my code can be used for - you can set it up to
> > > get access to arbitary IO ports (via the ioperm mechanism in Linux),
> > > and then read or write etc. as you like. Admittedly, it doesn't
> > > currently cater for interrupts.
> >
> > Which could be vitally significant or totally unimportant.
> >
> > > I originally started writing this to drive an ISA 8255/8253 card, and
> > > although this project-ette is currently in limbo, the basics are all
> > > there and working, if Bryan wants to do eg. polled access to an A/D
> > > card etc.
> > >
> > > You don't need a VxD (for W95 at least), although it's probably the
> > > 'better' way of doing things. My code is in C and turns into a little
> > > '.PYD' (= .DLL) file. In NT, you need a kernel mode driver, which I
> > > haven't yet got around to looking at.
> >
> > Here the winioport module (and the underlying DriverLYNX package) might
> > be better for Bryan.
> >
> > > I've just resurrected my code and am looking at using distutils to get
> > > it in a form more easily distributed. Email me if would be of use to
> > > you in the meantime.
> >
> > Bryan hasn't responded since he initially requested this information...
> > are you out there, Bryan?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 04:42:44 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:42:44 +0200
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.995052624.21992.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kuvac.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9ip0io010ke@enews4.newsguy.com>

"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn9kuvac.vde.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:29:32 -0700, James_Althoff at i2.com
<James_Althoff at i2.com> wrote:
> >
> >Granted, I used "only".  On the other hand, if someone says "good for
short
> >programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this case)
> >-- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
> >something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
> > >=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to
be
> >reasonable and fair)?
>
> No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
> it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?

Sure, and if I say "I never strangle British citizens on Saturdays", that
cannot be taken as meaning that you are at risk on other days of the
week, nor that people of other nationalities are at risk today -- however,
depending on context, there is a *fair inference* (in human language
usage, although not in the Aristotelic logic simplification thereof) that
I'm likely to have a specific reason for what would be overqualification
of my sentence IF I never strangled anybody at all on any day of the week.


It takes a small but non-zero amount of effort to append to a
general statement some specific qualification, thus, the general
assumption that effort is not purposelessly spent affords the fair
inference of some motivation behind this effort-expenditure (assuming,
a different but similar simplificating working-hypothesis to Aristoteles',
that the speaker behaves 'sensibly' by the usual definitions applied
in economics -- of course, enough of us like 'hearing the sound of our
own voices', or the Usenet equivalent thereof, that the hypothesis is
fairly suspect when applied to Usenet postings).


Alex





From smarsh at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 17:58:56 2001
From: smarsh at hotmail.com (scott)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:58:56 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpg0bmqfzs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lrln1.aq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpwv4yoyd8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DEFA2.FCE4B85B@hotmail.com>


Guido van Rossum wrote:
<snip>
I will definitely give this plenty of time (like I will with
> all incompatibilities I introduce).
>
 
I will retire in 2018 so I humbly suggest:
plenty_of_time = 16.5 years  (Note the use of a float to minimize 2019 /
- // problems for those who follow) :-)

P.S   I hope they don't use Python in my Pension scripts...


From rossi at earthling.net  Fri Jul 13 11:35:42 2001
From: rossi at earthling.net (Thorsten Roskowetz)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:35:42 +0200
Subject: FrameMaker exposed in Python (PyMaker anyone)?
Message-ID: <9in4dk$eap$06$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

is there a Python extension that allows scripting of the
FrameMaker API.  Google (and www.python.org) pointed me
to a project called PyMaker but the link is dead
(http://home.t-online.de/home/Ulrich.Herold/).

Regards,

Thorsten




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul  5 19:07:57 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 18:07:57 -0500
Subject: Best method for updating pickled data objects?
In-Reply-To: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com>
References: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15172.62285.701306.94097@beluga.mojam.com>

    Rupert> Deleting and recreating the pickle file, then writing out the
    Rupert> data object from memory each time seems horribly inefficient to
    Rupert> me (especially for large data objects).

You can just open the file for writing.  No need to delete it (well, expect
perhaps for OS's like VMS that automatically create new file versions).

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul  6 22:29:13 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 22:29:13 -0400
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <etd7kxlfp52.fsf@x15-cruise-basselope.mit.edu>

I may still be missing some cases, I did this a bit carelessly, but I
hope you get the idea.

import re

def isNum(s):

    try: float(s)
    except ValueError:

        # Python couldn't convert  it to a number, so  it's not in the
        # requested format.
        return None

    # Check that the precision is correct
    if '.' in s:
        l = list(s)
        assert l.count('.') == 1, \
               "Can't have more than one '.' in a number"

        if l.index('.') != len(s) - 3:

            # Wrong precision
            return None

    # Check that it begins with a number or '-' (it could start with a
    # '.')
    if not re.match('[-0-9]', s): return None
    
    return 1

if __name__ == '__main__':

    for s in ['9', '-1', '2.30', '-2.39',]: assert isNum(s)    

    for s in ['.01', '1.234', 'bub', '1.', '--1']: assert not isNum(s)

HTH.
Alex.


From roy at panix.com  Fri Jul 13 22:11:25 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:11:25 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
Message-ID: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com>

What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:

 ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);

The obvious translation would be:

 [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)

but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on it.  Perl 
handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra" variables undefined, whereas 
python raises a ValueError exception.  What I'd like to do is have the 
extra field variables left as null strings.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 23:13:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:13:11 -0400
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com> <etdelrh29w1.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <N6757.28920$d4.889960@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:etdelrh29w1.fsf at quiche-lorraine.mit.edu...
>
> Yeah, I mucked around a bit with nested list comprehensions when I
> started using them.  It causes the same sort of miserable readability
> problems that excessive use of the functional programming facilities
> do.
I think LC's are pretty neat, not that that's likely to sway anyone's
opinion one way or the other. Like many techniques it can be abused by
overuse.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Thu Jul 26 05:51:16 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 09:51:16 GMT
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jop6k$l2d$2@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810 at posting.google.com>,
 Stephen <Shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote:

[...]
>I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
>rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
>Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
>or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?

This is the ideal kind of application for CORBA. You could model both
the booking server and each of your client applications as CORBA
objects. They would then easily communicate with each other so
everything is kept up-to-date.

Python is the easiest language in which to develop CORBA applications,
and there are a number of CORBA implementations available. This page
has a list of them:

  http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/4930

I won't recommend one. I wrote omniORBpy so I'm biased.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 13 15:11:52 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:11:52 -0400
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <3b4eed03.298292@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEEEKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
> routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin
> long *!  Hint:  recursion <wink>.

[David C. Ullrich]
> I give up, howdaya do that?
>
> (When I read this I said aha, you're getting at something like
> using
>
> [*] (a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + (a*d+b*c)*2**k + b*d.
>
> But when I think about it I don't see why that would give any
> improvement - it _seems_ to me that vanilla long multiplication
> should be quadratic (a*b takes time "len"(a) * "len"(b), where
> "len" is the number of "digits".) If that's correct then using
> [*] wouldn't improve things at all as far as I can see.

Right, it's not "clever" enough:  that reduces an NxN mult to four
(N/2)x(N/2) mults.  NxN takes N**2 "elementary" (1x1->2) mults, and
(N/2)x(N/2) N**2/4, so four of the latter is no savings over the former.

The trick is to reduce it to three (N/2)x(N/2) multiplications (and
recursively too for those in turn).  Then the overall complexity drops from
O(N**2) to O(N**log2(3)) ~= O(N**1.58).

> Can't decide:
>
> You're hinting at [*] and I'm analyzing it wrong? (Like
> if vanilla multiplication is actually worse than quadratic
> in the sense above then [*] will speed things up...)

You'll figure it out <wink>.  "An answer" is spelled out in Knuth vol 2, or
search for "Karatsuba multiplication" on the web.

> You're hinting at something kinda like [*] but with clever
> rearrangents that does give improvement, like that
> Strassen(?) thing for matrix multiplcation?

Yes, but not nearly *that* clever.

> You're talking about using an FFT-based multiplication?
> (One can certainly write a recursive FFT. But surely if
> _this_ is what you meant then the hint would be "FFT"
> instead of "recursion"...)

I'm not sure you can write one of those *in Python* that's actually faster
than the builtin long *, unless the longs are so large nobody would care.
See

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/63188

and followups for Christian Tismer's last known stab at implementing
Karatsuba in Python.  It pays for ints short enough that somebody *might*
care.  OTOH, anyone who cares a lot should be using one of the GMP wrappers
(GMP also uses this trick, but in excruciatingly long-winded and
platform-optimized C).




From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 02:33:32 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 02:33:32 -0400
Subject: Use of iterators for state machine (was Re: 2.2 features)
In-Reply-To: <3B5FAF50.9AC8912C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEFHLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Peter Hansen]
> I like the potential for iterators for infinite sequences of several
> kinds (where the ability to "get out of a loop early" is an absolute
> requirement :-).
>
> I'm especially looking forward to using them to implement state machines.
>
> I suspect they will greatly simplify the readability of several
> different state machine patterns I tend to use.  Has anyone with more
> of a background in the whole iterator concept (in other languages
> of course) tried this before?  Any comments?

Have you read PEP 255 ("Simple Generators")?  There's a long section at the
start discussing exactly that.  Generators are great for programming state
machines, for reasons explained there in some detail (briefly that state can
often be left implicit in control flow and local bindings rather than
explicitly materialized into masses of stacks and persistent vrbls).

They're not as powerful as full-blown coroutines (a 255-flavor generator can
only suspend to its immediate invoker, and that's what's "Simple" about
them), but you may be surprised at how far you can get despite that
limitation.

What you can't do is, in a generator G, yield directly back to G's invoker
from a routine called *by* G.  But if the routine called by G is also a
generator, it can yield whatever it likes whenever it likes back to G, and G
can in turn yield that back to its invoker.  Both routines are suspended
then, and resuming G will as a matter of course resume the generator it
invoked too.

If you don't think about it too much <wink>, it all works the way you
expect; if you do think about it too much, it takes an "aha!" (or maybe even
two) to figure out *why* it all works.  It took me about 8 years to explain
it to Guido <wink> -- although, in his defense, he may wish to protest that
the first time he actually paid attention to what I was screaming at him, he
"got it" in about one minute flat.

pretty-good-for-a-malevolent-dutch-guy-ly y'rs  - tim




From beazley at cs.uchicago.edu  Tue Jul 17 21:11:51 2001
From: beazley at cs.uchicago.edu (David Beazley)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:11:51 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Augmented Assignment in Python (PER)
In-Reply-To: <OFC5914650.7A1267FB-ON88256A8C.0082F4D3@i2.com>
References: <OFC5914650.7A1267FB-ON88256A8C.0082F4D3@i2.com>
Message-ID: <15188.57943.434555.429691@gargoyle.cs.uchicago.edu>

James_Althoff at i2.com writes:
 > 
 > David,
 > 
 > There was a fairly lengthy and animated exchange (which you might have
 > seen) recently on python-list at python.org concerning augmented assigment.
 > Unless I'm very mixed up, it appears that your book presents augmented
 > assignment according to the way that many folks seem to think it works,
 > which according to Thomas -- and verified easily with Python test cases --
 > is, in fact, *not* the way it actually works.
 > 
 > Thought you might want to know (you might already be very aware of this).
 > 
 > Jim
 > 
 > 
 > Thomas Wouters wrote:
 > <snip>
 > >No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing. If x += y was supposed to be
 > >*exactly* the same as x = x + y, it would have been spelled as 'x = x +
 > y'.
 > >It isn't, and it's not. It's not supposed to be syntactic sugar for normal
 > >addition, it's supposed to be syntactic sugar for a method call.
 > >
 > >Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>
 > 
 > >From "Python Essential Reference", Second Edition, David M. Beazley
 > pages 48 - 49:
 > 
 > "
 > Python provides the following set of augmented assignment operators:
 > ---------    -----------
 > Operation    Description
 > ---------    -----------
 > x += y       x = x + y
 > 
 > <snip>
 > 
 > Augmented assignment doesn't violate mutability or perform in-place
 > modification of objects. Therefore, writing x += y creates an entirely new
 > object x with the value x + y.
 > "

Well, I seem to have gotten in on this fray rather late.   However, to 
clarify the contents of the Python Essential Reference, the book does
discuss the fact that the augmented assignment operators are mapped to
a certain set of special methods such as __iadd__() and that user
defined classes/types can override these methods (p. 37-38,
p.49).  Admittedly, this presentation is rather terse--keeping in
style with other parts of the book.  

I think the above sentence would make a lot more sense if it was
worded as follows:

"For the built-in types, augmented assignment doesn't violate
mutability or perform in-place modification of objects. Therefore,
writing x+=y creates an entirely new object x with the value x + y.
User defined types and classes may choose to implement different
behavior by redefining special methods such as __iadd__(), __isub__(), 
and so forth."

Note: I still stand by the statement for built-in types.  I looked through
the Python sources when writing the book and couldn't find any use of
augmented assignment for built-in types.  I am not aware of any
counter-example where x += y is not equal to x = x + y for the standard
built-in types (if there is such an example, please enlighten me!).

I'll see if I can add some clarification on this issue in the second
printing.

Cheers,

Dave













From gregj at pdxperts.com  Mon Jul  9 02:11:43 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 06:11:43 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <zWb27.320251$p33.6439312@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"I read that Burger King is better than McDonalds. Should I stop eating at
McDonalds and jump on the Burger King bandwagon?"

Are you able to learn more than one programming language? I find that
knowing a variety of languages, and learning new ones that look promising,
is a most practical approach. To feed myself and my family I find SQL,
Visual Basic, VBScript, C/C++, and Java very useful things to know. When I
am free to choose the implementation language (which frequently means I'm
not getting paid) I choose Python almost all of the time. I used to make
good money and even have some fun with Fortran, COBOL, and x386 assembly
language, but demand for those has fallen off recently, so I'm glad I
"jumped on the C bandwagon" when I did.

If I had to choose one language to use for the rest of my life I would
certainly put Python on the short list. Fortunately the world is bigger than
that, and I'm blessed with the ability to program capably in several
programming languages at a time.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pdxperts.com


"Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
>
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
>
> Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
>
> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
>
> Anybody that tried both languages ?
>
> How do they compare ?




From lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl  Thu Jul 12 03:52:37 2001
From: lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl (Tomasz Lisowski)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:52:37 +0200
Subject: ActivePython word wrap in Shell or PythonWin during list printout
References: <3b4cc844$0$172@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <9ijkqo$m49$1@news.tpi.pl>

U?ytkownik "Rufus V. Smith" <nospam at nospam> napisa? w wiadomo?ci
news:3b4cc844$0$172 at wodc7nh6.news.uu.net...
> I am running the latest Python from ActiveState and I have a
> problem that when I print a long list (Like dir()), the entire list
> prints out on one line and I have to scroll over to read it.
>
> Is there an environment setting to force word wrap at
> a certain line length?
>
> Or is there a list function that can take a list and
> pretty print it with word wrap.
>
> (Not having one gave me an opportunity to learn
> some  Python scripting as I wrote my own, but
> if there was a library standard, that might be better. )
>
>
> def marginprint(L,margin=80):
>      b=""
>      for a in L:
>          if len(str(a)+b)+3 >= margin :
>                 print b
>                 b = "'"+str(a)+"'"
>          else:
>                 if b: b+=","
>                 b += "'"+str(a)+"'"
>      if b: print b
>      b=""
>
>
> With this function, I just type marginprint(dir())
> and it will respect the margins.
>
> Only I have to load this into my environment every time
> I bring it up.

You could possibly add the statement:

from my_print_utils import marginprint

to your site.py file

I have not tried that, but it is supposed to work fin, as far as I know.

Regards,
Tomasz




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 14:27:43 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 18:27:43 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <jt4oltg3ekdlig096677p295f7mnbumteu@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9loi9e.2il.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <menolto49gnuqp06jgusrpn6nf4d47iede@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lor4v.j55.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:35 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:

> Ever worked with a chaotic system? Remember the butterfly and the
> hurricane? That small error can get big very quick using nothing but
> multiplies and additions - division is nowhere near as special as
> people think it is. If I want approximations I'll ask for them.

That's why I want '/' to return a rational, not int or float.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 03:59:14 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 03:59:14 -0400
Subject: Let's exclude behind the usable printers, but don't burst the lost 
 opinions.
References: <E71BD296.CE8FA110@oxiqi.net>
Message-ID: <3B63C252.47ED74A3@engcorp.com>

A Walter Dupuis bot wrote:

> When will you authenticate the clear slow emails before Grover does?  

Someone just posted a patch to sendmail.py which does just that, I think.

> I'd rather kick compleatly than close with Jimmie's sly warning.  

Jimmy's been getting on our nerves around here too.  Time the jerk stopped
posting to comp.lang.python, is what I say.  And you prob'ly meant "complete".

> My minor Java won't defile before I dig it.  The bug unbelievably builds the
> idle IRC server.  

Don't go starting another language war!  Java has its uses, but please
discuss problems in comp.lang.java, not here.  If you want to talk 
about Java in this group, make it a question about Jython.

> The flat messy advertisement shoots over Walter's sticky firewall.  
> What did James transport to all the librarians?  We can't
> learn robots unless Eddie will regularly load afterwards.  Go
> persevere a FORTRAN!  The insecure modem rarely disconnects Pamela, it
> questions Terrance instead.

Sounds like you're a newbie.  RTFM.  This is all clearly documented
in the module index.  Try http://www.python.org for a start, and 
next time make sure you specify which platform you're using so we
don't have to make wild guesses.

(_Somebody_ had to say it. ;)
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From rwallace at esatclear.ie  Thu Jul 26 23:06:51 2001
From: rwallace at esatclear.ie (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:06:51 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net>

On 26 Jul 2001 15:50:15 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> wrote:

>But rationals _are_ already in the language.  Integers are rationals.
>"/" should definitely return an integer when the result can be
>represented in an integer.  E.g., 4/2 should return 2, not 2.0.

The way it works right now is that the _type_ of the result depends on
the _type_ of the operands. You could argue about whether the specific
case of the current / operator is a bit too error prone, but generally
speaking this is reasonable behavior.

You want the _type_ of the result to depend on the _value_ of the
operands. My reaction to that is ***NO!!!*** It would make the
division operator for integer operands so error prone as to be
unusable. If that's the intent, much better to have it be an error to
use integer operands, that way you wouldn't get silently and
inconsistently wrong answers.

-- 
"How many roads must a man walk down?"
mailto:rwallace at esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace


From deltapigz at telocity.com  Sun Jul 29 12:35:42 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (Adonis Vargas)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:35:42 -0400
Subject: Slightly off-topic... (sending HTML data through a Python socket)
Message-ID: <3B643B5D.E62C6669@telocity.com>

I am attempting to send HTML data back to a browser which connected to X
port. I have goen over the the HTML RFC and just can not get it to work.
What I am attempting to do is send a redirect back to the browser. So
far I have something as follows:

c.send("""
          <HTML>
          <HEAD>
          <META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"
Content=0;Host=\"http://www.python.org/\">"
          </HEAD>
          </HTML>
          """)

Any help would greately be appreciated.

Adonis




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 09:33:42 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:33:42 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <Xns90E975194FDD5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
        <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
        <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
        <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org>
        <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net>
        <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <Xns90E975194FDD5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <15198.51894.568840.715658@beluga.mojam.com>

    Duncan> It might be an idea though to change some of the error messages
    Duncan> when a NameError or AttributeError is uncaught if a name could
    Duncan> have matched with different case (although I'm not sure how much
    Duncan> overhead this might cause).

    Duncan> NameError: name 'x' is not defined
    Duncan> could become:
    Duncan> NameError: name 'x' is not defined, nearest match was 'X'

Interesting idea.  Performance in exception handling is generally not a big
issue, because most often the program is going to exit anyway.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From jwelby at waitrose.com  Sun Jul  8 17:04:24 2001
From: jwelby at waitrose.com (Julius Welby)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:04:24 +0100
Subject: csv to XML converter crash and burn
References: <tkgnj6feescc0d@xo.supernews.co.uk> <mailman.994606693.28411.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkhilaesrc8d6c@xo.supernews.co.uk>

A very sensible suggestion. I'll keep it simple.

Thanks.

Julius

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994606693.28411.python-list at python.org...
> >>>>> "Julius" == Julius Welby <jwelby at waitrose.com> writes:
>
>     Julius> I just got all public spirited and posted this:
>     Julius> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66003
>
>     Julius> It's a module for transforming csv to XML. It works fine for
cvs
>     Julius> strings where no escaped commas or "" appear but.....
>
>     Julius> Unfortunately I now realise I didn't have a sufficient grasp
of
>     Julius> the csv format.
>
> Julius,
>
> You might want to take a look at Dave Cole's recently announced CSV
parser:
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=CSV&hl=en&group=comp.lang.python.*&safe=of
f&rnum=3&ic=1&selm=mailman.992813221.29993.clpa-moderators%40python.org
>
> Use that for parsing, then restrict your code to generating XML.
>
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> (847)971-7098
>




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sat Jul  7 13:05:28 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 17:05:28 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9ngektgqnrl17er73ukukqids95p5158dp@4ax.com>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 08:31:10 -0700, "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote:

>
>"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
>news:cpelrskgrr.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
><snip>
>>
>> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
>> new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
>> maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)

If one is going to add keywords to a language, I suggest that a list of
possible future keywords -- even ones that aren't planned on being
supported any time soon -- be reserved at the same time.

C//



From hostmaster at bemarnet.es  Wed Jul  4 03:48:46 2001
From: hostmaster at bemarnet.es (Antonio Navarro Navarro)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:48:46 +0200
Subject: Phonebook entry in windows
Message-ID: <1885336186.20010704094846@bemarnet.es>

Hi all,

I need to write a stand-alone Python application that will run like a
daemon (started at windows boot) to create a Phonebook entry on a
Windows 95 machine, start up a connection, make some FTP transfers and
then hang up and delete the connection.

I have been reading the mailing list and have found several references
to win32ras.CreatePhonebookEntry, EditPhonebookEntry, etc, but I don't
know if this functions are fully functional.

Where can I find more info, for example a working script that
creates-connect-disconnect-deletes a phonebook entry in Python ?

Do you think It will be better to use a different approach ? (I prefer
not to use rasdial.exe, because I need to obtain full control of the
connection process).

Thank you in advance, best regards,

Antonio Navarro Navarro                      
BemarNet Management
http://www.bemarnet.es
hostmaster at bemarnet.es



-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Mon Jul 30 19:06:00 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:06:00 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com> <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com> <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <sLl97.75231$Xr6.349962@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Peter Milliken:
> Sorry Tom, Just can't let the statement "The ideal
> language would support both strong and weak
> typing." go by :-). As soon as you allow "both" (and
> damned if I know how you would do that! :-)), then
> your typical C/C++ programmer (unfair there, I
> should say "programmer") will choose the loose
> typing everytime, because he "knows" what he
> means, even if the compiler can't work it out,
> doesn't he? :-) So all the benefits that you just
> acknowledged for strong typing are lost :-).

   The way I see a strong/weak language working well is with separate layers
that use one or the other technique. In my work I'd like to see the low
level data structure layer using strong typing both for correctness and
performance. The higher level policy and UI layers would be weakly typed for
development speed. Currently, this can be achieved by using C++ for the
lower layers and Python for the upper but this separates the code bases too
much. An ideal language would allow development of a feature to start as
weakly typed and then be migrated to strongly typed when and if required.

   Neil





From kosh at aesaeion.com  Tue Jul 24 11:45:58 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:13:58 +0028
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <nvrkj9.hc9.ln@192.168.0.1>

Tom Jenkins wrote:

> We're a zope shop.  Its quite possible that the work we do now will be
> still in use for many years (not guaranteed but we still use code now
> that we wrote 2 years ago - before it was zope ;) )
> 
> We use Python Methods in Zope... python snippets stored directly in
> zope's zodb.  grepping *.py won't find any of these snippets.  I don't
> believe zope will surface any warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may
> be wrong).  How do we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?
> 
> Tom

We are a zope shop also so I really feel your pain on this one. My current 
suggestion is to use the search tool from the root of the ZODB and see if 
you can find them from there. Thankfully so far zope does not track python 
versions very fast. I hope it stays with python 2.1 for a good while. Now 
that Zope 2.4 requires 2.1 maybe zope could almost be frozen at the 2.1 
state for a while until python comes up with a good method not to change 
the behavior of existing code. I have no idea how much code I would have to 
search through to try and fix some of our ZODBs since I have python 
products that allow python to be executed in them also and they store that 
python individually so that a change to the master product that is screwed 
up can't take out many instances of the product.

My feeling is that some kind of upgrader will need to be written to port 
those objects. What pissed me off is that it will become necessary to do 
that because the meaning of a language feature changed. 

Also in zope you will need to check all your dtml for this kind of problem 
since python is often embedded in the dtml. On the whole I don't think this 
will be just a few hour cleanup problem. This could take a long time to 
clean up and while I might do it once, twice will see me off the language 
for something else. The biggest problem I can see is that this will fail 
silently and lead to incorrect results.


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul 16 19:06:58 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 23:06:58 GMT
Subject: String Splice Assignment
References: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6ssi.i27.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 16 Jul 2001 14:57:06 -0700, eAndroid <gervaserules at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some

Because strings are immutable.

>alternatives?

Make a new string:

>>>> a = 'asdf'
>>>> a[1:2] = "EFGH"
>>>> a
>'aEFGHf'

a = 'aoeu'
b = a[:1] + 'HTNS' + a[2:]
b #-> 'aHTNSeu'

(note that even were strings mutable, your above code would not produce
'aEFGHf' since a[1:2] addresses a single character)

or:

a.replace('o', 'HTNS')


Check the docs for the string module for more.



>I have a long string (~1000 chars) that I would like to do multiple
>splice assignments on. I am now interested alternatives to do this,
>especially efficient ones.

1000 bytes is not a long string.  Go ahead and make copies.  And now is not
the time to make sacrifices to the tin god efficiency.

If some day you do have a really long string (say, 1 million characters), you
can break it up into chunks and store the chunks in a list.  When you want the
whole thing you use string.join.


From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul 31 20:31:28 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 17:31:28 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9k7il0$7dv$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <cpae1lzio7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:
>>
>> Now thow in 'isinstance' as an old way to spell a specific membership
>> test (for types and classes) which doesn't have to be learned about
>> at all.
>
>I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
>Checked into CVS!

After seeing all the confusion about whether 'x in type' means
isinstance() or issubclass(), my preference is for ripping this change
out of CVS.  The only way in which I think the 'in' operator makes sense
is if you're trying to do

    if x in [int, long]:

which starts being rather ugly as the only reason for an idiom's
existence.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From aito at carenet.co.jp  Sun Jul 15 19:38:29 2001
From: aito at carenet.co.jp (Akio Ito)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 16:38:29 -0700
Subject: Compatibility between MySQLdb and Py2EXE
References: <9i54qr01hc9@drn.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <82399a9.0107151538.2c36ca28@posting.google.com>

Nigel Linnett <Nigel_member at newsguy.com> wrote in message news:<9i54qr01hc9 at drn.newsguy.com>...
> Hi Gang,
> 
> I have just finished writing an application for use at work, and went to compile
> it to a Windows EXE using Py2EXE version 0.2.5 (I have upgraded to 0.2.6 and it
> didn't help).
> 
> The application is database dependant, so I am uising the MySQLdb module, and
> the whole thing works like a charm if I run it from my development directory.
> 
> When I compile the code, and go to run the resulting .exe file, this is the
> output...
> 

> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Nigel

See: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html
     (Freezing mxODBC using py2exe)


From plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 26 22:42:04 2001
From: plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (Manoj Plakal)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:42:04 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996196255.10345.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <0y487.183329$mG4.86470993@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

Ken Seehof <kens at sightreader.com> wrote on Thursday 26 July 2001 20:08:
> I like quotient too just because the word hasn't been used yet.   Yes,
> this truncates towards zero, but I don't really think of it in those
> terms.
> That's an algebraic way of looking at things.  I think of this "quotient"
> concept as a companion to "modulus".  It's a nice clean concept that
> maintains closure for integers, rather than a truncation of something.
> The term "floor division" to distinguish from "true division" seems
> somehow less pure, since the concept is dragged in from the world of
> real numbers.
> 
> Hmm, does this mean we rename divmod to quomod?  :-)


        How about quasimodo :) Is Quasi-Modulus defined in math?

        Manoj


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 09:44:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:44:41 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5FCDC3.C8A2AF9E@unice.fr>
Message-ID: <cp1yn3954u.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Jerome Alet <alet at unice.fr> writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> > The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> 
> Don't forget than Dictators, Benevolent of not, often die in a lot of
> blood because their "user community" is angry ;-)
> 
> (just a joke, of course)

Given the very real and insistent complaints and threats in this group
by others referring my "dictatorship", I don't find your joke funny.

I didn't choose the title, and I have never done anything to force
anyone to use Python.  In fact, I have fought (you have no idea how
hard) over a license that is so liberal that at any point in time
anybody can start a code fork of their own.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Tue Jul 31 09:34:47 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:34:47 -0400
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net> <3B65FD2B.39BA0A95@engcorp.com> <CE671DDD22B40C3E.25CDBEE912BDD9F9.C0CD28D28A68C3E3@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3dwv4pjk7c.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
> My scant contact with WAP has given me no
> reason to doubt that it's diving rapidly to
> extinction, as Andrew Odlyzko describes in
> <URL: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/ >.

Rohit Khare wrote an interesting analysis of WAP in the July/August
1999 issue of IEEE Internet Computing that's worth tracking down.  It
seems to be online at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~rohit/IEEE-L7-WAP.html.
I was surprised to find out that the WAP people reinvented ICMP,
adding 50 to all the error codes for no clear reason.

--amk



From sill at optonline.net  Thu Jul 12 16:05:37 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:05:37 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:42:30 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
> In article <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill at sill.silmarill.org>, Rainy wrote:
> 
>>I doubt I'll find a job using python any time soon. :/
> 
> Probably not if you wait around for management to tell you to
> start using it.
> 
> I use Python on my job because I decided to.  I'm probably
> luckier than most when it comes to being able to choose my
> tools.
> 

whoops.. i posted this followup to a wrong message.

"I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
in perl :-/."

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From sill at optonline.net  Sat Jul 28 12:51:35 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:51:35 GMT
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m5r4n.2ue.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 28 Jul 2001 03:05:21 -0700, Igor <igor at arzamas.nnov.ru> wrote:
> It would be really nice to know the reasons behind some syntax
> features.
> 
> What is the real purpose of the colon ":" after each if, def, etc...
> Is it really required and cannot be made optional?

if something: do_something()

Besides, editors detect that : and autoindent for you. Imagine for instance
that you are 5 levels of indentation to the right, if there were no colons
you'd have to hit enter and then <tab> 5 times! No thanks :P

> 
> Why__ do __Python__ programs __need to __look__ like __swarms__ of
> __underscores ? Is it OK that one must dig in underscores instead of
> having a normal English word for private symbols, for example?

Because they are different from normal functions and variables - so they
should look different, too!

 - Andrei

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Mon Jul  9 11:04:00 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 11:04:00 EDT
Subject: GETTING BIGGER AND BETTER!
Message-ID: <200107091513.JAA41028@s0225.pm0.net>

********************************************
QUACKO LOTTO.....GETTING BIGGER AND BETTER!
http://lotto.quacko.com
********************************************

Dear Lotto Player - 

We have made some MORE improvements to the
site this week, that hopefully makes the
game even that much more fun to play!

If you haven't played lately, you really
should check us out. NOBODY on the net
has an easier lotto game to play and
NOBODY has better odds of winning a 
Grand Prize!

Quacko Lotto continues to strive to be on
the cutting edge of lotto games.

Have you played YOUR Free Tickets today?

Win up to $1,000,000.00 in Cash!

http://lotto.quacko.com

***********************************************************
RED CARPET REWARDS AT GRAND BANKS CASINO
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072
***********************************************************

Red Carpet Rewards! The best way to earn free credits! Grand Banks casino is rolling out the Red Carpet for our patrons! For every $10 in real bets that you place, Grand Banks will credit your account with one comp point. Collect 100 comp points and you will receive one casino credit! It's so simple and calculated automatically for you. 

Example: Place a $100 wager on one hand of Blackjack and receive 10 Red Carpet Reward points. Do this 10 times & regardless of the outcome you will have amassed 100 Red Carpet Points. These 100 points now automatically convert to a FREE Grand Banks Casino credit!

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072

The Red Carpet Rewards Premier Program: For our more serious players we offer an even more aggressive plan to help you amass points more quickly! The structure is the same, but you will receive 1 Red Carpet point for every $7.50 placed in bets! Please note that Grand Banks reserves the right to invite patrons into the Premier program only.

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072


<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 01:41:44 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 07:41:44 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994049882.30354.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> When am I forced?  Sadly it seems that integrating any other language
> directly into MS Access is out of the question.  (Am I wrong?  Someone
> please tell me if I am!)

Depends what you mean by "directly".  With COM and ActiveScripting,
it's generally not a problem to use Python or other AS-compliant languages
with any Office or other Automation-enabled app, albeit with a simple
passage through VBA or VBScript.


> The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I would
> hardly typify that as not being "good database support".

http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/
or mxODBC + the dBase/clipper/foxpro ODBC drivers, or...?


Alex





From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul  9 23:40:25 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:40:25 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994630754.21755.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A7929.6036BE07@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> The last time we solved a "it's *hard* to make sure temporary context
> changes get undone!" problem in Python was via adding ">>" to "print" <0.8
> wink>.

In other words, the solution was to get rid of the
context and make it a parameter to the operation
instead. I think there is an important lesson to
be learned there somewhere <0.000 wink>.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From mirko.liss at web.de  Wed Jul 11 04:12:00 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:12:00 +0200
Subject: BASIC or Python?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9klpsc.ipj.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9klpsc.ipj.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20010711081201.172D211D.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
> >>>> for n in range(2, 10):
> >..     for x in range(2, n):
> >..         if n % x == 0:
> >..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
> >..            break
> >..     else:
> >..          print n, 'is a prime number'
> >.. 
> >
> >Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.  
> >Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be 
> >level-indented with the 'for'.   No doubt longer programs are even more 

You expect the 'else' being level indented with the 'if' conditional,
don't you?

Well, it's not an 'if...else' structure but a 'for...else' structure.
The 'else' clause will be skipped if you leave the 'for' loop
with 'break'.

There are several weird things in Python, but this isn't one
of those. I suppose there's no perfect language. 

> >fun.  The FAQ on increasing speed helpfully notes that function calls 
> >are expensive...
You can write slow code in C and fast programs in Python.
Speed often depends on the algorithm. And C programmers
tend to write simpler code.

Python is often very slow, though. Maybe you should try Perl.
I used logfile analyzers in Perl and Python (radiusreport and
radiuscontext) and the perl program was much faster.
But it used up much memory. When working with large logfiles,
memory quickly got exhausted. The other analyzer needed
less memory. I think that's because Python often copies a
reference and not the actual data. Not wanting to use the 
swap partition all the time, I switched to the python code.
Maybe I should have tried and optimized the perl program.

This is just an example, not a benchmark. So don't draw
general conclusions. 

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
> I don't wish you to know either. Python is far too sensible a
> language for the likes of you to be using it.

I remember you being a very nice and helpful person, Phil.
Too much coffee ?


Friendly regards,

Mirko Liss



From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Mon Jul 30 07:13:38 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:13:38 +1000
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com> <3B61E456.78DFE802@sneakemail.com>
Message-ID: <9k4nf2$g70$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

"Joshua Macy" <l0819m0v0smfm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
news:3B61E456.78DFE802 at sneakemail.com...
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> >
> > But possibly the first thing anyone with any investment in the
> > language should be thinking upon starting to read the PEP is: "How on
> > Earth am I going to know what needs changing, and how much time and
> > money am I going to be spending to adapt to this?"
> >
>
>   It seems to me that if upon reading the PEP someone thinks "How on
> Earth am I going to know what needs changing?", he is almost guaranteed
> to have bugs in his code that relate to the very issue that the PEP
> addresses.  How could he not, since he's obviously never thought about
> it before?  Someone who thinks this way should be thanking his lucky
> stars ...

Suppose a programmer who has used "/", knowing perfectly well what it does,
has written a heap of code.

Suppose he's just left the job, and you've taken his place. Since he has
(not unreasonably) not documented his use of the arithmetic operators,
because for some strange reason he didn't expect them to change, then "How
on Earth am I going to know what needs changing?" is exactly what you're
going to think.

Would you be thanking your lucky stars?

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 13 17:01:59 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:01:59 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com> <9ikee9$rpv$1@news.mathworks.com> <9iluu2$bmb$1@panix2.panix.com> <9imtg8$bqe$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <blJ37.2848$p7.765325@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

...
> Go back and read the first post in this thread.  Someone wanted to
> know if Python's speed would be an issue in writing a mud.  And, in my
> experience, the answer is "maybe".
...

'Maybe' is certainly correct. Enough users sending enough imputs per second
requiring whatever average response time will eventually overwhelm any
fixed capacity system -- regardless of what language it is written in, and
regardless of the type of system.

You previously said 'likely' rather than 'maybe'.  That requires a bit more
discussion to define a context (number of users, complexity of response,
etc) and substantiate a claim with respect to that context.

When programming in Python, an important part of the context includes the
available native code modules (some are part of the standard distribution).
The first/third person 3d action game Blade of Darkness works as a Python
program because it calls on a (proprietary) native code geometry engine
which in turn relies on graphics board processors.  Use of the Numerical
Python extensions is standard for other computation-intensive applications

When playing text muds (over a dial-up connection), I have noticed that
response time is quite variable.  I have wondered whether delays are mostly
due to everyone deciding at once to race out and bash monsters, internet
congestion, the program stopping to collect garbage and save state to disk,
or maybe the program looping in buggy code.  If you have any experience as
a system operator, I would be interested to know.

I have read that many text muds are scripted with an interpreted C-like
language.  I expect Python to be competitive with this.  If not,
reprogramming the bottleneck functions in C might make up the difference.

Terry J. Reedy





From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jul 10 03:16:55 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 07:16:55 GMT
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org> <3B4A7E95.B4AB2F71@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn9klav7.rp0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:03:33 +1200, Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
wrote:
>Roman Suzi wrote:
>> 
>> What is left:
>>
>> Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
>> some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
>> capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
>> have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).
>
>If the English language has changed too much, and
>there's no-one left who can understand the spec,
>you might have a bit of a problem...

Let alone latin letters.  Or even utf8.  Or 8 bit bytes.  I think the real
problem will be building a machine that can read old fashioned hard drives.
And if they do, will they still work?  Consider all the 9 track tape rotting
away in closets.

I think it's good that old software rots away.  If it's gone it's because
nobody needed it anymore.  A lot of other software which would still be
interesting is interesting because of the specific platform it ran on and the
time at which it ran (consider Amiga demos).  A language won't help for those,
you need a museum.


From piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl  Wed Jul 25 04:57:34 2001
From: piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl (Piotr Legiecki)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:57:34 +0200
Subject: Methods of setting class attributes
Message-ID: <3B5E89FE.DAE10265@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>

Hi

I'm C++ user and new to Python. I don't know what is the proper method
of setting attribute value in a class. I thought that this is ok:

class a:
  atr1=0
  atrb=1
.....

Well, after a little tour through python source codes I have changed my
point of view.

1. There is no explicit attributes declarations (hm...)
2. I'v found such a information in python's docs:
......

__setattr__(s, name, val) called when setting an attr
                                  (inside, don't use "self.name = value"
                                   use "self.__dict__[name] = val")
.....

This method (among others) has any class. So setting any attribute
should always be done by __setattr__() and not smiple self.name = value?
Why?

-- 
Regards
Piotr Legiecki


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 22 14:13:18 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 18:13:18 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9lkvah.sin.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <2kdllt08g3mveg9ojpls6jfe2pfr3j1227@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lm5tu.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:55:31 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

>>Why div= wouldn't work? (Lexed as two tokens.)
> 
> Because div doesn't exist as a keyword,

I meant: if it existed, it would be as easy to form augmnented
assignment syntax as for //. There might be other reasons to use //
instead of div, but augmented assignment is not a good argument,
because it works well with either.

IMHO div is more clear. It's used with this meaning in other languages.

> If you do add a capability like that, I'd propose $mod and $rem as
> new operators - modulo and remainder.

After a slight change that they don't introduce new keywords but turn
identifiers into operators, you did the same thing as Miranda did
over 10 years ago :-)  Haskell uses `mod` and `rem` syntax instead
of $mod and $rem. It works for all identifiers, possibly qualified
by a module name.

But Python already uses operators looking as identifiers: or, not,
is, in.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m  Tue Jul  3 18:42:14 2001
From: b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m (Ben)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 08:42:14 +1000
Subject: Language Shootout
Message-ID: <ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i@4ax.com>

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/


From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul 20 11:10:40 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 11:10:40 -0400
Subject: newbie pipes question
References: <3B58494D.C82965AD@raqia.com>
Message-ID: <etditgnljpr.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

Check out os.popen.

Alex.


From not-a-real-address at usa.net  Sun Jul 15 04:18:27 2001
From: not-a-real-address at usa.net (those who know me have no need of my name)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 08:18:27 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
 <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org>
 <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
 <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at>
 <slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9irjkj31h16@enews1.newsguy.com>

<slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> divulged:
>On 11 Jul 2001 21:20:02 GMT, Gergo Barany <gergo.barany at gmx.net> wrote:
>>phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>>> [snip flamebait crap]
>>
>>If anyone is going to to respond to this thread, *please* take
>>comp.lang.c out of the Newsgroups: list. We don't do advocacy here.
>>Followups set.
>
>My post was an entirely objective statistical summary, and contained 
>no subjective or opinion-based data at all.

whether or not that is true, the subject isn't appropriate for most of the
groups to which it was posted.

-- 
okay, have a sig then


From brian at sweetapp.com  Sat Jul  7 12:27:57 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 09:27:57 -0700
Subject: Selectively importing correct extension module version
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0107061848540.546-100000@SPIELZEUG.HASENTALER.THOUSAND-OAKS.CA.US>
Message-ID: <000501c10701$c8897d60$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

Hi all,

I'm writing a Python extension module that wraps a large C++ project.
For the Windows distribution, I was planning on wrapping my extension
module in a package to hide all of the nasty DLLs that I need i.e.

Pyana\
	__init__.py
	Pyana.pyd (my extension module)
	nasty1.dll
	nasty2.dll 
	...
	nastyn.dll

My next thought was that I should put both the Python20 and Python21
versions of my extension in the same module since it is tiny (40K)
compared to the rest of the package (2.6MB). So I wrote a new
__init__.py file: 

version_info = (0,1,0)
__version__ = "0.1.0"

import sys

major, minor, micro, releaselevel, serial = sys.version_info

if major == 2 and minor == 0:
    from Pyana20 import *
elif major == 2 and minor == 1:
    from Pyana21 import *
elif major < 2:
    raise ImportError("Pyana requires Python 2.0 or later to run")
elif major >= 2:
    raise ImportError("Pyana cannot be run on your Python version.")

Then I made a nice ifdef system in my extension to make my module
initializer work correctly i.e. initPyana(20|21)?. 

Finally I realized that I would have to change a lot of internal strings
to reflect the correct module name e.g.

XSLError = PyErr_NewException("Pyana(20|21)?.XSLError", PyanaError,
NULL);

Does this seem like a good idea? Right now I am not sure if the
additional coding effort justifies the nice packaging.




From cbarber at curl.com  Tue Jul 31 13:09:27 2001
From: cbarber at curl.com (Christopher Barber)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:09:27 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996540777.8399.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <pso66c9rpo8.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>

<brueckd at tbye.com> writes:

> On 30 Jul 2001, Christopher Barber wrote:
> > This is a bad example because the code is doing runtime, not compile-time
> > checking.  I was talking about the advantages of compile-time checking.
> 
> ?? Please review the example - that's compile-time checking there.

No it isn't!  The (Integer) cast is not performed until run-time.
 
> > Here is how this would be written in Curl:
> >
> >    let v:{Array-of String} = {new {Array-of String}}
> >    let s:String = "hi"
> >    {v.append s}
> >    let i:int = v[0]        || ERROR: can't assign a String to an int
> 
> But what benefit have I gained? 

You have detected a bug at compile-time instead of run-time and you didn't
have to write a unit-test to find it.

> The only reason it's an error to begin
> with is because the language is forcing me to name the type. 

The language does not force you to specify types, this would also be legal,
but you would not see the problem until you actually executed the code:

   let v = {Array}
   let s = "hi"
   {v.append s}
   let i = v[0]    || runtime error
   
It is your choice.  If type declarations were added to Python in a similar
fashion, then it would not have to impose any burden on developers who don't
want to use them.

> The fact that the compiler can detect my breakage of the 
> language-specific rules doesn't really advance the notion that 
> strict compile-time checking is beneficial.

Sure it does.  You might not believe that it is worth the trouble, but it
clearly has some benefits.

Another definite benefit is that knowledge of compile-time types can allow the
compiler to generate much better code.  We know this is true from our
experience on the Curl language.  Obviously it would be a lot of work for
Python to actually deliver this benefit, but it

> What is a real world problem that would not have existed if Python had 
> strict compile-time checking, and how common is such a problem? 

Here is a real-world problem: a developer wants to use a language with
compile-time type checking and rejects Python because it doesn't have it.

> The few times I've had this sort of conversation I've kind of felt that
> people's reasoning was like "I use language X. Language X without strict
> compile-time checking would make big programs a mess. Therefore, big
> Python programs would be a mess."

Well, I actually used Python on a number of projects a couple of years ago and
did spend more time than I would have liked writing tests to detect type
consistency.  I found myself writing comments next to variables indicating
their intended type.  I would much have preferred turning those comments into
actual type declarations.

I don't think that lack of static type declarations makes Python at all messy.
It is still an interesting and useful language.  I just think that it would be
better with the ability to use static typing when you want to.
 
- Christopher


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 10:27:15 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 15:27:15 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993760063.4583.python-list@python.org> <3dels41dhs.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <19v0kt462nkvid15t0fnrpclmem3epc61g@4ax.com>

On 28 Jun 2001 17:49:35 -0400, Andrew Kuchling
<akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:

>Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>> I think improving Python itself is also improving what you've
>> just mentioned.
>
>No it isn't.

It might make some libraries easier and quicker to write, and perhaps
even less prone to bugs. Though of course there is a balance to be
maintained.

Perhaps I should confess to being biassed. I rarely use more than the
basic string and file handling libraries - you know, doing scripting
and glue style things. I'll bet that describes a lot of what Python is
used for.

Python (or rather Jython) is no doubt extremely useful in combination
with Java - but I'm not sure there's any value to trying to compete
directly with Java. Sometimes I think that the drive to proove that
Python can do anything that other languages can do misses an essential
point - Python is extremely good (and getting better) at scripting and
glue style tasks. That is where its main strength lies. Being good at
everything is a pretty tall order.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 13 11:51:46 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:51:46 +0200
Subject: not safe at all 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT."
             <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> 
Message-ID: <m15L5EI-000wcEC@swing.co.at>

Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote:

> For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
> near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
> (Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
> this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
> following script:
> 
> x = 3
> x = x + 2
> print "x =", x
> x = "now I'm a string"
> print x
> x = [ 5, x ]
> print "and now a list:", x
> 
> If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
> x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
> different type on two sides of an assignment?

You're out of your depth here.

Lets run your code and then some and look what's unsafe in there:

    >>> x = 3
    >>> x = x + 2
    >>> print "x =", x
    x = 5
    >>> x.sort()
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'sort'
    >>> x.upper()
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'upper'

Currently, x is bound to an integer object and thus doesn't accept
calls to string or list methods. It complains loudly about trying to
force them on it.

    >>> x = "now I'm a string"
    >>> print x
    now I'm a string
    >>> x.sort()
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    AttributeError: sort
    >>> x.upper()
    "NOW I'M A STRING"
    >>> x = x + 2
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    TypeError: cannot add type "int" to string

After the rebinding, x refers to a string object and accepts calls to
string methods, but complains just as loud as the former int-binding
when called with int or list methods.

    >>> x = [ 5, x ]
    >>> print "and now a list:", x
    and now a list: [5, "now I'm a string"]
    >>> x.sort()
    >>> x.upper()
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    AttributeError: upper
    >>> x = x + 2
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    TypeError: can only concatenate list (not "int") to list

And for a binding to a list object, just the same applies -- it will
gladly perform list methods but refuses to do any string or int stuff.

In Python, objects are typed, not references. If you are used to 
languages where variables are (more or less) strongly typed but
objects aren't, you'll have to shed some old habits and acquire a new
point of view to appreciate Python's object model.

I'd recommend you go for it. Learning Python's object model will open
a new world for you and probably make you a better programmer in your
current language(s) of choice, too. A good start for this might be

    http://effbot.org/guides/python-objects.htm

Cheers,
Christian

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  2 15:05:06 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 23:05:06 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
In-Reply-To: <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107022249170.4650-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

It seems I start to understand database concerns of Mr. Wilson the second.

Once we tried 3 databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase) to suit our task.
And for every database (we stopped at Interbase) there was Python support.

However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.

>From this and also from my own experience with PostgeSQL queries from
Python, I could say that DB support in Python exists, but need enhancement
and standartization. Probably, higher level more or less common
object-oriented interfaces could help this.

I must also say, that I myself am completely satisfied with Python DB
support, but I do not use DB extentensively and routinely to judge.
However, I think that including some more DB support, at least for open
source databases like Postgresql and MySQL + ODBC/JDBC, could be a good
idea and will give a standard. (Yes, I know about Python DB API).

Are there licensing problems or what stops from letting RDB support
modules into standard library?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Monday, July 02, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Catalyze: To lie while looking cute." _/





From clpy at snakefarm.org  Fri Jul 13 03:35:55 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:35:55 +0200
Subject: Regural expression puzzle for gurus
References: <3B4EA0C8.9F697D06@vip.fi>
Message-ID: <3B4EA4DB.EED60B0B@snakefarm.org>

Pekka Niiranen wrote:
>             original string:           xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%
> 
>             after replacement:    xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!"?%
> 
> How can I do replacement with a single regural expression line ?

>>> import re
>>> text = 'xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!'
>>> re.sub(r'#\w+', lambda m: m.group(0)+'#', text)
'xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!'
>>> 

cg.


From deedsmis at aculink.net  Mon Jul  9 10:03:07 2001
From: deedsmis at aculink.net (SoloCDM)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 08:03:07 -0600
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B49B99B.4E496A0C@aculink.net>

Ben stated the following:
> 
> http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

I'm not bashing Python, I'm only commenting on what I saw.  The tests,
from my previous experience, are legitimate; therefore, the tests
raised many unanswered questions.

Theses numbers produced at this URL site are very real to me.  I
noticed a balanced and small memory and cpu usage for most of the
Python tests, but C/C++ out weighed most other languages.  Would
anyone care to comment?

--
Note: When you reply to this message, please include the mailing
      list/newsgroup address and my email address in To:.

*********************************************************************
Signed,
SoloCDM



From kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu  Sat Jul  7 10:24:54 2001
From: kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu (Keith F. Woeltje)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 14:24:54 GMT
Subject: the center of the world (was Re: Check out O'Reilly's Open Source Convention Highlights)
References: <cpvglilpzl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3AA82D.1A0FE860@seebelow.org> <Xns90CE99B1A22D9atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <3B3B2DED.5303198A@seebelow.org> <9hhri7019jd@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B471BA4.7050306@mail.mcg.edu>

Saw this on slashdot and thought of this thread. Here's what the Debian 
folks did. My trig is pretty rusty, so I'm not sure the method is correct.

http://people.debian.org/~edward/average/

digging-up-old-threads-to-put-off-real-work-a-few-minutes-longer-ly yours
 >K

Alex Martelli wrote:

> "Grant Griffin" <not.this at seebelow.org> wrote in message
> news:3B3B2DED.5303198A at seebelow.org...
>     ...
> 
>>Hey, who said anything about "world"?...
>>
> 
> Kernighan and Ritchie did (they were greeting it, I believe).
> 
> 
> 
>>But now that you mention it, the US Midwest *is* pretty centrally
>>located on a "world" basis.
>>
>>as-much-as-anything-else-on-this-sphere-<wink>-ly y'rs,
>>
> 
> An interesting exercise might be to define a *meaningful*
> "central location" -- one based on population distribution
> (or other geographical distributions of interest).
> 
> After all, since tunas are unlikely to attend a conference
> on technical computer issues (given that you can tune a
> filesystem, but you can't tuna fish), "weighting" the vast
> aquaceous parts of the (approximate) "sphere" equally to
> the populated landmass may be a fine exercise in geometry,
> but doesn't make much sense otherwise.  As soon as you want
> to move from pure geometry to some kind of geography, I
> think some demographic issues must arise.  Even without
> considering demographics, at least some account could be
> taken of land vs ocean and maybe of land with/without
> permanent ice covering.
> 
> Some data, ordered by-country, can easily be found for free
> on the web, http://www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2001/worldview.htm
> for example.  Latitudes and longitudes of cities in various
> countries are also easily available, e.g. at
> http://www.realestate3d.com/gps/world-latlong.htm.  We can
> get a first approximation for a distribution of world human
> population by assuming a country's population is divided
> equally among its major cities.  This will require some work
> and supervision because of varying formats etc in the files
> being used -- or is there somewhere on the net that already
> gives me in a single readable file a lot of data boiled down
> to triples (population, latitude, longitude)?  Anyway, once
> I do have such a file, I can presumably find the "center of
> the world" (approximate) -- the one point on the Earth's surface
> that minimizes population-weighted sum of great-circle distances
> to 'population centers'.  Of course I could get different
> centers by choosing different weighing factors (country GNP
> rather than country population, for example).
> 
> Hmmm, if the coordinates were on a plane, finding the weighed
> center would be trivial, but offhand I can't think of how to
> do it on a sphere's surface -- I guess there must be some way
> more suitable than just solving a generalized extremization
> problem -- can anybody suggest one...?
> 
> Of course, there are enough degrees of freedom in the outlined
> procedure that it can probably be used for my real purpose, i.e.,
> proving that the relevant "center of the world" is within easy
> walking distance from my home and thereby convincing the PS^H^H
> O'Reilly to hold their next conference somewhere that's highly
> convenient for me...
> 
> 
> Alex
> 
> 
> 
> 



From phawkins at connact.com  Fri Jul 20 16:06:01 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 16:06:01 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "TR" == Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

>> C = {}
>> for item in B:
>> C[item]=None

TR> This sort of makes me wish we had dict comprehensions to match list
TR> comprehensions:

TR> C = {item:None for item in B}
TR> or
TR> C = {item:1  for item in B}
TR> as revised and then discarded


So what's wrong with list comprehensions?  Observe, grasshopper:

Python 2.0 (#8, Oct 16 2000, 17:27:58) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

import time

a = [str(i) for i in range(7500)]
b = [str(i) for i in range(0, 7500 * 5, 5)]
c = {}

for item in b:
	c[item] = 1

def dict(a,c):
	start = time.clock()
	for item in a:
		d = filter(c.has_key, a)
	stend = time.clock()
	print "get: %6.2f"%(stend-start)

def comp(a,b):
	start = time.clock()
	out = [i for i in a if i not in b]
	stend = time.clock()
	print "get: %6.2f"%(stend-start)


>>> >>> >>> ... ... >>> ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> ... ... ... ... ... >>> ... ... ... ... ... ... ... >>> >>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> comp(a,b)
get:  19.78
>>> dict(a,c)
get: 154.77
>>> 
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC







From ddusa at ziplip.com  Thu Jul 26 12:07:54 2001
From: ddusa at ziplip.com (ddusa)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:07:54
Subject: $12 Investment...$10,000 Return!!!
Message-ID: <UTC200107262110.XAA08050@bacchus.cwi.nl>

THIS IS THE SUPER FAST ONE!!!!!

While you're waiting for the others to work,  this little gem will put $10,00 in 
your pockett in as little as two weeks!!..I guarantee it!!  Your only cost is a 
couple hours of your time and $10 or $20.  That's it.

                          THE GIFTING CLUB  (please take two min. to read this)

If you want to make several thousand dollars really quick, then please 
take two minutes to read and understand the program I am sharing with 
you.  No this is not what you think.  You do not have to send $5 to five 
people to buy a report, receipt, or get their mailing list.  Nor will you need 
to invest more money later to get things going.

      THIS IS THE FASTEST EASIEST PROGRAM YOU"VE EVER SEEN

Complete this in a couple hours and you'll never forget the day you 
received it.  If you are doing other programs, by all means stay with them.  
The more the merrier...please read on.

First, there are only three levels, not four, five or even nine like some other 
programs.  This three level program is much more realistic and much, 
much faster because it is so easy.  The response to this program is VERY 
HIGH and VERY FAST!!  You receive your money in a couple weeks, not 
a couple months.  

TRUE STORY:  Cindy Allen ran this summation four times last year.  The 
first time she received $3,000 in two weeks and $7,000 the next three 
weeks.   When this program is continued, as it should be,  EVERYONE 
PROFITS!!   Don't be afraid to gift a stranger.  There's an old saying that 
gifts will come back to you ten fold.

THE DETAILS:  You only need to mail out 20 copies, not 200 or more like 
other programs.  Mail them to friends, relatives,  poeple who send you their 
programs,  people who you know will continue the process.  Even if you're 
now in another program, stay with it by all means, but do yourself a favor, 
do this one as well!!  It is very simple and takes a very small ( $10 to $20 ) 
investment.  This will be big before the others even trickle in.  Just give 
ONE person $5.  That's it!!  Follow the simple instructions and in a couple 
weeks you'll have $10,000 because most people will respond to the low 
investment high speed and huge profit potential.  So lets's help each other 
by keeping it going!!

1. On a blank piece of paper write your name, address, and email address 
LEGIBLY and wrap it around a FIVE dollar bill.  Send it to the FIRST 
person on the list below ( #1 ).  ONLY THAT PERSON ON THE LIST 
GETS YOUR NAME AND A $5 BILL!!

2.  Retype the list, REMOVE the FIRST NAME ( #1 ) from the list.  Move 
the other two names up and add your name in the ( #3 ) position.

3.  If you're using snail mail, make however many copies you're sending 
out, ( at least 20 ) and send them out today!!!  If you're using email, make 
your initial mailing now and save it.  Every time you recieve an opportunity 
letter, mail them this.  

There is no more to do.  When your name reaches the first position,  it will 
be your turn to collect all your gifts.  

Can you do it??  Of course you can.  Get creative.  Each time you recieve 
a "Get Rich Quick" or "MLM" offer in the mail or your email, respond with 
THIS LETTER.  Your name will climb to the #1 position at dizzying rates.  
Some of you may want to purchase mailing lists or send out hundreds or 
even thousands of letters.  That's great.  The sky really is the limit with this 
unique GIFTING CLUB.

ACT FAST AND GET PAID FAST!  Honesty and Integrity make this plan 
work.  Send $5 to the first name only.  Remove that name and move the 
other two up one position.  Add your name to position ( #3 ).  Copy names 
and addresses EXACTLY. 

#1. Daniel Weaver,  P.O. Box 7, Clarksburg, MO 65025

#2. S. Denyer, P.O. Box 406, Triangle, VA 22172

#3. Bayberry Store, 114 S. Main #305, Fond du Lac, WI 54935

This is a one time mailing so no need to remove.  If you wish we will 
remove your name from our data base.  Type remove in the subject line 
and email  ddusa at ziplip.com .



From des.small at bristol.ac.uk  Wed Jul 25 12:29:04 2001
From: des.small at bristol.ac.uk (Des Small)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:29:04 GMT
Subject: A few things :)
References: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m6bsm8lxmd.fsf@maelstrom.maths.bris.ac.uk>

Lee Nutter <leenutter at australia.edu> writes:

> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a
> hobby. Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the
> language, don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)

I use it for number crunching with NumPy.  Having a clean
'interpreted' language, with good object-oriented facilities and the
ability to handle large arrays efficiently is a Good Thing.

Des.
-- 
Dr Des Small, Scientific Programmer,
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol,
Tel: 0117 9287984


From gustafl at algonet.se  Sat Jul  7 10:31:13 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 14:31:13 GMT
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
Message-ID: <Xns90D7A828A9E8Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

I have a script that I run from the command line in Windows. I need to feed 
it with configuration settings from an external file. I decided that this 
file must be in the same directory as the python script.

The problem is that I can't find a way to get this directory. The docs say 
that sys.path[0] should be used for this, but that does only return an 
empty string.

A second question: In the future, I'll use py2exe to make a DOS binary of 
this script. Will this make any difference when retrieving the script 
directory?

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From junkster at rochester.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 10:11:30 2001
From: junkster at rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:11:30 GMT
Subject: Unable to reach Python.org?
Message-ID: <junkster-459471.10125001072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com>

Anyone know of a outage @ Python.org?

Netscape is returning that the site is too busy to fullfill my request...

      - Benjamin


From roy at panix.com  Sun Jul 15 21:42:50 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:42:50 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com>

quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote:
> Even without that, I argue that a bad pattern match should throw an 
> exception and not assign None

I have to admit, that would be somewhat consistant with the way the rest of 
the language works, but it sure would make it more complicated to do 
something like:

   if re.match (pattern1, string):
      do stuff
   elif re.match (pattern2, string):
      do other stuff
   elif re.match (pattern3, string):
      etc, etc, etc.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 08:38:04 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:38:04 -0400
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net>
Message-ID: <kUZ%6.20165$he.986898@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/1667/fid/242

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Giles Constant" <gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MdY%6.168$iF.4908 at news.lhr.globix.net...
> Hi there,
>
> Being a C++ head, it's probably more a problem with my design than a
python
> problem, but I figured you guys would be able to help.
>
> I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some
> global data such that all instances of the class have access to it.  The
> alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every single
> object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently that it would
> be rediculous.
>
> Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)
>




From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 18:09:07 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:09:07 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994883788.13491.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4CCE83.94DC6521@engcorp.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
[snip]
> But it is hard to get others at my company on 
> that bandwagon.  I have a hard enough time selling Perl.

If you are trying to sell both Perl and Python, maybe you're
just confusing your audience with a mixed message.  Are you
trying to promote them on the same basis?  

If anyone tried to tell me I should be using Perl for a task, 
although I could also consider using Python because that would 
be just as effective, I'd have to laugh...  (and then apologize
and all that stuff, which I really hate. ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From paulsid at home.com  Tue Jul 24 13:54:29 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:54:29 -0600
Subject: Importing from Another Path
Message-ID: <3B5DB655.C830877B@home.com>

I'm working on a client/server project (in Python 2.1) and I've got it
organized in the familiar structure of client, server, and common
subdirectories.  What is the correct (i.e. simplest and fastest) way to
import modules from the common directory into the client or server? 
Right now I'm doing it by putting this at the top of each module:

import sys
sys.path.append("..\\common")
del sys

This works, but a) I don't need sys so importing it seems like a waste,
b) it's obviously not portable (and using os.path.join() would add more
wastage), and c) it just seems ugly.  Is there a better way?  (I'm aware
of PYTHONPATH but it would be a pain to use in this case.)  I haven't
been able to locate any information on doing this.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 30 00:37:10 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:37:10 +1200
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B64E476.F63A0BCD@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> 
> So what is the best way to talk about a binary-represented integer
> in the abstract?

A set of integers in range(n), where n is the
number of bits?

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 15:44:24 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:44:24 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>   <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <mailman.996599433.9583.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b6709dc.922129512@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:05:06 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:

>>     Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
>>     Guido> Checked into CVS!
>> 
>> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if x is a
>> type or class instead of an instance?
>
>No, that would be ambiguous.  A subclass is not an instance.  A class
>or type represents a set of instances, so 'in' is justified in a
>sense.
>
'x of type' for 'issubclass(x, type)' ?

Another .02 USD
new kw though.



From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 17:04:43 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:04:43 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easier way to do this
References: <mailman.994354039.27054.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44D66B.E6A2DD6D@home.net>

Ryan LeCompte wrote:
> Try this:
> 
> Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> IDLE 0.8 -- press F1 for help
> >>>import string
> >>>f = string.maketrans('', '')
> >>>string.translate('hello99there', f, string.letters)
> '99'

This only gets rid of letter, not any other character:


>>> string.translate('hello9-9there', f, string.letters)
'9-9'

If I understood correctly, what the poster wanted was to remove
everything that isn't a number. this works, however:

>>> remove = f.replace("0123456789","")
>>> string.translate('hello9-9there', f, remove)
'99'


-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From noselasd at frisurf.no  Mon Jul  2 07:50:46 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:50:46 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hnaat$284$02$1@news.t-online.com> <slrn9jud7l.111.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hneb9$ca0$00$1@news.t-online.com> <slrn9juj38.ptc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <LdZ%6.2052$Jp5.35256@news1.oke.nextra.no>

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9juj38.ptc.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:08:45 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
> >"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
> >> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:18 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
> >> >You might want to look at KDE's DCOP.
> >>
> >> Well, I did already. It looks cool and I even got the KSpread
> >> example to work, but it's tied to C++ and Qt.
> >
> >Not entirely true.  There are DCOP bindings for C (dcopc) and Python
> >(AFAIK only proof of concept at the moment) and even a XML-RPC to
DCOP
> >bridge (KXMLRPC) which could be used from Python, Java, Perl or any
> >other language that provide an XML-RPC implementation.
> >There are even native java bindings to DCOP in developement.
>
> Sorry for not being clear. I have just finished rebuilding the
kdebindings and
> PyQt RPMs for Python 2.1 to try out the Python examples. They work
fine so far.
> What I meant was that the DCOP server AFAIK can currently only be
written in
> C++. I also couldn't find anything that describes the APIs that are
exported
Probably, but is that a problem ? The DCOP server is already
written&working.
> via DCOP, but I'd better ask for this in a KDE group.
Do that. you might want to get kdevelop (a KDE IDE) which comes with
a bunch of documentation , www.kdevelop.org






From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 12:53:28 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:53:28 +0200
Subject: python as plugin language
References: <993529827.54981@newsmaster-04.atnet.at> <tjh5isq58hk8dc@corp.supernews.com> <tjhc8d7gjuohe8@news.supernews.com> <tji6ftsb4dlla3@corp.supernews.com> <tjiok16g2asmc7@news.supernews.com> <9hhkpq010gl@enews2.newsguy.com> <tk16lbm516pmfc@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9hq8ui0o4m@enews4.newsguy.com>

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:tk16lbm516pmfc at news.supernews.com...
    ...
> > I may be missing something, but... doesn't the embed.c demo/example,
> > D:\Python-2.1\Demo\embed\demo.c on a typical Python install on Win32
> > for ex., do exactly what you require...?  Well, almost -- it doesn't
    ...
> > So, WHAT am I missing...?
>
> The fact that my C:\Python21 directory doesn't contain any directory
> named "Demo"? Where do I get it? It wasn't in my "typical" Win32
> installation.

Darn, you're right -- the Demo directory only comes when you
install the *source* distribution (which is why I have it under
D:\Python-2.1, where I have the sources installed, rather than
on D:\Python21, where I have the normal installation).  I do
apologize for wrongfully believing you were missing something
"under your nose" -- sorry: it's *NOT* among the stuff one
routinely gets -- ONLY with the sources-package.

Let's say: if you're going to do any embedding or extending
of Python with C, it's a *VERY GOOD* idea to install the
source distribution of Python too.  This should probably be
emphasized in the docs AND in the download page too, I guess!

You don't need to *build* the source distribution (though
it can't hurt, and if you set the options right in VC++ it
gives you the .PDB files pointing to your installed sources
which can help debug your extensions/embeddings), but having
it around as a huge working collection of examples is a
VERY good idea anyway.


Alex





From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 01:30:27 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:30:27 -0400
Subject: Problem with timing, again:
References: <%QM87.438$k9.52157@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B639F73.78E37C2B@engcorp.com>

Jeremy Moles wrote:
> 
> It works, but it won't respond, and it won't let the
> button go. What am I doing wrong?

Classic mistake.

> ____________________________________________
> 
>     def dostuff(self):
[...]
>       def domorestuff():
>          z=ftplib.FTP(host='ahost')
>          z.login(user='asuer',passwd='apassword')
>          z.cwd('public_html')
>          z.storlines('STOR IP.html',open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','r'))
>          z.close()
>       while 1:
>          domorestuff()
>          time.sleep(15)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Anyways, the program works - but the gui itself freezes up - it's as if the
> button is stuck. You guys were so helpful last time, any advice this time?

It is typical in GUI programs to have to release the CPU quickly 
in order to keep responsiveness in the user interface.  There is
generally a way of having a function called periodically to do
some work (e.g. your domorestuff()) but you have to use some
feature of the GUI toolkit to set this up, not implement it 
yourself with time.sleep() as you have done.

Sorry, I'm not Tk expert so I can't point you to the specific
answer -- only generalities here. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 23:09:53 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:09:53 -0400
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <mailman.995377053.13982.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B54FE00.26071ECF@engcorp.com>

Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> 
> All of this was surprisingly fast to implement.  [...]
> And merely to please myself, I managed to clean out internals 
> and to get some more speed: not really that we needed it, 
> but because I feel better that way. :-)

Conditions for optimization:

   (program-works AND program-is-not-fast-enough)
OR programmer-wants-endorphin-rush

:)


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 23 17:00:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 17:00:14 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>
Message-ID: <ur8v79x9d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Michael Abbott <michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> writes:

> 1.  Scientific programs, where presumably the bulk of the work can be done 
> using floating point numbers.
> 2.  System control (I use this phrase *very* broadly) programs where 
> floating point *never* makes an appearance (except, perhaps, for friendly 
> display to the user).
> 
> (Of course, someone might pipe up, what about all that graphical 
> programming?)  Perhaps I should add a third category of task:
> 
> 3.  Graphical programming can, perhaps, be characterised as a mixture of 
> scientific calulations and discrete control.  (Please don't take this too 
> seriously!)
> 
> 
> Anyway, my point is this: integers are used for discrete computation and 
> control, and when I perform arithmetic on integers I expect to continue 
> working on integers.  The idea that a floating point number might magically 
> appear in the middle of my calculations (because I was foolish enough to 
> write a/b) does not make me happy.
>     Of course, the argument seems to be that I should be happy to use // 
> throughout my code.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But what about all that broken 
> code, eh?

It's the breakage concern that's what really does it for me, and I'm
pretty much all system control or GUI in my own uses at this point of
Python.  I think the only place I've cared about floating point
division is when computing percentage complete of some operations for
display to a user.

Personally, my threshold for this discussion is different in the
abstract than in the reality of a pre-existing implementation
decision.  I buy the arguments for the functionality difference, and
maybe even for which makes the most default sense.  If Python had
started with / for float, and // for integer division, I would just
just be using // about everywhere in my code.  But it didn't, and I
haven't, and once we introduce the idea of changing this for existing
code my threshold for which makes the most sense to use for "/" raises
quite a bit, for which the current discussions/arguments no longer
sway me.  In such a case, I'm more in favor of stability of the
existing code base.

And as pointed out elsewhere, my systems and installed base are not
incrementing through each release as they occur because of the cost of
doing so.  I'm still managing a base of 1.5.2, and will likely jump
from that right to a release like 2.1 (or maybe 2.2 depending on my
timing and availability of dependent extensions), so it's all too easy
to end up skipping over the "warning" release right into the "break"
release.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 25 11:07:48 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:07:48 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61@posting.google.com> <Xns90E97A202990duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B5EE0C4.64716F28@alcyone.com>

Duncan Booth wrote:

> If I remember correctly, the domain name (after the '@') is not case
> sensitive. The user name (before the '@') *may* be case sensitive, but
> it
> varies from system to system.

That's absolutely correct.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ The public is a fool.
\__/ Alexander Pope
    Maths reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/maths/
 A mathematics reference.


From rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu  Tue Jul 31 11:28:12 2001
From: rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu (Rajarshi Guha)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:28:12 -0400
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
Message-ID: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>

Hi,
  is there a sleep function in the Python library. I've beens earching 
throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way 
to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there 
any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?

TIA,

-- 
--
Rajarshi Guha


From wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net  Sat Jul 28 09:07:25 2001
From: wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net (William Dandreta)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:25 GMT
Subject: Python, mysql, roundoff  problem?
Message-ID: <hOy87.24265$gj1.2251802@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

mysql stores numbers as strings. I discovered that when converted to floats
in Python they are not exactly the same which can cause roundoff errors. The
floats represent money and I need to be sure there is no roundoff errors.

What is normally done to deal with this situation?

I am considering using mysql 64 bit integers to eliminate any roundoff
errors. What kind of performance problems might his cause?

Bill




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 11:32:29 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:32:29 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:_bh57.32695$d4.1090608 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com...
    ...
> In the CP4E world, do you feel it is better to educate everybody to
> understand that capitaisation has meaning, or dumb down the systems to
allow
> those without a finer appreciation of language to get what *they* expect,
> thereby annoying the literate minority? I've never been quite sure how

I consider myself a member of the literate minority (well
within the upper centile on all relevant demographics), and
having a recently-invented typographic prettiness, such as
letter-cd tcase, affect meaning, has always struck me as a deeply
flawed idea.  I hated it when I first met it in C and Unix,
and a quarter of a century hasn't reconciled me to it.


Alex





From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 08:25:12 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 08:25:12 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <slrn9l60i2.o0p.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <871ynfu4if.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle) writes:

> I suppose that the first loop could also be rewritten using map, in order 
> to squeeze some more juice out of the beast:
> 
> C={}
> map(lambda item,dic = C: dic[item]=1, B)

I doubt this would save you anything because the cost of that lambda
function will most likely be greater than the savings from the for
loop.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"How does a project get to be a year late? 
- -- One day at a time" - Frederick Brooks, Jr.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtULqgACgkQjVztv3T8pztPCQCfUEcjOUN7cdjQBX8GuRieA3Dr
pZ4AnRo9TobmYzQTQmRRWhNKn/JmFn2U
=IF0V
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Thu Jul 26 11:42:26 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:42:26 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m0ej2.o3q.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:44:55 -0400, Kevin Lacker <kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu> pisze:

> Can you do this:
> 
> answer = []
> for x in my_list:
>     if not is_good(x):
>         break
>     answer.append(process(x))
> 
> with a list comprehension somehow?

The pattern can be wrapped in a function. It's quite nice in Python 2.2:

def take_while(p, l):
    for x in l:
        if not p(x): break
        yield x

answer = [process(x) for x in take_while(is_good, my_list)]

> I think it would be cool to be able to reuse the while keyword
> inside comprehensions like
> 
> answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]

Looks nice for me.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Wed Jul 18 02:02:09 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 09:02:09 +0300
Subject: TK + cmd.cmdloop() in threads (was Re: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
References: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <u7kx74dmd.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <yox1yneojvi.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

> If your main thread isn't going to be doing anything but spinning up
> the other threads, then having it wait on such an event is fine -
> although you may want to consider having it read from a queue, and
> thus be able to not only receive information from failing threads (the
> failing thread could even send over the traceback object through the
> queue so the main thread could handle printing/logging duties for all
> operational threads), but also completion or other communication from
> properly working threads.

The architecture is indeed such that the main thread is just waiting
there. Having the main thread do the exception saving/printing sounds
like a good idea, I think I will do that in addition to the mentioned
event.

> If you're going to encapsulate this in a GUI at some point, then the
> threads can likely generate events to the main GUI thread which can
> also serve to communicate such information.

I haven't done any UI stuff (apart from cmd and toy GTK/TK examples)
in python yet, is it ok to have TK mainloop running in one thread and
still perform normal cmd.cmdloop() operation in another? I can't
quickly think of any reason why it wouldn't be, but I can't figure out
why it hasn't been explicitly suggested... Having a TK window doing
the data browsing/drawing while still having a straightforward,
versatile cmd.cmdloop() running on a console sounds like an extremely
potent combination. Anyone done it? Are there some subtle gotchas that
make it a bad idea?

> if you need to permit them to perform cleanup, you may actually want a
> path from the main thread to the worker threads (e.g., have them check
> a terminate flag or event periodically in their execution path) as well.

Having a terminate flag is problematic with some threads that are
doing something that blocks... if they are reading from a socket you
have to kill the socket under their feet to make them go over the read
instruction. They may also be blocking on a mutex or a semaphore,
which makes things harder.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 06:52:55 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:52:55 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
References: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E97731532B9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell) wrote in 
news:79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345 at posting.google.com:

> Recently I've been using a call like os.system("/usr/bin/lynx -dump
> http://www.sample.com > /tmp/site-text.txt") to grab formatted text
> versions of pages (without HTML) for subsequent processing.  However,
> I don't like the fact that this technique introduces an additional
> dependency into my code (lynx). I was wondering if anyone could
> recommend an equivalent Python function or module that lets me do this
> without introducing a platform specific dependency?
> 
> urllib.urlretrieve() gets back the raw HTML page, so it's not really
> helpful to me, except as a starting point for processing.
> 

Is this what you need?

--- begin strip.py ---
# This example will convert a simple HTML file into a plain text
# equivalent. This is useful for readme files etc.

import sys,formatter,StringIO,htmllib,string
from urllib import urlretrieve,urlcleanup

# Strip all HTML formatting.
class MyParser(htmllib.HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        self.bodytext = StringIO.StringIO()
        writer = formatter.DumbWriter(self.bodytext)
        htmllib.HTMLParser.__init__(self,
            formatter.AbstractFormatter(writer))

    def gettext(self):
        return self.bodytext.getvalue()

def GetPage(url):
    try:
        fn, h = urlretrieve(url)
        text = open(fn, "r").read()
    finally:
        urlcleanup()
    return text

if __name__=='__main__':
    arg = sys.argv[1]
    if arg[:7]=='http://':
        data = GetPage(sys.argv[1])
    else:
        data = open(arg, 'r').read()
    p = MyParser()
    p.feed(data)
    p.close()
    text = string.replace(p.gettext(), '\xa0', ' ')
    print text
    anchors = p.anchorlist
    for i in range(len(anchors)):
        print "[%d]: %s" % (i+1, anchors[i])
--- end strip.py ---


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Sat Jul 28 10:54:55 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 14:54:55 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <mailman.996167570.6366.python-list@python.org> <9js13u$c80$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg> <4Jh87.1292$e%4.30029@news3.oke.nextra.no>
Message-ID: <9jujnv$4g$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

According to Thomas Weholt <t-weh at online.no>:
> > - a Medusa-based soap_handler that does HTTP/1.1 server-side
> 
> A quickie: Doesn't medusa provide far better performance than
> BaseHTTPServer?  Does anybody know?

Dunno. But as I keep saying on this newsgroup ;-), Medusa does HTTP/1.1
which provides persistent HTTP connections. BaseHTTPServer (really
BaseHTTPRequestHandler) is HTTP/1.0. If network latency is your app's
hotspot, this will make a difference.


> ( Ng Pheng Siong, you're a life-saver. This is exactly what I need.
> Thanks!!  :-))

Glad to be of service! ;-)



-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 19 18:08:32 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:08:32 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Case Insensitivity (was Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: <%%G57.15495$Cy.1928702@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191553430.24983-100000@bms>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Tim Hochberg wrote:
<...>
> CaseMismatchError: Case of 'has_spam' doesn't match previous usage (did you
> mean 'HAS_SPAM').

That looks case-sensitive to me.
If it was case-insensitive... hi == Hi == hI == HI
so, has_spam == HAS_SPAM

By generating an error you are recognizing case, and enforcing rules
about the allowed case of a label... clearly, not being
case-insensitive.


- Bruce




From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 13 19:27:17 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 16:27:17 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107131527.6519cd88@posting.google.com>

Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l at 4ax.com>...
> Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
> would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
> variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
> misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> large projects.

People who are new to Python sometimes worry about dynamic typing and
assume that it will make for unreliable code.  I remember wondering
about the same thing at one point.

On the other hand, I have never heard a Python veteran complain about
dynamic typing based on actual experience.  Nobody seems to ever step
forward and say, "after years of using Python, I eventually gave up on
it and went back to C because of all the bugs I kept having related to
dynamic typing." :-)

If you like Python, I would encourage you to try it out and see for
yourself what happens.  Though it is easy to contrive examples where
such bugs might occur, in my experience with Python I very rarely
encounter them.  When I do, they are very easy to find and fix because
of Python's excellent traceback feature.


Tom


From dedalus at yifan.net  Sun Jul 29 17:54:02 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:54:02 GMT
Subject: importing modules
References: <mailman.996439858.7059.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b6484c1.131075601@news.libero.it>

Hans,

>I can send this executable to you if you want to. 

it would be great.

Thank you

Duilio


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 21:22:42 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:22:42 -0400
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
References: <mailman.996103607.3926.python-list@python.org> <b8c015b9.0107271956.3661a8a0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <5C297.544$WD1.106193@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Jon Schull" <jonschull at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b8c015b9.0107271956.3661a8a0 at posting.google.com...
> "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
> > ...I have no idea why you're doing "Run Script" on doctest to begin
> > with.  That's not a sensible thing to do -- doctest is a library module
in
> > 2.1, and you shouldn't need to load it into IDLE at all, let alone ever
run
> > it on itself.
> >
>
> Well, I was hoping to develop and test some modules within the idle
> environment.  (I'm wondering how well IDLE serves as a primary
> Interactive Development Environment.)
>
> I ran into this "problem" (it's not unique to doctest) and thought I
> was doing something wrong.  I figured doctest's use of docstrings for
> testing would be exemplary, so I tried doctest.
>
> In a way, doctest *was* exemplary...
>
> But it seems that its going to be awkward to do interactive
> development in IDLE of modules that employ doctest.  That seems a
> shame; routine use of doctest and IDLE would be a good practice.

Well, it really doesn't seem excessively demanding to test in a separate
process when you want to run doctest. Surely you don't do that except when
you want to be sure you have a stable new version which is compatible (as
dictated by regression tests) with the previous one?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 11 20:31:37 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:31:37 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <un16bcibu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <zP337.4881$z21.497530@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <uelrn3s46.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> David Bolen wrote:
> >
> > > And a//b definitely beats (a+0.)/b, which does the trick, but is not
> > > at all evident.
> >
> > Well, I'd probably suggest using "float(a)/b" instead which at least
> > makes it a little easier to see what's going on :-)
> 
> except that it doesn't do the right thing if a is a complex
> number.

Hmm, good point - I hadn't thought of that.

Of course, if a was complex then we wouldn't be worried about a/b
truncating anything either.  But definitely something to keep in mind
if working on code that might receive either complex or integer
parameters.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 00:43:26 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:43:26 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995944063.12608.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vbuplto32kls0kvc4caadom1osb6rimlm3@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:11:36 +0300, Kirill Simonov
<kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Please tell me, how to write a correct program that uses integer
>division and must work on Python 2.1 and Python 2.4.

There is a simple workaround to keep in mind for new software, and for
software that you get get hold of to change in advance. It ain't
pretty though...

  def intdiv (a, b) :
    return divmod (a, b) [0]

Not too bad where it's an option.



From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Wed Jul  4 18:56:54 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:56:54 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9i072s$ck8@news1.gtech.com>

Hi Alex,
Thanks for sharing that information. Have a look at
http://www.rational.com/products/whitepapers/337.jsp for the productivity
paper I was referencing.

As for the productivity data, I apologise, my original comment was in the
very narrow and strict proviso of real-time applications and using a
"normal" real-time language. So I am venturing out of my experience depth
somewhat here in some of my comments :-). Please correct me where you feel
the urge :-).

I wouldn't use/choose Python in a true real-time application because
(usually) interpreted languages just can't compare in terms of speed
performance with languages that have been designed with lower level
capabilities in mind i.e. C. (Another interesting URL is this one:
http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/sigada/triada92.html#LawlisE92 - sorry, you
will need an ACM membership to get access to the paper though, it used to be
freely available but I couldn't find any valid references other than this).
Now, I know that computers are "faster than light" now and "this is nolonger
a consideration" in this day and age. But it still is for large scale
systems. The problem domain almost invariably stretches the current hardware
(remember, at some stage you have to choose the hardware platform and commit
yourself to it, you can't develop an application over the course of several
years without making that commitment relatively early in the piece - it used
to be a lot worse in the "good old days", you bought the target hardware at
the start of the project and drooled over what the current state of the art
was by the end of the project but were forced to watch your dream creation
running on a, by then, dinosaur :-)).

Python shines at manipulation of things like strings, dictionary searches,
list manipulation etc etc but these are rarely requirements or useful
features in a real-time problem domain (I have worked on projects that
lasted years where most of the programmers didn't know how to do basic IO or
manipulate strings in the language because the portions of the system
architecture they were in didn't require any interface to the user!).  I
believe that Python is being used in some high performance areas, so don't
get me wrong, I wouldn't necessarily rule it out for those reasons but any
interpreted language *automatically* becomes less of a consideration when I
think of what language to do a real-time application in. The mere fact that
you can drop into an underlying language (C or whatever) when you require
speed is one of Pythons strengths, but also supports my idea that it is one
of its weaknesses when it comes to real-time. Most real-time systems don't
have a lot of data handling required ie read string processing, Python (and
such languages) are optimised for this kind of situation. So, any situation
that requires manipulation of data in these forms are going to benefit from
using Python. But surprisingly, the majority of real-time systems aren't
called on to manipulate these kind of data structures.

As for "have only the BEST programmers.  How to insure THAT is left as an
exercise for the reader:-)." Well, that's not possible when you have to
staff a project with large numbers of programmers. Most managers get so
desparate to have "bums on seats" that they take what they can get and tell
the team leads to "make the most of it" :-). There is no doubt, that if you
are lucky enough to work with a small, good group of people then you can do
very good work. But generally, even when I have worked in teams as small as
4 people, the 25%-50% rule has still been evident i.e. at least one of those
4 was a "waste of space", another was only "so-so" the other two did all the
real work and helped pull the others across the finish line through plan old
hard work :-). This has to be an important factor (IMO :-)) when choosing a
language/development environment i.e. you need "tools" to help *force* that
25%-50% to produce better quality work - but even that is only an *aid*
there is no "silver bullet" that will solve the problem. One of Pythons
strengths is the freedom it offers - with poor programmers this becomes one
of its greatest *weaknesses* (I can hear the howls of outrage from here in
Sydney :-)). With this element of your work force (and you have to plan for
them as well, because you will have them, no doubt about it! :-)) then
something (language, process, whatever) that will "funnel" them down the
right path is what you have to aim for.

As for the "superstar" concept - don't believe it to the extent you imply
:-) Yes, research *can* show productivity factors like that and I can tell
you stories of people who were placed on third shift where they were "out of
sight" - all they did was get their sleep and did *no* work (one that comes
to mind was they couldn't sack her because she would have cried racial
discrimination - and so when her work was due they just reassigned it to
another programmer). So productivity when compared to these people *can*
achieve factors of 1000:1. But in a normal world, I believe very much in the
lower published figures (languages aside here) of  anywhere from 2:1 to
15-20:1 (which is still pretty high and is a direct result of my 25%-50%
rule i.e. they shouldn't *even* be in the industry! :-)). That is not to say
that companies shouldn't reward the high performers but how do you measure
that performance? :-) The minute you talk about metric gathering (code
review, bugs per KLOC, resubmittal rate etc etc) you hear the howls of
outrage - "how  dare you measure my performance", "how dare you criticise my
code" - it's almost like when we leave University we somehow drop the mantle
of engineer/computer scientist and take up the mantle of artist/prima donna
:-)

Anyway, thanks for sharing the reference, hope you enjoy mine :-). BTW, they
give away the hint of what language I *would* use to program an ATC :-)

Peter

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9huo4n01jfl at enews1.newsguy.com...
> "Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
> news:9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com...
>     ...
> > There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
> > languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
> > "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing
> the
> > same application in two different languages to get meaningful
> comparisions -
> > but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed
> languages.
>
> I'll appreciate some URL's, thanks.  In exchange, please look at
> Lutz Prechelt et al's 1999 "phonecode" study -- e.g. at
> http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/documents/jccpp_tr.pdf.
>
> 80 implementations of the same specs, some in "scripting languages"
> (Perl, Python, Tcl, Rexx), some in "system languages" (Java, C,
> C++).  As it happens, Python was the only language for which NONE
> of the submitted programs was 'unusable' (11 of the original 91
> were not further evaluated, being completely unusable).  Overall
> results (my biased summary): programmer productivity is highest
> (by far) in Perl or Python (no statistically significant
> differences between Perl and Python).  Program performance is
> highest in C and C++, followed by Perl and Python, followed
> by Java, with Tcl and Rexx far slower yet.  Many of Prechelt's
> conclusions are invalidated by grouping Tcl and Rexx together
> with Perl and Python, but fortunately he also supplies raw data
> so you can redo the analysis.
>
>
> > Agreed, but one of my original points was about programmer ability. A
>
> The difference between the best and worst programmers in any single
> given language is far larger than any difference among languages,
> as evidenced in Prechelt's study -- in both productivity, and in
> correctness and performance of the resulting programs.  E.g.,
> the fastest Python and Perl programs are *HUNDREDS* of times
> faster than the slowest C and C++ ones, incredible as that may
> seem for what was a rather simple overall task.
>
> > successful. There is no one single factor that anyone can point to and
say
> > "if you do that or use this" then you will be successful in your
>
> Oh yes there is -- have only the BEST programmers.  How to insure
> THAT is left as an exercise for the reader:-).
>
> > Unfortunately, language choice is a very sensitive issue, and generally
> > doesn't come down to any rational factors - a lot of times it is
"because
> I
> > like it" or "this is the newest, popular language, if I learn that one
> then
> > I can enhance my employment prospects" :-).
>
> The latter is a perfectly-rational factor.  If you want to swing
> programmers' motivations towards "doing the best we possibly can
> on THIS one product", you have to make that compatible with their
> overall motivation of "have an interesting and financially rewarding
> career".  Stock options, cash prizes for specific targets, whatever.
> Non-financial forms of recognition can also be very important...!
>
> If you want/need to treat your programmers as interchangeable parts,
> don't be surprised if they treat your project as just one short step
> within a long career.  My impression is that most development shops
> underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
> attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
> yet that the individual performance variation between the best
> programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
> a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
> factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
> ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
> little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
> "superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
> sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
> doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
> mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
> but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
> performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
> times better, if that).
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From francis.meyvis at sonycom.com  Mon Jul 30 05:17:53 2001
From: francis.meyvis at sonycom.com (Francis Meyvis)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:17:53 GMT
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
References: <25b2e0d9.0107291052.7780d1f8@posting.google.com> <3B64BA49.C105612B@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <5D997.52$Nq1.2409@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>

This would be great!
I remember in the very very beginning
a lot of people were posting silly jokes on the list.
I think they thought this list was about the Monty Python thing.
Much to the frustration of some "serious" clerics.
At that time it were my first experiences with the "net".
Very enjoyable it was!

---
Kind regards, best wishes,
francis meyvis
Joal Heagney <s713221 at student.gu.edu.au> wrote in message
news:3B64BA49.C105612B at student.gu.edu.au...
> gods1child wrote:
> >
> > All this heated discussion over floats has led me to wonder if we need
> > to lighten up a little bit and celebrate the fact that were close to
> > 100,000 (94,100 as of this moment) messages on this news-group which
> > IMHO is some sort of a mile-stone for this neat little group.
> > Suggestions for celebrations?
>
> A memorial post? --> Drag some of the classic posts out of archives and
> repost them?
> --
>       Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
>    /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
>   /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
>  /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !




From klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com  Wed Jul 25 04:41:24 2001
From: klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com (Klaus-G. Meyer)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:41:24 +0200
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <9jm0p6$rk8$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>

Try http://www.fixedsys.com/context.

It is a nice Editor for Windows. Has syntax coloring for many languages
(also Python) and it's freeware!

Klaus




From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 27 06:18:18 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:18:18 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-50ACE3.07435116072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m2fva.gti.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:43:51 -0400, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote:
>> for o in '.'.split(ip_addr):
>>     assert 0 <= int(o) <= 255, 'ip octet not a byte in "%s"' % ip_addr
>
>Don't you also have to catch the ValueError you'll get if o is not a valid 
>integer?

The whole point is to raise an exception if ip_addr is invalid, right?  And
ValueError is probably the right one.  In fact, you should probably catch the
AssertionError and convert that to a ValueError.  But, as others have pointed
out, this will still pass a lot of invalid ip addresses.


From nospam at newsranger.com  Mon Jul  2 07:51:22 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:51:22 GMT
Subject: File-like objects for reading zip files?
References: <9hks27$549$1@slb2.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <_eZ%6.4201$Kf3.33223@www.newsranger.com>

wxPython -- http://wxpython.org -- has a wxZipFSHandler class with FindFirst,
FindNext and OpenFile methods. I hope this will help you.

Levi

In article <9hks27$549$1 at slb2.atl.mindspring.net>, Greg Landrum says...
>
>Hi,
>
>I have a .zip archive containing a very large text file (~2.3 MB compressed,
>~520MB uncompressed).  I'd like to have a file-like object for working with
>this file so that I never need to uncompress it.  In case this isn't clear
>enough, I'd like to be able to do something like this:
>
>import magiczipthing
>f = magiczipthing.FileLikeObject('bigfile.zip','r')
>l = f.readline()
>while l:
>    process_line(l)
>    l = f.readline()
>
>From my perusal of the docs, it doesn't look like the zipfile module
>supports this type of interaction.
>
>Is there any way to accomplish this task?
>
>Thanks,
>-greg
>
>




From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 11:02:37 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:02:37 GMT
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996211014.7234.python-list@python.org> <3B6109E3.624BE2B0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <hof87.34031$EP6.8711809@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> That is my point, though.  These integer optimizations are, as we
> agree, a clear win.  Are these optimizations in danger of being
impacted
> as a result of this unification, or will we still be able to count
> on integer performance being significantly better than that of
> less frequently used types.

I agree with this concern.  I would say it thus (especially for Tim
and Guido), with some rough numbers:

We agree that the 10 to 1 gain in programming speed often to usually
makes up for the 100 to 1 loss in execution speed (or we would not be
using Python).   But it would not as often make up for a 10000 to 1
loss (if such resulted from some fancy unification scheme).  Since we
love Python so much, we would *prefer* not to have to recalculate the
tradeoff and have to choose between options such as a) convert more
code to embedded C, which for many would be a first-time experience;
b) stick with the last 'fast' Python; c) support a parallel 'fast'
Python version; or d) (gasp!) investigate other languages.

Terry J. Reedy





From web.mail at lycos.com  Thu Jul 12 19:46:03 2001
From: web.mail at lycos.com (Alan Green)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 16:46:03 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <270c68fe.0107121546.249b9efa@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B4CC986.A5C8E605 at engcorp.com>...
> I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
> general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
> very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).

<soapbox>

Until it reaches the mythical "mindshare critical mass", Python is
going to have to take over the world just one project at a time. For
those of us who want to work in Python in the typical IT shop, this
means doing some advocacy.

To be an effective advocate of Python, you need to:

a) deeply understand what the people you are advocating to understand,
b) have the respect of the people you are advocating to, and
c) deeply understand why Python is better at the kinds of problem
being solved, and be able to express it.

(a) might be a lot of work, depending on your background, but it
certainly helps with (b). (b) is critical to the success of your
argument - how often do you find yourself swayed by the argument of
someone for who you have no respect?. (c) is definitely a lot of work
- reading and coding.

If you can do all of these, then you will be well on the way to making
an argument that is effective both on the technical and
person-to-person levels.

In an IT shop, the audience for your advocacy needs to include: the
programmers that would need to work on Python code, the technical
management and possibly your client or end-user.

I plan for the process to take 12 months before expecting to see
significant results. And remember: it might not work, but then again,
there is no fun in a guarantee.

</soapbox>

Enjoy!

Alan.


From henken at seas.upenn.edu  Tue Jul 31 13:43:11 2001
From: henken at seas.upenn.edu (Nicholas Henke)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:43:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: decent syslog replacement?
In-Reply-To: <20010801011857.A8795@Vetinari.home>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33L2.0107311342150.2256-100000@roughneck.mydomain.org>

Thanks...I forgot about the syslog - thing...The main problem is the
syslog disk thrashing...I guess I wasnt really clear about that. Are there
any clean options to buffer even more than syslog might do?

Nic

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 12:43:11PM -0400, Nicholas Henke wrote:
> > Hello, I am in the process of writing a Metakit database wrapper. I am
> > running into performance problems when I try to log a ton of debug
> > messages. The system with thrash the disk when logging. I have tried using
> > syslog, replacing stdout with a file, etc. None of these seem to help much.
> > The only luck I have had is to just use print and have bash redirect to a
> > file. This causes problems in other servers that are trying to log to the
> > same file.
>
> Well, you have just described a number of _different_ problems here (for
> example, replacing stdout with a file will not work if you are using
> system() or os.pipe() calls).
>
> As far as your original problem goes, syslog attempts to be reliable
> even in case of crashes. So, by default, it flushes every message to
> disk as it is written.
>
> It is possible to turn off this flushing to disk after each right, by
> prepending the filename in /etc/syslog.conf with a '-'. See the
> syslog.conf(5) man page for details. Note, however, that this is only
> valid for Linux (it was added in the port from BSD sources originally),
> but if you aren't running Linux, then there's just not much point to
> programming, really. :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Malcolm
>
>

-- 
Nicholas Henke
Undergraduate - SEAS '02
Liniac Project - University of Pennsylvania
http://clubmask.sourceforge.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
work: 215-873-5149
cell/home: 215-681-2705
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's nothing like good food, good beer, and a bad girl.





From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 20 04:08:24 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:08:24 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice (24 recommended exercises)
References: <E15N2SE-00058T-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.995542832.23503.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <YFR57.510933$eK2.107354493@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

ok, but what do i do *after* lunch??


"Mike Brenner" <mikeb at mitre.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.995542832.23503.python-list at python.org...
> Mike Brenner wrote:
> > > ... most programmers don't write programs that meet specs. Most
> > > programmer define greatness to be having fun while making money.
> > > To be great in that sense, instead of meeting specs, write the
> > > following Python programs (and for extra credit, do each program
> > > twice -- once using wxPython graphics, and once using Jython.)
> >
> > [snip list of trivial first-year programs ;-)]
> >
> > I think you left out one small thing.  How, by writing those programs,
> > fun it may be, would I make some money?
> >
> > Peter Hansen, P.Eng. peter at engcorp.com
>
> Hi Peter!
>
> I agree that the majority of those exercises are first year exercises.
>
> The 24 recommended exercises were for a person who stated they would
> like to BEGIN a career in programming. Upon completion of about 20 out
> of the 24 exercises they should be able to support themselves as a
> computer programmer.
>
> That is because they would have developed the basic Python and web
> skills required. They would also be able to transfer those Python skills
> over to Java or various mega-corporate languages.
>
> You appear to be a different case, because you put "P.Eng." after your
> name. People who have a degree or a professional license after their
> name ALREADY have a resource that can make them money. Therefore, a
> different set of recommended exercises would be needed to raises you to
> the next level of YOUR game.
>
> So, here are some exercises that you could probably sell to make money
> for yourself at your level. Each exercise suggests who you could sell
> the software to.
>
>
> RECOMMENDED ADVANCED EXERCISES FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS
>
> 1. FAA. Do a multi-player Air Controller game with 50 Air Traffic
> Controllers controlling 10,000 aircraft in the sky over the country at
> one time flying 10,000,000 people between the airports and airstrips of
> a large country, preventing collisions and near collisions, both on the
> ground, while in the neighborhood of an airport, and in between
> airports. Maximize safety and Minimize passenger waiting time both on
> the ground and in the air.
>
> 2. NASA. Do a multi-object simulation game with 1,250,000 representing
> all of the space junk, meteors, asteroids and comets that might hit the
> earth as they bounce off all the gravitational fields of the planets.
> Determine when and if each object will hit the Earth or leave meteor
> trails.
>
> 3. Army. Program the BOLO Tank, fully autonomous weapon system, which
> according to the famous science fiction novel was invented by General
> Motors in 1990 and in 1997 rebelled against the Army and determined that
> the human race was the enemy and exterminated it. EXCEPT, program it to
> not exterminate the human race. Using satellite sensors, the Bolo will
> fly itself to any part of the world and shoot its target.
>
> 4. Space Com. Do a satellite game that shows the portions of the Earth
> covered by each satellite. Automatically pick the best satellites to
> communicate with, to sense the earth with, to send signals across from
> other satellites, etc.
>
> 5. Air Force. Do an advanced three dimensional pilot station for a new
> type of air-space fighter craft that acts like an airplane when in the
> atmosphere but like a space craft above 80,000 feet. Track the pilot's
> eyeballs to see what he is looking at on the radar scope. Read the
> pilot's blood pressure helmet to see when she is emotionally angry, to
> know when to fire the missiles. Integrate a bunch of radars, weapons,
> defenses, escape mechanisms, communication systems, control systems,
> backup systems, reentry systems, scientific research systems, satellite
> repair systems, and atmospheric measurement systems into the game.
>
> 6. CIA. Program a robot that understands English and obeys orders with
> the intelligence of an 8 year old, but who never gets bored.
>
> 7. Department of Clone Wars. Program a biological simulation of all the
> genes in a DNA molecule that predicts what kind of monsters or diseases
> will come out if you switch around a given set of genes.
>
> 8. Mobile-Phone Companies. Program an interface that lets mobile phones
> run applets, commercial windows software, commercial linux software,
> Python programs, http, ftp, etc., SECURELY on wearable internet phones.
>
> 9. Mobile-Phone Companies. Program a method of surfing the internet
> anonymously (including statistical anonymity) from mobile-phones.
>
> 10. Proprietorship. Make a much better Internet Search Engine that
> really understands natural language and finds what you wish.
>
>
> Hope everyone who reads this finds a project that raises them to the
> next level!
>
>




From rcena at epcor.ca  Fri Jul  6 13:59:26 2001
From: rcena at epcor.ca (Resty Cena)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 10:59:26 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>

Well thank you for jolting me out of my comfortable position sitting
with my hands tucked between my pants and the chair. I donwloaded
cx_Oracle and, yes, it's up. Now, would you happen to have, or know
of, some materials (sample code, tips, tricks, techniques, tutorials)
on getting started on programming *forms* based applications in Oracle
and Python? That would be just great.

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message news:<TH%07.3499$i8.339613 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>...
> "Resty Cena" <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote in message
> news:458b194a.0107050711.72007607 at posting.google.com...
> > "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message
>  news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
> > > I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> > > frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
> > >
> > > Python still doesn't have good database support,
> >
> > I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
> > to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
> > database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
> > directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
> > then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
> > Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
> > don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
> > around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
> > want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
> > I'd like the IDE to do this for me. I'm a database programmer, and I
> > want to write applications right away. I'm also lazy and I expect much
> > from my tools.
> 
> Of course, one of the reasons why support isn't better is the huge ratio of
> consumers to producers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but most of the
> best parts of Python have been the results of individuals providing what
> they needed for their own purposes and then opening up the resulting code.
> 
> Continue to sit on your hands by all means. What you need should be along in
> another five years or so. But simply posting to complain that things aren't
> as you want is unlikely to change in the next six months what nothing else
> has changed in the last five years.
> 
> There are lots of people doing much good database work with Python. The
> mxODBC package (free for non-commerical use) and the cx_Oracle package
> (free) do indeed let you do what you describe (i.e. download, unpack, run an
> install script and connect to a database). So I suggest you look a little
> harder and complain a little less. Normally I try to include URLs in
> postings such as this, but you know, somehow I get the impression that
> clicking on a link in a news posting might just be too much trouble ;-)
> 
> Come on in, the water's lovely.
> 
> regards
>  Steve


From dirck at pacbell.net  Thu Jul 12 03:07:59 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:07:59 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Sa137.1466$zv2.51843@news.pacbell.net> <3B4D3622.5B4FC76E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <n1c37.177121$qv3.44584072@nnrp5-w.sbc.net>

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B4D3622.5B4FC76E at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> >
> > In all the examples cited that show why this is a problem,
> > it's not integer division that causes the confusion,
> > it's division of integer *literals*.
>
> That's only because the examples have deliberately
> been made very concise, to show the essence of
> what's going on.
>
> The problem occurs when / is applied to integer
> *objects*, which can arise from any number of
> sources.

The problem occurs when the programmer doesn't realize there is a problem,
not because of something fundamentally wrong with integer math.
It's a problem with expectations and the law of least astonishment.
Which audience would you rather astonish, and how much?

After I thought about it some more:
"of course the examples show literals,
 or they wouldn't be very good examples, would they?"
though I still assume this example:
        (x+y)**(1/2)
is verbatim.

Detecting and reporting the case for literals wouldn't break code,
and might provide enough help to some novice programmers so
they would realize this is something they have to be aware of,
and perhaps learn, and maybe even remember in the cases where they're
not using literals.  It is a burden.

"Might"+"some"+"perhaps"+"maybe" is far too vague for Guido's tastes.

Of course, it was just a thought, if not necessarily a good one.

d





From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 13:49:52 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:49:52 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <q%f87.34136$EP6.8735302@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cphevy2rf1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> > Title: Non-integer Division
> 
> Now that I look at it, the title seems rather odd, given that at least
> half of the PEP and the discussion is/has been about integer division.
> How about Revising Division or even better Splitting the Division
> Operator.

Good point.  Done.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Tue Jul 24 15:14:05 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:14:05 -0700
Subject: question about handling pointers in C extensions
Message-ID: <9jkhdv$r3o$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

I would like a bit of help with handling pointers in C extensions. I 
hope this is a simple question.

I want to write a Python interface to a device driver library. One 
starts by opening the device and getting a particular kind of pointer, 
e.g. (simplified):
  DevType *dev_open()

Is the following reasonable, or is there a better way to do this?

static PyObject *open (PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
) {
    PyObject *py_dev_p;
    DevType *dev_p;
    
    /* call the C routine to open the device */
    dev_p = dev_open();
    if (dev_p == NULL) {
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, "open failed");
        return NULL;
    }

    /* convert device pointer to a Python Long object */
    py_dev_p = PyLong_FromVoidPtr ((void *) dev_p);
    if (py_dev_p == NULL) {
        return NULL;
    }

    /* increment reference and return the PyLong */
    Py_INCREF (py_dev_p);
    return Py_BuildValue("O", py_dev_p);
}

Also, are there any tricks or gotchas to passing the pointer in to 
device control functions?

I am assuming the inverse functions are the ticket (parse "O" format to 
extract the PyLong, then use PyLong_AsVoidPtr). "O!" sounded interesting 
to get a void* in one step, but what are the "Python type objects" one 
can pass? Anyone have a simple example of a converter function for "O%"?

I assume:
- there is no need to INCREF or DECREF the PyLong pointer (so long as my 
extension only uses it locally, i.e. doesn't store it)
- eventually the user should call a Python interface to dev_close and at 
that time the PyLong should be DECREFed.

Any advice or warnings would be appreciated. I have been reading 
"Extending and Embedding" and "Python/C API", but I still have doubts 
I've got the pointer handling right.

Regards,

-- Russell


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 18:20:32 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 00:20:32 +0200
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com> <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50716F.2A9C12CA@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9iqgmp0hdj@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B50716F.2A9C12CA at engcorp.com...
    ...
> What kind of water is just right?  I've lived in Guelph, Ontario,
> much of my life, where the water is extremely hard but very
> little treated and so relatively devoid of mystery chemicals.
> Pray tell, where must I go for the water I need to improve
> the state of my pasta?  Will only bottled Italian water combine
> in the right way with the One True Durum Wheat? :-)

Bologna has very hard water too, alas (we get very pretty
'calanchi' in the nearby hills, but then we get to drink and
wash with the calcium escavated away by rainwater to
form those pretty forms:-), so most everybody drinks
bottled water, and those who care also use it for many
cooking tasks -- but I'll admit that, to the best of my
knowledge, that doesn't extend to cooking ordinary (hard)
pasta (it _might_ matter for freshly made egg-based pasta,
but you're not likely to get that anyway in Ontario, I fear --
it doesn't travel well...!).  Since it's important to use very
abundant amounts of water when cooking pasta, the price
of what is still a very cheap dish would skyrocket if that
abundant water had to be costly bottled mineral water.

One thing that has basically disappeared from Italian
usage since Goethe wrote admiringly about it a couple
centuries ago is the idea of cooking ordinary pasta in
broth (then after straining it, season it with nothing but
lots of grated cheese, since it's savoury enough not to
need any sauce).  Fresh egg-based pasta IS still often
cooked in broth, though (tortellini in particular, one of
Bologna's most famous specialties, really need to be
cooked in _chicken_ soup to be perfect).  But not
spaghetti or other kinds of hard-pasta.

I'm desperately straining to think of some Python
related hook to avoid this being woefully OT, but am
miserably failing, so I apologize to all non-pasta eaters
in the audience...:-(


Alex





From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 12 04:37:52 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:37:52 GMT
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>

On 11 Jul 2001 22:32:16 -0700, tangell at kicker.com (T Angell) wrote:

>I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket connections
>and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
>sample times:
>
>socket time: 0.0047459602356
>socket time: 0.00469899177551
>socket time: 0.00404000282288
>socket time: 0.00537407398224
>
[...]
>  t1 = time.time()
For accurate timing, time.clock()
is recommended, I believe:

"""
clock() 
    Return the current CPU time as a floating point number expressed in seconds.
    The precision, and in fact the very definition of the meaning of ``CPU time'',
    depends on that of the C function of the same name, but in any case, this
    is the function to use for benchmarking Python or timing algorithms. 
"""
"""
time() 
    Return the time as a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch,
    in UTC. Note that even though the time is always returned as a floating point number,
    not all systems provide time with a better precision than 1 second.
"""


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 09:16:37 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:16:37 +0200
Subject: simple question:the count of array
References: <mailman.996583454.15942.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6b3n027ib@enews4.newsguy.com>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.996583454.15942.python-list at python.org...
> >>> a=['a','b','c']
> >>> b=a.count()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
>     b=a.count()
> TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
> >>>
>
> then how I get the number of a,I mean how much
> values in a,in this case it should be 3

len(a) is 3.


Alex





From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 16:53:41 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 20:53:41 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B4A185D.7C9EC4A5@yahoo.com>

James Logajan wrote:
> 
> Paul Winkler wrote:
> > So basically what that benchmark tells me is: "Don't write recursively in Python
> > if performance is an issue".
> 
> Well yes, this is what benchmarks are useful for.

Right. I didn't know that before I looked at the site, so I'm glad I did.

I just wanted to prevent other people from making my initial mistake - assuming
that the tests only had to produce the same result. I was surprised how far down
the list python was on the fibonacci test until I started playing around with
alternative implementations and realized it was the recursion that was slowing
it down.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 12 11:13:47 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 11:13:47 -0400
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
	<07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
Message-ID: <oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Andreas Jung]

> From: "Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru>
> > Do not forget commas:
> >
> > list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url",
> >          "preview" ]
> >
> > list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
> >          "preview" ]
> >
> > Or Python will silently make:
> > ['update', 'y', 'm', 'd', 'y1', 'm1', 'd1', 'event', 'urlpreview']
> >
> > Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?

> For what reason should it check ?  Both is valid Python code.  In the
> second case 'url' and 'preview' are concatenated.  This is dedicated
> behaviour.

It should check because this is poor writing style to have concatenation
of strings written with such a vertical alignment.  "url" and "previews"
have no kind of logical vertical alignment, and a good checker should
consider this as suspicious.

> Also the following is correct Python code:

> print "url" "preview"
> print "url","preview"

> So there is no way to determine the programmers intention at this point.

This time, we have a comma not followed by a space, which is dubious style.
My ideal checker would tell me if do such stylistic mistakes. :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 15:05:17 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:05:17 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECDLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECDLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <E15OOXV-0003x3-00@darjeeling>

I'm the last person to avoid going off on a tangent.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:22:21 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> I wish the definition of continuity were
> easier to teach too, but that doesn't mean I'll settle for an easier
> definition that doesn't actually work <wink>.

Here is one that is easier to teach, if you just reverse the order
of teaching calculus and first-order logic and basic set theory.

A function is continuous at c if, when embedding the world of Reals
into a saturated model (or, say, 2^{Beth_omega} saturated, if you
don't want to get into subtle assumptions), for every infinitesimal x, 
f(c+x)-f(c) is an infintesimal.

Of course, you might think that teaching about saturation is hard --
well, it might be ;-)

i-always-blamed-cauchy-and-weirstrass-for-tormenting-the-world-
with-epsilons-and-deltas-ly y'rs, Z.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From ymor at checkpoint.com  Sun Jul 29 04:54:24 2001
From: ymor at checkpoint.com (Yossi Mor)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:54:24 +0200
Subject: Creating package in Python ???
Message-ID: <3b63c20c$1@news.barak.net.il>

Hello

I am new with Python and I would like to ask several questions:

1. For creating a package I have to create a *.py script that will group
selected modules and contain the following script __init__.py. -> Can you
elaborate on this script definition.

2. I have tried to create a package that contains 2 modules and succeeded in
importing the package itself but not a module inside the package for example
'import pkg.fib1' - what was wrong ?

Thanks

Yossi





From pwos at home.com  Tue Jul  3 11:06:38 2001
From: pwos at home.com (Wostenberg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:06:38 GMT
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
Message-ID: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>

This Smalltalker has been studying Zope, the Opensourced python product
for internet deployment (see http://www.zope.org), to learn.

It has an unusual model of interitance called acquisition, which blends
class heiarchy with containment. Read
http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/WhatIsAcquisition for introduction.
Basically "objects automatically gather. services from their
containers.". Everything is potentially a collector-class, and if I drop
objects into a collection, they inherit behavior from the container.
Weird, but somehow natural in this Web environment which organises
content around a tree-structured containment plan.

Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution
to OO modelling?
-Alan











From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Wed Jul  4 08:46:23 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 12:46:23 GMT
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <87d77iw6vi.fsf@gabriel.heim6.tu-clausthal.de>
Message-ID: <3b430e21.14825517@news.iway.fr>

On 03 Jul 2001 14:10:25 +0200, Patrick Bothe <Patrick.Bothe at ePost.de>
wrote:

>Hi,
>
>>  However, you're not going to do any modern, graphics intensive
>> game completely in Python.
>Hmm ... 
>I do not know how much of "Severance - Blade of Darkness -" 
>is written in Python, but I think this game is a good 
>argument against your statement.
>And where's the difference between using C++ 
>and for example OpenGl (or any other powerful toolkit)  and 
>Python and OpenGl?
>I think i did not get the point. 
>
>bye,
>    Patrick
>
>
>-- 

This game is a good example of how to use Python for any modern
commercial game : all the engine is made in C / C++ ( Visual, sound,
IA CPU eater functions like A*, ... )
Python is used on top of this, to change Finite State machine of the
game, ie things that does not require CPU, but is a real big and
important part of the game.
It's a real win to use a interpreted, hight level language for this
part.

To use your sentence, there's no difference between using a engine
with C++ and using a engine with python ( python is easier).
OpenGl and a real engine are _REALLY_ different things...
BTW, pygame is aiming in this direction : creating an engine that
would be used in Python. But the CPU eater parts are still made in
C/C++....



From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 11:16:51 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:16:51 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com><mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org><916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com><Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100><3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com><cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com><slrn9ls92t.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.996031845.16386.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <DpB77.27338$EP6.6897772@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Barry A. Warsaw" <barry at zope.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996031845.16386.python-list at python.org...

> Modulo the micro-release number, which is guaranteed to only include
> patches (but no guarantee that such patches won't break your code
:),
> why not just symbolically link oldpython -> python2.0 and
newpython ->
> python2.2 ?  Or just make sure that your old applications, for which
> you cannot afford even the possibility of code breakage, always and
> explicitly use python1.5 or whatever?

Interesting point.  A 'change' in the interpreter by definition
changes the behaviour of some non-empty set of program texts.  So if
one wants to be Six Sigma safe, one should test thoroughly with one or
more versions of the interpreter and then restrict the program to run
under that or those versions.  Something like, I suppose,

import sys
if sys.hexversion not in [17105648] # Python 1.5.2
  print "This critically important program has not been tested to run
correctly under", sys.version
  print "Exiting ..."
  sys.exit()

I recently realized that a seemingly-safe change that gives semantic
meaning to a syntactically valid but previously meaningless construct
(given the state of the vars) will break code that relies on the
previously resulting exception.  Consider
...
def sq(a): return a*a
...
def user(b):
  try:
     c=sq(b)
  except TypeError:
    return None
  return number_func(c) # we know c is a number
...

Now make seq*seq mean crossconcatenation and the program may break.
This raises the issue of whether an exception, in any particular
circumstance, is defined behavior (which referably should not be
changed) or the result of undefined behavior (which we should feel
free to define).

Terry J. Reedy





From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sat Jul 14 15:02:26 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:02:26 -0500
Subject: parallel port?!?
References: <3B513D42.933A0445@iinet.net.au>
Message-ID: <00a101c10c97$89731460$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard B" <boegli at iinet.net.au>


> I would like to know how to communicate with the parallel port under
> python. Is this possible? If so can it be done under all operating
> systems that support python.

Ouch.  That's gotta hurt.  Do you REALLY need cross-platform?

> I need to interface with the parallel port to send commands to a board
> connected to it. I have just come to grips with python, it is my first
> language, so I think this is what I should use to communicate with the
> parallel port so that I can implement new features latter on. If it is
> not possible to communicate directly with the parallel port, are there
> any open source communication programs which work under Windows and
> Linux which I could communicate to through python.
> Sorry for long message but this is kind of important.

For the Win32 platform, look at:

    http://www.geocities.com/dinceraydin/python/indexeng.html

specifically the winioport module.

For Linux, you will need a module providing abstractions for the lp(4)
ioctl's.  AFAIK there is no such module currently... somebody tell me
if I am wrong.

For any other OS, who knows?

> Thanks in advanced.

Hope this helps...




From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul 13 11:33:41 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:33:41 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Book count test
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5242@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107131932410.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)

;-)

>   Java     - 1621

Including geography book ? ;-)

>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682

Including Ancient Greece books ;-)


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Fri Jul 20 20:54:59 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 20:54:59 -0400
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
In-Reply-To: <995673835.372.38971.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B589AA3.1884.23541C5@localhost>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote, in part:
> ... My colleagues called the situation "maybe there's a race
> condition".  Could it be minidom has problems multi-tasking? 

I know nothing about 'minidom'. FWIW, it sounds like it might be a 
race condition to me too. Is there any way to put it in a thread by 
itself, protected by a lock or within a critical section? (And, forgive 
me, does the code use CoInitialize/CoUninitialize?)

> I would be grateful for any, no matter how crazy, suggestion.

As you read my response just remember that you included this 
final sentence. :o)

Good luck!

Bill



From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Thu Jul 12 09:50:28 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:50:28 GMT
Subject: 'import' error in csh
References: <c8fd1ef9.0107120544.20e2bec@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4DABBE.D176B14F@nokia.com>

Jerry Olup wrote:
> 
> Howdy all,
> 
> I am using py 1.5.2 on sunos 5.6.
> 
> When I run this code (snip below) from csh, I get the following
> errors:
>    import: command not found
>    badly placed ()'s
> 
> When I run the code from the interpreter, however, it runs just fine.
>    >>> import xilcorelib
> 
> Any ideas?  I searched the group and found a '97 thread (Strange
> import error ... how?), but no conclusions therein.
> 
> # !/usr/bin/local/python
> import re, string, os  # regexp, string handling, system calls
> 
> # xilinx core library parse script.
> #
> #  ... other drivel
> #
> 
> # file opening and sizing.
> compfile = open('vhdl_analyze_order', 'r');
> outfile  = open('xilinxcorelib_comp.tcl', 'w')
> list_lines = compfile.readlines()
> linecount = len(list_lines)
> #<etc...>

That code hasn't gone thru Python interpreter, because the error message
comes from csh.
Try to fix the first line from '# !/usr/bin/local/python' to
'#!/usr/bin/local/python'
                                 ^
                                 Note that space

You can also try 'python myscript.py'


From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul 31 12:08:05 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:08:05 +0200
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <m3bsm1hyje.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

Rajarshi Guha <rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu> writes:

> Hi,
>   is there a sleep function in the Python library.

time.sleep()

> I've beens earching 
> throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way 
> to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there 
> any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?

Would be nice, but I don't know.

- Markus


From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Wed Jul 25 02:30:41 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:30:41 -0700
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
Message-ID: <vmpsltscvqqp8helkrd8aovnn8f497lt89@4ax.com>

Wondered if others have this problem:  when I try any of the popens 
in the os module, and leave NAV 2001 enabled, I get various freeze,
VxD or other errors necessitating hard boot.  

Disabling NAV 2001 ends the problem i.e. popen variants work as 
advertized (to the extent of my testing anyway).  Running Python 2.1.1.

Kirby
cc email appreciated



From oconnor at bioreason.com  Fri Jul 27 16:29:23 2001
From: oconnor at bioreason.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:29:23 -0600
Subject: Launching Python from Python
References: <3B619A9E.9E940B28@bioreason.com> <Xns90EBDB73DC54Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <3B61CF23.D5FEACA7@bioreason.com>


chris liechti wrote:
> 
> do you realy need separate python interpreters?
> you could "import" the other module and run the main function in a thread
> look at the module "Threading".

Yes.  Because the two processes communicate by sockets.  They are
essentially in a client/server relationship and eventually be
potentially on seperate machines with.  However, for now they are
running on one machine with and the 'client' just launching the 'server'
(as part of its own startup) before opening the communication. 
Eventually, I will remove the launching code as it will be assumed the
server is running semi-continously

Take care,

Jay O'Connor
oconnor at bioreason.com


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 08:04:16 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:04:16 +0200
Subject: PEP: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
Message-ID: <3B4EE3C0.9875AB3D@lemburg.com>

Please comment...

--

PEP: 0262 (?)
Title: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
Version: $Revision: 1.0 $
Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Python-Version: 2.3
Created: 06-Jun-2001
Post-History: 

Abstract

    This PEP proposes a new module "unicodeindex" which provides 
    means to index Unicode objects in various higher level abstractions
    of "characters".

Problem and Terminology

    Unicode objects can be indexed just like string object using what
    in Unicode terms is called a code unit as index basis.  

    Code units are the storage entities used by the Unicode
    implementation to store a single Unicode information unit and do
    not necessarily map 1-1 to code points which are the smallest
    entities encoded by the Unicode standard.

    These code points can sometimes be composed to form graphemes
    which are then displayed by the Unicode output device as one
    character. A word is then a sequence of characters separated by
    space characters or punctuation, a line is a sequence of code
    points separated by line breaking code point sequences.

    For addressing Unicode, there are basically five different methods
    by which you can reference the data:

    1. per code unit    (codeunit)
    2. per code point   (codepoint)
    3. per grapheme     (grapheme)
    4. per word         (word)
    5. per line         (line)

    The indexing type name is given in parenthesis and used in the
    module interface.

Proposed Solution

    I propose to add a new module to the standard Python library which
    provides interfaces implementing the above indexing methods.

Module Interface

    The module should provide the following interfaces for all four
    indexing styles:

    next_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer

        Returns the Unicode object index for the start of the next
        <indextype> found after u[index] or -1 in case no next element
        of this type exists.

    prev_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer

        Returns the Unicode object index for the start of the previous
        <indextype> found before u[index] or -1 in case no previous
        element of this type exists.

    <indextype>_index(u, n) -> integer

        Returns the Unicode object index for the start of the n-th
        <indextype> element in u. Raises an IndexError in case no n-th
        element can be found.

    <indextype>_count(u, index) -> integer

        Counts the number of complete <indextype> elements found in
        u[:index] and returns the count as integer.

    <indextype>_start(u, index) -> integer

        Returns 1 or 0 depending on u[index] marks the start of an
        <indextype> element.

    <indextype>_end(u, index) -> integer

        Returns 1 or 0 depending on u[index] marks the end of an
        <indextype> element.

    Used symbols:
       <indextype>   one of: codeunit, codepoint, grapheme, word, line
       u             is the Unicode object
       index         the Unicode object index
       n             is an integer    

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Fri Jul 20 15:00:51 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 15:00:51 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
In-Reply-To: <3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com>
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com>
	<aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
	<3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com>
Message-ID: <873d7rs9wc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Raymond Hettinger <othello at javanet.com> writes:

> The big advantage comes from deprecating tuples, simplifying the
> language, getting rid of (,) and eliminating the need to remember
> which things require tuples, which require lists, and which allow
> both

So then you will have some code that only accepts list which have
their immutable flag set to "0" and some code that will change that
flag transparently.  So we get this behavior

>>> t = [5]
>>> a = t
>>> t += [2]
>>> a == t
1
>>> d = {t: 3}
>>> t += [2]
>>> a == t
0

Despite the fact that I have made no obvious changes to how "t" is
treated.  I think the fact that using a list as a dictionary key
fundamentally changes the behavior of the list is far more confusing
than the current system.

I also fail to see how this makes the tutorial any simpler.  I went
and read section 5.3 of the tutorial (Tuples and Sequences) and
imagined how it would look if you took out all of the tuple/list
distinctions, but added the rules for mutable/immutable changes and I
think it would be a great deal more complex.

Why do this at all?  Why not keep existing tuples and modify existing
code to use anything that supports the sequence interface (maybe
PEP245, maybe just implementing the needed functions)?  Then you could
support not just native lists and tuples, but also user extensions.  

Obviously modification requires mutability, but modifying an immutable
list would fail even with your suggestion.

Use as dictionary keys is the only place I can think of in the
language where immutability is required, and it isn't really required
there. 

>>> class foo:
...   def __hash__(self): return hash(self.n)
...
>>> t = foo()
>>> t.n = 23
>>> d = {t: 5}
>>> t.n = 47
>>> d[t]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
KeyError: <__main__.foo instance at ff3bc>

So lists _could_ support tp_hash and then they could be used as keys,
but I don't suggest this.  Better to just say that dictionaries
require immutable keys.


> (quick, what does the % formatting operator require?).

tuples, but it would be preferable if they supported any sequence and
recognized when they got a string and expected a single item (so that 
("%s" % "foo") would work)

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"No one has ever called us untrustworthy" -- Steve Balmer
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtYf+MACgkQjVztv3T8pzvcYACgsHQkcUWKa/TZWeuBXTiS2156
psAAoMzKbRbsC0+VzivPCcS6G6Ll4w5r
=MZOu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul  3 11:22:11 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:22:11 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Dql07.7618$B7.1406045@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list at python.org>, Haris Lekatsas wrote:
>This works thanks!
>
>Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
>sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
>but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
>I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.

Works for me.  All of my incoming e-mail at work goes through
Python's smtplib (on a Win32 system).  I did a fair amount of
testing under Linux and it seems well-behaved there also.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm EXCITED!! I want
                                  at               a FLANK STEAK WEEK-END!! I
                               visi.com            think I'm JULIA CHILD!!


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 17:38:45 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:38:45 +0200
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <3B4B2E5E.AB3C94BD@home.net>
Message-ID: <9ifsqc015fr@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B4B2E5E.AB3C94BD at home.net...
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
> > > The approved idiom is
> > while 1:
> >     x = raw_input()
> >     if not x:
> >         break
> >     DoSomethingInteresting()
>
> This is the approved idiom, but I never use it. I always use:
>
> x = raw_input()
> while x:
>     x = raw_input()
>     DoSomethingInteresting()
>     x = raw_input()

So you always throw away 50% of the raw input you receive?
Peculiar indeed!

> I really don't like any "while 1" constructs, you have to then go
> looking for the "break" to find out what is controlling the loop. I
> don't like having to put "x = raw_input" in two places either, but it's

Above, you're using it in three places.  I think your preferred
construct is error-prone, as evidenced here:-).


Alex





From maxx at easynews.com  Thu Jul 26 13:29:56 2001
From: maxx at easynews.com (maxx at easynews.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:29:56 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <08k0mtc2lftoon7eii2jo43qj1tt76256c@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>"Joseph A. Knapka" <jknapka at earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> FWIW, I am a relative newcomer to Python, with a lot of general
>> programming experience (C,C++,Java,Tcl,Prolog,LISP,Perl...). I
>> really love Python, but making it case-insensitive would put a
>> very significant damper on my enthusiasm. Why would you want
>> to intentionally reduce the symbol space available for names?
>
>The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
>distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.

Plus, the day that symbols become so numerous in code that the usage of case is
necessary to differentiate them, then software development will have become
truly too complex for mortals such as myseld.

>> Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
>> vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
>> that naive expectation? 

Because writing code is a completely different function than "normal every day
writing." Learning to write code means beginners must learn to structure their
thoughts, and organize tasks, so that their code is not a potential jumble of
ideas, as normal every day writing can be.

Creative writing and code writing are like apples and oranges. To expect that
beginners do not need this distinction is to doom them to failure. In fact, some
of the restrictions that Python places on users, forcing them to indent code for
example, is what makes the language a great training tool. 

Most every piece of problematic code I have dealt with in my career has been
difficult to work with primarily because it is poorly formatted and structured.
More often than not, I find code that does not work because novices just put
commands down in the order that they think of them, not bothering to design the
proper process flow first. Then they wind up with a malfunctioning mess that
even they cannot decipher. If they learned on languages like Python first
(instead of the popular stream of conciousness messes like VB), then they would
develop "good habits", and be more successful.

>But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
>The hostility of the user community is frightening.

Hear, hear! We do not want this group to become like comp.lang.perl.misc (no
flame towards the perl folks, I just could not resist a little ribbing).



From richardSPAM at geotek.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:12:26 2001
From: richardSPAM at geotek.co.uk (Richard Chamberlain)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:12:26 +0100
Subject: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING
References: <mailman.995453435.10145.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <51f57.14$Ow4.1053@news.dircon.co.uk>

Well as I haven't got time to write a whole book in this post, you gonna
have to narrow it down a bit, or read a book like:

Python Programming on Win32 which discusses windows gui programming.

If you don't want to do that then do a search for tk, wxPython, QT and look
for some examples,

hth,

Richard

"noverius pinem" <noveriuspinem at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995453435.10145.python-list at python.org...
> How we do "WINDOWS PROGRAMMING" with Python?
> - making the windows
> - create the controls
> - etc
> - etc
> - etc
> HELP...
> Please.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
> http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
>




From roy at panix.com  Mon Jul 23 08:30:51 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:30:51 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <roy-2E6A21.08305123072001@news1.panix.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there)

Well, heck, in perl, "1"/2 is 0.5 as well.  I'm sure there are lots of 
people new to programming who gets confused when they discover that numbers 
and strings are different too.  Perhaps we should add auto-conversion of 
strings to numbers to python as well? :-)

The thing that scares me most about this idea is that it breaks existing 
code.  And, the idea that there will be conversion tools, and auto-warnings 
generated, don't impress me.  You still need to touch all the old code.  
What about code that you've shipped to customers already?  Are we going to 
demand that they not upgrade their python installation, or that they 
maintain a new version for their own work and an old version to keep our 
stuff going?

While, I happen to like the way integer division works, I could be 
convinced that auto-promotion from int to float might be a good thing, if 
that's the way the language had been defined in the first place.  Too late 
to go back now, however.


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul 16 20:35:40 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:35:40 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b50d5dd.47261648@news1.on.sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9l704c.8s2.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:40:24 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Ok.
>
>Still no luck!  In case I'm just missing something... here is a
>listing of various files/directories:

Sorry, I'm out of ideas, too. The "ImportError: File not found" is the thing I
don't get. If I had to debug, I would check if you can import a file "mysql.py"
in the cgi-bin directory instead. (One, very improbable thing could be that the
provider disabled dynamic loading of extension modules. But they would have had
to do this explicitly on Linux.)

I'd perhaps contact the provider and ask if they could install the module.

What I have done one time, is install my own copy of Python in the cgi-bin
directory. But this is normally more difficult than installing MySQLdb and it
really sucks if you don't have access via ssh.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From pfenn at mmm.com  Thu Jul 12 09:54:43 2001
From: pfenn at mmm.com (pfenn at mmm.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:54:43 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <OF2ADE4F59.057273B2-ON86256A87.004BE386@mmm.com>

FWIW,  I'm a chemist and use Python at work in bursts.  I'll spend maybe
one week coding every few months.  I *always* forget the 1/3 == 0 thing
between programming bursts.  OTOH, I also quickly remember after making the
mistake the first time.   It's not a problem when I'm using C, because I'm
more conscious of type when I'm working in C.   But, I think it's very
unpythonic to have to worry about integer vs float types when doing simple
math.

Tom Fenn





From gustafl at algonet.se  Sat Jul 14 21:18:52 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 01:18:52 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9iq4oc$kme5j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90DF21CFC7984gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote:

>The correct py2exe command line would be (assuming your script is
>named setup.py):
>'python setup.py py2exe -p _xmlplus'
>to include the whole _xmlplus package.
>
>Hope this helps,

It did, but I encountered a horrible thing instead (scary, dissonant music 
starts) -- an encoding problem! (screams) I'm don't know how to continue, 
and not much of an idea about what pieces of information you would need to 
solve it. The script works from Python, but not from the execuable...

If you read the Installer thread, you read this:

--
My script needs a special config file, written in XML, in the same 
directory as the script itself. I was happy to see that before I had added 
the XML file to this directory, jane.exe complained in the right way:

E:\python\gustaf\dist_jane>jane
No profiles file found.
--

This accounts to py2exe aswell. But when adding the XML file, I get this 
error:

E:\jane>jane
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 54, in ?
  File "friend.pyc", line 22, in __init__
  File "friend.pyc", line 49, in getName
LookupError: unknown encoding

This has probably something to do with the fact that the XML modules use 
UTF-8 by default. But the class that import info from this XML file, 
converts everything to 'latin1' before sending it further to the other 
functions (how nice it would be if Python could handle this transparently), 
so this error must take place before this conversion. Could it be that my 
Windows 98 doesn't know about UTF-8?

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From ajd111 at york.ac.uk  Wed Jul 25 04:46:27 2001
From: ajd111 at york.ac.uk (Anthony J Doggett UG)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:46:27 +0100
Subject: 2.0b2: SystemError: frexp() result out of range
References: <vktpuaqnuu0.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk> <mailman.995995722.15658.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vktae1to0po.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk>

> Yeah, I believe so:
> 
>>>> float('inf')
> inf
<snip>
>>>> cPickle.dumps(float('inf'))
> 'Finf\n.'

I get the same when working in ascii mode - it is /binary/ that's the
problem.  It seems a horrible hack to have to change infinities before
binary-pickling them:(

>>> cPickle.dumps(float('inf'))
'Finf\012.'
>>> cPickle.dumps(float('inf'), 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
SystemError: frexp() result out of range

Anthony.
-- 
Anthony Doggett
*** Pick up a book, and enter a different world.
    But remember,
    it is unhealthy to spend too much time in any one world, 
    and worlds of the word come in concentrated form. ***


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Wed Jul 11 17:56:54 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:56:54 +0200
Subject: PgSQL.py / mxDateTime Question
References: <fuX27.261628$Z2.3142231@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpgut.ot.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:17:36 -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
>I am installing PyPgSQL v1.2 and have a question about mxDateTime.
>The DBAPI2 module PGSQL.py does not appear to updated for use with the
>newest version of
>mxDateTime (mxBase 2.0.1) which installs using a different directory
>structure (mx/DateTime).
>
>I can certainly edit the PgSQL.py module or tweak the directories around but
>I was wondering if anyone
>knows if PgSQL.py works correctly with the DateTime in the new mxBase
>package?
>The docs for PgSQL.py don't mention any DateTime version info.

Try changing the import to this one:

try:
    from mx import DateTime
except:
    import DateTime

and it will work with older versions of mxDateTime and the current one.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From maxm at normik.dk  Thu Jul  5 09:33:21 2001
From: maxm at normik.dk (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Max_M=F8ller_Rasmussen?=)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:33:21 +0200 
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
Message-ID: <7BD10B680501D411B9DF009027E06F32197DA9@exchange>

> From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paulp at ActiveState.com]

> Zope is certainly part of the solution. But Zope isn't where 
> you want to
> store a bunch of large archives.

I don't have the impression that Python modules are large archives. I would
assume that most are in th KB range some in the 100KB range and a few in the
MB range. That should be a nice fit for Zope.

> It would be better to use the file
> system. And Zope doesn't itself manage the interdependencies. That
> information has to come from the module. But we have no way to define
> those interdependencies right now.

I imagined that the interdependencies would be set manual when uploading the
modules. So far that would be the only way to do it anyway.

Something like this (Very rough)::

   http://maxm.normik.dk/pypan/

> And as you said, Zope doesn't help
> much with the client app. And Zope doesn't really help you to build
> binary modules in a safe way. And what categorization scheme (not
> technology) do you use? 

Some kind of tree structure naturally.

pypan
    Internet
        html
            html-module n
                 version n
                 version n+1
        email
    Structured Tex

Then using the Catalog to search across the tree.

> So Zope is a good start (just as Distutils is a good start).

It would be really good for making something work quickly on the server side
instead of just talking about it endlesly ;-)

It could simply talk to the client through webdav of xml-rpc.

Regards Max M



From thomasadunham at yahoo.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 16:46:57 2001
From: thomasadunham at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Dunham)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 13:46:57 -0700
Subject: python2.1 and RedHat7.1
References: <mailman.993580729.681.python-list@python.org> <flZ_6.1112$tD1.139245@news3.oke.nextra.no> <mailman.993885826.30310.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <182ecd7e.0107031246.32e7f1b7@posting.google.com>

Has anyone who installed in this way tried "import socket"?
(I get a library can't be found error)

Cheers,
Tom

Michael Ackerman <ack at nethere.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.993885826.30310.python-list at python.org>...
> The version asked for is the same as is in my directory.  And doing rpm
> -qf reveals that both files came from the rpm for openssl-0.0.6-3. So I
> don't understand what's wrong.  However, installing python with
> "--nodeps" seems to be okay.  Thanks for your help.   
>                                 Michael Ackerman
> 
> "Nils O. Sel?sdal" wrote:
> > 
> > "Michael Ackerman" <ack at nethere.com> wrote in message
> > news:mailman.993580729.681.python-list at python.org...
> > > Hello.
> > > I tried to install the python2.1 rpm for RedHat7.0 on my 7.1 system
>  but
> > > got a
> > > "failed dependency" message saying that it wants:
> > > libcrypto.so.0.9.6, libssl.so.0.9.6
> > > But these files are present, in /usr/lib. So what's going on?
> > > Any help will be appreciated.
> > And the version (0.9.6) asked for is the same as in your directory?
> > Then the libraries havent been installed with RPM, rpm dont check the
> > filesystem
> > only its database.
> > do: rpm -ivh python* --nodeps
> > 
> > --
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 00:12:08 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:12:08 -0700
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B60D432.5060109@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-7014B5.21120826072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3B60D432.5060109 at nospiced.ham.devis.com>,
 Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> wrote:

> >>    A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
> >>       division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
> >>       function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
> >>       you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
> >>
> > 
> > 
> > Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?
> > 
> > I still don't like the phrase "true division", it implies a value judgement 
> > that quotients are somehow an inferior thing to want to compute.
> > 
> 
> David,
> I'm not sure.  I thought so to, but decided to try it in the interpreter 
> first (since I never used floor before)

floor converts ints to floats????  This seems exactly backwards from what I 
would expect.  And while it is certainly documented that way in the library 
reference (section 5), it is contradicted by the footnote in section 2 
about using floor and ceil for "well-defined conversions" from float to 
int, as well as the claim in the reference manual that integer-division is 
the same as applying floor to the result of mathematical division.

I have to consider this a big wart.
Especially with the proposed changes to /, I would likely want to write 
code like i = floor(a/b) and j = ceil(c/d) but apparently this is going to 
need added coercions to get an integral type.

Anyway, back to the PEP, I don't think calling floor(x) is a very clear way 
of writing an int-to-float coercion, and it's still a bug because it will 
give you incorrect results if x is a non-integral float.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 08:20:41 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:20:41 GMT
Subject: win32gui
References: <9hpg2o$f4pdk$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B406737.1030707@ActiveState.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:

> All this (basically) works, the window is shown,
> but nothing is printed from the test function.
> Wading with the debugger through the code, it seems
> the 'test' function is never called.
> The reason seems to be that the default window-proc
> from win32gui is called, and SetClassLong() is never
> called with 'test' as the parameter.
> Has anyone got this to work? Am I doning something wrong?


It is supposed to work, but I can't find any example code.  Internally 
it shouldn't be calling SetClassLong(); there is lots of magic in 
win32gui that finds the correct WndProc to call - which may be either a 
function or message-map.  The win32gui taskbar demo has a message map. 
Looking in the debugger at references to "obFuncOrMap" should give you a 
clue - in the standard sample this will be a dictionary, and in your 
example it should be a simple function.

Mark.



From jochen at riekhof.de  Thu Jul 19 11:11:04 2001
From: jochen at riekhof.de (Jochen Riekhof)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:11:04 +0200
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
Message-ID: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com>

Hello...

I am trying to convert some of my VBScript ASPPages to python, but I hang on
this one:

I need to use an existant registered dbaccess com object to get
ADODB.Recordsets back.
The retrieval of my dbaccess object works fine:
import win32com.client
def getRecordset():
    pctRead = win32com.client.Dispatch("OrboPCT.OrboPCTRead")
    return
pctRead.QryMeasurementsByMachineTypeID(Application("OrboPCTConnection"), 2)

rst = getRecordset()

Now, I want to use the recordset:
rst.MoveFirst()

and get the following error:
Python ActiveX Scripting Engine (0x80020009)
Traceback (innermost last): File "<Script Block >", line 5, in ?
rst.MoveFirst() AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'MoveFirst'
/OrboPCT/pytest.asp, Zeile 15
rst.MoveFirst()


What can I do to access the Recordset object properly?


Thanks


...Jochen Riekhof




From n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 22 14:47:49 2001
From: n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 11:47:49 -0700
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com>

Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message news:<etdzo9x16ck.fsf at opus.mit.edu>...
> Hi, Nandyala.  Yeah, that's the correct behaviour.  When it can't find
> "myfile" bound to anything in "hello"'s namespace, it looks in the
> module namespace.
> 
> See the table at http://python.org/doc/ref/execframes.html for more
> details.

Thanks, Alex, for the answer and the reference. Is there any advantage
in such a behaviour? I see much disadvantage.

While at it, now, I cannot get it recognise myfile as a global in the
interactive mode (of course, it works as a script):

nspaces.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from os import sys
 
def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
        # We are writing to what should be an
        # unknown file descriptor:
        global myfile                         # <------- Added
        myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
        f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
        myfile = open (f, 'w')
        hello (myfile)

I try:

>>> from nspace import *
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'hello', 'sys']
>>> myfile = sys.stdout
>>> global myfile
>>> dir()
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'hello', 'myfile', 'sys']
>>> hello()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "nspace.py", line 11, in hello
    myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")
NameError: global name 'myfile' is not defined

What am I missing? 

Thanks for the patience and help!

Gangadhar

Aside: We Telugu speaking people can be addressed __formally__ also
       by our given names!


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 08:35:07 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 05:35:07 -0700
Subject: Fetching multiple items from a list
References: <3B41B778.6BD422C1@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <9hsed2$fp8k9$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Probably because it's so easy to create that functionality:

class MyList:
    def __init__(self,l):
        self.lst = l
    def __call__(self,*args):
        return [self.lst[i] for i in args]

mylist = MyList(list(string.lowercase))
print mylist(18,15,0,12)

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
news:3B41B778.6BD422C1 at nokia.com...
> Why doesn't Python support fetching and setting multiple items
> at the same time for lists and tuples.
>
> For example in the example below multiple fetching would be
> much better way than the ordinary way.
>
> >>> import string
> >>> mylist = list(string.lowercase)
> >>> mylist[18],mylist[15],mylist[0],mylist[12]
> ('s', 'p', 'a', 'm')
> >>> mylist[18,15,0,12]
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#23>", line 1, in ?
>     mylist[18,15,0,12]
> TypeError: sequence index must be integer
> >>>




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Wed Jul 18 13:22:31 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:22:31 +0200
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lbhen.22q.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:58:56 -0400, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>[...] In the mean time, for those of you using the CVS tree, these changes are
>not checked in on the trunk, but on a branch tagged "descr-branch".

Btw. is there a description of what the various CVS branches mean? Most of the
names are pretty obvious, like "release21-maint", but others aren't.

If such a page doesn't exist, I think it would be a good idea to write a short
dscription for each branch and put it in "Python @ Sourceforge FAQ".

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 08:40:51 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:40:51 -0400
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <XdB47.1546$PF1.114830@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b4fa037.1845423078 at wa.news.verio.net...
> Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:
>
> def pd(x):
>     try:
>         print x.__doc__
>     except:
>         print '(no doc string)'
>
> so that, e.g., I can type
>
>     pd(vars)
>
> and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
> I would like to to type just
>     pd vars
>
> Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?
>
> If not, would there be breakage if python were modified to make
>
>     foo whatever-up-to-EOL
>
> equivalent to
>
>     foo(whatever-up-to-EOL)
>
> when it would be a syntax error otherwise? I.e., I'm wondering
> if the grammar could be modified to do this by changing trailer
> to accept arglist NEWLINE if _all_ else fails, and treat a match
> as if it was an arglist. Leading '(' or '[' ambiguity would be
> resolved in favor of normal arglist or subscriptlist.
>
Python is not Perl. Nor should it try to be. Not even to increase typing
convenience!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul  5 10:59:47 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:59:47 +0200
Subject: system exec  ?
In-Reply-To: <9i1moe02fou@enews1.newsguy.com>
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com> <9i1ffe029cm@enews1.newsguy.com> <9i1npl$160$1@news.businessobjects.com> <9i1moe02fou@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <20010705165947.A5945@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 02:32:12PM +0200, Alex Martelli wrote:
> "alphaZeta" <NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9i1npl$160$1 at news.businessobjects.com...
> >
> > Thanks, I was also planning to use the readlines() method.
>     ...
> > > a = os.popen("ls -l").read()
> > >
> > > may be what you want (but you may also prefer to call .readlines()
> 
> That's good in most cases, just one further thing: if there
> is the possibility that the output of the command is vaster
> than will comfortably fit in memory, you may want to import
> xreadlines and rather than storing said output in your
> memory all at one loop over it line by line:

It is at these times you really wish you had lazy evaluation, like in
Haskell :) I miss Haskell...

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/1a5d58a8/attachment.sig>

From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 11:54:04 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:54:04 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <3B448C81.4DAC7DD@wwc.com>
Message-ID: <D2017.3540$i8.346893@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Steve Williams" <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message
news:3B448C81.4DAC7DD at wwc.com...
> Resty Cena wrote:
>
> > "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message
news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
> > > I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just
as
> > > frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
> > >
> > > Python still doesn't have good database support,
> >
> > I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
> > to make it easy for me to do database programming.
>
> [snip]
>
> How about this little jewel returned by a Google search on "Python DB2
AIX"?
>
> From
>
>      http://webevents.broadcast.com/ibm/developer/050901/display_qa.asp
>
>
>      Question 10:
>           DB/2 can be used whit PHP or Pyton ?
>      Answered by Nanda Pilaka:
>           DB2's supports C/C++/Java/COBOL/REXX/Basic/Perl/Fortran
currently.
>           Python is not supported.
>
>
> We now return you to the whitespace discussion currently in progress. . .
>
The DB SIG does list a DB/2 module, but the ftp server it links to doesn't
allow access. Does anyone actually USE DB/2 with Python?

The DB SIG module list seems a little out of date, and a monthly mail
archive of over 20KB seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/






From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul 17 04:04:55 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 10:04:55 +0200
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
References: <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3itgsyo9k.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> I want to have nice graphs from Python class hierarchies.  The daVinci
> package can do it (see the program below for Exception class tree), but
> the quality is not good enough.
> 
> Does anyone know any other tool which can help automatically draw graphs
> (or only trees) with ability to output to PS?

Dot (see http://www.graphviz.org/) is a powerful program that produces
reasonably beautiful output.


- Markus


From jknapka at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 26 13:31:40 2001
From: jknapka at earthlink.net (Joseph A. Knapka)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:31:40 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B6053FC.2998D839@earthlink.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> "Joseph A. Knapka" <jknapka at earthlink.net> writes:
> 
> > FWIW, I am a relative newcomer to Python, with a lot of general
> > programming experience (C,C++,Java,Tcl,Prolog,LISP,Perl...). I
> > really love Python, but making it case-insensitive would put a
> > very significant damper on my enthusiasm. Why would you want
> > to intentionally reduce the symbol space available for names?
> 
> The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
> distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.
> 
> > Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
> > vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
> > that naive expectation?
> 
> I know plenty of people who *sometime* write their name with a
> lowercase letter.  I even know someone who writes the personal pronoun
> "I" as "i", convinced that the form "I" would be pretentious.
> 
> You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net was sent
> to a different user than email to jknapka at earthlink.net.  There are
> plenty of situations where one only has one case available, e.g. WHEN
> CAPITALIZING FOR EMPHASIS or when typing with one finger.  In American
> usage, the first letter of most words in section and chapter titles
> are capitalized without changing the semantics.
> 
> For beginning typists, hunt-and-peck style, the shift key is one
> complication they can do without, so beginners tools are often
> case-forgiving.
> 
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Oh my. I'm sorry if my very first post to c.l.py came off as hostile.
I'm more just perplexed, I don't understand how a move to case
insensitivity could be beneficial, and I guess that's my problem
(but I'm glad you've changed your mind :-). In any case, I am in
awe of what you have accomplished with Python. It is without doubt
the most usable general-purpose language I have come across.
Thank you.

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S


From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Fri Jul 13 14:40:00 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:40:00 EDT
Subject: WOW!  WHAT A WEEK AT QUACKO-LOTTO!
Message-ID: <200107131849.MAA47319@s0226.pm0.net>

********************************************
WOW!  WHAT A WEEK AT QUACKO-LOTTO!
http://lotto.quacko.com
********************************************

Thanks to all the players who came out and took advantage of our daily
$1,000,000 draw! Over 250,000 tickets have been played this week with
over 3,000 Winning Tickets!

http://lotto.quacko.com

ALSO, 

-The Internet's Only Pick 1 Game
-Plus the Best Odds of Winning a Grand Prize
Check out what everyone is talking about!
 
http://lotto.quacko.com

*******************************************************
Go to SUPREMECASINO NOW and get a $75 Cash Bonus!  
*******************************************************
http://www.supremecasino.com

Play SupremeCasino's hottest casino games with Free Money. Get a 100% Bonus up to $75 FREE!! You're closer than ever to winning. 

Valid for All Valued Customers, with every Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or NETeller deposit, we will give you up to $75 FREE! Incredible! 

Register now and get in the game!!
http://www.supremecasino.com

***************************************************************
RED CARPET REWARDS AT GRAND BANKS CASINO!!
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072
***************************************************************

Red Carpet Rewards!! The best way to earn free credits! Grand Banks casino is rolling out the Red Carpet for our patrons! For every $10 in real bets that you place, Grand Banks will credit your account with one comp point. Collect 100 comp points and you will receive one casino credit! It's so simple and calculated automatically for you!

Stop by and Play For Free!
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072


<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From ehagemann at home.com  Sat Jul 14 18:24:01 2001
From: ehagemann at home.com (Eric Hagemann)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 22:24:01 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <mailman.995092164.12281.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5E347.10457$Ek3.3444795@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

I have a lot of code to parse logs as well --  neat trick (at least I think
it neat !)
to overcome this "problem"  is

name_of_field0 = 0
name_of_field1 = 1
name_of_field2 = 2
.
f = line.split()
.

then access the elements as
foo = f[name_of_field1]

in my applications I can use the len(f) to determine the type of line I am
parsing (by its length)

This way you get variable length parsing as well as "named" arguments

Cheers


"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.995092164.12281.python-list at python.org...
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, James Logajan wrote:
>
> >Roy Smith wrote:
> >>
> >> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:
> >>
> >>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);
> >>
> >> The obvious translation would be:
> >>
> >>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
> >>
> >> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on it.  Perl
> >> handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra" variables undefined,
whereas
> >> python raises a ValueError exception.  What I'd like to do is have the
> >> extra field variables left as null strings.
> >
> >This may not be the most elegant or efficient, but how about this:
> >
> >[f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]
>
> My variant is:
>
> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = map(lambda x, y: x, string.split(line), 6*[None])
>
> (maybe 6*[None] could be written as xrange(6), but I am not sure if
> xrange will allow it after stripping down)
>
> - this is VERY common problem when analysing logs. I will be grateful
> if somebody could point me to how to give names to log fields
> in efficient manner (logs are long, you know!). Probably, this
> is better done in C.
>
> Maybe, some kind of support from string module or Python itself
> could be had, for example:
>
> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = pad(string.split(line), 6, None)
>
> (where None could be omitted to be default value)
>
> There could also be rpad to pad from right.
>
> *
>
> re module could also be used, with named groups which
> name fields. But I wonder how efficient it is to use re
> where split is enough...
>
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/
>
>




From jcollins at boulder.net  Thu Jul 26 19:09:32 2001
From: jcollins at boulder.net (Jeffery Collins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:09:32 -0600
Subject: Python for Palm OS
In-Reply-To: <3B5EF3AC.E7627338@bioeng.ucsd.edu>; from cjensen@bioeng.ucsd.edu on Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:28:28AM -0700
References: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host> <3B5EF3AC.E7627338@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <20010726170932.A7862@boulder.net>

When I return from vacation, I'll accelerate the development of the documentation.

Jeff

--

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:28:28AM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> Robert Roberts wrote:
> > 
> > I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm
> > os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance.
> 
> Is there documentation or a reference manual for pippy?  A friend of
> mine, installed it on his palm, but we couldn't find documetation for
> it.
> 
> -- 
> Curtis Jensen
> cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
> http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
> FAX (425) 740-1451
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list








From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Jul  2 06:13:59 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:13:59 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] PEP 261, Rev 1.3 - Support for "wide" Unicode 
 characters
References: <3B3F8095.8D58631D@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B404967.14FE180F@lemburg.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> PEP: 261
> Title: Support for "wide" Unicode characters
> Version: $Revision: 1.3 $
> Author: paulp at activestate.com (Paul Prescod)
> Status: Draft
> Type: Standards Track
> Created: 27-Jun-2001
> Python-Version: 2.2
> Post-History: 27-Jun-2001
> 
> Abstract
> 
>     Python 2.1 unicode characters can have ordinals only up to 2**16
> -1.
>     This range corresponds to a range in Unicode known as the Basic
>     Multilingual Plane. There are now characters in Unicode that live
>     on other "planes". The largest addressable character in Unicode
>     has the ordinal 17 * 2**16 - 1 (0x10ffff). For readability, we
>     will call this TOPCHAR and call characters in this range "wide
>     characters".
> 
> Glossary
> 
>     Character
> 
>         Used by itself, means the addressable units of a Python
>         Unicode string.

Please add: also known as "code unit".
 
>     Code point
> 
>         A code point is an integer between 0 and TOPCHAR.
>         If you imagine Unicode as a mapping from integers to
>         characters, each integer is a code point. But the
>         integers between 0 and TOPCHAR that do not map to
>         characters are also code points. Some will someday
>         be used for characters. Some are guaranteed never
>         to be used for characters.
> 
>     Codec
> 
>         A set of functions for translating between physical
>         encodings (e.g. on disk or coming in from a network)
>         into logical Python objects.
> 
>     Encoding
> 
>         Mechanism for representing abstract characters in terms of
>         physical bits and bytes. Encodings allow us to store
>         Unicode characters on disk and transmit them over networks
>         in a manner that is compatible with other Unicode software.
> 
>     Surrogate pair
> 
>         Two physical characters that represent a single logical

Eeek... two code units (or have you ever seen a physical character
walking around ;-)

>         character. Part of a convention for representing 32-bit
>         code points in terms of two 16-bit code points.
> 
>     Unicode string
> 
>           A Python type representing a sequence of code points with
>           "string semantics" (e.g. case conversions, regular
>           expression compatibility, etc.) Constructed with the
>           unicode() function.
> 
> Proposed Solution
> 
>     One solution would be to merely increase the maximum ordinal
>     to a larger value. Unfortunately the only straightforward
>     implementation of this idea is to use 4 bytes per character.
>     This has the effect of doubling the size of most Unicode
>     strings. In order to avoid imposing this cost on every
>     user, Python 2.2 will allow the 4-byte implementation as a
>     build-time option. Users can choose whether they care about
>     wide characters or prefer to preserve memory.
> 
>     The 4-byte option is called "wide Py_UNICODE". The 2-byte option
>     is called "narrow Py_UNICODE".
> 
>     Most things will behave identically in the wide and narrow worlds.
> 
>     * unichr(i) for 0 <= i < 2**16 (0x10000) always returns a
>       length-one string.
> 
>     * unichr(i) for 2**16 <= i <= TOPCHAR will return a
>       length-one string on wide Python builds. On narrow builds it will
>       raise ValueError.
> 
>         ISSUE
> 
>             Python currently allows \U literals that cannot be
>             represented as a single Python character. It generates two
>             Python characters known as a "surrogate pair". Should this
>             be disallowed on future narrow Python builds?
> 
>         Pro:
> 
>             Python already the construction of a surrogate pair
>             for a large unicode literal character escape sequence.
>             This is basically designed as a simple way to construct
>             "wide characters" even in a narrow Python build. It is also
>             somewhat logical considering that the Unicode-literal syntax
>             is basically a short-form way of invoking the unicode-escape
>             codec.
> 
>         Con:
> 
>             Surrogates could be easily created this way but the user
>             still needs to be careful about slicing, indexing, printing
>             etc. Therefore some have suggested that Unicode
>             literals should not support surrogates.
> 
>         ISSUE
> 
>             Should Python allow the construction of characters that do
>             not correspond to Unicode code points?  Unassigned Unicode
>             code points should obviously be legal (because they could
>             be assigned at any time). But code points above TOPCHAR are
>             guaranteed never to be used by Unicode. Should we allow
> access
>             to them anyhow?
> 
>         Pro:
> 
>             If a Python user thinks they know what they're doing why
>             should we try to prevent them from violating the Unicode
>             spec? After all, we don't stop 8-bit strings from
>             containing non-ASCII characters.
> 
>         Con:
> 
>             Codecs and other Unicode-consuming code will have to be
>             careful of these characters which are disallowed by the
>             Unicode specification.
> 
>     * ord() is always the inverse of unichr()
> 
>     * There is an integer value in the sys module that describes the
>       largest ordinal for a character in a Unicode string on the current
>       interpreter. sys.maxunicode is 2**16-1 (0xffff) on narrow builds
>       of Python and TOPCHAR on wide builds.
> 
>         ISSUE: Should there be distinct constants for accessing
>                TOPCHAR and the real upper bound for the domain of
>                unichr (if they differ)? There has also been a
>                suggestion of sys.unicodewidth which can take the
>                values 'wide' and 'narrow'.
> 
>     * every Python Unicode character represents exactly one Unicode code
>       point (i.e. Python Unicode Character = Abstract Unicode
> character).
> 
>     * codecs will be upgraded to support "wide characters"
>       (represented directly in UCS-4, and as variable-length sequences
>       in UTF-8 and UTF-16). This is the main part of the implementation
>       left to be done.
> 
>     * There is a convention in the Unicode world for encoding a 32-bit
>       code point in terms of two 16-bit code points. These are known
>       as "surrogate pairs". Python's codecs will adopt this convention
>       and encode 32-bit code points as surrogate pairs on narrow Python
>       builds.
> 
>         ISSUE
> 
>             Should there be a way to tell codecs not to generate
>             surrogates and instead treat wide characters as
>             errors?
> 
>         Pro:
> 
>             I might want to write code that works only with
>             fixed-width characters and does not have to worry about
>             surrogates.
> 
>         Con:
> 
>             No clear proposal of how to communicate this to codecs.

No need to pass this information to the codec: simply write
a new one and give it a clear name, e.g. "ucs-2" will generate
errors while "utf-16-le" converts them to surrogates.
 
>     * there are no restrictions on constructing strings that use
>       code points "reserved for surrogates" improperly. These are
>       called "isolated surrogates". The codecs should disallow reading
>       these from files, but you could construct them using string
>       literals or unichr().
> 
> Implementation
> 
>     There is a new (experimental) define:
> 
>         #define PY_UNICODE_SIZE 2
> 
>     There is a new configure option:
> 
>         --enable-unicode=ucs2 configures a narrow Py_UNICODE, and uses
>                               wchar_t if it fits
>         --enable-unicode=ucs4 configures a wide Py_UNICODE, and uses
>                               whchar_t if it fits
>         --enable-unicode      same as "=ucs2"
> 
>     The intention is that --disable-unicode, or --enable-unicode=no
>     removes the Unicode type altogether; this is not yet implemented.
> 
>     It is also proposed that one day --enable-unicode will just
>     default to the width of your platforms wchar_t.
> 
>     Windows builds will be narrow for a while based on the fact that
>     there have been few requests for wide characters, those requests
>     are mostly from hard-core programmers with the ability to buy
>     their own Python and Windows itself is strongly biased towards
>     16-bit characters.
> 
> Notes
> 
>     This PEP does NOT imply that people using Unicode need to use a
>     4-byte encoding for their files on disk or sent over the network.
>     It only allows them to do so. For example, ASCII is still a
>     legitimate (7-bit) Unicode-encoding.
> 
>     It has been proposed that there should be a module that handles
>     surrogates in narrow Python builds for programmers. If someone
>     wants to implement that, it will be another PEP. It might also be
>     combined with features that allow other kinds of character-,
>     word- and line- based indexing.
> 
> Rejected Suggestions
> 
>     More or less the status-quo
> 
>         We could officially say that Python characters are 16-bit and
>         require programmers to implement wide characters in their
>         application logic by combining surrogate pairs. This is a heavy
>         burden because emulating 32-bit characters is likely to be
>         very inefficient if it is coded entirely in Python. Plus these
>         abstracted pseudo-strings would not be legal as input to the
>         regular expression engine.
> 
>     "Space-efficient Unicode" type
> 
>         Another class of solution is to use some efficient storage
>         internally but present an abstraction of wide characters to
>         the programmer. Any of these would require a much more complex
>         implementation than the accepted solution. For instance consider
>         the impact on the regular expression engine. In theory, we could
>         move to this implementation in the future without breaking
> Python
>         code. A future Python could "emulate" wide Python semantics on
>         narrow Python. Guido is not willing to undertake the
>         implementation right now.
> 
>     Two types
> 
>         We could introduce a 32-bit Unicode type alongside the 16-bit
>         type. There is a lot of code that expects there to be only a
>         single Unicode type.
> 
>     This PEP represents the least-effort solution. Over the next
>     several years, 32-bit Unicode characters will become more common
>     and that may either convince us that we need a more sophisticated
>     solution or (on the other hand) convince us that simply
>     mandating wide Unicode characters is an appropriate solution.
>     Right now the two options on the table are do nothing or do
>     this.
> 
> References
> 
>     Unicode Glossary: http://www.unicode.org/glossary/

Plus perhaps the Mark Davis paper at:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/unicode/library/utfencodingforms/
 
> Copyright
> 
>     This document has been placed in the public domain.

Good work, Paul !

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 02:22:02 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:22:02 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com> <mailman.994988062.18418.python-list@python.org> <3B4E68C5.E47D5F0F@engcorp.com> <mailman.994998742.17624.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E938A.96C7E937@engcorp.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
> >
> > ... I can't believe Python will
> > end up with the volume of five-inch thick books that PHP and
> > its ilk have barfed forth.
> 
> I still think that you have too much faith that the actual technical
> features of the topic have any real effect on the structure of the books
> (or the market). Once you move past the first ten books written by
> zealots and early adopters, the rest are written by people like "the
> Deitels" who have a structure and are looking for content to pour into
> it.

Believe me, after reading Philip Greenspun's article, I no longer
have faith of any kind in publishing, except that the industry 
exists largely to serve itself and that we should find ways to
support online publishing (by authors!) and make it sustainable.

I agree with what you're saying for the most part.  I'm just
looking for some sign that with Python, it's "different."  
Up until now, for me it's been the fact that of those first ten
Python books, only about two were a total waste of dead trees.
(Specifically, the "24 Hours" book, and ... hmmm, maybe that's
only one out of ten. :-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Wed Jul 25 08:47:30 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:47:30 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

26 Jul 2001 00:03:56 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:

>>   int < long < rational < float < complex
> 
> Well, it could, I suppose, but that would be a good reason to avoid
> Python :-)
> 
> What it *should* look like is this:
> 
>   int < long < rational
>                        \
>                         + < [real] < complex
>                        /
>                   float

There are no real reals in programming. And Python's complex is as
inexact as float.

I don't understand you. What practical difference do these diagrams
yield? What is wrong in *consequences* of Guido's and mine model
which your model puts differently?

What happens if you int to float in your model? Rational to float?

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 23:19:33 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:19:33 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com> <mailman.994988062.18418.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E68C5.E47D5F0F@engcorp.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
> >...
> > The users of the first would have most of their needs met by the
> > online information available, and the incredible ease of learning
> > the language or of applying it in diverse areas.
> >
> > Publishers can smell this and would not put their efforts into
> > tree-killing for the second language.  Entire forests, however,
> > would be slaughtered in the name of the second language, to buy
> > Mercedes automobiles for the publishing executives.
> 
> If this is true, why are there so many Python books all of a sudden?

I wouldn't have described the situation as "so many", rather "so few",
but a quick Amazon search shows 30-odd Python books published or soon
to be, so maybe "all of a sudden" is the key.  I thought there were 
only ten!

I think, however, the trick is that with PHP the books were probably
being written with or even before the hype, and probably even
contributed directly to the sudden popularity.  After all, when someone
sees four whole shelves shouting ASP or PHP, surely that must be
one of the best languages ever invented.  Four lone books (one written
in 1995) dispersed across three sections of the bookstore clearly
indicate a dying language with a lack of focus....

Which means if Python's popularity has grown to the point of 
attracting significant publisher attention, then as you say "The number 
of books is a pretty good indication of a languages' growth. The only
problem is that it is an indicator that trails badly."

I stand corrected. :)

> Publishers clearly believe that Python is going to be a big thing.

Well, maybe if we could measure, sometime in the future when the
user base of Python and PHP is identical (not sure which is
actually larger now, mind you), publisher revenues from the books,
I might still be sort of right... I can't believe Python will
end up with the volume of five-inch thick books that PHP and
its ilk have barfed forth.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Fri Jul  6 12:53:01 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 12:53:01 EDT
Subject: QUACKO LOTTO - BEAT THE SUMMER HEAT
Message-ID: <200107061702.LAA96567@s0203.pm0.net>

Beat the Summer Heat!

Stay Inside and Play Email-lotto

http://lotto.quacko.com

********************************************

Dear Lotto Player - 

Today you can play the following tickets:

(10) Daily Pick 6 Tickets 
(1)  Daily Pick 1 Ticket
(11) TOTAL TICKETS

Play today and Win up to 
$1,000,000.00 in Cash tomorrow!

http://lotto.quacko.com

**********************************************************
GRAND BANK CASINO - JULY PROMOTIONS
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072
***********************************************************

25% Welcome !!! Grand Banks Casino is offering all new users a 25% initial deposit bonus in casino credits. 
Example: Make an initial deposit of $100 and receive $25 in casino credits for a total of $125.00! 

Red Carpet Rewards !!! The best way to earn free credits! Grand Banks casino is rolling out the Red Carpet for our patrons! For every $10 in real bets that you place, Grand Banks will credit your account with one comp point. Collect 100 comp points and you will receive one casino credit! It's so simple and calculated automatically for you. For more information regarding comp points, please see our FAQ #16.

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072

Refer a Friend !!!-Earn $25 for every new unique player that you refer to Grand Banks! 

Latest Newsletter Have a look at the latest Grand Banks Casino news and special promotion announcements here!

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072

Tournaments - A great way to show the world your table skills - and a great place to make some extra cash! Grand Banks loves to host a good tournament - from Black Jack to Craps to Video Poker - see if there is one going on right now and get playing!

Stop By and Play For Free!
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072


<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From steve at hkit.net  Mon Jul  9 11:38:47 2001
From: steve at hkit.net (Steve S.L. Wong)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 23:38:47 +0800
Subject: [Tkinter]: Grid as in wxPython?
References: <9ic90t$s1l$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>
Message-ID: <tkjjrtr89f687e@news.supernews.com>

#I download this code from internet. Hope that helps you.

from Tkinter import *

class MultiListbox(Frame):
    def __init__(self, master, lists):
 Frame.__init__(self, master)
 self.lists = []
 for l,w in lists:
     frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
     Label(frame, text=l, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
     lb = Listbox(frame, width=w, borderwidth=0, selectborderwidth=0,
    relief=FLAT, exportselection=FALSE)
     lb.pack(expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
     self.lists.append(lb)
     lb.bind('<B1-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
     lb.bind('<Button-1>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
     lb.bind('<Leave>', lambda e: 'break')
     lb.bind('<B2-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._b2motion(e.x, e.y))
     lb.bind('<Button-2>', lambda e, s=self: s._button2(e.x, e.y))
 frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
 Label(frame, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
 sb = Scrollbar(frame, orient=VERTICAL, command=self._scroll)
 sb.pack(expand=YES, fill=Y)
 self.lists[0]['yscrollcommand']=sb.set

    def _select(self, y):
 row = self.lists[0].nearest(y)
 self.selection_clear(0, END)
 self.selection_set(row)
 return 'break'

    def _button2(self, x, y):
 for l in self.lists: l.scan_mark(x, y)
 return 'break'

    def _b2motion(self, x, y):
 for l in self.lists: l.scan_dragto(x, y)
 return 'break'

    def _scroll(self, *args):
 for l in self.lists:
     apply(l.yview, args)

    def curselection(self):
 return self.lists[0].curselection()

    def delete(self, first, last=None):
 for l in self.lists:
     l.delete(first, last)

    def get(self, first, last=None):
 result = []
 for l in self.lists:
     result.append(l.get(first,last))
 if last: return apply(map, [None] + result)
 return result

    def index(self, index):
 self.lists[0].index(index)

    def insert(self, index, *elements):
 for e in elements:
     i = 0
     for l in self.lists:
  l.insert(index, e[i])
  i = i + 1

    def size(self):
 return self.lists[0].size()

    def see(self, index):
 for l in self.lists:
     l.see(index)

    def selection_anchor(self, index):
 for l in self.lists:
     l.selection_anchor(index)

    def selection_clear(self, first, last=None):
 for l in self.lists:
     l.selection_clear(first, last)

    def selection_includes(self, index):
 return self.lists[0].selection_includes(index)

    def selection_set(self, first, last=None):
 for l in self.lists:
     l.selection_set(first, last)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    tk = Tk()
    Label(tk, text='MultiListbox').pack()
    mlb = MultiListbox(tk, (('Subject', 40), ('Sender', 20), ('Date', 10)))
    for i in range(1000):
 mlb.insert(END, ('Important Message: %d' % i, 'John Doe', '10/10/%04d' %
(1900+i)))
    mlb.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)
    tk.mainloop()


"Franz GEIGER" <fgeiger at datec.at> ???g???l??
news:9ic90t$s1l$1 at newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net...
> Is anybody aware of anything like wxPython grids, but for Tkinter? For a
> Tkinter GUI I need a grid as it is available in wxPython. I already use
PMW,
> but there isn't such a beast.
>
> Regards
> Franz
>
>
>
>




From volucris at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 19:28:41 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 18:28:41 -0500
Subject: Dynamic call of a method : error
References: <3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008@nnrp5.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <3b43a648$0$318$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Dublanc, David" <ddublanc at free.fr> wrote in message
news:3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008 at nnrp5.proxad.net...
> Hello, when I execute the module :
> ***************
> L = []
>
> for method in dir(L):
>     "dynamic call"
>     print L.method.__doc__
> ****************
>
> I have the following error :
>
> PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Apr 23 2001, 18:00:35) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32.
> Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) - see
> 'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "f:\python21\pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 301,
in
> RunScript
>     exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
>   File "G:\script python\test concat?nation.py", line 5, in ?
>     print L.method.__doc__
> AttributeError: method
>
>
> How can I call a method dynamically ?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Regards,
> --
> David
>

Remember that dir() returns a list of _strings_, so method is the name of
the
function (or whatever's in the module) not the actual function. Strings
don't
have a 'method' attribute. That is where the exception comes from. Try this:

#the name of the module you're digging in dynamically
mod_name = 'gc'

#import the module dynamically
exec 'import %s' % mod_name

#create a copy of the module dynamically
mod_copy = eval('%s' % mod_name)

for method in dir(mod_copy):
    try:
        #retrieve each member's docstring dynamically...
        print eval('%s.%s' % (mod_name, method)).__doc__
    except AttributeError:
        #unless it can't have one (ints, floats, etc.)
        print 'No \'__doc__\' for %s.' % method


Please excuse the excessize use of the word 'dynamically'. I really like
that word.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:47:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:47:58 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <y%587.32307$EP6.8411583@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cp1yn24eem.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> >This makes expressions expecting float or complex
> >     results error-prone when integers are not expected but possible
> as
> >     inputs.
> 
> and vice versa for integer expressions getting float input

That's not the same argument -- expressions expecting ints are
generally broken when they receive floats; expression expecting floats
are *only* broken when they receive ints IF THEY USE DIVISION.  The
PEP cannot do anything about floats passed in where ints are expected
-- such usage is broken.

> > Semantics of True Division
> >
> >     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
> >     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
> >     return a float (2.0), not an int.
> 
> Given that one spurious argument for this proposal was the claim that
> float division preserves more information than quotient division, I
> think it might be appropriate to warn here that the opposite is true
> for sufficiently long longs, so that one may need to switch to
> long//long to preserve accuracy.

I never bought the "preserving information" argument.  In general all
classic use of long/long should be switched to long//long, of course,
as should all classic use of int/int.

> >     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
> >       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
> >       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
> >       zero?)
> 
> Its true that -8/3 = -(2+2/3), but I think divmod(-i,j)[0] is up for
> grabs in most people's mental space.  This concern never entered my
> mind until I read the above.

Good!

> ---
> The only way I can think of to 'globally' turn on new division on my
> own Windows computer is to rebind .py and .pyc to python.bat
> containing '...python.exe -Dnew'.

Do I need to add that to the PEP?

> Great revision!

Thanks.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Mon Jul  9 06:41:07 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 10:41:07 GMT
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kj2cf.el0.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Chris Watson <chris at voodooland.net> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> 
> > That is not really what the license says though. With that license you
> > can't integrate it with anything. If you put it in a closed source product
> > it would have a more restrictive license and thus couldn't be used that way.
> 
> How do you figure you can't integrate my licensed code into a say binary
> only product? How is it restricting binary only products?

The typical binary only product would usually be under a license other than
your license. And your clause 3 doesn't allow that.

Your license is a sort of ultra-GPL.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 13:47:34 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:47:34 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com>

In article <cpitgf7itx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) writes:
>
>> >The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
>> >regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.
>> 
>> If that's important, why won't the other math operators do it???
>
>Huh?  They do (apart from unavoidable round-off errors).  1+2 == 1.0+2.0.

They compare equal with the "==" operator, but they are not
the same value:

>>> 1+2
3
>>> 1.0+2.0
3.0
>>> 

... unless 3 and 3.0 are "the same value".  In which case my
definition of that phrase is merely different than yours.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I wonder if I ought
                                  at               to tell them about my
                               visi.com            PREVIOUS LIFE as a COMPLETE
                                                   STRANGER?


From pkulkarni at sequoianet.com  Thu Jul 12 14:19:13 2001
From: pkulkarni at sequoianet.com (Pradeep Kulkarni)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 11:19:13 -0700
Subject: Python NT Service
Message-ID: <83241e1a.0107121019.308ebc6f@posting.google.com>

I am not able to import a user class (a class which send a mail) in my
NT service, which I am trying to develop since three days. Any help in
this problem would be appreciated.

Thank you - Pradeep


From rhystucker at rhystucker.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 16:14:56 2001
From: rhystucker at rhystucker.fsnet.co.uk (rhys tucker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:14:56 GMT
Subject: How to use Unicode regexes?
Message-ID: <1103_996264896@pan>

Could somebody show me how to do Unicode regexes? I'm trying to write a strings-like utility for windows - so I want to match ascii and unicode characters in a binary file. Do I need 
one regex pattern since ascii and Unicode are similar for ascii text characters or are 2 regex patterns needed since they are different byte sizes?

The documentation suggest that I need to use \w pattern to match Unicode and set UNICODE. I'm not sure what and how to set Unicode.

This is what I've done so far - it matches (some ?) ascii characters but misses those unicode strings.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# strings program

import sys
from re import compile, findall
f = open(sys.argv[1])
fl = f.read()
patt = compile("[\032-\176\000]{4,}") 

matches = findall(patt, fl) 

for match in matches:
	print match



Thanks to those people who answered my earlier question.


rhys







From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 28 12:31:34 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:31:34 +0500
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
References: <mailman.996311033.21035.python-list@python.org> <etdg0bhqczl.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9jvooi$hf8$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>

Alex wrote:

> 
>> This won't be solved in general by magic until someone contributes
>> code to launch "Run Script" in a fresh process; but that's not always
>> what you'll want either.
> 
> I got sick of having to keep track of which modules need to be reloaded,
> and now have a framework for emacs python-mode that temporarily
> overrides __builtin__.__import__ and tracks which modules are importing
> which so that by top-sorting the dependancy graph it only needs to
> reload the modules that have changed on disk and the modules that depend
> on those.  It works pretty well for my needs, except that sometimes the
> dependancy graph is a little out of sync and you have to do the reload a
> time or two extra.  If there's enough interest, I could have a look at
> fixing that (just a matter of repeating the reloads until the dependancy
> graph stabilizes) and folding it into IDLE.

Heck.  I'd be interested in having it in python-mode!

xemacs-should-be-able-to-read-my-mind-ly yours
---Tom



From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul  4 21:54:10 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 01:54:10 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9hvcu5$fu4ja$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <Xns90D4BD1F823A1gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <slrn9k7i61.tj1.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 4 Jul 2001 16:34:43 GMT, Gustaf Liljegren <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote:
>"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote:
>
>>So it appears to work here using getopt.  Something else must be going
>>on. Can you post an example that generates the string with the embedded
>>tabs? 
>
>Thank you. I had no idea that Python would add the extra backslash 
>automatically. Tried to isolate the problem before trying the whole thing 
>on getopt. This solved the problem on a more appropriate level.

Try not to think of things in terms of python "adding" or "removing"
backslashes.  Python will never alter your strings (and won't even let you
change them).  However, it will interpret what you put in between ""s, just as
it interprets [1,2] as a list, math.pi as a number, and open('foo') as a file
object.  It needs some way of readably representing nonprintable characters,
and backslash is it.  When printing a string, exactly what is in the string
will be printed (after all, if it mangled strings, that would really screw up
writing a JPEG to disk).  However, the interactive prompt doesn't print
strings exactly, it prints a representation of them that will be easy for
python to parse (with doubled backslashes, among other things).  You may have
noticed that it will also put quotes around your string, even though those
aren't part of the string.  For example:

s = 'foo\\bar' # requires \\ because ''s interpret \s
s2 = raw_input('enter path: ') # doesn't require the user to double \s because
    # raw_input doesn't interpret what it reads (hence the raw part)
print s # prints foo\bar
print repr(s) # prints a python-readable representation of s, "foo\\bar"

And note that if you just type 's' at the interactive prompt, that's
like "print repr(s)".


From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Wed Jul 25 11:24:45 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:24:45 -0700
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <ku4rs3yueb.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <9jk65h$dto$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9jk9ve$m94$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <9jmobv$kqi$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

Thank you very much to all who responded.

Since there's no standard mechanism for buffering an unbuffered device, 
I will try the driver package that comes with the card. It has an 
implementation of buffering that is a bit complex but should do just 
fine. The C code I started with has yet another implementation of 
buffering (it ignores the card vendor's driver package), but it is 
clumsier.

I didn't want to go to extra fuss if a standard buffering mechanism 
existed, but since it doesn't...time to get to work! I'm just glad the 
driver package exists. (I'll know just how glad to be once I see IF the 
driver package works! But it's an EDT company product, so I expect it'll 
be just fine.)

I'm most of the way through a Python interface to the driver library. 
Once that's done (my first C extension module, wish me luck), I can do 
everything else in Python. Hooray!

-- Russell


From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Sun Jul  1 22:50:39 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:50:39 +0800
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>; from cribeiro@mail.inet.com.br on Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 09:45:23PM -0300
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <20010702105039.A23408@Vetinari.home>

Some quick initial impressions to get the ball rolling (hopefully this
won't degenerate into a repeat of some previous threads).

Mostly, these are critical comments, but that's not because I'm a
negative bastard (well, I am, but...). Rather, some resolution would be
nice to these discussions, so if somebody throws out a PEP like this,
let's hammer it out and then it either survives and becomes policy or it
becomes clear that we don't really need.

I'm glad some people have taken the time to write down come conclusions
from the earlier discussions.

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 09:45:23PM -0300, Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
>      Last but not least, this proposal must be understood as a
>      broad set of recommendations. It is not meant to be read as
>      a set of rules to be enforced. Non-compliant modules may be
>      still be accepted as part of the standard library for several
>      reasons. Common sense and community acceptance are still the
>      best judges on this.

This last bit pretty much guarantees that everytime somebody proposes a
slightly border-line case, we will revisit the same tired old arguments
again and again. In fact, it's a bit worse than that: since there are a
whole bunch of modules in the current distribution which fail to meet
you recommendations, there's scope for "discussion" aplenty without
further delay. :-)

More seriously, this caveat is useful, since it is a response to all of
my complaints below: anything that falls between the cracks becomes a
source of discussion and then something like a BDFL pronouncement to
settle it.

> What is the Standard Library?
> 
>      The Standard Library is comprised of the modules that are
>      referenced in the Python Library Reference manual. Standard
>      Python Distributions MUST support all modules from the
>      Standard Library, with the exception of OS-dependant ones.

This seems loosely phrased. What do you mean by "support all modules"?
Do they have to compile? Do they have to return sensible answers when
they run? Can they just say "Not supported on this platform"?

It may be tempting to change this to "must include all modules from the
standard library". However, this is tricky for a couple of reasons: this
PEP hasn't really discussed why the concept of a Standard Library is
required, and I'm not convinced it's a good idea to keep making the
Python "distribution" larger and larger. My modem already starts to
complain if I have to do a full download (thank heavens for CVS
updates).

That last paragraph possibly sows the seed for a whole discussion on the
merits of including every standard component under the sun, or just
having a system for saying "component ZZ is required" and having a place
to download it (a la CPAN in that other world). I'm also not sure this
PEP is necessarily the place for also defining things like "what is a
distribution" (I don't even think that's a useful concept to formalise).

[...]
> OS-dependency guidelines
> 
>      1. There are three main categories of modules regarding the
>         dependency on some particular OS or hardware platform:
> 
>         * OS-DEPENDENT modules are, for intrinsec reasons, supported
>           only on some particular platforms and/or hardware
>           platforms. They may not be ported to other platforms
>           without substantial investment or changes to the
>           underlying environment.
> 
>         * OS-LIMITED modules are supported only on some particular
>           platforms. They are not inherently limited to the
>           supported platforms, but for some reason the code cannot
>           be easily ported (or supported) on other platforms.
> 
>         * OS-INDEPENDENT modules are supported on many platforms.
>           Some particular platforms may not support the module,
>           because of severe limitations on the platform itself.
>           These limitations are easily recognizable, specially if
>           the module is already supported on all major platforms.
> 
>      2. OS-LIMITED modules SHOULD NOT be included in the Standard
>         Library. The module author MUST rewrite the module in such
>         a way to make possible to port it to other platforms as a
>         OS-INDEPENDENT module.

The OS-LIMITED concept was a bit confusing to me the first couple of
times I read this. Basically, you are saying "write portable code", as
far as I can tell. If there were other obstacles, wouldn't that make the
module OS-DEPENDENT? If I'm missing something here, perhaps you can give
an example of something that is portable code, but OS-LIMITED and not
OS-DEPENDENT.

>      3. OS-DEPENDENT modules SHOULD only be included to support
>         functionality required to use Python in the target platform.

This is again a little loosely phrased. I can "use" Python with only a
handful of modules. Of course, it becomes reasonably functionality-free
at that point and I'd probably prefer C or Perl or shell scripting
instead. :-(

It is quite reasonable to have modules in the "standard library" that
are only supported on a wide range of platforms (not all platforms). For
example, there are already various things that are Unix specific and are
awkward at best on Redmond-based operating systems. The set of
Unix-like systems is quite large and if module X runs well on those, why
should it not be included just because Windows is broken (to pick but
one example)?

Similarly, the current stuff for supporting the Macintosh finder tools
and the like are fairly narrowly targeted, but they touch a large user
base.

>      4. OS-INDEPENDENT modules that rely on specific code in Python
>         for every platform supported MUST import a separate module
>         that implements the platform specific code. This (sub)module
>         SHOULD preferably be part of the main package. In this case
>         the module name should reflect the platform it supports.

Lest I sound too negative above, I think this categorisation scheme is
somewhat useful (it also exists already, since the library reference
already identifies the platform availability). Particularly for module
writers, who should be thinking about where their target is (does the
module really have to be platform dependent, or can they design it so
that somebody else can come along and add the bits to make it run on a
Palm Pilot and a Cray and a Space Shuttle, etc).

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:27:01 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:27:01 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930982.17575.python-list@python.org> <acppltstdl0oo692su8e9c4fhm6cf14kt9@4ax.com> <3B5E3FE1.1C1ABBA4@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <7coslt0rfthrfhgdc7emr6t9kh8tf7j6r9@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:41:21 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
wrote:

>Stephen Horne wrote:
>> 
>> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:35 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman"
>> <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:
>> 
>> >Both of these changes fall in the same group IMHO... they
>> >break a lot of code.
>> 
>> Case insenstitivity is also a serious issue for me - it might even
>> bite me for adopting a case-based naming convention as an apparently
>> sensible way to avoid future identifier conflicts - [...]
>> 
>> Anyway, it's probably less an issue for me than division - I use
>> integer division a lot, whereas defining different identifiers with
>> only case-changes to distinguish them is a definite no-no.
>
>This last item should always be said in conjunction with an 
>"in my opinion"... We *frequently* use identifiers which differ
>only in case from their class name.  We also use identifiers 
>which are identical to other identifiers except for case, primarily
>when we have a large series of CONSTANTS defined somewhere.

Ah - I should have thought more carefully.

Well, anyway, I'm still saying the same thing. It's wrong in principle
to change fundamental syntax and semantics, but in this particular
case I'm all right jack so sod you ;-)

(some have expressed the same view for '/', of course, but *they* are
evil whereas I am not ;-)



From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 22 18:31:34 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:31:34 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lml32.qb.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:22:21 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>It shouldn't be so hard to understand why.  The current integer division
>loses information silently and without a trace.

No, it doesn't.  Integer division is integer division.  The
correct answer for the value of 3/4 is 0.  If you wanted the
remainder, you should ask for it.  If you want to divide
floating point numbers, you should _use_ floating point numbers.

Perhaps my mind was warped by using nothing but integer
arithmatic in my software for many years because floating point
was simply too slow and too expensive.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Are we THERE yet? My
                                  at               MIND is a SUBMARINE!!
                               visi.com            


From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul  6 15:55:28 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:55:28 GMT
Subject: the C++ Standard Library for Python
References: <hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <QIo17.427166$eK2.86457968@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

First impression:
Very cool!, especially the fact that it seems to play well with python
iterators.
(I just need Python 2.2 to take full advantage..)
It took me about 30 seconds to install and start using it!
I will definitely be checking this out further.
( the website is also excellent )
good work!



"Tom" <tom-list at home.com> wrote in message
news:hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
>
> The core of the C++ Standard Library is now available for Python.  This
> includes 4 sequence containers, 8 mapping containers, and approximately 60
> algorithms.  The algorithms can be applied to any of these containers, or
to
> any of the Python built-in sequences.
>
> This is an actual C++ standard library, exposed to Python, not a Python
> implementation of it - so it is all native code.
>
> It is being release under a standard Python style license.
>
> Please note that this is a beta release.
>
> http://www.malcolmson.com/pystl
>
> I'll watch this thread for comments and feedback (thanks in advance).
>
>
>
>




From roy at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 09:30:13 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 09:30:13 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com> <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9iuq95$3e0$1@panix6.panix.com>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I find I can rarely throw away the match-objects in this cavalier
> way, because they carry much, often-needed information -- so, I
> don't get to use this idiom anyway.  Rather, I have to code:
>
>    mo = re1.match(thestring)
>    if mo:
>        dostuff(mo)
>    else:
>        mo = re2.match(thestring)
>        if mo:
>            dootherstuff(mo)
>        else:
>            mo = re3.match(thestring)
>            if mo:
>                etcetcetc(mo)
>            else:
>                nomatchatall()
>
>which is hardly elegant and clean.

No it's not, but the problem is not that match returns None, the
problem is that Python doesn't allow assignment as a side effect.
Imagine if you could write it this way:

    if mo = re1.match(thestring)
        dostuff(mo)
    elif mo = re2.match(thestring)
        dootherstuff(mo)
    elif mo = re3.match(thestring)
        etcetcetc(mo)
    else:
        nomatchatall()

Wouldn't that be elegant and clean and obvious?

After 4 years of using Python, I still find the lack of any way to do
an atomic "assign and test" unbelievably constraining.



From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 00:26:58 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 21:26:58 -0700
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9hr4k5$peq$1@panix6.panix.com> <slrn9k2gib.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <9hrhii$n7h$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9k2gib.aqd.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>2 Jul 2001 17:45:57 -0700 in <9hr4k5$peq$1 at panix6.panix.com>,
>Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> spake:
>> In article <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
>> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>  I suspect that Infocom-style interactive fiction, with good production
>>>values and nice packaging, could sell again just fine.  You'd have to
>>>sell it outside of most computer game shops, though, because the games
>>>publishing and distribution networks just won't carry it, and the games
>>>magazines won't review it (they're all run by and for hyperactive
>>>adolescent males (of all ages))...
>>
>> ...and genders.  ;-)
>
>  Hah!  When I was writing, I included exactly that clause, but then
>removed it because I couldn't think of any female game designers,
>publishers, or reviewers who trade in the "hyperactive adolescent male"
>genre, except possibly the "booth babes" at game developer's conferences
>(and they're almost universally hired models or non-game-design
>employees) or the female "mascot" at one of the game review mags (that
>specific word was used to describe her by one of the male reviewers...)

Okay, fair enough.  I tracked down one of my favorite reviewers at Games
Domain (http://www.gamesdomain.co.uk/gdreview/), but the closest she
comes to reivewing the "hyperactive adolescent male" genre is Diablo II
and Shogo.

>  I love games design, but I really really despise the games industry.
>Does it show much?

No.  Tell us how you really feel.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 30 16:37:50 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:37:50 -0400
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
In-Reply-To: <JFa97.68$Nq1.2992@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHOEPNCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Paolo Invernizzi]
> Request... is possible to provide also a MSI package?

It's not possible for me, no.  Wise's InstallMaster 8.1 is not an MSI
authoring tool, and the only behavior I was able to provoke out of
Microsoft's Visual Installer MSI authoring tool was program crashes and
corrupt installs.

As Guido said, ActiveState offers an MSI package, and PythonLabs has no
plans in that direction.  If you have an MSI authoring tool that works, or
can afford the time to write one from scratch, feel free to ship your own
Python installer.

at-least-it's-a-break-from-"write-a-pep"<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 21:52:52 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 01:52:52 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <20010727.150850.1605894428.16613@hp.com>
Message-ID: <UVo87.35811$EP6.9140747@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I strongly favor the // operator for the new behaviour.

The proposal, based on the premise that the old behaviour is broken
for Python (though not for C) is to replace the old behaviour with TWO
new behaviors.  It is somewhat arbitrary which new behavior goes with
which  symbol, but the assignment chosen is pretty obviously the more
sensible than the reverse.

Terry J. Reedy




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 03:17:35 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:17:35 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <nBQ%6.417370$oc7.58837743@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
References: <mailman.994035602.29848.python-list@python.org> <nBQ%6.417370$oc7.58837743@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010702091735.J8098@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 02:00:51AM +0000, Rainer Deyke wrote:
> "Delaney, Timothy" <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994035602.29848.python-list at python.org...

> An interesting (and AFAIK legal) optimization would be to make tuples act as
> mutable objects with respect to augmented assignment if their reference is
> 1.

But they are never 1 unless you're in a C extention that just created it.
When you call 'x += y', the refcount for both x and y is always 2 when the
arguments arrive at the __iadd__ (or C equivalent.)

So you mean '2'. But then you could run into trouble on, say,

  () += y

because the empty tuple is shared, just like interned strings and integers.
The refcount *could* be 2, and you end up modifying someone else's empty
tuple.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 09:45:01 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:45:01 GMT
Subject: Informix IDS2000 and Zope/Python/Perl/PHP on Linux
References: <3B600F47.2F59C1FC@gdp-group.com>
Message-ID: <3B601FC0.4030400@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Thomas Volkmar Worm wrote:

> Hi all!
> 
> I am consindering to use Informix Dynamic Server (Informix Internet
> Foundation 2000/Linux) together with Zope and the other 3 P's.
> 
> I wonder, whether somebody has any experience with Linux and
> 
> - IDS 2000 and Perl
> or
> - IDS 2000 and PHP
> or
> -  IDS 2000 and Python
> or
> - IDS 2000 and Zope
> 
> and can tell me about the experience he made with one or more of these
> combinations. I am interested to hear about
> 
> - availibility of the needed drivers
> - their (practical) compatibility to (eg. perl DBI, python DB-API 2.0,
> etc.)
> - stability
> - and what else someone has experienced
> 
> I already was an php.net, python.org, perl.org, zope.org - I guess I
> know whats available. It looks to me as if the support for IDS is not so
> strong, so I am really interested in real experience somebody had rather
> that what you can read in the READMEs. If you stopped using IDS together
> with P..., please tell me why and what db (other than mySQL, thats
> allready running here) are you using instead.
> 
> If some Informix/IBM people are around: Are there any contributions
> planned or in progress for the 3 P's by Informix/IBM? Where can I find
> online information about it?
> 
> If you respond to this posting, please send a CC to my email-address
> too.
> 
> Thanks for your efforts in advance
> 
> Regards
> Thomas Volkmar Worm
> 


One thing to keep in mind with Zope... you can call perl also.  This was 
added (by ActiveState I believe) so that the more "esoteric" databases 
that perl supports can be accessed in Zope.  Just a thought.

Tom

 




From kirwin14 at home.com  Sat Jul 14 13:55:11 2001
From: kirwin14 at home.com (Keith F Irwin)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 10:55:11 -0700
Subject: (no subject)
In-Reply-To: <200107141318.AA116326580@mtni.net>
References: <200107141318.AA116326580@mtni.net>
Message-ID: <995133311.4401.9.camel@c234192-a>

Could you use threads?  I just wrote a program that does something like:

1. start thread to read database between sleep(500)
2. start thread to ping machines listed in database, update global
struct,sleep(300)
3. in forever loop, listen on a socket, if there's a connection, start
thread to handle it (ie, spit out html table of global struct, close
socket)

Not sure if this fits in, but using timed threads can get you out of the
event driven model.  So, have a thread to listen via socket and update
list when data comes in, another thread to print out list when list
changes. You'll have to lock the list while it's being update, which'll
make the list print method wait until it's updated.  Add some sleeps to
slow things down a bit, etc.

Anyway, I'm new to python, and new to socket stuff too, so....

-K

On 14 Jul 2001 13:18:31 -0400, Shane Anglin wrote:
> Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app: 
> Main loop is: 
> 1 - check socket for any incoming data 
> 1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into a list 
> 2 - print out list 
> 3 - go to 1 and do it all over again 
> 
> Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that will sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data just fine, my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get any new data in... for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket, when a connection happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print list, 3 -go to 1 and do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has the rest of my code 'hostage' until a client connection is made and closed. 
> 
> Thanks a bunch! 
> Shane Anglin 
> shaneanglin at bigfoot.com 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 19:04:05 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 01:04:05 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <3b4102f4.887720905@wa.news.verio.net> <0Kd07.7470$e5.974463@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <9htj16$fre$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote in message
news:0Kd07.7470$e5.974463 at newsb.telia.net...
> Bengt wrote:
[...]
> I've built mission-critical, real-time Python systems.

Just out of (honest) curiosity: What kind of systems?

> Cheers /F

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From clpy at snakefarm.org  Sun Jul  8 05:47:48 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 11:47:48 +0200
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
Message-ID: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org>

Hi there!

I've just come across a strange difference between readline() and
readlines():

Python 2.1 (#17, Jun 15 2001, 15:24:30) 
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> f = open("foobar", "w")
>>> f.readline()
''
>>> f.close()
>>> 
>>> f =  open("foobar", "w")
>>> f.readlines()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
>>> 


Why does readlines() raise an exception while readline() does not? I
expected it to return an empty list. According to the docs readlines()
uses readline(). If I open the file "w+" everything's fine. Opinions?

Regards
Carsten.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 10:02:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:02:08 -0400
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <3B53BB43.986D70AE@engcorp.com> <3B53C285.F8405344@usa.net> <3B543A08.5E66740C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <bxX47.23541$d4.596732@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B543A08.5E66740C at engcorp.com...
> Lee wrote:
> >
> > I wasn't asking the readers to provide me with a list of pros and cons -
> > those would be for me to figure out when I have a few suggestions for
> > implementations.
>
> In other words, "don't think about it, just do it".  I get it. <1/2 wink>
>
You do realise this means Peter is entirely serious.

unless-he-really-meant-<1.0/2 wink>-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From foobarickknob at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 21:05:50 2001
From: foobarickknob at yahoo.com (Scott Taylor)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 18:05:50 -0700
Subject: Couple of newbie questions...
Message-ID: <5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3@posting.google.com>

I'm just getting started w/ Python - and have run into a couple issues
w/ the Windows extensions...

1) time.sleep doesn't seem to release time back to the Win32
subsystem.  I had a tight loop, and CPU was maxed out at 100% even if
I did a PumpWaitingMessages w/ a time.sleep.  To actually get the loop
to return slices of time back to windows and not max out the CPU I had
to do a PumpWaitingMessages followed by a win32api.Sleep(0) call.  My
question is - shouldn't time.sleep actually make the process sleep w/o
hogging CPU?

2) There seems to be a bug in win32gui.SetDlgItemText, or I'm not
using it appropriately.  win32gui.SendMessage w/ a WM_SETTEXT param
works, whereas SetDlgItemText w/ the dialog window and the control
don't... anybody else noticed this?

Thanx... and python rocks!!!

Scott


From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul  4 09:16:46 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:16:46 +0200
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org> <ku3d8d31ve.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <3B42BD95.D6A0BC30@stroeder.com> <kuwv5o28r9.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <3B43173E.9CEB7C0D@stroeder.com>

Erno Kuusela wrote:
> 
> In article <3B42BD95.D6A0BC30 at stroeder.com>, Michael Str?der
> <michael at stroeder.com> writes:
> 
> | Now think about systems where sendmail isn't installed at all.
> 
> every unix mta provides a "sendmail" command afaik. unixes don't
> function very well without the capability to deliver mail since
> it's used by cron and whatnot.

Well, you are making the assumption that your Python app lives on a
fully-installed Unix like a mainstream Linux or BSD distribution.
This is e.g. wrong for most web applications.

> ok, you may have a box that is configured to only deliver local mail,
> but not very common and easy to remedy.

How about restricted systems or non-Unix systems? Did you ever think
about this? IMHO a simple Python app which always sends to a certain
e-mail address through a well-defined mail relay can be reviewed
much easier than a full-blown MTA.

Unless you can really derive the assumption that sendmail has to be
present on the target system I'd always vote for smtplib.

Ciao, Michael.


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 19:57:18 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 16:57:18 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <mailman.995025922.12846.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107131557.5e0be899@posting.google.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995025922.12846.python-list at python.org>...
> Please comment...
> 
 
> Syntax
> 
>     The syntax for the directives is as follows:
> 
>     'directive' WS+ 'unicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
>     'directive' WS+ 'rawunicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERA
> L
> 
>     with the PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL representing the encoding name to be
>     used as standard Python 8-bit string literal and WS being the
>     whitespace characters [ \t].
> 

(1) An example of a directive complying with the syntax might aid the
understanding.

   directive unicodeencoding='big5'

(2) Could we possibly have e.g. raw_unicode_encoding (my preference)
or RawUnicodeEncoding instead of rawunicodeencoding? The latter could
be a little boggling for humans of some cultures to parse; it reminds
me of the preposterously long words that are used to frighten
beginners in lesson 1 of German language classes e.g.
Dampfschiffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 05:03:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:03:34 +0200
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9ip1qa012en@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B4F743C.66778F9F at tundraware.com...
    ...
> Furthermore, bear in mind that code "portability" is no where near as
> important in the commercial sector as it is in academics.  Commercial

That depends on the state of the market.  Just a few years ago, it
would have KILLED us if our CAD applications didn't run portably
between VMS, Apollo Domain, and many versions of Unix -- each
OS accounted for an important segment of our customer base.

Today, running on a small number of somewhat-different Microsoft
operating systems suffices -- but any day now, it would not at all
surprise me if an important market segment suddenly demanded,
say, Linux -- in which case, lack of portability would again become
a commercial killer in this nice.  (Before you scoff -- markets as
important as the French public administration and China appear
to be oriented to demanding Linux pretty soon, while others keep
demanding MS systems -- better keep those portability skills not
too badly honed, is my opinion).

Besides, portability is NOT only an issue between operating systems
and hardware platforms (...and on the latter, someday soon the
ability to exploit Itanium well may be a key market differentiator...).
Anything that qualifies as a "platform" for applications needs to be
seen in this light.  Portability between IIS and Apache can double
the potential market for a commercial web framework.  And it serves
our PDM product well that it's portable between SQL dialects and
RDBMS's -- some customers are totally wed to Oracle and would
never buy a product that can only run on SQL Server, and vice
versa -- this DOES give us an important marketing differentiator
wrt some of our competition.


I'm not getting into the C++ flamewar you're trying to unchain --
just noticing that one of our competitors in the PDM field recently
released their newest product version, and one of the fundamental
differences wrt the previous one is that they rewrote it from Java
(as it originally was) to C++ (as it is now) -- they claim speed-ups
of about 60% overall, more solidity, etc, as a consequence.  If that
is an example of C++ "dying a slow death", I think Mark Twain's
well-known dictum may apply.

I _do_ agree that C++ is too complex for the human brain and
thus should only be used sparingly (for system interaction and
top-speed components -- but do notice that those components
ARE part of large commercial applications... and many people
still do not realize that multi-language applications are the
way to go, thus, needing maybe 10% of the app to be in C++,
they go ahead and make or rewrite it ALL in C++, rather than
make it 10% C++ and 90% Python...:-).


Alex (Brainbench MVP for C++ -- declaring interest, as it were:-)





From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul 13 14:12:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:12:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
In-Reply-To: <9in5bs01mio@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107132148080.8976-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
>news:H6D37.14720$B7.2683686 at ruti.visi.com...
>    ...
>> >> I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
>> >> that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.
>    ...
>> Probably not.  To add to my "definition", I guess I would call
>> it a script if it was done using the same set of "primitives"
>> that the user would have done had it been done interactively.
>> Primitives like the "ls" "find" "rm" executables found on Unix
>> systems.
>
>So you wouldn't "call a script" a script scripted in VBScript
>on the Windows Scripting Host, or a script scripted in JScript or
>Javascript, residing typically between <SCRIPT> and </SCRIPT>
>tags in an HTML page?  Because, while they may well be automating

I think, there are several features which make language play a
"scripting" role:

- fast startup (Java IS NOT scripting language) of scripts
- ability to easily glue large software components (sh, for example,
use many external programs)
- related to the previous, scripts assume rich environment
and are better wired into it. For example, CGI-scripts
interact with web-server and are incomplete without this interaction
It could be even said, that scripts are command language
to control inside programm environment. More usually than not,
scripts add a function to the environment. And scripts
are usually more independent from each other than modules.
- scripts are interpreted. One do not need to recompile scripts.
- sometimes scripts are results of convertion from other
kind of user input (script or macro could be created by a
series of mouseclicks and key pressing).

Scripting languages differ from system programming languages
by having higher-level commands and (as is case with Python)
higher-level data-structures.

Scripting languages are problem-domain oriented. However,
universal scripting languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, ...)
are becoming more and more popular in IT industry.

Scripts fight complexity better than monolithic applications. For example,
authorisation scripts for RADIUS server allow us to have a hook on what to
do if such and such user wants to login. This is FAR better approach than
having large application which will require selecting dozens of checkboxes
from preselected list to do the same.

compact, simple and reliable engine with scripting hooks + scripts

WINS

large all-in-one memory-greedy application without scripts

For example, Quark Xpress (if I'm not mistaken) has no scripting
capabilities (PageMaker got it only recently), which makes me feel better
with TeX/LaTeX which had such from the start (it's itself a
programming language).

*

All said, I conclude that being "scripting language" is a role,
described above and not language feature in itself.

Python is universal programming language. But when it is used inside
Sketch, it is scripting language. When it is used to write Sketch itself
it is "normal" programming language.

By scripting languages we usually call those which are almost always used
for scripting.


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 13, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Useless Invention: Open Toed Safety Shoes." _/




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 09:17:18 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:17:18 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com>
Message-ID: <cp1ynukxmv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> writes:

> Again, my major objection to this proposal is that it gives us
> nothing and breaks a lot of existing code.

Other educators disagree.  Take the case of VPython.

The VPython folks have used Python very successfully to teach freshman
physics students at Carnegie Mellon to create 3D models.  Many
students had little or no programming experience.  The goal of the
course wasn't to teach programming, it was to teach understanding of
physics.  Throughout the course, students were writing Python programs
implementibg various laws of physics.  Here's a quote from Bruce
Sherwood, one of the teachers (without permission, but I'm sure he
doesn't mind):

"""
The final activity (last week) was very satisfying. Students made a
traveling electromagnetic wave in 3D, and then moved a positron
relativistically (leaving a trail) under the influence of the
wave. Almost every student did a very nice job. This is way beyond
what is normally done in these courses. And remember that this was
with extremely little instruction, with a sizable minority of the
students never having written a program before entering our course.
"""

Now read his criticism of Python:

"""
Everything worked extremely well except for integer division, both 1/2
being zero and 10**-15 giving an execution error. For example, on last
week's program one student spent two hours trying to figure out why he
was getting a strange positron trajectory, and it finally turned out
to be (x+y)**(1/2), which looks fine but is equal to 1 for all values
of x and y.
"""

This exactly corroborates the experience of the Alice team (who
started this discussion).

> The proposal is based upon the supposition that uniting floats with
> integers makes programming easier to learn for beginners, but this
> is absolutely not consistent with my experience in teaching
> programming using Python and other languages (including Maple that
> has rationals).

No, the proposal intends to make *using* Python easier.  Now, clearly
there are some areas where the current approach (1/2 == 0) is more
useful, and other areas where the proposed new approach (1/2 == 0.5)
is more useful.  But I think that the latter rule is useful vastly
more often than the former.  There just are more places in life where
1/2 equals one half then where it equals zero.

Note that I'm not saying that 1/2 *returns* 0.5.  While in the current
proposal that's indeed the plan, I'm not necessarily against returning
something else, e.g. maybe a rational.  (I have a different reason to
dislike rationals and favor decimal arithmetic instead, but that's
quite a different discussion.)  I'm just saying that the *value* of
1/2 should be equal to the value of 0.5, in other words, 1/2 should
act like 0.5 when fed into a floating point expression

> All programmers must very soon appreciate the different nature of
> integer and floating point (or rational) arithmetic in order to
> address discretized quantities such as lists, files, strings, etc. 

Agreed.  And integers should remain required for indexing etc.  But
when dividing two integers, we shouldn't drop the remainder on the
floor by default.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 17:09:15 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 22:09:15 +0100
Subject: batch generation of keypairs by GnuPG
Message-ID: <slrn9k71fq.707.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

[x-posted to several newsgroups, because I don't know what the
best way to proceed is]

I am developing an email encryption system in Python. (The
details of what it will do are at 
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html> )

It uses public-key encryption. As the encryption engine,
I am using GnuPG, which I am calling from my program using
the system() call.

I am having problems programmatically generating a public/private
keypair using GnuPG. The relevant code segment is:

     
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
  
def createSecretKey(realName, email):
   """ invoke GPG to create a secret key for me """  
   if debug: print "!! in createSecretKey() !!"
   
   # create a tempory file to contain parameters for key creation
   keyCreationParas = """%%secring %s
%%pubring %s
Key-Type: %s
Key-Length: 1024
Expire-Date: 0
Name-Real: %s
Name-Comment: %s
Name-Email: %s 
%%commit
""" % (secPn, pubPn, gpgCreateKeyType, realName, gpgKeyComment, email)

   tmpFilename = os.tempnam(herbDir, "temp_")
   tmpFilename2 = os.tempnam(herbDir, "temp2_")
   utility.writeFile(tmpFilename, keyCreationParas)
   
   #>>>>> invoke GPG to create the key:
   gpgCommand = ("gpg --batch " 
      + "--no-default-keyring --secret-keyring %s --keyring %s "
      + "--gen-key -a %s") % (secPn, pubPn, tmpFilename)
   
   if debug:
      print "!! About to [%s]..." % gpgCommand
   gpgProcess = popen2.Popen3(gpgCommand)
   # GPG is now running as a separate process. We may need to give it
   # a source of entropy. Running tasks in the background is intended
   # to achieve this
   if debug: print "!! returned from Popen3()"

   
   while 1:
      #####was: while gpgProcess.poll() != -1:
      pollValue = gpgProcess.poll()
      
      if debug:
         action = "stopped"
         if pollValue == PROCESS_STILL_RUNNING: action = "continuing..."
         print "!! gpgProcess.poll() => %s, %s" % (pollValue, action)
         
      if pollValue != PROCESS_STILL_RUNNING: break   
         
      # gpg process hasn't finished yet, so execute some tasks
      
      result = commands.getoutput("ps auxw")
      result2 = commands.getoutput("date")
      result3 = commands.getoutput("df")
      
      utility.writeFile(tmpFilename2, result+result2+result3)
      # ...feed these results into GPG?... 

      if debug: print "w",

   # tidy up: remove the temporary files
   os.remove(tmpFilename2)
   os.remove(tmpFilename)  

#---------------------------------------------------------------------

When I execute this, I get this output from gpg:

------------------ begin --------------------
gpg: Warning: using insecure memory!                                                    
gpg: /home/philh/.herbivore/secret_keys.gpg: keyring created                            
gpg: /home/philh/.herbivore/public_keys.gpg: keyring created                            
+++++.+++++++++++++++..+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++w !! gpgProcess.poll() => -1, 
continuing...                                                                               
++++++++++++++.+++++.+++++++++++++++++++++++++w !! gpgProcess.poll() => -1, 
continuing...  
.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.+++++>.+++++w !! gpgProcess.poll() => -1, continuing... 
.w !! gpgProcess.poll() => -1, continuing...                                            
..w !! gpgProcess.poll() => -1, continuing...   
(etc)
------------------- cut ---------------------

Note that it says it's creating the keyring files before the keypair
is computed -- this seems wrong to me.

On exit, when I try to view what's in the keyring files, gpg complains
thus:

------------------ begin --------------------                         
philh:~/.herbivore> gpg --list-sig --keyring 
~/.herbivore/public_keys.gpg gpg: Warning: using insecure memory!
gpg: [don't know]: invalid packet (ctb=2d) near 1
gpg: read_keyblock: read error: invalid packet
gpg: enum_keyblocks(read) failed: invalid keyring 
------------------- cut ---------------------

So, I have two questions:

(1) how do I get GnuPG to generate keypairs as a batch process?

(2) Should I be using GnuPG at all? I don't need its key management
facilities -- I can use a serialised Python data structure for that --
and I find it overcomplex to use programmatically. Is there a better 
solution? What I need is software that can generate keypairs
(using an unencumbered algorithm such as ElGamal), and can encrypt
and decrypt using those keys, and make/test signatures using
the keys. Is there anything which does this (either a Python
program, or something accessible from the command line)?


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 26 13:36:32 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 10:36:32 -0700
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107260936.2d0eb14d@posting.google.com>

"Kevin Lacker" <kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu> wrote in message news:<9jpadd$s5k$1 at news.duke.edu>...
> Can you do this:
> 
> answer = []
> for x in my_list:
>     if not is_good(x):
>         break
>     answer.append(process(x))
> 
> with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
> loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current one.
> 
> Would this work in the future python with iterators...
> 
> def done(): raise StopIteration
> answer = [process(x) for x in my_list if is_good(x) or done()]
> 
> If I used it a lot it might not be a pain to define done(). I think it would
> be cool to be able to reuse the while keyword inside comprehensions like
> 
> answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]
> 
> Makes sense to me... it's like being able to use a sentinel with iterators
> but more flexible.

You could simulate a "while...break" within comprehensions using a
generator, like this:

#---- begin code

def itrWhile(obj, func):
    itr = iter(obj)
    while 1:
        x = itr.next()
        if func(x):
            yield x
        else:
            return

#---- end code

Then:

>>> def isGood(n):
...     return n < 4
...
>>> a = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
>>> [x for x in itrWhile(a, isGood)]

[1, 2, 3]
>>>

Notice the important difference between this and "[x for x in a if
isGood(x)]"

>>> def isGood(n):
...     print "comparing", n
...     return n < 4
...
>>> [x for x in a if isGood(x)]
comparing 1
comparing 2
comparing 3
comparing 4
comparing 5
comparing 6
comparing 7
[1, 2, 3]
>>> [x for x in itrWhile(a, isGood)]
comparing 1
comparing 2
comparing 3
comparing 4
[1, 2, 3]
>>>

The "itrWhile" version breaks out after the first unsuccessful
comparison.  The version using "if" tests every element.


Tom


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 15 21:36:22 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:36:22 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEKLKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim Hammerquist]
> ...
> Easily implemented in Perl:
>
>: sub valid_ip {
>:     my ($ip, $failed, @elements) = (shift, 0);
>:     @elements = ($ip =~ /^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$/);
>:     $failed = grep { $_ > 255 } @elements;
>:     return ($failed) ? undef : 1;
>: }
>
> Slightly more verbose in Python:
>
>: import re
>: def valid_ip(ip):
>:     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
>:     elements = map(int, re.match(expr, ip).groups())
>:     failed = filter(lambda x: x > 255, elements)
>:     if failed:  return None
>:     else:       return 1

Well, it's un-Pythonic to try to emulate Perl undef via Python None; it's
idiomatic to return 0 for false and 1 for true, in which case the last three
lines can be replaced by, e.g.,

    return max(elements) < 256

Note that the leading "^" in the Python regexp isn't needed (can save
another entire character that way <wink>).

The Python version should also check for match failure.  Like

def valid_ip(ip):
    m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
    if m:
        elements = map(int, m.groups())
        return max(elements) < 256
    return 0

Yes, you can squash lines out of that -- I wouldn't.

BTW, does it bother anyone that all of these solutions accept an IP ending
with a newline?

regexps-are-surprising-ly y'rs  - tim




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 17:48:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:48:01 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9j507g01j75@enews3.newsguy.com>

"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn9lavp6.v3.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
    ...
>    if not myCollection.hasIndex(x): raise Exception
>
> (Note that hasIndex() should equally work for dictionaries as well
> as sequence-collections (strings, tuples, lists, etc). IMO it is
> an unnecessary non-orthogonality of the present python that it doesn't
> do this)

It's quite orthogonal if you think of exceptions as the MAIN way
to communicate the missing index case:

def hasindex(myCollection, x):
    try:  myCollection[x]
    except LookupError: return 0
    else: return 1

LookupError is the common base class of IndexError, raised by
sequences, and KeyError, raised by mappings.


> No, because on the odd occasions that you want an exception you can
> always throw one manually.

And viceversa, if the odd occasions are those in which you
want to SUPPRESS the exception, you can easily try/except it.

> Here, I'm assuming that usually you don't want one -- perhaps this
> is jsut my idiosyncratic programming style and most people vare different
> here. Comments?

I think that most languages supporting exceptions are hinged
to using them only for exceptional cases, so it's clearly going
to be common for people with such backgrounds to find that
style the 'usual' one -- but I also think that best Pythonic style
is different, and very oriented to "it's easier to ask forgiveness
than permission", and to rather free use of exceptions.


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 17:09:09 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:09:09 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDJLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido van Rossum]
> ...
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

Try to think of it as invigorating instead.  You haven't seen hostility
until they have to pay for Python.  Or weren't we going to announce that yet
<wink>?

new-division-is-free-old-division-is-$500-per-download-ly y'rs  - tim




From chris at voodooland.net  Sun Jul  8 23:35:37 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:35:37 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <9ib6nn$tut$1@apollo.csd.net>
Message-ID: <20010708223109.O93454-100000@open-systems.net>

> That is not really what the license says though. With that license you
> can't integrate it with anything. If you put it in a closed source product
> it would have a more restrictive license and thus couldn't be used that way.

How do you figure you can't integrate my licensed code into a say binary
only product? How is it restricting binary only products?

> Also no one can make your code GPL. Your code is always under the license
> you released it under. However the GPL would make the entire collection GPL
> if GPL code were released with it. That really is no different then
> including BSD code in a closed source product since the closed source
> license takes precedence.

That is where you are wrong. If someone either A) uses my code in a GPL
app the entire app is GPL'ed *including* my code. Or B) someone can just
flat out put the GPL on top of my code *HAD* my code been licensed with
only clause 1 and 2. The BSDL does *not* say you cannot place further
restrictions on it. Thats the whole point of BSDL. Do whatever you want
with it just dont sue me (the author) if you put it in your pace maker and
you die the next morning.

> That capitalism/communism thing is FUD and I hope people grow up and stop
> using it.

Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
     A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life;
     specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of
     inequalities in the possession of property, as by
     distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all
     wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.

communism
       n 1: a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership
       2: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless
          society

That is the GPL to the letter. I dont care what smoke and mirrors you try
to BS it with.

Chris





From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 11 16:17:27 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:17:27 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net> <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3b4ca7bc.1650739848@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:48:13 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:
[...]
>>On my system I get
>>
>>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
>>str took 13.601617 seconds
>>
>>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
>>strL took  1.044989 seconds
>>
>>Recursion rides again ;-)
>
>Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
>a replacement for str that's faster is very
>curious.
>
Well, it's a seldom-used aspect of str to print
monster longs. They surely had more urgent things to do ;-)

>>BTW, how do you put everything inside the strL def
>>to hide names, and how do you recurse inside without
>>a warning message?
I'm leaving this question in ;-)

[...]
>
>Of course you have to do the recursion in a non-stupid
>manner, as here; if you'd made a recurzive routine
>that concatenated Python strings instead of building
>that list I doubt that recursion would win. But it is
>curious how often recursion does seem to win in Python.
>(Doesn't usually beat built-in functions, though.)
>

I hope people realize what you are pointing out,
i.e., that it's not recursion per se that made the gains.
The algorithm is the thing.

Recursion is a powerful way of expressing algorithms,
and the more expressive power you have, the better your
chances of coming up with a good algorithm.
Clean expressive power is Python's main attraction IMO.

A better algorithm can often overcome the advantage of
optimized brute force, and recursion is a natural when
you have foo(x) and can partition x into x1 and x2 such that

    foo(x) == bar( foo(x1), foo(x2) )

and the times for foo-ing the pieces and bar-ing their
results is less than the time for foo-ing the whole.

BTW, if we were recursively searching for the optimumly timed partition
and sub-partitions, UIAM & IIRC it would amount to optimization by
Dynamic programming, I think. You know, the Bellman thing ;-)



From ken_chiba at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 17 07:17:36 2001
From: ken_chiba at hotmail.com (Ken)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:17:36 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b50d5dd.47261648@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9l704c.8s2.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3b541ea5.262501657@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

Okay... thanks for your suggestions.  I have been on the provider's
case for a few months now to install the module - which they promised
to do a while ago.. but still no luck!  I guess I'll just have to wait
it out.

Thanks again,



On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:35:40 +0200, gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard
=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) wrote:

>On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:40:24 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Ok.
>>
>>Still no luck!  In case I'm just missing something... here is a
>>listing of various files/directories:
>
>Sorry, I'm out of ideas, too. The "ImportError: File not found" is the thing I
>don't get. If I had to debug, I would check if you can import a file "mysql.py"
>in the cgi-bin directory instead. (One, very improbable thing could be that the
>provider disabled dynamic loading of extension modules. But they would have had
>to do this explicitly on Linux.)
>
>I'd perhaps contact the provider and ask if they could install the module.
>
>What I have done one time, is install my own copy of Python in the cgi-bin
>directory. But this is normally more difficult than installing MySQLdb and it
>really sucks if you don't have access via ssh.
>
>Gerhard
>-- 
>mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
>web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
>public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
>reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])



From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Sat Jul 28 19:14:23 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 19:14:23 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org>
	<cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
	<cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
	<3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net>
	<cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <87itgcabow.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> This doesn't work in my model. The simplest way to let it work is to
> treat ints (with longs) and rationals as representation details of
> the same concept (no matter if it's the same Python's type or not).
> 
> This is not nice IMHO and it leads to more cases when the type of the
> result depends on the value of the argument (x**y returns at least
> a float when y is a rational, but may return an integer when y is
> a nonnegative integer) and turns some TypeErrors into ValueErrors
> (e.g. s[1/2]).
> 
> I would not make 5/2-3/2 usable as a sequence index. My style is more
> "typeful". But you decide.

I don't like this.  If we accept PEP238 then I would like to see
the rational type return an int (preferably a united long/short int)
if the denominator is one.  Meaning that 5/2-3/2 would actually be an
int, and thus could be used as a sequence index.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for support
rather than illumination.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtjR04ACgkQjVztv3T8pzsXYgCcDirmNvyZJXZKlaeorpaVUQCP
3SwAnRF7OHdZPP6qSD7CPnmjx0b33Esg
=pFlW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From hoki26 at gmx.de  Sun Jul  8 12:14:49 2001
From: hoki26 at gmx.de (Holger Kipp)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:14:49 +0200
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
Message-ID: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>

Hi 2 all,
I've got a problem duplicating objects ... please could you help me ?

i've created an object named "test" ... now I would duplicate this object
for x times und rename the new objects to "test1", "test2", ... "test20" ...
and so on ...

for the numbers, i will take a adequate loop ... but: how can i paste the
serial numbers to the duplicated class name?

do you have any sources for my problem (duplicating classes and rename
them)?

greetings
-Holger-




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 09:10:21 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:10:21 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <roy-2E6A21.08305123072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <009a01c11378$d4eeaf20$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com>


> Well, heck, in perl, "1"/2 is 0.5 as well.  I'm sure there are lots of
> people new to programming who gets confused when they discover that
numbers
> and strings are different too.  Perhaps we should add auto-conversion of
> strings to numbers to python as well? :-)

If that were the rule in the first place (pre-1.5.2 at least) we wouldn't
cry about it (much).

> The thing that scares me most about this idea is that it breaks existing
> code.  And, the idea that there will be conversion tools, and
auto-warnings
> generated, don't impress me.  You still need to touch all the old code.

YES.  This is my headache too.  All the pro-PEP0238 people out there assume
that we will track version upgrades... but I upgraded several systems
directly
from 1.5.2 to 2.1.  There's nothing to stop me from doing that with 2.4, and
then I'll be in a world of hurt.

> What about code that you've shipped to customers already?  Are we going to
> demand that they not upgrade their python installation, or that they
> maintain a new version for their own work and an old version to keep our
> stuff going?

Ouch.

> While, I happen to like the way integer division works, I could be
> convinced that auto-promotion from int to float might be a good thing, if
> that's the way the language had been defined in the first place.  Too late
> to go back now, however.

Much too late.

Consistent rules which are not *wrong* but only *different* should NOT be
changed this late in the game.  I really don't think it takes that long to
teach a newbie about integer division; is saving 5 minutes times the number
of newbies out there really worth the man-hours of fixing the bugs and the
serious loss of face when we screw with a fundamental rule?





From msoulier at storm.ca  Fri Jul  6 17:27:05 2001
From: msoulier at storm.ca (Michael P. Soulier)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 21:27:05 GMT
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
Message-ID: <J2q17.427820$eK2.86548710@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

    Greetings. 

    This has probably been dealt with, but I didn't see it in the python faq,
so I'm asking. 

    In Python, previously unused lvalues cause that variable to be dynamically
declared. 

x = 1 # if x did not previously exist, following the LGB rule, it is
      # declared dynamically here

    Now, while this is great for scripting, it can cause major headaches with
large programs if you're a bad typist. It can declare new variables
accidentally, when you wanted to assign to an existing one...

myvar = 5
.
.
myver = othervar

...so here my typo of myver instead of myvar dynamically creates myver instead
of assigning othervar to myvar. It can also accidentally obscure globals. 

    So, while the simple answer would be, "don't do that", we all know that
accidents happen. So, I was wondering if there is a way to force declarations
of variables to catch this kind of thing. Is there, or is there anything in
the works, to assign with very large programs?

    Thanks for your time,

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at storm.ca> 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Jul 13 18:53:26 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:53:26 +0100
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994825097.24532.python-list@python.org> <3B4D0045.EBCDA083@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <wzzoa8lhu7.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn9kuuv6.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 13 Jul 2001 22:00:48 +0200, Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl> wrote:
>
>They also accuse it to be more viral than it is in reality. They seem to
>suggest that e.g. code compiled with gcc also has to be GPL'ed.

This is what is know in technical terminology as a "lie".

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Wed Jul 11 08:20:50 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:20:50 -0500
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
References: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)
Message-ID: <006101c10a03$f1006880$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vincent A. Primavera" <vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net>
> Hello,

Hi.

>         Looking for some guidance as to the set up of Apache's httpd.conf
for
> some basic CGI scripting practice in Python...  Any suggestions?

The "out of the box" configuration of Apache on Unix/Linux/BSD works fine
for me.  Python is no different than any other CGI scripting language with
respect to Apache.

Check the docs/FAQ at apache.org for CGI guidance.

Of course, if you have a more specific question feel free to ask.

>         Thank you,
>         Vincent A. Primavera

You're welcome.





From macias at bp.com.pl  Tue Jul  3 08:36:44 2001
From: macias at bp.com.pl (Maciej Pilichowski)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:36:44 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3b43b9df.25087634@news.tpi.pl>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 10:06:14 -0400, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:

>Having now used python for about 4 years, I still think 
>indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is just 
>too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without noticing), 
>especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one place to 
>another.

In languages like Pascal and C I indent all my code to get clear look.
And I don't remember if I make mistake putting one less or one more
space in all those years. Besides:

		for i:=1 to 10 do
begin
	mytab.first;
while not mytab.eof do
				begin
sum:=sum+mytabfee.ascurrency;
...

It sure will compile but is it an advantage? You have to correct this
mess anyway -- the only thing which is useless here is pairs of
begin-end.

And what's more -- pure indentation means full WYSIWYG. In such cases

if x==y:
  if q==w:
    print x
else:
  print y

you don't have to remember rules of if-else joining. You _see_ it and
that's enough.

Recently I was really seriously mislead by omitting ";" in my Pascal
code in last line of "case" but just before "else". This type of
mistakes are not possible in Python /thank you Guido van Rossum :-))/.

have a nice day
bye

-- 
Maciej "MACiAS" Pilichowski
http://www.torun.pdi.net/~macias/

z a k u p i e : pisma Komputer: 3/86,4/87


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 10:21:40 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:21:40 -0500
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org>
        <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org>
        <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
        <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
        <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
    Guido> Checked into CVS!

How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if x is a
type or class instead of an instance?

Skip



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 12:51:51 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:51:51 -0700
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <9hstef$g1hef$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote in message
news:9hst9p$oqv$5 at 216.39.170.247...
> In article <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal>,
> gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de says...
 <snip>
> the part about XP being evil where and are my supposition and opinion


did you mean to say "...evilware..."   ;-)


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------




From zen-nos at pam-heavengames.com  Thu Jul 26 15:26:32 2001
From: zen-nos at pam-heavengames.com (Zen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:26:32 GMT
Subject: Python 2.1 _sockets error
Message-ID: <u9r0mtkbja3hbichui2ki1vqniqd0051b0@4ax.com>

I'm trying to upgrade to Zope 2.4.0 on my server, and upgrading Python
from 1.5.2 was required for that to work.

When I start Zope, I get this error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/z2.py", line 540, in ?
    import ZServer
  File "/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/ZServer/__init__.py", line
87, in ?
    from medusa.test import max_sockets
  File
"/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/ZServer/medusa/test/max_sockets.py",
line 2, in ?
    import socket
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
    from _socket import *
ImportError: /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so.1: Undefined symbol
"ERR_load_RSAREF_strings"

Then I went into python's interactive mode, and typed in "import
socket", and got the same thing:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
    from _socket import *
ImportError: /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so.1: Undefined symbol
"ERR_load_RSAREF_strings"

The system is running FreeBSD 3.4, and the installed version is Python
2.1.  This happened with the install from the ports collection, as
well as installing from the source package with the basic configure.

Anyhelp is appreciated... thanks in advance!

-Zen
(remove -no at spam- from email)


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 27 05:11:52 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:11:52 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <cpzo9r5qty.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b612f52.538503356@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:21:55 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:
>
>> For discussion purposes, I'm going to assume that some forms of PEP 237, 238
>> and 239 are eventually adopted. In that case, integers and longs will be
>> unified. The integers can then be completely emebedded into rationals. This
>> leaves us with just one level of precision/range for exact numbers (infinite
>> more or less) and one level of precision/range for inexact numbers (C
>> double). This allows the numeric tower to be knocked down and stirred around
>> to form a box:
>> 
>>    Real      Complex
>>       |               |
>> rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
>> rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)
>
>I just don't see much use for complex rational...  So then we're back
>to my original tower (with rational).
>
For a different slant on diagramming all this, please see my post
"Number Tree (was: Re proposed language change ...(was: ...))"


From ehagemann at home.com  Sat Jul  7 08:24:40 2001
From: ehagemann at home.com (Eric Hagemann)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 12:24:40 GMT
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
References: <mailman.994457412.4660.python-list@python.org> <8Gt17.7112$PF2.1324057@news1.rdc1.md.home.com> <mailman.994498754.15402.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ccD17.7613$PF2.1683637@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

Ok I think I might have this -- let me state it another way

When the compiler compiles a codeblock it makes a list of
all variables in the code block.  At the top of the code block
these variables have NULL (or similar) reference because they
have yet to to be pointed to an object.  If I try to access these I get an
"UnboundLocalError".  As the assignment occurs then the compiler
fills in the references (points the variables to the objects) and all is
well

At the highest level (outside of a function) the name does not exist since
it is only entered into the global name space, a dictionary, when it
is found -- Is this since the compiler does not look at the
entire "global" or "outer" code block before execution -- it
just handles the code line by line ?


Cheers



"Thomas Wouters" <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994498754.15402.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 01:33:56AM +0000, Eric Hagemann wrote:
>
> > > Not dynamic.  Just look at the code in an editor:  if a name is bound
> > > anywhere within a code block, and isn't declared in a "global" stmt,
then
> > > that name is local throughout the entire code block.
>
> > Is this true ?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Given a file with the following
>
> > print x
> > x=1
> > print x
>
> > The first print will fail with a 'NameError'.  It was my (perhaps) wrong
> > impression
> > that x "came into being" at the assignment (x=1)
>
> Yes and no. If you execute the above snippet at the top level (not inside
a
> function) you'll get a NameError because the name doesn't exist yet. This
is
> because you are evaluating in the 'global' namespace, and it is handled
> slightly differently from the local namespace inside a function. If you
> write the above as part of a function, say,
>
> def spam():
>     print x
>     x = 1
>     print x
>
> spam()
>
> You'll also get a NameError under 1.5.2, but a more appropriate
> UnboundLocalError in newer versions of Python. The reason of the error is

> the same in both cases, but the exact exception raised was changed to make
> the difference between the first example and the second more obvious.
> (UnboundLocalError is a subclass of NameError, so catching NameError will
> still work for both cases.)
>
> > I would think the variable is local to the code block once the
assignement
> > has been executed
>
> No, it's local once the compiler sees an assignment statement for the
> variable inside the code block. But because the global (module) namespace
is
> a global one as well as a local one, it behaves slightly differently
there.
> What happens is that the global namespace is a straight dictionary, where
> assignment is a 'setitem', lookup is a 'getitem', and 'del' is a
'delitem'.
>
> The local namespace inside a function is actually stored (in absence of
> 'exec' or 'import *') as a vector (list) and the names of all local
> variables are translated into indexes. At runtime the interpreter will try
> to retrieve the X'th element of the vector and notice it's empty (a NULL
> value), raising the UnboundLocalError. A 'del' statement also empties the
> element.
>
> Just look at the LOAD_FAST opcode in Python/ceval.c in the source
> distribution :)
>
> --
> Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>
>
> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me
spread!
>




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 15:20:14 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:20:14 -0500
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <ij7oltslop050daaj5amiqvepigolbn0kf@4ax.com>
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
        <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
        <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org>
        <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
        <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>
        <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com>
        <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <ij7oltslop050daaj5amiqvepigolbn0kf@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15196.30958.558869.492693@beluga.mojam.com>

    Steve> This isn't going to be a little problem. It's going to happen in
    Steve> a lot of scripts - many of which are used in environments where
    Steve> no-one is going the warning - and I don't know how many scripts I
    Steve> wrote, or who has copies of them, or who has personally modified
    Steve> versions or anything much that would allow me to sort the problem
    Steve> out in advance.

I think many of the warnings generated for integer division will just wind
up in Apache log files where nobody will see them.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 09:59:08 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:59:08 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com> <3B4C5274.2220577C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <n2moktssh2n9vpvr6bmrmvga1p2dr87mon@4ax.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:19:48 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>Joe Potter wrote:
>> 
>> On 10 Jul 2001 20:29:23 -0400, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:
>> 

<snip>

>> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to follow and the
>> translation into Python show me where I am missing Python techniques.
>> 
>> My purpose in writing this is simply to say you are not just helping Mr. Wong when
>> you respond.
>
>Good point, Joe.  My slightly boorish response failed to consider that fact.
>

I sorta figured you might have forgot that a lot of newbies lurk here. 
(I wonder how many)

>
>On the other hand, posting obscure one-liners from C is not necessarily
>the best way to learn much, if anything about Python.  Context is always
>useful, and the response might be different if more of the original
>C code were made available.  I think this is similar to an attempt
>to translate from one spoken language into another, one word at a time,
>which looks like it works for a while but doesn't withstand serious
>scrutiny.
>

I have bought 5 books on Python in the last three weeks, and 2 on MySQL. I have a
working program now which uses Tkinter/Python/Gadfly. I had to pick up gui
programming and learn SQL to do the program the way I wanted. The folks here have
been wonderful --- make that damn wonderful --- in providing help. So, it is not as
if I am trying to learn Python with just his one-liners.

However, it has been great fun to see if I could do the little one-liners in Python
before I read what the crowd suggests. Sorta like problems in a math text with
answers in the back.



>(As it stands, Steve kindly wrote to me off-line and mentioned he was
>attempting to port GnuGo from C to Python as a learning exercise.  If
>we want "context" we can always go look at the source ourselves. :-)
>
>Joe (and other self-professed newbies), why don't you find some other
>interesting one-liners (or two, or three-liners) and post them here?
>

I will try to do so as soon as I get the MySQL module working so I can port my little
program out of Gadfly and into MySQL.

>
>Maybe the code base for GnuGo is not one of the best sources of example
>code for conversion to Python...  Based on a sample size of three,
>it consists of 33% strtok() calls and 67% sscanf() calls, making it
>one of the all-time poorest C programs! ;-)

One of the worst perhaps, but I am positive that I wrote the very worst one in 1986
while modeling population growth for a math grad class. Also, I think I recall that
extrapolation from a small data set can lead to erroneous conclusions.
:-) 



Warmest Regards, Joe



From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 08:21:47 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:21:47 +0200
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <87g0c5oybk.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>
References: <mailman.994755195.13246.python-list@python.org> <87g0c5oybk.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>
Message-ID: <20010710142147.Y8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 06:47:27AM -0400, Inconsistent Meowbot wrote:

> So, it looks like the One and Only Real True Way to call nice() is to
> set errno to 0, raise an exception only if errno is set after the call
> completes, and not to trust the return value to actually mean anything
> unless you know what platform you're on and what its nice returns.

This is why we have Python. We'll emulate the standard behaviour even on
Linux, using getpriority() when necessary, and converting -1-error-values to
exceptions, solving that problem nicely, too. See SF patch #439995:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=439995&group_id=5470&atid=305470

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul  8 18:47:23 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 22:47:23 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org> <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com> <cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9khonr.gg0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:43:13 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Actually, Paul's proposal to write
>
>  x has y
>
>instead of
>
>  hasattr(x, 'y')
>
>has a nice Pythonic ring to it, and the fact that you have to use
>quotes with hasattr() has always bothered me.  Too bad I didn't think
>of this 10 years ago; right now, I'd say it's too little value for too
>much disturbance (a new keyword).

Actually, I think there's a nice symmetry to hasattr taking strings.
It is to objects what has_key is to dicts, though it's more important because
dicts are naturally keyed with strings while objects are naturally keyed with
identifiers.

Now, the spelling I don't quite like.  We should have either haskey and
hasattr, or has_key and has_attr.  I prefer the latter, but it's too late now
in any case.

'x has y' would also have a nice resemblance to 'x in y', where one checks if
y is in the object itself, and the other checks if y is in the container the
object represents.  I don't want the former functionality often enough to
think a keyword is worth it, though.


From Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com  Fri Jul 13 13:24:33 2001
From: Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com (Alton, Matthew)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:24:33 -0500
Subject: Newbie list question
Message-ID: <DDF5392E0FB3D41196C10008C7D9AE5D013C438B@STLABCEXG022>

Thank you Mikael!  This explanation is concise and enlightening.
I drew up one of my pointer diagrams (inspired by Feynman Diagrams)
based on your explanation and the little light bulb came on.

Intriguing language, Python.  Just fascinating.  I'm having fun!

-----Original Message-----
From: Mikael Olofsson [mailto:mikael at isy.liu.se]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:14 PM
To: Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: RE: Newbie list question


Hi Matthew!

Welcome to the world of Python.

On 13-Jul-2001 Matthew Alton wrote:
 >  I am a UNIX/C programmer w/15y experience.  Forgive me if my neural
 >  pathways are all about following pointers.  The adjustment to
 >  Python-think is bumpy but I'll get by with a little help from my
 >  friends, eh?

Before we start; everything is a pointer in Python.

 >  Here's the crux of the biscuit:
 >  
 > >>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.

Actually, we have a pointer foo pointing to a list of pointers to 
the strings 'a', 'b', and 'c'.

 > >>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?

We copy the pointer foo. So bar now points to the same list as foo.

 > >>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.

baz points to a copy of the list. However, that list still points to 
the same strings...

The pointer stuff explains the following.

 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']
 > >>> bar 
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
 > >>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
 >  bar (?)
 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
 > >>> bar
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
 >  expected.

But now things happen:

 > >>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

The RHS creates a new list containing pointers to strings 'a', 'b', and
'c'. The LHS binds foo to this new list, i.e. foo now points to the new
list. You have not done anything to bar. 

 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
 > >>> bar
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz still unaffected, of course.
 > >>> 

I suggest that you go through your code again and try id(foo), id(bar),
and id(baz) here and there. The function id(pointer) returns an integer,
basically the address of pointer.

All this is documented behaviour. However, I do not have the time to find 
it for you right now. I'm sorry.

Good luck
/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    13-Jul-2001
Time:    18:59:45

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From dsavitsk at e-coli.net  Fri Jul 13 22:40:31 2001
From: dsavitsk at e-coli.net (douglas savitsky)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 02:40:31 GMT
Subject: VB client, Python server: NULL result ...
References: <q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <ziO37.35492$C81.2894779@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

have you tried registering with the --debug argument?  i had similar
troubles, and i found that sometimes i have to restart both pythonwin and vb
to clear the memory.

doug


"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> On three separate systems I am experiencing the same problem trying to
> create an Python COM object from VB. The VB satetement
>
>     Set obj = CreateObject("Python.Dictionary")
>
> (or any other Python COM object) gives the dreaded error 80004005, with
the
> message:
>
>     Unexpected Python Error: exceptions.SystemError: NULL result without
> error in call_object
>
> No problem creating "Python.Interpreter", (not, of course, written in
> Python) for example. So it doesn't appear to be a VB client problem.
>
> A Python client can do what I'm trying to do in VB, using Dispatch, so the
> COM object registration is at least half right (I'm using UseCommandLIne()
> to register and de-register).
>
> Seems I must have overlooked something dead obvious, so I'm hoping the
> collective wisdom of c.l.py will quickly tell me what. Couldn't find
> anything on ActiveState's site.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>
>
>
>
>




From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 05:49:38 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 13:49:38 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Discussions and developing
In-Reply-To: <DCB%6.382672$eK2.78065159@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107011339370.22883-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Nick Perkins wrote:

>The newsgroup is a bit like an evolving ecosystem.  A certain balance is
>achieved by the fact that really dumb questions generate fewer and shorter
>responses, while really interesting ones generate more and longer responses.
>In turn, the level of response may influence whether (and how often) similar
>questions are asked in the future.

Certainly. I do not complain about newbies questions. I just see like lot
of energy is spent in discussions which go round and round, like
discussion about a += 1.

It's like a positional war and is very boring... I think maillist is not
right technology for this kind of discussions. Maybe Wiki is more
appropriate and productive: no need to quote, counter-arguments could be
put right after arguments without need to look thru quotings or lots of
earlier posts. Also less typing ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From alavoor at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 22:45:10 2001
From: alavoor at yahoo.com (alavoor)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 02:45:10 GMT
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM 
 21 July 2001!!!
Message-ID: <3B54F839.AC6C11C3@yahoo.com>

All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
21 July 2001!!!

hello:
You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.

Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.

Do you know that Cesium Atomic clock located in Boulder, Colarado, USA
is the world's most accurate clock!! It does not lose or gain one second

even after running for 25 MILLION YEARS!!! This clock is the official
time USA and for the world.

There are also similar Atomic clocks in France, UK, Germany and Japan.

This program runs on MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/ME and MS Windows 3.11.

This program also runs on all flavors of Unix and Linux and Apple Mac.

Please download the program from:
 http://phpclasses.upperdesign.com/browse.html/package/285




From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 27 11:27:18 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:27:18 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <48F88F43C9842AD9.1E631B0D03856868.6FDBB21E772A6CB3@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <9js18m$n54$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

According to Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com>:
> On the other hand, lots of people are using SOAP,
> it'll get better, and, if performance annoys enough
> capable people, someone will invent a reworked 
> transport layer that solves these problems.

There's BEEP, formerly known as BXXP. RFC 3080 and 3081, I think.

A new Internet-draft talks about running SOAP over BEEP.

See www.beepcore.org.

(Python implementation seems to have fallen behind.)

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From stupot999 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 22:53:22 2001
From: stupot999 at hotmail.com (Soup-a-Stu)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 03:53:22 +0100
Subject: I want to do something:
References: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com> <Xns90ECAC6078D75cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <u0497.7910$ip4.2331123@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>

i get given a new IP every single connection, vecause i have free internet i
get disconnected every single 2 hours so in my case some hours would be bad,
every 10-15 minutes would be alright... possibly every 5.



"chris liechti" <cliechti at mails.ch> wrote in message
news:Xns90ECAC6078D75cliechtimailsch at 62.2.32.50...
> [posted and mailed]
>
> "Jeremy Moles" <xione at bellsouth.net> wrote in
> news:jYy87.177$vM1.2880 at e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com:
> > Basically, what this code does is get my IP address and upload it to my
> > webserver - since my IP is dynamic, and I never quite know what it is
> > when I leave this house.
> >
> > But anyways - how can I do this - say - every minute or so? Could I:
> >
> > import time
> >
> > while(time.time()%60==0):
> >     do_my_function()
> >
> this will not do what you want.. surround the modulo expression with
> int(...) otherwise it chances are small that it will be zero (the
> probability for the milliseconds beeing exacly zero are 1/1000 and % with
> floats returns a float reminder). also this while loop would exit when it
> sould do the function call but call it in a loop when you want to wait
(and
> does this with 100% CPU load)...
>
> i would do it with sleep:
> -------
> import time
>
> while 1:
>     do_my_function()     #upload file
>     time.sleep(600)    #wait ten minits
> -------
> i also think that ten minits or some hours are enough. usually the IP is
> valid for some longer time. i now get the same IP assigned (DHCP) for over
> one month and i switch off the pc every night.
>
> chris <cliechti at mails.ch>
>




From saabdaniel at yahoo.se  Mon Jul  9 05:35:21 2001
From: saabdaniel at yahoo.se (Daniel Larsson)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 02:35:21 -0700
Subject: How to include e.g. module variables in Happydoc generated files?
Message-ID: <d6b13572.0107090135.41f66c2b@posting.google.com>

Hi!

I'm using Happydoc to document a package. It's a very nice tool, but
my problem is that it only includes doc strings and comments in the
documentation. Is there a way to make it include e.g. variable names
in the documentation for a file? I'm using a file that only contains
"constant" declarations on the form

CONSTANT_NAME = 999.9

and since these constants are used in the calls to functions in the
other package files, it would be nice for future users to be able to
see the available constant names in the module documentation for the
constant file.

I don't want to use e.g. Pydoc or PythonDoc since I can't import all
modules refered to in my package. I also don't want to add a text
comment for each "constant".

Thank you in advance, 
Daniel Larsson


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 23:44:45 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:44:45 -0400
Subject: Javascript + Python...
References: <mailman.995037983.15466.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FC02D.C2373022@engcorp.com>

"Vincent A. Primavera" wrote:
> 
> Hello,
>         Does anyone know if there are ways to have JavaScript(client side...)
> "communicate" with Python(server side...) via variables(environmental?)
> etc...?

Things that are unclear in your posting:

1. Your environment (are you limiting this to Windows machines? 
   particular versions of Javascript?)

2. What "communicate" means.  Even you seem unsure...

3. Why you want to use "variables" instead of, say, sockets or something else.

4. What environmental (sic) variables have to do with this.  
   *Environment* variables are unrelated to network communications.

5. What you are actually trying to accomplish.  Providing some context
   with questions like this is the most helpful way to get useful responses,
   instead of borderline rude ones like this. :-)

By the way, one possibly I've seen used was MSXML3's special "load" 
function to retrieve from a Python server data formatted as XML.
This only works with IE 5.0 or later with the MSXML3 parser installed
and in any case I'm fairly sure from the way you asked the question
that this solution is not readily available to you...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Wed Jul 25 12:01:36 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:01:36 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-FD4197.09013625072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <cpzo9t80l7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> In a farther future, when PEP 228 is fully implemented, Python may
> only have *one* (built-in) numeric type, "number".

Uh oh, if this is a later change than 238, does this mean we have to wait 
until Python 4.0 for the grand unification?
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 03:01:43 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:01:43 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> If you forget about 'isinstance' then everything is ok, right?
> 'in' performs some membership test whose details depend on the second
> argument. It should not be more confusing that '+' being either addition
> of numbers and concatenation of sequences. We don't expect "a"-(-"b")
> to be equivalent to "a"+"b" just because 3-(-4) is equivalent to 3+4.
> 
> Now thow in 'isinstance' as an old way to spell a specific membership
> test (for types and classes) which doesn't have to be learned about
> at all.

I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
Checked into CVS!

> > Or you could just say that type objects implement a __contains__
> > method that does an isinstance. But if classes and types are unified,
> > that would get in the way of classes that define __contains__.
> 
> It indeed shows a flaw in unifying "attributes of instances which
> are defined by their classes" with "attributes of class objects
> themselves".
> 
> For example many objects are hashed by what o.__hash__() returns,
> but not type objects, because their __hash__ is something completely
> different (it expects an argument and hashes it instead of the
> receiver). Similarly for most magic methods.
> 
> It more or less works because intersection of proper attributes of
> type objects and attributes which are always polymorphically extracted
> using names (and not slots in the representation of type objects)
> happens to be empty.
> 
> This is so hardwired into Python and pushed by type/class unification
> that I don't believe it can be avoided without redesigning the language
> from scratch.
> 
> This particular case of __contains__ is not different than e.g.
> __hash__ or __str__. You can't redefine in Python how your class object
> (or type object in Python-2.2) will be hashed or printed, you won't
> be able to override the membership test either (and you can't now
> AFAIK) - unless something solves the generic problem of putting class
> attributes and static instance attributes in one namespace.

Good analysis of this particular problem, and indeed I've given up on
fixing it.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Tue Jul 24 12:37:49 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:37:49 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com> <m2puaqh6t2.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8B2C2EF3FBmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

Paul Foley <see at below> wrote in news:m2puaqh6t2.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz:

> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:23:34 +0100, Stephen Horne wrote:
>> As the saying goes, Lotsof-Infuriatingly-Stupid-Parentheses.
> 
> Lisp doesn't have any parentheses.  You must be thinking of Scheme.

Huh?
    	(defun list-reverse (list)
    	    (do ((x list (cdr x))
    	         (y '() (cons (car x) y)))
    	        ((endp x) y)))

(Steele, "Common Lisp, The Language")

Looks like lots of parentheses to me.


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul 22 12:22:54 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:22:54 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Arthur Siegel and I seem to be pushing each other's buttons
constantly.  I don't know why it is, but ever post of his feels like a
flame or flamebait to me.  I always feel that he attacks me as a
person rather than attacking my arguments (usually because he claims
that I haven't given any arguments).  Try as I may, this makes it very
hard, almost impossible for me to respond in a meaningful manner to
Arthur's posts.  I wonder what I've done to tick him off.  I also
wonder how come he is so good at ticking me off.

The reason for wanting / to return a float (or at least a type that
can represent close approximations of numbers like 0.75) has been
discussed many times before.  The summary of the argument in the PEP
may not be complete, but I disagree with Arthur's assessment that
integer division is not a problem -- the VPython folks have ample
experience that it is.

Because all Arthur does is tick me off, I'll leave it at this -- maybe
someone else can explain it all to him.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 01:00:25 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:00:25 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
In-Reply-To: <9hqoe8019j5@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107030854220.15928-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
>news:mailman.994100826.19440.python-list at python.org...
>> It seems I start to understand database concerns of Mr. Wilson the second.
>>
>> Once we tried 3 databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase) to suit our task.
>> And for every database (we stopped at Interbase) there was Python support.
>>
>> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
>> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
>
>Internet Information Server (IIS) serves webpages, including Active
>Server Pages (ASP), but neither has anything to do with database access.
>
>What you're using to access databases in such a setting is most likely
>MSDAC (MicroSoft Data Access Controls, I believe) and specifically the
>ADO (Active Data Objects, I believe) part thereof.  So if that's what you
>like, why not access it from Python?  I happen to like it quite a bit too,
>and as it happens Python + win32all makes it a snap to use it (on a
>Win32 platform, only, of course -- but then, that's where IIS runs, too,
>or has MS released it for OpenBSD lately?-).

Yes, ADO is what I meant.

With the recent object-orientation hype, Windows looks more attractive to
developers than UNIX. Probably ADO adds to it.

>> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
>> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
>
>Yep, the recordset part of ADO is undoubtedly the most popular single
>feature of it among us lazy programmers.  You can even disconnect from
>the DB and keep the recordset around, persist it to a file (maybe in XML),
>depersist it later... it's fun!-)

I have not tried Zope (it's overkill for our tasks) but I think
Zope must have something similar.

>> From this and also from my own experience with PostgeSQL queries from
>> Python, I could say that DB support in Python exists, but need enhancement
>> and standartization. Probably, higher level more or less common
>> object-oriented interfaces could help this.
>
>It seems to me the (DB API 2) standard is fine (maybe a bit too
>ambitious, so actual implementations may not have reached up
>to it yet?-).
>
>> I must also say, that I myself am completely satisfied with Python DB
>> support, but I do not use DB extentensively and routinely to judge.
>> However, I think that including some more DB support, at least for open
>> source databases like Postgresql and MySQL + ODBC/JDBC, could be a good
>> idea and will give a standard. (Yes, I know about Python DB API).
>
>And?  What's wrong with it?

According to some individuals here it makes Python dead snake :-))))

>What support would you get from ODBC,
>portably between Postgres & MySQL, that the relevant DB API modules
>don't supply?  Maybe we could supply an ADO-recordset-workalike on
>top of any DB API compliant implementation, that might be handy at
>times I guess.  But hardly a make-or-break thing, no?

>> Are there licensing problems or what stops from letting RDB support
>> modules into standard library?
>
>Why would I want to have to download support for many databases
>I don't use each and every time I download Python?  It's bad enough
>getting the Irix or Mac stuff as a part of my (e.g.) Windows d'load --
>why would I want Postgres and/or MySQL and/or Oracle and/or SQL
>Server and/or (&c) if what I end up using is Interbase (as you did)?

This is clever. Though ADO-like higher-level abstraction could
be useful.

>If I had a vote, I'd rather seen _Gadfly_ tuned up (out with regex
>and regsub, in favour of re; minimal-tolerance support of stuff it
>does not implement, such as NULLs) and made a part of Python.

Yes, this could be cool.

> It
>might give a taste of SQL to SQL-unaware programmers and it would
>provide a DB API implementation (usable like dumbdbm is as the
>last-choice fallback for anydbm, if you see what I mean).  But it sure
>wouldn't be THE db of choice for demanding professional use -- go
>see Oracle or SQL Server for that, or maybe Interbase, MySQL &c if
>that's what rocks your boat.  The DB scene seems just too fragmented
>at this point in time to warrant including support for 10% of it in
>the standard Python library, I think...

>Alex

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/




From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul  7 18:24:06 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 15:24:06 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <9i5guj$7kg$1@panix6.panix.com> <cphewokhez.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i8266$3s6$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <cphewokhez.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:
>>
>> I'm in agreement with Guido that at least two releases are necessary
>> (I also agree that it could be two warning releases).  But I think
>> Guido's step 3 (if used) should be changed to the semantically equivalent
>> 
>>     In Python 2.4, integer division with the '/' operator raises an
>>     exception.  This exception can be caught as usual, but the
>>     programmer should prepare for the next release of Python by either
>>     using the div() function or by using the future directive to get
>>     floating point division.
>
>Oh, Aazh!  I wasn't writing a formal specification, I was sketching a
>plan.  In that context, using "make it an error" is the right level of
>detail.  Everybody can fill in for themselves that that means it's an
>exception, since that's how we typically signal errors in Python.

Given that the person who followed up to you didn't seem to quite get
this, I figured it was a worthwhile clarification.  <shrug>
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 07:21:58 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:21:58 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B639C.FF5961E7@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.995848837.9325.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <k61olt001jfs878bo50snpb9f2uu80utee@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:39:43 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>Your choice, but my guess is that Guido has done an excellent job of
>maintaining backward compatibility so far (he burned me by changing
>str(long) to stop producing a trailing "L", and I must have spent nearly 20
>minutes recovering from that -- BFD).

Of course - so far. In 2.2, the biggest issue is the new 'yield'
keyword, for instance - easy to fix, and not a problem for me because
I have a naming convention where identifiers always contain at least
one uppercase letter.

Changing the behaviour of a fundamental arithmetic operator is going
to ruin this record quite effectively, I think.

Integers are much more used in scripting code than floats - subscripts
and loop indices being the main culprits. Integer division happens
quite a bit. All that code is just going to suddenly stop working. How
nice.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 16:39:38 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:39:38 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpg0bmqfzs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lrln1.aq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cpwv4yoyd8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[PEP 253]
> >>    Isn't this backwards incompatible? Won't it break existing code? It
> >>    would, if we changed the method resolution order for all classes.
> >>    However, in Python 2.2, the new lookup rule will only be applied to
> >>    types derived from built-in types, which is a new feature. Class
> >>    statements without a base class create "classic classes", and so do
> >>    class statements whose base classes are themselves classic classes.
> >>    For classic classes the classic lookup rule will be used. (To
> >>    experiment with the new lookup rule for classic classes, you will be
> >>    able to specify a different metaclass explicitly.) We'll also provide
> >>    a tool that analyzes a class hierarchy looking for methods that would
> >>    be affected by a change in method resolution order.

> Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:33:34 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:
> 
> > There are many things that could be improved here.  What exactly is
> > bothering you about it?

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> That a subtle difference in the program (deriving from a class which
> inherits from a builtin type instead of using delegation) causes a
> non-obvious subtle change in the behavior which doesn't seem related
> to the source (method lookup order).

This is a compromise between breaking backwards compatibility and
doing the right thing.

> If some consistent rule of method lookup order is going to eventually
> win, no matter which, then I didn't say anything. But if such fuzzy
> behaviors are going to stay, they feel almost as bad as would
> "'/' rounds down if you used '%' in the program or towards 0 otherwise"
> feel to me.

Eventually the new MRO rule will be the default, but a metaclass that
implements the old rule will be made available for code that requires
backwards compatibility (until demand disappears).  You can write
"__metaclass__ = <some_class>" at the top of your module to choose the
default metaclass.

Fortunately this problem is much easier to detect at compile time than
int division, so a tool that detects potential issues is not hard to
write.  I will definitely give this plenty of time (like I will with
all incompatibilities I introduce).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 24 18:26:53 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:26:53 +0200
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <3B5DEFA2.FCE4B85B@hotmail.com>
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpg0bmqfzs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lrln1.aq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpwv4yoyd8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DEFA2.FCE4B85B@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <20010725002653.D21770@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 09:58:56PM +0000, scott wrote:

> P.S   I hope they don't use Python in my Pension scripts...

Why not ? If all goes well, by that time Python will have done
int/int->float correctly for years, and you won't even end up with monthly
payments of $0 :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From paulsid at home.com  Sat Jul  7 16:57:49 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 14:57:49 -0600
Subject: "has" Operator
Message-ID: <3B4777CD.A6EBEA7F@home.com>

I was thinking that Python might benefit from a "has" operator that
would allow you to type something like this:

if myobject has someattribute:
    foo()
else:
    bar()

This would be roughly equivalent to:

try:
    uselessvar = myobject.someattribute
execpt AttributeError:
    bar()    # myobject does not have someattribute
else:
    foo()    # myobject has someattribute

...but (IMO) the operator version would be much nicer and more
readable.  (This idea came about when I actually tried to type in the
former!  Python's syntax is so clean that it seemed to be a natural
extension.)

The Inform interactive-fiction language provides "has" and "hasnt"
operators that do something similar so this is not without precendent. 
But for Python, it admittedly may be nothing more than syntactic sugar. 
What does everyone else think?

(Please forgive me if this has already been proposed/discussed before.)

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua  Fri Jul 27 17:47:41 2001
From: kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua (Kirill Simonov)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:47:41 +0300
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@python.org on Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 08:01:04PM +0000
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010728004741.A1138@xyz.donetsk.ua>

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 08:01:04PM +0000, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> John Schmitt <jschmitt at vmlabs.com> writes:
> 
> > Why do we have to wait for 2.2?  You can do this already.  
> 
> > >>> import types
> > >>> types.IntType
> > <type 'int'>
> > >>> assert isinstance(0,types.IntType)
> 
> [me, earlier]
> > >   assert isinstance(num, int)
> > >   assert isinstance(msg, str)
> 
> In 2.2 you don't have to import types.

It would be nice to have 'in' operator for types:

assert (num in int)
assert (msg in str)


Kirill.




From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul  3 20:33:11 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:33:11 -0700
Subject: PyArg_Parse
In-Reply-To: <slrn9k4ncv.f00.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <004f01c10420$e81f1420$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

> This is a bit of a silly question, but where is PyArg_Parse
> documented?

Does that function even exist? PyArg_ParseTuple is documented at
http://www.python.org/doc/ext/parseTuple.html

--
Brian Quinlan
Python and XSLT Developer
BrianQ at ActiveState.com

ASPN - ActiveState Programmer Network
Essential programming tools and information
http://www.ActiveState.com/ASPN




From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 17:15:25 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 21:15:25 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b476990.1307204851@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:33:55 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:
[...]
>The "div" keyword would be ideal except for the added complexity of
>adding a new keyword to the language -- do we need a separate warning
>phase here, too?
>
>(Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
>new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
>maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)

What about a 'special' keyword for special semantic scoping,
to control meanings within a block, e.g.,

special use_integer_defaults:
    x = 1/2    # makes zero because of special scope

special use_rationals, use_auto_bignums:
    x = 1/2    # makes rational in pref to float
    x <<= 65   # auto promotion to long of numerator

# back to (proposed) normal
x = 1/2        # makes float 0.5 as normal default

This is not exactly PEP-ready, but I thought I'd offer the idea.
Maybe 'special' might also have natural tie-ins to migration issues?

BTW, should I have posted this under a new heading?


From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul  6 20:26:18 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:26:18 -0700
Subject: Stopping a script in PythonWin?
References: <3B460F65.CBA46D2D@home.net> <ONp17.39923$he.2569508@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B46572A.E1B77690@home.net>

Steve Holden wrote:
> > When using PythonWin, Is it possible to stop a running script without
> > killing the whole IDE? I find that I want to do that on a fairly regular
> > basis, and have not found a way to do it.
> >
> If you look in the system tray you'll see a Python icon (oicon?). Right-menu
> on that has a "break into running script" item. Note that this won't work if
> your program is hanging in systems calls (e.g. waiting for socket input),
> but it's better than nothing.

Thanks, that does the trick

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul  2 21:42:40 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:42:40 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107021638.3dc5429f@posting.google.com>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 05:38:04PM -0700
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107021638.3dc5429f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010702214240.D4372@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 05:38:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
> Yes, you are missing something: my question. I asked about the
> feasibility of using Python for a safety-critical application. I
> didn't ask for a fifth-grade-level analysis of the problem. Trust me:
> you don't have a clue. BTW, I scored in the top 1% in the math section
> of the Graduate Records Exam. How did you do?

I trust you.  Which city did you say you were working at?

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Tue Jul 31 13:01:57 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:01:57 +0100
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:

OK, I've had a good look at this now.

It's hideous!

It's no wonder that people get fed up with computers if they get given a user interface that expects
pointless dashes all over the place.

You simply can't use this routine to code a nice arg string.

My search continues but thanks again for the quick response, Steve.
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 06:08:32 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:08:32 +0200
Subject: Unicode File
References: <3B66179D.1D55B27C@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9k604101pp8@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Tksee Lhsoh" <tksee at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3B66179D.1D55B27C at yahoo.com...
>
> I would like to open and save a file in unicode.
>
>
> For example,
> s=open("unicode_filename").read();
> seems to return oridinary string, not unicode.
>
> What should I do ?

There are several approaches, but I think the
simplest one is to use the unicode() built-in
function, giving it the codec name you want.

For example, suppose string s (e.g. as obtained
from the above operation) is:

>>> s
'\xff\xfec\x00i\x00a\x00o\x00'

e.g. as would be given by encoding UTF-16.  In
this case,

>>> unicode(s,'utf-16')
u'ciao'


As I said there are several other approaches,
but this one may be simplest for simple needs.


Alex





From m at moshez.org  Mon Jul 30 14:27:53 2001
From: m at moshez.org (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:27:53 +0300
Subject: Large-scale Python (was: Language Niches (long))
In-Reply-To: <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>
References: <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>, <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15RHlh-0005rL-00@darjeeling>

On 30 Jul 2001, claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) wrote:

> What role has "language change" played in this, though?
> I don't think Python's syntax or semantics support
> modularization and packaging significantly better than
> in '96

Packages (as opposed to just modules) are post '96, IIRC.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE
Learn Python! http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 13 20:51:49 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 00:51:49 GMT
Subject: FW: Newbie list question
References: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391050@torex004.attcanada.ca> <mailman.995046806.4294.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kv5t5.u3o.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:53:34 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>    Mark> Does:
>
>    Mark> foo += 'c'
>
>    Mark> act like an append then?  I always assumed it was the same as:
>
>    Mark> foo = foo + 'c'
>
>    Mark> which obviously should raise a TypeError.  Here however it works,
>    Mark> in that it appends 'c' to the object to which foo refers and thus
>    Mark> to the object to which bar refers...

I just noticed that too.  Of course, I knew that (+=) on a list maps to
[].extend, but didn't realize that extend would accept a string while (+)
wouldn't.  It's a manifestation of the fact that both lists and strings are
both sequences and hence "sorta similar".

In this case, one version of the operation thinks of strings as lists of
characters, and the other thinks of them as strings ('TypeError: can only
concatenate list (not "string") to list').

This seems inconsistent to me.  Either [].extend('string') should raise a
TypeError or "[1, 2] + 'ab'" should evaluate to [1, 2, 'a', 'b'].


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Tue Jul 24 10:38:03 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:38:03 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se> <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list@python.org> <yTedznATrXX7Ew7W@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3b5d8598.1522578@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:40:35 +0100, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>In article <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list at python.org>, Chris
>Gonnerman <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes
>....
>>I'm guessing here, but I'd bet from the tone of his postings that Robin
>>means
>>
>>    Malevolent Dictator For Life
>>
>>While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
>>version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
>>to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.
>...
>when the Gods smile upon us they are benevolent, when lighting strikes
>they are malevolent. They are still Gods. Luckily we only have
>dictators. Sometimes the dictatorship is good, sometimes bad it's still
>a dictatorship.

Supposing for the sake of argument that the DFL's views on this are
just totally wrong that's still far from "malevolent", could be
he's just stupid.

Not that that seems likely to me, of course (cracks about
orthogonal delphic oracles notwithstanding). And not that the issue 
matters to me, and not that my opinion has any bearing, but I
saw a post by Tim today explaining an aspect of this that seems
totally missing from most of the arguments we see on the topic.

(Look for a post containing the string "500". If there _are_
500 posts on a topic it's a good thing if some of them get
replies from people with contrary views, for the benefit of
people like me who only read a few - I'm certain that what
Tim said has been said many times before, but I hadn't
noticed...)

>-- 
>Robin Becker



David C. Ullrich


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 21:03:29 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:03:29 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4g1c.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> dijo:
> Ruby allows * notation:
> 
> a, b, *c = sequence # `c' gets the rest of the sequence
> 
> which is cute, but I don't like it.  Just another random "convenient" little
> trick to remember.  It's not half as useful as the 1.6 * apply trick.  Let's
> go easy on the syntax gimmicks.

I'm relatively new to Python. What's the '1.6 * apply' trick?

-- 
Little one, I would like to see anyone -- prophet, king or
god -- persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time.
    -- Orange Cat, The Sandman


From arildh at stud.cs.uit.no  Mon Jul  2 11:02:24 2001
From: arildh at stud.cs.uit.no (Arild Hansen)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:02:24 +0200
Subject: Sound recording (wav)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107021659540.19599-100000@arildh.pasta.cs.uit.no>

Hello,

I want to record a sound sample from the microphone. Can anyone give me a
small example of how to do this as I don't seem to figure it out. My
system is as follows:

Linux: 2.4.0
Python: 2.0c1


I just want to record to a wav file either using the Esd frontend for
python (which I have installed and which playbacks sound without problem)
or any other possible method (there are some wav methods in python but I
don't know if I can use them to record sound).

Thx for all help,

AH



From clspence at one.net  Wed Jul 11 15:53:06 2001
From: clspence at one.net (Chris Spencer)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 14:53:06 -0500
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
References: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <qebpktoe7n33altfhpar744nhak7hf4b6u@4ax.com>

	I can confirm these results.  Why would a deleted list retain 90% of its
memory usage after being deleted?  Sounds like a pointer is getting lost
somewhere.

Chris.

On 11 Jul 2001 11:41:25 -0700, msimpson at ioindustries.com (Mike Simpson) wrote:

>I can't figure out how to free the memory used in the creation of a
>large list in Python.
>I am running the Python 2.1 interpreter on Windows 2000 Professional
>to run the following piece of code:
>
>result = []
>for count in xrange(510*478):
>	result.append(count)
>del result
>
>By using Windows Task Manager I was able to determine that 4332K of
>memory was used up until the end of the for loop, but only 960K of
>memory was returned to the system after the call to "del".  Is there
>any way to return the other 3372K of memory to the system without
>quitting the Python interpreter?
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>
>Mike



From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Thu Jul 26 12:56:37 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:56:37 +0200
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> (message from Robin
	Becker on Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:48:00 +0100)
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <26072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>

>>>>> "Robin" == Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

    Robin> it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The
    Robin> popular vote is against the stupid float '/' operator.

Robin, has it ever occured to you that the majority might be *for*
that change?  But because we feel Guido *will* implement that change,
we don't see a need to speak up.

The most vocal group is not necessarily the majority (and much less
right).  There *is* such a thing as a silent majority...

I personally like that change.  And yes, I'll have to fix up some code
too, probably.  But it will be worth it.

Bye, J

PS: What Fran?ois said.

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
              GNOME Desktop Project (http://www.gnome.org)
         I have a firm grip on reality, now I can strangle it.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010726/df608355/attachment.sig>

From nas at python.ca  Mon Jul  9 17:38:13 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:38:13 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>; from web2ed@yahoo.com on Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 12:09:23PM -0700
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com> <7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010709143813.B10434@glacier.fnational.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:
> [...] Python won't bennefit from the best developers, the
> developers who code for a living.

How exactly are these developers going to benefit Python?  It appears to
me that the loss would be minor.  If you think there is something wrong
with the DB support in Python then do something about it.  Posting lots
of whiny messages to c.l.p doesn't help.

  Python-helps-those-who-help-themselves-ly'rs Neil



From piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl  Thu Jul 26 08:17:40 2001
From: piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl (Piotr Legiecki)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:17:40 +0200
Subject: Class with subclass and dynamic lists
Message-ID: <3B600A64.EC187E9@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>

Hi

I can't resolve my problem. Here is the test code 

class A:
  x=[] #it will be list of B objects
  z=None #something, doesn't matter

class B:
  y=None 


#this function adds to A object (arg) B objects with value val
def f(arg, val):
  for i in range(1,3): #to put some values into the list
    arg.x.append(B())
    l=len(arg.x)-1      #well, it is just added the last object in a
list, 
    arg.x[l].y=val+i     #assign him somethig
    print 'in f', arg.x[l].y # test
    print l                   #test, here I can see, that my list in
class A (x[]) is THE SAME for all the
                        #A instances! Why?

def main():
  p=[]  #list of class A objects
  p.append(A()) #make 2 objects of class A
  f(p[0], 10)   #send object A, from list of A's objects (I hope) to add
a list of B objects to A object
  p[0].z='aaa'

  p.append(A()) #second A object
  p[1].z='bbb'
  f(p[1],20)

#testing, not good
  print p[0].x[0].y 
  print p[0].x[1].y
  print p[0].z
  print p[1].x[0].y #here I have the same values as in p[0].x[0].y, why?
  print p[1].x[1].y #why p[1].x is the same list for both (p[0], p[1]) A
objects?
  print p[1].z
  print p[0].z

main()

-- 
Regards
Piotr Legiecki


From simonb at webone.com.au  Wed Jul 11 23:58:50 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:58:50 +1000
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <TX837.333827$p33.6744731@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4D207A.90100@webone.com.au>

Why is Eiffel better anyway?
It's faster, OK, and it
has nifty assertions as part of the language,
but, well i tried them both and
i vote for python.


Greg Jorgensen wrote:

>I read that Python is too slow for MUDs, and Eiffel is better anyway. Try
>Eiffel or Haskell if you are blind.
>
>
>"tyler spivey" <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote in message
>news:V%337.677940$166.13952126 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
>
>>could you write a fast mud  in python?
>>having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
>>how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
>>can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
>>I am blind myself.
>>
>
>



From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 16 13:50:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:50:02 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5328D7.34DDA5C1@tundraware.com>

John Machin wrote:
> 
<SNIP>

(Sound of TV Audience Clapping And Yelling, "Good Answer, John")


In the situation I am using this, I don't need to known whether
the digits are in range.  I am looking at a log file and just
want to know whether a given field is in host name or IP quad
format (so I can do an reverse on the quad)...

Thanx to all who chimed in... and here I thought I understood
re construction ... boy, am I a loser ;)

> Now for the third big two-byte saving: throw away the rightmost set of
> capturing parentheses.
> ipquad   = r"^(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}$"
> Either (a) you have no intention of retrieving parts of the matched
> string later, so the "capturing" functionality is of no use to you, or
> (b) you haven't considered this: if your input string is
> "010.020.030.040", then with your original re, groups 0 and 1 will be
> "010.020.030.040", group 2 will be "030." and group 3 will "040" --
> about as useful as a hip pocket on an athletic supporter.
> 
> OK, so now we've trimmed the text description of the re down a little,
> let's revisit the "legitimate IP address" notion. Is 999.999.999.999
> now a legitimate IP address? Last I heard, the max for each little
> doodad was 255. If so, you may not want to cr[au]ft a complicated re
> to try to enforce that. The one-liner freaks would no doubt relish a
> challenge to come up with something better than
> 
> max(map(int, your_input_string.split("."))) > 255
> 
> to use as a test *after* the uncomplicated_re.match() is successful.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 00:51:08 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 04:51:08 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com> <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b622f18.603981038@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:59:16 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
[...]
>
>IEEE 754, the floating point standard in use in virtually all current
>hardware, mandates that -0.0 be distinguishable from 0.0, in order to
>be able to represent the sign of degenerated underflow results.  (Or
>so I understand, having been educated in IEEE 754 through numerous
>discussions with Tim Peters, but not by reading the standard.  If I'm
>wrong, Tim will surely correct me. :-)
>
>I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
>box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.
>
My gut feeling is that the symmetry of sign,magnitude numbers in IEEE754 is not good
when you are dealing with a mapping of the real axis to the unit circle. It doesn't
feel right to me, though probably it's not of much practical consequence.

But, speaking of the unit circle, UIAM Scheme has what appears to me to be a wart.
Functions that return angles apparently do so as values in (-pi,pi] rather than
[-pi,pi). To me that is a wart. Apparently Scheme got it from APL, and I still haven't
got to the local U library to see the referenced paper with the rationale. Mathematically,
you can't translate the interval by exactly pi and get a 2pi interval that includes zero!
It strikes me as weird to exclude zero and include 2pi. [1]

And look what that interval does if you want to turn it into a Python index range
for k steps of 2*pi/k. Adding pi to an angle puts it in (0,2pi] -- and unless you
turn 2pi into zero before doing angle*k//twopi, you will have an out of range index
when an arctangent returns pi instead of -pi.

My intel book says the pentium FPATAN instruction returns radians with a magnitude
*less than* pi, so whatever constant is defined as pi for purposes of returning it
from software, the choice must have been made there between +pi and -pi, or they just
return whatever the hardware provides, which would make the scheme documentation wrong
about the interval. It could either be called (-pi,pi) or [-pi,pi], but not half open.

Is this something that might be given a clean resolution in Python?
I.e., [-pi,pi) , IMHO ;-)

[1] Afterthought ... unless angles are being represented inversely somewhere,
i.e., as x when you want 2*pi/x.


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 21 14:14:15 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 14:14:15 -0400
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etd3d7qxi88.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu>

Not really.  There are some ways you could speed up the python code:

def LogError(msg):
   old = open("./error.log", "r").read()
   err = open("./error.log", "w")
   err.write(msg)
   err.write(old)

...but you're still going to be reading a lot from the disk only to
write it straight back out again.  There's the additional problem that
opening "err" will truncate the log file, and if an error occurs while
you're writing the new version back, you could lose messages.

HTH.
Alex.


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 18 18:38:54 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 22:38:54 GMT
Subject: basic python-unix question
References: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9lc3vt.85k.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:51:25 GMT, Ed T <spi at micro.soft> wrote:
>Hi Folks,
>New to Python and have been unable to us the "ps ef |grep" command
>correctly. From what I can tell I need to use the os.system() command. But
>have had no luck. Here an example of a basic script:
>
>import os, sys
>process = ("test1", "test2")
>
>for eachProcess in process:
>     os.system('ps ef | grep eachProcess')
>
>
>The idea is to place processes that should be running into a for loop and
>see if it is running. When I do the above it appears only to check for the
>word "eachProcess" not for the process (i.e., test1 or test2). Is this a
>case of how to enter this command where substitution takes place in Python?

Yes.  Automatic substitution does not take place at all.  Strings will never
change their contents.

There are many functions that operate on strings, though.

You can concatenate strincgs with (+):
    'ps ef | grep ' + eachProcess

You can interpolate strings with (%):
    'ps ef | grep %s' % eachProcess

Read the docs for more.

As an aside, the above os.system is not a very good way to check for running
processes (you want a >/dev/null in there at least, not to mention that it
will break if you move it to a bsd).  I recommend finding out the relevant
pids and using os.kill(0, pid).


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 11 16:38:13 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:38:13 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>
Message-ID: <un16bcibu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Konrad Hinsen <hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr> writes:

> Sounds like a good idea. Just the existence of two division operators
> would help newbies to recognize that there is a nontrivial problem.
> And a//b definitely beats (a+0.)/b, which does the trick, but is not
> at all evident.

Well, I'd probably suggest using "float(a)/b" instead which at least
makes it a little easier to see what's going on :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 10:11:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:11:04 -0400
Subject: python vs kung fu
References: <50220745.0107170521.24f1c18b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B544778.CFC9293B@engcorp.com>

neil bromehead wrote:
> 
> It seems that, just like in chinese kung fu circles, lots of people
> are trying to justify their style (python in this case) to themselves,
> myself included. why ?, all styles can be equally effective , it
> depends on how you use them !

Without debating whether all styles are equally effective (see
Ultimate Fighting for example :-), I think there's another point
you aren't considering.  (And clearly Shorinji-ryu Karate is 
superior to chinese kung fu! ;-)

> so rather than get into endless arguments with java guys or perl guys
> about the virtues of python , lets just try to beat them at their own
> game !

Many of us are idealists who feel saddened that so many are 
effectively wasting their time with languages which are holding
them back.  We feel the urge (obviously an irresistable one :) to
try to convince those miscreants^H^H^H^H^H poor misguided souls
that they could better spend their time with Python.  That they
would be more productive, enjoy their work more, produce higher
quality results, and spend more time programming and less time
debugging.  That pragmatism and simplicity are far more 
important than optimization and the ability to write entire
applications in one line.

We are not so much arguing as trying to show them that we 
_understand_ their points, and in fact used to think the same
way, but that we have found a better way and want to see them
try it out for themselves.  Definitely sounds like religion:
probably indistinguishable, but that doesn't mean we should
all stop and silently use Python for our own applications and
never breathe a word of it to another soul...

Some of us just don't want to be the "quiet revolutionary"
who has played such an important role in history, sitting at
home peacefully practicing his new world-view and waiting
for the rest of the world to realize how effective it is...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Mon Jul  9 00:41:36 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:41:36 GMT
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <bqa27.442234$eK2.89986862@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <4Ca27.657799$166.13617032@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Sorry. I still dont understand. Its just more confusing now.




From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 16:01:42 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:01:42 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <o8a6lt0sdmgbm6vn939no9chocul4fpq10@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6inc.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Ben Wolfson <rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org> dijo:
> In that case you can eliminate a whole line this way:
> 
> def valid_ip(ip):
>     m = re.match( r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
>     return (m and max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256)) or 0

You meant:
     return (m and max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256) or 0
of course?

You have a knack for one-liners. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
<wink>

-- 
I am following my fish.
    -- Delirium, The Sandman


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 21:13:05 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:13:05 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <9jhmoc$9nm$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEICLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> Why is that?  It's because unlike any other builtin arithmetic
> operation, "/" today can cause *catastrophic* loss of
> information silently, and in ordinary cases.

[Roy Smith]
> Surely assignment causes catastrophic loss of information, no?  If I
> say "x = 4", havn't I lost the old value of x?

Possibly (you may have aliases for the same value -- I can't guess), but if
so that was either your intent or a logic error in your code.

> Multiplication by zero causes catastrophic loss of information too.

No.  x*0 is exactly 0:  the true result is the result you get.  3/4 is--
forgetting the conceits of computer numerics for a moment --exactly 0.75,
and sqrt(pi)**2 is exactly pi, and exp(log(1 + 1e-200))-1 is exactly 1e-200.
In the first case a result of 0 is 100% loss of the full truth (and so
"catastrophic" in this sense); in the second case 754 double arithmetic may
lose about 1 part in 2**53 of the full truth (and so is an insignificant
loss of information for most applications); while in the last case 754
double arithmetic will return 0, again a 100% loss of information (not
academic:  that kind of expression with small |x| is important in financial
models).

> Should we redefine how those operations work too?

Sounds even sillier to me than it did to you, you know.




From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 18:08:09 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:08:09 -0400
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
In-Reply-To: <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDBLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Sheila King]
> ...
> That's because the "big picture" is the general overview of how the
> parent class works. It is a general question, which is why I wanted to
> see the source for the class (which is all I originally asked for...a
> pointer to the source files...and that question has since been
> answered.) Actually, I just downloaded the source for 1.5.2 and am
> looking at exceptions.py and am finding it quite enlightening.
>
> This is silly. I'm defending asking to see the source code. ????

You don't have to defend yourself -- Guido will do it for you <wink>.  He
opened a bug report on SourceForge today:

    #443559  creating exceptions is underdocumented

and attached one of your first msgs as evidence.  This area is indeed
"underdocumented".




From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 11 16:04:21 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:04:21 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpca4.t6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 11 Jul 2001 19:00:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>And that works fine.  But *why* is the trailing comma designed into the
>language semantics this way.  I've been scratching my head and cannot come
>up with a rationale'.  It seems to me that the explicit use of the parens
>should be telling python that I want the second entry in each data
>structure to be a *tuple* of 0 or more tuples.

Because parens are overloaded.  Consider:

print (10 + 5) * 3

Do you expect

45

or

(15, 15, 15)

?


>Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to prepare
>the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
>
>        (()), (), ((,)) ???

Did you try it?  According to the documentation you use

((), (), ())

The documentation also recognizes that () vs. (one_elt,) vs. (two, elts) is
ugly, but there's no getting around it unless we get keyboards with more
bracket keys.

Large complicated data structures of nested tuples might be a mistake.  Tuples
and python's simple pattern matching can be handy for small ad hoc types, but
don't forget about classes.


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Wed Jul  4 15:24:43 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 19:24:43 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
Message-ID: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Hi folks,

I've been working on a text for PEP 2. Currently, PEP 2 is a 3 line
text written by Eric Raymond:

http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0002.html

Tim Peters suggested we fleshed it out, so I've made the attempt. I've
conferred with Eric to make sure I wasn't stepping on any toes there.

The PEP that follows officially has no number yet; it hasn't been
assigned one yet. My hope is of course i'tll be accepted as PEP 2.

Carlos Ribeiro has also been working on a text, which may become a 
separate PEP or may be merged into this one. The two texts are 
fairly complementary; Carlos talks more about guidelines for what
the modules should look like, while my text talks more about the
acceptance procedure. I'm in communication with Carlos about further
development of that text.

Comments are very welcome. I'll attempt to integrate any feedback and
will try to move this forward if the feedback is positive.

This text assumes the community will play a large role in developing and 
maintaining any standard library modules. So, community, please give 
some feedback.

Title: Producedure for Adding New Modules

Introduction

    The Python Standard Library contributes significantly to Python's
    success. The language comes with "batteries included", so it is
    easy for people to become productive with just the standard
    library alone. It is therefore important that this library grows
    with the language, and that such growth is supported and
    encouraged.

    Many contributions to the library are not created by core
    developers but by people from the Python community who are experts
    in their particular field. Furthermore, community members are also
    the users of the standard library, applying it in a great
    diversity of settings. This makes the community well equipped to
    detect and report gaps in the library; things that are missing but
    should be added.

    New functionality is commonly added to the library in the form of
    new modules. This PEP will describe the procedure for the
    _addition_ of new modules. PEP 4 deals with procedures for
    deprecation of modules; the _removal_ of old and unused modules
    from the standard library. Finally there is also the issue of
    _changing_ existing modules to make the picture of library
    evolution complete. PEP 3 and 5 give some guidelines on this. The
    continued maintenance of existing modules is an integral part of
    the decision on  This
    PEP also introduces concepts (integrators, maintainers) relevant
    to this issue.
    
Integrators

    The integrators are a group of people with the following
    responsibilities:

    - They determine if a proposed contribution should become part of
      the standard library.

    - They integrate accepted contributions into the standard library.

    - They produce standard library releases.

   This group of people shall be PythonLabs, led by Guido.


Maintainer(s)

    All contributions to the standard library need one or more
    maintainers. This can be an individual, but frequently is a group
    of people such as for instance the XML-SIG. Groups may subdivide
    maintenance tasks among themselves. One ore more maintainers shall
    be the _head maintainer_ (usually this is also the main
    developer). Head maintainers are convenient people the integrators
    can address if they want to resolve specific issues, such as the
    ones detailed later in this document.


Developers(s)

    Contributions to the standard library have been developed by one
    or more developers. The initial maintainers are the original
    developers unless there are special circumstances (which should be
    detailed in the PEP proposing the contribution).


Acceptance Procedure

    When developers wish to have a contribution accepted into the
    standard library, they will first form a group of maintainers
    (normally initially consisting of themselves).

    Then, this group shall produce a PEP called a library PEP. A
    library PEP is a special form of standards track PEP. The library
    PEP gives an overview of the proposed contribution, along with the
    proposed contribution as the reference implementation. This PEP
    should also contain a motivation on why this contribution should
    be part of the standard library.

    One or more maintainers shall step forward as PEP champion (the
    people listed in the Author field are the champions). The PEP
    champion(s) shall be the initial head maintainer(s).
    
    As described in PEP 1, a standards track PEP should consist of a
    design document and a reference implementation. The library PEP
    differs from a normal standard track PEP in that the reference
    implementation should in this case always already have been
    written before the PEP is to be reviewed; the reference
    implementation _is_ the proposed contribution.

    This different requirement exists for the following reasons:

    - The integrators can only properly evaluate a contribution to the
      standard library when there is source code and documentation to
      look at; i.e. the reference implementation is always necessary
      to aid people in studying the PEP.

    - Even rejected contributions will be useful outside the standard
      library, so there will a lower risk of waste of effort by the
      developers.
  
    - It will impress the integrators of the seriousness of
      contribution and will help guard them against having to evaluate
      too many frivolous proposals.

    Once the library PEP has been submitted for review, the
    integrators will then evaluate it. The PEP will follow the normal
    PEP work flow as described in PEP 1. If the PEP is accepted, they
    will work through the head maintainers to make the contribution
    ready for integration.

Maintenance Procedure

    After a contribution has been accepted, the job is not over for
    both integrators and maintainers. The integrators will forward any
    bug reports in the standard library to the appropriate head
    maintainers.

    Before the feature freeze preparing for a release of the standard
    library, the integrators will check with the head maintainers for
    all contributions, to see if there are any updates to be included
    in the next release. The integrators will evaluate any such
    updates for issues like backwards compability and may require PEPs
    if the changes are deemed to be large.

    The head maintainers should take an active role in keeping up to
    date with the Python development process. If a head maintainer is
    unable to function in this way, he or she should announce the
    intention to step down to the integrators and the rest of the
    maintainers, so that a replacement can step forward.

    In the case where no head maintainer can be found (possibly
    because there are no maintainers left), the integrators will issue
    a call to the community at large asking for new maintainers to
    step forward. If no one does, the integrators can decide to
    declare the contribution deprecated as described in PEP 4.


Open issues

    Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
    evaluating contributions? (source code but also things like
    documentation and a test suite, as well as such vague things like
    'dependability of the maintainers').

    A related question is integration with the Python documentation
    process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
    can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
    we detail this more in this PEP?
    
    Should the current standard library be subdivided among such
    maintainers? Many parts already have (informal) maintainers; it
    may be good to make this more explicit.

    Perhaps there is a better word for 'contribution'; the word
    'contribution' may not imply enough that the process (of
    development and maintenance) does not stop after the contribution
    is accepted and integrated into the library.

    Relationship to the mytical Catalog?

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.

-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 21 01:54:14 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 22:54:14 -0700
Subject: interpreter command line recall/editing/completion under Windows (was Re: interpreter improvements)
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <mailman.995680066.20051.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107202154.45eb36f@posting.google.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995680066.20051.python-list at python.org>...
> 
> As for command history and command completion, sounds like you must be stuck
> on Windows.  Readline and rlcompleter do a decent job of command recall and
> with the atexit module you can save the history file across sessions.

Indeed there are a lot of us rabbits stuck in those briar patches,
whether we asked to be thrown there or not :-)

However there seem to be different sub-species of briar:

Win NT4 seems to support "DOSKEY" style command editing inside any
application, including Python -- one just hits the up-arrow key and
there's the previous input, waiting to be edited. This is without my
having done anything special to make this happen (that I'm aware of!).
This facility is just so handy for fiddling around, checking what
works and what doesn't, trying out one-liners, experimenting with the
2.2 alpha goodies, etc etc that everyone IMO should just have it
straight away when they get Python out of the box.

Win 95B seems to do command editing only at the DOS prompt level, not
within applications -- certainly not within the Python interpreter.

I recall from a thread a few weeks ago that there were 2 or 3
competing but not widely-known and not (AFAIR) novice-installable
solutions to this problem. How can we progress this? Would it be
possible to build something into the standard Win32 distribution?


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 24 13:02:52 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:02:52 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <Lk377.36960$Cy.4485776@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <0Th77.23755$B7.3909918@ruti.visi.com>

In article <Lk377.36960$Cy.4485776 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>, Tim Hochberg wrote:

>> Another possible step instead of breaking integer division
>> would be to add a warning for any int/float or float/int
>> division, to make it more explicit that the two kinds of
>> division are different and that you need to make up your mind
>> which one you want to do.  Take out all the automagic and make
>> people use explicit casts.
>
>I don't think that's viable. Just issuing warning can break
>plenty of code.

WTF?  We've argued that changing the definition of "/" will
break plenty of code.  Response: "tough shit, bucko, deal with
it. We need this operator to change so that code that hasn't
been written yet will look the way we want it to."

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Well, I'm INVISIBLE
                                  at               AGAIN... I might as well
                               visi.com            pay a visit to the LADIES
                                                   ROOM...


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul 15 15:51:53 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 15:51:53 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <etdhewe0y3q.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>


def ip_p(ip_string):

    try: bytes = map(int, ip_string.split('.'))
    except ValueError: return None
    return 0 <= min(bytes) <= max(bytes) < 256

HTH.
Alex.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 18:18:42 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:18:42 +0100
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107251514570.6992-100000@bms> <mailman.996109404.25018.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <lvf3mto2i116sl1nrjn6q6p1ckt0c3ddbe@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:00:50 -0700, "Ken Seehof"
<kens at sightreader.com> wrote:

>This is not the same as a = int(5.2) and it would seem really wierd to
>me if it were.  Then again, from a C++ point of view, any syntax that
>is currently illegal is a natural candidate for a new syntax feature :-).
>But python is not C++, so I'm afraid you'll have to settle for something
>less terse and more clear.
>
>a,b = divmod(x,y)
>a = int(a)

I don't know why the first output in the tuple isn't an int anyway.
After all, it *is* a member of the set of integers even if it is
currently represented using a float.

A quick example...

>>> divmod(5.1,2.0)
(2.0, 1.0999999999999996)

So why doesn't this return...

>>> divmod(5.1,2.0)
(2, 1.0999999999999996)


If the 2 is used anywhere a float is needed it will be cast to float
implicitly anyway once PEP238 goes through.



From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 11:54:08 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:54:08 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com>

Just van Rossum wrote:

> Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte? Integer division
> is a lousy tool in this particular example...

Just add 512 to it first.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Laughter is the only genuine form of applause.
\__/ Camden Benares
    Kepler's laws / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/kepler/
 A proof of Kepler's laws.


From steve at hkit.net  Tue Jul 10 00:31:52 2001
From: steve at hkit.net (Steve S.L. Wong)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:31:52 +0800
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
Message-ID: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>

while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
}




From hnowak at cuci.nl  Sun Jul 29 16:46:07 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:46:07 +0200
Subject: importing modules
In-Reply-To: <3b5f38c5.112013116@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <200107292048.f6TKmG914531@hera.cuci.nl>

On 25 Jul 01, at 21:29, Duilio Foschi wrote:

> >Where did you get this from?  
> 
> http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/newsite/Python/Python-DX/python-dx.html
> 
> "Hans Nowak's Python-DX is a version of Python for 32-bit DOS.
> Python-DX is equivalent to Python 1.5.2, but Hans no longer maintains it,
> so it's doubtful that Python 1.6 will be supported. "
> 
> what shoud I do ?
> 
> Or - put it in a different way - which is fully working version for
> Dos I should download ?

Sorry, I didn't see this earlier... there are simply too many messages in the 
newsgroup for me to keep up with everything. :(

I didn't realize my site, or what's left of it, was still online... people at 
Home Vision moved things around, forgot to copy some files in the process, and 
the result looks horrible.

Anyway, it's true that I don't maintain Python-DX anymore, but I do have an 
executable of 2.0. I built it just for kicks, so there's no guarantees really, 
and you'll need to download the official 2.0 source which contains the 
standard library. I can send this executable to you if you want to. If more 
people are interested, I might consider putting a new page online with 
downloads and some info.

Regards,

--Hans Nowak (zephyrfalcon at hvision.nl)
You call me a masterless man. You are wrong. I am my own master.
May some hornox duel your Beatles records!



From barry at zope.com  Wed Jul 25 12:45:35 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:45:35 -0400
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
References: <15198.56371.751100.459533@anthem.wooz.org>
	<m15PQoi-000wcBC@swing.co.at>
Message-ID: <15198.63407.158009.6372@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "CT" == Christian Tanzer <tanzer at swing.co.at> writes:

    >> really-portable-code-is-always-ugly-anyway-ly y'rs,

    CT> So-lets-make-it-even-uglier-?-ly y'rs,

I don't consider int(math.floor(a / b)) to be ugly.  In fact, it's
arguably much more Pythonic: Explicit is better than implicit.
There's no ambiguity in intention with that idiom, like there is with
bare a / b.

-Barry



From volucris at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 22 04:11:33 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 03:11:33 -0500
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3b5a8a87$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

You can find ActivePython here:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePython/
It has PythonWin, a very good editor. If that's what you're looking for.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"zeke" <Zeke at xyz.net> wrote in message
news:92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965 at lp.airnews.net...
> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
> job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
> Ultra Edit but having doubts about it.
> zeke
>




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 14 18:36:52 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 15:36:52 -0700
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <3B4FD35A.26B4568E@Lugoj.Com> <roy-B49CE8.09521914072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107141436.31407065@posting.google.com>

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote in message news:<roy-B49CE8.09521914072001 at news1.panix.com>...
> James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
> > This may not be the most elegant or efficient, but how about this:
> > 
> > [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]
> 
> Yeah, that's what I had come up with, but I was hoping somebody would have 
> an idea that was more elegant and efficient :-)

Strive for correctness first, then worry about elegance and efficiency
-- this "solution" does not fulfill your original request that the
extra fields be populated with null strings; it drops None objects in
instead.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 12:38:56 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 18:38:56 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9hv9pl$5c7$1@panix6.panix.com> <56f6kt4goieognhbpi8i8kh4v79egmtaa2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hvgr202d1v@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:56f6kt4goieognhbpi8i8kh4v79egmtaa2 at 4ax.com...
>
> >>b) Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as
> >>   poor ones, at same training and two-year experience level.
> >>   (Sackman, Grant and Erickson)
>
> I agree with this wholeheartedly, with the exception that I would change
> it to "Highly motivated and very good professional...". Motivation and

Can we make it "Highly motivated and very good professionals in an
optimal enviroment"...?  At which point the 10-times estimate is
VERY restrictive, as Prechelt's study shows.

> a willingness to really throw oneself into programming is an essential
> element of a real programming maverick.

But the best & highest-motivated guru can only do so much if
hampered by too-heavy process, inadequate tools, &c.  And one
can't always choose (client needs given process and tools, but
motivation is high anyway e.g. because of VERY good $$ bonus...
that still doesn't give the same productivity as when process
and tools are optimally chosen).


Alex





From ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu  Fri Jul 13 09:28:00 2001
From: ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu (Suchandra Thapa)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:28:00 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com>

EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote:
>Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.
[...]
>
>Isnt that easier??
>
>Or do I not get lambda?
>
>*NOTE ... I think its just a way to complicate things OR just a way to avoid
>typing the function name beacuse.... I dont know they are scared of the
>names they give them.

    The lambda can be  a way  to avoid the need to define and name trivial
functions that get used in only one place.  However, the lambda function
is a also a way to dynamically create functions as well as a way of
composing two functions together.  For example, suppose you need to
apply a scaling factor to a list but the scaling factor depends on 
user input.  In this case, with lambda you can do a with 
lambda x: x * s where the value of s depends on the user input.  Also, 
suppose you have two image filters and you want to create a new filter
that applies the first filter then the second one.  Then using lambda, 
you can just use lambda x: filter2(filter1(x)).  
    Incidentally, you can use lambda to do a bunch of different things including
reducing the number of parameters a function takes (currying).  E.g. 
suppose foo takes x, y, and z then lambda x, y:foo(x, y, 4) returns a function
that takes only two paramters.  
    Basically, think of lambda as a way of applying mathematical operations
like +, /, * as well as a few others to functions.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	   		              |
Suchandra Thapa                       | "There are only two kinds of math . 
s-thapa-11 at NOSPAMalumni.uchicago.edu  | books. Those you cannot read beyond 
			              | the first sentence, and those you 
			              | can not read beyond the first page."
			              |                     -C.N. Yang
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 01:06:36 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:06:36 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <wfa37.18$Z6.28801@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cplmlvh6dx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

---

Thanks for the response.  My specific comments (for today) on int division
are in the PEP 0238 thread.  My general view on arithmetic change is this:
while your design for Python's arithmetic has served well for a decade,
without any change that I can think of, there are several dissatifactions
and proposals for modification.  Many involve semantic replacement, with
its accompanying problems.  If you are not going to reject them all
indefinitely, then we should discuss, debate, plan, and experiment for
several months to a year to come up with a coherant new design for Python
arithmetic that we can install all at once and then live with for several
more years without further change.  Piecemeal change release after release
could become very messy.

Terry J. Reedy





From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 21:59:59 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:59:59 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com> <mailman.995839778.19397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <271nltoop99epq3hi76prqm5gq38qn21te@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:08:09 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.995839778.19397.python-list at python.org>:

:You don't have to defend yourself -- Guido will do it for you <wink>.  He
:opened a bug report on SourceForge today:
:
:    #443559  creating exceptions is underdocumented
:
:and attached one of your first msgs as evidence.  This area is indeed
:"underdocumented".

Thanks. I needed that. <big grin>

Look, maybe after I've figured out exceptions, I can write up my own
understanding of them, and see how that flies?

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From mail at fredriks.org  Tue Jul 10 12:41:40 2001
From: mail at fredriks.org (Fredrik Stenberg)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:41:40 +0200
Subject: getting argument names from a function
In-Reply-To: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net>
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107101835460.10785-100000@my.nada.kth.se>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dan wrote:

> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
>    print arg1, arg2
>
> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
> 'arg2')?
>
> I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and can't
> find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?
>
> thanks,
> Dan

If the function has a func_code object you can try this approach,
I have never use it myself and there probably is better ways.


Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.
>>> def foo(bar,bar2):
...     print "foobar"
...
>>> foo.func_code.co_varnames
('bar', 'bar2')



I think this will only work for functions written in python, and not
extensions written in C (atleast thats what my brain thinks).

/fredriks



From bsb at winnegan.de  Fri Jul  6 09:23:06 2001
From: bsb at winnegan.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 15:23:06 +0200
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
In-Reply-To: <994422510.510089@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
	<0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>
	<994422510.510089@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <87r8vu2nut.fsf@winnegan.de>

Hi,

first of all, why do you post this message 3 times?

"whats_really_hot" <whats_really_hot at hotmail.com> writes:

> yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only for web
> reading and this requires time -internet time, which is unfortunately
> expensive.

If you have access to a *nix box, use wget(1), if you're on Windoze,
do a Google search for "offline web browser":

  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=offline+web+browser

Using such a beast might reduce your online bill.


Regards
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at winnegan.de - http://www.winnegan.de/
****** ceterum censeo javascriptum esse restrictam *******



From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul 21 01:47:16 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 05:47:16 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org><slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr><OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com><wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com><mailman.995662297.13101.python-list@python.org><E6367.7541$EP6.2460187@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995674715.6446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <EH867.9011$EP6.2837134@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Christopher A. Craig" <com-nospam at ccraig.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.995674715.6446.python-list at python.org...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
>
> > To compare program running times, they should compute the same
thing.
> >
> > How long does dict2 take if you remove the not, so it makes the
list
> > of 1500 elements that revised dict does, instead of the 'not' list
of
> > 6000?
> >
> > How long does dict take if you feed filter with 'lambda x,
> > f=c.has_key: f(x)', so it make the 'not' list of 6000 elements?
> >
>
> dict2 without the not takes (predictably) about twice as long as
dict
> (.038 seconds vs. .019) (because the explicit loops in the list
> comprehensions are slower)
>
> dict with a not takes (also predictably) slightly longer than dict2
> (.06 vs .055) (because the overhead of a lambda is higher than the
loops)
>
> My point was not to compare dict to dict2, but to show that the
> original author's comp() was greatly outperformed by a proper
> dictionary solution.

I know this was not your main point, so thank you for running these.
I'm going to replace 1.5.2 with 2.1.1 soon, so could not do this
myself yet.  Your result is about what I expected based on previous
comparisons.

TJ Reedy





From alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com  Mon Jul  9 14:18:34 2001
From: alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com (Alan Klietz)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 13:18:34 -0500
Subject: typo.py - Warn of typographical errors in Python scripts
References: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net> <15177.59858.853310.961010@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <jzm27.359$q7.211304@news.uswest.net>

Thanks for the pointer.  I did some quick comparisons and found that
PyChecker does overlap somewhat.  It doesn't check typos quite as
aggressively, however.  For example:

class Square:
    def __init__(self, width, height):
        self.width = width
        self.height = height

    def calculate_area(self):
        return self.width * self.height

def Run():
    s = Square(10, 20)
    c = s.calculate_areaa()   # oops
    print s.hieght   # oops
    import os
    print os.path.sep   # oops

PyChecker does do extra checking in areas not related to typography: omitted
doc strings, unused vars, return types, etc.   I agree it is a useful tool.
Probably for the most rigorous checking would be to use a combination of
both typo.py and PyChecker.

Regards,
-Alan
alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com


"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:15177.59858.853310.961010 at beluga.mojam.com...
>
>     Alan> You can download typo.py from http://utools.com/typo.htm
>
> Doesn't PyChecker already do this sort of thing?
>
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> (847)971-7098




From DOUGS at oceanic.com  Sun Jul 15 12:52:02 2001
From: DOUGS at oceanic.com (Doug Stanfield)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 06:52:02 -1000
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
Message-ID: <8457258D741DD411BD3D0050DA62365907A975@HUINA>

[wyatt stafford wrote:]
> I bought "Learn
> to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" 
> (Harms/McDonald).  Also
> checking out the tutorial, and other good info at 
> www.python.org.

Don't miss the references there to the Python Tutor mailing list.  Go here,
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor to subscribe.

HTH,

-Doug-



From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 10 12:20:40 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:20:40 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0106281419260.11263-100000@bms> <mailman.993764502.10834.python-list@python.org> <cpae2rlarx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.993841846.2132.python-list@python.org> <cpsngijfcg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hpjsjt04gj33rbcbpurvv2mbiknuqf6fob@4ax.com> <mailman.993964021.7787.python-list@python.org> <8pkujt04pv49fvklj6n8jv61fl177kv6c4@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107100820.1068b146@posting.google.com>

Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message news:<8pkujt04pv49fvklj6n8jv61fl177kv6c4 at 4ax.com>...
> >I don't always have the opportunity to talk to people and explain
> >confusing things to them. In one class I gave, a guy let out a gasp when
> >he came to understand the reference rules. He said that that was what
> >had prevented him from coming to understand Python the first two times
> >he tried. Now I think we've made life harder for guys like that to save
> >Numeric Python users from typing a method call for their mutations.
> >That's a poor trade-off.
> 
> Sure; I can buy this argument. I'm not a big fan of the ongoing lexical/
> grammatical expansion of Python.

What scares me is that, whilst I don't use Python at work but do have
some interest in experimenting a fair amount with it on my own machine
at home, it's very likely that Python 2.1 will completely pass me by
(for real use) and, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the
code that I have for Python 2.0 will break mysteriously under 2.2 (or
an even later release which could appear within the year) which I'll
probably have been forced to use because some modules will require it.

At that point, I'm sure that everyone will say how fluidly the
transition from release to release has been, but that won't be a
consolation for people who neither need nor want to indulge in
"version surfing". If it hadn't been for Unicode support and Pygame,
I'd probably have stuck with 1.5.2 until now.

It's bad enough when APIs are changing frequently, like in the earlier
days of Java, but it's downright scary when a language starts to (or
has the potential to) change so quickly. Programmers are raised on the
idea that languages are stable and glacially-slow moving targets, but
people do seem to fear that there's now a substantial melting process
taking place with Python.

Paul


From max at alcyone.com  Thu Jul 12 22:01:04 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:01:04 -0700
Subject: pythonista.com
References: <mailman.994955667.9160.python-list@python.org> <lbl37.161430$Mf5.43742860@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <oYl37.1089$%6.234079@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E5660.82848022@alcyone.com>

Terry Reedy wrote:

> Probably easiest and cheapest to let it expire and reregister the next
> day.

There are lots of "services" that will immediately reregister a domain
as soon as it expires, so even if you're watching it is very easy to
miss it -- and once you do you're going to have to buy it off a third
party.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Gods are born and die, but the atom endures.
\__/ Alexander Chase
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  2 22:47:11 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 22:47:11 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <3B411339.6DADAFF0@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <etdvglag24w.fsf@w20-575-3.mit.edu>

> I don't understand why people are replying to this troll.

I didn't recognize it as such, at first. :)

Alex.


From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Thu Jul  5 03:56:40 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 00:56:40 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994199197.7049.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107042356.20b76c21@posting.google.com>

Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote in message news:<mailman.994199197.7049.python-list at python.org>...
> Many of the concerns raised on the group are related to memory-related 
> problems: allocation/deallocation and garbage collection, which can be an 
> plentiful source of bugs. I have some specific suggestions to deal with 
> them, which may or not be applicable in your case.
> 
> - You can avoid allocation/deallocation in some languages by using static 
> structures, or by preallocating as much memory as possible. For example, 
> you could preallocate a vector to contain all the data from the aircrafts. 
> In this case you would have a maximum limit hardcoded in the software, but 
> this is not as bad as it may seem, because the limit is *deterministic*. 
> One of the problems of relying on dynamic allocation is that you never know 
> when it is going to fail, because it depends on the amount of memory 
> allocated for other purposes. This technique is can't be easily applied in 
> Python due to the nature of the language. It is still possible to do it in 
> some particular cases, but not as extensively as in C/C++.

As I wrote in a recent post, I used this technique extensively in a
real-time C++ application I worked on a few years ago (an integrated
GPS/INS autoland system). We had an update rate of a few milliseconds,
so we couldn't spare much memory management after startup. It works
great as long as you have enough memory, and you usually do these
days. Our update rate for this ATC application is on the order of a
few seconds, but I will still be disappointed if I can't use this same
technique in Python. I just don't like the idea of having the OS
interupt at what could be an inopportune time.

> - Don't rely on a long-running process for everything. Use multiple 
> short-running processes for batch-style tasks, and a lightweight dispatcher 
> to coordinate them. The batch-style tasks must be run on separate 
> interpreters. While the performance penalty may be not as acceptable for 
> many real-time tasks, you have one specific advantage: every new instance 
> of the interpreter always start with a fresh memory heap. This will allow 
> you to avoid fragmentation-related problems, which may happen on any 
> platform after a long time (not to mention Win98, where it *always* happen 
> in few time).

Interesting idea. In actual operation, I'll bet we'll restart at least
once per day, if not more.

Thanks for your insights.

Russ


From mcherm at destiny.com  Mon Jul 23 10:34:36 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:34:36 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <ce05109ca.109cace05@destiny.com>

Guido writes:
> [...]
> Because all Arthur does is tick me off, I'll leave it at this -- 
> maybe someone else can explain it all to him.

Well, I'll see what I can do. In the language there are (at least)
two distinct things we might want to do when "dividing" A and B:

  (1) split A up into B parts
  (2) find how many B's fit in an A

A good example of (1) is float division, and the cannonical example 
of (2) is "int division", aka "div". These are DIFFERENT THINGS.
For instance, if you are implementing a sort algorithm, you may
well want (2) in a place where (1) will never do! On the other
hand, if your program is performing CAD drawings, then (1) is
probably the meaning you need. Note that (2) often makes most sense
with integers (especially since it always gives out an integer),
while (1) may make sense with floats, rationals, fixed-position
decimals, as well as various other numerical types.

So I'm hoping that everyone reading this can agree, BOTH (1) and
(2) are USEFUL things, and a good language should allow BOTH. If
not, then please stop reading: there's no way I can convince you.

Given that you want both (1) and (2), there is just one problem:
the syntax "A / B" is the ideal syntax for BOTH of these purposes.
It's ideal for (1) because the mathematical operation of division 
is traditionally represented with a "/", and it's ideal for (2) 
because C and other languages have historically used "/" between 
integers for (2). In my opinion (and those of quite a few others), 
this is pretty lopsided: (1) is probably used more often, so it 
should get priority, PLUS just imitating C isn't very convincing 
since other languages (eg: Pascal) use other syntax, PLUS the use 
of division in mathematics is far more widespread and well-known
than the use of "/" in C, PLUS the people who intend to use (2)
will probably be able to remember to use a different symbol. So
if you believe these arguments, then the next time you go out
and invent a new language, you'll use "/" to mean (1), not (2).

But Python is not a new language, and in existing versions of
Python, "/" has meant (2) if both arguments were integers. To
change this now is VERY bad, because it will break lots of 
existing code. It probably won't be hard for existing programmers
to adapt, but having to repair all those old scripts is a VERY
BAD THING.

So Guido is trying to balance two things: the desire to use "/"
to mean (1) in all cases, regardless of the type of its arguments,
and the desire to keep Python stable, without breaking lots of
existing code. The issue is important because we often see
newbie bugs based on this issue, and because if the change is
EVER going to happen, it HAS to be soon... the longer he waits,
the more old scripts there are which will have to be broken.

In the end, after hearing all of the arguments (and if you haven't
spoken up yet I STILL suspect someone else has made your argument
for you before in a previous usenet thread), Guido has apparently
decided that the design improvement is worth breaking old scripts. 
Obviously, that means that tools and techniques (warnings, type
inferring source checkers, etc) need to be provided which will 
help in that transition... but it'll still be painful. Guido is
well aware of that, and I'm sure he approaches this with
reluctance. But remember, there's a GOOD side too! After the
trasnsition is over, the language will be (in one small way) even 
better than before.

-- Michael Chermside





From mikael at isy.liu.se  Tue Jul 24 10:16:02 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:16:02 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <00af01c11440$87a53c20$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010724161602.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 24-Jul-2001 Chris Gonnerman wrote:
 >  ----- Original Message ----- 
 >  From: "Mikael Olofsson" <mikael at isy.liu.se>
 > > 
 > > On 23-Jul-2001 Robin Becker wrote:
 > >  >  MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!
 > > 
 > > I've seen BDFL referring to GvR, and I know the interpretation of that.
 > > Here, obviously, MDFL suddenly referres to the very same GvR. What's
 > > with that M? 
 >  
 >  I'm guessing here, but I'd bet from the tone of his postings that Robin
 >  means
 >  
 >      Malevolent Dictator For Life

Of course! My English is obviously not good enough.

 >  While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
 >  version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
 >  to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.

Neither would I. I always thought of "GvR is the BDFL" as an axiom, 
which means that whatever he does regarding Python is benevolent.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    24-Jul-2001
Time:    16:09:37

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 08:28:42 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:28:42 +0200
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Vesselin Peev" <vesselinpeev at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995024902.7812.python-list at python.org...
> Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
    ...
You asked this 6+ hours ago under subject "How can I run precompiled
code objects?" and I answered 26 minutes before you reposted.  Have
a little patience, already: netnews propagation delays and varying
timezones mean it WILL take a little time for you to get answers!


Alex





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 12:05:07 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:05:07 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994168085.8709.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsqfl02gbd@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994168085.8709.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> >http://phplib.netuse.de/documentation/documentation-3.html#ss3.1
> >After studying that page a bit, unless I'm missing something,
> >it appears to me that this interface is *VASTLY* inferior to
> >the Python DB API.
>
> I do not believe it. PHP is so widely used with databases
> that I cant believe it's database connectivity is that bad!

As I said, I'm no PHP expert -- I hit on phplib because I
saw it mentioned as the only way to program PHP in such a
way that you won't have to redo everything if you move
from one RDBMS to another, which to me feels like a very
fundamental requirement.  Maybe the typical PHP user cares
not a whit about that and is deliriously happy to program
against Oracle-only, or MySQL-only, or whatever -- I have
not examined the widely different (I'm told) interfaces
you get to use for that, only saw what seemed to me highly
justified SQUEALS of pain by Perl programmers used to the
RDBMS-portability of Perl's DBI at the idea of having to
program against a _specific_ RDBMS and redo everything when
(not if -- life doesn't work that way) the RDBMS that has
to be used changes under them...


Alex





From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 03:31:00 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:31:00 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m2wv4w5lj3.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <mailman.996130247.13985.python-list@python.org> <m2hevy4fsa.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m33bh.a1o.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m2r8v13gyn.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m4qhk.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

28 Jul 2001 14:50:08 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:

> No, I know what you're intending, and you're right, it doesn't give
> wrong answers.  The problem is, it doesn't correspond to the type
> graph you draw, either!

Arrows don't mean subtypes but:

1. the direction of implicit conversions needed to perform some
   operations,

2. the fact that any function accepting a (say) rational should accept
   an integer with the same meaning wrt. the mathematical value,
   similarly for other types.

It's not the question of a particular hierarchy but of the meaning of
such diagram at all. It works the same way for all its type relations.
Int is not a "subtype" of rational wrt. your meaning of subtypes.

> *IF* rational is a subtype of float, it *should* be able to turn
> floats into rationals, if they fit.

There are no implicit conversions in this direction in other contexts
either. Rationals never turn into ints in my model for example.

> *IF* rational is a subtype of float, every rational should be
> representable as a float.

My model doesn't claim that these implicit conversions lose no
information. Adding a large int to a float converts the int to
a float which may truncate. It doesn't change the fact that it
makes more sense to perform this lossy conversion than for example
convert both to rationals, because the input float is inexact so
the result will be inexact anyway (that is: its value is not quite
true), so it should be treated as inexact (that is: represented in
a type which is perceived as inexact).

Your diagram doesn't tell how to add a float to a rational at all.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Thu Jul 19 19:44:56 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 23:44:56 GMT
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995572771.19528.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E3C8FCADDE6gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>

Jay Parlar wrote: 

> I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to
> distribute an application written in Python, intended for people who
> don't have Python installed on their machines? Even possibly a
> commercial distrubtion program, if it's the best. I've been playing
> around with py2exe, with not much success (although that's a topic for
> a different day). Assuming I do get py2exe working properly, how would
> everyone suggest we distribute our application? (By the way, this
> application is for Windows machines).

I'm afraid that only Thomas (py2exe), Jack (macPython) and I (Installer) 
even think about that stuff. Everyone else distributes Python modules
to people with existing Python installations.

As far as a free Windows installer (for py2exe or Installer), Inno gets
good reviews. I don't know anyone who can stand InstallShield. Wise is
the commercial one most people use.

- Gordon


From piercew at hushmail.com  Wed Jul 25 17:49:25 2001
From: piercew at hushmail.com (Wayne)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:49:25 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9d848d5d.0107251349.68519652@posting.google.com>

Shriek at gmx.co.uk (Stephen) wrote in message news:<6572890e.0107251014.47e07810 at posting.google.com>...

 ...

> intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
> staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
> be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
> which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made. 
> They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
> status of a particular resource. They want software more like 
> Windows-applications. 

Have you considered a small applet that displays the status of the
currently viewed resource?  This might be created in Jython and
automatically update from the server at a specific interval.

> How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
> with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the 
> bookings for the day from the server.

Are they able to edit the bookings once the data has been downloaded? 
i.e., do they get the data in "read only" mode then click on a button
or link to edit the data?  If so you might create a lock file, or
similar item, on the server when someone clicks on the edit button or
link.

If anyone after that clicks on the edit button it could check for the
existance of the lock file.  If the file is present they might see the
current information and who has it locked but not be able to edit the
information.

Wayne


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul 21 08:53:40 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 08:53:40 -0400
Subject: whats this mean?
In-Reply-To: <995680671.491.75448.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B594314.6161.27E3255@localhost>

thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr) wrote, in part:
> # BEGIN CODE BLOCK
> try:
>     s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>     s.bind((HOST, PORT))
>     s.listen(1)
>     conn, addr = s.accept()
> except socket.error, why: ## reference 1
>     print "Server Error: " + errno.errorcode[why[0]] + ", " + why[1]
>     ##
> reference 2
>     sys.exit(1)
> # END CODE BLOCK
> 
> what does reference 2 mean?  what do those brackets do?  And for
> reference 1, what will 'why' hold if an error occurs?

Dustin,

Consider the following code that is similar to what you included in 
your message.

    from errno import *
    import socket

    try:
        raise socket.error ( 1, "an error message" )
    except socket.error, why:
        print why
        print why [ 0 ]
        print why [ 1 ]
        print "Error: " + errno.errorcode[why[0]] + ", " + why[1]

I have replaced the sockets code with a 'raise' statement that does 
what the sockets code would do in case of an exception.

When I executed this code I got the following output:

(1, 'an error')
1
an error
Error: EPERM, an error

ie, one line for each 'print' statement in the exception suite.

1. 'why' will contain a tuple whose elements are the arguments 
passed to the procedure socket.error
2. 'why[0]' is the first element in the tuple and thus is the first 
argument to socket.error; likewise 'why[1]' will contain the second 
argument.
3. 'errno.errorcode' supplies the os-specific code (ie the code that 
is meaningful for the os) corresponding to the value of the first 
argument to 'socket.error'

A pair of brackets indexes into the expression to the left of the pair. 
For example, '[0]' in 'why[0]' returns the 0th item in 'why'.

How well does this clarify the code?

Bill



From philipprw at gmx.at  Fri Jul 13 08:42:44 2001
From: philipprw at gmx.at (Philipp Weinfurter)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 12:42:44 GMT
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org> <O4A37.23$Fv3.59@news1.oke.nextra.no>
Message-ID: <slrn9ktr6c.1n8.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Nils O. Sel?sdal <noselasd at frisurf.no> wrote:
> "Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> wrote in message
>> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
>> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
>>
>> >>> 1 < "aaa"
>> 1
[...]
> In any OO language its desired to take advantage og polymorphisme,
> and let comparison between diffrent objects be allowed.The programmer
> is responsible,
> for providing comparison functions.
> I wanna know if my User also equals my SecureUser....

hmm, i'm still new to python, so please correct me if i'm wrong here.
but since you can not subclass `integer' and `string' (and override the 
comparison operators for those types), there is not much polymorphism here.
and as the language reference states:
"Otherwise, objects of different types always compare unequal, and are
ordered consistently but arbitrarily."
i, too, think that this doesn't make much sense.

philipp


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 14:15:53 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 18:15:53 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Xns90E8BFE339C47michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lreqp.186.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:55:14 GMT, Michael Abbott <michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> pisze:

>     	sqrt(2)**2 == 2
> 
> By pretty much the same arguments as have been used elsewhere in this 
> discussion, I'm sure that you would expect this to evaluate to true.

Why?

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From me at charliedaniels.com-1.net  Sun Jul 15 00:28:21 2001
From: me at charliedaniels.com-1.net (chajadan)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 04:28:21 GMT
Subject: accessing the clipboard in windows and/or linux
Message-ID: <3b511bae.1235716@news.mailops.com>

I want to be able to access the clipboard for Windows, and also linux.
Using python of course.

If you know how, please pass this knowledge on to me.

Thanks =)

--chajadan


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul  6 22:21:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 19:21:57 -0700
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <B7695827.13DAA%dgoodger@bigfoot.com> <9i1pd8$8ei$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <9i5ro5$arv$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <9i1pd8$8ei$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>,
Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
>David Goodger <dgoodger at bigfoot.com> wrote:
>> Martijn: 
>>>
>>> The library PEP differs from a normal standard track PEP in that
>>> the reference implementation should in this case always already
>>> have been written before the PEP is to be reviewed; the reference
>>> implementation _is_ the proposed contribution.
>>
>> By "to be reviewed" do you mean "to be decided upon by the
>> Integrators"? Or "to be released to the Python community for
>> comment"? I hope the former.  Please clarify.
>
>The former, I shall clarify, thank you.

Actually, I think it should be both, just as with all standard PEPs.
That is, the PEP is reviewed and commented upon by the community, but
the Integrators (as proxies for Guido, BDFL) make the final decision
about whether to include it.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 12:04:19 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:04:19 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994078809.12040.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> > "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in
> message
> > news:mailman.994049882.30354.python-list at python.org...
> >     ...
> > > When am I forced?  Sadly it seems that integrating any other language
> > > directly into MS Access is out of the question.  (Am I wrong?  Someone
> > > please tell me if I am!)
> >
> > Depends what you mean by "directly".  With COM and ActiveScripting,
> > it's generally not a problem to use Python or other AS-compliant
languages
> > with any Office or other Automation-enabled app, albeit with a simple
> > passage through VBA or VBScript.
>
> Define "simple"... what I want is to drop in Python in place of VBA.  I'm
> still not sure it's possible.

I agree it's not possible to "drop in Python _in place of_ VBA" -- tricking
MS Access (or other office app) into using other DLL's in lieu of the
ones it's linked-to would be anything BUT simple (or solid:-).  What I
do mean by "simple" is, the (e.g.) code that responds to the (whatever)
event is still in VBA, but all it does is delegate the call right to a
Python object.


> > > The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I
would
> > > hardly typify that as not being "good database support".
> >
> > http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/
>
> I can't get this URL to work... I am getting Forbidden errors.

Darn, it's giving forbidden errors to me too, right now, it worked
the other day.  I haven't tried it, but maybe http://www.fiby.at/dbfpy.tgz
may help you -- or perhaps the idea of using ODBC (or ADO/OleDB, etc)
to access the dBase files remains better.


Alex





From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 23:02:27 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 20:02:27 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <20010709015224.Q8098@xs4all.nl>
References: <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>
 <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org>
 <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
 <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
 <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org>
 <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20010708185646.023c9640@mail.accessone.com>

At 01:52 2001-07-09 +0200, Thomas Wouters wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 10:45:12PM +0000, Bengt Richter wrote:
>
> > Why not parameterize the concept with a single block-scope-introducing
> > keyword, e.g., 'semantics' or 'special' e.g., rewriting from above:
>
> > semantics PRECISION, 0: # everything behaves as it does now
> >     print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
> >     print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714
>
> > semantics PRECISION 1:   # all calculations yield 1 decimal point
> >     print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places
>
>Doesn't fix the problems. What about this:
>
>semantics PRECISION, 0:
>     x = 2/7
>
>semantics PRECISION, 100:
>     print x

I'm thinking that's trying to peek from one nested scope into another,
and would be either illegal, trigger a special exception, or get you
a NameError. I haven't thought this through, but that was
part of the reason for a block rather than just setting global control
parameters. I think only new bindings would be affected. Rebinding
global names to stuff created within a semantic scope might have to carry
environment along. I haven't thought that through either ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter
P.S. I'm not a list subscriber, just reading the newsgroup, so I'm
not sure what is going where, but this is an email reply with cc to list.
Hope that's ok ;-)




From njm at rectec.net  Mon Jul 16 10:09:31 2001
From: njm at rectec.net (NJM)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:09:31 -0500
Subject: timed event??
Message-ID: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>

I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can someone
tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to find any modules
that will help me.




From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 13 15:50:04 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:50:04 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <MhI37.2619$p7.719925@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I believe it, but it doesn't demonstrate a thing about type safety.
> You've just discovered dynamic typing.

This might be better called dynamic naming or dynamic binding.  'Dynaming
typing' is confusing, as evidenced here, because of its two possible
interpretations.

1. Types are assigned at runtime (because they are created at runtime).
True.
2. Types are changeable at runtime.  Untrue, unless you count changing an
instance's base class (a recent addition to the language.   In this sense,
Python object types are fixed or static.  They are not like C unions.

>  You see, your implied view of
> typing seems to come from a statically typed language, where every
> *variable* has a type of its own.
>
> In Python, types are associated with *objects*, not with *variables*.
> IOW, all variables are of the same type: reference-to-object.

One of the keys to understanding Python.

Terry J. Reedy





From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 19 23:32:47 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:32:47 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B566ED8.E14732F8@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <9j5u2302v3e@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B57A65F.BDB6BAE5@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> I think it was a 19th century fancy, to start with.  Extremely
> recent when compared to the amount of time mathematics
> has been written about.

It's still a lot longer than computers have been around.
And the fact that they *did* adopt it suggests they
found it useful in some way. Perhaps because it let
them express things more succinctly?

They seem to be satisified with the decision, too.
I've never heard a group of mathematicians debating
whether mathematics should go back to being
case-insensitive (if it ever really was to begin
with).

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From sill at optonline.net  Wed Jul 11 16:34:17 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:34:17 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:10:43 -0600 (MDT), Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> <...>
>> >Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
>> >language.
>>
>> Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
>> for longer programs.
> 
> Hehe, you must have missed the recent thread about removing the first
> line from a text file... I thought it showed that Python is a horrible
> scripting language, way too verbose, it turned what should be a few
> lines of script into a program.

Wasn't one solution only 2 lines? If I remember right it was Alex
Martelli's.

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Thu Jul 12 02:46:39 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:46:39 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3b4c9b7f.8143238@news.hrz.uni-kassel.de> <9ii8a2$hg6$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <yv2wv5e3ar4.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel) writes:

> > 1) It doesn't solve the intellectual challenge.
> 
> What about : ([^<]|(<+(A<+)*([^A<]|(A[^<>]))))*<+(A<+)*A>B ?

Woow, seems to work. Did you fiddle around long enough by hand or is
it the result of a formal construction? In the latter case it should
be easy to write a script which, given a string s, results in a regexp
matching t s where t does not include s.

>From the construction I expect the resulting regexp to have a length
of O(2^len(s)).

  Harald.

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From danb at champonline.com  Fri Jul 20 14:26:21 2001
From: danb at champonline.com (Dan Bergan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:26:21 -0500
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org> <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <096101c11149$7a512e70$1164a8c0@champ17>

> Dan Bergan wrote:
> > (Declare the variable in mixed-case)
> > Dim myVariable as Integer
> >
> > (then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
> > myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!
>
> Well, if you "correct" that to myVaraible you would still be in error,
> because you accidentally exchanged "ia" with "ai" in addition to changing
> "V" to "v". Python will not inform you about about some typos, whether
> case-related, dropped characters, exchanged characters, or added
characters.

I think you missed my point a bit.  VB would NOT correct the typo (because
it does not match a variable name that is already declared).  So, I use the
fact that it was NOT corrected as a flag that I screwed something up.

Dan





From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 10 01:18:16 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:18:16 -0400
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <3b4a468d.1494788532@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEFIKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Bengt Richter]
> ...
> I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
> just over 15 seconds, including startup and
> printing to screen, by my watch. (Not a typo,
> that was 100k). Of course, it might not be the
> usual recursive solution (see below)  ;-)
> ...
> It's a close translation of a scheme version I came
> up with about five years ago.  Dave Ulrich may remember.
> He pointed out that the next to last version wasn't
> doing what I thought. So he helped nudge it into being.
> Never did establish what wheel I was reinventing, but
> apparently there is something related.

Cute!  For "something related", see Knuth section 4.6.3 exercise 26.

Apart from tricks specific to Fibonacci numbers, a general "good thing to
know" is that an order-N linear recurrence can be viewed as mapping
N-vectors to N-vectors via multiplication by a fixed NxN matrix M.  N==2 in
this case, and if a,b,c are consecutive Fibonacci numbers then

    [b c] = [a b] * M

where "*" is matmult and M is

    0 1
    1 1

That's why your program wound up with expressions that look a lot like
2-term dot products:  they are <wink>!  Moving ahead k steps is essentially
equivalent to computing M**k, and that can be done in "the usual" way via
O(log(k)) 2x2 matmults.  This has practical application in, e.g., many kinds
of recurrence-based random-number generators, for "skipping ahead" a huge
number of terms very quickly.




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 13:30:46 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:30:46 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
References: <mailman.994434612.10076.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Kxm17.11707$F%5.789485@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in ...
>
> As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's permission
> before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one can
> implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is safe,
> thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.
>
I must have misunderstood. Are you telling me that IE has a security system
to detect potentially unsafe downloaded content, but that it won't use this
system if the downloaded content tells it there's no need?

How very Microsoft. I must have missed something.

regards
 STeve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com  Fri Jul 27 16:22:29 2001
From: Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com (Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:22:29 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <0088D6B5.N22121@rsmi.com>

Guido writes -

>Actually, it's been very tough.  Years of therapy didn't prepare me
>for the accusations of dictatorship.  I also didn't see enough support
>*for* my position to want to continue.

I also would like to send apologies to the extent you have felt - as
you have made clear you have - that I have gotten too personal when 
pressing my positions.

My interest in these topics is a passionate avocation.  I understand that
to you it is so much more - and that my position is the easy one. 

I have indeed pressed hard on viewpoints that oppose yours. Not only
do I believe what I say, but I believe some of it is important to
at least get said.  Important because Python is important - God knows, 
no thanks to me.  

Perhaps we push each others buttons because our differences 
are somehow deep - more worldview differences than syntactical 
differences. 

Nevertheless, never questioned the structure itself.  As you say - 
the fact that Python is open source and you have worked to make 
it so, is, as far as I am  concerned, all that needs to be said on the 
issue of dictatorships. 

But if you feel that I have taken unfair advantage of this very open
forum in which you have chosen to participate (subject yourself),
I do indeed have regrets.

ART

 






From cgp at nospam.le.ac.uk  Thu Jul 12 05:48:55 2001
From: cgp at nospam.le.ac.uk (Clive Page)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 10:48:55 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010712083841.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <9ijrq7$2qui@owl.le.ac.uk>

In article <XFMail.20010712083841.mikael at isy.liu.se>,
Mikael Olofsson  <mikael at isy.liu.se> wrote:

>Being in EE, I would immediately interprete a//b as two resistors, a and
>b, in parallel. Thus, I would expect 1//2 to return 0.666666...

While a Fortran programmer would expect to see character concatenation.


-- 
Clive Page   cgp at le.ac.uk


From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 04:13:43 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:13:43 +0200
Subject: SocketServer returns bad file descriptor
In-Reply-To: <74cc9702.0107110622.6d95a609@posting.google.com>
References: <74cc9702.0107110622.6d95a609@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010712101343.G5396@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:22:04AM -0700, phillip wrote:
> I use the following from an example
> 
> class TestHandler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):

[..]

> But every time I connect I get the following error : 

> self.rfile + self.connection.makefile('rb', self.rbufsize) error: (9,
> 'Bad file descriptor')

This looks suspiciously like a bad bug Guido fixed in the SocketServer
module just a few days ago. If so, it'll be fixed in Python 2.2 and Python
2.1.1 (of which the release candidate should be released tomorrow, if all
goes well.) You can grab the CVS tree for either and find out -- the
SocketServer.py module can just be dropped into your current Python library
directory. You can get it through SourceForge, using ViewCVS:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/~checkout~/python/python/dist/src/Lib/SocketServer.py?rev=1.24.2.1&content-type=text/plain

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From Dominikus.Herzberg at eed.ericsson.se  Tue Jul 24 02:41:32 2001
From: Dominikus.Herzberg at eed.ericsson.se (Dominikus Herzberg)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:41:32 +0200
Subject: UML Packages And Python Modelling
References: <oecpltcn42hqfpf8ge308jpk6pe28n5bqm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D189C.C3BBD958@eed.ericsson.se>

Lothar Scholz wrote:

> I'm writing an UML Diagram Editor for python and would like to ask the
> community what entity is an UML package. My first idea was that a file
> is the logical equivalent, not the directory (likejava.and eiffel
> programmers would expect). But then what is a directory ?
> Should this be represented by a nested package ?

Hi Lothar,

maybe the following project "TransWarp" is of interest for you as well,
in case you plan to integrate code generation etc. to your editor.

http://www.zope.org//Members/pje/Wikis/TransWarp/HomePage
http://www.zope.org/Members/tsarna/AnnounceEbySarnaStuff

Dominikus



From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Tue Jul  3 22:47:03 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:47:03 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <slrn9k4out.ms.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <9hu07g$ck6@news1.gtech.com>

True, but all you are arguing here is that Python and accompanying toolset,
in it's current state, is not up to the task but could be made more
appropriate to the problem/situation. So, "how long is a piece of string"?
The original question related to using Python for a particular job. Where
are you going to end your Holy Grail of making Python up to the task i.e.
answering the "objections" as to why Python wouldn't necessarily be a good
choice. Sure the source code is there for anyone to "tweak", so lets just
keep "tweaking" it until it comes up to the required standard - in which
case it won't be Python anymore :-). There are other languages that offer
the same code constructs that Python offers plus more, without the
"drawback" of being an interpreted, dynamic language.

Different languages have different uses, just because you "love" a
particular language doesn't mean that it would suit all possible situations.
I could create the same arguments for using assembler. Why don't we all code
in assembler - because of good and obvious reasons such as ease of coding,
more readable code, higher productivity etc. Yet, I could show that
assembler is a perfectly good choice for certain situations/applications. I
could also talk about "support staff" extending the assembler to offer the
advantages perceived in language X :-) But of course, after the project is
ended you would find that you had a compiler for language X, not an assember
anymore.

Another "rub" here is, sure the project might have some support staff
(generally not though, because staffing such a large project would leave
only the "dreggs" available to act as support staff - assuming you had any
programmers left over at all, usually such projects are short staffed
throughout their entire development cycle :-)). Whoops, sentence got too
long there :-). But the point is you can't afford to have "support" staff
working on improving the tools in parallel with the development effort -
unless it is a small change then the main project can't afford to wait for
whatever feature is being crafted so they program around not having it :-).

Peter



"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9k4out.ms.grante at tuxtop.visi.com...
> On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:25:50 +1000, Peter Milliken
<peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>
> >This assumes that your coding standing inforces passing
> >arguments by name - just try staffing an ATC project and
> >enforcing a coding standard. There will be many programmers who
> >"don't like the standard" and will do anything to get around
> >it. You generally catch these people through code review only
> >and often too late! :-). Python doesn't enforce this,
>
> [without looking at the source code] I think it would probably
> be farily trivial to hack Python to require all arguements be
> passed by keyword.
>
> >personally I believe it is a good feature and I use it
> >frequently - but not all of the time :-)
> >
> >> In C++, the function calls all get checked automatically at
> >> compile time, but Python doesn't check them until run time.
> >> That is a valid concern, but hardly a show-stopper. I
> >> understand that PyChecker can be used for static checking. I
> >> actually think the core Python language should have an option
> >> to do static checking, but as long as some product is
> >> available to do it, the issue is not major.
> >
> >PyChecker is still very imature and some things it will never
> >(poor word to use, since if someone wants to put in the effort,
> >nothing is impossible :-)) be checked by it. It will only ever
> >be an aid. The ability of Python to dynamically "change its
> >behaviour on the fly" is one of its strengths but also a
> >weakness from the point of view of ensuring correctness and
> >reliability in such an application domain.
>
> On a project as large as an ATC program there will probably be
> (or at least _should_ be) some support staff whose job is
> nothing other than specify/acquire/develop/tweak/test
> development tools.
>
> --
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I wish I was a
>                                   at               sex-starved manicurist
>                                visi.com            found dead in the
Bronx!!




From friends at openxxx.net  Sat Jul 14 23:41:08 2001
From: friends at openxxx.net (friends at openxxx.net)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 05:41:08 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Hello, your friend recommended openxxx to you
Message-ID: <UTC200107150341.FAA08258@hera.cwi.nl>


You have been invited to check out this adult site
by one of your friends who visited us.

our URL is http://www.openxxx.net/
enjoy,
OpenXXX TEAM 2001





From newgene at bigfoot.com  Wed Jul 18 10:49:09 2001
From: newgene at bigfoot.com (newgene)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 07:49:09 -0700
Subject: Two Simple Qs:
References: <a50631f6.0107171019.74fb42a5@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <a50631f6.0107180649.b711dd1@posting.google.com>

Thank you all!

Now I got the solutions for both Qs.

Newgene


From adam.seyfarth at home.com  Sun Jul 22 14:17:35 2001
From: adam.seyfarth at home.com (Vonlia)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:17:35 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: HOWTO: exit
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221315300.4146-100000@cc489744-a>

Hi,
     Sorry, I know this will be easy and I'm making alot of noise, but
how do I exit from a script?  I was hoping for something like sh's
`exit' command...Once again, sorry, I just got into the python thing
(long time Monty Python liker, though C-:)



-- 
     singing person: ``There's nothing quite as wonderful as money,
     There's nothing quite as beautiful as cash...''
     choire: ``money money money money money money money...''
               -- Monty Python::music(unknown)

     /||  Name: `Adam Seyfarth'   Nicks: `Vonlia', `Fortuno'  ||\
    /?||  <mailto:cloud at users.sf.net>   <http://plib.sf.net>  ||?\
    \?||  <http://tuxaqfh.sf.net>    <http://tuxkart.sf.net>  ||?/
     \||  <http://vim.sf.net>       <http://www.majik3d.org>  ||/




From yeah at right.net  Fri Jul  6 16:50:43 2001
From: yeah at right.net (baronsamedi)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 20:50:43 GMT
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
References: <mailman.994426691.24524.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B46249E.8050608@right.net>

I'm a firm believer in the idea that something only proves its 
usefulness by its possibilities for misuse, or unintended use.  True, 
that is a rather low stunt to pull, but alas, it is rather funny.  In a 
school/college environment these kind of jokes are the general fodder 
that get you through the monotony of just another day at school/college.

I seriously doubt i'll be able to get a root password for my college... 
oh, wait.. they're using NT, and our projects throughout the year are 
done in pascal/vb.. oh well, guess i'll suggest python, and see if i can 
use it on my own coursework :)

==========================
baronsamedi/icarus

take this job and shove it
==========================

Oleg Broytmann wrote:

> On 6 Jul 2001, Charles Harrison wrote:
> 
>>If you are working in a school lab environment where you have
>>the root password on the machines
>>
> 
>    If you have root passwords you must be more responsible than that.
> 
> Oleg.
> ----
>      Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
>            Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.
> 
> 
> 




From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul 22 13:40:10 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:40:10 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:01:08 -0500, Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com <Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com> wrote:
> 
> If I was told that experinced programmers might 
> appreciate this change for any possible reason - 
> I'd be quiet as a mouse.

I don't think they will..

> 
> Since I remain convinced that the single most important
> factor for Python's acceptance as an educational language is
> the growth of its  acceptance as a professional language.

First of all, it's really ugly. It's the ugliest thing in python for a newbie,
imho. Yes, 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.

If it was just a matter of that, it wouldn't be enough for a change (non-
backwards-compatible one). But, the problem is that people will have strange
bugs because of this and spend hours upon hours trying to figure out what's
wrong. Python may be around during next 10-20 years and userbase may grow
a thousandfold, and having this ugliness on board for all this time is a
big problem.

It's arguable whether the problem is serious enough to break old code, but it's
obvious (to me, anyway) that there *is* a rather big problem here.

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul 16 13:45:04 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:45:04 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OFB4F80B00.12505A31-ON88256A8B.0061408B@i2.com>

Philip Hunt wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:29:32 -0700, James_Althoff at i2.com
<James_Althoff at i2.com> wrote:
>>
>>Granted, I used "only".  On the other hand, if someone says "good for
short
>>programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this case)
>>-- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
>>something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
>> >=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to
be
>>reasonable and fair)?
>
>No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
>it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?

How about if we just forward this over to the Department of Arguments?  (I
think it's right next to the Office of Silliness).

Jim





From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Mon Jul 23 21:08:19 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:08:19 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <000001c113e2$8cf52fe0$a9e1fea9@carol>

>Well, I'll see what I can do. In the language there are (at least)
>two distinct things we might want to do when "dividing" A and B:

>  (1) split A up into B parts
>  (2) find how many B's fit in an A

etc...

The well intentioned response I think only points out the problem
more. 

You don't seem to understand that my point is that, within reason, 
I do in fact understand all this fairly well. Anyone else of normal 
intelligence should be able to also. 

My further point is that there is a lot about programming that 
I do find difficult.  The difficult parts. 

Which is why I keep feeling the techies among you have
lost touch with common sense.  Almost comically.  
The easy stuff is easy, the hard stuff is hard.  
It's not that difficult to separate which is which. 
Which is why I am always amazed at what gets
reported - and taken seriously - as significant.

Will I have any problem with // and / - using them appropriately

Doubt it.

Can I handle case sensitivity any way you give it to me.

Cake.

Why is two years of discussion going on as if someone like
myself is not fully representative.  I simply have no reason
to believe I am not.  And will scrutinize carefully any evidence
which contends otherwise.

Should major design decisions for a professional language be
made on anecdotal reports from ???????? sources without 
a hard look at  their context and meaning.  Not in my opinion.

Do I believe the change is a significant enhancement on behalf
of the newbie.

Not in the least.

Will Python be a better language after it is done.  I don't have a
good basis to disagree with that assertion.

And none of these statements seem a bit contradictory to me.

>A good example of (1) is float division, and the cannonical example 
>of (2) is "int division", aka "div". These are DIFFERENT THINGS.
>For instance, if you are implementing a sort algorithm, you may
>well want (2) in a place where (1) will never do! On the other
>hand, if your program is performing CAD drawings, then (1) is
>probably the meaning you need. Note that (2) often makes most sense
>with integers (especially since it always gives out an integer),
>while (1) may make sense with floats, rationals, fixed-position
>decimals, as well as various other numerical types.






From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 11 14:10:30 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 18:10:30 GMT
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk> <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B4C76A3.A624D05F@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kp5kl.v9a.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:54:11 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
>Hmmm. Any language design that aspires to allow programmers the ability to
>express algorithms independent of the type of object to which it may be
>applied, such as containers, must at some level provide typeless handles. In
>C/C++ those handles are typically (void *). In Java they are typically
>Object references. In Python they are most all variables.

Not quite.  C and Java are pretty poor examples of "static typing".  Eiffel
and sather container classes use type parameters: ARRAY[INTEGER]
In haskell, most all functions are naturally polymorphic, with no declarations
required, and data constructors can take type arguments:

data Tree t = Leaf t | Node (Tree t) (Tree t)

I gather that even C++ supports something similar to eiffel generics through
"templates".

When a weak type system fails, you have to cast it away, at which point you
lose all the advantages of having a type system in the first place.  I'm
surprised to hear that Java makes such common use of down casts; it seems to
make the highly deprecated C practice of throwing around void pointers into a
basic language idiom.

Eiffel has the equivalent of down casts through the assignment attempt, but
it's surrounded by blinky warning lights saying "only to implement persistence
mechanisms and other nasty tricky bits where types are lost".

I used to think of java as a sort of ugly slow version of eiffel without
contracts, but now I suppose I should add "static types" to that prejudicial
dustbin as well :)


From Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com  Tue Jul  3 15:25:50 2001
From: Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com (Scherer, Bill)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:25:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: using python to append a file
In-Reply-To: <13e6b4a6.0107031113.441998c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031525130.31581-100000@ampeg.corp.bam.com>

open(fileName, 'a')

will do the trick.

On 3 Jul 2001, Thanh Le wrote:

> I am new to Python and was wondering if anyone could show me a way to
> append a file (similar to the way Unix does by using >> ). I've tried
> using open('file','r+') method and it overwrote whatever i had in that
> file. I am sure there is a way to append a file, but  havent had much
> luck.
> Thanks in advance,
> Thanh
>

William K. Scherer
Sr. Member of Applications Staff - Verizon Wireless
Bill.Scherer_at_VerizonWireless.com




From llothar at mailandnews.de  Thu Jul  5 12:10:31 2001
From: llothar at mailandnews.de (Lothar Scholz)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 18:10:31 +0200
Subject: Building an embedded Python application with Borland C++
Message-ID: <q449kt49kjuse1ft0fobvr85kqp3pa26vm@4ax.com>

I have the problem that i can build an import library from the
python20.dll but not link my program against it.

Python is compiled without the preceding underline character, so
i must compile my application with the -u-  option. But when i do
so the runtime library can't find a "_main" function because it is
now compiled as "main".

Has anybody solved this problem or has a makefile to build the
complete python DLL with the Borland 5.5 version.


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Thu Jul  5 16:36:48 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 22:36:48 +0200
Subject: ICFP 2001 contest - Python team, anyone?
Message-ID: <slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

The International Functional Programming Contest was announced. I'd like to
join this year. If you are a Python hacker and want to have all the fun and
glory, please contact me :-)

http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/

"""
On Thursday, July 26, 2001 at 15:00 UTC (see this page to convert to your time
zone), a challenge task will be posted on the Internet. It will also be sent by
mail to the contest mailing list.

Teams will have 72 hours to implement a program to perform this task and submit
this program to the contest judges.
"""

(Im not an ubercoder, I just want to have fun)

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:32:54 2001
From: rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu (Rajarshi Guha)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:32:54 -0400
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de> <m3bsm1hyje.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
Message-ID: <9k6mev$2vg4b$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>

markus at kepler.ibp.de wrote:

>
>> throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way
>> to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there
>> any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?
> 
> Would be nice, but I don't know.

Another post in this thread mentioned http://web.pydoc.org - looks pretty 
useful

-- 
--
Rajarshi Guha


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:09:43 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:09:43 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cpg0bi4g6d.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > 
> > Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  
> [...]
> > Command Line Option
> > 
> >     The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
> >     three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
> >     Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
> >     "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
> >     The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
> >     warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning framework)
> >     when applied to ints or longs.  The "new" value changes the
> >     default globally so that the / operator is always interpreted as
> >     true division.  
> 
> The choice of command line options is inconsistent with the terminology
> used elsewhere in the updated PEP.  
> 
> To further reduce the potential for confusion, I suggest changing
> "old" and "new" to "classic" and "true".  

I considered this, but I disagree.  I don't think there will be much
confusion since the words "classic" and "true" don't occur in the
source (except when overloading __truediv__).  The old/new distinction
makes the arrow of time more obvious.

> If that suggestion is accepted, "warn" might be better spelled 
> more like "classic-warn".
> --
> 
> The updated PEP also makes no mention of a utility for scanning 
> existing code to check for potential problems.  Is this considered
> an intractable problem?  Is there any commitment to doing this,
> eventually, as part of the implementation of this PEP?  Or is the
> presence of the "warn" option considered sufficient (to allow for
> testing, rather than scanning)?

The PEP can't address everything.  I have no idea how to write such a
scanner, and I think it would require type inference of unrivaled
sophistication, so I'm not keen on promising it in the PEP.  I assume
there will be some kind of conversion tool, but it's outside the scope
of the PEP.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 08:44:56 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 07:44:56 -0500
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
In-Reply-To: <92ae279c.0107060410.7beef3fa@posting.google.com>
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>
	<mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org>
	<9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
	<3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>
	<9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
	<mailman.994359729.14667.python-list@python.org>
	<92ae279c.0107060410.7beef3fa@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15173.45768.417053.440826@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> def str_join2(iters):
    >> ... elided ...

    John> The arguments to has() will be strings of unit length. The keys in
    John> the dictionary are integers.

Yeah, thanks for pointing out the error.  It does ruin the performance
advantage... ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 15:53:30 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:53:30 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> <mailman.995575532.23146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jhvbq$ap4$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:
[snip]
> You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
> environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
> identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

Which programming environment do you want us to all use, though? I can
only see this if you add this functionality to the Python interpreter itself,
as you can't enforce everybody to use a particular editing environment,
right? 

In fact my programming environment *currently* is case-preserving!
If I mispell 'Foo' as 'FoO' then the python interpreter will tend to issue
some complaints about this. How do you intend to improve this functionality? 

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Tue Jul 24 19:11:45 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:11:45 -0700
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com> <mailman.996013122.28143.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-C5F75F.16114524072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.996013122.28143.python-list at python.org>,
 barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) wrote:

> >>> must_be_int = 1 / 2
> >>> must_be_int
> 0
> >>> must_be_int = int(1.0 / 2.0)
> >>> must_be_int
> 0

And this addresses the problem of long->float inaccuracies how?
Seems like must_be_int = divmod(1,2)[0] is safer (if way uglier).
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From phawkins at connact.com  Fri Jul 27 13:45:37 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:45:37 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com> <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60E96C.2A99AD87@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <wkhevyfepq.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "PH" == Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

PH> In my post I was attempting to point out that I find list 
PH> comprehensions less readable than the equivalent, longer but 
PH> more explicit while loop version, not that one list comprehension 
PH> is more or less cryptic than another.

Personally, as soon as I saw list comprehensions, I found them
splendidly, instantly readable -- so long as they aren't nested, I can
read them at a glance, where it takes me just a little longer to
comprehend all of a loop.  This is certainly true for the examples
we've been looking at.  So I think this just has to do with how one's
mind works.

and-no-I-don't-find-perl-at-all-readable-ly yr's
Patricia
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 12:26:28 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:26:28 -0500
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
In-Reply-To: <oqae1rg432.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
References: <oqae1rg432.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <15200.17588.34980.217940@beluga.mojam.com>

    If one seeks difficulties against this project, I easily found one: I do
    not have the slightest idea about how to proceed about Perl "goto"s!

Raise and catch exceptions at the appropriate places?

    raise == goto
    except == target of goto

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Wed Jul 25 16:15:24 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:15:24 -0500
Subject: Driver finds 4' Python in hire car.
References: <mailman.996064604.22983.python-list@python.org> <cpitgg94bk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <04CE12C79327711A.081CEE4D6057F4D8.CD12FA66AFCF5BC4@lp.airnews.net>

In article <cpitgg94bk.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> writes:
>
>> <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30352,00.html>
>
>And in Fairfax County, home of PythonLabs no less! :-)
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

And they say there's no $eg#^7A+G?q+ ..............
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From spboulet at speakeasy.net  Tue Jul  3 23:01:35 2001
From: spboulet at speakeasy.net (Stephen Boulet)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:01:35 -0400
Subject: Changing default font in idle/linux
Message-ID: <tk55clhbjjrfd@corp.supernews.com>

Anyone know how to change the default font in idle in linux?
I've looked at the file "EditorWindow.py" but found no "text['font'] = 
("lucida console", 8)" line.

Here are my versions:

# rpm -q python tkinter
python-2.1-1mdk
tkinter-2.1-1mdk

Thanks.

-- Stephen


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 04:15:54 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:15:54 +0200
Subject: Python -- Use with both COM & Java?
References: <Jpc07.289$GI4.22690@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <9hruvr116bo@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Howard Dunlavy" <howard at dunlavy.net> wrote in message
news:Jpc07.289$GI4.22690 at typhoon.mn.mediaone.net...
> This question may be way off base, but here goes anyway...
>
> Would it be possible to maintain one set of Python code that would run in
> both a Microsoft COM environment and a Java environment -- both natively?

Yes, if you constrain that set to simple-enough operations.
For example, a script made up of
    print "hello world"
would satisfy such constraints:-).


> Our situation is that we are currently using Delphi and WebHub in our web
> applications.  However, as we talk to more of our larger customers, they
are
> falling into either the native Microsoft camp (IIS, COM, MTS) or the
native
> Java world.  We had been trying to bridge this problem by using SOAP as
our
> RPC.  However, since we actually have to install our software (we are an
> ISV) at our client site, they would prefer software that would live in
their
> respective "worlds".
>
> Hence my question.  Is Python something that could be used to create both
> COM object and EJB's, for instance (using JPython).
>
> Any comments would be appreciated.

Seriously: you can (and should) isolate the system dependencies in
separate modules.  "import foo" will import different foo.py modules
(or packages etc) depending on the environment.  The 'business logic'
part can be unchanged, but there's no way to avoid the two separate
implementations for the 'technology-infrastructure access' part.


> I realize that this approach might be the "worst of both worlds", and it
> would probably make sense for us to pick one world or the other, but I am
> concerned that we are going to shut ourselves out of a major part of
market
> by choosing just one of MS or Java.

A perfectly understandable concern!


Alex





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Thu Jul  5 11:33:21 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:33:21 -0400 
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA520A@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I made the change and everything is working fine now.  Thanks to everyone
for the wonderful support.  And Python has another edge over Perl.  With
Python, the FTP client is build in, while with Perl, you need to obtain and
install the CPAN (crummy programming archive network) libnet module.


-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 9:08 AM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
Subject: Re: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?


On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> I seem to be getting the listing of what's on my d drive in windows,
rather then the binary contents.  Here is what I do (the server id changed
to protect the innocent:
>
> for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

> List the directory contents in Unix
>
> ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> ls
> d:\programsPython\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt

> Why do I get the text d:\programsPython\filename?

   Because glob() returns full path, so you end up running commands like
ftp.storbinary("STOR " + 'd:\\programsPython\\CE H2-102000 Usage
Mentor1.txt'...
(please note double backslashes)
   If you want just filenames without path you can do one of two things:

1) cd d:\programsPython (os.chdir("d:\\programsPython")) and then use
glob('*') - this will list just the curent directory

2) or cut off the file/path yourself:

for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
   name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))

> How should I change the program to get the actual files sent over?

   Why do you think those funny files are not real files? It is just UNIX
didn't interpreted backslashes! :) I am sure they are your real files! Test
it.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.





From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul 14 10:11:36 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:11:36 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B502DBA.761D4F69@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141805550.5125-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'

>#!/usr/local/python
>""" Module Docs...
>"""
>directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
>...
>u = "H?ll? W?rld !"
>...

Is there any need for new directive like that?
Maybe it is possible to use Emacs-style "coding" directive
in the second line instead:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding=utf-8 -*-
...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/





From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 31 18:28:14 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:28:14 -0400
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
In-Reply-To: <3B671B63.23CC4490@raqia.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEJOLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Lees]
> Question - Does this affect the global lock at all?

You better hope not!

> Is it some way to get around it?  I wrote some simple threaded code
> while back that ran on a dual processor board.  The global lock kept 2
> threads from running in parallel on separate processors.

That's its purpose:  the CPython implementation relies on the GIL to keep
your Python objects sane.  Consider what would happen if, e.g., two threads
mucked with the internal refcount of an object at the same time.

Python releases the GIL only around potentially-blocking and thread-safe C
library calls (like I/O and time.sleep()), and every sys.setcheckinterval()
bytecodes to give another Python thread a chance to run.  If you want it
released at any other time, the only way is to write a C extension module.
However, even then a thread can *never* call a Python C/API function (with a
very few exceptions) unless it holds the GIL at the time.




From kelly.gerber at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 18 15:26:50 2001
From: kelly.gerber at mindspring.com (me)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:26:50 -0700
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
References: <mailman.995434769.10172.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B55E2FA.4BCFF3A@mindspring.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> Isn't Python already compiled with readline in RH7.1???
>
> If so, add
>
> .startpy
> import readline
> import rlcompleter
> readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
> print "Realine loaded"
>
> to your homedir and put
>
> export PYTHONSTARTUP=.startpy
>
> into your .bash_profile
> (if you are using bash)
>
> Then re-login and try:
>
> $ python
>
> Readline loaded
> >>> import os.
> >>> os.
> Display all 155 possibilities? (y or n)
>
> as usual.
>
> > Thanks,
> > Kelly
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
> --
>  - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
>

I did not make myself clear. I am trying to compile the latest version Python
from source code. It will not compile the module, so I am not able to do what
you suggest becaue the module does not exist yet. See the answer from Nils. I
installed the readline-devel package, but now there is still a problem with
-ltermcap.

One step closer..........

Thanks,
Kelly





From inigoserna at terra.es  Tue Jul 10 19:06:29 2001
From: inigoserna at terra.es (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?I=F1igo?= Serna)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 01:06:29 +0200
Subject: curses woes
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101209540.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101209540.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <994806389.845.2.camel@lethe.infernus.org>

El d?a 10 Jul 2001 12:11:39 +0400, Oleg Broytmann escribi?
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Rainy wrote:
> > while 1:
> >     c = win.getch()
> >     if c == curses.KEY_BACKSPACE:
> >         do_something()
> >
> > The problem is that backspace key shows up as ^? and doesn't match the above
> > test. I also tried doing c == 14 but also without luck. I'm using
> > curses.wrapper() here.
> 
>    Your terminal is incorrectly configured.
> 
> man 5 terminfo
> man tic
> man stty

you can use

print 'key: \'%s\' <=> %c <=> 0x%X <=> %d' % (curses.keyname(c), c & 255, c, c)

to learn the key code which is generated and then use it in your code,
but, of course, this is the wrong way (tm).

In my system (a much-modified RedHat Linux 7.1 with ncurses-5.2-8),
backspace generates code 8 (Ctrl-H) in xterm and gnome-terminal, but
curses.KEY_BACKSPACE in rxvt.

Greetings,

I?igo Serna





From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 10 01:57:21 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 08:57:21 +0300
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <yoxvgl12uny.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:

> I haven't seen any particularly notable bias towards "newbies" in this
> group. Anyway, if people want to go and develop their applications

True, this group seems to be perhaps the most enjoyable among the
language newsgroups I have browsed. Not too much "how should I learn
C++".

I'm talking about the tutorial here. There is a line that says "... or
perhaps you're not sufficiently familiar with C.". It just might scare
away some potential Python programmers. Familiarity with C is rarely a
problem for people - slow, tedious and error-prone development
is. When I mentioned Python to one of my colleagues, ha said he had
has the impression that Python was for people who can't learn some
other language (which, according to anecdotal evindce, seems to be the
very opposite of the truth - python people seem to know lots of
languages).

> entirely in C (as seems to be fashionable in certain open source
> circles), because they believe that Python isn't for real programmers
> or is too slow or "wasteful", then they can feel free to do so and
> waste their own time in the process.

C is also kinda fun, if you have lots of time, are doing nothing
complicated or playing with something that doesn't need to be run in a
production environment.

> Edward's right in one respect: stop concentrating on language issues
> and start concentrating on library issues. It's shocking but

I think the Python library is excellent, and the only thing I miss is
the database thing. 

I actually read the library reference docs every now and then just for
fun, enjoying all the beautiful and useful stuff there (that I
probably won't even use - knowing that they are there and how they
work is justy comforting). People doing the documentation for python
reserve special commendation.

> illustrative that many people claim to choose Perl for work purely on
> the basis of library availability for that language.

Perl DBI seems to be one one of the Perl's killer apps... 

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 24 16:11:49 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:11:49 -0500
Subject: cost of change
Message-ID: <1010724151149.ZM39634@anson.hcs.tl>

Has anyone tried to figure out how much changes to Python cost? The way I
figure it, it goes something like this:
500,000 Python programmers
$20/hr
3 hrs to port *all* needed code
Thats $30 *million*, and all those numbers are surely low -- especially the
time to port.  I can't imagine if you're using third party packages and have to
wrangle with all their code yourself.
I've been programming with Python only two months, and I've already gone
through part of the 1.5 to 2.1 upgrade, and it cost several hundred dollars in
salary simply because pickling doesn't port up versions.  (I know that's
documented, but it's still crazy not to have a pickly that works across
versions).
There are other hidden costs to breaking a language with every upgrade. Two
come to mind - first, people like me, who thought they liked it, now don't want
to do anything long term in it, and second, no one can afford to spend time on
optimizations because the structure and code they are trying to optimize keeps
shape shifting.
If you're going to change it, fine. *BUT*, do the world a favor and be sure
that *any* change which breaks existing code carries a new major version number
(PEP0238 clearly warrants a Python 3.0 designation) .
Galen



From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 23:38:08 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:38:08 -0400
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com>

Donovan Hide wrote:

> Basically how can I find all the sets of six numbers which sum to 17 and
> also to 20. 

There are zero sets of six numbers which sum both to 17 and to 20?  ;-)

>     I have come across algorithms written twenty years ago, but they are
> written in Pascal and Fortran. I am learning to program with Python, so it
> is difficult to translate them. I would be very grateful if someone could
> supply some c, python or even pseudocode to generate the solution to this
> problem.

If you have algorithms, why not post them?  Are you hoping somebody
will write this from scratch just for you?  (Someone might, but he's
in a different timezone and wasting his time creating it.comp.lang.python,
and _still_ hasn't replied since you posted this 13 hours ago, so you 
might be out of luck. :)

> Also is generation the correct phrase or is enumeration better?

Enumeration means counting or listing one by one.  That presupposes
the items being counted or listed exist.  Generation means to
bring into being.

So do the sets you are looking for already exist or not?  I'm 
fairly sure a mathematician would say you want enumeration...

(http://www.dictionary.com was instrumental in forming my response.
I'd also like to thank my mother and my father, and my first
grade teacher Mrs. Hurry.)
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Jul 13 09:07:36 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:07:36 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <3B4E52B1.FBAE6F34@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ktsko.tn7.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:45:21 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
>> 
>> Phil Hunt wrote:
>> >On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>> >>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>> >>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>> >
>> >To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> >that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> >lines of C++.
>> 
>> We are shipping a successful product that comprises more than 100,000 lines
>> of Jython.
>> 
>> What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
>> for short programs <100 lines".
>
>In Phil's defense (not that I think he can't speak for himself),
>he didn't say "only".  That's your word.  He was just responding to
>my parenthetical (whatever that means) in reference to the label
>being applied to Python.

Indeed so. Python is suited to longer programs, as has been demonstrated
many times.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sat Jul 14 00:01:09 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:01:09 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] RE: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995061384.26877.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <130720012101095839%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995061384.26877.python-list at python.org>, M.-A.
Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:

> I think that allowing one directive per file is the way to go,
> but I'm not sure about the exact position. Basically, I think it
> should go "near" the top, but not necessarily before any doc-string
> in the file.
>  
> > [Guido]
> > > Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
> > > docstring.  That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
> > > preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
> > > docstrings already have this built into them.  Is it worth breaking
> > > them so that editors can remain stupid?
> > 
> > No.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> Note that the PEP doesn't require the directive to be placed before the
> doc-string. That point is still open. Technically, the compiler
> will only need to know about the encoding before the first
> Unicode literal in the source file.

Is there a strong possibility that *other* directives will come along
which also "want" to be before the docstring?  [I find it unlikely, at
the moment.]

If so, and if directives happen, it would seem necessary to adjust the
docstring rules (and implementation <drat!> and tools <drat!>) to allow
directive-before-docstring.  But...

Can Unicode be used for docstrings?  A simpleminded test suggests "yes":
[localhost:/tmp] john% python
Python 2.1 (#1, 04/22/01, 11:06:25) 
[GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 6.0alpha] on darwin1
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import t
>>> t.__doc__
u'I am a unicode docstring'

So it might be annoying for the file-level docstring's Unicode flavor
to differ from that of all the other Unicode strings in the file.

Horrible thought:  can the compiler revisit the unicode docstring if it
turns out that there is a directive after it which sets the unicode
flavor?  always defer compiling the unicode docstring until after it's
no longer possible to write a unicode-flavor directive (first other
unicode string, end of file...just end of file?).

Is there a need for something ugly like 
   u-big5"I am a big 5 Unicode string"
(ugh!)?  (Unrestricted location in file.)

Of those two, the latter is the more powerful, but is the power needed?

   --John (full of questions; lacking answers; unhappy with own ideas)


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul  3 15:29:02 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:29:02 -0500
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
In-Reply-To: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <15170.7422.465821.631192@beluga.mojam.com>

    Gerson> dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
    ...
    Gerson> if o.type == 'button':
    Gerson> 	# do something for objects of type button

    Gerson> Worthwile pursuit or total crap ?

How about:

    import UserDict

    class Dict(UserDict.UserDict):
	def __getattr__(self, name):
	    if name == "data":
		return self.__dict__['data']
	    try:
		val = self.data[name]
	    except KeyError:
		raise AttributeError, "object has no attribute %s" % name
	    return val

	def __setattr__(self, name, val):
	    if name == "data":
		self.__dict__['data'] = val
	    else:
		self.__dict__['data'][name] = val

    def test():
	d = Dict()
	d['a'] = 1
	print d.a
	d.b = 1
	print d['b']
	try:
	    print d.c
	except AttributeError:
	    print "d.c does not exist, as expected"

    test()

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From root at rainerdeyke.com  Thu Jul 26 20:08:36 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:08:36 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>
Message-ID: <8i287.3114$oh1.1140514@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Peter Dobcsanyi" <petrus at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602 at news1.telusplanet.net...
> "nb_intdivide" and "nb_divide" are very different let's show this
> difference. Among the still free symbols ("?", "@", "$" I guess) I
> would suggest to use "$" for the integer division.

My vote (if I had one): keep '/' for integer division and introduce a new
symbol for floating point division.

Justification:

  - Everybody uses integers, but not everybody uses floats.  Therefore, if
'/' is used for integers, then fewer people will have to change their code.

  - The short and pretty modulus operator should be matched with a short and
pretty integer division operator.

  - It makes floats more difficult for newbies.  This is a good thing, since
floats are dangerous.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 13 23:36:37 2001
From: quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 03:36:37 GMT
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org> <slrn9ki07c.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9ki6cn.8ud.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9kvfi5.fk9.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 9 Jul 2001 02:40:23 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>Despite what the documentation may say, readlines does not use readline.
>readlines uses fread() (since it doesn't have to worry about reading too much)
>and then checks with ferror().  readline uses getc() (or perhaps fgets()) and,
>when it gets EOF for error, proceeds to *not* check for error (clears it, in
>fact).  So I'd say linux, SunOS, and Irix are correct here and OSX is wrong
>(must not be reporting via ferror() correctly).
>
>I'd say python is wrong here too, by not being consistent.  If readline
>checks, readlines should too.

I've submitted a patch that makes readline() check for errors.


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 10:09:36 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:09:36 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996098094.16930.python-list@python.org> <l_P77.559300$eK2.117135519@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <cplmlb7pev.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> writes:

> Here's a nice little use of type/class unification:
> 
> instead of using:
> if type(x) is type(0):
> 
> we can use:
> if type(x) is int:
> 
> or, for type checking..
> 
> assert type(num) is int
> assert type(msg) is str
> 
> ( I assume the use of 'is', rather than '==',  is acceptable here )

Yes, 'is' is right.  But you should never use this; instead, you
should use

  assert isinstance(num, int)
  assert isinstance(msg, str)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From meowbot at meowing.net  Fri Jul 27 01:39:04 2001
From: meowbot at meowing.net (Miasmic Meowbot)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 01:39:04 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996208009.24941.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EB99AB31ADBatodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>
Message-ID: <874rrzhqx3.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>

andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd) wrote:

> I just did a search for 'python' on their web site (http://www.qks.com/) 
> and got "Service is not running". I'm presuming this means not yet.

<URL:http://www.smallscript.net/Python_for_AOS.htm> would seem to concur.


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 09:06:54 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:06:54 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net>
Message-ID: <Xns90D28EBA8E49Aduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Giles Constant <gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk> wrote in
news:MdY%6.168$iF.4908 at news.lhr.globix.net: 

> I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some 
> global data such that all instances of the class have access to it. 
> The alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every
> single object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently
> that it would be rediculous.
> 
> Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)
> 

The easiest thing here is to put your environment class in its own module, 
and simply make the shared data global to that module.


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From uberfustigator at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 11:30:26 2001
From: uberfustigator at yahoo.com (Brian Kelley)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 08:30:26 -0700
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net> <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi@4ax.com> <slrn9jvbc6.pdh.carlf@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <22fbef71.0107030730.ae258df@posting.google.com>

carlf at panix.com (Carl Fink) wrote in message news:<slrn9jvbc6.pdh.carlf at panix2.panix.com>...
> In article <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi at 4ax.com>, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> > 
> > Perhaps you have missed that i was asking for an verion > alpha.
> > I think Pythoncard will not be useable for some years.
> 
> The current _Linux Journal_ has an article on Glade as a Python GUI
> builder.  It surely looks impressive to me, but I haven't tried it. 
> You'd end up with a GTK program (no native Windows/Mac look and feel)
> if that matters to you. 
> 
> (I suppose you could use a GTK widget set that looks like WinX or
> Mac?)

My tutorial at the Python 9 Conference was based on the source that
Mitch wrote for the Linux Journal article.  You can get the tutorial
at http://www.bioreason.com/~brian/GladeBase.html

Glade, libglade and pygtk currently complile and work under windows
and I believe someone has ported _libglade.pyd as well which was the
missing piece of the puzzle.  Hopefully I can bundle this stuff up
into an installer along with the tutorial and GladeBase within the
next decade :)


From iumrgk at nowasia.net  Fri Jul 20 18:45:33 2001
From: iumrgk at nowasia.net (iumrgk at nowasia.net)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:45:33 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: The PC and Software Museum
Message-ID: <9jacad$5cc$383@usenet.otenet.gr>

- Do you like OLD computers and software ?
- Would you like to download some OLD Windows Versions ?


   
** THE NUMBER 1 MUSEUM FOR PERSONAL COMPUTERS AND SOFTWARE **

///////////////////////////////////////
/           www.pcmuseum.8m.net       /
///////////////////////////////////////

Featuring:

* Personal Computers
* Terminals
* Dumb Terminal Support Center
* Software Section
* Trade & Buy Market
* and MORE !

                       http://www.pcmuseum.8m.net



mgodttfuwchrerlmbnxlhlfwqvdxenjnowvuegnkjpsmniemsmtozfidweskcscriunmsmxzdpybvnnvnkdmoowjjdrxc



From paulsid at home.com  Tue Jul 31 14:07:15 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:07:15 -0600
Subject: Control of flow
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local>
Message-ID: <3B66F3D3.B8B41AEC@home.com>

Campbell wrote:

> I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is often
> a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful" sometimes =).

I disagree, it's evil and should be avoided at all costs!  :-)

> Here is a little snippet that gets a month/day from a caller.  If the
> day entered is not in the range of days valid for the month entered, we
> repeat from the top.  Does anyone have a few minutes to waste helping
> me??  How better can I code things that look like this:
> 
> >>> snip <<<
> while 1:
>     cont = 1         ## ugh!
>     month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
>     if month < 1 or month > 12:
>         play("invalidmonth.vox")
>         continue
>     while 1:
>         day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
>         if day < 1 or day > Month[month]:
>             play("invalidday.vox")
>             cont = 1
>         cont = 0
>     if cont == 1:
>         continue
>     break
> >>> snip <<<

Your second loop will run indefinitely, and cont will always be 0. 
Unfortunately this bug (or pasting error?) makes it kind of hard to see exactly
what you want to do, but I'll take a shot at it.  (Two shots actually.)

If you always want to start back entering the month if the day was misentered,
this should work:

while 1:
    month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
    if month >= 1 and month <= 12:
        day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
        if day >= 1 and day <= Month[month]:
            break #  Or another if statement should you need to do more.
        else:
            play("invalidday.vox")
    else:
        play("invalidmonth.vox")

This is very straightforward and easy to read even when nested heavily.

If, however, there are also times when just the day can be reentered (which is
the only reason I can see for needing the second loop in your example) then
you'll still control variables, but maybe this will be nicer:

dayvalid = 0
monthvalid = 0
while not monthvalid:
    month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
    if month >= 1 and month <= 12:
        monthvalid = 1
        while not dayvalid:
            day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
            if day >= 1 and day <= Month[month]:
                dayvalid = 1
                break #  Or another if statement with a similar while loop.
            else:
                dayvalid = 0
                if needtostartoverwiththemonth:  ##
                    play("invalidday.vox")
                    monthvalid = 0
                    break
                else:
                    play("otherinvalidday.vox")  ##
    else:
        monthvalid = 0
        play("invalidmonth.vox")

(Lines with ## are pseudocodeish.)

With this approach you can quite easily back out of the loops to wherever you
need to start over.  For example, if you nested this further so you could get
an hour then a minute then some data, and if (for some reason) inputting
invalid data warranted restarting input at the day, you just set datavalid=0
and dayvalid=0 then break from the data loop and the other loops will do the
rest without any changes.  That is, minutevalid and hourvalid will be 1 so they
will terminate the minute and hour loops, leaving you back in the day loop
which will then start over because the day is no longer valid.

This approach does make for more long-winded code and more indents, but that's
a plus with hellish loop constructs.  When you need to look at it months later,
it's a lot easier to find a printer or screen that can display extra columns
than it is to find the team of programmers needed to figure out WTF you were
originally trying to do.  :-)

Does that help?  If not I hope you'll post more details and corrected code.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 23:44:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 20:44:57 -0700
Subject: Decimal arithmetic again (was Re: PEP 238 (revised))
References: <mailman.996352193.17199.python-list@python.org> <rzJ87.20458$oh1.6779045@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <9k00rp$qmc$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <rzJ87.20458$oh1.6779045 at news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>,
Rainer Deyke <root at rainerdeyke.com> wrote:
>
>'1.0' is a fixed point number with one digit to the right of the decimal
>place.  '1.00' is a fixed point number with two digits to the right of the
>decimal place.  '1e-1' is a fixed point number with one digit to the right
>of the decimal point.  '1e1' is a fixed point number with negative one
>digits to the right of the decimal point.  Conceptually, integers are fixed
>point numbers with zero digits to the right of the decimal place.
>
>Internally, each number could be represented as two integers (longs): one
>'base' and 'exp', such that the value of the number is 'base + 10 ** exp'.
>'-exp' is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point.
>
>For addition (and subtraction), the number with fewer digits to the right of
>the decimal point is padded with zeros.  Addition is therefore an exact
>operation:
>
>1.00 + 1.0 => 1.00 + 1.00 => 2.00

This is precisely what I'm currently implementing as Decimal.py.  You
can find my current code at http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 09:38:21 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:38:21 +0200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:06:00 EDT."
             <200107271306.JAA23956@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <m15Q7or-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

> > Keeping old interpreters around doesn't work for my biggest worry:
> > use of old scripts with new versions of TTTech's applications. In this
> > context, TTTech ships an application containing a new interpreter to a
> > customer who might still have old scripts around. These scripts might
> > come from a third party and be totally opaque to the customer itself
> > (e.g., a script to import from a tool of company XYZ into TTTech's
> > TTPplan). 
> 
> Well, I hope that making the change Python 3.0 does the right thing
> for you.  It shouldn't be hard to alert your customers that Python 2
> is required for your company's applications.  Like Perl 4 and Perl 5,
> Python 2 and Python 3 will probably live alongside for many years.

Well, I'd prefer not to get stuck with Python 2.0 forever. Unlike many
I usually enjoy the new features you add to the language :-)

> > I agree that exact emulation of old versions doesn't make sense. What
> > I would propose is to enable Python somehow to identify old code
> > (e.g., by absence of a version specifier) and let it raise an
> > exception when `/` is applied to two integer arguments by old code.
> > This would avoid both permanent warts and silent breakage of old code.
> 
> Requiring a version specifier in all new code is very annoying.  The
> future statement is annyoing too, but at least it's a transitional
> measure.

I agree and that's the reason I didn't want to propose any concrete
way of tagging new stuff. But I was hoping that maybe someone comes up
with a cleaver idea how mark new code in a non-intrusive and thus
non-annoying way.

Someone proposed a change in file extension. Too bad, that this
doesn't cover all cases (like my user scripts which are fed to
execfile).

> I agree that if we really need to have a way to explicitly request
> past behavior, "from __past__ import ..." is a decent syntax.  I just
> noticed that PEP 236 (the __future__ PEP) mentions this as an
> possibility (although the author claims it is unlikely).

Explicitly marking the past won't work for my case. If a file is
touched anyway, it should be fixed properly. I'm worried about the
files out of reach.

> I just looked it up at dictionary.com, and the meaning of quotient is
> just the result of a division.  One source even mentions that the
> quotient is rational if the operands are.

My Langenscheidt English/Geman dictionary just gives quotient <-->
Quotient.

But my Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary tells me:

    quotient: the number resulting from the division of one number by
    another [Latin quotiens `how many times`, from quot `how many`]

If they had only written integer in place of number! OTOH, one learns
in school that (integer) division gives a quotient and a remainder. So
I think quotient is still better than `floor division`. How many
newbies are going to know the meaning of floor?

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Wed Jul 11 03:53:54 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 10:53:54 +0300
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
Message-ID: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

I'm using a Threading.Event object. When I specify a timeout for
wait(), it takes almost 1 second for the thread that is wait()'ing to
wake up when I kick the Event obj with a set(). I know I could get
around this by creating a thread to perform set()'s periodically, but
since this slowness is not mentioned in the documentation I was
wondering whether I have misunderstood something.

I'm using Python 2.1.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From missive at frontiernet.net  Wed Jul 25 21:15:33 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:15:33 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: how to import curses
References: <9jni8c$3hl8$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <20010725195635.22015.00001518@ng-fx1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <9jnqvk$3a7e$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On 25 Jul 2001 23:56:35 GMT, TheDustbustr <thedustbustr at aol.com> wrote:
> I have a winmodem so I use Win95 for internet programming.  Is there any
> substitute modlue I can use?  I need a non-blocking alternative for
> raw_input().


Two possibilities:

1.) Get a new modem. Can't cost more than about $20.
(my last two were free... up to 33.6 kbps now. woo hoo!)

2.) I did a search on google for "python win32 curses" and came
up with a few links. One lists something called pdcurses

try:

http://www.mikroplan.com.pl/~mak/python/



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sat Jul 28 04:28:39 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 08:28:39 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org> <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9m4um1.28g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> dijo:
[snippage]
> > From what I hear about Python, it is weakly-typed like Perl.
> 
> Python is dynamically typed, and NOT like Perl!

Could someone elaborate on this a bit more?  What is the difference
here?  What makes Perl's typing _not_ dynamic?  I've heard this
statement often in clpy, but do not understand the semantics of the
argument.

However, Perl's typing system is much more flexible (read:
context-sensitive) than Python's.

[snippage]

-- 
"supported" is an MS term that means the function exists. The fact
that it always fails means, that it is an exercise for the programmer.
	-- Sarathy, p5p


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Mon Jul 23 21:42:52 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 04:42:52 +0300
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <ku4rs3yueb.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001 at nntp4.u.washington.edu>,
"Russell E. Owen" <owen at astro.washington.edu> writes:

| The present C program works as follows:
| - open the parallel port as a file-like device (and config with ioctl)
| - allocate some buffers
| - call aioread to start reading into one buffer
| - call aioread to queue a read into a 2nd buffer
| - repeatedly poll the aioreads; when one finishes,
|   processes the data, deallocate the buffer,
|   and allocate a new buffer and queue an aioread on it
| writing works similarly

| It would be nicest to end up with as little C code as possible (i.e. 
| move most of this functionality into Python). 

unix character devices often support select(), if that works
it would probably be easiest (look in the select module).

if not, you can still use python threads.

if you want to keep the c library, the lowest overhead method
might be to start a separate process for the parallel
port reading process and have a bit of c send things to
your python program (for example with pipes.)

| Ideally, I'd like to start a read into a 
| big FIFO, then check every once in awhile and process the data that has 
| arrived.

that's approximately what select lets you do (from many files at once).

  -- erno


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 21:02:39 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 18:02:39 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.423933 <slrn9m3q54.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <9jt2vf$gj8$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9m3q54.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan at g.local>,
Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> wrote:
>Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>[Tim Hochberg:]
>>>
>>> Actually, I do dislike this.  Much as I find floats generally useless, I 
>>> think that 0.666667 should return a float, and that if I want to write a 
>>> rational literal I should be able to write it as 2/3.
>> 
>> I think you're right.  An early version of ABC worked like this, and
>> at the time I though "hmm, but why shouldn't 0.98 be an exact number;
>> it could be intended as a price or something like that", and I
>> convinced the team to change it.  But in practice it was more often
>> annoying.  Now maybe that was because we (the biggest users) were CS
>> and math folks, and we tended to tackle typical math and CS problems
>> -- but my gut is to vote against this aspect of the PEP.
>
>I am a fan of rationals, but I strongly agree. Turning 0.98
>into 49/50 is likely to cause much more confusion than it
>saves.

If I ever get finished with Decimal.py, we'll likely make such numbers
into arbitrary-precision decimal numbers instead of binary floating
point.

[I keep talking about it in public to provide myself with one more
motivation to finish.  ;-)]
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 16:51:49 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:51:49 GMT
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
References: <mailman.994953982.6684.python-list@python.org> <Ofl37.2371$uJ3.65780@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <FbJ37.5151$z21.530169@newsc.telia.net>

Steve wrote:

> That's OK. I'm working on a Python-to-Perl translator.

isn't Perl 6 supposed to support different front-ends, including
Python?  or maybe it's the Python front-end you're working on?

Cheers /F




From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 17 13:12:35 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:12:35 -0500
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9l8iie.pm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <mailman.995375611.9710.python-list@python.org>
        <slrn.pl.9l8iie.pm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <15188.29187.925172.4862@beluga.mojam.com>

    Marcin> But how to rewrite it? I'm not sure if I like this:

    Marcin>   for i in list:
    Marcin>     if cond:
    Marcin>       do_something
    Marcin>     else:
    Marcin>       pass
    Marcin>   else:
    Marcin>     somethingelse

As they say, "explicit is better than implicit".

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 17 15:52:01 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:52:01 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171620190.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171240290.11975-100000@bms>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
<...>
> > Yes, that could be an issue (I don't think it matters much though,
> > since parsing usually only done during byte-code compilation and
> > the results are buffered in .pyc files).
>
> No! Scripts are compiled each time they run.
> If this will be implemented, developers will need to do the trick
> of making each script a module and so on. This is not good idea.
>
> There clearly must be the way to prevent encode-decode. And it would be
> better if only EXPLICITLY given encoding will trigger encode-decode
> mechanism.

Python currently manages .pyc and .pyo files by placing them in the
same location as the .py they are generated from, only if the location
is not writeable or the program has changed will it get recompiled...

Why not extend this to allow Python to manage .py-s, and allow for set
locations for source and byte-code; a command option can be used to
get the old behaviour where .pyc|o live where the source does.

<...>
> And this is right. I even think encoding information could be EXTERNAL.
> For example, directory will need to have "__encodings__.py" file where
> encodings are listed.
>
> Then, Python if started with some key could check for such file and
> compile modules accordingly.

...or reformat them...

> If there is not __encodings__.py, then Python proceed as it does now,
> WITHOUT any conversions to and from.

...why restrict this paradigm to character encodings.

> This will make script-writer happy (no conversion overhead) and those who
> want to write encoding-enabled programs (they could specify
> __encodings__.py)

Do you mean: use "import __encodings__" in a program, have an
__encodings__.py in a modules subdir (as is with __init__.py), or just
on sys.path?

Allowing for some kind of system and per-user customization seems
prudent; a __magic__ file both feels natural (Pythonic) and could
allow for system, program, and per-user settings or tweaks...

> I think, this solves most problems.

...but it would be in addition to a `trigger' (like magic comments),
   right?  No trigger, no overhead.

<...>
> I have a feeling that PEP is solving non-problem. Or have I lost
> the thread?

Who ever said a PEP must solve a problem.

> For example, I usually write scripts where I assume "koi8-r" or
> "windows-1251" encodings. And the only problems I have is when I use
> "koi8-r" strings from modules when I need "1251" ones. (In this case I
> explicitely recode).
>
> Aren't encodings better confined in documents (in XML for examples),
> than programs?

I agree, this is document meta-stuff and should be handled as far away
from the language as possible.  However, Python does need to look at
documents at some point, so some way of transparently handling
different encodings (and why not formats) is needed.

> If programs need to be written in unicode, then isn't the next step
> o allow embedding sound, graphics and video?
> (I imagine video docstring ;-)

cool...

# ## format videodocstring

> I can admit that using utf-8 in writing programs could be justified,
> but Unicode... It will bring nightmare...

...if handled badly.


- Bruce

p.s.

Q: How do you handle literate, unicoded source with video docstrings?
A: .py-s are assumed to be usable without pre-processing, and only
   the bit of Python that handles the pre-processing determines when
   a source is actually a source.py.

e.g.,  doing "python source", when `source' contains:

	# ## format noweb
	# ## format videodocstring
	# ## encoding utf-8

would result in Python running `source' through the noweb filter to
separate the code from the docs, then through the videodocstring
filter to split off the fancy docstrings, and finally doing whatever
it needs to do to handle the non-standard encoding.  The result would
be called `source.py' and be stored <somewhere>; the next time Python
gets handed `source' it can check for <somewhere>/source.py, and
eschew the conversion steps if they have already been done.




From morten at thingamy.net  Wed Jul 25 08:45:00 2001
From: morten at thingamy.net (Morten W. Petersen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:45:00 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Making a Sircam virus-remover in Python
In-Reply-To: <3B701D4B@twigger.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107251440340.25190-100000@bcryachts.atsat.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Hans Nowak wrote:

> Sure, use the _winreg module that is available since 2.0:
> 
>   http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module--winreg.html

Thanks,

does anyone want to join in on this one?  I'll collect some virus
descriptions and start fleshing out a quick-n-dirty script.

There's some programs out there that should supposedly remove the virus
completely, but they don't even detect it..

-Morten




From hdwinter at janbe.jnj.com  Mon Jul 23 08:12:29 2001
From: hdwinter at janbe.jnj.com (Hans De Winter)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 05:12:29 -0700
Subject: Newbie question on extending Python with C
Message-ID: <13ea8ea6.0107230412.3a6e2dd@posting.google.com>

Dear,

I would like to extend the standard Python classes with a number of
new ones implemented as C-structures. However, as a newbie to writing
C-extensions for Python, I'm not entirely sure how to C-implement a
Python class that can access the data from another C-implemented
Python class. Could someone point me to the proper documentation where
it is described how to achieve this?

Many thanks,

Hans


From rupe at metro.yak.net  Thu Jul  5 16:14:26 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 13:14:26 -0700
Subject: Best method for updating pickled data objects?
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com>

I was recently working on a project that required that a single
dictionary object be periodically written to a file via the pickle
module.  I quickly realized that the pickle.Pickler(file).dump(object)
function would write updated copies of the same data object
sequentially to the data file, rather than over-writing the older copy
of the object with new data.

To work around the problem, I wrote the following function, which
takes two arguments; dictionary_file, a string containing the name of
the file to pickle the data object in, and object, the name of the
data object to pickle.

def hash_update(dictionary_file, object):
        os.remove(dictionary_file)
        dfile = open(dictionary_file,"w")
        pickle_file = pickle.Pickler(dfile)
        pickle_file.dump(object)
        dfile.close()

Deleting and recreating the pickle file, then writing out the data
object from memory each time seems horribly inefficient to me
(especially for large data objects). There's got to be a better way to
do this.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 09:48:19 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 14:48:19 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <q5u0kt8grkoedsutk8tr61dnb3rcphmvg7@4ax.com>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 10:06:14 -0400, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:

>indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is just 
>too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without noticing), 
>especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one place to 
>another.  When such whitespace munging makes the code look ugly, it's 
>simply a minor annoyance.  When it changes the meaning of the code, it's a 
>language design mistake.

I've never had this problem. I'd say careful cutting and pasting -
generally meaning that when I cut large blocks they are made of
complete lines - was force of habit long before I used Python, simply
because the odds are I'll have to read the code later - and bad
indenting wastes a lot more time than taking care before you cut.

But yes - it is a valid, considered opinion.

Perhaps there would be some justification to wanting block structures
to be marked, and bad indentation could then perhaps cause an error
message to force you to tidy it up. But I don't know. I like Pythons
lack of clutter.

And so we return to the same old personal preferences.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From dag at orion.no  Mon Jul  2 04:14:49 2001
From: dag at orion.no (Dag Sunde)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 08:14:49 GMT
Subject: Help parsing XML
References: <mailman.994060443.31499.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Z3W%6.736$em.12119@juliett.dax.net>

Try changing the order of:
    <!DOCTYPE events SYSTEM "xml-concerts.dtd">
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding-"ISO-8859-1"?>

to:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
    <!DOCTYPE events SYSTEM "xml-concerts.dtd">

...and note the corrected "encoding=" instead of
"encoding-"...

It is not legal to have anything before "<?xml...",
if present.

Dag.


"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994060443.31499.python-list at python.org...
>
> Warning: I am a complete XML novice trying to parse some XML I dreamed up
> with xml.sax.parse.
>
> I wrote a simple subclass of xml.sax.ContentHandler to parse some XML.  It
> defines startElement, endElement and characters methods.  If I feed it
> something simple like so:
>
>     <events>
>       <event>
> <performers>
>   <performer>James Taylor</performer>
>   <performer>Carly Simon</performer>
> </performers>
> <keywords>
>   <keyword>pop</keyword>
>   <keyword>rock</keyword>
>   <keyword>vocals</keyword>
> </keywords>
> <start-date>20010701T20:00</start-date>
> <end-date>20010701T23:00</end-date>
> <admission-price>$30</admission-price>
> <venue-name>Pepsi Arena</venue-name>
> <city>Albany</city>
> <state>CA</state>
> <country>US</country>
> <submitter-name>Skip Montanaro</submitter-name>
> <submitter-email>skip at mojam.com</submitter-email>
>       </event>
>     </events>
>
> it works fine.  However, note the absence of <!DOCTYPE ...> and <?xml ...>
> tags at the start.  If I add them at the start of the XML file like so:
>
>     <!DOCTYPE events SYSTEM "xml-concerts.dtd">
>     <?xml version="1.0" encoding-"ISO-8859-1"?>
>     <events>
>       <event>
>       ...
>
> Python squawks:
>
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "parsexml.py", line 72, in ?
> xml.sax.parse("concert.xml", h)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/__init__.py", line 33, in
parse
> parser.parse(source)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 43, in
parse
> xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 123, in
parse
> self.feed(buffer)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 92, in
feed
> self._err_handler.fatalError(exc)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/handler.py", line 38, in
fatalError
> raise exception
>     xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: concert.xml:2:0: xml processing
instruction not at start of external entity
>
> If I zap the <!DOCTYPE ...> tag I get this:
>
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "parsexml.py", line 72, in ?
> xml.sax.parse("concert.xml", h)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/__init__.py", line 33, in
parse
> parser.parse(source)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 43, in
parse
> xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 123, in
parse
> self.feed(buffer)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 92, in
feed
> self._err_handler.fatalError(exc)
>       File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/handler.py", line 38, in
fatalError
> raise exception
>     xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: concert.xml:1:41: syntax error
>
> If you're wondering what sort of XML I'm trying to parse, my first cut at
a
> DTD (I'm a complete novice at DTD writing as well) is at
>
>     http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/concerts.dtd
>
> I suspect this is more a problem with my lack of XML expertise than with
> anything specific I'm doing wrong with my content handler.  Suggestions or
> pointers to appropriate XML tutorial material would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> (847)971-7098
>




From barry at digicool.com  Mon Jul  9 10:07:50 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:07:50 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <15177.47798.190647.733698@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "FL" == Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

    >> I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to
    >> RFC2822.

    FL> sounds like it's time to rename that module ;-)

mimelib <wink>

-Barry




From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Fri Jul 27 09:51:02 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:51:02 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:14:30 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>David Ullrich wrote:
>
>[someone else:]
>>> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the set
>>> of reals)?
>> 
>> Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
>> (except in contexts like the present).
>> 
>> We math guys have reduced more or less everything to sets these
>> days - fewer things at the bottom to keep track of. So when we
>> want to define a "type" with certain "properties" we figure out
>> how to "code" such a thing as a certain sort of set. But almost
>> always what set something actually is makes no difference, all
>> that matters is how it works.
>> 
>> Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is the set {{},{{}}}
>
>Tut. You're failing to distinguish interface from implementation.

Tut what? If you read more than one paragraph you see that my
point was exactly that when we say that Z is not strictly a
subset of R that's an irrelevant implemenation detail.

>That's one way to define the number 2, which happens to be the
>usual one at the moment. It's not the only way. Frege wanted
>2 to be the set of *all* unordered pairs {x,y}, and there are
>versions of set theory in which that definition works. In NF,
>sometimes 2 is defined as {{{}}}. Or there's the Conway approach,
>according to which the primitive notion is that of "ordered
>pair of sets" and 2 is an equivalence class whose "typical"
>member is ({0,1}, {}).
>
>I'm pretty sure you already know all this, but it's worth
>saying explicitly. :-)

Probably the fact that I _did_ say explicitly that there
are several different "standard" ways to implement integers
and reals is what makes you suspect I know this, eh? Very
astute of you.

>> So yes, strictly speaking the integers are not a subset
>> of the reals. But nonetheless if someone asks "Are the
>> integers a subset of the reals?" the _right_ answer
>> is "yes"; the answer becomes "no" only if we're focussing
>> on the irrelevant aspects of things.
>
>Right. And, actually, I'd say that the isomorphic image
>of (say) Z inside R *is* the integers. For exactly the
>reasons you mention, what you really mean when you say
>"the integers" is "anything that behaves like the integers".
>That copy of Z is such a thing. The fact that for some
>foundational purposes you start by constructing another
>copy of Z doesn't invalidate that. So, I say: for *all*
>purposes "the integers are a subset of the reals", unless
>for some technical reason you *have* to pick an implementation
>of the integers *and* can't make it be the one that lives
>inside R.
>
>-- 
>Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
>.sig under construc


David C. Ullrich


From eduard.hiti at t-online.de  Thu Jul 12 15:08:20 2001
From: eduard.hiti at t-online.de (Eduard Hiti)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:08:20 +0200
Subject: Python NT Service
References: <83241e1a.0107121019.308ebc6f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ikskm$2cg$04$1@news.t-online.com>

You didn't include much code to look at ;-)

>From where are you importing this class? Is that module on a network share?
Services can run under different users, so the share may not be available.
Try importing your module from a local drive.


"Pradeep Kulkarni" <pkulkarni at sequoianet.com> wrote in message
news:83241e1a.0107121019.308ebc6f at posting.google.com...
| I am not able to import a user class (a class which send a mail) in my
| NT service, which I am trying to develop since three days. Any help in
| this problem would be appreciated.
|
| Thank you - Pradeep




From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 14:05:50 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:05:50 -0700
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com> <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com> <pmglltoiomis08cg8s18ogql1psmb4knkj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B15FE.A6B51D9F@alcyone.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:

> Funny - the guy who last taught me maths insisted on the
> rhymes-with-couple version. tOOple sounds too high brow to me -
> British snobs tend to say things the longest, most stretched out and
> emphasised way they can - presumably they need to make up for the lack
> of content by at least making their words sound as impressive as
> possible. American high brows, I presume, are too busy making money to
> waste time saying 'oo' when they can just say 'u' ;-)

Yeah, I stick with the _couple_-rhyming version as well.  It's the
pronunciation I've heard most often.  Strangely enough, when he was
attempting to correct me, he said that he'd never heard anyone pronounce
it to rhyme with _couple_.  He started off in academia, so perhaps when
mathematicians are isolated with other mathematicians they tend to
pronounce it that way.  I really don't know.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Never use two words when one will do best.
\__/ Harry S. Truman
    Alcyone Systems' CatCam / http://www.catcam.com/
 What do your pets do all day while you're at work?  Find out.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 10:41:37 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:41:37 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994100826.19440.python-list@python.org> <9hqoe8019j5@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b4116e1$1@mercury.its.rmit.edu.au>
Message-ID: <9hslj4029ga@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Zen" <zen at shangri-la.dropbear.id.au> wrote in message
news:3b4116e1$1 at mercury.its.rmit.edu.au...
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> >Yep, the recordset part of ADO is undoubtedly the most popular single
> >feature of it among us lazy programmers.  You can even disconnect from
> >the DB and keep the recordset around, persist it to a file (maybe in
XML),
> >depersist it later... it's fun!-)
>
> I'm preparing a PEP to address a few issues with the Python DB API
> and an initial draft has been presented to the DB-SIG.
>
> I'm unfamiliar with ADO. When you retrieve a recordset, are all
> relevant tuples retrieved from the database (like the Cursor.fetchall()
> method in the DB API)? Or is it a lazy object that only downloads
> the rows when they are accessed by the application (like the
Cursor.fetch()
> or Cursor.fetchmany() methods in the DB API)?

Yes.  That is, you can program it either way, ot a bit of each
(see later).

> Can you provide examples of things you can do using the ADO interface
> (don't care what programming language) that are difficult to do using
> the Python DB API? Even if it is outside the scope of *this* PEP, I need
> to understand peoples wishlists to ensure they can be integrated
> in the future.

An ADO Recordset holds results from a datasource and implements
or delegates cursor behavior to the datasource.  Once the Recordset
has some data, you can keep working with the Recordset (even in an
independent way from the datasource) -- navigate in it, modify it,
persist and depersist it... at some later time you may decide to
connect to the datasource again, and have the Recordset send an
'update' to the datasource regarding the modifications you did to
the Recordset while the datasource was away.  It's *NOT* what I
would call a shining example of clean, minimalist, elegant OO
design.  It *IS* deucedly handy and seductive as soon as you start
getting used to it, though:-).

One example of systematical, handy though inelegant, redundance.
Basically all parameters to methods are optional.  If you do not
supply them, the object uses some of its properties as the
parameters.  You can query and change the properties at some
time, and later call the methods without parameters and they'll
do the right thing, or pass some parameters and have only some
others default.  Think of it as cheap and inelegant, but handy
and versatile, 'overridable currying'.

So take for example the Open method of a Recordset.  It has an
argument Source (or that may default from the Source property
of the Recordset) which can be a Command object (which can
encapsulate several different ways to fetch data) or a text
string which, together with option flags, can be implicitly
used to build the suitable Command object (an URL, an SQL
statement, a Stream object containing a persisted Recordset,
etc, etc).  An Options argument lets you specify several
things (again, you can use properties if you prefer) such
as the execution-and-fetching model:
adAsyncExecute    fully asynchronous
adAsyncFetch      synchronous for the first CacheSize rows,
                  then async for the rest (CS is a property)
adAsyncFetchNonBlocking    like adAsyncFetch, but the attempt
                  to read a row not yet fetched won't block
adExecuteNoRecords  no records are expected in response to
                  the command, the framework will throw away
                  any that might return (but shouldn't:-)
adExecuteStream   the results are packaged up as a Stream
                  object
adExecuteRecord   special-case: ONE, but only one, record is
                  returned as the result

Default is synchronous access, but the options, as you see,
are many.  Indeed perhaps TOO many -- not all apply in all
situations, always a bad sign (e.g., adExecuteStream with a
Source that is NOT a Command object executing is an error).

But back to the Open verb.  An argument ActiveConnection
lets you specify on what connection to open the recordset
(a Connection object, a string from which it can be
constructed, can default from the connection properties
of the recordset itself OR of the command object if you
have passed one as Source argument, etc).

And then you get to specify (still at Open time) what
kind of cursor-type and lock-type you desire.  Which is
a big topic in itself.  adOpenForwardOnly only lets you
move forward in the recordset, but is lightweight and
may afford optimization.  At the other extreme, one can
adOpenDynamic and see committed (or even uncommitted,
if that's the isolation level for your transaction)
changes made by other users while the cursor is open.


The transparent get recordset/disconnect/persist the
recordset/depersist it later/worh with the recordset
(client-side cursor of course!)/persist it again/&c
and later reconnect and send the update (as just a
delta).  All of the clientside software that displays
and edits the recordset doesn't even *know* whether
it's working on a live DB connection or in such a
disconnected edit-at-leisure scenario -- it's all
easily encapsulated.  If I had to choose one big
convenience feature, I think that would be it.


Maybe we can get such a level of convenience WITHOUT
adopting the "richly redundant architecture" that is
so characteristic of ADO... laziness apart, having to
do things in one specific sequence rather than any
which way isn't half bad (easier to document and
explain, not to mention code and test, for example).
But apart from such issues there IS real power in
such a concept as "a temporarily disconnected and
possibly persisted recordset" and the ability to
operate polymorphically on either THAT, or a live DB
connection.


> >> From this and also from my own experience with PostgeSQL queries from
> >> Python, I could say that DB support in Python exists, but need
enhancement
> >> and standartization. Probably, higher level more or less common
> >> object-oriented interfaces could help this.
>
> >It seems to me the (DB API 2) standard is fine (maybe a bit too
> >ambitious, so actual implementations may not have reached up
> >to it yet?-).
>
> The 2.0 driver implementations of the major databases seem fine to me.
> One problem I notice with database tools is extremly rare for someone
> to deal with more than three vendors RDBMS implementations, and generally
> people only develop with one or two.

True.  The specific DB-using product I currently consult for
(Think3's ThinkTeam PDM package) currently fully supports only
Oracle, SQL Server, and (ecch) Jet (aka "the Access DB") -- we've
more or less dropped Informix, Ingres &c as years went by.  But
my dad's office still works on Watcom SQL (on DOS 3.1...), and
of course one has to keep evaluating new releases of such things
as MySQL, Interbase, etc, so I try to keep current on more RDBMS's
than are strictly necessary for my job.  And emerging standards...


> >If I had a vote, I'd rather seen _Gadfly_ tuned up (out with regex
> >and regsub, in favour of re; minimal-tolerance support of stuff it
> >does not implement, such as NULLs) and made a part of Python.  It
>
> I agree that it would be a benefit and worth a PEP if the
> Gadfly author agrees and someone volunteers to do the
> required tweaking.

But would then Gadfly be included in the standard Python
distribution if so tuned-up and tweaked?  If it's to remain
an isolated module the motivation to go and clean it up
is an order of magnitude lessened, I think.  Having Gadfly
in the distribution would really enhance the "batteries
included" part of Python's appeal...!!!

Of course, it would have to be made clear in the docs that
Gadfly is great for small problems but that you can scale
up your programs to other (compatible) DB interfaces and
put a DB engine behind them, etc, etc.


> I don't see a point in including drivers in the core for databases that
> follow a different development cycle. Last thing we want is obsolete
> PostgreSQL drivers out there when a new version of PostgreSQL is
> released. Although PHP manages to do this.... can any PHP users comment?

I would hope major DB vendors keep compatibility in their
next releases with programs developed to their previous
API's...!  My objection would be another -- if there are
a dozen major RDBMS's and I, as a typical user, care about
1 or 2, why would I want to download the other 10 or so
at each Python upgrade?


Alex





From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 13:31:35 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:31:35 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996527936.11861.python-list@python.org> <cpd76hzjey.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <XXB97.56072$EP6.12803318@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

Guido
> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

[long slew of suggestions deleted]

> Sigh.  I sympathize with the desire for a non-acronym, none of the
> proposals work for me -- they are all neologisms in this context.
> Ditto for "us" etc.

I'll drag in my suggestion from a slightly different context: 'cat'
for class and type.
Or if you insist on abbreviating 'class', then 'cas' is pronouncable.
To me, 'cls' is a toss-up with 'class' (whoops, keyword) or 'clas'.

In the absence of a aesthetically and logically compelling standard, I
suspect people will try lots of things for class methods.
--

Suppose one make all methods class methods and raises an exception in
__init__().  Would the result do what people want for a singleton?

Terry J. Reedy










From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 15:43:32 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:43:32 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
In-Reply-To: <20010715171817.D5396@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107152336180.23284-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:

>On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:20:38AM -0400, kj0 wrote:
>
>> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
>> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
>> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
>> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
>> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
>> advocates :-)  )

Before doing aby comparisons, you must specify your criteria.
Or you will engage in positional flame-war.

>> I'm not looking to find out which of these languages is "better"; I
>> don't care for ranking here.
>
>The problem is that there isn't one "better", just "better in the eyes of
>the author", and that is oddly enough also the reason why you, as you state
>in the first paragraph, are unable to find one that isn't biased :)
>
>> What I want to know is how the various
>> popular OO languages compare in terms of OO and general programming
>> features (e.g. multiple inheritance; classes-as-objects; garbage
>> collection; closures; scoping; contracts; debugging; etc.).
>
>I seriously think your best bet is to start learning each language. You
>can't compare apples and oranges unless you ate them both, and you need to
>learn that, for instance, you *peel* the orange first, and you avoid the
>middle part of the apple, and you avoid the seeds of both these fruits (but
>they are considered the best parts of other fruits.) It'll take the most
>time, but it'll be the most satisfying answer, as programming language
>preferences are pretty personal.

8-) never heard such a vivid explanation of personal computer
language preferences!

>I think Python should be the strawberry. It's nice and small, easy to
>digest, no need to bite chunks out of it, almost all of it is edible, and
>whatever warts it has are plainly visible from the outside :)

But unlike strawberries, you can eat, eat and eat it ;-)

>I-had-strawberries-for-breakfast-ly y'rs,

"-".join("""Thanks for reminding that I have fresh strawberries in my
freezer ly y'rs""".split())

Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/




From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul  6 16:31:19 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 16:31:19 -0400
Subject: the C++ Standard Library for Python
References: <hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <QIo17.427166$eK2.86457968@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <etdhewpkdew.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Sigh, I wish I had a windows machine.  This C++/Python integration has
really hurt to miss out on. :)

Alex.


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 19:52:21 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:52:21 -0400
Subject: software documentation system?
References: <mailman.995486071.13046.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B562135.94CD2A7@engcorp.com>

Graham Guttocks wrote:
> A Python application of mine is now large enough that I need to get
> more serious about writing a real manual for it.  I'm looking for a
> documentation system that uses a single source file to produce both
> online information and printed output. (PS, HTML, etc.)
> 
> Any recommendations?  I work in a UNIX environment and would prefer
> an opensource alternative.  So far I've found GNU texinfo and also
> SGMLtools which is written in Python, but am open to other
> suggestions.

It's not a completely "canned" solution, but if you were to use
XML for the content (perhaps using the DocBook vocabulary
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ ), and XSLT stylesheets to 
generate the output (direct to HTML in one case, to XSLFO in 
another and then use, say, FOP to convert to PDF format)
you could build such a beast "relatively" easily (compared to
the less easy alternatives :-), using pure open source and
even some more Python (http://4suite.org/index.html for the XSLT).

This has the "advantage" of being about as bleeding edge as
you can get without passing out... ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 30 23:45:28 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 03:45:28 GMT
Subject: "Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <4E215400D01D7374.0068C51FD6502BE8.99D4E013ECF0FDFB@lp.airnews.net> <bhahn-ya02408000R3007012032180001@news.corp.hp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9mcafp.qj.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:32:18 -0700, Brendan Hahn <bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com> wrote:

As long we're completely off-topic (Python-wise)...

>You can do kernel stuff in C++ on a lot of systems, but it's
>often more trouble than it's worth...kernel versions of the C++
>runtime can be very quirky.  NT is actually pretty nice for
>doing C++ drivers.

Now that you mention it, I knew that.  Not long ago I was
helping a guy try to decypher some C++ code in an NT driver.
[What a mess: there were local variables that shadowed instance
variables that shadowed global variables, and all of the
instance variables were accessed via cpp macros.  It was like
somebody was _trying_ to be obtuse.]

The question of how to write a Linux driver in C++ comes up
fairly regularly.  In theory it's possible as long as you don't
use features X,Y, and Z, and you include a set of kenel-mode runtime
support routines.  Nobody ever wants to try it badly enough.

>You could use Objective-C on the old NeXT systems -- Apple has
>switched to a C++ IO system, for better performance, but using
>a restricted subset of the language.  Haven't tried it yet but
>I think it'll be nice.

Is that in OS X?  I thought it was BSD under the hood?

>Forth is actually in very wide use, but at the sub-OS level --
>any Open Firmware system starts up running Forth, and if you
>want a boot driver for a new storage adapter, say, you write it
>in Forth and put it in ROM on the card.

That always sounded like a very elegant system -- though I've
never worked with it.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm meditating on
                                  at               the FORMALDEHYDE and the
                               visi.com            ASBESTOS leaking into my
                                                   PERSONAL SPACE!!


From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Wed Jul 25 05:32:42 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:32:42 GMT
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.995916220.13066.python-list@python.org> <loj77.544242$eK2.114179510@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jm3nq$ulf$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <loj77.544242$eK2.114179510 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>,
 Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote:

>I suppose the only cross-version solution would be:
>
>     # Script MUST run under various Python versions without change
>     ...
>     print int(container/widget) ,'widgets will fit in the container'
>
>It's a tiny bit verbose, but at least it's very explicit.

And also wrong in the face of negative divisors (although you probably
wouldn't have a negative number of widgets :-) ).

  >>> 5/-2
  -3
  >>> int(5.0/-2.0)
  -2

The "simple" solution is divmod(container, widget)[0]. Lovely.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From maxx at easynews.com  Thu Jul 12 20:33:49 2001
From: maxx at easynews.com (maxx at easynews.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:33:49 GMT
Subject: Win32 ADO Connection not closing?
Message-ID: <b3gskt8crat32ha1nqjd1m3vajcubmqc81@4ax.com>

In the code example below, an ADO connection to a MS SQL Server database is not
closing. Even after the 'adoConn.Close()' statement, the SQL Server still has an
open connection to the database. The connection does release after the script
terminates.

As part of the function of the script, I need it to release connections to the
database, before continuing.

Is there a way to explicitly destroy the adoConn object in the following example
?

adoConn = win32com.client.Dispatch('ADODB.Connection')
connect = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=%s;Initial Catalog=%s;User
ID=sa;Password=;" % (server, dbname)
adoConn.Open(connect)
sql = "SELECT * FROM table1"
rs = adoConn.Execute(sql)
rs[0].Close()
adoConn.Close()



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Thu Jul  5 10:24:53 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:24:53 -0500 
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5209@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Thanks.  I will try that out today.

-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 9:08 AM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
Subject: Re: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?


On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> I seem to be getting the listing of what's on my d drive in windows, rather then the binary contents.  Here is what I do (the server id changed to protect the innocent:
>
> for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

> List the directory contents in Unix
>
> ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> ls
> d:\programsPython\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt

> Why do I get the text d:\programsPython\filename?

   Because glob() returns full path, so you end up running commands like
ftp.storbinary("STOR " + 'd:\\programsPython\\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt'...
(please note double backslashes)
   If you want just filenames without path you can do one of two things:

1) cd d:\programsPython (os.chdir("d:\\programsPython")) and then use
glob('*') - this will list just the curent directory

2) or cut off the file/path yourself:

for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
   name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))

> How should I change the program to get the actual files sent over?

   Why do you think those funny files are not real files? It is just UNIX
didn't interpreted backslashes! :) I am sure they are your real files! Test
it.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.



From jonas.b at home.se  Thu Jul 12 17:17:40 2001
From: jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 14:17:40 -0700
Subject: Problems getting mod_python up n' running
Message-ID: <4e2ddb70.0107121317.4c883f6c@posting.google.com>

Hi,
I can't get mod_python to work. I get this error message when I'm restarting
Apache:
make_obcallback(): could not import mod_python.apache.
make_obcallback(): could not call init.
And when I try to look at a .py page I get following error:
[Thu Jul 12 03:33:12 2001] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] python_handler:
make_obcallback returned no obCallBack!

What is wrong?
I've got: Apache/1.3.19 (Win32) mod_python/2.7.4 Python/2.1
Running under Windows 2000

I have put mod_python.dll.in E:\program\apache\modules and following rows to
httpd.conf:
#DSO section
LoadModule python_module e:/program/apache/modules/mod_python.dll
#under my main directory
    AddHandler python-program .py
    PythonHandler mptest
    PythonDebug on

Furthermore I have put following files under
e:\program\python21\libs\mod_python:
__init__.py
apache.py
cgihandler.py
httpdapi.py
publisher.py
util.py
zhandler.py

And my environment path contains:
E:\Program\Python21;e:\Program\Python21\libs


What can be the problem?

TIA
Jonas Bengtsson


From brian at supremecasino.com  Tue Jul 24 11:25:03 2001
From: brian at supremecasino.com (brian at supremecasino.com)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 15:25:03 -0000
Subject: We Have Big News and Free Money For You!!
Message-ID: <20010724152503.55886.qmail@multiwebhosting.com>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010724/8bdd4ea2/attachment.html>

From thomas at xs4all.net  Fri Jul 20 07:52:31 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:52:31 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010720135231.L2054@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 08:30:15PM +0000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
> language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is case-insensitive.  I
> can't find it on the web, but I bet the TeachScheme folks have a
> rationale for this decision.

I have another good example for you: LambdaMOO, which is (as I've said in
other posts) very Pythonic, is not only case-insensitive in its identifiers,
it's even case-insensitive in string comparison:

eval ;{A, a} = {"upper", "lower"} ; player:tell("a is " + a + " and A is " + A)
a is lower and A is lower

(the first statement is a 'sequence unpacking', the second is MOO's version
of a method call (<object>:<method>), and the 'eval' and semicolons are
necessary to evaluate the expression "on the prompt" :)

eval "SOMETHING" == "something"
=> 1

It's true that this makes it a lot easier for real programming-newbies to
learn the language, and to learn programming (I know it certainly helped in
my case!) but whether it's a net win in the end is something else. It helps
because it takes the burden off of the programmer to remember that kind of
detail, allows them to focus on what's important (this is another common
trait in MOO and Python :-) and thus lower the learning curve. It did take
me a while to get used to case-sensitive string comparison in the real
world, but I never really used the case-insensitive identifiers (on the
other hand, it never bit me either, as far as I recall.)

On the other hand, some people would argue that I'm a decent programmer,
intuitively, and that I'm not a good example. I know of MOO-programmers that
do use and enjoy and sometimes even need the case insensitivity, but none of
those has even thought about programming outside of MOO. I kinda doubt
they'll be persuaded by a case-insensitive Python; they like programming in
an interactive environment, where you show off you programs to your ('net)
friends and to total strangers alike, and where you can @list other people's
programs to see how they do it. Now if Python had something like that,
that'd sure get 'kids' of all ages addicted :)

> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

I'd opt for the tools.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 19:15:17 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:15:17 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions (was: Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

<*someone*@ActiveState.com> wrote:
> Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
> binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
> code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
> warnings is trivial.

I'm all for rapid development and such, and I use Python whenever I think
it has an advantage over another choice (which is quite often).

But what does 'larger' mean in this case?  Larger than the MySQL engine?
Larger than a linux kernel?  Larger than the Red Hat install scripts?

I wouldn't implement a RDBMS in Python. Nor would I implement a word
processor in assembler.

*nix OSes (like BSD) have attained an incredible scalability.  Many
attribute this to the fact that everything in this OS is a "file",
whether data on a hard drive, a hardware device, or a running process.
This is a type of abstraction.  Obviously /dev/scd0 isn't a file, at least
not in the sense that /etc/services is.  But each "file", regardless of
what it's linked to, has the same basic interface: open, close, read,
write, etc.  Is this not a form of OO?  And what language is the
majority of the core of BSD written in?  It's written in C, which does
not even claim to be an OO language.

An application's scalability has much more to do with the programmer's
use of algorithms and abstraction than with the language in which it's
implemented...no matter how much money ActiveState has invested in it.

-- 
It's astonishing how much trouble one can
get oneself into, if one works at it.
    -- Destruction, The Sandman


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 21:00:06 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:00:06 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
> anti-Perl.  I always thought that if someone as cynical, stubborn, and
> arrogant as I am can love both languages, anybody could.  

I wouldn't have said "violently".  That is to say, I haven't actually 
*killed* anyone for using Perl... yet.

And I consider my cynicism, stubbornness, and arrogance to be right 
up there with the best of them.  (In fact, my absolutely _unparalleled_
arrogance is _certain_ to be my own downfall, and _nothing_ you could 
say would convince me otherwise. ;-)

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say that I believe there may be
applications for which Perl is the better language, but I'm fairly
sure (a) I'd have an argument against _almost_ any example proposed,
and (b) the few I might not argue against would likely be "better in
Perl" only because of some ugly situation such as maintaining 
compatibility with a legacy system, supported by programmers who 
know only Perl and don't want to change, and an application already 
working and therefore not in need of maintenance of any kind.

Any other application, and I would probably say Python was a 
better choice...  

> There's always a matter of choosing the right tool for the job, 
> but this is reality and no one language can be the "right" tool 
> for _all_ jobs, regardless of how much I love Python.

Ah, but I would readily admit Python is not the right tool for
*all* jobs, just a better one than Perl in essentially any case
I've seen to date, IMHO.  I remain open-minded enough to admit
that someday I might have a Perl program shoved in front of me
for which I'd be forced to admit I'm wrong...  I'm still waiting.

> My apologies to the group at large.
> Tim Hammerquist

This group is scary in its degree of both tolerance and forgiveness.
(Hey, they even let me stay here.. so far. :)

Cheers,
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 20 15:48:06 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:48:06 -0700
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
References: <mailman.995577213.28399.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B588AF6.3D6ED3A5@home.net>

fleet at teachout.org wrote:
> It looks like all I need to do to convert to your suggestion is add:
> 
> "Customers={" before "Antonia," replace the "=" after Antonia with an
> opening brace (and ditto for each of the other customers) and add a
> closing brace at the end of the customers.

Yep, that's all.

> >Customers = {smith: {"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"},
> >             jones: {"busname":"Joneses", "street":"123 East Ave"},
> >              ....}
> 
> And how are these NOT hardcoded into a module?  How would I access them
> otherwise?

Yes, they are also hardcode into the module if you type it in there. IN
fact, I have been know to do it myself, it's easier than putting it in a
text file, and then having to parse out the text file to build your
dict. The differences are: 

A) It's easier to access your data

B) You can now manipulate the data as well. It might start hardcoded,
but you can now manipulate the data far more easily after reading it in:
add to it, change it etc. 

C) you can also write it out more easily, in fact, if you use repr(),
you will get a string that can be eval() back to the same dict.

D) you can also change how the data is stored in the future, and still
access it in the same way, byt writing a class that emulates a mapping.
The data could be in text files, in a database, whatever.

> Thanks for the input.  I'll try this.
> 
>                                         - fleet -

have fun!

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 09:06:10 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:06:10 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <9hv4c301ts3@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Mirko Liss" <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote in message
news:20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE at niccolo.ke4.de...
    ...
"""
If the arguments of a function are out of order, the compiler
should bark and die, shouldn?t it?
"""
I was taught "shud" is a four-letter word, to be avoided
in mixed company.

"""
Most programmers use type definitions deliberately, just to provoke
that kind of compile-time errors.
"""
In that case, most programmers' hopes are going to be frustrated,
if most programmers are working in C.

"""
An example in C:

typedef plane_t int ;  /* plane no */
typedef lane_t int  ;  /* lane no */
typedef go_down_in_pieces_t bool ;
go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch( plane_t flightno, \
                              lane_t neigboring_highway ) ;

If the arguments get swapped, the compiler gets angry.
Is this what you wanted to have in C ?
"""
If the compiler gets angry, then the compiler keeps its
emotions too bottled-up, and the compiler might be well
advised to see an analyst about it, because the compiler
is definitely giving no indication at all of its internal
emotional turmoil here.

In other words, quite apart from the fact that you're
apparently reversing the 2nd and 3rd arguments to the
various typedef's, AND labouring under the misconception
that there is a 'bool' keyword in C (there's one in C++,
and I don't know enough about C99 -- maybe they've
borrowed it?), there appears to be a fundamental error
or deep-misconception here... you *DO* know the most
elementary fundamentals of C, right?  Such as the fact
that type-equivalence is *BY STRUCTURE*, *NOT* by name,
and therefore no typedef is ever going to cause a failed
compilation because of two "int" arguments getting
swapped...?!  I.e., once we've fixed the obvious issues:

typedef int  plane_t;
typedef int  lane_t;
typedef int  bool;
typedef bool go_down_in_pieces_t;
go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch(
    plane_t flightno,
    lane_t neighboring_highway);

this will compile just fine...:

    plane_t krek = 23;
    lane_t pruk = 42;
    dispatch(pruk, krek);  /* oops... */


Oh, and -- that backslash you use is redundant.  Not
the major issue with your post, sure, but...


Alex





From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 18:47:56 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:47:56 -0700
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <mailman.996204469.11450.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107311447.799933b6@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996204469.11450.python-list at python.org>...
> [Guido]
> > (Couldn't resist. :-)
> >
> > It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> > endless laments in the SF bug database.)
> 
> [SteveN]
> > And yet HP makes it available:
> > http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/
> 
> They've made binaries available for some time, yet HP-UX users seem
> incapable of successfully compiling it themselves ("see the endless laments
> in the SF bug database" indeed).  So what's up with that platform?!  Would
> sure be nice if one of the folks at the HP Porting Centre filled us in --
> and if they need to patch the source to get it to compile, we'd be delighted
> to fold that into the core.
> 
> telepathy-challenged-ly y'rs  - tim

Possible solution: grab the source off the HPPC web-site. Then use
that wonderful utility called ndiff.py written by I've-forgotten-who.

Sorry, I couldn't resist, either :-)


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul  2 17:06:33 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 21:06:33 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994084684.19932.python-list at python.org...
...
> That is simply not true. Most people do not expect these four
> expressions to yield different results:
>
> 1.0/3.0
> 1/3
> 1.0/3
> 1/3.0

'People' could mean anything from 'CLP-reading Pythoneers' to 'all humans'.
The result of a survey of expections would depend on the the precise
population surveyed, the precise wording of the question, the manner in
which the question is given, whether and what clarification is given to
those who say they do not understand the question, and the treatment of "I
don't know", "I'm not sure", and "I was never very good at math" type
answers, which I believe (without direct data)would predominate in some
'general' populations.

> If you were taught this in school, it must be "new math".

Presuming that 'this' is the possibility that 1/3 might have a different
correct result than 1.0/3 and that calling that idea "new math" is meant as
a put down, this snide comment is doubly incorrect.  1) I learned long
division (by hand, no calculators) of whole numbers (counts) in about 1955,
before there was a 'new math'.  We learned to give answers as quotient 'r'
remainder.  I presume that this was standard practice in the US then, if
not now. 2) Indivisible units are not divisible.  Example: a school has 4
first grade classrooms and 82 new first graders.  If we split the students
evenly among the classrooms, how many in each?  The correct answer is 20
with 2 left over, not 20.5.  A student sliced in two is not a student or
even two halves of a student, but two chunks of dying flesh, an ancient
wisdom credited to Solomon.

Framing the integer division question in the context of the very special
case of reciprocals is an unfair tactic.  One indivisible unit divided into
multiple parts is so very obviously 0 r 1 that we would normally not write
1/n to ask such a question.  (Example: 1 BDFL divided among 3 simultaneous
computer conferences on different continents is how many BDFLs at each?
.33333333?  I'm sure BDFL hopes not.)  So it is usually reasonable (in this
special case only), upon seeing an explicitly written 1/n, to assume that
the 1 is a divisible 1.0, especially since '1/n', unlike 1+n, 1-n, or 1*n,
is ambiguous to human readers in that it can be read as representing the
result of performing the operation.  However, in a general case such as
82/4, the expression is more obviously a problem to be solved (which is how
the interpreter sees it) rather than an answer in itself and the assumption
of divisibility may well be disasterously wrong.

So I propose the following question to be asked of 'people':

"Do you expect the following two questions to have the same numerical
answer?
A. If a string 82 centimeters long is cut into 4 equal pieces, how long is
each?
B. If 82 students are divided evenly among 4 classrooms, how many will be
in each?"

Or, if proponents of change insist on using potential division of a unit:

"On one of Solomon's open court days, citizens of his realm bring him two
similar disputes.  Should he settle each with the same mathematical
procedure?
A. Two hungry boys each claim, with equal evidence, a delicious peach pie.
B. Two day-old mothers each clain, with equal evidence, a newborn baby as
their own.  (The other baby died at birth, and neither DNA testing or
definitive evidence is available)."

With these wordings of the question, I doubt even a majority would
definitely give the wrong answer "Yes, the same".

Underlying these formulations of the survey question is the observation
that most arithmetic is done to answer questions about the 'real' world by
using numbers to represent or model quantities of things in the world.
When so, each number has an at least implicit unit attached.  In this
context, the fundamental question is whether the unit is divisible (or is
allowed to be) or not.  If not, one uses (in Python) an integer (or long).
If the units are divisible, one should tell readers and the interpreter by
using divisible numbers (floats, complex) to model them, either from the
start (by adding '.0') or at least at the point of division (by converting
with float()).  The suffix '.0' says "Yes, this number is currently a whole
number (whether by design or accident) but it represents something that is
splittable and which we may well want to split into fractions."  Requiring
that people think about divisibility in choosing a number representation is
no more burdensome (and I think less so) than requiring them to think about
mutability in choosing a tuple versus list sequence representation.

Terry J. Reedy




From volucris at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 16:07:41 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:07:41 -0500
Subject: newbie 'Find File' question.
References: <9jn5kb$k16$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <3b5f3d46$0$327$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

Yeah that was one of the first scripts I ever wrote. It's under 20 lines, so
it's not documented. Just remember os.path.walk() if you friend. It will
only scan the C: drive, but that would be easy to change. I think you need
some platform API stuff (at least on Windows you do) to get the available
drives. I can't remember what it is, though. Does anyone else? Hope this
helps.

---Begin mpsscan.py---

#mp3scan.py
print 'MP3 Scan 0.1 (volucris at hotmail.com)\n\n'
print 'This program will scan the C: drive for files ending in \'mp3\'.'
print 'The results will be stored in \'C:\\mp3scan_results.txt\'.\n'
res = raw_input('Press ENTER to begin.')
if res != 'q':
    import os
    def test(of, dir, files):
        for file in files:
            if file[-3:] == 'mp3':
                of.write(os.path.join(dir, file) + '\n')
    f = open('c:\\mp3scan_results.txt', 'w')
    os.path.walk('c:\\', test, f)
    f.close()
    print '\nScan complete. Check \'C:\\mp3scan_results.txt\' for
results.\n'

res = raw_input('Press ENTER to quit.')

---End mp3scan.py---

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9jn5kb$k16$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com...
> Has anybody coded a script to simulate the windows/mac find file
utilitity?
> i'm using this to help me learn Tkinter and Python. I have created the GUI
i
> just need a few design tips for the search code. basically i need to
search
> all drives (not A:) for a file. any ideas?   :) .
>
> G. WIlloughby.
>
>




From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul  5 18:20:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 22:20:02 GMT
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com> <3B44DECA.7D64AE2C@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B44E5E6.7F0DC56F@tundraware.com>

Chris Barker wrote:
> Essentially you have only read-only access to immutable global
> variables. Mutable variables you can change, because you are not
> reassigning them, so you could do:
> >>> FLAG = [TRUE]
> >>> def FlagFalse():
> ...     FLAG[0] = FALSE
> ...
> >>> FLAG
> [1]
> >>> FlagFalse()
> >>> FLAG
> [0]
> 

Got it and it makes sense too....

Thanks to all who answered here and privately...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 22 03:14:25 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 07:14:25 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lkvah.sin.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> pisze:

> I thought again about the merits of the '//' operator vs. 'div'
> (either as a function or as a keyword binary operator), and figured
> that '//' is the best choice: it doesn't introduce a new keyword
> (which would cause more pain), and it works as an augmented assignment
> (//=) as well.

Why div= wouldn't work? (Lexed as two tokens.)

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 09:19:41 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:19:41 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7lfm.t2g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B543B6D.A97F2843@engcorp.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> > Perl, in this case (factory automation) would
> > definitely *not* have been a better choice, even in your estimation.
> 
> Fair enough.  =)   Python does sound like a good choice in this case,
> despite Perl's strength in sockets.

In this case, more than anything else, the driving factor was
the easy ability to wrap third-party DLLs (e.g. for a GPIB 
interface card) with calldll and make a beautiful object-oriented
wrapper to talk to instruments on the bus.  I knew I would
be able to make a maintainable and flexible system which 
newcomers (new developers that is) could learn to use easily 
and continue growing.  At the time, putting a Tkinter
interface on it quickly was an attractive option, although
I've since halted work on that development path until we
have time to retool around the web paradigm instead...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Wed Jul 11 23:37:23 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 03:37:23 GMT
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <TX837.333827$p33.6744731@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

I read that Python is too slow for MUDs, and Eiffel is better anyway. Try
Eiffel or Haskell if you are blind.


"tyler spivey" <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote in message
news:V%337.677940$166.13952126 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
>
> could you write a fast mud  in python?
> having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
> how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
> can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
> I am blind myself.




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul 10 12:20:22 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 20:20:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Adding timeouts to Internet sockets
In-Reply-To: <RBF27.212379$WB1.31341412@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107102019040.7138-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, John Copella wrote:
> How have developers added timeout behavior to Internet sockets in Python?  I
> am developing an application that uses ftplib, and I need to timeout if the
> server is unavailable, etc.  I note that Tim O'Malley has a package out
> (http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py?i=87800233) that very cleverly and
> transparently does this (or seems to).  Has anyone used it?  My application
> will be mission-critical, and I would prefer to use whatever is considered
> the current best practice.

   I use from time to time. It does the job, though I had some minor
problems - it seems sometimes it timeouts a connection that is in progress.
Well, I am almost satisfied with it.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul  3 19:38:15 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:38:15 -0600
Subject: ADODB.RecordSet bummer ( was Re: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?))
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4DF@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Bill Bell [mailto:bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca]
> 
> [Martelli's address not included since many list members may 
> already know it.]
> 
> Alex Martelli wrote, in part:
> 
> > you CAN write rs.Fields("FieldName").Value ... [and] ... I believe
> > ADO (and much more so, COM:-) deserves a far better language than
> > Visual Basic... Python, for example!-). 
> 
> Yup, me too FWIW. So, as one of this list's most longstanding 
> newbies, I decided to give the combination a spin.
> 
> In VBA it's common to coin the cliche:
> 
> with myRecordSet
> 	.edit
> 	.fields('myField') = 42
> 	.update
> end with
> 
> Unfortunately,
> 
> >>> import win32com.client
> >>> rs = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.RecordSet")
> >>> rs.ActiveConnection = "DSN=WebPASS"
> >>> rs.Open("[URLs]")
> >>> rs.Fields("myField") = 42
> Traceback (SyntaxError: can't assign to function call
> 
> Or, is this because I forgot my medication this morning?

Try

  rs.Fields("myField").Value = 42

-- bjorn



From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Sun Jul  8 18:46:04 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 22:46:04 GMT
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ianrc$lh7$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> This way, the portability is utmost: you write simple core interpreter (~
> RISC-processor) and you can run software!

This is sometimes called "portability by ease". I'd say many languages 
there are fulfill this criterion. Also, I have to suggest you take 
a peek at http://www.purists.org/esoteric/, which has many good
candidates.

I think the easiest path to go is character-based Forth with 
string-based lambda functions for control structures. As for computation,
lambda expressions are _the_ swiss army knife for everything.

Panu



From daniel at dittmar.net  Fri Jul 13 15:15:00 2001
From: daniel at dittmar.net (Daniel Dittmar)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:00 +0200
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3600$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <3B4F48B4.6E6F7316@dittmar.net>

> I can only think of two reasons to use it.
> 
>     1) You're a lazy typist. (Or haven't learned to cut and paste)
> 
>     2) You are generally concerned that multiple references to the
>      same object with complex, multilevel access might be confusing
>     to the reader or not optimized by the compiler.

There's a third one: control blocks give visual structure to a method,
making the parts more easily recognizable

with sys.stdout:
    .write (...)
    .write (...)
doSomethingElse ()
with sys.stdout:
    .write (...)
    .write (...)

is at least to me more easily scannable than

write = sys.stdout.write
write (...)
write (...)
doSomethingElse ()
write (...)
write (...)

Of course, the second version is faster, because the lookup of the write
method is cached, not of stdout.

Admittedly, this is highly a matter of taste. To some, a few blank lines
already do the trick. Others will insist that readability is only
achieved by

sys.stdout.write (...)
sys.stdout.write (...)
doSomethingElse ()
sys.stdout.write (...)
sys.stdout.write (...)
# explicit is better than implicit

Daniel


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 12:08:50 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:08:50 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <mmg87.34184$EP6.8750025@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

To Guido: Version 1.10, which you indicated would not be the last, has
gotten many cogent comments.  I recommend that at some point you
pre-announce a time limit for discussion, at which time you will
gather up existing comments, declare 1.10 and further comments thereon
obsolete, retire to your desk or study, write version 1.11, and
thereafter restart discussion with a new thread entitled 'PEP 238
v1.11' .

To everyone else: such a declaration would in no way stop anyone from
discussing anything they want.  It would help people not waste their
own time by making obsolete comments of no effect.  An author of a
work in progress has a right and usually a need to stop listening to
return to writing a new draft.  One he releases the new draft, he has
a right to only listen to comments that reference that new draft, so
the discussion can move forward, (as it already has with 1.10).  This
standard procedure is probably most valuable when the work is
contentious.

Terry J. Reedy





From paul.moore at uk.origin-it.com  Tue Jul 24 09:24:01 2001
From: paul.moore at uk.origin-it.com (Paul Moore)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:24:01 +0200
Subject: win32com: Setting ByRef parameters in an event
Message-ID: <urrqlt4g5dgbjjo23msnm1c022deabt5mp@4ax.com>

I'm trying to do some event handling code using win32com. I'm using a
component called WScriptEx as my test case, which has a Sleep method which
fires a regular OnTick event. The IDL for the OnTick event is

        HRESULT OnTick(
                        [in] VARIANT RemainingTime, 
                        [in, out] VARIANT* WakeUp);

The WakeUp parameter should be set if the event code wants to stop the sleep
at this point. I've tried this, and it works fine in VBScript:

    Set WScriptEx = WScript.CreateObject("WshToolbox.WScriptEx", "WScriptEx_")

    ' Sleep for 10 seconds, raising an OnTick event every 1 second
    WScriptEx.Sleep 10000, 1000

    Sub WScriptEx_OnTick (ByVal Remaining, ByRef Wakeup)
        WScript.Echo "Tick.... " & Remaining
        Wakeup = True ' Wake the sleep up
    End Sub


Now, based on a post from Mark Hammond ("Re: Handling Com Events in Python
(was Python and Windows Scripting Host)" from Fri, 11 Aug 2000) I can do this
by just returning the necessary value:

    import win32com.client

    class wexEvents:
        def OnTick(self, Remaining, WakeUp):
            print "Tick...", Remaining
            return -1

    wex = win32com.client.DispatchWithEvents("WshToolbox.WScriptEx",
                                             wexEvents)

    wex.Sleep(10000,1000)

But this doesn't seem to work! The thing just keeps ticking remorselessly
until the 10 seconds are up. (And, BTW, if I hit Ctrl-C, I get an error
"Unhandled exception detected before entering Python." - shouldn't I get a
KeybordInterrupt error?)

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a subtle bug here?

Any help would be appreciated - this sort of construct is important to me, and
I'd hate to be reduced to VBScript or (shudder...) Perl.

Thanks,
Paul



From donn at drizzle.com  Tue Jul 31 00:33:35 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 04:33:35 -0000
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: None <mailman.996540777.8399.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <996554015.454155@yabetcha.sttl.drizzle.com>

Quoth <brueckd at tbye.com>:
[ ... re demonstration that a type checking language can check types ...]

| But what benefit have I gained? The only reason it's an error to begin
| with is because the language is forcing me to name the type. The fact that
| the compiler can detect my breakage of the language-specific rules doesn't
| really advance the notion that strict compile-time checking is beneficial.
| What is a real world problem that would not have existed if Python had
| strict compile-time checking, and how common is such a problem? (I'm not
| saying those problems don't exist - I'm just desperate for some examples
| so I can understand the other side of the issue).

Well, one currently poignant example.  In Python, as you can hardly
fail to notice these days, division with integer inputs produces an
integer output, silently losing any fractional part.  That's held to
be a common problem.

It can happen because Python will let an integer (or anything else!)
walk into that division, and try to make the best of what happens.
If you a type checking compiler, the object would have to agree at
compile time with the programmer's notion of what would be an
appropriate input.

I don't know if that means Python should have type checking.  Its
open typed design works awfully well with OOP, and it would be a
shame to strangle that freedom for the sake of a half-baked concept
of discipline.  But some kind of type inference validation could be
applied from a lint utility - that already exists and is reportedly
useful, but I don't know if it actually covers types.  Anyway, maybe
it's an area where a big investment could yield something real
interesting for industrial strength programming.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From nperkins7 at home.com  Sat Jul 14 19:34:03 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:34:03 GMT
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com> <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LF447.476898$eK2.98947068@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
...
>     list_var += var_to_append
...

you mean:

list_var += [var_to_append]

or,

list_var += list_to_extend





From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 25 11:05:43 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:05:43 -0700
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B5EE047.3342B560@alcyone.com>

michael wrote:

> > But strictly
> > speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
> 
> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R
> (the set
> of reals)?

It is, but since the integers have different properties than the reals,
whether you mean the integer 2 or the real 2 can have an effect on what
you can do with those numbers.

For instance, the reals are a field, but the integers are not, so
whether 1/2 has any meaning depends on whether you're talking about
reals or integers.  I think that's what the original poster was getting
at.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Be thine own place, or the world's thy jail.
\__/ John Donne
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Tue Jul 10 19:39:46 2001
From: plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 23:39:46 GMT
Subject: PIL palette problem on PIL-1.1.2/Python-2.1/Solaris 2.8
References: <9ig02f$c4@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <9ig3o2$2oh@spool.cs.wisc.edu>

plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu wrote:
> I'm trying to use PIL to draw a line
> graph on a pre-existing GIF template file.

> However, for some reason, no matter
> what palette index I specify as
> the ink, the lines I draw are all white
> (which happens to be the first color
> in the palette).

> Can anyone spot what I'm doing wrong?
> Code is at the end of the message.

> This is with PIL-1.1.2, Python 2.1,
> Solaris 2.8. Weirdly enough, the same
> code works fine on Linux (with Python 2.0
> and PIL-1.1.2).

	I finally figured out the problem.
	There seems to be a bug in the
	support code in PIL where
	_draw_lines() (in _imaging.c)
	passes a pointer to an int
        as the ink parameter to
        the ImagingDrawLine() function
        in libImaging which then treats it
	as a pointer to unsigned char.
        This returns zero on big-endian
	SPARC but returns the correct
        ink value on little-endian x86.

	I modified it myself to make
	it work for me but I assumed
	that this kind of stuff would
	be handled by the configure
	scripts since this kind of casting
	makes assumptions about endian-ness.

	Manoj



> PS: Remove nospam- from my email address to respond by mail.


> ------------------------------------------
> import Image, ImageDraw

> image = Image.open( "graph_template.gif" )  # -- 500x600 GIF, 67-color palette

> draw = ImageDraw.Draw( image )
> draw.setink(1)   # -- Orange-ish
> draw.line( [(52,550),(220,40)] )
> draw.setink(2)   # -- another shade of orange
> draw.line( [(220,40),(300,550)] )
> draw.ellipse( (52,40,300,550) )

> image.save( "graph.gif" )
> ------------------------------------------



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 02:35:00 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:35:00 -0400
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.996097129.15274.python-list@python.org> <usnfkcy48.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <9jqh92$6jl71$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Message-ID: <u66cevq0b.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson) writes:

> David wrote:
> |> Of course, this isn't the best example, since threaded apps by their
> |> nature must be written to be safe in such variations ...
> 
> as opposed, of course, to unthreaded apps, which can have
> all manner of timing sensitive bugs, right? </joking>
> 
> In other words, speaking more directly, maybe threaded
> apps are supposed to be timing safe, but that doesn't
> mean that they are.

Of course not, but I sure wouldn't worry about bending over backwards
in restricting a change to avoid tickling a race condition bug in a
multi-threaded application just due to timing variations.  If the
developer ventured into multi-threaded space, and didn't take that
into account, then them's the breaks :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul 12 04:37:53 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 01:37:53 -0700
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com> <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B47C125.A65E5EAC@wwc.com> <23891c90.0107100801.14066af0@posting.google.com> <3B4B458C.A0F96E5D@wwc.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107120037.705cbe74@posting.google.com>

Steve Williams <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message news:<3B4B458C.A0F96E5D at wwc.com>...
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> > How do you manage to do different types of joins?  Do any of the systems
> > you mention use the explicit join syntax, for example?
> 
> My work lately has been in DB2 and I use explicit joins exclusively--they
> provide the level of documentation and control I want and need.  It's been a
> long time since I've used anything else.  I also use Interbase for a
> BiTemporal database I'm developing and, again, I use explicit joins.  When I
> worked in SQL-Server, I used a sad mixture of implicit and explicit joins--I
> hadn't seen the light yet.  I can't remember specifically about my work with
> the others.

I suspect that if you used Sybase ASE (and not ASA), you would have
needed to use implicit joins. I suppose it would be possible to
provide some kind of statement syntax independence within a database
framework, but the amount of work required probably isn't worth it.
It's far better off providing approaches which manage the differences
between systems in an understandable and easy-to-use way.

> > What about the statement parameter (bind variable) syntax?

I've corrected your quoting here...
  
> As far as binding, Python does a nice job for me:
>
> cursorODS = connectionODS.cursor()
> intInvoiceNumber = int(str(parmInvoiceNumber))
> parmList = (intInvoiceNumber,)
> cursorODS.execute("select " \
> + "InvoiceNumber,LineNumber,PartNumber,Description,Quantity,UnitOfMeasure,"
> + "Price,ExtendedSale,Cost,ExtendedCost,GP,GPPercent " \
> + "from ODS.OrderLineDetail " \
> + "where InvoiceNumber = ?",parmList)
> resultSet = cursorODS.fetchall()
> cursorODS.close()
> return resultSet
>
> This works for DB2 and Interbase via ODBC and mxODBC.

OK, so you're using paramstyle as 'qmark', as I think DB-API 2 would
say. I think the only reasonable abstraction which could be provided
over the differing parameter syntaxes is that of a dictionary, with
keywords in use within the statement itself. Something like paramstyle
as 'pyformat' or, in order to distinguish it from straightforward
string substitution (a bad thing), paramstyle as 'named'.

[Something about standards]

> > Which standard are we talking about now? ADO and COM aren't exactly
> > there on most flavours of UNIX, if at all. Of course, there's always
> > ODBC. ;-)
> 
> I know very little about ADO or COM.  Although mxODBC is a marvellous
> package, I'm always suspicious of the actual ODBC drivers.  I would rather
> directly interface with my target database.  But I don't have compile
> capability on some of my platforms (AIX or anything not WinTel, actually),
> so my contribution to this thread was a fantasy about pre-compiled drivers
> for all the databases on all the platforms.

I was surprised to see Sybase ASA directly supporting ODBC - going
against what Mr Wilson was asserting about its death - but, in
general, I suppose that the greater the number of layers between one's
application and the database system, the greater the risk for
something to fail in obscure ways. In the case of Sybase ASA, I found
things to be more reliable if I linked mxODBC directly to the library
provided, rather than through the iODBC driver manager.

> In general, I don't see much emphasis on relational databases in the Python
> jungle.

I think that it only appears that way because of the low traffic on
the DB-SIG list and because there isn't any other focal point for
database-related activity.

Paul


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 14:30:07 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:30:07 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org> <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com> <5lh$OIA2rxR7Ewou@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B47256F.72FE6CD0@engcorp.com> <g3+Z6LALyzR7Ewqz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cp1ynsk324.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> I think you express my position rather well. I don't believe that the
> users' needs are changing so fast,  rather I think that the user base
> itself is changing and with the new users come new needs and perhaps
> more and very different needs.

Bingo!

> On the other hand I think the target user base should be a reasonable
> one. I don't think python should be aimed at pre-schoolers. If there is
> a target set who and what are they? 

We're aiming at people with a high school education, actually.  Folks
whose main intuition about numbers and arithmetic is based on digital
calculators.

> I think that the development process itself is a bit awry as there are
> now more than 250 documents on requirements/changes etc and as you say
> getting to grips with the totality of the changes is hard.
> 
> For 250 documents to exist there have to be too many cooks for smooth
> development as many organisational studies suggest that best team sizes
> are between 3 and 7.

Don't jump to conclusions too fast!  PEPs aren't numbered
consecutively.  There are only about 75 PEPs.  Roughly half of those
are historical documents (already implemented or rejected), some are
meta-documents (numbers below 100).  The number under consideration is
theoretically about 25; in practice, half of those will never make it.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From chapman at bioreason.com  Wed Jul 18 14:05:49 2001
From: chapman at bioreason.com (Mitch Chapman)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:05:49 -0600
Subject: One Worry for 2.2
References: <ENi57.22469$M9.7022637@typhoon.we.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B55CFFD.C805B34A@bioreason.com>

Pete Shinners wrote:
> 
> i'm excited for the new features coming in 2.2. reading some
> release notes, i found a new difference that bothers me.
> 
> """
> There's one very specific (and fortunately uncommon) bug that
> used to go undetected, but which is now reported as an error:
>     class A:
>         def foo(self): pass
> 
>     class B(A): pass
> 
>     class C(A):
>         def foo(self):
>             B.foo(self)
> 
> Here, C.foo wants to call A.foo, but by mistake calls B.foo.
> In the old system, because B doesn't define foo, B.foo is
> identical to A.foo, so the call would succeed. In the new
> system, B.foo is marked as a method requiring a B instance,
> and a C is not a B, so the call fails.
> """
> 
> now in my mind's understanding of OO, if class B inherits
> from class A, then class B has a foo() function. what this
> is implying is that only _instances_ of class B have a foo()
> function.

B does have a foo method.  The problem is that C is derived 
from A, not from B.  So an instance of C shouldn't be 
allowed to pass itself to B.foo.

--
Mitch
Who is sometimes able to pass himself off as a programmer,
even though he isn't descended from one.


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul  5 15:10:21 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 21:10:21 +0200
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com> <9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B44BB9D.BBBFFBCB@stroeder.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure how you mean slower, but I tested just now to see,
> and this is the fastest of the four.

Ooops. I thought the if x in s statement would consume *much* time.
Well, now I learned again that optimization can be very subtle...

Thanks for doing the benchmark.

Ciao, Michael.


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul  9 03:02:08 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 07:02:08 GMT
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>

phil hunt wrote:
> I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to
> RFC2822.

sounds like it's time to rename that module ;-)

</F>




From krag_rao_pyt at rediffmail.com  Fri Jul 13 03:53:40 2001
From: krag_rao_pyt at rediffmail.com (raghu k rao)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 07:53:40 -0000
Subject: send http request
Message-ID: <20010713075340.22954.qmail@mailweb25.rediffmail.com>

hi

how can i send a http request using POST method.
Not just send request
Like i want to login with username and passwd using the above method.

can anyone tell me a program for this


thankyou
raghu

____________________________________________________
Buy Feng Shui Package for Rs. 151/- only, at http://shopping.rediff.com/shopping/fengshui_mailer.htm






From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 19:33:25 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 01:33:25 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <oVp07.429552$oc7.62655172@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <9htko5$gi6$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"Rainer Deyke" <root at rainerdeyke.com> wrote in message
news:oVp07.429552$oc7.62655172 at news2.rdc2.tx.home.com...
> "Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
> news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> > I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
> >
> > http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
> >
> > Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
>
> The conclusions of those who prefer Java over C++ should not be taken
> seriously.

What an utterly arrogant thing to say... Do you have any arguments
behind this statement?

(I hope this was meant humoristically...)

> --
> Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
> Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
> "In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 00:45:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:45:05 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <15196.14524.979058.576152@beluga.mojam.com>
        <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <15196.64849.278950.776622@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> You're pissing off a fairly significant fraction of the language's
    >> existing constituency in hopes of attracting some non-programmers to
    >> the language who may not come anyway for various other reasons.

    Tim> I don't detect any trace of that hypothesized motive in Guido.  He
    Tim> wants to repair what he has come to believe is a serious design
    Tim> error, and is wrestling with ways to get that done.  What a
    Tim> remarkably different world it would be if people tried to help
    Tim> <wink>.

And I did send a summary to Moshe of the objections to the current proposal
as I saw them, just not on the list where they'd get buried in the slew of
messages on the subject.

I think a lot of people feel that unlike most changes considered for Python,
scant attention is being paid to whether or not the proposed change will
break existing code.  There's ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that this
will break a lot of code and require a fair amount of effort just to check
code that is probably correct.

Skip




From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul 28 13:52:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:52:07 GMT
Subject: How to break? (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <9jun6j$c5$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <bZC87.37029$EP6.9803880@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9jun6j$c5$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> Phrased that way, I think it *has* to be true that there is never a
> future in which old code can break silently.

It is the nature of semantic substitutions to silently break code in
either the forward or backward directions.  Unfortunately, in a
language with runtime compilation (of user imput, for instance) any
feature addition implicity substitutes 'do the new thing' for 'raise
exception' .  The addition of 'yield expression' may silently break
programs that compile user-input into Python functions.  Bug fixes may
silently break programs that compensate for the bug.

One way to never break code, silently or otherwise, is to never change
the interpreter.

Another is to make current behaviour (including bugs) the default
forever and forever require explicit import of every change ever made
since freeze time, with runtime compilations handled separately.

Another is to go ahead and make new meanings the default but forever
identify every construct that once had a different meaning and issue a
warning so that the change is never completely silent.

Any others?

Terry J. Reedy





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 13 11:50:47 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:50:47 -0400
Subject: HTTP through multiple NICs
References: <mailman.995022383.31577.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <YJE37.19257$uJ3.626094@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Gardiner, Geoff" <ggardiner at accelrys.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995022383.31577.python-list at python.org...
> I need to send HTTP traffic through multiple NICs (multihoming with
> different IP addresses AND different MAC addresses) on a single PC. The
> traffic doesn't need to be simultaneous (I think I'll try to walk before I
> run).
>
> I've got a working single-NIC test suite in Python, but haven't worked out
> how to direct traffic to more than one NIC - I'm a complete novice in this
> area. I can't find anywhere obvious in httplib or its superclasses for a
NIC
> identifier or local IP address to be used to select the NIC.
>
> Can anyone suggest where I start with this - before I rush out and buy the
> NICs? I'm running Win NT at present, but could switch to Linux if that
> helps!
>
You don't say whether you are writing HTTP clients, servers, or both.
Generally speaking, on any well-behaved TCP/IP platform (i.e. at least
Windows and Linux), the network layer will direct client traffic out on the
correct NIC to route it to the destination. For servers, just use an address
of "" and the server will bind to all interfaces.

Hope this helps.

regards
 STeve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sandra at ccuec.unicamp.br  Mon Jul 16 17:12:30 2001
From: sandra at ccuec.unicamp.br (Sandra Regina)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:12:30 -0400
Subject: passwd not echoed by getpass
Message-ID: <3B5358BE.CD031688@ccuec.unicamp.br>

Hi ALL,

    I have installed MAILMAN 2.0.5 which uses python2.0 getpass , but
when I run it , the following message
appears :

apolo# ./newlist
Enter the name of the list: asdf
Enter the email of the person running the list: asdf
Warning: Problem with getpass. Passwords may be echoed. <<<------

I search for it at newlist program and It uses getpass like this :

....
import getpass
....
        list_pw = getpass.getpass("Initial %s password: " % listname)

What could be wrong... ?

   It's installed on a sun with solaris 2.5.1
Thanks-

Sandra
sandra at ccuec.unicamp.br






From hgg9140 at seanet.com  Sat Jul 28 07:04:03 2001
From: hgg9140 at seanet.com (Harry George)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 04:04:03 -0700
Subject: Newbie Q: PYTHONPATH_1 vs PYTHONPATH_2?
References: <3b6222b8.1007348@news.onemain.com>
Message-ID: <m3zo9pxql8.fsf@wilma.localdomain>

engsol at teleport.com writes:

> I have an "old" copy of Python on my NT machine. I've tailored
> PYTHONPATH to know about myfiles and mylib, etc.
> 
> But I've now installed Python 2.1.1 in a different directory, and
> would like to create PYTHONPATH_2, so as to not have to expand the
> vanilla PYTHONPATH forever as new versions are available.
> 
> Is this do-able?
>

For each version of python, make a script.  E.g., for
running python 2.0:

/usr/local/bin/py20:
    #!/bin/sh
    export PYTHONHOME=/usr/local
    export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.0: (no line break)
            /usr/local/lib/python2.0/site-packages
    /usr/local/bin/python2.0 $@

Then you can run interactive or batch by using py152,py20, py21, etc. 

> Thanks....engsol

-- 
Harry George
hgg9140 at seanet.com


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sun Jul  8 23:52:14 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:52:14 GMT
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <OT927.657477$166.13612439@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

I just used the one off the py2exe website it is as follows.

# setup.py
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe

setup(name="test",
scripts=["test.py"],
)

Is that bad or whats the story?
eric_brake <brakedon at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434 at posting.google.com...
> "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:<oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>...
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> > I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the
file
> > menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a
hand
> > with this it would be great.
>
> You will need to create a "setup.py" file. Here is the working code that I
use.
>
> from distutils.core import setup
> import py2exe
> setup(name = "filename", #not sure what this does, but it doesn't hurt
anything
>       version = "1.0", #meta info, shows up in the exe you make
>       author = "John Doe", #meta info, your name
>       author_email = "johndoe at somewhere.com",#meta info, author email
>       scripts = ["yourfile.py"])#target script, the script you want to
make an
>                                 #exe with




From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 06:38:39 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 03:38:39 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995988041.22317.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250238.590ff414@posting.google.com>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.995988041.22317.python-list at python.org>...
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 11:48:00PM +0100, Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> > it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The popular vote is
> > against the stupid float '/' operator.
> 
> Really ? I don't see a popular vote. I just see a very long and very heated
> discussion with a small group of repeat offenders (oops, did I say
> offenders ? I meant posters) that just keep on proclaiming their
> righteousness with little in the way of new arguments (either way, for that
> matter.)

On the contrary, I see some pretty strong arguments for not changing
the behaviour of the / operator. The argument that changing the
existing semantics breaks potentially huge amounts of existing code,
cannot be trivially tested for, and is therefore highly undesirable,
has not been adequately refuted. It is not sufficient to say that "new
style division" is nicer, looks better, or is "the way we wanted it
from the start"; such statements do not constitute a response to that
concern - they merely attempt to change the subject of discussion.

I see that the burden should be on those proposing these changes to
address the existing strong arguments against them, rather than being
on those against the changes to raise countless arguments only to see
them brushed aside in an ideological haze by people unwilling to
consider legitimate points of view.

The PEP document in question does not summarise the valid concerns of
the community, many of which have emerged in the recent discussions. I
can understand the author not having time to update it since these
discussions started - I have much less ambitious documents to maintain
myself, and it can be weeks before I get the chance to implement
changes in them - but I cannot believe that the original document did
not consider such obvious pitfalls in the proposed scheme, especially
before an implementation was produced.

Until such time as the PEP attempts to summarise the issues properly,
this discussion will continue with all sides feeling that their views
have not been heard, taken into account, or addressed.

> I strongly suspect the change will actually *fix* more code that was relying
> on float inputs than it will break code that depended on int/int being
> special-cased.

No-one ever fixes code, or should seek to have their code fixed, by
having the ground rules changed.

Paul


From amuys at shortech.com.au  Thu Jul 12 22:41:06 2001
From: amuys at shortech.com.au (Andrae Muys)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 19:41:06 -0700
Subject: What's object-oriented?
References: <GyiZ6.2264$Bp1.299293@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net> <9h4rto$fmc$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <7934d084.0107121841.1aab5693@posting.google.com>

m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) wrote in message news:<9h4rto$fmc$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>...
> zoodoo <zoodoo at infantry.com> wrote:
> > What's the concept/logic behind object-orientation? What is it suppose to
> > mean?
> 
> People noticed that good procedural programs often worked this way:
> 
>  * You have defined a bunch of data in a structure. In C, for instance
>    this is a struct definition. In many languages these are called
>    'records'.
> 
>  * You have a bunch of functions that operate on this data.   
> 
> The program would then be composed of modules, each defining a data
> structure (or bunch of related ones) and the functions operating on
> them (creating them, changing them, querying information in them).
> 
> Good procedural programs tend to look this way, because they're 
> more modular and easier to understand and modify. (this type of
> modelling becomes especially obvious when you're writing a simulation
> or a game, but it is useful in many places).
> 

Indeed.  In fact most good OOP books tend to use this as their
introduction to the concept of an Object/Class.  However while it is
historically correct --- in fact now I have learnt OOP my structured
code shows even stronger tendencies towards this approach --- I have
never found it a useful approach to actually understanding how to use
Objects.  (Note this is my personal experience, it may or may not
generalise)

Personally about half way through GoF, Fowler's book on Refactoring,
and Langr's book on Java Implementation Style I finally realised that
I could treat a well designed object as a State Machine.  Once I
realised that, most of the material in those three books became
'obvious'[1].

To summarise the approach I take.  The classical state machine has
inputs, state, next state logic, and outputs.  These map to methods,
members, implementaion, and attributes.

Now as soon as I accepted this analogy, I immediately started finding
exceptions, but it did mean that patterns such as Visitor, Strategy,
and State, started making much more sense.  Also, alot of the
exceptions seem to me to be OOP analogues of FP constructs (one of the
reasons why I like Python so much :).

All in all my engineering rather then CS background may explain why I
find this approach to understanding OOP useful.  I wouldn't be
surprised if the utility of this approach dosn't generalise, but I
thought I might share it as hopefully it will.

Andrae Muys
amuys at shortech.com.au

[1] cue old maths joke about the 10 blackboards of deriviations to
recognise the proof as obvious


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 13:09:45 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:09:45 -0500
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
In-Reply-To: <200107121639.f6CGdhJ30999@vela.tradersdata.com>
References: <200107121639.f6CGdhJ30999@vela.tradersdata.com>
Message-ID: <15181.55769.940584.551650@beluga.mojam.com>

    Daniel> I have a really dumb program that i would like to make smarter.
    Daniel> I need to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything
    Daniel> except for the standings which are written in it.  I have tried
    Daniel> to use regular expressions with no success, but i still think
    Daniel> that they are probably the best way. 

Assuming "League Standings" is the marker, try something like this:

    sawstandings = 0
    f = open('rawdata', 'r')
    for line in f.readlines():
      if line.strip() == "league standings":
        print line,
        sawstandings = 1
      elif sawstadings:
        print line,

No regular expressions needed.  Obviously, if the league standings aren't
the last thing in the file you will need a similar test to decide when to
break out of the loop.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 30 20:08:21 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:08:21 -0700
Subject: Large-scale Python (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list@python.org> <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B65F6F4.EBEEFE65@ActiveState.com>

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Without contesting any of Paul's larger points, what
> are the facts here?  I believe:
> * Python is good for team-work
>   and big projects; and
> * There is increasing recogni-
>   tion and use of Python in
>   this role.
> What role has "language change" played in this, though?
> I don't think Python's syntax or semantics support
> modularization and packaging significantly better than
> in '96 (Paul, do you have a Jython point in mind?).

I can't remember that far back. One feature I depend upon for
large-scale programming is threads and they are certainly the sort of
thing that you can imagine would be added in the transition from
"scripting" language to "general purpose OOP" language. And the
scalability of Python threads could also be improved.

I also think that the deprecation and assertion features are very useful
in large projects. 

Nevertheless I concede that Python was always designed as if it were
meant for "real work" so it didn't have to change a great deal to be
considered appropriate for large projects.

> Does performance improvement in hardware which makes
> raw speed less frequently a constraint constitute a
> "language change"?
> ...

Not really. I have a sense that there are certain project-size and scope
threshholds that push languages to mature and Python smoothed over the
first one pretty easily because it was designed to scale in the first
place. I would not be surprised if future ones require more changes such
as interfaces, multi-processor threading and optional static type
checking. And of course performance improvements! Or maybe it just
*seems* like bigger programs need those extra features and when we get
there we will find that they do not.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From JoeSalmeri at home.com  Tue Jul 17 20:54:00 2001
From: JoeSalmeri at home.com (Joe Salmeri)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:54:00 GMT
Subject: Python ASP Bug with traceback information
References: <Y9357.17749$Ek3.6722336@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <I6557.18067$Ek3.6855030@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

Mark,

Thanks.  I was going crazy fighting that one.

While I waiting/hoping you would reply I ran across something interesting.

When I created my test cases I tried to narrow things down to as small a
chuck of code as possible.

In the real world here is what I am doing:

*** Joe.ASP ***
try:
    import exception_handler
    import joe

    joe.dosomething()
except:
    exception_to_handle = sys.exc_info()
    exception_handler.exception_handler(Server, Application, Session,
Request, Response, exception_to_handle)
*** End of Joe.ASP ***

Using this method I have been able to print out complete traceback
information.

Strange or could it be because the code has moved out of the ASP file and
into a py module?

P.S.  The HTTP Server error that we talked about still happens.  When 2.1.1
is released I am going to upgrade and see if that fixes the problem.
P.S.S.  It does not have to do with old installs because I bought a new
machine so everything was a fresh install.
"Joe Salmeri" <JoeSalmeri at home.com> wrote in message
news:Y9357.17749$Ek3.6722336 at news1.rdc1.md.home.com...
> Can someone please confirm whether this is a known bug using Python with
> ASP?
>
> Web Server is IIS 5.0
> OS is Windows 2000 SP2
> Python is BeOpen Python 2.0
> Win32All is build 138
>
> When an exception occurs in a script under ASP the contents of the line
that
> the traceback occurred on do not appear to exist in the traceback.
> I have tried most of the functions available in the traceback module but
in
> all cases the contents of the line that normally appears in the
> traceback is lost when using ASP.  When using CGI/Python there are no
> problems.
>
> I have narrowed down my problem to the simple test scripts listed below:
>
> Have I found a new bug?  Is there a workaround available?
>
>
> **** File 1:  joe.py ****
> print 'Content-Type: text/html'
> print
>
> import StringIO
> import sys
> import traceback
>
> try:
>     1/0
> except:
>     e = sys.exc_info()
>     f = StringIO.StringIO()
>     traceback.print_exception(e[0], e[1], e[2], file=f)
>     print f.getvalue()
>
> **** File 2: joe.asp ****
> <%@language="Python"%>
>
> <%
> import StringIO
> import sys
> import traceback
>
> try:
>     1/0
> except:
>     e = sys.exc_info()
>     f = StringIO.StringIO()
>     traceback.print_exception(e[0], e[1], e[2], file=f)
>     Response.Write(f.getvalue())
> %>
>
> **** joe.py output ****
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "P:\Home\Joe\Web\Rolo\j.py", line 10, in ?
>     1/0
> ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo
>
> **** joe.asp output **** (NOTE: you must view source of the asp page
because
> I did not Encode the ASP output)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<Script Block >", line 7, in ?
> ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>




From jblazi at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 23:52:33 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 05:52:33 +0200
Subject: Opening a file, second attempt
References: <3b6384c7_6@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <3b6388b5_6@news.newsgroups.com>

Sorry, problem solved.
J.B.




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul  6 11:41:43 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 16:41:43 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <cpith6l3ip.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
....
>Well duh!
>
>If we left the design of programming languages to the *average*
>programmer, the field would never make progress.  Please give us
>language designers some credit.  We're programmers and we know what
>programmers need!
>
>This whole thread has disappointed me.
>
...
well, all known languages have been produced by people/bees/bacteria etc
and I know of no goodness criterion for languages except perhaps some
notions of expressivity and the like. There are some rather abstract and
little used notions of parseability, but these have no relevance on
whether a language actually gets used.

No matter that the vast majority of languages aren't understandable by
humans, for any language there will be a whole (infinite) family of
utilities which show that language to be optimal.

Presumably the designers/creators of P*** are also making similar
assertions and are as equally right/wrong.

Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them to be
uniformly wrong.
-- 
Robin Becker


From justin at iago.org  Tue Jul 24 00:13:23 2001
From: justin at iago.org (Justin Sheehy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:13:23 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEILAAA.tim.one@home.com> ("Tim Peters"'s
 message of "Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:26:52 -0400")
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEILAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <x7vgkjt15o.fsf@ra.iago.org>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there)

Sure, but 1 == "1" there as well.

Ugh.

-Justin

 




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 15:05:41 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:05:41 -0400
Subject: Need for help with Pythonic realization of win32 network concept
References: <B5204290C8C6A0E1.C46EAEACFB4DA997.B48C0E799B4DD389@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <uitg8udfe.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:

>   import win32api
>   import win32con
> 
>   reg_key = win32api.RegOpenKeyEx(win32con.HKEY_USERS, ...
> gives me a result I want--on "My Computer".  How do I navigate
> to the same point on "\\\\other_node"?  My guess is I have to
> open a hive with a \\other_node indirection--but none of my
> attempts with Python's win32api have given me what I want.

Use RegConnectRegistry to open a root key on a remote machine.  From
there, you can navigate beneath that root with the standard
RegOpenKey/RegQueryValueEx and so on.

> What documentation do folks use for win32api?

Microsoft Documentation (e.g., MSDN) for the underlying Win32 API, of which
win32api is but the slimmest of wrappers.

You can get the MSDN library reference on the web at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library.  Most of the stuff you would want
would be under the Platform SDK under Windows Development.  The
Registry overview is at (URL is all one line):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sysinfo/hh/sysmgmt/regapi_9bzt.asp

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 15:03:36 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:03:36 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <3B4EE391.19995171@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F4608.207DBA7B@ActiveState.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> Please comment...

I think that there should be a single directive for:

 * unicode strings
 * 8-bit strings
 * comments

If a user uses UTF-8 for 8-bit strings and Shift-JIS for Unicode, there
is basically no text editor in the world that is going to do the right
thing. And it isn't possible for a web server to properly associate an
encoding. In general, it isn't a useful configuration.

Also, no matter what the directive says, I think that \uXXXX should
continue to work. Just as in 8-bit strings, it should be possible to mix
and match direct encoded input and backslash-escaped characters.
Sometimes one is convenient (because of your keyboard setup) and
sometimes the other is convenient. This proposal exists only to improve
typing convenience so we should go all the way and allow both.

I strongly think we should restrict the directive to one per file and in
fact I would say it should be one of the first two lines. It should be
immediately following the shebang line if there is one. This is to allow
text editors to detect it as they detect XML encoding declarations.

My opinions are influenced by the fact that I've helped implement
Unicode support in an Python/XML editor. XML makes it easy to give the
user a good experience. Python could too if we are careful.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 18:01:54 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:01:54 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j50tq01k6r@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Michael Chermside" <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995479471.31821.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> I'm very surprised to hear this. Yes, I've taught lots of beginners, and
> I've found that they often complain about the case sensitivity. But I
> tell them that "Computers are EXTREMELY literal", and "you must be VERY
> precise when programming", and they get it. I also get complaints (not

I guess you're lucky that your beginners don't have a smattering of
Pascal or DOS, or other case-insensitive computers and programming
environments, or they'd challenge your generalization.  Of course you
must be very precise when programming in Pascal, say, but that
precision doesn't have to be artificially extended to case sensitivity.


> Don't encourage sloppy habits: require case sensitivity.

First time I heard that Pascal "encourages sloppy habits" -- with all
the valid criticisms one can level at it, this one seems ridiculous.


Alex





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Thu Jul  5 02:47:30 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 06:47:30 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9huenl$49q$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9k6vbl.1rv.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9i08r5$eq3$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k8424.22v.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <slrn9k6vbl.1rv.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
> Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> >
> >Also, I guess I'm a bit defensive, as so many here _do_ make little
> >snide comments about Perl and such.
> 
> I do -- feel free to take me to task when I do make such comments, but
> not otherwise.

I'm sorry. The honest original intention of the post was to explain the
Perl to Pythonistas, as they may likely not know Perl.

You were never intended to be a target and I apologize if I
inadvertently offended you.

Best regards.
-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Not all who wander are lost.
    -- J.R.R. Tolkien


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 01:22:41 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 01:22:41 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
In-Reply-To: <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEJKLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[James C. Ahlstrom]
> ...
> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.

As my physicists friend like to say, "that's not even wrong".  Write a PEP.

while-compsci-purists-denounce-python-for-its-pragmatism-ly y'rs  - tim




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 12:08:53 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:08:53 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
        <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <15196.19477.866414.443805@beluga.mojam.com>

    Terry> (Just noticed: http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
    Terry> now proposes a *2 year* int/int warning period starting with 2.3.
    Terry> It still needs a stipulation that someone write an intdiv checker
    Terry> to help automate replacements.)

Here's a quick div finder (got some off-by-one errors trying to track
NEWLINE tokens, hence the self.line hack).

Skip

import tokenize
import sys

class TokenSorter:
    def __init__(self, f):
        self.tokens = {}
        self.filename = f
        self.line = ""
        self.linenumber = 0
        self.lastprinted = 0

    def tokeneater(self, typ, val, (sr, sc), (er, ec), line):
        if self.line != line:
            self.linenumber += 1
            self.line = line
        if (tokenize.tok_name[typ] == "OP" and
            val == "/" and
            self.lastprinted != self.linenumber):
            print "%s(%d): %s" % (self.filename, self.linenumber,
                                   line.rstrip())
            self.lastprinted = self.linenumber

def main():
    for fn in sys.argv[1:]:
        try:
            f = open(fn)
        except IOError:
            pass
        else:
            ts = TokenSorter(fn)
            try:
                tokenize.tokenize(f.readline, ts.tokeneater)
            except tokenize.TokenError:
                pass

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 04:19:26 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:19:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: py2exe problem
References: <mailman.995667696.25448.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E75CF8B731Aduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote in
news:mailman.995667696.25448.python-list at python.org: 

> One note: This program is intended to run as a COM local server
> (controlled by an IE comm band). Could that possibly be the problem?
> Does py2exe not take kindly to folks trying to use COM in their Python
> code? We're not even trying to run it with IE yet, there is a way to
> start it independently, but neither way will produce screen output on a
> machine that doesn't have Python installed.

There a few tricks you have to do to get py2exe running properly with COM
servers. This URL has a useful post from Thomas Heller with a working 
example (edit it to one line if it gets split in transit):
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9eag5l%241muh3%241%40ID-59885.news.df
ncis.de 

Also you will find life a lot easier if you avoid using the -w flag while 
you are trying to get your application working. Without -w everything 
should run visibly on the screen and you can see uncaught exceptions or put 
print statements where you wish (even if it is running as a COM server). 
Only after you can build the exe and run it successfully on another Python-
free machine should you consider using the -w flag.

Another thing I have found useful is that my code (which is based on the 
example referenced above) is wrapped in code that replaces sys.stdout and 
sys.stderr with a cStringIO file and also catches and prints exceptions 
(including any exceptions raised by importing the rest of my code).
the original stdout and stderr are restored during the call to 
localserver.main(), but otherwise at the end of the program I get any data 
written to stdout/stderr and, if there is any, it goes in a call to 
win32ui.MessageBox.
The effect of this is that the messages indicating the server was 
registered or unregistered are displayed in a popup box, but more 
importantly the stack backtraces telling me what failed are also shown when 
something goes wrong. 
(Actually the code is a bit more complex because I also found it useful to 
add a --quiet option to suppress the registration popups so that I could 
register the control quietly from the setup program.)

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 22:32:26 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:32:26 GMT
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <_6577.22568$EP6.5469979@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I think this is what the PEP is proposing:

Suggest you read it -- more carefully than I did a month ago.

> // is current / behaviour

No,
x//y = floor(x/y) for both ints and floats, so that (x//y)*y + x%y = x
as close as possible

8//3 = 2,   8.0//3.0 = 2.0 which is similar to
8+3 = 11,  8.0+3.0 = 11.0

> / is new int/int --> fp

x/y is result with fraction so that (x/y)*y = x more or less






From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 22:24:08 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:24:08 -0400
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <3b5cbf31.247227744@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEIHLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Bengt Richter]
> I wonder if the implementation is factored to where not using 
> floating point would let you substitute small exception-raising
> stubs for otherwise large (?? usually, floating point carries a
> lot of baggage along in the C/C++ world) chunks concerned with
? floating point.

No, it is not.
 
> Then that could be a make option. I was wondering if someone's 
> been there done that.

These folks have:

    http://www.abo.fi/~iporres/python/

Their patch is against 1.5.1, but I bet the principle still applies <wink>.




From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Sat Jul  7 06:00:19 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 03:00:19 -0700
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
Message-ID: <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

Is there a way to limit the number of instructions executed by a thread
to a certain number?  I want to start several threads and give them all
the same number of instructions to work, then have them all stop after
they have reached that point.  Then I would like to resume all of those
threads again for another 'round' of instruction batches.

The idea is that I have a game where people play there code against
others, and I would like to have some granularity in the number of
intructions each thread executes in a given time frame.

I think this may be impossible, but any suggestions would be great!

Neil Macneale 

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Mon Jul 23 00:02:06 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:02:06 +1000
Subject: Insensitive Dictionaries (Was: Language change and code breaks)
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jfh2u$11b6$1@news.btv.ibm.com> <3B5BA116.28A32BC1@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3B5BA1BE.8F4BB08E@student.gu.edu.au>

Joal Heagney wrote:
 
> Version three rewritten so it's consistent about try/except and if has_key else:

> >>> class InsensitiveDict3(UserDict):
>         def __getitem__(self,key):
>                 if self.data.has_key(key)
>                         return self.data[key]
>                 else:
>                         if type(key) == type(""):
>                                 for i in self.data.keys():
>                                         if i.lower() == key.lower():
>                                                 return self.data[i]
>                         else:
>                         	  raise IndexError
>         def __setitem__(self,key,value):
>                 if self.data.has_key(key):
>                         self.data[key] = value
>                 else:
>                         if type(key) == type(""):
>                                 for i in self.data.keys():
>                                         if i.lower() == key.lower():
>                                                 del self.data[i]
>                                 self.data[key] = value
>                         else:
>                                 self.data[key] =value
> 

> --
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 05:57:29 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:57:29 +0200
Subject: portability
References: <9k5u2c$p542@news.rd.francetelecom.fr>
Message-ID: <9k5vec01p4b@enews4.newsguy.com>

"franck delarue" <franck.delarue at rd.francetelecom.com> wrote in message
news:9k5u2c$p542 at news.rd.francetelecom.fr...
> hello everyone,
> i'm working on python on linux red hat and i'm wandering if all the code
> that i've written would be portable to unix or windows (except the system
> calls of course). I know that python works a little like java ( on a
virtual
> machine), but is Python as portable as java ?

Python isn't quite as portable as Java, because Java by defaults
shields you from all platform-dependencies, while Python's
general attitude is to give you access to platform-dependent
features -- which may not be there on another platform.  So,
writing portable, cross-platform code in Python, while quite
feasible and not all that hard, DOES require more conscious
attention and care than it does in Java (you can of course
use Jython, Python for the Java Virtual Machine, in order to
write Python code but get Java portability).

While most non-portability issues with Python's standard
library are indeed with "system calls" (e.g., you won't get
os.fork on Windows platforms, because the operating system
doesn't support that -- it's for Unix and Unix-like platforms
only), there are (unfortunately, I would say) some (IMHO) less
forgivable portability holes.  For example, module time
exposes a parsing function strptime on SOME platforms only --
those whose underlying C library supplies strptime (and if
the underlying platform's strptime is flaky or non-standard,
so is Python's time.strptime).  There are pure Python versions
of strptime around, but for some reason the Python core team
never decided to integrate those in the standard Python library
so that time.strptime would be usable on all platforms -- in
the pure-Python version if need be, in a native-code one (for
speed) if available & reliable.

This is, unfortunately I feel, rather a good symbol of Python's
overall approach to portability: quite achievable *if you work
at it* (it's less work to make your Python code portable, than
it would be for, say, C, or C++), but definitely a secondary
issue (it takes a lot MORE work to make your Python code
portable than it would take for, say, Java, or Tcl).


Alex





From foodbar at mit.edu  Sun Jul 29 18:29:12 2001
From: foodbar at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 18:29:12 -0400
Subject: Need help in creating a simple package in python
References: <9k20ih$jq3$1@news.netvision.net.il>
Message-ID: <etdr8uzbc93.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

This is the third post you've sent about creating python packages.
You've gotten responses to them, but you send almost the same post each
time.  Are the responses to your posts not getting through?

Alex.

> Hi
> 
> Can you help me ?
> 
> I am new with Python and I would like to ask several questions:
> 
> 1. For creating a package I have to create a *.py script that will
> group selected modules and contain the following script
> __init__.py. -> Can you elaborate on this script definition (give an
> example how the script should be written ).
> 
> 2. I have tried to create a package that contains 2 modules and
> succeeded in importing the package itself but not a module inside the
> package for example 'import pkg.fib1' - what was wrong ?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Yossi


From brian_zhou at agilentNOSPAM.com  Sun Jul  1 02:20:06 2001
From: brian_zhou at agilentNOSPAM.com (Brian Zhou)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 23:20:06 -0700
Subject: Python for Windows CE 3.0
References: <YRq%6.44315$mK4.4754231@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <993968395.50097@emperor.labs.agilent.com>

See
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jython+j9&btnG=Search&meta=site%3Dgroups

I'm happily running Jython on iPaq now. Thanks to Java's WORA, it's a
no-effort port; just some configuration. But also thanks to Java, it's not
lightning fast, only got 49 pystones. So I'm looking forward to the native
port.

Sample session:

Jython 2.1a1 on java1.2.2 subset (JIT: null)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import math
>>> 4.0 * math.atan(1.0)
3.141592653589793
>>> import java
>>> java.util.Date()
Sat Jun 30 22:57:36 PDT 2001
>>> import sre
>>> sre.compile("\d+").findall("-12.345")
['12', '345']
>>> [n * 2 + 1 for n in [0, 1, 2]]
[1, 3, 5]
>>>

Cheers,

-Brian

"Tom wright" <thomas.wright1 at ntlworld.REMOVETHIS.com> wrote in message
news:YRq%6.44315$mK4.4754231 at news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> Guys n Gals,
>
> I have an Compaq Ipaq hand held running Windows CE 3.0  Does any one know
of
> any ports of python to it ?
>
> Many thanks
>
> Tom
>
>




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 22:23:13 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 22:23:13 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <rdeemts4mrarb8b5ghqieio68n1jv32tl1@4ax.com> <u8zh4u0b6.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <lyH97.7737$9i1.681152@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <uwv4oselq.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> Was this the one that allowed to you define command lines like
> 
>     COPY FROM <file> TO <file>
> 
> and variations could be deduced from the noise words? I seem to remember a
> college chum of mine working in BCPL with a scheme like this, circa 1978,
> but have only this fading memory.

The term "noise" words (while I'm sure it's generic) reminds me of the
TOPS-10/20 parsing that another poster wrote about (still in use in
some Columbia applications like MM or Kermit - in fact there's a C
CCMD library around made for that, although the TOPS stuff was built
as a system JSYS which I tended to use in MACRO).

In such a case, you actually defined parse tables that were
incrementally parsed and control was passed off to various routines as
the parsing continued, which could then dynamically vary the remainder
of the parsing.  Along the way you could define "noise" words so if
the user allowed auto-completion (normally TAB or ESC) the completed
word would be printed followed by the noise words in parenthesis
afterwards to give a hint as to what to type next.

Took a lot of set up work to do though in the code, and it was best
for interactive parsing (where you got the most benefit), although
since it was there it also got used for command lines.  But even it
had a convention for options and values as opposed to the native text
in the command.

The readline library is somewhat similar in construction but less
dynamic and flexible.

Actually, come to think of it, a wrapper around the CCMD library might
be an interesting idea as a Python extension for interactive parsing,
although I suppose with limited target base nowadays.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU  Tue Jul  3 01:54:08 2001
From: lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 01:54:08 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: problem with sending email
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107030943150.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.31.0107030150090.17815-100000@ivy.ee.princeton.edu>

This works thanks!

Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.

Thanks again
Haris Lekatsas

> On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Haris Lekatsas wrote:
>
> > How can I do that from a CGI script?
>
> One way:
>
> os.system("""/usr/sbin/sendmail -t << EOMESSAGE
> From: %(from)s
> To: %(towhom)s
> Subject: %(subject)s
>
> Message
>
> EOMESSAGE""" % vars())
>
> Another way is to open sendmail thru the pipe:
>
> file = os.popen("/usr/sbin/sendmail -t", "w")
> ...
> file.write(letter)
> ...
> file.close()
>
>
> > In article <mailman.994069322.26388.python-list at python.org>, Roman Suzi says...
> > >
> > >On 2 Jul 2001 piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
> > >
> > >> >>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:
> > >>
> > >> HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
> > >> HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
> > >> HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web
> > >> HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
> > >> HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
> > >> HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
> > >> HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.
> > >
> > >What if you try to send mail by piping to "sendmail -t"?
> > >
> > >Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
> > >--
> > > - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
> --
>  - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
>
>
>




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 15:51:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:51:00 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> writes:

> The moment using "tools" with Python becomes an essential part of
> creating Python programs, the language is dead to me. All of this
> pent-up rancor of mine comes with my open contempt for Lisp environ-
> ments which more or less simply require you to use Emacs.

I think you've got that backwards.  The whole point of putting case
insensitivity in the tools it *not* to force you to use the tool.

The language would remain case-sensitive, and you would be free to use
it that way in any tool you chose, but there would be a separate tool
available that enforced case-preserving case-sensitivity for those who
prefer it.

BTW, this would happen in a distant future, and that's all I'm going
to say about case-insensitivity for now.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net  Wed Jul 11 17:48:50 2001
From: chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net (Chad Everett)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:48:50 -0500
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
References: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com> <qebpktoe7n33altfhpar744nhak7hf4b6u@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpj0n.mi0.chat@linuxsupreme.homeip.net>

On 11 Jul 2001 14:53:06 -0500, Chris Spencer <clspence at one.net> wrote:
>	I can confirm these results.  Why would a deleted list retain 90% of its
>memory usage after being deleted?  Sounds like a pointer is getting lost
>somewhere.
>
>Chris.
>
>On 11 Jul 2001 11:41:25 -0700, msimpson at ioindustries.com (Mike Simpson) wrote:
>
>>I can't figure out how to free the memory used in the creation of a
>>large list in Python.
>>I am running the Python 2.1 interpreter on Windows 2000 Professional
>>to run the following piece of code:
>>
>>result = []
>>for count in xrange(510*478):
>>	result.append(count)
>>del result
>>
>>By using Windows Task Manager I was able to determine that 4332K of
>>memory was used up until the end of the for loop, but only 960K of
>>memory was returned to the system after the call to "del".  Is there
>>any way to return the other 3372K of memory to the system without
>>quitting the Python interpreter?
>>

Nothing has been lost.  As other responses have pointed out, you are seeing
a manifestation of the OS memory management algorithms.  To show you that
nothing has been "lost" do the following:

1. run python and get a python prompt

2. look at your memory allocation

3. do your:

result = []
for count in xrange(510*478):
      result.append(count)

4. look at memory usage

5. delete the result list

del result

6. look at memory usage

7. now build the list again

result = []
for count in xrange(510*478):
      result.append(count)

8. look at memory usage and you'll see it has only gone back up to the same 
   amount of memory at step 4.





-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 15:03:39 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 12:03:39 -0700
Subject: How to break? (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <9jun6j$c5$1@panix2.panix.com> <bZC87.37029$EP6.9803880@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jv2ab$ffo$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <bZC87.37029$EP6.9803880 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>,
Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
>
>One way to never break code, silently or otherwise, is to never change
>the interpreter.
>
>Another is to make current behaviour (including bugs) the default
>forever and forever require explicit import of every change ever made
>since freeze time, with runtime compilations handled separately.
>
>Another is to go ahead and make new meanings the default but forever
>identify every construct that once had a different meaning and issue a
>warning so that the change is never completely silent.
>
>Any others?

Yup: make the old behavior an error but also require a directive to
enable the new behavior.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 29 02:44:00 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 06:44:00 GMT
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9lttn5.69.grante@isis.visi.com> <ni92mt4a7e2k64b1vn6rm0jaqlkf525mjp@4ax.com> <jQg87.29709$B7.4412083@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m7c5g.na4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:40:47 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:

> An argument could be made that mixing ints and floats is A Bad
> Thing(tm).

I strongly disagree. The most natural way to cut a float into a half
is x/2

As long as literals like 2 have type int, mixing ints and floats
should be fully supported.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul 16 15:05:04 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 21:05:04 +0200
Subject: Failing gracefully when installed Python is too old?
References: <7MF47.17793$B7.2997540@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <wzy9po8zkv.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) (GE) writes:

GE> I can't figure out a way for a Python program to fail
GE> gracefully if somebody attempts to run it with a version of
GE> Python that's too old.

GE> Checking sys.hexversion at runtime won't work because the
GE> program might not even parse.  For example, attempting to run
GE> a program containing list comprehensions under 1.5.2.

GE> Is there any way to check the version at compile time?

You can write anothe very small module that just imports the main module
and catches the exception.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Sat Jul 21 18:05:59 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:33:59 +0028
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org> <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net> <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net> <mailman.995756077.11446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jdl47$362$1@apollo.csd.net>

Skip Montanaro wrote:

> 
>     >> That does bring up the subject of machine-generated symbols though.
>     >> And case sensitivity in dictionaries. I use base52 [A-Za-z] encoded
>     >> md5's in certain contexts. If I use those as keys, will it break?
> 
>     kosh> Losing case sensitivity in dictionaries would screw me pretty
>     kosh> badly also.
> 
> I think case-sensitivity as we are discussing in this thread runs only to
> identifier and attribute names, not the contents of strings, so while
> 
>     date = 1
>     DATE += 1
>     print Date
> 
> should print "2" by my understanding,
> 
>     dict = {"date": 1,
>             "DATE": 2,
>             "Date": 3}
> 
> would create a dictionary of length 3.
> 


However self.date and self.__dict__['date] and getattr(self, 'date') are 
the same things at this point. So how could self.data be case insensitive 
without the dicts being case insensitive? Otherwise I could just set the 
items however I wanted by using the __dict__ directly or even better 
override the setattr and getattr methods to use the __dict__ so that I 
could still do case sensitive stuff.

Overall it seems that if case insensitive is desired then case sensitive 
dicts have to go. In which case that will probably be the end of my use of 
python and many others.


From nperkins7 at home.com  Sat Jul 14 23:48:24 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 03:48:24 GMT
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
References: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <co847.478507$eK2.99254456@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

Your modules are going to have to import the globals.  You could put them
all in a separate file, call it "my_globals.py", and then in each file
(including the 'main' file), you would have:
from my_globals import *



"Pugsley" <europax at home.com> wrote in message
news:yH747.348232$p33.7087093 at news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
> I'm converting a number crunching program from C to Numeric Python, and
> I'm really getting stuck on how to deal with global variables.
>
> For example, there are about 30 variables that are defined in the main
> program that I want to be global and available in the functions in the
> modules.  (the modules are seperate files that I import).   A simple
> example would be:
>
> def foo(arg1, arg2):
>
> global bar1, bar2, bar3,             etc.
>
> result= bar1+bar2+bar3+ arg1+arg2
>
> return result
>
>
>
> But all I get are errors stating that the global variables have not been
> defined.  This behavior seems to run counter to what is implied in some
> books that I've been reading.
>
> What am I doing wrong?   Thanks,   Rob.




From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 20 12:31:08 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:31:08 -0700
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
References: <ac677656.0107191230.767b041d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107200831.1e94f7b1@posting.google.com>

Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good) wrote in message news:<ac677656.0107191230.767b041d at posting.google.com>...
> I downloaded the Python-2.2a1.exe installer from SourceForge, and
> verified that the MD5 sum is correct.  When I run it under Windows
> 2000 Professional [Version 5.00.2195], I get an error dialog that
> says:
> 
> 16 bit Windows Subsystem
> 
> The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
> CS:020c IP:0115 OP:0f 00 00 00 00 Choose 'Close' to terminate the
> application.
> 

Sorry, I had thought that this was a problem with the installer, but
it really turned out to be a problem with my Windows configuration.  I
fixed it.


From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Fri Jul 13 12:14:23 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:14:23 -0700
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>
Message-ID: <9in6p1$h36$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

In article <3b4e211f$1 at news.blarg.net>,
 steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R. Hastings) wrote:

>Hello.  I am new to Python, studying books to come up to speed.
>
>I have one question I have not really seen discussed in FAQs and such:
>
>If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
>be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
>At this point I suspect Tkinter is the way to go.

How cross-platform?

If you mean Mac, Windows and unix then Tkinter or Jython (Python running 
on Java) are your only options in Python. I have not used Jython, but am 
about to try it, because Tkinter has some serious limitations and some 
nasty problems on the Mac (including: file events don't work -- a known 
problem -- and custom menus cause crashes, at least on my machines). I 
would start with Jython -- or pick another language.

If you only mean various flavors of Windows and unix, then there are 
additional packages to choose from, including wxPython.

If you have additional platforms in mind, I'm afraid I can't offer any 
advice.

As to learning Tkinter...
An Introduction to Tkinter, by Fredrik Lundh, is excellent but 
incomplete (I'm not sure if it's a work in progress or that's as far as 
it's going to go; I hope the former). In any case, see links from 
PythonWare Library <http://www.pythonware.com/library/index.htm> for 
HTML and PDF versions.

John Grayson's book "Python and Tkinter Programming" is fine and well 
worth having. It's also the only book I know of on the subject.

You'll probably also want one ore more Tk references. I've been pleased 
with "Effective Tckl/Tk Programming" by Harrison and Mclennan. It 
doesn't try to cover everything, but has useful info about some subtler 
aspects of making real, usable GUIs with Tk.

Tkinter is an odd mix of strengths and weaknesses. The Canvas class, for 
line drawings and such, is quite powerful. On the other hand Tk has 
limitations that are bizarre in a toolkit as mature as this one, 
including:
- "copy and paste" of text don't "just work", and it's a real pain to 
implement them (I've still not finished the job for my app, but at least 
I've gotten some common cases working). I suspect this is a side effect 
of a toolkit originally written for unix.
- there is no good way to implement a text display that allows users to 
copy info but not change it. This is a famous FAQ and the usual solution 
is an ugly hack.

-- Russell


From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Mon Jul 30 10:19:17 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:19:17 +0100
Subject: Loaded module list and attributes
References: <o2mamt4qtis8r77maqnsmjg7h193aa80t4@4ax.com> <fQd97.3473$9i1.231823@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <m6ramt0abep6khir1fdq4fsf9sdt12e8le@4ax.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:

>Probably you want to iterate over sys.modules -- one way to do this is:
>
>    for k in sys.modules.keys():
>        module = sys.modules[k]
>        print module.__version__
>
>However you will need to ensure that a particular module HAS a __version__
>attribute before referencing it, or trap the AttributeError exception which
>will result when it doesn't.
>
>regards
> STeve

Excellent. Thanks.
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From dcarr1 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 18:55:50 2001
From: dcarr1 at hotmail.com (Dudley Carr)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:55:50 -0700
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <35fda446.0107251455.6a3339e@posting.google.com>

"Colin Meeks" <colin at meeks.ca> wrote in message news:<lSh77.64029$2V.13507417 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com>...
> I have a list that comprises of First Name, Surname, Age
> The list looks something like
> 
> [["Mickey","Mouse","50"],["Stan","Mantz","3"],["Junior","Wilst","40"],["Kim"
> ,"Bean","15"]]
> 
> How can I sort the list to rearrange it by either First Name, Surname, Age
> 

data = [["Mickey","Mouse","50"], ["Stan","Mantz","3"],
["Junior","Wilst","40"], ["Kim","Bean","15"]]
data.sort(lambda elem1, elem2: cmp(elem1[2], elem[2]))

That ought to sort the list on the age.

Dudley


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 16:07:58 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:07:58 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:
> 
> > I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
> > 
> >   2L**128/2
> > 
> > which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
> > semantics would give an approximation...
> 
> Have you read the PEP?  The PEP only returns a float if the int result
> would yield a remainder.

Does it?  While returning an integral value in the above case,
wouldn't it would in fact be a float data type (barring the addition
of rationals), as per:

    (from PEP238)

    "The type of a/b will be either a float or a rational, depending on
    other PEPs[2, 3]. However, the result will be integral in all case
    the division has no remainder."

And given that, what happens if float can't represent the resulting
precision necessary?

Of course, this is only true later when this is the default, right?
Until then, the "future" implementation is an addition of 0.0 to the
divisor, so the result would definitely be float, and not necessarily
integral.

Unless you meant something other than the data type involved by
"returns a float".

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From dinu at reportlab.com  Sat Jul 21 10:09:59 2001
From: dinu at reportlab.com (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:09:59 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org> <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <3b598d0f.252655609@news.t-online.de>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:01:04 GMT, "Mark Nenadov"
<mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca> wrote:

>The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
>(www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
>wide variety of other languages.

What do you mean by "best"? ;-)

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul 18 12:26:27 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 09:26:27 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995443830.26172.python-list@python.org> <3B55724D.465E8A44@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

Peter Hansen writes:

> In practice, we've found Python to be somewhere between
> 30 and 100 times slower than C, clearly depending on the
> algorithm and without really much effort to optimize.
> (That is, our Python code could probably withstand
> some significant optimization, if we cared to.)

I've been playing with ocaml, so I thought I'd try the results on my
computer, a Mac PowerBook G3/400.  Things don't look so good for the
G3/400 processor though, at least on OS X.

I get:

cc -O2       0.28
cc           0.62
ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
perl        28.9
python      66.8

Hm.  I'm beginning to wonder if I compiled python with -O2 or not.
Plus, I'm becoming more and more fond of ocaml.

The python function I used was the basic

def test ():
    i = 2.5
    j = 2.5
    while i < 1e7:
        j = 2.5 * 2.5
        i = i + 1.0
    print "%f %f\n" % (i, j)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    test ()

--Johann


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 14:40:49 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:40:49 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <15195.2349.947801.54567@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <15195.2349.947801.54567@beluga.mojam.com>, <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
        <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <E15OO9p-0003oJ-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:11:09 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

> Guido,
> 
> I just reread the PEP at
> 
>     http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
> 
> It looks like it hasn't been updated since March.  I see no support for the
> argument that the current integer division semantics are confusing, only a
> claim that the current semantics are a problem.  Perhaps there's a more
> recent version of the PEP available that hasn't been released to the
> website.

Not really. I'm working on the PEP, and hopefully there will be a
new version tommorow with some more meat. 
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 08:45:26 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:45:26 +0100
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com> <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <pmglltoiomis08cg8s18ogql1psmb4knkj@4ax.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:41:56 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com>
wrote:

>kevin parks wrote:
>
>> By the way is tuple pronounced tOOple (god i hope it is), or is it
>> pronounced
>> like the word "couple". Tuple like "couple" would be too high brow.
>
>I've always heard it pronounced to rhyme with _couple_, but a
>mathematician friend of mine insisted that it was pronounced the other
>way.  When I checked a dictionary it said both were legal.

Funny - the guy who last taught me maths insisted on the
rhymes-with-couple version. tOOple sounds too high brow to me -
British snobs tend to say things the longest, most stretched out and
emphasised way they can - presumably they need to make up for the lack
of content by at least making their words sound as impressive as
possible. American high brows, I presume, are too busy making money to
waste time saying 'oo' when they can just say 'u' ;-)



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 12:22:29 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:22:29 +0200
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9k6m0702ofn@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Dale Strickland-Clark" <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote in message
news:ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh at 4ax.com...
> Is there a class that simplifies high-level argument decoding under the
control of a template?
>
> Such a class would take a string as a template and the arg list and return
another list populated
> with keys, values and switches taken from the args.
>
> I've spent the last hour going through the global module list. If it's
there, its got a daft name!

You mean, standard module getopt?  That's pretty much a
traditional name I think, although getopt's functionality
is rather minimal compared with other implementations.


Alex





From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Tue Jul 24 11:39:01 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:39:01 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <apaolto6pr6cevpk0lgudiapnbrttaj8u9@4ax.com> <m2wv4yhm6v.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Vqg77.3375$Xk6.761103@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D977C.7010203@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Rainer Deyke wrote:

> "Paul Foley" <see at below> wrote in message
> news:m2wv4yhm6v.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz...
> 
>>If you want integers, write floor(a,b) [or floor(a/b)], since that's
>>what you really mean.
>>
> 
> That would be incorrect though.  When I write "a / b", I mean "the largest
> integer 'c' such that c * b <= a".  I don't mean "some approximation loosely
> resembling a / b", which floating point calculations give me.
> 


Correct, that would be incorrect <3.0/4 wink>.  To _really_ get what one 
wants, one would have to write divmod(a,b)[0] which is, ummm, well, just 
plain ugly.

now-i-wonder-how-Parrot-handles-this-ly yours
Tom



From martin at strakt.com  Mon Jul 30 08:35:04 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:35:04 +0200
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
In-Reply-To: <3B654A3B.61D17D7E@student.gu.edu.au>
References: <25b2e0d9.0107291052.7780d1f8@posting.google.com> <3B64BA49.C105612B@student.gu.edu.au> <5D997.52$Nq1.2409@nreader1.kpnqwest.net> <3B654A3B.61D17D7E@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <20010730143504.A3191@strakt.com>

On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 09:51:23PM +1000, Joal Heagney wrote:
> Francis Meyvis wrote:
> > 
> > This would be great!
> > I remember in the very very beginning
> > a lot of people were posting silly jokes on the list.
> > I think they thought this list was about the Monty Python thing.
> > Much to the frustration of some "serious" clerics.
> > At that time it were my first experiences with the "net".
> > Very enjoyable it was!
> 
> Well I'm a late-comer, so all the "great exploits" of the c.l.py group
> are only myth and legend to me. Though I did cruise the www.python.org
> site to find out what the #$*%)-was-with-the-ly-y'rs- ly-yr's.

I only recently subscribed, and I've been a bit curious about it too. Not
that I can be bothered to actually search for it :-)

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 11:52:04 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:52:04 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <01af01c1091f$c7e9a9a0$0e4ab43f@kens>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101948450.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

BTW, it just occured to me that Forth system may be a language 
of choice for ATC programming.

I remember somebody told me that some airports use such systems
quite successfully and COMFORTably. (They used COMFORT).

http://www.forth.com aslo mentions this kind of usage.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 





From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul 12 09:51:34 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:51:34 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: ZODB address list  question (source is listed)...
In-Reply-To: <4a249347.0107120538.6cf71cba@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121750340.29439-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 12 Jul 2001, Robert wrote:
> I am a newbie at both Python and ZODB so I thought I would modify the
> ZODB demo that Mr. Pelletier did. It does the Listing, Adding and
> Quiting fine. But when I add a duplicate it does not tell me that that
> "name" is already in the database.

   It doesn't - it just replaces old record. You are supposed to test it
yourself: if not root.has_key(name): root[name] = value.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From m-turk at nwu.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:51:41 2001
From: m-turk at nwu.edu (Matthew Turk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 16:51:41 GMT
Subject: C/Cygwin/Python
Message-ID: <slrn9mdold.1snq.m-turk@dhcp101054.res-hall.nwu.edu>

Hi there.  I'm working on some 'back-end' stuff that I'm doing in C -
and I'm struggling through compiling it properly, which is an entirely
different question.

Essentially, I want to be able to use it on computers that don't run
Cygwin.  Is this going to work?  I certainly *don't* want to resort to
Visual C, since I have no idea how to operate in that environment, nor
do I own a copy.  I know that cygwin has the -Wno_cygwin or something
flag that'll compile without CYGWIN.DLL, but will that be sufficient
for compiling a python extension?

Thanks!




mjt
--------------------------------------------------
Matthew J. Turk <m-turk at nwu.edu>      ICQ: 3856787
"Music is the Best." - FZ       www.dailyvault.com


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Wed Jul 11 22:33:12 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:33:12 GMT
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <3B4CEF3C.D664D82A@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <I%737.679443$166.13999728@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

I Still Dont Get It. Could you explain it in simpiler terms?

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message
news:3B4CEF3C.D664D82A at Lugoj.Com...
> EricIDLE wrote:
> >
> > What does filter do? I don't understand when I read it other places.
>
>   newlist = filter(somefunc, somelist)
> #### is roughly the same as doing:
>   newlist = []
>   for entry in somelist:
>       if somefunc(entry):
>           newlist.append(entry)
> ####
>
> So the newlist will have only those entries for which somefunc returns a
> true value. Note that if you do:
>   newlist = filter(None, somelist)
> #### this is roughly the same as:
>   newlist = []
>   for entry in somelist:
>       if entry:   # Notice change here.
>           newlist.append(entry)
> ####
>
> Note that if somelist is a string or tuple, then newlist will be a string
or
> tuple.




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 00:05:52 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 21:05:52 -0700
Subject: Support for "wide" Unicode characters
References: <mailman.993767684.13828.python-list@python.org> <5zn%6.2300$Z6.1039816@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EA1A0.87855C7C@ActiveState.com>

Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I find this ambiguous.  Is 'codepoint' a synonym for integer (in range 0 to
> MAX)? or just for integer that does or might someday represent a character?
> Does 'some'  (in all three uses) refer to integers or codepoints?

Okay:

    Code point

        If you imagine Unicode as a mapping from integers to
        characters, each integer is a code point. In other words
        a code point is an integer between 0 and TOPCHAR.
        Some code points are really mapped to characters. Some will 
        someday be used for characters. Some are guaranteed never 
        to be used for characters.


-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Jul  4 19:21:11 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 19:21:11 -0400
Subject: SPAM again [was: Re: .BIZ .INFO domain extensions]
In-Reply-To: <UTC200107042223.AAA18879@zeus.cwi.nl>
References: <UTC200107042223.AAA18879@zeus.cwi.nl>
Message-ID: <oqhewsxouw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

Hi, people.  We still get SPAM from this list once in a while, which is
annoying.  I wonder if something could be done about it at the list level.

I noticed that two recent SPAM were sent to `python-list at cwi.nl' instead of
`python-list at python.org', so we might think of ruling out that old address.
On the other hand, valid postings are still made to the `cwi.nl' address,
even if rarely.  I fear some members might find rude being forced to switch
to `python.org'.  And besides, I'm sure `python.org' will get included
in all spammers' lists, sooner or later, so this would be just postponing
the real problem.  Sigh!

My attitude about SPAM, and am not sure I am fully right, is that I rely
on mailing lists to filter the SPAM they get before forwarding it to me,
while I consider this is more my responsibility to filter the rest, which
directly gets addressed to me without going through mailing lists.

Opinions?  Suggestions?

> Attention:  Internet Domain Registrant [...]
> #######################################################################
> This message is sent in compliance [...]

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 17:43:51 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:43:51 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org> <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpr8v2120n.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:

> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:54:13 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:
> [...]
> >Assuming we'll adopt a variation of Scheme's numerical tower (which
> >I'm currently in favor of, more or less), this won't happen.  Floats
> >and complex would always be considered inexact (and ints and rationals
> >exact), and inexact numbers are not allowed as sequence indices, even
> >if their exact value is an integer.
> >
> Why would complex have to be inexact if both its
> real and imaginary parts were exact?
> 
> This looks exact, but will it be?
>  >>> (1+2j)**2
>  (-3+4j)

Probably not -- I don't think it's worth to have a separate exact and
inexact complex numbers, especially since exact numbers will probably
be represented as rationals (with ints and long ints as a special-case
optimization), while inexact numbers will probably all use some form
of floating point (binary or decimal).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sun Jul  1 22:00:51 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 02:00:51 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.994035602.29848.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <nBQ%6.417370$oc7.58837743@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Delaney, Timothy" <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994035602.29848.python-list at python.org...
> > >>> b = (1,2,3)
> > >>> id(b)
> > 15261292
> > >>> b += (4,5)
> > >>> b
> > (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
> > >>> id(b)
> > 18736580
> > >>>
>
> Actually, that's not quite true. It would be quite legal for id(b) to be
> identical in one case - since b is the only reference to the tuple, the
> original tuple could be collected, and a new tuple with the same id()
could
> be allocated. It's unlikely, but possible.

An interesting (and AFAIK legal) optimization would be to make tuples act as
mutable objects with respect to augmented assignment if their reference is
1.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:02:48 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:02:48 -0400
Subject: timed event??
References: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <etdk818rk6f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

Try "pydoc time" at the command line.

Alex.


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Sat Jul 28 13:37:08 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 13:37:08 -0400
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9juspa$8p0$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3dsnfhq7jv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:
> In article <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
> Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >MDFL 
> What does this stand for?

Misguided DFL?  Another thread expanded that as Malevolent, but that
seems unduly harsh.

--am"When in doubt, assume good will"k


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 05:48:36 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:48:36 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: import namespace issues
In-Reply-To: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101330370.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On 10 Jul 2001, Harald Kirsch wrote:

> THE PROBLEM:
> I have to separate a module's function into two .py-files. Now I would
> like to import both in a way that they behave like they are one file.

Strange. If functions are so closely related, their place is in 
one module.

After I read what you've written below, I concluded that probably you need
to rethink your modules' decomposition to have less dependent modules. For
example, create the third module and put low-level routines there
second.py and first.py will import from lowlevel.py and be happy.

I see no real reason this can't be done.
 
> FIRST TRY:
> Suppose the files are called first.py and second.py. I put a
> 
>   from second.py import *

from second import *
BTW

> 
> into first.py. This does not work as necessary since functions in
> second.py don't find functions defined in first.py. Same story when
> using __import__().
> 
> FINDINGS:
> What I gathered from experiments is that even with `from ... import'

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From grumble at usa.net  Wed Jul 11 12:56:46 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:56:46 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ihspn$c3o$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9ii0ge$coj$1@news.mathworks.com>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <9ifo90$4hh$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
>>slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
>>wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
>>the cpu.  In a production mud, you might want to do something
>>intelligent about wandering monsters (like have them stop wandering if
>>no players are nearby to save cpu-time), but there will also be lots
>>else going on.

> What we have here is a clear failure to communicate.

> Look, if you have *one* monster sitting in a computation-intensive loop,
> you're going to peg the CPU no matter what language you're using.  The
> question is, how efficient and fast is each pass through the loop, and
> how responsive is the loop to external input?  Don't make the mistake of
> measuring the wrong things.

Sure, you can have your monsters do fractal-generation if you want and
you'll use up lots of cpu time.  But analyzing the cpu-cost of
wandering monsters seems like a reasonable thing to do.  Maybe I
shouldn't have bothered bringing up a specific example unless I was
prepared to go into more detail.  Anyway, I maintain that
network-speed isn't the only thing that can reasonably slow down a
mud.


From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Tue Jul  3 09:40:16 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 08:40:16 -0500
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994140484.20380.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m2r8vym8qn.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> writes:

> William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
> 8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.
> 

Now in my kill file!!!



From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Mon Jul  2 08:07:12 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:07:12 -0300
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <9hpm6i$i5c$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org>
 <mailman.994024802.8132.python-list@python.org>
 <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
 <mailman.994055582.10768.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702090521.0277ae10@mail.inet.com.br>

At 11:33 02/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>Even though it was 3 lines and had been lingering like that for almost a
>year. :) I haven't heard from Barry yet, but that was one of my questions
>when submitting it to him; should I contact Eric Raymond about this?

You can do either of two things: contact Eric Raymond, as the original PEP 
owner; or post something on the list, maybe not the full PEP, but at least 
the proposed abstract. This would raise the discussion, and it may help to 
bring more attention to this particular issue. I don't see a problem here.


Carlos Ribeiro





From sill at optonline.net  Fri Jul 27 13:55:57 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Andrei Kulakov)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:55:57 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com> <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3ui1mt0e07vgp1b18306jd70pdufs91uva@4ax.com> <slrn9m25oe.gfe.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu> <vs82mtogpknka9ln0e7t9s9gc79mrh9d8l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3ahb.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:19:46 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>>>Because when identifier and someone else writes IdEnTIFIER, I want
>>>to kill them Actually, I'd like to kill them for changing the case at all.
>>
>>But if the language is the same, their editor would warn them about the case
>>mismatch, and the code would crash, just like yours would.  It would be just
>>like your editor, only yours won't warn about those things.
> 
> Oh right. Just _my_ editor. Right. Isolated little ole me, I'm the only small
> sole in the whole wide world who wants to use vim. You're just not getting
> this, I can tell.
> 
> C//
> 

I think the misunderstanding here is that you think you'll see code like

identifier = 0
Identifier = 5
do_stuff(IdenTifier)

in your vim or emacs or notepad or whatever.

If I understood this proposal right, you won't.

One possibility, for instance, is that *their* user friendly editor will
auto-change case of a variable when typed to the first used case..

i.e. you type identifier = 0; Identifier = 5

Just as you finished writing Identifier, it turns into identifier.

Another possibility would be that it doesn't change it on screen, but changes
it when it's written to a disk. OR it could merely display a warning, saying
that this identifier was spelled differently, but it's the same thing..

In any case, you won't see any difference at all, *except* that when you're
looking at their code, there won't any variables that only differ in case.

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Wed Jul 11 15:16:39 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 21:16:39 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> writes:

> but why not leave int/int->int alone,
> and use // for int//int->float.
> 
> No code breaks, and it is almost as easy for the newbies.

Sounds like a good idea. Just the existence of two division operators
would help newbies to recognize that there is a nontrivial problem.
And a//b definitely beats (a+0.)/b, which does the trick, but is not
at all evident.

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From mcfletch at home.com  Wed Jul  4 00:31:56 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:31:56 -0400
Subject: PyDoc: How to exclude from x import * objects?
Message-ID: <001001c10442$426d5a60$a9807018@cr706570a>

I'm just sitting down to do some serious documentation for PyOpenGL and
OpenGLContext.  Much of this will likely be in the form of in-module
documentation using PyDoc to generate nicely formatted HTML documentation.

However, OpenGL is one of those packages (like wxPython, Tkinter, Numeric,
etceteras) where the only practical way to use the system is to do from
OpenGL.GL import *, so the namespace of each module often has hundreds of
extraneous values (consider that a single module might import OpenGL.GL.*
OpenGL.GLU.* OpenGL.GLUT.* and wxPython.wx.*).   I'm wondering if there is a
simple way  to specify a list of names and/or objects to be excluded from
the pydoc  documentation run.

>From what I can see, around line 801 is the likely place to do the scanning
if everything is done at a "explicit exclude" level.  I.e. filter each of
the key, value lists to eliminate the specified objects.  This doesn't seem
really spectacularly elegant, but I don't see any other really obvious
places to do the elimination.

Thoughts, suggestions, already-implemented-solutions welcome,
Mike




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sun Jul  1 00:41:31 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 06:41:31 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
Message-ID: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

Please excuse this off-topicish post. I was looking for something similar to
the Windows Scripting Host in the Unix world: a library where an application
can register functions and types that can then be used by any scripting
language that bothers to implement the "Unix Scripting Host" interface. The
application language should not be limited to C or C++.

The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I thought
that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't find anything (except
the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).

Any suggestions/pointers?

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul 30 04:38:40 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:38:40 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com> <mailman.996437578.30803.python-list@python.org> <sln9mtgfkd0mdrjbj6vtlihitollc1f4ka@4ax.com> <eppstein-2999C5.23384429072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <hv6amtsmkkjq93nul8jtmgioo4lbnanbfi@4ax.com>

>> Why would anyone ever write anything in C or other standard compiled
>> languages? 
>
>I'm not sure you were serious here, but I'll answer anyway:
>Because it runs quickly and you have very good control of memory.

I was being ironic; shame on me for not being more clear. The irony
is that the Python interpreter itself is written in C, as well as large numbers
of its objects. The finally-honed implementation of Python's dictionary,
for example, depends critically on being written in C. Tight inner loops
in almost all Python applications are governed by how much time its
dictionary is consuming.

>E.g. a student here has been working on a program which needs to store a 
>small amount of information for a half-billion objects -- easy in C to 
>allocate a byte per object in a big array, harder if each object has 
>multiple bytes of overhead.  Of course most other languages will let you 
>allocate byte arrays but then you lose their object oriented advantages.
>And, the program currently runs in around 16 hours -- imagine how much more 
>time it might take if written in an interpreted language.

16 hours? Woozies.

C//



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul  3 13:35:37 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 10:35:37 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B420269.B3E1AB8C@Lugoj.Com>

Tomasz Stochmal wrote:
> 
> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
> 
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/

If C had been recently invented, it would deserve *some* bashing. But for
something invented 30 years ago, it deserves no bashing. It was an excellent
portable language for machines of that era. And in the hands of a competent
programmer it is still an excellent tool.

As for C++, that deserves a moderate amount of bashing.

But opinions are like nipples: most everyone has some.


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Fri Jul 20 02:48:37 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 08:48:37 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <yv28zhk2j0a.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
> kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
> case-insensitively.  

I guess it depends a bit on their (natural language) mother tongue. In
German (at least) many words must be written with uppercase first
letter, and there are sometimes non-obvious rules for it, and the
teacher at school normally really trains the pupils on
that. Consequently they might develop a strong feeling that case
matters.

... would make a nice diploma thesis for a social psychology student
to find some statistical evidence here :-)

  Harald Kirsch

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From Darren.Watson3 at ntlworld.com  Sat Jul 14 20:06:27 2001
From: Darren.Watson3 at ntlworld.com (Darren Watson)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 01:06:27 +0100
Subject: Re-sizing images in Python?
Message-ID: <q6547.41446$B56.8781902@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>

I would be very grateful for any advice that fellow list members can provide
about Pythons ability to resize image files (jpg and gif).

I would like to write a script that can process all the files in a directory
and resize the images to a specified size (passed in as an argument).
However, I am not sure if this is a task that Python 2.1 can perform or if
it is, which library to use.

If possible I would like the script to scale images in order to 'best fit' a
particular area.

Many Thanks

--

Darren Watson





From hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com  Thu Jul 19 11:01:50 2001
From: hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com (hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:01:50 +0200
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
Message-ID: <33105F8B185CD51182E300306E06473E2701B0@hermes.isr.thomson-csf.com>

Hi fleet,

Just learn that when you write : from cust import CurCust
==> CurCust becomes local and you have to reference to it by :
print CurCust["street"]

regards,
Hao-Nghi Au
-----Original Message-----
From: fleet at teachout.org [mailto:fleet at teachout.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:26 PM
To: python list
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?



I think I may have gotten myself into a box.

I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:

smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}

Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith" to a
variable - CurCust.

Now I want to do something like:

from cust import CurCust

print cust.CurCust["street"]

Spent the evening trying to solve this (Learning Python, and Sam's Teach
Yourself Python) then tried the archives.  The little I found on "variable
substitution" almost seems to say "no way!" ???

(I know someone is going to suggest a database.  That's a little further
up the learning curve.  I can see it from here; but I'm not there yet.)

Thanks for any assistance,
					- fleet -



-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 18:44:17 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 23:44:17 +0100
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:50:14 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:
>
>> "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote ...
>> > phil hunt wrote:
>> > > I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to
>> > > RFC2822.
>> >
>> > sounds like it's time to rename that module ;-)
>> >
>> It would be even better to rewrite it. rfc822 builds so many lists of
>> characters which are later returned as strings by joining the lists, a good
>> C optimization would yield huge performance benefits. Pity I'm not better at
>> C.
>
>I think Barry's mimelib may have a replacement already.
>
>    http://mimelib.sourceforge.net/

I am currently writing a program that reads emails, modifies
them in various ways (adding headers, encryption, etc) and
outputs the result.

As part of this program, I'm writing a mail module that 
(when finished) could be hacked into a replacement for rfc822. 
rfc822's functionality is to read mail headers and allow 
interrogation of their values easily. My module is conceptually
on a higher level; containing a MailHeader class which
can be used to write as well as read ascii representations
of email, and a Mail class that includes the header and the body;
again for composition as well as reading emails. (for now, it 
uses rfc822 to parse incoming headsers).

When it is written, perhaps it could be considered for 
eventual inclusion in the standard library (I say eventually, because
IMO it'll take me a few attempts to get the API exactly right)

My module doesn't know anything about Mime; which is good
because IMO there is room for a library that is higher-level
than rfc822 but lower levelb than knowing about Mime.

What is the process of getting a module in the standard library?

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 26 04:15:17 2001
From: plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (Manoj Plakal)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:15:17 GMT
Subject: Use "quotient"? (was Re: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament))
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <52Q77.181728$mG4.85523836@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>
Message-ID: <pkQ77.181752$mG4.85533256@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

Manoj Plakal <plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu> wrote on Thursday 26 July 
2001 02:55:
>            - currently, the symbol `/' in Python programs signifies
>              two different operators depending on the arguments:
>                  - the QUOTIENT operator with 2 integer arguments
> 
>                  - the DIVISION operator with at least 1 float
>                    argument
> 
>            - the proposed change is to make '/' always signify the
>              DIVISION operator and '//' always signify the QUOTIENT
>              operator


        Forgot to add that in the future, when we do unify ints and longs
        and bring in rationals, then we again end up overloading the
        '/' operator to mean two things:

              - a constructor of rationals (with 2 integer arguments)

              - the DIVISION operator (with at least 1 float argument)

        Is this correct? Or maybe when we've unified everything into
        a single number type, these will actually be the same thing:
        you represent the number as a rational when you can and as
        a real number otherwise. It's still "division".

        I would be curious to know if other languages have a unified
        number type (Scheme? Smalltalk?) and how they handle the
        various operators and when to choose a certain representation
        (rational vs real).

        Manoj



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Jul 18 10:21:37 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:21:37 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
Message-ID: <3B559B71.C08C6145@lemburg.com>

Here's an update of the pre-PEP. After this round of comments, the
PEP will be checked into CVS (provided Barry assigns a PEP number,
hi Barry ;-)

--

PEP: 0263 (?)
Title: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
Version: $Revision: 1.2 $
Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Python-Version: 2.3
Created: 06-Jun-2001
Post-History: 
Requires: 244

Abstract

    This PEP proposes to introduce a syntax to declare the encoding of
    a Python source file. The encoding information is then used by the
    Python parser to interpret the file using the given encoding. Most
    notably this enhances the interpretation of Unicode literals in
    the source code and makes it possible to write Unicode literals
    using e.g. UTF-8 directly in an Unicode aware editor.

Problem

    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian 
    countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
    favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
    for Unicode literals.

Proposed Solution

    I propose to make the Python source code encoding both visible and
    changeable on a per-source file basis by using a special comment
    at the top of the file to declare the encoding.

    To make Python aware of this encoding declaration a number of
    concept changes are necessary with repect to the handling of
    Python source code data.

Concepts

    The PEP is based on the following concepts which would have to be
    implemented to enable usage of such a magic comment:

    1. The complete Python source file should use a single encoding.
       Embedding of differently encoded data is not allowed and will
       result in a decoding error during compilation of the Python
       source code.

    2. Handling of escape sequences should continue to work as it does 
       now, but with all possible source code encodings, that is
       standard string literals (both 8-bit and Unicode) are subject to 
       escape sequence expansion while raw string literals only expand
       a very small subset of escape sequences.

    3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
       work as follows:

       1. read the file

       2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding

       3. tokenize the Unicode content

       4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
          and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
          by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
          using the given file encoding

       5. variable names and other identifiers will be reencoded into
          8-bit strings using the file encoding to assure backward
          compatibility with the existing implementation

          ISSUE: 

              Should we restrict identifiers to ASCII ?

       To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
       assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
       binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
       roundtrip).

Comment Syntax

    The magic comment will use the following syntax. It will have to
    appear as first or second line in the Python source file.

    ISSUE:

        Possible choices for the format:

        1. Emacs style:

          #!/usr/bin/python
          # -*- coding: utf-8; -*-

        2. Via a pseudo-option to the interpreter (one which is not used
           by the interpreter):

          #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8

        3. Using a special comment format:

          #!/usr/bin/python
          #!encoding = 'utf-8'

        4. XML-style format:

          #!/usr/bin/python
          #?python encoding = 'utf-8'

    Usage of a new keyword "directive" (see PEP 244) for this purpose
    has been proposed, but was put aside due to PEP 244 not being
    widely accepted (yet).

Scope

    This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
    proposed magic comment. Without the magic comment in the proposed
    position, Python will treat the source file as it does currently
    to maintain backwards compatibility.

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Wed Jul 25 15:29:52 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:29:52 GMT
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com> <3b5e59a7.3927973@news.newsguy.com> <tltvf78i1vus91@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3b5f1e1e.1334462@news.newsguy.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:12:18 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:

>Of course, that will take IDLE down with it.

Thanks, but no thanks! ;)


--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From ken_chiba at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 06:26:22 2001
From: ken_chiba at hotmail.com (Ken)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:26:22 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

I'm no expert with this at all... could I get some pointers?  I'm
assuming that you're saying that I need to compile MySQLdb with the
MySQL and Python versions that my provider uses.  This will result in
the creation of a MySQLdb directory in the site-packages directory of
Python.  Does it produce anything else?

After this is created, do I just copy that directory (MySQLdb) to a
MySQLdb directory on the provider side (in this case.. within
cgi-bin)?  And finally, what line can I put within my scripts to pull
this information in? (ie.:  import ??)

How can this keep track of what directory MySQL and Python are in? (or
are there configuration files that I can change - AFTER the compile?)

Thanks for your help,

kc


On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:55:50 +0200, gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard
=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:44:29 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Just curious.  I'm with an ISP that allows running of scripts, and has
>>MySQL database access.  They have a perl API installed, but nothing to
>>support Python.  I was wondering if it was possible to just copy over
>>the MySQLdb directory from the site-packages area of Python, and just
>>"import" it into the scripts?
>
>Yes, this works. MySQLdb needs a compiled extension module, however. You'll
>need a compiled version for the platform your provider uses.
>
>Gerhard
>-- 
>mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
>web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
>public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
>reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))



From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 13:56:02 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:56:02 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
In-Reply-To: <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEOPKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Robin Becker]
> ...
> Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
> to be uniformly wrong.

Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
that assertion would be unaffected.

BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.




From dereks at mip.com  Mon Jul 30 11:00:40 2001
From: dereks at mip.com (Derek S, Smigelski)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:00:40 GMT
Subject: need help converting .py to an exe for windows
Message-ID: <sEe97.180669$Bz6.213801@sjc-read.news.verio.net>

I have tried both py2exe and installer.  I currently have py2exe installed
now.  Here's the scoop.  I have python 2.1 installed to c:\python21, and
distutils installed to c:\python21\distutils.  I have a directory for my
scripts that I wish to be converted into exes located at
c:\python21\dsscripts

When I attempt to follow the instructions from Heller's py2exe site here's
what I get:


C:\Python21\DSSCRI~1>python setup.py py2exe --help
  File "setup.py", line 2
    from distutils.core import setup
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

C:\Python21\DSSCRI~1>

The setup.py file looks like this:

# setup.py
         from distutils.core import setup
         import py2exe

         setup(name="txlotto",
               scripts=["txlotto.py"],
         )

C:\Python21\DSSCRI~1>


Any Ideas?

Thanks,
Derek Smigelski
DerekS at mip.com




From junaftnoon at moc.oohay  Fri Jul 27 19:30:22 2001
From: junaftnoon at moc.oohay (June Kim)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 08:30:22 +0900
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org> <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net>
Message-ID: <GKm87.107196$ph7.18077464@news.hananet.net>

First of all, Python's dynamic typing nature can be a definite godsend when
combined with proper disciplines -- such as UnitTesting,
TestFirstProgramming
and RefactorMercilessly from XP. XP is one of the new agile methdologies,
which is quite a hot issue over the IT world.

Dave Thomas, who wrote the wonderful book "The Pragmatic Programmer", wrote
about the benefits of dynamic typing:
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?DavidThomasOnTheBenefitsOfDynamicTyping.

And there are some other stuffs including hot discussions  worth while to
read on the
same site:
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?DynamicTypesEaseRefactoring,
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?BenefitsOfDynamicTyping

My link is broken, but I believe you can find the forum lead by Rob C.
Martin
(aka Uncle Bob) at http://forums.itworld.com/, which discussed about cons
and
pros of dynamic typing (mainly on pros) and how to take advantage from it.

It might look like a deficiency that Python doesn't have static typing at
first, as it looked so to me, but you'll see it's rather liberating than
constraning, moreover, with strong confidence on the code.

Best wishes,

June Kim

ps. Python doesn't have compile-time type checking but you can substitute
it with unit tests if you want.



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:52:46 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:52:46 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
 <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <6XVfCJA+oDX7EwaP@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <230720010741551768%jwbaxter at spamcop.com>, John W. Baxter
<jwbaxter at spamcop.com> writes
>In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
>Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>> Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
>> We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
>> loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
>> so let's not be shy.
>
>This is encouraging and discouraging:
>
>Encouraging in that it suggests strongly that 2.3 isn't the target;
>discouraging in that it gives running code even longer to sit in the
>basement with people who know it moving on before it breaks.
>
>It's also discouraging because it means the change does seem to be on
>the way, with argument useless.
>
>  --John
the arguments presented by the leadership are

1) dumb down the language
2) it's ok because we have a discussion mechanism
3) the decision has already been made
4) we'll do extra work to make you do extra work

not good
-- 
Robin Becker


From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 17:41:14 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:41:14 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D552@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <003101c10f09$3426e0d0$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

> > > if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
> > > since global variable access is slower than local variable
access.

> Actually, it increases performance by ~15%.

That is too be expected. Fast load and save opcodes are not generated
for globals.




From jim at publishingresources.com  Tue Jul 31 11:05:25 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:05:25 -0000
Subject: PythonPath for ASP
References: <996471911.551564@emperor.labs.agilent.com> <uMn97.12165$ar1.37961@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF706268DFFjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Levente Sandor <nospam at newsranger.com> wrote in
<uMn97.12165$ar1.37961 at www.newsranger.com>: 

>In article <996471911.551564 at emperor.labs.agilent.com>, Brian Zhou
>says... 
>
>> Is there a place I can set that makes C:\Python21\PIL in PythonPath?
>
>Create a file with the extension ".pth" in your Python installation
>directory, then add the line PIL
>to it. You can add more (both relative and absolute) paths to the Python
>path in this way, each one in a new line. (You must restart the Python
>interpreter after doing this.)
>Or: you can do it (temporarily) anywhere in your script:
>import sys
>sys.path.append("c:\\python21\\pil")
>import Image

Remember that the sys module is cached, so repeat calls to this would 
pollute the path.
Maybe: 
if "c:\\python21\\pil" not in sys.path: sys.path.append("c:\\python21\\pil")

>Another way goes trough the Windows Registry but I never tried that.
HKLM/Software/Python/PythonCore/2.1/PythonPath
With 2.1 being whatever version you have.

Also site-packages isn't in your path. You might want to add it. It doesn't 
seem to get in there on windows.



From igor at arzamas.nnov.ru  Sat Jul 28 06:05:21 2001
From: igor at arzamas.nnov.ru (Igor)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 03:05:21 -0700
Subject: Colon and underscores
Message-ID: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com>

It would be really nice to know the reasons behind some syntax
features.

What is the real purpose of the colon ":" after each if, def, etc...
Is it really required and cannot be made optional?

Why__ do __Python__ programs __need to __look__ like __swarms__ of
__underscores ? Is it OK that one must dig in underscores instead of
having a normal English word for private symbols, for example?

Regards.


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 21:43:13 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:43:13 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996352253.17238.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b636863.684184555@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:29:18 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>[Tim]
>> > Multiplying by 1.0 preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0
>> > (of either sign) may not;
>
My intel pentium book is plainly wrong, ignore previous doubt about *1.0 ;-)
 >>> math.atan2( 0.0,-0.0*1.0)
 3.1415926535897931
 >>> math.atan2( 0.0, 0.0*1.0)
 0.0

>[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]
>> Why adding a negative zero may not? If 0.0+(-0.0) is specified to be
>> 0.0, then I don't see where it breaks.
>
>The result of 0+(-0) is -0 in the to-minus-inf rounding mode.  The result of
>multiplying by 1.0 is independent of rounding mode.
>
>obviously-correct-is-better-than-subtly-broken-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>



From wqh-2 at 263.net  Tue Jul 31 08:44:36 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:44:36 +0800 (CST)
Subject: simple question:the count of array
Message-ID: <3B66A834.15767@mta3>

>>> a=['a','b','c']
>>> b=a.count()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
    b=a.count()
TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
>>> 

then how I get the number of a,I mean how much 
values in a,in this case it should be 3 
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:16 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:16 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <220720011959361323%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <995861189.362184@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <f7gnltouvi56luruj79k06iaol0nc10q4k@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 04:06:30 -0000, Donn Cave <donn at drizzle.com>
wrote:

>Quoth "John W. Baxter" <jwbaxter at spamcop.com>:
>...
>| By the way, in .../lib/module-math.html (I keep my own copy on my end
>| of my 56K frame connection), it is not stated whether the input to
>| sin() (and the others where it applies) is degrees or radians.  An
>| experiment is necessary, or a reference to my rapidly waning C
>| knowledge or a visit to the C standard (which I'd rather not do, for
>| reasons of marginal sanity).
>|
>| >>> math.sin(1)
>| 0.8414709848078965
>|
>| is a conclusive experiment...which I had to run before making the "also
>| unlikely" claim.
>
>Right! and I don't think it's what the common folk expect either.
>Someone should write up a PEP to change these functions to take
>degrees (not on my account, but it would seem to be a potential
>stumbling block for the uninitiated, wouldn't it?)

Of course - and the chaos that would cause for people working with
engineering or mathematical notations where radians are natural
irrespective of the language or even the use of a computer should of
course be completely ignore ;-)



From nperkins7 at home.com  Wed Jul 11 18:30:14 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:30:14 GMT
Subject: ActivePython word wrap in Shell or PythonWin during list printout
References: <3b4cc843$0$172@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <Wr437.455475$eK2.94084815@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

module pprint does a nice job.

I use it like this:
from pprint import pprint as pp

>>> pp(dir())  ...etc



"Rufus V. Smith" <nospam at nospam> wrote in message
news:3b4cc843$0$172 at wodc7nh6.news.uu.net...
> I am running the latest Python from ActiveState and I have a
> problem that when I print a long list (Like dir()), the entire list
> prints out on one line and I have to scroll over to read it.
>
> Is there an environment setting to force word wrap at
> a certain line length?
>
> Or is there a list function that can take a list and
> pretty print it with word wrap.
>
> (Not having one gave me an opportunity to learn
> some  Python scripting as I wrote my own, but
> if there was a library standard, that might be better. )
>
>
> def marginprint(L,margin=80):
>      b=""
>      for a in L:
>          if len(str(a)+b)+3 >= margin :
>                 print b
>                 b = "'"+str(a)+"'"
>          else:
>                 if b: b+=","
>                 b += "'"+str(a)+"'"
>      if b: print b
>      b=""
>
>
> With this function, I just type marginprint(dir())
> and it will respect the margins.
>
> Only I have to load this into my environment every time
> I bring it up.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul  2 17:21:39 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 17:21:39 -0400
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994100826.19440.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ug0cfdo2k.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.

Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?

At least under Windows, it would seem that having solid ODBC and COM
support should pretty much cover in Python anything you'd do elsewhere.

On other environments, direct support for a particular database is
likely to be more desirable, as it's more typical in those
environments, but as you've noted, there's a plethora of support
modules for various databases - some at various levels.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 31 06:34:47 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 10:34:47 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64d4ce.777475039@wa.news.verio.net> <slrn.pl.9m9ug6.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b659613.826951783@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9md2e6.dma.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:58:48 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:

> Then you are not interested in whether a bit pattern transformation
> that implements a mathematical operation results in a bit pattern
> that exactly represents the infinite precision mathematical result?

I'm not. Because I don't use float at all when I need exact results,
and I don't care if it happened to be exact in case I don't need
exactness (and used float).

> The designers of the fp hardware apparently thought it was useful.
> They supply a hardware status bit for that purpose, and automatically
> re-tag to inexact when an operation causes that. Blame language designers
> and compiler writers, not floating point hardware.

I didn't know that. And I never heard of using it. Perhaps it's not
that useful :-)

I don't blame language designers; IMHO it's not worth the complication.

> Right, and the hardware knows when that happens. What do you mean by
> artificial conditions? E.g., the double format can handle anything
> the int (32 bit) format can handle exactly, and more. Would those
> be artificial?

If numbers are integers, I use int, not float. It's very rare when
I must use float in order to represent data *and* they can be exact.

>>In effect sometimes by accident you might get an exact result, but
>>it's not guaranteed that the same computation of different data will
>>give an exact result. It's better to statically known that results
>>of a computation are not exact in general.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "the same computation of different data."

There is a function which does some computation. We give it data tagged
as exact and the result happens to be tagged as exact. It only tells
us that this particular result is exact; results on different exact
data will not necessarily be exact.

But exactness is usually a static property. Either we need it, because
for example correctness of the computation depends on comparisons
of true mathematical results, or because we want the result to be
independent of the language implementation - or we don't need exactness
and don't care. *We* set up the program in order to preserve exactness
or to run fast and in predictable space (and we can't have both).

If we need exactness, it's too late when the compiler said us that
we didn't get it. If we don't need exactness, we can't easily tell
how much inexact the result really is, so why to make a special
significance to the rare case when it happened to be exact?

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From Marc.Poinot at onera.fr  Wed Jul 11 04:35:32 2001
From: Marc.Poinot at onera.fr (Marc Poinot)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:35:32 +0200
Subject: European Python Meeting report
Message-ID: <3B4C0FD4.CC283F07@onera.fr>

Hi you all galactictely spread out lovers of Python,
here's a little report of Libre Software Meeting Python Track.

---
The meeting starts Wed, 4th of July with a plenary session*.
Each topic has presented its agenda, including the goals they would
like to reach within the week. The Python track goals were:
- Meet together
- Learn Python things
- Try to gather European Python users in some annual event.

LSM stops Staturday evening, with a plenary session. The Python track
conclusion was:
- Presentations were always interesting and lively
  (We often explode the schedule, but discussions were fruitful for us)
- We enjoy meet together and share our ideas (actually, Python is way of
  thinking, I think there is kind of osmosis between the langage and the user).
- We were not a lot of Python users (about 20), and it looks like we have
  a lot of work to make it an European event. But the Python users there
  though it was worth trying again.

---
About 500 people were expected, while the actual total people
at LSM, during all the week, has been evaluated as 400+
As a matter of fact, we had German, Dutch, Italian, UK, Portugal...
and French people.
The Python track had an audience of 10/25 persons, depending on the
presentations, and including the speakers themselves in most cases.
There also was some "private" discussions in classrooms, about
many questions or topics related to Python. This is a specific point
in LSM, there are a lot of open classrooms, and people spontaneously
gather in little work groups.

There was a Python-LSM-attendees-group of about 10 people, not including
some of the speakers, and this look likes starting a European group.
Actually, there is a need for such an event. Many users do not money
and/or time enough to flight to the USA or to register to a
open-but-not-free-of-charge-conference. Now it seems we do not
make enough announces around the event, or the annouces were to late.

We also had the first European Python Meeting supper in Bordeaux 
downtown (with foie gras and wine), nine of us where there.

We thank here the LSM organisation, which was a little surprised by
the success of this 2nd LSM, but always succeed in solving our tiny problems.
I also want to thank all speakers for the quality of their work,
for their patience, and for the spirit they gave to this Python track. 

All presentations (PDF, html... and source code) will appear on
the LSM web site by the end of July. You can also find there
a lot of pictures, or links to other web sites including pictures,
flow the "LIVE" link of first web page.

http://lsm.abul.org

---
The Python European speakers we had were:

- Marc-Andre Lemburg
  - Marc-Andre explains us some secrets of Unicode, and the implementation
    he has done into Python. Now, thanks to Marc-Andre, we know about 
    the UTF-32 in strings.
- Martin von Loewis
  - A very complete presentation about the XML libraries for Python.
    It was a struggle between Martin and XML, but Martin won !
- Konrad Hinsen
  - He explains us Numerical Python, how to make Python arrays.
    This was a robust and portable presentation, with slides and blackboard.
- Moshe Zadka 
  - He made a lively presentation about Python Mailing System.
    (we adopt here Moshe as European user ;)
- Dinu Gherman and John Precedo
  - They presented the ReportLab libs and tools.
    A nice presentation with tax forms examples :( and color demos. 
- Benoit Lacherez
  - He has driven the French translation group. We had a very interesting
    afternoon work with Martin von Loewis about doc translation, either on
    the contents point of view, but also about the structure of the docs. 
    We will share our ideas and have a proposal soon in the DOC SIG.
- Stefane Fermigier
  - He presents internet with Python, and then explains some basics about
    the Zope way of life. The audience was so interested that they continue
    with a half a day Zope training in a classroom.
- Marc Poinot
  - I had a two-half-days first-level tutorial in French**
    We had a really nice feedback, and this definitely shows the need of
    slow, easy and introductive Python lessons, even in very technical
    conferences.

And at last, but not at least, I'd like to thank Tim Couper for his lively
and continuous support during all these days. I'm pretty sure we will have
a chance to finally have a drink at "the Frog and the Rosbeaf" pub in Bordeaux.

---
Now, we are thinking about the 2nd European Python Meeting. I don't know
yet if this is worth creating a private mailing list. Let me know...
I'm starting to think and organize this meeting... now!
Comments are welcome, as well as help!

---
Marcvs [alias Don't ask me about an UTF-128 encoded XML tree of this report]

*  Yes, it was the 4th of July, but there was no champagne around. So we
   decided to have an UTF-8 oyster-pizza party, with PDF cherry champagne, 
   but it looks like we had no success at all :(
** The choice of making it in French has lead to many discussions, before and
   after the tutorial.



From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 20 03:33:44 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:33:44 GMT
Subject: Conway's Life
References: <3B57AF54.F909FD36@.com>
Message-ID: <s9R57.510752$eK2.107335359@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Doug Newhouse" <n at .com> wrote in message news:3B57AF54.F909FD36 at .com...
..
> I should be able to figure out the algorithms and stuff, it's just that
> I have no idea how to do graphics....
..

Yes, Tk would be a good place to start.
The python interface is called tkinter, and there is good tutorial..
Tkinter is easy to program, compared to other toolkits.
http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/

WxPython is a little faster, more windows-looking, has more sophisticated
building blocks, but is a bit harder to program in python, for a beginner.
http://www.wxpython.org/

Of course, you could do the whole thing in Jython and use the native AWT or
Swing GUI stuff, which is actually a lot easier than it sounds.
http://www.jython.org/


All that being said, I can't resist adding my two cents worth about the data
structures to use for the algorithm, a subject which seems to be sparking
the imagination of several previous respondents.  I have done a similar type
of program, (but more of maze-thing), which i switched from using numeric
arrays to using a sort of linked graph structure, where each cell keeps a
list of references to it's immediate neighbors.  Then you can write the
whole algorithm without messing around with (x,y) coordinates.  It was a bit
faster that way, but of course, results will vary.  Try doing it a couple of
different ways.

Have fun, good luck.





From roy at panix.com  Sun Jul  8 19:46:43 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 19:46:43 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994626615.9894.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <roy-2F9DAF.19464308072001@news1.panix.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> BTW, if you want, say, "aa" not to be the same key as "a"+"a", in what sense
> is this dict indexed by strings?  That is, it's unclear what strings have to
> do with this.

Well, OK, that's a fair question.  Here's what I really want to do...

I'm writing a parser for a kind of text file we use a lot.  The main loop 
of the parser is a state machine.  In each state, the current input line is 
tested to see if it matches one or more regular expressions, and based on 
which (if any) it matches, you do some processing and advance to the next 
state.  Something like:

   state = "cvsid"
   for line in inputfile.readlines():
      if state == "cvsid":
         if re.match ("^\s*$\s*Id:([^$]*)$\s*$", line):
            state = "header"
       elif state == "header":
         if re.match ("big ugly pattern", line):
            do some stuff
            state = "what comes after the header"

and so on.  I'll end up with about a dozen different states, with perhaps 2 
dozen different regex's.  Here's the dilema.  If I write it as I did above, 
the regex's will get compiled each time they're evaluated, which is clearly 
inefficient in the extreme.  The alternative would be to re.compile() all 
the regex's once, at the top, then use the stored programs, something like 
this:

   cvsPattern = re.compile ("^\s*$\s*Id:([^$]*)$\s*$")
         [...]
         if cvsPattern.match (line):
            state = header

and so on.  This would certainly work, but it moves the regex's away from 
where they are used, making (IMHO) the program more difficult to read and 
understand.  It reminds me of the bad old days when we would collect all 
our FORTRAN format statements at the back of the deck.  See 
http://www.python.org/doc/Humor.html#habits for why I don't want to do that 
any more :-)

So, here's my plan.  I was thinking that I might write a thin wrapper 
around the re class which kept a cache of regexes it had compiled.  
myRe.match would take the passed-in regex, look it up in the cache, and if 
it found it, just use the cached compiled version.  I figure it would be 
very close to the speed of storing the pre-compiled versions in the 
mainline code, as shown above, but still have the convenience and 
comprehensibility of keeping the regex string at the place where it's used.

So, that's what got me going on this.  Thinking about it again (and reading 
what people have written here), I'm starting to realize the default key 
algorithm is probably fast enough for what I'm trying to do, but it's still 
an interesting thing to think about.


From gradha at iname.com  Sat Jul 21 09:54:23 2001
From: gradha at iname.com (gradha at iname.com)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:54:23 +0200
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?
Message-ID: <fi1cj9.8qm.ln@127.0.0.1>

Hi.

Given a list of strings, I am doing the following to delete duplicated
entries:

my_list.sort()
x = 0
while x < len (my_list) - 1:
	if my_list[x] == my_list[x+1]:
		del my_list[x+1]
	else:
		x = x + 1

Is there some more elegant, fast, algorithm? Is this the only one
obvious way to do it?
		
--
 Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul 14 12:21:28 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:21:28 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l0sc8.2nh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:22:14 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes (after much good stuff about
>transitioning):
>
>> After the transition period, screw the professional programmers 
>> who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet 
>> who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
>> allowed to continue running under the new Python without 
>> problem.
>
>Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am reluctant to say "screw you"
>to all those people who depend on Python script written by
>professional programmers who no longer work there.
>
>I also don't want to fork the code base.  

Does that imply that you sare no longer interested in making 
radical changes to Python, such as case-insensitive identifiers
mentioned in CP4E?

>There are *still* folks
>using Perl4 scripts who can't upgrade.

Sure they can, they can upgrade to python :-)

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From neil at qualica.com  Wed Jul 18 03:55:45 2001
From: neil at qualica.com (neil bromehead)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 00:55:45 -0700
Subject: python vs kung fu
References: <50220745.0107170521.24f1c18b@posting.google.com> <3B544778.CFC9293B@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <50220745.0107172355.4ca25c32@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B544778.CFC9293B at engcorp.com>...
> neil bromehead wrote:
> > 
> > It seems that, just like in chinese kung fu circles, lots of people
> > are trying to justify their style (python in this case) to themselves,
> > myself included. why ?, all styles can be equally effective , it
> > depends on how you use them !
> 
> Without debating whether all styles are equally effective (see
> Ultimate Fighting for example :-), I think there's another point
> you aren't considering.  (And clearly Shorinji-ryu Karate is 
> superior to chinese kung fu! ;-)
> 
> > so rather than get into endless arguments with java guys or perl guys
> > about the virtues of python , lets just try to beat them at their own
> > game !
> 
> Many of us are idealists who feel saddened that so many are 
> effectively wasting their time with languages which are holding
> them back.  We feel the urge (obviously an irresistable one :) to
> try to convince those miscreants^H^H^H^H^H poor misguided souls
> that they could better spend their time with Python.  That they
> would be more productive, enjoy their work more, produce higher
> quality results, and spend more time programming and less time
> debugging.  That pragmatism and simplicity are far more 
> important than optimization and the ability to write entire
> applications in one line.
> 
> We are not so much arguing as trying to show them that we 
> _understand_ their points, and in fact used to think the same
> way, but that we have found a better way and want to see them
> try it out for themselves.  Definitely sounds like religion:
> probably indistinguishable, but that doesn't mean we should
> all stop and silently use Python for our own applications and
> never breathe a word of it to another soul...

thats not really what I meant , Noise is good , and we have to make as
much as possible , but maybe not by arguing with them , rather make
them jealous about a python developers innate sense of superiorority,
ooh and industrial sabotage is always good ! i started using python,
without the consent of my employers, to tie up loose ends in projects
i was working on , got the jobs done before deadlines , and they work
, who can argue with that . now i dont have to justify python to
anyone in my office and no-ones minds if i use it. in fact perl and
java guys in my office come to me and say how would you handle this in
python and often end up using my code. and some guys are coding a bit
of their own now

i get the feeling that if we argue with these guys we are just showing
them even python developers are still trying to justify why on earth
they chose their style in the first place , so we lose our spirit ! or
alternatively how would you feel if Crane guys were saying
Shorinji-ryu Karate is bad and that you should be doing Crane for
these reasons ? if it was me , i would get angry and stop listening ,
its like the art of war , their are much more subtle ways of getting
people to take python seriously, and in the end theyre probably much
noisier !

but i do wish there were more job announcements with Python Developer
Wanted written at the top - see further down the string .


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Thu Jul 26 11:39:26 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:39:26 GMT
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] M2Crypto 0.06
Message-ID: <9jpdje$gbj$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

Hi,

I'm pleased to announce that M2Crypto 0.06 has been released.

- M2Crypto now works with (and requires) SWIG 1.3.6.

- ZServerSSL has been updated to work with Zope 2.4.0.

- Beginnings of unit tests for M2Crypto.SSL. (Uses fork/exec, so
  presently Unix only.)


Going forward, I'm aiming for the following:

- SSL HOWTO
- Better documentation
- XML-dsig implementation
- SRP implementation
- More unit tests of everything


Get M2Crypto here:

    http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/m2/


As usual, feedback is appreciated.

--
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sat Jul 28 08:08:13 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:08:13 +0200
Subject: Newbie Q - Py for Linux on Disk??
References: <554a464b.0107280303.1c0be0f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <dv9uj9.674.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>

On 28 Jul 2001 04:03:37 -0700, Dick Van Kirk <dickvan at quicktel.com> wrote:
>Please tell me where I can purchase Python for Linux on disk that I can
>quickly and easily install ??

??? Python is Open Source Software. You download it from http://www.python.org
for free.

If you want an easily installed Python, you can just buy a copy of any major
Linux distribution if you don't have one already. Any one that I know of has
Python included.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From anthony at interlink.com.au  Wed Jul 18 03:59:30 2001
From: anthony at interlink.com.au (Anthony Baxter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:59:30 +1000
Subject: PyDNS? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam@mega-nerd.net> 
   of "Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:04:49 GMT." <3B4F626E.5DDEAD49@mega-nerd.net> 
Message-ID: <200107180759.f6I7xUC17035@mbuna.arbhome.com.au>

>>> Erik de Castro Lopo wrote
> This version has exactly the same filename as Anthony Baxter's original.
> Maybe its time to add version info to the name of the tarball :-).

bah! :)

What, datestamps on the files in the tarball aren't good enough? 

sheesh.
Anthony



From mwh at python.net  Wed Jul  4 07:04:56 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 12:04:56 +0100
Subject: Pushing the standard library
References: <4E42BD2538CACF79.9FD7275B6CD3244E.A70BBB4C060B585B@lp.airn ews.net> <5.0.2.1.0.20010703215513.02c01d90@mail.inet.com.br> <mailman.994215787.1351.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3bsn1ymxz.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Gustavo Niemeyer <niemeyer at conectiva.com> writes:

> Hello Carlos!
> 
> [...]
> > As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we 
> > must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this 
> > issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys. 
> > The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To 
> > make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.
> [...]
> 
> Agreed. Indeed, I think that the first step to start this out is to
> discover which libraries currently have a poor implementation, or which
> ones should start do be developed ASAP. 

shutil is pretty crappy, both in terms of interface and implementation
(it loses on the Mac, for instance).  distutils.file_utils is much
better, and should probably be moved into the core.

just-my-vote-ly y'rs
m.

-- 
  Hey, if I thought I was wrong, I'd change my mind.  :)
                                    -- Grant Edwards, comp.lang.python


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 14:48:50 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:48:50 -0500
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal 
In-Reply-To: <011901c11335$1a8c95e0$0101010a@local>
References: <011901c11335$1a8c95e0$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <15196.29074.910090.697520@beluga.mojam.com>

    Chris> Why don't we add a hook to Python to control the numeric
    Chris> evaluation rules directly?

Paul DuBois wrote a PEP on numeric kinds that seems to point in this
direction.  Take a look at

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0242.html

He doesn't directly address the int division thing, but does discuss having
some runtime control over some numeric properties.  Perhaps this could be
extended to allow programmers to dictate the default result of int division
on a per-module basis.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sat Jul  7 18:39:35 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 00:39:35 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEPLKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <20010708003935.M8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 06:13:33PM -0400, Tim Peters wrote:

> I'm sorry, Alex, but `` is here to stay.  Guido is insanely fond of it!
> Meaning no more than that he doesn't hate it <0.9 wink>.  I see something
> like

>     print ``1`+`2``

> and to this day I still have no idea how Python manages to parse it
> correctly.

Holy crap! I can't believe Python parses that correctly -- for some form of
correctly, anyway, because I wouldn't know what it does without trying, and
that still doesn't say much about what the writer wanted :-) Still, great
parsers notwithstanding, I'd like to second Alex's idea of deprecating `` --
with appropriate warnings, of course.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Mon Jul 16 13:42:01 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:42:01 EDT
Subject: Best Odds Of Winning On The Net!
Message-ID: <200107161751.LAA44489@s0219.pm0.net>

QUACKO LOTTO!
http://lotto.quacko.com

- Play Everyday 
- Win up to $1,000,000.00 
- Best Odds of Winning on the Net!  

Guess       Odds          You Win 
3 out of 6  1:57          3 Free Tickets 
4 out of 6  1:1,032       6 Free Tickets 
5 out of 6  1:54,200      $100.00 in Cash 
6 out of 6  1:13,983,816  $1,000,000.00 in Cash 

Also,

All players are automatically enetered into our weekly draw for a DVD
Player or $2000.00 in Cash!

http://lotto.quacko.com


************************************************
Here's a fantastic opportunity! FREE MONEY!  
http://www.supremecasino.com 
************************************************

Play SupremeCasino's hottest casino games with Free Money. Get a 100% Bonus up to $75 FREE!! You're closer than ever to winning. 

Valid for All Valued Customers, with every Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or NETeller deposit, we will give you up to $75 FREE! Incredible! 

Register now and get in the game!!
http://www.supremecasino.com

***********************************************************
RED CARPET REWARDS AT GRAND BANKS CASINO
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072
***********************************************************

Red Carpet Rewards! The best way to earn free credits! Grand Banks casino is rolling out the Red Carpet for our patrons! For every $10 in real bets that you place, Grand Banks will credit your account with one comp point. Collect 100 comp points and you will receive one casino credit! It's so simple and calculated automatically for you. 

Example: Place a $100 wager on one hand of Blackjack and receive 10 Red Carpet Reward points. Do this 10 times & regardless of the outcome you will have amassed 100 Red Carpet Points. These 100 points now automatically convert to a FREE Grand Banks Casino credit!

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072

The Red Carpet Rewards Premier Program: For our more serious players we offer an even more aggressive plan to help you amass points more quickly! The structure is the same, but you will receive 1 Red Carpet point for every $7.50 placed in bets! Please note that Grand Banks reserves the right to invite patrons into the Premier program only.

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072





<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From zessin at decus.de  Sat Jul 28 06:09:06 2001
From: zessin at decus.de (zessin at decus.de)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:09:06 +0200
Subject: Python for OpenVMS version 2.1.1-V001 now available
Message-ID: <009FFAE6.9046CFEB.25@decus.de>

Please see http://www.decus.de/~zessin/python2/ for details.
Don't forget to check the 'notes' link at '~zessin/python2/notes.html'
  for last-minute changes.

-- 
Uwe Zessin



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 20 13:01:34 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:01:34 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5863EE.F9047098@Lugoj.Com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> If you use this
> a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
> should be.

Um, you've got that precisely reversed! If I see "message" anywhere in my
code, I know immediately that it is an instance of the class Message. Think
of it as an advanced form of Hungarian notation that tells you what type of
thing the variable is holding. (Although I'm no fan of Hungarian per se.)

I've gone through several identifier naming conventions over the last couple
of decades and I've settled on the one you think is "less" readable.
Fortunately, most of the programmers I've worked with not only don't have a
problem with it, most use it. A few, like you, think there is something
wrong with it, but none has ever had a problem with reading code that
contains that kind of thing. Some of those latter even do it when they are
"in a hurry" and then apologise for doing it!

Like you, I always "thought" that convention was bad. But having had to use
it a lot, I've grown to enjoy it and unless you can show me more than your
opinion, you can expect a nasty disagreement.

> It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over
> the phone -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has
> tried to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)

How about discussing indented code blocks? Spoken language is not
white-space preserving. It is not new-line preserving. It isn't a lot of
things. So what precisely does discussing code on the phone have to do with
this issue!?


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 01:37:57 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:37:57 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>
Message-ID: <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:37:06 -0600, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:

>> > As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how
>> > easy it is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would
>> > very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that
>> > enforce *uniform* case usage.

This would annoy the hell out of me, as I use and will continue to use
vim as my primary code editor. Anyone who builds a development
environment which requires specialized tools for the environment --
-- even if the requirement is indirect because things don't function quite
right without the tools --  loses my business forthright.

The moment using "tools" with Python becomes an essential part of
creating Python programs, the language is dead to me. All of this
pent-up rancor of mine comes with my open contempt for Lisp environ-
ments which more or less simply require you to use Emacs.

Puke-o-rama.

C//



From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 21:51:00 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:51:00 -0400
Subject: Couple of newbie questions...
References: <5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B60C904.A21992A3@engcorp.com>

Scott Taylor wrote:
> 
> 1) time.sleep doesn't seem to release time back to the Win32
> subsystem.  I had a tight loop, and CPU was maxed out at 100% even if
> I did a PumpWaitingMessages w/ a time.sleep.  To actually get the loop
> to return slices of time back to windows and not max out the CPU I had
> to do a PumpWaitingMessages followed by a win32api.Sleep(0) call.  My
> question is - shouldn't time.sleep actually make the process sleep w/o
> hogging CPU?

It does on my system.

Try executing this in a DOS prompt and compare with your other situation:

python -c "import time; time.sleep(30)"

On my machine (Win98 release 1) System Monitor shows only its
usual 30% or so, same as when I am just sitting at a DOS prompt...

(Disclaimer: no, I don't believe System Monitor is an appropriate
tool for this purpose, but I also know time.sleep() does not
busy-wait under Windows in any case I've ever seen.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 01:59:12 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 05:59:12 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61EEA5.9050306@home.com> <3B659A4C.96DE8CCA@home.net>
Message-ID: <3b66416a.870814825@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:33:00 -0700, Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
[...]
>lives on!. In fact, I think that if Fortran 77 introduced dynamic memory
>allocation, it would be living even larger than it is: that was kind of
>a deal killer for a lot of stuff. By the way, Fortran 90/95 is pretty
>darn nice language.
Does 90/95 have it?

I jiggered the Fortran runtime library for a version of DEC fortran on
the PDP-11 to provide dynamic memory allocation. Used two-dimensional
array trick subverting array access to use an allocation handle in
one index instead of a normal one. Call the trick allocation for
a handle and index into the allocated space 1-dimensionally with the other
index from the POV of the Fortran program. That was in the 70's ;-)

I used it to pass parameters in a cooperative multitasking program that
essentially did between dispatched fortran subroutines what windows does
with its message passing. The main dispatching loop was a Fortran do loop.
I was also painting multiple rectangular sub-windows
on a screen with cursors and responding to an asynchronous mix of inputs,
including a track ball.

In a parallel universe I'm sure I'm a billionaire ;-))



From kodtest99 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 11:45:58 2001
From: kodtest99 at yahoo.com (kodtest99 at yahoo.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:45:58 GMT
Subject: Help me please in one test.
Message-ID: <W4Z47.14371$M6.5423139@news.rt.ru>

This is test.
Answer me please for test message.
Thanks,
Robert.

 ----------------------------------
| FREE Vacation!  FANTASNIC offer! |
|                                  |
|  http://linkresort.fasturl.it    |
 ----------------------------------


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 00:00:30 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:00:30 -0400
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
In-Reply-To: <wkpuascphn.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEDMLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[phawkins at spamnotconnact.com]
> ...
> import exceptions
> ...
> class CameraError(exceptions.Exception):
>     def __init__ (self, args = None):
>         self.args = args

Just noting that Exception is in the builtin namespace, so there's no need
to import the exceptions module first.  That is, you can drop the import,
and change the declaration to

    class CameraError(Exception):

i-was-surprised-too-when-barry-taught-me-that!-ly y'rs  - tim




From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul 15 18:46:39 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 15:46:39 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141805550.5125-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.995126666.3898.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <150720011546398405%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995126666.3898.python-list at python.org>, M.-A.
Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:

> I already mentioned allowing directives in comments to work around
> the problem of directive placement before the first doc-string.
> 
> The above would then look like this:
> 
> #!/usr/local/bin/python
> # directive unicodeencoding='utf-8'
> u""" UTF-8 doc-string """
> 
> The downside of this is that parsing comments breaks the current
> tokenizing scheme in Python: the tokenizer removes comments before
> passing the tokens to the compiler ...wouldn't be hard to 
> fix though ;-) (note that tokenize.py does not)

I don't like the idea that removal of a comment changes the meaning of
the non-comment part of the source text...program text really should
mean the same thing without the comments.

But, I dislike this less than most of the previous ideas for dealing
with unicode docstrings.

Elsewhere, In article <mailman.995139510.24509.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> Another alternative:
> 
> #!/usr/local/python
> directive unicodeencoding 'utf-8'
> 
> __doc__ = u"""
>         This is a Unicode doc-string
> """
> 
> That is, the module docstring is just the module's __doc__ attr, and that
> can be bound explicitly (a trick I've sometimes use for *computed* module
> docstrings).

Ah...this may well be the way out.  It doesn't hurt the docstring tools
which use import.  Since it's already legal Python (isn't it?)--and is
used sometimes by Tim--it doesn't break a parsing docstring tool which
isn't already broken (although it may make the problem show up more
often).  And it doesn't affect those modules whose docstrings aren't
unicode and are done in the usual way.

The __doc__ = ...
method seems better than any of the things *I* muttered about in
earlier posts, which are now "inoperative" (USA-centric joke) and never
were particularly sensible.

  --John


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 22:59:36 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:59:36 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995499932.8750.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B564D18.4F6B31EA@engcorp.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
> > From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
> >
> > Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> > > But being a web hoster, with no knowledge about Python, would _you_
> > > expect a version change from 2.2 to 2.3 to fundamentally change
> > > semantics?
> >
> > I'm pretty sure nobody has seriously proposed making this change
> > in a non-major revision.  
[snip]
> > I could be wrong about this though...
> 
> Well, at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/ pep 238 is still listed
> under consideration for 2.2...

Yes, but the PEP implies that the initial change proposed
for 2.2 is only the first of several steps reasonably clearly
described which would lead to the final, code-breaking change
*in later releases*.

Nothing in the PEP implies that the first step to be made for
2.2 would be one which breaks existing code.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 22:11:04 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:11:04 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org> <3B4D2AF6.7F76CBA1@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <9iklh6$gfv$1@agate.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4E58B8.B97DC92A@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
> 
> For many geometric and scientific codes using floating-point,
> this is exactly what you want.  You bump the precision up
> once, or you multiply it after trying to get a good-enough
> answer.

Yes, I can see that this is a different sort of 
precision problem. Even so, I wouldn't like the idea
that some piece of code I have no control over could
lower the precision and mess up the results from
*my* code. So I still don't think it should be a
piece of global state, not even per-thread. Some
sort of scope control is needed.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From woetzel at gmd.de  Wed Jul 25 06:02:16 2001
From: woetzel at gmd.de (Gerd Woetzel)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:02:16 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DEA88.553AF758@home.net>
Message-ID: <9jm5f8$bgs$1@hop.gmd.de>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> writes:

[...]
>As of Python 2.2 (or 2.3, whatever, as long as it is as soon as any
>backward incompatibility is introduced) require something at the top of
>every source file: a line like:

>#version 2.3

>This is now an indicator of what version of Python the code runs under.
>If that line is not there, it is assumed that it is for a version less
>that 2.3: In that case, the interpreter has a backward compatibility
>mode, and runs that code in that mode. This could probably be a change
>at the compiling level, and the resultant byte code could be compatible.

>The nice thing about this approach is that it:

>A) will not break old code. Ever. At all.

>B) It sets up a system for other changes that might be backward
>incompatible as well. Let them be few and far between!

>C) it restricts the different dialects to being only version changes,
>and only a one way street. I think this is a good thing: I don't want
>Python coders in the future to be able to use a version that has, for
>example:
>the old division, but case insensitive
[...]

Yes, *very* good -- and so simple!
(not so for the developers of new Python releases, of course)

Furthermore,

D) the Python compiler can give up with a nice user (customer)
   friendly error message like

   "This sofware needs at least Python version 2.3, please upgrade"

   or (e.g. Python 3000 might state that)

   "Cannot understand this ancient Python 2.3 stuff" 

>Guido, (and everyone else) I'd love to hear your take on this proposal,
>I'm sure it's full of holes, but I don't what they are. I started a
>thread about it, and have gotten responses, but no one has actually
>commented on the proposal itself.

I'm listening too ..
--
Gerd Woetzel            | email: gerd.woetzel at gmd.de
GMD FIT.CSCW            | phone: ++49 2241 142648 (fax: 142084)
D-53754 Sankt Augustin  | www:   http://orgwis.gmd.de/~woetzel/


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 23:12:28 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:12:28 -0700
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <3B41381C.589E9E48@ActiveState.com>

We all know that there will be legitimate reasons for violating these
guidelines. It occurs to me that the way to minimize violations without
being totally heavy handed is to require violations to be documented and
justified (inline, or in the module documentation, or in some kind of
PEP, or whatever.)

So for FileInput there would be a paragraph somewhere that says: "The
fileinput module violates the restriction on global variables in order
to simplify the common case of doing X Y Z. If you want to use it in a
threaded (or otherwise sophisticated) context, you can use the FileInput
class instead of the global functions."

Documenting the deviation from the spec allows us all to read and
determine whether the deviation is justified and, more important,
demonstrates that the author understood the spec and took it into
account. Like a PEP, it also (in theory) will reduce the likelihood of
repeated arguments because the arguments will be captured in a document.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From anthony at interlink.com.au  Wed Jul 18 22:34:43 2001
From: anthony at interlink.com.au (Anthony Baxter)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:34:43 +1000
Subject: PyDNS? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?= <michael@stroeder.com> 
   of "Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:34:09 +0200." <3B555811.BAA3981E@stroeder.com> 
Message-ID: <200107190234.f6J2Yho32643@mbuna.arbhome.com.au>

>>> Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?= wrote
> Anthony, if you have a local CVS tree of the DNS module I'd prefer
> to let the SourceForge people import that and I will commit my few
> changes afterwards.

I've got an RCS repository of it - I'll convert it to a CVS tree and put in a 
request for the SF project (I think you need to specify the initial cvs
tarball at the same time...) - will do it this evening. Or have you already
put in the SF request?

Anthony



From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul 26 12:56:38 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 16:56:38 GMT
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>   <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com>
Message-ID: <9jpi46$13jg$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "James C. Ahlstrom" <jim at interet.com>:
[... re research language priorities ]

| I am afraid I have to agree with Robin here.  My company "solved"
| this problem by staying with Python 1.5.2.  I do plan to upgrade when
| I have the time, but absent any tools to at least flag incompatibilities
| this may never happen.
|
| My new Red Hat 7.1 system reports that its Python version is 1.5.2.
| Apparently I am not alone.  I believe many Python users are at 1.5.2.

We're up to 2.0 here, but you got me thinking about it and I checked -
we still have 1.5.2 installed on at least one host, if I need to verify
that something actually works on 1.5.2.  Hope folks will do that when
possible.  I do like some things about 2.0, but 1.5.2 has what you need
to write a working program if you don't want to introduce gratuitous
incompatibilities with the Red Hat et al. base.  Even those who plan
to keep up with Python's evolution have a stake in its reputation as
a useful programming environment, and eventually it's up to us.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu

PS  I used a C++ class binding technique per your report in a long ago
    workshop, http://www.python.org/workshops/1995-12/papers/ahlstrom1.html,
    for the BeOS native C++ API, and it has worked out OK.  The details
    are somewhat different by now (not necessarily for the better - my
    class hierarchy module division still needs some work!) but it does
    what it needs to with those user-defined virtual functions.  Thanks!


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Sat Jul 21 07:12:20 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:12:20 GMT
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
References: <3B54497F.B98D34CF@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <20010721.072418.846942590.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <3B54497F.B98D34CF at jam.rr.com>, "Rob Andrews" <rob at jam.rr.com>
wrote:


> Take a look at today's User Friendly poll. ("Web code of choice:
> Perl/mod_perl, *sh, C/C++, ASP, Javascript, Cold Fusion, JSP, PHP").  At
> the time I checked, there were more complaints about Python not being
> listed as there were comments on any of the actual choices offered.  Rob
> 

I think they have a pretty good reason to complain. I can guarantee more
people do more web stuff in Python than C/C++. Especially if you consider Zope
to be Python code. Also, I would surmise that Python has OO support
better than any of those languages with the *possible* exception of
Java(JSP) and C++. With all due respect to those language/environments (I
have programmed in 4 of them), I feel Python deserves to be on there.

~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://ww.coffeecode.com)


From simonb at webone.com.au  Wed Jul 11 23:23:15 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:23:15 +1000
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4D1823.4090708@webone.com.au>

These are hard questions!
i don't know much about muds,
but python is a serious language
designed to handle the real stuff...
One great feature of python is the
ability to code high level algorithms
really fast (maybe 10 times faster than c),
this should be a win for, say, experimenting
with muds.
As for speed, if it ends up being important
(this depends on many factors),
the standard technique is to re-write
the critical parts in c.

I am working on a python environment for
disabled people, in my spare time.
My problem is arms with a
very limited bandwidth.
I'll keep blind people in mind.
:)

Simon


tyler spivey wrote:

>could you write a fast mud  in python? 
>having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
>how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
>can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
>I am blind myself.
>



From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul 31 10:38:13 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 07:38:13 -0700
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9k6fsl$1rd$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93 at posting.google.com>,
Ronan Viernes <Ronan.Viernes at onsemi.com> wrote:
>
>1. Is it normal for threads on LINUX to have their own process id
>thereby displayed in "ps -ef"? 

Yup.  Linux threads are processes.  Sort of.

>2. How do i exit gracefully from a thread? After exiting the thread,
>is the thread 'process' automatically closed? I noticed in our system
>that after exiting the thread, the 'process' are still present as
>evidenced by the "ps -ef" .

Please post some short code that illustrates this.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 17 01:50:44 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 08:50:44 +0300
Subject: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
Message-ID: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Is there some "standard" or canonical way to make programs die when an
unhandled exception occurs in a thread (other than main)? Off the top
of my head, I can think of having a threading.Event blocking at the
main, all threads set to Daemons, and having the run() in catch-all
try-except block (and save/print traceback, trigger the blocking event
in main inside except).

Am I missing some obvious, easier method? How do you people handle
such cases in your own projects? I do know that eventually all
exceptions will be handled in their proper places, but just to prepare
for the unexpected... (no pun intended)

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From gustafl at algonet.se  Sat Jul 14 13:04:38 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 17:04:38 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>
Message-ID: <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

>Doesn't help to use py2exe args with Installer!

Sorry, misunderstood this first. Haven't used ConfigParser before.

>Edit myscript.cfg and put
>packages=_xmlplus
>in the PYZ section.

It don't work. Here's what I have done:

1. Extracted Installer in e:\installer.

2. Moved all my project files to e:\python\gustaf, which is in my Python 
path (sys.path). The project consists of jane.py + 4 other .py files with 
classes and functions.

3. Went to e:\python\gustaf and typed:

python e:\installer\simple.py jane.py

All 5 .py files modules were compiled into .pyc files. Apart from that, I 
also got the following new files:

Install_jane.exe
jane.exe
jane.cfg
gen_install.pyc
gen_install.py
Builder.log
installzlib.pyz
jane.pyz

5. Opened the jane.cfg file:

[MYINSTALL]
type= INSTALL
name= Install_jane.exe
bindepends= jane.py
zlib = INSTALLZLIB
misc= MYSTANDALONE
debug = 0
excludes = pywintypes, win32api

[MYSTANDALONE]
type= STANDALONE
name= jane.exe
script= jane.py
zlib = APPZLIB
userunw = 0
support = 0
debug = 0

[APPZLIB]
name= jane.pyz
dependencies= jane.py
excludes= dospath, posixpath, macpath

[INSTALLZLIB]
name = installzlib.pyz
dependencies = installutils
includes = installutils
excludes = dospath, posixpath, macpath

Either these header sections are not documented as they appear, or I'm 
looking in the wrong place. The Installer docs talk about PYZ, COLLECT, 
CARCHIVE, STANDALONE, FULLEXE and INSTALL.

6. Added a [PYZ] header section + a 'packages' property in the jane.cfg 
file:

[PYZ]
packages=_xmlplus

7. Ran Builder.py on the new jane.cfg:

E:\python\gustaf>python e:\installer\builder.py jane.cfg
W: exec statment detected at line 281 of imputil
W: No module named dos
W: No module named mac
W: No module named nt.stat
W: No module named os2
W: No module named posix
W: Cannot determine your Windows or System directories
W: Please add them to your PATH if .dlls are not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "e:\installer\builder.py", line 596, in ?
    main(args)
  File "e:\installer\builder.py", line 541, in main
    target = makeTarget(cfg, section)
  File "e:\installer\builder.py", line 479, in makeTarget
    return dispatch[cfg.get(section, 'type')](cfg, section, optcnvrts)
  File "e:\installer\builder.py", line 110, in __init__
    Target.__init__(self, cfg, sectnm, cnvrts)
  File "e:\installer\builder.py", line 45, in __init__
    self.__name__ = self.name
AttributeError: PYZTarget instance has no attribute 'name'

And here I am. If you need to see the code, the project files can be found 
at:

http://www.algonet.se/~gustafl/dev/jane/code/

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul  9 18:11:02 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:11:02 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net>

Paul Winkler wrote:
> Doing it iteratively is much, much faster.

does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?

import sys

def fib(n):
    if n < 2:
        return 1
    return fib(n-2) + fib(n-1)

def fib(n, fib=fib, memo={}):
    v = memo.get(n)
    if v is None:
        v = memo[n] = fib(n)
    return v

def main():
    N = int(sys.argv[1])
    print fib(N)

</F>




From anamax at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 21 00:23:28 2001
From: anamax at earthlink.net (Andy Freeman)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:23:28 -0700
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <8bbd9ac3.0107202023.197c4c3c@posting.google.com>

> I cling to the philosophy that there is no "better" language and that a

"no language is superior to all other languages in all circumstances"
does not imply that there are not languages x and y such that x is
superior to y in all circumstances.

In fact, the original statement is fairly weak; it doesn't seem to
imply anything interesting.

For example, the original statement doesn't rule out a language
P that happens to be superior to all known languages in all
circumstances.  The "fact" that P is inferior to some unknown language
in some circumstance doesn't do much for those of us who have to live
with existing languages.

-andy


From careye at spamcop.net  Tue Jul 10 21:33:15 2001
From: careye at spamcop.net (Carey Evans)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 13:33:15 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org>
	<9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu>
	<yAm27.8553$Y6.2987762@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<slrn.pl.9kjuov.nlq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <87bsmss10k.fsf@psyche.dnsalias.org>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> I would prefer it to mean integer division of fractional numbers, e.g.
>     1.3 div 0.3 == 4
>     1.3 mod 0.3 == 0.1

If it gets defined in terms of divmod(), as Guido would like to do
(see <cppubbipxg.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>), then this would be:

    1.3 div 0.3 == 4.0
    1.3 mod 0.3 == 0.1

which is pretty much what you want.

-- 
	 Carey Evans  http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/

	    "Quiet, you'll miss the humorous conclusion."


From sheila at spamcop.net  Thu Jul 12 01:48:01 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:48:01 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <bdeqktshfugcoh0fhge7k1j2mbhhejeeel@4ax.com>

I'm interested to see what responses you will get to this query, as I
don't fully understand the lambda functions either. However, I'm
currently working through the chapters on Tkinter in Programming Python,
2nd ed., and apparently, there are cases when issuing callbacks for
events, that in order to be able to pass parameters to the callback
function, one must use lambda functions.

I don't entirely understand why, at this time. But it was mentioned in
the book.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/


On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 03:27:21 GMT, "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<tO837.679712$166.14009323 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>:

:Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.
:
:def mult(x,y):
:    return x * y
:f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)
:print f
:
:*NOTE   The varible N is defined in the code before this excerpt.
:
:Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?
:
:But comon sense tells me this is easier.
:
:def mult(x,y):
:    return x * y
:f = reduce(mult,n)
:print f
:
:Isnt that easier??
:
:Or do I not get lambda?



From hostmaster at bemarnet.es  Mon Jul  2 11:44:00 2001
From: hostmaster at bemarnet.es (Antonio Navarro Navarro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:44:00 +0200
Subject: Windows RAS manipulation
Message-ID: <6723776458.20010702174400@bemarnet.es>

Hi all,

I need to write a stand-alone Python application that will run like a
daemon (started at windows boot) to create a Phonebook entry on a
Windows 95 machine, start up a connection, make some FTP transfers and
then hang up and delete the connection.

I have been reading the mailing list and have found several references
to win32ras.CreatePhonebookEntry, EditPhonebookEntry, etc, but I don't
know if this functions are fully functional.

Where can I find more info, for example a working script that
creates-connect-disconnect-deletes a phonebook entry in Python ?

Do you think It will be better to use a different approach ? (I prefer
not to use rasdial.exe, because I need to obtain full control of the
connection process).

Thank you in advance, best regards,

Antonio Navarro Navarro                      
BemarNet Management
http://www.bemarnet.es
hostmaster at bemarnet.es





From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Sat Jul 21 13:41:59 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 13:41:59 -0400
Subject: design patterns in python
References: <3b2786d5$1_3@newsfeeds> <3b4ee55f.102689870@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <wksnfqw55k.fsf@mail.connact.com>

Well, some patterns get posted to the Python Cookbook. Perhaps this
should be an additional category?

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python

-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From garyp at asti-usa.com  Thu Jul 26 15:35:52 2001
From: garyp at asti-usa.com (Gary Perez)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:35:52 -0400
Subject: SuSE 7.2 + apache/mod_python
Message-ID: <3B607117.12A36377@asti-usa.com>

Hi, all.

I've asked the mod_python list about this twice already (no luck there).

I'm having problems getting mod_python to work under apache. Here's the
relevant info:

SuSE Linux 7.2, kernel 2.4.4, reiserfs
Apache 1.3.19 + Python 2.0 + mod_python 2.7.2

Installed (and reinstalled) apache, python (no threads) and mod_python a
few times.

Set up the test directives in httpd.conf, proper .py module in the
htdocs/test directory as per the documentation.

When I hit the target URL, apache kicks out an internal server error...

ERROR LOG
[Wed Jul 18 15:58:02 2001] [notice] Apache/1.3.19 (Unix)  (SuSE/Linux)
mod_layout/1.0 mod_throttle/3.0 mod_fastcgi/2.2.2 mod_ssl/2.8.3
OpenSSL/0.9.6a PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.25 mod_dtcl mod_python/2.7.2
Python/2.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Jul 18 15:58:02 2001] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[Wed Jul 18 15:58:18 2001] [error] [client 192.168.100.100]
python_handler: Dispatch() returned nothing.

If anyone has any experience in this area or ideas as to what I can do
to figure out this annoying behavior, I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks very much,
-Gary



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 24 11:44:57 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:44:57 -0600
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DBA3@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Klaus-G. Meyer [mailto:klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com]
> 
> > those guys.  It *is* odd to have to do something like:
> >   x = float(y)/z
> > to get best-possible division in Python.
> 
> But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?
> 
> 99999*99999 -> integer overflow
> 
> Why not an long integer result? (or maybe float)
> 
> You must explicit type:
> 99999*99999L  or  99999*99999.
> 
> Is that not the same thing as type 1./3  ???

I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:

  2L**128/2

which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
semantics would give an approximation...

This is only one of the reasons why I think it's a mistake to look at
integer division by itself. If we're going to change basic behaviors it
would be better if we had a consistent semantic model first.

-- bjorn



From grumble at usa.net  Fri Jul 13 09:36:08 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 13:36:08 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com> <9ikee9$rpv$1@news.mathworks.com> <9iluu2$bmb$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9imtg8$bqe$1@news.mathworks.com>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <9ikee9$rpv$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>>Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>>> In article <9ik9kd$nch$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>If you'd like, reread my point as "muds are likely to be CPU-bound
>>>>programs".
>>>
>>> Fine, but in that case, what *is* your point?
>>
>>Muds are likely to be CPU-bound programs.

> If that is the entirety of your point, why are you posting?

Go back and read the first post in this thread.  Someone wanted to
know if Python's speed would be an issue in writing a mud.  And, in my
experience, the answer is "maybe".  But I think we've gone over this
already...


From arildh at stud.cs.uit.no  Mon Jul  2 19:42:01 2001
From: arildh at stud.cs.uit.no (Arild Hansen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 01:42:01 +0200
Subject: Recording wav files
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107030139470.20530-100000@arildh.pasta.cs.uit.no>

Hello,

What is the easiest way to record wav files in a python program using
pyEsd or possibly some other third party library (except snack or whatever
it is called)? Does the python 2.0 wave module permit recording of wav
files from /dev/dsp? The system is Linux 2.4.0, OSS for sound, python 2.0.
Thx for helping out,

AH



From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 15:18:52 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:18:52 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHAEFKCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Martijn Faassen]
> This discussion is entirely self selected too. What I'm pointing
> out is that your 3/4 number is fairly meaningless in this discussion.

In context, it was a directly relevant response to a question of Arthur's
that had gone unanswered.  Out of context, it may was well be blue cheese.

I'm afraid this whole thread has turned into too much "typical Usenet"
excess to be worth the effort of following it anymore.

lemme-know-how-it-turns-out<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From matthewm at ihug.co.nz  Mon Jul  9 23:57:50 2001
From: matthewm at ihug.co.nz (Matthew)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:57:50 +1200
Subject: Postscript for PythonCOM & Office. Arrgh!
Message-ID: <3B4A7D3E.E16FA838@ihug.co.nz>

Using Office97.



From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 13 16:34:04 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:34:04 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com> <mailman.994988062.18418.python-list@python.org> <3B4E68C5.E47D5F0F@engcorp.com> <mailman.994998742.17624.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4f538f.1825798619@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:30:43 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>Peter Hansen wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> Well, maybe if we could measure, sometime in the future when the
>> user base of Python and PHP is identical (not sure which is
>> actually larger now, mind you), publisher revenues from the books,
>> I might still be sort of right... I can't believe Python will
>> end up with the volume of five-inch thick books that PHP and
>> its ilk have barfed forth.
>
>I still think that you have too much faith that the actual technical
>features of the topic have any real effect on the structure of the books
>(or the market). Once you move past the first ten books written by
>zealots and early adopters, the rest are written by people like "the
>Deitels" who have a structure and are looking for content to pour into
>it.
>
>That isn't necessarily a bad thing -- people who buy a book from the
>Deitels (or the Dummies series or ...) know exactly what they are going
>to get! As long as they don't do too much damage to the content pouring
>it into their form, it doesn't seem so terrible. Sometimes books by the
>"writing experts" are better than those by the technical experts. And
>sometimes they are worse. 
>--

I have a theory that a fair number of books (and computers!) are bought for the
rabbit's-foot effect. I.e, if you just own it, it will give you magical powers.
Publishers try to cash in on that by the kind of design and cover hype that will
trigger an impulse purchase. 

The other kind of book is for actual use by professionals (or amateurs as in
Olympics rules). The hallmarks tend to be good indexing and cross referencing,
unobtrusive but pleasant and effective layout, conciseness and clearness, and
also good physical characteristics: coated paper, handy size, good fonts.

For my money, David Beazley and New Riders deserve a plug for hitting close to
the mark with the Python Essential Reference. I hope the new edition is as good.
(That's not to say it's the best book for everyone, but it is the kind I like).



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul 22 16:06:34 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 20:06:34 GMT
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org> <etd3d7qxi88.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu> <9jeafl$46q$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9lmcia.c1q.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:43:18 +0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
>Alex wrote:
>
>> Not really.  There are some ways you could speed up the python code:
>
>I'm also not really sure why one would want to do this, but...
> 
>> There's the additional problem that
>> opening "err" will truncate the log file, and if an error occurs while
>> you're writing the new version back, you could lose messages.
>
>here's a version that makes a copy of the file before prepending a 
>new message to avoid that problem.  It also uses seek to avoid having 

I suggest appending the normal way, but viewing it with 'tac' :)


From travis at grub.atlantic.net  Thu Jul  5 04:11:35 2001
From: travis at grub.atlantic.net (Travis Whitton)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 04:11:35 -0400
Subject: ANNOUNCE: ChemRound.py v0.1
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107050406090.2616-100000@grub.atlantic.net>

ChemRound.py is a small python class that performs .5 based rounding on
whatever numbers you pass into it. It is free of the performance
bottlenecks imposed by regexps and tries to do as much of it's
calculations as possible mathematically. I wrote it because I couldn't
find any pre-existing implementations of it's functionality; however, I'm
not a math expert or a python expert for that matter, so I would like to
ask any of you with the time/inclination to do a peer review and respond
to me at whitton at atlantic.net. The URL for download is:

http://grub.atlantic.net/ChemRound

Thanks,
Travis Whitton <whitton at atlantic.net>



From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul  4 10:38:45 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 07:38:45 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <9hv9pl$5c7$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta at sirppi.helsinki.fi>,
Jarno J Virtanen <jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:37:25 +0200 Alex Martelli wrote:
>>
>> My impression is that most development shops
>> underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
>> attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
>> yet that the individual performance variation between the best
>> programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
>> a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
>> factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
>> ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
>> little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
>> "superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
>> sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
>> doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
>> mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
>> but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
>> performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
>> times better, if that).
>
>[not that you didn't know this already ..]
>
>Isn't this just what Frederick Brooks claimed in "The Mythical
>Man-Month"? 
>
>quoting from the anniversary edition:
>
>a) Adding people to a software project increases the total effort
>   necessary in three ways: the work and disruption of repartitioning
>   itself, training the new people, and added intercommunication.
>
>   ("hence" Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project 
>     makes it later.)
>
>b) Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as
>   poor ones, at same training and two-year experience level. 
>   (Sackman, Grant and Erickson)
>
>therefore:
>
>   A small sharp team is best -- as few minds as possible.

Sure.  You snipped Alex's main point, though, which is that we now have
more real data to *prove* this assertion.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 14:01:36 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:01:36 GMT
Subject: (in)exactness of complex numbers
References: <mailman.996249232.22459.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp4rry2qvh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> Once these numeric changes are all implemented, if I define a complex
> constant with either integer real or imaginary parts, e.g.
>     
>     c = 1+2.1j
> 
>     d = 1.2+5j
> 
>     e = 4+7j
> 
> should I get an integer back (exact) or a float (inexact) when asking for an
> attribute that was originally an integer?  In general, can complex numbers
> be considered to have two exactness attributes?

That's probably not worth the implementation complexity.  I expect
that all floats and complex will be considered inexact, and all
rationals and ints exact.  That seems to be the most practical set of
rules, even if it doesn't satisfy everybody.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mirko.liss at web.de  Sun Jul  1 07:38:35 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 13:38:35 +0200
Subject: Discussions and developing
In-Reply-To: <tnp%6.1094$847.221276@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>
References: <mailman.993918166.28645.python-list@python.org> <tnp%6.1094$847.221276@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010701113841.11B7E661.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Brad Bollenbach wrote:

> The mere fact that one knows how to post to newsgroups implies at least a
> small degree of technical competency. Within that same degree of competency
> should be the understanding that one should at least make an attempt to find
> the FAQ for the relevant newsgroup before posting questions that have been
> asked over and over...and over. 

Complaints like that do in fact regularly come up in in almost 
*any* newsgroup or mailing list.

I guess there a three major approaches to deal with the 
low signal - to - noise - ratio of a many newsgroups:

a. Subdivide the group. 
Maybe comp.lang.python could spawn something like 
comp.lang.python.newusers, comp.lang.python.developers
or comp.lang.python.install .
Perhaps this will in fact be done, since the newsgroup's
traffic increases as Python gains popularity.

b. Apply threading, filtering or scoring mechanisms
to your newsreader.
There's something like a "food chain of excellence" in many 
diskussions. Experts discuss advanced topic with advanced users
but ignore common problems. Advanced users often volunteer 
answering questions of newbies, but choose to ignore esoteric 
threads.
Common news and mail readers feature very comfortable tools
to skew your personal horizont. Supposedly you have already
mentioned several useful keywords these programs can work with.

c. Be patient and suffer.
Useless talk do always happen. Complaints about other peoples` 
boring ideas might not help matters. 
We are all just humans out there.

I guess a combination of a., b. and c. might approximate
a solution to your problem.


Friendly regards,

Mirko Liss


PS: To those of you who aren't human: Please refrain from
sending me personal mail how to "get rich quick".
You will be brutally scored and filtered. ;-)



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 19 15:49:57 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:49:57 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at digicool.com]
> 
> > I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
> > expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
> > non-programmers.
> 
> IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.
> 
> (1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.
> 
> (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).

TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.

AS fAR aS thE Size Of thE VARious camPs, I haVE YeT tO sEe a coMPeLLinG
aRGuMeNt thAT THE grOup of noN-pRoGRaMmeRS THat WILl taKe up
pRoGRAmmInG, ANd wiLL DO sO in PYTHon InsTEad oF VisUal BasiC, Is any
LARGeR Than The groUp of ProgRAmmERs.

-- bJoRn



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 09:33:22 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:33:22 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
Message-ID: <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com>

Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
> I for one would like to see a strongly typed variant
> of Python: if for nothing else, I'd like to be able to compile my code.

How would that let you compile your code?  Lack of compile-time
type checking is hardly the only thing making it difficult to
develop a Python compiler.

More to the point, why would you want to compile your Python code?

If for packaging reasons, there are effective alternatives in
the form of, for example, py2exe.

If for performance, the better approach is perhaps to profile your
code, then rewrite the performance-critical portions as C 
extensions.  Then you have pretty much the best of both worlds.

> Let me just observe this: statically typed Python would need to be a
> different language from standard Python, though hopefully close enough to
> interoperate and have the same name.

It would be interesting, perhaps, to see how well such a beast
would be adopted by the programming community.  I can just see
the "marketing war" triggered as both sides try to promote
their own version of Python as the One True Way to program...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 15:23:59 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:23:59 +0100
Subject: viewcvs rlog error
References: <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <RNr1kKAPDJV7EwP1@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606 at posting.google.com>, Jeanie M.
Schwenk <jschwenk at oregon.idt.com> writes
>I just installed viewcvs 0.7 and it gives python exceptions if the
>directory has any files in it.  Not terribly useful.   It appears to
>be some kind of rlog error but I can't duplicate it from the command
>line so I must assume it's something to do with the python scripts. 
>I'm new to python so any useful suggestions would be nice.
>
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2514, in run_cgi
>    main()
>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2477, in main
>    view_directory(request)
>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1091, in view_directory
>    fileinfo, alltags = get_logs(full_name, rcs_files, view_tag)
>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1035, in get_logs
>    raise 'error during rlog: '+hex(status)
>error during rlog: 0x7f00
I'm getting the identical error after struggling a bit with my freeBSD
system. I'll have to go back to 0.5.
-- 
Robin Becker


From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Fri Jul 27 06:32:20 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:32:20 +1000
Subject: Importing from Another Path
References: <mailman.995997582.18776.python-list@python.org> <3B5DE390.2F35B36A@accessforall.nl> <mailman.996010131.21356.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k1vpt$e2e$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

> Ype Kingma wrote:
>
> > > sys.path.append("..\\common")
>
> Actually I just meant that it wasn't portable between Windows and Linux
> because I'm using backslashes in the path.

Windows is perfectly happy to accept "/" in a filename path. Try

sys.path.append('../common')

However, this won't help when someone runs the script on an OS that doesn't
accept either form.

> This works, but a) I don't need sys so importing it seems like a waste,

Why not just

from sys import path
path.append('../common')

?

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From ljohnson at resgen.com  Mon Jul  2 10:45:03 2001
From: ljohnson at resgen.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:45:03 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <tk11vfi415gn08@corp.supernews.com>

Python's not dead, he's just stunned. Pythons stun easily.




From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul  3 16:03:57 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:03:57 GMT
Subject: Calculus
References: <mailman.994185546.12116.python-list@python.org> <ct74kt4mfce48k1hoae9s50fh6nqdq90a5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <6994kto993a0cmsooshv3fhg6v48hilgjf@4ax.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:49:49 GMT, Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote
in comp.lang.python in article
<ct74kt4mfce48k1hoae9s50fh6nqdq90a5 at 4ax.com>:

:Yes, it seems that Voltaire was making fun of Leibnitz. The full text of
:Candide can be found here:
:http://eserver.org/fiction/candide.txt

Here is an even better link of Candide/Voltaire resources:
http://www.ericjonas.com/features/candide/home.asp

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 22:42:41 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 22:42:41 -0400
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com> <uwv4vut4n.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <3B60C000.F15559C0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <ulmlbum72.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> I'm curious why mine[**] returns lower-case results while
> yours gives upper case.  I'm on Windows 98 first release,
> running from the DOS prompt.  Is even this trivial thing
> inconsistent across different versions of the Win32 API?!

Probably - I'm on NT4, but also get uppercase under 2K.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 09:50:29 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:50:29 GMT
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996105287.5932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpy9pb7qar.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> Even better yet, why not simply reuse the class keyword in this context:
> 
>     class C:
>         def class foo(x, y):
>             print "classmethod", x, y

I'm not convinced we need new syntax for this, since I think it's a
rarely used feature, but here's a syntax proposal due to Jack Jansen
that I like better:

  class C:
      def foo(class, x, y): "this is a static method"
      def foo(class c, x, y): "this is a class method"

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Jul 17 21:49:08 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 21:49:08 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
In-Reply-To: <sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>
	<mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org>
	<sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <oqd76zatwr.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Steve Holden]

> Having been involved with Snobol in a previous incarnation I really
> liked Icon.

I did like Snobol, and worked a lot with it.  It was a quite powerful
language.  I found it very good for Kleenex programs, that is, those you
use once or twice, then throw away! :-) I remember how painful it was to
_punch_ Snobol code.  And later, many people told me great good about Icon.

> Not the fastest language, like Python it ended up interpreting bytecodes.

Nevertheless, it was quite fast for what it was doing.  The interpreter was
relatively small (maybe two or three inches thick, once printed).  I'm not
sure I remember correctly, but I think it was using a peculiar and unusual
representation for internal strings: packing up to 7 characters, then a
pointer to the rest, up to 7 characters, then a pointer to the rest, etc.

> > I'm still dreaming about an automatic Perl to Python converter.

> Suppose a Perl-to-Python conversion were possible (and I'm not suggesting
> it isn't): would it be the kind of Python you'd want to use to teach the
> language?

Surely not.  The idea is not to use it to teach Python, but to help quickly
migrating already written Perl code to Python.

> Given that Perl is ubiquitous, would there really be any point?

Besides converting one's programs, the point might be to move over Perl
libraries or modules for being able to use them within Python with much
simplicity, without having to resort to bigger tools like, say, Minotaur.

> I'd rather do something new in Python and keep the trusty old Perl scripts
> around, performing day in and day out, than translate them into Python
> just to avoid using Perl.

I've surely nothing against using Perl per se, as long as I do not much
have to maintain the scripts, or otherwise dive in the code.  Preventing
translation to Python is a way to aggressively dissolve the maintenance
fear, but it requires energy.  In any case, if a Perl to Python converter
produces horrible Python, we would not gain much in this area, and I guess
it might be rather difficult producing legible Python from such a conversion.

> > If I could swallow that snake [of tokenizing/parsing Perl] , the rest
> > would not necessarily be easy, but at least, it would be fun! :-)

> Ah, well, if you'd do it for fun I have no objection at all.

Oops!  Each thing in its proper proportion...  There might be some
miscommunication, here.  There are a lot, really a _lot_ of projects that are
more attractive than a Perl to Python converter.  It is only that it seems
that such a tool, if it existed, would solve a recurrent request on this
mailing list, and thus, presumably, a need.  Perl probably helped itself by
providing sed-to-Perl and awk-to-Perl converters rather soon in its history.
Maybe it would be worth for the Python cause to have such tools.  Maybe not?

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 20:48:13 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:48:13 -0400
Subject: Help with reduce().
References: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <Sds27.29662$F%5.1909477@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:3ur27.663627$166.13698874 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok well I have ANOTHER problem with one of the examples in my book (By The
> Way, "Teach yourself python in 24 hours" is an extremely poorly written
book
> and I do not reccomend it to any newbies who are just starting off)
> any ways the example is as follows.
>
> n = range(1,11)
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> print f
>
> I get everything up to reduce. I relize mult() takes the first two numbers
> in range N which would be 1, 2 and multiplys them together to get 2... ok
> fine im good ... now comes the tricky part!! what does reduce do? Does it
> take the whole range and make it into a number (12345678910) then subtract
2
> (the result of the function mult) or what does it do.
>
The reduce() function takes a function as its first argument and a sequence
as its second. There's also an optional third argument, which we can ignore
for now. The function is applied to the first two items of the sequence,
then to that result and the third item of the sequence, then to that result
and the fourth item, and so on until the sequence is exhausted. Here's a
loop that might make it a bit clearer:

>>> def mult(x, y):
...  return x * y
...
>>> for i in range(2, 11):
...  n = range(1, i)
...  print i, ":", reduce(mult, n)
...
2 : 1
3 : 2
4 : 6
5 : 24
6 : 120
7 : 720
8 : 5040
9 : 40320
10 : 362880

Each result extends the value by one multiplication (by one less than I
because of the way range works).

> And i have another question (not related to first question)
>
> x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> def strp(x,y):
>  return x + ' ' + y
> r = reduce(strp,x)
> print r
>
> my problem is this line return "x + ' ' + y" what does it return the value
> of. I would understand it if it was x + y but the qutation marks are what
> throw me off what do they mean?
>
This is another case where the interactive interpreter is your friend. Try
it and see...

>>> x = 'one'
>>> y = 'two'
>>> x + y
'onetwo'
>>> x + ' ' + y
'one two'

You can see that the second statement constructs a string from *three*
values: the string bound to x, the string consisting of a single space, and
the string bound to y.

So all your second example does is append al lthe strings together, with
spaces in between them. It takes 'Thu' and 'Aug" and puts them together with
a space in between them, that takes *that* result and '5' and puts them
together with a space between them, and ... you probably see the point now.

When you give reduce() a thrid argument, it starts with that and the first
element of the sequence rather than the first two elements of the sequence,
allowing you to put an initial value into the string of function
evaluations:

>>> x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
>>> def strp(x, y):
...  return x + ' ' + y
...
>>> print reduce(strp, x, "Date is:")
Date is: Thu Aug 5 06:06:27 MDT 1999

I hope the book also (though possibly later) points out that a much better
way to do the same thing would be

x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
r = string.join(x, " ")

which uses a function from the string module. And, using string methods, you
could even abreviate it to:

" ".join(x)

which tells the string containing a single space to insert itself between
the elements of the list, returning the resulting long string. But that
probably won't appear until you're about ten hours into the book! Good luck.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 13:46:49 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:46:49 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F3409.5BFC8954@ActiveState.com>

Dennis Roark wrote:
> 
> James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
> >for short programs <100 lines".
> >
> >Jim
> >
> 
> Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
> declared before use.  

There are many of us out there like James who have used Python to build
very large systems. Is your faith in static typing so strong that it
overwhelms the clear evidence to the contrary?

Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
warnings is trivial.

> (In a long program, how hard it is to
> find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)

No, it isn't hard to find a misspelled variable in a program. That's
what unit tests (and, ideally, code coverage tools) are for. If you
don't have good unit tests, it is going to be very hard to write robust
code in any language.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From zhough at 263.net  Thu Jul 26 02:04:16 2001
From: zhough at 263.net (Zhou, Ganhong)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 06:04:16 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
Message-ID: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com>

When I run make to build the python. I met with some problems.

The gcc version is as following:
Reading specs from /usr/local/cygnus/bin/../lib/gcc-lib/hppa2.0w-hp-
hpux11.00/2.9-hppa-000310/specs
gcc version 2.9-hppa-000310

The enviroment is
	HP-UX B.11.00 B 9000/800
	

The error information is as following:

gcc  -Wl,-E -Wl,+s -Wl,+b/home/zhough/bin/python/lib/python2.1/lib-dynload -
o python \
                Modules/python.o \
                libpython2.1.a -lnsl -ldld -ldl  -lpthread   -lm  
/usr/local/cygnus/bin/../lib/gcc-lib/hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.00/2.9-hppa-
000310/../../../../hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.00/bin/ld: cannot open +s: No such 
file or directory
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status


I look up the help information of gcc, and found that '+s' is not a option 
for linker.
Why the Makefile generated by configure script contains this option? 
Has anybody met with the problem?


Later I use the following options to run configure:
    configure -without-gcc -without-cxx
    
    It's ok for building. But "make install" report some errors.
    
    This line is the source for error:
        $(INSTALL) -d -m $(DIRMODE) $$i;
    
    
    INSTALL=/opt/imake/bin/install, but I found that the install script has 
no -d option.
    
    How can I deal with it?
    
    

    
    


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 16:11:56 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:11:56 -0700
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B3F840C.A4652564@ActiveState.com>

Kragen Sitaker wrote:
> 
>...
> >You could write an operating system that could only be directly
> >programmed in Python.
> 
> I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
> could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
> despite implementing operating systems in all four.  I think some of
> the Burroughs machines required special god privileges to run the
> assembler, but there was still an assembler.

The word "directly" is pretty vague but the point is that you choose one
language's runtime model as the model supported by the APIs. Then every
other language has to translate into their model. So on some operating
systems, strings are null-terminated and have no length pointer.
Programming against those operating systems "directly" from Python is
impossible. Someone needs to put in PyString_FromString and
PyString_AsString calls. Similarly, if you made an operating system that
exposed all objects as PyObjects then C++ programmers would have to
translate them into native C types to do meaningful computation.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Fri Jul  6 01:59:10 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 08:59:10 +0300
Subject: Tracebacks & bug-squashing (was Re: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org> <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <yox1ynu4mz5.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> Python, and for those (small extensions) it seems I'm about 4
> times more productive in Python than in C++.  I have no personal

And even more important than raw development-phase productivity is how
quickly bugs that surface in a production environment are fixed. I
would assume that pythons traceback dump would give it a 100x speed
boost compared to C++'s protection faults... after a month of running,
and with not-fine-grained-enough log entries.

Automatic traceback is god. With C++ (VC++ & windows), I don't even
get an automatic description of the exception thrown. With quake &
such obvious C++ projects, I could hardly care less but in a mission
critical environment...

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul 11 11:16:52 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 08:16:52 -0700
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c at news.demon.co.uk>,
Jeremy Henty <jeremy at chaos.org.uk> wrote:
>In article <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj at 4ax.com>,
> Daniel Klein <danielk at aracnet.com> writes:
>>
>>This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden
>>programs
>
>Then this person will be distressed to learn that Java is effectively
>dynamically typed!
>
>See http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/cgi-local/pragprog?JavaIsUntyped !

!!!

That is seriously interesting.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 11 08:39:50 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:39:50 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107111635570.6523-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Emile van Sebille wrote:

> Does it bother anyone that 
> 
> a *= 3 + 4
> 
> returns a different value from
> 
> a = a * 3 + 4
> 
> ??

There is a joke about americans:

they were confused that Excel give different result from 
pocket calculator:

[5] [+] [3] [*] [4] [=]

| 32 |

is different from 

5+3*4

| 17 |

as calculated by Excel.

Where is the bug? 

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From FenZhao at mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 14:55:39 2001
From: FenZhao at mit.edu (Man Vehicle Laboratory)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:55:39 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu> <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D@mit.edu> <HOi57.20158$sx2.1076301@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B55DBAB.EB900433@mit.edu>

Fiddling with the script some more, it seems like Vrut somehow runs the script
again when vrut.go() is called.  I placed print statements all throughout the
code, which shows up in the interactive window  until vrut.go() is called.  Then
in the vrut window, it gives the Attribute Error.   I'm going to have to muck
through the vrut code itself to see what's going on.

            Thanks for everyone's help!
                Fen



Steve Holden wrote:

> "Man Vehicle Laboratory" <FenZhao at mit.edu> wrote in message
> news:3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D at mit.edu...
> >
> > I've tried putting a print statement right after I import sys.  I have the
> same
> > error as before:
> >
> >
> >
> ****************************************************************************
> **
> >
> >      * WINVRUT 2.4a  Copyright 1995-2001  University of California, Santa
> >      Barbara *
> >      *                                    Massachusetts Institute of
> >      Technology   *
> >
> ****************************************************************************
> **
> >
> >      VRUT  2.4a
> >      voicekey                        Voicekey 0.9
> >      serialthrustmaster              Serial thrustmaster 1.0
> >      avstu                           AvatarStudio 1.1
> >      Traceback (most recent call last):
> >        File "<string>", line 1, in ?
> >        File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 61, in ?
> >          print sys.argv
> >      AttributeError: argv
> >
> Well, this traceback looks very suspicious. I assume that the file you are
> taking about is indeed e3_sid_data2.py?  Maybe not ... it is quite weird
> that sys appears to have no argv attribute. I can only conclude that perhaps
> some other portion of your code assigns to sys? But you say below this is
> NOT the case. Aaarrgghh...
>
> > The error I get from vrut is from my code looking at argv, not vrut (error
> > message w/out print statement:
> >
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<string>", line 1, in ?
> >   File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 62, in ?
> >     mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
> > AttributeError: argv
> >
> The first line of the tracebacks implies that some code is being executed
> from a strng variable. If none of your code does anything like that (uses
> eval/exec, let's say) then the obvious suspect is the vrut module...
>
> Your module doesn't by any chance import itself, does it?
>
> > So whatever my first operation is dealing with sys.argv, there's an
> attribute
> > error with argv)
> >
> > What confuses me is that this error is displayed in the VRUT window; VRUT
> opens
> > two windows, a display window that shows the 3D VR scene, and a text
> window that
> > will display print statements and error messages from python.  Logically,
> if
> > argv can't be found, an error message will end the program before vrut
> ever gets
> > started.
> >
> Oh. Is it possible that importing the vrut module modifies
> sys.stdout/sys.stderr, leaving something weird in place before the vrut.go()
> call creates the windows?
>
> > I've also tried importing vrut after looking at sys.argv in case vrut does
> > something funky in it's initialization/import.  Same problem.  Yet
> commenting
> > out the vrut.go() command, and the sys.argv is fine.
>
> OK, so what you are telling us is that the presence of a function call you
> have not yet executed is somehow affecting the sys module's namespace. That
> sounds pretty funky to me, and frankly I'm beginning to wonder whether you
> have programmed a time machine :-)
>
> >
> >                                         --Fen
> >
> > PS. I hope this helps:  all of my code up to the call to vrut (minus
> > comments)...  there's not much there, can't figure out what's making it
> work
> > improperly.  None of the modules that I wrote and imported do anything
> with sys
> >
> I can understand your confusion. I hope the rest of the list will feel free
> to dive in with suggestions about what's wrong! :-0
> >
>
> Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here to make sure your program does indeed
> see the correct value for the argument list.
>
> >      import vrut
>
> Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here too, to verify that the import
> statement makes no changes to sys.
> If you see output from the first print bu not the second then the module is
> indeed doing something funky.
>
> >      import sid
> >
> >
> >      import string
> >      import math
> >      import time
> >
> >
> >      import speeds
> >      import e3_dataAn
> >      import sys
> >
> >      mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
> >      ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
> >      ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
> >      OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
> >      SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
> >      sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
> >      VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
> >      path=sys.argv[8]
> >
> >      vrut.go(vrut.NICE)
> >
> >
> >
> > Steve Holden wrote:
> > [ various apparently irrelevant things ]
>
> I'm currently betting that a recursive import is somehow messing things up.
> Otherwise I'm a little stumped, and we'll have to proceed with debugging
> step by step.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/



From fdrake at acm.org  Mon Jul 23 18:04:50 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:04:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010723220450.33D4428932@beowolf.digicool.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/

Various minor updates.




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Sat Jul 28 14:07:30 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:07:30 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107281207030.16003-100000@bms>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Tim Peters wrote:
<...>
> Scheme has literal notations allowing to explictly say that an integer
> literal is inexact, and that a floating literal is exact, when appropriate.

This is the first scheme I've noticed mentioned that recognizes the
difference between a number and the representation of a number.

Does `float' having a hardware implementation elevate it to being a
number?  Does it matter?


> exactness-is-neither-a-type-nor-an-operation-property-ly y'rs  - tim

and-a-representation-alone-is-not-know-to-be-exact-ly y'rs

- Bruce





From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Fri Jul 20 13:47:07 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:47:07 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: List Question
In-Reply-To: <tlgptk32ve8o27@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107201337300.259-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


The new list comprehensions work nice for that:

>>> a = [ [0]*3 for x in range(3) ]
>>> a
[[0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0]]
>>> a[1][1] = 9999
>>> a
[[0, 0, 0], [0, 9999, 0], [0, 0, 0]]


You can also use a loop or a lambda:

>>> l = []
>>> for i in range(3):
...     l.append( [0]*3 )
... 

>>> map( lambda i: [0]*3, range(3) )

The essential thing is that the expression that creates the 
inner list ([0]*3) gets evaluated multiple times, not just 
replicated. Replicating the inner list with "*" :

>>> x = [[0]*3]*3
>>> x[1][1] = 9999
>>> x
[[0, 9999, 0], [0, 9999, 0], [0, 9999, 0]]


is what gives you multiple copies of the SAME list. 

-- sdm




From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul  7 14:00:14 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:00:14 -0500
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <9ngektgqnrl17er73ukukqids95p5158dp@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org>
	<cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
	<9ngektgqnrl17er73ukukqids95p5158dp@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15175.20014.876425.627044@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield'
    Guido> as a new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python
    Guido> 2.2, so maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)

    C//> If one is going to add keywords to a language, I suggest that a
    C//> list of possible future keywords -- even ones that aren't planned
    C//> on being supported any time soon -- be reserved at the same time.

And that warnings be issued for their use for at least one version.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 11:42:30 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:42:30 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com>

In article <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill at sill.silmarill.org>, Rainy wrote:

>I doubt I'll find a job using python any time soon. :/

Probably not if you wait around for management to tell you to
start using it.

I use Python on my job because I decided to.  I'm probably
luckier than most when it comes to being able to choose my
tools.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Is this my STOP??
                                  at               
                               visi.com            


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 23:42:18 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:42:18 -0700
Subject: [Q]pmw.selectiondialog
References: <5PL77.884$A3.10100@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5F919A.CBDE31DB@Lugoj.Com>

Seung-won Hwang wrote:
> I'm looking for a widget just like selectiondialog but allows multiple
> selection.. Is there any widget doing the functionality I'm looking for? I'd
> appreciate your answer very much.

You mean select multiple rows? The Pmw SelectionDialog widget can be made to
support this. You need to be able to get access to the ListBox widget inside
it and set the configuration variable selectmode to MULTIPLE. Something
like:

>>> from Tkinter import *
>>> import Pmw
>>> root = Tk()
>>> s = Pmw.SelectionDialog(root)
>>> slist = s.component("scrolledlist")
>>> slist.setlist(["a1", "b2", "c3"])
>>> slist.configure(listbox_selectmode = MULTIPLE)


From bernhard at intevation.de  Mon Jul  9 20:01:35 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 00:01:35 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
    <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
    <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
    <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
    <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9idgkv$i7i92$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <cpith6l3ip.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
	Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> [Bernhard]
>> What I've noticed is that I believe that the majority of people
>> contributing to the decisions are not the average python programmer
>> and therefore more likely to be in favour of things which might
>> be unnecessary for the average user. I thought this was valuable to
>> share so you can keep it in mind.

> Well duh!

> If we left the design of programming languages to the *average*
> programmer, the field would never make progress.  

This is an argument I often hear against usability tests for webpages.
You should not leave the decision to them, but make your decision
based on what they need and can use to make good code.
This is sometimes hard to find out and I know that there is no
practical solution to this problem. 

> Please give us language designers some credit.  
> We're programmers and we know what programmers need!
I do. 
(And just because I do not participate very actively 
in Python's programming design does not mean 
I know nothing about designing programming languages.)

> This whole thread has disappointed me.
Fortunatly I did not produce most of it. :)

>> Apard from that I am grateful to the whole python development team
>> and the community for its good work.
> Thanks.

May-you-design-python-in-peace-ly-yours,
	Bernhard


From joonas at olen.to  Mon Jul 16 06:21:00 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:21:00 GMT
Subject: command substitution
References: <newscache$vy7kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>
Message-ID: <3B52C0AD.93608611@olen.to>

Raphael Bauduin wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I was looking for a solution like in bash, which let you put the standard
> output of a command in a variable(in bash, you can do it like OUT=`ls` or
> OUT=$(ls) ).
> 
> If you have another way to take the standard output of a command and put it
> in a variable, it would be helpfull too.

out = popen("ls", "r").read()

And if you want a list of files.
out = popen("ls", "r").readlines()


From junkster at rochester.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 10:15:14 2001
From: junkster at rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:15:14 GMT
Subject: Odd problem with converting string to Hex?
Message-ID: <junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com>

Folks,

   This is odd.... or at least I think it is....

   Using Python v2.1....

   Here's a snippet of the data:

('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'), 
('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.1', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'), 
('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.4', 'RF Upstream Interface')

   I've tried using:

      eval (data[1])
      hex (data[1])
      str(data[1])

   What gets returned is:

   Unknown - Mac?  --->    ??H
            Hex:            Long: 

   Which os definetly not what I'm looking for.... I'm attempting to 
decode this in pure hexadecimal...

   I suspect it's due to the "\x" in the string, but I can't pull up the 
documentation, since when I tried I wasn't getting a response from 
python.org.....

   Conceptually I'm trying to output it, similiar to:

      00-90-83-11-0f    Assuming I'm reading the returned data properly.

         - Benjamin


From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 08:07:47 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:07:47 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>
Message-ID: <994421184.483900@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only for web
reading and this requires time -internet time, which is unfortunately
expensive.

so, any other proposals for sites that contain text about python tutoring?
every recommendation is welcome!

thanks in advance!




From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 09:24:05 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:24:05 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <3B5DBAC8.4B89E271@alcyone.com> <Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <Xns90E991EA4D715michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
news:Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1: 

> When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will have
> been told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over. Which
> is EXACTLY what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH more
> sophisticated concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on this
> newsgroup, is hard even for most programming professionals.
> 

Hear hear!

Floating point isn't even associative; there seems to be a real 
misconception that by making all results floating point then all numerical 
problems will magically vanish.  Far from it.

And I'm afraid that going to rational numbers (as has been suggested in a 
number of places) only puts the problem off a little.


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Wed Jul 25 03:55:56 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:55:56 +0200
Subject: size of a file
References: <3b5dd418_8@news.newsgroups.com> <eppstein-223C39.13240524072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <yv2hew14f3n.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> In article <3b5dd418_8 at news.newsgroups.com>,
>  "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > How can I find out the length of a file. I have a descriptor fd of the file
> > (I am using the os module).
> 
> When I wanted to do this recently, I used
> 
>     f = open(fn)   # open file, fn is a string containing the filename
>     f.seek(0,2)    # go to end of file
>     fsize = f.tell()
>     f.close()

You probably might want to check if fn denotes a device file or named
pipe in which case this will fail.

  Harald.

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul  4 05:36:15 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 04:36:15 -0500
Subject: tuple2csv  snipplet
In-Reply-To: <280f26fb.0107032303.64df7a48@posting.google.com>
References: <280f26fb.0107032303.64df7a48@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15170.58255.665757.136667@beluga.mojam.com>

    Shakeeb> ... convert tuples (generated from an SQL query) into comma
    Shakeeb> separated values.... is there a better way to do this?

Without reimplementing what you and others have already done, I suggest that
instead of stringifying the tuple and using regular expressions to convert
the fields that you consider looping over the tuple and constructing a list
of values that contains the appropriate strings, which you can then
string.join with commas:

    def tuple2csv(t):
        import types
        newt = []
        for elt in t:
            if elt is None:
                newt.append("")
                continue
            if (isinstance(elt, types.IntType) or
                isinstance(elt, types.FloatType)):
                newt.append(str(elt))
                continue
            if isinstance(elt, types.StringType):
               ... do the more complex string quote escaping, etc ...
        return ",".join(newt)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Thu Jul 12 03:51:24 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 07:51:24 GMT
Subject: connecting to Oracle database
References: <mailman.994917679.17455.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4D5795.CD6001E1@nokia.com>

reddykkk at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> hi all, i am learning Pyhton now. I am facing problems in connecting
> to Oracle database. plz guid me how to start with.

More information about databases supported by Python can be found at
http://www.python.org/topics/database/modules.html
I think, that mxODBC can do the job.

- Joonas


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:29:08 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:29:08 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9l0sc8.2nh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <cp1ynf3da9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lb08k.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:13:36 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
>
>> >I also don't want to fork the code base.  
>> 
>> Does that imply that you sare no longer interested in making 
>> radical changes to Python, such as case-insensitive identifiers
>> mentioned in CP4E?
>
>I still have the same end goal, but I believe there must be a way to
>obtain it without too much disturbance. 

Hmmm. I'm not sure about that, it feels to me like its opening up a
can of worms.

>Case-sensitivity, for
>example, may be a tool feature rather than a language feature, or it
>may be a user option or a langage-level choice. 

Say I write a module in the current (case-sensitive) Python. Then 
you write one in case-insensitive python. Your code calls one of my 
routines or variables; how does it get the case-sensitivity right?
Does it do so at run time or compile time? Compile time might
be difficult, for example if I have an object that dynamically
creates instance variables for itself. What if I have an object
ob with both ob.variable and ob.VARIABLE? What does your code
use when it resolves philsModule.ob.variable?

Case matching up at run-time is likely to make the language slower.

(One way I might consider fixing it would be to have the new
language explicitly say when it is dealing with old-python modules
and be case sensitive there; consider C++'s name mangling and the
extern keyword they used to link to C code.)

> (Not that I've
>figured out exactly how to do this, but TeachScheme makes this an
>option.)  Note that case-sensitivity is also controversial: the Alice
>folks found it a problem, but the VPython folks have not confirmed
>this (while they did confirm the integer division trap).

Who are the Alice people?



-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From oconnor at bioreason.com  Tue Jul 31 11:23:33 2001
From: oconnor at bioreason.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:23:33 -0600
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3B66CD75.A66DF2F2@bioreason.com>


Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:02:40 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> >Kirill Simonov <kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua> writes:
> >
> >> It would be nice to have 'in' operator for types:
> >>
> >> assert (num in int)
> >> assert (msg in str)
> 
> This implies (at least to me) that 'in' would be a general shorthand for
> 'isinstance'.  But then I would sort of expect '3 in [1,2,3,4]' to behave like
> 'isinstance(3, [1,2,3,4])'
> 
> Or you could just say that type objects implement a __contains__ method that
> does an isinstance.  But if classes and types are unified, that would get in
> the way of classes that define __contains__.  You'd have to think of it as a
> class method (or a metaclass method), which is in a different namespace than
> instance methods.  Or something.
> 
> It's a nice syntax, but it seems a bit confusing to me.


One thing to think about is the Smalltalk distinction of #isMemberOf:
versus #isKindof::  One indicates that x is indeed an instance of the
class Y; the other indicates that x is an instance of y or any subclass
of y

| c | 
c := OrderedCollection new.
c isMemberOf: OrderedCollection. => returns true
c isMemeberOf: Collection. ==> returns false
c isKindOf: Collection.  => returns true because OrderedCollection is a
subclass of Collection

In Python, I could see use for the same thing....

c = Car()
c.isMemberOf (Car)  => returns 1
c.isMemberOf (Vehicle) => returns 0
c.isKindOf (Car) => returns 1

This may not work as well for primitives as there is no real
inheritance.  IntType and FloatType are not subclasses of a generic
NumberType so the following wouldn't work

def doSomething (aValue):
	assert (aValue.isKindOf(types.NumberType))

which would be very useful for asserting that aValue is any numberic
type ( I can think of the use of ListType, TupleTyupe and DictType all
being a SequenceType as well)

If you like the x in y syntax, than maybe that could be expanded to
include "of" as well

c = Car()
c in Car  => returns 1
c in Vehicle => returns 0
c of Vehicle => returns 1

Take care,
Jay O'Connor
oconnor at bioreason.com


From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Wed Jul 25 15:14:10 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:14:10 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <mailman.996073073.17868.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lu6k1.4ua.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:55:57 -0400, Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax wrote:
>    >   To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:)
>    > We are like children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1
>    > cookie for two children means one cookie for 1 child and 0
>    > cookies for another:)

>No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
>lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
>entire family.

_Exactly_ like floating point!  Look at what it did to poor Tim.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 16:24:35 2001
From: 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:24:35 GMT
Subject: What is happening with this program
References: <mailman.995478810.30770.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lbs78.2fd.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:52:08 -0500, 
     Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote:
>#!/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/bin/python
>import string, os
>import ftplib
>import glob
>filename = os.path.join("usr2", "websoftware", "oraclebackupfiles", "pdsweb")

This value above is never used.

>listname = string.join(
>      os.listdir('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb'),',')

Neither is this one, unless the print below is intentional.

>print listname
>ftp = ftplib.FTP('999.999.999.999') #specify host
>ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
>ftp.login(user='fudd',passwd='elmer',acct='looney')   # user info
>ftp.cwd('/usr2/pdsweb/oraclebackupfiles2/pdsweb/')
>
>for filename in glob.glob('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb/*'):

It looks like you could use "glob.glob(filename)"

>    name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]

This line above is your error:  you're splitting on '\\' (which windows
uses as a directory separator).  Unix uses '/'.  Instead, try:

name = os.path.split(filename)[1]

>    print "filename = " + 'filename' + "\n"
>    print "name = " + 'name' + "\n"

These lines don't do anything useful.  Did you mean to use `backquotes`?
Also, the "\n" is probably unnecessary, unless you mean to generate an
extra newline here.

>    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))
>ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
>ftp.quit() 



Suggested rewrite:

--------------------------------------------------

#!/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/bin/python
import string, os, ftplib, glob

localpath = os.path.join("usr2", "websoftware", "oraclebackupfiles", "pdsweb")
ftppath = '/usr2/pdsweb/oraclebackupfiles2/pdsweb/'

localfiles = os.listdir(localpath)
#print localfiles

ftp = ftplib.FTP('999.999.999.999') #specify host
ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
ftp.login(user='fudd',passwd='elmer',acct='looney')   # user info
ftp.cwd('/usr2/pdsweb/oraclebackupfiles2/pdsweb/')

for localfile in localfiles:
     fullname = os.path.join(localpath, localfile)
     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + localfile, open(fullname, 'rb'))
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit() 

--------------------------------------------------

HTH,

-- 
 Nick Mathewson    <9 nick 9 m at alum dot mit dot edu> 
                     Remove 9's to respond.  No spam.



From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul  3 14:00:07 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 18:00:07 GMT
Subject: Calculus
References: <mailman.994172346.18277.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B42067B.2BC73E7A@tundraware.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> 
> Wait a minute!  Wasn't Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz one of the founders of Calculus?  And wasn't he also a philosopher, who with his world of monads, said that this is the best of all possible worlds?  And didn't the gentlemen direct his question to the Python group?  In essence, he is following the philosophy of Leibniz.

I thought it was Voltaire who said we live in the best of all possible
world (in 'Candide')...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 01:12:51 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:12:51 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: newbie apply() question
In-Reply-To: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107030911560.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Aaron Edsinger wrote:

> hi.  i'm stumped on something that seems easy.  why doesn't this work:

import sys 
> x=4
> apply(sys.stdout.write,x) #fails
> apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,)) #fails
> 
> is there a way to make this work?

probably, x must be a string. Then variant 2 will work fine.
 
> thanks,
>     aaron
> 

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 14:08:55 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 22:08:55 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Short form of file names
In-Reply-To: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107062205310.15616-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Mikhail Astafiev wrote:

>[Env: Win2k, Win98, Python 1.52]
>
>Hi!
>
>Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths to short
>form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..

Is there any standard for doing such conversion? AFAIK, there is no way to
convert individual files to 8.3, only whole directories of them, because
otherwise there will inevitable be name conflicts.

Programs such as mtools or cdrecord have some algorithms.
It's not too hard to rewrite them in Python

>Thanks in advance,
>Mikhail.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 17:28:45 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 21:28:45 GMT
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <3b48ccc7.1398139267@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:10:38 +0800, Chyr-Pyng Su
<cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote:
>Thanks in advance to help me writing the GUI program.. Actually I intended to
>contruct a
>buttom so that when I press it, it will trigger a wrapped function originally
>written in C.
>And capture those dumped message, show them in ScrolledText() widget..
>
>Sorry, I can't figure out what the self.index is... besides, where should I
>place these codes..
>in the callback function or in top level... :O
>
I'm a complete tkInter newbie, but here is something I hacked together
to do what you want (I think). The button is kind of clunky (how do
you make it less tall without going to a bitmap?)

Of course you can hard code the command line for your C program in
place of the interactive input. BTW, you can just hit Enter instead
of clicking the button, because of the binding of <return>.

I borrowed liberally from the sample directories, but Guido and Matt
are not responsible ;-)
HTH

Watch out for some wrapped lines below.
"echo hello" (w/o quotes) might be a good command to try first
______________________________________________________________________

# tkDoCmd.py - Illustrates running an arbitrary command
#              via popen and displaying result
#
# WARNING - THIS IS NOT AN INTERACTIVE SHELL INTERFACE!!
# You can screw things up with the wrong command,
# so watch what you're typing!
#
import os
from Tkinter import *
from ScrolledText import ScrolledText

class App:
    def __init__(self, master):

        self.hd = Label(master,anchor=W,text='(No command
yet)',font='courier 10 bold')
        self.hd.pack(side=TOP,fill=X,expand=1)

        self.frame = Frame(master)
        self.frame.pack(side=BOTTOM)

        self.te = Entry(self.frame, width=40, relief=SUNKEN,
borderwidth=2)
        self.te.pack(side=LEFT)
        self.te.bind('<Return>', self.do_cmd)
        self.te.focus_set()

        self.sp = Label(self.frame,width=2)
        self.sp.pack(side=LEFT)
    
        self.do = Button(self.frame, text="Do Command",
command=self.do_cmd)
        self.do.pack(side=LEFT)

        self.tx = ScrolledText(master, 
                 {'height': 20,
                   'width': 80,
                   'wrap': 'none',
                   'relief': 'raised',
                   'font': 'courier 10',
                   'bd': 2})
        self.tx.pack(side=LEFT, fill=BOTH, expand=1)

    def do_cmd(self,ev=None):
        cmd = self.te.get()
        self.tx.delete(0.0,END)
        self.hd.config(text='Trying command "'+cmd+'" ...')
        p = os.popen(cmd, 'r')
        if not p:
            self.tx.insert(END,'Pipe Blew up??')
            return
        while 1:
            s=p.read(4096)
            if not s: break
            self.tx.insert(END,s)
        cmdStatus = p.close()
        if cmdStatus: cmdStatus= `cmdStatus`
        else: cmdStatus = 'Ok'
        self.hd.config(text='Result of command "'+cmd+'":
(Status='+cmdStatus+')')

root = Tk()
app = App(root)
root.mainloop()
__________________________________________________________________


From nas at python.ca  Thu Jul  5 16:38:37 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 13:38:37 -0700
Subject: Best method for updating pickled data objects?
In-Reply-To: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com>; from rupe@metro.yak.net on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 01:14:26PM -0700
References: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010705133837.A31145@glacier.fnational.com>

Rupert Scammell wrote:
> Deleting and recreating the pickle file, then writing out the data
> object from memory each time seems horribly inefficient to me
> (especially for large data objects). There's got to be a better way to
> do this.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You want ZODB:

    http://www.amk.ca/zodb/

Its sounds complicated and scary but its really easy to use.

  Neil



From just at letterror.com  Mon Jul 23 04:13:40 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:13:40 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>

David Eppstein wrote:

> Ok, you convinced me to look more carefully at all the divisions in my
> recent small project, a program to generate web pages from collections of
> JPEGs.  I found:
> 
> 3 instances of simplifying numbers prior to output (e.g. I want file size
> in kbytes rather than bytes).
> [ ... ]

Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte? Integer division
is a lousy tool in this particular example...

Just


From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 12:44:15 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 16:44:15 GMT
Subject: getting argument names from a function
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <9ifbcv$3uu$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987 at weber.videotron.net>, dan at eevolved.com 
(dan) wrote:

> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
>    print arg1, arg2
> 
> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and 
> 'arg2')?
> 
> I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and 
> can't find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?

aFunction.func_code.co_names seems to do the trick


              Graham



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sat Jul 14 11:03:56 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:03:56 -0400
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>        <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.994949372.17704.python-list@python.org> <NCk37.1777$u76.55241@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <EbJ37.5150$z21.530071@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <38Z37.25588$uJ3.1077859@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Thanks for the excellent clarification, /F.

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote in message
news:EbJ37.5150$z21.530071 at newsc.telia.net...
> Steve Holden wrote
>
> > Well, after this little experiment on PythonWin 2.0/Win95 I'm no longer
> > sure what is going on:
> >
> > >>> for i in range(10):
> > ...  time.sleep(2.5)
> > ...  print time.time(), time.clock()
> > ...
> > 994956779.3 5.86667560636e-006
> > 994956781.88 2.55270956603
> > 994956784.41 5.0637313733
> > 994956786.94 7.58865720176
> > 994956789.41 10.1181121038
> > 994956791.99 12.6327050403
> > 994956794.46 15.1421897786
> > 994956796.99 17.6518547076
> > 994956799.51 20.1890552976
> > 994956802.04 22.7061055331
> >
> > Is my CPU usage really ~100% during those sleeps?
>
> from the Python library reference:
>
>     clock()
>
>     Return the current CPU time as a floating point
>     number expressed in seconds. The precision, and
>     in fact the very definition of the meaning of ''CPU
>     time'' , depends on that of the C function of the
>     same name
>
> ANSI C leaves the "era" and resolution open, and Microsoft
> has defined it as:
>
>     The clock function's era begins (with a value of 0)
>     when the C program starts to execute. It returns
>     times measured in 1/CLOCKS_PER_SEC (which
>     equals 1/1000 for Microsoft C).
>
> In recent version, I think "when the C program starts to
> execute" means "when the C program first calls the clock
> function", but you get the idea.
>
> Cheers /F
>
>




From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Sun Jul 29 10:53:02 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:53:02 GMT
Subject: What RE would i use to match this whole word?
References: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <20010729003831.2A193BED.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <9k10qe$n8n$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <irV87.147995$EF2.19745941@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* G. Willoughby <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> menulis:
| this is the code im using for a 'file file' kinda program:
| 
| [snip]
| 
| def search(resultPane, dir, files):
|     searchString = re.compile(str(entryField.get()), re.IGNORECASE) # Get
| search string
|     for file in files:
|         if searchString.search(file) == "None":

None is *not* a string, it's a unique object.  Since search() never
returns a string, your comparison always fails and your else: branch
always gets executed no matter what.  Change this line to:

          if searchString.search(file) is None:

or
          if not searchString.search(file):

to make it work.


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 17:09:22 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:09:22 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995872488.11031.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lp4k2.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Tim Peters wrote:

> FYI, PEP 42 (the "small feature request" PEP) contains
> 
>     - New math module radians() and degrees() functions.
> 
> Somebody quick add grads before Python becomes obsolete <wink>.

Only if that new operator gets called "div".

and-the-new-url-canonicalizing-function-will-be-called-curl-ly y'rs,

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 00:43:57 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 05:43:57 +0100
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995755776.9405.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <p8akltsg70nsi7jmsls62ijogrp4dmq1sg@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:47:53 -0600, Paul Sidorsky <paulsid at home.com>
wrote:

>I'm not an expert in object-oriented design, but nested functions seem
>kind of anti-OO too me.  Can behaviours (methods) really have their own
>behaviours (nested functions), or does the behaviour (nested function)
>actually belong to the object (class)?  And for non-OO use they seem
>completely unnecessary to me.  About all they seem to do is keep the
>global namespace a bit less polluted, but that's going to happen in
>non-OO anyhow.  But maybe I'm missing something...

Nested functions are handy, but not the kind of thing people can't
live without. Functions are often written not so much to be re-usable,
but to separate excess low level detail out of a higher level function
and make things more readable. If a function is never intended to be
called outside the context of another function, it makes sense to
limit its availability to that function. If it's not applicable to the
wider class, it shouldn't be available to the wider class. Hiding
internal details (whether you call it data hiding or whatever) is
certainly an important part of object orientation, but it's a much
older idea than OO and doing it on a per-function basis has also been
a useful facility in several non-OO imperative languages including
Pascal, Modula 2 and Ada.

Nested classes are supported in C++, so the idea of lower level
abstractions within higher level abstractions does exist within that
language too. And I believe that the GNU C/C++ compiler has optional
support for nested functions.

An important aspect of a function within a function is that it cannot
be called by other functions. Therefore, when you change the outer
function you can safely change the inner function in the knowledge
that nothing else will be broken - not even other member functions of
the same class. Most useful programs will need maintenance by people
other than those who wrote them at some point. Limiting the scope of
what you need to understand makes this easier. In some cases, it's the
only reason maintenance is possible at all.

I have to admit, though, that I've never needed a nested function in
Python.

>
>> I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
>> bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
>> response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
>> finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has
>> tried object Pascal.
>
>Object Pascal is okay.  I don't have much experience with it, but
>personally I'd hate to have to learn object-oriented concepts on it.  It
>shares the same problem with C++ as being an extension to an existing
>language, so the implementation of OO features is kind of glued on.  I
>think it's better to pick up OO concepts on Python (or even Java) before
>trying Object Pascal.

Pythons object orientation was glued onto a pre-existing non-OO
version of the language as well ;-)

The definitive OO language is always supposed to be Smalltalk.
Certainly it was the first, and designed to be pure OO. I've never
used it myself, though.

>Anyhow, I hope you stick with Python.  You'll get a lot of the
>convenience of Pascal merged with a cleaner and much more well-designed
>language!

Agreed. Remember, even Wirth didn't settle for Pascal - though that is
possibly unfair, as his other languages had different target users.
Pascal was only intended for teaching, though - like BASIC - to get
people used to imperative (and structured, in Pascals case)
programming before they moved on to programming larger applications in
languages suited for those tasks - at the time, that probably meant
Fortran (scientific), COBOL (business), Algol (?), CORAL (real time?)
and a few others.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 19:05:12 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:05:12 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com> <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <dk9plto33uqab4t2ooil3t543kr7siekmr@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:34:51 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:33 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>Fixed point arithmetic emulated by using integers with a scale factor,
>>though, works very nicely. Better still when there's a language
>>feature to do this automatically, but if we added fixed point types to
>>Python we'd need *another* division operator - four so far including
>>the rational one ;-)
>>
>This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
>floating point support?

I believe so - there was even a Python for Psion palmtops at one
point, and the 3 series certainly doesn't have hardware floats.

All it requires, I imagine, is that the C or C++ (not sure which)
compiler that you build Python on must have a correctly implemented
'double' type - the implementation of the floats in software or
hardware should be irrelevant bar performance concerns.

Linux Python is distributed both as source and as binary, and a source
distro will compile and install itself with very little fuss if you
know the basics of Linux. It should just install and work.



From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 11:27:10 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 10:27:10 -0500
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kbilr.4h3.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
References: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
	<3b45c3c4$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>
	<slrn9kbilr.4h3.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <15173.55502.89929.930194@beluga.mojam.com>

    Alexandre> However, right now, I'm just using xmlrpc as a nice, quick
    Alexandre> and lightweight way of doing rpc between two python
    Alexandre> applications. (if someone can suggest another method, as easy
    Alexandre> as this one, I'll be glad to give it a try).

You can always wrap your strings as base64 and pass them that way.  

    >>> server.echo(xmlrpclib.Binary('\231'))[0]         
    <xmlrpclib.Binary instance at 815d090>

You might also want to search the archives of the XML-RPC mailing list:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xml-rpc

The whole subject of non-ASCII content in XML-RPC has been hashed and
rehashed repeatedly.  Bottom line is that Dave Winer of Frontier (XML-RPC's
analog to our BDFL) doesn't want to change XML-RPC for fear of
interoperability problems (mostly unfounded I believe, but that's his
stance).

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 10:27:43 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:27:43 -0400
Subject: socket.connect timeout
References: <9icas4$lvp$1@news1.xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <K9j27.20247$i8.1580848@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Twan van der Schoot" <twanvds at xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:9icas4$lvp$1 at news1.xs4all.nl...
> Hi there,
>
> How do I increase the timeout period on a socket.connect()?
> A peek in the source code of the socket object does reveal anything
usefull.
>
>
> FWI: I'm using Python 2.1 from ActiveWare for WinNT (running on NT4.0SP6).
>
> thanks!
>
There's a module called timeoutsocket.py (take a look in the vaults of
Parnassus), which allows you much better control over the timeouts on your
sockets. Without this you can have problems.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Mon Jul  9 12:26:16 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:26:16 +0200
Subject: Writing documentation
References: <mailman.994690455.6338.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B49DB28.F9955406@dennis-voss.de>

> I'd like to document my Python modules in the same way the standard
> modules are documented, with LaTeX and the Python styles and things. It's
> not exactly a howto, and it'l look a lot like a mini-library reference,
> right? So how do I compile it? How do I generate all the nifty HTML?

Take a look at:
http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/writing.html

They are using LaTeX (why not docbook?) for doing so.
There are tools in every TeX distribution for generating PS, PDF, HTML ...

Dennis



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Jul 25 10:57:27 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:57:27 -0400
Subject: HOWTO: exit
In-Reply-To: <cXt77.49466$k33.5017307@typhoon.kc.rr.com>
References: <mailman.995826636.14065.python-list@python.org>
	<cXt77.49466$k33.5017307@typhoon.kc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <oqg0blgip4.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Brendan O'Connor]

> import sys
> sys.exit()

I'm curious.  What about "raise SystemExit"?  Does it have the same effect?
It looks cleaner to me, as one does not even need to import "sys".

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Wed Jul 18 21:24:38 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 21:24:38 -0400
Subject: newbie question: what does "<...>" or "<input>" signify?
References: <e71960c5.0107161807.5fe749eb@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3du209pv6x.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

doug_bartholomew99 at yahoo.com (doug) writes:
> i am new to python and i have seen references in its documentation and
> code to name strings with greater-than and less-than signs, such as
> filename="<input>".  i have looked high and low for an explanation of
> what a string with < and > on both ends means, but have found none. 

They don't mean anything special to Python; the author of the docs simply 
meant that you'd provide the filename for your input file as a string, 
filename="/tmp/input.txt" or whatever.

--amk


From guido at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 14:55:49 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:55:49 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:35:35 EDT."
             <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107111427580.379-100000@localhost.virginia.edu> 
References: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107111427580.379-100000@localhost.virginia.edu> 
Message-ID: <200107111855.f6BItnF13792@odiug.digicool.com>

> Is it possible that changes to built-in types to allow subclassing could
> be made to also allow redefining operators for built-in types ? 
> 
> Then "/" could be mapped to either behaviour, and gradual introduction
> could be a matter of changing the default behaviour in a future version. 

I'm currently working on subclassing built-in types, but redefining
operations for existing built-in types is not part of my agenda, for
various reasons (most of which have to do with boring implementation
details, but are real showstoppers nevertheless).

So alas, no relief from that angle.  Maybe we'll have to accept a
directive.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 00:41:42 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:41:42 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <3B428CC9.1F944ECD@seebelow.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040834040.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Grant Griffin wrote:

>Roman Suzi wrote:
>>
>...
>> CPyAN is much more complex task, because there are:
>...
>
>I think the problem here might be one of marketing, combined with a lack
>of corporate sponsorship.  To that end, I propose this resource be
>called "Python Program Archive Network", or PyPAN, for short. That might

Maybe PyCAN ;-)
(C for components)

>help it attract funding from Mrs. Smith's and Sara Lee.  (Heck, if
>nothing else, maybe those ladies can contribute something tasty to the
>Python Cookbook.)
>
><sorry>
>
>Seriously, folks, I never was a big fan of CPAN: in fact, for me, it was
>just another part of my overall poor user-interface experience with Perl
><wink>.  Although CPAN is impressive in terms of sheer girth, the CPAN
>concept seemed to encourage large interdependencies between modules.
>Although this seems like good thing in some ways (because it indicates a
>lot of software reuse), I found it nightmarish to install even fairly
>simple packages.  (I never could get the automatic CPAN installer gizmo
>to work well--at least without giving it a great deal of manual help.)
>
>Having a very large standard library seems a better solution.  (Of
>course, Perl also comes with a large standard library.)  I never seem to
>have large cross-package dependency problems with Python; my experience
>has been that nearly all packages require zero or one other packages.
>Presumably, this is a fortunate aftertaste of the fact that PyPAN is
>still just a half-baked idea.

I do not think large standard library is a must.  Probabaly, there could
be uniform way to download missing components and probably bare Python
distribution could contain a references of modules which could be
downloaded if user need them.

This will solve problem with large initial download of lots of unneeded
things.

>But maybe an increasingly large standard library isn't totally
>practical.  An alternative that I think would be very helpful is
>"application-targeted" distributions.  For example, someone could make a
>"Numeric" bundle of Python, including NumPy and related modules;
>likewise, there could be a "webmaster" bundle.  Of course, this takes a
>lot of time and effort for somebody to create and maintain.
>(ActiveState folks, are you listening?--given that you somehow make
>money by giving away software, the more software you give away, the more
>money you'll make <wink>.)

Its the way of Slackware Linux:
they thought the same way and labeled packages as "A", ... "K", "X" ,...
package-sets.

The better way is that of rpm or apt-get enabled distros.

The problem is the lack of knowledge.
There need to be some central storage + mirroring network
and mentioning PyPAN contents in the core Python distribution
(with links and such).

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  9 01:22:35 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 22:22:35 -0700
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994357450.6939.python-list@python.org> <3B44D0BD.63A3F795@home.net> <3dofqzqbvo.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <9ibf2r$le9$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <3dofqzqbvo.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us>,
Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> writes:
>>
>> Anyone writing a computer book should read this:
>> http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html
>> It's interesting (and humorous) reading for the rest of us as well.
>
>Indeed; that page cured me of my desire to write a book for physical
>publication.  Sure, there's the ego-thrill of a big wad of paper with
>your name on the front, but it also means you have to work to a
>deadline, errors in the final product can't be corrected, and you have
>to cope with potentially clueless editorial interference (sure, maybe
>your editor will offer lots of good suggestions -- what if they
>don't?).  Putting things on Web pages, you can fix errors whenever you
>like, write sections whenever you like, and can get direct feedback
>directly from readers; the advantages are all in the Web's favor.

Many people still prefer the solid feel of paper.  As for the other
problems, that's why smart people work with O'Reilly.  ;-)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From matthewm at ihug.co.nz  Tue Jul 10 21:51:23 2001
From: matthewm at ihug.co.nz (Matthew)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:51:23 +1200
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <mailman.994793537.30396.python-list@python.org> <9ig91u$ii5co$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B4BB11B.97268EC2@ihug.co.nz>

So, definitely looks like a config issue of some kind. Just out of
interest, what build of win32all are you running with 1.5.2? As Bill
rightly noted from my original post , passing keyword args does
absolutely nothing under my combos of win/python/win32all - no error,
nor 'effect'. I'm begining to wonder whether Office97 PythonCOM stuff
only works with similar vintage win32all builds. Will check it out and
report back. any other ideas? regards, matthew.

Emile van Sebille wrote:

> "Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994793537.30396.python-list at python.org...
> >
> > "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote, in part:
> > > This worked for me.  Win2ksp1, excel2k, Python 2.1
> > >
> > > >>> import win32com.client
> > > >>> xl = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
> > > >>> xlc = win32com.client.constants
> > > >>> xl.Workbooks.Open('test',Password='fred')
> > > <COMObject Open>
> > > >>> xl.Visible=1
> > >
> > > What do you get when you try this?
> >
> > Using Win95, Excel 97 SR-1, Python build 203
> >
> <snip error info>
> > This seems to be what the thread's originator experienced.
> > Tentatively, appears to relate to version or configuration.
> >
>
> I agree.  With win98, excel8 and python1.52 it still works for me.
>
> --
>
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:08:15 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:15 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <62aolt82hraa6m4620am93ba089oj2mcvo@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 10:47:08 GMT, m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
wrote:

>Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>> [Martijn Faassen]
>>> ...
>>> The audience was entirely self-selected;
>
>> Unlike, say, the participants in this discussion?  Hmm.  You set a rather
>> high standard here, Martijn <wink>.
>
>This discussion is entirely self selected too. What I'm pointing out is that
>your 3/4 number is fairly meaningless in this discussion.

Anyway, we don't need to prove the Anti-PEP0238 opinion representative
- we only need prove the Pro-PEP0238 vote is not. In the absence of
good solid reasons for change, stability should be the rule. All the
reasons given for change are clearly a matter of opinion.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 20:50:15 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 20:50:15 -0400
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.996097129.15274.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <usnfkcy48.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

(changing int()/long() to truncate)

This post is mostly tongue-in-cheek...

> There are no known platforms on which that will make a lick of difference,
> except to make Python run slower.  But that doesn't mean no such platforms
> exist.  And making a particular Python operation run slower can change the
> behavior of, e.g., threaded apps.

Of course, this isn't the best example, since threaded apps by their
nature must be written to be safe in such variations, and a given
platform on a given day might vary timing of the application even
without changes.

>                                    It's also the case that platforms
> certainly vary even now in how int(infinity) and int(NaN) behave (since C89
> is silent on those cases), and that they may suffer some different
> accidental behavior in these cases after the change.

Now, that could be a compatibility argument, but only if the existing
behavior were well defined.  I don't think compatibility needs to be
inclusive of undefined behavior - if the old platform said that some
behavior was undefined, then no change really violates that.  The
largest concerns for compatability should be concerned with conforming
to pre-existing definitions of behavior and interfaces.

Sure, some old code might just happen to work if the behavior was
lucky for the code, but that's a hard argument to care about breaking.

> So is this a change we should be frightened of?  Do we need a
> 
>     from __future__ import int_and_long_guaranteed_to_truncate
> 
> statement to enable it?
> 
> I think that would be absurd, but from an implementer's point of view it's
> the plain truth that no change is without consequences.

Agreed (to both points).  But it's probably realistic to consider that
changing any existing feature (or even a functional interface) such
that previously defined behavior changes, will probably require some
such support for the change.

Of course, that leaves a whole wide range of stuff that either changes
undefined behavior, or just adds behavior.

And as I've said before, clearly some pragmatism can come into play
such that changes can be judged on a case by case basis.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul  3 16:47:25 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 16:47:25 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993760063.4583.python-list@python.org> <3dels41dhs.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <19v0kt462nkvid15t0fnrpclmem3epc61g@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <87k81p7naa.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:

> Sometimes I think that the drive to proove that Python can do
> anything that other languages can do misses an essential point -
> Python is extremely good (and getting better) at scripting and glue
> style tasks. That is where its main strength lies. Being good at
> everything is a pretty tall order.

I think many people would disagree that that is "where its main
strength lies".  I, for one, frequently use Python for mathematical
modeling, and find it a superb tool for the task.  I have a friend who
does microprocessor and microcontroller modeling in Python because he
can turn out a prototype faster in it than VHDL, and if he actually
decides to burn a core he can translate it later.  RedHat uses Python
for nearly all of its user interfaces.  Google started out using a
great deal of Python (I imagine it is mostly C by now).  CVSWeb (and
thus SourceForge's CVS viewer) uses Python for its web presentation.

Python is not the best tool for every job, but it is a good one for
quite a few of them.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.  Going from
DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117. - Lawrence Foard

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse -- Larry Wall
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtCL10ACgkQjVztv3T8pzvmpACdF1Q+mlIUCizlvu5Oolnz4iJM
XkgAoJEFVIfmxi27ExFiIpxBu7V1yRKl
=OeRy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 22:39:59 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:39:59 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions 
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com> <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l77cb.91.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l7a23.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Rainy <sill at optonline.net> dijo:
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:24:40 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> > All very good points. I have certain reservations, tho.  I dread
> > waiting for Microsoft Word to startup as it is, written in compiled C++.
> > I fear for the speed of anything of that scale and complexity
> > implemented in Python.
> 
> I don't know this for a fact, but I heard someone saying that he/she
> received some errors in Word97 (or maybe 2k) that demostrated word's
> internal reliance on some sort of scripting language, most likely
> VBscript. Can anybody confirm this?

Microsoft provides VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) as a glue
language to script all of its 'Office (9\d|2000)' applications. It's
like VBScript'ing ASP, but with a different environment.  I don't know
if this is what this person found, but it's likely.  But I don't think
that Word et al. "rely" on it.

-- 
But the price of getting what you want
is getting what you once wanted.
    -- Morpheus, The Sandman


From thomas_barket at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 22:21:39 2001
From: thomas_barket at yahoo.com (tom barket)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 19:21:39 -0700
Subject: New User Question: extension types and python 2.2/class/type
Message-ID: <758d4715.0107251821.3ee9dda4@posting.google.com>

Hello,

I am relatively new to python and am about to embark on my first
significant "extension type" project (which will involve wrapping and
exposing some large c++ classes i have - and no, i dont think SWIG can
accommodate my c++).  Having followed the class/type unification
discussions somewhat and read Guido's "Unifying types and classes in
python 2.2" tutorial, it seems to me that chapter 2 "Defining New
Types" in the "Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter" doc is
about to become obsolete (in the sense that what it describes will
shortly *not* be the prefered way to define/import new types).  Since
this was going to be my guide for my own extension type endeavor, I
would like to ask how can i get instructions for correctly writing an
"extension type" under the new (or actually soon-to-be-new) regime.

Can someone kindly offer me advice on how to proceed?  I have not yet
implemented any metaclasses, but i am familiar with their concept.  I
would rather do this correctly under the new regime the first time if
possible, so i dont have to go back and change it in 2 months.

Thanks,
Tom
thomas_barket at yahoo.com


From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul  4 10:45:45 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 07:45:45 -0700
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de> <slrn9k471b.hhl.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3b421cec.5073656@news.t-online.de> <LNz07.1653$h45.11048@news.uk.colt.net>
Message-ID: <9hva6p$6a6$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <LNz07.1653$h45.11048 at news.uk.colt.net>,
Graham Ashton <graham at coms.com> wrote:
>In article <3b421cec.5073656 at news.t-online.de>, "Gerson Kurz"
><gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote:
>>
>> 2 reasons for using dicts rather than classes:
>> 
>> - You can easily create the data an object stores *dynamically*, i.e.
>> from user input.
>
>What can you do dynamically with a dictionary that you can't do with
>setattr() and getattr()? (that's a real question, not a cocky way of
>pointing out you might have missed something)

Well, you can use any immutable type as the key.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 24 08:59:45 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:59:45 -0500
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <00af01c11440$87a53c20$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mikael Olofsson" <mikael at isy.liu.se>
> 
> On 23-Jul-2001 Robin Becker wrote:
>  >  MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!
> 
> I've seen BDFL referring to GvR, and I know the interpretation of that.
> Here, obviously, MDFL suddenly referres to the very same GvR. What's
> with that M? 

I'm guessing here, but I'd bet from the tone of his postings that Robin
means

    Malevolent Dictator For Life

While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 10 00:50:17 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:50:17 -0700
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A8989.414C01B9@Lugoj.Com>

Daniel Klein wrote:
> 
> I did the unspeakable and got into a discussion (with another person on another usenet group) on
> Python vs Java.

You got into a _discussion_? Well shucks, that doesn't sound unspeakable. If
you got into an angry, venom spitting, eye-gouging, knee-into-the-groin
fight, then it might have been "unspeakable". Or not.

> This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden programs and
> that there are no reliable large applications (especially network apps) written in Python and that
> it is just used for small to medium scripting. I know better but I don't have any proof.

Look, you have got off on the wrong foot. You are trying to think logically.
That gives the other person a leg up on you. (But you admit that you know
better without proof, so you aren't totally out-matched.) You should have
put the burden of proof on the other person: demand proof that there exists
a large project attempted in Python that was a failure for the reason he/she
states. That'll shut the bugger up for a while. Even he/she digs something
up, it'll take so long that lurking readers will consider you the winner.
And that is all that matters in Usenet "discussions".

> Can anyone
> point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I already know about Zope
> and I can't find the list of companies on the Python website since they moved the page to PSA).

Me: What is your quest?

Daniel: I seek the holy Grail...


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 08:34:33 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:34:33 +0100
Subject: PEP0238: overriding // (__intdiv__) ??
References: <snatltotvlevdqc7kaj1m8v82o5fv51543@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <hPsZULAZzrX7Ew5X@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <snatltotvlevdqc7kaj1m8v82o5fv51543 at 4ax.com>, Kirby Urner
<urner at alumni.princeton.edu> writes
>
>Maybe I missed it.  Did the PEP specify what we'd use
>to override the // operator in a class?  __intdiv__  and 
>__rintdiv__ ?  Seems we'd need something like this, to
>have our objects play along.  And I'd think this wrinkle 
>should become available simultaneously with //.  
>
>Kirby
>
>
If and when the grand type class unification takes place and ints,
longs, floats rationals and the like are all properly sub-classable,
will it possible to inject behaviours into those types? If so then I can
trivially change '/' by changing the base implementations for the
various types.

I suppose that there are efficiency arguments involved, but the compiler
must issue a divide instruction anyhow and leave it up to the operand
classes to decide what to do.

That way we could begin to treat this as a properly abstract programming
language. It could of course lead to utter confusion.
-- 
Robin Becker


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 09:01:54 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:01:54 -0400
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote [...]:
>     ...
> > If you have algorithms, why not post them?  Are you hoping somebody
> > will write this from scratch just for you?  (Someone might, but he's
> > in a different timezone and wasting his time creating it.comp.lang.python,
> 
> free.it.python, actually, so the time isn't wasted -- the newsgroup is
> working just fine:-).

Brilliant!  "Free IT - use Python".  I like it!  

-deliberately-misinterpreting-ly yr's,
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Mon Jul  2 16:06:57 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 13:06:57 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>

I agree that the quality of the design is paramount. BTW, I would like
to thank everyone who responded to my query. I should probably point
out that I am an aerospace engineer with some experience in C++ and
Tcl/Tk, but I am a Python beginner.

As for function prototyping, it seems to me that argument passing by
keyword in Python can be used to advantage. If all procedure arguments
are passed by keyword, there is much less chance that a procedure will
be called incorrectly, particularly when a procedure interface is
changed. Contrast that with C++. The C++ compiler will catch only some
of those kinds of errors. If I change the order of two ints in a
function interface, for example, the C++ compiler won't have a clue
that the interface has changed.

What would be very desirable for Python is some kind of static checker
that can guarantee BEFORE run time that all procedures are called
correctly. Does anyone know of anything that does that?

Also, can anyone give specific examples of Python being used in
safety-critical applications? Thanks.

"GerritM" <gmullerNoSpam at worldonline.nl> wrote in message news:<9hlfbn$6ok$1 at nereid.worldonline.nl>...
> Safety is first of all a determined by the quality of the design and
> secondly by the engineering skills of the developers. Most errors found
> during the developement lifecycle have little relationship with type
> checking or prototyping. Instead semantic errors and missing design aspects
> (such as performance, exception handling, concurrency etcetera) are the
> majority of errors.
> 
> The use of a clear and expressive language, such as Python, will help to
> decrease this category of errors. However, keep in mind that the quality of
> the architects and engineers is an absolute must for this type of
> application!
> 
> Regards Gerrit
> 
> --
> www.extra.research.philips.com/natlab/sysarch
> "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> schreef in bericht
> news:bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15 at posting.google.com...
> > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> > aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> > initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> > aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> > collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> > C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> > humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> > toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> > nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> > among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> > insights.


From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 13:05:06 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:05:06 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:21:40 CDT."
             <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

>     Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
>     Guido> Checked into CVS!
> 
> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if x is a
> type or class instead of an instance?

No, that would be ambiguous.  A subclass is not an instance.  A class
or type represents a set of instances, so 'in' is justified in a
sense.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From JoeSalmeri at home.com  Tue Jul 24 18:40:55 2001
From: JoeSalmeri at home.com (Joe Salmeri)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:40:55 GMT
Subject: Python 2.1.1 ASP/Response object does not HONOR Response.End()
Message-ID: <XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

When using Python/ASP if you call the Response.End() method the rest of the
script is still processed

For Example:

** Script **

<@language="Python"%>
<%
Response.Write("This is line 1")
Response.Write("This is line 2")
Response.End()
Response.Write("This is line 3")
%>
This should NOT appear.

** End Script **

"This is line 3" and "this should NOT appear." both appear in the page
results.

Testing the same script with VBScript produces the correct results.

Is this a known bug?




From reddykkk at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 02:00:37 2001
From: reddykkk at yahoo.com (reddykkk at yahoo.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 06:00:37 -0000
Subject: connecting to Oracle database
Message-ID: <9ijee5+6ea8@eGroups.com>

hi all, i am learning Pyhton now. I am facing problems in connecting 
to Oracle database. plz guid me how to start with.

thanks all,
kranthi




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 26 15:36:18 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:36:18 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org>
	<cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com>
	<4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com>
	<slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <oqofq7eb4d.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Quinn Dunkan]

> On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:42:37 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:

> >I tried fiddling with Lisp-without-Emacs for most of a year.  It didn't
> >work out.  I can think of few programming-related things more onerous
> >than a programming language which requires you to learn its editor.
> >
> >Never again.

> Most 'vi's have paren matching and lisp indent, but I've also happily
> used acme, which has neither of these.

Hey, hey!  Courageous is not so courageous, after all!  I learned LISP
on punched cards, and believe me, the keypunch artillery had no special
`plonk' noise for a mismatched parenthesis :-).  Re-indenting the body of a
function could take a lot of minutes of work even to an experienced puncher.
People have thin skins! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk  Tue Jul 10 09:58:16 2001
From: sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk (Steve S.L. Wong)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 21:58:16 +0800
Subject: Newbie asks: How to do this line of C in Py?
Message-ID: <tkm2bef90nsic1@news.supernews.com>

if (sscanf(command, "%d", &num) != 1 )  {
}




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 04:53:07 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:53:07 +0200
Subject: String Splice Assignment
References: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com> <kuitgsgxre.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <9j0udj027sf@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Erno Kuusela" <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote in message
news:kuitgsgxre.fsf at lasipalatsi.fi...
> In article <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120 at posting.google.com>,
> gervaserules at yahoo.com (eAndroid) writes:
>
> | Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some
> | alternatives?
>
> as others have noted, strings are immutable. probably because
> the python "everything is a reference" semantics would make
> accidentally change someone else's string a frequent bug, and
> for efficiency reasons.
>
> you can use the array module, or a list, if you need a mutable
> sequence of characters. lists are a bit less hassle, use array if you
> need to worry about memory usage.

Easiest, IMHO, is to use the MutableString class from the
standard UserString module:

D:\>python
Python 2.1.1c1 (#19, Jul 13 2001, 00:25:06) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Alternative ReadLine 1.4 -- Copyright 2001, Chris Gonnerman
>>> import UserString
>>> x=UserString.MutableString("initialvalue")
>>> print x
initialvalue
>>> x[7:7]=' '
>>> print x
initial value
>>>


Alex





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 20:12:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:12:51 -0400
Subject: Large pages using Zope
References: <9k766t$dc0$04$1@news.t-online.com> <3B674802.C730D678@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B674983.8CB67B84@engcorp.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> Achim Domma wrote:
> >
> > I would like to use Zope,
> 
[...]
>
> (Note: we are using Zope quite successfully in the
> company I work for right now.  It is fast enough,
> just as Python is, for our needs, and is *very*
> stable.  You shouldn't take someone's word for it,
> however, as your own needs and standards may vary.
> Give it a test drive yourself, if you are interested.)

But don't miss this link that was posted by Titus Brown
under a different subject line just after yours:

http://zope-is-evil-666.idyll.org/

It's at least humorous, definitely valid in some respects,
but still uncertain in its conclusion (read to the
final disclaimer), just as with many other Zope users' 
opinions...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul  3 16:54:00 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:54:00 -0600
Subject: Hiding Console?
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4DC@admin56.narex.com>

> From: G. Willoughby [mailto:thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com]
> 
> Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
> WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the 
> IDLE ide. I wanna
> write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont 
> want the console
> there when there run, any ideas?

Just name your file foo.pyw (note the extra 'w').

-- bjorn



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 04:08:01 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:08:01 +0100
Subject: viewcvs rlog error
References: <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606@posting.google.com>
 <RNr1kKAPDJV7EwP1@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <XwAkbgAhPUV7Ewd6@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <RNr1kKAPDJV7EwP1 at jessikat.demon.co.uk>, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>In article <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606 at posting.google.com>, Jeanie M.
>Schwenk <jschwenk at oregon.idt.com> writes
>>I just installed viewcvs 0.7 and it gives python exceptions if the
>>directory has any files in it.  Not terribly useful.   It appears to
>>be some kind of rlog error but I can't duplicate it from the command
>>line so I must assume it's something to do with the python scripts. 
>>I'm new to python so any useful suggestions would be nice.
>>
>>Traceback (most recent call last):
>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2514, in run_cgi
>>    main()
>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2477, in main
>>    view_directory(request)
>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1091, in view_directory
>>    fileinfo, alltags = get_logs(full_name, rcs_files, view_tag)
>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1035, in get_logs
>>    raise 'error during rlog: '+hex(status)
>>error during rlog: 0x7f00
>I'm getting the identical error after struggling a bit with my freeBSD
>system. I'll have to go back to 0.5.
OK it seems we need to install rlog, to get this to work.
-- 
Robin Becker


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 17 14:07:22 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 14:07:22 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995328450.15230.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l7alj.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <uae234eg5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:

> AFAIK, the only larger source of aggression than the anti-Perl
> Pythonistas is the anti-C++ Smalltalkers.  <wink>

Maybe I'm just too forgiving, but I'm having a hard time thinking of
all the "anti-Perl Pythonistas" that I've read posts from here.
Perhaps they hang out elsewhere that I don't frequent?

It's true that Perl rarely gets suggested as an alternative to Python
(except perhaps in selected pure text processing applications, before
the speedups in recent Python releases), but it seems pretty rare that
it is rejected harshly, as opposed to Python simply being favored.
And I find it pretty typical to get a reasoned explanation for why as
opposed to a knee-jerk response.

I also expect that you'll find a larger subset of people (at least
here) that did do a lot of Perl in the past and then found their way
to Python - as you say, it does get mentioned in that vein on some of
the c.l.perl lists.  I don't think the reverse happens anywhere near
as much, so there's probably some pre-selection (at least here)
towards preferring Python over Perl in any comparison.  But again, I
rarely perceive that as a violent reaction, as opposed to the voice of
experience.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 16:10:34 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:10:34 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B646DBA.8362A98E@ActiveState.com>

Courageous wrote:
> 
> > * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
> >into "Servlets" and "EJBs"
> 
> Note that this quickly went by the way side. The vast majority of all
> web-served client-side graphic technologies are not Java. Javascript
> (which is most emphatically not Java) dominates the landscape here.

Yes, it is clear that languages can outgrow their original niches.
That's why I mentioned Servlets and EJBs. My understanding is that use
of these technologies allow you to achieve scalability easier than in
languages where you must do it all "yourself". But that's just hearsay.

> > * Perl was also the defacto way to do CGI in the early web
> 
> Funny, too, as it never had to be, and you could easily gen up a
> C program which did your CGI duties with vastly higher efficiency
> (n.b.: assuming you didn't badly screw up in string management).

Why would you write ten or a hundred times as much code to solve your
problem? Early CGIs tended to be small and simple so Perl's
maintainability was not that big of an issue.

> >cross-platform general-purpose rapid application development. Moore's
> >law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant....
> 
> While I actually agree with this sentiment, note well that in compile-
> time type checking communities, the primary argument in favor is
> compile-time error checking, not speed. The speed argument is
> actually close to dead, because a good optimizing jit VM can
> achieve speeds nearly equivalent to C within about a factor of 2
> much of the time, even without declared type information.

I agree. But the type check argument is abstract and therefore weaker
than the performance algorithm. If someone asked me if they could write
a commercially competitive relational database in Python I would have to
say: "No." If they asked me "could you build a large system in Python" I
would at least have a chance of convincing them.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 18 16:14:55 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:14:55 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de> <PTg57.32687$d4.1085713@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4ntg$m8l0k$1@fu-berlin.de> <JCl57.22558$PF1.1107141@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9j4qns$lu982$1@fu-berlin.de>

Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> You might find you need to examine the HTTP response headers and access
> another page. I think that httplib does that for you, but you will have to
> code it yourself with asyncore. Here's a trace from a proxy trying to
access
> that page on my browser's behalf. Did I get anything wrong? I cam
certainly
> access the page in IE. In this case the server might not have liked the
> apparently-spoofed "Host:" header which the proxy just dumbly echoes out.
>

Hhmm, I don't know. I'll ask our sys-admin. Perhaps she knows...

Thanks a lot, Matthias




From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 24 13:43:17 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:43:17 GMT
Subject: FYI: PEP 5 Verbatim
Message-ID: <3b5db288.309948953@wa.news.verio.net>

[home] [index] [PEP source] 

     PEP:
          5
    Title:
          Guidelines for Language Evolution
 Version:
          $Revision: 1.1 $
  Author:
          paul at prescod.net (Paul Prescod)
   Status:
          Active
    Type:
          Informational
 Created:
          26-Oct-2000



Abstract

    In the natural evolution of programming languages it is sometimes
    necessary to make changes that modify the behavior of older
    programs.  This PEP proposes a policy for implementing these
    changes in a manner respectful of the installed base of Python
    users.



Implementation Details

    Implementation of this PEP requires the addition of a formal
    warning and deprecation facility that will be described in another
    proposal.



Scope

    These guidelines apply to future versions of Python that introduce
    backward-incompatible behavior.  Backward incompatible behavior is
    a major deviation in Python interpretation from an earlier
    behavior described in the standard Python documentation.  Removal
    of a feature also constitutes a change of behavior.

    This PEP does not replace or preclude other compatibility
    strategies such as dynamic loading of backwards-compatible
    parsers.  On the other hand, if execution of "old code" requires a
    special switch or pragma then that is indeed a change of behavior
    from the point of view of the user and that change should be
    implemented according to these guidelines.

    In general, common sense must prevail in the implementation of
    these guidelines.  For instance changing "sys.copyright" does not
    constitute a backwards-incompatible change of behavior!



Steps For Introducing Backwards-Incompatible Features

    1. Propose backwards-incompatible behavior in a PEP.  The PEP must
       include a section on backwards compatibility that describes in
       detail a plan to complete the remainder of these steps.

    2. Once the PEP is accepted as a productive direction, implement
       an alternate way to accomplish the task previously provided by
       the feature that is being removed or changed.  For instance if
       the addition operator were scheduled for removal, a new version
       of Python could implement an "add()" built-in function.

    3. Formally deprecate the obsolete construct in the Python
       documentation.

    4. Add an an optional warning mode to the parser that will inform
       users when the deprecated construct is used.  In other words,
       all programs that will behave differently in the future must
       trigger warnings in this mode.  Compile-time warnings are
       preferable to runtime warnings.  The warning messages should
       steer people from the deprecated construct to the alternative
       construct.

    5. There must be at least a one-year transition period between the
       release of the transitional version of Python and the release
       of the backwards incompatible version.  Users will have at
       least a year to test their programs and migrate them from use
       of the deprecated construct to the alternative one.





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 08:09:44 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:09:44 -0400
Subject: COM: VB client, Python server: NULL result ...
References: <q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B521442.1080103@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <mOA47.1406$sx2.94294@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Mark Hammond" <MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:3B521442.1080103 at ActiveState.com...
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
> > On three separate systems I am experiencing the same problem trying to
> > create an Python COM object from VB. The VB satetement
> >
> >     Set obj = CreateObject("Python.Dictionary")
> >
> > (or any other Python COM object) gives the dreaded error 80004005, with
the
> > message:
> >
> >     Unexpected Python Error: exceptions.SystemError: NULL result without
> > error in call_object
>
>
> If you are using a debug COM object, it may be a bug in win32trace.pyd -
> this has been fixed in the latest ActivePython and win32all.  Creating
> Python.Dictionary from WSH works fine for me.
>
> Mark.

Thanks, Mark -- hopes you might be lurking. I was indeed using debugging: I
thought it would help! I'll try updating the win32 and see if this fixes
things.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 11:16:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:16:34 +0200
Subject: modifying sys.path on win98...?
References: <3b40d94c.3665104@news.mailops.com>
Message-ID: <9hsnkk02cj7@enews1.newsguy.com>

"chajadan" <me at charliedaniels.com-1.net> wrote in message
news:3b40d94c.3665104 at news.mailops.com...
> I'm trying to update the sys.path for python on win98...
>
> I altered the registry, under local machine, seemingly correct. But
> when I access the sys.path to check it, my alterations don't show,
> even after rebooting.
>
> I can use sys.path.append, but the change only lasts until I close
> python. Then it reverts back to its original state.
>
> How do I make the alteration 'permanent' ?

You can write in PYTHONHOME (typically C:\Python21 on a Win98
installation of Python 2.1) a textfile with an arbitrary name
and extension .pth.  Such files are read and processed by
site.py on every run of Python (except when the run uses a
-S to explicitly bypass site installation, but then all bets
are off:-).  Blank lines, and lines starting with #, are
skipped.  Lines starting with import are executed.  All other
lines are added to sys.path, one directory per such line,
if the directory that a line names does actually exist.

So, to "permanently" add, say, directory "C:/Blippo" to your
sys.path, one simple way is (Python 2.1):

    import sys, os.path, time
    pth_file = open(os.path.join(sys.prefix, "Blippo.Pth"), w)
    pth_file.write("# created by AddBlippo.py on %s\n" %
        time.asctime())
    pth_file.write("C:/Blippo\n")
    pth_file.close()

assuming you want to do it in a Python script -- you can
also perfectly well do it with a text editor, of course:-).

After site.py has finished preparing sys.path, it also
tries to import sitecustomize.py, so, if you need to,
you can further tweak the path at this point.  E.g.,
directories added by .pth files tend to go at the END
of sys.path -- if you need to have C:/Blippo right at
the START of the path (because it must shadow and hide
other directories on the path), you'd better see to it
in sitecustomize.py (or other custom script import'ed
from a .pth file, of course).

I think this is decently well documented in the library
reference (under module site).


Alex





From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 12 19:48:38 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 09:48:38 +1000
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.994221787.10379.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <864rsh4skp.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> Maybe PyCAN ;-)
> (C for components)

As in PyCAN pie?


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 19 14:06:02 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 11:06:02 -0700
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com> <mailman.995526636.21726.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107191006.28da887e@posting.google.com>

Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995526636.21726.python-list at python.org>...
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 11:58:43AM -0700, Tom Good wrote:
> > Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995459
> 309.19355.python-list at python.org>...
> 

[snip]

> 
> Yes I know that, but that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is why i
> n
> 
> >>> raise ("a","b")
> 
> the "b" disappears? IMO that's a pretty weird behaviour. Yes anybody usin
> g
> non-class exceptions derived from Exception in a real-world program are
> insane, but this is a puristic thing of mine. :-)
> 
> Martin

I agree, it is kind of weird, and I don't know why it works that way. 
I would probably expect trying to raise a tuple to generate an error.


Tom


From Patrick.Bothe at ePost.de  Tue Jul  3 08:10:25 2001
From: Patrick.Bothe at ePost.de (Patrick Bothe)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 14:10:25 +0200
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <87d77iw6vi.fsf@gabriel.heim6.tu-clausthal.de>

Hi,

>  However, you're not going to do any modern, graphics intensive
> game completely in Python.
Hmm ... 
I do not know how much of "Severance - Blade of Darkness -" 
is written in Python, but I think this game is a good 
argument against your statement.
And where's the difference between using C++ 
and for example OpenGl (or any other powerful toolkit)  and 
Python and OpenGl?
I think i did not get the point. 

bye,
    Patrick


-- 
Der Kopf ist rund,                                   (_ )
damit das Denken die Richtung ?ndern kann.        \\\@@ ) ^
                                                    \/, \(
[Francis Picabia]                                   cXc_/_)


From arthur.haas at westgeo.com  Fri Jul 20 09:58:14 2001
From: arthur.haas at westgeo.com (Art Haas)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 08:58:14 -0500
Subject: Large File Support
References: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <lru207zoqx.fsf@haasart1.dhcp.wg.waii.com>

"Rod MacNeil" <rmacneil at interactdirect.com> writes:

> Hello NG,
> 
> I need to build Python to include large file support on Redhat Linux 7.1.
> 
> I tried the following instructions from section 8.1.1 in the Python docs but
> it doesn't work:
> 
>     On large-file-capable Linux systems, this might work:
> 
> 
> CC="-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> export CC
> ./configure
> 
> 
> I think this fails because the variable CC is expected to have the compiler
> name (gcc).
> 
> Does anyone have any alternative instructions?
> 

Don't set `CC', set `CFLAGS' ...

$ CFLAGS="-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
$ export CFLAGS
$ ./configure
...

You'll probably have to go in and edit the Makefile, to set these same
flags for the `OPT' variable as well. Or, when you run `configure',
you could ...

$ ./configure OPT="-O2 ${CFLAGS}"

... and things should work. If you want to have debug info in the
compiled program, add a `-g' to the OPT variable. Check the makefile
when configure finishes to ensure that the largefile flags are in the
OPT variable.

-- 
###############################
# Art Haas
# (713) 689-2417
###############################


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 07:41:53 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:41:53 -0500
Subject: Emacs and ecb with python
In-Reply-To: <87d76r2bej.fsf@frop.house-net>
References: <slrn9lh21d.ls.stefan.heimann@honk.ratzer>
        <87d76r2bej.fsf@frop.house-net>
Message-ID: <15197.24321.885588.437830@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> Hi!  Has anyone a patch to use the emacs code browser with python?

    Eric> look for oobrowser on sourceforge. it claims to do python.

Make that oo-browser and you get a cigar:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/oo-browser/

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 22:27:17 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:27:17 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org>
 <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com>
 <5lh$OIA2rxR7Ewou@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B47256F.72FE6CD0@engcorp.com>
 <g3+Z6LALyzR7Ewqz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <cp1ynsk324.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <GYdgBLAFU8R7EwdF@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <cp1ynsk324.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
>Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
...
>> 
>> For 250 documents to exist there have to be too many cooks for smooth
>> development as many organisational studies suggest that best team sizes
>> are between 3 and 7.
>
>Don't jump to conclusions too fast!  PEPs aren't numbered
>consecutively.  There are only about 75 PEPs.  Roughly half of those
>are historical documents (already implemented or rejected), some are
>meta-documents (numbers below 100).  The number under consideration is
>theoretically about 25; in practice, half of those will never make it.
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
so is this like version number or report number inflation? Or perhaps
something more sinister with integer arithmetic :)
-- 
Robin Becker


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 11:35:02 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:35:02 GMT
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996211014.7234.python-list@python.org> <3B6109E3.624BE2B0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cppuam2xnr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> That is my point, though.  These integer optimizations are, as we 
> agree, a clear win.  Are these optimizations in danger of being impacted
> as a result of this unification, or will we still be able to count 
> on integer performance being significantly better than that of
> less frequently used types.

What Tim was trying to say was that under the covers we will still use
different representations so this kind of optimization will still be
possible.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Fri Jul 13 00:13:50 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 06:13:50 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksrdc.sa.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:34:46 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Thanks for your continued help...  I'm hitting a wall:  I've compiled MySQLdb
>(on python 1.5.2) -- I believe that's what my ISP's using, and I have the
>files I (think I) need:
>
>_mysql.so
>_mysql_exceptions.py(c)
>MySQLdb
>  - lots of files, and 'constants' within.
>
>I've copied these three files, plus the MySQLdb directory to the
>cgi-bin directory on the host.  I placed a simple python script in the
>cgi-bin directory that just has:
>
>#!/usr/contrib/bin/python  (the python path)
>import MySQLdb
>print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n" (so the browser doesn't choke).

Should be ok so far.

>I get a server 500 message, and checking the error_log file, I get:
>
>Traceback (innermost last):
>  File "test.cgi", line 4, in ?
>    import MySQLdb
>  File "MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 27, in ?
>    import _mysql
>ImportError: File not found
>[Thu Jul 12 17:25:48 2001] [error] [client 206.47.244.60] Premature
>end of script headers: /usr/home/v1/a0005722/html/cgi-bin/test.cgi

It looks suspiciously like a problem with file permissions. You should check
that _mysql.so has read and execute permissions for "others". Taking away both
I could reproduce the above error message.

In fact, any files in the cgi-bin directory need to be readable by others,
because the webserver usually does run under a different user and group id.

>I've placed a copy of _mysql.so in both the root cgi-bin directory,
>and into the MySQLdb directory (since __init__.py is located there).
>But no luck!  I looked for a _mysql file (without the .so), but could
>not find one.

That's not the problem. The file is really called _mysql.so and only needs to
be in the cgi-bin directory.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From hard2bsome1 at yahoo.com.au  Thu Jul 19 05:23:43 2001
From: hard2bsome1 at yahoo.com.au (Patrick W.)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 19:23:43 +1000
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost>

"Greg Jorgensen" <gregj at pdxperts.com> writes:

> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:9j4af20d2o at enews4.newsguy.com...
> 
> > Perl and Python ruled the roost in Prechelt's tests (from the POV
> > of development speed), indistinguishable from each other.  C and C++
> > made the fastest executables on average.  Java was bad on both
> > scores -- very slow programs taking a long time to develop.  Other
> > scripting languages (Tcl, Rexx) gave intermediate development times
> > but extremely slow results.  Somebody else claims to have rerun the
> > same experiment with Common Lisp, getting runtimes competitive with
> > C and C++ and development speed competitive with Perl and Python.
> >
> > We could definitely do with more such tests...!!!

There are links to Erann Gat's follow-up study at:

http://www.norvig.com/java-lisp.html

> With all respect, why? [...]

To get a better understanding of which languages it benefits us to
learn and teach. Also to get a better understanding of which languages
are best used in the "real world", given a set of tradeoffs between
development time and program performance.

Sounds reasonable enough to me.











From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul 12 15:52:29 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:52:29 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: 'import' error in csh
In-Reply-To: <1Hk37.2714$yb3.51907@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107122351390.1375-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Steve Holden wrote:
> But, preferably:
>
> #!/usr/bin/env python

   You cannot pass parameters this way. For example, you cannot write

#!/usr/bin/env python -O

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 09:32:03 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:32:03 +0100 
Subject: FTP client module
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE03@intrepid>

> From:	Kemp Randy-W18971 [SMTP:Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com]
> Does Python have an FTP client module, like FTP::Net, which is part of
> libnet on www.cpan.com for Perl?  If so, is it part of the core Python
> package, or do I have to download it?  If I need to get it, what is the
> website?
 
ftplib is part of the Python Standard Library - see
<http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-ftplib.html> for details.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk
 




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 02:29:57 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 06:29:57 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net>
Message-ID: <3b62459e.609746999@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:27:44 -0700, Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
[...]
>so if I want to use the result as an index, I'll need to use:
>
>int(x/y)
>
>kind of like I now use:
>
>int(floor(x/y))
>
>What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an integer always? It will
>always have an integral value. I suppose one problem is that the range
>of integers that a float (C double) can handle is larger than a 32 bit
>integer can hold. This could be solved in the future with int/long
>inification, what will be the behaviour then?
>
I think it has to do with being consistent with the idea of using the
representation type as an indicator of exactness.

Using that idea, float is a visible name and means inexact,
and int and long are visible and mean exact.

Floor can't turn inexact to exact, so it must return inexact (i.e., float)
if it gets an inexact (i.e., float) input.

int(x) will effectively be an exactness coercion because of the
representation-type linkage.

If Dr Who takes us forward a bit, and we have no floats or ints, but just
exact and approximate numbers, with exact being integers or rationals, and
approximate being approximate[1], then you would have to translate your statement
to "What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an exact number always?"

[1] Approximate numbers will undoubtedly be implemented as floats, but hiding
that will let people think about aspects of approximation instead of the hardware
below. And if someone came up with a new approximate number representation for
special situations, e.g., an alternate rational with bounded numerator/denominator
values, it could be implemented without changing the language.  The point is you
need to know the effectiveness of the approximation for your purposes, not what
representation tricks they have come up with for the latest version of Python.
Take us back, Dr Who.

If the current numeric literal formats persist, as I think they must, then I
think the old formats for float should not automatically become formats for
approximate.

All the numbers you can reasonably enter as literals can be represented
exactly, so why not break the 1.0 -> float-hence-inexact chain, and let 1.0 and 1
signify the same thing? Driving the internal representation with a decimal point
is arms-length C programming, not Python, IMHO.

Evaluating some expressions will result in approximations, but not all the time.
Inputs can be exact all the time. Including 0.1 and 1/3, after number unification.
(0.1 just becomes 1/10).


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Fri Jul 13 11:31:21 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:31:21 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <u7ae28eth2.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> writes:

> f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)

> Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?

It is like using nameless intermediary results.

You might expand your code into

aux = lambda x,y: x*y
f = reduce(aux,n)

and then replace my first line with the equivalent pair of lines

def aux(x,y):
    return x*y

The whole thing is similar to writing

f = a*b*c

instead of

aux = a*b
f = aux*c

, just with other types (functions instead of numbers).

Ralf


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 03:53:20 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 02:53:20 -0500
Subject: Help parsing XML
Message-ID: <15168.10352.110362.156821@beluga.mojam.com>

Warning: I am a complete XML novice trying to parse some XML I dreamed up
with xml.sax.parse.

I wrote a simple subclass of xml.sax.ContentHandler to parse some XML.  It
defines startElement, endElement and characters methods.  If I feed it
something simple like so:

    <events>
      <event>
	<performers>
	  <performer>James Taylor</performer>
	  <performer>Carly Simon</performer>
	</performers>
	<keywords>
	  <keyword>pop</keyword>
	  <keyword>rock</keyword>
	  <keyword>vocals</keyword>
	</keywords>
	<start-date>20010701T20:00</start-date>
	<end-date>20010701T23:00</end-date>
	<admission-price>$30</admission-price>
	<venue-name>Pepsi Arena</venue-name>
	<city>Albany</city>
	<state>CA</state>
	<country>US</country>
	<submitter-name>Skip Montanaro</submitter-name>
	<submitter-email>skip at mojam.com</submitter-email>
      </event>
    </events>

it works fine.  However, note the absence of <!DOCTYPE ...> and <?xml ...>
tags at the start.  If I add them at the start of the XML file like so:

    <!DOCTYPE events SYSTEM "xml-concerts.dtd">
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding-"ISO-8859-1"?>
    <events>
      <event>
      ...

Python squawks:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "parsexml.py", line 72, in ?
	xml.sax.parse("concert.xml", h)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/__init__.py", line 33, in parse
	parser.parse(source)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 43, in parse
	xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 123, in parse
	self.feed(buffer)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 92, in feed
	self._err_handler.fatalError(exc)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/handler.py", line 38, in fatalError
	raise exception
    xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: concert.xml:2:0: xml processing instruction not at start of external entity

If I zap the <!DOCTYPE ...> tag I get this:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "parsexml.py", line 72, in ?
	xml.sax.parse("concert.xml", h)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/__init__.py", line 33, in parse
	parser.parse(source)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 43, in parse
	xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 123, in parse
	self.feed(buffer)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 92, in feed
	self._err_handler.fatalError(exc)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/sax/handler.py", line 38, in fatalError
	raise exception
    xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: concert.xml:1:41: syntax error

If you're wondering what sort of XML I'm trying to parse, my first cut at a
DTD (I'm a complete novice at DTD writing as well) is at

    http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/concerts.dtd

I suspect this is more a problem with my lack of XML expertise than with
anything specific I'm doing wrong with my content handler.  Suggestions or
pointers to appropriate XML tutorial material would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 06:35:21 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:21 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
news:3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB at westerngeco.com: 

> I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
> I want to replace the common prefix of a list of file names
> with a relative stub (./) I have this...
> 
>     def _removePrefix(self, fullfile):
>         print r'%s' %fullfile
Why are you using a raw string here? And why format it at all?
Either:
    	print "%s" % fullfile
or
    	print fullfile
will have the same effect.

>filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
Again the r prefix on each of the "%s" format strings does nothing, and in 
every case formatting a using a format of '%s' does nothing except to 
convert the value to a string if it wasn't already a string.
So this line is equivalent to:
   filename=re.sub(self.prefix, os.sep, fullfile)

If you want to use arbitrary strings in regular expressions, the best thing 
is to escape them using re.escape:
   filename=re.sub(re.escape(self.prefix), os.sep, fullfile)
but since your regular expression is actually a constant string, why use 
regular expressions at all? This is equivalent:
   filename=fullfile.replace(self.prefix, os.sep)

I think you maybe misunderstand what raw strings do. Raw strings simply 
prevent any backslash character that is present in the string from being 
interpreted as an escape sequence. They don't affect the processing or use 
of the string in any way. Since none of your literal strings contain 
backslashes there is no reason to use raw strings.
In regular expressions backslashes are special, but so are many other 
characters that could appear in filenames, even on Unix.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From dek at cgl.ucsf.edu  Fri Jul 20 01:56:23 2001
From: dek at cgl.ucsf.edu (David Konerding)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 05:56:23 GMT
Subject: python 2.1.1 trouble with addsitedir
Message-ID: <slrn9lfi07.5n69.dek@socrates.cgl.ucsf.edu>

Hi, I am checking my application's compatibility wiht 2.1.1 and I've
run into a snag.  We use "site.addsitedir" to add a directory to the
loading path.

As an example, the following works just fine on Python-2.1:

[dek at tolkien dek]$ python
Python 2.1 (#2, Jul 19 2001, 20:48:59) 
[GCC 2.95.3 20010315 (release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import site
>>> site.addsitedir("/tmp")
>>> 


but running it with 2.1.1 gives the following:

[dek at tolkien Python-2.1.1c1]$ /var/tmp/python/bin/python
Python 2.1.1c1 (#1, Jul 19 2001, 22:49:25) 
[GCC 2.95.3 20010315 (release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import site
>>> site.addsitedir("/tmp")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/var/tmp/python/lib/python2.1/site.py", line 100, in addsitedir
    if not dirs_in_sys_path.has_key(sitedircase):
NameError: global name 'dirs_in_sys_path' is not defined

Did some sort of change occur to how global variables behave?
dirs_in_sys_path is defined as a dictionary earlier in the file.

Dave


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 18:49:34 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:49:34 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994126144.24483.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hti5u$fhn$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994126144.24483.python-list at python.org...

> It scales linearly with the number of planes.

> What I meant is that for each airplane, he needs to calculate the
> distance to every other airplanes; that's O(N^2).  ;-)

I can see you're not very experienced in the field of computational
geometry ;)

Alex's point was (i assume) that this _isn't_ necessary. I guess it
would be hard to get below Omega(n*log(n)) preprocessing (sorting),
though.

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From mertz at gnosis.cx  Tue Jul 17 20:09:05 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:09:05 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
Message-ID: <hONV7kKkXAWG092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

|Nevertheless, I want to make the clear point (if I haven't already)
|that I'm not suggesting screwing every such programmer... just
|those who are actively using code which would be broken, who will
|not take the time (however small we might make it) to modify the
|source, and yet who "must" have their code work under the new Python.

Here's a scenario:

I--one of those professional programmers--write a Python script for
someone who runs a business, or a non-profit, or an agency, to run on
their CGI webserver.  This client knows not the first thing about Python
or about programming, nor do they maintain the webserver, just rent
space on it.  But still, this script does something useful for users of
the website--order products, or request documents, or send data to a
database.

I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in the future
:-)).  Client's scripts break.

--
---[ to our friends at TLAs (spread the word) ]--------------------------
Echelon North Korea Nazi cracking spy smuggle Columbia fissionable Stego
White Water strategic Clinton Delta Force militia TEMPEST Libya Mossad
---[ Postmodern Enterprises <mertz at gnosis.cx> ]--------------------------




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 10:58:36 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:58:36 -0500 
Subject: Calculus
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51EA@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Wait a minute!  Wasn't Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz one of the founders of Calculus?  And wasn't he also a philosopher, who with his world of monads, said that this is the best of all possible worlds?  And didn't the gentlemen direct his question to the Python group?  In essence, he is following the philosophy of Leibniz.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sheila King [mailto:sheila at spamcop.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 9:05 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Calculus


On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:55:32 -0400 (EDT), Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.994164981.2922.python-list at python.org>:

:I wrote:
:>Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.
:
:Sheila King wrote:
:>What are you talking about? Do you mean a newsgroup for 
:>discussing calculus?
:
:No. I probably was too brief. I meant a module for Python 
:that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example, 
:the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find 
:the error. Sorry for the confusion.

Oh, shoot, I canceled that message, about two minutes after I posted it.
I see it made it to the mailing list half of this group, though. :(

I forgot what newsgroup I was reading when I posted that. (I thought I
was in a completely different hierarchy, not even comp.* )

Sorry for my stupid message!

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 21:09:52 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:09:52 +0100
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.994727597.27647.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kn9r0.l0d.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

rOn Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:12:17 -0400, Barry A. Warsaw <barry at digicool.com> wrote:
>
>>>>>> "ph" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>
>    ph> I am currently writing a program that reads emails, modifies
>    ph> them in various ways (adding headers, encryption, etc) and
>    ph> outputs the result.
>
>This actually sound like a good fit for mimelib, which is arguably
>misnamed (perhaps it should be called maillib?).

My encryption system won't really know about mime; it'll encrypt
the whole body of the email, regardless of whether it contains mime
attachments or not. (It'll also remove and put encrypted into
the body several headers that says things about the email's
content such as Subject: and whatever headers Mime uses).

>    ph> As part of this program, I'm writing a mail module that (when
>    ph> finished) could be hacked into a replacement for rfc822.
>    ph> rfc822's functionality is to read mail headers and allow
>    ph> interrogation of their values easily. My module is
>    ph> conceptually on a higher level; containing a MailHeader class
>    ph> which can be used to write as well as read ascii
>    ph> representations of email, and a Mail class that includes the
>    ph> header and the body; again for composition as well as reading
>    ph> emails. (for now, it uses rfc822 to parse incoming headsers).
>
>mimelib uses rfc822 for some functionality, but it has its own Parser
>and Generator class (to go from plaintext -> object tree ->
>plaintext).  It uses rfc822 for some parts of the implementation, such
>as parsing addresses and realnames out of strings (so it's vulnerable
>to the RFC 2822 updates as well).
>
>    ph> When it is written, perhaps it could be considered for
>    ph> eventual inclusion in the standard library (I say eventually,
>    ph> because IMO it'll take me a few attempts to get the API
>    ph> exactly right)
>
>That's the hard part, all right!

Indeed.

>    ph> My module doesn't know anything about Mime; which is good
>    ph> because IMO there is room for a library that is higher-level
>    ph> than rfc822 but lower levelb than knowing about Mime.
>
>    ph> What is the process of getting a module in the standard
>    ph> library?
>
>Post the code. :)  I definitely want to look at what you've got, to
>see how well (or if) it fits with mimelib. 

At the moment it's just a class for reading/writing mail headers:


#---------------------------------------------------------------------

"""***
The MailHeader class stores headers for a rfc822 email message

Creation:
~~~~~~~~~
readFromFileHandle(fh)
readFromString(str)
   read the header lines from a file or string
 
Accessing:
~~~~~~~~~~
getheader(name, default)
get(name, default)
   These do the same thing: return the value of a header line.
   if no (default) is specified and the line doesn't exist, 
   returns none.

put(name, value)
   Sets the value of header-line (name) to (value).

Writing output
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
__str__()
asString()
   These do the same thing: Output all the header-lines as a 
   string

Instance variables:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
self.h = dictionary containing header lines. If there are >1
   lines with a particular header, the value will be a list of all
   the lines, in the order they appeared

self.mess = an instance of rfc822.Message, used internally to
   decode the header messages
***"""



class MailHeader:

   def __init__(self):  
      self.h = {}
   
   def readFromFileHandle(self, fh):
      # get a message object for parsing:
      self.mess = rfc822.Message(fh)
      headerNames = self.mess.keys()
      for hn in headerNames:
         hValue = self.mess.getheader(hn)
         self.putAppend(hn, hValue)
           
   def readFromString(self, str):      
      stringToFileWrapper = StringIO.StringIO(str)
      self.readFromFileHandle(stringToFileWrapper)
      stringToFileWrapper.close()
   
   def getheader(self, name, default =None):
      return self.get(name, default)  
      
   def get(self, name, default =None):
      try:
         value = self.h[name]
         return value
      except:
         # couldn't return a value, use default
         return default
   
   def put(self, name, value):
      self.h[name] = value
      
   def putAppend(self, name, value):
      if self.h.has_key(name):
         v = self.h[name]
         if type(v)==type([]):
            print "@@@ self.h[%s] was %s @@@" % (name,self.h[name])
            v.append(value)
            print "@@@ self.h[%s] is %s @@@" % (name,self.h[name])
            # not sure if we need to add anything here???
         else:
            # it's a string, change to a list:
            self.h[name] = [self.h[name], value] 
      else:
         self.h[name] = value
   
   def __str__(self):                               
      return self.asString()

   def asString(self):
      result = ""
      for name, value in self.h.items():
         if type(value)==type([]):
            for v in value:
               result = result + name + ": " \
                  + self._valueMultiline(v) + "\n"
         else:
            result = result + name + ": " \
               + self._valueMultiline(value) + "\n"
      return result
            
   def _valueMultiline(self, v):
      """*** 
      if (v) has more than one line, ensure that lines
      after the first one begin with a space
      ***"""
      sa = string.split(v, '\n')
      for i in range(len(sa)):
         if i == 0: continue
         if not utility.startsWith(sa[i], " "):
            sa[i] = " " + sa[i]
      v = string.join(sa, '\n')    
      return v
   
   
#---------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm also thinking of adding a Mail class that'll
contain 2 instance variables, (header) for the header (a MailHeader)
and (body) (a string) for the body.

There would be a Mail.__str__() method to render the whole thing to
ascii.

There would also be getBody() and setBody() methods.

This class wouldn't understand Mime, but a subclass, MimeMail, could
be written that would. Presumably MimeMail.setBody() would throw an
exception as this wouldn't be the recomended way of adding mime 
components.

Also I think that it would be nice is these classes could be used effectively
with Usenet messages, interfacing to the low level nntplib library.

> IMO, if we're going aim at
>replacing rfc822.py and all the various and sundry MIME attempts, we
>ought to do it right, and simplify the choices end-users have to make
>in order to manipulate email messages.

I agree.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:38:48 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:38:48 GMT
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <200107071818.f67II2g18846@odiug.digicool.com> <mailman.994532292.9464.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cphewnionr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes:

> Perhaps it's too inconsistent, but I see no reason why longs can't
> continue returning "normal" results forever.  When you use a long
> you know what you are doing, or at least think you do; so you should
> expect integer division results just as always.

Well, but there's another proposal (that taken by itself would have
few detractors) to blur the distinction between int and long.  This
would do away with the whole OverflowError problem: int calculations
whose result doesn't fit in an int would simply and silently return a
long instead.

This is PEP 237.  I don't expect that this will be added to Python 2.2
because there are lots of little details that need to be taken care
of, and backwards incompatibilities (e.g. 1<<100 currently yields 0,
but 1L<<100 is the same as 2L**100).

But given that that is likely to be the way of the future, it seems
best to treat int and long division the same way.

> What does it buy us to break longs as well as ints?
> 
> Overall I am in favor of *eventually* automatically promoting ints to float
> when division is attempted, and likewise converting longs to floats when
> dividing one by the other, but I really think we gain nothing by changing
> the semantics of division of longs.

This is inconsistent.  You are saying that you think we gain nothing
from something (long division) that you want to change anyway.

> I would also say that, when longs and ints are divided together, you should
> probably promote the int to a long rather than performing float division.

You're thinking of it the wrong way.  The operands are first converted
to the same type according to specific rules; then that type is asked
to perform the operation.  So what you are requesting here is already
decided, by the existing rule that says that in "int/long", the int is
converted to long before the operation takes place.

> I really don't think a newbie will appreciate
> 
>     >>> 1 / 2
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>     IntDivisionError: integer division is invalid
> 
> any more than they currently understand
> 
>     >>> 1 / 2
>     0

Good point.  So we should switch directly from 1/2 -> 0 to 1/2 ->
0.5.  But it's unavoidable that they will get a warning in some
versions...  e.g.

    >>> 1 / 2
    __main__:1: DeprecationWarning: integer division semantics will change;
    use x div y to force integer result or float(x)/y to force float result
    0
    >>> 


--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 07:40:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:40:11 -0400
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <%7i07.25728$he.1340574@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
>
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
>
> Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
>
> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
>
> Anybody that tried both languages ?
>
> How do they compare ?

You're lucky you didn't read a book that told you jumping in the river was a
good thing, otherwise you'd be pretty wet by now...

Seriously. You have to use your own judgment on these matters. Clearly there
are things "wrong" with every programming language. It's a matter of which
suits your purposes best.

Alternatively: "Yes, Eiffel is much better than anything else. Especially
for air traffic control systems" :-)

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de  Mon Jul  9 17:30:13 2001
From: Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de (Lutz Schroeer)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 21:30:13 GMT
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D9EF22CC848Latzikatz@139.174.2.56>

"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> wrote in
news:9id5p9$8r62 at interserv.etn.com: 

> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first
> line, and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please
> point me in the right direction?  Thanks!

* open source file, 'r'
* open temporary destination file, 'w'
* read first line of source file, throw it away
* read remaining source file lines and write them to destination file
* delete source file
* rename destination file to old source file name

There are several variations of implementation but this raodmap should guide 
you to the right direction.

latz


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  9 16:43:27 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:43:27 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>	<458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>	<TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>	<7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A176F.6C3D57C2@ActiveState.com>

> > From what I can tell, PHP and Ruby
> > are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that I see
> > in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
> > adoration for pure acedemic elegance.

I think even the Ruby people would be surprised to hear about Edward's
statistics about it flying past Python!

I've decided to flame Edward offlist because it becomes increasingly
difficult to take him seriously.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 14:36:19 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:36:19 -0700
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <0bj77.544176$eK2.114166570@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F11A3.A3D8C420@home.net>

Nick Perkins wrote:

> You don't have to use a custom compare sort.
> You can get what you want by creating a temp list, consisting of 'decorated'
> values, and sorting that list.  These are actually tuples whose second
> element is the real data, and the first element is a copy of the field that
> you want to sort by.  (or a computed value, if you want)

Note that this will only work if all the items in your list are
sortable, not just the one you actually want to sort by, which is often,
but not always, the case.

Building your own compare function can get around this.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Fri Jul 20 09:25:34 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 06:25:34 -0700
Subject: AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107200525.64189e36@posting.google.com>

Hi

I have the following code :

from Tkinter import *
import Image, ImageTk

class UI(Label):

    def __init__(self, master=None):
        
        im = Image.open('c:\\tm.gif')
        self.image = ImageTk.PhotoImage(im)
        Label.__init__(self, master, image=self.image, bd=0)

    def getSetupValues():
            return {'Name': 'Phillip'}

if __name__ == "__main__":
    
    root = Tk()
    root.geometry('800x600')
    root.title('Malaysian Web Site Installation')
    ui = UI(root).pack()
    root.leftFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
    root.rightFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
    setup = ui.getSetupValues()
    for eachKey in root.setup.keys():
        Label(root.leftFrame, text=eachKey, bg='gray50',
anchor=E).pack()
        Label(root.rightFrame, text=setup[eachKey], bg='gray50',
anchor=E).pack()
    root.rightFrame.pack(side=RIGHT)
    root.rightFrame.pack_propagate(0)
    root.leftFrame.pack(side=LEFT)
    root.leftFrame.pack_propagate(0)
    root.mainloop()

Everything is fine if i put the function in the __init__ function,
which is not a good idea, I want to keep the code compartmentilized
nicely.

any ideas?

Phill


From tksee at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 13:36:40 2001
From: tksee at yahoo.com (Tksee Lhsoh)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 02:36:40 +0900
Subject: Unicode File
References: <3B66179D.1D55B27C@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B66ECA8.60313BD0@yahoo.com>

Thanks Alex and Margin !

And I have one question.

How do you know the encoding of a file ?

Is it specific to the application which generated the file?


> I recommend to use codecs.open. You'll need to specify the encoding,
> e.g.
>
> s = codecs.open("unicode_filename",encoding="ucs-2").read()
>



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 14:30:57 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:30:57 +0100
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>	<458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>	<TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>	<7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <5bgjlt4d4psovucjusr93r7mfump3tcch3@4ax.com>

On 9 Jul 2001 12:09:23 -0700, web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) wrote:

>Languages never die; they just fall out of use when they loose touch
>with the contemporary.  Python will become more or less mainstream
>(live or die) on it's own merits.
>
>A scripting language should be good at scripting.  From my
>observation, Python appears to be headed in more of an acedemic
>direction rather than that of mainstream commerce.  Acedemics are
>good, it's where technology comes from.  Unfortunately, I still
>haven't found a way to make money using Python.  If I can't make money
>with Python, then Python is dead to me.  I would imagine my voice
>represents a small crowd of developers, who wish they too could make
>money with and contribute to Python on a daily basis (on company
>time).

I'm curious - do 'academic' features include such features as...

1.  Nested scopes
2.  List comprehensions
3.  Iterators
4.  Generators

If so, maybe you should be aware that I *do* make money from Python,
and the first two version 2.x features have *already* made that
process much easier and much less of a headache, and my only regret
with iterators and generators is that they didn't come sooner - being
able to write generators would have made a utility I wrote recently -
with its own build-in little-language for the input files - much
easier, as the scanner, parser, *and* executor could all have been
written in a simple imperative style without needing to worry about
preserving state between tokens. The lexical and grammar rules were
too simple to bother with tool generated scanners and parsers -
designing and expressing grammar rules takes time, as does learning
the tools input format - but keeping track of what is, in a sense,
three concurrent threads is a pain.

I'm always seeking out ways to be more effectively lazy in the future.
If any task is awkward, fiddly, repetitive or error-prone, I start
thinking there must be a better way - and looking for it - especially
if that task is one I earn money from. Any paradigm or language
feature that allows me to earn more money with less effort gets my
vote - just the same as any pre-existing library.

Of course, I'm not writing yet another server-side scripted web site.
To have any chance of claiming PHP has greater acceptance than Python
implies this form of tunnel vision where only server-side scripted web
sites have any relevance. I assume more-or-less the same with Ruby,
though in truth I've barely heard of it. I certainly believe that
Pythons greatest strength is as a scripting language, and that it's
suitability for larger applications merely reflects the fact that it
is a *good* scripting language - but it isn't a single purpose
language by any stretch. Scripting doesn't just mean generating web
pages. I don't think the web even existed when Python started out.
Believe it or not, computers were used for a *huge* range of
applications before the web was invented, and those applications have
*not* gone away.



From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 13:04:34 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:04:34 -0400
Subject: New Jersey
In-Reply-To: <9hsmop$fsg3i$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>; from emile@fenx.com on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 07:57:53AM -0700
References: <1b93da20.0107030529.bb6ca89@posting.google.com> <9hsmop$fsg3i$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <20010703130434.E22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 07:57:53AM -0700, Emile van Sebille wrote:
| Post your questions.  You'll likely get a good response here.

True, or check out the tutor list -- it is specifically designed for
new programmers (or new-to-python programmers).

-D




From spahievi at vega.bg  Sat Jul 21 04:15:59 2001
From: spahievi at vega.bg (Niki Spahiev)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:15:59 +0300
Subject: software documentation system?
In-Reply-To: <20010718195348.75599.qmail@web10306.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20010718195348.75599.qmail@web10306.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <123395071.20010721111559@vega.bg>

18.7.2001, 22:53:48, Graham Guttocks wrote:

GG> Greetings,

GG> A Python application of mine is now large enough that I need to get
GG> more serious about writing a real manual for it.  I'm looking for a
GG> documentation system that uses a single source file to produce both
GG> online information and printed output. (PS, HTML, etc.)

GG> Any recommendations?  I work in a UNIX environment and would prefer 
GG> an opensource alternative.  So far I've found GNU texinfo and also
GG> SGMLtools which is written in Python, but am open to other
GG> suggestions.

Look at www.easysw.com for htmldoc. It can make PDF and PS books (with
TOC) form HTML.

-- 
Best regards,
 Niki Spahiev




From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Fri Jul 13 04:59:09 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 11:59:09 +0300
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:

> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
> in perl :-/."

And that's when you reached for your revolver?

I understand why it was your previous job, not current :-). This
brings to my mind the techie Prima donna article referenced in
slashdot a while ago:

http://www.itrecruitermag.com/magazine/display-management101.asp?ContentID=603

I assume it would require quite a "team player" to agree to do
something as revolting as turning a beautiful piece of python to a
heap of line noise.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 17:14:30 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:14:30 +0100
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

David Ullrich wrote:

[someone else:]
>> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the set
>> of reals)?
> 
> Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
> (except in contexts like the present).
> 
> We math guys have reduced more or less everything to sets these
> days - fewer things at the bottom to keep track of. So when we
> want to define a "type" with certain "properties" we figure out
> how to "code" such a thing as a certain sort of set. But almost
> always what set something actually is makes no difference, all
> that matters is how it works.
> 
> Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is the set {{},{{}}}

Tut. You're failing to distinguish interface from implementation.
That's one way to define the number 2, which happens to be the
usual one at the moment. It's not the only way. Frege wanted
2 to be the set of *all* unordered pairs {x,y}, and there are
versions of set theory in which that definition works. In NF,
sometimes 2 is defined as {{{}}}. Or there's the Conway approach,
according to which the primitive notion is that of "ordered
pair of sets" and 2 is an equivalence class whose "typical"
member is ({0,1}, {}).

I'm pretty sure you already know all this, but it's worth
saying explicitly. :-)

> So yes, strictly speaking the integers are not a subset
> of the reals. But nonetheless if someone asks "Are the
> integers a subset of the reals?" the _right_ answer
> is "yes"; the answer becomes "no" only if we're focussing
> on the irrelevant aspects of things.

Right. And, actually, I'd say that the isomorphic image
of (say) Z inside R *is* the integers. For exactly the
reasons you mention, what you really mean when you say
"the integers" is "anything that behaves like the integers".
That copy of Z is such a thing. The fact that for some
foundational purposes you start by constructing another
copy of Z doesn't invalidate that. So, I say: for *all*
purposes "the integers are a subset of the reals", unless
for some technical reason you *have* to pick an implementation
of the integers *and* can't make it be the one that lives
inside R.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 20:39:48 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:39:48 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <e4O67.17873$EP6.4677310@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jt1kk$en4$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <e4O67.17873$EP6.4677310 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>,
Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
>
>Moshe's current proposal cleanly separates the two types: '/' will be
>fractional result and '//' will be integer result (including
>floor(float/float)).  So 8/3 = 8.0/3.0 = 2.33333, while 8//3 = 2 and
>8.0//3.0 = 3.0, which is the same to within type, just as 3+8 ==
>(withing type) 3.0+8.0.  (I am not sure about complex//complex since I
>an not sure if floor(complex) is defined -- floor(x) + floor(y)*j?)
>This is arguably what Python should have started with.

Uh, I think you meant 2.666666667 and 2.0 up there.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 05:53:08 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:53:08 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90E06CD541CC7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote in
news:slrn9l4esk.885.quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu: 

> Ruby allows * notation:
> 
> a, b, *c = sequence # `c' gets the rest of the sequence
> 
> which is cute, but I don't like it.  Just another random "convenient"
> little trick to remember.  It's not half as useful as the 1.6 * apply
> trick.  Let's go easy on the syntax gimmicks.

The Python equivalent to the Ruby trick really isn't that much longer, and 
to my mind has the advantage of showing more clearly the programmer's 
intent:
   (a, b), c = sequence[:2], sequence[2:]

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 13 18:01:15 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:01:15 GMT
Subject: static methods and meta classes
References: <nIJ37.79679$WT.15186091@typhoon.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <LcK37.466754$eK2.97121455@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52304



"Rod Mancisidor" <rmancisidor at austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:nIJ37.79679$WT.15186091 at typhoon.austin.rr.com...
> For reasons that are a bit complicated to explain I have developed a
program
> that passes classes around quite a bit as parameters.  I now need to
> associate methods that can be invoked on the class objects themselves as
> opposed to the instances of the class.  As an example, for a given class:
>
> class Foo:
>     def f(self, param): return param + 1
>
> I need to invoke Foo.f(10).  This obviously won't work given that f is not
a
> static method.  So I thought I could to this:
>
> class MetaFoo:
>     def f(self, param): return param + 1
>
> class Foo:
>     __class__ = MetaFoo
>
> In the hope that python could think of Foo as a class that is also an
> instance of MetaFoo and allow me to invoke:
>
> Foo.f(10)
>
> This does not work.  I wonder why, every other undocumented crazy thing I
> have tried in Python works.  Does anyone know how to trick Python into
> supporting static methods?
>
> If you have a reply and can also send it to rod at mancisidor.com I would
> appreciate it.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>




From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 28 10:37:08 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:37:08 GMT
Subject: (in)exactness of complex numbers
References: <mailman.996249232.22459.python-list@python.org> <cp4rry2qvh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b62cc78.3396597@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:01:36 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
>
>> Once these numeric changes are all implemented, if I define a complex
>> constant with either integer real or imaginary parts, e.g.
>>     
>>     c = 1+2.1j
>> 
>>     d = 1.2+5j
>> 
>>     e = 4+7j
>> 
>> should I get an integer back (exact) or a float (inexact) when asking for an
>> attribute that was originally an integer?  In general, can complex numbers
>> be considered to have two exactness attributes?
>
>That's probably not worth the implementation complexity.  I expect
>that all floats and complex will be considered inexact, and all
>rationals and ints exact.  That seems to be the most practical set of
>rules, even if it doesn't satisfy everybody.

Again, don't get the idea I'm actually saying you should worry about
this. But it looks to me like you've missed the point - at least
it looks to me like you've missed what it seems to me the point is:

If all floats are inexact and ints and rationals are exact fine. 
But why should the real and imag of a complex be required to be 
floats in the first place? Why  shouldn't they be allowed to be 
floats or rationals or integers?

(Of course that would complicate things, which is why I'm not
saying this is how it should be. But I don't think the people
talking about complexes being either exact or not are 
necessarily disputing the idea that ints and rationals should
be exact and floats should be inexact. Surely a vector class
or a matrix class should allow the entries to be of various
types, why shouldn't complexes?)

>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


David C. Ullrich


From donn at u.washington.edu  Tue Jul 10 14:31:28 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 18:31:28 GMT
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>  <mailman.994736537.19096.python-list@python.org>  <994742167.67214@yabetcha.drizzle.com> <mailman.994784546.10619.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ifhm0$jgc$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>:
|
|     Donn> That's cool, but you might be interested to see if tail on your
|     Donn> platform supports a positive index (bet it does):
|
| It works, but with no discernable effect

Dang, I meant to say tail +2, not tail +1 - off by one, again!

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 10 11:42:31 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:42:31 -0700
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
References: <mailman.994755195.13246.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B2267.9B490F2E@alcyone.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> It's docs inaccuracy or os.nice() bug? Or glibc bug?

It's a bug in the documentation; os.nice is just returning the value
return by nice(2), which is platform dependent.  On Linux, it isn't the
new nice value.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ No man is more cheated than the selfish man.
\__/ Henry Ward Beecher
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From hobomo at austin.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 17:03:28 2001
From: hobomo at austin.rr.com (James Money)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:03:28 -0500
Subject: Learning Python
References: <20010724.144042.1258638252.27706@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <3B5F3420.42BF30C6@austin.rr.com>

I recommend 'Learning Python' in the O'Reilly series.  If you intend to
learn Tkinter also (for the GUI), you might look at 'Tkinter and Python
Programming'

Paul wrote:

> I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
> program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.
>
> Thanks in advance.
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

--
James Money
hobomo at austin.rr.com
512-343-1266





From timr at probo.com  Wed Jul 18 01:48:44 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:48:44 -0700
Subject: python2.1 pythonw.exe base address
References: <83weaIAguDV7EwJm@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <me8altkhiogbki58a1u1br7rr41nl33bt1@4ax.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>I don't know how much this is of real interest, but using the latest
>proc explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com/ I notice that
>pythonw.exe has a base address of 0x1e190000, but that python21.dll
>wants to reside at 0x1e100000 and has a length of 0xAF000, the result is
>that python21.dll gets relocated.

Yes; "link /dump /headers" shows the same thing.

Why isn't pythonw.exe based at 00400000 like most well-behaved executables?
Rebasing to 1E190000 unnecessarily fragments linear space.

>Redefining the base address of pythonw to be something non-controversial
>that didn't overlap would be a zero cost win for tk apps.
>
>as an aside it seems that tcl83.dll and _tkinter.pyd are also relocated,
>but I don't know the desired base address.

tcl83.dll is at the default base of 10000000.  _tkinter.pyd is set to
1E190000, same as pythonw.exe.

I have to believe the pythonw.exe base address is a bug.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 21 13:45:54 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 13:45:54 -0400
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
References: <3B54497F.B98D34CF@jam.rr.com> <20010721.072418.846942590.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <etd7kx2xjjh.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu>

Enh, who cares?  Everyone knows the slashdot poll is the only one that
matters, anyway.

Alex.


From inigoserna at terra.es  Tue Jul  3 19:20:44 2001
From: inigoserna at terra.es (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?I=F1igo?= Serna)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 01:20:44 +0200
Subject: problems with class initiation
In-Reply-To: <Xns90D35C03C7035duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
References: <mailman.994017363.31520.python-list@python.org>
	<9ho0dl$ri0$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
	<JIL%6.24504$zT1.1243653@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> 
	<Xns90D35C03C7035duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <994202445.13668.0.camel@lethe.infernus.org>

Thanks to Nick, Magnus, Steve and Ducan for answering.

Finally, the best solution was the obvious, so I pass Main's self
reference to the constructor of Second class. I didn't like this way, it
seemed a bit ugly (perhaps because I don't know much OO... well, in fact
I didn't like OO at all until I found python ;-)

Ah, and the return value of the __init__ constructor was just because I
needed to write a rapid example...

Thanks again,

I?igo Serna





From nospam at nospam  Mon Jul 30 14:04:51 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:04:51 -0400
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9juspa$8p0$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3b65ae3f$0$876@wodc7nh1.news.uu.net>

I know what it stands for, but being an acrophobia fan,
I couldn't help but thing of a couple crude meanings
with the final L standing for "loudly"

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9juspa$8p0$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
> Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >MDFL
>
> What does this stand for?
> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)
>
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
> Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
>
> Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be
reserved.




From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 09:13:44 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:13:44 -0400
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <3B53BB43.986D70AE@engcorp.com> <3B53C285.F8405344@usa.net>
Message-ID: <3B543A08.5E66740C@engcorp.com>

Lee wrote:
> 
> I wasn't asking the readers to provide me with a list of pros and cons -
> those would be for me to figure out when I have a few suggestions for
> implementations. 

In other words, "don't think about it, just do it".  I get it. <1/2 wink>

> As for the the questions, I consider them to be mostly irrelevant but...

But you're the one asking for help here.  Maybe to those whom
you've asked to do the actual replying, they are not irrelevant.

[summary of reasonable replies to my other questions]

So it's likely a Linux-based, moderate to low performance system
written as a student project which is expected to be supported
for some time.  Some reliability/security issues might have to
be addressed.  That's a good start.

> Random suggestions would be a start, but I hope this has cleared things up
> a little...

I think it did!  Really, although you'll get some random 
suggestions, around here if you provide enough detail you'll
often get far more than that.  In all cases, the more background
you provide with a question, the more effective your responses.
As far as judging pros and cons, you might also consider that
the people in this forum are probably in a better position to
judge that after learning a little bit about your context, than
you are after hearing a little bit about their suggestions.
Don't implicitly put down the people who might be about to 
help you out.

(What about the nature of the interface to the C program?
How does it produce its output?  Writing to a file?  Can 
it be run simultaneously on multiple threads?  Is it CPU-
bound so that you want some mechanism to serialize accesses
or is it so fast that won't matter?  Or does it support
a socket interface directly to serve up the data, but
just not in an HTML compatible way?  There are lots
of relevant questions revolving around your "server X".)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From aahz at panix.com  Sun Jul 15 00:56:23 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 21:56:23 -0700
Subject: Newbie list question
References: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ir7pn$afo$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38 at posting.google.com>,
Matthew Alton <Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM> wrote:
>
>I am a UNIX/C programmer w/15y experience.  Forgive me if my neural
>pathways are all about following pointers.  The adjustment to
>Python-think is bumpy but I'll get by with a little help from my
>friends, eh?

Python becomes much easier to understand once you switch from
"variables" and "references" to "names" and "bindings".  A name in
Python is bound to an object.  Every time you execute the assignment
statement, the name gets re-bound.  All objects are global; names exist
in namespaces.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 26 20:59:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:59:08 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

[posted & mailed]

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
>
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
>
I find this a saddening remark. Perhaps the vehemence of some of the
reactions is an indication of how much users value your language. I'm sure
you are quite capable of ignoring personal abuse and ill-informed comment
that suggests you do not have the best interests of the Python community at
heart. I comment on your proposals, as do many others, to offer an
alternative point of view (though I'm sure many times my comments have
already been thought about).

Do I take the emphasis to mean that you are thinking about making *some
other language* case-insensitive?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 12 20:29:26 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 10:29:26 +1000
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <86vgkx3c49.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:

> The contractor chose to use C++.  The DLL that was
> delivered failed miserably in following the spec

Surely that says much more about the quality of the contractor than
the language they chose to use?


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 08:12:52 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:12:52 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:roy-E01423.21425015072001 at news1.panix.com...
> quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote:
> > Even without that, I argue that a bad pattern match should throw an
> > exception and not assign None
>
> I have to admit, that would be somewhat consistant with the way the rest
of
> the language works, but it sure would make it more complicated to do
> something like:
>
>    if re.match (pattern1, string):
>       do stuff
>    elif re.match (pattern2, string):
>       do other stuff
>    elif re.match (pattern3, string):
>       etc, etc, etc.

I find I can rarely throw away the match-objects in this cavalier
way, because they carry much, often-needed information -- so, I
don't get to use this idiom anyway.  Rather, I have to code:

    mo = re1.match(thestring)
    if mo:
        dostuff(mo)
    else:
        mo = re2.match(thestring)
        if mo:
            dootherstuff(mo)
        else:
            mo = re3.match(thestring)
            if mo:
                etcetcetc(mo)
            else:
                nomatchatall()

which is hardly elegant and clean.  If a failing re.match raised
ReException, and auxiliary functions dostuff &c were guaranteed
not to propagate ReException themselves, then...:
    try: dostuff(re1.match(thestring))
    except ReException:
        try: dootherstuff(re2.match(thestring))
        except ReException:
            try: etcetcetc(re3.match(thestring))
            except ReException: nomatchatall()
still a bit too 'nestful' for comfort, but better than the
current alternative IMHO.


Alex





From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Mon Jul  9 11:39:23 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 15:39:23 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <9icj7b$8df$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Erik Max Francis  <max at alcyone.com>:
> Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
> classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
> process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
> delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?

Just use Medusa's http_server. Medusa does HTTP/1.1 with persistent 
connections; SimpleHTTPServer (really BaseHTTPRequestHandler) does 
HTTP/1.0 only.

Some refactoring of Medusa and/or BaseHTTPRequestHandler to simplify
writing HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.) handlers that are portable to both 
would be nice; e.g., send_header(), end_headers() versus Medusa's
http_response object.


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul  5 18:31:44 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 22:31:44 GMT
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com> <3B44D89A.1DF28AD9@tundraware.com> <3B44DBDF.41C4CF2F@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <9i2psg$o14$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Carsten Gaebler <clpy at snakefarm.org>:
| Tim Daneliuk wrote:
|> I guess what I want to know is when globally declared objects are seen inside a function, class, or
|> block, and when they must be explicitly declared as being global.
|
| You can always 'read' a global variable in a function, e.g.
|
| g = 0
| def func():
|   print g
| func()
|
| prints '0'. If you want to modify a global variable inside a function you
| need to declare it as global:
|
| g = 0
| def func():
|   global g
|   g = 1
| func()
| print g
|
| prints '1'.
|
| Otherwise an assignment inside a function will create a new variable in
| the local namespace:
|
| g = 0
| def func():
|   g = 1
| print g
|
| prints '0' because g=1 only exists inside func().

As long as we're here - the queerest thing is when you combine the
two in this order:

g = 0
def func():
  print g
  g = 1

That will raise an "UnboundLocalError", because (as I understand it)
the interpreter already classified g as local at "compile" time, when
it saw the assignment.  Not at run time when it actually performs the
assignment.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From treaves at silverfields.com  Thu Jul 12 13:38:57 2001
From: treaves at silverfields.com (Timothy Reaves)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:38:57 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107122127300.3555-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <20010712125340.5baf980b.treaves@silverfields.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.30.0107122127300.3555-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <20010712133857.6e90786a.treaves@silverfields.com>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:27:59 +0400 (MSD)
Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Timothy Reaves wrote:
> 
> >	Hello.  I'm trying to compile  python2-2.1-5.src.rpm on a SuSE 7.1 system.  It gets along a ways and then:
> >/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./LICENSE /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/LICENSE.txt
> >PYTHONPATH=/var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 \
> >        ./python -tt /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
> >Listing /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 ...
> >Compiling /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/BaseHTTPServer.py ...
> >make: *** [libinstall] Segmentation fault
> >Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.83840 (%install)
> 
> Does it occur at the same palce everytime?
> 
> (I not so, you have hardware problems)
> 


	Yes, at the same place.



From gustavo at ifour.com.br  Fri Jul 20 13:03:30 2001
From: gustavo at ifour.com.br (Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:03:30 -0300
Subject: string random generator (Sorry if too stupid, but i am a beginner)
Message-ID: <20010720140330.B39397@ifour.com.br>

Hi folks!

I am in need for a function that return a string of len x random generated, like

strrnd(5)
'Df%d^'

strrnd(2)
'&@'


I have the following code: The problem is that i don't known how to map a int to a char.

import random
def strrnd(n = 24) :
	result = []
	while n :
		n = n - 1
		result.append(random.randrange(1,255,1))
	return result

How may i get what i want. (Sorry if too basic, but i am a python beginner).
Another problem: This functins will be called thousands of time a minute, so performance is a definitive requirement.


-- 
Whatever became of eternal truth?



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Jul 20 18:09:22 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 18:09:22 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org>
	<cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <oq7kx38d7x.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Guido van Rossum]

> TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
> language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is case-insensitive.  I

Did it change recently?  I thought Scheme was case-insensitive.  An idiom I
saw a few times in Scheme code, written by other people, is writing `lambda'
or `cdr' when you mean what it means, and `LAMBDA' and `CDR' when you are
quoting the same, for example when you write code which produces code.

But DSSSL, which introduces a flavour of Scheme, is case-sensitive.  (Please
someone correct me if I'm wrong.)  That is an improvement.

> My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
> kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
> case-insensitively.

There are also people who like spelling correctly, and others who do not
care.  The later kind might ask that Python be forgiving about dyslexic
errors on Python keywords or variables names, and might even argue that
this would tremendously help beginners.

> It's been argued that making string, String, STRING and StRiNg mean
> the same thing makes for less readable programs.  I agree.  A good
> programming environment should silently correct the case of
> identifiers as you type to conform to the definition.

Yes, quite agreed.  It is the job of the editing environment to take care
of dyslexic errors, case discrepancies, or case clashes.  Python in itself,
as a language, does not really have to be modified to take care of such
things.  Beginners, or children, should merely use a suitable environment:
I do not understand the purpose of modifying the language itself for them.
What or where is the gain?

> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

(I presume you meant "case-insensitivity" on the second line of the above
paragraph).

Would not it be convenient, before asking "how", to wonder "why"?  The real
prerequisite question might be to define quite precisely "What are we
wanting to achieve, here?".  Once this done, another question might be to
ask ourselves?  "Is modifying the language the proper answer to about how
to reach the goals?", meaning the goals identified by the first question.

I worry a bit that you state that the real important question is "how",
as if you were trying to escape the prerequisite questions, or maybe trying
to tell us that your mind got firm answers about them.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Mon Jul 23 00:13:26 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:13:26 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5B7689.F37B991C@alcyone.com>
References: <3B5B7689.F37B991C@alcyone.com>, <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>, <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15OX5y-0005Rk-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:57:45 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:

> That's quite different from the current case, where we're talking about
> an operation that will return different types depending on the inputs. 
> I don't see any good reason to change the current behavior; / means
> division over the types that are passed in.

It does? I fail to see why people assume that operations *have* to return
the type of their operands. In this case, succumbing to this rule means
that we violate much more important, IMHO, rules, like

>>> a==b
1
>>> c==d
1
>>> a/c == b/d
0

(the part before that is:
Python 2.1 (#1, Apr 27 2001, 01:24:08)
[GCC 2.95.3 20010219 (prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> a,b,c,d=1,1.,2,2.

Of course)

> If you pass in ints, you want integer division.

I do?

> Sorry, lazily pasted something into my .sig database.  It was meant to
> be:
> 
> 	http://www.alcyone.com/max/lang/esperanto/

Thanks!
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com  Wed Jul 18 03:08:51 2001
From: hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com (hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:08:51 +0200
Subject: command substitution
Message-ID: <33105F8B185CD51182E300306E06473E2701A8@hermes.isr.thomson-csf.com>

Hi Rapha?l,

I think you can define a function like :

import os, string
def GetStdOut(cmd):
	pipe = os.popen('{ ' + cmd + '; } 2>&1', 'r')
	return string.split(string.strip(pipe.read()),'\n')

then :
OUT=GetStdOut('ls')

Regards,
Hao-Nghi Au

-----Original Message-----
From: Raphael Bauduin [mailto:rb at tiscali.be]
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 10:35 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: command substitution


Hi!

I was looking for a solution like in bash, which let you put the standard 
output of a command in a variable(in bash, you can do it like OUT=`ls` or 
OUT=$(ls) ).

If you have another way to take the standard output of a command and put it 
in a variable, it would be helpfull too.

Thanks.

Raph
-- 
          Open Source and Free Software Developers Meeting
See you at the 2002 edition. Check the 2001 sessions on 
www.opensource-tv.com
     Visit http://www.osdem.org and subscribe to the mailing list!
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From Sugarpine.Sierra.West at greatbasin.net  Sun Jul 22 04:22:00 2001
From: Sugarpine.Sierra.West at greatbasin.net (Sugarpine.Sierra.West at greatbasin.net)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 02:22:00 -0600
Subject: Press Release
Message-ID: <20017228520python-list@python.org>

For Immediate Release
Incline Village, Nevada
Contact Corporate Communications
www.sugarpinellc.com

Sugarpine Sierra West, LLC is proud to announce 4 additional services, Sports Memorabilia, Hair Raisers, Financial Services and Worlds-Best-4 the worlds largest virtual shopping mall featuring over 2.2 million products! Save time! Save money! Make money!!!

These services and products are now available to everyone. To view these tremendous opportunities, please visit our website. Sports Memorabilia may be viewed simply by clicking on its front-page banner. Hair Raisers may be viewed by visiting our web site, www.sugarpinellc.com, and select our associates? link. Our Financial Services is linked and bannered on our home page.

As you all may already know, Sugarpine Sierra West, LLC is at its heart an asset hosting company.  Please don?t forget to look at our Asset Gallery to see some outstanding business and investment opportunities, as well as collectables and real estate.

Sugarpine Sierra West, LLC would like to extend its sincere thanks and appreciation to all!

Please visit us at our web site at: www.sugarpinellc.com.

Corporate Communications:
Sugarpine Sierra West, LLC
Mr. Charles J. Armstrong II or Ms. Denise Pavlo
Phone:  775-832-2552
E-Mail: info at sugarpinellc.com

To be removed from our e-mail list, reply to this e-mail with "REMOVE" in the subject line of your reply.





From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 13 09:53:04 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:53:04 +0200
Subject: PyDNS?
References: <3B4ECBE0.96898063@stroeder.com> <bsrtktkhojr3osgha2npgoukhro5h0lfnt@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4EFD40.C0C075B6@stroeder.com>

Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
> 
> Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> schrieb am Fri, 13 Jul 2001
> 12:22:24 +0200:
> 
> >I wonder if there's interest to maintain the DNS module formerly
> >written as demo by Guido van Rossum. Anthony Baxter has a modified
> >version of it under http://www.interlink.com.au/anthony/dns.tar.gz.
> >I've added support for SRV RRs and I'm thinking about adding caching
> >support.
> 
> Great.
> 
>   File "DNS\Lib.py", line 105, in addname
>     index.append(keys[j], offset + len(buf))
> TypeError: append() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)
> 
> This definitely needs an overhaul. :-)

Already fixed this too. Not sure if I covered all cases though.

For the impatient: My version of the module is shipped with
http://web2ldap.de. Simply pull it out of pylib/ dir.

If somebody is going to work on it let me know to avoid doubling
efforts.

Ciao, Michael.


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Jul 15 10:11:50 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 14:11:50 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <Xns90DE9C0C61AFAgmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155> <Xns90DF1E7FD2E35gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <Xns90DF67CD969E2gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>

[posted and mailed]

Gustaf Liljegren wrote: 

> Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
> 
>>So put the line
>>packages=_xmlplus 
>>in the APPZLIB section.
> 
> Okay, now I used Standalone first. Got a .cfg file and changed it
> according to the above. Then I ran in again with Builder. Is this
> really the normal operation? I had expected to first make a config file
> and then make an exe, or that you would get an opportunity to save the
> modified config file and run Standalone on it again. But I guess this
> is a special case, and the second run is normally not needed.

All Standalone, Simple and Freeze do is create config files for you, 
and then run Builder on them. If the code does not contain import
hacks, that's all that's needs to be done.

There are 2 general approaches to getting around import hacks (which,
for some reason, many package authors seem to feel compelled to use, 
even when simpler solutions are possible). Both require figuring out
what the hack does.

The easiest is to do the import yourself in plain Python (using straight 
"import"s) before the hack gets executed. When the hack executes, it will 
find the module(s) already in sys.modules and complete successfully.

The second is to use the config file. Depending on the hack, that may
not always work. The config file is very handy for trimming the size
of your executable, though. By using Analyze, you can strip out all
unneeded modules.

 
> When I run Builder, I get the following two warnings (among many others
> that seem non-significant):
> 
> W: __import__ hack detected at line 54 of xml.dom.domreg
> W: __import__ hack detected at line 100 of xml.sax
> 
> Does this mean that the import of the XML modules wasn't successful?

No, it means you'd better look at that code and see what the author
is doing with his import hacks.
 
> My script needs a special config file, written in XML, in the same 
> directory as the script itself. I was happy to see that before I had
> added the XML file to this directory, jane.exe complained in the right
> way: 
> 
> E:\python\gustaf\dist_jane>jane
> No profiles file found.
> 
> However, when I add the XML file to the directory, it fails:
> 
> E:\python\gustaf\dist_jane>jane

[snip]

>   File "e:\python\_xmlplus\sax\saxexts.py", line 75, in make_parser
>     sys.modules[parser_name].create_parser = _create_parser
> KeyError: xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat

I'd guess one of those __import__s is responsible for importing
xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat. If you do that yourself (before this
code executes), you'll at least get past the KeyError.
 
<editorial>It's not a good sign for Python's maturity that
developers ignore (subvert!)[1] the distribution of packaged 
apps. Assuming that end users have a Python installation (of
the correct version) is just silly. Python is not just for
Python developers.</editorial>

[1] One notable exception being Greg MacFarlane, who has included
a bundlepmw script with his Pmw package for years.

- Gordon


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Sat Jul 21 19:50:10 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:50:10 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms><mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org><9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net><cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Syo67.20628$Xr6.171242@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Justin Sheehy:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
>
> > If you use this a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less
> > readable than it should be.
>
> Really?  People use capitalization semantically all the time, both in
> programming and in the rest of life.  I don't understand at all what
> makes the above code unreadable.

   I find code like this harder to read and reason about. There are multiple
entities with the same name so you have to remember to think about some
extra details. While example code that looks like m=M() is at the low end of
difficulty, stuff like:

   caterpillar = Caterpillar()
   # ... lots of code ...
   egglets = caterpillar()

places more strain on my poor brain.

   _In_ written English, a change _in_ capitalisation is not always a change
of meaning as it is most often done for sentence formation.

   Neil





From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 01:08:03 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:08:03 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <995862297.667165@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEECLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> Of course, but computer numerics is a massive exercise in picking the
> general rules you want to preserve at the expense of others,
> and trading all that off against pragmatics too.  Not losing information
> silently is also a Very Good General Rule, and even 745 binary fp
> arithmetic is better at meeting that one than current "/".
>

[Donn Cave]
> So would it make sense to also change the >> and << operators to
> rotate shift?  I mean, I sure wouldn't find that more useful, but
> it does conserve information that the current shifts lose.

First explain what bitstring operations have to do with computer numerics.
You may as well as complain that, e.g., "del a[i]" loses information too.
Well, of course it does -- that's its purpose.  Same thing with >>.  << does
not lose info on longs, and it is indeed a source of bugs that it may lose
info on ints (the result is platform-dependent in Python).




From brian at sweetapp.com  Fri Jul 13 04:06:20 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:06:20 -0700
Subject: sort->list
In-Reply-To: <9im8jj$1b36$1@news.lf.net>
Message-ID: <000301c10b72$b34ed5b0$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

Domi wrote:
> Does somebody know how to sort a numeric list in the right way?
> The sort method sort a list in this way:
> [1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,21,...]
> 
> but I need a list sort like this:
> [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,...]

It looks like you list is actually of strings rather than integers. That
is why it is being sorted alphabetically rather than numerically. Try
converting the list to integers first i.e.

testList = ['1', '10', '2', '15']
testList = map(int, testList)
testList.sort()





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Jul 12 11:35:19 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:35:19 GMT
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>        <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net>        <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xsj37.9345$e5.1243922@newsb.telia.net>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Interpretation of \x escapes was tightened up in 2.0 I believe.  In versions
> earlier than 2.0 '\xyy' is interpreted as the four-character sequence:
>
>     \ x y y

not if yy is hexadecimal digits.  the difference is that in 1.5.2, \x
could consume more than 2 hex digits.

> In 2.0 and 2.1 the ValueError you see is raised because "yy" can't be
> interpreted as a hex number.

shouldn't happen, though: pickle uses repr, and repr didn't ever
create \x escapes in 1.5.2.

you could get this problem if you move text pickles from 2.1 back to
1.5.2, though: "\x1234" is one character under 1.5.2, three under 2.0
and later.  and 2.1's repr uses \xnn instead of \ddd on output...

> I'm not sure what the solution is.  Someone with more pickle/string/
> internals knowledge will probably have some ideas.

one possible workaround could be to load the pickle under 1.5.2,
and write it out as a binary pickle:

    infile = open("data")
    object = pickle.load(infile)

    outfile = open("outdata", "wb")
    pickle.dump(object, outfile, 1)
    outfile.close()

</F>




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:40:34 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:40:34 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org> <270720011702397113%mday@apple.com>
Message-ID: <cpbsm522ul.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Mark Day <mday at apple.com> writes:

> I think my original discomfort was due to using C for so long (and
> damaging my brain along the way).  But maybe C is like tobacco, and if
> I quit, maybe my brain will eventually heal.  One can hope.  :-)

There's also the phenomenon Tim calls "Extreme Fear of Floating
Point".  That used to be a rational fear (no pun intended :-) but that
was long ago.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 18:18:12 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:18:12 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3q54.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

[Tim Hochberg:]
> > Actually, I do dislike this.  Much as I find floats generally useless, I 
> > think that 0.666667 should return a float, and that if I want to write a 
> > rational literal I should be able to write it as 2/3.
> 
> I think you're right.  An early version of ABC worked like this, and
> at the time I though "hmm, but why shouldn't 0.98 be an exact number;
> it could be intended as a price or something like that", and I
> convinced the team to change it.  But in practice it was more often
> annoying.  Now maybe that was because we (the biggest users) were CS
> and math folks, and we tended to tackle typical math and CS problems
> -- but my gut is to vote against this aspect of the PEP.

I am a fan of rationals, but I strongly agree. Turning 0.98
into 49/50 is likely to cause much more confusion than it
saves.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Fri Jul 13 09:13:40 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:13:40 +1000
Subject: [Python-Dev] PEP: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
References: <3B4EE3C0.9875AB3D@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <072101c10b9d$a28068e0$0acc8490@neil>

M.-A. Lemburg:
>    next_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
>
>        Returns the Unicode object index for the start of the next
>        <indextype> found after u[index] or -1 in case no next
>        element of this type exists.
>
>    prev_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
> ...

   Its not clear to me from the description whether the term "object index"
is used for a code unit index or an <indextype> index. Code unit index seems
to make the most sense but this should be explicit.

   Neil




From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul 18 10:21:52 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:21:52 +0200
Subject: SocketServer and broken ThreadingMixIn - patch for 2.1.1c1
References: <slrn9lb58c.885.stain@zoidberg.trd.linpro.no>
Message-ID: <3B559B80.4C8EDBE3@stroeder.com>

Stian Soiland wrote:
> 
> As known, in Python 2.1 the SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn
> does not work, and thereby SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer
> etc. are broken as well.

I'm very glad that you took the discussion to the news group since
the SourceForge bug tracking page is not a discussion forum.

> However, the fix simply removes close_request()
> for threaded servers, as the process_request()
> is overridden. The overriden process_request()
> simply starts final_request() (doing the actual
> work), but does not call close_request()
> afterwards.
> 
> This means that there is a difference between
> threaded servers and non-threading servers.

I agree with Guido that it does not hurt to call close_request()
method more than once. Therefore your handler thread can easily call
close_request() without being incompatible to single-threaded
(checked it myself) or forking mode (did not check myself yet).

Ciao, Michael.


From barry at zope.com  Wed Jul 25 16:06:20 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:06:20 -0400
Subject: ANNOUNCE Mailman 2.0.6
Message-ID: <15199.9916.286454.845536@anthem.wooz.org>

I've just released version 2.0.6 of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List
Manager.  Mailman is released under the GNU General Public License
(GPL).  Version 2.0.6 fixes a potential security problem in Mailman
2.0.x, and includes a few other minor bug fixes.

It is possible, although unlikely, that you could have an empty site
password, or an empty list password.  Because of peculiarities in the
Unix crypt() function, such empty passwords could allow unauthorized
access to the list administrative pages with an arbitrary password
string.  This situation does not occur normally, but it is possible to
create it by accident (e.g. by touch'ing data/adm.pw).

This patch ensures that such empty passwords do not allow unauthorized
access, by first checking to make sure that the salt is at least 2
characters in length.  Alternatively, you can make sure that either
data/adm.pw does not exist or that it is not empty.  For the extra
paranoid, you'd need to be sure that none of your lists have empty
passwords, but that's an even more difficult situation to create by
accident.

This patch guards against both situations.  (Please note that Mailman
2.1alpha is not vulnerable to this problem because it does not use
crypt().)

A few other minor bugs have been fixed; see the NEWS excerpt below for
details.

Mailman 2.0.6 is being released as both a gzip'd source tarball and as
a patch file.

GNU Mailman is software to help manage electronic mail discussion
lists.  Mailman gives each mailing list a unique web page and allows
users to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change their account options over
the web.  Even the list manager can administer his or her list
entirely via the web.  Mailman has most of the features that people
want in a mailing list management system, including built-in
archiving, mail-to-news gateways, spam filters, bounce detection,
digest delivery, and so on.

Mailman is compatible with most web servers, web browsers, and mail
servers.  It runs on GNU/Linux and should run on any other Unix-like
operating system.  Mailman 2.0.6 requires Python 1.5.2 or newer.  To
install Mailman from source, you will need a C compiler.

For more information on Mailman, including links to file downloads,
please see the Mailman WWW page: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman

And its mirrors at:

    http://mailman.sourceforge.net
    http://www.list.org

Downloads are available at

    http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=45268

There are email lists (managed by Mailman, of course!) for both
Mailman users and developers.  See the web sites above for details.

Enjoy,
-Barry

2.0.6 (25-Jul-2001)

    Security fix:

    - Fixed a potential security hole which could allow access to list
      administrative features by unauthorized users.  If there is an
      empty data/adm.pw file (the site password file), then any
      password will be accepted as the list administrative password.
      This exploit is caused by a common "bug" in the crypt() function
      suffered by several Unix distributions, including at least
      GNU/Linux and Solaris.  Given a salt string of length zero,
      crypt() always returns the empty string.

      In lieu of applying this patch, sites can run bin/mmsitepass and
      ensure that data/adm.pw is of length 2 or greater.

    Bug fixes:

    - Ensure that even if DEFAULT_URL is misconfigured in mm_cfg.py
      (i.e. is missing a trailing slash), it is always fixed upon list
      creation.

    - Check for administrivia holds before any other tests.

    - SF bugs fixed: 407666, 227694

    - Other miscellaneous buglets fixed.



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 18 17:19:54 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 21:19:54 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9lbvbp.6o6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:20:54 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:
>>> This goes for lots of things; IMO if you
>>> access a list or dictionary with a non-existant index it should
>>> return a value such as None, instead of raising an exception.
>>
>>Sometimes.  It's convenient in CGI to have tags default to '' if missing.
>>But you can't find a one-size-fits all solution.  For some applications,
>>None and '' are legitimate values, and must be distinguished from
>>"key not found".  Thus, why Python offers both dict.get('x', DEFAULT)
>>as well as dict['better be there or KeyError'].
>
>No, because on the odd occasions that you want an exception you can
>always throw one manually.
>
>Here, I'm assuming that usually you don't want one -- perhaps this
>is jsut my idiosyncratic programming style and most people vare different
>here. Comments?

It's not just you, but I don't agree, and it's not just me either.
NameErrors, KeyErrors, and IndexErrors have saved me many times.  One of the
things I didn't like about perl is how it magically created values on
reference, and then I had to go hunt down the bad reference that created it.
And I often store None in dicts and lists.  It would be weird if d.has_key(x)
could be true or false while d[x] always evaluated to None.  That means that
d[x] is implicitly creating a None when d.has_key(x) is false, but not when
it's true (python's None is a normal value, not a magic "nothing"
pseudo-value).

I like all bad references to be errors, always, not "press on and hope for the
best" or "depends on what declarations were made" or "depends on what kind of
reference it is" (as in ruby).  

Perl has undef, and lua has nil, and in both those languages saying 'x = nil'
is equavalent to unbinding `x' (I think that's true for perl, don't remember).
If python's None were to be consistent we should remove NameError and del and
have all unbound names evaluate to None.  Then people would request perl-like
'use strict' hacks to turn it off.

And lastly, and most importantly, that's the way the language works.  Some
languages may work differently, but many languages also work this way.  Since
obviously no one agrees, there is no "should".  And there has to be a really
clear "should" to justify breaking code for it.

For the circumstances when it's handy to have a 'default value' dict or list
that never raises, it's easy to subclass UserDict.


From stefan.heimann at web.de  Sun Jul 22 05:50:11 2001
From: stefan.heimann at web.de (Stefan Heimann)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 09:50:11 GMT
Subject: interactive mode, history
Message-ID: <slrn9ll8ei.dh.stefan.heimann@kunz.ratzer>

Hi!

I have a problems with arrow keys in interactive mode. When I hit the
up-arrow, I get ^[[A, the left-arrow produces ^[[D and so on.
This problem occurs NOT with python 1.5 but with python 2.0 and 2.1.
I have debian woody installed here and it doesn't matter if I invoke
python on the console or in a xterm. I alsoe tried wterm,
gnome-terminal and konsole from kde. With all I get the same results.

Can anyone help

Thanks stefan


From jim at publishingresources.com  Fri Jul 20 11:54:22 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:54:22 -0000
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E478A656FFBjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Mark Hammond <MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote in
<3B576D8C.9080705 at ActiveState.com>: 

>Jochen Riekhof wrote:
>
>> 
>> rst = getRecordset()
>> 
>> Now, I want to use the recordset:
>> rst.MoveFirst()
>> 
>> and get the following error:
>> Python ActiveX Scripting Engine (0x80020009)
>> Traceback (innermost last): File "<Script Block >", line 5, in ?
>> rst.MoveFirst() AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute
>> 'MoveFirst' /OrboPCT/pytest.asp, Zeile 15
>> rst.MoveFirst()
>
>
>This means that "getRecordset()" is actually returning _2_ values - the 
>recordset itself, and some other value (possibly a boolean or some
>such). 
>
>You will probably find that you need something like:
>
>ok, rst = getRecordset()
>
>or maybe the other way around:
>
>rst, ignored = getRecordset()
>
>Mark.
>

>From the Python-Win32 list:


Jim Abrams wrote:

>objCN = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
>objCN.open(dsn)
>objRS = objCN.Execute("select * etc")
>objRS now has a tuple of (<RecordSetObject>, int)
>I have no idea what the int means, but you need to trim it away to get
>at the RecordSet object.
>
Ok, well I obviously didn't know that Application wasn't just a simple 
Dispatch object in asps but this one I do know! The reason Execute 
returns a tuple is because Execute has an [out] parameter which returns 
the number of rows affected. Here's the clip from OLEVIEW:

 _Recordset* Execute(
                        [in] BSTR CommandText,
                        [out, optional] VARIANT* RecordsAffected,
                        [in, optional, defaultvalue(-1)] long Options);

Any COM [out] parameter will be returned from the method since in Python 
parameters are passed by value rather than by reference (we won't talk 
about object references).

--
Jens B. Jorgensen
jens.jorgensen at tallan.com


From cliechti at mails.ch  Thu Jul 26 22:39:36 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 04:39:36 +0200
Subject: freeze.py (where is it?)
References: <3B58494D.C82965AD@raqia.com> <dd144f8b.0107260325.6a0f21e4@posting.google.com> <3B6019CE.4070900@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Xns90EB300C26454cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

freeze.py is in the source distribution.

if you want to create standalone python apps on win32 "py2exe" could also 
be a solution for you (easier as it doesn't needs a c compiler... :-)

chris


Mark Robinson <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> wrote in 
news:3B6019CE.4070900 at herts.ac.uk:

> can anyone tell me where I might find the freeze utility. It doesn't 
> seem to be included in the windows installation of python 2.1. Am I just 
> being blind or has it perhaps been superceeded by something better, I am 
> only aware of it from a reference in 'programming python'.
> 
> blobby
> 



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 20 07:47:27 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:47:27 -0400
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B581A4F.381F3072@engcorp.com>

"Owen F. Ransen" wrote:
> 
> The Quick Python Book says that KeyboardInterrupt is
> tested regularly when the Python interpreter is running,
> but I have a program which may run for several minutes
> without printing anything, and I find I cannot break out of
> it with control-C.
> 
> How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?

This could be a platform-dependent issue.  

Are you by any chance running on Win2K?


From ed at ewilson.com  Mon Jul  2 00:42:37 2001
From: ed at ewilson.com (Edward B. Wilson II)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:42:37 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>

I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
frustrated with it as I was in 1996.

Python still doesn't have good database support, nor has it grown to be
useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
space.

It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language at
eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.

Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
or otherwise).

It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
attempts poetry.

--Ed






From hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 17:41:56 2001
From: hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk (Hamish Lawson)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 14:41:56 -0700
Subject: Python Essential Reference 2d edn.
References: <da5vhtcqa8tafr4edm2l5opnd65gva6osl@4ax.com> <zY5X6.137$fr.175944@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <915a998f.0107031341.271e2ced@posting.google.com>

Michael Prager wrote:

> Can anyone tell me whether the second edition of this book (by
> Beazley & Van Rossum, and scheduled for publication next week)
> will be printed in a larger type size than the first edition?

Kevin Altis wrote:

> There is a sample chapter in PDF format online at
> http://www.newriders.com/books/title.cfm?isbn=0735710910
> 
> If you view at "actual size" that should give you an idea of the type-size
> readability.

The text of the second edition is in a welcome larger font. However,
if you were to go by the sample PDF, you'd think it was actually in a
*smaller* font than the first edition - I'm guessing it must be a
pre-production draft.

Hamish Lawson


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 03:30:45 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:30:45 +0200
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ibmi812a8n@enews2.newsguy.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:pM927.657463$166.13605776 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it
is
> as follows:
>
> s="12.19.6.7.12"
> ls = string.split(s, '.')
> md = map(string.atoi, ls)
>
> Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
> is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. But my first problem is

Specifically, variable s is being bound to a string made up of several
DIGITS and periods.  "Number" is an ambiguous terms, while "digit"
more precisely identifies one of the characters '0', '1', ... '9' (note
the quotes).

> after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
> what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?

No, it means to SPLIT where a period occurs.  The result of string.split
is then a list of strings, each a copy of the substring of s that occurs
between two periods.

> The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
> exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the
string
> ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? I mean the

ls is a list of strings.  string.split always returns a list of strings --
specifically, copies of substrings of s.

> varible ls contains ['12', '19', '6', '7', '12'] arent those intergers
they

No, they are strings (which happen to be made up of digits, only, in
this case).  The quotes around each are a strong indication of their
string nature.

If you need to transform a string of digits into an integer number,
you can pass the string of digits to function int (or, as here used,
function string.atoi).  map() calls its first argument (normally a
function) over each item in its second argument (a sequence) and
returns the list of results  (map also has other uses, but this is
one fundamental use for it).


Alex





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 13:05:03 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:05:03 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171439080.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B54703F.DDB8C4B6@ActiveState.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
> If I understood correctly, Python will soon switch to "unicode-only"
> strings, as Java and Tcl did. (This is of course disaster for some Python
> usage areas such as fast text-processing, but...)

No, this is not likely to happen "soon". Maybe before the death of Sol
but not in the next year. 

>...
> 
> I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.

I agree. Allowing "funny characters" in names is not something we have
much call for yet and it may break many tools that have ASCII-only
assumptions.

>...
> 
> May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
> at the beginning...

If you want an XML-style declaration, a more compact syntax could be:

#?python encoding="..."

> Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
> with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.

I think we should be wary of overcomplicating a relatively simple idea. 

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 12 18:59:05 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:59:05 GMT
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com> <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net> <ku66cy58qp.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <3b4e2522.1748377423@wa.news.verio.net>

On 12 Jul 2001 20:59:26 +0300, Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote:

>In article <3b4d6184.1698299906 at wa.news.verio.net>, bokr at accessone.com
>(Bengt Richter) writes:
>
>| For accurate timing, time.clock()
>| is recommended, I believe:
>
>[...]
>
>the docs recommend it, but on unix time.time() is far better
>
>time.clock() tries to measure "cpu time" instead of "real time"
>there, which results in terrible resolution. time.time() maps
>to gettimeofday(2).
>
>  -- erno

On my boxes, I know I have pentiums where it's ok, and I've
been doing C/C++ so here is what I've used. It gives very
good resolution ( 1 cpu clock at your CPU rate ): Executing
the instructions and storing the numbers takes a few cycles,
but I seem to remember 23 cycles minimum for something I did.
At my 300mhz, that was about 77 nanoseconds. So you just
substract that out when you time something ;-)

// for linux
typedef unsigned long long u64;

inline u64
getTick64() {
     u64 ticks;
     asm volatile ("rdtsc" : "=A"(ticks));
     return ticks;
}

This will get you an accurate tick count in a real hurry ;-)
What I do is save them raw, and convert to seconds after
computing the deltas. You can do the same on windows with

//for win32
#include <basetsd.h>
typedef UINT64 u64;

inline u64 getTick64()
{
   __asm
   {
	rdtsc		; puts counter in eax,edx
   }
}

Of course, this doesn't directly do you a lot of good
in Python, but I could see a useful extension using it,
building in proper checks for rdtsc availability.

NOTE WELL: THE ABOVE CODE PRESUMES YOU HAVE A PENTIUM THAT
SUPPORTS RDTSC !!

You can check with a bit that comes back from the cpuid
instruction. But this is the reason for using the windows
QueryPerformanceCounter API instead of going to the hardware
direct. Maybe there should be such an API on unix.
I'll be someone has done it. For PC's it's the same hardware after all.




From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 12:29:53 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:29:53 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <9i4neh$h1jne$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107062028470.12590-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Emile van Sebille wrote:

>The first reference to the faq on python.org does this.  It's not so much a
>question of why would you, more so how could you not the first time.  Maybe
>drop the complete reference on the front page, leaving the reference to it

Oh, no. "FAQ" is one of the eye catches, like "Download" ;-)

>on the faq wizard page so that you know when clicking it that you'll get a
>bunch.
>
>http://python.org/doc/FAQ.html
>
>--
>
>Emile van Sebille
>emile at fenx.com
>
>---------
>"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
>news:cpvgl6jbyz.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
>> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:
>>
>> > On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> > > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
>> >
>> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it
>is
>> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
>>
>> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
>> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
>>
>> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul 16 04:22:55 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:22:55 +0200
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <20010716102255.F5396@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 02:39:50AM +0000, Tim Hammerquist wrote:

> I'm in the habit (in Python as well) of return undef on
> false because in some methods, 0 is ambiguous.  So, in cases where 0 is
> not ambiguous, 0 is idiomatically preferred to None?

You wouldn't call those functions in a boolean context, now would you ? I
prefer to return -1 if 0 is a valid return value, or just raise an exception
if -1 is valid as well. We're talking an entirely different function though,
one where an 'error return' really is exceptional. 

> Ok, so here's my version (I hate wasted line space and unnecessary temp
> vars):

Just wait until you revisit this code in 6 months ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 21 17:30:07 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:30:07 -0400
Subject: The windows python.exe interpreter hangs processing large files.
In-Reply-To: <u7fcj9.uis.ln@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEAFLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[gradha at iname.com]
> I have tried to use some Linux scripts I have under Windows, and the
> python.exe ran in a dos Box under Win98 just hangs when it has to
> process slightly big text files (over 20 KB). Could it be just because
> I use the DOTALL option in regular expressions?

No:  the regexp engine is the same on both platforms.

> Under Linux everything goes blazing fast, and since everything hangs
> I don't know what to do or how to debug it, especially because Windows
> is not my native work environment and don't master any tools there.

Stick in print statements to determine *where* it hangs.  Then whittle it
down to a minimal case.  The most frequent cause of Linux->Windows Python
porting problems is neglecting to open binary files in binary mode.




From craigmnet at cow.physics.wisc.edu  Mon Jul 23 01:53:34 2001
From: craigmnet at cow.physics.wisc.edu (Craig Markwardt)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 00:53:34 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995861918.11181.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <onofqc5gyp.fsf@cow.physics.wisc.edu>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:
> [John W. Baxter]
> > I see a fairly strong argument there for starting out with a language
> > in which int / int --> float (or rational) and int // int --> int (or
> > int div int --> int).
> 
> I don't consider a vote an argument.  At best, since it was a visible show
> of hands, it let everyone know who wasn't worthy to live due to voting the
> wrong way <wink>.
> ...

I'll decloak here for a moment.  I'm an IDL user, as in Interactive
Data Language by RSI, but I mostly admire Python from afar, and read
the newsgroup.  I can relate the community experience of the upgrade
between IDL version 4 and version 5.

In the new version, IDL gained an *optional* language change.  IDL 5
allows users to subscript arrays with either the square brackets [] or
the round parentheses ().  IDL 4 only allowed the round parentheses.

As a result of this, people began coding both styles.  However, the
new style was not backwards compatible, so there was some
fragmentation.  Some major standard libraries were, and are still,
maintained in two forms.  

Overall, from introduction to acceptance, the change took about 2-3
years.  This change was thankfully optional.  I am very grateful that
I can still pull up useful IDL archive code from ten or more years
ago, written by someone long gone, and usually have it run
successfully.

Thus, I am dismayed to hear about a Python language change that will
*not* be optional, and which will break the function of existing code.
Doing so will eventually place people in the unenviable quandry of
either upgrading their Python interpreter, or tossing out a tried and
tested library module.

Other language enhancements, like nested scopes, add features at the
expense of resolving language ambiguities.  The proposed integer
division change is an outright language change, and impacts a core
functionality: arithmetic.  Quite frankly, I am baffled.

Craig

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D.         EMAIL:    craigmnet at cow.physics.wisc.edu
Astrophysics, IDL, whatever else
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


From mday at apple.com  Tue Jul 17 16:59:54 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:59:54 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com>

In article <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b at posting.google.com>, Xu, C.S.
<xucs007 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> #!/usr/bin/env python
> i = 2.5;
> while i < 1e7:
>         j = 2.5 * 2.5
>         i += 1
> print i, j

Notice that the assignment to j is a loop invariant.  It could be moved
outside the while loop without changing the result.  I'll bet the C and
Java compilers are in fact moving it outside of the loop for you, so
you're only timing the increment of i.  I think Perl may be
precomputing 2.5 * 2.5, so it may just be repeating the assignment of j
and not the multiplication.  I don't think Python will evaluate the
expression at "compile" time, nor move the assignment outside the loop.

-Mark


From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Thu Jul 19 10:13:20 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:13:20 +0100
Subject: Unable to produce Tkinter.Toplevel() in a Thread object
Message-ID: <3B56EB00.EA378CB@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Hi, everybody,

I tried to display some information in a thread, but failed to produce
Tkinter.Toplevel() in a Thread object. Is it possible to use such
functions, eg. "showinfo, showerror, askokcancel" (import from
tkMessageBox)?

Cheers,
XiaoQin Xia


From sam at ddmweb.com  Tue Jul 31 16:06:09 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:06:09 -0700
Subject: www.python.org is down 
Message-ID: <01073113091406.01179@frock.ddmweb.com>

Guido writes:

>>We have a broken hard drive on the machine that is www.python.org.
CNRI claims there is no spare drive.  It may be a while before we
resolve this.  In the mean time, here's a mirror:<<

Does www.python.org need funds for a drive or a new server? I'd be happy
to contribute funds if it would help and someone will volunteer to
collect the checks.



From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 23 19:50:19 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:50:19 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
Message-ID: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net>

Hi all,

Having spent (wasted?) far too much time reading everyone's opinion of
the new division proposal, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) Everyone seems to agree that having both kinds of division is a good
idea

2) Without careful counting , it seems that most people think that
having the "/" operator on two integers result in a float and another
operator ("//", div, whatever) do integer division is a better syntax
for A NEW LANGUAGE.

3) So, the big disagreement is over whether the improvement in the
language resulting from the proposed change is worth the considerable
pain it is likely to cause by:
   A) Breaking old code
   B) Making it very difficult to write code that can run on old and new
version of the interpreter.


It seems that since (3) is the big stumbling block, perhaps we need to
focus our intentions on how to make not only this change, but other
potential changes less painful. It's too late now, but ideally, Python
might have had a required version header:

UsesVersion 1.5.2

(#!/usr/bin/env python1.5.2) would do, but it's not useful on all
systems.

I'm not proposing a syntax here, just the concept. Once a given file has
an indication in it as to what version of Python it was designed for,
the interpreter could shift into an appropriate backward compatability
mode. This would ensure that old code could run just fine on new
interpreters.

Since this doesn't currently exist, it would have to be added now, but
it could be assumed that any *.py file without the header was version <=
2.1. This way no old code would break. Beyond this change, it would
allow for far less painful changes in the future as well. I'm betting
that this is not the last incompatable change that will be introduced.

At worst, we will have some bloat by having essentially mutiple copies
of the interpreter running, at best, it could be more cleverly
implimented, and just a few changes added to the compiler. That would
certainly be easy to do if a keyword was added, or something like case
sensitivity was changed.

Anyway, even if it is decided not to make a backward incompatable change
to division, it is likely to happen some day, so it could be a useful
addition to the language. This is how LaTeX changed from version 2.09 to
2e. If the header was "\documentstyle" it is 2.09, and if it is
"\documentclass" it is a version 2e file. That way the LaTeX
installation could be upgraded, without breaking any existing documents.

Python, unfortunatly, doesn't have such a header, but if one were added
now, it would be better poised for the future. 

I can't currently think of any major problem with this: many of us put
he #! line on top of files anyway, and I've even seen people put it on
files on Windows and Macintosh, because that's what was in the examples,
so I don't think newbies will have any problem with it.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From BBRANNIGAN at CYBERTOURS.COM  Tue Jul 17 14:16:23 2001
From: BBRANNIGAN at CYBERTOURS.COM (BRYAN BRANNIGAN)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:16:23 -0400
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org> <3B5390BC.C5FFCD2A@engcorp.com> <mailman.995346569.21423.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5480f5@news.cybertours.com>

Thanks for the responses,

This card is going to send small voltages to relays to control motors and is
the only way I have found to accomplish this task.  The address on the card
is flexible.

Bryan
"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.995346569.21423.python-list at python.org...
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com>
>
>
> > Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> > >
> > > Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.  He
> wants
> > > to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a "custom
> ISA
> > > card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port
> interface,
> > > nor serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.
> >
> > I admit I didn't actually look at the winioport stuff proposed in the
> > "parallel port?!?" thread, but given that it was called winioport
> > and not winparallelport, I assumed it was a way of providing generic
> > access to IO ports under Windows.  If I was wrong, then you are right
> > to correct me!  (Do you know winioport would not work or were you just
> > tricked by the name of the thread?)
>
> Whups.  Evidently the low-level package in use by winioport DOES support
> generic
> access.  My mistake... I was going by the commentary on the main winioport
> page,
> where he says "I am now able do printer port IO."  I assumed that was the
> entire
> scope of the package, but evidently not.
>
> > Of course, it's probably moot given Jon Nicoll's response which suggests
> > a perfectly viable alternative.
>
> Indeed... to wit:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jon Nicoll" <jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk>
>
> > This is exactly what my code can be used for - you can set it up to
> > get access to arbitary IO ports (via the ioperm mechanism in Linux),
> > and then read or write etc. as you like. Admittedly, it doesn't
> > currently cater for interrupts.
>
> Which could be vitally significant or totally unimportant.
>
> > I originally started writing this to drive an ISA 8255/8253 card, and
> > although this project-ette is currently in limbo, the basics are all
> > there and working, if Bryan wants to do eg. polled access to an A/D
> > card etc.
> >
> > You don't need a VxD (for W95 at least), although it's probably the
> > 'better' way of doing things. My code is in C and turns into a little
> > '.PYD' (= .DLL) file. In NT, you need a kernel mode driver, which I
> > haven't yet got around to looking at.
>
> Here the winioport module (and the underlying DriverLYNX package) might
> be better for Bryan.
>
> > I've just resurrected my code and am looking at using distutils to get
> > it in a form more easily distributed. Email me if would be of use to
> > you in the meantime.
>
> Bryan hasn't responded since he initially requested this information...
> are you out there, Bryan?
>
>
>




From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 17:47:50 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com>

phil hunt wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> >Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> >>
> >> So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
> >> acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
> >> carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it
> >> for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can Python
> >> become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?
> >
> >Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
> >particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
> >administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
> >into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.
> >
> >Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
> >language.
> 
> Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
> for longer programs.

I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).

(In a way I agree with Paul's conclusion that Python is too generally
useful and overall nice to use to have drawn the attention of a tiny
core of vocal fanatics (who then have to write 100 books explaining
every subtle nuance of the language).)  We've applied it so widely
that I would certain question the term "niche language" when applied
to Python (more so than almost any other language).  Even Java
has a more clearly defined "niche" (internet programming).

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 14 02:50:50 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:50:50 +1000
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <mailman.995048304.8843.python-list@python.org> <3B4F8B57.7684D13A@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4FEBCA.E3F256E2@student.gu.edu.au>

Curtis Jensen wrote:
 
> I thought about that.  But in the test examples below, you can see that
> you'll that you don't have to pass "self" with apply.  In fact if you
> do, you'll end up with too many parameters.  Also, symanticly, I think
> "apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )" will only
> pass two arguments "self" and "cmd[1]" as apposed to sending "self" and
> all the items in "cmd[1]" as individual argument.  You'd need to put
> "self" at the beginning of cmd[1], or make a new tuple to pass in.  But
> I know what you mean.

If you need to add a self argument to a list of arguments, (Usually if
you're calling an unbound class method) the typical method is as
follows:

apply( self.ren.Elements, (self,)+cmd, additional_kwds )

Of course this is assuming that cmd is a tuple. If it's a list you need
to do the following:

apply( self.ren.Elements, (self,)+tuple(cmd), additional_kwds

> In any case, my problem went away.  I'm not exactly sure why.  It
> probably had to do with unsafe dynamic binding or something like that.
> :)

Would you be able to show us what cmd and additional_kwds typically look
like?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:35 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:35 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995898939.27893.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6unolt4kg5pjav1k0c7qjv8mg4qe0fdbaj@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:34:36 -0500, <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:

>Guido writes:
>> [...]
>> Because all Arthur does is tick me off, I'll leave it at this -- 
>> maybe someone else can explain it all to him.
>
>Well, I'll see what I can do. In the language there are (at least)
>two distinct things we might want to do when "dividing" A and B:
>
>  (1) split A up into B parts
>  (2) find how many B's fit in an A
>
>A good example of (1) is float division, and the cannonical example 
>of (2) is "int division", aka "div". These are DIFFERENT THINGS.

Nope - float division is simply a logical extension of int division,
the same as float addition compared with int addition. The fact that
some people *see* them as different things is irrelevant given that
others don't.

>So I'm hoping that everyone reading this can agree, BOTH (1) and
>(2) are USEFUL things, and a good language should allow BOTH. If
>not, then please stop reading: there's no way I can convince you.

Here I agree - division that implicitly coerces integers to floats is
likely to be useful, at least for some. It's *not* the only solution
for the stated problems, but it is a reasonable idea.

>Given that you want both (1) and (2), there is just one problem:
>the syntax "A / B" is the ideal syntax for BOTH of these purposes.
>It's ideal for (1) because the mathematical operation of division 
>is traditionally represented with a "/", and it's ideal for (2) 

The mathematical operation of division is traditionally represented as
? in general - or as a horizontal line between the numerator and
denominator. Only rationals merit the / in mathematics - it's simply
the best compromise.

But mathematics uses the same set of symbols equally for both integer
and real division - it's rarely made explicit which is in use as it is
normally blatantly obvious. So I don't believe (1) is valid.


>because C and other languages have historically used "/" between 
>integers for (2). In my opinion (and those of quite a few others), 
>this is pretty lopsided: (1) is probably used more often, so it 

Most programs make heavy use of integer subscripts and indices.
Integer division is heavily used in many applications - including
numerics (even numeric algorithms have to partition their data sets
for some tasks). The first form of division is rarely done outside of
noddy teaching exercises and some specialist fields. *THAT* is the
rare case.

>should get priority, PLUS just imitating C isn't very convincing 
>since other languages (eg: Pascal) use other syntax, PLUS the use 

Pascal is half dead - only Delphi is realistically keeping it alive,
and that is a single vendor non-standard implementation which has
never been a major language in the way C, C++ or Java have - why do
you think they made C++ Builder?

Lets see - on the 1/2 gives 0.5 front we have...

Perl         Completely untyped, so it only has one 'numeric type'
             anyway. Only popular as a scripting language - ie it
             is a competitor, not something lots of people will use
             concurrently with Python so confusion on changeover will
             be relatively limited.
LISP         Lots-Of-Infuriatingly-Stupid-Parentheses? - A very
             important language academically, but *not* a model of
             clarity or simplicity. To my knowledge, the biggest user
             base is the non-standard version used for scripting
             EMACS.
Pascal       Again a very *important* language, but mainly
             historical. Ada - a language very heavily influenced
             by Pascal and by Wirth in general - *REVERSED* this
             decision ON THE GROUNDS OF CLARITY, SIMPLICITY AND
             RELIABILITY - and believe me, Ada was *not* designed
             using guesswork and personal ideologies.
Modula 2/3 etc   Better than Pascal, but sadly not kept around to
                 the same extent. Definitely minority languages.
JavaScript   Hardly a model of cleanliness or simplicity - my
             experience is that half the time the interpreter
             is trying to guess what you mean and getting it
             wrong - just like HTML, I suppose. It's dumbed down
             to the point that you have to figure out just how
             stupid it's assuming you are to have any chance of
             getting it to work at all.


On the other side...

Visual BASIC   The most used language for at least three years
               running.
C              What need I say? Not a great model for clarity in
               general, but at least a *lot* of people are used to it.
C++            Ditto
Java           Ditto
Ada            See 'Pascal' above
VBA            The most used language by non-programmers who just want
               a quick script in a spreadsheet or whatever.


Has anyone noticed a pattern here ;-)


Sorry for arguing against something that's only a minor part of the
issue - especially when you clearly understand my main worry - but I
want people to appreciate that even in twenty years when every Python
script in use has been fixed and no-one remembers the argument - it
will *still* be a matter of opinion which is better.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 15:18:17 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:18:17 -0700
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com>

Sheila King wrote:

> I'm trying to see the "big picture". I'm a "big picture" kind of gal.
> I
> don't feel comfortable working with just bits and pieces...just enough
> information (in the information-giver's opinion) for me to get by.
	...
> Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Should I be satisfied
> with the docs only?

Not necessarily, but I'm still not sure what you're asking for.  You say
you want the "big picture," but your queries seem too general to pin
down exactly what part of the "big picture" (if any) you're missing,
particularly since you have access to and have read the library
reference section on exceptions.Exception.

Why not try asking some very specific questions, with code if necessary,
and see where that takes you?

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
\__/ James Thurber
    Rules for Buh / http://www.alcyone.com/max/projects/cards/buh.html
 The official rules to the betting card game, Buh.


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul  7 22:20:07 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 19:20:07 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107071820.7ebb77f8@posting.google.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994016102.30019.python-list at python.org>...
> I really don't want to go through this whole argument again (after all,
> that's the point of PEPs) but when you were a child, you "just knew"
> whether you meant truncating or float division. Python guesses based on
> the types of the operands which is a poor choice in a dynamically typed
> language that otherwise treats "5.0" as a more verbose alternate syntax
> for "5":
> 
> for i in range(5.0): 
> 	print i
> 
> If Python were to always disallow integer/float coercion then users
> would learn that and life would go on. Instead, it coerces in some
> places and not others.

Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
>>> range(5.0)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
-- as advertised by Paul. However doc says args are "plain integers".
>>> range(5.9999)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
-- should maybe have a last value of 5 (see doc).
>>> range(5.99999999999999999)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
-- Tim seems to need to spend a lot more time explaining this sort of
thing to newbies than why 1/3 produces 0
>>> range(5+0j)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: can't convert complex to int; use e.g. int(abs(z))
-- Not consistent with the theory espoused elsewhere in the PEP-0208
thread that ints are a subset of floats. Floats are a subset of
complex numbers.

IMO, narrowing coercions, ones that can silently lose information,
like the far-too-helpful automatic conversion from character to
numeric that's found in awk and Perl, are dangerous and are against
what I thought was the Python way. Certainly range(5.9999) is a dark
corner that I suspect most people had never ventured into.


From jpb at ApesSeekingKnowledge.net  Thu Jul 12 20:23:07 2001
From: jpb at ApesSeekingKnowledge.net (Joe Block)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:23:07 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <jpb-BA1E76.20231012072001@news-server.cfl.rr.com>

In article <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> > 
> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
> 
> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?

To print it, so it can be read while I'm away from the net?


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Thu Jul 12 13:28:46 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:28:46 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: asyncore.dispatch_with_send bug
Message-ID: <slrn9krnq0.fm0.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

Hello,

I think there's a bug in asyncore.dispatcher_with_send. The accesses
to self.out_buffer in this class cause errors because of the 
__getattr__ method inherited from dispatcher, causing tracebacks such as

  File "/home/alf/Narval/narval/services/SocketManager.py", line 118, in _run
    loop(timeout=60,use_poll=0)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/asyncore.py", line 193, in loop
    poll_fun (timeout, map)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/asyncore.py", line 84, in poll
    if obj.writable():
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/asyncore.py", line 452, in writable
    return (not self.connected) or len(self.out_buffer)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/asyncore.py", line 357, in __getattr__
    return getattr (self.socket, attr)
AttributeError: out_buffer


Am I right, or am I misunderstanding the code ?

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From fellowsd at cs.man.ac.uk  Thu Jul 12 05:24:46 2001
From: fellowsd at cs.man.ac.uk (Donal K. Fellows)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:24:46 +0100
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <3B4D6CDE.FE8B08F0@cs.man.ac.uk>

Harald Kirsch wrote:
> 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
>    SOLUTION: ???
> 
> An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> 'A<A>B', which it should.

This isn't purely a regexp, but it is a one-liner:

  if {[regexp -indices {<A>(B)?} $string matched gotB]&&[lindex $gotB 0]+1} {
     #....
  }

Donal.
-- 
Donal K. Fellows    http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/    fellowsd at cs.man.ac.uk
-- Actually, come to think of it, I don't think your opponent, your audience,
   or the metropolitan Tokyo area would be in much better shape.
                                        -- Jeff Huo <jeff at starfall.com.nospam>


From barry at zope.com  Wed Jul 25 10:39:33 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:39:33 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
	<mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
	<9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
	<cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org>
	<3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net>
	<cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15198.55845.931191.151572@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "GvR" == Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

    GvR> You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net
    GvR> was sent to a different user than email to
    GvR> jknapka at earthlink.net.

Interestingly enough (or maybe not ;), those might be consider two
different addresses.  E.g. Mailman case-preserves the localpart for
delivery purposes, but is case-insensitive for membership purposes.
The domainpart of course is case insensitive.

-Barry



From oliphant at ee.byu.edu  Thu Jul 19 15:06:17 2001
From: oliphant at ee.byu.edu (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:06:17 -0600
Subject: Statistics tool box.
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191304540.10340-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>

> Hi,
>   I am trying to convert my matlab scripts into Python. But I see that
> there are no equivalent stat. tools in Python. If there are any, could you
> please let me know. I am looking for the functions similar to:
>
> normrnd()
> unifrnd()
> hist()
>

The equivalent functionality is available but you need to install Numeric,
Scientifc Python (Konrad Hinsen), and the stats package.  Alternatively,
wait a couple of weeks for the alpha release of SciPy.

-Travis Oliphant



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 13:20:48 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:20:48 -0500
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: <3b66c4ce.904451372@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
        <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
        <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
        <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>
        <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com>
        <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net>
        <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <9k5tg301mn9@enews4.newsguy.com>
        <3b66c4ce.904451372@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <15206.59632.530210.78316@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bengt> Most of us have lots to be thankful for, clearly. Shifting case
    Bengt> is also an extra finger dexterity exercise, which is difficult
    Bengt> for some with good sight but other impairments.

Let's assume you have a desterity problem that makes it hard to press the
shift key while hitting other keys on the keyboard.  No problem, all your
identifiers will be lower case.  You'll probably want to separate words in
identifiers with underscores, however, and on American keyboards at least,
that requires you to use the shift key.  Someone with an impairment such as
you suggest would have to either have a special keyboard (perhaps special
enough to be a voice recognition system) or work on a system that allows
them to remap their keyboards as you can do with X/xmodmap, so they could
move the underscore into an unshifted position.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 20:20:09 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:20:09 -0400
Subject: Python 2.0.1 bug?
References: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com> <Xns90E4B1153C485gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>
Message-ID: <3B5E10B9.A7402CB5@engcorp.com>

Gordon McMillan wrote:
> TheDustbustr) wrote:
[snip]
> > When you run this program then point your webbrowser to localhost:8080,
> > you SHOULD see your GET / HTTP/1.1 request echoed to the screen (the
> > "webpage"), as well as echoed to the console.  Well, under Python 1.5.2
> > running under Linux, it does.  Running 2.0.1 under Windows 95, it
> > doesn't, *nothing* is printed to the webbrowser.
[snip]
> Or it could be that your Windows browser is waiting to see a proper
> HTTP response, but your Linux browser is being "forgiving".
> 
> Browsers are notoriously difficult beasts, so I would definitely
> look there first.

Or at least use 'telnet' first, to view the actual response in
a tool more suited to debugging basic socket problems like 
this, rather than assuming the browser is really showing everything
it has received.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  Fri Jul 27 21:33:11 2001
From: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au (Andrew MacIntyre)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 11:33:11 +1000 (EST)
Subject: Python 2.1 _sockets error
In-Reply-To: <u9r0mtkbja3hbichui2ki1vqniqd0051b0@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.OS2.4.32.0107281124570.27429-100000@central>

{posted and mailed}

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Zen wrote:

> When I start Zope, I get this error:
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/z2.py", line 540, in ?
>     import ZServer
>   File "/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/ZServer/__init__.py", line
> 87, in ?
>     from medusa.test import max_sockets
>   File
> "/usr/www/heavenga/Zope-2.4.0-src/ZServer/medusa/test/max_sockets.py",
> line 2, in ?
>     import socket
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
>     from _socket import *
> ImportError: /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so.1: Undefined symbol
> "ERR_load_RSAREF_strings"

{...}

> The system is running FreeBSD 3.4, and the installed version is Python
> 2.1.  This happened with the install from the ports collection, as
> well as installing from the source package with the basic configure.

For some reason, your base system doesn't have some RSA related
entrypoints in its libcrypto, but your build from the Python port expected
it.  This may be related to the ports system now not specifically
supporting FreeBSD < v4.0.

It might be worth trying to build Python 2.1 (better yet, use 2.1.1)
from the configure script and see whether you get the same result.

For many reasons, you should at the very least upgrade the system to
FreeBSD 3.5.1-STABLE, or even better the 4.3 security updates only branch
(RELENG_4_3 I think).

--
Andrew I MacIntyre                     "These thoughts are mine alone..."
E-mail: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  | Snail: PO Box 370
        andymac at pcug.org.au            |        Belconnen  ACT  2616
Web:    http://www.andymac.org/        |        Australia




From wesc at deirdre.org  Sun Jul 15 03:07:43 2001
From: wesc at deirdre.org (Wesley Chun)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 00:07:43 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107142358330.20249-100000@emperor.deirdre.org>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:27:56 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:23:07 GMT, Joe Block
<jpb at ApesSeekingKnowledge.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
>>> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
>>
>> To print it, so it can be read while I'm away from the net?
> Away from the net?
> Huh? Why would you ever be away from the net?  ;)

what a cute discussion.  ;-)

actually, i *like* to periodically print an entire FAQ for reference
purposes.  although i have an 802.11 setup at home, it seems more awkward
to take my laptop to the restroom when i can bring my trusty printout --
double-sided, double-columned to save whatever tree i can -- along with a
highlighter.

as i was working on a certain manuscript (name withheld to prevent a
shameless plug), the FAQ proved very useful when i could flip back and
forth and make annotations in the margins.  plus, i *wanted* to be off the
net so that i could get some *real* work done!   :)

-wesley

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area Python users group:  http://baypiggies.org

"Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall PTR, December 2000
    http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/

wesley.j.chun :: wesc at baypiggies.org
cyberweb.consulting :: silicon.valley, ca
http://www.roadkill.com/~wesc/cyberweb/




From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 23:30:31 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 00:30:31 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <20010702105039.A23408@Vetinari.home>
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
 <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702001802.02764c60@mail.inet.com.br>

Now it's a little over midnight, a bad time to give a meaningful reply 
after a busy Sunday :-) You raised several interesting points. I believe 
that some problems are caused by my limited knowledge of english. Sometimes 
I'm not able to make myself clear. I'll try to reply only one of your 
comments; I'll leave the rest of them for tomorrow.

At 10:50 02/07/01 +0800, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
>The OS-LIMITED concept was a bit confusing to me the first couple of
>times I read this. Basically, you are saying "write portable code", as
>far as I can tell. If there were other obstacles, wouldn't that make the
>module OS-DEPENDENT? If I'm missing something here, perhaps you can give
>an example of something that is portable code, but OS-LIMITED and not
>OS-DEPENDENT.

Let me try to explain what I meant: some modules are not as portable as 
they should. There is nothing inherently non portable on the module code, 
but the author may have used (maybe inadvertently) some non portable 
feature of some particular platform. This is the what I meant as 
OS-LIMITED. It was my way to define modules that deserve to be "fixed". By 
removing unneeded dependency these modules may become portable, and so 
OS-INDEPENDENT.

Many modules that are available on the net suffer from this problem. Let us 
talk about something simple: some advanced data structure, for example a 
tree. Some implementations available on the net compile only for some 
particular platforms, sometimes because the author used particular features 
of that platform's compiler. In such case, it should be relatively easy to 
remove the dependency in order to make the code OS-INDEPENDENT, as by my 
definition.

As for the rest of your comments, they were all very helpful. I'll try to 
think on them a little bit harder Monday morning after a good sleep 
<wink-and-snore>


Carlos Ribeiro





From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 18:18:32 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:18:32 -0400
Subject: defining classes within loops?
In-Reply-To: <roy-10E6A4.08233827072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEMPLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Roy Smith]
> Just out of curiosity, how many people have ever written a function or
> class definition nested inside a loop?  Seems like sort of a
> strange thing  to do, although I suppose it might be useful in some
> situations.

Never a class, but sometimes a function.  This can be (marginally!) handy
when abusing the default-argument mechanism to build a family of functions
that differ in some regular way.

For a non-trivial example (it's simply fresh on my mind), the 2.2
test_generators.py contains a generator-based N-Queens solver, which uses a
different column-number generator for each row of the board.  The column
generators are created in a loop, using the default-argument trick to give
each row's column-number generator its own pre-initialized local list
containing info about the diagonals reachable from each square in that row.

So that's the problem:  examples are either too complex to explain both
clearly and briefly, or so trivial that if I included one here I'd be
subject to another rash of "but that's so useless only an academic
propeller-head could think it was valuable!" rants <0.9 wink>.

not-a-*common*-practice-regardless-ly y'rs  - tim




From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 13 04:41:58 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:41:58 +0200
Subject: Encryption and python?
References: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <3B4EB456.5A315CF9@stroeder.com>

Greg Copeland wrote:
> 
> I've been browsing around for a while now trying to come up with
> "the" python encryption library that I can make use of.

This is a very general question. What are you looking for?
- Low-level algorithms (hashes and encryption)
- Crypto Protocols (e.g SSL or S/MIME)
- Key stores
...

There's also a mailing list (currently very low volume):
http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/python-crypto.html

Ciao, Michael.


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 02:01:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:01:24 -0400
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu>
Message-ID: <3B6103B4.AF7AE15B@engcorp.com>

Ratnakar Malla wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I need to read from a very long file. But the only information I am
> interested is
> 2 lines at the bottom of the file.

> 1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
> time?

Do you really want to read in "reverse"?  To me that implies getting
each byte in reverse order, which would require reversing the lines
again after finding the "first" two... Or do you just want to read
line-by-line, in reverse?

> 2) If so how??

How about this?

   lastTwoLinesAsList = open('somefile').readlines()[-2:]

> 3) I tried the normal way, but looks like, it is taking lot of time.

What is "normal"?  Maybe your code is not the most efficient
implementation...

You could also use "seek" to find the end of the file, then 
go backwards a few dozen bytes at a time, grabbing blobs of
data until you found the third-last newline (or the second last,
if the file did not end with a newline), then return everything
after that point.  This would be awkward, largely unreadable,
bug-prone, and might take a while to develop.

Or how about calling out to "tail"?

   import os
   lastTwoLinesAsString = os.popen('tail -2 somefile').read()

You might also want to post a sample of your code, and mention
which platform you are on, so feedback might be a little more
relevant to your situation...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 09:37:50 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:37:50 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B542B69.8C092964@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171620190.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

> > I think, that if encoding is not given, it must sillently assume "UNKNOWN"
> > encoding and do nothing, that is be 8-bit clean (as it is now).
> 
> To be 8-bit clean it will have to use Latin-1 as fallback encoding
> since this encoding assures the roundtrip safety (decode to Unicode,
> then reencode).

Nope. There must be no encode-decode back. Or it will slow down
starting Python _scripts_ unnecessary.

That is why I suggested "unknown" encoding - a safe default 
for those who do not want any back-and-force recodings.
  
> > Otherwise, it will slow down parser considerably.
> 
> Yes, that could be an issue (I don't think it matters much though,
> since parsing usually only done during byte-code compilation and
> the results are buffered in .pyc files).

No! Scripts are compiled each time they run. 
If this will be implemented, developers will need to do the trick
of making each script a module and so on. This is not good idea.

There clearly must be the way to prevent encode-decode. And it would be
better if only EXPLICITLY given encoding will trigger encode-decode
mechanism.

> > I also think that if encoding is choosen, there is no need to reencode it
> > back to literal strings: let them be in Unicode.
> 
> That would be nice, but is not feasable at the moment (just try
> to run Python with -U option and see what happens...).

Then indeed --encoding= is needed with -U ;-)
  
> > Or am I missing something?
> 
> It won't switch any time soon... there's still too much work
> ahead and I'm also pretty sure that the 8-bit string type won't
> go away for backward compatibility reasons.

...and efficiency reasons too. re was slowed down significantly by adding
Unicode support.

> > >    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
> > >    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
> > >    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
> > >    roundtrip).
> > 
> > ...as I said, there must be no assumed charset. Things must
> > be left as is now when no explicit encoding given.
> 
> This is what the Latin-1 encoding assures.

I still think something like "raw" is needed...
  
> > > 4. The encoding used in a Python source file should be easily
> > >    parseable for en editor; a magic comment at the top of the
> > >    file seems to be what people want to see, so I'll drop the
> > >    directive (PEP 244) requirement in the PEP.
> > >
> > > Issues that still need to be resolved:
> > >
> > > - how to enable embedding of differently encoded data in Python
> > >   source code (e.g. UTF-8 encoded XML data in a Latin-1
> > >   source file)
> > 
> > Probably, adding explicit conversions.
> 
> Yes, but there are cases where the source file having the embedded
> data will not decode into Unicode (I got the example backwards:
> think of a UTF-8 encoded source file with a Latin-1 string literal).

utf-7 bit for embedded things ;-)
 
> Perhaps we should simply rule out this case and have the 
> programmer stick to the source file encoding + some escaping
> or a run-time recoding of the literal data into the preferred
> encoding.

This is probably wise. Python program need not be a 
while Zoo of encodings... 
  
> > No variant is ideal. The 2nd is worse/best than all
> > (it depends on how to look at it!)
> > 
> > Python has no macro directives. In this situation
> > they could help greatly!
> 
> We've been discussing these on python-dev, but Guido is not
> too keen on having them.

And this is right. I even think encoding information could be EXTERNAL.
For example, directory will need to have "__encodings__.py" file where
encodings are listed.

Then, Python if started with some key could check for such file and
compile modules accordingly.

If there is not __encodings__.py, then Python proceed as it does now,
WITHOUT any conversions to and from.

This will make script-writer happy (no conversion overhead) and those who
want to write encoding-enabled programs (they could specify
__encodings__.py)

I think, this solves most problems.

> > That "#!encoding" is special case of macro directive.
> > 
> > May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
> > at the beginning...
> > 
> > Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
> > with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.
> > 
> > I think, GvR could come with some advice here...
> > 
> > > Comments are welcome !
> 
> Thanks for your comments,

I just hope the realisation of your PEP will not make Python scripts
running slower ;-) while allowing truly useful i18n functionality.

*

I have a feeling that PEP is solving non-problem. Or have I lost
the thread? 
 
For example, I usually write scripts where I assume "koi8-r" or
"windows-1251" encodings. And the only problems I have is when I use
"koi8-r" strings from modules when I need "1251" ones. (In this case I
explicitely recode).

Aren't encodings better confined in documents (in XML for examples),
than programs?

If programs need to be written in unicode, then isn't the next step 
o allow embedding sound, graphics and video?
(I imagine video docstring ;-)

I can admit that using utf-8 in writing programs could be justified,
but Unicode... It will bring nightmare...

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 







From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Mon Jul  2 07:20:57 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 08:20:57 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702081012.02776e10@mail.inet.com.br>

At 06:25 02/07/01 +0000, Courageous wrote:
>When writing language requirements, one MUST not use the
>term "MUST" in conjunction with an "except". And in any case,
>I disagree. Emphatically.

Point taken.

>The use of a singleton pattern changes nothing unless every
>call to the module has the singleton as its first argument. And
>if you're envisioning storing the singleton as a global, nothing
>has been accomplished. There's a global.
>
>Perhaps you could make a better case for why you think this
>is even important.

One example that comes to mind is the fileinput standard module. It stores 
global state:

input([files[, inplace[, backup]]])
Create an instance of the FileInput class. The instance will be used as 
global state for the functions of this module, and is also returned to use 
during iteration.


Let us say that you are iterating over the lines in the main loop of a 
filter, and then, depending on the line read, have to iterate over several 
other files. The global state prevents you from using the same instance of 
the fileinput module. The workaround is to import the module a second time, 
binding it by a different name. Please note that I haven't done any *real* 
test on this myself. Also, if the state variable is declared as a global, 
even reimporting the module will fail.


Carlos Ribeiro





From avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru  Thu Jul 26 17:50:54 2001
From: avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru (Alexander V. Voinov)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:50:54 -0700
Subject: Problem with Python-2.1.1 and Numeric-20.1.0
Message-ID: <3B6090BD.F2B81140@quasar.ipa.nw.ru>

Hi,

It says:

    data = Numeric.transpose(data)
  File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 280, in transpose
    axes = arange(len(array(a).shape))[::-1]
  File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 159, in arrayrange
    m = (add.accumulate(ones((n,), Int))-1)*step +(start+(stop-stop))
NameError: global name 'add' is not defined

The program worked OK with Python-2.0 and Numeric-17.1.

Thank you in advance

Alexander




From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 21:29:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 18:29:57 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508@ruti.visi.com> <9hsu54$t38$1@panix3.panix.com> <9htjhb$ck4@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9htril$5ml$1@panix6.panix.com>

[BTW, would you please attribute the quotes.  It makes conversation
difficult if we can't keep track of who said what.]

In article <9htjhb$ck4 at news1.gtech.com>,
Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>>>Aahz:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and
>>>>Python, and that the real-time resolution requirement is on the
>>>>order of one second. Which would you choose and why?
>
>Sorry, won't answer because it is not a realistic situation i.e. the choice
>wouldn't be between C/C++ and Python :-).

We already have the information that applications in this domain are
written in C/C++, so your claim that it's an unrealistic situation
strikes me as specious at best.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 17 05:19:52 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 12:19:52 +0300
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994803257.19598.python-list@python.org> <3b53fda0$0$151$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de>
Message-ID: <yoxr8vfhpzb.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Guido Stepken <stepken at little-idiot.de> writes:

> I have been teaching python to kids ...12 years old .... they really had 
> fun ... that's the (only) reason for the extreme growing acceptance for 
> python over java or perl or php .... python will be #1 in 2 years 
> .....expecially for huge projects ....

I don't really think this learn-as-child thing is too
important. Generation of people (20-somethings) who were doing basic
at age 12 have already abandoned the language, while people who are
actually using basic these days probably didn't use it at age 12.

OTOH, Unlike basic, Python doesn't suck.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From wyatts at onr.com  Sat Jul 21 05:54:15 2001
From: wyatts at onr.com (wyatt stafford)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 09:54:15 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995634453.9136.python-list@python.org> <hlgglt4hrnnb8a7dmocntkns5bkm4b6jmm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <bjc67.73$5W4.2036582442@news.onr.com>

> :Indeed, I don't think case-sensitiveness is something that will help
> :non-programmers to get used to the language.

I am new to Python and programming, in general.  It is much more important
to me that the syntax be consistent, rather than specifically easy.

In my newbie opinion, case sensitivity gives me the ability to make finer
distinctions in the names of things, though possibly I will also screw
myself by being too clever.

wyatt stafford





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 14:50:52 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:50:52 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <08k0mtc2lftoon7eii2jo43qj1tt76256c@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107261216140.11619-100000@bms>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 maxx at easynews.com wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
<...>
> >The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
> >distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.
>
> Plus, the day that symbols become so numerous in code that the usage of case is
> necessary to differentiate them, then software development will have become
> truly too complex for mortals such as myseld.

Sure, and we can generate as many identifiers as we need with only 2
symbols, "0" and "1".

Obviously there can be both too many symbols and too few symbols...
the question is, `how many is too many, and how few is too few'.
Furthermore, case-sensitive vs. case-insensitive can be handled as a
convention (if you don't like 52+<numbers> symbols then only use 26+),
no need to change the language and force 26+ on everyone.

> >> Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
> >> vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
> >> that naive expectation?
>
> Because writing code is a completely different function than "normal every day
> writing." Learning to write code means beginners must learn to structure their
> thoughts, and organize tasks, so that their code is not a potential jumble of
> ideas, as normal every day writing can be.

What does that have to do with case sensitivity... code, thoughts and
tasks can be organized just as well with case sensitivity as without,
and can be just as jumbled without case sensitivity as they can be
with it.  This is a function of the language's semantics and how well
the users have `wrapped their head' around the language.

> Creative writing and code writing are like apples and oranges. To expect that
> beginners do not need this distinction is to doom them to failure. In fact, some
> of the restrictions that Python places on users, forcing them to indent code for
> example, is what makes the language a great training tool.

Indentation is not a restriction, it is part of the language.
It would be a restriction if the semantics were clear without
indentation (e.g., we had block identifiers) but indentation was
forced anyways.

> Most every piece of problematic code I have dealt with in my career has been
> difficult to work with primarily because it is poorly formatted and structured.
> More often than not, I find code that does not work because novices just put
> commands down in the order that they think of them, not bothering to design the
> proper process flow first. Then they wind up with a malfunctioning mess that
> even they cannot decipher. If they learned on languages like Python first
> (instead of the popular stream of conciousness messes like VB), then they would
> develop "good habits", and be more successful.

That may be true, but "format" and "structure" have nothing to do with
case sensitivity.  Case sensitivity may affect readability, for those
who do not realize that "a" and "A" are different... a simple

>>> ord("a"), ord("A")
(97, 65)

should fix that problem though.


- Bruce




From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Fri Jul 13 03:31:34 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:31:34 GMT
Subject: Regural expression puzzle for gurus
References: <3B4EA0C8.9F697D06@vip.fi>
Message-ID: <3B4EA470.AA7B0D12@nokia.com>

Pekka Niiranen wrote:
> 
> I have a string in the middle of a text starting with #-sign and ending
> to \W.
> I can find it with re.compile('#\w+') and  would like to replace it by
> adding a
> # -sign also to the end of it.
> 
> Example:
> 
>             original string:           xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%
> 
>             after replacement:    xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!"?%
> 
> How can I do replacement with a single regural expression line ?
> 
> I have found a solution like:
>            text = 'xx:yy:#AAA:-#BBB:aa'
>            line = re.compile('#\w+')
>            list = line.findall(text)
>            for i in range(len(list)):
>                  text = text.replace(list[i],list[i]+'#')
> 
> >>>  text
> 'xx:yy:#AAA#:-#BBB#:aa'
> 
> I would like to do this without the for -loop (unless somebody can
> convince
> me the found solution is the fastest available)

Try this.

import re
text = """xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%"""
print re.sub(r"(#\w+)(\W)", r"\1#\2", text)

- Joonas


From twofingersalute at atl.mediaone.net  Sun Jul  1 19:14:15 2001
From: twofingersalute at atl.mediaone.net (myself)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:14:15 -0400
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <9hoat4$euo90$1@ID-87965.news.dfncis.de>

In article <993939668.727430 at athnrd02.forthnet.gr>, "whats_really_hot"
<whats_really_hot at hotmail.com> wrote:

> so, are there..........give me a feedback and some help(how about some
> URL's with books for downloading) for learning Python......
> 
how about:

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/index.htm   ??


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 13:42:32 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:42:32 -0500
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
In-Reply-To: <55ndmt4e43rpoi7at0pikc4a50qp90jh4b@4ax.com>
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>
        <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
        <55ndmt4e43rpoi7at0pikc4a50qp90jh4b@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15206.60936.334175.227484@beluga.mojam.com>

    Dale> It looks a bit unfriendly with all the - and -- but I'll see if I
    Dale> can make some sense of it.

It's actually pretty easy to use once you learn the pattern.  I commonly use
it like so:

    alternate = ""
    binary = quiet = verbose = 0

    # split arg list up into pieces
    try:
        # colon after "a" says it needs an argument - others are boolean
        # flags
        opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "a:bqv")
    except getopt.error:
        usage()

    # process the flags
    for opt, arg in opts:
        if opt == "-a":
            alternate = arg
        elif opt == "-b:
            binary = 1
        elif opt == "-q":
            quiet = 1
        elif opt == "-v":
            verbose = 1

    # process the rest of the args
    if not args:
        infile = sys.stdin
        outfile = sys.stdout
    if len(args) == 1:
        infile = open(args[0])
        outfile = sys.stdout
    elif len(args) == 2:
        infile = open(args[0])
        outfile = open(args[1], "w")
    else:
        usage()

You can expand your getopt call to accept long args by adding a third
argument and adding the necessary tests to your for loop, but for internal
stuff I rarely do.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 11:42:44 2001
From: bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
Message-ID: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com>

Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
Any pointers much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul  4 19:25:18 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 19:25:18 -0400
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
In-Reply-To: <9huj6g01er2@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEHDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tomasz Stochmal]
> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?

[Tim]
> You didn't say what you want to accomplish.  If the idea of "provably
> correct" programs appeals to you, Eiffel will give you more help than
> any other practical language I know of.

[Alex Martelli]
> I still think Haskell would be of higher help.  Immutable data
> make proving program properties easier (while not _easy_).  (If
> you're implying Haskell isn't "practical", I'll unchain the
> slavering hordes of FP groupies against you... scary threat,
> innit?).

Consider the questioner.  Eiffel is an embodiment of a formal theory of
software construction, and has many language features specifically designed
to make application of that theory straightforward.  Thomasz likely doesn't
know either what to prove or how to go about it, in a vacuum; most
programmers wouldn't; Eiffel helps them by providing a well-documented
theory and executable framework; doing it in Haskell instead requires
sucking the theory of functional programming out of scattered papers,
building the proof support machinery by hand, and then persistent commitment
to use it.

Immutability isn't really much help when the *interesting* questions are
about how dozens of subsystems interact with each other; documented and
automagically enforced preconditions, postconditions, and class invariants
do help, and in large part by forcing the programmer to *think* about them.
If you try to do something similar in Haskell, you have to bring the
motivation and support tools with you.  DBC never catches on in Python for
much the same reasons, I fear.

too-clumsy-==-won't-be-used-except-by-motivated-experts-and-those-are-
    the-ones-who-need-it-least-ly y'rs  - tim




From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Thu Jul 19 09:59:38 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 15:59:38 +0200
Subject: Problems with self as default parameter
References: <3B56D025.508F40AD@olen.to>
Message-ID: <m3y9plt3xx.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

Joonas Paalasmaa <joonas at olen.to> writes:

> How can I use class members as default values.
> The code above raises an error.
> 
> class Test:
>     def __init__(self,s):
>         self.default = s
>     def printer(self, string = self.default):
>         print string

[...]

> NameError: name 'self' is not defined

That's it: the default values are evaluated only once, at the time
when the function is defined. And then the value of self.default
(which belongs to the instance, not to the class) is not defined. A
common idiom to overcome this problem is:

def printer(self, string = None):
	if string is None: string =  self.default
	print string


- Markus


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 23 14:34:57 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:34:57 -0400
Subject: direct (not DNS) database connection
References: <74cc9702.0107190115.18ce07aa@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <05_67.12906$YK4.1093571@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"phillip" <phillip at transwitch.co.za> wrote in message
news:74cc9702.0107190115.18ce07aa at posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> I am able to connect to a database, but I must first create a data
> source name(DSN) in windows and the connect through the DSN.
>
> I would like to connect directly like : servername:port/databasename
>
> What module will enable me to do this ( connection pooling would be
> good as well)?
>
> currently I am using odbc for windows and dcoracle for linux.
>
Take a look at cx_Oracle on www.computronix.com (?): I believe that will
allow you to use the equivalent of Oracle connect strings, and I suspect ir
will run on both your platforms.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 14:16:53 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:16:53 -0500
Subject: Short form of file names
In-Reply-To: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net>
References: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net>
Message-ID: <15174.149.10005.190801@beluga.mojam.com>

    Mikhail> Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths
    Mikhail> to short form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..

Try importing dospath directly:

    >>> import dospath
    >>> dospath.normpath("/supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.py")
    '\\supercal.py'

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 04:14:52 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:14:52 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E2B04A54C14duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Martin Sj?gren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in 
news:mailman.995459309.19355.python-list at python.org:

> What's going on here? If (A, B) is raised like A, B, why don't I get
> anything in my 'var' variable? If not, how come (A, B) is matched against
> A?

raise takes 0 to 3 expressions. (A, B) is a single expression yielding a 
tuple. You could have written 'raise (A, B), "Hello"' and then var would 
have been set to "Hello". However, a tuple isn't a valid type for an 
exception which must be a string class or instance object so I think that 
probably this should have thrown a TypeError as it does if you try to 
'raise 3'. Why it didn't escapes me, but a quick play with the interpreter 
seems to indicate that raising any tuple is equivalent to raising the first 
element of the tuple and the remaining elements are lost.

I just looked at the source and in fact it is recursive, as long as the 
first argument is a tuple, it replaces it with its first element.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From nospam at nospam  Wed Jul 11 17:32:31 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:32:31 -0400
Subject: ActivePython word wrap in Shell or PythonWin during list printout
Message-ID: <3b4cc843$0$172@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

I am running the latest Python from ActiveState and I have a
problem that when I print a long list (Like dir()), the entire list
prints out on one line and I have to scroll over to read it.

Is there an environment setting to force word wrap at
a certain line length?

Or is there a list function that can take a list and
pretty print it with word wrap.

(Not having one gave me an opportunity to learn
some  Python scripting as I wrote my own, but
if there was a library standard, that might be better. )


def marginprint(L,margin=80):
     b=""
     for a in L:
         if len(str(a)+b)+3 >= margin :
                print b
                b = "'"+str(a)+"'"
         else:
                if b: b+=","
                b += "'"+str(a)+"'"
     if b: print b
     b=""


With this function, I just type marginprint(dir())
and it will respect the margins.

Only I have to load this into my environment every time
I bring it up.









From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 11:49:53 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:49:53 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994083124.18397.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> I'd like to see some real-world code that takes advantage of the fact
> that this single operator behaves differently with mutable and immutable
> types. Then I will believe that it isn't just a squishing together of
> two unrelated features.

Depending on how you define "real world", I have some use of that
with my still-unreleased "in-house" (literally:-) "gmpy 1.0", where I
have mutable numbers.  My application code is doing combinatorial
arithmetic (computing bridge-related stuff) -- iterating over a
zillion different possible cases (exhaustively covering all
possible distribution of cards over suits in a given situation),
and for each given case X that occurs n times finding out how case
X is to be classified (e.g., number of tricks that in case X are
taken with playstrategies a/b/c, being compared).  When it's
found the classification index of case X is Y, it just does
    countof[Y] += n

If container countof has been initialized with plain longs (or
standard GMPY mpz's), that's like countof[Y] = countof[Y] + n.

Sometimes these are LONG longs (combinatorial arithmetic does
have a knack for producing *big* numbers... unless you do very
clever analysis indeed to ensure against double- and triple-
counting, and part of this application is exactly eschewing all
the usual clever analysis, that one often gets subtly wrong,
and using brute-force counting from first principles instead).

So, I think releasing the old long (or gmpy.mpz) and allocating
a new incremented one may sometimes be costly.  But anyway this
is what I get to have with good-old-Python, and with the gmpy
that is released (because I accepted the unanimous advice from
all Pythonistas who deigned to comment -- numbers must stay
immutable).  With the "new and improved" gmpy, I have an mpz
variant that is mutable.  So if I initialize countof with such
numbers, I'll get inplace incrementing and save the deallocation
and reallocation cost at each and every increment.  Nothing
huge I guess, these ARE scalars after all albeit big ones at
times, but over a few million increments it builds up a bit.

Having this polymorphism here lets me write an application that
can run in plain Python, or with released-gmpy (a bit faster,
because I get to use GMP's enhanced algorithms for long int
[mpz] multiplication, the fast builtin 'comb' function, &c),
or with experimental-gmpy (a bit faster yet).  I like this.
I do want to keep the flexibility because one day this might
be running in Jython (e.g. as part of some JSP setup on the
net) or under a Python installation I don't fully control
(e.g. at some ISP's) so I may or may not be able to install
gmpy on the side, or I may only be able to install the fully
stable, released version.

Of course, except for performance, I couldn't care less
whether the increment is inplace or not -- I never have
other outstanding references to the 'bins' of countof as
I run this nested loop, so the identity of the object that
the bin references is of no interest here.

I guess that's pretty much a limit case for += &c on *scalars*.

Most scalars probably won't have significant costs in
freeing and allocation -- huge integer or rational numbers
would seem to be atypical this way; surely vectors/matrices
will be involved most of the time that +='s inplace version
does matter performance-wise.  But I doubt I'm the only
weirdo doing combinatorial arithmetic, though most may be
currently suffering from the 'numbers must be immutable'
taboo and not considering 'mutable numbers' as a possible
source of speedup:-).


Alex





From bckfnn at worldonline.dk  Sun Jul 29 17:22:44 2001
From: bckfnn at worldonline.dk (Finn Bock)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:22:44 GMT
Subject: ANN: Third alpha release of Jython-2.1
Message-ID: <3b647cc5.30690039@mail.wanadoo.dk>

I am happy to announce the third alpha release of Jython 2.1.

Jython is a Java implementation of the Python programming
language.  It allows users to compile Python source code to
Java byte codes, and run the resulting bytecodes on any Java
Virtual Machine.  It is a very seamless and smooth
integration with Java:  from Python you have complete access
to all Java libraries, can build applets, can integrate with
Java beans, and can subclass Java classes in Python and vice
versa.  Like Python, and unlike Java, Jython can also be
used interactively:  just type some Jython code at the
prompt and see the results immediately.

A java installer is available for download at the Jython website:

    http://www.jython.org/

Installation on version 2.1a3 is similar to version 2.0. Further 
information and tips on installation is available at:

    http://www.jython.org/install.html

Jython 2.1 aims to be feature compatible with Python 2.1.1 and among
the new feature are:

   - A settable console encoding will allow windows users to enter
     national characters at the command prompt.
   - The names of zip- and jarfiles can be added to sys.path.

A complete list of changes and differences are available here:

  http://www.jython.org/NEWS.html

A list of fixed bugs can be found here:

  http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=12867&atid=112867

Change the Status input box to "Closed" and the Group input box to
"Fixed in 2.1a3" and press the "Browse" button.


Bugs can be reported to the bug manager on SourceForge:

  http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=12867

Cheers,
the jython-developers




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 10 01:19:44 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:19:44 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A9070.A394537C@Lugoj.Com>

"Steve S.L. Wong" wrote:
> 
> while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> }

I've been coding C for 20 years and I can therefore say authoritatively that
that is one ugly line of code good sir. You've really abused the comma
operator. Oh well, no animals were harmed I assume.

Anyway, assuming you are doing something with the tokens inside the while
loop, one equivalent appears to be:

import string

for command in filter(None, string.split(line_ptr, ";")):
	print command

The string.split() tokenizes line_ptr, but includes zero length tokens, so I
am applying the filter() function with the "identity" function None, which
will remove the non-true list elements (in this case the zero-length
strings) from the list of tokens.

Hope this helps.


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul 10 09:20:35 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:20:35 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5223@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Let's give Java its due respect, and Python its due respect.  J2EE does have a considerable amount of emphasize in the business world, along with creating some open source efforts (www.jboss.org and www.enhydra.org).  But Python should be used more in the business world.  Unfortunately, it is not.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Logajan [mailto:JamesL at Lugoj.Com]
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 4:24 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> Edward Wilson wrote:
> <snip>
> >Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind.
> <snip>
> 
> Might we be over-generalizing just a wee bit, perhaps?  My company is
> generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with products written
> in Java (with major pieces implemented in Jython :-).
> 
> (I suppose *serious development* is relative <wink>).

"A few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you're talking
real money." A few hundred million? A mere pittance! Obviously no one who
wants to make real money develops in Java!

(Do I really need to add a wink or smiley??)



From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Tue Jul  3 13:59:32 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 10:59:32 -0700
Subject: accessing class data members
Message-ID: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when you
want to know the value of some data member, that a function is written
to return that value.  However, in Python it seems that people just
access the data member directly.

for example:
if there were a class that represented a physical object.  In the class
there were data members that held the objects temperature and location. 
If I wanted to know the temperature of an object, I could just use
obj.temperature.  Though in other languages, the convention seems to
call a function that returns the value, like: obj.get_temperature.

Which is better?

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 15:03:53 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:03:53 -0400
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
References: <slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at> <Fok57.21911$PF1.1081086@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <slrn9lbmfi.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>
Message-ID: <52l57.22260$PF1.1093557@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philipp Weinfurter" <philipprw at gmx.at>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: bug in python's scope handling?


> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:20:49 -0400, Steve Holden
<sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> > When your Python is compiled into bytecode, the assignment to a is
detected
> > during compilation of your function func2(). The name a is therefore
assumed
> > to refer to a local variable, hence the ruin-time exception you
observe.
>
> yes, this is what i thought. but is it correct?
> i don't mean to be pedantic, but the rules are that if a variable
> is not found in local scope, then the compiler looks up the global
> scope and python doesn't follow this rule here.
> it doesn't really hurt, since in 99% of all cases the programmer
> probably _thinks_ he is referring to a local variable, but still...

The rules are correct, but you are making the mistake of assuming that
Python determines the locality of local names by searching the
namespace. This is where you are wrong. The compiler performs a static
program analysis of each function, and if it sees assignments to a
particular name (or indeed various other bindings, as described below)
then it optimizes ALL references to that name to be local.

I know it's a little difficult to get your head around, but that's the
way it is! From section 4.1 of the 2.0 reference manual:

"""Whether a name is local or global in a code block is determined by
static inspection of the source text for the code block: in the absence
of global statements, a name that is bound anywhere in the code block is
local in the entire code block; all other names are considered global.
The global statement forces global interpretation of selected names
throughout the code block. The following constructs bind names: formal
parameters to functions, import statements, class and function
definitions (these bind the class or function name in the defining
block), and targets that are identifiers if occurring in an assignment,
for loop header, or in the second position of an except clause header.
Local names are searched only on the local namespace; global names are
searched only in the global and built-in namespace."""

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/








From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 15:42:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 15:42:55 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107071820.7ebb77f8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <fH227.14742$i8.1300639@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

<tongue_in_cheek>

How about instead of the current proposal we provide a division operator,
say "/.", that always produces a floating-point (or at least non-integer)
result? Then we could call the people who need to use that one the
"slash-dotters".

</tongue_in_cheek>

At least it wouldn't break existing code...

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From sill at optonline.net  Sat Jul 14 21:05:12 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 01:05:12 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9kutbc.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B4F9D27.CF8DC351@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l1r0a.ai.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:19 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Rainy wrote:
>> 
>> On 13 Jul 2001 11:59:09 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
>> > sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:
>> >
>> >> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>> >> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>> >> in perl :-/."
>> >
>> > And that's when you reached for your revolver?
>> 
>> No, the script was fairly short, maybe a hundred lines. It was also the kind of
>> script that you write once and never have to extend, so doing it in perl wasn't
>> a problem. 
> 
> I understand what you mean here, but I'm not sure I believe in the
> idea that there really are scripts you write once and never have to extend.

Well, there *are* such scripts, but the problem is, you don't know if the one
you're writing is going to be one of these or not. I made an educated guess
that the one in question will be write-once and was right, and so wasn't too
annoyed to rewrite it in perl :P.

> 
> That's why I value Python's maintainability so much: effectively
> every program or script we write has to be extended, even if just 
> in the first few months of use.
> 
> With Python, we regular hand off 100 line programs from one person 
> to another for completion and maintenance, as people are available.  
> I think there's even one each of us has contributed to over the 
> last year.  Contrary to what you might imagine, it has become
> progressively cleaner and easier to understand, rather than growing
> into its own little tar pit of a program.

I totally agree.



-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul  3 14:29:17 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 14:29:17 -0400
Subject: Calling a user-defined Exception from within a function. Need Help.
References: <9hsmbn+781@eGroups.com> <mailman.994180745.3880.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etd7kxp3lz6.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> |                   raise other
> 
> I think this line is wrong, but I could be wrong.

No, you can raise a subclass of Exception.  I do it all the time.

Alex.


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Wed Jul 18 20:05:00 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:05:00 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <180720011705003205%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> 
> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
> 
> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

Well, let's see.  The first machines I used didn't have a case problem: 
they only had upper case.  Is that case sensitive or case insensitive? 
[They also had identifiers of 3 or fewer characters.]

Then I used some machines with upper and lower case, which were case
sensitive in the language processors I used (favoring lower case).

For that matter, they didn't have a file naming problem...they didn't
use file names.

Times do change.

I happen to prefer case-sensitive languages (that could be the only
aspect of C that I prefer to the related aspect of the Pascals I
used...which had reacted to the advent of readily available lower case
in mid-life by being case insensitive).

So I think Python is currently right in this area, but it isn't
important enough to me to cause me to stop upgrading Python versions
when it changes.  Or argue about.  

[The direction the Unicode source threads are taking might well, but we
still have the BDFL (or bdfl, or bDFL, or bDFl ...) to conrol that...I
hope.]

I also hope that after the change to case-insensitive Python, we don't
also go through a change to diacriticals-don't-matter Python.

  --John


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul 26 18:59:57 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:59:57 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Vk087.27863$B7.4280302@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B60A0ED.BAAFE3A9@Lugoj.Com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> And (at least in the Pascal compiler) identifiers were limited
> to 6 characters so that an entire identifier would fit into a
> single word -- so two identifiers could be compared in a single
> instruction.

I too fondly remember the CDC Cyber series. They didn't have a traditional
stack. As I recall, a blank memory space was left at the beginning of each
subroutine where a single return address could be stored. This meant you
couldn't do recursion using the standard assembly language subroutine call
mechanism. I forget how Pascal got around this. I do recall them switching
from 6 bit characters to an optional 12 bit characters to support lowercase
a few years after I encountered Kronos.

> Yikes.  It was an interesting architecture.  One of my
> assignments in a class once upon a time was to write a 6600
> instruction set simulator in 6600 assembly language.  It had a
> small, regular instruction set and it was surprisingly easy...

It has been soooo long that I may misremember, but wasn't it pretty much
automatic to set the r1 register to 1 at the top of an assembly language
program? And to clear r0? Or was it the other way around?

> Doing the same thing for a Pentium would be pretty horrific.

While I am one of the grunting barbarians who doesn't wish to see progress
roll over a lot of legacy code, I suspect any ugliness of the Pentium is due
to the attempts by Intel to retain some form of backward compatibility at
least as far back as the 8008. But it has been so long since I did any
assembly language programming that that may no longer hold true.


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 21:40:13 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:40:13 -0400
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9kutbc.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B4F9D27.CF8DC351@engcorp.com> <slrn9l1r0a.ai.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3B50F47D.BD251C00@engcorp.com>

Rainy wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:19 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> > I understand what you mean here, but I'm not sure I believe in the
> > idea that there really are scripts you write once and never have to extend.
> 
> Well, there *are* such scripts, but the problem is, you don't know if the one
> you're writing is going to be one of these or not. I made an educated guess
> that the one in question will be write-once and was right, 
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So far.  :-)

> and so wasn't too annoyed to rewrite it in perl :P.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 15:33:35 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:33:35 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:27:56 MDT."
             <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> 
Message-ID: <200107191933.f6JJXZF17263@odiug.digicool.com>

> I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
> expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
> non-programmers.

IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.

(1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.

(2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
    group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
    arbitrary rule than non-programmers).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Fri Jul 20 22:21:34 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:21:34 -0500
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <000801c11181$3145dcc0$2cde3dd8@glindshome>
Message-ID: <00cc01c1118b$dd96f9f0$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

Take a look at Reportlab (www.reportlab.com)

==========================================================================
Andreas Jung                                          andreas at digicool.com
Digital Creations           "Zope Dealers"            http://www.zope.org


----- Original Message -----
From: Greg & Janet LINDSTROM
To: python-list at python.org
Sent: Freitag, 20. Juli 2001 20:05
Subject: Help with PDF


Greetings-

What is available in Python to produce Portable Document Format (PDF) files?
I have read through the "Python Programming on Win32" book and searched the
web-site, with little result (the book is good, but eluded that new tools
might be available by the time the book had been published).  What is the
state-of-the-python on pdf?  Is it considered "the method of choice" for
"pretty" documents?

Thanks,
Greg Lindstrom
Vilonia, Arkansas




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:26:59 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:26:59 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995898939.27893.python-list@python.org> <6unolt4kg5pjav1k0c7qjv8mg4qe0fdbaj@4ax.com> <cpzo9uoz9k.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <4rrslt8tpvf1fe7de8tph82c88goq18lss@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:20:14 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:
>
>> The mathematical operation of division is traditionally represented as
>> ? in general - or as a horizontal line between the numerator and
>> denominator. Only rationals merit the / in mathematics - it's simply
>> the best compromise.
>> 
>> But mathematics uses the same set of symbols equally for both integer
>> and real division - it's rarely made explicit which is in use as it is
>> normally blatantly obvious. So I don't believe (1) is valid.
>
>I believe you are wrong here on both counts.  Knuth, a mathematician
>if there ever was one, uses / for division when written in-line and a
>horizontal line in "display" formulas.  He also uses an explicit floor
>notation to indicate integer division, and without that his divisions
>are real divisions.  (Knuth's floor notation acts like a pair of
>brackets around an expression; the left bracket looks like an L, the
>right bracket looks like a reverse L.  He has a similar ceiling
>notation where the L's are upside down.)

Being more explicit is essential when you are defining and proving
algorithms. Everyday application of those algorithms is a completely
different thing.

Most mathematics I've seen uses a mixture of '/' (or, rarely, '?') and
horizontal lines even in the same expression - the issue is
convenience and clarity due to the length of the numerator and
denominator expressions, not the semantics of the notation.

In discrete mathematics, of course adding the additional explicit
floor/ceiling notations is the norm - for the same reason as when
defining and proving algorithms. However, it isn't always so - it's
just that in any currently *interesting* discrete mathematics, it *is*
necessary. Cases where it is not necessary are generally considered to
be done-and-dusted and boring, but that doesn't make them wrong - they
are the cases that happen in every day life, and which most frequently
occur in programming.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 00:43:56 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 05:43:56 +0100
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
References: <sdigltkmqv58ujun2b55jrgvbd5oec4okb@4ax.com> <mailman.995751757.31814.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <rt8klto9303h65rth71cfsmikgptpdqdt0@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:41:54 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>It's not at all clear what p.copy() "should" do, though-- even for simple
>iterators --and that's why we're leaving it out, at least at the start.  For
>example, the bindings of local variables are part of a generator's state.
>What should p.copy() do about *them*?  If a local vrbl is also a generator,
>should it (recursively) apply the .copy() method to it too?  Just make
>another reference to the current bindings of the locals?  Systematically do
>shallow copies of values?  Systematically do deep copies?

It's all *very* clear to me - only a full deep copy would do. The only
reason it should generate a different sequence to the original copy
would be due to external state.

I can see that a generator following exactly the same sequence again
is not much use, and that re-running the sequence should mean getting
a different result, but that should result from external state in my
mind - if only *some* internal state was copied, it would be far too
confusing.

However, although it would be an interesting capability, I'm not
actually sure my original thought was valid...

>> A major use I could think of for this is in applications that need to
>> balance searching by depth and by breadth according to some heuristic.
>> In addition to the search tree so far, it would be easy to record
>> generator states that have only identified some of the branches from a
>> particular state - so you could explore this area of the tree
>> depth-wise for a bit then nip-back to expand the breadth later. An
>> obvious application would be for board games such as chess.

Chess doesn't need to rederive from the same generator state more than
once - the tree building/searching heuristic I mentioned merely needs
to store a partially evaluated generator for each node that is capable
of working out the remaining possible moves from its state. Evaluating
the same position and move more than once would be pointless.

Given that, I'm not sure I can think of another use. Backtracking in
the Icon sense can be handled quite effectively without it.

>Needs a PEP, and won't go in for 2.2 because I can pretty much guarantee
>"one size fits all" won't.  Python generators aren't quite like any other
>language's, and so we need more real-life experience with them before
>deciding what (if anything) more is truly needed.

I can accept that.

>in-the-meantime-python-chess-apps-aren't-really-a-major-use<wink>-ly

Of course you're right - noughts and crosses is *much* more important
;-)



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul  9 23:32:43 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:32:43 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.994548913.18171.python-list@python.org> <cppubbipxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A775B.1212684C@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I just discovered that we don't need to add a new operator overloading
> name for the div and mod operations: classes already look for a
> __divmod__ method to overload divmod(), and we should naturally define
> div(x, y) (or x div y) as divmod(x, y)[0].

That sounds suspiciously similar to the argument that
we don't need __eq__, __le__ etc. because we can just
as well funnel them all through __cmp__...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 05:53:45 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 11:53:45 +0200
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994576272.19695.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i9afg0385@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994576272.19695.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> to include to the core. For example, if one want to do logic,
> there is only one operation needed (i do not know how to call it in
> English:
>
> X    Y      X/Y
> 0    0      1
> 1    0      1
> 0    1      1
> 1    1      0

It's usually called "nand" (short for Not-AND, I guess).

> I believe, that there is some set of operations which is as general as
> Turing machine BUT is easily evolutionable into something practical.

Sure, there must be plenty (infinitely many, I'd bet, offhand).  But
I think the most practical one must be some subset of Scheme -- no
effort wasted on syntax... and quite practical as often demonstrated.


Alex





From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 13:00:31 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:00:31 -0400
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
In-Reply-To: <fnt3ktkphaut5q2ohbpage1n1advhdt109@4ax.com>; from jkraska1@san.rr.com on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 04:40:31PM +0000
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <fnt3ktkphaut5q2ohbpage1n1advhdt109@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <20010703130031.C22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 04:40:31PM +0000, Courageous wrote:
| 
| >The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the positive
| >things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?  Why
| >the leaning towards C over C++?
| 
| The explosion of forms available and commonly in use in C++ gives me
| a headache. I really just want "C with classes and virtual functions," pretty

Isn't that called "Objective C"?  I read an overview and the beginning
of a tutorial once.

-D




From greg at electricrain.com  Tue Jul 17 21:19:40 2001
From: greg at electricrain.com (Gregory P. Smith)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:19:40 -0700
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
In-Reply-To: <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>; from gustafl@algonet.se on Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:04:38PM +0000
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <20010717181940.E28612@zot.electricrain.com>

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:04:38PM +0000, Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
> 
> >Doesn't help to use py2exe args with Installer!
> 
> Sorry, misunderstood this first. Haven't used ConfigParser before.
> 
> >Edit myscript.cfg and put
> >packages=_xmlplus
> >in the PYZ section.
> 
> It don't work. Here's what I have done:

...

I hack that I don't really recommend, but that does work: rename the
_xmlplus subdirectory from the pyxml installation to xml.  (move any
old tiny xml directory that python came with out of the way).  We've
been doing this to package mojo nation successfully with both gordons
and py2exe.  [we did that for other historical reasons unrelated to
packaging but it worked for packaging as a side effect]

-G




From donn at u.washington.edu  Tue Jul 24 13:06:54 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:06:54 GMT
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <ku4rs3yueb.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <9jk65h$dto$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <9jk9ve$m94$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "Russell E. Owen" <owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu>:
...
| The main problem is going to be how to buffer data until it can be read. 
| the parallel port card has no buffering of its own. Hence the complex 
| process outlined above.
|
| I was hoping unix and/or Python had some nice way to "magically" connect 
| an unbuffered input device to a FIFO buffer and make it look like a 
| socket, so I could use select and/or aynchcore.

Yes and no, I guess.  I would expect the file descriptor to be
selectable, at least in principle though subject to implementation
details, but the point is you probably want a more leisurely
select schedule, which would require a kernel I/O buffer.
I can't say there is no way to get the kernel to buffer a normally
unbuffered device, but it would have to be a Solaris dependent feature.
If Solaris supports some kind of loadable kernel module, it might be
a fun project to see if it could be done generically.  Far from
simplifying life though.

| P.S. Any advice regarding using "aioread", etc. vs "aio_read", etc.? 
| This is on Solaris 8. "aio_read", etc. seems to be the standard Posix 
| way of doing asynch I/O. I have no idea where "aioread", etc. come from, 
| but it's what the existing C code uses. At first glance, the interface 
| to aio_read looks a bit better, but I'd hate to pick something that was 
| buggy or deprecated.

I bet aio_read is not any kind of POSIX, but I do find it documented
on Digital UNIX, and not aioread.  So that's one vote for aio_read
being the more standard non-standard function.  Neither is documented
on NetBSD.  Buggy or not is up to Sun.  For the Python module, I
think Modules/cStringIO.c would be a good reference for C type that
presents a file interface.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  2 19:53:28 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 23:53:28 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b4102f4.887720905@wa.news.verio.net>

On 2 Jul 2001 13:06:57 -0700, 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote:

>I agree that the quality of the design is paramount. BTW, I would like
>to thank everyone who responded to my query. I should probably point
>out that I am an aerospace engineer with some experience in C++ and
>Tcl/Tk, but I am a Python beginner.
>
>As for function prototyping, it seems to me that argument passing by
>keyword in Python can be used to advantage. If all procedure arguments
>are passed by keyword, there is much less chance that a procedure will
>be called incorrectly, particularly when a procedure interface is
>changed. Contrast that with C++. The C++ compiler will catch only some
>of those kinds of errors. If I change the order of two ints in a
>function interface, for example, the C++ compiler won't have a clue
>that the interface has changed.
>
>What would be very desirable for Python is some kind of static checker
>that can guarantee BEFORE run time that all procedures are called
>correctly. Does anyone know of anything that does that?
>
>Also, can anyone give specific examples of Python being used in
>safety-critical applications? Thanks.
>
I am wondering if using non-deterministic[1] memory allocation is
permissible in a safety-critical system. What kind of testing
could you specify to guarantee that code would continue to
run? Or does memory allocation/garbage collection have provable
behavior under conditions that you could implement within? Also,
do you have any hard-real-time requirements?

Actually, I would be surprised if you have the freedom to choose
to use anything in your final product that doesn't formally meet
stringent requirements, if it is really safety-critical. Better read
the requirements docs with a lawyer at your elbow, I would think ;-/

[1] Obviously I don't mean that a computer proceeds randomly, any
more than it does when generating pseudo-random numbers.


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sat Jul 14 01:06:34 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:06:34 -0700
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FD35A.26B4568E@Lugoj.Com>

Roy Smith wrote:
> 
> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:
> 
>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);
> 
> The obvious translation would be:
> 
>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
> 
> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on it.  Perl
> handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra" variables undefined, whereas
> python raises a ValueError exception.  What I'd like to do is have the
> extra field variables left as null strings.

This may not be the most elegant or efficient, but how about this:

[f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Fri Jul  6 13:17:00 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 21:17:00 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <3B460CCF.2924.33315027@localhost>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107062116260.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Garry Steedman wrote:
> maybe this would be a good time for someone to think about writing a
> nifty FAQ product for Zope?

   The only problem with FlexFAQ2 is its funny URLs.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul 18 12:36:15 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 09:36:15 -0700
Subject: Python CGI speed on MacOS X
References: <johnca-1707011356260001@nop009.transbay.net>
Message-ID: <mty9pm9ou8.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

John Abbe writes:

> I'm running MacOS X on a PowerBook G3 400MHz, and have Python 2.1
> installed (from http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/).

I've got the same computer, and I do notice Python being a bit more
pokey than it should be.  I suspect some weird intereaction between
the Apple-patched gcc compiler and the Python source.

I'm afraid I can't help, though.  :-(

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 06:27:59 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:27:59 +0200
Subject: system exec  ?
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <9i1ffe029cm@enews1.newsguy.com>

"alphaZeta" <NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9i1er4$mth$1 at news.businessobjects.com...
> Hi,
>
> I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a
program
> in a python script.

os.system('theprogram') just executes it.  What you desire is different:

> Does anybody know ?
>
> For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
> the system.
> alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")

a = os.popen("ls -l").read()

may be what you want (but you may also prefer to call .readlines()
instead for example, getting the result as a list of strings, one
per line, rather than as one big string).


Alex





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 04:06:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:06:34 +0200
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org> <9hsql302ghk@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k4s5u.v3.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <tk54ovf2o14ede@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9huiqb01eih@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Stephen Boulet" <spboulet at speakeasy.net> wrote in message
news:tk54ovf2o14ede at corp.supernews.com...
    ...
> Ok, how would you write this if you actually needed the index of array in
> your for loop?
>
> My (ugly looking) solution; I hope there's something better:
>
> i = 0
> for item in array:
>    process(item)
>    someFunction(i)
>    i = i + 1

# somewhere "up above", e.g. placed in __builtin__ by
# your siteconfigure.py or whatever:
indices = xrange(sys.maxint)

for index, item in zip(indices, array):
    process(item)
    someFunction(index)

See http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52233
for a bit more discussion &c (ratings and/or comments always
welcome, of course:-).


Alex





From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 19 19:28:01 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:28:01 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995580633.1267.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpsnfsfqjk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:

> The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
> is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?

You flunked math, right?  The number of available identifiers is still
infinite...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 23 14:47:28 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:47:28 -0400
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <mailman.995840325.21528.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ch_67.13062$4v6.1090294@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995840325.21528.python-list at python.org...
> [Erik Max Francis]
> > so perhaps when mathematicians are isolated with other mathematicians
> > they tend to pronounce it that way.  I really don't know.
>
> [Tom Bryan]
> > In both my undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics in the
> > U.S., I only remember hearing tuple pronounced so that it rhymes with
> > goop.
>
> Now *that's* an affectation.  Where I went to school, it rhymed with
goople
> <wink>.
>
> > If anyone pronounced it to rhyme with couple, it was rare enough
> > that I don't remember it.  But we also said "pie" for pi and "fee" for
> > phi.
>
> Perfectly sensible.  At PythonLabs, I think Fred Drake says
> tuple-like-couple.  I'm a tuple-like-goople guy (i.e., normal).  Jeremy
> hasn't existed for months, and everyone runs away when Barry speaks, so
who
> knows what they say.  Guido only barks orders in Dutch, so I'm not sure
how
> he pronounces it either.
>
> but-pretty-sure-he-prounounces-"dict"-like-"luxury-yacht"-ly y'rs  - tim
>
Of course in a civilised society, tuple rhymes with goople, and also has a
"y" sound after the t, so it's "tyoople", if you don't mind, thank you very
much. OK?

no-nooze-is-good-nooze-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From rjh at 3-cities.com  Wed Jul  4 19:39:19 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 23:39:19 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com> <mailman.994276569.27572.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B43AE03.F58B72C7@3-cities.com>

Paul Prescod wrote: 
> "Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> > Python does not undermine the distinction between integers and floats.
> >>> 5 + 10
> 15
> >>> 5 + "10"
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: number coercion failed

You seem to want to have the string "10" automatically
converted to be an integer.  PEP-0238 will have no
impact on this. 

Python extensively distinguishes between numeric
types and other types.  Consider all of the special
class methods devoted to this end (.e.g, __add__).
It would not be too hard to creat a numeric string
that could behave to your satisfaction.

> > Arithmetic expressions that
> > involve only integers currently always result in an integer.
> >>> import math
> >>> math.cos(5)
> 0.28366218546322625

Cosine is not an arithmetic operation; it is a trigonometric
function.  Again, PEP-0238 would not change this behaviour
and would not increase consistency with it since in this instance
it is a property of the function (give it a real number and it gives
you float) not of the type of the argument (other than requiring
the real number property).

> ... Only people with a history in statically
> typed languages seem to expect operations to be type-consistent.

One of the great virtues of Python is indeed dynamic typing,
and I am not struggling to preserve type consistency.  I do think
that the current behaviour is more consistent with the properties
of mathematical integers, and for this reason I have had no trouble
in communicating to students the expected behaviour.
 
My comments have been directed at 

  - the assumption that the change will help beginners. I believe
    this to be incorrect - the PEP merely moves the point at which 
    they must appreciate the difference between integer and 
    floating point arithmetic.   

  - the amount of code that is broken

Hinsen and others have noted that functions written to expect a 
floating point argument will behave more consistently if they
are mistakenly given an integer argument.  The PEP will indeed
accomplish this.  But so would other far less drastic mechanisms.

You cite an example above.  cos(5) does the "right" thing.  It
is a property of the function itself, not the argument 
passed to it.  But cos("5") also (correctly in my view) gives a 
type error.

> > Who expects?  You are already seeing in this discussion that many
> > people think that the current behaviour is not only what they expect
> > but is actually very justifiable.
> 
> Sure, people with a bunch of programming language experience.
> 
> http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

This issue is only mentioned in passing in this article and no
reference is given to an actual survey.  Can U please post a better
link to the reference?  All I can find on Prof. Pausch's
home page or with a Google search are either third party notes from a 
Python conference or papers on Alice that again only touch on this
issue in passing.  I'm a big fan of Alice, so I know he knows about 
usability, but I'd like to see his description of how the survey 
was conducted and his conclusions.

The audience for Python is very large.  A survey that captures only
just a small part of that audience (e.g., novices focussing not on
programming but on 3-D graphics) is not necessarily a basis for change.
My experience with scientifically literate programming novices is also
not 
representative of the entire Python user community.  Hence the debate.

> > All programmers must very soon appreciate the different nature of
> > integer and floating point (or rational) arithmetic in order to
> > address discretized quantities such as lists, files, strings, etc.
> 
> If you are consistent about this I might support you. Let's ban
> expressions like this:
> 
> >>> 1/2.0
> 0.5
> 
> Then Python will be consistent about the fact that integers and floats
> are as different as strings and integers.

Integers and floats are both numbers - hence 1/2.0 makes sense and the
Python coercion rules handle the choice of the type of the result. 
 
Integers are a subset of floats - so the Python choice of coercing 
integers to floats in mixed integer-float expression makes sense.

Integers have properties that most floats do not - so forcing the
coercion
of integers to floats in *some* pure integer expressions is a matter
of choice.  It is only this choice that PEP-0238 is addressing.
 



-------------------------------------------------------------------
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by 
little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a
great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself
with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard
words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said to-day."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Robert J. Harrison (rjh at 3-cities.com)


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 08:29:26 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:29:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996578158.8220.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF896FA6DF1michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

"Ken Seehof" <kseehof at neuralintegrator.com> wrote in 
news:mailman.996578158.8220.python-list at python.org:

> I hereby revoke the title ".*[dD]ictator".  I dub thee "Fearless Leader".
> 

Nice one; I agree it's earned!


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 00:12:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:12:51 -0400
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net>
Message-ID: <3B53BB43.986D70AE@engcorp.com>

Lee wrote:
> 
> I wonder if anyone reading this could be kind enough to offer me some
> advice. 
[...]
> Of course, there may be hundreds(?) of
> ways to arrive at the desired results - using e.g. ASP, PHP, perl. If
> anyone out there has worked on similar projects, or simply has some
> recommendations, I should very much appreciate their thoughts.
> 
> Ideally, I'd like to have maybe 5 or 6 different implementation
> suggestions with an associated set of pros and cons for each, so I'd
> love to hear lots of suggestions!

You haven't really provided much in the way of information to
allow anyone to suggest pros and cons *in the context of your
application*.

Can you provide background on the platforms the various servers
you describe have to run?  (Linux, Windows, undefined?)

Can you discuss the requirements in terms of performance
(required throughput, volume, number of hits, latency, whatever)?

Is this commercial (implying money to pay for certain kinds
of development) or a freebie (implying you are willing to trade
off cost savings against perhaps reduced sophistication)?

I could probably think of a dozen other such questions.

If you provide more detail, maybe you'll get responses more
closely tailored to your application and needs, rather than just
a bunch of random suggestions.  In other words, do you really
want everyone to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, or could
you take off the blindfold and point us in the right direction?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 02:15:31 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:15:31 -0400
Subject: ANNOUNCE: SCons (Python build tool) development under way
References: <mailman.994953807.6320.python-list@python.org> <3B4E702B.8070008@webone.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B4E9203.FBF84764@engcorp.com>

Oops, accidentally sent before done editing...

simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> 
> Steven Knight wrote:
> 
> >This is to announce that active development of SCons is now underway at:
> >
> >       http://scons.sourceforge.net/

> So this is not just for a python project (i can't see why
> you would need any "make" utility for a (purely) python project),
> but as a real replacement for make?
> ie. reads makefiles and such?
> Well, im rather confused about this...

Well, if it will help, since maybe you didn't click on the 
conveniently included link:

"""
 SCons is ... an improved substitute for the classic Make 
 utility... 

 What makes SCons better? 

 * Configuration files are Python scripts--no new syntax to 
   learn. 
 * Global view of all dependencies--no more multiple build passes 
   or reordering targets to build everything.
 * Reliable detection of build changes using MD5 signatures, not timestamps. 
 * Reliable, automatic dependency analysis--no more "make depend" 
   / "make clean" to get all of the dependencies. 
 * Easily extensible through user-defined builders. 
 * Building from central repositories of source code and/or pre-built targets.
"""

This all sounds DAMN fine to me.  What was it that confused you?
As it says above, the configuration files are Python scripts, so
no, it will not read makefiles.  This is a substitute for make,
an improved way of doing what make has been doing, gradually 
more and more awkwardly as programmers' needs became more
sophisticated, for years.

(I've been anxiously awaiting the release of this in some
releasable form, so "alpha" or not I'm happy to see it reach
this stage.  Thanks, Steven!)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Tue Jul 24 15:32:32 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 21:32:32 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de>
Message-ID: <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Sibylle Koczian <Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> (SK) writes:

SK> piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
>> 
>> >>>>> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> (GvR) writes:
>> 
GvR> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
GvR> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
GvR> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
GvR> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
GvR> routine.
>> 
>> This is not true. Algol 60 was case-insensitive from the beginning. By
>> design, as Algol 60 was designed the way it is in spite of the difficulties
>> it would give its implementors.
>> --
SK> But that's exactly what he says! Algol 60 was before C, as far as I
SK> know, and case-insensitive as was normal at the time.

Sorry, I meant to say that Algol 60 was case sensitive.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 12:43:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:43:28 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cp7kwv7iag.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> (2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
> rational integers?

Sorry, you lost me there.  What are these?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 16:10:53 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:10:53 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <slrn9krv7p.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107130007060.9325-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Rainy wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:29:21 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>>>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>>>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>>>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>>
>> To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> lines of C++.
>>
>>
>
>I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
>this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>in perl :-/.

...and you wrote automated Python->Perl routine in Python?

*

I've redone cgiforum in Python and that saved as from REAL intrusion:
Python code was immune for "../../../etc/passwd\0"-path exploit while Perl
was not! he-he. That was before I learned to check every CGI-input.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 12, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses." _/




From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 10 19:37:04 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:37:04 -0700
Subject: compiling c app in MSVC
In-Reply-To: <3b4b8bc7$0$26110$6e365a64@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at>
Message-ID: <002501c10999$3a4521e0$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

ThaFacka wrote:
> MSVC5 complains when compiling a program with <python.h>,
> that the lib file python20.lib is either invalid or my
> disk is corrupted (cant set file pointer to 0xblabla).
> and no my disk is not corrupted. anybody compiled '
> succesfully with MSVC5?

Python is compiled with MSVC6, which does not produce libraries that
are compatible with MSVC5.

1. You can try to rebuild Python with MSVC5 (probably won't work
though) and then build your project (but the binary will not be
compatible with everyone's Python).
2. You could pay Microsoft some cash and get MSVC6
3. You could start developing with Cygwin Python and use GCC





From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Tue Jul 24 16:24:05 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:24:05 -0700
Subject: size of a file
References: <3b5dd418_8@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-223C39.13240524072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3b5dd418_8 at news.newsgroups.com>,
 "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote:

> How can I find out the length of a file. I have a descriptor fd of the file
> (I am using the os module).

When I wanted to do this recently, I used

    f = open(fn)   # open file, fn is a string containing the filename
    f.seek(0,2)    # go to end of file
    fsize = f.tell()
    f.close()

I guess if you already have an fd you could skip the call to open() and 
seek back to the start in place of the close().

No doubt someone will tell me a better way to do this...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From clpy at snakefarm.org  Tue Jul  3 12:19:15 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 18:19:15 +0200
Subject: Strange os.popen() behavior
Message-ID: <3B41F083.55F65C46@snakefarm.org>

Hi there!

I have a problem with a script that reads the contents of /etc/passwd from
a remote host. It doesn't always seem to read all lines:

<test.py>
#!/usr/bin/python

import os

for i in range(5):
    pipe = os.popen("ssh -q root at remotehost cat /etc/passwd")
    passwd = pipe.readlines()
    pipe.close()
    print len(passwd)
</test.py>

Here's the output:

969
72
969
325
969

If I enter the SSH command in a shell I always get all 969 lines of
/etc/passwd (the file does not change over time). Any clues?

I am using Python 2.1, OpenSSH 2.9p1 (client), OpenSSH 2.5.2p2 (server).

Regards
Carsten.


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Wed Jul 25 15:53:31 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:53:31 -0400
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective
Message-ID: <7OyX7kKkXgeB092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

"Tim Randolph" <timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com> wrote:
|I, for one, would like to thank him for all the work he has done for the
|language and its community.  I really do feel gratitude (almost) every time
|I first see the >>>.

Oh... for a moment there I misread this.  I thought you wrote that you
felt gratitude every time you see ">>" :-).

good-at-heart-but-still-prone-to-misjudgemently yours, Lulu...



From bktoa23 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 22 10:50:28 2001
From: bktoa23 at hotmail.com (Tom Baker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:50:28 GMT
Subject: capturing multiple groups?
Message-ID: <UKB67.166784$mG4.79726347@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

What is the required syntax to match and save repeating groups?  ie.

Have:  @12X12Y12Z@
Want:  ['12X' '12Y' '12Z']

My re of  re.compile("@(12.)*@") matches but only saves '12Z', and that is
exactly what the manual says it should do!!!  I'm sure I did this sort of
thing in Perl before but I've not been able to come across the correct
python syntax.

Thanks in advance,
Jim





From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 10 02:32:37 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:32:37 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com> <slrn.pl.9kl837.1c4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3B4AA185.9F9DC509@alcyone.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:

> for command in ';'.split(line_ptr):

No, you mean

	for command in line_ptr.split(';'):
	    ...

The pattern you used is for the join method, not the split method.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Women are equal because they are not different any more.
\__/ Erich Fromm
    Product's Quake III Arena Tips / http://www.bosskey.net/
 Tips and tricks from the absolute beginner to the Arena Master.


From barewy at edefod.net  Sun Jul 29 14:25:53 2001
From: barewy at edefod.net (Timothy Gibson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:25:53 GMT
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
Message-ID: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net>

If you'll recycle Gilbert's printer with keypads, it'll biweekly 
interface the thought.  Sometimes Alexandra will get the robot, and if 
Samantha wistfully meets it too, the programmer will collaborate 
outside the fast cybercafe.  My extreme PERL won't disconnect before I 
push it.  He will engulf halfheartedly if William's plotter isn't 
bizarre.  Go cry a protocol!  When will you save the chaotic 
retarded zipdisks before Pilar does?  Jeff wants to know seemingly, unless 
Chester infects machines within Evan's administrator.  Until 
Jeff defiles the RAMs stupidly, Ann won't moan any solid cafes.  
Where Frederick's discarded LAN outwits, Robette facilitates 
in back of loud, plastic CIAs.  Otherwise the terminal in Jonnie's 
librarian might prepare.  Try typeing the Back Orifice's dry 
admin and Sherry will close you!  Who shoots undoubtably, when 
Martin dreams the disgusting firewall in the mail server?  Don't try to 
exclude the stacks wanly, eliminate them deeply.  As badly as 
Robette reloads, you can negotiate the operator much more strongly.  





From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 16 13:20:04 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:20:04 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8E@intrepid> <mailman.995298207.17374.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8nF47.11964$p7.3575146@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> map(A.remove, bb)

Removing items from a list one at a time is O(len(list)) for each item
removal.
Filter() seems the better way to remove several items since it scans the
list only once instead of len(bb) times.




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 04:12:38 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:12:38 +0100
Subject: freeBSD 4.2 + Python2.1
Message-ID: <BAlhHJA2TUV7EwdX@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

I'm trying to install Python2.1 and the package seems to install fine,
but it seems that _socket.pyd is linked against libssl.so.2 which I
don't have. Attempts to upgrade openssl are refused as openssl is part
of the 'base' system. Am I really forced to upgrade the whole operating
system?
-- 
Robin Becker


From jparlar at home.com  Fri Jul 20 18:17:55 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:17:55 -0400
Subject: py2exe problem
Message-ID: <20010720222025.PXJA15886.femail4.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

My colleague and I are working on an application, coded mostly in Python, that must be distributed to people who don't 
have Python installed on their machines. Anyway, py2exe seemed the natural way to do this. However, it doesn't seem to 
be working correctly (although as is usually the case, I believe it has more to do with me than with py2exe).

The first step in using py2exe is giving it an install script. Because of the nature of the program, we have all the components 
broken down into about 10 or 11 files, with one main file that coordinates everything. Using the suggestion from the py2exe 
page, my install script is simply the following:

#install.py
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(name="webpass", scripts=["window1.py"], )

Now, this is my first time using Distutils, so maybe my install script isn't done correctly. It seems to compile all the modules we 
created ourselves when I run py2exe (I see their filenames going by on the screen during compilation).

Because the app is for Windows, I compile the exe with the following command line:

python install.py py2exe -w

When run, the final product is supposed to present a GUI written in wxPython, which accesses an Access database using 
ADODB. When we run the file without py2exe, everything works (well, mostly works, we have some small bugs here and 
there, but we at least have an alpha version running). However, when I run the py2exe created .exe file, I have problems. 

If I run the .exe on my development machine, where Python is present, the GUI comes onto the screen properly, but the 
ADODB doesn't work perfectly. For some reason, it doesn't access one field of the database. However, if I run the .exe on 
a machine without Python, the GUI doesn't come up at all. I can tell that the backround operations are doing something, 
because the .ldb file for the database is generated after I try running the .exe, but the GUI never comes on screen. 

In addition, there is a command line option which would do nothing but print one line to a standard DOS prompt, but it won't 
even print that line. Again, the backround operations work (this command line creates registry entries, and they are present 
afterwards), but there is no screen output.

One note: This program is intended to run as a COM local server (controlled by an IE comm band). Could that possibly be 
the problem? Does py2exe not take kindly to folks trying to use COM in their Python code? We're not even trying to run it 
with IE yet, there is a way to start it independently, but neither way will produce screen output on a machine that doesn't 
have Python installed.

So to sum up: The py2exe version mostly works on my development machine that has Python installed, but when tried on a 
test machine without Python, there is no screen output, but the backround activities perform properly. The development 
machine is running Win95b, and the test machine is running Win98. I am running Python2.1 to create the code, and 
py2exe 0.2.6 to create the .exe.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

(Bill, if I've made any mistakes in my explanation of the program, feel free to jump in and correct me)

Jay Parlar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."





From Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM  Fri Jul 13 12:43:08 2001
From: Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM (Matthew Alton)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 09:43:08 -0700
Subject: Newbie list question
Message-ID: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>

I am a UNIX/C programmer w/15y experience.  Forgive me if my neural
pathways are all about following pointers.  The adjustment to
Python-think is bumpy but I'll get by with a little help from my
friends, eh?

Here's the crux of the biscuit:

>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
>>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?
>>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.
>>> foo
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> bar 
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> baz
['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
>>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
bar (?)
>>> foo
['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
>>> bar
['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
>>> baz
['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
expected.
>>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.
>>> foo
['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
>>> bar
['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?
>>> baz
['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz still unaffected, of course.
>>> 

I have verified this behavior on Python 1.5.1 (AIX 4.3.3) and on
Python 2.1
(Solaris Sparc 2.8).  From my arcane perspective, this behavior is
utterly inconsistent and confusing.  I strongly suspect that I simply
do not correctly grok the list structure, but so far I am unable to
turn up an explanation in the literature.

Any help is appreciated.


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 10 11:11:07 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:11:07 GMT
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net> <23891c90.0107100440.2eb444af@posting.google.com> <3B4AFE8D.DE1F6563@stroeder.com> <mailman.994772496.27685.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fWE27.12057$B7.2309367@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mailman.994772496.27685.python-list at python.org>, Thomas Wouters wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 03:09:33PM +0200, Michael Str?der wrote:
>> Paul Boddie wrote:
>
>> > Can the open source
>> > movement include everyone, or is it inherently elitist?
>
>> Since you asked: The latter.
>
>Well, meritocracies are *very* likely to be elitist, but contrary to most
>elitist systems, there is a clear and open doorway to the meritocrically
>elite: contribute ;)

But that doesn't mean you have to write code.  You can:

 Help maintain a web site.
 Write a tutorial on something.
 Maintian a manual.
 Hang around a newsgroup and answer questions.
 etc.
 
-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I OWN six pink
                                  at               HIPPOS!!
                               visi.com            


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 15:05:26 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:05:26 GMT
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <01b001c1091f$c9c74340$0e4ab43f@kens> <mailman.994758022.15575.python-list@python.org> <9ifima$8r69@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B507D.95897534@yahoo.com>

Chris McMillan wrote:
> 
> When I run my script, below, it complains after the line f = open(fname,
> 'r') saying that it expected string, list found.  I believe this happens
> because of what the glob command returns, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
> FYI - I'm running Python 2.0 on Windows NT.  Thanks in advance for your
> help!
> Chris

(snip)
> for fname in glob.glob('M:\\python\\*.dat'):
>    fname = glob.glob('M:\\python\\*.dat')

The first line assigns fname to each item from the list returned by glob.glob(),
one at a time until it runs out of filenames.

The second line then assigns fname to the list itself. Take this line out and
you should get what you want.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From tdelaney at avaya.com  Sun Jul 22 21:21:11 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:21:11 +1000
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2C8@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >> In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who is a
> >> professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.
> >
> >Eek - I hope you don't really mean that last subclause!
> 
> A *real* programmer gets in a good six hours code-slinging in their
> sleep - that period when all the hard problems find their neat
> original solutions. Apart from the ones that get scribbled on a
> beer-mat, that is ;-)

Nah - all the best solutions are worked out in the shower.

I am currently campaigning for all programmer's cubicles at my place of work
to have showers installed. I predict that productivity will increase 5-fold.

Tim Delaney



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 06:11:36 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:11:36 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
In-Reply-To: <9hrv5k016q4@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107031407420.20048-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
>news:mailman.994135925.11224.python-list at python.org...
>> On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:
>>
>> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>> >
>> >> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that
>in
>> >> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and
>then
>> >> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is
>an
>> >> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
>> >
>> >Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
>> >to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
>> >manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?
>>
>> Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
>> development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
>> have COM for whatever is in their system.
>
>I strongly doubt that "most Python users are Windows users", but
>it's certainly true that most Python users *WHO CONSIDER ASP/IIS
>AN ALTERNATIVE* are Windows users (and pretty-clueless ones, if
>they don't know Python can work perfectly well WITHIN ASP/IIS!-).

Ok, I've not pushed the issue because people wanted to learn
ASP.

>> We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
>> to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
>> purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.
>
>If COM+ADO is not an option then neither is ASP/IIS!

I am sorry that I gave inaccurate description.
There were no point in installing Python just to serve 3-4
pages from IIS.

*

Anyway, I wanted to say that some generic (!=Windows only) ADO
could help for those who consider Python for tasks usually
done with PHP or ASP.

Probably it could be coupled with gadfly to make
subqueries possible.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/




From graham_guttocks at yahoo.co.nz  Wed Jul 18 15:53:48 2001
From: graham_guttocks at yahoo.co.nz (Graham Guttocks)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:53:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: software documentation system?
Message-ID: <20010718195348.75599.qmail@web10306.mail.yahoo.com>

Greetings,

A Python application of mine is now large enough that I need to get
more serious about writing a real manual for it.  I'm looking for a
documentation system that uses a single source file to produce both
online information and printed output. (PS, HTML, etc.)

Any recommendations?  I work in a UNIX environment and would prefer 
an opensource alternative.  So far I've found GNU texinfo and also
SGMLtools which is written in Python, but am open to other
suggestions.

Regards,
Graham

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 03:05:17 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:05:17 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
In-Reply-To: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107031100460.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On 2 Jul 2001, Heiko wrote:

> Hello,
> I want to do this:
> 
> ClassObject = Class()
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, Arg4, Arg5 ....)
> ...
> ClassObject.Method()
> ...
> and so on.
> 
> Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of arguments
> and the method decides what to do.
> If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
> doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
> position (but that is a "nice to have"). So, how do I have to declare
> the method, that this works?

example:

class Class:
  def Method(self, Arg1="default", Arg2="def2", Arg3=None):
    Arg3 = Arg3 or []
    print Arg1, Arg2, Arg3
    
class_object = Class()
class_object.Method(Arg3=[1,2,3])
class_object.Method("a", "b", [2,3,4])

...

Works like this:

>>> class Class:
...   def Method(self, Arg1="default", Arg2="def2", Arg3=None):
...     Arg3 = Arg3 or []
...     print Arg1, Arg2, Arg3
...
>>> class_object = Class()
>>> class_object.Method(Arg3=[1,2,3])
default def2 [1, 2, 3]
>>> class_object.Method("a", "b", [2,3,4])
a b [2, 3, 4]
>>>


> Thanks
> Heiko
> 

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 11:06:23 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 11:06:23 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
	 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
	 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
	 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org>
	 <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com> <5lh$OIA2rxR7Ewou@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B47256F.72FE6CD0@engcorp.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> In article <3B471314.8B179A92 at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen
> <peter at engcorp.com> writes
> >Robin Becker wrote:
> >>
> >> The language is evolving as all languages do because of the needs of its
> >> users. Five years ago the leadership said integer division was good,
> >> today it's bad; the audience changed is all.
> >
> >Actually, maybe it's just which audience members are vocal which
> >has changed recently.
... [snip]
> >But until now my voice was silent on the matter.  Perhaps the
> >reason you think the needs of the users has changed is because
> >Python suits the needs of some users so well that they don't
> >feel the need to constantly whine about the fact.  Maybe only
> >those who have a problem with it are going to make their voice
> >heard.  (As someone said a few messages back: Well, duh! :-)
> 
> You infer too much as I prefer to keep the / operator as it is.

I can't see anything in my message which infers your preference
on this issue one way or the other.  What I _did_ comment on was
your expressed belief that the needs of the users was changing 
(this being the reason, you said, for the evolution of the language).  

> I believe that the python developers have an interest in promoting the
> language to a wider audience and so they keep changing the language to
> enhance its popularity.

Guido said as much in other messages.  I don't see this as a
particularly bad thing (actually not bad in any way at all).  

I am a little concerned at the rate of change though, or, perhaps more 
accurately, at the desired rate of change.  It appears the developers 
are working hard towards an environment in which language change can 
occur _very_ quickly.  

I believe they want to do this to make change go more smoothly, 
efficiently, and with greater consensus.  The problem, I believe, 
is that not enough time is being given to the discussion of the
change prior to agreeing to do it.  As an example, the discussion
on div() appears already to have progressed to the point where
a decision is forming on a plan to do it over the next couple of
years.  

I applaud the slow (proposed) pace of implementing the change, but 
I think the discussion itself should be taking many months before
a decision is made, to give more people the opportunity to voice
their concerns.  

That is to a large extent the purpose and effect of the PEP process, 
I suppose, and yet it feels like in the last few months there
have been literally dozens of significant changes to the language.

Perhaps the issue, then, is not the speed of discussion and 
implementation of individual changes, but the sheer volume of 
proposed changes.  Taken one at a time they all seem reasonable
and harmless, maybe even useful, but as a whole they feel like
an onslaught that could lead to a loss of "focus" as to the
nature of Python.  They may dilute the language's (until now)
clarify of purpose and style.  Frankly I'm worried.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 12:30:34 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 16:30:34 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> This is reasonable. However, IMHO, solution need to be different
> than redefining established "/" behaviour?
> 
> Could "right" division be given some other symbol than "/" and old "/" be
> left intact as a "low-level" C-conformant division every Python programmer
> is accustomed to?

Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
number of established Python programmers.  The sooner we fix this the
better!

Another thing.  Division of integers is a pretty uncommon operation
(less common than shifting or bitwise masking, in my experience).  As
an experiment, I added a warning to int and long division, and ran the
test suite.  The result: 44 distinct warning locations, of which 38
were part of the test suite (more than half of which had to do with
the testing of division or binary operators, or used 1/0 to raise an
arbitrary exception).  In the library itself, only three modules
engaged in integer division during execution of the test suite:
bisect, dumbdbm, and inspect.  Of these, bisect and dumbdbm will need
to be converted to using div(); inspect uses 1/0 to raise an
exception.

The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":

1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
   makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.

2. In a following revision, we add a warning when / is used on two int
   or long arguments, recommending to use div() instead.  (It is
   important not to start warning in phase 1, so folks have time to
   switch to div() voluntarily first; maybe phase 1 could have a
   command line option to warn about integer division.)

3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
   error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
   specify floating point division.

4. Finally we can implement the "future" behavior by default.

I haven't picked dates yet; if folks agree, I would like to add div()
and a future statement to 2.2 and space the other steps a single
revision apart, so phase 4 would be at Python 2.5 (April 2003, if we
keep the current release schedule up).  Is that too aggressive?

I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
messenger from the future :-).

I'm not sure how to spell the future statement.  Here are some
choices:

  from __future__ import float_division
  from __future__ import real_division
  from __future__ import new_division
  from __future__ import division

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 12:33:13 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:33:13 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996592198.30711.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6mkc02poc@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Christian Tanzer" <tanzer at swing.co.at> wrote in message
news:mailman.996592198.30711.python-list at python.org...
"""
> poor programming on my part, but I can't even think how one would type a
> function like say:
>
>    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )

Genericity (templates in C++) this is not a problem -- you get one
instance of `f` for each type `zs` you happen to apply `f` to.

Disclaimer: C++ templates don't allow different return types for such
functions, but that's a restriction of C++, not of genericity. IIRC,
"""

Beg pardon?

template<class A, class B>
A myfunction(const B& b)
{
    return b;
}

Maybe you mean that C++ doesn't *automatically INFER* A when
you just call myfunction(something)?  But, you CAN partially
specify myfunction<int>(something) [or, of course, totally
specify myfunction<int,double>(something)], if you have a
standard-compliant C++ compiler.

Back to Python -- programming in Python has always felt to
me a *LOT* like generic programming (e.g. with C++ templates)
in so many ways... of course, I was "steeped" in C++ generics
well before I met Python, so that may help explain this:-).

But, really, the only significant difference seems to me to
be that C++ instantiates its generics at compile-time (less
flexibility, some more syntax cruft, better runtime speed)
while Python works in a fully dynamic way, at runtime (some
errors are diagnosed a bit later, speed is not so great,
syntax is very lightweight and flexibility is nonpareil).

They're still very subjectively similar programming mindsets...
*signature-based polymorphism* dominates in either case!


Alex (Brainbench MVP for C++)





From James_Althoff at i2.com  Fri Jul 13 16:13:08 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:13:08 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OF4AF701E5.07D90C51-ON88256A88.006D2F83@i2.com>

Dennis Roark wrote:
>James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only
"good
>>for short programs <100 lines".
>>
>>Jim
>>
>
>Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
>declared before use.  (In a long program, how hard it is to
>find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)

Have you actually found either of these *really* to be a problem in writing
longer programs -- in *actual* practice, I mean?  I ask because I haven't
found either to be a show-stopper.

Specifically, I *do* misspell variable names.  And in my experience,
misspelled variable names are pretty easy to find.  One case where this is
less so is when you misspell something in an exception handler (for
example) and then *never* exercise that exception case.  On the other hand,
I consider such a thing to be a very bad practice anyway (the "never
exercising part" ;-)  My experience has been that the *hard* problems in
big programs are *way* beyond anything that a compile can detect.

Again, we are shipping production code with > 100,000 lines of Jython and
neither "Lack of type safety" (by this I assume you mean "compile-time,
static, type checking") nor "lack of forcing variable names to be declared
before use" were problems for us.  So, though I am not against the general
notion of making it possible to detect errors as early as possible (e.g.,
at compile time) I don't see today's Python as being unsuitable for large
program.  In fact, I see Python as being *very* suitable for large
programs.  And I say this from the perspective of having already written
large program using Python.  :-)

Jim

>
>I really like Python, but for at least the reasons above, I
>can't see it for long programs.
>
>---------------------------------
>Dennis Roark
>Dept. of Computer Science
>University of Sioux Falls





From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 24 16:10:09 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:10:09 -0600
Subject: cost of change
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D57C@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Galen Swint [mailto:hcsgss at texlife.com]
> 
> Has anyone tried to figure out how much changes to Python 
> cost? The way I
> figure it, it goes something like this:
> 500,000 Python programmers
> $20/hr
> 3 hrs to port *all* needed code
> Thats $30 *million*, and all those numbers are surely low -- 
> especially the
> time to port.  I can't imagine if you're using third party 
> packages and have to
> wrangle with all their code yourself.
> I've been programming with Python only two months, and I've 
> already gone
> through part of the 1.5 to 2.1 upgrade, and it cost several 
> hundred dollars in
> salary simply because pickling doesn't port up versions.  (I 
> know that's
> documented, but it's still crazy not to have a pickly that 
> works across
> versions).
> There are other hidden costs to breaking a language with 
> every upgrade. Two
> come to mind - first, people like me, who thought they liked 
> it, now don't want
> to do anything long term in it, and second, no one can afford 
> to spend time on
> optimizations because the structure and code they are trying 
> to optimize keeps
> shape shifting.
> If you're going to change it, fine. *BUT*, do the world a 
> favor and be sure
> that *any* change which breaks existing code carries a new 
> major version number
> (PEP0238 clearly warrants a Python 3.0 designation) .
> Galen

$20/hr? I think it's time to renegotiate <wink>

-- bjorn



From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul  8 20:10:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 00:10:01 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com> <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B48F5BB.E93EF377@tundraware.com>

Bengt Richter wrote:
>

Thanks to all who answered!  A fertitle bunch of minds 'round here....

The response that gets it all (despite my fuzzy definition) was mailed
to me privately.  I deconstructed it (well really, reinvented it from 
scratch myself) to make sure I understood what was going on. 

And the winner is...

^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$

To be really fussy, the \. should really be a string constant which
is conatenated into the remainder substrings so that other delimiters
could be used when I18Ning the code.
 
Just for the record - I knew when I started that a re was a better way to do
this.  Although I've programmed a lot in other languages, I am still in
the process of absorbing python, and I had not yet attacked its re
capabilities so I decided to hand code it.  Now that I look at the re
implementation, I realize I should have started there because it is so
much more compact and elegant.

In any case, it was a nice tutorial exercise which made me learn an
essential piece of python.

I'm writing a complete (small) application which does keyboard I/O,
saves state to disk, does meaningful arithmetic and so on.  My intention
is to put it up on the web when done so others can use it to see something
a bit less trivial than the examples which are common in tutorials.

Once again, many thanks to all who kindly took the time to respond.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From gustin at pcpm.ucl.ac.be  Tue Jul  3 02:06:48 2001
From: gustin at pcpm.ucl.ac.be (Cédric Gustin)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:06:48 +0200
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <9hn12v$p0r$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net> <Xns90D2622C0266C89065hrerehxvb@139.88.112.200> <9hqshs$k9m$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <9hrnhl$60k$1@estragon.sri.ucl.ac.be>

"Frank Miles" <fpm at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> >Has anyone made this work under Windows? I tried it a few months ago, and
> >it worked great under Linux, but there seemed to be some piece (Python
> >bindings for libGlade?) missing under Windows.

> libglade stuff was graciously sent by Cedric Gustin, but he's working on
> Python 2.1.

Yesterday I patched pygtk-0.6.8, the latest stable version and recompiled
_gtk.pyd and _libglade.pyd for python 2.1 on win32. I have also a working
version of glade running on win32 (although it's also available on various
sites, at  http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/ among others). This means that
you can write and port to win32 any pygtk application with libglade support.
If anybody is interested, simply email me directly and I'll send you the
binaries. I can also recompile everything for python 2.0 if necessary.

If Hans Breuer is reading this newsgroup, I think it would be nice to
provide a standard windows installer (I think I have a copy of installer
vise somewhere) for both python 2.0 and python 2.1. If I remember correctly
somebody posted a message about this a few weeks ago but maybe it was on the
pygtk mailinglist...

Cedric




From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Sun Jul  8 15:41:53 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 19:41:53 GMT
Subject: Adding a package to the standard distribution
Message-ID: <9iad21$btd$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Hello all, I've got a package (called Selecting) that I'd
like to subject to consideration for being added to the
standard python distribution. The package implements a better
(in my opinion) scheme of abstraction over select.select()
than does asyncore and asynchat. However, I don't know what 
mailing list / person I should write to to get the package 
included in the standard distribution.

Whom should I contact?

Panu Kalliokoski



From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 25 00:26:15 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:26:15 -0400
Subject: newbie projects
References: <mailman.996028966.8516.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5E4A67.FD4BE81A@engcorp.com>

fett at tradersdata.com wrote:
> 
> Uh I know this sounds knda dumb but anyoone have a job that they want
> done cheap or for free that doesnt have to be done by a professional,
> because im not one by any stretch of the immagination.  But i need some
> type of project to do to help me hone my skills.

Why not contribute your efforts to a worthy open-source project,
like maybe one of the ones on SourceForge?  Giving your time away
to a commercial enterprise would be silly, unless you are
specifically hoping to turn that into future work for the same
company.  And even then working on the open-source project might
end up providing you more lasting value.  And fun.  (Just a thought.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 20 19:26:28 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:26:28 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org><slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr><OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com><wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com> <mailman.995662297.13101.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E6367.7541$EP6.2460187@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> > def dict(a,c):
> > start = time.clock()
> > for item in a:
> > d = filter(c.has_key, a)
>
> this is an error.  You are creating a list containing items in 'a'
and
> 'c' for each item in a.  You only need to make the list once.
>
> with the correction dict runs in .04 seconds while comp runs in
58.09
>
> I would say that you still need to use dictionaries (note that this
> doesn't actually solve the problem, which is to get items in 'a' but
> not in 'b', but the following
>
> def dict2(a, c):
>    start = time.time()
>    d = [ i for i in a if not c.has_key(i)]
>    end = time.time()
>    print `end-start`
>
> does in in .14 seconds (still 400x faster than comp)

To compare program running times, they should compute the same thing.

How long does dict2 take if you remove the not, so it makes the list
of 1500 elements that revised dict does, instead of the 'not' list of
6000?

How long does dict take if you feed filter with 'lambda x,
f=c.has_key: f(x)', so it make the 'not' list of 6000 elements?

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 23:57:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:57:51 -0400
Subject: Book count test
References: <mailman.995037802.14375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FC33F.AA8C6095@engcorp.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> 
> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)
>   Java     - 1621
>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682

A little more useful are the following numbers:

Python - 33 (not including snake books)
Java - 1041 (not including volcanic rocks or coffee)
Perl - 257 (not including readable languages)
C++ - 1265 (not including reliable languages)
PHP - 34 (not including the other four books you found)
ASP - 80 (not including snake books either)
Oracle - 356 (not including ancient Greece books)

Amazon, being booksellers, know a little about cataloguing books.
Just append the word "computer" after any of the above.  It
may not be 100% accurate yet, but it's more accurate than
using just the language names alone...

The only real outlier there might be Oracle.  If that
really is books about "the" Oracle from Oracle, that
is at least one language where the difficulty of learning
or applying it must be contributing to the volume of
available books.

(Note, roughly 33% of the Python books are not readily
available (or even published yet) and only slightly fewer
of the PHP books don't exist yet either.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From k5r2a at chollian.net  Mon Jul 23 22:54:30 2001
From: k5r2a at chollian.net (±èÇö±¹)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:54:30 GMT
Subject: user level can't bind socket address & port
Message-ID: <Gr577.7519$2k2.398288@news.bora.net>

hi, all

as the title user level can't bind socket address & port

for example,
    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    sock.bind((iface, port))

if i login user level, python interpreter generate error message like that
"    sock.bind((iface, port))
     socket.error: (13, 'Permission denied') "

How can I bind socket user level.

please send comment......




From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 26 20:30:12 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:30:12 GMT
Subject: Number tree (was: Re: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament))
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3b608138.493932958@wa.news.verio.net>

On 25 Jul 2001 12:47:30 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>26 Jul 2001 00:03:56 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:
>
>>>   int < long < rational < float < complex
>> 
>> Well, it could, I suppose, but that would be a good reason to avoid
>> Python :-)
>> 
>> What it *should* look like is this:
>> 
>>   int < long < rational
>>                        \
>>                         + < [real] < complex
>>                        /
>>                   float
>
>There are no real reals in programming. And Python's complex is as
>inexact as float.
>
>I don't understand you. What practical difference do these diagrams
>yield? What is wrong in *consequences* of Guido's and mine model
>which your model puts differently?
>
>What happens if you int to float in your model? Rational to float?
>
The trouble with these discussions is that common usage creates an
overloading of meanings for the words. Some of these things can be
talked about sensibly even if computers don't exist. Some can't.
>From the above,

  Can: rational, real, complex (integer belongs here too)
Can't: int, long, float

Separating the abstract (A) world from the world of (R)representations, you get
a different diagram, with as many variations below the line as you can
imagine (I'm mixing in C types and common typedefs to illustrate the idea)

   A[integer] <  A[rational]      <       A[real]    <     A[complex]
       v            v                        v                v
-------v------------v------------------------v----------------v-----------
       v            v                        v                v       
   R[integer]   R[rational]               R[real]        R[real],R[real]
       v~ ~[5]      +---------v~ ~[6]        +~ ~[7]
      long       R[i]/R[i]  float[3]     R[rational]
       v            v         v              v
      int64        R[i]     fsingle[4]   R[integer]
       v
     fdouble[1]
       v
      int32
       v
     fsingle[2]
       v
   int16,short
       v
   int8,char
       v  
   (single bit)

R[i] is short for R[integer] above. Specifics re fp below relate to IEEE754:
[1] as 53-bit integer
[2] as 24-bit integer
[3] as 53-bit integer * 2^n where -1022<=n<=1023 (interpret -n as /2^n )
[4] as 24-bit integer * 2^n where -126<=n<=127   (ditto)
[5] I show a wiggly side branch, because there's a zillion possible other ways
    to represent integers. Python's long internally makes use of 15-bit integers,
    I think I read in a post of Tim's, so it's really off to the side if you
    like to think in terms of more traditional C representation types.
    I included the floats at [1] and [2] just to illustrate possible variety.
[6] I added this to point out that you can/must interpret floating point numerical states
    as representations of particular exact A[rational] numbers, and these exact
    A[rationals] also serve as approximations to A[reals] (which can be right on or not)
    represented as R[rational] under R[real]. BTW, "A[float]" is a way of referring to
    the peculiar subset of A[rational] representable by concrete float states.
[7] On this branch, you could imagine various schemes for representing irrational
    numbers, such as rationals with stored rational exponents, and special
    representations for e and pi etc., etc.

By R[integer] etc., I mean representation in the widest sense that can have a
concrete realization. E.g., we could imagine representing really big integers
by combining the distributed resources on the internet. The point is, what's
below the line has no significance mathematically until you translate it back
to something above the line using some mapping you have in mind.

Computers have been designed to transform stuff below the line. They can't touch
stuff above the line. They can only produce stuff that may have a relationship
to what's above. It's pretty obvious if you think about it, but it's easy to
lose sight of in daily shortcut habits of thought.

Maybe our discussions would become clearer if we adopted a convention to indicate
which aspect of a number we were talking about, e.g., A[x] for the abstraction
behind our mention of x, and R[x] for some corresponding representation. If you
want to indicate a specific type of representation, it could be R[type:x], e.g.,
R[float:x]

Saying that "there are no real reals in programming" is really saying
A[real] != R[real], but that doesn't mean that we can't deal with A[problems]
with A[real] functions by using R[real] approximations.

Without [7] we can do no better than R[rational] under R[real], which is why
I didn't elaborate the tree. Note that R[rational] includes float at [3].
Decimal floats or any other monster float you can come up with will ultimatlely also
attach at [6].

Anyway, this is the way I look at it ;-)

Maybe with Guido and Tim's help, and that of lurking mathematicians, something like
the above could become a useful part of Python docs.

It would be nice to work in exact vs inexact also. Obviously, any R[] is exactly
something, because it has a particular distinct state, so there is an A[x] for every R[x].
Thus every R[x] has the possibility of serving as an exact representation (i.e., of A[x]).
But I think I'll stop here, because exactness and all that is too big a discussion.

HTH make discussions more meaningful ;-)



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 10:59:27 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:59:27 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9l60i2.o0p.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 16:39:34 +0200, Bernhard Herzog <bh at intevation.de> wrote:

>A bit more elegant, perhaps, and a little faster still would be to use 1
>as the value in C and directly use C.get in filter:
>
>C = {}
>for item in B:
>    C[item] = 1
>
>A = filter(C.get, A)

Much more elegant, of course. 
This is a good example of iterative refactoring ;o)

I suppose that the first loop could also be rewritten using map, in order 
to squeeze some more juice out of the beast:

C={}
map(lambda item,dic = C: dic[item]=1, B)

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 24 14:11:30 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:11:30 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995941542.7888.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5db927.311644451@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:24:08 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>[Bengt Richter]
>> I wonder if the implementation is factored to where not using 
>> floating point would let you substitute small exception-raising
>> stubs for otherwise large (?? usually, floating point carries a
>> lot of baggage along in the C/C++ world) chunks concerned with
>? floating point.
>
>No, it is not.
> 
>> Then that could be a make option. I was wondering if someone's 
>> been there done that.
>
>These folks have:
>
>    http://www.abo.fi/~iporres/python/
>
>Their patch is against 1.5.1, but I bet the principle still applies <wink>.
>
Thanks. Interesting. Though "patch" may be a bit of an understatement ;-)



From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Thu Jul 26 22:25:57 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 19:25:57 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B5FC733.5186D588 at tundraware.com>...
> > OSE is implemented using an event driven system model. This includes the HTTP
> > servlet framework, such that multiple requests can be handled at a time etc.
> > It includes mechanisms for knowing when connections block due to slow HTTP
> > clients so you can stop sending data back etc.
> > 
> > OSE at its core is actually C++, with Python wrappers. Thus, you are getting
> > the efficiency of C++ but the simpler interfaces possible with Python.
> 
> I have a related question.  I come from a very high-scale, high-arrival
> rate transactional computing background.  In this world, connection-oriented
> solutions like RPCs across wide-area networks are a big "no no" for 
> a variety of reasons.  (If you care more about why, I wrote a paper, years
> ago, in grad school on this topic.  The specifics of the paper are quite
> out of date, but the general critique' of RPCs is still very much relevant,
> perhaps even moreso today with the proliferation of the internet.  You can
> find it at: http://www.tundraware.com/RPCpaper/rpcpaper.pdf)  The short
> reason for this is that connection-oriented solutions like RPCs create
> very "brittle" applications in highly distributed, high-performance
> environments.  I am thus less than enthusiastic about SOAP as a solution.
> 
> One really good alternative is transactional queuing with asynchronous
> read/write interfaces to the queues.  I'm wondering if anyone is doing 
> anything in this area with Python.

I have saved your document and will look at it, but be aware that OSE
actually supports publish/subscribe and request/reply modules of
communication using an asynchronous model. OSE uses messaging concepts
in its implementation as opposed to connection oriented RPCs. It does
however take a simple approach to this in that it isn't underlayed by
persistent message queues. This is still useful for many applications
and certainly makes the implementation easier. It hasn't been the
intention with OSE to target transactional environments so it would
more than likely not be useful for that sort of application, but there
are lots of other things it would be quite adequate for.

I will look at your paper. You may want to look further at the Python
manual for OSE and you might see it ain't quite what you first had in
mind.


From mirko.liss at web.de  Sun Jul 15 04:58:01 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 10:58:01 +0200
Subject: do .. while loops ?
In-Reply-To: <3B51256D.E6266B50@alcyone.com>
References: <mailman.995169745.15095.python-list@python.org> <3B51256D.E6266B50@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <20010715085808.1176385C.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> do...while loops are a language feature that tend to be fairly
> controversial in some languages, for some reason -- probably because it
> seems more on the "fluff" side to many people.  They're easy enough to
> simulate with other control structures.

On the other hand, if you write do..while - loops, you can get rid 
of one jump per iteration. Rewriting while - loops into 
do ... while - loops is a common optimization.

Lets take a look at it:

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Jul 29 2000, 14:28:37)  [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)]
on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import dis
>>> def testme(a):
...     while a > 0:
...           a = a -1
...
>>> dis.dis(testme)
          0 SET_LINENO          1
          3 SET_LINENO          2
          6 SETUP_LOOP         34 (to 43)
    >>    9 SET_LINENO          2
         12 LOAD_FAST           0 (a)
         15 LOAD_CONST          1 (0)
         18 COMPARE_OP          4 (>)
         21 JUMP_IF_FALSE      17 (to 41)
         24 POP_TOP        
         25 SET_LINENO          3
         28 LOAD_FAST           0 (a)
         31 LOAD_CONST          2 (1)
         34 BINARY_SUBTRACT
         35 STORE_FAST          0 (a)
         38 JUMP_ABSOLUTE       9
    >>   41 POP_TOP        
         42 POP_BLOCK      
    >>   43 LOAD_CONST          0 (None)
         46 RETURN_VALUE   
>>> 

Rewriting this to 
>>> def testme2(a):
...     while 1: 
...        a = a - 1
...        if a < 0 : break
... 
yields something like:
            ...
         35 LOAD_FAST           0 (a)
         38 LOAD_CONST          2 (0)
         41 COMPARE_OP          0 (<)
         44 JUMP_IF_FALSE       8 (to 55)
         47 POP_TOP        
         48 SET_LINENO          4
         51 BREAK_LOOP     
         52 JUMP_FORWARD        1 (to 56)
    >>   55 POP_TOP        
    >>   56 JUMP_ABSOLUTE       9
    >>   59 POP_TOP        
         60 POP_BLOCK      
            ...

Using a do..while - loop, you'd have one jump less per iteration,
but because of the if..break you get one additional jump.


regards,
	Mirko

PS: Sorry, if this has been discussed before.



From orlov at diasoft.ru  Thu Jul  5 06:58:28 2001
From: orlov at diasoft.ru (Oleg Orlov)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:58:28 +0400
Subject: Weird problem on WIN platform.. any ideas?
References: <ecfce343.0107042329.54bcd07a@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i1h03$20p5$1@gavrilo.mtu.ru>

>
> However, when I schedule SQL Server Agent to run the script, the Agent
> reports the following error:
>
> File "C:\scripts\dailygif.py", line 26, in ?
> urlretrieve(gif_url,gif_filename)
> File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 68, in urlretrieve      return
> _urlopener.retrieve(url, filename, reporthook, data)
> File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 212, in retrieve      tfp =
> open(filename, 'wb')  IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
> 'v:\\images\\dailygif\\dailygif.gif'

Hint: LocalSystem account can not access resources outside local computer.

>
> As I said, I'm unable to repeat this error when I run the same script
> from command line. The double slashes in the error-causing file path
> are not of my doing (gif_filename =
> 'v:\images\dailygif\dailygif.gif').
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.




From djc at object-craft.com.au  Thu Jul 12 10:15:49 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 00:15:49 +1000
Subject: csv-0.4 (John Machin release) released
Message-ID: <m3r8vmp71m.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

The CSV module provides a fast CSV parser which can split and join CSV
records which have been produced by Microsoft products such as Access
and Excel.

For some reason on Python 2.0, it now outperforms string.split().  Of
course the CSV parser can handle much more complex records than
string.split()...

This is a bugfix release.

My thanks to Skip Montanaro for providing most of the following
example:

   CSV files can be syntactically more complex than simply inserting
   commas between fields. For example, if a field contains a comma, it
   must be quoted:
   
     1,2,3,"I think, therefore I am",5,6

   The fields returned by this example are: 

     ['1', '2', '3', 'I think, therefore I am', '5', '6']

   Since fields are quoted using quotation marks, you also need a way
   to escape them. In Microsoft created CSV files this is done by
   doubling them:
   
     1,2,3,"""I see,"" said the blind man","as he picked up his hammer and saw"

   Excel and Access quite reasonably allow you to place newlines in
   cell and column data. When this is exported as CSV data the output
   file contains fields with embedded newlines.
   
     1,2,3,"""I see,""
     said the blind man","as he picked up his
     hammer and saw"

   A single record is split over three lines with text fields
   containing embedded newlines. This is what happens when you pass
   that data line by line to the CSV parser.
   
     ferret:/home/djc% python
     Python 2.0 (#0, Apr 14 2001, 21:24:22) 
     [GCC 2.95.3 20010219 (prerelease)] on linux2
     Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
     >>> import csv
     >>> p = csv.parser()
     >>> p.parse('1,2,3,"""I see,""')
     >>> p.parse('said the blind man","as he picked up his')
     >>> p.parse('hammer and saw"')
     ['1', '2', '3', '"I see,"\012said the blind man', 'as he picked up his\012hammer and saw']

   Note that the parser only returns a list of fields when the record
   is complete.

The changes in this release are:

1- Exception raising was leaking the error message.  Thanks to John
   Machin for fixing this.

2- When a parsing exception is raised during parse(), the parser will
   automatically call clear() discard accumulated fields and state the
   next time you call parse().

   The old behaviour can be restored either by passing zero as the
   auto_clear constructor keyword argument, or by setting the
   auto_clear parser attribute to zero.

   As well as raising an exception, a parsing error will also set the
   readonly parser attribute had_parse_error to 1.  This is reset next
   time you call parse() or clear().

   Thanks again to John Machin for suggesting this.

3- An obscure parsing bug has been fixed.

   The old behaviour:

      >>> p.parse('12,12,1",')
      ['12', '12', '1",']
      >>> 

   The new behaviour:

      >>> p.parse('12,12,1",')
      ['12', '12', '1"', '']
      >>> 

   I am still of two minds about whether I should raise an exception
   when I encounter text like that...

The module homepage:

        http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/

For people who do not have a C compiler on Windows I have put a Python
2.1 binary up here:

        http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/csv.pyd

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 14:39:45 2001
From: dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk (Dave Stanton)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:39:45 +0100
Subject: beginners books
Message-ID: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk>

Hi

What book (s) would people recommend for a beginner to python ?. I did
some basic programming years ago and have done a lot of pic
microcontroller assembler programming.

Cheers

Dave


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul  3 05:51:54 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:51:54 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca>
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca>
Message-ID: <20010703115154.N8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:02:54AM -0400, William Park wrote:

> On your original post, you came across as a high-schooler with homework.
> Now, it's becoming clear... a propaganda by fucking trolls.  

[ snip rant ]

> So, go way.

You know, this is really the first time I even considered the benifits of a
moderated c.l.py. And all because of one person... that scares me. I'd have
thought the cynical old bastard in me would have given up its hope and
belief in humanity by now.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From mwh at python.net  Sun Jul  1 17:06:38 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 22:06:38 +0100
Subject: [Python-iterators] While we're at it...
References: <mailman.993954541.982.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m34rsw1hr5.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> [Michael Hudson]
> > I'm not sure that's a good idea, but I would like to see an
> > "iterators" module that provided various common iterator
> > manipulations, so you could have eg:
> >
> > def slice(it, lo, hi):
> >     for i in range(lo):
> >         it.next()
> >     for i in range(hi - lo):
> >         yield it.next()
> 
> The number of choices becomes mind-boggling, so prototype this module about
> 6 times first.  

Quite.  It's probably not going to be done by me though (I'm not going
to have decent internet access over the summer, and if 2.2a1 is really
going to be within ... checks ... three weeks (!?) we'd better move
fast on this one).

> Like, who said slice should be a generator?  Maybe they want an
> explicit list.

Well, I was thinking that generally the iterators module would contain
functions that took iterators or iteratable objects as arguments and
return iterators (like the "outer" and "zip" thingies that got chucked
around on python-iterators a couple of months back - and could
probably now be trivially implemented as generators!).

> Maybe they don't want that iterating "it" after calling slice() can
> change the values slice() *later* returns.  Maybe they want slice()
> to return an indexable object too.  Etc.

Well, if we can drum into people that iterators.blah(...) returns an
iterator then these all more or less go away, don't they?

Also turning an iterator into a list is a piece of piss (list(it))
whereas turning a list into an iterator is impossible.  So if there's
no need to materialise the list, one probably shouldn't.

> The 2.2 test_generators.py has a cute class:
> 
> class LazyList:
>     def __init__(self, g):
>         self.sofar = []
>         self.fetch = g.next
> 
>     def __getitem__(self, i):
>         sofar, fetch = self.sofar, self.fetch
>         while i >= len(sofar):
>             sofar.append(fetch())
>         return sofar[i]
> 
>     def clear(self):
>         self.__dict__.clear()

That can go in, then!

I might have time to whip up a strawman proposal (pre-PEP?) in the
next couple of days.

[...] 
> Should probably derive that from UserList instead, to give it a full set of
> list methods.  But then it's not clear what all of them should do.

Well, it should have a few more methods I'd think.

> Since there are so many possibilities, and so little Python
> experience here, I'm very happy to leave the iterator protocol with
> the single method it *must* have.  Anything beyond that is muddy at
> best, so better to leave it alone at first.

I very much agree here!

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  Remember - if all you have is an axe, every problem looks 
  like hours of fun.                                        -- Frossie
               -- http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/ASR.Quotes.html


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 10:59:16 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:59:16 -0500
Subject: 'import' error in csh
In-Reply-To: <3B4DABBE.D176B14F@nokia.com>
References: <c8fd1ef9.0107120544.20e2bec@posting.google.com>
        <3B4DABBE.D176B14F@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <15181.47940.138512.594822@beluga.mojam.com>

    Joonas> That code hasn't gone thru Python interpreter, because the error message
    Joonas> comes from csh.
    Joonas> Try to fix the first line from '# !/usr/bin/local/python' to
    Joonas> '#!/usr/bin/local/python'

or more likely:

    #!/usr/local/bin/python

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 00:38:01 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 04:38:01 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4sjj.pv9.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> dijo:
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:58:46 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> >from 'Mastering Regular Expressions', p.124:
> >
> >'^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.\
> >([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])$'
> 
> How about:
> 
> for o in '.'.split(ip_addr):
>     assert 0 <= int(o) <= 255, 'ip octet not a byte in "%s"' % ip_addr
> 
> Re's can be handy, but their usefulness can trick you into trying to use them
> for things for which they're not suitable.

That was the point the author was making when he said "Was it worth the
trouble?" (which was snipped).

Also, Perler's can be as over-zealous with re's as Pythonista can be
with the string module.  Sometimes re's are faster, though maybe not in
this case.  Depends on number of function calls and so many other
things.  I don't think I'll benchmark it, tho.

BTW: your solution allows '10.20.30.40.50'. Is this a valid IP?  ;)

-- 
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
	-- Bill Gates (circa 1981)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 10:21:54 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 16:21:54 +0200
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <9hv8q4022kn@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Gustaf Liljegren" <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.148...
> I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:
>
> >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'

That's e, colon, tab, e, s, tab, e ... each \t is
an escape sequence representing a tab.  You'll need
to double the backslashes or use a rawstring...

> >>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'

The \f's are form-feeds, I believe.  As above...


Alex





From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 23 14:08:16 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 14:08:16 -0400
Subject: interating letters
References: <9jhojp$t7h$1@solaria.cc.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <etdlmlfplgv.fsf@m2-225-11.mit.edu>

You could use this:
>>> chr(65)
'A'

Alex.


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Mon Jul 23 01:45:01 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 08:45:01 +0300
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <yox1yn819nm.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

zeke  <Zeke at xyz.net> writes:

> job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
> Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 

http://www.xemacs.org/Download/win32/

Version 21.4.3 of xemacs, at least, ships with python mode as
standard. With GNU Emacs, you would have to get and install the python
mode yourself. Xemacs also has tons of other great stuff when compared
to the gnu emacs.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 01:43:48 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:43:48 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <o0t77.26820$EP6.6648839@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Could we also at least keep in the fray a slightly alternate
question
> of "what can we do about the PEP"?  I mean, as has been suggested
> elsewhere at times, one solution to the old code is not to break
it -
> using "//" (or some other sequence) as the float division is
backwards
> compatible (no current code using it) and can be introduced at any
> time for new code to use.  It wouldn't even need a lengthy period,
but
> could show up right in 2.2.
>
> It seems to me that the only real argument against that is
aesthetics,
> or am I missing something.

Perhaps.  1. PEP238 introduces *two* new meanings to replace the
current meaning, so the alternative some have asked for is not merely
a matter of switching.  2. This change is the one arithmetic change
Guido needs, and in the core and in the form proposed, for his dream
project -- CP4E.

This proposal is the first change of its type.  I hope and expect it
will be the last for years to come.

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 02:27:47 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:27:47 -0400
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996211014.7234.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B6109E3.624BE2B0@engcorp.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Peter Hansen]
> > The interpreter currently has direct support for the most-used
> > integer operations, thus ensuring that this type has performance
> > reasonably close to the maximum feasible given the nature of
> > virtual machines.
> 
> Actually not close at all.  In, e.g.,
> 
>     k = i + j
> 
> we spend a lot more time fiddling with reference counts and memory
> management than doing the arithmetic!  But we'll ignore that since you're
> already happy <wink>.

Well, I knew all that of course, which is what I meant with "given 
the nature of virtual machines" (which have to do all those extra
goodies which make them so worthwhile).  I meant there is 
a spot reasonably close to the identification of the bytecode
operation where the integer operation is actually performed.
So close, in fact, that it is right in the interpreter core itself
very much like you might inline critical code with C macros.

This is in contrast to all other types (actually, I don't have 
the source in front of me, but do I recall floats being
optimized in the same way?) which end up executing the actual
operation (in C for builtins) way, way down the chain after a
horrendous series of indirections, virtual methods, dictionary
lookups, and so on (implemented in wonderfully elegant and 
rather efficient-looking code I readily agree).

> > Would the number system unification imply that this integer
> > optimization would be eliminated?
> 
> BTW, Python got along fine for years without any integer optimizations at
> all, but I agree that specialing-casing int + - and compares in the eval
> loop was a clear net win (for which you can, IIRC, thank Fredrik Lundh).

Thank you, Fredrik! :-)

That is my point, though.  These integer optimizations are, as we 
agree, a clear win.  Are these optimizations in danger of being impacted
as a result of this unification, or will we still be able to count 
on integer performance being significantly better than that of
less frequently used types.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 09:09:33 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:09:33 +0200
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net> <23891c90.0107100440.2eb444af@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4AFE8D.DE1F6563@stroeder.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> Can the open source
> movement include everyone, or is it inherently elitist?

Since you asked: The latter.

Ciao, Michael.


From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul 27 01:20:53 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 01:20:53 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996208009.24941.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EB99AB31ADBatodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>
Message-ID: <etditgf0wy2.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

I just did a search for 'government' and got the same message, so it may
be referring to the search service, rather than the python service.

or-maybe-the-libertarians-get-to-see-their-ideas-in-action-ly yr's Alex.


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:21:45 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:21:45 -0500
Subject: Large-scale Python (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Python are certainly not mature. In particular, many people use Python
>today in radically different ways than they would have five years ago
>(in particular much bigger projects). They make certain demands on
			.
			.
			.
This illustration interests me.

Without contesting any of Paul's larger points, what
are the facts here?  I believe:
* Python is good for team-work
  and big projects; and
* There is increasing recogni-
  tion and use of Python in
  this role.
What role has "language change" played in this, though?
I don't think Python's syntax or semantics support
modularization and packaging significantly better than
in '96 (Paul, do you have a Jython point in mind?).
Does performance improvement in hardware which makes
raw speed less frequently a constraint constitute a
"language change"?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 07:54:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:54:55 -0400
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
References: <mailman.996556736.30160.python-list@python.org> <m3k80piax2.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
Message-ID: <XZw97.5001$9i1.471725@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

<markus at kepler.ibp.de> wrote in message news:m3k80piax2.fsf at kepler.ibp.de...
> Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
>
> > In this context, it comes from the CP4E motivation that people may be
> > called upon to script operations or interactions between their
> > `toys'... calling them "non-programmers" is shorter than saying,
> > `people who may need to program without knowing they are doing it'
> > (imo).
>
> We obviously need a good name.
>
> Maybe 'non-professional programmers'? Doesn't sound right. It should
> mean someone whose profession is something else and who has to write
> some code to get the work done. Something like the work of system
> administrators, who may have to write some code but whose programs
> probably will never run on other machines than those which they
> administrate.
>
> Perl is called a 'glue language', so should we call the work of system
> administrators and other 'non-programmers' as 'glue programming'?
> Sounds strange, but at least it is new.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
How about "incidental programmers", since the programming is largely
incidental to the real goals of their activities?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Tue Jul 31 19:24:41 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:24:41 -0300
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <200107312309.TAA17435@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@zope.com on Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 07:09:43PM -0400
References: <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com> <200107312309.TAA17435@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010731202441.M19610@tux.distro.conectiva>

> Ah, but there you're wrong.  Classes are also instances (of the
> metaclass), and when we don't know anything about an object X, after
> knowing that "X in Foo" is true, we would still not know whether X was
> a Foo subclass or a Foo instance.  Very different beasts.

I'm starting to like the is{subclass,instance}() version. It's probably
quicker for one to understand code written by others, and for
non-fulltime-python-programmers to remember what "in" means in each
context.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From brakedon at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  9 11:40:58 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 08:40:58 -0700
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434@posting.google.com> <OT927.657477$166.13612439@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107090740.6d7fb9f0@posting.google.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message news:<OT927.657477$166.13612439 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>...
> I just used the one off the py2exe website it is as follows.
> 
> # setup.py
> from distutils.core import setup
> import py2exe
> 
> setup(name="test",
> scripts=["test.py"],
> )
> 
> Is that bad or whats the story?

No, if it works then use it, but there won't be any meta info (if you
even care about that)


From BMichielsen at compuserve.com  Sat Jul 21 09:15:05 2001
From: BMichielsen at compuserve.com (Bas Michielsen)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:15:05 +0200
Subject: Don't understand this "method mapping"
Message-ID: <3B598059.42027565@compuserve.com>

## Hello,

## I am a beginner with Python and I don't understand why in the code
below
## the attribute `map' first represents Curve.linear which also
## points to the external function linear and then, after calling
set_map,
## is simply the external function linear for a Curve object.
## I had expected that calling Curve.linear would be signalled as an
## attribute error because there is no method linear in class Curve or
## otherwise that the two ways to initialise the map attribute would be
## equivalent???
##
## Is somebody able and willing to explain this to me,

def linear( x_in, a=0): # a=0 is a stub to get past an error condition
    print "linear called, a =", a
    return x_in

class Curve:
    map = linear 

    def use_map( self, x):
        print "Using self.map = ", self.map
        self.y = self.map( x)

    def set_map( self):
        self.map = linear
        
# Test code (I am running Python 1.5.2)

c = Curve()
print c.map
c.use_map( 1.0)
print c.y
c.set_map()
c.use_map( 1.0)
print c.y

## # Output produced by the above
## <method Curve.linear of Curve instance at 80c7380>
## Using self.map =  <method Curve.linear of Curve instance at 80c7380>
## linear called, a = 1.0
## <__main__.Curve instance at 80c7380>
## Using self.map =  <function linear at 80b6dd0>
## linear called, a = 0
## 1.0

-- 
Bas Michielsen
14, avenue du Corail
31650 St. Orens de Gameville
France


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 29 18:20:09 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:20:09 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:14:12 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:

>On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:34:46 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
>McCaughan) wrote:
>
and
>>David Ullrich wrote:
>>
[...lots of set stuff...]>
>>This has long ceased to have anything to do with Python.
>>I suggest that we take it to e-mail or drop it entirely.
>
>Simply dropping it seems the sensible option, since
>neither of us is actually saying anything the other
>doesn't know - my original butting in was a just for
>the record thing.
>
>(Did they change the rules recently? Don't recall
>relevance to Python being a criterion here...)
>
>>(But if you prefer continuing in c.l.py, I don't mind.)
>
Something that might be relevant to Python: I have been using
bit twiddling operators and arithmetic operators for decades,
mostly putatively on things referred to as two's complement
integers, represented by an ordered sequence of bits,
but also other entities.

ISTM that thinking of bit twiddling as operating on integers
is not clean conceptually. I.e., I think there is an implicit
coercion to a set type for the twiddle operation and then implicitly
back to integer again when supposedly twiddling two integers
with a binary twiddling operation (same for unary, of course).

ISTM if i an j were taken as integers per se, 'i | j' would create a
set of two integers. Obviously the '|' operation is not referring
to the integers as integer-set members. I think that ought to be
made clear, but I am not sure about the best way to talk about
what's really happening. I'm grasping after something about
ordered-binary-coefficient-set-ordinal sets, or something
like that, I think. More below ;-)

PEP 218 introduces sets to the language. I think it would be good to say
something there too about integers-as-sets (and maybe have explicit
conversions to/from integers, and ordered sequences of integers such
as convert nicely to strings) (I am sending a Bcc to the author
gvwilson at ddj.com, in case he's interested in this).

If some paragraphs on this belonged in the docs (by URL link ;-)
where bit twiddle operations are explained, it sounds like you
guys would be the ones to get it officially right. (Or immediately know
an existing reference ;-)

BTW, I got to thinking about this because of a post mentioning
the '<<' operator as being uniquely bit twiddling in nature.
Yet ISTM it really does have an aritmetic meaning as well, i.e.,
'*2**' and '<<' are often interchangeable in code, and both
senses are used (even if sometimes intended in the alternate sense ;-).

So what is the best way to talk about a binary-represented integer
in the abstract? A vector of coefficients for radix powers doesn't
evoke the usages that ignore the radix powers, i.e., treating 1-or-0
coefficients as existence booleans for set elements identified by
position number (or *being* position number).

BTW, note the usefulness of boolean-as-integer returned from
comparison operators, if you want to be picky about plurals:

    print "There %s %d error%s." % ( ['were','was'][n==1], n, 's'*(n!=1) ) 

Sets seem a lot like dictionaries with values restricted to true/false.
Less generally, don't-care/no-key is sometimes useful.

You could convert an integer into a dictionary of  bitposition:bitvalue
pairs and back pretty reliably, so an integer could have a standard
conversion to a dictionary. Of course, you would probably hide
the implementation for efficiency ;-)

You could do a dictionary for numbers with non-binary radix, revealing that you
really have radixPower:coefficient pairs, and in the binary case are using
the pairs in an elementId:existence sense.

Side thought: You could write a Python program for addition etc. that would operate
on integers represented as sets. I wonder if this sort of thing could help students
understand what is going on in the hardware. Serial adder as set comprehension?

Time flies when you're having fun ('cause timing flies is a real
nuisance if you aren't having fun ;-)


From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Fri Jul 20 23:35:29 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 03:35:29 GMT
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com> <3B581A4F.381F3072@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b5a8e2f.323275@news.newsguy.com>

>> How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?
>
>This could be a platform-dependent issue.  
>
>Are you by any chance running on Win2K?

No Windows 98. It really does not seem to respond at
all unless I am print() ing something...


--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:26:00 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:26:00 -0400
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E4E28.719ACE57@engcorp.com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> In article <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill at sill.silmarill.org>, Rainy wrote:
> 
> >I doubt I'll find a job using python any time soon. :/
> 
> Probably not if you wait around for management to tell you to
> start using it.
> 
> I use Python on my job because I decided to.  I'm probably
> luckier than most when it comes to being able to choose my
> tools.

Even if one is not officially "allowed" to use Python on a project,
there's nothing stopping one from following the recommendation
often seen here, of using Python to prototype a solution and
debug an algorithm, and then to port the result to the mandated
target language.

After one's productivity and morale goes up significantly 
for no apparent reason, it might not be quite as hard to
advocate a more official role for Python...

There's also always the slight more devious ("guerrilla") 
approach of writing useful utilities in your own time (you 
know, the extra ten to twenty unpaid hours a week you spend 
at work) which then are surreptitiously integrated into the
work environment (maybe using py2exe to disguise them :),
at which point it becomes difficult for management to 
justify rewriting them all and poof, Python is an 
official part of the scenery.

(This latter is difficult to do if you have a manager 
like me, who rigorously controls the languages used for
all development and has periodically demanded that
certain newly developed small tools be rewritten in
the official languages.  Of course, if you have a
manager like me, I'm asking you to rewrite Perl code
in Python anyway, so maybe it's not a problem. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jul  3 20:04:48 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 00:04:48 GMT
Subject: PyArg_Parse
Message-ID: <slrn9k4ncv.f00.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

This is a bit of a silly question, but where is PyArg_Parse documented?  I've
checked the source, the faq, and the C api manual, and no luck.  Reading
module source is sort of risky because there seems to have been several
different versions and syntaxes for PyArg_* over the years.

Also, the intro to the "utilities" chapter for the api manual should probably
be altered to be less misleading.  It currently says:

The functions in this chapter perform various utility tasks, such as parsing
function arguments and constructing Python values from C values. 

In fact, the functions in that chapter do neither of those things.


thanks


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Fri Jul 27 11:30:59 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:30:59 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <%_W77.12073$Up.356411@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j48zhah4ib.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <TOf87.5470$Kd7.2901996@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote...
> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
>
> > The system that tries to use some XML files is written in Python
> > and is being run from under a Java application.  In the system
> > something (that looks like a deadlock) happens when two threads
> > both need to parse (each its own) XML file.
>
> When you say "thread" here, do you mean "Java thread" or "Python
> thread"? I assume you mean "Java thread", since you did not indicate
> at all that you are using threads in your Python application.

Don't assume.  I don't mean Java thread, otherwise I would be
asking in a Java forum.

> Note that when you call Java's Runtime.exec, you create a new
> operating system process. So when two Java threads simultaneously
> invoke Runtime.exec, you end up with two operating system processes,
> each running a separate Python interpreter - not with a single Python
> interpreter running two threads.
>
> Can you please confirm that this is the situation you are confronted
> with?

No, sorry, I can't confirm.  It's one Python interpreter running
multi-threaded Python application.  I do believe the problem to be
with Python multithreading code (and not even with our Python code).

Why it shows up when run under Java, I don't know.  But symptoms
are very similar to what was talked about in another thread (no
pun intended) here.  See "Threads in Python version 1.5, thread
doesn't start until calling process dies".

> > Both call 'parse' from 'minidom' package, which leads to an attempt
> > to __import__ the xml.sax.expatreader.
>
> Assuming that [...]

Thanks.  Wrong assumption, though.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 03:22:39 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:22:39 +0200
Subject: [Python-iterators] While we're at it...
In-Reply-To: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21D@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
References: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21D@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
Message-ID: <20010702092239.L8098@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:03:18AM +1000, Delaney, Timothy wrote:
> > >Of course, an iterator map would be useful:
> > >
> > >def iter_map(f, seq):
> > >    for o in seq:
> > >        yield f(o)
> > 
> > This is a generator, not just an iterator.

> def iter_map (f, seq):
> 
>     def iter_map_generator (f=f, seq=seq):
>         for o in seq:
>             yield f(o)

>     return iter_map_generator()

While this makes a technical difference, the result is exactly the same.
It's just slower :-) The first example (iter_map, the generator) shows
exactly why 'yield' isn't magic and a generator should be defined using
'def': all you need is 'yield' instead of 'result.append()' and you
magically do the right thing :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 08:59:10 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:59:10 -0400
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote [...]:
> > Alex, please consider moving closer to the Eastern Standard timezone
> > so that you may answer my questions more quickly.  What's so special
> > about Italy anyway?
> 
> Pasta, of course.  You guys can claim your pizza is as good as Italy's
> (I'd disagree, but there IS space for debate), but our pasta is still
> nonpareil -- people who decry spaghetti coding don't know what
> they're blabbering about!

Ah, but where I live we have maple syrup and, not to far down the
road (hi Montreal), poutine.  Now _there's_ a fine cuisine... ;)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From fcnpereira at home.com  Sat Jul 14 15:09:33 2001
From: fcnpereira at home.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 19:09:33 GMT
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com> <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <140720011509328399%fcnpereira@home.com>

In article <9ipkp501mop at enews4.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli
<aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The latest issue of the Economist magazine has an in-depth survey
> of Italy, and, to balance out the fact that it's mostly about the
> woes and challenges of our economics & politics, it starts out
> with a Paean titled "What a lovely off place!"
"Off place" intimates some kind of putrefaction (of the political
system?). "Odd place" as in the original is less scary <wink>

-- F


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 21:27:18 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:27:18 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com> <mailman.995305828.11815.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B539476.B31A639E@engcorp.com>

William Park wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 06:03:27PM +0200, Alex Martelli wrote:
> > "Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote:
> >     ...
> > > for eachItem in A:
> > >     if eachItem in B:
> > >         A.remove(eachItem)
> > >
> > > Now, this will work fine,
> >
> > Are you sure about that?  Normally, modifying the list
> > you're iterating on does NOT work fine.
> 
> Good point.  Most of us knew what he meant, though.

(Yeah, but only Alex knew that what he meant was wrong...)

I find humour (and humor) in these discussions, on several
fronts.

1. Python appears to be a language with an incredibly wide
   range of potential optimizations.  The generic "vanilla"
   idiom (is that triply redundant?) posted by many people
   often appears to be very similar, in comparison to 
   other languages (the likely source of the "one way to 
   write it" mantra).  As refactoring goes on, the performance
   probably improves several orders of magnitude.

2. These are wonderful examples of just how many excellent
   programmers can post incorrect code.  Sure, relatively
   little time was spent developing it or, obviously, 
   testing it before posting.  Still it should serve to
   spread a little humility on us all.

3. We certainly talk a lot about "one way to write it", 
   but obviously Python does allow several ways in most
   cases.  It seems to split roughly between the "most
   obvious" (probably only for us newcomers) and the 
   map/filter/lambda/list comprehension style which is
   obviously second nature for some and entirely outside
   of the experience of others.  This ties back to
   (1), suggesting that learning more about these builtins
   is one of the best ways to optimize (working) Python
   code.

4. Pythonistas spend too much time writing working code,
   so they obviously need an "optimization fix" from
   this newsgroup from time to time!  :-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From zawy at oxiqi.net  Sun Jul 29 15:16:14 2001
From: zawy at oxiqi.net (Walter Dupuis)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:16:14 GMT
Subject: Let's exclude behind the usable printers, but don't burst the lost opinions.
Message-ID: <E71BD296.CE8FA110@oxiqi.net>

When will you authenticate the clear slow emails before Grover does?  I'd rather 
kick compleatly than close with Jimmie's sly warning.  My minor 
Java won't defile before I dig it.  The bug unbelievably builds the 
idle IRC server.  One more hard spool or room, and she'll inadvertently 
defeat everybody.  The flat messy advertisement shoots over Walter's 
sticky firewall.  What did James transport to all the librarians?  We can't 
learn robots unless Eddie will regularly load afterwards.  Go 
persevere a FORTRAN!  The insecure modem rarely disconnects Pamela, it 
questions Terrance instead.  





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 20:29:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:29:20 -0400
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in ...
> What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
>
> while (x=getchar() != 'N')
> {
> Do something}
>
> In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?
>
> I'm sure this is possible, I just cannot seem to find the magic
> combination that gets me there.  Nothing seems to turn up when I
> look in the Usual Places, but then again, I may not be Lookin' Right.
>
> At the moment, I'm doing things like:
>
> x=raw_input()
> while x:
> Do Something Interesting
> x = get_input("Prompt: ")
>
The approved idiom is

x = raw_input()
while 1:
    if not x:
        break
    DoSomethingInteresting()

However, you may be aware that iterators and generators will shortly make
their appearance in a programming language near you, and this might allow
some other technique.

You might want to look at FAQ 6.30, "Why can't I use an assignment in an
expression" for the rationale.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 00:16:44 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:16:44 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Newbie Radiobutton question
In-Reply-To: <a5d3ff08.0107031901.33157db9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040803400.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 3 Jul 2001, Rick Olson wrote:

>Hi--
>
>I'm trying to run the following from IDLE:
>

from Tkinter import *
root=Tk()
x=IntVar()
x.set(2)
Radiobutton(root, text='a',value=1,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)
Radiobutton(root, text='b',value=2,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)

# What about adding

root.mainloop()

saving this program as something.py
and trying this as a program _not from IDLE_?

(IDLE is made in TK and probably there is not enough
isolation between it and programs it runs)

>With Red Hat Linux (Python 1.5.2, IDLE .4) it runs fine the first
>time.  I get the window and the second radio button is selected.  If I
>close the window and try to run it again by immediately clicking on F5
>the window and buttons appear, but nothing is selected.  If I click on
>the buttons they work properly.  Even closing the window with the
>program, reopening the file and running won't cause the buttons to be
>selected.  I need to close IDLE, and restart it.
>
>
>
>With Win2K (Python 1.6.1, IDLE .6) it runs every time.
>
>
>
>I'm a linux neophyte, but will figure out how to upgrade whatever is
>necessary.  Is this a Python problem, and IDLE problem, a Red Hat
>problem or a user problem?   Is there anything else that I am likely
>to need to change (e.g. tcl installation)?
>
>
>Thanks in advance--
>
>Rick Olson
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 06:28:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:28:12 +0200
Subject: Regural expression puzzle for gurus
References: <3B4EA0C8.9F697D06@vip.fi>
Message-ID: <9imift0qqr@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Pekka Niiranen" <krissepu at vip.fi> wrote in message
news:3B4EA0C8.9F697D06 at vip.fi...
> I have a string in the middle of a text starting with #-sign and ending
> to \W.
> I can find it with re.compile('#\w+') and  would like to replace it by
> adding a
> # -sign also to the end of it.
>
> Example:
>
>             original string:           xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%
>
>             after replacement:    xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!"?%
>
> How can I do replacement with a single regural expression line ?
>
> I have found a solution like:
>            text = 'xx:yy:#AAA:-#BBB:aa'
>            line = re.compile('#\w+')

line = re.compile('(#\w+)')
text = line.sub(r'\1#', text)

should do what you want.  The parentheses around the re's
pattern define a group, the \1 in sub backreferences to
the group (in many contexts "group 0" can be used to mean
the whole substring matched, but, I believe, not here, so
I don't think you can avoid the parentheses in the pattern).


Alex





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 06:44:05 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:44:05 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996098094.16930.python-list@python.org> <l_P77.559300$eK2.117135519@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA74D4A27F2duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in 
news:l_P77.559300$eK2.117135519 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com:

> assert type(num) is int
> assert type(msg) is str
> 
> ( I assume the use of 'is', rather than '==',  is acceptable here )
> 
> ..much prettier.
> 
Prettier, but now you can subclass builtin types you may want isinstance 
instead:
    assert isinstance(collection, dictionary)

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 16:29:59 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:29:59 -0400
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu> <Uh327.14798$i8.1312190@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Nl327.20471$F%5.1437375@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:Uh327.14798$i8.1312190 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com...
> "Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
> news:etd7kxjcp8x.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
> >
> > You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test objects
> > in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:
> >
> > import copy
> > test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]
> >
> Or, possibly, in a dictionary:
>
> dict = {}
> for i in range(1,21):
>     dict[test+str(i)] = copy.copy(obj)
>
Sorry, read that last as

    dict["test"+str(i)] = copy.copy.(obj)






From dsavitsk at e-coli.net  Thu Jul 12 15:00:25 2001
From: dsavitsk at e-coli.net (doug s.)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 12:00:25 -0700
Subject: dictionary speed
Message-ID: <41899b99.0107121100.7b2c2cdc@posting.google.com>

hi all,

is there any speed differential to be aware or with nested
dictionaries? that is, does the position of data matter. for example,
if i need to access certain data quickly and often, is it best to
structure things so that it is all near the top level?

thanks,
doug


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:50:25 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:50:25 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9hv9pl$5c7$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <56f6kt4goieognhbpi8i8kh4v79egmtaa2@4ax.com>

>>b) Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as
>>   poor ones, at same training and two-year experience level. 
>>   (Sackman, Grant and Erickson)

I agree with this wholeheartedly, with the exception that I would change
it to "Highly motivated and very good professional...". Motivation and
a willingness to really throw oneself into programming is an essential
element of a real programming maverick.

C//



From othello at javanet.com  Fri Jul 20 15:31:44 2001
From: othello at javanet.com (Raymond Hettinger)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:31:44 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com> <aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com> <%3%57.7717$m11.427739@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B588720.83400FB5@javanet.com>

Steve Holden wrote:

> "I don't
> see why immutability has to be a one-way attribute when converiosn between
> list and tuple is so easy.
>
> regards
>  Steve

Dictionary's rely on immutability of keys.  If the list is used as a key, then
it cannot be subsequently assigned to without breaking the key reference.

Also, immutability can be an important internal optimization. Once made
immutable, the list can be fixed length, stored as an array, and hashed
once and for all.

tuples-who-needs-them-ly, yours Raymond



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Thu Jul 26 01:17:12 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 08:17:12 +0300
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com> <yoxhew1zejh.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <3b5f0932.2397984@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <yoxsnfkw9pj.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:

> >What about the good old control-break? 
> 
> Nope don't work.  :(

Yep, I noticed the same thing yesterday when I had to test a script on
win95. Control-break is usually (almost always) stronger than
control-C, so I assumed it might work. 

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From Henning at 3s-hanusa.de  Sat Jul  7 06:28:28 2001
From: Henning at 3s-hanusa.de (Henning Hanusa)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 12:28:28 +0200
Subject: Newbie Help -- Python 2.1 - MySQL-python-0.9.0
Message-ID: <9i6oce$tbe$1@news.online.de>

i'm a newbie to installing Python packages:
using ActiveState Python 2.1.0.211 and want to inistall
MySQL-python-0.9.9-win32-2.

cannot do with the descritption (sorry) - any hints please

thx
Henning




From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Mon Jul 30 08:53:41 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:53:41 +0100
Subject: Loaded module list and attributes
Message-ID: <o2mamt4qtis8r77maqnsmjg7h193aa80t4@4ax.com>

How do I itterate through all the loaded modules and find the name of the module and a value of a
local attribute (__version__ in this case)?

I'm writing a small debugging routine and Python internals are still a bit of a black box to me.

Thanks.
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From donn at drizzle.com  Mon Jul 23 00:06:30 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 04:06:30 -0000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <220720011959361323%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <995861189.362184@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth "John W. Baxter" <jwbaxter at spamcop.com>:
...
| By the way, in .../lib/module-math.html (I keep my own copy on my end
| of my 56K frame connection), it is not stated whether the input to
| sin() (and the others where it applies) is degrees or radians.  An
| experiment is necessary, or a reference to my rapidly waning C
| knowledge or a visit to the C standard (which I'd rather not do, for
| reasons of marginal sanity).
|
| >>> math.sin(1)
| 0.8414709848078965
|
| is a conclusive experiment...which I had to run before making the "also
| unlikely" claim.

Right! and I don't think it's what the common folk expect either.
Someone should write up a PEP to change these functions to take
degrees (not on my account, but it would seem to be a potential
stumbling block for the uninitiated, wouldn't it?)

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul  5 05:47:37 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 13:47:37 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051339400.17954-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 5 Jul 2001, Russ wrote:

>> There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
>> languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
>> "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing the
>> same application in two different languages to get meaningful comparisions -
>> but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed languages.
>
>Let's cut right to the chase here. I like strong typing almost as much
>as you do, but I don't understand why I can't get it in Python,
>perhaps by specialized code-analysis tools. Is the problem just that
>the development tools are underdeveloped, or is there a fundamental
>technical reason that type-checking cannot be done? If it's the
>former, then I suggest that the tools be given a very high priority.

What for? Python has dynamic type-checking and making yet another Pascal
from it is probably stupid idea.

>If it's the latter, then perhaps type checking can be done under
>certain reasonable restrictions. Whatever the case, I want to have my
>cake and eat it too. :-)

You can add asserts to whatever places to check types:

from types import *
def add_int(x, y):
  assert type(x) is IntType and type(y) is IntType
  return x+y

I can't see how static type-checking could eliminate more
problems than create, though.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 05, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ">From the Department of Redundancy Dept." _/




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Jul  3 03:17:53 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:17:53 GMT
Subject: newbie apply() question
References: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net>
Message-ID: <Bke07.7480$e5.975477@newsb.telia.net>

Aaron Edsinger wrote:
> hi.  i'm stumped on something that seems easy.  why doesn't this work:
>
> x=4
> apply(sys.stdout.write,x) #fails

TypeError: apply() 2nd argument must be a sequence

as the exception implies, the second argument to apply
must be a sequence.  an integer is not a sequence.

> apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,)) #fails

TypeError: argument must be string or read-only character buffer, not int

as the exception implies, the argument (to sys.stdout.write)
must be a string, not an int(eger).

> is there a way to make this work?

if you really need to use apply, you can do something like:

    apply(sys.stdout.write,(str(x),))

or even:

    sys.stdout.write(*(str(x),))

but since write doesn't take a variable number of arguments,
I see no reason why you cannot simply write:

    sys.stdout.write(str(x))

hope this helps!

</F>




From emile at fenx.com  Sun Jul  8 22:43:31 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:43:31 -0700
Subject: calling a variable from a separate function
References: <7b515e0f.0107081752.5dc1680d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ib60g$hph69$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Well, I'm going to guess you mean to be working in a class.  Then what you'd
say is:

class Test:        #--untested--
    def func1(self):
        self.var1 = 22
    def func2(self):
        print self.var1

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"eric_brake" <brakedon at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b515e0f.0107081752.5dc1680d at posting.google.com...
> Let's say
>
> def function1:
>      self.variable1 = 22
> def function2:
>      print variable1
>
> Would function2 look like "print function1.variable1" or some other
> way? By the way I already know that the "function1.variable1" format
> doesn't work. thanks for any help.



From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 26 00:27:06 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 04:27:06 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <mailman.996054346.18950.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5f90cb.432383654@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:43:24 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>Dead serious apps don't take chances, and there are no restrictions in the
>Python license on redistributing it with your apps.  If you don't isolate
>your app from user whims, there's no guarantee it will continue to work even
>if they install a single bugfix to a shared Python.  I don't know which OS
>you're targeting, but it doesn't sound like you've thought about the big
>picture here, be it Linux or Windows.  The more important the app, the more
>important to cover your butt, and even pure bugfixes can break code that
>relied on accidents.
>
>test-what-you-ship-and-ship-what-you-test-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>
IOW, only ship bootable CDROMS.
No, wait, better ship the whole box, with 110/220 adapter ;-)

(Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see this approach happen.
First-time cost of a major commercial application suite is often
considerably more than the bare-bones box part of the system
it gets bought for. The opportunities for patent/UCITA control
will be too much to resist. Your system will become a stack of
app bricks. Of course this general idea is obvious, but hereby
put in the public domain just in case ;-)




From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Thu Jul 19 17:24:35 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:24:35 -0500
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <20010719195840.BHJ2711.femail24.sdc1.sfba.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <07d201c11099$36abe440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

The standard way to distribute Python modules or applications
is *usually* with DistUtils (see Python documentation for
further informations). DistUtils supports to build and install
a Python package and allows you to build archives for distribution
like .tar.gz or rpms.

Andreas




----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Donnerstag, 19. Juli 2001 14:56
Subject: Distributing a Python app


> I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to
distribute an application written in Python, intended for
> people who don't have Python installed on their machines? Even possibly a
commercial distrubtion program, if it's the best. I've
> been playing around with py2exe, with not much success (although that's a
topic for a different day). Assuming I do get py2exe
> working properly, how would everyone suggest we distribute our
application? (By the way, this application is for Windows
> machines).
>
> Jay Parlar
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Software Engineering III
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
>
> "Though there are many paths
> At the foot of the mountain
> All those who reach the top
> See the same moon."
>
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 00:22:53 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:22:53 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995926001.4339.python-list@python.org> <vmcpltkoo6137ko4hnivtl5a01b9dtq2e1@4ax.com> <3B5CE049.8F274BD@geocities.com> <hW577.26451$Xr6.212776@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <ilrpltg0nls6p8gs46k57kar6q2a5u4cqf@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 03:27:09 GMT, "Neil Hodgson"
<nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

>Myles:
>
>> Ermm, fact correction :
>> not on the VB and VBA I have available to me.
>>
>> VB (admittedly v.4):
>>     x = 1 \ 2
>>     MsgBox (x)
>> gives 0.5
>
>   Also in VBScript (on W2K):
>WScript.echo(1/2)
>   displays "0.5".
>
>   And QBasic
>PRINT 1/2
>   displays ".5"
>
>   Neil

<fx: slowly descending whistle>
<fx: ***BOOM***>

Thats one big hole blown in one of my major arguments - dammit.

Teach me for assuming BASIC would work the same way for five minutes,
I suppose.

The next ***BOOM*** is still going to be a huge hole blown in my
credibility after advocating Python though - so I'm still not a happy
bunny :-<



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 10:43:39 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:43:39 -0500
Subject: socket module
In-Reply-To: <20010709091943.A18359@strakt.com>
References: <20010709091943.A18359@strakt.com>
Message-ID: <15177.49947.594373.154573@beluga.mojam.com>

    Martin> Is there ANY way to use the socket module from a Python module
    Martin> written in C?

Sure.  Check the C API manual:

    http://www.python.org/doc/api/api.html

especially the sections on importing modules and the object protocol section
(for calling callable objects).

Basically, you'll do just what you'd do from Python:

    import socket
    sock = socket.socket(...)
    sock.connect(...)

Something vaguely like:

    PyObject *sockmodule, *sockfunc, *socket;
    sockmodule = PyImport_Import("socket");
    sockfunc = PyDict_GetItemString(PyModule_GetDict(sockmodule), "socket");
    PyCall_Object(sockfunc, ...);

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 02:36:51 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:36:51 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B7689.F37B991C@alcyone.com>, <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>, <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995861977.11576.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5BC603.692036B0@alcyone.com>

Moshe Zadka wrote:

> It does? I fail to see why people assume that operations *have* to
> return
> the type of their operands.

It's not a requirement, but integer division is very frequently used. 
An operation that's closed on the types of its arguments is always easy
to understand, consistent with many other programming languages that do
such integer division, and is already the way things work.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.
\__/ Han Suyin
    Erik Max Francis' bookmarks / http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/
 A highly categorized list of Web links.


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 18:47:27 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:47:27 -0500
Subject: Postgres  support
In-Reply-To: <o5acktc6ot7upcu01eh3hul6e8mtu9qqnn@4ax.com>
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
	<5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
	<mailman.994448787.15987.python-list@python.org>
	<o5acktc6ot7upcu01eh3hul6e8mtu9qqnn@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15174.16383.881430.115111@beluga.mojam.com>

    Rene> Oracle is almost free [$200] for development purposes.
    ...
    Rene> Just put your production data in PostgreSQL and Oracle is quite
    Rene> affordable.

Huh?  Why would I plunk down $200 for an Oracle development license, then
field my application using Postgres?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Thu Jul 19 21:08:16 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:08:16 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
Message-ID: <002501c110b8$758a2860$a9e1fea9@carol>

Guido writes - 

>I apologize for my poor English -- I don't know what you mean by "an
>affection" or "an affect".  Consulting a dictionary didn't help, but
>I'm guessing that you mean something that gets in your way when
>programming.

The poor English is all mine, for which I apologize.  

The correct word is affectation, which I used in the sense of:

"manner of speech or behavior not natural to one's actual
personality or behavior"

Implies artificial.

>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

But I have also been trying to ask you to define a term - "novice".

Seems to me it is clear that the needs of someone with an interest
in learning programming is a novice in a whole different sense
than someone with no such interest.

That seems obvious, but you do seem to point time and
again to circumstances in which the goal is for the subject
to accomplish something specific - and the set-up is specifically
to insulate them from an understanding of programming.  *Not*
to motivate them to achieve it.

Anything you might *continue* to do to make an understanding
of programming accessible to those interested in such an
understanding, I would certainly support.  I happen not to
believe focusing on case-sensitivity is at all a core issue
for that audience. But that, as they say, is me.

To spend any significant energy to cater to the novice in
the other sense - the novice who combines a lack of
experience with a lack of interest in the subject matter
of programming... well if I were you, I'd let myself off
that hook.

ART






From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Fri Jul  6 09:24:11 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:24:11 GMT
Subject: embedding pythonwin ?
Message-ID: <3b45ba6c.17617021@news.iway.fr>

Hi all, 


I would like to embed python, to use its debugging facilities.

My application that embed python let me enter python commands.
Here's what happens :

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
import pywin.debugger

pywin.debugger.GetDebugger()
Could not create the debugger!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\debugger\__init__.py",
line 46, in GetDebugger
    rc = _GetCurrentDebugger()
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\debugger\__init__.py",
line 35, in _GetCurrentDebugger
    _CheckNeedGUI()
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\debugger\__init__.py",
line 21, in _CheckNeedGUI
    pywin.framework.app.CreateDefaultGUI(dbgpyapp.DebuggerPythonApp)
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\framework\app.py", line
386, in CreateDefaultGUI
    appClass().InitInstance()
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\debugger\dbgpyapp.py",
line 38, in InitInstance
    from pywin.framework import interact
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\framework\interact.py",
line 21, in ?
    import pywin.scintilla.IDLEenvironment
  File
"d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\scintilla\IDLEenvironment.py",
line 56, in ?
    GetIDLEModule("AutoIndent").IndentSearcher.readline =
fast_readline
  File
"d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\scintilla\IDLEenvironment.py",
line 24, in GetIDLEModule
    __import__(modname)
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\idle\AutoIndent.py", line
38, in ?
    import PyParse
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\pythonwin\pywin\idle\PyParse.py", line 2,
in ?
    import re
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\lib\re.py", line 28, in ?
    from sre import *
  File "d:\python\python_2_1\lib\sre.py", line 218, in ?
    import copy_reg
ValueError: bad marshal data
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

All is release compile, so I don't have issues with "*_d.pyd".

Anyone has any clue ?

Thanks by advance, 

Emmanuel



From robin at stop.spam.alldunn.com  Tue Jul  3 22:07:44 2001
From: robin at stop.spam.alldunn.com (Robin Dunn)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 02:07:44 GMT
Subject: py2exe & wxWin
References: <m2lmm6m1tg.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <PTu07.61$7981.44630199@news.randori.com>

"Greg Copeland" <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:m2lmm6m1tg.fsf at mouse.copelandconsulting.net...
>
> Is it possible to use py2exe to package up a wxPython application?
>

Yep.  Works quite nicely too.


--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
robin at AllDunn.com       Java give you jitters?
http://wxPython.org      Relax with wxPython!





From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul 31 13:28:32 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:28:32 GMT
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>  <3dsnfdjg1w.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org> <mailman.996596704.6347.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ojqdmtguukc4ju3d8k7gvivqdfksd8e6dg@4ax.com>

>Didn't IBM just release a new (optional) threads package for Linux that
>implements true lightweight threads?

This would require a kernel-patch, yes?

C//



From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 10:06:30 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:06:30 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Just van Rossum" <just at letterror.com> wrote in message
news:3B5BDCB4.A2010560 at letterror.com...
> David Eppstein wrote:
>
> > Ok, you convinced me to look more carefully at all the divisions
in my
> > recent small project, a program to generate web pages from
collections of
> > JPEGs.  I found:
> >
> > 3 instances of simplifying numbers prior to output (e.g. I want
file size
> > in kbytes rather than bytes).
> > [ ... ]
>
> Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte?
> Integer division is a lousy tool in this particular example...

Just, this is stupid, wrong, and gratuitously insulting,
and therefore, in my opinion, ugly and nasty.

As for the first line: unless you have seen Eppstein's code, which I
assume not, you do not know what divisor he uses (both k = 1000 and
1024 have been by various people, as have both m = 1000000 and
1024*1024).  You do no know whether he truncates down, rounds [(bytes
+ k/2)/k], or truncates up.  You do not know that a difference of +-1
matters a bit to him and his audience, or that his program ever
encounters 2K microjpegs.  Given the care he described in choosing his
focal length formula and the care he exhibited in examining his code
and reporting the results, it is reasonable to assume that he made
what he considers to be sensible choices for reporting file sizes.
Who are you to assume otherwise?

As for the second line: do you really think
int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is signigicantly better for rounding?
If so, that is a statement of anti-integer float-religion preference,
not fact.

I am beginning to think that there is something wrong with a proposal
that apparently has to be promoted by bulldozing away reasonable
skepticism.

Terry J. Reedy




From rupe at metro.yak.net  Fri Jul  6 15:44:46 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 12:44:46 -0700
Subject: Best method for updating pickled data objects?
References: <79179cf5.0107051214.19990222@posting.google.com> <mailman.994365490.28604.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107061144.5e1d627d@posting.google.com>

Neil Schemenauer <nas at python.ca> wrote in message news:<mailman.994365490.28604.python-list at python.org>...
> Rupert Scammell wrote:
> > Deleting and recreating the pickle file, then writing out the data
> > object from memory each time seems horribly inefficient to me
> > (especially for large data objects). There's got to be a better way to
> > do this.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> You want ZODB:
> 
>     http://www.amk.ca/zodb/
> 
> Its sounds complicated and scary but its really easy to use.
> 
>   Neil

Thanks for your help Neil.  ZODB looks like an elegant solution to
this problem, and appears to have some nice extra features to boot. 
The semi-intelligent caching of dirty objects back to disk is
especially useful.  Once again, Andrew saves the day!

--- Rupert


From visionary25 at _nospam_hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 17:52:35 2001
From: visionary25 at _nospam_hotmail.com (Vis Mike)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:52:35 -0700
Subject: accessing class data members
References: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <3B421822.572A5CDD@recombinant.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <d8r07.169$T57.104869@news.pacbell.net>

I've been toying with the idea of a new language, and I thought of this to
aid in the getter/setter dilemma:

Methods take precedence over variables of the same name, so you can simply
use direct access at first, and implement a getter/setter method when the
time comes.  Incremental development. :)

Mike

"Stephen D Evans" <stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3B421822.572A5CDD at recombinant.demon.co.uk...
Curtis,
It's a question of style/performance. Neither obj.temperature nor
obj.get_temperature() are necessarily better. Accessing a class variable
directly or indirectly via a function are both valid and have
advantages/disadvantages depending on the language/task.
For indirect variable access via a function:
In a compiled language the indirect access via a function call can be
optimised away by the compiler, so there may be no loss of runtime speed.
In Python there is the overhead of a function call, therefore potentially
slower.
If the function does not exist, the code crashes.
Debugging is easier as all accesses to the variable can be trapped/traced.
For direct variable access:
In Python this is quicker.
It is possible to set a 'typo', e.g. obj.temperature_oops = t without any
complaint, but not (always) retrieve one e.g. t = obj.temperature_oops may
or may not work.
Possibly harder to debug the code.
For quick and dirty debugging in Python it is possible to override the
__getattr__ and __setattr__ class methods and thus provide the equivalent of
obj.get_temperature() and obj.set_temperature(t) while using obj.temperature
in the code. Use has to be made of the __getattr__/__setattr__ asymmetry.
class UpperClassTwitOfTheYear:
    """An example for debugging only"""
    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
        if name == 'temperature':
            name = 'hidden_temperature' # rename, place debugging code here
        self.__dict__[name] = value
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        assert name=='temperature' # should only be called for this
        return self.__dict__['hidden_temperature']

Having looked at a lot of Python code and programmed in Python regularly for
over a year, I generally use direct access to the class variable in Python
i.e. obj.temperature

Stephen D Evans


Curtis Jensen wrote:
In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when you
want to know the value of some data member, that a function is written
to return that value.  However, in Python it seems that people just
access the data member directly.
for example:
if there were a class that represented a physical object.  In the class
there were data members that held the objects temperature and location.
If I wanted to know the temperature of an object, I could just use
obj.temperature.  Though in other languages, the convention seems to
call a function that returns the value, like: obj.get_temperature.
Which is better?
--
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul  3 19:47:58 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:47:58 -0600
Subject: No float limits
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E0@admin56.narex.com>

> From: D-Man [mailto:dsh8290 at rit.edu]
> 
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 11:37:51PM +0200, J?rgen Hermann wrote:
> | Hi!
> | 
> | I just stumbled over the fact that there is sys.maxint, but 
> no sys.maxfloat
> | and sys.epsfloat. In case anyone thinks this is a valid 
> addition, I'll come
> | up with a patch.
> 
> What value would sys.maxfloat have?
> 
> IIRC IEEE754 states that all ones (ie 0xFFFFFFFF for a single
> precision float) means infinity, so there really isn't a "max" value
> for a float.

Perhaps not, but there is a maximum representable number, a.k.a. DBL_MAX
in your C library (same argument for DBL_EPSILON of course ;-)

-- bjorn



From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 20:41:12 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:41:12 -0400
Subject: intersection and union idea
In-Reply-To: <3b5cb9d4$0$325$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEIALAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Neil Macneale]
> I was day dreaming about python today, and I realized that it would be
> very python-ish to have intersection and union operators for lists and
> tuples. Eg:
>
> >>> (1,2,3,4) | (1,3,6,8)
> (1,2,3,4,6,8)
> >>> (1,2,3,4) & (1,3,6,8)
> (1,3)
>
> Does such an operator exist? I am sure someone else has thought of this
> before.

No and yes.  A feeble subset of set operations isn't worth the bother of
adding ("gratuitous bloat"), so the best hope for this kind of thing is in
PEP 218:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0218.html

a-lot-of-bloat-is-always-better-than-a-little<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 22:17:40 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:17:40 -0400
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
		<07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
		<oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
		<086c01c10aec$8ebe4b80$9865fea9@SUXLAP> <mailman.994959323.21264.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E5A44.7100F507@engcorp.com>

Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> 
> ... My mother often said to me:
> 
>   "Des go?ts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas.
>    Mais il y en a de meilleurs que d'autres..."
> 
> (roughly translated: "People should never discuss about what is good taste.
> Yet, some people have better taste than others.").

Fran?ois, are you sure your translation is accurate?  

I think it should read "Yet, some people taste better than others."

-cannibalistic-ly yr's,
Peter H


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 20:01:16 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:01:16 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995572293.19088.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9let6c.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:49:57 -0600, Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
>> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at digicool.com]
>> 
>> > I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
>> > expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
>> > non-programmers.
>> 
>> IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.
>> 
>> (1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.
>> 
>> (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>>     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>>     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
>
>TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
>hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
>iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
>stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
>begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.

Rubbish. The only thing you can't do is give them the same name, eg:

message = Message()

but this is bad practise anyway, IMO.



-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 15:48:40 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:48:40 -0500
Subject: Redirecting broswers in Py
In-Reply-To: <3B5F0AC8.BF54029C@telocity.com>
References: <3B5F0AC8.BF54029C@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <15199.8856.97177.810376@beluga.mojam.com>

    Adonis> the script accepts the connection then processes information
    Adonis> once that is done i want to be able to send the broswer to X
    Adonis> page.

That's the job of the Location: header in the HTTP response.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 30 00:35:31 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:35:31 +1200
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <Xns90EB76175FA2Brobindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>
Message-ID: <3B64E413.B9086368@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Robin Garner wrote:
> 
> As sets (and from the p.o.v. of analysis), Z is a subset of R, but as
> algebraic entities there is a distinction.

In other words, it all depends on the purpose
you have in mind!

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From michael at stroeder.com  Mon Jul 16 19:15:32 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:15:32 +0200
Subject: CGI-Problem with Refresh Header
References: <9ivnss$csl$01$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <3B537594.35F2CA08@stroeder.com>

Heiko Wundram wrote:
> 
> I have a small problem with my CGI-script; I need to do a refresh (to some
> other page) after a certain amount of time, but I can't remember the exact
> syntax of the "Refresh:"-HTTP-Header...
> 
> Anybody out there who can help me? :)

RFC2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1

Ciao, Michael.


From jrbjr at digitalexp.com  Fri Jul  6 03:04:11 2001
From: jrbjr at digitalexp.com (jrbjr)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 07:04:11 GMT
Subject: What do you think? I want to know!!!
Message-ID: <Lpd17.566615$ho6.36516038@news5.aus1.giganews.com>

This message posted with trial version of Express News Poster
_____________________________________________________________

Want to voice your opinion or belief? Visit my new site Called "Alternatives To Popular Beliefs" (www.jrbjr.freeservers.com) I have a chatroom, messageboard and poll. I am looking for new topics, so please send me ideas for topics you would like to see on my site.


From fdrake at beowolf.digicool.com  Wed Jul 18 16:10:31 2001
From: fdrake at beowolf.digicool.com (Fred Drake)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:10:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [maintenance doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010718201031.F34352892C@beowolf.digicool.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

	http://python.sourceforge.net/maint-docs/

Current status of the 2.1.1 documentation -- very few changes since the
2.1.1c1 release.




From -$Paul$- at verence.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul  8 11:04:20 2001
From: -$Paul$- at verence.demon.co.uk (Paul Wright)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 15:04:20 -0000
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <9i9spk$1hr$1@verence.demon.co.uk>

In article <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a at newsreader.tycho.net>,
Neil Macneale <mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote:
>Is there a way to limit the number of instructions executed by a thread
>to a certain number?  I want to start several threads and give them all
>the same number of instructions to work, then have them all stop after
>they have reached that point.  Then I would like to resume all of those
>threads again for another 'round' of instruction batches.
>
>The idea is that I have a game where people play there code against
>others, and I would like to have some granularity in the number of
>intructions each thread executes in a given time frame.
>
>I think this may be impossible, but any suggestions would be great!

Greg Stein has a Robot Wars implementation which does what you want by
playing with thread locks in a function which is a sys.settrace hook.
sys.settrace lets you specify a function to run after every line of code
(it's intended for people writing debuggers).

http://www.pythonpros.com/gstein/war/

(Unfortunately it's not a complete implementation: it'd be a cool way
to help beginners learn Python, especially those with a limited
attention span :-)

-- 
----- Paul Wright ------| Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are
-paul.wright at pobox.com--| committed by someone else!  -- Chuck Smith
http://pobox.com/~pw201 | 


From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul 25 13:28:50 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:28:50 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996076486.582.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jmvru$6afv$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I ordered the Zope book on-line at Barnes & Noble this morning, and when
searching for Python, the first entry displayed is a Perl book!??

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996076486.582.python-list at python.org...
> I agree that Python is fun and exciting.  In fact, I ran into this guy in
the alley, who sold me a bunch of Python tee shirts, with a picture of a guy
named Larry Wall on them.  Can anyone tell me if these are "official Python
tee shirts?"  I hate to think that I got ripped off.
>



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Fri Jul 13 19:02:38 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:02:38 -0400
Subject: Statistics tool box.
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>; from prem@engr.uky.edu on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 06:29:19PM -0400
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <20010713190238.A230@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 06:29:19PM -0400, Prem Rachakonda wrote:
> Hi,
>   I am trying to convert my matlab scripts into Python. But I see that
> there are no equivalent stat. tools in Python. If there are any, could you
> please let me know. I am looking for the functions similar to:

You probably have to write your own.  I remember 
    - an old post in comp.lang.python about C math library wrapper...
      "cephes" or something.
    - an old post in <freshmeat.com> about C math library

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From jochen at riekhof.de  Fri Jul 20 05:21:38 2001
From: jochen at riekhof.de (Jochen Riekhof)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:21:38 +0200
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <9j8t73$d5g$00$1@news.t-online.com>

ah, and FYI, hte second TUPLE-Value is the connection DSN string!
DSN=<somedsn>;UID=<someuid>;PWD=<somepwd>

Ciao

Jochen






From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 16:16:08 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:16:08 +0200
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994625054.7131.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107092059.8b56186@posting.google.com> <1103_994765524@jparlar> <3B4B0141.580437D2@stroeder.com> <1103_994771037@jparlar>
Message-ID: <3B4B6288.C4854E73@stroeder.com>

Jay Parlar wrote:
> 
> > > Now, whenever I'm given HTML from IE's cache, it is unicode. There is 
> > > no doubt about that.
> >
> > Are you sure? Which encoding of Unicode? UTF-16, UTF-8, ...
> 
> Well, I know that it's Unicode for two reasons:
> 1) The developer
> of the module that generates the HTML from the cache told me so,

Frankly this is not a real reason...

> and 2) I do a check for
> UnicodeType in my own code. I don't think I could tell you
> which encoding it is though (not without knowing how to check
> for that within my code).

I wonder how you want to properly initialize an Unicode object
without knowing the encoding. You should have a closer look at the
cached data and not trust was anybody said. Especially you should
watch out for the HTTP header and <meta> tags.

Then you should get familiar with Unicode handling in Python and the
distinction of strings and Unicode objects by reading the fine
Python docs.

Ciao, Michael.


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 20 12:27:44 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:27:44 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995572293.19088.python-list@python.org> <slrn9let6c.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B585C00.93162A1@Lugoj.Com>

phil hunt wrote:
[ Elided. ]

> message = Message()
> 
> but this is bad practise anyway, IMO.

Why is that bad practice? What problems do you think this causes?

I never used that convention much until after I had been exposed to ASN.1,
where it is a common convention to have identifiers differ from type names
only by a change of case in the first letter. In ASN.1 type names start with
upper case and instance names start with lower case. Obviously the ITU
didn't see any problems with that convention.

I have never run into any problems at all with that convention and actually
find it quite useful.


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 09:20:32 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:20:32 +0100
Subject: python2.1 pythonw.exe base address
Message-ID: <83weaIAguDV7EwJm@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

I don't know how much this is of real interest, but using the latest
proc explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com/ I notice that
pythonw.exe has a base address of 0x1e190000, but that python21.dll
wants to reside at 0x1e100000 and has a length of 0xAF000, the result is
that python21.dll gets relocated.

Redefining the base address of pythonw to be something non-controversial
that didn't overlap would be a zero cost win for tk apps.

as an aside it seems that tcl83.dll and _tkinter.pyd are also relocated,
but I don't know the desired base address.
-- 
Robin Becker


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 17:19:47 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:19:47 -0400 
Subject: What's wrong with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51FC@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Does anyone have an example of how to set filename to access files in a
directory list, so I can implement this?  My Python is limited, as I don't
use it every day, and in limited ways.  Thanks. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:05 PM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
Subject: RE: What's wrong with this program


On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Thanks for the correction.

   Actually I think you don't need ftp.connect() at all - it is called in
ftp.__init__...

> Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
> from one server directory to another server directory?

   I don't know - I've never used ftplib, but the idea is obvious: put it
one by one. Something like this:

for filename in somelist:
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 24 08:22:56 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:22:56 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D68A0.5E48C13@ActiveState.com>

Duncan Grisby wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I return to my question. Suppose Python 2.2 is released with this
> __future__ division. Now suppose I must maintain some code which can
> run on Python 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, which needs integer division. What am
> I to do? 

I think divmod()[0]. (or maybe I've missed something there)

Another option would be for Guido to add a declaration that wouldn't
break old versions of Python (i.e. a comment) that you could add to your
module.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Fri Jul 27 11:46:30 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:46:30 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com> <3B5FAD11.FB9D737E@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <tm336a7vjqjq5f@news.supernews.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B5FAD11.FB9D737E at engcorp.com...
> John Roth wrote:
> >
> > After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> > threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
> > for real use.
>
> Do you really mean "is" too unstable, or you mean it looks like it
> "might be" unstable, solely because of the proposals about changing the
> way the / operator works?

I mean is. Notice that I said "among others," therefore PEP 238 was
**NOT** the sole proposal involved.

> I've used Python for about a year and a half in dozens of practical
> areas in industry.  I consider it *bar none* the most stable language
> I've ever used.  Not only with respect to the stability of the
> applications I write, but also the runtime (I can hardly recall a crash,
> although I'm sure I've had a few when using calldll around third-party
> DLLs) and definitely *even the language definition*.

Runtime stability was not the issue. That's a given before I even start
evaluating. And I don't consider the existing problem with Win 9x
console mode and Tkinter to be a point in Python's favor.

> Changing from 1.5.2 to 2.1 required us to do, let me see: nothing!
> I reviewed the list of changes, predicted we would not be impacted,
> and so far (after several months of ongoing development and continued
> use of our many utilities and applications) I've been proven correct.

Many shops want something a little more concrete than a statement
by the top technical expert. A compatibility scan tool would be
appreciated.

> So I'm guessing you really just mean that this PEP 238 proposal
> is scarey.  I agree, to the extent that code breakage is never nice
> to contemplate, but with the ongoing consideration being given to the
> issue by the developers, I'm reasonably satisfied that even this
> drastic change will end up having relatively little effect on my
> opinion of Python's stability.  Planning over two years in
> advance and guaranteeing the breakage will only occur when
> a major upgrade (Python 3.0) is released is pretty much the
> best you could hope for from any language.  After all, by convention
> major upgrades are where you are supposed to *expect* code
> breakage.

That last sentence is what is scarey, not PEP238 or any of the
other specific proposals. There's an endemic mindset in the xNIX
community that simply doesn't understand the risk aversive behavior
of many of the large shops. If compatability isn't guaranteed, then
an upgrade is a project - which has to be scoped, justified, planned,
and then prioritized with all the rest of the projects.

> > Hopefully, this is going to provide more food for thought than fuel for
the
> > flames.
>
> I hope you don't consider this a flame.  But I'm not responding to
> the  suggestion of "required" other than to say I don't think it's
> really necessary (because I don't think it's really necessary...
> as should be evident from the above).

I think we're going to disagree on this one...

John Roth
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
> peter at engcorp.com




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  9 04:16:50 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:16:50 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20010708185646.023c9640@mail.accessone.com>
References: <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net> <5.0.2.1.1.20010708185646.023c9640@mail.accessone.com>
Message-ID: <20010709101650.B32419@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 08:02:27PM -0700, Bengt Richter wrote:

> >Doesn't fix the problems. What about this:
> >
> >semantics PRECISION, 0:
> >     x = 2/7
> >
> >semantics PRECISION, 100:
> >     print x

> I'm thinking that's trying to peek from one nested scope into another,
> and would be either illegal, trigger a special exception, or get you
> a NameError. I haven't thought this through, but that was
> part of the reason for a block rather than just setting global control
> parameters. I think only new bindings would be affected. Rebinding
> global names to stuff created within a semantic scope might have to carry
> environment along. I haven't thought that through either ;-)

Note that currently, only functions and classes introduce a new scope, not
other blocks like if, for, try, etc. And this still is no solution: if you
can't carry values from your 'precision scopes' to upper scopes, they are
useless black bloxes that eat everything that goes in :) And an explicit
'return x' is not going to change anything about the problem.

And what about this, for that matter:

def printme(x):
    semantics PRECISION, 100:
        print x

semantics PRECISION, 0:
    x = 2/7
    printme(x)

(or even with printme defined as

semantics PRECISION, 100:
    def printme(x):
        print x

:-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Jul 11 07:16:00 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:16:00 +0100
Subject: Can not use jTkinter
Message-ID: <3B4C3570.218395D4@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Hi everybody,

The JPython1.1 was installed in c:\winnt\java\JPython-1.1, a copy is in 
 c:\winnt\java\JPython11
according to guidance, modification was made in c:\winnt\java\JPython11:
1. The replacement jpython.jar must be copied to the JPython directory.  
  -- in c:\winnt\java\jpython11
2. The jTkinter.jar must be placed somehere on your classpath. 
  -- copies of jpython.jar can be found in c:\winnt\java\classes; 
 c:\winnt\java\jpython11; c:\winnt\java\jpython11\lib
3. The tcl82.dll, tk82.dll and tkinter.dll must be placed somewhere on
your 
 path. 
  -- in c:\winnt\java\jpython\lib
4. The Lib\_tkinter.py, Lib\code.py, Lib\imp.py and Lib\javaos.py must
be 
 copied to the JPython Lib directory. 
  -- in c:\winnt\java\jpython\lib
5. The folders Lib\tcl8.2, Lib\tk8.2 and Lib\lib-tk directories must be 
 copied to the JPython Lib directory. 
  -- in c:\winnt\java\jpython\lib
6. The full path to lib-tk must be added to python.path in JPython's 
 registry. Remember to use double backslashes in the windows path,    
e.g: 
 c:\\java\\jpython-1.1\\lib\\lib-tk 
-- done after enter JPython.

But I still got the following error information:

C:\WINNT\java\JPYTHO~1>jpython
JPython 1.1+jTkinter on java1.1.4 (JIT: null)
Copyright (C) 1997-1999 Corporation for National Research Initiatives
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append("c:\\winnt\\java\\jpython11\\lib\\lib-tk")
>>> import Tkinter
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
  File "D:\java\jpython\jTkinter\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 8, in ?
  File "C:\WINNT\java\JPython11\Lib\_tkinter.py", line 4, in ?
ImportError: no module named jTkinter
>>> import Tkinter
>>> dir(Tkinter)
['__file__', '__name__', '__version__', 'sys']
>>> r=3DTkinter.Tk()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: module 'Tkinter' has no attribute 'Tk'
>>>


Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 20:56:35 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 20:56:35 -0400
Subject: amkCrypto/mxCrypto on Win32 with Visual C++
References: <HS507.15883$Lk6.1149673@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <II807.21844$he.1176748@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

Itamar Shtull-Trauring was kind enough to send me the following, which is
good news for all Windows Python would-be cryptographers:

> I've got this (compiled for 2.0 and the source needed to compile for
> non-2.0 versions of Python) at http://itamarst.org/downloads/. Could you
> forward this on to the list without my email? (don't want to get spam :).

His email is ... [only joking]. Itamar's web site says:

"""amkCrypto-0.1.3-win32.zip - the amkCrypto package compiled for Windows.
Includes the necessary OpenSSL DLLs (v.0.9.6a) and updated source code so
you can compile it yourself."""

You will, of course, require the OpenSSL and the Python source headers in
order to do this, and the setup.py requires source. Just dropping the Crypto
directory from the distribution in uner my Python root appeared to do the
trick for a binary installation, however.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:HS507.15883$Lk6.1149673 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> I'm trying to get the amkCrypto (modified mxCrypto) package working under
> Win32, but Visual C++ is barfing about the declaration (and concurrent
> initialization) of public member variables.
>
> For example, mxCrypto.h includes the following declaration:
>
> class StreamCipher
> {
>  protected:
>     int mode;
>
>  public:
>     static int const blocksize = 1;
>     static int const keysize = 0;
>
>     StreamCipher(PyStringObject *v, int cipher_mode);
>     ~StreamCipher();
>     PyObject *encrypt(PyStringObject *v);
>     PyObject *decrypt(PyStringObject *v);
>     int getmode(void) { return mode; };
> };
>
> The compiler says that the public member variables (blocksize and keysize)
> cannot be intialized in the header file. But clearly this code works under
> some compilers...
>
> Has anyone sucessfully installed this code on Windows? Nothing on Google
to
> suggest previous problems.
>
> Thanks in advance
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>
>
>




From ak42 at altavista.com  Thu Jul 19 01:24:55 2001
From: ak42 at altavista.com (Alex K)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:24:55 +0200
Subject: Retreiving a single number from a list of numbers ?
References: <3b565953@news.iprimus.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B566F26.24C4F807@altavista.com>

Peter Moscatt wrote:
> 
> I am trying to extract a value from a variable that contains more than one
> value.
> 
> For example:
>     If  I assigned the result of wxGetClientDisplayRect() to the var 'a'
> like:
>         a = wxGetClientDisplayRect()
> 
> the 'a' would return something like (0, 0, 800. 540)
> 
> How then would I assign the 800 from 'a' and give it to a var called 'b' ??
> 
> Regards
> Pete

>>> a=(0, 0, 800, 540)
>>> a
(0, 0, 800, 540)
>>> a[2]                     <-- slicing
800
>>> (0, 0, 800, 540)[0]
0
>>> (0, 0, 800, 540)[3]
540
>>>


From grey at despair.dmiyu.org  Mon Jul 16 18:30:09 2001
From: grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:30:09 -0000
Subject: do .. while loops ?
References: <mailman.995169745.15095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6qnh.rkf.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 14:00:31 +1000, Paul Andreassen <paul at andreassen.com.au>
wrote:
>Could someone please tell me why "do .. while" loops are not part of the
>python language?  I realise they are rarely used but the implementation
>should be easy.

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=do%20while%20&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 13 00:54:26 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 21:54:26 -0700
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com> <9ikee9$rpv$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <9iluu2$bmb$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9ikee9$rpv$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <9ik9kd$nch$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>If you'd like, reread my point as "muds are likely to be CPU-bound
>>>programs".
>>
>> Fine, but in that case, what *is* your point?
>
>Muds are likely to be CPU-bound programs.

If that is the entirety of your point, why are you posting?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From sassman at nucentrix.net  Sat Jul 14 18:24:20 2001
From: sassman at nucentrix.net (Mark Sass)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:24:20 -0500
Subject: Performance data
Message-ID: <Gy347.1380$QX5.6266@eagle.america.net>

Hello,
    I am trying to get the current CPU load of a system using the win32
modules, but when I pull the data I get some very small number which seems
to be the CPU load for the machine over a long time (even if I max out the
CPU, I only get small increases in this value).  Anyone have a way to get
the current CPU usage that includes both priveleged and user?

counter = '\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time'  #This returns the percent
IDLE time, so my result is 100 - value

def queryperfdata(counter):
    machine, object, instance, parentInstance, index, counterName =
win32pdh.ParseCounterPath(counter)
    path = win32pdh.MakeCounterPath( ( machine, object, instance, None,
index, counterName) )
    # if ValidatePath(path) != 0:
        #  return None
    hq = win32pdh.OpenQuery()
    try:
         hc = win32pdh.AddCounter(hq, path)
         try:
             win32pdh.CollectQueryData(hq)
             type, result = win32pdh.GetFormattedCounterValue(hc,
win32pdh.PDH_FMT_DOUBLE)
             return result
         finally:
            win32pdh.RemoveCounter(hc)
    finally:
        win32pdh.CloseQuery(hq)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
    Mark Sass, sassman at nucentrix.net




From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul 21 21:43:01 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:43:01 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <3b5a1d11.74651563@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org>
        <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net>
        <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net>
        <mailman.995756077.11446.python-list@python.org>
        <3b5a1d11.74651563@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <15194.12197.735895.185029@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> date = 1
    >> DATE += 1
    >> print Date

    Bengt> Ok, after the above, what would locals() give you?  Which will
    Bengt> give the value 2, locals()['date'] or locals()['DATE'] or both?

My guess is that case issues aside, locals() will be deprecated in the
relatively near future, so your question may be moot.  I'm not sure what the
correct answer is.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 08:53:27 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 12:53:27 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994132144.528.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsf87$oqv$0@216.39.170.247>

In article <mailman.994132144.528.python-list at python.org>, 
cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br says...
> As for the flight path planning, please note that airplanes can't travel in 
> any place in space. You can't see it but there are several "lanes" in air 
> space, defined by the authorities. The use of the radio frequencies must 
> also be managed by the tower to make sure that there are not any undesired 
> interference between different airplanes. The system must also balance a 
> high degree of automation and the need for human decision. This is not the 
> place for dumb decisions.
> 
> Carlos Ribeiro
> 

A minor point: with the advent of GPS and enhanced avionics, the airlines 
are moving towards point to point flights and away from the  charted 
airways (at least in the US). Since they totally screwed up with 
excessive reliance on the hub/spoke system, they are trying to undo some 
of the damage and realize some fuel savings too.

Dave LeBlanc


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 10:03:43 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:03:43 +0100
Subject: Newbie problem with user input
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE58@intrepid>

> From:	Chris McMillan [SMTP:christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com]
> Hello all!  The partial code below prompts a user to enter a path.  I then
> want it to find (and later do something with) all the files in that
> directory matching the specified string.  The problem is that when I run
> the
> script, and enter, for example D:\test it does not find any of the files.
> I
> believe it is because the glob command is searching for
> ''D:\\test'\\*.dat'
> With the extra single quotes.  How can I get it to search for
> 'D:\\test\\*.dat' ?  Thanks!
> Chris
> 
> print 'Enter the path:'                  # prompt user for directory path
> path = raw_input()
> for fname in glob.glob('path\\*.dat'):   # finds files matching string
 
Try this (untested):

import os, glob

path = raw_input('Enter the Path')
for fname in glob.glob(os.path.join(path, '*.txt')):
    pass # do whatever...

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From phr-n2001 at nightsong.com  Wed Jul  4 17:15:42 2001
From: phr-n2001 at nightsong.com (Paul Rubin)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 14:15:42 -0700
Subject: batch generation of keypairs by GnuPG
References: <slrn9k71fq.707.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <7xelrwl7k1.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
> (2) Should I be using GnuPG at all? I don't need its key management
> facilities -- I can use a serialised Python data structure for that --
> and I find it overcomplex to use programmatically. Is there a better 
> solution? What I need is software that can generate keypairs
> (using an unencumbered algorithm such as ElGamal), and can encrypt
> and decrypt using those keys, and make/test signatures using
> the keys. Is there anything which does this (either a Python
> program, or something accessible from the command line)?

I think there's Python bindings for OpenSSL, which can do all that
stuff.  Or you could just code the algorithms yourself using one of
the bignum libraries.  I'm pretty sure Python has those, but I'm not
a Python user and don't know specifics.


From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 13:50:59 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:50:59 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996263093.23412.python-list@python.org> <3B61F08A.1A4C6069@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B659E83.FEF6B9E4@home.net>

James Logajan wrote:

> Is the intent to do
> IEEE-754 FP arithmetic on all platforms when FP is involved? What if the
> underlying hardware isn't conformant? Sorry, since this seems to be going
> through the python-list mailing list, the "References:" header isn't being
> included for some reason, so I missed the introduction of IEEE-754 into the
> discussion. Can't find it mentioned in that PEP (unless it is in another PEP
> or is documented elsewhere).

There is no mention of it in the PEP. I think IEEE-754 was brought up
because:

a) it is a standard for floating point computation
b) it is a very good standard. HTe only piece of it that I have heard
serious objection to is the number of bits in the exponent for doubles.
c) it is implimented (most of it anyway) on the vast majority of
hardware sold today.

Because of these points, it is a good context in which to test possible
computation schemes. IF you can't comply with IEEE-754 with a given
proposal, it probably has an important flaw.

By the way, I think a number of us on this list would love to see Python
be IEEE-754 compliant. Unfortunately, that is very difficult given that
not all hardware and C libraries support it.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From max at alcyone.com  Sat Jul 14 01:03:40 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:03:40 -0700
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <mailman.995086406.23419.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FD2AC.BF2F9AD6@alcyone.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> Programmers must be lazy to some degree. So, they tend to write
> 
> a*(b+c+d+e)
> 
> instead of
> 
> a*b+a*c+a*d+a*e

That's just plain more efficient.  Four additions and one multiply
instead of three additions and four multiplies.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ There are no dull subjects.  There are only dull writers.
\__/ H.L. Mencken
    Physics reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/physics/
 A physics reference.


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul 31 13:27:29 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:27:29 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com> <3B66E4FA.158E7DDA@home.net>
Message-ID: <u4qdmtcsd0uj65qgl9itrejaipq1mr36ut@4ax.com>

>I would probably only use it in small computational functions that I
>could efficiently compile.

By and large this is nothing a good optimizing JIT can't handle
without static typing information. QKS is getting a 10-100X improvement
in Python execution speeds without modifying the Python language.
http:\\www.smallscript.com. Execution times within 1-2X of C.

>For performances, sake another nice addition would be the introduction
>of the "homogenous" sequence.

This I can agree with.

>Does anyone else think this could be a good idea???

Sure. Pretty easy to implement yourself, of course, saving the first-class
language support. Although one can imagine something like:

var = []!

C//



From xtian at hyperactive.co.nz  Tue Jul  3 02:09:41 2001
From: xtian at hyperactive.co.nz (xtian at hyperactive.co.nz)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:09:41 GMT
Subject: newbie apply() question
References: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net>
Message-ID: <3b415332.96563631@news.supernews.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 04:37:54 GMT, "Aaron Edsinger"
<edsinger at ai.mit.edu> wrote:

>hi.  i'm stumped on something that seems easy.  why doesn't this work:
>
>x=4
>apply(sys.stdout.write,x) #fails
>apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,)) #fails
>
>is there a way to make this work?
>
>thanks,
>    aaron

If you try to run this by itself (without doing anything else), it
fails with the traceback

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in ?
    apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,))
NameError: name 'sys' is not defined

What this means is that Python has tried to look at the object
referred to by 'sys' to find out what it's 'stdout' attribute is, and
discovered that the name 'sys' hasn't been set (or 'bound') yet.

Names can be bound in quite a few ways, the main one being assignment.
In this case, you want the binding 'sys' to refer to the sys module -
to bind the name 'sys' to the sys module, you need to import the
module with...

import sys

...at the start of your script (or at least before the first use of
sys). Incidentally, when importing a module, you can pick the name you
want to bind it to; if you'd had (I'm assuming Python 2.0 or up
here)...

import sys as fish

...at the start, you could then use...

apply(fish.stdout.write,(x,)) 
# this is the form that works, by the way.

...just as well.

(I'm assuming that your confusion was caused by not understanding what
was meant by NameError. If I sounded patronising - sorry! Also, as a
general hint, if you're asking people for help working out what's
causing an error, post the traceback (long error message) - they're
very useful in diagnosing the problem.)

The best explanation of name binding of which I know is the effbot
guide to Python objects:
http://effbot.org/guides/python-objects.htm

Any others around?

So, to wrap up, you need an 'import sys' at the start.

(Good choice trying Python - it's so cool!)

Hey - I feel like the Martellibot - that was long.

xtian

Question 6:
I'm trying to implement a Content Management System. Should I use
Scissors, XML, or dirt?


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Mon Jul 23 19:54:43 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:54:43 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <8rdoltsi3fcph86pnkgckmiqich6d9qqng@4ax.com> <mtn15v2wiw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <2b6plts93l46r4aip12u0veqfab01sfsau@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <mtvgkj19rw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

Stephen Horne writes:

>> Anyway, there are two camps.  The proposed new behavior would make my
>> life easier, so I like it.  It's also "the right thing" from a
>> mathematical point of view.  Others clearly disagree.

> They are *NOT* the right thing from a mathematical point of view -
> integer division in mathematics gives an integer quotient and integer
> remainder as any five-year-old knows.

Well, most mathematicians I know would disagree.  Division is not
well-defined on integers, unless you want "5 / 2" to return "(2, 1)".
It's just not a property integers have.  Or, well, you can define the
operation, but they'll stop being a group under it, so all hell breaks
loose.  :-)

Five year olds don't know much maths.

> If you are so keen on int <op> int -> float, why is it *ME* that has
> to change operators and not *YOU*. Is it really just that it makes
> *YOUR* life easier so sod everyone else?

Well, that, and the improved purity of the language now that the false
idol called "integer division" has been banished back to whatever dank
hell from which it sprang.  :-)

It's not that big a deal for me; I'd be almost as happy with a special
"float division operator" like "/." or such.  However, if people are
thinking about getting rid of what I perceive as a wart, then I'm not
about to argue against it, am I?

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 31 20:23:19 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 1 Aug 2001 02:23:19 +0200
Subject: C/Cygwin/Python
References: <slrn9mdold.1snq.m-turk@dhcp101054.res-hall.nwu.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90F018F3860E1cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

m-turk at nwu.edu (Matthew Turk) wrote in news:slrn9mdold.1snq.m-
turk at dhcp101054.res-hall.nwu.edu:
> Hi there.  I'm working on some 'back-end' stuff that I'm doing in C -
> and I'm struggling through compiling it properly, which is an entirely
> different question.

i can try my makefile

that's a example on using DDE:
http://www.geocities.com/chrisliechti/en/python/spam2.0.zip

> 
> Essentially, I want to be able to use it on computers that don't run
> Cygwin.  Is this going to work?  I certainly *don't* want to resort to

its needing cygwin1.dll not the entire cygwin installation - i think.

> Visual C, since I have no idea how to operate in that environment, nor
> do I own a copy.  I know that cygwin has the -Wno_cygwin or something
> flag that'll compile without CYGWIN.DLL, but will that be sufficient
> for compiling a python extension?

the extension should work either way. its just more convenient for 
distribution if you dont need to suply the cygwin stuff.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 30 16:56:36 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 16:56:36 -0400
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <9jvsio$j4r$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <3B639A2D.83B00CD5@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <usnfe5e63.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Possible reasons to import in a function: 
> 
>  1. Readability: if the import is needed in only one
>     function and that's very unlikely ever to change,
>     it might be clearer and cleaner to put it there only.
> 
>  2. Startup time: if you don't have the import outside
>     of the function definitions, it will not execute
>     when your module is first imported by another, but
>     only when one of the functions is called.  This
>     delays the overhead of the import (or avoids it
>     if the functions might never be called).

One thing to point out is that the "might never be called" part may be
more than just convenience, if the import that is being done is
platform-specific.  In such a case, putting the import at the top of
the screen could prevent it from loading at all (without a dedicated
try/except block around it), while placing it inline in the platform
specific code is a bit more straight-forward.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com  Sat Jul 21 13:50:03 2001
From: timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com (Tim Randolph)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 17:50:03 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <9jcfcb$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net>

"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante at tuxtop.visi.com...

> >Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but nobody
> >wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program with distinct
> >meanings.
>
> That is simply not true.

Do you really ever want "fOo" and "FOO" and "foo" in the same program?
(Notice the typo in my original? fOo --> foo.  No wonder I want a case
insensitive language. ;-)  I would bet a $100 bucks that you are a better
coder than I am, but I really can't imagine why you would want that.

> >I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes for readable code -- at
> >least for this sometime programmer.
>
> I've been using foo and Foo to mean two different things for
> many years (and I know of lots of others do also). Perhaps it's
> not to your taste, but that doesn't make all of us "nobody".
>
I wasn't trying to lump the foo=Foo() case with the "fOo", "FOO", "foo"
case.  The latter is used as the pat example on what a case insenstive
Python would look like, which is not the way I see it.  I really have not
seen any one suggesting that they use more than a leading character
difference in case intentionally.

foo=Foo() is a matter of taste, which, as I said in my original message,
doesn't work for me.  I have no idea how representative of sometime
programmers I might be.

My apologies for any offense.  None was intended.

---Tim Randolph




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 11 23:16:52 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:16:52 -0700
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <3B4CEF3C.D664D82A@Lugoj.Com> <I%737.679443$166.13999728@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4D16A4.E8941F20@Lugoj.Com>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> I Still Dont Get It. Could you explain it in simpiler terms?

How good is your Python? Do you know about lists and how to manipulate them
and how to use "for" loops? Do you understand that variables can be assigned
references to functions and that a function can take a function reference as
an argument? If you are unclear on any of that, then that may be why my
explanation is unclear. Or more likely I did not explain very well, so I'll
try again:

How about: "filter" takes a reference to a filtering function and a list,
and returns a subset of the supplied list. Try some examples:

# This function returns true if given a number larger
# than 23 and false for all other numbers.
def MyFunc(listItem):
    return listItem > 23

So the following call:

filter(MyFunc, [10, 22, 23, 24, 5, 30, 45])

would return another list containing only those elements for which MyFunc
returns true:

[24, 30, 45]

Now if you don't supply a function, the items themselves are tested for
"truthness" as Python defines it. Try the following:

filter(None, [10, 0, None, 23, -3, "", "hi", [], "the end"])

Since Python considers 0, None, "", and empty lists [] as having "false"
truth values when used in boolean expressions, they are filtered out and you
would get everything else, which Python considers has a "true" value in
boolean expressions:

[10, 23, -3, 'hi', 'the end']

You need to run the Python interpreter and use the interactive mode and
start playing around with it. Experimenting more may answer a lot of your
questions.


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Thu Jul 26 10:57:00 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:57:00 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC),
<margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> wrote:

[...]
>2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the BDFL
>perhaps calls into question the 'B'.  

Nonsense. Without saying anything about who's right and who's
wrong, or about whether the D is B or not: To be "benevolent"
towards someone is to act in a way consistent with that
person's best interests. This is not the same thing as
giving the person what he asks for, not by a long shot.

(My opinion is if he wants to keep his position he
should give _everyone_ exactly what they want. Of course
this would require several thousand different versions
of Python...)

Why in the world should "level of dissent" have any
bearing on anything? Deciding moral issues by taking
a vote is one thing - deciding what's best on a 
technical issue by taking a vote is silly.



David C. Ullrich


From mikle at tomsk.net  Fri Jul  6 22:40:43 2001
From: mikle at tomsk.net (Mikhail Astafiev)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 09:40:43 +0700
Subject: Short form of file names
In-Reply-To: <cpn16hkft1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net>
 <mailman.994443389.735.python-list@python.org>
 <cpn16hkft1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <1816249903.20010707094043@tomsk.net>

Hi!

Saturday, July 07, 2001, 2:42:25 AM, you wrote:

> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>>     Mikhail> Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths
>>     Mikhail> to short form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..
>> 
>> Try importing dospath directly:
>> 
>>     >>> import dospath
>>     >>> dospath.normpath("/supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.py")
>>     '\\supercal.py'

> Yeah, but shouldn't it return '\\superca~1.py' ?  I believe the
> algorithm to produce the ~1 part is dependent on what else is in the
> same directory.  I guess the ActiveState win32 modules hide an API
> somewhere that gets this information directly from the filesystem.

Yes, I think so too. I just wanted to know if someone already wrote
such pyd calling appropriate Win32 API function. Actually my problem
is the bug in os.chdir() function - it does not work with long
filenames under Win9x. :(

I'll create pyd myself. Well, thanks to all for responses!

Mikhail.




From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul  3 20:30:58 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 00:30:58 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k4out.ms.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:25:50 +1000, Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:

>This assumes that your coding standing inforces passing
>arguments by name - just try staffing an ATC project and
>enforcing a coding standard. There will be many programmers who
>"don't like the standard" and will do anything to get around
>it. You generally catch these people through code review only
>and often too late! :-). Python doesn't enforce this,

[without looking at the source code] I think it would probably
be farily trivial to hack Python to require all arguements be
passed by keyword.

>personally I believe it is a good feature and I use it
>frequently - but not all of the time :-)
>
>> In C++, the function calls all get checked automatically at
>> compile time, but Python doesn't check them until run time.
>> That is a valid concern, but hardly a show-stopper. I
>> understand that PyChecker can be used for static checking. I
>> actually think the core Python language should have an option
>> to do static checking, but as long as some product is
>> available to do it, the issue is not major.
>
>PyChecker is still very imature and some things it will never
>(poor word to use, since if someone wants to put in the effort,
>nothing is impossible :-)) be checked by it. It will only ever
>be an aid. The ability of Python to dynamically "change its
>behaviour on the fly" is one of its strengths but also a
>weakness from the point of view of ensuring correctness and
>reliability in such an application domain.

On a project as large as an ATC program there will probably be
(or at least _should_ be) some support staff whose job is
nothing other than specify/acquire/develop/tweak/test
development tools.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I wish I was a
                                  at               sex-starved manicurist
                               visi.com            found dead in the Bronx!!


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 18 10:30:27 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:30:27 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
> to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
> the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.

But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mday at apple.com  Thu Jul 26 21:09:21 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:09:21 -0700
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <260720011809216278%mday@apple.com>

In article <cpofq75qax.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:
> 
> > I would like to suggest that we add a "while condition" clause
> > to list comprehensions, similar to the "if condition" clause,
> > but terminating the list comprehension on the first false condition.
> > The above example could then be written as
> > 
> > [x for x in fib() while x < 50]
> 
> Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?

[x[0] for x in zip(fib(),xrange(N))]

or

[x for x in fib()][:N]

assuming it's smart enough to stop iterating when the slice has been
produced.  I guess the list comprehension would have to be a form of
iterator/generator, and slices would have to stop iterating when they
get all the elements they need.  Would this work in 2.2a1?

> And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?

I would have assumed it would exclude the first x >= 50.  But then I
tend to think in C and prefer while(){} over do{}while().

Consider:
>>> [3*i for i in xrange(10) if (i%2)==0]
[0, 6, 12, 18, 24]

When I see that list comprehension, I think of it as something like:

for i in xrange(10):
   if (i%2)==0:
      yield 3*i

or

temp = iterator(xrange(10))
while 1:
   i = temp.next()
   if i%2==0:
      yield 3*i

where the while loop terminates when temp returns an exception.

So, [x for x in fib() while x < 50] would be something like:

while (x=fib.next()) < 50:
   yield x

I'm using C notation to express combined assignment and condition test. 
But that's because that concept is a little more cumbersome to express
in Python (and why it would be great in list comprehensions).  I
suppose the Pythonic way would be something like:

x = fib.next()
while x<50:
   yield x
   x = fib.next()

-Mark


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 13:42:02 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:42:02 GMT
Subject: Q: HTTP through multiple NICs
References: <mailman.995022383.31577.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9inbta$rqb$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Gardiner, Geoff <ggardiner at accelrys.com>:
> I need to send HTTP traffic through multiple NICs (multihoming with
> different IP addresses AND different MAC addresses) on a single PC. The
> traffic doesn't need to be simultaneous (I think I'll try to walk before I
> run).

The archetypal TCP client socket example goes like this:

    from socket import *
1   s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
2   s.connect((addr, port))
    s.send('blah blah blah')
    <etc.>

To do what you want, insert "s.bind((local_addr, local_port))" between
lines 1 and 2. Yes, bind() works for client sockets, too.

For this to work, your host's networking, routing, etc. must be configured
correctly, of course.

(A while ago, I used M2Crypto.SSL sockets with the bind() thingy above to
test so-called server load balancers' SSL session-id persistence when the
SSL session resumption requests come from different IP addresses, which
happens because certain ISPs were implementing transparent HTTP/HTTPS
proxying thru their cache farms, fronted by _their_ load balancers.)


A quick glance thru httplib shows no mechanism to pass your own socket
objects in - httplib's HTTP and HTTPConnection classes want to create their
own sockets. 

You can subclass either of those (use HTTPConnection, it's newer ;-) to pass
in your own sockets that bind to your choice of local address.


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 12 03:58:39 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 07:58:39 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994910001.4712.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4d4913.1692043049@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:52:59 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>The rub is that while this kind of thing is fun and easy to program in
>Python, it's a total pain in the ass to program in C, and indeed leads to
>code bloat.  Since Python longs use base 2**15 internally, converting to
>power-of-2 bases is both simple and fast in C, so we settled for that.
>
That's interesting. Are you in effect saying there can't be compiled
python bytecode in python, even if there could be both speed and
space advantage for a given function?

So long as you weren't trying to lift yourself by not-yet-existent
boot straps, why not? That sounds a little funny, but ITYKWIM ;-)

BTW, looking at the way you can call the interpreter from C for embedding,
I would think you could write a translator for a useful subset of python
that would output a mix of plain C and Py_whatever calls to create C source
that could be compiled and linked into CPython. This would bypass the PITA
part and leave the fun part, ISTM ;-) Could you alter the byte code compiler
to emit this?

Done that way, strL wouldn't amount to that much C (or would it?), and you
could have 100% C code that way (i.e., not even byte codes as C constants
to feed the python interpreter).



From johnca at DIESPAMmac.com  Tue Jul 17 16:56:26 2001
From: johnca at DIESPAMmac.com (John Abbe)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:56:26 -0700
Subject: Python CGI speed on MacOS X
Message-ID: <johnca-1707011356260001@nop009.transbay.net>

I'm running MacOS X on a PowerBook G3 400MHz, and have Python 2.1
installed (from http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/).

Running some python stuff for CGI (PikiePikie -- see pikie.darktech.org --
it's a cgi script and a bunch of modules; .pyc files have been generated).

It's very slow (about 6-7 seconds every time i click). Serving regular
pages is plenty fast, and PikiePikie at the above address is pretty fast
(a Linux box). Is there any obvious (or inobvious) advice for speeding
this up?

Appreciatively,
John

-- 
             We've been waiting seven years for real Mac on Unix.
                            Get the most out of it!
Links & tips for learning, and to get OS X up and running:
http://www.ourpla.net/guiunix/GettingXGoing.html


From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Tue Jul 31 19:25:26 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:25:26 +0100
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <rdeemts4mrarb8b5ghqieio68n1jv32tl1@4ax.com>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:

>I suppose that's a matter of taste.  Certainly in the Unix domain,
>from whence this arose, where virtually everything was traditionally
>done via the command line, all command line utilities parse their
>command lines in exactly this way, it's extremely consistent and
>trying to do other manual approaches actually makes the non-conformant
>application stand out as such.
>
>In effect, such command line parsing is a standard interface, much as
>under Windows, there's standard UI elements in its GUI.  It's also
>(unlike a GUI) designed as much for efficiency and flexibility as
>looks.
>
>You'll find that it's a flexible interface for something that has to
>deal with a textual command line.  Try designing a CLI parser that has
>optional arguments, arguments with and without values even with
>multi-character options, spacing and order insensitive, and so on, and
>you'll find yourself replicating much of the getopt behavior.
>
>Personally, since DOS/Windows command line applications never really
>formed such consistency (IMO), and at least for me I find "-" less
>glaring on the command line than "/", I find the use of a getopt
>conformant command line to be nice as well as consistency
>cross-platform.
>
>I don't know what particular user interface you are looking to serve,
>so if you're comparing this to some GUI interface to obtain
>parameters, that's not apples to apples.  But if you're working
>strictly with a command line, I wouldn't necessarily jettison getopt
>summarily.
>
>--
>-- David

I guess what I had in mind was a simple but effective equivelent that I used to use with BCPL. A
function called rdargs, which I think also became part of AmigaDOS

I've just had a quick hunt with Google and I can't find a definition for it anywhere.

I'll probably end up using getopt just because I don't have time to do a proper job right now.

--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul  1 21:07:43 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 01:07:43 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9jvibr.is.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:17:31 GMT, Kragen Sitaker <kragen at dnaco.net> wrote:

>>You could write an operating system that could only be directly
>>programmed in Python.
>
>I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
>could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
>despite implementing operating systems in all four.

Weren't Symbolics machines circa 1980 directly programmable
in Lisp?

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm RELIGIOUS!! I
                                  at               love a man with a
                               visi.com            HAIRPIECE!! Equip me with
                                                   MISSILES!!


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 24 08:29:22 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:29:22 GMT
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
References: <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list@python.org> <20010724.084018.1789376348.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <20010724.084156.1238433452.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article
<20010724.084018.1789376348.1751 at d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>, "Mark
Nenadov" <mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca> wrote:



> sys.mathtype = "break those dark pinecones" answer = 5/2

oopps.. "darn" that is, not "dark"

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From insanc at cc.gatech.edu  Mon Jul 23 13:58:17 2001
From: insanc at cc.gatech.edu (Holland King)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 17:58:17 GMT
Subject: interating letters
Message-ID: <9jhojp$t7h$1@solaria.cc.gatech.edu>

how do you interate a letter or string? for instance:
a + 1 = b
or 
aa + 1 = ab
etc. in c it is similar to above and i am guessing there is an equally 
simple way to do it in python, i just can't figure it out. thank you
for your time and help.

-- 
---
Joseph Holland King  | "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our
                     |  conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His
                     |  megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis


From martin at strakt.com  Wed Jul  4 02:45:29 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:45:29 +0200
Subject: Problems with thread state
In-Reply-To: <3B422857.F1050215@q-survey.be>
References: <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org> <3B422857.F1050215@q-survey.be>
Message-ID: <20010704084529.B595@strakt.com>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 10:17:27PM +0200, Laurent Szyster wrote:
> "Martin Sj?gren" wrote:
> > 
> > I'm trying to write an OpenSSL module for Python (purely in C) and
> > I've run into a big problem.
> 
> There's allready a Python binding for OpenSSL: M2Crypto. Combining
> Medusa and M2Crypto is the fastest I can think of to develop an SSL
> network client or server.

I know of M2Crypto, and I've been looking at it long and seriously and
come to the conclusion that it doesn't fulfill my needs. I'm not bashing
the author, I've exchanged several mails with him, but I've got a few
issues with M2Crypto:

* It's not written entirely in C - while this might not be an issue, I'm
  not sure if the communications protocol I'm working on will be written
  in C or Python
* The exception handling is somewhat weird, and at several times (because
  of SWIG I guess) exceptions aren't raised where they should be.
* The objects sent with the exceptions are strings all the way, which is
  not very nice to compare over. Oh, except for when SetFromErrno is used,
  and I think that's used on a few places where it shouldn't too.

I guess I could patch most of this if I knew something about SWIG, but the
first issue - not being written in C - weighs heavily on my shoulders here
:)

> > Seeing as a call to SSL_connect() might block, I surrounded the call to it
> > by Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS. (...)
> 
> OpenSSL has non-blocking IO API calls.

Yes it's got non-blocking IO API calls, but I'm trying to develop a
general module here, one that supports blocking IO too, eventhough I may
not use it at all. After all, I want to do a good job, right?

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010704/84353c06/attachment.sig>

From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:14:25 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:14:25 +0100
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <eppstein-7014B5.21120826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
 <mailman.996209989.30329.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Q29FKvAhLSY7EwU8@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.996209989.30329.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> writes
>[David Eppstein]
....
>Virtually all the functions in the math module wrap C library functions of
>the same names.  floor() is a required double->double function in standard
>C, and Python's math.floor() exposes the platform C's floor() function.
>
...
when/if the grand unification happens what will math.cos do with 1+3j?
What will floor do with 1.3+0j etc etc etc. Presumably a Timbot thread
is even now busily extending all math functions to the complex domain.

I eagerly await the arrival of quaternions.
-- 
Robin Becker


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 13:56:25 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:56:25 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/nondist/p
eps/
"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp3d7ngazy.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
>
> > >and nobody has ever proposed taking away the ability to get an
> > >integer result; the issue is how  to spell that.
> >
> > And that issue was *not* spelled out in the PEP.
>
> Funny, I just checked rev. 1.1 of PEP 238, and it contains the same
> language about adding // as before.  Maybe you never saw the PEP,
but
> assumed the worse based on the discussion?

I just discovered how to access older versions of PEPs and checked
1.3, which I at least partly read and you are right.  My view and
memory of the PEP was distorted by anti-int-div float-div-religion
being pushed as fact by the PEP author and some other proponents, who
continue to this day.  Some current examples nearly identical to
several previous attempts:

* "Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and Tcl,
for instance."  My claim: this is a religious statement.  Obvious
implication of such statements: Python currently does division
wrongly.  Subtler implication in at least some statements of this
sort: it is not intelligent to advocate that Python continue doing
division wrongly.

* "Integer division is a lousy tool in this particular example.."
[converting bytes to Kbytes].  Combined with the previous line, this
response denies the possibility of using (bytes + k/2)/k to round (or
that the original poster would have known how to do so) and claims
that int(float(bytes)/float(k)+.5) is factually better.  I disagree.

* "Nobody said [int division] wasn't of any use, people just claim it
is *less* useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible."
(from Moshe himself, last night).  Since in any situation the most
useful form of division is the one that most easily gives the correct
answer, the premise is incorrect.  So why do proponents even now keep
repeating an incorrect and unnecessary claim to justify the change?
Since the difference between '/' and '//' is too trivial to hardly
discuss, I tend to interprete the 'conclusion' to be an attempt, even
now, to justify something that really would be less accessible and
more obnoxious than '//', like div(i,j) or divmod(i,j)[0].  When
proponents of the change keep trying to justify making int div less
accessible, is it any wonder that people think that that is what they
really intend?

[snip]

> > If 238 had been written originally something like the following
(which
> > it now is), I would have argued *much* less.
>
> Shall I rub it in? :-) ...:-)

Since I just recently accepted the long-term desirability of the
change, you're treading on thin ice.   But since you added two smileys
to make sure I saw at least one, I'll take this as good-natured
ribbing.

> > Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two
arithmetic
> > operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
> > division.  This confuses some people.
> > Proposal: Make '/' consistently mean fractional division and
introduce
> > a new operator '//' for truncated-result division.
> > Acknowledgement: This semantic replacement is a bit different from
> > most any previous change to Python.  Extra care will be needed to
make
> > the transition as smooth as possible.

> This is exactly what the PEP said all the time.

NO, NO, NO!  Contrary to what I said above, it still does not.  Moshe
writes,
"Rationale
    The behavior of integer division is a major stumbling block ..."

This prejudiced view, which too many people have unnecessarily bundled
with the proposed change itself, is quite different from the
division-neutral rationale you quoted above, which locates the
'problem' in the conflict *between* the two meanings.  To repeat:
'''
Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two arithmetic
operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
division.  This confuses some people.
'''
which I would today follow with:
'''
Contention: Even though there will be many transition problems, it
will be in the long term interest of some current and many future
Python programmers to better separate the two meanings of 'division'.
'''

Proponents have pointed out that if someone writes a function like
def speed(distance, time): return distance/time
without checking inputs for conformance with preconditions and if
function users violate the preconditions (by feeding in two ints in
this case), the function will generally return a subtlely wrong
answer.  Okay, but the same is just as true of
def minmaxpart(n,k): return (n+k-1)/k
The problem is the close overlap of the two meanings, not either in
itself.

I strongly recommend that the PEP Rationale (and Abstract) be
rewritten in a neutral manner starting with something like "The
conflict and confusion between the two closely related meanings of
number division is a stumbling block in the writing of correct Python
programs."  In suggesting that a straightforward, if troublesome,
separation of meanings be divorced from attempts to assign blame to
one of the two meanings, I am attempting to help make the proposal
more palatable to those, like me, who do not and will not accept the
religious-philosophical views behind that assignment of blame.

 > > (Just noticed:  http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
> > now proposes a *2 year* int/int warning period starting with 2.3.
It
> > still needs a stipulation that someone write an intdiv checker to
help
> > automate replacements.)
>
> Hm???  I don't see that on the URL you give.  Maybe you live in an
> alternate universe where PEP 238 has a different contents than in
mine?

Your sarcasism is improving, but look again:
'''
PEP: 238
Title: Non-integer Division
Version: $Revision: 1.6 $
...
Changing the Semantics of the / Operator
...
The warning will be off by default in the 2.2 release, and on by
    default for in the next Python release, and will stay in effect
    for 24 months.
'''
Shall *I* rub it in? ;-)  In *my* universe, 24 months is (24/12 =) 2
years ;-)

> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Terry J. Reedy





From jdavis at empires.org  Wed Jul 25 20:22:57 2001
From: jdavis at empires.org (Jeff Davis)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:50:57 +2328
Subject: SuSE 7.2 + apache/mod_python
References: <mailman.996176328.5610.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <X8887.7994$6I3.281793@news.pacbell.net>

I have dealt with my fair share of similar problems, but haven't seen this 
specific one. Many problems are associated with conflicting modules, 
especially suexec, although it doesn't look like that's your problem. Seems 
like a lower-level apache error with the apache API (disclaimer: I am not 
entirely sure about this).

I would try:
1) try disabling other associated modules and if you can get it to work 
with any config at all, try to isolate a conflict.
2) use a new version of mod_python. I believe 2.7.5 is out. This is more 
likely to help you but could take a little more time than (1). I would even 
try upgrading apache (I think it's 1.3.20).
3) use simpler ./configure options. It might be an obscure option set that 
slipped through the testing.

It looks like a tough problem, best of luck. I hope one of my suggestions 
points you in the right direction. 

Regards,
        Jeff Davis

Gary Perez wrote:

> Hi, all.
> 
> I've asked the mod_python list about this twice already (no luck there).
> 
> I'm having problems getting mod_python to work under apache. Here's the
> relevant info:
> 
> SuSE Linux 7.2, kernel 2.4.4, reiserfs
> Apache 1.3.19 + Python 2.0 + mod_python 2.7.2
> 
> Installed (and reinstalled) apache, python (no threads) and mod_python a
> few times.
> 
> Set up the test directives in httpd.conf, proper .py module in the
> htdocs/test directory as per the documentation.
> 
> When I hit the target URL, apache kicks out an internal server error...
> 
> ERROR LOG
> [Wed Jul 18 15:58:02 2001] [notice] Apache/1.3.19 (Unix)  (SuSE/Linux)
> mod_layout/1.0 mod_throttle/3.0 mod_fastcgi/2.2.2 mod_ssl/2.8.3
> OpenSSL/0.9.6a PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.25 mod_dtcl mod_python/2.7.2
> Python/2.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
> [Wed Jul 18 15:58:02 2001] [notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper:
> [/usr/sbin/suexec) Wed Jul 18 15:58:18 2001] [error] [client
> [192.168.100.100]
> python_handler: Dispatch() returned nothing.
> 
> If anyone has any experience in this area or ideas as to what I can do
> to figure out this annoying behavior, I'd greatly appreciate any help.
> 
> Thanks very much,
> -Gary



From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 16:01:31 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:01:31 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <E15OOXV-0003x3-00@darjeeling>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECKLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[TIm]
> I wish the definition of continuity were easier to teach too, but that
> doesn't mean I'll settle for an easier definition that doesn't actually
> work <wink>.

[Moshe Zadka]
> Here is one that is easier to teach, if you just reverse the order
> of teaching calculus and first-order logic and basic set theory.
>
> A function is continuous at c if, when embedding the world of Reals
> into a saturated model (or, say, 2^{Beth_omega} saturated, if you
> don't want to get into subtle assumptions), for every infinitesimal x,
> f(c+x)-f(c) is an infintesimal.
>
> Of course, you might think that teaching about saturation is hard --
> well, it might be ;-)

Na, they always leave *some* of the foundations in intro calculus courses
fuzzy.  H. Jerome Keisler wrote a very good intro calculus text based on
non-standard analysis, unfortunately now out of print.  See

    http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/books.html

for publication details.  He didn't try to explain the intricacies of model
theory, he just spelled out "the rules" for working with infinitesimals and
got on with it.  Huge steaming masses of epsilon-delta proofs were
conspicuous by absence, so he was able to get to "the interesting stuff" a
lot quicker that way.  A good feel for the flavor of the approach can be
gotten by skipping to the end ("Part IV: Turning Calculus into Algebra") of

    http://online.sfsu.edu/~brian271/nsa.pdf

and reading "~=" as "infinitely close to".

> i-always-blamed-cauchy-and-weirstrass-for-tormenting-the-world-
> with-epsilons-and-deltas-ly y'rs, Z.

i-personally-blame-guido-for-letting-it-stand<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 12 16:50:35 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 14:50:35 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <021e01c10b04$74352820$0300a8c0@arthur>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121323300.21929-100000@bms>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:
> "Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
>     ...
> > The point was that python and sh operate on different levels.
>
> So they do.  Python operates, much like Perl and most other
> scripting languages, mostly by operations in the languages
> itself and its libraries; sh (although bash and ksh move it a
> bit away from that) basically relies on external programs.

Python, Perl, Bash, etc., have moved the nototion of scripting away
from the earlier connotations (which came first sh, or Python, Perl,
Bash, etc.)

> > $ cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5
> >
> > (i.e., concatenate some unknown number of files whose names match one
> > of three patterns, write the result to a file and count the
> > characters, lines and words, appending that result to a different
> > file)
> >
> > is what in Python....
> > ...2 lines, 3, 4, an explicit loop, a function or two, or maybe a
> > program (i.e., some imports, assignments, blocks of code, ...)?
>
> If you do not need cross-platform operation, you can do it the
> same way (except that you most always need to import...):
>
> import os
> os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')
>
> This, of course, is anything BUT idiomatic, because you have no
> control at all -- you're delegating everything to external programs,
> just like in sh.  What will happen on OS/2, Macintosh, Windows,
> VMS, or a Sony Playstation?  What happens if there are too many
> files called 'file'+something+'2' and you overflow the number of
> arguments allowed on some older Unix-ish box?  Etc, etc.  Most
> likely, one would program it differently, solidly, and portably:

...and if I wanted a robust, cross-platform implementation I would
write a program... but all I [just for the sake of argument] want is
to save a little bit of typing...

> import fileinput
> from glob import glob
>
> file4 = open('file4','w')
> lines = words = chars = 0
> for line in fileinput.input(glob('file*1')+glob('file*2')+glob('file*3')):
>     file4.write(line)
>     lines += 1
>     words += len(line.split())
>     chars += len(line)
> file4.close()
> file5 = open('file5','a')
> file5.write("%s lines, %s words, %s chars\n"%(lines,words,chars))
> file5.close()

Q.E.D.  ?


> But the fact that one CAN do it differently doesn't mean the "different"
> way is inferior.  os.system and friends are there, for those times where
> you want to operate this way.  So are excellent facilities for operating
> differently.  It's silly to claim that giving you a choice makes Python
> inferior to sh for such operations.

... of course it depends on what the objective is.  It is silly to
claim that `Python is just as good at ... as ...' when examples like
the above are so easy to come up with.

"""
import os
os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')
"""

Is Ok when you are in the Python Interpreter, but would you do...

$ python -c "import os;os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')"

...from the command line that comes up when you login?

Keep in mind that I never claimed Python to be inferior to anything,
just that it is a "horrible scripting language" (and am now getting
shot at for not qualifying the statement :).

> > Ya, I know, for some... "script" == "interpreted", for the rest of
> > us... "script" == "automating a sequence of command line operations".
> > I guess it was a mistake to play off that bit of ambiguousness as an
> > introduction to the point.
>
> "script"=="interpreted" seems just silly.  But where do the *command
> line* operations get into the "scripting" concept?!   "Automating a
> sequence of operations" seems just right.

Yes, that is sorta what I wanted to say...

> That sh is basically able
> to do it for (some) "command line" operations, but not really for ones
> based on other paradigms, is sh's problem -- it doesn't define the
> concept of 'scripting'.  For example, with VIM (Vi IMproved), I can use
> Python for scripts, which automate sequences of editing operations
> that are anything *but* "command-line" -- one doesn't *HAVE* to
> resort to command-line-oriented editors (ed, ex, sed, ...) to script them,
> as long as the available scripting language and infrastructure are
> good enough.

...and I deserve the virtual slap-upside-the-head for mentioning
"commandline" in that context without qualifying it...

> sh and its descendants just _aren't_ good enough for
> the kind of rich, complicated scripting tasks that Python (and, though
> I loathe to admit it, Perl, Tcl, VBScript, &c) handle with ease today.

...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
"Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
there must be more to it, eh.


Just for fun (dictionaries are fun, but unless the majority of the
definitions agree... it is still, really, just connotation) I did:
---
$ dict "scripting language"
<...>
>From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (06 Jun 01) [foldoc]:

  scripting language

     <language> (Or "glue language") A loose term for any language
     that is {weakly typed} or {untyped} and has little or no
     provision for complex {data structures}.  A program in a
     scripting language (a "{script}") is often {interpreted} (but
     see {Ousterhout's dichotomy}).

     Scripts typically interact either with other programs (often
     as {glue}) or with a set of functions provided by the
     interpreter, as with the {file system} functions provided in a
     {UNIX shell} and with {Tcl}'s {GUI} functions.  Prototypical
     scripting languages are {AppleScript}, {C Shell}, MSDOS {batch
     files}, and {Tcl}.

     (2001-03-06)
---

[Ousterhout's dichotomy... mainly refers to the arbitrary
 catagorization of languages into "interpreted" vs. "compiled".]

<shrug>
At least I know I'm not alone with my OF restricted view of
what `scripting' is.


- Bruce




From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 16:49:42 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:49:42 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B44D2E6.A7024AFE@home.net>

> > > I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away
> everything
> > > except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do
> this.

> > > but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure
> there
> > > is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).

I havn't see this whole thread, but did anyone suggest the translate
string method?:

>>> table = "".join([chr(x) for x in range(256)])
>>> remove = table.replace("0123456789","")
>>> "555-343:564-othergarbage987".translate(table,remove)
'555343564987'

I imagine it's a lot faster that REs. (I'm only imagining).

Note: does anyone know if there is a way to use the delete part without
the translate part?

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:54:50 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:54:50 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>
Message-ID: <cpg0bj5pb3.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Dobcsanyi <petrus at pobox.com> writes:

> But, I don't like the "//" operator symbol what we are supposed to use
> for implementing "a // b == floor(a/b)". Here are my reasons, in not any
> particular order reflecting (my subjectively assigned) importance:
> 
>     - It is ugly, two characters.

Lots of operators are two characters (**, <<, ==).

>     - Some languages use it for starting comments.

So?  Some languages use a semicolon as a comment.  Does that mean we
can't use it as a statement separator?

>     - "//" is hard to read, i.e. quickly clearly distinguish from "/"
>       the other division operator.

I don't believe this.  If you can't distinguish / from //, you need
new glasses. :-)

>     - When the transition period over (around 3.x or something) the
>       visual and typing characteristic of "//" can be source of error.

*Any* choice of symbol can be a source of error.  

> At some stage in the future, the warnings will be turned off, everybody
> knows the new rules. But typing mistakes, oversights happen, so I can
> accidentally write "/" instead of "//" and vice versa:
> 
>     def foo(x,y):
> 	# stuff here
> 	...
> 	z = x / y
> 	..
> 	# blah blah
> 	..
> 
>     i_wanted_int_div_but_mistyped_then_did_not_notice_for_a_while = foo
> 
> And there is no warning any more.

*Usually* this will be clear very quickly because at some point the
expected resulting integer will be fed into an operation that requires
integers, e.g. list[i] or i<<n.

> I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable one-character
> symbol for the "nb_intdivide". PEP238 is to fix a "design fault". If we
> go for it despite of all the _temporary_ pain, we should not be shy,
> there is nothing wrong with doing it radically not just semantically but
> also visually. One of the nice virtue of the Python language is that it
> is readable, keep it this way.
> 
> "nb_intdivide" and "nb_divide" are very different let's show this
> difference. Among the still free symbols ("?", "@", "$" I guess) I
> would suggest to use "$" for the integer division.
> 
> Running_for_cover_ly y'rs,

You had me there for a moment... :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 12 21:57:42 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:57:42 -0500
Subject: SocketServer returns bad file descriptor
References: <74cc9702.0107110622.6d95a609@posting.google.com> <mailman.994925661.7628.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m2y9ptwpyh.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes:

> 
> This looks suspiciously like a bad bug Guido fixed in the SocketServer
> module just a few days ago. If so, it'll be fixed in Python 2.2 and Python
> 2.1.1 (of which the release candidate should be released tomorrow, if all
> goes well.) You can grab the CVS tree for either and find out -- the
> SocketServer.py module can just be dropped into your current Python library
> directory. You can get it through SourceForge, using ViewCVS:
> 


Man!  I just finished asking about this a couple of minutes ago!!!  Thanks!!!


Greg


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 27 14:50:12 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:50:12 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com>

Andrei Kulakov wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:09:06 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> >
> >     The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
> >     is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
> >     argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
> >     zero.
> 
> When is 0 different from -0?

When doing ones-complement arithmetic. Not too many machines use that
anymore, and the ones that did (or do) should have comparison logic to
consider -0 == 0. The CDC Cyber series used ones-complement.


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Jul  8 15:20:31 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 20:20:31 +0100
Subject: Bug in rfc822
Message-ID: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

Python Bug Report #437395 states: 
The rfc822 and smtplib modules need to be checked for 
conformance with RFC 2822, which obsoletes RFC 822. 
(Added this to the tracker so we don't lose track of this.) 

I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to 
RFC2822. As an example, when we have a field:

   From: From: A. N. Other <another at nowhere.org.ca>

then getaddr("From") returns ('', 'A.N.Other')
which is incorrect.

When the from line is changed to:

   From: From: A N Other <another at nowhere.org.ca>

then getaddr("From") correctly returns 
('A N Other', 'another at nowhere.org.ca')  

The relevant parts of the syntax specified in rfc2822
are:

from            =       "From:" mailbox-list CRLF

mailbox-list    =       (mailbox *("," mailbox)) / obs-mbox-list 

mailbox         =       name-addr / addr-spec

name-addr       =       [display-name] angle-addr

display-name    =       phrase

phrase          =       1*word / obs-phrase

obs-phrase      =       word *(word / "." / CFWS)

>From rfc2822, section 4.1:

   Note: The "period" (or "full stop") character (".") in obs-phrase is
   not a form that was allowed in earlier versions of this or any other
   standard.  Period (nor any other character from specials) was not
   allowed in phrase because it introduced a parsing difficulty
   distinguishing between phrases and portions of an addr-spec (see
   section 4.4).  It appears here because the period character is
   currently used in many messages in the display-name portion of
   addresses, especially for initials in names, and therefore must be
   interpreted properly.  In the future, period may appear in the
   regular syntax of phrase.
   

I have added a comment to bug #437395, to this effect. Do
I need to notify anyone else? The Bug Report says it was submitted 
by Fred Drake, and assigned to Barry Warsaw.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Thu Jul 26 20:53:34 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:53:34 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107262020310.744-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:
> 
> > I would like to suggest that we add a "while condition" clause
> > to list comprehensions, similar to the "if condition" clause,
> > but terminating the list comprehension on the first false condition.
> > The above example could then be written as
> > 
> > [x for x in fib() while x < 50]
> 
> Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?
> And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?
> 
> How about a library of functions for iterator algebra?  E.g.
> 

How about:

>>> def dowhile( seq, test ):
...     for x in seq: 
...             if test(x): yield x
...             else: break 
... 
>>> def until( seq, test ):
...     for x in seq:
...             yield x
...             if test(x) : break 
... 
>>> [ x for x in until( range(100), lambda x: x > 12 ) ]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]
>>> [ x for x in until( fib(), lambda x: x > 50 ) ]
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>>> [ x for x in dowhile( fib(), lambda x: x < 50 ) ] 
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
>>> 

( where fib is the generator version )


And maybe, Icon inspired:

>>> def every( s ):
...     return [ x for x in s ] 


>>> every( range(10) )
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> every( iter( fib().next, 55 ) )
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
>>> every( dowhile( fib(), lambda x: x < 50 ))
[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
>>> 



If there was a version of iter that was:
	iter( genfunc, boolfunc )
along with:
	iter( genfunc, sentinal )

But checking for whether the second arg is callable is no good
if it's possible to iterate thru functions,methods or classes. 

Maybe a three arg version: 
	iter( genfunc, sentinal, boolfunc ) 

and if you don't care about the sentinal, pass an arg that won't
be produced by the generator. ( None maybe, depending. ) 

[ But maybe the generator versions above are better. 
  I'm still getting used to this new stuff. 
  Sometimes the syntax seems a bit awkward. 
  I hope that this __future__ stuff is not cast in stone until 
  we've had time to see how it works.  ] 


-- Steve Majewski





From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 18:01:44 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:01:44 -0400
Subject: importing modules
In-Reply-To: <3b5f38c5.112013116@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEDPLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Duilio Foschi]
> http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/newsite/Python/Python-DX/python-dx.html
>
> "Hans Nowak's Python-DX is a version of Python for 32-bit DOS.
> Python-DX is equivalent to Python 1.5.2, but Hans no longer maintains
> it, so it's doubtful that Python 1.6 will be supported. "
>
> what shoud I do ?

If I were you, I'd ask Hans -- it's his package.  Did you read his FAQ?
Specificially

    6. Python runs, but I get error messages/cannot find library files?

at

<http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/newsite/Python/Python-DX/
Python-DX_FAQ/python-dx_faq.html>

> Or - put it in a different way - which is fully working version for
> Dos I should download ?

Sorry, I don't know of any actively maintained Python for DOS.  Python runs
on all flavors of Windows, but official support for DOS was dropped some
time ago due to utter lack of user interest and user volunteers.  Anyone
else know of one?




From tundra at tundraware.com  Fri Jul 27 00:40:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 04:40:01 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com>

A gracious Graham Dumpleton wrote:
<SNIP>
 
> I will look at your paper. You may want to look further at the Python
> manual for OSE and you might see it ain't quite what you first had in
> mind.

I guess I should clarify something.  In order to have "transactional
correctness" you have to have a reliable transport somewhere in the
stack below the transactional elements (or transport reliability has
to be synthesized at the transactional layer - a really bad idea).

So long as the synchronous semantics of the reliable (connection-oriented,
usually, although there have been attempts made at reliable datagrams)
transport are not exposed to the *distributed application*, we can do
what is needed.  For example, if the underlying transport is RPC over
http (as in SOAP), that's fine if:

1) Distributed apps don't see the RPC semantics and spin-lock waiting for
   calls to complete.

2) Transport reconnection is automatic and invisible to the application
   which sees the appearance of an apparently "always up, but not always
   fast" network underneath it.

3) All this layering of protocols is not excessively punative in performance.

4) The underlying speeds-n-feeds are up to the task of setting up and
   tearing down sessions for each object invocation.  For seriously big
   apps, they are NOT, so you have either session pool, or run dedicated
   sessions based on the applications topology and multiplex access 
   across those sessions.

In an ideal world, you's have a layering scheme something like this:


       Chunk of distributed application.
           |     and/or    |
-------------------------------------------
tx Queuing API | Direct Message Passing API
-------------------------------------------
tx Q Manager  M|           |              M
----------------           |
            Reliable Messaging Layer
--------------------------------------------         Where, "M" is a pluggable
            Reliable Comms Transport      M          management & security
--------------------------------------------         facility for each layer
             Speeds, Feeds, & Wire        M          in question
--------------------------------------------


(You'll notice that my picture is a bit different than the usual
one in which Q management lives *below* the messaging layer.  This
is a matter of taste because you can accomplish the same things
either way.  In any case, if you need message persistence as a 
class of service (almost all enterprises need this on occasion),
you will end up implementing a disk-based Q under the Messaging
Layer above and beyond what the Transactional Q Manager has to do.)

The problem is that everyone is more-or-less proposing that chunks of
a distributed application talk some simple API (.NET/J2EE) which connects
directly to the Reliable Comms Transport layers which is The Path To Hell
as I describe in the paper.

One other point.  The natural unit of distribution (how big a "chunk"
should be distributed) is NOT an object (except for object programmers ;).  
Distributing things at the granularity of an object is
just *begging* for trouble when you need to recover from a network
outage, a machine failure, or some other badness.  Distributed objects are
swell inside a small, contained, topology, but sending millions of
objects into orbit around the Net (as both .NET and EJB/J2EE/et al
propose) will make all our applications run with the reliability we've
come to know and love with Windows - i.e. prepare to "reboot" your
distributed applications components regularly.

A far better scheme is to first do a thorough Business Process Flow
analysis and let that suggest what the major unit is applications
*functionality* might be.  Then distribute at the more coarse-grained
"fat component = several thousand objects" level.  This is how we
essentially divided up what was the largest commercial TX processing
system about 20 years ago (airline) - no objects, but the idea was the same. 
We went from one very saturated giant mainframe to 7 mainframes (barely
keeping up ;).  We distributed at the very coarse-grained level of
"This machine does domestic fare quotes.", "This machine does intl fare
quotes.", "This machine does reservation bookings.", "This machine loses
your luggage.", and so on.

While this approach is heresey to the "everything is an object and distributed
objects are the wave of the future" religion being taught to the youngsters
in school, it is the only rational way to put up a system that runs
at 20,000+ TPC/A per second, has 1 minute of outage per year, and serves
100,000+ global customers with guaranteed round-trip response times of <4 sec
for the biggest customers. (This is only possible on a private network -
you cannot begin to approach this on the internet because of unpredicatable
propagation delays in the fabric.)  IOW, you can distribute at the object
level only if you are certain that the system as a whole can be recovered
from failure in an adequately short (as defined by the business requirements)
period of time.  For the typical web shopping or even simple B2B application,
this might be feasible over the Net.  But, at least in my experience, for
really big mission-critical systems where human life or the economic
survival of an institution is at stake, distributed objects won't cut it.

I will look into OSE further - now I'm intrigued.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From leenutter at australia.edu  Sun Jul 22 11:30:25 2001
From: leenutter at australia.edu (Lee Nutter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:30:25 +1000
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org> <etd3d7qxi88.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu> <9jeafl$46q$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <3B5AF191.9030609@australia.edu>

Thanks for all you helps guys!

It has given me a few things to think about :)

When I get to writing big programs, I will use normal log files. You 
have twisted my arm :)

But for now, I was just messing around, so I will implement some of your 
ideas / code.

Thanks again!




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul  4 13:12:09 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:12:09 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <9ht7ki$pao$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <mailman.994191428.24168.python-list@python.org> <3B42B707.9EF02768@3-cities.com>
Message-ID: <3B434E69.BC7B960C@ActiveState.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> If a tree falls in the forest and the BDFL is not there to hear it,
> does it make a sound?  Seriously, if the powers that be have a rigid
> opinion on this subject, I'd like to be put of our misery.  Or is
> this discussion contributing to decision making?

I doubt that this particular discussion is contributing to his decision
making because it's a rehash of discussions that have been had before a
hundred times. I'm sure he's got better things to do than read it. It
could be productive if it lead to a new community consensus. Guido does
listen when enough people tell him he's wrong. But when half say he's
wrong and half say he's right, he's most likely to go with what he's
already decided.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From grzegorz at ugrad.cs.ualberta.ca  Wed Jul 25 16:36:51 2001
From: grzegorz at ugrad.cs.ualberta.ca (Grzegorz Dostatni)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:36:51 -0600
Subject: Selecting text in Tkinter.Text
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0107251431370.5757-100000@csu038.cs.ualberta.ca>

Hello.
What I want to do sounds simple.  I've created a widget that extends
Tkinter.Text widget.  It supposed to display database tables.  I want the
user to be able to select rows (ie ignore borders/empyspaces, etc) in an
intelligent manner.  I can bind a function to '<B1-Motion>' but I haven't
been able to figure out how to change the current selection to what I
want? (ie. modify sel.first to be the beginning of the row for example).

I know what i need is probably somewhere in the documentation... I'll keep
on reading it, hope someone helps me though ;-)

Greg


_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_

Some family trees bear an enormous crop of nuts.
		Wayne H. 

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. 
               	*Anonymous 



From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sun Jul 29 00:31:37 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 04:31:37 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <mailman.996373135.2559.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <JkM87.10500$Kd7.5942572@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote...
> Victor Bazarov wrote:
> >
> >...
> > > How exactly did you find out about that? If one of the threads would
> > > raise an exception that is not caught, would you see the traceback or
> > > would it get eaten silently by the calling Java application?
> >
> > I don't know the answer to that question.  However, I think that
> > any exception that is not caught in Python code would be caught
> > in Python interpreter my Java application runs.  Is it not true?
>
> He didn't ask about whether the *exception* is getting eaten siliently.
> He asked about the traceback. i.e. the text written to stderr in the
> event of an exception.


No, I am reading all the Python output and if there were any,
I'd have seen it.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From emile at fcfw.fenx.com  Tue Jul 10 22:08:51 2001
From: emile at fcfw.fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:08:51 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238 
References: <01Jul10.184408pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com>
Message-ID: <12a201c109ae$7a3bbf60$0a06a8c0@FENX.COM>

That shouldn't affect what I'm after.  I've managed to put together a python based simple implementation that does add, subtract,
multiply and divide so far, though no negatives yet.  As I work through that, I'm considering how this may/should impact things so I
can flesh out a potential PEP.  Maybe by next week or so.

Now if only the customers would cooperate and stop giving me new projects so I can get some time...

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Janssen" <janssen at parc.xerox.com>
To: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>; <emile at fenx.com>
Cc: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 6:44 PM
Subject: Re: Comment on PEP-0238


> Actually, if you're going to go in this direction, why not do what I
> proposed for HTTP-NG, which is to use a "denominator" rather than a
> decimal precision?  The denominator implicitly specifies the precision.
>
> So, if I want two decimal places, I specify "denominator 100", which
> mean that the result will be figured in hundredths.  This easily
> allows one to work in 16ths, 3rds, or other fractional amounts.
>
> >>> denominator 100
> >>> print 2/7        #-> 0.28
> >>> denominator 7
> >>> print 2/7        #-> 0.285714285714...
>
> This is, of course, just another use of rationals, since the
> denominator used must be stored with each value.
>
> At the very least, if you use "precision" to mean decimal precision,
> use "decimal_precision".
>
> Bill
>
>




From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Fri Jul  6 20:27:02 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 00:27:02 GMT
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <qHs17.2494$4B5.15547@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Edward Wilson:

> Python will only appeal to scientific developers researching
> the "impossible to do" until it handles databases on a first
> class scale. Oh, and another point, ODBC is dead.  Microsoft
> has already abandand it for OLEDB a COM based library.
> References to ODBC need not apply.

   Python's COM support handles ADO which is the most commonly used
interface to OLEDB. Using calldll you can even call the lower level OLEDB
directly although there is generally no need to do so - the reason I did
this was when writing an OLEDB provider to perform experiments and for
testing.

   BTW, Microsoft is already moving on to ADO.NET and, of course, Python for
.NET will be able to use it.

   Neil





From mikael at isy.liu.se  Tue Jul 31 02:56:44 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:56:44 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9mcgi8.fpt.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010731085639.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 31-Jul-2001 Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
 >  Really? In Polish a different form of "there were" and "errors"
 >  is needed depending on whether
 >      n%10 in (2,3,4) and (n//10)%10 != 1
 >  or not :-)

At last, I have reason *not* to learn Polish. :o)

One-language-down-a-few-thousand-to-go-ly y'rs

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    31-Jul-2001
Time:    08:53:51

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 15:08:18 2001
From: stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk (Stephen D Evans)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:08:18 +0100
Subject: accessing class data members
References: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <3B421822.572A5CDD@recombinant.demon.co.uk>

Curtis,

It's a question of style/performance. Neither obj.temperature nor
obj.get_temperature() are necessarily better. Accessing a class variable
directly or indirectly via a function are both valid and have
advantages/disadvantages depending on the language/task.

For indirect variable access via a function:

   * In a compiled language the indirect access via a function call can be
     optimised away by the compiler, so there may be no loss of runtime
     speed.
   * In Python there is the overhead of a function call, therefore
     potentially slower.
   * If the function does not exist, the code crashes.
   * Debugging is easier as all accesses to the variable can be
     trapped/traced.

For direct variable access:

   * In Python this is quicker.
   * It is possible to set a 'typo', e.g. obj.temperature_oops = t without
     any complaint, but not (always) retrieve one e.g. t =
     obj.temperature_oops may or may not work.
   * Possibly harder to debug the code.

For quick and dirty debugging in Python it is possible to override the
__getattr__ and __setattr__ class methods and thus provide the equivalent
of obj.get_temperature() and obj.set_temperature(t) while using
obj.temperature in the code. Use has to be made of the
__getattr__/__setattr__ asymmetry.

class UpperClassTwitOfTheYear:
    """An example for debugging only"""
    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
        if name == 'temperature':
            name = 'hidden_temperature' # rename, place debugging code here

        self.__dict__[name] = value

    def __getattr__(self, name):
        assert name=='temperature' # should only be called for this
        return self.__dict__['hidden_temperature']

Having looked at a lot of Python code and programmed in Python regularly
for over a year, I generally use direct access to the class variable in
Python i.e. obj.temperature


Stephen D Evans



Curtis Jensen wrote:

> In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when you
> want to know the value of some data member, that a function is written
> to return that value.  However, in Python it seems that people just
> access the data member directly.
>
> for example:
> if there were a class that represented a physical object.  In the class
> there were data members that held the objects temperature and location.
> If I wanted to know the temperature of an object, I could just use
> obj.temperature.  Though in other languages, the convention seems to
> call a function that returns the value, like: obj.get_temperature.
>
> Which is better?
>
> --
> Curtis Jensen
> cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
> http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
> FAX (425) 740-1451
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010703/ce95ec10/attachment.html>

From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 22 16:29:45 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:29:45 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
> participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
> such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.
> There was no consensus on exactly what 3/4 should return -- rational or HW
> float or decimal float were the most popular alternatives.

This has probably already been brought up, but perhaps the problem lies not
with the "/" operator, but one step earlier in distinguishing the meaning
of:

x = 3
and
x = 3.

That is subtle difference that can cause quite different results later on.

Or, one may try to teach that when ALL arguments of an operator are in one
"set", such as the set of integers, then one must expect a result that is an
element from THAT set, not another set, such as the set of real numbers or
from the set of complex numbers. Set theory seems to be taught fairly early
on in math, I think.

It has been my observation that people can often quickly grasp and make use
of the common underlying general principles behind things after having seen
only a few examples, provided there is a CONSISTENT underlying principle. A
handful of general rules may be easier to teach than a collection of special
cases. So can and should Python adopt an underlying principle along the
lines where one can grasp the following pattern:

integer = integer operator integer
real = integer operator real
real = real operator integer
real = real operator real
complex = integer operator complex
...

I prefer a handful of general rules, and operators that obey them.


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Fri Jul 27 10:24:12 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:24:12 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b613855.540809753@wa.news.verio.net> <cpsnfi4h2a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <gQe87.53150$Cy.6859156@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>:
> bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:
> > ISTM floor couldn't make an exact number out of an inexact one
> > unless the inexactness was known to be constrained to the halfopen
> > interval above the floor.
>
> Good point.

I guess the question becomes, does "exactness" mean just precision, or both
precision and accuracy. The result of floor is infinitely precise, but it's
accuracy is potentially suspect.

It seems that any[1] operation that converts imprecise numbers to precise
numbers is going to have this problem , so it seems best just to define
"exactness" to be "infinite precision" and live with the consequences.


-tim


[1] I suppose you could map all numbers to a constant and I suppose that
wouldn't have any accuracy problems, but it's not very interesting.




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sat Jul 21 15:30:19 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 21:30:19 +0200
Subject: Handling errors in PyXML/SAX
References: <3B545EB5.6BB5DF57@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> <j4vgkogipu.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <3B58922C.26289F15@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <j4puaugjw4.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Tom Bridgman <bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

> parser.parse(inputfilename) does work.  It's not clear from the
> documentation at http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/xml-ref/node20.html
> that systemID is a file name, even though I was guessing this at a
> couple of spots.

In fact, in XML, system IDs are URLs; see the XML recommendation for
details. To allow file names is an extension, and there is often
heated debate as to whether this is desirable, since you cannot tell a
file name from an URL (in particular if the file name is C:/foo/bar.xml).

Regards,
Martin



From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 22:15:01 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:15:01 -0400
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEIGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Bengt Richter]
> This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
> floating point support?

Not directly, but it doesn't use fp extensively.  Support for complex
numbers can be dropped via a preprocessor symbol, but we never build it that
way so I wouldn't bet your life it still works <wink>.

> With Linux being embedded all over the place, it seems like it
> would come up.  Do the mini hand-helds (not to mention cell phones)
> have floating point?

Most small platforms have (software) FP emulation libraries.




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul  4 16:18:38 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 16:18:38 -0400
Subject: Phonebook entry in windows
References: <mailman.994232826.25668.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ulmm478ip.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Antonio Navarro Navarro <hostmaster at bemarnet.es> writes:

> I need to write a stand-alone Python application that will run like a
> daemon (started at windows boot) to create a Phonebook entry on a
> Windows 95 machine, start up a connection, make some FTP transfers and
> then hang up and delete the connection.
> 
> I have been reading the mailing list and have found several references
> to win32ras.CreatePhonebookEntry, EditPhonebookEntry, etc, but I don't
> know if this functions are fully functional.

The problem with the currently wrapped functions in win32ras is that
they all involve GUI interaction with the user.  That is, they behave
just as if the user was creating or editing the entry.  I do not
believe that any functions are currently wrapped that will let you
silently create such entries.

> Where can I find more info, for example a working script that
> creates-connect-disconnect-deletes a phonebook entry in Python ?

Well, the rastest.py module in the demos directory of the win32all
installation (under <pythonroot>/win32) exercises most of the
functions including a sample of a callback with the Dial function.

> Do you think It will be better to use a different approach ? (I prefer
> not to use rasdial.exe, because I need to obtain full control of the
> connection process).

One suggestion is to have a fixed entry in the phonebook (already
established) that you just reference in your win32ras.Dial call - you
can still override the phone number at dial time.

Alternatively if you can handle default phonebook entry settings, you
can use win32ras.Dial directly without a phone book entry - just
include all the parameters in the call.  Note however that at least
under NT 4, there is a bug that over time (and generally thousands of
calls) can build up stray RAS parameter entries in your registry which
make the dialing process very sluggish.

The other option would be to write your own wrapper function around
the RasSetEntryProperties function which can create an entry without
any user interaction.  Or, use a standalone utility (we did one
locally but I'm sure there must be something around on the net) that
can build a RAS entry and execute that from your code with os.system()
or os.popen().

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From sheila at spamcop.net  Wed Jul  4 21:13:39 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 01:13:39 GMT
Subject: Config options on Tkinter Label Widget
Message-ID: <anf7kt4edeq12n4kb7hjdd73jjhnck2bco@4ax.com>

I'm trying my hand at a bit of Tkinter programming. I must say, the
discussion in Mark Lutz' Programming Python, 2nd ed, is really
excellent.

Anyhow, I liked the suggestion in Chun's Core Python Programming for one
of the exercises: "Label and Entry Widgets and Python I/O: Create a GUI
application that provides and Entry field where the suer can provide the
name of a text file. Open the file and read it, displaying its contents
in a Label."

So, I'm just starting out on the exercise, and I decided to mess around
a bit with the look and feel of the application. (I've also snagged a
local copy of Lundh's Tkinter reference and the Tkinter Life
Preserver...so I think I have ample reference material.)

So, here is my code so far:
--------------------------------------------------------------

from Tkinter import *

root = Tk()
Directions = Label(root, text ='Enter name of File to Open:')
Directions.config(anchor=W)
inputBox = Entry(root, width=80)

Directions.pack()
inputBox.pack()
mainloop()
--------------------------------------------------------------

Now, notice the line where I am trying to configure on Directions the
positioning of the text in the label:
Directions.config(anchor=W)

>From reading Lundh's reference, I thought that this would position the
text all the way to the left of the label.

However, it remains centered.

Why isn't it moving to the left? What do I need to do to get that
effect?

Thanks,

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 06:36:58 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:36:58 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: backslash woes........
In-Reply-To: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101435480.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Martin Franklin wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> 
> I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
> I want to replace the common prefix of a list of file names
> with a relative stub (./) I have this...
> 
>     def _removePrefix(self, fullfile):
>         print r'%s' %fullfile

what about 

re.escape(fullfile)
re.escape(os.sep)

? Does it cure the situation?

>         filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
>         print filename
>         return filename
> 
> 
> Where fullfile is the - full filename...
> and self.prefix is the os.commonprefix()
> 
> 
> Currently I get an error:-
> 
> traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "c:\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1285, in __call__
>     return apply(self.func, args)
>   File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\makesqueeze.py", line 161, in Finish
>     Squeeze(platFileList, open(filename, 'w'), self.prefix_or_path.get(),
> config)
>   File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 58, in __init__
>     self._apply(file)
>   File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 137, in _apply
>     file = self._removePrefix(fullfile)
>   File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 151, in _removePrefix
>     filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
>   File "c:\python21\lib\sre.py", line 63, in sub
>     return _compile(pattern, 0).sub(repl, string, count)
>   File "c:\python21\lib\sre.py", line 136, in _compile
>     raise error, v # invalid expression
> error: bogus escape: '\\x'
> 
> 
> I don't understand this as I am (trying) to use raw strings everywhere.....
> (that's what the DOC's told me to do...)
> 
> 
> 'Course on UNIX it all works perfectly well with or without the raw strings;-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hope _you_ can help
> 
> Martin
> 

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org  Fri Jul 27 03:01:32 2001
From: Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org (Scott David Daniels)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:01:32 -0700
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu>
Message-ID: <tm24egqbpid338@corp.supernews.com>

Reading backwards is tough, but reading forwards from a guaranteed
conservative guess is pretty easy:

    file.seek(-2*MAX_LINE, 2)
    lines = file.readlines()[-2:]

"Ratnakar Malla" <rmalla1 at lsu.edu> wrote in message
news:3B60F7EC.5275E026 at lsu.edu...
> I need to read from ... [the] 2 lines at the bottom of ... [a very long]
file.
> 1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
> time?
> 2) If so how??


-Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org





From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Sat Jul 14 13:51:17 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:51:17 -0400
Subject: python and applications
In-Reply-To: <9ipv9k$nda$1@panix2.panix.com>; from aahz@panix.com on Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 10:25:08AM -0700
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ipv9k$nda$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <20010714135117.A333@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 10:25:08AM -0700, Aahz Maruch wrote:
> tyler spivey <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote:
> >how many blind programmers use python? 
> 
> No idea.  Python is probably good for blind people because you usually
> write less code in Python -- each statement in Python does more.

If the original author meant "visually impaired", then I agree.  Python
code is short, easy to read, and easy to write.  This would be important
for limited screen space or letter-by-letter translation (grade 1
braille).

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 12:03:27 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 18:03:27 +0200
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995289809.28477.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:
>         A.remove(eachItem)
>
> Now, this will work fine,

Are you sure about that?  Normally, modifying the list
you're iterating on does NOT work fine.  Have you tested
a decent variety of cases?  For example:

>>> a=['ciao']*7
>>> for x in a: a.remove(x)
...
>>> a
['ciao', 'ciao', 'ciao']
>>>

as you see, NOT all seven occurrences of 'ciao' have
been removed.  Before worrying about speed, I would
suggest you first make sure your code is CORRECT... I
think this loop will misbehave if any two successive
items of A are both in B (only the first one will be
removed).  Are you sure this can't occur...?


Alex





From elecfsh at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 08:23:34 2001
From: elecfsh at yahoo.com (elecfsh)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 05:23:34 -0700
Subject: Network able Chess
Message-ID: <86f9eea9.0107160423.1e1a0103@posting.google.com>

Hey,
  For a while I have been wanting to write a little chess game that
can be played over a network w/ some simple chatting features. I want
to do this in Python, but I'm a little worried about doing the
graphics. Any suggestions as far as gamming libraries? or any standard
libraries I may have missed? Thanks.

-Andrew


From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul 16 20:52:15 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:52:15 GMT
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com> <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com> <LF447.476898$eK2.98947068@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <kuzoa4hf75.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <3%L47.493641$eK2.102167240@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Erno Kuusela" <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote in message
news:kuzoa4hf75.fsf at lasipalatsi.fi...
>

> [reformatted for your reading pleasure]

* Incorrectly!!


>
> In article <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, "Emile van
> Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:
>
> || "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> || "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
> || news:LF447.476898$eK2.98947068 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
>

* Just for the record, I (Nick Perkins) did not write any of this.
* I responded to it.

> ||| I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
> ||| to a list by just using
> ||| list_var[] = var_to_append
> ||| It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
> |||
> ||| Any comments?
>
> ||    list_var += var_to_append
> ||
> || (which is how you express this today in Python) is equivalent
> || and shorter.  Python does NOT go out of its way to provide
> || a zillion ways to write the same, identical thing.
>
> | Alex is right as long as var_to_append is already a list.
>
> not quite:
>
> >>> l1 = [1]
> >>> l2 = [2]
> >>> l1 += l2
> >>> l1
> [1, 2]
>
> vs.
>
> >>> l2.append(l1)
> >>> l2
> [2, [1]]
>
> | For non-lists though you can also do
>
> | list_var += 1,
>
> | or,
>
> | list_var += (1,)
>
> hmm, does the sequence protocol really include __add__ing arbitrary
> sequences? one would think lists would support it too if that
> was the case.
>
>   -- erno




From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Thu Jul 26 16:00:20 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:00:20 -0700
Subject: Numeric.transpose (incorrect documentation)
Message-ID: <3B6076D4.68B6840C@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

the documenation for the "transpose" function for the "Numeric" module
seems to be incoorect, or at least missleading.

It says that transpose is suppose to return a "new" array.  In fact it
does not.  It returns a pointer to the same array, only with transposed
indicies.
consider the example:

Python 1.5.2 (#4, Sep  5 2000, 10:29:12) [C] on irix646
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> from Numeric import *
>>> foo = zeros([5,10])
>>> bar = transpose( foo )
>>> foo
array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
>>> bar
array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
>>> foo[0,2] = 1
>>> foo
array([[0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
>>> bar 
array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [1, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
>>>


if bar was truely a new array, then changes to foo would not affect
bar.  In the example above, it does.  This way actualy works better for
my purposes, however, the documentation is missleading.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Wed Jul  4 19:42:23 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 23:42:23 GMT
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041355150.7776-100000@bms> <mailman.994283709.16414.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i09kv$efs$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Paul Prescod <paulp at activestate.com> wrote:
[how to get to a catalog]
> Incremental steps are the only path that will lead to success.

Right; we can always replace what we have at any point and throw the
old stuff away (or better revise it and add the dependencies/security/
whatnot).

Anyway, you can consider the PEP '2' proposal I posted today as such
an incremental step. It is focused on the standard library but the model
would be suitable for a high quality catalog system too.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Wed Jul 25 12:59:29 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:59:29 GMT
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com> <yoxhew1zejh.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <3b5efaca.2141033@news.newsguy.com>

On 25 Jul 2001 09:52:18 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi>
wrote:

>ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:
>
>
>> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
>> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
>
>What about the good old control-break? 

I'll try it, but does Python respond differently to these
two things?


--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 21:34:41 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:34:41 -0400
Subject: No float limits
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E0@admin56.narex.com>; from BPettersen@narex.com on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 05:47:58PM -0600
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E0@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <20010703213441.A26215@harmony.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 05:47:58PM -0600, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
| > From: D-Man [mailto:dsh8290 at rit.edu]
| > 
| > On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 11:37:51PM +0200, J?rgen Hermann wrote:
| > | Hi!
| > | 
| > | I just stumbled over the fact that there is sys.maxint, but 
| > no sys.maxfloat
| > | and sys.epsfloat. In case anyone thinks this is a valid 
| > addition, I'll come
| > | up with a patch.
| > 
| > What value would sys.maxfloat have?
| > 
| > IIRC IEEE754 states that all ones (ie 0xFFFFFFFF for a single
| > precision float) means infinity, so there really isn't a "max" value
| > for a float.
| 
| Perhaps not, but there is a maximum representable number, a.k.a. DBL_MAX
| in your C library (same argument for DBL_EPSILON of course ;-)

Ok, I'm over my head now.  I'll let you float gurus fight it out :-).

-D




From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 12:23:23 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:23:23 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107182005260.1370-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Steve Holden wrote:

>"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
>news:cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
>> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>>
>> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
>> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
>> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
>> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
>>
>> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
>> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
>> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
>> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
>> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
>> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

Maybe case-sensitiveness is an atavism, but I think that the Man and the
man are too _different_ words. And MAN is yet another. Case-sensitivity is
simple. Having one 0x0A is also simpler than 0x0A 0xD and thus having two
different file types. Unix is simpler, that is why it survived for so
long.

>In the CP4E world, do you feel it is better to educate everybody to
>understand that capitaisation has meaning, or dumb down the systems to allow
>those without a finer appreciation of language to get what *they* expect,
>thereby annoying the literate minority? I've never been quite sure how
>inclusive the "E" in "CP4E" is intended to be, but you may find that spoken
>natural language is the only acceptable user interface, given the literacy

Even spoken language will not help, because people just plainly do not
know how things are called even on their GUI systems. They hardly know
what OS is and they talk strictly about what they see, without
understanding of underlying processes. More than that, many 'puter users
are lame enough not to learn things! (believe me, I am working at
ISP tech. support...)

So probably CP4E is Utopia or "E" != humankind, but some part of it.

And thus there is no need to make thing too complex in trying to do them
simple. I think that CP is for everyone who is open to learn things as
they are, without overly simplification or complication.

If I give variable name 'Name', then I mean to call it so. And I will not
be disappointed when I try to call it by 'name' and it will not answer.

These are basic things even from pre-Eve times, when Adam called things.

>problems of even "advanced" societies. Now, even I couldn't disagree that
>there's no upper case spoken language, unless it's the traditional British
>device of
>
>         S-H-O-U-T-I-N-G   S-L-O-W-L-Y   A-T   F-O-R-E-I-G-N-E-R-S

There are no spoken language IDEs yet. And if I am not mistaken, there
will never be. Because it is much simpler to program more or
less complex things with written language.

Spoken command language could be of use with some AI systems or simple
systems which know some set of prescribed commands. Otherwise, it is too
easy for computer to give patients metil. when the doctor wanted etil.



Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 18, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?" _/




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 08:00:40 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:00:40 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <7BD10B680501D411B9DF009027E06F32197DA0@exchange>
Message-ID: <3B4456E8.8420459A@ActiveState.com>

Max M?ller Rasmussen wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Obviously there is something I have missed here.
> 
> If what we need is a system that can manage modules, versions,
> interdependencies, searching, different comunication protocols like ftp,
> http, webdav, a web interface and a Python client, Why don't we just write
> it in Zope?

Zope is certainly part of the solution. But Zope isn't where you want to
store a bunch of large archives. It would be better to use the file
system. And Zope doesn't itself manage the interdependencies. That
information has to come from the module. But we have no way to define
those interdependencies right now. And as you said, Zope doesn't help
much with the client app. And Zope doesn't really help you to build
binary modules in a safe way. And what categorization scheme (not
technology) do you use? 

So Zope is a good start (just as Distutils is a good start).
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul 22 14:57:16 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:57:16 -0500
Subject: HOWTO: exit
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221315300.4146-100000@cc489744-a>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221315300.4146-100000@cc489744-a>
Message-ID: <15195.8716.946086.989620@beluga.mojam.com>

    adam> how do I exit from a script?

You can call sys.exit() or raise the SystemExit exception:

    beluga:skip% python
    Python 2.1.1c1 (#13, Jul 10 2001, 17:30:38) 
    [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> raise SystemExit
    beluga:skip% python
    Python 2.1.1c1 (#13, Jul 10 2001, 17:30:38) 
    [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import sys
    >>> sys.exit()
    beluga:skip% 


-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From thomas at xs4all.net  Wed Jul  4 12:19:18 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 18:19:18 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <20010704181918.Y8098@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 07:42:51AM +1000, Peter Milliken wrote:

> > The only way to make sure a program works is by testing each and every
> > line in each and every circumstance, regardless of which programming
> > language you use. For something like ATC, you *do not* want to rely on
> > anything else. Using Python would at least allow you to find and fix
> > problems a lot faster -- you won't be carrying around NULL or undef
> > values without noticing it.

> > Do you check the return value of every fprintf()/fclose() function call
> > you make ? You should!

> Well, you show your inexperience/ignorance in two places here Thomas :-)

Neither, actually. My innocence, maybe, and my faith in numbers, but not
inexperience (I'm not) and not ignorance (at least, not that I know.)

> 1. No program EVER has 100% coverage during testing (unless it is trivial -
> this for the nitpickers :-)). The bigger the program the less likely full
> coverage has been achieved, ATC's are big programs. Anyone who claims they
> have 100% tested an ATC are either fools or liars - "every line and every
> circumstance" are NOT POSSIBLE, if you think they are then I don't have
> anything more to say other than get a few more years real world experience
> :-). So, if you plan to 100% test a python ATC "each line and every
> circumstance" then my original confidence that it would never be put into
> production holds (that's one of the reason languages have exception
> handlers - to catch the error that the programmer didn't foresee) :-).

You should try to re-read my message: I didn't say it was possible, or even
plausible (I happen think it's possible but implausible) just that it is the
only way it'll work. It also depends on what you call 'testing': open source
software, especially popular open source software, is continuously tested,
in the real world. Most bugs in Python nowadays are bugs in new features, or
on new platforms, because a lot of the possible combinations of what/when
have been covered. The real world is the testing, and proving, grounds
<wink>.

If you read the rest of the thread, you'll note that the ATC software runs
in acceptance testing for *years*. That's a lot of testing time. If you're
that deep into testing, you'll be done catching the 'typical' Python bug,
and just catch algorithm errors. Peter v/d Linden's excellent and highly
entertaining "Deep C Secrets" has some good examples of that (and no, they
aren't about C or C++.) Nothing, and I do mean *nothing*, in the language
could have prevented those errors.

> 2. Strongly typed languages don't include C/C++, so your example is
> meaningless i.e. a strongly typed language would at least FORCE you to
> assign/test the return value of an function - not like C/C++ which allows
> you to ignore any return values. This is not to say that an application
> written in a such a language wouldn't still ignore the return value after
> the assignment - that is a function of programmer ability (another point in
> my original email) - to fix that is up to testing and code review.

I didn't say C was strongly typed, nor did I say Perl was strongly typed.
Those two, and Python, are just my 'main' languages, and I just used them to
express what I meant: programmers can ignore error codes, and catch
exceptions and ignore them. There isn't much a language can do about that.
But that still doesn't mean that strongly typed languages are the best for
reliable code.

How does a strongly (and statically, I presume you mean) typed language
FORCE you to assign/test the return value of a function, by the way ? I
don't think I ever heard of a language that did that... My experience with
true strongly, statically typed languages must be smaller than I thought.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul  9 17:51:22 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:51:22 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OFFC26B3E9.4A427F51-ON88256A84.0077D6B8@i2.com>

James Logajan wrote:
>James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
>>
>> Edward Wilson wrote:
>> <snip>
>> >Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind.
>> <snip>
>>
>> Might we be over-generalizing just a wee bit, perhaps?  My company is
>> generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with products
written
>> in Java (with major pieces implemented in Jython :-).
>>
>> (I suppose *serious development* is relative <wink>).
>
>"A few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you're talking
>real money." A few hundred million? A mere pittance! Obviously no one who
>wants to make real money develops in Java!
>
>(Do I really need to add a wink or smiley??)

Nah.  I'm sure Everett Dirksen is smiling somewhere "out there".

Jim




From arnulf at spirea.net  Mon Jul 30 08:56:48 2001
From: arnulf at spirea.net (Arnulf Heimsbakk)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:56:48 +0200
Subject: Error on mimetools?
References: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no> <j4puair3bb.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <9k3l62$d31$1@news.uit.no>

I'm using only the raw base64 text. It is the same text I used in my winzip
experiment and in python test program I've made. It works in winzip but not
with python code. As I mentioned python gives me a file slightly bigger than
winzip. It's about 300 bytes bigger.

I'm without clues to this one. It does not seem to be any logic in the
error.

Arnulf

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:j4puair3bb.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de...
> "Arnulf Heimsbakk" <arnulf at spirea.net> writes:
>
> > I'm trying to decode a mime64 message in python with mimetools. I have
> > tested the "body" with windows winzip. It decodes correctly. When I try
to
> > decode it in python, it do not decode correctly. I get a file with
slightly
> > increased size. The heading of the file seems the same, but when I test
this
> > with a jpg file - the file gets corrupted when decoded with python's
> > mimetools.
> >
> > Is there a error in mimetools? Or is my approach entirly incorrect. My
code
> > is below:
> >
> > out = StringIO()
> > mimetools.decode(StringIO(self.body), out,  'base64')
> > return out.getvalue()
>
> It very much depends on what self.body is in this context. To use
> mimetools.decode, you must be sure that it is the raw base64 bytes,
> i.e. without any headers and trailers.
>
> Regards,
> Martin
>




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 22 16:07:02 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:07:02 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list at python.org>,
 "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
> participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
> such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.

Well then, float is a very bad choice for what to return, or then how do 
we explain when 3/4 * 4 = 3 (exactly) but 3/10 * 10 != 10?

I would be a lot happier with integer / integer = rational (as in 
Mathematica's programming lang), but float is just ugly.  It is turning 
exact values (integers) into approximate ones (float) when I didn't tell it 
to.  It's almost as bad as if integer subtraction always truncated to 16 
bit values -- a lot of the time that would give sort of reasonable answers 
but it's a gratuitous approximation where you didn't expect one.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul  3 19:52:15 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:52:15 +0100
Subject: i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field...
Message-ID: <9htlpd$ki$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>

i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field, this is the code i
am using:

[snip...]

def getNew():
    result1=str(newName.get())
    print result1

[snip...]

Button(frame1, text="Add New Entry", command=getNew).grid(row=0,column=0)
newName=Entry(frame1).grid(row=1,column=0)

[snip...]

it somehow doesn't work, any ideas?

P.S. no classes are used anywhere in this program.

G. Willoughby





From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Mon Jul 23 15:04:50 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:04:50 -0300
Subject: [phawkins@connact.com: Re: python and applications]
In-Reply-To: <20010723140032.A71300@ifour.com.br>; from gustavo@ifour.com.br on Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 02:00:32PM -0300
References: <20010722144735.A2737@ifour.com.br> <20010723114109.G27699@tux.distro.conectiva> <20010723140032.A71300@ifour.com.br>
Message-ID: <20010723160450.C1028@tux.distro.conectiva>

Gustavo,

> >> libraries. C has no support for IO, garbage collections, dynamic
> >> memory allocation, etc...... Many thing that C "does" comes from
> >> external libraries. Being small, and without any kind of special
> >
> >So does python. What do you think you're doing when you use something
> >like "import sys" in your program? Yes, many of these libraries
> >are part of a "standard set", but that doesn't change things. You
> >have POSIX and other standards on the C side.
> 
> As i told, i am just a python beginner! You need not to get hungry.

I'm not hungry at all. I just don't agree with you, and explained
my arguments.

[...]
> I am enjoying python too. But C has a small learning curve, since it's
> very simple!If you think C is not simple, try C++. Important: i am not
> saying python is not simple.

Yes, I was comparing it with Python (we're in the python list).

> >> program. The most sofistaced feature C provides is loop (while, do
> >> while, for), the lowest level C feature are pointer. If you master
> >> pointer and loop in C, you may be concidered a C guru. the problem is
> >
> >Ouch... What's a feature for you?? If you're talking about the language
> >constructs, as far as I remember, Guido is always trying to have the
> >minimum possible set of language constructs in python (no do/while, no
> >switch, no enum, etc). I don't think this is a bad thing, but I don't
> >understand your position.
> 
> I am confused! Why python folks come up with version x, x.y, x.y.z and
> ++x, x.f, x.3! I don't really understand! Once the
> interpreter/compiler is written, there is no need to come up with new
> version, at least if you don't change the language. Is python immature
> yet? Please, don't get me wrong, i cannot really understand what is
> going. There is no need for new versions of a language if it's mature
> enough, right! As i told, C has only two versions, Standard and ANSI,
> the last one remains the same for years and i doubt something will
> change in the upcoming years.

Have you seen gcc 3.0? It's a compiler... compilers change all the time,
just like interpreters. Python is not as stable as C, no doubts. But
releasing new interpreters is usual, just like compiler releases. Even
because the standard library is part of the game.

Besides that, the C standards are not as static as you may think. The
latest one (from ISO) I know about was adopted officially in 1999. Some
of the changes were even borrowed from C++. ;-)

(have a look at http://web.onetelnet.ch/~twolf/tw/c/c9x_changes.html)

> >> that C++ is easier than C - All i do is laughting. Serious IT stuff
> >> never get project developed in C++.
> >
> >We have lots of well known projects developed in C++ (qt, apt, etc).
> 
> Being well known does not make a software good! MS Windows is well
> known! is it an OS you would put a critical service? I guess "being
> well knonw" is no argument to trust in order to declare some thing
> good.

QT is well done. Have a look by yourself.

> >C has very complex data types, from the point of view of a Python
> >programmer. As I told, these languages have different purposes and
> >one has to be careful when making such comparisions.
> 
> Sorry, i do not known a single one data type C naturally holds? The
> only types i known in C are: long, float, int (and its derivated). I
> don't really known anymore.

You can build anything with structs (yes, they are types as well). You
just don't have "out-of-the-box" lists, dictionaries and alike. That
kind of stuff *shouldn't* be part of lower level languages. As I told,
comparing C and Python at that level is useless.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From marka at sundance.com  Thu Jul 19 09:50:55 2001
From: marka at sundance.com (Mark Ainsworth)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:50:55 +0100
Subject: Examples of using XML and Python?
Message-ID: <3b56e5fa$1@shiva.ukisp.net>

Has anyone got any simple examples of using Python and XML? The plan is to
use XML as the data format for information files. These need to be able to
be read, for data extraction, and also written too for modification. I am
VERY new to this. Python is O.K. but I haven't got a clue about SAX, DOM
etc.

Many thanks.

Mark A.




From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 10:57:37 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 07:57:37 -0700
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>
Message-ID: <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9hsckg$4rt$1 at taliesin.netcom.net.uk>, MDK <no at spam.com> wrote:
>
>The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the
>positive things said about the C language.  Is C that much different
>than C++?  Why the leaning towards C over C++?  I thought C++ was
>supposed to be the 'New and Improved C.'

Let me give you a real-life example:

I'm not a C programmer, but I've used C a bit.  I've also read some
books about C++ over the years.  The company I was working for hired a
contrator to write a DLL to interface between two parts of the system we
were writing.  The contractor chose to use C++.  The DLL that was
delivered failed miserably in following the spec, but it worked just
barely well enough that we postponed rewriting it due to lack of time.

As these things always play out, the need to rewrite the DLL came up on
very short notice, basically one week was what we had to meet a deadline
(the biggest problem with the DLL was that it worked okay with text
files but choked on binaries).  Although I was the least competent C/C++
programmer available, I was elected to do the rewrite because I was the
expert on the APIs the DLL used.

I managed to do the rewrite in a week, but only by sticking to straight
C code.  The rewrite was cleaner, simpler, and faster.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 14:22:03 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:22:03 GMT
Subject: Building a minimal Python 2.2 for Windows
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261804050.25190-100000@bcryachts.atsat.com>
Message-ID: <fdZ77.30592$EP6.7869594@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Morten W. Petersen" <morten at thingamy.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261804050.25190-100000 at bcryachts.atsat.com...
> Hia,
>
> I've just tried to build a small Python distribution that will fit
on a
> floppy disc (to do some cleanups on the filesystem without starting
> windows itself); however, the message python22.dll is needed..
>
> ..now, I've just copied a couple of files from the install
directory,
> files like python22.exe and certain .py and .lib files, can't find
the
> python22.dll file though..
>
> Any ideas?

Try /windows/system for python22.dll and python22.lib (don't know if
you need the latter)

Terry J. Reedy





From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 22:04:59 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 12:04:59 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B58E34B.52A137FD@student.gu.edu.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> "Tim Randolph" <timothyrandolph at yahoo.com> writes:

> Thanks for reminding me!  This is in fact the group I have in mind
> when I say non-programmer -- true non-programmers of course wouldn't
> be using Python... :-).  In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who
> is a professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.  A "non-programmer"
> is someone whose profession is something else (e.g. chemist, or
> webdesigner, or rocket scientist) but who occasionally needs to
> program.
> 
> > As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how
> > easy it is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would
> > very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that
> > enforce *uniform* case usage.
> 
> And that's of course what I have in mind.
> 
> > Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but
> > nobody wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program
> > with distinct meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes
> > for readable code -- at least for this sometime programmer.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Yes, but by your definition I'm a non-programmer (Though I do have three
versions of python floating on my machine at the moment.) and I prefer
case-sensitivity! I use it as a convention to remind me what is what.
(Note: Not to distinguish c and C *grins* well not all the time, but
between instance alpha and class FormattedText.)
Additionally as a BSc graduate I have a strong mathematical background
so as another poster has commented, I often use mixed cases for very
short code blocks.

for i in len(I):
	..........
	..........

When it's a simple block of code, especially when I'm in prototyping
mode, I prefer to not have to bother about thinking up clever names for
my code. *puts on his halo* Of course I clean things up later *grins*.

My vote would be in either giving IDLE TAB completion/correction that
recognises case errors, or more helpful NameErrors (Perhaps wrapped into
the IDLE code.) - if there's anything an occasional programmer can do to
help, I'd be glad to volunteer. Perhaps testing ...?

One of my python versions is the 2.2 prerelease - I haven't tested it
much, but it seems to work ok. I like the use of the yield keyword
(Though I'll be glad when the from __future__ etc requirement disappears
in 2.3.), and I assume the generator method returns values on the next()
function for a compatibility issue with something else, rather than just
calling the object directly? Additionally, yes the nested scopes DOES
make code behave more as I expect it to! *thumbs up*
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 17:03:08 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 21:03:08 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995917312.15332.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lp48c.h5i.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:41:18 -0400, Tim Peters <tim at digicool.com> pisze:

>> I think you'll find it's the picking of languages where 1/2 = 0.5 that
>> has to be done carefully - I can think of Pacal, Modula 2, LISP and -
>> taking into account your correction - Perl and JavaScript.
> 
> LISP doesn't belong in that list, but members of the Algol family do.

I don't know about Lisp standards, but in clisp implementation
(/ 1 2) is a rational which is = to 0.5.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 20:02:03 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:02:03 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 2:18 PM
Subject: Re: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238
lament)


> [Guido]
> > >> >The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
> > >> >regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.
>
> [Grant]
> > >> If that's important, why won't the other math operators do it???
>
> [Guido]
> > >Huh?  They do (apart from unavoidable round-off errors).  1+2 ==
1.0+2.0.
>
> [Grant]
> > They compare equal with the "==" operator, but they are not
> > the same value:
> >
> > >>> 1+2
> > 3
> > >>> 1.0+2.0
> > 3.0
> > >>>
> >
> > ... unless 3 and 3.0 are "the same value".  In which case my
> > definition of that phrase is merely different than yours.
>
> [Guido]
> Well, they have the same *mathemtical* value, and Python does its
> darndest to treat them as equal everywhere.  For example, a dict with
> int keys can be indexed with corresponding float or complex values.
> Exceptions are operations that intrinsically require ints, e.g. list
> indexing.  (This would change under a unified numeric system though, I
> expect, unless inexact numbers are excluded from being used as
> sequence indices.)
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> --

This scares me.  The whole numeric unification thing seems to be hiding
all the intrinsically difficult properties of numbers.  Kind of like Windows
ME trying to hide all the intrinsically difficult properties of computers.

Hiding difficult properties usually makes those properties more difficult
in the long run, while appeasing beginners in the short run.  This is not
a good trade off.

Here's some questions that come to mind that have a "sweep the can
of worms under the rug" theme:

1. If inexact numbers are excluded from being used as sequence indices,
won't there be a tendency for programs to have more special case bugs?
The value of a variable in a calculation might be usually exact, but inexact
once in awhile.  So floats can be used as indices until there is a precision
error?  Yikes!  And I have a funny feeling in my stomach that this is just
the tip of the iceberg.  Floats may or may not turn out to be exact
depending
on details of a particular run.  This is a Bad Thing.  Integers are always
exact.  This is a good thing.

2. Wouldn't a function in an extension module that takes a number as an
argument be significantly more difficult to write, since it would have
figure out the actual runtime type of the number and deal with all the
different cases?  Right now, I just have to verify the type.  Seems like
even if you somehow solve the problem of breaking python code, you
will break extension code badly.  One thing I like about python is that
it is highly compatible with its extension language.  The further we get
from the current symmetry between python and C/C++ the harder it
will be to write extensions.  The same goes for case sensitivity BTW.

3. Why do you expect it to be wise to hide all the numeric issues under
a level of abstraction?  The issues will still exist, but will just be more
obscure.  Right now, we have a simple and explicit numeric system with
simple and well understood problems.  Trying to make it simpler for
beginners by adding complexity to the overall system won't work.

The basic fact is that all conceivable numeric systems suck badly for
different reasons, (including the one we currently have).  And for every
problem there is a solution that's even worse.  Just keep what we have.
It sucks less badly than all of the alternatives.  Even the / operator has
it's virtues.  It make integers a closed set with respect to all the basic
operators.  This is a Good Thing.  The grand unification of numbers is
the other way to try to create a closed set, so it's not surprising that the
1/2 debate eventually lead to it.  But it won't work because the different
kinds of numbers really are different and trying to stuff them into the
same set is inherently unnatural.  I'd accept 1/2 == 0.5 with 1//2 == 0
as the integer quotient operator, but going further than that is a mistake
IMHO.

Kinda-weird-that-computers-are-so-lousy-at-dealing-with-numbers-ly yrs,

- Ken

"Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler."
- A. Einstein





From mirko.liss at web.de  Wed Jul  4 13:00:10 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 19:00:10 +0200
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <3B428CC9.1F944ECD@seebelow.org>
References: <mailman.993846706.12635.python-list@python.org> <3B428CC9.1F944ECD@seebelow.org>
Message-ID: <20010704170016.7C12CBD.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Grant Griffin wrote:
> I think the problem here might be one of marketing, combined with a lack
> of corporate sponsorship.  To that end, I propose this resource be
> called "Python Program Archive Network", or PyPAN, for short. That might

If you're just looking for a fancy acronym, what about 
calling it "Supplementary Python Archive Manager" ?

The name might be changed later depending on whether the
project turns out being scrappy, strange, striking, 
satisfactory, sumptuous or hopefuly superb.

regards,


Mirko



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 21:05:32 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 01:05:32 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cpvgke2zf1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <wdo87.35525$EP6.9091573@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

In the essay that  began this thread, I wrote

"Deletions: If a feature is directly deleted, it presumably is rarely
used and
not too useful."  I made mention of the only pure Python deletion that
I know of, the removal of the unused 'access' keyword.

The discussion, somewhat heated, initially focused on the proposed
division change.
After about a week, Guido mentioned the idea of deleting case
sensitivity from Python.

Since Guido labeled my essay a 'useful summary' and never directly
challenged any of it,
   including the deletion principle laid out above (nor did anyone
else),
since case sensitivity is commonly used by people who consider it
helpful to essential, since its removal would break much code and
outrage many people,
since the above are, to me, bad things to do,
since, to me, it is a 'problem' hardly worth discussing,
since it can instead be accomplished in an editor/IDE without break
and outrage,
since Python, while not a language of intentional duplication, is one
of flexibility, and
since its removal could likely be easily be reversed in a parallel
fork of Python ---

I was puzzled, didn't take the proposal seriously, only skimmed the
resulting discussion, and kept quiet.  After a few days, I noticed
that 'case' heat had replaced 'division' heat, thought Guido clever
for the diversion, and kept quiet to let the 'joke' continue.  It
seems I was wrong about Guido's seriousness.

So I am back to being puzzled and would like to return to my original
topic.  Leaving the case proposal aside, does anyone have a serious
alternative to the delete criterion quoted above?  If so, what, in
general, should be the less-than-finite burden placed on someone
proposing to delete a feature usefully used more than rarely?  For a
hypothetical example, what would be needed to justify removing
underscores (which must confuse beginners as much as case) either from
all public identifiers or just from public builtin identifiers?  (I
personally would prefer that the latter, at least, had been the rule f
rom the beginning.)

Terry J. Reedy





From donovanhide at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul 16 12:46:01 2001
From: donovanhide at bigfoot.com (Donovan Hide)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:46:01 +0100
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74>
Message-ID: <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>

Hi,
    thanks for the input, newsgroups are great! After scratching my head
last night, I came up with a non-recursive algorithm which works for
specific values of k (6 in the following example), as follows:

from math import *

def P(n,k):
    res=[]
    for a in range (n-k+1,int(ceil(n/k)-1),-1):
        for b in range(a,0,-1):
            for c in range(b,0,-1):
                for d in range(c,0,-1):
                    for e in range(d,0,-1):
                        for f in range(e,0,-1):
                            if (a+b+c+d+e+f)==n:
                                res.append([a,b,c,d,e,f])

    return res

a=P(20,6)
for x in range(0,len(a)):
    print a[x]

[15, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
[14, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1]
[13, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1]
......
......
[4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2]
[4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2]
[4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3]

    I'm sure it is possible to make this recursive, but I'm going to explore
Alex's, Emile's and Arne's versions first.
    Another aspect of this problem I'm trying to do, is to find all the
permutations of 20 and also 17. Is there a module available fo such standard
combinatoric questions? Emile mentions Tim's klistcombs, is this a snippet
from a library of functions?
    Thanks for all the help, it's making learning python really interesting.
My ultimate aim is to prototype an animation doping system for the
traditional practice of line-testing. I work for an animation company and
there is a serious dearth of effective, simple software out there for this
purpose. Any comments or experience of image file handling with Python? PIL
and ImageMagick look like the obvious routes to follow. More specifically,
has anyone linked python to the vidcap API of MS Windows. This would be
useful for capturing frames of animation through a video camera.
    Anyway,
    a pint is waiting for all of you in your pub of choice (so long as it is
in London!)
    Cheers,
    Donovan Hide.





From timr at probo.com  Tue Jul 10 02:07:28 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:07:28 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <nr6lktshij2lugi6p3825507qmd18b4erp@4ax.com>

"Steve S.L. Wong" <steve at hkit.net> wrote:

>while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
>}

  while line_ptr.split(';'):
    ...do stuff...
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 17:12:23 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 17:12:23 -0400
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <ku7kx7gtzk.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> writes:

> if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
> since global variable access is slower than local variable access.

This is, in this case, incorrect.  Unless I am horribly mistaken, the
higher cost of dealing with globals is that you first have to do a
failed lookup in the local dictionary.  (Plus failed lookups are more
expensive than successful ones)  

In this particular case the local dictionary is the same as the global
one, so I don't see how moving to a function would offer a time savings.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you fall in an open
sewer and die."  Mel Brooks.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtUqjcACgkQjVztv3T8pzsrTQCfRDCvNaHn8NhnHWUu1j42vI1i
7DQAoKg0+pweTRul6FdtfM7Et4xOKDs6
=3wsl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Jul  2 20:12:16 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 20:12:16 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <9hqtkk$b5a$1@panix6.panix.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com>
	<9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>
	<bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
	<mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
	<9hqtkk$b5a$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <oq8zi66fbz.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Aahz Maruch]

> In article <mailman.994111084.403.python-list at python.org>,
> William Park  <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> >Of course, you idiot...  

> Is there some reason you're calling Russ an idiot?  Let's try to keep
> comp.lang.python flamefree, please.

I did not like reading this either, but thought it might have been some
linguistic idiom, that escapes my knowledge of English or American humour.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Sun Jul 15 11:37:13 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 10:37:13 -0500
Subject: (no subject)
Message-ID: <031801c10d44$058f9e40$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

http://www.python.org/doc/Comparisons.html



"kj0" <kj0 at mailcity.com> wrote in message
news:9is8rm$46d$1 at panix3.panix.com...
> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
> advocates :-)  )





From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 13 13:52:05 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:52:05 -0400
Subject: More on "with" statement
Message-ID: <3b4f3600$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

I went to the FAQ to check the entry about a "with" statement
that is available in other languages.  I can only think of two
reasons to use it.

    1) You're a lazy typist. (Or haven't learned to cut and paste)

    2) You are generally concerned that multiple references to the
     same object with complex, multilevel access might be confusing
    to the reader or not optimized by the compiler.

I used to like the "with" statement in Pascal or VB.  Very useful
for using or setting multiple fields.  However, as programs got large it
could
get difficult knowing if the field was a local, global, or part of a with
block that started several pages back (in Pascal at least.  VB used a
preceding '.', which is a good idea).

A better solution is to assign a temporary reference.  This is possible
in C++:

DeeplyHiddenStruct & rdhs =
&SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct;

rdhs.Field1 = NewValue;
DoSomethingWith(rdhs.Field2);

etc.  which IMO is easier and cleaner than

SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field1 = NewValue;
DoSomethingWith(SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field2);

I don't know if the same thing can be done in VB.

Isn't it possible to do this in Python by simple assigning to a new object
reference?

rdhs = SomeObject.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct

The other advantage in the alternate reference is seen when copying
fields from one object to another:

rdest = <some object >
rsrc = <some compatible object>

rdest.field1 = rsrc.field1
rdest.field2 = rsrc.field2
etc.

I am a newbie just cutting my fangs in Python, but if I'm right about this,
perhaps this preferred workaround should be added the the FAQ.  If I'm
not...           never mind...






From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 24 13:10:40 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:10:40 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <k_h77.23757$B7.3910692@ruti.visi.com>

In article <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:

>>>> Language design mistake.
>>>
>>>It allows to write code which increments a number of unknown type
>>>by one. How would you write it in your universe?
>
>> Literals can be used for any type where the representation matches,
>> so incrementing is not a problem.
>
>Ok, this applies to Ada and Haskell. But how to fix the "design
>mistake" in Python?
>
>IMHO it doesn't have a practical fix,

For some definitions of "practical".  My definition of
practical doesn't include changing the meaning of "/" between
minor revs of a language. ;)

To be honest, I would prefer than int/float or float/int throws
an exception (and should possibly do the same for "+", "-",
etc.).  If you want to mix them, then tell the compiler what to
do.  Explicit is better than implicit:

 y = x/float(i)
 j = int(x)/i

>as long as a literal is an expression with type independent
>from the context. This implies that implicit conversions from
>int to float and rational are unavoidable in Python.

Why?

>Without them some reasonable code is hard to write.

I guess I never ran into such a situation.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Was my SOY LOAF left
                                  at               out in th'RAIN? It tastes
                               visi.com            REAL GOOD!!


From chuxxx at swbell.net  Wed Jul 18 11:46:17 2001
From: chuxxx at swbell.net (Charles Crain)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:46:17 -0500
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
Message-ID: <tlbbqas5b6hvff@corp.supernews.com>

I am part of the team working on SCons, the build tool for the Software
Carpentry project.  We have an interesting quandry before us: what is the
earliest version of Python we should support?  On the one hand, we would
like to use the latest and greatest and be able to take advantage of the
several powerful features added in recent Python releases.  On the other
hand, we would like to avoid putting any barriers to adoption of our product
that might arise from requiring users (particularly those in large
organizations with high-intertia IT departments) to upgrade Python versions
in order to use it.

It occurs to us that this is a general question facing anyone wishing to
release a Python product.  Do you code for the latest and greatest, or do
you try to figure out what release is most "common" (in this case, still
1.5.2, since it ships with most major Linux distros) and code for that?  Is
there any consensus as to what to do here?

In particular, does anyone have a feeling for how pmuch of a pain people
consider upgrading Python versions so that they may run a particular piece
of software?  In my experience, upgrading Python versions, and even running
concurrent versions, is pretty easy.

Thanks for anyone that can help out.

-Charles Crain





From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul 20 13:03:32 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:03:32 -0400
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
Message-ID: <200107201703.NAA16871@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

I've released Python 2.1.1 today.  This is the final version of this
bugfix release for Python 2.1, and should be fully compatible with
Python 2.1.  There should be *no* reason to use 2.1 any more.  Many
thanks to Thomas Wouters for being the release manager!  Pick up your
copy here:

    http://www.python.org/2.1.1/

Python 2.1.1 is GPL-compatible.  This means that it is okay to
distribute Python binaries linked with GPL-licensed software; Python
itself is not released under the GPL but under a less restrictive
license which is Open Source compliant.

PS: I've noticed some disarray of mail sent through python.org; this
seems to have to do with the dysfunctional ORBS "spam-checker".  See
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016151.html for
details.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From cliechti at mails.ch  Sat Jul 14 14:46:41 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 20:46:41 +0200
Subject: Need help with socket server code
References: <mailman.995132124.31082.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90DED3F7A2560cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

i can not see how printing the same list over and over again when no data 
arrives.... but i think you are looking for
s.setblocking(0)
where s is your socket object.
keep in mind that this will print the list relatively fast and you will get 
100% CPU usage.
as an other poster mentioned: if you want to do two or more things at the 
same time - use threads (module threading).
then you can run your (blocking) communications stuff in a separate thread.

chris <cliechti at mails.ch>


"Shane Anglin" <shane.anglin at mtni.net> wrote in
news:mailman.995132124.31082.python-list at python.org: 

> Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app: 
> Main loop is: 
> 1 - check socket for any incoming data 
> 1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into
> a list 2 - print out list 
> 3 - go to 1 and do it all over again 
> 
> Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that
> will sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data
> just fine, my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get
> any new data in... for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket,
> when a connection happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print
> list, 3 -go to 1 and do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has
> the rest of my code 'hostage' until a client connection is made and
> closed. 
> 
> Thanks a bunch! 
> Shane Anglin 
> shaneanglin at bigfoot.com 
> 



From cliechti at mails.ch  Fri Jul 27 15:30:35 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 21:30:35 +0200
Subject: Launching Python from Python
References: <3B619A9E.9E940B28@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EBDB73DC54Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

do you realy need separate python interpreters?
you could "import" the other module and run the main function in a thread
look at the module "Threading".

something like that:
------
import threading
import test
t = threading.Thread( target=test.main )
t.start()
------
the test.main function runs then in the background

chris


Jay O'Connor <oconnor at bioreason.com> wrote in 
news:3B619A9E.9E940B28 at bioreason.com:

> All,
> 
> I'm trying to launch another program from a Python program.  The other
> program happens to be another Python program.  I thought spawnle would
> be the proper place.  However, it doesn't seem to be working.
> 
>      import os
>      pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
>                "c:\\python20\\python.exe",
>                ["c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py"],
>                {"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})
> 
> my understanding is that this should spawn the other process, running
> the python runtime and passing in my script name.
> 
> However, it doesn't quite happen.  What happens is that it launches
> python in interactive mode.  If I import sys, sys.path has my added path
> above, buy sys.argv is an array with one empty string.
> 
> Any ideas why it doesn't work?  Any other ideas on how to launch another
> python program from within one?
> 
> This is on WinNT, BTW
> 
> Take care,
> Jay O'Connor
> oconnor at bioreason.com
> 



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 03:45:18 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:45:18 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk> <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com> <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <eppstein-E10BDA.10010023072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8581225ABCduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote in news:eppstein-
E10BDA.10010023072001 at news.service.uci.edu:

> Nice, but shouldn't the len(seq)==1 test actually be <=1?
> The empty sequence has one permutation, not zero.

Oops. Missed that, thanks.

Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good) wrote in 
news:ac677656.0107230857.1a9a12be at posting.google.com:

> Bravo!  That's a good one.  When you say you prefer having the
> "return" in there, is your purpose to emphasize that execution does
> not "fall through" the first "yield"?

As I originally wrote it the return stopped it executing the main body and 
attempting to permute a 0 length sequence. Since I had written it so that 
permuting a 0 length sequence gave no permutations, this meant the return 
simply cut out a lot of code that had no net result. However, once it is 
fixed to correctly return one permutation of an empty sequence the return 
becomes essential.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From frandebo at latt.if.usp.br  Wed Jul 25 13:33:12 2001
From: frandebo at latt.if.usp.br (Francisco)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:33:12 -0300
Subject: A few things :)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010725135955.24282B-100000@latt.if.usp.br>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Lee Nutter wrote:

 Hello Lee,

> Im a beginner, and although (i think) I know the base language all 
> right, I haven't really made anything. Can anyone recommend anything for 
> a first project?

 I don't know what areas of interest you have or anything else but since
 you asked, I will recommend what I used :)

 I did a (very) simple program of artificial life, the Penna model, that
 was intended to study biological aging. If you are scared about the
 words 'artificial life', well... don't be, it is indeed a very simple
 model that actually does something :)

 The description of this Penna Model can be found at 
 "Theoretical approuch to biological aging" Physica A 253 (1998) pags
 366-378. I don't know if that article is open to be retrieved from
 internet from any machine (I'm inside an IP block from college, so I
 have access). If you want to take a look at it and can't download the
 article, e-mail me and I'll send you a pdf file. 
  
 DISCLAIMER: I don't have anything to do with the people who wrote that
 article bla bla bla :^P  I just used it to learn python.

 NOTE: a more in depth analysis of that model is found at:
 "Dynamics of the bit-string model of age strutured populations"
 Physica A 242 1997 195-218  ( <- in this case, I had classes with the
 guy who wrote the article)

> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby. 
> Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language, 
> don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)

 I use it for parallel programing (with the hard work done with embedded
 Fortran code), **lot's** of statistical analysis (over the output of
 the Fortran code), plotting of all that is aidded by python and also
 for lots of smaller numerical calculations (with Numerical Python). 

 cheers,
--
  Francisco.
  S?o Paulo, Brasil.
             __o
            `\<,
     _____(*)/(*)_____




From sassman at nucentrix.net  Sat Jul 14 03:38:07 2001
From: sassman at nucentrix.net (Mark Sass)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 02:38:07 -0500
Subject: SQL Proxy question
Message-ID: <UzS37.2$QX5.751@eagle.america.net>

Hi All,
    I am fairly new to Python but have a decent background in programming.
I am trying to write some code to proxy authentications to a MS SQL database
server.  The concept is basically to proxy authentication that uses NTLM or
SQL authentication either encrypted or clear text.  I have done some packet
sniffing to see how the packets work, and it seems fairly straight forward,
but I need further assistance.  Can anyone point me to some M$ doc that
details the packet structure or have some code that already does this?  Your
help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
    Mark Sass




From gerryq at indigo.ie  Mon Jul  9 22:17:31 2001
From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie>

In article <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>, kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
>[ Followups set where they belong. ]
>
>Sun, 08 Jul 2001 14:52:13 GMT in <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382 at news.indigo.ie>,
>Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> spake:
>> In article <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
> kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
>>>  Likewise, Python's string handling is IMO just brilliant; slicing is
>[...]
>>>string"""`.  What's not to love?
>> 
>> Remember that the meaning of a line depends on its indentation.  Plenty 
>> not to love, IMO.
>
>  That has nothing to do with strings, though.
>
>  However, do you not indent your code in C?
>if(foo)
>bar();
>  in a longer example would be unreadable and unmaintainable.  Python
>just eliminates the curly braces, and assumes you wrote exactly what you
>meant.  It also eliminates those idiotic religious arguments over
>indentation style, because there's only one correct indentation style.
>
>  It's a very old, very bogus argument, dragged out every time by the
>people who haven't used Python; once you program in Python, it becomes a
>non-issue.
>

In case anyone is fooled, here's an example from the tutorial at 
www.python.org, which also has a FAQ on what Python is for:

>>> for n in range(2, 10):
..     for x in range(2, n):
..         if n % x == 0:
..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
..            break
..     else:
..          print n, 'is a prime number'
.. 

Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.  
Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be 
level-indented with the 'for'.   No doubt longer programs are even more 
fun.  The FAQ on increasing speed helpfully notes that function calls 
are expensive...

The second print statement is one character offset from the 'if' - I 
don't know whether that is necessary or not.  It is unlikely that I will 
ever wish to know.

- Gerry Quinn








From moryossi at barak-online.net  Sat Jul 28 06:33:15 2001
From: moryossi at barak-online.net (Yossi Mor)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:33:15 +0200
Subject: Creating package in Python
Message-ID: <3b6288fc$1@news.barak.net.il>

Hello

I am new with Python and i would like to ask several questions:

1. For creating a package i have to create a *.py script that will group
selected modules and contain the following script __init__.py. -> Can you
elaborate on this script definition.

2. I have tried to create a package that contains 2 modules and succeeded in
importing the package itself but not a module inside the package for example
'import pkg.fib1' - what was wrong ?

Thanks

Yossi





From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 00:43:34 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:43:34 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4D2AF6.7F76CBA1@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> If precision is adjustable, seems to me it's "usually explicit" (which you
> just said you don't want) or "usually implicit" (which you just said you
> don't want).  If you have another idea, let's hear it -- but remember I said
> at the start that the issue can't be wished away.

I don't want it implicit on some global or dynamically-scoped 
state. Some sort of lexically-scoped precision-setting statement
might be acceptable, but I'm not sure that's really appropriate
either.

It seems to me that, if you want adjustable precision at
all, you want to adjust it in a very fine-grained way
based on the kind of data you're using and what you're
doing with it.

For example, if you're adding up amounts of money, you
want 2 decimal places. But you *only* want to apply that
to the numbers which represent money, not the ones which
represent the rate of GST or the price per metre of the
material you're costing, etc.

So the notion of precision being part of some sort of
context that you establish and then go off and do your
calculations seems fundamentally wrong-headed. You'd
be changing the context almost operation-by-operation.

I don't know what the best solution to this is. I feel
it lies somewhere in the direction of using specialised
data types which know their own precision and also
what precisions are needed for various combinations
of them.

For example, a Money type would have a precision of
2dp, GSTRate maybe 4dp. They would know that
Money * GSTRate --> Money, so the result should have
2dp. Etc.

> Haven't used it, and didn't find any reference docs on the web that admitted
> to such a thing in Hypertalk; seemed to imply it handled 19-digit
> arithmetic, with a numberFormat property to control (only) *display*
> precision.

That's the problem -- it *wasn't* just used for display!
The only data type in Hypertalk was the string, so storing
a number anywhere counted as "displaying" it, and the
numberFormat got used.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 08:42:25 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:42:25 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
 <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
 <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <7lG$+VAxuBX7Ew5z@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <cp3d7ngazy.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes


....excuses etc elided

the pep no matter how written is still about breaking one of the
traditional arithmetic properties that has been carried into many
computer languages.

I am of the if it ain't broke don't fix it school. As others point out
explicit is better than implicit. int op int --> int is pretty easy to
remember as is the fact that mixed arithmetic promotes the lower
arithmetic operands.

The leadership is wrong on this and not for good reasons.
-- 
Robin Becker


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 17:07:40 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:07:40 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net>

Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> > "from __past__ import" anyone? ;-)
> 
> This occurred to me as well, but it still doesn't address the problem of
> backward compatibility.  With a from __past__ import construct or not,
> legacy code will still break.  The problem is not fixing old code, it's
> being unable to fix old code that is no longer accessible (either from
> being passed around or by being instrumented at a client site).

Exactly. I think everyone would be a LOT happier if you could run old
code on a new interpreter, without ANY CHANGES AT ALL.

I think my proposal will allow that, someone plese commment on it!!


-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul  2 21:17:42 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:17:42 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <134760338.994108231348.JavaMail.root@boots>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 03:13:05PM -0700
References: <134760338.994108231348.JavaMail.root@boots>
Message-ID: <20010702211742.A4372@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 03:13:05PM -0700, Russ Paielli wrote:
> Gee, that's profound.  You must be some kind of genius.  I would have
> never figured that out.  I scored in the top 1% in math on the
> Graduate Records Exam.  How did you do, moron?

> Yes, a brain.  Please don't wast my time anymore with your crap.

Ask silly question, get silly answer.  Please stop asking "Can Python do
this, can python do that..."  Just read the docs, and do it.  If you
can't read, there people who can help you with that too.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Wed Jul 25 14:51:30 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:51:30 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
Message-ID: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>

After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
for real use.

Now, I've got a slightly different background here. Much of my
professional life was in IBM mainframe shops, where installing a new
version of the operating system, major utilities and language processors
was essentially **guaranteed** not to break running applications. I
can remember numerous upgrades where I had to do absolutely
nothing on the applications side.  I also have been in shops where
programs written in the mid '70s are still running the same executable!

You can't always guarantee 100% compatibility while providing new
functionality, but you can certainly provide the framework.

The root of most of the upgrade problems (PEP 238 being the exception)
is that keywords come from the same namespace as other names. Most
languages have this problem, and most languages don't solve it, either.

Therefore: the Proposal (ta da!)

Add a new statement named "required". This statement, if present, must
occur before any other statement in a module except comments and
docstrings. If it is not present, it will not be considered a reserved word
in the remainder of the module. If it is, it will be so considered.

It also won't be considered as a new statement if it's immediately followed
by an "=" sign.

The rest of the statement is simply a list of keyword, value pairs, where
the
keywords can be added to from release to release with impunity. The syntax
for the pairs could be keyword = value, or keyword: value, with commas
between the pairs. I have no real opinion on the matter, other than that it
allow for essentially unlimited extensibility.

The initial set of keywords could be:

earliest-release: <release number>
latest-release: <release number>
tested-release: <release number>

earliest-release means that the module requires at least that level of the
Python
system. Python releases that recognize the requires statement will refuse to
run (or import) the module if they are at an earlier level.

latest-release means that the module is known not to work on later releases
of Python. Python releases later than this level will compile and run the
module using the prior release's semantics.

tested-release simply means that it was working on that release, and may not
work on later releases. This is documentation only; the Python interpreter
will
automatically supply messages when it is running under a command line, but
not if it is running under a GUI.

A second part of this would be an optional file named "__requires__.py" in
any
directory that contained python source or executables. This would contain
requires statements for (some of) the various modules in the directory that
supply or override the requires statement in the module.

Hopefully, this is going to provide more food for thought than fuel for the
flames.

John Roth




From matt_yarbrough at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  1 19:44:39 2001
From: matt_yarbrough at hotmail.com (matt yarbrough)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:44:39 
Subject: import error
Message-ID: <LAW2-F114N7miR9Odut0000a7c7@hotmail.com>

I'm having trouble with a zope product I'm trying to use, in that it errors 
on the following line:

from ZPublisher.HTTPRequest import html_quote

This is the first line in the module.  I notice that ZPublisher is a folder 
rather than a module, and I'm wondering if this is something that may have 
worked in 1.5 but not in 2.1.  The folder is also not a child of the current 
folder but is actually a sibling of the current folder.  Could this be 
rather a PYTHONPATH issue?





_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 17:22:11 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:22:11 +0200
Subject: getting argument names from a function
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107101835460.10785-100000@my.nada.kth.se> <W9I27.5835$yh2.510569@weber.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <9ifriv013re@enews2.newsguy.com>

"dan" <dan at eevolved.com> wrote in message
news:W9I27.5835$yh2.510569 at weber.videotron.net...
> Actually, that grabs the entire namespace of the function, not just the
> function variables. I haven't found anything in the func_code tree that
> contains only the function argument keys...
    ...
> >> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
> >>    print arg1, arg2
> >>
> >> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
> >> 'arg2')?

>>> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
...     print arg1, arg2
...
>>> dir(aFunction)
['__dict__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'func_closure', 'func_code',
'func_defaults'
, 'func_dict', 'func_doc', 'func_globals', 'func_name']
>>> aFunction.func_code.co_varnames
('arg1', 'arg2')

If the function has both arguments and other local variables, the arguments
come first in ...co_varnames.  ...co_argcount is the number of arguments.
So:

def argsof(f):
    co = f.func_code
    return co.co_varnames[:co.co_argcount]

should be what you want.


Alex





From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul 23 18:53:42 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:53:42 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> So what problems was PEP 238 proposed for anyway?
> I still haven't seen even one good example where int/int->float semantics
> is the right thing to do.

That's odd -- you must exist in a completely different part of compuspatial
continuum than I do. In my experience when I define a function that involves
division I generally want it to either compute using float-division or
floor-division[1]. I know which type of division I want when I write the
function, and it doesn't depend on what the inputs as[2]. I don't think I've
ever seen a case where I want to see the type of division change from
floor-division to float-division based on the input types.

Consider two functions: the number of pillars on a bridge and electrical
impedance per unit length:

def pillars_per_bridge(bridge_length, pillar_sep):
   return bridge_length / pillar_sep

def impedance_per_length(impedance, length):
   return return impedance / length

In the first case I _always_ want to do floor-division. In the second I
always want to do float-division. To get these to work now I need to do
something like:

def pillars_per_bridge(bridge_length, pillar_sep):
   return int(bridge_length) / int(pillar_sep)

def impedance_per_length(impedance, length):
   return (1.0*return impedance) / length

Which is not too horrible, but it is extra cruft. So let me turn your
question around. Can you give an example where you want the type of division
(float vs floor) to change depending on the type of input (int, float,
complex)? I can't, although I suspect there must be some. I also suspect
they're very rare.

When _I_ use an operator, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither
more nor
less.

or-at-least-it-should-ly yours,
-tim

[1] I'm going to use floor division rather than int-division in my
terminology because those crafty math people tell us you can't really divide
integers because there a boxing rather than a soccer venue (or maybe
vice-vera), and because the term integer-division is not well defined;
witness the difference in how integer division is done in C and python.

[2] As long as they're "numbers". Whatever that means on a given day.





From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul  9 21:00:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 01:00:01 GMT
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <3B4A4E7D.F16F2C4B@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B4A51CF.7EE1ACA@tundraware.com>

James Logajan wrote:
> 
> Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> >
> > What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
> >
> > while (x=getchar() != 'N')
> >         {
> >         Do something}
> >
> > In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> > input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> > value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?
> 
> What is wrong with:
> 
> while 1:
>         x=raw_input()
>         if x == 'N': break
>         Do something

Nothing - I was just doing a quick idiom check to make sure I was in
the ballpark.  Tnx for the reply.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 18:24:43 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:24:43 -0400
Subject: No float limits
In-Reply-To: <9htdv6$phu$01$1@news.t-online.com>; from jh@web.de on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 11:37:51PM +0200
References: <9htdv6$phu$01$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <20010703182443.C26134@harmony.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 11:37:51PM +0200, J?rgen Hermann wrote:
| Hi!
| 
| I just stumbled over the fact that there is sys.maxint, but no sys.maxfloat
| and sys.epsfloat. In case anyone thinks this is a valid addition, I'll come
| up with a patch.

What value would sys.maxfloat have?

IIRC IEEE754 states that all ones (ie 0xFFFFFFFF for a single
precision float) means infinity, so there really isn't a "max" value
for a float.

-D




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 14:56:59 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:56:59 +0200
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121131290.21768-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <021e01c10b04$74352820$0300a8c0@arthur>

"Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
    ...
> The point was that python and sh operate on different levels.

So they do.  Python operates, much like Perl and most other
scripting languages, mostly by operations in the languages
itself and its libraries; sh (although bash and ksh move it a
bit away from that) basically relies on external programs.

> $ cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5
> 
> (i.e., concatenate some unknown number of files whose names match one
> of three patterns, write the result to a file and count the
> characters, lines and words, appending that result to a different
> file)
> 
> is what in Python....
> ...2 lines, 3, 4, an explicit loop, a function or two, or maybe a
> program (i.e., some imports, assignments, blocks of code, ...)?

If you do not need cross-platform operation, you can do it the
same way (except that you most always need to import...):

import os
os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')

This, of course, is anything BUT idiomatic, because you have no
control at all -- you're delegating everything to external programs,
just like in sh.  What will happen on OS/2, Macintosh, Windows,
VMS, or a Sony Playstation?  What happens if there are too many
files called 'file'+something+'2' and you overflow the number of
arguments allowed on some older Unix-ish box?  Etc, etc.  Most
likely, one would program it differently, solidly, and portably:

import fileinput
from glob import glob

file4 = open('file4','w')
lines = words = chars = 0
for line in fileinput.input(glob('file*1')+glob('file*2')+glob('file*3')):
    file4.write(line)
    lines += 1
    words += len(line.split())
    chars += len(line)
file4.close()
file5 = open('file5','a')
file5.write("%s lines, %s words, %s chars\n"%(lines,words,chars))
file5.close()


But the fact that one CAN do it differently doesn't mean the "different"
way is inferior.  os.system and friends are there, for those times where
you want to operate this way.  So are excellent facilities for operating
differently.  It's silly to claim that giving you a choice makes Python
inferior to sh for such operations.


> Ya, I know, for some... "script" == "interpreted", for the rest of
> us... "script" == "automating a sequence of command line operations".
> I guess it was a mistake to play off that bit of ambiguousness as an
> introduction to the point.

"script"=="interpreted" seems just silly.  But where do the *command
line* operations get into the "scripting" concept?!   "Automating a
sequence of operations" seems just right.  That sh is basically able
to do it for (some) "command line" operations, but not really for ones
based on other paradigms, is sh's problem -- it doesn't define the
concept of 'scripting'.  For example, with VIM (Vi IMproved), I can use
Python for scripts, which automate sequences of editing operations
that are anything *but* "command-line" -- one doesn't *HAVE* to
resort to command-line-oriented editors (ed, ex, sed, ...) to script them,
as long as the available scripting language and infrastructure are
good enough.  sh and its descendants just _aren't_ good enough for
the kind of rich, complicated scripting tasks that Python (and, though
I loathe to admit it, Perl, Tcl, VBScript, &c) handle with ease today.


Alex



_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com




From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul 12 06:59:36 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 03:59:36 -0700
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <3B4D3CF1.889B57BB@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107120259.333a8a9a@posting.google.com>

Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message news:<3B4D3CF1.889B57BB at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>...
> EricIDLE wrote:
> > 
> > def mult(x,y):
> >     return x * y
> > f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)

[mult is not needed if lambda is used]

> It's a matter of taste. Some people like the ability
> to write very trivial functions like your mult() in-line.

Amplifying the above explanation...

In this case, the use of lambda is convenient because * can't behave
like a function, so you need a quick way of wrapping * up to act like
one.

The lambda construct lets you define a function "in-line" (as stated
above) without needing to call it something, or having it take up
space somewhere in your source file. The "mult" function could be seen
as "overkill" by some people in that such a standalone function isn't
likely to be widely useful and therefore doesn't justify its existence
as a standalone function.

In cases where you want to apply complicated expressions, the use of a
separate function becomes more compelling. Where control flow
constructs such as "if" are required, a separate function is
necessary.

So, lambda is really only useful when you want to apply simple
expressions as if they were functions. Of course, a daring extension
to the Python language could let the following be written:

  f = reduce(*, n)

Or:

  f = reduce(*.as_function(), n)

But I'm not one to advocate this kind of thing. ;-) Besides, there are
still cases that this wouldn't address. For example:

  f = reduce(lambda x, y: x + y/2, n)

:-)

Paul


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 00:06:15 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:06:15 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com> <3B5E1075.94167ECD@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B5E45B7.2C4AE40@Lugoj.Com>

Note: I should have called this a proposal for a new source file suffix to
match the terminology used in the library reference manual. I'll use
"suffix", rather than "extension", henceforth.

Chris Barker wrote:
> In the long, run, I think relying on file extensions ios a bad idea.
> Among othetr things, Python code is not neccesarily stored in files at
> all (at least not when passed to the interpreter)

But, but, Python ALREADY relies on file name suffixes! The "import"
statement:

import <module>

does NOT cause the interpreter to scan through every file in every directory
in sys.path, examining the contents of each and use some magical mechanism
to determine which ones are Python and are the module <module>. It looks for
files named <module>.so (or whatever the extension suffix for the given
platform), <module>.pyc, <module>.pyo, and <module>.py. It generally
REQUIRES proper suffixes to do its job. If it finds a .pyc then I believe it
looks at the "magic string" in it to determine which version of python it
was compiled with. That would tell the interpreter what behavior to use for
the "/" operator (or any other language change) for that module.

Compiled byte code files theoretically shouldn't be a problem, since the
"magic string" should already differentiate versions (although I'm not sure
what, say, a 1.5.2 interpreter does when it encounters a "non-conformant"
magic string for a later release). I'm also not sure what unusual uses users
have made of the "compile" function in the py_compile module, but I would be
surprised if anyone was using it with unusual file extensions. (Much less
breakage is likely here than that which would be caused by a change to "/"
semantics.) Actually, even there one could use the rule that if the file
doesn't end in .py2, (or whatever) then assume the source was written under
older versions. (However, a 1.5.2, say, might be accidentally be fed a .py2
this way; the proposal isn't 100% perfect. Just 98.7%.) As far as I can see,
there shouldn't be any obstacles getting the "imp" module and the "import"
statement to deal with a mix of .py and .py2 files. This proposal basically
adds an alternate suffix for source files.

To summarize, a new source code suffix has these properties:

1) Both humans and interpreters may know immediately by inspection of the
source file name what version of syntax and semantics to apply to the source
code.

2) Does not require old code to be rewritten in any way.

3) Does not require new code to have any special versioning statement
embedded in it.

4) Beginners can be instructed to use only the latest version suffix for
their source files until they have reached a high enough level of competence
and familiarity before trying to comprehend older code.

5) Provides the language designer(s) more latitude in designing in otherwise
code-breaking changes while still protecting the time invested in legacy
code.

6) Forces the language designer(s) to collect many changes to the language
in fewer quantum leaps. (That is, if one is limited to .py0, .py1, .py2, ...
.py9, then greater care will be taken in not "using up" the rather small
number of version numbers so quickly. I consider this a useful property.)

That is it; I can think of some minor objections or esthetic complaints, but
can't see any show stoppers unless I basically misunderstand some Python
internals.


From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 03:20:13 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:20:13 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <1e9801c1029f$92682940$0a06a8c0@FENX.COM>
References: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21C@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com> <1e9801c1029f$92682940$0a06a8c0@FENX.COM>
Message-ID: <20010702092013.K8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 07:34:07PM -0700, Emile van Sebille wrote:

> > It would be quite legal for id(b) to be identical in one case - since b
> > is the only reference to the tuple, the original tuple could be
> > collected, and a new tuple with the same id() could be allocated. It's
> > unlikely, but possible.

> I'm not sure that's true.  It looks like the old (collectible) reference
> exists until the STORE_FAST is executed, and IIRC, individual byte code
> commands are atomic and execute until completion without interference.

> Do I have that right?

You do. The new tuple gets created before the old one is destroyed. Even if
my *first* attempt at augmented assignment (which used new two-argument
bytecodes to do inplace-operation-and-store in 1 bytecode) had been
accepted, it probably wouldn't have worked that way: you don't want to
destroy the old value until you are sure you can create the new value
without raising an exception.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 15 14:33:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 20:33:12 +0200
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com> <9ip1qa012en@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6@tundraware.com> <9iqea10f19@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B50DE63.4217DC08@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9isnio08c@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B50DE63.4217DC08 at tundraware.com...
    ...
> > What gave you the idea that anybody around here is interested
> > in "serving abstract ideas"?  I'm interested in serving *our
> > customers*, all 10,000+ of them at last count -- ensuring
>
> None of whom give a damn if your code is portable (unless you're
> selling programming tools like compilers) or how elegantly

Go tell that to a (hopefully hypothetical) customer who's just
done some system upgrade, preferably right after the program
with which he spends the majority of his working hours has
just stopped working.  "Oh but you don't give a damn if my
code is portable, so why are you giving all of these damns
right now?".  Even if all it takes to get him back to work is
a few downloads of upgraded versions -- a few hours' time to
locate, grab and install them -- you WILL hear damns aplenty.

> architected it might be - they just want your application to run
> on their system.  How it does so, is your problem, not theirs.

There is a grammatical error here.  "their system" is singular.
It would be a singular customer indeed (for our products) who
owned one single system (without significant upgrades) and
only ran our programs on that single (singular) system.

Change the sentence to "they just want your applications to
run on a wide variety of systems, offering several trade-off
points between cost, performance, stability, familiarity of
other system tools to their employees, &c, so that choosing
your applications does not constrain their abilities to choose
the platforms they equip their employees with, upgrade them
with the newest processors or graphic cards when they think
the price/performance is right for that, and so on".  In other
words, they just want our applications to be portable -- you're
right that HOW we achieve that desideratum (just like, how
do we achieve high performance, rich functionality, low price,
backwards compatibility, solidity, and a zillion other typical
customer desiderata) doesn't (well, _shouldn't_ -- reality is
often different) concern them.  But portability is a plus in
itself for the customer, just like performance &c, because a
typical customer in our field doesn't own ONE system -- much
less does he or she kid him or herself that 'ONE' unchanged
system is what he or she will own for a long, long time.

It so happens that _right now_ we can get away (for most
customers) with only offering portability among a relatively
narrow range of platforms -- yes, we ARE losing business
where (for example) the customer specifies that design
applications must run on Macintosh whatever (because
that's the system used in certain key departments of the
customer's firm/suppliers/customers/whatever, and the
customer doesn't trust translation utilities to be perfect,
and so wants to make SURE the same application runs on
all systems in a certain set) as well as Windows 2000, &c;
i.e., where a potential customer specifies among the
requisites a wider portability than we can offer right now.
But, we estimate that the loss due to non-universal
portability is lower than what it would cost us to achieve
universal portability (including quality assurance on each
supported platform, of course).  It's not an abstract, far
away issue: it's just as concrete and important as any
other customer desideratum, such as top performance,
low footprint, low price, total solidity, and so on.  Of course,
what the customer really wants is: everything, for free,
yesterday, etc, so one must trade-off between various
such desiderata -- but portability IS typically one of them.

It may be different in fields (if there are any) where every
customer believes (rightly or wrongly) that the application
he or she buys will run for all of its useful lifetime on a
single unchanging system configuration.  I suspect that may
be true of applications with relatively short useful lifes (such
as games), or when the customer is too naive to understand
how constraining it will soon prove to be unable to upgrade
his or her machines because of portability constraints of the
application being purchased.  Neither of these issues applies
to CAD and PDM software, and, I'm sure, to many other
fields in the area of software development.


Alex





From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 14:00:08 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:00:08 GMT
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <mailman.996217251.21555.python-list@python.org> <3B61A275.82581457@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <cp8zha2qxw.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes:

> I've checked the Google archives, and I've come to the conclusion that you
> are of the position that anyone who doesn't constantly upgrade should not be
> supported, in the sense that if they report bugs, write books about Python,
> or ask for porting assistance, their questions will all be answered with
> "Upgrade first, then we'll talk". Is that basically correct?

Since you don't pay him for fixing bugs or answering questions, what's
wrong with Tim's desire to avoid discussing things that have been
fixed already?

Maybe here's a business for somebody: maintain old versions of Python.
I don't think that PythonLabs has the manpower of financial resources
to add this to our already growing list of tasks.

Or maybe you want to become a platinum sponsor of the PSF?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From philipprw at gmx.at  Wed Jul 18 14:14:56 2001
From: philipprw at gmx.at (Philipp Weinfurter)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 18:14:56 GMT
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
Message-ID: <slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>

hi everyone!

a = 1

def func1():
    b = a + 1

right, the local variable b is assigned the value of the global variable
a. so far, so good.

def func2():
    a = a + 1

and now the local variable a is assigned... uh, nothing because it produces
an UnboundLocalError.

now, i admit that no programmer should ever write such code, but i still
consider this a bug. what _should_ happen, is this: the right side of
the assignment is evaluated first, thus adding 1 to the value of the global 
variable a, then the result should be assigned to the local variable a,
no?
then


From gustafl at algonet.se  Tue Jul  3 19:12:25 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 23:12:25 GMT
Subject: AttributeError: 'getopt' module has no attribute 'GetoptError'
References: <Xns90D3ECC92390Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <Xns90D4C665646gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren) wrote:

> Try to use the getopt module, but get the error in the subject line.
> What's wrong?

Still a true mystery.

> Another question about getopt: Are options optional by nature? You
> can't have a mandatory option?

Found the answer to this myself: "Unlike GNU getopt(), after a non-option 
argument, all further arguments are considered also non-options. This is 
similar to the way non-GNU Unix systems work."

What I want to do is something like:

  python script.py <single command> <some options> <some arguments>

Hm...maybe I should write my own getopt? Maybe someone already did? :-)

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From cgale1 at _remove_home.com  Fri Jul 13 03:30:52 2001
From: cgale1 at _remove_home.com (Van Gale)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:30:52 GMT
Subject: Any way to get current file position in xml.parsers.expat?
References: <slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>
Message-ID: <Msx37.103186$%a.4410093@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>

"C. Laurence Gonsalves" <clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com> wrote in
message news:slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com...
> Unfortunately, I can't find any way to get the current position in the
> file when using ParseFile. I know that if expat throws an ExpatError,
> that will contain the line and column number, but that doesn't help me
> in this situation, as the file is 'well formed' XML as far as expat is
> concerned.
>
> So is there any way to ask the expat parser where it is in the file?
> Even a byte offset from the beginning of the file would be better than
> nothing.

I'm pretty sure ErrorColumnNumber, ErrorLineNumber, and ErrorByteIndex are
updated even when there is no error.

Van





From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 09:13:58 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:13:58 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <tnc8ltsd0p882c369q100a5e9s5ehuaans@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171709200.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Toby Dickenson wrote:

> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:
> 
> >>> Do not forget commas:
> >>>
> >>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url",
> >>>          "preview" ]
> >>>
> >>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
> >>>          "preview" ]
> >>>
> >>> Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?
> >>>
> >>
> >>For what reason should it check ? Both is valid Python code. In the second
> >>case 'url' and 'preview' are concatenated. This is dedicated behaviour.
> >>
> >
> >PyChecker is about determining ambiguity, like lint
> >will give you warnings about
> >
> >if (a=b) { };
> >
> >in C code.
> 
> Which, as I am sure you know, is no more ambiguous in C than the
> Python fragment above.

It is not ambiguous for the translator. Still lint-like tools could report
such problems as warnings, because it is too easy to make error here.

I even think, that things like:

for i in list:
  if cond:
    do_something
else:
  somethingelse

must be reported. Just like TAB/space mixes.
This will lead to much more readable code.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From Richard.Suchenwirth at kst.siemens.de  Wed Jul 11 14:11:52 2001
From: Richard.Suchenwirth at kst.siemens.de (Richard.Suchenwirth)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:11:52 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <3B4C96E8.668FB82A@kst.siemens.de>

Harald Kirsch wrote:
...
> 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
>    SOLUTION: ???
> 
> An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> 'A<A>B', which it should.
> 
> With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
 
Maybe I don't understand the exact problem, but wouldn't

regexp  {(<A>)B} foo<A>Cbar<A>B -> matched

fulfill task 2?
-- 
Schoene Gruesse/best regards, Richard Suchenwirth - +49-7531-86 2703
Siemens Dematic AG, PA RC D2, Buecklestr.1-5, 78467 Konstanz,Germany
Personal opinions expressed only unless explicitly stated otherwise.


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 01:13:57 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:13:57 -0400
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDDLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David C. Ullrich]
> ...
> (Did they change the rules recently? Don't recall
> relevance to Python being a criterion here...)

You're exempt from the rules, David:  letting you wax mathematical is just
our way of sucking you deeper into the Python community <wink>.

integral-hugs-and-rational-kisses-ly y'rs  - tim




From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 14:00:28 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:00:28 -0700
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net> <ubrklto6t10pidmh5bld02glmcmjd9jdvq@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B14BC.FAEDC762@alcyone.com>

Sheila King wrote:

> OK, interesting. I didn't realize you could make an exception without
> subclassing it.

You can, but the library reference (2.2, Built-in Exceptions) states
that user-defined exceptions _should_ be derived from
exceptions.Exception, and suggests that this behavior might be enforced
in the future.  It's generally good practice.

> However, I noticed earlier this evening, from browsing the
> exceptions.c
> source (as noted elsewhere in this thread), that the Exceptions seem to
> have 3 methods and 1 datamember, namely:
> 
> methods:
> __init__
> __getitem__
> __str__
> 
> and the datamember
> __doc__

And an `args' method, as the library reference states:

Python 2.0 (#2, Apr  4 2001, 19:28:30) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> try:    
...  raise Exception
... except Exception, e:
...  pass
... 
>>> dir(e)
['args']

> So, I would imagine that if you subclass it, and do not specifically
> define these methods/data listed above, that you at least inherit them
> from the base class. Whereas, if you create an "exception" that does
> not
> derive from a base Exception class, it would not have these methods.

Correct.  A class you intend to use for exceptions is just like any
other class; there's nothing special about it.  Only when you derive
from exceptions.Exception does it make it clear you plan to use the
class for exception handling, and since you derive from the Exception
class you get standard behavior for free even if you do not extend it.

> Hmm...I just tried a little experiment in the interactive shell to see
> if I could confirm/deny my above theory, and it gave me surprising
> results that I do not understand, and which seem to indicate no
> difference between deriving it from an Exception class or not.

Well, if you don't understand the results, it's going to be a little
hard telling you what you did wrong or what you misunderstood without
knowing what you actually did.  :-)

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ History is a bucket of ashes.
\__/ Carl Sandburg
    Erik Max Francis' bookmarks / http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/
 A highly categorized list of Web links.


From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 12:04:04 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:04:04 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141805550.5125-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B506D74.634EA1F@lemburg.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> >directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
> 
> >#!/usr/local/python
> >""" Module Docs...
> >"""
> >directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
> >...
> >u = "H?ll? W?rld !"
> >...
> 
> Is there any need for new directive like that?
> Maybe it is possible to use Emacs-style "coding" directive
> in the second line instead:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/python
> # -*- coding=utf-8 -*-
> ...

I already mentioned allowing directives in comments to work around
the problem of directive placement before the first doc-string.

The above would then look like this:

#!/usr/local/bin/python
# directive unicodeencoding='utf-8'
u""" UTF-8 doc-string """

The downside of this is that parsing comments breaks the current
tokenizing scheme in Python: the tokenizer removes comments before
passing the tokens to the compiler ...wouldn't be hard to 
fix though ;-) (note that tokenize.py does not)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sat Jul 21 15:31:27 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 21:31:27 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <Xns90E2BDCEA67E7gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194> <j4snfsgin1.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <9j8uu1$lujt7$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <j4n15ygju8.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> writes:

> More and more I have the impression (from an freeze/install/py2exe
> point of view, I don't know too much about xml and PyXML) that
> installing PyXML should *replace* the Lib/xml module.
> By replace I mean that Lib/xml should be deleted/renamed,
> and PyXML should be installed into xml somewhere in sys.path.

I think this was discussed when the original _xmlplus solution was
developped, and rejected: distutils should never write into the
standard library.

Regards,
Martin



From dirck at pacbell.net  Fri Jul 13 14:48:37 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 11:48:37 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107131048.4b400d2d@posting.google.com>

Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5 at 4ax.com>...
> James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> >What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
> >for short programs <100 lines".
> 
> Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
> declared before use.  (In a long program, how hard it is to
> find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)
> 
> I really like Python, but for at least the reasons above, I
> can't see it for long programs.

With Python, you don't know if your code is going to work until
it's actually been tested.  Hmm...  :)

I don't think type safety makes that go away,
though it does help to catch some bugs at compile time.

With Python, at least there's no 'illusion of safety'
for code that hasn't been tested.
---------------------------------------------------
    if it hasn't been built, it doesn't compile,
    if it hasn't been executed, it doesn't run,
    if it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work,
    if it hasn't been used, it's not correct,
and if it hasn't been checked-in, it doesn't exist.
---------------------------------------------------


From brian_zhouNOSPAM at techie.com  Fri Jul 13 17:40:28 2001
From: brian_zhouNOSPAM at techie.com (Brian Zhou)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:40:28 -0700
Subject: Apache & Python
References: <20010713.15394573@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <995060457.436160@emperor.labs.agilent.com>

Apache & PythonBesides CGI or mod_*, one more alternative is jython servlet,
esp. when you have Java components.

See http://jywiki.sourceforge.net/index.php?JythonServlet for some examples.

-Brian

"Paul Duquette" <pauld at metrocast.net> wrote in message
news:20010713.15394573 at mis.configured.host...
I have installed python 2.1 on my windows2k machine and would like to know
how to use Python with Apache. I can't find any config instructions
anywhere. The python faq tells me how to configure it with IIS but I didnt
see anything about Apache.
Hopeing you Python experts out there can point me in the right direction.
Thanks




From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Thu Jul  5 06:37:35 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:37:35 GMT
Subject: system exec  ?
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <3B4443FB.E9D32C12@nokia.com>

alphaZeta wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
> in a python script.
> Does anybody know ?
> 
> For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
> the system.
> alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")

a = os.popen("ls -l","r").read()


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 20:35:49 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:35:49 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com> <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net> <dk9plto33uqab4t2ooil3t543kr7siekmr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b5cbf31.247227744@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:05:12 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:34:51 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
>wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:33 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>>[...]
>>>
>>>Fixed point arithmetic emulated by using integers with a scale factor,
>>>though, works very nicely. Better still when there's a language
>>>feature to do this automatically, but if we added fixed point types to
>>>Python we'd need *another* division operator - four so far including
>>>the rational one ;-)
>>>
>>This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
>>floating point support?
>
>I believe so - there was even a Python for Psion palmtops at one
>point, and the 3 series certainly doesn't have hardware floats.
>
>All it requires, I imagine, is that the C or C++ (not sure which)
>compiler that you build Python on must have a correctly implemented
>'double' type - the implementation of the floats in software or
>hardware should be irrelevant bar performance concerns.
>
No, I meant really no floating point, including software. What if you had
zero use for floating point, and wanted the benefit of a small footprint?

I wonder if the implementation is factored to where not using floating point
would let you substitute small exception-raising stubs for otherwise large
(?? usually, floating point carries a lot of baggage along in the C/C++ world)
chunks concerned with floating point.

Then that could be a make option. I was wondering if someone's been there done that.

>Linux Python is distributed both as source and as binary, and a source
>distro will compile and install itself with very little fuss if you
>know the basics of Linux. It should just install and work.
>
Yes, no prob.


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Thu Jul 19 04:24:25 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:24:25 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9j4af20d2o at enews4.newsguy.com...

> Perl and Python ruled the roost in Prechelt's tests (from the POV
> of development speed), indistinguishable from each other.  C and C++
> made the fastest executables on average.  Java was bad on both
> scores -- very slow programs taking a long time to develop.  Other
> scripting languages (Tcl, Rexx) gave intermediate development times
> but extremely slow results.  Somebody else claims to have rerun the
> same experiment with Common Lisp, getting runtimes competitive with
> C and C++ and development speed competitive with Perl and Python.
>
> We could definitely do with more such tests...!!!

With all respect, why? Other than Usenet fodder what good are these tests?
The large majority of programmers don't pick their development language
anyway. When programmers do have a choice, they choose what they are most
comfortable with. Showing that language XYZ is faster than ABC, or that XYZ
programmers are more productive, will sway few corporate IT managers or
project leads with deadlines and time-to-market pressures. In my experience
implementation languages are chosen based on (a) what is already in use, (b)
what the platform supports, (c) what an outside vendor or third-party
product forces the client to adopt, (d) someone's personal preference, or
(e) attempts to rescue doomed projects with a silver-bullet technology.
Language decisions are not influenced much by benchmarks.

Most readers of this newsgroup already are convinced of Python's worth, and
we'll do what we can to spread the word. But how many of us Python devotees
will abandon Python because some benchmark shows that Perl or C is faster?
Who cares?

Every comp.lang.* newsgroup needs a parallel group where students, junior
programmers, and the newly unemployed can post benchmarks of loops doing
multiplications and debate language trivia. They can graduate to the main
newsgroup when they understand how pointless those benchmarks and debates
really are.

I know who the audience is for these timing tests: In the cubicle next to
mine is a junior programmer (fresh from Sun Java training classes, his first
language) who frequently gets into long discussions with other programmers
about language trivia and "performance." His projects are always late
because he over-designs and ends up with unusable class structures. Over the
course of the last few months he has wasted hundreds of hours of his own
time, and incessantly interrupted other people, because he doesn't
understand Excel or SQL. He's writing a set of functions--he calls it a
class library--to calculate vacation time for various types of employees.
His code is supposed to replace a perfectly good spreadsheet that everyone
understands.

Sign me, cynical and sick of worthless benchmarks.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 14:33:43 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:33:43 +0100
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <26072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <26072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>
Message-ID: <YC0HXJAHKGY7Ew2v@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In message <26072001.2 at wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>, J?rgen A. Erhard
<juergen.erhard at gmx.net> writes
>>>>>> "Robin" == Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
>    Robin> it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The
>    Robin> popular vote is against the stupid float '/' operator.
>
>Robin, has it ever occured to you that the majority might be *for*
>that change?  But because we feel Guido *will* implement that change,
>we don't see a need to speak up.

sure it has, but this is a process. If no one says anything then it will
go through on the nod; even polite discussion doesn't seem to get
through. After ranting a bit it seems that there are quite a few people
of a similar persuasion. Change for change's sake is just plain wrong
and as I've said many times I don't want this marvellous language to
become a theoretician's language; it's too useful for that.

C style division may not have many nice properties, but it sure gets the
job done; many algorithms like to partition their index sets.
-- 
Robin Becker



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:49 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:49 +0100
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews>
Message-ID: <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:14 GMT, matthew.feinstein at jhuapl.edu (Matt
Feinstein) wrote:

>Why not make the operator // do what the -old- division operator did,
>so that the only change that has to be made for backwards
>compatibility is replace all /'s with //'s?

Nice and easy for the hobbyist - NOT a sane option for professional
users who've bet their reputations on Python, and besides.

It's precisely what the PEP is suggesting - change the functionality
of the existing operator for no particularly strong reason, and expect
everyone to change to a *new* operator to support a *different*
functionality.

One minor problem is that according to the PEP the original behaviour
will *not* be supported by *any* single operator - you have to figure
out for every single use whether the change is necessary - it is not a
no-brainer.

More important is all the software that is somehow in-the-field - a
VERY serious problem.



From quiptiq at yahoo.com.au  Thu Jul 12 08:20:01 2001
From: quiptiq at yahoo.com.au (Quiptic)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 22:20:01 +1000
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <3B4D3CF1.889B57BB@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <23891c90.0107120259.333a8a9a@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <87lmlumj9q.fsf@ivory.localhost>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:

> In this case, the use of lambda is convenient because * can't behave
> like a function, so you need a quick way of wrapping * up to act like
> one.

Just as an aside, this wrapper already exists:

import operator
>>> reduce(operator.mul, range(1,10))
362880




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 17:33:11 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:33:11 +0100
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994880540.7664.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kphgn.ns4.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:53 +0200, J?rgen A. Erhard <juergen.erhard at gmx.net> wrote:
>--pgp-sign-Multipart_Wed_Jul_11_21:40:43_2001-1
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>>>>>> "Kemp" =3D=3D Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> writes:
>
>    Kemp> So an interesting question is raised.
>
>Is it?
>
>    Kemp> If PHP and Ruby are gaining acceptance because they address
>    Kemp> business needs, what needs to be done to carry Python in
>    Kemp> that direction?
>
>*If*!  We can debate to no end whether PHP and Ruby are gaining
>acceptance, in business circles.
>
>And PHP and Ruby are quite different beasts.

PHP is very popular in open source projects. Ruby less so.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From grey at despair.dmiyu.org  Fri Jul 20 17:06:08 2001
From: grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:06:08 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lc1rt.6j0.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org> <20010719084721.75050AE1.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9lh79k.op.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:47:18 +0200, Mirko Liss <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Steve Lamb wrote:
>[..case-sensitivity..]
>>     Eh, preference is for case sensitivity.  Besides, I far prefer case
>> sensitivity with tab completion than case insensitivity without.  :)

>What about case-sensitive Python combined with case-insensitive
>tab-completion in IDLE? With an option to switch it off, of course.

    Erm, two things.  

1: I was referring to shells, not Python there.

2: I don't use IDLE and never will.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 16:09:42 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:09:42 +0100
Subject: XML for meta-information (was Re: Deposing Dictators)
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com> <wpL87.5132$CQ1.206410@news.pacbell.net> <3B639329.65EE0546@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <mk2emt08pscn61rper6hil2l9euqt5oq9n@4ax.com>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:38:01 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
wrote:

>Dirck Blaskey wrote:
>> 
>> "Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>> > ...
>> > 1.  A lot of the ideas turn out not to be for a programming language
>> > as such at all. Rather, it combines the ideas of literate programming
>> > with a kind of replacement for make. An XML notation would allow
>> > source code in a range of languages to be packaged in a linked set of
>> > XML files with documentation, detailed specification of the build
>> > process and explicit requirements for the run-time and build-time
>> > environment. It would allow you to specify, for instance, that the
>> > source code for this C++ module contains a constant structure derived
>> > according to xxx principles (for the documentation) and can be
>> > generated by running yyy script in zzz version of Python (or
>> > whatever).
>> 
>> Unless you have compelling reasons for using XML, I would suggest
>> the alternative of using Python itself as the meta-language.
>
>I think there are always compelling reasons for using XML.  XML 
>is not code -- it's data.  Python is for expressing algorithms
>'n such.  XML is perfect (well, maybe not quite) for meta-
>information, or at least as perfect as we've come up with to date.

My thoughts exactly. XML is not designed to be human-friendly, it is
only designed to be human-readable as a last resort.

>I like Steve's idea above, although it sounds like it might
>be a little "monolithic" if one didn't take care to keep the
>pieces separate.  Of course with XLink there's no reason the
>pieces of information relating to a single module all have
>to be in the same physical file.  

The root element in most files would be <component>, I think, though
there would be a file with root element <project>, some files with
root elements such as <tool> (to describe compilers, interpreters,
linkers and other tools, and how to call them) and possibly several
others.

I haven't looked into XLink yet, but certainly some kind of
link-following mechanism would be present. In fact, I expect that
'#include', 'import' and similar lines would generally be generated
automatically using tool-derived cross-reference information. The need
for include guards could be removed from C and C++ components - you
would know absolutely that precisely the declarations you have
declared an interest in are understood by your code with no chance of
double-inclusion.

I want pieces to be kept separate, but the division should be based on
the components - not on whether the file contains documentation,
source code, build instructions, test cases or whatever. Information
related to the same component should be kept in the same file, and it
should be the tools job to cross-reference and correlate the
information required to generate documents, executables or whatever.



From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Fri Jul 13 11:16:15 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:16:15 +0800
Subject: dependencies question on 2.1-5
In-Reply-To: <f18d2785.0107130516.7e126e9f@posting.google.com>; from larryd@musicalheritage.org on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 06:16:55AM -0700
References: <f18d2785.0107130516.7e126e9f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010713231615.C5436@Vetinari.home>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 06:16:55AM -0700, Lawrence D wrote:
> Hello everyone.  I have seen the following question asked, but I still
> do not understand what packages I need.
> 
> RedHat 7.0
> Kernel:2.2.17-8
> 
> The error I get when I try and build:
> error: failed dependencies:
> 	libcrypto.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5
> 	libssl.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5

These two are in openssl-0.9.6.

> 	libexpat.so.0   is needed by python2-2.1-5

And this is from the expat package (I think it's expat-1.1 for Red Hat
7.0 and expat-1.95 for Red Hat 7.1).

> What packages am I missing?

Slightly offtopic: you can always find this out by going to http://rpmfind.net and typing in the name of the library in the search box.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Borrow from a pessimist - they don't expect it back.



From perry at stsci.edu  Mon Jul  9 11:08:47 2001
From: perry at stsci.edu (Perry Greenfield)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:08:47 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994532533.10229.python-list at python.org...
>> ...
>> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>>   makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.
>
> I want to make a pitch for naming it idiv() instead.  The "i" should
> strongly remind that the result is an integer, something "div" says only
to
> former Pascal programmers.  Seems a Positive Good to me if, e.g.,
>
>    idiv(5.0, 3.0)
>
> returned 1 too; i.e., that idiv(i, j) mathematically return floor(i/j).

I sense some confusion here (or maybe I'm confused). The original point was
that
someone could simply search and replace the existing '/' operator with the
'div'
operator. The existing '/' does not guarantee an integer result (if one of
the operands
is a float for example). So providing an idiv operator that always returned
an
integer result would not suffice for the original desire which was to have
an
operator with the same semantics as the existing division operator. Or do I
misunderstand?

Perry Greenfield






From roy at panix.com  Mon Jul 23 13:26:36 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 13:26:36 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jhmoc$9nm$1@panix6.panix.com>

>    Tim> Why is that?  It's because unlike any other builtin arithmetic
>    Tim> operation, "/" today can cause *catastrophic* loss of information
>    Tim> silently, and in ordinary cases.  

Surely assignment causes catastrophic loss of information, no?  If I
say "x = 4", havn't I lost the old value of x?  Multiplication by zero
causes catastrophic loss of information too.  Should we redefine how
those operations work too?



From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 05:17:42 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:17:42 +0100
Subject: The best gui library for newbies.
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF3B@intrepid>

> From:	William Park [SMTP:opengeometry at yahoo.ca]
> Start with Tkinter, since it's part of standard distribution and been
> around for a while.  There is also a book called "Python and Tkinter
> Programming" by Grayson from Manning <www.manning.com>.
 
Never having programmed a GUI before, I found this impenetrable.
"Programming Python, 2nd Edition" by Mark Lutz, OTOH, got me going in no
time. *Then* I found John Greyson's book useful. YMMV.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Tue Jul 10 10:15:29 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:15:29 +0100
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com> <Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <3B4ADD33.CA2836D1@westerngeco.com> <Xns90DA8FF2145Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B4B0E01.89E7E7AA@westerngeco.com>


Thanks for your time Duncan I think I am beginning to get it.  I 
did not use re at all when I only needed to support this function
on UNIX and then when windows came along I (for some unknown 
reason) reached for re as a solution....  I am beginning to regret
this now  ;-)

Anyway as I said in reply to someone else in this thread I have a 
working solution (and a better understanding)

Thanks to all,
Martin.


Duncan Booth wrote:
> 
> Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
> news:3B4ADD33.CA2836D1 at westerngeco.com:
> 
> >> I think you maybe misunderstand what raw strings do. Raw strings
> >> simply prevent any backslash character that is present in the string
> >> from being interpreted as an escape sequence. They don't affect the
> >> processing or use of the string in any way. Since none of your literal
> >> strings contain backslashes there is no reason to use raw strings.
> >> In regular expressions backslashes are special, but so are many other
> >> characters that could appear in filenames, even on Unix.
> >
> >
> > You are right I don't understand...  My strings do include backslashes
> > (they are windows filenames from os.path.walk())  I Have indeed changed
> > to using string.replace() - having read the HOW TO on
> > www.python.org.... and it seems to work (without using raw strings....)
> > This all seems very confusing!
> >
> 
> Let me try to explain. A raw string is a change in notation, not a change
> in the string itself. So r'%s' is exactly the same as '%s' or "%s" or
> '''%s''' or '\x25\x73', but r'\x25\x73' is a string containing 8 characters
> two of which are backslashes.
> If you write a string containing a backslash, e.g. 'c:\autoexec.bat' the
> backslash may be interpreted as beginning an escape sequence, so in this
> case you get 'c:\x07utoexec.bat' as the \a converts to a bell character.
> Writing r'c:\autoexec.bat' or writing 'c:\\autoexec.bat' both give you a
> identical string containing exactly 15 characters. Both of these are
> strings (there is no separate raw string type), and each of them contains
> exactly one backslash character:
> 
> >>> file1 = r'c:\autoexec.bat'
> >>> file2 = 'c:\\autoexec.bat'
> >>> print file1
> c:\autoexec.bat
> >>> print file2
> c:\autoexec.bat
> >>> print repr(file1)
> 'c:\\autoexec.bat'
> >>> print repr(file2)
> 'c:\\autoexec.bat'
> >>> print len(file1), len(file2)
> 15 15
> >>> print type(file1), type(file2)
> <type 'string'> <type 'string'>
> 
> In other words the r prefix on a raw string simply changes the way
> the string literal is regarded at compile time, it has no further effect on
> the processing of data after Python has compiled your code.
> 
> If your program reads data from a file, or indeed gets it anywhere else,
> then backslashes have no special meaning. Only string literals do this
> special interpretation.
> 
> The real confusion creeps in because backslash also has a special meaning
> in regular expressions. So to put a backslash into a regular expression you
> must escape it by preceding it with another backslash, and to write two
> backslashes in literal string you must either use a raw string or write 4
> backslashes. So the string for a regular expression that matches one
> backslash followed by an 'x' could be written as:
>         s = '\\\\x'
>         s = r'\\x'
>         s = re.escape('\\x')
>         s = re.escape(r'\x')
> In all of these s ends up as the same three character string: two
> backslashes followed by an 'x'.
> 
> Why the 'x'? Because for reasons that escape me, raw strings cannot end
> with a single backslash:
> >>> r'\\'
> '\\\\'
> >>> r'\'
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     r'\'
>        ^
> SyntaxError: invalid token
> 
> I hope this makes things a bit clearer.
> --
> Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
> int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
> "\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From barry at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 11:58:07 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:58:07 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
	<2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
	<cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<mailman.994727597.27647.python-list@python.org>
	<9ihnv5$e2v$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <15180.30607.11847.673371@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "EJ" == Emmanuel Jeandel <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> writes:

    EJ> Playing with rfc822 is good, but i think mailbox.py has also
    EJ> several problems. When you do mailbox.next(), the function
    EJ> return a rfc822.Message but i wanted to use my class
    EJ> MyMessage, so i have to rewrite :

I added a default argument to the _Mailbox class in Python 2.2's
mailbox.py module:

    class _Mailbox:
	def __init__(self, fp, factory=rfc822.Message):
	    self.fp = fp
	    self.seekp = 0
	    self.factory = factory

so when a new mail message object needs to be created, it'll call
self.factory (i.e. factory must be a callable).  I use this in Mailman
to create instances of my own Message class (subclassed from
mimelib.Message.Message).

Python 2.2's mailbox.py should be compatible with earlier versions of
Python, and if you don't have cvs access, you can grab it from

    http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/Lib/mailbox.py?rev=1.31&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

Hope that helps,
-Barry



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Tue Jul 17 04:26:34 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:26:34 GMT
Subject: Python vs. Perl sockets (was Re: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7lfm.t2g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <yoxsnfwggcy.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <slrn9l7ubt.tq9.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> dijo:
> tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:
> 
> > Fair enough.  =)   Python does sound like a good choice in this case,
> > despite Perl's strength in sockets.
> 
> What do perl sockets have that python sockets don't? I'm doing
> logistics/socket stuff in Python also, and haven't had any problems
> with Python sockets and threads. A lot more goes into socket
> programming than bind& accept: concurrency, queues...

Not a challenge of Python's capability.  Just that Perl's socket
handling (AFAIK) is closer to the core code.  You are entirely correct,
however.

> *cough* Bareword file handles *cough*

* heh *   BFHs are pre-deprecated (just like global vars: not
technically preferred, but hardly less used)  =)

-- 
C combines all the power of assembly language with all
the ease of use of assembly language.
    -- trad


From wqh-2 at 263.net  Mon Jul 30 22:58:28 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:58:28 +0800 (CST)
Subject: may any one post an example for xml which use method appendchild(xml)
Message-ID: <3B661ED4.11870@mta2>

thanks
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Sat Jul 28 18:35:23 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:35:23 GMT
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com> <slrn9m5r4n.2ue.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <L6H87.69279$Xr6.307583@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Andrei Kulakov:

> Besides, editors detect that : and autoindent for you. Imagine for
instance
> that you are 5 levels of indentation to the right, if there were no colons
> you'd have to hit enter and then <tab> 5 times! No thanks :P

   Editors can also detect that you started the line with a structuring
keyword (if, def, ...) and indent. The colon is really only needed when you
want to place the body on the same line:

    if a: b = 1

   I'd be happy to see Python without the colons at the end of lines but its
no big deal.

   Neil





From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Wed Jul  4 18:37:22 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 23:37:22 +0100
Subject: i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field...
References: <9htlpd$ki$1@plutonium.btinternet.com> <3B42E57D.B9D11046@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <9i05or$fl5$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>

Yes thats it! if i shift the grid statement to a new line, all is ok,

ta,

Gary.


"XiaoQin Xia" <XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3B42E57D.B9D11046 at ccsr.cam.ac.uk...
Dear G. Willoughby,
I think the problem is in the line:
newName=Entry(frame1).grid(row=1,column=0)
# here newName is the return value of grid(), i.e, None, instead of a Entry
object.
things may be better if you write as:
newName=Entry(frame1)
newName.grid(row=1,column=0)
Cheers,
Xia Xiao-Qin
"G. Willoughby" wrote:
i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field, this is the code i
am using:
[snip...]
def getNew():
    result1=str(newName.get())
    print result1
[snip...]
Button(frame1, text="Add New Entry", command=getNew).grid(row=0,column=0)
newName=Entry(frame1).grid(row=1,column=0)
[snip...]
it somehow doesn't work, any ideas?
P.S. no classes are used anywhere in this program.
G. Willoughby




From pobrien at orbtech.com  Sun Jul 15 17:36:03 2001
From: pobrien at orbtech.com (Patrick K. O'Brien)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:36:03 GMT
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net> <wvk47.45349$J91.2359350@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <71o47.37639$C81.3113896@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Here is a slightly better version, in that it handles parameters:

class PseudoKeyword:
    '''A callable class that calls a method passed as a parameter.

    Good for creating a pseudo keyword in the python runtime
    environment. The keyword is really an object that has a repr()
    that calls itself which calls the method that was passed in the
    init of the object. All this just to avoid having to type in the
    closing parens on a method. So, for example:

        >>> quit = PseudoKeyword(SomeObject.someMethod)
        >>> quit

    SomeObject.someMethod gets executed as if it had been called
    directly and the user didn't have to type the parens, like
    "quit()". This technique is most applicable for pseudo keywords
    like quit, exit and help. '''

    def __init__(self, method):
        # XXX Should probably check that this is a callable object.
        self.method = method

    def __call__(self, *args, **kwds):
        self.method(*args, **kwds)

    def __repr__(self):
        self()
        return ''

--
Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech
"I am, therefore I think."





From djc at object-craft.com.au  Fri Jul 13 06:53:07 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 20:53:07 +1000
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <slrn9kc0ov.1ob.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <86pub5361i.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>
Message-ID: <m34rshxfqk.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "gnb" == Gregory Bond <gnb at itga.com.au> writes:

gnb> gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard H?ring) writes:
>> If you want a commercially supported Python module that implements
>> the Python DB-API, you should give Python another try and check out
>> the mxODBC module. It's the only module for which you can buy
>> commercial support, AFAIK.

gnb> Dave Cole has floated the idea of commercial support for his
gnb> Sybase module.

I had almost given the idea away until a poster raised the issue that
he could not really use a database module which the developer did not
consider a serious development project (or words to that effect).

For people who are of a like mind - for release 0.30 and later we are
going to offer commercial support.  This should do a number things:

1- Convince potential users that we do take development and support for
   the module seriously.

2- Provide us with a little bit of compensation for what we would
   probably do anyway.  If an income stream can be derived from the
   module then additional features and bugfixes become a higher
   priority relative to other tasks which do not generate a cash flow.

3- If you work for an organisation which has a policy of only using
   software which is commercially supported - you will soon have the
   option of using the Sybase module.

The terms and cost of the support contract have not been decided
yet.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 10:06:57 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:06:57 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9992EFB8CFmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Robin Garner <robin.garner at i.name.com> wrote in
news:Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam at 172.18.25.3: 

> "michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au> wrote in
> news:JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007 at ozemail.com.au: 
> 
> In most maths the sets are made explicit, and operators are defined as 
> functions with specific domains.  There are standard embeddings of
> Integers into Rationals and Reals, and if you are working with real
> numbers, then 2 and 2.0 are generally taken to stand for the same
> thing.  But strictly speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are
> different entities.  You would be hard pressed to find anyone writing
> the natural number 2 as 2.0. 

Indeed.  The domain and sets of operations are crucial, and it is important 
to keep integers and reals separate.  Of course we know that there is a 
injective mapping from integers to reals which preserves all sorts of nice 
properties the integers (but *not* all properties), but integers are not 
reals!

> 
> Since the Integers aren't a field, there isn't a generally accepted 
> function 
> 
>          / : Int x Int -> Int.
> 
> that agrees with the function 
> 
>           / : Real x Real -> Real
> 
> for all (a,b) where b is divisible by a.

However, since the integers are a "Euclidian domain", there is a function
    	divmod : Int x Int -> Int x Int
with the expected properties (where a/b is a plausible name for the first 
half of the result of this operation).



From tdelaney at avaya.com  Wed Jul  4 19:57:11 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:57:11 +1000 
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC23A@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> But the best & highest-motivated guru can only do so much if
> hampered by too-heavy process, inadequate tools, &c.  And one
> can't always choose (client needs given process and tools, but

This bit I agree with wholeheartedly

> motivation is high anyway e.g. because of VERY good $$ bonus...
> that still doesn't give the same productivity as when process
> and tools are optimally chosen).

And this I don't.

I've found that I've rarely been motivated to perform well in a project
based on the $$$ I was to receive for it (when I was a contractor). Once I
accepted how many $$$ I was getting, that was the end of it (after that, the
money is uninteresting and indeed annoying because you have to chase it).

Instead, environment, requirements and straight-out interest level of the
project motivate me. If I'm working with good people, on an interesting
project, and able to work how I feel comfortable (start work when I'm ready,
which is usually 10am, be able to organise to get time off if I need it,
etc) then I tend to work better. Note: casual clothes is not an option - I
have *never* worn a tie or trousers in my professional career, and I never
will. The most formal I've gone to is to wear a button-up shirt at one
place, but that won't happen again. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a place
that will let me work in boxer shorts like I do at home ... :)

Tim Delaney



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 17 14:31:24 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:31:24 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B540EBA.EE5372BD@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171117070.11975-100000@bms>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
<...>
> - which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
>
>   * Emacs style:
>
>       #!/usr/bin/python
>       # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-

This should work for everyone, but will it confuse emacs?.
I suppose, "# # ...", or "### ...", or almost any short sequence
starting with "#" will work, eh.

>   * Via meta-option to the interpreter:
>
>       #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8

This will require editing if python is not in /usr/bin, and can not be
used to pass more than one argument to the command (python, in this
case).

>   * Using a special comment format:
>
>       #!/usr/bin/python
>       #!encoding = 'utf-8'

This is confusing, and will only work on *nix (linux?) iff it is the
second (or later) line; if it is the first line... it will fail
because there is probably no executable named "encoding" available,
and if there is, "= 'utf8'" is unlikely to exist.

please,
Avoid character sequences that have other meanings in this context.


I think this should be done as a generic method for pre-processing
Python source before the compiler/interpreter has a look at it.

e.g.,

	# ## encoding utf-8

triggers whatever you encoding fans want,

	# ## format noweb

runs the source through a filter which can extract code noweb marked
up code, and maybe even installs the weaved docs and tangled code
(via distutils?)

	# ## MySpecialMarkup

runs the source through a filter named MySpecialMarkup.
MySpecialMarkup could be anything: extensions to docstrings, a
proprietary binary format, an entire package-in-a-file!

Generally:  #<magic> <directive> [<arguments>]

If Python does not know what the <directive> is it should either look
in a set location for a program of the same name then use its output as
the source, or look into a table that maps <directive> to a procedure
which results in Python source.


- Bruce




From pchilds at ithink.net  Tue Jul 24 14:41:10 2001
From: pchilds at ithink.net (Paul)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:41:10 GMT
Subject: Learning Python
Message-ID: <20010724.144042.1258638252.27706@localhost.localdomain>

I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.

Thanks in advance.


From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 14:03:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 22:03:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: formatting enhancement idea Re: Most important text processing
 examples
In-Reply-To: <01070609564400.07365@frock.ddmweb.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107062143370.15616-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Sam Penrose wrote:

>class PartialStringSubstitution(UserDict):
>    def __init__(self, dict={}):
>        UserDict.__init__(self, dict)
>    def __getitem__(self, key):
>        return UserDict.get(self, key, '%(' + key + ')s')

BTW, you can use anything but "(" and ")"  in format strings:

>>> print " -- %(2+2)s -- " % {"2+2": 4}
 -- 4 --

(Guido, please, do not change "%" to disallow it!)

It is really
easy to include something like:

text = EvaluatingFormat("""lalala %(2+2)s ... %(anything[0])s ...
     %({a+b}*c)s """, vars())

with {} used instead of ().

(I had a piece of code for that, but can't find it now.
It was, I remember, more efficient than DocumentTemplate)

You can even make a special class for string and
redefine "%" to do evaluation transparent...

BTW, it could be supercool feature to have built-in something
like:

a=2
b=2
""" %(a+b)z """ % {'__eval__': eval, '__dict__': vars()}

to produce:

4

And, also, it could be of some interest to make hooks
into formatting procedure. (If it will do no slowdown ;-)
(something similar to SAX ;-) to allow to define
calls for individual format identifiers.)
Probably, this idea is too old-fashioned in the world of
XML though...

def i_format(value, len, zero, ...):
  return "%s" % value
...

__format__.hook(i_format=i_format)

...

print "%012i" % 2.3
23
(and not 000000000023, because we defined though)

This feature could be useful, for example, to redefine
rounding rules of floating point formats, etc...

Wadda yu think?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 00:22:52 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:22:52 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995939441.3705.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <v9splts0932691b080rllm4h03id32u152@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:08:19 -0400, "Arthur Siegel"
<ajs at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>Will I have any problem with // and / - using them appropriately
>
>Doubt it.

For new code, certainly.

>Can I handle case sensitivity any way you give it to me.
>
>Cake.

I really think this is only going to cause minor problems - it's the
kind of thing that sounds worse than it is. Even in case sensitive
languages, defining same-bar-the-case identifiers is normally
considered confusing and just plain bad anyway.

>Why is two years of discussion going on as if someone like
>myself is not fully representative.  I simply have no reason
>to believe I am not.  And will scrutinize carefully any evidence
>which contends otherwise.

I cannot believe I am the only person who has gone out on a limb
advocating Python and who is now going to end up looking a right arse.

The only one shouting so much ATM, maybe ;-)

As for two years of discussion - I wish I'd noticed it then, not now,
but that ain't what happened.

>Will Python be a better language after it is done.  I don't have a
>good basis to disagree with that assertion.

Same here - but there is definite cause for serious doubt.



From max at alcyone.com  Sat Jul 21 20:23:36 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:23:36 -0700
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5A1D08.C2CF58DE@alcyone.com>

TheDustbustr wrote:

> Unless my logic is flawed, this should return 'PRIVMSG':
> 
> sender='Angel'
> print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
> 
> It prints '' (an empty string).  Is my logic flawed, or does Python
> dislike a
> string splice determined by a function?

Your logic is flawed.  Break the splice limits into pieces:

max at oxygen:~% python
Python 2.0 (#2, Apr  4 2001, 19:28:30) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import string
>>> sender='Angel'
>>> data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!'
>>> data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
''
>>> len(sender)+2
7
>>> string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')
7


-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ The revolution will not televised
\__/ Public Enemy
    Polly Wanna Cracka? / http://www.pollywannacracka.com/
 The Internet resource for interracial relationships.


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 20:56:42 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 20:56:42 -0400
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <mailman.996104447.4969.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uofq8cxth.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> [Grant Edwards]
> > The problem is that it's not _us_ (people who write Python programs) who
> > decide what version of Python is running on a system.
> 
> It's slowly dawning on me that some people don't ship Python *with* their
> apps.  What are you, nuts <0.9 wink>?  From PySol to Zope, everyone who
> gives a rip about stability ships the software they develop with.
> 
> I see I have 12 copies of the Microsoft C runtime library on my Win98 box at
> the moment, and for the same reason:  serious Windows app developers are
> careful to isolate themselves from C runtime changes too.

And then of course they get bit when, depending on the OS at hand, it
decides to use an already loaded (but incompatible) copy anyway :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Sat Jul 28 15:27:52 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 20:27:52 +0100
Subject: What RE would i use to match this whole word?
Message-ID: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

What RE would i use to match this whole word, 'Rasping'

i was using:

searchString = re.compile('Rasping', re.IGNORECASE) but this don't seem to
be right. Im missing something! any help would be appreiciated!

G. Willoughby




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 11:46:59 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:46:59 -0500
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
        <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220>
        <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com>
        <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15189.44915.757599.303504@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> The revised stupid testing py is:

    >> #!/usr/bin/env python
    >> def f():
    >>         for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
    >>                 j = 2.5 * 2.5
    >>         print i, j
    >> f()

Note that the end condition for this loop is not quite the same as your
original while loop version.  Before, the loop was

    i = 2.5
    while i < 1e7:
        j = 2.5 * 2.5
        i += 1

which resulted in a final value for i of 10000000.5.

The xrange fuction should be called as

    xrange(2.5, 1e7+1.0, 1.0)

so that i terminates the loop with a value >= 1e7.  Even so, note that both
the range and xrange functions coerce their arguments to ints:

    >>> range(2.5, 1e2, 1.0)
    [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]
    >>> xrange(2.5, 1e2, 1.0)[-1]
    99

so at the end of 

    for i n xrange(2.5, 1e7+1, 1.):
        pass

i has an integer value of 10000000, not a float value of 10000000.5, as was
the case for the while loop version.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Wed Jul 25 03:47:39 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:47:39 +0200
Subject: question about handling pointers in C extensions
References: <9jkhdv$r3o$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <yv2lmld4fhg.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Russell E. Owen" <owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu> writes:

> I would like a bit of help with handling pointers in C extensions. I 
> hope this is a simple question.
> 
> I want to write a Python interface to a device driver library. One 
> starts by opening the device and getting a particular kind of pointer, 
> e.g. (simplified):
>   DevType *dev_open()
> 
> Is the following reasonable, or is there a better way to do this?
> 
> static PyObject *open (PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
> ) {
>     PyObject *py_dev_p;
>     DevType *dev_p;
>     
>     /* call the C routine to open the device */
>     dev_p = dev_open();
>     if (dev_p == NULL) {
>         PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, "open failed");
>         return NULL;
>     }
> 
>     /* convert device pointer to a Python Long object */
>     py_dev_p = PyLong_FromVoidPtr ((void *) dev_p);

This makes py_dev_p into a reference you own, therefore ...

>     if (py_dev_p == NULL) {
>         return NULL;
>     }
> 
>     /* increment reference and return the PyLong */
>     Py_INCREF (py_dev_p);
>     return Py_BuildValue("O", py_dev_p);

... neither INCREF nor BuildValue are needed.

> }

In the long run you want to define your own PyObject type in which you
store the DevType *dev_p. The cast to long is a bit of a
hack. Something like

  typedef struct {
    PyObject_HEAD;
    DevType *dev_p;
  } DeviceObject;

You then want a related PyTypeObject along the lines of 

  PyTypeObject deviceTypeObject = {
    PyObject_HEAD_INIT(NULL);
    0,
    "Device",
    sizeof(DeviceObject),
    0,
    /**** more things to come, your book should have an example.
  };

Don't forget in your init code to

  deviceTypeObject.ob_type = &PyType_Type;

I found it like this in the docs, I think.

Having your own type of objects makes things a bit saver, because you
now can write:

static PyObject*
close (PyObject *obself, PyObject *args)
{
  DeviceObject *self;

  if( !obself ) {
    /* this was called as a module function like
       device.close(arg)
      where 'device' is the name of your module
    */
    if( !PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "O!", &deviceTypeObject, &self) ) 
      return NULL;
  } else {
    /* this was called like
       fin = device.open()
       fin.close()
       so we are sure already that obself is of the correct type
    */
    self = (DeviceObject*)obself;
  }

  /* Now do it */
  whateverCloseFunctionIsNecessary(self->dev_p);

  Py_INCREF(Py_None);
  return Py_None;
}


  Harald Kirsch


-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 25 19:29:32 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:29:32 -0700
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com>

>Kevin Smith wrote:
> 
> I am very glad to see the new features of Python 2.2, but I do have a minor
> gripe about the implementation of static and class methods.  My issue stems
> from the fact that when glancing over Python code that uses static or class
> methods, you cannot tell that a method is a static or class method by looking
> at the point where it is defined.  
> ...

Agree strongly. This will also be a problem for documentation generation
tools, type extraction tools and class browsers. I believe it would be
easy to add a contextual keyword 

> class C:
>         def static foo(x, y):
>             print "classmethod", x, y

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Thu Jul 12 06:53:18 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:53:18 +0100
Subject: Need to change the icon in the title bar of a Tk() window
Message-ID: <3B4D819E.FE528677@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Hi, anybody,

I need to change the icon in the title bar of a Tk() window, but failed
to find any method to do it.
In addtion, what kinds of image files are accepted for Tkinter to place
on the title bar?

Xiao-Qin Xia


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 16:07:32 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:32 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B631B84.2229B634@ActiveState.com>

I'm reading the section on the introspection API but I don't understand
something. 

1. If I am sitting at an interpreter prompt and I have an object how do
I figure out the complete list of currently available attributes
available on that object. 

2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?

If I understand correctly, doing this is not sufficient:

 >>> T = foo.__class__
 >>> T
 <type 'Foo'>
 >>> dir(T)              

I don't think that this will get base class attributes or attributes
hidden in __getattr__. And even if it did, it would be nice to have a
single API that combined instance attributes and class attributes
according to the fallback rules. i.e. I'd like something as close to
this as is realistically possible:

def attrs(x):
	return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 17:24:36 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:24:36 -0500
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <20010716202955.LXMI20827.femail3.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
References: <20010716202955.LXMI20827.femail3.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <15187.23444.135787.640637@beluga.mojam.com>

    Jay> I've never noticed the list behaviour before that you pointed out,
    Jay> what causes that, if you don't mind my asking?

When you execute something like

    for elt in somelist:
        yadda(elt, yadda, yadda)

the for loop keeps an index into the list (internally - you can't access it)
and calls

    somelist.__getitem__[index]

as you traverse the list (ignore the upcoming iterator stuff).  If you
change the parts of the list you haven't yet visited there is no way to
convey this to the for loop.  If the list might change as you are traversing
it the normal Python idiom is to traverse the list back-to-front:

    for i in range(len(somelist)-1, -1, -1):
        elt = somelist[i]
        yadda(elt, yadda, yadda)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 15:00:39 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:00:39 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com> <m2puaqh6t2.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E8B2C2EF3FBmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <m2ofq9g4he.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E9954091A7Fmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9> <mtwv4wzzwd.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <m2y9pc5ljc.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <rNZ77.30642$EP6.7885925@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Foley" <see at below> wrote in message
news:m2y9pc5ljc.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz...
> Yes, that's pretty much what I was getting at.  Lisp isn't text
> containing parentheses, it's lists or trees of objects, which has no
> parentheses (unless you have some reason to want to represent a
> parenthesis-object in your code; e.g., as a character).  The printed
> representation of
>
>            a
>           / \
>          b   c
>
> as (a b c) is just an easier-to-deal-with form of "marshal" output.

Has anyone writen an environment that uses the 'proper' 2-D,
unmarshalled tree form?  I think I might prefer such.

> Nothing says you have to use that particular print representation,
> though everybody does

who can tolerate the flattened form.

Terry J. Reedy





From tjenkins at devis.com  Tue Jul 10 12:01:58 2001
From: tjenkins at devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:01:58 -0400
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B26F6.8010305@devis.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:

> 
> What would be constructive for Python would be for others to donaite
> ther time to testing your work just as you donante your time writing
> extensions in the first place.  This gets at the "Workgroup"
> mentality/approach I have been talking about.  In other words, it's
> not enough for you, working alone to produce a great Sybase extension.
>  Rather, those of us who hope to use your module should be willing to
> help build it, lending our time as testers.  My personal feeling is
> that if ten or twenty folks would jump in and help you out, in a year
> (working part-time) Python could have a diamond hardened Sybase
> module.  If the same were done with Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2,
> Python too could have a serious killer app in the way of db
> accessibility.  Python is way cooler than PL/SQL or any other language
> used for writing db apps for that matter.
> 

Ed -
You keep harping on this whole Oracle, SQL Server blah, blah, blah 
issue.  Do you not realize that DCOracle is written, maintained, and 
supported by Digital Creations for use in their clients applications? 
And mxODBC is also written and supported for a fee by the author's 
corporation?

What more do you want?

-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com




From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul 16 12:21:13 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:21:13 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>; from jparlar@home.com on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 09:19:09AM -0400
References: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <20010716122113.A908@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 09:19:09AM -0400, Jay Parlar wrote:
>
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:

Try
    if BB.has_key[eachItem]:
where BB is dictionary whose keys are strings in list B, ie.
    BB = {}
    for i in B:
	BB[i] = None (or any value)

>         A.remove(eachItem)



-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From deepak9999 at mail.com  Fri Jul  6 00:29:50 2001
From: deepak9999 at mail.com (Deepak)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 21:29:50 -0700
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
Message-ID: <48365474.0107052029.12d28427@posting.google.com>

Hi,
I tried to go through all the related postings on the newsgroup
regarding this.
However, I haven't figured out a way to get Tkinter working in an MFC
application that uses embedded python interpreter... Here is the
simple code
that I am trying in the MFC application

The code in C is simple like this: -

#include <Python.h>

void myFunc (int argc, char **argv)
{
   Py_Initialize ();
   PySys_SetArgv (argc, argv);
   PyRun_SimpleString ("execfile('myTkinterApp.py')");
}

The code in Python script (myTkinterApp.py) is like this: -

try:
   import Tkinter
   print 'Tkinter successfully imported'
   try:
      root = Tkinter.Tk ()
      print 'Successful'
   except:
      print 'failed'
except:
   print 'Could not import Tkinter'


The result is that it prints: -

Tkinter successfully imported
failed

The STDOUT is redirected to print to one of the MFC windows. 
I tried to run this by changing the STDOUT to default (standard)
STDOUT. However, even that did not help.

Any examples or suggestions will be extremely valuable.
Deepak


From fumingw at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 14:09:17 2001
From: fumingw at yahoo.com (Fuming Wang)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:09:17 -0700
Subject: indetation problem
Message-ID: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com>

I am experiencing indentation problems when mixing tabs and spaces in
my code. They appear in correct indentation in my editor, but cause
error when running them. I am using Python 2.2a1. I reproduced the
problem in following interactive sequence:

>>> def dummy():
... <  tab >a = 1
... <sp><sp>b = 2
  File "<stdin>", Line 3

IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level.

Question: is this something new, or it has always been there. It is
strange that I have been using Python for several years, but only
notice this behavior recently.

Thanks,

Fuming Wang


From brian at supremecasino.com  Thu Jul  5 15:10:57 2001
From: brian at supremecasino.com (brian at supremecasino.com)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 19:10:57 -0000
Subject: A New Slot Machine Means Big Bonuses For All
Message-ID: <20010705191057.47252.qmail@multiwebhosting.com>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/f9b8ee95/attachment.html>

From Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com  Tue Jul 31 13:59:50 2001
From: Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com (Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:59:50 -0500
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
Message-ID: <0089EBDB.N22121@rsmi.com>

Alex writes - 

>Maybe, if a _small_ fight
>is needed to ENABLE (as opposed to FORCE:-) use of a
>semi-smart, case-preserving tool, it MIGHT be worth it,
>if the fight be small enough...?

Why would anyone oppose a detached elective tool?

We may be mean, but not recreationally mean.

ART 




From wheelege at tsn.cc  Wed Jul 25 02:56:46 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:56:46 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <033001c114d6$f8d43c20$0200a8c0@ACE>

From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>:
> <snip!>
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
> 

  Now everybody, hang your heads in shame!




From david7 at visto.com  Mon Jul 23 15:55:21 2001
From: david7 at visto.com (David)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 12:55:21 -0700
Subject: Using QT to change menu bar
Message-ID: <ac71c3f1.0107231155.7f07f467@posting.google.com>

Can anyone tell me how to use QT and python to do the following:
Usually when you do a mouse over an item on any windows menu bar, you
will see a boarder around that item. Now I need to do is to make it
not to have any border, and also highlight the item when I do a mouse
over. Usually only the item in sub menu will be highlighted when you
do a mouse over.

Thank you!


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 11:56:33 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:56:33 +0200
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <3B4B1F25.996D8514@yahoo.com>
References: <mailman.994749518.7874.python-list@python.org> <3B4B1F25.996D8514@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20010710175633.A8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 03:34:52PM +0000, Paul Winkler wrote:

> > This is an area where community contributions are almost non-existent. 
> > If anyone is looking for a low-commitment way to help Python out, pick
> > your favorite library module and contribute some good tests for it! 
> > There's a decent orientation Lib/test/REAMDE to help you get started. 
> > The regrtest.py framework is baroque and inadequately documented, but it
> > can run both unittest- and doctest-based tests in natural ways now.

> This sounds like a good idea. In fact I think I'll do that. Should we work
> from CVS, or is Python 2.1 OK?

CVS is always best, since a number of tests were added since 2.1. It also
gives you an excuse to check out the cool new features in 2.2: iterators and
generators :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 11:37:07 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:37:07 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 11:02:12 -0400, Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> You may get some speedup by making B a dictionary, and using has_key()
>> to see if the word is there. This should get you a O(log(n)) instead
>> of O(n) inside the loop. To gain further performance, use filter to
>> skim A.
>
>What's n, here?  This looks linear in the length of A, and constant time
>in the number of unique elements in B, to me.

I was referring to the inner loop. n is the number of elements in B 
(or of keys in C). 'item in B' is O(n), and 'C.has_key(item)' is O(log(n)). 
You still have to multiply by len(A) for the whole program. 

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 13:12:09 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:12:09 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238
 suggestion)
In-Reply-To: <006301c115ce$33c0bc80$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107261028580.11619-100000@bms>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Chris Gonnerman wrote:
<...>
> The "original" semantics under my proposal would be "invented" as already
> deprecated, and would be removed in 3.0 as the current plan stands.  We
> have deprecated and subsequently removed things before without the
> __future__ directives and it didn't kill us; hence I see the question of
> "transitory implications" as only of minor concern.  Remember, explicit
> (even in documentation) is better than implicit.

I'm not sure then, why "original" would be needed if it will be
removed when 3.0 comes out.  My understanding is that the original
semantics will be available until 3.0, without any additional work.
Or maybe they will be available via an option only, for the release
just before 3.0.

If you can convince the `powers that be' that the original semantics
should be retained as an incompatible option, then "from __numeric__
import ..." would seem to be a reasonable course of action.  Ditto if
you want rationals, etc., to be an option instead of builtin;
although a plain "import rationals" would look nicer.

However, if you are after an alternative to an ugly command line
switch... then let's convince Guido that the __past__ need not stick
around forever, because at some point the past becomes so distant as
to have no direct bearing on the present and can safely be ignored).
Guido gets to play god and decide when the __past__ is distant enough
to have support for it dropped.


- Bruce

p.s. - Explicit documentation is no good if it doesn't get read, and
while we can't do anything about those who don't read all the
pertinent docs, we can at least not lead them into thinking that a
transitory feature will stick around because we have implemented it in
such a way as to imply it may be permanent.




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 13:00:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:00:19 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 
 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>   <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995217986.28167.python-list@python.org> <3b521a83.2007802417@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B546F23.F3DFEB9B@ActiveState.com>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> 
>...
> If the scope is always a complete file, what about just building on
> the -U in #!/usr/bin/python -U, and letting all interested programs
> look for flags?

Note that there are many Python files that are not meant to be directly
executable as scripts. e.g. most files in the standard library do not
have shebang lines.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 15 05:39:01 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:39:01 GMT
Subject: win32net.NetUserGetInfo error
References: <350a368d.0107131301.1bd4d921@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5164F3.9020203@ActiveState.com>

Peder Jakobsen wrote:

> import win32api
> import win32net
> 
> userName=win32api.GetUserName()
> info=win32net.NetUserGetInfo(None, userName, 1)
> 
> I get the following error


Works for me.  I guess you have a domain controller, or the username 
actually exists on another server.  Off the top of my head I can't 
recall exactly how to determine the controllers on the network - 
hopefully someone else will help.

Mark.



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 08:50:51 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:50:51 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <jt4oltg3ekdlig096677p295f7mnbumteu@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:18:43 +1200, Greg Ewing
<greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

>Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
>> 
>> If I was told that experinced programmers might
>> appreciate this change for any possible reason -
>> I'd be quiet as a mouse.
>
>I'm an experienced programmer, and I appreciate the
>change on the grounds that different operations on
>the same data should be spelled differently.

It's not a different operation on the same data. It's the same
operation on a different datatype. Floating point division simply
extends integer division to some extend past the point - quite
appropriate when dealing with floats, but extending a principle is not
the same as defining a fundamentally different operation.

You might as well claim floating point addition is different from
integer addition - that also requires a different algorithm and gives
a different result.

But that is only a small part of the problem. The real problem is
compatability.

You disagree? - then may the bugs of a thousand divisions infest your
code forever ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 19:12:13 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:12:13 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
 "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

> Which is not too horrible, but it is extra cruft. So let me turn your
> question around. Can you give an example where you want the type of division
> (float vs floor) to change depending on the type of input (int, float,
> complex)? I can't, although I suspect there must be some. I also suspect
> they're very rare.

Rather than arguing about nonexistent situations, let's make an analogy:
In Python, "123"+"456" = "123456" but 123+456=579.  These are two different 
operators that happen to have the same symbol.  I really don't see why 
integer-division and floating-point-division should be treated any 
differently from this case.

Maybe it would have been more type-safe to have defined a language in which
string concatenation was defined by some other symbol ++, so that 
"123"++"456" would equal "123456" but "123"+"456" would automagically 
coerce the arguments into integers and return 579.  You could argue either 
way on the abstract merits of such a language.  But that's not the language 
we have now, the automagic coercion violates the "better explicit than 
implicit" principle, and there are too many calls to the 
string-concatenation '+' operator to change them without great pain.

Another possible step instead of breaking integer division would be to add 
a warning for any int/float or float/int division, to make it more explicit 
that the two kinds of division are different and that you need to make up 
your mind which one you want to do.  Take out all the automagic and make 
people use explicit casts.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 11:47:04 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:47:04 +0100
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
References: <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995640935.26598.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <b1kglto0o6j0bgpl5vc55ja4adbktobgdj@4ax.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:53:52 +0100, "Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)"
<tony at lsl.co.uk> wrote:

>Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who is a
>> professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.
>
>Eek - I hope you don't really mean that last subclause!

A *real* programmer gets in a good six hours code-slinging in their
sleep - that period when all the hard problems find their neat
original solutions. Apart from the ones that get scribbled on a
beer-mat, that is ;-)

What do mean, get a life? - There's no Python port for the life
platform yet!

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Tue Jul 31 21:36:51 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 21:36:51 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9k7il0$7dv$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3dd76gv9vw.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:
> is if you're trying to do
> 
>     if x in [int, long]:
> 
> which starts being rather ugly as the only reason for an idiom's
> existence.

Plus it's actually would be wrong, I think.  'in' uses the ==
operator, so that expression returns true if the object x is the int
or long type object.  Do we want to explain that 'x in int' and 'x in
[int,long]' do quite different things?

+1 on ripping 'x in int' out of CVS.  Like children, it's sorta cute
at first glance but becomes annoying after longer acquaintance and
contemplation.

--amk


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 21:25:13 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:25:13 +0100
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 11 Jul 2001 21:20:02 GMT, Gergo Barany <gergo.barany at gmx.net> wrote:
>phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> [snip flamebait crap]
>
>If anyone is going to to respond to this thread, *please* take
>comp.lang.c out of the Newsgroups: list. We don't do advocacy here.
>Followups set.

My post was an entirely objective statistical summary, and contained 
no subjective or opinion-based data at all.

If you think that facts are "crap" and hard statistical analysis
is "flamebait" then all I can say is that it is up to others to
decide, on the basis of your posts, how "crappy" you are.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 08:56:41 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 05:56:41 -0700
Subject: Regural expression puzzle for gurus
References: <3B4EA0C8.9F697D06@vip.fi> <3B4EA470.AA7B0D12@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107130456.6cc2d272@posting.google.com>

Joonas Paalasmaa <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message news:<3B4EA470.AA7B0D12 at nokia.com>...
> Pekka Niiranen wrote:
> > 
> > I have a string in the middle of a text starting with #-sign and ending
> > to \W.
> > I can find it with re.compile('#\w+') and  would like to replace it by
> > adding a
> > # -sign also to the end of it.
> > 
> > Example:
> > 
> >             original string:           xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%
> > 
> >             after replacement:    xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!"?%
> > 
> > How can I do replacement with a single regural expression line ?
> > 
> > I have found a solution like:
> >            text = 'xx:yy:#AAA:-#BBB:aa'
> >            line = re.compile('#\w+')
> >            list = line.findall(text)
> >            for i in range(len(list)):
> >                  text = text.replace(list[i],list[i]+'#')
> > 
> > >>>  text
> > 'xx:yy:#AAA#:-#BBB#:aa'
> > 
> > I would like to do this without the for -loop (unless somebody can
> > convince
> > me the found solution is the fastest available)
> 
> Try this.
> 
> import re
> text = """xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%"""
> print re.sub(r"(#\w+)(\W)", r"\1#\2", text)
> 
> - Joonas

The \W is not only unnecessary but will cause failure if the input
string ends in the desired pattern -- there would be nothing for \W to
match. Quite simply, all you need is:

re.sub(r"(#\w+)", r"\1#", text)


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Thu Jul 26 15:51:58 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:51:58 -0500
Subject: Why Johnny Can't Distribute Processing.   WAS: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com>
        "Why Johnny Can't Distribute Processing.   WAS: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?" (Jul 26,  6:30pm)
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> 
	<dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> 
	<3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> 
	<mailman.996163788.16805.python-list@python.org> 
	<3B6060C3.A6E69FF5@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <1010726145158.ZM95844@anson.hcs.tl>

On Jul 26,  6:30pm, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
>
> 1) Aynchronous APIs to the messaging and queuing manager
> 2) Platform-neutrality: From mainframes to desktops
> 3) Class-Of-Service selection
> 4) Per-event, selectable write through to backing store
> 5) Bindings for C and Java, and also the major scripting langs: Python, TCL,
Perl, VBA
> 6) Remote management and recovery capability
> 7) Plugable security and encryption.
>
This is an interesting set of criteria. At GaTech, where I am the other 9 mos
of the year, we are working on a project called "Infosphere" and Infosphere to
address some of these concerns.  Right now we are built on top of a framework
called "ECho" which is a high-performance event messaging system that runs on
several platforms (mostly Solaris, WinNT, Linux, with support for Java
up-and-coming). Not all of this functionality is built in, but you can add it
easily. For instance, not only could you do logging to a backing store, but you
can do remote logging just as easily. Security, I think, is slowly being added,
and class-of-service is actually one of the major goals for the near-term.
ECho is a very efficient framework, and I think they built an RPC using it that
was faster than SunRPC.
Right now you're probably most interested in ECho:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/systems/projects/ECho
but Infosphere is just ramping up
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/infosphere

Galen Swint




From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 07:12:55 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 13:12:55 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org>
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <20010715131255.Z5396@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 11:28:39PM -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

> >>>>> "RS" == Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
> 
>     RS> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into
>     RS> python:
> 
>     RS>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);
> 
>     RS> The obvious translation would be:
> 
>     RS>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
> 
>     RS> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on
>     RS> it.  Perl handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra"
>     RS> variables undefined, whereas python raises a ValueError
>     RS> exception.  What I'd like to do is have the extra field
>     RS> variables left as null strings.

> Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing a
> PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.

Oh, cool. Here are some ideas for you, from my second-most favourite
language, LambdaMOO. It's the language that learned me programming, and laid
the groundwork for my love of Python -- it's an amazingly Pythonic language,
probably because it was developed at PARC Xerox to teach basic OOP concepts.
I strongly suspect either ABC or Python influenced MOO (or viceversa) but
no-one ever came forward to admit it :)

Anyway, MOO lists are created using '{}'s like in ABC, and indexing starts
with 1, not 0. And MOO lists can't be added with '+', so there is a special
'splice' operator that 'unpacks' a list in-place: the MOO expression

     caps = {"A", "B"};
     l = {"a", "b", @caps, "c", "d"}

Is the same as the Python 

     caps = ["A", "B"]
     l = ["a", "b"] + caps + ["c", "d"]

And this '@' syntax comes back in the 'sequence unpacking' MOO has. The
LambdaMOO Programmers Manual explains this so nicely, you could almost copy
this into your PEP :-)

>From ftp://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/ProgrammersManual.html (also
available in .tex, .dvi, .ps and .txt from the same location):

"""
Spreading List Elements Among Variables

It is often the case in MOO programming that you will want to access the
elements of a list individually, with each element stored in a separate
variables. This desire arises, for example, at the beginning of almost every
MOO verb, since the arguments to all verbs are delivered all bunched
together in a single list. In such circumstances, you could write statements
like these:

first = args[1];
second = args[2];
if (length(args) > 2)
  third = args[3];
else
  third = 0;
endif

This approach gets pretty tedious, both to read and to write, and it's prone
to errors if you mistype one of the indices. Also, you often want to check
whether or not any extra list elements were present, adding to the tedium.

MOO provides a special kind of assignment expression, called scattering
assignment made just for cases such as these. A scattering assignment
expression looks like this:

{target, ...} = expr

where each target describes a place to store elements of the list that
results from evaluating expr. A target has one of the following forms:

variable

This is the simplest target, just a simple variable; the list element in the
corresponding position is assigned to the variable. This is called a
required target, since the assignment is required to put one of the list
elements into the variable.

?variable

This is called an optional target, since it doesn't always get assigned an
element. If there are any list elements left over after all of the required
targets have been accounted for (along with all of the other optionals to
the left of this one), then this variable is treated like a required one and
the list element in the corresponding position is assigned to the variable.
If there aren't enough elements to assign one to this target, then no
assignment is made to this variable, leaving it with whatever its previous
value was. 

?variable = default-expr

This is also an optional target, but if there aren't enough list elements
available to assign one to this target, the result of evaluating
default-expr is assigned to it instead. Thus, default-expr provides a
default value for the variable. The default value expressions are evaluated
and assigned working from left to right after all of the other assignments
have been performed.

@variable

By analogy with the @ syntax in list construction, this variable is assigned
a list of all of the `leftover' list elements in this part of the list after
all of the other targets have been filled in. It is assigned the empty list
if there aren't any elements left over. This is called a rest target, since
it gets the rest of the elements. There may be at most one rest target in
each scattering assignment expression.

If there aren't enough list elements to fill all of the required targets, or
if there are more than enough to fill all of the required and optional
targets but there isn't a rest target to take the leftover ones, then E_ARGS
is raised.

Here are some examples of how this works. Assume first that the verb
me:foo() contains the following code:

b = c = e = 17;
{a, ?b, ?c = 8, @d, ?e = 9, f} = args;
return {a, b, c, d, e, f};

me:foo(1)                        error--> E_ARGS
me:foo(1, 2)                     => {1, 17, 8, {}, 9, 2}
me:foo(1, 2, 3)                  => {1, 2, 8, {}, 9, 3}
me:foo(1, 2, 3, 4)               => {1, 2, 3, {}, 9, 4}
me:foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)            => {1, 2, 3, {}, 4, 5}
me:foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)         => {1, 2, 3, {4}, 5, 6}
me:foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)      => {1, 2, 3, {4, 5}, 6, 7}
me:foo(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)   => {1, 2, 3, {4, 5, 6}, 7, 8}

Using scattering assignment, the example at the begining of this section
could be rewritten more simply, reliably, and readably:

{first, second, ?third = 0} = args;

It is good MOO programming style to use a scattering assignment at the top
of nearly every verb, since it shows so clearly just what kinds of arguments
the verb expects.
"""

I think I would really enjoy seeing

  fromaddr, toaddr, subject="(no subject)", contenttype="text/plain" = f()

(though I know that's syntactically impossible, *snif* ;)
and

  user, domain, @aliases = getinfo()

in Python, though I doubt I ever will :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul  3 21:47:44 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:47:44 -0400
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
In-Reply-To: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEEFKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tomasz Stochmal]
> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?

You didn't say what you want to accomplish.  If the idea of "provably
correct" programs appeals to you, Eiffel will give you more help than any
other practical language I know of.  But since your post didn't lay out your
assumptions, your goals, or how you view language characteristics as fitting
in with either, you're not a *natural* candidate for embracing Design by
Contract <0.6 wink>.




From tundra at tundraware.com  Wed Jul 11 15:00:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 19:00:01 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
Message-ID: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>

I'm curious about why python was designed to handle the tuple semantics
described below the way it does.  Perhaps one of you language experts
can 'splain it to me.

I have a data structure that looks like this (each of the elements is a
string):

ds = (
      (
       (name-1, descrip-1),
       ( (argA-1, argB-1), ... (argA-n, argB-n) )
      ),

      ...

      (
       (name-n, descrip-n),
       ( (argA-1, argB-1), ... (argA-n, argB-n) )
      ),
     )


One of the tuples of ds has a single arg pair.  That is, it looks
like this:

      (
       (name-n, descrip-n),
       ( (argA-1, argB-1) )
      ),


But, at runtime, python sees is as this:

      (
       (name-n, descrip-n),
       (argA-1, argB-1)
      ),


>From what I've read, to force the data structure to be maintained correctly, 
I have to add a trailing comma to the single arg pair like this:

      )
       (name-n, descrip-n),
       ( (argA-1, argB-1), )
      ),


And that works fine.  But *why* is the trailing comma designed into the
language semantics this way.  I've been scratching my head and cannot come
up with a rationale'.  It seems to me that the explicit use of the parens
should be telling python that I want the second entry in each data
structure to be a *tuple* of 0 or more tuples.

Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to prepare
the way for adding some later.  Would I use:

        (()), (), ((,)) ???

'Just curious...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 05:37:07 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:37:07 +0200
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com> <slrn9ki0e0.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B4AC204.80941297@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9ieic40622@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B4AC204.80941297 at tundraware.com...
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> >
> >
> > This works for me:
> >
> >     try:
> >         input = raw_input()
> >     except KeyboardInterrupt:
> >         # handle Ctrl-C
> >
> > The only difference I see is the capital 'B' you have in
> > 'KeyboardInterrupt'.  Change it to lowercase and see what happens.
>
> (Whoops, I spelled it wrong here, but correctly in my program.)
>
> This code fragment works fine under Unix (FreeBSD 4.3) but not under
> Windows 2000.  Is this a known bug or is there some magic I'm missing?

It seems to me (trying under NT4) that raw_input() is generating
an EOFError on Ctrl-C (or Ctrl-Break) rather than the exception
you (reasonably expect), i.e. KeyboardInterrupt.  Maybe try an
    except (KeyboardInterrupt, EOFError):
        # whatever
to catch both...?  Of course, on Unix EOFError would happen if
the user hit Ctrl-D rather than Ctrl-C, and on Windows also on
Ctrl-Z followed by a return, but...


Alex





From jonas.b at home.se  Sun Jul 15 04:22:48 2001
From: jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 01:22:48 -0700
Subject: Re-sizing images in Python?
References: <q6547.41446$B56.8781902@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <4e2ddb70.0107150022.7e5bc118@posting.google.com>

There is a great program that can do that (and much more). It is
called ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/). There is a Python
API to it but I havn't tested it myself.

/Jonas B

"Darren Watson" <Darren.Watson3 at ntlworld.com> wrote in message news:<q6547.41446$B56.8781902 at news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>...
> I would be very grateful for any advice that fellow list members can provide
> about Pythons ability to resize image files (jpg and gif).
> 
> I would like to write a script that can process all the files in a directory
> and resize the images to a specified size (passed in as an argument).
> However, I am not sure if this is a task that Python 2.1 can perform or if
> it is, which library to use.
> 
> If possible I would like the script to scale images in order to 'best fit' a
> particular area.
> 
> Many Thanks


From mkx at excite.com  Mon Jul  2 17:42:56 2001
From: mkx at excite.com (mkx at excite.com)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 21:42:56 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
Message-ID: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com>

Do the folks at MS _want_ us to find them unreasonable?

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010702/tc/ms_attacks_open_source_1.html

"The license for Microsoft's Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is in its
second beta release to developers, says that it may not be used with
any software under the Free Software Foundation's General Public
License (GPL) and six other forms of "potentially viral software."
That language refers to open source code's freely available and shared
code licensing agreements. The wording of the license cites the Linux
OS and the Perl scripting language as examples."




From reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com  Tue Jul 31 11:36:02 2001
From: reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com (Robert Amesz)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:36:02 GMT
Subject: The best gui library for newbies.
References: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt> <mailman.996528841.13919.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EFAF63546DErcamesz@127.0.0.1>

William Park wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 12:21:48PM +0100, David A. wrote:
>> H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to
>> beegin doing some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing
>> I want to know is wich one is the best gui toolkit for python when
>> you are a newbie? Wxpython, tkinter?? Whatis important for me is
>> easy of use and well documented!! this is what I am looking for.
>> 
>> Thank you for any help in advance!!!
> 
> Start with Tkinter, since it's part of standard distribution and
> been around for a while.  There is also a book called "Python and
> Tkinter Programming" by Grayson from Manning <www.manning.com>.

Start with wxPython, because it's scrumptious. Oh, yes, the demo is 
scrumptious too.


Robert Amesz


From shane.anglin at mtni.net  Sat Jul 14 13:20:40 2001
From: shane.anglin at mtni.net (Shane Anglin)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:20:40 -0400
Subject: Need help with socket server code
Message-ID: <200107141320.AA116850868@mtni.net>

Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app: 
Main loop is: 
1 - check socket for any incoming data 
1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into a list 
2 - print out list 
3 - go to 1 and do it all over again 

Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that will sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data just fine, my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get any new data in... for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket, when a connection happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print list, 3 -go to 1 and do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has the rest of my code 'hostage' until a client connection is made and closed. 

Thanks a bunch! 
Shane Anglin 
shaneanglin at bigfoot.com 



From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 24 17:45:18 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 23:45:18 +0200
Subject: question about handling pointers in C extensions
References: <9jkhdv$r3o$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8F1B09448cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

seams reasonable for me. bt not that i have worked with python and c 
pointers. i've done this by making a python extension module that provides 
access to the device functions (were some GUI methonds).

for me the cleanest thing would be writing a c extension module that 
provides a python class. this class has methods to communicate with the 
driver (thats no problem as it is written in c). that way you don's have to 
expose any pointers to the python code and you dont have to worry about 
memory leaks as a python object gets always finalized if no longer needed. 
just put your cleanup code in that classes __del__ method.

here some exaple sourse as it would look for your approach:
 import mydriver
 handle = mydriver.open()
 mydriver.dosomething(handle, args)
 mydriver.close(handle)

the above description gives you something like this:
 import mydriver
 dev = mydriver.open()
 dev.dosomething(args)
 dev.close()

no "handle" carriend around - a nice obejct oriented solution.

chris



"Russell E. Owen" <owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu> wrote in 
news:9jkhdv$r3o$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu:

> I would like a bit of help with handling pointers in C extensions. I 
> hope this is a simple question.
> 
> I want to write a Python interface to a device driver library. One 
> starts by opening the device and getting a particular kind of pointer, 
> e.g. (simplified):
>   DevType *dev_open()
> 
> Is the following reasonable, or is there a better way to do this?
> 
> static PyObject *open (PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
> ) {
>     PyObject *py_dev_p;
>     DevType *dev_p;
>     
>     /* call the C routine to open the device */
>     dev_p = dev_open();
>     if (dev_p == NULL) {
>         PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, "open failed");
>         return NULL;
>     }
> 
>     /* convert device pointer to a Python Long object */
>     py_dev_p = PyLong_FromVoidPtr ((void *) dev_p);
>     if (py_dev_p == NULL) {
>         return NULL;
>     }
> 
>     /* increment reference and return the PyLong */
>     Py_INCREF (py_dev_p);
>     return Py_BuildValue("O", py_dev_p);
> }
> 
> Also, are there any tricks or gotchas to passing the pointer in to 
> device control functions?
> 
> I am assuming the inverse functions are the ticket (parse "O" format to 
> extract the PyLong, then use PyLong_AsVoidPtr). "O!" sounded interesting 
> to get a void* in one step, but what are the "Python type objects" one 
> can pass? Anyone have a simple example of a converter function for "O%"?
> 
> I assume:
> - there is no need to INCREF or DECREF the PyLong pointer (so long as my 
> extension only uses it locally, i.e. doesn't store it)
> - eventually the user should call a Python interface to dev_close and at 
> that time the PyLong should be DECREFed.
> 
> Any advice or warnings would be appreciated. I have been reading 
> "Extending and Embedding" and "Python/C API", but I still have doubts 
> I've got the pointer handling right.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- Russell
> 



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From loisel at math.mcgill.ca  Fri Jul  6 16:25:21 2001
From: loisel at math.mcgill.ca (Sebastien Loisel)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:25:21 -0700
Subject: c bindings
Message-ID: <p9p17.50949$aW5.630440@dfw-read.news.verio.net>

Hello.

I apologize in advance, for I have already asked help from help at python.org
for this very same problem. I didn't know about this newsgroup.

I am writing an extension module. For this purpose, I have written a very
short code generator, to create wrappers around my C library. For some
simple test cases, it seems to work fine, but I am encountering core dumps
with a more complete program. I don't think this is relevant, but I'm
running python 1.5.2 in Linux. As I see it, I can either work hard and
figure it out myself, but the fastest would probably be for a guru to tell
me what I'm doing wrong. Of course, I hate looking at someone else's code
just as much as the next guy, so I've had my code generator create the
shortest useful binding I can have it generate, to see if there are any
errors in that.

If you guys could tell me if I've got a refcount wrong in there somewhere, I
would appreciate greatly. I would also appreciate if you would cc my email
address in your replies, for reference purposes in the future.

Thank you very much,

Sebastien Loisel

------snip here-----
#include <Python.h>
static PyObject *ErrorObject;
// This code is automatically generated
/* This function takes for argument a sequence of ints and returns
   a list of floats. */
static PyObject *example_py(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
{
  int j;
  PyObject *_;
  float *ret;
  int ret_size=-1;
  PyObject *ret_list;
  int *param;
  int param_size;
  PyObject *param_helper;
  if(!PyArg_ParseTuple(args,"O", &param_helper)) return 0;
  if(!PySequence_Check(param_helper)) {
    PyErr_SetString(ErrorObject,"arg should be a sequence");
    return 0;
  }
  param_size=PySequence_Length(param_helper);
  param=gtc_must_malloc(param_size*sizeof(int));
  for(j=0;j<param_size;j++) {
    _=PySequence_GetItem(param_helper,j);
    param[j]=PyInt_AsLong(_);
    Py_DECREF(_);
  }
  ret_size=param_size;
  ret=gtc_must_malloc(sizeof(float)*ret_size);
  for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) ret[j]=param[j]+j/2.0;
  if(ret_size<0) abort();
  ret_list=PyList_New(ret_size);
  for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) {
    PyList_SetItem(ret_list,j,PyFloat_FromDouble(ret[j]));
  }
  free(ret);
  return ret_list;
}
static PyMethodDef example_methods[] = {
  {"example",example_py,1},
  {0,0} // sentinel
};
DL_EXPORT(void) initexample()
{
  PyObject *m,*d;
  m=Py_InitModule("example",example_methods);
  d=PyModule_GetDict(m);
  ErrorObject = PyErr_NewException("example.error",0,0);
  PyDict_SetItemString(d,"error",ErrorObject);
}





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Jul 11 03:57:01 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:57:01 GMT
Subject: compiling c app in MSVC
References: <mailman.994808297.31968.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <hFT27.2515$z21.474249@newsc.telia.net>

Brian Quinlan wrote:
> 1. You can try to rebuild Python with MSVC5 (probably won't work
> though)

it works just fine.

> (but the binary will not be compatible with everyone's Python).

really?  I've shipped VC5 built extensions for official 1.5.2, 1.6,
2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 distributions, and nobody has ever reported
any compatibility problems...

</F>




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul  3 00:54:17 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 21:54:17 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <20010702212238.Q32419@xs4all.nl>
References: <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
 <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
 <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
 <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
 <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
 <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
 <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
 <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.0.20010702215108.02a92958@pop-server>


>Changing the implementation two releases *after* the fact is going to

Expecting the change of something  is one thing and observing it's
incorrectness is another. Be what may about the current implementation
and future of Python, it is simply wrong that a = a + 1 is evaluated
differently than a += 1.

I'm not sure that this will matter much in the scheme of things;
however, I do know that this behavior will likely always be surprising
to the uninitiated. The equivalency of a = a + 1 to a +=1 is
something that I'd wager is the first instinct of programmers
approaching the form.

C//




From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 21 18:31:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:31:00 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org> <atehltknbavv0irts7ousrh4ed8t36op5f@4ax.com> <cphew6fjao.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <1djjlt0ho504505v0ljfllb74o76acffjp@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cpelr9gbk7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:

> So far, there have been about 8 responses. I think I need to allow a
> week or two, especially since it is summer--many teachers on vacation
> and not checking e-mail regularly--before it is worth sharing the
> results. Especially, the one mailing list is moderated, and sometimes it
> takes several days for the moderator to approve and post articles. Heck,
> there's no rush here, right? Maybe I should just wait until mid- to
> late-August. (The mailing lists have about 450 and 1900 members
> respectively. Don't know what sort of return I will get.)

Definitely no rush.  This won't affect 2.2 in any way.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From newgene at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 17 14:19:51 2001
From: newgene at bigfoot.com (newgene)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 11:19:51 -0700
Subject: Two Simple Qs:
Message-ID: <a50631f6.0107171019.74fb42a5@posting.google.com>

I am quite new to python. I have 2 simple questions:

1. How can I run a simply Python script under IDLE directly? I wrote a
start.py to do some routine work, like importing some medules and
adding my working path into sys.path, before I start to work. This
script is just like a macro or batch file under DOS. Now I have to
open this file and then run it. I hope python have a statement can run
it directly( maybe like 'run start.py').

2. When I made some modification of my own module after I import this
module,python can not recognized the modified module even I import it
again. It raised the same error msg, but gave me the error line
actually I have corrected, that is , it run as the old module but
display the error from the newer module file. I have to restart python
environment and import again, then my module run correctly. Is this a
bug? And how to resolve it?


Thank you.


Newgene


From mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za  Mon Jul 30 03:58:30 2001
From: mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za (mixo)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:58:30 +0200
Subject: Proxy Server
Message-ID: <3B6513A6.C4B84218@beth.uniforum.org.za>

How does one  connect to an external mail server when  you actually
connect to the outside through a proxy server (which may or may not
require a user id  and or a password)? What I want to be able to do
is , given an email address, get the  mail host ,and using that host,
verify
that the email receipient exists before sending mail using "smtplib".




From simonb at webone.com.au  Thu Jul 12 23:51:07 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:51:07 +1000
Subject: ANNOUNCE: SCons (Python build tool) development under way
References: <mailman.994953807.6320.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E702B.8070008@webone.com.au>

So this is not just for a python project (i can't see why
you would need any "make" utility for a (purely) python project),
but as a real replacement for make?
ie. reads makefiles and such?
Well, im rather confused about this...

Simon.


Steven Knight wrote:

>This is to announce that active development of SCons is now underway at:
>
>	http://scons.sourceforge.net/
>
>SCons is a Python software construction (or software build) tool--that
>is, a substitute or replacement for Make.  SCons is implemented as a
>Python script around a central set of Python build-engine modules.
>SCons configuration files are actually executed as Python scripts,
>allowing you to use full Python functionality to control your build.
>You use Python functions and methods in the configuration files to tell
>the central build engine about your input and output files.
>
>Other key features:  Dependency calculations are done using MD5
>signatures, yielding more reliable builds than timestamp-based
>dependency analysis.  Most dependencies are handled automatically.
>Building multiple targets in parallel (-j) is supported.  It's easy to
>add your own Builder objects and otherwise customize your build.
>
>SCons is still on its way to alpha release, so there's no official
>package available for download at the moment--sorry.  Much of the
>infrastructure has been coded, though, and is available for anonymous
>CVS checkout, or browsable via the CVS web interface under the SCons
>project page at SourceForge:
>
>	http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/
>
>The usual set of mailing lists (scons-announce, scons-devel,
>scons-users) has been created.  Follow the web site links to subscribe.
>
>A small development team (n == 3) is working towards finishing enough
>documentation and basic functionality for a rapid series of alpha
>releases in the (hopefully) near future.  To help that effort, we'd like
>to become larger than just a "small" team.  If you're interested in
>contributing, we'd love to hear from you.  Check out the developer
>guidelines on the SCons web site.
>
>Yes, SCons is the direct descendant of the ScCons design that won the
>Software Carpentry build tool competition last year.  It's been renamed
>(dropped the extra 'c') to make it slightly easier to type, and to try
>to reflect weakly the fact that this project is no longer directly
>related to Software Carpentry.  (Sorry, I don't know the current status
>of Software Carpentry or the other tools they were planning.)
>
>The SCons design is based on the design of the Perl-based Cons software
>construction tool:
>
>	http://www.dsmit.com/cons/
>
>SCons improves on the Cons architecture by incorporating several years
>of practical experience with its strengths and weaknesses.  (And, of
>course, by being written in Python...  :-)
>
>	--SK
>
>



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 31 17:38:56 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:38:56 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: <9k5tg301mn9@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107311455010.649-100000@bms>

Hi,

Welcome back.

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:
<...>
> For those of you who can't really empathize with other's issues
> and misfortunes, imagine being in a situation where you'd often
> need to have source code read out loud to you (e.g. over a
> phone), and/or you'd often want to dictate code (e.g. to some
> kind of voice-recognition, dictation-taking automatic system).
> What's case sensitivity giving you, that would compensate for
> the serious bother it causes in those situations?

Good point, but I'm not sure how much bother it will be.

Case sensitivity is so common in everyday life that the standard tools
must be able to work with it if they are to be (will be?) useful.  I
would imagine a VR system would let you say something along the lines
of...

"<runon> file input <equal-sign> <capitalize-words runon> file input"

...to get...

"fileinput = FileInput"

...and that may be easy compared to...

"one", "1", "1.", "1+0j"

...which would probably require a programming or python specific addon
module for the VR system (in this fantasy world I'm constructing).

As you suggested, tools could get pretty smart, maybe even
automatically translating between case-sensitive and case-insensitive.
e.g., source has "foo = Foo", VR user hears and uses "foo = fooa"

Of course, that is no reason to not explore case-insensitivity;
actually, it is a reason to explore it... someone has to figure out
where the problem areas are (hopefully before cataracts and glaucoma
catch up with me ;).


- Bruce




From brueckd at tbye.com  Mon Jul 30 19:42:03 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:42:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301626270.22456-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Peter Milliken wrote:

> I have used a very strongly typed language (Ada), I haven't tried Haskall or
> Ocaml as one repondent mentioned, but I claim that with Ada, 95-98% of
> "normal" bugs are out of my programs once I get the compiler to produce
> executable code. The only bugs that are left are the purely logic bugs.

Only 2-5% of your bugs are purely logical!? While I'd agree that once your
compiler produces executable code the bugs left are of the logical
variety, that number seems incredibly low (or the number of bugs you
initially have is ridiculously high ;-) ). Back to the topic: how much of
this would you attribute to Ada's use of types versus its very thorough
compiler (that checks a wide range of problems, not all of which may be
type-related).

> Once you have used a truly strongly typed language, then you would
> never consider doing a large job (multiple programmers) in anything
> else. I love and use Python, but anything more than a one man job
> would see me turfing it for a better suited language. Sometimes I
> think that even the idea of using Python may be a mistake because the
> number of hours I have spent chasing down code bugs in my Python
> programs that would have been caught by a decent typed language
> compiler are too numerous to count :-).

Excellent! You seem to have what I was looking for from the initial
poster: a specific example. Can you post one please? I'd really like to
better understand your perspective. Thanks!

-Dave




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 16:33:18 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:33:18 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107071820.7ebb77f8@posting.google.com> <fH227.14742$i8.1300639@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <etd4rsnchr3.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Sp327.45930$he.3180482@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:etd4rsnchr3.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
>
> Sorry, I think it actually would. :)
>
> >>> 5/.1
> 50.0
> >>>
>
Damn the bad habits Fortran is responsible for. I've never written that
number as anything other than 0.1, and assumed nobody else would, either.
Thanks!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul  3 14:09:42 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:09:42 +0200
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <3B420A66.FB5E75A5@stroeder.com>

David LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> In article <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal>,
> gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de says...
> <snip>
> 
> > You don't try to spread FUD, do you? No matter what MS or
> > any other company writes into their "license agreements", not 
> > everything is compatible with German or US or whatever laws.
> 
> I'm gratified to know that you are aware enough to know that, and that
> further you can afford to take Microsoft to court if needs be.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

Well, at least here in Germany almost everything M$ or other similar
software vendors write into their "license agreements" will fail in
court (AGB-Gesetz) as long as you don't register the software. And
the good things is that they would have to take you to court and
prove their point of view.

> Microsoft, like other companies and even
> governments, either counts on people's ignorance or inability to contest
> their behavior

Nevertheless you're right that it's even annoying that they try to
make people believe the crap they're writing about Open Source by
"enforcing" such a license.

Remember: Don't register software!

> Opinion: It would not be illegal for Microsoft to make it a condition of
> use that you not install open source software if you want to use their
> OS.

I don't think so. In Germany a software vendor cannot restrict the
dedicated use (I hope I translated "bestimmungsgem??e Benutzung"
correctly) of software. The dedicated use of an operating system is
being a platform for running arbitrary applications. I think they
would fail miserably in court - at least here in Germany (don't know
anything about other countries). IMHO M$ will never try to really
enforce such rules in a trial.

Ciao, Michael.


From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  9 10:04:22 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 18:04:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kjb2u.ev8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107091803300.3884-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

I've said it already somewhere. I think licensing need it's own algebra to
resolve equations (and non-equalities ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 22 19:37:00 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:37:00 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995838436.11056.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5B639C.FF5961E7@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> Guido hears all the
> complaints, and he's become convinced that this is a genuine and serious
> flaw in the language:  the current rules are *unusable* for too many people
> too often.  If you're not one of them, congratulations <wink>.  I'm not
> either -- I never get burned by this.  But I see plenty of people who are,
> and they're neither stupid nor careless; it's a common blind spot, so it
> doesn't really matter that it's not one I (or you) suffer.

Well, having learned one set of expectations, I can say that I WILL suffer
some pain if this is changed. And it isn't a case of an expectation carried
over from another language!

Speaking of patterns, it unfortunately appears that Guido has a strong
tendency to take the existing user base for granted, since he continues to
keep the door open to code-breaking changes. There is only so much insult
("well, what you were doing was bad style anyway," or "you shouldn't have
written code that depends on integer division(!)") and injury (the more
Python you've written, the more likely something you wrote wont work with
the latest version and will need to spend hours reviewing,
just-in-case-anyway) before one decides that it just isn't worth the pain.

I do not want to continue to write more Python and expose myself to further
risk of having it either become dependent on an un-maintained and minority
release (e.g. "sorry, you should have upgraded to 3.1 years ago; who writes
stuff on 2.1 these days anyway?") or having a growing body of code to
constantly shepherd along to insure it runs on the next release.

That is the pragmatics from my point of view. And it doesn't give a damn
what real or perceived "flaw" in the language is being addressed.


From bkelley at wi.mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 17:01:20 2001
From: bkelley at wi.mit.edu (Brian Kelley)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:01:20 -0500
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
References: <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list@python.org> <m3itgsyo9k.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
Message-ID: <3B55F91F.A80DC806@wi.mit.edu>

markus at kepler.ibp.de wrote:

> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> > Does anyone know any other tool which can help automatically draw graphs
> > (or only trees) with ability to output to PS?
>
> Dot (see http://www.graphviz.org/) is a powerful program that produces
> reasonably beautiful output.

I noticed that there was a perl and tcl interface to graphviz, is anyone
working on a python interface for doing layouts?  If not, I'll step up to the
plate.

If anyone is interested, I also have a python interface to the unix version of
daVinci 2.1 at http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/daVinci/

The one redeeming element is that you can write the daVinci graph language
directly in python (the syntax is the same as python syntax) for example from
the tutorial:

>>> g = Graph()
>>> g(l("Node A",n("Module",[a("COLOR","#f31d8b"),
                        a("OBJECT","Node A"),
                        a("_GO","ellipse"),
                        a("FONTFAMILY","helvetica")], ...
        )

You could also build up the graph independently

>>> node = n("Module", [a("COLOR","green")])
>>> g(l(node))

Either of these would create a graphical output in the daVinci window.

Not all the functionality is added but we had it set up so that you could
watch graphs grow and see nodes get deleted.  I'll dig this up from the
archives and place it on the vaults of parnassus if anyone is interested.

Brian Kelley
Whitehead Institute



From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Fri Jul 20 19:47:10 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:47:10 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
Message-ID: <2q367.11670$Up.346617@sea-read.news.verio.net>

Hi,

If I am violating some rules by asking a question that has been
asked and answered before, please forward me to FAQ or to a web
page/site...  I have searched the news archives and can't seem
to find anything relevant.

I am running a fairly complex system written in Python by using
'exec' method from a Java application.  The trouble that I face
is that the application (multi-threaded) unpredictably hangs in
the minidom's "parse(filename)" function (I figured that by
adding "trace" printouts to the Python code.  The most puzzling
fact is that the hang-up happens not every time I run, and it
never happens if I run the same system from a command line.

Additional information: if I introduce enough debug print-outs
to the system's files, it seems to behave more stably.  If I run
the Java application under a debugger (even without stopping at
any breakpoints), everything seems fine.  My colleagues called
the situation "maybe there's a race condition".  Could it be
minidom has problems multi-tasking?

More additional information: I first encountered it with Python
2.0, upgrading to Python 2.1 didn't change a thing.  This all is
on Windows 2000 Pro.  The file it needs to parse exists and is
not locked.

I have not tried the same system on a different OS.  I will, I
have to.  Next week, for sure.

I would be grateful for any, no matter how crazy, suggestion.

Thank you for reading.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de  Mon Jul  2 11:40:20 2001
From: Lutz.Schroeer at kybernetik-manufaktur.de (Lutz Schroeer)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 15:40:20 GMT
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <3B3DE732.660AF0E1@earthlink.net> <3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D2B3C8FB2D9Latzikatz@139.174.2.56>

Lothar Scholz <llothar at mailandnews.de> wrote in
news:3l1vjtg9cu1jcr78hdgnchmp8bt53cuhbi at 4ax.com: 

> On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:40:34 GMT, Ron Stephens <rdsteph at earthlink.net>
> wrote:
> I like commercial software if it is worth the money you pay. After
> hacking a lot with "Free Software" i more and more hate this kind,
> specially for things as complex as good GUI interfaces. Where nearly
> all "Freeware" sucks at least at one point.  

But you do use Python, don't you? Maybe you should use some M$ Visual stuff 
that's very expensive and therefore has to be excellent...

Latz


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 12 12:06:58 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:06:58 -0600
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB95@admin56.narex.com>

> From: fett at tradersdata.com [mailto:fett at tradersdata.com]
> 
> I have a really dumb program that i would like to make 
> smarter.  I need
> to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything 
> except for the
> standings which are written in it.  I have tried to use regular
> expressions with no success, but i still think that they are probably
> the best way.  I created the following simple fix, but it is 
> unreliable
> if the data changed posistions.
> 
> 
> input = open('rawdata', 'r')
> S = input.read()
> print S[4021:6095]
> 
> Output :
>    League Standings
>    American League
>      EAST W L PCT GB HOME ROAD EAST CENT WEST NL L10 STRK
>      Red Sox 43 29 .597 - 23-15 20-14 23-13 8-7 6-6 6-3 6-4 L2
>      Yankees 41 31 .569 2.0 21-15 20-16 19-11 12-9 5-7 5-4 6-3 W2
>      Blue Jays 35 38 .479 8.5 18-20 17-18 14-13 6-7 11-13 4-5 5-5 W3
>      Orioles 34 39 .466 9.5 20-20 14-19 15-17 9-12 6-5 4-5 5-5 L1
> ........( it continues with all the standings)

How about something like:

  def findTeam(team, lines):
      for line in lines:
          if line.startswith(team):
              print line
              break

> 
> Also could you tell me if its possible to download the data from the
> web-page in python so that it doesnt even have to deal with 
> opening the
> file.

  import urllib
  fp = urllib.urlopen('http://www.yoursite.com')
  findTeam( fp.readlines() )

hth,
-- bjorn



From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 18 09:51:51 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:51:51 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
Message-ID: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de>

I have a function like this:

-----
def read_pages(urllist):
    res = {}
    for x in urllist:
        try:
            res[x] = urllib.urlopen(x).read()
        except:
            pass
    return(res)
-----

I now want the following behaviour: try to catch the webpage for 3 seconds;
if it takes longer just skip this one and move on to the next. How can I
achieve this?

Thanks, Matthias

PS Other suggestions for speeding up the process of reading lets say 100
webpages are welcome...





From timothyrandolph at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 16:46:32 2001
From: timothyrandolph at yahoo.com (Tim Randolph)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 20:46:32 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995571273.18192.python-list at python.org...
>
> (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).

I think the distinction between programmers and non-programmers misses a
third important group: "sometime programmers"  -- people who code
occasionally to for fun or to solve problems, but aren't in the trenches (or
the cubes) day in and day out.

As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how easy it
is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would very much
prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that enforce *uniform* case
usage.

Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but nobody
wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program with distinct
meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes for readable code -- at
least for this sometime programmer.


little-logs-can-make-for-warm-fires-ly yrs,

Tim Randolph

>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>




From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Wed Jul 25 01:32:20 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:32:20 GMT
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b5e59a7.3927973@news.newsguy.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:49:35 GMT, ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F.
Ransen) wrote:

Thanks for all the suggestions, I am indeed running from
within IDLE, and for various reasons I need to keep running
in IDLE, I'll have a look at the suggestions and see if I
can use one of those.

Thanks again to all who replied



--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul 26 03:20:03 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 07:20:03 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com> <slrn9luefe.5a2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3B5FC3AE.A8F664B9@tundraware.com>

Gareth McCaughan wrote:
<SNIP>
> 
> By the way, any definition of "mathematician" that excludes
> pure mathematicians is spectacularly broken.

In that vein:


A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were each asked to
comment on the assertion "All odd numbers are prime."

The mathematician at once gave a counterexample, 9.

The physicist said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime.
Now at nine we see second order effects!"

The engineer said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is
prime..."

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 19 17:20:36 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:20:36 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB9E@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at digicool.com]
> 
> > TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
> > hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs 
> AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
> > iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE 
> naMiNg CLASseS
> > stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
> > begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
> 
> Very funny (not).  You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
> environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
> identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

I'm not sure I understand what this means. Are you proposing a
"non-programmer" IDE that automatically corrects incorrectly cased
identifiers and keywords, or are you still suggesting that the language
itself be case insensitive, but with a "non-programmer" IDE that just
makes code look consistent?

I don't think anyone would be opposed to an auto-correcting IDE.

> > AS fAR aS thE Size Of thE VARious camPs, I haVE YeT tO sEe 
> a coMPeLLinG
> > aRGuMeNt thAT THE grOup of noN-pRoGRaMmeRS THat WILl taKe up
> > pRoGRAmmInG, ANd wiLL DO sO in PYTHon InsTEad oF VisUal 
> BasiC, Is any
> > LARGeR Than The groUp of ProgRAmmERs.
> 
> With your atttude, it will never happen.

What attitude is that? The one where I'd rather write new programs than
making sure the tens of thousand lines of Python I've allready written
work with a case insensitive interpreter? I don't think I'm the only one
with that attitude... :-)

-- bjorn



From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Fri Jul 20 12:39:02 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:39:02 EDT
Subject: PLAY TODAY! WIN $1,000,000 TOMORROW!
Message-ID: <200107201650.KAA61450@s0227.pm0.net>

****************************************
PLAY TODAY! WIN $1,000,000 TOMORROW!
http://lotto.quacko.com
**************************************** 
Quacko Lotto continues to strive to be on the cutting edge of lotto
games on the internet. We have the VERY BEST ODDS of Winning a
$1,000,000 Grand Prize on the net.

Is today your lucky day?

The Internet's Only Pick 1 Game Plus the Best Odds of Winning a Grand
Prize Check out what everyone is talking about!

http://lotto.quacko.com 

WEEKLY DRAW & GIVEAWAYS! 
******************************
How would you like to WIN a brand NEW DVD player? How would you like to
WIN up to $2000 every week? Play every week to be entered in our random
draw and win these great prizes!

Click Here: http://lotto.quacko.com 

******************************************
RECEIVE FREE MONEY AT SUPREMECASINO!
******************************************
http://www.supremecasino.com

Free money on all deposits... just one of the reasons
we're VOTED #1 with Online Wagerers! 

Have your tried PayPal Yet?
Supremecasino offers the easiest and most reliable processing solutions
for its wagerers! Just look what the CNET says about PayPal!

PayPal's the most reliable personal bill payment service on the Web.
It's easy to use, offers a convenient auction payment form, and delivers
your dough faster than most of the other services we reviewed. We think
PayPal offers the best combination of speed, security, and features. And
best of all, it's free.'

Why not try out Paypal today?

100% Bonus!  Up to $75 free money on initial credit card deposits
including PayPal and NETeller!
5% Bonus on any further Credit Card Deposits
40% Bonus Initial Western Union Deposits
15% Bonus on any further Western Union Deposits
20% Bonus On Wire or Personal Check Deposits

Combine the BEST in online casino games with FREE money and you've got
some major excitement! 

Come and play for free!
http://www.supremecasino.com


***********************************************************
RED CARPET REWARDS AT GRAND BANKS CASINO
http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072
***********************************************************

Red Carpet Rewards! The best way to earn free credits! Grand Banks casino is rolling out the Red Carpet for our patrons! For every $10 in real bets that you place, Grand Banks will credit your account with one comp point. Collect 100 comp points and you will receive one casino credit! It's so simple and calculated automatically for you. 

Example: Place a $100 wager on one hand of Blackjack and receive 10 Red Carpet Reward points. Do this 10 times & regardless of the outcome you will have amassed 100 Red Carpet Points. These 100 points now automatically convert to a FREE Grand Banks Casino credit!

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072

The Red Carpet Rewards Premier Program: For our more serious players we offer an even more aggressive plan to help you amass points more quickly! The structure is the same, but you will receive 1 Red Carpet point for every $7.50 placed in bets! Please note that Grand Banks reserves the right to invite patrons into the Premier program only.

http://www.grandbankscasino.com/default.asp?from=1072



<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From kav062 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 17:08:36 2001
From: kav062 at yahoo.com (Kannan Vijayan)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:08:36 -0700
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu>
Message-ID: <a1364c9f.0107271308.66a5246@posting.google.com>

Ratnakar Malla <rmalla1 at lsu.edu> wrote in message news:<3B60F7EC.5275E026 at lsu.edu>...
> Hi,
> I need to read from a very long file. But the only information I am
> interested is
> 2 lines at the bottom of the file.
> 1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
> time?
> 2) If so how??
> 3) I tried the normal way, but looks like, it is taking lot of time.
> Thanx,
> Ratnakar Malla
> 
> --

A modification of Peter Hansen's code:

i = -4096
file.seek(i, 2)
lines = file.readlines()
while len(lines) <= 2:
    i -= 4096
    file.seek(i, 2)
    lines = file.readlines()
lines = lines[-2:]

The 4096 is about 1-4 pages on most filesystems, so it should be
reasonably fast, and incur about the same amount of overhead as
seeking -50.

It's multiple seeks, but if your'e dealing with large files, it's
better than going headfirst through the lines.

-kannan


From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Jul 26 13:36:23 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 17:36:23 GMT
Subject: Herbrip-0.1.0 released
References: <slrn9lm5lq.5g3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9jpken$rqun$7@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

[Posted and mailed]

Hi Phil,
good to see more Free Software for this topic.
Here is my feedback.

Herbivore seems to be too small as a project to get to critical mass.
If GNUPG is integrated nicely in the MUA people actually start using it.
(mutt is most advanced regarding the integration.) 
Handling actually is as easy as you describe it, except for the Key part.

Herbivore avoids the hassle about the public key handling,
which is its main advantage. On the other hand, people will have to
learn this concept anyway for several reasons.

Herbivore cannot handle MIME well (AFAIC), 
which is the hard part of MUA encrypting integration.
Something like RFC2015 PGP/MIME is needed for the concept, too.

Plugins for other platforms and reaching critical mass
are the main technical problems preventing mass email encryption.
Gnupg and the GPA-Project are trying to address this.
Hopefully the Germany Ministry of Commerce will financially 
support another project to support excactly this goal. 

	Bernhard

In article <slrn9lm5lq.5g3.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>,
	philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> Herbivore is an initiative to encourage more people to  use
> encrypted email. 

> Herbrip is a command-line implementation of the Herbivore
> protocol. In the future, I plan to extend Herbrip's functionality
> and  integrate  it into one or more open source email clients.

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 11 18:22:16 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 22:22:16 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:34:17 GMT, Rainy <sill at optonline.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:10:43 -0600 (MDT), Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
>>> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>> <...>
>>> >Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
>>> >language.
>>>
>>> Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
>>> for longer programs.
>> 
>> Hehe, you must have missed the recent thread about removing the first
>> line from a text file... I thought it showed that Python is a horrible
>> scripting language, way too verbose, it turned what should be a few
>> lines of script into a program.
>
>Wasn't one solution only 2 lines? If I remember right it was Alex
>Martelli's.

open(output, 'w').writelines(open(input).readlines()[1:])

... can I go back to using python a scripting language now?

Here's a superior solution:

import sys
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines()[1:])

A mere semicolon could turn this two line program monstrosity back into a
beautifully script-like one line.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 06:26:40 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:26:40 +0200
Subject: about extension module
References: <mailman.994919065.24113.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iju1002i7e@enews4.newsguy.com>

"binto bient" <python_binto at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994919065.24113.python-list at python.org...
>
> hi, is there somebody know the procedure to make...
> extension module, because i confuse when i follow
> Python/C API Reference Manual, by Guido van Rossum
> what do i need to make extension module..

Try...:

http://starship.python.net/crew/arcege/extwriting/pyext.html


Alex





From GeorgLohrer at gmx.de  Mon Jul  2 12:05:10 2001
From: GeorgLohrer at gmx.de (Georg Lohrer)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:05:10 +0200
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net>
Message-ID: <v361kts2pk9o86stkn68pp5vdtb0ek7gg4@4ax.com>

On Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:45:24 +0100, Giles Constant
<gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk> wrote:

>Hi there,
>
>Being a C++ head, it's probably more a problem with my design than a python 
>problem, but I figured you guys would be able to help.
>
>I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some 
>global data such that all instances of the class have access to it.  The 
>alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every single 
>object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently that it would 
>be rediculous.
>
>Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)

Maybe the latter one. I'm also an old fellow with C (over 15 yrs) and
C++ (8 yrs) and I like sophisticated stuff (like Guru-of-the-week,
etc.). But starting Python a year ago I've to throw away some of my
current point of views. Sometimes because they are not common or even
possible in Python or because I misunderstood the patterns of a
interpreted language like Python.

Oh, you could realize most of good object patterns in Python, too. But
if it is necessary or even sensefull, it seems to be doubtful, because
the concept and the paradigm of an interpreted language is really
different. 
But, to be honest, it's more a feeling of getting a successfull
approach towards a solution with Python. Two days ago, I reviewed some
three months old code (rather running fine and correct) and I
eliminated a lot of stuff and replaced it with more Python-like code
(the old one was a more or less C++-to-Python translation) and the
code runs faster and it spends a better feeling seeing the code (if
you understand what I mean -- if you see a graceful piece of code in
your favourite language it will be well-formed and you could see/feel
it.)

BTW, currently I'm doing half of my work in C++, the rest in Python,
and I everytime like the return to Python. But I really "hate" the
effective cycle of editing-running-debugging-editing. Sometimes there
is a melange of all these things -- I've never had this ever before --
and it's marvellous. My speed of producing correct code was doubled,
but with compiler-languages you always have some time for relaxing
(during compilation/linking), but with languages like Python its away
:-((
 So, after one or two hours of pythoning, I need a rest for getting
some relaxation.

Like now,

Ciao, Georg


From wpt2097 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 02:31:55 2001
From: wpt2097 at hotmail.com (andreas)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 23:31:55 -0700
Subject: Listing directorycontent in python
Message-ID: <1aa68e6e.0107302231.dd024a2@posting.google.com>

Hello.

I have a simple question, I want to have a list of all files/dirs in a
certain directory.

An example would be that I want to know all filenames that end with
"*.JPG" in the directory "/var/www/".

I have not succeeded in doing this myself with "os.path"-module, so I
am now asking for tips, hints, examples or pointers to answers of
previous similar posts.

I am using Python v1.5 most of the time.

TIA

Andreas


From jp at ulgo.koti.com.pl  Sat Jul 21 08:52:54 2001
From: jp at ulgo.koti.com.pl (Jacek =?iso-8859-2?Q?Pop=B3awski?=)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 12:52:54 GMT
Subject: VRML
Message-ID: <slrn9liuit.a6f.jp@localhost.localdomain>

Hello. I am writing car game for Linux. To create 3D objects I use Blender,
save with alt+w which gives simple "videoscape format". I think VRML will be
much better.  It will be great to create converter between VRML and my own
format. What I need is Python library which helps me read VRML. I searched
www.python.org, freshmeat and sourceforge.  I found some projects, but one is
in C++ and not so easy (example app is huge!), seconds is in Python and I can't
find "download" section anywhere. Can you help me?

-- 
Turn round slowly 
Tell us what you see
Oh no - The fly got the spider 
And now he's chasing me                        "Otherworld" - Ronnie James Dio


From Heikki.Tuuri at innobase.inet.fi  Sun Jul  8 11:18:24 2001
From: Heikki.Tuuri at innobase.inet.fi (Heikki Tuuri)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:18:24 GMT
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com> <Xns90D59D0D33B09atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <luf8kt4t8e5urfata61qfu9c90otqi9puv@4ax.com> <Xns90D5EB408F9D5atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>
Message-ID: <4R_17.81$rR1.5521@read2.inet.fi>

Hi!

MySQL supports transactions through BDB and InnoDB
on all platforms MySQL runs on.

You have to download the -Max version of the MySQL
binary from the MySQL website. See http://ww.innodb.com
for more info.

Regards,

Heikki Tuuri
Innobase Oy

Andy Todd wrote in message ...
>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
><luf8kt4t8e5urfata61qfu9c90otqi9puv at 4ax.com>:
>
>>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:26:39 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>>Todd) wrote:
>>
>>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>>><qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7 at 4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>>>>Todd) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>>>>><n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>:
>>>>>
>[major snippage]
>>>
>>
>>I am reading a book on SQL that covers MySQL.
>>
>>But, in this one post you covered my main problem. I could not find
>>where the magic words like "cursor.fetchall()" were coming from. I was
>>reduced to looking at the Gadfly code and making a list of magic code.
>>
>>But, with DB-API spec I see where they are coming from.
>
>Smashing. One final point. MySQL doesn't currently include transactions
>(unless you are running it on GNU/Linux with the BSDDB extensions) so
>beware of multi user commits and rollbacks. They can come in useful and yet
>frustrate you endlessly.
>
>>
>>All praise to Andy on this fine morning.
>>
>>Thanks ever so much.
>>
>[more snipping]
>>
>>
>>Thanks again.
>>
>>Regards, Joe
>>
>
>Always a pleasure, never a chore.
>
>Regards,
>Andy
>
>--
>Content free posts a speciality




From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 05:10:22 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 02:10:22 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <23891c90.0107240109.5b7072d4@posting.google.com> <cpd76pbpfh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250110.632b70e@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpd76pbpfh.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:
> 
> > If someone had suggested using // for the int/int->float operation, I
> > bet that hardly anyone would have complained, apart from some people
> > who might consider it "language bloat". But instead, it seems that for
> > the sake of some aesthetic principle the rug is being pulled out from
> > under everyone whether they want to lie down or not.
> 
> It's not just an aesthetic principle.  The currently / behavior is a
> design mistake that needs to be eventually eradicated, because it
> makes writing reliable cood too hard and it makes writing subtly
> broken code too easy.  The only way to do that is to bite the bullet
> -- otherwise Python will still have this problem in 10 years.

I don't disagree with your assertion that it's a bad thing. The
problem is that the / operator has a well-defined meaning in Python
which you're seeking to change. Whether or not it has a desirable
behaviour is almost irrelevant to the strongest argument to leave it
be: that changing its behaviour will potentially break lots of old
code.

I haven't seen any adequate response to the proposal that a different
operator (such as //, although I don't care so much) be used. And in
the PEP, whilst backward compatibility is mentioned, it isn't
addressed in any way which can be considered an acceptable treatment
of the subject.

> I can live with a temporary language wart that we're committed to
> removing.  I don't want to live with the wart forever, which the other
> solution would do.

You have designed a language which I and many others really enjoy
using, and are really grateful for. Whilst programming languages tend
to differ from natural languages by resisting change in order to
promote robust, well-defined semantics, what you are doing here is
analogous to issuing a decree that a particular word in
English/Dutch/French (or your preferred natural language), where the
word isn't exactly an infrequently used noun, now means something
else.

What do you propose we do with all the novels ever written in that
language? Instigate a massive rewriting project? Burn them? Did Monty
Python ever do a sketch about the Cultural Revolution? <1/3 wink>

> (Another argument for PEP 238, which I made in another message, is
> that it opens to way to a unified numeric model, hinted at by PEP
> 228.  I will update both PEPs to greatly improve the motivational
> sections.)

Your numerical aspirations are noble, but due to practical
considerations won't some of us end up speaking "Dutch" and some of us
speaking "Flemish"? ;-)

Paul


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Fri Jul  6 10:23:06 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:23:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <3b45c3c4$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kbilr.4h3.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 6 Jul 2001 14:57:27 +0100, Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net> wrote:
>
>The XML-RPC standard only supports ASCII text.  (I found this our from the 
>new O'Reilly book 'Programming Web Services with XML-RPC'.  The book is 
>pretty light weight (I skimmed it in an hour) but it has some worthwhile 
>tidbits.

Thanks for the reference, I'll try to get my hands on it. However, right now, 
I'm  just using xmlrpc as a nice, quick and lightweight way of doing rpc 
between two python applications. (if someone can suggest another method,
as easy as this one, I'll be glad to give it a try). 

Concerning the ascii stuff, could someone then explain to me what is meant 
on http://www.pythonware.com/products/xmlrpc/index.htm by :
"xmlrpclib 0.9.9 (aka 1.0b1) is now available. This is a development 
release (hopefully the last one before 1.0 final), which adds support 
for encodings, Unicode, and HTTPS transports." ?
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
TIA

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 18:59:16 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 15:59:16 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9htio4$dtf$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com>,
Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>
>There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
>languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they
>are "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams
>doing the same application in two different languages to get meaningful
>comparisions - but it has been done and that was the result) than
>loosely typed languages.

Note that Python *is* a strongly-typed language, it's just that it is
dynamically typed instead of statically typed.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From timr at probo.com  Wed Jul 25 02:40:21 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:40:21 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <4dqslt4pj7algruf69gg3497m663gggjnf@4ax.com>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Intellectual decline is not what it used to be ;-) - apparently the
>avarage childs IQ these days (I forget the exact age range) is around
>120. Must it's all the TV and video games ;-)

The average child's IQ these days is 100.  That is the very definition of
IQ.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From mikael at isy.liu.se  Wed Jul 25 03:41:02 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:41:02 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lam
In-Reply-To: <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010725094057.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 25-Jul-2001 Andy Salnikov wrote:
 >    To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:) We are like
 >  children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1 cookie for two children
 >  means one cookie for 1 child and 0 cookies for another:)

Sorry, that throws an exception (i.e. one of the children gets mad). One
cookie for two children means 0 cookies for both children, since mom or
dad did not serve that one cookie at all. After all that is the meaning 
of 1/2 being 0 with 1 as a remainder.

Then-again-some-cookies-can-be-cut-in-pieces-ly y'rs

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    25-Jul-2001
Time:    09:35:20

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Thu Jul 19 15:00:46 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:00:46 +0100
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9j7ao4$ir$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

thanks that works great! but one more question... i have compiled my script
to an .exe BUT is there a way of getting rid of the console window. i tried:

pythonw setup.py py2exe

instead of

python setup.py py2exe

but this only copied the 'tcl' dir to the 'dist' dir! any ideas???

Gaz.

"eric_brake" <brakedon at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434 at posting.google.com...
> "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:<oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>...
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> > I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the
file
> > menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a
hand
> > with this it would be great.
>
> You will need to create a "setup.py" file. Here is the working code that I
use.
>
> from distutils.core import setup
> import py2exe
> setup(name = "filename", #not sure what this does, but it doesn't hurt
anything
>       version = "1.0", #meta info, shows up in the exe you make
>       author = "John Doe", #meta info, your name
>       author_email = "johndoe at somewhere.com",#meta info, author email
>       scripts = ["yourfile.py"])#target script, the script you want to
make an
>                                 #exe with




From bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 19:09:02 2001
From: bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com (Chris Stromberger)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:09:02 GMT
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
References: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com> <slrn9lu024.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3E9DA22F3FF99072.0E52F24E38E09F05.89F1DF1C896E89C5@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <25jult8co0bqqu557i9i6jpmepvgepglug@4ax.com>

On 25 Jul 2001 14:13:20 -0500, claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron
Laird) wrote:

>In article <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>,
>Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>On 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
>>wrote:
>>>On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>>>>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>>>>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>>>>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>>>>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>>>>Any pointers much appreciated.
>>>
>>>This is a shell task:
>>>
>>>(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
>>> ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results
>>>
>>>Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
>>>passwords all the time.
>>
>>BTW, if you *really* wanted to use python for it, you couldn't use popen
>>(stdio wins again!).  You'd need to use ptys to trick telnet that it's being
>>run by a terminal.  That means either figuring out how unix ptys work and
>>using pty.py, or installing expect and ExpectPy.  Both are more work than
>>installing openssh (and once you do that you can toss telnet anyway).
>>
>>Unless, of course, machine{1,2} don't have ssh and you have no control over
>>them.  There are any number of ugly hacks you could do at that point, and
>>expect is one of them.
>>
>>or-publish-the-logs-on-the-web-and-use-wget-ly y'rs
>
>Exactly.  That is, ssh is a fine way to solve these
>problems--unless you don't have control over the re-
>mote end.
>
>Long term, ExpectPy might be in better shape than
>you realize.  There are glimmers of hope that Expect
>might be rewritten in a way that eases maintenance
>of ExpectPy (and maybe brings Win* within range, too).
>In the meantime, you might consider using stock Expect.
>You might be able to get your job done with just a few
>lines.  If you need more, there are plenty of ways to
>tie together Tcl and Python codings.


Unfortunately, I have no control over either end!  Not even over the
Python installation. It's 1.5.6 (or whatever was just before 2.0).
Was hoping there was some magically easy way to do this, like there
usually is with Python.

Thanks for the suggestions.


From Juha.Syrjala at iki.fi  Tue Jul 31 17:21:28 2001
From: Juha.Syrjala at iki.fi (Juha =?iso-8859-1?Q?Syrj=E4l=E4?=)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 21:21:28 GMT
Subject: decent syslog replacement?
References: <mailman.996601142.13364.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k77go$21du5$1@midnight.cs.hut.fi>

In article <mailman.996601142.13364.python-list at python.org>, Nicholas Henke
wrote: 
>Thanks...I forgot about the syslog - thing...The main problem is the
>syslog disk thrashing...I guess I wasnt really clear about that. Are there
>any clean options to buffer even more than syslog might do?

One thing you might try is to use syslog to send the logs to another
machine. This makes disk trashing happen in a different machine. And logging
might not be too reliable since syslog uses UDP.

There is also syslog replacement called syslog-ng which might be more
efficient.

-- 
Juha Syrj?l?


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 06:20:20 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:20:20 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
 <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
 <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
 <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
 <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
 <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3gDsvgAkvUX7EwIv@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list at python.org>, Glen
Wheeler <wheelege at tsn.cc> writes
...
>  Right, I think this is a good time for everybody to cool down...Just is
>clearly not being offensive here.
>  The same arguments are being stated over and over again by the pro 1/2==0
>side, and the same refutements are being stated by the other side.
>  My opinion is that if Guido wants it changed even in the light of all
>these arguments, then so be it.  Sure I'll have to change a little bit of
>code, but that's alright.  I distribute alot of my stuff as stand-alone
>packages anyway - the user never has to worry about upgrading, unless it's
>>MY< upgrade - which isn't going to break anything.
>
>  Glen.
I'll probably have to look at a lot of code, even Guido found a majority
for the library / usages as relying on int behaviour; something he
seemed surprised by. How odd, I am not at all surprised that programmers
make real use of a useful behaviour.

The whole PEP process is also broken by Guido's unilateral decision;
we're informed by Tim that the he simply decided to correct a design
fault.

Our real failure is not appreciating that the leadership has different
motives and plans for python than most of the current userbase.

Is there a list of the other design failures that the mdfl plans to fix? 

I do hope case sensitivity is not one of them.
-- 
Robin Becker


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 17:46:15 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:46:15 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> Jim Abrams wrote:
> 
> > Because every camel has its straw, I need to agree here. I, and most
> > of my python buddies, fight with bloodstained teeth and nails to get
> > python in our projects and developments. I can't see winning too many
> > arguments when my opposition can pull out 'the division operator' to
> > shoot me down. I can't see budgeting time and people to making sure
> > the division operator works after an upgrade. I'd be laughed into data
> > entry ;).

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:

> Indeed.  If this is implemented, it will be a black eye for Python.  Any
> anti-Python advocate will be able to point at this and say, "Look,
> that's why you shouldn't switch to Python.  The semantics of the builtin
> operators changes from release to release."  Problem is, they will be
> absolutely right.

This seems to be the crux of the anti-PEP-238 sentiments, and I want
to take it very, very seriously -- without losing the PEP.

If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238 would
make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?

I propose the following measures.  Let's discuss whether these are
conservative enough, from the perspective of someone who has a large
body of old working Python code.  (From the perspective of someone who
wants int division for other reasons, these can never be conservative
enough. :-)

(1) A very long wait period before the new division becomes the
    default.  The PPE mentions at least two years; we can go over
    that.  Python 2.2 will introduce the first release where it's
    *possible* to write "from __future__ import division"; we'll have
    to wait until 1.5.2 is only a faint memory (like 1.4 is now) and
    2.2 pretty old.  (The current release pace is two revisions per
    year, so two years would make 2.6 the first release where new
    division is the default.)

(2) A command line option to change division semantics.  I propose
    -Dnew to make the new division semantics the default, -Dold to
    make the old semantics the default.  -Dold will be the default
    until the wait period is over, then -Dnew will become the
    default.  The -D option is retired when nobody needs -Dold any
    more.  Modules that contain a future statement always use the new
    default; there's no way to force the old default on a *per-module*
    basis (since that would be a language feature that could never be
    removed).

(3) As of 2.2, all the standard library code should work regardless of
    the -D option.  That is, all library modules (and modules in Demo
    and Tools) should use // whenever int division is required, and
    should use the future statement whenever float division is
    required.  This is necessary so that use of the -D command line
    option doesn't break the standard library.

Anything else?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 13:42:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:42:01 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org> <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B45C48D.413A5E@divalsim.it> <9i56ph0eke@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B496B96.A0F46A0B@divalsim.it>
Message-ID: <9icqb30gvq@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Nicola Musatti" <objectway at divalsim.it> wrote in message
news:3B496B96.A0F46A0B at divalsim.it...
> Another question: hom much of the productivity increase would you
> attribute to the core language and how much to the availability (or lack
> thereof) of useful functionality in the language library?

I'm just guessing here, because I did not even try to separate the
effects.  But offhand, I would say that, considering the specific tasks
I was doing (proprietary protocols on top of sockets, basically, if the
C++ vs Java comparison is still what we're talking about), the lack
of the C++ Standard Library hurt by slightly more than the extras in
Java's libraries helped.  It might have been very different if my task
had been to work cross-platform on an RDBMS, for example (assuming
I could use JDBC in Java but not ODBC in C++, say) -- or other such
tasks for which Java's extremely rich libraries help and C++ Standard
Libraries plus C-level stuff (such as sockets in my case) don't, much.


Alex





From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul 12 05:48:01 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:48:01 +0200
Subject: Coexistence of SOAP-server and MS-IIS
References: <3b4dd214.587664066@news.mch.sni.de>
Message-ID: <3B4D7251.22638220@stroeder.com>

Nikolai Kirsebom wrote:
> 
> I have a web-server running IIS and would like to make a small
> testapplication using the SOAP protocol.  Is it possible to have both
> IIS running and a SOAP-server running on the same machine, or will
> they 'fight' for the same resources (communication).

Never heard of running demons on different ports?
Now's the time for you to learn about host:port addressing...

Ciao, Michael.


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 14:43:09 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:43:09 GMT
Subject: Control of flow
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local>
Message-ID: <1%C97.56179$EP6.12833513@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Campbell" <cb921 at voice.co.za> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000 at cb921.local...
> I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is
often
> a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful" sometimes =).

Indeed.  Once, when revising a Unix serial port driver, I used a goto
to efficiently escape from three levels of nested loops.  Very useful
there :-).

However, using them to emulate, one at a time, state transition
machines, seems like a road to madness, as in "> It gets worse quite
easily".

Given that you said 'apps' plural, and the example you gave thereof, I
would first design a state transition structure that is specific to
your application class but generic within it: initial and intermediate
states are 'get data x with prompt x.vox'; terminal states are 'here
is result y.  thank you <click>".  Then I would write a program to
execute the machine defined by a particular set of states.

At this point, 'programming' an app within the class would consist of
drawing a transition diagram, which a client could inspect and sign
off on, and then translating to the defined structure.

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul  6 00:00:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 00:00:04 -0400
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9hvcu5$fu4ja$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <Xns90D4BD1F823A1gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <3B4537C4.F8B4482E@engcorp.com>

Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> 
> "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote:
> 
> >#test.py:
> >import getopt, sys
> >print getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "")
> >
> >F:\Python21>python test.py c:\test
> >([], ['c:\\test'])
[examples reinserted by peter at engcorp.com]
> >
> >So it appears to work here using getopt.  Something else must be going
> >on. Can you post an example that generates the string with the embedded
> >tabs?
> 
> Thank you. I had no idea that Python would add the extra backslash
> automatically. Tried to isolate the problem before trying the whole thing
> on getopt. This solved the problem on a more appropriate level.

Gustaf, Python does _not_ "add the extra backslash".  What is 
shown above as ([], ['c:\\test']) is just a printable
*representation* of the content of the string, which actually
contains only a single backslash.

If you print a string directly (e.g. 'print "some text"')
then the actual sequence of bytes in the string is output,
and whatever non-printing characters (control characters) 
you may have will affect the output.

If instead you print a tuple or list containing a string
(or a tuple containing a list which contains a string
as in the above example), Python will print instead a 
special representation of the data, and any contained
strings will be printed with special control characters 
escaped so they don't mess up the output (and so that
the same data could be used as input to generate exactly
the same data again in certain ways).

So:

>>> a = 'c:\\test'
>>> a
'c:\\test'
>>> print a
c:\test
>>> print len(a)
7
>>> b = 'c:\test'
>>> b
'c:\test'
>>> print b
c:      est
>>> print len(b)
6

The string 'a' contains seven bytes where the third byte
is a backslash.  The string 'b' contains only six bytes
where the third byte is the tab character (formed when
you use a backslash followed by a 't' in a string).

It looks like you solved the problem, but from your
message above it didn't sound like you had completely 
understood how string entry, string representations 
when printing, and raw strings all work in Python.
I hope this helps a little.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From paul at boddie.net  Fri Jul 27 05:38:46 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:38:46 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B60B3D5.664A3D7F at engcorp.com>...
> 
> The updated PEP also makes no mention of a utility for scanning 
> existing code to check for potential problems.  Is this considered
> an intractable problem?  Is there any commitment to doing this,
> eventually, as part of the implementation of this PEP?  Or is the
> presence of the "warn" option considered sufficient (to allow for
> testing, rather than scanning)?

I'm really disappointed that the "migration" process hasn't been
addressed in the PEP, since the disruptive nature of the changes to
division constitute my principal objection to the adoption of these
changes. I get the impression that there isn't a good solution to this
problem, and since this situation could hinder "progress", it is being
"swept under the carpet".

But possibly the first thing anyone with any investment in the
language should be thinking upon starting to read the PEP is: "How on
Earth am I going to know what needs changing, and how much time and
money am I going to be spending to adapt to this?"

One could suggest (as I did before) that until such time as effective
type inference/analysis tools are available, this change shouldn't go
through.

Paul


From garry at sage.att.com  Tue Jul 24 11:53:46 2001
From: garry at sage.att.com (Garry Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:53:46 GMT
Subject: IPC10 Call For Tutorials
 
Message-ID: <3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B@sage.att.com>

We're now accepting proposals for tutorials for IPC10, the
annual Python conference.  We had a good batch last year, and
are hoping to have some equally good ones this year.

Tutorials can cover any topic related to Python or its use, 
so graphics, networking, web, XML, Zope, etc are all fair game.
Anything that you think will be of interest to a segment of the
Python community.

With all the changes in the language, it might be nice to have a
tutorial on advanced Python usage, covering new features, OO,
functional programming style, etc.  Or perhaps a team-taught class
that combines multiple topics to build some non-trivial application,
like using wxpython and the protocol libraries to build a news/mail
reader.
Feel free to come up with unusual topics or approaches, or to contact
me with a half-baked idea.  Maybe we can turn it into something good.

The deadline for submitting proposals is Monday, October 1, 2001,
but it would be great to have feedback sooner if you're thinking about
submitting something.  For more information, please see
http://www.python10.org/p10-calltutorials.html


-- 
Garry Hodgson                   sometimes we ride on your horses
Senior Hacker                   sometimes we walk alone
Software Innovation Services    sometimes the songs that we hear
AT&T Labs                       are just songs of our own
garry at sage.att.com


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 09:18:08 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:18:08 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com> <Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <3B4ADD33.CA2836D1@westerngeco.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90DA8FF2145Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
news:3B4ADD33.CA2836D1 at westerngeco.com: 

>> I think you maybe misunderstand what raw strings do. Raw strings
>> simply prevent any backslash character that is present in the string
>> from being interpreted as an escape sequence. They don't affect the
>> processing or use of the string in any way. Since none of your literal
>> strings contain backslashes there is no reason to use raw strings.
>> In regular expressions backslashes are special, but so are many other
>> characters that could appear in filenames, even on Unix. 
> 
> 
> You are right I don't understand...  My strings do include backslashes
> (they are windows filenames from os.path.walk())  I Have indeed changed
> to using string.replace() - having read the HOW TO on
> www.python.org.... and it seems to work (without using raw strings....)
> This all seems very confusing! 
> 

Let me try to explain. A raw string is a change in notation, not a change 
in the string itself. So r'%s' is exactly the same as '%s' or "%s" or 
'''%s''' or '\x25\x73', but r'\x25\x73' is a string containing 8 characters 
two of which are backslashes.
If you write a string containing a backslash, e.g. 'c:\autoexec.bat' the 
backslash may be interpreted as beginning an escape sequence, so in this 
case you get 'c:\x07utoexec.bat' as the \a converts to a bell character. 
Writing r'c:\autoexec.bat' or writing 'c:\\autoexec.bat' both give you a 
identical string containing exactly 15 characters. Both of these are 
strings (there is no separate raw string type), and each of them contains 
exactly one backslash character:

>>> file1 = r'c:\autoexec.bat'
>>> file2 = 'c:\\autoexec.bat'
>>> print file1
c:\autoexec.bat
>>> print file2
c:\autoexec.bat
>>> print repr(file1)
'c:\\autoexec.bat'
>>> print repr(file2)
'c:\\autoexec.bat'
>>> print len(file1), len(file2)
15 15
>>> print type(file1), type(file2)
<type 'string'> <type 'string'>

In other words the r prefix on a raw string simply changes the way 
the string literal is regarded at compile time, it has no further effect on 
the processing of data after Python has compiled your code.

If your program reads data from a file, or indeed gets it anywhere else, 
then backslashes have no special meaning. Only string literals do this 
special interpretation.

The real confusion creeps in because backslash also has a special meaning 
in regular expressions. So to put a backslash into a regular expression you 
must escape it by preceding it with another backslash, and to write two 
backslashes in literal string you must either use a raw string or write 4 
backslashes. So the string for a regular expression that matches one 
backslash followed by an 'x' could be written as:
    	s = '\\\\x'
    	s = r'\\x'
    	s = re.escape('\\x')
    	s = re.escape(r'\x')
In all of these s ends up as the same three character string: two 
backslashes followed by an 'x'.

Why the 'x'? Because for reasons that escape me, raw strings cannot end 
with a single backslash:
>>> r'\\'
'\\\\'
>>> r'\'
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    r'\'
       ^
SyntaxError: invalid token

I hope this makes things a bit clearer.
-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul  9 03:34:01 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:34:01 -0400
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D7B5DD9220gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <3B473741.2BE14CB0@engcorp.com> <Xns90D9116ADA12Bgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <3B495E69.ED0EBAC2@engcorp.com>

Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> That works. Now I run it from the same directory, but still with the full
> path:
> 
> E:\test>python e:\test\syspath.py
> e:\test
> 
> That works too, but look here when I run it with only the filename:
> 
> E:\test>python syspath.py
> 
> Nothing! This is the problem I have. It think the second and third case
> ought to mean the same.

By now you should have seen my other post from Saturday which shows
how to use os.path.abspath(), which converts relative paths to absolute
ones by prepending os.getcwd() when required.

sys.path[0] should perhaps show an absolute path, but there are probably
arguments for why it should not, too.  Just convert to an abspath and
your troubles will be gone. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Wed Jul 25 05:05:33 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:05:33 +1000
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhi8b$duv$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E8BDD.3B0C9634@student.gu.edu.au>

Duncan Grisby wrote:
> 
> In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
>  Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> >Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
> >We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
> >loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
> >so let's not be shy.
> 
> What is the suggested course of action for people (like me) who have
> to maintain software which must run on more than one version of
> Python?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Duncan.
> 
> --
>  -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
>   -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
>    -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --

Um. Probably to explicitly state what type of result you're expecting to
get back. Like the float(a)/b trick for a float return on present
python, and an int(a/b) for an integer on future (post 2.3+) versions of
python. *grins* As a moderate follower (yellow belt at best) it is a bit
bewildering watching all the changes that have suddenly sprung up. 

But generators have got my vote!
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From donovan at sherbet.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 07:20:02 2001
From: donovan at sherbet.co.uk (Donovan Hide)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:20:02 +0100
Subject: List Question
References: <mailman.995651315.21162.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tlo25942haqo15@corp.supernews.co.uk>

Cheers,
 just goes to show there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Donovan Hide.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul  6 03:07:23 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 07:07:23 GMT
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>		<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net> <mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Lsd17.8383$e5.1082989@newsb.telia.net>

Paul Prescod wrote:

> Here's what an ActivePython user does to install 3 out of 4 those
> modules:
>
> pyppm install Numeric
> pyppm install egenix-mx-base
> pyppm install PIL

and then he does "import Image", gets an import error
(JPEG62.DLL missing), and sends me a nastygram ;-)

where's the PPM protocol docs?

how do I add new nodes to the PPM distribution network?

Cheers /F




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul  3 16:16:27 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:16:27 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <9ht7ki$pao$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <3B42281B.EAB20330@ActiveState.com>

I knew I shouldn't get dragged into this. :)

The problems with the current situation are well-documented. Every
Python book introduces this feature with a statement along the lines of:
"this is something that's going to be different than you expect...be
careful." It is one of Guido's oldest regrets. Arguing about it isn't
really going to change anything. Either someone will step up and do the
implementation, in which case the behaviour likely will change, as Guido
wants it to, or nobody ever will, in which case the status quo will
remain.

Donn Cave wrote:
> 
> Quoth Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com>:
> ...
> | Nobody argues against understanding. But understanding is eased if you
> | do what people expect. People believe that the integers are a special
> | case of floats. Python encourages them in that belief in most places
> | other than this one.
> 
> Integer is not a special case of float, they're both special cases
> of number.  Why not say integers are pure numbers and floats are
> corrupt, hence coercion favors the float because you can corrupt
> the pure easier than you can purify the corrupt?  
> ...
> 
> Floating point is just a can of worms.

I'll take that as a vote in favor of PEP 240. :)

http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0240.html

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From nas at python.ca  Fri Jul 27 21:05:02 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:05:02 -0700
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEJDLBAA.tim.one@home.com>; from tim.one@home.com on Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:39:10PM -0400
References: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107262020310.744-100000@localhost.virginia.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEJDLBAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <20010727180502.A31572@glacier.fnational.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
...
>     for x in whatever:
> 
> magically applies iter() to whatever under the covers (nothing off there),
> but if "whatever" is a generator(-function), iter(whatever) is an error.

Huh?  Why would you want to iterate over the function itself?

  Neil



From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 18:16:40 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:16:40 -0500
Subject: Undefining functions and classes
In-Reply-To: <3B4EFA40@operamail.com>
References: <3B4EFA40@operamail.com>
Message-ID: <15180.53320.717257.503138@beluga.mojam.com>

    Vesselin> Does anyone know how to undefine a function or class in Python

Try

    del func

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 21:10:19 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:10:19 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B566ED8.E14732F8@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <9j5u2302v3e@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B57A65F.BDB6BAE5@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <3B58D67B.D3D3EDE8@student.gu.edu.au>

Greg Ewing wrote:
> 
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > I think it was a 19th century fancy, to start with.  Extremely
> > recent when compared to the amount of time mathematics
> > has been written about.
> 
> It's still a lot longer than computers have been around.
> And the fact that they *did* adopt it suggests they
> found it useful in some way. Perhaps because it let
> them express things more succinctly?
> 
> They seem to be satisified with the decision, too.
> I've never heard a group of mathematicians debating
> whether mathematics should go back to being
> case-insensitive (if it ever really was to begin
> with).

Well, it was probably pragmatism that caused them to do it. Especially
with physical mathematics, even using case sensitivity, they still have
to resort to using the Greek alphabet and putting funny lines
over/under/around perfectly ordinary letters to get enough symbols, and
even there, there's a lot of recycling. *thinking of some of the
arguments why we use j for complex numbers in python*

i-already-been-taken-by-the-engineers-'ly yours
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul  5 17:10:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 21:10:01 GMT
Subject: Question about scope
Message-ID: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com>

I thought I understood python scoping, but I guess I don't.  Consider this
code:

FALSE = 0
TRUE = not FALSE
FLAG = TRUE

def FlagFalse():
	FLAG = FALSE

print str(FLAG)
FlagFalse()
print str(FLAG)

I get:
1
1

But I expected:
1
0

If I declare FLAG as global in the function, it works properly, of course.

I thought that python checked local scope for a variable first and if
it did not find it, it appealed to the local namespace.  What am I missing
here - it's probably at the end of my nose, but I cannot seem to make sense
of it...

TIA,
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From mday at apple.com  Fri Jul 27 20:02:39 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:02:39 -0700
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <270720011702397113%mday@apple.com>

In article <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list at python.org>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:

> Here's a new revision of PEP 238.  I've incorporated clarifications of
> issues that were brought up during the discussion of rev 1.10

Thanks.

Originally, I was uncomfortable with the change.  But now I'm starting
to warm up to it nicely.  The threads about non-programmers (eg.,
medical technicians) getting caught by classic division was quite
compelling.  Sometimes I forget that programming itself isn't the goal.

I think my original discomfort was due to using C for so long (and
damaging my brain along the way).  But maybe C is like tobacco, and if
I quit, maybe my brain will eventually heal.  One can hope.  :-)

-Mark


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  1 21:31:03 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:31:03 -0400
Subject: PEP 255: Simple Generators
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-2897DB.09161529062001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEMNKLAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Toby Dickenson]
> If that quadratic term is actually dominant for sensibly deep trees,
> then I suspect it would not be too hard to optimise away this very
> common case at C level:
>
>     for x in <generator>:
>         yield x

Toby, this is Python:  we're not optimizing anything.  WYSIWYG!  Even the
possibility for "optimimizing" that is off limits here:  it crosses stack
frames, with all the difficulties that entails.

[David Eppstein]
> ... one could use simple generators to implement a union-find data
> structure (probably not the right way of actually implementing UF,
> but...)

Cute!  The code snippet wasn't quite Python, so I'll attach a working light
rewrite below.

> ...
> But there are known superlinear lower bounds on union-find.
> Note, this code assumes that it's ok to call next() on gen X at the
> same time as some other gen Y is suspended inside a for loop that's
> also looking  at the elements of gen X; I don't see any reason why
> that shouldn't be allowed.

It's allowed.  What isn't allowed is for an *active* (non-suspended)
generator to reinvoke itself (whether directly or indirectly) while still
active; e.g.,

>>> def g():
...     i = me.next()
...     yield i
>>> me = g()
>>> me.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
  File "<string>", line 2, in g
ValueError: generator already executing

Here's your union-find algorithm w/ a little test driver:

class disjointSet:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
        self.parent = None
        self.generator = self.generate()

    def generate(self):
        while not self.parent:
            yield self
        for x in self.parent.generator:
            yield x

    def find(self):
        return self.generator.next()

    def union(self, parent):
        if self.parent:
            raise ValueError("Sorry, I'm not a root!")
        self.parent = parent

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

names = "ABCDEFGHIJKLM"
sets = [disjointSet(name) for name in names]
roots = sets[:]

from random import choice
while 1:
    for s in sets:
        print "%s->%s" % (s, s.find()),
    print
    if len(roots) > 1:
        s1 = choice(roots)
        roots.remove(s1)
        s2 = choice(roots)
        s1.union(s2)
        print "merged", s1, "into", s2
    else:
        break

Here's "typical" output:

A->A B->B C->C D->D E->E F->F G->G H->H I->I J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged A into M
A->M B->B C->C D->D E->E F->F G->G H->H I->I J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged B into K
A->M B->K C->C D->D E->E F->F G->G H->H I->I J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged I into J
A->M B->K C->C D->D E->E F->F G->G H->H I->J J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged C into G
A->M B->K C->G D->D E->E F->F G->G H->H I->J J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged G into J
A->M B->K C->J D->D E->E F->F G->J H->H I->J J->J K->K L->L M->M
merged J into M
A->M B->K C->M D->D E->E F->F G->M H->H I->M J->M K->K L->L M->M
merged K into H
A->M B->H C->M D->D E->E F->F G->M H->H I->M J->M K->H L->L M->M
merged D into F
A->M B->H C->M D->F E->E F->F G->M H->H I->M J->M K->H L->L M->M
merged H into M
A->M B->M C->M D->F E->E F->F G->M H->M I->M J->M K->M L->L M->M
merged E into L
A->M B->M C->M D->F E->L F->F G->M H->M I->M J->M K->M L->L M->M
merged M into L
A->L B->L C->L D->F E->L F->F G->L H->L I->L J->L K->L L->L M->L
merged F into L
A->L B->L C->L D->L E->L F->L G->L H->L I->L J->L K->L L->L M->L

It seems a very clever way to avoid chasing up to the root each time.




From paulsid at home.com  Tue Jul 24 02:54:26 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:54:26 -0600
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu> <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lp6u8.hhd.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <h69plt04ff8j36ma26k9b2l13e5i04hg6e@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D1BA2.215716AB@home.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:

> I've been here already - mathematicians use the same set of operators
> whatever set of values. They exact representations aren't available to
> simple ASCII text files, so we use a single alternate representation.
> The point is that we should the same symbol for the same meaning,
> exactly the same as mathemeticians. When a mathematician asks 'I can't
> find a divide symbol, how do I do that?' the answer should be simple -
> it should not depend on which set of values he happens to be working
> in at the time.
> The fact that we need to choose an alternative symbol should not be
> seen as a chance to break with principles that mathematicians have
> applied successfuly since well before Christs time.

While on the subject of choosing symbols, I think the thing that really
bugs me most about this is that * and / are opposites (I won't say
"inverses" just in case somebody gets me on a mathematical
technicality), so shouldn't ** and // be opposites?  I'll bet there will
be at least a few newcomers (that is mainly who the change is being made
for, right?) who will be casually browsing a Python operator list (e.g.
section 2.5 of the reference manual), see both ** and // on there, learn
what ** does, and assume // does the opposite.  Or vice-versa.  (This is
regardless of whatever kind of division // will do.)

Here's one example - it's easy think of many more:

x = (2**4)//2

Here x == 8, but isn't it awfully tempting at first glance to think x ==
4?!  (Take the parentheses out and it's worse.)

I know the subject of which symbol should be used was beaten to death a
long time ago, and I don't want to revive that debate again so I'm not
expecting anybody to reply.  I just wanted to get this off my chest
since it's been irking me all day and I wasn't around for the original
debate.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul  8 19:52:24 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:52:24 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <20010709015224.Q8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 10:45:12PM +0000, Bengt Richter wrote:

> Why not parameterize the concept with a single block-scope-introducing
> keyword, e.g., 'semantics' or 'special' e.g., rewriting from above:

> semantics PRECISION, 0: # everything behaves as it does now
>     print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
>     print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714

> semantics PRECISION 1:   # all calculations yield 1 decimal point 
>     print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places

Doesn't fix the problems. What about this:

semantics PRECISION, 0:
    x = 2/7

semantics PRECISION, 100:
    print x


-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 20 03:32:50 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:32:50 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <Xns90E2BDCEA67E7gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>
Message-ID: <j4snfsgin1.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:

> You have to do a lot more than that. After all, once xml/__init__.py
> runs and swaps itself for _xmlplus/__init__.py, then xml.sax.expatreader
> refers to _xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py.

The original reporter did not have PyXML installed, so no swapping of
_xmlplus would happen on this installation.

Regards,
Martin


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul  7 16:11:48 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 20:11:48 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9ker84.1sg.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 06 Jul 2001 16:30:34 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

> Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":

I like it.

> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.

Please aim at some replacement for floats here in the future.

Recently I needed exact calculations on fractional numbers.
The program renders texts in an artificial script (see
<http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/vi-001.gif> for a sample - resolution
is for printing at 300 dpi).

Conversion of a vectorized form of a character (lines, quarters
of ellipses and dots) into a bitmap needs reliable equality of
coordinates, to check whether lines meet or not, to produce proper
corners and ends, and to fit the shape into character size.

Coordinates here are rational by nature. A computed shape consisting
of evenly distributed lines is stretched vertically to fit into
character size.

I could do it on floats instead of rationals and test for equality
by comparing abs(difference) with a small epsilon, but it would be
ugly. The problem doesn't have intrinsic inaccuracies: it's digital,
not analog. Unambiguously either there is a horizontal line at the
top of the character or there is not. Lines either meet or not.

It would not work well on floats without changes also for another
reason. When a horizontal line of an integral width is positioned
such that after rounding to whole pixels it could be equally well
one pixel higher or lower, my code is careful to round coordinates
of its higher and lower outline in the same direction, so the line
has the correct width. Floating-point inaccuracies could make some
lines one pixel narrower or wider than others.

Unfortunately the program is not written in Python. I promise to
reimplement it in Python when it supports rationals, i.e. when it
guarantees that 1/3+1/6 == 1/2 :-)

This would also be another use for generators, but I don't need to
ask for them - they are going in anyway. This is another example
when generators or lazy lists are very useful: several stages of
processing should be pipelined, to not hold everything in memory as
pages of output are produced.

> I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.

I like div(x, y) and x div y equally well. x//y is not as clear.

Don't you want to borrow Haskell's turning of an arbitrary binary
function into an operator thus: x `div` y? :-)  OCaml recently did.

> Maybe also add mod(x, y) for symmetry

Sure. This would remove the overloading of %, leaving it for sprintf.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Thu Jul  5 03:41:13 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 00:41:13 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message news:<9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com>...

> Perhaps if you are seriously looking into possible languages to use for
> writing an ATC then you might be better off looking for some research
> information about the relative merits of different languages rather than
> asking a fairly obvious question in a news group that will only be read by
> adherents of a particular language :-). I say "obvious" here because you
> will find only Python lovers here. I love Python but I wouldn't use it to
> write an ATC.

Perhaps I should clarify that I am not proposing to use Python for a
complete ATC system but rather for a relatively small, albeit key,
component of a very large system.

> The choice of languages for implementing various applications is sometimes
> extremely suspect. I suspect that often it comes down to something like one
> or more of the following reasons:
> 
> "I know X, it is a good language"
> "I can get programmers more easily in language X than language Y"
> "We currently have programmers who know language X"
> 
> I am not necessarily saying that choosing a language based upon the above
> reasons is wrong, but it is hardly approaching the problem from an
> engineering standpoint. There is literature available that compares the
> relative merits of languages. To make an informed decision you really should
> do some research and find out what information is available to help you make
> the decision. The more information the better informed the decision. I am
> sure as an aerospace engineer, you do studies into the various alternatives
> for your design, why should choosing a programming language be any
> different?

I agree. However, I wouldn't know where to start with the formal
literature, and even if I did I don't have enough time to pursue it in
depth. My management is already worried that I am even considering
Python (they'd never even heard of it), and they may well shoot it
down even if it's my choice. (You'd no doubt praise them for that. :-)

> > <cut>
> >
> > > Based upon Gerrit's observations, which I fully endorse, anybody who
>  doesn't
> > > use the most strongly typed language they can find for an application
>  like
> > > Air Traffic Control, has to put it mildly, rocks in their head :-).
> >
> > As I indicated in my original post, the lack of type checking does
> > concern me. However, as I wrote in a later post, I also suspect that
> > this concern is overblown. I am not a computer scientist or even a
> > full-time programmer, so I don't pretend to be an expert in this area.
> > I am an aerospace engineer, and I do some programming in support of my
> > own research (but I am a Python beginner).
> >
> 
> There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
> languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
> "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing the
> same application in two different languages to get meaningful comparisions -
> but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed languages.

Let's cut right to the chase here. I like strong typing almost as much
as you do, but I don't understand why I can't get it in Python,
perhaps by specialized code-analysis tools. Is the problem just that
the development tools are underdeveloped, or is there a fundamental
technical reason that type-checking cannot be done? If it's the
former, then I suggest that the tools be given a very high priority.
If it's the latter, then perhaps type checking can be done under
certain reasonable restrictions. Whatever the case, I want to have my
cake and eat it too. :-)

<cut>
> PyChecker is still very imature and some things it will never (poor word to
> use, since if someone wants to put in the effort, nothing is impossible :-))
> be checked by it. It will only ever be an aid. The ability of Python to
> dynamically "change its behaviour on the fly" is one of its strengths but
> also a weakness from the point of view of ensuring correctness and
> reliability in such an application domain.

Do you think PyChecker could ever be sophisticated enough to do static
type checking?

> Well, if you need more information, email me directly Russ - I'm more than
> happy to help. The issue can be confusing with all of the Python lovers on
> the list :-)

Thanks.

Russ


From ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr  Sat Jul  7 11:15:03 2001
From: ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 15:15:03 GMT
Subject: anonymous variable
Message-ID: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>

Hello

In a script i made, i have tuples (name, nb, size) in a list and i wanted to
sort the list with respect to size.

In python 1.5, i do : 
L.sort ( lambda (_,_, size1) (_,_,size2) : cmp(size1,size2))
_ is a variable that, according to the language reference manual,  has
no special meaning, and i find it adequate for meaning 'I don't use
this value'
I also write code such as (_,nb, size) = c, and so on

But, in python 2.2 (0501 snapshot), it gives an error, _ being use twice
in the definition of the fonction. I agree, but writing 
L.sort ( lambda (dum1, dum2, size1) (dum3, dum4, size2) : cmp (size1,size2))
is a bit too complicate for me.
and writing
L.sort ( lambda x y : cmp (x[2],y[2])) 
is not the solution because it is not as expressive as what i do before.

In the majority of fonctionnal and logic programming languages, you have
such a keyword, that says : 'We don't know what is its
value, but who cares ?'
Can we have the same in python ?

Thanks in advance
Emmanuel


From xione at prodigy.net  Thu Jul 26 15:04:22 2001
From: xione at prodigy.net (Xione Wrent)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:04:22 GMT
Subject: Tkinter Problem:
Message-ID: <WQZ77.419$w04.68939031@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>

How do I display buttons as images, particularly Windows Bitmaps? Thanks...




From djc at object-craft.com.au  Wed Jul 11 09:40:26 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 23:40:26 +1000
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com> <m3g0c4hstf.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au> <23891c90.0107110150.24b7d36@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m3itgzfut1.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> writes:

Paul> What could be interesting would be some kind of common test
Paul> suite for database modules. It would give module developers
Paul> something to aim for (for compliance with the DB-API), and
Paul> module users something to use to verify how good a module is for
Paul> their purposes. mxODBC has something like this for sanity
Paul> checking, as well as for investigating certain aspects of type
Paul> binding.

That would be a good thing.  I have a feeling that the DB-API is not
strict enough to write anything but the most general test suite.

>>  You are 100% correct here.  If only people were willing to try the
>> module.  For all I know there are more than 20 people who are using
>> the module for serious work.  Noone ever tells me, so how can I
>> claim that I have a proven module?  As I said before - there have
>> been over 180 unique IP addresses which have downloaded the
>> Sybase-0.2x module.

Paul> Perhaps it works sufficiently well for the purposes of the users
Paul> who downloaded it. Nevertheless, sure-fire ways to elicit
Paul> feedback would be invaluable for module developers. Do any of
Paul> these Sourceforge surveys ever get used? (Or are people too worn
Paul> down by having too many meaningless "Who is your favourite
Paul> actress?"/"What kind of geek are you?" surveys in their face
Paul> whilst surfing?)

I am as guilty as the next person here.  I suspect that it just does
not occur to people who use a module that the developer might be
lacking positive feedback.

It is a classic case of the volunteer's dilemma:

        http://www.heretical.com/games/vdilemma.html

        (excellent book - by the way)

Everyone just assumes that other people will provide feedback so none
is ever received.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 08:29:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:29:42 -0400
Subject: Use of iterators for state machine (was Re: 2.2 features)
References: <mailman.996129288.32203.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B600D36.242A8E82@engcorp.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Peter Hansen]
[on iterators]
> > I'm especially looking forward to using them to implement state machines.
> 
> Have you read PEP 255 ("Simple Generators")?  There's a long section at the
> start discussing exactly that.  [...]

Clearly I had not :-).  I shall.  Thanks for the background.

> If you don't think about it too much <wink>, it all works the way you
> expect; if you do think about it too much, it takes an "aha!" (or maybe even
> two) to figure out *why* it all works.  It took me about 8 years to explain
> it to Guido <wink> -- although, in his defense, he may wish to protest that
> the first time he actually paid attention to what I was screaming at him, he
> "got it" in about one minute flat.

Thanks for leaving me an "out":  I'll let you know when *I* actually
start paying attention, since I don't entirely get it just yet. ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From nas at python.ca  Tue Jul 10 11:37:25 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:37:25 -0700
Subject: Profiler question
In-Reply-To: <slrn9km60i.d3l.alf@leo.logilab.fr>; from alf@leo.logilab.fr on Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:54:26PM +0000
References: <slrn9km60i.d3l.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <20010710083725.A12135@glacier.fnational.com>

Alexandre Fayolle wrote:
> I'm using the profile module to try to see where I could get some speedups
> in an application, I'm getting troubles interpretting the results, especially
> the cumulative times. Is there a known problem with profile and multithreaded
> applications? 

If you're on a reasonably fast machine and the timer resolution is poor
(e.g. Linux x68 is 100 Hz by default) then the results can be very
strange.  Changing HZ to 1024 in "include/asm/param.h" and recompiling
the Linux kernel greatly improved my profile results.

  Neil



From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Fri Jul 27 17:40:01 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:40:01 EDT
Subject: PLAY TODAY! WIN $1,000,000 TOMORROW!
Message-ID: <200107272150.PAA63204@s0222.pm0.net>

****************************************
PLAY TODAY! WIN $1,000,000 TOMORROW!
http://lotto.quacko.com
**************************************** 
Quacko Lotto continues to strive to be on the cutting edge of lotto
games on the internet. We have the VERY BEST ODDS of Winning a
$1,000,000 Grand Prize on the net.

Is today your lucky day?

The Internet's Only Pick 1 Game Plus the Best Odds of Winning a Grand
Prize Check out what everyone is talking about!

http://lotto.quacko.com 

WEEKLY DRAW & GIVEAWAYS! 
******************************
How would you like to WIN a brand NEW DVD player? How would you like to
WIN up to $2000 every week? Play every week to be entered in our random
draw and win these great prizes!

Click Here: http://lotto.quacko.com 

******************************************
RECEIVE FREE MONEY AT SUPREMECASINO!
******************************************
http://www.supremecasino.com

Free money on all deposits... just one of the reasons
we're VOTED #1 with Online Wagerers! 

Great News Valued Customer!!! Use Your Visa or MasterCard NOW Virtually
100% GUARANTEED !!! 

No More Rejected Cards, Problems or Errors. TRY IT NOW!

Buy $25 and Get $25 Free!
Buy $50 and Get $50 Free!
Buy $75 and Get $75 Free!
100% Match Bonus!!

Combine the BEST in online casino games with FREE money and you've got
some major excitement! 

Stop by and play for free!
http://www.supremecasino.com



<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Mon Jul 23 23:27:09 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 03:27:09 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995926001.4339.python-list@python.org> <vmcpltkoo6137ko4hnivtl5a01b9dtq2e1@4ax.com> <3B5CE049.8F274BD@geocities.com>
Message-ID: <hW577.26451$Xr6.212776@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Myles:

> Ermm, fact correction :
> not on the VB and VBA I have available to me.
>
> VB (admittedly v.4):
>     x = 1 \ 2
>     MsgBox (x)
> gives 0.5

   Also in VBScript (on W2K):
WScript.echo(1/2)
   displays "0.5".

   And QBasic
PRINT 1/2
   displays ".5"

   Neil





From jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi  Mon Jul 16 08:29:17 2001
From: jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi (Jarno J Virtanen)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 12:29:17 GMT
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

15 Jul 2001 10:20:38 -0400 kj0 wrote:
> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  
[snip]

Here's one: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/crisis/

It's subjective, but he clearly states what he wants and then ranks
programming languages according to the criterias.



From barry at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 12:08:43 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:08:43 -0400
Subject: Forth and Python side note
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101932480.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
	<Pine.LNX.4.30.0107111902400.2392-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <15180.31243.417520.826123@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "RS" == Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

    RS> It's very intersting that searching revealed at least two
    RS> Forth interpreters written in Python:

    RS> google:"Forth Python"

    RS> One occured at Edu-sig in Oct 2000 and another one in 1994 in
    RS> Python-list.

    RS> (But no one attemted to implement Python in Forth)

If Python had existed in 1986, I might have attempted it!

you-forth-love-if-honk-then-ly y'rs,
-Barry



From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul 26 03:40:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 07:40:01 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com>

Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> 
> "Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message news:<LBA77.58$bXi.175168000 at news.telia.no>...
<SNIP>

> > It's also clear that some problems might occur cuz the BaseHTTPServer which
> > is used for the most part, have performance issues. Perhaps implementing the
> > server using asyncchat etc. would increase performance ?? Why aren't the
> > modules allready implemented with these tools available in the standard
> > python lib allready, if that's the case?
> 
> OSE is implemented using an event driven system model. This includes the HTTP
> servlet framework, such that multiple requests can be handled at a time etc.
> It includes mechanisms for knowing when connections block due to slow HTTP
> clients so you can stop sending data back etc.
> 
> OSE at its core is actually C++, with Python wrappers. Thus, you are getting
> the efficiency of C++ but the simpler interfaces possible with Python.

I have a related question.  I come from a very high-scale, high-arrival
rate transactional computing background.  In this world, connection-oriented
solutions like RPCs across wide-area networks are a big "no no" for 
a variety of reasons.  (If you care more about why, I wrote a paper, years
ago, in grad school on this topic.  The specifics of the paper are quite
out of date, but the general critique' of RPCs is still very much relevant,
perhaps even moreso today with the proliferation of the internet.  You can
find it at: http://www.tundraware.com/RPCpaper/rpcpaper.pdf)  The short
reason for this is that connection-oriented solutions like RPCs create
very "brittle" applications in highly distributed, high-performance
environments.  I am thus less than enthusiastic about SOAP as a solution.

One really good alternative is transactional queuing with asynchronous
read/write interfaces to the queues.  I'm wondering if anyone is doing 
anything in this area with Python.




-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 28 11:35:44 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 15:35:44 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
Message-ID: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

When I released Python 2.2a1, the type/class unification feature was
announced as TENTATIVE.  It's been a while now (feels like a year,
although I realize it's only been 10 days :), and I would like to see
some feedback on this.

If there's anyone who believes the type/class unification should not
become a feature in Python 2.2, please speak up now or forever hold
your peace...  (But I'd rather you speak up!)

Note that if you have concerns about backwards incompatibilities, the
best thing you can do is point them out ASAP.  I want to ensure that
2.2 (final) is as compatible with 2.1 as possible, while still
providing the new exciting features that type/class unification makes
possible.

I realize the PEPs aren't done yet, but I believe that the separate
introduction I wrote goes a long way towards explaining type/class
unification.  Read it here:

  http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.  Just DON'T CHANGE THE THREAD
TOPIC.  I don't have time to read the entire newsgroup (I tried this
week, and I didn't get to anything else :).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul  3 21:34:42 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 01:34:42 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com> <008701c1037d$f6280de0$0101010a@local> <mailman.994137125.12580.python-list@python.org> <OTj07.179491$ff.1395689@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <3b427333.981991248@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:36:46 GMT, "Neil Hodgson"
<nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

>Paul Prescod:
>> Is anybody else suspicious about the sudden uptick of troll-like
>> behavior on comp.lang.python?  Keep an eye out and don't bother
>> responding to anything inflammatory.
>
>   Its that damned PSU - Martijn must have let something a little sensitive
>out and they're flooding the group hoping to
>
I'm a bit new here, so I'd appreciate it if you could exp


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 09:16:13 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:16:13 +0200
Subject: Control of flow
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local>
Message-ID: <9k6b2u027hv@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Campbell" <cb921 at voice.co.za> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000 at cb921.local...
> Hi,
>
> I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is often
> a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful" sometimes =).

Naah, you can always get the same effect with better structure:-).


> Here is a little snippet that gets a month/day from a caller.  If the
> day entered is not in the range of days valid for the month entered, we
> repeat from the top.  Does anyone have a few minutes to waste helping
> me??  How better can I code things that look like this:
>
> >>> snip <<<
> while 1:
>     cont = 1         ## ugh!

Agreed on the "ugh" - artificial "codeflow-control" variables
ARE a horror (only marginally better than goto's:-).

>     month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
>     if month < 1 or month > 12:
>         play("invalidmonth.vox")
>         continue

So far so good -- and indeed 'cont' is not used here:-)

>     while 1:
>         day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
>         if day < 1 or day > Month[month]:
>             play("invalidday.vox")
>             cont = 1
>         cont = 0

This won't work (I think you forgot a 'break' or two:-).
This loop will never exit at all.

What are the conditions under which you want to repeat
this inner loop (letting the user enter a day for the
fixed month) rather than redo the outer loop (letting
the user enter the month again)?

In general, you should move your validation code to
auxiliary functions.  Each auxiliary function can
only exit with either a valid value for whatever it
is accepting, or an indication to "redo from scratch"
(or possibly, redo from a given point, though this
may be cutting it slightly too fine:-).

For example you might have:

def getvalidated(prompt_voxfile, mysterycode,
        invalid_voxfile, lowerbound, upperbound):
    while 1:
        result = getdmf(prompt_voxfile, mysterycode)
        if lowerbound<=result<upperbound: return result
        play(invalid_voxfile)

if you always wanted to keep retrying THIS part of
data-entry until the user gets it right.  This would
need no looping at the outer (application) level).

More likely, the user can also enter some code to
mean "OK, let's do it over, from scratch".  Suppose
that getdmf() is coded so that it always returns
None in that case.  Then you might use the same
convention for getvalidated, just change the if to
    if result is None or lowerbound<=result<upperbound: return result

and the upper (application) level might be:
    while 1:
        month = getvalidated("entermonth", 2,
            "invalidmonth", 1, 13)
        if month is None: continue
        day = getvalidated("enterday", 2,
            "invalidday", 1, 1+Month[month])
        if day is None: continue

that's not too bad for a couple of entries, but it
gets slightly tiresome when you have a zillion.  That
is (part of:-) what exceptions are for...

class Invalid(IOError): pass

def getvalid(prompt_voxfile, mysterycode,
        invalid_voxfile, lowerbound, upperbound):
    while 1:
        result = getdmf(prompt_voxfile, mysterycode)
        if result is None: raise Invalid
        if lowerbound<=result<upperbound: return result
        play(invalid_voxfile)

and the upper application level:

    while 1:
        try:
            year=getvalid("entyear",2,"invyear",1970,2030)
            month=getvalid("entmonth",2,"invmonth",1,13)
            day=getvalid("entday",2,"invday",1,1+lastof(month,year))
            spam=getvalid("entspam",3,"invspam",*spamspan(day,month,year))
            eggs=getvalid("enteggs",1","inveggs",-spam,1)
        except Invalid: pass
        else: break

Such regularity in the code strongly suggests encoding the
changing parts (names of vox files, rules for limits) into
a data table and writing a general function to "accept a
bunch of stuff according to this table of rules", but that's
just a further helpful refactoring -- you don't *have* to
do it, it's just a possibility:-).


Alex





From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 14 11:22:14 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:22:14 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes (after much good stuff about
transitioning):

> After the transition period, screw the professional programmers 
> who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet 
> who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
> allowed to continue running under the new Python without 
> problem.

Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am reluctant to say "screw you"
to all those people who depend on Python script written by
professional programmers who no longer work there.

I also don't want to fork the code base.  There are *still* folks
using Perl4 scripts who can't upgrade.  I don't want to do that to the
community.

So indeed, we'll need to be *very* careful with this kind of
transition, providing tools, warnings, anything we can think of.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From VesselinPeev at operamail.com  Wed Jul 11 18:03:22 2001
From: VesselinPeev at operamail.com (Vesselin Iliev Peev)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:03:22 -0400
Subject: Undefining functions and classes
Message-ID: <3B4EFA40@operamail.com>

Does anyone know how to undefine a function or class in Python
i.e. if we execute
def func()
  blah
  blah

and then, supposedly
unbind func

executing

func()

will give us an error that the symbol is not defined


If you anyone can point me to a way of doing this (preferably via C) or 
through Python, I'd be very grateful. As you can guess, I need this to 
conserve memory during prolonged interpreter execution (deleting unused 
function/class defs)
Thanks in advance.




From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul  3 16:29:45 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:29:45 +0100
Subject: Hiding Console?
Message-ID: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the IDLE ide. I wanna
write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont want the console
there when there run, any ideas?

G. Willoughby.




From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 26 11:33:55 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:33:55 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
Message-ID: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

I was thinking this morning (a dangerous occupation, I know) about the
proposals to eventually unify Python's numeric model. I had all these great
ideas and I got all fired up to write a long post, then I read PEP 228 and
realized that my ideas were similar to what is in there. So instead of a
nice long post, I'll write a short one instead.

Recently Guido wrote that:

> [SNIP]
> A numeric tower
> with rationals could look like this:
>
>   int < long < rational < float < complex
[SNIP]
> Without rationals, it would look like this:
>
>   int < long < float < complex
> [SNIP]

I'm not fond of the tower method of numeric conversions. It doesn't do a
very good job of capturing the way numbers should be coerced. A better model
is a cube. Along the first axis is exactness (e.g., rational vs. float),
along the second axis complexness and along the last axis is
precision/range. The precison/range axis is kind of dicey, but thankfully
should not be needed for core Python numeric types.

For discussion purposes, I'm going to assume that some forms of PEP 237, 238
and 239 are eventually adopted. In that case, integers and longs will be
unified. The integers can then be completely emebedded into rationals. This
leaves us with just one level of precision/range for exact numbers (infinite
more or less) and one level of precision/range for inexact numbers (C
double). This allows the numeric tower to be knocked down and stirred around
to form a box:

   Real      Complex
      |               |
rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)

Coercion goes from exact to inexact and from Real to Complex.

PEP 228 proposes a single Number type with query methods to determine
whether it's real/complex, exact/inexact, etc. I'll stay with that model
since I'm not sure if builtin types can support multiple inheritance, which
is what you would need to make the above model work nicely if the rRational,
etc were to be separate classes. PEP 228 proposes the following query
methods:

>    1. isnatural()
>    2. isintegral()
>    3. isrational()
>    4. isreal()
>    5. iscomplex()
>
>    a. isexact()

This is too many. I would strip this down to

A. iscomplex()
B. isexact()
C. isintegral()

The first two correspond to the axes of the box. The last is included in the
recognition that even though integers can be nicely embedded in the
rationals, they are still very signifigant on their own and deserve their
own query function. 1 and 4 can easily be written in terms of the other
functions, so I don't think they are worth the baggage. Since all integers
and floats can be represented as rationals, I'm not sure what the point of 3
is. Maybe I'm missing something?

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on PEP 228 and the numeric tower.

Enjoy,

-tim




From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Wed Jul  4 20:00:18 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:00:18 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994263608.9373.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i0cjt$ck9@news1.gtech.com>

"Thomas Wouters" <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994263608.9373.python-list at python.org...
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 07:42:51AM +1000, Peter Milliken wrote:
>
> > > The only way to make sure a program works is by testing each and every
> > > line in each and every circumstance, regardless of which programming
> > > language you use. For something like ATC, you *do not* want to rely on
> > > anything else. Using Python would at least allow you to find and fix
> > > problems a lot faster -- you won't be carrying around NULL or undef
> > > values without noticing it.
>
> > > Do you check the return value of every fprintf()/fclose() function
call
> > > you make ? You should!
>
> > Well, you show your inexperience/ignorance in two places here Thomas :-)
>
> Neither, actually. My innocence, maybe, and my faith in numbers, but not
> inexperience (I'm not) and not ignorance (at least, not that I know.)
>

Well, sorry Thomas, my command of the English language isn't the best, I'm a
fairly typical engineer i.e. I almost failed English in highschool :-). But
I thought that was a reasonable definition for inexperience/ignorance i.e.
"innocence" is generally present until experience takes it away (through
pain and suffering, most times :-)) and "ignorance" is the lack of "knowing"
about something. So, you seem to be confirming my original statement :-).
Through your innocence you are inexperienced and you admit to (possibility
of) your lack of your own knowledge :-). No offence intended here, BTW :-).

> > 1. No program EVER has 100% coverage during testing (unless it is
trivial -
> > this for the nitpickers :-)). The bigger the program the less likely
full
> > coverage has been achieved, ATC's are big programs. Anyone who claims
they
> > have 100% tested an ATC are either fools or liars - "every line and
every
> > circumstance" are NOT POSSIBLE, if you think they are then I don't have
> > anything more to say other than get a few more years real world
experience
> > :-). So, if you plan to 100% test a python ATC "each line and every
> > circumstance" then my original confidence that it would never be put
into
> > production holds (that's one of the reason languages have exception
> > handlers - to catch the error that the programmer didn't foresee) :-).
>
> You should try to re-read my message: I didn't say it was possible, or
even
> plausible (I happen think it's possible but implausible) just that it is
the
> only way it'll work. It also depends on what you call 'testing': open
source
> software, especially popular open source software, is continuously tested,
> in the real world. Most bugs in Python nowadays are bugs in new features,
or
> on new platforms, because a lot of the possible combinations of what/when
> have been covered. The real world is the testing, and proving, grounds
> <wink>.
>

Once again, English/semantics could be causing a misunderstanding here (you
speak American, I speak Australian :-)) but I thought that a reasonable
interpretation of "by testing each and every line in each and every
circumstance" equated to "100% coverage of a program". At least, my
experience as a test engineer says that 100% coverage was "each and every
line in each and every circumstance" :-). Anyway, at least we agree that
whatever terminology we want to use, it is not possible/plausable to test to
that level. You make the point that Python would help you find NULLs and
undef's - well, the language of choice that I would use has this capacity as
well :-). It "dumps" information the same way Python does i.e. if the
programmer didn't foresee something then run-time checks will provide
diagnostic information as to the problem area. It also provides "run-time"
checks on the use of variables/values in a similar manner to Python.

> If you read the rest of the thread, you'll note that the ATC software runs
> in acceptance testing for *years*. That's a lot of testing time. If you're
> that deep into testing, you'll be done catching the 'typical' Python bug,
> and just catch algorithm errors. Peter v/d Linden's excellent and highly
> entertaining "Deep C Secrets" has some good examples of that (and no, they
> aren't about C or C++.) Nothing, and I do mean *nothing*, in the language
> could have prevented those errors.

Actually, a "strongly typed" language would get all of the bugs you are
refering to out at compile time - and save you several years of testing :-).
A strongly typed language will *only* leave the algorithimic type errors
(there are probably a few errors that are exceptions but I am making a point
through very minor exaggeration). This is personal, real experience here
:-).

I have also worked on a large(ish) C project in the '90's. 40+ programmers,
It went for 7.5 years before the customer cancelled it. It was in acceptance
testing for 4 of those years - they never got all of the bugs out of it.
There was in the vicinity of 14,000+ problem reports (some portions of the
application were completely re-written, so they didn't count towards this
number :-)). So, I doubt seriously that you would catch all of the "typical"
Python bugs :-). This was an example where the 25%-50% rule was exceeded
:-).

>
> > 2. Strongly typed languages don't include C/C++, so your example is
> > meaningless i.e. a strongly typed language would at least FORCE you to
> > assign/test the return value of an function - not like C/C++ which
allows
> > you to ignore any return values. This is not to say that an application
> > written in a such a language wouldn't still ignore the return value
after
> > the assignment - that is a function of programmer ability (another point
in
> > my original email) - to fix that is up to testing and code review.
>
> I didn't say C was strongly typed, nor did I say Perl was strongly typed.
> Those two, and Python, are just my 'main' languages, and I just used them
to
> express what I meant: programmers can ignore error codes, and catch
> exceptions and ignore them. There isn't much a language can do about that.
> But that still doesn't mean that strongly typed languages are the best for
> reliable code.
>

Sorry, since the context of my post was about typing, I assumed in your
response implied something in that area that it obviously didn't. Yes, I
agree, no matter what the language, a programmer is the source of any bugs
in the code :-). There is nothing you can do about that. What you can do
though (keep in mind the environment here, we are talking potentially
hundreds of programmers - remember also the 25%-50% rule :-)) is provide a
development environment that will "force" or "funnel" the programmers in
producing *more* reliable code i.e. a strongly typed language will not allow
a programmer to compile a truly incorrect program - so they couldn't even
get to unit testing! :-). Programming teams have produced failures despite
using a strongly typed language, there is no cure for the inherent weakness
of the people factor. A language and a compiler is only a tool, some tools
are better than others at particular aspects of the job.


> How does a strongly (and statically, I presume you mean) typed language
> FORCE you to assign/test the return value of a function, by the way ? I
> don't think I ever heard of a language that did that... My experience with
> true strongly, statically typed languages must be smaller than I thought.
>

Strong type checking means that when you tell a compiler that a function
will return a value then the compiler will not allow a program to compile
that doesn't have that return value assigned to *something* (of the
appropriate type, as well :-)) i.e. a program variable or just used in a
test case e.g if statement. The language that I have in mind is Ada - it is
used primarily in the defence industry and therefore has the stigma of being
a "defence language" and therefore not worth considering in the "real world"
of commercial programming :-) (their loss :-)). It was designed to/using
some strict computer science principles (please, no boffins jumping in here
with corrections thanks :-)) of the day and encourages, through the language
definition and operation of the compiler some very handy heuristics. It is a
very "readable" language (uses keywords in the same style as Pascal and
Modula). By default (you can turn it off when generating binaries for the
live system), it generates automatic run-time checking of code i.e. if you
define a data type that should only ever have a range of values of 0 - 255
then if you try and assign 256 to a variable of that type then it will raise
an exception at runt-ime (this assumes that the compiler wasn't able to
detect that at compile time though! a statement line like byte_var := 256;
would raise an error from the compiler) - the application will either handle
the exception via an exception handler (has to be programmed though, just
like Python :-)) or it will abort the program and display diagnostic data
(just like Python :-)).

Many programmers, when they first meet a strongly typed language (such as
Ada, but there are others) have a great deal of difficulty, because they are
used to having a lot more "freedom" from the languages they are used to. But
once you get past the barrier of producing correct code then it offers a
great freedom - 90% of your "typical" bugs are found by the compiler at
compile time rather than during unit testing :-). In my experience (I wrote
code using Ada for about 4-5 years, I have about 10-12 years of coding in C,
I have used C++ but not any any extent worth mentioning), the only bugs left
after a successful compile are "algorithimic" - a truly great aid to
productivity! :-). Most programmers can't get past that first hurdle though,
they "hate" the language because it "won't let them do what they want" - but
if they examined their code, they are always forced to admit that what they
"wanted" wasn't "correct" :-).

But Ada is like C or C++ - it doesn't "shine"  in the areas of data
manipulation that Python does. It doesn't have a huge array of support
libraries, like Python, Perl and Java do etc. So productivity can be down
purely because you have to write a lot of basic things from the ground up.
Again, different languages have different applications areas. Python is not
my choice for an ATC (as anyone may have guessed by now :-)), C/C++ would be
a disaster! Of those mentioned, I believe Ada is a better choice, there may
be others but I have no experience with those languages so I can't comment.
Caveat: ANY LANGUAGE can produce working code for an application, it is just
the amount or work and effort required to get there. Python *could* be used
for an ATC application, so can assembler - but I haven't heard anyone
advocating that one :-).

Hope you have a good day,
Peter






From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul  5 13:37:35 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:37:35 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com> <qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <zB117.9481$B7.1663062@ruti.visi.com>

In article <qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos at 4ax.com>, Steve Horne wrote:

>Any language suffers when bad programmers use it. The biggest
>reliability problems in C++ are...

>2.  Overuse of C features such as pointers, when standard
>    container templates would be more appropriate - or function
>    pointer callbacks and awkward methods of finding their context
>    data when classes with virtual functions would be more
>    appropriate.

The availability of those C features is one of the major flaws
in C++.

>3.  The age-old inherited problems with pointers

Another flaw: C++ intentionally inherited those problems also.

>4.  Failing to use exception-safe patterns.

Why was the language designed so that there is such a thing
as an exception-unsafe pattern?

>In short, C++ is for large systems that are going to be around
>for years. There is a tradeoff in favour of greater reliability
>and better maintainability - provided you really write C++ and
>not some half-baked hybrid

The basic problem is that C++ _is_ a half-baked hybrid.  

If you want a compiled, statically typed OO language, then I'd
recommend using a real one like Modula-3.  If you want
something more dynamic, try something like Python.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm receiving a coded
                                  at               message from EUBIE BLAKE!!
                               visi.com            


From anderson at hp.com  Fri Jul 27 20:21:45 2001
From: anderson at hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:21:45 -0600
Subject: IPC10 Call For Tutorials
References: <3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B@sage.att.com> <mmh77.25356$EP6.5928862@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010727.182145.933110197.16613@hp.com>

In article <mmh77.25356$EP6.5928862 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>, "Terry Reedy"
<tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

> "Garry Hodgson" <garry at sage.att.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B at sage.att.com...
>>
>> We're now accepting proposals for tutorials for IPC10, the annual
>> Python conference.  We had a good batch last year, and are hoping to
>> have some equally good ones this year.
> 
> How about someone doing "Surving Language Change"? (Only half jesting.)
> 
> 


Is that mean to be Serving or Surviving. ;^)


From andreas3004 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 20 03:22:52 2001
From: andreas3004 at hotmail.com (Andreas Kremer)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:22:52 +0200
Subject: synchronized lists
Message-ID: <9j8m49$22v$00$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

i have the following design problem:

in different classes i have lists which consist of elements pointing to
instances of other classes with lists. What i need to acchieve is that if an
instance of one class is pointing towards another instance, the latter needs
a pointer to the former in its list, too, to know who is pointing at it. The
result would be at least two lists in each instance, one with pointers
outwards to other instances, the other with pointer to instances which point
to this instance.

I was thinking about a superclass of  synchronized lists, but that design
did not look "nice". Also a connector doesnt seem to be the best idea. Has
anybody an idea about how to acchieve this goal?

Thanks in advance, Andreas.




From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Fri Jul 27 06:29:24 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 03:29:24 -0700
Subject: Why Johnny Can't Distribute Processing.   WAS: Distributed computing  using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>         <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com>         <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <mailman.996163788.16805.python-list@python.org> <3B6060C3.A6E69FF5@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107270229.4d7cf31@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B6060C3.A6E69FF5 at tundraware.com>...
> So, here's what we need.  We need a platform-neutral transactional messaging and
> queing service with features like:
> 
> 1) Aynchronous APIs to the messaging and queuing manager
> 2) Platform-neutrality: From mainframes to desktops
> 3) Class-Of-Service selection
> 4) Per-event, selectable write through to backing store
> 5) Bindings for C and Java, and also the major scripting langs: Python, TCL, Perl, VBA
> 6) Remote management and recovery capability
> 7) Plugable security and encryption.
> 
> There are only two commercial products that come close to this, of which I
> am aware.  BEA bought the rights to the old DEC Message Queue product, but
> I dunno if they're doing anything with it any more.  And IBM, of course,
> has MQ-Series, which has some of the above.

I thought BEA bought up Tuxedo, or is that what the DEC stuff used to be
called. Anyway, you might also want to look at TIB/Rendezvous and
TIB/Rendezvous TX from Tibco (http://www.tibco.com/products/rv/index.html).
JMS from the Sun also tries to address this area but obviously with the
emphasis on Java. Others I can think of which might also be of interest
are Ambrosia from Open Horizon (http://ohi.u1.com) and SmartSockets from
Talarian (http://www.talarian.com). From what I have seen and heard, the
stuff from TIBCO is quite good and probably the only one I would recommend
to anyone.

I guess I identify these product because of having more interest in the
publish/subscribe side of things. Although most things address this as
well as point to point or request/reply semantics these days. The products
mentioned may not all address what you are talking about, I haven't looked
at exactly what they do recently, but they probably do more than what they
did the last time I looked. :-)


From shalehperry at home.com  Fri Jul 20 22:41:15 2001
From: shalehperry at home.com (Sean 'Shaleh' Perry)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:41:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: whats this mean?
In-Reply-To: <20010720213533.19217.00000446@ng-fb1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010720194115.shalehperry@home.com>

On 21-Jul-2001 TheDustbustr wrote:
># BEGIN CODE BLOCK
> try:
>     s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>     s.bind((HOST, PORT))
>     s.listen(1)
>     conn, addr = s.accept()
> except socket.error, why: ## reference 1
>     print "Server Error: " + errno.errorcode[why[0]] + ", " + why[1] ##
> reference 2
>     sys.exit(1)
># END CODE BLOCK
> 
> what does reference 2 mean?  what do those brackets do?  And for reference 1,
> what will 'why' hold if an error occurs?
> 

>From the language reference, 4.2:
<quote>
When an exception is raised, an object (maybe None) is passed as the
exception's ``parameter'' or ``value''; this object does not affect the
selection of an exception handler, but is passed to the selected exception
handler as additional information. For class exceptions, this object must be an
instance of the exception class being raised. 

See also the description of the try statement in section 7.4 and raise
statement in section 6.8. 
</quote>

For fun, write an exception handler:

try:
        do something
except foo, e:
        print e
        print e[0], e[1], e[2]

Remember, the python interpreter can also be run interactively.  It is a great
way to experiment and learn.



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 12 21:57:54 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:57:54 GMT
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <6qsng2rqnr.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <9iko92$j1nkb$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cpk81d37t6.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

> That's it!  My class is invoking __rmul__, coercing the string to an
> instance and doing the math.

Emile, you might want to study operator precendence and execution
order and such.  Weren't you also the one who was surprised that 3+5*4
was 23 instead of 32?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From neal at metaslash.com  Tue Jul 10 17:10:18 2001
From: neal at metaslash.com (Neal Norwitz)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 21:10:18 GMT
Subject: getting argument names from a function
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107101835460.10785-100000@my.nada.kth.se> <W9I27.5835$yh2.510569@weber.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <3B4B6F38.759E5DDE@metaslash.com>

def func(a, b, c):
    x, y, z = 0, 1, 2
    numArgs = func.func_code.co_argcount
    print func.func_code.co_varnames[:numArgs]

Neal
--
dan wrote:
> 
> Actually, that grabs the entire namespace of the function, not just the
> function variables. I haven't found anything in the func_code tree that
> contains only the function argument keys...
> 
> thank you though,
> Dan
> 
> Fredrik Stenberg wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dan wrote:
> >
> >> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
> >>    print arg1, arg2
> >>
> >> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
> >> 'arg2')?
> >>
> >> I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and can't
> >> find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?
> >>
> >> thanks,
> >> Dan
> >
> > If the function has a func_code object you can try this approach,
> > I have never use it myself and there probably is better ways.
> >
> >
> > Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.
> >>>> def foo(bar,bar2):
> > ...     print "foobar"
> > ...
> >>>> foo.func_code.co_varnames
> > ('bar', 'bar2')
> >
> >
> >
> > I think this will only work for functions written in python, and not
> > extensions written in C (atleast thats what my brain thinks).
> >
> > /fredriks


From bsb at winnegan.de  Fri Jul  6 10:18:40 2001
From: bsb at winnegan.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 16:18:40 +0200
Subject: GUI problems
In-Reply-To: <7b515e0f.0107060511.6d8993f4@posting.google.com>
References: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com>
	<7b515e0f.0107060511.6d8993f4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <87ith62la7.fsf@winnegan.de>

brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake) writes:

> I don't know what happened, but this is how it's supposed to look
> ("command=frame.quit" under "Button" was on the next line. Thanks for
> any help

That's an easy one, see below:

> brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake) wrote in message news:<7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679 at posting.google.com>...
> > Why doesn't this TKinter script work? The blank window will come up,
> > but the "quit" button doesn't appear inside it. Thanks for any help.
> > 
> > import dice_gui #ignore this
> > from Tkinter import *
> > class fibon_gui:
> >      def __init__(self, master):
> >           frame = Frame(master)
> >           frame.pack()
> >           button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red", command=frame.quit)
> >           button.pack(side=LEFT)
> > root = Tk()
> > root.title('Play Dice')
    fibon_gui(root)
> > root.mainloop()
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at winnegan.de - http://www.winnegan.de/
****** ceterum censeo javascriptum esse restrictam *******



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 03:38:20 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 09:38:20 +0200
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B465858.CB7F38E8 at tundraware.com...
> I want a function to check a string to make sure it is a legitimate
> dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
>
> First character is numeric or "-"
> At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly two
digits
> All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"

These specs seem to be equivalent to:
    optional: -
    one or more digits
    optional: . followed by two digits
    end of string

This is very easy to express as a Regular Expression:
    r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$'

So one function to check any string to see if it satisfies
this pattern is:

def isDollar(astring):
    import re
    return re.match(r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$', astring)


Alex





From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 27 14:28:58 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:28:58 +0200
Subject: Launching Python from Python
References: <3B619A9E.9E940B28@bioreason.com>
Message-ID: <wz66cefcph.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Jay O'Connor <oconnor at bioreason.com> (JO) writes:

JO> All,
JO> I'm trying to launch another program from a Python program.  The other
JO> program happens to be another Python program.  I thought spawnle would
JO> be the proper place.  However, it doesn't seem to be working.

JO> 	import os
JO> 	pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
JO> 			"c:\\python20\\python.exe",
JO> 			["c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py"],
JO> 			{"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})

JO> my understanding is that this should spawn the other process, running
JO> the python runtime and passing in my script name.

JO> However, it doesn't quite happen.  What happens is that it launches
JO> python in interactive mode.  If I import sys, sys.path has my added path
JO> above, buy sys.argv is an array with one empty string.

JO> Any ideas why it doesn't work?  Any other ideas on how to launch another
JO> python program from within one?

There are two errors in your program:

1. spawnle doesn't have a list [args] as third parameter, but the
   parameters should be given individually. The format with the [args] is
   for spawnve.
2. You should supply an additional first argument in the argument list
   which indicated the name of the program called. It can be different from
   the filename, on Unix it is what ps displays.
   In your example python thinks it is called with no arguments.

So make it either:

pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
		"c:\\python20\\python.exe",
		"python", "c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py",
		{"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})

or

pid = os.spawnve (os.P_NOWAIT,
		"c:\\python20\\python.exe",
		["python", "c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py"],
		{"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})

-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul  6 18:09:31 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:09:31 -0400
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
In-Reply-To: <J2q17.427820$eK2.86548710@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAENMKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Michael P. Soulier]
> ...
>     In Python, previously unused lvalues cause that variable to
> be dynamically declared.

This is a flawed mental model:  the local vs non-local distinction is made
at compile-time, by static inspection of the program text.  There's nothing
dynamic about that (in the absence of "import *" and "exec" abuses).

> x = 1 # if x did not previously exist, following the LGB rule, it is
>       # declared dynamically here

Not dynamic.  Just look at the code in an editor:  if a name is bound
anywhere within a code block, and isn't declared in a "global" stmt, then
that name is local throughout the entire code block.

>     Now, while this is great for scripting, it can cause major
> headaches with large programs if you're a bad typist.

I expect bad typists have lots of other problems writing code too <wink>.

> It can declare new variables accidentally, when you wanted to assign
> to an existing one...
>
> myvar = 5
> .
> .
> myver = othervar

A tool like PyChecker will detect that, in the example exactly as given,
"myvar" and "myver" are *both* unreferenced, and flag both lines with
warnings.

> ...so here my typo of myver instead of myvar dynamically creates
> myver instead of assigning othervar to myvar.

It caused the compiler to believe you have two local vars, myvar and myver;
it makes no difference which one comes first; space for both is allocated
(in a sense) at compile-time.

> It can also accidentally obscure globals.
>
>     So, while the simple answer would be, "don't do that", we all
> know that accidents happen. So, I was wondering if there is a way to
> force declarations of variables to catch this kind of thing.

Not in Python:  "global" is its only declaration statement.  Use PyChecker:

    http://sf.net/projects/pychecker/

> Is there, or is there anything in the works, to assign with very large
> programs?

The size of the program doesn't really matter; regardless of program size,
if you don't keep your individual functions and methods to well under a
screen of code almost all the time, you're going to have lots of problems
(in Python or any other language; it may even be worse in Python, because
indendation for grouping really doesn't work well when code blocks slobber
over screen pages; that's one of the clever pressures in Python *nudging*
you toward writing better code).

guido-can-lead-you-to-clarity-but-he-can't-stop-you-from-peeing-in-
    the-stream<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 17:28:29 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:28:29 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com> <eppstein-FE588D.09125623072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3b5c85aa.232500618@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:12:56 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
[...]
>think it an improvement.  Integers are exact.  Floating point numbers are 
>approximate.  Integers allow rearrangements like (a+b)+c=a+(b+c), floating 
>point numbers don't.  If you need your numbers to be computed exactly, and 
>your programming language turns them into floats behind your back, it will 
>cause bugs.
<philosophical nit>
IMHO integer and floating point are not comparable concepts. One is an abstract
mathematical concept and the other loosely identifies a set of tricks for
representing numbers in hardware.

    Integer, rational, real, complex

are what need to be represented, with provisions for specifying
and monitoring of how "well" the number is represented. The first
measure of how "well" is exact vs inexact. Exact doesn't need further
qualification. Inexact does, and confusion reigns[1].

    floating point, IEEE754, float, double, extended, short, int,
    long, long long (ick), decimal float, BCD, bi-quinary, string,
    pickling formats, etc., and compounds of same

are different possible representation formats, limited only by imagination.
The integer IV can be represented *exactly* in all those formats ;-).

Exactness is not a property of the representation itself. E.g., Python's float
can represent a bigger contiguous set of integers exactly than its int type
(unless you're on an Alpha or such). Limitations != inexactness, but can
sometimes produce it.

It may be a safe convention to treat floating-point-represented numbers
as inexact, but it is shoddy to mislead newbies by saying that floating
point *is* inexact, implying that even 1.0 should be suspect[2]. It smacks
of the arrogant paternalism that says, "Here's a safe way for you
twits to think about this, so that what you don't know won't hurt you."

OTOH, I think one could argue for hiding the existence of float in a language,
on the grounds that it is a low level implementation detail, and ought not be
visible except to developers and specialists. That's better than outright misleading.
</philosophical nit>

[1] Here we are characterizing the relationship of a pure number (whatever its
    source) to its representation. An exact number per se can result from an
    inaccurate measurement, so people don't like to call such a number exact.
    The word is overloaded. Since representation approximations and measurement
    errors can be compounded into the final result of a computation, people get
    confused about what's what.

[2] An _even_ 1.0 _would_ be suspect ;-)


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 23:59:17 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 07:59:17 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: problem with sending email
In-Reply-To: <ku3d8d31ve.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040758050.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 4 Jul 2001, Erno Kuusela wrote:

May be, web-server you are using imposes limitations of the length of
files? Check resource.RLIMIT_FSIZE


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Tue Jul 10 15:11:53 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 21:11:53 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>
	(web2ed@yahoo.com)
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>	<458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>	<TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>	<7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org> <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <10072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Edward" == Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> writes:

    Edward> Languages never die; they just fall out of use when they loose touch
    Edward> with the contemporary.  Python will become more or less mainstream
    Edward> (live or die) on it's own merits.

    Edward> A scripting language should be good at scripting.  From my
    Edward> observation, Python appears to be headed in more of an acedemic
    Edward> direction rather than that of mainstream commerce.  Acedemics are
    Edward> good, it's where technology comes from.  Unfortunately, I still
    Edward> haven't found a way to make money using Python.  If I can't make money
    Edward> with Python, then Python is dead to me.  I would imagine my voice
    Edward> represents a small crowd of developers, who wish they too could make
    Edward> money with and contribute to Python on a daily basis (on company
    Edward> time).

    Edward> If this is so, Python won't bennefit from the best developers, the
    Edward> developers who code for a living.  From what I can tell, PHP and Ruby
    Edward> are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that I see
    Edward> in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
    Edward> adoration for pure acedemic elegance.

    Edward> Beauty is only beauty if one can experience it.  I can't experience
    Edward> Python on a day to day basis (in the workplace), so therefore I can't
    Edward> appreciate it.

    Edward> As far as ODBC--ODBC is too slow for what I do.  I'm using Oracle
    Edward> Pro/C.  Most serious developers would agree that ODBC is slow. 
    Edward> Wheather Java decides to use (cheat with) ODBC or not is Java's
    Edward> problem.  Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind. 
    Edward> If it weren't, it would be the perfect language--if that were
    Edward> possible.

    Edward> Yes, native drivers for all db vendors.  This is why I mentioned (in
    Edward> an earlier post) that this should be a community effort.  Python could
    Edward> break the door down if it paid more attention to the needs of the
    Edward> commond professional.  Satellite controlers are great too, but
    Edward> Priorities have meaining in a time of war.

Bwahahahahha... heehee, *wheeeze*... please, stop, this is too good!
My stomach's starting to hurt!  "Java ... serious development of any
kind."  ... mua... mwua... Mwuahaha, Bwuahahaha!

Bye, J

PS: If ever you should have a need for a second career, try stand-up
comedy.  You should be good at it...

PPS: I agree with Paul: it's hardly possible to take you seriously
anymore.

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
                    "Perl Programmers are from Mars,
        Python Programmers are from Yorkshire" -- Alex in c.l.py
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010710/4726bd4d/attachment.sig>

From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Wed Jul 25 13:49:26 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:49:26 -0700
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal
References: <mailman.995864377.19861.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5F06A6.36BB1AFC@ccvcorp.com>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:

> Why don't we add a hook to Python to control the numeric evaluation
> rules directly?
>
> An object containing methods to handle numerical operations would
> be registered with a statement like this:
>
>     __builtins__.numerics = MyNumericObject()
>

Not too bad of an idea, perhaps... but, if we allow this to be done on
the module level, then how is it different from  "from __future__ import
division" ??  The only difference being that, in the latter case, the
implication is that the distinction (old v. new division) will
eventually disappear.

I'm not too thrilled about the division change, but... Guido's
rationale, now that I've seen it, *is* consistent.  He wants, in
essence, to create a generic "number" type that switches internal
representation between ints, longs, floats, and complex as needed.  If
you're looking at ints as a special subclass of floats, then the
proposed semantics make sense.  If you look at ints as a separate set,
representing purely discrete quantities, then it doesn't.  Given that
automatic type conversions already treat ints in the former way, it
could be difficult to make a compelling argument against
float-division.  And he *does* seem to be taking the code-breakage issue
seriously... so, while I'd prefer  /  to retain its current meaning, I
guess I can accept the change.  Fortunately *I* don't have a large
library of scripts to modify....

My one big recommendation in this issue, would be that, however many
versions are released before float division becomes the default, that
version--the code-breaking version--be called Python 3.0.  This major of
a change in core behavior seems to indicate a major-version change.  I
suspect this would also help with the PR aspect of code breakage--it's
much easier to justify breaking old code with a major release than a
minor release, and there's less likelyhood of someone upgrading to a new
major version without at least checking the release notes--which, I
would expect, would prominently declare that this release would create
problems with legacy code.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

P.S.  I *was* going to suggest that if case-blindness were to be
accepted, that it be planned to become effective in the same release,
thus having only one major code-breaking release instead of two, but
fortunately, case-blindness seems to have been dropped and case
sensitivity will remain as is (whew!).





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 08:30:13 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:30:13 +0200
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9iumon01t0v@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Donovan Hide" <donovanhide at bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:9itb14$2oi$1 at newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
    ...
> question. What I am actually looking for is the enumeration of all the 6
> whole numbers greater than 0 that sum to 17.
>     After that, another enumeration is required, this time to find all 6
> whole numbers greater than 0 that sum to 20. Order is unimportant.
    ...
>     So, apart from this short bibliography, I am still stuck. I don't want

So go back to the solution I already posted for a slightly
different interpretation of your problem:

def seqs(i, j, sumsofar, sumdesired, minok, thelist):
    # print 's',i,j,sumsofar,sumdesired,minok,thelist[:j]
    if i==j-1:
        missing = sumdesired - sumsofar
        if missing < minok: return 0
        thelist[i] = missing
        print thelist
        return 1
    elif i>=j or sumsofar+minok > sumdesired:
        return 0
    thelist[i] = minok
    results = 0
    while 1:
        more = seqs(i+1, j, sumsofar+thelist[i], sumdesired,
            thelist[i]+1, thelist)
        if not more: break
        results += more
        thelist[i]+=1
    return results

Apparently the only way in which this differs from what
you'd like to do is that this forbids duplication, right?
OK, then, so ALLOW duplication -- where's the problem?!
Just change the recursive call so that the 5th parameter,
'minok', is passed as thelist[i] rather than thelist[i]+1.

This means thelist ends up in nondecreasing, rather than
strictly increasing, order.

def seqs1(i, j, sumsofar, sumdesired, minok, thelist):
    # print 's',i,j,sumsofar,sumdesired,minok,thelist[:j]
    if i==j-1:
        missing = sumdesired - sumsofar
        if missing < minok: return 0
        thelist[i] = missing
        print thelist
        return 1
    elif i>=j or sumsofar+minok > sumdesired:
        return 0
    thelist[i] = minok
    results = 0
    while 1:
        more = seqs1(i+1, j, sumsofar+thelist[i], sumdesired,
            thelist[i], thelist)
        if not more: break
        results += more
        thelist[i]+=1
    return results

if __name__=='__main__':
    nr = seqs1(0, 6, 0, 17, 1, 6*[0])
    print nr,'sets of 6 numbers that sum to 17'

D:\py21>python sq.py
[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 12]
[1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 11]
    ...snipped several lines...
[2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4]
[2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
44 sets of 6 numbers that sum to 17

D:\py21>


So, where's the problem?  Solving this for sets of 6
numbers that sum to 20 is left as an exercise for the
reader -- not too difficult an exercise, I hope!-)
(More interesting is to find optimizations that can
be applied to this reference implementation:-).

Another easy exercise: what would you change if the
numbers were allowed to be from -1 upwards, rather
than "greater than 0"...?


General consideration: even where the problem statement
does NOT constrain the order of the results (you just
have to count them, whatever), it's often easier if
results are generated in a systematic order -- this helps
ensure against double-counting, you can print out the
results you're supposed to be just-counting to help
you debug things (and notice gaps more easily because
of the systematic order, if you have a bug somewhere)...


Alex





From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul  3 09:25:24 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:25:24 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hsfue$oqv$1@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8@stroeder.com>

David LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> The Canadians privatized their national air traffic control a few years
> ago and oh my! the planes RUN ON TIME!

Which does not say anything about safety. Well, time will tell...

Ciao, Michael.


From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 13:32:45 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:32:45 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu> <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <etdlmlmuoqq.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

Perhaps you have another module sys.py somewhere in your path.  Try this
from the interpreter:

>>> import sys
>>> sys
<module 'sys' (built-in)>

If this gives you a module name with a file path, you may want to try
moving that file out of the way.

Alex.




From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 23:28:54 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:28:54 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:24:41 -0300."
             <20010731202441.M19610@tux.distro.conectiva> 
References: <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com> <200107312309.TAA17435@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <20010731202441.M19610@tux.distro.conectiva> 
Message-ID: <200108010328.XAA18293@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> I'm starting to like the is{subclass,instance}() version. It's probably
> quicker for one to understand code written by others, and for
> non-fulltime-python-programmers to remember what "in" means in each
> context.

You may be right.  isinstance() and issubclass() are somewhat standard
in other languages I believe, and hard to misunderstand.  The form

  if x in list: ...

looks a lot more confusing.  I may withdraw this idea.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From donn at u.washington.edu  Fri Jul 13 13:25:42 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:25:42 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com>
Message-ID: <9inaum$nj4$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "wyatt stafford" <wyatts at onr.com>:
...
| Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self study
| resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good programmer,
| in general?

If you like working examples, I would get the source distribution and
peruse the programs in the Demo subtree.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 18:18:28 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:18:28 GMT
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l46bt.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que kj0 <kj0 at mailcity.com> dijo:
> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
> advocates :-)  )

What about Smalltalk?  I know so many lifelong programmers that swear
Smalltalk is the _ONLY_ true OO language.  ;)
(see signature at bottom for one of their many rationales)

> I'm not looking to find out which of these languages is "better"; I
> don't care for ranking here.  What I want to know is how the various
> popular OO languages compare in terms of OO and general programming
> features (e.g. multiple inheritance; classes-as-objects; garbage
> collection; closures; scoping; contracts; debugging; etc.).

IMBANERHO[*], Python offers the greatest flexibility overall in the
areas you listed.  (And this from a long-time and unapologetic Perl
monger!)

However, you'd always be better off making the decision for yourself.
Try them and see what works best for your applications.


[*] In My Biased And Never Even Remotely Humble Opinion

HTH
-- 
C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog
    -- unknown


From serrano at ozemail.com.au  Tue Jul 24 04:47:40 2001
From: serrano at ozemail.com.au (michael)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:47:40 +1000
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au>

> Not formally, AFAIK.  For example, 3 with no decimal point following
> could be anything from 2.5 to 3.4.  If I remember correctly, to be
> fussy about it, you would need to specify 3.00/4.00 to get 0.75 or am
> I missing something or misremembering my ancient maths courses ;) ?
>

I'm pretty sure that mathematicians say that
  three, 3, 3.00, iii
are different numerals for the same number.
This number is a real number, a rational number, an integer, and a natural
number.

> More importantly, the thing everyone is talking about here is an
> integer operation yielding a real (float) result.  Isn't this kind of
> a "no-no" amongst mathematicians?

I'm not sure whether the "inner product" from vector algebra could be
considered an "operator", but it does operate on vectors and yields a
scalar.

>
> Maybe I'm wrong here...






From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 13:36:07 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:36:07 GMT
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <3b5d8947_5@news.newsgroups.com> <nzh77.543721$eK2.114049226@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <3b5da934_2@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <bmi77.543954$eK2.114107493@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> Yes, thx. Can you tell me the difference between python.exe and
pythonw.exe?
> And later I am going to use Tkinter in my program. Shall I need python.exe
> or pythonw.exe?

The only difference is that pythonw.exe does not pop open the dos window.
Otherwise, they are the same.  Both are fine for Tkinter.
You could use python.exe while you are writing/debugging, then when it's all
finished, switch to pythonw.exe ( change extension to .pyw ), so that users
of your program don't have to see the dos window.

In other words, just stick to python.exe and .py extensions unless you
really want to get rid of the dos window.





From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Thu Jul 26 11:56:22 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:56:22 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
> Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:
>
> > "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
> > [...]
>
> The only situation where I've seen this, ironically, is if you attempt
> to import the test module that's designed specifically to test this
> lock, in the interactive interpreter on Windows.
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

I just saw something that might be relevant.  Please, don't jump
the gun, I said "might".  The other thread ("Re: Threads in Python
version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies") is
discussing a problem with threads in Python.  The death of the
calling process lets the system to go ahead.

It may or may not be relevant, but I would like to hear your
opinion on it.

The big difference is that in the aforementioned posts the version
of Python is 1.5.1 and I am using 2.0.

Thank you very much for your time.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail





From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Mon Jul 16 10:09:19 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:09:19 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB98@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
> 
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > 
> > Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes (after much good stuff about
> > transitioning):
> > 
> > > After the transition period, screw the professional programmers
> > > who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet
> > > who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
> > > allowed to continue running under the new Python without
> > > problem.
> > 
> > Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am reluctant to say 
> "screw you"
> > to all those people who depend on Python script written by
> > professional programmers who no longer work there.
> 
> "Screw you" might have been a little strong.  (And for those just
> joining, I _am_ one of those professional programmers about which
> I was making the suggestion...)
> 
> Nevertheless, I want to make the clear point (if I haven't already)
> that I'm not suggesting screwing every such programmer... just 
> those who are actively using code which would be broken, who will 
> not take the time (however small we might make it) to modify the 
> source, and yet who "must" have their code work under the new Python.
> 
> Are there really any people like that?  Enough to make it
> a key factor?  I'm not sure I can even think of any realistic
> cases where anyone like that exists (he said, trolling for
> someone to point out an obvious example or two).

Well, I for one wrote several thousands of lines of Python code in my
last job, and I obviously have no influence on when they're going to
upgrade to a newer version of Python. You can probably safely assume
that they're not going to put a programmer on fixing programs that are
running without any problems. More likely they would upgrade Python,
realize that "a bunch" of Python scripts stopped working, and either
roll back the Python upgrade, rewrite them in Perl/Java, or find someone
with enough Python skills to fix the problems. Neither solution would be
good PR for Python...

-- bjorn



From cer at tutopia.com  Sat Jul 21 01:42:42 2001
From: cer at tutopia.com (Cristian Echeverria)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 01:42:42 -0400
Subject: py2exe problem
References: <mailman.995667696.25448.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jb4a0$n00kv$1@ID-44371.news.dfncis.de>

Ok
"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote:

> #install.py
> from distutils.core import setup
> import py2exe
> setup(name="webpass", scripts=["window1.py"], )

If your application uses any file apart from the *.py ones you need to use
the data_files parameter. something like this:

setup(name="webpass", scripts=["window1.py"], data_files=["file1","file2"])


> python install.py py2exe -w

You can try compiling without the "-w" option and running the program from
the command line on the test machine.
Did you try this?

What about msvcirt.dll and msvcrt.dll in your development machine and your
test machine? If I remember wxPython update this dlls when this is
installed.

Remember that py2exe is intended to use with an installer like Inno Setup,
if you move only your exe there is good chance that this can't run.






From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 20 19:13:44 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:13:44 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <IW267.7537$EP6.2447816@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

<phawkins at connact.com> wrote in message
news:wkk813nz6e.fsf at mail.connact.com...
> >>>>> "TR" == Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
>
> >> C = {}
> >> for item in B:
> >> C[item]=None
>
> TR> This sort of makes me wish we had dict comprehensions to match
list
> TR> comprehensions:
>
> TR> C = {item:None for item in B}
> TR> or
> TR> C = {item:1  for item in B}
> TR> as revised and then discarded
>
> So what's wrong with list comprehensions?  Observe, grasshopper:

Confucius say: People who make gratuitous snide putdowns set
themselves up to look like asses.

> Python 2.0 (#8, Oct 16 2000, 17:27:58) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>
> import time
>
> a = [str(i) for i in range(7500)]
> b = [str(i) for i in range(0, 7500 * 5, 5)]
> c = {}
>
> for item in b:
> c[item] = 1
>
> def dict(a,c):
> start = time.clock()
> for item in a:
> d = filter(c.has_key, a)
> stend = time.clock()
> print "get: %6.2f"%(stend-start)
>
> def comp(a,b):
> start = time.clock()
> out = [i for i in a if i not in b]
> stend = time.clock()
> print "get: %6.2f"%(stend-start)

> >>> comp(a,b)
> get:  19.78
> >>> dict(a,c)
> get: 154.77

For years, people have compared reduce(), map(), and filter() to
equivalent contructs with for and if statements that do the same work
and produce the same result.  In the last year, such comparisons have
been extended to list comprehensions, which, last I knew, are
implemented by compiling them as if they had been written as some
equivalent set of nested for and if statements.  As I recall, most
such results have been fairly close (within say, a factor of two),
with details depending on the exact problem and platform (hardware +
operating system + compiler + compiler settings).  As a result, many
or most people have continued using whichever construct they prefer on
other grounds.

This mishmash of hashes producing 1500-element lists and
non-equivalent linear searches producing a 6000-element list says
*nothing* about anything 'wrong' with either list comprehensions or
the nested for and if statements they abbreviate.  And even proper
comparisions involving reduce, map, and filter would have nothing to
do with dictionary comprehensions since none of them produce
dictionaries.

If my 'wish' become strong enough, I will follow the proper procedure
for proposals and write a PEP so dict comprehensions either get added
or have a documented reason after discussion why not.

Terry J. Reedy




From sam at ddmweb.com  Fri Jul  6 12:00:23 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 09:00:23 -0700
Subject: Most important text processing examples
Message-ID: <01070609564400.07365@frock.ddmweb.com>

For building dynamic web pages (generating, as opposed to parsing,
strings), I find tweaking Python's string substitution idioms to be
helpful. If you have a web template into which you want to drop some
content, standard Python practice  would be to read in a file that
looks like this:

template = """<html><head><title>%(title)s</title></head>
<body>%(body)s</body><html>"""

#... then generate a dictionary that looks like:
dict = {'title':'This is my title', 'body':'This is the body of my
page'}

#...and then combine the two with:
html = template % dict

#giving html ==
"""<html><head><title>This is my title</title></head>
<body>This is the body of my page</body><html>"""

If you fail to include either the 'title' or 'body' keys on the
dictionary, you will get a KeyError on the last step. When the target
has many tags, some of which are only going to be filled with text in
certain situations, keeping track of all the keys quickly becomes a
tedious chore. If you insist on doing it manually, your code will be
dominated by dictionary assignments. This is why so many of us have
written frameworks for generating web pages. I rely on a
dictionary-like object that returns an empty string if asked for a key
it doesn't have.

from UserDict import UserDict
class NoKeyErrors(UserDict):
    def __init__(self, dict={}):
        UserDict.__init__(self, dict)
    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return UserDict.get(self, key, '')

template % NoKeyErrors({'body':'This is the body of my page'})

#gives html == 
"""<html><head><title></title></head>
<body>This is the body of my page</body><html>"""

...rather than an error. In pages with a dozen or more possible keys,
this allows me to write code that focuses on the keys that will be used
in a given situation, rather than requiring every object to know about
the keys used by every other object that uses the same template. I used
to use another modification of UserDict:

class PartialStringSubstitution(UserDict):
    def __init__(self, dict={}):
        UserDict.__init__(self, dict)
    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return UserDict.get(self, key, '%(' + key + ')s')

which, if it fails to find a key, will re-insert the tag for the key.
This allows you to make multiple passes over a single template:

# early in the code
html = template % PartialStringSubstitution(
                           {'body':'This is the body of my page'})
# giving html ==
"""<html><head><title>%(title)s</title></head>
<body>This is the body of my page</body><html>"""

# much later
html = html % {'title':'This is my title'}

#which also results in html ==
"""<html><head><title>This is my title</title></head>
<body>This is the body of my page</body><html>"""

I only used this double-pass technique in one project, finding it
easier to update a single NoKeyErrors object with various auxiliary
dictionaries than to keep track of when I should make prelimary passes
with PartialStringSubstitution dictionaries and which keys they should
contain.

There are many ways to tackle this kind of string handling, and you can
probably do much better than my hacks. But if you want to write
reasonably modular code on large string generating projects, you will
need to find some way of decoupling the variables required by one
situation from those required by all of the others.



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 14:27:15 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:27:15 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F3D83.FDE549B@ActiveState.com>

Dennis Roark wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
> would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
> variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
> misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> large projects.

You seem to have just discovered Python's dynamicity. You may not yet be
in a position to understand the *benefits* of this dynamicity in large
programs which go along with its costs. Sometimes Python's dynamic
features will allow thousands of lines of Java or C++ code to just melt
away into a few lines of Python. That increases the overall reliability
of the system. Python also makes testing much easier. Therefore you can
do more testing in less time and thus improve the stability of your
program.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From tangell at kicker.com  Thu Jul 12 10:46:33 2001
From: tangell at kicker.com (T Angell)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 07:46:33 -0700
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com> <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <d01baf67.0107120646.7ffa713b@posting.google.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote in message news:<3b4d6184.1698299906 at wa.news.verio.net>...
> On 11 Jul 2001 22:32:16 -0700, tangell at kicker.com (T Angell) wrote:
> 
> >I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket connections
> >and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
> >sample times:
> >
> >socket time: 0.0047459602356
> >socket time: 0.00469899177551
> >socket time: 0.00404000282288
> >socket time: 0.00537407398224
> >
>  [...]
> >  t1 = time.time()
> For accurate timing, time.clock()
> is recommended, I believe:
> 
> """
> clock() 
>     Return the current CPU time as a floating point number expressed in seconds.
>     The precision, and in fact the very definition of the meaning of ``CPU time'',
>     depends on that of the C function of the same name, but in any case, this
>     is the function to use for benchmarking Python or timing algorithms. 
> """
> """
> time() 
>     Return the time as a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch,
>     in UTC. Note that even though the time is always returned as a floating point number,
>     not all systems provide time with a better precision than 1 second.
> """

Oh, of course. Thanks!


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 15:11:50 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:11:50 -0400
Subject: doctest
In-Reply-To: <9j8m10$n1t3p$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEECHLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Thomas Heller, reverts the string-methods changes to doctest.py in
 current CVS Python]

> Thanks to cvs update -j 1.3 -j 1.2 and manually fixing the two or
> threee conflicts it was easy, with _one_ exception:
>
> There is a 'from __future__ import generators' line, which
> makes sense for 2.2, but throws SyntaxError in 2.1 and 2.0,
> and ImportError in 1.5.2.
> Unfortunately it cannot be wrapped by try: except: because
> it must occur at the beginning of the file.
> Any idea?

What are you trying to accomplish?  A single version of doctest that runs
under all versions of Python?  Then comment out that line and you're done.
The generator-future stmt is needed in CVS (only) so that test_generators.py
passes (doctest itself doesn't use generators), and the need is due to
unresolved general issues spelled out in PEP 236 (see the "Paritally
Resolved Problem: Runtime Compilation" section).




From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 14:33:43 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:33:43 +0100
Subject: Steve Summary of views on the Is-It-Actually-Better? (was re: a use for...)
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <apaolto6pr6cevpk0lgudiapnbrttaj8u9@4ax.com> <m2wv4yhm6v.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <m28rltg94shda00u63lt3tdj3dhvu731sr@4ax.com>

On 24 Jul 2001 18:32:08 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:16 +0100, Steve Horne wrote:
>
>> And what do you mean *correctly* - integer division is NOT incorrect,
>
>It's not division, either.
>
>> it is the only form of division that is appropriate for integer
>> measures. If you are using inherently real measures you should use
>> floats - not integers.
>
>If you want integers, write floor(a,b) [or floor(a/b)], since that's
>what you really mean.

To address this issues, but also summarise my main objections to many
others...

Because...

1.  The fact that mathematicians have had many views on integers
    and division, and the one that is in most non-specialist mindsets
    doesn't meet the pragmatic requirements for several fields of
    mathematics, is understood. That doesn't make the other
    definitions from less demanding, more down-to-earth fields
    invalid.

2.  It particularly does not invalidate the practical view which most
    people can easily understand, which is taught to everyone at
    a very early age and which also happens to work extremely well
    for typical programming tasks (not just specialist applications).

    Doesn't the pro-pep views insistence on the most pragmatic
    possible definition of discrete integer division seem more than a
    little inconsistent with their sloppy attitude to the much more
    fundamental difference between discrete and continuous
    mathematics?

    Just because it isn't the unnecessarily pragmatic (for normal
    programming tasks) field of mathematics that a few people
    subscribe to, it doesn't make it wrong. It is simply from a less
    specialised, more basic and more generally useful field that
    doesn't address the  specialist problems of the minority over the
    general day-to-day practicality of the majority.

3.  Practically all programs use discrete integer quantities -
    indices, subscripts, counters, sizes and more - whereas numerics
    is a particular specialist field.

    Making life more awkward for the majority just to suit a few
    specialist fields is not rational. It's the specialists dealing
    with specialist fields who should have to deal with awkward
    special case syntax and semantics - not the everyday user.

4.  Discrete measures and continuous measures are not the same thing
    and should not be arbitrarily confused. Discrete integer division
    makes perfect sense despite the fact that specialist fields have
    outlawed it for specialist reasons relating to specialist
    problems.

    This is much more fundamental than just switching between
    different representations of continuous measures.

    The pro-pep groups arbitrarily application of continuous measure
    division principles with a discrete integer type is wrong in
    mathematics, and it is wrong in engineering, and it is wrong in
    programming. My use of more practical day-to-day discrete
    principles for discrete integer arithmetic than would be
    appropriate in field theory - or even 16-year-old pure
    mathematics, I fully agree - is not the same thing at all.

5.  Having established that division on the discrete integer type
    should work in the only practical way that makes sense while
    not erroneously confusing the properties of discrete and
    continuous measures, it makes sense for it to apply a simple
    everyday convension for rounding direction - wordy and pragmatic
    systems should be saved for the specialist fields where they are
    necessary.

6.  No-one has yet explained why bugs with misusing discrete
    integer types in continuous contexts cannot be detected and
    handled by simple validation.

    IMO, no-one can consider themselves a professional programmer if
    they assume the need for validation of externally sourced inputs
    does not apply to them.

    If the validation requirements are too fiddly to be practical,
    then that is a valid reason to consider adding new validation
    syntax and semantics which could even have wider applications. It
    is not a valid reason to break the widespread uses of discrete
    integer division in existing code, nor to make the distinction
    between discrete and continuous measures even harder to maintain
    than it already is.

7.  People who are really dealing with numerics and who cannot trace
    down big errors caused by the buggy use of discrete integer types
    in a continuous context are surely incapable of tracing down the
    subtle and insidious problems caused by float approximations?

8.  If you are worried about the learning curve of newbies and
    students, then you should be worried about making the learning
    curve faster and easier - not disguising or hiding it, and not
    creating a comfort zone where you encourage bad habits while
    pretending there is no principle that needs to be learned.

9.  If you are dealing with 3D graphics, then you are either getting a
    library or hardware interface to do the rendering for you and MOST
    (but not all) of what you handle will be continuous measures
    represented by floats (which obviously should not be confused with
    discrete integers), or else you will be doing the rendering
    yourself and you will need to handle a lot of discrete integer
    mathematics AND continuous floating point mathematics. Pixels are
    a discrete integer measure and they are handled using algorithms
    that require discrete integers to behave as discrete integers.
    Discrete and continuous principles should not be arbitrarily
    confused, however.

10. Discrete integer division is not fundamentally different to
    continuous float or rational division - continuous measures simply
    use logical extensions of the same principles that apply to
    discrete integers. There is no need for a different notation for
    division, as mathematitians noticed long ago. The fact that
    mathematicians have additional notations for floor and ceiling
    which they use when necessary in specialist fields is irrelevant -
    we have the capability if we need it but most of the time using a
    simple convention is more practical.

    Discrete and continuous types, however, are fundamentally
    different things and should be kept as cleanly separate and
    unconfused as possible. That is done by using different data types
    for discrete and continuous data.

    If anything is broken, it is in the automatic erroneous
    'promotion' of discrete quantities into continuous types in many
    cases, which should clearly be treated as errors.

    Such a change would of course cause breakage, but we can set up
    a transition procedure for that so get with the program. Obviously
    it is far better to introduce code breaks that are highly visible
    in that the code aborts through an exception rather than creating
    insidious hidden bugs in long-time trusted code.

That just about covers it. It's pretty irritating the way I worded it
as if any alterative opinion is blatantly wrong and stupid, eh -
wonder where I learned that trick?

This is a self consistent view that explains why the proposed new
division handling is clearly rationally debatable and arguably just
wrong even in the 20-years-time case, let alone here and now. It isn't
the main issue in the here and now, but it remains a serious cause of
concern.

Adopting some method to minimise the damage at least for many Python
users and advocates may be a good thing, but please lets not just
assume the change is the right thing.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From hnowak at cuci.nl  Tue Jul 24 09:10:53 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (hnowak)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:10:53 +0200
Subject: Exec and namespaces
Message-ID: <3B679067@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From Aquarius <aquarius at kryogenix.org> =====
>I've got a CGI which reads a file and then execs its contents. The file
>defines a function, and that function can't find itself to call
>recursively; it gets a NameError.

>def main():
>    fp = open("foo.txt")
>    exec(fp.read())

Replace this by

    exec fp.read() in {}

and it should work fine.

The exec() call first creates the bar() function in the local mainspace,
i.e. the namespace of main(). So far, so good; calling bar() works too, but 
the recursive call fails, roughly because of the reasons you already 
mentioned: bar() is neither in the global nor in the local (in this case, in 
bar's) namespace, so a NameError is raised. (At least I *think* that's what 
happens. I'm not a language lawyer. ;-)

The Reference Manual says:

"In all cases, if the optional parts are omitted, the code is executed in the 
current scope. If only the first expression after in is specified, it should 
be a dictionary, which will be used for both the global and the local 
variables. If two expressions are given, both must be dictionaries and they 
are used for the global and local variables, respectively."

(I'm using Python 2.2a1 docs, Doc/ref/exec.html#l2h-365)

Specifying the "in {}" creates a temporary namespace for exec, which is used 
to define and look up the bar function.

HTH,

--Hans Nowak




From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Sat Jul 28 11:01:31 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 15:01:31 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <48F88F43C9842AD9.1E631B0D03856868.6FDBB21E772A6CB3@lp.airnews.net> <9js18m$n54$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg> <D4DB37387F4EA9A2.D6DD66D7FD6C9115.609F82073AFFEB7C@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <9juk4b$pjh$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com>:
> Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> wrote:
> >There's BEEP, formerly known as BXXP. RFC 3080 and 3081, I think.
> >
> >A new Internet-draft talks about running SOAP over BEEP.
> >
> >See www.beepcore.org.
> >
> >(Python implementation seems to have fallen behind.)
> 			.
> The background of the Beepcore principals is in Tcl.

Good to see MTR bounce back from First Virtual. (He was with FV,
wasn't he? Or was it Nat Borenstein? Whatever happened to NB?)


> 'Twill be entertaining to implement the RFCs for Py-
> thon, though, no?

There is a PyBXXP project on Sourceforge. Seems to have gone
defunct.

I'm sure it will be fun to do BEEP for Python. Anyone volunteering? ;-)



-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From grumble at usa.net  Fri Jul 13 00:30:04 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 04:30:04 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <m2ae29y5nj.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <9iltgc$q2f$1@news.mathworks.com>

Greg Copeland <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> wrote:
> jcm <grumble at usa.net> writes:

>> 
>> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
>> slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
>> wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
>> the cpu.  In a production mud, you might want to do something
>> intelligent about wandering monsters (like have them stop wandering if
>> no players are nearby to save cpu-time), but there will also be lots
>> else going on.
>> 
>> There might be some clever optimizations that could be made.  Anyway,
>> my only point was that computation-speed can become an issue.

> Don't take this the wrong way, but you shouldn't expect the language of
> choice to make up for what sounds like a poor design.  No matter what
> language you use, you have to have a sound design that will meet all of
> your requirements (speed and scalability included).  Once you have a good
> design, python makes for an excellent prototype bench.  See how well it
> runs and profile it.  The areas that still don't perform well, many
> need to be optimized either via redesign or re-implementation of existing
> design.  If after all that is done, and you KNOW you have a good design,
> but python still isn't up to the task, well then you know that another
> scripting language probably wouldn't of fit the bill either.  Now, you
> have an excellent design and a fast working prototype, so now you are
> free to reimplement in another, faster language (C, C++, pascal, etc).

I wouldn't assume that something is designed poorly because it runs
slowly.  We've coded, profiled, optimized, rearchitectured, etc.
Things are slow because of the level of generality we wanted.  I'm sure
that commonly occuring events could be special-cased and speeded up.
Anyway, this project isn't one that I'm working on anymore (probably
permanently shelved), so I'm really not interested in going into
specifics.

And since I'm not willing to put the effort into packaging and posting
the code (nevermind actually finishing the changes that I have
half-complete), it was probably a bad idea to mention anything about
the mud at all in a newsgroup.


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 17:37:53 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:37:53 -0400
Subject: Version compatibility in division
In-Reply-To: <u66cgeoe1.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDNLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Bolen]
> ...
> Then again, the bigger problem with int() is the potential for
> rounding that is, at least theoretically, permitted by the
> implementation, although as someone else pointed out, it's not clear
> that any C libraries actually do that.

Guido suggested that "someone" (certainly me) change Python's implementation
so that int() and long() always truncate, regardless of what the platform C
happens to do.  I can do that, no problem.

There are no known platforms on which that will make a lick of difference,
except to make Python run slower.  But that doesn't mean no such platforms
exist.  And making a particular Python operation run slower can change the
behavior of, e.g., threaded apps.  It's also the case that platforms
certainly vary even now in how int(infinity) and int(NaN) behave (since C89
is silent on those cases), and that they may suffer some different
accidental behavior in these cases after the change.

So is this a change we should be frightened of?  Do we need a

    from __future__ import int_and_long_guaranteed_to_truncate

statement to enable it?

I think that would be absurd, but from an implementer's point of view it's
the plain truth that no change is without consequences.




From laurent.szyster at q-survey.be  Tue Jul 24 09:03:26 2001
From: laurent.szyster at q-survey.be (Laurent Szyster)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:03:26 +0200
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5D721E.B230D30E@q-survey.be>

"Russell E. Owen" wrote:
> 
> I have a unix C library that reads some parallel port cards
> (asynchronously), processes the data and writes it files. I want
> to be able to call it from Python and would love some advice.
>
> (...)
>
> It would be nicest to end up with as little C code as possible (i.e.
> move most of this functionality into Python). Some of the processing
> would be better done in Python, and it's so much easier to debug and
> modify things in Python.
> 
> I think I can rewrite most or all of this directly in Python, but surely
> I can do better than simply replicate this code? It looks awfully
> complex. Is there A Better Way?

Have a look at Medusa sources. It's an asynchronous server that uses
the OS select() interface to do multiplexing. Maybe the same technique
can be used for serial devices on UNIX.

	http://www.nightmare.com/medusa

Let me know ;-)


Laurent Szyster


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Tue Jul  3 16:28:04 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:28:04 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <oVp07.429552$oc7.62655172@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
>
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
>
> Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel

The conclusions of those who prefer Java over C++ should not be taken
seriously.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 10:57:29 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:57:29 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994095972.11214.python-list@python.org> <9hqlel016bl@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994112767.3627.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsmgs02aoj@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994112767.3627.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> I shouldn't have said to use proxies instead of mutable integers. I
> meant that you should have proxy x holding mutable integer x' and proxy
> y holding mutable integer y'. Then when you see x+y you can mutate x
> because you claim that you know that there is only ever one reference to
> these objects. That doesn't rely on the person using a particular syntax
> for adding to x.

I may well have other additions to x at other points, that accumulate
to other temporary counts -- e.g. at some point I could have:
    totImportant = mpz(0, mutable=1)
    for key in importantCases:
        totImportant += countOf[key]

Relying on writing this as "totImportant + countOf[key]" rather than
"countOf[key] + totImportant" seems to me far more fragile than
relying on +=.  And if I ever have this in a python -i and when
interactively exploring I write countOf[this}+countOf[that] I
definitely do NOT want this to mess up my further explorations -- I
shudder at the thought.


> How do we "flag" types that have in-place behavior now? How would I
> recognize that your integers were mutable based on anything other than
> reading the documentation or code?

Indeed, while "mutable" vs "immutable" is such a key concept in
Python (from well before += was introduced, of course:-), there
is no direct introspection for it (maybe there SHOULD be!).  If
faced with such a need currently, I would try to check if X is
hashable (if not, it's probably mutable) and if so if its hash()
coincides with its id() (if so, it's probably mutable).  But that
is hardly as solid or reliable as most Python introspection.

But while I can conceive Python growing an ismutable() builtin,
I'd hardly imagine an isadvanced() builtin.  While not fully
pinned down, "mutable" is still a fundamental concept in a way
that "advanced" isn't...


Alex





From anders.eriksson at morateknikutveckling.se  Wed Jul  4 04:43:49 2001
From: anders.eriksson at morateknikutveckling.se (Anders M Eriksson)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:43:49 +0200
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
References: <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <k3l5ktcuktha3qomdnnqs970d6s4fdt405@4ax.com>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:20:01 +0200, Gregor Hoffleit
<gregor at mediasupervision.de> wrote:

>Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
>to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?
>
If you can put up some money for Sequiter's CodeBase library, then you
can use Mr. Hakki Dougsan's python wrapper.

"""Wrapper for Sequiter's (www.sequiter.com) dbase api. Win32. Binary
Only.
CodeBase library is NOT included. Mimics CodeBase C++ Api. Most of the
examples are translated to Python.


       URL:  http://home.tr.net/dogusanh/

  Platform:  Win32
  Requires:  CodeBase C4DLL.DLL
"""

There also is the XBase project which has Python on it's ToDo list.
http://linux.techass.com/projects/xdb/

// Anders

  


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 21:15:19 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:15:19 -0400
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9kutbc.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3B4F9D27.CF8DC351@engcorp.com>

Rainy wrote:
> 
> On 13 Jul 2001 11:59:09 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
> > sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:
> >
> >> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
> >> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
> >> in perl :-/."
> >
> > And that's when you reached for your revolver?
> 
> No, the script was fairly short, maybe a hundred lines. It was also the kind of
> script that you write once and never have to extend, so doing it in perl wasn't
> a problem. 

I understand what you mean here, but I'm not sure I believe in the
idea that there really are scripts you write once and never have to extend.

That's why I value Python's maintainability so much: effectively
every program or script we write has to be extended, even if just 
in the first few months of use.

With Python, we regular hand off 100 line programs from one person 
to another for completion and maintenance, as people are available.  
I think there's even one each of us has contributed to over the 
last year.  Contrary to what you might imagine, it has become
progressively cleaner and easier to understand, rather than growing
into its own little tar pit of a program.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From kelleys at ucsu.colorado.edu  Wed Jul 25 12:38:53 2001
From: kelleys at ucsu.colorado.edu (Scott Kelley)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:38:53 -0700
Subject: Module import problem: _socket
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <mailman.996072369.15531.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5EF61D.363995B2@ucsu.colorado.edu>

Hello all,

I just installed Python 2.1.1 on a machine running

Slackware 3.5 (over Python 1.5.2) and I get the

following error while importing some newly installed

modules:

  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
    from _socket import *
ImportError: No module named _socket

I can't find this module in the Python lib (naturally).

Has anyone out there encountered a similar problem?

Thanks for any help you can give me. -Scott

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott T. Kelley, Ph.D.                  E-mail: Scott.Kelley at Colorado.edu
Dept. MCD Biology                       Phone : 303-735-1808
Campus Box 347                          Fax   : 303-492-7744
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO  80309-0347
U.S.A.





From gtalvola at nameconnector.com  Tue Jul 24 12:03:47 2001
From: gtalvola at nameconnector.com (Geoff Talvola)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:03:47 -0400
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
In-Reply-To: <Xns90E8AFE68ACCDrcamesz@127.0.0.1>
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
 <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20010724120105.02666910@infratest1>

At 03:43 PM 7/24/01 +0000, Robert Amesz wrote:

>SciTE Edit (I believe the URL is something like www.scintilla.org) is
>pretty nice for us Pythoneers. If only it could open multiple files...

SciTE _can_ open multiple files if you configure it properly!  You just 
have to edit some of the settings in SciTEGlobal.properties.  I think I had 
to make the tabbar visible and increase the number of buffers, or something 
along those lines.


--

- Geoff Talvola
   gtalvola at NameConnector.com



From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Wed Jul 25 16:08:15 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 13:08:15 -0700
Subject: maths in programming
References: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107251208.707f8@posting.google.com>

"Native_MetaL" <Jasper49 at optushome.com.au> wrote in message news:<WXy77.11082$A5.32095 at news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>...
> Hello im new to programming and i have some questions about Maths in
> programming
> 
> 1 what type of Maths is used in programming
> 2 how good do you have to be at maths to program

If you can do simple algebra, there are many kinds of programs that
you will be able to write.

> 3 dose all programing have complex maths

No, not all.  Many programs you could write wouldn't involve difficult
math at all.

> 4 are all programmers Expert's with maths

No.

> 5 do you need to be an expert with maths to get Employment in programming

No, although some *types* of programming will specifically need
certain math skills.

> 6 in IT firms are there people that do the maths ......... and others that
> just do the coding <---- the programmers

Not that I know of.  I have never worked for a company that had a
"staff mathematician" who did all the math while the rest of us just
coded.

> 
> i would really like to learn Programming and one day work as a programmer
> but i dont have maths skills.

With Python, the Python tutorials and documentation, and this
newsgroup, you should be able to start learning programming, no
calculus classes required :-)


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Thu Jul 19 06:06:19 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:06:19 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldcug.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que rh cassel <rhcassel at yahoo.com> dijo:
> 
> > Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for
> > me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
> > Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
> > accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
> > with Python.
> 
> Off topic but if one looks at the definition, a "steep" learning curve means
> quick and easy to learn. It is an accumulated knowledge versus time
> function.  The marketing folks have totally corrupted the meaning.
> 
> Here is a nice reference.
> http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV63-1356_STO61762,00.html

I have looked at the definition you mention, but here is _my_
definition, as defended by many I know, at least a couple of which are
in this thread.

Since we are learning, we start with a knowledge value of zero (on
y-axis).  As we assume we are just starting to learn, our time value is
also 0 (on x-axis).  Therefore, our starting point in the graph is
(appropriately) the origin (0,0).

The more about a given subject we need to learn, the farther up the
y-axis we must traverse.  As the time we are given is limited (if
nothing else, by our lifespans) this leads to a steeper curve than if
there were less knowledge to gain.

Given the fact that the subject currently is Perl, there are _MANY_
concepts to grasp (curse-characters & what they mean; context; built-in
global vars; flexible control structures; et al), giving us a "high"
hill to "climb."  Since the quicker you learn it, the better certain job
prospects might be (if no other motivation exists), this shortens the
time span to well under a life span, further squeezing our vector on the
x axis.

A mostly-joking example:

Perl learning curve
+       ____________/
+      /
+     /
+    /
+   /
+  /
+ /
+/
+---+---+---+---+---+

HTML learning curve
+
+
+
+
+
+  
+ ___________________
+/
+---+---+---+---+---+

In the words of Dennis Miller:
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
<wink>

-- 
Is there any person in the world who does not dream?
Who does not contain within them worlds unimagined?
    -- Narrator, The Sandman


From justin at iago.org  Sat Jul 21 12:56:58 2001
From: justin at iago.org (Justin Sheehy)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 12:56:58 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> (Guido van
 Rossum's message of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:32:47 GMT")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
	<mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
	<9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
	<cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <x7puau1aqt.fsf@ra.iago.org>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>> I would very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools
>> that enforce *uniform* case usage.
> 
> And that's of course what I have in mind.

The problem here is that you control the language, but you don't
control the tools.  People use a variety of different editors to work
on Python, and adding this type of smarts to all such editors is
simply not going to happen.

If there is a rule that needs to be enforced, you can't count on the
tools to enforce it.  Python will either demand uniform case usage, or
it won't.  It is impractical to assume that everyone will choose
editors that enforce this sort of rule.

Having only a small number of "approved" editors or IDEs will not work
either, as that would alienate a large portion of the professional
programmers using Python.  Such people are very loyal to their tools.
As much as bringing non-programmers into the fold is a major goal, any
means used to do so that drives away programmers is questionable.

"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:

> I don't think anyone would be opposed to an auto-correcting IDE.

I beg to differ.

There are two problems with this.

The first is that many people don't want anything they type to be
"autocorrected".  I frequently hear about misadventures that people
have with Microsoft tools that "autocorrect" their spelling mistakes.
This feature often makes correct text incorrect, and even when it is
correct it is providing an obnoxious degree of invasiveness which many
people find very distracting while they try to work.

The second is something that I mentioned above.  Attempting to enforce
that everyone use such an IDE is a very bad idea.  If you can't count
on everyone using it, then you cannot count on it enforcing the rules.

A language's rules should be enforced by the language implementation
itself, not the tools that people use to program in that language.

(FWIW, I think that Python's implementions should not allow mixed tabs
and spaces, but that is a different argument.)

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> If you use this a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less
> readable than it should be. 

Really?  People use capitalization semantically all the time, both in
programming and in the rest of life.  I don't understand at all what
makes the above code unreadable.

It has been stated a few times that this is "bad style", but I have
yet to see why.  The lowercase name as instance of uppercase class
convention seems to be a valid style, and I don't know of a reason to
make it disallowed.

> It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over the phone
> -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has tried
> to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)

This is a very funny argument in the context of Python.

Is spoken language indentation-preserving?

Clearly, you should make Python indentation-insensitive in order to
make it easier to discuss code over the phone.  Besides, we can always
just write an IDE that everyone will use that will enforce uniform
indentation...

Spoken language has very different rules than written natural
language, which has different rules than program text.  Trying to
pretend otherwise leads down a dark and ugly path.

I do not see that CP4E can ignore or change this fact.  Or that it should try.

-Justin

 




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 20:26:07 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:26:07 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <N9X67.10961$e5.1612071@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <cpk80xq2g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > But I also found a likely bug!  In colorsys.py, there are two routines
> > (rgb_to_hls() and rgb_to_hsv()) that seem to be doing floating point
> > math using (r, g, b) inputs and don't take any consistent precaution
> > to cast these inputs to floats before dividing them.
> 
> from the docstring:
> 
>     "All inputs and outputs are triples of floats in the range [0.0...1.0].
>     Inputs outside this range may cause exceptions or invalid outputs."
> 
> </F>

Whoops. :-(

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 08:07:19 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:07:19 GMT
Subject: Implementation of popen() with timeout
References: <mailman.994045502.19987.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B406415.1060205@ActiveState.com>

Tom Harris wrote:

> I want to use one of the popen() functions to call an external program and
> capture the output, but I would like to have the facility to kill the
> external program if it does not complete within a specific time.
> Unfortunately I am using NT. Options appear to be to use the Win32 API to
> write my own, as the popen source looks fierce code. Any ideas?


You probably do need to roll your own.  If you use the win32 extensions, 
you could write it in Python making things smaller, and not providing 
the multitude of redirection options that popen supports will make it 
quite a bit simpler.

Mark.



From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 15:01:47 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 15:01:47 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido]
> ...
> arbitrary exception).  In the library itself, only three modules
> engaged in integer division during execution of the test suite:
> bisect, dumbdbm, and inspect.  Of these, bisect and dumbdbm will need
> to be converted to using div(); inspect uses 1/0 to raise an
> exception.

bisect is only dividing by 2; it should use a right-shift instead (like
every other binary search algorithm ever written <wink>).

inspect (and code like it) should be upgraded to use sys._getframe()
directly instead of raising phony exceptions.

dumbdbm uses a pattern common to many apps outside the std library:  it
doesn't really care about integer division per se, it's using an
excruciating trick to compute (the mathemetical) ceiling(i/j) (via
truncating (i+j-1)/j).  This is one-liner disease in action, and subject to
spurious OverflowError; it was always better written as

def ceiling_of_quotient(i, j):
    q, r = divmod(i, j)
    return q + (r != 0)

> ...
> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.

I want to make a pitch for naming it idiv() instead.  The "i" should
strongly remind that the result is an integer, something "div" says only to
former Pascal programmers.  Seems a Positive Good to me if, e.g.,

    idiv(5.0, 3.0)

returned 1 too; i.e., that idiv(i, j) mathematically return floor(i/j).

Alternative:  Given the point about dumbdbm above, the missing half is a
builtin to return (mathematically) ceiling(i/j) too.  A very direct approach
to both is to forget div/idiv and introduce two-argument builtins

    floor(i, j)   # return floor of mathematical quotient
    ceiling(i, j) # return ceiling of mathematical quotient

instead.  They should also have 1-argument flavors, corresponding to the
current math.floor and math.ceil.  This would emphasize that the real point
to all this stuff is computing floors and ceilings, not really about the
numeric types of division arguments (that's always been a red herring!).

but-perhaps-some-herrings-are-too-tasty-to-forego-ly y'rs  - tim




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 02:28:48 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 06:28:48 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lm5h3.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <ta4nltkr6m4friraviemkhelo6hp4ttnn1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lnh0v.41v.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:34:57 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

> exp(1/2) is irrational - it cannot be represented as a float or as a
> rational - but the float representation can never be more precise than
> a rational representation, whereas a rational representation *can* be
> more precise than a float representation.

Rationals are used in cases when the result is exact, because it can
be exact when working with +-*/ and a few more. When I see a rational,
I expect that it's exact.

Floats are used in cases when the result is not exact, because it
can't be exact even for +.  When I see a float, I know that there is
an inaccuracy.

You can't give exact answer to exp(1/2) - Python won't have builtin
symbolic computation soon. It must be inexact anyway. Moreover, working
with rationals with huge nominators and denominators is ineffective;
there are not suited for approximating irrational numbers. If I really
wanted to work wirh inexact numbers with a better precision than
float, I'd use a custom float-like type with more precision. This
is unlikely - in reality the precision of float usually suffices
(in cases we allow the result to be approximate at all).

> If you argue that integers are just a subset of floats and division
> should always return a float if necessary to get the more precise
> value,

I would not call the difference between 3 and 3.6 "precision".
They are results of different operations, difference between these
numbers is huge.

OTOH the difference between 3.6 and the number closest to 3.6
representable as float is not big. This is precision.

>>Too late: it has already lost its precision because input was a float.
> 
> But why throw away the rational arguments precision.
> 
> 1/3 * 2.0 should give 2/3 - not 0.6666666666666

This is a rare case when the float was exact. In general floats are
not exact. If you *know* that it's exact, why it's a float in the
first place? Convert it to a rational or integer.

If one of arguments is inexact, the result is inexact.

This is how Lisp behaves BTW. Integer division yields a rational and
mixing floats with rationals yields a float. I didn't remember that
when I started argouing for it: it's just the most logical way of
how it should work.

> But if we use your logic for this case, then surely we should consider
> that in integer division there's no point giving a float result as the
> inputs are already represented as integers and therefore they have
> already lost the precision that floats have ;-)

Integers are exact!!! That's the point: if numbers represent inexact
quantities, they should be expressed as floats. Since working with
integers and rationals is predictable and +-*/div,mod give correct
(with int/int->rational), they should be used when we want to know the
true answer. If it's not possible anyway, use floats and don't waste
computation time for the 100th decimal place which is wrong anyway.

> But a rational approximation can more accurate than floats - surely
> we should choose the *best* approximation.

There is no best approximation: there is an infinite sequence of
better and better rational approximations.

> One major advantage of treating integer division separate from
> float division separate from rational division etc etc is simply
> that the rules stay the same for each case

Why should float division be separate from rational division?

> What the hell is a decimal float, and where did they come from! They
> only exist, to my knowledge, in the sense of standard form/scientific
> notation.

Guido was arguing for them :-)

> But you can't simply classify floats and rationals as alternatives
> like this - by your own logic, floats are a subset of rationals (just
> as integers are a subset of floats),

No. Integers represent mathematical integers (exactly). Rationals
represent mathematical rationals (exactlt). Floats represent
mathematical reals (inexactly).

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From jschmitt at vmlabs.com  Tue Jul 24 17:32:05 2001
From: jschmitt at vmlabs.com (John Schmitt)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:32:05 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <4197FA5DD22AD5118ADE00805F6FA62F3B67BD@eden.vmlabs.com>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at python.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 12:51 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Language change and code breaks
[...]
> The language would remain case-sensitive, and you would be free to use
> it that way in any tool you chose, but there would be a separate tool
> available that enforced case-preserving case-sensitivity for those who
> prefer it.
[...]

There you have it folks.  This is the same thing that Guido ended with the
last time this issue came up.  

To summarise: The language will not change to be case-insensitive.  Python,
the programming language, will remain case-sensitive.

Thank you very much, Guido, for stating it.  I'm hoping that we can keep
this message and quote it as the BDFL proclamation on this issue the next
time it arises.

Personally, I'm happy to hear that the language will stay case-sensitive and
that I can choose to use or ignore a tool that provides case-insensitivity.
Hopefully a tool that would provide this isn't tied to something I would
like to use.

John



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  8 13:14:57 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 10:14:57 -0700
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B489511.19523932@ActiveState.com>

Roy Smith wrote:
> 
> I'm kind of confused about exactly what happens when I use a string as a
> dictionary key.  Section 3.2 of the reference manual seems to imply that
> keys are compared by identity:
> 
> > The only types of values not acceptable as keys are values containing
> > lists or dictionaries or other mutable types that are compared by value
> > rather than by object identity

That is confusing! It is saying that the types of objects that case
problems are those that 

 a) are mutable

AND

 b) are compared by value rather than by object identity

>..
> Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?  

Not on strings!

> I'm
> contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key comparison by
> identity should be significantly faster than by value, because I'm going to
> be using rather long strings as keys.

Here's one way:

>>> class a:
...     def __init__(self, val):
...         self.val = val
...
>>> key1 = a("abc")
>>> key2 = a("a"+"b"+"c")
>>> dict={key1:5, key2:6}
>>> dict[key1]
5
>>> dict[key2]
6
>>> key1.val == key2.val
1
>>> key1 == key2
0

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Jul  5 09:17:28 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 13:17:28 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <B7695827.13DAA%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <9i1pd8$8ei$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

David Goodger <dgoodger at bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Martijn: Good PEP. Comments:

>> The library PEP
>> differs from a normal standard track PEP in that the reference
>> implementation should in this case always already have been
>> written before the PEP is to be reviewed; the reference
>> implementation _is_ the proposed contribution.

> By "to be reviewed" do you mean "to be decided upon by the Integrators"? Or
> "to be released to the Python community for comment"? I hope the former.
> Please clarify.

The former, I shall clarify, thank you.

>> In the case where no head maintainer can be found (possibly
>> because there are no maintainers left), the integrators will issue
>> a call to the community at large asking for new maintainers to
>> step forward. If no one does, the integrators can decide to
>> declare the contribution deprecated as described in PEP 4.

> I agree with Roman that this needs some explanation. When, why, under what
> conditions, would the Integrators deprecate a contribution? I think
> "maintainerless" is a useful category; after all, most modules do *not*
> require much if any maintenance between releases.

*all* modules require maintenance, if only to check whether it still works.
These maintainers can be PythonLabs or whomever, but there should be
a maintainer.

Do people really want a maintainerless category? That'd be sort of
defeating the point of requiring a maintainer in the first place..

If maintenance is considered trivial, then you or anyone can step forward
and become maintainer, after all. 

Finally, I say 'can decide to declare deprecated', not 'will'. Perhaps
I ought to make this actually *stronger*, so that unmaintained contributions
never persist for a long time.

>> Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
>> evaluating contributions?

> It would be useful. I think it would have to come from the PythonLabs crew
> themselves. I think it would be useful to them as well.

I'm helping Carlos Ribeiro with this, who is working on such a list of
criteria.

>> A related question is integration with the Python documentation
>> process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
>> can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
>> we detail this more in this PEP?

> Say exactly that, with a pointer to the "Documenting Python" section of the
> Python reference.

Okay, sounds good.

Thanks,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:48 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:48 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995934280.25863.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ockpltktklt4v7ltqb583mg6s5rck06amd@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:23:18 -0700, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>It is very common to pass floats to functions that expect integers and
>vice versa without really thinking about it. It is *especially* common
>to pass integers to functions that expect floats.

And in my mind this is the problem, not division. The traditional
solutions to the problem of bad inputs are called *validation* and
*documentation*.



From martin at strakt.com  Mon Jul  9 10:53:18 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:53:18 +0200
Subject: Writing documentation
Message-ID: <20010709165318.A21876@strakt.com>

Heya

I'd like to document my Python modules in the same way the standard
modules are documented, with LaTeX and the Python styles and things. It's
not exactly a howto, and it'l look a lot like a mini-library reference,
right? So how do I compile it? How do I generate all the nifty HTML?

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From jackyci at sinamail.com  Thu Jul 19 12:22:20 2001
From: jackyci at sinamail.com (=?big5?B?amFja3ljaQ==?=)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:22:20 +0800
Subject: =?big5?B?W1FdIEZpbGUgT2JqZWN0IC0tIGZ1bmN0aW9uICdyZWFkJw==?=
Message-ID: <20010719162220.18332.qmail@sinamail.com>

Hi 

There is a TEXT file named 'test.txt'.
--------test.txt-------
This is a test.\n
test\n
test\n
-----------------------
In Windows. "\n" equal "\x0d\x0a"
But in function "read" of File Object, "\x0d\x0a" equal 1 byte.

file = open('test.txt')
str = file.read(22)    # I want to read the first two line

# but str = This is a test\ntest\nte

How to solve the problem ?

Greetings
==================================================================
?????? 50MB ????  http://www.sinamail.com
????????????
http://bonus.sina.com.tw/adevents/alico/





From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Wed Jul  4 18:44:01 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 23:44:01 +0100
Subject: Hiding Console?
References: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <slrn9k4bt2.pjn.carlf@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9i065k$gea$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

Thanks Carl, that works a treat!

Gary.


"Carl Fink" <carlf at panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9k4bt2.pjn.carlf at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <9ht9to$fei$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com>, G. Willoughby wrote:
> > Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
> > WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the IDLE ide. I
wanna
> > write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont want the
console
> > there when there run, any ideas?
>
> Run the program with pythonw.exe instead of python.exe.
> --
> Carl Fink carlf at dm.net




From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Tue Jul 10 10:08:33 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:08:33 +0100
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <Xns90DA75C5FEBC9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <9iep6h$gmi$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4B0C61.7193BEF2@westerngeco.com>

gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> 
> In article <Xns90DA75C5FEBC9duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>,
> duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth) wrote:
> 
> > "Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
> > news:Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1:
> >
> > > Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
> > > news:3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB at westerngeco.com:
> > >
> > >> I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
> >
> > Another useful tip to remember is that except for the DOS command
> > prompt, and some badly behaved applications, Windows actually supports
> > both forward slash and backslash as path separators. So in a Python
> > program (or most other languages) you can use forward slashes anywhere
> > you want to write a pathname.
> 
> So long as you aren't using data given to you by the OS.  In this case, I
> think the duality is more of a problem than a solution.  Here's a function
> that I think solves the poster's original problem:
> 
> def getPrefixRelatives(*filenames):
>         """return the common prefix of the filenames
>         and each filename relative to that prefix
> 
>         """
>         # make sure all paths are spelt the same
>         normalized = map(os.path.normpath, filenames)
>         prefix = os.path.commonprefix(normalized)
>         return(prefix, [
>             filename[len(prefix):] for filename in normalized])
> 
> >>> import os
> >>> getPrefixRelatives('c:/python/first.py', 'c:\\python\\sub\\second.py')
> ('c:\\python\\', ['first.py', 'sub\\second.py'])
> 
> Returning UNIX-style / separated pathnames is left as an exercise for the
> reader.
> 
>                      Graham

Bingo!  Thanks for this (and all the other sugestions....ofcourse!)  It didn't
occur to me to use slicing to remove the prefix (simplest is best!)


From engsol at teleport.com  Fri Jul 27 22:32:19 2001
From: engsol at teleport.com (engsol at teleport.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:32:19 GMT
Subject: Newbie Q: PYTHONPATH_1 vs PYTHONPATH_2?
Message-ID: <3b6222b8.1007348@news.onemain.com>

I have an "old" copy of Python on my NT machine. I've tailored
PYTHONPATH to know about myfiles and mylib, etc.

But I've now installed Python 2.1.1 in a different directory, and
would like to create PYTHONPATH_2, so as to not have to expand the
vanilla PYTHONPATH forever as new versions are available.

Is this do-able?

Thanks....engsol


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:18:38 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:18:38 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[Guido]
> >> >The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
> >> >regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.

[Grant]
> >> If that's important, why won't the other math operators do it???

[Guido]
> >Huh?  They do (apart from unavoidable round-off errors).  1+2 == 1.0+2.0.

[Grant]
> They compare equal with the "==" operator, but they are not
> the same value:
> 
> >>> 1+2
> 3
> >>> 1.0+2.0
> 3.0
> >>> 
> 
> ... unless 3 and 3.0 are "the same value".  In which case my
> definition of that phrase is merely different than yours.

[Guido]
Well, they have the same *mathemtical* value, and Python does its
darndest to treat them as equal everywhere.  For example, a dict with
int keys can be indexed with corresponding float or complex values.
Exceptions are operations that intrinsically require ints, e.g. list
indexing.  (This would change under a unified numeric system though, I
expect, unless inexact numbers are excluded from being used as
sequence indices.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  9 16:30:26 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 15:30:26 -0500
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org> <Fij27.24993$F%5.1707320@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <9Bk27.469493$oc7.75721180@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <006f01c108b5$ff18c240$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rainer Deyke" <root at rainerdeyke.com>


> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
> news:Fij27.24993$F%5.1707320 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> > And some of us wonder what it is about the GPL that stops your previous,
> > liberally-licensed, version from existing?
>
> Given: software A is released under the BSDL.  Somebody creates an
improved
> version of it (software B) and releases it under the GPL.
>
> A still exists.  But B is better than A, so people will be more likely to
> use B than A.  A still exists, but A is competing with a better version of
> itself.  New programmers will be more likely to improve B than A, because
> they don't want to duplicate effort.  The original author is unable to
> incorporate the improvements to A in future software C unless C is
released
> under the GPL.

Granted.  Whose fault is that?  If the author of A doesn't maintain it, and
other programmers prefer the B program *even with the GPL on it* then B must
be really superior and deserves to win.

Who loses?  A's author can't use B to create C unless he/she commits to
source
code releases forever.  If C is to be commercial software with hidden
source,
and the programmers who created B don't like that, then they chose the right
license.  On the other hand, if A intended to do that anyway, then there is
really no loss to anyone.

Sort of a legal armwrestling match.





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 17:20:42 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:20:42 +0200
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <9htctp0a0j@enews4.newsguy.com>

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote in message
news:9hst9p$oqv$5 at 216.39.170.247...
    ...
> Opinion: It would not be illegal for Microsoft to make it a condition of
> use that you not install open source software if you want to use their
> OS. It's not restraint of trade since technically, open software is not
> traded - there's no _overt_ exchange of value nor is there a "buyer" or a
> "seller" who could be harmed monetarily through such a restraint

Counter-opinion: where did you get the strange idea that open-source
software can't be traded/sold/bought?  It's far from unusual for a
developer to develop application X for a specific customer (and for
plenty of $$$) and put X under the GPL (the developer may have to,
if he uses GPL'd stuff in X, or may simply choose to -- maybe he
thinks this will help spread X's use and his superior familiarity with
X's core sources gives him competitive advantage in bidding for
support & enhancement contracts on X once it's widespread, &c).

> (besides, you have the freedom to choose another OS according to MS).

Remember the US Appeals court did endorse the findings of fact
and law in the MS antitrust case -- so MS _is_ officially a monopoly.
This subjects them to much stricter restraints (in theory -- what
remedies will be decided against their illegal antitrust behavior is
another issue of course).


Alex





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 15:02:22 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 23:02:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: python-mode and py-python-command
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107042256590.32257-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

Hello!

How do I tell Emacs to call specific Python interpreter
within a certain file with Python code?

I know that for this I need to set up py-python-command
variable, but how to do it?

1. With

set-variable

(You know, Lisp is super intuitive ;-)

2. With eval-expression I managed to

(setq py-python-command "/usr/bin/python2.1")

but it has no effect in the decision which Python to run :-(

3. What is wrong with this (at the end of file)?

% Local Variables:
% mode: python
% py-python-command: \"/usr/bin/python2.1\"
% End:

(do i need to put some control characters after End: ?)

Thank you!

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jul 17 18:44:57 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:44:57 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171439080.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru> <mailman.995389618.4756.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Jd357.11818$Xr6.98411@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Paul Prescod:
> Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> > ....
> >
> > I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.
>
> I agree. Allowing "funny characters" in names is not something
> we have much call for yet and it may break many tools that
> have ASCII-only assumptions.

   Allowing non-ASCII characters in names enhances interoperaility with Java
and .NET which allow this.

   Neil





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul 11 14:10:43 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:10:43 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107111139020.3926-100000@bms>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
<...>
> >Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
> >language.
>
> Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
> for longer programs.

Hehe, you must have missed the recent thread about removing the first
line from a text file... I thought it showed that Python is a horrible
scripting language, way too verbose, it turned what should be a few
lines of script into a program.

If I move my notion of a "script" up a level (or two)...
Python is great at scripting high level stuff;
it is not obvious that could be a niche,
and even less obvious that Python fills it.

i.e.,  Python is good at turning what would be "longer programs"
       in most other languages, into scripts.


- Bruce




From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 03:26:52 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:26:52 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEILAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[]Stephen Horne]
> ...
> And what about the languages web developers are used to, such as
> VBScript and JavaScript.

Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there) -- I'm
afraid the "mimic other languages" approach requires picking languages very
carefully if you want the illusion of consistency.  By the way, 1/2 is also
0.5 in standard JavaScript:

    http://www.el-mundo.es/internet/ecmascript.html

    11.5.2 Applying the / operator

    The / operator performs division, producing the quotient of
    its operands. The left operand is the dividend and the right
    operand is the divisor. ECMAScript does not perform integer
    division.  The operands and result of all division operations
    are double-precision floating-point numbers. The result of
    division is determined by the specification of IEEE 754
    arithmetic:

        yadda yadda yadda

produce-enough-frantic-arguments-at-random-and-some-are-likely-
    to-backfire<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk  Wed Jul  4 09:53:23 2001
From: R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk (Richard Brodie)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 14:53:23 +0100
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <Xns90D489E9982B4duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <9hv74k$1bts@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>

"Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns90D489E9982B4duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1...


> No wonder the compiler gets angry, you can't rename your own types as
> 'int'. Also there is no type called 'bool' in C.

It's a macro expanding to a type. At least it is, if you include <stdbool.h>
Even when you know a language, someone comes along and changes it...





From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 18:17:00 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:17:00 -0400
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
In-Reply-To: <9jfe8v$gu4$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEDCLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Erik Max Francis]
> so perhaps when mathematicians are isolated with other mathematicians
> they tend to pronounce it that way.  I really don't know.

[Tom Bryan]
> In both my undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics in the
> U.S., I only remember hearing tuple pronounced so that it rhymes with
> goop.

Now *that's* an affectation.  Where I went to school, it rhymed with goople
<wink>.

> If anyone pronounced it to rhyme with couple, it was rare enough
> that I don't remember it.  But we also said "pie" for pi and "fee" for
> phi.

Perfectly sensible.  At PythonLabs, I think Fred Drake says
tuple-like-couple.  I'm a tuple-like-goople guy (i.e., normal).  Jeremy
hasn't existed for months, and everyone runs away when Barry speaks, so who
knows what they say.  Guido only barks orders in Dutch, so I'm not sure how
he pronounces it either.

but-pretty-sure-he-prounounces-"dict"-like-"luxury-yacht"-ly y'rs  - tim




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 01:14:01 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:14:01 -0400
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net> <9jvj7e$96b$1@panix2.panix.com> <XCM87.10556$Kd7.5973154@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B639B99.E068591E@engcorp.com>

Victor Bazarov wrote:
> 
> "Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote...
> > You've got a complex problem here, probably resulting from a multi-way
> > interaction between Python, Java, and the OS.  You're going to get little
> > help from us unless you can pare down the problem.
> 
> If I could pare it down, I would have probably found the cause by
> now.  The problem is that I don't have time to look.  The system
> that Python is running is a fairly complex one.  The Java app that
> runs the Python interpreter is also complex.  Call it a hunch, call
> it an educated guess, but I have a feeling that as soon as I start
> paring the problem by removing some [irrelevant] parts of the app
> and the Python code, the problem will go into hiding...

In another post you wrote:
> At this point I frankly care only about one thing: to prevent it
> from happening.

Is that a temporary solution?  You don't have time to find the cause,
but you feel confident that if you removed some irrelevant part of 
the app the problem will go into hiding, and you care only about
one thing: preventing it from happening.  Problem solved. :-)

(I'm sure the real solution is to find the time to narrow down
the list of possible causes, because it seems very unlikely this
group will be able to solve your problem without more legwork 
on your part.  I know that doesn't sound helpful: sorry.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From wqh-2 at 263.net  Mon Jul 30 21:03:36 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:03:36 +0800 (CST)
Subject: problem with re.rearch 
Message-ID: <3B6603E8.13863@mta3>

since s=abcd ,then I search 'a' in s
the result must be true 
but why the result is nono

>>> a=re.compile(s)
>>> b=a.search('a')
>>> print b
None
>>> print s
abcd
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 15:37:04 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:37:04 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
	            <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> Yes, it's a lot less useful than you seem to think.  If you are
> interested in documentation, it's better to use something like pydoc
> which gives much more details.

Major: Pydoc seems only useful for a small subset of types and classes. 

Major: I use dir() in object browsers and other graphical constructs. I
can't use pydoc for that. I don't see an obvious dir-like function in
inspect.py.

Minor: It returns so much prose information that I might prefer to use
dir() to just get the spelling or name of a function.

Consider this traceback and you'll see why I still depend on dir()

>>> a=urllib.urlopen("file:///c|/autoexec.bat")
>>> type(a)
<type 'instance'>
>>> dir(a)
['fileno', 'fp', 'headers', 'read', 'readline', 'readlines', 'url']
>>> help(a)
Help on instance of addinfourl:

<addinfourl at 16411468 whose fp = <open file 'C:\autoexec.bat', mode
'rb' at 00
F7EB28>>

>>> m = re.match("abc","abcdef")
>>> type(m)
<type 'SRE_Match'>
>>> dir(m)
['end', 'expand', 'group', 'groupdict', 'groups', 'span', 'start']
>>> help(m)
Help on SRE_Match:

<SRE_Match object>

> Right now, pydoc doesn't understand the new types yet, but eventually,
> before 2.2 final, pydoc (or more likely inspect.py) will be able to
> introspect according to PEP 252.

Maybe that will be enough to help me for my object-browsing
applications. And perhaps pydoc will be reliable enough for me to give
up on dir(x).

> 
> ....
> Hm, I'd like you to tell me more about how you use dir().  I find
> getting the entire list of attributes overwhelming.

I use dir(x) as a compressed and somewhat more reliable pydoc that works
great for modules and built-in types and works poorly for instances.

What do *you* use dir(x) for? When do you want to introspect an instance
and you care about instance data but not class data and functions that
are instance attributes but not true methods.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 12:36:57 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 16:36:57 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0106281419260.11263-100000@bms> <mailman.993764502.10834.python-list@python.org> <cpae2rlarx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.993841846.2132.python-list@python.org> <cpsngijfcg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hpjsjt04gj33rbcbpurvv2mbiknuqf6fob@4ax.com> <mailman.993964021.7787.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8pkujt04pv49fvklj6n8jv61fl177kv6c4@4ax.com>

>I don't always have the opportunity to talk to people and explain
>confusing things to them. In one class I gave, a guy let out a gasp when
>he came to understand the reference rules. He said that that was what
>had prevented him from coming to understand Python the first two times
>he tried. Now I think we've made life harder for guys like that to save
>Numeric Python users from typing a method call for their mutations.
>That's a poor trade-off.

Sure; I can buy this argument. I'm not a big fan of the ongoing lexical/
grammatical expansion of Python.

C//



From nwaterworth at lineone.net  Wed Jul 18 14:16:21 2001
From: nwaterworth at lineone.net (Neil Waterworth)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:16:21 +0100
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM 21 July 2001!!!
References: <3B54F839.AC6C11C3@yahoo.com> <sog57.3111$N21.1150208@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <tlbl39inknnbd4@corp.supernews.com>

I have a PC without a modem or network connection. Will it explode, or can
someone lend me their Caesium Atomic clock and a serial cable?

Ric Werme <werme at mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:sog57.3111$N21.1150208 at typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> alavoor <alavoor at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> >All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
> >21 July 2001!!!
>
> >hello:
> >You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.
>
> Garbage!
>
> >Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.
>
> "This won't hurt a bit!"  At least you aren't hawking a .EXE virus.
>
> What wrong with NTP?  (Assuming one needs his computers' time to be
accurate.)
>
> --
> Ric Werme                            | werme at nospam.mediaone.net
> http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete




From arnulf at spirea.net  Mon Jul 30 04:42:20 2001
From: arnulf at spirea.net (Arnulf Heimsbakk)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:42:20 +0200
Subject: Error on mimetools?
Message-ID: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no>

I'm trying to decode a mime64 message in python with mimetools. I have
tested the "body" with windows winzip. It decodes correctly. When I try to
decode it in python, it do not decode correctly. I get a file with slightly
increased size. The heading of the file seems the same, but when I test this
with a jpg file - the file gets corrupted when decoded with python's
mimetools.

Is there a error in mimetools? Or is my approach entirly incorrect. My code
is below:

out = StringIO()
mimetools.decode(StringIO(self.body), out,  'base64')
return out.getvalue()

I preciate any advise or help I can get.
---
arnulf heimsbakk
system analyst
+47 76 14 45 42

spirea.net - http://spirea.net
and?ya rocket range - http://www.rocketrange.no






From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 20 10:39:51 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:39:51 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> writes:

> On 19-Jul-2001 Guido van Rossum wrote:
>  >  Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
>  >  
>  > > The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
>  > > is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?
>  >  
>  >  You flunked math, right?  The number of available identifiers is still
>  >  infinite...
> 
> That comment was not necessary. What Bruce must mean is that the average
> length of an identifier will be larger with case insensitiveness than 
> with case sensitiveness. I am sure you understood that.

I apologize for the comment.  But I don't find the argument (that
case-sensitivity reduces the expressivity or the number of available
good identifiers) convincing at all.  Given that in current code,
case-insensitive name clashes are very rare, I don't believe for a
second that the average identifier length will go up.  If you use this
a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
should be.  It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over
the phone -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has
tried to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 20 13:57:47 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:57:47 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org> <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com> <9j79s6$n27$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B578D96.DCE5B63C@engcorp.com> <3B57937B.B4057461@Lugoj.Com> <3B58180A.2264EDCD@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b586cc7.2422078454@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:37:46 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>James Logajan wrote:
>> 
>> Peter Hansen wrote:
>> >  1. They are inactive in the Python community and are
>> >     therefore unaware of the upcoming code breakage.
>> >
>> >  2. Their code is dependent on the existing integer
>> >     division behaviour, and yet they are not amongst
>> >     the classes of users identified in this newsgroup
>> >     as being the most likely to be impacted.
>> >
>> >  3. They are incapable of maintaining their code,
>> >     and simultaneously are entirely at the mercy of
>> >     outside forces who may choose to upgrade them
>> >     against their will or without their knowledge to
>> >     the new and incompatible version of Python.
>> >
>> >     Or, they are not at the mercy of outside forces,
>> >     yet mysteriously cannot *avoid* upgrading their
>> >     Python installations and thus breaking their
>> >     own code (which they somehow cannot maintain).
>> >
>> >  4. Were we to develop and make easily available to
>> >     them a scanner capable at least of identifying
>> >     the probability they will suffer code breakage,
>> >     they would be unable to use it, whether for
>> >     (1) or (3).
>> >
>> > Have I missed anything?
>> 
>> I'm sure you could think of many more insults if you just tried harder. Just
>> how many years have you been in commercial software development anyway?
>
>Did you miss the thread up until this point?  
>
>I neither intended the above to be insulting nor, as far as I 
>can tell, *is* anything in the above insulting.
>
>Therefore, I agree completely with you.  I could *definitely*
>think of more insults (than zero) if I tried.  
>
>I've been in commercial software development since roughly 1981.
>
>(Perhaps you consider something in *this* posting insulting too.
>If you do, we clearly have a different definition of insulting.
>You, by the way, were obviously trying to insult me, and I honestly
>have no idea why.)
>
Perhaps James meant "insult" in the sense of "insult and injury" to
the victims whose injuries you were enumerating. That's the way I took it.

I think you are usefully pointing out a real problem.
Trying to code in the least-likely-to-be-changed subset
of a language is not fun, but that is what you wind up doing.

Perhaps the BDFL may want to consider making a never-to-be-changed
subset official? Ada went through a no-subset discussion, but I think
I might like a very lean official subset, especially if it also meant
a very lean embedding option.

Isn't it fun trying to make Netscape and IE show the same thing
on the screen? ISTM the same could happen between generations of Python.



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 12:22:13 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 16:22:13 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <9hq73l$i0g$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Edward B. Wilson II <ed at ewilson.com> wrote:
> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.

And 'is Python dead' will guarantee you people will read your post.

> Python still doesn't have good database support,

I realize I'm not familiar with Perl's dbi, which I hear is more powerful
than Python's database interfacing, but I've happily connected 
Python to things like Access, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Also from 
within Zope. What do you consider to be 'good database support'?

> nor has it grown to be
> useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
> mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
> space.

What about Zope, Quixote, WebWare? I mean, really, this is an area which
has seen a lot of growth in recent years.

http://www.zope.org
http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/python/quixote/
http://webware.sourceforge.net/

And then there's this:

http://www.vex.net/parnassus

where you can find much more web related stuff, in case that wasn't enough.

> It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
> write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
> manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
> making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language at
> eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.

You'll just have to be more specific about this..

> Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
> best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
> largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
> or otherwise).

But those areas are exactly what I've been using it for the last couple
of years! Surely I would've noticed it if Python was dead. :)

Of course, some things could be nicer (relational object
integration would be nice), and as have been discussed recently,
the Python Standard Library could've seen some more development. 
Also of course a comprehensive Python Catalog ala CPAN would be nice.

But really, either you've managed to miss an amazing amount of developments
the last few years (really, had you missed Zope?), or your post here
was rather unclear -- what exactly is it that you're missing?

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From ed_tsang at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 14:29:30 2001
From: ed_tsang at yahoo.com (ed_tsang at yahoo.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:29:30 -0000
Subject: how to save strings to a temporary buffer?
Message-ID: <9j4kia+hmtu@eGroups.com>

How can I save string to a tempororay buffer and then write it to a 
file afterwards?

I have a function that output a formatted string each time it is 
called; but instead of open a file and write it each time; I would 
like to save these strings to a , may be a tmeporory buffer, and then 
write it to a file when everythign is completed... how cna I do that?
thansk






From tdelaney at avaya.com  Wed Jul 25 01:41:44 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:41:44 +1000
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2D8@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> Actually, adding rationals can be done almost entirely without
> breaking code...  That is, *if* we adopt PEP-238 now.  Changing 1/2
> from returning a float to returning a rational won't have to break
> code, since the mathematical value of the result is the same.
> Changing it from returning 0 to returning a rational isn't any easier
> than changing it from returning 0 to returning a float -- exactly the
> same places will have to be changed.
> 
> If you're for rationals, you're for PEP-238.

I am entirely for rationals (actually, what I would *really* like is
symbolic numerics - I want 100% exact values in all cases, including
sqrt(2), and I want them to be *fast*, but I'd settle for rationals ;)

I am however leery of the assertion that changing from int/int=>float to
int/int=>rational would have no code breakage. There are many cases where
int/int=>float will give an inexact result whereas int/int=>rational would
give an exact result.

In practice, I suspect the cases where the difference would show up are
minimal, however just as going from int/int=>int to int/int=>float means you
are gaining precision (and possibly losing exactness), the same occurs with
going from int/int=>float to int/int=>rational (except you then gain
exactness).

In any case, as I have stated before, any such changes must be held over
until the next major release before they are the default behaviour.
Fortunately, the next major release is Python 3.000, which we have always
maintained could break existing code.

For the record, I intensely dislike the // notation, but I can't articulate
why. I would prefer something like ?, but unfortunately, typing that on my
keyboard is somewhat difficult.

Tim Delaney



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 08:38:54 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 07:38:54 -0500
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net> <3B65FD2B.39BA0A95@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <CE671DDD22B40C3E.25CDBEE912BDD9F9.C0CD28D28A68C3E3@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3B65FD2B.39BA0A95 at engcorp.com>,
Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>Cameron Laird wrote:
>> 
>> I've lost count--is WAP essentially
>> dead now, or on the verge of utter
>> world domination?
>
>Dead, or at least in stasis waiting for a purpose in life.
>
>Have you ever tried (or imagined trying) to use a tiny
>LCD screen that can't even show your own full name as a
>way of accessing something with the degree of rich
>information as the Web has?
>
>(I work in wireless and the topic rarely comes around these
>days.  I'm quite sure some companies are working full speed
>on it, however, and I wish them the best of luck.)
			.
			.
			.
I confess I posted a bit disingenuously here.
My scant contact with WAP has given me no
reason to doubt that it's diving rapidly to
extinction, as Andrew Odlyzko describes in
<URL: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/ >.
Thanks to a correspondent for offering me this
URL.  Note that PLENTY of other apparently-
knowledgeable people (Clay Shirky, for
example), reinforce this judgment.  Anyway,
my real intent was to expose as delicately
as possible my surprise that Paul would use
WAP in his illustrations of language growth.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From knight at baldmt.com  Thu Jul 12 12:06:44 2001
From: knight at baldmt.com (Steven Knight)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:06:44 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: SCons (Python build tool) development under way
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121102450.1121-100000@theopera.home.baldmt.com>

This is to announce that active development of SCons is now underway at:

	http://scons.sourceforge.net/

SCons is a Python software construction (or software build) tool--that
is, a substitute or replacement for Make.  SCons is implemented as a
Python script around a central set of Python build-engine modules.
SCons configuration files are actually executed as Python scripts,
allowing you to use full Python functionality to control your build.
You use Python functions and methods in the configuration files to tell
the central build engine about your input and output files.

Other key features:  Dependency calculations are done using MD5
signatures, yielding more reliable builds than timestamp-based
dependency analysis.  Most dependencies are handled automatically.
Building multiple targets in parallel (-j) is supported.  It's easy to
add your own Builder objects and otherwise customize your build.

SCons is still on its way to alpha release, so there's no official
package available for download at the moment--sorry.  Much of the
infrastructure has been coded, though, and is available for anonymous
CVS checkout, or browsable via the CVS web interface under the SCons
project page at SourceForge:

	http://sourceforge.net/projects/scons/

The usual set of mailing lists (scons-announce, scons-devel,
scons-users) has been created.  Follow the web site links to subscribe.

A small development team (n == 3) is working towards finishing enough
documentation and basic functionality for a rapid series of alpha
releases in the (hopefully) near future.  To help that effort, we'd like
to become larger than just a "small" team.  If you're interested in
contributing, we'd love to hear from you.  Check out the developer
guidelines on the SCons web site.

Yes, SCons is the direct descendant of the ScCons design that won the
Software Carpentry build tool competition last year.  It's been renamed
(dropped the extra 'c') to make it slightly easier to type, and to try
to reflect weakly the fact that this project is no longer directly
related to Software Carpentry.  (Sorry, I don't know the current status
of Software Carpentry or the other tools they were planning.)

The SCons design is based on the design of the Perl-based Cons software
construction tool:

	http://www.dsmit.com/cons/

SCons improves on the Cons architecture by incorporating several years
of practical experience with its strengths and weaknesses.  (And, of
course, by being written in Python...  :-)

	--SK




From boegli at iinet.net.au  Sun Jul 15 02:50:42 2001
From: boegli at iinet.net.au (Richard B)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:50:42 -0700
Subject: parallel port?!?
Message-ID: <3B513D42.933A0445@iinet.net.au>

I would like to know how to communicate with the parallel port under
python. Is this possible? If so can it be done under all operating
systems that support python.
I need to interface with the parallel port to send commands to a board
connected to it. I have just come to grips with python, it is my first
language, so I think this is what I should use to communicate with the
parallel port so that I can implement new features latter on. If it is
not possible to communicate directly with the parallel port, are there
any open source communication programs which work under Windows and
Linux which I could communicate to through python.
Sorry for long message but this is kind of important.
Thanks in advanced.




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul  5 22:39:43 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 14:39:43 +1200
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
References: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com> <mailman.994144624.30210.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4524EF.C33D6F70@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 11:40:49PM -0700, Heiko wrote:
> >
> > If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
> > doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
> > position (but that is a "nice to have").
> 
> I don't really know what you mean here, since I don't know how the
> function is meant to know which argument belongs where.

Heiko, I think you want keyword arguments. Given

  def foo(a, b, c):
    ...

you can call it like this:

  foo(b = 1, a = 2, c = 3)

If you declare

  def foo(**kw):
    ...

you can call it with any number of keyword arguments,
and kw receives a dictionary where the keys are the keywords
you used and the values are the values you passed.

You can mix and match all of these, too:

  def foo(a, b, c, *args, **kw):
    ...

can be called with 3 or more arguments. The first 3
can be passed positionally or by keyword; args
receives a tuple of the remaining positional arguments;
and kw receives a dictionary of the remaining keyword
arguments.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Tue Jul 31 19:08:32 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:08:32 -0300
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <3B6727F6.6D43D989@ActiveState.com>; from paulp@ActiveState.com on Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 02:49:42PM -0700
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B6727F6.6D43D989@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <20010731200832.L19610@tux.distro.conectiva>

> It sounds weird from an English perspective to me. "If Guido in
> programmer and Guido in author then". "isa" or even just "a" makes more
> sense. or how about "in class" "If Guido in class programmer and Guido
> in class author then".

What about "If programmer in Guido" ("type in x" instead of "x in type")?

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 14:42:23 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 18:42:23 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

23 Jul 2001 17:00:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> pisze:

> - This is not "incorrect" arithmetic.  *It is 3/4 == .75 that is incorrect*
>   because the precision of the result exceeds the precision of the operands.

It doesn't exceed if the result is a rational. Operands and the result
are all exact here.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From hoki26 at gmx.de  Tue Jul 10 08:14:38 2001
From: hoki26 at gmx.de (Holger Kipp)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:14:38 +0200
Subject: Q: mpg123 with Python
Message-ID: <9ierhe$c3u$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>

Hi,
my professor told me, that i have to realize a "webbased skin for mpg123
with flash and mySQL"
so, i installed mpg123 and now i've got the problem to respond that player
via Python.
Flash and the mySQL-DB are not the problem ...

I MUST retrieve ID3-Tags, playtime, etc... from mpg123 and have to control
the player
like: skip track, seek, pause track, ... and so on.

Is there any EASY sourcecode/modules/API for Python?  (I'm using Python2.1
on RedHat 7.1)
Where can I show useful code-segments? Do you have an better idea? Shouldn't
I use mpg123?
Please note: easy code is required ;-))

yours sincerely
Holger Kipp




From mcherm at destiny.com  Mon Jul 23 10:02:12 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:02:12 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <10ec1ce85.ce8510ec1@destiny.com>

One part of Arthur Siegel's posting bears repeating:

> I remain convinced that the single most important
> factor for Python's acceptance as an educational language is
> the growth of its  acceptance as a professional language.

I have opinions on integer division, case sensitivity, and
probably on other issues where CP4E advocates seem to come
into conflict with some "professional programmers". But I
think I'll just keep quiet about my own opinions (which may
NOT be what you think) and let you think a minute on Arthur's 
words.

-- Michael Chermside





From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 09:20:07 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:20:07 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.995052624.21992.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kuvac.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9ip0io010ke@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B504707.86D6ED85@engcorp.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> > No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
> > it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?
> 
> Sure, and if I say "I never strangle British citizens on Saturdays", that
> cannot be taken as meaning that you are at risk on other days of the
> week, nor that people of other nationalities are at risk today -- however,
> depending on context, there is a *fair inference* (in human language
> usage, although not in the Aristotelic logic simplification thereof) that
> I'm likely to have a specific reason for what would be overqualification
> of my sentence IF I never strangled anybody at all on any day of the week.

I think you've left the original context behind, Alex.  Phil was responding
specifically to my parenthetical comment about the phrase "scripting
language".  I said "(whatever that means)".  It was almost independent of
anything to do with Python.

So he was nicely clarifying a term we were using so that we would be
able to agree on a useful definition (which I think we subsequently did).

>> Phil Hunt wrote:
>> > Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>> >>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>> >>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>> >>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>> >
>> >To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> >that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> >lines of C++.

If we rewrite history, what we said was actually this:

Peter wrote:
> I think of Python as an effective general-purpose language. 
> Python *also* works very well as a "scripting language".
> By the way, can we define what we mean by the term "scripting language".

Phil wrote:
> The term "scripting language" has the connotation of "good for
> short programs, <100 lines".  

If you think Phil needs to qualify that, I suspect there are many
even more critical cases we would need to qualify in half the postings
to c.l.p.  Of course, maybe we should have added:

Peter:
> Maybe someone will misinterpret your comment.  Just to clarify,
> you aren't saying you think Python is *only* good for scripting
> according to our agreed definition, are you?  You are actually
> agreeing with my statement that Python *also* works very well
> as a scripting language.  Some people might think you meant 
> something different.

Phil:
> Yes, Peter.  That's exactly what I meant.  Good thing we caught
> that ambiguity before it developed into a little Usenet noise-fest.

Peter:
> That's what I thought, too.  Thanks, Phil.

:-)
 
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sun Jul  1 01:53:33 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 01:53:33 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0106282024320.15886-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0106282024320.15886-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <oqhewxgppe.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Roman Suzi]

> >Examples are:
> >	- augmented Assigments
> >	- Lists comprehensions
> >	- Simple Generators

(About recent changes, I would sadly add the fact that join/split are now
string methods -- an horrible ugliness that still just cannot tame me!)

> I can't see these as bad things which make Python worse!  If you do not
> want to use them - please do so.

Beware the PL/I syndrome. :-)

Quite granted that nobody is forced to use a feature.  But when a language
becomes too featureful, people start programming in the subdialect they like
best, later creating difficulties to other wanting to read their programs,
who might like other parts better.

One of the reason behind Python legibility success, is that there is
almost only one way to do one thing (to contrast with Perl, say).  We are
progressively sliding away of this virtue.  The danger is real.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Wed Jul 25 12:28:28 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:28:28 -0700
Subject: Python for Palm OS
References: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <3B5EF3AC.E7627338@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Robert Roberts wrote:
> 
> I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm
> os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?
> 
> Thanks in advance.

Is there documentation or a reference manual for pippy?  A friend of
mine, installed it on his palm, but we couldn't find documetation for
it.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From jeremy at chaos.org.uk  Tue Jul 10 13:30:03 2001
From: jeremy at chaos.org.uk (Jeremy Henty)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:30:03 GMT
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk>

In article <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj at 4ax.com>,
 Daniel Klein <danielk at aracnet.com> writes:

>This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden
>programs

Then this person will be distressed to learn that Java is effectively
dynamically typed!

See http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/cgi-local/pragprog?JavaIsUntyped !

Cheers, 

Jeremy Henty 


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 20:00:59 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:00:59 +0100
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <3B4B2E5E.AB3C94BD@home.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9kn5pr.kj0.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:33:34 -0700, Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
>Steve Holden wrote:
>
>> > The approved idiom is
>> while 1:
>>     x = raw_input()
>>     if not x:
>>         break
>>     DoSomethingInteresting()
>
>This is the approved idiom, but I never use it. I always use:
>
>x = raw_input()
>while x:
>    x = raw_input()
>    DoSomethingInteresting()
>    x = raw_input()

Do you often find you programs don't work? :-)

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Fri Jul  6 11:49:01 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:49:01 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <994426394.405.95578.l7@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B45A5AD.12631.573C6B@localhost>

As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's permission 
before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one can 
implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is safe, 
thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.

I have a Python COM server that I would like to use with IE.

Does someone happen to know if there is an incantation that can 
be muttered in Python that implements IObjectSafety--or of some 
alternative way of doing this?

(I suppose one could embed the Python in an MSVC server. 
However, the more I play with Python the more I hate C++. And 
anyway I have a deadline.)

Thanks for any clues or hints!!



From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Sat Jul  7 14:01:43 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 11:01:43 -0700
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net> <3B4721F3.BA771F79@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b474e87$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

In article <3B4721F3.BA771F79 at engcorp.com>, "Peter Hansen"
<peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

> Neil Macneale wrote:
>> 
>> Is there a way to limit the number of instructions executed by a thread
>> to a certain number?
> 
> What do you mean by "instructions"?  Machine language opcodes?  Python
> bytecode instructions?  Python source instructions ("statements")?
>
Yes, bytecode intructions.

>> The idea is that I have a game where people play there code against
>> others, and I would like to have some granularity in the number of
>> intructions each thread executes in a given time frame.
> 
> Are you doing this to make the game "fair"?  In what sense?
> 
> Would you then need to consider the total amount of processing time used
> by a given thread?  Or are you trying to see how efficiently (in terms
> of source lines of code) your players can code their algorithms, by
> putting a limiter on their code at a higher level such as source lines
> of code executed per unit time?
> 
I want to give each thread the same amount of processing time.  The way
the game works is that each player needs to write a program which
competes with other programs, or AI some might say.  More computation is
an advantage, so we want to encourage players who can figure out the 
most efficient algorythm.

In the game, computation will cost a player, in the form of negative
points or something.  It would also be suitable if there was a way to
determine who many instructions were made after there program returns.
That may be equally impossible though.

> By the way, Python can, depending on the platform, already do some kind
> of round-robin style of multithreading (switching threads after a given
> number of Python bytecode instructions) which may have an effect similar
> to what you are trying to achieve, but I suspect what you are really
> looking for can not be found in that way.

So round robin scheduling is automatically used?  The game is being
written strictly for unix;  is there a way to find out if the unix
version uses round robin scheduling?

Neil Macneale

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul  5 03:56:24 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 07:56:24 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <u7elrwi0pa.fsf@hpeesof.asc>
Message-ID: <Xns90D55999CEC4Cduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Ralf Muschall <ralf.muschall at alphasat.de> wrote in 
news:u7elrwi0pa.fsf at hpeesof.asc:

> No, typedef just creates aliases, *not* types.  One might consider
> creating something like
> 
>     typedef struct { int value; } plane_t;
> 
> instead (and get bitten by the fact that struct tag names are not
> local to the struct scope for some versions of C (i.e. adding
> 
>     typedef struct { int value; } lane_t;
> 
> would clash)).
> 
At which point you go out and buy yourself a C compiler that manages to get 
a bit closer to the standard. I think clashing of structure tag names went 
out of fashion about 20 years ago, certainly it wasn't a problem I 
encountered even in my days of writing C for Z80s.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:55:54 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:55:54 +0100
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <cpwv4xa97a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <s882mt8jisclgfc1leqouqa0ek7fll4gbr@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:06:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) writes:
>
>> I think this is what the PEP is proposing:
>> 
>> // is current / behaviour
>> / is new int/int --> fp
>
>No, a//b would always return floor(a/b).
>
>> we already have people importing things from the __future__,
>> how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?
>
>But the problem (as I see it)
>is that there will never be a point where we can throw away support
>for the past behavior, because there will always be code around that
>imports it.

Of course there is.

You just give an explicit error when the import is disallowed
(out-of-range-of-time-machine or some such), and refuse to run the
script.

This is much better than code that runs incorrectly. It means people
know they have a problem, they have a very good clue as to what that
problem is, and they can try to find a solution - rather than
continuing to trust outputs from previously reliable programs or
libraries that have gone bad.



From thwapp at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 23 20:14:33 2001
From: thwapp at hotmail.com (thwapp at hotmail.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:14:33 GMT
Subject: help with ming and python 2.1
Message-ID: <3b5cbdda.22330511@news.earthlink.net>

I have ming-pythonwin32.zip but it was compiled for use with python
1.5.2 and does not work in python 2.1.  Does anybody have compiled
version for Python2.1

thwapp at hotmail.com



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 09:09:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:09:55 -0400
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
References: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <co847.478507$eK2.99254456@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <fFB47.1659$PF1.124551@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:co847.478507$eK2.99254456 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> Your modules are going to have to import the globals.  You could put them
> all in a separate file, call it "my_globals.py", and then in each file
> (including the 'main' file), you would have:
> from my_globals import *
>
>
This would not be a good idea. Each module would create its own copy of the
imported globals, meaning that one module would not see changes made by
another because each would be modifying its own copy. And, in fact, this is
another good reason why one should avoid

    from module import *

unless one is very sure one knows what one is doing.

since-i-frequently-don't-i-avoid-it-like-the-plague-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 10:37:46 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:37:46 -0500
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se>
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
        <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <15197.34874.72036.271448@beluga.mojam.com>

    Mikael> I've seen BDFL referring to GvR, and I know the interpretation
    Mikael> of that.  Here, obviously, MDFL suddenly referres to the very
    Mikael> same GvR. What's with that M?

Based on the context in which I saw it I assumed it meant "malevolent", but
I agree, it's not obvious.  I'd never seen that acronym before.

Skip




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Jul  5 09:28:58 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 13:28:58 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <mailman.994319168.17079.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i1q2q$8ei$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
> <...>
>> Maintainer(s)
>>
>>     All contributions to the standard library need one or more
>>     maintainers. This can be an individual, but frequently is a group
>>     of people such as for instance the XML-SIG. Groups may subdivide
>>     maintenance tasks among themselves. One ore more maintainers shall
>>     be the _head maintainer_ (usually this is also the main
>>     developer). Head maintainers are convenient people the integrators
>>     can address if they want to resolve specific issues, such as the
>>     ones detailed later in this document.

> With the maintainers of the existing library being the group of core
> developers?

What happens with the existing library is strictly outside the scope of this
PEP, though I could of course broaden it. I'd *like* to say something
like that, yes. Perhaps I ought to.

[snip]
> Will maintainers be given access to the servers, if so then
> there should be set procedure to verify who they are (email don't cut
> it!)

Hm, do I want to get into technical details of how maintainers can be
contacted? I think email should be enough; the maintainer should notify
the integrators if his or her email address changes! Perhaps there could
be a maintainer-SIG or something like that. If a maintainer cannot
be contacted easily then that's just a bad job by the maintainer, right?
(Perhaps there should be a note that the integrators have the right to
reject a maintainer that's inactive and look for another one..?)

[snip]
>>     Should the current standard library be subdivided among such
>>     maintainers? Many parts already have (informal) maintainers; it
>>     may be good to make this more explicit.

> That would be up to the group currently responsible for them.

You mean PythonLabs/python-dev? (along with such other groups like the
XML-SIG for the xml modules).

>>     Perhaps there is a better word for 'contribution'; the word
>>     'contribution' may not imply enough that the process (of
>>     development and maintenance) does not stop after the contribution
>>     is accepted and integrated into the library.

> "contribution" accurately describes the relationship of the work
> to the standard library, and as soon as someone starts looking into
> contributing the word "maintainer" is gonna smack'em in the forehead.

Yes, I think it's okay as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 01:49:32 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 01:49:32 -0400
Subject: Compile-time type checking (was Re: Typing system vs. Java)
References: None <mailman.996540777.8399.python-list@python.org> <996554015.454155@yabetcha.sttl.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <3B6646EC.37B11428@engcorp.com>

Donn Cave wrote:
> 
> If you a type checking compiler, the object would have to agree at
> compile time with the programmer's notion of what would be an
> appropriate input.

Sometimes the programmer's notion of "appropriate input" is
a little restrictive.  Sometimes it is better not to have type-checking
at compile time, but to do it at run time.  When a library routine
is used for a purpose the original author wouldn't have predicted,
maybe.  Run-time assertions could check that the inputs have the
required characteristics, but those characteristics might not
be restricted to the simple notion of "type".  (For example,
maybe it is better to allow any object which will _act_ as an
integer, rather than just integers.  If only integers are to
be allowed, Python easily supports checking for this, at run-time.)

> I don't know if that means Python should have type checking.  Its
> open typed design works awfully well with OOP, and it would be a
> shame to strangle that freedom for the sake of a half-baked concept
> of discipline.  But some kind of type inference validation could be
> applied from a lint utility - that already exists and is reportedly
> useful, but I don't know if it actually covers types.  

The problem with an external checking utility such as lint, or
the proposed division scanning utility, is that it only works
in a limited set of cases (although perhaps the majority of cases).

What it can't do is deal with some cases which are possible
because of the dynamic nature of Python.  It may be only at 
run-time that one can determine which inputs are actually being
fed to a subroutine, for example.

This is where testing comes in.  A compiler can only check
whether you have followed the rules to which it restricts you.
Testing, however, can verify that, whether you followed the 
rules or not, the code is doing what you think it should.  

Testing is both necessary and sufficient for Python code.

With statically typed languages, testing is still necessary, 
though probably done less often, while compile-time checking 
is _not_ sufficient, yet that's all most people use.

In the end, whether or not Python suffers because of a
lack of compile-time checking is hardly the issue.  Anyone
relying on such simplistic means to provide them with 
confidence in their code's correct operation is deluding
themselves.  Python just doesn't try to delude you: if
you want safe code, test.

> Anyway, maybe it's an area where a big investment could yield 
> something real interesting for industrial strength programming.

I suppose you could say my group does "industrial strength"
programming with Python, since we're in industry :-) and the 
strength of the code -- without compile-time type checking -- 
is quite adequate for now.  

Of all our problems, well under 5% are related to problems 
caused by Python's syntax, lack of compile-time type checking, 
division behaviour, and other such things.  Adding static types 
(i.e. _requiring_ them) would cost us significant productivity 
with next to no practical gain (since they would catch a small
fraction of less than 1% of our problems).

(Note: these numbers are anecdotal, unscientific, and made up.  
Hah, some engineer! :-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Wed Jul 11 12:54:27 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:54:27 -0400
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <994866174.493.60419.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C4C83.18319.3B586F9@localhost>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote, in part:
> >"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
> >news:9ihg33$irjha$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> >> Does it bother anyone that
> >> a *= 3 + 4
> >> returns a different value from
> >> a = a * 3 + 4
> 
> By this example I conclude that infix notation is seriously flawed
> compared to prefix or postfix (called Polish and inverted Polish).
<SNIP>
> What? This is inconsistent with math notation? Who cares to know it
> these days! You do not need to be rocket scientist (or any scientists
> at all) to write simple arithmetics!

Good one, Roman! LedOL. All I can say is that you ~belong~ on 
this list composed mostly of eggheads. :o) Those of us with IQs of 
120 (or perhaps somewhat less) just use parens when we find that 
we're again becoming hopelessly confused.



From rmalla1 at lsu.edu  Fri Jul 27 01:04:34 2001
From: rmalla1 at lsu.edu (Ratnakar Malla)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 05:04:34 GMT
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
Message-ID: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu>

Hi,
I need to read from a very long file. But the only information I am
interested is
2 lines at the bottom of the file.
1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
time?
2) If so how??
3) I tried the normal way, but looks like, it is taking lot of time.
Thanx,
Ratnakar Malla
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: rmalla1.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 294 bytes
Desc: Card for Ratnakar Malla
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010727/59d750d8/attachment.vcf>

From nperkins7 at home.com  Wed Jul 11 12:57:38 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:57:38 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cplmlvh6dx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


If changing int/int->int to int/int->float is going to break too much code,
then why not use another operator?

I have seen // suggested as a replacement for int/int->int,
ie. int//int->int,..

but why not leave int/int->int alone,
and use // for int//int->float.

No code breaks, and it is almost as easy for the newbies.

1/2 -> 0
1//2 -> 0.5

That way we still have / = div, % = mod,
and we add // = float-divide.

No need for a 'div' operator or anything like that.


p.s.
Would it be possible to allow operators to be used as first-class functions,
eg:
reduce(+,mylist)

instead of:
import operator
reduce(operator.__add__,mylist)





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 01:25:54 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:25:54 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
In-Reply-To: <009901c1156e$6a9c5260$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107252315010.8592-100000@bms>

Ya, that's pretty much what I figured; well, that or maybe the
look-ahead required would involve more than a naive view suggests.

It didn't look too weird when I first wrote it, but a second look has
me thinking otherwise (Paul and Greg's posts kinda clinch it :).

I suppose if I ever get lazy enough to actually want such a thing...
it would be easy to do in a preprocessing step.


Thanks All.


- Bruce

-- 
On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Ken Seehof wrote:
> No, it's just that the syntax makes no sense in python.
>
> It would also, of course, be invalid to say:
> int(a) = 5.2    # hoping for a=5
>
> This is not the same as a = int(5.2) and it would seem really wierd to
> me if it were.  Then again, from a C++ point of view, any syntax that
> is currently illegal is a natural candidate for a new syntax feature :-).
> But python is not C++, so I'm afraid you'll have to settle for something
> less terse and more clear.
>
> a,b = divmod(x,y)
> a = int(a)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>
> > How nasty would it be to allow one to do...
> >
> > >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> > >>> print a, b
> > 2 1.01
> >
> > ...instead of the current...
> >
> > >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> > SyntaxError: can't assign to function call
> >
> > On the surface, it looks as simple as postponing the function call
> > until after the assignment.  Would it be a one-time hit when the
> > pseudo-ops are generated, a runtime performance issue that would
> > affect all function calls, just too hairy to implement, or something
> > else?





From deblNoNospammy at theworld.com  Sun Jul 15 18:47:35 2001
From: deblNoNospammy at theworld.com (David Lees)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:47:35 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995226565.30277.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B521D9B.53E86E68@theworld.com>

Because you would also find non-valid IP address.  In fact a split would
not even require them to be numeric.  There is a problem with the
original regex approach too because while it does require digits for the
quad, it would still accept invalid values such as 999.257.382.433

david lees


Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On 15 Jul 2001, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> >The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
> >"quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?
> >
> >ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"
> 
> ipquad   = r"^((\d{1,3}\.){3}(\d{1,3}))$"
> 
> (Why not just split(it, ".") ?)
> 
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 16:30:10 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:30:10 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <slrn9lhgqu.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9javdi$bbp$1@panix2.panix.com> <slrn9lk9pv.ls.bencd@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <9jsj0i$dom$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9lk9pv.ls.bencd at localhost.localdomain>,
Ben Caradoc-Davies <bencd at bigfoot.com> wrote:
>On 20 Jul 2001 21:11:30 -0700, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>smpt = SMTP()
>
>That won't be affected.  ;-)

<grin>  I caught that just after I posted and decided to wait and see if
anyone else noticed.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Jul 11 13:32:22 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:32:22 +0100
Subject: apply for keywords
References: <3B4C89BA.DB51C3A7@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4C8DA6.B6F41B8F@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Why not write as:

>>> apply(foo,(),{"bar":1})

Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia

Curtis Jensen wrote:
> 
> Can you use "apply" to pass keywords?  If so, what is the syntax?
> 
> ie:
> Python 1.5.2 (#4, Sep  5 2000, 10:29:12) [C] on irix646
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> def foo( bar = None ):
> ...   if bar != None:
> ...     print 'ok'
> ...   else:
> ...     print 'not ok'
> ...
> >>> apply( foo, [bar = 1] )
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     apply( foo, [bar = 1] )
>                      ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >>> apply( foo, bar = 1 )
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: this function takes no keyword arguments
> >>> apply(foo, (bar = 1) )
>   File "<stdin>", line 1
>     apply(foo, (bar = 1) )
>                     ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >>>
> 
> --
> Curtis Jensen
> cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
> http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
> FAX (425) 740-1451


From nospam at nospam.com  Fri Jul 27 02:09:46 2001
From: nospam at nospam.com (Grace)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:09:46 +0900
Subject: Is this an Intended behaviour of __getattr__?
Message-ID: <uu787.103805$ph7.16107665@news.hananet.net>

I'm a bit confused with this:

class Node:
    def __init__(self):
        self._next=None
    def __getattr__(self,attr):
        if attr=='next':
            if self._next is not None:
                return self._next
            else:
                self._next=Node()
                return self._next
        print attr,"was called..."
        error=3/0  #supposed to raise exception
        raise AttributeError

if __name__=='__main__':
    f=Node()
    links=[f.next,f.next,f.next.next,f.next.next]
    for each in links:
        print each
    print f.errorPlz

And this yields exactly,

 __str__ was called...
__repr__ was called...
<__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
 __str__ was called...
__repr__ was called...
<__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
 __str__ was called...
__repr__ was called...
<__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
 __str__ was called...
__repr__ was called...
<__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
al was called...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "...", line 22, in ?
    print f.al
  File "...", line 12, in __getattr__
    k=3/0
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero

Why did it suck up all ZeroDivisionErrors while outputting the "was
called..." messages? Special case with magic methods? Is this an intended
behaviour? Then what is the exact process/mechanism?

Thanks in advance.






From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 13:59:48 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:59:48 GMT
Subject: Use "quotient"? (was Re: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament))
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <52Q77.181728$mG4.85523836@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>
Message-ID: <oUY77.30575$EP6.7861637@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Manoj Plakal" <plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu> wrote in message
news:52Q77.181728$mG4.85523836 at news1.mntp1.il.home.com...
>         It seems to me that the word "division" is being sorely
>         overloaded in these threads as well as in PEP 238. Would
>         it be more precise (mathematically and otherwise) to
>         reword things like this:
>
>            - currently, the symbol `/' in Python programs signifies
>              two different operators depending on the arguments:
>                  - the QUOTIENT operator with 2 integer arguments
>
>                  - the DIVISION operator with at least 1 float
>                    argument
>
>            - the proposed change is to make '/' always signify the
>              DIVISION operator and '//' always signify the QUOTIENT
>              operator
>
>          Seems to be more clear than saying "integer division"
>          or "truncating division" or "float division".

Bravo.  This clear and succinct summary of PEP0238 makes its intent
and virtues clearer than anything I've read (or written) so far.

Guido, please consider something very much like this for the Abstract.

Terry J. Reedy





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 04:38:25 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:38:25 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:41:49 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to
>
>(1) int/int *ought* to return an int;

...

>IMO, argument (1) is misguided.  I've heard all the variations many
>times by now and none are convincing to me; they are either wrong,
>like "that's how mathematicians define it" or "that's how all
>right-thinking programming languages define it", or they miss the
>point, like "it's easy to explain to newbies that int/int returns
>int".

Please read my 'Steve Summary' message - it addresses all these and
more.

If you can prove that the set of mathematicians only includes those
who are dealing with the currently interesting discrete-mathematics
problems, or you can prove that magically warping discrete measures
into continuous measures is useful for typical bread-and-butter
programming tasks, I'd be interested to hear it.

I define a mathematician as someone who applies mathematics, and who
understands the mathematical principles being applied. I don't limit
it to people working in field theory or some such, however interesting
it may be and however pervasive it may be in current
college/university study and specialist application of discrete
mathematics. Any narrowing of that definition should be explicit or at
least for day-to-day practical reasons.

I define practical as the normal case, not the first-day newbies
expectations and not specialist fields.



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Tue Jul 24 12:28:28 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:28:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: function while true - list function?
In-Reply-To: <ENg77.543485$eK2.113992779@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107241217300.461-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>

An alternative to the generator class method:

Also in 2.2, the 'iter' function has two forms: 

  iter( collection )  & 
  iter( callable, sentinel ) 

The second form takes a callable object of no args and a sentinal
value, and returns an iterator that calls the function until it
returns the sentinel value.


For example:

>>> i = iter( [1,2,3,None,4,5,6] )
>>> j = iter( i.next, None )
>>> for x in j: print x
... 
1
2
3
>>> 


So, if you can curry your function into one that takes no args 
( with lambda or by turning it into a class method that keeps 
 state ) or if that's what you've already got, you can just 
use 'iter( function, None )' . 

If you need to force eager evaluation of the iterator you
can use:      [ x for x in iter( function, None ) ] 


-- Steve Majewski





From jim at interet.com  Thu Jul 26 09:16:01 2001
From: jim at interet.com (James C. Ahlstrom)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:16:01 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>
	 <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com>

Robin Becker wrote:

> If the advice from the Gods is that Python is a 'research' language then
> I'll know better what to do.

I am afraid I have to agree with Robin here.  My company "solved"
this problem by staying with Python 1.5.2.  I do plan to upgrade when
I have the time, but absent any tools to at least flag incompatibilities
this may never happen.

My new Red Hat 7.1 system reports that its Python version is 1.5.2.
Apparently I am not alone.  I believe many Python users are at 1.5.2.

The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
proof program.  The current rate of language change is fine for a
student or casual programmer I'm sure, but I don't have that luxury.

Jim Ahlstrom



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 10:41:23 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:41:23 -0700
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org> <9hsk9c$fl3ec$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9hslpr$fl4qm$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Oops... s/b print file

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9hsk9c$fl3ec$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> import os
> for file in os.listdir(dirpath): print i
>
>




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul  4 05:42:18 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 04:42:18 -0500
Subject: Catching Python exceptions from C++ ...
In-Reply-To: <3B42847A.E436B1D1@accesswave.ca>
References: <3B42847A.E436B1D1@accesswave.ca>
Message-ID: <15170.58618.250831.520476@beluga.mojam.com>

    Sandy> 2. Can I perhaps set stdin, stdout, stderr to my own FILE handles
    Sandy>    and at least dump the output/trace info to something I can
    Sandy>    read later? If so, how?

You could wrap the Python code you call in a try/except, then catch and save
the exception:

    import traceback, sys
    try:
        ... original code ...
    except:
        traceback.print_tb(sys.exc_info()[2], 0, open("/tmp/traceback", "w"))
	raise

The raise call is there so the return value of PyRun_SimpleFileExFlags is
the same.  It's not strictly necessary.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From simonb at webone.com.au  Wed Jul 11 15:44:35 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:44:35 +1000
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CACA3.4010109@webone.com.au>

Right, parenthesese usually mean "do this first",
as in (1+2)*3.
Python is not designed to
work out that in something like
 >>> a=(3)
the brackets are redundant
and therefore the user really meant
that "a" should be a tuple with one element.
And im not sure that i'd like such a feature.
But (as i just tried), it does work out that if you type
 >>> a=()
you want "a" to be an empty tuple ( (,) does not work ).

So to get this structure:

        (()), (), ((,)) 

you should do :
       ((),), (), ((),)

Simon Burton


Tim Daneliuk wrote:

>I'm curious about why python was designed to handle the tuple semantics
>described below the way it does.  Perhaps one of you language experts
>can 'splain it to me.
>
>I have a data structure that looks like this (each of the elements is a
>string):
>
>ds = (
>      (
>       (name-1, descrip-1),
>       ( (argA-1, argB-1), ... (argA-n, argB-n) )
>      ),
>
>      ...
>
>      (
>       (name-n, descrip-n),
>       ( (argA-1, argB-1), ... (argA-n, argB-n) )
>      ),
>     )
>
>
>One of the tuples of ds has a single arg pair.  That is, it looks
>like this:
>
>      (
>       (name-n, descrip-n),
>       ( (argA-1, argB-1) )
>      ),
>
>
>But, at runtime, python sees is as this:
>
>      (
>       (name-n, descrip-n),
>       (argA-1, argB-1)
>      ),
>
>
>From what I've read, to force the data structure to be maintained correctly, 
>I have to add a trailing comma to the single arg pair like this:
>
>      )
>       (name-n, descrip-n),
>       ( (argA-1, argB-1), )
>      ),
>
>
>And that works fine.  But *why* is the trailing comma designed into the
>language semantics this way.  I've been scratching my head and cannot come
>up with a rationale'.  It seems to me that the explicit use of the parens
>should be telling python that I want the second entry in each data
>structure to be a *tuple* of 0 or more tuples.
>
>Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to prepare
>the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
>
>        (()), (), ((,)) ???
>
>'Just curious...
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Tim Daneliuk
>tundra at tundraware.com
>



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Wed Jul  4 08:12:26 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 15:12:26 +0300
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org> <ku3d8d31ve.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <3B42BD95.D6A0BC30@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <kuwv5o28r9.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <3B42BD95.D6A0BC30 at stroeder.com>, Michael Str?der
<michael at stroeder.com> writes:

| Now think about systems where sendmail isn't installed at all. 

every unix mta provides a "sendmail" command afaik. unixes don't
function very well without the capability to deliver mail since
it's used by cron and whatnot.

ok, you may have a box that is configured to only deliver local mail,
but not very common and easy to remedy.

  -- erno




From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul 31 07:40:50 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:40:50 +0100
Subject: win32api exception names?
References: <9k4r84$n85$1@uranium.btinternet.com> <uhevt6hsy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <9k65s2$5ao$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

could you please explain the code needed a little better? sorry!

if i use something like this:

except win32api.api_error, info:
    win32api.MessageBox(0,"File can not be opened, right double click to
open\nthe file's directory.", appName, 0, 0)

then i get: AttributeError: 'win32api' module has no attribute 'api_error'

any ideas?

G. Willoughby

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:uhevt6hsy.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> "G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> writes:
>
> > I'm using this function to open a file listed in a Tkinter Listbox
widget,
> > but i've run into some problems. First when i double click on .htm files
> > listed they work perfectly, opening in Explorer, But when i double click
on
> > .txt files i get this error:
> >
> > Exception in Tkinter callback
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "c:\program files\python\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1285, in
> > __call__
> >     return apply(self.func, args)
> >   File "D:\Backup\Python Programs\PyFind\PyFind.py", line 61, in
executeFile
> >     win32api.ShellExecute(0, "open" ,
str(resultPane.get(ACTIVE)),"","",1)
> > api_error: (31, 'ShellExecute', 'A device attached to the system is not
> > functioning.')
> >
> > i'm trying to handle this exception, but being new to them i dunno what
> > exception is being raised, the 'except EnvironmentError:' line really
isn't
> > getting it. any ideas?
>
> I can't necessarily address why your code is returning that specific
> exception (perhaps a bad path?), but each of the PythonWin modules all
> raise an api_error exception for any general Win32 errors.  The first
> element in the instance data tuple will be the underlying Win32 error
> code (31 in this case is ERROR_GEN_FAILURE), then the failing function
> call, and finally a textual description.
>
> So if you want to catch these in your exception handler, you can use:
>
>     except win32api.api_error, info
>
> and then if necessary, inspect the actual Win32 API error code (in
info[0]).
>
> --
> -- David
> --
> /-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
>  \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
>   |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
>  /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
> \-----------------------------------------------------------------------/




From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Sun Jul 29 02:43:43 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 06:43:43 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m6esl.d7d.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <mailman.996365813.14171.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9m7c4u.df9.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:14:38 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
>William Tanksley wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:32 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
>> >2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
>> >is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?

>> Not without the object's cooperation -- it's not even theoretically
>> possible to figure out what attributes __getattr__ might support.  

>I am asking whether there is a way for the object to cooperate.

Yes and no.  I asked later for input from people who use __getattr__; if
most or many of them follow some kind of pattern, then that pattern can be
added to the introspection API in some way.  However, until they tell us,
there is no way for us to predict what that part of the API will look like.

For example, I've used getattr once for a little toy project (I shouldn't
have; I didn't need it).  In short, it created any item you asked for,
with some calculated value.  We could make that a standard part of the
introspection API by possibly making a query function which would answer
whether the getattr did that type of action -- the query function could
possibly even give some info on how the default value was calculated.

>I wasn't being theoretical. I was asking whether there is a function,
>method or parameter with those semantics (and obviously a more sane
>implementation).

I apologise.  I wasn't intending to make fun; I was just playing around.
I knew you had a good question.

I don't think it has a good answer; I think that getattr is by definition
too complex to allow introspection.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 20:57:45 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:57:45 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>, <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5B7689.F37B991C@alcyone.com>

Moshe Zadka wrote:

> Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning
> integers
> into floats for years.

Sure, but that's something different.  The domain of math.cos (and so
on) is floats, not ints, so if you pass it an int you very sensibly get
coercion to an float, because that's what you must have really meant.

That's quite different from the current case, where we're talking about
an operation that will return different types depending on the inputs. 
I don't see any good reason to change the current behavior; / means
division over the types that are passed in.  If you pass in floats, you
want float division.  If you pass in ints, you want integer division.

> Err.....problem with the URL?.

Sorry, lazily pasted something into my .sig database.  It was meant to
be:

	http://www.alcyone.com/max/lang/esperanto/

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ When the solution is simple, God is answering.
\__/ Albert Einstein
    REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
 Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 14 16:34:09 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:34:09 -0400
Subject: not safe at all
In-Reply-To: <9ioonl0jgu@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEHNKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Alex Martelli]
> ...
> Actually, I wouldn't mind an 'assertion language' that's not even
> truly checkable (fast enough to be useful) at runtime -- one where
> I could use existential and universal quantifiers, because those are
> so often the things I *WANT* to express in a formal, unambiguous
> way.  Consider the predicate parameter P I can pass to many of
> the containers and algorithms in the standard C++ library.  What
> I often want to assert about the type of P is: for all X, not P(X,X);
> for all X and Y, P(X,Y) implies not P(Y,X); for all X, Y and Z,
> P(X,Y) and P(Y,Z) imply P(X,Z).  I.e., the crucial facts about P's
> type is that it's antireflexive, antisymmetric, transitive.  What I
> _can_ assert that's static-type-checkable is that P accepts two
> "foo" arguments and returns a boolean.  Pish and tush -- that's
> close to saying NOTHING about the known type constraints on P!!!

LOL -- "pish and tush" is exactly on-target.

ABC (Python's predecessor) had quantified boolean expressions, of the forms

1.  each x in s has expression_involving_x
2.  no x in s has expression_involving_x
3.  some x in s has expression_involving_x

The keywords there are "each", "no", "some", "in" and "has".  They had a
very nice twist:  if an expression of form #1 was false, it left x bound to
"the first" counterexample (i.e., "the first" x in s that did not satisfy
the predicate expression); similarly if #2 was false, it left x bound to the
first witness (the first x in s that did satisfy the predicate); and if #3
was true, to the first witness.  For example,

    if some i in xrange(2, int(sqrt(n))+1) has n % i == 0:
        print n, "isn't prime -- it's divisible by", i

or

    assert no x in xrange(2, int(sqrt(n))+1) has n % i == 0, "n not prime"

According to Guido, Lambert Meertens (ABC's chief designer) spent a
sabbatical year in New York City working with some of the SETL people, and I
speculate that's where this cool little ABC subsystem came from.  I would
like it in Python too, but it's a lot of new keywords to support one
conceptual gimmick.  It's still a pleasant pseudo-code notation to use in
comments, though.

uncommonly-fond-of-constructs-that-capture-common-loops-ly y'rs  - tim




From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 28 11:42:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 15:42:28 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org> <9juerr$f3b$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <cp3d7h12ni.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:

> Consider an existing
> 	class Foo:
> 	    def __div__(self, other):
> 		...
> 
> With your proposal, this will break as soon as it's called from
> a module importing the future division.

And that's exactly right, because we don't know if the type is trying
to "look like" a float or an int, so we don't know whether to map
__floordiv__ to __div__ or __truediv__.

This is only a problem when the user of the class uses true or floor
division, and I think it's fair that the system shouldn't attempt to
guess.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM  Thu Jul 12 11:59:55 2001
From: mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM (mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:59:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
In-Reply-To: <a9b1cafe.cafea9b1@destiny.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.4.05L.10107120837430.2218-100000@SPIELPLATZ.TO.GD-ES.COM>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 mcherm at destiny.com wrote:

> simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> > i don't want to see any more versions of python.
> > ITS FINISHED
> > AND I LOVE IT RIGHT NOW
> > if you want more then make a new language.
> 
> Regretably, Simon, you are out of luck. In order to convince
> Microsoft to support Python natively in their .NET initiative,
> Guido was forced to make several major concessions. One of those
> was to recind the "Open Source" liscense, which allowed anyone
> to freely use Python -- using any version they wanted for (pretty
> much) any purpose.
> 
> Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
> liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
> programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
> present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
> ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
> (to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the 
> infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.

This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  This implies that Python will
only be available to the Windows community.  There are environments where
Microsoft Certification servers will never exist.  If there will now be
a component added to Python to only allow its use when authorized by a
Microsoft Certification server, then one may need to change or develop a
new solution set.

I'm not particularly opposed to forking off a "Python for Microsoft
Windows Environments" or a "Python for Microsoft Certification Server
Environments" as long as there remains a Python for other communities of
interest.  If the latter is not going to occur, then I need to reconsider
whether or not Python is part of a viable solution.

Merton Campbell Crockett




From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Mon Jul 30 05:34:14 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:34:14 +0100
Subject: Threading in Python
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com> <9jv2h8$fo1$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B652A0D.D8354D7F@accessforall.nl>


Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <bn787.4044$Me1.99107 at e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>,
> Andy <andy at mindgate.net> wrote:
> >
> >There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes going on in the
> >Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps the direction should be towards
> >improving the internals first?
> >
> >One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent support for
> >multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads, but I believe it is
> >internally implemented and has been shown not to take advantage of an
> >SMP machine.
> 
> That's about half-true.  For more information, see
> http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/
> 

(Very nice python threading code.)

> (New & Improved slideshow coming Real Soon Now (a couple or three days))
> --

Meanwhile you can have the best of both worlds: www.jython.org
Some threading features:
- jython  interpreter threads are Java threads,
- java's 'synchronized' is used in the jython interpreter where necessary,
- in other words: fine grained locking is used, there is no 'interpreter lock'.

Regards,
Ype

-- 
email at xs4all.nl


From kseehof at neuralintegrator.com  Tue Jul 31 19:17:43 2001
From: kseehof at neuralintegrator.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:17:43 -0700
Subject: Large pages using Zope
References: <9k766t$dc0$04$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <012c01c11a1f$126371e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

From: "Achim Domma" <achim.domma at syynx.de>


> Hi,
>
> I just finished the first step : I succeded in introducing Python as our
> prefered
> scripting language, replacing JScript and VBScript in the future. Now we
> need
> a way to script webpages with it. I would like to use Zope, but I have to
> answer
> questions like 'How do we know that it's fast/stable enough ?'. Can
anybody
> help ?
> Are there any big references, which are using Zope ?
>
> thanks
> Achim

Hmmm, I was going to refer you to www.zope.org, where there used to be
lots of great references.  Hey Zope, where's your links to zope users?

- Ken





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 24 08:31:58 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:31:58 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <mailman.995929959.12037.python-list@python.org> <l7mplt48hlpa0vrrm1g27hlit9uq86v11m@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5D6ABE.93C05B66@ActiveState.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> They aren't dynamically typed, they are essentially untyped. That is a
> very different thing. And the reason Python users are Python users is
> quite often because they hate the choices made by Perl, Javascript...

JavaScript is as strongly typed as Python. I don't think anyone ever
abandoned Perl specifically for type system reasons. Overall cleanlness
is more likely.

> There's a marketing term called differentiation. The principle is
> simple. You can't compete effectively with another product unless
> yours is different somehow.

Python is different in a lot of ways. This one is trivial and most
people will see both and conclude that Python got it wrong. We wouldn't
be talking about this if Guido didn't hear, over and over again, from
many people that the other behaviour would be better. Of course that
isn't a concensus opinion but I think it is probably a silent majority
opinion.

> ... Not
> a stunningly serious mistake, perhaps, but that hardly counts as a
> justification - especially given the much more serious problems with
> compatability and credibility.

There are ways to handle compatibility (see my posts enocuraging people
to take the long view) and credibility is only a function of
compatibility.

If you put your support behind a plan to stage the change in as
gradually as possible, you might have more luck then telling Guido that
his language designer instincts are wrong.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From pjakobsen at blueairnetworks.com  Fri Jul 13 17:01:38 2001
From: pjakobsen at blueairnetworks.com (Peder Jakobsen)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 14:01:38 -0700
Subject: win32net.NetUserGetInfo error
Message-ID: <350a368d.0107131301.1bd4d921@posting.google.com>

Hi:

Hi!  I'm running Windows 2000, and I'm calling:

import win32api
import win32net

userName=win32api.GetUserName()
info=win32net.NetUserGetInfo(None, userName, 1)

I get the following error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
api_error: (2221, 'NetUserGetInfo', 'The user name could not be found.')

Any ideas

Many thanks,

Peder Jakobsen
Python Newbie in Ottawa


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 31 05:08:39 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:08:39 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <mailman.996562926.4343.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9mctcn.irh.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:56:44 +0200 (MET DST), Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> pisze:

>  >  is needed depending on whether
>  >      n%10 in (2,3,4) and (n//10)%10 != 1
>  >  or not :-)
> 
> At last, I have reason *not* to learn Polish. :o)

It's not that hard after you learn how to change verb forms depending
on the subject, adjective forms depending on the noun, noun and
adjective forms depending on the preposition, numeral forms depending
on the noun and vice versa, the direction of the relationship between
numeral and noun depending on the preposition and noun form, what
numerals to use with nouns which are already plural when they mean a
single object, and how to spell a change at the end of a word written
in a foreign orthography depending on how much is changed and whether
the final letter was originally mute.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 11 15:46:58 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:46:58 -0700
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9klpsc.ipj.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <20010711081201.172D211D.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <3B4CAD32.20551E64@home.net>

Mirko Liss wrote:

> Python is often very slow, though. Maybe you should try Perl.
> I used logfile analyzers in Perl and Python (radiusreport and
> radiuscontext) and the perl program was much faster.
> But it used up much memory. When working with large logfiles,
> memory quickly got exhausted. The other analyzer needed
> less memory. I think that's because Python often copies a
> reference and not the actual data. Not wanting to use the
> swap partition all the time, I switched to the python code.
> Maybe I should have tried and optimized the perl program.

Maybe you coudl optimize the Python program, and get the speed and the
low memory usage!

 
> This is just an example, not a benchmark. So don't draw
> general conclusions.

A benchmark is just an example anyway...

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 16:49:53 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 13:49:53 -0700
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com>

By the way is tuple pronounced tOOple (god i hope it is), or is it
pronounced
like the word "couple". Tuple like "couple" would be too high brow. As
a New Yawka
i would feel too high brow saying that. I like the blue collar tOOPle.
"yeah, joe
i gots my freaking tOOples all ****ed up last night, like, you know, i
couldn't
change 'em or nuttin', jyou you eva heard a such crap? Them tOOples is
stuck up, refusin'
to change and all, the nerve... **** 'em that's what i say, just use
them list things, they
always co-operate without havin' to give 'em an attitude adjustment.

I wouldn't want to mispronounce it at my next Python cocktail party
and be embarrased.

inquiring minds want to know


From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 10 15:01:11 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:01:11 GMT
Subject: Q: mpg123 with Python
References: <9ierhe$c3u$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9kmk5l.uvp.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:14:38 +0200, Holger Kipp <hoki26 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
> my professor told me, that i have to realize a "webbased skin for mpg123
> with flash and mySQL"
> so, i installed mpg123 and now i've got the problem to respond that player
> via Python.
> Flash and the mySQL-DB are not the problem ...
> 
> I MUST retrieve ID3-Tags, playtime, etc... from mpg123 and have to control
> the player
> like: skip track, seek, pause track, ... and so on.
> 
> Is there any EASY sourcecode/modules/API for Python?  (I'm using Python2.1
> on RedHat 7.1)
> Where can I show useful code-segments? Do you have an better idea? Shouldn't
> I use mpg123?
> Please note: easy code is required ;-))
> 
> yours sincerely
> Holger Kipp
> 
> 

Look at my sig - it uses mpg123, it skips, but doesn't pause track or seek.
I know there's cplay.py that also uses mpg123 as backend and has pausing/
seeking. I don't remember where I got it, so try searching for it..

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 12:07:51 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:07:51 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EEED7.C9C7117B@home.net>

Paul Boddie wrote:

> > PEP238 proposes that / be the inverse of *, so that '(a/b) * b = a
> > (more or less)' and that 'a // b == floor(a/b)'.  If we 'swap the proposed
> > meanings of // and /', then we would have a/b == floor(a/b), which would
> > break almost all existing floating point code.
> 
> I suspect that the contributor who made the above unattributed
> suggestion actually meant that the meanings should be swapped
> intelligently in the PEP in such a way that the explanatory text be
> altered accordingly.

I'm sure that was the intention, but we need to keep in mind that the
PEP proposed two types of division, NEITHER of which is the current one,
so in order to keep total backward computability, we would need to add
two operators, which would really get messy.

And, this has been repeated MANY times, but despite the working in the
PEP "Rationale" section, there are some very good and compelling reasons
to have the proposed division that are relevant to experienced
programmers, not just people learning. Guido recently said he will
re-write the Rationale section to include this. I have been convinced by
those reasons, though I think we need a better way to handle the
backward computability issue.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Thu Jul 12 05:55:50 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:55:50 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:44:29 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Just curious.  I'm with an ISP that allows running of scripts, and has
>MySQL database access.  They have a perl API installed, but nothing to
>support Python.  I was wondering if it was possible to just copy over
>the MySQLdb directory from the site-packages area of Python, and just
>"import" it into the scripts?

Yes, this works. MySQLdb needs a compiled extension module, however. You'll
need a compiled version for the platform your provider uses.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net  Wed Jul 11 03:33:11 2001
From: vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net (Vincent A. Primavera)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:33:11 +0000
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
Message-ID: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)

Hello,
        Looking for some guidance as to the set up of Apache's httpd.conf for 
some basic CGI scripting practice in Python...  Any suggestions?

        Thank you,
        Vincent A. Primavera



From hcsgss at texlife.com  Wed Jul 18 12:10:48 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:10:48 -0500
Subject: Embedded Python 2.1 and AIX
Message-ID: <1010718111048.ZM85826@anson.hcs.tl>

Hello,
I'm embedding Python 2.1 in an AIX 4.3 library and it's crashing every time the
embedded Python calls for an import of the 'string' or 'math' module. With a
little bit of gdb work I can find that it's crashing with SIGSEGV in the
'initstrop' function (or 'initmath' -- take your pick) when it calls
Py_InitModule4. Apparently, when the library is linked the reference to
Py_InitModule4 is not resolved.
I placed some print statements to print the pointer value of Py_InitModule4 and
its fine the four or five times it's called until the library init calls it.
I have done the import by running the embedded Python on a file with the import
statement on, running the import statement using PyRun_SimpleString, and using
PyImport_ImportModule.
I do call Py_Initialize, and I can execute code like prints and PyDict
functions before the import calls.
Some more info
-Python configured with
    ./configure --with-threads --with-gcc --prefix=/opt/local
(also, it is loading the library from the correct directory
(/opt/local/lib/python2.1/lib-dynload) according to gdb)
- The Makefile for the test program is below
I suspect there is some linker flag omitted or something of that nature
Thanks
Galen Swint


**Makefile**
CC=gcc
PYTHONLIB=/opt/local/lib/python2.1/config
PYTHONINC=/opt/local/include/python2.1

all: libtest.o test.o test
	echo Making all.

libtest.o: libtest.c
	gcc -c -g -DAIX -I$(PYTHONINC) libtest.c

test.o:
	gcc -c -g -DAIX test.c


test: test.o libtest.o
	rm -f test
	$(CC) -o test test.o libtest.o -Wl,-brtl -L$(PYTHONLIB) -lpython2.1
-lpthread -lm



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 30 01:29:01 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:29:01 +1200
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <3B64F09D.1D59837F@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Kevin Lacker wrote:
> 
> answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]

Looks quite nice. But what should

  answer = [process(x,y) for x in a for y in b while f(x,y)]

do? Should the break terminate the whole comprehension,
or just the enclosing for-clause?

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Thu Jul  5 09:42:56 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 16:42:56 +0300
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98>
Message-ID: <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Mitchell Morris <mitchell.morris at cingular.com> writes:

> All in all, it's been a pretty big win for Java. Conventional wisdom and 
> some non-peer-reviewed studies suggest that Java per se provides very little 
> leverage over C++, that the average developer doesn't build Java solutions 
> any faster or more bug-free than they build C++ ones, and that selecting 

Supposing that garbage collection and abundant reference semantics
increase productivity by n percent (as all pythonians know), this
would mean that C++ has some areas that improve productivity (and
reduce bugs) as much over java. What are they? STL alone doesn't
amount to that much, I would believe...

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 16:20:47 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:20:47 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9l54oq.hfm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6jr4.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> dijo:
> Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:36:22 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:
> 
> > def valid_ip(ip):
> >     m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
> >     if m:
> >         elements = map(int, m.groups())
> >         return max(elements) < 256
> >     return 0
> 
> Is 0127.0.0.00001 a valid IP?
> 
> If yes, then it should be accepted. If no, what about 127.0.0.001?

with
: def valid_ip(ip):
:     m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})(?!\n)$', ip)
:     return (m and max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256) or 0
valid_ip('127.0.0.001') returns 1
valid_ip('0127.0.0.001') returns 0
valid_ip('127.0.0.00001') returns 0

with Mozilla/4.73 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.15-4mdk i686):
    0127.0.0.001 fails.
    127.0.0.001 succeeds.
    127.0.0.00001 succeeds.

This is, of course, just what the browser accepts. =)

-- 
C combines all the power of assembly language with all
the ease of use of assembly language.
    -- trad


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 11 04:45:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:45:19 -0700
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994770857.26075.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107101751.5348c0a9@posting.google.com> <1103_994830833@jparlar>
Message-ID: <3B4C121F.211B1CCD@ActiveState.com>

If you don't know the encoding, a bunch of Unicode on a disk is just a
bunch of bits. As long as those bits look a lot like ASCII you are safe,
but if any of them look like something else you run into trouble. IE
probably either a) remembers the encoding of the files or b) uses a
single, internal encoding for the cache. You need to know which it is
before you can work with the information reliably. Consider the
knowledge of the encoding as being almost as important as knowing
whether the files are HTML or PDF.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Tue Jul 31 11:20:54 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:20:54 +0100
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
Message-ID: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>

Is there a class that simplifies high-level argument decoding under the control of a template?

Such a class would take a string as a template and the arg list and return another list populated
with keys, values and switches taken from the args.

I've spent the last hour going through the global module list. If it's there, its got a daft name!
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From sill at optonline.net  Thu Jul 12 15:40:41 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:40:41 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <slrn9kpvbh.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9krv7p.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:29:21 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
> 
> To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
> that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
> lines of C++.
> 
> 

I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
in perl :-/.

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From bbollenbach at homenospam.com  Thu Jul  5 17:31:07 2001
From: bbollenbach at homenospam.com (Brad Bollenbach)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 21:31:07 GMT
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <mailman.994350130.18544.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <v0517.75$hn5.63366@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>

Consider the underlying problem here before going any further.

Generally speaking "data" isn't stored formatted. "Information" is data that
has /been/ formatted. In other words, your data model (whether flat file, or
database), should store phone numbers as:

1235554444

not

(123) 555 - 4444

So by the sounds of it, if you have to do some trickery just to extract
_only digits_ out of  a stored phone number, you might want to fix your data
model before you fix your code.

"Lindstrom Greg - glinds" <Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994350130.18544.python-list at python.org...
> I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away
everything
> except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do this.
> Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
>
> stripped_phone=''
> for c in phone_number:
> if c in digits:
> stripped_phone += c
>
> but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure
there
> is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).
>
> Greg Lindstrom
> Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911
> email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com
>
> "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
>
>                                                             Albert
Einstein
>
>
>




From johnroth at ameritech.net  Thu Jul 12 11:54:21 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:54:21 -0700
Subject: Assignement Overloading
References: <3b48bd83$0$7113$4d4efb8e@news.be.uu.net>
Message-ID: <tkri1vfc29hiad@news.supernews.com>

"Pierre Denis" <Pierre-et-Liliane.DENIS at village.uunet.be> wrote in message
news:3b48bd83$0$7113$4d4efb8e at news.be.uu.net...
> I am trying to emulate some kind of type checking in Python
> (sorry for the heresy). Because of the dynamic typing, my unpretentious
> goal is to intercept the assignment statement in order to perform
> a consistency check between the variable and the object to assign.
> Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in Python to do this; there
> is no magic function like __assign__(name,value). The reason
> usually invoked about this lack is the fact that Python's assignment
> is actually just a name binding, which is very different, for
> instance, from C++ assignment.

Strong type checking is not a heresy. The subject comes up quite
frequently, and the general opinion seems to be that it would be a
good idea - as an option. The problem is that nobody has ever
proposed an acceptable way of accomplishing it.

The difficulty you're running into is that you've fixed on the idea of
solving one problem (lack of strong type checking) by using another
feature (overriding assignments) that turns out not to be there, either.

The only method of doing it is to use the __setattr__ function to
intercept all names in the objects you want to protect, and provide
a different method of accessing them.

> Now I have two questions :
>
> 1. Why is there no general way to overload the assignment in
> Python ? I do not agree with the 'name binding' argument because, to my
> humble opinion, __setattr__ allows to overload some assignments,
> while performing a name binding (in an object's namespace). So I
> think the problem is well stated and the request makes sense.

Assignment binds a name to an object. In C++ terms, all names are
declared as void *. An overloaded assignment would still have to return
an object. If I have an object, "spam", and I try to do this assignment:

breakfast = spam

what would you expect the spam object's __assign__ method to do with
an overload? And how would it do it? Or do you expect the name
"breakfast" to have an __assign__ method?

Also, you cannot use __setattr__ to influence the name binding of
local variables in a function or method.

If you can come up with a proposal, I'm sure it will be looked at. See
the PEP process for details. However, I know I would object if the
proposal stated "type checking" as a reason to do assignment overriding -
IMHO, type checking should be dealt with in a different manner.

John Roth

>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Pierre Denis
>




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 16:08:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:08:08 -0400
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <g2327.45910$he.3173871@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Chyr-Pyng Su" <cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote in message
news:3B48076E.B16ACF5B at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw...
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
> >
> > Sorry, should have read the subject line. Here's a snippet of code that
> > write to a PMW scrolled text window, you should be able to do the same
in a
> > Tkinter text window.
> >
> >         t = Pmw.ScrolledText(self.msgWindow)
> >         grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
> >         strmes =
> > self.index.Message(self.MsgSet[int(self.msgList.curselection()[0])][0])
> >         message = mimecntl.MIME_document(strmes)
> >         for hdr in ("from", "date", "subject", "to", "cc"):
> >             try:
> >                 hdrline = message[hdr]
> >                 t.insert(END, "%s:     %s\n" %
> > (string.capitalize(hdr),hdrline))
> >             except KeyError:
> >                 pass
> >
> > It's the insert() method you are looking for, I suspect.
> >
> > regards
> >  Steve
>
> Thanks in advance to help me writing the GUI program.. Actually I intended
to
> contruct a
> buttom so that when I press it, it will trigger a wrapped function
originally
> written in C.
> And capture those dumped message, show them in ScrolledText() widget..
>
> Sorry, I can't figure out what the self.index is... besides, where should
I
> place these codes..
> in the callback function or in top level... :O
>
OK, I was running a little too fast. The "self" in the code I showed you
referred to the object whose class implementation I had extracted the code
from, so you all you need to know is that is was the parent of the
Pmw.ScrolledText object in which I was rendering text.

Suppose that the error message returned by the wrapped C function has been
stored in st. To create a Text widget in a separate top-level window and
display the message in it, you would do (something like: warning, untested):

        msgWindow = Toplevel(height=350, width=500)
        msgWindow.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
        msgWindow.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
        t = Text(msgWindow)
        grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
        t.insert(END, st)

I have here assumed that like most Tkinter programmers you have used "from
Tkinter import *", and that you are using (or are prepared to use) the grid
geometry management.

Does this make it any clearer?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From rmalla1 at lsu.edu  Fri Jul 27 02:22:43 2001
From: rmalla1 at lsu.edu (Ratnakar Malla)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 06:22:43 GMT
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu> <3B6103B4.AF7AE15B@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B610A3C.5AF439E4@lsu.edu>

Hi,
Thanx for the lightning reply.
Well , sorry for not speciying my platform. It is a pentium , running
Windows 2000.
what I really wanted was some sort of "tail " kind of functionality.
Unfortunately, there is no "tail" command in Windows. I was just wondering,
if there is any better way than reading the entire file into memory.
Anyways thanx for your reply. I am sticking with readlines()
Cheers,
Ratnakar

Peter Hansen wrote:

> Ratnakar Malla wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> > I need to read from a very long file. But the only information I am
> > interested is
> > 2 lines at the bottom of the file.
>
> > 1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
> > time?
>
> Do you really want to read in "reverse"?  To me that implies getting
> each byte in reverse order, which would require reversing the lines
> again after finding the "first" two... Or do you just want to read
> line-by-line, in reverse?
>
> > 2) If so how??
>
> How about this?
>
>    lastTwoLinesAsList = open('somefile').readlines()[-2:]
>
> > 3) I tried the normal way, but looks like, it is taking lot of time.
>
> What is "normal"?  Maybe your code is not the most efficient
> implementation...
>
> You could also use "seek" to find the end of the file, then
> go backwards a few dozen bytes at a time, grabbing blobs of
> data until you found the third-last newline (or the second last,
> if the file did not end with a newline), then return everything
> after that point.  This would be awkward, largely unreadable,
> bug-prone, and might take a while to develop.
>
> Or how about calling out to "tail"?
>
>    import os
>    lastTwoLinesAsString = os.popen('tail -2 somefile').read()
>
> You might also want to post a sample of your code, and mention
> which platform you are on, so feedback might be a little more
> relevant to your situation...
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
> peter at engcorp.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: rmalla1.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 294 bytes
Desc: Card for Ratnakar Malla
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010727/af3c506a/attachment.vcf>

From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 16:37:13 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:37:13 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995572293.19088.python-list@python.org> <slrn9let6c.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B585C00.93162A1@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ljpvp.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:27:44 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
>phil hunt wrote:
>[ Elided. ]
>
>> message = Message()
>> 
>> but this is bad practise anyway, IMO.
>
>Why is that bad practice?

Having two identifiers whose names differ only in case.

> What problems do you think this causes?

I don't know, I never use this practise :-)

Confusion between the 2, I suppose.

>I never used that convention much until after I had been exposed to ASN.1,
>where it is a common convention to have identifiers differ from type names
>only by a change of case in the first letter. In ASN.1 type names start with
>upper case and instance names start with lower case. Obviously the ITU
>didn't see any problems with that convention.

I don't know whether ASN.1 is any good; but i do know (having just looked)
the organisation behind it aren't competent to design websites.


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From shane.anglin at mtni.net  Sat Jul 14 13:18:31 2001
From: shane.anglin at mtni.net (Shane Anglin)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:18:31 -0400
Subject: (no subject)
Message-ID: <200107141318.AA116326580@mtni.net>

Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app: 
Main loop is: 
1 - check socket for any incoming data 
1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into a list 
2 - print out list 
3 - go to 1 and do it all over again 

Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that will sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data just fine, my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get any new data in... for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket, when a connection happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print list, 3 -go to 1 and do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has the rest of my code 'hostage' until a client connection is made and closed. 

Thanks a bunch! 
Shane Anglin 
shaneanglin at bigfoot.com 



From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 01:04:01 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 22:04:01 -0700
Subject: PyZipFile
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10@posting.google.com>

Why wont the following code work? Thanx.

import zipfile
p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","w",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
p.writepy("c:\\pe")
p.close()
p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","r",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
p.close()

----------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/pe/nest.py", line 6, in ?
    eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
TypeError: expected string without null bytes


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul 17 16:50:55 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 23:50:55 +0300
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ku7kx7gtzk.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b at posting.google.com>,
xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.) writes:

| #!/usr/bin/env python
| i = 2.5;
| while i < 1e7:
|         j = 2.5 * 2.5
|         i += 1
| print i, j

| The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
| 	python script:	37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
| 	perl script:	15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
| 	java compiled:	1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
| 	C compiled:	0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%

if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
since global variable access is slower than local variable access.

| Can anybody explain why Python is always about 1 time
| slower than Perl?

it is not - sometimes it is slower and sometimes faster.

  -- erno


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:26:26 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:26:26 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <S4_77.49614$Cy.6352181@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpu1zz5qmf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:

> >>> 1e0 << 2e0
> 4 # exact
>   or
> 4e0 # inexact
> 
> Either answer sucks: the first turns two inexact operands into an exact
> result, while the second represents the results of bit twiddling, a discrete
> operation if ever there was one, as an inexact, floating point number. The
> best choice is to insist on exact numbers for integer operations.

Agreed.

> Note that I don't know that this is the meaning for isintegral meant by PEP
> 228, but it is the one that makes sense to me.

I don't know why PEP 228 doesn't reference Scheme.  It is clearly
inspired by Scheme.  See

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r5rs-html/r5rs_8.html#SEC50

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 03:03:28 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 03:03:28 -0400
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
In-Reply-To: <vmpsltscvqqp8helkrd8aovnn8f497lt89@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEPMLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Kirby Urner]
> Wondered if others have this problem:  when I try any of the popens
> in the os module, and leave NAV 2001 enabled, I get various freeze,
> VxD or other errors necessitating hard boot.
>
> Disabling NAV 2001 ends the problem i.e. popen variants work as
> advertized (to the extent of my testing anyway).  Running Python 2.1.1.

I reported this to Symantec against an earlier version of NAV, and they gave
me a runaround stretching over a couple of months.  In the end they
suggested I purchase NAV 2001 to see whether it still happened(!).  I didn't
bother, and I'm appalled to hear that it's not fixed.

This has nothing to do with Python, BTW:  *any* program calling the
Microsoft popen() function displays the same symptoms.  I gave them a very
small (5-line) C program to illustrate that, but try as I might I couldn't
get beyond the first two layers of (polite but clueless) tech support to
someone who even knew what "a C program" was.

BTW, are you running Win98?  IIRC, only Win98 systems suffered this
problem -- but not *all* Win98 systems (for example, not mine; so why did I
spend months on this?  because of Guido's Win98 box <wink>).

the-virus-stops-here-ly y'rs  - tim




From claird at NeoSoft.com  Mon Jul 30 10:47:17 2001
From: claird at NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 09:47:17 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul 30)
Message-ID: <165CDE42C9C74F48.E1CDA2AAFABCA74B.ABA37F87F66F88EE@lp.airnews.net>

Quotes of the week:
    Paul Prescod:  Perl users seem remarkably accepting of
    change considering the installed base of the language.
    Paul Prescod:  Moore's law is slowly making type
    declarations irrelevant.
    Stephen: The web just doesn't lend itself to building
    look-ahead auto-complete fields for names, emails etc.


    Uwe Zessin releases Python 2.1.1 for OpenVMS
	http://www.decus.de/~zessin/python2/

    Harry George offers example use of setup.py
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=18626bc240f7e9e3

    June Kim and Dave Brueck present the argument in favor
    of dynamic typing
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2d17178851b0f98e

    Thomas Weholt's relatively innocent question about distributed
    computing technologies leads to deep (if largely Python-free)
    and even important analyses by Tim Daneliuk, Graham Dumpleton,
    Galen Swint, and others.  Also in the same thread, Ng Pheng
    Siong provides nice performance boosts for SOAP.
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=559ffaccf0ac9907

    You can submit a paper for the tenth Python Conference
	http://www.python10.org/p10-callpapers.html

    Duncan Grisby provides a fine quick-start tutorial to CORBA
    use, as well as directions to a public fortune-cookie service
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2244bf713d379f2e

    Guido launches a lively and important newsgroup thread on the
    reality of type-class unification (and discloses his own
    temporal intuition is accurate only to a decimal order-and-a-half
    of magnitude)
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a8dc15aab8832a6b

    Front Range Pythoneers energetically dispute the validation
    theology involved in PyUnit (look for "Doctest" as a subject)
	http://community.tummy.com/pipermail/frpythoneers/2001-July/thread.html

    David Mertz teaches that Pippy is a port of Python to PalmOS
	http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pippy?open&l=252,t=grl,p=Pyth4PalmOS

    Now it's called, "Zope Corporation"
	http://www.zope.com/News/PressReleases/DC2ZC


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning,
ask <claird at neosoft.com> to subscribe.  Mention "Python-URL!".


-- The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From just at letterror.com  Sun Jul 29 03:43:27 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 09:43:27 +0200
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <9jvsio$j4r$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <3B639A2D.83B00CD5@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B63BE9C.ED311F4F@letterror.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> Tom Bryan wrote:
> >
> > Alex wrote:
> >
> > > Goodness, without import, python's close to useless.
> >
> > Well, of course.  But where to import?  What's the most common idiom?
> 
> At the top, unless you have a specific need to import in a
> function.
> 
> Possible reasons to import in a function:
> 
>  1. Readability: if the import is needed in only one
>     function and that's very unlikely ever to change,
>     it might be clearer and cleaner to put it there only.
> 
>  2. Startup time: if you don't have the import outside
>     of the function definitions, it will not execute
>     when your module is first imported by another, but
>     only when one of the functions is called.  This
>     delays the overhead of the import (or avoids it
>     if the functions might never be called).
> 
>  3. There is always one more reason than the ones
>     we've thought of until now.

I know one more:

  4. Overhead: if the module imports a lot of modules,
     and there's a good chance only a few will actually
     be used. This is similar to the "Startup time"
     reason, but goes a little further. If a script
     using your module only uses a small subset of the
     functionality it can save quite some time, especially
     if the imports that can be avoided also import a lot
     of modules.

Just


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Thu Jul 12 11:21:21 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:21:21 -0700
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <mailman.994529832.2013.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <tkrg43ilksi315@news.supernews.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> wrote in message
news:7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4 at posting.google.com...
> Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message
news:<mailman.994529832.2013.python-list at python.org>...
> > > However, I think that some details of the numerics also need to
> > > be clarified before you boldly go.  Specifically,
> > >
> > >  - What about long division?  A float cannot capture all results.
> > >    Should it raise a Value/Range error?
> > >    Should the programmer be forced to use divmod?
> > >    Should it return a rational?
> > >    I don't really like the last two choices and the first two choices
> > >    obviate much of the usefulness of longs.
> >
> > We'll introduce a new operator or function (e.g. div(x, y)) for
> > integer division, which will work for ints and longs.  When / is used
> > and the result can't be expressed as a C double, we can choose between
> > yielding Infinity or raising OverflowError; I think probably the
> > latter although with two float arguments this currently returns Inf on
> > most platforms.
>
> I think this design might hold as an interim approach, but I don't
> find it satisfactory to have this forced coercion to double make
> division by longs sometimes fail ... it's just not in the spirit of
> dynamic typing ... if coercion is forced, it should be to make things
> "work better", not fail.
>
> Other thoughts
>
>    - Accelerating the consideration of Rationals.

It's inconsistant to have a rational type, and have integer division return
a float! Either integer division should return a rational, or we should take
PEPs 239 and 240 out and bury them. (In fact, if integer division returns
a rational, then there is no need for PEP 240 - 1/2 is perfectly good as
a rational literal!

If we make integer division return a float now, then we're simply creating
another problem when we implment rationals sometime down the path.

John Roth




From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 09:48:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 09:48:04 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
	 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
	 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
	 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
	 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org> <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> The language is evolving as all languages do because of the needs of its
> users. Five years ago the leadership said integer division was good,
> today it's bad; the audience changed is all.

Actually, maybe it's just which audience members are vocal which 
has changed recently.

I happen to use Python frequently (almost exclusively) in situations
where it is very valuable to have integer division work the way 
it does now.  Floats are only infrequently used.

If I were constantly forced to jump through hoops to make sure 
my integers divided like integers (as in, like the CPU designers 
intended... not like CS people believe it should work), I would have 
a lot more work than I do now.

But until now my voice was silent on the matter.  Perhaps the
reason you think the needs of the users has changed is because
Python suits the needs of some users so well that they don't
feel the need to constantly whine about the fact.  Maybe only
those who have a problem with it are going to make their voice
heard.  (As someone said a few messages back: Well, duh! :-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From p.vrijlandt at aig.azn.nl  Wed Jul 25 09:05:39 2001
From: p.vrijlandt at aig.azn.nl (p.vrijlandt at aig.azn.nl)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:05:39 +0200
Subject: size of a file
Message-ID: <"vines.+I,8+aLgLvA"@azninfo22.azn.nl>

>  "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > How can I find out the length of a file. I have a descriptor fd of the file
> > (I am using the os module).

import os
import stat

# file denotes a file-object
def fsize(file):
    return os.stat(file.name)[stat.ST_SIZE]



--
Patrick Vrijlandt



From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Wed Jul 25 16:37:19 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 20:37:19 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lubft.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT in <cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> spake:
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

  This baffles me; the division issue is IMO far more terrifying a
change, while case-insensitive is a mere quirk.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Thu Jul 19 08:56:06 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:56:06 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j66an$3bm02@owl.le.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldm72.aq4.nde@cslin-gps.comp>

On 19 Jul 2001 09:38:47 +0100, Clive Page <cgp at nospam.le.ac.uk> wrote:

> In article <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
> Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> >But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> >Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> >case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> >was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> >routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> >implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.
> 
> As this thread has shown, nearly everyone has an opinion on this.  For what
> it's worth, I've been using Unix for nearly 20 years and I still get caught
> regularly by its case sensitivity, and I don't like it at all.  Of course
> my opinion is worth almost nothing, but there are some facts worth noting:
> 
> I'm pretty sure I've seen a study in one of the reputable computer science
> journals reporting a trial of two sets of users with two invented computer
> languages, identical except that one was case-blind and the other was case
> sensitive.  It showed that people made significantly more mistakes with a
> case-sensitive language.  Unfortunately I didn't keep the reference -
> maybe someone else remembers it too?   To me the results of that study
> were pretty conclusive.   

Interesting.  Was the study done with programming novices, or with
experienced programmers?  If the latter, did they have experience of
case-sensitive or case-insensitive languages?  I wouldn't want to
draw firm conclusions without knowing more...

I can appreciate some of the arguments made in favour of a case-
insensitive Python, but there are times when we give meaning to case
in written English: "python" is the snake, but "Python" is the
programming language; "latex" is a material, "LaTeX" is a markup
language for document typesetting; "mud" is something you get on your
shoes, but a "MUD" is something entirely different.  I would much
prefer it if Python continued to allow the distinctions we make in
written language to be preserved when coding.

Also, I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that "foo" and
"FOO" are perceived the same way when humans parse source code
visually.  In pattern recognition terms, they are surely different
entities.  It is only when natural language processing kicks in
that our brains can make the decision to treat the two the same.
So it may be that we can grok code quicker in a case-sensitive
language.

My other worry over case insensitivity is that it creates
opportunities for poor style by allowing the inconsistent use
of case.  This seems a strange path to follow for a language
that made the inspired decision to avoid using block delimiters,
thereby denying users the "freedoms" of inconsistent or
non-existent indentation.


Nick


From paul at svensson.org  Thu Jul 26 22:00:54 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:00:54 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jqi0m$5oe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:
>
>> I would like to suggest that we add a "while condition" clause
>> to list comprehensions, similar to the "if condition" clause,
>> but terminating the list comprehension on the first false condition.
>> The above example could then be written as
>> 
>> [x for x in fib() while x < 50]
>
>Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?

No need to cover cases that are clearer expressed
without involving a list comprehensions at all.

fib()[:N], I would assume works.


>And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?

No fuzzier than "while x < 50: ..." -- of course it excludes.

>How about a library of functions for iterator algebra?  E.g.
>
>  def first(n, sq):
>      it = iter(sq)
>      for i in range(n): yield it.next()
>
>  def lessthan(n, sq):
>      for x in sq:
>          if x >= n: break
>          yield x

Now, there's something I would call "not general enough".

	/Paul


From python_binto at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 20 08:16:39 2001
From: python_binto at yahoo.com (binto bient)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 05:16:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Python for RADIUS..???
Message-ID: <20010720121639.25111.qmail@web14806.mail.yahoo.com>

could Python implemented in RADIUS (Remote
Authentication Dial-In User Service )for ISP,
everything that related with RADIUS.

thnx

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 11 17:38:41 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:38:41 GMT
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
References: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com) <mailman.994853658.9863.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4cc04f.1657030403@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:20:50 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:
>
>Check the docs/FAQ at apache.org for CGI guidance.
>
>Of course, if you have a more specific question feel free to ask.

Can a python script be run efficiently and su-exec'd? I.e, Apache can run
CGI as a particular account owner (e.g.,for access to private directories
etc. that 'nobody' shouldn't see). Naturally it would work if you got
a whole instance of the interpreter to yourself, but does modPython take
care of su-exec properly? (I guess I should ask at modpython, but I'm here ;-)

Also, I'm wondering how widespread Python and/or mod_python is on ISP servers.
I have a C++ CGI program with some scriptable aspects, and I ++like Python,
so I am considering making the C++ an extension and having the main cgi be
pythonic glue and some scriptable stuff (scriptable script ;-).

Alternatively, how does embedding python in a C++ CGI program work out?

My main concerns are speed, su-exec, and availability.
TIA for opinions & advice.



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 00:14:06 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:14:06 -0400
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010724175515.4646A-100000@latt.if.usp.br>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEPALAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Francisco]
>  I just compiled python2.2a and I'm getting this strange response to the
> 'type' command:
>
> Python 2.2a1 (#2, Jul 24 2001, 12:24:09)
> [GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> type('')
> <type 'str'>
>
>  while I expected to get <type 'string'>.
>
>  Am I missing something or I just messed up with the compilation??

No, that's the way it works (today).  Under the type/class unification
scheme, type names also work as constructors.  Since str() was always the
way to build a string in Python, that's a natural name for its type.  This
name is also different:

>>> type(1L)  # used to be "long int"
<type 'long'>
>>>

Note this cute consequence:

>>> x = 1L
>>> type(x)(3)
3L
>>>

That is, type() in 2.2a1 truly returns a constructor, and type(1L)(y) is the
same as long(y).  Likewise for

>>> type("abc")(42)
'42'
>>> type("abc") is str
1
>>> type(1L) is long
1
>>>

I'm not sure the type names will stay this way, but determining that is part
of what an alpha release is for.  On a scale of 1 to 12, were you merely
surprised by the change or truly upset <wink>?




From piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl  Tue Jul 24 08:38:46 2001
From: piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl (Piotr Legiecki)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:38:46 +0200
Subject: Debuger for python 2.x
Message-ID: <3B5D6C56.A951BDAE@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>

Hi

I'm new to python and I'm writing my first python program. I'd like to
use some nice debugger (like ddd, xgdb etc) but I can't find any for
python 2.x. DDD has pydb but only for python 1.5.2. IDLE is not very
helpful curently. Aby other choices?

I'm using debian/sid. What about pdb? I'v read that this is the python's
standard debugger, but on my system there is no such a program.

-- 
Regards
Piotr Legiecki


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 13 03:33:20 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:33:20 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no>
Message-ID: <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

[posted and mailed]
"Trond Gaarder" <trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no> wrote in message news:9ilk1r$quo$1 at maud.ifi.uio.no...
> A small problem concerning py2exe that I hope you can help me with:
>
> I have a small OpenGL program that reads its scene graph from a XML file. I
> use xml.dom.minidom to accomplish this, and everything works fine. But when
> I try to compile the script into an .EXE with py2exe I get the following
> warnings:
>
> warning: py2exe:
> ***************************************************************
> warning: py2exe: * The following modules were not found:
> warning: py2exe: *   xml.dom.HierarchyRequestErr
> warning: py2exe: *   riscosenviron
> warning: py2exe: *   _xmlplus
> warning: py2exe: *   ic
> warning: py2exe: *   ce
> warning: py2exe: *   riscos
> warning: py2exe: *   SOCKS
> warning: py2exe: *   rourl2path
> warning: py2exe: *   riscospath
> warning: py2exe:
> ***************************************************************
>
> And when I try to run the program:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<string>", line 381, in ?
>   File "<string>", line 299, in readScenegraph
>   File "SceneGraph.pyc", line 187, in fromXML
>   File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 910, in parse
>   File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 901, in _doparse
>   File "xml\dom\pulldom.pyc", line 289, in parse
>   File "xml\sax\__init__.pyc", line 88, in make_parser
> xml.sax._exceptions.SAXReaderNotAvailable: No parsers found
>
>
> It looks like the XML module is using som kind of dynamic loader (like Pmw
> does), and these modules naturally escape py2exe.

This is indeed the case:

C:\sf\py2exe\tests>c:\python20\python.exe
Python 2.0 (#8, Apr 25 2001, 22:09:02) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import xml
>>> xml
<module '_xmlplus' from 'c:\python20\_xmlplus\__init__.pyc'>
>>>

As you can see, 'import xml' actually loads _xmlplus and puts this
into sys.modules under the name 'xml'.
This can also be done by the packed executable, however, the _xmlplus
package must be available for this to work, and the bundling process
does not find it.

>  Do any of you have any
> tips on how to work around this problem? Something similar to bundlepmw.py
> perhaps?

Use the -p command line flag 'python setup.py py2exe -p _xmlplus'
to include the whole _xmlplus package into the exe.

HTH,

Thomas




From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 18 20:24:17 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:24:17 GMT
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <RMp57.1754$EP6.588516@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995464538.29395.python-list at python.org...
...
> I'm writing an introduction to the type/class unification:
>
>   http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

This intro also describes some neat 'by-product' features that I have
missed seeing mentioned on the newsgroup:

* Static methods (and class methods also): If this does not stop people
from asking 'how do I write static class methods', at least now we will be
able to say follow 'def f...' with 'f  = staticmethod(f)' instead of 'you
cannot' and 'here is a kludgy workaround'.

* A getset typeclass that allows us to have our cake (the nice
instance.attr notation) and eat it too (by having such accesses optionally
rerouted to attribute-specific get and set methods instead of all-attribute
__get/setattr__).  This will end discussions about which now-unnecessary
compromise to make.

These are nice improvements in the Python class model.  There is also an
improved base-class lookup rule at least for type-based classes.

Terry J. Reedy





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 11:50:18 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:50:18 +0200
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com> <slrn9ksnh3.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <3B4E69D5.5CB278F2@engcorp.com> <H6D37.14720$B7.2683686@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <9in5bs01mio@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:H6D37.14720$B7.2683686 at ruti.visi.com...
    ...
> >> I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
> >> that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.
    ...
> Probably not.  To add to my "definition", I guess I would call
> it a script if it was done using the same set of "primitives"
> that the user would have done had it been done interactively.
> Primitives like the "ls" "find" "rm" executables found on Unix
> systems.

So you wouldn't "call a script" a script scripted in VBScript
on the Windows Scripting Host, or a script scripted in JScript or
Javascript, residing typically between <SCRIPT> and </SCRIPT>
tags in an HTML page?  Because, while they may well be automating
a series of operations that would be done interactively by a
user, they don't generally do so "using the same set of
primitives" the interactive user would interactively use
(mostly mouseclics on menuitems, buttons &c, with perhaps a
few keystrokes thrown in for good measure)?

And yet the names of the languages, of the supporting tools,
of the relevant tags, &c, clearly indicate that these things
ARE perceived as scripts very widely today.  And I concur
with the general perception which I think these naming choices
indicate.  Interactively-used "primitives" today are mostly
mouseclics on controls & menuitems, but that doesn't make
scripts impossible or inappropriate: on the contrary, scripts
are more and more pervasive -- they just use different and
more appropriate primitives, organized in "object-models" such
as HTML's Document Object Model (DOM), the object-models that
WSH exposes for the Windows Shell, filesystem, &c, and so on.


Alex





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 30 08:45:18 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:45:18 +0200
Subject: Automate telnet?
References: <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012@typhoon.southeast.rr.com>
Message-ID: <j4u1zur3fl.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Don Tuttle" <tuttledon at hotmail.com> writes:

> I have a secure Windows telnet client I'd like to automate with a
> script.  So far my efforts with the popen family haven't worked.  Is
> this a possible task?

Doing popen in Windows is quite involved. Instead, I recommend to try
telnetlib directly.

Regards,
Martin



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Wed Jul 18 15:10:59 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:10:59 -0600
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D557@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Philipp Weinfurter [mailto:philipprw at gmx.at]
> 
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:20:49 -0400, Steve Holden 
> <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> > When your Python is compiled into bytecode, the assignment 
> to a is detected
> > during compilation of your function func2(). The name a is 
> therefore assumed
> > to refer to a local variable, hence the ruin-time exception 
> you observe.
> 
> yes, this is what i thought. but is it correct?
> i don't mean to be pedantic, but the rules are that if a variable
> is not found in local scope, then the compiler looks up the global
> scope and python doesn't follow this rule here.
> it doesn't really hurt, since in 99% of all cases the programmer
> probably _thinks_ he is referring to a local variable, but still...

The rules are a little more complicated:

 1. if a variable is assigned to anywhere in a function,
    then all mentions of the variable in the current function
    are references to this local.
 2. during lookup, if a name can't be found in the local scope, 
    the global scope will be used.

therefore it's allready decided before the lookup phase whether the
variable is a local or a global. Is it correct? Well, it removes a
number of possible errors, so yes. <wink>

-- bjorn



From dirck at pacbell.net  Fri Jul 20 01:00:05 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 22:00:05 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> <mailman.995575532.23146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107192100.5be576a9@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995575532.23146.python-list at python.org>...
> ...  The programming
> environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
> identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

When using this approach, please be a little extra careful:

VBA has this feature, and a bug where it remembers some random/first input of a 
symbol as the 'definition' for things that are actually defined elsewhere.

I got stuck with DAte everywhere in one project, because I mis-typed it
once, and since Date is a system function, I couldn't ever get it back,
it always insists on using DAte no matter what I type.

Just some MS-SIlliness to be wary of.

d

(Not that I expect these kinds of bugs in Python, but you never know.)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 23:20:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:20:20 -0400
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com> <3B529CB7.8030905@T-Online.de> <3B54FAA2.D7E04ECB@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <vd757.28967$d4.892501@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B54FAA2.D7E04ECB at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Burkhard Kroesen wrote:
> >
> > Maybe you feel more comfortable with
> > multtab = [x*y for x in range(13) for y in range(13)]
>
> But that doesn't produce what he wanted, which
> was for multtab[x][y] to be equal to x*y.
>
> But if there were such a thing as dictionary
> comprehensions, he could use
>
>   multtab = {(x,y):x*y for x in range(13)
>                          for y in range(13)}
>
> :-)

>>> multtab = {}
>>> [multtab.update({(x, y): x*y}) for x in range(13) for y in range(13)]
[None, None, ...,  None]
>>> multtab[6,8]
48

If I could think of a way to recycle those Nones I might make money here ;-)

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From web2ed at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 18:23:57 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:23:57 -0700
Subject: Wiring a test harness into a C/C++ application?
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107111423.2c446821@posting.google.com>

To use Python for regression testing a C++ application, what is the
recommended method for snapping-in Python.

1. Should Python be embedded into the debug/test version of the
application?
2. Should an application hook be used as a Python extension? 
3. Is there a better way? 

-- 
ed


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:26:56 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:26:56 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <mailman.995886519.23021.python-list@python.org> <fauolt41gp2mjlsqiuc9rnl84dtinsle9j@4ax.com> <cpae1uqfgs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <dplslt4osaraq02m96ia2pk0u3licut8n8@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:44:58 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> If I take serious damage to my professional reputation because of this
>> change and my vocal Python advocacy, I'll more than likely be starting
>> up my own competing scripting language. I won't expect success, but it
>> will be interesting and I will expect that others will have the same
>> thought, so once the breakaway projects start coalescing there might
>> well be a *better* alternative in the end. Maybe a bit melodramatic,
>> but it's not like it's hard to find a scripting language market these
>> days.
>
>More power to you.  Since your new language won't be restricted by
>backwards compatibility, you'll find that the better choice for
>int/int is to return a float, or perhaps a rational, rather than
>following C (whose insistence on closing integers under division, as
>that of so many other languages, is inspired by the price of floating
>point hardware twenty years ago).

And the convenience of integer arithmetic with discrete measures such
as array subscripts in a vast number of algorithms.



From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Mon Jul 16 17:19:00 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 14:19:00 -0700
Subject: Re-sizing images in Python?
References: <q6547.41446$B56.8781902@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> <wf547.21414$Kg7.1547337@wagner.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <mtn164mv23.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

akhar  writes:

> Look into PIL(python Imaging library) has all you need.
> Stephane

Exactly.  Here's some sample code I wrote using PIL, just to give you
the idea:

def resize (filename_in, filename_out, quality=None, size=(400,300)):
    "Read a file from filename_in, resize, then output to filename_out."
    im = Image.open (filename_in)
    out = im.resize (size, Image.BILINEAR)
    if quality:
        out.save (filename_out, quality=quality)
    else:
        out.save (filename_out)

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 20:23:17 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:23:17 GMT
Subject: HELP: Python ASP Bug with traceback information
References: <Y9357.17749$Ek3.6722336@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B54D739.7050601@ActiveState.com>

Joe Salmeri wrote:

> Can someone please confirm whether this is a known bug using Python with
> ASP?


It is a known bug with no identified solution.  If you do not handle the 
exception yourself but let the scripting engine handle it, it will work.

The problem is that Python is never passed a filename - just a chunk of 
text that came from "joe.asp" - hence, the traceback module has no way 
of determining what the original source code was.  The script engine 
hacks around this.

Mark.



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Wed Jul 11 11:31:49 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:31:49 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
In-Reply-To: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com>; from sailwong@alumni.cuhk.edu.hk on Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 01:50:52AM +0800
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <20010711113149.A1609@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 01:50:52AM +0800, Steve S.L. Wong wrote:
> if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
> }

- isolate the char/number, by cutting at the delimiter(s).  See,
  'string.split()' 
- convert ASCII characters into proper char/integer type.  See 'int()'.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr  Wed Jul 11 15:09:54 2001
From: ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 19:09:54 GMT
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3b4c9b7f.8143238@news.hrz.uni-kassel.de>
Message-ID: <9ii8a2$hg6$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>

> 

> 1) It doesn't solve the intellectual challenge.

What about : ([^<]|(<+(A<+)*([^A<]|(A[^<>]))))*<+(A<+)*A>B ?

(sorry)

Emmanuel


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Thu Jul 12 21:26:18 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:54:18 +0028
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9im9fq$gk5$1@apollo.csd.net>

Dennis Roark wrote:

> For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
> near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
> (Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
> this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
> following script:
> 
> x = 3
> x = x + 2
> print "x =", x
> x = "now I'm a string"
> print x
> x = [ 5, x ]
> print "and now a list:", x
> 
> If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
> x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
> different type on two sides of an assignment?
> ---------------------------------
> Dennis Roark
> Dept. of Computer Science
> University of Sioux Falls
> 
> Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
> ---------------------------------

What you have posted has nothing to do with typesafety in the slightest. 
Not once did you actually mix types. What you have done is just change the 
assignment. At first you had x equal to an integer of 5, then when you 
assigned it a value of a string it deleted the old object and made a new 
one. Then it did the same as a list. 

What you are really complaining about is that it is easy to reassign a var 
to point to a new object. If you do id(x) after each assignment you will 
see x is not the same object.


From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Tue Jul  3 08:18:39 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:18:39 GMT
Subject: Fetching multiple items from a list
Message-ID: <3B41B778.6BD422C1@nokia.com>

Why doesn't Python support fetching and setting multiple items
at the same time for lists and tuples.

For example in the example below multiple fetching would be
much better way than the ordinary way.

>>> import string
>>> mylist = list(string.lowercase)
>>> mylist[18],mylist[15],mylist[0],mylist[12]
('s', 'p', 'a', 'm')
>>> mylist[18,15,0,12]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#23>", line 1, in ?
    mylist[18,15,0,12]
TypeError: sequence index must be integer
>>>


From paul at boddie.net  Fri Jul 20 05:29:39 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 02:29:39 -0700
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <23891c90.0107170315.36f571e9@posting.google.com> <slrn9l9p15.cm.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107200129.13becfc3@posting.google.com>

sill at optonline.net (Rainy) wrote in message news:<slrn9l9p15.cm.sill at sill.silmarill.org>...
> On 17 Jul 2001 04:15:40 -0700, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> wrote:
> >
> > to get the job done. A similar kind of idiocy was once imposed on me,
> > forcing me to rewrite various CGI-based programs in C++ of all
> > horrors. Insane!
> 
> That's just bizarre! Good thing they haven't heard that assembly is
> the fastest, they'd have you do CGI stuff in it ;-).

These were competent people, though (hello, if you're reading this!),
who mostly knew a fair amount about different languages and the
different levels of abstraction that they offer. SPARC assembly
language wasn't an option. ;-)

Still, Perl would have been a better choice than C++ for CGI stuff,
although I had "moved on" from Perl long before then and probably
would have resented the use of that language too. (But not as much as
C++.)


From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Wed Jul 25 14:00:43 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:00:43 GMT
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com> <yoxhew1zejh.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <3b5f0932.2397984@news.newsguy.com>

On 25 Jul 2001 09:52:18 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi>
wrote:

>ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:
>
>
>> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
>> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
>
>What about the good old control-break? 

Nope don't work.  :(

--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 08:06:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:06:55 -0400
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <mailman.995093605.18818.python-list@python.org> <3B4FF355.AFC80981@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <JLA47.1387$sx2.93578@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3B4FF355.AFC80981 at alcyone.com...
> Roman Suzi wrote:
>
> > > That's just plain more efficient.  Four additions and one multiply
> >
> > four?
>
> Yes, typo.  Three, obviously.
>
> > The same with "with": it could make name-resolving more efficient
> > by allowing searching some namespaces ahead of locals() and
> > globals()...
>
> Or you could just make a temporary assignment.  Same thing going on, no
> need for a new keyword and ambiguous code.
>

As in:

for lvar in [some.horrendous.long.reference[3][12]]:
    lvar.this = 17
    lvar.that = 21

which, IIRC, was pointed out bu the timbot about three months ago.

But a lot of this thread has ignored the fact that Python's dynamic nature
makes a "with"-type construct impossible to compile with any efficiency,
since the contents of the namespace cannot be predicted purely as a result
of static program analysis.

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 12:50:42 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 12:50:42 -0400
Subject: I want to do something:
References: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com> <etdae1pqbzp.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <9E498636EBFC006C.0B20514C36C78E95.408432537CAD3767@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <etd4rrxq9p9.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Thanks for pointing that out.

Alex.


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Thu Jul  5 18:01:54 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 18:01:54 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <o8NR7kKkXM4c092yn@bellatlantic.net>; from mertz@gnosis.cx on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 05:42:00PM -0400
References: <o8NR7kKkXM4c092yn@bellatlantic.net>
Message-ID: <20010705180154.A2143@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 05:42:00PM -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
>   def traditional(iters):
>       for i in iters:
>           result = ""
>           for c in '(123)/456-7890':
>               if c in digits:
>                   result = result + c

Sorry to jump in the middle of thread (can't access newgroup at the
moment).  Have you tried this one.

    def traditional(iters):
        for i in iters:
	    result = []
	    for c in '(123)/456-7890':
	        if c in digits:
		    result.append(c)
	    "".join(result)

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 12:08:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:08:01 +0200
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsql302ghk@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994168205.8845.python-list at python.org...
> Can anyone share a short code example of how to access all the programs in
a
> Unix directory, put them into an array, and print them out in Python?
Here
> is the code I have to do it in Perl (please forgive the harsh language).
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> #use Net::FTP;
> opendir (TEMP, '/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
>   or die "Can't open current directory.";
> @files=join(',',grep(!/^\.\.?$/, readdir TEMP));
> closedir TEMP;
> print "\n";
> print @files;
> print "\n";

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
print os.listdir('/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')

Makes you wonder where Perl got its reputation for
conciseness, doesn't it?-)  [Note the . and .. entries
are automatically removed by the listdir function].


Alex





From JoeSalmeri at home.com  Tue Jul 17 18:40:56 2001
From: JoeSalmeri at home.com (Joe Salmeri)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:40:56 GMT
Subject: HELP: Python ASP Bug with traceback information
Message-ID: <Y9357.17749$Ek3.6722336@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

Can someone please confirm whether this is a known bug using Python with
ASP?

Web Server is IIS 5.0
OS is Windows 2000 SP2
Python is BeOpen Python 2.0
Win32All is build 138

When an exception occurs in a script under ASP the contents of the line that
the traceback occurred on do not appear to exist in the traceback.
I have tried most of the functions available in the traceback module but in
all cases the contents of the line that normally appears in the
traceback is lost when using ASP.  When using CGI/Python there are no
problems.

I have narrowed down my problem to the simple test scripts listed below:

Have I found a new bug?  Is there a workaround available?


**** File 1:  joe.py ****
print 'Content-Type: text/html'
print

import StringIO
import sys
import traceback

try:
    1/0
except:
    e = sys.exc_info()
    f = StringIO.StringIO()
    traceback.print_exception(e[0], e[1], e[2], file=f)
    print f.getvalue()

**** File 2: joe.asp ****
<%@language="Python"%>

<%
import StringIO
import sys
import traceback

try:
    1/0
except:
    e = sys.exc_info()
    f = StringIO.StringIO()
    traceback.print_exception(e[0], e[1], e[2], file=f)
    Response.Write(f.getvalue())
%>

**** joe.py output ****
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "P:\Home\Joe\Web\Rolo\j.py", line 10, in ?
    1/0
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo

**** joe.asp output **** (NOTE: you must view source of the asp page because
I did not Encode the ASP output)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<Script Block >", line 7, in ?
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo















From esr at thyrsus.com  Fri Jul 13 13:49:19 2001
From: esr at thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:49:19 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] Python 2.1.1c1 released
In-Reply-To: <200107131721.f6DHLgX16757@odiug.digicool.com>; from guido@digicool.com on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:21:42PM -0400
References: <200107131721.f6DHLgX16757@odiug.digicool.com>
Message-ID: <20010713134919.B7279@thyrsus.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com>:
> This is a pure bugfix release; see the website for details.  One fixed
> "bug" deserves special attention: this release is GPL-compatible.
> I hope it's in time for inclusion in the Debian release.

Should be.  They haven't even settled their freeze policy yet, let alone
declared a freeze.  I've been tracking this because I'm coming up on a
fetchmail-5.9.0 stable release and want to get that in, too.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Freedom begins between the ears.
	-- Edward Abbey



From ts1 at its.com.sg  Tue Jul 24 16:36:35 2001
From: ts1 at its.com.sg (ts1 at its.com.sg)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:36:35 PDT
Subject: any vb sample code for access database function
Message-ID: <3b5d09ad$4@news.starhub.net.sg>

I am new in vb design, anybody can email some sample code or show me some site to download, I just want to design a vb program to load an MS access database(phonebook directory), I can search by name , by postcode, by tel no, to select some company.

thanks
ts



From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  2 11:35:35 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 08:35:35 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <9hq4c7$e7h$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852 at news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>,
Rainer Deyke <root at rainerdeyke.com> wrote:
>"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
>news:q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7 at 4ax.com...
>>
>> def f(x):
>>     x = x + (1,2,3)
>> print x
>>
>> ?
>
>A vast improvement: clear, unambiguous, and correct.  I can safely pass a
>list as an argument and not have it modified behind my back.  Having to
>write "x" twice on the second line is not good, but if it buys me
>correctness, I'll happily pay that price.

In what version of Python can you pass a list to f() here?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 24 13:20:50 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:20:50 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995941042.7335.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <S7i77.23759$B7.3912364@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mailman.995941042.7335.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters wrote:
>[Bengt Richter]
>> This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
>> floating point support?
>
>Not directly, but it doesn't use fp extensively.  Support for
>complex numbers can be dropped via a preprocessor symbol, but
>we never build it that way so I wouldn't bet your life it still
>works <wink>.
>
>> With Linux being embedded all over the place, it seems like it
>> would come up.  Do the mini hand-helds (not to mention cell
>> phones) have floating point?
>
>Most small platforms have (software) FP emulation libraries.

Only if the designer decided that FP support is required.  I
run a couple different 32-bit platforms for which I've been
considering Python -- I doubt there would be FP support
available.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Does someone from
                                  at               PEORIA have a SHORTER
                               visi.com            ATTENTION span than me?


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Fri Jul 20 14:43:54 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 18:43:54 GMT
Subject: [Q] File Object -- function 'read'
References: <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list@python.org> <3B579358.DCF39F49@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lguva.h23.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Thu, 19 Jul 2001 22:11:36 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> pisze:

> (I'm surprised there's no answer yet to your question -- at least
> none visible on my system, yet.)

On 19 July you are surprised that there is no answer yet to a question
asked on 20 July? :-)

(Ok, different timezones...)

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 08:25:54 2001
From: tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk (Toby Dickenson)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 13:25:54 +0100
Subject: the center of the world (was Re: Check out O'Reilly's Open Source Convention Highlights)
References: <cpvglilpzl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3AA82D.1A0FE860@seebelow.org> <Xns90CE99B1A22D9atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <3B3B2DED.5303198A@seebelow.org> <9hhri7019jd@enews2.newsguy.com> <m3pubn2yqo.fsf@kepler.ibp.de> <m33d8j8j2j.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <9hi42h01og2@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <4to0ktst8hhgol3nvlbuktgrlv4l5172gm@4ax.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

>"Konrad Hinsen" <hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr> wrote in message
>news:m33d8j8j2j.fsf at chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr...
>> markus at kepler.ibp.de writes:
>>
>> > Then find first the weighted average as a point in three-dimensional
>> > space, i.e. as (an approximation to) the center of gravity of the
>> > human population. This will be some point deep in the interior of the
>> > Earth, which you could the project back to the surface.
>>
>> But that doesn't minimize the distance on the surface.
>
>Doesn't it (in terms of great-circle distance)?  I can't prove
>it in my head either way, but trying to visualize a few cases
>does suggest the requested surfacepoint IS obtained this way.

Imagine 51 people gathered at the north pole, and 50 people gathered a
very small distance away from the south pole.

Surface-distance-wise the midpoint is roughly on the equator (actually
1% of the half-circumference north of the equator)

However, the center of mass of the people lies only slightly lies off
the polar axis, but northwards of the earths center by a 1% of its
diameter. Projected onto the surface this is a point very close to the
north pole.

Best effort ascii-art: 
* is the earths center
. is center of mass of people
x is that point projected onto the surface

        /                            \
       /                              \
      x                                )
     (            .                     ) 50 
N 51 (                *                 )    S
     (                                  )



Toby Dickenson
tdickenson at geminidataloggers.com


From jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Jul  4 07:40:54 2001
From: jajvirta at cc.helsinki.fi (Jarno J Virtanen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 11:40:54 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9huo4n01jfl@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k605n.esf.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi>

Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:37:25 +0200 Alex Martelli wrote:
[snip]
> My impression is that most development shops
> underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
> attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
> yet that the individual performance variation between the best
> programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
> a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
> factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
> ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
> little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
> "superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
> sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
> doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
> mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
> but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
> performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
> times better, if that).

[not that you didn't know this already ..]

Isn't this just what Frederick Brooks claimed in "The Mythical
Man-Month"? 

quoting from the anniversary edition:

a) Adding people to a software project increases the total effort
   necessary in three ways: the work and disruption of repartitioning
   itself, training the new people, and added intercommunication.

   ("hence" Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project 
     makes it later.)

b) Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as
   poor ones, at same training and two-year experience level. 
   (Sackman, Grant and Erickson)

therefore:

   A small sharp team is best -- as few minds as possible.


(This, of course, is not all there's to it.)


From dwig at advancedmp.net  Wed Jul 25 13:44:56 2001
From: dwig at advancedmp.net (Don Dwiggins)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:44:56 -0700
Subject: Distributing multiple related scripts
In-Reply-To: "Terry Reedy"'s message of "Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:23:36 GMT"
Message-ID: <u4rs0kinb.fsf_-_@advancedmp.net>

I have a distribution need that might be somewhat unusual: instead of
distributing a single program, I need to distribute a collection of scripts,
some to be run manually, others scheduled.  Since there's considerable
common code among them, I want to have one or more common modules that the
scripts can load as needed.

Both the source and target of distribution are Windows machines.  Also, it's
possible to have Python installed on the target machine(s).

1) What would be the best distribution tool and setup for this?
2) How would the scripts access the common modules?

Thanks for any good words,

-- 
Don Dwiggins                    "Solvitur Ambulando"
Advanced MP Technology
dwig at advancedmp.net




From sheila at spamcop.net  Sat Jul 21 23:20:46 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 03:20:46 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
Message-ID: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com>

OK, I've become fairly comfortable with defining my own classes and
subclassing other classes and so on...

Now I'm wanting to create some of my own exceptions. I've searched
comp.lang.python at Google Groups, and the archives for the Tutor list,
and faqts.python.com and my copy of Core Python Programming, but all I
find on the subject is essentially this:

"""

You can create a new exception by subclassing one of the standard
exceptions like this:

class MyNewException(SomeStandardException):
    pass


Just use the 'pass' statement unless you want to override some of the
methods/data of the Standard Exception.

"""

And that's all the information I can find.

I tried looking under the /Python20 directory for source or something
for the Exception classes, but can't find it. For example, right now I'm
working on subclassing the rfc822.py module, and I found the file
rfc822.py in /Python20/Lib and studied the source until I understood it,
and could subclass it. I'd like to find something similar for the
standard exception classes. I looked in the /include directory and some
others but can't find what I'm needing.

Thanks for any pointers/tips.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul 12 21:33:08 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:33:08 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E4FD4.72A3458D@ActiveState.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The users of the first would have most of their needs met by the
> online information available, and the incredible ease of learning
> the language or of applying it in diverse areas.
> 
> Publishers can smell this and would not put their efforts into
> tree-killing for the second language.  Entire forests, however,
> would be slaughtered in the name of the second language, to buy
> Mercedes automobiles for the publishing executives.

If this is true, why are there so many Python books all of a sudden?

Even a simple language needs books because many people prefer to learn
from books than from web tutorials. And no language is truly simple when
you look at it in sufficient context. Do you know everything about
Python including how to handle Unicode, XML, Tk, windows APIs, CORBA,
and a hundred other buzzwords? Even if there were a language you could
teach in one chapter (lambda calculus for dummies, anyone?), the
libraries and add-ons would add up to a thick book.

Plus, you can always pair it with another buzzword. "ADO Programming
with Python." "Web Services with Python." and so forth. The number of
books is a pretty good indication of a languages' growth. The only
problem is that it is an indicator that trails badly. For all we know
there are twenty Ruby books under development but they won't show up
until a year from now.

Publishers clearly believe that Python is going to be a big thing.
Consider:

http://www.deitel.com/whatsnew.html

These guys are the ultimate trend-watchers. The fact that Python has
attracted their attention means that it is gaining mainstream
traction....or was last year. :)

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From slhath at home.com  Sun Jul  8 21:54:42 2001
From: slhath at home.com (Scott Hathaway)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 01:54:42 GMT
Subject: location of pySol
Message-ID: <C9827.10612$EW.36339@news1.rdc1.tx.home.com>

Can anyone tell me where to get the latest version of pySol?

Thanks,
Scott




From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Tue Jul 31 21:43:41 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:43:41 GMT
Subject: int() built-in and hex "0x..." strings
References: <20010723.110751.1143408282.18374@troikanetworks.com>
Message-ID: <h9J97.180665$T97.21557988@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Bruce Edge <bedge at troikanetworks.com> menulis:
| 
| Do I really need to parse out the '0x' 1st, then based on it's
| absence/presence do either:
| int('80', 16)
| or
| int('80')
| ?
| 
| Is there another int() type lib func that I should use instead?

You can do int('0x80', 0) -- passing 0 as the second argument causes
int() to try to guess the base from the format of the string.


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 31 13:03:54 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:03:54 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B66E4FA.158E7DDA@home.net>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> > I for one would like to see a strongly typed variant
> > of Python: if for nothing else, I'd like to be able to compile my code.

I would like to see OPTIONAL static typing in Python. There are places
where it makes a lot of sense, and places where it doesn't. Personally,
I would probably only use it in small computational functions that I
could efficiently compile.

> More to the point, why would you want to compile your Python code?

> If for performance, the better approach is perhaps to profile your
> code, then rewrite the performance-critical portions as C
> extensions.  Then you have pretty much the best of both worlds.

No you don't. The best of both worlds would be to profile my code, and
then statically type those few performance critical portions. This would
be a whole lot less work than re-writing those parts in C.
 
For performances, sake another nice addition would be the introduction
of the "homogenous" sequence. Python already has some of these: strings,
the library array module, NumPy arrays. They allow efficient computation
for methods and functions that know about them (and these are all
written in C), such as the string methods, the re module, and, of
course, NumPy Ufuncs. Unfortunatly, Python itself has no concept of the
homogenous sequence. If it did then a lot of optimization could be done
inside map calls, or list comprehensions, etc. As an example, look at
the following trivial example:

a = range(100)
b = range(100)
c = [(x**2 + y**2) for x in a for y in b] 

In this case, both a and b are homogenous lists of integers. When the
list comprehension is called, every single time (x**2 + y**2) is
evaluated, the interpreter must check the type of x and y and do the
appropriate operation. If  the interpreter knew that a and b were
homogenous, it would only have to do that check once, which could speed
up things a LOT. Of course you could use NumPy for this example, but
there are others where NumPy's array operations are not enough.

Even without any static type declaration, the homogenous sequence could
be possible. It would be pretty easy for tuples, since they are
immutable. Even for lists, at every append, the type of the appended
object could be checked, and the homogenous flag turned off if the type
doesn't match.

Does anyone else think this could be a good idea???

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 19:56:45 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:56:45 GMT
Subject: Version/requirement marking of code using 2.2+ features?  Was Re: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b5c65cf.224345241@wa.news.verio.net> <3B5C7847.EA60FE59@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3b5ca6ba.240964128@wa.news.verio.net>

I probably should have started a new thread in the first place, so I'll
prefix the post I should have started with, for context:
__________________________________________________________________

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:51:48 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:46:45 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
>>We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
>>loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
>>so let's not be shy.
>>
>What about mandatory version/requirement marking of code depending
>on new features of 2.2 and beyond?
>
>This would introduce *now* the possibility of using 2.1 rules for unmarked
>code, and allowing progress without backwards-compatibility pain[1].
>
>Perhaps a requires statement keyword with syntax like print? E.g.,
>
>    requires {'Python':'2.3', 'math':'2.4','division':('unified','warn') }
>
>or short form could be distinguished by arg type
>
>    requires 2.3
>
>The keyword itself would be rejected by older interpreters, signaling a need
>to upgrade the interpreter (or revise the script code down).
>
>All the good arguments on both sides of the '/' question are making me
>feel wishy-washy, as I sympathize in alternation, but I do find the
>backwards compatibility argument compelling. HTH.
>
>[1] Other than for implementors ;-)
>
__________________________________________________________________

On 23 Jul 2001 19:20:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>Bengt Richter wrote:
[...see above...]
>
>This is a *really good* idea.  Although I am new to Python, I am not new
>to very large development projects.  This ability to stipulate the minimum
>required runtime environment could go a long way to mitigate upgrade and
>release nightmares.
>
Perhaps I should have started a new thread.[1]] Tim said he was about ready
to ignore any more on this one ;-)

>I would only suggest that such a keyword:
>
>-  Have "at least" semantics so that later versions would satisfy the 'requires'
>   as well.
>
Hm. I think we need both. 'At least' only works if backwards compatibility is
guaranteed ;-)

I think the requires side can be specific. The provider side should declare
its capabilities in a way that allows determining go/nogo, or possibly some
setup action to satisfy the requirement.

>- Be generalized so that any module author could apply the same thing to
>  their module independent of all other modules (I think you were hinting
>  at this above.)
Yes, that's what I was getting at with the 'math':'2.4' entry. But then math
has to be able to show its version/capability info. See below.

>
>- Be optional, which would mean that anything works.
>
Well, for unspecified requirements you have to make some default
assumption. If we assume that 2.1 is the most compatible existing
distribution ( or is there lots that breaks on 1.5.2? ), then
unmarked can mean 2.1.

I left out the other side of requires, which is provides, which
I don't think would need a keyword. But maybe a new __provides__
attribute (perhaps also a dictionary, since that is very flexible)
as a container for encoding what the entity provides.

E.g., dir(math) would get you
 >>> dir(math)
 ['__doc__', '__name__', '__provides__', 'acos', 'sin', ... etc. ]

and math.__provides__ might be
 { 'version':'2.4-', 'angleargs':'+degrees', 'exceptions':('-fpprecloss','-infinity') }

meaning it's backwards('-') compatible with a requires 2.4, and it additionally supports
passing degrees to its functions, but if there's a requires 2.3, the implication is that
some exception functionality was deleted and would have to be hooked in to ensure 2.3
compatibility.

This is OTTOMH, to stimulate better ideas, not a design spec ;-)

[1] Decided to do it ;-)


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Fri Jul 20 23:31:11 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 03:31:11 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
References: <2q367.11670$Up.346617@sea-read.news.verio.net> <mailman.995678557.14358.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3I667.233325$%i7.131482008@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote...
> Minidom doesn't use any special threading. minidom is just Python code
> so you could add trace statements ....

And so I shall.  Thanks for your words of encouragement.

>
> You mention java. Is this Jython or CPython? Is there a C extension
> involved?

Nope.  Just plain Java and Runnable.exec("python.exe someth.py");

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 07:25:32 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:25:32 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 04:16:23 PDT."
             <00aa01c119b2$3c866bc0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <00aa01c119b2$3c866bc0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
Message-ID: <200107311125.HAA15791@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>
> 
> > I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
> > Checked into CVS!

[Ken Seehof]

> Very cool.

(Were you the original proposer?  I'd like to honor him/her.)

> While you're at it, how about mapping "in" to "has_key" for
> mapping objects?

Already done.

> >>> 'parrot' in {'parrot': 'dead'}
> 1
> >>> 'dead' in {'parrot': 'dead'}  # obviously "in" refers to keys, not
> values
> 0

Indeed.

> BTW, thanks again for the awesome language.
> I hereby revoke the title ".*[dD]ictator".  I dub thee "Fearless Leader".

If you want to lead, go find a parade and walk in front of it.  (Old
hippy wisdom.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 23:30:38 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 23:30:38 -0400
Subject: how to know whether the item in a diretory is a file/directory
References: <mailman.996630962.3179.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uu1zssbhd.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> writes:

> I want to process all the files in a diretory,and ignore the
> subdirectorys in it ,I use os.listdir() to list all the items,but I
> do not know whether the selected item is a file

Simplest approach is probably to use os.path.isdir(path).  Note that
you may need to add the directory to the file returned from os.listdir
if you aren't listing files in the current directory.

There are several isxxx functions in os.path for various matches.
They're all basically wrappers for calling os.stat(filename), and then
checking the result[stat.ST_MODE] (the stat module has constants to
index into the tuple returned by os.stat) for certain bits (constants
and functions to test against which are also in the stat module).

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Tue Jul 24 17:07:46 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:07:46 +0100
Subject: Importing from Another Path
References: <mailman.995997582.18776.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DE390.2F35B36A@accessforall.nl>


Paul Sidorsky wrote:
> 
> I'm working on a client/server project (in Python 2.1) and I've got it
> organized in the familiar structure of client, server, and common
> subdirectories.  What is the correct (i.e. simplest and fastest) way to
> import modules from the common directory into the client or server?
> Right now I'm doing it by putting this at the top of each module:
> 
> import sys
> sys.path.append("..\\common")
> del sys

That is almost as portable as it gets: when also you take
the common directory from the command line sys.argv, eg:

  sys.path.append(sys.argv[1])

I wouldn't know of a more portable way.
The non portable part is then moved into the script(s) that
start(s) the client and the server.

I prefer to use a command line argument when provided,
and to have some default built in for easy testing.

Also you should be aware that the sys module (any imported module
in fact) is unique in the process that runs the python interpreter,
so you should not add the common directory when it is already there:

  if sys.argv[1] not in sys.path: sys.path.append(sys.argv[1])

Have fun,
Ype


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Fri Jul 20 19:48:47 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 23:48:47 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4> <Xns90E4E1E55281Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <slrn9lhgqu.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

20 Jul 2001 22:08:43 +0200 in <Xns90E4E1E55281Dcliechtimailsch at 62.2.32.50>,
chris liechti <cliechti at mails.ch> spake:
> -i think that you realy have to be a huge fan of python to stay with it 
> even if you have to change all the old code if you are one of these "a = 
> A()" programmers. well most reader of this group would probably stay but it 
> givess python an "incopatibility" touch.

  Who actually names their classes with one-letter names like A or C as
I've seen in this thread?  Anyone?  Didn't think so.

  Actual use is more like:
a = Anything()
c = Cookie()

> -people from scientific and math fields often use "n" and "N" together. or 
> "alpha" and "Alpha" because our keyboard has no greek letters. their code 
> will need a lot of fixes.

  Unless case-sensitivity is an optional module-level directive.

> ps: couln't a case-insensitive fan not just overrite __getattr__ and 
> __setattr__ to be case insensitive at least for class members?

  The people most likely to want the feature are not capable yet of
writing code that hairy.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Wed Jul 11 14:57:42 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:57:42 +0200
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <3b4b4a70$0$319$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
	(mac4-devnull@theory.org)
References: <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list@python.org> <3b4b4a70$0$319$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <11072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Neil" == Neil Macneale <mac4-devnull at theory.org> writes:

    Neil> In article <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list at python.org>, "Chris Watson"
    Neil> <chris at voodooland.net> wrote:

    >> 
    >> Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
    >> A scheme of equalizing the social conditions [...]

    Neil> You can't compare communism and capitalism.  One is a
    Neil> political structure while the other economic structure.

Both are ideologies, first and foremost, IMPAO.

    Neil> It makes more sense to say that you perfer Capitalism over
    Neil> Socialism, or Democracy over Communism.  I am for democracy,
    Neil> and socialism, so I'm going with GPL :-)

Good for you ;-) ("GPL is good for you"?  No, that get Guiness'
lawyers on my hide).

Me?  I'm an anarchist.  (A christian anarchist, to be precise... and
confusing to most people, probably ;-)

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
                 "All language designers are arrogant.
               Goes with the territory..." -- Larry Wall
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010711/d7760c0f/attachment.sig>

From nell at skrzynka.pl  Mon Jul 23 05:05:24 2001
From: nell at skrzynka.pl (Justyna =?iso-8859-2?Q?Bia=B3a?=)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 09:05:24 GMT
Subject: Blender module
Message-ID: <slrn9lnq08.dh1.nell@localhost.localdomain>

Hi,
I need to know how to use the new module for writing scripts in python for
Blender.

I mean the newest version of Blender (2.14) and actually I have no
documentation to that.
Most scripts I found is written in the old API.
If anybody is familiar with that stuff, please, let me know or maybe you can
send any examples of using that module.

Thanks in advance

nell


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Sat Jul 14 09:33:02 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:33:02 +0200
Subject: not safe at all 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:00:22 GMT."
             <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> 
Message-ID: <m15LPXa-000wcDC@swing.co.at>

Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I appreciate those who replied, particularly Nick's
> informative reply.  I would still argue that "dynamic"
> typing is a weaker and less safe sort of typing than the
> static typing of C++.  Nick brings up the C++ example of
> using pointers to void and then casting them as needed or
> recasting them to allow the variable to point to different
> objects not involved in an inheritance relationship.  But
> C++ is also often criticized for this because void pointers
> do allow for unsafe coding, relaxation of type safety and
> should be avoided if possible.

I think you are still missing some important facts about typing
systems. There are two dimensions: static vs. dynamic and weak vs.
strong.

Now, C++'s typing is moderately (some call it weak) strong and static.
Void pointers are not necessary to get into trouble with C++'s type
system. Type casts and implicit type conversions are two likely
gotchas. And when typing fails in a language like C++, all bets are
off. 

Python's typing is strong and dynamic. Wrong interpretation of bits
just doesn't happen. And if you try to use an object incorrectly you
will get an exception. Exceptions are safe unless you choose to ignore
them in your exception handlers.

> Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
> would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
> variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
> misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> large projects.

Strong typing is not a panacea for bad designs. Refactoring will do
better. 

If you really need strong static typing, look at languages like Eiffel
or Ada. Both C++ and Object Pascal are broken in comparison.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 17:21:10 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:21:10 -0700
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B43C6.A1B4BD92@alcyone.com>

Sheila King wrote:

> That's because the "big picture" is the general overview of how the
> parent class works.

The behavior of the parent class is as the library reference states:  It
implements __str__, __getitem__, __len__ (presumably), and args. 
Exception is just a class like everything else; other than having the
behavior as specified in the reference, it's your typical class.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Sanity is a cozy lie.
\__/ Susan Sontag
    The laws list / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/
 Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 18:09:06 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:09:06 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
Message-ID: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  It contains a long
motivational section, a clear specification of what will happen, and a
discussion of rejected alternatives, a list of open issues, a Q-and-A
section etc..  I hope it answers most questions that have been raised
about this issue.  I'd be happy to revise it if there are still things
unclear.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

PEP: 238
Title: Non-integer Division
Version: $Revision: 1.10 $
Author: pep at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka), guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Created: 11-Mar-2001
Python-Version: 2.2
Post-History: 16-Mar-2001, 26-Jul-2001


Abstract

    The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for
    numerical arguments: it returns the floor of the mathematical
    result if the arguments are ints or longs, but it returns a
    reasonable approximation of the result if the arguments are floats
    or complex.  This makes expressions expecting float or complex
    results error-prone when integers are not expected but possible as
    inputs.

    We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for
    different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of
    the mathematical result of the division ("true division"), x//y to
    return the floor ("floor division").  We call the current, mixed
    meaning of x/y "classic division".

    Because of severe backwards compatibility issues, not to mention a
    major flamewar on c.l.py, we propose the following transitional
    measures (starting with Python 2.2):

    - Classic division will remain the default in the Python 2.x
      series; true division will be standard in Python 3.0.

    - The // operator will be available to request floor division
      unambiguously.

    - The future division statement, spelled "from __future__ import
      division", will change the / operator to mean true division
      throughout the module.

    - A command line option will enable run-time warnings for classic
      division applied to int or long arguments; another command line
      option will make true division the default.

    - The standard library will use the future division statement and
      the // operator when appropriate, so as to completely avoid
      classic division.


Motivation

    The classic division operator makes it hard to write numerical
    expressions that are supposed to give correct results from
    arbitrary numerical inputs.  For all other operators, one can
    write down a formula such as x*y**2 + z, and the calculated result
    will be close to the mathematical result (within the limits of
    numerical accuracy, of course) for any numerical input type (int,
    long, float, or complex).  But division poses a problem: if the
    expressions for both arguments happen to have an integral type, it
    implements floor division rather than true division.

    The problem is unique to dynamically typed languages: in a
    statically typed language like C, the inputs, typically function
    arguments, would be declared as double or float, and when a call
    passes an integer argument, it is converted to double or float at
    the time of the call.  Python doesn't have argument type
    declarations, so integer arguments can easily find their way into
    an expression.

    The problem is particularly pernicious since ints are perfect
    substitutes for floats in all other circumstances: math.sqrt(2)
    returns the same value as math.sqrt(2.0), 3.14*100 and 3.14*100.0
    return the same value, and so on.  Thus, the author of a numerical
    routine may only use floating point numbers to test his code, and
    believe that it works correctly, and a user may accidentally pass
    in an integer input value and get incorrect results.

    Another way to look at this is that classic division makes it
    difficult to write polymorphic functions that work well with
    either float or int arguments; all other operators already do the
    right thing.  No algorithm that works for both ints and floats has
    a need for truncating division in one case and true division in
    the other.

    The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
    is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
    argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
    zero.  The only solution without either downside is multiplying an
    argument (typically the first) by 1.0.  This leaves the value and
    sign unchanged for float and complex, and turns int and long into
    a float with the corresponding value.

    It is the opinion of the authors that this is a real design bug in
    Python, and that it should be fixed sooner rather than later.
    Assuming Python usage will continue to grow, the cost of leaving
    this bug in the language will eventually outweigh the cost of
    fixing old code -- there is an upper bound to the amount of code
    to be fixed, but the amount of code that might be affected by the
    bug in the future is unbounded.

    Another reason for this change is the desire to ultimately unify
    Python's numeric model.  This is the subject of PEP 228[0] (which
    is currently incomplete).  A unified numeric model removes most of
    the user's need to be aware of different numerical types.  This is
    good for beginners, but also takes away concerns about different
    numeric behavior for advanced programmers.  (Of course, it won't
    remove concerns about numerical stability and accuracy.)

    In a unified numeric model, the different types (int, long, float,
    complex, and possibly others, such as a new rational type) serve
    mostly as storage optimizations, and to some extent to indicate
    orthogonal properties such as inexactness or complexity.  In a
    unified model, the integer 1 should be indistinguishable from the
    floating point number 1.0 (except for its inexactness), and both
    should behave the same in all numeric contexts.  Clearly, in a
    unified numeric model, if a==b and c==d, a/c should equal b/d
    (taking some liberties due to rounding for inexact numbers), and
    since everybody agrees that 1.0/2.0 equals 0.5, 1/2 should also
    equal 0.5.  Likewise, since 1//2 equals zero, 1.0//2.0 should also
    equal zero.


Variations

    Esthetically, x//y doesn't please everyone, and hence several
    variations have been proposed: x div y, or div(x, y), sometimes in
    combination with x mod y or mod(x, y) as an alternative spelling
    for x%y.

    We consider these solutions inferior, on the following grounds.

    - Using x div y would introduce a new keyword.  Since div is a
      popular identifier, this would break a fair amount of existing
      code, unless the new keyword was only recognized under a future
      division statement.  Since it is expected that the majority of
      code that needs to be converted is dividing integers, this would
      greatly increase the need for the future division statement.
      Even with a future statement, the general sentiment against
      adding new keywords unless absolutely necessary argues against
      this.

    - Using div(x, y) makes the conversion of old code much harder.
      Replacing x/y with x//y or x div y can be done with a simple
      query replace; in most cases the programmer can easily verify
      that a particular module only works with integers so all
      occurrences of x/y can be replaced.  (The query replace is still
      needed to weed out slashes occurring in comments or string
      literals.)  Replacing x/y with div(x, y) would require a much
      more intelligent tool, since the extent of the expressions to
      the left and right of the / must be analized before the
      placement of the "div(" and ")" part can be decided.


Alternatives

    In order to reduce the amount of old code that needs to be
    converted, several alternative proposals have been put forth.
    Here is a brief discussion of each proposal (or category of
    proposals).  If you know of an alternative that was discussed on
    c.l.py that isn't mentioned here, please mail the second author.

    - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
      division.  This doesn't solve the problem that the classic /
      operator makes it hard to write polymorphic numeric functions
      accept int and float arguments, and still requires the use of
      x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required.

    - Let int division return a special "portmanteau" type that
      behaves as an integer in integer context, but like a float in a
      float context.  The problem with this is that after a few
      operations, the int and the float value could be miles apart,
      it's unclear which value should be used in comparisons, and of
      course many contexts (e.g. conversion to string) don't have a
      clear integer or float context.

    - Use a directive to use specific division semantics in a module,
      rather than a future statement.  This retains classic division
      as a permanent wart in the language, requiring future
      generations of Python programmers to be aware of the problem and
      the remedies.

    - Use "from __past__ import division" to use classic division
      semantics in a module.  This also retains the classic division
      as a permanent wart, or at least for a long time (eventually the
      past division statement could raise an ImportError).

    - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
      version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
      requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
      *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
      so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
      too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
      interpreters installed.


Specification

    During the transitional phase, we have to support *three* division
    operators within the same program: classic division (for / in
    modules without a future division statement), true division (for /
    in modules with a future division statement), and floor division
    (for //).  Each operator comes in two flavors: regular, and as an
    augmented assignment operator (/= or //=).

    The names associated with these variations are:

    - Overloaded operator methods:

      __div__(), __floordiv__(), __truediv__();

      __idiv__(), __ifloordiv__(), __itruediv__().

    - Abstract API C functions:

      PyNumber_Divide(), PyNumber_FloorDivide(),
      PyNumber_TrueDivide();

      PyNumber_InPlaceDivide(), PyNumber_InPlaceFloorDivide(),
      PyNumber_InPlaceTrueDivide().

    - Byte code opcodes:

      BINARY_DIVIDE, BINARY_FLOOR_DIVIDE, BINARY_TRUE_DIVIDE;

      INPLACE_DIVIDE, INPLACE_FLOOR_DIVIDE, INPLACE_TRUE_DIVIDE.

    - PyNumberMethod slots:

      nb_divide, nb_floor_divide, nb_true_divide,

      nb_inplace_divide, nb_inplace_floor_divide,
      nb_inplace_true_divide.

    The added PyNumberMethod slots require an additional flag in
    tp_flags; this flag will be named Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_NEWDIVIDE and
    will be included in Py_TPFLAGS_DEFAULT.

    The true and floor division APIs will look for the corresponding
    slots and call that; when that slot is NULL, they will raise an
    exception.  There is no fallback to the classic divide slot.


Command Line Option

    The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
    three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
    Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
    "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
    The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
    warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning framework)
    when applied to ints or longs.  The "new" value changes the
    default globally so that the / operator is always interpreted as
    true division.  The "new" option is only intended for use in
    certain educational environments, where true division is required,
    but asking the students to include the future division statement
    in all their code would be a problem.

    This option will not be supported in Python 3.0; Python 3.0 will
    always interpret / as true division.


Semantics of Floor Division

    Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
    types, and will have the semantics of

        a // b == floor(a/b)

    except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
    coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
    will be of that type too.


Semantics of True Division

    True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
    float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
    return a float (2.0), not an int.


The Future Division Statement

    If "from __future__ import division" is present in a module, or if
    -Dnew is used, the / and /= operators are translated to true
    division opcodes; otherwise they are translated to classic
    division (until Python 3.0 comes along, where they are always
    translated to true division).

    The future division statement has no effect on the recognition or
    translation of // and //=.

    See PEP 236[4] for the general rules for future statements.


Open Issues

    - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
      this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
      it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
      zero?)

    - It has been argued that a command line option to change the
      default is evil.  It can certainly be dangerous in the wrong
      hands: for example, it would be impossible to combine a 3rd
      party library package that requires -Dnew with another one that
      requires -Dold.  But I believe that the VPython folks need a way
      to enable true division by default, and other educators might
      need the same.  These usually have enough control over the
      library packages available in their environment.


FAQ

    Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
       as under the new rules without using // or a future division
       statement?

    A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
       division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
       function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
       you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.  If you
       know your integers are never negative, you can use int(x/y) --
       while the documentation of int() says that int() can round or
       truncate depending on the C implementation, we know of no C
       implementation that doesn't truncate, and we're going to change
       the spec for int() to promise truncation.  Note that for
       negative ints, classic division (and floor division) round
       towards negative infinity, while int() rounds towards zero.

    Q. How do I specify the division semantics for input(), compile(),
       execfile(), eval() and exec?

    A. They inherit the choice from the invoking module.  PEP 236[4]
       lists this as a partially resolved problem.

    Q. What about code compiled by the codeop module?

    A. Alas, this will always use the default semantics (set by the -D
       command line option).  This is a general problem with the
       future statement; PEP 236[4] lists it as an unresolved
       problem.  You could have your own clone of codeop.py that
       includes a future division statement, but that's not a general
       solution.

    Q. Why is my question not answered here?

    A. Because we weren't aware of it.  If it's been discussed on
       c.l.py and you believe the answer is of general interest,
       please notify the second author.  (We don't have the time or
       inclination to answer every question sent in private email,
       hence the requirement that it be discussed on c.l.py first.)


Implementation

    A very early implementation (not yet following the above spec, but
    supporting // and the future division statement) is available from
    the SourceForge patch manager[5].


References

    [0] PEP 228, Reworking Python's Numeric Model
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0228.html

    [1] PEP 237, Unifying Long Integers and Integers, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0237.html

    [2] PEP 239, Adding a Rational Type to Python, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0239.html

    [3] PEP 240, Adding a Rational Literal to Python, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0240.html

    [4] PEP 236, Back to the __future__, Peters,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0236.html

    [5] Patch 443474, from __future__ import division
        http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=443474&group_id=5470&atid=305470


Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 10:37:54 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:37:54 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <dZC47.2433$sx2.139844@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote in ...
> I have a simple problem, but one that, without some optimization, might
hurt the performance of my project. To sum it up, I
> have two lists, we'll call them list A and list B, both lists contain only
one-word strings (ie. both were generated by string.split()
> performed on a large amount of text)
>
> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want
included in my final version of list A. So what I need to
> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want
to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought
> would be:
>
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:
>         A.remove(eachItem)
>
> Now, this will work fine, however, the size of list A varies, and while
list B is constant, it is quite large (more than 750 items).
> List A can also, should the situation warrant, become quite huge as well.
The main problem is that I have no idea of the
> efficiency of "in" for large lists like this. Can anyone think of a
possibly quicker way, or is this the best?
> One other note: List A may (and usually does) contain duplicate words. If
those duplicate words appear in list B, then I want
> them both removed, but if they don't appear in list B, then I want them to
remain separate (ie. if the word "Python" shows up
> five times in A, then I want the final version of A to still contain five
occurrences of "Python")
>
> I really don't know if this can be made any quicker, but any insight would
be appreciated. For the cases I've been running,
> it's been quick enough so far, but there's a good chance that the amount
of data in list A will be getting much larger, and I'll
> have to perform this entire operation (for different versions of list A)
multiple times in one program execution.

You will probably find that for larger lists you'd be better of using a
dictionary, so you can test for a given word using has_key. However, you
also need to consider whether it is important to retain the non-noise words
in list A in their original order, as dictionaries don't have an special
ordering on their keys.

A hybrid solution (untested) would be:

    dict = {}
    for w in B:
        dict[w] = 1
    for eachitem in A:
        if dict.has_key(eachitem):
            A.remove(eachitem)

You don't say whether you want to retain repetitions in list A, or ordering.
Depending on your exact requirements there will be other solutions which are
more efficient, but the key (no pun intended) feature here is that it's
faster to look strings up as dictionary leys than it is to find them in a
long list.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 11:50:35 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:50:35 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:

> On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> 
>    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
> too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.

Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jason at tishler.net  Tue Jul 31 14:18:05 2001
From: jason at tishler.net (Jason Tishler)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:18:05 -0400
Subject: C/Cygwin/Python
In-Reply-To: <slrn9mdold.1snq.m-turk@dhcp101054.res-hall.nwu.edu>
Message-ID: <20010731141805.Q590@dothill.com>

Matthew,

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 04:51:41PM +0000, Matthew Turk wrote:
> Essentially, I want to be able to use it on computers that don't run
> Cygwin.  Is this going to work?

Most likely -- see below.

> I certainly *don't* want to resort to
> Visual C, since I have no idea how to operate in that environment, nor
> do I own a copy.  I know that cygwin has the -Wno_cygwin or something
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^

Actually, it is the -mno-cygwin option.

> flag that'll compile without CYGWIN.DLL, but will that be sufficient
> for compiling a python extension?

Yes, but only if your extension does not require Posix semantics (i.e.,
only the standard C runtime stuff).

IIRC, you want something like the following:

    python setup.py build_ext --compiler=cygwin

Note that I usually only build Cygwin Python extensions, so it has been
a while since I tried the above.  Hopefully, someone who regularly builds
Cygwin -mno-cygwin or Mingw extensions will chime in.

Jason

-- 
Jason Tishler
Director, Software Engineering       Phone: 732.264.8770 x235
Dot Hill Systems Corp.               Fax:   732.264.8798
82 Bethany Road, Suite 7             Email: jason at tishler.net
Hazlet, NJ 07730 USA                 WWW:   http://www.dothill.com



From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Thu Jul 26 21:29:40 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 01:29:40 GMT
Subject: HIEP HIEP HOERA
References: <9jqbrh$pc6$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>
Message-ID: <rug1mtc8uk7m8vfh3konk21vge8sjormjf@4ax.com>

On 27 Jul 2001 02:15:45 +0200, Carel Fellinger <cfelling at iae.nl> wrote:

>Hurray hurray
>A huge hurray for the one that made our programming lives fun again!
>
>
>           I   I  I   I  I_--_  I_--_  _---_  \   /
>           I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I   \ /
>           I---I  I   I  I---I  I---I  I---I    V
>           I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I    I
>           I   I  -__-I  I   I  I   I  I   I    I
>
>
>I'm very distressed that in the last year the tone of many a posting
>is getting hostile and insulting to the point that one fears to post
>at all.  Some bots tent to be on the aggressive side now and again,
>and lately even the creator of all my programming fun became subject
>of direct attacts.  Let's keep behaving in the spirit of our beloved
>language: like consentient adults.
>
>Rational:

This line made me think of the PEP-format.  Maybe someone without a
Calvinistic background could come up with a PEP in favor of three cheers
for Python?

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From mwh at python.net  Sun Jul  1 18:25:44 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 23:25:44 +0100
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <f29vjto7q0ga8hmjs3q9kkt0ddv1lfru47@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <m3vglcz3pz.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> writes:

> >I do, of course, have my own opinions about where PythonLabs should be
> >spending its time improving things, but...
> 
> IMO: "performance, performance, performance".

IMO: "Earning DC some money so they still have jobs and don't starve
to death."

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  MGM will not get your whites whiter or your colors brighter.
  It will, however, sit there and look spiffy while sucking down
  a major honking wad of RAM.              -- http://www.xiph.org/mgm/


From guido at python.org  Mon Jul 30 09:29:13 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:29:13 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996447295.25645.python-list@python.org> <zE297.50718$EP6.11188601@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpofq2zgtu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> I find it interesting that the hackish hook you first added so one
> person could write C extension classes should be a doorway to
> unification.  Did you have this in mind when you wrote it?

No, but it testifies to the foresight of Don Beaudry who proposed it.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul 30 10:49:26 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 07:49:26 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com> <3B5FAD11.FB9D737E@engcorp.com> <tm336a7vjqjq5f@news.supernews.com> <3B656CBC.4F8FAFB2@interet.com>
Message-ID: <9k3s5m$9av$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B656CBC.4F8FAFB2 at interet.com>,
James C. Ahlstrom <jim at interet.com> wrote:
>
>But it would be naive to ignore the problem that Red Hat has
>declined to upgrade from 1.5.2.  A quick
>find | wc shows that Red Hat 7.1 has 84,494 lines of Python
>code not counting the Python libraries.  I don't know how
>Red Hat is supposed to upgrade Python and still know their
>code works.

That's a different issue.  Until June 2001, no version of Python after
1.5.2 was GPL-compatible according to the FSF.  Now that 2.0.1 and 2.1.1
are available, I expect that the various distributions will be
upgrading.  Eric Raymond will make sure of that.  ;-)

>BTW, it's not just the division proposal.  The change from
>lst.append(x, y) to lst.append((x, y)) is another example.

>From what I see, the complaints about the division proposal are
two-fold: silent breakage of old code and difficulty of maintaining
cross-version code.  Neither of those points applies to the
list.append() case, so few people have complained about that.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 11 11:20:51 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:20:51 -0700
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B4C6ED3.83596420@alcyone.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:

> Does it bother anyone that
> 
> a *= 3 + 4
> 
> returns a different value from
> 
> a = a * 3 + 4

No, because they're not the same thing.  Operator precedence means that
a * 3 + 4 is the same as (a * 3) + 4, not a * (3 + 4).

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Society attacks early when the individual is helpless.
\__/ B.F. Skinner
    REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
 Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 07:56:32 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 07:56:32 -0400
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <_Fh17.5204$i8.601280@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

stdout redirection is probably what you want, but without knowing which GUI
toolkit you are using it's hard t give you an appropriate method.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Chyr-Pyng Su" <cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote in message
news:3B455B5D.544A2EF5 at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw...
>
> Recently I have wrote a program in C, and start to write the GUI for it.
>
> I want to capture the message dump by the C program and show them on a
> text window.
> Does anyone have some idea to do that???   redirect the stdout???
>
>
> BR
>
> cp.
>
>
>




From tanzer at swing.co.at  Mon Jul 23 02:03:35 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:03:35 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:38:19 PDT."
             <3B586C8B.305B8679@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <m15OYoZ-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

> James Logajan wrote:
> > 
> > Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > If you use this
> > > a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
> > > should be.
> > 
> > Um, you've got that precisely reversed! If I see "message" anywhere in my
> > code, I know immediately that it is an instance of the class Message. Think
> > of it as an advanced form of Hungarian notation that tells you what type of
> > thing the variable is holding. (Although I'm no fan of Hungarian per se.)
> 
> The Ruby convention is aMessage which is really more clear. i.e.
> "message" could be of type string or of type Unicode or anything. I'm
> sure I've got code on my computer where message was of any of these
> types.

I've used the `aFoo` convention (and `theFoo`, too) in
case-insensitive languages like Ada. I stopped doing so as soon as I
used a case-sensitive language.

And I wouldn't claim `message` to be any sort of Hungarian notation.
As you note `message` might have many different types. 

Still, I like to be able to use the lowercase name to refer to an
object, while the same name capitalized refers to a class.

For the record, I started programming in case-insensitive languages
and had to use them for a long time. Although I prefer Ada over C++, I
really dislike the case blindness of Ada.

What's missing IMHO in this whole discussion is the question of costs
and benefits. In all written languages, there are costs for the reader
and a different set of costs for the writer. Normally, there is one
writer for many readers -- therefore one should try to reduce the
reader's costs. Unfortunately, many people completly disregard the
reader and campaign for reducing the costs of the writer (the hotly
contested reform of german writing rules is a prime example). For me,
the goal of making Python case-insensitive is also too preoccupied with
the writer's side of the game.  

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul 29 15:31:33 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:31:33 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com>

> * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
>into "Servlets" and "EJBs"

Note that this quickly went by the way side. The vast majority of all
web-served client-side graphic technologies are not Java. Javascript
(which is most emphatically not Java) dominates the landscape here.

> * Perl was also the defacto way to do CGI in the early web

Funny, too, as it never had to be, and you could easily gen up a
C program which did your CGI duties with vastly higher efficiency
(n.b.: assuming you didn't badly screw up in string management).

>cross-platform general-purpose rapid application development. Moore's
>law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant....

While I actually agree with this sentiment, note well that in compile-
time type checking communities, the primary argument in favor is
compile-time error checking, not speed. The speed argument is
actually close to dead, because a good optimizing jit VM can
achieve speeds nearly equivalent to C within about a factor of 2
much of the time, even without declared type information.

>I would much rather see Python evolve than to see Python#, Jython,
>Python++ and various other variants split off while our community is
>still so small. But really, the int/int->float thing is not really a way
>of avoiding a fork. It is more a way of doing *the right thing*
>technically in the opinion of Guido and many others.

I emphatically agree. Correctness should be pursued; things should
evolve. Care should be taken to offer a sensible migration path, and
things which break forward migration should be given due consideration.

C//



From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Wed Jul  4 17:07:48 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 17:07:48 -0400
Subject: Work on the C API Reference
Message-ID: <87vgl85rob.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I'm thinking about doing some work on Chapter 10 of the C API
reference so that there is better documentation of the various object
structures.  For instance rather than merely saying that
PyNumberMethods is a "Structure used to hold pointers to the functions
an extension type uses to implement the number protocol," I would
prefer that it laid out the structure of PyNumberMethods.  It would
also be nice if some common "gotchas" about methods were described (at
least stating something about coercion rules and the two methods of
coercion).

I would also like to include most (if not all) of the information in
"Extending and Embedding" in the reference manual so that there is one
central document describing everything about the API (so that you
don't, for instance, have to consult E&E for info on
PyArg_ParseTuple).

So before I start I want to ask: is this a worthwhile pursuit?  Is
there something I'm missing that makes this useless or undesirable?
Also how would I submit changes (especially realizing that I'm fairly
new to the API myself)?

Thanks,


- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Microprocessors cost $700 -- far too much for a tiny slice of refined,
 impurity-laced beach sand." Steve Gibson
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtDhaQACgkQjVztv3T8pztEXwCbBv8Et73+vwj57d1mZl5vXmRk
9V8AoJEkCiORKLaFFr1ySrYEej+3RKe3
=RNl4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  1 15:34:32 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:34:32 -0400
Subject: Odd problem with converting string to Hex?
References: <junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <OUK%6.17065$he.735624@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Benjamin Schollnick" <junkster at rochester.rr.com> wrote in ...
> Folks,
>
>    This is odd.... or at least I think it is....
>
>    Using Python v2.1....
>
>    Here's a snippet of the data:
>
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.1', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.4', 'RF Upstream Interface')
>
>    I've tried using:
>
>       eval (data[1])
>       hex (data[1])
>       str(data[1])
>
>    What gets returned is:
>
>    Unknown - Mac?  --->    ??H
>             Hex:            Long:
>
Let's get this straight. Your data records MAC-level addresses as six-byte
strings, and you want to represent each address as a set of byte values, in
hex, separated by dashes. OK so far?

>    Which os definetly not what I'm looking for.... I'm attempting to
> decode this in pure hexadecimal...
>
>    I suspect it's due to the "\x" in the string, but I can't pull up the
> documentation, since when I tried I wasn't getting a response from
> python.org.....
>
Nope. There *is* no"\x" in the string. Look:

>>> d = ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f')
>>> len(d[1])
6

Each \xXX (where the XX are hex digits) is made into a single 8-bit
character by the Python interpreter. The "H" is also a character. Let's look
at the decimal values of each character:

>>> [ord(x) for x in d[1]]
[0, 144, 131, 72, 17, 15]

Given the hex values in your data this seems reasonable.

>    Conceptually I'm trying to output it, similiar to:
>
>       00-90-83-11-0f    Assuming I'm reading the returned data properly.

That appears to be the problem: you assumed that Python was storing
everything inside the single quotes as individual bytes, when in fact the
hex escape sequences are interpreted as the string is constructed.

Getting the hex values is relatively easy using string formatting:

>>> ['%02x' % ord(x) for x in d[1]]
['00', '90', '83', '48', '11', '0f']

All you have to do to get what you want is join this list of strings with
dashes. I tend to favor the string methods for this kind of thing, though
some say it seems counterintuitive:

>>> "-".join(['%02x' % ord(x) for x in d[1]])
'00-90-83-48-11-0f'

Hope this helps.

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:27:00 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:27:00 +0100
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <yoxwv4y8y6r.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <srnsltg09pftvcn71n8s9bpktpeicmqhtj@4ax.com>

On 24 Jul 2001 12:37:48 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi>
wrote:

>Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Nice and easy for the hobbyist - NOT a sane option for professional
>> users who've bet their reputations on Python, and besides.
>
>They could just keep running the old versions where necessary;
>"legacy" applications don't really need new libraries or features from
>the new versions, do they? I think your reputation will be just fine,
>when you say that these apps need some specific version of python
>installed :-).

How would you feel if you found out that installing your new wiz-bang
application suddenly meant your bread-and-butter application broke.
That is what can happen - someone gets a new application from a
different supplier, updates their Python to use it and *BANG* - the
existing app breaks.

If you ever had to deal with a customer blaming you for something that
was due to them getting a DLL change resulting from a different
applications installation, you'll know what this is like. But in that
case, it's usually down to their other application having bad install
logic or due to common system DLLs not maintaining back compatability
- people understand that in the end.

This case is due to "the language and run-time environment *I*
encouraged you to depend on changed its most basic semantics - sorry
about that." - a little different, really.



From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 09:04:11 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:04:11 -0400
Subject: ssh control from Python
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010726084341.027d05a0@mail.mindspring.com>

I'm trying to control ssh from Python using pty. I have made some progress. 
For example, if I send the wrong password, I get a message back saying so. 
However, after sending the correct password, sent commands just get echoed 
back to me.

I verified that I can use ssh from the command prompt, both by specifying 
the remote command as an extra arg to ssh and through the interactive shell.

I'm really close, but obviously still missing something.

I'm using Python 2.1 and Linux Mandrake 7.2 (kernel 2.2.17 I think).


#!/usr/bin/env python
# original version by Alex (the_brain at mit.edu) per 2000/10/24 c.l.p
import os, pty, time, signal

def remote_ex(hostname, password, cmd):
     pid, fd = pty.fork()
     if pid==0:
         os.execv("/usr/bin/ssh", ['/usr/bin/ssh', hostname])
     else:
         password += '\n'
         cmd += '\n'
         delay = 3
         time.sleep(delay)
         print ">> 1 Child says %r" % os.read(fd,1024).strip()
         print ">> 2 Child took %d password bytes." % os.write(fd, password)
         time.sleep(delay)  # being over cautious
         print ">> 3 Child took %d command bytes" % os.write(fd, cmd)
         print ">> 4 Child says %r" % os.read(fd,1024).strip()
         print ">> 5 Child took %d exit bytes." % os.write(fd, "exit\n")
         print ">> 6 Child says %r" % os.read(fd,1024).strip()
         # st ()
         os.kill(pid, signal.SIGKILL)

def main():
     cmd = 'echo $HOST > foo.text'
     host = 'my.host.com'
     pass = 'password'
     remote_ex(host, pass, cmd)

if __name__ == "__main__":
     main()


The output:
$ ./ssh.py
 >> 1 Child says "user at my.host.com's password:"
 >> 2 Child took 7 password bytes.
 >> 3 Child took 22 command bytes
 >> 4 Child says 'echo $HOST > foo.text'
 >> 5 Child took 5 exit bytes.
 >> 6 Child says 'exit'


If I send the wrong password:
 >> 1 Child says "user at my.host.com's password:"
 >> 2 Child took 8 password bytes.
 >> 3 Child took 22 command bytes
 >> 4 Child says "Permission denied, please try 
again.\r\r\nuser at my.host.com's password:"
 >> 5 Child took 5 exit bytes.
 >> 6 Child says ''


So sent commands are echoed back to me instead of being executed with their 
output sent back.

Any ideas?


-Chuck




From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 10:22:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:22:24 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995302230.31372.python-list@python.org> <GGMCFM.MHr@leeds.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B544A20.5F4A76A8@engcorp.com>

Nick Efford wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:48:42 -0600,
> Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
> 
> > Getting Python accepted in an organization as a viable alternative to
> > Perl requires a lot of hard work. Once you've got a foothold it seems
> > stupid to shoot yourself in the foot by introducing random
> > incompatibilities that may or may not provide better traction for
> > non-users (not to mention the hackish solutions to long division that
> > would be introduced).
> 
> IIRC, aren't Perl-ers contemplating incompatibilities of
> a similar degree for Perl 6? (albeit with some kind of
> automated Perl 5 --> 6 conversion tool provided to ease
> the transition...)

I would think that even with Python's dynamic nature, it would
be possible to make a "Pareto scanner" which would uncover
80% of the possible problems with 20% of the work it would
take to make something more sophisticated.  I think "divscan.py"
could work...

> > I'm not against making this change per se, however, I think it should be
> > in the context of an overhaul of the entire numerical system, and it
> > definitely deserves a 3.0 labelling since that would indicate that there
> > are incompatible changes involved with upgrading.
> 
> Yes - I also like the idea of using a 3.0 version number
> to signal the importance of these changes.

That would be the point of a transition period, I think.  Starting
in the near future there would be support for the new style of 
division (future statement?) which would be optionally enabled
for new code.  Later on, when all the real work has been done,
version 3.0 would be released: this would be the first version
actually to *break* code, not the 2.3 or whatever release...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  9 18:49:00 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 15:49:00 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87DA5@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A34DC.4F524DD7@ActiveState.com>

Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> This is quite true in my experience, too.  I work in an IT shop that simply
> refuses to recognize Python (and Perl) because most of the people in
> leadership will not accept it.  The major strikes?
> 
> 1. It's Free.  How serious can a language be if it's given away? We seem to
> feel more secure in spending over $2500.00 per box for MS Developers Studio
> and various other software license (CORBA goes for $1,200 a box, I'm told)?

ActiveState has a program wherein we can sell you Python at whatever
price point is comfortable for you. :) If $2500.00 is your price point,
that's fine with us.

Actually scratch that. I'm going to run this program myself from home.
Contact me separately for my home phone number.

>..
> 3. No Support! At least no 900 number to call for a per minute fee. Doesn't
> seem to matter that in the past couple of years I have never had to wait
> over a day to get a answer to a question. Perhaps we would feel better if
> there were someone we could sue.

Actually, ActiveState really does have a program where we can provide
technical support for open source languages. Despite my levity above,
this is a real product that provides serious value to people who need to
know that they can get (e.g.) custom builds of Python when they need
them.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From mcalla at home.com  Tue Jul 17 17:17:56 2001
From: mcalla at home.com (Mike Callahan)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:17:56 GMT
Subject: "Print" in IDlE??
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171509470.12906-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <8Y157.61253$B5.13809251@news1.rdc1.tn.home.com>

Because, there is no way to make "Print" platform independent, which IDLE
is.

Mike Callahan

"Prem Rachakonda" <prem at engr.uky.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171509470.12906-100000 at seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu...
> Hi,
>   Why is that there is no print option in IDlE. Though not an absoute
> necessity, is there a reason for that. It would have been good if it had
> the print option, because you intutively go for FILE-->PRINT and don't
> find
> it there!!
>
> Prem.
>
> ____________________________________________________________
>                        Prem Rachakonda
> ____________________________________________________________
> Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
> 700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
> Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
> PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
> eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
> Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651
>




From guido at python.org  Mon Jul 30 09:32:21 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:32:21 GMT
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
References: <mailman.996447416.25799.python-list@python.org> <JFa97.68$Nq1.2992@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>
Message-ID: <cplml6zgom.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Paolo Invernizzi" <paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com> writes:

> Request... is possible to provide also a MSI package?
> 
> Actually in our company we are using python21 standard installation
> distributed to developers as a zap, would be nice to have a MSI ( as
> ActiveState does with its python implementation... <wink> )

ActivePython is just a repackaging of Python using MSI, so I see no
need for us to *also* provide one.  Too much duplicated efforts.  If
ActivePython doesn't have what you need, the quickest way to get your
needs met is to ask ActiveState what they are. :)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 27 10:42:03 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 16:42:03 +0200
Subject: Memory usage, in droves
References: <9jr62c$16d$1@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <j4zo9qfn7o.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Danyel Fisher" <danyelf at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> So I want to figure out the memory leaks--what objects am I not letting go?
> What is the GC missing?
> 
> I can certainly search for the inefficiencies and the errors by hand, but it
> seems to me that there ought to be a way to generate a table of the form
>     <object name>    <object size>

When you configure the compiler with --with-pydebug, it will keep
track of all objects, and print a list of remaining objects at exit.

My suspicion is that you are putting objects into global containers
(dictionaries, lists), and never remove them from there. So you might
check all caches, lookup tables, etc. whether they are constantly
growing, and perhaps keep objects that you were already considering
dead.

If you have a suspicion that certain types of objects are ever
increasing in count, you could put a counter into __init__ and __del__
to keep track of how many objects you have. Be careful not to add a
__del__ to an object in a cycle, though.

If you find such objects, and wonder why they are never released, you
can look at their sys.getrefcount, to see how many "unexplained"
references to these objects you have.

If you need to find out where these references come from, you can try
my gc.getreferents patch, which finds all containers containing a
certain object.

Hope this helps,
Martin


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 26 15:27:19 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:27:19 -0400
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
In-Reply-To: <20010726103233.B9810@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
References: <oqae1rg432.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
	<15200.17588.34980.217940@beluga.mojam.com>
	<20010726103233.B9810@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
Message-ID: <oqsnfjebjc.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[John Aycock]

> There are some papers on automatic removal of gotos; I can dig up the
> references if anyone wants them.

Oh, we could probably come up with something, if we really wanted to simulate
"goto"s, but my fear is that a general solution would also yield unreadable
code, and this, I'm not willing to.  If the generated code is going to be
indecipherable, why not just leave it as Perl! :-).  <-- [Note: a smiley!]

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Wed Jul 25 11:23:42 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:23:42 GMT
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
References: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9AE88FD37rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Rupert Scammell wrote:

> Recently I've been using a call like os.system("/usr/bin/lynx -dump
> http://www.sample.com > /tmp/site-text.txt") to grab formatted text
> versions of pages (without HTML) for subsequent processing. 
> However, I don't like the fact that this technique introduces an
> additional dependency into my code (lynx). I was wondering if
> anyone could recommend an equivalent Python function or module that
> lets me do this without introducing a platform specific dependency?
> 
> urllib.urlretrieve() gets back the raw HTML page, so it's not
> really helpful to me, except as a starting point for processing.

Use the HTML or SGML parser module. Mind you, I couldn't get the HTML-
parser to work [*], but the SGML parser works like a charm. Keep in 
mind, though, that it's not a full SGML parser, not by a long shot. It 
implements just enough to do HTML processing, but that suits me fine.


Robert Amesz
-- 
[*] It could be just me, but the documentation is very unhelpful, and 
there is no example code to dissect.


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Fri Jul 27 13:09:02 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Dr. David Mertz)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:09:02 -0400
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction (fwd)
Message-ID: <uAaY7kKkXoxS092yn@bellatlantic.net>                         

Ratnakar Malla <rmalla1 at lsu.edu> wrote:
|I need to read from a very long file. But the only information I am
|interested is
|2 lines at the bottom of the file.
|1) Can i read the file in the reverse direction , so that I dont lose
|time?

OK... shameless plug, in my forthcoming book _Text Processing in Python_
(still a number of months away), I show this example program to do what
Ratnakar requests.  HTH:

#---------- read_backwards.py ----------#
# Read blocks of a file from end to beginning.
# Blocks may be defined by any delimiter, but the
#  constants LINE and PARA are useful ones.
# Works much like the file object method '.readline()':
#  repeated calls continue to get "next" part, and
#  function returns empty string once BOF is reached.

# Define constants
LINE = '\n'
PARA = '\n\n'
READSIZE = 1000

# Global variables
buffer = ''

def read_backwards(fh, mode=LINE, sizehint=READSIZE, _init=[0]):
    """Read blocks of file backwards (return empty string when done)"""
    # Trick of mutable default argument to hold state between calls
    if not _init[0]:
        fh.seek(0,2)
        _init[0] = 1
    # Find a block (using global buffer)
    global buffer
    while 1:
        # first check for block in buffer
        delim = buffer.rfind(mode)
        if delim <> -1:     # block is in buffer, return it
            block = buffer[delim+len(mode):]
            buffer = buffer[:delim]
            return block
        elif fh.tell()==0:  # BOF reached, return remainder (or empty string)
            block = buffer
            buffer = ''
            return block
        else:               # Read some more data into the buffer
            readsize = min(fh.tell(),sizehint)
            fh.seek(-readsize,1)
            buffer = fh.read(readsize) + buffer
            fh.seek(-readsize,1)

#-- Self test of read_backwards()
if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Let's create a test file to read in backwards
    open('lines','w').write('\n'.join(['--- %d ---'%n for n in range(15)]))
    # Now open for reading backwards
    fh = open('lines','rb')
    # Read the blocks in, one per call (block==line by default)
    block = read_backwards(fh)
    while block:
        print block
        block = read_backwards(fh)




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:27:00 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:27:00 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995978334.29554.python-list@python.org> <su3rltc8d88jrjdv9v73otlbsrajleqs21@4ax.com> <XJi77.25371$EP6.5981216@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <2pnsltk22t61vfcgl0lcfgqqj3iclh4gsm@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:01:27 GMT, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com>
wrote:

>
>"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:su3rltc8d88jrjdv9v73otlbsrajleqs21 at 4ax.com...
>> > <list>*<list> raises a TypeError
>>
>> Given that other arithmetic operations have been hijacked for other
>> jobs (concat etc) with lists, there *is* no sensible meaning for
>this.
>
>Actually there *is*: cross concatenation, (somewhat similar to set
>cross products)
>
>L1*L2 := [i1+i2 for i1 in Li for i2 in L2]

Oops

Should have remembered that.



From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 16:19:28 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:19:28 +0200
Subject: guessing mime type without extension?
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107101150400.13716-100000@mlug.missouri.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4B6350.577C1F04@stroeder.com>

Michael wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to guess a files mime type by content rather than extension
> similar to the way the Unix 'file' command works?

Take a look at the modules sndhdr and imghdr for images and
sounds. Don't know about others.

Ciao, Michael.


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 09:23:57 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:23:57 -0400
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B4C536D.7264BF57@engcorp.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> Does it bother anyone that
> 
> a *= 3 + 4
> 
> returns a different value from
> 
> a = a * 3 + 4
> 
> ??

Not if the value it returns is the same as

a = a * 7

...

----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 11:24:18 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:24:18 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:

> Thanks for taking the time to address these issues. I agree your
> proposed three steps would go a long way towards easing any
> compatibility concerns. I have one request though... make the first
> release where the new division is the default be named 3.0. It's much
> easier to go to management and say "There's a new stable major release
> of Python that I think we should go to, but since it's a major release
> I'll need to spend some time testing our current applications."
> Management tends to be much less willing to schedule maintenance time
> every six months for what they consider minor point releases.
> 
> If there was to be a scheduled 3.0 release, any other source
> incompatible changes that were seen as important would also have a
> natural place to go.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I think I'll do it this way: Python 3.x
will be the first incompatible version, Python 2.x will require
__future__ statements or other explicit ways to indicate that the
programmer wants the new feature.

For less disturbing changes like nested scopes or generators (which
would break only very small amounts of old code), we can introduce the
new feature for real in the next release (e.g., nested scopes will be
standard in 2.2, I expect generators will become standard in 2.3), but
for devastatingly code-breaking changes like division, I'll wait until
3.0 before it becomes the law.

A number of people have proposed version directives or directives to
select specific division semantics.  I am not in favor of this kind of
solution, since it makes the two alternative semantics a *permanent*
wart of the language.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sheila at spamcop.net  Sat Jul 21 16:02:09 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:02:09 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995739157.3632.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9onjltohimabuu0to7b1n7lnme21nrl8hc@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:16:42 -0400, "Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.995739157.3632.python-list at python.org>:

:Why not comment on Sheila's previous post - an  
:unambiguous report of an active and interested 
:member of the community backed up 
:by numbers of years of classroom teaching 
:experience.
:
:Has case sensitivity been found to be a significant
:issue?
:
:"Not once." 
:
:Even surprised me a bit.
:
:"Not once."

Let me qualify that just a bit. Here is the actual quote from my
message:

SK > and I don't remember it ever being a problem, where a
SK > student called me over to his/her machine and asked me for help 
SK > finding a bug, and it came out to be related to case-sensitivity. I
SK > don't remember this happening even once. There were many other bugs
SK > that made us tear our hair out, but never, never this.

I'm not saying that it never happened. I'm saying, if it did, I don't
remember it. (In other words, it was so easily dealt with--if at
all--that it was not noteworthy.) Also, *if* it did occur (which to my
recollection it did not), it was easily dealt with.

Anyhow, I'm conducting a survey of computer science teachers. I hope I
will get a good 30 to 50 responses? In a few weeks I will post the
results.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:08:16 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:16 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <apaolto6pr6cevpk0lgudiapnbrttaj8u9@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:18:38 +0300, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:

>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:42:03 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> 
>> Or you could not change it in the first place, eliminate the transition
>> period requirement, keep Python's integer division operator consistent
>> with other languages 
>
>non-issue. Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and
>Tcl, for instance.

All rarely used languages compared with C, C++, Java, BASIC and
others.

And what do you mean *correctly* - integer division is NOT incorrect,
it is the only form of division that is appropriate for integer
measures. If you are using inherently real measures you should use
floats - not integers.

>> I simply cannot believe that the benefit that will be gained will be
>> worth the price in inconvenience.
>
>Here we must agree to disagree. Guido thinks that the benefits it
>will give to Python readability are big enough, and I happen to
>agree with him.

Are clearly debatable matters of opinion going to continue influencing
basic built-in code semantics? I can propose so many that *nobodies*
old code would work afterwards, and I'll have a seemingly good reason
for every single one.

How about it?

Lets start with indenting. People get upset with this regularly. A
good compromise position would be for Python to require both correct
indenting AND block markers, and to insist that both match up. This
would clearly force everyone to write readable code, and it would
catch both broken indentation AND mismatched markers after editing.
People who rely on block markers can look for them as they scan down
code, whereas people who look for indentation can equally look for
that to.

I propose we put this change as from __future__ in 2.3, and force
*everyone* to comply with it by 2.4 - after all *nobody* could
*possibly* claim I don't have a point, so while we should *listen* to
any opinions to the contrary, we've *obviously* got enough to
justification to go ahead anyway!

As for every single Python program or library ever being broken, what
the hell - we *have* got a transition procedure, haven't we!

I'll have the next everything-killer ready to go into the 2.4
__future__ - after all, if we're going to break code we might as well
get people used to it.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 09:39:44 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:39:44 +0200
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
In-Reply-To: <3B4AFE8D.DE1F6563@stroeder.com>
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net> <23891c90.0107100440.2eb444af@posting.google.com> <3B4AFE8D.DE1F6563@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <20010710153944.Z8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 03:09:33PM +0200, Michael Str?der wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:

> > Can the open source
> > movement include everyone, or is it inherently elitist?

> Since you asked: The latter.

Well, meritocracies are *very* likely to be elitist, but contrary to most
elitist systems, there is a clear and open doorway to the meritocrically
elite: contribute ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From nperkins7 at home.com  Wed Jul 18 23:34:44 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 03:34:44 GMT
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9j2en5$q15$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <ozs57.503585$eK2.105539497@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

I am no expert, but here's how it worked for me:

First, you need to write a 'setup.py' script.  Here's one of mine:
My program is just the one file (mp3prog.py), so this very simple setup will
do the trick.


from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe

setup(name="mp3prog",
      scripts=["mp3prog.py"],
      )


This is in a file called 'setup.py', in the same dir as my prog.
Then you run this setup program, and give it the argument 'py2exe'.
To give the argument from the dos prompt, (not the >>> prompt) type:

python setup.py py2exe    (from the right directory)

If you run the setup.py script from within PythonWin, you can type 'py2exe'
in the dialog that pops up when you hit F5 (run).

The setup will run for a long time, produce a huge amount of text output,
including many error messages that you can ignore, and then produce a
directory containing some .dll's and an .exe


That is it.  You can run the .exe.  You can zip up the whole dir and send it
to your friend (who doesn't have python installed), and say "hey, here's a
program I wrote!"





"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9j2en5$q15$1 at uranium.btinternet.com...
> have you any examples on how to use py2exe???
>
> Gary.
>
> "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
> news:E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> > You need py2exe:
> >
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/
> >
> >
> > "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
> > news:oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> > > Hello,
> > > I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> > > I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the
> file
> > > menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a
> hand
> > > with this it would be great.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>




From mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM  Fri Jul  6 22:12:27 2001
From: mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 19:12:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Tuple Assignment Statement
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0107061848540.546-100000@SPIELZEUG.HASENTALER.THOUSAND-OAKS.CA.US>

I am new to Python.  The last time that I used a high-order language was at
university in the early Seventies when I wrote a compiler for a language
with characteristics fairly similar to Python.  Since then, I've spent a
significant portion of my time writing in machine and assembler languages.

Am I correct in assuming that the following assignment statement is valid.

  Scheme, Host, Path = urlparse("http://JANUS.TO.GD-ES.COM/netops/")

If valid, would the three elements contain the following?

  Scheme:  http:
  Host:	   //JANUS.TO.GD-ES.COM
  Path:	   /netops/

If the commas in the above assignment statement were replaced with an equal
(=), all three elements would contain the same value, a reference to a
tuple?

Merton Campbell Crockett




From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sun Jul  8 11:42:34 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:42:34 GMT
Subject: Partially evaluated functions
References: <mailman.993067482.25265.python-list@python.org> <abeY6.301566$eK2.61312477@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <qveY6.330710$oc7.33319652@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <FGtY6.311407$eK2.62392325@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <tkfjjaj9irlm7b@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <Kb%17.463229$oc7.73256773@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Scott David Daniels" <Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org> wrote in message
news:tkfjjaj9irlm7b at corp.supernews.com...
> You might make this slightly more readable with:
> > def curry(*args, **create_time_kwds):
> >     func = args[0]
> >     create_time_args = args[1:]
> >     ...
> =============
> def curry(func, *args, **create_time_kwds):
>      create_time_args = args[:]
>      ...

It has already been pointed out that this is broken if "func" is used as a
keyword argument:

curry(f, func=g)

> Depending upon how this gets used, you might be safe
> not even performing the copy, so you'd get:

The copy is never necessary.  'args' is a tuple and therefore immutable.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From mikael at isy.liu.se  Fri Jul 13 13:13:49 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:13:49 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Newbie list question
In-Reply-To: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010713191349.mikael@isy.liu.se>

Hi Matthew!

Welcome to the world of Python.

On 13-Jul-2001 Matthew Alton wrote:
 >  I am a UNIX/C programmer w/15y experience.  Forgive me if my neural
 >  pathways are all about following pointers.  The adjustment to
 >  Python-think is bumpy but I'll get by with a little help from my
 >  friends, eh?

Before we start; everything is a pointer in Python.

 >  Here's the crux of the biscuit:
 >  
 > >>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.

Actually, we have a pointer foo pointing to a list of pointers to 
the strings 'a', 'b', and 'c'.

 > >>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?

We copy the pointer foo. So bar now points to the same list as foo.

 > >>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.

baz points to a copy of the list. However, that list still points to 
the same strings...

The pointer stuff explains the following.

 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']
 > >>> bar 
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
 > >>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
 >  bar (?)
 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
 > >>> bar
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
 >  expected.

But now things happen:

 > >>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

The RHS creates a new list containing pointers to strings 'a', 'b', and
'c'. The LHS binds foo to this new list, i.e. foo now points to the new
list. You have not done anything to bar. 

 > >>> foo
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
 > >>> bar
 >  ['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?
 > >>> baz
 >  ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz still unaffected, of course.
 > >>> 

I suggest that you go through your code again and try id(foo), id(bar),
and id(baz) here and there. The function id(pointer) returns an integer,
basically the address of pointer.

All this is documented behaviour. However, I do not have the time to find 
it for you right now. I'm sorry.

Good luck
/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    13-Jul-2001
Time:    18:59:45

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul  9 13:45:20 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:45:20 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <9iciar$fqd$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Q4m27.8468$Y6.2970324@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

 However, the lawyers had a issue with that so one of the COTS suppliers
> were asked to `supply' it to us.  Problem solved.

Lets see:  I've slept on cots and eaten apri'cots but you must mean
something different.

Perhaps some of us should set up a Python COTS supplier to supply Python
for mission-critical software.  The same idea as the corporation set up
specifically to distribute RU-### (misoprotal?, the 'abortion' drug) in the
United States (and take whatever legal/political flack that ensued).

What should such an entity should do?  I imagine develop a super-heavy-duty
test suite that would document the actual behaviour of particular code in a
particular environment, with coverage of all extreme cases that can be
thought up, and certify that the tests had been run competantly and
honestly.  Distribute with CRC checker?  What else?

Terry J. Reedy





From rharkins at thinkronize.com  Fri Jul 27 15:08:01 2001
From: rharkins at thinkronize.com (Rich Harkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:08:01 -0400
Subject: scoping problems
In-Reply-To: <yrx66cegqs2.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <NEBBIGEFDMPMOPJDPFGLMEHDCCAA.rharkins@thinkronize.com>

In Python this just works - no need for prototypes (the symbols don't bind
inside the function until it is called although the scopes do).  For example
try the following on your interactive interpreter:

>>> x=5
>>> def f():
...   print x
...
>>> f()
5
>>> x=2
>>> f()
2
>>>

Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Narayan Desai
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 2:40 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: scoping problems
>
>
> How can i define the following code:
>
> def a():
>     b()
>
> def b():
>     a()
>
> (ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate)
> How do you get the namespaces right?
>
> I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't clear
> to me how to do this in python.
> thanks...
>  -nld
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From matt at mondoinfo.com  Sat Jul 14 14:58:08 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:58:08 GMT
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com> <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l15i0.qi.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:25:05 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>The latest issue of the Economist magazine has an in-depth survey of
>Italy

[. . .]

>it starts out with a Paean titled "What a lovely off place!"

A rare typo has escaped Alex's keyboard here. It's "odd", rather than
"off".

I haven't yet read any of the survey (The Economist arrives a little
late here in the colonies) but it seems likely that they're making a
small joke about what a British tourist might say. And while I
wouldn't be surprised to hear some things in Italy called odd, I would
be surprised to hears someone say that the country was "off".

Regards,
Matt



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 17 14:37:39 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:37:39 -0600
Subject: Two Simple Qs:
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D54D@admin56.narex.com>

> From: newgene [mailto:newgene at bigfoot.com]
> 
> I am quite new to python. I have 2 simple questions:
> 
> 1. How can I run a simply Python script under IDLE directly? I wrote a
> start.py to do some routine work, like importing some medules and
> adding my working path into sys.path, before I start to work. This
> script is just like a macro or batch file under DOS. Now I have to
> open this file and then run it. I hope python have a statement can run
> it directly( maybe like 'run start.py').

try "import start.py"

> 2. When I made some modification of my own module after I import this
> module,python can not recognized the modified module even I import it
> again. It raised the same error msg, but gave me the error line
> actually I have corrected, that is , it run as the old module but
> display the error from the newer module file. I have to restart python
> environment and import again, then my module run correctly. Is this a
> bug? And how to resolve it?

Not quite clear what you're asking here, but try "reload(myModule)"

hth,
-- bjorn



From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 21 19:34:33 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:34:33 -0400
Subject: Inno installer for Windows (was RE: Distributing a Python app)
In-Reply-To: <ur8vct1z2.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEALLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Bolen and Niki Spahiev, speculate about ways to get an Inno
 installer finished for Python]

I'd like to see an Inno installer for Windows Python, but can't make more
time to pursue it.  A "90% there" (in terms of coverage, not effort -- I
figure it will take at least as much work to get the last 10% done as went
into getting the first 90% working) Inno install script has been checked
into CVS:  start at

  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/

and navigate down to

  PCBuild/python.iss

It works fine so far as it goes; see the comments at the start for what
remains.

If the community would like to finish this project, great!  Please do.

In the meantime, Wise has kindly offered to let PythonLabs use their
InstallMaster 8 product gratis, and that's the quickest path to a solid
modern Windows installer without losing functionality (Wise 5.0a did a great
job for us -- but most of the Windows flavors we run on now didn't even
exist when it was released!).

aged-very-well-but-not-immortal-ly y'rs  - tim




From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 21 23:41:06 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:41:06 -0400
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
In-Reply-To: <lrsjlt0f0b0c60s3k5dv0gh7v9413urqj2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEBALAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> I don't seem to be getting much response. Please help!!!

There are only two people who can answer this stuff, and I already did, so
you'll have to try harder to make me feel guilty <wink>.

> To restate the problem, I want to know how to modify the following
> code...
>
>   from __future__ import generators
>
>   def test () :
>     for a in xrange (4) :
>       yield a
>
>   a = test ()
>
>   print a.next ()
>   print a.next ()
>
>   b = a
>
>   print a.next ()
>   print a.next ()
>
>   print b.next ()
>   print b.next ()
>
> So that the 'b=a' line takes a copy of a - rather than just making a
> reference.

You cannot -- it's not supported directly.  Even if you used Stackless
Python and used full-blown continuations, you still couldn't.

> The current code gives the result...
>
> 0
> 1
> 2
> 3
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "test2.py", line 17, in ?
>     print b.next ()
> StopIteration
>
> The output I want is...
>
> 0
> 1
> 2
> 3
> 2
> 3
>
> Obviously I need a deep copy - the shallow copies achieved by slices
> on lists etc would not preserve the entire state of the generator.

Steve, you can't even get a "deep copy" of an xrange object in isolation --
and the state of a local xrange object is part of your generator's state.
See my earlier reply for more on that.

> Is there any way to do this? Even a definite no would save me worrying
> about it.

definite-no-ly y'rs  - tim




From phawkins at connact.com  Wed Jul 25 12:55:32 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:55:32 -0400
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <0bj77.544176$eK2.114166570@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9jm8re$a1c$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <wk7kwxvth7.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "TB" == Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> writes:

TB> While it's probably much harder to read, one could 
TB> avoid copying the list twice and maintain the semantics 
TB> of sorting in place by doing something like the following...

TB> def sort_by_field( index ):
TB>     def cmpfunc( x, y, i=index ):
TB>         return cmp( x[i], y[i] )
TB>     return cmpfunc

TB> data.sort( sort_by_field( 2 ) )

TB> ---Tom

That's what I thought, but when I timed it, I found that this method
is slower, because of the repeat function calls.  (Which means I have a
bunch of cmpfnc-style sorts to rewrite using decorate/undecorate...)

Patricia
--
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 15 20:11:55 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 20:11:55 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions (was: Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> <*someone*@ActiveState.com> wrote:
> > Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
> > binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
> > code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
> > warnings is trivial.
> 
> I'm all for rapid development and such, and I use Python whenever I think
> it has an advantage over another choice (which is quite often).
> 
> But what does 'larger' mean in this case?  Larger than the MySQL engine?
> Larger than a linux kernel?  Larger than the Red Hat install scripts?

Yes.  Yes.  And yes.

(Oh, sorry... how big are those programs?  No, wait, it doesn't matter.)

> I wouldn't implement a RDBMS in Python. Nor would I implement a word
> processor in assembler.

Neither would I.  An RDBMS would most likely need performance beyond
what Python could provide, but if that were not the case, Python would
most certainly be an option.  (I don't know what assembler has to do
with this discussion, but I would prefer Python over it for writing
a word processor, performance issues aside.  Performance issues 
included, I might use a little bit of assembler for the hot spots 
of the word processor, but a more reasonable choice would be C, of 
course.  A good way of writing very large applications in Python
would be to have the performance-critical parts coded not in Python,
then spend the development effort where it counts on the higher level
complex functionality, and testing.)

> *nix OSes (like BSD) have attained an incredible scalability.  
[...]
> And what language is the
> majority of the core of BSD written in?  It's written in C, which does
> not even claim to be an OO language.

Typical Python applications, even really large ones, would not likely 
have the sheer number of programmers working on it that the BSD core
has had, nor the length of time they've worked on it.

> An application's scalability has much more to do with the programmer's
> use of algorithms and abstraction than with the language in which it's
> implemented...no matter how much money ActiveState has invested in it.

Did you write all this just for this jab at ActiveState?  I know of the
opinion some people have of them, but I didn't sense that *someone*'s 
posting contained anything more commercial or biased than what many of 
the rest of us, who don't work for ActiveState, have written.

You're right about algorithms having more to do with this issue than the
language, but some languages support better algorithms (by making
their implementation easier and less buggy) and faster development than
others.  Those are merely two of the ways in which Python supports
"larger" applications.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 20 22:24:34 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:24:34 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5863EE.F9047098@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.995650811.20135.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58E7E2.3A080C8F@alcyone.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:

> The Ruby convention is aMessage which is really more clear. i.e.
> "message" could be of type string or of type Unicode or anything. I'm
> sure I've got code on my computer where message was of any of these
> types.

Which is a convention that always seemed a little strange to me (though
not repugnant) -- what really does that indefinite article give you? 
Might as well just write `message'.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ But we go on pretending / Stories like ours / Have happy endings
\__/ The Russian and Florence, _Chess_
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From clpy at snakefarm.org  Wed Jul  4 17:13:15 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 23:13:15 +0200
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4386EB.A16E686@snakefarm.org>

Dave Stanton wrote:

> What book (s) would people recommend for a beginner to python ?.

"Learning Python" by Mark Lutz & David Ascher (O'Reilly) will be your
friend. Never seen a better introduction to a programming language (well,
except for NI's LabVIEW tutorial book :-).

cg.


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Jul  3 03:17:53 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:17:53 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.994105325.25347.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Bke07.7479$e5.975453@newsb.telia.net>

Carsten wrote:

> Well, the Python world before augmented assignment was quite simple:
> Operators never changed the objects they acted on.

nothing prevents __add__ from changing the objects.

> Now we have augmented assignments.  x=+y _can_ change the object
> bound to x, depending if x is mutable or immutable.

has nothing to do with mutability, and all to do with how the
__iadd__ method is implemented:

    + is an alias for __add__
    += is an alias for __iadd__

as for all other operators, the exact semantics are up to the
type/class implementation.

</F>




From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 15:41:06 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 23:41:06 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107072339090.15957-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Tim Peters wrote:

>    idiv(5.0, 3.0)

Yes, I was going to propose this too.

>returned 1 too; i.e., that idiv(i, j) mathematically return floor(i/j).
>
>Alternative:  Given the point about dumbdbm above, the missing half is a
>builtin to return (mathematically) ceiling(i/j) too.  A very direct approach
>to both is to forget div/idiv and introduce two-argument builtins
>
>    floor(i, j)   # return floor of mathematical quotient
>    ceiling(i, j) # return ceiling of mathematical quotient

Maybe make it floor2(i, j) and ceil2(i, j) ?
(like atan2)

(And put math into builtins ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From gregj at pdxperts.com  Wed Jul 11 23:35:13 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 03:35:13 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <TfQ27.328548$p33.6645853@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <9ihjfu$3ls$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <RV837.333819$p33.6744825@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"jcm" <grumble at usa.net> wrote in message
news:9ihjfu$3ls$1 at news.mathworks.com...
> Greg Jorgensen <gregj at pdxperts.com> wrote:
> > "jcm" <grumble at usa.net> wrote in message
> > news:9ifo90$4hh$1 at news.mathworks.com...
>
> >> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
> >> slow.
>
> > I drove my motorcycle around Laguna Seca, and it was slow. Maybe if I
bought
> > a different brand of motorcycle I could go around the track faster.
>
> Well that's just silly.  That's a bad analogy, for reasons that should
> be obvious.

Given the little information you posted it's an apt analogy. Why should
anyone assume Python is at fault when we haven't seen any of your code? We
are supposed to assume that you are an expert programmer who has maxed out
the possibilities of Python, but you don't offer any evidence of that.
Likewise my facetious analogy expects you to assume that I am an expert
motorcycle rider, but I don't offer any evidence.

> Also, recall that I said my ONLY point was that cpu-bound performance
> CAN become an issue.  That is, depending on what you want your mud to
> do, you may find Python to be slow.  I've spent time trying to squeeze
> more performance out of Python, but was unable to speed things up to a
> point where I was happy.

A "MUD engine" sounds to me like something sufficiently complicated and
unique that no one who hasn't seen your code can really comment on it. It's
not like writing, "I wrote a quicksort program in Python and it's slow." I
don't know what a MUD engine is supposed to do or how complicated it is. I
am guessing that there are a lot of ways to write one, though.

> I didn't bother posting my source code,
> because I'm personally not interested in looking for further
> optimizations.  Feel free to email me if you want it, but I doubt it's
> worth your time.

I guess I don't know WHAT you want. If your point is that CPU-bound programs
are slow, we can agree and leave it at that.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA






From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 14 10:46:23 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 00:46:23 +1000
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <mailman.995092164.12281.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B505B3F.C2851242@student.gu.edu.au>

> >[f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]

> My variant is:
> 
> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = map(lambda x, y: x, string.split(line), 6*[None])

> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = pad(string.split(line), 6, None)

I've noticed that everyone is using string.split. Is there a reason why
we aren't using the .split() function of strings? They work the same way
in all these examples, so I was wondering was this because they aren't
supported in python 1.5?

>>> line = 'Hi, my name is Joal.'
>>> f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6 = map(lambda x,y:x, line.split(),6*[None])
>>> f1
'Hi,'
>>> f6
>>>
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 15 18:49:04 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:49:04 GMT
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.995148507.15865.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b521ee7.2008927134@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:07:11 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>Yesterday I posted a subclass of code.InteractiveConsole that when an
>attempt at evaluating user input failed, it would pass the line to
>os.system:
>
>    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mycode.py+skip%40pobox.com&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=mailman.994974802.14320.python-list%40python.org
>
>You could instead have it convert
>
>    foo arg1 arg2 arg3
Actually, I don't mind commas - they don't require the shift key,
so they're about as easy as spaces, and I was thinking of syntax
just like print's anyway ;-)
>
>into 
>
>    foo(arg1,arg2,arg3)
>
>with appropriate argument quoting (checking for ints, strings and such) and
>eval that.  Obviously, if arg2 contained whitespace, you'd have to quote it.
>Completion of this idea is left as an exercise for the reader.
>
Thanks, I'll have a look.
BTW, though, passing eval failures unconditionally to os.system seems a little dangerous,
if that's what you are doing? Maybe I'll add a dictionary of leading names like 'rm'
that would trigger 'are you sure?' if I want to use it for os.system ;-)

But of course what I really want is to play in Tim and Guido's sandbox ;-)

I just managed to put together a pgen.dsp on win32 to build pgen (there didn't seem
to be one in the otherwise beautifully set up workspace/projects). pgen regenerated
the indentical grammar.c and .h, so I guess it's working. Anticipating more fun ;-)
This change should be easier than a multi-statement lambda, I think, depending on
how cleanly newlines are handled.


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  9 21:01:23 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:01:23 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com> <3B4A185D.7C9EC4A5@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3b4a468d.1494788532@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 20:53:41 GMT, Paul Winkler <slinkp23 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>James Logajan wrote:
>> 
>> Paul Winkler wrote:
>> > So basically what that benchmark tells me is: "Don't write recursively in Python
>> > if performance is an issue".
>> 
>> Well yes, this is what benchmarks are useful for.
>
>Right. I didn't know that before I looked at the site, so I'm glad I did.
>
>I just wanted to prevent other people from making my initial mistake - assuming
>that the tests only had to produce the same result. I was surprised how far down
>the list python was on the fibonacci test until I started playing around with
>alternative implementations and realized it was the recursion that was slowing
>it down.
>
I just had a look at the site with the fibonacci
results. N=32 in 19.78 seconds. Python can do
better while still doing it recursively ;-)

I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
just over 15 seconds, including startup and
printing to screen, by my watch. (Not a typo,
that was 100k). Of course, it might not be the
usual recursive solution (see below)  ;-)

(300mhz P2, 320MB ram, NT4sp3)
Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32

Simple iteration using

def fib(x):
    if x < 3:
        return 1
    f,fm1 = 1L,1L
    for i in xrange(2,x):
        f,fm1 = f+fm1,f
    return f

took over 30 seconds ;-)

I haven't fine tuned this. It's a close translation of
a scheme version I came up with about five years ago.
Dave Ulrich may remember. He pointed out that the next to
last version wasn't doing what I thought. So he helped
nudge it into being. Never did establish what wheel I was
reinventing, but apparently there is something related.

___________________________________________________________

# ffibp.py - fast recursive fibonacci algorithm using pairs 
# Copyright (c) 2001, Bengt Richter. All rights reserved. 
# Use is governed by the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE -- see
http://gnu.org 
# NO WARRANTY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED IS GIVEN AS TO CORRECTNESS 
# OR SUITABLILITY FOR ANY PURPOSE. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. 
#
import sys

def pfib(n):
    if n < 2: return 1L,1L
    if n == 2: return 1L,2L
    k = n / 2L
    fk,fkp1 = pfib(k)   # recursion here
    fkm1 = fkp1 - fk
    if n&1:
        return fkp1*fkp1 + fk*fk, fkp1*( fkp1+fk+fk)
    else: 
        return fk*(fk+fkm1+fkm1), fkp1*fkp1 + fk*fk

def ffib(x):
    if x < 3:
        return 1
    else:
        fxm2,fxm1 = pfib( x - 2L )
        return fxm2+fxm1        

def main():
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        sys.stderr.write("usage: %s number\n" % sys.argv[0])
        sys.exit(2)
    print 'fib(',sys.argv[1],') = ', ffib( long(sys.argv[1]) )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
_____________________________________________________________--


From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 11 09:57:01 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:57:01 +0200
Subject: py2exe & Pmw
References: <9ihb0c$ivgp5$1@fu-berlin.de> <90DB6DF40gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>
Message-ID: <9ihnuf$itrjl$1@fu-berlin.de>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:
>
> I'm sure it's the same as with Installer - you need to run Pmw's
> bundlepmw.py script (instructions in the bin directory).
>

Thank you very much!
I just tried it and after creating Pmw.py
everything worked just fine.

Matthias




From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Mon Jul 23 02:35:19 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 23:35:19 -0700
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I put 'name,values' into a dictionary.
But when I get the keys and display the values they come out in a
different order that the order I inserted them in.

Is there a way maintain the oringinal order?

Phill


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Fri Jul 27 14:00:20 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:00:20 +0100
Subject: newbie 'Find File' question.
References: <9jn5kb$k16$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <3b5f3d46$0$327$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
Message-ID: <9jsa66$4q2$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>

very useful ta, maybe you could help me with a little problem, my code:

def go():
 status.set("Searching...")

 if checkEntryField() == 1:

  resultPane.delete(0, END) # Clear the results pane!
  searchString=str(entryField.get()) # Get search string

  def search(of, dir, files):
   for file in files:
    if file == searchString:
     of.insert(END, os.path.join(dir, file))

  driveList=string.split(win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings(),'\0')[:-1] # Get
Drives
  for x in range(0,len(driveList)):
   os.path.walk(driveList[x], search, resultPane)
  status.set("Done")

when this script is run i get this error:

Local name 'searchString' in 'go' shadows use of 'searchString' as global in
nested scope 'search' def go()

HUH!!!

any ideas, i'm learning as i go along   :)

G. Willoughby

"Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b5f3d46$0$327$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net...
> Yeah that was one of the first scripts I ever wrote. It's under 20 lines,
so
> it's not documented. Just remember os.path.walk() if you friend. It will
> only scan the C: drive, but that would be easy to change. I think you need
> some platform API stuff (at least on Windows you do) to get the available
> drives. I can't remember what it is, though. Does anyone else? Hope this
> helps.
>
> ---Begin mpsscan.py---
>
> #mp3scan.py
> print 'MP3 Scan 0.1 (volucris at hotmail.com)\n\n'
> print 'This program will scan the C: drive for files ending in \'mp3\'.'
> print 'The results will be stored in \'C:\\mp3scan_results.txt\'.\n'
> res = raw_input('Press ENTER to begin.')
> if res != 'q':
>     import os
>     def test(of, dir, files):
>         for file in files:
>             if file[-3:] == 'mp3':
>                 of.write(os.path.join(dir, file) + '\n')
>     f = open('c:\\mp3scan_results.txt', 'w')
>     os.path.walk('c:\\', test, f)
>     f.close()
>     print '\nScan complete. Check \'C:\\mp3scan_results.txt\' for
> results.\n'
>
> res = raw_input('Press ENTER to quit.')
>
> ---End mp3scan.py---
>
> --
>
> Volucris (a) hotmail.com
> "Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."
>
> "G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:9jn5kb$k16$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com...
> > Has anybody coded a script to simulate the windows/mac find file
> utilitity?
> > i'm using this to help me learn Tkinter and Python. I have created the
GUI
> i
> > just need a few design tips for the search code. basically i need to
> search
> > all drives (not A:) for a file. any ideas?   :) .
> >
> > G. WIlloughby.
> >
> >
>
>




From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 17:18:48 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:18:48 -0400
Subject: Make it a major version number change (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <cp66ch9gfc.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDLLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido]
> ...
> A patch in SF is by definition under discussion.  There are many
> things wrong with the patch, but it gives people an easy way to
> experiment with an approximation what 2.2 might look like.
>
> Unfortunately, all it seems to have done is spur this enormous
> flamewar.  It's really hard to remain calm when people start shouting
> "the leadership is wrong because I say so."

That is your burden to bear, and I sympathize!  I'm merely a corporate
apologist, so the worst anyone can accuse me of is unprincipled suckupery,
which-- since it's part of the job description --simply lets me know I'm
doing my job.

all-i-ever-see-is-compliments<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 05:41:19 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:41:19 +0200
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101323380.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101323380.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <20010710114119.W8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 01:25:28PM +0400, Roman Suzi wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:

> > > Which category to report it in the Bug tracker?

> > 'Python Library' is the best fit, I guess, but it doesn't really matter.
> > The group should be 'platform specific', though :) Feel free to assign it
> > to me, I think I'll check in a fix soon anyway :)

> I did. With hope the fix is not "remove" ;-)

I guess you don't read python-dev ;) I'm the Backward Compatibility
HogMonster, I do not only not remove, I refuse to let others remove :)

> It could also be nice to have os.getpriority()

Yes, I guess it would. Care to submit a patch ? :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 17:17:15 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 23:17:15 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9ker84.1sg.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <9i7u7601c4p@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk" <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in message
news:slrn.pl.9ker84.1sg.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda...
    ...
> Don't you want to borrow Haskell's turning of an arbitrary binary
> function into an operator thus: x `div` y? :-)  OCaml recently did.

One side advantage of adopting that in Python would be to
remove the ugly equivalent `x` to repr(x)...:-) <ducks/>


Alex





From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 20 03:57:24 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:57:24 GMT
Subject: Immutable list reverse function
References: <mailman.995543208.24170.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <EvR57.510859$eK2.107350161@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Martin Sj?gren" <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message


...
What I want to do is basically this:
>>> foo(reverse(create_a_list()))
...

you could write your own function like this:

def myreverse(List):
    revlist = List[:]  # make a copy of the list
    revlist.reverse()  # reverse the copy
    return revlist     # return the reversed copy


>>> foo(myreverse(create_a_list()))

This works the way you want, but is a bit wasteful, since the list created
by create_a_list() will be lost and garbage collected, leaving you with the
reversed copy.  Not a big deal, though, unless performance really matters.

If you wanted to keep a copy of the original, un-reversed list, then this
function would be just right.

A better option, if you don't want to keep an un-reversed list, is to do
this:

def myreverse(List):
    List.reverse()
    return List

Which will reverse the original list, without making a copy, and return a
reference to the reversed list:

Now this still works, but is more efficient because no copy is made.

>>> foo(myreverse(create_a_list()))






From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Fri Jul  6 14:10:13 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:10:13 -0400
Subject: Any detailed tutor for python multi-thread programming?
In-Reply-To: <994440172.3230.78430.l10@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B45C6C5.3470.49D183@localhost>

XiaoQin Xia <XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> sent a message that 
"is not in displayable format".

Some places to read about Python threads:
	http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/IPC9/index.html
	chapter in Wesley Chun's "core Python" book (available via 
http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/book/)
	articles in the help file for wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org)

Enjoy.



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:25:49 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:25:49 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <cpg0blbpo4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Greg Landrum" <gReGlAnDrUm at earthlink.net> writes:

> And then I start thinking about all the code I've written for
> myself, my former employer and my consulting clients. I *know* I've
> used '/' to do integer (truncating) division in that code
> intentionally.  Of course I have, it's the way things were done.
> Once PEP 238 is implemented and the change in place (v2.3?), a lot
> of that code is going to start producing warnings.

The PEP needs an update.  Here's what I am thinking of now.

- In 2.2, the future division statement and the // operator are
  available, and there's a command line option to turn on warnings for
  int/int and another to make the default for / be a float (i.e. an
  implied future division statement everywhere).  The standard library
  is reworked to make it work with all option values.

- In later versions (timing not yet decided), first the default
  changes to enable warnings on int/int, and then (after at least 2
  years) to enable float division by default, but the command line
  options remain available to reverse the situation.

> The warnings can be used to track down the problems before code actually
> breaks and there will be 2 years in which to do so... that's acceptable.
> 
> I do have a question. The PEP says:
> 
>     If "from __future__ import non_integer_division" is present in the
>     module, until the IntType nb_divide is changed, the "/" operator
>     is compiled to FUTURE_DIV.
> 
>     This is not yet implemented in the Python 2.2 release.
> 
> Okay, it's "not yet" implemented for 2.2.  It's going to be though, right?

Yes; I have a preliminary patch in the SF patch manager (referenced
from the PEP).

> If the change is going to happen, it is going to break some of my
> code and I would like to start tracking down these problems and
> changing my programming habits ASAP.

Yes, you will be able to start changing your habits as soon as 2.2 is
released.

> [I started this message intending to make a very different argument because
> of the code breakage.  Then I re-read the PEP and realized that we are being
> promised at least 2 years to fix things before code breaks.  I'm much more
> comfortable with the PEP now.]

Thanks!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  9 11:48:58 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:48:58 +0200
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <9icghc$8er$1@panix6.panix.com>
References: <mailman.994649054.6535.python-list@python.org> <9icghc$8er$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <20010709174858.S8098@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 10:53:32AM -0400, Roy Smith wrote:
> Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> > The good news is that this part isn't true:  all versions of Python have
> > always maintained an internal compiled-regexp cache, mapping regexp strings
> > to their compiled forms, much like the one you sketched building "by hand"
> > later.  Current Python maintains a cache of 100 pairs.

> Wow, that's awesome.  You might want to update the library reference
> to mention this.  It would keep people like me from running off on
> pointless efficiency-hack tangents :-)

I doubt it. I'm sure they'll find some other pointless efficiency-hack to
tangent after :-)

History-will-teach-us-nothing-ly y'rs,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 19:09:47 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:09:47 -0700
Subject: Backward compatibility environments (was Future division patch 
 available)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DEA88.553AF758@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B5E003B.B242DC35@alcyone.com>

Chris Barker wrote:

> Python is an evolving language. I, for one, am very happy about that
> (I
> was ecstatic about the addition of rich comparisons, among other
> things). It does mean that code written with 2.1 in mind will not run
> on
> 1.5.2, but that's not too bad. What is bad is that code written for
> 1.5.2 might not run on a version 2.4 interpreter. A lot of folks have
> made it very clear that that could cause a LOT of problems. I agree,
> and
> I think we really can evolve the language without causing that kind of
> code breakage.

Agreed.  Let's try categorizing the Python environments which will have
different ramifications for a backward-incompatible change:

1.  First and easiest is code that is in active use which can be changed
in place after an upgrade to Python 238 (what I'll use to refer to a
version of Python which implements PEP 238 and/or requires PEP 238's
semantics).

2.  Code that is established and in long-term use which is not in active
use but which still has resources that can be thrown at it to update it.

3.  Code that is established and in longer-term use but which is not in
a position to be fixed by the original engineers, either because it has
been passed around repeatedly or because it is, say, at a client side
that no longer has any contact with the original company (presumably
because pre-238 Python has been so reliable that there was no need :-).

4.  Code which may be in use and up to date but which is not trivially
available in editable source form and/or from which compatibility
warnings may not be easily found, such as stowed in a database or in

5.  Code running in very special environments in which the ramifications
of PEP 238 may not even make sense.  What does always-float division
mean on an architecture that does not support floats of any kind (say,
on an architecture with no FPU and with limited space so that software
emulation was deemed wasteful)?

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ All the people in my neighborhood turn around and get mad and sing
\__/ Public Enemy
    Rules for Buh / http://www.alcyone.com/max/projects/cards/buh.html
 The official rules to the betting card game, Buh.


From max at alcyone.com  Thu Jul  5 14:18:06 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:18:06 -0700
Subject: SSL module
References: <mailman.994320669.23326.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44AF5E.15B1E7C@alcyone.com>

"Martin Sj?gren" wrote:

> The past few days I've been writing on a basic SSL module for Python,
> written completely in C. Yep I'm getting paid to do it. ;)
> It uses OpenSSL (of course?) and it's starting to take shape. Of
> course
> there are a multitude of things not finished, a lot of the OpenSSL API
> that I haven't included. Let's put it this way, it's doing what we
> (the
> company I work for) need it to do. If someone wants to continue
> working on
> it I'll be just as glad. I might continue working on it in my spare
> time
> too.

I sure hope that you have gotten written, explicit permission to release
the code.  If you are getting paid to do it, then the job is work for
hire, and you do not own the copyright, so it is not under your
authority to release it publicly.

Make sure you've cleared it with your company before you go any further.
(If they have not already okayed it, it is unlikely that they would.)

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ The work will teach you how to do it.
\__/ (an Estonian proverb)
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From guido at zope.com  Fri Jul 27 15:48:07 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:48:07 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <200107271948.PAA27153@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Here's a new revision of PEP 238.  I've incorporated clarifications of
issues that were brought up during the discussion of rev 1.10 -- from
typos via rewording of ambiguous phrasing to the addition of new open
issues.  I've decided not to go for the "quotient and ratio"
terminology -- my rationale is in the PEP.

IF YOU WANT ME TO SEE YOUR COMMENTS, DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT OF YOUR
FOLLOWUP.  I cannot follow all of c.l.py, but I will follow this one
thread.  Please don't fragment the thread -- I won't see other
threads, guaranteed.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

PEP: 238
Title: Changing the Division Operator
Version: $Revision: 1.12 $
Author: pep at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka), guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Created: 11-Mar-2001
Python-Version: 2.2
Post-History: 16-Mar-2001, 26-Jul-2001, 27-Jul-2001


Abstract

    The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for
    numerical arguments: it returns the floor of the mathematical
    result of division if the arguments are ints or longs, but it
    returns a reasonable approximation of the division result if the
    arguments are floats or complex.  This makes expressions expecting
    float or complex results error-prone when integers are not
    expected but possible as inputs.

    We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for
    different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of
    the mathematical result of the division ("true division"), x//y to
    return the floor ("floor division").  We call the current, mixed
    meaning of x/y "classic division".

    Because of severe backwards compatibility issues, not to mention a
    major flamewar on c.l.py, we propose the following transitional
    measures (starting with Python 2.2):

    - Classic division will remain the default in the Python 2.x
      series; true division will be standard in Python 3.0.

    - The // operator will be available to request floor division
      unambiguously.

    - The future division statement, spelled "from __future__ import
      division", will change the / operator to mean true division
      throughout the module.

    - A command line option will enable run-time warnings for classic
      division applied to int or long arguments; another command line
      option will make true division the default.

    - The standard library will use the future division statement and
      the // operator when appropriate, so as to completely avoid
      classic division.


Motivation

    The classic division operator makes it hard to write numerical
    expressions that are supposed to give correct results from
    arbitrary numerical inputs.  For all other operators, one can
    write down a formula such as x*y**2 + z, and the calculated result
    will be close to the mathematical result (within the limits of
    numerical accuracy, of course) for any numerical input type (int,
    long, float, or complex).  But division poses a problem: if the
    expressions for both arguments happen to have an integral type, it
    implements floor division rather than true division.

    The problem is unique to dynamically typed languages: in a
    statically typed language like C, the inputs, typically function
    arguments, would be declared as double or float, and when a call
    passes an integer argument, it is converted to double or float at
    the time of the call.  Python doesn't have argument type
    declarations, so integer arguments can easily find their way into
    an expression.

    The problem is particularly pernicious since ints are perfect
    substitutes for floats in all other circumstances: math.sqrt(2)
    returns the same value as math.sqrt(2.0), 3.14*100 and 3.14*100.0
    return the same value, and so on.  Thus, the author of a numerical
    routine may only use floating point numbers to test his code, and
    believe that it works correctly, and a user may accidentally pass
    in an integer input value and get incorrect results.

    Another way to look at this is that classic division makes it
    difficult to write polymorphic functions that work well with
    either float or int arguments; all other operators already do the
    right thing.  No algorithm that works for both ints and floats has
    a need for truncating division in one case and true division in
    the other.

    The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
    is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
    argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
    zero.  The only solution without either downside is multiplying an
    argument (typically the first) by 1.0.  This leaves the value and
    sign unchanged for float and complex, and turns int and long into
    a float with the corresponding value.

    It is the opinion of the authors that this is a real design bug in
    Python, and that it should be fixed sooner rather than later.
    Assuming Python usage will continue to grow, the cost of leaving
    this bug in the language will eventually outweigh the cost of
    fixing old code -- there is an upper bound to the amount of code
    to be fixed, but the amount of code that might be affected by the
    bug in the future is unbounded.

    Another reason for this change is the desire to ultimately unify
    Python's numeric model.  This is the subject of PEP 228[0] (which
    is currently incomplete).  A unified numeric model removes most of
    the user's need to be aware of different numerical types.  This is
    good for beginners, but also takes away concerns about different
    numeric behavior for advanced programmers.  (Of course, it won't
    remove concerns about numerical stability and accuracy.)

    In a unified numeric model, the different types (int, long, float,
    complex, and possibly others, such as a new rational type) serve
    mostly as storage optimizations, and to some extent to indicate
    orthogonal properties such as inexactness or complexity.  In a
    unified model, the integer 1 should be indistinguishable from the
    floating point number 1.0 (except for its inexactness), and both
    should behave the same in all numeric contexts.  Clearly, in a
    unified numeric model, if a==b and c==d, a/c should equal b/d
    (taking some liberties due to rounding for inexact numbers), and
    since everybody agrees that 1.0/2.0 equals 0.5, 1/2 should also
    equal 0.5.  Likewise, since 1//2 equals zero, 1.0//2.0 should also
    equal zero.


Variations

    Aesthetically, x//y doesn't please everyone, and hence several
    variations have been proposed: x div y, or div(x, y), sometimes in
    combination with x mod y or mod(x, y) as an alternative spelling
    for x%y.

    We consider these solutions inferior, on the following grounds.

    - Using x div y would introduce a new keyword.  Since div is a
      popular identifier, this would break a fair amount of existing
      code, unless the new keyword was only recognized under a future
      division statement.  Since it is expected that the majority of
      code that needs to be converted is dividing integers, this would
      greatly increase the need for the future division statement.
      Even with a future statement, the general sentiment against
      adding new keywords unless absolutely necessary argues against
      this.

    - Using div(x, y) makes the conversion of old code much harder.
      Replacing x/y with x//y or x div y can be done with a simple
      query replace; in most cases the programmer can easily verify
      that a particular module only works with integers so all
      occurrences of x/y can be replaced.  (The query replace is still
      needed to weed out slashes occurring in comments or string
      literals.)  Replacing x/y with div(x, y) would require a much
      more intelligent tool, since the extent of the expressions to
      the left and right of the / must be analyzed before the
      placement of the "div(" and ")" part can be decided.


Alternatives

    In order to reduce the amount of old code that needs to be
    converted, several alternative proposals have been put forth.
    Here is a brief discussion of each proposal (or category of
    proposals).  If you know of an alternative that was discussed on
    c.l.py that isn't mentioned here, please mail the second author.

    - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
      division.  This still leaves a broken operator in the language,
      and invites to use the broken behavior.  It also shuts off the
      road to a unified numeric model a la PEP 228[0].

    - Let int division return a special "portmanteau" type that
      behaves as an integer in integer context, but like a float in a
      float context.  The problem with this is that after a few
      operations, the int and the float value could be miles apart,
      it's unclear which value should be used in comparisons, and of
      course many contexts (like conversion to string) don't have a
      clear integer or float context.

    - Use a directive to use specific division semantics in a module,
      rather than a future statement.  This retains classic division
      as a permanent wart in the language, requiring future
      generations of Python programmers to be aware of the problem and
      the remedies.

    - Use "from __past__ import division" to use classic division
      semantics in a module.  This also retains the classic division
      as a permanent wart, or at least for a long time (eventually the
      past division statement could raise an ImportError).

    - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
      version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
      requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
      *exactly* several previous versions of Python, and moreover to
      do so for multiple versions within the same interpreter.  This
      is way too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep
      multiple interpreters installed.


API Changes

    During the transitional phase, we have to support *three* division
    operators within the same program: classic division (for / in
    modules without a future division statement), true division (for /
    in modules with a future division statement), and floor division
    (for //).  Each operator comes in two flavors: regular, and as an
    augmented assignment operator (/= or //=).

    The names associated with these variations are:

    - Overloaded operator methods:

      __div__(), __floordiv__(), __truediv__();

      __idiv__(), __ifloordiv__(), __itruediv__().

    - Abstract API C functions:

      PyNumber_Divide(), PyNumber_FloorDivide(),
      PyNumber_TrueDivide();

      PyNumber_InPlaceDivide(), PyNumber_InPlaceFloorDivide(),
      PyNumber_InPlaceTrueDivide().

    - Byte code opcodes:

      BINARY_DIVIDE, BINARY_FLOOR_DIVIDE, BINARY_TRUE_DIVIDE;

      INPLACE_DIVIDE, INPLACE_FLOOR_DIVIDE, INPLACE_TRUE_DIVIDE.

    - PyNumberMethod slots:

      nb_divide, nb_floor_divide, nb_true_divide,

      nb_inplace_divide, nb_inplace_floor_divide,
      nb_inplace_true_divide.

    The added PyNumberMethod slots require an additional flag in
    tp_flags; this flag will be named Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_NEWDIVIDE and
    will be included in Py_TPFLAGS_DEFAULT.

    The true and floor division APIs will look for the corresponding
    slots and call that; when that slot is NULL, they will raise an
    exception.  There is no fallback to the classic divide slot.

    In Python 3.0, the classic division semantics will be removed; the
    classic division APIs will become synonymous with true division.


Command Line Option

    The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
    three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
    Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
    "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
    The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
    warning (a DeprecationWarning using the standard warning
    framework) when applied to ints or longs.  The "new" value changes
    the default globally so that the / operator is always interpreted
    as true division.  The "new" option is only intended for use in
    certain educational environments, where true division is required,
    but asking the students to include the future division statement
    in all their code would be a problem.

    This option will not be supported in Python 3.0; Python 3.0 will
    always interpret / as true division.

    (Other names have been proposed, like -Dclassic, -Dclassic-warn,
    -Dtrue, or -Dold_division etc.; these seem more verbose to me
    without much advantage.  After all the term classic division is
    not used in the language at all (only in the PEP), and the term
    true division is rarely used in the language -- only in
    __truediv__.)


Semantics of Floor Division

    Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
    types, and will have the semantics of

        a // b == floor(a/b)

    except that the result type will be the common type into which a
    and b are coerced before the operation.

    Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b will be of
    that type too.  If the inputs are of different types, they are
    first coerced to a common type using the same rules used for all
    other arithmetic operators.

    In particular, if a and b are both ints or longs, the result has
    the same type and value as for classic division on these types
    (including the case of mixed input types; int//long and long//int
    will both return a long).

    For floating point inputs, the result is a float.  For example:

      3.5//2.0 == 1.0

    For complex numbers, // raises an exception, since float() of a
    complex number is not allowed.

    For user-defined classes and extension types, all semantics are up
    to the implementation of the class or type.


Semantics of True Division

    True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
    float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
    return a float (2.0), not an int.  For floats and complex, it will
    be the same as classic division.

    Note that for long arguments, true division may lose information;
    this is in the nature of true division (as long as rationals are
    not in the language).  Algorithms that consciously use longs
    should consider using //.

    If and when a rational type is added to Python (see PEP 239[2]),
    true division for ints and longs should probably return a
    rational.  This avoids the problem with true division of longs
    losing information.  But until then, for consistency, float is the
    only choice for true division.


The Future Division Statement

    If "from __future__ import division" is present in a module, or if
    -Dnew is used, the / and /= operators are translated to true
    division opcodes; otherwise they are translated to classic
    division (until Python 3.0 comes along, where they are always
    translated to true division).

    The future division statement has no effect on the recognition or
    translation of // and //=.

    See PEP 236[4] for the general rules for future statements.

    (It has been proposed to use a longer phrase, like "true_division"
    or "modern_division".  These don't seem to add much information.)


Open Issues

    - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator, and the /
      operator the ratio operator.  I'm not sure about this -- for
      some people quotient is just a synonym for division, and ratio
      suggests rational numbers, which is wrong.  I prefer the
      terminology to be slightly awkward if that avoids unambiguity.
      Also, for some folks "quotient" suggests truncation towards
      zero, not towards infinity as "floor division" says explicitly.

    - It has been argued that a command line option to change the
      default is evil.  It can certainly be dangerous in the wrong
      hands: for example, it would be impossible to combine a 3rd
      party library package that requires -Dnew with another one that
      requires -Dold.  But I believe that the VPython folks need a way
      to enable true division by default, and other educators might
      need the same.  These usually have enough control over the
      library packages available in their environment.

    - For very large long integers, the definition of true division as
      returning a float causes problems, since the range of Python
      longs is much larger than that of Python floats.  This problem
      will disappear if and when rational numbers are supported.  In
      the interim, maybe the long-to-float conversion could be made to
      raise OverflowError if the long is out of range.


FAQ

    Q. Why isn't true division called float division?

    A. Because I want to keep the door open to *possibly* introducing
       rationals and making 1/2 return a rational rather than a
       float.  See PEP 239[2].

    Q. Why is there a need for __truediv__ and __itruediv__?

    A. We don't want to make user-defined classes second-class
       citizens.  Certainly not with the type/class unification going
       on.

    Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
       as under the new rules without using // or a future division
       statement?

    A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
       division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
       function.  You may also write float(x)/y for true division if
       you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.  If you
       know your integers are never negative, you can use int(x/y) --
       while the documentation of int() says that int() can round or
       truncate depending on the C implementation, we know of no C
       implementation that doesn't truncate, and we're going to change
       the spec for int() to promise truncation.  Note that for
       negative ints, classic division (and floor division) round
       towards negative infinity, while int() rounds towards zero.

    Q. How do I specify the division semantics for input(), compile(),
       execfile(), eval() and exec?

    A. They inherit the choice from the invoking module.  PEP 236[4]
       lists this as a partially resolved problem.

    Q. What about code compiled by the codeop module?

    A. Alas, this will always use the default semantics (set by the -D
       command line option).  This is a general problem with the
       future statement; PEP 236[4] lists it as an unresolved
       problem.  You could have your own clone of codeop.py that
       includes a future division statement, but that's not a general
       solution.

    Q. Will there be conversion tools or aids?

    A. Certainly, but these are outside the scope of the PEP.

    Q. Why is my question not answered here?

    A. Because we weren't aware of it.  If it's been discussed on
       c.l.py and you believe the answer is of general interest,
       please notify the second author.  (We don't have the time or
       inclination to answer every question sent in private email,
       hence the requirement that it be discussed on c.l.py first.)


Implementation

    A very early implementation (not yet following the above spec, but
    supporting // and the future division statement) is available from
    the SourceForge patch manager[5].


References

    [0] PEP 228, Reworking Python's Numeric Model
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0228.html

    [1] PEP 237, Unifying Long Integers and Integers, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0237.html

    [2] PEP 239, Adding a Rational Type to Python, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0239.html

    [3] PEP 240, Adding a Rational Literal to Python, Zadka,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0240.html

    [4] PEP 236, Back to the __future__, Peters,
        http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0236.html

    [5] Patch 443474, from __future__ import division
        http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=443474&group_id=5470&atid=305470


Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:



From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 10 07:35:40 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 13:35:40 +0200
Subject: import namespace issues (why do I want this)
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <yv2hewlggoj.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> writes:

> THE PROBLEM:
> I have to separate a module's function into two .py-files. Now I would
> like to import both in a way that they behave like they are one file.


Several people asked me to describe what I really want to do. Chances
are there is a cleaner solution. However it may be preempted due to
historic code I wrote when I started to use Python and which I cannot
change easily.

One file, the historic one (call it littlelanguage.py), contains
functions which are intended to be used by more-or-less
non-programmers as a little language. They are not expected to know
Python. They only know the basic syntax and those
functions. Consequently they write code which does not contain any
`import' and the functions are not qualified.

Those functions don't do a lot. Usually they soon call more basic
functions which do the real work. To allow for more than one
implementation of the basic functions, they go into other files, say
basicimpl1.py, basicimpl2.py, etc.

When calling the basic functions, those functions in littlelanguage.py
don't qualify them (which is bad, I know now). Consequently the
implementation functions must be in the same globals()-context as the
functions in littlelanguage.py. Because I have more than one
implementation, I cannot put

  from basicimpl1 import *

into littlelanguage.py. In fact I cannot change this file at all.


The solution I came up with for now is to put the following code into
every basicimpl*.py:

  import imp
  exec imp.find_module("littlelanguage")[0]
  del imp

However, it does not compile littlelanguage.py and even breaks if it
finds a compiled version.

Suggestions welcome and thanks for the replies I found already.

  Harald Kirsch

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 17:05:18 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:05:18 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> Well then, float is a very bad choice for what to return, or then how
> do we explain when 3/4 * 4 = 3 (exactly) but 3/10 * 10 != 10? [3
> was intended here]

Using decimal floats, 3/10*10 does equal 3, but a generation raised on
BCD-ish hand calculators wouldn't even blink an eye if 1/3*3 returned
0.999999999999.

> I would be a lot happier with integer / integer = rational (as in
> Mathematica's programming lang),

That view has its fans too; see PEPs 239 and 240; also mounds of prior
discussion on the python-numerics list:

    http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=5470

You're probably new enough to this to have missed that Guido had lots of
experience with rationals in the ABC language and didn't like it there.
Speed and memory consumption were unpredictable for non-experts, and could
vary wildly (factors of 1000s) for a fixed algorithm, depending on the
inputs.  Rationals aren't a cure-all, and the instant you throw a sqrt or
transcendental into the mix you're back to some form of fp anyway.

> but float is just ugly.  It is turning exact values (integers) into
> approximate ones (float) when I didn't tell it to.

If the language defines "/" as returning a float, then you told it to.  You
*almost* may as well complain that math.sqrt(2) turns an exact value into an
approximate one; but, e.g., when I use Macsyma, it doesn't lose information
there either.  Python isn't going to do symbolic computation by default, so
the question isn't whether to compromise, but where.

> It's almost as bad as if integer subtraction always truncated to 16
> bit values -- a lot of the time that would give sort of reasonable
> answers but it's a gratuitous approximation where you didn't expect
> one.

You don't expect an approximation in that context because Python promises
not to make one in that context.  If you expect things a language doesn't
promise, that's not really the language's fault <wink>.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Jul  3 03:17:51 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:17:51 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <zke07.7478$e5.975466@newsb.telia.net>

Peter Milliken wrote:
> At least with a strongly typed language, even if a line of code has never
> been run, you are reasonably assured that when it does run it won't crash
> due to a variable being mispelled or mis-used.

and like everyone knows, this is of course the only reason
programs crash.

(remind me to never buy a pacemaker from gtech.com ;-)

</F>




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:40:00 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:40:00 -0500
Subject: Java's scalability in Web service (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com> <mailman.996437578.30803.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E8F6DBFA42202693.2663320F72D0935C.436139F7D83B860D@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.996437578.30803.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Yes, it is clear that languages can outgrow their original niches.
>That's why I mentioned Servlets and EJBs. My understanding is that use
>of these technologies allow you to achieve scalability easier than in
>languages where you must do it all "yourself". But that's just hearsay.
			.
			.
			.
On a couple of levels, I believe.  That is,
I accept that the industry largely shares and
propagates the belief that servlets and EJBs
are good scalability mechanisms.  I have a
personal belief that they are mediocre at
best.  I suspect that NO one has more than
the flimsiest actual measurements that bear
on the claim.  Does anyone know of research
into this point?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 10 01:59:58 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:59:58 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <3B4A7929.6036BE07@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEFKKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> The last time we solved a "it's *hard* to make sure temporary context
> changes get undone!" problem in Python was via adding ">>" to
> "print" <0.8 wink>.

[Greg Ewing]
> In other words, the solution was to get rid of the
> context and make it a parameter to the operation
> instead. I think there is an important lesson to
> be learned there somewhere <0.000 wink>.

If you want to turn every + - * / etc into a long-winded function call
explicitly passing and updating a context object, you can already do so in
Java (lightly edited from
<http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimalj/decdemo.java>, to avoid split lines):

/* Demonstration program showing use of the enhanced BigDecimal class. */
/*                                                                     */
/* This shows the results of repeatedly dividing by ten, using:        */
/*   BigDecimal (decimal floating point)                               */
/*   float      (binary floating point)                                */
/* datatypes.                                                          */

import com.ibm.math.*;   // import BigDecimal and MathContext

public class decdemo
 {
  public static void main(String args[])
   {
    String        s;                    // work variable
    float         f=9;                  // binary floating point var
    BigDecimal    d=new BigDecimal(9);  // decimal floating point var
    MathContext def=MathContext.DEFAULT;// standard arithmetic context

    for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
     {
      d=d.divide(BigDecimal.TEN, def);  // divide using decimal fp
      f=f/10;                           // divide using binary fp

      // pad the first result with blanks for display, then display both
      s=d.toString();
      s=s.concat(new String(new char[10-s.length()])).replace('\000',' ');
      System.out.println(s+" "+String.valueOf(f));
     }
   }
 }

Does anybody in their right mind want to endure (no, it doesn't look a *lot*
better in Python <wink>)

      d = d.divide(BigDecimal.TEN, def)

for routine use?  Context is an inherent part of finite arithmetic; it can't
be wished away.  Although if it's made an implicit part of thread-local
state it can be *ignored* by most people most of the time (just like *you*
likely ignore the 6 implicit inputs to, and 5 implicit outputs of, every
binary 754 fp operation you perform today).

practicality-beats-purity-ly y'rs  - tim




From donn at u.washington.edu  Tue Jul  3 15:49:38 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 19:49:38 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ht7ki$pao$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com>:
...
| Nobody argues against understanding. But understanding is eased if you
| do what people expect. People believe that the integers are a special
| case of floats. Python encourages them in that belief in most places
| other than this one.

Integer is not a special case of float, they're both special cases
of number.  Why not say integers are pure numbers and floats are
corrupt, hence coercion favors the float because you can corrupt
the pure easier than you can purify the corrupt?  As far as I'm
concerned that's as reasonable.

I don't know what people believe.  This morning's paper says some
significant fraction of American teenagers suppose that tomorrow
we'll celebrate our independence, gained in 1776, from ... France!
Does it matter what they believe?  Who cares what people think
about Python, unless they're going be able to do something useful
with it.  Those people can learn.  Integer arithmetic is useful.
They should learn it.  Floating point is just a can of worms.

Maybe there should have been a "div" operator in Python, but it
strikes me as rather monomorphic (antonym of polymorphic?) unless
we have a more general notion in mind than just integer arithmetic.
But it's awfully late for that anyway.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 14:51:33 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:51:33 -0400
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <3B49F9EC.CA10886A@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <z0n27.26$vA6.24426@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Paul Winkler" <slinkp23 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3B49F9EC.CA10886A at yahoo.com...
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
> > Open issues
> >
> >     Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
> >     evaluating contributions? (source code but also things like
> >     documentation and a test suite, as well as such vague things like
> >     'dependability of the maintainers').
>
> I think test suites would be a very, very good idea. At a minimum, some
doctest
> examples. Even better would be a well-defined suite of unit tests using
the
> unittest module. I propose that this be made a requirement for adding new
> modules to the standard library.
>
> It would be A Good Thing if unit tests were added to the existing standard
> library modules, but my mind boggles at the size of the job.

You have to admit the library does get a pretty fair testing in the standard
tests, even if they aren't using unittest (note: the tests don't come with
binary distributions AFAIK).

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From treaves at silverfields.com  Thu Jul 12 12:53:40 2001
From: treaves at silverfields.com (Timothy Reaves)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:53:40 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
Message-ID: <20010712125340.5baf980b.treaves@silverfields.com>

	Hello.  I'm trying to compile  python2-2.1-5.src.rpm on a SuSE 7.1 system.  It gets along a ways and then:
/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./LICENSE /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/LICENSE.txt
PYTHONPATH=/var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 \
        ./python -tt /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
Listing /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 ...
Compiling /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/BaseHTTPServer.py ...
make: *** [libinstall] Segmentation fault
Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.83840 (%install)


	Any help?



From Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com  Fri Jul 20 13:37:53 2001
From: Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com (Scherer, Bill)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:37:53 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: List Question
In-Reply-To: <tlgptk32ve8o27@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107201335490.21776-100000@ampeg.corp.bam.com>


>>> a=[[0]*6]*6
>>> a[3][3]=4
>>> a[0] is a[1] is a[2] is a[3] is a[4] is a[5]
1

This last line shows the source of your problem.  Each list subelement of
a is in fact the same list.

Build your list of lists so that each subelement is a different list, and
then a[3][3] = 4 will do what you want.



On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Donovan Hide wrote:

> Given:
>
> a=[[0]*6]*6
> a[3][3]=4
> print a
>
> [[0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
> 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0]]
>
> What syntax should I use to get this result:
>
> [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
> 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]
>
> Thanks for the help,
> Donovan Hide.
>
>
>

William K. Scherer
Sr. Member of Applications Staff - Verizon Wireless
Bill.Scherer_at_VerizonWireless.com




From python at lee-morgan.net  Tue Jul 10 03:32:13 2001
From: python at lee-morgan.net (Lee Morgan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:32:13 GMT
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <wkhewlxmdn.fsf@lee-morgan.net>

Hi,

Forgive my naivety, but ...

Has anyone proposed the idea of having a timebomb license?

Similar to drug companies control of new drugs to a market. ie you get
8 years to develop and market your new drug but after that its open
season. (I'm not wholly certain how this works - and 2 years or less is
probably more applicable for software).

Wouldn't this prevent shrewd business men like Gates gaining runaway
monopolies and yet allow commercial r&d to contribute to technological
innovation? ie You get 2 years to recoup your investment and then the
license drops to GPL or something.

You still get several huge companies in the clinical market though
(maybe because 8 years is enough to gain sustainable 'brand' power) -
but I don't think there is a monopoly.

Also this would probably require legislating software companies -
which I can't imagine happening.

But the conceptual free market often works better as a regulated free
market. Just as the conceptual democracy works better as a democratic
republic.

Anyway its just a thought - exploration/condemnation and
dissection welcome.

Cheers

Lee

-- 
Lee Morgan


From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 10 03:17:34 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:17:34 -0400
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <3B4A1AE3.BB23C0E1@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEFNKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Paul Winkler]
> ...
> I also should not have implied that the existing library is not
> adequately tested; I have no basis for thinking that.

But I do:  it's not.  Huge steaming mounds of it are barely touched.  If you
take a look at test_sundry.py, you'll find about 100(!) library modules  are
"tested" there.  The test_sundry docstring reads:

"""Do a minimal test of all the modules that aren't otherwise tested."""

The "minimal test" test_sundry does is merely to import the modules, just to
verify that importing alone isn't enough to make them blow up.

This is an area where community contributions are almost non-existent.  If
anyone is looking for a low-commitment way to help Python out, pick your
favorite library module and contribute some good tests for it!  There's a
decent orientation Lib/test/REAMDE to help you get started.  The regrtest.py
framework is baroque and inadequately documented, but it can run both
unittest- and doctest-based tests in natural ways now.

> I based my suggestion (doctest at minimum, preferably unittest)
> on the note at the end of the documentation for doctest:
>
> """
> The first word in doctest is "doc", and that's why the author
> wrote doctest: to keep documentation up to date. It so happens that
> doctest makes a pleasant unit testing environment, but that's not
> its primary purpose.

I'm the author in question, and I stand by that.  OTOH, doctest is the
fastest and easiest way in existence to get a substantial test suite up and
running, especially when used as Fredrik suggested.

There's an interesting but unplanned experiment going on in Python 2.2:
Guido started the new test_iter.py (to test 2.2 iterators), using unittest,
and I later more than doubled its size by adding additional iterator tests.
unittest is easy enough to use for this, but it's always deliberate "extra"
work to write the tests.  Like:

    # Test list()'s use of iterators.
    def test_builtin_list(self):
        self.assertEqual(list(SequenceClass(5)), range(5))
        self.assertEqual(list(SequenceClass(0)), [])
        self.assertEqual(list(()), [])
        self.assertEqual(list(range(10, -1, -1)), range(10, -1, -1))

        d = {"one": 1, "two": 2, "three": 3}
        self.assertEqual(list(d), d.keys())

        self.assertRaises(TypeError, list, list)
        self.assertRaises(TypeError, list, 42)

        f = open(TESTFN, "w")
        try:
            for i in range(5):
                f.write("%d\n" % i)
        finally:
            f.close()
        f = open(TESTFN, "r")
        try:
            self.assertEqual(list(f), ["0\n", "1\n", "2\n", "3\n", "4\n"])
            f.seek(0, 0)
            self.assertEqual(list(f.xreadlines()),
                             ["0\n", "1\n", "2\n", "3\n", "4\n"])
        finally:
            f.close()
            try:
                unlink(TESTFN)
            except OSError:
                pass

OTOH, Neil Schemenauer started test_generators.py (to test 2.2 generators)
using doctest, and I followed his lead on that one too, until it's now
nearly 1,400 lines.  Here's what the tests look like in that:

"""
>From the Iterators list, about the types of these things.

>>> def g():
...     yield 1
...
>>> type(g)
<type 'function'>
>>> i = g()
>>> type(i)
<type 'generator'>
>>> dir(i)
['gi_frame', 'gi_running', 'next']
>>> print i.next.__doc__
next() -- get the next value, or raise StopIteration
>>> iter(i) is i
1
>>> import types
>>> isinstance(i, types.GeneratorType)
1

And more, added later.

>>> i.gi_running
0
>>> type(i.gi_frame)
<type 'frame'>
>>> i.gi_running = 42
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
TypeError: object has read-only attributes
>>> def g():
...     yield me.gi_running
>>> me = g()
>>> me.gi_running
0
>>> me.next()
1
>>> me.gi_running
0

A clever union-find implementation from c.l.py, due to David Eppstein.
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 12:16 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: PEP 255: Simple Generators

>>> class disjointSet:
...     def __init__(self, name):
...         self.name = name
...         self.parent = None
...         self.generator = self.generate()

[etc]
"""

IOW, every example posted to every mailing list, along with every example in
PEP 255, was simply *pasted* into a test string.  It was no additional work
to speak of; WYSIWYG; nothing was written *just* "to test"; and if you can
read straight Python, you can easily and directly see what each little piece
is testing.  WRT the latter, what do you think the earlier

        self.assertRaises(TypeError, list, list)

was testing?  I wrote it, but I couldn't remember after I copied the code
into this msg; I had to look up the source for unittest's assertRaises().
As a doctest, it would have read

"""
>>> list(list)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  ...
TypeError: iter() of non-sequence
"""

instead and then "it's obvious".

I still think doctest's *primary* purpose is for ensuring docstring examples
stay 100% accurate, but my extended recent experiences with test_iter.py vs
test_generators.py is making me wonder whether doctest should shift
emphasis.  But I'm more wary of Second System Syndrome than Guido, so I'm
holding back <wink>.

> So for more thorough testing of things that don't belong in the
> documentation, I thought unittest.py might be a worthy candidate.

Indeed it is.

> After all, that's what it's designed for, and it's already in the
> standard library.
>
> I should have said "Yes, testing is a good idea, let's have some
> standards for that", and then I should have shut my mouth.

What -- and deprive me of an opportunity to rant <wink>?

All new Python tests should be in unittest or doctest format; and we'd
gladly adopt conversions of existing tests to those formats too (all the
PythonLab'ers have converted some of them, but there's too much else that
needs doing too to expect us to finish all of them without help).

well-actually-you're-free-to-expect-anything-ly y'rs  - tim




From clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com  Fri Jul  6 01:50:26 2001
From: clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com (C. Laurence Gonsalves)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 05:50:26 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <slrn9k3ji4.49l.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hst9p$oqv$5@216.39.170.247> <3B420A66.FB5E75A5@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kakd8.v4j.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:09:42 +0200, Michael Str?der
<michael at stroeder.com> wrote:
>
>Well, at least here in Germany almost everything M$ or other similar
>software vendors write into their "license agreements" will fail in
>court (AGB-Gesetz) as long as you don't register the software.

XP will stop working if you don't "activate" it within 30 days.
Presumably registering the software is part of the activation process.

See also http://ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html

-- 
  C. Laurence Gonsalves                "Any sufficiently advanced
  clgonsal at kami.com                     technology is indistinguishable
  http://cryogen.com/clgonsal/          from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke


From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 11 19:06:06 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:06:06 -0700
Subject: ActivePython word wrap in Shell or PythonWin during list printout
In-Reply-To: <3b4cc844$0$172@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <002401c10a5e$116415e0$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

Rufus wrote:
> I am running the latest Python from ActiveState and I have a
> problem that when I print a long list (Like dir()), the entire list
> prints out on one line and I have to scroll over to read it.
>
> Is there an environment setting to force word wrap at
> a certain line length?
>
> Or is there a list function that can take a list and
> pretty print it with word wrap.

You could try something like this:

import sys

class stdoutwrapper:
    def __init__(self, width=80):
        self.stdout = sys.stdout
        self.width = width

    def write(self, buffer):
        for line in buffer.split('\n'):
            while line:
                self.stdout.write(line[0:self.width] + '\n')
                line = line[self.width:]

sys.stdout = stdoutwrapper(100)
print 'This is a very long test' * 1000

I didn't really test this so be careful. Also note how I don't do the
right thing if the buffer doesn't end in a newline.

Cheers,
Brian




From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Sat Jul  7 22:07:51 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 02:07:51 GMT
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com> <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B47C125.A65E5EAC@wwc.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:

> "Steve Williams" <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message
> news:3B4719E1.C5540B19 at wwc.com...
> > Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > > "Edward Wilson" <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > > news:5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9 at posting.google.com...
> > > > This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
> > > >
> > > A SINGLE module to handle five or more mutually incompatible
> > > interfaces?!  That's utterly ridiculous --
> >
> > Take a deep breath, now.  Calm, calm.
> >
> > I can dream of a paradise with python and wxPython/wxDesigner and a
> > hypothetical pySQL92 universally available, pre-compiled, waiting only to
> be
>
> SQL92 API is _one_ interface, not five, and I suspect that DB2, Informix,
> &c don't support it fully (do they?).
>
> Well, I don't need the *full* SQL92 and I'm not likely to get it.  DB2 7.2
> does talk about SQL92 compatibility, but I'm not willing to explore the claim.

> Interbase has always taken SQL92 seriously, but nobody takes Interbase
> seriously.

Nevertheless, I've managed to survive and prosper on a meager toolkit of
(Select, Insert, Delete, Update, Create, Drop, etc) on SQL-Server, Sybase,
Informix, DB2, and Oracle.  If I'm not fastidious, I can even get by with it in
ACCESS.

So when I say pySQL92, you may take that as something less than the *full*
SQL92.

> > downloaded and installed on more platforms than WinTel.
>
> Assuming I did have a Python API DB 2 implementation, coded against
> the SQL92 API standard, I'm not sure it could even be _compiled_ in a
> single way (doesn't SQL92 define certain preprocessor macro names that
> a compliant API implementation can define differently?) and surely it
> cannot be *prelinked* (against libraries of unknown names...?) in any
> cross-platform way.

[snip]

Some sites provide DB Windows binaries for specific databases:

    http://www.computronix.com/utilities/
    http://home.t-online.de/home/err666/

Some sites provide binaries for non-Windows platforms:

    http://www-frec.bull.com/cgi-bin/list_dir.cgi/download/aix432/

    (No database stuff there, just Python, unfortunately, but I can dream.)

Etc.

A longer list (including my fantasy DB interfaces) similar to the above is what
I had in mind--particularly for those platforms where people are unlikely to
have development capability--the Mac, for example.  But no, I'm not thinking of
a universal, pre-compiled, linked against unknown libraries heap of bits.

If you accept the idea of a limited SQL toolset (for the sake of the argument)
and limit the idea to the big three databases (DB2, Oracle, SQL-Server) and
allow that Postgres and mySQL are already taken care of, I claim the scope of
the effort is not that great.

But here I defer to actual experience.  Man-Yong (Brian) Lee says in

    ftp://people.linuxkorea.co.kr/pub/DB2/

he wrote the initial version of his DB2 API in four days.  His tar file comes to
about 29k bytes.

It certainly seems like it would be less trouble than implementing, say, a
universal threading module.

> [snip]

> > As far as ADO, well, I fear it might be part of a subscription-only
> revenue
> > model in the future.
>
> Perhaps.  So let's start doing XPADO on top of XPCOM just as ADO was
> done on top of COM, shall we?  Technically, for all of its slight faults,
> COM/Automation/OleDb/ADO is a pinnacle of cross-language component
> base infrastructure.  XPCOM has apparently managed to implement a
> faithful-enough rendition of the first (lowest) layer, and PyXPCOM might
> do the same for the second (Automation) -- aren't we almost halfway?-)
>

I found COM (DCOM, actually) hard to deploy.  The code was easy--a joy to write
and use.  The registering and permissions and mystery error messages and
administration and fighting with sysadmins was not.  Maybe it's gotten better.

>
> But most likely the usual crybabies will still be crying about "RAW" (sic)
> C-level interfacing (to a zillion incompatible proprietary idiotic API's, no
> doubt -- the fact that there IS a solid, well-developed standard doesn't
> count:-).  So, naah, not worth the bother.
>

I take no notice of that remark.  Do you have an opinion on Corba?




From threeseas at earthlink.net  Thu Jul  5 00:03:18 2001
From: threeseas at earthlink.net (Timothy Rue)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 04:03:18 GMT
Subject: IQ updated
References: <1061.585T38T14352776threeseas@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <1061.585T884T14383622threeseas@earthlink.net>

For those of you who have (like it or not) a windows box, IQ has been
compiled (via py2exe) so you don't have to install the python programming
language and system.

Filename at Line# can now be switched on or off by the presence of a file
named lnswitch.on or lnswitch.off (also not existing acts like
lnswitch.off)

This is version 0.351 of IQ and there is also a non-compiled version of it
for installing on a windows box having Python installed. Also a plain
text/source file named IQ.351.py for all other systems is available.

see:

http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/python/Python-IQ.html

A couple of the older VIC web pages have also been updated and accessible
from this web page.

---
*3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!*
   *~ ~ ~      Advancing How we Perceive and Use the Tool of Computers!*
Timothy Rue      What's *DONE* in all we do?  *AI PK OI IP OP SF IQ ID KE*
Email @ mailto:timrue at mindspring.com      >INPUT->(Processing)->OUTPUT>v
Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/  ^<--------<----9----<--------<



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 12:23:45 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:23:45 +0200
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <mailman.996590580.27986.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6m2j02onn@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Simon Brunning" <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> wrote in message
news:mailman.996590580.27986.python-list at python.org...
> > From: Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
> > Pity I was away during the hottest part of this debate...
>
> Nice to have you back, Alex. In your absence, we had to resort to a major
> flame-war to keep the bandwidth up.

Yep -- hottest flameweek in c.l.p's history, apparently,
and I, the c.l.p flameguy, was away for it...!-(


Alex





From meowbot at meowing.net  Wed Jul  4 05:13:00 2001
From: meowbot at meowing.net (A Meowbot)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 05:13:00 -0400
Subject: Strong typing
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <9htio4$dtf$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <87ae2ldplv.fsf_-_@litterbox.meowing.net>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:
> Note that Python *is* a strongly-typed language, it's just that it is
> dynamically typed instead of statically typed.

This debate has recently been raging a few doors down the hallway.
One contribution in particular should be stapled to the forehead of
anyone mining that muck:

<URL:http://groups.google.com/groups?q=msgid%3A20010623153305.20460.qmail%40plover.com&ic=1>


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 16:52:58 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 22:52:58 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Neil Schemenauer" <nas at python.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994350172.18735.python-list at python.org...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> > From my personal experience: I get roughly a 15-20% increase of
> > productivity in Java.
>
> Could you estimate the figure for Python?  I haven't done enough C++ or
> Java to judge myself.

Haven't done *identical* projects in C++ and Python yet, except
for Python extensions prototyped in Python then coded with Boost
Python, and for those (small extensions) it seems I'm about 4
times more productive in Python than in C++.  I have no personal
experience doing the same task in Python and Java, yet.


Alex





From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 10 11:51:30 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 08:51:30 -0700
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107100751.6781ef0a@posting.google.com>

web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) wrote in message news:<5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9 at posting.google.com>...
> This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
> 
> Python will only appeal to scientific developers researching the
> "impossible to do" until it handles databases on a first class scale. 
> Oh, and another point, ODBC is dead.  Microsoft has already abandand
> it for OLEDB a COM based library.  References to ODBC need not apply.
> What is needed are RAW Native Drivers at the C/C++ level.

ODBC is not dead as long as anyone is writing middleware which exposes
it.

If I were in the process of writing a Python database module, I'd
rather leave middleware vendors such as Merant and Openlink to the
details of writing "RAW" drivers. At least they have the resources to
track n different releases of n different database system APIs. Then,
I'd just be able to write against the ODBC API.

Alternatively, I'd attempt to find some broadly supported "wire"
standards for database access, although I wouldn't start this exercise
feeling optimistic.

> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
> Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles Postgres
> and MsSQL that would be a bonus, however, most $$ gigs don't use the
> last two db's much so most of the focus should be on the "big five" or
> at least on the big three (Oracle, DB2, and SQL_Server).

You've certainly been reading your "consultancy house" reports.
However, you don't define what you mean by "cross database". I assert
that it's outside the scope of any Python database framework to ensure
SQL statement independence, for example.

> In my opinion, what has held Python back from going primetime virtical
> is it's lack of commercial grade db support, and I beleive it will
> continue to do so until a tribe of Python-developers gathers to
> accomplish this end.  I have for a long time felt that this has
> warranted the support of the General himself """_GV_""" if for nothing
> else than for moral support and inspiration to see this call to it's
> end.

We have the DB-API, and there are some efforts to address deficiencies
in it - the unification of bind/bound variable syntaxes in statements
is a good start, and some educational materials about their virtues
would not go amiss. We have the DB-SIG with a "tribe" of interested
developers. Time and resources prevent these developers from uniting.

Of course, most developers are motivated to write modules/drivers to
serve their own needs, and I can understand your belief that most of
the not-directly-motivated developers who are looking for projects of
interest tend to become preoccupied with other things less important
to yourself.

> The Python cummunity should throw it's best resources at this void
> until this call is answered.  Once a baseline is established, many
> intermediate developers could mantain such a platform.  The main need
> of the hour is to draw a crowd, once the crowd exists--it will
> self-sustain.

I can see a number of useful things which could be done, some not
solely relevant to the issue of database support:

  * More promotion of "hot projects" on a prominent site, along
    with why they are considered important and how people can
    contribute. As I noted in another thread, it's important to
    include people of all skill levels.

  * Support for the publication of less formal but still PEP-like
    documents for projects and project domains. This should appeal
    to those wanting to make a difference but not necessarily
    wanting to do the work.

  * Consideration of common frameworks for database modules, just
    like the Python graphical user interface API people are
    considering a common GUI framework. Indeed this kind of
    activity could be relevant in other domains.

The last point is worth discussing briefly. I would certainly feel
apprehensive about writing an extension module against a database
system API, but if some people had already written the Python
interface code, requiring me only to concentrate on making the calls
specific to the database system in question, then I might be more
readily persuaded.

Paul


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul  9 19:25:48 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:25:48 GMT
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hdgcktgn4eksejt01vqa8k0g7k69ov1isj@4ax.com> <9icndo$loe$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <slrn9kk83m.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <b8fkktkqihbo2ooc4p4nsfjgaehi81ii18@4ax.com>

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:21:59 +0100, philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
wrote:

>I suggest we continue to name the existing language "Python" and
>the new developments by called under a different name ("SuperPython"
>or "CP4A" possibly). That way, everyone gets what they want.
>
>The new SuperPython would be free to experiment with radical new
>ideas -- including changing the case-sensitivity, for example. And
>the old, exisiting Python would be guaranteed to evolve in a way 
>that doesn't break existing code, without a very very good reason.

Instead of SuperPython, it could be called Python 3000, but Guido has
already decided against that.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sun Jul  8 23:44:21 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:44:21 GMT
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
Message-ID: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it is
as follows:

s="12.19.6.7.12"
ls = string.split(s, '.')
md = map(string.atoi, ls)

Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. But my first problem is
after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?
The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the string
ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? I mean the
varible ls contains ['12', '19', '6', '7', '12'] arent those intergers they
are numbers. Any ways if you could reply answering all the questions in
whole or maybe just a few of em' it would be great.

Thanks.




From sean.mcgrath at propylon.com  Thu Jul 19 11:02:02 2001
From: sean.mcgrath at propylon.com (sean.mcgrath at propylon.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:02:02 GMT
Subject: Problem with using xml with jython
References: <f35f1426.0107181234.3406817e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b56f5a2.714647769@sydney.sligo.propylon>

I had the same problem. makeparser() is defaulting to expat which is a
C module. I worked around it by specifying xmlproc as the parser:

	parser = sax.make_parser("xml.sax.drivers2.drv_xmlproc")

This will then work on both Python and Jython. It takes responsibility
for choosing a parser ouf of the XML utilities and into your code.
This may or may not be acceptable depending on your application.

Sean


On 18 Jul 2001 13:34:22 -0700, gmulchan at hotmail.com (Gautam) wrote:

>Hi,
>   I am trying to run a simple program shown below with jython. It
>runs with python successfully but throws the following exception when
>run with jython. Can someone point out the problem.
>   I am using python 2.0. on win2k. I downloaded the xml package very
>recently.
>
>Thx
>
>program starts here 
>--------------------------------
>import sys
>
>from xml.sax import saxutils
>from xml.sax import make_parser
>from xml.sax.handler import feature_namespaces
>
>#print sys.modules
>    
>file='test.xml'
>
>class FindIssue(saxutils.DefaultHandler):
>    def __init__(self, title, number):
>        self.search_title, self.search_number = title, number
>
>    def startElement(self,name,attrs):
>        if name != 'comic' : return
>
>        title = attrs.get('title', None)
>        number = attrs.get('number',None)
>        if title == self.search_title and number ==
>self.search_number:
>            print title, '#'+str(number), 'found'
>        
>if __name__ == '__main__':
>    parser = make_parser()
> #   parser.setFeature(feature_namespaces,0)
>
>    dh = FindIssue('Sandman', '62')
>    parser.setContentHandler(dh)
>    parser.parse(file)
>
>----------------------------------------------------------
>
>The exception in jython is :
>
>C:\pythoncode\xmltest>C:\jython-2.0\jython trial.py
>Traceback (innermost last):
>  File "trial.py", line 24, in ?
>  File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\sax2exts.py", line 34, in
>make_parser
>  File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\saxexts.py", line 75, in
>make_parser
>KeyError: xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat



From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Wed Jul 25 16:11:59 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:11:59 +0100
Subject: Importing from Another Path
References: <mailman.995997582.18776.python-list@python.org> <3B5DE390.2F35B36A@accessforall.nl> <mailman.996010131.21356.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5F2806.851134A1@accessforall.nl>


Paul Sidorsky wrote:
> 
> Ype Kingma wrote:
> 
> > > sys.path.append("..\\common")
> > That is almost as portable as it gets: when also you take
> > the common directory from the command line sys.argv, eg:
> >
> >   sys.path.append(sys.argv[1])
> >
> > I wouldn't know of a more portable way.
> > The non portable part is then moved into the script(s) that
> > start(s) the client and the server.
> 
> Actually I just meant that it wasn't portable between Windows and Linux
> because I'm using backslashes in the path.
> 

Have a look at os.path.normpath(), os.path.normcase(), and
os.path.abspath().

> It looks like I'll have to just clean it up to use os.path.join() to
> take care of that and live with it the way I've got it.  This is not the
> answer I was hoping to hear, but at least it's an answer.  Thanks!
> 

File system naming depends on the file system, there is no way
around that. os.path can help you keep your file names compatible
enough to use file names in your python source on both systems.
But most programs need a startup script anyway, so I prefer
to take the file names from sys.argv.

<snip>

Ype

-- 
email at xs4all.nl


From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 23 05:18:29 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 02:18:29 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com>

"Andy Salnikov" <salnikov at inp.nsk.su> wrote in message news:<9jg6ei$ges7$1 at sky.inp.nsk.su>...
> "Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk...
> >
> > I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
> > think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.
> 
> Yeah, completely agree. Personaly, if this change happens, it will be a big
> revolt from Python for me. Not only for aesthetic reasons, simply because I
> cannot rely on the language which dares to change the meaning of existing
> operators. What do you think will be next? Change assignment to work like a
> copy, because there are many people confused with the reference semantic?

Indeed. I think there's a significantly underestimated danger of
widespread code breakage in making such a fundamental change to the
language. While it may be disappointing to learn, or even consider,
that numerous working programs today may somehow depend on the
semantics of the / operator as it stands, we must still respect that
this situation exists.

Of course, it is also possible that some programs out there are
actually flawed because integer division is taking place where the
author intended that "floating point division" should occur, and where
arguments to the / operator were not anticipated to be, but can be,
integer. However, it is not up to the language architects to fix
people's programs for them - those programs were written according to
well-defined rules, and it is the obligation of the language
architects to maintain those rules.

> I almost hear how manager staff saying: "Do you talk about that sh**ty snake
> language which changes its rules every year? Don't even think about it in
> our project!"

I can see people seriously suggesting a "pythonfork" project if the
debate gets any more intense. :-O

> Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
> new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
> 0.5.

The most sensible suggestion yet! I was reading the previous messages
in this thread waiting for someone to suggest this, and it's about
time someone did! There's a lot of weight behind adding a new
operator, yet most people seem to advocate adding the // operator and
then *changing* the / operator... which is madness!

If beginners want an operator which behaves as they expect, they
certainly aren't going to have any preconceptions about what it's
going to look like - they are beginners, after all. Therefore, why
even bother suggesting changing the / operator? Just introduce // and
be done with it! Nothing gets broken, the beginners get their new
operator, and those wanting the C++ comment syntax in Python will just
have to be disappointed. ;-)

Paul


From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Wed Jul 25 09:11:09 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:11:09 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EC652.9000908@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:

> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:40:06 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I think it will be inevitable for many Pythons to come to provide a
>>way to turn off the new division rules.  I am currently working on a
>>command line option for this.
>>
> 
> How about inference by looking at the extension of the input file.
> Either way you create language dialects, but looking at the extension
> makes the selection in a way that will generally work here and now.
> 
> I assume some applications ignore the standard *.py filename
> convention - hopefully rare enough to handle other ways, or maybe a
> case for allowing a command line option in addition.
> 
> 

Won't work for the python methods embedded in zope's zodb.  They don't 
have file extensions.

i'm-glad-i'm-not-jim-fulton-ly yours
Tom



From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Wed Jul 25 09:41:22 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:41:22 +0100
Subject: Version numbers in traceback
Message-ID: <5nitltsbrurir59906mbdtectsoah2ppcc@4ax.com>

Is there a standard way for a module to register its version number so that it is reported by
traceback or other debugging tools.

I thought something nice and simple like 

_Module_Version_ = '10.5C'

would be nice.
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 06:07:08 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 11:07:08 +0100
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e at posting.google.com>, Ben C
<benc1 at today.com.au> writes
>IMHO the reason why C has survived as a language and not become an
>endangered species like Rexx, pascal et al is because it has it's own
>'niche' ... initially evolving alongside of the unix environment it
>has become the most suited language (currently) for systems
>programming ... this has been both its strength and its weakness ...
>to add more functionality it has had to fragment itself into other
>competing 'species' and hence we now have C++ (and all its sub
>species) ... C is analogous to the carnivore of the programming
>languages ... yes fast and efficient ... but is also in a lot of
>respects quite crude ...
>
>I don't think Python has it's own true 'niche' ... it competes well
>with many other languages ... hence it has to either keep evolving
>into a 'better' competing language or find a niche or other languages
>will inevitably supplant it ... what will happen to all your Python
>code then? Will you invest the time learning and re-writing it to the
>newer language? ...
>
...
I believe that well designed languages define their own niche. A
language that constantly needs changing is clearly bad. That's not to
say that programming languages shouldn't evolve. The Pascal family, the
B family each had something. Perhaps the Python family will develop,
perhaps not. Constant syntax change for a programming language is a sign
of weakness not strength.
-- 
Robin Becker


From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul 23 04:28:27 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:28:27 GMT
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LeR67.534528$eK2.111965964@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"phillip" <phillip at transwitch.co.za> wrote in message
news:74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35 at posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> I put 'name,values' into a dictionary.
> But when I get the keys and display the values they come out in a
> different order that the order I inserted them in.
>
> Is there a way maintain the oringinal order?
>
> Phill


This cookbook recipe deals with a similar idea...
...but not exactly keeping keys in the order in which they were inserted.
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52306


..alternatively..
In Python 2.2a1 you can sub-class a dictionary to make it behave this way.
Here's a first stab at it...

class orderdict(dictionary):
    """ dictionary which returns keys in the order of insertion """

    def __init__(self):
        dictionary.__init__(self)
        self.n = 0

    def __setitem__(self,key,value):
        dictionary.__setitem__(self,(self.n,key),value)
        self.n += 1

    def __getitem__(self,key):
        return dictionary.__getitem__(self,(self.n,key))

    def keys(self):
        ks = dictionary.keys(self)
        ks.sort()
        return [ key for n,key in ks ]


...I think you would also have to implement items(), and probably a few
others as well to get them all working right.  I would like to see someone
else post a better version of this code.






From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul 23 15:01:56 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:01:56 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
[SNIP]
> Obviously - if complex numbers are considered valid inputs then that
> function is wrong. What you are saying, though, is that integer inputs
> are invalid and should be coerced to floats. That *CAN* be tested for
> and done now without ANY changes to the language. If it's too awkward,
> then what is needed is a simpler way to do achieve that. I have
> suggested several ways to achieve this kind of result, and one that
> achieves EXACTLY that. NONE of those suggestions would break old code.
> NOBODY has replied in any way to any of them though.

In my case at least they've been lost in the sound and fury. For a while I
tried to follow all of the posts in this thread, but they were quite
prolific and half were wrong (arguing about things not in the PEP), half
were hysterical (I'm afraid that I'm not all that concerned if those evil
Perl guys really laugh at us) and half were talking about things that have
been discussed to death. Oh yeah, I forgot the half that discussed how only
the feeble of mind could possibly want something like this. That left very
few posts that had any interesting arguments about why this was or was not a
bad idea. So now I skim for interesting posts, but it's easy to miss stuff.

>how about...
>
>def simple_func(x, y):
>  $coerce x, y : $integer -> $float
>  return y / x**2

Wouldn't help me much since I'm also concerned about arrays.  I don't like
the syntax much either. At the end of the day, it doesn't seem to be much
better than doing:

def simple_func(x, y):
   if isinstance(y, types.IntType):
      y = float(y)
   if isinstance(y, Numeric.ArrayType) and y.typecode() in ('i','l'):
      y = y.astype('d')
   return y / x**2

Now I'm not sure that it deserves to be called simple_func anymore.

It seems you would be better served proposing:

def simple_func(x, y):
   directive use_float_division
   return y / x**2

Maybe you already have and it was lost in the noise? However, I suspect that
your more likely to get more mileage out of pushing for the ability to use:

directive old_style_division

at the top of a file to force the use of the current division style for that
file. That depends on PEP 244 getting accepted of course.

>Notice I even used my simple prefix-to-indicate-keywords idea to avoid
>breaking any 'coerce' identifiers anyone might be using. I admit the
>syntax hasn't been thought through - I'll bet there's a dozen holes
>picked in it before tomorrow morning - but the principle is simple,
>clear, effective and non-destructive.

I'm afraid I disagree with 1-3 here. Four might be true, but since I don't
think helps the problems for which PEP 238 was proposed for, this is no
better (worse since it adds kruft) than doing nothing.

-tim







From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sun Jul  1 19:15:31 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 23:15:31 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7 at 4ax.com...
>
> >Correctness: Consider the following function:
> >
> >def f(x):
> >  x += (1, 2, 3)
> >  print x
>
> What do you think of:
>
> def f(x):
> x = x + (1,2,3)
> print x
>
> ?

A vast improvement: clear, unambiguous, and correct.  I can safely pass a
list as an argument and not have it modified behind my back.  Having to
write "x" twice on the second line is not good, but if it buys me
correctness, I'll happily pay that price.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 13:28:50 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:28:50 -0500
Subject: typo.py - Warn of typographical errors in Python scripts
In-Reply-To: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net>
References: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <15177.59858.853310.961010@beluga.mojam.com>

    Alan> You can download typo.py from http://utools.com/typo.htm

Doesn't PyChecker already do this sort of thing?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Wed Jul 18 15:12:01 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 21:12:01 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <m37kx6cari.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

Whatever the original reason was, many people have put case
sensitivity to good use for implementing naming conventions. For
example, I find it useful in my Python code to capitalize class names
(and nothing else), and then use a lower-case name otherwise identical
to a class name to indicate the expected type of a parameter to a
function.

If computing were to start from scratch, I'd perhaps favour a
case-insensitive approach everywhere. But I can't say I ever had a
problem with case sensitivity.

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From hfoffani at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 06:06:11 2001
From: hfoffani at yahoo.com (Hernan M. Foffani)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 10:06:11 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <mailman.994278428.32719.python-list@python.org> <9i0231$c2e$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <20010705060611.126$G9@newsreader.com>

About the "deprecated" issue, I think that what stated in the PEP it's ok.
If there is a need for a mantainer in a some moment is because *there is*
something to be done in a contribution, may be as a result of a bug-report,
a warning, an error in the regression test, whatever. And if nobody takes
care of it, it's ok for the integrators to have the right to deprecate such
module. I won't expect that the integrators ask every week if all the
mantainers of all the contributions are still "alive"... Regards,
-Hernan

-- 
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
                    Usenet Newsgroup Service


From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul  4 20:09:32 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:09:32 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <87lmm5dqjq.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net> <slrn9k5vo5.nv.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <ihJ07.84056$%a.3801959@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k7c2n.ip.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:30:38 GMT, Van Gale <cgale1 at _remove_home.com> wrote:

>> I think that Ada 95 is the best language to use for safety
>> critical systems such as air traffic control. That's precisely
>> the field Ada was designed for: large, safety-critical
>> realtime software.
>
>As much as I love Python, and dislike the Ada "world", I would have to agree
>with this.  Ada has tools available that can read source code and validate
>real-time requirements.

I find that extremely hard to believe: tools that read source
code and verify execution timing?  Of multi-threaded apps with
unsyncrhonized inputs?

That would be pretty amazing.

The only way I have ever hear of for doing that is with a
platform simulator that executions the object code generated by
the compiler/linker and simulates input data.

>These kinds of tools were developed by the aerospace industry
>for projects like the space station.  Not trivial stuff.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  We are now enjoying
                                  at               total mutual interaction in
                               visi.com            an imaginary hot tub...


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 15:06:46 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:06:46 +0300
Subject: HOWTO: exit
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221315300.4146-100000@cc489744-a>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221315300.4146-100000@cc489744-a>
Message-ID: <E15OOYw-0003xf-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:17:35 -0500 (CDT), Vonlia <adam.seyfarth at home.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>      Sorry, I know this will be easy and I'm making alot of noise, but
> how do I exit from a script?  I was hoping for something like sh's
> `exit' command...Once again, sorry, I just got into the python thing
> (long time Monty Python liker, though C-:)

>>> import sys
>>> sys.exit()
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 10:38:33 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:38:33 +0200
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com> <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9icfor038k@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b48d5b9.1400429941 at wa.news.verio.net...
    ...
> Well, ok, but did either of us really nail that? ;-)
>
> """
> First character is numeric or "-"
> At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly
> two digits
> All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"
> """

That depends on your reading of the last clause.  In modern
maths, generally speaking, an empty set would be taken to
satisfy it.  Python tends to disagree, though:

>>> ''.isdigit()
0

i.e., isdigit's spec of "all the characters in the strings are
digits" is taken to imply "and there is at least one such
character".  Reverend Dodgson, AKA "Lewis Carroll", would
be happy about that -- if I understand correctly, he fought
hard (and lost) against the notion that an empty set can be
taken as satisfying any condition whatsoever (I believe he
claimed "practicality beats purity" about that, or words to
that effect:-).

So: if you take the third spec as meaning:
    "all the remaining characters, IF ANY, ..."
then '-' by itself must be taken as specifying "a correct
dollar amount", &c, and my re didn't meet the specs. If
you take the third spec as meaning:
    "all the remaining characters, AND THERE MUST BE SOME, ..."
then '-' by itself is not acceptable.  Neither is '3', though,
because there are no remaining characters apart from the
first one -- and I think my re did accept '3'.

> I missed because I allowed \.\d\d by itself, which has first
> character '.' not equal to '-' or digit.
>
> But according to the rules, ISTM you missed too, since you
> don't allow -\.\d\d, which has an ok first character. The rules
> don't say whether any digits must precede a '.'
>
> In fact, we probably both missed by not letting '-' by itself
> be legal ;-)
>
> Perhaps r'(-|\d)\d*(\.\d\d)?$' ?

I suspect a + instead of that * right in the middle might
better capture the probable intent of ambiguous spec 3
(Python-like and Dodgson-like rather than emptysettish).
But apart from that, and it's gotta be either a * or a +, I
think you got it right.


Alex





From jh at web.de  Tue Jul  3 17:37:51 2001
From: jh at web.de (Jürgen Hermann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:37:51 +0200
Subject: No float limits
Message-ID: <9htdv6$phu$01$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi!

I just stumbled over the fact that there is sys.maxint, but no sys.maxfloat
and sys.epsfloat. In case anyone thinks this is a valid addition, I'll come
up with a patch.




From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Thu Jul 19 13:15:15 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:15:15 -0400
Subject: Threads
In-Reply-To: <995561518.767.71055.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B56DD63.13481.3B8EA8C@localhost>

"Tatiana Evers" <tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br> wrote, in part:
> I need use threads in Python. How does interaction between threads
> work? How do they communicate?

Tatiana, I'd suggest:

Good slides about threads in http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/
Good section about threads in Hammond and Robinson, Python 
Programming on Win32 (O'Reilly)
Sections about threads in the documentation that's provided as 
part of wxPython (www.wxpython.org).

Otherwise, please supply more specifics about what you need to 
do.

Bill



From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 20:52:39 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 10:52:39 +1000
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58D257.E0982C2@student.gu.edu.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I've released Python 2.1.1 today.  This is the final version of this
> bugfix release for Python 2.1, and should be fully compatible with
> Python 2.1.  There should be *no* reason to use 2.1 any more.  Many
> thanks to Thomas Wouters for being the release manager!  Pick up your
> copy here:
> 
>     http://www.python.org/2.1.1/
> 
> Python 2.1.1 is GPL-compatible.  This means that it is okay to
> distribute Python binaries linked with GPL-licensed software; Python
> itself is not released under the GPL but under a less restrictive
> license which is Open Source compliant.
> 
> PS: I've noticed some disarray of mail sent through python.org; this
> seems to have to do with the dysfunctional ORBS "spam-checker".  See
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016151.html for
> details.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Now as a bug release, is there any need for me to rebuild and reinstall
third-party modules built on 2.1?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From fgeiger at datec.at  Mon Jul  9 12:09:01 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 18:09:01 +0200
Subject: [Tkinter]: Grid as in wxPython?
References: <9ic90t$s1l$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net> <tkjjrtr89f687e@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9icko9$7jl$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>

Indeed, it does. Thank you Steve!

Regards
Franz


"Steve S.L. Wong" <steve at hkit.net> wrote in message
news:tkjjrtr89f687e at news.supernews.com...
> #I download this code from internet. Hope that helps you.
>
> from Tkinter import *
>
> class MultiListbox(Frame):
>     def __init__(self, master, lists):
>  Frame.__init__(self, master)
>  self.lists = []
>  for l,w in lists:
>      frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
>      Label(frame, text=l, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
>      lb = Listbox(frame, width=w, borderwidth=0, selectborderwidth=0,
>     relief=FLAT, exportselection=FALSE)
>      lb.pack(expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
>      self.lists.append(lb)
>      lb.bind('<B1-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Button-1>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Leave>', lambda e: 'break')
>      lb.bind('<B2-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._b2motion(e.x, e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Button-2>', lambda e, s=self: s._button2(e.x, e.y))
>  frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
>  Label(frame, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
>  sb = Scrollbar(frame, orient=VERTICAL, command=self._scroll)
>  sb.pack(expand=YES, fill=Y)
>  self.lists[0]['yscrollcommand']=sb.set
>
>     def _select(self, y):
>  row = self.lists[0].nearest(y)
>  self.selection_clear(0, END)
>  self.selection_set(row)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _button2(self, x, y):
>  for l in self.lists: l.scan_mark(x, y)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _b2motion(self, x, y):
>  for l in self.lists: l.scan_dragto(x, y)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _scroll(self, *args):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      apply(l.yview, args)
>
>     def curselection(self):
>  return self.lists[0].curselection()
>
>     def delete(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.delete(first, last)
>
>     def get(self, first, last=None):
>  result = []
>  for l in self.lists:
>      result.append(l.get(first,last))
>  if last: return apply(map, [None] + result)
>  return result
>
>     def index(self, index):
>  self.lists[0].index(index)
>
>     def insert(self, index, *elements):
>  for e in elements:
>      i = 0
>      for l in self.lists:
>   l.insert(index, e[i])
>   i = i + 1
>
>     def size(self):
>  return self.lists[0].size()
>
>     def see(self, index):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.see(index)
>
>     def selection_anchor(self, index):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_anchor(index)
>
>     def selection_clear(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_clear(first, last)
>
>     def selection_includes(self, index):
>  return self.lists[0].selection_includes(index)
>
>     def selection_set(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_set(first, last)
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     tk = Tk()
>     Label(tk, text='MultiListbox').pack()
>     mlb = MultiListbox(tk, (('Subject', 40), ('Sender', 20), ('Date',
10)))
>     for i in range(1000):
>  mlb.insert(END, ('Important Message: %d' % i, 'John Doe', '10/10/%04d' %
> (1900+i)))
>     mlb.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)
>     tk.mainloop()
>
>
> "Franz GEIGER" <fgeiger at datec.at> ???g???l??
> news:9ic90t$s1l$1 at newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net...
> > Is anybody aware of anything like wxPython grids, but for Tkinter? For a
> > Tkinter GUI I need a grid as it is available in wxPython. I already use
> PMW,
> > but there isn't such a beast.
> >
> > Regards
> > Franz
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>




From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 11:54:07 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:54:07 -0500
Subject: (in)exactness of complex numbers
Message-ID: <15201.36511.846651.858524@beluga.mojam.com>

Once these numeric changes are all implemented, if I define a complex
constant with either integer real or imaginary parts, e.g.
    
    c = 1+2.1j

    d = 1.2+5j

    e = 4+7j

should I get an integer back (exact) or a float (inexact) when asking for an
attribute that was originally an integer?  In general, can complex numbers
be considered to have two exactness attributes?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul  2 08:46:33 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:46:33 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <9hphiu0dks@drn.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k0olm.pc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On 2 Jul 2001 03:14:54 -0700, Armin Steinhoff <Armin_member at newsguy.com> wrote:
>In article <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>, "Edward says...
>>
>>I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>>frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>>
>>Python still doesn't have good database support,
>
>IMHO ... if something is dead, then it's your perception :)
>
>Here some database links ... out of the reality.
>
>http://www.oraclepower.com/isapi/orapower.dll?AID=SC&CAT_ID=1166
>http://starship.python.net/crew/sturner/informixdb.html
>http://object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/
>http://www.druid.net/pygresql/
>http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/Products/MySQLdb
>http://www.python.org/topics/database/DatabaseAPI-2.0.html
>http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html
>http://www.ziclix.com/zxjdbc/
>http://www.chordate.com/gadfly.html
>http://clientes.netvisao.pt/luiforra/gvib/
>http://www.equi4.com/metakit/python.html
>http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/

For more, go here:
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Python/Modules/Database/

If you have one that isn't there, submit it :-)

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From leo at iems.nwu.edu  Tue Jul  3 11:35:29 2001
From: leo at iems.nwu.edu (Leo Lopes)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 08:35:29 -0700
Subject: Debugging status 7/01
Message-ID: <e81c5a52.0107030735.6262a18e@posting.google.com>

Dear Friends,

        Would you like to share what are you doing for debuggers? I just
installed the newest ddd, and I have py 2.0. after playing around with a
few symbolic links, I was able to get the debugger to work inside the
ddd window, but ddd still seems unable to obtain all the correct info. 

        I used to use idle about a year ago, but my RH7 system doesn't like the
tk libraries needed to get that to work. I see @ www.python.org that
python 2.1 has rpms that seem to solve the problem, but I definetely
prefer ddd working to idle 0.5. Who is using idle nowadays? What are
your opinions? Has anyone been able to get ddd working properly with
2.0? 2.1?

Thanks!
Leo.
-- 
=======================================================================
Leonardo B. Lopes                                      leo at iems.nwu.edu 
Ph.D. Student                                             (847)491-8470
IEMS - Northwestern University             http://www.iems.nwu.edu/~leo


From pj at sgi.com  Fri Jul  6 21:16:44 2001
From: pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 01:16:44 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i5nts$1gq71$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>

Guido wrote:
|> This whole thread has disappointed me.

Don't let it get you down, Guido.

Any sufficiently large effort (more than 1 or 2 people ;) will
try to widen the narrowness of some in ways they choose to avoid.
The work of yourself and colleagues continues to delight a
surprisingly high percentage of those who come to know it.

In my case, in particular, as a student long ago of ZF set
theory, I smile everytime I come across the list comprehension
syntax.  Thanks Greg and whomever else.
-- 

                          I won't rest till it's the best ...
                          Manager, Linux Scalability
                          Paul Jackson <pj at sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:06:41 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:06:41 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item] = 1
> 
> A = filter(C.get, A)

I guess that'll drop some elements from A that are in B but evaluate to
false, though.

Alex.


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sat Jul 21 01:20:38 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:20:38 -0500
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <007401c111a4$e2f377c0$0101010a@local>

Are you on Windows?  All the things you mentioned are available on
Linux/Unix/BSD/etc. with the readline module.

On Windows platforms it is possible (but not easy) to get the standard
GNU readline working.  I created an "Alternative Readline" using a bit
of code from /F and some home-baked Python code for those of us on
Windows... get it at

    http://www.newcenturycomputers.net/projects/readline.html

It provides command history but not completion.

Hope this helps...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kevin parks" <kp87 at lycos.com>


> I've always wondered why the interpreter was so, uhm...difficult, even
> compared to wish (tcl). I like to mess around and improvise in the
> interpreter, but find that it is so feature-starved that it is often a
> bit tedious. Couldn't the interpreter be improved to behave more like
> a real shell, with command history and maybe evn completion or (god
> forbid) keywork syntax coloring. Couldn't it support some basic shell
> commands like more and ls and such? Even in wish i can type ls and get
> a listing. The interpreter is a great tool, but it really requires a
> wicked amount of typing and you can't eaily recall and edit these
> monster that you type in at the prompt.
> 
> cheers,
> -kevin parks
> seoul, korea
> 
> kp87 at lycos.com
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 
> 




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 17 11:48:31 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 10:48:31 -0500
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <mailman.995377053.13982.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <F86DF18457B00CF6.A3F0B5DB12E10790.B4014EB5206D6D05@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.995377053.13982.python-list at python.org>,
=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Not so long ago, I had something to do which was (probably) similar.
>We had a rather complex application in C that was meant to be used in
>batch mode on massive input, delivering massive output.  We wanted to
>include it in a Web application for processing one set of input at a time.
			.
		[plenty more detail]
			.
			.
>Finally, I opted for something very simple, clean, and quick to implement.
That's sure my favorite.
			.
			.
			.
I very much like Fran=E7ois's description.  These "case
studies" are valuable. 

He raises a couple of points that are special concerns
of mine.  Small, simple, reliable parts are, of course,
a great idea.  I'll add that it's absolutely fine to
build-in "extra" capabilities--self-diagnosis, network-
ing savvy, ...--to an existing or planned application.
Real-life experience shows that these can frequently
*simplify* a project.  Even though there might be no
requirement in an original specification for Web access,
if it makes development easier enough (by facilitating
testing, for example), implement it, and keep it "in
reserve".

Any day now, it'll be natural to design more and more
of such applications in terms of WS (Web Services as a
standard--XML-RPC and such), and then use common tools
(including the already-well-endowed Zope) to provide a
human-viewable Web face over the WS API.  Among other
advantages, this will provide another interface boundary
that developers presumably know how to engineer reliably.

Nice work, Fran=E7ois.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 21 10:29:13 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:29:13 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org> <atehltknbavv0irts7ousrh4ed8t36op5f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cphew6fjao.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:

> In an attempt to address the "why" of this problem, I have posted the
> following article to two mailing lists to which I belong, for AP
> Computer Science teachers:

Thanks, Sheila!  Finally someone who *does* something about this
rather than repeating old arguments... :-)  Looking forward to the
responses you get.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Sat Jul  7 10:14:14 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 14:14:14 GMT
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:

> "Edward Wilson" <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9 at posting.google.com...
> > This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
> >
> A SINGLE module to handle five or more mutually incompatible
> interfaces?!  That's utterly ridiculous --

Take a deep breath, now.  Calm, calm.

I can dream of a paradise with python and wxPython/wxDesigner and a
hypothetical pySQL92 universally available, pre-compiled, waiting only to be
downloaded and installed on more platforms than WinTel.

The non-SQL92 administration bits are usually handled by utility scripts
anyway.  ODBC 'Function Sequence Error', don'cha know.

Not all that far-fetched, IMO, although I'm prepared to ignore those who
urge me to do it myself.

As far as ADO, well, I fear it might be part of a subscription-only revenue
model in the future.





From roy at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 07:43:51 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:43:51 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <roy-50ACE3.07435116072001@news1.panix.com>

quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) wrote:
> for o in '.'.split(ip_addr):
>     assert 0 <= int(o) <= 255, 'ip octet not a byte in "%s"' % ip_addr

Don't you also have to catch the ValueError you'll get if o is not a valid 
integer?


From emile at fcfw.fenx.com  Sun Jul  1 22:34:07 2001
From: emile at fcfw.fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 19:34:07 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21C@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
Message-ID: <1e9801c1029f$92682940$0a06a8c0@FENX.COM>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Delaney, Timothy" <tdelaney at avaya.com>
To: "'Emile van Sebille'" <emile at fenx.com>; <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 5:59 PM
Subject: RE: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)


> > It's nothing that examining the id doesn't resolve:
> >
> > >>> a = [1,2,3]
> > >>> id(a)
> > 18916180
> > >>> a += [4,5]
> > >>> a
> > [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
> > >>> id(a)
> > 18916180
> > >>> b = (1,2,3)
> > >>> id(b)
> > 15261292
> > >>> b += (4,5)
> > >>> b
> > (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
> > >>> id(b)
> > 18736580
> > >>>
>
> Actually, that's not quite true. It would be quite legal for id(b) to be
> identical in one case - since b is the only reference to the tuple, the
> original tuple could be collected, and a new tuple with the same id() could
> be allocated. It's unlikely, but possible.
>
> Tim Delaney
>

I'm not sure that's true.  It looks like the old (collectible) reference exists until the STORE_FAST is executed, and IIRC,
individual byte code commands are atomic and execute until completion without interference.

Do I have that right?

>>> def test():
 b += (4,5)

>>> import dis
>>> dis.dis(test)
          0 SET_LINENO               1

          3 SET_LINENO               2
          6 LOAD_FAST                0 (b)
          9 LOAD_CONST               1 (4)
         12 LOAD_CONST               2 (5)
         15 BUILD_TUPLE              2
         18 INPLACE_ADD
         19 STORE_FAST               0 (b)
         22 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
         25 RETURN_VALUE


Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------




From gregj at pdxperts.com  Sun Jul  8 18:28:40 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:28:40 GMT
Subject: Good Newbie Books
References: <Cp427.655296$166.13566993@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <s8527.318555$p33.6387588@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

The Python tutorial available free at python.org is good. "Learning Python"
by Mark Lutz (O'Reilly) is well-written and steps through the language with
lots of examples. I think David Beazley's "Python Essential Reference" (New
Riders) is essential, even for beginners, though it isn't quite enough to
learn the language from.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pdxperts.com


"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:Cp427.655296$166.13566993 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Hello,
> Does anybody know of some good newbie books for me to read? I have already
> read Ian Van Laningham's "Teach yourself Python in 24 Hours" are there any
> good books that kind of step me up (from the book mentioned before).
>
> Thanks.
>
>




From roy at panix.com  Tue Jul 24 07:41:14 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:41:14 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <roy-24160D.07405224072001@news1.panix.com>

Duncan Grisby <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> wrote:

> So what can I do?  I can't even do something ugly like
> 
>   if sys.hexversion > 0x2000200:
>       c = a // b
>   else:
>       c = a / b
> 
> since the a // b gives a syntax error.

I'm almost embarassed to suggest this, but what about:

   if sys.hexversion > 0x2000200:
       c = eval ("a // b")
   else:
       c = a / b

It makes me barf to even suggest it, but it does solve the immediate 
problem.

PS -- please don't infer from this posting that I'm in support of the PEP; 
I'm just addressing this specific issue.  The fundamental problem here is 
that the PEP breaks existing code, which if it's not a cardinal sin, should 
be.


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul 22 18:17:10 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 22:17:10 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> [about //]
>> it just looks awful as well as annoying those who don't want this
>> change.

> Any solution would have annoyed the other side, and one solution
> had to be taken.
> And no, "inertia" isn't an excuse. Python cannot be ruled by inertia,
> just as it cannot arbitrarily break backwards compat. 

People just differ in their opinions on what is inertia and what is
arbitrarily breaking backwards compatibility. Robin is probably in
the "arbitrarily breaking backwards compatibility" camp on this issue,
while you're in the "inertia" camp. I'm in the "just leave me here,
go on without me, I'll be okay" camp, myself.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 16:23:46 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:23:46 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Steve Horne wrote:

> I've had idle thoughts for some time about a language that would allow
> you to define - within the language itself - the syntax and semantics
> for sublanguages. Only the lexical rules would be fixed, though there
> would need to be several built-in sublanguages - grammar and
> translation definition, simple compile-time imperative and simple
> run-time imperative being the obvious ones. The thought was originally
> provoked by wanting to support many different paradigms efficiently
> and concisely in the same language - if anyone comes up with a new
> paradigm, they just create a library that defines a suitable grammar
> and translation and, hey presto, anyone can use it without changing
> languages, and without discarding code written for other paradigms.
> 
> It suddenly seems so much more like a practical idea.

It's existed for years. It's called Lisp, and it's
the reason why Python is only the second best programming
language in the world <0.5 wink>.

I'm afraid it doesn't say that 1/2 == 0, though. It has
rationals.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul  2 23:56:43 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 03:56:43 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9k2gkn.k2.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:52:45 -0400, William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>> From: Russ (18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com)
>> Subject: Python for air traffic control?
>> Date: 2001-06-29 17:42:45 PST
>>
>> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
>> application in air traffic control. [...] Is Python up to this
>> task? Thanks for your insights.
>
>Of course, you idiot... 
[...]
>Am I missing something?

Yes apparently a couple things:

 1) Manners
 
 2) A basic understanding of the question being asked.

He's asking about the implications of using Python is a safety
critical system -- not about whether it can do arrays or
whatever it was you were talking about.

There are many considerations in safety critical systems that
have absolutely nothing to do with whether the language chosen
is capable of performing the required calculations.

For example: in a safety-critical system any sort of dynamic
memory allocation can be risky, and garbage collection can be
downright terrifying.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I am a traffic light,
                                  at               and Alan Ginzberg kidnapped
                               visi.com            my laundry in 1927!


From sa at bayt.net  Wed Jul  4 03:03:44 2001
From: sa at bayt.net (Shakeeb Alireza)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 00:03:44 -0700
Subject: tuple2csv  snipplet
Message-ID: <280f26fb.0107032303.64df7a48@posting.google.com>

Hi folks,

A friend and I have just spent a bit of time trying to convert tuples
(generated from an SQL query) into comma separated values. As it seems
to work we thought we'd share what we have come up with so far. It's a
bit of a hack however... is there a better way to do this?

All the best,

Shakeeb


<code>

t1 = (None, 'spam', 'bar', "Python's kewl", None, None)
t2 = (123, 'She said "Ni!" and smiled.')

import re

def tuple2csv(tuple):
    s = str(tuple)
    p = re.compile(", *None")
    s = p.sub(', ""', s)
    p = re.compile("None *,")
    s = p.sub('"",', s)
    p = re.compile(", *None *,")
    s = p.sub(', "",', s)
    p = re.compile("' *\)")
    s = p.sub('"', s)    
    p = re.compile("\( *'")
    s = p.sub('"', s)
    p = re.compile("\)")
    s = p.sub('', s)    
    p = re.compile("\(")
    s = p.sub('', s)        
    p = re.compile("('|\") *,")
    s = p.sub('",', s)
    p = re.compile(", *('|\")")
    csv = p.sub(',"', s)
    return csv

print tuple2csv(t1)
print tuple2csv(t2)

</code>


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:42:32 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:42:32 +0100
Subject: Learning Python
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BEEA@intrepid>

> From:	Paul [SMTP:pchilds at ithink.net]
> Sent:	Tuesday, July 24, 2001 7:41 PM
> To:	python-list at python.org
> Subject:	Learning Python
> 
> I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
> program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.
 
You have already been steered towards a number if excellent tutorials. You
might also want to join the Python-tutor list at
<http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor> - just the place for all
those newbie questions!

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From tchur at optushome.com.au  Fri Jul 13 22:51:18 2001
From: tchur at optushome.com.au (Tim Churches)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:51:18 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FB3A6.5FD759BF@optushome.com.au>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum wrote:

-----8<----snip---------
[ discussion of ways of preventing changes to Python breaking existing
code ]
-----8<----snip---------

I'm just about to head off to a 1 week statistics workshop in which the
Stata package (see http://www.stata.org) will be used for teaching, so I
thought I had better crack open the Stata manual...

Although Stata is a proprietary, closed source package, Stata Corp. has
actively encouraged end users to write their own extensions to Stata
using the Stata scripting language (about which the less said the
better...), so there is a large body of work written using various
versions of Stata from 1.0 to 7.0 (in 0.2 or 0.5 version increments, it
seems). Stata Corp actively distributes these extensions via a built-in
download facility or via CD-ROMs.

The first thing which caught my eye in the manual was the "version"
statement. This statement modifies the behaviour of Stata to mimic the
specified version, thus allowing old scripts to run unchanged under new
versions. Not only that, it does so at run-time, allowing old and new
code to be combined, such as, in a single script:

version 2.1 /* emulate Stata 2.1 */
...assorted old Stata code....
version 6.5 /* emulate Stata 6.5 */
...newer code...
version 7.0 /* revert to current version behaviour */
...code to take advantage of latest changes to syntax...

This behaviour modification seems to extend not just to the Stata
kernel, in which the core syntax is defined, but also to Stata
libraries, so that if you specify "Version 2.1" you even get the old
style random number generator instead of the better one introduced in a
later version. 

This seems like both an excellent solution and a very neat trick. Having
never looked into the bowels of the Python bytecode compiler or VM, I
have no idea whether such a thing would be feasible, but it is an
attractive idea, at least superficially. It appears to have worked well
for Stata.

Tim C
Sydney, Australia



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 17:02:22 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:02:22 +0200
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de> <mailman.994188607.18864.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9htc0v08u2@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994188607.18864.python-list at python.org...
    ...
>     class Dict(UserDict.UserDict):
> def __getattr__(self, name):
>     if name == "data":
> return self.__dict__['data']

Dead-code warning: __getattr__ is NOT called for attribute
names that are keys in self.__dict__.  You can remove these
two lines without ill effect:-).


Alex





From gmulchan at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 16:34:22 2001
From: gmulchan at hotmail.com (Gautam)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:34:22 -0700
Subject: Problem with using xml with jython
Message-ID: <f35f1426.0107181234.3406817e@posting.google.com>

Hi,
   I am trying to run a simple program shown below with jython. It
runs with python successfully but throws the following exception when
run with jython. Can someone point out the problem.
   I am using python 2.0. on win2k. I downloaded the xml package very
recently.

Thx

program starts here 
--------------------------------
import sys

from xml.sax import saxutils
from xml.sax import make_parser
from xml.sax.handler import feature_namespaces

#print sys.modules
    
file='test.xml'

class FindIssue(saxutils.DefaultHandler):
    def __init__(self, title, number):
        self.search_title, self.search_number = title, number

    def startElement(self,name,attrs):
        if name != 'comic' : return

        title = attrs.get('title', None)
        number = attrs.get('number',None)
        if title == self.search_title and number ==
self.search_number:
            print title, '#'+str(number), 'found'
        
if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = make_parser()
 #   parser.setFeature(feature_namespaces,0)

    dh = FindIssue('Sandman', '62')
    parser.setContentHandler(dh)
    parser.parse(file)

----------------------------------------------------------

The exception in jython is :

C:\pythoncode\xmltest>C:\jython-2.0\jython trial.py
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "trial.py", line 24, in ?
  File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\sax2exts.py", line 34, in
make_parser
  File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\saxexts.py", line 75, in
make_parser
KeyError: xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat


From rjohns at americasm01.nt.com  Tue Jul 17 18:33:59 2001
From: rjohns at americasm01.nt.com (Johns, Richard [NCRTP:JZ54:EXCH])
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:33:59 -0400
Subject: Profiling threads?
Message-ID: <3B54BD57.5A2A3048@americasm01.nt.com>

Any suggestions on using profile with threaded programs?  I haven't managed
to get the profiler to do anything in a thread yet.  Is it a matter of 
getting the thread to exit on its own so the profiler can dump its report?
 
Cheers,
Rick


From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Mon Jul  9 16:06:00 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:06:00 -0400
Subject: Error Building PyPgSQL
References: <L6i27.261092$Z2.3119989@nnrp1.uunet.ca> <slrn9kjihk.pj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <o9o27.261200$Z2.3123178@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

I have version 1.2 from sourceforge, it doesn't mention using distutils or
have a setup.py script.
Have I got the latest?
I'm new to distutils, am I missing something basic?

Rod MacNeil

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9kjihk.pj.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
> On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:13:36 -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >I'm trying to build PyPgSQL on a RH7 box with
> >Python 1.5 and postgres 7.0 and gcc-2.96-54.
> >I left the Setup.in file as it shipped because it looked
> >correct to me.
> >I get the following when I run make.
> >
> >gcc -fPIC -I/usr/local/pgsql/include -g -02 -
> >I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/include/python1.5 -
> >DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c ./libpqmodule.c
> >./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgConnection_New':
> >./libpqmodule.c:196: parse error before `PgConnection'
> >./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgResult_New':
> >./libpqmodule.c:282: parse error before `PgResult'
> >./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgLargeObject_New':
> >./libpqmodule.c:358: parse error before `PgLargeObject'
> >./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgNotify_New':
> >./libpqmodule.c:548: parse error before `PgNotify'
> >make: *** [libpqmodule.o] Error 1
> >
> >This looks like a compiler error to me but I'm not a C programmer.
> >The four lines of code appear to be
> >using the same syntax, is this a syntax error or
> >possibly a compiler version issue?
> >
> >Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?
>
> The latest release uses distutils and it works fine. I think you should
use
> this one (edit paths in setup.py, then "python setup.py build" then
"python
> setup.py install").
>
> Gerhard
> --
> mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
> web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
> public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
> reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda
x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 18:02:25 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 15:02:25 -0700
Subject: What is happening with this program
References: <mailman.995478810.30770.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107181402.64982597@posting.google.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995478810.30770.python-list at python.org>...
> Can someone tell me what is happening here?  Is it saying my original
> directory is not present?  If not, can anyone tell me how to fix this
> program?  The program ran fine in windows, and I am enclosing:
> 1. Results of executing program on Solaris.
> 2. File on server where program is being executed
> 3. Program with IP and sign on information changed.
> 
> ------------------------> Results of executing program
> <---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> 
> pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/pythonprograms> ./ftpclient.py
> tablespace.list,redologs.list,logfile.list,controlfile.list,dumpdest.list,us
[snip]> .ctl.Z,backup.controlfile,initpdsweb.ora,tnsnames.ora,listener.ora
> filename = filename

What's this? Is this meaningless output expected? Does this come under
your definition of "ran fine in windows"?

> 
> name = name

What's this? Is this ...

> 
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "./ftpclient.py", line 16, in ?
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))
>   File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 371, in
> storbinary
>     conn = self.transfercmd(cmd)
>   File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 296, in
> transfercmd
>     return self.ntransfercmd(cmd, rest)[0]
>   File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 278, in
> ntransfercmd
>     resp = self.sendcmd(cmd)
>   File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 229, in
> sendcmd
>     return self.getresp()
>   File "/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/lib/python2.1/ftplib.py", line 202, in
> getresp
>     raise error_perm, resp
> ftplib.error_perm: 553
> /usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb/tablespace.list: No such file or
> directory.

"No such file or directory" is probably not very meaningful. According
to RFC 959, code 553 means "Requested action not taken. File name not
allowed." This may give you a better clue.

> pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/pythonprograms>
> 
> -----------------> File on sending server
> <--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb> ls
> backup.controlfile
[snip]
> usr2_pdswebdbfiles_oradata_pdsweb_users01.dbf.Z
> pdsweb:/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb> 
> 
> -------------------> Python program (with sensitive data changed to protect
> the innocent) <---------------------------------------------
> 
> #!/usr2/ActivePython-2.1/bin/python
> import string, os
> import ftplib
> import glob
> filename = os.path.join("usr2", "websoftware", "oraclebackupfiles",
> "pdsweb")

You started off on the right track here, using the os.path module
functions for portability ...

> listname =
> string.join(os.listdir('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb'),',')

.. but were quickly seduced by the Dark Side; those hardwired slashes
are harbingers of doom ...

> print listname

Not relevant to your problem, but the above is susceptible to stepwise
refinement:
(1) listname =  string.join(os.listdir(filename),','); print listname
(2) print string.join(os.listdir(filename),',')
(3) print os.listdir(filename) # not identical, but good enough for
debugging

> ftp = ftplib.FTP('999.999.999.999') #specify host
> ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
> ftp.login(user='fudd',passwd='elmer',acct='looney')   # user info
> ftp.cwd('/usr2/pdsweb/oraclebackupfiles2/pdsweb/')

Those slashes again ...

> for filename in glob.glob('/usr2/websoftware/oraclebackupfiles/pdsweb/*'):

and again ...

>     name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]

Wwwhhhoooooopppsss!!!  A *back*slash ???? This *might* just explain
why it doesn't "run fine" on non-windows.

Try using os.path.split() for portability. When you RTFM and you find
that the FingM refers to "slash" instead of "path separator", you may
take some comfort from the fact that you are not alone in
non-portability :-)

However, try fixing the two following print statements first, and run
this again, so that you can see better what is happening.  Then change
to using os.path.split()

>     print "filename = " + 'filename' + "\n"

This can be "refined" to 
   print "filename = filename\n"
... perhaps not what you intended. Perhaps you are a recent convert
from some  language where " (quote) and ' (apostrophe) have different
meaning. Perhaps you meant to use ` (grave accent) instead of '
(apostrophe). You may like to try repr(x) instead of `x`.

>     print "name = " + 'name' + "\n"
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))
> ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
> ftp.quit()

HTH,
John


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 01:05:46 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 22:05:46 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0106281419260.11263-100000@bms> <mailman.993764502.10834.python-list@python.org> <cpae2rlarx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.993841846.2132.python-list@python.org> <cpsngijfcg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hpjsjt04gj33rbcbpurvv2mbiknuqf6fob@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EAFAA.5FE272@ActiveState.com>

Courageous wrote:
> 
> >> My point is that it is hard for a new user to "believe me" (or at least
> >> understand me) when I say that tuples are not mutable but they see them
> >> changing right in front of their eyes:
> >>
> >> >>> a=(1,2,3)
> >> >>> a+=(8,3)
> 
> They would believe you better if you gave a better example:

It's funny how this discussion just goes around and around in circles. I
say: "this is initially confusing" and someone else responds with "yes,
but if you spend a whole bunch of effort and show them a long and
complicated list of commands and explain some details of Python's object
orientation it all becomes clear." Yes well, with enough explanation,
even Perl is clear.

In my experience, mutability and references are already one of the
hardest things to teach and understand in Python. They are somewhat
tricky in any language. Anything that makes them more tricky is
questionable in my opinion.

I don't always have the opportunity to talk to people and explain
confusing things to them. In one class I gave, a guy let out a gasp when
he came to understand the reference rules. He said that that was what
had prevented him from coming to understand Python the first two times
he tried. Now I think we've made life harder for guys like that to save
Numeric Python users from typing a method call for their mutations.
That's a poor trade-off.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Mon Jul 30 07:50:28 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:50:28 +0100
Subject: What RE would i use to match this whole word?
References: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <20010729003831.2A193BED.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <9k10qe$n8n$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <irV87.147995$EF2.19745941@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9k3hm5$mrp$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

YIPPEEEE!!!! thats it, of course its not a string, doh, how foolish of me.
he he.. anyway thanks m8.

G. WIlloughby

"Cliff Crawford" <cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu> wrote in message
news:irV87.147995$EF2.19745941 at typhoon.nyroc.rr.com...
> * G. Willoughby <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> menulis:
> | this is the code im using for a 'file file' kinda program:
> |
> | [snip]
> |
> | def search(resultPane, dir, files):
> |     searchString = re.compile(str(entryField.get()), re.IGNORECASE) #
Get
> | search string
> |     for file in files:
> |         if searchString.search(file) == "None":
>
> None is *not* a string, it's a unique object.  Since search() never
> returns a string, your comparison always fails and your else: branch
> always gets executed no matter what.  Change this line to:
>
>           if searchString.search(file) is None:
>
> or
>           if not searchString.search(file):
>
> to make it work.
>
>
> --
> Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
> A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
> "This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism."
>                                  -- Camille Paglia




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sat Jul  7 16:54:55 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 20:54:55 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <B7695827.13DAA%dgoodger@bigfoot.com> <9i1pd8$8ei$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <9i5ro5$arv$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9i7suv$b2g$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <9i1pd8$8ei$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>,
> Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
>>David Goodger <dgoodger at bigfoot.com> wrote:
>>> Martijn: 
>>>>
>>>> The library PEP differs from a normal standard track PEP in that
>>>> the reference implementation should in this case always already
>>>> have been written before the PEP is to be reviewed; the reference
>>>> implementation _is_ the proposed contribution.
>>>
>>> By "to be reviewed" do you mean "to be decided upon by the
>>> Integrators"? Or "to be released to the Python community for
>>> comment"? I hope the former.  Please clarify.
>>
>>The former, I shall clarify, thank you.

> Actually, I think it should be both, just as with all standard PEPs.
> That is, the PEP is reviewed and commented upon by the community, but
> the Integrators (as proxies for Guido, BDFL) make the final decision
> about whether to include it.

Right, that's an even more correct clarification. I just should make sure
the Integrators (and Guido) are shown to have the final word.

Thanks,

Martijn 
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Jul 13 18:59:24 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:59:24 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.995052624.21992.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kuvac.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:29:32 -0700, James_Althoff at i2.com <James_Althoff at i2.com> wrote:
>
>Granted, I used "only".  On the other hand, if someone says "good for short
>programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this case)
>-- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
>something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
> >=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to be
>reasonable and fair)?

No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?



-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 20 01:21:48 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 01:21:48 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j507g01j75@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9ldhqf.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <u7kx4tbtf.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:48:01 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:slrn9lavp6.v3.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> >    ...
> > (...)
> >> No, because on the odd occasions that you want an exception you can
> >> always throw one manually.
> >
> >And viceversa, if the odd occasions are those in which you
> >want to SUPPRESS the exception, you can easily try/except it.
> 
> On the contrary, i want to suppress the exception >90% of the
> time.

and earlier, philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:

> Here, I'm assuming that usually you don't want one -- perhaps this
> is jsut my idiosyncratic programming style and most people vare different
> here. Comments?

I think it does seem like you're going to end up fighting Python quite
a bit with this goal.  Exceptions really are integral to Python (much
more so than many other languages that also support the notion) and
working hard to avoid them as much as you suggest may be just too much
swimming against the tide.

And this is true outside the core objects/libraries as well.  A really
good example is the win32all package, which wraps the majority of the
win32 API.  Any error code back from the API is translated into an
exception.  So that's an example of a non-exception API conforming to
exceptions from within the Python environment.

I don't want to pre-suppose how much experience you have working with
them to this point, but I'm guessing that if you become more
comfortable with programming in the presence of exceptions (e.g.,
accept that it can happen in far more than 10% of the code you write),
that you'll find it neither as intrusive as you suggest in this
thread, nor problematic.  Of course you can always wrap exceptions up
in your own functions as has been shown here, and can always choose at
what level you want to catch exceptions.  Exception handling at
logical points in an application (e.g., not really each and every
statement) can go a long way to amortizing the overhead of dealing
with them.

Personally, I also find the exception approach very valuable to quick
'n dirty scripts.  It gives you extra confidence to whip up those
really dirty one-shot tools, knowing that if something fails the
exception will bubble up a trackback and just stop things.  I'm always
a bit more leary of that rapidly-built more than single liner, but
less than large application, Perl script in terms of automatic
coersions, empty results to bad references and so on, for example.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From sill at optonline.net  Wed Jul 11 16:16:30 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:16:30 GMT
Subject: curses woes
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101209540.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru> <mailman.994806384.27419.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpcut.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 11 Jul 2001 01:06:29 +0200, I?igo Serna <inigoserna at terra.es> wrote:
> El d?a 10 Jul 2001 12:11:39 +0400, Oleg Broytmann escribi?
>> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Rainy wrote:
>> > while 1:
>> >     c = win.getch()
>> >     if c == curses.KEY_BACKSPACE:
>> >         do_something()
>> >
>> > The problem is that backspace key shows up as ^? and doesn't match the above
>> > test. I also tried doing c == 14 but also without luck. I'm using
>> > curses.wrapper() here.
>> 
>>    Your terminal is incorrectly configured.
>> 
>> man 5 terminfo
>> man tic
>> man stty
> 
> you can use
> 
> print 'key: \'%s\' <=> %c <=> 0x%X <=> %d' % (curses.keyname(c), c & 255, c, c)

Thanks! That's exactly what I needed.

> 
> to learn the key code which is generated and then use it in your code,
> but, of course, this is the wrong way (tm).

But all curses apps use it, seeing that mutt, slrn, etc have no problem with
xterm?

> 
> In my system (a much-modified RedHat Linux 7.1 with ncurses-5.2-8),
> backspace generates code 8 (Ctrl-H) in xterm and gnome-terminal, but
> curses.KEY_BACKSPACE in rxvt.
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I?igo Serna
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul  3 18:25:17 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 00:25:17 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B42464D.8DE6A3B4@stroeder.com>

Russ wrote:
> 
> Consider the type checking in C or C++, for example. Suppose that a
> function takes several ints (or any other type) as arguments, and
> suppose the calls of the function all pass ints in the correct slots.
> The compiler will be perfectly happy. Does that assure that the
> arguments are passed correctly? Of course not.

Did you ever used Modula 2 or at least Pascal? I used to declare
types for almost every integer index I had to pass to a
function/procedure. Type checking in C/C++ is almost meaningless
compared to that.

> Now consider argument passing by keyword in Python. The order of the
> arguments no longer matters. Sure, the wrong type of arguments could
> still be passed in, but it seems to me the probability is less than
> getting the wrong object of the right type in C++. In C++, the
> complier only checks the type of the argument, but Python checks the
> actual NAME of the argument. The name is more specific than the type.

Just a rough idea: How about pass instances with the parameter
values stored in the class' attributes named differently. IMHO this
would reduce the probability of passing wrong arguments even more.

> As I said, static type checking is a must, but it can already be done
> in Python.

An method/function implementor could also check the type of every
argument passed if the interpreter is started in debug mode. You can
mandate to comply with a style guide.

if __debug__:
  if type(arg1)!=type(''):
    raise TypeError,'Argument arg1 must be string type.'
  if type(arg2)!=type(1):
    raise TypeError,'Argument arg2 must be integer type.'
  ...

Ciao, Michael.


From mirko.liss at web.de  Sat Jul 28 20:38:30 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 02:38:30 +0200
Subject: What RE would i use to match this whole word?
In-Reply-To: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
References: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20010729003831.2A193BED.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, G. Willoughby wrote:
> What RE would i use to match this whole word, 'Rasping'
> 
> i was using:
> 
> searchString = re.compile('Rasping', re.IGNORECASE) but this don't seem to
> be right. Im missing something! any help would be appreiciated!

Hmm, what about some examples:

Python 2.1.1 (#4, Jul 25 2001, 10:17:07) 
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import re
>>> pattern = re.compile('RASping', re.IGNORECASE)
>>> pattern                                       
<SRE_Pattern object at 0x81ed3c8>
>>> pattern.match("rasping racing pong")
<SRE_Match object at 0x81f1628>
>>> pattern.match("rasping racing pong").group(0)
'rasping'
>>> pattern.match("Grasping racing pong").group(0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'group'
>>> print pattern.match("Grasping racing pong")
None
>>> pattern.search("Grasping racing pong").group(0)
'rasping'
>>> pattern.search("Grasping racing pong").span(0)
(1, 8)

I believe the Python Documentation and the FAQ explains
this in more detail. Python reg exps are quite similar
to Perl reg exps, so there's a huge pile of books at
the friendly bookshop in your neighborhood, as well.


regards,

Mirko



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:34:57 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:34:57 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lm5h3.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <ta4nltkr6m4friraviemkhelo6hp4ttnn1@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 18:06:27 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>It's not that simple, e.g. exp(1/2) should return a float. Generally

exp(1/2) is irrational - it cannot be represented as a float or as a
rational - but the float representation can never be more precise than
a rational representation, whereas a rational representation *can* be
more precise than a float representation.

If you argue that integers are just a subset of floats and division
should always return a float if necessary to get the more precise
value, then surely you should also argue that floats are merely a
subset of rationals and rationals should be used where necessary to
get more precision.

Of course I don't agree - but I am simply extending your logic.

>> Logically, operations with mixed float and rational arguments should
>> give rational results - the float argument can be accurately
>> converted, and the result is less likely to have lost precision.
>
>Too late: it has already lost its precision because input was a float.

But why throw away the rational arguments precision.

1/3 * 2.0 should give 2/3 - not 0.6666666666666

But if we use your logic for this case, then surely we should consider
that in integer division there's no point giving a float result as the
inputs are already represented as integers and therefore they have
already lost the precision that floats have ;-)

>But floats are used to represent their approximations. We have two
>choices about the meaning of pi+1/2: either 3.641592653589793 or
>3+180592277226915/281474976710656. I think that the former is a better
>choice; it's inexact anyway, so we should not pretend that it's exact.

But a rational approximation can more accurate than floats - surely we
should choose the *best* approximation.

>> Of course, this then opens a major can of worms - rational versions
>> of trig functions and similar would not be realistic, and therefore
>> you'd get lots of implicit conversions from floats to rationals
>> (rationals being more general than floats) only to have to convert
>> back again for the trig functions, and so on.
>
>That's why I would do it in the opposite direction.

So would I in reality - I'm simply extending the same logic you use
for integers and floats. One major advantage of treating integer
division separate from float division separate from rational division
etc etc is simply that the rules stay the same for each case - your
not making up new inconsistent rules for each special case that
someone thinks up.

>
>>>  Decimal floats should not be necessary: they are inexact
>>>  like binary floats and slow like rationals.
>> 
>> Floats are not slow on modern hardware.
>
>This is what I said.

Sorry - I just realised what you are saying - *decimal* floats.

What the hell is a decimal float, and where did they come from! They
only exist, to my knowledge, in the sense of standard form/scientific
notation.

>When you want speed, use floats. When you want correctness, use
>rationals. You can't have both. Decimal floats provide neither.

Decimal floats provide the same as binary floats but different - they
can be precise in cases when binary floats cannot and visa versa. But
I agree there's no real advantage, unless you were to argue that they
are more suited to the kinds of approximations that people naturally
make - we typically round to decimal places, not binary places.

But you can't simply classify floats and rationals as alternatives
like this - by your own logic, floats are a subset of rationals (just
as integers are a subset of floats), so 1.0 divided by 3.0 should give
the rational 1/3.

Its your argument - why aren't you sticking to it ;-)



From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Mon Jul  9 13:37:38 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 13:37:38 -0400
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <3b4676ad$0$324$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net> <9icb9i$o68$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <wk1ynqj95p.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "AM" == Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> writes:

AM> In article <3b4676ad$0$324$8eec23a at newsreader.tycho.net>,
AM> Neil Macneale <mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Note: this sollution requires 2 characters after the decimal point....
>> 
>> def isDollarAmount(s):
>> try:
>> if s.count == 1 and s[-3] == '.':
>> dol, cen = s.split('.')
>> int(dol)
>> int(cen)
>> return 1
>> int(s)
>> return 1
>> except:
>> return None

AM> I would change "int(dol)" to "long(dol)".

And s.count to s.count('.')

Otherwise, cute.
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Wed Jul 25 20:45:15 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:45:15 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
Message-ID: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net>

Hi again, folks,

So, I dug deeper and found out that two threads were apparently
struggling to get xml.sax.__init__ module to execute a very
suspect __import__("xml.sax.expatreader").  Further digging led
me to the C source module that contained some comment "this is
to prevent two threads from importing the same module at the same
time returning incomplete module" (or something like that).  I
didn't try to comprehend the C source, sorry.  Although it may
not be so difficult, I prefer to leave fixing to those for whom
the system is an open book.

Understanding that Python thread mechanism does not use the OS
thread mechanism, and with all due respect to the creators and
contributors, I would like to ask, "Has anybody experienced
similar situation with more than one thread competing for the
same module?"

I searched in Google's Usenet archive and found that in 1998 it
used to be a problem (I think the message thread was called
"import not thread safe?").  I gather, later there was an attempt
made to resolve the issue.  [trying not to sound skeptical] Has
it been actually resolved?

Thank you in advance.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From paul at boddie.net  Fri Jul 27 10:33:45 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 07:33:45 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995934280.25863.python-list@python.org> <ockpltktklt4v7ltqb583mg6s5rck06amd@4ax.com> <mailman.996102528.2686.python-list@python.org> <7n62mtgoe5gv5km2im83rut4jdaqfivqcn@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107270633.86ec9c2@posting.google.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<7n62mtgoe5gv5km2im83rut4jdaqfivqcn at 4ax.com>...
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:07:19 -0700, Paul Prescod
> <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> >So rather than fix the language to reduce mistakes we should impose more
> >discipline on programmers. That sounds like a C or Perl solution, not a
> >Python solution.
> 
> I've never heard of validation dismissed like this before. It is a
> basic and fundamental programming principle - not just something to do
> if you feel like it, and not something that depends on language choice
> in any way except in how you achieve it.

I'd agree with those sentiments. Whilst it remains possible for the
language to manage certain activities in a transparent fashion, some
activities remain hard, inexplicable or bizarre, depending on one's
prior perspective. Sometimes thought actually has to be given about
the nature of a program's activities.

One of the first things that is covered in programming language
classes in Computer Science courses is representation, with the
notable case that one cannot write the following code and expect it to
stop terminating:

  /* In C... */
  float i, a, b, c;

  /* Some time later in the code... */
  for (i = a; i != b; i += c) {
    printf("i = %f\n", i);
  }

I applaud the intention that Python should have a unified numeric type
system where everyone can have everything: no loss of precision, no
effect on performance, etc. It might make validation easier, whilst
possibly making numeric operators behave in similar ways across all
types. However, there are many ways of defining similar: some people
refer to "what happens to the result"; others refer to "what the
result type is".

Explicit validation is important because there may be no general
*single* way of the language providing services to the programmer
which does what he/she wants in a particular application. Therefore
it's necessary to be more verbose.

I find it amusing that Perl is brought into this - where Python would
force you to convert strings to integers, Perl is "fixed to reduce
mistakes", but I don't seem to remember thinking how wonderful that
was.

Paul


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Fri Jul  6 10:02:26 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:02:26 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <cpy9q2ji9y.fsf_-_@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107061800290.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its

   For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 15:44:23 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:44:23 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: I'd like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
In-Reply-To: <3B41E92B.4009B1C5@mitre.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107032343360.2491-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Mike Brenner wrote:
> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> said: "I have some time on my hands.  It
> seems like a good opportunity to do some noncommercial Python
> programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm more suited to be the
> lackey than the mad scientist."

   No! It was not me!!! Exactly opposite - I asked Doug to help me! :)))

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 17:13:46 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:13:46 +0200
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9iaibh018uk@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:roy-58C72C.12353708072001 at news1.panix.com...
    ...
> Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?  I'm
> contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key comparison by
> identity should be significantly faster than by value, because I'm going
to
> be using rather long strings as keys.

You could try using the built-in function intern() on all strings involved.

That may cost you not a little memory (which garbage collection will
not recover) but there could be a substantial speed gain -- try it...


Alex





From missive at frontiernet.net  Mon Jul  9 21:20:17 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:20:17 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com> <9iag6e$1l2k$2@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <tIa27.163327$lq1.39403742@typhoon.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9idl8g$lqs$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:48:25 GMT, alan runyan <runyaga at thisbox.com> wrote:
>> Well, the code is cut and pasted from the Zope Book, so I am
>> _assuming_ there are no errors in the script. And, like I
>> said it works fine on other images.
> 
> I wouldnt assume anything.
> 
>>
>> What I am trying to determine is if there are any
>> limits set on External Methods which I might be running in
>> to trying to process such a large image. I have looked
>> through many pages of docs and everything seems to be
>> saying that External Methods are unrestricted.
>>
>> Is that true?
> 
> from my experience, they are completely unrestricted.  You can now do this
> w/ XXXPythonScripts, if interested ;)
> 

So, TTW Python Scripts can be made unrestricted? Sounds dangerous.
(I like it :)

I took one of the images and started cutting it up in to smaller
parts. I cut it in half. No good. Then I cut the half in half.
That one got thumbnailed just fine.

So I am thinking it is one of two things:

= External Methods are restricted somehow in how much processing
  power they can use, or
= cStringIO uses a different method to move data around once
  the file gets past a certain size, and that is causing trouble.


> the error message says you are getting a acquistionwrapper instead of a file
> object.  so I think there is something different from what you are doing
> with this one vs the other images that worked.  different object types or
> something.  (?)  maybe something with the same name thats being acquired
> from somewhere?
> 
> for future reference, ZOPE discussions should be kept to the zope mailing
> lists. www.zope.org -- you will get answeres much faster and will be viewed
> by a larger group of people interested in your problems.

I looked at the mailing lists, but I do not like getting so much
mail and don't like the web interface to the lists. I much prefer
to do this over usenet. (Works great for python, why not zope?)


> 
> ~runyaga
> 

Thanks for your help.


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 13:51:21 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:51:21 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ihspn$c3o$1@panix3.panix.com> <9ii0ge$coj$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C909C.7D6CDD9C@yahoo.com>

jcm wrote:
> Sure, you can have your monsters do fractal-generation if you want and
> you'll use up lots of cpu time.  But analyzing the cpu-cost of
> wandering monsters seems like a reasonable thing to do.  Maybe I
> shouldn't have bothered bringing up a specific example unless I was
> prepared to go into more detail.  Anyway, I maintain that
> network-speed isn't the only thing that can reasonably slow down a
> mud.

OK... so it sounds like you've established that your server is
1) working, and
2) too slow.

Have you already followed my previous suggestion?
I'll quote it:
> Then write a test script that hits the server hard, and run the
> server under the
> python profiler.
> 
> Then, once you know what the slow parts are, go to the FAQ
> wizard:
> http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw.py
> 
> ...and search for "optimize". There's lots of good info in there.

If you're already sure that the wandering monsters are the problem, you could
skip the test script for now.

But wait - I see in another message from you:
> I didn't bother posting my source code,
> because I'm personally not interested in looking for further
> optimizations.

So I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for.
Your mud is too slow to make you happy but you're not interested in fixing it?

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 17 13:40:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 17:40:02 GMT
Subject: ANN: tdir 1.62 Released
Message-ID: <3B54769B.E73BAD3F@tundraware.com>

tdir 1.62 is now out, and this should be it for quite a while (I hope).

tdir is an advanced directory & tree command line utility which sorts
by file 'extension' by default.  There are two files of interest:

http://www.tundraware.com/Software/tdir/tdir-1.62.tar.gz is the usual
unix distribution with man pages, licensing terms, and such.

http://www.tundraware.com/Software/tdir/tdir-1.62.exe is a self-extracting
zip file with a win32 executable and supports file in it.  Anyone who wishes
to use this version should also download the .gz file above as well read
the licensing terms and documentation.

Tnx,
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 10:52:38 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:52:38 -0700
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
References: <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsmeu$frnuf$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

IIRC, xbase is a generic term for dBase clones.  I have used odbc to
read/write these.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Gregor Hoffleit" <gregor at mediasupervision.de> wrote in message
news:mailman.994166465.5480.python-list at python.org...
> Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
> to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?
>
> (I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)
>
>     Gregor
>




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 00:13:54 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:13:54 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <4ohslt8aushodpn9emkcqioad6755gr58s@4ax.com>

>> The moment using "tools" with Python becomes an essential part of
>> creating Python programs, the language is dead to me. All of this
>> pent-up rancor of mine comes with my open contempt for Lisp environ-
>> ments which more or less simply require you to use Emacs.

>I think you've got that backwards.  The whole point of putting case
>insensitivity in the tools it *not* to force you to use the tool.
>The language would remain case-sensitive, and ...

This works great for me. We're talking past eachother: some folks
have opined they want case _insensitivity_ in the language with
tools to enforce consistent usage. No way! That basically makes
me use the tools. That happens, I walk.

C//



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 05:20:28 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:20:28 +0100
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <irpnltsgenv5pfjk8k4t8kbl74dtcr4pf2@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 23:35:19 -0700, phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I put 'name,values' into a dictionary.
>But when I get the keys and display the values they come out in a
>different order that the order I inserted them in.
>
>Is there a way maintain the oringinal order?
>
>Phill

Not really

Internally, Python uses hashing to implement dictionaries. What this
means is that python objects - which may represent large values, such
as long strings or nested tuples - are translated to a representative
simple value to use as a subscript into an array. The advantage of
doing this is that it is a very efficient (and with a few catches)
very reliable way of handling dictionaries. Unfortunately, it is very
difficult to directly read the keys in order - the representative
simple value will not relate in any sensible way to the ordering of
the values. This is deliberate in hashing - if the keys you use for
your values are clustered around a few common values (which quite
often happens in real applications), you still want them to be
distributed evenly in the hash table or things start getting very
awkward very quickly.

You can get the keys in order if you want - just use the sort
function. This is a little annoying, but given that Python would have
to do the same thing to return the keys in order - inefficient for
applications where that is not needed - it is better that it continues
to work the way it does.

Of course, hashing isn't the *only* way to implement dictionaries. It
is much better than the red-black trees (a tweak of binary trees) used
in the C++ STL for std::map etc - it avoids doing lots of slow string
comparisons for insertions and searches - but it could be argued that
ternary trees are better than hashing. Ternary trees can detect items
not found in the dictionary much faster than hashing, perform
comparably (maybe a little slower) for insertions, deletions and
searches that do find an item, and they *do* support in-order
iteration of the keys. Whether ternary trees use more memory than hash
tables depends very much on how the hashing is implemented.

Hashing is popular mainly for the same reason I treat it as suspicious
- effective hashing is more a matter of experience, judgement and
sometimes luck than of deterministic logic, which of course makes it
interesting to play with and write papers about.

Pythons hashing works well, though, so changing it for an alternative
that - in truth - has its downsides as well as benefits would be a bad
idea.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From timr at probo.com  Wed Jul 25 01:39:15 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:39:15 -0700
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com> <etdwv50226x.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107230557.35250fdd@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <g4msltk213sdv6tkda5nb93q3imsdt62s0@4ax.com>

n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar) wrote:
>
>I understand what you said. So I have:
>
>1. Before one uses a name in __main__, one has to make sure that it is
>   not used anywhere in the Module, even without the qualifier "global";
>   failure to do so could be unpleasent.

If I may be so bold as to break in, I think you are missing the main point.

In my view, the key concept to grasp is that Python namespaces are dynamic,
not static.  A variable is added to a namespace when a statement assigning
it a value is executed, and a variable does not need to exist until a
statement that needs it is executed.  Here's an example:

  import os
  
  def abc():
    return myValue

  print abc()
  myValue = 1
  print abc()

The fact that myValue does not exist at the time abc() is defined is
irrelevant.  It won't even be looked for until abc() is actually invoked.

The first time abc() is called, myValue has not been defined, so it will
generate an exception.  However, the SECOND call to abc() would succeed (if
the first one had not already failed), because by the time it executes,
"myValue" has been added to the global namespace.

This is quite different from languages like Pascal and C.
   
>2. OTOH, __main__ namespace is not searched by the module if it is 
>   imported, since it is only __builtins__ that is searched, after 
>   the module's name space.

No.  Rather, when a module is imported, __name__ is not equal to
"__main__", so the section starting with:

  if __name__ == '__main__':

does not get executed.  Thus, none of the changes it might have made to the
global namespace will happen.

>Hence, I get NameError with 
>
>nspace1.py:
>
>#!/usr/bin/env python
>
>from nspace import *
> 
>if __name__ == '__main__':
>        f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
>        myfile = open (f, 'w')
>        hello (myfile)
>
>[myfile was declared global in nspace.py] in interactive mode as well.

If "myfile" is assigned only in the "if __name__ == '__main__':" section,
then it will not exist, because that section will not be executed.  On the
other hand, if nspace.py looked like this:

  myfile = 'xyz'
  if __name__ == '__main__':
    myfile = 'abc'

then your nspace1.py example would work.  The statement "myfile = 'xyz'"
would be executed when you did the import, and would then be imported into
nspace1.py's global namespace.

I hope this helps to explain why the behavior IS consistent.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 15:53:13 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:53:13 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> > 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
> >    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
> >    specify floating point division.
> 
> Step 3 strikes me as a bit odd; does that mean documentation for that
> release will have to say "applying the / operator to integers is an
> error, full stop"?  And then in the next release the docs will again
> have to be changed to say that integer division now works?  IMHO step
> 3 should be dropped; one release with a warning every time integer
> division is attempted should be sufficient.

Possibly.  But it means that folks who skip just one release are in
for a nasty surprise.  I'd like that to be two releases.  Maybe we can
just hang on to the warning for two releases.

> >   from __future__ import float_division
> >   from __future__ import real_division
> >   from __future__ import new_division
> >   from __future__ import division
> 
> 'float_division'.  There's no type corresponding to "real", nor is
> that terminology used anywhere in the docs; 'new_division' and
> 'division' strike me as unclear.

I would pick float_division in a jiffy if it weren't for the issue
that some folks feel that they would rather have 1/3 return a rational
number.  I think they'll lose that argument in the end, but I don't
want to preclude that outcome just yet.  I like the proposal
unified_division best so far, with float_division a close second.

> I still like 'x div 3' better than div() or //, but can live with div().

I like x div 3 better too, but it means adding another new keyword,
and I'd rather not do that.  Picking div() means that we can still
turn that into a keyword later (the keyword would be both a unary and
a binary operator).

> > Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
> > frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
> > number of established Python programmers.  
> 
> I'm still unconvinced about that, though.  Like the occasional claims
> that there would be many more Python users if more conventional block
> delimiters are used, this strikes me as proof by assertion.

But that's not what I said!  I don't think that this will affect the
number of users.  Rather, I expect that we'll be flooded with users
for whom float division is more natural than integer division: the
CP4E crowds.  They'll come anyway, but they'll be happier with a
language that has float division.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 11:06:26 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 08:06:26 -0700
Subject: types.UnboundMethodType == types.MethodType >>> 1
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107030706.500fe3d@posting.google.com>

>>> import types
>>> print types.UnboundMethodType == types.MethodType
1

So the point of BOTH of these is? Better documentation? Naaahhhh.


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 24 09:12:23 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:12:23 -0500
Subject: Another Proposal re- Integer Division
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com> <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list@python.org> <3gDsvgAkvUX7EwIv@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B5D6C54.ADE36880@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <00c901c11442$487356c0$0101010a@local>

Assuming that the changes in PEP0238 are to come to pass, why
can't we issue "bugfix" releases of 1.5.2, 2.0, and 2.1 that 
add only the // operator (just as Guido is doing in the 2.2
source tree) so that those of us who don't want to upgrade 
every installation of Python (because we have very many) can
do a much smaller upgrade and then support cross-version 
integer division?

Gah.  What a run-on sentence.

Given:  // has never been a valid token before.

Given:  Portable integer division code between 2.2 and 2.4
        will be ugly, i.e.:

            floor(n/2) 

        (worse if the expression in the parentheses is 
        complicated).

Given:  Upgrading Python on a running system is a pain,
        because you have to find all the extensions you
        are currently using and rebuild or upgrade them 
        also.

On platforms like Windows with no good version management,
it would be nice to be able to install, say, 2.1.2, over
2.1.  This shouldn't require any upgrading of modules, but
would add // as an operator so that pure-Python modules 
written using // but otherwise not using 2.2+ features
would work fine.

I reuse a lot of my own modules on various customer machines.
This minor change to the older versions would ease my 
transition greatly.





From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Jul  8 18:42:35 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:42:35 +0100
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu> <Uh327.14798$i8.1312190@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <Nl327.20471$F%5.1437375@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9khoer.cpe.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:29:59 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
>news:Uh327.14798$i8.1312190 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com...
>> "Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
>> news:etd7kxjcp8x.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
>> >
>> > You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test objects
>> > in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:
>> >
>> > import copy
>> > test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]
>> >
>> Or, possibly, in a dictionary:
>>
>> dict = {}
>> for i in range(1,21):
>>     dict[test+str(i)] = copy.copy(obj)
>>
>Sorry, read that last as
>
>    dict["test"+str(i)] = copy.copy.(obj)

You're not haviong much luck with the typos, are you?

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From news at dorb.com  Sun Jul  1 15:43:45 2001
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:43:45 GMT
Subject: _sre recursion limit
References: <mailman.993953401.665.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <R3L%6.57178$ID1.12730342@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

This bit of code avoids recursion in favor of a loop. Patch #101612
So it shouldn't be overly platform specific.
Fredrik gave some positive feed back that the patch was accepted,
with some reservations about it working in all cases.

So I was surprised to see it disabled and curious about the failed test
case.

Maybe I should avoid searching huge buffers.
>>> s="dog"+" "*100000 +'cat'
>>> re.search("dog.*?cat", s)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "e:\python21\lib\sre.py", line 57, in search
    return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)
RuntimeError: maximum recursion limit exceeded


"Tim Peters"
> It's not so much the specific test case as the specific platform you run
it
> on.  C defines no way to determine whether you're "about to" run out of
> stack space, so this is nightmarish cross-platform hackery.
>
> > _sre.pyd with the 'if' enabled.  http://ezwiki.com/sre
>
> So you've tried it on *some* flavor of Windows.  And that's all?  That
would
> explain why you think it's fixed and /F doesn't <wink>.
>
>





From vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net  Wed Jul 11 08:57:24 2001
From: vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net (Vincent A. Primavera)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:57:24 +0000
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
In-Reply-To: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)
References: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)
Message-ID: <3B45051300133AC9@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)

Hello,
	Up and running...

	Thank you,
	Vincent A. Primavera

On Wednesday 11 July 2001 07:33, Vincent A. Primavera wrote:
> Hello,
>         Looking for some guidance as to the set up of Apache's httpd.conf
> for some basic CGI scripting practice in Python...  Any suggestions?
>
>         Thank you,
>         Vincent A. Primavera



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 16:09:09 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:09:09 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <cpg0blbpo4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <L1_87.216$yi7.49064@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

[posted & mailed]

" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
> "Greg Landrum" <gReGlAnDrUm at earthlink.net> writes:
>
> > And then I start thinking about all the code I've written for
> > myself, my former employer and my consulting clients. I *know* I've
> > used '/' to do integer (truncating) division in that code
> > intentionally.  Of course I have, it's the way things were done.
> > Once PEP 238 is implemented and the change in place (v2.3?), a lot
> > of that code is going to start producing warnings.
>
> The PEP needs an update.  Here's what I am thinking of now.
>
> - In 2.2, the future division statement and the // operator are
>   available, and there's a command line option to turn on warnings for
>   int/int and another to make the default for / be a float (i.e. an
>   implied future division statement everywhere).  The standard library
>   is reworked to make it work with all option values.
>
> - In later versions (timing not yet decided), first the default
>   changes to enable warnings on int/int, and then (after at least 2
>   years) to enable float division by default, but the command line
>   options remain available to reverse the situation.
>
> > The warnings can be used to track down the problems before code actually
> > breaks and there will be 2 years in which to do so... that's acceptable.
> >
> > I do have a question. The PEP says:
> >
> >     If "from __future__ import non_integer_division" is present in the
> >     module, until the IntType nb_divide is changed, the "/" operator
> >     is compiled to FUTURE_DIV.
> >
> >     This is not yet implemented in the Python 2.2 release.
> >
> > Okay, it's "not yet" implemented for 2.2.  It's going to be though,
right?
>
> Yes; I have a preliminary patch in the SF patch manager (referenced
> from the PEP).
>
> > If the change is going to happen, it is going to break some of my
> > code and I would like to start tracking down these problems and
> > changing my programming habits ASAP.
>
> Yes, you will be able to start changing your habits as soon as 2.2 is
> released.
>
> > [I started this message intending to make a very different argument
because
> > of the code breakage.  Then I re-read the PEP and realized that we are
being
> > promised at least 2 years to fix things before code breaks.  I'm much
more
> > comfortable with the PEP now.]
>
> Thanks!

As another who has argued in the past against the PEP, my major contribution
in recent days has been to simply not post: I had made my views known, and
the volume on this one topic has been frightening without "me too" responses
or knee-jerk criticisms. Not to mention the personal aspersions, which I
found to be completely uncalled for and unwarranted.

So. I would like to say that this current change proposal is certainly the
best I have seen to date. It's never seemed unreasonable to me to want a
float result from the division of two integers. I've probably been using
int-only too long for it to seem *comfortable* to me, but I can accept that
those from non-computer disciplines would prefer results in which (a/b)*b ~
a whichever numerical domain is being used. The code major point at issue
was code breakage. It seems that issue has now been satisfactorily
addressed.

No change of this nature is ever going to be entirely comfortable, and I can
foresee that some of my own code is going to need fixing up.

so-i'll-shut-up-now-and-prepare-to-do-it-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 13:12:52 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:12:52 -0500
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.05L.10107120837430.2218-100000@SPIELPLATZ.TO.GD-ES.COM>
References: <a9b1cafe.cafea9b1@destiny.com>
        <Pine.BSI.4.05L.10107120837430.2218-100000@SPIELPLATZ.TO.GD-ES.COM>
Message-ID: <15181.55956.879740.279211@beluga.mojam.com>

    mcc> This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  

I think the only clarification it needed was

    ;-)
or

    <wink>

<wink>

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul 30 12:30:55 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:30:55 -0700
Subject: switching between frames
References: <74cc9702.0107300611.7ae0c578@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B658BBF.755E85A8@Lugoj.Com>

phillip wrote:
> I have a GUI that displays the contents of a properties file and
> allows for a user to edit the values and rewrite the file.
> 
> But I have more that one file and want to display the values  on a
> frame and then click a button to display the contents of the other
> file.

I'm not clear on whether you want to allow the user to be able to bring up
multiple property file windows, or only want one whose content appears to
change when a new file is selected.

If the former, then I would suggest instantiating a transient toplevel
window each time and then using destroy() or similar technique when the user
selects a button that quits that file edit.

If the latter, I would suggest using configure() calls to change the
contents of your frame and any auxilary widgets whenever a new properties
file is loaded.

By the way, for top level windows you can use the deiconify() and withdraw()
methods to control the display of a window.


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 08:51:18 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:51:18 +0100
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF2E@intrepid>

> From:	Martin Sj?gren [SMTP:martin at strakt.com]
> > Well I'm a late-comer, so all the "great exploits" of the c.l.py group
> > are only myth and legend to me. Though I did cruise the www.python.org
> > site to find out what the #$*%)-was-with-the-ly-y'rs- ly-yr's.
> 
> I only recently subscribed, and I've been a bit curious about it too. Not
> that I can be bothered to actually search for it :-)
 
See here - <http://www.amk.ca/quotations/python-quotes/page-1.html>.

Enjoy.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From justin at iago.org  Sun Jul  1 23:50:02 2001
From: justin at iago.org (Justin Sheehy)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 23:50:02 -0400
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> (Guido van
 Rossum's message of "Fri, 29 Jun 2001 16:18:10 GMT")
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
	<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <x71yo0xa51.fsf@ra.iago.org>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>> It could be also interesting to have time module as powerful as mxDateTime
>> in standard library. And so on.
> 
> Well, propose one.  But what exactly is the point of adding it to the
> standard library when you can get mxDateTime if you need it?

There's a huge amount of value in having a module that is known to be
the de facto standard for a given use added to the standard library.

First off, people new to Python will know that they have it when they
look at the standard library documentation.  Python's rich standard
library is one of its big strengths.

Also, once something is part of the standard distribution, it is much
more likely to stick around and continue to have people pay attention
to it.  This is a major positive point for long-term stability.

For another point, I'll give a personal datapoint.  Part of my job
occasionally involves writing software that will run on a network of
several thousand computers, not all of which have the same
architecture or operating system.  Any code that I write or use that
is pure-python other than modules in the standard library is
relatively easy to roll out.  If I have to compile and deploy
separate module files for each architecture/OS in order to use a
fairly basic library, the degree of added work is really quite
enormous.

If a module is already considered to be "standard" by the Python
community, and is unencumbered license-wise, adding it to the standard
library helps everyone.

-Justin

 






From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 12:40:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:40:00 GMT
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <cpae1r7ig7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Mark Robinson <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> writes:

> can anyone shed some light on the mysterious behaviour of my byte 
> compiled files. I am currently working on a python script which analyses 
> patterns in a DNA sequence. I have a function which checks a pattern (a 
> substring of approx 6 chars) to ensure only valid charactors are 
> present. When I first run this program it runs fine, but if I 
> immediately rerun the program (i.e using the pre-byte compiled file) it 
> finds all patterns non-valid. If I delete the .pyc file between runs 
> this problem does not occur. Can anyone explain what is happening here 
> to me and how to prevent it?

Which Python version?  Which platform?  Please also show the regular
expression you are using and how you compile it.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 19 01:00:55 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 05:00:55 GMT
Subject: Retreiving a single number from a list of numbers ?
References: <3b565953@news.iprimus.com.au>
Message-ID: <bQt57.2521$EP6.907151@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I am trying to extract a value from a variable that contains more than
one
> value.
>
> For example:
>     If  I assigned the result of wxGetClientDisplayRect() to the var 'a'
> like:
>         a = wxGetClientDisplayRect()
>
> the 'a' would return something like (0, 0, 800. 540)
>
> How then would I assign the 800 from 'a' and give it to a var called 'b'
??

b=a[2]

But you might want something like

x1,y1, x2,y2 = wxGetClientDisplayRect()

to unpack all 4 values of the tuple into individual vars.

Terry J. Reedy





From aotto at t-online.de  Wed Jul 18 05:53:02 2001
From: aotto at t-online.de (Andreas Otto)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:53:02 +0200
Subject: ANNOUNCE:  "Compiler" 2.0beta1
Message-ID: <u9m3j9.ip9.ln@linux02.otto-net>

Dear Customer,

  "Compiler" 2.0beta1, a tool for creating native binaries ot of Tcl code
  is available for download.

  Please refer to:

    http://www.compiler-factory.com/01_07_17-press_E.html

  for the public press release


Your Sincerely
    
    Compiler Factory Team

-- 
================================================================
(C) Compiler-Factory      Phone: ++49-(0)8152-399540
Dipl.-Ing Andreas Otto    mailto:info at compiler-factory.com
Business Solutions        http://www.compiler-factory.com
Ulmenstrasse 3            => "Compiler", FastWeb, OpMenu
D-34289 Zierenberg        => C, C++, Tcl, HTML, database,
=================================================================


From barry at digicool.com  Fri Jul 13 23:28:39 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:28:39 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "RS" == Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

    RS> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into
    RS> python:

    RS>  ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);

    RS> The obvious translation would be:

    RS>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)

    RS> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on
    RS> it.  Perl handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra"
    RS> variables undefined, whereas python raises a ValueError
    RS> exception.  What I'd like to do is have the extra field
    RS> variables left as null strings.

Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing a
PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.

-Barry



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Fri Jul 20 12:07:07 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:07:07 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010720180654.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 20-Jul-2001 Guido van Rossum wrote:
 >  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> writes:
 > > That comment was not necessary. What Bruce must mean is that the average
 > > length of an identifier will be larger with case insensitiveness than 
 > > with case sensitiveness. I am sure you understood that.
 >  
 >  I apologize for the comment.  But I don't find the argument (that
 >  case-sensitivity reduces the expressivity or the number of available
 >  good identifiers) convincing at all.  Given that in current code,
 >  case-insensitive name clashes are very rare, I don't believe for a
 >  second that the average identifier length will go up.  If you use this
 >  a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
 >  should be.  It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over
 >  the phone -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has
 >  tried to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)

I didn't say that I agree with Bruce. I was only a bit surprised to see 
spanking on c.l.py, especially delivered by you. Well, I guess it proves
that you're only human after all.

I do agree that things like message = Message() does make my code less
readable. I must confess that I do that occationally, but only when 
there is only supposed to be one instance of a specific class. Then 
again, I never write large programs and I don't consider myself being a
programmer. I'm an electrical engineer who does some programming from 
time to time, as most engineers today (I guess). But I would not call
myself a non-programmer either. At least I'm being paid to do the 
programming I do.

I still maintain a neutral position in this discussion. I guess I can
live with any sensitivity-version of python. I have programmed in both
case-sensitive, case-insensitive, and single-case environments, and 
I have never thought that case was a problem. All I thought in the 
beginning of each experience was "Oh, that's how this thing works? Ok!".
But if I recall correctly, the version(s) of Basic that was my first 
programming experience only allowed identifiers like A and A1 for numbers 
and A? and A1? for strings. Yes, exactly one letter followed by at most 
one digit. Now *that* was a problem. I hated it even when I wrote 
10 line programs using only a handfull of variables. Even then I thought
that appending ? to mark strings was ridiculous. But it did make the 
variable space twice as big as it would have been without it.

And-now-home-for-dinner-ly y'rs

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    20-Jul-2001
Time:    17:05:09

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Fri Jul 20 13:44:24 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:44:24 GMT
Subject: List Question
References: <tlgptk32ve8o27@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B586EE8.4050100@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Donovan Hide wrote:

> Given:
> 
> a=[[0]*6]*6
> a[3][3]=4
> print a

> [[0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
> 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0]]
> 

Your syntax for changing the cell is correct.  However, you may be thinking that you're putting in separate list objects in the outside list but you're not.  That's why all of the lists are getting the change.

> 
> What syntax should I use to get this result:
> 
> [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
> 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]
> 


b = [0]*6
a = []
for i in range(0,6):
     # make a copy of b and put into a
     a.append(b[:])


or alternatively in 2+
a = [[0]*6 for x in range(0,6)]

a[3][3] = 4

(btw that was my very first list comprehension that i've ever thought of 
and written.  I was quite amazed when in worked.)

<python-still-amazes-me-ly> yours,

Tom




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 08:34:50 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:34:50 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Edward Wilson" <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9 at posting.google.com...
> This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
>
> Python will only appeal to scientific developers researching the
> "impossible to do" until it handles databases on a first class scale.

To try and defend this outrageous thesis, please explain why
C++, Java, Visual Basic, Perl, and other languages whose
database support is strictly comparable to, or lesser than,
Python, do NOT by any stretch of the imagination "only appeal
to scientific developers" &c.

> Oh, and another point, ODBC is dead.  Microsoft has already abandand
> it for OLEDB a COM based library.  References to ODBC need not apply.

I have sympathy for this thesis, but Java does seem to be doing
fine with the strictly-equivalent JDBC package.  So why is ODBC
no good for Python if JDBC is good for Java?

> What is needed are RAW Native Drivers at the C/C++ level.

Non sequitur!  You just mentioned (albeit with rather questionable
spelling) Ole/Db -- which is a low-level interface, not really meant
for use at application-level, but, rather, is wrapped by higher-level
ADO at app-level.  Python does VERY well driving ADO, and, through
it, Ole/Db.  So why should Python regress down to "RAW" native
drivers rather than progress to even better ADO and Ole/Db use?


> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
> Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles Postgres

A SINGLE module to handle five or more mutually incompatible
interfaces?!  That's utterly ridiculous -- WHY would anybody want
to download lots of code he'll never use (and suffer the implicit
consequences of complication in the front-end code he does use)
rather than get a single SPECIFIC module (with a uniform API,
of course) for the specific RDBMS he's interested in?

IBM's acquisition of all of Informix database business was, btw,
completed the other day -- I think this includes all rights to the
NAME "Informix", so that the company previously so named is
now named "Ascential".  Presumably, the API's exposed by DB2
and the Informix RDBMS are slated to get closer and closer.  How
much sense would it make today to spend effort to support,
specifically, the Informix product as a separate one from DB2...?

But that is an aside -- the point is that THERE ARE good modules
supporting each single one of the databases you've named (and
more besides) while presenting a reasonably uniform interface
(the DB API 2.0) to Python client-code.  What added value would
there be in rolling half a dozen or so of these separate modules
into one non-modular module that makes a mismash of it all?!


Alex





From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Sun Jul 15 11:13:44 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 11:13:44 -0400
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
In-Reply-To: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>; from europax@home.com on Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:00:46AM +0000
References: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010715111344.A640@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:00:46AM +0000, Pugsley wrote:
> def foo(arg1, arg2):
> 	global bar1, bar2, bar3,             etc.
> 	result= bar1+bar2+bar3+ arg1+arg2
> 	return result

Put 'bar1', 'bar2', and 'bar3' in a separate module, and import where
you need them.  Then, you only need 'global' statements to change their
values; you don't need it to access them.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 22 22:46:07 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:46:07 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995847098.3660.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ln40a.sr.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:10:47 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>[Tim]
>> The current integer division loses information silently and without
>> a trace.
>
>[Grant Edwards]
>> No, it doesn't.
>
>Of course it does, but note that I'm using "information" in its technical
>sense.  Current int division is a many-to-one mapping, so necessarily loses
>information.

Right, but the same is true for float division.  Therefore, the
fact that integer division loses information isn't a valid
reason to prefer floating point division for the "/" operator
when it is used on two integers.

int + int => int
int * int => int
int - int => int
int & int => int
int | int => int

[so far, so good]

int / int => int
  or
int / int => float

Which of the two is the least astonishing?  In my mind, the
"int" result is the least astonishing, but like I said, I'm
quite used to using integer arithmetic, and if I want floats,
I use floats.

>Whether 1/2 would return a float is still open.

Right.  IMO, having operators coerce their operands like that
is too much like the "magic" that goes on in Perl.  I suppose
it's only a bit worse that 1/2.0 coercing the "1" to a float,
but I'm not too kean on _that_ either. ;)  Quite a few hours of
debugging time could have been saved over the past 30 years if
1/2.0 wasn't legal in C.

I'd be pretty happy if mixing a float and an int threw an
exception.  When I run lint on C programs, I usually want it to
complain about that sort of thing. I don't generally like types
changing "automagically" behind the scenes.

>Or maybe you needed integer semantics -- I can't guess. Doesn't
>much matter to the current debate.  If you bought a hand
>calculator that truncated division results to integers, would
>you be happy with that?

Mine does.  If it didn't I'd toss it in the trash.  Of course
the operands are always integers, so it's not that surprising.
There's a way to get it to do floating point, but I don't do
that very often.

>That's what informs the expectations of the generations after
>us.

Kids these days...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm in direct contact
                                  at               with many advanced fun
                               visi.com            CONCEPTS.


From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul  3 06:28:13 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:28:13 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca> <mailman.994154044.13791.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B419E3D.A965D4DE@stroeder.com>

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:02:54AM -0400, William Park wrote:
> 
> > On your original post, you came across as a high-schooler with homework.
> > Now, it's becoming clear... a propaganda by fucking trolls.
> 
> [ snip rant ]
> 
> > So, go way.
> 
> You know, this is really the first time I even considered the benifits of a
> moderated c.l.py.

Well, it's the first time I put someone posting to comp.lang.python
(Mr. Park) into my kill file. One out of hundreds. That doesn't look
too bad.

Let's get back on-topic...

Ciao, Michael.


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul 12 10:23:24 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:23:24 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: The size of a list
In-Reply-To: <74cc9702.0107120609.6c8dc5f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121823070.29439-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 12 Jul 2001, phillip wrote:
> Is there a way to determine the size of a list (disregarding any
> possible null entries)?

   Using builtin len(mylist).

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Sat Jul 21 12:17:05 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:17:05 GMT
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk> <3B45D9E7.BF5FB037@asme.org> <5e8bd451.0107190257.7d49f0ff@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b59a918.6070304@news.newsguy.com>

On 19 Jul 2001 03:57:39 -0700, kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote:

>With apologies to Jeff Sandys i have to say stay away from The Quick
>Python Book. It is a miserable, unprofessional piece of sh*t. 

The Quick Python Book is an excellent introduction for *programmers*.

It is not aimed at beginning programmers.

As the preface says "To learn Python from this book you should
already know some other programming language like C,Java, C++...."




--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From martin at strakt.com  Wed Jul 25 10:44:56 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:44:56 +0200
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <20010725164456.A26980@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 12:01:15AM +1000, michael wrote:
> > But strictly
> > speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
> 
> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the set
> of reals)?

Hmm. Strictly strictly strictly I don't think so.

It's all about how you define the sets of course, and I guess that can be
done in a number of ways.

The numeral 2 is the successor of the successor of zero, that is S(S(0)),
which in set theory usually is {\emptyset, {\emptyset}} (0 = \emptyset and
S(x) = {x} U x).

That's N, given this, you usually define elements in Z as (n,m) where n
and m in N (ouch, case sensitivity problem there! <n/2 wink>) and let the
negative number "-3" be (0,3).

Now you can define the elements of Q as (p,q) where one of them is in Z
and the other in N, (and q!=0).

The real numbers are usually defined with Dedekind cuts (is that the
correct English term?) which is a bit complicated.

If you define it this way, then sure, Z isn't a subset of R...

</mathetmatical digression>

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 11:57:41 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:57:41 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <%7i07.25728$he.1340574@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9hsi0d$oqv$3@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <9hsq1n02frc@enews1.newsguy.com>

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.nospamnet> wrote in message
news:9hsi0d$oqv$3 at 216.39.170.247...
    ...
> I wonder if the annual Dataquest language survey, if it still exists,
> that showed that more "programmers" used Basic in it's various flavors
> then all other languages combined still shows that... hmm, is that a

http://dqweek.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?artid=16199
(I can't find their 2001 survey) but the emergence of Visual Basic
in the top spot is pretty recent there, and now threatened:
2000 Visual Basic
1999 Visual Basic
1998 Visual Basic
1997 PowerBuilder
1996 PowerBuilder
1995 Borland C++
1994 Borland C++
1993 Turbo Analyst
1992 Turbo Analyst
1991 TurboAnalyst/Borland C++
1990 COBOL Level II/MS COBOL
1989 COBOL Level III

Their "UPIs" for the year 2000 are:

Visual Basic 100
Oracle 76
Java 66
Borland Delphi 34
Visual C++ 28

but I'm not sure what that measures exactly.

"""
Interestingly, current usage was reported the highest
for Java, followed by Visual Basic. Visual Basic doesn?t
have the huge lead that it had last year. The UPI of Oracle
and Java has increased manifold. So for now, all eyes are
on Oracle and Java as the preferred development tools next
year.
"""


Alex





From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 21:35:36 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 02:35:36 +0100
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <mailman.996011383.24629.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls8j8.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

>> From: James Logajan [mailto:JamesL at Lugoj.Com]
>>
>> In the interest of proposing a solution everyone can live with, may I
>> suggest adoption of new module name extensions? A module 
>> named "module.py2"

I like this idea.

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
 Herbivore: effort-free public key email encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
          *** herbrip software now released ***
          







From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul 31 16:12:42 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:12:42 +0200
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>  <3dsnfdjg1w.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org> <mailman.996596704.6347.python-list@python.org> <ojqdmtguukc4ju3d8k7gvivqdfksd8e6dg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <qf37k9.tvc.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:28:32 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
>>Didn't IBM just release a new (optional) threads package for Linux that
>>implements true lightweight threads?

Yes. See http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/pthreads/

>This would require a kernel-patch, yes?

Yes. IBM's Next Generation Posix Threading is btw. based on GNU Pth (a
threading library that is non-preemptive and runs completely in userspace).
Python can be built against GNU Pth out of the box.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 19:58:37 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:58:37 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
	 <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <UuxEMIARGKY7Ew1w@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B60AEAD.CB287C47@engcorp.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> In Python Land, the language may win the technical battle, but lose the
> war. Python still loses against perl at simple tasks.

No, it doesn't.

> If, as I claim, Python  wins or loses on its usefulness at real
> programming tasks then eventually it must improve either real
> performance or real utility.

Oh, wait, you are judging "wins" and "loses" on the scale of 
performance.  It looked like a more general claim at first... :)

In my books, the difference in performance between Perl and Python
is insignificantly large.

The difference in readability (and thus ease of maintenance and
ease of developing robust code) is sufficiently large to outweigh
any performance differences.

Obviously, the question of whether Python wins or loses, against
Perl or any other language, is largely a matter of opinion. 
As long as the performance is not an order of magnitude slower
for my kind of application, I have zero reason to look enviously
at Perl users...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 14:22:21 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:22:21 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECDLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com]
> ...
> If I was told that experinced programmers might
> appreciate this change for any possible reason -
> I'd be quiet as a mouse.

Not all experienced programmers agree.  At the last Python Conference, I
moderated a 40-some person group discussion on conceivable changes to
Python's numeric model, not advocating but keeping the participants from
killing each other <wink>.  The meaning of integer division wasn't the
focus, but naturally came up.  By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.
There was no consensus on exactly what 3/4 should return -- rational or HW
float or decimal float were the most popular alternatives.

It shouldn't be so hard to understand why.  The current integer division
loses information silently and without a trace.  Combined with that Python
is not a statically typed language, there's simply no telling what e.g.

def velocity(distance, time):
    return distance / time

will compute by inspection.  This isn't about esoteric user overloading of
"/", it's about ordinary arithmetic on builtin numeric types, and many
experienced Python programmers have testified over the years to being burned
in practice by stuff exactly that simple.

I expect that either way is easy enough to *teach*, but I don't accept ease
of teaching as a primary goal:  I'm much keener on semantics that, once
*learned*, are hard to forget or to stumble over.  Even if such semantics
are 100x harder to teach at first, fine by me:  you spend the rest of your
life living with the consequences.  I wish the definition of continuity were
easier to teach too, but that doesn't mean I'll settle for an easier
definition that doesn't actually work <wink>.

some-mice-are-surprised-when-thet-divide-up-the-cheese-and-
    cheese-mass-mysteriously-disappears-ly y'rs  - tim




From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 20 04:15:23 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:15:23 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B57E89B.C3866DE0@stroeder.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> It has been argued that making Python case-insensitive would be
> "dumbing it down".  I find this a strange argument.  It doesn't take
> any power away

In my case I sometimes have to deal with ASN.1 types. The convention
in ASN.1 is that type names are written with a first capital letter
and an attribute of the type has the same name with first letter
lower-cased. My certificate parser maps the ASN.1 types 1:1 to
Python classes and the attributes 1:1 to class attributes. Because I
don't want to introduce an extra name mapping I use the ASN.1 type
names as class names and the ASN.1 attribute names as class
attribute names. This makes it very easy for PKI people to read the
code.

As I understand this discussion it wouldn't be possible to write the
code in this form if Python will be case-insensitive in the future.
I would have to define an extra mapping from ASN.1 names to Python
class/attribute names => case-insensitivity takes power away because
less things can be expressed directly without defining an additional
name mapping.

> It's been argued that making string, String, STRING and StRiNg mean
> the same thing makes for less readable programs.  I agree.  A good
> programming environment should silently correct the case of
> identifiers as you type to conform to the definition.

Uuuh. Looking at the handling/displaying of file names under Windows
I'm not really keen to obey some kind of "automatic" mechanism for
case-insensitivity. There are so many error-prone semi-automatic
mechanisms out there claiming to make my life easier. But actually
work doesn't get easier...

>  This also means
> that you can still use different case conventions to hint about what
> type of identifier it is, e.g. MACRO, Class, variable.

But I can't use

class MyClass:
  pass

myClass = MyClass()

> It's been argued that it's convenient to be able to write c = C(),
> where C is a class and c is an instance of that class.  Surely there
> are other conventions we can use.

But this convention exists in other non-Python name spaces. And to
keep things simple I'd like to map these name spaces 1:1 as
described with ASN.1 example above. IMHO things will get
significantly worse instead of easier.

> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.

Yes. (I really hope that you will choose this option.)

> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

No. I'm usually mistrusting automatic tools. Too many of them only
cover 98% of the cases. This might seem good but actually it's not.

Ciao, Michael.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 08:21:50 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 08:21:50 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <8766cru4o1.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bernhard Herzog <bh at intevation.de> writes:

> A bit more elegant, perhaps, and a little faster still would be to use 1
> as the value in C and directly use C.get in filter:
> 
> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item] = 1
> 
> A = filter(C.get, A)

The main gain of this is just the elimination of the (costly) lambda
function.  You could also do this with

C={}
for i in B: C[i]=None
A = filter(C.has_key, A)

which would operate in exactly the same manner, but which I find less
confusing.


- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would
be a merrier world." - J.R.R. Tolkien
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtULd4ACgkQjVztv3T8pzsHyACdGRROZ735+4ruUZelWzToYnkO
XfEAoJuotBNV6WzBjuf6lPguZhtY3dq/
=ugcI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul  5 07:09:10 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 07:09:10 -0400
Subject: SPAM again [was: Re: .BIZ .INFO domain extensions]
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051332450.17954-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051332450.17954-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <oqy9q3bpk9.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Roman Suzi]

> >> Opinions?  Suggestions?

> Spam? I stopped noticing spam after I subscribed to this list ;-)

I recently got to write a simple (Python) SPAM filter for a customer,
and why not, installed it for me just as well.  In my case at least, it is
pretty effective.  This is why I'm a bit sensible to SPAM in these days.
The only SPAM that gets through comes from the Wget list mainly, and a
bit from this Python list.  You know me, always seeking perfection! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From agavrilov at home.com  Mon Jul  2 20:08:15 2001
From: agavrilov at home.com (Alexander Gavrilov)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 00:08:15 GMT
Subject: amkCrypto/mxCrypto on Win32 with Visual C++
References: <HS507.15883$Lk6.1149673@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <P1807.147228$%i7.99126251@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

I didn't try to install this package, but...
Even this construct is perfectly legal according to C++ standard, VC++
doesn't support it. I can suggest to replace these two lines:

     static int const blocksize = 1;
     static int const keysize = 0;

with the following:

enum
{
     blocksize = 1,
     keysize = 0
};

It should work with VC++.

--
Alexander Gavrilov
Brainbench MVP for C++
http://www.brainbench.com

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:HS507.15883$Lk6.1149673 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> I'm trying to get the amkCrypto (modified mxCrypto) package working under
> Win32, but Visual C++ is barfing about the declaration (and concurrent
> initialization) of public member variables.
>
> For example, mxCrypto.h includes the following declaration:
>
> class StreamCipher
> {
>  protected:
>     int mode;
>
>  public:
>     static int const blocksize = 1;
>     static int const keysize = 0;
>
>     StreamCipher(PyStringObject *v, int cipher_mode);
>     ~StreamCipher();
>     PyObject *encrypt(PyStringObject *v);
>     PyObject *decrypt(PyStringObject *v);
>     int getmode(void) { return mode; };
> };
>
> The compiler says that the public member variables (blocksize and keysize)
> cannot be intialized in the header file. But clearly this code works under
> some compilers...
>
> Has anyone sucessfully installed this code on Windows? Nothing on Google
to
> suggest previous problems.
>
> Thanks in advance
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>
>
>




From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul 19 14:43:21 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:43:21 -0700
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
References: <mailman.995549244.5727.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B572A49.8AE731C4@home.net>

fleet at teachout.org wrote:

> I think I may have gotten myself into a box.
> 
> I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
> references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:
> 
> smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}

I think this is your problem right her. Having the customer name as a
variable name is problematic, it means the customer's names are
hard-coded into your module. You can do it, and some others have
suggested how(you might also want to look at eval and exec),but why not
use a nested dictionary?

Customers = {smith: {"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"},
             jones: {"busname":"Joneses", "street":"123 East Ave"},
              ....}

> from cust import CurCust
> 
> print cust.CurCust["street"]

now you do:

from cust import Customers
print Customers[CurCust]["street"]

or 
import cust
CurCust = cust.Customers[CurCustName]

print CurCust["street"]

> Spent the evening trying to solve this (Learning Python, and Sam's Teach
> Yourself Python) then tried the archives.  The little I found on "variable
> substitution" almost seems to say "no way!" ???

Python really doesn't do "variable substition the way TCL or *nix shells
do.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:29:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Joseph A. Knapka" <jknapka at earthlink.net> writes:

> FWIW, I am a relative newcomer to Python, with a lot of general
> programming experience (C,C++,Java,Tcl,Prolog,LISP,Perl...). I
> really love Python, but making it case-insensitive would put a
> very significant damper on my enthusiasm. Why would you want
> to intentionally reduce the symbol space available for names?

The number of symbols available is so much larger than the number of
distinct names you need that the reduction is irrelevant.

> Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
> vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
> that naive expectation? 

I know plenty of people who *sometime* write their name with a
lowercase letter.  I even know someone who writes the personal pronoun
"I" as "i", convinced that the form "I" would be pretentious.

You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net was sent
to a different user than email to jknapka at earthlink.net.  There are
plenty of situations where one only has one case available, e.g. WHEN
CAPITALIZING FOR EMPHASIS or when typing with one finger.  In American
usage, the first letter of most words in section and chapter titles
are capitalized without changing the semantics.

For beginning typists, hunt-and-peck style, the shift key is one
complication they can do without, so beginners tools are often
case-forgiving.

But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
The hostility of the user community is frightening.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jparlar at home.com  Sun Jul  8 16:42:09 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 16:42:09 -0400
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
Message-ID: <20010708204337.MJGP11827.femail4.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

I'm having a problem converting unicode text to string type with str(). 

The code snippet causing the problem is

if type(pageText) == UnicodeType:
                newText = str(pageText)

and the error message I receive is

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "D:\MyData\HOME\PWA\Scripts\filter.py", line 60, in parser
    newText = str(pageText)
UnicodeError: ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

Now, I know there is a lot of precedence for these "...ordinal not in range(128)" questions, but I've looked around, and I 
haven't found anything that will explicitly do what I want, namely, completely remove any uncovertable unicode characters. I 
have to be able to parse this text afterwards, using a lot of Python's string functions, so I need 'newText' to be a string, but I'd 
really prefer not to have the various unicode strings (ie \xa0) showing up. Is there a simple way to convert the unicode text to 
StringType, removing the resulting unicode strings for unrepresentable characters?

Thanks in advance to anyone who's looking at this,
Jay P.





From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 17:59:22 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:59:22 -0500
Subject: os.path.commonprefix inadequacies
In-Reply-To: <E15RgvB-0001jn-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15RgvB-0001jn-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <15207.10810.30039.63906@beluga.mojam.com>

    Dean> The os.path.commonprefix function at first glance seems like a
    Dean> useful function: to find a common ancestor of a bunch of
    Dean> paths.

I tried to get this sort of change adopted two years ago, but was unable to
convince people that it should operate on path elements instead of strings.
In fact, I actually updated the relevant bits of code in CVS but had to
retract the changes when the semantic change broke something of Mark
Hammond's.  My argument was that the common filesystem prefix of these two
paths

    /home/sally
    /home/sam

should be "/home/" (or "/home"), not "/home/sa".  You can browse the
python-dev archives for August 1999 to read all the details:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/1999-August/thread.html

Search for "commonprefix".

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 24 13:15:02 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:15:02 -0700
Subject: Evolving Python and PEP238
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <ur8v79x9d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DAD16.5FB0BD5@ActiveState.com>

David Bolen wrote:
> 
>...
> And as pointed out elsewhere, my systems and installed base are not
> incrementing through each release as they occur because of the cost of
> doing so.  I'm still managing a base of 1.5.2, and will likely jump
> from that right to a release like 2.1 (or maybe 2.2 depending on my
> timing and availability of dependent extensions), so it's all too easy
> to end up skipping over the "warning" release right into the "break"
> release.

I notice that people keep mentioning Python 1.5.2. That was a
particularly popular release of Python and people seem not to care much
about releases before that.

Now consider if Guido says: "I'm going to be changing a behaviour that
was deprecated in 1.4 and has issued a warning since then. Any
complaints?" Would anyone here complain? I doubt it. The offending
feature would have been expunged from the collective consciousness so
long ago that people would not even remember it.

So the backwards compatibility question is a function both of how severe
the change is and *how quickly it is made*. 

Python is around 11 years old. If Guido had embarked on this PEP238 path
7 years ago, the backwards compatibility problem would also have been
severe for the code created in the first 4 years but by now most people
would not know or care about the fact that there was 3 or 4 year period
where divisions had to be migrated over slowly. Today, the period of
transition would be merely a mythical historical event like the Great
Usenet Reorganization.

For anyone who doesn't know: Guido doesn't really have a time machine.
Time-delayed deprecations his only way to fix most bugs in the language. 

The Python community is still growing fast. I expect Python to be around
for at least another 11 years. We should be planning for that future.
Python is important enough to have a long-term plan like your retirement
plan and the plan for how you are going to send your kids to school and
how America is going to save Social Security. (oh...wait...scratch that
one)

It is one thing to argue that this change is not the right one. I
disagree but we can cover that in another discussion. It is another
thing to say that Python is a language that can only accumulate warts
and never remove them. I think that that is an unnecessarily defeatist
attitude. The mechanism for making "big" changes is well-defined and
entirely workable. It merely requires patience and a sense that Python's
future is important enough to have a long-term plan.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 17:59:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:59:24 +0200
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Jonas Bengtsson" <jonas.b at home.se> wrote in message
news:4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355 at posting.google.com...
> I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
> to a list by just using
> list_var[] = var_to_append
> It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
>
> Any comments?

    list_var += var_to_append

(which is how you express this today in Python) is equivalent
and shorter.  Python does NOT go out of its way to provide
a zillion ways to write the same, identical thing.


Alex





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul  4 16:21:04 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 20:21:04 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net> <9htfu7$cb1$1@panix6.panix.com> <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9huenl$49q$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k6vbl.1rv.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> [excessive quoting ahead]
> 
> In article <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
> Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> >It should not involve the preference of a strange author bashing some
> >other language.
> 
> Pointing out that Perl has weak typing does not equate to language
> bashing.

You are right.

The "author" here is the one the OP mentioned who bashed C/C++ in favor
of Java, which the OP seemed to take to heart.

Also, I guess I'm a bit defensive, as so many here _do_ make little
snide comments about Perl and such.

-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
    -- Lily Tomlin


From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 19:45:08 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:45:08 -0700
Subject: Debugging extension modules
In-Reply-To: <ur8vk1kqe.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <003801c10bf5$da242720$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

David wrote:
> You could probably (at least under NT/2K) rename the DLL in order to
> rebuild a new version, but I expect you'd still have to stop/start
> Python to get it to reload the new version.

Doing this would be painful because the module name must match the
file name of the DLL.




From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 23:42:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:42:24 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com>

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> 
> |Nevertheless, I want to make the clear point (if I haven't already)
> |that I'm not suggesting screwing every such programmer... just
> |those who are actively using code which would be broken, who will
> |not take the time (however small we might make it) to modify the
> |source, and yet who "must" have their code work under the new Python.
> 
> Here's a scenario:
> 
> I--one of those professional programmers--write a Python script for
> someone who runs a business, or a non-profit, or an agency, to run on
> their CGI webserver.  This client knows not the first thing about Python
> or about programming, nor do they maintain the webserver, just rent
> space on it.  But still, this script does something useful for users of
> the website--order products, or request documents, or send data to a
> database.
> 
> I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
> upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in the future
> :-)).  Client's scripts break.


Thanks for the well-considered example.

In this case, I would argue that the client's hosting company should
not upgrade Python (especially across a major revision) without either
notifying everyone who is using it (may be hard to do), or keeping
the old version around for legacy use.  After all, if they support
Python for customers, they presumably are interested in and somewhat
responsible for keeping the customers' applications functional when
they do such an upgrade.

Yes, the might do this without being careful ... 

No, I don't think this should stop us from making the div change.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 17 07:15:40 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 04:15:40 -0700
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107170315.36f571e9@posting.google.com>

sill at optonline.net (Rainy) wrote in message news:<slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill at sill.silmarill.org>...
> 
> "I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
> in perl :-/."

I can't stand it when that kind of thing happens. In your case, you
were using a language with some pretty potent tools available for it
to get the job done. A similar kind of idiocy was once imposed on me,
forcing me to rewrite various CGI-based programs in C++ of all
horrors. Insane!

Paul


From kragen at dnaco.net  Thu Jul 19 16:20:18 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:20:18 GMT
Subject: problem with gzip files
References: <mailman.995526990.21898.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6iH57.263$nq6.24188@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

In article <mailman.995526990.21898.python-list at python.org>,
Dave Harrison  <dlharris at mail.usyd.edu.au> wrote:
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>	File "./zipreader.py", line 3, in ?
>		import gzip, os
>	File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/gzip.py", line 9, in ?
>		import zlib
>ImportError: No module named zlib
>
>I then tried installed the zlib library, which went fine.  Except it
>hasn't solved my problem.

Perhaps you installed libz.so, the C library of zlib, but not the
Python zlib module?


-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 20 05:50:56 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:50:56 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <Xns90E2BDCEA67E7gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194> <j4snfsgin1.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <9j8uu1$lujt7$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:
>
> > You have to do a lot more than that. After all, once xml/__init__.py
> > runs and swaps itself for _xmlplus/__init__.py, then xml.sax.expatreader
> > refers to _xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py.
>
> The original reporter did not have PyXML installed, so no swapping of
> _xmlplus would happen on this installation.
>
More and more I have the impression (from an freeze/install/py2exe
point of view, I don't know too much about xml and PyXML) that
installing PyXML should *replace* the Lib/xml module.
By replace I mean that Lib/xml should be deleted/renamed,
and PyXML should be installed into xml somewhere in sys.path.


Thomas




From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 27 14:23:38 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 11:23:38 -0700
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <mailman.996205196.16876.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107271023.a5d1328@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996205196.16876.python-list at python.org>...

[snip]

> 
> There's something at least a *little* off with the dance between generators
> and iterators, but I'm not clear on exactly what and haven't had more time
> to consider it.  Part of it seems to be that
> 
>     for x in whatever:
> 
> magically applies iter() to whatever under the covers (nothing off there),
> but if "whatever" is a generator(-function), iter(whatever) is an error.
> 
> I don't know *why* that seems a little bit off, because it makes perfect
> sense <wink>.  But play with it long enough and I wouldn't be surprised if
> you thought so too.
> 
> if-so-it's-in-need-of-articulation-ly y'rs  - tim

I agree.  Consider the following:

>>> from __future__ import generators
>>> def g():
...     yield 1
...     yield 2
...
>>> i = g()
>>> i.next()
1
>>> i = iter(g())
>>> i.next()
1
>>> i = iter(g)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: iter() of non-sequence
>>>

iter(g) doesn't work, but it somehow feels as if it should. 

>>> i = iter([1,2,3,4,5])
>>> j = iter(i)

This *does* work, and maybe that explains why iter(g) feels OK.
 
Anyway, this is the kind of thing that ought to go in a
generators/iterators tutorial.


Tom


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 24 08:23:28 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:23:28 -0500
Subject: Code breakage is bad, and hard-to-find code breakage is worse.
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <007301c1143b$7696b9e0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Duncan Grisby" <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com>

> The thing about this change is that it is different from other changes
> there have been (that I'm aware of), in that it changes a fundamental
> part of the language semantics. Switching from the current / behaviour
> to the new proposal is not the same as _removing_ a feature -- it is
> _changing_ a feature. That is far more insidious.

We're burning a bridge here.  It really doesn't matter that there is a
backwards-compatibility *path* from / to //; the problem is that, once 
2.4 comes out, writing code using integer division portably between
versions is *very ugly*.

This has every likelyhood of causing a code fork.  I don't want to see 
that.  Several of us have proposed two-way bridges of one type or another,
but Guido has already tuned us out.

True, there is time yet, but frankly I'm worried.  I have never really
mistrusted Guido before, and I don't like it.

> In an ideal world, everyone would upgrade to new Python versions the
> moment they are released. The world just isn't like that, and people
> providing Python programs and libraries _have_ to support multiple
> Python versions.

Upgrading Python is painful, so I tend to jump versions when I do.  I'm
aware of the problem here, so I will be careful... but what about those
who don't get the message?





From tomh at optiscan.com  Thu Jul 26 20:14:58 2001
From: tomh at optiscan.com (Tom Harris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:14:58 +1000
Subject: class atribute name mangling and exec()
Message-ID: <AA94BA487AE0D411829300D0B7A7A95F079503@uluru2.optiscan.com.au>

All,

I cannot explain this, could someone give me a simple explanation? Suppose I
have this little class:

class GreenEggs:
	def __init__(self):
		exec('self.__m1 = "I am Sam"')
		self.__m2 = 'Sam I am'
		
	def m1(self):
		print self.__m1
		
	def m2(self):
		print self.__m2
		
>>> a = GreenEggs.GreenEggs()
>>> a.m1()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "f:/dev\GreenEggs.py", line 7, in m1
    print self.__m1
AttributeError: GreenEggs instance has no attribute '_GreenEggs__m1'
>>> a.m2()
Sam I am
>>> dir (a)
['_GreenEggs__m2', '__m1']

See what I mean? The name mangling is defeated inside the evaluation
performed by the exec statement. What is the moral here, exec() is evil, or
name mangling is easily broken, so avoid it (I have a heavy C++ background,
so hiding everything in classes is a serious obsession)? 

 Tom Harris, Software Engineer
 Optiscan Imaging, 15-17 Normanby Rd, Notting Hill, Melbourne, Vic 3168,
Australia
 email tomh at optiscan.com     ph +61 3 9538 3333  fax +61 3 9562 7742

This email may contain confidential information. If you have received this
email in error, please delete it immediately,and inform us of the mistake by
return email. Any form of reproduction, or further dissemination of this
email is strictly prohibited.
Also, please note that opinions expressed in this email are those of the
author, and are not necessarily those of OptiScan Pty Ltd




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul  4 15:50:31 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:50:31 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040834040.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041248350.7776-100000@bms>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Grant Griffin wrote:
<...>
> Its the way of Slackware Linux:
> they thought the same way and labeled packages as "A", ... "K", "X" ,...
> package-sets.
>
> The better way is that of rpm or apt-get enabled distros.
>
> The problem is the lack of knowledge.
> There need to be some central storage + mirroring network
> and mentioning PyPAN contents in the core Python distribution
> (with links and such).

This is superficial, and what results in a mess (afaict)
if you do not implement something deeper.

You MUST have: registered contributors, bug tracking system, a solid
dependency scheme, multiple levels (e.g., incoming -> for testing
-> current -> old), heavy security, and the ability to integrate with
existing (larger in size and scope) archives.


- Bruce




From jafo at tummy.com  Mon Jul  9 03:39:26 2001
From: jafo at tummy.com (Sean Reifschneider)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:39:26 -0600
Subject: python2.1 and RedHat7.1
In-Reply-To: <182ecd7e.0107031246.32e7f1b7@posting.google.com>; from thomasadunham@yahoo.co.uk on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 01:46:57PM -0700
References: <mailman.993580729.681.python-list@python.org> <flZ_6.1112$tD1.139245@news3.oke.nextra.no> <mailman.993885826.30310.python-list@python.org> <182ecd7e.0107031246.32e7f1b7@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010709013925.A28437@tummy.com>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 01:46:57PM -0700, Tom Dunham wrote:
>Has anyone who installed in this way tried "import socket"?

RedHat has changed the OpenSSL RPM so that openssl-0.9.6 provides
libssl.so.1, where the old one provided libssl.so.0.  Ditto for libcrypto.
Either try installing the "openssl095a" package (in addition to the
"openssl-0.9.6" package), or make link the missing library in /usr/lib.
Try "ls -l /usr/lib/libssl*" to see what you currently have.

Sean
-- 
 "The big bad wolf, he learned the rule.  You gotta get hot to play real cool."
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python



From sandysj at asme.org  Fri Jul  6 11:31:51 2001
From: sandysj at asme.org (Jeff Sandys)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:31:51 GMT
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B45D9E7.BF5FB037@asme.org>

Dave Stanton wrote:
> What book (s) would people recommend for a beginner to python ?

I prefer _The Quick Python Book_ by Daryl Harms and Kenneth McDonald.
If you have some programming experience _Quick Python_ has more depth 
than _Learning Python_ which is designed for true beginners.

Thanks,
Jeff Sandys


From mirko.liss at web.de  Sat Jul 14 03:54:18 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:54:18 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
In-Reply-To: <92ae279c.0107131557.5e0be899@posting.google.com>
References: <mailman.995025922.12846.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107131557.5e0be899@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010714075420.2E3D6259.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On 13 Jul 2001, John Machin wrote:
> Dampfschiffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin.

The german language has been improved much in recent years.
Several syntactic crufts are obsolete now and have been replaced 
by a small set of simple rules.

Today, the german language is much easier to learn and understand.
This led to enhanced readability and maintainability of german 
Python code comments. In fact, it enabled native speakers 
to speak much faster.

Even the word you mentioned has been simplified for ease
of readability:

Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin
           _


regards,

Mirko Liss




From JoeSalmeri at home.com  Wed Jul 25 14:16:32 2001
From: JoeSalmeri at home.com (Joe Salmeri)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:16:32 GMT
Subject: Python 2.1.1 ASP/Response object does not HONOR Response.End()
References: <XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <42E77.41650$Ek3.15221529@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

Thanks Jim.

Are all the methods supposed to be lower case.

I'm using the ASP documentation at
http://www.w3schools.com/asp/asp_ref_response.asp whichs shows the method
names with an upper case first letter.  I just did a test and Response.Write
and Response.write BOTH work.  I wonder why Response.End() doesn't raise an
AttributeError?

Do you have any good sources for documentation using Python and ASP?  There
do not seem to be many and those that I have found are minimal at best.

"Joe Salmeri" <JoeSalmeri at home.com> wrote in message
news:XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736 at news1.rdc1.md.home.com...
> When using Python/ASP if you call the Response.End() method the rest of
the
> script is still processed
>
> For Example:
>
> ** Script **
>
> <@language="Python"%>
> <%
> Response.Write("This is line 1")
> Response.Write("This is line 2")
> Response.End()
> Response.Write("This is line 3")
> %>
> This should NOT appear.
>
> ** End Script **
>
> "This is line 3" and "this should NOT appear." both appear in the page
> results.
>
> Testing the same script with VBScript produces the correct results.
>
> Is this a known bug?
>
>




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 04:09:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:09:24 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <slrn9k4out.ms.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <9hu07g$ck6@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9huivl01eln@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:9hu07g$ck6 at news1.gtech.com...
> True, but all you are arguing here is that Python and accompanying
toolset,
> in it's current state, is not up to the task but could be made more
> appropriate to the problem/situation. So, "how long is a piece of string"?

len(thestring[thestart:theend]), of course.  What else?

For extra credit, explain why this need NOT equal theend-thestart...


Alex





From niemeyer at conectiva.com.br  Mon Jul 23 10:41:09 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com.br (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:41:09 -0300
Subject: [phawkins@connact.com: Re: python and applications]
In-Reply-To: <20010722144735.A2737@ifour.com.br>; from gustavo@ifour.com.br on Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 02:47:35PM -0300
References: <20010722144735.A2737@ifour.com.br>
Message-ID: <20010723114109.G27699@tux.distro.conectiva>

Hi Gustavo!

Before starting, I think comparing C and Python at that level is
useless, since these languages have different purposes. Anyway,
let's go...

> I am just a python beginner, but clearly C would cannot do many thing
> in python the same way you cannot do many thing in C!

I don't think so. Using C you are able to do anything you can do
in python. Remember, the main implementation of Python is written in C.
Many tasks will just take longer to be done in C.

> C is simple, and very, very small. Everything you need come form

I wouldn't say that at all.

> libraries. C has no support for IO, garbage collections, dynamic
> memory allocation, etc...... Many thing that C "does" comes from
> external libraries. Being small, and without any kind of special

So does python. What do you think you're doing when you use something
like "import sys" in your program? Yes, many of these libraries
are part of a "standard set", but that doesn't change things. You
have POSIX and other standards on the C side.

> structs gives C some nice features like: small learning curve, code
> are easy to mantain , you can write very fast code in C, easy to

I'm not sure I'm reading this... :-) Com'on.. Python is so valuable
exactly because it has a very small learning curve, and because code
written in Python is so easy to write and maintain.

> program. The most sofistaced feature C provides is loop (while, do
> while, for), the lowest level C feature are pointer. If you master
> pointer and loop in C, you may be concidered a C guru. the problem is

Ouch... What's a feature for you?? If you're talking about the language
constructs, as far as I remember, Guido is always trying to have the
minimum possible set of language constructs in python (no do/while, no
switch, no enum, etc). I don't think this is a bad thing, but I don't
understand your position.

> that C by itself is useless. Writting really useful programms required
> you to master the OS API, or even your hardware.

You can "master" the POSIX standard, just like you'd "master" the
python stdlib.

[...]
> that C++ is easier than C - All i do is laughting. Serious IT stuff
> never get project developed in C++.

We have lots of well known projects developed in C++ (qt, apt, etc).

> Python is much more elaborated than C. It supports complex data types
> (from the point of view of a C programmer), and operation on such Data
[...]

C has very complex data types, from the point of view of a Python
programmer. As I told, these languages have different purposes and
one has to be careful when making such comparisions.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From stadt at cs.utwente.nl  Sun Jul 29 20:55:52 2001
From: stadt at cs.utwente.nl (Richard van de Stadt)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:55:52 +0200
Subject: Timezone
Message-ID: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl>

I run stuff on systems in various timezones.
I need to display when certain files have been updated.
ctime (time()) shows the current date and time, but without the timezone
that you get to see e.g. by Unix' date command.

Is there a (Python) way to find out the timezone?

Richard.


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 09:37:51 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:37:51 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net>
Message-ID: <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

rwallace at esatclear.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:

> You want the _type_ of the result to depend on the _value_ of the
> operands. My reaction to that is ***NO!!!*** It would make the
> division operator for integer operands so error prone as to be
> unusable. If that's the intent, much better to have it be an error to
> use integer operands, that way you wouldn't get silently and
> inconsistently wrong answers.

That all depends on details of the number system, and details of the
values involved.  If we have rationals in our numeric tower, I
definitely want (5/2 - 3/2) to be usable as a sequence index, so
either rationals must be usable as sequence indices as long as their
value is integral, or the result of rational arithmetic may return an
int.  That shouldn't matter.

On the other hand, floats should never be usable as sequence index.
Scheme defines this quite nicely:

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r5rs-html/r5rs_8.html#SEC50

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 10 00:00:34 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:00:34 +1200
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994576272.19695.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A7DE2.7E4FACD2@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> State of the Eternal machine could be comprised of a dictionary of
> lists of strings (which are keys to the dictionaries or literals)
> (Pythoner's thinking showing ;-) and interpreter will be just
> executing elements from some list while not told to switch to another
> one.

Sounds rather like PostScript!

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From me at mikerobin.com  Thu Jul  5 03:11:23 2001
From: me at mikerobin.com (Michael Robin)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 00:11:23 -0700
Subject: Pythonic Quote of the Week - sliding away...
References: <mailman.994210026.25214.python-list@python.org> <3B428990.B5AC4CB5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <52e5ab5f.0107042311.47710842@posting.google.com>

I assume that the lack of any positive response to this implies lack
of agreement - but just in case...

CPython and JPython are complimentary in their standard libraries, the
behavior (and amount :) ) of their memory management, etc., so that
the removal of one (certainly CPython) would cut the user community
drastically. Not being at the mercy of a JVM (unless having it around
is a good idea for other reasons) is an important feature.

Hmm, does someone provide an auto-magic way to reflect Java objects
into CPython when needed, in conjunction with an "adjacent" JVM? I
think you could get at Java objects through win32com & the MS VM, but
I'm not sure about any cross-platform methods - but I'm behind on Java
technology. (Python-implemented RMI?)

m

scott <smarsh at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3B428990.B5AC4CB5 at hotmail.com>...
> Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> <snip>
> Because I know Java better than Python, I'll vent this unlikely
> proposal:
> Abandon cPython (ok, bug fix it for a while, then 'deprecate' it) and
> throw all development effort behind Jython. The core developers can
> continue to improve the Java implementation of Python and everyone else
> can buy the three "Java in a Nutshell" books (key APIs, graphics APIs
> and enterprise APIs) and take the rest of the decade off :-)
>


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 13:44:11 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:44:11 -0500
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
In-Reply-To: <NCk37.1777$u76.55241@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>
        <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>
        <mailman.994949372.17704.python-list@python.org>
        <NCk37.1777$u76.55241@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <15181.57835.267185.320060@beluga.mojam.com>

    Steve> Is my CPU usage really ~100% during those sleeps?

Maybe, maybe not.  Win95 is a single user OS.  The CPU has to be doing
something during those 2.5 second rest periods.  There's nobody else to
credit the time to.  On the other hand, maybe it really does use a busy
wait.

On a multi-user OS (Mandrake Linux in my case, but there are plenty others
to choose from), I see this:

    >>> for i in range(10):
    ...   time.sleep(2.5)
    ...   print time.time(), time.clock()
    ... 
    994959584.635 0.65
    994959587.135 0.65
    994959589.635 0.65
    994959592.135 0.65
    994959594.635 0.65
    994959597.135 0.65
    994959599.635 0.65
    994959602.135 0.65
    994959604.635 0.65
    994959607.135 0.65

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 08:45:48 2001
From: tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk (Toby Dickenson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:45:48 +0100
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP> <mailman.994958001.15478.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tnc8ltsd0p882c369q100a5e9s5ehuaans@4ax.com>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

>>> Do not forget commas:
>>>
>>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url",
>>>          "preview" ]
>>>
>>> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
>>>          "preview" ]
>>>
>>> Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?
>>>
>>
>>For what reason should it check ? Both is valid Python code. In the second
>>case 'url' and 'preview' are concatenated. This is dedicated behaviour.
>>
>
>PyChecker is about determining ambiguity, like lint
>will give you warnings about
>
>if (a=b) { };
>
>in C code.

Which, as I am sure you know, is no more ambiguous in C than the
Python fragment above.


Toby Dickenson
tdickenson at geminidataloggers.com


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul  3 06:00:40 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:00:40 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <20010703120040.O8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 07:34:54AM +1000, Peter Milliken wrote:

> Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging out
> applications that are going to run in an environment where it isn't going to
> matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not something I would put
> forward for something like Air Traffic Control.

> This is a joke, right?

Nope. The only way to make sure a program works is by testing each and every
line in each and every circumstance, regardless of which programming
language you use. For something like ATC, you *do not* want to rely on
anything else. Using Python would at least allow you to find and fix
problems a lot faster -- you won't be carrying around NULL or undef values
without noticing it.

Do you check the return value of every fprintf()/fclose() function call you
make ? You should!

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 10:41:36 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 16:41:36 +0200
Subject: apply problems
In-Reply-To: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <20010715164136.A5396@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:50:57AM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> Python 1.5.2
> Irix 6.5

> In my code, I have the line:
> apply( self.ren.Elements, cmd[1], additional_kwds )
> 
> and I get the error:
> TypeError: keyword parameter redefined
> 
> 
> where:
> cmd[1] = [0, 0, 3, 3, 0.0, [0]]
> 
> additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements': 
> <cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes': 
> <cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}

> def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> elements, *args, **kwds ):

Note: this function requires 9 arguments, one of which ('self') is passed
implicitly when called through an instance. However, your error message 

> If I remove the "additional_kwds" from the apply call, then I get:
> TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 8, got 7

states otherwise. Conclusion: you're not using the code you say you are
using :)

The error you're seeing, "keyword parameter redefined", should not occur
given your code, and indeed I can't reproduce it. The 'keyword parameter
redefined' error *does* happen if your 'additional_kwds' dictionary contains
one of the 6 arguments you already pass in as positional arguments, though.

> 
> I can't figure out where the seventh argument is comming from. If I try:
> "cmd[1][6]" I get:

The seventh argument in the error message is of course the implicit 'self'
itself.

> I am unable to repeat this in a simple example, so I am forced to merely
> describe the problem as best as I can.  The code is too big to post. 

And *that*'s the biggest hint that you haven't described the real problem :)
If you can't reproduce what you think is the error, it's probably not the
real error.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul 19 03:09:30 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:09:30 +0200
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
In-Reply-To: <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com>
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010719090930.A853@strakt.com>

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 11:58:43AM -0700, Tom Good wrote:
> Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995459309.19355.python-list at python.org>...

[snipped my own code]

> Consider this:
> 
> PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Jun 15 2001, 14:13:47) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on
> win32.
> Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) -
> see 'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
> >>> # raise A,B raises A with B as its argument
> >>> raise "a", "b"
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
> a: b
> >>> #raise (A, B) raises A and ignores B
> >>> raise ("a", "b")
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
> a
> 
> 
> 
> Keep in mind also, that a statement like:
> 
>   except (A, B):
> 
> means to catch either A or B.  That is, it does NOT mean to catch the
> tuple (A,B).

Yes I know that, but that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is why in

>>> raise ("a","b")

the "b" disappears? IMO that's a pretty weird behaviour. Yes anybody using
non-class exceptions derived from Exception in a real-world program are
insane, but this is a puristic thing of mine. :-)

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From trygve.nesheim at c2i.net  Tue Jul 31 19:12:30 2001
From: trygve.nesheim at c2i.net (TRYGVE NESHEIM)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:12:30 GMT
Subject: Large pages using Zope
References: <9k766t$dc0$04$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <yXG97.5335$em.180937@juliett.dax.net>

I know this isn't what you asked for but it's very convincing :)

Why You Should Host Zope

Zope is Great For ISP Business
Why is Zope great for an ISP business? ? The following points illustrate the
reasons.

1. Price is right. Many ISPs don't have the capital budget to purchase a
$40,000 application server with $5,000 per developer licenses. Moreover,
these application servers aren't very useful "out of the box". However,
cobbling together a set of services from various free tools is not a sound
architecture for building a business.

2. Thus, a free package like Zope that is designed to compete with
commercial application servers is a perfect fit.

3. Source is available. Any ISP that runs services based on Linux
understands the hidden truth: commercial software and commercial software
companies cannot be trusted. They do not have your interests, nor your
business plan, at heart. You need control. You need the source.

4. Very portable. Zope is extremely easy to build on the latest-and-greatest
Unix platform, as well as Windows machines. You won't have to worry about
waiting for a vendor to get to your platform with Zope!

5. Commercial consulting and support. Since Digital Creations, the creators
of Zope, exists as a services company, there is plenty of commercial backing
behind Zope to address your services needs.

6. Completely web managed. Zope does not require password file entries,
Apache passwords, new directories with hacked permissions, executable
scripts, or the like. In fact, Zope doesn't even store new content in new
files. Everything is managed through the web object system and stored inside
the object database.

7. Safely turn over control to customers. Zope allows you to create folders
containing user accounts and turn these over to your customers. They can
create content for themselves, for others, create new user accounts, and
more. But they only exist and have control over their folder and its
subfolders. Moreover, if they make a mistake they can undo their changes to
recover without bothering you for going to a backup tape!

8. Outside of web server. Unlike solutions such as PHP that run inside the
web server, Zope runs as its own long-running process. Thus your production
web server isn't compromised by strange add-ins and programs.




From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Thu Jul 12 05:45:21 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 09:45:21 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994095972.11214.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kqsb0.1du.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> "This" is the simplest interpretation x +=y is equivalent to x = x + y.
> 
> "That" is the more sophisticated polymorphic interpretation where the
> type chooses its own behaviour.
> 
> Would this be an acceptable compromise? Everyone wins.

I believe that the current behavior is exactly what I want almost all the
time. If I have a list, I most often want to append to it; if it's a tuple
or integer, then of course I couldn't, and what I meant is adding it and
making a new object.

The problem really doesn't show up for me. This design is an excellent
pragmatical choice.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul  8 13:19:42 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 08 Jul 2001 13:19:42 -0400
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Message-ID: <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test objects
in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:

import copy
test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]

HTH.
Alex.


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 21 15:32:40 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:32:40 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b59d969.57331237@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:39:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> writes:
>
>> On 19-Jul-2001 Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>  >  Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
>>  >  
>>  > > The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
>>  > > is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?
>>  >  
>>  >  You flunked math, right?  The number of available identifiers is still
>>  >  infinite...
>> 
>> That comment was not necessary. What Bruce must mean is that the average
>> length of an identifier will be larger with case insensitiveness than 
>> with case sensitiveness. I am sure you understood that.
>
>I apologize for the comment.  But I don't find the argument (that
>case-sensitivity reduces the expressivity or the number of available
>good identifiers) convincing at all.  Given that in current code,
>case-insensitive name clashes are very rare, I don't believe for a
>second that the average identifier length will go up.  If you use this
>a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
>should be.  It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over
>the phone -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has
>tried to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)
>

I don't know if the following uses of the same symbol with case variations
qualify as "case-insensitive name clashes" the way you meant, but I guess
there would be a certain amount of work in checking.

I just picked a directory with your name on it to get your attention ;-)
Code hack is at end. Nice that Python makes it so easy, for which THANKS ;-)

[12:18] D:\Python-2.1\Demo\tkinter\guido>casecheck.py *.py
---- AttrDialog.py ----
{'Button': 1, 'button': 10}
{'canvas': 4, 'Canvas': 1}
{'stringoption': 6, 'StringOption': 6}
{'ReadonlyOption': 6, 'readonlyoption': 6}
{'E': 3, 'e': 7}
{'enumoption': 6, 'EnumOption': 6}
{'None': 12, 'NONE': 2}
{'label': 5, 'Label': 2}
{'TOP': 1, 'top': 7}
{'Dialog': 6, 'dialog': 17}
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 4}
{'Menu': 1, 'menu': 3}
{'Frame': 2, 'frame': 13}
{'booleanoption': 6, 'BooleanOption': 6}
{'Option': 5, 'option': 10}
{'Entry': 1, 'entry': 3}
---- brownian.py ----
{'canvas': 6, 'Canvas': 1}
{'HEIGHT': 3, 'height': 1}
{'FILL': 2, 'fill': 2}
{'width': 1, 'WIDTH': 3}
---- canvasevents.py ----
{'Canvas': 2, 'canvas': 20}
{'Pile': 3, 'pile': 9}
{'group': 19, 'Group': 5}
{'Bottom': 2, 'bottom': 2}
{'Demo': 2, 'demo': 7}
{'Object': 5, 'object': 11}
---- dialog.py ----
{'pack': 9, 'Pack': 1}
{'TOP': 1, 'top': 4}
---- electrons.py ----
{'canvas': 2, 'Canvas': 1}
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 8}
---- hanoi.py ----
{'canvas': 2, 'Canvas': 1}
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 11}
---- hello.py ----
{'Button': 1, 'button': 4}
---- imagedraw.py ----
---- imageview.py ----
{'label': 2, 'Label': 1}
---- kill.py ----
{'Y': 1, 'y': 4}
{'kill': 6, 'Kill': 2}
{'Menu': 1, 'menu': 4}
{'label': 4, 'Label': 1}
{'frame': 21, 'Frame': 4}
---- listtree.py ----
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 5}
---- ManPage.py ----
{'ManPage': 2, 'manpage': 3}
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 2}
---- mbox.py ----
{'MH': 1, 'mh': 6}
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 6}
---- MimeViewer.py ----
{'MH': 1, 'mh': 2}
{'tk': 3, 'Tk': 1}
{'Frame': 3, 'frame': 14}
---- newmenubardemo.py ----
{'menu': 4, 'Menu': 4}
{'app': 1, 'App': 2}
---- optionmenu.py ----
---- paint.py ----
---- rmt.py ----
{'y': 9, 'Y': 1}
{'tk': 4, 'Tk': 1}
{'menu': 1, 'Menu': 2}
{'x': 9, 'X': 1}
{'text': 1, 'Text': 1}
---- ShellWindow.py ----
{'Tk': 1, 'tk': 3}
{'SIGINT': 1, 'sigint': 2}
{'sigquit': 1, 'SIGQUIT': 1}
{'sigterm': 2, 'SIGTERM': 1}
{'SIGKILL': 1, 'sigkill': 2}
---- solitaire.py ----
{'window': 1, 'Window': 2}
{'Canvas': 2, 'canvas': 15}
{'Deck': 2, 'deck': 6}
{'stack': 11, 'Stack': 4}
{'background': 2, 'BACKGROUND': 4}
{'group': 17, 'Group': 5}
{'Card': 2, 'card': 67}
{'N': 1, 'n': 4}
{'color': 4, 'COLOR': 5}
---- sortvisu.py ----
{'label': 3, 'Label': 2}
{'right': 20, 'RIGHT': 1}
{'Canvas': 2, 'canvas': 7}
{'Array': 4, 'array': 96}
{'Y': 2, 'y': 4}
{'x': 7, 'X': 14}
{'Frame': 4, 'frame': 6}
{'left': 19, 'LEFT': 1}
{'width': 2, 'WIDTH': 3}
---- svkill.py ----
{'Y': 2, 'y': 2}
{'kill': 6, 'Kill': 2}
{'label': 9, 'Label': 1}
{'Menu': 1, 'menu': 5}
{'frame': 19, 'Frame': 4}
---- switch.py ----
{'Button': 2, 'button': 6}
{'app': 4, 'App': 2}
{'frame': 10, 'Frame': 3}
{'label': 2, 'Label': 1}
---- tkman.py ----
{'Listbox': 1, 'listbox': 9}
{'None': 2, 'NONE': 2}
{'label': 2, 'Label': 1}
{'Frame': 5, 'frame': 9}
{'Entry': 2, 'entry': 9}
---- wish.py ----


_________________________________________________
#casecheck.py
import sys, tokenize, glob, token

symdir={}

def tokeneater(type, tokstr, start, end, line):
    if (type==token.NAME):
	TOKSTR = tokstr.upper()		#should show up for this file
        if symdir.has_key(TOKSTR):
            d = symdir[TOKSTR]
            if d.has_key(tokstr):
                d[tokstr] += 1
            else:
                d[tokstr] = 1
        else:
            symdir[TOKSTR]={ tokstr:1 }
        
for fileglob in sys.argv[1:]:
    for filename in glob.glob(fileglob):
        symdir={}
        print '----',filename,'----'
        tokenize.tokenize(open(filename).readline, tokeneater)

        for key in symdir.keys():
            if len(symdir[key]) > 1:
                print symdir[key]



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:38:06 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:38:06 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9l0sc8.2nh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <cp1ynf3da9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lb08k.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9lb0pe.11n.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:29:08 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:13:36 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
>>
>>> >I also don't want to fork the code base.  
>>> 
>>> Does that imply that you sare no longer interested in making 
>>> radical changes to Python, such as case-insensitive identifiers
>>> mentioned in CP4E?
>>
>>I still have the same end goal, but I believe there must be a way to
>>obtain it without too much disturbance. 
>
>Hmmm. I'm not sure about that, it feels to me like its opening up a
>can of worms.
>
>>Case-sensitivity, for
>>example, may be a tool feature rather than a language feature, or it
>>may be a user option or a langage-level choice. 
>
>Say I write a module in the current (case-sensitive) Python. Then 
>you write one in case-insensitive python. Your code calls one of my 
>routines or variables; how does it get the case-sensitivity right?
>Does it do so at run time or compile time? Compile time might
>be difficult, for example if I have an object that dynamically
>creates instance variables for itself. What if I have an object
>ob with both ob.variable and ob.VARIABLE? What does your code
>use when it resolves philsModule.ob.variable?
>
>Case matching up at run-time is likely to make the language slower.
>
>(One way I might consider fixing it would be to have the new
>language explicitly say when it is dealing with old-python modules
>and be case sensitive there; consider C++'s name mangling and the
>extern keyword they used to link to C code.)

One question that's just occurred to me.

In normal Python:

class C: pass

c = C()
c.__dict__['h'] = 'hello'

Now, c.h is 'hello' but c.H is an exception.

Will keys in dictionaries have to be case-insensitive in
cae-insensitive python?

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From prem at engr.uky.edu  Tue Jul 31 10:50:09 2001
From: prem at engr.uky.edu (Prem Rachakonda)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:50:09 -0400
Subject: Spline tool Box in Python?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107311045430.15217-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>

Hi,
  I am trying to fit a spline to a set of points. I am looking out for a
tool-box, similar to Matlab's Spline-Tool box. Does anybody have any idea.
  I came to know about a module 'Screens.py', on the web, but it doesn't
give me any pointer to the
module. http://lithos.gat.com/~osborne/pythondoc/data.html

Could someone help me out in finding a tool-box which would help me in
fitting splines?

Thanks,
Prem.

____________________________________________________________
                       Prem Rachakonda
____________________________________________________________
Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 00:30:43 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:30:43 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com> <mailman.994988062.18418.python-list@python.org> <3B4E68C5.E47D5F0F@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E7973.2852664B@ActiveState.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> Well, maybe if we could measure, sometime in the future when the
> user base of Python and PHP is identical (not sure which is
> actually larger now, mind you), publisher revenues from the books,
> I might still be sort of right... I can't believe Python will
> end up with the volume of five-inch thick books that PHP and
> its ilk have barfed forth.

I still think that you have too much faith that the actual technical
features of the topic have any real effect on the structure of the books
(or the market). Once you move past the first ten books written by
zealots and early adopters, the rest are written by people like "the
Deitels" who have a structure and are looking for content to pour into
it.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing -- people who buy a book from the
Deitels (or the Dummies series or ...) know exactly what they are going
to get! As long as they don't do too much damage to the content pouring
it into their form, it doesn't seem so terrible. Sometimes books by the
"writing experts" are better than those by the technical experts. And
sometimes they are worse. 
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From rjh at 3-cities.com  Wed Jul  4 01:41:10 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 05:41:10 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> "Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> > ... the distinction between integer and real arithmetic is an 
> > essential concept.
> 
> If it is such an essential concept, why does Python undermine the
> distinction by coercing between types. And by the way, why doesn't the
> division of an integer by a float result always in an integer? Because
> Python treats integers as a special case of floats? Except in *one
> particular context*. Hmmmm.

Python does not undermine the distinction between integers and floats.  
Arithmetic expressions that
involve only integers currently always result in an integer.  It is the
new proposal that coerces integers to floats, but only if a
div operation is performed, otherwise you get an integer.  So the new
proposal will perform more automatic coercions than the current
behaviour,
and it will not be consistent about the type of result returned from a
pure
integer expression.

> > > ... Why is automatic coercion *ever* necessary?
> >
> > Mixed type expressions are almost inevitable.  It would take a much
> > larger reworking of the Python numerical model than proposed by
> > PEP-0238 to do away with that.
> 
> Exactly. PEP-0238 strives to do away with a single operation that is out
> of sync with Python's general treatment of integers as a special case of
> float. The only othre way that behaviour could be made consistent would
> be to remove all of the other cases where it uses this type hierarchy.

Python's current treatment of integers is NOT as a special case
of float.  It is to treat them as a distinct integer type.  It is only
in MIXED type expressions that Python helpfully converts them.
 
> > My point was rather poorly made.  The new
> > proposal has simply moved the point at which people need to understand
> > the distinction between real and integer arithmetic.  Currently it must
> > be understood when the operation is performed.  In the new proposal it
> > must be understood when the result of the operation is used.
> 
> Nobody argues against understanding. But understanding is eased if you
> do what people expect. People believe that the integers are a special
> case of floats. Python encourages them in that belief in most places
> other than this one.

Who expects?  You are already seeing in this discussion that many
people think that the current behaviour is not only what they expect
but is actually very justifiable. 

Again, my major objection to this proposal is that it gives us
nothing and breaks a lot of existing code.  The proposal is based upon 
the supposition that uniting floats with integers makes programming
easier to learn for beginners, but this is absolutely not consistent
with my experience in teaching programming using Python and other
languages (including Maple that has rationals).
All programmers must very soon appreciate the different nature of
integer and floating point (or rational) arithmetic in order to
address discretized quantities such as lists, files, strings, etc. 

> --
> Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.
> Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook

-- 
Robert J. Harrison (rjh at 3-cities.com)


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Sun Jul  8 16:31:51 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 20:59:51 +0028
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ib6nn$tut$1@apollo.csd.net>

Chris Watson wrote:

> 
> 
>> This seems really strange to me. So you are saying you can integrate it
>> into any proprietary product without problems? You can intergrate it into
>> perl, python etc with their various licenses. Why do you specifically not
>> want anyone to integrate it with GPL code but allow everything else?
> 
> Strange? Not that I dont know where this will end up but how is wanting to
> keep the GPL (which would add restrictions to my code that *I* did not
> place on it) from infecting my licensed code strange? I release everyone
> can choose their OWN licenses. I have NO problem with that. The thing's I
> have problems with are the fact that A) you can GPL BSD licensed code.
> Which I do NOT want to happen or I would of GPL'ed it in the first place.
> To butcher a Roger Waters song "Keep your filthy GPL off my desert". :-)
> B) I fail to see how someone coming along and GPL'ing my code without my
> permission is fair. Or ethicly right. Now had I used a standard 2 clause
> FreeBSD license I would have no recourse to bi*ch about that. Since the
> BSD license allows for that. So instead of bit*hing about it I just a 3rd
> clause effectivlely saying "Sorry GPL people go play elsewhere". The
> license as shown above places no restrictions on "code use". Simply the
> licensing terms. Nothing more or less. You can do whatever you wish with
> the code. Make it binary only and keep your secret modifications secret,
> release them with source, whatever you wish. You just can't add any
> restrictions to my code. Like the GPL. Or you would violate the license
> and I will sue you. Everyone can choose to license their code as they see
> fit it's a free country. I simple dont want the GPL to inflict itself on
> my code or I would of licensed it under the GPL to begin with. :-)
> Some of us like capitolsim more then communism. *shrug*
> 
> Chris


That is not really what the license says though. With that license you 
can't integrate it with anything. If you put it in a closed source product 
it would have a more restrictive license and thus couldn't be used that way.

Also no one can make your code GPL. Your code is always under the license 
you released it under. However the GPL would make the entire collection GPL 
if GPL code were released with it. That really is no different then 
including BSD code in a closed source product since the closed source 
license takes precedence.

That capitalism/communism thing is FUD and I hope people grow up and stop 
using it.


From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 18 12:58:05 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:58:05 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b55ba06.2245246233@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:30:27 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
>> Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
>> to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
>> the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
>> filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
>
>But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
>Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
>case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
>was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
>routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
>implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.
>
Are you sure that was the reason? I would have guessed that at a transition
from ALL UPPERCASE ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING they would have said to
themselves, "Let's not deny programmers the use of 7-bit distinctions, now
that we have 7-bit characters."

If you want to cater to windows case insensitivity, maybe W"do it like this"
-- but please don't even think about eliminating case sensitivity from Python ;-)


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:29:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:29:58 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B60D432.5060109@nospiced.ham.devis.com> <eppstein-7014B5.21120826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cp7kwu4f8m.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> > >>    A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
> > >>       division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
> > >>       function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
> > >>       you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
> > >>
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?

Yes, it's a typo.

> > > I still don't like the phrase "true division", it implies a
> > > value judgement that quotients are somehow an inferior thing to
> > > want to compute.

I may go with your ratio.

> floor converts ints to floats????  This seems exactly backwards from what I 
> would expect.  And while it is certainly documented that way in the library 
> reference (section 5), it is contradicted by the footnote in section 2 
> about using floor and ceil for "well-defined conversions" from float to 
> int, as well as the claim in the reference manual that integer-division is 
> the same as applying floor to the result of mathematical division.

The floor() function is part of the math module, whose whole point is
to work with floats.  In the future, we may introduce a floor()
function in the standard library which should of course behave better.

> I have to consider this a big wart.
> Especially with the proposed changes to /, I would likely want to write 
> code like i = floor(a/b) and j = ceil(c/d) but apparently this is going to 
> need added coercions to get an integral type.

I hope you would use // rather than using floor().  For ceil(), I
guess you could use -(-c//d). :-(

> Anyway, back to the PEP, I don't think calling floor(x) is a very clear way 
> of writing an int-to-float coercion, and it's still a bug because it will 
> give you incorrect results if x is a non-integral float.

It was a typo.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  9 16:15:54 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 16:15:54 -0400
Subject: Newbie Radiobutton question (again)
References: <32n27.12$V3.95@cronkite>
Message-ID: <etdd779rh8l.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

It could be an interaction between idle's TKinter code and yours.  Do
you get the same problem when you run the script from the command line?
If not, you could use emacs and python-mode, instead.

Alex.


From rob at jam.rr.com  Tue Jul 17 10:22:24 2001
From: rob at jam.rr.com (Rob Andrews)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:22:24 GMT
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
Message-ID: <3B544995.4538E4DA@jam.rr.com>

Take a look at today's User Friendly poll. ("Web code of choice:
Perl/mod_perl, *sh, C/C++, ASP, Javascript, Cold Fusion, JSP, PHP").

http://www.userfriendly.org/static/

At the time I checked, there were more complaints about Python not being
listed as there were comments on any of the actual choices offered.

Rob



From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 02:33:57 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 10:33:57 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [Tutor] Need help with SWIG
In-Reply-To: <NBBBIOJPGKJEKIECEMCBEEBJKDAA.pobrien@orbtech.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071032500.31897-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Patrick K. O'Brien wrote:

>If there is anyone here that has experience with SWIG, I could use some
>help. I'm trying to build an interface to a commercial Windows application

I've heard, that on Windows you can use COM to access application as an
object?

(And Python works with COM)

>that provides an api in the form of a dll file. I have the C header file and
>tried to run it through SWIG to create the Python interface but SWIG fails
>with a whole bunch of "Syntax error in input" errors. I really don't know
>where to begin and I hate to spend any more time on this than necessary. All
>I want is the darn Python interface so I can start using the dll from
>Python.
>
>If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it. I can send you the .h
>file as well. Thanks.


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 22 05:55:50 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 09:55:50 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 22 Jul 2001 09:35:27 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

> And as it happens, I remember my first experience with Pascal led
> to the question "why does Pascal need two division operators when
> BASIC works perfectly well with one?"

The Basic I used didn't have integer division at all, which is hardly
an improvement.

All arithmetic operators and functions like divmod, except /, have the
property that the value of the result, as long as it's not an error,
depends only on the values of arguments - not on their types.

Python implicitly converts numbers between types - it doesn't treat
numeric types as independent (like e.g. Haskell and OCaml do). So
it makes sense to extend the idea that 2 can be used to mean "two"
also in floating point contexts to the / operator.

			*	*	*

My taste suggests the following:

- div and mod should be operators which return components of divmod.
  divmod works as currently.

- / applied to ints or longs should return the exact result as a rational.
  % should remain only in its sprintf meaning.

- When rationals and floats are mixed, the result is a float.

- Given the above assumptions, I'm not sure what literals like
  1.2 should produce. All possibilities have reasons: rationals,
  floats, or decimal floats. Anyway, the question is what should be
  the default, because other possibilities can be formed by using
  a letter suffix. I would either let 1.2 mean a rational and 1.2f
  a float, or 1.2 a float and 1.2r a rational. More probably the
  former. Decimal floats should not be necessary: they are inexact
  like binary floats and slow like rationals.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com  Tue Jul  3 11:31:18 2001
From: Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com (Tobin, Mark)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:31:18 -0600 
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
Message-ID: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391047@torex004.attcanada.ca>

On Tuesday, July 03, 2001 11:00 AM, Grant Edwards [SMTP:grante at visi.com]
wrote:
> In article <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8 at stroeder.com>, Michael Str?der wrote:
> >David LeBlanc wrote:
> >> 
> >> The Canadians privatized their national air traffic control a few years
> >> ago and oh my! the planes RUN ON TIME!
> 
> All six of them.

Not to be the stodgy Canadian but Pierson International Airport in Toronto
is a rather large Airport with 3 terminals now, and another scheduled to be
completed in the next two years.  We may have a limited number of airlines
(it's worse than Microsoft ;-) ), but I think it's fair to say that we have
a fairly large number of daily flights.  However, I don't think it's fair to
say that our "planes RUN ON TIME".  With the current monopoly the complaints
to the ombudsperson are apparently up close to seventy percent over last
year.

> 
> :)

;-)

btw somebody on this thread said that the Air Traffic Control was privatized
in Canada, when did that happen, and what does it mean in a practical sense?


> 
> -- 
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Now I understand
the

Cheers,

Mark
>                                   at               meaning of "THE MOD
SQUAD"!
>                                visi.com            
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From brueckd at tbye.com  Mon Jul 30 20:19:57 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:19:57 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <psoae1mrn48.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301651570.22482-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

On 30 Jul 2001, Christopher Barber wrote:

> > The compiler made me stick in the cast to an Integer, but it didn't solve
> > any problems for me (the code is still wrong). The only result is that the
> > compiler can now say, "Hey, it's not my fault - you're the one who cast it
> > to an Integer!".
>
> This is a bad example because the code is doing runtime, not compile-time
> checking.  I was talking about the advantages of compile-time checking.

?? Please review the example - that's compile-time checking there.

> Here is how this would be written in Curl:
>
>    let v:{Array-of String} = {new {Array-of String}}
>    let s:String = "hi"
>    {v.append s}
>    let i:int = v[0]        || ERROR: can't assign a String to an int

But what benefit have I gained? The only reason it's an error to begin
with is because the language is forcing me to name the type. The fact that
the compiler can detect my breakage of the language-specific rules doesn't
really advance the notion that strict compile-time checking is beneficial.
What is a real world problem that would not have existed if Python had
strict compile-time checking, and how common is such a problem? (I'm not
saying those problems don't exist - I'm just desperate for some examples
so I can understand the other side of the issue).

I guess my thinking is something like this: _if_ the language forces the
programmer to be very involved with details like type information, then
some sort of strict, compile-time checking is a Good Thing. _If_, however,
the programmer doesn't have to deal with those issues (or at least not to
the same degree), then many of the related problems go away (or are
present to a much smaller degree), and therefore the ability to check for
those problems is much less beneficial. For example, Python handles most
of the details surrounding memory usage, and as a result Python programs
are generally free from corrupted/lost memory problems, and features to
detect such problems just aren't worth as much.

The few times I've had this sort of conversation I've kind of felt that
people's reasoning was like "I use language X. Language X without strict
compile-time checking would make big programs a mess. Therefore, big
Python programs would be a mess."

I've seen big Python programs that are messy, but not much evidence that
the messiness is related to type problems (but sloppy programmers). I've
also seen big Python programs that are far easier to maintain and modify,
and have far fewer bugs, than what their equivalents would be in
"stricter" languages, so now I'm fishing for examples to show me where the
reverse is true.

-Dave




From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 00:14:11 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:14:11 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEFALBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Courageous]
> I would gladly shell out hefty developer fees for a Python which
> performed within a small order of magnitude C speeds.

I'll expect the check shortly then -- or you should rephrase what is you're
after.

> I'm keeping a close eye one QKS at the moment for just that reason.

If they're developing a faster version of Python, great.  Or you mean you
want "a fast language" regardless of brand?  Then I don't know why you're
waiting for QKS.  It shouldn't really be a challenge to find a $300
two-platform language that runs faster than Python <wink>.

> At work, I'd easily pull strings for a $1000 developer platform to do
> this; at home, I'd be willing to spend about $250.
>
> I know I'm not alone.

Indeed you aren't, but from where I sit there aren't *enough* others in your
family to avoid bankruptcy if someone were to bet a business on it.  Of all
the many things people ask for, "faster, faster!" is ongoing but almost down
in the noise.  Few people contribute toward it, either.

> You Python Labs dudes have lost sight of a major impediment to
> the maturation of Python, IMO.

Don't know what that means.

> And if the QKS folks are getting the performance improvements
> they say they are, it would appear that the allegation that
> Python speed was dependent on a first-class type system was just
> plain wrong.

I've never heard anyone at PythonLabs make that claim.  Have you?  BTW, I
stopped arguing about optimization on c.l.py years ago, because it was
time-consuming but never bore fruit.

> Don't you guys work on Python all day long?

Sorry, that's not the arrangement, not even for Guido.  At least half the
time I do spend on Python is devoted to dealing with SourceForge bug reports
and patches, answering a torrent of email questions (but still only a
fraction of the ones I get), reviewing ideas & proposals, and just keeping
up with the Python newsgroups and mailing lists.  Barry is also lead
developer on the Mailman project, and Fred Drake also busy advancing the
state of

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/

I have a good grasp of what it takes to undertake a major optimization
project (I made my living for 15 years writing optimizing compilers), and
the only way we have enough resource to tackle that successfully is in my
dreams.  We could certainly spend more time than we do making solid small
(localized and modest) performance improvements -- but only by dropping
other work.  IOW, the plate's already overflowing, Joe, and I'm sure you
have your ideas of what we should drop to work on what you want instead, but
everyone else does too, and the bulk of the pressures don't push in the
"faster" direction.

heck-just-look-at-this-week's-outcry-to-break-division-instead<wink>-ly
    y'rs  - tim




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 03:42:27 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:42:27 +0100
Subject: intersection and union idea
References: <3b5cb9d4$0$325$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <o28qltsavdnclqqp5f4kvme35rh021fi7m@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:57:20 -0700, "Neil Macneale"
<mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote:

>I was day dreaming about python today, and I realized that it would be
>very python-ish to have intersection and union operators for lists and
>tuples. Eg:
>
>>>> (1,2,3,4) | (1,3,6,8)
>(1,2,3,4,6,8)
>>>> (1,2,3,4) & (1,3,6,8)
>(1,3)

You could define your own set object, or an alternative to a
dictionary or list, using a class and defining the following
methods...

__and__(self, other) 
__or__(self, other) 

Whether it's really useful, though, is a different thing - you're
probably better off with simple functions operation on the existing
types.

As a language addition - well, it wouldn't break anything I can see.
It could have some consiseness value, but it is really syntactic
sugar.



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 06:26:03 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:26:03 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 10:33:08 +0200, Martin von Loewis
<loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

>Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Division on integers should be integer division. 
>
>I don't think there is any argument about that: the only question is
>how to spell integer division; in the future, it will be spelled '//'.
>
>> Mathematically, integer division should be the inverse of integer
>> multiplication, with no extra functionality bar the need to allow for
>> the remainder. Well shock horror - that's exactly what we've got now
>> and exactly what we're throwing away.
>
>We are not - we are just spelling it differently. However, if you
>think that the inverse of multiplication on integers should be spelled
>'/' (even though the integers do not form a group with respect to
>multiplication), you could still get this under the new PEP. It would
>be possible to implement
>
>12/4 is 3 (not 3.0)
>14/4 == 3.5

Yes, but what about my existing algorithm in some code somewhere that
uses n / 2 to partition an array and checks for == 0 as the
termination condition. It's not exactly going to work very well after
the change, is it.

The point of telling people that integer division is important is to
make them aware of the impact of breaking all the existing code that
uses it - if this goes ahead, Python is going to be a joke.

The view that integer operations should be closed on integers, and
that an separate division operator for integers is going to be at
least as confusing to newbies - not to mention the confusion to
experienced programmers - is a separate issue, a matter of opinion,
even though in my case it is a very *strong* opinion.

>> Integer division is important to a huge range of applications -
>> anything involving money stands out as the obvious case, but also
>> cryptography and others.

But the existing use of division in many applications is going to
suddenly work differently, leading to all kinds of strange
hard-to-trace bugs, and Pythons advocates are going to end up looking
*very* stupid indeed.

It's the kind of thing that could make many of Pythons strongest
supporters say "sod this for a lark, I can live without the ground
shifting under my feet, Perls syntax might be naff but at least the
programs still work from one release to the next"

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From sam at ddmweb.com  Fri Jul 20 14:05:36 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:05:36 -0700
Subject: While we're discussing readability (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
Message-ID: <01072013440400.00999@frock.ddmweb.com>

Python is and will in all likelihood remain a marvel of readability.
Two nits to pick:

I would argue that keystroke-saving has been taken too far when common
functions have had just enough characters chopped to obscure their
meaning to a novice. "len", "del", and "repr" should have been "length",
"delete", and "represent". They can't be changed, but they shouldn't be
emulated.

Second, the standardization of docstrings, if applied with a heavy
hand, could result in more and more modules that are very hard to scan
because you can't see the code for more than one function/method on a
even a 1600x1200 screen. Not every handler should have a docstring, and
not every docstring should be lavishly sprinkled with whitespace and
variable definitions.



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:33:20 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:33:20 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:

> I would like to suggest that we add a "while condition" clause
> to list comprehensions, similar to the "if condition" clause,
> but terminating the list comprehension on the first false condition.
> The above example could then be written as
> 
> [x for x in fib() while x < 50]

Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?
And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?

How about a library of functions for iterator algebra?  E.g.

  def first(n, sq):
      it = iter(sq)
      for i in range(n): yield it.next()

  def lessthan(n, sq):
      for x in sq:
          if x >= n: break
          yield x

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no  Fri Jul 13 09:19:58 2001
From: trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no (Trond Gaarder)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:19:58 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9imsg4$svn$1@maud.ifi.uio.no>

There was no _xmlplus package in Python21, but I did the same with 'xml' and
that did the trick.

Thanks!


-Trond

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote in message
news:9im880$jjh8j$1 at ID-59885.news.dfncis.de...
> [posted and mailed]
> "Trond Gaarder" <trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no> wrote in message
news:9ilk1r$quo$1 at maud.ifi.uio.no...
> > A small problem concerning py2exe that I hope you can help me with:
> >
> > I have a small OpenGL program that reads its scene graph from a XML
file. I
> > use xml.dom.minidom to accomplish this, and everything works fine. But
when
> > I try to compile the script into an .EXE with py2exe I get the following
> > warnings:
> >
> > warning: py2exe:
> > ***************************************************************
> > warning: py2exe: * The following modules were not found:
> > warning: py2exe: *   xml.dom.HierarchyRequestErr
> > warning: py2exe: *   riscosenviron
> > warning: py2exe: *   _xmlplus
> > warning: py2exe: *   ic
> > warning: py2exe: *   ce
> > warning: py2exe: *   riscos
> > warning: py2exe: *   SOCKS
> > warning: py2exe: *   rourl2path
> > warning: py2exe: *   riscospath
> > warning: py2exe:
> > ***************************************************************
> >
> > And when I try to run the program:
> >
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<string>", line 381, in ?
> >   File "<string>", line 299, in readScenegraph
> >   File "SceneGraph.pyc", line 187, in fromXML
> >   File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 910, in parse
> >   File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 901, in _doparse
> >   File "xml\dom\pulldom.pyc", line 289, in parse
> >   File "xml\sax\__init__.pyc", line 88, in make_parser
> > xml.sax._exceptions.SAXReaderNotAvailable: No parsers found
> >
> >
> > It looks like the XML module is using som kind of dynamic loader (like
Pmw
> > does), and these modules naturally escape py2exe.
>
> This is indeed the case:
>
> C:\sf\py2exe\tests>c:\python20\python.exe
> Python 2.0 (#8, Apr 25 2001, 22:09:02) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> import xml
> >>> xml
> <module '_xmlplus' from 'c:\python20\_xmlplus\__init__.pyc'>
> >>>
>
> As you can see, 'import xml' actually loads _xmlplus and puts this
> into sys.modules under the name 'xml'.
> This can also be done by the packed executable, however, the _xmlplus
> package must be available for this to work, and the bundling process
> does not find it.
>
> >  Do any of you have any
> > tips on how to work around this problem? Something similar to
bundlepmw.py
> > perhaps?
>
> Use the -p command line flag 'python setup.py py2exe -p _xmlplus'
> to include the whole _xmlplus package into the exe.
>
> HTH,
>
> Thomas
>
>




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 22:32:17 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:32:17 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-102CB1.19321727072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf at asfast.com>, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> 
wrote:

> Accountants and their kin want ledgers, positions, etc. to balance to
> the penny (or centavo, or whatever is the smallest fractional currency
> in a given country).  This can only be accomplished using decimal
> arithmetic ... like Bignums with implied decimal places.
> 
> I believe that this kind of exact decimals would be very useful,
> although I agree that there should be some new way to represent these
> values (so that 0.98 in a Python program would still be considered a
> float).

The dollar sign is still unused, right?

0.98 can return a float
$0.98 can return a decimal

Or does using that character remind people too much of Perl...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 15 18:29:25 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 15:29:25 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B51E6B1.47E25214 at tundraware.com>...
> The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
> "quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?
> 
> ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"

Is this a trick question? Oh well, fools rush in ...

What about:
ipquad   = r"^((\d{1,3}\.){3}(\d{1,3}))$"
This saves two bytes. It is semantically equivalent.

Now for the next big two-byte saving: throw away the outer capturing
parentheses.
ipquad   = r"^(\d{1,3}\.){3}(\d{1,3})$"
-- In general, you can still access what matched your entire re by
referring to group 0 when invoking methods of your match object. In
this particular case, you don't even need to do that, as the whole
objective of the exercise is to match the whole input string.

Now for the third big two-byte saving: throw away the rightmost set of
capturing parentheses.
ipquad   = r"^(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}$"
Either (a) you have no intention of retrieving parts of the matched
string later, so the "capturing" functionality is of no use to you, or
(b) you haven't considered this: if your input string is
"010.020.030.040", then with your original re, groups 0 and 1 will be
"010.020.030.040", group 2 will be "030." and group 3 will "040" --
about as useful as a hip pocket on an athletic supporter.

OK, so now we've trimmed the text description of the re down a little,
let's revisit the "legitimate IP address" notion. Is 999.999.999.999
now a legitimate IP address? Last I heard, the max for each little
doodad was 255. If so, you may not want to cr[au]ft a complicated re
to try to enforce that. The one-liner freaks would no doubt relish a
challenge to come up with something better than

max(map(int, your_input_string.split("."))) > 255

to use as a test *after* the uncomplicated_re.match() is successful.


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul  6 09:27:43 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:27:43 -0500 
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5212@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Old Chinese proverb.  It is better to light one candle then to forever curse the darkness.

-----Original Message-----
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk [mailto:philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 6:21 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?


On 5 Jul 2001 08:11:48 -0700, Resty Cena <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote:
>"Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
>> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>> 
>> Python still doesn't have good database support, 
>
>I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
>to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
>database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
>directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
>then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
>Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
>don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
>around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
>want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
>I'd like the IDE to do this for me.

Then why don't you write one, instead of just complaining that
the tools available don't work quite how you like?


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##









From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 23:26:49 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:26:49 -0400
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
In-Reply-To: <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEJCLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido]
> (Couldn't resist. :-)
>
> It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> endless laments in the SF bug database.)

[SteveN]
> And yet HP makes it available:
> http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/

They've made binaries available for some time, yet HP-UX users seem
incapable of successfully compiling it themselves ("see the endless laments
in the SF bug database" indeed).  So what's up with that platform?!  Would
sure be nice if one of the folks at the HP Porting Centre filled us in --
and if they need to patch the source to get it to compile, we'd be delighted
to fold that into the core.

telepathy-challenged-ly y'rs  - tim




From brueckd at tbye.com  Fri Jul 27 13:51:12 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:51:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107271021400.10788-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

> To me, the benefit of Java or Python over Perl comes into play with
> large apps.  For my purposes (no flames please!), Perl works great for
> small scripts and stuff, but its almost total lack of typing,
> prototyping, etc. causes major trouble with larger projects.

Hi John,
Can you elaborate on this "major trouble" with some specific examples?
This is sort of straying from your original post but I've had people
tell me similar things before but I've yet to run into the problems they
feared. Maybe it's a knee-jerk reaction to all that sudden freedom and
flexibility that comes with a loosely-typed languaged?

In most jobs I've used C/C++ or Java and for me the stronger the typing
rules the more problems (and in turn bugs) it caused. I haven't sat down
to really ponder why but I have noticed a few recurring problems.

One is that stronger types introduce a lot more complexity. In Java I
spend a lot of time creating new classes just to act as simple data
structures.  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
an array or Vector. And darn it, if I want to pull them out of the
Vector I have to cast them back to their class - even though both I and
the objects in the Vector already know what they are.

Now if I want those point/color tuples to sometimes have a color index and
other times use an RGB value, what do I do? Once again I just can't store
the correct value in there, I have to go and extend my class to take
either, or if the resulting classes are different enough I have to create
a whole new class and form both into some sort of class hierarchy. Or I
could have them both implement a common interface.  Sheesh! Too often I've
seen rather convoluted class hierarchies or next-to-worthless interfaces
because there's some functions to which different objects need to be
passed so the language forces me to relate the classes in some way, even
when it doesn't make much sense. Forcing the developer to explicitly state
that common ground really adds to the complexity - too often it forces the
developer to make design decisions he/she is not really ready to make.

Strong typing seems to prevent a very small class of errors at great
expense, and none of the errors it prevents should escape good testing
(which you should have anyway).

With Python you can add any sort of checking that you want. You can have
your methods reject objects that aren't of a certain type or that don't
have certain methods/member variables, but I just haven't seen too many
cases where this is a problem.

Like I said, I haven't devoted a ton of time to thinking about why the
weaker typing of Python is actually a huge advantage to me in large
projects, but it seems that stronger types force you to define everything
in more exact terms, thereby adding complexity and forcing you to specify
your design in more detail than you may really have.

If nothing else, for large projects the Python versions are much smaller
and simpler, and as a result are usually less buggy and easier to manage.

-Dave




From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul  5 00:28:17 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:28:17 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: python-mode and py-python-command
In-Reply-To: <87k81os372.fsf@winnegan.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107050824100.13200-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 5 Jul 2001, Siggy Brentrup wrote:

>Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
>> Hello!
>>
>> How do I tell Emacs to call specific Python interpreter
>> within a certain file with Python code?
>>
>> I know that for this I need to set up py-python-command
>> variable, but how to do it?
>
>Which version of py-mode.el are you using (C-h v py-version)?
>On my system it shows
>
>  Value: "3.105"

Exactly this!

>That version is slightly broken, it runs the Python interpreter
>in the py-which-shell buffer-local variable. This variable is set from
>py-python-command on M-1 C-c C-t (py-toggle-shells).

So, toggling between, say, 1.5.2. and 2.1 is impossible?

>> 3. What is wrong with this (at the end of file)?
>>
>> % Local Variables:
>> % mode: python
>> % py-python-command: \"/usr/bin/python2.1\"
>> % End:
>
>Python will choke on % as a comment character.

It's not python file ;-)

>The following snippet shows how to set the variables including a
>workaround for the buglet.
>
>--------- snip --------
>import sys
>print sys.version[:3]
>^L
># Local variables:
># py-python-command: "python2.1"
># py-which-shell: "python1.5"
># End:

Thank you! This helps.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 05, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ">From the Department of Redundancy Dept." _/




From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Sun Jul 22 13:41:29 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:41:29 GMT
Subject: whats this mean?
References: <20010720213533.19217.00000446@ng-fb1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E6B23BD1DA5rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

TheDustbustr wrote:

> # BEGIN CODE BLOCK
> try:
>     s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>     s.bind((HOST, PORT))
>     s.listen(1)
>     conn, addr = s.accept()
> except socket.error, why: ## reference 1
>     print "Server Error: " + errno.errorcode[why[0]] + ", " +
>     why[1] ## 
> reference 2
>     sys.exit(1)
> # END CODE BLOCK
> 
> what does reference 2 mean?  what do those brackets do?  And for
> reference 1, what will 'why' hold if an error occurs?

I don't know where this code comes from, but it contains an error: 
why[1] does *not* necessarily exist. Specifically, this happens for the 
error ('host not found',) [*]. Also, in that case 
errno.errorcode[why[0]] will not exist either, as why[0] will not be an 
error number but a string.

Presumably, having the socket.error object emulate a tuple is done for 
reasons of backward compatibility, but wouldn't it be better to make 
those available as normal attributes of the socket.error class? The use 
of why[0] and why[1] could be (gradually) replaced by, for instance, 
why.number and why.message. The advantages are:

 - Fewer questions like the one above. The code would be largely self
   explanatory.
 - The ('host not found',) anomaly could be removed from the new
   accessors, as would any other anomalies that I'm not aware of.
 - The old and new access methods could coexist without any conflicts
   indefinitely, and thus no old code would be broken. 

Any comments?


Robert Amesz
-- 
[*] At least under Windows, using Python 2.1. Socket errors represent 
themselves as if they were tuples, usually of the form (<number>, 
'<message>').


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 21 01:57:53 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 22:57:53 -0700
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org> <3B58D257.E0982C2@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <9jb5l1$jp3$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B58D257.E0982C2 at student.gu.edu.au>,
Joal Heagney  <s713221 at student.gu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>Now as a bug release, is there any need for me to rebuild and reinstall
>third-party modules built on 2.1?

If 2.1.1 follows the dictates of PEP 6 (which I wrote but have
insufficient competence to verify compliance), the answer to your
question is a definite "No!"  I've got a fair amount of trust in Thomas
Wouters (2.1.1 Release Czar), though, so it's a pretty good bet you're
safe.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Fri Jul 13 12:04:48 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 18:04:48 +0200
Subject: Book count test
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5242@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.995038468.17529.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u71ynkerxb.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

"Andreas Jung" <andreas at andreas-jung.com> writes:

> And what do we learn from these numbers ?

I'd say we learn that Java and C++ are hard and/or have dumb users who
need lots of books :-)

Ralf


From mcherm at destiny.com  Wed Jul 11 15:17:53 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:17:53 -0500
Subject: evalstr
Message-ID: <3B4CA661.FA8954D5@destiny.com>

>>> class Eval:
def __getitem__(self, key):
		return eval(key)

	
>>> foo = 3.0
>>> spam = 5.0
>>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
0.6
>>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000
>>>

Now THAT'S a wierd-but-cool hack! Very powerful and flexible, and
simple enough to use. It should definitely be added to the cookbook. 
It does, unfortunately, have one significant limitation: the expression
cannot contain the character ")", which is one you'd like to use in
expressions.

-- Michael Chermside





From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 29 13:55:58 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:55:58 -0700
Subject: int vs float divide: abbreviating numbers w/SI units
References: <eppstein-D36BE1.12293028072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3b63a8ec.700705120@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <eppstein-D3984B.10555829072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3b63a8ec.700705120 at wa.news.verio.net>,
 bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:

> I was going to make a one-liner, but it would be really ugly and repeat stuff 
> ;-)
> But there might be something in this you can use?:
> 
> import math
> def abbrn(n,k=1000):
>     if n==0: return '0'
>     nk, rk = divmod(math.log(abs(n)), math.log(k))
>     nkr = max(-9, min(int(nk), 9))
>     suffix= 'kyzafpnum kMGTPEZYk'[nkr+9] + (abs(nkr)==9)*("^%d" % (nk,) )
>     sr = ("%1.1f" % (math.exp(rk),))
>     adjlen = len(sr) - 2*(sr[-1]=='0' or len(sr)>3)
>     return '-'*(n<0) + sr[0:adjlen] + suffix
> 
> I think it does what yours does, except I rely on %1.1f to round and
> just chuck the '.0' or .x if there's more than 3 chars, which makes
> some differences, e.g.,
> 
> for the args 2.0*10.**-30 1000
> yours => 2.0k^-10
> mine  => 2k^-10

Thanks for the suggestions.

Unfortunately, there are cases where counting three chars is the wrong 
thing to do.  E.g. in my code, abbreviateNumber(1012,k=1024) returns '1012'.
Also I'm worried that the approximations involved in the math.log and 
math.exp would prevent the algorithm from noticing that some values are 
equal to integers, e.g. my code abbreviateNumber(1000) returns '1k' rather 
than '1.0k'.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From rjh at 3-cities.com  Thu Jul  5 13:05:38 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:05:38 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com> <mailman.994276569.27572.python-list@python.org> <3B43AE03.F58B72C7@3-cities.com> <mailman.994337415.8385.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44A341.E28B5419@3-cities.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> > Python extensively distinguishes between numeric
> > types and other types.
> 
> That's my *exact* point. Python strongly enforces the view that there
> are "numbers", "strings".... not "integers", "floats", "strings"
> Integers and floats are strongly related. Much more so than other types.
> 
> No, I do not want to change the behaviour of either of these lines. I'm
> making the point that a threshold has been crossed. The distinction
> between integers and floats has been blurred. The logical conclusion is
> to treat integers as a special case of floats everywhere.

I think a better analogy is between the number property and the 
sequence property. 

   - numbers - integers, longs, floats, complex (with perhaps kinds
     and rationals to be added)

   - sequences - strings, lists, tuples, ...

A number is not a single type because it has properties
such as range and precision associated with it.

For instance, when operating on longs such that the result is too
big to store in a float, the new semantics for divide must
generate a Range or Value error - unless rationals are accepted
into the core language (and I don't want to open that can of
worms here).  The current behaviour has no such problem since
it does not involve any automatic type coercion.  So, again, the
problem does not go away, it has just been moved.  

This also demonstrates that the new PEP does need a special
function or operator to perform closed integer division,
but not for the reasons it cites.
So, a comment I made earlier in this thread (that Guido
agreed with) about preferring use of int(a/b) instead of
a//b, is incomplete.  You cannot compute the integer division
in this fashion for longs without rationals being in the
core.  Since I have not thought about that issue much at
all, I'm left having to choose either // or a function
div(a,b) that does closed integer divide

Uniting ints with floats is entirely workable, but as you
see from above it cannot be done uniformly for all integers 
without extending float to include rationals.  The
consequences and design of this PEP (and all of the other
numeric proposals) need to be much more thought through 
before accepting them.   And we must analyze them all together
rather than just this one alone.  So perhaps it is time
for a new thread.

-- 
Robert J. Harrison (rjh at 3-cities.com)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 08:28:44 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:28:44 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9k689u02450@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Jonathan Hogg" <jonathan at onegoodidea.com> wrote in message
news:jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001 at news.easynet.co.uk...
> In article <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list at python.org>,
>  <brueckd at tbye.com> wrote:
>
> > Others on here have pointed out that using C++/Java as an example of a
> > strongly-typed language is a mistake, so maybe my opinion is closer to
> > "the typing systems in C++ and Java tend to cause me more work and
> > problems" and not strong, static typing.
>
> Bingo. This is Java's fault for not having parametric polymorphism
> rather than a problem with strong static typing per se. In my opinion
> it's unfair to lump C++ in with Java since C++ at least has templates to
> do this sort of thing.

True.  On the other hand, C++ has really no way to let
you specify "a sequence of things of ANY types at all", which
IS sometimes useful (e.g., Python's lists:-) and you get in
Java with Vector (almost everything in Java descends from
Object, and you can easily wrap into Object-derived equivalents
those few fundamental types that don't, such as integer).

Even for "a sequence of *pointers* to things of any types",
vector<void*> doesn't really work as well as Java's Vector,
since you get NO *runtime* checks of type correctness as
you pull pointers out and cast them back as needed (C++
does have dynamic_cast for runtime checking, but it does
not apply to types that have no virtual-table -- only
classes with virtual methods get effective use of the
dynamic_cast and its runtime checking).

So, summarizing: the (relative) strengths and weaknesses of
the ways in which Java and C++ let you escape (some of) the
constraints of strong typing present trade-offs (Java PLUS
generics, as in good old Pizza, or, I'm told, some future
forthcoming Java enhanced version, will definitely be a big
step forward, though).


> Maybe I just haven't been writing large enough programs in Python, but I
> don't feel that I hit many errors where I think "damn! I wish the
> compiler had picked this up for me". I'd be interested in other people's
> opinion on this. (And I've programmed plenty in Haskell so I know a
> strong static typing system when I see one.)

I've often wished I could use Haskell typeclasses in a
Python program, but haven't been bitten particularly hard
by lack of compile-time checking in Python.  Such a lack
does mean that many errors are caught a BIT later than
they should be -- a delay of between about one and about
ten minutes in most cases (when I'm being good and coding
test-first -- when I'm *NOT*, I have far worse problems
in my code than the typo-level errors a compiler could
catch:-).

The single kind of issue where I've found the highest
cost for lack of type declarations in Python, in my
experience so far, is with documentation of library
modules.  When a docstring says or implies argument f
must be a file, I know that's probably not true, it just
needs to be a file-like object, but, HOW file-like does
it need to be?  Does it have to implement, e.g., .read(N)
for an integer N, or will just .read() without arguments
suffice?  (and so on, and so forth).  When a docstring
says or implies argument L must be a list, I know that's
likely not true, it may well suffice for L to be some
kind of sequence, BUT, how closely does it have to mimic
list interface?  Ditto for "a function" (it can probably
be any callable, but ...) and so on.

That's why I'm SO keen for the PEPs that propose that
Python add interfaces and protocol-adaptation concepts
to the language.  They won't be *compile-time* checked
and I don't really care -- but they *WILL* formalize
the polymorphism kind and amount required and supplied
by library modules.  That will save me lots of code
reading or experimentation that I now need to make best
use of some library modules...!-).


> I can though, think of plenty of places where strong static typing would
> defeat intentional exploitation of the dynamic typing. Maybe this is

Sure, and that's what happens when some [expletive deleted]
module author codes
    assert type(a)==type(b)
and other similar cases of type-testing -- they break my
beautiful signature-based polymorphism into smithereens.
I tend to think VERY unkind thoughts each time I see such
a typetest (or even the slightly less-hateful isinstance).

> poor programming on my part, but I can't even think how one would type a
> function like say:
>
>    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )

I'd type it
    def f(zs): return reduce(operator.add, zs)
as I *particularly* despise using lambda where any halfway
decent alternative presents itself, but that's quite
tangential to your issue, of course:-).

> Python's dynamic typing has the most optimal type for this function:
>
>    "A function that takes something looking like a sequence of
>     things that you can call "+" on, and returns something that
>     you might get back by "+"ing a bunch of such things together."

It's somewhat subtler (each application of '+' must produce an
object such that you can again '+' it with the NEXT item of zs),
but that's more a problem in theory than in practice.

> else. If you find Java/C++ too horrific, then I'd seriously recommend
> O'Caml - though this is just from a cursory look, I did most of my FP in
> Haskell but I don't think I could recommend it unless you're willing to
> become a serious FP-head and want to get to grips with Monads ;-)

For some reason O'Caml keeps feeling to me like a modern-day
C++ -- a grabbag of every interesting concept the authors can
possibly think of, with peculiar quirky syntax to tie it all
together, and a lot of emphasis on run-time efficiency.  Any
comparison with the sheer elegance of Haskell (its whitespace-
using clean syntax, its lazy-semantics default, its beautiful
typeclass concept...) seems to be out of place... although I
do understand that O'Caml can make much-faster code than
Haskell, and I do confess that monads always did stretch the
limits of my conceptualization abilities...


Alex





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 17:55:04 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:55:04 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <9hsnd3$7h3$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>
Message-ID: <9htf2n0c83@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Franz GEIGER" <fgeiger at datec.at> wrote in message
news:9hsnd3$7h3$1 at newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net...
> I am curious: What do you Haskell use for?

Never used it "in anger" (i.e. either for $$ gain, or [successfully] for
research into contract bridge, my One True Love:-).  Just played
around with various FP toys in fascination, emerging with a strong
impression that Haskell is far and away the most elegant one (not
necessarily "most practical" or "most powerful" -- haven't looked
into O'Haskell, and did TRY to grasp O'Caml but I can't see the
elegance or whatever... seems as accretion-laden as C++ to me).

> I know that your bag of tools contain at least Python, (MSV)C++, MSVB, and
> Haskell. Curious again: How do you use your bag of tools?

C++ (currently in the MSV incarnation) pays my rent (and much
besides) since it's the main development language at the SW
house I work for (think3, inc) and internal teaching & consulting
on C++ (and other technological issues -- COM & related ones
first and foremost, &c) is among my main roles as Senior SW
Consultant there.  VB is starting to see growing use in ancillary
roles (and some customer-delivered software, e.g. the integration
of our PDM tool with Autocad uses the latter's built-in VBA and
related Automation Object Model).  Python is what I use and
suggest every time I get a chance and it's starting to replace
Perl internally in system administration tools, testing setups,
and general scripting (but not in customer-delivered SW, so
far).  Python is also what I use (together with some C++ COMponents
& Boost Python-extensions for speed) in my contract-bridge research
now (having entirely rewritten the mixture of Perl, C and custom
ad hoc languages I had ended up with over the years).

I'm not currently coding in Haskell (pity) or other languages
I know.  Except for a little Javascript (as little as I can get
away with -- oh how I *DETEST* the beast!) in Dynamic
HTML pages I have to write sometime...


Alex





From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  9 12:08:43 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 16:08:43 GMT
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <3b48ccc7.1398139267@wa.news.verio.net> <3B494606.42F868FE@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <3b49cc63.1463575099@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:49:58 +0800, Chyr-Pyng Su
<cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote:

>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>
>I have considered this method os.popen() before. I think this method is best used
>when
>the C programs and the Python GUI are independently seperate program. But this is
>not
>for my situation. Since I want to process the data from the C function and also
>monitor
>the its message... :p
>
I'm still not sure what your situation is ;-)

What do you mean by "its message" ? Stuff that used to go to stdout
and/or stderr (both? or which?) the way it ran originally?

Have you got the rest of the problem solved? (I.e., passing
the function arguments and getting "the data").

Is it a huge C program that is impractical to change at the
points where "messages" are generated? Or could you change
the interface to pass the function a call-back routine and
change it to use that instead of printf/fprintf?

Have you considered a hack like #define printf blah-blah
to change  what your C function does where it makes "messages"?

Have you considered writing your own stdio write function
and linking that statically with the C function in a DLL
to capture writes to stdout and stderr?

Where do the "messages" go if you don't try to capture them?
To a console ("DOS") window? (BTW is your platform Windows?)

Do you have other output going to stdout/stderr from your
Python program (e.g., plain print or fwrite to stdout/stderr)
that you don't want to interfere with? If not, and all of
your program's output to stdout/stderr is from your C function,
maybe it would be possible to catch your own program's output
via a pipe (not popen, but similar).

There are a lot of possibilities, but if you want very specific
help you have to be very specific about what you need, best
stated it in terms of your real goal, not a sub-goal. I.e.,
if you want to get across a river, don't ask about a problem
building suspension bridges or concrete spans. The answer may
be a rowboat or wading across a shallow place upstream ;-)



From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Mon Jul  2 07:55:10 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 08:55:10 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702082413.02776040@mail.inet.com.br>

Let me try explain this topic a little bit better. I've highlighted more 
words this time:

      1. Standard Modules MUST not rely on global variables to keep
         state information, EXCEPT when it is ABSOLUTELY required.

Standard modules should not rely on global variables to store state. It 
makes more difficult to use the library functionality on different 
instances at the same time. It breaks the consistence rule, because you 
need to take extra care to avoid some constructs if the module uses 
globals. For instance, you can open as many files at you want at the same 
time (within the practical limits of your platform), but you aren't 
supposed to use more than one instance of the fileinput module. This 
limitation can and should be fixed - it's possible to do it using 
iterators, but I'm not still into 2.2, so I don't know for sure.

However, in some particular cases, it may be impossible to remove all 
global state information from the module. Some examples may include the use 
of specific features of the OS or the platform, that is global in its 
nature (path information is a good example). Then you have two choices: you 
either expose the global objects as part of the module interface (as it is 
the case with sys.path), or you expose it using a singleton class. I 
believe that using singletons makes it easier to use the module 
functionality in a flexible OO way.

Anyway, we can discuss why singletons are good and globals are not until 
the end of the universe. I just feel that using singletons will make things 
much more consistent with the OO paradigm that is used on most of the library.


Carlos Ribeiro





From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul  3 17:31:10 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:31:10 -0700
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993788804.16625.python-list@python.org> <9hhgbc$e50ak$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B42399E.8D447DC5@home.net>

Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> Agreed.
> However not having augmented assignment made me think about it and
> the clarity you gain when writing it more explicitly.

I think one has to keep in mind that there may be greater reason to add
some of these features than just the syntactic sugar. NO coming form a
primarily C background, I saw no need for a += 2over a = a + 2, and I do
think the later is more clear an obvious. Reducin ghte need for a little
typing is NOT a good reason to add a feature (which is why that one took
so long to add). However, there are sometimes good reasons beyond the
syntactic sugar:

a += 4 means "increment a by 4"
a = a+4 means "create a new object that is the sum of a and 4, and
assign a to it"

for an integer, the result is the same, but for a mutable object, it can
do something very different:

>>> a = [1,2,3]
>>> a += [4,5,6]
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]


The list, a can be extended without creating a new list. I'm a heavy
user of Numeric, so this can make a big difference for an array of
numbers that may be huge!

Anyway, as the original poster made it clear, he was not intending to
bring up discussion of any particular feature: my point is that a
feature that may appear to be simple syntactic sugar may turn out to
have important consequences.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From wyatts at onr.com  Fri Jul 20 09:04:10 2001
From: wyatts at onr.com (wyatt stafford)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:04:10 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice (24 recommended exercises)
References: <mailman.995492227.27932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <e%V57.77845$H37.1290522@news.easynews.com>

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, especially you Mike for taking the time
to list those assignments.  I had been focused on what is only one part of a
multi-part process.  It's not just a question of language (as my original
question suggests), but also algorithms, operating environments, human
interface, specification, theory . . . more.

That all being true, I am quite happy with Python, it's community, technical
resources (both free and paid), and, the fact that it is in the growing
acceptance phase of its life cycle.  So I like my chances over the next few
years of becoming someone who produces useful programs using whatever
language makes sense (which it seems to me could be Python in many, many
cases).

wyatt




From janssen at parc.xerox.com  Tue Jul 10 21:44:08 2001
From: janssen at parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:44:08 PDT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 08 Jul 2001 05:27:11 PDT."
             <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <01Jul10.184408pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com>

Actually, if you're going to go in this direction, why not do what I
proposed for HTTP-NG, which is to use a "denominator" rather than a
decimal precision?  The denominator implicitly specifies the precision.

So, if I want two decimal places, I specify "denominator 100", which
mean that the result will be figured in hundredths.  This easily
allows one to work in 16ths, 3rds, or other fractional amounts.

>>> denominator 100
>>> print 2/7        #-> 0.28
>>> denominator 7
>>> print 2/7        #-> 0.285714285714...

This is, of course, just another use of rationals, since the
denominator used must be stored with each value.

At the very least, if you use "precision" to mean decimal precision,
use "decimal_precision".

Bill




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul  9 11:47:18 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:47:18 +0200
Subject: Error Building PyPgSQL
References: <L6i27.261092$Z2.3119989@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9kjihk.pj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:13:36 -0400, Rod MacNeil wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I'm trying to build PyPgSQL on a RH7 box with
>Python 1.5 and postgres 7.0 and gcc-2.96-54.
>I left the Setup.in file as it shipped because it looked
>correct to me.
>I get the following when I run make.
>
>gcc -fPIC -I/usr/local/pgsql/include -g -02 -
>I/usr/include/python1.5 -I/usr/include/python1.5 -
>DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c ./libpqmodule.c
>./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgConnection_New':
>./libpqmodule.c:196: parse error before `PgConnection'
>./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgResult_New':
>./libpqmodule.c:282: parse error before `PgResult'
>./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgLargeObject_New':
>./libpqmodule.c:358: parse error before `PgLargeObject'
>./libpqmodule.c: In function `PgNotify_New':
>./libpqmodule.c:548: parse error before `PgNotify'
>make: *** [libpqmodule.o] Error 1
>
>This looks like a compiler error to me but I'm not a C programmer.
>The four lines of code appear to be
>using the same syntax, is this a syntax error or
>possibly a compiler version issue?
>
>Has anyone else had this problem or know of a solution?

The latest release uses distutils and it works fine. I think you should use
this one (edit paths in setup.py, then "python setup.py build" then "python
setup.py install").

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 14 12:38:20 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:38:20 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net> <WlT37.9639$e5.1274541@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3b507433.1899690470@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:25:26 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Bengt Richter wrote:
>> In that case why not allow an anonymous version of def, e.g..,
>>
>>     map(
>>         def(x):
>>             x**2
>>         ,xrange(5))
>
>you forgot something:
>
>     map(
>         def(x):
>             return x**2
>         , xrange(5))
>
>Cheers /F
>
>
Doh



From europax at home.com  Fri Jul  6 12:59:55 2001
From: europax at home.com (Pugsley)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 16:59:55 GMT
Subject: EM codes in Numerical Python
Message-ID: <f8m17.307760$p33.6139604@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

I've ported a simple finite difference time domain code into Numpy, and
it was thoroughly enjoyable to see that it runs at about 1/2 the speed of
C.  Are others doing similar things?  I want to try to port a hybrid
FEM-MOM code, but that going to take a lot of effort.  

Rob.
 
"EM Computation-  where God licenses the source code"


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 13 22:32:44 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 02:32:44 GMT
Subject: Naked function call syntax
Message-ID: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>

Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:

def pd(x):
    try:
        print x.__doc__
    except:
        print '(no doc string)'

so that, e.g., I can type

    pd(vars)

and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
I would like to to type just
    pd vars

Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?

If not, would there be breakage if python were modified to make

    foo whatever-up-to-EOL

equivalent to

    foo(whatever-up-to-EOL)

when it would be a syntax error otherwise? I.e., I'm wondering
if the grammar could be modified to do this by changing trailer
to accept arglist NEWLINE if _all_ else fails, and treat a match
as if it was an arglist. Leading '(' or '[' ambiguity would be
resolved in favor of normal arglist or subscriptlist.




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:43:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:43:00 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <mailman.994135685.10748.python-list@python.org> <994146195.807921@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <cp7kxml201.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Donn Cave <donn at drizzle.com> writes:

> The thing that I like about all this, it's good to hear what
> sounds like a consensus that Python programmers need to have
> some appreciation of the object/reference/binding/namespace
> thing that happens when we assign.  We can't reasonably say
> "don't worry, it will just work", we can't pass it off as an
> esoteric internal detail, you need to get this model from the
> start.  Left to your own devices you might not get it.  If you
> don't, you can't accurately predict what your code will do.
> 
> If augmented assignments confuse a few people, but the
> potential for confusion leads authors and teachers to take
> more pains early on, to firm up these notions before +=
> can lead folks astray, I predict a net gain.

Excellent observation, Don!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Thu Jul 19 14:45:26 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 11:45:26 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org> <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9j79s6$n27$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B5505A0.F89ADB86 at engcorp.com>,
Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
>> 
>> I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
>> upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in the future
>> :-)).  Client's scripts break.
>
>In this case, I would argue that the client's hosting company should
>not upgrade Python (especially across a major revision) without either
>notifying everyone who is using it (may be hard to do), or keeping
>the old version around for legacy use.  After all, if they support
>Python for customers, they presumably are interested in and somewhat
>responsible for keeping the customers' applications functional when
>they do such an upgrade.

For how long?  I just checked on Panix, which I believe is considered to
be a well-run hosting company, and they don't have Perl4.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From rwallace at esatclear.ie  Fri Jul 27 16:33:27 2001
From: rwallace at esatclear.ie (Russell Wallace)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:33:27 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b61cf2c.282915799@news.eircom.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:37:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>That all depends on details of the number system, and details of the
>values involved.  If we have rationals in our numeric tower, I
>definitely want (5/2 - 3/2) to be usable as a sequence index, so
>either rationals must be usable as sequence indices as long as their
>value is integral, or the result of rational arithmetic may return an
>int.  That shouldn't matter.

Right.

>On the other hand, floats should never be usable as sequence index.

Ah, yes, we're agreed on both counts then :)

>Scheme defines this quite nicely:

*nod* I always thought Scheme has one of the most elegant number
systems of any programming language.

-- 
"How many roads must a man walk down?"
mailto:rwallace at esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 23:41:35 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 00:41:35 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702003145.0277aa00@mail.inet.com.br>

After re-reading both Malcolm Tredinnick comments and my own draft, I'v 
come up with a revision for this key paragraph:

  What is the Standard Library?

  The Standard Library is comprised of the modules that are
  documented in the Python Library Reference manual. Standard
  Python Distributions MUST implement all modules from the
  Standard Library, with the possible exception of OS-dependant
  ones.

That's a little clearer, I think. However it does still suffer from some 
problems:

- Python != CPython. This should not be an issue, though;
   standard modules should be supported on different Python
   implementations also.

- The problem was moved from the definition of the "Python
   Standard Library" to the concept of a "Python Distribution".
   It is not clear what a Python Distribution is. However, I
   feel that the existence of the Python Library Reference
   manual is already one step on this direction, because it
   does define a lot of things as part of the "official"
   Python Distribution.

Again, a disclaimer: English is not my first language, and sometimes it is 
hard for me to make myself clear. I hope to get better with a few more 
attempts :-)


Carlos Ribeiro





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul  9 15:43:12 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 19:43:12 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <3B49F9EC.CA10886A@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <kPn27.2200$z21.433251@newsc.telia.net>

Paul Winkler wrote:
> I think test suites would be a very, very good idea. At a minimum, some doctest
> examples. Even better would be a well-defined suite of unit tests using the
> unittest module.

if you think tests using one support module is automatically better
than tests using another support module, you have a lot to learn
about testing...

</F>




From serrano at ozemail.com.au  Wed Jul 25 10:01:15 2001
From: serrano at ozemail.com.au (michael)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:15 +1000
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>
Message-ID: <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>

> But strictly
> speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.

So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the set
of reals)?






From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 19 20:47:22 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 20:47:22 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9lefod.mv2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>
	<mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org>
	<slrn.pl.9lefod.mv2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <oqelrca0kl.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

> 17 Jul 2001 17:50:16 -0400, Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> pisze:

> > I'm still dreaming about an automatic Perl to Python converter.
> > Despite many consider this is not possible, I stick with my naive
> > impression we could do something about it.

> How would you translate
>     eval $x;
> ?

I do not know.  I guess that if `eval' is used in Perl code, the translator
would have to be invoked at run time.

About `eval', I try to avoid it in Perl as well in Python.  Much less in
traditional LISP should I say, where `eval' is pretty fundamental.  I much
try to avoid it in Scheme, as it is not part of the strict definition of
the language.  But it is true that `eval' is nevertheless easily used and
abused in most languages where it is available.

Do people remember Pascal to C translators?  The Swedish one was doing a
rather perfect job, but it was very stiff on the conformance of the input,
and was producing poor style code, so requiring from the user a very serious
editing and tidying session to make the code maintainable.  The translator
written by David Gillespie was producing much more maintainable code out of
the box, was able to read a few variants of Pascal, but the code was more
approximative and called for manual revision on various fingered spots,
to make sure the programmer's intent has been preserved.  Of course, the
notorious CWeb had to do perfectly working _and_ readable translations,
but required carefully crafted configuration files for each conversion job.

I presume that the second approach would be a good one on the average.
-------------- next part --------------

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 19:40:04 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:40:04 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <3B61F08A.1A4C6069@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKENDLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[James Logajan]
> Obviously I'm not familiar with IEEE-754 arithmetic. Is the intent to
> do IEEE-754 FP arithmetic on all platforms when FP is involved?

Python has no 754 story today, and nobody has written a 754 PEP, so it's not
likely to grow one soon.  I believe the NumPy people are pursuing this more
aggressively, though (it's important to many of them, yet despised by others
of them -- sound familiar <wink>?).

> What if the underlying hardware isn't conformant?

Python doesn't make any explicit promises about fp behavior; it does try to
pass on whatever fp behavior the platform C exhibits; unfortunately for
people who care, C89 has no 754 story either, so what you see for endcase
behavior from Python varies almost as much across platforms as C does.  Most
people never notice because their fp computations are unexceptional, and
then the x-platform reproducibility in Python is much higher than in C (the
way fp is implemented in Python checkmates C optimizers, effectively wiping
out platform variations due to platform-specific availability of assorted
extended-precision HW gimmicks).

> Sorry, since this seems to be going through the python-list mailing
> list, the "References:" header isn't being included for some reason,
> so I missed the introduction of  IEEE-754 into the discussion. Can't
> find it mentioned in that PEP (unless it is in another PEP or is
> documented elsewhere).

It's in relation to this part of PEP 238:

    The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
    is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
    argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
    zero.  The only solution without either downside is multiplying an
    argument (typically the first) by 1.0.  This leaves the value and
    sign unchanged for float and complex, and turns int and long into
    a float with the corresponding value.

Somebody asked why *1.0 is better than +0.0 as a general way to coerce to
float; if you're on 754 hardware (as most people are now), the explanation
given there is correct.




From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 12 21:33:20 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:33:20 -0500
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <m2ae29y5nj.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

jcm <grumble at usa.net> writes:

> 
> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
> slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
> wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
> the cpu.  In a production mud, you might want to do something
> intelligent about wandering monsters (like have them stop wandering if
> no players are nearby to save cpu-time), but there will also be lots
> else going on.
> 
> There might be some clever optimizations that could be made.  Anyway,
> my only point was that computation-speed can become an issue.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you shouldn't expect the language of
choice to make up for what sounds like a poor design.  No matter what
language you use, you have to have a sound design that will meet all of
your requirements (speed and scalability included).  Once you have a good
design, python makes for an excellent prototype bench.  See how well it
runs and profile it.  The areas that still don't perform well, many
need to be optimized either via redesign or re-implementation of existing
design.  If after all that is done, and you KNOW you have a good design,
but python still isn't up to the task, well then you know that another
scripting language probably wouldn't of fit the bill either.  Now, you
have an excellent design and a fast working prototype, so now you are
free to reimplement in another, faster language (C, C++, pascal, etc).

Greg




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 08:52:11 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:52:11 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:15:10AM +0000, Courageous wrote:

> x += (1,2,3)

> ... is not the same as...

> x=x+(1,2,3)

> That's just plain wrong.

No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing. If x += y was supposed to be
*exactly* the same as x = x + y, it would have been spelled as 'x = x + y'.
It isn't, and it's not. It's not supposed to be syntactic sugar for normal
addition, it's supposed to be syntactic sugar for a method call.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 13:56:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:56:28 GMT
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996211014.7234.python-list@python.org> <3B6109E3.624BE2B0@engcorp.com> <hof87.34031$EP6.8711809@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpbsm62r42.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> We agree that the 10 to 1 gain in programming speed often to usually
> makes up for the 100 to 1 loss in execution speed (or we would not be
> using Python).   But it would not as often make up for a 10000 to 1
> loss (if such resulted from some fancy unification scheme).  Since we
> love Python so much, we would *prefer* not to have to recalculate the
> tradeoff and have to choose between options such as a) convert more
> code to embedded C, which for many would be a first-time experience;
> b) stick with the last 'fast' Python; c) support a parallel 'fast'
> Python version; or d) (gasp!) investigate other languages.

Actually, the numeric unification that *I* have in mind would only
change the rules slightly at the edges where the types touch -- it
would leave the existing implementation and rules largely unchanged.
Therefore the performance would generally be the same, except that it
might be possible for a operation on two longs to return a small int
-- a possible speed *benefit* compared to the current situation.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Sat Jul 14 19:56:52 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:56:52 -0500
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
Message-ID: <003601c10cc0$a8d94530$9865fea9@SUXLAP>



"Jonas Bengtsson" <jonas.b at home.se> wrote in message
news:4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355 at posting.google.com...
> I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
> to a list by just using
> list_var[] = var_to_append
> It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
>

Extremly ugly and not very intuitive.

Andreas




From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 23:11:35 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 20:11:35 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>
>Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
>binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
>code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
>warnings is trivial.

Allow me to quote myself:

    The way to build large Python applications is to componentize and
    loosely-couple the hell out of everything.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From noselasd at frisurf.no  Fri Jul 20 09:53:44 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:53:44 +0200
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
References: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <RIW57.129$4E6.1767@news1.oke.nextra.no>

"Young-Jin Lee" <ylee12 at uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:sAj57.1758$oz3.22749 at vixen.cso.uiuc.edu...
> Hi, all.
> I'm new to Python. I heard many applause on Python, especially ease
of
> programming, and I want to use Python. I read the python tutorial on
the
> python home page, but it didn't have all I wanted to know.
> From my first expression on Python, it is better for server side
> programming. Can I use Pythong to develop a client application with a
GUI?
> It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it? How easy is
it?
> And is there any way to connect Python application and Java
application? I
> have been developing a Java application (it's quite large) and I
don't want
> to rewrite it with JPython.
You should really take a deep look at PyQt,
http://www.thekompany.com/projects/pykde/index.php3?dhtml_ok=1
In my experience Qt is the best toolkit ever, regardlesss of
language/platform,
together with Python its a breeze to do GUI apps.




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 10 15:15:40 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:15:40 -0400
Subject: Credit card processing on the web
References: <mailman.994788201.18609.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GtI27.9689$xf7.404558@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Mike Brenner" <mikeb at mitre.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.994788201.18609.python-list at python.org...
> Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com>
> ... credit card transaction ... socket-based with mx/amkCrypto to
implement the Blowfish encryption
>
>
> Michal Wallace <sabren at manifestation.com> wrote:
> I have a library for dealing with online payments through the web at
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/payment/ .. There's no web page or
> documentation for it yet, but the code is quite small and hopefully
> readable... There's also some unit tests..
> It works with Authorize.net and verisign and requires M2Crypto.
>
>
> Michal,
> Sourceforge reports that no code has been uploaded yet. I am very
interested in learning how to connect to banks, credit card machines, etc.,
for eCommerce purposes.
>
The code as it currently stands is available from the CVS tree if you want
to go in and grab it, though.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 10:34:13 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:34:13 -0400
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <drZ27.12585$vA6.728754@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9ihg33$irjha$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> Does it bother anyone that
>
> a *= 3 + 4
>
> returns a different value from
>
> a = a * 3 + 4
>
> ??
>
Two words: operator precedence.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 09:00:26 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 09:00:26 -0400
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
In-Reply-To: <3B499266.FC4D36A0@lemburg.com>
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010709085854.02491aa0@mail.mindspring.com>

At 01:15 PM 7/9/2001 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>Side note:
>
>         if x is None: ...
>
>is a possible workaround which is faster than using "==" !

I switched to that, but then there is this left over:

         if a==b:


where a and b are literally variables and could both be DateTimes, but one 
of them ends up being None and the exception occurs. Someone suggested I 
could use:

         if str(a)==str(b):

although before I got that suggestion, I just wrapped it with a try: and 
assumed inequality.


-Chuck




From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 18 02:59:00 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 06:59:00 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67>
Message-ID: <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Arne Leithe" <arne at leithe.spammenot.no> wrote in message
news:Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno at 148.122.208.67...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in
> news:0oR47.12485$p7.4220508 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com:
>
> > So why do you object when I revise an algorith to make it feasible for
> > much larger n?
>
> Because you optimized a brute force-algorithm for speed, without first
> fixing the algorithm (first and foremost the ability to vary "k").

*My* original purpose was to illustrate how one can improve a brute-force
branching algorithm by pruning the tree (in this case, by improving the
loop upper bounds).  When I discovered how to make both upper and lower
bounds exact, so as to prune *all* unneeded branches, so much better the
lesson.  For *this purpose*, the original and my first revision are quite
good, and the 'defect' irrelevant.

>It  seemed that the ability to use large n-s, however, somehow was of
paramount
> importance, and you even suggested that Donovan use a rather obscure
> technique to vary k.

Okay, that was a distraction that I should have saved for another post.
Having found a easier way to accomplish the same, I retract it.

> Your latest algorithm is great, though, and I wish you had posted it the
> first time around.

I did not work it out until you challenged me.  I glad you like it.  It
will look even prettier if/when I rewrite it for nested scopes and remove
the workaround hacks.  (The intermediate version was, of course, very
helpful in arriving at this version.)

>I find it to important when explaining algorithms to  beginners that
extensibility and >generality of the algorithm should be taken care of
before speed.

If I still believed that program running speed came first, I would still be
programming in C.  The fact that I write in Python indicates different
priorities. Think about it.

Actually, correctness come first in my opinion.  In this regard, having
builtin lists and list comparison and being able to interactively type

>>> known_correct_function(n) == new_version(n) # and see
1 # ie, the thousand element lists are identical

was extremely helpful.  I hate to even think about how I would test
identical behaviour of three C versions.

>When I find myself in a position where I need to unroll loops (or even get
rid of >recursion), I'm already reprogramming the algorithm in C++.

Whereas I'm thinking about how to remove the recursion in a Python version
starting with
for k in range(k0, 0, -1):
I would not even think of rewriting in C until I had the generalized
iterative version giving a list == known corrrect list for at least two
values of each parameter.

Terry J. Reedy





From none at nohost.com  Fri Jul 27 19:57:24 2001
From: none at nohost.com (hg)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:57:24 -0700
Subject: Informix IDS2000 and Zope/Python/Perl/PHP on Linux
References: <3B600F47.2F59C1FC@gdp-group.com>
Message-ID: <3B61FFE4.1DBB2F92@nohost.com>

Can't answer for IDS 2000, but here's my $.02.

I'm running IDS 7.30.UC7 on Redhat 6 and IDS 7.31.UC7 on Solaris 7.  I have
web access to the databases with perl, PHP, and C/embedded SQL programs and
Apache.  I really like PHP because you write and test, write and test, etc.,
instead of compile the program, copy it to cgi-bin, run it, check the log
file(s), etc.  Saves on development and implementation time.  I don't see
much difference in execution time between the C and PHP programs that do the
same thing.

Hank



Thomas Volkmar Worm wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I am consindering to use Informix Dynamic Server (Informix Internet
> Foundation 2000/Linux) together with Zope and the other 3 P's.
>
> I wonder, whether somebody has any experience with Linux and
>
> - IDS 2000 and Perl
> or
> - IDS 2000 and PHP
> or
> -  IDS 2000 and Python
> or
> - IDS 2000 and Zope
>
> and can tell me about the experience he made with one or more of these
> combinations. I am interested to hear about
>
> - availibility of the needed drivers
> - their (practical) compatibility to (eg. perl DBI, python DB-API 2.0,
> etc.)
> - stability
> - and what else someone has experienced
>
> I already was an php.net, python.org, perl.org, zope.org - I guess I
> know whats available. It looks to me as if the support for IDS is not so
> strong, so I am really interested in real experience somebody had rather
> that what you can read in the READMEs. If you stopped using IDS together
> with P..., please tell me why and what db (other than mySQL, thats
> allready running here) are you using instead.
>
> If some Informix/IBM people are around: Are there any contributions
> planned or in progress for the 3 P's by Informix/IBM? Where can I find
> online information about it?
>
> If you respond to this posting, please send a CC to my email-address
> too.
>
> Thanks for your efforts in advance
>
> Regards
> Thomas Volkmar Worm



From sam at ddmweb.com  Fri Jul  6 13:33:03 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 10:33:03 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this 
Message-ID: <01070610440101.07365@frock.ddmweb.com>

One assumption in this thread is that non-numerical data lacks
syntactic significance. This is not always the case. Dealing with a real
database of 30,000+ customer phone numbers, I discovered such
variations as: 321-8765 ext 991
--a local phone number with an extension. Y'all would convert that into
an area code plus seven, generating a possibly valid but useless phone
number and destroying real data. I wrote a short script to take out
only whitespace, parentheses, and hyphens and examine the result. If it
looked like a 7 or 10-digit phone number, I displayed it as
such--otherwise I didn't touch it.

You may know that your input contains no such entries, of course. Or
international numbers. Or other special cases I haven't thought of.



From tuttledon at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 00:34:20 2001
From: tuttledon at hotmail.com (Don Tuttle)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:34:20 GMT
Subject: Automate telnet?
Message-ID: <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012@typhoon.southeast.rr.com>

I have a secure Windows telnet client I'd like to automate with a script.
So far my efforts with the popen family haven't worked.   Is this a possible
task?

Don





From sam at ddmweb.com  Tue Jul 31 18:34:35 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:34:35 -0700
Subject: Is Python a Good Choice for Web Programming? 
Message-ID: <01073115483107.01179@frock.ddmweb.com>

There has been a ton of experience-based discussion of this topic in
this newsgroup over the last few months. Go to
<http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en&safe=off> and
have at it.

Some brief points:

1) I and many others make a living doing web programming in Python, but
it is much easier to get a job doing it in Java or Perl.

2) Getting started is easy. Search the web for "cgi.py tutorial", or
just read the source.

3) Writing frameworks is so easy that dozens of us have done it; no
one has come up with a best-of-breed a la mod_perl or Tomcat/Jakarta
although Chuck Esterbrook and friends are working hard on one
("Webware").



From lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu  Tue Jul  3 19:05:53 2001
From: lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 23:05:53 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org> <Dql07.7618$B7.1406045@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <lds07.6432$Kf3.61408@www.newsranger.com>

In article <Dql07.7618$B7.1406045 at ruti.visi.com>, Grant Edwards says...
>
>In article <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list at python.org>, Haris Lekatsas wrote:
>>This works thanks!
>>
>>Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
>>sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
>>but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
>>I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.
>
>Works for me.  All of my incoming e-mail at work goes through
>Python's smtplib (on a Win32 system).  I did a fair amount of
>testing under Linux and it seems well-behaved there also.
>

I have also tested smtplib on linux and it seems to be working fine. Only on
FreeBSD I have this problem. 

Haris Lekatsas
lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Jul 28 11:28:28 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 10:28:28 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <9js18m$n54$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg> <D4DB37387F4EA9A2.D6DD66D7FD6C9115.609F82073AFFEB7C@lp.airnews.net> <9juk4b$pjh$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <E1F26E4B1D0C4E18.5D86276F3AB82364.047A469CCB91B230@lp.airnews.net>

In article <9juk4b$pjh$1 at dahlia.singnet.com.sg>,
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> wrote:
>According to Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com>:
>> Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> wrote:
>> >There's BEEP, formerly known as BXXP. RFC 3080 and 3081, I think.
>> >
>> >A new Internet-draft talks about running SOAP over BEEP.
>> >
>> >See www.beepcore.org.
>> >
>> >(Python implementation seems to have fallen behind.)
>> 			.
>> The background of the Beepcore principals is in Tcl.
>
>Good to see MTR bounce back from First Virtual. (He was with FV,
>wasn't he? Or was it Nat Borenstein? Whatever happened to NB?)
Both were, yes.  Dr. Borenstein is still in Michigan,
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of
NetPOS.com, which he founded last year (I think).
			.
			.
			.
>There is a PyBXXP project on Sourceforge. Seems to have gone
I will!--just as soon as someone volunteers to take
care of my house repairs.

OK--maybe sooner than that.
			.
			.
			.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sat Jul 28 13:48:47 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:48:47 -0700
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com>

Ben C wrote:
> 
> In the ecosystem of programming languages I think that the argument
> "Oh you can't change that as it will break all my existing code"
> should not be used to stagnate the evolution of a language ... and
> infact if you think about it is quite selfish ... to have Python
> evolve will require a some effort from everyone who activley uses the
> language ... if it means reworking some code then so be it ... or if
> 1.X is the niche you like then stick with it ...

Fascinating inversion of the role of a computer language, IMHO. I'm curious,
who else subscribes to this view?

[ On language change options: ]
> b\ Try not to change the language to keep maximum retrospective
> compatibility == stagnates the language (see Rexx==dinosaur )

b.1\ Or K&R C (in which Python was written for a long time to maximize
portability) or ANSI C (which tried to maintain compatibility with K&R). A
case where stagnation helped lead to success.

In what language Python would have been written had 'C' not existed, if it
had come to exist at all, would make for entertaining "what if" scenarios.
Maybe Pascal? Or assembly?


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul  5 01:27:33 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:27:33 +1200
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKPKLAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993966061.10438.python-list@python.org> <slrn9k28vp.s9l.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3B43FAC5.8B0A3B60@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 
> And a lot of C functions that could (and should) accept keyword arguments
> don't.  Even when the docs suggest they do, they don't.  For example, you
> should be able to write 'foo bar baz'.split(maxsplit=1)

As long as there's a difference, there should be a documentation
convention to distinguish between argument names which are
keywords and those which aren't.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From philipprw at gmx.at  Wed Jul 18 15:35:32 2001
From: philipprw at gmx.at (Philipp Weinfurter)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 19:35:32 GMT
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
References: <slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at> <Fok57.21911$PF1.1081086@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <slrn9lbmfi.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at> <52l57.22260$PF1.1093557@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lbp8k.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:03:53 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>> yes, this is what i thought. but is it correct?
>> i don't mean to be pedantic, but the rules are that if a variable
>> is not found in local scope, then the compiler looks up the global
>> scope and python doesn't follow this rule here.
>> it doesn't really hurt, since in 99% of all cases the programmer
>> probably _thinks_ he is referring to a local variable, but still...
> 
> The rules are correct, but you are making the mistake of assuming that
> Python determines the locality of local names by searching the
> namespace. This is where you are wrong. The compiler performs a static
> program analysis of each function, and if it sees assignments to a
> particular name (or indeed various other bindings, as described below)
> then it optimizes ALL references to that name to be local.

wait, do you mean that this is also true for assignments that occur
_after_ the statement in question?
let's try it out:
a = 1
def confuse_me():
    b = a + 1
    a = 0

confuse_me()
UnboundLocalError

aah.
now i see. i'm not sure that i like it, but i understand :)

thank you,
philipp


From glyph at twistedmatrix.com  Mon Jul  2 20:59:31 2001
From: glyph at twistedmatrix.com (Glyph Lefkowitz)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 19:59:31 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
In-Reply-To: <9hq8uv$i0g$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107021941020.14563-100000@zaibach.twistedmatrix.com>

On 2 Jul 2001, Martijn Faassen wrote:

> It's true. There has been a big PSU (Python Secret Underground)
> conspiracy to prevent database support and web server modules to
> be created in Python. It is a nefarious plot that plays right in the
> hands of the PSU.

Of course, the PSU does not exist.  It would be foolish to discuss them as
if they did.  Hah!  I laugh at the foolish implication that the PSU is a
real entity, which is in the real world that we live in today.

> The PSU is very interested in the use of Python in the field of AI;  
> advanced usenet robots such as the Timbot are one example, and the
> very convincing androids like the effbot another (you'd think he was a
> real Swede if you met him! really! at the last python conference they
> even had a prototype of the timbot android, though it didn't work very
> well yet). These androids and AIs will of course eventually used to
> either save the world or take over the world. You never know with the
> PSU.

Although it's not entirely clear to me whether the PSU would be involved
with world domination or world salvation (SHOULD THEY EXIST WHICH THEY
*CLEARLY* DO NOT), I am sure that the Twisted Matrix project would be
working either very strongly with or directly against them, perhaps both.

> Obviously, an advanced robot needs image manipulation programs (to
> process visual data). Interactive games are an excellent simulation testing
> ground for AI applications. It's obvious you need supercomputing to
> make the robot process data enough. Finally, XML is good magic
> pixie dust with a lot of enterprise power that will certainly make
> any failing AI work. If you have a problem, throw XML at it, problem
> solved (the AIs do this internally; they use quantum-substrate fuzzy
> coherent XSLT engines to do n-dimensional annealing).

Of course, another sworn (and not at all real) enemy (or ally) of the
(completely hypothetical) PSU, the perl organization of secrecy, or POS,
was recently behind the cancellation, but also the subsequent creation or
integration, of some massively multiplayer games using python.  Of course,
since good database and networking support in python and native
integration are as fictional as these organizations, nobody's ever
*actually* going to make something useful with python.  Notwithstanding
the plentiful examples to the contrary.

> This is why the PSU has been steering the community away from 
> relational database integration and web server applications. They 
> *need* interactive simulations on supercomputers, they *need* image
> manipulation software, and most importantly of all, they *need* XML.

I'm curious as to why the PSU is not spearheading an effort to get an EJB
clone into Python; Mojo Nation (and now Bram Cohen's BitTorrent) provides
P2P... with the final corner of the so-called "golden triangle" of XML,
EJB, and P2P, anything would be within their power.

No, wait!  I didn't mean to imply the PSU is real.  Egads, they're already
here!  I mean, they're not!  They're not here!  They're not real.  Oh no,
not more brainwashing!

but-I-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart-ly y'rs,

                      ______      __   __  _____  _     _
                     |  ____ |      \_/   |_____] |_____|
                     |_____| |_____  |    |       |     |
                     @ t w i s t e d m a t r i x  . c o m
                     http://twistedmatrix.com/users/glyph





From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul  4 18:56:47 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:56:47 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <p1f6ktc7qphfb5tg6c59kn4jeok9ndu1eq@4ax.com> <b%M07.2192$Ij5.16923@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <3B439F2F.EBB5070D@stroeder.com>

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> 
>    Linting tools can be used to enforce better static type safety than is
> normal with C. Gimpel's PC-lint with the -strong setting will warn about
> mixing variables of different typedef types even when the underlying types
> are the same.

I really wonder why people even consider C to be a strongly typed
language if I have to purchase an extra tool for that. And even if
you bought the tool you have to use the -strong setting. Ouch!

E.g. Turbo Pascal did this ages ago and was much faster while being
strict. Sometimes I have the feeling that things are not really
getting better. I'd guess that if today's OS were written in Modula
2/3 during the 90s instead of C/C++ we would not have all this
repeating security announcements about buffer overflows... (sigh)

Ciao, Michael.


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 11:24:39 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:24:39 -0500
Subject: Python 2.0.1 bug?
In-Reply-To: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com>
References: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <15192.19767.805522.175511@beluga.mojam.com>

    import socket
    
    HOST = ''     # empty string meaning localhost
    PORT = 8080
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    s.bind((HOST, PORT))
    s.listen(1)
    
    while 1:
        conn, addr = s.accept()
        print 'Connected by', addr
        data = conn.recv(1024)
        print data
        conn.send(data)     # reference point 1
        conn.close()

Does it help to add

    conn.send("HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n")
    conn.send("Content-Type: text/plain\r\n\r\n")

before you echo the request back to the client?  I realize that shouldn't
explain your 1.5.2/2.0.1 differences.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 11:34:01 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:34:01 +0100
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <snnjltc2dcapdbsd1cm511jtkc29cpll75@4ax.com> <mailman.995883282.11649.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <o5goltchb6viejekog777sp060gbnvvt7l@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:12:24 +0200 (MET DST), Mikael Olofsson
<mikael at isy.liu.se> wrote:

>
>On 21-Jul-2001 Stephen Horne wrote:

> >  I just think integer division should round towards zero - not strictly
> >  downwards.
>
>In my research I toss a lot of finite fields around. These are mathematical
>entities where modulo reduction is used all the time. The mathematical 
>concept of modulo is one of equivalence. If a, b, and c, are integers, you 
>say that a and b are equal (or equivalent) modulo c if there is an integer 
>d such that 
>
>  a == b + c*d 
>
>holds. For instance

I'm aware - it gets common applications in crytography. Properties I
like, for instance, include that with a prime modulo, division is a
strict one-to-one mapping except when the divisor is zero - it works
as a strict inverse to multiplication, but it isn't always to easy to
figure out the result ;-)

Personally, I think this would work best with an equivalent of a
template class - the modulo becomes part of the numeric type, and
trying to mix modulo types becomes an error.

I understand your view, but I don't think it should apply to integers
in general - but it does, and that's no big deal either. And I agree
that it's arguably more consistent to always round lower (or at least
in a consistent direction, as you say), and therefore it no doubt
saves unnecessary checks in many cases. 

Trouble is, the way things are going, the fact that I have a valid
opinion (irrespective of the alternative and arguably better opinions)
might just be enough to get Python changed. After all, its different
and it'll break existing code so why not? Maybe I should have kept
quiet ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sat Jul 14 01:43:44 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:43:44 -0500
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com> <9ina5r$l96$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <01b701c10c27$fbf6d500$0101010a@local>

How about Thomas Niemann's Sorting and Searching Algorithms: A Cookbook?
The title doesn't say so, but there are many data structures defined
and code given in C in this online book.

Go to: http://epaperpress.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua Marshall" <jmarshal at mathworks.com>

> Python's a very good place to start.  Besides books on the language,
> I'd also recommend you find some books on data-structures.  I can't
> name any good ones offhand, but maybe some other posters can...
>
> wyatt stafford <wyatts at onr.com> wrote:
> > Preamble:
>
> > I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start
programming
> > for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).
After
> > some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  I bought
"Learn
> > to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" (Harms/McDonald).
Also
> > checking out the tutorial, and other good info at www.python.org.    I
have
> > a leaping, intuitive learning style given to missing the obvious, so I
am
> > concerned about having fatal gaps in my learning via home schooling
plan.
>
> > Questions:
>
> > Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self
study
> > resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good
programmer,
> > in general?
>
> > Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?
>
> > thanks and happy weekend to all,
> > wyatt
>
> > "Oh, that's not what I call bingeing"
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>




From heikowu at ceosg.de  Tue Jul  3 04:08:37 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:08:37 +0200
Subject: apply problem
References: <9hr0aj$ta0$06$1@news.t-online.com> <3B41499B.BC753752@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <9hrue2$q8a$07$1@news.t-online.com>

Greg Ewing wrote on Tue, 03 Jul 2001 16:27:07 +1200:

>    getattr(self,name)(attrs)

Thanks for the code, it works fine! :) 

Yours,

        Heiko W.


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 20:31:27 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:31:27 -0700
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <mailman.996104447.4969.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5F64DF.EBA25066@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> It's slowly dawning on me that some people don't ship Python *with* their
> apps.  What are you, nuts <0.9 wink>?  From PySol to Zope, everyone who
> gives a rip about stability ships the software they develop with.

(I think that should have been <1.0 winks>.)

Many Python apps are open source; even when one provides Windoze users a
nicely packaged "closed" .exe, for maximum OS portability one must also
allow downloading of the source sans Python interpreter.

> I see I have 12 copies of the Microsoft C runtime library on my Win98 box at
> the moment, and for the same reason:  serious Windows app developers are
> careful to isolate themselves from C runtime changes too.
> 
> in-the-real-world-compatibility-doesn't-rely-on-luck-ly y'rs  - tim

Well I see your problem already: you are developing on the wrong OS. It
makes your thinking fuzzy. Some of us don't have Solaris, Linux, BSDI, AIX,
Mac OS, etc. platforms all sitting on our desk (that would be some desk!) to
build complete runtime interpreters. So we ship only source and hope the
target users read the instructions on which version of Python we think we've
validated our code on.


From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 21 21:43:18 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:43:18 +0500
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org> <etd3d7qxi88.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9jeafl$46q$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>

Alex wrote:

> Not really.  There are some ways you could speed up the python code:

I'm also not really sure why one would want to do this, but...
 
> There's the additional problem that
> opening "err" will truncate the log file, and if an error occurs while
> you're writing the new version back, you could lose messages.

here's a version that makes a copy of the file before prepending a 
new message to avoid that problem.  It also uses seek to avoid having 
to reopen the file handle repeatedly.  Depending on the use, it might 
be fast enough, and since it's wrapped in a class, one could keep 
track of the number of messages written and automatically rotate 
log files as they get large so that it's not reading and copying so 
many lines.  

Of course, you'd still be confusing all of us who are quite used to 
log files that append the most recent message to the end of the file. :-)

import shutil

class Logger:
    def __init__( self, filename ):
        self.filename = filename
        self.file = open( filename, 'w+' )
    def log( self, message ):
        # Make a copy in case we die in the middle of the next op
        shutil.copyfile( self.filename, self.filename + '.bak' )
        # Prepend the message to the beginning of the file
        self.file.seek( 0 )
        old = self.file.read()
        self.file.seek( 0 )
        self.file.write( message )
        self.file.write( old )
        self.file.flush()
    def __del__( self ):
        self.file.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    aLogger = Logger( 'error.log' )
    aLogger.log( 'message1\n' )
    aLogger.log( 'message2\n' )
    aLogger.log( 'message3\n' )

there's-more-than-one-way-to-do-it-ly yours
---Tom



From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul  5 13:33:16 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:33:16 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
Message-ID: <cTKR7kKkXE6f092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

"Jeffery D. Collins" <jcollins at boulder.net> wrote in message
| re.sub("[^0-9]", "", "(555) 333.2221")

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote:
| "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])

  filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')

Thirteen characters shorter than Emile's, and still no [re] :-).

Personally, I even find it easier to read.  YMMV.

Yours, Lulu...



From howard at dunlavy.net  Tue Jul  3 01:06:49 2001
From: howard at dunlavy.net (Howard Dunlavy)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 05:06:49 GMT
Subject: Python -- Use with both COM & Java?
Message-ID: <Jpc07.289$GI4.22690@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>

This question may be way off base, but here goes anyway...

Would it be possible to maintain one set of Python code that would run in
both a Microsoft COM environment and a Java environment -- both natively?

Our situation is that we are currently using Delphi and WebHub in our web
applications.  However, as we talk to more of our larger customers, they are
falling into either the native Microsoft camp (IIS, COM, MTS) or the native
Java world.  We had been trying to bridge this problem by using SOAP as our
RPC.  However, since we actually have to install our software (we are an
ISV) at our client site, they would prefer software that would live in their
respective "worlds".

Hence my question.  Is Python something that could be used to create both
COM object and EJB's, for instance (using JPython).

Any comments would be appreciated.

I realize that this approach might be the "worst of both worlds", and it
would probably make sense for us to pick one world or the other, but I am
concerned that we are going to shut ourselves out of a major part of market
by choosing just one of MS or Java.

Thanks!

-Howard




From benjamin.altman at noaa.gov  Mon Jul  9 13:56:33 2001
From: benjamin.altman at noaa.gov (Benjamin.Altman)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:56:33 -0400
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com> <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net> <9icfor038k@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B49F051.8CFE5881@noaa.gov>

Alex Martelli wrote:

> character".  Reverend Dodgson, AKA "Lewis Carroll", would
> be happy about that -- if I understand correctly, he fought
> hard (and lost) against the notion that an empty set can be
> taken as satisfying any condition whatsoever (I believe he

I believe that the above is true except for the "(and lost)" part. Though
I am not a pure mathematician, a friend of mine who is once mentioned
that to me.



From paul at boddie.net  Fri Jul 27 06:18:35 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 03:18:35 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com> <3B5EEED7.C9C7117B@home.net> <23891c90.0107260053.70747d65@posting.google.com> <IGZ77.30629$EP6.7882998@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107270218.34460ea5@posting.google.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message news:<IGZ77.30629$EP6.7882998 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>...
> "Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
> news:23891c90.0107260053.70747d65 at posting.google.com...

[...]

> > I think such "ideological" changes to the language with
> > such limited justification send the message to numerous
> > highly-respected community members that their work is
> > considered to be of little value and can be sacrificed
> > to the "language gods" on a whim.
> 
> Is this a one-time gift/sacrifice, of this magnitude, in return for
> Guido's gift of Python, or the first of a long series?  I'll let Guido
> answer by word and ultimately by deed as he chooses.

It's probably best to leave the whole "gift culture" model out of
this, just to avoid the usual tedious distractions which have plagued
many of the threads about PEP 238. I won't even air my own opinions on
the accuracy or relevance of that model.

I have said it before, and I'll repeat myself: I'm very grateful to
everyone who has made Python the language it is today, just as I am
grateful to everyone who made it the language it was when I started
using it in 1995. I don't consider myself a high profile user, or
anyone who has contributed very much at all to the community, so
whilst I want to have my views on this and other issues taken into
consideration, I can hardly expect it.

But this is a large community of people who have produced considerable
amounts of useful work. It is true that they might not have produced
such work if they had not been able to use Python, and it is true that
they have Guido and company to thank for producing the tool which
allowed them to commence that work. However, Python itself has
benefited from having useful software available for it. It's probably
true that the vast majority of open source projects don't ever reach
the "critical mass" to ensure near-guaranteed long-term development;
so Python didn't get where it is today purely on merit as a language
concept.

Ideally, the community should be grateful to Python's inventors, just
as Python's inventors should be grateful to the community. One could
argue that one party doesn't owe the other anything: Python's
inventors are just doing something which interests them and if one
wants to come along for the ride, then one has to put up with the
company; users of Python have many choices of language and platform,
so the inventors should be grateful that their invention has been
chosen, and be attentive to those developers in order to keep their
invention "competitive".

To shut the other party out does show a fair amount of disrespect.
Python's inventors are only able to work on Python because Python has
been a successful component in a number of products; most Python users
probably cannot make a living out of writing and working on Python.
Python's users are only able to use Python because its inventors have
dedicated their skills to a freely-available language and not to
making "dot com fortunes".

Both parties are therefore fortunate because of their interaction with
each other. This should be considered when, inevitably, the legitimate
concerns of any individual are publicly belittled on comp.lang.python
because they are not expressing the "acceptable" point of view.

Paul


From maxx at easynews.com  Tue Jul 24 14:47:50 2001
From: maxx at easynews.com (maxx at easynews.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:47:50 GMT
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <usfrltsfobghrram0dgls24r6ijicpk4p9@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:23:48 -0700, zeke  <Zeke at xyz.net> wrote:

>Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
>job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
>Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 
>zeke

I started using UltraEdit around the time I began working with Python. Both
tools came from the concept of using a relatively powerful tool, without a lot
of "expense." Python saved me time by allowing me to write useful scripts
without a great deal of hassle, and UltraEdit provided me a relatively feature
complete Windows based editor, without a major investment in money.

For me, the nice thing about UltraEdit is that is does just what I need it to
do. Many of the competing _commercial_ editors had a great many features that I
do not need, but also came with a high price tag. I do not have much experience
with EMACS or VIM, so I cannot speak to the comparison.

Currently, UltraEdit makes a good standalone development tool for Python. The
publisher of UltraEdit has a Python syntax definition file available for
download. With a few minor tweaks it does very well in terms of highlighting and
indenting. Plus, menu items can be easily added to compile the current script
and report errors, or run and capture output back to the editor.

For a Windows based editor, UltraEdit seems to provide pretty good support for
the cost - although it is not free.

Send me an e-mail if you want the Python config file I use.


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Thu Jul 12 10:10:46 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 14:10:46 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net> <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com> <3B4C759D.559D6AA5@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b4daf7c.221771@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:49:49 -0700, Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com>
wrote:

>
>
>"David C. Ullrich" wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:47:30 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
>> >str took 13.601617 seconds
>> >
>> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
>> >strL took  1.044989 seconds
>> >
>> >Recursion rides again ;-)
>>
>> Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
>> a replacement for str that's faster is very
>> curious.
>
>How much of this difference in speed, though, is because strL()
>is a special purpose integer->string conversion, where the
>standard str() is a general-purpose anything->string conversion?

Surely almost none of it! I don't know anything about the
internal representation of Python objects, but I tend to
doubt it takes more than a tick or two for str() to determine
that the argument is a long and call the appropriate
long->string code.

>Jeff Shannon
>Technician/Programmer
>Credit International
>
>
>


David C. Ullrich


From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 12 00:08:36 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:08:36 -0400
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <110720011805044955%fcnpereira@home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCENFKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Fernando Pereira]
> M. D. McIlroy, Functional pearl: Power series, power serious, J. of
> Functional Programming 9 (1999) 323-335
>
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/pearl.ps.gz

Yup, that's fun!  Even with generators in Pytnon 2.2, "this kind of thing"
is more pleasant in Haskell -- but then that's not what generators were
aiming at.

> and
>
> M. D. McIlroy, The music of streams, Information Processing Letters 77
> (2001) 189-195
>
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/mdmspe.ps.gz

That's actually a link to "A Killer Adversary for Quicksort".  I expect this
was intended:

    http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/music.ps.gz




From bobh at hslda.org  Thu Jul 12 11:25:22 2001
From: bobh at hslda.org (Robert)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:25:22 -0700
Subject: noncommercial Python+QT on Windows? (was Re: qt or gtk?)
References: <slrn9ios1q.el.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <9gk8he$8gl$1@brokaw.wa.com> <16074dce.0106181045.139d80a5@posting.google.com> <3b3b40a0@news.uia.ac.be> <9hfjho05to@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.993768352.14849.python-list@python.org> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0106292039570.18740-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <9hjriq$pc8$1@news1.xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <4a249347.0107120725.3c4569ea@posting.google.com>

Are there binaries anywhere for those of us without a compiler?

Bob


From rossi at earthling.net  Sun Jul  1 11:08:45 2001
From: rossi at earthling.net (Thorsten Roskowetz)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:08:45 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hnaat$284$02$1@news.t-online.com> <slrn9jud7l.111.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <9hneb9$ca0$00$1@news.t-online.com>

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:18 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
> >You might want to look at KDE's DCOP.
>
> Well, I did already. It looks cool and I even got the KSpread
> example to work, but it's tied to C++ and Qt.

Not entirely true.  There are DCOP bindings for C (dcopc) and Python
(AFAIK only proof of concept at the moment) and even a XML-RPC to DCOP
bridge (KXMLRPC) which could be used from Python, Java, Perl or any
other language that provide an XML-RPC implementation.
There are even native java bindings to DCOP in developement.

Some pointers:

http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/python/
http://dot.kde.org/971418407/

Cheers,

Thorsten




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 07:29:06 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:29:06 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com> <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com> <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com> <sLl97.75231$Xr6.349962@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <9k64q501vd6@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:sLl97.75231$Xr6.349962 at news-server.bigpond.net.au...
    ...
> much. An ideal language would allow development of a feature to start as
> weakly typed and then be migrated to strongly typed when and if required.

I believe that Dylan is the only existing language that offers this
approach, in non-LISP-ish syntax style, and with both free and
commercial high-quality implementations widely available.  See:
    http://www.gwydiondylan.org/
    http://www.fun-o.com/
The Dylan books are also quite good, though very few in number,
due to Dylan never really making any significant widespread impact.

Reflecting on Dylan's utter lack of widespread impact tends to be
maddening to True Believers in Dylan or in the basic technological
choices it embodies (key one being "support both weak and strong
typing", a second crucial one being a highly sophisticated macro
system, a third very important one being multiple dispatch).  In
my experience, most hardboiled Dylanistas have had to buy into a
"technical merit is never rewarded" mindset to avoid a painful
cognitive dissonance arising from this.  I don't agree with such
a mindset, so my take on things is quite different -- at the very
least, though, one would have to agree that allowing both weak
and strong typing, with smooth migration between the two, is
not a very important feature in a language (although it DOES
sound lovely), given how little good (none) it did to Dylan:-(.

My basic take on things?  That trying to design "one language
to bind them all" is a doomed pursuit; that multi-language
systems are here to stay, and to grow; trying to be all things
to all people makes a language too rich and complex, and the
complexity itself weighs it down.  Maybe a language can afford
optional type-annotations and so on (I truly hope so, since
I'd love to have them), maybe it can afford multi-dispatching
(again, I sure HOPE it can!), maybe it can afford sophisticated
macro systems (and here, I start to have my doubts!), and so on,
and so forth... but striving to cover *all* the bases conflicts
inevitably with the SIMPLICITY that should be a very important
meta-goal of any language's design.


Alex





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 19:59:10 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:59:10 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
	 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
	 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
	 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
	 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
	 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com> <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B64A34E.63C22FE8@ActiveState.com>

I'm not going to respond to the majority of the post because I don't
really see where the conversation is going. I'm just going to say on
this one point:

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> >For system administration? I would say "not much". Systems programming
> >and system administration are two different thing.
> 
> you're reaching here.

http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?system+administration
http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=systems+programming

>...
> evolutionarily the only good dinosaurs are chickens. SQL, Cobol and the
> like were there at the right time. If Python/Tcl/VB et al are to succeed
> as languages they have to have a real edge. All of these languages are
> Turing complete; therefore they can only really be distinguished using
> other criteria such as ease of use, matching with the problem space etc
> etc. It's pretty stupid to criticize C when it's the main vehicle for
> Python.

Funny, I don't recall criticizing C. We seem to be having two different
conversations here.

I withdraw.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From dedalus at yifan.net  Wed Jul 25 17:29:38 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:29:38 GMT
Subject: importing modules
References: <mailman.996086687.3763.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5f38c5.112013116@news.libero.it>

>Where did you get this from?  

http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/newsite/Python/Python-DX/python-dx.html

"Hans Nowak's Python-DX is a version of Python for 32-bit DOS.
Python-DX is equivalent to Python 1.5.2, but Hans no longer maintains
it, so it's doubtful that Python 1.6 will be supported. "


what shoud I do ?

Or - put it in a different way - which is fully working version for
Dos I should download ?

Thank you

Duilio




From emile at fenx.com  Sat Jul  7 19:08:27 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 16:08:27 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org><cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com><FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com><cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com><9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de><cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Parts of it.  (You do mean PEP 242?)  That and working in Tim's/Aahz's
FixedPoint/Decimal concepts.  In general, if a keyword precision were to be
added to the language, it could serve to set the context in which *all*
calculations are made within the defining scope.  For example:

# default setting
precision 0    # everything behaves as it does now
print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714

precision 1    # all calculations yield 1 decimal point precision interim
results
print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places

precision 2
print 2 / 7    # -> 0.28, ie to precision 2 decimal places

precision 3
print 2 / 7    # -> 0.285, ie to precision 3 decimal places

This seems to me to break no existing code other than where precision is
currently used as a label, and allows us to teach others, when they get
stung by unexpected results, that they need to set precision appropriately.
Once explained, integer division would not be a surprise to newbies, nor
would the precision of floating point be lost to those who understand and
benefit from its use.  And those of us that just want to write business
accounting applications will be able to set precision 2 at the top of each
module and be done with it.

<new topic>

  But now that I've been asked to PEP up...

Let me quote from PEP0002:

    There are two kinds of PEPs.  A standards track PEP describes a
    new feature or implementation for Python.

Which is what I'd like to see and was referring to.  Later, in PEP0002:

    Standards track PEPs consists of two parts, a design document and
    a reference implementation.

Now, being a user of Python, and not an implementor of changes to python, I
feel that the PEP process is biased to produce what language *writers* want
to see in a language, not what *users* necessarily need or want.  This might
be likened to doing XP without the customer.  For me to start a PEP I would
need to be capable of creating a reference implementation (otherwise who
would do it?).  This will not happen, as I have neither the intimate
internals knowledge nor language development experience to do it.  If a
change were made to the PEP process with a nod to the XP philosophy, whereby
programmers/users/customers wrote stories, python-dev/implementors/BDFL
assigned costs/effort/impact and finally BDFL/community selected which to do
next, then perhaps more stories would come out of how python could be wider
deployed, break through open-glass ceilings, and increase the money being
spent on python solutions.

>From my perspective, being that I still support programs I originally wrote
in the mid '70s, and that these still run on current platforms and versions
of the development language, and do so with minimal maintenance, backward
compatibility is *everything*.  I fully expect the next version of that
application will be written in Python.  As a user of python, I will adapt to
the continued changes.  As a developer with a 25 year line of sight I am
concerned that code I develop today will maintain its viability in 25 years.

Anyone-want-to-implement-my-PEP?-(didn't-think-so-;-)-ly y'rs

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994531918.7040.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Guido> "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:
>     >> If you're going to add keywords, why not add precision and allow
>     >> those who want non-integer division to set it to the level of
>     >> precision they require.  That breaks no more code (presumably) than
>     >> adding div or yield does.
>
>     Guido> I'm not sure what you're asking about.  If you're serious,
please
>     Guido> submit a PEP!  This is the time to do it.  Posting to the
>     Guido> newsgroup is *not* sufficient to let an idea be heard by me --
>     Guido> you *have* to mail it to me directly or to python-dev.  (While
I
>     Guido> like to read c.l.py sometimes, I cannot guarantee that I see
>     Guido> every post.)
>
> Isn't this similar to Paul DuBois' floating point ideas?
>
> Skip
>
>



From jknapka at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 18:04:49 2001
From: jknapka at earthlink.net (Joseph A. Knapka)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:04:49 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
		<mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
		<9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
		<cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net>

Justin Sheehy wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
> >> I would very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools
> >> that enforce *uniform* case usage.
> >
> > And that's of course what I have in mind.

Ugh. Sounds like VB. No thanks.

> The problem here is that you control the language, but you don't
> control the tools.  People use a variety of different editors to work
> on Python, and adding this type of smarts to all such editors is
> simply not going to happen.
> 
> If there is a rule that needs to be enforced, you can't count on the
> tools to enforce it.  Python will either demand uniform case usage, or
> it won't.  It is impractical to assume that everyone will choose
> editors that enforce this sort of rule.
> 
> Having only a small number of "approved" editors or IDEs will not work
> either, as that would alienate a large portion of the professional
> programmers using Python.  Such people are very loyal to their tools.
> As much as bringing non-programmers into the fold is a major goal, any
> means used to do so that drives away programmers is questionable.

A case sensitive language, along with a development environment
for beginners that encourages and enables case consistency, sounds
like the best of both worlds. No one would *have* to use it, but
anyone who wanted to could.

FWIW, I am a relative newcomer to Python, with a lot of general
programming experience (C,C++,Java,Tcl,Prolog,LISP,Perl...). I
really love Python, but making it case-insensitive would put a
very significant damper on my enthusiasm. Why would you want
to intentionally reduce the symbol space available for names?
Everyone knows that in normal usage, case carries meaning (bob
vs Bob). How could it possibly benefit the beginner to violate
that naive expectation? 

<Yes yes, argument from personal incredulity, I know.>

-- Joe
 
> "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:
> 
> > I don't think anyone would be opposed to an auto-correcting IDE.
> 
> I beg to differ.
> 
> There are two problems with this.
> 
> The first is that many people don't want anything they type to be
> "autocorrected".  I frequently hear about misadventures that people
> have with Microsoft tools that "autocorrect" their spelling mistakes.
> This feature often makes correct text incorrect, and even when it is
> correct it is providing an obnoxious degree of invasiveness which many
> people find very distracting while they try to work.
> 
> The second is something that I mentioned above.  Attempting to enforce
> that everyone use such an IDE is a very bad idea.  If you can't count
> on everyone using it, then you cannot count on it enforcing the rules.
> 
> A language's rules should be enforced by the language implementation
> itself, not the tools that people use to program in that language.
> 
> (FWIW, I think that Python's implementions should not allow mixed tabs
> and spaces, but that is a different argument.)
> 
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
> > If you use this a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less
> > readable than it should be.
> 
> Really?  People use capitalization semantically all the time, both in
> programming and in the rest of life.  I don't understand at all what
> makes the above code unreadable.
> 
> It has been stated a few times that this is "bad style", but I have
> yet to see why.  The lowercase name as instance of uppercase class
> convention seems to be a valid style, and I don't know of a reason to
> make it disallowed.
> 
> > It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over the phone
> > -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has tried
> > to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)
> 
> This is a very funny argument in the context of Python.
> 
> Is spoken language indentation-preserving?
> 
> Clearly, you should make Python indentation-insensitive in order to
> make it easier to discuss code over the phone.  Besides, we can always
> just write an IDE that everyone will use that will enforce uniform
> indentation...
> 
> Spoken language has very different rules than written natural
> language, which has different rules than program text.  Trying to
> pretend otherwise leads down a dark and ugly path.
> 
> I do not see that CP4E can ignore or change this fact.  Or that it should try.
> 
> -Justin

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S


From deltapigz at telocity.com  Tue Jul 31 18:57:02 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (Adonis Vargas)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:57:02 -0400
Subject: Question...
Message-ID: <3B6737BE.2CCC0A1A@telocity.com>

how come this code does not seem to popup on any broswer i attempt to
send HTML data to:

    (c, a) = s.accept()
    c.send('HTTP 200 OK\n')
    c.send('Content-Type: text/html\n')
    c.send('')
    print RED + "CONNECT->%s"%a[0] + RESET

    d = c.recv(256)
    c.send("""
          <HTML>
          <HEAD>
          <TITLE>Redirecting...</TITLE>
          <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;
url=http://www.python.org/">
          </HEAD>
          <BODY>
          </BODY>
          </HTML>\n
          """)
    c.close()

*basic idea to redirect a broswer.

any help would greatly be appreciated.

Adonis



From pete at ipartners.pl  Mon Jul 30 06:24:01 2001
From: pete at ipartners.pl (Pete)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:24:01 +0200
Subject: are sockets bloking on WinTN...
Message-ID: <9k3ck2$15us$1@news2.ipartners.pl>

Hi pythoniers,

According to docs I never should receive (10035, 'The socket operation could
not complete without blocking') error with blocking sockets. But on my NT
box this is what I got:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "client.py", line 90, in callback
    type, data = self.msg.receive()
  File "TcpMsg.py", line 19, in receive
    hdr = self.__socket.recv( struct.calcsize(FORMAT) )
  File "<string>", line 1, in recv
socket.error: (10035, 'The socket operation could not complete without
blocking')

callback is SLOT to QSocketNotifier (for those who know PyQt...)
TpcMsg.py is as follows:
01: import struct
02:
03: FORMAT = '!BL' # short - message type, long message length
04:
05: class TcpMsg:
06:     def __init__( self, socket ):
07:        self.__socket = socket
08:
09:     def send( self, type, message = '_' ):
10:         if len(message) == 0:
11:             print 'len(message) must be > 0'
12:             message = '_'
13:         hdr = struct.pack( FORMAT, type, len(message) )
14:         self.__socket.send( hdr )
15:         self.__socket.send( message )
16:
17:     def receive( self ):
18:         self.__socket.setblocking( 1 )
19:         hdr = self.__socket.recv( struct.calcsize(FORMAT) )
20:         if hdr == '':
21:             return None, None
22:         type, length = struct.unpack( FORMAT, hdr )
23:         print 'r2', len(hdr), type, length
24:         self.__socket.setblocking( 1 )
25:         message = self.__socket.recv( length )
26:         return type, message
27:
28:     def close( self ):
29:         self.__socket.close()

the socket passed to __init__ was by default blocking and even when I forced
it bloking in lines 18 & 24 I still got error 10035... why? any idea?

Pete




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul  1 11:33:23 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 15:33:23 GMT
Subject: The standard library
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hnfs3$dag$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> [Paul Prescod, with many good gripes about the libraries]
>> ...
>> I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
>> address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
>> controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.

> Guido knows this, if for no other reason than that Eric Raymond keeps
> reminding him of it.  PEP 2 is supposed is the first step on this path.

I've just submitted a version of PEP 2 to Barry. It's only a first step
on this path, but it's a step.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 06:03:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:03:34 +0200
Subject: again problem with re.reserch
References: <mailman.996548997.18654.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k5vpp01pf5@enews4.newsguy.com>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.996548997.18654.python-list at python.org...
> >None
> >>>> c = a.search('foo abcd')
> >>>> print c
> ><SRE_Match object at 0x8114a28>
> >>>>
> >
> ****************
>
>        then how I can get the exact postion the string in 'foo abcd',
> for example ,I want it return a number denote the postion

The match-object c has the methods you need.  For example:

>>> import re
>>> a=re.compile('abc')
>>> c=a.search('foo abcd')
>>> c
<SRE_Match object at 00820010>
>>> dir(c)
['end', 'expand', 'group', 'groupdict', 'groups', 'span', 'start']
>>> c.start
<built-in method start of SRE_Match object at 00820010>
>>> c.start()
4
>>> c.end()
7
>>> c.span()
(4, 7)
>>>


Alex





From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 23 14:45:12 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:45:12 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com>

In article <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:

>The difference between '+' and '/' is that ints aren't
>implicitly converted to strings, so one wouldn't use an int
>instead of a string expecting '+' to do the conversion and
>concatenation. But ints *are* implicitly converted to floats
>when needed

Language design mistake.

>in about all contexts except '/', so it would be reasonable to
>expect them to be converted in the '/' case too.

And we'll fix it by makeing more widespread.

>Python does treat ints and floats as different parts of the
>same concept by letting them compare equal and convert as
>needed.

Let's change that.  Mixing ints and floats should to
automagical conversion, it should cause an exception.  That's
no more disruptive that changing the meaning of the "/"
operator, and it's far more in line with the spirit of not
converting operands to make operators happy.

>So real division and integer division should be distinguished
>by the operator.

That's one opinion.  I feel that in an OO language the objects
should determine the meaning of the operators.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Yes, but will I
                                  at               see the EASTER BUNNY in
                               visi.com            skintight leather at an
                                                   IRON MAIDEN concert?


From paul at svensson.org  Thu Jul 26 12:48:20 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 16:48:20 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good) writes:

>The problem with using "for i in fib():" is that fib() will generate
>an infinite set!  Infinite sets are fun to work with, but somewhat
>problematic to output :-)
>
>The example uses "for i in range(9):" instead, in order to generate
>and show only the first few Fibonacci numbers.
>
>Which reminds me, when working with unbounded generators, you can wrap
>them with another generator to restrict their output, with something
>like this:
>
>#------ begin code
>
>def genWhile(g, condition):
>    """
>    run generator g while 'condition' is true.
>    Condition is a partial expression string such as "< 10"
>    to be evaluated with g.next() as the left side
>    """
>    while 1:
>        next = g.next()
>        if eval("next " + condition):
>            yield next
>        else:
>            raise StopIteration
>
>#------ end code
>
>Then you can say, for example:
>
>>>> g = fib()
>>>> [x for x in genWhile(g, "< 50")]
>
>[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
>.
>...to get the Fibonacci numbers that are less than 50.

This immegiately suggest an obvious language improvement.
Now that we have generators in the language, unbounded sequences
will be much more common, so other ways to terminate list comprehensions
would be increasingly useful.

With the current Python, [x for x in fib() if x < 50] would be the same
as your example above, it would just take forever to do it, since Python
doesn't understand that continuing past the first false condition,
the condition will continue to be false, and no new elements produced.

I would like to suggest that we add a "while condition" clause
to list comprehensions, similar to the "if condition" clause,
but terminating the list comprehension on the first false condition.
The above example could then be written as

[x for x in fib() while x < 50]

	/Paul


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 16:09:47 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:09:47 GMT
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <fO_77.30758$EP6.7915305@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9jpqlh$phf$1 at uranium.btinternet.com...
> how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a
command to
> display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't
find
> it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing.
oh well
> any ideas out there?

[When asking questions like this, include platform and version, as in
sys.version]

This would be an os specific operation.  If there is anything
standard, it would be in os module (and added since I last read it).
On unix, I believe you can read mount directory or use
os.system(command).  In Windows machine, there is a windows module. Do
not know contents






From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Tue Jul 10 13:28:53 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:28:53 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com>

"tyler spivey" <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote
> python is way slower than c. that's no big deal. but:
> 1. is python slower than perl
> 2. is python slower than ruby
> 3. is python slower than lua (some kind of scripting language)
> i want to know if python, or lua would be a good thing to
> design a mud in. probably not lua since i think it is dead.
> why are they way more modules for ruby than python?


for doing a MUD, the language speed is not going to have
much noticeable effect, since network speed is far slower
than any of the languages can handle.

of the languages you list i'd say ruby or python would be
your best bests. this being comp.lang.python, i'm going to
put an obvious lean on using python :]

who do you mean, "they", are building way more modules for
ruby than python? at this point python has a much larger
user base, a larger standard library, and a lot more people
working on a lot more different modules.

what modules in particular are you seeing on ruby that aren't
available for python?

also, you mention ruby as faster than python, but i'd put
them in the same speed category. i suppose on an average of
benchmarks you'll find ruby about 10% quicker than python,
but there are cases where python will win too. i doubt its
the type of speed difference you can see without a stopwatch





From thedustbustr at aol.com  Sat Jul 21 19:56:40 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 23:56:40 GMT
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
Message-ID: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>

I'm trying to split the following string called data into four variables:

:Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!

(so data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!') with an outcome of:

sender='Angel'
command='PRIVMSG'
rcpt=Wiz'
message='here is my message!'

Unless my logic is flawed, this should return 'PRIVMSG':

sender='Angel'
print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]

It prints '' (an empty string).  Is my logic flawed, or does Python dislike a
string splice determined by a function?

And if you are up to it, feel free to help me splice (correct terminology,
parse?) for variables rcpt and message ;)

Many thanks, Dustin


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:11:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:11:23 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.994548913.18171.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cppubbipxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> [Tim Peters]
> 
> > I want to make a pitch for naming it idiv() instead.  The "i" should
> > strongly remind that the result is an integer, something "div" says only to
> > former Pascal programmers.

pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (Fran?ois Pinard) writes:

> idiv suggests FORTRAN to me! :-) I prefer being remembered of
> Pascal! :-) :-)
> 
> And I like the idea of div(), mod() and divmod(): it's clean.

Yeah, I don't see the point of idiv either.  Plus, __idiv__ is already
in use to mean in-place division (i.e. the /= operator).

I just discovered that we don't need to add a new operator overloading
name for the div and mod operations: classes already look for a
__divmod__ method to overload divmod(), and we should naturally define
div(x, y) (or x div y) as divmod(x, y)[0].  Ditto for mod if it gets
added.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 16 03:21:32 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:21:32 -0700
Subject: OO misconceptions (was: Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B5295FC.218FFE79@ActiveState.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> <*someone*@ActiveState.com> wrote:
> > Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
> > binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
> > code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
> > warnings is trivial.
> 
> I'm all for rapid development and such, and I use Python whenever I think
> it has an advantage over another choice (which is quite often).
> 
> But what does 'larger' mean in this case?  Larger than the MySQL engine?
> Larger than a linux kernel?  Larger than the Red Hat install scripts?

Python allows you to build larger systems in less time than traditional
technologies (C++, Java, COBOL, etc.).

> I wouldn't implement a RDBMS in Python. Nor would I implement a word
> processor in assembler.

There is an RDBMS in Python. I know a company that embedded it in a
prototype expecting that it would not only reduce the development time
but also encourage the customer to come back and ask for the "real
thing". But the customer didn't. Anyhow, I wouldn't try to *sell* an
RDBMS written in Python because it wouldn't be performance-competitive.
What does that have to do with application sizes? Or ActiveState? (by
the way, groups.google.com will show that I was a Python booster before
ActiveState even existed so it would be somewhat ironic if I now decided
to stop promoting Python because people would consider it an indirect
way to sell ActiveState products)

> ....[stuff about BSD] It's written in C, which does
> not even claim to be an OO language.

Funny, my message didn't mention object orientation or object oriented
programming. You're just knocking down a straw man.

> An application's scalability has much more to do with the programmer's
> use of algorithms and abstraction than with the language in which it's
> implemented...no matter how much money ActiveState has invested in it.

I didn't say otherwise. But a language can support a programmer in
trying to choose scalable algorithms and abstractions or it can make it
difficult. You said you wouldn't implement a word processor in assembly
language so you must agree. In my experience, Python is at the opposite
end of the productivity spectrum from assembly language when it comes to
large programs. Other popular programming languages fall somewhere in
the middle. YMMV.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk  Wed Jul 25 10:05:34 2001
From: margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk (margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Deposing Dictators
Message-ID: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>

<disclaimer>
I'm an inveterate lurker, and I've followed the progress of Python for 
the last couple of years from the background -- writing programs for my 
own benefit, but nothing for the use of the general populace.

In other words, I am a worm, and none of you should pay any attention 
to me, to get the insults out the way.
</disclaimer>

Many political historians claim that, in short to medium term timescales,
the best form of governance is the benevolent dictatorship -- where the 
leader cares about his people, and has the ability and intelligence 
to act quickly on their behalf. However, it is unstable in the long term:
either the dictator, or the next in line, stops caring about the 
populace, and becomes capricious and vain.

I have been pondering recently whether we are seeing this process in 
action with Python. Guido van Rossum has been an extremely strong and
benevolent dictator, and Python itself is a much better language, and
has a bigger mindshare, than it would under many other leadership 
systems. However, we may be getting to the stage now where the task of
guiding Python should be taken out of his hands.

The next features of Python will see several types of changes, which
seem to been implmented and accepted into the language without 
discussion. The least serious of these are the introduction of 
generators, and the yield keyword, which do not negatively impact past
code (although they might incite grumblings about the PL/1-ization of 
a small and relatively simple language). The most serious surrounds
the changes in division.

Without getting into the arguments for and against a change, I would
note that changing the semantics of a core part of the language is
basically equivalent to creating a new language. Python with / and //
operators in the form currently envisaged is, frankly, not Python at
all. The fact that it looks like the change will be made, over the 
heads of all the dissenting opinions, means several things:

1) New versions of 'Python' are not 'Python', and should be indicated
as such -- perhaps by calling it 'Python++' :)
2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the BDFL
perhaps calls into question the 'B'.  

If Guido does change Python in the way it currently appears it will,
and if so many people disagree with the way it is developing, then
why not stand up and call for people to ignore the dictator, and
keep Python the way it should be? 

This new version of Python will not be one that I will be happy to use. 
If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
able to depose the dictatorship, and create a stable and sensible 
system for developing Python (not Python++). If this means forking 
Python, then that will be done.

...

Alternatively, the people that have been baffled and amazed by recent
developments in Python could actually turn out to be all heat and light,
without any substance. It would just be nice to know where I stand.
If enough people are interested in deposing the dictator, then I will
happily join them -- otherwise I will just add my name to the list of
sound-and-fury grumblers, and fade back into darkness.

--
Jonathan Ingram


From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Fri Jul 13 11:35:57 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:35:57 GMT
Subject: Assert in (embedded) pythonWin...
Message-ID: <3b4f13f9.24284379@news.iway.fr>

Hi, 

I try ( and it's not that easy for me) to embed PythonWin.

For I now, I got a assert in win32win.cpp, line 3526.
The creation of the 5th control bar failed...

It's not that important, because pythonWin launch after I ignore the
assert, but it's not very clean.
Someone has a idea ?


Thanks, 

Emmanuel


From max at alcyone.com  Thu Jul 19 22:31:05 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:31:05 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995580633.1267.python-list@python.org> <cpsnfsfqjk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5797E9.BA51AA99@alcyone.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
> 
> > The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
> > is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?
> 
> You flunked math, right?  The number of available identifiers is still
> infinite...

And is, in fact, corresponds to the same transfinite cardinal number.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
\__/ Berthold Auerbach
    The laws list / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/
 Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.


From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Thu Jul  5 06:17:03 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:17:03 GMT
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr> <tk6tumj4ucre9d@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3b443731.3777511@news.iway.fr>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:08:19 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:

>
>"Emmanuel Astier" <emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr> wrote in message
>news:3b431024.15341289 at news.iway.fr...
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> I embedded and extended python for a game, and I was REALLY
>> disappointed by the performances I get...
>>
>> Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my
>> Python logical part from my C game with :
>
>There's one thing that needs to be said right off - while there are
>many successful commercial games that use a scripting language to
>control the actual flow of the game, they don't, and I must repeat,
>they don't call the script every frame. As you've noticed, it's just
>too slow. It's the responsibility of the game engine (written in C
>or C++, with Assembler assists as needed for performance) to
>handle everything until, and only until, the engine needs a decision.

I don't agree : I worked on a successful commercial game, and I writed
the script for this game, and it was REALLLY light, and I run it every
frame.
The language was far more simple and stupid that Python, but it was
aimed for a PSone ( 33Mhz ! ).
I was hoping that aiming a real PC, I could use a language like
Python.
But I agree my older script didn't had to handle 200 objects per
seconds.

BTW, a game like Unreal has a script that's called every frame (all
the logical part is scripted), and it runs quite well :)

>
>With 200 sprites, I presume you're doing some kind of arcade type
>game - lots of stuff flashing around the screen, and the gameplayer is
>pushing his hand-eye coordination to the limit. People don't use scripting
>languages for that, except possibly for transitions.

The 200 sprites were just a test.
I intend to use the script for our engine, and having to specialize it
yet.

>
>Scripting languages are used where there is an extended storyline
>embedded in the game, such as Adventure or RPG type games. The
>script handles the storyline and transition, and the game engine handles
>everything else.
>
>For example, in Zork: Grand Inquisitor, there's a point early in the
>game where the adventurer comes across a glass box on the wall, with the
>sign "in case of adventure, break glass." The mechanism to solve this puzzle
>requires a state machine with around five states and five or six inputs,
>each
>state transition requires that the scene is updated. There are literally
>hundreds
>of such situations in the game.
>
>If you tried to do this in C or C++, with the inevitable rewrites as the
>game
>designers tried to tweak it this way and that to make the game a compelling,
>memorable experiance, you'd run through your budget in no time flat.

I totally agree... 

>
>>
>> PyObject_CallFunction( LogicalEntryPoint, NULL );
>>
>> Logical Entry Point being a PyObject* pointing on the name of the
>> function.
>
>I presume that you've made sure that the function is preloaded in
>memory at all times - it does not have to be reloaded from disk
>or recompiled from a string.


Gulp.............

Euh... I don't know how to be sure my function is preloaded, and not
on the disk... How can I do that ?


>
>> My function do only :
>>
>>     for i in range ( 0, NbTestSprites - 1 ):
>>         ListOfSprites[i].setPos( 100, 100 )
>>
>> ie it sets the pos of 200 sprites.
>> ListOfSprites is a tuple of 200 sprites, sprites is a extension class,
>> and setPos one of its method.
>
>"for i in range(...)" creates 101 objects each time it's executed: it
>has to build a tuple, and objects for all numbers from 101 to 200.
>(numbers from -1 to 100 are preallocated in the interpreter). It's
>faster if this is done once, and then passed to the for loop:
>
>foobar = range(0, NbTestSprites - 1)
>
>for i in foobar:
>
>This only works if foobar is stored somewhere where it doesn't have
>to be recreated on each call.
>

Designers will handle the scripts and I'm not sure they will use this
kind of optimisation ( using map seems a good win here too ).

>>
>> I'm using Swig to extend Python with my C functions ( I Tried Boost
>> too, but there is even more overhead... )
>
>Swig is intended to make extension more convenient. Convenience is
>usually exactly opposite to performance. Do it by hand.

Swig is not really something appearing in the profile.
but the PyArg_ParseTuple function could appear...

Thansk for your reponse, 

Emmanuel



From nikolai.kirsebom at siemens.no  Thu Jul 12 12:40:23 2001
From: nikolai.kirsebom at siemens.no (Nikolai Kirsebom)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:40:23 GMT
Subject: Coexistence of SOAP-server and MS-IIS
Message-ID: <3b4dd214.587664066@news.mch.sni.de>

I have a web-server running IIS and would like to make a small
testapplication using the SOAP protocol.  Is it possible to have both
IIS running and a SOAP-server running on the same machine, or will
they 'fight' for the same resources (communication).

Nikolai



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul 16 12:11:48 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:11:48 GMT
Subject: Structuring packages
References: <3B52CFF4.84AFD40D@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3f46ltsv9svhtsla6gsuk3e541sgfjm3or@4ax.com>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:28:52 +0100, Sven ?string <s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>The documentation at www.python.org expressed the structure of a package
>as a hierarchical filesystem, with subpackages being labelled as
>filenames.  However, there is more to this structure than is described -
>how is a package in Python actually structured, in terms of storing
>subpackages and linking subpackages into the main package?

It's just what it says it is, except that when a package is a directory, it is
expected that there will be an __init__.py file in the directory, IIRC. I don't
do this very often, so you'll want to double-check.

C//



From beazley at cs.uchicago.edu  Tue Jul 17 22:49:07 2001
From: beazley at cs.uchicago.edu (David Beazley)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:49:07 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Augmented Assignment in Python (PER)
In-Reply-To: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2B9@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
References: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2B9@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>
Message-ID: <15188.63779.766080.105135@gargoyle.cs.uchicago.edu>

Delaney, Timothy writes:
 > > built-in types (if there is such an example, please enlighten me!).
 > 
 > This is very very wrong.
 > 
 > a = []
 > b = a
 > 
 > print b
 > a += [1, 2]
 > print b
 > 
 > List is a built-in type. Lists are modified in-place by augmented
 > assignment.

Noted. Thanks. 

 > The information in your book will lead to bad programming errors.

Oh, I don't think my book has any kind of monopoly on creating
potentially bad programming errors--just look at the PEPs (sic) :-).

Cheers,

Dave







From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Tue Jul  3 10:25:14 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 09:25:14 -0500
Subject: Interesting speed benchmark
References: <3B1D6FED.4070506@nospam.yahoo.com> <9fkh50$6e1$1@panix6.panix.com> <9fkt3u$1i0ub$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <3b1e331b.1407333@news.laplaza.org>
Message-ID: <m2ofr2m6np.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

xyzmats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann) writes:

> That's because Java leaves that to the gabage collector. Which is
> quite sophisticated but to us mere mortals often presents the image of
> "yeah, yeah, I'll get around to it. Maybe tomorrow."  But this sounds
> like a place where it would do okay, because the whole wonky chain of
> 10000 objects can be reaped by the gc.
> 
> Nonetheless, I'm not convinced that's what's going on here.
> Mats Wichmann

Actually, I have several friends that live in Java.  For a very long time,
they were always first to point out how fast Java was at performing a task
in a benchmark (home-grown or otherwise).  I was always first to point out
that MOST benchmarks do not run long enough for Java's gc to kick in.  Once
Java's gc kicks in, you often see a *HUGE* correction in performance.  What
does this mean?  Well, it means that Java's gc implementation is AWESOME
for benchmarks.  It also means that anything you benchmark is Java is usually
a worthless indicator of real-world performance if it's going to be in a
long-running application (that is, runs long enough for the gc to start
running).  My friends have finally acknowledged this and now rarely show me
benchmarks unless they know what the JVM's memory settings are  and can
at least guess at if gc is running.  Now that they do this, most of their
boasts have been removed from their sails.  The other metric that often
gets ignored is the huge JVM start up time.  Likewise, people tend to
forget allow python to byte-compile before they measure.  While these may
not be the single attribute that is making the difference here, it is worth
pointing out that it certainly may be a factor.

Please keep in mind that I'm not trying to bash Java or say that Python
is better.  Rather, I'm only saying that when you are comparing Java to
ANY other language, you must make sure you really are comparing apples to
apples.  Likewise, I find that most Java programmers don't understand enough
of the internals to truly be in a position to offer any type of meaningful
comparison because the simply don't understand what's going on under the
covers.  Again, this is not a whack at Java or Java programmers...just some
observations gleaned from my experiences.


-- 
Greg Copeland, Principal Consultant
Copeland Computer Consulting
--------------------------------------------------
PGP/GPG Key at http://www.keyserver.net
DE5E 6F1D 0B51 6758 A5D7  7DFE D785 A386 BD11 4FCD
--------------------------------------------------


From cb921 at voice.co.za  Thu Jul 12 10:17:16 2001
From: cb921 at voice.co.za (Campbell)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:17:16 +0200
Subject: Number::Spell
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107121615560.6412-100000@cb921.local>

Hello,

This was something I once used from perl a long time ago.  Does anyone
know of a function to return a list of words making up an english
number, from a normal set of digits?

Thank you for any help,

  No one speaks and no one tries
  No one flies around the sun....



From tundra at tundraware.com  Fri Jul 27 13:10:03 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:10:03 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com> <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107270155.72f8c5aa@posting.google.com> <pgc87.237$bXi.178337280@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <3B61A061.2634D595@tundraware.com>

Thomas Weholt wrote:
>
> What do you mean by "reliability"? I think we're talking about different
> worlds here; I'm developing a system for normal users, who can accept
> infrequent failures and some downtime without ending in financial ruin.

For end-user computing, you may be right.  For back-office computing
I think the risk is way too high.

> Companies spending millions on huge projects cannot. SOAP is supported by
> IBM, Microsoft etc. and would they risk promoting, even building complex
> systems like .NET on this technology if it wasn't suitable at all?

Umm, yes they would.  Microsoft built a multi-billion dollar empire
on buggy, unreliable software that is "good enough" for consumer-grade problems.
As you point out above "reliable" depends in what context and by what measure
you are working.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 19 22:45:20 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:45:20 -0500
Subject: Parsing TCL?
In-Reply-To: <roy-8EF99A.21173519072001@news1.panix.com>
References: <roy-8EF99A.21173519072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <15191.39744.646542.487991@beluga.mojam.com>

    Roy> I know this is probably a strange request, but does anybody know of
    Roy> a python module which parses TCL files?

No, but isn't Tcl essentially just

    command arg arg arg arg

?  I thought it was designed to be extremely easy to parse.  Shouldn't be
hard to write a parser for it I wouldn't think.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 18:07:54 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 22:07:54 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9m155p.og5.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:34 GMT, Peter Dobcsanyi <petrus at pobox.com> wrote:
>But, I don't like the "//" operator symbol what we are supposed to use
>for implementing "a // b == floor(a/b)". Here are my reasons, in not any
>particular order reflecting (my subjectively assigned) importance:
>
>    - It is ugly, two characters.

Ugly is subjective... but it looks fine to me.  Two characters?  Well, 'and'
is three.  But if your concern is not "less readable" but "too much typing"
consider that they're the same two characters and don't need shift.  Consider
also that your priorities may be misplaced.

>    - Some languages use it for starting comments.

So?  Most don't.  Some use ';', many use '--', and some even use 'rem' or 'C'
at the beginning of a line.  I gather Visual Basic uses '.  Should python not
use single quotes?  I don't understand.

At least Eiffel uses // for integer division (and \\ for remainder... or is it
modulus?).

>    - "//" is hard to read, i.e. quickly clearly distinguish from "/"
>      the other division operator.

It looks pretty visually distinct to me.  But that's also subjective.

>    - When the transition period over (around 3.x or something) the
>      visual and typing characteristic of "//" can be source of error.

I don't quite understand this sentence :)

>At some stage in the future, the warnings will be turned off, everybody
>knows the new rules. But typing mistakes, oversights happen, so I can
>accidentally write "/" instead of "//" and vice versa:

That's the same situation as the current one: you have to know what kind of
division you want.  If you get it wrong, you get the wrong number.  No
warnings.  Only the current implementation uses the same operator for both
meanings, so you also have to know the types of the values on both sides (or
insure them with float() or int()).

>I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable one-character
>symbol for the "nb_intdivide". PEP238 is to fix a "design fault". If we
>go for it despite of all the _temporary_ pain, we should not be shy,
>there is nothing wrong with doing it radically not just semantically but
>also visually. One of the nice virtue of the Python language is that it
>is readable, keep it this way.
>
>"nb_intdivide" and "nb_divide" are very different let's show this
>difference. Among the still free symbols ("?", "@", "$" I guess) I
>would suggest to use "$" for the integer division.

Ick.  At least '//' suggests division.  "x $ y" makes me think of some kind of
low-precedence function application or something.  No thanks.

I do like the idea of 'div' and 'mod', but I also appreciate the reluctance to
pile on the reserved words.  We already have 'yield', that should be enough
for a few years (although I would have preferred 'suspend').  I also like the
idea of ad-hoc `infix` operators, but that's already been mentioned :)


From kalath at lycos.com  Mon Jul 23 12:54:38 2001
From: kalath at lycos.com (Mark Brady)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 09:54:38 -0700
Subject: Stackless for 2.1?
Message-ID: <e840346c.0107230854.70ca2543@posting.google.com>

Hello,
      Does anybody know if stackless for 2.1 will be released soon?

Thanks,
Mark.


From tjenkins at devis.com  Sun Jul  8 15:38:48 2001
From: tjenkins at devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:38:48 -0400
Subject: Gotcha in replace
References: <mailman.994564693.26957.python-list@python.org> <9i9icb$hkm7l$1@ID-41653.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B48B6C8.3030805@devis.com>

Hi Tobias,

Tobias Klausmann wrote:

> Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at devis.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hello all,
>>While I was working on some database scripting, I got bit by this 
>>behavior in replace.
>>
>>
>>>>>y = "insert into blah values ('hello','','','','bye')"
>>>>>y.replace(",'',", ",' ',")
>>>>>
>>"insert into blah values ('hello',' ','',' ','bye')"
>>
>>Notice that the second matching set of ",''," characters are not 
>>replaced probably because the first and second matching sets overlap on 
>>the last and first character, respectively.
>>
>>It was trivial for this script to work around the gotcha (I just put the 
>>replace in a loop and broke out when new string equalled the old 
>>string).  But that method may not be an appropriate workaround in all cases.
>>
>>Is this known behavior and I just missed it; or is this a bug in replace?
>>
> 
> I wouldn't call it a bug even if it's a gotcha. You're
> replacing ,'', with ,' ', and then look for the next
> occurence of ,'',. The search starts *after* what you
> just replaced, therefore it doesn't match (there would
> have to be something like ,'',,'', ).


Sure, that's what I meant by the last and first characters overlapping 
(obviously it was late and I didn't make myself clear in the post - 
sorry).  I was just wondering if that behavior - restarting the search 
*after* the replacement was the intended behavior.  I can live with it 
either way, really.


> 
> Maybe a better replace-call would be:
> y.replace(",''", ",' '")
> By this, the next occurence should be found correctly.
> 


Yes that would be a better replace-call for the dummy string I posted. 
Unfortunately, the actual data contains numerous comma-quote-quote (,'') 
entries like so: "...,'','', '.... the following 
''Quote1'',''Quote2'',and ''Quote3''.....',...."

The database dump that generates the file I'm using automatically 
escapes single quotes with another quote.

Maybe I'll just go to the person who created the destination database 
and have them change those fields marked NOT NULL, then I wouldn't have 
to do any replace calls <wink>.

yeah-why-am-i-working-around-the-dba's-mistake-ly yours,
Tom
-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com




From syring at email.com  Sun Jul 15 13:14:57 2001
From: syring at email.com (Karl M. Syring)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 19:14:57 +0200
Subject: [Q]Remove Directory in Win2k
References: <3hMlEP$l9c@openbazaar.net>
Message-ID: <9isj52$k5sis$1@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de>

"?Q?@?U" <skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3hMlEP$l9c at openbazaar.net...
> Hi~~guys ^^
> My patition is NTFS
> when I execute below codes, it return error "Permission Denied".
> And, the directiory "test" remainly exist.
>
>    import os
>    os.mkdir('test')
>    os.remove('test')

That should be
 os.rmdir('test')

Karl M. Syring





From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul  5 13:15:09 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:15:09 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Or (without re):

print "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Jeffery D. Collins" <jcollins at boulder.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994351690.22119.python-list at python.org...
> >>> import re
> >>> re.sub("[^0-9]", "", "(555) 333.2221")
> '5553332221'
>
> or
>
> >>> c = re.compile("[^0-9]")
> >>> c.sub("", "(555) 333.2221")
> '5553332221'
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:15:38AM -0500, Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
> > I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away
everything
> > except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do
this.
> > Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
> >
> > stripped_phone=''
> > for c in phone_number:
> > if c in digits:
> > stripped_phone += c
> >
> > but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure
there
> > is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).
> >
> > Greg Lindstrom
> > Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> > InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> > 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911
> > email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com
> >
> > "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
> >
> >                                                             Albert
Einstein
>
> --
> Jeffery Collins (http://www.boulder.net/~jcollins)
>



From emile at fenx.com  Mon Jul 16 09:12:26 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 06:12:26 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4rck.rlt.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l4sjj.pv9.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9iupf5$l5ejl$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

---------
"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn9l4sjj.pv9.tim at vegeta.ath.cx...
<Snip On Topic Discussion)
> --
> 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
> -- Bill Gates (circa 1981)

Don't worry.  They won't be running this code in 20 years.
  -- Just about everyone else...

;-)

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com



From gradha at iname.com  Mon Jul 23 15:21:06 2001
From: gradha at iname.com (gradha at iname.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:21:06 +0200
Subject: The windows python.exe interpreter hangs processing large files.
References: <mailman.995751036.29760.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <2fthj9.2hk.ln@127.0.0.1>

>> [gradha at iname.com]
>> Under Linux everything goes blazing fast, and since everything hangs
>> I don't know what to do or how to debug it, especially because Windows
>> is not my native work environment and don't master any tools there.
> Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> Stick in print statements to determine *where* it hangs.

All output is written in sys.stdout, so I didn't redirect the output and
found out that the problem was inserting a big text file while scanning
it for recursive insertions. My script is some sort of html parser
and I use the re module to find <include-src=filename> tags, substituting
them with the pointed file instead.

> Then whittle it
> down to a minimal case.  The most frequent cause of Linux->Windows Python
> porting problems is neglecting to open binary files in binary mode.

A grep for open calls showed only "rt" modes. I solved the problem
avoiding the DOTALL option of the <include...> tag and rewritting my
brute force algorithm, which inserted whole files as a single string, to
use instead lists of lines, since the <include...> tag cannot be
split over more than a single line, and now the dos/windows version works
fast. If somebody wants to get the "bad" script along with some files to
parse, you can get it all from sourceforges cvs:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.alleg.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/alleg/ co allegrowww

Just check out the version from "Sun Jul 22 09:21 2001 UTC". Alternatively
if somebody wants to check for this dos hangs, I can prepare a smaller
.zip with just the needed files to reproduce the problem, just mail me
privately. The hangs were so terrible that not even Ctrl+C interrupted
the script (and this ran on a PII 300 with plenty of ram...).

BTW, one user ran the script with Python 2.1 and got some warning messages
I don't get with 1.5 or 2.0:

c:\python21\python.exe webmake.py -o out -M src/*.html > dependency_info
webmake.py:0: SyntaxWarning: name 'expresion_include' is assigned to
before global declaration

My script is something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import some_modules

expresion_multi = None
expresion_...
...

What's that and what can I do to avoid these warnings?

--
 Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org


From fpm at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul  2 18:28:12 2001
From: fpm at u.washington.edu (Frank Miles)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 22:28:12 GMT
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <9hn12v$p0r$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net> <Xns90D2622C0266C89065hrerehxvb@139.88.112.200>
Message-ID: <9hqshs$k9m$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

In article <Xns90D2622C0266C89065hrerehxvb at 139.88.112.200>,
Ted Wright <wright at grc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>anon at nym.net wrote in news:9hn12v$p0r$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net:
>>"Lothar Scholz" wrote:
>>> Is there something other then "Black Adder" which  is behind an  alpha
>>> version ?
>>
>> Have you tried using Glade?
>> 
>> With the assistance of libglade it is exceptionally easy to use Glade
>> and attach handlers written in Python.
>
>Has anyone made this work under Windows? I tried it a few months ago, and
>it worked great under Linux, but there seemed to be some piece (Python
>bindings for libGlade?) missing under Windows. 

There appears to be a gap as the Python-version-transition occurs.  There
are pieces for 2.0 and for 2.1, but not, it seems, all the pieces for
both.  At least I haven't found them.

pygtk stuff is available for 2.0 (the best functioning stuff that I've
found is part of the Gimp distribution, though the pygtk installer may
also work with some manual help -- the *.py and _gtk.pyd files don't seem
to be installed into all the right places (this can be assisted manually).

libglade stuff was graciously sent by Cedric Gustin, but he's working on
Python 2.1.

I tried running a mixed-version system (actually several combinations) but
failed to get it working.  Wouldn't mind doing Linux compiles, but my
system isn't set up to compile for Windows, and I hesitate to start down
that path.  Hopefully Hans Breuer will soon port to 2.1.

	-frank
-- 


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul  7 18:12:52 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 15:12:52 -0700
Subject: Any detailed tutor for python multi-thread programming?
References: <mailman.994443086.32584.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i81h4$33t$1@panix2.panix.com>

[posted & e-mailed]

In article <mailman.994443086.32584.python-list at python.org>,
Bill Bell <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote:
>
>XiaoQin Xia <XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> sent a message that 
>"is not in displayable format".
>
>Some places to read about Python threads:
>	http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/IPC9/index.html

Please refer to my Starship home page:
http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/

I'm likely to rearrange things at some point, but that URL is probably
safe as long as the Starship survives.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Jul 26 20:39:58 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:39:58 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995739157.3632.python-list@python.org> <9onjltohimabuu0to7b1n7lnme21nrl8hc@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jqd8u$pkk$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote:
...
> I'm not saying that it never happened. I'm saying, if it did, I don't
> remember it. (In other words, it was so easily dealt with--if at
> all--that it was not noteworthy.) Also, *if* it did occur (which to my
> recollection it did not), it was easily dealt with.

> Anyhow, I'm conducting a survey of computer science teachers. I hope I
> will get a good 30 to 50 responses? In a few weeks I will post the
> results.

Probably to late by now, but could you include in that survey queries
to find out if finding the proper spelling for library goodies is a
frequent problem.  IIRC that was what was likely/possibly the
underlying problem the Alice project stumbled accross and labeled
case-sensitivity-problem.
-- 
groetjes, carel


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Sat Jul 14 15:15:37 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 19:15:37 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net> <9ip0u401117@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b507741.1900473085@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <of61ltsf59np9d94qgi3l0vt077lb3q5t8@4ax.com>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:55:25 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:

>From the grammar, we have
>    funcdef: 'def' NAME parameters ':' suite
>where
>    parameters: '(' [varargslist] ')'
>and
>    lambdef: 'lambda' [varargslist] ':' test
>
>So what would happen if that last "test" were
>changed to "suite" ? If the end of "suite" is
>well defined, why would there be a problem?

If that's *all* you do, this happens:

harper:~/tmp/Python-2.1.1c1> ./python
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Python 2.1.1c1 (#1, Jul 14 2001, 14:09:38)
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on sunos5
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> t = lambda a:
...     if a == 1:
...             print 'hi'
...     else:
...             print 'bye'
...
>>> t
<function <lambda> at be4ac>
>>> t(1)
hi
Bus error
harper:~/tmp/Python-2.1.1c1>

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 10:39:46 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:39:46 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com>

In article <9jnt9p$qhe$1 at newsy.ifm.liu.se>, Paul Svensson wrote:

>The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
>regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.

If that's important, why won't the other math operators do it???

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Now that I have my
                                  at               "APPLE," I comprehend COST
                               visi.com            ACCOUNTING!!


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 18:01:37 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:01:37 -0300
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <9hnfs3$dag$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701190024.02773880@mail.inet.com.br>

At 15:33 01/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>I've just submitted a version of PEP 2 to Barry. It's only a first step
>on this path, but it's a step.

I was going to write on myself. Can you send it to the list for us to work 
with? It is not listed on the website; the "stub" one is there.


Carlos Ribeiro





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 17 17:24:04 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:24:04 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: and now for something really different... (was: PEP: Defining Python
 Source Code Encodings)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107180043410.15217-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171455520.11975-100000@bms>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
<...>
> Or, yes! And some dosstrings could be web-cam broadcasts from PythonLabs
> ;-)
>
> Well, at least some recording must be done.
> For example, when Python starts, it shows random piece
> from M.P.F.C. show. (When Digicool will buy rights to MPFC?)

I would expect a videodocstring to boil down to a URL, which could be
local or reference a webcam.  Once the infrastructure is in place it
would be possible to extend the functionality to other aspects of
Python...

> Or when user tries to put xrange outside for loop statement,
> GvR's voice says: "Oh, no!"

...including that... but why stop there... ring a bell inside
PythonLabs and bring up a webcam connection, then one of the
language's designers can try to talk the programmer out of doing it.
You could have a whole network of online-tutors, all just waiting to
pop up and tell you how to code (if it was allowed as per settings in
the system wide and per-user __styleguide__.py magic files).

Or maybe some .com's support staff popping up whenever a Python
program generates an uncaught exception.

<0.0 wink>


- Bruce




From benjamin.altman at noaa.gov  Tue Jul 10 11:23:19 2001
From: benjamin.altman at noaa.gov (Benjamin.Altman)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:23:19 -0400
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9idp67$jln$2@gondor.sdsu.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4B1DE7.142B815C@noaa.gov>

stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:

> I'll just quote:
>
>    This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
>    documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by the
>    compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September 1999)
>

Who cares?  The above is just personal opinion and preference like everything else - not a rule or
law.



From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul  8 00:57:12 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:57:12 -0400
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <3b477513$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <3B47E828.15E2C9C5@engcorp.com>

Neil Macneale wrote:
> 
> I am wondering if there is a straight forward license which I can use for
> python code I plan to distribute.  Is there a standard header, or
> possibly a link that can be placed in a header which basically says that
> people use the code at there own risk, and that they are free to change
> it?  I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
> GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?

How about this vanilla header?

"This code is placed in the public domain."

(Well, just on the off chance you hadn't thought of that approach. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From pj at sgi.com  Tue Jul 31 03:44:25 2001
From: pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 07:44:25 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com> <nQq87.6146$YP2.191178@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <9k5nkp$7k9rq$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>

|> On the other hand, I've never understood the corporate mentality of
|> "The bugs we know are safer than the fixes we don't know".

It comes from (1) avoiding unpleasant surprises to ones boss,
and (2) measuring power by the size of ones organization.

Ongoing work, caused by known bugs perhaps, is good - it
justifies power and budget.  Change is bad, because some
portion of it will have the side affect of provoking fear
and anger in ones boss.

In any case ... coding Python is clearly superior to
any of the above ...

Be grateful that you've "never understood".

(I make no allusions above to any current or recent
boss ... only to ones long past <grin>.)
-- 

                          I won't rest till it's the best ...
                          Manager, Linux Scalability
                          Paul Jackson <pj at sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 20:39:46 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:39:46 -0400
Subject: Question...
References: <3B6737BE.2CCC0A1A@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <3B674FD2.9A438760@engcorp.com>

Adonis Vargas wrote:
> 
> how come this code does not seem to popup on any broswer i attempt to
> send HTML data to:
> 
>     (c, a) = s.accept()
>     c.send('HTTP 200 OK\n')
>     c.send('Content-Type: text/html\n')
>     c.send('')

As noted by Steven, c.send('') does nothing... so you aren't
sending the required extra newline here.

Why are you sending anything to the browser before receiving what
it has sent to you?  I think with HTTP you should send nothing
until you get the request from the client....

>     d = c.recv(256)

Why 256?  This seems to be your problem.  What if the client 
has more data to send before it is done with you?  It won't 
accept your response because you closed the socket before it 
was even finished talking to you.  I tried something based on
your basic code (although it wouldn't have hurt to post the
three lines required to set up the connection and removed the
RED and RESET stuff so you had a self-contained example),
and changing 256 to 2560 was enough to get a redirect...
(to www.engcorp.com at least, since www.python.org didn't
respond at the time :-( )

I hope you are doing this as a learning exercise, because if
you are actually trying to write an HTTP server from scratch
you should try using the standard library modules that already
implement HTTP in a much more thorough and correct manner.
Or at least they could serve as good examples/starting points.

Cheers!
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Thu Jul 12 20:41:39 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:41:39 -0400
Subject: Digest Number 2752
In-Reply-To: <994980143.687.71328.l10@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E0B83.27727.2D7529@localhost>

"Harvest T. Moon" <info at black-karma.de> wrote:
> is there any tutorial/documentation on how to use the ActiveState
> Win32GUI extension?

Dear Mr Moon (or would you prefer Harvest?):

In case no one more knowledgeable writes, I'd say have a look at 
the demos in the win32/demos folder.

Bill



From wqh-2 at 263.net  Mon Jul 30 11:23:02 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:23:02 +0800 (CST)
Subject: error occur when using py2exe
Message-ID: <3B657BD6.28902@mta2>

I type the following,but error appear.
I put the the myscript.py file  under d:/python21/program/
I think I must give a directory to the setup ,but when I use
setup(name="myscript",scripts=["/program/myscript.py"],)
error also jump out. How can I fix it 
>>> from distutils.core import setup
>>> import py2exe
>>> setup(name="myscript",scripts=["myscript.py"],)


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in ?
    setup(name="myscript",scripts=["myscript.py"],)
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\core.py", line 125, in setup
    raise SystemExit, \
SystemExit: usage:  [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or:  --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or:  --help-commands
   or:  cmd --help

error: no commands supplied
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Fri Jul  6 12:44:47 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:44:47 -0400
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
In-Reply-To: <994421184.483900@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>; from whats_really_hot@hotmail.com on Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 03:07:47PM +0300
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net> <994421184.483900@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <20010706124447.A867@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 03:07:47PM +0300, whats_really_hot wrote:
> yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only
> for web reading and this requires time -internet time, which is
> unfortunately expensive.
> 
> so, any other proposals for sites that contain text about python
> tutoring?  every recommendation is welcome!

Standard answer is the official online docs.  But, I guess you already
tried that.  I don't think there is any paper book available online for
free (for obvious reason).

If you want to read off-line, then just download .html.tar.gz file, and
read with a browser.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From just at letterror.com  Sun Jul  1 15:59:27 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:59:27 +0200
Subject: No os._exit() in MacOS?
References: <eppstein-CDC3AB.11522101072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B3F811D.41162F15@letterror.com>

David Eppstein wrote:

> I am having difficulty getting a Mac W applet to exit cleanly --
> sys.exit(0) causes W.application.mainloop() to put up a traceback window
> (and not quit), W.application._quit() causes W to stop responding (but
> still not quit, unless called from a Quit event handler), and os._exit(0)
> isn't available on the Mac.  Are there any other alternatives?

W.getapplication()._quit() works for me. Can you verify that that works
when you've just started the IDE? If yes, I'll need to know more details
about what you've done before.

> As a sign that this isn't only my problem, the BuildApplication applet that
> comes with the 2.1 build has similar problems -- if you let it run to
> completion, it gets into a state where you can't exit without
> Cmd-Ctrl-Option-Esc.

Sorry, no idea :-(

(I think you'd better ask these questions on the macpython list.)

Just


From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Fri Jul  6 10:35:47 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 14:35:47 GMT
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <9i4ic3$f3v$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000 at leo.logilab.fr>, 
alf at logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle) wrote:

> However I get this \231 character from elsewhere (some webpage, 
> actually),
> and I need to get a way to pass it around. Using 
>       server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1').encode('utf-8'))
> dies not help either.

Have you tried

 server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1'))

?  Dunno about xmlrpc, but it works with SOAP.


                        Graham


From dan at cgsoftware.com  Mon Jul  9 03:17:35 2001
From: dan at cgsoftware.com (Daniel Berlin)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:17:35 -0400
Subject: Package DB: strawman PEP
In-Reply-To: <20010708234624.A30892@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> (Andrew Kuchling's message of "Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:46:24 -0400")
References: <20010708234624.A30892@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <87bsmur2pc.fsf@cgsoftware.com>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

>     XXX how much do we care about performance?  Do we really need to
>     use an anydbm file or something similar?
> 
>     XXX is the actual filename important?  Let's say the installation
>     data for PIL is in the file INSTALLDB/Numeric.  Is this OK?  When
>     we want to figure out if Numeric is installed, do we want to open
>     a single file, or have to scan them all?  Note that for
>     human-interface purposes, we'll often have to scan all the
>     packages anyway, for a case-insensitive or keyword search.

Errr, how so?
If you mean keyword/case-insensitive on package description/name,
just keep an anydbm whose sole purpose is to list the installed
packages and descriptions, and nothing else.
Then you could just search all they keys, rather than have to open and
close 600 files or whatever. Every time (if you cached it in memory, instead of
doing it every time,  you'd have an in memory version of this anydbm
database, and if you go that far, you might as well just store it in the database).

This can easily be rebuilt in case of corruption, since *it* was
generated initially by scanning the files (you just keep it up to date
when you install packages, and if something gets out of whack,
completely rebuild it).

> 
> Database Contents
> 
>     Each file in $INSTALLDB or its subdirectories describes a single
>     package, and has the following contents:
> 
>         An initial line listing the sections in this file, separated
>         by whitespace.  Currently this will always be 'PKG-INFO
>         FILES'.  This is for future-proofing; if we add a new section,
>         for example to list documentation files, then we'd add a DOCS
>         section and list it in the contents.  Sections are always
>         separated by blank lines.  XXX too simple?

Can we try to keep delimiters the same where possible (IE why use
whitespace here, but tabs for file entries)?  



> 
>         [PKG-INFO section] An initial set of RFC-822 headers
>         containing the package information for a file, as described in
>         PEP 241, "Metadata for Python Software Packages".
> 
>         A blank line indicating the end of the PKG-INFO section.
> 
>         An entry for each file installed by the package.  
>         XXX Are .pyc and .pyo files in this list?  What about compiled
>         .so files?  AMK thinks "no" and "yes", respectively.
> 
>     Each file's entry is a single tab-delimited line that contains the
>     following fields: 
>     XXX should each file entry be all on one line and
>     tab-delimited?  More RFC-822 headers?  AMK thinks tab-delimited
>     seems sufficent.
> 
>         * The file's size
>  
>         * XXX do we need to store permissions?  The owner/group?  
> 
owner/group will get you in trouble if the owner/group doesn't exist
on the other system.
>         * An MD5 digest of the file, written in hex.  (XXX All 16
>           bytes of the digest seems unnecessary; first 8 bytes only,
>           maybe?  Is a zlib.crc32() hash sufficient?)
We should use either MD5 or sha1.
MD5 can be done at 10 meg a second (easily) on a pentium 90. So it's
fast enough.  8 bytes is fine enough, just make it the first 8.
crc32 will probably not be faster (unless you have *huge* .py files,
you are going to be dominated here by open/close/seek time, not
read/checksum calculation time)
> 
>         * The file's full path, as installed on the system.  (XXX
>           should it be relative to sys.prefix, or sys.prefix +
>           '/lib/python<version>?'  If so, full paths are still needed;
>           consider a package that installs a startup script such as
>           /etc/init.d/zope)
>           
>         * XXX some sort of type indicator, to indicate whether this is
>           a Python module, binary module, documentation file, config
>           file?  Do we need this?
Well, it would allow you to purge docs seperately from the rest of the
package, or purge everything but the config files. I've used both
options myself. The other option is to put docs in a seperate package.

> 
>     A package that uses the Distutils for installation will
>     automatically update the database.  Packages that roll their own
>     installation 
> 
>     XXX what's the relationship between this database and the RPM or
>     DPKG database?  I'm tempted to make the Python database completely
>     optional; a distributor can preserve the interface of the package
>     management tool and replace it with their own wrapper on top of
>     their own package manager.  (XXX but how would the Distutils know
>     that, and not bother to update the Python database?)

Well, why don't we email the package owners for a few distributions,
and see what they think?
:)


-- 
"My dental hygienist is cute.  Every time I visit, I eat a whole
package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby.  Sometimes
she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon's appointments.
"-Steven Wright



From xione at bellsouth.net  Sat Jul 28 12:24:37 2001
From: xione at bellsouth.net (Jeremy Moles)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 09:24:37 -0700
Subject: I want to do something:
Message-ID: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>

I want to do something every minute, but I also want the program to have a
small footprint. Does anyone have any advice? This is the code I have so
far:

import socket
import ftplib
x=socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
y=open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','w')
y.write(x)
y.close()
z=ftplib.FTP(host='softwherecompany.com')
z.login(user='john',passwd='doe')
z.cwd('public_html')
z.storlines('STOR IP.html',open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','r'))
z.close()

Basically, what this code does is get my IP address and upload it to my
webserver - since my IP is dynamic, and I never quite know what it is when I
leave this house.

But anyways - how can I do this - say - every minute or so? Could I:

import time

while(time.time()%60==0):
    do_my_function()

Also - I'd like to get rid of the temporary file in my code. You'll notice
that I had to create "y" so that it could be uploaded. Is there any way just
to write to a file on an ftp server with python without actually UPLOADING
an existing file?

Do I make any sense? =)





From kosh at aesaeion.com  Sat Jul 21 01:04:53 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 05:32:53 +0028
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org> <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net>

Bengt Richter wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:18:15 -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
> <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
> [...]
>>Likewise, in Python you rarely see syntactical but silly choices like:
>>
>>    >>> xlsoALwl390sslkslWW = 37
>>    >>> xlsoALwL390sslkslWW = 38
>>    >>> print xlsoALwL390sslkslWW,xlsoALwl390sslkslWW
>>    38 37
>>
> That does bring up the subject of machine-generated symbols though.
> And case sensitivity in dictionaries. I use base52 [A-Za-z] encoded
> md5's in certain contexts. If I use those as keys, will it break?

Losing case sensitivity in dictionaries would screw me pretty badly also. 
That would make it very hard to just use the unix name of a file etc as the 
entry in the dict. Since you would lose your cast mapping which is 
important. However it also seems if you keep the cast mapping in a 
dictionary then how can you make python not case about case since 
everything is based off of dictionaries.


From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 13:58:16 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:58:16 -0700
Subject: Python compiler
References: <20010630145541.94405.qmail@web13007.mail.yahoo.com> <mailman.993928547.9172.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44AAB8.5DF014F8@home.net>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> but I would say that if what you need is speed, the best solution
> is often to code in Python and then rewrite your inner loops in C.

That's what I do, but I have to say that I am very disappointed that I
have to. Now I have to know 2 languages (I'm not very good at C). What I
have found is that, as Paul suggests, you really only need that
"compiled" speed for a very small subset of your programs, but I end up
having to spent a week re-coding a small function in C that I wrote in a
couple of hours in Python (and I had the algorithm worked out already!)
If I was more experienced at C, it would be faster, but still a lot more
time. That's why I use Python in the first place. Personally, I'm
looking forward to the proposed "optionally static typing" for Py3k. If
this were combined with a revival of Py2C, I would probably never have
to write C again!

> Or even profile your Python and then optimize it. You'll be amazed how much
> speed you can squeeze out if you concentrate on your problem areas.

This works too (and use Numeric!) that's why I have only had to write a
handful of C functions in a couple of years of heavy Python use. That's
still a handful more that I would have liked.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 16:13:23 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 20:13:23 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpg0bmqfzs.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lrln1.aq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:33:34 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

>>    Isn't this backwards incompatible? Won't it break existing code? It
>>    would, if we changed the method resolution order for all classes.
>>    However, in Python 2.2, the new lookup rule will only be applied to
>>    types derived from built-in types, which is a new feature. Class
>>    statements without a base class create "classic classes", and so do
>>    class statements whose base classes are themselves classic classes.
>>    For classic classes the classic lookup rule will be used. (To
>>    experiment with the new lookup rule for classic classes, you will be
>>    able to specify a different metaclass explicitly.) We'll also provide
>>    a tool that analyzes a class hierarchy looking for methods that would
>>    be affected by a change in method resolution order.
> 
> There are many things that could be improved here.  What exactly is
> bothering you about it?

That a subtle difference in the program (deriving from a class which
inherits from a builtin type instead of using delegation) causes a
non-obvious subtle change in the behavior which doesn't seem related
to the source (method lookup order).

If some consistent rule of method lookup order is going to eventually
win, no matter which, then I didn't say anything. But if such fuzzy
behaviors are going to stay, they feel almost as bad as would
"'/' rounds down if you used '%' in the program or towards 0 otherwise"
feel to me.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From smarsh at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 23:12:24 2001
From: smarsh at hotmail.com (scott)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 03:12:24 GMT
Subject: Pythonic Quote of the Week - sliding away...
References: <mailman.994210026.25214.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B428990.B5AC4CB5@hotmail.com>


Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
<snip>
> 
> The solution as proposed by the main python-dev guys - Guido himself and
> Tim Peters - is that the community should take the responsibility to keep
> the library, as we can see here:
> 
> [Guido van Rossum, 2001-06-30 05:53:49 PST]
> So let's all do what we do best: the core developers (e.g. PythonLabs)
> improve the language, and the community improves the library.
> 
> [Tim Peters, Date: 2001-06-30 21:01:05 PST]
> A problem is that nobody at PythonLabs has any spare cycles. People can
> suggest any number of things we should do for them, but we're already
> overloaded -- it simply won't happen.
> 
> As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we
> must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this
> issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys.
> The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To
> make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.
> 
> One of things that plugged me on this "Python thing" was the "batteries
> included" motto. In fact, the strength of any programming environment can
> be measured by the extension and usability of its standard library. That's
> where Java is shining today. The investment on the standard library is one
> of the surest ways of making Python popular while keeping with the "there's
> one way to do it" motto.
> 
> Carlos Ribeiro

Because I know Java better than Python, I'll vent this unlikely
proposal:
Abandon cPython (ok, bug fix it for a while, then 'deprecate' it) and
throw all development effort behind Jython. The core developers can
continue to improve the Java implementation of Python and everyone else
can buy the three "Java in a Nutshell" books (key APIs, graphics APIs
and enterprise APIs) and take the rest of the decade off :-)

And for my next wish (the more likely one :-)), I'll take world peace.


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 31 22:59:31 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 02:59:31 GMT
Subject: .pyo compilation
References: <25b2e0d9.0107301306.16864cf7@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010731.230632.1789376348.12797@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <25b2e0d9.0107301306.16864cf7 at posting.google.com>, "gods1child"
<alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote:


> How do I dis/enable optimization of bytecodes in the current interpreter
> from within a script (as opposed to the standard -O option on firing up
> the interpreter). Need something that compiles to .pyo no matter what
> and py_compile isnt helping me (I think).  Tnx.

I am not 100% sure on this, but I believe telling Python to generate
'.pyo' files is impossible. The reason I say that is I because think Python
compiles ALL modules in each directory in sys.path during its
initialization phase, not at run time. Someone please correct me if I am
wrong.

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From roy at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 08:23:38 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:23:38 -0400
Subject: defining classes within loops?
Message-ID: <roy-10E6A4.08233827072001@news1.panix.com>

The documentation for the "continue" statement says:

> continue may only occur syntactically nested in a for or while loop,
> but not nested in a function or class definition

Just out of curiosity, how many people have ever written a function or 
class definition nested inside a loop?  Seems like sort of a strange thing 
to do, although I suppose it might be useful in some situations.


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 30 19:29:57 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 19:29:57 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com> <3B61E456.78DFE802@sneakemail.com> <9k4nf2$g70$1@news.btv.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <ulml6572i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Peter Mayne" <Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com> writes:

> Suppose he's just left the job, and you've taken his place. Since he has
> (not unreasonably) not documented his use of the arithmetic operators,
> because for some strange reason he didn't expect them to change, then "How
> on Earth am I going to know what needs changing?" is exactly what you're
> going to think.

But that's no different than someone suggesting a change in the
specification of the system, or of its feature set, and my asking the
same question (after all I don't know anything about the system yet).

You might say the difference is in explicit specification
documentation rather than arithmetic operator use, but I'd think that
if there was in fact explicit specification/implementation
documentation, that it would naturally follow that I could figure out
where I might be impacted.

Or, put another way, with a tool to detect the use of division (at
least one rough version of which has already been made available
here), I should be able to detect in what modules and
functions/methods the use occurs, and then from knowing the system
design, understand what would be going on there.  Of course that
pre-supposes some design/implementation documentation, but if you
don't have that, then tracking division changes is just one of your
problems :-)

So I just see this as a specific case of change - of which any change
will be exacerbated by the change in ownership of the implementation.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From thedustbustr at aol.com  Fri Jul 20 09:53:30 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 13:53:30 GMT
Subject: Python 2.0.1 bug?
Message-ID: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com>

Sutdy the following code:

# BEGIN CODE BLOCK
# simple webserver
import socket

HOST = ''     # empty string meaning localhost
PORT = 8080
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen(1)

while 1:
    conn, addr = s.accept()
    print 'Connected by', addr
    data = conn.recv(1024)
    print data
    conn.send(data)     # reference point 1
    conn.close()
# END CODE BLOCK

When you run this program then point your webbrowser to localhost:8080, you
SHOULD see your GET / HTTP/1.1 request echoed to the screen (the "webpage"), as
well as echoed to the console.  Well, under Python 1.5.2 running under Linux,
it does.  Running 2.0.1 under Windows 95, it doesn't, *nothing* is printed to
the webbrowser.  Reference point 1 can be changed to thus to make it work: 
conn.send(data+data)   Thus under Windows Py2.0.1 it prints the GET request to
the webbrowser ONCE.  Under Linux Py1.5.2 it prints it TWICE as expected). 
Another test with curious results is to change the reference line to this: 
conn.send("first part" + data + "second part")   This prints the string "second
part" to the webbrowser, nothing more.

Hmmm, any known workarounds for this problem?  Other python-based servers have
worked on my machine (like the samples included in the docs).

Thanks, Dustin


From spike at oztourer.nl  Wed Jul 25 10:11:06 2001
From: spike at oztourer.nl (Steve Pike)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:11:06 GMT
Subject: Design By Contract in python
References: <b2674b3.0107240223.279eb05@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b5ed2db.24621158@news.cablewanadoo.nl>

Interesting stuff, but I would enjoy it more if the source wasn't
mangled by line wraps. I think I have reconstituted it OK, but perhaps
you could make the original source available for download?

Thanx,
Steve Pike


On 24 Jul 2001 03:23:10 -0700, arthur.gordon at thales-esecurity.com
(Arthur Gordon) wrote:

>An implementation of Design by Contract in Python, this uses the
>document strings to hold the pre and post conditions as per the paper
>http://www.swe.uni-linz.ac.at/publications/abstract/TR-SE-97.24.html
>
>Enjoy
>
>-Arthur
>
>--------------- cut here -----------------------------
>"""FILENAME:
>        DesignByContract.py
>   DESCRIPTION:
>        An implementation of Design by Contract in Python 2.1 
>        based on a paper by R. Plosch @ Johannes Kepler Universitiat
>Linz.
>        which can be found at:
>http://www.swe.uni-linz.ac.at/publications/abstract/TR-SE-97.24.html
>   AUTHOR:
>       Arthur Gordon <arthur.gordon at thales-esecurity.com>
>   HISTORY:
>       18-Jul-01: Added support for old and param namespace.
>       17-Jul-01: Added PrintDbCTrace - which prints out the stack
>upto the DbC classes, no further.
>       12-Jul-01: First attempt.
>"""
>import types
>import sys
>import traceback
>import copy
>
>if sys.hexversion <0x200000:
>    print 'DesignByContract.py requires Python version 2.0 or
>greater.'
>    sys.exit(0)
>
>KEYWORD_INVARIANT   = 'invar:'
>KEYWORD_TYPE        = 'type:'
>KEYWORD_PARAMETER   = 'param:'
>KEYWORD_REQUIRE     = 'require:'
>KEYWORD_ENSURE      = 'ensure:'
>
>LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT   = len(KEYWORD_INVARIANT)
>LEN_KEYWORD_TYPE        = len(KEYWORD_TYPE)
>LEN_KEYWORD_PARAMETER   = len(KEYWORD_PARAMETER)
>LEN_KEYWORD_REQUIRE     = len(KEYWORD_REQUIRE)
>LEN_KEYWORD_ENSURE      = len(KEYWORD_ENSURE)
>
>TRUE = 1==1
>
>""" Used for String to Type conversion.
>    asType ={   'NoneType':types.NoneType, ...}
>"""
>asType ={}
>for ty in dir(types):                                           #
>Create table of types
>    if type(eval('types.'+ty)) == types.TypeType:
>        asType[ty] = eval('types.'+ty)
>
>
>def checkType(param, typeAsString):
>    """ Checks the param against the string description of the type.
>        Special case any accepts all types.
>    """
>    if typeAsString == 'AnyType':           # accept any
>        return TRUE        
>    else:
>        return type(param) == asType[typeAsString]           # Check
>type is correct
>""" Violation handling
>    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Examples for catching exceptions.
>
>    try:
>       TestStack()
>        pass
>    except DbCFormatError,msg:
>        PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_tb(sys.exc_info()[2]),str(msg),"FORMAT
>ERROR:")
>    except DbCViolationError,msg:
>        PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_tb(sys.exc_info()[2]),str(msg))
>
>
>"""
>class DbCViolationError(Exception):
>    """ Error: Contract Violation """
>    pass
>
>class DbCFormatError(Exception):
>    """ Error: Incorrect Contract Format """
>    pass
>
>
>def FormatDbCTrace(trace, line, msg= "VIOLATION:"):
>    """ Formats the trace without going back into the DbC classes """
>    retval = []
>    retval.append('='*60)
>    retval.append(msg+line)
>    retval.append('='*60)
>    FIELD_FILENAME  = 0
>    FIELD_LINENO    = 1
>    trace_slice = 0                             # Find where trace
>back to.
>    while not trace[trace_slice][FIELD_FILENAME].endswith('DesignByContract.py')
>or\
>              trace[trace_slice][FIELD_LINENO] >DBC_LAST_LINE:
>        trace_slice += 1                                
>    retval.extend( traceback.format_list(trace[0:trace_slice]))
>    return retval
>
>def PrintDbCTrace(trace, msg, str = "VIOLATION:"):
>    for line in  FormatDbCTrace(trace,msg,str):
>        print line
>
>def LogDbCTrace(trace, line, fname='violation.txt'):
>    f = open(fname,'w+')
>    f.writelines(FormatDbCTrace(trace,line))
>    f.close()    
>
>def contractViolationBehaviour(object,line):
>    """	Options write to screen 
>            write to log file
>            raise Exception
>    """
>    PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_stack(),line)  # Pass the stack
>trace
>    #raise DbCViolationError(line)                            # Raise
>exception
>    #LogDbCTrace(traceback.extract_stack(),line)    # Write to log
>file
>    
>
>
>
>""" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>"""
>def getParameters(orignal_line):
>    line = orignal_line
>    comment_start = line.find('#')        
>    if comment_start != -1:                                   #remove
>trailing comments
>        line = line[:comment_start]
>    line =line.split(',')                           # split by ,
>    line = map(lambda x:str(x).split(':'),line)     # split by :
>    for pair in line:
>        if len(pair) != 2:                          # should be two
>            raise DbCFormatError(orignal_line)
>        pair[0] = pair[0].strip()
>        pair[1] = pair[1].strip()
>    return line
>
>""" print "getParameters(' list: ListType, another:IntType       #
>Should work')"
>    print getParameters(' list: ListType, another:IntType       #
>Should work')
>"""
>
>
>
>DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS =
>['_wrapped_object','_violationProc','_docstr']
>class DbCClassWrapper:
>    """ Wrapper for classes to check Contracts. """
>    
>    def __init__(self, object, violationProc =
>contractViolationBehaviour):
>        """ param: object:InstanceType
>        
>            Note the leading underscores are required on variable
>names as we are
>            sharing name space with the wrapped object
>            We should check the class invaraints as we have just been
>called.
>        """
>        self._wrapped_object = object                               #
>Reference to wrapped instance
>        self._violationProc = violationProc                         #
>Who you going to call?
>        self._wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper = self                    #
>Attach ourselves to the Wrapped object
>        if not self._wrapped_object.__doc__:
>            self._docstr = None
>        else:
>            self._docstr = self._wrapped_object.__doc__.splitlines()  
> # Turn it into a list
>            self._docstr = map(lambda x:x.strip(),self._docstr)       
> # remove leading/trailing whitespace
>            self.checkClassInvariants()                               
> # Since we did not check at __init__
>            
>                            
>    def __getattr__(self, name):
>        """ param: name:StringType """
>        if name in DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS:		                  
>         # Access private vars.
>            attribute = self.__dict__[name]
>        else:
>            attribute = getattr(self._wrapped_object, name)
>        if type(attribute) == types.MethodType:			            # If it
>is a method...
>            attribute = DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper(
>                           self._wrapped_object, attribute)         #
>...Wrap it
>        return attribute
>    
>    def __setattr__(self,name,val):
>        """ param: name:StringType, val:AnyType """
>        if name in DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS:                    
>               # Access private vars.
>            self.__dict__[name]= val
>        else:
>            setattr(self._wrapped_object, name, val)
>            self.checkClassInvariants()
>
>    def checkClassInvariants(self):        
>        """ Check the invariants for the wrapped class
>            Protects itself against self.docstr == None
>        """
>        if self._docstr:    
>            for line in self._docstr:
>                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT):                
> # line starts invariant:
>                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:]):
>                        self._violationProc(self._wrapped_object,line)
>                            
>                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_TYPE):
>                    for p in getParameters(line[LEN_KEYWORD_TYPE:]):
>                        arg = getattr(self._wrapped_object, p[0])
>                        if not checkType(arg,p[1]):
>                           
>self._violationProc(self._wrapped_object,line)
>
>    
>                    
>    class DbCMethodWrapper:         
>        """ A Wrapper for methods """
>        def __init__(self, object, method):
>            """ param: object:InstanceType, method:MethodType  """
>            self.wrapped_object = object
>            self.method = method
>            if method.__doc__:                                      #
>has documentation string
>                self.docstr = method.__doc__.splitlines()             
> # Turn it into a list
>                self.docstr = map(lambda x:x.strip(),self.docstr)     
> # remove leading/trailing whitespace
>            else:
>                self.docstr = None
>            self.violationProc =
>self.wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper._violationProc
>            self.private_vars = {}
>            
>        def __call__(self,*args):
>            """ param: args:AnyType
>                Only bother to call pre and post condition if you have
>a doc string for this method
>                However we can still check the class invariants at the
>end.
>            """
>            if not self.docstr:
>                retval = apply(self.method,args)			                #
>Call the method
>            else:    
>                self.private_vars = self.getWrappedClassPrivateVars() 
>     # shallow-copy
>                self.checkBefore(args)                                
>     # Pre-conditions
>                self.copyPrivateVarsToOld()                           
>     # Copy members to old
>                #self.displayPrivateVars()
>                retval = apply(self.method,args)			                #
>Call the method
>
>                self.private_vars.update(self.getWrappedClassPrivateVars())
>                self.checkAfter()					                        #
>Post-conditions
>                del self.private_vars
>                self.private_vars = {}
>            self.wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper.checkClassInvariants()   
>     #always check class invars !
>            return retval
>
>        def getWrappedClassPrivateVars(self):
>            retval = {}
>            for key in self.wrapped_object.__dict__.keys():
>                if not key in
>['docstr','_dbc_wrapper','__builtins__']: # dont whant to copy these
>objects
>                    retval[key] = self.wrapped_object.__dict__[key]
>            return retval
>        
>        class DbCDictWrapper:
>            """ class that allows us to use the old. and para.
>notation in the DbC expressions."""
>            pass
>        
>        def copyPrivateVarsToOld(self):
>            """ Copy methods private vars to old """    
>            if self.private_vars:                                   #
>may not have any
>                old =
>DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper.DbCDictWrapper()
>                if self.private_vars.has_key('__builtins__'):
>                    del self.private_vars['__builtins__']
>                for key in self.private_vars.keys():
>                    if not key in ['param']:                        #
>dont copy param over
>                       
>setattr(old,key,copy.deepcopy(self.private_vars[key]))     # deep-copy
>                self.private_vars['old'] = old
>
>        def displayPrivateVars(self):
>            """ for debug """
>            print '-'*60
>            for i in self.private_vars.keys():
>                if not i in ['__builtins__']:
>                    print '[',i,'] =',self.private_vars[i]
>                    if i in ['param','old']:
>                            print '  ',self.private_vars[i].__dict__
>            print '-'*60
>
>        def checkBefore(self,*args):
>            """ param: args:AnyType
>                Pre-conditions 
>                Check param, require, invars
>                require: self.docstr != None
>            """
>            args = args[0]                                          #
>unpack args from tuple
>            param = DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper.DbCDictWrapper()
>            self.private_vars['param'] = param
>            for line in self.docstr:				                # For each
>line...
>                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_PARAMETER):
>                    parameters =
>getParameters(line[LEN_KEYWORD_PARAMETER:])
>                    #print 'parameters',parameters
>                    for i in range(len(parameters)):                  
>         # for each param type pair
>                        #if checkType(type(args[i]) !=
>asType[parameters[i][1]]:           # Check type is correct
>                        if not checkType(args[i],parameters[i][1]):   
>       # Check type is correct
>                           
>self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
>                       
>setattr(self.private_vars['param'],parameters[i][0],args[i])        #
>assign to params
>        
>                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_REQUIRE):
>                    if not
>eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_REQUIRE:],self.private_vars):
>                        self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
>                
>                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT): 
>                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:],
>self.private_vars):
>                        self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
>            
>                
>        def checkAfter(self):
>            """ Post-conditions 
>                This checks the ensure and method invars
>                require: self.docstr != None
>            """
>            for line in self.docstr:
>                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_ENSURE):
>                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_ENSURE:],
>self.private_vars):
>                        self.displayPrivateVars()
>            
>                       
>self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,':"'+line+'"')
>                
>                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT):
>                    if not
>eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:],self.private_vars):
>                       
>self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,':"'+line+'"')
>            
>            
>            
>DBC_LAST_LINE = 297     # Don not dump the stack any further than this
>line number for DbCErrors.
>
>    
>if __name__ == '__main__':
>    class Stack:
>        """ A simple test class
>            invar: list != None                         # Should work
>            type: list: ListType                        # Should work
>        """
>        def __init__(self):
>            self.list = []
>            
>        def ppush(self,val):
>            """ param:   val:IntType                        # Should
>work
>                require: param.val >1                       # Should
>work
>                invar:  list != None                        # Should
>work
>                ensure: len(list) == len(old.list)+1        # Should
>work
>                """
>            self.list.append(val)
>        
>        def ppop(self):
>            """ invar:  list != None                        # Should
>work
>                ensure: len(list) == len(old.list)-1        # Should
>work
>                """
>    
>            return self.list.pop()
>
>        def inc(self,val):
>            """ param:  val:IntType
>                require: another > 1                     # Should pass
>                ensure: old.another > 100                     # Should
>fail
>                ensure: another == old.another + 1                    
># Should pass
>                ensure: another == old.another + 10                   
> # Should fail
>                """
>            self.another = self.another+ 1
>               
>    import unittest    
>    class DesignByContractTests(unittest.TestCase):
>        def setUp(self):
>            def onContractViolation(object,line):
>                raise DbCViolationError(line)               # Raise
>exception
>            aStack = Stack()                                # Call the
>constructor for class
>            self.ws = DbCClassWrapper(aStack,onContractViolation)     
>   # And wrap it
>    	    
>        def checkPushValidValue(self):
>            self.ws.ppush(10)
>            
>        def checkPushInValidType(self):
>            self.failUnlessRaises(DbCViolationError,self.ws.ppush,'asd')
>
>        def checkPushInValidValue(self):
>            self.failUnlessRaises(DbCViolationError,self.ws.ppush,-1)
>
>        def checkPopValid(self):
>            self.ws.ppush(10)
>            assert self.ws.ppop() == 10
>                    
>            
>    suite = unittest.makeSuite(DesignByContractTests,'check')
>    retval = unittest.TextTestRunner().run(suite)



From alexwalsh at accesswave.ca  Tue Jul  3 22:50:34 2001
From: alexwalsh at accesswave.ca (Alex Walsh)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 23:50:34 -0300
Subject: Catching Python exceptions from C++ ...
Message-ID: <3B42847A.E436B1D1@accesswave.ca>

Hi all!

I have embedded Python in my C++ application and fire off a script by
calling the PyRun_SimpleFileExFlags() function.

The problem is that it only returns a bool to indicate failure. I have
no way of knowing what caused it.

So, I have two questions:
1. How can I extract the exception that caused the script problem from
this function?
2. Can I perhaps set stdin, stdout, stderr to my own FILE handles and at
least dump the output/trace info to something I can read later? If so,
how?

Thanx in advance,
Sandy


From jussij at zeusedit.com  Wed Jul 18 19:37:55 2001
From: jussij at zeusedit.com (Jussi Jumppanen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:37:55 +1000
Subject: Ann: Zeus Programmers Editor V3.60
Message-ID: <3B561DD3.7971@zeusedit.com>

The latest release of the Zeus for Windows Version 3.60 programmer's
editor is now available.

The features new to this release include:

  + support for Java, GCC, and Perl debugging from within Zeus

  + support for CVS verison control using MS-SCC interface.

  + all new visual file differencing feature.

  + enhanced project workspace support to allow for easier
     configuration of compilers and linkers on a project
     by project basis.

  + new scripting functions.

  + other minor enhancements and bug fixes.

For more details regarding all these changes see the history.txt
found in the Zeus install directory.

If you wish to find out more about this latest release you can
download the shareware version from the following web page:

   http://www.zeusedit.com/download.html

Jussi Jumppanen
xidicone at iname.com




From eholbrook at austin.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 00:29:22 2001
From: eholbrook at austin.rr.com (Eric Holbrook)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:29:22 GMT
Subject: Emacs and ecb with python
References: <slrn9lh21d.ls.stefan.heimann@honk.ratzer>
Message-ID: <87d76r2bej.fsf@frop.house-net>

> Hi!  Has anyone a patch to use the emacs code browser with python?

look for oobrowser on sourceforge. it claims to do python.



From colin at meeks.ca  Fri Jul 20 10:33:35 2001
From: colin at meeks.ca (Colin Meeks)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:33:35 GMT
Subject: Running PYC files on Windows2000 with IIS
Message-ID: <3jX57.20230$2V.4458254@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

I currently have Python 1.5.2 running fine under Windows2000 with IIS using
regular .PY files. I've tried configuring IIS to run .PYC files in a similar
fashion to .PY files, but when I run a file through my browser I get the
following message


CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of
HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:
RuntimeError: Bad magic number in .pyc file


Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

Colin




From abulka at netspace.net.au  Mon Jul 30 08:24:47 2001
From: abulka at netspace.net.au (Andy Bulka)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:24:47 +1000
Subject: xmlrpc via proxy in XML-RPC HOWTO
In-Reply-To: <E15QFJ7-0002ul-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <NEBBLJJLILPHPJGMOBLPEENJCOAA.abulka@netspace.net.au>

I'm trying to get xmlrpc to work through a firewall/proxy.  The python
example at XML-RPC HOWTO at
http://xmlrpc-c.sourceforge.net/xmlrpc-howto/xmlrpc-howto-python-client.html
 gives the following client code shows how to call an XML-RPC server from
Python and get an XML result.

    import xmlrpclib
    # Create an object to represent our server.
    server_url = 'http://xmlrpc-c.sourceforge.net/api/sample.php';
    server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);

    # Call the server and get our result.
    result = server.sample.sumAndDifference(5, 3)
    print "Sum:", result['sum']
    print "Difference:", result['difference']

I'm trying to get it to work through a firewall/proxy and have replaced the
line
    server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
with
    server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url, transport=UrllibTransport() );

and defined the following class to break through the proxy / firewall

class UrllibTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):
	def request(self, host, handler, request_body):
		import urllib
                urlopener = urllib.FancyURLopener( {'http' :
'http://www-proxy.BLAH.au:8080' } )
		urlopener.addheaders = [('User-agent', self.user_agent)]
		f = urlopener.open('http://'+host+handler, request_body)
		return(self.parse_response(f))

But its not working - raising an exception.  I've pieced together this
almost-solution from fragments on the web and would appreciate help getting
it to work.

thanks
Andy Bulka





From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Thu Jul 19 19:24:22 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:24:22 +0100
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <8f41cfd.0107181055.3b34851a@posting.google.com> <0r46j9.qg1.ln@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <slrn9ler16.2l93.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Radovan Garabik wrote:

> 1e6 is a real number, this comparision has to coerce i to real number
> better comparision would be with i<1000000
> for me, it improved the time from 4.65s to 4.14s
> and running with python -O cut it down to 3.92s
> (now this I do not quite understand... I thought -O
>  just removes docstrings, doesn't it?)

It also removes the opcodes whose only purpose is to keep
track of line numbers within the source code. When you
have a tight loop that's doing almost nothing, losing those
can help. (It's the interpreter overhead, of course, not
the actual setting of the line number, that costs.)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From ljz at asfast.com  Wed Jul 25 20:16:54 2001
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 20:16:54 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <mailman.996073073.17868.python-list@python.org> <5396362c.0107251029.5a487677@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ygevgkgfssp.fsf@asfast.com>

sburr at home.com (sburrious) writes:

> lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax) wrote in message news:<mailman.996073073.17868.python-list at python.org>...
>> >   To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:)
>>     > We are like children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1
>>     > cookie for two children means one cookie for 1 child and 0
>>     > cookies for another:)
>> 
>> No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
>> lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
>> entire family.
>> 
>> proof-that-integer-division-causes-thousands-of-disfunctional-families-
>>     per-year-and-must-be-abolished-ly y'rs, - frank
> 
> Unless you use the old trick of having one child divide the cookie and
> the other choose which piece he or she wants.
>
> would-there-were-such-a-solution-to-the-int-division-debate-ly y'rs,

Ah ... but there *is* such a solution:

One thread performs an arbitrary integer partitioning, and a second
thread chooses the value within the partition to return to the caller.

For example, to do 5/2, the first thread would arbitrarily pick one of
these 2-element partitions: [0,5], [1,4], [2,3].  It would pass this
partition to the second thread, which would also arbitrarily choose
one of the two numbers to return to the caller, with the other value
returned to the first thread.  E.g., if partition [1,4] happens to be
chosen by the first thread, the second thread could return either 1 or
4 to the caller, and the other value back to the first thread.

Not very efficient, not very accurate, not very useful, and not even
very desirable, but given intelligent threads operating under heavy
self-interest (in Python 6.0 maybe?), at least it would be fair.  :)


Actually, I'm very much in agreement with Guido's latest decision (to
wait until Python 3.0 before this change in division semantics goes
into full effect, tying it to _future_ in prior versions).  It's a
Solomonic solution, and I applaud your wisdom, Guido.


> sburrious

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com


From grumble at usa.net  Thu Jul 12 11:06:49 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 15:06:49 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ihjfu$3ls$1@news.mathworks.com> <RV837.333819$p33.6744825@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9ikee9$rpv$1@news.mathworks.com>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <9ik9kd$nch$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>If you'd like, reread my point as "muds are likely to be CPU-bound
>>programs".

> Fine, but in that case, what *is* your point?

Muds are likely to be CPU-bound programs.


From abraham at dina.kvl.dk  Thu Jul 12 13:32:03 2001
From: abraham at dina.kvl.dk (Per Abrahamsen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 19:32:03 +0200
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpgtq.5ug.gergo.barany@hold.otthon.at> <slrn9kpv3p.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <rjwv5evyss.fsf@ssv2.dina.kvl.dk>

[ FUT: gnu.misc.discuss ]

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> If you think that facts are "crap" and hard statistical analysis
> is "flamebait" then all I can say is that it is up to others to
> decide, on the basis of your posts, how "crappy" you are.

Croosposting between advocacy groups like gnu.misc.discuss and
comp.lang.java.advocacy, and technical groups like comp.lang.python,
comp.lang.c, comp.lang.perl.misc is probably not the smartest thing to
do, if one want a serious discussion.

However, the statistical data itself is worthy of discussion,
preferably in a language neutral group.  I have therefore directed
followups to gnu.misc.discuss.  I'll not respond to any crossposted
answers. 

And obvious potential problem is that the data is based on a project
count from a database with many unfinished beginner projects.  I
suspect a count of developers or lines of code would put e.g. C and
Perl higher, and Python and Java lower, as the later have a reputation
for being more beginner friendly.

With regard to the "age" analysis, the trend is that young languages
take marketshare from old languages.  Anything else would have been a
big surprise, bordering to impossible.


From thomas at cintra.no  Thu Jul 12 09:58:19 2001
From: thomas at cintra.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:58:19 GMT
Subject: ZODB : speed and automatic full-text indexingk
Message-ID: <%1i37.2398$em.68142@juliett.dax.net>

Hi,

Indexing:
I'm wondering about using ZODB in a small project. I need full-text
indexing/searching of any stored objects. Earlier version of the standalone
ZODB-package included ZIndex I believe. It's not there anymore. Does anybody
have a simple example on how to use ZIndex with the ZODB-standalone package?
Any other solutions. I'd like to use something that's easy to use with ZODB.

Speed:
In terms of speed; what can I expect of performance from ZODB and ZIndex? It
will process lots of read-access, some write and the amount of data stored
can be huge, up to gigabytes of data.

Any hints or tips appreciated.

Thomas




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 12:39:52 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 09:39:52 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:
> 
> > I'm reading the section on the introspection API but I don't understand
> > something.
> >
> > 1. If I am sitting at an interpreter prompt and I have an object how do
> > I figure out the complete list of currently available attributes
> > available on that object.
> 
> Same as currently if it's a class: look in inst.__dict__ for instance
> vars, then look in inst.__class__ for methods and class vars, then
> recursively look through int.__class__.__bases__ for inherited methods
> and class vars.  Weed out duplicates.

Is there any reason that this is not defined as a built-in function? I
propose a function called attrs().

>...
> > 2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
> > is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?

You didn't answer this one. If I'm wrapping a COM object and I want to
dynamically provide the list of methods and other attributes when some
asks (i.e. "override" dir() or attrs()).

> ....  I'd like something as close to
> > this as is realistically possible:
> >
> > def attrs(x):
> >       return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]
> 
> (Note: this may return an infinite list!)

Right, that's why I'm asking for something as *close as realistically
possible*. i.e. a built-in function that gets me the attributes list.

99% of the time when I use dir(), I wish it behaved as I described
attrs() and I just have to work around its limitations. I would like for
there to be a function that returns as many attributes as is
realistically possible.

>...
> 
> BTW, now also linked from the python.org home page side bar.

Great! Thanks!

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:00:44 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:00:44 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> There is a good test of how popular something is.

I'm not convinced this is really a good test...

> Walk into a big book store that carries technical books (Border's is an
> example in the US), or a web outlet like www.amazon.com.  Count how many
> books are on a topic: Perl, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, ASP, etc.  It may not
> be foolproof, but it is a good start. 

Let's consider the case of two hypothetical languages.

One of them was designed by someone with extensive language design
background and an innate good sense of design.  It was easy to learn 
and apply and well-supported by a friendly newsgroup, etc. (not 
thinking of any particular language here...  this is just a hypothetical 
case, remember :-).  The language was mature, with a strong, 
established and mostly content user base which was growing steadily.

The other language was a twisted hodge-podge of braces and Perlishness
built on a poor design with only a very limited field of application in 
mind, by someone fresh out of university and with relatively little 
language design in his background (and, if not poor design sense,
then poor taste in choice of starting point).  Luckily, however, 
the language struck a chord with a frenzied population of web-meisters
and script kiddies who up until now were limited to writing code in 
Javascript to run on the client side and, as a result, exploded in popularity 
almost overnight.  Unfortunately as a result of the language's design, 
it was difficult for new programmers to learn, and because of its 
limitations it was very difficult for those programmers to apply it 
outside of its narrow niche without assistance.

I think it would be reasonable to assume that a much larger number
of books (and I mean those big, thick books that Philip Greenspun 
derides so well in http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html)
would be written about the second language than the first.  

The users of the first would have most of their needs met by the 
online information available, and the incredible ease of learning 
the language or of applying it in diverse areas.  

Publishers can smell this and would not put their efforts into 
tree-killing for the second language.  Entire forests, however,
would be slaughtered in the name of the second language, to buy 
Mercedes automobiles for the publishing executives.

Hypothetically speaking, of course. ;)
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul  4 18:46:48 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 16:46:48 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <3B43908A.C82B95CC@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041602450.7776-100000@bms>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Paul Prescod wrote:
> Bruce Sass wrote:

> > I think this needs a PEP from the core Python developers,
> > for four reasons:
>
> I have only a meta-comment. After years of discussions about Python
> CPAN, I can see two things that are guaranteed to kill any effort:
>
>  1. The requirement that it be sophisticated, comprehensive, logically
> consistent from the start.

Even if there are working schemes that meet those requirements?

I can see your point being a problem if it is necessary to start from
scratch and think up all the sophistication and consistency.

>  2. The requirement that the core team be deeply involved in its
> creation.

Ok.  I think `well represented' is good enough for the creation...

...and see it as a matter of convincing Guido and the gang that there
would be clear advantages to moving towards a package based
distribution... how else do you have a big standard library and not
fill up peoples harddrive with stuff they don't want or never need,
or upgrade pieces of the system without doing a full release.


> > 1) anything less is "just" third-party (no matter how well done)
>
> Well, that's better than what we have today. And the Vaults (what we
> have today) is better than what we had before it. Incremental steps are
> the only path that will lead to success.

I agree.

The next incremental step seems to be packaging up Python modules.


I should have added a fifth point...
5) if any packaging scheme comes to fruition and is adopted by the
   community, the developers would have to live with it (by either
   using it themselves, or dealing with people who are)


- Bruce




From tom-list at home.com  Sun Jul 29 23:52:15 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:52:15 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b64d9e3$1_8@Usenet.com>

One vote in favour.

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp66cd12yp.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> When I released Python 2.2a1, the type/class unification feature was
> announced as TENTATIVE.  It's been a while now (feels like a year,
> although I realize it's only been 10 days :), and I would like to see
> some feedback on this.
>
> If there's anyone who believes the type/class unification should not
> become a feature in Python 2.2, please speak up now or forever hold
> your peace...  (But I'd rather you speak up!)
>
> Note that if you have concerns about backwards incompatibilities, the
> best thing you can do is point them out ASAP.  I want to ensure that
> 2.2 (final) is as compatible with 2.1 as possible, while still
> providing the new exciting features that type/class unification makes
> possible.
>
> I realize the PEPs aren't done yet, but I believe that the separate
> introduction I wrote goes a long way towards explaining type/class
> unification.  Read it here:
>
>   http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
>
> Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.  Just DON'T CHANGE THE THREAD
> TOPIC.  I don't have time to read the entire newsgroup (I tried this
> week, and I didn't get to anything else :).
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
    ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------        
                http://www.usenet.com


From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Tue Jul  3 13:07:04 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:07:04 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <6qu3kt0uvk04tq14ovp9eo7a0s044933e9@4ax.com>

tom at peresys.co.za (Tomasz Stochmal) schreef:
>Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?

Eiffel is one of the "purest" practical programming languages (PPPL's
:-) ) I've seen. But for some reason its popularity is lagging far
behing Java, Python etc.

-- 
Vriendelijke groet,
Ren? Pijlman <rpijlman at spamcop.net>

Wat wil jij leren?
http://www.leren.nl/


From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Sat Jul 28 13:58:26 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:58:26 +0200
Subject: smtplib hack
Message-ID: <3B62FD42.6617797E@dennis-voss.de>

Hi,

I patched the smtplib to support sending email via sendmail also.
With this addon, you should be able to do:

import smtplib2

mysendmailexe = "/usr/sbin/sendmail"

fromaddr = "dennis at dennis-voss.de"
toaddr = "dennis.voss at tu-harburg.de"
message = "Just a quick test for the smtplib enhancement\n"

server = smtplib2.SMTP(mysendmailexe)
server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddr, message)
server.quit()

The code is largely beta and in some parts untested.
However, swapping sendmail and a fully fledged is nice and
hopefully welcomed in cgi.

Here's the diff -u:
--- smtplib.py Mon Jun 18 21:38:06 2001
+++ smtplib2.py Sat Jul 28 19:09:18 2001
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@
 #     Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com>
 # Better RFC 821 compliance (MAIL and RCPT, and CRLF in data)
 #     by Carey Evans <c.evans at clear.net.nz>, for picky mail servers.
+# Sendmail interface added by Dennis Voss <dennis at dennis-voss.de>
 #
 # This was modified from the Python 1.5 library HTTP lib.

@@ -111,6 +112,9 @@
 class SMTPHeloError(SMTPResponseException):
     """The server refused our HELO reply."""

+class SMTPSendmailError(SMTPResponseException):
+    """sendmail did exit with an error."""
+

 def quoteaddr(addr):
     """Quote a subset of the email addresses defined by RFC 821.
@@ -172,21 +176,26 @@
     helo_resp = None
     ehlo_resp = None
     does_esmtp = 0
+    sendmail_path = ''

     def __init__(self, host = '', port = 0):
         """Initialize a new instance.

         If specified, `host' is the name of the remote host to which to

-        connect.  If specified, `port' specifies the port to which to
connect.
+        connect OR path to sendmail (or compatible) executeable.
+        If specified, `port' specifies the port to which to connect.
         By default, smtplib.SMTP_PORT is used.  An SMTPConnectError is
raised
         if the specified `host' doesn't respond correctly.

         """
         self.esmtp_features = {}
         if host:
-            (code, msg) = self.connect(host, port)
-            if code != 220:
-                raise SMTPConnectError(code, msg)
+            if host[0] == '/':
+                self.sendmail_path = host
+            else:
+                (code, msg) = self.connect(host, port)
+                if code != 220:
+                    raise SMTPConnectError(code, msg)

     def set_debuglevel(self, debuglevel):
         """Set the debug output level.
@@ -464,6 +473,17 @@
         empty dictionary.

         """
+        if self.sendmail_path:
+            import os
+            p = os.popen("%s -t" % self.sendmail_path, "w")
+            p.write("From: %s\n" % from_addr)
+            p.write("To: %s\n" % to_addrs)
+            p.write("\n") # blank line separating headers from body
+            p.write("%s\n" % msg)
+            sts = p.close()
+            if sts != 0:
+                raise SMTPSendmailError
+
         if self.helo_resp is None and self.ehlo_resp is None:
             if not (200 <= self.ehlo()[0] <= 299):
                 (code,resp) = self.helo()


My diff program did not recognize the two extra lines in the sendmail()
function:
-       (code,resp) = self.mail(from_addr, esmtp_opts)
+       if not self.sendmail_path:
+            (code,resp) = self.mail(from_addr, esmtp_opts)

-            (code,resp) = self.data(msg)
+       if not self.sendmail_path:
+            (code,resp) = self.data(msg)

And the new quit() function:
    def quit(self):
        """Terminate the SMTP session."""
        if not self.sendmail_path:
            self.docmd("quit")
            self.close()


Further encapsulation is needed, but I generally only use these.


Dennis Voss



From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 30 15:33:22 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:33:22 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <3b659613.826951783@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHEEPJCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Bengt Richter]
> ...
> There really shouldn't be that much floating point implementation
> code in the interpreter or VM.

Right, there isn't.

> I wonder what it would take to rewrite it to take real advantage
> of IEEE754.

Since C provides no portable way to *spell* this stuff, it requires
boundless masses of platform-specific #ifdef's.  That requires in turn a
boundless supply of people who are expert in both 754 and their platform
(where "platform" is a combination of compiler, library, HW, and sometimes
subdivided across specific releases of any or all those).

It would much easier to take advantage of 754 by simulating fp entirely in
software, avoiding the platform HW and C fp facilities entirely.

> That would be a real Python distinction.

Then again, distinctions aren't always a good thing <wink>.





From barry at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 01:42:27 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:42:27 -0400
Subject: SMTP server class ??
References: <d0alktgu1k5qvlt2bqdmb8l0k1rlmqm6ie@4ax.com>
	<mailman.994773686.29026.python-list@python.org>
	<04lmktc7dhd9glgskkdmm5u8r5dcubdsf4@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15179.59203.723946.75804@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "SK" == Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:

    SK> I looked at the current 2.1 Module docs online here
    SK> http://www.python.org/doc/current/modindex.html

    SK> and see no mention of it?

Sadly, I've never had the time to write up documentation for it.

    SK> I've taken a cursory glance from the code I downloaded off of
    SK> your site last night. It seems to be heavy on the
    SK> Unix-isms. Does it run on win32 platforms?

Dunno.  Never tried it.  I'm pretty sure that asyncore/asynchat works
on Windows, but it's possible that some of the socket machinery is too
Unix specific.  I don't know what it would take to port it though.

    SK> Heh...I'm not expecting something extremely standards
    SK> compliant.

Actually, RFC 821 specifies a "minimal compliant server" and that's
what smtpd.py implements.  It /only/ accepts the minimal commands (I
forget what they are), and hasn't been updated to RFC 2821.
    
    SK> Actually, all I really want, is something to act
    SK> as smtp.localhost so that I can set my mail client up to send
    SK> mail to 127.0.0.1, and have the raw messages written to a
    SK> file.

That should be easy to do.  Of course, it'd also be easy to configure
a classic MTA to do something like this.
    
    SK> Then I will take a script to pipe them to this smtp server I'm
    SK> having to use temporarily (I want to set the From on the SMTP
    SK> envelope, so that I can use my usual "from" address...ISPs can
    SK> be so restrictive...been without my usual DSL for over 60
    SK> hours now, and using temporary dialup with port 25 blocked. :(

Ug.

    SK> If I have time this afternoon, I might try a hand at writing
    SK> myself something simple. I'm just being cautious, as I've not
    SK> done any sockets programming up to this point.

Gotcha.  I think the framework in smtpd.py should be fairly easy to
customize, if you're familiar enough with the asyncore/asynchat
modules.

-Barry



From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 19 20:23:22 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:23:22 -0400
Subject: Distributing a Python app
In-Reply-To: <Xns90E3C8FCADDE6gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEJMKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Gordon McMillan]
> ...
> As far as a free Windows installer (for py2exe or [Gordon's] Installer),
> Inno gets good reviews. I don't know anyone who can stand InstallShield.
> Wise is the commercial one most people use.

FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows installer
over to Inno.  It's simple (as such things go) and easy to use (as such
things go).  We've been happy with the Wise installer Mark Hammond talked
them into letting us use in '94 or '95, but it's showing its age and I'm
apparently not nearly as persuasive as Mark (they don't even acknowledge
receiving my emails -- but then I wouldn't either <wink>).

ms-should-bundle-python-as-a-public-service-ly y'rs  - tim




From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 12:22:25 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 12:22:25 -0400
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D7B5DD9220gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <3B473741.2BE14CB0@engcorp.com>

Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> 
> Michal Wallace <sabren at manifestation.com> wrote:
> 
> >Where do the docs say this? It sounds like a mistake, or something
> >that needs clarification..
> 
> In the library reference, for the 'path' list in the 'os' module: "The
> first item of this list, path[0], is the directory containing the script
> that was used to invoke the Python interpreter." I interpreted it as the
> directory with the script.

I think you mean the "sys" module above, not the "os" module.  I didn't
know about this behaviour with sys.path[0] until now, but when I tested
it under Windows it worked as documented.  If I invoke a script in 
a different directory, sys.path[0] shows the directory.  If I invoke
the script in the current directory, sys.path[0] shows the empty string.
(Other notes in the documentation point out the special behaviour if
you invoke the interpreter interactively etc).

So if you have a script containing

import sys
print sys.path

and you run it from another directory (e.g. 'python c:\windows\test.py'
or 'python /tmp/test.py' what do you get?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From ken_chiba at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 18:34:46 2001
From: ken_chiba at hotmail.com (Ken)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:34:46 GMT
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3b4e2495.82731972@news1.on.sympatico.ca>

Thanks for your continued help...  I'm hitting a wall:  I've compiled
MySQLdb (on python 1.5.2) -- I believe that's what my ISP's using, and
I have the files I (think I) need:

_mysql.so
_mysql_exceptions.py(c)
MySQLdb
  - lots of files, and 'constants' within.

I've copied these three files, plus the MySQLdb directory to the
cgi-bin directory on the host.  I placed a simple python script in the
cgi-bin directory that just has:

#!/usr/contrib/bin/python  (the python path)
import MySQLdb
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n" (so the browser doesn't choke).

I get a server 500 message, and checking the error_log file, I get:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "test.cgi", line 4, in ?
    import MySQLdb
  File "MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 27, in ?
    import _mysql
ImportError: File not found
[Thu Jul 12 17:25:48 2001] [error] [client 206.47.244.60] Premature
end of script headers: /usr/home/v1/a0005722/html/cgi-bin/test.cgi

I've placed a copy of _mysql.so in both the root cgi-bin directory,
and into the MySQLdb directory (since __init__.py is located there).
But no luck!  I looked for a _mysql file (without the .so), but could
not find one.

What am I doing wrong??

Thanks!

Ken


On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:38:48 +0200, gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard
=?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:26:22 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>I'm no expert with this at all... could I get some pointers?  I'm
>>assuming that you're saying that I need to compile MySQLdb with the
>>MySQL and Python versions that my provider uses.  This will result in
>>the creation of a MySQLdb directory in the site-packages directory of
>>Python.  Does it produce anything else?
>
>To build MySQLdb, you might have to change some paths in setup.py, then do a
>"python setup.py build". The files to install will then be in a directory named
>not entirely unlike "build/lib.linux-i686-2.1". This directory is normally
>copied to your site-packages dir. A simple way to use it on your provider is to
>copy all of it into your cgi-bin (the py[c] files, the binary extension module
>and the MySQLdb directory in it).
>
>>After this is created, do I just copy that directory (MySQLdb) to a
>>MySQLdb directory on the provider side (in this case.. within
>>cgi-bin)?  And finally, what line can I put within my scripts to pull
>>this information in? (ie.:  import ??)
>
>Better look into the MySQLdb docs, but here's a simple one:
>
>#!/usr/bin/env python
>import MySQLdb
>con = MySQLdb.connect( user = "me", password = "verysecret", db = "mydb",\
>    host = "dbcluster" )
>cursor = con.cursor()
>cursor.execute( "select hello from world" )
>print cursor.fetchall()
>
>>How can this keep track of what directory MySQL and Python are in? (or
>>are there configuration files that I can change - AFTER the compile?)
>
>No need to change any files *after* you compiled it. The dynamic loader must
>find the libmysqlclient library, or you'll have a problem. If this should
>really happen, you can perhaps link the Python extension module statically.
>You'll notice that this is the case when "import _mysql" produces something
>like:
>
>ImportError: libmysqlclient.so.10: cannot load shared object file: No such file
>or directory
>
>Hopefully, the standard way of setting "#!/usr/bin/env python" works as first
>line of your scripts. If not, you'll have to put the full path to the
>interpreter there ("#!/usr/local/bin/python" or whatever ...).
>
>Gerhard
>-- 
>mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
>web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
>public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
>reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))



From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 11:56:54 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:56:54 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996590461.27817.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EFAC97E5CA5michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

<brueckd at tbye.com> wrote in news:mailman.996590461.27817.python-
list at python.org:

> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
>> >    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )
>> >
>>          f :: Num a => [a] -> a
>>
>>          class SemiGroup a where
>>              (+) :: a -> a -> a
>>
>>          f :: SemiGroup a => [a] -> a
>>
>>          reduce :: (a -> a -> a) -> [a] -> a
>>
>>          (+) :: Num a => a -> a -> a
> 
> This goes back to my orignal point: when the language forces you to be so
> explicit with the type it sometimes requires you to give it more
> information than you really have, and so you have to stop and invent a
> pigeonhole in which you can place this thing. 

Yes, I think this is the price you have to pay if you want this kind of 
type safety.

> I suppose that once you get
> it right then it could provide a sort of safety net, but too often
> "getting it right" is complex and error-prone (or maintenance-prone, if
> your original definition was too restrictive and you need to go back and
> modify it to be more broad).

I would like the option of this kind of safety net, particularly after I've 
finished designing things in detail.  In particular, working out the types 
in detail can in itself be a helpful design tool.




From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 13:37:13 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:37:13 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B5DB249.EA8BDC26@home.net>

James Logajan wrote:
 > Chris Barker wrote:
> > pain it is likely to cause by:
> >    A) Breaking old code
> >    B) Making it very difficult to write code that can run on old and new
> > version of the interpreter.
> >
> > It seems that since (3) is the big stumbling block, perhaps we need to
> > focus our intentions on how to make not only this change, but other
> > potential changes less painful. It's too late now, but ideally, Python
>                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> Not to be abrupt, but if it is too late now, why bother mentioning it?

Poorly worded. What I meant was that it is too late to require a version
header in old code. It is not too late to require it in new code that
uses new features of the language. It could be assumed that not having a
version header means that the code is designed for version <= 2.1.

> I effectively stopped considering Python for new projects as of last night.
> I can't read Guido's mind, I don't know what other code-breaking changes he
> might be considering. I'm not sure he even knows. 

That's why I have proposed a method of mitgating the problem, both for
this example, and any others. Frankly, the one downside I see is that
making it easier to accomodate incompatable changes makes it more likely
that they will occur, and I think that such changes should be VERY rare.
(I'll comment elsewhere on whether I think the integer division isssue
is an example of one that should be done).

Terry Reedy wrote:
> This problem, though worse in a way with the division change, is
> generic to all language changes.  To run newly written code under old
> versions of the interpreter, you have to eschew *all* features added
> after the oldest version you want to support.  For 1.5.2, this means
> list comprehensions, augmented assignments, nested scopes, iterators,
> generators, type-class unification features, and what ever else is
> next added.

Well of course. There is nothing to be done about that. I fyou dont'
want the new features, don't use them, if you do, upgrade your Python
installation. So far, things were added, not changed, so old code would
run unchanged on new interpreters. My proposal allows that to still be
the case.

Cold someone please comment on my proposal (adding a version header of
some sort to all new files, and having backward compatable modes in all
new interpreters)? I'm sure it's full of holes, so I'd like to know what
they are!

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From wqh-2 at 263.net  Mon Jul 30 23:08:42 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:08:42 +0800 (CST)
Subject: again problem with re.reserch
Message-ID: <3B66213A.14396@mta2>

>None
>>>> c = a.search('foo abcd')
>>>> print c
><SRE_Match object at 0x8114a28>
>>>> 
>
****************
 
       then how I can get the exact postion the string in 'foo abcd',
for example ,I want it return a number denote the postion
**********************

__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 11:46:56 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:46:56 +0200
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <9iv29h0ofl@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Bernhard Herzog" <bh at intevation.de> wrote in message
news:6qae252b15.fsf at abnoba.intevation.de...
    ...
> A bit more elegant, perhaps, and a little faster still would be to use 1
> as the value in C and directly use C.get in filter:
>
> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item] = 1
>
> A = filter(C.get, A)

Actually, on my box, has_key appears to be a TINY little
bit faster...:

import time

B = range(7,77)
C = {}
for item in B:
    C[item] = 1

A = range(777)
start = time.clock()
for i in range(10000):
    A = filter(C.get, A)
stend = time.clock()
print "get: %6.2f"%(stend-start)

A = range(777)
start = time.clock()
for i in range(10000):
    A = filter(C.has_key, A)
stend = time.clock()
print "has: %6.2f"%(stend-start)

D:\>python timit.py
get:   2.33
has:   1.98

I.e., about 15% faster for has_key, it seems.


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 02:48:49 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:48:49 -0400
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-CF33D7.22131829072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDJLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> ...
> However, I think bit twiddling is nice and continuous if instead you
> use 2-adic numbers (overcondensed tutorial: 2-adic integers are
> binary numbers  where the bit sequence goes to infinity to the
> left instead of to the right, e.g. 3 1/4 = .....000011.01 -- just apply
> usual 2's complement arithmetic to these sequences and everything
> works).
>
> Of course, this doesn't do much for your attempt to make this thread
> relevant to Python again...

It does:  bit-fiddling on Python longs was designed to be viewed as if on
"left-unbounded" bitstrings, with an unbounded supply of sign-bit duplicates
"to the left".  All the bit-fiddling operations are consistent with this
view.  They're not fully general bitstrings, though -- the only
representable bitstrings are those with a finite number of 0 bits, or a
finite number of 1 bits.  Luckily <wink>, the set of representable bitsrings
is closed under the bit-fiddling operations, as well as under + - and *.




From edmund at ngetal.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 02:05:13 2001
From: edmund at ngetal.fsnet.co.uk (Edmund Strangely)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 07:05:13 +0100
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
Message-ID: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk>

Hello,

I've been lurking here for a while while working my way through 'Learning
Python'. So far only a few things have pissed me off with it. I was just
wondering, is anybody else coming from Pascal? Or Modula2/3? The book I am
reading kind of assumes that you are coming from C, and as I understand it
Python is written in C which is why it shares some of the same
conventions. Python is my first object orientated language. Pascal was my
second programming language (after BASIC on a spectrum) and although I
sort of learned C later, I still prefer Pascal. I personally like it more
than C for a few reasons. I don't think that I should have to worry about
how many bytes precisely my variables are stored in. (And I like BASIC
even better in this respect, in that integers and fp numbers are
automatically converted, and strings will grow and shrink as required (as 
in Python seemingly)). I don't like the fact that in Python if

>>>a=5
>>>b=2
>>>#and then
>>>c=a/b
>>>#then
>>>c
2

in Pascal if you *want* modulo arithmetic (which is not normally the case
) then you have DIV and MOD. I like having a distinction between functions
and procedures, for purely aesthetic reasons (I think having loads of
function names followed by () just looks ugly, procedures don't give
return values). Python only has functions, but I can forgive it that. But
the one thing above all that I think Pascal has over C (and which Python
shares) is that you can nest your procedures/functions! Most of my Pascal
programs had a mere few lines in the 'main' body of the program and the
rest would be large functions and procedures each with their own
sub-procedures and sub-functions with their own sub-sub units etc. When I
first started on C I just couldn't *believe* that you couldn't nest
functions, and just had to put them one after the other! You call that
structured programming?

I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has
tried object Pascal.

-- 
                      Smash Bourgeois Revisionism!
               Edmund Strangely aka Bad Nail Varnish Boy
 'at all times he remained peculiar in presentation, and at one point
                    painted his finger nails black.'


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Fri Jul  6 14:29:54 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:29:54 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <15173.64971.638094.552178@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <3B45A5AD.12631.573C6B@localhost>
Message-ID: <3B45CB62.1168.5BD7DB@localhost>

On 6 Jul 2001, at 13:04, Skip Montanaro wrote:
>     Bill> As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's
>     Bill> permission before instantiating an ActiveX control. However,
>     one Bill> can implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's
>     control is Bill> safe, thus sparing the user the need to respond
>     to the dialog box.
> 
> I have nothing useful to help you with your quest ... 

Darn.

> ... but it seems that if the ActiveX control can say "trust me!",
> it's sort of like asking the fox to guard the hen house. 

Well, many software developers are not carnivores. Some of us 
injure the chickens only by accident. What I'm trying to say is that 
I'm not sure your simile is quite apt.

> Did I misunderstand something? Wouldn't all ActiveX controls
> simply implement IObjectSafety simply to make them easier to use
> (less annoying to the user)? 

OTOH, as 'net people are apt to say:

1. To a certain degree I think you're correct, especially considering 
that it takes a lot less skill and knowledge to mark the control safe 
that it would to actually make it safe. (You will I trust forgive me a 
split infinitive.)

2. In order to reach the stage where this message is emitted the 
control must have been installed on the user's computer (which, I 
suppose, corresponds to the chicken). In order to provide some 
assurance to the user one can, for one thing, associate a 
certificate with one's ActiveX control and the user can accept the 
certificate only if it was issued by some overwhelmingly trustworthy 
source--say Microsoft of Redmond, Washington.

In my case, though, the chickens are all housed in research 
buildings and, whether they know it or not, the fox has already 
been allowed into all of the buildings. No certificate needed, hehe.

Peace, eh.



From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:55:41 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:55:41 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62rq.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <etdbsmkrhqa.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

> I'm pretty sure this will work, though I've not tested. C.get(item)
> will return None (thus false) if item was not in B, and 1 (thus true)
> if item was in B. You should definitely give a try to this version.

Yes, but what if item == None, or item == ''?

Alex.


From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Fri Jul 20 04:52:28 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:52:28 GMT
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
Message-ID: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com>

The Quick Python Book says that KeyboardInterrupt is
tested regularly when the Python interpreter is running,
but I have a program which may run for several minutes
without printing anything, and I find I cannot break out of
it with control-C.

How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?


--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From trace at reinventnow.com  Wed Jul 11 02:15:57 2001
From: trace at reinventnow.com (tracy s. ruggles)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 06:15:57 GMT
Subject: Unexpected behavior with class and instance variables...
Message-ID: <B77159A3.390B%trace@reinventnow.com>

I'm trying to build a wrapper for any given function and noticed some odd
behavior with using class variables instead of instance variables.

I've included the script below... It chokes on trying to call the function
that was built using class variables as defaults, instead of instance
variables.

The error message I get is:
    TypeError: myFunction() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)

This happens when the function built using class variables is called.  Doing
a post-mortem in the IDE shows that there really is only 1 argument being
passed into the function, but for some reason it thinks there is 2.  This
doesn't happen with the function built using instance variables.

Why?

--Tracy
(trace at reinventnow.com)


---/  CODE BELOW  /---

def myFunction(a): return str(a)

class Function:
    def __init__(self, f):
        self._f = f
    def __call__(self, *args):
        results = []
        for arg in args:
            results.append(self._f(arg))
        if len(results) is 1: return results[0]
        return results
        
def build(f, fClass=Function):
    return fClass(f)

class AppWithInstanceDefaults:
    """Application that sets defaults in __init__"""
    def __init__(self):
        """Set default values for instance"""
        self._defaultFunction = myFunction
        self._defaultFunctionClass = Function
    def makeFunction(self):
        """Create a meta-function with the builder function
            and this instance's defaults"""
        return build(self._defaultFunction, self._defaultFunctionClass)

class AppWithClassDefaults(AppWithInstanceDefaults):
    """Application that has class variables as defaults"""
    _defaultFunction = myFunction
    _defaultFunctionClass = Function
    def __init__(self):
        """We don't want no stinkin' instance variables"""
        pass

def test():
    print "-"*20
    data = 42
    
    IDApp = AppWithInstanceDefaults()
    IDFunction = IDApp.makeFunction()
    
    CDApp = AppWithClassDefaults()
    CDFunction = CDApp.makeFunction()
    
    print IDFunction(data)
    print CDFunction(data)

if __name__ is "__main__": test()



From tdelaney at avaya.com  Wed Jul 18 21:04:53 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:04:53 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2BB@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only 
> before one needs
> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they 
> understand all
> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
> 
> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

This is very true. I grew up with Apple IIs and Macintoshes.
Case-insensitive but case-preserving file systems work (IMO) very well.
However, I *also* like case-sensitive file systems. I do *not* like
Case-insensitive, non-preserving filesystems - that's just plain wrong.

However, what is applicable to filesystems is not necessarily applicable to
programming.

I know I personally prefer having the discipline of case-sensitivity forced
on me by the language. When I see a function call (for example), it is the
same in every situation.

With case-insensitive languages, you either need the editor to enforce
case-sensitivity or you need to force everyone on the team to enforce it.
Look at (yuk) VB (why do I keep using this as an example? Probably because
it's one of the worst languages I've ever seen). *Keywords* are written in
different case in different sources. Every time I look at

For Each foo In far
Next

I need to mentally translate that to my version of

for each foo in bar
next

and likewise, people who like the former need to translate my code.

Python follows "there should be one (obvious) way to do it". Most of all, I
think this should apply to the syntax. All Python code should have a similar
look. IMO the most important aspect of this is case.

Tim Delaney



From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 12 17:28:41 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:28:41 GMT
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b4e129b.1743634894@wa.news.verio.net>

[T Angell]
>I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket connections
>and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
>sample times:
>
>socket time: 0.0047459602356
>socket time: 0.00469899177551
>socket time: 0.00404000282288
>socket time: 0.00537407398224

[Bengt]
>For accurate timing, time.clock()
>is recommended, I believe:

[Skip Montanaro]
>Not in this case.  He wants to know how long it takes the socket to be
>connected between the two machines.  That is an elapsed time sort of thing,
>what you measure with time.time.  It has little or nothing to do with the
>CPU time used by the client process making the connection.

[Steve Holden]
>> Well, after this little experiment on PythonWin 2.0/Win95 I'm no longer
>sure what is going on:
>
>>>> for i in range(10):
>...  time.sleep(2.5)
>...  print time.time(), time.clock()
>...
>994956779.3 5.86667560636e-006
>994956781.88 2.55270956603
>994956784.41 5.0637313733
>994956786.94 7.58865720176
>994956789.41 10.1181121038
>994956791.99 12.6327050403
>994956794.46 15.1421897786
>994956796.99 17.6518547076
>994956799.51 20.1890552976
>994956802.04 22.7061055331
>
>Is my CPU usage really ~100% during those sleeps?

It all becomes clearer referring back to an old post by
the usual authority ;-) (See appended below).

The upshot is that windows and unix apparently don't access
the same clock() even on identical intel pentium hardware
boxes. For timing algorithms that seems less than ideal.
IMHO there ought to be a platform-independent way to access
the best tick counter available.

I feel another bout of idearrhea coming on ... ;-)
More on that later. Here's the old post (hope no one minds):
___________________________________________________
On Fri, 20 Apr 2001 01:38:25 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>[Les Schaffer]
>> i am talking to some hardware, needing to resolve 10's-100's of msec
>> of time. So I started playing around with the clock and GetTickCount
>> functions under win32 to check for finer time resolution.
>>
>> See code below. timimg results for win2k at:
>>
>>   http://folks.astrian.net/godzilla/ticks.html
>>
>> GetTickCount has some funniness in its behavior.
>>
>> i'm good and stickin with clock for now. But I am curious to hear
>> other people's observations about msec time resolution or possibly
>> even smaller, particularly on winXX and linux.
>
>GetTickCount is a legacy API; its resolution varies across systems, but is
>never better than 10ms, and is as coarse as 55ms on Win9X.
>
>Python on Windows uses the QueryPerformanceCounter API for time.clock(),
>thanks to Mark Hammond.  How good that is (indeed, whether it even exists!)
>depends on your platform.  On my home box, it updates 1,193,180 times per
>second (use QueryPerformanceFrequency to get your magic number -- it will
>probably be the same if you're running on a Win9X Pentium).  So ms resolution
>is a yawn for it.  BTW, you'll find the hardcoded number 1193180 in
>winsound.c too:  this isn't a coincidence <wink>.
>
>clock() on Linux returns CPU time, not wall-clock time.  I don't remember
>what its resolution is, but you won't like it.  time.time() may or may not be
>better for you there (across Unix flavors, it varies from microsecond to
>full-second resolution; on Win9X it's something bizarre, *appearing* to be
>10ms unless you look very carefully and notice it's only updated 18.2 times
>per second).
>
>In any case, don't mistake resolution for accuracy.  You didn't ask about
>accuracy <0.5 wink>.
>
>for-more-on-that-do-a-google-search-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>
__________________________________________________




From spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk  Thu Jul 19 04:13:20 2001
From: spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk (Radovan Garabik)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:13:20 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <8f41cfd.0107181055.3b34851a@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <0r46j9.qg1.ln@127.0.0.1>

Xu, C.S. <xucs007 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 : Just spent a little time to compare 4 stupid again algorithms
 : (changed a little bit from last time) for both python and perl
 : (codes attached) on two systems (SunOS and Linux):
 :        1. while loop, global variables
 :        2. for loop, global variables
 :        3. while loop, local variables (in function)
 :        4. for loop, local variables (in function)
 : I used `time [1234].p[yl]` to get the time info. The user time
 : is as follows:

 : PII 450MHz, Dell Precision 4100 Desktop, SunOS 5.8 i386
 :                #1      #2      #3      #4
 : Python 2.1a1:   5.1     3.1     4.5     2.7
 : Perl 5.005_03:  1.8     1.6     1.7     1.6


 : PIII 1GHz, MTech 8500 Notebook, i386 Linux (Mandrake 8.0, kernal 2.4)
 :                #1      #2      #3      #4
 : Python 2.0:     2.34    1.38    1.54    0.98
 : Perl 5.6.0:     0.95    1.22    0.95    1.21

 : The closest match is on Linux, 0.98 (python#4) vs. 0.95 (perl#1,#3).
 : Python still can't beat Perl, :-(  But I will continue to use Python
 : to do uncritical data analysis, :-)



 : P.S. Codes are:
 : ####################### 1.pl: while loop, global var #####################
 : #!/usr/bin/env perl
 : $i = 0;
 : $j = 0.;
 : while ($i < 1e6) {
 :        $j += $i * 2.5;
 :        $i++;
 : }
 : print $i, ' ', $j, "\n";

 : ####################### 1.py: while loop, global var #####################
 : #!/usr/bin/env python
 : i, j = 0, 0.
 : while i<1e6:
         ^^^^^
1e6 is a real number, this comparision has to coerce i to real number
better comparision would be with i<1000000
for me, it improved the time from 4.65s to 4.14s
and running with python -O cut it down to 3.92s
(now this I do not quite understand... I thought -O
 just removes docstrings, doesn't it?)

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 12:53:51 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 16:53:51 GMT
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
References: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hq8uv$i0g$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Why is it that one can attempt the most daring tasks with Python, e.g.
> write image manipulation programs, steer super computing applications,
> write interactive games, parse XML, yet still can not perform the more
> basic tasks of hitting a database and generating a report.

See my reply in the other thread you started for actual useful
answers. Here I will give useful answers too, but more useful
to your survival, not your programming.

> After five years of following Python, I haven&#8217;t seen much
> improvement in the areas that seem to be the most natural fit for
> Python: Commercial quality database support and robust web server
> modules.

It's true. There has been a big PSU (Python Secret Underground)
conspiracy to prevent database support and web server modules to
be created in Python. It is a nefarious plot that plays right in the
hands of the PSU.

The PSU is very interested in the use of Python in the field of AI; 
advanced usenet robots such as the Timbot are one example, and the
very convincing androids like the effbot another (you'd think he
was a real Swede if you met him! really! at the last python conference
they even had a prototype of the timbot android, though it didn't work very
well yet). These androids and AIs will of course eventually used to
either save the world or take over the world. You never know with the
PSU.

Obviously, an advanced robot needs image manipulation programs (to
process visual data). Interactive games are an excellent simulation testing
ground for AI applications. It's obvious you need supercomputing to
make the robot process data enough. Finally, XML is good magic
pixie dust with a lot of enterprise power that will certainly make
any failing AI work. If you have a problem, throw XML at it, problem
solved (the AIs do this internally; they use quantum-substrate fuzzy
coherent XSLT engines to do n-dimensional annealing).

This is why the PSU has been steering the community away from 
relational database integration and web server applications. They 
*need* interactive simulations on supercomputers, they *need* image
manipulation software, and most importantly of all, they *need* XML.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From sburr at home.com  Wed Jul 25 14:29:54 2001
From: sburr at home.com (sburrious)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 11:29:54 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>	<LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>	<mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>	<tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>	<Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>	<slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>	<p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>	<slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>	<cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>	<9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <mailman.996073073.17868.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5396362c.0107251029.5a487677@posting.google.com>

lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax) wrote in message news:<mailman.996073073.17868.python-list at python.org>...
> >   To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:)
>     > We are like children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1
>     > cookie for two children means one cookie for 1 child and 0
>     > cookies for another:)
> 
> No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
> lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
> entire family.
> 
> proof-that-integer-division-causes-thousands-of-disfunctional-families-
>     per-year-and-must-be-abolished-ly y'rs, - frank

Unless you use the old trick of having one child divide the cookie and
the other choose which piece he or she wants.

would-there-were-such-a-solution-to-the-int-division-debate-ly y'rs,
sburrious


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:42:08 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:42:08 GMT
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr>
Message-ID: <vle6kt8736tsqu498op6srgshmat6ouabf@4ax.com>

>Have someone a clue of something I could have done wrong ?

If you have a C program which embeds Python, you're going to have
to profile your C program using whatever profiling tools are available
under your development platform.

>Can't extended python be faster ?

You have verified yet that it's not your C code.

You may be able to profile your Python code, however. Look into the
"profile" module.

C//



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 17:46:46 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 21:46:46 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m6cm6.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 15:35:44 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

> If there's anyone who believes the type/class unification should not
> become a feature in Python 2.2, please speak up now or forever hold
> your peace...  (But I'd rather you speak up!)

Type/class unification is definitely worth doing.

But since you want some critic, here is one: the picture is
complicated. Not that I know how to do it better, perhaps it's
unavoidable. Nevertheless it's so complicated that details escape me.

Relations between instances and classes, instance methods and class
methods and static methods, related magic attributes (__base__,
__bases__, __class__, __dict__, __mro__, mro, __init__, __new__,
__call__, __defined__), all these slots and wrappers and descriptors
and methods and functions, and e.g. what is really called when I
write o().

I didn't expect this basing on previous experience with Python where
most of important things were obvious at the first glance. Here
are examples of things in Python which were very easy for me: the =
operator, translation of syntactic sugar into methods, mutability
and immutability, == and is, indexing conventions in slices, apply
and *args and **kwargs, del and __del__, and almost all the syntax. I
like them. Things mentioned in the paragraph above are not among them.

Another hairy place is raise and except, i.e. what is really raised
when I write 'raise a' or 'raise a,b' - what a and b can be.

Other than that and some unimportant points, it's a nice and clean
language.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 16:16:17 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:16:17 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
In-Reply-To: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107261410420.11807-100000@bms>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, G. Willoughby wrote:

> how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
> display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't find
> it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh well
> any ideas out there?

import os
os.system("<whatever command works on your platform>")

or

output = os.popen...<system level command>...

Python is not a low level scripting language that needs to know these
kind of things... but I agree it would be nice if it did, because then
I could put "exec python" at the end of my .bash_profile and still
have an easy to use shell without defining a bunch of helper
functions in PYTHONSTARTUP.


- Bruce




From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Mon Jul 23 12:09:47 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:09:47 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jhi8b$duv$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:

>Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
>We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
>loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
>so let's not be shy.

What is the suggested course of action for people (like me) who have
to maintain software which must run on more than one version of
Python?

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 07:01:36 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:01:36 +0200
Subject: Interpreter hangs after calling my extension
References: <u8zidrst8.fsf@roundpoint.com>
Message-ID: <j4ae2ovrov.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Ben Hutchings <ben.hutchings at roundpoint.com> writes:

> When I enter 'cvsdll.main([])' at the Python console, my extension
> function is called; it runs and returns as expected (checked in the
> VC++ debugger), but the Python interpreter never prints a new prompt
> or reacts to input.  Further, if I set cvsdll.stderr = sys.stderr
> first, the error message that is successfully written to sys.stderr
> (checked in the VC++ debugger) never appears in the console.

Your code looks fine to me. Are you running it from IDLE or PythonWin?
If so, don't be surprised that nothing is displayed immediately; you
may need to trigger a repaint. So I recommend to run it in the console
version first.

Next, you probably have to start debugging through the Python code, as
well. You'll need the debug version of Python for that so VC++ can
locate the source code properly.

Regards,
Martin


From man_at_moon at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 07:21:48 2001
From: man_at_moon at hotmail.com (David A.)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:21:48 +0100
Subject: The best gui library for newbies. 
Message-ID: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt>

H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to beegin doing
some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing I want to know is wich
one is the best gui toolkit for python when you are a newbie? Wxpython,
tkinter?? Whatis important for me is easy of use and well documented!! this
is what I am looking for.

Thank you for any help in advance!!!




From pauld at metrocast.net  Fri Jul 13 11:39:45 2001
From: pauld at metrocast.net (Paul Duquette)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:39:45 GMT
Subject: Apache & Python
Message-ID: <20010713.15394573@mis.configured.host>

I have installed python 2.1 on my windows2k machine and would like to 
know how to use Python with Apache. I can't find any config instructions 
anywhere. The python faq tells me how to configure it with IIS but I 
didnt see anything about Apache.
Hopeing you Python experts out there can point me in the right direction.
Thanks
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010713/a323a48b/attachment.html>

From mikael at isy.liu.se  Tue Jul 10 10:23:42 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:23:42 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071909220.6282-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010710162342.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 07-Jul-2001 Roman Suzi wrote:
 >  No... Probably you have not understood.
 >  
 >  Lets imagine you want to run a program 300 years from now. C compiler no
 >  longer exists. Intel hardware sells no longer. No weird MS Word
 >  files. Python 123.3.4 with almost anything changed compared with version
 >  1.5.2 ;-)
 >  
 >  What is left:
 >  
 >  ... snipped ...
 >  
 >  So, after they program core interpreter according to specs, they will have
 >  all Eternal software ready to run!
 >  
 >  ... snipped ...
 >  
 >  AFAIK, there is nothing similar to Eternal apart from Turing machine or
 >  basic math notation.
 >  
 >  ... snipped ...

INTERCAL or Brainf***, anyone?

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    10-Jul-2001
Time:    16:20:37

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From root at rainerdeyke.com  Mon Jul  2 13:32:03 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 17:32:03 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <9hq4c7$e7h$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <ne207.421742$oc7.60198079@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9hq4c7$e7h$1 at panix3.panix.com...
> In article <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852 at news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>,
> Rainer Deyke <root at rainerdeyke.com> wrote:
> >"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
> >news:q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7 at 4ax.com...
> >>
> >> def f(x):
> >>     x = x + (1,2,3)
> >> print x
> >>
> >> ?
> >
> >A vast improvement: clear, unambiguous, and correct.  I can safely pass a
> >list as an argument and not have it modified behind my back.  Having to
> >write "x" twice on the second line is not good, but if it buys me
> >correctness, I'll happily pay that price.
>
> In what version of Python can you pass a list to f() here?

Not sure (though, since you asked, I'd guess none), but that's not really
the point.  If I pass a list and the function doesn't like it, I get an
exception telling me exactly what went wrong and how I need to fix it.  If I
pass a list to the other version, I get subtly (or not so subtly) incorrect
results.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From donn at drizzle.com  Wed Jul  4 14:01:53 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:01:53 -0000
Subject: Problems with thread state
References: <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org> <994174327.655299@yabetcha.drizzle.com> <mailman.994228747.19601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <994269711.655209@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth Martin Sjgren <martin at strakt.com>:
...
| But... SSL_connect may call a callback I've set, for verification
| purposes. This function looks somewhat like this:
|
|     // find context and certificate and stuff
|     argv = Py_BuildValue(...);
|     ret = PyEval_CallObject(ctx->verify_callback, argv);
|     Py_DECREF(argv);
|     // handle ret, etc
|
| and this is where it crashes... Should I put in a PyThreadState pointer in
| my ctx objects that I set instead of using BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS, so I can
| release and re-acquire around the CallObject?

Yes, that sounds reasonable to me.  You could continue to use
BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS, but the point is that you now have a thread
state that you can dig up from the callback and use to re-enter
the interpreter.

But this is an area of Python internals where I don't have a very
solid grasp of what I'm doing, so you will have to look at the
source code and do some of your own analysis.  I see from the
definition of Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS that it uses functions that
are always defined, even when the interpreter was built without
threads, where the functions I suggested are only present with
threads so they should be used only if threads are really required.

You also may need to consider the possibility that two threads
might concurrently use the same ctx object.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Sun Jul  1 21:18:09 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 21:18:09 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3dels03z8u.fsf@ludwig.cnri.reston.va.us>

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
> Just out of curiosity, how long must one dislike something before that 
> dislike graduates from "knee-jerk reaction" to "considered opinion"?
> Having now used python for about 4 years, ...

At that point, it's certainly a considered opinion, because you've
actually used the language and found it to be a problem.  I'm mostly
thinking of people who haven't actually used the language at all, yet
will vociferously maintain that it's an insurmountably bad decision.
(Exhibit A: Slashdot, or at least a subset of Slashdot posters.)  Once
you've written some actual code using Python, if you still think it's
a problem, well, that's fair enough.  There are a few other long-time
users who aren't enamored of the indentation rules, but who grit their
teeth and live with it, so you're not alone.

--amk



From ddublanc at free.fr  Tue Jul 24 15:55:00 2001
From: ddublanc at free.fr (Dublanc, David)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:55:00 GMT
Subject: Learning Python
References: <20010724.144042.1258638252.27706@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <ook77.83$iW5.300127@nnrp3.proxad.net>

You can find the official tutorial at http://www.python.org
There are a lots of docs at :
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Python/Documentation_and_Tut
orials/

Regards,

David


"Paul" <pchilds at ithink.net> a ?crit dans le message news:
20010724.144042.1258638252.27706 at localhost.localdomain...
> I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
> program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>




From tundra at tundraware.com  Sat Jul 14 15:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 19:30:01 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com> <9ip1qa012en@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6@tundraware.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
> news:3B4F743C.66778F9F at tundraware.com...
>     ...
> > Furthermore, bear in mind that code "portability" is no where near as
> > important in the commercial sector as it is in academics.  Commercial
> 
> That depends on the state of the market.  Just a few years ago, it
> would have KILLED us if our CAD applications didn't run portably
> between VMS, Apollo Domain, and many versions of Unix -- each
> OS accounted for an important segment of our customer base.
> 
<SNIP>

Sure, there are places where portability is important.  And portability
is not a "Yes" or "No" things - there are degrees.  But the most
important thing that needs to be portable are *the skills of the
people* so that they can be used in many different roles.

DEC once estimated that there was something like an 8 or 10 to 1
ratio of the cost of owning code vs. the initial cost to produce
the code.  The ongoing reliability and maintenance of software and
systems tends to be way more important than portability of the code
itself because that is a relatively lower cost to produce the code
than to maintain it.

I once was Chief Technologist for a company that did communications
messaging middleware and oversaw its transition to 20+ operating
platforms that were all over the map in OS and comms protocols.
(All IBM Mainframe, All the Unixes, MS-DOS, OS/2, Win16, Win32,
TCP/IP, SNA, NetBIOS, Novell and many others were supported in
a wide variety of combinations and configurations.)

Anyway, our code, *by intent* was *not* portable.  It couldn't
be portable in any practical sense because the underlying 
infrastructure paradigms are really different between, say TPF,
Unix, Stratus VOS, and Tandem Nonstop as they run comms over
VTAM/SNA, Sockets/TCP/IP, Novell, and so forth.  We were far
more interested in creating competitive and distinctive market
advantage than serving the abstract idea of portability.

I think code portability really only becomes an issue if it
is a first-order component of the economics of a company.  For example,
if you sell compilers, portability is probably pretty important.
OTOH, if you write drives, it is not much of an issue.

> 
> 
> I'm not getting into the C++ flamewar you're trying to unchain --

Sorry, that was not my intention.  Apologies to all if it seemed
that way...

> -- they claim speed-ups
> of about 60% overall, more solidity, etc, as a consequence.  If that

Speed-up, I believe.  But "more solidity" by switching C++, I doubt.
That probably has more to do with 2nd generation software being
better than the 1st.

> is an example of C++ "dying a slow death", I think Mark Twain's
> well-known dictum may apply.

I did say it would be "slow" ;)

> 
> I _do_ agree that C++ is too complex for the human brain and
> thus should only be used sparingly (for system interaction and
> top-speed components -- but do notice that those components
> ARE part of large commercial applications... and many people
> still do not realize that multi-language applications are the
> way to go, thus, needing maybe 10% of the app to be in C++,
> they go ahead and make or rewrite it ALL in C++, rather than
> make it 10% C++ and 90% Python...:-).
> 


Absolutely right.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Mon Jul 30 18:09:26 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:09:26 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6edd2418.0107301344.439affc8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B65DBF0.6090308@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Leo wrote:

> Not that my opinion matters much, but just in case someone else agrees
> with me, I will post it anyway.
> 
> I like the direction that Python is taking.  However I only have one
> request.  Check out how Ruby handles accessor creation.  I think it
> has a very simple and clean syntax with minimum of typing.
> 
> I like the idea of get/set stuff, but it needs to become
> super-convinient to type in order for it to be used more widely.  I
> would prefer for there being a fast way of telling Python that a
> certain class variable is get-enabled, set-enabled, or both without
> actually having to manually type out the accessor methods.
> 
> Because plain accessor methods always do the same thing, it's a shame
> to waste any lines on them, imo.  It's just a repetitive typing that
> brings no new information.  Only when someone wants to override
> default accessors does it make sense to type it out, imo.
> 
> Just my $.02. :)  This is not meant to be a flame, just a request or a
> question, that's all.
> 

if i remember correctly in the get/set stuff we have to supply a 
statement like:
   x = getset(self.getx, self.setx)

if i am remembering correctly then it should be rather easy for a tool 
to write those def's for you... sort of like doing <Shift><Ctrl>C in 
Delphi... it will stub out your getter/setters and add field 
declarations for your properties.


now-what-do-we-have-if-i-add-my-.02-to-your-.02-ly yr's
Tom



From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 17 03:14:19 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:14:19 GMT
Subject: integer division rounding
References: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au>
Message-ID: <fBR47.12488$p7.4225009@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Why does an integer division resulting in a negative round down ,e.g -0.5
> => -1, while C and  __builtin__.int() rounds up ,e.g -0.5 => 0. Is this a
> purposful error(?), or an oversight?

Purposeful.  This way, 0 <= m%n < n and (m/n)*n + m%n = m.
The other choice (round toward 0) maintains the invarient -(m/n) = (-m/n).
Much as we would like, we cannot make all three invarients true at once for
negative quotients.

Terry J. Reedy





From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Sun Jul  8 13:54:20 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:54:20 GMT
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org> <8B027.515$My6.187812@news1.news.adelphia.net>
Message-ID: <ge7hktsqvsqu8n87shns7os99co09nmgk2@4ax.com>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:17:56 GMT, "Ronald Legere" <legere at adelphia.net>
wrote:

>If I were going to do that, I think I would use Scheme.. the syntax is very
>simple, and if you use only core language constructs
>(cons/car/cdr/define/cond and a few others.. maybe definemacro too. ) you
>will have writen your code in a very easy to implement language (almost
>everyone writes a scheme interpreter at some point <* grin *> )
>  Alternatives? Perhaps lambda calc with minimal extensions.. but then again
>thats just scheme :)

Pah!  Unlambda
(http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/programs/unlambda/) is the only
option for *true* simplicity and ease of use!

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul 16 16:20:03 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:20:03 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OFF2BD88B9.C8050CB1-ON88256A8B.006F883C@i2.com>

Well said (and entertaining, too :-).



                                                                                                                    
                    "Alex Martelli"                                                                                 
                    <aleaxit at yahoo.com        To:     python-list at python.org                                        
                    >                         cc:                                                                   
                    Sent by:                  Subject:     Re: Long Live Python!                                    
                    python-list-admin@                                                                              
                    python.org                                                                                      
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                    
                    07/14/01 01:42 AM                                                                               
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                    




"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn9kuvac.vde.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:29:32 -0700, James_Althoff at i2.com
<James_Althoff at i2.com> wrote:
> >
> >Granted, I used "only".  On the other hand, if someone says "good for
short
> >programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this
case)
> >-- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
> >something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
> > >=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to
be
> >reasonable and fair)?
>
> No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10 miles",
> it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?

Sure, and if I say "I never strangle British citizens on Saturdays", that
cannot be taken as meaning that you are at risk on other days of the
week, nor that people of other nationalities are at risk today -- however,
depending on context, there is a *fair inference* (in human language
usage, although not in the Aristotelic logic simplification thereof) that
I'm likely to have a specific reason for what would be overqualification
of my sentence IF I never strangled anybody at all on any day of the week.


It takes a small but non-zero amount of effort to append to a
general statement some specific qualification, thus, the general
assumption that effort is not purposelessly spent affords the fair
inference of some motivation behind this effort-expenditure (assuming,
a different but similar simplificating working-hypothesis to Aristoteles',
that the speaker behaves 'sensibly' by the usual definitions applied
in economics -- of course, enough of us like 'hearing the sound of our
own voices', or the Usenet equivalent thereof, that the hypothesis is
fairly suspect when applied to Usenet postings).


Alex



--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list







From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 18:35:34 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:35:34 +0100
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3b4c9b7f.8143238@news.hrz.uni-kassel.de> <9ii8a2$hg6$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpl5m.ns4.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 11 Jul 2001 19:09:54 GMT, Emmanuel Jeandel <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> wrote:
>> 
>
>> 1) It doesn't solve the intellectual challenge.
>
>What about : ([^<]|(<+(A<+)*([^A<]|(A[^<>]))))*<+(A<+)*A>B ?

I hate regular expressions.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 16 13:46:43 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:46:43 GMT
Subject: Failing gracefully when installed Python is too old?
Message-ID: <7MF47.17793$B7.2997540@ruti.visi.com>

I can't figure out a way for a Python program to fail
gracefully if somebody attempts to run it with a version of
Python that's too old.

Checking sys.hexversion at runtime won't work because the
program might not even parse.  For example, attempting to run
a program containing list comprehensions under 1.5.2.

Is there any way to check the version at compile time?

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Sometime in 1993
                                  at               NANCY SINATRA will lead a
                               visi.com            BLOODLESS COUP on GUAM!!


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 14 09:01:04 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:01:04 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994910001.4712.python-list@python.org> <3b4eed03.298292@nntp.sprynet.com> <9ina13$jau$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <3b50420d.1014572@nntp.sprynet.com>

On 13 Jul 2001 17:09:55 GMT, ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr (Emmanuel Jeandel)
wrote:

>In article <3b4eed03.298292 at nntp.sprynet.com>, David C. Ullrich wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:52:59 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> [...]
>>>
>>>Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
>>>routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin long *!
>>>Hint:  recursion <wink>.
>> 
>> I give up, howdaya do that?
>> 
>> (When I read this I said aha, you're getting at something like 
>> using
>> 
>> [*] (a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + (a*d+b*c)*2**k + b*d.
>> 
>Perhaps you mean : 
>(a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + ((a+d)*(b+c) - a*c - b*d)*2**k + b*d.

Aha. No, that's not what I "meant", but it's exactly what I wondered
Tim meant (too early in the morning to try to make an English sentence
out of this). Thanks.

>You only have to compute 3 multiplications
>  a*c
>  b*d
>  (a+d)*(b+c)
>
>Then you can have an algorithm for multiplying a and b, if a and b 
>are of the same size (len(a) = len(b)) of complexity
>len(a)**(1.6)  
>significantly better than len(a)**2
>(len(a)*len(b) is *not* linear, rather quadratic)
>
>Emmanuel


David C. Ullrich


From clgonsal at kami.com  Sun Jul 22 13:04:19 2001
From: clgonsal at kami.com (C. Laurence Gonsalves)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:04:19 GMT
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com> <3B581A4F.381F3072@engcorp.com> <3B583998.3AFF2E75@beth.uniforum.org.za>
Message-ID: <slrn9lm5dc.acg.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:00:56 +0200, mixo <mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za> wrote:
...
>I doubt it is a Win2K (or any other version of windoze version ) issue
>as I  had (and still have) a similar problem  :I  had  to  press
>controls-C 2 times to break out of a program! (the  program  listens on
>a port for connections - and actually threads)

I've noticed this as well. Threaded Python programs, particularly things
like servers that listen for connections, seem to require multiple ^C's
to kill. I always thought that each ^C was just killing one thread...

-- 
  C. Laurence Gonsalves                "Any sufficiently advanced
  clgonsal at kami.com                     technology is indistinguishable
  http://cryogen.com/clgonsal/          from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke


From cliechti at mails.ch  Sat Jul 28 23:09:14 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 05:09:14 +0200
Subject: no subject
References: <mailman.996374154.4603.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED35132E5FFcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

intsea at aol.com wrote in
news:mailman.996374154.4603.python-list at python.org: 
> THIS IS NOT SPAM!  YOU ARE RECIEVING THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE YOU HAVE
> SUBSCRIBE TO A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OPT-IN EMAIL LIST. ALSO, THIS IS A
> ONE TIME MAILING AND YOU WILL NOT NEED TO BE REMOVED!
> 
> 

python-list at python.org has a spam filer right?
how about adding the string "THIS IS NOT SPAM" to the filter. *every* time 
i see this it *is* spam....


-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 00:47:14 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:47:14 -0400
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
In-Reply-To: <200107250437.OAA22898@goanna.adroit.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEPCLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Richard Jones]
> Not having access to 2.2 for the moment, what's the story if 
> type() returns the instance type?

C:\Code\descr\dist\src\PCbuild>python
Python 2.2a1 (#21, Jul 21 2001, 01:12:35) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
...
>>> class C:
...   pass
...
>>> type(C())
<type 'instance'>
>>> type(C())()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: cannot create 'instance' instances
>>>

it's-a-unification-not-a-miracle<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From xucs007 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 16:50:20 2001
From: xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 13:50:20 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995535516.9340.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8f41cfd.0107191250.16351e0@posting.google.com>

Speed issue is due to recently I helped my classmate to do a
calculation on his study. The calc. time increases as ~ 2^n,
where n is number of particle pairs (2 particle forms a bond
called a pair). In python, n=15 already took me 10 minutes to
get the result. So I am curious what improvement I can obtain
if I change the code into C/C++. According to my previous
experiences, NumericPy doesn't give much more speed as claimed.
I remember it is only about 2 times faster than original python.

And wxPython author says: "Java gives you garbage? Try wxPython."
So I became also interested in the speed difference between
Java and Python.

Anyway, thanks for all comments. I've ever considered Python
was always 2 times slower than Perl everywhere (it is true on
my working SunOS, :-( ), now I'm corrected.

Regards,


From nikifor at sky.inp.nsk.su  Sun Jul  1 23:46:20 2001
From: nikifor at sky.inp.nsk.su (Alex A. Nikiforov)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 03:46:20 GMT
Subject: Closing a child window using Tkinter???
References: <9hb3ob$hai$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <9hoqqc$3cviu$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>

G. Willoughby <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote:
> This is the code i am using to display a new window from another window, but
> when i click the close button it closes the whole program when i only want
> to close the new 'child' window. any ideas whats wrong?  ta.

> def newWindow():
>     aboutbox=Toplevel()
>     aboutbox.resizable(0, 0)
>     aboutbox.title("About...")
>     aboutFrame = Frame(aboutbox, bd=1, relief=SUNKEN)
>     aboutFrame.pack()
>     Label(aboutFrame, text="Testing...", wraplength=300, justify=LEFT,
> padx=10, pady=10).grid(row=0, column=0, sticky=W+E)
>     Button(aboutFrame, text="Close", width=15, relief=GROOVE,
> command=aboutbox.quit).grid(row=1, column=0, padx=10, pady=10)
                   ^^^^ - destroy - ?
> Gaz.




From xione at bellsouth.net  Tue Jul 31 22:23:56 2001
From: xione at bellsouth.net (Xione Wrent)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:23:56 -0700
Subject: Dial-Up w/ Python on Win32:
Message-ID: <85H97.2823$kg.194231@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Is there any way to launch a .DUN file (Dial-Up Networking) on a Windows box
using Python?





From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 29 13:30:51 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:30:51 -0700
Subject: Slightly off-topic... (sending HTML data through a Python socket)
References: <3B643B5D.E62C6669@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <3B64484B.B96F780F@alcyone.com>

Adonis Vargas wrote:

> I am attempting to send HTML data back to a browser which connected to
> X
> port. I have goen over the the HTML RFC and just can not get it to
> work.
> What I am attempting to do is send a redirect back to the browser. So
> far I have something as follows:
> 
> c.send("""
>           <HTML>
>           <HEAD>
>           <META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\"
> Content=0;Host=\"http://www.python.org/\">"
>           </HEAD>
>           </HTML>
>           """)

The meta directive should read

    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.python.org/">

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ An undevout astronomer is mad.
\__/ Edward Young
    The laws list / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/
 Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul  6 19:17:39 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 16:17:39 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <9i5guj$7kg$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <3dd77drkea.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us>,
Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
>>
>> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>>    specify floating point division.
>
>Step 3 strikes me as a bit odd; does that mean documentation for that
>release will have to say "applying the / operator to integers is an
>error, full stop"?  And then in the next release the docs will again
>have to be changed to say that integer division now works?  IMHO step
>3 should be dropped; one release with a warning every time integer
>division is attempted should be sufficient.

I'm in agreement with Guido that at least two releases are necessary
(I also agree that it could be two warning releases).  But I think
Guido's step 3 (if used) should be changed to the semantically equivalent

    In Python 2.4, integer division with the '/' operator raises an
    exception.  This exception can be caught as usual, but the
    programmer should prepare for the next release of Python by either
    using the div() function or by using the future directive to get
    floating point division.

(Calling it an error is technically imprecise; an exception isn't
*necessarily* an error.)

>>   from __future__ import float_division
>>   from __future__ import real_division
>>   from __future__ import new_division
>>   from __future__ import division
>
>'float_division'.  There's no type corresponding to "real", nor is
>that terminology used anywhere in the docs; 'new_division' and
>'division' strike me as unclear.

Ditto.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Jul 10 02:07:10 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 06:07:10 GMT
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <iYw27.2271$z21.445141@newsc.telia.net>

Steve S.L. Wong wrote:

> while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> }

ouch.  that's ugly.  ever heard of for-loops?  and did you miss
the "Never use this function" sentence in your C library manual? ;-)

anyway, this is a pretty good emulation:

for command in line.split(";"):
    ...

</F>




From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 10 00:06:39 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 04:06:39 GMT
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie>
Message-ID: <slrn9kkvoc.rts.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
> In article <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>, kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
>>[ Followups set where they belong. ]
>>
>>Sun, 08 Jul 2001 14:52:13 GMT in <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382 at news.indigo.ie>,
>>Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> spake:
>>> In article <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
>> kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
>>>>  Likewise, Python's string handling is IMO just brilliant; slicing is
>>[...]
>>>>string"""`.  What's not to love?
>>> 
>>> Remember that the meaning of a line depends on its indentation.  Plenty 
>>> not to love, IMO.
>>
>>  That has nothing to do with strings, though.
>>
>>  However, do you not indent your code in C?
>>if(foo)
>>bar();
>>  in a longer example would be unreadable and unmaintainable.  Python
>>just eliminates the curly braces, and assumes you wrote exactly what you
>>meant.  It also eliminates those idiotic religious arguments over
>>indentation style, because there's only one correct indentation style.
>>
>>  It's a very old, very bogus argument, dragged out every time by the
>>people who haven't used Python; once you program in Python, it becomes a
>>non-issue.
>>
> 
> In case anyone is fooled, here's an example from the tutorial at 
> www.python.org, which also has a FAQ on what Python is for:
> 
>>>> for n in range(2, 10):
> ..     for x in range(2, n):
> ..         if n % x == 0:
> ..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
> ..            break
> ..     else:
> ..          print n, 'is a prime number'
> .. 
> 
> Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.  
> Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be 
> level-indented with the 'for'.   No doubt longer programs are even more 
> fun.  The FAQ on increasing speed helpfully notes that function calls 
> are expensive...
> 
> The second print statement is one character offset from the 'if' - I 
> don't know whether that is necessary or not.  It is unlikely that I will 
> ever wish to know.
> 
> - Gerry Quinn

Isn't this an example of how python's indentation is a *good* thing?

In python, above code causes an error, a programmer goes and corrects it.
No harm done.

In indentation-unaware language, it may work but it will look like there is
no else to that if. That can be really confusing. Also, if there's a block like
this:

if:
    ...
    if:
        ...
else:

in python it looks like else is for outer if, and that's how it'll work. In
other languages, it may in fact work with inner if, while it will *look* like
it works with outer, leading to even worse confusion than in the first example.

IOW, if there's something wrong with indentation, it's best to find out as
soon as possible, not half a year later after 3 hours of trying to figure out
why else block doesn't work. Am I missing something here?

> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From fgeiger at datec.at  Mon Jul  9 02:14:55 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:14:55 +0200
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ibht6$jfc$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>

This works for me:

>>> import string
>>> s="1.2.3"
>>> string.split(s,'.')
['1', '2', '3']
>>> map(string.atoi, _)
[1, 2, 3]
>>>

s is a string. split splits the strings, where the '.' is the delimiter,
i.e. those are the spots, where the string is cut (the delim's are
discarded).

The result is a list of strings.

map applies string.atoi to all the members of the list. The result is a list
of integers.

Regards
Franz


"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:pM927.657463$166.13605776 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it
is
> as follows:
>
> s="12.19.6.7.12"
> ls = string.split(s, '.')
> md = map(string.atoi, ls)
>
> Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
> is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. But my first problem is
> after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
> what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?
> The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
> exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the
string
> ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? I mean the
> varible ls contains ['12', '19', '6', '7', '12'] arent those intergers
they
> are numbers. Any ways if you could reply answering all the questions in
> whole or maybe just a few of em' it would be great.
>
> Thanks.
>
>




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Wed Jul 18 20:12:14 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:12:14 -0600
Subject: Problems
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D559@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Tatiana Evers [mailto:tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I try to compile NT example for embedding Python in C. This 
> example is in
> Source(...\Pyton-2.1\Pc\example.nt), but when I Build the 
> error happens
> below
> 
> Compiling...
> example.c
> Linking...
> LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "python21_d.lib"
> Error executing link.exe.
> 
> example_d.dll - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
> 
> What can I do ?

You'll either have to compile a debug version of Python (which is where
you would get the python21_d.lib file from), or compile your program in
release mode.

-- bjorn



From mgn000 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 11:38:25 2001
From: mgn000 at yahoo.com (Matt Noel)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 08:38:25 -0700
Subject: Sample code for using readline
References: <3B49CD3C.F157E2F@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B49CFF1.FB6A6C79@yahoo.com>

Matt Noel wrote:
> 
> Can someone send me a sample of how to use the readline module?  I'm
> just starting out with Python and wanted to code up something using
> readline but I can't quite figure out how to import and use it
> properly.  I've used it before with Perl.

I should claify that I'm asking about the module for providing access to
the GNU readline interface, not the method Python provides for reading
lines from a file.  I know there is an entry for this in the Python
Library Reference but it's not enough for me to get started.  Maybe
after I get a bit more used to the language it will be.
 
> A chunk of code would be quite handy.  I checked the FAQ but did not see
> anything that looked useful.

-- 
     Matt Noel           mgn000 at yahoo.com


From aetodd at wm.edu  Thu Jul  5 12:52:05 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 12:52:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Python-list digest, Vol 1 #6687 - 14 msgs
In-Reply-To: <E15ICJI-0005oP-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15ICJI-0005oP-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <994351925.3b449b35caaab@webmail1.wm.edu>


 
 
>This isn't terribly important, but wouldn't it be nice if 
>you could do the following...

>from module import a and b

>instead of having to write...

>from module import a 
>from module import b

>I don't know what sort of implications such and addition 
>might have, but it would be nice.

Of course since I lack a brain it never occured to me to 
try from module import a, b. Damnit.

Andrew - elecfish
aetodd at mw.edu




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 20:34:55 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:34:55 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b5c65cf.224345241@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpelr5q21k.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:

> What about mandatory version/requirement marking of code depending
> on new features of 2.2 and beyond?

This is exactly what "from __future__ import division" is for.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 06:29:48 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:29:48 +0100
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <69vsltslttpgrpfbiqkq4kqmaf5aiitgrp@4ax.com> <mailman.996049425.1860.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <f67tltodtcv3sl1apini788k0iapbo7q82@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:22:44 +0200 (MET DST), Mikael Olofsson
<mikael at isy.liu.se> wrote:

>
>On 25-Jul-2001 Stephen Horne wrote:
> >  I don't mind rationals, but they are a continuous measure. 
>
>No, they are not. The reals are continuous. The rationals are a subset
>of the reals. Don't let the fact that there are infinitely many rationals
>in every finite interval fool you to believe that the rationals are 
>continuous.

Technically true, but current uze of floats and presumably any use of
rationals would be as a stand-in for true continuous values.

Rationals would be expected to be exact (on the assumption that the
inputs are exact, anyway), but they are only discrete in the same
sense that floats are discrete.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 10 05:00:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:00:02 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com> <slrn9ki0e0.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B4AC204.80941297@tundraware.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
>
> This works for me:
> 
>     try:
>         input = raw_input()
>     except KeyboardInterrupt:
>         # handle Ctrl-C
> 
> The only difference I see is the capital 'B' you have in
> 'KeyboardInterrupt'.  Change it to lowercase and see what happens.

(Whoops, I spelled it wrong here, but correctly in my program.)

This code fragment works fine under Unix (FreeBSD 4.3) but not under
Windows 2000.  Is this a known bug or is there some magic I'm missing?
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Wed Jul  4 22:12:01 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 04:12:01 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <u7elrwi0pa.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

Mirko Liss <mirko.liss at web.de> writes:

> typedef plane_t int ;  /* plane no */
> typedef lane_t int  ;  /* lane no */
> typedef go_down_in_pieces_t bool ;  
> go_down_in_pieces_t dispatch( plane_t flightno, \
>                               lane_t neigboring_highway ) ;

> If the arguments get swapped, the compiler gets angry.

No, typedef just creates aliases, *not* types.  One might consider
creating something like

    typedef struct { int value; } plane_t;

instead (and get bitten by the fact that struct tag names are not
local to the struct scope for some versions of C (i.e. adding

    typedef struct { int value; } lane_t;

would clash)).

> at run-time. Supposedly, you might want to drop dynamic 
> typing for your kind of application. 

Agreed.  For stuff like planes I'd use the strictest typing available
(probably something like SML's) in order to get fine-grained
compile-time errors, even from e.g. confusing fuel states given in
gallons or liters.  C's is far too weak, I don't remember whether
Pascal also did silent promotions like int->float or similar evil
things.

Ralf


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Sat Jul  7 20:04:20 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:04:20 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <9ngektgqnrl17er73ukukqids95p5158dp@4ax.com> <mailman.994528813.30449.python-list@python.org> <cp8zi0k3kq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <tkf8t2f3cqsa98@news.supernews.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp8zi0k3kq.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:
>
> >     Guido> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce
'yield'
> >     Guido> as a new keyword without warnings or future statements in
Python
> >     Guido> 2.2, so maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as
well...)
> >
> >     C//> If one is going to add keywords to a language, I suggest that a
> >     C//> list of possible future keywords -- even ones that aren't
planned
> >     C//> on being supported any time soon -- be reserved at the same
time.
> >
> > And that warnings be issued for their use for at least one version.
>
> Good idea.  I'd have to fire up my time machine to figure out which
> keywords will be used in the future though, and I'm not sure how
> successful that would be.  C tried this and had a few unused reserved
> words (I recall 'fortran') for years until they threw them out.

Simple enough. Add them when the related PEP goes into the active list, and
drop them when the PEP dies. It's an ongoing process, not a once a decade
standards activity, after all.

John Roth
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)




From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 10 10:00:27 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 07:00:27 -0700
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107100600.13e4fc7c@posting.google.com>

Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> wrote in message news:<m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_ at vole.object-craft.com.au>...
> >>>>> "Paul" == Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> writes:
> 
> Paul> That's not to say that one doesn't have a certain feeling of
> Paul> unease when evaluating Python modules for serious database use,
> Paul> however. It does seem like a reflection of the open source
> Paul> community at large when there are lots of seemingly incomplete
> Paul> modules covering certain narrow, fashionable areas, and few
> Paul> modules covering other areas.
> 
> Boy, would I ever like to be able to complete my modules...

Isn't that true for most of us? ;-)

> The problem with producing free software is that you can only dedicate
> so much time to it before the consulting business goes belly-up.  It
> would make my year if someone who used one of my modules approached me
> and said that they would sponsor some development on it.

Indeed. Whilst sponsorship was seen as one of the big ways forward in
commercialising open source, only large organisations like IBM seem to
have the luxury of pursuing this aggressively, and even then most of
their funding seems to be spent in-house.

> In the absence of such a sponsor, I am limited to my spare time (such
> as it is) - the rest of my time goes into making sure that I do not
> lose my business, house, car, family, ...

Understood. But as I pointed out in the thread from which the message
you respond to came from, the usefulness of your module in your
business, and your reliance on that module, should be seen as
guarantees that you take its development seriously. It is for this
reason that I took exception to Mr Wilson's "Maverick" accusations.

> Paul> I mean no offence to any database module author when I use the
> Paul> term "incomplete"; my definition of "completeness" may differ
> Paul> from that of any given developer in this case, and presumably
> Paul> most database authors are satisfied with what they have
> Paul> written. Moreover, I wouldn't like to make any criticism of the
> Paul> reliablity of any module without having seen it first. I
> Paul> sometimes get concerned that serious commercial users are likely
> Paul> to have views on issues of functionality and reliability even
> Paul> more extreme than my own, however.
> 
> If the module is almost good enough surely you should be entering a
> discussion with the module author to work out how it can be made good
> enough.

Indeed. And in that original thread I later raise this point.

Actually, I think I did try your Sybase module out about a year ago or
so, by the way. What held me back there was, I think, the lack of
certain required libraries with my Sybase system, but I may have got
it working in the end. Sorry if I never communicated that!

An interesting point emerges here, though. The process of module
discovery can be somewhat stressful. It's quite likely that many
people give up "too easily" while building extensions, for example,
and move on to the next candidate module. In my Sybase adventures, I
tried your module and ctsybase first; ctsybase was easiest to get
working but lacked support for bind/bound variables. Since I can't
abide working without them, I moved over to mxODBC, even though the
effort in getting ODBC working can be significant, but at that point I
had the possibility of choosing other database systems and was
satisfied enough not to do any more evaluation of other modules.

> In my case, I can always dedicate spare time for development, so while
> funding would be nice, it is not essential.  What is more important is
> to be able to find people who are willing to exercise the module in
> their environment and work with me to resolve problems.

I certainly accept this. It can be disheartening to release something
which seems interesting and exciting to oneself, only to be met with
near silence in response. In practical terms, I suppose such a
reception means that the module never gets developed in ways that some
potential users would like, and a rift emerges between module authors
who must address their immediate needs and potential users who
consider those modules to marginally lack relevance to them to be of
any real use.

> In the entire history of the Sybase module(s) I have developed, I have
> only been contacted by four people who experienced a usage problem
> with the module.  There are two possible interpretations to that:
> 
> 1- I write awesome code which has only the most obscure bugs.

I think obscure bugs are the things that worry people most
particularly about database modules. ;-)

> 2- People who experience problems do not bother contacting me.
> 
> Although it would be nice to think that option 1 is true, I suspect
> that option 2 is closer to the truth.

There's another possibility: people may experience problems but may
not have your level of skill to diagnose or investigate them. I accept
that this isn't a good enough excuse when, in this case, there is
someone taking responsibility for the module, but then in periods of a
maintainer not having enough time to work on the module whilst doing
paid work, development and fixes are understandably delayed. Whilst it
seems harsh and ungrateful, developers are often impatient creatures
who only report problems when they happen and frequently give up
quickly, choosing the path of least resistance (to the next candidate
module).

> Paul> However, if you are referring to a standard API for databases,
> Paul> then one already exists. Unfortunately, most modules aren't
> Paul> compliant with the most recent version of that API as far as I
> Paul> can tell.
> 
> Time or money is the solution to this in my case.

Of course, and no-one can or should be blamed for this. One big
problem in the development of database modules in particular is the
rarity of developers motivated enough and with enough resources to
help people like you out. Not many people in the past have had access
(or the inclination for ideological or other reasons to access) Sybase
database systems whilst developing interfaces to the native libraries.
Indeed, even those who have access to such systems may find libraries
and headers missing.

What this means in general is that some projects are likely to be
driven by a single developer without "peers". A good way to make this
situation more bearable for such developers and for the community
would definitely go down well.

Paul


From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul  5 03:09:45 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:09:45 +0200
Subject: Problems with thread state
In-Reply-To: <994269711.655209@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
References: <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org> <994174327.655299@yabetcha.drizzle.com> <mailman.994228747.19601.python-list@python.org> <994269711.655209@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <20010705090945.B4111@strakt.com>

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 06:01:53PM -0000, Donn Cave wrote:
> Yes, that sounds reasonable to me.  You could continue to use
> BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS, but the point is that you now have a thread
> state that you can dig up from the callback and use to re-enter
> the interpreter.
> 
> But this is an area of Python internals where I don't have a very
> solid grasp of what I'm doing, so you will have to look at the
> source code and do some of your own analysis.  I see from the
> definition of Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS that it uses functions that
> are always defined, even when the interpreter was built without
> threads, where the functions I suggested are only present with
> threads so they should be used only if threads are really required.
> 
> You also may need to consider the possibility that two threads
> might concurrently use the same ctx object.

This is what I do now:

#define MY_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS(st)    st = PyEval_SaveThread();
#define MY_END_ALLOW_THREADS(st)    { PyEval_RestoreThread(st); \
                                      st = NULL; }

And I enclose the call to SSL_connect with BEGIN and END, and enlose the
call to PyEval_CallObject with END and BEGIN, with a PyThreadState pointer
in my context objects.

It doesn't segfault any more ;)

But you got me thinking. Maybe I ought to do the END/BEGIN thingy not just
around the PyEval_CallObject but right at the start and end of my bogus C
callback. Hmm.

I'm writing this in a "submodule" in socket (from socket import SSL...) so
now socketmodule.c is up to ~110K instead of the ~75K it was before...
ick...

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/9eb0e76e/attachment.sig>

From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul  2 22:44:17 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 22:44:17 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 07:23:57PM -0700
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots>
Message-ID: <20010702224417.A4664@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 07:23:57PM -0700, Russ Paielli wrote:
> "William Park opengeometry at yahoo.ca XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 05:38:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
> > > Yes, you are missing something: my question. I asked about the
> > > feasibility of using Python for a safety-critical application. I
> > > didn't ask for a fifth-grade-level analysis of the problem. Trust me:
> > > you don't have a clue. BTW, I scored in the top 1% in the math section
> > > of the Graduate Records Exam. How did you do?
> >
> > I trust you.  Which city did you say you were working at?
> 
> Which "city am I working at"?  Boy, you really ARE stupid, aren't you?
> The GRE score is fact.

It would be helpful to me to know which airport you intend to write this
Python code for.  

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 10:41:26 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:41:26 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
>
> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.
>
Well, there's case-insensitive and then there's just plain old insensitive,
which is what Windows NT ended up being. I would rather have a
case-sensitive filesystem, properly implemented, than the mess you get with
Posix primitives layered on top of a rather poorly-implemented
case-insensitive filesystem. Using Posix utilities it is possible under NT
4.0 to have two files with the "same" name, but (of course) then impossible
to use native NT files to say which file you want to read!

In the CP4E world, do you feel it is better to educate everybody to
understand that capitaisation has meaning, or dumb down the systems to allow
those without a finer appreciation of language to get what *they* expect,
thereby annoying the literate minority? I've never been quite sure how
inclusive the "E" in "CP4E" is intended to be, but you may find that spoken
natural language is the only acceptable user interface, given the literacy
problems of even "advanced" societies. Now, even I couldn't disagree that
there's no upper case spoken language, unless it's the traditional British
device of

         S-H-O-U-T-I-N-G   S-L-O-W-L-Y   A-T   F-O-R-E-I-G-N-E-R-S

which-i-wouldn't-even-do-about-print->>-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 04:13:00 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:13:00 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <mailman.994211288.26450.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9huj6g01er2@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994211288.26450.python-list at python.org...
> [Tomasz Stochmal]
> > Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
>
> You didn't say what you want to accomplish.  If the idea of "provably
> correct" programs appeals to you, Eiffel will give you more help than any
> other practical language I know of.

I still think Haskell would be of higher help.  Immutable data
make proving program properties easier (while not _easy_).  (If
you're implying Haskell isn't "practical", I'll unchain the
slavering hordes of FP groupies against you... scary threat,
innit?).


Alex





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 04:45:27 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:45:27 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ijk8l$jo6$1@news.tpi.pl>
Message-ID: <Xns90DC61EA3F86Cduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

"Tomasz Lisowski" <lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl> wrote in
news:9ijk8l$jo6$1 at news.tpi.pl: 

> Code 1 uses a builtin reduce function (fast), but nevertheless lambda
> function gets called for each element in some_list.
> Code 2 uses slower, native Python loop, but does not use any function
> calls 
> 
> Question: which version is better from performance point of view?
> 

Well, one my system, using my arbitrary choice of parameters, and including 
a third version which uses operator.__mul__, Code 1 loses big time every 
time, code 2 wins slightly on short lists and code 3 just beats 2 on longer 
lists. YMMV.

In real life of course, the for loop wins hands down almost every time as 
it also takes less time to think about and write, and you'll have to run it 
a lot to make up for that.

The code I used:

import time

def code1(some_list):
    res = reduce(lambda x, y: x*y, some_list)

def code2(some_list):
    res = 1.0
    for x in some_list: res *= x

import operator
def code3(some_list, op=operator.__mul__):
    res = reduce(op, some_list)
    
def timetest(loop, function, *args):
    start = time.time()
    for i in range(loop):
        res = function(*args)
    end = time.time()
    print "%d calls to %s took %.2f seconds, %.2fmS/call" % (
        loop, function.__name__,
        (end-start), ((end-start)*1000)/loop)

if __name__=='__main__':
    shortlist = [2.0]*8
    longlist = [1.0]*10000
    timetest(10000, code1, shortlist)
    timetest(10000, code2, shortlist)
    timetest(10000, code3, shortlist)
    timetest(1000, code1, longlist)
    timetest(1000, code2, longlist)
    timetest(1000, code3, longlist)
    

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul  5 03:43:15 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 01:43:15 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107050111190.9950-100000@bms>

<...>
> Maintainer(s)
>
>     All contributions to the standard library need one or more
>     maintainers. This can be an individual, but frequently is a group
>     of people such as for instance the XML-SIG. Groups may subdivide
>     maintenance tasks among themselves. One ore more maintainers shall
>     be the _head maintainer_ (usually this is also the main
>     developer). Head maintainers are convenient people the integrators
>     can address if they want to resolve specific issues, such as the
>     ones detailed later in this document.

With the maintainers of the existing library being the group of core
developers?

<...>
> Open issues
>
>     Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
>     evaluating contributions? (source code but also things like
>     documentation and a test suite, as well as such vague things like
>     'dependability of the maintainers').

Yes, but subjective determinations should be avoided as much as
possible.  Will maintainers be given access to the servers, if so then
there should be set procedure to verify who they are (email don't cut
it!)

>     A related question is integration with the Python documentation
>     process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
>     can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
>     we detail this more in this PEP?

It should be mentioned, but not detailed...
refer it to a different PEP.

>     Should the current standard library be subdivided among such
>     maintainers? Many parts already have (informal) maintainers; it
>     may be good to make this more explicit.

That would be up to the group currently responsible for them.

>     Perhaps there is a better word for 'contribution'; the word
>     'contribution' may not imply enough that the process (of
>     development and maintenance) does not stop after the contribution
>     is accepted and integrated into the library.

"contribution" accurately describes the relationship of the work
to the standard library, and as soon as someone starts looking into
contributing the word "maintainer" is gonna smack'em in the forehead.

I understand your concern, but don't think it will trip up anyone
serious about contributing.


- Bruce





From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 31 19:02:25 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 1 Aug 2001 01:02:25 +0200
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996527936.11861.python-list@python.org> <cpd76hzjey.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <XXB97.56072$EP6.12803318@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90F0B3C4F966cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in 
news:XXB97.56072$EP6.12803318 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com:
> Guido
>> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
> 
> [long slew of suggestions deleted]
> 
>> Sigh.  I sympathize with the desire for a non-acronym, none of the
>> proposals work for me -- they are all neologisms in this context.
>> Ditto for "us" etc.
> 
> I'll drag in my suggestion from a slightly different context: 'cat'
> for class and type.
> Or if you insist on abbreviating 'class', then 'cas' is pronouncable.
> To me, 'cls' is a toss-up with 'class' (whoops, keyword) or 'clas'.

do pythons (snake) like cat[s]?

i think a word that can easily be spoken is easier to remember and use 
especially for beginners. and this one even makes a useful abbreviation.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 18:09:59 2001
From: ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 23:09:59 +0100
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994140484.20380.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ida3n$tiq$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>

> William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
> 8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.

I've been lurking on c.l.p for a while and it's the first time you've
come to my attention.  For a normally interesting, polite, newsgroup
you really lower the tone.  Please re-consider your behaviour.


Ralph.



From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 12 16:51:33 2001
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 15:51:33 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net> <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org> <Xsj37.9345$e5.1243922@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <jtlmltx44q.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:
> one possible workaround could be to load the pickle under 1.5.2,
> and write it out as a binary pickle:

        Nope.  Exact same error, which I find quite curious.

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacian Lingvon  www.esperanto.org


From missive at frontiernet.net  Sun Jul  1 20:42:09 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 00:42:09 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: import error
References: <mailman.994016762.30789.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hog10$176k$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:44:39, matt yarbrough <matt_yarbrough at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm having trouble with a zope product I'm trying to use, in that it errors 
> on the following line:
> 
> from ZPublisher.HTTPRequest import html_quote
> 
> This is the first line in the module.  I notice that ZPublisher is a folder 
> rather than a module, and I'm wondering if this is something that may have 
> worked in 1.5 but not in 2.1.  The folder is also not a child of the current 
> folder but is actually a sibling of the current folder.  Could this be 
> rather a PYTHONPATH issue?
> 

Could be the 1.5 vs 2.1 thing. Which version of Zope are you using?
My understanding is that as of Zope 2.3.2 the only supported version
of Python is still 1.5



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sat Jul 21 19:50:04 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:50:04 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <a65klt8kir2q61fgrk0rlobtjekgtiiosn@4ax.com>

>The problem here is that you control the language, but you don't
>control the tools.  

In fact with me, and I'm quite sure a host of others, dictating which tools
we have to use is a complete deal-breaker. 

C//



From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 31 12:26:41 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:26:41 -0500
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
In-Reply-To: Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org>
        "Re: Python Threads on Linux" (Jul 31, 11:04am)
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com> 
	<3dsnfdjg1w.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <1010731112641.ZM94442@anson.hcs.tl>

On Jul 31, 11:04am, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> Correct; Linux threads have different PIDs because of how the kernel
> treats them.  The fork() system call which creates a new process is
> essentially a special case of the clone() system call that creates a
> new thread, but that distinction doesn't matter to a Python
> programmer.
Didn't IBM just release a new (optional) threads package for Linux that
implements true lightweight threads? I think it was called ngthreads or
something like that. I remember seeing a post about it in /. but never really
got to look into it.
Galen


>
> --amk
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>-- End of excerpt from Andrew Kuchling






From robin at brainexeculink.com  Fri Jul 20 16:09:12 2001
From: robin at brainexeculink.com (robin at brainexeculink.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:09:12 -0400
Subject: large file uploads to Apache
Message-ID: <jm3hlt8mo61bqcr3oj4utu56g8762m1qur@4ax.com>

I need to accept very large files over an HTTP(S) connection to
Apache. My understanding is that Apache must have enough memory
available to store the entire file. I'm looking for alternatives, in
order to minimise memory consumption, which as I see it boils down to
one of these:

1. Write my own module in Python that will listen on a socket for a
request and handle the file upload in chunks.

2. Find a mod for Apache so it will do the same.

My Apache knowledge is minimal. 

Anyone been this route before?

-----
robin
robin at brainexeculink.com
(remove "brain" to reply) 


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 25 19:14:54 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:14:54 -0700
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <yoxwv4y8y6r.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <srnsltg09pftvcn71n8s9bpktpeicmqhtj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F52EE.75E2BD3C@ActiveState.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> How would you feel if you found out that installing your new wiz-bang
> application suddenly meant your bread-and-butter application broke.

I have versions of Zope and Komodo on my hard disk that only run on
particular (and different!) versions of Python. I can safely add a new
Python version to my system without worrying about them because Zope and
Komodo *ship with the version of Python they need embedded*. I think
that this is the only sane thing for commercial applications to do. Most
Python upgrades break really big software packages. Commercial Python
vendors have *always* had to defend themselves against upgrades.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From dentim12 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 17 07:22:15 2001
From: dentim12 at hotmail.com (TimVC)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:22:15 GMT
Subject: mSQL database
Message-ID: <HdV47.12519$Xy1.2689641@afrodite.telenet-ops.be>

Is there a module for connecting to an mSQL database (not MySQL)?

Thanks,

Tim




From thomas at xs4all.net  Wed Jul 18 09:13:27 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:13:27 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220> <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com> <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010718151327.C2054@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 12:05:24AM -0700, Xu, C.S. wrote:

> Interesting is for perl: On the same PII 450 MHz, "for" loop
> in stead of "while" loop increase about 10% speed, but on another
> PIII 1GHz, "for" slowes down speed by 30% (from 8 seconds of
> "while" to 10.6 seconds of "for"). Only computers themselves
> can understand, :-(

Are you sure you're using the same version of Python on both machines ? 

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 03:34:03 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:34:03 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: time.strftime BUG?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071124250.684-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

Hello,

I have found that on my system (Linux RH6.2+, glibc-2.1.3)
strftime shows me the following:

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%Z", time.localtime(time.time()))
'MSD'
>>> time.strftime("%z", time.localtime(time.time()))
'+0000'

While I believe the later should be:
'+0400'

At the same time:

$ date +%z
+0400

which looks reasonable. What is wrong?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 12 21:48:55 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:48:55 -0500
Subject: SocketServer and threading mixin?
Message-ID: <m24rshy4xk.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

I've been following the bug report on the SocketServer module
and how it is broken with the threading mixin.  The bug report
has been closed and the people that posted offered several
solutions, however, from what I've seen, SocketServer, the
module, is still broken and requires a minor patch or two to
work correctly.  Does anyone know what the plans are to address
this issue down the road?  Will there be an interim python release
which addresses this???  Would be nice since there is seemingly
lots of people that don't want to have to their user base patch
or replace python modules.

Anyone?

Greg


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 18 14:16:53 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:16:53 -0400
Subject: integer division rounding
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9lbipc.6cn.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEEHKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Marcin 'Qrczak'  Kowalczyk]
> ...
> A consequence of the C definition is that the compiler can't implement
> i/2 as i>>1 unless it can be sure that i is nonnegative.

And neither can you!  C (neither C Classic nor C99) defines what i >> 1
returns when i is of a signed type and i < 0.  Python defines
sign-extension, and there's at least one Python platform where the native C
compiler does not sign-extend right shifts of signed ints.

some-committees-have-no-sense<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From jestes39 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 10:54:47 2001
From: jestes39 at yahoo.com (jestes39 at yahoo.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:54:47 -0000
Subject: Calling a user-defined Exception from within a function. Need Help.
Message-ID: <9hsmbn+781@eGroups.com>

I am still learning Python basics. I am trying to raise exceptions 
within a function. The problem is that my named exceptions aren't 
being recognized. They were working before I split the code up into 
modules. I just need to know where I need to define the exceptions or 
if I have to do something special to get them to work. Here's the 
basic shell of the code:

  import sys
  import telnetlib
  import dbi,odbc
  import exceptions

  class database_error(exceptions.Exception):
      def __init__(self,args=NONE):
          self.args = args

  class other(exceptions.Exception):
      def __init__(self,args=NONE):
          self.args = args

  def parse(record):
      try:
          #Parse the row into the variables that will be used to 
          #  populate the receiving fields
          .....
          .....
          return 'TRUE'
      except:
          return 'FALSE'

  def receipt(record):
      dbc = odbc.odbc(conn_str)
      crsr = dbc.cursor()
      try:
          try:
              if parse(record) == 'FALSE':
                  raise other
              tn = cas_login.login(username,password,host)

              try:
                  sql = "DELETE <table_name> WHERE ROWID = '" + rowid 
+ "';"
                  crsr.execute(sql)
              except:
                  raise database_error

      except database_error:
          dbc = None
          crsr = None
          tn.close()
          print 'we made it to the database exception'
      except other:
          dbc = None
          crsr = None
          tn.close()    
          print 'unidentified error'
      except:
          dbc = None
          crsr = None
          tn.close()
          print 'unhandled exception'

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Jason




From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 21 04:35:28 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:35:28 +1000
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <mailman.995692716.8559.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B593ED0.43C71BBD@student.gu.edu.au>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> 
> Are you on Windows?  All the things you mentioned are available on
> Linux/Unix/BSD/etc. with the readline module.
> 
> On Windows platforms it is possible (but not easy) to get the standard
> GNU readline working.  I created an "Alternative Readline" using a bit
> of code from /F and some home-baked Python code for those of us on
> Windows... get it at
> 
>     http://www.newcenturycomputers.net/projects/readline.html
> 
> It provides command history but not completion.
> 
> Hope this helps...

As an addition for newer users who build on Linux distro's, you have to
make sure that the readline-devel package is installed before build, or
otherwise python builds without it.

-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 13:19:34 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:19:34 -0700
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B62F426.6DB76722@ActiveState.com>

What if you imported the relevant module before you launched any
threads? Then the a bunch of the import machinery would be bypassed in
the threading part. It may be worth a try.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From christian at rocketnetwork.com  Tue Jul  3 20:54:26 2001
From: christian at rocketnetwork.com (Christian Reyes)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:54:26 -0700
Subject: How do I run a python script from an applescript
Message-ID: <9htph1$4e1$1@bob.news.rcn.net>

This is a pythonMac question.
How do I run a python script from an applescript.
Is this possible?
Is the python interpreter scriptable?

tia,
christian




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sat Jul  7 15:09:13 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:09:13 -0500
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEOPKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <00b801c10718$503bf240$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
> [Robin Becker]
> > ...
> > Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
> > to be uniformly wrong.
>
> Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
> that assertion would be unaffected.
>
> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by
force
> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.

But didn't the PSU help Guido to





From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Sat Jul  7 12:12:35 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:12:35 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <3B44369F.5521A9A7@stroeder.com> (message from Michael
	=?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?= on Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:42:55 +0200)
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994263608.9373.python-list@python.org> <9i0cjt$ck9@news1.gtech.com> <3B44369F.5521A9A7@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <07072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?= <Michael> writes:

    Michael> I once read a statistic that 80% of the german car
    Michael> drivers think of themselves that their capabilities as a
    Michael> driver are above average.  That's also the problem with
    Michael> "real men" programming e.g. C/C++. They think of
    Michael> themselves they are above average...

<nitpick> It's entirely possible to have 80% of people above
average... if the 20% are *far below* average, and those 80% just a
tiny bit above average... </nitpick> ;-)

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
             Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com)
            "MCSE: Minesweeper Champion and Solitare Expert"
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010707/332ef073/attachment.sig>

From yeah at right.net  Fri Jul  6 17:02:14 2001
From: yeah at right.net (baronsamedi)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 21:02:14 GMT
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
References: <3B461A1D.260DB405@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B462751.4010307@right.net>

 > In any case, They are on the the right
 > track, and I hope they get some better
 > docs, and a larger list of packages.

The docs suffice, the recent inclusion of some PEP's and HOWTO's etc. 
are a great improvement, though the help in komodo (the IDE i'm using 
atm, not sure if i'll go back to emacs though), is somewhat lacking. 
It's enough for a quick reference if you're unsure of what a command 
does, all I personally need tbh (don't get me wrong, I'm probably a poor 
python coder, but I'm learning all the time, all the time...)

 > Unfortunately, I still haven't found
 > a list of available packages, or any
 > docs on how to find that list. Perhaps
 > if I actually installed ActiveState
 > Python I could figure it out. In any case,
 > They are on the the right track, and I
 > hope they get some better docs, and a
 > larger list of packages.

Check the help in ppm:

---------------
  ppm search [--case|nocase] [--abstract|author] PATTERN

Displays a list of any packages matching 'PATTERN' (a regular expression)
available from the repository locations in the PPM data file.  If 
'PATTERN' is
omitted, information about all available packages will be displayed.

If either '--abstract' or '--author' is specified, PATTERN will be
searched for in the <ABSTRACT> or <AUTHOR> tags of the available packages.

The '--case' and '--nocase' options can be used to override the default
case-sensitivity search settings.

See also: 'case' option.
-----------------

Also, if you can find another pyppm server (i've found a couple, it's 
really just an FTP folder with an index file), you can connect and 
search them too.

I think that'll do, I like the ActiveState distribution, just thought it 
needed (a bit of) defending. :)

================================
baronsamedi/icarus

got a job, oh yes indeed
================================



From donn at drizzle.com  Tue Jul  3 11:32:08 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:32:08 -0000
Subject: Problems with thread state
References: None <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <994174327.655299@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth Martin Sjgren <martin at strakt.com>:

| I'm trying to write an OpenSSL module for Python (purely in C) and I've
| run into a big problem.
|
| My understanding of the inner workings of Python isn't that big, so please
| help me out here.
|
| Seeing as a call to SSL_connect() might block, I surrounded the call to it
| by Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS. I also have a wrapper
| callback for verification (i.e. I plug my callback into OpenSSL and it
| calls a Python callback residing in a Context object)... Here's my
| problem: When I call PyEval_CallObject() in my wrapper callback, python
| segfaults! Some poking around with gdb shows that somewhere, before
| PyFrame_New() is called to execute the Python callback in,
| PyThreadState_Get() returns NULL!
|
| When I comment out the Py_(BEGIN|END)_ALLOW_THREADS stuff, everything
| works.
|
| What's wrong? What do I do about it?

Prior to PyEval_CallObject(), you need to get back in line for the
Python thread you released with Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS.  I do that
with PyEval_AcquireThread(PyThreadState *), and then after the
callback, PyEval_ReleaseThread(PyThreadState *).  How do you get
the thread state?  Not the way I do, I reckon, so I will leave
that to you.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 27 09:43:08 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:43:08 +0200
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <%_W77.12073$Up.356411@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <j48zhah4ib.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> The system that tries to use some XML files is written in Python
> and is being run from under a Java application.  In the system
> something (that looks like a deadlock) happens when two threads
> both need to parse (each its own) XML file.  

When you say "thread" here, do you mean "Java thread" or "Python
thread"? I assume you mean "Java thread", since you did not indicate
at all that you are using threads in your Python application.

Note that when you call Java's Runtime.exec, you create a new
operating system process. So when two Java threads simultaneously
invoke Runtime.exec, you end up with two operating system processes,
each running a separate Python interpreter - not with a single Python
interpreter running two threads.

Can you please confirm that this is the situation you are confronted
with?

> Both call 'parse' from 'minidom' package, which leads to an attempt
> to __import__ the xml.sax.expatreader.

Assuming that the two Python interpreters run single-threaded, ignore
any Python thread issues - they won't be relevant.

What might be relevant is that two Python interpreters might be
simultaneously create the same output files; I don't know enough about
your application to know whether this might happen. I also don't know
at the moment how Python would deal with a case where two Python
interpreters generate the same byte code file simultaneously.

> The questions I have are: has anyone else seen anything of sorts
> and where should I look to try to find _why_ this is happening?

No, I haven't seen this. I doubt it has to do with your Python code,
so you should look into the Java part.

Regards,
Martin


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 14:20:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:20:02 GMT
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B66F611.B12948A6@tundraware.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
>               *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
>                          Tim Daneliuk
>               Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.
> 

Now cleaned up, edited a bit, and on the web:

http://www.tundraware.com/Technology/Python-Is-Middleware/Python-Is-Middleware.html

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From joconnor at cybermesa.com  Tue Jul 31 09:10:47 2001
From: joconnor at cybermesa.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:10:47 +0000
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com> <Xns90ED38309C442cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <3B63973B.490D4B08@engcorp.com> <Xns90ED5DA29D6E3gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>
Message-ID: <3B66AE57.79A2C217@cybermesa.com>

Gordon McMillan wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > There is at least one situation where import in a function is very
> > useful, and that is to delay execution of the import.  If the first
> > module is imported by another, and all of its import statements are
> > at the top, each import executes at that time, slowing down loading
> > of the first module.  If one of the imported modules is needed only
> > in one of the functions, which may or may not be called, putting
> > the import statement in the function will postpone (perhaps avoid)
> > the import and improve responsiveness.

> As above, this is a sensible solution only if the use of the imported
> module is confined to the one function.


This is starting to look really attractive to me as I've got one program
that does some heavy weight processing and imports a lot of modules. 
However, for UI/User Response reasons, a long startup time is not
acceptable.  The user will be initiating some long running processes, so
doing some import prior to those processes starting is starting to look
like a good idea after reading this thread.

What's the scope of an import done in this manner?  Say I were to have a
class that imported a module in it "__init__" method; would that module
be available throughout the class?  Or the module the class is in?

class MyEngine:
	def __init__ (self):
		import engine_support

	def doSomething (self):
		#is engine_support is scope?
		engine_support.do_something()

eng = MyEngine()
eng.doSomething()

#is engine_support in scope
engine_support.do_something_else()

hmmmm...I just tested it, both  references to engine_support outside of
__init__ fail with a NameError.  *THAT* would be something useful to
have...a class level import; import the module in __init__, it's in
scope for the whole class

The best workaround for now I could think of is either to assign an
instance variable to the module


class MyEngine:
	def __init__ (self):
		import engine_support
		self._es = engine_support

	def doSomething(self):
		self._es.do_something()

That works...I tested it...

or to assign it to a global in the module so that once it's imported,
it's available to the whole module.

I can see the use for being able to import a module into a function, but
having it in visible outside of that function (especially in classes)

-- 
Jay O'Connor
joconnor at cybermesa.com
http://www.cybermesa.com/~joconnor


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 03:07:35 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:07:35 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: How to run Python from build directory?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107191103021.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

I want to try Python 2.2a1 and have already compiled it in the
~/src/Python-2.2a1 directory.

(there are problems with pyexpat, but python binary compiled OK).

How do I run Python 2.2a1 using it's own libraries and all? (Right now I
have a feeling it uses libs from /usr/python* ...)

Do I need to ./configure --prefix=mydir to do that?

Where to get right expat?

Thanks!

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 13:31:43 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:31:43 GMT
Subject: Building 2.1.1 on Python
References: <vglslt4qg5nufacdecfil49f5leue84p9a@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cpr8v49apw.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> writes:

> I upgraded by old Linux RedHat 6.1 machine from Python 1.5 to Python 2.1.1
> today, and I encountered a surprise.
> 
> After untarring, I did:
>   ./configure --with-threads
>   make
>   make install
> 
> I then tried loading a Webware page as a test, and to my dismay got an
> error.  In socket.py, the line "from _socket import *" failed saying that
> module _socket was not found.
> 
> Eventually, I went into Modules/Setup and uncommented one of the two
> _socket declarations, rebuilt, and it worked fine, but I was surprised that
> the out-of-the-box installation didn't work.
> 
> SHould I have been surprised?  Or did I miss something?
> 
> Almost everything in Modules/Setup is commented out, although many of the
> commented-out modules work perfectly well.  Are those loaded in some other
> way?

The _socket module, as almost all extensions, is built by the setup
script, which is run by the Makefile after building the Python
binary.  It would be instructive to look at the setup.py script and
figure out why it decided not to build _socket -- maybe yo can put a
few print statements in there to debug this further.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Mon Jul 16 09:12:26 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:12:26 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA524E@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

This reminds me of a software training session I held long ago.  I mentioned
that one is proficient in a foreign language when they dream in that
language.  Similarly, if one dreams in binary ones and zeros, they have
really mastered software languages.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Brunning [mailto:SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 7:07 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Cc: 'aleaxit at yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


> From:	Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
> How silly -- everybody knows that owning it is irrelevant, the key thing
> is sleeping with your head close to it so that its magical effluvia reach
> your brain each night.  Good thing the standard Python library reference
> does specify that usage mode IS keeping it under one's pillow!
 
Alex,
You should be ashamed of yourself, passing on rubbish like this. Putting
them under your pillow does no good; you have to *eat* them if you want to
gain their power.

The 'Essential Reference' isn't a problem here, but you'll need to be a
*big* eater to cope with 'Programming Python'.

Not-saying-a-word-about-Americans-ly y'rs,
Simon B.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 03:51:06 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:51:06 +0100
Subject: css vs python ? was WHY is python slow?
References: <mailman.991900751.7603.python-list@python.org>
 <Xns90B957291603Dbeable@30.146.28.98>
 <mailman.991931952.3023.python-list@python.org>
 <RxR%6.27117$J91.732032@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <NWnCiJAqfCQ7EwVQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

I just checked out css. using the rather trivial

//css
#loadLibrary 'ZcSysLib'
                          
main()
{
        var k=0, t0 = sysTimestamp();
        for(var i=0;i<1000000;i++){
                k += 1;
                }
        sysLog('seconds='+sysSecondsSince(t0));
}

and for python

#python
from time import time
def main():
        k = 0
        t0 = time()
        for i in xrange(1000000):
                k+=1
        print 'seconds=%.2f' % (time()-t0)

if __name__=='__main__':
        main()

C:\Tmp>css hello.css
seconds=32

C:\Tmp>python hello.py
seconds=0.60

C:\Tmp>
-- 
Robin Becker


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 10:21:42 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 15:21:42 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org>
 <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <5lh$OIA2rxR7Ewou@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B471314.8B179A92 at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen
<peter at engcorp.com> writes
>Robin Becker wrote:
>> 
>> The language is evolving as all languages do because of the needs of its
>> users. Five years ago the leadership said integer division was good,
>> today it's bad; the audience changed is all.
>
>Actually, maybe it's just which audience members are vocal which 
>has changed recently.
>
>I happen to use Python frequently (almost exclusively) in situations
>where it is very valuable to have integer division work the way 
>it does now.  Floats are only infrequently used.
>
>If I were constantly forced to jump through hoops to make sure 
>my integers divided like integers (as in, like the CPU designers 
>intended... not like CS people believe it should work), I would have 
>a lot more work than I do now.
>
>But until now my voice was silent on the matter.  Perhaps the
>reason you think the needs of the users has changed is because
>Python suits the needs of some users so well that they don't
>feel the need to constantly whine about the fact.  Maybe only
>those who have a problem with it are going to make their voice
>heard.  (As someone said a few messages back: Well, duh! :-)
>

You infer too much as I prefer to keep the / operator as it is. My
preferred solution would be a module level configuration that allowed
the old style to be used. So then people such as yourself could do

from __past__ import int_divide

and in such a module the '/' operator would be treated as it always has
up to now. This is a comparatively easy way to do things, but I fear
that the purists amongst the python team would reject any such laziness
and demand that we do indeed jump through hoops.

I believe that the python developers have an interest in promoting the
language to a wider audience and so they keep changing the language to
enhance its popularity. 

If the MDFL was perfect and got python 'right' the developers would have
little or no reason to continue developing python. Experience suggests
they ought to hand the code to a new team and do something else.

I often wonder why these little languages now seem to evolve as
singletons rather than species like algol and pascal did. 
-- 
Robin Becker


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 23:27:41 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 03:27:41 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Niq87.35852$EP6.9250765@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

>     The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for
>     numerical arguments: it returns the floor of the mathematical
>     result of division if the arguments are ints or longs, but it
>     returns a reasonable approximation of the division result if the
>     arguments are floats or complex.  This makes expressions
expecting
>     float or complex results error-prone when integers are not
>     expected but possible as inputs.

I previously suggested at this point:
> > and vice versa for integer expressions getting float input
which I should revise to include a key stipulation:
and vice versa for integer expressions getting float integer input

and Guido answered

> That's not the same argument -- expressions expecting ints are
> generally broken when they receive floats; expression expecting
floats
> are *only* broken when they receive ints IF THEY USE DIVISION.  The
> PEP cannot do anything about floats passed in where ints are
expected
> -- such usage is broken.

I disagree; due to my leaving a key word out, you have missed one of
the virtues of the proposal that convinced me to support it.  An
expression that is valid for int integers (ie, 387) is just as valid
for float integers (ie, 387.0), which you claim to be +/- the same
thing (modulo type).  With //, such expressions will give the same
numerical result with either input,  whereas they now, with /,
generally give different numerical results.

Example: 20//6 = 3,   20.0//6.0 = 3.0 (hooray),   20.0/6.0 = 3.5 (ugh,
if I want 3==3.0)

A corollary effect: suppose I publish a discrete algorithm using
Python and someone runs it on a typical hand calculator that converts
int literals to their float equivalent and I explain that 'i//j' means
to enter 'i / j = floor' (with the flooring done by substraction if
necessary) and the person does just that.  The answer will be correct!
(instead of wrong).
------

Me:
> > The only way I can think of to 'globally' turn on new division on
my
> > own Windows computer is to rebind .py and .pyc to python.bat
> > containing '...python.exe -Dnew'.
Guido:
> Do I need to add that to the PEP?

and in response to someone else

> What exactly would you like to see addressed in the PEP?  Should I
> spell out that you have to do a query replace of / to //,approving
the
> replace if the arguments are integers?  That seems pretty trivial.

Right now you are writing to persuade and satisfy people who are
mostly experienced programmers.  Later it will remain to be read by a
wider variety of people, including beginners.  Have to? No.
Advisable? Maybe so.  Even with the rewrite, the proposal may still
have enough shock value to new readers to inhibit some people's normal
thought process.

Terry J. Reedy





From aramanat at optonline.net  Wed Jul  4 13:17:27 2001
From: aramanat at optonline.net (Arun Ramanathan)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 17:17:27 GMT
Subject: tkinter/commands help
Message-ID: <3B437AB7.86540660@optonline.net>

I am trying to run a rsh command from the commands module.
My code for a tkinter button and call back looks like this.

from Tkinter import *
import commands

def callme():
    result = commands.getoutput('rsh -l username hostname showrev -p')
    mytext.delete(0.0,END)
    mytext.insert(0.0,result)

root = Tk()
...
...
b1 = button(root,text ='patchlist',command=callme)
b1.pack(side=LEFT,fill=X)

text = Text(root,width='40',height='25')
text.pack(side=BOTTOM,fill=X)

....
..

root.mainloop()

when I hit the button from the gui, for about 80% of the time I do get
an
output displayed in the Text widget. for 20% of the time the GUI just
stalls/stops and hangs. the gui stops responding to anything else.
I had to kill the application.

Is there a reason why this is happening. I even tried using the thread
module
and calling the callback with a new thread, I got the same results. I
tried printing
out the output from the following line

result = commands.getoutput('rsh -l username hostname showrev -p')
print result

I found that during the 20% times the gui hangs the result is some kind
of a
number like 123456.123456.

Can someone help me understand why this happens.

Arun




From grante at visi.com  Sat Jul 21 11:00:26 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:00:26 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity (fwd)
References: <mailman.995668176.26176.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lj697.9q2.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:17:34 -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:

>"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
>|Personally, I always send code through email, even when speaking with
>|someone on the phone. Works much faster (and it also takes care of
>|whitespace <wink>).
>
>I was thinking more about the "over the shoulder" situation (where email
>is a little harder to use).

The bit of code is... "move over and let me type."

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm in ATLANTIC CITY
                                  at               riding in a comfortable
                               visi.com            ROLLING CHAIR...


From missive at frontiernet.net  Wed Jul 25 18:46:37 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:46:37 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: how to import curses
References: <20010725175110.25823.00001273@ng-cf1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <9jni8c$3hl8$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On 25 Jul 2001 21:51:10 GMT, TheDustbustr <thedustbustr at aol.com> wrote:
> import curses #returns "no module named curses"
> 
> I have no trouble importing other modules.  I have the docs for curses on my
> system, I just can't import it.  So, where can I download the actual module?

What kind of system are you on?

Sometimes the curses module is not built by default.
This may mean that configure could not find your curses libs.

It is included with the base distribution, but you may need to compile
again after editing Modules/Setup.

Sorry I can't be more specific, I had some trouble with this too,
but still have trouble finding the words to describe how i fixed it.



From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Fri Jul 20 02:50:53 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 06:50:53 GMT
Subject: distutils and documentation
References: <3B55D32B.52B6B0F2@ibp.de>
Message-ID: <hxQ57.30841$ca.8223726@typhoon.we.rr.com>

"Lars Immisch" <lars at ibp.de> wrote
> I have written a Python C-extension that some people have expressed
> interest in.
>
> I have a distutils setup for my extension, which works nicely, but I'd
> like to include some documentation with the binary distribution.
>
> Is there a recommended way to do this?

i really wish there was. for my own projects i simply include
the full docs/examples with the source installs. for the several
binary installations i have a separate installer for the docs.
this has worked out pretty good so far, but i would prefer an
"all-in-one" approach.






From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 02:15:39 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 23:15:39 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9hrnub$9a2$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>,
Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>
>Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging
>out applications that are going to run in an environment where it
>isn't going to matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not
>something I would put forward for something like Air Traffic Control.

Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and Python, and
that the real-time resolution requirement is on the order of one second.
Which would you choose and why?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 16:04:39 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:04:39 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: What's wrong with this program
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F7@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107040000100.2491-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Thanks for the correction.

   Actually I think you don't need ftp.connect() at all - it is called in
ftp.__init__...

> Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
> from one server directory to another server directory?

   I don't know - I've never used ftplib, but the idea is obvious: put it
one by one. Something like this:

for filename in somelist:
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From James_Althoff at i2.com  Tue Jul 17 13:34:24 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:34:24 -0700
Subject: OO misconceptions
Message-ID: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
<snip>
>> My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
>> anti-Perl.
>
>It's human nature for the people behind the technology in second place
>to complain about the one in first place. I think Java is not a bad
>little language but I'll bet that on the Perl mailing lists you'll hear
>a lot of Java-bashing. And what about Window$ bashing? People hate to
>see their technology overlooked in favour of something that they think
>is inferior. Also, the people who like the language in second or third
>place often have to contend with PHBs that force them to use the
>first-place language. This tends to cause resentment.

Yeah, I think that explains it really well.

Plus the fact that Perl sucks.  (Just kidding.  (Well, not really.  (Well,
kinda, sorta))).    ;-)

Jim





From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 08:46:58 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:46:58 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <005f01c11375$93f20e20$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>


> Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
> > 
> > If I was told that experinced programmers might
> > appreciate this change for any possible reason -
> > I'd be quiet as a mouse.
> 
> I'm an experienced programmer, and I appreciate the
> change on the grounds that different operations on
> the same data should be spelled differently.
> 
> You may lapse into silence now. :-)

Well, I'm an experienced programmer also, and I don't 
appreciate the change.  Ultimately that's the entire
reason... code written for 1.5.2 still works great in 
2.1, and will work fine in 2.2 and apparently 2.3, but
will then fail in 2.4.

Suppose that I follow all this, dutifully finding and
fixing all the warnings in my modules as we move from
version to version; this is the plan, after all.

Now, here I am some years later and I look for a module
to do something or other, and on the Vaults I find one; 
but the module (which may be huge) was written for 1.5.2.
I have to debug someone else's code (a big job even in
Python), find another source (if there is one) or write
the functionality myself.

If we don't screw with the integer division, I'm probably
in good shape.  If we do, bang.

Changes that are mostly backwards compatible are cool, 
but when something as fundamental as division of integers
changes, it gets pretty ugly.





From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 19 12:36:58 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:36:58 GMT
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
References: <mailman.995549244.5727.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <K0E57.4124$EP6.1259590@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith"
to a
> variable - CurCust.
>
> Now I want to do something like:
> from cust import CurCust
> print cust.CurCust["street"]

If I understand correctly, try (not tested)

import cust
current = getattr(cust, CurCust)
print current['street']

etc

Terry J. Reedy





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:55:51 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:55:51 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.996052189.14819.python-list@python.org> <3B5EF2CC.6D0626E3@calendargalaxy.com>
Message-ID: <uk32mtg1a8naikbk04njjhjt10ts3vr4dr@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:31:38 GMT, Paul Winkler
<paul at calendargalaxy.com> wrote:

>> - Just a wild idea: the problem you want to solve is that the existing
>>   division operator mixes two totally different meanings and thus
>>   leads to nasty surprises.
>> 
>>   What if `/` applied to two integer values returned neither an
>>   integer nor a float but an object carrying the float result but
>>   behaving like an integer if used in an integer context?

I suspect this would move problems around (at considerable cost in
terms of Pythons complexity and reliability) rather than solving them.
For instance, what type would 5 + (1/2) have - float, integer or the
hybrid?

>thought the whole point of the PEP was to make division behave consistently -
>that is, always return the same type of result regardless of the operands.

No - that would require many more division operators. Consider complex
division, division with classes (such as matrix division) etc.

However, this is arguably not really the point.

Both float and complex try to represent continuous measures (there's
not much use for discrete complex measures - even a Z transform is a
continuous complex measure, even though it is intended for use with
discrete signals).

Also, no doubt part of the issue is that integer-avoiding division
would equally seek to convert integers to floats within matrices or
other structures before doing division.



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul 22 18:11:41 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 22:11:41 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <220720011019310436%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <9jfj2t$ad4$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

John W. Baxter <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I don't think 1 / 2 producing 0 is broken, so I don't think it needs to
> be fixed, but that view is unlikely to prevail.

I believe there'll be a huge outcry once it actually looks like
this is going to be in Python for real, when the people who don't track 
the Python development discover what's up with this.

I for once still have a hard time actually believing right now that I'll
have to go through a lot of source code evaluating each and every /
to determine if I want a // or a / there.

So, just wait a bit until this looks like it's going to be real and people
realize what they have to do. We haven't even started to see the beginning
of the complaints. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From emile at fcfw.fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 18:34:56 2001
From: emile at fcfw.fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 17:34:56 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul  3)
Message-ID: <4E42BD2538CACF79.9FD7275B6CD3244E.A70BBB4C060B585B@lp.airnews.net>

Pythonic Quote of the Week...
    Quite granted that nobody is forced to use a feature.  But when
    a language becomes too featureful, people start programming in
    the subdialect they like best, later creating difficulties to
    other wanting to read their programs, who might like other parts
    better.

    One of the reason behind Python legibility success, is that
    there is almost only one way to do one thing (to contrast with
    Perl, say).  We are progressively sliding away of this virtue. 
    The danger is real.
                                  Fran?ois Pinard
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993966362.10675.python-list at python.org

    Bernhard Rieter wonders about second system syndrome resulting from
    the syntactic additions to recent Python releases.  The discussion
    weaves in and out of topics, reviewing how things get done, who does
    what, and what's needed next.  It turns out there's no magic here:
    people work and volunteer in their areas of interest.  Guido tells us
    we should all do what we do best: the core PythonLabs team should
    work on the language, and the community the Libraries.  Elsewhere
    it's noted that PythonLabs needs to support library modules accepted
    to the core distribution, sometimes making the core team reluctant to
    accept modules not within their areas of expertise.  It appears the
    next step is to work on PEP-0002 so guidelines can be worked out as
    to which modules will be in the core, and which should be in third
    party repositories such as the Vaults or ActiveState's planned
    repository.  See the complete thread starting at
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b4a14dbfb3560d93,64&ic=1
    ... Tim Peters disagrees with Bernhard's particulars, but warns that
    some PEPs may be pointing that way
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993788804.16625.python-list at python.org
    ... while also saying the rate of change will slow down, as the backlog
    dwindles.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993880666.24740.python-list at python.org

    Early registration for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention Ends
    Today.  The convention runs July 23-27, 2001 in San Diego, CA.  Many
    Python people are scheduled, including David Ascher, David Beazley,
    Mark Hammond and Guido van Rossum.  Check out the Python session
    information at
        http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2001/pub/w/os2001/sessions_python.html
    ... the Bird of a Feather Sessions will feature Wesley Chun and Paul Prescod
        http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2001/pub/w/os2001/bofs.html
    ... tutorials will be conducted by Aaron Watters, Aahz, Eric Jones and Wesley Chun.
        http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2001/pub/10/python_tutorials.html
    ... and many additional Python related topics covered
        http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2001/pub/w/os2001/speakers.html

    Richard Snow calls for testers and developers to help advance his
    school library system.  See the project home page or his posting for
    more information.
        http://richardsnow.bizland.com/opendev/id5.html
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3B3601BE.3C84E49A at earthlink.net

    Martijn Faasen answers the question "What's the concept/logic behind
    object-orientation?" in a succinct posting.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9h4rto$fmc$1 at newshost.accu.uu.nl

    Create screen savers for windows using Python!  Chris Liechti
    releases a win32 screen saver that includes embedded python and shows
    how you can write your own version of flying toasters.  I did a
    company wide screen-saver community-access-channel type project last
    year that I'll rewrite some day using this.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:Xns90D014E757768cliechtimailsch at 62.2.32.50

    Milan Zamazal has contributed Python 2.1 documentation in GNU info
    format.  Thanks to Fred Drake for pointing this out.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993842806.3648.python-list at python.org

    Guido reveals that threads of democracy occasionally work loose in
    the fabric of the BDFL cloak.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:cp7kxvlake.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com

    OpenDocs put up the first parts of Boudewijn Rempt's Graphical
    Programming with Python: QT Edition. The book is under development
    and feedback is asked for.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993884385.26860.python-list at python.org

    Magnus Lie Hetland hopes to revive Greg Ewing's Python GUI API as a
    new project named anygui, which will function in a manner similar to
    anydbm in that it will look for existing backends, and use what is
    available.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9hg7fg$dmg$1 at tyfon.itea.ntnu.no

    Paul Prescod and the team at ActiveState push the penny ahead with
    the starting of the repository of our dreams.  This is also the
    topic of his BOF in San Diego later this month.  The combined
    projects show a lot of promise, and are even now quite useful.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993856425.27427.python-list at python.org

    Jussi Jumppanen announces the availability of CVS integration for
    ZeusEdit, a windows based programmer's source code editor.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3B3BB20B.7514 at zeusedit.com

    Neal Norwitz introduces a new version of PyChecker, a tool for
    finding common bugs in python source code.  It finds problems that
    are typically caught by a compiler for less dynamic languages, like
    C and C++.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993642589.9402.python-list at python.org

    Pete Shinners releases Pygame 1.1 for Python Game Development. 
    There are currently several released open source games and
    applications built with Pygame.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:OIVZ6.41208$c7.7431279 at typhoon.we.rr.com

    Cayce Ullman tells us that SOAP.py is updated now to version 0.9.7
    and moves to sourceforge.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993726240.19493.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Alex Martelli provides a clue and Dirck Blaskey follows up, showing
    how to call a module.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:6c8b7eb9.0106250030.51be556d at posting.google.com

    Robin Becker finds the PMW "loader" slows down imports, and suggests
    a solution for introspective Tk apps.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:4e4PQKAuqKO7EwDj at jessikat.demon.co.uk

    Frederik Lundh shows how to un-accent unicode strings for use in
    searches and filters.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:7M0_6.4105$e5.767781 at newsb.telia.net

    Tim Peters leads us safely through the minefield of threads and generators.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993456458.22004.python-list at python.org

    Guido presents a PEP to strip buggy un-used portions of xrange from the system
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993578546.30453.python-list at python.org
    ... which leads Tim Peters and James Logajan to go soul searching.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3B39480C.F4808C1F at Lugoj.Com


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning,
ask <claird at neosoft.com> to subscribe.  Mention "Python-URL!".


-- The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 20:12:20 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:12:20 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <20010727.150850.1605894428.16613@hp.com>
Message-ID: <u8zh9nc7v.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Bill Anderson" <anderson at hp.com> writes:

> I strongly favor the // operator for the new behaviour. It just make smuch
> more sense that the new stuff goes with new stuff, and old stuff stays
> the same.  Furthermore, code breakage is kept to ... none.
> 
> Hmm code breakage vs no code breakage. If there was no possibility of
> making a change to get the behaviour, I could support a code-breakage.
> But in this case we _have_ a way, a fairly trivial way, of getting the
> int/int=float behaviour *without code breakage*.

For anyone who's been following the threads, it's probably clear that
I'm biased towards the compatibility argument, but it's also only fair
to point out that part of the crux of the problem is that it's not
just a debate over code breakage versus no code breakage, and thus the
answer is not that simple.

At the very least it's a debate over code breakage with better long
term characteristics for a language operator versus no code breakage
with continued ambiguous long term characteristics in a language
operator.  The fact that the operator in question (/) just happens to
be the intuitive one that all new users will want to use for division
adds to the equation.

I think the most recent versions of the PEP do a reasonable job of
highlighting this.

> BTW, how much extra memory does it take (if any) to store 1.0 over 1?

Depends on the precise format, but currently Python uses a C "long" to
store an integer (32 bits or 4 bytes on most current platforms), and a
C "double" to store a floating point value (generally 8 bytes I believe).

So 4 bytes more per value.  It's not actually twice the memory overall
since each object has a fixed header (generally 16 bytes), so it's
really more like a 20% growth.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul 14 13:27:22 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:27:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B506D74.634EA1F@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107142120210.11347-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>> #!/usr/bin/python
>> # -*- coding=utf-8 -*-
>> ...
>
>I already mentioned allowing directives in comments to work around
>the problem of directive placement before the first doc-string.
>
>The above would then look like this:
>
>#!/usr/local/bin/python
># directive unicodeencoding='utf-8'
>u""" UTF-8 doc-string """
>
>The downside of this is that parsing comments breaks the current
>tokenizing scheme in Python: the tokenizer removes comments before
>passing the tokens to the compiler ...wouldn't be hard to
>fix though ;-) (note that tokenize.py does not)

BTW, it is possible to write variable names in national alphabet
is locale is set. But I do not know if this is side-effect
which will be corrected or behaviour one can rely on ;-)

It could be also nice to be able replace keywords with localised ones.
Python remains nice even after translating into Russian.

This + mending broken IDLE (which doesn't allow to enter cyrillic) will
allow beginners to think and write. Currently "writing while thinking"
works only for those who think in English ;-)

And such a move opens Python to secondary schools. For example, Logo has
national variants without any losses. Why Python, also targeted for
education requires to use English?

And unicoding (utf-8-ing) Python source could be the solution.

What do you think?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 02:34:43 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:34:43 -0400
Subject: Threading in Python
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B610B83.EF89E365@engcorp.com>

Andy wrote:
> 
> There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes
> going on in the Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps
> the direction should be towards improving the internals
> first?
> 
> One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent
> support for multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads,
> but I believe it is internally implemented and has
> been shown not to take advantage of an SMP machine.

I'm not an expert on SMP.  In fact, I know next to 
nothing about SMP.  (But ignorance never stopped anyone 
from posting an answer on Usenet. :-)

I'm quite sure Python threads will take advantage
of whatever the native threads take advantage of,
since Python threads are *not* "internally implemented"
quite like you probably imagine.  On an OS and
platform with SMP support, different Python threads
probably execute on different CPUs.

Even so, you are probably right about there
being no advantage with multiple CPUs.  The reason,
however, would be the "global interpreter lock", 
which is a feature of the interpreter core which 
protects against the usual thread safety problems.

I haven't done enough work down at that level yet
to be able to answer the question "could Python
readily be changed to reduce the negative impact 
of the global interpreter lock on multithreaded
performance?"

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:47 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:47 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <33kpltg1nol79n9b4c484hh0kqdpoqaocu@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:12:13 -0700, David Eppstein
<eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>Maybe it would have been more type-safe to have defined a language in which
>string concatenation was defined by some other symbol ++, so that 
>"123"++"456" would equal "123456" but "123"+"456" would automagically 
>coerce the arguments into integers and return 579.  You could argue either 

Shutupshutupshutup - if you're not careful, they'll hear you - and
that's another codebreaking change in the queue. After all, Perl does
it so it *must* be right.

BTW, it's not just strings - how about [1,2,3] + [4,5,6]. Same thing
of course, but worth noting that strings aren't just a special case.



From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 11 15:16:43 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:16:43 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net> <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com> <3B4C759D.559D6AA5@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b4c99fe.1647222100@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:49:49 -0700, Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com> wrote:

>
>
>"David C. Ullrich" wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:47:30 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
>> >str took 13.601617 seconds
>> >
>> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
>> >strL took  1.044989 seconds
>> >
>> >Recursion rides again ;-)
>>
>> Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
>> a replacement for str that's faster is very
>> curious.
>
>How much of this difference in speed, though, is because strL()
>is a special purpose integer->string conversion, where the
>standard str() is a general-purpose anything->string conversion?
>
I would guess the general purpose str already does something
internally specialized for longs. However, the % operator is even
more general purpose, and you may note that I used it
to trim my trees in strL (because it is faster than carrying
strLR's recursion all the way down to w=1 and chr(48+n) )

BDFL & Tim & co probably just had better things to do than cater
to the small percentage of strange people with programs
that need to convert longs to multi-kilo-digit integers ;-)

I'm sure they know how to do this kind of thing very well,
but if they think it's worth the seldom-used-bloat-increment,
they're certainly welcome to take strL and make it truly
Python-worthy and incorporate it. (Maybe I'd find out how to
keep everything but strL invisible from the user, and make
strLR nested without triggering a warning ;-)


From mcherm at destiny.com  Mon Jul 23 18:05:34 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:05:34 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <e1fbf438.f438e1fb@destiny.com>

Steve Horn replied with a few comments, let me try to 
address some of his points:

Your second point, was to attack my claim:

> just imitating C isn't very convincing 
> since other languages (eg: Pascal) use other syntax

Which you do by listing, and rating, languages (I'm
paraphrasing you here quite severely, and probably
missing a few good points along the way):

> 1/2 == 0.5:
>    Perl -- untyped, thus irrelevent
>    LISP -- academic language only
>    Pascal -- the Ada folks thought it was wrong
>    Modula 2+ -- Minority languages
>    JavaScript -- dumbed down language
> 1/2 == 0:
>    Visual BASIC -- most used language 3 yrs running
>    C -- what need I say?
>    C++ -- ditto
>    Java -- ditto
>    Ada -- intentionally changed the Pascal practice
>    VBA -- most used non-programmer language

Now, I *could* argue with you. I could say that VB, C++,
and Java are just imitating C, and thus you only have 2
independent examples of making this choice (C and Ada).
I could say that mere put-downs of excellent languages
like LISP and Modula 3 (and other languages, like JavaScript)
are hardly an "argument". But instead I'm going to go
ahead and concede... as you've demonstrated with this list,
consistancy with "the C family" *is* a desirable trait.

This doesn't make it good language design, but it's clearly
an argument in favor of 1/2==0.

----

Your first point, though, was:

> [F]loat division is simply a logical extension of int division,
> the same as float addition compared with int addition. The fact 
> that some people *see* them as different things is irrelevant 
> given that others don't.

On this point I'm holding my ground. I do NOT belive that
int division is "the same thing" (with different domain). For
instance a VERY IMPORTANT feature of "division" is that
(A / B) * B == A, and "integer division" doesn't maintain
this. Another clear way to tell that "integer division" is
different from "division", is to see that they give different
answers... 25 <int division> 3 == 8, while 
25.0 <mathematical division> 3.0 == 8 1/3 =~= 8.3333333333333339


However, these are minor points. My impression is that you
agree with my major points: 

> > [Both] are USEFUL things, and a good language should allow 
> > BOTH.
> Here I agree - division that implicitly coerces integers to 
> floats is likely to be useful, at least for some.

And secondly that the issue here is to balance issues of code
breakage (VERY BAD THING) against language design (VERY
DESIRABLE (but also debatable) THING). Good luck Guido!

-- Michael Chermside





From PoulsenL at capecon.com  Fri Jul 20 11:01:05 2001
From: PoulsenL at capecon.com (PoulsenL at capecon.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:01:05 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
Message-ID: <72F73B808A78D511A73600034771D9FF717B19@dc_exchange2.howrey.com>

I don't understand why we can't have our cake and eat it to...  If Guido is
thinking about an IDE that enforces case-consistency much like what VBA does
today, why is there simultaneously a need to enforce case-insensitivity at
the level of the interpreter?  If such a feature is aimed at
"non-programmers" they would most likely be using some development
environment anyway.  Why not one geared to catching mistakes occassional
prgrammers are more likely to make?

Loren



From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Fri Jul 27 17:41:24 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:41:24 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <UuxEMIARGKY7Ew1w@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B60AEAD.CB287C47@engcorp.com><UW1ECVADBSY7EwWj@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <B7875843.151BE%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

on 2001-07-27 4:03 AM, Robin Becker (robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk) wrote:
> I don't disagree on readability, but given that the scripties can do
> perl already and the result is often faster python won't get a look in
> at the sort of mundane tasks in web serving/shell scripting etc.

I "did Perl" intensively for 2.5 years, shell scripts up through
multi-thousand-line systems. Then I learned Python, and gave up on Perl for
all but one-line throw-away commands. Perl may run faster, but at what cost?

I chose sanity: Python.

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sourceforge.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sourceforge.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net



From djc at object-craft.com.au  Mon Jul  9 20:55:02 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 10:55:02 +1000
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> writes:

Paul> That's not to say that one doesn't have a certain feeling of
Paul> unease when evaluating Python modules for serious database use,
Paul> however. It does seem like a reflection of the open source
Paul> community at large when there are lots of seemingly incomplete
Paul> modules covering certain narrow, fashionable areas, and few
Paul> modules covering other areas.

Boy, would I ever like to be able to complete my modules...

The problem with producing free software is that you can only dedicate
so much time to it before the consulting business goes belly-up.  It
would make my year if someone who used one of my modules approached me
and said that they would sponsor some development on it.

In the absence of such a sponsor, I am limited to my spare time (such
as it is) - the rest of my time goes into making sure that I do not
lose my business, house, car, family, ...

Paul> I mean no offence to any database module author when I use the
Paul> term "incomplete"; my definition of "completeness" may differ
Paul> from that of any given developer in this case, and presumably
Paul> most database authors are satisfied with what they have
Paul> written. Moreover, I wouldn't like to make any criticism of the
Paul> reliablity of any module without having seen it first. I
Paul> sometimes get concerned that serious commercial users are likely
Paul> to have views on issues of functionality and reliability even
Paul> more extreme than my own, however.

If the module is almost good enough surely you should be entering a
discussion with the module author to work out how it can be made good
enough.

In my case, I can always dedicate spare time for development, so while
funding would be nice, it is not essential.  What is more important is
to be able to find people who are willing to exercise the module in
their environment and work with me to resolve problems.

In the entire history of the Sybase module(s) I have developed, I have
only been contacted by four people who experienced a usage problem
with the module.  There are two possible interpretations to that:

1- I write awesome code which has only the most obscure bugs.

2- People who experience problems do not bother contacting me.

Although it would be nice to think that option 1 is true, I suspect
that option 2 is closer to the truth.

Paul> However, if you are referring to a standard API for databases,
Paul> then one already exists. Unfortunately, most modules aren't
Paul> compliant with the most recent version of that API as far as I
Paul> can tell.

Time or money is the solution to this in my case.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 07:55:56 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:55:56 +0100
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca> <mailman.994154044.13791.python-list@python.org> <3B419E3D.A965D4DE@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k3cmc.p7.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:28:13 +0200, Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> wrote:
>Thomas Wouters wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:02:54AM -0400, William Park wrote:
>> 
>> > On your original post, you came across as a high-schooler with homework.
>> > Now, it's becoming clear... a propaganda by fucking trolls.
>> 
>> [ snip rant ]
>> 
>> > So, go way.
>> 
>> You know, this is really the first time I even considered the benifits of a
>> moderated c.l.py.
>
>Well, it's the first time I put someone posting to comp.lang.python
>(Mr. Park) into my kill file. One out of hundreds.

Me too.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Thu Jul  5 06:02:30 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:02:30 +0100
Subject: How to use Tkinter.canvas.postscript()?
References: <3B4437BC.640620F9@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B443B36.D0309988@westerngeco.com>


Take a look into the Tk commands help..canvas

I do like this but I can't remember which of these options do what.......




psfile.write(canvas2.postscript(fontmap='fontMap',
                   colormap='colorMap',
                   pageanchor='nw',
                   height='%2.1fc' %paper_height,
                   width='21.c',
                   pagex='0.c',
                   pagey='%2.1fc' %paper_height,
                   y='0.c', 
                   x='0.c'))







XiaoQin Xia wrote:
> 
> Hi, everybody,
> 
> Here is some code to use Tkinter.canvas.postscript()
> 
>   from Tkinter import *
> 
>   win=Tk()
>   win.title("A Chart ")
>   canvas=Canvas(win)#, background="white")
>   canvas.pack(padx=0, pady=0)
>   # here is some code using canvas to draw some lines and words.
>   p=canvas.postscript()
>   f=open("chart.ps", "wb")
>   f.write(p)
>   f.close()
> 
> The problem is,  after type the command " lpr chart.ps", I got only a blank
> paper, instead of a chart I saw on screen.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Xiao-Qin Xia
>


From uioziaremwpl at spammotel.com  Mon Jul  2 16:22:19 2001
From: uioziaremwpl at spammotel.com (Carsten Geckeler)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 22:22:19 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107022216020.1180-100000@athlon.de>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Paul Prescod wrote:

> Tim Hochberg wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Someone made a decision at some point that the builtin mutable types should
> > mutated by augmented assigment. If the newbies were sacrificed on somebody's
> > alter, it was not NumPy's.
>
> I've come to the same conclusion myself. I don't know what the rationale
> is for this "mutable types behave one way" and "immutable types behave
> another" philosophy.

Well, the Python world before augmented assignment was quite simple:
Operators never changed the objects they acted on.  You would never expect
x+y changing the object bound to x or y themselves (except some
brain-twistings user objects with dumb operator overloading).  You'd just
expect to return a "sum" (for the object type) of two object.

Now we have augmented assignments.  x=+y _can_ change the object bound to
x, depending if x is mutable or immutable.  From my POV using a method
call for changing an object in place is appropriate and more readable
(l.extend was perfect for me).

> "Advanced" types could have "smart" behaviour and simple types could
> have x=x+y behaviour.

Cheers, Carsten
-- 
Carsten Geckeler




From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul  4 02:54:13 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 08:54:13 +0200
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org> <ku3d8d31ve.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <3B42BD95.D6A0BC30@stroeder.com>

Erno Kuusela wrote:
> 
> In article <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list at python.org>, Haris
> Lekatsas <lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU> writes:
> 
> | Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
> | sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
> | but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
> 
> i'm under the impression that /usr/lib/sendmail is pretty universal.
> with smtplib you have to configure the hostname of the smtp server.

Now think about systems where sendmail isn't installed at all. How
does the effort for configuration compare then?

Ciao, Michael.


From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul  2 01:42:44 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 05:42:44 GMT
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k02ej.jqa.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:59:08 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>So, I tend to restrict my activities to the practical things I *can* do to
>help, like maintaining the FAQ (even though many questions indicate that a
>large proportion of newbies either aren't aware of it or don't read it). At

Don't lose faith, when I was a newbie I read the faq multiple times, and
appreciated its presence a great deal.

and-then-turned-around-and-posted-about-the-def-foo(x=[])-bug-ly y'rs


From vesselinpeev at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 07:46:33 2001
From: vesselinpeev at hotmail.com (Vesselin Peev)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:46:33 +0300
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
Message-ID: <F183yz5b6KZmcK8r6be0001874c@hotmail.com>

Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
example the ones created via

PyObject* Py_CompileString(char *str, char *filename, int start)

There's no explanation on the matter that I can find.

All I want to do is to execute different precompiled python code blocks from
a C program (I have already embedded Python). I could make do without
bytecode but then the speed would be much less.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.




From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul 19 13:43:46 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 17:43:46 GMT
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>
Message-ID: <9j768i$h9g$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "Michael Abbott" <michael at rcp.co.uk>:
...
| I also was encouraged by the presence of OCaml.  I'm troubled by the absence
| of strong typing in Python, and it's good to see a strongly typed language
| with comparable expressive strength.
|
| I haven't yet tried writing anything in OCaml, but I'm anticipating being
| let down by the library support in comparison with Python, particularly on
| Win32!

In a completely coincidence, I happened to be researching network
file distribution options yesterday and one of them turned out to
be written in OCaml (Unison), with Windows and UNIX support.

But that strong typing thing, I'm not so sure.  Like others who
have commented on this lately here, it hasn't been a significant
real problem in practice for me.  Python's willingness to allow
any object to appear in any context is a freedom, as usual with
benefits and costs, and when you look at how it fits with the OO
model you can really see the benefit.  It puts the object in the
driver's seat.

I managed to implement a tree in OCaml last night - not balanced
or anything, just insert in alphabetical order and print.  That's
how much I know about it - next to nothing.  But for what it's
worth, I was thinking the value of the way it handles types might
be rather accidental to the ostensible intention.  They talk about
reasoning about program correctness, but that sounds pretty ambitious
to me.  Meanwhile though, they have come up with type dispatching
and other features that end up getting some programming mileage out
of types that is missing in the miserable encumbrance of Pascal, C
et al. types.  Maybe instead of FLP, we should say TOP, Type Oriented
Programming.

Have only skimmed the OO part, but it looks like its contribution
to the language might be debatable.  Just as the typing would be
in Python, if it were grafted in somehow - a thing that considered
on its own seems to be of value, but ends up a burden on the language
that already has enough to work with.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 14:53:28 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:53:28 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com> <3B5EEED7.C9C7117B@home.net> <23891c90.0107260053.70747d65@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <IGZ77.30629$EP6.7882998@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:23891c90.0107260053.70747d65 at posting.google.com...

> However, it's arguably more relevant to discuss the fact that this
> changes well-defined semantics in the language.

This has been for at least a month.  I summarized the issues 'so far'
in 'Language Change and Code Breaks' on July 10.

> It's extremely  important for pragmatic reasons to discuss how much
damage this change
> will cause.

There have been several good posts on this topic.  Some 'surprised' me
in the sense of pointing out things I had not considered because they
arise from experiences I have not had.  Very educational.  If you have
anything new to add, please do.

I think the proper focus now is how to minimize the impact, given the
problem scenarios presented so far.

> I'm sure we'd all love to see a nice and consistent numeric system,
> but Python is a mature language in widespread use. It's tempting for
> some to think that with a supposedly inevitable huge influx of new
> users that the volume of existing code will be dwarfed by new code
> within a short period of time, but regardless of whether this will
> happen or not, I think such "ideological" changes to the language
with
> such limited justification send the message to numerous
> highly-respected community members that their work is considered to
be
> of little value and can be sacrificed to the "language gods" on a
> whim.
>
> Paul

Is this a one-time gift/sacrifice, of this magnitude, in return for
Guido's gift of Python, or the first of a long series?  I'll let Guido
answer by word and ultimately by deed as he chooses.

Terry J. Reedy





From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:21:55 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:21:55 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpzo9r5qty.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:

> For discussion purposes, I'm going to assume that some forms of PEP 237, 238
> and 239 are eventually adopted. In that case, integers and longs will be
> unified. The integers can then be completely emebedded into rationals. This
> leaves us with just one level of precision/range for exact numbers (infinite
> more or less) and one level of precision/range for inexact numbers (C
> double). This allows the numeric tower to be knocked down and stirred around
> to form a box:
> 
>    Real      Complex
>       |               |
> rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
> rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)

I just don't see much use for complex rational...  So then we're back
to my original tower (with rational).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From ejr at cs.berkeley.edu  Tue Jul 10 22:31:24 2001
From: ejr at cs.berkeley.edu (Edward Jason Riedy)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:31:24 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Dynamic precisions [was Re: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <mailman.994630754.21755.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9igdps$o1u$1@agate.berkeley.edu>

And Tim Peters writes:
 - 
 - A gloss on this:
 - 
 - > If I write
 - >
 - >   precision 3
 - >   x = f()	# some function that uses int division
 - >
 - > should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
 - > statement?
 - 
 - Believe it or not, probably "yes".  REXX has tons of experience with this,
 - and life works best if (a) everyone respects precision, and (b) users rarely
 - fiddle it except once at the start of a program run.
 -
 - That said, f()'s author also needs to make a choice here.  Most *library*
 - routines should strive to return a *result* good to strictly less than 1 ULP
 - wrt the precision in effect at the time they were called, even if that
 - requires temporarily boosting precision internally.  This kind of construct
 - would be common in well-written libraries:

For others, as Tim already knows:  This use of extended precision
is common for calculating elementary functions (sine, pow, arctan,
etc.).  See Markstein's book[1] for a good discussion.  Note that
this class of methods needs a single additive increase to the
precision, often a small one.

For everyone:  ;)
Some growing uses of extended precision:
	* A fix-up phase that requires twice the initial precision.
	  e.g.: Iterative refinement in linear systems.  See a 
	  numerical linear algebra text or the XBLAS work[2].

	* Repeating a calculation until you know some predicate is
	  _correct_.
	  e.g.: Determining orientation in geometric calculations.
	  See Shewchuk's predicates in CMU's Quake project[3].

Most 'new' uses of extended precision require relative precision 
adjustments.  Moreover, they often need to multiply the precision 
by some power of sqrt(2) each time.  (For binary.  I'm not sure
about decimal.  Ulp-sized errors behave much differently in 
decimal.)

So currently there seem to be three classes of extended precisions
widely needed:
	1) Adding a small amount to the current precision once.
	2) Doubling precision for 'internal' calculations.
	3) Repeating a calculation with about sqrt(2) times the
	   precision.

The first is often a matter of performance.  Extra precision
can lead to a simpler algorithm.  I've never seen it nested
with other precision increases, but I suppose it could be.
In most cases where nesting would be profitable, simply 
doubling the internal precision once would be much easier.
And the small additive increase often bumps the precision up
to about sqrt(2) times the original...

Some precision doublings are mathematically required.  See
Demmel's text for iterative refinement's requirement proof.
Nesting this type of precision change seems quite possible.
It's also a good idea for general expression evaluation,
a quite dead horse.

(Note that some of the uses here are tolerant of 'doubled'
precisions.  See IBM's Power series or the aforementioned 
XBLAS work.  Those have interesting rounding properties, so
I'd relegate them to 'expert' tools.)

The third is almost only used where an exact answer (but not 
exact floating-point result) is required.  By its nature, 
nesting precision changes doesn't make much sense.  It also
has a generator-like feel.

All three are normally scoped, or they really want to be.

What does this have to do with Python?  Well, does Python
really need fully arbitrary precision changes?  Can the
associated state be simplified if you only allow precision
changes that multiply precisions by multiples of 1.5 and 2?

Some thread-local stack with _very_ simple, scoped accessors 
should suffice for most (all?) uses.  The top of the stack 
would be the current working precision.  The next entry would 
be some i/o precision (routine i/o, not terminal i/o).  One 
accessor could ensure that the top two entries satisfy some 
relationship, pushing a new value if they don't.  Another
would just push a multiple of the current top.

[BTW, there's some disagreement about the scope of REXX 
experience.  Some folks feel that the arbitrary precision
settings are only used in calculations that should be fixed-
point.  The "fiddling with it once at the beginning" kinda
supports that view...  The REXX and IEEE viewpoints diverge
significantly once you look at subnormals.]

Jason

[1] http://www.markstein.org/
Note:  The current good-and-still-fast error for elementary 
functions is about 0.53 ulp.
[2] http://www.nersc.gov/~xiaoye/XBLAS/
[3] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/robust.html
-- 


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul  2 15:52:16 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 19:52:16 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <uN107.141431$L4.17198481@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <3B40B551.5A554148@ActiveState.com> <15168.47771.528688.531809@beluga.mojam.com> <mailman.994098845.15542.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9k1k7g.co7.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:33:12 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> pisze:

> print mumble
> 
> It could open a socket and download Quake for all you know.

We are not talking about what is possible in bad code
but what happens in good code.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 16 18:29:12 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 18:29:12 -0400
Subject: Debugging extension modules
References: <mailman.995067983.18546.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u8zhowls7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Brian Quinlan" <BrianQ at ActiveState.com> writes:

> David wrote:
> > You could probably (at least under NT/2K) rename the DLL in order to
> > rebuild a new version, but I expect you'd still have to stop/start
> > Python to get it to reload the new version.
> 
> Doing this would be painful because the module name must match the
> file name of the DLL.

Right, that's why you have to rename the current DLL (which is in use
by Python) to something else before rebuilding.  Of course, given the
probable need to stop/restart Python to then load in the new version,
at best this just let's you parallelize some current testing with a
new build task.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From anthony at interlink.com.au  Fri Jul 20 00:42:19 2001
From: anthony at interlink.com.au (Anthony Baxter)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:42:19 +1000
Subject: PyDNS? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Wolfgang Strobl <Wolfgang.Strobl@gmd.de> 
   of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:38:53 +0200." <85jdlt41f5u6mfqqecutsh7vhk7do0aopj@4ax.com> 
Message-ID: <200107200442.f6K4gJT02472@mbuna.arbhome.com.au>

>>> Wolfgang Strobl wrote
> Well, I noticed that the DNS module is somewhat Unix centric, by
> parsing /etc/resolv.conf for name servers in base.py. So I wrote a
> function collecting name server adresses from the Windows registry,  

Oh you complete legend! Thanks very much - this will go into the
code once the SF guys have imported the CVS tree.

any Macintosh users want to contribute the equivalent for their O/S? :)

Anthony



From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 15 01:09:01 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 22:09:01 -0700
Subject: do .. while loops ?
References: <mailman.995169745.15095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B51256D.E6266B50@alcyone.com>

Paul Andreassen wrote:

> Could someone please tell me why "do .. while" loops are not part of
> the
> python language?  I realise they are rarely used but the
> implementation
> should be easy.
> 
> Thanks for any reply, except abuse.

I think just simplicity.  Doing

	while 1:
	    ...
	    if not (condition): break

is pretty clear.

do...while loops are a language feature that tend to be fairly
controversial in some languages, for some reason -- probably because it
seems more on the "fluff" side to many people.  They're easy enough to
simulate with other control structures.

I certainly wouldn't have minded them being in Python, but by the same
token I don't miss them either.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Do you like what you see / Do you like yourself
\__/ Neneh Cherry
    Polly Wanna Cracka? / http://www.pollywannacracka.com/
 The Internet resource for interracial relationships.


From chris at voodooland.net  Mon Jul  9 09:42:08 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:42:08 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9ki1iv.de3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20010709083742.E93525-100000@open-systems.net>

> What software do you publish under this license?

Whatever code I feel like releasing to the public.

> Say you write a program, B, under this license.
>
> I then make some modifications to B, creating MB. I license my modifications
> under the GPL.
>
> B is still your license.

Correct, the *original work* is still B and under ym license.

> But anyone wanting to link code to MB must GPL it.
>
> How does this differ from if B was licensed under the regular BSDL?

Court time. You will not be able to GPL MB. Regardless if it contains GPL
code. You have conflicting licenses. The GPL says MB must be GPL in its
entirety and my section of code prevents it from falling under the GPL
because it places further restrictions on it. Time to go to court and get
it resolved. In which case they either uphold my license, and throw the
GPL out as illegal, or they uphold the GPL and throw mine out. There can
only be two outcomes. Which would be good because I would like to see the
GPL get into court. Finally see if it stands up in court.

Chris




From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 14:39:38 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:39:38 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org> <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net> <slrn9m4um1.28g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B65A9EA.19373772@home.net>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:

> > > From what I hear about Python, it is weakly-typed like Perl.
> >
> > Python is dynamically typed, and NOT like Perl!
> 
> Could someone elaborate on this a bit more?  What is the difference
> here?  What makes Perl's typing _not_ dynamic?  I've heard this
> statement often in clpy, but do not understand the semantics of the
> argument.
> 
> However, Perl's typing system is much more flexible (read:
> context-sensitive) than Python's.

I didn't mean to say that Perl was not dynamicly typed. What I meant to
say was:

a) Python is dynamically typed, as opposed to weakly typed
b) Python's typing is not like Perl's typing, as you just said yourself.

Whether or not Perl's typing is best described as "dynamic" or "weak" is
a question I will leave to others that are more familiar with Perl than
I.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From daring at ecs.fullerton.edu  Thu Jul 19 03:08:31 2001
From: daring at ecs.fullerton.edu (Darin Goldstein)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 00:08:31 -0700
Subject: PyRun_File
Message-ID: <f61c65b3.0107182308.1ecfbb97@posting.google.com>

I have been told to use this newsgroup as a last resource. I modified
the file Demo/embed/demo.c in order to test out the functionality of
the PyRun_File command. Most likely, I'm making some sort of
boneheaded mistake that will probably be obvious to everyone and their
dog, but I've been banging my head for over 2 hours and I can't figure
out why this won't work.

Everything compiles perfectly and things seem to run as usual. result
does NOT come out NULL but the answer doesn't get parsed correctly.
Ironically, when it prints out the string with the message that it's
not parsing correctly, it only comes up with a smiley face. If someone
could tell me what's wrong, I would VERY much appreciate it. Thanks
for your help in advance.

D

---------------<demo.c>
/* Example of embedding Python in another program */

#include "Python.h"

void initxyzzy(void); /* Forward */

main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	PyObject *dict;
	FILE *fp;
	PyObject *result;
	char *helper; /* should be deleted */
	double answer;


	/* Pass argv[0] to the Python interpreter */
	Py_SetProgramName(argv[0]);

	/* Initialize the Python interpreter.  Required. */
	Py_Initialize();

	/* Add a static module */
	initxyzzy();

	/* Define sys.argv.  It is up to the application if you
	   want this; you can also let it undefined (since the Python 
	   code is generally not a main program it has no business
	   touching sys.argv...) */
	PySys_SetArgv(argc, argv);

	/* Do some application specific code */
	printf("Hello, brave new world\n\n");

	/* Execute some Python statements (in module __main__) */
	PyRun_SimpleString("import sys\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.builtin_module_names\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.modules.keys()\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.executable\n");
	PyRun_SimpleString("print sys.argv\n");

	/* We're going to try and run a Python file here. */
	fp=fopen("costtemp.py","r");
	if (fp==NULL)
	{
		printf("Failed to find the file costtemp.py.\n");
		exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
	};
	result=NULL;
	dict=PyDict_New();
	
	result=PyRun_File(fp,"costtemp.py",Py_file_input,
		dict,dict);
	if (result==NULL) printf("This went wrong.\n");
	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(result,"d",&answer))
	{
		printf("The answer didn't get parsed correctly:
%s\n",PyObject_Str(result));
	}
	else
	{
		printf("The answer is %.39f\n",answer);
	};

	Py_DECREF(dict);
	Py_DECREF(result);

	fclose(fp);
	/* ********************************************** */

	/* Note that you can call any public function of the Python
	   interpreter here, e.g. call_object(). */

	/* Some more application specific code */
	printf("\nGoodbye, cruel world\n");

	/* Exit, cleaning up the interpreter */
	Py_Exit(0);
	/*NOTREACHED*/
}

/* A static module */

/* 'self' is not used */
static PyObject *
xyzzy_foo(PyObject *self, PyObject* args)
{
	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, ""))
		return NULL;
	return PyInt_FromLong(42L);
}

static PyMethodDef xyzzy_methods[] = {
	{"foo",		xyzzy_foo,	1},
	{NULL,		NULL}		/* sentinel */
};

void
initxyzzy(void)
{
	PyImport_AddModule("xyzzy");
	Py_InitModule("xyzzy", xyzzy_methods);
}

-------------------------------------<costtemp.py>
x=[-9999.999998975394191802479326725006103515625 ,
9989.999999949799530440941452980041503906250 ]
x[0]+2*x[1]


From driedel at home.com  Fri Jul  6 19:06:59 2001
From: driedel at home.com (David P. Riedel)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 23:06:59 GMT
Subject: MS SQL Server
References: <51dgjtsbuureuugfcubid11tldg7077sfa@4ax.com> <m34rt2emlw.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B464491.577CFB99@home.com>

Dave Cole wrote:

> >>>>> "Ben" == Ben  <b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m> writes:
>
> Ben> Hi, Unfortunately I have to upload data to a MS SQL server
> Ben> ... Can anyone recommend a tool for doing this or docs\examples
> Ben> :] ... is it ANSI SQL compliant like MySQL and therefore can use
> Ben> the same commands?
>
> Ben> greatly appreciate any advice
>
> You don't say which platform you are using as the source for the
> data...
>
> The Sybase module which I wrote can be compiled on Linux or NT (so I
> hear) and it has bulkcopy support.  In my limited experience of using
> it to talk to MS SQL server I was able to bulkcopy data into tables
> which did not have IDENTITY columns.  There seems to be some
> difference between Sybase and MS SQL server in their handling of
> that column type.
>
>         http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/
>
> An example of bulkcopy from the README file:
>
> >>> import Sybase
> >>>
> >>> data = (('pencils',  5),
> >>>         ('books',  300),
> >>>         ('videos',  11))
> >>>
> >>> db = Sybase.connect('SYBASE', 'user', 'password', bulkcopy = 1, auto_commit = 1)
> >>> db.execute('create table #bogus (name varchar(40), num int)')
> >>>
> >>> bcp = db.bulkcopy('#bogus)
> >>> for line in data:
> >>>     bcp.rowxfer(line)
> >>> print 'Loaded', bcp.done(), 'rows'
>
> The auto_commit is needed because bulkcopy does not work inside a
> transaction.
>
> Sybase 11.0.3 is a free download from http://linux.sybase.com/
> It is free for development and deployment.
>
> If your source data is CSV format then you can use another one of the
> modules I wrote to load it into a format suitable to feeding the
> bulkcopy object in the Sybase module.  The module was written
> specifically to handle data type data produced by Access and Excel.
>
>         http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/
>
> The above bulkcopy example enhanced to use the csv module would look
> something like this:
>
> >>> import Sybase, csv
> >>>
> >>> db = Sybase.connect('SYBASE', 'user', 'password', bulkcopy = 1, auto_commit = 1)
> >>> db.execute('create table #bogus (name varchar(40), num int)')
> >>>
> >>> p = csv.parser()
> >>> bcp = db.bulkcopy('#bogus')
> >>> for line in open('datafile').readlines():
> >>>     fields = p.parse(line)
> >>>     if fields:
> >>>         bcp.rowxfer(line)
> >>> print 'Loaded', bcp.done(), 'rows'
>
> - Dave
>
> P.S.  Ob.Vapour #1: I have some more appropriate software under
>       development but do not want to announce it until it is ready...
>
>       Ob.Vapour #2: I just tested the above and realised that I had
>       not added support for the optional bulkcopy = 1 argument.  I
>       have since fixed that and it will be in the next release.  Two
>       releases in two days - oops.
>
> --
> http://www.object-craft.com.au

in our shop, we work with ms sql server databases from linux clients using mxodbc and
the easysoftt odbc-odbc bridge.

so far, this has been successful.

dave riedel




From thomas at gatsoft.no  Wed Jul 25 10:39:25 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:39:25 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <xSA77.59$bXi.175169024@news.telia.no>

I think Guido has done a great job so far. Python is by far the most
productive and fun programming language I've ever worked with.

Introducing new features is probably a good thing in terms of letting Python
evolve as a language, but I'm more concerned about the fact that each new
release of Python seem to be slower than the one before. Perhaps the
developers should focus more on performance and tuning of existing code
before adding more core features. I *do* think the inclusion of things like
pyunit and pydoc are good things, - very good indeed.

Extending the standard library and focusing on performance issues would
possibly be better. But hey, that's just me and I'm not known for using the
more advanced features of Python. The new features are probably aimed at
more trained programmers.

thomas




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Jul  4 13:06:39 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 17:06:39 GMT
Subject: Tkinter Scrollbar get method
References: <9hvbla$1bpq$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <z2I07.7660$e5.1023500@newsb.telia.net>

Lee Harr wrote:

> I am trying to use the Tkinter Scrollbar class.
> The docs say that the get() method returns a
> two element tuple of values between 0.0 and 1.0
>
> What I am getting, though is a 4 element tuple:

it's a weird backwards compatibility thing; if you call "get" directly
after you've created the scrollbar, it operates in "pre-Tk 4.0" mode,
and returns four values:

    total, window, first, last

to get normal behaviour, you have to call the "set" method with
two arguments (see the docs).  once you've done this, "get" will
work as documented.

note that if you attach a scrollbar to a scrollable widget, Tk(inter)
will do this for you all by itself.

</F>

<!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the python standard library:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
-->




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul  6 16:17:19 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:17:19 -0600
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4F5@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Chris Barker [mailto:chrishbarker at home.net]

[snip]

> 2) ActiveState is already doing that
> 
> Yes, it appears they are, but they have done an unusually bad job of
> advertising it! When I recently upgraded to 2.1, I went to their web
> page, got excited, then saw no mention of Numeric, or PIL, or mxTools,
> or wxPython, so I went and installed these things myself. It turns out
> that I could have installed all of these (except wx) with the pyppm
> tool. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a list of 
> available packages, or any docs on how to find that list. 


Copyright (C) 2000-2001 ActiveState Tool Corp., All rights reserved.
ActivePython PPM interactive shell (0.1.0) - type 'help' for available
commands.
PPM>help

Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
genconfig       help            install         query           querydb
search          set             verify          version

Undocumented commands:
======================
EOF             exit            quit

PPM>help query

 ppm query [--case|nocase] [--abstract|author] PATTERN

Searches for 'PATTERN' (a regular expression) in the name of any
installed
package.  If a search is successful, information about the matching
package(s) is displayed.  If 'PATTERN' is omitted, information about
all installed packages will be displayed.

If either '--abstract' or '--author' is specified, PATTERN will be
searched for in the <ABSTRACT> or <AUTHOR> tags of the installed
packages.

The '--case' and '--nocase' options can be used to override the default
case-sensitivity search settings.

See also: 'case' option.

PPM>query
Numeric [ 19.0.0  ] Numerical Extension to Python
PyXML   [ 0.6.4   ] XML Parsers and API for Python This version of PyXML
was
                    tested with Python 2.0 and 1.5.2.
PIL     [ 1.1.1.0 ] Python Imaging Library
PPM>



From glyph at twistedmatrix.com  Mon Jul  2 20:17:31 2001
From: glyph at twistedmatrix.com (Glyph Lefkowitz)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 19:17:31 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: PEP scepticism
In-Reply-To: <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107021911430.14563-100000@zaibach.twistedmatrix.com>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Roy Smith wrote:

> Having now used python for about 4 years, I still think
> indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is
> just too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without
> noticing), especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one
> place to another.  When such whitespace munging makes the code look
> ugly, it's simply a minor annoyance.  When it changes the meaning of
> the code, it's a language design mistake.

Rather, it's a usage mistake.  Why are you copying and pasting so much
code without reading it before you use it?  Most editors since after 'ed'
have been able to display whitespace.  Some are even able to replace
spaces with tabs, although this advanced technology must be licensed from
microsoft, it comes with their "emacs" software :-)

When I discovered Python's whitespace, I had a knee jerk reaction to it.  
Once I got into the language, I discovered that I really liked it and now
I just *love* scoping-by-indentation; I feel silly typing braces in a
language which requires them.  (even english <0.6 wink>)

now-I-just-have-a-knee-jerk-reaction-to-knee-jerk-reactions-ly y'rs,

                      ______      __   __  _____  _     _
                     |  ____ |      \_/   |_____] |_____|
                     |_____| |_____  |    |       |     |
                     @ t w i s t e d m a t r i x  . c o m
                     http://twistedmatrix.com/users/glyph





From catlee at canada.com  Sat Jul  7 20:19:05 2001
From: catlee at canada.com (Chris AtLee)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:19:05 GMT
Subject: Gzip problems
Message-ID: <ZFN17.434166$eK2.88218036@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

Hi there,

In python 2.0, the following two code segments have problems:
------
import gzip, cPickle
a = "Hello World"
cPickle.dump(a, gzip.open("hello","w"))
del a
a = cPickle.load(gzip.open("hello")) # decompression problems
print a
------
import gzip, cPickle
a = [0,] * 1024 * 1024
f = gzip.open("array","w")
print "Saving"
cPickle.dump(a, f)
f.close()
del a
print "Loading"
a = cPickle.load(gzip.open("array")) # gets stuck here
print len(a)

------
I believe the first problem is a result of the gzip file not being flushed
when the object is deleted.  The second problem I have no idea about...It
works when the object being dumped is fairly small, but for large objects it
doesn't work.  There are workarounds for both, but I'd rather fix these and
be able to do the intuitive thing :)

Cheers,
Chris






From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Wed Jul 11 03:03:27 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 07:03:27 GMT
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <3B4B2E5E.AB3C94BD@home.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9knuc5.hqf.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> This is the approved idiom, but I never use it. I always use:
> 
> x = raw_input()
> while x:
>     x = raw_input()
>     DoSomethingInteresting()
>     x = raw_input()

This bugs, of course; delete the second raw_input() line.

> I really don't like any "while 1" constructs, you have to then go
> looking for the "break" to find out what is controlling the loop. I
> don't like having to put "x = raw_input" in two places either, but it's
> more clear to me this way.

Just that you don't like it in two is no reason to put it in three places ;)

It's usually a single break statement, right at the top of the loop after
the 'x = raw_input()', in this case. That's pretty clear, especially in
Python where the idiom is common. Having it in two places isn't clearer, and
may be a maintenance problem (change one, forget the other).

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 11 14:00:47 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:00:47 -0400
Subject: evalstr
In-Reply-To: <20010711092116.6807.qmail@web10702.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEKOKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Shannon --jj Behrens]
> ...
> I wrote a useful C module for doing string interpolation.
> ...
> Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
> even be useful enough to be included as a standard
> module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
> suggestions as to what I can do with it.

You should work with the author of PEP 215 (String Interpolation) to settle
on a consensus proposal:

    http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0215.html




From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 10 01:27:05 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:27:05 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A9229.D45C14D6@alcyone.com>

"Steve S.L. Wong" wrote:

> while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> }

Whoever wrote that should be taken out and fed worms.  This is
deliberately and unnecessarily obfuscated.

All this does is tokenize the contents of line_ptr.  In Python the
equivalent would simply be:

	for command in line_ptr.split(';'):
	    ...

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ All the people in his neighborhood turn around and get mad and sing
\__/ Public Enemy
    Kepler's laws / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/kepler/
 A proof of Kepler's laws.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 04:07:06 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 10:07:06 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com><5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <mailman.994448787.15987.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i6st702vfa@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994448787.15987.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Edward> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which
handles
>     Edward> Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles
>     Edward> Postgres and MsSQL that would be a bonus, however, most $$
gigs
>     Edward> don't use the last two db's much so most of the focus should
be
>     Edward> on the "big five" or at least on the big three (Oracle, DB2,
and
>     Edward> SQL_Server).
>
> I'm not sure there are many Python programmers with the discretionary
funds
> necessary to buy any of the commercial databases you want supported.  That

Microsoft SQL Server could be an exception to this.  Although this fact is
not
well-known, I guess, if you have a license for Visual Studio or Office
Developer
at a sufficient level ('professional' I believe), you also have a license
for SQL
Server Developer Edition (single-user) and MicroSoft Data Engine (MSDE)
which you can redistribute for free with your applications (supports up to 5
simultaneous users).  In other words, anybody who uses MSVC++ or Office
(for development) needs 0$, just a download, to develop for MSQ SQL Server
and even to deploy his or her applications in small-ish situations (up to 5
simultaneous users).  At least, this was the case with SQL Server 7, but I
don't think it changed with the latest releases.  I consider this to be
clever
marketing on Microsoft's part, for once:-).


Alex





From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 08:42:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 16:42:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071540410.7441-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

Hello,

Latest Guido's decisions about xrange, / vs. div, etc, gave an interesting
idea which, probably, will find some followers.

The idea is to create Eternal programming style (or language -
I am not sure).

Let me explain.

I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
My main concerns are:

- archivators/compressors
- picture-showing utilities
- format converters
- file-system recognizers
-

The Eternal language must have the following features:

1. Small set of well-defined features and operations:
   - basic integer operations
   - basic string operations
   - way to extend language dictionary to allow even
   syntactical changes
   - basic IO capabilities. I mean really basic:
   1 input and 1 output stream of bytes.

2. Universal set of algorithmic constructions:
   if, while, for (like in Python or dumbed down)

3. Small set of libraries, written entirely in Eternal

4. There is only ONE fully described way of how core Eternal
   should function. All extensions only thru libraries
   which must be 7-bit clean (and thus Unicode too)

Eternal programs must remain Eternal as long as humanity use latin aphabet
(26 digits), 0-9 digits, ".", ",", spaces. All other characters must be
defined thru special macros.

The main feature of Eternal is:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. the interpreter of the language must be buildable from 2-page specs by
any programmer in (nearly) any language and platform in reasonable time
(0.5-8 hours, depending on the proficiency).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then extension libraries could be applied to the core and we get complete
language. Every program must be distributed with source, libraries and a
spec to build Eternal so, anyone could run them after building
interpreter. It doesn't matter how large libraries are used as long as
they are written in pure Eternal. NO "downloadable" modules and such.
Every Eternal program is monolithic and if it is not functional, it is not
eternal.

The main concern of the Eternal to be usable by any computers which could
do simple things like arithmetics, put strings together, store data and
such.
------------------------------------------------------------------

6. Eternal specs, interpreter and base library must be in Public Domain.

7. There will be only ONE TRUE ORIGINAL core Eternal Spec, no enhancements
ever. And I would like the Spec to be on the stone of my tomb..!

The closest of all to described as Eternal is... Forth. I even think, that
some well-defined minimal subset of Forth will do.

This way, Eternal programs could _look_ as whatever language as long as
they use nothing but pure Eternal. Otherwise, as you can guess, your
program are no more eternal ;-)

And I think Eternal will be really easy to write in Python ;-)

Gee... This doc is probably suitable for humour page and it's
author for psychiatric clinic ;-)

But I really-really frustrated keep up-to-date with things which need
eternity...

Self-appointed Eternal BDFL&D,
Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Tue Jul 10 06:47:15 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:47:15 +0100
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com> <Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B4ADD33.CA2836D1@westerngeco.com>

Duncan Booth wrote:
> 
> Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
> news:3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB at westerngeco.com:
> 
> > I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
> > I want to replace the common prefix of a list of file names
> > with a relative stub (./) I have this...
> >
> >     def _removePrefix(self, fullfile):
> >         print r'%s' %fullfile
> Why are you using a raw string here? And why format it at all?
> Either:
>         print "%s" % fullfile
> or
>         print fullfile
> will have the same effect.


Forgot to remove this before I sent the code in sorry... I was
jst testing around to _see_ if I could _see_ what was happening.....


> 
> >filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
> Again the r prefix on each of the "%s" format strings does nothing, and in
> every case formatting a using a format of '%s' does nothing except to
> convert the value to a string if it wasn't already a string.
> So this line is equivalent to:
>    filename=re.sub(self.prefix, os.sep, fullfile)
> 
> If you want to use arbitrary strings in regular expressions, the best thing
> is to escape them using re.escape:
>    filename=re.sub(re.escape(self.prefix), os.sep, fullfile)
> but since your regular expression is actually a constant string, why use
> regular expressions at all? This is equivalent:
>    filename=fullfile.replace(self.prefix, os.sep)


Tried re.escape() to escape my backslashes...  The jury is still out on this
IOW I need to go back and test it again.

> 
> I think you maybe misunderstand what raw strings do. Raw strings simply
> prevent any backslash character that is present in the string from being
> interpreted as an escape sequence. They don't affect the processing or use
> of the string in any way. Since none of your literal strings contain
> backslashes there is no reason to use raw strings.
> In regular expressions backslashes are special, but so are many other
> characters that could appear in filenames, even on Unix.


You are right I don't understand...  My strings do include backslashes (they
are windows filenames from os.path.walk())  I Have indeed changed to using 
string.replace() - having read the HOW TO on www.python.org.... and it seems 
to work (without using raw strings....) This all seems very confusing! 


Thanks for you help
Martin

> 
> --
> Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
> int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
> "\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sun Jul 29 00:51:03 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 04:51:03 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net> <9jvj7e$96b$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <XCM87.10556$Kd7.5973154@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote...
> In article <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569 at sea-read.news.verio.net>,
> Victor Bazarov <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote:
> [...]
> What OS are you using?  Which JVM?

That's happening on Windows 2000, under Java 1.3.

> >In order to write a test program I have to know what to try to
> >reproduce.  Should it itself be multi-threaded?  How complex should
> >it be?  If I don't get the same result, does it mean the problem is
> >in my Java program or is it just a coincidence?  (as I wrote before,
> >it does not happen if I run Java program under the debugger instead
> >of simply executing it)  You see, it would probably take me as long
> >to create a "self-contained" example as it did to create the system
> >in its current state.
>
> You've got a complex problem here, probably resulting from a multi-way
> interaction between Python, Java, and the OS.  You're going to get little
> help from us unless you can pare down the problem.

If I could pare it down, I would have probably found the cause by
now.  The problem is that I don't have time to look.  The system
that Python is running is a fairly complex one.  The Java app that
runs the Python interpreter is also complex.  Call it a hunch, call
it an educated guess, but I have a feeling that as soon as I start
paring the problem by removing some [irrelevant] parts of the app
and the Python code, the problem will go into hiding...

> >One of my colleagues suggested wrapping the call to minidom.parse
> >in a critical section (locking something before, unlocking after),
> >another hint came from you: let the main program sleep after fork.
> >At this point I frankly care only about one thing: to prevent it
> >from happening.
>
> That's one way.  I second Paul's suggestion that you instead do the
> import before you spin off any threads.  Note that the problem in the
> other thread you're referring to was *Python* doing a fork, not Python
> executing in the forked process.

I will certainly try it.

> I think your best bet is likely to be switching to Jython instead of
> trying to run CPython through a system call.  That way, your Python
> program will have full access to Java's capabilities, and you'll have
> better cross-platform portability.  If you stick with CPython, I suggest
> upgrading to Python 2.1.1; IIRC, there were some thread bugs fixed
> post-2.0.

I tried the latest version.  No difference.  As to switching to
Jython, it's not my place to decide, but I will make sure to
suggest it.

Thanks.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul  5 12:56:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 20:56:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: import syntax
In-Reply-To: <994351494.3b4499864e286@webmail1.wm.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107052055230.26552-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Andrew Todd wrote:

>This isn't terribly important, but wouldn't it be nice if
>you could do the following...
>
>from module import a and b

What is wrong with:

from module import a, b

?

>instead of having to write...
>
>from module import a
>from module import b
>
>I don't know what sort of implications such and addition
>might have, but it would be nice.
>
>Andrew ~ elecfish
>aetodd at wm.edu
>
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 05, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ">From the Department of Redundancy Dept." _/




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 10 12:53:35 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:53:35 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
In-Reply-To: <PHC27.12032$B7.2296688@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101039110.13382-100000@bms>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Grant Edwards wrote:
> In article <mailman.994760356.17812.python-list at python.org>, Oleg Broytmann wrote:
> >> > > I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.
> >> >
> >> >    slang? newt?
> >
> >ftp://quasar.ipa.nw.ru/pub/avv/Python/pyslang/
> >ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/grante/stuff/newt-0.50.tar.gz
>
> BTW, the python module that wraps the newt library is called
> "snack".  It's standard equipment on some Linux distros (e.g.
> RedHat).

Snack is also the name of a tk/tcl sound extension, so the Newt
bindings may be known by some other name (e.g., python-newt on
Debian, from newt-0.50.17).


- Bruce




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 11:43:58 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:43:58 +0100
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF46@intrepid>

> From:	Rajarshi Guha [SMTP:rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu]
>   is there a sleep function in the Python library. I've beens earching 
> throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way 
> to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there 
> any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?
 
time.sleep() is probably what you are looking for.

On Windows, PyShelf (here <http://www.orgmf.com.ar/condor/pytstuff.html>)
provides a pretty good searchable interface to the standard docs.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 08:49:14 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:49:14 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
>
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
>
> Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
>
> Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
>
> Anybody that tried both languages ?
>
> How do they compare ?

Eiffel has reasonably-good strict, compile-time typing.

Python is totally oriented to dynamic, run-time typing
(often erroneously called "weak typing" -- that is, in
fact, something else).

So, they don't compare much: they've taken widely
different language-design choices from way back.  Eiffel
will do a good job of finding type mismatches at compile
time (not a perfect one due to the covariance problem),
Python won't even try and will rather maximize your
productivity so you can most easily and productively
develop and run lots and lots of tests (you need to test
a LOT even in a compile-time-typed language of course,
but it does occasionally diagnose an error earlier -- in
exchange, you have to do a lot more work, of course).

If you want a language that's even LESS compromising
than Eiffel in terms of typing, with *NO* possibility
whatsoever of a typing-error escaping the compiler,
try Haskell instead.  It's VERY instructive to become
productive in Haskell, and it's fun if you do it with
a book such as Hudak's "The Haskell School of Expression".

Then you can come back to Python with much deeper
appreciation for the role of immutability, list
comprehensions, functional programming, type deduction
by the compiler (Eiffel doesn't do that for you: you
have to tell the compiler everything -- Haskell is
designed so the compiler can DEDUCE types on your
behalf, although you do normally, redundantly, also
state them "out loud" so the compiler can catch your
logic mistakes).  When you're back to Python from
Haskell I suspect you'll miss Haskell's typeclasses,
such an UTTERLY elegant approach!, and the implied
lazy-evaluation of everything, perhaps the syntax
sugar that allows any function to be used as an infix
operator.  I think you WON'T miss Haskell's "monads",
a concept so powerful, refined and elegant that its
full import keeps escaping most of us:-).  In syntax
sugar terms, Haskell will give you significant whitespace
use that's not too far from Python, but you'll see lots
of (well-used) punctuation in lieu of keywords -- not
a big deal either way, of course.

In the end, I think Python is far more productive
for all kind of real-world uses, but an apercu on
statically-type-checked, nothing-is-mutable, lazy-
everything, &c, IS interesting and instructive.
Eiffel only does *part* of that for you...


Alex





From kens at sightreader.com  Wed Jul 25 21:00:50 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:00:50 -0700
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107251514570.6992-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <009901c1156e$6a9c5260$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

No, it's just that the syntax makes no sense in python.

It would also, of course, be invalid to say:
int(a) = 5.2    # hoping for a=5

This is not the same as a = int(5.2) and it would seem really wierd to
me if it were.  Then again, from a C++ point of view, any syntax that
is currently illegal is a natural candidate for a new syntax feature :-).
But python is not C++, so I'm afraid you'll have to settle for something
less terse and more clear.

a,b = divmod(x,y)
a = int(a)

- Ken

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bruce Sass" <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 2:31 PM
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)


> How nasty would it be to allow one to do...
> 
> >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> >>> print a, b
> 2 1.01
> 
> ...instead of the current...
> 
> >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> SyntaxError: can't assign to function call
> 
> 
> On the surface, it looks as simple as postponing the function call
> until after the assignment.  Would it be a one-time hit when the
> pseudo-ops are generated, a runtime performance issue that would
> affect all function calls, just too hairy to implement, or something
> else?
> 
> 
> - Bruce
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From smnordby at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 20:56:34 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:56:34 -0700
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> (Couldn't resist. :-)
> 
> It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> endless laments in the SF bug database.)


And yet HP makes it available:
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/

-SteveN-


From vnestr at netvision.net.il  Sat Jul  7 21:14:58 2001
From: vnestr at netvision.net.il (Vladimir Nesterovsky)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 03:14:58 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr> <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9i88o3$hj41s$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de>

It might be viewed as a "value sort" or "sort by value",
meaning that a natural sort is done on a list as if each
its element was represented by some value comparable
with the "<" operator, produced by a user-specified function:

  def vsort (ls, f):
    x = map(lambda e,g=f : (g(e),e), ls)
    x.sort()
    return map(lambda p:p[1],x)

and call it

  alist = vsort(alist, lambda x: x[2])

This is doing the same thing that your function is doing by a
different syntax; knowing as little Python as I do I just don't
know which way's faster. :-)

In Perl they call it Schwartzian transform, but the paradigm's
the same in any language. I once did it to sort Lisp data by a
Lisp value-function (well, AutoLisp to be exact) in C with standard
qsort() function. How to provide for a value-element association
is a more technical detail; in C I used pointers, in Python tuples
are the readily available built-in possibility.


Cheers,
Vlad   http://vnestr.tripod.com/



Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9i7tjq01b9o at enews3.newsguy.com...
> "Emmanuel Jeandel" <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> wrote in message
> news:9i791n$3bh$1 at macareux.ens-lyon.fr...
> > Hello
> >
> > In a script i made, i have tuples (name, nb, size) in a list and i
wanted
> to
> > sort the list with respect to size.
>
> As an aside, you know the fastest way for this is almost invariably:
>
>     templist = [(size,tuple) for tuple in alist for _,_,size in tuple,]
>     templist.sort()
>     alist[:] = [tuple for size, tuple in templist]
>
> AKA decorate-sort-undecorate, didn't you?  That doesn't affect your
> argument, I'm just pointing out once again that passing a function
> to .sort() is almost never optimal... hmm, maybe we could have a
> way to encapsulate THIS excellent pattern in a perhaps-handier
> way... the only real variant is the decoration, so we might have:
>
> def dsu_sort(alist, decorate):
>     templist = [(decorate(item),item) for item in alist]
>     templist.sort()
>     alist[:] = [item for _,item in templist]
>
> and you could call
>     dsu_sort(alist, lambda x: x[2])
> to satisfy lambda-craving, or, more readably:
>     def bysize(tuple): return tuple[2]
>     dsu_sort(alist, bysize)
> or perhaps nicer:
>     def bysize(tuple): _,_,size=tuple; return size
> and in any case the pattern would be well-packaged.
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From Dieter_Deyke at CoCreate.com  Sat Jul 21 12:56:20 2001
From: Dieter_Deyke at CoCreate.com (Dieter Deyke)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:56:20 GMT
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?
References: <fi1cj9.8qm.ln@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <uvgkmusp7.fsf@CoCreate.com>

How about:

tmp = {}
for x in my_list: tmp[x] = 1
my_list = tmp.keys()

gradha at iname.com writes:

> Hi.
>
> Given a list of strings, I am doing the following to delete duplicated
> entries:
>
> my_list.sort()
> x = 0
> while x < len (my_list) - 1:
>       if my_list[x] == my_list[x+1]:
>               del my_list[x+1]
>       else:
>               x = x + 1
>
> Is there some more elegant, fast, algorithm? Is this the only one
> obvious way to do it?
>
> --
>  Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org

--
Dieter Deyke
mailto:Dieter_Deyke at CoCreate.com mailto:deyke at yahoo.com
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh unir jnl gbb zhpu gvzr.


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 13 15:34:24 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:34:24 GMT
Subject: SocketServer and threading mixin?
References: <m24rshy4xk.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <cpbsmo39gv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Greg Copeland <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> writes:

> I've been following the bug report on the SocketServer module
> and how it is broken with the threading mixin.  The bug report
> has been closed and the people that posted offered several
> solutions, however, from what I've seen, SocketServer, the
> module, is still broken and requires a minor patch or two to
> work correctly.

Maybe I should explain how the bug fixing process works.  When we fix
a bug in CVS, we close the bug report, because there's no reason for
us to be reminded of the bug.  Of course, that doesn't magically
update everybody's copy of the buggy module, but once it's fixed in
CVS, it will automatically be part of the next release.

For those who can't wait until the next release, the fixed module can
be retrieved using CVS.  If you don't have CVS, you can browse the CVS
tree on-line at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=5470

> Does anyone know what the plans are to address
> this issue down the road?  Will there be an interim python release
> which addresses this???  Would be nice since there is seemingly
> lots of people that don't want to have to their user base patch
> or replace python modules.

It's fixed in the 2.1.1c1 release that I announced today.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 14:43:43 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 18:43:43 GMT
Subject: int() built-in and hex "0x..." strings
References: <20010723.110751.1143408282.18374@troikanetworks.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9los2v.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:07:57 -0700, Bruce Edge <bedge at troikanetworks.com> pisze:

>>>> int('0x80')                                                                                          

> Is there another int() type lib func that I should use instead?

int('0x80', 0) == 128
int('80',   0) == 80

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 08:50:50 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:50:50 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <995862297.667165@yabetcha.drizzle.com> <mailman.995864978.20548.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <kd4olt49pog26meuolca93n1ci8gt64du3@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:08:03 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>[Tim]
>> Of course, but computer numerics is a massive exercise in picking the
>> general rules you want to preserve at the expense of others,
>> and trading all that off against pragmatics too.  Not losing information
>> silently is also a Very Good General Rule, and even 745 binary fp
>> arithmetic is better at meeting that one than current "/".
>>
>
>[Donn Cave]
>> So would it make sense to also change the >> and << operators to
>> rotate shift?  I mean, I sure wouldn't find that more useful, but
>> it does conserve information that the current shifts lose.
>
>First explain what bitstring operations have to do with computer numerics.

Donn didn't claim any such relationship - Tim said that not losing
information is a very good *GENERAL* rule and Donn followed that logic
through quite effectively.

>You may as well as complain that, e.g., "del a[i]" loses information too.
>Well, of course it does -- that's its purpose.  Same thing with >>.  << does

The same applies to integer division - it is an inherently many-to-one
information-losing operation unless you include the remainder as part
of the result.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 21 18:37:41 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:37:41 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <5bgjlt4d4psovucjusr93r7mfump3tcch3@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEAILAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> ...
> Scripting doesn't just mean generating web pages. I don't think the
> web even existed when Python started out.

Here from Andrew Kuchling's delightful collection of Python quotes, at

    http://amk.ca/quotations/python-quotes/page-1.html

    If you have a browser from CERN's WWW project (World-Wide Web, a
    distributed hypertext system) you can browse a WWW hypertext
    version of the manual...

    Guido van Rossum, 19 Nov 1992 [First mention of the Web on
                                   python-list.]


> Believe it or not, computers were used for a *huge* range of
> applications before the web was invented, and those applications have
> *not* gone away.

And quite unlike the Web, which is just another passing fad <wink>.

hope-springs-eternal-ly y'rs  - tim




From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 15:04:12 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:04:12 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:51:41 CDT."
             <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

>     Skip> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if
>     Skip> x is a type or class instead of an instance?
> 
>     Guido> No, that would be ambiguous.  A subclass is not an instance.  A
>     Guido> class or type represents a set of instances, so 'in' is justified
>     Guido> in a sense.
> 
> I guess I'm confused, but if isinstance(x, type) is true isn't
> issubclass(x.__class__, type) also true?

You are indeed confused. :)

Seems you confuse isinstance(x, y) with issubclass(x, y).  These are
very different.  x in y can map to at most one of these (for y a type
object).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From hdl728 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 09:29:51 2001
From: hdl728 at yahoo.com (Hugh Roarty)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 06:29:51 -0700
Subject: New Jersey
Message-ID: <1b93da20.0107030529.bb6ca89@posting.google.com>

Any python programmers in the Princeton New Jersey area willing to
help a new programmer with some code?


From marc.gluch at mindtap.com  Wed Jul  4 15:06:56 2001
From: marc.gluch at mindtap.com (Marc Gluch)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:06:56 GMT
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
References: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>
Message-ID: <3b43665e.220514242@news.grpvine1.tx.home.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:06:38 GMT, Wostenberg <pwos at home.com> wrote:

>This Smalltalker has been studying Zope, the Opensourced python product
>for internet deployment (see http://www.zope.org), to learn.
>
>It has an unusual model of interitance called acquisition, which blends
>class heiarchy with containment. Read
>http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/WhatIsAcquisition for introduction.
>Basically "objects automatically gather. services from their
>containers.". Everything is potentially a collector-class, and if I drop
>objects into a collection, they inherit behavior from the container.
>Weird, but somehow natural in this Web environment which organises
>content around a tree-structured containment plan.
>
>Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution
>to OO modelling?
>-Alan
>
>
>
I see an analogy to block-structured languages (Algol, Pascal),
where an inner block has access to variables and procedures
of enclosing blocks. Most of these languages employ lexical scoping,
but some allow dynamic scoping (runtime binding).

More abstraclty, a context augments the meaning of any given
statement.

Marc Gluch
Mindtap Inc.


From reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep  Sun Jul  1 07:20:38 2001
From: reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep (Rene Pijlman)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:20:38 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <5m1ujt454r67tmaa5tm6qpk7f95bgvbqgd@4ax.com>

gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard H?ring) schreef:
>a library where an application
>can register functions and types that can then be used by any scripting
>language that bothers to implement the "Unix Scripting Host" interface. The
>application language should not be limited to C or C++.

Sounds like intra-machine CORBA.
http://www.corba.org/

Regards,
Ren? Pijlman


From tjg at hyperlinq.net  Sat Jul  7 14:03:47 2001
From: tjg at hyperlinq.net (Timothy Grant)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:03:47 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <7ef50c46.0107070905.4f9fa92@posting.google.com>; from rjh@3-cities.com on Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 10:05:44AM -0700
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <7ef50c46.0107070905.4f9fa92@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010707110347.B26950@trufflehunter.hyperlinq.net>

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 10:05:44AM -0700, Robert J. Harrison wrote:
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpsngaja4g.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> 
> > The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
> > transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":
> > 
> > 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
> >    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.

I've been watching this thread and the integer division PEP
with some dismay. I've only ever had cause to really use
integer division one time, and that was in a little module I
wrote several years ago that converted numbers such as
123456.78 into $123,456.78 and back again. It used a completely
ugly, and probably inefficient mechanism for doing so, but it
worked beautifully, and has been used in every GUI app I've
written that needs to display dollars-and-cents. I'm not the
most gifted programmer on the planet, but I have had no problem
with the concept of integer division, in fact, when I need a
calculator I usually open the Python interpreter and do my math
on the command line. I've never had a problem remembering that
if I want a float result I need to make one of the numbers a
float.

# It looks ugly but it really isn't. A couple of really nice
# Pythonisms
# make it work right. The first is list insertion, and the
# second is integer
# division.

I guess I need to revise the comments in my code now...

-- 
Stand Fast,
    tjg.

Timothy Grant                                www.hyperlinq.net 
Chief Technology Officer                     tjg at hyperlinq.net 
HyperLINq Technologies, Inc.                <>< (503) 246-3630
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Linux, because rebooting is *NOT* normal<<<<<<<<<
>>>>This machine was last rebooted:  32 days 17:55 hours ago<<



From wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net  Mon Jul 30 10:42:10 2001
From: wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net (William Dandreta)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:42:10 GMT
Subject: Python, mysql, roundoff  problem?
References: <hOy87.24265$gj1.2251802@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <%iR87.4633$Ke4.2601210@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <6ne97.20797$LP2.1239019@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Hi Greg,

I have done that in the past. The reason I asked about 64 bit integers is
because I need more than 2 decimal places. Some items are inexpensive and
sold by the 1000, i.e., $12.57 per 1000 => .01257 each.

Bill
Greg Jorgensen wrote in message
>"William Dandreta" <wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>> mysql stores numbers as strings. I discovered that when converted to
>floats
>> in Python they are not exactly the same which can cause roundoff errors.
>The
>> floats represent money and I need to be sure there is no roundoff errors.
>>
>> What is normally done to deal with this situation?
>
>Work with pennies instead of dollars. Store 12949 instead of 129.49. Do
>integer arithmetic with pennies rather than floating-point arithmetic with
>dollars. Divide by 100 when you need to display the value.
>
>Greg Jorgensen
>PDXperts LLC
>Portland, Oregon, USA
>
>
>




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul  6 18:48:07 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:48:07 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4F5@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <3B464027.EDCE3C1E@ActiveState.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Copyright (C) 2000-2001 ActiveState Tool Corp., All rights reserved.
> ActivePython PPM interactive shell (0.1.0) - type 'help' for available
> 
>...
> 
> PPM>query

Actually, the better command is "search".

Yes, Chris is right that we could advertise and document better.

And I don't think anyone at ActiveState minds if Chris sets up a
distribution. ActiveState can't do everything and doesn't want to.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 03:40:21 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 09:40:21 +0200
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b478576.1314346961 at wa.news.verio.net...
    ...
> >> dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
> >>
> >> First character is numeric or "-"
    ...
> >This is very easy to express as a Regular Expression:
> >    r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$'
> or
>      r'^-?(\d*\.\d\d|\d+)$'
> if you want to allow .12  (or -.00), see below ;-)

Yes, but that follows a very different spec from the one
given by the original poster, where the first rule was, as
above quoted, 'first character is numeric or "-"'.

Getting the specs 'right' for a fuzzily defined domain is
challenging, I was just trying to help implement the
specs the poster thought were right:-).


Alex





From kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua  Tue Jul 31 12:06:54 2001
From: kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua (Kirill Simonov)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:06:54 +0300
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>; from skip@pobox.com on Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 09:21:40AM -0500
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010731190654.E1031@xyz.donetsk.ua>

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 09:21:40AM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
>     Guido> Checked into CVS!
> 
> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if x is a
> type or class instead of an instance?

It is better to change type comparison, e.g.
    (A >= B) == issubclass(A, B)





From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul  2 08:40:10 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:40:10 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9k0o9o.pc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:42:37 -0700, Edward B. Wilson II <ed at ewilson.com> wrote:
>I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>
>Python still doesn't have good database support, nor has it grown to be
>useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
>mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
>space.

PHP is IMHO even worse a programming language than Perl. The main difference
may be that there is a company behind PHP, whereas there are AFIK no sponsors
of mod_python and mod_snake development (you know about these and not only
about PyApache, do you?).

I have had no problems with Python's database support, yet I didn't push it to
the limits yet (only did simple stuff). There is at least one Python database
module available for any major database that I know of. 

>Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
>best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
>largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
>or otherwise).

There are tons of modules available for these sectors. Do you think that they
are all buggy or lack important features?

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul  3 09:42:22 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 06:42:22 -0700
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993957902.3207.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107030542.c0eb4d5@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.993957902.3207.python-list at python.org>...
> [Carlos Ribeiro]

[...]

> > - Define clearly what goes and what does not go into the standard
> > library.
> 
> This is the province of PEP 2:
> 
>     http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0002.html
> 
> While what's there is fine so far as it goes, it would help if someone added
> a second sentence <wink>.

Whilst the PythonLabs people have had firm control over the standard
library when it comes to finalising releases (deciding which modules
to discard, which to obsolete, and which to include), there doesn't
seem to be any source of authority when it comes to directing the
development of new-but-important modules. The SIGs are interesting to
read now and again but, as you or someone else pointed out, they don't
always necessarily produce much as a side-effect - they certainly
don't have the same output/talk ratio that "independent" projects
have.

> > - Help track the module development process.

Where this crosses over into the "Is Python dead?" thread is possibly
in the area of people wanting clear and reliable advice on how to
proceed with development work in certain domains, along with pointers
to where they can best help out. One might suggest that interested
parties read the documentation, trawl Sourceforge, or join various
lists, but it would be a compelling idea that someone could just visit
the currently rarely-updated python.org site, see the "hot projects",
access the "Web application recipes" or the "database application
cookbooks" and more easily participate.

Of course, it doesn't have to be python.org where this happens, and
there are numerous examples of sites which attempt to address these
issues. Freshmeat and Sourceforge, for example, have certain
interesting concepts such as indications of activity levels in
projects. I'm sure that such concepts could be applied to the
Parnassus in order to increase the usability of that site even
further. However, this doesn't really go far enough - I think people
want to be guided, possibly by members of Python's "trusted elite" to
activities that would benefit most from their participation.

> > - Compile the standard modules for all supported platforms.
> 
> Good goal, but no way to get there from here:  PythonLabs has access to only
> a tiny percentage of all the platforms Python runs on.  This *has* to come
> from the community.

Indeed, so it would be great if any kind of catalogue site could
include the facility for people to upload binaries and packages and
relate them to the original package.

> > One advantage of having such a well defined process to elect the
> > standard  modules is that it will encourage people to improve the
> > standard modules, instead of re-inventing the wheel.
> 
> PEP 2 is indeed important.

Some areas will probably never yield standard modules - the lack of
responses to Andrew Kuchling's Web modules PEP highlighted the
fragmentation and the "more than one way to do something" inherent in
certain areas. However, more accessible information about available
modules and frameworks would prevent the more blatant wheel
reinvention activities; the reason I made a Web modules overview [1]
was to try and inform people of what was already out there and to open
up the debate around Web frameworks beyond the "use Zope" mantra which
predominated at the time, but I doubt that my site is any more obvious
to the disorientated masses than the
not-exactly-obviously-located-nor-up-to-date topic guides on
python.org.

What most of this requires is organisation which, as someone claimed,
is boring to many in comparison to the playful activity of looking at
new or marginalised languages, plundering interesting features and
bringing them home to Python. This isn't to say that language
enhancements aren't useful or necessary, but perhaps it is time to let
the applications dictate the direction of Python, just as (for
example) Unicode support was dictated by (amongst other things) the
need to support XML properly, which in turn was clearly dictated by
real-world applications, rather than the "wouldn't this be cool"
justification which some seem to feel is hiding behind some recent
language innovations.

And perhaps it is time to encourage the most enthusiastic in the
community towards libraries and modules, rather than increasingly
contentious core language improvements. It did occur to me that since
the core language development work is better centrally organised than
work on modules, this could be influential in encouraging so many
suggestions for improvements, but then language tweaking has always
been a favourite pastime for newsgroup contributors over the years.

Personally, whilst I have been an experimenter in terms of programming
languages in the past, these days I very quickly look at the library
or module support available for a given language, usually consigning
the candidate language to the list of "interesting but not that
interesting languages" shortly thereafter. After all, there's real
work to be done and real software to be written, not just neat
demonstrations of interesting concepts.

Paul

[1] http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/web_modules.html


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 16:57:30 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:57:30 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

David Ullrich wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC),
> <margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> wrote:
...
> >2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the BDFL
> >perhaps calls into question the 'B'.
> 
> Nonsense. Without saying anything about who's right and who's
> wrong, or about whether the D is B or not: To be "benevolent"
> towards someone is to act in a way consistent with that
> person's best interests. This is not the same thing as
> giving the person what he asks for, not by a long shot.

More: to be benevolent is to *try* to act in a way
consistent with the person's best interests[1], even
if in fact you're wrong. So even if Guido is as
horribly wrong as some people here say he is about
what their best interests are, that's no reason to
think he isn't benevolent.

> Why in the world should "level of dissent" have any
> bearing on anything? Deciding moral issues by taking
> a vote is one thing - deciding what's best on a 
> technical issue by taking a vote is silly.

Hear hear.


[1] I initially typed "integers". Hmm.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Sun Jul 22 15:06:22 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 19:06:22 GMT
Subject: Mainpulating Data Files
References: <3B5B1914.FCC02BF2@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <OuF67.11951$135.1933565@typhoon.we.rr.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote
> So, as a general matter, is there a 'Pythonic' way to read
> this kind of thing in or am I stuck with the usual 'C' approach
> of reading in n-characters and then filling some data stucture

tim, i'd start with the struct module. it will at least
handle the binary sections of data for you. plus all your
worries about byteswapping and what not can be planned out.
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-struct.html






From wheelege at tsn.cc  Wed Jul 25 06:31:13 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:31:13 +1000
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEAELBAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <040401c114f4$ee00f360$0200a8c0@ACE>

>
> Dead serious apps don't take chances, and there are no restrictions in the
> Python license on redistributing it with your apps.  If you don't isolate
> your app from user whims, there's no guarantee it will continue to work
even
> if they install a single bugfix to a shared Python.  I don't know which OS
> you're targeting, but it doesn't sound like you've thought about the big
> picture here, be it Linux or Windows.  The more important the app, the
more
> important to cover your butt, and even pure bugfixes can break code that
> relied on accidents.
>

  I'd like to second that - as I stated earlier I never EVER distribute any
application as a script.  Only as a standalone distribution.  Standalone.
So it doesn't matter if
chickenbopmegafunction(j,k)['thefirstbit&&&otherone'] gives the division in
the new version - your standalone is perfectly fine.
  Note this is not a suggested change to division - although it ranks about
equal to some of the suggestions (anti-pep) that are serious...

  Glen.




From donovanhide at bigfoot.com  Sun Jul 15 20:07:35 2001
From: donovanhide at bigfoot.com (Donovan Hide)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:07:35 +0100
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>

Hi,
    thanks for the responses, I can see the ambiguity in the original
question. What I am actually looking for is the enumeration of all the 6
whole numbers greater than 0 that sum to 17.

    After that, another enumeration is required, this time to find all 6
whole numbers greater than 0 that sum to 20. Order is unimportant.

    I have found a book that covers this exact area, Combinatorial
Algorithms by Kreher and Stinson. Their source for the book is at
http://www.math.mtu.edu/~kreher/cages/Src.html

    They have used recursive algorithms to solve this problem and many other
similar partitioning problems I had no idea that existed. However, it is all
coded in C!

    Also working in this area is Frank Ruskey,
http://www.csr.uvic.ca/~fruskey/, who seems to be the main man.

    So, apart from this short bibliography, I am still stuck. I don't want
any of the readers of this newsgroup to do my homework, because this isn't
homework. I am learning Python casually and this problem seemed like a good
starting point for a newbie.

    Waffle aside,
        can someone fill the gaps:

def Partition(n,k):
    res=[[0]*k]                               #results list, each result
nested in the main list
    res[0][0]=(n-k+1)                     #enumerate first result
    for x in range(1,k):
        res[0][x]=1
    step=1
    while 1:                                     #iterate through remaining
possible partitions
        next=NextPartition(n,k,step)
        step=step+1
        if next !=0:
            res.append(next)
        else:
            break
    return res

def NextPartition(n,k,step):
    #generate next possible partition
    #return next possible partition as list

    #if no more partitions left
    return 0

a=Partition(7,4)
print a

[[4, 1, 1, 1], [3, 2, 1, 1],[2,2,2,1]]

Cheers,
Donovan Hide.

P.S. A pint for the winning Algorithm Master!







From rhystucker at rhystucker.fsnet.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 10:41:43 2001
From: rhystucker at rhystucker.fsnet.co.uk (rhys tucker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:41:43 GMT
Subject: Problems installing calldll
Message-ID: <1103_996158503@pan>

Suggestions please for the errors I'm getting installing the calldll module to Windows2000 with python 2.1 located at c:\Python21. Python21 and gcc are included in the PATH variable. 

calldll's compile.bat reads 

gcc -I../Include -O2 -c calldllmodule.c -o calldllmodule.o
dllwrap --dllname calldll.pyd --driver-name gcc --def calldll.def -o calldll.pyd calldllmodule.o -s --entry _DllMain at 12 --target=i386-mingw32 -L.. -lpython21 

but produces this 

In file included from ../Include/Python.h:54,
                 from calldllmodule.c:62:
./Include/pyport.h:422: #error "LONG_BIT definition appears wrong for platform (bad gcc/glibc config?)."
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/2.95.3-5/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lpython21
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
dllwrap: gcc exited with status 1 

I've even tried -lPython21 

thanks 

rhys



From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 14:24:51 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:24:51 -0500
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <cpelr22rbq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <mmg87.34184$EP6.8750025@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
        <cpelr22rbq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15201.45555.512294.649273@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> But at some point I will have to withdraw from the newsgroup
    Guido> again -- then we will need a different mechanism to comment on
    Guido> the PEP (at least if you want me to hear you).

python-numerics at lists.sourceforge.net?

Skip




From glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com  Wed Jul 18 07:35:11 2001
From: glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com (Gilles Lenfant)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:35:11 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net>

You can optimize this:

# "No loop verson"
i = 1e7
j = 2.5 * 2.5
print i, j

Has the same effect and is much faster 8-))

Seriously, compare 2 languages with really useful features (Genrate PDF
report, extract XML data...).
You can find useless stuffs that run much faster in Python than in Perl.

c = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]
for i in xrange(100000):
  d=filter(lambda x : x>5, c)


"Xu, C.S." <xucs007 at yahoo.com> a ?crit dans le message news:
8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b at posting.google.com...
> I just compared the speed of Python, Perl, Java, C
> to do simple numerical calculations. Python is the
> slowest: took 150 times of time than C, Perl about
> 60 times, Java is 4.5 times.
>
> The source code of Python is: (Other source are
> similar, all use while loop):
>
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> i = 2.5;
> while i < 1e7:
>         j = 2.5 * 2.5
>         i += 1
> print i, j
>
> The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
> python script: 37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
> perl script: 15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
> java compiled: 1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
> C compiled: 0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%
>
> Can anybody explain why Python is always about 1 time
> slower than Perl?
>
> Regards,




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:52 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:52 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995931210.19083.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <lenpltkva689npo5jc4lj1uhu4187gt96i@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:30:04 -0600, "Bjorn Pettersen"
<BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:

>Ruby seems to be quite in line with (current) Python:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes this kind of mistake.



From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Sun Jul 22 16:52:41 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:52:41 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org> <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net> <3B5980BC.422232EC@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <20010722.170456.726371155.10918@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <3B5980BC.422232EC at letterror.com>, "Just van Rossum"
<just at letterror.com> wrote:


> Mark Nenadov wrote:
> 
>> The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
>> (www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
>> wide variety of other languages.
> I haven't looked at PDFLib in a long time. Have you also looked at
> reportlab's pdfgen (www.reportlab.com)? If yes, how does it compare? 
> Just

I have not tried ReportLab's pdfgen yet. I was not aware that it existed.
Just from reading their website (not pratical experience mind you), ReportLab's
product appears to be quite solid. Well.. I will add that to my every
increasing list of new things to try out" :)

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From barry at digicool.com  Mon Jul  9 00:08:53 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 00:08:53 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15177.11861.212715.752242@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "ph" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

    ph> I have added a comment to bug #437395, to this effect. Do I
    ph> need to notify anyone else? The Bug Report says it was
    ph> submitted by Fred Drake, and assigned to Barry Warsaw.

No, you did it perfectly.  I'll take a look when I get a chance.

Thanks,
-Barry



From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul  6 15:20:05 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 12:20:05 -0700
Subject: Stopping a script in PythonWin?
Message-ID: <3B460F65.CBA46D2D@home.net>

HI all,

When using PythonWin, Is it possible to stop a running script without
killing the whole IDE? I find that I want to do that on a fairly regular
basis, and have not found a way to do it.

Also, the command window doesn't auto-scroll when a script is running
and dumping stuff to the screen, this makes it kind of hard to see what
is going on. Is there a way to get it to scroll?

-thanks,

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Jul  6 19:40:37 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Fri,  6 Jul 2001 19:40:37 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010706234037.432972892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/


Lot's of updates!  Mostly small style adjustments.

Documentation for some new markup of the documentation has been added.

There is a bunch of new content in the Python/C API manual.  I have started
describing the new interface to support high-performance profiling and
tracing.  Some of the PyObject_*() functions which are used in creating
objects have been described and some related reference count information
has been added as well.  Some small corrections have also been made in the
C API manual.  The updates to this manual have not yet been checked in.




From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 21:51:36 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 01:51:36 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60CA0B.3010905@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

[snip]

> 
> PEP: 238
> Title: Non-integer Division
> Version: $Revision: 1.10 $
> Author: pep at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka), guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
> 
[snip]

> 
> Command Line Option
> 
>     The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
>     three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
>     Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
>     "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
>     The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
>     warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning framework)
>     when applied to ints or longs.  The "new" value changes the
>     default globally so that the / operator is always interpreted as
>     true division.  The "new" option is only intended for use in
>     certain educational environments, where true division is required,
>     but asking the students to include the future division statement
>     in all their code would be a problem.


I'm wondering if these command line options are too "generic" and not 
explicit enough.  Possibly
  -Dold_division
  -Dwarn_division
  -Dnew_division
give more information as to what the options mean?

[snip]

> 
> Semantics of Floor Division
> 
>     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
>     types, and will have the semantics of
> 
>         a // b == floor(a/b)
> 
>     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
>     coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
>     will be of that type too.
> 


I'm not sure I understand this part.  Could you throw in an example? 
Does it mean that if 'a' and 'b' are floats then a//b would return a 
float?  For example 3.5//2.0 == 1.0?

[snip]


Tom



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Jul 28 09:32:03 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 08:32:03 -0500
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org> <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net> <GKm87.107196$ph7.18077464@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <60490FFEEE122DE6.BAD3E9EC0B93E004.FDAF6CC7A5317253@lp.airnews.net>

In article <GKm87.107196$ph7.18077464 at news.hananet.net>,
June Kim <junaftnoon at moc.oohay> wrote:
>First of all, Python's dynamic typing nature can be a definite godsend when
>combined with proper disciplines -- such as UnitTesting,
>TestFirstProgramming
>and RefactorMercilessly from XP. XP is one of the new agile methdologies,
			.
		[excellent references]
			.
			.
>My link is broken, but I believe you can find the forum lead by Rob C.
>Martin
>(aka Uncle Bob) at http://forums.itworld.com/, which discussed about cons
>and
>pros of dynamic typing (mainly on pros) and how to take advantage from it.
<URL: http://www.itworld.com/Man/2672/itw-0314-rcmforumint/ >
<URL: http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1246/ITF010425meyer/ >
<URL: http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1032/ITF010402meyerpromo/
are apparently all that's left.  I encourage readers to holler
at ITworld.com for making things so hard to find.
>
>It might look like a deficiency that Python doesn't have static typing at
>first, as it looked so to me, but you'll see it's rather liberating than
>constraning, moreover, with strong confidence on the code.
Good summary.  Also, Alex Martelli has written eloquently
on the same subject here in clp just within the last year.
			.
			.
			.
I don't think anyone has yet made the point explicitly in
this thread that compile-time validations have been a topic
of interest in Pythonia for quite some time.  Several Con-
ference talks and an entire SIG <URL:
http://www.python.org/sigs/types-sig/ > touch on the subject.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sun Jul  8 13:50:17 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:50:17 GMT
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <t3127.653459$166.13530605@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

thanks.
Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> You need py2exe:
>
> http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/
>
>
> "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
> news:oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> > I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the
file
> > menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a
hand
> > with this it would be great.
> >
> >
>
>




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:55 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:55 +0100
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <eppstein-60FEF0.16135923072001@news.service.uci.edu> <9jiebd$poi$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <85ppltsaijtjnotcqlr10fb2aspgfnq4v2@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:09:17 +0000 (UTC), missive at frontiernet.net (Lee
Harr) wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:13:59 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>> In article <9jiak1$3s96$3 at node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>,
>>  missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) wrote:
>> 
>>> we already have people importing things from the __future__,
>>> how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?
>> 
>> Doesn't do anything for the people who are running precompiled scripts 
>> acquired from somewhere else, or who have warnings redirected to where they 
>> won't be seen.
>
>I have not used it, but I think you can define a script that runs
>every time python starts up.

Yes - but end users are not going to know they need to check for
problems, they only know they have this utility that's been happily
working since way back when, and suddenly it doesn't work any more.

Oh - there is, of course, one more thing they know. It's all *my*
fault ;-)



From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul 16 13:54:34 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:54:34 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OF173EDA55.CCA01C38-ON88256A8B.0061EC76@i2.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
>And mine, and (apparently) Phil's too!  We're close to deafening
>each other with our agreement on this issue!  <grin>
>
>(Okay, actually I would disagree with the word "good".
>Clearly Python is "excellent" for medium programs and
>"stellar" for large programs.  Case closed. ;-)

I agree.  I'm hoping more people will see Python as "stellar" tool for
large programs -- and not *just* a great tool for small sys-admin scripts.
We've certainly had great success using Python on large programs here at i2
Technologies.

Jim




From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 20:19:01 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:19:01 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B5E1075.94167ECD@home.net>

James Logajan wrote:

> Sure: your proposal isn't bad. That is, absent any "pragma" the interpreter
> assumes "old" semantics. But it does require programmers doing new
> development to add that line of text in all their modules. And it has the
> nice effect of spitting out an error when run by a 1.5.2 interpreter. But it
> can get tiresome always adding that. So perhaps one should put the indicator
> in the module name itself:

I still think a line at the top of the module would be a limited
inconvenience. It's no more typing than:

while 1:
    x = something
    if something:
	break
	
compared to:
while x = something:

And we all think that's a good idea (don't we!)

In the long, run, I think relying on file extensions ios a bad idea.
Among othetr things, Python code is not neccesarily stored in files at
all (at least not when passed to the interpreter)

Still, on the right track....

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul  8 23:10:36 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:10:36 GMT
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org> <slrn9ki07c.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9ki6cn.8ud.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki8s0.22e.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Quinn Dunkan <quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

[ snippage ]
> >BTW, is file.xreadlines() a new feature in Py2.1?
> 
> Yep.
> 
> >Of course, an obvious question is, if you want to read _and_ write, why
> >weren't you using 'r+' or 'w+' to begin with?
> >
> >I hope someone can answer this, but is this a matter of file I/O
> >implementation between different OS's?  Or is this a Python
> >implementation issue?
> 
> Despite what the documentation may say, readlines does not use readline.
> readlines uses fread() (since it doesn't have to worry about reading too much)
> and then checks with ferror().  readline uses getc() (or perhaps fgets()) and,
> when it gets EOF for error, proceeds to *not* check for error (clears it, in
> fact).  So I'd say linux, SunOS, and Irix are correct here and OSX is wrong
> (must not be reporting via ferror() correctly).
> 
> I'd say python is wrong here too, by not being consistent.  If readline
> checks, readlines should too.

Thank you for the excellent answer!  And I agree that Python should be
more consistent.

BTW, I try to have back 1 minor version or so to let the groups debug
the current release (a habit I picked up due to ActiveState's Perl
implementation).  Is Py2.1 stable, or are there still some bugs? Is it
suitable for enterprise development?

Thx in advance,
Tim
-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Ted's got a mind like a steel sieve.
    -- Woody Allen, "Manhattan Murder Mystery"


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 09:33:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:33:58 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> In article <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
>  "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> >    * Addition of a rational literal (PEP 240)? This one you could easily
> > dislike a lot. But if your really super concerned about the evils of
> > inexatitude, you'll probably like this more than I do.
> 
> Actually, I do dislike this.  Much as I find floats generally useless, I 
> think that 0.666667 should return a float, and that if I want to write a 
> rational literal I should be able to write it as 2/3.

I think you're right.  An early version of ABC worked like this, and
at the time I though "hmm, but why shouldn't 0.98 be an exact number;
it could be intended as a price or something like that", and I
convinced the team to change it.  But in practice it was more often
annoying.  Now maybe that was because we (the biggest users) were CS
and math folks, and we tended to tackle typical math and CS problems
-- but my gut is to vote against this aspect of the PEP.

> Also it is odd that the abstract discusses modifying division to
> return rationals but that the rest of the PEP is entirely about what
> to do with decimal strings.

Most of the numeric PEPs need to be rewritten to give more motivation
and more choices and more details, but that's a lot of work...  Want
to help?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From pirkka.hartikainen at visualsystems.com  Thu Jul  5 03:29:45 2001
From: pirkka.hartikainen at visualsystems.com (mixoftheweek.com)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 00:29:45 -0700
Subject: Weird problem on WIN platform.. any ideas?
Message-ID: <ecfce343.0107042329.54bcd07a@posting.google.com>

Problem description:

I've got a little Python script using urllib's urlretrieve() function
to fetch an image from a web site. The script works without errors
when I run it from the command line.

However, when I schedule SQL Server Agent to run the script, the Agent
reports the following error:

File "C:\scripts\dailygif.py", line 26, in ?     
urlretrieve(gif_url,gif_filename)
File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 68, in urlretrieve      return
_urlopener.retrieve(url, filename, reporthook, data)
File "c:\python20\lib\urllib.py", line 212, in retrieve      tfp =
open(filename, 'wb')  IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'v:\\images\\dailygif\\dailygif.gif'

As I said, I'm unable to repeat this error when I run the same script
from command line. The double slashes in the error-causing file path
are not of my doing (gif_filename =
'v:\images\dailygif\dailygif.gif').

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.


From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 25 04:35:03 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:35:03 GMT
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
References: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <3b5e83a3.363479606@wa.news.verio.net>

On 24 Jul 2001 05:16:37 GMT, "Bryan Webb" <bww00 at amdahl.com> wrote:

>I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating point
>envirnoment. I would like an increase of precision over std floats. I also
>would like to know the internal representation of the numbers, so that I can
>read and write them to disk in their internal representations..
>Should I use real-accurate, or numpy
>Any help would be appreciated
>Thanks for the help

Where are you getting numbers like that? Just curious. ;-)



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Wed Jul 18 17:18:27 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:18:27 -0400
Subject: software documentation system?
In-Reply-To: <GGosq0.7Fo@world.std.com>; from wware@world.std.com on Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 08:54:00PM +0000
References: <mailman.995486071.13046.python-list@python.org> <GGosq0.7Fo@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <20010718171827.A657@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 08:54:00PM +0000, Will Ware wrote:
> Graham Guttocks (graham_guttocks at yahoo.co.nz) wrote:
> > A Python application of mine is now large enough that I need to get
> > more serious about writing a real manual for it.  I'm looking for a
> > documentation system that uses a single source file to produce both
> > online information and printed output. (PS, HTML, etc.) Any
> > recommendations?  I work in a UNIX environment and would prefer an
> > opensource alternative.  So far I've found GNU texinfo and also
> > SGMLtools which is written in Python, but am open to other
> > suggestions.
> 
> It's my understanding the standard Python documents are generated from
> LaTeX source. Certainly with LaTeX, you could easily generate both
> printed and on-line documentation from a single source file. 

I concur.  But, it really depends on what kind of info you're putting in
the manual.

If it's like Unix manpage, with usage syntax and options, then HTML
might be better suited.  You can print convert it to PS using Netscape.
On the other hand, if you're describing data structure, tutorial, and
other background info, then LaTeX (eventually PS) might be better.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From lee.reilly at usa.net  Tue Jul 17 00:43:49 2001
From: lee.reilly at usa.net (Lee)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 05:43:49 +0100
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <3B53BB43.986D70AE@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B53C285.F8405344@usa.net>

I wasn't asking the readers to provide me with a list of pros and cons -
those would be for me to figure out when I have a few suggestions for
implementations. I am not asking for any amount of great detail. I am
mostly interested in te following:

1- Ways in which C programs can be accessed using a Web browser e.g. server
side software (ASP?) providing an interface on a seperate server to that on
which the C program is running.
2- Web technologies that can be used to create Web portals e.g. Zope CMF
and perhaps the JA-SIG u-Portal.

I am no stranger to programming or web developement (using Servlets /
Zope), but I have no idea of ways in which a piece of software written in C
can be accessed in such a fashion.

As for the the questions, I consider them to be mostly irrelevant but...


> Can you provide background on the platforms the various servers
> you describe have to run?  (Linux, Windows, undefined?)

Most probably Linux.

> Can you discuss the requirements in terms of performance
> (required throughput, volume, number of hits, latency, whatever)?

Not really. No more than 1000 hits per day I expect. Bandwidth would not
really be an issue as uploads will be mainly small plain text files / small
application files.

> Is this commercial (implying money to pay for certain kinds
> of development) or a freebie (implying you are willing to trade
> off cost savings against perhaps reduced sophistication)?

It's going to be a student work project and won't be commercial. The people
responsible for the software would like others (in other universities) to
be able to use it. To be honest, I have only a rough description of the
software myself, but I believe that most of my problems will come from
simply getting data to the software from a client browser, processing, and
returning the new data. As for the 'sophistication' - if you mean in terms
of functionality or look and feel, then that won't be a problem. The
functionality is already in place. If you're talking about
security/redundancy/anything else(!) then that probably will be an
important issue - once that I will be investigating.

> If you provide more detail, maybe you'll get responses more
> closely tailored to your application and needs, rather than just
> a bunch of random suggestions.  In other words, do you really
> want everyone to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, or could
> you take off the blindfold and point us in the right direction?

Random suggestions would be a start, but I hope this has cleared things up
a little...



From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 11:59:54 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 11:59:54 -0400
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4731FA.9DC570CF@engcorp.com>

Michal Wallace wrote:
> 
> On 7 Jul 2001, Gustaf Liljegren wrote:
> 
> > The problem is that I can't find a way to get this directory. The
> > docs say that sys.path[0] should be used for this, but that does
> > only return an empty string.
> 
> Where do the docs say this? It sounds like a mistake, or something
> that needs clarification..
> 
> you want os.getcwd()

It's more likely he wants something with sys.argv[0].  He 
wanted the directory of the Python script, which might not be the 
same as os.getcwd().

import sys, os
x = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 03:35:40 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:35:40 +0200
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4AB04C.FF1DECC6@stroeder.com>

phil hunt wrote:
> 
> I am currently writing a program that reads emails,
> [..]
> encryption,

S/MIME, PGP? Which toolkit?

Ciao, Michael.


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 20:16:17 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 00:16:17 GMT
Subject: MS "bans" GPL [OFF Topic]
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247> <Xns90D379471D989jimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
Message-ID: <Xns90D469A2C85E1atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

jim at publishingresources.com (Jim) wrote in 
<Xns90D379471D989jimpublishingresourc at 207.126.101.100>:

>>XP: the coming evil - you thought it was bad now? Just wait.
>>Dave LeBlanc
>
>Off topic but really good read on the evils of XP.
>http://grc.com/dos/winxp.htm
>

Alternatively, view the Reg's coverage of this issue, starting at 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20160.html

Regards,
Andy
-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 07:14:05 2001
From: tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk (Toby Dickenson)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:14:05 +0100
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995572771.19528.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E3C8FCADDE6gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>
Message-ID: <6d1olt813gdi8pa0ims2u12ipf5brq16up@4ax.com>

Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

>I'm afraid that only Thomas (py2exe), Jack (macPython) and I (Installer) 
>even think about that stuff. Everyone else distributes Python modules
>to people with existing Python installations.

Im also happy with freeze....... is anyone else using it?




Toby Dickenson
tdickenson at geminidataloggers.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 23 15:24:03 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:24:03 -0400
Subject: popen problem with spaces in directory-ARRGHHHH!
References: <603e1b49.0107191344.42808306@posting.google.com> <603e1b49.0107200443.d32524f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <RN_67.14917$1V1.1089010@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

You might want to take a look at the win32/Scripts/VersionStamp directory
for some ideas about interacting with Visual SourceSafe.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Steve Canfield" <stevecanfield at my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:603e1b49.0107200443.d32524f at posting.google.com...
> Okay.  I'm a little frustrated.
>
> Earlier, I wrote in message
news:<603e1b49.0107191344.42808306 at posting.google.com>...
> > If I open up a command prompt and type in the following:
> > C:\>"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My Project"
> > I get back a bunch of text showing which files are checked out.
> >
> > If I open a Python interpreter and type:
> > >>> import os
> > >>> os.popen(r'"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My
> > Project"').readlines()
> > []
> > I get an empty list.
>
> Since I first posted this I have tried a few more things.  The FAQ
> mentions bugs in popen and suggests win32pipe.popen.  I tried it and
> it seems to behave exactly like os.popen.
>
> One thing that didn't work (and I don't want to have to do this) is
> using the short (8.3) version of the directory names:
> >>> import os
> >>> os.popen(r'e:\visual~1\ss.exe status "$/My Project"').readlines()
> ['$/My Project:\n', 'file1.cpp      Steve    etc...
>
> Is this a bug in os.popen, win32pipe.popen, or (more likely) am I
> missing something really obvious here?
>
> Please help!  I really don't want to have to be restricted to short
> file names.
>
> Thanks,
> steve




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 11:04:25 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:04:25 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com>
        <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <15196.15609.218465.128279@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> Why is that?  It's because unlike any other builtin arithmetic
    Tim> operation, "/" today can cause *catastrophic* loss of information
    Tim> silently, and in ordinary cases.  

Catastrophic is in the eye of the beholder.  I would find it just as
catastrophic if this

    x = len(somelist)/3

resulted in a floating point answer.  With integer division I haven't lost
anything, because if I want the remainder I can just execute

    y = len(somelist)%3

If I want to insure a floating point result I can just use the builtin
float.

I suspect that most people resistant to this change share the following two
traits:

    * a large body of code to maintain
    * most arithmetic they do in Python is non-scientific - implied by few
      imports of the math module in their code

I took a quick peek at my code.  Out of 360 Python source files, the math
module is imported just six times.  Two of those imports are in versions of
Digital Creations' DocumentTemplate module, which I didn't write, just
forked for private use, one was in a trivial test script, and one was a
spurious import (it was imported but not actually used).  That leaves two
files written by me that use math.  I only found calls to the float builtin
in 16 files.  I suspect that most people who are advocates of the change
proposed in PEP 238 either are numerical folks or don't have much code that
will break.  Numerical folks probably import math about as frequently as sys
and sprinkle their code liberally with calls to float().

S



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul  1 20:09:13 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 00:09:13 GMT
Subject: The standard library
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994024802.8132.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote:
> At 15:33 01/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>>I've just submitted a version of PEP 2 to Barry. It's only a first step
>>on this path, but it's a step.

> I was going to write on myself. Can you send it to the list for us to work 
> with? It is not listed on the website; the "stub" one is there.

I understand from PEP 1 that I ought to send it to the PEP editor (Barry)
first. I'll send it to the list as soon as I've received feedback from him. 
Then I'll certainly try to integrate anyone's feedback into it.

Do I understand PEP 1 right this way? I guess having a number assigned for
a PEP before discussing it in public may be a good idea. :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From mlunnay at ihug.com.au  Tue Jul 17 04:17:38 2001
From: mlunnay at ihug.com.au (Michael Lunnay)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:47:38 +0930
Subject: integer division rounding
References: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <fBR47.12488$p7.4225009@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b53dedd$0$16308$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au>

Which is 'mathematically' correct then? I am doing some graphics coding and
while my maths background is shakey (re-learning it all as I go along) I
would like to match the work I am learning from.
Should I do all floating point division and then use __builtin__.int() so as
to match C code?

Michael

> > Why does an integer division resulting in a negative round down
,e.g -0.5
> > => -1, while C and  __builtin__.int() rounds up ,e.g -0.5 => 0. Is this
a
> > purposful error(?), or an oversight?
>
> Purposeful.  This way, 0 <= m%n < n and (m/n)*n + m%n = m.
> The other choice (round toward 0) maintains the invarient -(m/n) = (-m/n).
> Much as we would like, we cannot make all three invarients true at once
for
> negative quotients.
>
> Terry J. Reedy
>
>
>




From janssen at parc.xerox.com  Tue Jul 24 22:41:34 2001
From: janssen at parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:41:34 PDT
Subject: PEP0238 lament 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:46:15 PDT."
             <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <01Jul24.194143pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com>

> Anything else?

I'd think you'd have to wait till a major release to make the new
division (which I think is an improvement) the default.  No mere
length of time is enough.

But perhaps the change is enough to warrant a major release :-).

Bill




From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul  3 08:23:41 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:23:41 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <GFwB1t.4DB@world.std.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107031621530.22025-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Will Ware wrote:

>Carlos Ribeiro (cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br) wrote:
>> ...the problem in air traffic
>> control is *not* how to map airplane positions using radar input; is how to
>> calculate paths and coordinate communications with dozens, or even
>> hundreds, of airplanes, while following *very* strict safety rules that
>> tell how to solve conflicts that arise all the time. You have to manage the
>> queues for takeoff and landing, keeping everything in sync to make the most
>> of precious time.  ...there are several "lanes" in air
>> space, defined by the authorities. The use of the radio frequencies must
>> also be managed by the tower to make sure that there are not any undesired
>> interference between different airplanes...

There is a little game in bsd-games package which is called atc.
With it is real to feel what is ATC in busy area...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 03, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Paranoia is nothing to be afraid of!!" _/




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 10:19:51 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:19:51 -0400
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <PTg57.32687$d4.1085713@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Matthias Huening" <mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:9j446n$lom9k$1 at fu-berlin.de...
> I have a function like this:
>
> -----
> def read_pages(urllist):
>     res = {}
>     for x in urllist:
>         try:
>             res[x] = urllib.urlopen(x).read()
>         except:
>             pass
>     return(res)
> -----
>
> I now want the following behaviour: try to catch the webpage for 3
seconds;
> if it takes longer just skip this one and move on to the next. How can I
> achieve this?
>
> Thanks, Matthias
>
> PS Other suggestions for speeding up the process of reading lets say 100
> webpages are welcome...
>
This one comes in the category of "other suggestions", but it might nullify
your concerns about download time, thereby solving your whole problem. Sam
Rushing, the author of the asyncore module, shows on his web site
(www.nightmare.com) how to asynchronously read as many web pages as you
like. The code goes something like this:

import asyncore
import socket

class http_client (asyncore.dispatcher):

    def __init__ (self, host, path, cnum):
        asyncore.dispatcher.__init__ (self)
        self.path = path
        self.cnum = cnum
        self.host = host
        self.wflag = 1
        self.create_socket (socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        self.connect ((self.host, 80))

    def handle_connect (self):
        self.send ('GET %s HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' % self.path)
        print "Channel:", self.cnum, \
                "Sent request for", self.path, "to", self.host
        self.wflag = 0

    def handle_read (self):
        data = self.recv (8192)
        print "Channel:", self.cnum, "Received", len(data), "bytes"

    def handle_write (self):
        print "Channel:", self.cnum, "was writable"

    def writable(self):
        return self.wflag

import sys
import urlparse
cnum = 0
for url in sys.argv[1:]:
    parts = urlparse.urlparse (url)
    if parts[0] != 'http':
        raise ValueError, "HTTP URL's only, please"
    else:
        cnum += 1
        host = parts[1]
        path = parts[2]
        http_client (host, path, cnum)
asyncore.loop()

Now in this particular example each http_client object just prints debug
information about its input. You should easily be able to modify it to do
something sensible with the downloaded HTML, I should think. Try running the
program with several URLs on the command line, you'll soon see how it works.
Then read the documentation (such as it is), and download Sam's code for
more information on this fascinating system.

Sam's ideas are not as well-known as they should be, and I'm sure you'll see
a big improvement over just reading the HTML streams one by one if you go
with this code. Since each http_client is an object, it's quite easy to
parse each HTML stream independent of the others. Also, since they are
handled in parallel, you will no longer be so concerned about pages which
take longer than 3 seconds, since they won't hold the others up!

regards
 Steve
--
www.holdenweb.com





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 05:16:36 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 02:16:36 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B@lp.airnews.net> <4s1vMVAEtYZ7Ew4w@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <m3n15lijp1.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
Message-ID: <3B667774.75FE3C16@ActiveState.com>

markus at kepler.ibp.de wrote:
> 
> Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
> 
> > As for abominations has anyone else used the Fame programming language?
> 
> No, but what is the interesting thing about Fame?

The theme song:

             I'm gonna live forever
             I'm gonna learn how to fly
             (High!)
             I feel it coming together
             People will see me and cry
             (Fame!)
             I'm gonna make it to heaven
             Light up the sky like a flame
             (Fame!)
             I'm gonna live forever
             Baby, remember my name

Unfortunately, the distribution is a little bit expensive (not free like
ActiveState distributions):

	"You got big dreams? You want fame? Well fame costs and right here's
where you start paying. In sweat."

As you can see the licensing pretty much doomed the language.

http://fameforever.8m.com/

Whoa. Time for bed.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 04:48:11 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:48:11 +0200
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ijo8c027ve@enews4.newsguy.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:XA537.678643$166.13965187 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> What does filter do? I don't understand when I read it other places.

Would you understand the following pure Python function...:

    return [item for item in sequence if function(item)]

or its more verbose equivalent...:

def filter2(function, sequence):
    result = []
    for item in sequence:
        if function(item):
            result.append(item)
    return result

If you understand this, it's very easy to explain the
semantics of builtin filter by difference from those
of these pure-Python filter1 and filter2 -- the
differences are not many, nor are they complex.

If you don't understand these pure-Python functions,
then we'd better focus on this, and wait for filter
when you have a better grasp of fundamentals...?


Alex





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 19:03:14 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:03:14 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B40FDB2.6A100521@ActiveState.com>

Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
>... However, in a general case such as
> 82/4, the expression is more obviously a problem to be solved (which is how
> the interpreter sees it) rather than an answer in itself and the assumption
> of divisibility may well be disasterously wrong.

I strongly feel that in the modern world, people will see an unadorned
82/4 as 20.5. Go ask someone on the street: "What's 11 divided by 2." If
they are good enough at mathematics to even figure out an answer, they
will usually respond 5.5. Very few would bother to ask you whether you
mean "count division." Very few would answer 5. Try it with your family
and (non-mathematician) friends.

We could each work up more and more complicated expressions of the
question but I don't see that as relevant. The Python interpreter
presents no such "background". The person is given a raw command line
and asked type an expression that evaluates to 5.5. Most people will
type 11/2 (if we disallow directly typing 5.5!). 

The prevalence of calculators moves people more and more in that
direction every day. They choose to truncate (or not) after the
calculator has done the division.

>...
> Underlying these formulations of the survey question is the observation
> that most arithmetic is done to answer questions about the 'real' world by
> using numbers to represent or model quantities of things in the world.
> When so, each number has an at least implicit unit attached.  In this
> context, the fundamental question is whether the unit is divisible (or is
> allowed to be) or not.  If not, one uses (in Python) an integer (or long).
> If the units are divisible, one should tell readers and the interpreter by
> using divisible numbers (floats, complex) to model them, either from the
> start (by adding '.0') or at least at the point of division (by converting
> with float()).  The suffix '.0' says "Yes, this number is currently a whole
> number (whether by design or accident) but it represents something that is
> splittable and which we may well want to split into fractions."  

I do not think it is very good idea to use two syntaxes that are
semantically equivalent in "real math" to indicate divisibility. Perhaps
we should have a "divisible" keyword. And maybe one day we could say
that 5.00 represents not double-precision math but *triple* precsion.
Adding zeros to the end could get you more and more precision. You see
my point? Adding mathematically meaningless numbers to the front and/or
back is a terrible way to change the properties of the object you are
creating.

But anyhow, this is not the crux of the issue.

In a dynamically typed language with no type declarations it makes more
sense to define the nature of the operation *at the point of the
operation* and not at the point where the value is initialized. If you
write a function like this:

def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
    return teachers/classroom

you absolutely do NOT want the users of this function to accidently
subvert it and get meaningless answers by passing it "3.0" instead of
"3". Therefore to make this safe, you need to do this:

def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
    return int(teachers)/int(classroom)

(or something like that)

I do this on *every* division that works with paramaters because that's
the only way I can be explicit and confident. And of course when I want
float division I do the opposite. Eventually after I do this a thousand
times or so I realized that I'm really selecting between two different
logical operators that happen to be sharing the same syntactic body. And
I'm selecting between these two operators in a syntactically obtuse,
runtime-inefficient manner. If I want count division, I want count
division. It doesn't matter if I'm handed a floating point number that
happens to be integral.

> Requiring
> that people think about divisibility in choosing a number representation is
> no more burdensome (and I think less so) than requiring them to think about
> mutability in choosing a tuple versus list sequence representation.

Many Python hot-shots admit to occasionally being bitten by the
int/float problem whereas we never have trouble with tuple/list. You may
be smarter than us, but Python is not only for smart people. The
confusion caused by this is well-documented:

http://old.eleceng.uct.ac.za/courses/EEE103W/python/yhslug.tux.org/obp/thinkCS/thinkCSpy/chap02.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/42970
http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From volucris at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 05:16:04 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:16:04 -0500
Subject: can anybody tell me where to find jTkinter??
References: <Cu987.36229$eY6.3874926@news20.bellglobal.com> <3b612e34$0$327$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
Message-ID: <3b6130ae$0$321$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

whoops! that should be http://groups.google.com/

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b612e34$0$327$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net...
> http://jTkinter.sourceforge.net/
>
> BTW, if you ever need to find an old post, you can check out
> <group.google.com>.
>
> --
>
> Volucris (a) hotmail.com
> "Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."
>
> "Chang" <wchang at sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:Cu987.36229$eY6.3874926 at news20.bellglobal.com...
> > hi all...
> >
> > i've been trying to find jTkinter on the web...i don't even know if it
> > exists, i happen to come across it in this newsgroup a couple of days
ago,
> > but i can't find the post anymore...
> >
> > so can anybody help me and tell me where i can find jTkinter, if it
exists
> > at all...
> >
> > thx so much~~
> >
> >
>
>




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 15:30:49 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 19:30:49 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2k80u4fus.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <cpk80u2rg8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m64n9.jdf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:49:09 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

> I don't understand why everybody suddenly associates floor with
> division.

Maybe because floor(x) == x div 1

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 23 13:00:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 17:00:01 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com>

Moshe Zadka wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:42:03 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> 
> > Or you could not change it in the first place, eliminate the transition
> > period requirement, keep Python's integer division operator consistent
> > with other languages
> 
> non-issue. Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and
> Tcl, for instance.
> 

I've been watching this debate with some interest, hoping that NO change
be instituted.  That is, 3/4 should return 0 as it does today.  'Just
a few points:

- This is not "incorrect" arithmetic.  *It is 3/4 == .75 that is incorrect*
  because the precision of the result exceeds the precision of the operands.
  This path has been paved to hell for several thousand years and ought
  not to be trod upon once again - we should know better.

- If anything, the new // operator ought to apply to new behavior, not be
  foisted upon existing code.  If people desparately want integer division to
  return floating point results, then the onus should be on them to use a
  new operator. 

- As I understand it, a significant motivation for this action has to
  do with making the language more accessible to beginners.  This is a
  laudable goal, but it ought not take precedence over mathematical 
  correctness.  We've all seen and used any number of languages that
  made "learning" and "accessibility" the goal and the result has been
  a code maintenance nightmare.  Examples include many early variants
  of BASIC (after the original Dartmouth version), almost all of the
  4-GLs like FOCUS, and so on.  I am by no means an advocate of 
  preserving the programming High Priesthood.  Making languages easier
  to assimilate *is* important.  However, if the cost of doing so is
  to violate the canons a mathematics, produce unmaintainable code, or
  perpetuate bad professional practice, we ought not to do it.  

So, here's one strong vote for leaving things along, or at the very least,
introducing nw behavior with new operands.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za  Wed Jul 11 08:05:03 2001
From: mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za (mixo)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:05:03 +0200
Subject: python2.1 install problem on redhat 7.1
References: <9ig1i7$95b$1@nntp1.ba.best.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C40EF.B8B32771@beth.uniforum.org.za>

David White wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm trying to install python2.1 on redhat 7.1 i686.  I'm using the RPM and I get a dependency error:
>
> error: failed dependencies:
>         libcrypto.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5
>         libssl.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5
>
> so I installed the following
>
> rpm -iv ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/PLD/current/PLD-1.0/i686/PLD/RPMS/openssl-0.9.6a-4.i686.rpm
> which gives me
> /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.6.1
> /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.6.1
>
> but I still have that dependency error.
>
> So the question is, what's the right way to resolve this situation?
>
> thanks,
> dave white

try installing with "--nodeps" option.  and remember, to get into python 2 (.xx) you have to type in
"python2 ", instead of  just "python" as that will invoke the old python interpreter in you have one
installed

Mix



From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 19 22:11:36 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 22:11:36 -0400
Subject: [Q] File Object -- function 'read'
References: <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B579358.DCF39F49@engcorp.com>

jackyci wrote:
> 
> In Windows. "\n" equal "\x0d\x0a"
> But in function "read" of File Object, "\x0d\x0a" equal 1 byte.
> 
> file = open('test.txt')
> str = file.read(22)    # I want to read the first two line
> # but str = "This is a test\ntest\nte"
> 
> How to solve the problem ?

(I'm surprised there's no answer yet to your question -- at least
none visible on my system, yet.)

There is a concept of "text files" versus "binary files".  The
primary way in which these differ is that "text" files, when 
written, may convert the data written in ways which depend on the
current platform.  "Binary" files, on the other hand, contain
precisely the bytes which were written out.

The main difference between the two, is that on Windows
(and DOS, and anything else in that ugly realm), "text" files
have 'newlines' (represented as \n but really just LF or 
linefeed characters, or \x0a) converted to pairs of bytes,
specifically a Carriage Return (CR) followed by a Line Feed
(LF).  

When you read in a "text" file again, CR followed by LF is 
converted back into a single byte, the \n character (which,
again, is just a LF character).

On a Unix platform, "binary" and "text" files are the same 
thing.  Windows is "special". :-)

To solve your problem in one way: on Windows, use the
"b" option in the open command to force the file to 
be read as a "binary" file.  (You need to explicitly 
include the "r" option as well, for read mode.)

>>> file = open('test.txt', 'rb')
>>> str = file.read()
>>> str
'This is a test\r\ntest\r\ntest\r\n'

Note that your comment suggests you really would be
better off interpreting the file as a "text" file,
since the entire concept of "lines" is exclusive
to "text" files.  "Binary" files should generally be
thought of as having "raw" data, without "lines"
(this is not a hard and fast rule of course).

If your application doesn't really require the
CR LF combination to be read in, don't open the
file in binary mode.

(I use "text" and "binary" in the above to emphasize
the fact that the distinction is one of convention
or interpretation.  Or to put it another way, 
files are just series of bytes; whether you want 
to treat them as text or binary is up to you...
it's not an inherent property of the file.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Wed Jul  4 16:08:19 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:08:19 -0700
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr>
Message-ID: <tk6tumj4ucre9d@news.supernews.com>

"Emmanuel Astier" <emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr> wrote in message
news:3b431024.15341289 at news.iway.fr...
> Hi,
>
>
> I embedded and extended python for a game, and I was REALLY
> disappointed by the performances I get...
>
> Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my
> Python logical part from my C game with :

There's one thing that needs to be said right off - while there are
many successful commercial games that use a scripting language to
control the actual flow of the game, they don't, and I must repeat,
they don't call the script every frame. As you've noticed, it's just
too slow. It's the responsibility of the game engine (written in C
or C++, with Assembler assists as needed for performance) to
handle everything until, and only until, the engine needs a decision.

With 200 sprites, I presume you're doing some kind of arcade type
game - lots of stuff flashing around the screen, and the gameplayer is
pushing his hand-eye coordination to the limit. People don't use scripting
languages for that, except possibly for transitions.

Scripting languages are used where there is an extended storyline
embedded in the game, such as Adventure or RPG type games. The
script handles the storyline and transition, and the game engine handles
everything else.

For example, in Zork: Grand Inquisitor, there's a point early in the
game where the adventurer comes across a glass box on the wall, with the
sign "in case of adventure, break glass." The mechanism to solve this puzzle
requires a state machine with around five states and five or six inputs,
each
state transition requires that the scene is updated. There are literally
hundreds
of such situations in the game.

If you tried to do this in C or C++, with the inevitable rewrites as the
game
designers tried to tweak it this way and that to make the game a compelling,
memorable experiance, you'd run through your budget in no time flat.

>
> PyObject_CallFunction( LogicalEntryPoint, NULL );
>
> Logical Entry Point being a PyObject* pointing on the name of the
> function.

I presume that you've made sure that the function is preloaded in
memory at all times - it does not have to be reloaded from disk
or recompiled from a string.

> My function do only :
>
>     for i in range ( 0, NbTestSprites - 1 ):
>         ListOfSprites[i].setPos( 100, 100 )
>
> ie it sets the pos of 200 sprites.
> ListOfSprites is a tuple of 200 sprites, sprites is a extension class,
> and setPos one of its method.

"for i in range(...)" creates 101 objects each time it's executed: it
has to build a tuple, and objects for all numbers from 101 to 200.
(numbers from -1 to 100 are preallocated in the interpreter). It's
faster if this is done once, and then passed to the for loop:

foobar = range(0, NbTestSprites - 1)

for i in foobar:

This only works if foobar is stored somewhere where it doesn't have
to be recreated on each call.

>
> I'm using Swig to extend Python with my C functions ( I Tried Boost
> too, but there is even more overhead... )

Swig is intended to make extension more convenient. Convenience is
usually exactly opposite to performance. Do it by hand.

> This is _REALLY_ slow ( i run at around 1 Frame / second on a P733 ).
>
> 200 sprites is not so much...
>
> Have someone a clue of something I could have done wrong ?
>
> Can't extended python be faster ?
>
> Any help appreciated,
>
> thanks,
>
> Emmanuel
>
>
>




From jparlar at home.com  Mon Jul 16 11:01:31 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:01:31 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
Message-ID: <20010716150355.FDYB21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

> 
>That will teach me to post without testing. This doesn't work at all - items
>from B are removed from the temporary, unnamed list created for A + B.
Hehe, that's what I thought. At first I just assumed you were right and wondered what I was doing wrong ;-)


>A bit neared the truth would be:
>
>A += B
>map(A.remove, B)
>
>But this doesn't really work, either. Only the first occurrence of each
>token in B is removed.
I was thinking the same thing, you're essentially going to always remove only the elements you add by concatenating the 
two lists together.


>It strikes me that if B is large, it might be quicker to build a re pattern
>from its elements, and match on that, rather than use 'in'. I'll give that a
>bash later.
If you do, cool, if not, no worries. Like I said in the original post, any insight is appreciated.

>Cheers,
>Simon Brunning
>TriSystems Ltd.
>sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk
>
>
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
>It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
>is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
>copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
>reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
>accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.
>


Jay Parlar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."





From bkelley at wi.mit.edu  Thu Jul 19 10:55:10 2001
From: bkelley at wi.mit.edu (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:55:10 -0500
Subject: Python Server Pages or Physician Heal Thyself
References: <3B56E7ED.E4506CBD@wi.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <3B56F4CE.BDF66DA8@wi.mit.edu>

Allright, I just discovered here
http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/web_python.html
that there are two different entities named Python Server Pages.  I was
referring to Kiby Andell's version here http://www.ciobriefings.com/psp/

Anyway, I stumbled across the web topics section at python.org
http://www.python.org/topics/web and discovered a third (?) so-called
python server pages from Webware http://webware.sourceforge.net/

So I'll mention my REAL problem :)  I am planning on using a particular
Java applet on a client side Macintosh.  Unfortunately it only runs under
the newly released Macintosh Java RunTime and the current MJR netscape
plugin from mozilla doesn't allow JavaScript to Java calls.  I was hoping
that using a some variant of Python Server Pages with Jython would give me
this functionality back.  So the question is which to use?

Webware seems the most supported so far, does anybody have any comments?
Thanks in advance.

Brian Kelley
Whitehead Institute



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:21:50 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:21:50 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <y%587.32307$EP6.8411583@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> PEP: 238

Generally agree with Eppstein's comments.


>This makes expressions expecting float or complex
>     results error-prone when integers are not expected but possible
as
>     inputs.

and vice versa for integer expressions getting float input


>     The problem is unique to dynamically typed languages: in a
>     statically typed language like C, the inputs, typically function
>     arguments, would be declared as double or float, and when a call
>     passes an integer argument, it is converted to double or float
at
>     the time of the call.  Python doesn't have argument type
>     declarations, so integer arguments can easily find their way
into
>     an expression.

Arguments that 'classic' division is bad for all languages obscured
this valid argument that it is particularly bad for Python.  Glad to
see it spelled out so nicely.


> Command Line Option
>...
>     warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning
framework)
Deprecation?


> Semantics of True Division
>
>     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
>     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
>     return a float (2.0), not an int.

Given that one spurious argument for this proposal was the claim that
float division preserves more information than quotient division, I
think it might be appropriate to warn here that the opposite is true
for sufficiently long longs, so that one may need to switch to
long//long to preserve accuracy.


>     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
>       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people
like
>       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
>       zero?)

Its true that -8/3 = -(2+2/3), but I think divmod(-i,j)[0] is up for
grabs in most people's mental space.  This concern never entered my
mind until I read the above.

---
The only way I can think of to 'globally' turn on new division on my
own Windows computer is to rebind .py and .pyc to python.bat
containing '...python.exe -Dnew'.


Great revision!

Terry J. Reedy





From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 20:05:34 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 01:05:34 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Stephen Horne wrote:

[I said:]
>> The different behaviour of "/" on floats and ints isn't
>> polymorphism, it's overloading. Two different operations.
>> Closely related, of course, but different. Generally
>> "polymorphism" is reserved for when what's being done
>> is "the same thing" in both cases.
> 
> It *is* the same thing in both cases - float division is nothing more
> than a logical extension of integer division. Even mathematicians know
> that ;-)

I am a mathematician, and I do not know, or even believe,
that "float division is nothing more than a logical extension
of integer division" if "integer division" means what
Python presently does.

To any mathematician on the planet, 1/2 is, well, 1/2.
A rational number quite different from 0.

This isn't necessarily an argument for making division
return rationals when handed integers -- well, it is, but
it's not necessarily a very *strong* argument for that.
(It would involve a non-trivial amount of work, the
results would be amazingly frustrating in practice
unless the numerator and denominator had the sematics
of longs rather than ints, and simple programs could
become mysteriously inefficient. Some people would find
that worse than them just doing the wrong thing.)

If I were re-designing Python from scratch and didn't
care about backwards compatibility, then I'd give it
unified ints and longs, and rationals, and I'd make
division of integers produce rationals. But I'm not,
and since Guido is a better language designer than me
it's probably just as well.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:41:49 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:41:49 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"John W. Baxter" <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> writes:

> In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
> Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> > Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
> > We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
> > loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
> > so let's not be shy.
> 
> This is encouraging and discouraging:
> 
> Encouraging in that it suggests strongly that 2.3 isn't the target;
> discouraging in that it gives running code even longer to sit in the
> basement with people who know it moving on before it breaks.
> 
> It's also discouraging because it means the change does seem to be on
> the way, with argument useless.

Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to

(1) int/int *ought* to return an int;

(2) it breaks too much code to change now.

IMO, argument (1) is misguided.  I've heard all the variations many
times by now and none are convincing to me; they are either wrong,
like "that's how mathematicians define it" or "that's how all
right-thinking programming languages define it", or they miss the
point, like "it's easy to explain to newbies that int/int returns
int".

Attempts to convince the proponents of (1) seem useless -- otherwise
this thread wouldn't last so long -- so I won't repeat the
explanation.  Let me add that it has nothing to do with teaching
Python to newbies -- the problem is a fundamental design bug.
(Ironically, it dates back to the day, probably in 1991, that Tim
Peters convinced me that int+float should automatically coerce the int
to a float rather than raise a type error; this embedded the integers
in the floats, and we should have realized then that int division
should therefore also be embedded in the floats.)

Argument (2) is very real, therefore I am trying to address it with
all my might.  See my other posts.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Fri Jul  6 12:14:41 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:14:41 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107062012260.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> >
> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
>
> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?

1. Because it is the first link a user sees on the frontpage of
www.python.org and on http://www.python.org/doc/

2. Because I prefer static files instead of running CGIs on your server.
Just to lesser the load.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul 24 15:40:28 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:40:28 -0500
Subject: Learning Python
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5278@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Books available are found at www.amazon.com, under Python.  Tutorials are at
www.python.org.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul [mailto:pchilds at ithink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:41 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Learning Python


I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.

Thanks in advance.



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 10:41:39 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:41:39 -0500 
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51E9@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

You forgot the fraction,
A quarter infraction (in fraction, get it),
This error in Python,
Would deserve drastic action.


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Holden [mailto:sholden at holdenweb.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 8:41 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?


Roses are red
Violets are blue
Everyone knows
Four into nine gives two

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994164845.2688.python-list at python.org...
> Roses are red,
> and violets are blue,
> I program in Python,
> and so can you.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jaap Spies [mailto:j.spies at hccnet.nl]
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 5:12 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?
>
>
> Armin Steinhoff wrote:
>
>
> > It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
> > attempts poetry.
> >
> > --Ed
> >
>
>
>
> You should know that the roots of Python are in the ABC Programming
> Language and
> as I mentioned  before reading/writing Python is really Poetry!
>
>
> Jaap Spies
>
>





From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Mon Jul  2 16:13:04 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 16:13:04 -0400
Subject: Win32com
In-Reply-To: <994088437.737.81588.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B409D90.15306.4241353@localhost>

"Mamoon Khan" <mamoonk at nortelnetworks.com> wrote:
> I am trying to create a ComServer .  Following is some part of the
> code that you guys need to see if I am doing it right.
> 
> _public_methods_ = [ 'SomeMethod']
> _reg_progid_ = "PythonComTest.TestClass"
> _reg_clsid_ = "{41E24E95-D45A-11D2-852C-204C4F4F5020}"
> 
> Here the vb code that I am using
> 
> Dim SomeServer as Variant
> Set SomeServer = CreateObject(PythonComTest.TestClass")
> 
> msgbox SomeServer.SomeMethod()
> 
> I can register the Com Server fine and can call it from within python
> using createobject no problem.
> 
> When I go to use it from VB I can create an object SomeServer fine but
> when I call a method and return a string from a function and try to
> display the results in a message box, I get an error invalid type.
> 
> Could someone tell me what the heck is going on here with this.

Mamoon:

Maybe someone else can guess what's wrong, given this 
information. I can't. I executed the following code in order to 
register the server.

class SomeServer:
    _public_methods_ = [ 'SomeMethod']
    _reg_progid_ = "PythonComTest.TestClass"
    _reg_clsid_ = "{41E24E95-D45A-11D2-852C-204C4F4F5020}"

    def SomeMethod(self):
        return "A valid string"

if __name__=='__main__':
    import win32com.server.register 
    win32com.server.register.UseCommandLine(SomeServer)

I believe this corresponds to what you gave in the way of 
information.

The following worked as an MS Excel macro.

Public Sub ForMamoon()
  Set someserver = CreateObject("PythonComTest.TestClass")
  
  MsgBox someserver.somemethod
End Sub

And the following worked in VB6.

Private Sub Command1_Click()
Dim someserver As Object

  Set someserver = CreateObject("PythonComTest.TestClass")
  
  MsgBox someserver.somemethod
End Sub

Or, IOW, what you've supplied ~could~ be part of a COM server. :o)

I'd suggest that a reading of Chapter 12 of the Win32 book by 
Hammond and Robinson in the O'Reilly series, if you haven't 
already done that. What Mark Hammond suggested to me once 
was that I implement the debugging machinery in my Python code 
(also described in aforementioned reading) and see if that helps.

Good luck!

Bill



From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Tue Jul  3 17:42:51 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 07:42:51 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com>

"Thomas Wouters" <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994154525.14580.python-list at python.org...
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 07:34:54AM +1000, Peter Milliken wrote:
>
> > Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging
out
> > applications that are going to run in an environment where it isn't
going to
> > matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not something I would
put
> > forward for something like Air Traffic Control.
>
> > This is a joke, right?
>
> Nope. The only way to make sure a program works is by testing each and
every
> line in each and every circumstance, regardless of which programming
> language you use. For something like ATC, you *do not* want to rely on
> anything else. Using Python would at least allow you to find and fix
> problems a lot faster -- you won't be carrying around NULL or undef values
> without noticing it.
>
> Do you check the return value of every fprintf()/fclose() function call
you
> make ? You should!

Well, you show your inexperience/ignorance in two places here Thomas :-)

1. No program EVER has 100% coverage during testing (unless it is trivial -
this for the nitpickers :-)). The bigger the program the less likely full
coverage has been achieved, ATC's are big programs. Anyone who claims they
have 100% tested an ATC are either fools or liars - "every line and every
circumstance" are NOT POSSIBLE, if you think they are then I don't have
anything more to say other than get a few more years real world experience
:-). So, if you plan to 100% test a python ATC "each line and every
circumstance" then my original confidence that it would never be put into
production holds (that's one of the reason languages have exception
handlers - to catch the error that the programmer didn't foresee) :-).

2. Strongly typed languages don't include C/C++, so your example is
meaningless i.e. a strongly typed language would at least FORCE you to
assign/test the return value of an function - not like C/C++ which allows
you to ignore any return values. This is not to say that an application
written in a such a language wouldn't still ignore the return value after
the assignment - that is a function of programmer ability (another point in
my original email) - to fix that is up to testing and code review.

Peter




From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul 29 21:10:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 01:10:02 GMT
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6@tundraware.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> Richard van de Stadt wrote:
> >
> > I run stuff on systems in various timezones.
> > I need to display when certain files have been updated.
> > ctime (time()) shows the current date and time, but without the timezone
> > that you get to see e.g. by Unix' date command.
> >
> > Is there a (Python) way to find out the timezone?
> >
> > Richard.
> 
> import time
> 
> time.tzname
> 
> ...will return a tuple containing the strings which name the timezone
> 
> time.timezone
> 
> ...will return the offset from UTC in seconds
> 
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tim Daneliuk
> tundra at tundraware.com

Actually, this raises an interesting question, which perhaps the resident geniuses
can 'splain to me.  Here in Chicago, we're currently 6 hourse or 21,600 sec *behind*
UTC.  Why does time.timezone return 21600, not -21600?  It seems that for
arithmetic reasons, you'd want to know both the magnitude and direction of
this vector...

Inquiring minds wanna know ;)
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 10 08:40:39 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 05:40:39 -0700
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107100440.2eb444af@posting.google.com>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote in message news:<14m27.2182$z21.428719 at newsc.telia.net>...
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> > Edward's right in one respect: stop concentrating on language issues
> > and start concentrating on library issues.
> 
> are you sure "do what I want, not what you want" is a good way to
> get people to write software and give it to you?

Not really, but I don't think that even Mr Wilson was quite going to
that extreme... or perhaps he was, but his point illustrates a
seemingly increasing trend in comp.lang.python (or the python-list) to
discuss interesting new language constructs rather than applications
of the language itself. To offer opinions or proposals on language
change seems like an easy (and lazy) route for some people to take
when they will never come near to the implementation that would need
to be done to achieve that change.

To endlessly discuss the nature of a particular syntax, as we often
see with the subject of indentation, is pretty undemanding in
comparison to discussing and planning new frameworks where Python
actually gets used for something. However, it's a "well-known secret"
that much of the real discussion in terms of framework development
takes place well away from comp.lang.python.

The classic open source development principles of developing for
oneself, and people getting involved because it interests them and
addresses their needs, is great for those people who either have the
skill and resources to start a project from scratch and get somewhere
with it, or have the skill and resources to improve a project close
enough to meeting their needs, or can find a project which just
happens to meet their needs exactly.

The big open source question is: how can Mr Wilson, who either has a
skill or resources deficit (no offence intended, Edward), get involved
in the projects which are clearly close to his needs (but not close
enough) in order for his needs to be addressed? Can the open source
movement include everyone, or is it inherently elitist?

Paul


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 14:06:38 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:06:38 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930982.17575.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DB92E.3EEBFEAD@home.net>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> Both of these changes fall in the same group IMHO... they
> break a lot of code.

Yes, they do. That's why I proposed a versioning sytem in an earlier
post (see:
A way to accommodate laguage changes) Ithink it could reduce the pain a
lot.

> Don't tell me that newbies need this to learn the language,
> as we know they don't.  We were all newbies once; which of
> us had a problem with either int division or case sensitivity.

I think the issues with newbies bring it to light, but neither of these
are newbie-only issues. I know it's a big time sink, but READ THE POSTS,
it's all there! I'm not going to comment on case sensitivity, but as for
the int/int thing:

This has been said a number of times, but I'll put it here as anyway,
since it pretty difficult to sift through the enormous number of posts
about this. There are a couple of issues with / as it is:

1)  1/2 == 0

(constant values) This is an issue for newbies mostly, but it can be
learned, and perhaps should be anyway, integers and floats are different
inside the computer, the sooner you learn that, the better.

2) def velocity(distance,time):
       return distance/time

This, I think, is a MUCH bigger issue. For the first time, I see why
some folks are so gung ho on static type declarations. Clearly the
author of this function intends floating point division. (or maybe
complex!) It is possible, however, for a couple of integers to get
passed in, perhaps from user input. Granted, this isn't biting us all
the time because most of us think to wrap the input in a float() or
something. There are other solutions, such as putting float() , or *1.0
or +0.0 or something in there, but there are problems and limitations to
all of these. There are also limiations to always using float division,
and then wrapping a int(), or int(floor()) or whatever around it. See
various previous posts for the details. Note that this in NOT an issue
with a statically typed language float velocity( float distance, float
time) could not have this problem, so the fact that a number of
statically typed laguages use the current system successfully is not
very relevant.

Since Python is dynamically typed, you don't know for sure what the
types  will be that are input to your function. Yes, that applies to
strings (or whatever) getting passed in when you expect a number, but
that usually creates an obvious error much sooner thatn an int when you
expect a float. Given this, it makes a whole lot more sense to have the
programmer specify what kind of division is desired, thus the desire for
two operators. It seems that most folks (not all!) do agree that the two
operator approach is a good one, the question is whether it is worth
introducing backward compatability in order to do it.

By the way, just adding "//" as the new operator (returning a float
divide, even with all integer inputs) is not a perfect solution either.
The current "/" behaves differently depending on input. Some have
scoffed at the idea of 1.0/2.0 returning 0, but I do think that is very
useful, just like you might get two ints when you expect a float, you
could get one or more floats when you expect two ints. AGin,you could
write (int(floor(a/b)) or  int(divmod(1.0,2.0)[0]), and I do write code
like that all the time, but it would be great if I didn't have to!

So: the ideal solution is two have two different division operators: one
that is as close as we can get to real number (and complex) division,
and one that is integer division. The real question here is:

Is it worth introducing a backward compatable change to get it ???

My answer is yes, but only if a way to handle backwards compatable
changes is introduced: some kind of versioning system. We'll see what
Guido decides, but I'd be very surprised if he is still reading these
posts!


-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 13:26:00 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:26:00 +0200
Subject: overriding of methods and variables in a class.
References: <mailman.994686374.24889.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9icq0c0gk9@enews2.newsguy.com>

<rdesetty at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994686374.24889.python-list at python.org...
> I dont seem to understand why a method name and a variable name is
> allowed to be same in a class. what is the use. Most importantly,

Identifiers obey the same rules, whether they identify function objects
or non-function objects.  No name becomes 'reserved' because it has
been bound to something else (except maybe in an _instance_ whose
class defines an appropriate __setattr__, but that doesn't apply here
and I won't keep harping on this tiny escape clause in the following).

In other words: a name (of a class attribute) that has been bound to
one thing can later be re-bound to some other thing.  When a name
that was bound to object X is later re-bound to object Y, it is NOT any
more bound to X, of course; the name is only bound to ONE object at
any given point in time, so a re-binding *takes the place* of the
previous binding.

> Assuming that we have a class as follows:
>
> class abc
> # I am going to define a variable here.
> var_x = 1

This binds name var_x in the namespace of class abc to object 1.  OK so far.

> # now the function with the same name as the variable with say some
> #parameter
> def var_x(abc)

This RE-binds name var_x in the namespace of class abc to another object.
So, the name var_x is not bound any more to the object (the number 1) it
was previously bound to.

>     return abc+1
>
> Now the question is how do i access the variable as well as the
> function (with the same name as the variable) say from another
> function. thanx in advance.

There is no 'variable' that is separate from the 'function' any more.
Class attribute abc.var_x is only bound to one object at any given
point in time.  In your example, it was bound to the number 1 for
a tiny moment, then immediately got re-bound to something else
(a function object -- which magically mutates into a method object
when you access it directly, but that's another issue).


Alex





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:46 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:46 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <jt4oltg3ekdlig096677p295f7mnbumteu@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9loi9e.2il.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <menolto49gnuqp06jgusrpn6nf4d47iede@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lor4v.j55.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cc0pltgv6orb4ho6rvl2b2jenki65b58eh@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 18:27:43 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:35 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:
>
>> Ever worked with a chaotic system? Remember the butterfly and the
>> hurricane? That small error can get big very quick using nothing but
>> multiplies and additions - division is nowhere near as special as
>> people think it is. If I want approximations I'll ask for them.
>
>That's why I want '/' to return a rational, not int or float.

In a chaotic system? - your values will take megabytes each ;-)

Sorry - I know what you mean, but I couldn't resist it ;-)



From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 17:14:11 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:14:11 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org>
Message-ID: <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net>

John Goerzen wrote:

> To me, the benefit of Java or Python over Perl comes into play with
> large apps.

I think Python is far superior to Perl for large projects, but because
is has nice support for clean syntax and modular programming, not
because of strong typing. The previous poster has a good discussion the
question of whether strong typing is as advantageous as you may think.

> From what I hear about Python, it is weakly-typed like Perl.

Python is dynamically typed, and NOT like Perl!

> are many times where I would like strong, static typing and some times
> when I'd like to override that.

As the previous poster mentioned, you can do type checking in your code
if you want to:

import types
def function(i,j):
    if type(i) <> types.IntType or type(j) <> types.IntType:
	raise TypeError("both input values must be integers")
    #do something with i and j

Clearly this is something of a pain, so if you really think you are
going it a lot, you are using the wrong language for your problem and or
programming style.

> that as many things as possible be caught before runtime.  Do you
> think that Python would be a worthwhile language to investigate given
> these criteria?

If compile time type checking is an important criteria: Python is not
your language! Even the above example is a runtime check.

> If so, how would I go about asserting type
> compatibility at "compile time"?  (Or as close as Python gets to that)

Essentially, it can't be done.

My major thought is this: Compile time type checking is vastly over
rated: I suspect you won't miss it much, and the dynamicism of Python
will buy you much more that you lose: try it, you'll probably like it.

One more thought: it is important when trying  a new language to learn
to program in a style appropriate to that language -- write Python that
looks like C (or JAVA), and you won't like the language.

As an example, my graduate advisor started using MATLAB, he like it at
first, but started out by re-writing a bunch of FORTRAN routines in
MATLAB. Soon he found that they ran really slow, and he never really go
the hang of writing MATLAB like MATLAB. After a couple of years, he went
back to using FORTRAN, and using MATLAB for interactive plotting only.
I, on the other hand, put some effort into learning MATLAB techniques,
and even re-wrote a number of his translated-from-FORTRAN routines in
more MATLAB native syntax, and they ran much faster. I used MATLAB for
years, and like it a lot. (Now I use Python + NumPy for most of what I
used to do in MATLAB, of course)

-good luck, Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 19 22:06:30 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 12:06:30 +1000
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <86hew8bbh5.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
> kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
> case-insensitively.  Myself, I am a case-sensitive person, but I can
> easily learn to work with case-insensitive systems.  It's possible
> that most programmers have case-sensitive minds, but I think that most
> non-programmers probably have case-insensitive minds.

My gut feeling agrees, but I wonder if this is because most
fair-dinkum programmers these days come from a C/Pascal/Java
background where case is sensitive and that's all we've ever known.
If you speak to people whose main language is CobOL or ForTRan (or
BASIC in its myriad forms) they may be notionally case-insensitive
thinkers.  And these people also seem to be among the "sometimes
Python programmers" target group.

Or to put it another way, the set of "programmers" is much larger and
more diverse than the set of "programmers a bit like me".




From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Sat Jul 21 21:16:48 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 01:16:48 GMT
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5A2A6D.3040305@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

TheDustbustr wrote:

> I'm trying to split the following string called data into four variables:
> 
> :Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!
> 
> (so data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!') with an outcome of:
> 
> sender='Angel'
> command='PRIVMSG'
> rcpt=Wiz'
> message='here is my message!'
> 
> Unless my logic is flawed, this should return 'PRIVMSG':
> 
> sender='Angel'
> print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
> 
> It prints '' (an empty string).  Is my logic flawed, or does Python dislike a
> string splice determined by a function?
> 
> And if you are up to it, feel free to help me splice (correct terminology,
> parse?) for variables rcpt and message ;)
> 
> Many thanks, Dustin
> 

Well if your string data is always formated that way, then this function 
will parse it into the parts:

 >>> def splitMessage(data):
... 	dummy, set, msg = data.split(':')
... 	sender, command, rcpt = set.split()
... 	return (sender, command, rcpt, msg)
...
 >>> s, c, r, m = splitMessage(data)
 >>> print s
Angel
 >>> print c
PRIVMSG
 >>> print r
Wiz
 >>> print m
here is my message!
 >>> print data
:Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!
 >>>

however if the sender or rcpt fields are allowed to contain spaces, then 
it won't work.

but-hey-i-didn't-get-any-specs-ly yours
Tom



From spboulet at speakeasy.net  Wed Jul  4 01:21:04 2001
From: spboulet at speakeasy.net (Stephen Boulet)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 01:21:04 -0400
Subject: Changing default font in idle/linux
References: <tk55clhbjjrfd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <tk5di6614baj06@corp.supernews.com>

To reply to my own post, I found out about:

  /usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/idle/config-unix.txt

but my fonts still look bad. Maybe it's an issue with kde and 
anti-aliasing, but the letters look jagged. Any help appreciated.

Stephen Boulet wrote:

> Anyone know how to change the default font in idle in linux?
> I've looked at the file "EditorWindow.py" but found no "text['font'] =
> ("lucida console", 8)" line.
> 
> Here are my versions:
> 
> # rpm -q python tkinter
> python-2.1-1mdk
> tkinter-2.1-1mdk
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- Stephen
> 



From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 09:01:34 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:01:34 +0200
Subject: changes in threading and SocketServer since Python 2.0?
In-Reply-To: <9ijvo7$df7$1@news.nuri.net>
References: <9ijvo7$df7$1@news.nuri.net>
Message-ID: <20010712150134.J5396@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 07:54:06PM +0900, Kelly DeMarco wrote:

> I used to use webdebug(http://www.cyberclip.com/webdebug/) on Python 1.6
> without any problem, but I've been through some problem using it on Python
> 2.1 thesedays.

Well, just for you <wink>, Guido should be releasing Python 2.1.1c1 (release
candidate 1) tomorrow. It should fix your problems :)

(Or you can use the ViewCVS link that was posted before to 'upgrade' the
SocketServer.py in the Python 2.1 installation.)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From DavidLNoSpamm at raqia.com  Thu Jul  5 13:45:07 2001
From: DavidLNoSpamm at raqia.com (David Lees)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:45:07 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <mailman.994350130.18544.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44A7A3.E0746E5A@raqia.com>

How about using a regular expression with a backreference to pickout the
phone number?  Take a look at the 're' module documentation and also the
how-to.

david lees


Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
> 
> I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away everything
> except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do this.
> Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
> 
>         stripped_phone=''
>         for c in phone_number:
>                 if c in digits:
>                         stripped_phone += c
> 
> but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure there
> is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).
> 
> Greg Lindstrom
> Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911
> email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com
> 
> "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
> 
>                                                             Albert Einstein


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Jul 11 16:17:58 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:17:58 GMT
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Wv237.4859$z21.493903@newsc.telia.net>

Harald Kirsch wrote:
> 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
>    SOLUTION: ???
>
> An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> 'A<A>B', which it should.
>
> With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.

    (?:(?!<A>).)*<A>B

</F>




From paul at calendargalaxy.com  Tue Jul 24 21:44:48 2001
From: paul at calendargalaxy.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 01:44:48 GMT
Subject: Filesystem access, was Re: Hi, I'm available for work
References: <MTG57.421$qh7.17297@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E22EA.610D5C97@calendargalaxy.com>

Kragen Sitaker wrote:
> 
> Some of the regular readers of this group know me from my previous
> postings here; you can find them at
> 
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kragen+python&meta=site%3Dgroups

Did you ever do anything else with the filesystem "sugar" code?
That looked really cool!


-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From Kevin.Smith at sas.com  Wed Jul 25 14:30:25 2001
From: Kevin.Smith at sas.com (Kevin Smith)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:30:25 GMT
Subject: Static method and class method comments
Message-ID: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>

I am very glad to see the new features of Python 2.2, but I do have a minor 
gripe about the implementation of static and class methods.  My issue stems 
from the fact that when glancing over Python code that uses static or class 
methods, you cannot tell that a method is a static or class method by looking 
at the point where it is defined.  Here is the example given on the Python web 
site.

class C:
        def foo(x, y):
            print "classmethod", x, y
        foo = classmethod(foo)

It is clear that 'foo' is a class method simply because the classmethod() call 
is only two lines away.  It is not so clear when 'foo' is a 100 line method. 
This implementation really doesn't fit the clean, concise syntax of Python 
that I've come to love (and expect).  I would very much prefer something along 
the lines of 

class C:
        classdef foo(x, y):
            print "classmethod", x, y

This syntax indicates very clearly at the time of definition whether the 
method is an instance method or a class method.  A similar syntax could also 
be used for static methods.  I am very happy to see class methods and static 
methods in Python, but, to me, the current implementation still has that 
"workaround look" to it.

Kevin Smith
Kevin.Smith at sas.com


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 12:15:28 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 12:15:28 -0400
Subject: trouble importing module _socket
References: <3B5EF46A.9A7E61E6@ucsu.colorado.edu>
Message-ID: <etd7kwtqbbz.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

What are you trying to install python from?  It sounds like it didn't
include the _socket builtin.  If you didn't build it from the source,
I'd try this:

wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.1/Python-2.1.tgz
tar zxf Python-2.1.tgz
cd Python-2.1
./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make && make install

(note that this will overwrite your previous installation of python2.1.)

HTH.
Alex.


From rmancisidor at austin.rr.com  Fri Jul 13 17:26:43 2001
From: rmancisidor at austin.rr.com (Rod Mancisidor)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:26:43 GMT
Subject: static methods and meta classes
Message-ID: <nIJ37.79679$WT.15186091@typhoon.austin.rr.com>

For reasons that are a bit complicated to explain I have developed a program
that passes classes around quite a bit as parameters.  I now need to
associate methods that can be invoked on the class objects themselves as
opposed to the instances of the class.  As an example, for a given class:

class Foo:
    def f(self, param): return param + 1

I need to invoke Foo.f(10).  This obviously won't work given that f is not a
static method.  So I thought I could to this:

class MetaFoo:
    def f(self, param): return param + 1

class Foo:
    __class__ = MetaFoo

In the hope that python could think of Foo as a class that is also an
instance of MetaFoo and allow me to invoke:

Foo.f(10)

This does not work.  I wonder why, every other undocumented crazy thing I
have tried in Python works.  Does anyone know how to trick Python into
supporting static methods?

If you have a reply and can also send it to rod at mancisidor.com I would
appreciate it.

Thanks






From sabren at manifestation.com  Fri Jul  6 20:19:31 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 19:19:31 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
In-Reply-To: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061913550.29517-100000@mercury.sabren.com>

On 6 Jul 2001, Edward Wilson wrote:

> I have been hoping that someone else would write Oracle, DB2, and SQL
> Server drivers/modules for Python, so I wouldn't have to.  Mostly
> because I haven't had time, and also because such an undertaking is
> better suited for a group with a formal review board rather than an
> individual code Maverick.

But... this kind of stuff is already there.. There's mxODBC for
starter, plus a few native drivers. I use python for all kinds of
stuff, but mostly for web-based frontends to databases. The DB-API is
standardized and works just fine. If you want a higher level of
abstraction, you can do that too.. I built an object-relational
mapper on top of it and it works just fine too.

And if you're on microsoft, you can also just use ADO.. Python
supports COM..

There really is no problem here..

Cheers,

- Michal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.manifestation.com  www.sabren.net  www.linkwatcher.com  www.zike.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------




From loisel at scylla.math.mcgill.ca  Sun Jul  8 20:38:22 2001
From: loisel at scylla.math.mcgill.ca (Sebastien LOISEL)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 20:38:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: c bindings
In-Reply-To: <20010709013727.P8098@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.96.1010708203016.1579539B-100000@scylla.math.mcgill.ca>

Thank you Thomas for your invaluable comments,

I have been tracking down my problems and it seems that the code I had
sent was ok. It was important for me to have other people, who are
undoubtedly much smarter than I am at this, tell me that it was ok.
Knowing that I do this correctly allows me to concentrate on what I'm
doing wrong, which is elsewhere. And please be assured that when I am
stumped again, I will reach out again for help from the community.

That being said, let me beg to differ: I am one of those people who think
that returning 0 is actually better than returning NULL and I also like
my one-line for loops.

Oddness in the code (eg, the ret_size check) is caused by the automatic
code generator.

Sebastien Loisel -- http://www.loisel.org/
Ph.D. Student -- McGill University -- Department of Mathematics
Graphics Architect -- Nvidia Corporation

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 01:25:21PM -0700, Sebastien Loisel wrote:
> 
> 
> > I am writing an extension module. For this purpose, I have written a very
> > short code generator, to create wrappers around my C library. For some
> > simple test cases, it seems to work fine, but I am encountering core dumps
> > with a more complete program.
> 
> Your best bet is really to examine the corefile in gdb, it can often point
> you directly to the problem. Changing the 'gtc_must_malloc's in your example
> to just plain 'malloc', your code works, and you don't give any clues about
> how to break it. Still, here are some hints.
> 
> > static PyObject *example_py(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
> > {
> >   int j;
> >   PyObject *_;
> 
> Bad style... Don't use _* names unless you know what you're doing, it might
> clash with something platformish, 'hidden'.
> 
> >   if(!PyArg_ParseTuple(args,"O", &param_helper)) return 0;
> 
> Bad style... Your function returns a pointer, you should return 'NULL', not
> 0. Unlikely to be the cause of the problem, though.
> 
> >   ret_size=param_size;
> >   ret=gtc_must_malloc(sizeof(float)*ret_size);
> >   for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) ret[j]=param[j]+j/2.0;
> >   if(ret_size<0) abort();
> 
> Too late for this check. If reg_size is smaller than 0, the malloc() would
> already have failed and you die in the for loop. What's more, you didn't
> check the return value of the malloc. And cramming the for statement and
> body all on one line is, well, bad style :-)
> 
> >   ret_list=PyList_New(ret_size);
> >   for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) {
> >     PyList_SetItem(ret_list,j,PyFloat_FromDouble(ret[j]));
> 
> Note: you can use PyList_SETITEM here, it works the same but is faster, and
> you already know the list is a real list and is long enough to hold the
> result.
> 
> >   free(ret);
> >   return ret_list;
> > }
> > static PyMethodDef example_methods[] = {
> >   {"example",example_py,1},
> 
> Better use the define 'METH_VARARS' than a literal 1 here... not just better
> style, but more guaranteed to work later :)
> 
> >   {0,0} // sentinel
> 
> And these should be NULL's.
> 
> -- 
> Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>
> 
> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!
> 




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 10:15:38 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:15:38 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print
 t hem out
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51E1@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031812470.30661-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Can anyone share a short code example of how to access all the programs in a
> Unix directory, put them into an array, and print them out in Python?  Here
> is the code I have to do it in Perl (please forgive the harsh language).
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> #use Net::FTP;
> opendir (TEMP, '/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
>   or die "Can't open current directory.";
> @files=join(',',grep(!/^\.\.?$/, readdir TEMP));

   This program does completely different thing from your description - it
collects all files, not only programs.

   Well, in Python the program to collect all files (not programs) is:

#!/usr/bin/python -O
import string, os
print string.join(os.listdir('/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms'), ',')

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 08:32:15 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:32:15 +0100
Subject: Driver finds 4' Python in hire car.
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BEF3@intrepid>

<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30352,00.html>

The unidentified driver had no opinion as to the expected result of the '/'
operator on integers. I think that she's just about the only one.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk





-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 19:38:38 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:38:38 -0400
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
In-Reply-To: <slrn9ltpb4.mqs.grante@isis.visi.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEEILBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Grant Edwards]
> The problem is that it's not _us_ (people who write Python programs) who
> decide what version of Python is running on a system.

It's slowly dawning on me that some people don't ship Python *with* their
apps.  What are you, nuts <0.9 wink>?  From PySol to Zope, everyone who
gives a rip about stability ships the software they develop with.

I see I have 12 copies of the Microsoft C runtime library on my Win98 box at
the moment, and for the same reason:  serious Windows app developers are
careful to isolate themselves from C runtime changes too.

in-the-real-world-compatibility-doesn't-rely-on-luck-ly y'rs  - tim




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Wed Jul 25 23:42:24 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:42:24 +1200
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
References: <mailman.996096713.14453.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5F91A0.591DF8D8@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Bruce Sass wrote:
> 
> How nasty would it be to allow one to do...
> 
> >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> 
> Would it be a one-time hit when the
> pseudo-ops are generated, a runtime performance issue that would
> affect all function calls, just too hairy to implement, or something
> else?

Too hairy to *think* about! It looks extremely weird.
If it means anything at all, it looks like it means
"set a to some value such that int(a) == divmod(5.01, 2)[0]".
On that basis it could set a to anything from
2.0 to 2.99999999999999!

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul 22 15:28:38 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 15:28:38 -0400
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etdwv50226x.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

Hi, Gangadhar.  I hope I'm addressing you appropriately. :)

The issue there is that the "if __name__ == '__main__':" block is not
executed when the module is imported, because in that case, "__name__"
is bound to the name of the module, in this case, "nspace".  As a
result, in the "nspace" namespace, nothing is bound to "myfile", so the
"myfile.write" command raises a NameError.  The "global" keyword only
means "global to the module" not "global to the entire program."  The
"myfile" you bound in the interpreter is in the "__main__" namespace.

Try this version:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from os import sys
 
def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
        # We are writing to what should be an
        # unknown file descriptor:
        global myfile                         # <------- Added
        myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")

print "Value of __name__ is", __name__
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
        f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
        print "This line doesn't get executed"
        myfile = open (f, 'w')
        hello (myfile)

I'll leave it to the more erudite people on the list to debate the
merits of this arrangement.  I've been using it for years, and I'm too
familiar with it to really think critically about it, anymore,
anyway. :)

Alex.


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul  9 15:28:30 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:28:30 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OF2D8DE924.861D8E26-ON88256A84.006A6C87@i2.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:
<snip>
>Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind.
<snip>

Might we be over-generalizing just a wee bit, perhaps?  My company is
generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with products written
in Java (with major pieces implemented in Jython :-).

(I suppose *serious development* is relative <wink>).

Jim




From spahievi at vega.bg  Tue Jul  3 16:07:20 2001
From: spahievi at vega.bg (Niki Spahiev)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:07:20 +0300
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
In-Reply-To: <20010703152001.D12350@mediasupervision.de>
References: <20010703152001.D12350@mediasupervision.de>
Message-ID: <554830566.20010703230720@vega.bg>

03.7.2001, 16:20:01, Gregor Hoffleit wrote:

GH> Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
GH> to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?

GH> (I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)

GH>     Gregor


Well, i hacked one of read-only modules to write. It works for my
case.

-- 
Best regards,
 Niki Spahiev




From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul  1 13:28:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 17:28:24 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> > From recent discussion it is not clear to me if
> > PeP 0238 (http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html)
> > has gained favor, or not.

I'm not sure I saw it before, but I'm opposed.  In second grade, I  learned
that count division gives a quotient and remainder.  Integer (signed or
paired count) division only has the additional complication of deciding
whether negative quotients should be the floor or ceiling, which is to say,
whether remainders can be negative or not.  In Python today, / gives the
quotient, % the remainder, and divmod the pair.  Quite simple and quite
easy to understand if one only remembers one's first division lessons
(assuming that one got them).

Terry J. Reedy





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:56 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:56 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930982.17575.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <acppltstdl0oo692su8e9c4fhm6cf14kt9@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:35 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman"
<chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:

>Both of these changes fall in the same group IMHO... they
>break a lot of code.

Case insenstitivity is also a serious issue for me - it might even
bite me for adopting a case-based naming convention as an apparently
sensible way to avoid future identifier conflicts - but I'm overloaded
by the division thing ATM. My brain has no room for further panic.

Anyway, it's probably less an issue for me than division - I use
integer division a lot, whereas defining different identifiers with
only case-changes to distinguish them is a definite no-no.

Case insensitivity on data (a subject line I glanced at briefly
mentioned insensitive dictionaries) would be a bigger issue - but
(while I'm too scared to check at the moment) I don't think that's the
point. The only nervous twitch is the thought that identifiers are
stored in dictionaries.

The argument for case-insensitivity (or - in my mind better still - a
case-consistency rule that rejects identifiers differing in case only)
is a very strong one. The in-twenty-years (or even 1 or 2 years)
argument has a lot more weight. The past experience of the industry
has shown that case insensitivity for identifiers and keywords
generally works - for many people, a major Unix/Linux wart is that
fact that the same command spelling - with a case change - can run a
completely different command.

Maybe it's just me not looking for the counter-arguments, but this
doesn't sound the killer that changing division will be for me. One or
two apps might fail from keyword clashes, but they shouldn't quietly
give out wrong results for anyone who names things sensibly. An
occasional bug report is a fact of daily life - it's the avalanche
that worries me.

There's still an argument for keeping backward compatability, but it's
both obvious and (personally) not that important - certainly it's not
going to give me a heart attack. I expect a lot of people will be
grateful to hear that that's all I've got to say on the topic ;-)



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 19:02:41 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:02:41 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
 <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <UuxEMIARGKY7Ew1w@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3b602daf.1623450 at nntp.sprynet.com>, David C. Ullrich
<ullrich at math.okstate.edu> writes
....
>
>Why in the world should "level of dissent" have any
>bearing on anything? Deciding moral issues by taking
>a vote is one thing - deciding what's best on a 
>technical issue by taking a vote is silly.
....
>David C. Ullrich
This can only be a correct position. Betamax was better than VHS, but
the best lost the vote.

In Python Land, the language may win the technical battle, but lose the
war. Python still loses against perl at simple tasks.

cf
        http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

If, as I claim, Python  wins or loses on its usefulness at real
programming tasks then eventually it must improve either real
performance or real utility.

I don't see that happening with the grand unification; although keeping
the 'div' operator is at least a nod in the direction of all those who
want to split their lists in two.
-- 
Robin Becker


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Fri Jul 20 16:56:00 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:56:00 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity (fwd)
Message-ID: <grJW7kKkX0/A092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

I like some of the case conventions in Python, like the instance/class
capitalization thing.  Maybe a little on the cute side for beginners,
but it as an aesthetic.

But the most annoying aspect of case-sensitivity is trying to *speak* it
to beginners (or even to non-beginners):

  "type 'class MyClass colon'... ummm, no, that's cap 'M', cap 'C'...
  no... capital 'M', lower 'y', capital 'C, rest lowercase.  Ok, now
  type "myclass equals MyClass parens"... umm, the thing to the left in
  lowercase, then the caps as in the class name.... ad nauseaum..."

But-at-least-its-easier-than-speaking-Perl-ly Yours, Lulu...




From martin at strakt.com  Wed Jul 18 08:26:38 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:26:38 +0200
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
Message-ID: <20010718142638.A30760@strakt.com>

I've been fooling around with exceptions a bit today, and found some
things that I don't quite understand.

class A (Exception): pass
class B (Exception): pass

        try:
            raise A, B
        except A, var:
            print "A,", var
        except (A, B), var:
            print "(A,B),", var

This prints 'A, __main__.B'

        try:
            raise A, B
        except (A, B), var:
            print "(A,B),", var
        except A, var:
            print "A,", var

This prints '(A, B), __main__.B'


That's rather predictiable, here comes the funky part:

        try:
            raise (A, B)
        except A, var:
            print "A,", var
        except (A, B), var:
            print "(A,B),", var

This prints 'A, '

        try:
            raise (A, B)
        except (A, B), var:
            print "(A,B),", var
        except A, var:
            print "A,", var

This prints '(A,B), '

!!!
What's going on here? If (A, B) is raised like A, B, why don't I get
anything in my 'var' variable? If not, how come (A, B) is matched against
A?

I'm really confused here...

Martin Sj?gren

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 02:29:06 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:29:06 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238
 suggestion)
In-Reply-To: <01c001c11595$ef870c00$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107260002070.8592-100000@bms>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>
> > missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) writes:
> > > we already have people importing things from the __future__,
> > > how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?
> >
> > This has been suggested before.  It's just as easy (in fact in a sense
> > it's easier, since you know what the past was, but you may be wrong
> > about what the future might bring :-).  But the problem (as I see it)
> > is that there will never be a point where we can throw away support
> > for the past behavior, because there will always be code around that
> > imports it.
>
> I disagree here... in fact I think this is a *plus*.  That is, when version
> 3.0 comes out (for instance) and the code says "from __past__ import
> division"
> then you get an exception.  This is GOOD... obvious code breakage is much
> safer than silent code breakage.  You get notified right away, when the new
> version compiles the code, that this bird don't fly no more.

Hmmm, I was thinking __past__ would be available in a couple of
releases after __future__ became unnecessary, then disappear.
Intended only as an easy way for someone experiencing a bug in an old
program to quickly check if it is caused by a new feature.

Using __past__ would be a hack, and the clearest warning you can get
that a program is going to break in the near future.

> My proposal for
>
>     from __numerics__ import original
>
> is the same sort of thing.  When the "original" semantics disappear, the
> user gets an obvious error message.

__future__ and __past__ both imply reference to some specific time,
and it is reasonable to expect what they are being used for will go
away when that time becomes inconsequential to the present (i.e., the
future has already come, or the past is distant).

__<something specific>__ has no such transitory implications, and
would best be left for permanent features.  Perhaps for sets of
incompatible features that must all be in the language.


- Bruce




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 19 11:44:23 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:44:23 -0500
Subject: float to str help
In-Reply-To: <9j6tva$9mb@dispatch.concentric.net>
References: <9j6tva$9mb@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <15191.87.619635.430111@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bryan> In converting a float (5.661706091586558e+240) to a string using
    Bryan> str() I come up with 5.6617060916+240 . I checked the string
    Bryan> variable in the debugger. I need the full precicsion. I know its
    Bryan> probably simple but this red hair is causing me problems.

Try repr() or string interpolation:

    >>> f = 5.661706091586558e+240
    >>> f
    5.6617060915865581e+240
    >>> str(f)
    '5.66170609159e+240'
    >>> repr(f)
    '5.6617060915865581e+240'
    >>> "%.17f" % f
    '5.6617060915865581e+240'

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From dirck at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 28 11:29:28 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 08:29:28 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996304554.3545.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107280729.769f4cf5@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996304554.3545.python-list at python.org>...
> [Dirck Blaskey]
> > ...
> > The closest equivalent I can come up with: I still run into people
> > using dBase III.
> [Tim Peters]
> Time to move into the 21st century, Dirck!  This alternative is often
> overlooked:
> 
>     http://www.cobolscript.com/
> 

[ValleyGirlVoice:] OhMiGod.

> When that site was just getting started, Guido sent them a congratulatory
> msg about what a wonderfully well-done joke it was.  Turns out they weren't
> kidding -- and boy, was his face red <wink>.

Oops. Oh well :^)

I actually compiled a COBOL program once.
Back in 1985 or thereabouts I was working as an operator at a
warehouse for Super Shops Auto Performance part stores.  
The stores were using terminals on leased lines connected to
Pr1me Super-Minis at the warehouse.  So one day I was futzing
with some stupid little utility they were using, I don't even 
remember what it did (probably equivalent to 3 lines of Python).
So I kick off the compiler, and the machine grinds to a halt.
The IT manager runs in:
"Oh no!  You're not supposed to use the compiler during the Daytime!
 The stores are online!  
 Well, there's nothing we can do now, everybody will just have to wait."

once again Oops. Oh well :^)


From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 17:14:55 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:14:55 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:18:17 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article <3B5B26F9.A2C71182 at alcyone.com>:

:Sheila King wrote:
:
:> I'm trying to see the "big picture". I'm a "big picture" kind of gal.
:> I don't feel comfortable working with just bits and pieces...just enough
:> information (in the information-giver's opinion) for me to get by.
:	...
:> Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Should I be satisfied
:> with the docs only?
:
:Not necessarily, but I'm still not sure what you're asking for.  You say
:you want the "big picture," but your queries seem too general to pin
:down exactly what part of the "big picture" (if any) you're missing,
:particularly since you have access to and have read the library
:reference section on exceptions.Exception.

That's because the "big picture" is the general overview of how the
parent class works. It is a general question, which is why I wanted to
see the source for the class (which is all I originally asked for...a
pointer to the source files...and that question has since been
answered.) Actually, I just downloaded the source for 1.5.2 and am
looking at exceptions.py and am finding it quite enlightening.

This is silly. I'm defending asking to see the source code. ????

:Why not try asking some very specific questions, with code if necessary,
:and see where that takes you?

Believe me, when I get some specific questions I will ask them. I'm sure
there is no shortage of specific questions from me on this list or on
the tutor at python.org list, either.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 19:31:42 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:31:42 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls1au.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> (2) A command line option to change division semantics.  I propose
>     -Dnew to make the new division semantics the default, -Dold to
>     make the old semantics the default.  -Dold will be the default
>     until the wait period is over, then -Dnew will become the
>     default.  The -D option is retired when nobody needs -Dold any
>     more.  Modules that contain a future statement always use the new
>     default; there's no way to force the old default on a *per-module*
>     basis (since that would be a language feature that could never be
>     removed).

Two micro-optimizations.

1. -Dfloat / -Dint (or -Dinteger) would be better, unless
   you're prepared to rule out now the possibility that 2.5
   might introduce the option of using rationals or decimal
   floats.

2. Unless you're worried that it would encourage the appearance
   of other scary issues like this one, a more "extensible"
   convention (-Ddiv=float ?) might be better.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu  Tue Jul  3 01:14:33 2001
From: lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 05:14:33 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994069322.26388.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Zwc07.5269$Kf3.45103@www.newsranger.com>

How can I do that from a CGI script?

In article <mailman.994069322.26388.python-list at python.org>, Roman Suzi says...
>
>On 2 Jul 2001 piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
>
>> >>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:
>> 
>> HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
>> HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
>> HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
>> HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
>> HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
>> HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
>> HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.
>
>What if you try to send mail by piping to "sendmail -t"?
>
>Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
>-- 
> - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
> 
>
>




From sabren at manifestation.com  Wed Jul  4 19:48:34 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 18:48:34 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Dynamic call of a method : error
In-Reply-To: <3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008@nnrp5.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107041847040.20660-100000@mercury.sabren.com>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Dublanc, David wrote:

> Hello, when I execute the module :
> ***************
> L = []
> 
> for method in dir(L):
>     "dynamic call"
>     print L.method.__doc__


This is looking for L.method, not L.append, L.count, etc..  you want
to use getattr first.

>>> L = []
>>> for method in dir(L):
...    print getattr(L, method).__doc__
...
L.append(object) -- append object to end
L.count(value) -> integer -- return number of occurrences of value
L.extend(list) -- extend list by appending list elements
#(and so on)


Cheers,

- Michal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.manifestation.com  www.sabren.net  www.linkwatcher.com  www.zike.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------




From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 23:15:55 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 03:15:55 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <23891c90.0107240109.5b7072d4@posting.google.com> <cpd76pbpfh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LXL77.29984$EP6.7441600@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpd76pbpfh.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...

Just to let you know that you are making some progress ...

> It's not just an aesthetic principle.  The currently / behavior is a
> design mistake that needs to be eventually eradicated,

With the metaphysical mists having mostly dissapated, I now agree with
this for Python.  I also believe that the similar behaviour of C is
correct for C.

> because it  makes writing reliable cood too hard and it makes
writing subtly
> broken code too easy.

This is because of Python's type system, which is considerably
different from C's.

>  The only way to do that is to bite the bullet
> -- otherwise Python will still have this problem in 10 years.

Agreed, better now than later.

Terry J. Reedy






From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul 24 13:14:53 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:14:53 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <roy-24160D.07405224072001@news1.panix.com> <Xns90E890D978CF4duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <h2i77.23758$B7.3911616@ruti.visi.com>

In article <Xns90E890D978CF4duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>, Duncan Booth wrote:

>Or you could do c = divmod(a, b)[0]

All in the name of "readability"...  :(

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I will SHAVE and
                                  at               buy JELL-O and bring my
                               visi.com            MARRIAGE MANUAL!!


From dirck at pacbell.net  Fri Jul 27 17:58:35 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:58:35 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message news:<3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D at Lugoj.Com>...
> ...
> I suspect Mr. van Rossum is probably not in the happiest of moods, what with
> his suggested changes being challenged from many people for various reasons.
> This influence would color anyone's reading.

I would wager it's not the challenge itself that's wearing.

Any rational discussion of a technical disagreement is appropriate -
but the response to this change has been completely overboard.

I haven't followed it all, because 
1) A lot of it is just plain rude
2) There's simply way too much of it
3) There doesn't appear to be much in the way of meaningful argument

Guido doesn't deserve a lot of the crap thrown his way over this,
and it wouldn't surprise me if he told us all 'Piss Off, I'm going fishing'.

It's much harder being benevolent dictator than despotic ruler.
(and: "Since when is the majority ever right, anyway?")

So far I've managed to avoid contributing, thinking that far, far too 
much has been said on this topic - I'm tempted to invoke Godwin's Law.

But now I'm gonna open-my-mouth-too-and-insert-both-feet,
basically in the 'cooler-heads-will-eventually-prevail' department.

In the end, it's just code.  No reason to shout and get red in the face.

> By the way, the division issue is several years old. A lot of bits have
> flowed on this issue. See for example:

> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d,40&start=0

> Three years later the code base and programmer base are no doubt
> considerably larger, so the inertia against change has probably grown too
> large to deal with.

When I first heard about this back then, I had a 
knee-jerk-dogmatic-negative-reaction to it.  Now, I believe
I understand the motivation for the change better, and I also
understand where the reaction comes from.  I've also had direct
experience with a co-worker being burned by integer division.
He didn't know what the problem was until I pointed it out to him.

Guido's motivation is pretty simple:  sand off the rough spots.
Prevent a problem from occuring instead of hand-waving it away after.

("Just cut away all the stone that doesn't look like the statue.")

The arguments against come down to two groups:

1) Inertia, two flavors:
        
        a) Too Much Code will be Impacted
                (and The Children will be Corrupted!)
        
        b) This Displays Wanton Disregard for Stability that will 
                Desperately Frighten the Management 
                (obviously from the non-Unix and non-Windows users ;)
                ("How long do we still have to support SunOS 4.1.x?")

Inertia should always be taken into account, but it should never
be the single deciding factor - or we'd all be working legacy COBOL.

Guido has taken great pains to address this issue, because, technically,
it really is the only issue - everything else is just reactionary.
While I wouldn't argue against leaving the old opcode available indefinitely,
Guido is more meticulous than that.

2) The unspoken 'do it the C-way' prejudice.

I think this is where most of the reactionary responses come from.
C is deeply ingrained in the programming culture, because in a lot
of ways it was, and in some ways still is, The Programming Language.
Anything you do, day in and day out, year after year, no matter how 
odd or perverse or inconsequential, becomes 'the natural order of things'.
The more deeply ingrained, the harder it is to actually see.

Sometimes you have to get down to the bits, somewhere close to the hardware.
I don't see this going away in Python - it's just trying to move
the hardware issues out of the way when they're not relevant.
Python will always integrate well with C, because that's part of its nature.

...

I just wanted to add a thank-you to Guido, for a terrific language.
It really is a joy to write Python code.
 
d


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul 12 07:23:26 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:23:26 +0200
Subject: changes in threading and SocketServer since Python 2.0?
References: <9ijvo7$df7$1@news.nuri.net>
Message-ID: <3B4D88AE.AB16F5F6@stroeder.com>

Kelly DeMarco wrote:
> 
> I used to use webdebug(http://www.cyberclip.com/webdebug/) on Python 1.6
> without any problem, but I've been through some problem using it on Python
> 2.1 thesedays.

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/Lib/SocketServer.py

Ciao, Michael.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 11:56:51 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:56:51 -0400
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <gxA97.1782$0%2.221138@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Rajarshi Guha" <rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu> wrote in message
news:9k6ilm$2sed8$1 at ID-91520.news.dfncis.de...
> Hi,
>   is there a sleep function in the Python library. I've beens earching
> throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way
> to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there
> any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?
> Rajarshi:

You are looking for time.sleep(). I generally find things by using the
Windows help file (.chm format). As far as I can remember this comes with
ActivePython distributions, but Robin Dunn makes them available from time to
time at

    http://alldunn.com/python/

You might also want to take a look at

    http://web.pydoc.org/

though I'm not sure how easy this is to replicate locally. It has a search
interface which found time.sleep() from a search for "sleep". Hope this
helps.

regards
 Steve

PS: I see from your domain name that you come from the educational home of
the Python Secr




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Mon Jul 23 19:30:04 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:30:04 -0600
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D575@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paulp at ActiveState.com]
> 
> This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
> "regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a 
> dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and 
> those on dynamically typed languages.
> 
> The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, 
> JavaScript, ...)
> all make a different choice for division and the choice is
> uncontroversial. Python is the only one of the languages that has a
> constant battle on the issue.

Ruby seems to be quite in line with (current) Python:

irb(main):001:0> puts 1/2
0
nil
irb(main):002:0> puts 1.0/2
0.5
nil
irb(main):003:0>

-- bjorn



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sat Jul 14 04:25:26 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:25:26 GMT
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <mailman.995075785.18964.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <WlT37.9638$e5.1274504@newsb.telia.net>

Tim Peters wrote:

> Python doesn't use the MS clock() for time.clock() on Windows; it uses the
> MS QueryPerformanceCounter API instead.

so you mean I cannot trust the Python documentation? ;-)

Cheers /F




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul 30 01:57:55 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 05:57:55 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com> <mailman.996437578.30803.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <sln9mtgfkd0mdrjbj6vtlihitollc1f4ka@4ax.com>

>Why would you write ten or a hundred times as much code to solve your
>problem?

Why would anyone ever write anything in C or other standard compiled
languages? 

>> While I actually agree with this sentiment, note well that in compile-
>> time type checking communities, the primary argument in favor is
>> compile-time error checking, not speed. 

>I agree. But the type check argument is abstract and therefore weaker
>than the performance algorithm. If someone asked me if they could write
>a commercially competitive relational database in Python I would have to
>say: "No."

That's only because we're currently lacking good compiler/JIT virtual
machines for Python, really, although there's always a point where a
2:1 performance gain justifies moving to something like C. But then
again, this is preaching to the choir on a Python group, don't you think?

C//



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 10:43:33 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:43:33 -0500
Subject: Another Proposal re- Integer Division
In-Reply-To: <00c901c11442$487356c0$0101010a@local>
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
        <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
        <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com>
        <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
        <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
        <mailman.995966145.31953.python-list@python.org>
        <3gDsvgAkvUX7EwIv@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
        <3B5D6C54.ADE36880@letterror.com>
        <00c901c11442$487356c0$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <15197.35221.811865.377095@beluga.mojam.com>

    Chris> This shouldn't require any upgrading of modules, but would add //
    Chris> as an operator so that pure-Python modules written using // but
    Chris> otherwise not using 2.2+ features would work fine.

There's the rub.  How do you convince people to write division code with
"//" but not use list comprehensions, nested scopes, yadda yadda yadda?

Not to mention which the fact of having to do any upgrade, even one as
simple as you propose, will probably present an insurmountable barrier for
many folks.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 12 22:40:41 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 12:40:41 +1000
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <slrn9kc0ov.1ob.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <86pub5361i.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard H?ring) writes:

> If you want a commercially supported
> Python module that implements the Python DB-API, you should give Python another
> try and check out the mxODBC module. It's the only module for which you can buy
> commercial support, AFAIK. 

Dave Cole has floated the idea of commercial support for his Sybase
module. 
	http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/


From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Fri Jul 27 21:31:46 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 01:31:46 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6Co87.132189$EF2.18348858@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> menulis:
| 
| Semantics of Floor Division
| 
|     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
|     types, and will have the semantics of
| 
|         a // b == floor(a/b)
| 
| [...]
|     For complex numbers, // raises an exception, since float() of a
|     complex number is not allowed.

Shouldn't this read, "since floor() of a complex number is not allowed"?
That would make more sense in context..


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk  Thu Jul 26 10:56:32 2001
From: m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk (Mark Robinson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:56:32 +0100
Subject: byte compiled files
Message-ID: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk>

can anyone shed some light on the mysterious behaviour of my byte 
compiled files. I am currently working on a python script which analyses 
patterns in a DNA sequence. I have a function which checks a pattern (a 
substring of approx 6 chars) to ensure only valid charactors are 
present. When I first run this program it runs fine, but if I 
immediately rerun the program (i.e using the pre-byte compiled file) it 
finds all patterns non-valid. If I delete the .pyc file between runs 
this problem does not occur. Can anyone explain what is happening here 
to me and how to prevent it?

blobby



From benjamin.altman at noaa.gov  Tue Jul 10 11:14:00 2001
From: benjamin.altman at noaa.gov (Benjamin.Altman)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:14:00 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994713616.26838.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B1BB8.80EA0D56@noaa.gov>

Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:

> 3. No Support! At least no 900 number to call for a per minute fee. Doesn't
> seem to matter that in the past couple of years I have never had to wait
> over a day to get a answer to a question. Perhaps we would feel better if
> there were someone we could sue.

I am sure plenty of people would be willing to charge per minute to give Python
advice - just a matter of offering the service to get some suckers.. I mean
companies to take it up.



From glassy at esus.cs.montana.edu  Fri Jul 27 18:08:36 2001
From: glassy at esus.cs.montana.edu (Louis Glassy)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:08:36 GMT
Subject: stat st_rdev in python
Message-ID: <9jsop4$si0$1@netra.msu.montana.edu>

Is there a way to find out unix device major/minor numbers
_in_ Python 2.1, without using an external C module or program?

The tuple returned by os.stat() does not return the stat 
st_rdev field, which contains the information I need.

I see two options:  either write my own binding to stat(2)
or do something like a popen on /bin/ls.  These both work,
though neither is attractive.  It'd be nice if there were
an unaldulterated posix module that I could call and get
what everything that stat(2) would return.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance, and thanks particularly to all the Python
developers for making the language a pleasure to work with!
:-)

lou



From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Thu Jul 12 01:52:17 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:52:17 +0300
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <yoxzoaa66em.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> writes:

> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> print f
> 
> Isnt that easier??
> 
> Or do I not get lambda?

Functional programming people like lambda. It looks like a "real"
function in a mathematical sense, you don't type "return", but just
map params to a value. Having side effects in lambda expressions kinda
waters this thing down, though...

You might want to look at 

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-prog.html

And corresponding l-prog2.html and l-prog3.html

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 19:15:41 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:15:41 +0100
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net>
Message-ID: <96s3mtk7kvcbn7jndjgtuvs9bgiih36ter@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:07:40 -0700, Chris Barker
<chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:

>I think my proposal will allow that, someone plese commment on it!!

I did already ;-)

Actually, one more thing - It doesn't solve the current problem (code
that is already out there) though it could be very helpful the next
time we get a massively codebreaking change.



From volucris at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 22 01:51:31 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:51:31 -0500
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

If all you want is your own exception (nothing fancy), all you need is a
class:

class SpamException:
    pass

you can raise and catch that just like any exception, but it'll be kind of
ugly when it gets printed.

class SpamException:
    def __str__(self):
        return "cooking spam is not required"

that will give a clue as to what the exception means. That said, I don't
recall ever seeing an exception not subclassed from Exception, so it's
probably a good idea.

class SpamException(Exception):
    def __str__(self):
        return "cooking spam is not required"

I don't know why every one is subclassed, but the HPIC seem to know what
they're doing so far. I have no reason to question them. Yet.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Sheila King" <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0 at 4ax.com...
> OK, I've become fairly comfortable with defining my own classes and
> subclassing other classes and so on...
>
> Now I'm wanting to create some of my own exceptions. I've searched
> comp.lang.python at Google Groups, and the archives for the Tutor list,
> and faqts.python.com and my copy of Core Python Programming, but all I
> find on the subject is essentially this:
>
> """
>
> You can create a new exception by subclassing one of the standard
> exceptions like this:
>
> class MyNewException(SomeStandardException):
>     pass
>
>
> Just use the 'pass' statement unless you want to override some of the
> methods/data of the Standard Exception.
>
> """
>
> And that's all the information I can find.
>
> I tried looking under the /Python20 directory for source or something
> for the Exception classes, but can't find it. For example, right now I'm
> working on subclassing the rfc822.py module, and I found the file
> rfc822.py in /Python20/Lib and studied the source until I understood it,
> and could subclass it. I'd like to find something similar for the
> standard exception classes. I looked in the /include directory and some
> others but can't find what I'm needing.
>
> Thanks for any pointers/tips.
>
> --
> Sheila King
> http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
> http://www.k12groups.org/
>
>




From reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com  Mon Jul 30 19:26:20 2001
From: reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com (Robert Amesz)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:26:20 GMT
Subject: Error on mimetools?
References: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no> <j4puair3bb.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <9k3l62$d31$1@news.uit.no>
Message-ID: <Xns90EEDF9EA53EBrcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Arnulf Heimsbakk wrote:

> I'm using only the raw base64 text. It is the same text I used in
> my winzip experiment and in python test program I've made. It works
> in winzip but not with python code. As I mentioned python gives me
> a file slightly bigger than winzip. It's about 300 bytes bigger.
> 
> I'm without clues to this one. It does not seem to be any logic in
> the error.

[You really should mention (among other things) the OS you're using, 
but as you posted your message with OE, I'll assume it's Windows.]

It sounds as if you might have openened a file in the text mode instead 
of the binary mode (or possibly the other way round). In Windows, 
saving a binary file in the text mode will cause spurious '\r' 
characters to be inserted into the stream for every '\n'. Be thankful 
you don't own a Mac: on that platform every '\n' is *replaced* by an 
'\r', depriving you of a valuable clue something is wrong.

Assuming the file consists of random characters, 1 in every 256 
characters will be a '\n', so the 300 extra bytes would indicate a file 
size of about 75000 bytes.

If this is the cause the remedy is simple: try finding an 
open(somefilename, 'w') in the code, and change the 'w' to 'wb'.


HTH,
Robert Amesz


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul 23 11:12:45 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:12:45 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <N9X67.10961$e5.1612071@newsb.telia.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> But I also found a likely bug!  In colorsys.py, there are two routines
> (rgb_to_hls() and rgb_to_hsv()) that seem to be doing floating point
> math using (r, g, b) inputs and don't take any consistent precaution
> to cast these inputs to floats before dividing them.

from the docstring:

    "All inputs and outputs are triples of floats in the range [0.0...1.0].
    Inputs outside this range may cause exceptions or invalid outputs."

</F>




From support at internetdiscovery.com  Tue Jul  3 16:36:07 2001
From: support at internetdiscovery.com (Mike Clarkson)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 20:36:07 GMT
Subject: Windows shutdown problem
References: <tjhq3pmojkjp8c@corp.supernews.com> <tjirfqhn910pf7@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3b422c51.16544477@24.0.228.33>

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 22:23:18 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:

>
>"NJM" <njm at rectec.net> wrote in message
>news:tjhq3pmojkjp8c at corp.supernews.com...
>> My computer locks up in the shutting down screen after I use python.  If I
>> don't use any python, it shuts down fine.
>>
>> Does any one have any ideas??

What version of Python? What version of Windows?  Which executable are
you running python.exe or pythonw.exe? Are you using Tkinter?
What version of Tk/Tcl?

>There's a known problem with Tkinter and the command line in windows 9x and
>ME. It
>doesn't seem to occur in Windows 2000 and equivalent. Nobody knows whether
>it's in
>Tk or Tkinter. As far as I can determine, it only occurs when there's been
>an uncaught
>exception, although I'm certainly not an expert on the subject.

Can you provide more details on "it only occurs when there's been
an uncaught exception".  It sounds like a very good area to look for
the problem - the way Tcl errors are passed back to Python.

>There was a fairly extensive discussion about two weeks ago, titled "IDLE
>bug". See that
>for details. As far as I can tell, it's going to remain until some real
>Windows guru gets
>irritated enough to track it down with the heavy duty debug tools.

Let's get some more info from the original poster - the 'known
problem' is specific to python.exe with Tkinter under windows 9x.

>If it's something other than this, no clue. My system shuts down fine as
>long as I don't
>use anything that throws an exception in Tkinter.

Can you boil it down to  minimal example program of starting Tkinter,
doing something to throw an exception, and then not being able to
shutdown? It would be great to nail this bug down. (And of course:
What version of Python? What version of Windows?  Which executable are
you running python.exe or pythonw.exe? What version of Tk/Tcl?)

Mike.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Fri Jul  6 10:22:56 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 10:22:56 -0400
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <87pubew30f.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> This whole thread has disappointed me.

I'm sorry, though not surprised, to hear that.  I have been using
Python since 1.4 and I just wanted to add my opinion to offset the
negative ones in this thread.  

I think that the growth the language has seen has been fabulous and I
have always looked forward to the next release as the changes have
always addressed problems I've had with the language (augmented
assignment being one of the front runners in this).  I look forward
still to the next release.

I regularly read the list of active PEPs.  Some of them I am
ambivalent about (Sets, outer-product, non-integer division) and some
of them I am really excited about (unification of integers,
rationals, unification of types and classes, iterators, generators).
I do have some fears about some of them (interfaces, adaptation, and
some parts of the class/type unification), but I can see huge
advantages to them being accepted and have faith in the developers to
make the right decision.

I think Python is the best high level language out there and I feel
that every revision has been better than its predecessor.  Please keep
up the good work.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtFycAACgkQjVztv3T8pztIJwCdGx+6UXyksw1CFbalvfNRsU+F
Uv4AoNzYL/I6pP8Vl5H4BsnqzVFl/62c
=vAmM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 17 13:00:58 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 10:00:58 -0700
Subject: embedding Python, imports, and (sigh) AIX
Message-ID: <a279dd25.0107170900.4c43f32f@posting.google.com>

I am trying to use Python embedded in a C library and am getting SEGV
upon executing "import string" or "import re" on an AIX platform with
gcc. I have built a similar program on Linux+gcc with no problem. Any
suggestions, even if you don't have experience with AIX would be
appreciated.


Detailed:
A function starts up the Python and executes a string
"execfile('pyresolve.py')". (Note: "python pyresolve.py" works great!)
This file will execute fine until it causes string or re to be
imported. (that is, imports of math, sys, and os all work fine).
Running through gdb, and adding some print statements to Python, it
seems to be crashing in initstrop() at Py_InitModule4() because it has
an incorrect address for the function. For instance look at this
output (some printf's I added to print addresses for Py_InitModule4()
- e04c0 is the function address):
*********** 
Hello.
execfile('pyresolve.py')

Inside Py_InitModule4, add=200192d4
Inside Py_InitModule4, add=20019


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 17:37:06 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:37:06 -0700
Subject: 2.0 or 2.1 on win32
References: <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <9jti6t$e2g$1@panix2.panix.com> <L6X87.58021$C81.4985811@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <9k1gu0$j0a$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B648202.965AECF2@ActiveState.com>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <L6X87.58021$C81.4985811 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
> >
> >people have always been ambiguous in the past as to whether installing
> >activepython or python + win32 extensions was the better choice. as far
> >as i can tell active python is based upon 2.1 and not 2.1.1. should
> >this be the deciding factor?
> 
> I don't have an opinion.  Paul?  ;-)

We are in the final stages of QA on our 2.1.1. We have not had much
customer demand for 2.0.1. ActivePython is pretty much a straight
superset of the reference distribution of Python. Even adding win32all
will not get you as much documentation as nicely organized as
ActivePython. 
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Fri Jul 13 11:08:02 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:08:02 -0700
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <130720010808024546%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <tO837.679712$166.14009323 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>, EricIDLE
<grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote:

[Questions about lambda omitted]

I see assertions in this thread that "lambda is easier" and that
"lambda is harder"  (mostly that something else is easier, actually).

That's a matter of background and experience.  If one's prior
experience included routine use of lambda, then for many things "lambda
is easier."  Lambda seems to be "harder" if one has not previously been
"forced" to comprehend it.

And if one has little or no background, the most important factor is
probably the experience of one's mentor(s).  Unfortunately, if one's
mentor is this list/newsgroup, one gets mentoring that says "here, use
lambda like this...it's easy" side by side with "avoid that horrible
lambda thing if you possibly can and here's an alternative".  Or 6 or 7
alternatives which fit the habits of various people.

As with most things, the extremes are likely wrong, and success likely
lies somewhere in the middle.

One note:  it's very hard to decide wisely whether to use lambda in a
particular situation if one is unfamiliar or uncomfortable with it. 
I'd recommend learning to be comfortable with lambda...if you then
decide to put it on the shelf and use alternatives, that's fine. 
Lambda will still be sitting there ready to work for you.

Another note:  relative efficiency only matters if it matters.  If I
waste a millisecond 100 times over the course of an hour, who cares.

   --John


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Wed Jul 25 15:38:05 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:38:05 -0700
Subject: A few things :)
References: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107251138.c4686f0@posting.google.com>

Lee Nutter <leenutter at australia.edu> wrote in message news:<mailman.996068624.2375.python-list at python.org>...
> Hello,
> 
> Im a beginner, and although (i think) I know the base language all 
> right, I haven't really made anything. Can anyone recommend anything for 
> a first project?
> 
> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby. 
> Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language, 
> don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)
> 
> Thanks,

The number one reason I use Python is because I have much higher
productivity in Python compared to most other languages (including
languages I have been using for much longer than I have used Python). 
There are many other reasons why I like the language, but that is why
I use it so much.


Tom


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul  3 01:06:39 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 00:06:39 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <008701c1037d$f6280de0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
> > > http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/
> >
> > I can't get this URL to work... I am getting Forbidden errors.
>
> Darn, it's giving forbidden errors to me too, right now, it worked
> the other day.  I haven't tried it, but maybe http://www.fiby.at/dbfpy.tgz
> may help you -- or perhaps the idea of using ODBC (or ADO/OleDB, etc)
> to access the dBase files remains better.

I went up the URL until I got to the root http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/
and got a page described as:

Institutt for informatikks studentserver

I don't read the language, but I'd say that last word is pretty clear
even to an English-speaker like myself.  I guess that "larsqa" is out
of school by now.  I get redirected to "lmariusg's" homepage before
getting the "Forbidden" error.

Bummer.






From djc at object-craft.com.au  Sat Jul  7 03:01:06 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 17:01:06 +1000
Subject: MS SQL Server
References: <51dgjtsbuureuugfcubid11tldg7077sfa@4ax.com> <m34rt2emlw.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au> <3B464491.577CFB99@home.com>
Message-ID: <m3sng9dxzh.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "David" == David P Riedel <driedel at home.com> writes:

>> P.S.  Ob.Vapour #1: I have some more appropriate software under
>> development but do not want to announce it until it is ready...

I am trying to get the time to get to first public release...  I have
a few more days of development to go, but it might be of interest now...

        http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/mssql/

Even if you do not start using it for real work I would be interested
to hear about any results of testing...

David> in our shop, we work with ms sql server databases from linux
David> clients using mxodbc and the easysoftt odbc-odbc bridge.

David> so far, this has been successful.

At some stage (in my ample spare time) I might try compiling my Sybase
and MSSQL modules with the FreeTDS libraries.  This will provide a
100% free non-proprietary solution.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Fri Jul 13 15:29:32 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:29:32 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OFBD50B1FD.A74C37E6-ON88256A88.00698D22@i2.com>



Peter Hansen wrote:
>James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
>>
>> Phil Hunt wrote:
>> >On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and
maintainable
>> >>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>> >>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that
means).
>> >
>> >To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> >that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> >lines of C++.
>>
>> We are shipping a successful product that comprises more than 100,000
lines
>> of Jython.
>>
>> What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only
"good
>> for short programs <100 lines".
>
>In Phil's defense (not that I think he can't speak for himself),
>he didn't say "only".  That's your word.

Granted, I used "only".  On the other hand, if someone says "good for short
programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this case)
-- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
>=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to be
reasonable and fair)?

Otherwise, I would think it much simpler and less ambiguous just to say
"Python is good for programs small, medium, and large  -- which is, in
fact, my view!  :-)


>He was just responding to
>my parenthetical (whatever that means) in reference to the label
>being applied to Python.
>
>I think "good for short programs <100 lines" is not a bad definition
>of "scripting language", but I don't think he wasn't saying he
>thinks that's all Python is good for.
>
>--
>----------------------
>Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
>peter at engcorp.com
>--
>http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Jim




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sat Jul  7 15:03:43 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:03:43 -0500
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com>  <200107071818.f67II2g18846@odiug.digicool.com>
Message-ID: <009e01c10717$913caec0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at digicool.com>


> > However, I think that some details of the numerics also need to
> > be clarified before you boldly go.  Specifically,
> >
> >  - What about long division?  A float cannot capture all results.
> >    Should it raise a Value/Range error?
> >    Should the programmer be forced to use divmod?
> >    Should it return a rational?
> >    I don't really like the last two choices and the first two choices
> >    obviate much of the usefulness of longs.
>
> We'll introduce a new operator or function (e.g. div(x, y)) for
> integer division, which will work for ints and longs.  When / is used
> and the result can't be expressed as a C double, we can choose between
> yielding Infinity or raising OverflowError; I think probably the
> latter although with two float arguments this currently returns Inf on
> most platforms.

Perhaps it's too inconsistent, but I see no reason why longs can't continue
returning "normal" results forever.  When you use a long you know what you
are
doing, or at least think you do; so you should expect integer division
results
just as always.

What does it buy us to break longs as well as ints?

Overall I am in favor of *eventually* automatically promoting ints to float
when division is attempted, and likewise converting longs to floats when
dividing one by the other, but I really think we gain nothing by changing
the semantics of division of longs.

I would also say that, when longs and ints are divided together, you should
probably promote the int to a long rather than performing float division.

In other words:

    int / int => float
    float / float => float
    long / long => long

    int / float => float
    float / int => float

    int / long => long
    long / int => long

    long / float => long
    float / long => long

I have a bad feeling about raising an exception on int division, but I
really
can't say what is so bad about it... maybe that it seems messy.  Division of
a numeric value should yield some kind of numeric value, except in the case
of division by zero, etc.  I really don't think a newbie will appreciate

    >>> 1 / 2
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    IntDivisionError: integer division is invalid

any more than they currently understand

    >>> 1 / 2
    0







From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 04:36:39 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:36:39 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995894318.12197.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7A3A0675A4michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <44ioltcofs8i897flbo7bfqtec5ki06n0s@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E86045A264Dduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in
news:44ioltcofs8i897flbo7bfqtec5ki06n0s at 4ax.com: 

> I hope he sees my current posts as they are intended - I see PEP0238
> as being something worthy of extreme scepticism if not outright
> terror. But I only care at all because Python *is* a good and
> worthwhile thing, and as a result I have been a very vocal advocate in
> my company.

I must admit to being terrified by PEP0238. Although I agree that in
principle it would be a good thing for division to always be predictable,
I like a programming language to be predictable even more. 

If someone tells me that a future version of Python will (for example)
support proper static scoping, then I endeavour to write all my code so
that it will work both in the current version and in the future version.
And with the scoping issue the compiler can warn me about potential
trouble spots. If someone tells me that a future version of Python will
treat division differently, then what on earth am I supposed to do now
when I want integer division. I cannot write my code so that it works
properly in both old a new versions, all I can do is dread the
maintenance headache that will appear when I finally need to upgrade. It
isn't even an area where the compiler can generate a useful warning. If
the proposal was to introduce '//' to mean proper division and leave '/'
as the 'broken' one I would be fully behind it, but in almost every
situation where I use division I intend the integer truncating version,
and that means a LOT of code breaking. 

I too say "But I only care at all because Python *is* a good and
worthwhile thing, and as a result I have been a very vocal advocate in
my company."

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 09:38:47 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:38:47 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpvgke4hlx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
> n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
> for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
> floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
> independent of type).

Good point.  What does Scheme do?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From xyzmats at laplaza.org  Fri Jul 20 10:02:28 2001
From: xyzmats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:02:28 GMT
Subject: Probems with IDLE
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171601020.12906-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <3b5836d7.146721123@news.laplaza.org>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:03:10 -0400, Prem Rachakonda
<prem at engr.uky.edu> wrote:

:Hi,
:  I am not sure if anyone of you have found this problem, but the regular
:exit commands 'CTRL+C', 'CTRL+A', 'CTRL+X', 'CTRL+V' don't work all the
:time. But if you go to EDIT>COPY OR EDIT>CUT etc. they work fine. Can
:somebody fix this??


Can you give some more details?  What platform are you running on? Are
there any particular curcumstances that lead to the "don't work"
condition?  What versions of Python/IDLE?  


Mats Wichmann

(Anti-spam stuff: to reply remove the "xyz" from the
address xyzmats at laplaza.org. Not that it helps much...)


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 21:31:59 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:31:59 -0400
Subject: XML for meta-information (was Re: Deposing Dictators)
References: <mailman.996477839.32616.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B660A8F.6B79FCC0@engcorp.com>

Bruce Sass wrote:
[...lots snipped...]
> I guess what I'm beating around the bush about is that XML should be
> seen as just one view of a "project", and the main view should be
> based on something easily translatable to and from other common
> representations (XML?)  

I see XML as *the* way to encode information which "should
be easily translatable to and from other common
representations".  I have no disagreement with the view
that XML is not easily readable, especially for data of
even the slightest sophistication.  I just don't think it is
worth reinventing the wheel with yet another data format when
we're talking about inter-application communication of
data, which is the essence of the "meta-information"
question.  XML is (trying to be) the one standard for
this, as much as possible.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From timr at probo.com  Wed Jul 25 01:20:03 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:20:03 -0700
Subject: Building 2.1.1 on Python
Message-ID: <vglslt4qg5nufacdecfil49f5leue84p9a@4ax.com>

I upgraded by old Linux RedHat 6.1 machine from Python 1.5 to Python 2.1.1
today, and I encountered a surprise.

After untarring, I did:
  ./configure --with-threads
  make
  make install

I then tried loading a Webware page as a test, and to my dismay got an
error.  In socket.py, the line "from _socket import *" failed saying that
module _socket was not found.

Eventually, I went into Modules/Setup and uncommented one of the two
_socket declarations, rebuilt, and it worked fine, but I was surprised that
the out-of-the-box installation didn't work.

SHould I have been surprised?  Or did I miss something?

Almost everything in Modules/Setup is commented out, although many of the
commented-out modules work perfectly well.  Are those loaded in some other
way?
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 14:11:59 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 18:11:59 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 19 Jul 2001 03:24:31 -0700, kevin parks <kp87 at lycos.com> wrote:
>I've always wondered why the interpreter was so, uhm...difficult, even
>compared to wish (tcl). I like to mess around and improvise in the
>interpreter, but find that it is so feature-starved that it is often a
>bit tedious. Couldn't the interpreter be improved to behave more like
>a real shell, with command history and maybe evn completion or (god
>forbid) keywork syntax coloring. Couldn't it support some basic shell
>commands like more and ls and such? Even in wish i can type ls and get
>a listing. The interpreter is a great tool, but it really requires a
>wicked amount of typing and you can't eaily recall and edit these
>monster that you type in at the prompt.

It can do all those things, and it does, if you compile the readline module.

Except shell commands.  Python is a different language from sh---that's the
whole point.

The other observation is that line editing belongs in the terminal emulator or
window system, not seperately in every single program that runs under it.  If
you use a terminal emulator with cut and paste and line editing then all
programs automatically have those features.


From wware at world.std.com  Tue Jul 17 14:41:32 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:41:32 GMT
Subject: Two Simple Qs:
References: <a50631f6.0107171019.74fb42a5@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <GGMrx8.9CJ@world.std.com>

newgene (newgene at bigfoot.com) wrote:
> 1. How can I run a simply Python script under IDLE directly?

Under the "Edit" menu, you'll find a "Run Script" option. You can do
the "Run Script" thing directly by hitting Control-F5. This works from
the Editor window (where you are editing your script) but it doesn't
work from the "*Python Shell*" window.

> 2. When I made some modification of my own module after I import this
> module,python can not recognized the modified module even I import it
> again.

After you do "import mymodule" and then later make changes in mymodule.py,
type "reload(mymodule)" to pick up the changes. Be sure to save the file
first, but IDLE should warn you if you've forgotten to save it.

-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 05:09:10 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:09:10 +0200
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <9ijpfk02a67@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Quinn Dunkan" <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu...
    ...
> >Wasn't one solution only 2 lines? If I remember right it was Alex
> >Martelli's.
>
> open(output, 'w').writelines(open(input).readlines()[1:])
>
> ... can I go back to using python a scripting language now?
>
> Here's a superior solution:
>
> import sys
> sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines()[1:])
>
> A mere semicolon could turn this two line program monstrosity back into a
> beautifully script-like one line.

The original problem was expressed as "removing the first line
from a file", but what the original poster really wanted was
to do the operation "in-place" on ALL files in a directory.

Operations from standard-input to standard-output do not meet
the "in-place" constraint (with the redirection of most shells
I know, at least -- the '>foo' empties the file so the '<foo'
cannot read it).  What happens when the same file is opened
twice for both input and output at the same time is murky.  And
neither of these handles the issue of working on all files in
a directory.

My proposed solution relied on the fileinput module's "in-place"
behavior (WITH a backup, but that's optional I guess:-).  That
module nicely wraps whatever concerns may need to be wrapped, AND
works on as many files as you desire.

def allbutfirst(files):
    for line in fileinput.input(files,inplace=1,backup='.bak'):
        if fileinput.filelineno()>1: print line,

to be called, presumably, as:

allbutfirst(os.listdir(thedir))

To perform the operation on an arbitrary number of directories
named on the Python script's command line one might write, for
example (warning - untested):

import sys, os, fileinput
for dir in sys.argv[1:]:
    for line in fileinput.input(os.listdir(dir),inplace=1,backup='.bak'):
        if fileinput.filelineno()>1: print line,

Yes, this IS four lines all told, but I'm not convinced an (e.g.)
bash script to perform the identical job can be substantially
shorter and still decently readable.

How anybody could deduce from that thread that Python is not
suitable to typical scripting operations is the real mystery
to me here.


Alex





From see.below at no.spam.es  Thu Jul 19 04:54:10 2001
From: see.below at no.spam.es (Javier Bezos)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:54:10 +0100
Subject: access keyword
References: <mailman.995506833.21832.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <1ewsdky.17j0l1k1sxjv3oN%see.below@no.spam.es>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> [Javier Bezos]
> > Just curiosity. What was the access keyword indended for?
> 
> It was never documented so you'd have to dig into the CVS history and
> reverse-engineer it from the code.  In general, it was for controlling name
> visibility, akin to protected, private, private protected, protected static
> private, and const private public protected volatile const private.

Tim,

Thanks. 

___________________________________________________________
Javier Bezos              | TeX y tipografia
jbezos at wanadoo dot es  | http://perso.wanadoo.es/jbezos/


From danielk at aracnet.com  Tue Jul 10 00:23:57 2001
From: danielk at aracnet.com (Daniel Klein)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:23:57 -0700
Subject: An unspeakable act
Message-ID: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>

I did the unspeakable and got into a discussion (with another person on another usenet group) on
Python vs Java. This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden programs and
that there are no reliable large applications (especially network apps) written in Python and that
it is just used for small to medium scripting. I know better but I don't have any proof. Can anyone
point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I already know about Zope
and I can't find the list of companies on the Python website since they moved the page to PSA).

Thanks for any information you can provide (or point me to).

Daniel Klein



From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Fri Jul 27 10:00:26 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:00:26 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3b617356.1560717@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:57:30 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>David Ullrich wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC),
>> <margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> wrote:
>...
>> >2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the BDFL
>> >perhaps calls into question the 'B'.
>> 
>> Nonsense. Without saying anything about who's right and who's
>> wrong, or about whether the D is B or not: To be "benevolent"
>> towards someone is to act in a way consistent with that
>> person's best interests. This is not the same thing as
>> giving the person what he asks for, not by a long shot.
>
>More: to be benevolent is to *try* to act in a way
>consistent with the person's best interests[1], even
>if in fact you're wrong. So even if Guido is as
>horribly wrong as some people here say he is about
>what their best interests are, that's no reason to
>think he isn't benevolent.

Right. I didn't try to get the definition exactly
right, just right enough to point out the silliness
in judging B-ness by the level of dissent required to
change the D's mind.

Realized later what I should said was just this:
A "benevolent dictatorship" is not a democracy.

>> Why in the world should "level of dissent" have any
>> bearing on anything? Deciding moral issues by taking
>> a vote is one thing - deciding what's best on a 
>> technical issue by taking a vote is silly.
>
>Hear hear.

And thanks for not saying "Here here"...

>[1] I initially typed "integers". Hmm.

Programmers have been typing integers for a long time.

>-- 
>Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
>.sig under construc


David C. Ullrich


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 19:15:02 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:15:02 +0100
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksbrm.rqa.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:04:17 -0500, Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote:
>I mentioned in a previous listing that someone else on the list made that
>statement, and I was raising a question, given that the information was
>true.  But I also have my doubts.  PHP is also competing for the market with
>JSP, ASP, and Cold Fusion, and you can run JSP (with Tomcat) and ASP (with
>Win doze and IIS) for nothing.  Ruby is still mainly used in Japan, and not
>outside that country. There is a good test of how popular something is.
>Walk into a big book store that carries technical books (Border's is an
>example in the US), or a web outlet like www.amazon.com.  Count how many
>books are on a topic: Perl, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, ASP, etc.  It may not
>be foolproof, but it is a good start. And yes -- I am a big Python fan, even
>though I don't get a chance to use it as frequently as others on this list.

There are a lot more pytohn books now than there were a few years
ago. I have never seen a Ruby book.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:28:39 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:28:39 GMT
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cpg0cal2ny.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> I'm beginning to suffer from a PEPtic ulcer. The "PEP scepticism" thread has
> been ploughing on (in my opinion with the only progress being a better
> understanding of various individuals' and groups' positions) for quite some
> time now, without too many people standing up and volunteeering to improve
> things.

Nevertheless, that thread implicitly explains one of the good reasons
why Python doesn't have a 'with' statement: we have to be very careful
with adding new features, because many folks appreciate Pythonr
precisely because of its relative feature sparsity.

The other reason why I haven't added 'with' (because believe me, this
has been suggested many times before) has been explained by others: it
is the problem of assignments.  About the only choice would be to make
every unqualified assignment inside a with statement an attribute
assignment to the object mentioned in the with clause, and that seems
counterproductive.  The VB solution (use a '.' prefix to reference the
object from the with clause) would be reasonable too, but requires a
lot of syntactic changes and makes me refer back to the first reason
above.

> I do, of course, have my own opinions about where PythonLabs should be
> spending its time improving things, but I by and large try to keep these
> opinions to myself as I'm not in a position to contribute to many of these
> activities.

I would like to hear what's important to you!  I get irritated when
people say "PythonLabs should do this or that" (only Digital Creations
can tell us what we *should* do, since they pay us), but I *do* want
to know what kind of things people need.

> If you aren't part of the answer, you're part of the problem ...
> and you do seem to take input from many sources. I'm quite happy offering
> input when it's solicited, but try to move on after a "battle" has been
> fought, whether I "won" or "lost" (I use quotes to indicate that I don't
> regard these matters as appropriate for a high level of emotional
> involvement).

Sorry, I have no idea what you are referring to here any more...

> So, I tend to restrict my activities to the practical things I *can* do to
> help, like maintaining the FAQ (even though many questions indicate that a
> large proportion of newbies either aren't aware of it or don't read it). At
> least that way there's a corpus of knowledge that individual questioners can
> be pointed to. As a for-profit activity I am also writing a book, but this
> isn't the place to publicize that. Just the same, I hope it will help people
> to make better use of Python, and improve the S/N ratio on this group. The
> post you responded to, by the way, was simply to indicate that I had changed
> the FAQ in line with a previous poster's suggestion.

Ah, the FAQ.  Only the bible has more information that was once useful
but is now just confusing.  I would love to see its maintenance being
picked up -- but it takes more than adding an entry explaining the
lack with statement (thanks, BTW).

> A practical step, which some groups already use, is to publicize the FAQ and
> the charter of the newsgroup periodically. Maybe we could arrange this? I'd
> be happy to make the postings, say every seven or fourteen days, once a
> suitable message was composed. Anyone? I'm not sure it will increase the S/N
> ratio, but every little helps.

Yeah, I've seen those posts in other groups.  Everybody seems to
ignore them.  Let's put the good info on the website, that's where
newbies should go.

> The PEP process is a good idea, but not enough people are willing to get
> involved. Perhaps some feel they aren't knowledgable enough, others would
> rather make their comments on c.l.py. Since I don't have the time myself
> (yet) to write PEPs, I try to refrain from throwing rocks at those who have,
> since at least they have stood up to be counted. So I offer opinions, but
> when changes go against my inclination I try not to bitch and moan.

Comments on c.l.py rarely reach me...  If you want my attention,
propose a PEP.

> Except I still don't like "print >>" ;^)

You don't have to like it, as logn as you use it when appropriate. ;-)

> just-to-retain-some-bolshevik-credibility-ly y'rs  - steve

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 10:38:01 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:38:01 -0500
Subject: portability
References: <9k5u2c$p542@news.rd.francetelecom.fr> <9k5vec01p4b@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <E0EE45EA386FA346.4667C52503CEADA6.388C6D96FBC81A26@lp.airnews.net>

In article <9k5vec01p4b at enews4.newsguy.com>,
Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>"franck delarue" <franck.delarue at rd.francetelecom.com> wrote in message
>news:9k5u2c$p542 at news.rd.francetelecom.fr...
>> hello everyone,
>> i'm working on python on linux red hat and i'm wandering if all the code
>> that i've written would be portable to unix or windows (except the system
>> calls of course). I know that python works a little like java ( on a
>virtual
>> machine), but is Python as portable as java ?
>
>Python isn't quite as portable as Java, because Java by defaults
>shields you from all platform-dependencies, while Python's
>general attitude is to give you access to platform-dependent
>features -- which may not be there on another platform.  So,
>writing portable, cross-platform code in Python, while quite
>feasible and not all that hard, DOES require more conscious
>attention and care than it does in Java (you can of course
>use Jython, Python for the Java Virtual Machine, in order to
>write Python code but get Java portability).
			.
		[correct details
		on various irri-
		tations]
			.
			.
>This is, unfortunately I feel, rather a good symbol of Python's
>overall approach to portability: quite achievable *if you work
>at it* (it's less work to make your Python code portable, than
>it would be for, say, C, or C++), but definitely a secondary
>issue (it takes a lot MORE work to make your Python code
>portable than it would take for, say, Java, or Tcl).
>
>
>Alex
>
>
>

On the other hand, Python is sufficiently close to
Java that there's a meaningful sense in which it is
*more* portable than the latter.  It is this:  if I
am an experienced Python coder, and I write some-
thing that I know to be portable Python, I can
reasonably expect it to run properly on HP-UX,
Win*, OpenVMS, maybe PalmOS, certainly SCO (or
whatever they're calling it now), all Linuxes, and
so on.

With Java, I have to fight for every JVM, and then,
once I've extracted it from a vendor, fight *with*
the JVM.  Briefly, both the language and the poli-
tics of Java are sufficiently complex to make it
seem unlikely to me that we'll ever have reliable
implementations everywhere reasonable.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 19 21:47:02 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:47:02 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org> <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com> <9j79s6$n27$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B578D96.DCE5B63C@engcorp.com>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <3B5505A0.F89ADB86 at engcorp.com>,
> Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> >Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> >>
> >> I go away, no longer available.  The client's web hosting company
> >> upgrades the Python installation to Python 3.7 (this is in the future
> >> :-)).  Client's scripts break.
> >
> >In this case, I would argue that the client's hosting company should
> >not upgrade Python (especially across a major revision) without either
> >notifying everyone who is using it (may be hard to do), or keeping
> >the old version around for legacy use.  After all, if they support
> >Python for customers, they presumably are interested in and somewhat
> >responsible for keeping the customers' applications functional when
> >they do such an upgrade.
> 
> For how long?  I just checked on Panix, which I believe is considered to
> be a well-run hosting company, and they don't have Perl4.

About six months.  Not a moment longer. :-)

I seem to be having a little trouble getting my point across.

Am I really the only one who seems to think that, so far, the
arguments against this change on logistical grounds seem to 
be based entirely on hypothetical situations, and require
increasingly contrived examples to make their cases?

I'm suggesting that it is neither practical nor realistic 
to avoid making such changes to Python solely on the basis
of potential difficulties for some hypothetical classes of 
users who seem to have the following unlikely combination 
of traits:

 1. They are inactive in the Python community and are 
    therefore unaware of the upcoming code breakage.

 2. Their code is dependent on the existing integer
    division behaviour, and yet they are not amongst  
    the classes of users identified in this newsgroup
    as being the most likely to be impacted.

 3. They are incapable of maintaining their code, 
    and simultaneously are entirely at the mercy of
    outside forces who may choose to upgrade them
    against their will or without their knowledge to
    the new and incompatible version of Python. 

    Or, they are not at the mercy of outside forces,
    yet mysteriously cannot *avoid* upgrading their
    Python installations and thus breaking their
    own code (which they somehow cannot maintain).

 4. Were we to develop and make easily available to
    them a scanner capable at least of identifying
    the probability they will suffer code breakage,
    they would be unable to use it, whether for
    (1) or (3).

Have I missed anything?

In the end, clearly there will be *some* users who
are affected against their will, without their 
advance knowledge, and in situations where it will
be difficult for them to recover easily.  I'm not
saying there are not.

I am saying that I don't think the numbers of 
such users is large enough to weigh that heavily
on our minds.  We shouldn't try to be baby-sitters
for ISPs who don't care about their own customers.

We needn't try to ensure that every possible current
user of Python, no matter how bizarre or unlikely
their situation, never ever has to touch their code
again even if somebody upgrades their environment 
right under their feet!

Or am I really overlooking a significant contingent
of users here? (in which case I apologize to them 
in advance for what I'm suggesting we do. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From des.small at bristol.ac.uk  Wed Jul 25 12:08:39 2001
From: des.small at bristol.ac.uk (Des Small)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:08:39 GMT
Subject: maths in programming
References: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>
Message-ID: <m6itghkjzz.fsf@maelstrom.maths.bris.ac.uk>

"Native_MetaL" <Jasper49 at optushome.com.au> writes:

> Hello im new to programming and i have some questions about Maths in
> programming
> 
> 1 what type of Maths is used in programming

Very little, in practice.  The kind of discrete maths taught in
Computer Science courses is not that widely used in practice.  

> 2 how good do you have to be at maths to program
> 3 dose all programing have complex maths
> 4 are all programmers Expert's with maths
> 5 do you need to be an expert with maths to get Employment in
> programming

These are all much the same question.  And the answer is that maths
isn't all that big a deal for most programming.  It probably is true
that programmers are often the same kind of people who like maths, but
not always.

Of course, some programming can be mathematical: some 3D graphics work
(although you would probably have a library to do most of the work), or
solving equations numerically.  But that isn't typical.

> 6 in IT firms are there people that do the maths ......... and others that
> just do the coding <---- the programmers

Not in any company I've ever heard of.  There's sometimes a division
into 'analysts' and 'programmers', but the sort of analysis involved
is more breaking the problem down into suitable pieces, rather than
doing fancy mathematical stuff.

Funnily enough, my job is very like you describe.  But I work in a
University Maths department, and my boss is a Professor.  If you don't
like the subject that's unlikely to happen to you.

> i would really like to learn Programming and one day work as a programmer
> but i dont have maths skills.
> Ide like to get input from anyone that can help or maybe from people that
> have been in my situation
> and have now got Employment as programmers

If you want to learn to program, then learn to program.  Get a book
(preferably on Python, to keep things on topic) and try stuff out.  If
you get stuck ask here, or on the Python tutor list.

Des,
does really scary maths in Python.
-- 
Dr Des Small, Scientific Programmer,
School of Mathematics, University of Bristol,
Tel: 0117 9287984


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 01:05:15 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 05:05:15 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.996208009.24941.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EB99AB31ADBatodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in
<mailman.996208009.24941.python-list at python.org>: 

>[Courageous]
>> They've [QKS] developed a general purpose Virtual Machine which
>> happens to run Python quite a bit faster than Python's.
>
>Cool!  Can we take a test drive yet?  I've seen very little about this
>of substance in the past, but don't doubt that Smalltalk optimization
>pros have the background to pull it off (provided they also have the
>backing to complete it).
>
>
>

I just did a search for 'python' on their web site (http://www.qks.com/) 
and got "Service is not running". I'm presuming this means not yet.

Regards,
Andy

-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 27 04:00:57 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:00:57 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Vk087.27863$B7.4280302@ruti.visi.com> <3B60A0ED.BAAFE3A9@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <uelr2er7q.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> (JL) writes:

JL> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> And (at least in the Pascal compiler) identifiers were limited
>> to 6 characters so that an entire identifier would fit into a
>> single word -- so two identifiers could be compared in a single
>> instruction.

JL> I too fondly remember the CDC Cyber series. They didn't have a traditional
JL> stack. As I recall, a blank memory space was left at the beginning of each
JL> subroutine where a single return address could be stored. This meant you
JL> couldn't do recursion using the standard assembly language subroutine call
JL> mechanism. I forget how Pascal got around this. I do recall them switching
JL> from 6 bit characters to an optional 12 bit characters to support lowercase
JL> a few years after I encountered Kronos.

I wrote several parts of the CDC Cyber Algol 68 compiler (and later also an
Algol 60 compiler) and we just moved the address of the following
instruction to the stack (`manually') and then jumped to the procedure
address. And of course we used 12 bit characters and the language was
case-sensitive.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From grumble at usa.net  Wed Jul 11 15:08:21 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 19:08:21 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ihspn$c3o$1@panix3.panix.com> <9ii0ge$coj$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4C909C.7D6CDD9C@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9ii875$is8$1@news.mathworks.com>

Paul Winkler <slinkp23 at yahoo.com> wrote:
...

> So I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for.
> Your mud is too slow to make you happy but you're not interested in fixing it?

I'm not looking for anything.  I was responding to the first poster
who was asking about Python speed in the context of mud engines.  And,
in summary, my reponse is "computation-speed can be an issue".
Anything I've said about my specific experience was only to help
illustrate my point (apparently without as much success as I'd hoped).


From reagle at MIT.EDU  Tue Jul 17 14:35:35 2001
From: reagle at MIT.EDU (Joseph M. Reagle Jr.)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:35:35 -0400
Subject: AttributeError: writer
Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010717143222.031b74f0@rpcp.mit.edu>

I'm learning Python by working on a Canonical XML [1] implementation and the 
encoding issues, particularly with respect to example 6 [1] continue to 
confuse me.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-c14n-20010315#Example-UTF8


First, I can't get the simple example from the Python Essential Reference 
(2.1) to work:

>import codecs
>(utf8_encode, utf8_decode, utf8_reader, utf8_writer) = \
>     codecs.lookup('utf-8')
>
>ustr = u'M\u00fcller'
>
>outf = utf8_writer(open('foo.xml','w'))
>outf.writer(ustr)
>outf.close

>Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "./xpath.py", line 97, in ?
>     outf.writer(ustr)
>   File "d:\winapps\python21\lib\codecs.py", line 165, in __getattr__
>     return getattr(self.stream,name)
>AttributeError: writer

I'm not sure why I'm getting that error.


But I can get the following to work:
>(latin_encode, latin_decode, latin_reader, latin_writer) = \
>     codecs.lookup('iso-8859-1')
>infile = latin_reader(open('example-6.c14n'))
>eg6 = infile.read()
>infile.close()
>print eg6.encode('utf-8')

No problem with the reader, nor with foo.encode(''), just the writer.

Ultimately, I'd like to have the eg6 string (see attached) properly encoded 
as Latin, and output as UTF-8 as required by [1], but I get the typical '> 
128 error' when I try to write a serialization of that nodeset -- I suspect 
this is my own confusion, but I'm wondering if it stems from my first issue.



--
Regards,          http://www.mit.edu/~reagle/
Joseph Reagle     E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E
MIT LCS Research Engineer at the World Wide Web Consortium.

* This email is from an independent academic account and is
not necessarily representative of my affiliations.




From jedi at ccrypt.net  Tue Jul  3 12:06:18 2001
From: jedi at ccrypt.net (jedi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:06:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: What's wrong with this program
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51EB@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.32.0107030859170.13503-100000@hobbit.ccrypt.net>

Try it like this:

import string, os
import ftplib
print string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPerl'),',')
ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144') #specify host
ftp.connect # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
ftp.login(user='Goofy',passwd='elmer',acct='fudd')   # user info
ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/')
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit()

that's on first glance at the docs, but it should work.

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> I am writing a short Python program to FTP data in my windows directory to a windows machine.  Here is the program (with IP, name., and password changed to protect the innocent, along with the trace.  What do I need to modify to ftp all the files in my particular windows directory to a directory on a Unix machine, using a user account with name and password provided?
>
> import string, os
> from ftplib import FTP
> print string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPerl'),',')
> ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144',21) #connect to host, default port
> ftp.login(user='Goofy',passwd='elmer',acct='fudd')   # default, i.e.: user name, passwd hostname
> ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/')
> ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
> ftp.quit()
>
> Here is the trace
>
> raceback (most recent call last):
>   File "D:\Python20\Pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 301, in RunScript
>     exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
>   File "D:\programsPython\ftpdata.py", line 4, in ?
>     ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144',21) #connect to host, default port
>   File "D:\Python20\lib\ftplib.py", line 108, in __init__
>     if user: resp = self.login(user, passwd, acct)
>   File "D:\Python20\lib\ftplib.py", line 318, in login
>     resp = self.sendcmd('USER ' + user)
> TypeError: cannot add type "int" to string
> >>>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 05:44:37 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 10:44:37 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list at python.org>, Thomas
Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes
>On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 04:41:43PM +0100, Robin Becker wrote:
>
>> Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them to be
>> uniformly wrong.
>
>While I couldn't help but have a good, long, uproarish laugh about this
>comment (recent readers of python-dev will know why ;) I don't think you're
>right in this. I'm not a historian, but I do believe leaders aren't
>generally seen as dictators unless they were proven wrong.
>
>Guido may be the BDFL, but he *does* listen. He may disagree, like in this
>thread, but at least he has considered the issue. Guido the Dictator made
>Python, and shaped Python into what it is right now, a damned great and
>*fun* language that you can show to your family/colleagues/total strangers
>and be proud about.
>
the reason why dictators always know best is that they define 'best';
they often redefine history as well. In the present case since you bring
it up we observe that the BDFL has faults because Python isn't perfect.
I'm probably wrong about that as it's conceivable that Guido is
optimally tracking the needs of some group of target users, I doubt it
though :) unless the group is of unit size.

My take on the language is that it's quite good, but no one has yet
written a love poem in Python.

The language is evolving as all languages do because of the needs of its
users. Five years ago the leadership said integer division was good,
today it's bad; the audience changed is all. 
-- 
Robin Becker


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Tue Jul 24 17:50:38 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:50:38 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:25:41 +0100, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <20010724171838.A21770 at xs4all.nl>, Thomas Wouters
><thomas at xs4all.net> writes
>....
>>Robin, sorry, but you are wrong <wink>.
>>
>that's almost always true, but I think not in this particular case. I
>think the compatibility issue is of prime importance here.

So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize this is the
third time I've said this but I think it would silence a lot of objections
and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From mats at laplaza.org  Wed Jul 11 00:13:52 2001
From: mats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:13:52 -0600
Subject: [Distutils] Package DB: strawman PEP
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107091411520.1770-100000@llave.eproinet.com
 >
References: <20010708234624.A30892@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20010710220537.027b3f08@laplaza.org>

At 02:33 PM 7/9/2001 -0400, Mark W. Alexander wrote:
 >On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
 >
 >> It seems time to bite the bullet and actually begin designing and
 >> implementing a database of installed packages.  As a strawman to get a
 >> focused discussion started, here's a draft of a PEP, with lots of
 >> XXX's in it.  Followups to the Distutils SIG, please.
 >
 >I'm confused. Why? What does this give us that native package managers
 >don't. How is it going to keep synchronized with package manager?

One problem is that native package managers don't make sense for
everything.  I can't imagine wanting to even deal with many of
the package managers out there for a smaller Python package. I'm
not even convinced that one of the major entrants out there - the
Windows one - does a reasonable job with dependencies, but I'm
pretty ignorant there.  And even small packages - a few Python source
files - might want to check for prereqs.




From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 13:03:32 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:03:32 -0400
Subject: Calculus
In-Reply-To: <994164932.3b41c0c4bc046@webmail1.wm.edu>; from aetodd@wm.edu on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 08:55:32AM -0400
References: <994164932.3b41c0c4bc046@webmail1.wm.edu>
Message-ID: <20010703130332.D22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 08:55:32AM -0400, Andrew Todd wrote:
| I wrote:
| >Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.
| 
| Sheila King wrote:
| >What are you talking about? Do you mean a newsgroup for 
| >discussing calculus?
| 
| No. I probably was too brief. I meant a module for Python 
| that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example, 
| the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find 
| the error. Sorry for the confusion.

It's not hard to implement it your self (Simpson's rule, Newton's
Method, and some others anyways) and make it general enough to solve
any polynomial (take a reference to a function that takes a single
float argument).  I had to implement it in C for a class once, but we
hardcoded the function in it.

-D




From desai at mcs.anl.gov  Fri Jul 27 14:39:41 2001
From: desai at mcs.anl.gov (Narayan Desai)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:39:41 -0500
Subject: scoping problems
Message-ID: <yrx66cegqs2.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>

How can i define the following code:

def a():
    b()

def b():
    a()

(ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate)
How do you get the namespaces right?

I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't clear
to me how to do this in python.
thanks...
 -nld


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 20 11:16:57 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 08:16:57 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9j9i19$p96$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
>Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
>case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
>was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
>routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
>implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

i'M aFraId i doN't UnDerStaNd wHy YoU THinK caSE-InsENsitIvitY miGhT bE
A gOoD idEA.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Jul 26 13:21:39 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 17:21:39 GMT
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
References: <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list@python.org>
    <9jmkp2$2d1b$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9jpjj3$rqun$5@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <9jmkp2$2d1b$3 at id-89274.news.dfncis.de>,
	bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) writes:
> In article <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list at python.org>,
> 	Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> 
>> I want to have nice graphs from Python class hierarchies.  The daVinci
>> package can do it 
> 
>> I need this solution under Linux and Open Source 
> 
> Note that daVince is not Free Software.
And graphviz (though claimed) _probably_ is not Free Software, too. :(
(This is still subject to some evaluation, but the license
defineatly contains dangerous clauses.)

If you start development VCR might be the way to go.
http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html

	Bernhard
-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Wed Jul 25 13:42:33 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:42:33 -0400
Subject: maths in programming
In-Reply-To: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>; from Jasper49@optushome.com.au on Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 12:28:38PM +0000
References: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>
Message-ID: <20010725134233.A1487@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 12:28:38PM +0000, Native_MetaL wrote:
> Hello im new to programming and i have some questions about Maths in
> programming
> 
> 1 what type of Maths is used in programming
> 2 how good do you have to be at maths to program
> 3 dose all programing have complex maths
> 4 are all programmers Expert's with maths
> 5 do you need to be an expert with maths to get Employment in programming
> 6 in IT firms are there people that do the maths ......... and others that
> just do the coding <---- the programmers

You don't need to know math to program (ie. type code), but having the
discipline of analyzing the program and writing out the solution step by
step is extremely helpful.  Of course, you have to understand the math
behind the program code, in order to know if the results are correct or
not.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Tue Jul  3 11:50:38 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 15:50:38 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <9hsnd3$7h3$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>
Message-ID: <9hspke$vf4$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

According to Franz GEIGER <fgeiger at datec.at>:
> I am curious: What do you Haskell use for?

I bet he uses Haskell to write Usenet posting-bots. ;-)


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul  1 08:18:59 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 12:18:59 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993958922.4025.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hn4fj$h16$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> [Martijn Faassen]
>> ...
>> And as I suggested in my post, if standard library development is indeed
>> not part of the primary sets of interests of the core developers,

> I'm not sure Guido expressed himself clearly enough there.  All the core
> developers have done major work on the libraries, so that's not a hangup.

I figured it was like this. I realize of course that the library has
in a large part been written by the core developers.

> What is a hangup is that people also want stuff the current group of core
> developers has no competence (and/or sometimes interest) to write.  Like SSL
> support on Windows, or IPv6 support, etc.  Expert-level work in a field
> requires experts in that field to contribute.

This is understood.

> We also need a plan to keep
> their stuff running after they go away again, the lack of which is one
> strong reason Guido resists adding stuff to the library.

Agreed. And some people who make it their central business to keep the stuff
running (either by fixing it themselves or by harassing experts in the
community :) may be a good idea there. Of course it may not. 
 
>> perhaps it would be good to set up an semi-formal group that *does*
>> treat this as their 'core business' (manage core library development
>> and perhaps even independent releases) A library-SIG, perhaps?

> Start by adding some meat to PEP 2.

I'll study PEP 2. :) Oh, done. Yes, this *really* needs more meat. 
 
>> In general, the idea is that perhaps we don't have hundreds of Andrew
>> Kuchlings (to quote Tim) is because there is no place or group to
>> attract them. A bit of a chicken and egg problem, of course. :)

> Part of what makes Andrew Andrew is that he didn't wait for anyone to take
> him by the hand and tell him what to do.  He saw things that needed to be
> done, and *did* them, fighting when necessary to get his work out into the
> world.  That's how things get accomplished -- committees and study groups
> and Usenet debates don't; even the Python SIGs have, overall, a poor track
> record on delivering results (with notable exceptions).  You don't need a
> group; you need someone able to work and motivated enough to do it without
> being pushed.

I realize this, and this is a good point. Of course this is idle
discussion. :)

I may still signal a need for such people before said people get
up and do all the work. :) If this need is very well recognized by the
developers and the community, they may be more welcoming to people
who stand up and the word..

> you-do-it-for-the-glory-or-not-at-all-ly y'rs  - tim

Exactly! Right now there is not the feeling that there is much _glory_ in this
activity. Which is why I've been talking about a special 'status' for it.
It doesn't really matter how this is accomplished, but there should be
a feeling in the community that work on the standard library is wonderful,
doable (your patches have a reasonable chance at being studied and accepted) 
and desirable.

I'll try to do some work on PEP 2.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul  5 18:35:38 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:35:38 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library
 development
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E8@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051626190.17400-100000@bms>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
<...>
> Which is just begging for someone to do:
>
>   try:
>     import Numeric
>   except ImportError:
>     import pyppm
>     pyppm.install('Numeric')
>     import Numeric
>
> <wink>?

Ya, that is the nasty side of nice'n'easy to use automated package
management systems... they can install stuff behind your back if not
done properly.

As a *nixer I don't worry too much 'cause I don't run untrusted
software as the superuser... but you win users must be concerned.


- Bruce




From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 11:29:50 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 19:29:50 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107071040380.11943-100000@mercury.sabren.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071909220.6282-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Michal Wallace wrote:

>On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
>
>> I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
>> My main concerns are:
>
>Hey Roman,
>
>You've got an interesting idea here.. But I'm not sure I understand
>the problem it's meant to address. If you're worried about your code
>suddenly ceasing to work, of course you know that code doesn't break
>unless you change things. A pyhon 0.1 script would work just fine
>today if you had python 0.1 installed.

No... Probably you have not understood.

Lets imagine you want to run a program 300 years from now. C compiler no
longer exists. Intel hardware sells no longer. No weird MS Word
files. Python 123.3.4 with almost anything changed compared with version
1.5.2 ;-)

What is left:

Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).

So, after they program core interpreter according to specs, they will have
all Eternal software ready to run!

What I half-jokingly proposed is "do it yourself" core interpreter which
could interprete code written in some simple code, able to evolve like
Forth does.

AFAIK, there is nothing similar to Eternal apart from Turing machine or
basic math notation.

This way, the portability is utmost: you write simple core interpreter (~
RISC-processor) and you can run software!

And you have NO troubles of getting 300 years old hardware, CPU specs,
etc, etc - only data stored in 8-bit bytes + the only informal piece
missing: interpreter.

Can you see the root of the idea now?

Of course, only things of historical value will be done in Eternal:
* JPEG->ASCII convertor
* bzip2 decompressor
and so on.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 15 18:06:58 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:06:58 GMT
Subject: COM: VB client, Python server: NULL result ...
References: <q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B521442.1080103@ActiveState.com>

Steve Holden wrote:

> On three separate systems I am experiencing the same problem trying to
> create an Python COM object from VB. The VB satetement
> 
>     Set obj = CreateObject("Python.Dictionary")
> 
> (or any other Python COM object) gives the dreaded error 80004005, with the
> message:
> 
>     Unexpected Python Error: exceptions.SystemError: NULL result without
> error in call_object


If you are using a debug COM object, it may be a bug in win32trace.pyd - 
this has been fixed in the latest ActivePython and win32all.  Creating 
Python.Dictionary from WSH works fine for me.

Mark.



From djc at object-craft.com.au  Sat Jul  7 01:21:00 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 15:21:00 +1000
Subject: Sybase module (was Re: Postgres  support)
In-Reply-To: Tim Churches's message of "Sat, 07 Jul 2001 08:39:34 +1000"
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
	<5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
	<15174.5497.55793.936749@beluga.mojam.com>
	<3B463E26.582642E0@optushome.com.au>
Message-ID: <m3ae2hfh6r.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Churches <tchur at optushome.com.au> writes:

Tim> Skip Montanaro wrote:
>>
Edward> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which
Edward> handles Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it
Edward> handles
>>  "Python Sybase" netted this:
>> 
>> http://www.stecf.org/~npirzkal/python/sybase/

Tim> I think the Python<->Sybase module of choice would have to be the
Tim> Sybase module (alpha status notwithstanding) being developed by
Tim> Object Craft, who are based in Melbourne, Australia. See
Tim> http://www.object-craft.com.au

The alpha status of the current unannounced release is probably a bit
extreme.  Last week a bug was reported where Cursor.execute() would
fail after around 9000 different SQL commands over the same
connection.  It turned out that I had forgotten one important stage of
the finalisation of the dynamic SQL sequence.  The fix was the
addition of about five lines in the Sybase.py module.  Things seem to
be OK now.

At some time in the not too distant future I will be releasing 0.30
which will truely be an alpha release...

Tim> Ava Gardner quipped that Melbourne was a good place to make a
Tim> movie about the end of the world when she was filming the cinema
Tim> version of Neville Shute's "On the Beach" (in which the Northern
Tim> Hemisphere obliterates itself in a bout of mutually assured
Tim> thermonuclear destruction, with the Southern Hemisphere
Tim> eventually succumbing to radioactive fallout, but only after
Tim> plenty of soul-searching, a few bottles of Scotch and a brief but
Tim> passionate love affairs). Melbourne also appears to be a good
Tim> place to write Python modules.

Tim> Tim C Sydney, Australia

Much better Sydney in any event (sorry, couldn't resist).

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au




From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 14:51:48 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:51:48 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b5c65cf.224345241@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:46:45 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
[...]
>
>Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
>We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
>loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
>so let's not be shy.
>
What about mandatory version/requirement marking of code depending
on new features of 2.2 and beyond?

This would introduce *now* the possibility of using 2.1 rules for unmarked
code, and allowing progress without backwards-compatibility pain[1].

Perhaps a requires statement keyword with syntax like print? E.g.,

    requires {'Python':'2.3', 'math':'2.4','division':('unified','warn') }

or short form could be distinguished by arg type

    requires 2.3

The keyword itself would be rejected by older interpreters, signaling a need
to upgrade the interpreter (or revise the script code down).

All the good arguments on both sides of the '/' question are making me
feel wishy-washy, as I sympathize in alternation, but I do find the
backwards compatibility argument compelling. HTH.

[1] Other than for implementors ;-)



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 10:11:27 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:11:27 +0200
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.995052624.21992.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kuvac.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9ip0io010ke@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B504707.86D6ED85@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9ipjs001lru@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B504707.86D6ED85 at engcorp.com...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > "phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> > > No it would not. If I say "my car is convenient for journeys <10
miles",
> > > it doesn't mean it is inconvenient for journeys >10 miles, does it?
> >
> > Sure, and if I say "I never strangle British citizens on Saturdays",
that
    ...
> I think you've left the original context behind, Alex.  Phil was
responding

Definitely: I was responding specifically to this observation with my
usual tirade about over-qualification and Aristotle's failings in dealing
with it.  My disagreements with you guys about 'scripting' having to
do with 'shortness of programs' are completely separate.  Take the
delightful book Jon Bentley entitled "Programming Pearls" [NOT
"Scripting Pearls"!] -- it's chock full of delightful programs that are
shorter than 100 lines, yet are not "scripts" in the common perception
and common usage of the word: they do not automate repetitive
sequences of operations that might commonly be performed by
an interactive user &c.  (I think one area where the term 'script'
is often used to describe programs that are _neither_ short _nor_
automating &c is CGI -- thousand-line CGI "scripts" that aren't
"scripts" by any sensible definition except the fact that in CGI one
uses that term are far from exceptional -- but don't let me start
my _Wittgenstein_ tirade about natural language's irreducibility
to precision...:-).


Alex





From idivanov at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 19 04:30:45 2001
From: idivanov at hotmail.com (Ivan)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 01:30:45 -0700
Subject: eval()/exec() inconsistency
Message-ID: <9dab6033.0107190030.5f4af660@posting.google.com>

Hi,
haven't thoroughly read the 
Python langage specifications, but at first look 
this seem to be a good idea to correct this for
better consistency:

D:\>python
Python 2.0 (#8, Oct 16 2000, 17:27:58) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
>>> exec("");
>>>
>>> eval("");
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<string>", line 0

    ^
SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
>>>
>>>


Empty string "" should be a valid code or invalid for evec(...) and
eval(...) ni the same way.

Regards,
Ivan


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 10:49:07 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 15:49:07 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <9hfg1n$du33c$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3B3BB077.1E51F2C9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.993788863.16675.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jp0kq.o4l.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.993829912.16325.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jpho8.peb.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015@4ax.com>

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 19:20:58 +0100, philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
hunt) wrote:

>2. how will this interact with python's indent/dedent mechanism
>
>In particular, how do we treat this:
>
>def myfunction():
>   print "hello"
>   print "start" /* start of comment
>middle of comment
>end of comment */   print "goodbye"
>
>IMO the best way to prevent unexpected wierdness like this is
>to forbid any code in any line after the */ closing-comment
>sequence; or perhaps to give a warning and ignore it (it
>shouldn't just be silently ignored, as this will confuse people
>familiar to how it works in C).

My opinion is that it should also ban comment text from being further
left than the start comment marker. That would pretty much force a
layout like this...

print "Hello"  /*  This is a
                   hello world
                   thingy       */

A similar rule about the right margin and end comment marker wouldn't
work - some people might prefer...

print "Hello"  /*  This is a
                   hello world
                   thingy
               */

To be honest, though, I personally wouldn't use this. It raises the
age-old spectre of the missing end-of-comment, which can cause no end
of confusion in C.

I'd also consider whether /# and #/ are better markers - more directly
related to the existing #.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 27 15:18:01 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:18:01 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3b61bef1$0$11920@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net>

"James Logajan" <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message
news:3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D at Lugoj.Com...
> "Rufus V. Smith" wrote:
> >
> > "Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> > > Oh dear I sense a humour deficit :(
> >
> > I think it was just an emoticon deficit.
>
> If the prose is well written or the readers well read, then there
shouldn't
> be a need for "emoticons". Of the hundreds of books I have, I don't think
> any of them make use of emoticons. But virtually all of them were reviewed
> by editors, so with Usenet you may need to supplement your writing with
> emoticons.
>

Of the hundreds of books you have read, there is no lack of context.

In these parts, lack of context is often a rule rather than exception.

Emoticons a are a (sometimes puerile) compensation.

> I suspect Mr. van Rossum is probably not in the happiest of moods, what
with
> his suggested changes being challenged from many people for various
reasons.
> This influence would color anyone's reading.
>

Really?  And I thought we infallible humans reacting uniformly and
predictably to
purely objective statements in our unambiguous printed language(s).

> By the way, the division issue is several years old. A lot of bits have
> flowed on this issue. See for example:
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d,40&start=
0
>
> Three years later the code base and programmer base are no doubt
> considerably larger, so the inertia against change has probably grown too
> large to deal with.

.. and the folks who are happy or even simply content don't generate the
equivalent
heat of the (minority) complainers.

Just staying in the game shows a strength of character, and (I'm betting) a
sense of humor, on the part of Mr. van Rossum.






From bbrannigan at cybertours.com  Sun Jul 15 17:31:23 2001
From: bbrannigan at cybertours.com (Bryan Brannigan)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:31:23 -0400
Subject: windows port access
Message-ID: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com>

I am looking for a way to send data to certain ports on a custom ISA card.
The card is addressed as 280h.  Is this possible with Python?  Is the code
compatible with Linux as well?

Bryan




From volucris at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 03:04:16 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:04:16 -0500
Subject: Is this an Intended behaviour of __getattr__?
References: <uu787.103805$ph7.16107665@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <3b6111de$0$325$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

"Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message
news:uu787.103805$ph7.16107665 at news.hananet.net...
> I'm a bit confused with this:
>
> class Node:
>     def __init__(self):
>         self._next=None
>     def __getattr__(self,attr):
>         if attr=='next':
>             if self._next is not None:
>                 return self._next
>             else:
>                 self._next=Node()
>                 return self._next
>         print attr,"was called..."
>         error=3/0  #supposed to raise exception
>         raise AttributeError
>
> if __name__=='__main__':
>     f=Node()
>     links=[f.next,f.next,f.next.next,f.next.next]
>     for each in links:
>         print each
>     print f.errorPlz
>
> And this yields exactly,
>
>  __str__ was called...
> __repr__ was called...
> <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
>  __str__ was called...
> __repr__ was called...
> <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
>  __str__ was called...
> __repr__ was called...
> <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
>  __str__ was called...
> __repr__ was called...
> <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
> al was called...
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "...", line 22, in ?
>     print f.al
>   File "...", line 12, in __getattr__
>     k=3/0
> ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
>
> Why did it suck up all ZeroDivisionErrors while outputting the "was
> called..." messages? Special case with magic methods? Is this an intended
> behaviour? Then what is the exact process/mechanism?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>

in __getattr__ if the attr is 'next', if checks the value of _next and
returns whether it's None or not. the code after return never gets executed.
the only time it didn't return first, was when __getattr__ was called with
'errorPlz' (not 'next').

That was too wordy, but I hope it's intelligible.
--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."




From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 22 18:28:18 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:28:18 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lmksu.qb.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:40:10 GMT, Rainy <sill at optonline.net> wrote:

>First of all, it's really ugly. It's the ugliest thing in python for a newbie,
>imho. Yes, 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
>reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.

There _is_ a good reason.  1 and 2 are integers.  How many 2s
can you fit into a 1?

None.

Zero.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Can you MAIL a BEAN
                                  at               CAKE?
                               visi.com            


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Fri Jul 20 18:17:34 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:17:34 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D56A@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <+3KW7kKkXUBL092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

|>   "type 'class MyClass colon'... ummm, no, that's cap 'M', cap 'C'...
|>   no... capital 'M', lower 'y', capital 'C, rest lowercase.  Ok, now
|>   type "myclass equals MyClass parens"... umm, the thing to
|>   the left in  lowercase, then the caps as in the class name...."

"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
|Personally, I always send code through email, even when speaking with
|someone on the phone. Works much faster (and it also takes care of
|whitespace <wink>).

I was thinking more about the "over the shoulder" situation (where email
is a little harder to use).

Yours, Lulu...

--
mertz@  | The specter of free information is haunting the `Net!  All the
gnosis  | powers of IP- and crypto-tyranny have entered into an unholy
.cx     | alliance...ideas have nothing to lose but their chains.  Unite
        | against "intellectual property" and anti-privacy regimes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------




From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul 16 14:32:53 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:32:53 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
Message-ID: <OF942843A6.40753E81-ON88256A8B.0065603B@i2.com>

I agree with Alex on the issue of portability in commercial applications.
Our company was founded in 1991.  Our first product was aimed at hardware
design engineers and *had* to run on UNIX systems (to be compatible with
the ECAD tools of that time).  By the mid-to-late 90's much of the ECAD
community had shifted to Windows.  We also started to build products for
procurement people who ran on Windows as well.  Had we not developed
portable products, we would have been out of business early on.  (Instead
we were bought for over $9 billion in 2000 -- a world record for any
software company to date).

Jim




                                                                                                                   
                    "Alex Martelli"                                                                                
                    <aleaxit at yahoo.com        To:     python-list at python.org                                       
                    >                         cc:                                                                  
                    Sent by:                  Subject:     Re: not safe at all                                     
                    python-list-admin@                                                                             
                    python.org                                                                                     
                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                   
                    07/14/01 02:03 AM                                                                              
                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                   




"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B4F743C.66778F9F at tundraware.com...
    ...
> Furthermore, bear in mind that code "portability" is no where near as
> important in the commercial sector as it is in academics.  Commercial

That depends on the state of the market.  Just a few years ago, it
would have KILLED us if our CAD applications didn't run portably
between VMS, Apollo Domain, and many versions of Unix -- each
OS accounted for an important segment of our customer base.

Today, running on a small number of somewhat-different Microsoft
operating systems suffices -- but any day now, it would not at all
surprise me if an important market segment suddenly demanded,
say, Linux -- in which case, lack of portability would again become
a commercial killer in this nice.  (Before you scoff -- markets as
important as the French public administration and China appear
to be oriented to demanding Linux pretty soon, while others keep
demanding MS systems -- better keep those portability skills not
too badly honed, is my opinion).

Besides, portability is NOT only an issue between operating systems
and hardware platforms (...and on the latter, someday soon the
ability to exploit Itanium well may be a key market differentiator...).
Anything that qualifies as a "platform" for applications needs to be
seen in this light.  Portability between IIS and Apache can double
the potential market for a commercial web framework.  And it serves
our PDM product well that it's portable between SQL dialects and
RDBMS's -- some customers are totally wed to Oracle and would
never buy a product that can only run on SQL Server, and vice
versa -- this DOES give us an important marketing differentiator
wrt some of our competition.


I'm not getting into the C++ flamewar you're trying to unchain --
just noticing that one of our competitors in the PDM field recently
released their newest product version, and one of the fundamental
differences wrt the previous one is that they rewrote it from Java
(as it originally was) to C++ (as it is now) -- they claim speed-ups
of about 60% overall, more solidity, etc, as a consequence.  If that
is an example of C++ "dying a slow death", I think Mark Twain's
well-known dictum may apply.

I _do_ agree that C++ is too complex for the human brain and
thus should only be used sparingly (for system interaction and
top-speed components -- but do notice that those components
ARE part of large commercial applications... and many people
still do not realize that multi-language applications are the
way to go, thus, needing maybe 10% of the app to be in C++,
they go ahead and make or rewrite it ALL in C++, rather than
make it 10% C++ and 90% Python...:-).


Alex (Brainbench MVP for C++ -- declaring interest, as it were:-)



--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list







From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Fri Jul 13 13:50:57 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:50:57 -0700
Subject: apply problems
Message-ID: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Python 1.5.2
Irix 6.5


In my code, I have the line:
apply( self.ren.Elements, cmd[1], additional_kwds )

and I get the error:
TypeError: keyword parameter redefined


where:
cmd[1] = [0, 0, 3, 3, 0.0, [0]]

additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements': 
<cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes': 
<cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}

def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
elements, *args, **kwds ):



However, if I replace the apply command with:
self.ren.Elements( cmd[1][0], cmd[1][1], cmd[1][2], cmd[1][3],
cmd[1][4], cmd[1][5], additional_kwds )

It works fine.  I can't figure why the apply line doesn't work.  There
are 8 arguments to self.ren.Elements (excluding self). There are 6 items
in "cmd[1]."  The remaining two are taken care of in "additional_kwds." 
I know what the error means, I just don't see where the redefined keword
is.  If I remove the "additional_kwds" from the apply call, then I get:
TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 8, got 7

I can't figure out where the seventh argument is comming from. If I try:
"cmd[1][6]" I get:
IndexError: list index out of range
and "len(cmd[1]" gives 6.

I am unable to repeat this in a simple example, so I am forced to merely
describe the problem as best as I can.  The code is too big to post. 
Any suggestions?  Thanks.


-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 16 03:09:14 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 07:09:14 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9l54oq.hfm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:36:22 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:

> def valid_ip(ip):
>     m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
>     if m:
>         elements = map(int, m.groups())
>         return max(elements) < 256
>     return 0

Is 0127.0.0.00001 a valid IP?

If yes, then it should be accepted. If no, what about 127.0.0.001?

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From fdrake at beowolf.digicool.com  Mon Jul  2 11:37:45 2001
From: fdrake at beowolf.digicool.com (Fred Drake)
Date: Mon,  2 Jul 2001 11:37:45 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [maintenance doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010702153745.B304B28929@beowolf.digicool.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

	http://python.sourceforge.net/maint-docs/


Updated to reflect the current state of the Python 2.1.1 maintenance
release branch.




From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 06:24:31 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 03:24:31 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>

I've always wondered why the interpreter was so, uhm...difficult, even
compared to wish (tcl). I like to mess around and improvise in the
interpreter, but find that it is so feature-starved that it is often a
bit tedious. Couldn't the interpreter be improved to behave more like
a real shell, with command history and maybe evn completion or (god
forbid) keywork syntax coloring. Couldn't it support some basic shell
commands like more and ls and such? Even in wish i can type ls and get
a listing. The interpreter is a great tool, but it really requires a
wicked amount of typing and you can't eaily recall and edit these
monster that you type in at the prompt.

cheers,
-kevin parks
seoul, korea

kp87 at lycos.com


From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  2 20:47:06 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:47:06 -0400
Subject: missing setfirstweekday in calendar module
In-Reply-To: <56817b75.0107021223.39a661ae@posting.google.com>
References: <56817b75.0107021223.39a661ae@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <B7668E49.13B8B%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

on 2001-07-02 4:23 PM, grakker (grakker at softhome.net) wrote:
> I'm pretty new to python.  I wrote up a cgi script for a family
> calendar.  It works great, but I would like to use the setfirstweekday
> part of the calendar module, but it isn't there.  I'm running an
> up-to-date sid debian install.  When I downloaded Python at work to
> mess around during down times, I noticed that it does have a
> setfirstweekday option.  Anyone know where I can find it?

Your Debian must have an older Python, 1.5.2 or earlier. 2.0 or later have
setfirstweekday(). The best thing would be to install the latest Python. If
you can't, the 2.0 version of calendar.py is 1.5.2-compatible. Just copy the
2.0 version on top of the 1.5.2 version.

(BTW, I added setfirstweekday() and other improvements to calenday.py, and
I'm glad somebody is getting use out of it.)

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sf.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sf.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sf.net



From neal at metaslash.com  Mon Jul 16 22:23:26 2001
From: neal at metaslash.com (Neal Norwitz)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:23:26 -0400
Subject: ANN: PyChecker version 0.7
Message-ID: <3B53A19E.899A5084@metaslash.com>

A new version of PyChecker is available for your hacking pleasure.

        PyChecker is a tool for finding common bugs in python source code.
        It finds problems that are typically caught by a compiler for less
        dynamic languages, like C and C++.

Comments, criticisms, new ideas, and other feedback is welcome.

Change Log:
  * Improve import warning messages, add from ... import ... checks
  * checker.py -h prints defaults after processing .pycheckrc file
  * Add config option -k/--pkgimport to disable unused imports from __init__.py
  * Add warning for variable used before being set
  * Improve format string checks/warnings
  * Check arguments to constructors
  * Check that self is first arg to base constructor
  * Add -e/--errors option to only warn about likely errors
  * Make 'self' configurable as the first argument to methods
  * Add check that there is a c'tor when instantiating an object and 
	passing arguments
  * Add config option (-N/--initreturn) to turn off warnings 
	when returning None from __init__()
  * Fix internal error with python 2.1 which defines a new op: LOAD_DEREF
  * Check in lambda functions for module/variable use
  * Fix inability to evaluate { 1: 'a' } inline,
	led to incorrect __init__() not called warnings
  * Fix exception when class overrides __special__() methods & raise exception
  * Fix check in format strings when using '%*g %*.*g', etc
  * Add check for static class attributes
  * Fix checking of module attributes
  * Fix wrong filename in 'Base class (xxx) __init__() not called'
  	when doing a from X import *
  * Fix 'No attribute found' for very dynamic classes
  	(may also work for classes that use __getattr__)

PyChecker is available on Source Forge:
    Web page:           http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/
    Project page:       http://sourceforge.net/projects/pychecker/

Neal
--
pychecker at metaslash.com



From nospam at newsranger.com  Sat Jul 14 06:46:54 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:46:54 GMT
Subject: More on 
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com> <9ioru01pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <yqV37.19156$Kf3.249507@www.newsranger.com>

In article <9ioru01pc9 at enews4.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli says...
>
>"Levente Sandor" <nospam at newsranger.com> wrote in message
>news:poP37.19002$Kf3.249024 at www.newsranger.com...
>> If you absolutely need a 'with' statement...
>>
>> import re
>> def with(object, statements):
>> """ 'with' for the very lazy programmer :) :) :)
>> Someone might prefer Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, ... instead."""
>> exec(re.sub('\B\.', '%s.' % object, statements))
>
>If you're willing to stoop to an exec, then surely it's
>better to use the fact that exec lets you specify local
>and global dictionaries:
>
>def with(obj, statements, globs=None):
>    if globs is None: globs=globals()
>    exec statements in vars(obj), globs
>

Sorry but I can't see how it simulates the 'with' statement in Pascal or VB.
Levi




From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Thu Jul 19 08:08:41 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:08:41 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j3u3c030k4@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldk3s.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> dijo:
> "Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
> > I cling to the philosophy that there is no "better" language and that a
> > programmer's ability to _use_ it is more important than benchmarks or
> > syntax.
> 
> It can be -- while I know of no studies directly targeting this,
> Prechelt's results do confirm that variations between programmers
> using the same language are at least as large as variations
> between median values of metrics for different languages.

A person's aptitude for learning a given concept is largely affected by
the person's willingness.  This is demonstrated by hundreds that
frequent programming newsgroups (all of them), as well as by millions of
high school students nationwide (in the US).  "Willingness" is not
something that can be rationalized into existence by talking, reasoning,
or even yelling. (Have you ever dealt with teenagers? Then you
understand! =)  Doing a "study" would require a quantification of an
abstract thing such as "willingness", "open-mindedness", etc; I leave
this for marketing and advocacy people.

> Consider a programmer who knows
> Fortran quite well, and Perl not at all.  She needs to print
> all lines in several files that meet certain criteria.  It is
> quite possible that she can hack a Fortran program for the
> purpose in less time than it would take her to learn enough
> Perl for the purpose.  If this is the last time in her life
> that she needs such a task performed, it would thus be quite
> cost-effective for her not to learn Perl at all.
> But does this line of argument make sense to you?

Yes.

> Would it
> lead you to conclude that "Fortran is preferable to Perl for
> certain tasks regarding extraction and reporting of lines
> from textfiles"?

Umm, no.  Why?  Would you like to take anything else I say out of
context?  My point was made. You understood what I was saying, and now
you search for loopholes in my words.  Why?

BTW: very subtle use of words: "extraction" and "reporting"; however:

$ perldoc -q '"perl'"

       [snip] ... perl isn't really an
       acronym, apocryphal folklore and post-facto expansions
       notwithstanding.

> That would look to me like a wrong-headed
> way to frame the situation.  It's quite unlikely that a task
> in a sufficiently wide class, such as this one, presents
> itself for the first and last time in a programmer's career
> (*possible*, since the programmer MIGHT die tonight: but,
> NOT *likely*).  Most likely other tasks in similar fields
> will appear again and again.  The programmer who devoted the
> reasonable amount of effort to keeping her own skills up to
> date (and ancillary deployment efforts, e.g., downloading and
> installing a Perl interpreter on a machine that used to have
> only a Fortran compiler installed) will therefore, most likely,
> soon be better off than the one who sticks to the tools she
> is already highly productive with -- *IF* the new tools do
> indeed present an intrinsic advantage over the already-known
> alternatives.

Or did you actually not understand what I said?  "Ability to use" in the
sense that, say, if a Pythonista can't get past the curse-characters in
a Perl script, they're not very "able" to "use" Perl, are they?
Therefore, they will be much more productive using Python than they will
with Perl.

> > For this reason, for a given application, I might reach for
> > Perl before Python because I have more experience with it.  However, I
> 
> Assuming for the sake of argument that the general class of
> application is one where Python has intrinsic advantage (as
> opposed to one where the two P languages are more or less
> equal, or one where Perl has advantage), this might be short-
> term sensible but long-term inferior, as above sketched.  I.e.,
> you may get your current task done faster, but over a longer
> period of time still enjoy lower overall productivity.

Hence the statement below.  I'm not content with my current knowledge of
Python, therefore: I am here in cl.py and learn more about
idioms, new developments, standard modules, etc.

> > am not content with "just getting by" in a language if I have an
> > opportunity to learn more (as long as it doesn't piss me off with every
> > :w<CR>:!javac %<CR> ... but I won't mention any names ... oops!)
> 
> A *FAST* Java compiler would surely do wonders for that
> language's approachability, but that's another issue:-).

I meant Java's tendency (as C/C++) toward syntax errors.  Java's
execution speed is a thread I have no time for. =)

> Personally, I found Perl the only language with an even steeper
> and longer learning curve than C++ -- which, I guess, is part of
> why I'm a C++ Brainbench MVP but definitely *NOT* a Perl one:-).

Two major tripwires to Perl: context, varied control structures with
implied meanings.  Perl syntax is not near as clear-cut and
self-explanatory as Python's, and most in this NG consider this a plus
for Python.  But if understanding these concepts speeds development time
for someone using Perl, doesn't this support your argument?  Given
proper indentation and half-decent var names, I find most documentation
of Perl code unnecessary.

> > me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
> > Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
> > accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
> 
> I was in the same situation 2 years ago, to the day.  Which is
> why I used Perl, even while detesting it -- for many tasks I was
> more productive with it than with any other language.

Ah, but I grasped the concepts and said, "Ooh!  So I can do this...and
this... and this...", etc.  It was beautiful!

> Which is why I'd like to be shown the *specific* cases where Perl
> dominates Python.  Knowing of a few, net of transient effects
> such as a given programmer knowing one and not the other or
> other deployment issues, would help reconcile me with Perl's
> existence:-).

Advocacy has never been my calling.  And while I may not love the way
some people mention Perl, I don't have to.  My desire to learn more
about Python outweighs the cons.  Nor must I convince you that Perl's
existence is justified.  It's not my job to teach you about Perl. I'm
sorry you didn't get the level-headed discussion you said you wanted,
but honestly, did you ever think it would happen?

> Apparently your clients aren't wedded to NT...?  Because in that
> case you might get VBScript as your sum total of readily available
> tools... either Perl or Python requiring a download-and-install
> (worst case for most boxes, today, surely).

Every NT host so far has had Perl installed, hence my website in
ASP PerlScript.  

> But meanwhile, I still haven't learned anything about the general
> application areas where Perl is alleged to enjoy intrinsic
> advantages over Python -- the purpose of this thread from my
> personal viewpoint... if somebody knowledgeable in both languages
> such as you are can't help me ascertain this, who might?

Abigail on clpm helps develop Perl. She can probably answer your
questions much better than I.  I never asked for a debate about
Python vs. Perl.  Any actions misinterpreted as such are strictly
coincidental. (Although I have enjoyed some of your retorts.)

Cheers.
-- 
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
	-- Bill Gates (circa 1981)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 18:17:32 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:17:32 -0400
Subject: import string -> error "no module named string"
References: <3b5dac88.10561252@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <AV%87.522$9i1.87833@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

Your installation is clearly badly broken, as bpth the modules names are
essential system components. Did you notice anything unusual about the
install? You did, I take it, run the installer...

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Duilio Foschi" <dedalus at yifan.net> wrote in message
news:3b5dac88.10561252 at news.libero.it...
> I downloaded python.zip (the dos version).
>
> When I run python.exe, I can already read the following error
> messages:
>
> "import exceptions failed"
>
> and
>
> "import site failed".
>
> Similar messages I get when trying to import different modules.
>
> What is missing ?
>
> Thank you
>
> Duilio Foschi
>




From mcfletch at home.com  Tue Jul 31 14:00:35 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:00:35 -0400
Subject: error occur when using py2exe
In-Reply-To: <aCB97.12856$WD1.527988@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <000501c119ea$b3908880$04817018@cr706570a>

Minor note: the two paths quoted are not the same...

"/python21/program/myscript.py"

HTH,
Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Steve Holden
Sent: July 31, 2001 13:12
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: error occur when using py2exe


<engsol at teleport.com> wrote in message
news:3b66e351.4492439 at news.onemain.com...
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:23:02 +0800 (CST), "sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote:
...
> >I put the the myscript.py file  under d:/python21/program/
>
> >I think I must give a directory to the setup ,but when I use
>
> >setup(name="myscript",scripts=["/program/myscript.py"],)
...



From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 23 06:04:22 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 03:04:22 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107230204.4e26d5e8@posting.google.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5 at 4ax.com>...
>
> If you really want a division operator that treats everything as
> floats, then *that* is the new functionality and *that* should be the
> new operator. I don't mind such an operator being added - I will
> simply feel free to ignore it.

Indeed. If only // were introduced as the operator with this new
functionality, leaving / as it is now, there wouldn't be 100s of
messages trying to rationalise and justify the whole affair of
changing the / operator in the first place, let alone the 100s of
messages attempting to rationalise Python's "position" on arithmetic.

> Python would be a laughing stock without a division operator, and it
> will certainly be a laughing stock if we can't rely on it to do the
> same thing from one release to the next. It's a far to fundamental
> change just to please people with a particular mindset.

I get the feeling that those people who follow the Python development
list tend to work their way to what they believe to be sensible
conclusions, but run the risk of becoming out of touch with everyone
else. The big danger for Python is that they become so out of touch
that half the Python community decide to "fork off".

Paul


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 20 21:49:19 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 01:49:19 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9lbvbp.6o6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9ldhif.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9lhnsu.t43.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:36:49 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:
>On 18 Jul 2001 21:19:54 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>It's not just you, but I don't agree, and it's not just me either.
>>NameErrors, KeyErrors, and IndexErrors have saved me many times.  One of the
>>things I didn't like about perl is how it magically created values on
>>reference, and then I had to go hunt down the bad reference that created it.
>>And I often store None in dicts and lists.  It would be weird if d.has_key(x)
>>could be true or false while d[x] always evaluated to None.  That means that
>>d[x] is implicitly creating a None when d.has_key(x) is false,
>
>It doesn't, it's just returning a value.

But where is that value coming from?  It wasn't stored in the dict!

Too me, the following:

>>> d = {}
>>> d.has_key('foo')
0           # foo doesn't exist
>>> d['foo']
None
>>> d['foo'] = None
>>> d.has_key('foo')
1           # foo exists
>>> d['foo']
None

seems inconsistent with:

>          X = None should be different than X not existing.

And keep in mind that looking up global names and looking up object attributes
are conceptually dictionary lookups (in globals() and obj.__dict__,
respectively).


>                                         Though I can see how that
>might be useful, e.g:
...
>Note this involves:
>
>(1) if you refer to a variable that doesn't exist, it creatres it giving
>it the value None
>
>(2) None.__getitem__() makes it into a Dictionary
>
>(3) Dict:__getitem__() on an item not found returns None
>
>(4) None + a number equals that number

This is the kind of automatic creation and coercion that many people love
about perl.  Many other people, however, don't :)


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 13:44:44 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:44:44 -0500
Subject: apply for keywords
In-Reply-To: <3B4C89BA.DB51C3A7@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
References: <3B4C89BA.DB51C3A7@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <15180.37004.311840.505057@beluga.mojam.com>

    Curtis> Can you use "apply" to pass keywords?

Yup.  Third argument is an optional dictionary representing the keyword args
to the function you're calling:

    apply(foo, (), {"bar": 1})

Note that since 2.0 Python has a nice shortcut that allows you to call
functions taking variable arguments from other similarly signatured
functions.   So, instead of

    apply(spam, args, kwds)

where args is a tuple and kwds is a dict, you can write:

    spam(*args, **kwds)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Fri Jul  6 15:59:17 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 19:59:17 GMT
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i55al$oqv$8@216.39.170.247>

In article <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list at python.org>, rnd at onego.ru 
says...
> On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:
> 
> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
> >> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
> >> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
> >> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
> >
> >Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
> >to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
> >manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?
> 
> Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
> development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
> have COM for whatever is in their system.
> 
> >At least under Windows, it would seem that having solid ODBC and COM
> >support should pretty much cover in Python anything you'd do elsewhere.
> >
> >On other environments, direct support for a particular database is
> >likely to be more desirable, as it's more typical in those
> >environments, but as you've noted, there's a plethora of support
> >modules for various databases - some at various levels.
> 
> We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
> to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
> purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.
> 
> >--
> >-- David
> 
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> 

If you don't mind spending $$, then COM and ASP are most definately an 
option on Unix. Check out ChiliASP (www.chilisoft.com ?). Even COM all by 
it's lonesome is available for Unix since ChiliSoft uses a COM library 
from a 3rd party supplier.

Dave LeBlanc


From danyelf at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 03:50:33 2001
From: danyelf at ics.uci.edu (Danyel Fisher)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:50:33 -0700
Subject: Memory usage, in droves
Message-ID: <9jr62c$16d$1@news.service.uci.edu>

I've been running a mail ... well, all sorts of stuff, including digester,
that sucks a lot of stuff into memory. As a test, it has been digesting
the python mailing list every 24 hours or so. Phew! That is a big pile
of data. It's multi-threaded, failry complex, and has a fair number of
little twiddly bits.

I just went away for two weeks. I came back to note that it was eating
something like 79% of my linux box's memory--something over 100
MB.

So I want to figure out the memory leaks--what objects am I not letting go?
What is the GC missing?

I can certainly search for the inefficiencies and the errors by hand, but it
seems to me that there ought to be a way to generate a table of the form
    <object name>    <object size>

I like the gc.debug() and associated cookbook recipe; but I'm looking,
too, to learn what I'm simply forgetting about. Yes, weak references
are valuable, and is careful use of explicit deletion. What I'm curious
about, though, is whether there's a way to get a sense of what is
floating around in memory. What the heck _am_ I doing with all
that memory?

Danyel





From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 23:52:48 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:52:48 -0400
Subject: garbage collector
In-Reply-To: <20010726142931.53348.qmail@web14805.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEJELBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[franck delarue]
> I use python1 with a lot of object (dictionnairies +
> lists) and my program takes 3 or 4 hours to execute on
> a 4 processors (700 mghz) and 2 Go Ram machine (linux
> red hat).
> The problem is that when the program is finished,
> python still continues to delete the objects (I've put
> some "print" to see when the "del" function is
> executed) during about 30 minutes.
> Is that normal ?

For your particular app as currently written, apparently "yes".  It's
unusual in general, but common enough for apps that greatly exceed VM -- it
can take a very long time at shutdown to page in all the objects again to
decrement their refcounts.

> Is there a solution to stop the program correctly ?
> ("ctrl+alt+del" or "kill -9 XXX" works but i don't feel satisfied)

You can use os._exit() (note:  not the same as sys.exit()) if you don't care
about clean-up handling.  That's extreme, though.





From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Fri Jul 27 15:34:44 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:34:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: scoping problems
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D58C@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107271529320.258-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:

> > From: Narayan Desai [mailto:desai at mcs.anl.gov]
> > 
> > How can i define the following code:
> > 
> > def a():
> >     b()
> > 
> > def b():
> >     a()
> > 
> 
> What's wrong with that code? (did you try it in the interpreter?)
> 
> -- bjorn
> 

I'm not sure what he's trying to do with the above code, 
but with generators in 2.2, you can do:

>>> from __future__ import generators
>>> def a():
...     yield b()
... 
>>> def b():
...     yield a()
... 
>>> a()    
<generator object at 0x9759ec>
>>> a().next
<method-wrapper object at 0x80d870>
>>> a().next()
<generator object at 0x80546c>
>>> a().next().next()
<generator object at 0x806e2c>
>>> a().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x805d7c>
>>> a().next().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x80548c>
>>> a().next().next().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x805d7c>
>>> a().next().next().next().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x80548c>
>>> a().next().next().next().next().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x805d9c>
>>> a().next().next().next().next().next().next().next().next()
<generator object at 0x805d7c>
>>> 

I'm not sure what THAT is good for either, but at least it doesn't
stack overflow!

I keep finding more and more amazing uses for this new feature! ;-) 

-- Steve Majewski






From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 20:12:56 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 20:12:56 -0400
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <uwv4vut4n.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> writes:

> how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
> display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't find
> it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh well
> any ideas out there?

Assuming you mean under Windows...

Since the concept of "drives" is an operating-system specific issue,
it's not something in the standard Python libraries, but something
that you generally need to handle in an OS-specific manner.  Sometimes
you'll find such stuff in the os module, but in this case you're
better off with the win32all package which provides interfaces to
windows-specific functions.

win32all is a package that can be installed on top of a stock Python
installation, or in some distributions, like ActiveState, may be
included already.

The simplest method is via the win32api module:

    >>> import win32api
    >>> import string
    >>> string.split(win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings(),'\0')[:-1]
    ['A:\\', 'C:\\', 'D:\\', 'E:\\']

The actual code is mildly complex, as I'm doing three things at once.
GetLogicalDriveStrings (which is a native Windows function) returns a
single string with the drives separated by NUL characters (\x00).  It
also terminates the list with an extra NUL.

So, I take that string, and then split it on the NULs.  This yields a
list of which the final entry will always be the empty string ('') due
to the extra NUL terminator, so I take a slice of that list to exclude
the final element.

There is also a GetLogicalDrives() that returns a bitmask, which may or
may not be more suitable for your purposes.

Another poster suggested iterating through possible drives using
os.path.exist() which will also work, but will end up activating all
the devices it tries (e.g., your floppy disk may try to be accessed,
and/or the CDROM may spin up briefly), and since the notion of
existence of a drive is platform specific, it's probably worth too
much trying to keep the check platform independent.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 11:47:35 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:47:35 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

[Posted & mailed]

"Dale Strickland-Clark" <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote in message
news:ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh at 4ax.com...
> Is there a class that simplifies high-level argument decoding under the
control of a template?
>
> Such a class would take a string as a template and the arg list and return
another list populated
> with keys, values and switches taken from the args.
>
> I've spent the last hour going through the global module list. If it's
there, its got a daft name!
]
So the getopts module wouldn't be any use to you, then? ;-)

I think it has that stupid name because the Unix C library with similar
functionality uses the exact same stupid name.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 15:55:09 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:55:09 GMT
Subject: Learning Python
References: <20010724.144042.1258638252.27706@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <xok77.25456$EP6.6044914@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:20010724.144042.1258638252.27706 at localhost.localdomain...
> I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
> program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.

Have you already looked at sources available at or through python.org?




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 03:14:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:14:24 -0400
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu> <3B6103B4.AF7AE15B@engcorp.com> <3B610A3C.5AF439E4@lsu.edu>
Message-ID: <3B6114D0.B8DB4C2F@engcorp.com>

Ratnakar Malla wrote:
> 
> [I'm running] Windows 2000.
> what I really wanted was some sort of "tail " kind of functionality.
> Unfortunately, there is no "tail" command in Windows. 

True, but I've had "tail" on all my DOS and Windows systems for a
decade.  If this is just to run on your own system, dig up an 
implementation of "tail" and save yourself the trouble of
reinventing the wheel.

> I was just wondering,
> if there is any better way than reading the entire file into memory.

Probably, but "better" is pretty much open to interpretation.
Do you mean faster?  Not likely to do better than readlines().  
Less memory-hungry?  Definitely possible.  More aesthetically 
appealing?  Get over it. :-)

> Anyways thanx for your reply. I am sticking with readlines()

You might find xreadlines() useful, or not.  (Only in the 2.1 release.  
Check the docs for module xreadlines.)  Unfortunately, I just tried 
slicing it and it doesn't like that (as clearly documented). :-(

If you are really worried about both performance and memory
consumption, but have a little certainty about the length
of the lines, you could use seek() to position a little 
way back from the end of the file (largest line length times
two plus some safety margin), then apply readlines()[-2:]

>>> f = open('autoexec.bat')
>>> f.seek(-50, 2)     # position 50 bytes before EOF
>>> f.readlines()[-2:]
['set pythonhome=c:\\a\\python\n', 'doskey >nul\n']

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 31 11:47:59 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:47:59 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996589321.24833.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9mdkpf.dd8.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:21:40 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> pisze:

>     Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
>     Guido> Checked into CVS!
> 
> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)'
> if x is a type or class instead of an instance?

Bad idea because it overlaps with the previous. You could not check
whether an object is an instance of some class (because of false
positives for objects representing its subclasses) nor whether it's
a subclass (because of false positives for instances).

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 15:37:26 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:37:26 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp3d7l9fya.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <un15ser61.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> > It seems to me that the only real argument against that is aesthetics,
> > or am I missing something?  Of course I'll play a little devil's
> > advocate and say that I probably agree with the aesthetic argument, but
> > only to the point where it breaks down against my concern for the
> > compatibility argument.
> 
> I don't see it as just aesthetics.  It's like the alleged bug that
> caused a figter jet to flip over when crossing the equator, a subtle
> bug waiting to happen.

By aesthetics I just meant // being less logical as a CP4E division
operator than /.  You'd still be able to get the
as-accurate-as-possible result, but not with the most obvious operator
syntax.

But even if it was just aesthestics, I don't really like that syntax
either, so I definitely won't press this point :-)

BTW, when I read the PEP my take-away is that the problem behavior is
the int/int yielding int case.  Thus, to me having any single operator
that avoids the int/int->int case would be a potential resolution even
if the existing behavior is untouched.  The PEP seemed less clear that
I guess you also consider a problem that a single operator (/ today)
can yield both int or float as a result depending on operands.  So
perhaps that could be clarified in the PEP?

> I just decided that the new behavior won't become the default before
> Python 3.0.

Personally, the version numbers don't mean as much to me (I don't have
any higher management to "sell" this to), but I do think this may make
others lives a bit easier.

Ideally, this would also permit a few other such issues (if they
exist) to slip in over time during the next few 2.x releases and yet
the real breakage all be clustered in the future 3.0 release.

> > Unlike many (all?) of the prior backwards-incompatible features, which
> > first warn about breaking behavior and then fully break behavior, but
> > continue to do so visibly (e.g., "yield" remains a keyword), this one
> > ends up in a state where the break goes from being warned about to
> > being silent and no longer visible.  That might be part of my gut
> > concern about compatibility, as it makes me feel that there is a
> > window of opportunity to catch the problem, but if you miss it,
> > discovering dependencies on old behavior becomes very problematic.
> 
> Actually, nested scopes shares this property.  It's just that code
> affected adversely by nested scopes is pretty rare.

Drat - I hate it when that happens (losing weight behind an argument
because you've already missed a pre-existing similar case).

> > Doing a static analysis of
> > modules to find uses of division can help inspect older modules but
> > having runtime warnings may prove helpful when trying to make use of
> > an older module in a few years with a current Python.  This sort of
> > thing might even be helpful as a general recommendation for other
> > backwards-incompatible changes that by their nature become silent once
> > fully enabled.
> 
> An easy solution of course is to keep an older version of Python
> around and see if the code triggers any warnings with that version.

Good point.  The difficult part of this might be if testing the module
is part of a larger system that uses newer modules requiring a later
interpreter, but clearly at worst a test harness could be written to
cover that.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu  Mon Jul  2 14:58:12 2001
From: lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:58:12 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <22U%6.3997$Kf3.32727@www.newsranger.com> <upubjy8y3.fsf@cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <8v307.4811$Kf3.40772@www.newsranger.com>

I tried using a try... except and there is no exception thrown. Also
I am printing the response (print tmp_output) and I get an empty
dictionary which means the mail was sent succesfully. I do receive the email
but just the first 17,988 bytes. I think you may be right it may have
something to do with Apache.

In article <upubjy8y3.fsf at cs.uu.nl>, piet at cs.uu.nl says...
>
>>>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:
>
>HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
>HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
>HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
>HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
>HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
>HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
>HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.
>
>Could it be the timeout of the HTTP server?
>Do you still get the response ("Mail sent!")?
>Anyway I would suggest you put a try except around the server.sendmail and
>print an error message if an exception is caught. Also print the response.
>-- 
>Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
>URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
>Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 16:31:29 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:31:29 -0500
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
In-Reply-To: <kuzoa4hf75.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com>
        <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com>
        <LF447.476898$eK2.98947068@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
        <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
        <kuzoa4hf75.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <15187.20257.96398.982571@beluga.mojam.com>

    >>> l1 = [1]
    >>> l2 = [2]
    >>> l1 += l2
    >>> l1
    [1, 2]

    vs.

    >>> l2.append(l1)
    >>> l2
    [2, [1]]

Note that list += another_list is defined as

    list.extend(another_list)

which does what you'd expect:

    >>> l1 = [1]
    >>> l2 = [2]
    >>> l1.extend(l2)
    >>> l1
    [1, 2]

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 07:59:06 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 07:59:06 -0400
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <g2327.45910$he.3173871@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B4943F0.35F0FADA@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <PZg27.49221$he.3398464@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

Chyr-Pyng:

That's why my first example was over-complicated. I was displaying email
messages parsed from a file after selection from a list item. All that code
was highly specific to my program, and shouldn't be expected to make much
sense to you. It's the insert() method of the Text and scrolledText objects
I ws trying to pint you at!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Chyr-Pyng Su" <cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote in message
news:3B4943F0.35F0FADA at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw...
> > OK, I was running a little too fast. The "self" in the code I showed you
> > referred to the object whose class implementation I had extracted the
code
> > from, so you all you need to know is that is was the parent of the
> > Pmw.ScrolledText object in which I was rendering text.
> >
> > Suppose that the error message returned by the wrapped C function has
been
> > stored in st. To create a Text widget in a separate top-level window and
> > display the message in it, you would do (something like: warning,
untested):
> >
> >         msgWindow = Toplevel(height=350, width=500)
> >         msgWindow.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
> >         msgWindow.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
> >         t = Text(msgWindow)
> >         grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
> >         t.insert(END, st)
> >
> > I have here assumed that like most Tkinter programmers you have used
"from
> > Tkinter import *", and that you are using (or are prepared to use) the
grid
> > geometry management.
> >
> > Does this make it any clearer?
> >
> > regards
> >  Steve
> > --
> > http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>  :>  I know 'self', but the question is 'index' .  The following code
segment
> is what I really
> interesting. That is, how to catch the message that transfer from wrapped
c
> function.
>
> strmes =
> self.index.Message(self.MsgSet[int(self.msgList.curselection()[0])][0])
>                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>         message = mimecntl.MIME_document(strmes)
>                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>         for hdr in ("from", "date", "subject", "to", "cc"):
>              try:
>                  hdrline = message[hdr]
>                  t.insert(END, "%s:     %s\n" %
> (string.capitalize(hdr),hdrline))
>              except KeyError:
>                  pass
>
> From my experiment, Using Pmw package to write my GUI, the dumped message
from
> C
> will popup a error message dialog, but this won't happen when I implement
GUI
> in original Tkinter package.  Could you explain the MsgSet..
MIME_document...
> these functions..
> or tell me where to find related document that describe those mechanism,
so
> that I can study
> it. I can't find these stuff in Pmw or Tkinter document... :p
>
> Thanks....
>
>
>
> --
>  ??????   Su, Chyr-Pyng                               o888o V o888o
>  VLSI Design, Testing and Fault Tolerance Lab.       o8 ~__   __  8o
>  EE. National Tsing Hau Univ. Taiwan                 88o   ooo   o88
>                                                         o 8^ ^8 o
>  E-Mail: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw                    /- 88_____88 -\
>  WWW:    http://larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~cpsu            _\   qioip   /_
>
>
>




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 19 12:47:20 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:47:20 -0600
Subject: Threads
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55B@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Tatiana Evers [mailto:tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm here again with more problems....;o)
> I need use threads in Python. How does interaction between 
> threads work? How
> do they communicate?

You can communicate through regular thread global variables (ie.
variables that are visible to functions running in each thread). You'll
want to read up on threading.Lock() to prevent multiple thread from
assigning to the same variable at the same time.

As an alternative, you could use module Queue...

-- bjorn



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul  3 18:41:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 18:41:14 -0400
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994155184.16109.python-list@python.org> <9hsds501vk3@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <uzoalzldh.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> *WHY* is it apparently so durned HARD?!  Why do people keep
> saying "ASP" as if it somehow IMPLIED a language choice when
> one can perfectly well run any number of languages even on
> the *SAME SINGLE* Active Server Page?!  Microsoft brainwashing?
> Anti-Microsoft brainwashing?  I don't really understand.
(...)
>                                                But Microsoft
> HAS been highlighting in glow-in-the-dark bright orance that
> THEIR environments are FULLY multi-language, since day one.
> Is Microsoft marketing really SO feeble that they still have
> not been able to get THIS single VERY simple point across?!

As someone who only finally had to deal with ASP pages this year, I
can say that until I started working with it, that I certainly might
have made the same mistake as referring to ASP as if it was more than
just the environment.  It's far more common to see references to
IIS/ASP (both in and out of Microsoft stuff) than to see references to
the actual default scripting language (VBScript?) involved.  At least
I found it so.

It's crystal clear when you actually start using it, but if you're
just talking hypothetically (perhaps the original poster had not
actually done any ASP work), it's pretty easy to make that mistake
IMO.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From finlay at moeraki.com  Thu Jul 26 23:30:17 2001
From: finlay at moeraki.com (John Finlay)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:30:17 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010726.203013.159259470.7431@shmoe.stooges.moeraki.com>

Most engineers likely weren't given any choice - i.e. FORTRAN was what was
available for many years and the only programming language taught to
engineers. Many of us were only too happy to leave the problems of FORTRAN
behind and use C, PASCAL and other languages. Others stayed with the beast
they knew.

Just to add a personal data point: I've taught quite a few people
something about C, Scheme, Lisp, Basic both formally and informally over
20 years and I never found anyone to have a problem with case sensitivity
- most seem to realize that something that looks different is different
i.e. name is not the same as NAME. This may have something to do with
speaking English. I usually find that other concepts are much more
difficult for beginners to grasp.

John

In article <cp7kwyqfce.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, "Guido van
Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote:


> Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> writes:
>> I'll just chime in to say that as one who uses Python for
>> science/engineering, I would be very unhappy not to be able to define
>> the variables h and H to mean two different things.  Engineers often
>> uses case to distinguish between the function and it's Fourier
>> transform for example.
> How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
> preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
> C++...
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From christian.aastorp.ingen.uadressert at siemens.no  Sat Jul 14 13:06:01 2001
From: christian.aastorp.ingen.uadressert at siemens.no (Christian Aastorp)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:06:01 GMT
Subject: Activestate Python, not able to run "Module Documentation Server" on standalone computer
Message-ID: <3b507b2b.1396350535@news.mch.sni.de>

The Module Documentation Server is quite nice, I run it on my computer
at work. But it fails when I try to run it at home with a message from
the browser that its unable to go on-line. 

Is it possible to run it on a stand-alone computer?



From volucris at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  2 16:15:26 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 15:15:26 -0500
Subject: Win32com
References: <mailman.994082583.16562.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b40d5e7$0$319$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

This is the code I used and it worked fine. Maybe you could post more code.

***Begin VB Code***

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Set PyObj = CreateObject("PythonComTest.TestClass")
    MsgBox PyObj.SomeMethod
End Sub

***End VB Code***


***Begin Python Code***

class PythonCOMTest:
    _public_methods_ = [ 'SomeMethod']
    _reg_progid_ = "PythonComTest.TestClass"
    _reg_clsid_ = "{41E24E95-D45A-11D2-852C-204C4F4F5020}"
    def SomeMethod(self):
        return "Hello!"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print "Registering COM server..."
    import win32com.server.register
    win32com.server.register.UseCommandLine(PythonCOMTest)

***End Python Code***

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."


"Mamoon Khan" <mamoonk at nortelnetworks.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994082583.16562.python-list at python.org...
> I am trying to create a ComServer .  Following is some part of the code
that
> you guys need to see if I am doing it right.
>
> _public_methods_ = [ 'SomeMethod']
> _reg_progid_ = "PythonComTest.TestClass"
> _reg_clsid_ = "{41E24E95-D45A-11D2-852C-204C4F4F5020}"
>
> Here the vb code that I am using
>
> Dim SomeServer as Variant
> Set SomeServer = CreateObject(PythonComTest.TestClass")
>
> msgbox SomeServer.SomeMethod()
>
>
> I can register the Com Server fine and can call it from within python
using
> createobject no problem.
>
> When I go to use it from VB I can create an object SomeServer fine but
when
> I call a method and return a string from a function and try to display the
> results in a message box, I get an error invalid type.
>
> Could someone tell me what the heck is going on here with this.
>
> TIA
>
> Mamoon
>
>




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul 23 20:37:25 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:37:25 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com>

Chris Barker wrote:
> pain it is likely to cause by:
>    A) Breaking old code
>    B) Making it very difficult to write code that can run on old and new
> version of the interpreter.
> 
> It seems that since (3) is the big stumbling block, perhaps we need to
> focus our intentions on how to make not only this change, but other
> potential changes less painful. It's too late now, but ideally, Python
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
Not to be abrupt, but if it is too late now, why bother mentioning it?

I effectively stopped considering Python for new projects as of last night.
I can't read Guido's mind, I don't know what other code-breaking changes he
might be considering. I'm not sure he even knows. Where else is he going to
be convinced that "evil" lies in the language and needs to be exorcised?


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 04:10:41 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:10:41 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <slrn9laetc.lhu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181208020.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

Purely on subject: 

it is great Python is ONLY 2 times slower than Perl.
In my experience, Perl in only 2 times slower than C.

This makes Python to be only 4 times slower than C. Not bad
for the _interpreter_.

Can you compare this with Java?

My guess is that you will only wait Java starting up
10 secs ;-)


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 10 14:40:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 18:40:01 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com> <slrn9ki0e0.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B4AC204.80941297@tundraware.com> <9ieic40622@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B4AE8.355B4A8B@tundraware.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
> news:3B4AC204.80941297 at tundraware.com...
> > Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > This works for me:
> > >
> > >     try:
> > >         input = raw_input()
> > >     except KeyboardInterrupt:
> > >         # handle Ctrl-C
> > >
> > > The only difference I see is the capital 'B' you have in
> > > 'KeyboardInterrupt'.  Change it to lowercase and see what happens.
> >
> > (Whoops, I spelled it wrong here, but correctly in my program.)
> >
> > This code fragment works fine under Unix (FreeBSD 4.3) but not under
> > Windows 2000.  Is this a known bug or is there some magic I'm missing?
> 
> It seems to me (trying under NT4) that raw_input() is generating
> an EOFError on Ctrl-C (or Ctrl-Break) rather than the exception
> you (reasonably expect), i.e. KeyboardInterrupt.  Maybe try an
>     except (KeyboardInterrupt, EOFError):
>         # whatever
> to catch both...?  Of course, on Unix EOFError would happen if
> the user hit Ctrl-D rather than Ctrl-C, and on Windows also on
> Ctrl-Z followed by a return, but...
> 
> Alex

Nope, the traceback is definitely showing a KeyboardError.  I did what
you suggested just to be sure, but still no go.  What's weird is that
the code below works on unix (freebsd) and IDLE on win2k, but not python itself
on win2k...

while 1:
    try:
        x = raw_input().upper()
        print x
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print "Leaving Dodge...\n"
        break
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 09:35:24 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:35:24 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldogs.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:53:59 +0100, Michael Abbott <michael at rcp.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I haven't yet tried writing anything in OCaml, but I'm anticipating being
>let down by the library support in comparison with Python, particularly on
>Win32!

This is a common problem when using a little-known language.

Supposedly, Microsoft's C# and CLR system will provide a fix for
this, by allowing the programmer to use any language that compiles
to CLR to call a routine in any other language that does.

Does anyone have details on this?

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul  4 17:54:18 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 14:54:18 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041355150.7776-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <3B43908A.C82B95CC@ActiveState.com>

Bruce Sass wrote:
> 
>..
> 
> I think this needs a PEP from the core Python developers,
> for four reasons:

I have only a meta-comment. After years of discussions about Python
CPAN, I can see two things that are guaranteed to kill any effort:

 1. The requirement that it be sophisticated, comprehensive, logically
consistent from the start.

 2. The requirement that the core team be deeply involved in its
creation.

> 1) anything less is "just" third-party (no matter how well done)

Well, that's better than what we have today. And the Vaults (what we
have today) is better than what we had before it. Incremental steps are
the only path that will lead to success.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 15 14:31:39 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 11:31:39 -0700
Subject: How to add type "int" to string ?
References: <692684d4.0107150512.5b7d9ccd@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B51E18B.CD138DAE@alcyone.com>

shuibo wrote:

> Hello all :
> in my program I want to give a char variable a Hex value , for example
> :
> a = "Hello World"
> a = a + 0x00
> but it display "cannot add type int to string"
> what can I do ?

What are you intending to do?  It's not clear from your example.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ So look into my eyes / I won't tell you lies
\__/ Neneh Cherry
    Alcyone Systems / http://www.alcyone.com/
 Alcyone Systems, San Jose, California.


From aetodd at wm.edu  Tue Jul  3 08:55:32 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:55:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Calculus
Message-ID: <994164932.3b41c0c4bc046@webmail1.wm.edu>

I wrote:
>Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

Sheila King wrote:
>What are you talking about? Do you mean a newsgroup for 
>discussing calculus?

No. I probably was too brief. I meant a module for Python 
that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example, 
the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find 
the error. Sorry for the confusion.

Andrew ~ elecfish
aetodd at wm.edu



From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 28 13:36:43 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:36:43 +0500
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <9jvsio$j4r$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

Alex wrote:

> Goodness, without import, python's close to useless.  

Well, of course.  But where to import?  What's the most common idiom?

import sys, os, string

or 

import sys
import os
import string

or 

import sys as _sys

and where Python programmers expect to see the imports?

> I'm not sure what advantage there might be to deleting module references
> in a function's scope just prior to leaving it.  I would have thought
> the reference was usually dropped at that point, anyway.

After digging at Google Groups, I think that it might have been a comment 
about importing and then deleting at the module level.  At least, I see 
that the timbot is still explaining why threading.py does this.

import sys
import time
import thread
import traceback
import StringIO

# Rename some stuff so "from threading import *" is safe

_sys = sys
del sys

_time = time.time
_sleep = time.sleep
del time

still-seeking-elightenment-ly yours
---Tom



From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 21:12:32 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:12:32 -0400
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com> <uwv4vut4n.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <3B60C000.F15559C0@engcorp.com>

David Bolen wrote:
> The simplest method is via the win32api module:
> 
>     >>> import win32api
>     >>> import string
>     >>> string.split(win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings(),'\0')[:-1]
>     ['A:\\', 'C:\\', 'D:\\', 'E:\\']

Nice to see that even with something as platform-dependent
and non-core as this, the "one obvious way to do it" 
claim holds up well. :-)

I'm curious why mine[**] returns lower-case results while
yours gives upper case.  I'm on Windows 98 first release,
running from the DOS prompt.  Is even this trivial thing
inconsistent across different versions of the Win32 API?!

----

[**] from my answer to the question:
>>> import win32api
>>> drives = win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings()
>>> drives
'a:\\\x00c:\\\x00d:\\\x00e:\\\x00v:\\\x00'
>>> drives.split('\x00')[:-1]
['a:\\', 'c:\\', 'd:\\', 'e:\\', 'v:\\']

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul  5 16:11:40 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 16:11:40 -0400
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
References: <mailman.994361230.19417.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdelrvqgoz.fsf@cutter-john.mit.edu>

"Netscape has a bug.  Film at 11."

Alex.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 24 18:18:30 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:18:30 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <roy-2E6A21.08305123072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DF436.4E17F373@ActiveState.com>

Roy Smith wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The thing that scares me most about this idea is that it breaks existing
> code.  And, the idea that there will be conversion tools, and auto-warnings
> generated, don't impress me.  You still need to touch all the old code.
> What about code that you've shipped to customers already?  Are we going to
> demand that they not upgrade their python installation, or that they
> maintain a new version for their own work and an old version to keep our
> stuff going?

Languages that choose not to ever break backwards compatibility end up
becoming very ugly because of the accumulation of warts. C++ anyone?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 20 11:18:41 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 15:18:41 GMT
Subject: python sha module and ldap
References: <3b56f2e7$0$26381@reader4>
Message-ID: <9j9i4h$mks$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

According to  <lawick at wanadoo.nl>:
> >>> import sha pwd='secret' so=sha.new(pwd) print so.hexdigest()
> e5e9fa1ba31ecd1ae84f75caaa474f3a663f05f4
> 
> With openldap, a sha can be generated like this: joost at saba:~ >
> ldappasswd -h saba -t "" -vv -n -Hsha -e geheim
> :{sha}kGByAB793z4R5tK1eC9Hd/4Dhzk=
> 
> The two don't match because Python sha is hex and ldap not. How can I
> make them match?

Here's a guess: the LDAP output is the base64 encoding of the binary
digest.



-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 15:41:48 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:41:48 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:45:12 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:

>>But ints *are* implicitly converted to floats when needed
> 
> Language design mistake.

It allows to write code which increments a number of unknown type
by one. How would you write it in your universe?

It can be written in Python 2.2 changed to disallow implicit
conversions:
    def add_one(x):
        return x + type(x)(1)
but I'm not convinced that we should require this style.

Your view is practical as long as you can convert to a type
depending on the context or write literals having a type depending
on the context. This is how Haskell works, where (+) only works for
arguments of the same type, and in x+1 the 1 denotes an Integer if
x is an Integer, a Double if x is a Double, a Rational if x is a
Rational etc., and (+) is overloaded likewise.

It can't be adapted for Python because it doesn't have static types
and the meaning of an expression can't depend on how it will be used.
So it uses implicit conversions instead: although 2 isn't already
a float or rational, it can be used as such if needed. This works too.

BTW, in Haskell 1/2 can be a Rational or Double or any numeric type
which supports fractions, which doesn't include Integer. Integer
division is spelled div (as a function) or `div` (as an operator).
Haskell could choose to overload (/), to let it mean one thing for
Integers and another for Doubles. But it didn't do that. Actually
there is no builtin type which has both (/) and div defined. And it
provides both div+mod and quot+rem. Explicit is better than implicit.

I know no language which doesn't do implicit conversions from integer
to float *and* doesn't signal this error at compile time. There are
only languages like OCaml with completely disjoint integer and float
arithmetic, with separate literals and separate operators.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From just at letterror.com  Tue Jul 24 11:55:37 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:55:37 +0200
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com> <slrn.pl.9lr1n5.i0e.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3B5D9A79.67BADF71@letterror.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> 
> Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:20:44 +0200, Klaus-G. Meyer <klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com> pisze:
> 
> > But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?
> >
> > 99999*99999 -> integer overflow
> 
> That's why I want int and long unified.

And that's in fact being discussed as well.

Just


From writeson at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 27 14:06:11 2001
From: writeson at earthlink.net (Doug Farrell)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:06:11 GMT
Subject: Python & wxPython on Solaris 2.6
Message-ID: <n4i87.1113$bl1.180691@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the Unix/Linux environment, so bear with me. I'm trying to
get Python and wxPython to run on my Sun/Solaris 2.6 Ultra 5 workstation at
work and I'm having a little trouble. I've gotten gcc from
www.sunfreeware.com and installed that along with glib and gtk+ on the Sun.
I've also installed Python 2.1 from ActiveState since they had a binary
version for the sun that runs. Now I'm trying to install wxGTK+ on the
machine and not having much luck. I've done this:

./configure --with-gtk

and it seems to build a Makefile okay. But when I run make I get errors.
Some of which are caused by space characters where there should only be tabs
in the Makefile. When I fix these I still get errors as it looks like the
Makefile doesn't know how to build all the *.o files.

I'm not sure where to go from here and I'm looking for some help. Can anyone
direct me on how I might get Python and wxPython to work on the Solaris 2.6
platform? I'm trying to evangelize <g> at the office to get people to use
Python rather than Unix shell scripts for our scripting programming
language.

Thanks in advance,
Doug Farrell




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 09:53:25 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:53:25 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <k154KKAx2RY7EwC2@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cppuam4gxj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> well I have at least one extension that requires 32 bit unsigned as
> inputs. Under existing python I can manipulate myself around bit 31
> problems with ease (using negative numbers or hex). It seems it
> will/might be a bit more complicated if this pep goes through. I'm sure
> there are others who have explicit int size requirements. Effectively
> removing ints takes away ease of external communication in at least some
> cases.

This is easily solved by taking the result modulo 2**32.  Python
extensions with unsigned 32-bit inputs or outputs generally Python
longs.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 12:02:14 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:02:14 -0500
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
In-Reply-To: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15206.54918.70634.316126@beluga.mojam.com>

    Dale> Is there a class that simplifies high-level argument decoding
    Dale> under the control of a template?  Such a class would take a string
    Dale> as a template and the arg list and return another list populated
    Dale> with keys, values and switches taken from the args.

I think you want the getopt module.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Thu Jul 19 16:11:57 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 20:11:57 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com> <mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lefod.mv2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

17 Jul 2001 17:50:16 -0400, Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> pisze:

> I'm still dreaming about an automatic Perl to Python converter.
> Despite many consider this is not possible, I stick with my naive
> impression we could do something about it.

How would you translate
    eval $x;
?

> Would you believe, this is the first step which looks most difficult
> to me.  Parsing Perl might not be that difficult after all, but
> its tokenizer is extremely hairy, and rather discouraging.

Indeed Perl has a simple syntax. Lexical structure is what makes
it a unique language...

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul 10 03:10:07 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:10:07 GMT
Subject: SMTP server class ??
Message-ID: <d0alktgu1k5qvlt2bqdmb8l0k1rlmqm6ie@4ax.com>

Has anyone written a SMTP server class?

If you have written one, or know of one, that is available, I'd sure
appreciate having access to the code.

Actually, I found what Barry Warsaw calls his "experimental" smtp server
(RFC821 compliant) at the Vaults at Parnassus. I've downloaded it.

Any others out there?


--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 22:50:23 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:50:23 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995328450.15230.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l7alj.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> dijo:
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> Re: having a bad day, no problem.

Thx.

> ... but I'll bet that on the Perl mailing lists you'll hear
> a lot of Java-bashing.

Not in my experience.  In fact, the most common references to non-Perl
technologies is re. HTML/JavaScript (which are rather abrubtly led
toward other NGs).  In my memory, Python has been brought up several
times in clpmisc in a very _positive_ way: endorsing it....which is how
I came to check it out myself.  If it hadn't been for Abigail (a p5p),
I'd never have tried Python.

AFAIK, the only larger source of aggression than the anti-Perl
Pythonistas is the anti-C++ Smalltalkers.  <wink>

-- 
Well of *course* Perl should not be taught to everyone. It should
only be taught to people who want to like their computers.
	-- Larry Wall


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 08:19:49 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 08:19:49 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62rq.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdbsmkrhqa.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <87ae23u4re.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:

> Yes, but what if item == None, or item == ''?

This doesn't matter.  The return value of C.get(item) is either None
or the _value_ of C[item] (which is always 1 in this instance).

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
Remember, volume changes with the inverse square of the  
distance  -- GT Trombones
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtULWUACgkQjVztv3T8pzsBXACcDDz/xi9pel1Uh1Z6dHbOpkKA
CggAn0H8AcQOWZjdpogarFTToan83jch
=b8br
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Mon Jul  2 11:54:37 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 17:54:37 +0200
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
References: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m3vglbjphe.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) writes:

> write interactive games, parse XML, yet still can not perform the more
> basic tasks of hitting a database and generating a report.

Although I am not doing any of this myself, I know that others do. If
you feel that some particular interface module is missing, then

1) State precisely what you need and can't find. An interface to some
   particular database system? To some particular web server?

2) See what others have to propose.

3) If nothing suitable exists, try to create a group of developers
   that work on it.

The principle of Open Source software development is "take what there
is, add what you need, and make it available to the community".

In the meantime, please let those of us who work in domains that you
consider "eclectic" go on. There's room for all of us.

> champions are made of.  Python excels at everything except the basics,
> the very tasks which make it acceptible.

I don't think you will find many people in this group who share this
opinion. Python works very well for most of us. And when something
turns out to be less than perfect, we work on it. Just complaining
is not productive.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 11 23:52:59 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:52:59 -0400
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <3b4c99fe.1647222100@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIENDKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Bengt Richter]
> I would guess the general purpose str already does something
> internally specialized for longs.

Yes it does.  Every type gets to implement its own routine for repr() (and
at the Python level, every class gets to implement its own too-- if it wants
to --via defining a __repr__ method, and/or a __str__ method).

> However, the % operator is even more general purpose, and you may
> note that I used it to trim my trees in strL (because it is faster
> than carrying strLR's recursion all the way down to w=1 and chr(48+n)).

And %d defers right back to the long repr routine!

> BDFL & Tim & co probably just had better things to do than cater
> to the small percentage of strange people with programs
> that need to convert longs to multi-kilo-digit integers ;-)

We *do* cater to it, but only in the power-of-2 forms:  hex(long) and
oct(long) are linear-time, and you're not going to beat those with Python
code.  For base 10, it's a dead-simple loop that just divides by 10 over and
over again; this is quadratic-time in the number of digits.

> I'm sure they know how to do this kind of thing very well,
> but if they think it's worth the seldom-used-bloat-increment,
> they're certainly welcome to take strL and make it truly
> Python-worthy and incorporate it.

The rub is that while this kind of thing is fun and easy to program in
Python, it's a total pain in the ass to program in C, and indeed leads to
code bloat.  Since Python longs use base 2**15 internally, converting to
power-of-2 bases is both simple and fast in C, so we settled for that.

Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin long *!
Hint:  recursion <wink>.

You can even write Python routines to do str(dict) and str(list) much faster
than the builtins, for very large dicts and lists.  But you have to hurry on
those, because Python 2.2 will finally use linear-time algorithms for those
under the covers.

> (Maybe I'd find out how to keep everything but strL invisible from
> the user, and make strLR nested without triggering a warning ;-)

Use Python 2.1, nest the helper functions, and put

from __future__ import nested_scopes

at the top of the module.  Heh -- you probably think I'm kidding.

but-i'm-not-ly y'rs  - tim




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 12:13:38 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:13:38 +0200
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9k6lfl02mrj@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Rajarshi Guha" <rajarshi at seed.chem.psu.edu> wrote in message
news:9k6ilm$2sed8$1 at ID-91520.news.dfncis.de...
> Hi,
>   is there a sleep function in the Python library. I've beens earching
> throught the modules but could'nt seem to find one. BTW, is there any way

Function sleep of module time is probably what you want.

> to search the Python docs for a specific function/module etc? Or is there

If you use the .CHM (Compiled HTML) form of Python's docs, you
get a search engine included, but I think .CHM only runs on
Windows.

> any resource on the web that provides a searchable interface?

Yes, it's called Google.

http://www.google.com/search?q=python+sleep
(which you can also enter interactively, visiting www.google.com
and typing
    python sleep
into the textbox) gives you 39,300 hits, of which the first
one is http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/2609
an entry from FAQTS titled "Does python have a sleep function?"
and providing the answer too.


Alex





From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 17 17:36:09 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:36:09 -0600
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D552@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Christopher A. Craig [mailto:com-nospam at ccraig.org]
> 
> Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> writes:
> 
> > if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
> > since global variable access is slower than local variable access.
> 
> This is, in this case, incorrect.  Unless I am horribly mistaken, the
> higher cost of dealing with globals is that you first have to do a
> failed lookup in the local dictionary.  (Plus failed lookups are more
> expensive than successful ones)  
> 
> In this particular case the local dictionary is the same as the global
> one, so I don't see how moving to a function would offer a 
> time savings.

Actually, it increases performance by ~15%.

-- bjorn



From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 12:09:11 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:09:11 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com>
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
        <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com>
        <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <15200.16551.855871.455516@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> The short reason for this is that connection-oriented solutions
    Tim> like RPCs create very "brittle" applications in highly distributed,
    Tim> high-performance environments.  I am thus less than enthusiastic
    Tim> about SOAP as a solution.

I'd suggest that most of the applications that use SOAP or XML-RPC are not
"applications in highly distributed, high-performance environments".  Highly
distributed, yes, if you're talking about over the Internet.  Most uses I'm
aware of, however, are not meant to be high-performance the way you mean it.

I have a server that uses XML-RPC to service requests.  Fairly high-level
requests are made to it for information from a MySQL database.  For every
request to the XML-RPC server, it may make tens to hundreds of requests to
the MySQL database.  The machine-independence, language-independence, and
ease of extension of the server far outweigh its performance shortfalls.

While SOAP and XML-RPC are definitely not the bees knees for extremely
high-performance applications, they definitely seem to be filling a niche
for many people.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Tue Jul  3 10:37:12 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:37:12 -0700
Subject: OpenMP
Message-ID: <3B41D898.8B465492@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Python 1.52
IRIX 6.5
Fortran 77
using Pearu Peterson's FPIG

We're trying to get on of our fortran modules to us OpenMP.  We're
having some strange behaviors.  We are using 5 different fortran
modules.  Only one of them is using OpenMP.  Only that one has the
OpenMP library linked in.  However, that module affects the behavior of
the others.  If we don't import the OpenMP module, then everything works
normal.  Once that module gets imported, some things work a little
strange.
Right now, it seems to only be the OPEN function for opening files.  We
have to open a file as 'NEW' if we want to read it.  Anyone have any
clues as to why importing the OpenMP module would affect other modules
in this way?  Thanks.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 11 11:07:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:07:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Forth and Python side note
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101932480.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107111902400.2392-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

It's very intersting that searching revealed at least two
Forth interpreters written in Python:

google:"Forth Python"

One occured at Edu-sig in Oct 2000 and another one in 1994 in Python-list.

(But no one attemted to implement Python in Forth)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "186,000 miles/sec: Not just a good idea, it's the LAW." _/




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul  5 17:47:27 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:47:27 -0600
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library development
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E8@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paulp at ActiveState.com]

<snip>

> 
> Here's what an ActivePython user does to install 3 out of 4 those
> modules:
> 
> pyppm install Numeric
> pyppm install egenix-mx-base
> pyppm install PIL
> 

Which is just begging for someone to do:

  try:
    import Numeric
  except ImportError:
    import pyppm
    pyppm.install('Numeric')
    import Numeric

<wink>?

seriously-though-I'd-never-have-played-with-Numeric-if-not-for-pyppm'ly
y'rs
-- bjorn



From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul  8 09:34:24 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 08:34:24 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com>
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
	<458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>
	<TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
	<458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>
	<7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
	<458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15176.24928.684661.293765@beluga.mojam.com>

    Resty> By the way, someone should rename this thread "Is Python Dead?
    Resty> Long Live Python!" ...

Couldn't you have done that? ;-)

S



From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul 16 23:42:07 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:42:07 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: newbie question: what does "<...>" or "<input>" signify?
In-Reply-To: <e71960c5.0107161807.5fe749eb@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107170738140.2333-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

Did you mean this:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.stdout
<open file '<stdout>', mode 'w' at 0x25d820>

?

This is _informal_ (but used consistently everywhere) way to represent
inrepresentable objects as string and files of which nothing more is
known, like in the above example.

You can also encounter this kind of output:

>>> l = [0]
>>> l[0] = l
>>> l
[[...]]

- because l is recursively constructed (never do such an ugly
objects, please!).



Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From nperkins7 at home.com  Sat Jul  7 16:13:24 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 20:13:24 GMT
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <E3K17.433170$eK2.87951585@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

You need py2exe:

http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/


"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Hello,
> I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the file
> menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a hand
> with this it would be great.
>
>




From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 01:33:22 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:33:22 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <mty9pl96sp.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107190929240.18217-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:

>Roman Suzi writes:
>
>> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, John J. Lee wrote:
>>> On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>> cc -O2       0.28
>>>> cc           0.62
>>>> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
>>>> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
>>>> perl        28.9
>>>> python      66.8
>
>After re-compiling python with -O2, my result is:
>
>python     31.4
>
>which I find much more believable.  That optimization really helps!
>Perhaps the python configuration process should default to compiling
>with -O2 rather than with -O?

Is -O2 safe?

>> But in my applications speed is not the main virtue. The top thing is
>> express logic in a plain language and this is Python great at.
>
>I have a good bit of leisure time these days (i.e. I'm only barely
>employed), so I've been playing around with ocaml.  It's nice,
>although it took me a while to get up to really understand the
>language.  I like it, quite a bit, but then again I do numerics, so
>speed is always a blessing.

Unfortunately, I do not have leisure time now.

>If you have some time, take a look at ocaml.  It'll teach you
>something.  I don't know if you'll find it useful, but it's
>educational.
>
>> That is why I do not understand why Java is so popular:  it is not large
>> enough improvement over C/C++ in terms of source readability but still
>> poses serious overhead in execution speed... I have the feeling it stalled
>> at the middle between C++ and Python...
>
>I agree with you here, completely.  But it is nice to have GC...

>> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
>
>Heh.  My mother was born in Karelia, before she had to move rather
>rapidly to Finland around 1940.  I still would like to visit the area
>one of these days.  All right, so I'm rambling now.

You are welcome! You can also visit http://heninen.net , http://onego.ru
and/or http://karelia.ru to visit us virtually.
I hope, you do not feel bad toward current Karelia population
as some do.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 19, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The bigger they are, the harder they hit you." _/




From mikeb at mitre.org  Thu Jul 19 07:47:33 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:47:33 -0400
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice (24 recommended exercises)
References: <E15N2SE-00058T-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <3B56C8D5.5F218771@mitre.org>

Mike Brenner wrote:
> > ... most programmers don't write programs that meet specs. Most
> > programmer define greatness to be having fun while making money.
> > To be great in that sense, instead of meeting specs, write the
> > following Python programs (and for extra credit, do each program
> > twice -- once using wxPython graphics, and once using Jython.)
> 
> [snip list of trivial first-year programs ;-)]
> 
> I think you left out one small thing.  How, by writing those programs,
> fun it may be, would I make some money?
> 
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng. peter at engcorp.com

Hi Peter!

I agree that the majority of those exercises are first year exercises.

The 24 recommended exercises were for a person who stated they would
like to BEGIN a career in programming. Upon completion of about 20 out
of the 24 exercises they should be able to support themselves as a
computer programmer.

That is because they would have developed the basic Python and web
skills required. They would also be able to transfer those Python skills
over to Java or various mega-corporate languages.

You appear to be a different case, because you put "P.Eng." after your
name. People who have a degree or a professional license after their
name ALREADY have a resource that can make them money. Therefore, a
different set of recommended exercises would be needed to raises you to
the next level of YOUR game.

So, here are some exercises that you could probably sell to make money
for yourself at your level. Each exercise suggests who you could sell
the software to.


RECOMMENDED ADVANCED EXERCISES FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS

	1. FAA. Do a multi-player Air Controller game with 50 Air Traffic
Controllers controlling 10,000 aircraft in the sky over the country at
one time flying 10,000,000 people between the airports and airstrips of
a large country, preventing collisions and near collisions, both on the
ground, while in the neighborhood of an airport, and in between
airports. Maximize safety and Minimize passenger waiting time both on
the ground and in the air.

	2. NASA. Do a multi-object simulation game with 1,250,000 representing
all of the space junk, meteors, asteroids and comets that might hit the
earth as they bounce off all the gravitational fields of the planets.
Determine when and if each object will hit the Earth or leave meteor
trails.

	3. Army. Program the BOLO Tank, fully autonomous weapon system, which
according to the famous science fiction novel was invented by General
Motors in 1990 and in 1997 rebelled against the Army and determined that
the human race was the enemy and exterminated it. EXCEPT, program it to
not exterminate the human race. Using satellite sensors, the Bolo will
fly itself to any part of the world and shoot its target.

	4. Space Com. Do a satellite game that shows the portions of the Earth
covered by each satellite. Automatically pick the best satellites to
communicate with, to sense the earth with, to send signals across from
other satellites, etc.

	5. Air Force. Do an advanced three dimensional pilot station for a new
type of air-space fighter craft that acts like an airplane when in the
atmosphere but like a space craft above 80,000 feet. Track the pilot's
eyeballs to see what he is looking at on the radar scope. Read the
pilot's blood pressure helmet to see when she is emotionally angry, to
know when to fire the missiles. Integrate a bunch of radars, weapons,
defenses, escape mechanisms, communication systems, control systems,
backup systems, reentry systems, scientific research systems, satellite
repair systems, and atmospheric measurement systems into the game.

	6. CIA. Program a robot that understands English and obeys orders with
the intelligence of an 8 year old, but who never gets bored.

	7. Department of Clone Wars. Program a biological simulation of all the
genes in a DNA molecule that predicts what kind of monsters or diseases
will come out if you switch around a given set of genes.

	8. Mobile-Phone Companies. Program an interface that lets mobile phones
run applets, commercial windows software, commercial linux software,
Python programs, http, ftp, etc., SECURELY on wearable internet phones. 

	9. Mobile-Phone Companies. Program a method of surfing the internet
anonymously (including statistical anonymity) from mobile-phones.

	10. Proprietorship. Make a much better Internet Search Engine that
really understands natural language and finds what you wish.


Hope everyone who reads this finds a project that raises them to the
next level!




From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 12:17:44 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 20:17:44 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
In-Reply-To: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107012014530.32425-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Mexican Bandit wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Wondering of anyone can help - Python newbie. I'm trying to write a
>Python cgi script which outputs a gif or jpg image from another
>server...
>
>----
>import urllib
>
>print "Content-Type: image/jpeg"
>print
>
>image = urllib.urlopen("http://127.0.0.1/splogo.jpg")
>print image.read()

# Maybe:

import sys, urllib
sys.stdout.write("Content-Type: image/jpeg\n\n")
sys.stdout.write(urllib.urlopen("http://127.0.0.1/splogo.jpg").read())


>----
>
>The output of the image is corrupted. I suspect this is to do with
>'print' turning everything into strings?
>
>How do I output raw image data?
>
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 03:39:22 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:39:22 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

28 Jul 2001 14:49:14 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:

> Um...Guido, Scheme is broken!

I don't see how it is broken.

> You should have a completely *abstract* type hierarchy, representing
> the mathematical entities (e.g., "real" represents mathematical reals,
> quite independent of any possibility of a precise computer-based
> representation), and all the implementation types should inherit from
> those.

Python doesn't use abstract types. Interfaces are implicit. You may
group types under implicit interfaces yourself, it's not specified
in the language. There is no Python construct which would express
your meaning of "real".

> That is, "int" and "long" should be sibling subtypes of "integer";
> "int" should *not* be a subtype of "long" as in your proposal.

Everything works as long as you don't call it subtyping, so I propose
to not call it subtyping for the purpose of this discussion. Is
anything still broken?

> The handling of exactness is also broken.  Exactness is
> metainformation, like units.  It's probably wrong to put it in the
> language at all.  It's *certainly* wrong to say integers are always
> exact and floats always inexact.

Why? It's the most practical approach I know.

> If the exactness flag has to carried around externally (e.g., in
> the programmer's head) anyway, there isn't much point having an
> inexact concept of exactness in the language.

It doesn't have to be explicit in the language at all. But in practice
ints and rationals are usually exact, and you should rarely use them
as inexact, and that floats are inexact, and there is no much need
to rely on the fact that in some circumstances they can be exact.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From vesselinpeev at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 01:32:18 2001
From: vesselinpeev at hotmail.com (Vesselin Peev)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:32:18 +0300
Subject: How can I run precompiled code objects?
Message-ID: <F167WUP5t27eRBx9bup000005c5@hotmail.com>

Hello,

Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for 
example the ones created via

PyObject* Py_CompileString(char *str, char *filename, int start)

There's no explanation on the matter that I can find.

All I want to do is to execute different precompiled python code blocks from 
a C program (I have already embedded Python). I could make do without 
bytecode but then the speed would be much les.

Thanks in advance.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.




From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 15:45:44 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:45:44 GMT
Subject: PEP0238: overriding // (__intdiv__) ??
References: <snatltotvlevdqc7kaj1m8v82o5fv51543@4ax.com> <hPsZULAZzrX7Ew5X@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cpofq894ik.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> In article <snatltotvlevdqc7kaj1m8v82o5fv51543 at 4ax.com>, Kirby Urner
> <urner at alumni.princeton.edu> writes
> >
> >Maybe I missed it.  Did the PEP specify what we'd use to override
> >the // operator in a class?  __intdiv__ and __rintdiv__ ?  Seems
> >we'd need something like this, to have our objects play along.  And
> >I'd think this wrinkle should become available simultaneously with
> >//.

I haven't picked the names yet, but yes, these will be available.
What about __wdiv__ (for whole division) and __rdiv__ (for real
division; or rational division of you please :-).

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> If and when the grand type class unification takes place and ints,
> longs, floats rationals and the like are all properly sub-classable,
> will it possible to inject behaviours into those types? If so then I
> can trivially change '/' by changing the base implementations for
> the various types.

No, changes to the existing built-in types will be forbidden, partly
for low-level practical reasons (the type objects are shared between
multiple interpreters in the same address space) and partly out of
principle (the effect is probably more global than you think,
affecting all library code you use, implicitly or explicitly).

> I suppose that there are efficiency arguments involved, but the
> compiler must issue a divide instruction anyhow and leave it up to
> the operand classes to decide what to do.

Yes, that's why there will be four new slots in the "as number"
substructure of the type object: one for //, one for
/-under-future-division, and two more for augmented assignment
involving these two operators.  (This is not yet in the patch I
provided on SF.) 

> That way we could begin to treat this as a properly abstract
> programming language. It could of course lead to utter confusion.

Indeed.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 11:29:25 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:29:25 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com> <mailman.995927281.7201.python-list@python.org> <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com> <Xns90E862BBEA7B5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <vqiqltsf8tl5kuklp653tki84rkc9lggfe@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <pvg77.25330$EP6.5900068@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> 3.  I dislike % substitution because I dislike sprintf formatting,
and
>     besides - I tend to think it should specify the subscript for
the
>     data to substitute in the string - not just rely on the
list/tuple
>     order.

Off the subject of the thread, but ...

Are you aware of substitution by name and dictionary?  For instance

quot,rem = divmod(amount,100)
print 'most = %(quot)d, rest = %(rem)d' % locals()

These is easy to miss the first time thru the docs (oh, just like
sprintf),
and underutilized in quickly-written posted examples.

Terry J. Reedy




From rdesetty at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 09:45:08 2001
From: rdesetty at yahoo.com (rdesetty at yahoo.com)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:45:08 -0000
Subject: overriding of methods and variables in a class.
Message-ID: <9icch4+37ql@eGroups.com>

I dont seem to understand why a method name and a variable name is 
allowed to be same in a class. what is the use. Most importantly, 
Assuming that we have a class as follows:

class abc
# I am going to define a variable here.
var_x = 1
# now the function with the same name as the variable with say some 
#parameter
def var_x(abc)
    return abc+1

Now the question is how do i access the variable as well as the 
function (with the same name as the variable) say from another 
function. thanx in advance.





From bernhard at intevation.de  Mon Jul  2 13:47:30 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 17:47:30 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
    <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
    <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
    <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <cppubkkbhf.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
	Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) writes:
> 
>> Having started the topic I cannot remember the original point
>> having been made ever before. 
> 
> It sounded to me like the usual complaint that Python was acquiring
> too many new features.  

That was not my intention.
Python has to acquire some more features and evolve.
And I know that good arguments have been made for all what was changed.

What I've noticed is that I believe that the majority of people
contributing to the decisions are not the average python programmer
and therefore more likely to be in favour of things which might
be unnecessary for the average user. I thought this was valuable to
share so you can keep it in mind.

Apard from that I am grateful to the whole python development team
and the community for its good work.

	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Wed Jul 11 21:41:25 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:41:25 +1200
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994825097.24532.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4D0045.EBCDA083@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> Microsoft world accuses GPL of being "viral". 

Well, the GPL *is* viral. The irksome thing about that
Microsoft license is that it defines "viral" in a way
that includes ALL open-source licenses, even though
most of them are not in the least bit viral by the
commonly understood meaning of the term in this
context.

So it's not the GPL they're slandering, it's all
the other open-source licenses.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul 26 20:24:54 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:24:54 -0700
Subject: Numeric.transpose (incorrect documentation)
References: <3B6076D4.68B6840C@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <7a%77.49685$Cy.6379277@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60B4D6.AC5CAC87@home.net>

Tim Hochberg wrote:

> > the documenation for the "transpose" function for the "Numeric" module
> > seems to be incoorect, or at least missleading.
> 
> The correct place for this is probably the numpy-discussion list, so I'm
> cc'ing it there. Perhaps the Paul Dubois will see it and have some ideas for
> clearing of the docs.

As it happens, I pointed this out to Paul on the numpy list a while ago,
and he siad he'd make the docs clearer.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 11:49:52 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 10:49:52 -0500
Subject: Need for help with Pythonic realization of win32 network concept
Message-ID: <B5204290C8C6A0E1.C46EAEACFB4DA997.B48C0E799B4DD389@lp.airnews.net>

  import win32api
  import win32con

  reg_key = win32api.RegOpenKeyEx(win32con.HKEY_USERS, ...
gives me a result I want--on "My Computer".  How do I navigate
to the same point on "\\\\other_node"?  My guess is I have to
open a hive with a \\other_node indirection--but none of my
attempts with Python's win32api have given me what I want.

What documentation do folks use for win32api?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From xavier at perceval.net  Mon Jul  9 05:36:35 2001
From: xavier at perceval.net (Xavier Defrang)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:36:35 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: dummy/trash object
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107091121310.19614-100000@elara.perceval.be>

Hello,

I'm sure that someone already came with a question like : "why is there no
real dummy or trash object in Python which could by used like the magic
'_' in Prolog?"

Using a "normal" variable like in the following snippet involves useless
assignations...

<snip>
>>> t = 1, 2, 3, 4
>>> x, _, z, _ = t
>>> _
4
</snip>

Since I'm quite sure that the language designers have already thought
about this, the question is not whether such a magic object should be
added to the Python language but why it has not been done?  I'm sure there
are good reasons... The nearly-magic None value could have been used for
this purpose... Some could say that it would break the "no exception" rule
but we've already seen in previous threads (about assigning a value to
None) that the core of the interpreter has some special instructions to
handle None thus turning it into an actual exceptional thing...

Regards,

Xavier Defrang
Perceval R&D Team
xavier at perceval.net

-------------------------------------------------
 Perceval Technologies SA/NV  Tel: +32-2-6409194
 Rue Tenbosch, 9              Fax: +32-2-6403154
 B-1000 Brussels         http://www.perceval.net
 BELGIUM                       info at perceval.net
-------------------------------------------------




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 20:03:47 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 01:03:47 +0100
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <Q29FKvAhLSY7EwU8@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996274552.18788.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <SkdlOfAjFgY7Ew0V@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.996274552.18788.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> writes
>[Robin Becker]
>> when/if the grand unification happens what will math.cos do with 1+3j?
>> What will floor do with 1.3+0j etc etc etc. Presumably a Timbot thread
>> is even now busily extending all math functions to the complex domain.
>
>My belief is that the vast majority of Python users are best served by the
>current behavior of never getting a complex result from non-complex inputs
>unless they explicitly invoke functions from the cmath module.  But that's a
>question you didn't ask (although you should have).  A more interesting
>question is whether math.acos(2) should continue to whine.

so the statement by the grand designer that int/float(x) won't cut it if
x is complex is just a little fake.  If complex x hurts in division are
we to accept it won't hurt in sqrt?

The idea that we might import cmath to get complex '/' to work is
interesting given the arguments presented about closure for arbitrary
numerics as inputs to functions. Others have been presenting similar
schemes to preserve/change the natural order of literals etc, but these
schemes seem doomed. If OO completeness is desirable why shouldn't
math.acos is cmath.acos be true?

I accept along with others that there are other numeric models. I don't
accept the grand unification at face value as some kind of panacea.
Before all this brouhaha we didn't really understand any of the real
problems and I don't believe we can solve them to everyone's
satisfaction.
-- 
Robin Becker


From dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk  Thu Jul  5 00:10:09 2001
From: dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk (Dave Stanton)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:10:09 +0100
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk> <mailman.994282448.12115.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010705.051009.1784639529.1306@klatu.worldonline.co.uk>

In article <mailman.994282448.12115.python-list at python.org>, "Ken Seehof"
<kens at sightreader.com> wrote:

> All of the books are listed here:
> http://www.amk.ca/bookstore/python.html
> 
> I recommend "Learning Python".
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Stanton" <dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk> Newsgroups:
> comp.lang.python
> To: <python-list at python.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 11:39 AM Subject: beginners books

Thanks all, now to get down to learning. Using Linux BTW.

Cheers
Dave


From 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu  Fri Jul 13 16:57:54 2001
From: 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:57:54 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <MhI37.2619$p7.719925@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kuo9b.n6u.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:50:04 GMT, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
  [Nick wrote:]
>> I believe it, but it doesn't demonstrate a thing about type safety.
>> You've just discovered dynamic typing.
>
>This might be better called dynamic naming or dynamic binding.  'Dynaming
>typing' is confusing, as evidenced here, because of its two possible
>interpretations.
>
>1. Types are assigned at runtime (because they are created at runtime).
>True.
>2. Types are changeable at runtime.  Untrue, unless you count changing an
>instance's base class (a recent addition to the language.   In this sense,
>Python object types are fixed or static.  They are not like C unions.

Indeed.  I'll try to remember to use "dynamic binding" in the future:
while 'dynamic typing' was what I used in school, it does indeed
suffer from the ambiguity you note.

Relieved-to-know-at-least-one-interpretation-of-my-post-was-accurate'ly yrs,

-- 
 Nick Mathewson    <9 nick 9 m at alum dot mit dot edu> 
                     Remove 9's to respond.  No spam.


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 19 14:55:12 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 18:55:12 GMT
Subject: How to run Python from build directory?
References: <mailman.995526452.21067.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9leb8g.hgd.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:07:35 +0400 (MSD), Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:
>
>I want to try Python 2.2a1 and have already compiled it in the
>~/src/Python-2.2a1 directory.
>
>(there are problems with pyexpat, but python binary compiled OK).
>
>How do I run Python 2.2a1 using it's own libraries and all?

Did you try ./python ?

>                                                            (Right now I
>have a feeling it uses libs from /usr/python* ...)

Did you verify your feeling by typing

echo 'print "hello"' >>Lib/site.py; ./python

?

<wink>


Python does some pretty elaborate (too elaborate, IMHO) searching for library
directories.


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 21:25:03 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 01:25:03 GMT
Subject: call Python from a multithreaded DLL
References: <v4Y07.5104$pm5.6724636@nnrp1.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <3B451397.9080300@ActiveState.com>

Alexandre Perrin wrote:

There are a few problems here.  One is that the code as it standard will 
almost certainly finalize Python before your thread has acquired the lock.

If you look at the Python for Win32 extensions source code 
(starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/cvs.html) and find the 'pywintypes.h' 
file, you will find a 'CEnterLeavePython' class.  This manages the 
thread state for you and allows 'random' threads to call back into Python.

Mark.



From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 11:30:56 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:30:56 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org> <9iirju$j9rjr$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <NjoSfiAYVXT7EweG@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9ikg3v$jbm55$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I'm sure this wouldn't be thread safe.  At this point, I wanted to get
something working that did what I expect.  I'm taking a look now to see how
this can work.


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:NjoSfiAYVXT7EweG at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk...
> In article <9iirju$j9rjr$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, Emile van Sebille
> <emile at fenx.com> writes
> >
> >I've written a module that takes a few steps in the direction I'd like to
> >see things go, but even if that's not in the cards I'll probably use it
> >anyway.  It works like Tim's FixedPoint, but uses precision in a slightly
> >different way.  When run as __main__, it imports FixedPoint to compare
> >results as it tests.  Overall, this feels more like what I had in mind.
> >
> >Anyway, a sample session follows.  If anyone is interested in
testing/using
> >this, e-mail me and I'll send you back a copy.
> >
> >
> >Emile van Sebille
> >emile at fenx.com
> >
>
> how do these global class attributes work with threads? a lot of people
> are asking me about Zope (vis a vis reportlab) I keep telling them that
> reportlab isn't thread safe. I had imagined just packaging up all the
> module globals in some way and making things thread safe with a few
> locks.  Now I see that BNum.PRECISION is affecting all instances of the
> class, perhaps including someone else's thread so can BNum and similar
> be used in a real multithreaded environment like Zope?
>
>



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 18:03:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:03:11 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <nb087.27857$B7.4279077@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <cp7kwv5ox6.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) writes:

> If the numerical types all get unified, then I think one would
> expect an inexact number to get "converted" to an exact one if
> used in that context.

There are no exact and inexact contexts.  There are only exact and
inexact operations.  An exact operation yields an exact result iff all
its inputs are exact, otherwise it yields an inexact result.  +, -, *
are examples of exact operations; / is exact if you allow a rational
result.  But inexact+exact gives an inexact result.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jonschull at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 15:06:35 2001
From: jonschull at yahoo.com (Jon Schull)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:06:35 -0700
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
Message-ID: <b8c015b9.0107251106.567803c@posting.google.com>

If I run "python doctest.py" from the command line (win2K) doctest
does what I'd expect (which in this case is nothing).

If I load doctest.py into idle and go "Edit| Run Script" I get
something similar(a blank line)
But if I go "Edit| Run Script" again, I get a Whole Bunch of Stuff
(and doctest seems not be testing docstrings).  Is there a right way
to have doctest and idle coexist?

Here follows a Whole Bunch of Stuff ....
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.testmod' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.run__test__' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.rundict' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.get' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.run_docstring_examples' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.__init__' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.runstring' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.merge' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.is_private' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__.string' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.__init__' in both
testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.square' in both
testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.rundoc' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.summarize' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.testmod' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.run__test__' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.rundict' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.get' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.run_docstring_examples' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest' in both testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.__init__' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.runstring' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.merge' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass' in both testers;
summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.is_private' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__.string' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.__init__' in both
testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.__test__._TestClass.square' in both
testers; summing outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.rundoc' in both testers; summing
outcomes.
*** Tester.merge: 'doctest.Tester.summarize' in both testers; summing
outcomes.


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 22:29:20 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 22:29:20 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <upuanumtb.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Alternatives
> 
>     In order to reduce the amount of old code that needs to be
>     converted, several alternative proposals have been put forth.
>     Here is a brief discussion of each proposal (or category of
>     proposals).  If you know of an alternative that was discussed on
>     c.l.py that isn't mentioned here, please mail the second author.
> 
>     - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
>       division.  This doesn't solve the problem that the classic /
>       operator makes it hard to write polymorphic numeric functions
>       accept int and float arguments, and still requires the use of
>       x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required.

Is the polymorphic argument really true here?  I buy the difficult case
currently (as described in the motivation) is a polymorphic way to get
a "true" result using the existing classic / operator.  But once you
have // as true division you'd just use it in such a case.  So what is
the remaining hard polymorphic case for / once you have // for "true"?
Getting an integer result in all cases?  If so, wouldn't an actual
floor(x/y) or even int(x/y) suffice?  It wouldn't work with complex,
but then neither would the definition of the floor behavior in the PEP
either (see below), so you'd want to stick with true division if you
might receive complex numbers and wanted to work polymorphically.

Or if this isn't the polymorphic case being described, perhaps another
sentence or two could clarify that?

I'd probably also mention in this alternative that if true division is
the correct default behavior, then / seems logically the correct
symbol for default division behavior.  It may not be a technical
argument, and is mitigated somewhat by the compatibility issue, but
it's a point in favor of the change nonetheless.

>     - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
>       version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
>       requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
>       *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
>       so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
>       too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
>       interpreters installed.

While some number of version implementations may need to be supported
for some changes, this suggestion doesn't require them all in
perpetuity, so that's slightly misleading.  One could easily consider
some range of versions being supported (and retired over time), and an
advantage of this approach would be accurate (and reportable) breakage
if using code expecting version behavior no longer supported.

I agree that in general this would be a significant amount of work though.

> Command Line Option
> 
>     The -D command line option takes a string argument that can take
>     three values: "old", "warn", or "new".  The default is "old" in
>     Python 2.2 but will change to "warn" in later 2.x versions.  The
>     "old" value means the classic division operator acts as described.
>     The "warn" value means the classic division operator issues a
>     warning (a DeprecatinWarning using the standard warning framework)
                 ^Deprecation

> Semantics of Floor Division
> 
>     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
>     types, and will have the semantics of
> 
>         a // b == floor(a/b)
> 
>     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
>     coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
>     will be of that type too.

How will this work with complex numbers?  Is it actually a floor()
operation on the division result or something else?

Perhaps this section could more clearly lay out how this impacts each
of the current types and/or the coercions planned?  I noticed the
current sample patch has a comment to the effect of only doing the
right thing with ints and longs.

> Semantics of True Division
> 
>     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
>     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
>     return a float (2.0), not an int.

Since this is a statement of overall semantics for true division, it
might be useful to at least comment that complex numbers remain
unchanged in behavior (presumably?).

>     Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
>        as under the new rules without using // or a future division
>        statement?
> 
>     A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>        division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>        function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
                                       ^float

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Thu Jul 12 15:38:48 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:38:48 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb - possible without install?
References: <3b4d0ea7.11581823@news1.on.sympatico.ca> <slrn9kqr2k.p1.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <3b4d7a61.39160079@news1.on.sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <slrn9krt7k.nj.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:26:22 GMT, Ken <ken_chiba at hotmail.com> wrote:
>I'm no expert with this at all... could I get some pointers?  I'm
>assuming that you're saying that I need to compile MySQLdb with the
>MySQL and Python versions that my provider uses.  This will result in
>the creation of a MySQLdb directory in the site-packages directory of
>Python.  Does it produce anything else?

To build MySQLdb, you might have to change some paths in setup.py, then do a
"python setup.py build". The files to install will then be in a directory named
not entirely unlike "build/lib.linux-i686-2.1". This directory is normally
copied to your site-packages dir. A simple way to use it on your provider is to
copy all of it into your cgi-bin (the py[c] files, the binary extension module
and the MySQLdb directory in it).

>After this is created, do I just copy that directory (MySQLdb) to a
>MySQLdb directory on the provider side (in this case.. within
>cgi-bin)?  And finally, what line can I put within my scripts to pull
>this information in? (ie.:  import ??)

Better look into the MySQLdb docs, but here's a simple one:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import MySQLdb
con = MySQLdb.connect( user = "me", password = "verysecret", db = "mydb",\
    host = "dbcluster" )
cursor = con.cursor()
cursor.execute( "select hello from world" )
print cursor.fetchall()

>How can this keep track of what directory MySQL and Python are in? (or
>are there configuration files that I can change - AFTER the compile?)

No need to change any files *after* you compiled it. The dynamic loader must
find the libmysqlclient library, or you'll have a problem. If this should
really happen, you can perhaps link the Python extension module statically.
You'll notice that this is the case when "import _mysql" produces something
like:

ImportError: libmysqlclient.so.10: cannot load shared object file: No such file
or directory

Hopefully, the standard way of setting "#!/usr/bin/env python" works as first
line of your scripts. If not, you'll have to put the full path to the
interpreter there ("#!/usr/local/bin/python" or whatever ...).

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 20:45:23 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:45:23 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>

This is a small draft of mine, still unnumbered. It deals with some of the 
issues associated with PEP 2, namely:

- the definition of the "Standard Library";

- some considerations about OS independency and its relation to the 
Standard Library;

- and finally, some fairly broad guidelines for standard modules.

I've decided to submit it to the group before sending it Barry Warsaw. I 
think that this subject still deserves some public discussion before fixing 
the PEP format. I also believe that the main issue with PEP 2 is that it is 
too big to be tackled as a single PEP; it is better for us to have a 
"framework" for the Standard Library and modules in general, comprised of 
several PEPs. Too many cats for a single bag.

p.s. That's probably my first formal document in English. I'm not used to 
write such documents in English, and I don't think that I'm going to win a 
Pulitzer on it anytime soon :-) Critics are welcome.


Carlos Ribeiro
----

PEP: Unnumbered
Title: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
Version: $Revision: 0.1$
Author: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Status: Draft
Type: Informational
Created: 01-Jul-2001
Post-History:


Abstract

     This PEP describes the minimum quality guidelines for modules
     to be included as part of the Standard Library. The main
     focus is to define a minimum quality level, making the use
     of the module as easy, consistent and predictable as possible.
     These recommendations are not meant to be enforced as absolute
     rules, and should not prevent non-compliant modules from being
     included in any Python Distribution.

     This proposal does not try to enforce rigid rules on
     controversial issues such as source code style and attribute
     names. There are no absolute rules for these issues.  However,
     we feel that some general advice is applicable to most
     instances, and so included some guidelines on this topic.

     Last but not least, this proposal must be understood as a
     broad set of recommendations. It is not meant to be read as
     a set of rules to be enforced. Non-compliant modules may be
     still be accepted as part of the standard library for several
     reasons. Common sense and community acceptance are still the
     best judges on this.


What is the Standard Library?

     The Standard Library is comprised of the modules that are
     referenced in the Python Library Reference manual. Standard
     Python Distributions MUST support all modules from the
     Standard Library, with the exception of OS-dependant ones.


What is "quality"?

     This question is as old as philosophy, and as such, there are
     no absolute answers. Our definition of quality, as applied to
     the modules in the Standard Library, is based on the folowing
     atributes:

     - Consistence. All modules in the Standard Library follow
       similar structure. Similar objects or attributes always lead
       to similar results.

     - Predictability. By means of a consistent interface, all
       the modules provide highly predictable behavior. Subtle
       surprises must be avoided.

     - Readability. Both the documentation and the code must be
       easy to read, making the learning process much easier.


Documentation and naming guidelines

     1. By definition, Standard Library modules MUST be documented
        in the main Python Library Reference.

     2. The module author SHALL supply the documentation as part
        of the process for module acceptance in the Standard
        Library, as covered in PEP-2.

     3. All the classes and functions exported by the module MUST
        have PEP-256 compliant docstrings.

     4. Class names SHOULD be written in mixed case.

     5. Attributes whose value is expected to be constant SHOULD
        have their names written in uppercase.


Module structure guidelines

     1. Standard Modules MUST not rely on global variables to keep
        state information, except when it is absolutely required.
        Whenever it does need to save state information, the use
        of a instance object is suggested.

     2. In the case that the module is expected to support only a
        single instance, a singleton MUST be used, instead of
        global variables.

     3. Python source code MUST be written using only spaces. Tabs
        are not allowed on source code files.


OS-dependency guidelines

     1. There are three main categories of modules regarding the
        dependency on some particular OS or hardware platform:

        * OS-DEPENDENT modules are, for intrinsec reasons, supported
          only on some particular platforms and/or hardware
          platforms. They may not be ported to other platforms
          without substantial investment or changes to the
          underlying environment.

        * OS-LIMITED modules are supported only on some particular
          platforms. They are not inherently limited to the
          supported platforms, but for some reason the code cannot
          be easily ported (or supported) on other platforms.

        * OS-INDEPENDENT modules are supported on many platforms.
          Some particular platforms may not support the module,
          because of severe limitations on the platform itself.
          These limitations are easily recognizable, specially if
          the module is already supported on all major platforms.

     2. OS-LIMITED modules SHOULD NOT be included in the Standard
        Library. The module author MUST rewrite the module in such
        a way to make possible to port it to other platforms as a
        OS-INDEPENDENT module.

     3. OS-DEPENDENT modules SHOULD only be included to support
        functionality required to use Python in the target platform.

     4. OS-INDEPENDENT modules that rely on specific code in Python
        for every platform supported MUST import a separate module
        that implements the platform specific code. This (sub)module
        SHOULD preferably be part of the main package. In this case
        the module name should reflect the platform it supports.


Remarks

     This draft was inspired by the discussions regarding Python
     development, and PEPs in particular. After following the
     discussion it became clear that one of the main topics of the
     debate was the need to improve the library. However, we did
     lack some definitions on this, and this PEP is being addressed
     at this particular problem.

     We did chose to use the Python Library Reference documentation
     as the basis for our definition, because we felt that no other
     definition would as clearly embrace the set of modules that
     the community regards as the standard one.


References

     (still incomplete; please help me!)

     [1] PEP 2 - Procedure for Adding New Modules

     [2] PEP 256 - Docstring Processing System Framework

     [3] (...there a more to come, please be patient...)


Copyright

     This document has been placed in the public domain.


Acknowledgements

     This PEP would be impossible without the help of the Python
     community. In special, Martijn Faassen and Paul Prescod helped
     a lot to bring the issue to our attention.

     (please help me here also; I dont want to step on anybody's
     toes, but I'm having a terrible time to find all the past
     references on my mailbox)




Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:





From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Tue Jul  3 22:59:24 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:59:24 -0300
Subject: Pushing the standard library
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703215513.02c01d90@mail.inet.com.br>; from cribeiro@mail.inet.com.br on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 10:27:52PM -0300
References: <4E42BD2538CACF79.9FD7275B6CD3244E.A70BBB4C060B585B@lp.airn ews.net> <5.0.2.1.0.20010703215513.02c01d90@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <20010703235924.E3447@tux.distro.conectiva>

Hello Carlos!

[...]
> As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we 
> must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this 
> issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys. 
> The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To 
> make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.
[...]

Agreed. Indeed, I think that the first step to start this out is to
discover which libraries currently have a poor implementation, or which
ones should start do be developed ASAP. I could start a list right now,
but I'd probably mention those that I miss in my environment (cvs, etc).
Maybe somebody from the dev team could tell us where to find the
"most requested" ones.

Another nice question is, is it time to move some "well-known" libraries
in the standard set (pil, pynum, etc)!? I'm sorry if this issue has been
discussed before (urls?). I'd like to understand what should and what
shouldn't get in the standard library.

Thanks!

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 21:49:33 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:49:33 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <3B5E25AD.63061E5@engcorp.com>

Andy Salnikov wrote:
> Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
> new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
> 0.5.

Has anyone suggested the possibility (ugly though it may be) of 
preserving the existing behaviour of / and adding *two* new operators,
which implement float and integer division "correctly", without
breaking any existing code?

(I would really hate this, but I don't exactly like the 
alternatives yet either.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From horst at eaglesnest.mceggman  Sat Jul 21 04:34:55 2001
From: horst at eaglesnest.mceggman (Horst Eyermann)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 08:34:55 +0000
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <frebj9.f9b.ln@eaglesnest.mceggman>

In article <oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>,
	"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> writes:
> Hello,
> I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the file
> menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a hand
> with this it would be great.

Hello,

somewhat related, I always wondered if it is possible to
crosscompile an application?

I am under linux, and would like to distribute for other OS's as well
(esp. Windows)

Is this possible at all, or would I have to reboot to Windows, and use
the (free) Borland compiler, ...?

THoughts welcome

Horst


> 
> 

-- 
Horst at freedict.de
Horst Eyermann 
Germany

You need a dictionary? - visit http://www.freedict.de
for free (GPL) dictionaries (unix; windows work in progress)
For windows, visit http://www.freedict.de/wbuch

A article (in German) about dictionary efforts on the net
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/on/5927/1.html 



From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 13:34:25 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 10:34:25 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se> <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list@python.org> <yTedznATrXX7Ew7W@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9jut31$96r$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <yTedznATrXX7Ew7W at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list at python.org>, Chris
>Gonnerman <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes
>>
>>I'm guessing here, but I'd bet from the tone of his postings that Robin
>>means
>>
>>    Malevolent Dictator For Life
>>
>>While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
>>version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
>>to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.
>
>when the Gods smile upon us they are benevolent, when lighting strikes
>they are malevolent. They are still Gods. Luckily we only have
>dictators. Sometimes the dictatorship is good, sometimes bad it's still
>a dictatorship.

While there's a saying about what the road to Hell is paved with, I
think it's still in poor taste -- not to mention downright rude -- to
refer to the person who gave us Python as "malevolent" when it's pretty
clear that he's *trying* to improve things, no matter how much you
disagree.

Heated words and vociferous arguments are one thing, but descending to
insults weakens your argument *at* *best*.  You won't accomplish
anything that way, except possibly hardening the position of those
opposing you.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From nospam at mega-nerd.net  Thu Jul 19 16:19:23 2001
From: nospam at mega-nerd.net (Erik de Castro Lopo)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:19:23 GMT
Subject: dnslib license?
References: <3B56DCCB.6EF0DEED@stroeder.com> <3dlmlkyj8p.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <3B5727C0.79B8DCAC@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3B5740C8.4A0DA3F2@mega-nerd.net>

Michael Str?der wrote:
> 
> Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> >
> > BTW, personally I'd vote for extending the DNS code and adding it as
> > dnslib.py to the standard library, rather than having it be a separate
> > project.
> 
> Since Guido suggested the same this seems to be the master plan...

As a user of this thing thing, that it my prefered option.

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo     nospam at mega-nerd.net      (Yes its valid)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
UNIX *is* user-friendly, just picky about who it 
chooses for friends!


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Mon Jul 23 00:03:06 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:03:06 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
References: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu>, <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15OWvy-0005Oe-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:27:32 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
 
> My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are the 
> same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.
> Result: buggier code since the errors are less obvious.

The thing is, making 1/2=0.5 won't make the problem *worse*. Because
after two days of being baffled by 1/2=0, these newbies will eventually
figure out the solution float(1)/2. So, I'm just getting to show them
the buggy roundoff-error code *faster*, instead of making them suffer
for it. You want to fix *that* problem, you have to give easy to access
rationals.

> If you have a routine "velocity" in which it doesn't make sense to do 
> integer truncation, and it doesn't coerce its args to float by adding 0.0, 
> that's also a bug.

velocity(1+2j, 3)
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Jul  2 13:42:30 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 13:42:30 -0400
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <%o107.21422$he.1049178@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
	<zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
	<naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
	<20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
	<mailman.994086604.24754.python-list@python.org>
	<%o107.21422$he.1049178@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <oq1ynzmdmh.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Steve Holden]

> Too late.  [...] Sorry.  Move on!

"Compatible with their previous mistakes."  This is the recurring expression
we used, at a place I once worked, to characterise some development decisions.

There have been a few design mistakes, recently, for the Python language.
Of course, I absolutely agree that many good things occurred simultaneously.

Python might not be what it used to be, for some aspects of it.  When people
start avoiding parts of the language as not acceptable, legibility is lost
through developments of dialects, and Python suffers in the long run.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 15:09:18 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:09:18 -0700
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <3B55DEDE.2683DEFD@ccvcorp.com>

Curtis Jensen wrote:

> additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements':
> <cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes':
> <cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}
>
> def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> elements, *args, **kwds ):

You have an argument of Elements named 'nodes'.  You are also passing in an
additional keyword argument that is *also* named 'nodes'.  Rename either one
of these, and see if the problem goes away...

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 15:19:09 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:19:09 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <mailman.996031185.15584.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <upuaoes0i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) writes:

> >>>>> "DB" == David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:
> 
>     DB> Thus, the very fact that the behavior is moving towards
>     DB> breakage may hold up people from moving for fear of the
>     DB> resource involved to ensure they don't have a problem, which
>     DB> in turn may prolong the period of time when such breakage is a
>     DB> risk.
> 
> If this is a real fear then you can never upgrade your Python, even if
> a new version introduces no language changes.

Well, that's an extreme - I think most reasonable people gauge their
concern about the upgrade based on what changes, and which of those
changes are new features or changed features, and what breaks existing
behavior.  I'm just suggesting (note the "may") that those that break
backwards compatibility may cause more hesistancy than new features,
and the paragraph was in response to the comparison to the change from
1.4 to 1.5 which I don't think had as much breakage (but am not
positive).

And sure, it's my responsibility to test as much of my system as I can
with all the intermediate releases (I keep them all on my development
machine) as they come out even if they won't get used in the field.

But I don't disagree with your general point - there's always some
risk involved in upgrading and you need to take that into account in
any system that you are working in that will evolve.

> But if this is really a fear then upgrading Python might not even be
> your biggest worry.  What if you upgrade some underlying library, or
> apply an OS patch, or add more memory, or a faster disk, or change to
> a new C compiler?  Any or all of those things may break your code or
> it may not.  I've certainly been victim to such "innocent" upgrade
> breakages.  So you still have to think hard about it, test
> aggressively, plan defensively, and cross your fingers.  Why would you
> upgrade Python any differently?

Agreed.  I don't think we discussing the overall process of upgrading
in this thread though, as much as how the specific change under
discussion might affect the variables (and planning, testing, etc...)
involved.

> But there's also no reason why Python should stagnate, or not fix its
> warts, or not evolve, so that /new/ applications or newer versions of
> existing applications cannot be written more elegantly, more
> succintly, or more maintainably.  No, new versions should not
> gratuitously break old code without some systematic migration plan,
> but that's what __future__ and the PEPs are all about.

I hope no-one is reading my commentary as suggesting that Python
should stagnate or in any other way not evolve, as I don't intend it
that way.  I do think it's worth highlighting that incompatible
changes need significantly more evaluation and weighing against the
compatibility cost involved with implementing them, than just new
features or forward-compatible bug fixes.

After writing my last post, it did also solidify in my mind that I
believe this division change is the first that struck me as one for
which the __future__ system is not as well suited, if only because
unlike other incompatible changes, once the future cycle time has
elapsed, the change is silent and permits old code to run incorrectly
without warning.  __future__ works well for something that is
incrementally introduced, with warnings for future failures, and then
real failures.  So you have to fix code during the future cycle time
or it'll break and not be usable.  But that's not quite true here.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 15:46:30 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:46:30 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: What's wrong with this program
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.32.0107030859170.13503-100000@hobbit.ccrypt.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107032346040.2491-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, jedi wrote:
> ftp.connect # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options

   Call it: ftp.connect()

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From thomas at xs4all.net  Sat Jul  7 11:08:49 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:08:49 +0200
Subject: Dynamic call of a method : error
In-Reply-To: <3b43a648$0$318$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
References: <3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008@nnrp5.proxad.net> <3b43a648$0$318$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
Message-ID: <20010707170849.I8098@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 06:28:41PM -0500, Volucris wrote:

> #the name of the module you're digging in dynamically
> mod_name = 'gc'

> #import the module dynamically
> exec 'import %s' % mod_name
> #create a copy of the module dynamically
> mod_copy = eval('%s' % mod_name)

Or, more efficient and more readable (IMHO):

mod_copy = __import__(mod_name)

> for method in dir(mod_copy):
>     try:
>         #retrieve each member's docstring dynamically...
>         print eval('%s.%s' % (mod_name, method)).__doc__
>     except AttributeError:
>         #unless it can't have one (ints, floats, etc.)
>         print 'No \'__doc__\' for %s.' % method

'getattr()' is much more appropriate than eval() here, and in fact in most
places. The tree-argument version is also particularly useful in this case:

for method in dir(mod_copy):
    print getattr(mod_copy, method, "No docstring for %s"%method)

> Please excuse the excessize use of the word 'dynamically'. I really like
> that word.

Not as much as you seem to like 'eval' and 'exec' :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From web2ed at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 11:19:36 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 08:19:36 -0700
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com>

Dave:

The way I see it, nobody is going to use a module "trial and error" in
the workplace, especially if they suspect it may be incomplete.  They
are going to use a proven module, or hack one up in their shop's
native tounge.

What would be constructive for Python would be for others to donaite
ther time to testing your work just as you donante your time writing
extensions in the first place.  This gets at the "Workgroup"
mentality/approach I have been talking about.  In other words, it's
not enough for you, working alone to produce a great Sybase extension.
 Rather, those of us who hope to use your module should be willing to
help build it, lending our time as testers.  My personal feeling is
that if ten or twenty folks would jump in and help you out, in a year
(working part-time) Python could have a diamond hardened Sybase
module.  If the same were done with Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2,
Python too could have a serious killer app in the way of db
accessibility.  Python is way cooler than PL/SQL or any other language
used for writing db apps for that matter.

For me being a developer, rarely have I noticed something amazing
produced by a man or woman working alone.  It has been my experience
that most great software is the product of a group's effort.  From
Managers/Leaders/Architects to QA and everything in between--a team is
always better than the one man band variety, especially in the
freeware space where everyone works 20 minutes a day on their pet
project.  (Sure, I know, myself included, we all have soloed some
great code.) Python has had no trouble assembling teams to improve the
langugage, the interpretor, the built-in data-structures ... etc ...
but from the looks of it, Python has hit the wall in duplicating the
same *team* focus/approach in building extension modules.

--
ed


Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> wrote in message news:<m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_ at vole.object-craft.com.au>...
> >>>>> "Paul" == Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> writes:
> 
> Paul> That's not to say that one doesn't have a certain feeling of
> Paul> unease when evaluating Python modules for serious database use,
> Paul> however. It does seem like a reflection of the open source
> Paul> community at large when there are lots of seemingly incomplete
> Paul> modules covering certain narrow, fashionable areas, and few
> Paul> modules covering other areas.
> 
> Boy, would I ever like to be able to complete my modules...
> 
> The problem with producing free software is that you can only dedicate
> so much time to it before the consulting business goes belly-up.  It
> would make my year if someone who used one of my modules approached me
> and said that they would sponsor some development on it.
> 
> In the absence of such a sponsor, I am limited to my spare time (such
> as it is) - the rest of my time goes into making sure that I do not
> lose my business, house, car, family, ...
> 
> Paul> I mean no offence to any database module author when I use the
> Paul> term "incomplete"; my definition of "completeness" may differ
> Paul> from that of any given developer in this case, and presumably
> Paul> most database authors are satisfied with what they have
> Paul> written. Moreover, I wouldn't like to make any criticism of the
> Paul> reliablity of any module without having seen it first. I
> Paul> sometimes get concerned that serious commercial users are likely
> Paul> to have views on issues of functionality and reliability even
> Paul> more extreme than my own, however.
> 
> If the module is almost good enough surely you should be entering a
> discussion with the module author to work out how it can be made good
> enough.
> 
> In my case, I can always dedicate spare time for development, so while
> funding would be nice, it is not essential.  What is more important is
> to be able to find people who are willing to exercise the module in
> their environment and work with me to resolve problems.
> 
> In the entire history of the Sybase module(s) I have developed, I have
> only been contacted by four people who experienced a usage problem
> with the module.  There are two possible interpretations to that:
> 
> 1- I write awesome code which has only the most obscure bugs.
> 
> 2- People who experience problems do not bother contacting me.
> 
> Although it would be nice to think that option 1 is true, I suspect
> that option 2 is closer to the truth.
> 
> Paul> However, if you are referring to a standard API for databases,
> Paul> then one already exists. Unfortunately, most modules aren't
> Paul> compliant with the most recent version of that API as far as I
> Paul> can tell.
> 
> Time or money is the solution to this in my case.
> 
> - Dave


From bobh at hslda.org  Thu Jul 12 09:38:30 2001
From: bobh at hslda.org (Robert)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 06:38:30 -0700
Subject: ZODB address list  question (source is listed)...
Message-ID: <4a249347.0107120538.6cf71cba@posting.google.com>

I am a newbie at both Python and ZODB so I thought I would modify the
ZODB demo that Mr. Pelletier did. It does the Listing, Adding and 
Quiting fine. But when I add a duplicate it does not tell me that that
"name" is already in the database.

Any help would be appreciated!

Bob


## ---- CODE ----

# Created: R.L. Hicks, 2001-07-12
# Notes:
#    Modified version of ZODB paper by Michel Pelletier
#--

#--
# TO DO:
#    o delete
#    o search
#    o sorting
#--

# import libs needed to run
from ZODB import DB
from ZODB.FileStorage import FileStorage
from ZODB.PersistentMapping import PersistentMapping
from Persistence import Persistent

class Employee(Persistent):
    """ an employee """

    def __init__(self, name, phone):
        self.name = name
        self.phone = phone

# setup the database
storage = FileStorage("employees.fs")
db = DB(storage)
connection = db.open()
root = connection.root()

# get the employees mapping, creating an empty mapping
# if it is necessary
if not root.has_key("employees"):
    root["employees"] = {}
employees = root["employees"]

def listEmployees():
    if len(employees.values()) == 0:
        print "The database is empty."
        print
        return
    for employee in employees.values():
        print "Info: %s - %s" % (employee.name, employee.phone)
        print

def addEmployee(name, phone):
    if employees.has_key(name):
        ## the below does not print when a duplicate is created
        print "There is already an employee with this name."
        return
    else:
        employees[name, phone] = Employee(name, phone)
        
        root['employees'] = employees   # reassign to change list
        get_transaction().commit()
        print "Employee %s added to database." % name
        print

if __name__ == "__main__":
    while 1:
        choice = raw_input("Press 'L' to list, 'A' to add, or 'Q' to quit:")
        choice = choice.lower()
        if choice == "l":
            listEmployees()
        elif choice == "a":
            name = raw_input("Employee name:")
            phone = raw_input("Employee Phone:")
            addEmployee(name, phone)
        elif choice == "q":
            break

    # close the database
    connection.close()


From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Wed Jul 25 20:55:44 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:55:44 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com>

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message news:<LBA77.58$bXi.175168000 at news.telia.no>...

You might look at OSE, which was recently announced on the newsgroup
comp.lang.python.announce. OSE actually uses SOAPpy parser in a RPC
over HTTP gateway it provides for the SOAP protocol. It also provides
an XML-RPC protocol gateway as well as one for its own RPC over HTTP
protocol. The web site for OSE is:

  http://ose.sourceforge.net

Have a good look through the Python manual for OSE as my guess is that
it already provides a lot of features you are intending to implement.

> ( In relation to my previous post about user authentication using SOAP, I
> got another simple question. )

In regard to your last post about authentication, be aware that OSE also
includes support for basic authentication through its HTTP servlet framework
and RPC over HTTP gateways.

> Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it looks very
> nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues? I'm thinking of
> implementing a distributed system where nodes communicate using SOAP.
> There's a clear potential of much traffic among the nodes and I just
> wondered if SOAP is the right protocoll/technology for the job. In my
> project each node will register with a nodemaster ( holds info about running
> nodes, nothing else, will check for availability of registered nodes with a
> given interval too, remove dead ones from list ) and get a list of running
> nodes in return. It will then proceed to query these running nodes in a
> serial manner ( at least to begin with, maybe use a async. approach later )
> about information and parse the result.

As well as providing RPC over HTTP access, OSE also has its own internal
connected mechanism for interprocess communications. This includes a
service registration framework whereby you can subscribe to existance of
services such that when a new node connects you automatically get notified
of its existance. At the moment with the way this is implemented, you may
have to deal with some firewall issues as HTTP port isn't used, but a
connected model avoids the time and resources of having to create new
connections for each message.

> It's also clear that some problems might occur cuz the BaseHTTPServer which
> is used for the most part, have performance issues. Perhaps implementing the
> server using asyncchat etc. would increase performance ?? Why aren't the
> modules allready implemented with these tools available in the standard
> python lib allready, if that's the case?

OSE is implemented using an event driven system model. This includes the HTTP
servlet framework, such that multiple requests can be handled at a time etc.
It includes mechanisms for knowing when connections block due to slow HTTP
clients so you can stop sending data back etc.

OSE at its core is actually C++, with Python wrappers. Thus, you are getting
the efficiency of C++ but the simpler interfaces possible with Python.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 08:04:18 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:04:18 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994115046.6243.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <evi07.33864$zT1.1862031@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994115046.6243.python-list at python.org...
> Terry Reedy wrote:
> >
> >... However, in a general case such as
> > 82/4, the expression is more obviously a problem to be solved (which is
how
> > the interpreter sees it) rather than an answer in itself and the
assumption
> > of divisibility may well be disasterously wrong.
>
[ ... not the crux ...]
>
> But anyhow, this is not the crux of the issue.
>
> In a dynamically typed language with no type declarations it makes more
> sense to define the nature of the operation *at the point of the
> operation* and not at the point where the value is initialized. If you
> write a function like this:
>
> def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
>     return teachers/classroom
>
> you absolutely do NOT want the users of this function to accidently
> subvert it and get meaningless answers by passing it "3.0" instead of
> "3".

Quite untrue. If you are looking for a statistical result over the whole
country you are much more likely to want a fractional answer. Huge spending
decisions are made on the basis of just such calculations, and only Dan
"potatoe" Quayle wold expect to choose between three and four in that
context. You choose the problem domain to suit your argument, so should
allow other people the right to do the same.

>   Therefore to make this safe, you need to do this:
>
> def teachersPerClassRoom(teachers, classroom):
>     return int(teachers)/int(classroom)
>
> (or something like that)
>
> I do this on *every* division that works with paramaters because that's
> the only way I can be explicit and confident. And of course when I want
> float division I do the opposite. Eventually after I do this a thousand
> times or so I realized that I'm really selecting between two different
> logical operators that happen to be sharing the same syntactic body. And
> I'm selecting between these two operators in a syntactically obtuse,
> runtime-inefficient manner. If I want count division, I want count
> division. It doesn't matter if I'm handed a floating point number that
> happens to be integral.
>
It would seem better, given that you need to be so picky about the
operational semantics, to actually use a language that enforces static type
checking. Or at least write the functions so they realise a ValueError,
suggesting that anyone who calls them with floating point numbers should
change their approach (or vice versa, of course, when the function requires
floating-point arguments).

Otherwise you allow someone to ask what's the average teachers per classroom
when you have 13.5 classrooms and 27.9 teachers. How much sense does that
make? Or do you bother to verify that the int() result is within some delta
of the parameter passed to your routine? If not then your approach will give
results that are just as sloppy (and counter-intuitive to the "average
person") as those provided by default for division.

It seems to me that Python could go altogether too far in this direction,
and I suspect that the CP4E agenda lies behind all this. If someone isn't
capable of learning that dividing two integers gives a fundamentally
different type of result than dividing two reals, they aren't ready for
advanced programming. Period. Please don't "dumb down" the language so it
can be taught to idiots, or we will end up with a language fit only for
idiots.

Next, someone will propose a requirement that

    "four" * "twelve" == "forty-eight"

to be followed by a huge debate on i18n, with the Americans insisting there
should be no "and" in "three hundred and forty-eight", and Unicode issues
arising quite needlessly. After all, if you approach the average person in
the street and ask them 'What's "four" times "twelve"?' you will usually get
the answer "forty-eight".

Maybe I'm being elitist here, and if so then I am unapologetic about it. If
someone doesn't realise that the same operation can yield different results
when they are applied over different domains, their intuitions are a very
poor guide when making important decisions about the semantics of a
programming language.

I am all in favor of arithmetic being "more sensible", but I fear we
disagree about the meaning of "sensible", and so will have difficulty
agreeing on what should be done. Just because something *can* be done
doesn't mean it *should* be done.

damn,-i'll-be-voting-republican-next-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Thu Jul 12 09:10:54 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:10:54 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5239@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

We run Solaris at my company, and Perl comes bundled with the Sun machines.  It's easier to ask someone to look at Perl because it's an existing part of every Solaris installation.  Since Python is not pre-bundled with Solaris, I need to ask the Unix administration to install it.  I could sell either language if Python were bundled with Solaris like Perl is.  Which raises an interesting question.  Why do companies like Sun include Perl but not Python with their operating systems?

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 5:09 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
[snip]
> But it is hard to get others at my company on 
> that bandwagon.  I have a hard enough time selling Perl.

If you are trying to sell both Perl and Python, maybe you're
just confusing your audience with a mixed message.  Are you
trying to promote them on the same basis?  

If anyone tried to tell me I should be using Perl for a task, 
although I could also consider using Python because that would 
be just as effective, I'd have to laugh...  (and then apologize
and all that stuff, which I really hate. ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com



From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 10 06:01:49 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 06:01:49 -0400
Subject: import namespace issues
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <etdg0c5je5u.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

> I have to separate a module's function into two .py-files. Now I would
> like to import both in a way that they behave like they are one file.

Why do you want to do this?

I guess if you put something like this in first.py, it ought to roughly
work:

import second
for attr in dir(secord):
    exec '%s = second.%s' % (attr, attr)

...but if you give some more details about what you're really trying to
achieve, people might be able to come up with a cleaner solution.

HTH.
Alex.


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 09:29:27 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:29:27 -0500
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
In-Reply-To: <994422510.510089@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
	<0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>
	<994422510.510089@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <15173.48439.117088.163957@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only
    >> for web reading and this requires time -internet time, which is
    >> unfortunately expensive.

In the Python distribution under the Tools/webchecker directory is a script
called websucker.py that will download a web page and the stuff it links to
on the same site.  Use it like

    python websucker.py http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

There are other tools you can use to download complete chunks of websites
like wget and lynx.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From ivdkleyn at xs4all.nl  Sat Jul 14 15:51:07 2001
From: ivdkleyn at xs4all.nl (Iwan van der Kleyn)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:51:07 +0200
Subject: "Object Browser" for XPCOM?
Message-ID: <9iq7c1$gog$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Little bit off topic perhaps. But does anyone know whether there is an
"Object Browser" available for XPCOM, Mozilla's cross-platform component
model? I want to do some research into PyXPCOM, ActiveState's bindings
between Python and XPCOM. An Object Browser like you will find in the IDE of
Visual Basic, makes it more easy to explore the interfaces which are
available on a system.

Regards,

Iwan




From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Jul 11 16:01:35 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:01:35 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com> <9icj7b$8df$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg> <3B4A644F.895FC4B8@home.com> <9ihsrh$1un$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <9iibav$kj$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at madcap.dyndns.org> wrote:

> I suppose you are interested in adding and removing "servers" while the
> application is in asyncore's loop. One way is for your app to first start a
> _controller_ "server" with which you communicate, also over sockets, for
> this purpose. You'll need to design the controller's protocol (candidate:
> XML-RPC request/response) and also implement a client.

For the record (and some free advertisement), the process of adding and
removing accept channels is somewhat simpler in my SelectManager module
(http://sange.fi/~atehwa-u/selecting/) than in asyncore. But the
difference is not a big one.

Panu



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Tue Jul 17 01:54:59 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 05:54:59 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l7lfm.t2g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> dijo:
> (Actually, when I started posting the other message, my intention
> was to admit that I had hardly even tried to learn and apply Perl.  

Fair enough. Maybe it's just a psychotic (masochistic) tendency to learn
any language that enough people say good things about.  Because of this,
I'm currently familiarizing myself with Smalltalk.  And while it is, as
it claims, a pure OO language, it is exceedingly tedious to do simple
things...things which Perl does in one line and which Python does in 3
now take 10-20+ in Smalltalk.  OO may be powerful, but considering this
particular alternative [Smalltalk] I have to agree with Mr. Prescod's
synopsis that I so violently argued against just yesterday.  =)

> I consider myself fortunate to have discovered Python just when 
> I was considering Perl for an application which required a 
> scripting language.  Perl, in this case (factory automation) would 
> definitely *not* have been a better choice, even in your estimation.  
> I've used a wide enough variety of languages, however, to know that 
> it just wouldn't work for me.  I _do_ have an open mind about it, 
> but that doesn't stop me proselytizing about Python. :-)

Fair enough.  =)   Python does sound like a good choice in this case,
despite Perl's strength in sockets.

-- 
Little one, I would like to see anyone -- prophet, king or
god -- persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time.
    -- Orange Cat, The Sandman


From dgallion1 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 22 16:03:50 2001
From: dgallion1 at yahoo.com (Darrell)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 13:03:50 -0700
Subject: capturing multiple groups?
References: <UKB67.166784$mG4.79726347@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>
Message-ID: <b0c5da3a.0107221203.435f9e0d@posting.google.com>

>>> re.findall("(12.)",s)
['12X', '12Y', '12Z']
>>> re.findall("(12[^1@]+)",s)
['12X', '12Y', '12Z']

And just for fun...
>>> ['12'+val for val in filter(len, s.replace('@','').replace('12','~').strip()
.split('~'))]
['12X', '12Y', '12Z']
>>>


--Darrell 


"Tom Baker" <bktoa23 at hotmail.com> wrote 
> What is the required syntax to match and save repeating groups?  ie.
> 
> Have:  @12X12Y12Z@
> Want:  ['12X' '12Y' '12Z']
> 
> My re of  re.compile("@(12.)*@") matches but only saves '12Z', and that is
> exactly what the manual says it should do!!!  I'm sure I did this sort of
> thing in Perl before but I've not been able to come across the correct
> python syntax.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Jim


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 03:25:19 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:25:19 +0200
Subject: Newbie... Help with Dates/Times
References: <11f492f.0107082013.e9845f4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ibmi602a8n@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Drake" <yeahoo at yeehaa.com> wrote in message
news:11f492f.0107082013.e9845f4 at posting.google.com...
    ...
> - Compare file dates (time is irrelevant) of matching files to a
> target date determined by user.
> - If filedate is >= (equal to or after) the target date, the fully
> qualified path prints to a file.
>
> Currently, I'm using an os.path.walk routine to gather the files per
> drive.
>
> Here's my problem...
> Im lost on the date stuff.
>
> 1) I'm thinking of comparing seconds... os.path.getmtime('myfile').
> How do I strip off the time and get the seconds based on only the
> date?

See standard module time.  For example, time.gmtime(x) will give
you a tuple representing the various components of time represented
by seconds x: year, month, day, etc.

Presumably you want to represent a date by one specific instant in
that date, say midnight.  Then you do not need to "strip off the time"
for comparison: you just compare the seconds.

> 2) How do I get the seconds for the target date. The user is entering
> a date. Do I create a time tuple and then convert that to seconds?

Again, module time can help, depending on the string format
you want to be able to accept from the user.  Unfortunately,
function strptime is not supplied by module time on Windows
(there are Python implementations around aplenty, though),
or you can look at separately distributed module mxDateTime
which has other time-parsing functionality.

But if (e.g.) the user is entering a date in a standard format
such as 'yyyy-mm-dd', parsing it in Python is not hard either:
you can date.split('-') and get the three string fields yyyy, mm,
dd, each of which is turned into an int with function int().
time.mktime() accepts the time tuple as the argument (just
be sure to append enough 0's:-) and returns the seconds.

For example:

>>> timestring='2001-06-01'
>>> pieces=timestring.split('-')
>>> pieces
['2001', '06', '01']
>>> timetup=tuple(map(int,pieces))+(0,)*6
>>> timetup
(2001, 6, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
>>> x=time.mktime(timetup)
>>> x
991350000.0
>>> time.localtime(x)
(2001, 6, 1, 1, 0, 0, 4, 152, 1)
>>> time.asctime(timetup)
'Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 2001'


Alex





From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Thu Jul 12 23:13:57 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 03:13:57 GMT
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksprk.n2h.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

12 Jul 2001 15:13:51 -0700 in <3b4e211f$1 at news.blarg.net>,
Steve R. Hastings <steveha at animal.blarg.net> spake:
> Hello.  I am new to Python, studying books to come up to speed.
> I have one question I have not really seen discussed in FAQs and such:
> If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
> be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
> At this point I suspect Tkinter is the way to go.
> The reason I'm asking is that I found an expensive Tkinter book that will
> be on sale for a couple more days, and if Tkinter is the way to go, I'll
> buy that book now.  Normally I would keep reading up on Python until I
> could answer the question myself, but I don't want to miss the sale price!
> Actually, do I need the expensive book?  Is there a web site you like that
> explains Tkinter well?

  The online material at www.python.org is okay, but nothing to write
home about.  OTOH, if the expensive book is John Grayson's _Python and
Tkinter Programming_, get it now, it's a damn fine book.

  That's how I learned Tkinter for my computer RPG written in Python,
Umbra: <http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/Umbra/>

  Tkinter works very nicely, very Pythonically.

> In a perfect world, I'd like my Python program to be compiled to Java
> bytecodes and thus theoretically portable anywhere.  Does the use of
> Tkinter make this impossible?

  I believe there's actually some kind of port of Tkinter to Jython, but
I know nothing about it.

  If what you want is portability, though, Python's probably more
portable than Java (and I speak here as someone who does Java
programming for a living; Python's what I do to relax!).  I compile
Umbra with python -OO build.py (which just imports the two top-level
modules), and then distribute the .pyo files.  They're specific to
Python 2.1 because the Python bytecode is not version-portable, but
anyone with Python 2.1 can run it.

>  My current understanding, which could be
> wrong, is that parts of Tkinter run TCL, so you would need both TCL and
> Tkinter installed on a system before a Python program could use Tkinter.
> I would like my program to be as self-contained as possible to make it easy
> to install.

  For that, you'd want to go to some kind of native compile, because it
will always be a two-step process for most users: install Python or
Java, then install your app.  I just live with the two-step process...

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 16:03:06 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:03:06 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-FD4197.09013625072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cpg0bk93pr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> > In a farther future, when PEP 228 is fully implemented, Python may
> > only have *one* (built-in) numeric type, "number".
> 
> Uh oh, if this is a later change than 238, does this mean we have to wait 
> until Python 4.0 for the grand unification?

Not necessarily.  The grand unification could be introduced at the
same time as 3.0, and could be imported from the future in some 2.x
release.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From cwebster at nevada.edu  Fri Jul 20 14:36:18 2001
From: cwebster at nevada.edu (Corran Webster)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:36:18 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4>

In article <cppuawfqbm.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> "Tim Randolph" <timothyrandolph at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > > (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than
> > >     the group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers
> > >     an arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
> > 
> > I think the distinction between programmers and non-programmers
> > misses a third important group: "sometime programmers" -- people who
> > code occasionally to for fun or to solve problems, but aren't in the
> > trenches (or the cubes) day in and day out.
> 
> Thanks for reminding me!  This is in fact the group I have in mind
> when I say non-programmer -- true non-programmers of course wouldn't
> be using Python... :-).  In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who
> is a professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.  A "non-programmer"
> is someone whose profession is something else (e.g. chemist, or
> webdesigner, or rocket scientist) but who occasionally needs to
> program.

I probably fall into this "non-programmer" mould: my main profession is
a mathematician, but I use Python to support my teaching and research.
To be fair, I am far from a "novice," having been programming for the
majority of my life, have had formal instruction in programming, and have
taught programming as a teaching assistant.

I very much appreciate the ability to distinguish between "n" and "N"
or "omega" and "Omega" when I am converting math to Python.  I don't
recall ever having been bitten by confusing variables due to case, but
again, this may reflect the fact that I am used working with variables
in different cases (and, indeed, alphabets and scripts) possibly having
vastly different meanings.

It may be considered bad style to write something like:

sum = 0
for n in range(N):
  sum += n**2

but it is useful when translating a mathematical expression like:

  __ N-1   2
  \       n
  /__n=0

into a Python program.

Since one major audience for Python at present is the Numerical Python
community, I would think that case insensitivity would be a problem
for users in this context, and quite a number of these would be such
part-time programmers as you are trying to help with this proposal.

> > As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how
> > easy it is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would
> > very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that
> > enforce *uniform* case usage.
> 
> And that's of course what I have in mind.

I think a far better solution would be a case sensitive language with
tools that allow the user to enforce uniform case usage.  Having taught
novice programmers, I can appreciate that case sensitivity can lead to
problems in that community (although I do not remember it being a major
obstacle for the students I taught, I can never-the-less see that it may
have caused some students confusion).

However, I think that the best way to deal with this is in the tools that
are provided with the language, such as IDLE, or by providing a case
insensitive version of the language for a teaching environment.

> > Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but
> > nobody wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program
> > with distinct meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes
> > for readable code -- at least for this sometime programmer.
> 
> Exactly.

And I have to disagree.  While I don't want to see "oMegA" and "omega"
*at all* in the same program, I do want "omega" and "Omega" to be able
to refer to distinct (albeit probably related) objects.

how-about-allowing-blackboard-bold-and-greek-letters-in-variable-names-ly
yours, Corran


From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 13:29:29 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (Chuck Esterbrook)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:29:29 -0400
Subject: Python ssh wrapper
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010727132853.023ee200@mail.mindspring.com>

Does anyone have a complete, Python ssh wrapper example they could either 
post to the list or send me?

-Chuck




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 19 13:05:56 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:05:56 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <UrE57.4192$EP6.1273453@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> With all respect, why? Other than Usenet fodder what good are these
tests?

;-)
Several years ago, a Dr. Dobbs columnist recommendedd that programmers
check out perl via the site and newgroup to think about getting in on
the cgi boom.  When I did, there was a thread with some comparative
timing test.  Perl beat Python, I sure, but Python caught my attention
with its easy to read syntax.  So I clicked over to python.org and clp
stayed.

> Most readers of this newsgroup already are convinced of Python's
worth, and
> we'll do what we can to spread the word.

If Python gives people a competitive advantage in producing better
programs faster, as it seems to, its usage should continue to grow,
even if slowly.




From grayson-wilson at home.com  Mon Jul  9 21:29:53 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:29:53 GMT
Subject: Help with reduce().
References: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <Sds27.29662$F%5.1909477@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <eMs27.664121$166.13711545@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <lUs27.664124$166.13716698@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Oh wait nevermind i got it.

EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:eMs27.664121$166.13711545 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> im sorry i still dont understand reduce can you explain it in simpiler
> terms?
>
> Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
> news:Sds27.29662$F%5.1909477 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> > "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
> > news:3ur27.663627$166.13698874 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> > > Ok well I have ANOTHER problem with one of the examples in my book (By
> The
> > > Way, "Teach yourself python in 24 hours" is an extremely poorly
written
> > book
> > > and I do not reccomend it to any newbies who are just starting off)
> > > any ways the example is as follows.
> > >
> > > n = range(1,11)
> > > def mult(x,y):
> > >     return x * y
> > > f = reduce(mult,n)
> > > print f
> > >
> > > I get everything up to reduce. I relize mult() takes the first two
> numbers
> > > in range N which would be 1, 2 and multiplys them together to get 2...
> ok
> > > fine im good ... now comes the tricky part!! what does reduce do? Does
> it
> > > take the whole range and make it into a number (12345678910) then
> subtract
> > 2
> > > (the result of the function mult) or what does it do.
> > >
> > The reduce() function takes a function as its first argument and a
> sequence
> > as its second. There's also an optional third argument, which we can
> ignore
> > for now. The function is applied to the first two items of the sequence,
> > then to that result and the third item of the sequence, then to that
> result
> > and the fourth item, and so on until the sequence is exhausted. Here's a
> > loop that might make it a bit clearer:
> >
> > >>> def mult(x, y):
> > ...  return x * y
> > ...
> > >>> for i in range(2, 11):
> > ...  n = range(1, i)
> > ...  print i, ":", reduce(mult, n)
> > ...
> > 2 : 1
> > 3 : 2
> > 4 : 6
> > 5 : 24
> > 6 : 120
> > 7 : 720
> > 8 : 5040
> > 9 : 40320
> > 10 : 362880
> >
> > Each result extends the value by one multiplication (by one less than I
> > because of the way range works).
> >
> > > And i have another question (not related to first question)
> > >
> > > x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> > > def strp(x,y):
> > >  return x + ' ' + y
> > > r = reduce(strp,x)
> > > print r
> > >
> > > my problem is this line return "x + ' ' + y" what does it return the
> value
> > > of. I would understand it if it was x + y but the qutation marks are
> what
> > > throw me off what do they mean?
> > >
> > This is another case where the interactive interpreter is your friend.
Try
> > it and see...
> >
> > >>> x = 'one'
> > >>> y = 'two'
> > >>> x + y
> > 'onetwo'
> > >>> x + ' ' + y
> > 'one two'
> >
> > You can see that the second statement constructs a string from *three*
> > values: the string bound to x, the string consisting of a single space,
> and
> > the string bound to y.
> >
> > So all your second example does is append al lthe strings together, with
> > spaces in between them. It takes 'Thu' and 'Aug" and puts them together
> with
> > a space in between them, that takes *that* result and '5' and puts them
> > together with a space between them, and ... you probably see the point
> now.
> >
> > When you give reduce() a thrid argument, it starts with that and the
first
> > element of the sequence rather than the first two elements of the
> sequence,
> > allowing you to put an initial value into the string of function
> > evaluations:
> >
> > >>> x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> > >>> def strp(x, y):
> > ...  return x + ' ' + y
> > ...
> > >>> print reduce(strp, x, "Date is:")
> > Date is: Thu Aug 5 06:06:27 MDT 1999
> >
> > I hope the book also (though possibly later) points out that a much
better
> > way to do the same thing would be
> >
> > x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> > r = string.join(x, " ")
> >
> > which uses a function from the string module. And, using string methods,
> you
> > could even abreviate it to:
> >
> > " ".join(x)
> >
> > which tells the string containing a single space to insert itself
between
> > the elements of the list, returning the resulting long string. But that
> > probably won't appear until you're about ten hours into the book! Good
> luck.
> >
> > regards
> >  Steve
> > --
> > http://www.holdenweb.com/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>




From jadestar at idiom.com  Sun Jul 15 15:50:12 2001
From: jadestar at idiom.com (James T. Dennis)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 19:50:12 GMT
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
Message-ID: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com>

 This is not a question but merely a comment from a 
 newbie.   I'm reading Beazley's 2nd Ed. "Python Essential
 Reference" and playing with things therein and I thought
 "list comprehension, what a quick way to make a multiplication 
 table"

 multtab = [ [ x*y for x in range(13) ] for y in range(13) ]

 ... though I was surpirsed that I got the syntax correct
 on the first try.  (It still looks wrong, somehow but 
 [ x*y [x for x in range(13)] [y for y in range(13) ] ] looks
 even more wrong).





From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:55:53 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:55:53 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995934280.25863.python-list@python.org> <ockpltktklt4v7ltqb583mg6s5rck06amd@4ax.com> <mailman.996102528.2686.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7n62mtgoe5gv5km2im83rut4jdaqfivqcn@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:07:19 -0700, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>Stephen Horne wrote:
>> 
>> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:23:18 -0700, Paul Prescod
>> <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >It is very common to pass floats to functions that expect integers and
>> >vice versa without really thinking about it. It is *especially* common
>> >to pass integers to functions that expect floats.
>> 
>> And in my mind this is the problem, not division. The traditional
>> solutions to the problem of bad inputs are called *validation* and
>> *documentation*.
>
>So rather than fix the language to reduce mistakes we should impose more
>discipline on programmers. That sounds like a C or Perl solution, not a
>Python solution.

I've never heard of validation dismissed like this before. It is a
basic and fundamental programming principle - not just something to do
if you feel like it, and not something that depends on language choice
in any way except in how you achieve it.

A program or library which accepts bad inputs without generating an
error or at least documenting the limitation is bad, irrespective of
what language you are using.

You don't think you should have to worry about datatypes.
You don't think you should have to worry about validation.

Is there a pattern here? - Perhaps you shouldn't be worrying about
programming at all?



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 10 18:43:02 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:43:02 -0500
Subject: Adding a package to the standard distribution
In-Reply-To: <9iftv6$lq1$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
References: <9iad21$btd$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
        <mailman.994687591.32116.python-list@python.org>
        <9iftv6$lq1$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <15179.34038.116465.816620@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> Vaults of Parnassus.  As for persuading the powers-that-be, you can
    >> send a note to python-dev at python.org.

    Panu> I tried to find information about appropriate lists on
    Panu> www.python.org, but found none. Maybe python-dev just slipped my
    Panu> eye. What are Vaults of Parnassus? Some kind of open repository
    Panu> for Python code?

I'm not sure how well-publicized python-dev is, but the list archives are
available, and anyone can post to it.  (Subscriptions are by invitation.)

I should have posted the VoP address.  It's at

    http://www.vex.net/parnassus/

Skip



From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Mon Jul  2 17:34:54 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:34:54 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>
Message-ID: <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com>

Funny, I thought all of the April Fool jokes were out on the 1st April, did
this one get delayed (badly) somewhere along the line?

Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging out
applications that are going to run in an environment where it isn't going to
matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not something I would put
forward for something like Air Traffic Control.

This is a joke, right?

Gerrit makes some good points here. Add to this that after 20+ years of
experience in the software world (real-time programming all of it), my
experience says that between 25%-50% of any group of programmers you ever
work with in your career should have listened to their mothers and been
"butchers, bakers or candlestick makers" - NOT programmers! That is the
single biggest driving factor for all of this quality, CMM etc movements -
but that's another story :-).

Based upon Gerrit's observations, which I fully endorse, anybody who doesn't
use the most strongly typed language they can find for an application like
Air Traffic Control, has to put it mildly, rocks in their head :-).

Don't get me wrong, Python is a nice language and you could probably do the
job with it with enough time and effort. But as an earlier respondent said,
you would literally have to test it to death and then some! i.e. because of
the lack of type checking  there could be a single line of code somewhere
that has never been run that could cause catastrophic failure of the
application (architectural design *might* mitigate this but it gets back to
the people factor - something I don't trust :-)). At least with a strongly
typed language, even if a line of code has never been run, you are
reasonably assured that when it does run it won't crash due to a variable
being mispelled or mis-used.

Of course, I could at this point say I would never venture into air space
controlled by such as system, but I know it would never get off the ground
(so to speak :-)) because to do it in Python would mean it would never pass
acceptance testing - sure you could code it just as fast (if not faster)
than most other languages used for this application area but you would be in
the test phase forever - or at least until the customer cancelled the
contract :-). So keep dreaming :-)

Peter


"GerritM" <gmullerNoSpam at worldonline.nl> wrote in message
news:9hlfbn$6ok$1 at nereid.worldonline.nl...
> Safety is first of all a determined by the quality of the design and
> secondly by the engineering skills of the developers. Most errors found
> during the developement lifecycle have little relationship with type
> checking or prototyping. Instead semantic errors and missing design
aspects
> (such as performance, exception handling, concurrency etcetera) are the
> majority of errors.
>
> The use of a clear and expressive language, such as Python, will help to
> decrease this category of errors. However, keep in mind that the quality
of
> the architects and engineers is an absolute must for this type of
> application!
>
> Regards Gerrit
>
> --
> www.extra.research.philips.com/natlab/sysarch
> "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> schreef in bericht
> news:bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15 at posting.google.com...
> > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> > aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> > initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> > aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> > collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> > C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> > humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> > toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> > nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> > among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> > insights.
>
>




From hfoffani at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 06:14:22 2001
From: hfoffani at yahoo.com (Hernan M. Foffani)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 10:14:22 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <20010705061422.353$tN@newsreader.com>

m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) wrote:
>    A related question is integration with the Python documentation
>    process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
>    can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
>    we detail this more in this PEP?

No, unless this PEP is merged with Carlos' one.
Definitely, it's one of Carlos' PEP issue.
What you should add to this PEP is a reference that the chance of a
contribution to be accepted is directly proportional to the cumpliment of
the Quality Guidelines.

Regards,
-Hernan

-- 
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
                    Usenet Newsgroup Service


From rh2137 at mindspring.com  Tue Jul  3 03:16:42 2001
From: rh2137 at mindspring.com (David M. Cook)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 07:16:42 GMT
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <slrn9k2s62.3dv.rh2137@localhost.localdomain>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 06:41:31 +0200, Gerhard H?ring
<gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:

>Please excuse this off-topicish post. I was looking for something similar to
>the Windows Scripting Host in the Unix world: a library where an application
>can register functions and types that can then be used by any scripting
>language that bothers to implement the "Unix Scripting Host" interface. The
>application language should not be limited to C or C++.

xmlrpc perhaps?

http://www.xmlrpc.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/py-xmlrpc/

Dave Cook


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sat Jul 21 01:26:31 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 05:26:31 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
References: <2q367.11670$Up.346617@sea-read.news.verio.net> <mailman.995678557.14358.python-list@python.org> <3I667.233325$%i7.131482008@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <bo867.233493$%i7.131705580@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote...
> "Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote...
> > Minidom doesn't use any special threading. minidom is just Python code
> > so you could add trace statements ....
>
> And so I shall.  Thanks for your words of encouragement.
>
> >
> > You mention java. Is this Jython or CPython? Is there a C extension
> > involved?
>
> Nope.  Just plain Java and Runnable.exec("python.exe someth.py");

Of course, it's not Runnable, it's Runtime.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Mon Jul 23 13:57:13 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:57:13 -0400
Subject: Large File Support
References: <eiW57.266163$Z2.3224218@nnrp1.uunet.ca> <lru207zoqx.fsf@haasart1.dhcp.wg.waii.com>
Message-ID: <EAZ67.267418$Z2.3249244@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Thanks for your response Art.

I tried   $ ./configure OPT="-O2 ${CFLAGS}"
but I got an error from make.

The following solution worked, or seems to. But I'm not a C programmer so I
need to find out if it is correct to do it this way:


1. Run ./configure

2. Edit Makefile and add the following options to the OPT=  line near the
top:      -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE  -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64

3. Run make.



Can you tell me if this incorrect in some way?

Thanx

Rod MacNeil

"Art Haas" <arthur.haas at westgeo.com> wrote in message
news:lru207zoqx.fsf at haasart1.dhcp.wg.waii.com...
> "Rod MacNeil" <rmacneil at interactdirect.com> writes:
>
> > Hello NG,
> >
> > I need to build Python to include large file support on Redhat Linux
7.1.
> >
> > I tried the following instructions from section 8.1.1 in the Python docs
but
> > it doesn't work:
> >
> >     On large-file-capable Linux systems, this might work:
> >
> >
> > CC="-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> > export CC
> > ./configure
> >
> >
> > I think this fails because the variable CC is expected to have the
compiler
> > name (gcc).
> >
> > Does anyone have any alternative instructions?
> >
>
> Don't set `CC', set `CFLAGS' ...
>
> $ CFLAGS="-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64"
> $ export CFLAGS
> $ ./configure
> ...
>
> You'll probably have to go in and edit the Makefile, to set these same
> flags for the `OPT' variable as well. Or, when you run `configure',
> you could ...
>
> $ ./configure OPT="-O2 ${CFLAGS}"
>
> ... and things should work. If you want to have debug info in the
> compiled program, add a `-g' to the OPT variable. Check the makefile
> when configure finishes to ensure that the largefile flags are in the
> OPT variable.
>
> --
> ###############################
> # Art Haas
> # (713) 689-2417
> ###############################




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 13:27:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:27:07 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B6031C3.6010707@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <LpY77.30552$EP6.7850796@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Tom Jenkins" <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> wrote in message
news:3B6031C3.6010707 at nospiced.ham.devis.com...
> Kevin Lacker wrote:
>
> > Can you do this:
> >
> > answer = []
> > for x in my_list:
> >     if not is_good(x):
> >         break
> >     answer.append(process(x))
> >
> > with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike
explicit for
> > loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a
current one.
>
>
> do you mean like this?

[filter the list]

No, 'break' stops the for loop.  Good things after non-good x do not
get processed and appended.

Terry J. Reedy





From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 24 21:53:51 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:53:51 -0400
Subject: Vaguely related question about divmod
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-2934E4.17291924072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEOJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> divmod(3.1415926535, 2.718281828) returns (1.0, 0.4233108255) almost as
> I would expect.  But, why is the first return value a float instead
> of an int?

float divmod is defined in terms of float operations; that's all.  A
consequence:

>>> divmod(2.**64, 17)
(1.0851025925711501e+018, 1.0)
>>> divmod(2L**64, 17)
(1085102592571150095L, 1L)
>>>

IOW, while 2.**64 (and 2.**1000 ...) are exactly representable as IEEE
doubles, Python doesn't generate (potentially) multi-hundred digit longs for
float divmod's results.  The audience for float divmod wouldn't appreciate
it if Python did, either <wink>.

BTW, a more useful divmod(x, y) for positive floats would return floats q, r
such that r <= y/2.




From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 19:30:33 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:30:33 GMT
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate  laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <tyn77.25777$EP6.6217548@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> In the interest of proposing a solution everyone can live with, may
I
> suggest adoption of new module name extensions? A module named
"module.py2"

Perhaps .py3 for 3.0, the release that cannot run old code.

> will not be picked up or understood by Python 1.x on any platforms
that I am
> aware of. These would be compiled to either ".pyc", ".py2c", or
".pc2",
> depending on whether one can compile the new semantics into code old
> interpreters can handle, and whether it is now okay to allow more
than 3
> letters in file extensions on all popular platforms and file
systems. But
> hopefully everyone gets the idea.

Windows (at least some versions) limited to 3 chars as far as I know.
However, since compiled files are version-specific implementation
'buffers' (and not part of the language definition) with an internal
version identifier (I'm sure), py3 could still be compiled to .pyc

Terry J. Reedy





From thedustbustr at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 21:15:12 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 01:15:12 GMT
Subject: raw_input() with out blocking process
Message-ID: <20010724211512.04292.00000898@ng-fh1.aol.com>

I am writing an IRC client, and have not found a good solution to a major
problem: How do I enter commands to be sent while not blocking the process (so
that the client continues to recieve and print data to the screen)? 
raw_input() waits for you to press enter, and blocks the program.  I tried
using threads for the raw_input() but this didnt work because whenever text was
printed the raw_input() was terminated or something (it just didnt work at
all).  My best solution was to use threads and ANOTHER program- a server to
type commands into (with raw_input() ) that uses sockets to communicate with
the IRC client (the command reciever subroutine a thread so s.accept() doesn't
block the process).  The IRC client recieves the data from the command server
(it prints anything it recieves) but doesn't send it along (not sure why,
theres a bug in my code somewhere).  Is there a better way to issue commands to
my client, or do I have to find the bug?  I'll post the code below so you can
graciously help ;)  I think the problem is that you cannot send data to the IRC
server from the subroutine, but I'm not sure how to do that... it has to be a
subroutine because its a thread...

ANY help at all is appreciated =)
Thanks a million, Dustin

# BEGIN CODE BLOCK 1
# irc.py
import socket, string, sys, errno, thread
HOST = 'irc.box.sk'
PORT = 6667
NICK='Dustin[bot]'
REAL='MyReal Name'
QUITMSG='Bye'
IDENT='hacker'

def parse(data):     #print data to screen in orderly fashion
    if string.find(string.lower(data), 'privmsg') >= 0:
        if data[:1]==':':     #was recieved from IRC server because it was
routed
            garbage,middle,msg = string.split(data,':')
            sender,cmd,rcpt = string.split(middle)
            return '<%s> %s' % (sender,msg)
        else:                   #was recieved from control program
            middle,msg = string.split(data,':')
            cmd,rcpt = string.split(middle)
            return '<%s> %s' % (NICK,msg)
    else: 
        return data

def get_control():     #recieve data from control program
    while 1:
        control = ctl.recv(256)
        if string.lower(control) == 'die':
            irc.send('QUIT :%s' % QUITMSG)     #quit IRC
            ctl.close     #kill all the sockets
            irc.close
            break     #terminate loop therefore exiting the thread
        else:
            irc.send(control)
            print control

#set up connection to IRC server
irc = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
irc.connect((HOST, PORT))
log=open('irclog.txt','w')     #set up log
print 'Connecting to %s:%s' % (HOST, PORT)

while 1:	# initial registration
    data = irc.recv(1024)
    log.write(data)
    print data
    if string.find(string.lower(data), 'got ident response'): 
        break     #the connection was established

#register on the IRC server, send USER command followed by NICK
irc.send('USER %s localhost localhost :%s\n' % (IDENT, REAL))
irc.send('NICK %s\n' % NICK)

# connect to control server, a program ALREADY RUNNING:
ctl = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
ctl.connect(('localhost', 5989))

# start recieving commands from control program
thread.start_new_thread(get_control,())

while 1:	# main program loop
    data = irc.recv(2048)     #recieve data from IRC server
    log.write(data)
    print data
    #print parse(data)

# END CODE BLOCK 1

# BEGIN CODE BLOCK 2
# ircctl.py
# This is a SERVER running on localhost, it sends any inputted
# text to the main IRC client through localhost:5989
import socket, string

#set up connection,
s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind(('', 5989))
s.listen(1)

#conveniently blocks process so you cant prematurely send data
conn, addr = s.accept()
while 1:
    cmd = raw_input(">")
    conn.send(cmd)
    if cmd=='die':
        conn.close
        break
#END CODE BLOCK 2


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 14:35:46 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:35:46 -0700
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
References: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <3B5DC002.B3F06FE3@home.net>

Bryan Webb wrote:
> I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating point
> envirnoment.

Python FLoats are C doubles. Numpy supports C dooubles as well, on a
most 32 bit machines, you can get numbers up to 1.8X10^308, which is
greater than 2**800. If you mean 2X10**800,you are out of luck with
NumPy or native Python Floats. Do you really need more precision that 

> I would like an increase of precision over std floats.

Do you really need more precision that doubles? (I think it's 53 bits,
about 16 decimal digits)

>I also
> would like to know the internal representation of the numbers, so that I can
> read and write them to disk in their internal representations..

You can do this withe the struct or array modules, or with numpy's
tostring() and fromstring() methods, without knowing the internal
representation. If you really want to write it bit by bit, find a good
reference for IEEE 754 (it may be in a C book,and any number of other
places as well)

> Should I use real-accurate, or numpy

NumPy gives you a nice notation, and much better performance for working
with arrays of numberes, it willnot give you any added range or
precision.

I only just heard of real-accurate, but if you really need the extra
range and/or precision, it looks pretty nice. It won't be fast, however!

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From kbk at shore.net  Wed Jul 11 14:20:01 2001
From: kbk at shore.net (Kurt B. Kaiser)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:20:01 GMT
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it> <79179cf5.0107061455.19093036@posting.google.com> <GG7JuM.772@leeds.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <m3ofqr5nxy.fsf@float.ne.mediaone.com>

There are a bunch of 1000 pagers out there, now. The new edition of Programming
Python is the best, IMHO.  I think Beazley is the best reference (if you need
more, RTS, and look at the online reference) and also the best for learning
Python, if you have programming experience already. It's the one getting
dog-eared here.  
Regards, KBK







From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Wed Jul  4 17:33:21 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 21:33:21 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <mailman.994278428.32719.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i0231$c2e$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:
> On 4 Jul 2001, Martijn Faassen wrote:

>>Hi folks,

> ...
>>    In the case where no head maintainer can be found (possibly
>>    because there are no maintainers left), the integrators will issue
>>    a call to the community at large asking for new maintainers to
>>    step forward. If no one does, the integrators can decide to
>>    declare the contribution deprecated as described in PEP 4.
> ...

> This is too quick, IMHO: some libraries/modules could be actual for
> years even without any maintainers. (Yes, I hope Python to be *that*
> stable).

I said they *can* decide it, they don't have to decide it.
This is here to make explicit a circumstance when depcrecation of a module
can be invoked; if there is no one willing to maintain it anymore
the interest is low. It is also a mild stick to be used so that modules *will*
be maintained; the integrators start mumbling about deprecation may
be a powerful incentive to any would-be maintainers (it flushes out
people motivated to maintain it :) 

> So, probably there is a need to add a special category of unmaintained
> modules and ship them with the Standard Library as long, as they
> are useful and runnable.

It is still maintenance to verify whether something is still runnable.
What I should do is make explicit that python core developers can be
module maintainers; in fact what may need to be done is to make them
the module maintainers of most of what's in the library now. This is
still an open issue; I don't know what other people think about
this (most importantly the core developers!)

I think it is important to have a clear maintainer for everything
added to the library (and preferably also everything *in* the library).
If the maintainer's work is not much work at all, as you suggest, so
much the better for everybody. Additionally, if a lingering module
has an actual maintainer the chances are higher said module will
actually be developed further, which is a win for everybody too.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From guido at zope.com  Fri Jul 27 15:14:42 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:14:42 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:06:59 EDT."
             <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOELNLBAA.tim.one@home.com> 
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOELNLBAA.tim.one@home.com> 
Message-ID: <200107271914.PAA26871@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> [Terry Reedy]
> > Given that one spurious argument for this proposal was the claim that
> > float division preserves more information than quotient division, I
> > think it might be appropriate to warn here that the opposite is true
> > for sufficiently long longs, so that one may need to switch to
> > long//long to preserve accuracy.
> 
> [Guido van Rossum]
> > I never bought the "preserving information" argument.  In general all
> > classic use of long/long should be switched to long//long, of course,
> > as should all classic use of int/int.

[Tim Peters]
> They should, but I'm still of the violent opinion that the "loss of
> information" argument is the key to what's wrong with
> 
>     x = y / z
> 
> today.  If it doesn't give the best result it can (given the limitations of
> internal representations) in all cases, polymorphism is still screwed in the
> cases where it happens not to, and "best result it can" has no objective
> meaning I can think of other than "closest possible to the infinitely
> precise result".  If it can return infinities or NaNs or raise OverflowError
> or silently underflow to 0 if y and z just happen to be longs with
> unfortunate values, we've only addressed the underlying problem for short
> ints.
> 
> The problem with
> 
>     2/3 == 0
> 
> was never that the result "isn't a float"(!),

That depends on your point of view.  The problem was that it wasn't a
good approximation.  In a language (like Python today) where float is
the only type that can give you that approximation, the problem might
as well be thought of as "isn't a float".

> and flat-out disasters like
> 
> >>> x = 1L << 2000
> >>> y = x
> >>> float(x)/y
> -1.#IND
> >>>
> 
> can't be considered improvements for polymorphism even under the influence
> of strong drugs <wink>.
> 
> The potential damage is most obvious with Python longs, but on boxes where
> Python ints have more bits of precision than doubles, that
> 
>    x/1 == x
> 
> will be false for some vanilla short ints x is also bad news.

But will it be false?  If x/1 returns a float, it certainly returns the
same float as float(x), and a comparison of float to int converts the
int to a float today.  Ditto for float vs. long.

> Throwing
> information away needlessly is the problem, and rigid conversion to float
> only sounds like "a cure" if you're picturing short ints on boxes where
> conversion to float can't lose info (which is most boxes today, but not all;
> 64-bit Linux is the most common exception).
> 
> >>> x = 1L << 2000
> >>> y = x
> >>> x / y
> 
> ought to return 1 (of some flavor), and
> 
>     x/(y*2)
> 
> ought to return 0.5 (so long as floats are the most accurate representation
> we have)
> 
> and
> 
>     x/1 == x
> 
> ought to be true for short or long int x regardless of value or platform.
> "Preserving as much information as possible" is the only principle I see
> that explains why anyone in their right mind <wink> must agree with the
> claimed "ought to" behavior in those three examples.  It also explains why
> conversion to float is desirable if all you're picturing is int/int on
> current 32-bit boxes.

With the qualification "as much as possible", I agree.

By the time 3.0 comes around, (1L<<2000)/1 will probably return a
rational number.  But until we have added rationals, I think that for
most apps, long/long -> float is the only definition that is
consistent with the other requirements, which IMO are:

- longs behave like ints, only without the limitation on size;

- int/int must yield a close approximation of the mathematical result of
  division;

- the result type should not depend on the input values.

The third requirement cannot be absolute (see the new meaning of
10**-100) but I still think it would be better if long/long true
division always returned a float than if it returned a long under
certain circumstances.  We cannot do anything about the underflow
either -- 1 / (1L<<2000) is 0 under the classic division rules too.

Until we have rationals, I'd be okay if long/long true division raised
an exception when unacceptable information loss would be the result --
but I'd be just as happy if it simply returned inf or 0.0 as a side
effect of the conversion to float.

I'm not willing to wait with the introduction of PEP 238 until we've
sorted out rationals.

People who don't want their longs to be truncated by true division
should not use true division with longs.

I expect that only mathematicians use longs outside the range of
IEEE double, and they will be wise enough to use //.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Wed Jul 11 09:07:27 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:07:27 -0500
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5231@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

That is a good point.  Why are some open source and free efforts popular and
others not?  Apache is popular because it was the only thing going at the
time, and now it runs 60 per cent of the world's servers.  Linux started out
as a one man show, and became popular because it's a free Unix system, and
Unix is much better then Win doze.  And Perl came bundled with Unix, so when
CGI first came around, Unix Administrators were called upon to write CGI
modules.  And yes -- Java is the precious child of Sun -- and Sun has gotten
other major players, such as IBM and Oracle, to support the J2EE
infrastructure.  Now if only Python can have a lucky break.  

-----Original Message-----
From: James_Althoff at i2.com [mailto:James_Althoff at i2.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 7:12 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Long Live Python!



Paul Prescod wrote:
>Java has of course outgrown its initial niche but it is hardly fair to
>compare Python to a language backed by Sun, IBM, etc. If Python had that
>kind of backing it would be as big or bigger than Java too.

On the other hand, Jython actually helps Python take *advantage* of Java's
popularity.  So Java and Python can both "win" together.

Jim





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 23 15:23:08 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 15:23:08 -0400
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
References: <mailman.995680776.21360.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uu203a1r7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> Would you please spell out what you changed?  I saw anther report of this
> symptom, a few months ago (w/ a different installer), but no follow-up.  I'd
> like to know how you cured it so we can help the next person who falls into
> this trap.

Just as another data point - I can't recall for sure about 1.5.2, but
for me under NT 4.0, I believe all the releases since then have given
me an NTVDM error upon startup of the installer - but not a hard
crash, just an error which I can cancel or close.  Cancelling just
continues with the installation fine - successfully so far in all
cases including 2.2a1.

I've seen it in other (older) installation packages as well, and am
presuming that it has something to do with the Wise installer -
perhaps trying to run an internal utility module upon startup that is
a 16-bit application (thus the need to start up NTVDM) and which
doesn't work quite right in all cases.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Mon Jul 30 15:49:15 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:49:15 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHEEPJCDAA.tim@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301343340.28123-100000@bms>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Tim Peters wrote:
> [Bengt Richter]
> > I wonder what it would take to rewrite it to take real advantage
> > of IEEE754.
<...>
> It would much easier to take advantage of 754 by simulating fp entirely in
> software, avoiding the platform HW and C fp facilities entirely.

..and best to do that, then provide a compile time switch so platforms
which have a maintainer for this sorta thing can take advantage of the
HW implementation.


- Bruce




From weage98 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 15:59:06 2001
From: weage98 at yahoo.com (Joshua Weage)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 12:59:06 -0700
Subject: Tkinter: Frames in nested classes?
References: <9053f4e3.0107130616.79fd6378@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9053f4e3.0107131159.4af4d9a4@posting.google.com>

Following up to my own message, here is the solution (as done in Tkinter.py):

from Tkinter import *

def _flatten(tuple):
        res = ()
        for item in tuple:
                if type(item) in (TupleType, ListType):
                        res = res + _flatten(item)
                elif item is not None:
                        res = res + (item,)
        return res

def _cnfmerge(cnfs):
        if type(cnfs) is DictionaryType:
                return cnfs
        elif type(cnfs) in (NoneType, StringType):
                return cnfs
        else:
                cnf = {}
                for c in _flatten(cnfs):
                        try:
                                cnf.update(c)
                        except (AttributeError, TypeError), msg:
                                print "_cnfmerge: fallback due to:", msg
                                for k, v in c.items():
                                        cnf[k] = v
                return cnf

class Frame1(Frame):
        def __init__(self, master=None, cnf={}, **kw):
                cnf = _cnfmerge((cnf,kw))
                Frame.__init__(self, master, cnf)
                Label(self,text="frame1").pack()
                self.frame = Frame2(self,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
                self.frame.pack()

class Frame2(Frame):
        def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
                cnf = _cnfmerge((cnf,kw))
                Frame.__init__(self,master,cnf)
                Label(self,text="frame2").pack()
                self.frame = Frame3(self,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
                self.frame.pack()

class Frame3(Frame):
        def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
                cnf = _cnfmerge((cnf,kw))
                Frame.__init__(self,master,cnf)
                Label(self,text="testing").pack()

root = Tk()

root.title("Temp testing")
root.config(height=200,width=300)

frame1 = Frame1(root,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
frame1.pack()

root.mainloop()


From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul 20 08:43:47 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:43:47 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for RADIUS..???
In-Reply-To: <20010720121639.25111.qmail@web14806.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107201642120.2068-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, binto bient wrote:

> could Python implemented in RADIUS (Remote
> Authentication Dial-In User Service )for ISP,
> everything that related with RADIUS.

Get yourself xtRadius or similar and enjoy fully scriptable RADIUS.
(Or read RADIUS docs and implement it itself ;-)
 
> thnx

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi

(offline in 0.5 hour)
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From brakedon at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 22:56:37 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 19:56:37 -0700
Subject: GUI problems
References: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com> <3B44F685.4F00FA2@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107061856.30e64d8f@posting.google.com>

Thank you very much! That's all that was needed.

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message news:<3B44F685.4F00FA2 at Lugoj.Com>...
> You are missing a line. Before root.mainloop(), add the line:
> 
> x = fibon_gui(root)
> 
> Otherwise you aren't creating any instance of class fibon_gui that I can
> see!


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 11:00:51 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:00:51 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC),
<margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> wrote:

>systems. However, we may be getting to the stage now where the task of
>guiding Python should be taken out of his hands.

Despite my initial overreaction (yes, I admit it) and my ongoing
concerns, I don't think this is realistic.

>The next features of Python will see several types of changes, which
>seem to been implmented and accepted into the language without 
>discussion.

This definitely isn't realistic. Generators may not have been a major
topic for the masses, for instance, but that doesn't mean the subject
wasn't raised and discussed several times in the past.

Division has been discussed in the past, but when you don't believe
such a basic language feature would ever be changed anyway such
discussions aren't interesting.

>2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the BDFL
>perhaps calls into question the 'B'.  

IMO, the 'B' is not in question.

There is a clear split in opinion, and if you take the Pro-PEP0238
view then there is some merit in claiming that the short term pain is
justified by the long term greater good. I believe this opinion is
wrong, but I don't believe it is motivated by anything but the best
intentions.

>If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
>able to depose the dictatorship, and create a stable and sensible 
>system for developing Python (not Python++). If this means forking 
>Python, then that will be done.

I've been thinking very hard about this. Forking Python would be a
very damaging thing. It isn't a way of enhancing Pythons usefulness in
the way that other variants of Python have been. It would, IMO, be an
abuse of the open source principles. Using the openly available Python
source to create mutually incompatible variants of the language would
be just as bad as Microsofts attempts to 'enhance' Java.

Of course Guido is the person who is arguably creating the
incompatible side of the fork, but with luck Python will recover from
that given time.


I've had ideas for a new language for some time, and the events of the
last few days have given me the reason I needed to start taking it
more seriously. Having considered these ideas a little, I have come to
some conclusions...

1.  A lot of the ideas turn out not to be for a programming language
as such at all. Rather, it combines the ideas of literate programming
with a kind of replacement for make. An XML notation would allow
source code in a range of languages to be packaged in a linked set of
XML files with documentation, detailed specification of the build
process and explicit requirements for the run-time and build-time
environment. It would allow you to specify, for instance, that the
source code for this C++ module contains a constant structure derived
according to xxx principles (for the documentation) and can be
generated by running yyy script in zzz version of Python (or
whatever).

Definitely a case of going off at a tangent!

2.  Those ideas I do have for a scripting language would describe
something superficially similar to Python, but substantially
different. The reason being that I have realised that datatypes in all
current languages are attempting to represent two distinct concepts
with one language construct.

Someone once defined a type to me as a set of values and the
operations that can be performed on those values. AFAICR, it was in
relation to Z and formal methods.

This definition of type is quite distinct from the representation.

On this basis, you could define types like 'number', 'integer',
'real', 'approximate_real' - and yet allow that within the each type
the language is free to change representations (and in some cases may
be forced to change representations) in order to best handle the data.

In other words, it would be quite reasonable to have strong static
typing and yet still have dynamic representation of values.

To be practical, literals would have to have sensible default types -
the most general type possible for the given value and there would
need to be a rule that allowed more general types to be implicitly
cast into more specialist types (the reverse of what generally happens
with representations) with errors raised if the value is not supported
by the target type.

In blocks of code that would otherwise require excessive casting, it
should be possible to override the default type for literals.

For example, the following code...

  assume real :
    a = 5/2

Would result in the values '5' and '2' being classified initially with
the 'real' type. They would be represented as ints, but (and you have
no idea how hard it is to say this ;-) division would change
representations (maybe to float, maybe to rational etc) and return the
value two-and-a-half.

However, in the following code...

  assume integer :
    a = 5/2

The 5 and 2 would have 'integer' type and representation 'int'. When
the division operator is evaluated, changing to float or rational
representations would be illegal.


Depending on your religion, there are a few ways this could work. I
would favour division being considered ambiguous and therefore illegal
with 'number' type, and otherwise working as per current Python
division (but with respect to type, not representation).

Therefore...

  print 5/2  #  error - don't know whether to use integer or real
             #  arithmetic

  assume integer :
    print 5/2   #  result 2

  assume real :
    print 5/2   #  result 2.5

In the two-division-operators religion, // would be defined for all
specialisations of number but / would only be defined for
specialisations of real. / would work for two number arguments, but
only due to implicit casting to real - the result would therefore be
considered real as well.

Thus...

  a = 5/2   #  5 and 2 both number, but must cast to real for /
            #  value assigned to a therefore has type real

  b = a * integer (2)  # error - attempt to mix integer and real
                       # arithmetic

  c = 5//2  # result is 2 - type is number as no need to specialise
            # further at present, even though representation is
            # certainly int.


How this would affect performance is unclear. In general, having a
known type would restrict the number of representations to be
considered. Functions that restrict the types that they are valid for
would probably be significantly faster than those that allowed their
arguments to default to the anything type, but they would also trigger
some kind of check on call which might easily wipe out that gain if it
happened in inner loops.



This strikes me as a worthwhile experiment, but one that still needs a
lot of thought and also one which has a big chance of turning out
impractical.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  9 10:31:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 18:31:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <3B49B99B.4E496A0C@aculink.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107091826230.549-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, SoloCDM wrote:

>Ben stated the following:
>>
>> http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
>
>I'm not bashing Python, I'm only commenting on what I saw.  The tests,
>from my previous experience, are legitimate; therefore, the tests
>raised many unanswered questions.
>
>Theses numbers produced at this URL site are very real to me.  I
>noticed a balanced and small memory and cpu usage for most of the
>Python tests, but C/C++ out weighed most other languages.  Would
>anyone care to comment?

Have you tried to tweak weights?
If you put nonzero into "number of lines" category, you will get
the picture where Python and some other languages are winners.

There are other analyses (Lutz Prechelt's, for example) which show that
overall program efficiency depends largely on programmer's abilities.

Poor C/C++ programmer could make programs much worse than average Python
programmer!

One more point about shootout. If I understood correctly, advanced
features are banned. You can't change

k = []
for i in list:
  k.append(f(i)

into:

k = [f(i) for i in list]

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Monday, July 09, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Useless Invention: Motorcycle seat-belts." _/




From smarsh at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  1 01:53:36 2001
From: smarsh at hotmail.com (scott)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 05:53:36 GMT
Subject: Can I list the functions inside a module
References: <3B3DFF55.2030701@stu.ust.hk>
Message-ID: <3B3EBADB.B57A5ED8@hotmail.com>


Calvin Fong wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
>         I'm running Piggy 0.7 on my palm m100. Piggy is a python interperter for
> palm OS. As there is some platform specific modules for it, I want to
> know what function do they contain. Please, can anyone teach me how to
> show the function inside a modules.
> 

The following code is from the tutorial "Dive into Python"
(http://diveintopython.org/apihelper_divein.html#apihelper.divein) :

# apihelper.py

def help(object, spacing=10, collapse=1):
    """Print methods and doc strings.

    Takes module, class, list, dictionary, or string."""
    methodList = [e for e in dir(object) if callable(getattr(object,
e))]
    processFunc = collapse and (lambda s: " ".join(s.split())) or
(lambda s: s)
    print "\n".join(["%s %s" %
                     (method.ljust(spacing),
                      processFunc(str(getattr(object, method).__doc__)))
                      for method in methodList])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print help.__doc__


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 21:19:26 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:19:26 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996263093.23412.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9m659r.jdf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3b636231.682598134@wa.news.verio.net>

On 28 Jul 2001 19:40:43 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:43:24 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:
>
>> Multiplying by 1.0 preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0
>> (of either sign) may not;
>
UIAM, the way I read it, the only way you can get -0 from multiply is as a
result of extreme underflow denormalizing to zero. Others give plain zero.
Of course, my intel pentium book is not the official ieee754 spec.

>Why adding a negative zero may not? If 0.0+(-0.0) is specified to be
>0.0, then I don't see where it breaks.
>
UIAM some more, the result of 0.0+(-0.0) depends on rounding mode (Down => -0.0)



From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 00:09:16 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:09:16 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com> <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <3B60E96C.2A99AD87@engcorp.com>

Kevin Lacker wrote:
>
> How cryptic is
> 
> [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]
> 
> ? Not really any more cryptic than
> 
> [process(x) for x in my_list if is_good(x)]
> 
> which seems to be agreeably a good thing to have. I certainly like it.

Assuming you can read the one, the other is at least as
readable.

In my post I was attempting to point out that I find list 
comprehensions less readable than the equivalent, longer but 
more explicit while loop version, not that one list comprehension 
is more or less cryptic than another.

(I'm quite sure in time list comprehensions will be quite
readable to me.  Eventually even Perl can become readable
to someone.  That doesn't mean the meaning of either is
obvious to a newcomer, which is what bothers me about both.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bsb at winnegan.de  Wed Jul  4 19:21:34 2001
From: bsb at winnegan.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 01:21:34 +0200
Subject: python-mode and py-python-command
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107042256590.32257-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107042256590.32257-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <87k81os372.fsf@winnegan.de>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> Hello!
> 
> How do I tell Emacs to call specific Python interpreter
> within a certain file with Python code?
> 
> I know that for this I need to set up py-python-command
> variable, but how to do it?

Which version of py-mode.el are you using (C-h v py-version)?
On my system it shows 

  Value: "3.105"

That version is slightly broken, it runs the Python interpreter
in the py-which-shell buffer-local variable. This variable is set from
py-python-command on M-1 C-c C-t (py-toggle-shells).

[...]

> 3. What is wrong with this (at the end of file)?
> 
> % Local Variables:
> % mode: python
> % py-python-command: \"/usr/bin/python2.1\"
> % End:

Python will choke on % as a comment character.

The following snippet shows how to set the variables including a
workaround for the buglet.

--------- snip --------
import sys
print sys.version[:3]

# Local variables:
# py-python-command: "python2.1"
# py-which-shell: "python1.5"
# End:
--------- snip --------

HTH
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at winnegan.de - http://www.winnegan.de/
****** ceterum censeo javascriptum esse restrictam *******



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul 12 16:00:45 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:00:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: spam
In-Reply-To: <9ikpns$qg5$846@scelto.ts.kiev.ua>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107122357220.1375-100000@phd.fep.ru>

This is russian spam, please everyone complain to usenet at scelto.ts.kiev.ua

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Alexander wrote:
>  ?? ?????????????? ???????????  -  sagemm.h1.ru

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 23:12:57 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 23:12:57 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994126144.24483.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <xHa07.16949$Lk6.1252424@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994126144.24483.python-list at python.org...
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:13:36PM -0400, Alex wrote:
> >
> > > You would be maintaining NxN table to see
> > >     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
> > >     - distance (between any two position) is too close
> >
> > You don't need an NxN table, actually.  You can partition the space in
> > which you'll be tracking the planes into cubical buckets with diameters
> > greater than your threshold minimum distance.  Then you only need to
> > check for each plane the other planes that are in its bucket or an
> > adjacent bucket.  It scales linearly with the number of planes.
>
> What I meant is that for each airplane, he needs to calculate the
> distance to every other airplanes; that's O(N^2).  ;-)  Ultimately,
> though, it depends on how the data (from the radar) are given to Python
> script, and this wasn't clear in the original post.  Judging by his thin
> skin, I don't think it was a serious post.
>
It seemed like a reasonable question to me, without any justification for
calling him an idiot. I thought his reply made the reasonable point that
it's a specialised problem which has been studied for long enough to make
obvious solutions seem simplistic. Fast-time simulation was the latest
technique about twenty-five, no, make that thirty, years ago.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 12:57:21 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:57:21 -0400
Subject: Python -- Use with both COM & Java?
In-Reply-To: <Jpc07.289$GI4.22690@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>; from howard@dunlavy.net on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 05:06:49AM +0000
References: <Jpc07.289$GI4.22690@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <20010703125721.B22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 05:06:49AM +0000, Howard Dunlavy wrote:
| Hence my question.  Is Python something that could be used to create both
| COM object and EJB's, for instance (using JPython).

I have no COM experience, but I think that it is available directly
from Python only with CPython.  Java is, of course, available through
Jython (JPython is the old name).  You could use SOAP or ILU or
something to use both a JVM and CPython to get both Java and COM.  I
have also heard a little bit about COM from Java.  It may only exist
with MS's implementation of a JVM, but I have one application in
particular (Source Off-Site) that uses Java but has an MFC gui (on
windows).  Maybe that would help?  I also like Alex' suggestion of
having the interface be in 2 separate modules, one for COM and one for
Java, similar to the way the 'os' module in the standard library
works.  The core can be "pure Python" and not rely on either
interface.  This is probably the easiest way to go.

-D




From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Mon Jul  2 14:24:06 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:24:06 +0200
Subject: modifying sys.path on win98...?
References: <3b40d94c.3665104@news.mailops.com>
Message-ID: <3B40BC46.65C94737@dennis-voss.de>

> I'm trying to update the sys.path for python on win98...
>
> I altered the registry, under local machine, seemingly correct. But
> when I access the sys.path to check it, my alterations don't show,
> even after rebooting.
>
> I can use sys.path.append, but the change only lasts until I close
> python. Then it reverts back to its original state.
>
> How do I make the alteration 'permanent' ?

You can't.
Windows 9x does not store the enviroment variables in the registry
as Win NT does. The only permanent keys are created in the
autoexec.bat file. When you start an application or a DOS box,
Windows copies the env.vars to your "sandbox" and destroys that
information when your program ends.

The only alternative in MS way seems to be the registry, but that also
has disadvantages, i.e. the files storing the data don't shrink when you
delete
information in the registry.

Bad, I know - Blame MS. I asked the same question in the helpdesk on
this years CeBIT (we needed that for network scripts, my old teacher
didn't
want to change his Novell scripts) resulting in the above answer (=no)

Dennis



From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 27 11:36:04 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:36:04 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <m15Q45B-000wcBC@swing.co.at> <mailman.996239270.26342.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B618A64.B0642E9B@alcyone.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Requiring a version specifier in all new code is very annoying.  The
> future statement is annyoing too, but at least it's a transitional
> measure.

But when you have substantial and fundamental language changes coming
down the pipe, it looks more and more attracive.  A version specifier
need not be required in all code, but if the language keeps changing I
don't really see a better alternative to being able to put a stake in
the ground when you're writing an application or library.

If a program won't work in a differently-versioned interpreter, then
it's best to get that out of the way right at the start of the program
before going any further.  It's far better for a program/library to
break cleanly in a way that makes it clear what's wrong, rather than
either failing silently or behaving erratically and unpredictably.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough.
\__/ Albert Einstein
    Interstelen / http://www.interstelen.com/
 A multiplayer, strategic, turn-based Web game on an interstellar scale.


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 24 19:43:57 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 19:43:57 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238 would
> make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?

Could we also at least keep in the fray a slightly alternate question
of "what can we do about the PEP"?  I mean, as has been suggested
elsewhere at times, one solution to the old code is not to break it -
using "//" (or some other sequence) as the float division is backwards
compatible (no current code using it) and can be introduced at any
time for new code to use.  It wouldn't even need a lengthy period, but
could show up right in 2.2.

It seems to me that the only real argument against that is aesthetics,
or am I missing something?  Of course I'll play a little devil's
advocate and say that I probably agree with the aesthetic argument, but
only to the point where it breaks down against my concern for the
compatibility argument.

I will however, also concede that realistically the compatibility
argument should hold for any backwards-incompatible change (e.g.,
adding the yield keyword for generators) which weakens my argument
somewhat since old modules using "yield" as a variable will already be
running into the same issues we're discussing with respect to
division.

> I propose the following measures.  Let's discuss whether these are
> conservative enough, from the perspective of someone who has a large
> body of old working Python code.  (From the perspective of someone who
> wants int division for other reasons, these can never be conservative
> enough. :-)

"large body" in this case should be the product of actual amount of
code, and size of deployed base.  Even if I've only got a few modules
impacted, if they're deployed all over the place, it's just as hard to
fix one thing as many.

But, going with the thought process...

> (1) A very long wait period before the new division becomes the
>     default.  The PPE mentions at least two years; we can go over
>     that.  Python 2.2 will introduce the first release where it's
>     *possible* to write "from __future__ import division"; we'll have
>     to wait until 1.5.2 is only a faint memory (like 1.4 is now) and
>     2.2 pretty old.  (The current release pace is two revisions per
>     year, so two years would make 2.6 the first release where new
>     division is the default.)

Will 2.2 also introduce the use of // if you wanted to write it now?

Thinking in general, I'm concerned that this change itself might feed
back and itself cause the necessary time to increase, and it's not
clear that it ever really comes to closure.  That is, perhaps part of
the reason that 1.4 became a faint memory is that the only thing
holding up use of 1.5.2 was pure deployment concerns.  I didn't take
part in that transition, so will have to defer to others if there were
any core backwards incompatible changes in 1.5 over 1.4 that had to be
overcome for people to move away from 1.4.

Thus, the very fact that the behavior is moving towards breakage may
hold up people from moving for fear of the resource involved to ensure
they don't have a problem, which in turn may prolong the period of
time when such breakage is a risk.  And while we may be timing from
1.5.2, the real crux is the gap from oldest in general use release
that works the old way to first that doesn't, since deployments
(particularly large systems) don't tend to move linearly through the
releases.

This just makes me think that no timeline is really large enough, but
maybe I'm just falling into the trap of theoretical concerns that
won't materialize in reality.

But in concrete terms (as a data point for myself, if only to give
some visibility into some practical terms of what I'm likely to be
dealing with), on a distributed basis, I have to deal with relatively
small amount of code, but dependent on third party packages,
distributed to around 1000 machines in several hundred locations in a
few countries.  That's at the moment, and if my sales force isn't
lying (no snickers from the back of the room) it'll be at least double
that within a year.  Locally, I have larger code bases, but only on
tens of machines all in a central data center.

I'm still at 1.5.2 and unlikely to move beyond that until at least
this year's end.  At that point I would have been using Python 1.5.2
for about 21 months with it fully deployed in all production sites
around 18.  I would anticipate about a 6 month preparation cycle
before moving to any new release (code test, ensure third party
support, etc...) and would then expect to get at least 12-18 months
run time again.  Right now I was planning on moving to 2.1.1 unless
2.2 looked to arrive soon enough (unlikely) to meet the testing/third
party criteria.

So even when you released 2.2, I'd probably just be deploying 2.1.1
with the next deployment release being investigated around 2.4/2.5.

So, assuming the new division operator was supported as of 2.2, I'd
likely have my first chance of using it in production use (e.g.,
writing code to use it to avoid breaking in 2.6) with 2.4, at least a
year from now.  But if that still left me a year and two releases to
iron things out I expect the code I controlled would be fine.

My biggest concern at that point would be that third party code
continued to track as well, and even more so, how to sanity check
older code I may obtain (from the net or elsewhere) to ensure that it
didn't depend on old behavior.

Actually, that might turn out to be the biggest compatibility problem
of all.  Once the from __future__ goes away you'll be left with
straight Python code with no indication that it assumes that / is the
new behavior (other than being written recently) and as things lead a
_long_ life on the web, it'll be all too easy to pull down code
examples or modules that have no visual indication that they might
depend on the old behavior.

So bottom line is that I think I'd have to admit that two years is
probably ok, but I'd feel more comfortable with it longer, and even
then I'd be concerned with where that left us steady state given the
legacy of code modules floating around for who knows how long.  But
since some stake has to be placed in the ground, and I don't know that
I'd be more comfortable with 'n' years rather than 2 years, it's
probably ok.

Wow, that got longer than I thought...

> (2) A command line option to change division semantics.  I propose
>     -Dnew to make the new division semantics the default, -Dold to
>     make the old semantics the default.  -Dold will be the default
>     until the wait period is over, then -Dnew will become the
>     default.  The -D option is retired when nobody needs -Dold any
>     more.  Modules that contain a future statement always use the new
>     default; there's no way to force the old default on a *per-module*
>     basis (since that would be a language feature that could never be
>     removed).

I see this as being of limited usefulness, primarily in cases where
all application code (sans standard library) is under my control.
That's because from a compatibility point of view, if I'm having
problems, it's during the transition, so it's less likely that I'll be
dealing with a homogenous set of modules all of which want one
behavior or the other, versus a mixed bag.

This also begs the question of why offer a command line option for
division but not other backwards-incompatible changes (aside from lack
of more public uproar in the other cases :-)).  

> (3) As of 2.2, all the standard library code should work regardless of
>     the -D option.  That is, all library modules (and modules in Demo
>     and Tools) should use // whenever int division is required, and
>     should use the future statement whenever float division is
>     required.  This is necessary so that use of the -D command line
>     option doesn't break the standard library.

What happens when you reach the release where the __future__ is no
longer needed?  Will that stay in the standard library for some period
of time after that anyway (or else the -D command line option might
cause breakage in the standard library)?

> Anything else?

Just one thought on the warnings defined in the PEP (which in any list
like the above, I'd probably suggest highlighting as a point).
They're not perfect since there are plenty of environments where they
might not show up, but if I read correctly, as of 2.3 any integer
divisions that lose data will generate a warning, but only until the
new behavior becomes default.

Unlike many (all?) of the prior backwards-incompatible features, which
first warn about breaking behavior and then fully break behavior, but
continue to do so visibly (e.g., "yield" remains a keyword), this one
ends up in a state where the break goes from being warned about to
being silent and no longer visible.  That might be part of my gut
concern about compatibility, as it makes me feel that there is a
window of opportunity to catch the problem, but if you miss it,
discovering dependencies on old behavior becomes very problematic.

Could there be a way to continue to request the activation of the
warning noted in the PEP even after it has been turned off by default
and the behavior has officially changed?  Doing a static analysis of
modules to find uses of division can help inspect older modules but
having runtime warnings may prove helpful when trying to make use of
an older module in a few years with a current Python.  This sort of
thing might even be helpful as a general recommendation for other
backwards-incompatible changes that by their nature become silent once
fully enabled.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Fri Jul 27 23:11:38 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:11:38 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <000901c11713$04b3e340$a9e1fea9@carol>

>Originally, I was uncomfortable with the change.  But now I'm starting
>to warm up to it nicely.  The threads about non-programmers (eg.,
>medical technicians) getting caught by classic division was quite
>compelling.  Sometimes I forget that programming itself isn't the goal.

Would be a lot more compelling were they reports *from* rather than
reports *about*. There probably was once such a technician.  Until
I hear from him (or them), I give the entire sub-thread weight in 
range -0 to 0.

Caught how.  Typo and correct. Happened  to be me more than once.
Personally. Typo and 15 minute debug. Personally. At least once. 
Are you compelled? Why?

Hearsay is forbidden as evidence in formal proceedings for 
good reason. Should be informally forbidden here, IMO.

No opportunity to cross examine, to establish credibility and context.   

On the merits only, please.  

All of which is without comment as to / or //.  My issues/concerns
have been mostly about process.  Which is why I felt it necessary 
to pop in here.

Reasoned PEPs have gone a long way toward calming the waters.

Next time round, hopefully, no Queen for a Day stories.

ART





From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 12:21:03 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:21:03 -0400
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com> <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B50716F.2A9C12CA@engcorp.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote [...] :
> > Ah, but where I live we have maple syrup and, not to far down the
> 
> Nolo contendere: Vermont's maple syrup IS one of the things that
> make life worth living.  

Of course, I'm Canadian, so I'd have to defend my own country's
maple syrup as superior, but I'm sure Vermont's is quite adequate
for the ordinary palate ;-).

> Too much
> of pasta's worth is in the cooking and seasoning for that to work --
> yes, you CAN buy real Italian durum wheat spaghetti over there,
> but you're unlikely to have the right water, skill, and sauce to get
> them to perfection (and _cooked_ pasta doesn't travel well).

I can handle the sauce part fairly well (having spent a few
long Saturdays carefully simmering them from fresh tomatoes),
and I like to think I have some modicum of skill, but this is
the first time I've heard the *water* might have an effect.
Now I know I'm but an amateur.

What kind of water is just right?  I've lived in Guelph, Ontario,
much of my life, where the water is extremely hard but very 
little treated and so relatively devoid of mystery chemicals.
Pray tell, where must I go for the water I need to improve
the state of my pasta?  Will only bottled Italian water combine
in the right way with the One True Durum Wheat? :-)

On Italy:
> "Few have so brilliant a sense of style and
> fashion, so sumptuous a cuisine and cellar, so strong a tradition
> of melding hard work with pleasure"... for more, see
> http://www.economist.com/surveys/showsurvey.cfm?issue=20010707

I shall.  Thanks. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From ramsa at swva.net  Sun Jul 29 21:56:08 2001
From: ramsa at swva.net (Patricia A. Shaffer)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:56:08 GMT
Subject: REPOST: Re: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net> <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <4$-_-%_%-$-$%%-__$@news.noc.cabal.int>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT, "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com>
wrote:

>I laughed at the first one of these I read,
>thinking it might be the result of a python program,
>but now I have noticed that they are popping up
>on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
>Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
>I have seen four or five today.

Poor dear, you've missed out on all the fun!  C'mon over to nanae
(news.admin.net-abuse.email) and join the party! <eg>

Patricia
ramsa at swva.net

Proud Citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia
"Anti-spammers are the immune system of the Internet." CDR M. Dobson
"The issue is consent, not content." Crosscut
Help Outlaw spam! <http://www.cauce.org> - <http://www.spamfree.org/>

========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======:
Path: news.uni-stuttgart.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!akk.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!diablo.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!internal-news-hub.cableinet.net!news1.cableinet.net.POSTED!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!hatchetman.killfile.org!not-for-mail
Message-ID: <ckf8dsfk6bat5kidpaae5aea0kfvoc0qae at 4ax.com>
Control: cancel <ejf9mtgm2det0ooavadu3vef5meigb0uph at 4ax.com>
Subject: cmsg cancel <ejf9mtgm2det0ooavadu3vef5meigb0uph at 4ax.com>
From: tskirvin at killfile.org
Sender: Patricia A. Shaffer <ramsa at swva.net>
Approved: tskirvin at killfile.org
Newsgroups: at.test,uk.test,alt.test,news.test
Organization: Killfiles, Unlimited
X-Cancelled-By: tskirvin at killfile.org
X-Original-From: Patricia A. Shaffer <ramsa at swva.net>
X-Original-Posting-Host: 66.190.110.172
X-Cancel-ID: *E&PKF`R1[SX6*+>NJ39/=A[|@UB:<MO`6)SD:T?VAP=),B9*YH=:=ET
Reply-To: Patricia A. Shaffer <ramsa at swva.net>
Lines: 2
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:44:03 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.30.137.31
X-Complaints-To: http://www.blueyonder.co.uk/abuse
X-Trace: news1.cableinet.net 996569043 62.30.137.31 (Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:44:03 BST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:44:03 BST
<remainder snipped>


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 16:35:15 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:35:15 -0500
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
In-Reply-To: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <15180.47235.396343.762816@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> From what I've read, to force the data structure to be maintained
    Tim> correctly, I have to add a trailing comma to the single arg pair
    Tim> like this:

    Tim>       )
    Tim>        (name-n, descrip-n),
    Tim>        ( (argA-1, argB-1), )
    Tim>       ),


That's because the construct

    ( (argA-1, argB-1) )

without the comma can't be distinguished syntactically from simply wrapping
parens around the inner value.

Consider a simpler example:

    if (a) == 5:

vs.

    if (a,) == 5:

The first is simply parenthesizing a variable and comparing it to the number
5.  The second is creating a one-element tuple and comparing it to the
number 5.

The second variant could be written as

    if a, == 5:

but in my mind that's hiding the tuple creation a bit.

For more discussion, check the Tuples and Sequences section of the Python
tutorial:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 24 17:47:38 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:47:38 -0600
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate laguage changes
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D57D@admin56.narex.com>

> From: James Logajan [mailto:JamesL at Lugoj.Com]
 
[snip]

> In the interest of proposing a solution everyone can live with, may I
> suggest adoption of new module name extensions? A module 
> named "module.py2"
> will not be picked up or understood by Python 1.x on any 
> platforms that I am
> aware of. These would be compiled to either ".pyc", ".py2c", 
> or ".pc2",
> depending on whether one can compile the new semantics into code old
> interpreters can handle, and whether it is now okay to allow 
> more than 3
> letters in file extensions on all popular platforms and file 
> systems. But
> hopefully everyone gets the idea.
> 
> Anyone see any insurmountable flaws with this? (Just trying 
> to help; I hate
> to abandon Python without at least trying one diplomatic 
> solution to at
> least one serious objection.)

I like the idea, however Python source is not always in a file (e.g. zip
archives, ZODB databases, etc.)

-- bjorn



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 23:52:44 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 20:52:44 -0700
Subject: Pythonic Quote of the Week - sliding away...
References: <mailman.994210026.25214.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hu4a5$g02pb$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I understand the intents both of Guido's and Tim's quotes below.  Granted
that Python-Labs is reluctant to add to their obligation to support
additional standard modules for ever more, I think a future PEP should lay
out a PEP like process (call it SPAM - Specialized Python Add-in Module ;-)
that formalizes *which* modules will be considered as acceptable for
inclusion in the core.  Then it becomes clear if a particular module is or
will be Python-Labs supported, or if the community builds and supports it.
I feel that the PEP you are proposing will help keep the level of third
party contributions to the core consistent and maintainable.  I also feel
that additional modules accepted to the core by Python-Labs will be few and
far between.  I would like to know, in a formal manner, that xyz_lib.py will
or will not make it into the core.

The community needs a CPAN like mechanism.  Perhaps ActiveState's
"Repository of our Dreams" will be such a thing.  AMK, in his work on PEPs
229 (DistUtils) and 241 (Package Metadata), takes us in that direction.
Zadka in PEP 206 (Batteries Included) promotes creation of a "fat"
distribution that includes common third party software the core modules and
language conditionally use, and encourages installation using distutils.  I
think it is important to delineate what needs to be distributed this way.  I
also think a mechanism to support this *should* be sanctioned and/or
possibly built by Python-Labs.  This, together with a in/out pronouncement
on suggested/contributed modules will go a long way to encourage the
community to contribute and build upon contributed modules.

Python-Labs wants and needs to build and support a standard Python that runs
on all supported platforms.  Limiting the range of modules in the core
package works towards this goal.  Providing a sanctioned mechanism for
optional third party module/package support/installation works towards
reducing the demand on Python-Labs to include those same modules in the
core, thereby contributing towards this goal.  Finally, to paraphrase Guido
when he said in reference to his personal desire to make an IDE for Python,
the competition reduces the need.   Commercial solutions should be
available.  Multiple options should (as they are now) be available.  In
general, I feel that the durability of third party modules pales in
comparison to the support the core language and modules receive from the
Python-Labs team.  Multiple options smooth out the ups and downs of third
party module reliability.


Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Carlos Ribeiro" <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote in message
news:mailman.994210026.25214.python-list at python.org...
At 17:34 03/07/01 -0500, Emile van Sebille wrote:
>Pythonic Quote of the Week...
>     Quite granted that nobody is forced to use a feature.  But when
>     a language becomes too featureful, people start programming in
>     the subdialect they like best, later creating difficulties to
>     other wanting to read their programs, who might like other parts
>     better.
>
>     One of the reason behind Python legibility success, is that
>     there is almost only one way to do one thing (to contrast with
>     Perl, say).  We are progressively sliding away of this virtue.
>     The danger is real.
>                                   Fran?ois Pinard
>
>http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993966362.10675.python
-list at python.org

We've got a very good discussion in the past three days about the current
status of the library. I feel that at least part of the problem pointed out
by Fran?ois Pinard may be attributed at the lack of some highly needed
modules on the standard library. As people keep reinventing the wheel, we
get two problems:

- Less productivity

- More fragmentation

The solution as proposed by the main python-dev guys - Guido himself and
Tim Peters - is that the community should take the responsibility to keep
the library, as we can see here:

[Guido van Rossum, 2001-06-30 05:53:49 PST]
So let's all do what we do best: the core developers (e.g. PythonLabs)
improve the language, and the community improves the library.

[Tim Peters, Date: 2001-06-30 21:01:05 PST]
A problem is that nobody at PythonLabs has any spare cycles. People can
suggest any number of things we should do for them, but we're already
overloaded -- it simply won't happen.


As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we
must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this
issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys.
The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To
make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.

One of things that plugged me on this "Python thing" was the "batteries
included" motto. In fact, the strength of any programming environment can
be measured by the extension and usability of its standard library. That's
where Java is shining today. The investment on the standard library is one
of the surest ways of making Python popular while keeping with the "there's
one way to do it" motto.


Carlos Ribeiro








From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 10:52:34 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 16:52:34 +0200
Subject: error compiling python 2.1 and  tkinter
In-Reply-To: <57ffe515.0107131240.14da4dc9@posting.google.com>
References: <57ffe515.0107131240.14da4dc9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010715165234.B5396@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:40:13PM -0700, Rene Salmon wrote:

> Am hoping some here can help me or point me in the right direction.

> I have and Irix 6.5.11 machine. I can install the default Python2.1 no
> problem.  But I just installed TCL/TK 8.3.3 and would like to use
> TKinter with it.  So I edited the Modules/Setup file to enable tkinter

Halt, stop, wait, stop, halt. Python 2.1 comes with a distutils-based Python
script to build as many optional modules as possible, including Tkinter. It
doesn't build PIL or TOGL for you (at least, not that I'm aware of) but it's
a lot easier to use! Just remove the Setup file you edited, run 'make
distclean', 'configure' and 'make' and it should build Tkinter for you. If
it doesn't find Tcl/Tk, you can start by filing a SF bugreport to
complain ;) and possibly edit 'setup.py' to make it search in the right
location.

Of course, it is possible that the automated build of Tkinter will run into
the same problems...

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul  6 13:07:07 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 10:07:07 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B45F03B.986582B3@ActiveState.com>

I think your plan is excellent!

>   from __future__ import float_division

Sounds good.

>   from __future__ import real_division

There are no real reals involved.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Fri Jul  6 06:18:52 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:18:52 +0100
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
References: <01070512214400.00888@whatsup.home> <87vgl72k1h.fsf@winnegan.de> <mailman.994372894.18237.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B45908C.84978E1E@westerngeco.com>


Good to hear you got a fix you may want to consider Opera
here is a webbrowser opera class......(relativly untested)

from webbrowser import *

class Opera:
    def _remote(self, action):
        cmd = "opera -remote '%s' >/dev/null 2>&1 &" % (action)        
        rc = os.system(cmd)
        if rc:
            import time
            os.system("opera &")
            time.sleep(PROCESS_CREATION_DELAY)
            rc = os.system(cmd)
        return not rc

    def open(self, url, new=0):
        if new:
            self.open_new(url)
        else:
            self._remote("openURL(%s)" % url)

    def open_new(self, url):
        self._remote("openURL(%s, new-window)" % url)

register("opera", Opera)    






Gary Herron wrote:
> 
> Right on!   A search of the archive found
>   http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0107/msg00040.html
> which explains the problem and give a solution.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> On Thursday 05 July 2001 13:33, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> > Hi Gary,
> >
> > If you're running KDE 2.1: I remember a message including
> > a workaround on the debian-kde mailing list the day
> > before.
> >
> > Gary Herron <gherron at islandtraining.com> writes:
> > > I'm writing an application which needs to open a web
> > > browser on any platform, so I used the webbrowser
> > > module, and it fails to work on my first system test
> > > because of an apparent bug in netscape.  I've not seen
> > > any mention of this problem, but I'm hoping someone has
> > > a workaround.
> >
> > Since I don't use Netscape 4.7x any more, I don't have
> > the message at hand, search the archive at
> >
> >   http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0107/maillist.html
> >
> > for netscape in the subject line.
> >
> > Good luck
> >   Siggy


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 18:57:23 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:57:23 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com>

Kevin Lacker wrote:
> 
> Can you do this:
> 
> answer = []
> for x in my_list:
>     if not is_good(x):
>         break
>     answer.append(process(x))
> 
> with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
> loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current one.

I can clearly understand what the above code is doing.  Doing this
as a list comprehension would be less readable for me (I'm not a 
heavy user of list comprehensions, yet.)  

Are you sure you really don't like the explicit, readable code 
above, and would prefer a more compressed, (admittedly explicit, 
I suppose), more cryptic version instead?  There are other
languages which could do the above in one tiny line, no doubt.
(No names. :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From syring at email.com  Sat Jul 21 23:03:30 2001
From: syring at email.com (Karl M. Syring)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 05:03:30 +0200
Subject: [Q] Python and ODE solver
References: <%8m67.123$A3.1317@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <9jdfq2$n8pev$1@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de>

"Young-Jin Lee" <ylee12 at uiuc.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:%8m67.123$A3.1317 at vixen.cso.uiuc.edu...
> Hi, all.
> I'd like to know if there's ordinary differential equation solver in
Python.
> Thanks.

Depends on what you mean with "in Python", but Pearu Petersons site
(http://cens.ioc.ee/~pearu/python/) should be a good start.

Karl M. Syring



From Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org  Sat Jul  7 23:07:26 2001
From: Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org (Scott David Daniels)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 20:07:26 -0700
Subject: Partially evaluated functions
References: <mailman.993067482.25265.python-list@python.org> <abeY6.301566$eK2.61312477@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <qveY6.330710$oc7.33319652@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <FGtY6.311407$eK2.62392325@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <tkfjjaj9irlm7b@corp.supernews.com>

You might make this slightly more readable with:
> def curry(*args, **create_time_kwds):
>     func = args[0]
>     create_time_args = args[1:]
>     ...
=============
def curry(func, *args, **create_time_kwds):
     create_time_args = args[:]
     ...

Depending upon how this gets used, you might be safe
not even performing the copy, so you'd get:
=============
def curry(func, *create_time_args, **create_time_kwds):
     ...

The reason for the "depending upon, ..." has to do with whether
"list + []" must always produce a new list, or is allowed to notice
that [] is 0-length and simply returns the first list.  With a copy,
you are safe for sure.  Similar strictures should apply about your
proposed (dict1 + dict2) behavior.  We'd need to define whether
a new value _must_ be produced.


-Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org





From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 27 11:24:46 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:24:46 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com> <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de> <mailman.996167570.6366.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9js13u$c80$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Skip Montanaro  <skip at pobox.com>:
> Yes, that can be a problem.  With SOAP you can mitigate some of it (I
> think) by using HTTP 1.1 and saving the cost of making and breaking
> repeated connections in some instances.  

You can't do that with stock SOAPpy097, but you can with my patches:

- a Medusa-based soap_handler that does HTTP/1.1 server-side
- a new transport that does HTTP/1.1 client-side 

With these, you get multiple SOAP calls per TCP connection.

Patches on SOAPpy sourceforge.net page.

Cheers.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Thu Jul  5 02:50:38 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 06:50:38 GMT
Subject: Odd problem with converting string to Hex?
References: <junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com> <OUK%6.17065$he.735624@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <junkster-308058.17185001072001@typhoon4-3.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k83cj.7th.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Benjamin Schollnick <junkster at rochester.rr.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> 
> I haven't tried this.... But it certainly makes sense...
> 
> I was assuming, incorrectly it appears, that Python was storing it 
> as a string of 3 or so characters.... After all, that's what the 
> Print command was displaying....

No, it didn't. The interpreter showed it, but not with the print command!

Try it:

>>> x = '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'
>>> x
'\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'
>>> print x
          # In my xterm this prints the actual bytes, leaving nothing visible
>>> len(x)
6
>>> len(repr(x))
23     # Includes the '' around the string, the escaping, etc 

'\x00' is a length 1 string, containing a single character, hex 0.

The interactive interpreter uses repr() to show the value of things by
default, which returns a form that could be used as a Python literal. It
needs to escape things again. As an example: chr(92) is a backslash... try
typing:

>>> chr(92)
'\\'
>>> print chr(92)
\


> I had never considered that it was being stored as a "list of 
> characters", array, or whatever you'd like to call it....
> 
> Although, I want to stress STR(data....), didn't give a HEX PRINTABLE
> result....

You need to explain this, no idea what you mean. str() of a tuple calls
repr() again on the internal elements, so it has to returns the escaped
forms again.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From brian at sweetapp.com  Fri Jul 13 04:00:22 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:00:22 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
In-Reply-To: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <000201c10b71$dde70780$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

Dennis wrote:
> For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
> near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
> (Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
> this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
> following script:
> 
> x = 3
> x = x + 2
> print "x =", x
> x = "now I'm a string"
> print x
> x = [ 5, x ]
> print "and now a list:", x
> 
> If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
> x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
> different type on two sides of an assignment?

I'm sure that most people you read this group/list are well aware of
this behavior :-)

I'm also pretty sure that you're conceptual model of what is going on
needs a bit of rejigging. When you write:

a = 5
a = "Test"

You are not saying that you want to somehow mangle a string so it fits
inside an integer; you are saying that the name "a" should be rebound to
the string "test". And names don't have any notions of what they can and
cannot be bound to. So Python typing is dynamic. But it is also
reasonably strong because most operations require a narrow range of
types to not raise exceptions, as you noted.


Cheers,
Brian





From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 02:19:21 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 23:19:21 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com> <008701c1037d$f6280de0$0101010a@local> <mailman.994137125.12580.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hro59$9ho$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <mailman.994137125.12580.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>
>Is anybody else suspicious about the sudden uptick of troll-like
>behavior on comp.lang.python?  Keep an eye out and don't bother
>responding to anything inflammatory.

Partly.  I think it's more the weather, though; William Park, for one,
has certainly been around here a while.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 13:57:09 2001
From: stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk (Stephen D Evans)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:57:09 +0100
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net>
Message-ID: <3B40B5F5.1F8F03D9@recombinant.demon.co.uk>

You mention 'data', but do not state whether it is variable or constant data.

If you want to use a singleton to pass around constant data there is a useful
Python recipe (by Alex Martelli) on ActiveState's website, titled 'Constants in
Python'.

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/65207

Stephen D Evans.


Giles Constant wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> Being a C++ head, it's probably more a problem with my design than a python
> problem, but I figured you guys would be able to help.
>
> I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some
> global data such that all instances of the class have access to it.  The
> alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every single
> object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently that it would
> be rediculous.
>
> Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)



From tavis at calrudd.com  Fri Jul 13 21:27:26 2001
From: tavis at calrudd.com (Tavis Rudd)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:27:26 -0700
Subject: introducing Cheetah: The Python-Powered Template Engine
Message-ID: <0107131827260E.00792@lucy>

Cheetah is a Python-powered template engine and code 
generator that grew out of discussions on the 
webware-discuss list.  Cheetah was designed for internet 
development and provides integration with Webware 
(webware.sourceforge.net). Together with Webware, Cheetah 
is a compelling alternative to ASP, JSP, PHP and PSP for 
building dynamic web sites.   Cheetah can also be used 
without Webware and is not limited to HTML.

Last month, we shifted the development discussions to 
cheetahtemplate-discuss at lists.sourceforge.net and created 
http://www.CheetahTemplate.org.  Cheetah has matured a lot 
since then.  

Version 0.9.7 was released today.  It includes fixes for 
almost all outstanding bugs,  a beefed-up regression test 
suite, and an updated, but still incomplete, Users' Guide.

Cheetah is Open Source Software. Tavis Rudd (me), Mike Orr, 
Chuck Esterbrook, Ian Bicking and Tom Schwaller are the 
core developers. We welcome contributions and suggestions.  
We also welcome any general discussion about Python-based 
templates on the cheetahtemplate-discuss e-mail list.  You 
can subscribe and view the archives at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cheetahtemplate-discuss

More information is in the attached file and at 
http://cheetahtemplate.org/

Cheers,
Tavis 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010713/f8cf1157/attachment.html>

From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Wed Jul 25 16:00:19 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:00:19 +0100
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling 
 process dies
References: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F254C.5A7A4681@accessforall.nl>


Ken Tabacchi wrote:
> 
> I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
> 1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
> process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
> program is run under Python version 2.1.
> 
> **********************************************
> import thread, time
> 
> def Thread1():
>     while (1):
>         print "I`m in the thread"
>         time.sleep(1)
> 
> thread.start_new_thread(Thread1, ())
> print "about to call time.sleep(4)"
> time.sleep(4)
> print "just slept for 4 seconds"
> **********************************************
> 
> This is the Python version 1.5 execution of the above code:
> 
> about to call time.sleep(4)
> just slept for 4 seconds
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> 
> and here is the Python version 2.1 execution of the same code:
> 
> about to call time.sleep(4)
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> just slept for 4 seconds
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> I`m in the thread
> 
> Does any one have any suggestions?

Although the first output is unlikely, this might happen when
the python process gets no more CPU time after starting the 
4 second sleep().

However, you should never rely on the process/thread scheduler(s)
for the correct behaviour of your program.
In case you want threads to wait for each other in any
reliable way, have a look at the threading module for inspiration.

> 
> Thanks in advance for your assistance.
> 
> Ken Tabacchi

My pleasure,
Ype

-- 
email at xs4all.nl


From mertz at gnosis.cx  Mon Jul 23 15:03:33 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:03:33 -0400
Subject: Version compatibility in division
Message-ID: <FUHX7kKkXo8e092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

IMO, there has been a lot more heat than light generated--on both
sides--in the discussion of changes in integer division operators.

I don't want to opine on either side, actually.  The issue of checking
old code for breakage is something I believe can be reasonably
automated, and not require horribly much work.  That is, it will not
be horrible *if* a script is simply updated for a new Python version.

But in reading the threads, the most significant argument against the
change, to my mind, has been the problem with maintaining scripts that
must run across multiple Python versions.  I'd like to hear how PEP238
proponents suggest best updating a script like the below.  I don't mean
this as a rhetoric suggestion that it cannot be done, but as a genuine
question of the best idiom:

    #!/usr/bin/python
    # Simple script using integer division.
    # Script MUST run under various Python versions without change
    widget = input('widget size: ')
    container = input('container size: ')
    print container/widget,'widgets will fit in the container'

Obviously, anything with 'from __future__ ...' fails in some versions.
And anything with '//' fails in some versions.  One could catch such
exceptions, but that gets verbose quickly.

Yours, Lulu...



From emile at fenx.com  Fri Jul 13 08:13:14 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 05:13:14 -0700
Subject: PyZipFile
References: <25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9imotd$jrp8f$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"gods1child" <alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10 at posting.google.com...
> Why wont the following code work? Thanx.
>
> import zipfile
> p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","w",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> p.writepy("c:\\pe")
> p.close()
> p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","r",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> p.close()
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "C:/pe/nest.py", line 6, in ?
>     eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> TypeError: expected string without null bytes



From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul 23 14:04:29 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 18:04:29 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jhovd$o3a$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie):
...
| I can see people seriously suggesting a "pythonfork" project if the
| debate gets any more intense. :-O

Has already happened, names proposed etc.  I see you don't have time
to read all the threads, speaks well of you I might add.

Discussion seems a little futile at this point.  People on both sides
are clearly dug in and there's nothing left to say.  I don't think it's
time to start talking seriously about a fork project, but it looks like
a sure bet at some point.  Though I think with the current size of the
Python base, we're talking about integer division - Python / 2 -> 0.

But that may only mean gradual extinction of Python in some of its
current roles, like for software that gets distributed sans interpreter.
If GvR & Co. actually get somewhere with the new Python and its target
audience, and Python3000 survives, it may still be attractive for
applications like prototyping.

I think the "tubes vs. transistors" lag in contemporary computing is the
difficulty of writing software in general in C/C++.  Storage model leads
to buffer overflows, segmentation faults etc., laborious implementation
requirements make it too hard to fix a design after it's first coded.
Software for alternative platforms tends to not exist.  Python could be
the revolution.  But that's no safer bet than the CP4E gamble, and maybe
the latter is better for Python anyway.  I'd like to see a language that
can make fast, self-contained compiled applications for the major platforms
and also interpret the same application on a new or obscure platform.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From kp87 at lycos.com  Sat Jul 21 04:40:51 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 01:40:51 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <mailman.995692716.8559.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107210040.2e2d9a0e@posting.google.com>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.995692716.8559.python-list at python.org>... > Are you on Windows? 

I on a Macintosh, so maybe that is why. I mistakenly
assumed that all interpreters were the same, more or
less. Our IDE is a bit primitive and IDLE is broken
(Tkinter is mostly broken i understand). Jack Jansen,
Just, & Co. work hard to get Python happening on the Mac
but we still lag far behind it seems. I recently tried
Python out on Windows and i was surprised how sweet it
was compared to the Mac. We don't even have syntax
coloring!

Anyway, i spend all day in the interpreter and i was
hoping to make it a more pleasant experience. I can't
believe you can't do:

>>> foo(somereallylongbitofcodegoeshere,
itsrealllybothersomeifyoumistype) [change a bunch of crap here]
>>> !foo

Like you can in csh, or use your arrow keys to go back
and fix something in your history and re-enter. Most
annoyingly you can type past the space that follows the:
>>> prompt and screw things up and if you are in the
middle of a command and hit enter it only enters up to
where your cursor is on the line instead of entering the
whole line like most shells do.

Python some times seems to be like a really fine tuned
engine inside an old beat up old jalopy. What Python
does is amazing, but sometimes, at least on Mac, you
feel like you are running an old DOS window in the 3.1
days. I really wish the mac had 1 decent IDE, with 1
decent editor, and a nice well behaved interpreter.


Either that or i have to learn to type perfectly and
make no mistakes


From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul 13 13:21:42 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:21:42 -0400
Subject: Python 2.1.1c1 released
Message-ID: <200107131721.f6DHLgX16757@odiug.digicool.com>

I'm happy to announce the release today of Python 2.1.1c1, a release
candidate for Python 2.1.1:

  http://www.python.org/2.1.1/

This is a pure bugfix release; see the website for details.  One fixed
"bug" deserves special attention: this release is GPL-compatible.
I hope it's in time for inclusion in the Debian release.

Thanks to Thomas Wouters for all his work on making this a perfect
candidate, despite today's date. :-)

The final 2.1.1 release is expected a week from now.

Enjoy!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul  6 23:49:57 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 03:49:57 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

GvR:
> I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> messenger from the future :-).

Since I do not like the change, as explained previously, I would prefer the
least change, which would be // with div second.  // would not be new
keyword and breaks nothing sensible that I can think of.  An operator form
would run as fast as now since it would be compiled inline as now.  A
function call would be slower and make integer division look much more
wierdly asymmetric than it actually is.  I suspect that some newbies and
CP4E people would find *that* (div()) strange.

Terry J. Reedy




From seant at webreply.com  Wed Jul 11 09:23:00 2001
From: seant at webreply.com (Sean True)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:23:00 GMT
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
References: <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <e9koktkhs1msqagu2jdmb3f1tcq29qtr6e@4ax.com>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:20:01 +0200, Gregor Hoffleit
<gregor at mediasupervision.de> wrote:

>Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
>to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?
>
>(I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)
>
>    Gregor

There is pretty good support for .dbf files in a component of GDAL
(http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/).

"GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that
is released under an Open Source license. As a library, it presents a
single abstract data model to the calling application for all
supported formats."

The key here is that .DBF is the standard format for storing
geographically linked data attributes in one of the GIS industry
standard formats (shapefile). You can find the relevant pieces, which
are a C library and a SWIG wrapper in  the source distribution for
GDAL in the location \gdal\frmts\shapelib\pyshapelib-0.1, for a fairly
recent release. I use the functions for both reading and writing.
This wrapper is not intertwined (much!) with the rest of GDAL.

Works for me but ... YMMV.

Sean True
WebReply.Com, Inc.




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 02:17:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:17:24 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B566ED8.E14732F8@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <9j5u2302v3e@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B566ED8.E14732F8 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > having a recently-invented typographic prettiness, such as
> > letter-cd tcase, affect meaning, has always struck me as a deeply
> > flawed idea.
>
> If you asked a mathematician, I doubt he'd regard
> it as either "recent" or "flawed". Mathematicians
> have been using case-, font-, style- and alphabet-
> sensitive identifiers for centuries...

I think it was a 19th century fancy, to start with.  Extremely
recent when compared to the amount of time mathematics
has been written about.


Alex





From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Wed Jul 25 22:27:07 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 02:27:07 GMT
Subject: importing modules
References: <mailman.996098568.21224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9luvvq.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

25 Jul 2001 18:01:44 -0400 in <mailman.996098568.21224.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> spake:
>[Duilio Foschi]
>> Or - put it in a different way - which is fully working version for
>> Dos I should download ?
> Sorry, I don't know of any actively maintained Python for DOS.  Python runs
> on all flavors of Windows, but official support for DOS was dropped some
> time ago due to utter lack of user interest and user volunteers.  Anyone
> else know of one?

  No, but if it's for a resource-constrained machine, wouldn't Linux be
a reasonable upgrade path?  dosemu, which is included in standard Linux
distros, seems to run most DOS software, so there's a fairly small
adjustment bump.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From emile at fenx.com  Sun Jul  8 09:55:04 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 06:55:04 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i9ovi$hptm7$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 5:27 AM
Subject: Re: Comment on PEP-0238


> Your examples don't show what should happen in this example:
>
>   precision 0
>   x = 2/7
>   precision 4
>   print x

0

>
> In other words, is the precision a property of the printing or a
> property of the value stored?
>

The value stored.  For example:
>>> precision 8
>>> x = 2/7
>>> print x
 .28571429
>>> precision 3
>>> print x
 .286
>>> precision 5
>>> print x
 .28571
>>> precision 14
>>> print x
 .28571429
>>> x = 2/7
>>> print x
 .28571428571429

> There are lots of other ways to get this effect for printing ("%.4f"%x
> comes to mind); if you intended the effect to apply to computation
> results, there are questions about the scope of the calculation.  If I
> write
>
>   precision 3
>   x = f() # some function that uses int division
>
> should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
> statement?
>

No.  I'd imagine that precision would live in the current namespace.  f()
would use whatever level of precision it needs.  The namespace invoking f()
does likewise, as would the namespace containing f().  If you write a module
containing functions that only require 4 decimal places and set precision to
4 at the module level, all calculations, variable creation and passing (eg
def xxx(a,b,c)), interim calculations, and results returned would work at
precision 4.  The assignment of the return value to x in the local namespace
should be at the local precision, but I can see where this might cause some
implementation concerns, particularly if a composite is returned.  Perhaps
the initial creation of the object fixes the precision, and use of the
number is controlled by the encompassing namespace.


> Etc., etc.
>

I'll give this some thought.  ;-)

> This is exactly why I was asking you to write a PEP.  I don't mean
> that you have to write an implementation.  (Despite the seeming
> requirement in PEP 2, that's not a requirement before a PEP is
> accepted for review -- that's only required before a standard PEP is
> finally approved for inclusion in the language.  There are plenty of
> PEPs without a shred of implementation.)

Good.  I'll see if I can't further consider some of these isssues and put
one together over the next week or ten days.

>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 07:02:09 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:02:09 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Python 2.2 dictionary question.
References: <Xns90E76819BC1F6duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <j4bsmbgbxs.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E7787B441D5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in 
news:j4bsmbgbxs.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de:

> Also note that much of this has been discussed before in
> 
which is precisely why I didn't just post a bug report to sourceforge since 
I was sure it must have been discussed *somewhere*, I just couldn't find 
the discussion.
Thanks.


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 15:19:17 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:19:17 -0700
Subject: byte compiled files and acute neurological disorders
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <014d01c11607$ddcbfd00$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

I don't know the details of your situation, but I can offer this suggestion:

Don't use
    from mymodule import *
unless mymodule is completely stable (preferably not yours).

I generally only use that for third party modules that I don't change
because "from ... import" ruins module dependency logic.

Suppose module A imports * from module B.

The problem is that A only gets recompiled if the timestamp on A.py file
is later than A.pyc (otherwise the compiler assumes that A hasn't changed).
Now, suppose B changes.  B.pyc gets updated, but A.pyc does not.

To confuse thing further, if you're running your program from a python
interpreter that doesn't restart on each run, you get an analogous problem.
A change to module B will not affect module A until A is reloaded!  This
is a problem even if you are using "import A" instead of "from A import *",
if your imports are nested two or more levels deep.  The solution to this
is to use reload as needed.  When you release your module, you can
remove the reload.  Of course, reloading won't solve problem describe
in the previous paragraph.

If you really want "from mymodule import *" you can do this sequence:
    import mymodule
    reload(mymodule)
    from mymodule import *

This is kind of wasteful of CPU cycles though.

Time for a PEP if someone can think of a solution.  Maybe the compiler
could store dependency information in the pyc file.  My doctor won't let
me work on this problem any more.

What's really confusing is that these two effects mix together and cause
minor strokes, seizures, and other neurological disorders which also
have symptoms including confusion and disorientation.  It's sometimes
hard to tell hard to which help me problem to tell conforientate it's hard
too hard
help me too hard help discomphoriated aablblblepoouuuughhhh

- Ken Seehooooooaaaauuuugh

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Robinson" <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:56 AM
Subject: byte compiled files


> can anyone shed some light on the mysterious behaviour of my byte
> compiled files. I am currently working on a python script which analyses
> patterns in a DNA sequence. I have a function which checks a pattern (a
> substring of approx 6 chars) to ensure only valid charactors are
> present. When I first run this program it runs fine, but if I
> immediately rerun the program (i.e using the pre-byte compiled file) it
> finds all patterns non-valid. If I delete the .pyc file between runs
> this problem does not occur. Can anyone explain what is happening here
> to me and how to prevent it?
>
> blobby
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Mon Jul 23 22:07:10 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:07:10 GMT
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com> <LeR67.534528$eK2.111965964@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <iL477.106891$T97.14984550@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> menulis:
| 
| class orderdict(dictionary):
|     """ dictionary which returns keys in the order of insertion """
| 
|     def __init__(self):
|         dictionary.__init__(self)
|         self.n = 0
| 
|     def __setitem__(self,key,value):
|         dictionary.__setitem__(self,(self.n,key),value)
|         self.n += 1
| 
|     def __getitem__(self,key):
|         return dictionary.__getitem__(self,(self.n,key))

I don't think the above line will work...if you call __getitem__ on an
already-inserted key (not the last one inserted) then self.n will
already be incremented and you'll get a KeyError.

This is pretty clever, though..more clever than what I usually do, which
is append the keys to a list as they are inserted.  I think you can make
it work by doing the following instead:

    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        dictionary.__setitem__(self, key, (self.n, value))
        self.n += 1

    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return dictionary.__getitem__(self, key)[1]


| 
|     def keys(self):
|         ks = dictionary.keys(self)
|         ks.sort()
|         return [ key for n,key in ks ]

This would have to be changed to:

    def keys(self):
        ks = [(n, key) for (key, (n, _)) in dictionary.items(self)]
        ks.sort()
        return [key for (n, key) in ks]

(A little too clever for my taste...:)


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 06:50:54 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:50:54 +0100
Subject: freeBSD 4.2 + Python2.1
References: <BAlhHJA2TUV7EwdX@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B554714.EAA32155@oek.dk>
 <wA0tXVAylUV7EwbY@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <6CbPnKAOoWV7Ewbe@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <wA0tXVAylUV7EwbY at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>In article <3B554714.EAA32155 at oek.dk>, Peter I. Hansen <pih at oek.dk>
>writes
>>Robin Becker wrote:
>>
>>> I'm trying to install Python2.1 and the package seems to install fine,
>>> but it seems that _socket.pyd is linked against libssl.so.2 which I
>>> don't have. Attempts to upgrade openssl are refused as openssl is part
>>> of the 'base' system. Am I really forced to upgrade the whole operating
>>> system?
>>> --
>>> Robin Becker
>>
>>No, you can just download a new openssl (from openssl.org) and install it.
>>
>>/Peter
>>
>I tried and make seemed only to build statics, any one know how to get
>Configure to work properly? I don't have the faintest idea what
>openssldir is/are etc
well I hacked the base Makefile to remove the check on the make ie
#.if exists(/usr/lib/libssl.a) && ${OSVERSION} >= 400014
#FORBIDDEN=     "OpenSSL is already in the base system"
#.endif

and then the make happens as expected. I don't hink I'm going to try the
install though, perhaps a handomatic copy of the shared libs.
-- 
Robin Becker


From donn at u.washington.edu  Tue Jul 24 18:26:17 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 22:26:17 GMT
Subject: Evolving Python and PEP238
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <ur8v79x9d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <mailman.995995091.14349.python-list@python.org> <u4rs2t66d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <9jksm9$cqi$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:
...
| Now consider if Guido says: "I'm going to be changing a behaviour that
| was deprecated in 1.4 and has issued a warning since then. Any
| complaints?" Would anyone here complain? I doubt it. The offending
| feature would have been expunged from the collective consciousness so
| long ago that people would not even remember it.

Worth also considering, as long as we're set up for this thought
experiment, whether 1.5.2 would have been so widely installed, if
it were issuing warnings for what had been a common and arguably
reasonable usage.

Basically your point revolves around the outcome of the transitional
warnings in 1.5.2.  Did we arrive here, with all these people using
Python and happy that we're ready to finally make the transition?

Or are we talking to an empty room?  Maybe that would be better,
then the next crowd won't be frightened by all the pocket protectors
and uncombed hair and stuff.  Anyway, I think Python is losing
ground in some quarters because of this already, before it has even
been officially decided.  By the time the behavior actually changes,
that process will be mostly complete.  And those who remain at that
point probably won't complain, true.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 22:48:29 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:48:29 -0400
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>
Message-ID: <3B4E617D.C7AA9123@engcorp.com>

"Steve R. Hastings" wrote:
> 
> If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
> be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
> At this point I suspect Tkinter is the way to go.
...
> In a perfect world, I'd like my Python program to be compiled to Java
> bytecodes and thus theoretically portable anywhere.

Luckily, with Python it is a perfect world. :-)

Look into Jython (http://www.jython.org), which compiles Python 
source to Java bytecodes.

Adding to the perfection, this lets you avoid Tkinter and TCL 
entirely, because now the entire world of Swing is open to you.


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 17:03:07 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:03:07 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <OF2ADE4F59.057273B2-ON86256A87.004BE386@mmm.com> <mailman.994953501.2169.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fmJ37.5156$z21.530549@newsc.telia.net>

Skip wrote:
>
>     Tom> I *always* forget the 1/3 == 0 thing between programming bursts.
>     Tom> OTOH, I also quickly remember after making the mistake the first
>     Tom> time.
>
> What is it that reminds you of the mistake?  Is it something glaring like
> using the result of 1/3 as a divisor and getting a divide-by-zero error, or
> is it something more subtle like getting slightly incorrect results and
> having to dig through your code to find the problem?

depending on what you do, the results may not be just
"slightly" incorrect... :-)

(yes, I mess up on this several times each year.  if you do
complex things, it's not always obvious that the real problem
is an integer division hidden somewhere in there)

</F>




From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul 26 02:47:32 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:47:32 +0200
Subject: Submodules in dynamic modules?
Message-ID: <20010726084732.A28949@strakt.com>

Is there a standardized way to use submodules in a dynamic module written
in C? I have a module (foo) that should have a few submodules in it, foo
by itself won't contain much at all, but it's nice to group things up in
submodules, so I could do

from foo import bar

or

from foo import bar, baz

The way I'm doing it right now is that I've more or less copied the source
code from Py_InitModule4() to set things up, and then insert the module
object into the dictionary.

Is there a better way to do this?

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 12:36:33 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:36:33 GMT
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com> <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com> <pmglltoiomis08cg8s18ogql1psmb4knkj@4ax.com> <3B5B15FE.A6B51D9F@alcyone.com> <9jfe8v$gu4$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lokkh.h62.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:54:08 +0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> pisze:

> In both my undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics in the U.S., 
> I only remember hearing tuple pronounced so that it rhymes with goop.  If 
> anyone pronounced it to rhyme with couple, it was rare enough that I don't 
> remember it.  But we also said "pie" for pi and "fee" for phi.

Because you have ambiguous orthography :-)

At least in Polish tupla is unambiguously pronounced tooplah
(or translated to krotka), and we say pee and fee. And pit-on.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From dirck at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 28 22:09:23 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 19:09:23 -0700
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com> <slrn9m5r4n.2ue.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <L6H87.69279$Xr6.307583@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107281809.721012b2@posting.google.com>

"Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote in message news:<L6H87.69279$Xr6.307583 at news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
> ...The colon is really only needed when you
> want to place the body on the same line:
> 
>     if a: b = 1

>From May, 2000: 
Re: Python Grammar (was Re: A TYPICAL NEWBIE MISTAKE?) 
===================================================================
Oddly enough, the parser doesn't really need the colon here either.
It can manage to figure out where the if expression ends without it.

The colon is almost entirely for readability purposes.
(there are a couple of places where ambiguity occurs without it).
===================================================================
This has been tested in a colon-optional Python 1.5.2.

Just FYI - I couldn't resist pointing that out again.

d


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 17:42:50 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:42:50 -0400
Subject: Transliterating C code to Python
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com> <93d9a839.0107110743.5ec8ae3d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CC85A.7ADF05C5@engcorp.com>

- RZ wrote [regarding translating one-liners from C]:
> 
> Given a little context, the answers could vary considerably from the
> line-at-a-time approach. There's a difference between transliteration
> and translation. It might well be more educational to learn the best
> Pythonic way to accomplish a task than to learn how to write C in
> Python.

A case in point: one of my junior developers was "left unattended"
for a while, during which time he wrote an impressive quantity of
Python code which among other things did conversion of S19 files
(Motorola format for binary data usually to be programmed as firmware)
and placed the resulting information in a dual-port memory eight
bytes at a time for sending to another processor.

He complained of "poor performance with Python" so I took a look
at the code to see if maybe I could help.  In the end, after much
time spent grokking the code to figure out what it was really 
trying to do, I realized he was essentially writing C code in
Python.  His code was probably about 100 lines of Python code.
My "optimized" version rewrote the code in real Python -- in about
six lines as I recall.  Mostly he'd missed dictionaries, for 
loops that iterate over sequences and other useful Python 
idioms, and spent a lot of time manipulating 16-bit values as 
individual bytes with bitwise anding and oring and shifting... 

Very nice and efficient if it were coded in C.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 21:28:50 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:50 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com> <mailman.995927281.7201.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <gmhplt4kitb3514p6kkdfg1kgl1eqr1fqg@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:27:06 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
wrote:

>try-giving-it-a-rest-for-12-hours?-ly y'rs  - tim

Sorry - insomnia brought on by anxiety due to the anticipation of
severe damage to my professional reputation and a lot of unnecessary
work.

If you had as many cases of "?"+str(Amount/100)+"."+str(amount%100)
and similar in your code as I do - most of which I don't even know who
has it or who might have tweaked versions (and I know as an absolute
fact those warnings will either not be seen at all or will be ignored)
you'd be just as pissed of as I am.

I trusted Python and I put myself out on a limb advocating it - and
now that limb is being deliberately broken - and I don't accept that
the change is such an undeniably great idea in the long term, let
alone in the here and now. In my position, how would *you* feel.

I just happened to start keeping track of the newsgroup in the last
couple of days - just in time to see the oncoming disaster, but
apparently too late to do the slightest thing about it. How many
people like me aren't going to find out until *after* everything goes
tits up?



From nospam at newsranger.com  Tue Jul  3 10:44:26 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:44:26 GMT
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
References: <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eTk07.5728$Kf3.48690@www.newsranger.com>

In article <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list at python.org>, Gregor Hoffleit
says...
>
>Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
>to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?
>
>(I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)
>
>    Gregor
>
There is a dbfpy module that can read and write SIMPLE dbf files:
http://www.fiby.at/
I have not tried it.
Levi




From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 05:11:50 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:11:50 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org> <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <3B65FF05.7F262FEB@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3b667634.884329538@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:42:45 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>William Tanksley wrote:
>> 
>> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
>> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> 
>> >> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
>> 
>> >How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
>> >terse acronym to learn)?
>> 
>> Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
>> nice because it was in common use before.
>[...]
>> OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want a
>> plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?
>
>Without necessarily understanding the question or its implications,
>reading the first posting my subconscious came up with "us", too.
>On the other hand, we use "self", not "me", so it's not conceptually
>consistent.
>
How about clarg?



From hcsgss at texlife.com  Fri Jul 20 14:17:01 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:17:01 -0500
Subject: import error
Message-ID: <1010720131701.ZM34142@anson.hcs.tl>

Hello,
I'm receiving the following error on AIX 4.3 for a shared module I built:

Traceback (innermost last):
  File "pytestim.py", line 5, in ?
    import imdpdf
ImportError: from module imdpdfmodule.so Exec format error

Can anyone tell me how to extract more information about the error? Or, better,
how to fix it?

imdpdfmodule.so was created with the following:
./ld_so_aix gcc -Wl,-brtl -o imdpdfmodule.so -einitimdpdf imdpdfmodule.o
libimagedocpdf.o pcl_pdf_render.o /usr1/hcsgss/libimagedoc/libimagedoc.so
 -Wl,-bloadmap:imdpdfmodule.map -L$(PDFLIBHOME)/lib -lpdf -L$(XMTHOME)/Xmt
-L$(XRTHOME)/lib -L$(XRTHOME)/src/tools -L/usr/lib/X11
-L$(IMAGEMAGICKHOME)/magick/.libs -L/usr/local/lib -L$(T1LIBHOME)/lib -lMagick
-ljbig -ljpeg -lmpeg -ltiff -lpng -lz -lXm -lXt -lX11 -lXext -ldl -lt1

Thanks,
Galen Swint

P.S. I vote case sensitivity, '//' for integer/integer division, and if you
change integer division (and/or case), the interpreter should be released under
3.0



From kentabacchi at excite.com  Fri Jul 20 15:13:45 2001
From: kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 12:13:45 -0700
Subject: dspace rtplib, rs232lib, testautomation probs in Python 2.1
Message-ID: <a99a629c.0107201113.42501881@posting.google.com>

Hello,

Has anyone seen and solved this one yet?  I would like to access
dspace provided Python libraries in their test automation package
(specifically, rtplib.pyd, and rs232lib.pyd under
..\ControlDesk\Python\TestAutomation) using Python version 2.1. 
rtplib and rs232lib are compiled under Python version 1.5.  When I try
to import them into Python version 2.1, it causes access violations in
the interpreter.  This happens equally for PythonWin, Idle, and the
Python command line.

Any assistance would be greatfully accepted.

Thanks,

Ken


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul 10 04:16:21 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:16:21 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
In-Reply-To: <9ie9r7$8ke$06$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101215570.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Klaus Rienessl wrote:
> I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.

   slang? newt?

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 10:32:06 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 14:32:06 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lr1n5.i0e.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:20:44 +0200, Klaus-G. Meyer <klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com> pisze:

> But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?
> 
> 99999*99999 -> integer overflow

That's why I want int and long unified.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 17:10:07 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 17:10:07 -0400
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com>
Message-ID: <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mark Day <mday at apple.com> writes:

> and not the multiplication.  I don't think Python will evaluate the
> expression at "compile" time, nor move the assignment outside the loop.

I can't speak for Perl, but Python definately does not evaluate the 
expression at compile time.  This is a problem I've had with Python.
I wish that when given the -O option the compiler would do constant
subexpression elimination.  

That said I created a Perl program that does $j *= 2.5 instead and it
still beat Python handsomely (on a Ultra 10).  I expect this is
because of the cost of dealing with so many Python object
creations/deletions which I've found can be quite a bit higher that C
entities.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Sir, your remarks are repugnant to me, and I disagree with your viewpoints.
But I will defend to the death your right to express them." Voltaire
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtUqa8ACgkQjVztv3T8pzu3IwCgndntxq+Ux5aWhNYMJ7QTW1TT
r9sAoLEdrpzGW3RbaFhCi1+Yx9dVaWXB
=5s/o
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul  7 17:19:18 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 17:19:18 -0400
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <mailman.994539552.27112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdu20ofne1.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

You can already do 

if hasattr(myobject, someattribute): foo()

Alex.


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sun Jul 29 09:26:16 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 13:26:16 GMT
Subject: Creating package in Python ???
References: <3b63c20c$1@news.barak.net.il>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED600FC7D61gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

Yossi Mor wrote: 

> 1. For creating a package I have to create a *.py script that will
> group selected modules and contain the following script __init__.py. ->
> Can you elaborate on this script definition.

__init__.py can be empty (it frequently is). It's presence is needed
to signal that the directory it is in is a package.
 
> 2. I have tried to create a package that contains 2 modules and
> succeeded in importing the package itself but not a module inside the
> package for example 'import pkg.fib1' - what was wrong ?

Assuming that directory A is on your python path, your package should
look like this:

 A/
   pkg/
      __init__.py
      fib1.py
      <other modules in your package>

- Gordon


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 16 17:31:38 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:31:38 GMT
Subject: Boolean idioms (was Re: re Challenge: More Compact?)
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <9iuqec$1bh$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <_2J47.12094$p7.3702468@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I know that it's a frequent Python idiom to use 0/1, but where is it
> specifically un-Pythonic to use None/1?

Since conditionals return 0/1, that is the expected range for predicates,
and it often takes more work to return None.

However, I personally prefer None to an artificial -1 answer based on
pre-Python solutions in languages that did not have None (or the
equivalent) available.

Terry J. Reedy





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 13 12:02:35 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:02:35 -0500
Subject: Javascript + Python...
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5245@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

One way is via "posting", but I'm not sure if that's what you want.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vincent A. Primavera [mailto:vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 6:25 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Javascript + Python...


Hello,
	Does anyone know if there are ways to have JavaScript(client
side...) 
"communicate" with Python(server side...) via variables(environmental?) 
etc...?

	Thank you,
	Vincent A. Primavera




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 15:50:00 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:50:00 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
 "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

> Four might be true, but since I don't
> think helps the problems for which PEP 238 was proposed for

So what problems was PEP 238 proposed for anyway?
I still haven't seen even one good example where int/int->float semantics 
is the right thing to do.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Jul 26 20:15:45 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:15:45 +0200
Subject: HIEP HIEP HOERA
Message-ID: <9jqbrh$pc6$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Hurray hurray
A huge hurray for the one that made our programming lives fun again!


           I   I  I   I  I_--_  I_--_  _---_  \   /
           I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I   \ /
           I---I  I   I  I---I  I---I  I---I    V
           I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I  I   I    I
           I   I  -__-I  I   I  I   I  I   I    I


I'm very distressed that in the last year the tone of many a posting
is getting hostile and insulting to the point that one fears to post
at all.  Some bots tent to be on the aggressive side now and again,
and lately even the creator of all my programming fun became subject
of direct attacts.  Let's keep behaving in the spirit of our beloved
language: like consentient adults.

Rational:
I'm not keen on posting things like this (must have to do with some
Calvinistic leftovers:), but from the last few postings of our BDFL
(and Guido be assured I never thought of this title as anything but
a pet name, expressing our deep admiration and gratitude) I got the
impression he could do with a little public hurraying. Hence: HOERA

-- 
groetjes, carel


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 07:26:40 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:26:40 +0100
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4AB04C.FF1DECC6@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9klpjg.ipj.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:35:40 +0200, Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> wrote:
>phil hunt wrote:
>> 
>> I am currently writing a program that reads emails,
>> [..]
>> encryption,
>
>S/MIME, PGP? Which toolkit?

It uses OpenSSL as the encryption engine.

The spec for my system is at 
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 23:35:16 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:35:16 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> [Guido]
> Well, they have the same *mathemtical* value, and Python does its
> darndest to treat them as equal everywhere.  For example, a dict
with
> int keys can be indexed with corresponding float or complex values.
> Exceptions are operations that intrinsically require ints, e.g. list
> indexing.  (This would change under a unified numeric system though,
I
> expect, unless inexact numbers are excluded from being used as
> sequence indices.)

If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
independent of type).

Terry





From volucris at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 05:47:35 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:47:35 -0500
Subject: Is this an Intended behaviour of __getattr__?
References: <uu787.103805$ph7.16107665@news.hananet.net> <OR887.104175$ph7.16309267@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <3b613812$0$317$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

Yeah, I didn't even notice that before. You know what else I didn't notice
before? That the 3rd and 4th elements are f.next.next. I think I was too
busy looking at the logic of the method to notice the simplicity of the
question.

There must be some kind of Exception suppression, because look at this code:

---Begin Code---
#an Exception of my own ingenious design
class MyError(Exception):
  def __init__(self):
    print "I have been called!"

class Node:
    def __init__(self):
        self._next=None
    def __getattr__(self,attr):
        if attr=='next':
            if self._next is not None:
                return self._next
            else:
                self._next=Node()
                return self._next
        print attr,"was called..."
        #got rid of your 'normal' Exception raising, and raised my own
        raise MyError
---End Code---

And look at the output I get:

  __str__ was called...
I have been called!
__repr__ was called...
I have been called!
<__main__.Node instance at 00F818DC>
 __str__ was called...
I have been called!
__repr__ was called...
I have been called!
<__main__.Node instance at 00F818DC>
 __str__ was called...
I have been called!
__repr__ was called...
I have been called!
<__main__.Node instance at 00F810AC>
 __str__ was called...
I have been called!
__repr__ was called...
I have been called!
<__main__.Node instance at 00F810AC>
errorPlz was called...
I have been called!


So, the exception _is_ being raised, but it's not being displayed. Hmmmm. I
have no idea.  Where are those PythoGeniuses? <Whistles>
--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message
news:OR887.104175$ph7.16309267 at news.hananet.net...
> "Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3b6111de$0$325$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net...
> >
> > "Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message
> > news:uu787.103805$ph7.16107665 at news.hananet.net...
> > > I'm a bit confused with this:
> > >
> > > class Node:
> > >     def __init__(self):
> > >         self._next=None
> > >     def __getattr__(self,attr):
> > >         if attr=='next':
> > >             if self._next is not None:
> > >                 return self._next
> > >             else:
> > >                 self._next=Node()
> > >                 return self._next
> > >         print attr,"was called..."
> > >         error=3/0  #supposed to raise exception
> > >         raise AttributeError
> > >
> > > if __name__=='__main__':
> > >     f=Node()
> > >     links=[f.next,f.next,f.next.next,f.next.next]
> > >     for each in links:
> > >         print each
> > >     print f.errorPlz
> > >
> > > And this yields exactly,
> > >
> > >  __str__ was called...
> > > __repr__ was called...
> > > <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
> > >  __str__ was called...
> > > __repr__ was called...
> > > <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
> > >  __str__ was called...
> > > __repr__ was called...
> > > <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
> > >  __str__ was called...
> > > __repr__ was called...
> > > <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
> > > al was called...
> > > Traceback (most recent call last):
> > >   File "...", line 22, in ?
> > >     print f.al
> > >   File "...", line 12, in __getattr__
> > >     k=3/0
> > > ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
> > >
> > > Why did it suck up all ZeroDivisionErrors while outputting the "was
> > > called..." messages? Special case with magic methods? Is this an
> intended
> > > behaviour? Then what is the exact process/mechanism?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > in __getattr__ if the attr is 'next', if checks the value of _next and
> > returns whether it's None or not. the code after return never gets
> executed.
> > the only time it didn't return first, was when __getattr__ was called
> with
> > 'errorPlz' (not 'next').
> >
> > That was too wordy, but I hope it's intelligible.
> > --
>
> Thanks, but I don't think it answers my question.
>
> I think when __repr__ and __str__ are called internally via the
interpreter
> as in the print statement, it passes through the __getattr__ method of
Node
> class while all exceptions are simply ignored.
>
> Am I right on this? Not sure.
>
> ps. when  I use "not equal operator" != in the "if self._next is not
None:"
> line, __ne__ (above python 2.0) is searched after, and as it fails,
> __getattr__ is called, and goes into the same strange process as above,
> ignoring all exceptions.
>
>
>




From emile at fenx.com  Mon Jul 30 06:16:32 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 03:16:32 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com> <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996451255.5138.python-list@python.org> <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7@Lugoj.Com> <ZVl3CVAHMRZ7EwPR@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9k3eb7$2a326$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

"Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ZVl3CVAHMRZ7EwPR at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk...
> In article <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7 at Lugoj.Com>, James Logajan
> <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes
> >Paul Prescod wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm not going to respond to the majority of the post because I don't
> >> really see where the conversation is going.
> >
> >I'm not sure it is going anywhere in particular. Just some people
shootin'
> >the breeze.
> yes the point of discourse is to replace silence. Sometimes the silence
> is prefereable :)
> --
> Robin Becker

Is that like the opposite of talking is waiting to talk?

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------



From andym at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 21 13:18:50 2001
From: andym at ActiveState.com (Andy McKay)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 10:18:50 -0700
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?
References: <fi1cj9.8qm.ln@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <002701c11209$709c9480$ae03a8c0@activestate.com>

Tim Peters wrote a good recipe to do just that:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52560

Cheers.
--
  Andy McKay.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <gradha at iname.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 6:54 AM
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?


> Hi.
> 
> Given a list of strings, I am doing the following to delete duplicated
> entries:
> 
> my_list.sort()
> x = 0
> while x < len (my_list) - 1:
> if my_list[x] == my_list[x+1]:
> del my_list[x+1]
> else:
> x = x + 1
> 
> Is there some more elegant, fast, algorithm? Is this the only one
> obvious way to do it?
> 
> --
>  Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 




From iron at mso.oz.net  Tue Jul 17 18:20:39 2001
From: iron at mso.oz.net (Mike Orr)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 22:20:39 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220>

phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> However, im my experience, most of the time you don't want to do this,
> most of the time, if there are too few or many values, you weant the
> software to "do its best". 

Perl "does its best" by making guesses about what you want.  Python is
more deterministic, which means you have a greater certainty about what
the program will actually do.

> This goes for lots of things; IMO if you
> access a list or dictionary with a non-existant index it should
> return a value such as None, instead of raising an exception.

Sometimes.  It's convenient in CGI to have tags default to '' if missing.
But you can't find a one-size-fits all solution.  For some applications,
None and '' are legitimate values, and must be distinguished from
"key not found".  Thus, why Python offers both dict.get('x', DEFAULT)
as well as dict['better be there or KeyError'].

-- 
-Mike (Iron) Orr, iron at mso.oz.net  (if mail problems: mso at jimpick.com)
   http://iron.cx/     English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol


From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 17:15:59 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:15:59 +0200
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
In-Reply-To: <20010712133304.3415243d.treaves@silverfields.com>
Message-ID: <20010712231559.Q5396@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 01:33:04PM -0400, Timothy Reaves wrote:
> On 12 Jul 2001 13:18:35 -0400
> Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > What output do you get when you run the last command, 
> > 
> > ./python -tt \
> >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py \
> >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
> > 
> > with the -v flag?

> double # ./python -tt -v >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py >     /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
> bash: /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1: Is a directory

Please re-read Alex's posting, and compare it with yours. You are using '>'s
where he typed '\'s. There is an important difference :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From andre.risnes at tenpipes.no  Thu Jul 26 06:17:37 2001
From: andre.risnes at tenpipes.no (André Risnes)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:17:37 +0200
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9joqp4$b31$1@lise.netcom.no>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B5FC733.5186D588 at tundraware.com...
>
> One really good alternative is transactional queuing with asynchronous
> read/write interfaces to the queues.  I'm wondering if anyone is doing
> anything in this area with Python.
>

I did something like that for my masters, as part of a protocol
for exchanging control messages for a distributed file system.
The queues where just email queues (which were obviously slow,
but the goal was reliability and asynchrony, not speed).

The system supported plug-in transaction handlers, and a version
of two-phase commit was implemented for it. This 2PC was totally
asynchronous, so it could not survive if the queue dropped messsages.
(i.e. two-army problem). Id did tolarate multiple messages,
however, so a semi-asynchronous version with timeouts and
retransmits would have been extremely reliable.


--
Andr? Risnes





From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Thu Jul 12 15:06:50 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:06:50 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB94@admin56.narex.com>
	(BPettersen@NAREX.com)
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB94@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <12072001.4@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Bjorn" == Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:

    >> From: "J?rgen A. Erhard" [mailto:juergen.erhard at gmx.net]
    Bjorn> [snip]

    >> I had a script recently where I wanted to pass in a command
    >> line param that could be a numeric ratio, s.th. like

    >> thescript --ratio=1/3

    >> [...]

    Bjorn> If you're eval'ing random strings the user types in you
    Bjorn> really deserve whatever you get <1/3 wink>.

Oops, you're right... though there's no security hole in there if the
script only runs *as that user*.  And I generally trust the users of
these scripts anyway (= I trust myself ;-)

    >>>> r = '1/3'
    >>>> import re
    >>>> tmp = r.split('/')
    >>>> assert len(tmp) == 2
    >>>> a, b = tmp
    >>>> assert re.match(r'[0-9]+', a) != None
    >>>> assert re.match(r'[0-9]+', b) != None
    >>>> x, y = map(int, [a,b])
    >>>> ratio = (x + 0.0) / y
    >>>> ratio
    Bjorn> 0.33333333333333331
    >>>> 

    Bjorn> Nothing magic about it...

And nothing readable. ;-}

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
   Stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal!  (http://www.freemumia.org)
         I have a firm grip on reality, now I can strangle it.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010712/f1420341/attachment.sig>

From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Fri Jul 27 07:13:28 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:13:28 GMT
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
References: <mailman.996156559.1063.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <s1c87.66149$Xr6.281107@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Fran?ois Pinard:
> * Scanner: a good part of it is written.  Some difficult issues
>   remain, like the disambiguation of '/' from patterns, and
>   various `s' like operators. For sure, it will never be fully Perl
>   compatible, yet I think we could get similar interpretations
>   most of times, in practice.

   The Perl lexer built into Scintilla tries to disambiguate "/" by keeping
a 'preferRE' hint which is set to true after most operators (regular
expressions mostly appear after assignment operators or "(") and after
keywords and reset after variables, ")" or "]". Its not accurate but it
works on most real code.

   Neil




From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul  1 18:12:48 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 00:12:48 +0200
Subject: Python 2.1.1 release 'schedule'
Message-ID: <20010702001248.H8098@xs4all.nl>

This is just a heads-up to everyone. I plan to release Python 2.1.1c1
(release candidate 1) somewhere on Friday the 13th (of July) and, barring
any serious problems, the full release the friday following that, July 20.

The python 2.1.1 CVS branch (tagged 'release21-maint') should be stable, and
should contain most bugfixes that will be in 2.1.1. If you care about
2.1.1's stability and portability, or you found bugs in 2.1 and aren't sure
they are fixed, and you can check things out of CVS, please give the CVS
branch a try: just 'checkout' python with

cvs co -rrelease21-maint python

(with the -d option from the SourceForge CVS page that applies to you) and
follow the normal compile procedure. Binaries for Windows as well as source
tarballs will be provided for the release candidate and the final release
(obviously) but the more bugs people point out before the final release, the
more bugs will be fixed in 2.1.1 :-)

Python 2.1.1 (as well as the CVS branch) will fall under the new
GPL-compatible PSF licence, just like Python 2.0.1. The only notable thing
missing from the CVS branch is an updated NEWS file -- I'm working on it.
I'm also not done searching the open bugs for ones that might need to be
adressed in 2.1.1, but feel free to point me to bugs you think are
important!

2.1.1-Patch-Czar-ly y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From xtian at hyperactive.co.nz  Tue Jul  3 18:30:04 2001
From: xtian at hyperactive.co.nz (xtian at hyperactive.co.nz)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:30:04 GMT
Subject: newbie apply() question
References: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net> <Bke07.7480$e5.975477@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3b423b21.155938557@news.supernews.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:17:53 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh"
<fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Aaron Edsinger wrote:
>> hi.  i'm stumped on something that seems easy.  why doesn't this work:
>>
>> x=4
>> apply(sys.stdout.write,x) #fails
>
>TypeError: apply() 2nd argument must be a sequence
>
>as the exception implies, the second argument to apply
>must be a sequence.  an integer is not a sequence.
>
>> apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,)) #fails
>
>TypeError: argument must be string or read-only character buffer, not int
>
>as the exception implies, the argument (to sys.stdout.write)
>must be a string, not an int(eger).
>
>> is there a way to make this work?
>
>if you really need to use apply, you can do something like:
>
>    apply(sys.stdout.write,(str(x),))
>
>or even:
>
>    sys.stdout.write(*(str(x),))
>
>but since write doesn't take a variable number of arguments,
>I see no reason why you cannot simply write:
>
>    sys.stdout.write(str(x))
>
>hope this helps!
>
></F>

Okay, that's weird. I feel silly - this is almost bound to be the real
problem the poster was having (at least the advice to post tracebacks
is still good!). 
But when I do this in IDLE, I don't get an error - is the IDLE stdout
object automatically calling str() on anything it's passed, while the
raw interpreter doesn't?
Yup - in OutputWindow.OutputWindow.write(). <sigh>
(If only I launched the real interpreter instead of IDLE by default!)

xtian


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 05:02:34 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:02:34 +0200
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107101247500.6857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107101247500.6857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <20010710110234.V8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 12:52:00PM +0400, Roman Suzi wrote:

> The following from the Python docs:

>    nice (increment)
>           Add increment to the process's ``niceness''. Return the new
>           niceness. Availability: Unix.

> Contradicts what I see in python 1.5.2 - 2.1:

> >>> import os
> >>> os.nice(1)
> 0
> >>> os.nice(5)
> 0

> It's docs inaccuracy or os.nice() bug? Or glibc bug?

It's more or less a bug, under Linux. (I guess you're using Linux, since you
mention 'glibc'.) If you look at posixmodule.c, you'll notice:

static PyObject *
posix_nice(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
{
        int increment, value;

        if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "i:nice", &increment))
                return NULL;
        value = nice(increment);
        if (value == -1)
                return posix_error();
        return PyInt_FromLong((long) value);
}

it simply returns the value returned by the 'nice' system call. The Linux
'nice' manpage has this to note:

NOTES
       Note that the routine is documented in SUSv2 to return the
       new nice value, while the Linux syscall and  (g)libc  rou-
       tines return 0 on success. The new nice value can be found
       using getpriority(2).   Note  that  an  implementation  in
       which  nice  returns  the  new nice value can legitimately
       return -1.  To reliably detect an error, set  errno  to  0
       before the call, and check its value when nice returns -1.

> Which category to report it in the Bug tracker?

'Python Library' is the best fit, I guess, but it doesn't really matter.
The group should be 'platform specific', though :) Feel free to assign it
to me, I think I'll check in a fix soon anyway :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul 12 10:27:58 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 10:27:58 -0400
Subject: The size of a list
References: <74cc9702.0107120609.6c8dc5f6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etdbsmq8bo1.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

I'm not sure what you mean by null entries, but if you mean entries that
evaluate to false, you could do len(filter(None, list_)).

Alex.


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:45:21 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:45:21 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E52B1.FBAE6F34@engcorp.com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> Phil Hunt wrote:
> >On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
> wrote:
> >>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
> >>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
> >>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
> >
> >To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
> >that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
> >lines of C++.
> 
> We are shipping a successful product that comprises more than 100,000 lines
> of Jython.
> 
> What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
> for short programs <100 lines".

In Phil's defense (not that I think he can't speak for himself),
he didn't say "only".  That's your word.  He was just responding to
my parenthetical (whatever that means) in reference to the label
being applied to Python.

I think "good for short programs <100 lines" is not a bad definition
of "scripting language", but I don't think he wasn't saying he 
thinks that's all Python is good for.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sat Jul  7 14:31:48 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:31:48 GMT
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
Message-ID: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Hello,
I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the file
menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a hand
with this it would be great.




From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 15:27:39 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:27:39 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3b5f0a37$1@hpb10302.boi.hp.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCECNLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Daniel Fackrell]
> Would this unified number system somehow still be able to provide the
> functionality that ints provide with regard to bitwise operations?
> There may be other problems that arise as well, but I'm too much of a
> newbie to point them out at this time.

These bit-fiddling operators couldn't care less:  & | ^ ~ >>

The problem child is << on (short) ints, which is already a problem because
its behavior varies across Python installations.  Few people seem aware of
that now, because it only bites those running short-int left-shifting Python
on both 32-bit and 64-bit Unixish boxes (Windows boxes are immune, because
MS decided to leave sizeof(long) at 4 even under Win64).




From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul 26 14:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 18:30:01 GMT
Subject: Why Johnny Can't Distribute Processing.   WAS: Distributed computing 
 using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
         <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com>
         <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <mailman.996163788.16805.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B6060C3.A6E69FF5@tundraware.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Tim> The short reason for this is that connection-oriented solutions
>     Tim> like RPCs create very "brittle" applications in highly distributed,
>     Tim> high-performance environments.  I am thus less than enthusiastic
>     Tim> about SOAP as a solution.
> 
> I'd suggest that most of the applications that use SOAP or XML-RPC are not
> "applications in highly distributed, high-performance environments".  Highly
> distributed, yes, if you're talking about over the Internet.  Most uses I'm
> aware of, however, are not meant to be high-performance the way you mean it.
> 

You're right, of course, but ...

Both distribution and scale are important in different situations.
For instance, even if performance is not much of an issue, if you have 
an n-tier application laying all over a network and you're using RPCs 
for fabric, any one node becoming unavailable halts the application.  

A lot of the reason the internet is getting away with these kinds of protocols 
right now is that the computational model isn't n-tier, or really even something
as limited as client-server.  While these architectures exist *behind* the web 
server, the distribution model across the internet is really more terminal-to-
server wherein the browser has more-or-less become a better VT100.  This is
a Good Thing, IMHO, because it recognizes that clients are not trustworthy,
cannot be made reliable, and so on.

The rub is that things like .NET from Microsoft and EJB from Sun propose
to change the computational architecture such that the unit of distribution
(across the internet AND behind the walls of an organization) will be an 
*object* (not a server) with RPC, or at least some transport with synchronous
semantics, as the underlying connective tissue.  If successful, these models
will drive us to very fine-grained distributed computing topologies which
will be slow, brittle, impossible to manage, very hard to recover after failure,
ad infinitum, ad nausem.

Microsoft saw this coming years ago - Well, their Enterprise Computing group did,
anyway.  Gates probably didn't even understand what they were talking about because
it wasn't written in BASIC ;) - and came up with the MTS/Viper tx queue management
system.  They also added async and transactional semantics to COM+.  The problem,
as always, with Microsoft is that: a) It is MS-centric and barely plays well with
others.  (.NET will play well with others only in the marketing literature.  In
reality, I suspect that anyone wanting to use the full .NET bag-o-trix will need
to do so primarily from Win32 platforms.) and b) Microsoft makes terrific
consumer-grade and end-user platforms, but their server technology is just
not up to running mission-critical high scale apps.  (Their ads say that they
do just that, but forget to mention the number of full time engineers that are
needed to crawl all over their enterprise servers to keep 'em alive.)  So,
Microsoft with arguably the best distribution harness in the business right now,
is out of the running because their underlying platform is simply not appropriate
for very larger problems and they don't run on other, more adult platforms.

Sun (and EJB) is, IMHO, out of the running because they are married to those
synchronous transport semantics.

So, here's what we need.  We need a platform-neutral transactional messaging and
queing service with features like:

1) Aynchronous APIs to the messaging and queuing manager
2) Platform-neutrality: From mainframes to desktops
3) Class-Of-Service selection
4) Per-event, selectable write through to backing store
5) Bindings for C and Java, and also the major scripting langs: Python, TCL, Perl, VBA
6) Remote management and recovery capability
7) Plugable security and encryption.

There are only two commercial products that come close to this, of which I
am aware.  BEA bought the rights to the old DEC Message Queue product, but
I dunno if they're doing anything with it any more.  And IBM, of course,
has MQ-Series, which has some of the above.

I keep thinking about designing such a beast myself, but the time to get
it done seems daunting.  But, it's one of the background tasks that runs
while I sleep, so you never know...                                                        

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:16 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:16 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lml32.qb.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <mailman.995844756.32430.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <upgnltcnmip6mdg8ulko2t86nai5ev6nqv@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:31:14 +0100, Jan Dries <jdries at mail.com> wrote:

>Grant Edwards wrote:
>> No, it doesn't.  Integer division is integer division.  The
>> correct answer for the value of 3/4 is 0.  If you wanted the
>> remainder, you should ask for it.  If you want to divide
>> floating point numbers, you should _use_ floating point numbers.
>> 
>> Perhaps my mind was warped by using nothing but integer
>> arithmatic in my software for many years because floating point
>> was simply too slow and too expensive.
>
>Upon reading this and other threads on the subject I wondered why
>apparently a number of people find 3/4 giving 0 odd, while I don't
>remember ever having and certainly don't ever make a mistake against it.
>But now I realise why. I too for many years used nothing but integers
>because fp was, indeed, simply too slow. I even remember calculating
>bezier curves for vector font outlines using only +, >> and << on ints,
>because even integer multiplication was too slow.

Surely it goes deeper than that?

Children learn to count integers very young, and they learn integer
division almost as soon as they start school. They learn about
remainders almost as soon. Fractions, decimals and scientific notation
don't come until much later. The confused expectation about getting
floats as a result instead of integers simply shows that a lot of
children forget the core principles on which their knowledge is based.



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Thu Jul 12 13:59:26 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:59:26 +0300
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com> <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <ku66cy58qp.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <3b4d6184.1698299906 at wa.news.verio.net>, bokr at accessone.com
(Bengt Richter) writes:

| For accurate timing, time.clock()
| is recommended, I believe:

[...]

the docs recommend it, but on unix time.time() is far better

time.clock() tries to measure "cpu time" instead of "real time"
there, which results in terrible resolution. time.time() maps
to gettimeofday(2).

  -- erno


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 19:37:18 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:37:18 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
In-Reply-To: <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco@cortechs.com>
References: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
 <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco@cortechs.com>
Message-ID: <gd$5gjAu4JZ7EwIM@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In message <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco at cortechs.com>, Bob Calco
<rcalco at cortechs.com> writes

I hesitated to mention ADA as it is (so far as I'm aware) the only
computer programming language to have won a standardized selection
process. It has been an utter failure outside the DOD despite the fact
that it does indeed have a dedicated following.


I think many CS people would now say that ADA is an awful language, but
I'm uncertain exactly why. I felt at the time that it had far too many
keywords and was a bit too complete.

I think what I'm trying to say is that ADA is too complex at the
lexical/syntax side of things. I know that you can do nice
floating/fixed point things with ADA, but those anti-missile missiles
still seem to miss so perhaps the added complexity doesn't really work.
-- 
Robin Becker



From mamidsh at bath.ac.uk  Tue Jul 17 07:55:33 2001
From: mamidsh at bath.ac.uk (Iain Hallam)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:55:33 GMT
Subject: ImportError: No module named _socket
Message-ID: <3B5427B5.5040005@bath.ac.uk>

Hi.

I've only just started using Python and attempted the default install on 
a Solaris 2.6 box here at university. Everything seemed to work OK 
(considering I was only testing it by running "Hello World!" type 
programs) and the sysadmin kindly installed it system wide.

I've just downloaded the ping modules by Jeremy Hylton, and they import 
the socket module. All well and good - it's in 
/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py - but the line that imports _socket 
fails. Could someone tell me where I can find this module in our 
install, please?

Thanks,

Iain Hallam.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:26:55 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:26:55 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <0ilsltgmrc2eg39jf8cg2i4tam5ujqld0f@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:40:06 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>I think it will be inevitable for many Pythons to come to provide a
>way to turn off the new division rules.  I am currently working on a
>command line option for this.

How about inference by looking at the extension of the input file.
Either way you create language dialects, but looking at the extension
makes the selection in a way that will generally work here and now.

I assume some applications ignore the standard *.py filename
convention - hopefully rare enough to handle other ways, or maybe a
case for allowing a command line option in addition.



From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  2 09:09:57 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:09:57 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107021241560.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Carlos Ribeiro wrote:

> PEP: Unnumbered
> Title: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
> Version: $Revision: 0.1$
> Author: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
> Status: Draft
> Type: Informational
> Created: 01-Jul-2001
> Post-History:
> 
> 
> Abstract
> 
>      This PEP describes the minimum quality guidelines for modules
>      to be included as part of the Standard Library. The main
>      focus is to define a minimum quality level, making the use
>      of the module as easy, consistent and predictable as possible.
>      These recommendations are not meant to be enforced as absolute
>      rules, and should not prevent non-compliant modules from being
>      included in any Python Distribution.
> 
>      This proposal does not try to enforce rigid rules on
>      controversial issues such as source code style and attribute
>      names. There are no absolute rules for these issues.  However,
>      we feel that some general advice is applicable to most
>      instances, and so included some guidelines on this topic.
> 
>      Last but not least, this proposal must be understood as a
>      broad set of recommendations. It is not meant to be read as
>      a set of rules to be enforced. Non-compliant modules may be
>      still be accepted as part of the standard library for several
>      reasons. Common sense and community acceptance are still the
>      best judges on this.
> 
> 
> What is the Standard Library?
> 
>      The Standard Library is comprised of the modules that are
>      referenced in the Python Library Reference manual. Standard
>      Python Distributions MUST support all modules from the
>      Standard Library, with the exception of OS-dependant ones.

> What is "quality"?
> 
>      This question is as old as philosophy, and as such, there are
>      no absolute answers. Our definition of quality, as applied to
>      the modules in the Standard Library, is based on the folowing
>      atributes:
> 
>      - Consistence. All modules in the Standard Library follow
>        similar structure. Similar objects or attributes always lead
>        to similar results.

Maybe there could be 2-3 different structures, because modules are so
different and to force similar behaviour from them could be
coounter-productive.

>      - Predictability. By means of a consistent interface, all
>        the modules provide highly predictable behavior. Subtle
>        surprises must be avoided.

realistically surprises are always present because they 
depend on the knowledge of the user.
 
>      - Readability. Both the documentation and the code must be
>        easy to read, making the learning process much easier.
> 
> 
> Documentation and naming guidelines
> 
>      1. By definition, Standard Library modules MUST be documented
>         in the main Python Library Reference.
> 
>      2. The module author SHALL supply the documentation as part
>         of the process for module acceptance in the Standard
>         Library, as covered in PEP-2.
> 
>      3. All the classes and functions exported by the module MUST
>         have PEP-256 compliant docstrings.
> 
>      4. Class names SHOULD be written in mixed case.

Why? Again, in some situation class names are dictated by
the problem domain...
 
>      5. Attributes whose value is expected to be constant SHOULD
>         have their names written in uppercase.

So, I will need to rewrite my programs to use 

math.PI instead of math.pi ?

Something about compatibility must be said here...

I am sure there are other examples where constants need to
be used "as is" to avoid "surprises".

Maybe, better define cases when these rules could be broken?

I think, that it's enough to be near the Style Guide when writing a
standard library module. But not to take it dogmatically, of course.
 
> Module structure guidelines
> 
>      1. Standard Modules MUST not rely on global variables to keep
>         state information, except when it is absolutely required.
>         Whenever it does need to save state information, the use
>         of a instance object is suggested.
> 
>      2. In the case that the module is expected to support only a
>         single instance, a singleton MUST be used, instead of
>         global variables.
> 
>      3. Python source code MUST be written using only spaces. Tabs
>         are not allowed on source code files.
> 
> 
> OS-dependency guidelines
> 
>      1. There are three main categories of modules regarding the
>         dependency on some particular OS or hardware platform:
> 
>         * OS-DEPENDENT modules are, for intrinsec reasons, supported
>           only on some particular platforms and/or hardware
>           platforms. They may not be ported to other platforms
>           without substantial investment or changes to the
>           underlying environment.
> 
>         * OS-LIMITED modules are supported only on some particular
>           platforms. They are not inherently limited to the
>           supported platforms, but for some reason the code cannot
>           be easily ported (or supported) on other platforms.
> 
>         * OS-INDEPENDENT modules are supported on many platforms.
>           Some particular platforms may not support the module,
>           because of severe limitations on the platform itself.
>           These limitations are easily recognizable, specially if
>           the module is already supported on all major platforms.
> 
>      2. OS-LIMITED modules SHOULD NOT be included in the Standard
>         Library. The module author MUST rewrite the module in such
>         a way to make possible to port it to other platforms as a
>         OS-INDEPENDENT module.
> 
>      3. OS-DEPENDENT modules SHOULD only be included to support
>         functionality required to use Python in the target platform.
> 
>      4. OS-INDEPENDENT modules that rely on specific code in Python
>         for every platform supported MUST import a separate module
>         that implements the platform specific code. This (sub)module
>         SHOULD preferably be part of the main package. In this case
>         the module name should reflect the platform it supports.
> 
> 
> Remarks
> 
>      This draft was inspired by the discussions regarding Python
>      development, and PEPs in particular. After following the
>      discussion it became clear that one of the main topics of the
>      debate was the need to improve the library. However, we did
>      lack some definitions on this, and this PEP is being addressed
>      at this particular problem.
> 
>      We did chose to use the Python Library Reference documentation
>      as the basis for our definition, because we felt that no other
>      definition would as clearly embrace the set of modules that
>      the community regards as the standard one.
> 
> 
> References
> 
>      (still incomplete; please help me!)
> 
>      [1] PEP 2 - Procedure for Adding New Modules
> 
>      [2] PEP 256 - Docstring Processing System Framework
> 
>      [3] (...there a more to come, please be patient...)

        Style Guide?
 
> Copyright
> 
>      This document has been placed in the public domain.
> 

Probably this PEP also need to mention directory structure 
of standard library?

Anyway, it seems that probably you need to submit it as PEP
and let wide discussion to make this doc nearly perfect.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 






From xucs007 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 03:05:24 2001
From: xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 00:05:24 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220> <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>

Thanks for all comments. Now I revised my stupid testing
python script to adopt both a func (save original 38 seconds
to 28 seconds) and a for loop (save original 38 seconds to
21 seconds), I got 16.0 seconds, which is pretty comparable
to perl's 15.4 seconds.

The revised stupid testing py is:

#!/usr/bin/env python
def f():
        for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
                j = 2.5 * 2.5
        print i, j
f()


Interesting is for perl: On the same PII 450 MHz, "for" loop
in stead of "while" loop increase about 10% speed, but on another
PIII 1GHz, "for" slowes down speed by 30% (from 8 seconds of
"while" to 10.6 seconds of "for"). Only computers themselves
can understand, :-(


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 28 10:13:42 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:13:42 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org> <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net> <cpr8v2120n.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b62c5c7.1683787@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:43:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:54:13 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> >Assuming we'll adopt a variation of Scheme's numerical tower (which
>> >I'm currently in favor of, more or less), this won't happen.  Floats
>> >and complex would always be considered inexact (and ints and rationals
>> >exact), and inexact numbers are not allowed as sequence indices, even
>> >if their exact value is an integer.
>> >
>> Why would complex have to be inexact if both its
>> real and imaginary parts were exact?
>> 
>> This looks exact, but will it be?
>>  >>> (1+2j)**2
>>  (-3+4j)
>
>Probably not -- I don't think it's worth to have a separate exact and
>inexact complex numbers, especially since exact numbers will probably
>be represented as rationals (with ints and long ints as a special-case
>optimization), while inexact numbers will probably all use some form
>of floating point (binary or decimal).

??? I wouldn't presume to say what's "worth it" and what isn't
(seriously, simply because none of this really matters to me,
being just an interested onlooker.) But _if_ it's worth it to
have exact and inexact real numbers I don't see why complex
numbers should be different - if you're going to revise all
this why shouldn't there be exact complexes, where real and
imag are integers or rationals, and also inexact complexes
where real and imag are floats?

(Hmm. Thinking about it, what seems worth it to me would
surely not be worth it to almost anyone else: A complex
should have alternate real-imag and modulus-arg representations,
ie representations in rectangular or polar coordinates, and
we should be able to say that _either_ is exact. Because the
calculations with "exact complexes" that interest me in
particular are with complexes where the polar coordinate
representation involves _exact_ rationals, although real
and imag are inexact. For example, if z is a complex with
 |z| = 1 and arg(z) = pi/3 then z**6 should be 1, exactly.
If there were an exact complex like that that would be
convenient.

Come to think of it, it's arg/pi that should be allowed
to be an exact rational for this reason, not arg.

And no, this is _not_ an actual suggestion or a request;
actually doing this in a general-purpose programming
language seems silly. But if you decide to write several
thousand versions to keep everyone happy this is a feature
that goes in my version...)

>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


David C. Ullrich


From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Thu Jul  5 18:04:26 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:04:26 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i2oc8$cj3@news1.gtech.com>

"Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
news:bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43 at posting.google.com...
> "Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:<9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com>...
>
> > Perhaps if you are seriously looking into possible languages to use for
> > writing an ATC then you might be better off looking for some research
> > information about the relative merits of different languages rather than
> > asking a fairly obvious question in a news group that will only be read
by
> > adherents of a particular language :-). I say "obvious" here because you
> > will find only Python lovers here. I love Python but I wouldn't use it
to
> > write an ATC.
>
> Perhaps I should clarify that I am not proposing to use Python for a
> complete ATC system but rather for a relatively small, albeit key,
> component of a very large system.

Well, that makes it a completely different ballgame :-). I can't comment in
this case because I would need more information about the proposed area
prior to making any informed (or thought to be informed :-)) opinions. The
only thing to bear in mind in this case is there are other languages which
offer the same (nice) features of Python but they would probably be a
*safer* choice. Especially if the area you have in mind is in any way
central or critical to the operation of the ATC as a whole. If it is small
enough, then you can employ good testing, defensive programming techniques
etc to the point where you can assure and reassure yourself and others that
it is a good fit and solution. But even then I would (assuming I was your
manager :-)) be looking for some good, definitive reason for using Python
over some other language i.e. I would be looking for a business case of some
form. A comparision of language features, a comparision of available
libraries, that kind of thing. Many times (in my opinion :-)) the selection
of language for a project comes down to "well, I like it" or vague hand
waving and statements like "well, it's a popular language therefore it must
be the best" - neither of which are good engineering bases for decision
making :-)

>
> > The choice of languages for implementing various applications is
sometimes
> > extremely suspect. I suspect that often it comes down to something like
one
> > or more of the following reasons:
> >
> > "I know X, it is a good language"
> > "I can get programmers more easily in language X than language Y"
> > "We currently have programmers who know language X"
> >
> > I am not necessarily saying that choosing a language based upon the
above
> > reasons is wrong, but it is hardly approaching the problem from an
> > engineering standpoint. There is literature available that compares the
> > relative merits of languages. To make an informed decision you really
should
> > do some research and find out what information is available to help you
make
> > the decision. The more information the better informed the decision. I
am
> > sure as an aerospace engineer, you do studies into the various
alternatives
> > for your design, why should choosing a programming language be any
> > different?
>
> I agree. However, I wouldn't know where to start with the formal
> literature, and even if I did I don't have enough time to pursue it in
> depth. My management is already worried that I am even considering
> Python (they'd never even heard of it), and they may well shoot it
> down even if it's my choice. (You'd no doubt praise them for that. :-)
>

No, you have me wrong there :-), if you could place a sound, reasoned case
in front of me that I couldn't pick holes in then I would OK the choice. So
far all you have said in this thread is you are thinking about using Python
because you have been dabbling with it at a personal level - this is not a
good basis for choosing a language! Although, as I said previously, I
suspect it has been done for these reasons many times in the past - a sad
reflection on the professionalism of our industry.

> > > <cut>
> > >
> > > > Based upon Gerrit's observations, which I fully endorse, anybody who
> >  doesn't
> > > > use the most strongly typed language they can find for an
application
> >  like
> > > > Air Traffic Control, has to put it mildly, rocks in their head :-).
> > >
> > > As I indicated in my original post, the lack of type checking does
> > > concern me. However, as I wrote in a later post, I also suspect that
> > > this concern is overblown. I am not a computer scientist or even a
> > > full-time programmer, so I don't pretend to be an expert in this area.
> > > I am an aerospace engineer, and I do some programming in support of my
> > > own research (but I am a Python beginner).
> > >
> >
> > There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
> > languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
> > "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing
the
> > same application in two different languages to get meaningful
comparisions -
> > but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed
languages.
>
> Let's cut right to the chase here. I like strong typing almost as much
> as you do, but I don't understand why I can't get it in Python,
> perhaps by specialized code-analysis tools. Is the problem just that
> the development tools are underdeveloped, or is there a fundamental
> technical reason that type-checking cannot be done? If it's the
> former, then I suggest that the tools be given a very high priority.
> If it's the latter, then perhaps type checking can be done under
> certain reasonable restrictions. Whatever the case, I want to have my
> cake and eat it too. :-)
>

Well, sometimes I make my son do something he doesn't want to because I
believe it is in his best interests - even when he doesn't :-).

The design of Python was to incorporate the "freedoms" of dynamic typing -
it is a fundamental feature of the language. You can't work around it (well,
another "absolute" in a land where there are none if you are prepared to
spend the rest of your life achieving your goal, but as I said elsewhere, by
the time you work around it it is nolonger Python :-)). So producing code
analysis tools would be a big job and still prone to error/misinformation
(witness other posting in this portion of the thread about the reliability
of PyChecker). The nature of dynamic typing would make it almost impossible
for PyChecker to give accurate results, it would basically have to "run" the
program through all possible permutations to even come close and when the
program takes input from outside itself and runs certain Python features
then you would NEVER be able to get PyChecker to predict whether something
is correct or not :-).

So, sorry, I can understand and sympathise with the desire to have your cake
and eat it but it is a forelorn hope in this case :-).

> <cut>
> > PyChecker is still very imature and some things it will never (poor word
to
> > use, since if someone wants to put in the effort, nothing is impossible
:-))
> > be checked by it. It will only ever be an aid. The ability of Python to
> > dynamically "change its behaviour on the fly" is one of its strengths
but
> > also a weakness from the point of view of ensuring correctness and
> > reliability in such an application domain.
>
> Do you think PyChecker could ever be sophisticated enough to do static
> type checking?
>

See above, with commands like exec,eval etc PyChecker could never be
sophisticated enough to provide *full* static checking. For example, I use
Python right at the moment to write a client/server application - to ease
the changes on the server side I send Python executable code through the
socket connection where it is executed by a Python thread (that way I don't
have to come up with a protocol for the command syntax, create a new case
statement each time a new command is added to the server etc etc). PyChecker
would not provide full coverage in this case........

Goodluck with your desires but please (for those of us who will fly in
future) base your decisions on sound engineering practice and not wishful
thinking :-)

Peter




From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 29 21:37:44 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:37:44 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org> <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net> <cpr8v2120n.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b62c5c7.1683787@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3b64b136.768362777@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:13:42 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:
[...]
>
>(Hmm. Thinking about it, what seems worth it to me would
>surely not be worth it to almost anyone else: A complex
>should have alternate real-imag and modulus-arg representations,
>ie representations in rectangular or polar coordinates, and
>we should be able to say that _either_ is exact. Because the
>calculations with "exact complexes" that interest me in
>particular are with complexes where the polar coordinate
>representation involves _exact_ rationals, although real
>and imag are inexact. For example, if z is a complex with
> |z| = 1 and arg(z) = pi/3 then z**6 should be 1, exactly.
>If there were an exact complex like that that would be
>convenient.
>
>Come to think of it, it's arg/pi that should be allowed
>to be an exact rational for this reason, not arg.
>
>And no, this is _not_ an actual suggestion or a request;
>actually doing this in a general-purpose programming
>language seems silly. But if you decide to write several
>thousand versions to keep everyone happy this is a feature
>that goes in my version...)
>
Why don't you write a class that does what you want ;-)
(But google first. It's amazing how 99% of everything I think of
magically appears before I've even mentioned it on line ;-)

BTW, in some systems it is convenient to represent angles as
two's complement integers of n bits, where the least
significan bit is worth 2pi/2^n.  It gives you a lot
of easily and exactly representable angles, effectively
rationals with 2^n denominator.

The sign bit gives a nice unambiguous -pi in preference
to +pi, and angles get modulo 2pi for free. We did
transcendental functions in software and rescaled the
series coefficients so we could pass angle arguments
in that form (IIRC -- this was in a time frame where we
were happy to get our software floating point ops executing
in under a millisecond ;-). Shaft angle encoders commonly
wind up giving you this kind of representation of angles,
(or gray code that you can convert if the device didn't).

If you have n bits to represent an angle, ISTM that
format gets the most out of them.


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 17:06:41 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:06:41 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996474302.23848.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b65b2d7.834315572@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:22:21 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
[...]
>IMO, so long as we've got internal numeric representations on the brain,
>Scheme's model makes little sense -- the point of Scheme's model was to get
>away from representations and move toward abstract mathematical values.
>
>That said, you may get to the same result in the end in this case anyway,
>thanks to the contagiousness of inexactness (but not of *type*!):
>
>> (integer? (floor (/ 20. 2)))
>#t
>> (exact? (floor (/ 20. 2)))
>#f
>>
>
I suspect they have chosen to coerce exact to #f whenever they internally
use floating point. Either that, or you have a version like my old pc scheme
that doesn't implement exact?

>So 20.//2 is not usable as a sequence index in Scheme, despite that "it's an
>integer" (as Scheme means "an integer").  Python can get to the same place
>in the end, but the terminological battle on the way there is going to be
>excruciating.
>
Yes, it's really hard to communicate thoughts about these things.
Is there a standard glossary we can all refer to?

For floating point unit terminology, probably
    http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/Names.pdf
but there's a lot of terms flying around. Does O'Reilly put out a
programmer's math dictionary? It'd be nice as a mini-book.

I would like it if Python could do better than Scheme. IMHO they compromised
badly if
    (exact? 2) => #t
and
    (exact? 2.0) => #f

If the above is so, they're hiding something with a pretty thin veil ;-)

You would know how much floating point there is in the interpreter, I assume ;-)
What's the chance of rewriting it to take advantage of IEE754's fpu precision status bit?

(Not to mention opportunities that would arise at the same time to provide access to
other controls and status such as rounding mode, etc.).

I think it could be a competitive advantage and distiction for Python to use IEE754 well.
It would also probably please Prof. Kahan, don't you think?

---
BTW, in
    http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf
he said about Java (excerpt):

"4. Every programmer?s prospects for success are diminished by Java?s refusal to grant access
to capabilities built into over 95% of today's floating-point hardware.
5. Java has rejected even mildly disciplined infix operator overloading, without which extensions
to arithmetic with everyday mathematical types like complex numbers, intervals, matrices,
geometrical objects and arbitrarily high precision become extremely inconvenient."

He also said, "Many people still think Floating-Point is a Black Art. They are wrong too."
Easy for him to say ;-)

Glad I finally picked up on the mention of Kahan and googled.
It might even change my misgivings about -0 ;-)



From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul  4 09:41:06 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 13:41:06 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <3b4102f4.887720905@wa.news.verio.net> <0Kd07.7470$e5.974463@newsb.telia.net> <3b425350.973828140@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b4317f5.1024169638@wa.news.verio.net>

On Wed, 04 Jul 2001 01:17:10 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:
[...]
>Um, so where and when will this system first be operational?
>
Um, sorry. One of my less enlightened personalities tried to be cute.
The rest was by me ;-)


From kens at sightreader.com  Wed Jul  4 17:36:43 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 14:36:43 -0700
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk>
Message-ID: <027901c104d1$6cbc4bc0$a325fea9@his>

All of the books are listed here:
http://www.amk.ca/bookstore/python.html

I recommend "Learning Python".

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Stanton" <dave at klatu.worldonline.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 11:39 AM
Subject: beginners books


> Hi
> 
> What book (s) would people recommend for a beginner to python ?. I did
> some basic programming years ago and have done a lot of pic
> microcontroller assembler programming.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Dave
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 12:14:14 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:14:14 +0200
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk> <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B4C76A3.A624D05F@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <9ihu2i013a3@enews4.newsguy.com>

"James Logajan" <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message
news:3B4C76A3.A624D05F at Lugoj.Com...
    ...
> Hmmm. Any language design that aspires to allow programmers the ability to
> express algorithms independent of the type of object to which it may be
> applied, such as containers, must at some level provide typeless handles.
In

...or genericity, as in C++ templates.  Genericity is typically
"solved" at compile-time (or link-time, for languages in which
that makes a difference), so typechecking may still have some
use there (you can get some error messages earlier than you would
if the checks were all done at runtime; performance-wise, that's
even more important -- the more loop-things-up work is done at
compile-time, the better).  But in practice programming generic
C++ "feels" a LOT like programming ordinary Python (except for
the syntax cruft:-), at least to this respondent -- signature
based polymorphism being commonality number one.

The lack of genericity in Java (I've been heard that it was due
to be fixed "soon" for a few years now -- I've even used a good
genericity-on-top-of-Java thingy called Pizza, but it was so
clearly stamped as experimental that there was no chance I could
use it for production work) is, IMHO, its #1 current defect.

Casting Object references isn't really comparable...:-)... it
WOULD be very similar to trying to use void* in C++ as a
substitute for templates!-)


Alex





From gmulchan at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 20:40:43 2001
From: gmulchan at hotmail.com (Gautam)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 17:40:43 -0700
Subject: Problem with using xml with jython
References: <f35f1426.0107181234.3406817e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <f35f1426.0107181640.45509e25@posting.google.com>

i fixed the problem by using
parser = make_parser('xml.sax.drivers2.drv_xmlproc')
instead of
parser = make_parser()

Thx

gmulchan at hotmail.com (Gautam) wrote in message news:<f35f1426.0107181234.3406817e at posting.google.com>...
> Hi,
>    I am trying to run a simple program shown below with jython. It
> runs with python successfully but throws the following exception when
> run with jython. Can someone point out the problem.
>    I am using python 2.0. on win2k. I downloaded the xml package very
> recently.
> 
> Thx
> 
> program starts here 
> --------------------------------
> import sys
> 
> from xml.sax import saxutils
> from xml.sax import make_parser
> from xml.sax.handler import feature_namespaces
> 
> #print sys.modules
>     
> file='test.xml'
> 
> class FindIssue(saxutils.DefaultHandler):
>     def __init__(self, title, number):
>         self.search_title, self.search_number = title, number
> 
>     def startElement(self,name,attrs):
>         if name != 'comic' : return
> 
>         title = attrs.get('title', None)
>         number = attrs.get('number',None)
>         if title == self.search_title and number ==
> self.search_number:
>             print title, '#'+str(number), 'found'
>         
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     parser = make_parser()
>  #   parser.setFeature(feature_namespaces,0)
> 
>     dh = FindIssue('Sandman', '62')
>     parser.setContentHandler(dh)
>     parser.parse(file)
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The exception in jython is :
> 
> C:\pythoncode\xmltest>C:\jython-2.0\jython trial.py
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "trial.py", line 24, in ?
>   File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\sax2exts.py", line 34, in
> make_parser
>   File "C:\jython-2.0\_xmlplus\sax\saxexts.py", line 75, in
> make_parser
> KeyError: xml.sax.drivers2.drv_pyexpat


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 11 10:52:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:52:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <9ihics0o27@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107111833260.1911-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
>news:9ihg33$irjha$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
>> Does it bother anyone that
>> a *= 3 + 4
>> returns a different value from
>> a = a * 3 + 4

By this example I conclude that infix notation is seriously flawed
compared to prefix or postfix (called Polish and inverted Polish).

You have no chance to mess with postfix:

3 4 + a *=

or even with:

3 4 + 5 *

;-)

So, GvR should consider phasing infix out ca Python 2.6. With postfix, you
will have much more freedom to express youself. For example,

a div b  or div(a, b) will be non-issue:

a b div

And also the border between operations and functions cease to exist:

a b +
a b add

And it is also easier for beginners: they will not need to remember all
those rules of precedence, association, priority, ( ) spilled here and
there. All they will need, is to put their numbers in order:

a b c + *

will be no more complex than:

a b * c +

Instead of:

a * (b + c)

and

a * b + c  or (a * b) + c  , who knows?

What? This is inconsistent with math notation? Who cares to know it these
days! You do not need to be rocket scientist (or any scientists at all) to
write simple arithmetics!

;-)

Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that in childhood I had a programmable
calculator with postfix notation. And I really learned to program with it.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi

P.S. Going to write Fython ;-)
(F for Forth)
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "186,000 miles/sec: Not just a good idea, it's the LAW." _/




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 22 13:33:47 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:33:47 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E87ACC.10334722072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi at 4ax.com>,
 Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Division in the set of integers can only have
> an integer result by definition. The fact that in mathematics it is
> common to assume real numbers even if no point is specified is largely
> irrelevant - programmers often have to be more explicit than
> mathemeticians because programs are read by computers - not people.

As a further point in this direction, floats are *not* the same as real 
numbers and it is usually a mistake to forget this.  In mathematics, the 
result of dividing two integers is a rational number.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 22 16:08:44 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:08:44 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <eppstein-15CC71.13084422072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001 at news.service.uci.edu>,
 David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

> Well then, float is a very bad choice for what to return, or then how do 
> we explain when 3/4 * 4 = 3 (exactly) but 3/10 * 10 != 10?

Uh, of course I meant 3/10 * 10 != 3...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 24 18:14:09 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:14:09 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <mailman.996011383.24629.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DF331.AE7CB6C4@Lugoj.Com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
> > From: James Logajan [mailto:JamesL at Lugoj.Com]
[ On new module name extensions. ]
> I like the idea, however Python source is not always in a file (e.g. zip
> archives, ZODB databases, etc.)

True, but if it is zipped, it has to be unzipped for an interpreter to get
at it. When it does, if it is "old" code it will end in .py or .pyc (or
.pyo). Basically if the code is imported using the import statement, then
this should work. If one is pulling bytecode from a repository and using the
imp module, the pyc magic string (which all .pyc modules have) indicates to
the interpreter whether it is bytecode it can handle. If module source code
is stored in a database without an extension, then that is a possible
problem. I would say though that is application specific and that such
applications should assume it runs under the old semantics. I am not
familiar with Zope to know if this a serious issue, or if there are
workarounds.


From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 17 11:38:22 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:38:22 -0700
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
References: <3B544995.4538E4DA@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B545BEE.7E2BA7A0@alcyone.com>

Rob Andrews wrote:

> Take a look at today's User Friendly poll. ("Web code of choice:
> Perl/mod_perl, *sh, C/C++, ASP, Javascript, Cold Fusion, JSP, PHP").
> 
> http://www.userfriendly.org/static/
> 
> At the time I checked, there were more complaints about Python not
> being
> listed as there were comments on any of the actual choices offered.

They don't even have a "None of the above" option, which is customary of
such multiple choice polls.

Well, what do you expect from User Friendly?

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Gods are born and die, but the atom endures.
\__/ Alexander Chase
    Alcyone Systems' CatCam / http://www.catcam.com/
 What do your pets do all day while you're at work?  Find out.


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 12:12:56 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:12:56 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-FE588D.09125623072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <3B5C3713.A5201C5A at letterror.com>,
 Just van Rossum <just at letterror.com> wrote:

> 1) only one of the / operands need to be a float to force a float
> outcome, and 2) there is a round() builtin function. Now, if we
> initialize k to a float, we can write it like so:
> 
>    int(round(bytes/k))
> 
> I really don't see how the int examples you gave are in any way superior.

In the case under discussion it doesn't matter (the rounded number is just 
an approximation for human discussion) but it is just wrong to me to 
confuse integers and floating point numbers to the extent that you 
gratuitously convert from int to float and back when you don't need to and 
think it an improvement.  Integers are exact.  Floating point numbers are 
approximate.  Integers allow rearrangements like (a+b)+c=a+(b+c), floating 
point numbers don't.  If you need your numbers to be computed exactly, and 
your programming language turns them into floats behind your back, it will 
cause bugs.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 18 10:49:35 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 16:49:35 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> writes:

> > It looks like the XML module is using som kind of dynamic loader (like Pmw
> > does), and these modules naturally escape py2exe.
> 
> This is indeed the case:
> 
> C:\sf\py2exe\tests>c:\python20\python.exe
> Python 2.0 (#8, Apr 25 2001, 22:09:02) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> import xml
> >>> xml
> <module '_xmlplus' from 'c:\python20\_xmlplus\__init__.pyc'>

_xmlplus is provided by PyXML, so it is only available if PyXML is
installed. OTOH, this was not the problem for py2exe: It (correctly)
detected that _xmlplus could not be found, this is triggered by
xml/__init__.py's

try:
    import _xmlplus
except ImportError:
    pass
else:
    ...

Here is a clear import statement for _xmlplus, but it is no problem if
that fails. What did cause the problem is the code

default_parser_list = ["xml.sax.expatreader"]
...
    for parser_name in parser_list + default_parser_list:
        try:
            return _create_parser(parser_name)
        except ImportError,e:
            import sys
...
    def _create_parser(parser_name):
        drv_module = __import__(parser_name,{},{},['create_parser'])
        return drv_module.create_parser()

in xml/sax/__init__.py. So for freezing (py2exeing?) XML applications,
you have to give xml.sax.expatreader as a 'static' module, and
perhaps any additional parsers you may want to use.

Regards,
Martin


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Mon Jul  9 02:27:45 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 06:27:45 GMT
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994632014.24563.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <B9c27.7856$4B5.47122@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Chris Watson:

> This is what I use. A standard 2 clause (clause 1 and 2) FreeBSD
> style copyright but with my own clause 3 to PREVENT people
> from GPL'ing my code and thereby RESTRICTING its useage.

    If you want to protect your code from the evil clutches of the FSF, just
add a clause that is particularly unpalatable to them. They hate choice of
jurisdiction clauses so:

   3. This License Agreement shall be governed by the intellectual property
law of the state of New South Wales.

   as-if-we-needed-such-laws-in-this-stately y'rs - neil





From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 12:07:17 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:07:17 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5C4BB5.932C041D@alcyone.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there)
> -- I'm
> afraid the "mimic other languages" approach requires picking languages
> very
> carefully if you want the illusion of consistency.

Only fairly strongly-typed languages are relevant here.  Perl doesn't
have a concept of types at this level, so 1 and 1.0 and even "1" are all
the same thing.

> By the way, 1/2 is also
> 0.5 in standard JavaScript:

I wouldn't think how JavaScript does things would be a valid defense in
any case.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ I wonder if this grief will ever let me go
\__/ Sade
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Fri Jul 20 16:50:30 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 16:50:30 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com>
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
	<slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
	<OeF47.11959$p7.3571067@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<wkk813nz6e.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <8766cn2ull.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

phawkins at connact.com writes:

> def dict(a,c):
> 	start = time.clock()
> 	for item in a:
> 		d = filter(c.has_key, a)

this is an error.  You are creating a list containing items in 'a' and
'c' for each item in a.  You only need to make the list once.

with the correction dict runs in .04 seconds while comp runs in 58.09

I would say that you still need to use dictionaries (note that this
doesn't actually solve the problem, which is to get items in 'a' but
not in 'b', but the following

def dict2(a, c):
   start = time.time()
   d = [ i for i in a if not c.has_key(i)]
   end = time.time()
   print `end-start`

does in in .14 seconds (still 400x faster than comp)

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"The absolute value of the TA was less than epsilon" - MIT Course Evaluation
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtYmZYACgkQjVztv3T8pzsxhQCgn9cZvI72NqkldzBKVx+azg7d
XC4AnRBQU4Zbze69paircJb8Rm8ZVjiN
=EUxR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From wware at world.std.com  Wed Jul 18 15:00:29 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:00:29 GMT
Subject: Really Python leaks?
References: <mailman.995461170.23230.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995473055.17644.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GGonGt.L9K@world.std.com>

Barry A. Warsaw (barry at digicool.com) wrote:
> There are leaks and then there are leaks. :) I'm usually primarily
> concerned with the type that are true C leaks of memory blocks, almost
> always caused by missing DECREFs...

Once while fooling with a C module, I came up with a nifty trick to
help me debug this kind of stuff. Please feel free to use it, if it
would be of any help to you:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&ic=1&th=1616c6161fdd5dd7,1

-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From bbanfield99 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 14:22:46 2001
From: bbanfield99 at yahoo.com (Bret Banfield)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:22:46 -0700
Subject: Pointers, SWIG, Python.
Message-ID: <153832e0.0107161022.78c4ea98@posting.google.com>

I am brand new to high level languages in general, so go easy. 

I have a Software Development Layer for a Hardware board written in
C++ that I have (after much tweaking) wrapped with SWIG to interface
with python.

All of the functions work great, unfortunately the C++ code uses
abstract datatypes (objects called DWORD, DIME-HANDLE...). When SWIG
wraps it, of course, it just uses pointers to these objects.

My problem is I need to be able to access what these pointers point
to. Not only that, but some of the functions require pointers as
arguments.

I do have one thing going for me, however. These objects aren't really
complex structures. For the most part, they can be interpreted as
objects python knows about: integers and strings.

Any advice on what to do here? 

Thanks.


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 22 00:31:24 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 04:31:24 GMT
Subject: Sybase module 0.28 (Brown Paper Bag) released
References: <m3pubqd3i7.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au> <m3bsmd1try.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <3b5a57ad.89655077@wa.news.verio.net>

On 22 Jul 2001 14:18:09 +1000, Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> wrote:

>>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> writes:
>
>Dave> What is it: The Sybase module provides a Python interface to the
>Dave> Sybase relational database system. The Sybase package supports
>Dave> almost all of the Python Database API, version 2.0 with
>Dave> extensions.
>
>Huh!?!
>
>I didn't post that (I posted the original a long time ago - but this
>isn't it).
>
>Looking at the path, who are onlynews.com?
>
>Path: vic.nntp.telstra.net!intgwlon.nntp.telstra.net!newsfeeds.ihug.co.nz!news.xtra.co.nz!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!news-out.nibble.net!hub1.nntpserver.com!cyclone-sjo1.usenetserver.com!news-out-sjo.usenetserver.com!newsin.onlynews.com!newsout.onlynews.com!news1.onlynews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
>
>- Dave
>
>-- 
Do the dates in the header match your prior post?

Date: 27 Jun 2001 13:07:44 +1000
NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.44.186.249
X-Trace: vic.nntp.telstra.net 993611189 203.44.186.249 (Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:06:29 EST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:06:29 EST

Maybe a server got restored from backups containing your previous
post in a pending state, and took off from there?


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:33 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:33 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:54:08 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com>
wrote:

>Just van Rossum wrote:
>
>> Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte? Integer division
>> is a lousy tool in this particular example...
>
>Just add 512 to it first.

The oldest trick in the book - it scares me that something so basic is
considered a problem. Rounding can be done according to a number of
conventions - magically turning integers into floats changes a task
that is trivially done exactly into one that involves approximations
and conditionals, and which can easily create subtle special-case
bugs.

Consider - you want to round to two decimal places. So you multiply by
100.0, round to integer, then divide by 100.0.

That division will not give an exact result, so the result cannot be
considered rounded to two decimal places without a lot of careful
provisos.

Fixed point arithmetic emulated by using integers with a scale factor,
though, works very nicely. Better still when there's a language
feature to do this automatically, but if we added fixed point types to
Python we'd need *another* division operator - four so far including
the rational one ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 00:03:54 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:03:54 -0400
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
In-Reply-To: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEOPLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Owen F. Ransen]
> If you put this in a module and test it:
>
> def ForLoopTest (NumLoops) :
>     for Year in range (1,NumLoops) :
>         for Century in range (1,NumLoops) :
>             Months = Year*12
>
> you'll find that ForLoopTest (10000) will apparently
> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
> or do I just have to live with it?

Ctrl-C works fine for me on a Win98 machine, when running this from a DOS
box.  I suspect you're running this from inside some GUI (e.g., maybe IDLE),
right?  In that case Ctrl-C will indeed be ineffective:  the GUI wants to
take over Ctrl-C processing, but doesn't get a chance to *run* so long as
the Python interpreter is running full bore.  This is a difficult problem to
solve (which is why it never has been solved <wink>).  If that's what's
biting you, the only workaround is to give the GUI a chance to run every now
and again; for example, print something to the output screen in the outer
loop, or use time.sleep(0.001) (whatever).  Or use a DOS box to run instead.

uninterruptedly y'rs  - tim




From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 08:55:52 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:55:52 -0400
Subject: MySQL-python-0.9.0 setup problems under windows98
Message-ID: <hniokt4u4365lf475ci469lbidsnhl0gfa@4ax.com>

Hello all,

I have MySQL running on a win98 box. All systems are go with the package.

Now, I would like to use the system from within python. So far I have downloaded the
module that does this job. The one listed above is supposed to be the windows
version.

However, I can not seem to understand how to install the module and get it imported
so as to start using MySQL.

Any comments will be appreciated.


Regards, Joe Potter




From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 17 03:16:26 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 09:16:26 +0200
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
References: <mailman.995315008.1887.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <yv2r8vgt48l.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

zooko at zooko.com writes:

> But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default argument to
> an inner function, like this:
> 
> >>> def silliest_func():
> >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
> >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
> >>>         pass
> >>>     return inner_silliest_func
> >>> 
> >>> blarg = {}
> >>> for i in range(2**13):
> >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()

This creates 2**13 references to one and the same object, namely
silliest_func which (I suspect) has just one reference to an object
inner_silliest_func.

> 
> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:
> 
> >>> del blarg

This removes the 2**13 references again. And copies of the
inner_silliest_func were never produced and need not be freed.

> 
> none of the memory is freed up!

The only memory that can and should be freed is the one for the list
object blarg and this is about
sizeof(PyListObject)+2**13*sizeof(void*) (see
Python/Objects/listobject.c/PyList_New). This is roughly 32kBytes on
32bit machines. I doubt that you will notice freeing such a rather
small amount of memory.

> 
> Even stimulating the garbage collector, with:
> 
> >>> import gc
> >>> gc.collect()
> 0

I guess you see this because `del blarg' did already all that there
was to do.

However, from your description it looks like you might have simplified
your example too such that the true problem cannot be demonstrated.

Regards,
  Harald Kirsch
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 17:49:53 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:49:53 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.996483001.8901.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b65ce40.841333002@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:43:48 +0300, Moshe Zadka <m at moshez.org> wrote:

>On 30 Jul 2001, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:
>
>> I would write it
>>       print "There %s %d error%s." % (if n==1 then ('was',  n, '')
>>                                               else ('were', n, 's'))
>
>The correct way to write it is:
>
>print ["There was %d error", "There were %d errors"][n>1] % n
>
I like that, but in English "There was 0 error" doesn't sound right to me,
so I would change your '>' to '!='. Maybe we need 3 alternatives?

>This way, making this application translatable is a piece of cake.
>The other version can't be translated properly.
>As someone from a non-English speaking country, you should care.
Maybe

  from English import errorFormats as ef
  print [ef.Err0, ef.Err1, ef.ErrN][(n>0)+(n>1)] % n

or what is Pythonic practice?


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 05:38:57 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:38:57 +0200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:09:06 GMT."
             <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <m15Q45B-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>     - Use a directive to use specific division semantics in a module,
>       rather than a future statement.  This retains classic division
>       as a permanent wart in the language, requiring future
>       generations of Python programmers to be aware of the problem and
>       the remedies.
> 
>     - Use "from __past__ import division" to use classic division
>       semantics in a module.  This also retains the classic division
>       as a permanent wart, or at least for a long time (eventually the
>       past division statement could raise an ImportError).
> 
>     - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
>       version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
>       requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
>       *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
>       so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
>       too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
>       interpreters installed.

I was one of those asking for a way to get old-style semantics. 

Keeping old interpreters around doesn't work for my biggest worry:
use of old scripts with new versions of TTTech's applications. In this
context, TTTech ships an application containing a new interpreter to a
customer who might still have old scripts around. These scripts might
come from a third party and be totally opaque to the customer itself
(e.g., a script to import from a tool of company XYZ into TTTech's
TTPplan). 

I agree that exact emulation of old versions doesn't make sense. What
I would propose is to enable Python somehow to identify old code
(e.g., by absence of a version specifier) and let it raise an
exception when `/` is applied to two integer arguments by old code.
This would avoid both permanent warts and silent breakage of old code.

David Bolen expressed this better than me in his answer to your
updated PEP::

    """While some number of version implementations may need to be
    supported for some changes, this suggestion doesn't require them
    all in perpetuity, so that's slightly misleading. One could easily
    consider some range of versions being supported (and retired over
    time), and an advantage of this approach would be accurate (and
    reportable) breakage if using code expecting version behavior no
    longer supported."""

>     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
>       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
>       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
>       zero?)

IMO quotient is a much better name than floor division. I'll let the
mathematicians speak on whether quotient and truncation to minus
infinity can go together.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul  2 21:46:33 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 01:46:33 GMT
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKPKLAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993966061.10438.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9k28vp.s9l.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001 22:39:51 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> * why do we need a "stat" module for interpreting stat() results. Why
>aren't stat's results self-describing? (i.e. an object)

This has always bugged me.  Wherever I go, I bring along python modules that
wrap pwd.*, grp.*, os.stat, time.*, etc. to provide a more reasonable
interface.  Then I wind up writing some throwaway script somewhere, for which
installing and importing my wrapper module is not worth it, so I grope through
some documentation and put in bare indexes.  Then the script grows, and bare
integers slow me down when I'm trying to read it, so I do
'pw_name, pw_this, pw_that = range(n)', and then the script grows more and I
wind up having to import those constants elsewhere, and I realize what I
should have realized in the beginning:  I should have used my wrappers all
along.

Usually when python wraps C the interface gets higher level and easier to use,
but flattening structs into arrays goes in the other direction.

Sorry, just a pet peeve.  Anyway, that was basically a long-winded "me too".

And a lot of C functions that could (and should) accept keyword arguments
don't.  Even when the docs suggest they do, they don't.  For example, you
should be able to write 'foo bar baz'.split(maxsplit=1)

I don't know Py_ParseArgs or whatever its called... maybe C functions *can't*
have keyword args.


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 05:06:29 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:06:29 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEACLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Duncan Booth]
> When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will
> have been told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over.
> Which is EXACTLY what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH
> more sophisticated concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on
> this newsgroup, is hard even for most programming professionals.

Apparently not:  an oft-repeated complaint against PEP 238 is that it's
dumbing-down the language <wink>.

believes-everything-he-reads-but-has-trouble-making-sense-of-the-
    whole-ly y'rs  - tim




From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul 31 10:18:03 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 07:18:03 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996578158.8220.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k6emr$ref$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.996578158.8220.python-list at python.org>,
Ken Seehof <kseehof at neuralintegrator.com> wrote:
>
>Very cool.  While you're at it, how about mapping "in" to "has_key" for
>mapping objects?

Guido's time machine strikes again: see
http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0234.html
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 16:56:44 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 22:56:44 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com>
Message-ID: <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Steve Williams" <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message
news:3B4719E1.C5540B19 at wwc.com...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
>
> > "Edward Wilson" <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9 at posting.google.com...
> > > This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
> > >
> > A SINGLE module to handle five or more mutually incompatible
> > interfaces?!  That's utterly ridiculous --
>
> Take a deep breath, now.  Calm, calm.
>
> I can dream of a paradise with python and wxPython/wxDesigner and a
> hypothetical pySQL92 universally available, pre-compiled, waiting only to
be

SQL92 API is _one_ interface, not five, and I suspect that DB2, Informix,
&c don't support it fully (do they?).

> downloaded and installed on more platforms than WinTel.

Assuming I did have a Python API DB 2 implementation, coded against
the SQL92 API standard, I'm not sure it could even be _compiled_ in a
single way (doesn't SQL92 define certain preprocessor macro names that
a compliant API implementation can define differently?) and surely it
cannot be *prelinked* (against libraries of unknown names...?) in any
cross-platform way.  Is this a *PYTHON* issue?  What other languages,
libraries or utilities manage to deliver a cross-platform "pre-compiled"
(and pre-linked?) interface to SQL92 API "waiting only to be downloaded
and installed" on many platforms?  Particularly one that supports Sybase,
Informix, Oracle, DB2 AND Microsoft SQL Server transparently?!

> Not all that far-fetched, IMO, although I'm prepared to ignore those who
> urge me to do it myself.

Totally far-fetched IMO, even IF all the mentioned db's did support
the SQL92 standard API (which I don't believe is the case).  I'm quite
ready to adapt some existing Python DB extension to use the SQL92
API instead *IF* somebody could ensure such a huge (far-fetched)
deployability of the resulting precompiled binary.  I just think that it
is VERY far from the realm of the possible.


> As far as ADO, well, I fear it might be part of a subscription-only
revenue
> model in the future.

Perhaps.  So let's start doing XPADO on top of XPCOM just as ADO was
done on top of COM, shall we?  Technically, for all of its slight faults,
COM/Automation/OleDb/ADO is a pinnacle of cross-language component
base infrastructure.  XPCOM has apparently managed to implement a
faithful-enough rendition of the first (lowest) layer, and PyXPCOM might
do the same for the second (Automation) -- aren't we almost halfway?-)

But most likely the usual crybabies will still be crying about "RAW" (sic)
C-level interfacing (to a zillion incompatible proprietary idiotic API's, no
doubt -- the fact that there IS a solid, well-developed standard doesn't
count:-).  So, naah, not worth the bother.


Alex





From paul at calendargalaxy.com  Wed Jul 25 12:31:38 2001
From: paul at calendargalaxy.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:31:38 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.996052189.14819.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5EF2CC.6D0626E3@calendargalaxy.com>

Christian Tanzer wrote:

> - Just a wild idea: the problem you want to solve is that the existing
>   division operator mixes two totally different meanings and thus
>   leads to nasty surprises.
> 
>   What if `/` applied to two integer values returned neither an
>   integer nor a float but an object carrying the float result but
>   behaving like an integer if used in an integer context?
> 
>   For instance:
> 
>       >>> x = 1/2
>       >>> type(x)
>       <type 'Ratio'>
>       >>> print "%d %f %s" % (x, x, x)
>       0 0.5 0.5
>       >>> 2 * x
>       0
>       >>> 2. * x
>       1.0

Intriguing, but it worries me. You're proposing a behavior for the / operator
where it still produces a different type depending on the operand types, and
this new type behaves differently in different contexts. I think that's just
trading the old can of worms for a (possibly much larger) new can of worms. I
thought the whole point of the PEP was to make division behave consistently -
that is, always return the same type of result regardless of the operands.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From vdelft at itmasters.com  Wed Jul 18 09:43:16 2001
From: vdelft at itmasters.com (vincent delft)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:43:16 +0200
Subject: how saving/retreiving python code from DB ?
Message-ID: <3B559274.6B66A372@yahoo.com>

I'm looking for a module that allow us to store/import python code into
DB (bsddb for example) instead of a file.

like "import" retreives coding in flat files, is there a way to retreive
coding for a DB ?
something like :
    db.open('db')
    db.dbimport('module1')
    print module1.test()

where 'time' whas previously save into the DB as a Python code :
class module1:
    def test(self):
        print "work"

Thanks







From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 07:41:03 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:41:03 +0100
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j507g01j75@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldhqf.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:48:01 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:slrn9lavp6.v3.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
>    ...
>>    if not myCollection.hasIndex(x): raise Exception
>>
>> (Note that hasIndex() should equally work for dictionaries as well
>> as sequence-collections (strings, tuples, lists, etc). IMO it is
>> an unnecessary non-orthogonality of the present python that it doesn't
>> do this)
>
>It's quite orthogonal if you think of exceptions as the MAIN way
>to communicate the missing index case:
>
>def hasindex(myCollection, x):
>    try:  myCollection[x]
>    except LookupError: return 0
>    else: return 1
>
>LookupError is the common base class of IndexError, raised by
>sequences, and KeyError, raised by mappings.

No, I mean:

>>> a=[1,66,77,88]
>>> a.has_key(2)  

should return 1 not:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: has_key 


>> No, because on the odd occasions that you want an exception you can
>> always throw one manually.
>
>And viceversa, if the odd occasions are those in which you
>want to SUPPRESS the exception, you can easily try/except it.

On the contrary, i want to suppress the exception >90% of the
time.


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From jafo at tummy.com  Mon Jul  9 03:40:38 2001
From: jafo at tummy.com (Sean Reifschneider)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:40:38 -0600
Subject: python 2.1 rpm and tgz don't install under rh7 with xfree86 4.1.0
In-Reply-To: <3B48456D.27A7CFC4@iinet.net.au>; from boegli@iinet.net.au on Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 07:35:10PM +0800
References: <3B48456D.27A7CFC4@iinet.net.au>
Message-ID: <20010709014038.B28437@tummy.com>

On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 07:35:10PM +0800, Richard wrote:
>expat-1.1-4tummy.src.rpm
>but when i run python2-2.1-5.src.rpm it says i need =>
>expat-1.1-3tummy.src.rpm

You have *INSTALLED* the expat built from the SRPM, right?

Sean
-- 
 You know you're in Canada when:  The weather reports starts with "All
 temperatures are below zero unless otherwise stated."
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python



From n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 23 09:57:31 2001
From: n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 06:57:31 -0700
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com> <etdwv50226x.fsf@opus.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7b9380ca.0107230557.35250fdd@posting.google.com>

Hi, Alex.

[Hope I am not bugging you!]

I understand what you said. So I have:

1. Before one uses a name in __main__, one has to make sure that it is
   not used anywhere in the Module, even without the qualifier "global";
   failure to do so could be unpleasent.
   
2. OTOH, __main__ namespace is not searched by the module if it is 
   imported, since it is only __builtins__ that is searched, after 
   the module's name space. Hence, I get NameError with 

nspace1.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from nspace import *
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
        f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
        myfile = open (f, 'w')
        hello (myfile)

[myfile was declared global in nspace.py] in interactive mode as well.

To be frank, though this is in accordance with the reference, it is
not, IMO, (for want of a better word) "consistent." (I mean, it is not
a one-rule-applies behaviour for a module in its original and import-ed 
avatars.) Well, I might have still got it all mixed up!; so all comments
are welcome.

Thanks, 
Gangadhar.
[I am not fastidious about how I am being addressed; just wanted to tell
 you that you needn't address me formally and it can be done transparently
 if you wish to!]


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 10:11:07 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:11:07 +0200
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <eppstein-15CC71.13084422072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <u4rs3n3b8.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> (DE) writes:

DE> In article <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001 at news.service.uci.edu>,
DE>  David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>> Well then, float is a very bad choice for what to return, or then how do 
>> we explain when 3/4 * 4 = 3 (exactly) but 3/10 * 10 != 10?

DE> Uh, of course I meant 3/10 * 10 != 3...

You have to explain it the same way as you explain that 3*0.1 != 0.3.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From paulsid at home.com  Sat Jul 21 18:47:53 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:47:53 -0600
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B5A0699.117393E6@home.com>

Edmund Strangely wrote:

> I've been lurking here for a while while working my way through 'Learning
> Python'. So far only a few things have pissed me off with it. I was just
> wondering, is anybody else coming from Pascal? 

I'm not coming from Pascal but I'm quite familiar with it, so maybe I
can offer a different perspective.  (I used to be vehemently anti-Pascal
until I actually started to work with it; now I don't mind it so much.)

> and as I understand it
> Python is written in C which is why it shares some of the same
> conventions. 

I suspect the actual reason for this is that C (and C++) are just so
popular so language designers often borrow features from them.  

> Python is my first object orientated language. Pascal was my
> second programming language (after BASIC on a spectrum) and although I
> sort of learned C later, I still prefer Pascal. 

There are probably a bunch of people who would say that if you've only
programmed in BASIC and Pascal, you haven't programmed yet.  :-)  

> (And I like BASIC
> even better in this respect, in that integers and fp numbers are
> automatically converted, and strings will grow and shrink as required (as
> in Python seemingly)). 

Technically Python strings never change size, they get replaced with a
new object.  Try playing around with the built-in id() function to see
this.

> >>>a=5
> >>>b=2
> >>>#and then
> >>>c=a/b
> >>>#then
> >>>c
> 2
> 
> in Pascal if you *want* modulo arithmetic (which is not normally the case
> ) then you have DIV and MOD. 

There was a long discussion about this recently.  Search the archives
for more.  

(I like it the way it is.  I think keeping the integers closed under the
division operator when programming avoids many nasty surprises, even
though real-life integer division doesn't work this way.)

> I like having a distinction between functions
> and procedures, for purely aesthetic reasons (I think having loads of
> function names followed by () just looks ugly, procedures don't give
> return values). 

Personally I think () provides for more followable code, because it is a
distinctive tag to indicate the program will "branch" there. 
Admittedly, though, I never had a problem with the distinction in
Pascal, or even BASIC.  (I've been doing some VBScript lately and I
barely notice it.)

> But
> the one thing above all that I think Pascal has over C (and which Python
> shares) is that you can nest your procedures/functions! Most of my Pascal
> programs had a mere few lines in the 'main' body of the program and the
> rest would be large functions and procedures each with their own
> sub-procedures and sub-functions with their own sub-sub units etc.  When I
> first started on C I just couldn't *believe* that you couldn't nest
> functions, and just had to put them one after the other! You call that
> structured programming?

I've been doing C/C++ for 10 years and have never once needed to nest
functions.  In fact I never even heard of the concept until I met
Python.  I've used them in Python on occasion, but don't see them as
much more than a small time-saver.  

I'm not an expert in object-oriented design, but nested functions seem
kind of anti-OO too me.  Can behaviours (methods) really have their own
behaviours (nested functions), or does the behaviour (nested function)
actually belong to the object (class)?  And for non-OO use they seem
completely unnecessary to me.  About all they seem to do is keep the
global namespace a bit less polluted, but that's going to happen in
non-OO anyhow.  But maybe I'm missing something...

> I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
> bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
> response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
> finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has
> tried object Pascal.

Object Pascal is okay.  I don't have much experience with it, but
personally I'd hate to have to learn object-oriented concepts on it.  It
shares the same problem with C++ as being an extension to an existing
language, so the implementation of OO features is kind of glued on.  I
think it's better to pick up OO concepts on Python (or even Java) before
trying Object Pascal.

Anyhow, I hope you stick with Python.  You'll get a lot of the
convenience of Pascal merged with a cleaner and much more well-designed
language!

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 11:34:01 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:34:01 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <8rdoltsi3fcph86pnkgckmiqich6d9qqng@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:46:45 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>This is why making / fractional division and // truncated division
>will reduce the number of bugs in new code: for all occurrences of

If that is what you do, any *intentionally* integer divisions are
going to break. You can't justify that by claiming that one or two
cases are buggy the way they are - the *majority* is *correct* usage
and will *become* bugs *because* of the change.

>Note that this kind of bug is unique to Python (or dynamically typed
>languages in general): in C, the arguments would have been declared as
>floats and the problem would have been prevented.

Then perhaps we need a way of attaching implicit type assertions to
variables and function arguments - NOT to the data of course as there
is no point, but any assignment made to a variable which does *not*
match the type assertion attached to it should either cause an error
or, if possible, coerce to the correct type.

How many alternatives have I suggested so far? Lets see...

1.  Implementing the *new* behaviour with a *new* operator.
2.  Some kind of pragma that makes all numeric literals default to
    float unless you explicitly suffix them.
3.  Some kind of pragma that becomes a permanent language option to
    change the division operator, but which never becomes compulsory.
4.  Some form of implicit type assertion attached to identifiers.

ANY of these could quickly and simply solve the problems that numeric
programmers are complaining about *without* breaking existing code.

Not bad for someone who doesn't believe any change is needed anyway.

>Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil: int and float
>together aren't really two distinct types: they are at most a
>type-and-a-half, and the integers are embedded in the space of floats

Tell that to a mathematician, or an engineer, or even an accountant -
all of these need to deal with inherently integer measures and
therefore using integer operations. Any of these people who have
Python scripts using division are going to have a problem.

You don't believe me about the accountants? - My current job is
software development for accountancy, and you don't use floats for
money believe me. ?1.01 / 2 is 50p with 1p left over - there are times
when you count fractions of the smallest possible denomination, but it
certainly isn't the default.

Engineering - How would you feel if you knew a bridge was going to be
built with 2.5 supports on each side?

Mathematics - Mathemeticians practically *invented* integers, and note
that integers were understood thousands of years before fractions,
decimals or standard form.

Have you noticed how none of these groups consists of experienced
programmers?


You have a point of view - *not* an absolute undebatable fact. At the
end of the day, it's your language and you can do what you want - but
*please* think on it just a little longer.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 23 06:52:33 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 12:52:33 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:

> Yes, but what about my existing algorithm in some code somewhere that
> uses n / 2 to partition an array and checks for == 0 as the
> termination condition. It's not exactly going to work very well after
> the change, is it.

No, that is what the transition procedure to support the language
change must solve. One possible procedure would be

1. In 2.2, your algorithm continues to work unless you put some future
   import into it.

2. In 2.3, your algorithm continues to work, but produces a warning
   the first time integer division is used with the '/'; you could
   shut off the warning by either adding a future import, or using
   '//' division.

3. In 2.4, your algorithm will not exactly work very well.

> But the existing use of division in many applications is going to
> suddenly work differently, leading to all kinds of strange
> hard-to-trace bugs, and Pythons advocates are going to end up looking
> *very* stupid indeed.

No, that won't be a sudden change.

Regards,
Martin


From nospam at newsranger.com  Sat Jul 14 06:47:23 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:47:23 GMT
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com> <9ioru01pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <%qV37.19159$Kf3.249506@www.newsranger.com>

In article <9ioru01pc9 at enews4.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli says...
>
>"Levente Sandor" <nospam at newsranger.com> wrote in message
>news:poP37.19002$Kf3.249024 at www.newsranger.com...
>> If you absolutely need a 'with' statement...
>>
>> import re
>> def with(object, statements):
>> """ 'with' for the very lazy programmer :) :) :)
>> Someone might prefer Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, ... instead."""
>> exec(re.sub('\B\.', '%s.' % object, statements))
>
>If you're willing to stoop to an exec, then surely it's
>better to use the fact that exec lets you specify local
>and global dictionaries:
>
>def with(obj, statements, globs=None):
>    if globs is None: globs=globals()
>    exec statements in vars(obj), globs
>

Sorry but I can't see how it simulates the 'with' statement in Pascal or VB.
Levi




From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Mon Jul 16 14:09:59 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:09:59 -0700
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <mailman.995048304.8843.python-list@python.org> <3B4F8B57.7684D13A@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <3B4FEBCA.E3F256E2@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3B532DF7.F603A6F6@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Joal Heagney wrote:
> 
> Curtis Jensen wrote:
> 
> > I thought about that.  But in the test examples below, you can see that
> > you'll that you don't have to pass "self" with apply.  In fact if you
> > do, you'll end up with too many parameters.  Also, symanticly, I think
> > "apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )" will only
> > pass two arguments "self" and "cmd[1]" as apposed to sending "self" and
> > all the items in "cmd[1]" as individual argument.  You'd need to put
> > "self" at the beginning of cmd[1], or make a new tuple to pass in.  But
> > I know what you mean.
> 
> If you need to add a self argument to a list of arguments, (Usually if
> you're calling an unbound class method) the typical method is as
> follows:
> 
> apply( self.ren.Elements, (self,)+cmd, additional_kwds )
> 
> Of course this is assuming that cmd is a tuple. If it's a list you need
> to do the following:
> 
> apply( self.ren.Elements, (self,)+tuple(cmd), additional_kwds
> 
> > In any case, my problem went away.  I'm not exactly sure why.  It
> > probably had to do with unsafe dynamic binding or something like that.
> > :)
> 
> Would you be able to show us what cmd and additional_kwds typically look
> like?
> --
>       Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
>    /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
>   /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
>  /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


cmd is always a list.  The size and element types varies greatly, but it
is usualy made of integers, floats, and lists.  ie:
cmd[1] = [0, 0, 3, 3, 0.0, [0]]

additional_kwds is always a dictionary with instances of classes as it's
values. These classes are a bit complex (lots of data members,
functions, and inheritance).  ie:
additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements': 
<cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes': 
<cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}
additional_kwds is always 


-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From sheila at spamcop.net  Mon Jul  2 17:07:27 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 21:07:27 GMT
Subject: Calculus Module
References: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994106583.27446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tjo1kt0eeo1mfebv8q737kgr1nrudo5336@4ax.com>

On Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:42:36 -0400 (EDT), Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.994106583.27446.python-list at python.org>:

:Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

What are you talking about? Do you mean a newsgroup for discussing
calculus?

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Wed Jul 25 13:12:18 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:12:18 -0700
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com> <3b5e59a7.3927973@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <tltvf78i1vus91@news.supernews.com>

If it's in a gui, then your best recourse is the good, old three fingered
salute - ctl/alt/delete. You will eventually get a box with your
application on the top line that says (not responding). kill it from there.

Of course, that will take IDLE down with it.

John Roth

"Owen F. Ransen" <ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it> wrote in message
news:3b5e59a7.3927973 at news.newsguy.com...
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:49:35 GMT, ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F.
> Ransen) wrote:
>
> Thanks for all the suggestions, I am indeed running from
> within IDLE, and for various reasons I need to keep running
> in IDLE, I'll have a look at the suggestions and see if I
> can use one of those.
>
> Thanks again to all who replied
>
>
>
> --
> Owen F. Ransen
> http://www.ransen.com/
> Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 18:33:42 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:33:42 -0700
Subject: range(2.9); coercions
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107311433.98a8e10@posting.google.com>

Does it concern anyone that range(2.9) *silently* returns [0, 1]?

A strict reading of the documentation suggests that it should return
[0, 1, 2] (because 2 is the largest integer < 2.9).

However my real concern is not with the behaviour of range() itself,
but with the *general* mechanism by which it gets that answer -- this
mechanism would have been used by a large proportion of all the C
extension modules ever written.

Unless the birds ate my breadcrumbs while I was stumbling around the
source for Python 2.1, what happens is this: the range()
implementation calls PyArg_ParseTuple, saying that it expects "i"
(integer) argument(s). This is however interpreted to include any
instance of a type that has an nb_int slot, or a class that has an
__int__() method.

So 2.9 is a float, the float type supplies an nb_int slot, and
int(2.9) -> 2 and so 2 is used as the open upper bound.

IMO any coercion that "narrows" (loses information) should only be
possible by explicit coding -- range() is intended to have integer
arguments; callers who know they have some float expression should be
required to "declare" and document this by using range(int(floater))
while callers who don't know but use range(floater) should be thrown
an exception just as surely as if they had used list[1.1:2.2]

This implicit undocumented behaviour of PyArg_ParseTuple worries me --
callers can "happily" pass float arguments where the module
implementor was confidently expecting that non-int arguments would be
fended off by PyArg_ParseTuple. Yes, the callers should test their
code, but having an exception instead of silent truncation would find
the problem earlier, and say explicitly what the problem was.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 17:49:42 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:49:42 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B6727F6.6D43D989@ActiveState.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
> Checked into CVS!

It sounds weird from an English perspective to me. "If Guido in
programmer and Guido in author then". "isa" or even just "a" makes more
sense. or how about "in class" "If Guido in class programmer and Guido
in class author then".
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From timr at probo.com  Sun Jul 29 01:14:06 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:14:06 -0700
Subject: Module import problem: _socket
References: <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <mailman.996072369.15531.python-list@python.org> <3B5EF61D.363995B2@ucsu.colorado.edu>
Message-ID: <qn67mt0m8rmpcmlhlttesa4tjr1ar2qo4k@4ax.com>

Scott Kelley <kelleys at ucsu.colorado.edu> wrote:
>
>I just installed Python 2.1.1 on a machine running
>Slackware 3.5 (over Python 1.5.2) and I get the
>following error while importing some newly installed
>modules:
>
>  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
>    from _socket import *
>ImportError: No module named _socket
>
>I can't find this module in the Python lib (naturally).
>Has anyone out there encountered a similar problem?

I ran into this exact same issue building Python 2.1.1 from source on a Red
Hat 6.1 system.  At Guido's suggestion, I'm trying to chase through
setup.py to find out why it decided not to build _socket, but when I reran
the script to debug it, it DID decide to build it.  Right now, I'm boggled,
but since it did work, I feel less pressured to chase it down.

You can work around this by editing Modules/Setup and uncommenting the
second _socket statement.  Then rebuild Python, and off you go.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From aeoo at myrealbox.com  Mon Jul 30 17:44:24 2001
From: aeoo at myrealbox.com (Leo)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:44:24 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <6edd2418.0107301344.439affc8@posting.google.com>

Not that my opinion matters much, but just in case someone else agrees
with me, I will post it anyway.

I like the direction that Python is taking.  However I only have one
request.  Check out how Ruby handles accessor creation.  I think it
has a very simple and clean syntax with minimum of typing.

I like the idea of get/set stuff, but it needs to become
super-convinient to type in order for it to be used more widely.  I
would prefer for there being a fast way of telling Python that a
certain class variable is get-enabled, set-enabled, or both without
actually having to manually type out the accessor methods.

Because plain accessor methods always do the same thing, it's a shame
to waste any lines on them, imo.  It's just a repetitive typing that
brings no new information.  Only when someone wants to override
default accessors does it make sense to type it out, imo.

Just my $.02. :)  This is not meant to be a flame, just a request or a
question, that's all.


From eli-wallach at ugly.com  Sun Jul  1 13:17:35 2001
From: eli-wallach at ugly.com (Mexican Bandit)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 17:17:35 GMT
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re@4ax.com>

I tried using sys.stdout.write() but had the same problem.

As different browsers give the same corrupted image, it must be my
webserver (Xitami on Windows 98).

Thanks for the replies.



From treaves at silverfields.com  Tue Jul  3 13:29:29 2001
From: treaves at silverfields.com (Timothy Reaves)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:29:29 -0400
Subject: GOODS interface?
Message-ID: <3B4200F9.60207@silverfields.com>

	Has anyone started writing an interfae to the GOODS oodb?  We use GOODS 
extensivly with our Java apps, and even some perl (there is a Perl API). 
  I'm just learing Python, and would like to use GOODS there as well.

	That I know of, GOODS (http://www.ispras.ru/~knizhnik/goods.html ) has 
API's for C++, Java, Perl, and XML.  Any information appreciated.




From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Tue Jul 10 13:37:41 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 13:37:41 -0400
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3dae2cr8gq.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

> For me being a developer, rarely have I noticed something amazing
> produced by a man or woman working alone.  It has been my experience
> that most great software is the product of a group's effort.  

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software
systems have been designed by committees and built as part of
multipart projects, those software systems that have excited
passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few
designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula,
the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol,
PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
    -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
(In _Mythical Man-Month_, I think)

--amk


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Jul 24 14:24:25 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 14:24:25 -0400
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <oq8zhe89t2.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Robin Becker]

> The popular vote is against the stupid float '/' operator.

How can you assert the popular vote is against it?  Which vote?  And even
if it was, as you probably heard many times, Python is not a democracy
where decisions are taken by voting.  Guido expects arguments (and new ones).

Also, why do you say, without the shadow of an argument, that a float '/'
operator is "stupid"?  You express bare naked emotions here, not reason.
Let's use the mailing list more productively.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From tanzer at swing.co.at  Sat Jul 28 11:02:12 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:02:12 +0200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:00:00 GMT."
             <3B61E456.78DFE802@sneakemail.com> 
Message-ID: <m15QVbY-000wcEC@swing.co.at>

Joshua Macy <l0819m0v0smfm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote:

> Paul Boddie wrote:
> >
> > But possibly the first thing anyone with any investment in the
> > language should be thinking upon starting to read the PEP is: "How on
> > Earth am I going to know what needs changing, and how much time and
> > money am I going to be spending to adapt to this?"
> > 
> 
>   It seems to me that if upon reading the PEP someone thinks "How on
> Earth am I going to know what needs changing?", he is almost guaranteed
> to have bugs in his code that relate to the very issue that the PEP
> addresses.  How could he not, since he's obviously never thought about
> it before?

That's a very arrogant statement to make.

I know that my code contains both floor division and real division.
Trust me, that I knew what I did when I programmed them.

And I can use Skip Montanaro's division finder to spot many places in
need of checking. Yet I also know that my applications contain quite a
number of strings which are feed to eval/exec at run-time. These are
much harder to identify.

And then there's code I don't even know about. Some of it written by
me and used by others. Some of it written by God-knows-who and fed as
a script to one of my applications. Do you have a recipe for this one,
too? 

> Someone who thinks this way should be thanking his lucky stars that if
> the PEP is implemented the language is going to grow the machinery in
> the near term to help him identify the bugs (warnings and possibly
> tools), write code that's not subject to the bugs (using / and //
> appropriately) and the incentive (Python 3.0) to attack the problem in
> the next few years.

Maybe we should break some more operators and thereby improve the code
out there even more?

Maybe-changing-the-meaning-of-some-keywords-would-be-even-more-beneficial-ly
y'rs, 

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 21 09:49:54 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 13:49:54 GMT
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3b598541.1279259@nntp.sprynet.com>

Well, I may be qualified to answer this one because I
know less C than anyone else here. And in fact the 
first "real" language I learned was ObjectPascal. 
Two comments:

[i] I _think_ that all your complaints with Python are
just the sort of thing you need to get used to - there's
no real reason the Python way is worse, if you'd learned
Python first then the way Pascal does things would bother
you the same way. I think. (The bit about 5/2 = 2 does
bug a lot of people - that's something they talk about
changing periodically. You should note that 5.0/2 comes
out to 2.5. That won't work so well with variables;
note as well that float(5)/2 is 2.5. Still bugs me,
but even here I suspect that if you'd learned Python
first then you'd be posting to a Pascal group right 
now saying what the heck is this stuff where / and
div do the same thing except different.)

[ii] "Object Pascal" actually refers to a few different
things. I'm a big fan of Object Pascal as in Delphi, which
I'm guessing is the Object Pascal you have in mind. But
I don't quite follow why you say you'd like to hear from
people who've tried it. I use both languages a lot, but
for very different sorts of things; I wouldn't regard
either one as a substitute for the other.


On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 07:05:13 +0100, edmund at ngetal.fsnet.co.uk (Edmund
Strangely) wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I've been lurking here for a while while working my way through 'Learning
>Python'. So far only a few things have pissed me off with it. I was just
>wondering, is anybody else coming from Pascal? Or Modula2/3? The book I am
>reading kind of assumes that you are coming from C, and as I understand it
>Python is written in C which is why it shares some of the same
>conventions. Python is my first object orientated language. Pascal was my
>second programming language (after BASIC on a spectrum) and although I
>sort of learned C later, I still prefer Pascal. I personally like it more
>than C for a few reasons. I don't think that I should have to worry about
>how many bytes precisely my variables are stored in. (And I like BASIC
>even better in this respect, in that integers and fp numbers are
>automatically converted, and strings will grow and shrink as required (as 
>in Python seemingly)). I don't like the fact that in Python if
>
>>>>a=5
>>>>b=2
>>>>#and then
>>>>c=a/b
>>>>#then
>>>>c
>2
>
>in Pascal if you *want* modulo arithmetic (which is not normally the case
>) then you have DIV and MOD. I like having a distinction between functions
>and procedures, for purely aesthetic reasons (I think having loads of
>function names followed by () just looks ugly, procedures don't give
>return values). Python only has functions, but I can forgive it that. But
>the one thing above all that I think Pascal has over C (and which Python
>shares) is that you can nest your procedures/functions! Most of my Pascal
>programs had a mere few lines in the 'main' body of the program and the
>rest would be large functions and procedures each with their own
>sub-procedures and sub-functions with their own sub-sub units etc. When I
>first started on C I just couldn't *believe* that you couldn't nest
>functions, and just had to put them one after the other! You call that
>structured programming?
>
>I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
>bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
>response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
>finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has
>tried object Pascal.
>
>-- 
>                      Smash Bourgeois Revisionism!
>               Edmund Strangely aka Bad Nail Varnish Boy
> 'at all times he remained peculiar in presentation, and at one point
>                    painted his finger nails black.'


David C. Ullrich


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 20 15:49:12 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:49:12 +0200
Subject: Immutable list reverse function
References: <20010719134535.A1906@strakt.com>
Message-ID: <3B588B38.BBA89E33@lemburg.com>

"Martin Sj?gren" wrote:
> 
> Is there a "good" way to write a fast reverse function for immutable
> lists?
> 
> I tried this:
> 
> def reverse(list):
>     l = len(list)
>     return [ list[l-i-1] for i in range(l) ]
> 
> It works, but it's obviously not backwards compatible.
> Any suggestions?
> 
> What I want to do is basically this:
> 
> >>> foo(reverse(create_a_list()))
> 
> Instead of having to:
> 
> >>> list = create_a_list()
> >>> list.reverse()
> >>> foo(list)
> 
> Hints appreciated

Take a look at mxTools which you can download from the Python link
below (it's part of the eGenix mx BASE package).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 14:20:49 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:20:49 -0400
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
References: <slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>
Message-ID: <Fok57.21911$PF1.1081086@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Philipp Weinfurter" <philipprw at gmx.at> wrote in message
news:slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw at chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at...
> hi everyone!
>
> a = 1
>
> def func1():
>     b = a + 1
>
> right, the local variable b is assigned the value of the global variable
> a. so far, so good.
>
> def func2():
>     a = a + 1
>
> and now the local variable a is assigned... uh, nothing because it
produces
> an UnboundLocalError.
>
> now, i admit that no programmer should ever write such code, but i still
> consider this a bug. what _should_ happen, is this: the right side of
> the assignment is evaluated first, thus adding 1 to the value of the
global
> variable a, then the result should be assigned to the local variable a,
> no?
> then

When your Python is compiled into bytecode, the assignment to a is detected
during compilation of your function func2(). The name a is therefore assumed
to refer to a local variable, hence the ruin-time exception you observe.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From prem at engr.uky.edu  Tue Jul 17 16:03:10 2001
From: prem at engr.uky.edu (Prem Rachakonda)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:03:10 -0400
Subject: Probems with IDLE
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107171601020.12906-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>

Hi,
  I am not sure if anyone of you have found this problem, but the regular
exit commands 'CTRL+C', 'CTRL+A', 'CTRL+X', 'CTRL+V' don't work all the
time. But if you go to EDIT>COPY OR EDIT>CUT etc. they work fine. Can
somebody fix this??

Prem.

____________________________________________________________
                       Prem Rachakonda
____________________________________________________________
Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651



From noselasd at frisurf.no  Mon Jul  9 07:52:03 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 13:52:03 +0200
Subject: socket module
References: <mailman.994663214.5314.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <VUg27.4185$Jp5.63929@news1.oke.nextra.no>

>"Martin Sj?gren" <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994663214.5314.python-list at python.org...
>Is there ANY way to use the socket module from a Python module written
in
>C? I mean, sure I could use BSD sockets right away, but that's really
r>einventing the wheel since the Python socket module is a good,
portable
>module (AFAIK).
The socket functions reside in:
/usr/lib/python1.5/lib-dynload/socketmodule.so
Not, if you find and use the appropriate haederfiles, you might use
it..

However BSD sockets are farly portable on unixes, and the python
sockets
are not that diffrent from bsd sockets..

>So, is there any way short of doing a  s/static//g  in socketmodule.c?
No.





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 00:33:30 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:33:30 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Pushing the standard library
In-Reply-To: <20010703235924.E3447@tux.distro.conectiva>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040830160.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:

>Hello Carlos!
>
>[...]
>> As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we
>> must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this
>> issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys.
>> The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To
>> make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.
>[...]
>
>Agreed. Indeed, I think that the first step to start this out is to
>discover which libraries currently have a poor implementation, or which
>ones should start do be developed ASAP. I could start a list right now,
>but I'd probably mention those that I miss in my environment (cvs, etc).
>Maybe somebody from the dev team could tell us where to find the
>"most requested" ones.
>
>Another nice question is, is it time to move some "well-known" libraries
>in the standard set (pil, pynum, etc)!? I'm sorry if this issue has been
>discussed before (urls?). I'd like to understand what should and what
>shouldn't get in the standard library.

Python is more or less compact compared to Java. It will not be good to
add everything into it. So, probably Numeric is worse adding, as it adds
superb arrays capabilities and uses Python syntax more than Python itself
;-)

If there were CPyAN ...

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com  Fri Jul 13 03:18:36 2001
From: clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com (C. Laurence Gonsalves)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:18:36 GMT
Subject: Any way to get current file position in xml.parsers.expat?
Message-ID: <slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>

I'm writing a little utility that uses xml.parsers.expat (this is in
Python 2.1) to parse XML. I want to be able to generate semantic error
messages, in addition to the syntacic errors that expat handles.  For
example, if the value of an attribute is invalid for whatever reason,
I'd like to be able to say "Invalid attribute 'foo': line 86, column 5"
(or something along those lines)

Unfortunately, I can't find any way to get the current position in the
file when using ParseFile. I know that if expat throws an ExpatError,
that will contain the line and column number, but that doesn't help me
in this situation, as the file is 'well formed' XML as far as expat is
concerned.

So is there any way to ask the expat parser where it is in the file?
Even a byte offset from the beginning of the file would be better than
nothing.

-- 
  C. Laurence Gonsalves                "Any sufficiently advanced
  clgonsal at kami.com                     technology is indistinguishable
  http://cryogen.com/clgonsal/          from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke


From the_cpu_fan at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 00:28:27 2001
From: the_cpu_fan at yahoo.com (Alex Mercader)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:28:27 +0800
Subject: curses default background
Message-ID: <3B4FCA6B.11AA1638@yahoo.com>

I used to be able to use Eterm's (and other X terminals that support
pseudo-transparent backgrounds) background in my C/Ncurses applications.

The C/Ncurses code looks like:

init_pair(COLOR_BLACK, -1, -1)
init_pair(COLOR_WHITE, -1, -1)
init_pair(COLOR_RED, COLOR_RED, -1)
...

Unfortunately, I can not get the same effect in Python/curses. I read
somewhere in the curses-HOWTO that color pair 0 is hardwired to white on
black and can not be redefined. Should I just give up my quest for
transparency? Please help. This thing is driving me insane.

Thanks heaps.

Alex Mercader
the_cpu_fan at yahoo.com


From dan at eevolved.com  Tue Jul 10 12:19:04 2001
From: dan at eevolved.com (dan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:19:04 -0400
Subject: getting argument names from a function
Message-ID: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net>

def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
   print arg1, arg2

is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and 
'arg2')?

I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and can't 
find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?

thanks,
Dan


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 28 16:29:18 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:29:18 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9m659r.jdf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEABLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> > Multiplying by 1.0 preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0
> > (of either sign) may not;

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]
> Why adding a negative zero may not? If 0.0+(-0.0) is specified to be
> 0.0, then I don't see where it breaks.

The result of 0+(-0) is -0 in the to-minus-inf rounding mode.  The result of
multiplying by 1.0 is independent of rounding mode.

obviously-correct-is-better-than-subtly-broken-ly y'rs  - tim




From vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net  Thu Jul 12 06:04:35 2001
From: vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net (Vincent A. Primavera)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:04:35 +0000
Subject: More CGI ?'s...
In-Reply-To: <3B4DA7F9.9406D959@nokia.com>
References: <mailman.994883900.13704.python-list@python.org> <3B4DA7F9.9406D959@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <3B4505130016F337@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)

Thank you!

On Thursday 12 July 2001 13:34, Joonas Paalasmaa wrote:
> "Vincent A. Primavera" wrote:
> > Hello,
> >         Is there a way to access each row's data from this text area with
> > python's cgi module(cgi.FieldStorage to be exact...)?
> >
> > <B>Notes:</B><BR>
> > <TEXTAREA NAME="Notes" ROWS=6 COLS=25>
> > </TEXTAREA>
>
> import cgi
> form = cgi.FieldStorage()
>
> Notes = form.getvalue("Notes") or "" #None would cause some problems
> Lines = Notes.split("\r\n")
>
> for x in range(len(Lines)):
>     print "line",x+1,":",Lines[x],"<br>"
>
> - Joonas



From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  9 21:56:21 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 21:56:21 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <9icghc$8er$1@panix6.panix.com>
References: <mailman.994649054.6535.python-list@python.org><9icghc$8er$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <B76FD904.1412B%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

Check out http://docstring.sf.net/dps/statemachine.py, a finite state
machine specialized for regular-expression-based text filters. Newest
version (1.2) to be posted soon. I've been using it for my reStructuredText
parser with great success (I'll be posting the parser soon too).

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sf.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sf.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sf.net



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 22 14:06:27 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 18:06:27 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lm5h3.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:55:29 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

>>All arithmetic operators and functions like divmod, except /, have the
>>property that the value of the result, as long as it's not an error,
>>depends only on the values of arguments - not on their types.
> 
> Not true.
> 
> 1 + 1 == 2
> 1.0 + 1.0 == 2.0
> 1L + 1L == 2L

This is my point: 2 == 2.0 and 2.0 == 2L. The value is the same,
only represented in different types.

> It is a convenience - it does not make integers equivalent to floats.

Sure, but after fixing / an integer can be used when a float is
expected without surprise.

> I see no reason good reason to weaken Python by discarding strong
> typing.

It's not discarding strong typing. Proper strong typing would disallow
/ on integers at all: it's not a field after all, only a ring. Integer
division is not a special case of real division.

> I would like a 'mod' operator, I admit, but it wouldn't be the same as
> the current '%' operator (and the mod part of divmod) because they
> provide the remainder - not the modulo - which is different when the
> arguments include negative numbers.

No, they all provide the modulo, i.e. divmod(-123, 10) == (-13, 7),
(-123) % 10 == 7, (-123) / 10 == -13.

> I'd therefore like 'mod' and 'rem' - like Ada

Or like Haskell. It's ok to have all six (div, mod, divmod, quot, rem,
quotrem), but I don't think that Guido wants to add so many operators.

>>- / applied to ints or longs should return the exact result as a rational.
> 
> Support for rationals is a good idea, but I'd prefer to see them
> as a separate type.

Surely I want a separate type.

> When working with rationals or floats or whatever, you should get
> a result appropriate to that type.

It's not that simple, e.g. exp(1/2) should return a float. Generally
if an operation is not applicable to the given domain, there are two
choices: report an error or promote the argument to a more appropriate
domain. Given that Python already chose promotion in some contexts and
that literals won't have a type depending on the context, IMHO it's
more convenient to do the promotion. Practicality beats purity. This
implies that / on ints promote them to something, and rationals are
good here because the result is always correct.

>>- When rationals and floats are mixed, the result is a float.
> 
> Any float is merely an alternative representation of a rational,
> whether it is a binary float or a decimal float.

But when floats are used, the intent is that the value is not exact:
analog, not digital. So results of operations performed on floats
are inexact too.

> 0.0001 == 1/10000
> 
> Wherever you put the point, it is a simple matter to derive an integer
> numerator and denominator to represent a particular float exactly as a
> rational - even when the exponent (the * base**n part) is included.

This is the question of what 0.0001 should mean: rational or float.
I said that I don't have a strong position. I think that rationals
here is a more idealistic decision (it doesn't lose information,
one can always convert it to float but conversion in the opposite
direction would not work). Floats might be more practical if rationals
already had a syntax (namely 1/3), especially as this is what these
literals mean now. So it's ok for me when they are floats.

> Logically, operations with mixed float and rational arguments should
> give rational results - the float argument can be accurately
> converted, and the result is less likely to have lost precision.

Too late: it has already lost its precision because input was a float.
I assume that one would *not* use floats in case the value can be
represented exactly and the intent is to represent it exactly. One
should use a rational or integer in such case. Floats are inexact
by nature.

> The only real values that cannot be represented exactly as rationals
> are irrational numbers - such as pi, sqrt(2) and e. These values
> equally cannot be represented exactly as floats.

But floats are used to represent their approximations. We have two
choices about the meaning of pi+1/2: either 3.641592653589793 or
3+180592277226915/281474976710656. I think that the former is a better
choice; it's inexact anyway, so we should not pretend that it's exact.

> Of course, this then opens a major can of worms - rational versions
> of trig functions and similar would not be realistic, and therefore
> you'd get lots of implicit conversions from floats to rationals
> (rationals being more general than floats) only to have to convert
> back again for the trig functions, and so on.

That's why I would do it in the opposite direction.

>>  Decimal floats should not be necessary: they are inexact
>>  like binary floats and slow like rationals.
> 
> Floats are not slow on modern hardware.

This is what I said.

When you want speed, use floats. When you want correctness, use
rationals. You can't have both. Decimal floats provide neither.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:20:54 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:20:54 +0100
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220>
Message-ID: <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 17 Jul 2001 22:20:39 GMT, Mike Orr <iron at mso.oz.net> wrote:
>phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> However, im my experience, most of the time you don't want to do this,
>> most of the time, if there are too few or many values, you weant the
>> software to "do its best". 
>
>Perl "does its best" by making guesses about what you want.  Python is
>more deterministic, which means you have a greater certainty about what
>the program will actually do.

Python would still be deterministic if:

(a,b,c,d) = (1,2,3)

resulted in d being None

Ditto if (10,11,12)[3] returned None instead of an exception.

If people *want* an exception in instances liek this, they should
be able to say something like:

   if not myCollection.hasIndex(x): raise Exception

(Note that hasIndex() should equally work for dictionaries as well
as sequence-collections (strings, tuples, lists, etc). IMO it is
an unnecessary non-orthogonality of the present python that it doesn't
do this)

>> This goes for lots of things; IMO if you
>> access a list or dictionary with a non-existant index it should
>> return a value such as None, instead of raising an exception.
>
>Sometimes.  It's convenient in CGI to have tags default to '' if missing.
>But you can't find a one-size-fits all solution.  For some applications,
>None and '' are legitimate values, and must be distinguished from
>"key not found".  Thus, why Python offers both dict.get('x', DEFAULT)
>as well as dict['better be there or KeyError'].

No, because on the odd occasions that you want an exception you can
always throw one manually.

Here, I'm assuming that usually you don't want one -- perhaps this
is jsut my idiosyncratic programming style and most people vare different
here. Comments?

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Mon Jul 16 00:06:01 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:06:01 +0300
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
References: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>, <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <E15Lzdx-0007gU-00@darjeeling>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:58:46 GMT, tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) wrote:

> Easily implemented in Perl:
> 
> : sub valid_ip {
> :     my ($ip, $failed, @elements) = (shift, 0);
> :     @elements = ($ip =~ /^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$/);
> :     $failed = grep { $_ > 255 } @elements;
> :     return ($failed) ? undef : 1;
> : }
> 
> Slightly more verbose in Python:
> 
> : import re
> : def valid_ip(ip):
> :     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
> :     elements = map(int, re.match(expr, ip).groups())
> :     failed = filter(lambda x: x > 255, elements)
> :     if failed:  return None
> :     else:       return 1

In the interest of "fair" Python/Perl comparisons:

: import re
: def valid_ip(ip):
:     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
:     elements = map(int, re.match(expr, ip).groups())
:     failed = filter(lambda x: x > 255, elements)
:     return !failed

Exactly the same as the Perl version.

the "import re" line is offset by Python doing parameter passing
itself, and all the rest correspond line-for-line.
Of course, using list-comps, it might be easier:

: import re
: def valid_ip(ip):
:     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
:     failed = [x if int(x)>255 for x in re.match(expr, ip).groups()]
:     return !failed

Of course, I would never write that way -- here's more idiomatic Python:

: import re
: valid_ip_re = re.compile(r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$')
: def valid_ip(ip):
:    match = valid_ip_re.match(ip)
:    if not match:
:        return
:    return ![x if int(x)>255 for x in match.groups()]
  
And now it's even correct!
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 10:15:59 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:15:59 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107061800290.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107061814580.3884-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Oleg Broytmann wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> 
>    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
> too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.

May be better solution is to add splitted version.
Whole FAQ is nice to have as one document.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:26:53 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:26:53 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <260720011731078325%mday@apple.com>
Message-ID: <cpae1q4fdr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Mark Day <mday at apple.com> writes:

> I assume that means type(long//int) == type(int//long) == long.

Yes, no different than for other operations with mixed arguments.

> Can we assume that when both arguments are integers (including long
> integers), that the result is exact (and that no part of the
> computation involves conversion to floats)?  That is, would we get the
> same result as "classic" division?

The result of //, yes, of course.

> >     - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
> >       division.  This doesn't solve the problem that the classic /
> >       operator makes it hard to write polymorphic numeric functions
> >       accept int and float arguments, and still requires the use of
> >       x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required.
> 
> I don't understand this statement.  Wouldn't you use // when you
> wanted true division?  Why wouldn't // (true division) support
> polymorphic functions?

The PEP has a mistake here -- the part "and still requires the use of
x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required" is wrong; I'll fix this.
But it still leaves a broken operator in the language, and also shuts
off the road to a unified numeric model a la PEP 228.

> All I can see that's missing (compared to the actual proposal) is
> floor division that returns the same type as the (coerced)
> arguments.  That seems like it wouldn't be *too* hard: just use
> classic division (/ in this case) and if the result wasn't an
> integer, just call floor().  I suppose you could modify floor()
> [yuck!] or introduce a new function that returns the same type as
> its operand.  Is it that important to provide a type-preserving
> floor division?  (If you're assuming floor division, wouldn't you
> also use either int(a/b) or floor(a/b)?)

Other posts have explained the problem with making the result of
floor() exact.

> > Semantics of True Division
> > 
> >     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
> >     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
> >     return a float (2.0), not an int.
> 
> Well, then I'd call it Float Division.

I don't want to call it that for a specific reason: I want to keep the
door open to *possibly* introducing rationals and making 1/2 return a
rational rather than a float.  See PEP 239.

> This has the downside of loosing accuracy when the arguments are longs
> and the result can be expressed exactly as a long.

When you want an exact result there, you should use //.

> It would be nice if there was a division that would return exact
> results of the same type as the coerced arguments (when an exact
> answer is possible in that type).  But that begs the question of
> what you'd want in the case of division of two longs that can't be
> represented exactly in either a long or a float.  I guess I'd lean
> towards a long result (i.e. like classic division).

Rationals would give you that.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jim.vickroy at noaa.gov  Wed Jul 18 13:49:27 2001
From: jim.vickroy at noaa.gov (jim.vickroy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:49:27 -0600
Subject: Microsoft COM and "service" class
References: <3B549159.1A381BE6@noaa.gov> <3B54D564.3060207@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B55CC27.658EE9FA@noaa.gov>

Hello Mark,

Thanks for your quick response.

BTW, how do you notice these messages so quickly?  Are you using some type of
tool?

Here is a, hopefully, simple example of what I am trying to do.  I hope I did
not introduce any new errors when I made this simplification!

####### begin file com_service.py ###################
import Queue
import win32event

import win32serviceutil
import win32service
import win32event



class component ( win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework ):
 """
 This implementation is really a *Singleton*.
 """


 # MS COM attributes:
 _reg_progid_  = 'Trial.COM.Service'
 _reg_clsid_   = '{78FF80EE-8E81-4816-BD6C-30D5924F2901}' #> must be unique -
obtained via: print pythoncom.CreateGuid()
 _public_methods_ = ['accept', 'backlog']

 # MS Win *service* attributes:
 _svc_name_   = _reg_progid_
 _svc_display_name_ = 'Trial COM service'


 def __init__ ( self, args ) :
  """
  Initializes an instance.
  """

  print '\n\n *** starting: com_service component.__init__ ***\n'  #! debug
  import servicemanager  #! debug
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( 'args: ' + str ( args ) ) #! debug --> args:
(u'SXI.processor_events_log',)
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( 'starting: com_service component.__init__' ) #!
debug

  print '\n\n *** starting: win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__ ***\n'
#! debug
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( 'starting:
win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__' ) #! debug
  win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__(self, args)
  print '\n\n *** completed: win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__
***\n'  #! debug
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( 'completed:
win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__' ) #! debug

  # Create a "request stop" event to be set by the SvcStop procedure.
  self._stop_request = win32event.CreateEvent (None, 0, 0, None)

  self._ingest_queue = Queue.Queue ( maxsize = 0 ) # grow to available memory


 # Implementation of the COM interface.


 def accept ( self, item ) :
  """
  Queues an item for processing.
  """

  self._ingest_queue.put ( item )


 def backlog ( self ) :
  """
  Returns the number of items remaining to be processed.
  """

  return self._ingest_queue.qsize()


 # Implementation of the MS OS *services* interface:


 def SvcStop ( self ) :
  """
  Prepares this service to be stopped.
  """

  # First, send an acknowledgement to the SCM.
  self.ReportServiceStatus (win32service.SERVICE_STOP_PENDING)

  # Set the STOP event signal.
  win32event.SetEvent (self._stop_request)


 def SvcDoRun (self):
  """
  Perpetually removes messages from the source queue and ...

  Responds to a STOP request by exiting the perpetual loop and returning.
  """

  # Put: "service started" message in Win Event Log.
  import servicemanager # provided at runtime - can not be at start of module
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( component._svc_display_name_ + ' started')

  while 1: # do-forever

   try:
    message = self._ingest_queue.get ( block = 0 ) # do not wait for a queue
entry
    #! determine target file for message
    #! open target file
    #! copy message to target file
   except Queue.Empty:
    pass # ignore empty queue warning
   except Exception, error_object:
    servicemanager.LogErrorMsg \
     ( component._svc_display_name_ + ' unable to process message - reason: '
+ str (error_object) )

   #! close target file

   # Pause to determine if a STOP-service request has been made; if so exit
this loop.
   result = win32event.WaitForSingleObject (self._stop_request, 1 * 1000) #
milli-secs
   if result == win32event.WAIT_OBJECT_0: break # a request to stop this
service has been received

  # Put: "service stopped" message in Win Event Log.
  servicemanager.LogInfoMsg ( component._svc_display_name_ + ' stopped')


 # Auxillary methods:




if __name__=='__main__':

 # Prepare component to be a MS OS service:
 import win32serviceutil
 win32serviceutil.HandleCommandLine ( component )

 # Prepare component to be a MS COM object:
 import win32com.server.register
 win32com.server.register.UseCommandLine ( component )

####### end file com_service.py ###################



####### begin file test_com.py ###################

import win32com.client

com_obj = win32com.client.Dispatch ('Trial.COM.Service')
print 'queue backlog: ', com_obj.backlog()

####### end file test_com.py ###################



Add here is a sample session on my Win 2k (professional) system using Python
2.0:

D:\applications\sec\sxi>
D:\applications\sec\sxi>com_service.py install
Installing service Trial.COM.Service to Python class
D:\applications\sec\sxi\com_service.component
Service installed
Registered: Trial.COM.Service

D:\applications\sec\sxi>com_service.py start
Starting service Trial.COM.Service
Registered: Trial.COM.Service

D:\applications\sec\sxi>test_com.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\applications\sec\sxi\test_com.py", line 3, in ?
    com_obj = win32com.client.Dispatch ('Trial.COM.Service')
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 94, in Dispatch
    dispatch, userName =
dynamic._GetGoodDispatchAndUserName(dispatch,userName,clsctx)
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 80, in
_GetGoodDispatchAndUserName
    return (_GetGoodDispatch(IDispatch, clsctx), userName)
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 71, in _GetGoodDispatch
    IDispatch = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(IDispatch, None, clsctx,
pythoncom.IID_IDispatch)
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147221231, 'ClassFactory cannot supply requested
class', None, None)

D:\applications\sec\sxi>

Mark Hammond wrote:

> jim.vickroy wrote:
>
> > which I believe is caused by the following statement in my
> > implementation:
> >
> >   win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__(self, args)
> >
> > I do not understand where and how the 'args' parameter is being defined.
>
> "args" comes from the service control manager.  For "normal" services,
> the service args can be defined in the dialog used to start and stop
> services.
>
> > If I strip the "service" interface (which references the 'args'
> > parameter) from my class, it seems to work just fine as a COM object.
> >
> > Could someone offer some suggestions on what I need to do.
>
> Any chance of a trivial sample I can keep in the win32com test suite?
> This will help me to track it down once and for all.
>
> Mark.



From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Wed Jul 25 05:53:05 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 02:53:05 -0700
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
References: <vmpsltscvqqp8helkrd8aovnn8f497lt89@4ax.com> <mailman.996044685.24108.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cf5tltg1qtvmbv7qutr382vt3e7sa0aacu@4ax.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>BTW, are you running Win98?  IIRC, only Win98 systems suffered this
>problem -- but not *all* Win98 systems (for example, not mine; so why did I
>spend months on this?  because of Guido's Win98 box <wink>).
>
>the-virus-stops-here-ly y'rs  - tim
>

I'm using Millenium Edition (ME).

Before, the NAV2000 popen glitch was very in-your-face in that 
simply asking for Help in IDLE triggered it.  But that problem has
indeed gone away.  The browser opens in Help HTML no prob.

In the new chapter, the problem occurs when I explicitly import os
and try to use popen myself at the IDLE command line (in shell
mode).  Whether I get the same crash in a DOS box I don't
know yet (I'd try it now, but don't want to risk a reboot just yet).

So how does IDLE invoke the browser if not with popen and if
it uses popen, then why can't I from the IDLE shell?  The kind 
of question that keeps me up at night.

time-for-a-reboot-at-2:52-amly yrs,
Kirby 



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 15:42:25 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:42:25 GMT
Subject: Short form of file names
References: <39916145.20010707010418@tomsk.net> <mailman.994443389.735.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpn16hkft1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     Mikhail> Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths
>     Mikhail> to short form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..
> 
> Try importing dospath directly:
> 
>     >>> import dospath
>     >>> dospath.normpath("/supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.py")
>     '\\supercal.py'

Yeah, but shouldn't it return '\\superca~1.py' ?  I believe the
algorithm to produce the ~1 part is dependent on what else is in the
same directory.  I guess the ActiveState win32 modules hide an API
somewhere that gets this information directly from the filesystem.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 10:10:41 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 07:10:41 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <3B4080E1.F7049032@ActiveState.com>

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:15:10AM +0000, Courageous wrote:
> 
> > x += (1,2,3)
> 
> > ... is not the same as...
> 
> > x=x+(1,2,3)
> 
> > That's just plain wrong.
> 
> No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing. If x += y was supposed to be
> *exactly* the same as x = x + y, it would have been spelled as 'x = x + y'.
> It isn't, and it's not. It's not supposed to be syntactic sugar for normal
> addition, it's supposed to be syntactic sugar for a method call.

That's exactly the problem. The millions of newbies who begged for this
feature didn't want a short form for a method call. They wanted a short
form for a repetitive assignment pattern. The feature as implemented
tries to make them happy and at the same time tries to make the NumPy
guys happy. If we had chosen to ONLY make the NumPy guys happy then the
feature would never have got in -- after all it is isomorphic to a
method call. I think the newbies were sacrificed on the alter of the
Numeric Dieties.

I'd like to see some real-world code that takes advantage of the fact
that this single operator behaves differently with mutable and immutable
types. Then I will believe that it isn't just a squishing together of
two unrelated features.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jcollins at boulder.net  Mon Jul 16 11:44:21 2001
From: jcollins at boulder.net (Jeffery D. Collins)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:44:21 -0600
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8E@intrepid>; from SBrunning@trisystems.co.uk on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 03:41:21PM +0100
References: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8E@intrepid>
Message-ID: <20010716094421.E17802@boulder.net>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 03:41:21PM +0100, Simon Brunning wrote:
> > From:	Simon Brunning 
> > 	From:	Jeffery D. Collins [SMTP:jcollins at boulder.net]
> > 	> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want
> > included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> > 	> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then
> > I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> > 	> would be:
> > 	> 
> > 	> for eachItem in A:
> > 	>     if eachItem in B:
> > 	>         A.remove(eachItem)
> > 	> 
> > 
> > 	How about: 
> > 
> > 	map(A.remove, B)
> >  
> > Clever! Unfortunately, it dies (giving a ValueError) if any of the tokens
> > in B are not present in A. Nasty, but how about:
> > 
> > map((A + B).remove, B)
>  
> That will teach me to post without testing. This doesn't work at all - items
> from B are removed from the temporary, unnamed list created for A + B.
> 
> A bit neared the truth would be:
> 
> A += B
> map(A.remove, B)
> 
> But this doesn't really work, either. Only the first occurrence of each
> token in B is removed.
> 
> It strikes me that if B is large, it might be quicker to build a re pattern
> from its elements, and match on that, rather than use 'in'. I'll give that a
> bash later.
> 

How about this:

import operator
h = {}
map(operator.setitem, [h]*len(B), B, B)  # create a dictionary of B
bb = filter(h.get, A)  # find all elements of A in B (include repeats)
map(A.remove, bb)


-- 
Jeffery Collins (http://www.boulder.net/~jcollins)



From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 13:27:59 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:27:59 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
In-Reply-To: <20010712125340.5baf980b.treaves@silverfields.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107122127300.3555-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Timothy Reaves wrote:

>	Hello.  I'm trying to compile  python2-2.1-5.src.rpm on a SuSE 7.1 system.  It gets along a ways and then:
>/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./LICENSE /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/LICENSE.txt
>PYTHONPATH=/var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 \
>        ./python -tt /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1
>Listing /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1 ...
>Compiling /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/BaseHTTPServer.py ...
>make: *** [libinstall] Segmentation fault
>Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.83840 (%install)

Does it occur at the same palce everytime?

(I not so, you have hardware problems)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 12, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses." _/




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 13:17:18 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:17:18 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com> <3B66E4FA.158E7DDA@home.net>
Message-ID: <0HB97.12860$WD1.529303@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B66E4FA.158E7DDA at home.net...
[ ... ]
> Even without any static type declaration, the homogenous sequence could
> be possible. It would be pretty easy for tuples, since they are
> immutable. Even for lists, at every append, the type of the appended
> object could be checked, and the homogenous flag turned off if the type
> doesn't match.
>
> Does anyone else think this could be a good idea???
>
It's a good idea, but given that the compiler we use daily doesn't yet even
do numerical constant folding, and adds two integers together every time it
uses (2+3) there is clearly a long road to hoe before we see progress.

optimization-is-boring-when-there-are-other-development-choices-ly y'rs  -
steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bernhard at intevation.de  Mon Jul 16 12:51:27 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 16:51:27 GMT
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>
    <9imq3s$jv3c9$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
    <eppstein-8FB212.09052613072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <9iv62f$k0v7i$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <eppstein-8FB212.09052613072001 at news.service.uci.edu>,
	David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:
> In article <9imq3s$jv3c9$1 at ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>,
>  bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) wrote:
> 
>> > If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
>> > be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
>> 
>> 	www.wxpython.org (IMO)
> 
> Doesn't seem to run on a Mac.

There is this long story about the wxMac port which indeed exists in
some state...  A wizard probably could make it run.

	Bernhard
-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!  Tue Jul 24 11:45:42 2001
From: vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.! (Kevin Riggle)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:45:42 -0500
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <3b5d8947_5@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <9jk4us$392$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net>

Sorry about that...  I think this should work.

"c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe" "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py"
"%1"

If that doesn't work, you might try it without the double-quotes on the %1.
The quotes tell Windows to ignore spaces in a path (ie. 'Program _ Files')
and take everything they contain as one unit.  Otherwise Windows/DOS will
spit back 'Cannot find c:\Program' or something to that effect.

Best of luck...  Kevin


"Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b5d8947_5 at news.newsgroups.com...
> Thx.
> Most unfortunately, this does not work. If I omit the double quotes it
seems
> that the file is not opened correctly (I am usinf pythonw.exe instead of
> winpy.exe as i do not have the latter). If I set the double quotes, I
cannot
> enter my program as i get the error message 'the application you have
> selected does not exist'.
>
> Janos Blazi
>
> "Kevin Riggle" <vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!@n()et> schrieb im
> Newsbeitrag news:9jhgm4$2mo$1 at mtc1.mtcnet.net...
> > You have to associate the file-type with the program.
> >
> > Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File Types
> tab,
> > and click on New Type.
> >
> > Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on the
> New
> > button beneath the Actions: list box.
> >
> > Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
> > perform action:' to
> >
> > "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,
> >
> > or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program
Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
> > %1",
> >
> > in both examples *including* the double-quotes.
> >
> > (I haven't actually used Python on Windows, so if the WinPy path is a
> little
> > off please forgive me.)
> >
> > Hope this helps...  Kevin
> >
> >
> > "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:3b5be641_3 at news.newsgroups.com...
> > > I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double
> clicks
> > > on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the
> file.
> > > What have I to do?
> > > This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.
> > >
> > > Janos Blazi




From barry at zope.com  Wed Jul 25 10:48:19 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:48:19 -0400
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
References: <15197.62422.841114.343701@anthem.wooz.org>
	<m15PHkJ-000wcBC@swing.co.at>
Message-ID: <15198.56371.751100.459533@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "CT" == Christian Tanzer <tanzer at swing.co.at> writes:

    CT> This isn't portable behavior. According to the python library
    CT> reference, `int` may round on some platforms.

It also says:

    "This is ugly -- the language definition should require truncation
    towards zero."

Okay so

    int(math.floor(a / b))

or

    divmod(a, b)[0]

are better.  Either way, wrap it in a function called "div()" and use
that where ever you absolutely must have integer division.

really-portable-code-is-always-ugly-anyway-ly y'rs,
-Barry



From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul 29 02:45:37 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 06:45:37 GMT
Subject: Problem with timing, again:
References: <%QM87.438$k9.52157@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <liO87.583459$eK2.122196735@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Jeremy Moles" <xione at bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:%QM87.438$k9.52157 at e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com...
> I had an earlier post about timing in a program. Well, this is what I have
> so far - exactly. It works, but it won't respond, and it won't let the
> button go. What am I doing wrong?
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> from Tkinter import *
>
> class App:
>
>     def __init__(self, master):



          self.master = master  # save this, (or use class App(Frame):)


>
>         frame = Frame(master)
>         frame.pack()
>
>         self.hi_there = Button(frame, text='Upload',
> command=self.dostuff).pack()
>
>     def dostuff(self):
>       import socket,ftplib,time
>       x=socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
>       y=open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','w')
>       y.write(x)
>       y.close()
>       def domorestuff():
>          z=ftplib.FTP(host='ahost')
>          z.login(user='asuer',passwd='apassword')
>          z.cwd('public_html')
>          z.storlines('STOR IP.html',open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','r'))
>          z.close()

---------------------------------------------------------------
           self.master.after(15000,domorestuff)

        domorestuff()

        # I think this right (untested)
        # ..the point is that you should use the tk.after(..) method
        # This allows the little function to re-schedule itself
        # to run again.
        # Using a sentinel value is a good idea..
        # eg:    if self.keep_checking: self.after(...)....

-------------------------------------------------------------------

>       while 1:
>          domorestuff()
>          time.sleep(15)
>
--------------------
    ...and just nuke this bit ^
----------------------


> root = Tk()
> root.title('IPUL')
>
> app = App(root)
>
> root.mainloop()
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Anyways, the program works - but the gui itself freezes up - it's as if
the
> button is stuck. You guys were so helpful last time, any advice this time?
>
>
>




From gustavo at ifour.com.br  Sun Jul 22 13:47:35 2001
From: gustavo at ifour.com.br (Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:47:35 -0300
Subject: [phawkins@connact.com: Re: python and applications]
Message-ID: <20010722144735.A2737@ifour.com.br>

>ts> could you write a fast mud  in python? 
>ts> having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
>ts> how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
>ts> can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
>ts> I am blind myself.

I am just a python beginner, but clearly C would cannot do many thing in python the same way you cannot do many thing in C!

C is simple, and very, very small. Everything you need come form libraries. C has no support for IO, garbage collections, dynamic memory allocation, etc...... Many thing that C "does" comes from external libraries. Being small, and without any kind of special structs gives C some nice features like: small learning curve, code are easy to mantain , you can write very fast code in C, easy to program. The most sofistaced feature C provides is loop (while, do while, for), the lowest level C feature are pointer. If you master pointer and loop in C, you may be concidered a C guru. the problem is that C by itself is useless. Writting really useful programms required you to master the OS API, or even your hardware.

Just to take a notion about what i say:
Get two book: Brian Kernigham: The C Programming Language and give it to one who have never program in C. Get too Bjearne Stroustp C++ one, give it to another one. Come back two months later and take a look at who of that guys will be more satisfied ? C++ is a hell of complicated. People are used to think that C++ is easier than C - All i do is laughting. Serious IT stuff never get project developed in C++.

Python is much more elaborated than C. It supports complex data types (from the point of view of a C programmer), and operation on such Data Types. This may be a problem. this approach makes constant motivation for the language release (C has only two: standard and ANSI - ISO/IEC 9899:1989, i guess). Any way i am just beginning python and i am loving it. Python is beautiful, elegant, nice and considering script world is fast enough, even for more complicated task. Despite of my impression about python, i am sure i would never use it to write a, say, high performance ftp server and alike.
Python folks made something i am realy enjoyng: they made a language as simple as C with add-on o C++, but of course without all that stupid complexity C++ bring to your brain.

BTW: as i told, i am just python beginner, sorry if something i told about python is misleading..

best regards.


-- 
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
		-- Trotsky



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 12 13:47:19 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:47:19 -0400
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
In-Reply-To: <086c01c10aec$8ebe4b80$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
	<07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
	<oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
	<086c01c10aec$8ebe4b80$9865fea9@SUXLAP>
Message-ID: <oqitgyrqe0.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Andreas Jung]

> >It should check because this is poor writing style to have concatenation
> >of strings written with such a vertical alignment.  "url" and "previews"
> >have no kind of logical vertical alignment, and a good checker should
> >consider this as suspicious.

> Is there a common opinion what "poor writing style" is ? :-)

Surely not.  My mother often said to me:

  "Des go?ts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas.
   Mais il y en a de meilleurs que d'autres..."

(roughly translated: "People should never discuss about what is good taste.
Yet, some people have better taste than others.").

In practice, there is some common sense that could emerge, and on which
we could rely, more or less.  More than less, actually! :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  9 10:36:45 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 10:36:45 -0400
Subject: How to 'from package import module; from module import variable'?
References: <mailman.994686675.26966.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdk81i185e.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Ouch, it doesn't use the binding in the current namespace?  OK, I guess
I'll need to write a new __import__ function, or something.

Thanks.
Alex.


From rdmurray at twirl.bitdance.com  Mon Jul 23 10:46:35 2001
From: rdmurray at twirl.bitdance.com (R. David Murray)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:46:35 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com> <3B5B43C6.A1B4BD92@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <fNW67.18391$sE4.367914@news6.giganews.com>

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:
>Sheila King wrote:
>> That's because the "big picture" is the general overview of how the
>> parent class works.
>The behavior of the parent class is as the library reference states:  It
>implements __str__, __getitem__, __len__ (presumably), and args. 
>Exception is just a class like everything else; other than having the
>behavior as specified in the reference, it's your typical class.

I agree with Sheila here: while I *can* subclass and develop based
solely on the the documentation, I have a much greater comfort level
when I can actually look at the *implementation* of the base class.
I realize that the goal of encapsulation is to make this unnecessary,
but I'm talking here as much about psychological comfort as anything
that affects my knowledge level.  It probably does have an effect on
my productivity, though.

Still, I've been able to happily subclass from dictionary and list
(through UserDict and UserList) without caring how they are
implemented internally, so it's really just a personal nit and
not something anyone else should care about.

There is, however, a deeper sense in which pointing Shelia or myself
to the documentation in the Library Reference is *not* an adequate
answer to "this is what you need in order to subclass", and it not
merely a matter of providing some examples (though that certainly
helps a lot!).  What the Library Reference lacks, at least with
regards to the built in types, is a single, comprehensive, and
concise list of *all* of the methods that a type implements, and
their semantics. In other words, the *complete* Interface of the
type; some way to answer the question:  what is the expected behavior
of a class that is going to play the same role as this thing I am
subclassing?  Right now I get that information (very effectively!)
out of files like exceptions.py and UserList.py.  But we've lost
exceptions.py already, and we will soon lose UserList.py and its
friends.

I've looked at the Interfaces module (from Zope), and that could
form the basis of something that could auto-generate the answer to
this question.  (It might not be enough by itself, though, because
I might still need documentation that would let me know which
combination of underlying Interfaces implemented by a class were
essential to the particular role that I am expecting my subclass
to fulfill.)

--RDM


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Mon Jul 23 13:53:03 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 10:53:03 -0700
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
References: <mailman.995680776.21360.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107230953.77774c0@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995680776.21360.python-list at python.org>...
> [Tom Good]
> > I downloaded the Python-2.2a1.exe installer from SourceForge, and
> > verified that the MD5 sum is correct.  When I run it under Windows
> > 2000 Professional [Version 5.00.2195], I get an error dialog that
> > says:
> >
> > 16 bit Windows Subsystem
> >
> > The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
> > CS:020c IP:0115 OP:0f 00 00 00 00 Choose 'Close' to terminate the
> > application.
> 
> [also Tom Good, later]
> > Sorry, I had thought that this was a problem with the installer, but
> > it really turned out to be a problem with my Windows configuration.  I
> > fixed it.
> 
> Would you please spell out what you changed?  I saw anther report of this
> symptom, a few months ago (w/ a different installer), but no follow-up.  I'd
> like to know how you cured it so we can help the next person who falls into
> this trap.

Searching around for the text of the error message led me to this:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q245/1/84.ASP

Which gave me the clue that maybe it had something to do with the
command interpreter command.com.  I fixed it by going into Control
Panel / System / Advanced / Environment Variables, and changed the
System variable "ComSpec" to point to c:\WINNT\system32\command.com
(it had been set to c:\WINNT\system32\cmd.exe).  Then I ran the Python
installer and it worked fine.  After installing Python, I changed the
setting back to the way it was before.

There may be other work-arounds or ways to address the problem besides
this, but this worked for me.

This link also has some info that may apply.

http://www.chami.com/tips/windows/122096W.html

By the way, the symptom of this problem was that I got the "NTVDM CPU"
error message immediately upon trying to launch the installer.  No
program window ever came up, just the error dialog box.



Tom


From jparlar at home.com  Tue Jul 10 09:13:32 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:13:32 GMT
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994625054.7131.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107092059.8b56186@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <1103_994765524@jparlar>

> >  
> > I haven't found anything that will explicitly do what I want, namely,
> > completely remove any uncovertable unicode characters. I 
> > have to be able to parse this text afterwards, 
> > using a lot of Python's string functions,
> [snip]
> 
> Are you completely sure that the offending characters are totally
> meaningless in your application? u'\u00A0' is a no-break space; seems
> stripping that out but leaving normal spaces (u'\u0020') might not be
> a good idea. What other non-ASCII characters do you have?
> 
> Are you sure it's Unicode? Is \xA0 exactly what you are seeing, or are
> you seeing \u00A0 and telling us it's \xA0 ??
> 
> Which "lot of Python's string functions" do you plan to use? Note that
> 8-bit strings and Unicode strings support a large number of same-name
> as-close-to-same-functionality-as-possible methods -- see section
> 2.1.5.1 of the Python Library Reference manual. Also the re module
> supports the same functions and methods on both types.


Frankly, I'm starting to wonder myself about all of this :) I'll give a brief description of what's going on, exactly, maybe that will 
offer more insight.

My task is to create an HTML parser that will pull full text from HTML documents, and count the number of occurences of 
each word, as well as the first position it apeared in. I'm using HTMLParser(AbstractFormatter(DumbWriter(cStringIO))) for 
the HTML parsing, and then a variety of other methods to count the number of occurences of each word. Anyway, there 
are two possible ways that my code will be told what HTML to parse: It will either be given a URL, and I have to download 
the page using urlretrieve (or urlopen, not too important, I don't think), or, the other case is that my code is given the full 
HTML from a page, retrieved from IE's cache. 

Now, whenever I'm given HTML from IE's cache, it is unicode. There is no doubt about that. When the cache retrieval 
code was originally written by my colleague, he had to implement it as unicode in C++. It is because of this code that I 
needed to convert from unicode to string, because otherwise, I was getting "ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in 
range(128)" errors.

The reason that I asked for code to remove the non-convertable unicode characters is because I thought that the '\xa0' 
that I was seeing was a result of the unicode. In further testing, it seems that it's not. When I download the page 
'http://www.ign.com', and parser it using the HTMLParser method above, one of the characters/words returned to me is 
'\xa0'. Now, I have no idea where this is coming from. I suppose I'll have to start looking at the source for HTMLParser, as 
well as the formatter and writer I used. It's not just '\xa0' either, one page (which I can't seem to remember now) returned a 
'\x95' as one of the characters/words. 

One technique I'm using that might be causing the problem is: Using an re to remove a lot of punctuation, punctuation that 
would cause the word "Python" not to be matched with "Python." (notice the period). Actually, if anyone has a better 
solution to that, I'd be more than willing to listen. 

Now, if I'm making some obvious mistake here, I ask your forgiveness, what with my total time with Python thus far 
amounting to no more than 1.5 months. However, if you or anyone else could offer any additional insight into this, it would 
be much appreciated.

Jay P. 

PS. I have to leave to a meeting, right now, so I have no time to double check this. Please excuse any silly 
grammar/spelling errors.



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 23 03:46:21 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:46:21 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com> <slrn9ldcug.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <yoxzo9wyvul.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <slrn9lnm9u.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> dijo:
[ snippage ]
> That is, once you get beyond trivial, you hit the wall, even thougn in
> the beginning things move quite smoothly. In perl trivial things (awk
> stuff) are easy (but not easier than in Python; just requiring a few
> keystrokes less), and difficult things are "possible", but hardly
> worth trying (unless your boss/teacher/whatever forces you).

You and I have had violently different experiences with Perl. OTOH, I'm
glad you have found a language that works better for you than Perl
seemed to. Hell, if there were no beauty, why am I still using it? ;)

-- 
Tools, of course, can be the subtlest of traps.
    -- Daniel, The Sandman


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 09:57:26 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:57:26 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9979168AE9michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in
news:cp7kwyqfce.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com: 

> 
> How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
> preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
> C++...

Fortran was utterly miserable.  With only six letters per identifier (and 
upper case only), you ended up with incomprehensible sequences of letters 
and numbers (typically a library prefix together with a subroutine 
identification number).

I expect the language has moved on by now, though!


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 19:27:21 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:27:21 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995476231.26352.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B561B59.17856C7F@engcorp.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> From: Nick Efford [mailto:nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk]
> > Any web hoster worth its salt should at least run old and new
> > versions of the s/w in parallel and provide clients with the
> > opportunity to test programs in the new environment before
> > migrating.
> 
> But being a web hoster, with no knowledge about Python, would _you_
> expect a version change from 2.2 to 2.3 to fundamentally change
> semantics? 

I'm pretty sure nobody has seriously proposed making this change
in a non-major revision.  I suspect anyone who might have implied 
that would say they weren't really thinking at the time they said 
so, and that of course if we went ahead with such a change it would
not cause code breakage in existing code until a major revision 
change.

I could be wrong about this though...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Thu Jul 12 20:14:22 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 00:14:22 GMT
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994874479.28261.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksfat.n2h.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

11 Jul 2001 14:00:47 -0400 in <mailman.994874479.28261.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> spake:
>[Shannon --jj Behrens]
>> I wrote a useful C module for doing string interpolation.
> You should work with the author of PEP 215 (String Interpolation) to settle
> on a consensus proposal:
>     http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0215.html

  Aside from the appeal for Perl fans, how is that different from normal
formatted strings with named references?
>>> a="I wanted a monkey."
>>> "%(a)s" % vars()
'I wanted a monkey.'

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From john.thai at dspfactory.com  Tue Jul  3 17:42:13 2001
From: john.thai at dspfactory.com (John)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:42:13 -0400
Subject: unsigned short
Message-ID: <OXq07.259466$Z2.3071054@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Hi,

    Correct me if I'm wrong:  Python only supports signed short?

    I have C function that I'm trying to extend python with by writing the
corresponding module function.  The C function takes an unsigned short as a
modifiable parameter.

If my assumption above is correct, then I need to represent my parameter as
an integer?  Will this work?  When I extract the python integer to a C
variable, I would use "i" as the formatter, then cast the it with (unsigned
short)?  And vice versa for returning a C unsigned short to a python?

Any suggestions would be appreciated..

Thanks,

John




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul  3 01:10:45 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 22:10:45 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com> <008701c1037d$f6280de0$0101010a@local>
Message-ID: <3B4153D5.3A187BC5@ActiveState.com>

Is anybody else suspicious about the sudden uptick of troll-like
behavior on comp.lang.python?  Keep an eye out and don't bother
responding to anything inflammatory.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From sill at optonline.net  Wed Jul 18 18:59:12 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:59:12 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lc547.27j.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:43:35 GMT, rh cassel <rhcassel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for
>> me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
>> Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
>> accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
>> with Python.
> 
> Off topic but if one looks at the definition, a "steep" learning curve means
> quick and easy to learn. It is an accumulated knowledge versus time
> function.  The marketing folks have totally corrupted the meaning.
> 
> Here is a nice reference.
> http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV63-1356_STO61762,00.html
> 
> 
> Bob

I think it makes the perfect sense - a steep hill is the one that's hard to
climb.

> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 16:31:51 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:31:51 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121131290.21768-100000@bms> <mailman.994964185.6915.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <XOn37.1162$%6.291181@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
...
> import os
> os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')

So, by putting 'import os' in site.py, we can say that any one-liner for
the local default command processor can be turned into an identally
functioning Python one-liner by wrapping it in a os.system call.
...
>Most  likely, one would program it differently, solidly, and portably:
>
> import fileinput
> from glob import glob
>
> file4 = open('file4','w')
> lines = words = chars = 0
> for line in
fileinput.input(glob('file*1')+glob('file*2')+glob('file*3')):
>     file4.write(line)
>     lines += 1
>     words += len(line.split())
>     chars += len(line)
> file4.close()
> file5 = open('file5','a')
> file5.write("%s lines, %s words, %s chars\n"%(lines,words,chars))
> file5.close()

While more verbose, this is *much* more flexible.  We could count sentences
instead of lines, redefine 'word', count subsets of chars, format the
output however desired, and stick the results on a remote website (can sh
do this last now?).  We can also to n-way instead of just 2-way splits of
the data stream, or re-merge data streams.  And so on ...

Terry J. Reedy





From aetodd at wm.edu  Tue Jul  3 09:15:25 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:15:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Calculus Module (Michael Hudson)
In-Reply-To: <E15HDYq-0003N7-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15HDYq-0003N7-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <994166125.3b41c56d42abc@webmail1.wm.edu>

Andrew Todd wrote:
>> Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

Michael Hudson wrote:
>What would you want such a thing to do?  I'm curious.  
>Symbolic integration?

Not necessarily, but that would be nice. I'm more 
interested in lower level Calculus at the moment. 
Really I just want to see how a math module should be 
designed.



From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 04:46:45 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:46:45 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996521640.5165.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b666579.880046189@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:33:22 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com> wrote:

>[Bengt Richter]
>> ...
>> There really shouldn't be that much floating point implementation
>> code in the interpreter or VM.
>
>Right, there isn't.
>
>> I wonder what it would take to rewrite it to take real advantage
>> of IEEE754.
>
>Since C provides no portable way to *spell* this stuff, it requires
>boundless masses of platform-specific #ifdef's.  That requires in turn a
>boundless supply of people who are expert in both 754 and their platform
>(where "platform" is a combination of compiler, library, HW, and sometimes
>subdivided across specific releases of any or all those).
>
>It would much easier to take advantage of 754 by simulating fp entirely in
>software, avoiding the platform HW and C fp facilities entirely.
>
I sort of expected you to say that, but don't you find that sad?

>> That would be a real Python distinction.
>
>Then again, distinctions aren't always a good thing <wink>.
>
>
Ok, enough excitement for a while ;-)

BTW, I couldn't find where it officially says a sequence expression's elements
are evaluated guaranteed left to right. E.g., if I write
    [foo(), bar(), baz()]
can I depend on global side effects of foo() to be available to bar(), and of bar()
to baz() in strict sequence? The sequences are at the top of the precedence table,
but what of the elements? Just want to make sure ;-)




From emile at fenx.com  Mon Jul 16 10:30:15 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:30:15 -0700
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9iuu12$l51n6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Borrowing Tim's klistcombs:

def klistcombs(s, k):
    """Returns list of combinations of S taken K at a time.

    S must be a list.
    K must be >= 0.
    If K > len(S), an empty list is returned.
    Else if K is 0, a singleton list containing an empty list
    is returned.
    The k-combinations are returned in lexicographic order
    of their indices.
"""
    if k < 0:
        raise ValueError, "arg k == %d not >= 0" % k
    if len(s) < k:
        return []
    if k == 0:
        return [[]]

    answer = []
    indices = range(k)
    indices[-1] = indices[-1] - 1
    while 1:
        limit = len(s) - 1
        i = k - 1
        while i >= 0 and indices[i] == limit:
            i = i - 1
            limit = limit - 1
        if i < 0:
            break
        val = indices[i]
        for i in xrange( i, k ):
            val = val + 1
            indices[i] = val
        temp = []
        for i in indices:
            temp.append( s[i] )
        answer.append( temp )

    return answer        

def Partition(n,k):
    res=[[0]*k]                           
    res[0][0]=(n-k+1)                     
    for x in range(1,k):
        res[0][x]=1
    current = res[0][:]
    for i,j in klistcombs(range(k),2):
        while current[i] > current[j]+1:
            current[i] -= 1
            current[j] += 1
            res.append(current[:])
    return res

for i in Partition(9,3):
    print '\n\n',i

HTH,

-- 

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com



From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Jul 17 09:50:54 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 09:50:54 -0400
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
In-Reply-To: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net>
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net>
Message-ID: <oq7kx7fyv5.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Lee]

> There is a piece of software being developed in C for performing
> various scientific calculations on various types of data.  I have been
> asked to investigate the ways in which this could be made into a web
> application - specifically, a portal.

I do not understand what "portal" means.  For me, who does not speak English,
I only learned this word with the PDP-10 series, as meaning an entry point
within an execute-only memory page.

> Reimplementing the program in another language is not one I wish to
> investigate, as I believe the software has gone through months of
> testing already.

Not so long ago, I had something to do which was (probably) similar.
We had a rather complex application in C that was meant to be used in
batch mode on massive input, delivering massive output.  We wanted to
include it in a Web application for processing one set of input at a time.
The problem was that this application had a big start-up time really, as
it preconditioned itself a great deal, studying databases and precompiling
scenarios, for later very speedy processing.

> One solution I understand would be to create an interface to the
> software using Zope & XML-RPC, and then using Zope Content Management
> Framework to create a portal.  Of course, there may be hundreds(?) of
> ways to arrive at the desired results - using e.g.  ASP, PHP, perl.

I spent some time studying many avenues, and experimenting some of them.
Finally, I opted for something very simple, clean, and quick to implement.

* We added a program call option to the big application telling if it was
  used through a server, instead of in batch.  With that option, the
  C program had to produce a recognisable delimiter on its output to
  mean End-of-Result and then flush all its output.  That option was
  also making the program more lenient than drastic about a few errors.
  This application's input and output are line oriented.

* I wrote a small server in Python, to be run on the same machine the big
  application was.  That server essentially listens to a socket, decodes
  the request and produces a fragment of input for the big application.
  It then starts the big application if not already (the Web application
  has to wait a while for its very first request), it also restarts it
  while logging an error if the application died.  It then reads
  the big application's output, but also its standard error (playing
  with select and a doing a few tricks) before packaging a result to return.

* On the Web service machine, I merely wrote another smallish Python module
  meant to receive a request from various CGI-scripts, package it for the
  server, establish a one-shot communication to read the analysis from
  the big application, and return the result to the scripts.  The socket
  communication between that Python module and the Python server is structure
  driven (not line driven), and I merely transit compressed pickled data
  between both.  Very simple to write, and effective in practice.

* The CGI-scripts are written as Python-active HTML pages.  For being able to
  directly embed Python code within HTML pages, I wrote a light and clean,
  yet powerful active templating system.  As we regroup functionalities
  within "import"able functions, Python code stays unobtrusive within HTML.
  I used two levels: the embedded code is rather pure Python, while the
  control of HTML generation with conditionals, loops and other facilities,
  merely uses Python-like concepts, in French, within special HTML comments.

All of this was surprisingly fast to implement.  However, once done, I spent
some time refining the last part of the project (the templating tool), so
it could be used in other projects of ours, as well.  Besides per-project
configurability, I added various facilities so HTML-writers could get more
extensive debugging feedback, better inclusion design, etc.  And merely to
please myself, I managed to clean out internals and to get some more speed:
not really that we needed it, but because I feel better that way. :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 18 21:39:37 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:39:37 -0400
Subject: access keyword
In-Reply-To: <1ewon1i.nf6eyso9tlp8N%see.below@no.spam.es>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEGJKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Javier Bezos]
> Just curiosity. What was the access keyword indended for?

It was never documented so you'd have to dig into the CVS history and
reverse-engineer it from the code.  In general, it was for controlling name
visibility, akin to protected, private, private protected, protected static
private, and const private public protected volatile const private.

plus-5**9-more-i-lost-track-of-ly y'rs  - tim




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 13:50:46 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:50:46 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:44:57 -0600, Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> pisze:

> I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
> 
>   2L**128/2
> 
> which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
> semantics would give an approximation...

That's why I propose rationals.

> If we're going to change basic behaviors it would be better if we
> had a consistent semantic model first.

In my model there are four builtin numeric types: int, rational,
float, and complex. The intent is that floats approximate real numbers.

There are explicit conversions from any to any among int, rational and
float. Conversion of rational and float to int truncates as currently.

+, -, * work for arguments of any two types from these and return
the result in the broader type wrt. the order above.

div, mod, divmod similarly, except that complex arguments are
disallowed.

/ similarly, except that ints are changed to rationals first.

sqrt, sin, cos, exp etc. similarly, except that ints and rationals
are changed to float first.

The behavior of ** depends on the exponent which determines the
narrowest type to which base is converted first. If it's a nonnegative
int, the result has the same type as the base. If it's a negative
int, the base is converted from int to rational. If it's a rational
or float, the base is converted from int or rational to float. If
it's a complex, the base is converted to complex.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul  5 16:17:49 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:17:49 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com> <9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B44CB6D.E8C2FB7F@Lugoj.Com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> I'm not sure how you mean slower, but I tested just now to see, and this is
> the fastest of the four.
[ Test results elided. ]

Not that it would affect the results much in this instance, but you really
should have benchmarked those algorithms on the same input string. And on
varying lengths too.

Now here is something you should add to your benchmarks:

####
from string import digits

def traditional(iters):
    for i in iters:
        result = ""
        for c in '(123)/456-7890':
            if c in digits:
                result = result + c
####

After you benchmark this, I'm sure you'll see that sometimes the "old" and
obvious ways are in fact good choices. And unlike some suggestions, the
above still works on 1.5.2....


From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Wed Jul 11 10:22:04 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 07:22:04 -0700
Subject: SocketServer returns bad file descriptor
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107110622.6d95a609@posting.google.com>

I use the following from an example

class TestHandler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):
    def handle(self):
        import string
        self.wfile.write ("hello\r\n")
        while 1:
           data=self.rfile.readline(512)
           data=string.strip(data)
           self.wfile.write (data + "\r\n")

server=SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer( ('',10002), TestHandler)
server.serve_forever()

and for the client : 

tcpCliSock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
tcpCliSock.connect(ADDR)

while 1:
    data = raw_input('> ')
    if not data: break
    tcpCliSock.send(data)
    data = tcpCliSock.recv(BUFSIZ)
    if not data: break
    print data

tcpCliSock.close()


But every time I connect I get the following error : 

self.rfile + self.connection.makefile('rb', self.rbufsize) error: (9,
'Bad file descriptor')

Any thoughts?

Phill


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:28:02 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:28:02 GMT
Subject: IPC10 Call For Tutorials
References: <3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B@sage.att.com>
Message-ID: <mmh77.25356$EP6.5928862@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Garry Hodgson" <garry at sage.att.com> wrote in message
news:3B5D9A09.A49F7C7B at sage.att.com...
>
> We're now accepting proposals for tutorials for IPC10, the
> annual Python conference.  We had a good batch last year, and
> are hoping to have some equally good ones this year.

How about someone doing "Surving Language Change"?
(Only half jesting.)




From kelly.kranabetter at gems6.gov.bc.ca  Tue Jul 17 19:30:21 2001
From: kelly.kranabetter at gems6.gov.bc.ca (KellyK)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:30:21 GMT
Subject: win32net.NetUserGetInfo error
References: <350a368d.0107131301.1bd4d921@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b54ca51.967568179@nntp.gov.bc.ca>

If the userid is on (a trusted or whatever) domain you could try:

>>> import win32net
>>> import win32api
>>> win32net.NetUserGetInfo("\\\\" + str(win32api.GetDomainName()), win32api.GetUserName(), 1)


On 13 Jul 2001 14:01:38 -0700, pjakobsen at blueairnetworks.com (Peder
Jakobsen) wrote:

>import win32api
>import win32net
>
>userName=win32api.GetUserName()
>info=win32net.NetUserGetInfo(None, userName, 1)
>
>I get the following error
>
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
>api_error: (2221, 'NetUserGetInfo', 'The user name could not be found.')



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 26 13:35:36 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:35:36 -0700
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp7kwv7iag.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-721F92.10353626072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <cp7kwv7iag.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> > (2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
> > rational integers?
> 
> Sorry, you lost me there.  What are these?

Roots of polynomials with integer coefficients, leading coefficient = 1.
E.g. the golden ratio 1+sqrt(5)/2 is a root of the polynomial
x^2-x-1, so it is an algebraic integer.  When mathematicians want to 
specify that a number is what you would call an integer, in the context of 
algebraic numbers, they say "rational integer" to be more specific.

This is irrelevant to the proposed numeric tower int-long-rat-float-complex 
since that doesn't include exact algebraic computation at all, but some 
users would find it useful to be able to add to the tower.  As an example, 
I recently wanted to work with a program for computing the sets of faces of 
a polyhedron -- this was in 4d but to keep things simple I'll talk about 
3d.  A cube or cuboid has the property that three edges and faces meet at 
every vertex, and I wanted to verify that certain polyhedra had similar 
properties.  It would be incorrect to approximate the vertex coordinates by 
floats, because that would change the set of faces -- if you shift a 
cuboid's vertices even a little bit, its nice quadrilateral faces get 
broken into pairs of triangles.  For the cube, this is not a problem, just 
use integers, but the polyhedra I was interested in could not be expressed 
by integer coordinates, they needed exact computation with numbers like 
sqrt(3).  Unfortunately, the program I wanted to use had not been written 
in a way that made it easy to implement and add my own numeric types.  But 
if it had been written in Python 3.0 ...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 06:10:04 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 03:10:04 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
>
> You would be very surprised if email to JKnapka at EarthLink.Net was sent
> to a different user than email to jknapka at earthlink.net.  There are

I'm fairly sure that I don't get personal e-mails (going via my
particular mail provider) when the capitalisation of parts of my
address is changed. Not that I regard this as desirable, but I no
longer regard it as surprising.

[...]

> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

And I never even got to say my piece! ;-)

Just think of PythonLabs as "the Romans" and the community as the
different "revolutionary factions". :-)

Paul


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 19:16:11 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:16:11 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize this
is the
> third time I've said this but I think it would silence a lot of
objections
> and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.

This would break as much or more code as the current proposal.  Read
the PEP.





From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 20:31:16 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:31:16 GMT
Subject: Is it possible to build Python without floats (or other unwanted capabilities)
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com> <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net> <dk9plto33uqab4t2ooil3t543kr7siekmr@4ax.com> <3b5cbf31.247227744@wa.news.verio.net> <sknplt8aighgtg93h3b1r2i3ggqhf8vvd1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cphew1q27m.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:35:49 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
> wrote:
> 
> >No, I meant really no floating point, including software. What if you had
> >zero use for floating point, and wanted the benefit of a small footprint?

Pippy (Python for the Palm) has no floating point.  The input 3.14 is
a syntax error.  They had to considerably hack the source to get this
-- I'm still waiting to get the patches back.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mitchell.morris at cingular.com  Tue Jul  3 10:21:05 2001
From: mitchell.morris at cingular.com (Mitchell Morris)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 14:21:05 GMT
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote in 
news:3d8zib16g7.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us:

> Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:
>> What's EJB got going for it, anyway?
> 
> Buggered if I know.  Perhaps they provide a frictionless method for
> transferring a business's money to consultants.
> 
> --amk

As amazing as it might seem, the Java hype machine wasn't really getting any 
traction until J2EE came along. Now, suddenly, Java has a niche where 
developers and development shops are willing to work around non-portable 
manual-task-intensive vendor lock-in environments that are rapaciously 
priced. Even if you don't see what the big deal is, you do recognize from 
their behavior that they think it is one (I hope).

EJB:Java :: Zope:Python

That is, it is an environment and a framework where the developer provides 
the "business rule" logic, potentially in a dynamically reloadable form, and 
the framework ensures that the rule is applied when the matching inputs are 
supplied. It also provides for applying an object-relational layer over a 
database, with the database-backed persistence being controlled by either 
the framework or the developer-supplied code. As of the latest release, it 
also now provides a message-based event architecture. This means that the 
developer doesn't need to write a huge chunk of their required 
infrastructure, but can press on to the domain-specific bits.

As a side benefit, most EJB containers supply webheads with dynamic page 
generation (servlets and JSP), so it is (potentially) a single point of 
contact to buy/maintain/service everything a company needs to perform nearly 
all their Internet business.

All in all, it's been a pretty big win for Java. Conventional wisdom and 
some non-peer-reviewed studies suggest that Java per se provides very little 
leverage over C++, that the average developer doesn't build Java solutions 
any faster or more bug-free than they build C++ ones, and that selecting 
Java over C++ means you'll need faster processors and more memory because of 
the concomitant runtime costs. In spite of those tremendous disadvantages, a 
shop can deploy an Internet-based thunk of functionality in Java much faster 
than C++ because they can just go buy an application server for Java and C++ 
still doesn't have one.

if-only-it-wasn't-Java!-ly y'rs,
+Mitchell


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 17:52:03 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:52:03 -0500
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121323300.21929-100000@bms>
References: <021e01c10b04$74352820$0300a8c0@arthur>
        <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107121323300.21929-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <15182.7171.508504.946071@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bruce> """
    Bruce> import os
    Bruce> os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')
    Bruce> """

    Bruce> Is Ok when you are in the Python Interpreter, but would you do...

    Bruce> $ python -c "import os;os.system('cat file*1 file*2 file*3 | tee file4 | wc -cwl >> file5')"

    Bruce> ...from the command line that comes up when you login?

Well, no, but I might run this file as "python mycode.py" (ten-minute hack -
buyer beware) and type either Python or shell commands at the interpreter
prompt:

    import code

    class Console(code.InteractiveConsole):
        def runsource(self, source, filename="<input>", symbol="single",rec=0):
            import os
            from code import softspace
            import sys
            self.locals.update({"os": os, "softspace": softspace, "sys": sys})
            try:
                from codeop import compile_command
                code = compile_command(source, filename, symbol)
            except SyntaxError:
                source = """x = os.system('''%s''')""" % source
                return self.runsource(source, filename, symbol, rec=1)
            except (OverflowError, ValueError):
                # Case 1
                self.showsyntaxerror(filename)
                return 0

            if code is None:
                # Case 2
                return 1

            # Case 3
            try:
                exec code in self.locals
            except SystemExit:
                raise
            except:
                if rec == 1:
                    raise
                source = """x = os.system('''%s''')""" % source
                return self.runsource(source, filename, symbol, rec=1)
            else:
                if softspace(sys.stdout, 0):
                    print
            return 0

    Console().interact()

The output looks like

    % python mycode.py
    Python 2.1.1c1 (#13, Jul 10 2001, 17:30:38) 
    [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    (Console)
    >>> wc -l /etc/termcap
      16412 /etc/termcap
    >>> f = open("/etc/termcap")
    >>> f.readlines()[10]
    '# Please e-mail changes to terminfo at thyrsus.com; the old termcap at berkeley.edu\n'
    >>> 

;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From sabren at manifestation.com  Mon Jul  9 13:09:03 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:09:03 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Credit card processing on the web
In-Reply-To: <Z6i27.49545$he.3417932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107091204300.28677-100000@mercury.sabren.com>

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, Steve Holden wrote:

> I've been doing some work on credit card transaction verification, and as a
> result of certain experiences with a third party vendor, my client has
> requested that I look for another verification company.
> 
> Has anyone actually used Python to verify credit card data? If so, with
> which company or companies? If you have time to post about your experiences
> I would be grateful.
> 
> In fact, we don't even *have* to use Python, although the work I have done
> so far did, socket-based with mx/amkCrypto to implement the Blowfish
> encryption. I'd prefer to use Python, though. Just because I can.


Hey Steve,

I have a library for dealing with online payments through the web at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/payment/ .. There's no web page or
documentation for it yet, but the code is quite small and hopefully
readable... There's also some unit tests..

It works with Authorize.net and verisign and requires M2Crypto.

Cheers,

- Michal
----------------------------------------------------------------------
let me host you! http://www.sabren.com       me: http://www.sabren.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------




From andre.risnes at tenpipes.no  Thu Jul 26 06:23:40 2001
From: andre.risnes at tenpipes.no (André Risnes)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:23:40 +0200
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <h3R77.130$bXi.170753536@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <9jor4c$5vm$1@lise.netcom.no>

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message
news:h3R77.130$bXi.170753536 at news.telia.no...
> What are my options? How hard could it be to create a custom protocoll for
> distributing addresses of running nodes among the nodes themselves in a
> effective manner?
>
> Thomas
>

If the problem is the overhead of parsing a large and compex data structure
sent over SOAP rather than the overhead of handling a large number
of SOAP requests, you could perhaps make a semi-customized prototocol,
by sending one large string with the data (maybe compressed) over SOAP,
and (dis)assembling that string "maually" at each end.

--
Andr? Risnes




From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 15:57:29 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:57:29 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B50A429.59B8FB7B@lemburg.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [M.-A. Lemburg]
> > ...
> > I'm not picky about the '='; if people don't want it, I'll
> > happily drop it from the PEP. The only reason I think it may be
> > worthwhile adding it is because it simply looks right:
> >
> > directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
> >
> > rather than
> >
> > directive unicodeencoding 'latin-1'
> 
> The hangup is finding someone who cares enough <0.9 wink> to change the text
> and implementation of the directive PEP.  There was no significant debate
> about the proposed directive syntax in that, and in years past similar
> crusades that did attract debate floundered on the inability to reach
> consensus on overall syntax; it's not a good sign that the first proposed
> use wanted syntax the PEP doesn't support.

Well, I guess I would care enough :-) Martin has to change the PEP
though, since he's the PEP author (and currently on vacation if
I'm not mistaken).

I think that supporting the typical "key = value" format is
quite reasonable for setting flags in the compiler. The PEP's
original idea of replacing your "from __future__ import spam"
does not require this format, since is only needs to support
switches.

> > ...
> > Still, if people would like to use Unicode literals for module
> > doc-strings, then they should place the directive *before* the
> > doc-string accepting that this could break some tools (the PEP
> > currently does not restrict the placement of the directive).
> > Alternatively, we could allow placing the directive into a
> > comment, e.g.
> >
> > #!/usr/local/python
> > #directive unicodeencoding = 'utf-8'
> > u"""
> >      This is a Unicode doc-string
> > """
> 
> Another alternative:
> 
> #!/usr/local/python
> directive unicodeencoding 'utf-8'
> 
> __doc__ = u"""
>         This is a Unicode doc-string
> """
> 
> That is, the module docstring is just the module's __doc__ attr, and that
> can be bound explicitly (a trick I've sometimes use for *computed* module
> docstrings).

Hmm, that looks a little cumbersome, but it would work (at least for
doc string extraction tools which import the module rather than
tokenize it).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From nospam at nospam.com  Sat Jul 28 09:18:26 2001
From: nospam at nospam.com (Grace)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:18:26 +0900
Subject: from __future__ import generators not working in IDLE
Message-ID: <xUy87.107718$ph7.20561327@news.hananet.net>

"from __future__ import generators" does not work in IDLE which is included
in Python 2.2a1.

See the copy&pasted text from the real IDLE running:

>>> from __future__ import generators
>>>
>>> <string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the
future
<string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
<string>:2: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
def f():
 yield 1

SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>

Is there any workarounds?

Thanks in advance.

Grace.



From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul  8 20:14:11 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 00:14:11 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
Message-ID: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com>

I have a two part question about accepting keyboard input in python:

Is there a standard way to read one keystroke at a time rather than
doing line input via raw_input()?

For some reason, I cannot seem to catch Ctrl-C when it is typed in response
to a raw_input() call.  This code still blows out of the python interpreter
when the user keys in Ctrl-C:

try:
	x=raw_input()
except KeyBoardInterrupt:
	# Handle the Ctrl-C and regroup
        ...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From wware at world.std.com  Tue Jul  3 12:09:52 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:09:52 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <xll07.7615$B7.1404761@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <GFwnKG.MnC@world.std.com>

Grant Edwards (grante at visi.com) wrote:
> If this were a simple, hard-realtime system with response time
> requirements in the milliseconds, I'd stay away from Python,
> away from C++, and away from dynamic memory allocation.
> However, with response time requirements in the hundreds of
> milliseconds and a problem domain that probably requires
> dynamic memory allocation I think Python would be suitable.

In a case like this you could perhaps take the RT-Linux approach, which
runs Linux as a low-priority task in a RTOS. The high priority
things can be device drivers, special interrupt handlers, etc. It should
probably be possible to do something similar with Python as a low priority
task on a RTOS. In fact one could just install Python on an RT-Linux
system and you'd have it. The fast stuff would need to be coded in C
or assembler, but it's unlikely to need dynamic memory allocation. Having
Linux available might allow you to place a bound on the memory used by
Python, assuming you wanted to do that.

-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Tue Jul  3 19:46:24 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:46:24 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
Message-ID: <OFE1931693.0C45812A-ON88256A7E.00816AD5@i2.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
<snip>
>of our PDM tool with Autocad uses the latter's built-in VBA and
<snip>

Alex, I didn't know your company did PDM.  I thought you might be
interested in knowing that our product -- currently dubbed SRM (Supplier
Relationship Management) by market analysts -- has as a subset a "PDM-lite"
type functionality: BOM analysis, product info management, red-lining,
part/BOM change approval, etc.  Of interest is that it is written in Jython
(using Swing).  We used to do everything in C++, but now its all Java on
the server side with Jython/Swing for all desktop-based GUI's (and HTML for
some of the basic stuff).  I'm extremely pleased with our choice of using
Jython/Swing instead of pure Java/Swing for the UI stuff!  (And our
customers seem happy with the result, too!).

Jim





From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 11:19:49 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:19:49 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995978334.29554.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <su3rltc8d88jrjdv9v73otlbsrajleqs21@4ax.com>

I hate countering arguments from someone who supports my opinion,
but...

On 24 Jul 2001 08:35:51 -0400, com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A.
Craig) wrote:

>As examples:
>
><list>*<list> raises a TypeError

Given that other arithmetic operations have been hijacked for other
jobs (concat etc) with lists, there *is* no sensible meaning for this.
In another universe, interpreting lists as vectors might have been
handy I suppose - but not really an everyday case I'd have thought.


><int>**<negative int> raises a ValueError

I believe Guido is already changing this.


><rational>**<rational> would presumably raise a TypeError

Or give a symbolic result ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul 22 13:16:13 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:16:13 GMT
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9lm2hb.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:23:48 -0700, zeke <Zeke at xyz.net> wrote:
> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
> job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
> Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 
> zeke
> 

vim - http://www.vim.org

for python autoindent, put this line in your .vimrc:

:autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.py set expandtab smartindent cinw=try,if,def,
except,for,while,else,elif,class,finally

(it has to be one line)

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  8 03:06:52 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 11:06:52 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <3b47cfba.1333358077@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080954320.4123-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Bengt Richter wrote:

>On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:55:56 -0700, "John Roth"
><johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
>>I don't see why it couldn't be of much more utility. The big problem is
>>performance, since you're talking about a two level interpreter. The last
>>time I saw anything quite that slow was a /360 running a 1410 emulator
>>running a 650 simulator.
>I am getting the impression there's a lot of OF's around here ;-)
>I remember when you could go to any IBM office and get an armload
>of system and programming manuals just for the asking. The 650 manual
>was the first computer manual I ever looked at ;-)
>
>>
>>Very interesting idea. The trouble is, I can't see it being really small.
>>Making it cleanly extensible seems to require some of the features that
>>support extendability, such as namespaces (Forth dictionaries), etc.
>>
>>Anyone want to work on it - either technically or politically?
>Well, the nuclear waste problem is probably the most eternal thing
>we've managed to create yet, so there ought to be application
>for 'Eternal' somehow with that ;-/
>
>Actually, I think there are people very concerned about the viability
>of digital archives from the point of view of survivability of
>the access methods and devices. I'd bet the Library of Congress has
>folks worrying about this.

I am glad to see biological examples. Eternal program is like seed
which could grow around small rightly built environment.

The problem, as I see it now, is scientific: which features
to include to the core. For example, if one want to do logic,
there is only one operation needed (i do not know how to call it in
English:

X    Y      X/Y
0    0      1
1    0      1
0    1      1
1    1      0

With this single operation you can build any boolean operation:

not X  ==  X/X
X and Y  == not(X/Y) == (X/Y)/(X/Y)
X or Y == (not X)/(not Y) == (X/X)/(Y/Y)

and so on!

I believe, that there is some set of operations which is as general as
Turing machine BUT is easily evolutionable into something practical.
The above means you need to implement only one operation and library
will create: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, ... whatever.

Same applies to arithmetics. Field operations need to be
supplied: x+y, -x, x*y, 1/x.

I think Eternal will also need strong text-processing capabilities.
Thus minimal DFA regex need to be built in. (this is beneficial to
core itself, because it will need some parser and the parser could be
available for program evolution as well.) Deterministic Turing machine
is DFA + potentially unbounded memory to play on.

It's really interesting reasearch which (probably) nobody has done
yet.

State of the Eternal machine could be comprised of a dictionary of
lists of strings (which are keys to the dictionaries or literals)
(Pythoner's thinking showing ;-) and interpreter will be just
executing elements from some list while not told to switch to another
one. Program could be self-modifying all the way, like in Lisp.

At first, only main interpreter loop entry exists, entry for the
interpreter EXEC, dictionary/list access operations, IO and
fundamental arithm. and logic things. ALL these could be replaced later by
more advanced versions from library.

def core_add():
  memory["STACK"][0:2] =  [int(memory["STACK"][0]) + int(memory["STACK"][1])]

memory = {
'EXEC': core_exec,
'MAIN': ['READ', 'EXEC', 'MAIN'],  # tail recursion need catching
'READ': core_read_input,
# ...
'ADD': core_add,
'IP': ['0', 'MAIN']
'STACK': [],
}

interpreter(input, memory) -> output


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 08, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The days of the digital watch are numbered" _/




From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Fri Jul 13 11:12:18 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:12:18 -0700
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru> <07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP> <oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca> <mailman.994950637.23678.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <130720010812189874%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.994950637.23678.python-list at python.org>, Andreas
Jung <andreas at digicool.com> wrote:

> Is there a common opinion what "poor writing style" is ? :-)

Yes...in fact there are several.  (See, for example, the ongoing thread
about lambda.)

  --john


From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul 31 04:31:06 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 10:31:06 +0200
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B@lp.airnews.net> <4s1vMVAEtYZ7Ew4w@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <m3n15lijp1.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> As for abominations has anyone else used the Fame programming language?

No, but what is the interesting thing about Fame?


- Markus


From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 09:00:22 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 08:00:22 -0500
Subject: SocketServer and threading mixin?
References: <m24rshy4xk.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <3B4EB5A2.6BEC1DCA@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <m2sng1vva1.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> writes:

> Greg Copeland wrote:
> > 
> > I've been following the bug report on the SocketServer module
> > and how it is broken with the threading mixin.  The bug report
> > has been closed and the people that posted offered several
> > solutions, however, from what I've seen, SocketServer, the
> > module, is still broken and requires a minor patch or two to
> > work correctly.  Does anyone know what the plans are to address
> > this issue down the road?
> 
> Guido checked in SocketServer.__version__='0.4' and announced it on
> the bug tracking page. If you read the page carefully you will
> notice that.
> 
> The various URLs were posted here several times during the last
> days. Actually I won't repost them because I'm currently trying not
> to mutate to a SocketServer.ThreadingMixin-in-Python-2.1 robot.
> 
> The only URL I'd like to suggest today is: 
> 
>  
> http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?as_ugroup=comp.lang.python
> 
> Ciao, Michael.

While I do thank you for answering this, your tone is undesired and uncalled
for.  I just went back and checked and the things that you implied that I
should of read.  Simply put, they were not there the last time I read it.
Period.  If you read the date on the follow ups on the bug, you would
of known that the latest comments are very new and therefore, could of
easily not been read by a current poster asking about the information.  I
did not bother to monitor the thread as they had long since closed the bug
(which clearly should not of been closed as it had not been officially fixed).

Prior to posting, I specifially did web, news and bug searches to find out
what was going on with it (dejanews, google, sourceforge and python).

Next time, if you are annoyed having to post a reply, please don't.

Having said that, I do thank you for the polite responce you gave to my
encryption question.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!


Greg


From arthur.gordon at thales-esecurity.com  Tue Jul 24 06:23:10 2001
From: arthur.gordon at thales-esecurity.com (Arthur Gordon)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 03:23:10 -0700
Subject: Design By Contract in python
Message-ID: <b2674b3.0107240223.279eb05@posting.google.com>

An implementation of Design by Contract in Python, this uses the
document strings to hold the pre and post conditions as per the paper
http://www.swe.uni-linz.ac.at/publications/abstract/TR-SE-97.24.html

Enjoy

-Arthur

--------------- cut here -----------------------------
"""FILENAME:
        DesignByContract.py
   DESCRIPTION:
        An implementation of Design by Contract in Python 2.1 
        based on a paper by R. Plosch @ Johannes Kepler Universitiat
Linz.
        which can be found at:
http://www.swe.uni-linz.ac.at/publications/abstract/TR-SE-97.24.html
   AUTHOR:
       Arthur Gordon <arthur.gordon at thales-esecurity.com>
   HISTORY:
       18-Jul-01: Added support for old and param namespace.
       17-Jul-01: Added PrintDbCTrace - which prints out the stack
upto the DbC classes, no further.
       12-Jul-01: First attempt.
"""
import types
import sys
import traceback
import copy

if sys.hexversion <0x200000:
    print 'DesignByContract.py requires Python version 2.0 or
greater.'
    sys.exit(0)

KEYWORD_INVARIANT   = 'invar:'
KEYWORD_TYPE        = 'type:'
KEYWORD_PARAMETER   = 'param:'
KEYWORD_REQUIRE     = 'require:'
KEYWORD_ENSURE      = 'ensure:'

LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT   = len(KEYWORD_INVARIANT)
LEN_KEYWORD_TYPE        = len(KEYWORD_TYPE)
LEN_KEYWORD_PARAMETER   = len(KEYWORD_PARAMETER)
LEN_KEYWORD_REQUIRE     = len(KEYWORD_REQUIRE)
LEN_KEYWORD_ENSURE      = len(KEYWORD_ENSURE)

TRUE = 1==1

""" Used for String to Type conversion.
    asType ={   'NoneType':types.NoneType, ...}
"""
asType ={}
for ty in dir(types):                                           #
Create table of types
    if type(eval('types.'+ty)) == types.TypeType:
        asType[ty] = eval('types.'+ty)


def checkType(param, typeAsString):
    """ Checks the param against the string description of the type.
        Special case any accepts all types.
    """
    if typeAsString == 'AnyType':           # accept any
        return TRUE        
    else:
        return type(param) == asType[typeAsString]           # Check
type is correct
""" Violation handling
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Examples for catching exceptions.

    try:
       TestStack()
        pass
    except DbCFormatError,msg:
        PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_tb(sys.exc_info()[2]),str(msg),"FORMAT
ERROR:")
    except DbCViolationError,msg:
        PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_tb(sys.exc_info()[2]),str(msg))


"""
class DbCViolationError(Exception):
    """ Error: Contract Violation """
    pass

class DbCFormatError(Exception):
    """ Error: Incorrect Contract Format """
    pass


def FormatDbCTrace(trace, line, msg= "VIOLATION:"):
    """ Formats the trace without going back into the DbC classes """
    retval = []
    retval.append('='*60)
    retval.append(msg+line)
    retval.append('='*60)
    FIELD_FILENAME  = 0
    FIELD_LINENO    = 1
    trace_slice = 0                             # Find where trace
back to.
    while not trace[trace_slice][FIELD_FILENAME].endswith('DesignByContract.py')
or\
              trace[trace_slice][FIELD_LINENO] >DBC_LAST_LINE:
        trace_slice += 1                                
    retval.extend( traceback.format_list(trace[0:trace_slice]))
    return retval

def PrintDbCTrace(trace, msg, str = "VIOLATION:"):
    for line in  FormatDbCTrace(trace,msg,str):
        print line

def LogDbCTrace(trace, line, fname='violation.txt'):
    f = open(fname,'w+')
    f.writelines(FormatDbCTrace(trace,line))
    f.close()    

def contractViolationBehaviour(object,line):
    """	Options write to screen 
            write to log file
            raise Exception
    """
    PrintDbCTrace(traceback.extract_stack(),line)  # Pass the stack
trace
    #raise DbCViolationError(line)                            # Raise
exception
    #LogDbCTrace(traceback.extract_stack(),line)    # Write to log
file
    



""" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
"""
def getParameters(orignal_line):
    line = orignal_line
    comment_start = line.find('#')        
    if comment_start != -1:                                   #remove
trailing comments
        line = line[:comment_start]
    line =line.split(',')                           # split by ,
    line = map(lambda x:str(x).split(':'),line)     # split by :
    for pair in line:
        if len(pair) != 2:                          # should be two
            raise DbCFormatError(orignal_line)
        pair[0] = pair[0].strip()
        pair[1] = pair[1].strip()
    return line

""" print "getParameters(' list: ListType, another:IntType       #
Should work')"
    print getParameters(' list: ListType, another:IntType       #
Should work')
"""



DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS =
['_wrapped_object','_violationProc','_docstr']
class DbCClassWrapper:
    """ Wrapper for classes to check Contracts. """
    
    def __init__(self, object, violationProc =
contractViolationBehaviour):
        """ param: object:InstanceType
        
            Note the leading underscores are required on variable
names as we are
            sharing name space with the wrapped object
            We should check the class invaraints as we have just been
called.
        """
        self._wrapped_object = object                               #
Reference to wrapped instance
        self._violationProc = violationProc                         #
Who you going to call?
        self._wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper = self                    #
Attach ourselves to the Wrapped object
        if not self._wrapped_object.__doc__:
            self._docstr = None
        else:
            self._docstr = self._wrapped_object.__doc__.splitlines()  
 # Turn it into a list
            self._docstr = map(lambda x:x.strip(),self._docstr)       
 # remove leading/trailing whitespace
            self.checkClassInvariants()                               
 # Since we did not check at __init__
            
                            
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        """ param: name:StringType """
        if name in DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS:		                  
         # Access private vars.
            attribute = self.__dict__[name]
        else:
            attribute = getattr(self._wrapped_object, name)
        if type(attribute) == types.MethodType:			            # If it
is a method...
            attribute = DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper(
                           self._wrapped_object, attribute)         #
...Wrap it
        return attribute
    
    def __setattr__(self,name,val):
        """ param: name:StringType, val:AnyType """
        if name in DBC_CLASS_WRAPPER_PRIVATE_VARS:                    
               # Access private vars.
            self.__dict__[name]= val
        else:
            setattr(self._wrapped_object, name, val)
            self.checkClassInvariants()

    def checkClassInvariants(self):        
        """ Check the invariants for the wrapped class
            Protects itself against self.docstr == None
        """
        if self._docstr:    
            for line in self._docstr:
                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT):                
 # line starts invariant:
                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:]):
                        self._violationProc(self._wrapped_object,line)
                            
                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_TYPE):
                    for p in getParameters(line[LEN_KEYWORD_TYPE:]):
                        arg = getattr(self._wrapped_object, p[0])
                        if not checkType(arg,p[1]):
                           
self._violationProc(self._wrapped_object,line)

    
                    
    class DbCMethodWrapper:         
        """ A Wrapper for methods """
        def __init__(self, object, method):
            """ param: object:InstanceType, method:MethodType  """
            self.wrapped_object = object
            self.method = method
            if method.__doc__:                                      #
has documentation string
                self.docstr = method.__doc__.splitlines()             
 # Turn it into a list
                self.docstr = map(lambda x:x.strip(),self.docstr)     
 # remove leading/trailing whitespace
            else:
                self.docstr = None
            self.violationProc =
self.wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper._violationProc
            self.private_vars = {}
            
        def __call__(self,*args):
            """ param: args:AnyType
                Only bother to call pre and post condition if you have
a doc string for this method
                However we can still check the class invariants at the
end.
            """
            if not self.docstr:
                retval = apply(self.method,args)			                #
Call the method
            else:    
                self.private_vars = self.getWrappedClassPrivateVars() 
     # shallow-copy
                self.checkBefore(args)                                
     # Pre-conditions
                self.copyPrivateVarsToOld()                           
     # Copy members to old
                #self.displayPrivateVars()
                retval = apply(self.method,args)			                #
Call the method

                self.private_vars.update(self.getWrappedClassPrivateVars())
                self.checkAfter()					                        #
Post-conditions
                del self.private_vars
                self.private_vars = {}
            self.wrapped_object._dbc_wrapper.checkClassInvariants()   
     #always check class invars !
            return retval

        def getWrappedClassPrivateVars(self):
            retval = {}
            for key in self.wrapped_object.__dict__.keys():
                if not key in
['docstr','_dbc_wrapper','__builtins__']: # dont whant to copy these
objects
                    retval[key] = self.wrapped_object.__dict__[key]
            return retval
        
        class DbCDictWrapper:
            """ class that allows us to use the old. and para.
notation in the DbC expressions."""
            pass
        
        def copyPrivateVarsToOld(self):
            """ Copy methods private vars to old """    
            if self.private_vars:                                   #
may not have any
                old =
DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper.DbCDictWrapper()
                if self.private_vars.has_key('__builtins__'):
                    del self.private_vars['__builtins__']
                for key in self.private_vars.keys():
                    if not key in ['param']:                        #
dont copy param over
                       
setattr(old,key,copy.deepcopy(self.private_vars[key]))     # deep-copy
                self.private_vars['old'] = old

        def displayPrivateVars(self):
            """ for debug """
            print '-'*60
            for i in self.private_vars.keys():
                if not i in ['__builtins__']:
                    print '[',i,'] =',self.private_vars[i]
                    if i in ['param','old']:
                            print '  ',self.private_vars[i].__dict__
            print '-'*60

        def checkBefore(self,*args):
            """ param: args:AnyType
                Pre-conditions 
                Check param, require, invars
                require: self.docstr != None
            """
            args = args[0]                                          #
unpack args from tuple
            param = DbCClassWrapper.DbCMethodWrapper.DbCDictWrapper()
            self.private_vars['param'] = param
            for line in self.docstr:				                # For each
line...
                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_PARAMETER):
                    parameters =
getParameters(line[LEN_KEYWORD_PARAMETER:])
                    #print 'parameters',parameters
                    for i in range(len(parameters)):                  
         # for each param type pair
                        #if checkType(type(args[i]) !=
asType[parameters[i][1]]:           # Check type is correct
                        if not checkType(args[i],parameters[i][1]):   
       # Check type is correct
                           
self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
                       
setattr(self.private_vars['param'],parameters[i][0],args[i])        #
assign to params
        
                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_REQUIRE):
                    if not
eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_REQUIRE:],self.private_vars):
                        self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
                
                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT): 
                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:],
self.private_vars):
                        self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,line)
            
                
        def checkAfter(self):
            """ Post-conditions 
                This checks the ensure and method invars
                require: self.docstr != None
            """
            for line in self.docstr:
                if line.startswith(KEYWORD_ENSURE):
                    if not eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_ENSURE:],
self.private_vars):
                        self.displayPrivateVars()
            
                       
self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,':"'+line+'"')
                
                elif line.startswith(KEYWORD_INVARIANT):
                    if not
eval(line[LEN_KEYWORD_INVARIANT:],self.private_vars):
                       
self.violationProc(self.wrapped_object,':"'+line+'"')
            
            
            
DBC_LAST_LINE = 297     # Don not dump the stack any further than this
line number for DbCErrors.

    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    class Stack:
        """ A simple test class
            invar: list != None                         # Should work
            type: list: ListType                        # Should work
        """
        def __init__(self):
            self.list = []
            
        def ppush(self,val):
            """ param:   val:IntType                        # Should
work
                require: param.val >1                       # Should
work
                invar:  list != None                        # Should
work
                ensure: len(list) == len(old.list)+1        # Should
work
                """
            self.list.append(val)
        
        def ppop(self):
            """ invar:  list != None                        # Should
work
                ensure: len(list) == len(old.list)-1        # Should
work
                """
    
            return self.list.pop()

        def inc(self,val):
            """ param:  val:IntType
                require: another > 1                     # Should pass
                ensure: old.another > 100                     # Should
fail
                ensure: another == old.another + 1                    
# Should pass
                ensure: another == old.another + 10                   
 # Should fail
                """
            self.another = self.another+ 1
               
    import unittest    
    class DesignByContractTests(unittest.TestCase):
        def setUp(self):
            def onContractViolation(object,line):
                raise DbCViolationError(line)               # Raise
exception
            aStack = Stack()                                # Call the
constructor for class
            self.ws = DbCClassWrapper(aStack,onContractViolation)     
   # And wrap it
    	    
        def checkPushValidValue(self):
            self.ws.ppush(10)
            
        def checkPushInValidType(self):
            self.failUnlessRaises(DbCViolationError,self.ws.ppush,'asd')

        def checkPushInValidValue(self):
            self.failUnlessRaises(DbCViolationError,self.ws.ppush,-1)

        def checkPopValid(self):
            self.ws.ppush(10)
            assert self.ws.ppop() == 10
                    
            
    suite = unittest.makeSuite(DesignByContractTests,'check')
    retval = unittest.TextTestRunner().run(suite)


From andreas at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 09:43:32 2001
From: andreas at digicool.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:43:32 -0500
Subject: Bug in __imul__
Message-ID: <013e01c10a0f$7a013050$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9ihg33$irjha$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> Does it bother anyone that
>
> a *= 3 + 4

means a = a * (3+4)
>
> returns a different value from
>
> a = a * 3 + 4

means a = (a*3) + 4

Andreas






From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 16 13:06:12 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:06:12 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62rq.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdbsmkrhqa.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <8aF47.11957$p7.3568331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:etdbsmkrhqa.fsf at quiche-lorraine.mit.edu...
>
> > I'm pretty sure this will work, though I've not tested. C.get(item)
> > will return None (thus false) if item was not in B, and 1 (thus true)
> > if item was in B. You should definitely give a try to this version.
>
> Yes, but what if item == None, or item == ''?

In general, this is a valid objection.  In this context, all items are
non-null strings.

Terry J. Reedy





From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Mon Jul  9 10:59:52 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 14:59:52 GMT
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <3B49C795.D832D2FD@wwc.com>

Ville Vainio wrote:

> web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) writes:
>
> > I pray to the Python Gods "please bless us with a Python JDBC
> > counterpart" and all in the world will be in balance.
>
> Amen.
>

In

    http://gui-lords.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=1

Shawn Gordon says about Rekall, his MS ACCESS-like product:

. . .Some distinguishing characteristics for Rekall from MS Access is that
the scripting language is Python, and the database access is through KDE-DB,
which means you can swap out the native xBase format for anything that has a
KDE-DB plug in, so you could go to DB2 and 10,000 users  with this
application if you wanted. Now that Qt3 has this new database component we
have to see how that affects KDE-DB, it seems there is some overlap but not
totally. . .




From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 16 13:50:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:50:02 GMT
Subject: Boolean idioms (was Re: re Challenge: More Compact?)
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <9iuqec$1bh$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B53270E.743A3613@tundraware.com>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list at python.org>,
> Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> >
> >Well, it's un-Pythonic to try to emulate Perl undef via Python None; it's
> >idiomatic to return 0 for false and 1 for true, [...]
> 
> I know that it's a frequent Python idiom to use 0/1, but where is it
> specifically un-Pythonic to use None/1?
> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)
> 
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
> Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
> 
> "How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
> for Miss America?"  --AEN

Well, in the spirit of really being anal-retentive, I use:

FALSE =  1==0
TRUE  = not FALSE


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 23:08:46 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:08:46 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B448.78DBC7D0@home.net>
Message-ID: <2X487.31971$EP6.8333313@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B60B448.78DBC7D0 at home.net...

> I think this has been dismissed a little too quickly. I suppose I
can't
> comment on what "way too much work" is, as I really don't know how
much
> work it will be, and I'm unlikely to be doing any of it. I do think
that
> it is a lot of work for system administrators to keep all the old
> interpreters around (particularly on new systems, it could be a fair
bit
> of work to get a working copy of Python 2.1 on RedHat 13.2 a few
years
> from now!)

Now that Pythonlabs has control of the distributions, it can keep
source tarballs and windows installers available indefinitely.
Perhaps a process of collecting (and keeping) miscellaneous
installation experience for a given distribution could be instituted.

Examples: install @ pythonlabs.com; or autocollection of postings with
subject like
Install: Python2.2, Linux, Mandrake

> I'm also not so sure about the emulate "exactly" issue. New features
> that have been added but don't break old code

As Tim Peters and someone else convincingly explained in the last few
days, *any* change that changes external behaviour can break some
code.  We just normally do not count it as such when the code broken
depended on a bug or on undefined behavior (unless it is our own
tested and distributed code!).

Terry J. Reedy





From mcherm at destiny.com  Wed Jul 25 18:19:14 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (mcherm at destiny.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:19:14 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <126bbfa70.fa70126bb@destiny.com>

> If Guido does change Python in the way it currently appears it will,
> and if so many people disagree with the way it is developing, then
> why not stand up and call for people to ignore the dictator, and
> keep Python the way it should be? 
> 
> This new version of Python will not be one that I will be happy to 
use. 
> If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
> able to depose the dictatorship, and create a stable and sensible 
> system for developing Python (not Python++). If this means forking 
> Python, then that will be done.

I just wanted to say two things.

  1. I'm really glad that Python is open source, so that you have
     the ability to do exactly this, WITHOUT a revolution. Just
     fork the code anytime you like.

  2. It's clear that this issue brought forth a GREAT deal of heat
     and vociferous arguments on all sides. There are good reasons
     for that. Many people were scared (perhaps rightly so) that
     Guido was precipitiously making a dangerous/unwise change.
     However, at this point (only a FEW DAYS LATER), I have the
     impression that the matter is being considered carefully, that
     all opinions have been listened to, that great care will be
     taken in making code-breaking changes, and that decisions are
     being made with an eye toward improving the language. In
     short, after backsliding momentarily, Guido has impressed me 
     once again.

-- Michael Chermside





From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 06:57:59 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 06:57:59 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com> <usng3ckqk.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <630rktsr41h6huiqj0rpp2lobc1rgqjulr@4ax.com>

On 11 Jul 2001 15:46:11 -0400, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:

>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps
>> asking for a while --- and folks here keep answering.
>> 
>> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to
>> follow and the translation into Python show me where I am missing
>> Python techniques.
>
>There is, however, a risk in this technique as a single line
>translation from another language to Python is often a bit too fine
>grained to really serve as a good guide for translation, especially
>from a language such as C.  The two languages do not necessarily
>provide the same functionality per line of code so you risk force
>fitting the translation since you don't have any surrounding context.
>

This is absolutely true.

>
>In these cases so far, it's largely been translating a C library call
>into Python library calls so the one-to-one holds better than usual,
>but I do think that even newbies will be able to get a better grasp of
>the concepts with slightly larger code snippets.  E.g., what you use
>strtok or sscanf in a C program for, you might attack quite
>differently in a Python program, even if direct translations of strtok
>and sscanf exist.  (Then again, you might use the direct translation,
>but making that choice is assisted by more original context).
>

This was my point. Most examples here are of a "better" nature, so a few
one-liners did not hurt any. In fact, it was some fun.

On the other hand, I fully expect that anything I do in Python should be different
from C --- as different as going from assembler to C was back then.

There is a post on the ng today where a fellow relates fixing a newbie's code that
was 100 lines and done in C idiom (python language, of course) with 6 lines that ran
much faster. This is what I would expect.

I just want to know the other ways also.
 

>Note I'm certainly not proposing that such requests not be answered,
>nor that they can't be helpful, but only that I think more benefit
>could be gained (by the original poster as well as other readers) with
>some addition information and/or sample code in the translation
>requests.
>

No argument.

>But c.l.p is certainly one of the best communities in which I've
>participated in this regard - we'll answer just about anything as well
>as possible (even while suggesting better ways to phrase the questions
>

There is a great group of folks here. The worst flame that I have seen would not keep
me warm in winter --- even here in Orlando!

Regards, Joe


From lee.reilly at usa.net  Mon Jul 16 23:29:26 2001
From: lee.reilly at usa.net (Lee)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 04:29:26 +0100
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
Message-ID: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net>

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone reading this could be kind enough to offer me some
advice. There is a piece of software being developed in C for performing
various scientific calculations on various types of data. I have been
asked to investigate the ways in which this could be made into a web
application - specifically, a portal. Reimplementing the program in
another language is not one I wish to investigate, as I believe the
software has gone through months of testing already.

I can think of a few solutions, but I would appreciate the insight and
advice of those with more experience than myself. I am working on the
premise that the software written in C will be running on server X and
the software creating the interface and the portal will be on server Y
(with a database on server Z). I have a little experience with Java
Servlets and Zope, and believe that both could be used to implement
this. This may also be an opportunity to develop new skills like
learning perl, etc.

One solution I understand would be to create an interface to the
software using Zope & XML-RPC, and then using Zope Content Management
Framework to create a portal. Of course, there may be hundreds(?) of
ways to arrive at the desired results - using e.g. ASP, PHP, perl. If
anyone out there has worked on similar projects, or simply has some
recommendations, I should very much appreciate their thoughts.

Ideally, I'd like to have maybe 5 or 6 different implementation
suggestions with an associated set of pros and cons for each, so I'd
love to hear lots of suggestions!

Thanks very much in advance,

Lee



From solrac at us.ibm.com  Thu Jul 26 12:21:01 2001
From: solrac at us.ibm.com (Frank)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 09:21:01 -0700
Subject: Python for the PalmOS
Message-ID: <64ebecf3.0107260821.23f08e50@posting.google.com>

Pippy is a port of (a subset of) Python to the PalmOS. With Pippy,
Python programmers can create custom applications to run on Palm
devices, as well as use Pippy as an interactive environment directly
on the Palm. This article evaluates the strengths and limitations of
Pippy as a means of implementing Palm applications.

Complet article
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pippy.html?t=gr,npy0=Python4PalmOS


From mikael at isy.liu.se  Mon Jul 23 06:12:24 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:12:24 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
In-Reply-To: <snnjltc2dcapdbsd1cm511jtkc29cpll75@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010723121213.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 21-Jul-2001 Stephen Horne wrote:
 >  Also, I'm not happy with the Python definition of integer division,
 >  and of the remainder...
 >  
 >  """
 >  The modulo operator always yields a result with the same sign as its
 >  second operand (or zero)
 >  """
 >  
 >  As far as I'm concerned, this is plain wrong. If I do the following...
 >  
 >  quotient = -3 / 2
 >  remainder = -3 % 2
 >  
 >  I expect quotient = -1 and remainder = -1
 >  
 >  I get quotient = -2 and remainder = 1
 >  
 >  Either version maintains the basic remainder law - given...
 >  
 >  quotient = a / b
 >  remainder = a % b
 >  
 >  You can still rely on...
 >  
 >  (quotient * b) + remainder == a
 >  
 >  I just think integer division should round towards zero - not strictly
 >  downwards.

In my research I toss a lot of finite fields around. These are mathematical
entities where modulo reduction is used all the time. The mathematical 
concept of modulo is one of equivalence. If a, b, and c, are integers, you 
say that a and b are equal (or equivalent) modulo c if there is an integer 
d such that 

  a == b + c*d 

holds. For instance

  -5, -2, 1, 4

are all equal modulo 3. Therefore, I expect

>>> a % c == b % c

to evaluate as true if and only if a and b are equal modulo c (as 
described above). Now, if 

>>> quotient = -3 / 2
>>> remainder = -3 % 2

would result in quotient = -1 and remainder = -1, then I could not rely
on Python in this matter without (to me) unnecessary hacking. For the 
mathemetically interrested, quotient = -2 and remainder = 1 should be
the right thing.

(Well... Unless

>>> quotient = 3 / 2
>>> remainder = 3 % 2

would result in quotient = 2 and remainder = -1.)

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    23-Jul-2001
Time:    11:48:30

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From kelly.gerber at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 18 15:12:35 2001
From: kelly.gerber at mindspring.com (me)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:12:35 -0700
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
References: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com> <0Ne57.1129$KC.143209@news3.oke.nextra.no>
Message-ID: <3B55DFA3.E5BBC46E@mindspring.com>

"Nils O. Sel?sdal" wrote:

> "Kelly Gerber" <kelly.gerber at mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:3B551BD7.4D666D9E at mindspring.com...
>
> Python 2.1 builds fine with readline on RH7.1, you must ofcourse have
> the
> readline-devel package installed.

OK, I installed the readline-devel package. Now I am getting the following
error message:
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ltermcap
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [python] Error 1

Thanks for the response. I am getting closer, but there is still something
wrong. Any idea what I should do next?

Thanks,
Kelly




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Tue Jul 24 20:29:19 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:29:19 -0700
Subject: Vaguely related question about divmod
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-2934E4.17291924072001@news.service.uci.edu>

divmod(3.1415926535, 2.718281828) returns (1.0, 0.4233108255) almost as I 
would expect.  But, why is the first return value a float instead of an int?
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul 29 23:28:44 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:28:44 -0400
Subject: Python, mysql, roundoff  problem?
References: <hOy87.24265$gj1.2251802@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <%iR87.4633$Ke4.2601210@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Ut497.1192$yi7.124575@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Greg Jorgensen" <gregj at pdxperts.com> wrote in message
news:%iR87.4633$Ke4.2601210 at news1.sttln1.wa.home.com...
> "William Dandreta" <wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > mysql stores numbers as strings. I discovered that when converted to
> floats
> > in Python they are not exactly the same which can cause roundoff errors.
> The
> > floats represent money and I need to be sure there is no roundoff
errors.
> >
> > What is normally done to deal with this situation?
>
> Work with pennies instead of dollars. Store 12949 instead of 129.49. Do
> integer arithmetic with pennies rather than floating-point arithmetic with
> dollars.
Add 0.5 then
>            Divide by 100
and take the integer portion of the result
>                                when you need to display the value.
>
regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From claird at NeoSoft.com  Wed Jul 25 15:38:37 2001
From: claird at NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:38:37 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul 25)
Message-ID: <CB922BDFD132CD02.BB90F1A4CBF8453A.6CA4F1A4F06F2431@lp.airnews.net>

    BDFL releases 2.2a1!  Finn Bock releases 2.1a2 of Jython!
	http://www.python.org/2.2/
	http://www.jython.org/

    Python works well with XML.  In particular, WSDL
	http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/webservices-onlinecourse-bytitle/D092605075D1D67D86256A7E0042432D?OpenDocument
    and XSLT
	http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyana/
    are both available to Pyprogrammers.

    Nick Mathewson reaches conclusions after examination of data.
    His particular display of radical behavior has to do with newbie
    behavior, interpreted as reflections on the usability of Python
	http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f55698979c9dc75d

    Jon Udell explains WinForms, WS, .NET, and where Python fits in.
	http://www.byte.com/documents/s=804/byt20010712s0002/

    Stephen Figgins outlines what's involved in combining Python and
    C++
	http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/07/19/pythonnews.html

    David Mertz reviews PythonWorks Pro 1.2
	http://www.webreview.com/2001/07_20/developers/index02.shtml


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning,
ask <claird at neosoft.com> to subscribe.  Mention "Python-URL!".


-- The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From jim at publishingresources.com  Wed Jul 25 16:24:14 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:24:14 -0000
Subject: Python 2.1.1 ASP/Response object does not HONOR Response.End()
References: <XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736@news1.rdc1.md.home.com> <42E77.41650$Ek3.15221529@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9A661E3613jimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

"Joe Salmeri" <JoeSalmeri at home.com> wrote in
<42E77.41650$Ek3.15221529 at news1.rdc1.md.home.com>: 

>Thanks Jim.
>
>Are all the methods supposed to be lower case.
>
>I'm using the ASP documentation at
>http://www.w3schools.com/asp/asp_ref_response.asp whichs shows the
>method names with an upper case first letter.  I just did a test and
>Response.Write and Response.write BOTH work.  I wonder why
>Response.End() doesn't raise an AttributeError?
>
>Do you have any good sources for documentation using Python and ASP? 
>There do not seem to be many and those that I have found are minimal at
>best. 

Unfortunately I don't have any good documentation sources, and most of what 
I know was learned the hard way. 

If you know ASP and have a good 'feel' for Python you have a good start. 
Just think how Python works and try applying it to ASP and things usually 
fell into place for me.

Here are a bunch of other things to look out for. I wonder... is there a 
Python in ASP faq? Maybe it's time to start one.

Session.SetValue(key, val)
Application.SetValue(key, val)
Is how you set Session and Application vars from Python.

Modules are cached and need to be explicitly reloaded. i.e. reload(module)

global.asa: You need some VBscript first, then the Python one will work.
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=VBScript RUNAT=Server>
function noOp()
end function
</SCRIPT>

<script language=Python runat=server>
def Application_OnStart():
	pass #stuff
</SCRIPT>


You can't mix HTML in code blocks.
<%if 1:%>
  <tags>
<%else:%>
  <tags>

This doesn't work for obvious reasons. Check out HTMLgen for some easy 
alternatives.

And there's a bunch more I can't think of right now, but go check through 
the c.l.py archives for ASP and lots of good info will emerge.



From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 16:31:27 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:31:27 GMT
Subject: Regex for strings utility
References: <1103_995396879@pan> <mailman.995397930.20942.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b549ec9.2172736409@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:25:52 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>
>    rhys> I'm trying to write a script which operates like the Unix
>    rhys> 'strings' utility but I'm having difficulties with the regex.
>    ...
>    rhys> I'm getting a Syntax Error: Invalid Token at the closing brace to
>    rhys> the pattern.
>
>You have a couple problems.  First, the pattern needs to be a string, so it
>has to be enclosed in quotes.  Second, the terminating character for the for
>loop needs to be a colon.  Third, based upon the way you imported re, you
>need to refer to the findall function as re.findall.
>
>Here's a slightly revised version of your script:
>
>    #!/usr/bin/env python
>
>    # strings program
>
>    import sys, re
>
>    f = open(sys.argv[1])
>    line = f.readline()
>    pattern = re.compile("[\040-\126\s]{4,}")
Fourth ... ;-)
I don't think he means \126 since
 >>> "\126 is not \176"
 'V is not ~'
and since he's got \s covered, it would be clearer as
     pattern = re.compile("[!-~\s]{4,}")
>
>    while line:
>            # regular expression to match strings >=4 chars goes here
>            matches = re.findall(pattern, line)
>            for match in matches:
>                    print match
>            line = f.readline()
>



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 06:24:29 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:24:29 +0100
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <ow9rLvAdzUX7EwL0@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8 at Lugoj.Com>, James Logajan
<JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes
...
>
>I effectively stopped considering Python for new projects as of last night.
>I can't read Guido's mind, I don't know what other code-breaking changes he
>might be considering. I'm not sure he even knows. Where else is he going to
>be convinced that "evil" lies in the language and needs to be exorcised?

I'm afraid that's the real problem that became apparent during this
discussion. All the fury and arguments mean nothing when the mdfl has
decided to change the language. The PEP process is a rubber stamping
mechanism for the great leader's diktat.
-- 
Robin Becker


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Tue Jul  3 11:17:11 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 17:17:11 +0200
Subject: Calculus Module (Michael Hudson)
References: <E15HDYq-0003N7-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994166105.4817.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m33d8e59fs.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu> writes:

> Not necessarily, but that would be nice. I'm more 
> interested in lower level Calculus at the moment. 
> Really I just want to see how a math module should be 
> designed.

Math is still a bit general. Perhaps you should look at Numerical
Python (numpy.sourceforge.net) and ScientificPython
(dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/programs/scientific.html) to get an idea
of what has already been done in this field.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From dirck at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 28 23:28:28 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 20:28:28 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wpL87.5132$CQ1.206410@news.pacbell.net>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
news:n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog at 4ax.com...
> ...
> 1.  A lot of the ideas turn out not to be for a programming language
> as such at all. Rather, it combines the ideas of literate programming
> with a kind of replacement for make. An XML notation would allow
> source code in a range of languages to be packaged in a linked set of
> XML files with documentation, detailed specification of the build
> process and explicit requirements for the run-time and build-time
> environment. It would allow you to specify, for instance, that the
> source code for this C++ module contains a constant structure derived
> according to xxx principles (for the documentation) and can be
> generated by running yyy script in zzz version of Python (or
> whatever).
>
> Definitely a case of going off at a tangent!
> ...

Unless you have compelling reasons for using XML, I would suggest
the alternative of using Python itself as the meta-language.

Maybe I don't fully understand your intended use of XML, but
it gives me a good opportunity to go off on a tangent, as well.
(Hmm...  Maybe it's time to change the subject: line?)

XML is a bit hard on the eyes (quite unlike Python).
I've been using Python as a meta-language, and it's kind of a neat twist.

For example, here is a piece of a script defining a database structure:
####################
from dbmodel import DBD
db = DBD('cmsmain')
table = db.table('Active Clients')
table.field('ClientID', 'COUNTER', nulls=1)
table.field('ClientName1', 'VARCHAR', size=50)
table.field('Address1', 'VARCHAR', size=50, nulls=1)
table.field('City', 'VARCHAR', size=25, nulls=1)
table.field('State', 'VARCHAR', size=2, nulls=1)
table.field('SalesPersonID', 'INTEGER', nulls=1)
table.primary('ClientID')
table.unique('ClientName1', name='ClientName1')
table.index('SalesPersonID', name='SalesID')

table = db.table('Active Contracts')
table.field('ContractID', 'COUNTER', nulls=1)
table.field('ContractNo', 'VARCHAR', size=15)
table.field('ClientID', 'INTEGER')
table.field('IntRate', 'FLOAT', nulls=1)
table.primary('ContractID')
table.unique('ContractNo', name='Active ContractsContractNo')
table.index('ClientID', name='ClientID')

db.onetomany('Active Clients', 'ClientID', 'Active Contracts', 'ClientID',
enforce=1, cascadeUpdates=1, cascadeDeletes=0)
####################
Python modules can load this and generate the
appropriate CREATE TABLE statements for the target platform
(it seems like all SQLs are different), or alternatively,
query a platform, and generate this Python code from an
existing SQL database, which can then in turn be loaded
and the structure reproduced on a different platform.

Maybe the point here is subtle, and I'm not sure exactly how to express it.

The code above isn't quite like normal code, exactly, because the code
itself is essentially the persistent data structure.
dbmodel doesn't _do_ anything, all the dbmodel classes can do are
be created, be queried for their structure, and write themselves out,
as Python code.

A dbmodel might be used somewhat like this:
====================
    import dbmodel
    db = dbmodel.Load("modelfile")
    for table in db:
        print table,
        for field in table:
                print field,
        print
====================
It occurred to me that it would be cool if they could also
call into another DBD-like class exactly as above, in essence,
reproduce, or reflect their structure onto another implementation,
which might have different purposes.

Something like this:
====================
    import dbmodel
    import dbgen

    g = dbgen.thingie()
    db = dbmodel.Load("modelfile")
    db.renderOn(g)
====================
which is subtly different from this:
====================
    import dbmodel
    import dbgen

    g = dbgen.thingie()
    db = dbmodel.Load("modelfile")
    g.buildFrom(db)
====================

Another example, from a Python build system (for C/C++) I use instead
of make (it has #include searches and dependency checking.)
Here's an example recipe '.bld' file:
########################

TARGET="application.exe"    # our target executable

BUILD=["../lib/framework.bld"]  # required subprojects: we're using this lib

SOURCES=["../util/*.cpp",  # sources to build and link
         "/thirdParty/xsrc/*.c",
         "main.cpp",]

DEFINES=["DEBUG_FRIPPERY", "NO_WIDGET_CHECKS"]      # some switches

INCLUDES=[".", "../util", "/thirdParty/stuff"]  # where to look for includes

LIBRARIES=["../lib/framework.lib"]    # libraries to link

##########################
So instead of futzing with Make rules and yet-another-obscure-syntax,
all I do is write little Python declarations for what I want.

You could also put conditionals in the recipe based on configuration
options.

Another example, a deliver recipe, from a tool that just copies files about:
##########################

SOURCE="../lts/cdoc/src"
TARGET='../ship/cdoc/src'

files=FileSet(base=SOURCE,
              files=['*/*', '*/*/*'],
              exclude=['*.obj',
                       '*.exe',
                       '*.pdb','*.idb','*.ilk'
                       'tools/*'])
files.copy(TARGET)

##########################

I've been thinking about another Python-Code-Model-Representation for
vector graphics documents.  Maybe something like this:

##########################
from picmodel import *
pic = PICTURE()
pic.dpi(72)
pic.extents(0,0,8.5*72,11.5*72)
pic.fill_color(red)
pic.frame_color(blue)
pic.frame_width(1)

pic.rectangle(0,0,100,100)

shape = pic.shape()
shape.line(10,10)
shape.line(15,0)
shape.line(20,10)
shape.arc2((15,15),(10,10))
pic.shape_fill(shape, (100,100))

##########################

Then you could do this:
=====================
import picmodel
import pslib
import pdflib

ps = pslib.target("file.ps")
pic = picmodel.Load("picturefile")
pic.renderOn(ps)

pdf = pdflib.target("file.pdf")
pic.renderOn(pdf)

=====================

Still thinking about that one.  Graphic models get pretty horrendous.

Hopefully this isn't too obscure, and maybe gives you some more ideas.

-off-on-still-yet-another-tangent-
d





From missive at frontiernet.net  Mon Jul 23 20:09:17 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:09:17 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <eppstein-60FEF0.16135923072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <9jiebd$poi$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:13:59 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
> In article <9jiak1$3s96$3 at node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>,
>  missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) wrote:
> 
>> we already have people importing things from the __future__,
>> how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?
> 
> Doesn't do anything for the people who are running precompiled scripts 
> acquired from somewhere else, or who have warnings redirected to where they 
> won't be seen.

I have not used it, but I think you can define a script that runs
every time python starts up.

Or is that only for the interactive mode?



From Pierre-et-Liliane.DENIS at village.uunet.be  Sun Jul  8 16:26:59 2001
From: Pierre-et-Liliane.DENIS at village.uunet.be (Pierre Denis)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:26:59 +0200
Subject: Assignement Overloading
Message-ID: <3b48bd83$0$7113$4d4efb8e@news.be.uu.net>

I am trying to emulate some kind of type checking in Python (sorry for the heresy). Because of the dynamic typing, my unpretentious
goal is to intercept the assignment statement in order to perform a consistency check between the variable and the object to assign.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in Python to do this; there is no magic function like __assign__(name,value). The reason
usually invoked about this lack is the fact that Python's assignment is actually just a name binding, which is very different, for
instance, from C++ assignment. However, there exists a concept very similar in Python, although less general : the __setattr__
method. For a given class instance, it is invoked whenever an attribute assignment is attempted. This allows to make a step towards
a solution to my problem. Consider the following example where an attribute's type checking is emulated, basing on Python's type()
function (this example has no other pretension than showing a 'pattern' to fake assignment overloading) :

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
''' file typechecker.py
'''
class TypedNamespace:

      def __setattr__(self,name,value):
          if self.__dict__.has_key(name):
             targetType, valueType = type(self.__dict__[name]), type(value)
             if targetType != valueType:
                print "Error : cannot assign %s value to %s variable '%s'." \
                      % (valueType.__name__, targetType.__name__, name)
                return
          self.__dict__[name] = value

t = TypedNamespace()
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> from typechecker import t
>>> t.name = 'To infinity and beyond'
>>> t.name = 20
Error : cannot assign int value to string variable 'name'.
>>> t.name
'To infinity and beyond'
>>> t.name = ['Hello','Dolly']
Error : cannot assign list value to string variable 'name'.
>>> t.height = 15
>>> t.height = t.name
Error : cannot assign string value to int variable 'height'.
>>>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This works fine, but the (expensive) price to pay is the fact that you can not work with true variables : the prefix 't.' is an
artifact to get true attributes in order to take advantage of the __setattr__ method.

Now I have two questions :

1. Why is there no general way to overload the assignment in Python ? I do not agree with the 'name binding' argument because, to my
humble opinion, __setattr__ allows to overload some assignments, while performing a name binding (in an object's namespace). So I
think the problem is well stated and the request makes sense.

2. Is there other features in Python I can use to emulate assignment overloading (simpler than the technique given in my example) ?

Thanks in advance,

Pierre Denis








From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 09:20:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:20:00 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <9i5guj$7kg$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <cphewokhez.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:

> I'm in agreement with Guido that at least two releases are necessary
> (I also agree that it could be two warning releases).  But I think
> Guido's step 3 (if used) should be changed to the semantically equivalent
> 
>     In Python 2.4, integer division with the '/' operator raises an
>     exception.  This exception can be caught as usual, but the
>     programmer should prepare for the next release of Python by either
>     using the div() function or by using the future directive to get
>     floating point division.

Oh, Aazh!  I wasn't writing a formal specification, I was sketching a
plan.  In that context, using "make it an error" is the right level of
detail.  Everybody can fill in for themselves that that means it's an
exception, since that's how we typically signal errors in Python.

> (Calling it an error is technically imprecise; an exception isn't
> *necessarily* an error.)

No, I meant it to be an error.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Jul 15 12:07:18 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:07:18 +0100
Subject: do .. while loops ?
References: <mailman.995169745.15095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l3ftm.3jb.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 14:00:31 +1000, Paul Andreassen <paul at andreassen.com.au> wrote:
>
>Could someone please tell me why "do .. while" loops are not part of the
>python language?

Because they complicate the language, probably. Also, doing else:
continuations with them would look a bit ugly, IMO:


do:
   ...code...
   if x: break
   ...more code...
while a>b
else:
   ...stuff if we didn't break...

Personally, if i was designing a Pytohn-like lang, it'd have
"loop" which does the same as "while" but "loop:" would
mean "while 1:"


loop:
   fun1()
   if x: break
   fun2()

etc.



-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul  4 17:30:53 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:30:53 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <u7r8vwijd2.fsf@hpeesof.asc>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041355150.7776-100000@bms>

On 4 Jul 2001, Ralf Muschall wrote:
> Grant Griffin <not.this at seebelow.org> writes:
> > concept seemed to encourage large interdependencies between modules.
>
> Unfortunately, the logical alternative to interdependencies is
> duplication of code (or, at least, of functionality).
>
> > "application-targeted" distributions.  For example, someone could make a
> > "Numeric" bundle of Python, including NumPy and related modules;
> > likewise, there could be a "webmaster" bundle.  Of course, this takes a
>
> This does not remove the need to keep them mutually compatible.

Stuff would _need_ to be packaged in terms of the smallest replaceable
unit if you want to eliminate duplication, and if you do not eliminate
duplication you can end up with packages conflicting because they
require different versions of the same software.

One result of this is that packages which make it into the archive,
and depend on other stuff in the archive, will either get maintained
or dropped when the dependencies can not be met anymore.

The bug tracking system is what tells the pkg's maintainer there is a
problem, but if the maintainers are not around because you didn't make
them jump through some hoops to ensure they are serious -- it all
falls apart and becomes easier for the user to just go get the source.


I think this needs a PEP from the core Python developers,
for four reasons:

1) anything less is "just" third-party (no matter how well done)

2) to end up with an archive that is not crufty, inconsistent, or
   full of duplication -- Python itself must be in the archive
   [(co)authoring a PEP is tacit approval]

and

3) having a repackaged version of Python in the archive is
   potentially starting down the road to having multiple,
   incompatible, archives (who decides the right way to break
   Python down into packages, and what happens when PyPAN and
   ActiveState (or whoever) diagree) -- this pretty much
   necessitates the core developers involvement

4) this is a complex undertaking, the result of which can affect
   the stability and security of systems that use it


- Bruce




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 08:28:35 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:28:35 +0200
Subject: reading sockets
References: <FGN07.153841$%i7.102425274@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i1mhk02fhu@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Ken Mugrage" <kmugrageREMOVE at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:FGN07.153841$%i7.102425274 at news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...
    ...
> In perl, I would do something like
>
> while(<SOCKET>) {
>     print $_;
> }
>
> and it would print everything as it is sent, one line at a time.
>
> In Python, I have something like
>
> while 1:
>   data = mysocket.recv(1024)
>   print data
>
> which of course print everything in 1024 byte blocks.

from xreadlines import xreadlines
    ...
for line in xreadlines(sock.makefile()):
    print line,

should be what you want.  sock.makefile() gives you a
file-like object that reads data from the socket, and
the xreadlines() wrapper makes it easy and efficient
to loop on it line by line.


Alex





From jacy at poczta.onet.pl  Mon Jul 23 02:50:41 2001
From: jacy at poczta.onet.pl (jacek czerwinski)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:50:41 +0200
Subject: light GUI
Message-ID: <3B5BC941.C7B77575@poczta.onet.pl>

I need simple light GUI for python embeded into bigger windows
application.
Some proposal ?


--
Skalowalny, bezpieczny, serwer dedykowany, http://www.wdc.pl


From ddublanc at free.fr  Wed Jul  4 18:03:43 2001
From: ddublanc at free.fr (Dublanc, David)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:03:43 GMT
Subject: Dynamic call of a method : error
Message-ID: <3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008@nnrp5.proxad.net>

Hello, when I execute the module :
***************
L = []

for method in dir(L):
    "dynamic call"
    print L.method.__doc__
****************

I have the following error :

PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Apr 23 2001, 18:00:35) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32.
Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) - see
'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "f:\python21\pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 301, in
RunScript
    exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
  File "G:\script python\test concat?nation.py", line 5, in ?
    print L.method.__doc__
AttributeError: method


How can I call a method dynamically ?

Thanks.

Regards,
--
David




From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Mon Jul 23 04:39:54 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 01:39:54 -0700
Subject: Packing of Frames
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107230039.195d1546@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I have two frames(left & right) into which I place names (left) and
vlaues (right).

The left Frame adheres to my constraints but the right expands
vertically beyond my constraints.

I do it thus:

root = Tk()
root.geometry('350x300')

root.leftFrame = Frame(width=150, height=300, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
root.rightFrame = Frame(width=200, height=300, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
root.setup = ui.getSetupValues()
root.rightFrame.pack(fill=X, side=RIGHT)
root.rightFrame.pack_propagate(0)
root.leftFrame.pack(fill=BOTH)
root.leftFrame.pack_propagate(0)

myRow = 0
for eachKey in root.setup.keys():
     l = Label(root.leftFrame, text=string.strip(eachKey), 
         bg='gray50',anchor=E, justify=RIGHT)
     r = Entry(root.rightFrame, bg='gray100', width=200,
relief=GROOVE)
     l.grid(row=myRow, sticky=E+W )
     r.insert(INSERT, string.strip(root.setup[eachKey]))
     r.pack()

root.mainloop()

any ideas?

Phill


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 12:33:43 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:33:43 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 
 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <200107151729.NAA00455@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995220627.11627.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-8E8777.19281715072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5468E7.F534E5D2@ActiveState.com>

David Eppstein wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I tend to think putting anything at all in the text of the file is a hack
> and not a clean design -- this is meta-information rather than content,
> right?  

What is the practical problem with mixing "meta-information" and
"content"?

> ... But maybe as long as you're going to do that you should go all the
> way and have some kind of "meta" directive that allows MIME directives
> beyond just charset=...

What other ones make sense?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 19 05:14:35 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:14:35 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107182051120.1370-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B56A4FB.104CBCBB@lemburg.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> >    This PEP proposes to introduce a syntax to declare the encoding of
> >    a Python source file. The encoding information is then used by the
> >    Python parser to interpret the file using the given encoding. Most
> >    notably this enhances the interpretation of Unicode literals in
> >    the source code and makes it possible to write Unicode literals
> >    using e.g. UTF-8 directly in an Unicode aware editor.
> 
> I have not understood: will Unicode encoding be directly allowed or only
> ASCII-compatible encodings (like UTF-8)?

Only ASCII supersets -- detecting UTF-16 or UTF-32 would be hard since
Python's source files do not provide a usable file magic (at least
not to my knowledge) and prepending BOM marks or similar identifiers
will likely break executability of Python scrips on Unix (due to the
#! logic).
 
> >Problem
> >
> >    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
> >    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
> >    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
> >    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian
> >    countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
> >    favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
> >    for Unicode literals.
> 
> Isn't it time for better gettext support in Python? Then for i18n-enabled
> programs, encodings will belong to .mo, .po or whatever called files...

We already have good gettext support in Python (see the Tools/i18n
directory). AFAIK, gettext uses UTF-8 as only encoding for its
l10n files.
 
> >Scope
> >
> >    This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
> >    proposed magic comment.
> 
> >    Without the magic comment in the proposed
> >    position, Python will treat the source file as it does currently
> >    to maintain backwards compatibility.
> 
> This is what I like most. Will optimization be mentioned here?

If the performance hit is noticable, we could look into optimizing
the setup for files which don't use the magic comment. I'd rather
leave this to after the implemenation.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From barry at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 11:19:15 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:19:15 -0400
Subject: emacs python mode
References: <3B5BF5C7.3070707@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <15196.16499.637362.583213@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "MR" == Mark Robinson <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> writes:

    MR> trivial question I suppose, but it is bugging me, so here
    MR> goes. I have just installed the python.el file (and byte
    MR> compiled it) and emacs is happily switching to python mode
    MR> when I open a *.py file, but I don't get any pretty colors at
    MR> all. Is there anything I need to be doing, I thought that
    MR> should be automatic?

You need to turn on font-lock mode.

-Barry



From grayson-wilson at home.com  Wed Jul 11 23:27:21 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 03:27:21 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
Message-ID: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.

def mult(x,y):
    return x * y
f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)
print f

*NOTE   The varible N is defined in the code before this excerpt.

Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?

But comon sense tells me this is easier.

def mult(x,y):
    return x * y
f = reduce(mult,n)
print f

Isnt that easier??

Or do I not get lambda?

*NOTE ... I think its just a way to complicate things OR just a way to avoid
typing the function name beacuse.... I dont know they are scared of the
names they give them.




From bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com  Mon Jul 30 23:32:18 2001
From: bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com (Brendan Hahn)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:32:18 -0700
Subject: "Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <4E215400D01D7374.0068C51FD6502BE8.99D4E013ECF0FDFB@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <bhahn-ya02408000R3007012032180001@news.corp.hp.com>

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) wrote:
>Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
>                        .
>>AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
>>that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
>>BSD, Linux).

>Perlites occasionally make a serious pitch for this role.
>Java, Forth, and C++ have all briefly flared as possibili-
>ties.

You can do kernel stuff in C++ on a lot of systems, but it's often more
trouble than it's worth...kernel versions of the C++ runtime can be very
quirky.  NT is actually pretty nice for doing C++ drivers.  You could use
Objective-C on the old NeXT systems -- Apple has switched to a C++ IO
system, for better performance, but using a restricted subset of the
language.  Haven't tried it yet but I think it'll be nice.  Forth is
actually in very wide use, but at the sub-OS level -- any Open Firmware
system starts up running Forth, and if you want a boot driver for a new
storage adapter, say, you write it in Forth and put it in ROM on the card.

bhahn at transoft.mmangle.net   <-- unmangle address to reply


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 08:31:54 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 07:31:54 -0500
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701213736.0277d700@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <15168.27066.773689.676765@beluga.mojam.com>

Carlos,

Good start on the PEP.  A couple comments.

In the final PEP I think you will need to have code examples or point to
specific compliant modules as examples.  That will make it easier for people
who won't bother to read and understand the entire PEP to write compliant
code the first time.  For example, you wrote:

     4. Class names SHOULD be written in mixed case.

This could be either missed or interpreted by lazy programmers as any of

    mixedCaseClass
    MixedCaseClass
    mIxEdCaseCLASS
    Mixed_Case_Class

or any of a zillion other possibilities.  I suspect you only meant the
second case.

Also, in the References section you should refer to Guido's style guide:

    http://www.python.org/doc/essays/styleguide.html

In fact, you may want to pilfer some content...

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Thu Jul  5 22:22:20 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 23:22:20 -0300
Subject: Warning: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010705231135.0279fba0@mail.inet.com.br>

As I promised, I'm revising my draft PEP - Quality Guidelines For Standard 
Modules. However, due to external reasons (read "real job pressures") I'm 
only going to be able to work on it over the weekend. I expected to be able 
to make it over the past two days but it was simply impossible. I need to 
take some time to re-read carefully all the answers that I got both 
privately and through the newsgroup before issuing a revision.

I would like to ask all the people that contributed to wait a few more 
days, and to keep sending contributions and revisions. I apologize if this 
is inconvenient to anyone, specially to Martijn Faassen that is working on 
a related PEP. I'm working to make this delay as small as possible. Thanks 
in advance,


Carlos Ribeiro





From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Tue Jul 10 10:54:26 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:54:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Profiler question
Message-ID: <slrn9km60i.d3l.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

Hello,

I'm using the profile module to try to see where I could get some speedups
in an application, I'm getting troubles interpretting the results, especially
the cumulative times. Is there a known problem with profile and multithreaded
applications? 

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul  8 09:30:28 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 08:30:28 -0500
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <15176.24692.194746.775712@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> inspect (and code like it) should be upgraded to use
    Tim> sys._getframe() directly instead of raising phony exceptions.

Inspect tries to be 1.5-compatible I believe, so it can't call
sys._getframe.  It could raise a different exception, however...

Skip



From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 05:37:26 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:37:26 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107191305270.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Greg Jorgensen wrote:

> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:9j4af20d2o at enews4.newsguy.com...
> 
> > Perl and Python ruled the roost in Prechelt's tests (from the POV
> > of development speed), indistinguishable from each other.  C and C++
> > made the fastest executables on average.  Java was bad on both
> > scores -- very slow programs taking a long time to develop.  Other
> > scripting languages (Tcl, Rexx) gave intermediate development times
> > but extremely slow results.  Somebody else claims to have rerun the
> > same experiment with Common Lisp, getting runtimes competitive with
> > C and C++ and development speed competitive with Perl and Python.
> >
> > We could definitely do with more such tests...!!!
> 
> With all respect, why? Other than Usenet fodder what good are these tests?

Posting tests showing performance weakness in some typical situations
is needed to make Python better.

Maybe, not such trivial and useless as with cycling 2.5 * 2.5, but others
which come from real programmer's practice.

For example, Oleg Broytman was concerned with Python's re 
performance, because their application became 5 time slower.

We need watch Python performance and it is not nice to discourage posting
tests here which indicate problams.

> I know who the audience is for these timing tests: In the cubicle next to
> mine is a junior programmer (fresh from Sun Java training classes, his first
> language) who frequently gets into long discussions with other programmers
> about language trivia and "performance." His projects are always late
> because he over-designs and ends up with unusable class structures. Over the
> course of the last few months he has wasted hundreds of hours of his own
> time, and incessantly interrupted other people, because he doesn't
> understand Excel or SQL. He's writing a set of functions--he calls it a
> class library--to calculate vacation time for various types of employees.
> His code is supposed to replace a perfectly good spreadsheet that everyone
> understands.

I do not know your concrete case, but sometimes simple CGI script is
better than XLS file, because only browser is needed to use it. It's much
more inconvenient to send XLS to anybody.

SQL is also overkill when not used on the regular basis with 
real databases.

And also those "wasted hundreds of hours" are not wasted in vein,
because juniors need to learn.

As for over-designs, I agree. I am too tending to over-design (I am not
into XP!). This could be explained by inexperience. When experienced
programmer makes the same, it is not called "over-design", because he
includes things which make easier to extend system in directions he
foresee.

For example, when I was writing my ISP tarification program, I always
tried to put our domain name in a variable (while it was easier to put
"onego.ru" everywhere is source!). Now we can accept different domains
without much refactoring. 

> Sign me, cynical and sick of worthless benchmarks.

These benchmarks also show how good someones Python is compiled. For
exaple, I saw that my AMD K6 225 makes almost same results as somebody
elses Celeron 450 ;-)
 
> Greg Jorgensen
> PDXperts LLC
> Portland, Oregon, USA

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From brian_zhou at NOSPAMtechie.com  Mon Jul 30 01:45:09 2001
From: brian_zhou at NOSPAMtechie.com (Brian Zhou)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:45:09 -0700
Subject: PythonPath for ASP
Message-ID: <996471911.551564@emperor.labs.agilent.com>

Hello group,

Currently on command line, sys.path is

['',
 'c:\\python21\\pil',
 'c:\\python21\\pythonwin',
 'c:\\python21\\win32',
 'c:\\python21\\win32\\lib',
 'c:\\python21',
 'c:\\python21\\dlls',
 'c:\\python21\\lib',
 'c:\\python21\\lib\\plat-win',
 'c:\\python21\\lib\\lib-tk',
 'c:\\python21\\numeric',
 'c:\\python21\\ppm']

But from ASP Python script:
[c:\python21\pythonwin
c:\python21\win32
c:\python21\win32\lib
c:\python21
c:\python21\lib\plat-win
c:\python21\lib
c:\python21\dlls
c:\python21\lib\lib-tk
c:\windows\system32]

You can see 'c:\\python21\\pil' is not in the path. So from ASP scripts, I
have to do
    import PIL.Image
instead of
    import Image

Is there a place I can set that makes C:\Python21\PIL in PythonPath?

Thanks for any help,

-Brian





From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 06:48:44 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 10:48:44 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995861319.10218.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jgvec$dos$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:27:32 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>> My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are the 
>> same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.
>> Result: buggier code since the errors are less obvious.

> The thing is, making 1/2=0.5 won't make the problem *worse*. Because
> after two days of being baffled by 1/2=0, these newbies will eventually
> figure out the solution float(1)/2. So, I'm just getting to show them
> the buggy roundoff-error code *faster*, instead of making them suffer
> for it. You want to fix *that* problem, you have to give easy to access
> rationals.

Will you introduce a special 'rational division' operator for that? 
Or change the semantics of '/' again? :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From franck.delarue at rd.francetelecom.com  Tue Jul 31 05:33:46 2001
From: franck.delarue at rd.francetelecom.com (franck delarue)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:33:46 +0200
Subject: portability
Message-ID: <9k5u2c$p542@news.rd.francetelecom.fr>

hello everyone,
i'm working on python on linux red hat and i'm wandering if all the code
that i've written would be portable to unix or windows (except the system
calls of course). I know that python works a little like java ( on a virtual
machine), but is Python as portable as java ?

thanks in advance.




From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 29 20:22:05 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:22:05 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com> <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco@cortechs.com> <mailman.996449995.2167.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9m9a6e.43m.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:37:18 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>I hesitated to mention ADA

One nit:

It's "Ada" not "ADA".  The former is a programming language;
the latter is the American Dental Association (among other
things).

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'd like some JUNK
                                  at               FOOD... and then I want to
                               visi.com            be ALONE --


From tchur at optushome.com.au  Fri Jul  6 18:39:34 2001
From: tchur at optushome.com.au (Tim Churches)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 08:39:34 +1000
Subject: Sybase module (was Re: Postgres  support)
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
		<5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <15174.5497.55793.936749@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <3B463E26.582642E0@optushome.com.au>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Edward> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
>     Edward> Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles
>
> "Python Sybase" netted this:
> 
>     http://www.stecf.org/~npirzkal/python/sybase/

I think the Python<->Sybase module of choice would have to be the Sybase
module (alpha status notwithstanding) being developed by Object Craft,
who are based in Melbourne, Australia. See
http://www.object-craft.com.au

Ava Gardner quipped that Melbourne was a good place to make a movie
about the end of the world when she was filming the cinema version of
Neville Shute's "On the Beach" (in which the Northern Hemisphere
obliterates itself in a bout of mutually assured thermonuclear
destruction, with the Southern Hemisphere eventually succumbing to
radioactive fallout, but only after plenty of soul-searching, a few
bottles of Scotch and a brief but passionate love affairs). Melbourne
also appears to be a good place to write Python modules.

Cheers,

Tim C
Sydney, Australia



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 09:19:34 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:19:34 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
>> 
>> So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
>> acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
>> carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it
>> for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can Python
>> become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?
>
>Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
>particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
>administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
>into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.
>
>Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
>language.

Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
for longer programs.

> That means that it has a harder slog to gain adherents. On the
>other hand, Python is not as dependent on its niche. I think that Python
>is probably growing faster than Perl and PHP now that those two
>languages have basically dominated their niches. 

I've heard there is a Python Server Pages program that lets you use Python
in the same way you would with PHP or JSP. Has anyone used this? Is it any 
good? Of course, there is also Zope, which is another Python-to-web
interface.

>Consider the status of
>Tcl which is not growing much since other languages invaded the "easy
>GUI development" niche.

Including Python.

>Java has of course outgrown its initial niche but it is hardly fair to
>compare Python to a language backed by Sun, IBM, etc. If Python had that
>kind of backing it would be as big or bigger than Java too.

Indeed.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul  9 06:25:55 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 10:25:55 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994630754.21755.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kj1lj.nof.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:19:01 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:

> BTW, state-of-the-art rational support also requires context, to determine
> whether results should be reduced to lowest terms (some programs run 1000s
> of times faster if you don't, others 1000s of times faster if you do, and
> only the algorithm author can know which is better).

If such context affects only performance, then maybe it's acceptable,
but if it affects essential semantics, I'm worried that it's a bad idea
to introduce global state where it doesn't exist in the problem domain.

The more global settings affect the meaning of a piece of code, the
harder is to use independent modules together and to understand code
in isolation.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 11:09:49 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:09:49 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar> <mailman.995292207.6439.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdelrgrjuq.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

> map(A.remove, B)

That'll throw an error on elements of B that aren't in A, and if elt
occurs twice in A and once in B, map(A.remove, B) will still have a copy
of elt in it, even if no error is thrown.

Alex.


From spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk  Tue Jul 24 03:11:18 2001
From: spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk (Radovan Garabik)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:11:18 +0200
Subject: user level can't bind socket address & port
References: <Gr577.7519$2k2.398288@news.bora.net>
Message-ID: <m27jj9.i8m.ln@127.0.0.1>

"??????" <k5r2a at chollian.net> wrote:
 : hi, all

 : as the title user level can't bind socket address & port

 : for example,
 :    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
 :    sock.bind((iface, port))

 : if i login user level, python interpreter generate error message like that
 : "    sock.bind((iface, port))
 :     socket.error: (13, 'Permission denied') "

 : How can I bind socket user level.

 : please send comment......

1) what OS are you using?
2) by any chance, is your port < 1024 ?

If the answer to 1) is UNIX-like, and the answer to 2) yes, then 
what you experience is the expected behaviour. Either run the
script as superuser (ewww...), or use authbind 
(http://packages.debian.org/authbind), or some relevant kernel
modification.

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Wed Jul 25 14:56:45 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:56:45 +0200
Subject: Numeric methods again
References: <9jmelr$m2g$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no> <j4ofq8hp0w.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <9jn4pe$2ov$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:j4ofq8hp0w.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de...
> "Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> writes:
>
> > in front of the reference dot... For a simple parser
> > it might be difficult to know whether 5. was a float
> > or the beginning of a reference, but with a bit of
> > lookahead that can't be too hard?
>
> If you want to allow "5.foo", you certainly also need to allow
> "5. foo", as you can also write "a. foo". So it requires arbitrary
> look-ahead.

I'm sure you didn't think I meant that "5. foo" should be outlawed?
I'm just surprised that it should be _required_.

And it would only require one token lookahead, as long as the scanner
compresses the whitespace... But, as I said, that's not the issue.

> > Can a number ever be directly followed by an identifier?
>
> Yes, certainly: "5.e17" could be either 5*10**17, or the e17 attribute
> of 5.

Right. I guess that's the problem, then. But since all the methods of
numeric constants begin with an underscore, that really ought not
to be a problem... Right?

> Regards,
> Martin

- Magnus, still wondering what the _real_ problem is...

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 19:30:35 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:30:35 -0400
Subject: Question...
References: <3B6737BE.2CCC0A1A@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <%8H97.15003$WD1.668162@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Adonis Vargas" <deltapigz at telocity.com> wrote in message
news:3B6737BE.2CCC0A1A at telocity.com...
> how come this code does not seem to popup on any broswer i attempt to
> send HTML data to:
>
>     (c, a) = s.accept()
>     c.send('HTTP 200 OK\n')

Strictly according to the protocol that should be "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" or some
other string including a version.

>     c.send('Content-Type: text/html\n')
>     c.send('')
>     print RED + "CONNECT->%s"%a[0] + RESET
>
>     d = c.recv(256)

At the moment the browser has the HTTP headers winging their way towards it,
with no terminating blank line. What are you expecting to receive? Since the
browser won't close the socket either (it's still waiting for the
termination of the headers) it won't close its end of the socket either, so
your program stops here. Only for an hour or two while the connection times
out, though 8-)

>     c.send("""
>           <HTML>
>           <HEAD>
>           <TITLE>Redirecting...</TITLE>
>           <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;
> url=http://www.python.org/">
>           </HEAD>
>           <BODY>
>           </BODY>
>           </HTML>\n
>           """)
>     c.close()
>
> *basic idea to redirect a broswer.
>
> any help would greatly be appreciated.
>
Does this help?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From James_Althoff at i2.com  Fri Jul 13 15:44:46 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:44:46 -0700
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
Message-ID: <OFEC68EA4D.F2379641-ON88256A88.006B407D@i2.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
>Interesting (?) special case: what do Jython programmers
>use to refer to their source.  Do you call it, as you likely
>do for Python, a script, or do you think of it as a program?
>(And I don't know the nature of the compilation stage:
>is it automated as with Python, or manual as with Java?)

Jython has the same "auto-compile and run" mechanism as CPython.

In terms of what we call our Jython code, it depends on the context.  I
generally use the phrase "scripting capabilities" as opposed to "scripting
language".  For me it makes more sense to characterize certain
capabilities: "write and run", "very high-level, built-in, domain-specific
functionality", "embedded in a particular framework", etc. as
"scripting-like" capabilities.  Then I can say that Python is a
full-fledged, high-level language that also has "scripting capabilities"
and avoid the debate of whether Python is a "scripting" language OR a
"programming" language -- because it's both.  :-)

So getting back to the question at hand, if I write a 10,000 line business
application in Jython, I call it a "program".  If I include in that program
the ability for customers to add extra buttons to the UI along with a few
lines of Python that act handlers for those added buttons, I call those
handlers "script".  The "script" in this case is not script *because* it is
written in Python.  It is "script" because it is code that has "script"
-like capabilites and is being used in a "script"-like role (it is embedded
in the framework of my application, you can write a few lines of code in a
configuratio file and not have to compile it and link it, etc.).

Jim





From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:21:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:21:28 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <7ef50c46.0107070905.4f9fa92@posting.google.com> <mailman.994528873.30514.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpn16fipgn.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Timothy Grant <tjg at hyperlinq.net> writes:

> I'm not the most gifted programmer on the planet, but I have had no
> problem with the concept of integer division, in fact, when I need a
> calculator I usually open the Python interpreter and do my math on
> the command line. I've never had a problem remembering that if I
> want a float result I need to make one of the numbers a float.

Easy for you to say, since you seem to think mostly in terms of
integers.  For other people, and in other application domains, where
floating point is the only type that makes sense, it's very easy to
forget adding a decimal point to every constant you use.  A typical
example goes as follows:

    def velocity(distance, time):
        return distance / time

The author of this function clearly assumes that the arguments are
floats.  But a user, thinking that ints are automatically converted to
floats, it's totally necessary to write

    velocity(50000, 3600) # 50 km/h

and get a result that is plausible but incorrect.  Now imagine that
this is part of a much large program doing physical calculations.
Either we'd have to place a total ban on integer constants (a big
pain), or we'd have to place float() casts around the arguments of
function everwhere (an even bigger pain).

> # It looks ugly but it really isn't. A couple of really nice
> # Pythonisms
> # make it work right. The first is list insertion, and the
> # second is integer
> # division.
> 
> I guess I need to revise the comments in my code now...

The *concept* of integer division won't go away.  It will just be
spelled differently (as div(x,y) or x div y).  There's no need to
update your comment. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 03:42:28 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:42:28 +0100
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org> <etd3d7qxi88.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu> <9jeafl$46q$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net> <slrn9lmcia.c1q.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <ub9qlt046j964o6v2g9hh416nd7cgimb6k@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 20:06:34 GMT, quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
wrote:

>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:43:18 +0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote:
>>Alex wrote:
>>
>>> Not really.  There are some ways you could speed up the python code:
>>
>>I'm also not really sure why one would want to do this, but...
>> 
>>> There's the additional problem that
>>> opening "err" will truncate the log file, and if an error occurs while
>>> you're writing the new version back, you could lose messages.
>>
>>here's a version that makes a copy of the file before prepending a 
>>new message to avoid that problem.  It also uses seek to avoid having 
>
>I suggest appending the normal way, but viewing it with 'tac' :)

Another possible alternative...

In initialisation, read the main file, invert the order of the lines
and save to a second temporary file...

  f = open ("file.log", "r")
  text = f.readlines ().reverse ()

  f = open ("temp.log", "w")
  for i in text :
    f.write (i)


While the program runs, log at the end of the temporary log file. Then
on completion, reverse what you did at the start...

  f = open ("temp.log", "r")
  text = f.readlines ().reverse ()

  f = open ("file.log", "w")
  for i in text :
    f.write (i)


If the program ran for a while, this might be the better approach.


You could also use the same general approach to print a normal-order
log file in last-error-first order - remember to slice off the newline
character at the end of each line before calling print though.


Another approach is to save all your errors into a list of strings in
memory and dump them out to err at the end - a risky one, though, if
you get a bug that stops the log getting saved.



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 16:01:04 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:01:04 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

John Schmitt <jschmitt at vmlabs.com> writes:

> Why do we have to wait for 2.2?  You can do this already.  

> >>> import types
> >>> types.IntType
> <type 'int'>
> >>> assert isinstance(0,types.IntType)

[me, earlier]
> >   assert isinstance(num, int)
> >   assert isinstance(msg, str)

In 2.2 you don't have to import types.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 18:14:51 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:14:51 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 09:40:21 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
>news:3b478576.1314346961 at wa.news.verio.net...
>    ...
>> >> dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
>> >>
>> >> First character is numeric or "-"
>    ...
>> >This is very easy to express as a Regular Expression:
>> >    r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$'
>> or
>>      r'^-?(\d*\.\d\d|\d+)$'
>> if you want to allow .12  (or -.00), see below ;-)
>
>Yes, but that follows a very different spec from the one
>given by the original poster, where the first rule was, as
>above quoted, 'first character is numeric or "-"'.
>
>Getting the specs 'right' for a fuzzily defined domain is
>challenging, I was just trying to help implement the
>specs the poster thought were right:-).
>
>
Well, ok, but did either of us really nail that? ;-)

"""
First character is numeric or "-"
At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly
two digits
All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"
"""

I missed because I allowed \.\d\d by itself, which has first
character '.' not equal to '-' or digit.

But according to the rules, ISTM you missed too, since you
don't allow -\.\d\d, which has an ok first character. The rules
don't say whether any digits must precede a '.'

In fact, we probably both missed by not letting '-' by itself
be legal ;-)

Perhaps r'(-|\d)\d*(\.\d\d)?$' ?


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 15:42:39 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:42:39 -0400
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de> <PTg57.32687$d4.1085713@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4ntg$m8l0k$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <JCl57.22558$PF1.1107141@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Matthias Huening" <mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:9j4ntg$m8l0k$1 at fu-berlin.de...
> Thanks, Marco, for pointing me to the signal-module.
>
> And, Steve, thank you very much for your 'other suggestion'.
> I have to admit that I don't understand how it works but - it works!!
> The asyncore-module is really great! Exactly what I was looking for.
>
> One question: while playing around with your example I noticed that there
> seems to be a problem with virtual servers. Your http_client-class seems
to
> ignore virtual servers. E.g. the page:
> http://www.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/mitarbeiter.html
> is not found (but it exists...).
> Any ideas?

You might find you need to examine the HTTP response headers and access
another page. I think that httplib does that for you, but you will have to
code it yourself with asyncore. Here's a trace from a proxy trying to access
that page on my browser's behalf. Did I get anything wrong? I cam certainly
access the page in IE. In this case the server might not have liked the
apparently-spoofed "Host:" header which the proxy just dumbly echoes out.

By the way, the proxy is another Rushing-inspired tool!

D:\Book1\Code\Ch7>python proxysample.py www.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de 80
<==(0) 'GET /mitarbeiter.html HTTP/1.0\015'
<==(0) 'Accept: application/vnd.ms-excel, application/msword,
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg,
image/pjpeg, */*\015'
<==(0) 'Accept-Language: en-us\015'
<==(0) 'User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; MSNIA; Windows
98)\015'
<==(0) 'Host: 127.0.0.1:8080\015'
<==(0) 'Connection: Keep-Alive\015'
<==(0) '\015'
Connected
==>(0) 'HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found\015'
==>(0) 'Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:38:16 GMT\015'
==>(0) 'Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU PHP/4.0.3pl1 mod_ssl/2.4.10
OpenSSL/0.9.4\015'
==>(0) 'Connection: close\015'
==>(0) 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\015'
==>(0) '\015'
==>(0) '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">'
==>(0) '<HTML><HEAD>'
==>(0) '<TITLE>404 Not Found</TITLE>'
==>(0) '</HEAD><BODY>'
==>(0) '<H1>Not Found</H1>'
==>(0) 'The requested URL /mitarbeiter.html was not found on this
server.<P>'
==>(0) '</BODY></HTML>'

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 15:59:26 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:59:26 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <uelr4eq5d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> (IMO -- and attempting to be helpful again) This (and similar
> statements) is rhetorically wrong and counter-productive.  In PEP238,
> you are NOT proposing to delete integer division (and I hope/presume
> you never will), you are NOT proposing to switch it to C's version
> (ditto), nor are you proposing any other substantive change (ditto).
> From a technical viewpoint, you are merely, in Tim's words, proposing
> to change it's spelling, so that future i//j == current i/j, down to
> the very last bit. (...)

Just for clarification, I don't think that's quite right.  // is being
proposed for integer division only.  That is, unlike todays /, using
// with two floats, while still yielding a float, would yield the
floor() of what today's / would have yielded, and thus not the same
"down to the very last bit"

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Jul  2 09:51:44 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 13:51:44 GMT
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <90D26BA98gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>

Carlos Ribeiro wrote: 

[snip example of module global being misused]

>... Also, if the state variable
>is declared as a global, even reimporting the module will fail.

This is untrue. I'm guessing you mean that given:

  from module import module_global

  reload(module)

doesn't do what you want, but that's the fault of using
"from ... import", not module's use of a global.

- Gordon




From ramsa at swva.net  Sun Jul 29 21:56:08 2001
From: ramsa at swva.net (Patricia A. Shaffer)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:56:08 GMT
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net> <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <ejf9mtgm2det0ooavadu3vef5meigb0uph@4ax.com>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT, "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com>
wrote:

>I laughed at the first one of these I read,
>thinking it might be the result of a python program,
>but now I have noticed that they are popping up
>on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
>Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
>I have seen four or five today.

Poor dear, you've missed out on all the fun!  C'mon over to nanae
(news.admin.net-abuse.email) and join the party! <eg>

Patricia
ramsa at swva.net

Proud Citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia
"Anti-spammers are the immune system of the Internet." CDR M. Dobson
"The issue is consent, not content." Crosscut
Help Outlaw spam! <http://www.cauce.org> - <http://www.spamfree.org/>


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 19:49:01 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 19:49:01 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <rdeemts4mrarb8b5ghqieio68n1jv32tl1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <u8zh4u0b6.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:

> I guess what I had in mind was a simple but effective equivelent
> that I used to use with BCPL. A function called rdargs, which I
> think also became part of AmigaDOS

If you do get a moment to point to any reference or just write up a
quick summary, I'm sure there would be some implementation suggestions
available.

Presumably any parsing template still has to deal with issues such as
flagging options (optional pieces) versus standard arguments,
delimiters and quoting them, etc...  But there's obviously also
multiple ways to make choices about each of those issues.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 11:58:55 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:58:55 +0100
Subject: Win2k Tkinter checkbuttons
Message-ID: <MDxSHIA$eHT7Ew8o@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

I'm having problems with menu checkbuttons under python2.1 running under
win2k sp2. When I pop up a menu containing a ticked item I don't see all
of the tick. When the mouse passes over the checkbutton the tick
suddenly gets fully displayed.

 I have other Tk apps which seem to be able to do this eg tkCon, but
stuff I build with Tkinter doesn't seem able to get this quite right. 

Anyone else seen/fixed this?
-- 
Robin Becker


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Wed Jul 11 02:35:49 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:35:49 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994744816.1936.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4BF3C5.419FEC0D@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> If you want to turn every + - * / etc into a long-winded function call

No, I don't want to do that, obviously. But I also
wouldn't like to see a piece of implicit state controlling
the number of digits I get out of arithmetic operations.
I've had experiences with that in Hypertalk, all of
them bad.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 11:26:34 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:26:34 +0100
Subject: python for AS400 ?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BEDF@intrepid>

> From:	dedalus at yifan.net [SMTP:dedalus at yifan.net]
> is there a python version for AS400 ?
 
See <http://home.no.net/pgummeda/> for Per Gummedal's port.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From laurent.szyster at q-survey.be  Sat Jul  7 02:30:12 2001
From: laurent.szyster at q-survey.be (Laurent Szyster)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 08:30:12 +0200
Subject: openssl-python
References: <slrn9kciqp.5l8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B46AC74.717BF64D@q-survey.be>

phil hunt wrote:
> 
> There's a package, openssl-python that lets you write python
> programs that call functions in the OpenSSL library.
> 
> Unfortunately i cannot find a homepage for it. All there
> is that gets retuerned by Google is pages that link to RPMs
> for it.

Search for "M2Crypto".


Laurent Szyster


From aetodd at wm.edu  Tue Jul 10 10:39:40 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:39:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: getpass() problems..
In-Reply-To: <E15JyYX-00088M-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15JyYX-00088M-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <994775980.3b4b13acc356e@webmail1.wm.edu>

Hey,
  getpass() seems to be crashing my WinNT system. Is there 
some way I can manually change the echo to aterisks or 
something? I'm writing a _really_ simple program that just 
encrypts text files past in on the command line using the 
rotor module. I'm using getpass to get the key... is this a 
bad idea? Is there a better way?

Andrew ~ elecfsh
aetodd at wm.edu



From martin at strakt.com  Wed Jul  4 02:38:48 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:38:48 +0200
Subject: Problems with thread state
In-Reply-To: <994174327.655299@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
References: <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org> <994174327.655299@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <20010704083848.A595@strakt.com>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 03:32:08PM -0000, Donn Cave wrote:
> Quoth Martin Sjgren <martin at strakt.com>:
> 
> | Seeing as a call to SSL_connect() might block, I surrounded the call to it
> | by Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS. I also have a wrapper
> | callback for verification (i.e. I plug my callback into OpenSSL and it
> | calls a Python callback residing in a Context object)... Here's my
> | problem: When I call PyEval_CallObject() in my wrapper callback, python
> | segfaults! Some poking around with gdb shows that somewhere, before
> | PyFrame_New() is called to execute the Python callback in,
> | PyThreadState_Get() returns NULL!
> 
> Prior to PyEval_CallObject(), you need to get back in line for the
> Python thread you released with Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS.  I do that
> with PyEval_AcquireThread(PyThreadState *), and then after the
> callback, PyEval_ReleaseThread(PyThreadState *).  How do you get
> the thread state?  Not the way I do, I reckon, so I will leave
> that to you.

This is how I do it, in my MySSL_Connection_connect()

    if (PySocketSock_connect(self->socket, args) == NULL)
        return NULL;
    setup_ssl(self); // creates a BIO and some stuff
    Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS
    ret = SSL_connect(self->ssl);
    Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS
    // handle ret, etc

But... SSL_connect may call a callback I've set, for verification
purposes. This function looks somewhat like this:

    // find context and certificate and stuff
    argv = Py_BuildValue(...);
    ret = PyEval_CallObject(ctx->verify_callback, argv);
    Py_DECREF(argv);
    // handle ret, etc

and this is where it crashes... Should I put in a PyThreadState pointer in
my ctx objects that I set instead of using BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS, so I can
release and re-acquire around the CallObject?

Thanks a lot for your help

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010704/9c873299/attachment.sig>

From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 15:35:57 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:35:57 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <xi_77.30701$EP6.7899249@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

I believe that 5.0//2.0 will be 2.0, not 2

TJR





From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 14:25:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:25:24 GMT
Subject: pythonista.com
References: <mailman.994955667.9160.python-list@python.org> <lbl37.161430$Mf5.43742860@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <oYl37.1089$%6.234079@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> If an open source(ish) project doesn't come forward for it let me know
> bosahv at netscape.net. Like I said I don't know what I'd do with it but I
> think I'll pay whatever transfer stuff to keep it 'in the family' so to
> speak.

Probably easiest and cheapest to let it expire and reregister the next day.




From simonb at webone.com.au  Sun Jul 15 10:07:18 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:07:18 +1000
Subject: How to add type "int" to string ?
References: <692684d4.0107150512.5b7d9ccd@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B51A396.4020302@webone.com.au>

 >>> "hello world"+chr(0x00)
'hello world\000'

is that what you wanted?

shuibo wrote:

>Hello all :
>in my program I want to give a char variable a Hex value , for example :
>a = "Hello World"
>a = a + 0x00
>but it display "cannot add type int to string"
>what can I do ?
>thanks very very much !
>



From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 13:18:40 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:18:40 -0400
Subject: Calling a user-defined Exception from within a function. Need Help.
In-Reply-To: <9hsmbn+781@eGroups.com>; from jestes39@yahoo.com on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:54:47PM +0000
References: <9hsmbn+781@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <20010703131840.F22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:54:47PM +0000, jestes39 at yahoo.com wrote:
| I am still learning Python basics. I am trying to raise exceptions 
| within a function. The problem is that my named exceptions aren't 
| being recognized. They were working before I split the code up into 
| modules. I just need to know where I need to define the exceptions or 
| if I have to do something special to get them to work. Here's the 
| basic shell of the code:
| 
|   import sys
|   import telnetlib
|   import dbi,odbc
|   import exceptions
| 
|   class database_error(exceptions.Exception):
...
|   class other(exceptions.Exception):
...
|   def parse(record):
|       try:
|           #Parse the row into the variables that will be used to 
|           #  populate the receiving fields
|           .....
|           .....
|           return 'TRUE'
|       except:
|           return 'FALSE'

IMO it is better to raise an exception than to catch all of them and
return a boolean.  This is Python, not C, after all :-).

|   def receipt(record):
...
|               if parse(record) == 'FALSE':
For example, here, you could just let the exception from 'parse'
propagate upwards, rather than checking the return value and then
raising a new exception.

|                   raise other

I think this line is wrong, but I could be wrong.  Can classes be
raised, or just instances?  I think you mean to raise an instance
anyways so change it to 

                    raise other()

|       except database_error:
|           dbc = None
|           crsr = None
|           tn.close()
|           print 'we made it to the database exception'
|       except other:
|           dbc = None
|           crsr = None
|           tn.close()    
|           print 'unidentified error'
|       except:
|           dbc = None
|           crsr = None
|           tn.close()
|           print 'unhandled exception'

The first 2 except clauses can be simplified down to :

    except (database_error , other ) err :
        dbc = None
        crsr = None
        tn.close()
        print err   # let the exception itself define what a useful
                    # message will be

The only difference here is that unexpected exceptions are caught
(such as SystemExit, as Steve mentioned).

Alternatively, if you want the error (exception) to propagate upwards,
you can use a 'finally' clause :

    finally :
        dbc = None
        crsr = None
        tn.close()
        print sys.exc_info()  # this gives you access to the
                              # exception, but check the spelling as
                              # I'm not 100% certain

Which one you should use depends on the exact semantics you want in
your program.

-D




From salnikov at inp.nsk.su  Sun Jul 22 23:42:10 2001
From: salnikov at inp.nsk.su (Andy Salnikov)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:42:10 +0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>

"Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk...
>
> I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
> think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.

Yeah, completely agree. Personaly, if this change happens, it will be a big
revolt from Python for me. Not only for aesthetic reasons, simply because I
cannot rely on the language which dares to change the meaning of existing
operators. What do you think will be next? Change assignment to work like a
copy, because there are many people confused with the reference semantic? I
almost hear how manager staff saying: "Do you talk about that sh**ty snake
language which changes its rules every year? Don't even think about it in
our project!"

Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
0.5.

Cheers,
Andy.




From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul 23 14:22:02 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:22:02 GMT
Subject: incrementing characters
References: <9jhojp$t7h$1@solaria.cc.gatech.edu>
Message-ID: <eXZ67.536189$eK2.112437924@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Holland King" <insanc at cc.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:9jhojp$t7h$1 at solaria.cc.gatech.edu...
> how do you interate a letter or string? for instance:
> a + 1 = b
> or
> aa + 1 = ab
> etc. in c it is similar to above and i am guessing there is an equally
> simple way to do it in python, i just can't figure it out. thank you
> for your time and help.
>
> --
> ---
> Joseph Holland King  | "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our
>                      |  conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His
>                      |  megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis


I think you mean "increment"...
For one character, it's simple:

>>> ord('A')
65
>>> chr(65)
'A'
>>> chr(66)
'B'

For a string, you will have to mess around a bit.
Remember, strings are immutable, so you will have to construct a new string.

def inc_char(ch): return chr(ord(ch)+1)
def inc_string(s): return s[:-1] + inc_char(s[-1])

..add you own error checking, etc...





From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 04:39:30 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:39:30 +0200
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:45:35 EDT."
             <15198.63407.158009.6372@anthem.wooz.org> 
Message-ID: <m15Q39e-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) wrote:

> >>>>> "CT" == Christian Tanzer <tanzer at swing.co.at> writes:
> 
>     >> really-portable-code-is-always-ugly-anyway-ly y'rs,
> 
>     CT> So-lets-make-it-even-uglier-?-ly y'rs,
> 
> I don't consider int(math.floor(a / b)) to be ugly.  In fact, it's
> arguably much more Pythonic: Explicit is better than implicit.
> There's no ambiguity in intention with that idiom, like there is with
> bare a / b.

As they say (at least in german): `tastes vary`.

If `a` and `b` are integer numbers, I consider

    int(math.floor(a / b))

to be considerably uglier than

    int(a / b)

Both are explicit, but use of a floating point function like floor in
a pure integer context is less than obvious. Besides, the quotient
operation might be part of a bigger expression -- even the use of a
single function call might reduce readability there. 

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From James_Althoff at i2.com  Mon Jul  9 15:06:51 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:06:51 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
Message-ID: <OF25443FD7.FFAA68F2-ON88256A84.0067C535@i2.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
<snip>
>The last time we solved a "it's *hard* to make sure temporary context
>changes get undone!" problem in Python was via adding ">>" to "print" <0.8
>wink>.  Python may want a more general approach to this kind of thing.

I'm hoping for the possibility of Python someday supporting "unnamed,
in-place (and fully functional)" code blocks as a possible "more general
approach" (a la Smalltalk and Ruby).

context.withPrecisionDo(max(8, oldp + 3)):
    do stuff
    return roundtoprecision(result, oldp)

lock.whileAcquiredDo():
    do stuff

mySideEffectObjectDo(args):
    do stuff

myFunkyCursor.showDuring():
    do stuff

myFile.whileOpenDo():
    do stuff

etc.

(Ignoring vexing details of syntax, semantics, etc. :-)

Jim




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Wed Jul 11 16:35:44 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:35:44 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5237@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I really can't speak for Ruby or PHP, as I can only work on the assumption that the gentleman that wrote the original work has accurate information.  But I also wonder about that.  How does PHP compare, in comparison to ASP, JSP, and Cold Fusion?  JSP is free if you run Tomcat, PHP is free, and APS is free if you run Windows and IIS.  The only one I question is Cold Fusion, which costs a few thousand.  And as far as Ruby goes, how many of those business needs lie outside Japan?  And Sun has picked up other big names (has anyone heard of IBM and Oracle?) on the J2EE bandwagon.  To set the record straight, I am pro Python.  But it is hard to get others at my company on that bandwagon.  I have a hard enough time selling Perl.   

-----Original Message-----
From: "J?rgen A. Erhard" [mailto:juergen.erhard at gmx.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 2:41 PM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


>>>>> "Kemp" == Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> writes:

    Kemp> So an interesting question is raised.

Is it?

    Kemp> If PHP and Ruby are gaining acceptance because they address
    Kemp> business needs, what needs to be done to carry Python in
    Kemp> that direction?

*If*!  We can debate to no end whether PHP and Ruby are gaining
acceptance, in business circles.

And PHP and Ruby are quite different beasts.

I'm looking on my Debian system... and lo and behold, I don't see any
significant app or tool written in Ruby.  Okay, that might not mean
too much...  I can find tons of *important* stuff using Python,
however (apt-cache showpkg python-base scrolls off the screen... a 60
line screen.  The same for ruby fits nicely)

    Kemp> And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it for business
    Kemp> solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can
    Kemp> Python become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?

What Paul said... especially concerning Java.  Just Sun alone probably
has a marketing budget for Java that no company in the Python camp can
match.

Bye, J

PS: This will really (yeah, sure ;-) be the last from me in this
thread.

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
                GNU Privacy Guard (http://www.gnupg.org)
         I have a firm grip on reality, now I can strangle it.



From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 13 19:50:21 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:50:21 -0500
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com>
        <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com>
        <004c01c10be8$af2face0$4ffa42d5@hagrid>
        <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <15183.35133.264728.399408@beluga.mojam.com>

    mal> Here's an updated version which clarifies some issues...
    ...
    mal>     I propose to make the Unicode literal encodings (both standard
    mal>     and raw) a per-source file option which can be set using the
    mal>     "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244 in a slightly
    mal>     extended form (by adding the '=' between the directive name and
    mal>     it's value).

I think you need to motivate the need for a different syntax than is defined
in PEP 244.  I didn't see any obvious reason why the '=' is required.

Also, how do you propose to address /F's objections, particularly that the
directive can't syntactically appear before the module's docstring (where it
makes sense that the module author would logically want to use a non-default
encoding)?

Skip




From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 09:26:30 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:26:30 +0100
Subject: Stop a duty in a Tkinter program
Message-ID: <3B558E86.1E7441C4@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

Hi, everybody,

I am programming with Tkinter. After the user click "Go" button or menu,
my program will carry out some operation which won't stop until the end
time (which is set by user) reach. In order to let user interupt the
operation, a "Stop" button is present. But during the period of the
operation, my program is not able to respond to any click at all, it
seems dead before the operation finished.  How can I terminate the
operation without exit the program? Any help is welcome.

Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:59:07 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 07:59:07 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <3B5DBAC8.4B89E271@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote in 
news:3B5DBAC8.4B89E271 at alcyone.com:

> I find it pretty horrifying that this change is even being seriously
> considered much less is evidently going forward.  That I find the
> benefits (namely, making the language easier for novices to understand;
> integer division is not very hard to understand and have not known
> anybody learning programmer for which this was absolutely a deal breaker
> and totally inhibited their ability to learn a language) to be of
> dubious value only makes it more disturbing.

When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will have been 
told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over. Which is EXACTLY 
what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH more sophisticated 
concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on this newsgroup, is hard even 
for most programming professionals.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From ben.hutchings at roundpoint.com  Wed Jul  4 07:38:24 2001
From: ben.hutchings at roundpoint.com (Ben Hutchings)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 04:38:24 -0700
Subject: Interpreter hangs after calling my extension
References: <u8zidrst8.fsf@roundpoint.com> <j4ae2ovrov.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <uzoakrkjz.fsf@roundpoint.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:

> Ben Hutchings <ben.hutchings at roundpoint.com> writes:
> 
> > When I enter 'cvsdll.main([])' at the Python console, my extension
> > function is called; it runs and returns as expected (checked in the
> > VC++ debugger), but the Python interpreter never prints a new prompt
> > or reacts to input.  Further, if I set cvsdll.stderr = sys.stderr
> > first, the error message that is successfully written to sys.stderr
> > (checked in the VC++ debugger) never appears in the console.
> 
> Your code looks fine to me. Are you running it from IDLE or PythonWin?
> If so, don't be surprised that nothing is displayed immediately; you
> may need to trigger a repaint. So I recommend to run it in the console
> version first.

I was running it in the console.

In PythonWin these problems don't occur.  So perhaps the CVS DLL
does something strange to the console.  In any case, I think that's
where I should be looking now.  Thanks for looking over my code.

> Next, you probably have to start debugging through the Python code, as
> well. You'll need the debug version of Python for that so VC++ can
> locate the source code properly.

Right.


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 17 18:23:39 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:23:39 -0500
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
        <ku7kx7gtzk.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
        <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
Message-ID: <15188.47851.965197.196645@beluga.mojam.com>

    Christopher> This is, in this case, incorrect.  Unless I am horribly
    Christopher> mistaken, the higher cost of dealing with globals is that
    Christopher> you first have to do a failed lookup in the local
    Christopher> dictionary.  (Plus failed lookups are more expensive than
    Christopher> successful ones)

(Note: I trimmed the endpoint from 1e7 to 1e6):

simple1.py:

    i = 2.5
    while i < 1e6:
        j = 2.5 * 2.5
        i += 1
    print i, j

simple2.py:

    def func():
      i = 2.5
      while i < 1e6:
        j = 2.5 * 2.5
        i += 1
      print i, j

    func()

Result:

    % time python simple1.py
    1000000.5 6.25
    4.04user 0.00system 0:04.13elapsed 97%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
    0inputs+0outputs (323major+138minor)pagefaults 0swaps
    % time python simple2.py
    1000000.5 6.25
    3.00user 0.00system 0:03.06elapsed 97%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
    0inputs+0outputs (323major+138minor)pagefaults 0swaps

QED.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 02:11:46 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:11:46 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <upuanumtb.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <ne687.32368$EP6.8424941@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <ubsm6vr31.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> "David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
> news:upuanumtb.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> 
> > Is the polymorphic argument really true here?
> 
> I think so, even though Guido made it look asymetric in the first
> paragraph.  I can easily imagine that I would want a formula like
> (n-1)//k to give the same numerical value regardless of whether n
> enters as 20 or 20.0 -- the same as (n-1)*k does.  Why should one work
> polymorphically and the other not?

I'm not sure I follow - the section is discussing an alternative where
// does the true division, so the new // functionality would be
polymorphic for true division?  The "argument" I'm not sure about is
that leaving / alone still leaves a problem case when trying to use it
(e.g., the existing classic function with /) in some other polymorphic
case.  I'm just not sure what that case is.

If in the above, you meant / rather than //, then either you want an
integer result polymorphically (in which case I'd think int(expr)
would work), or you want a float result polymorphically (in which case
you'd use // for true division instead).  Yes, the existing classic
operator on its own might not give you the integer polymorphic result, but
it's not "hard" to write as specified here.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 01:46:34 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:46:34 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
In-Reply-To: <co847.478507$eK2.99254456@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107150943360.2560-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Nick Perkins wrote:

>Your modules are going to have to import the globals.  You could put them
>all in a separate file, call it "my_globals.py", and then in each file
>(including the 'main' file), you would have:
>from my_globals import *

This assumes globals are constants. If you want them to change,
you can put them to class/object:

class Dummy:
  pass

globs = Dummy()
globs.var1 = 1.23
globs.var2 = 2.34
...

BTW, globals and object attributes take more time to get than
locals.


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/




From peter.zettler at gmx.net  Wed Jul  4 03:53:39 2001
From: peter.zettler at gmx.net (Peter Zettler)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 07:53:39 GMT
Subject: Binding for Open Cascade
Message-ID: <1103_994233219@creepy-pz>

Hey there,

  does anybody know if someone is working on a Open Cascade binding for Python?
For Open Cascade see www.opencascade.org

Regards,
Peter Zettler



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 30 10:07:34 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:07:34 -0400
Subject: Loaded module list and attributes
References: <o2mamt4qtis8r77maqnsmjg7h193aa80t4@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <fQd97.3473$9i1.231823@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Dale Strickland-Clark" <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote in message
news:o2mamt4qtis8r77maqnsmjg7h193aa80t4 at 4ax.com...
> How do I itterate through all the loaded modules and find the name of the
module and a value of a
> local attribute (__version__ in this case)?
>
> I'm writing a small debugging routine and Python internals are still a bit
of a black box to me.
>
> Thanks.

Probably you want to iterate over sys.modules -- one way to do this is:

    for k in sys.modules.keys():
        module = sys.modules[k]
        print module.__version__

However you will need to ensure that a particular module HAS a __version__
attribute before referencing it, or trap the AttributeError exception which
will result when it doesn't.

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 04:55:37 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:55:37 +0200
Subject: Version compatibility in division 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:37:53 EDT."
             <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDNLBAA.tim.one@home.com> 
Message-ID: <m15Q3PF-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> [David Bolen]
> > ...
> > Then again, the bigger problem with int() is the potential for
> > rounding that is, at least theoretically, permitted by the
> > implementation, although as someone else pointed out, it's not clear
> > that any C libraries actually do that.
> 
> Guido suggested that "someone" (certainly me) change Python's implementation
> so that int() and long() always truncate, regardless of what the platform C
> happens to do.  I can do that, no problem.
> 
> There are no known platforms on which that will make a lick of difference,
> except to make Python run slower.  But that doesn't mean no such platforms
> exist.  And making a particular Python operation run slower can change the
> behavior of, e.g., threaded apps.  It's also the case that platforms
> certainly vary even now in how int(infinity) and int(NaN) behave (since C89
> is silent on those cases), and that they may suffer some different
> accidental behavior in these cases after the change.

Judging by your many other posts, I think you'll be able to avoid any
performance hit for all the platforms where C does the right thing
anyway.

I don't see how changing previously undefined behavior to
platform-indpendent behavior makes you worry, though. As far as I
understood one of your previous posts about this topic, moving to a
C99(?) compiler would have the same effect anyway.

For sure you aren't planning on introducing `from __future__ import
C99_semantics` for when Python migrates to one of these new-fangled
compilers <wink>?

> So is this a change we should be frightened of?  Do we need a
> 
>     from __future__ import int_and_long_guaranteed_to_truncate
> 
> statement to enable it?
> 
> I think that would be absurd, but from an implementer's point of view it's
> the plain truth that no change is without consequences.

So it is.

That's-what-pragmatism-was-invented-for-y'rs,
Christian

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Fri Jul 27 08:40:31 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 07:40:31 -0500
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net> <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com> <015001c1165c$8106e6c0$0101010a@local> <3B611DB7.480D5FA5@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <000d01c11699$5793dcc0$0101010a@local>

Oooooops... that'll teach me to post after Midnight...  :-0


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Str?der" <michael at stroeder.com>


> Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> >
> > What I'd like to see is a working example of *using* one or more of
> > the given session managers... I'm afraid that just reading the source
> > is not helping me.
>
> Did you check out the cgi-bin/test-session.py shipped
> in PyWebLib's tar.gz file ?
>
> Ciao, Michael.





From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul 21 18:54:09 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:54:09 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net>
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org>
        <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net>
        <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net>
Message-ID: <15194.2065.803389.649592@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> That does bring up the subject of machine-generated symbols though.
    >> And case sensitivity in dictionaries. I use base52 [A-Za-z] encoded
    >> md5's in certain contexts. If I use those as keys, will it break?

    kosh> Losing case sensitivity in dictionaries would screw me pretty
    kosh> badly also.

I think case-sensitivity as we are discussing in this thread runs only to
identifier and attribute names, not the contents of strings, so while

    date = 1
    DATE += 1
    print Date

should print "2" by my understanding, 

    dict = {"date": 1,
            "DATE": 2,
            "Date": 3}

would create a dictionary of length 3.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From larryd at musicalheritage.org  Fri Jul 13 17:07:02 2001
From: larryd at musicalheritage.org (Lawrence D)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 14:07:02 -0700
Subject: dependencies question on 2.1-5
References: <f18d2785.0107130516.7e126e9f@posting.google.com> <mailman.995037082.11546.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <f18d2785.0107131307.6ea95c6c@posting.google.com>

thank you.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 03:24:00 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:24:00 +0200
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B4FBBD8.45F56742 at engcorp.com...
    ...
> Alex, please consider moving closer to the Eastern Standard timezone
> so that you may answer my questions more quickly.  What's so special
> about Italy anyway?

Pasta, of course.  You guys can claim your pizza is as good as Italy's
(I'd disagree, but there IS space for debate), but our pasta is still
nonpareil -- people who decry spaghetti coding don't know what
they're blabbering about!


Alex





From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 17 09:29:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:29:11 GMT
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
References: <mailman.995315008.1887.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpy9pn1xzu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

zooko at zooko.com writes:

> But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default argument to
> an inner function, like this:
> 
> >>> def silliest_func():
> >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
> >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
> >>>         pass
> >>>     return inner_silliest_func
> >>> 
> >>> blarg = {}
> >>> for i in range(2**13):
> >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()
> 
> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:
> 
> >>> del blarg
> 
> none of the memory is freed up!

Hi Zooko,

How do you know that the memory isn't feed up?  I've tried this with
2.0 and with the current CVS, and it doesn't leak.

If you're looking at process size, there are lots of good reasons why
the process size doesn't go down -- but if you do this in a loop,
you'll see it doesn't grow:

    >>> def ps(flags = "-l"):
            import os
            os.system("ps -p %d %s" % (os.getpid(), flags))

    >>> def f():
            x = [0]*2**10
            def g(x=x): return x
            return g

    >>> while 1:
            ps()
            b = {}
            for i in range(2**13): b[i] = f()

Could it be that the real code that does blow up have more intricate
behavior that isn't captured by your example?  What Python version are
you using where you have observed this in your server?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Tue Jul  3 07:07:27 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:07:27 -0300
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703080216.026f3ab0@mail.inet.com.br>

I've got some very good comments on my PEP-to-be. The main concerns are:

- we need to reference the style guide
- the use of tools such as PyCheck should be encouraged
- and yes, my english needs some quality checking also :-)

I'm going to work on it tonight. Too bad I have a day job <wink>. As of 
now, I'm still waiting for Martin's proposed PEP2 text - it seems that he 
still needs to get either Barry Warsaw or ESR approval on this, mainly 
because he's taking over an existing but unfinished PEP. I feel that we're 
talking about complementary issues, and it would be very important to be 
working together.


Carlos Ribeiro





From GADGILP at INFOTECH.ICICI.com  Wed Jul  4 07:32:10 2001
From: GADGILP at INFOTECH.ICICI.com (GADGIL PRASAD /INFRA/INFOTECH)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 17:02:10 +0530 
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
Message-ID: <E1B786DCFA6ED511A0390008C7289E47046D85@ICICIBACK3>

hi,

I think the "python tutorial" + "language reference" provided by the
python standard distro is something that comes close.

Small tutorial plus a neat language reference and both provided by the
same ppl that designed the language. I have not yet purchased a python book,
and using the above. I too, wanted a smallest and best book for it like
K&R :)

/prasad

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Brunning [mailto:SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 4:17 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Cc: 'Nicola.Musatti at ObjectWay.it'
Subject: RE: Is there a K&R on Python?


> From:	Nicola Musatti [SMTP:objectway at divalsim.it]
> I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
> language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
> toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
> lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
> C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?
 
Hmmm. I thought K&R *was* a tutorial.

Anyway, there are two books which nearly fit the bill. The first is Mark
Lutz's 'Python Pocket Reference' (O'Reilly). This is *very* similar in style
and content to the on-line quick reference (see
<http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/python/PQR.html>). It covers Python
1.5.1 - I don't know if a 2.1 version is planned.

The other is David Beazley's 'Python Essential Reference' (New Riders). This
is rather larger, and covers both the core language and most of the Standard
Library. The 2nd edition was published recently, and covers Python 2.1. To
me, this really *is* essential. YYMV.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010704/dbad11e1/attachment.html>

From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 23:24:06 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:24:06 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <roy-2F9DAF.19464308072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECFKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Roy Smith]
> ...
> I'm writing a parser for a kind of text file we use a lot.  The main
> loop  of the parser is a state machine.  In each state, the current
> input line is  tested to see if it matches one or more regular
> expressions, and based on  which (if any) it matches, you do some
> processing and advance to the next state.  Something like:
>
>    state = "cvsid"
>    for line in inputfile.readlines():
>       if state == "cvsid":
>          if re.match ("^\s*$\s*Id:([^$]*)$\s*$", line):

Always use r-strings for regexps!  You're going to get "mysterious failures"
if you don't, as time goes on and you change the regexps.  For example, add
a \b to the above to match at a word boundary, and it's actually going to
insist on matching a backspace character instead.  It's just an accident
that "\s" yields a two-character string and leaves the backslash intact,
while "\b" yields chr(8).  r-strings are WYSIWYG in all cases.

>             state = "header"
>        elif state == "header":
>          if re.match ("big ugly pattern", line):
>             do some stuff
>             state = "what comes after the header"
>
> and so on.  I'll end up with about a dozen different states, with
> perhaps 2 dozen different regex's.  Here's the dilema.  If I write
> it as I did above, the regex's will get compiled each time they're
> evaluated, which is clearly inefficient in the extreme.

The good news is that this part isn't true:  all versions of Python have
always maintained an internal compiled-regexp cache, mapping regexp strings
to their compiled forms, much like the one you sketched building "by hand"
later.  Current Python maintains a cache of 100 pairs.

The bad news is that I recommend the alternative anyway:

> The alternative would be to re.compile() all  the regex's once, at the
> top, then use the stored programs,

The great *advantage* to this is that you wouldn't be so reluctant to
exploit re.VERBOSE mode if the regexps were compiled at module level.  The
clarity added by using whitespace and inline comments to document the
*intent* of regexp gibberish is of overwhelming maintenance value.

> something like this:
>
>    cvsPattern = re.compile ("^\s*$\s*Id:([^$]*)$\s*$")
>          [...]
>          if cvsPattern.match (line):
>             state = header
>
> and so on.  This would certainly work, but it moves the regex's away
> from where they are used, making (IMHO) the program more difficult to
> read and understand.

re.VERBOSE mode regexps can be much easier to read and understand; so long
as you leave them inline, you're going to tend (as your examples *do*) to
squash them into as little space as possible with no explanation at all.

> It reminds me of the bad old days when we would collect all
> our FORTRAN format statements at the back of the deck.  See
> http://www.python.org/doc/Humor.html#habits for why I don't want
> to do that any more :-)

There's one huge difference:  FORMAT statements were identified by
meaningless integers, but you can give compiled regexp objects descriptive
names instead.

BTW, abstract away a little more, and you can likely build an entirely
table-driven state machine for this task, with simple and uniform code that
merely walks the table.  Nested dicts make great state-machine tables.




From martin at strakt.com  Mon Jul  9 03:19:43 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:19:43 +0200
Subject: socket module
Message-ID: <20010709091943.A18359@strakt.com>

Is there ANY way to use the socket module from a Python module written in
C? I mean, sure I could use BSD sockets right away, but that's really
reinventing the wheel since the Python socket module is a good, portable
module (AFAIK).

So, is there any way short of doing a  s/static//g  in socketmodule.c?

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From nperkins7 at home.com  Wed Jul 11 17:40:52 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:52 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <slrn9kpca4.t6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <EJ337.455416$eK2.94021506@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Quinn Dunkan" <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
"""
Large complicated data structures of nested tuples might be a mistake.
Tuples
and python's simple pattern matching can be handy for small ad hoc types,
but
don't forget about classes.
"""

Yes,
...but I have found one good use for such 'tuple gymnastics'.
( perhaps this is what you mean by 'pattern matching' )

When you want to have a dictionary that uses some type of object as a key,
but you want 'identical' objects to considered 'the same', you can pack the
relevant bits of an instance's data into a tuple, and use it as the dict
key.

example:
Suppose you want to keep track of the color any given x,y point...

>>> class point:
...  def __init__(self,x,y):
...   self.x = x
...   self.y = y
...  def as_tuple(self):
...   return (self.x,self.y)
...
>>> p1 = point(3,4)
>>> p2 = point(3,4)
>>> color = {}
>>> color[p1]='red'
>>> color[p2]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
KeyError: <__main__.point instance at 01373A6C>

# not the same instance

>>> color[p1.as_tuple()]='red'
>>> color[p2.as_tuple()]
'red'
>>>

# ..but the generated tuples are considered the same

This example is trivial, but I have used the same technique for much more
complicated objects, often generating a 'stucture of tuples', much like the
original poster was using.  Such a structure is, of course, unweildy, but it
makes a great dictionary key!  You can pick and choose which bits of
instance data to include, depending on your needs.  I have used this to
detect the (unwanted) generation of multiple, similar objects.  And the good
news is that you never have to manually extract info from the tuple, at all.

Another variation is to keep a dict which maps the tuple back to the object
itself, if that suits your needs.





From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Fri Jul 27 11:49:05 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:49:05 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m2wv4w5lj3.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <mailman.996130247.13985.python-list@python.org> <m2hevy4fsa.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m33bh.a1o.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

28 Jul 2001 02:17:57 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:

> Paul> The most obvious problem is that it implies that every rational
> Paul> can be represented as a float -- this is *severe* brokenness you
> Paul> don't need.  [I think it also implies that floats with integral
> Paul> values (1.0, etc.)  should turn into integers.]
> 
>> You can't do that.  Suppose that value you think is 1.0 really got truncated
> 
> Yeah; that's exactly my point!

But my model never treats a float as an integer, even if it's equal
to 1.0. Where does it give a wrong answer? It doesn't claim that
rationals are exactly representable as floats and doesn't implicitly
turn floats into rationals. What's wrong with it?

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From pmoscatt at iprimus.com.au  Wed Jul 18 23:48:12 2001
From: pmoscatt at iprimus.com.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:48:12 +1000
Subject: Retreiving a single number from a list of numbers ?
Message-ID: <3b565953@news.iprimus.com.au>

I am trying to extract a value from a variable that contains more than one
value.

For example:
    If  I assigned the result of wxGetClientDisplayRect() to the var 'a'
like:
        a = wxGetClientDisplayRect()

the 'a' would return something like (0, 0, 800. 540)

How then would I assign the 800 from 'a' and give it to a var called 'b' ??

Regards
Pete




From chris at voodooland.net  Sun Jul  8 18:39:45 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:39:45 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <3b477513$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <20010708173310.D92972-100000@open-systems.net>


On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Neil Macneale wrote:

> I am wondering if there is a straight forward license which I can use for
> python code I plan to distribute.  Is there a standard header, or
> possibly a link that can be placed in a header which basically says that
> people use the code at there own risk, and that they are free to change
> it?  I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
> GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?

This is what I use. A standard 2 clause (clause 1 and 2) FreeBSD style
copyright but with my own clause 3 to PREVENT people from GPL'ing my code
and thereby RESTRICTING its useage. I call it the static BSD License. Once
it's BSDL'ed it can't be made any less free. It's the closest thing to
public domain you can get yet still cover you A$$ from liability, and the
like. It keeps the code BSDL'ed and prevents someone from GPL'ing it
basically. If a company wanted to license it differently I would have ZERO
problem letting them license it for their own needs whatever that may be.
I just REFUSE to let the code be GPL'ed. Hence clause 3.

# Copyright 2001 Chris Watson (scanner at jurai.net).  All rights reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
# modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
# met:
#
#  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
#     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
#     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#  3. No changes are made to this license and/or additional terms of use
#     are placed without prior written permission from Chris Watson.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CHRIS WATSON ``AS IS'' AND ANY
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
# IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A  PARTICULAR
# PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CHRIS WATSON OR CONTRIBUTORS
# BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,  INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
# CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
# SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
# INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY  THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
# CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
# ARISING IN  ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
# THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.





From bh at intevation.de  Thu Jul 12 13:41:28 2001
From: bh at intevation.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 19:41:28 +0200
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <6qsng2rqnr.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

> I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple precision
> accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:
> 
> >>> from BNum import BNum as bn
> 
> >>> ab = bn('1.2340000')
> >>> cb = bn('123.45')
> >>> ab
> 1.2340000
> >>> ab * cb
> 152.3373000
> >>> (ab*cb).disp(2)
> '152.34'
> >>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
> 151.84
> +++++++++++++++++++++??????!

This is equivalent to

print ('%8.2f' % ab) * cb

:-)

And since 

>>> 1.23 * 123.45
151.84350000000001

the output 151.84 seems reasonable to me.

  Bernhard

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/


From fig at localhost.localdomain  Tue Jul 31 11:22:27 2001
From: fig at localhost.localdomain (Stephen R. Figgins)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:22:27 -0000
Subject: Frank Willison
References: <mailman.996583393.15643.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9mdjmi.1ok.fig@localhost.localdomain>

I am reeling from this news.  Frank was my manager for four years at
O'Reilly & Associates.  We worked on different coasts, but I got to
meet with him a few times a year.  Frank was very witty, well read,
intelligent, I loved talking with him.  His emails often made me
smile.  Frank was my hero when it came to wit and choice of words.
Frank was at the very heart of O'Reilly & Associates.  Tim is the
visionary, but Frank made the vision real.

What a sad day. O'Reilly & Associates has lost its strongest and best
loved knight.

-Stephen


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 03:38:47 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 07:38:47 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com> <m2puaqh6t2.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E8B2C2EF3FBmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <m2ofq9g4he.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E9954091A7Fmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9> <mtwv4wzzwd.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <m2y9pc5ljc.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE582A4BF27michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

Paul Foley <see at below> wrote in
news:m2y9pc5ljc.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz: 

> On 25 Jul 2001 10:23:14 -0700, Johann Hibschman wrote:
>
> ...  The printed representation of
> 
>            a
>           / \
>          b   c
> 
> as (a b c) is just an easier-to-deal-with form of "marshal" output.
> Nothing says you have to use that particular print representation,
> though everybody does.  

I would have thought that

    	a(b,c)

was a slightly more familiar print representation of the structure above!

Of course, sometimes it's nice to write

    	b `a` c

(stealing infix notation from Haskell here) for the same expression.


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 18:32:19 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:32:19 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpkvj.ns4.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:10:43 -0600 (MDT), Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
><...>
>> >Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
>> >language.
>>
>> Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
>> for longer programs.
>
>Hehe, you must have missed the recent thread about removing the first
>line from a text file...

Yes, I did. How about:


stdin.readline() #throw away first line
stdout.write(stdin.read())  #send the rest to stdout


or:


stdin.readline() #throw away first line
while 1:
   l = stdin.readline()
   if l == "": break
   stdout.write(stdin.readline()) 




-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Thu Jul 26 01:53:46 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:53:46 -0500
Subject: from __numerics__ import rational
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <cpwv4xa97a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <01c101c11597$56a23300$0101010a@local>

Guido recently shot down my proposal for a magic __numerics__ module,
based largely on the idea that the old semantics could never be removed.
In another posting I state that you *can* remove the original semantics,
producing (for instance) a DeprecationError exception so that the user
knows as soon as the module compiles that it isn't going to work.

I have an ulterior motive for this proposal.  I don't like rationals,
for the very pragmatic reason that even Guido mentions the "mysterious
inefficiencies" of programs using rational numbers.  On the other hand,
there are some strong supporters of rational numbers who have just as
much right to their opinions as I do.

My proposal gives a mechanism for specifying that a given module needs
(for instance) support for automatic rational arithmetic, which could
then be off by default.  It would also be straightforward to add support
for fixedpoints and/or decimal floats, which I would very much like to 
have but which the rational guys could care less about.

My proposal is certainly not the only way to support numeric operation
control; I don't even care if Guido et al use it.  I just want to be
sure that the needs of the rational crew aren't allowed to harm the 
rest of us, and likewise our disinterest in rationals doesn't harm them.

I don't mind int/int => float; I'll probably avoid using the / operator
with integers from now on anyway.  I just don't want to accidentally get
a rational number when I don't want one.

I guess that makes me irrational...  ;)





From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul 31 09:56:28 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 06:56:28 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.423933 <slrn.pl.9m7b4d.na4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <9k6dec$nbr$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn.pl.9m7b4d.na4.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>,
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk  <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:
>28 Jul 2001 23:14:01 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> pisze:
>>
>> Agreed: rationals with a fixed denominator for calculation results,
>> such as 100 in the U.S. where we have dollars and cents.
>
>No, plain rationals will suffice. No arithmetic operation except
>division introduces a denominator which represents fractional cents.

Huh?  What about sales tax?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From jparlar at home.com  Mon Jul 16 09:19:09 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:19:09 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
Message-ID: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

I have a simple problem, but one that, without some optimization, might hurt the performance of my project. To sum it up, I 
have two lists, we'll call them list A and list B, both lists contain only one-word strings (ie. both were generated by string.split() 
performed on a large amount of text)

List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
would be:

for eachItem in A:
    if eachItem in B:
        A.remove(eachItem)

Now, this will work fine, however, the size of list A varies, and while list B is constant, it is quite large (more than 750 items). 
List A can also, should the situation warrant, become quite huge as well. The main problem is that I have no idea of the 
efficiency of "in" for large lists like this. Can anyone think of a possibly quicker way, or is this the best?
One other note: List A may (and usually does) contain duplicate words. If those duplicate words appear in list B, then I want 
them both removed, but if they don't appear in list B, then I want them to remain separate (ie. if the word "Python" shows up 
five times in A, then I want the final version of A to still contain five occurrences of "Python")

I really don't know if this can be made any quicker, but any insight would be appreciated. For the cases I've been running, 
it's been quick enough so far, but there's a good chance that the amount of data in list A will be getting much larger, and I'll 
have to perform this entire operation (for different versions of list A) multiple times in one program execution.



Jay Parlar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."





From fluxent at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 13:21:31 2001
From: fluxent at yahoo.com (Bill Seitz)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 10:21:31 -0700
Subject: SQL-SELECT against View via ODBC?
References: <e2491a75.0106251209.c19d5e@posting.google.com> <2l%Z6.22470$g4.740189@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <e2491a75.0107020921.3a773de2@posting.google.com>

I established that the "cause" of the problem is that one of the
tables in my view has a Text field. It's the last field in the base
table, so those queries always worked fine. When I built the view, it
was no longer the last field, so the error reared it's ugly head.

Does anyone know whether mxODBC has this bug? The person who led me on
this discovery thought so, but wasn't too sure...

Also, I'm not clear on what qualifies as "commercial" use triggering
the non-free status of mxODBC? Is it limited to using the API within a
product for sale, or does any internal use by a corporate trigger it?

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message news:<2l%Z6.22470$g4.740189 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>...
> The generic odbc driver (I presume you mean the one from the Windows
> extensions) is known to be in need of maitnenance, and I understand from a
> recent posting that Mark Hammond expects to release a slightly updated copy
> (may even have done so by now).


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 16:38:58 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:38:58 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
        <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
        <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>
Message-ID: <15180.47458.789719.733845@beluga.mojam.com>

    Konrad> And a//b definitely beats (a+0.)/b, which does the trick, but is
    Konrad> not at all evident.

I'm not sure that the purpose of a//b would be all that evident to a new
Python programmer, especially one whose first programming language is
Python.  I've never seen // used as an operator before other than to
introduce comments in C++ and that ilk.  I suppose it means something in
APL, and I wouldn't be that surprised if it had some meaning in Perl. ;-)

At the very least C, C++ and Java programmers should be familiar with the
purpose of

    (a+0.0)/b

or

    float(a)/b

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From piet at cs.uu.nl  Tue Jul  3 07:36:22 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 13:36:22 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993765761.11911.python-list@python.org> <6qn16r7i69.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <9hhu6701d5j@enews2.newsguy.com> <6qae2r71hd.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <cp4rszl10a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3CECEA.5D02A66E@Lugoj.Com> <v491ktc9nooqo00k2l8th5moqui4i91c7r@4ax.com> <wz8zi719f9.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9k1fg2.24g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <uithaqm6h.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> (MK) writes:

MK> 02 Jul 2001 20:18:50 +0200, Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl> pisze:
SH> I've always liked having a colon on my assignment operator - I think
SH> the single = for assignment was a mistake. If we had := for
SH> assignment, then augmented assignments would be more clearly distinct
SH> from other operators - :+=, :-=, :*= etc etc.
>> 
>> Should be +:=, like in Algol 68.

MK> Or :+, like in Comal AFAIR. "x :+ y" is composed of two substrings of
MK> "x := x + y"; "x +:= y" is not.

It *is*, just in a different order.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 21 21:04:02 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:04:02 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j9i19$p96$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B596D95.C87DFFCD@mac.com> <3B5A12D9.7836217E@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B5A2682.E1A8A4D0@student.gu.edu.au>

SteveN wrote:
> 
> jorjun wrote:
> >
> > Aahz Maruch wrote:
> > > i'M aFraId i doN't UnDerStaNd wHy YoU THinK caSE-InsENsitIvitY miGhT bE
> > > A gOoD idEA.
> > > --
> > Currently if I import a module and the identifiers lOoK_lIkE_ThIs
> > then I have to precisely follow the ugly conventions in my own code.
> 
> Or import uGlY_mOdUlE as pretty_module
> 
> -SteveN-

Or 
1. politely mention it to the original coder. 
2. recode it for yourself with pretty names. :)
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul  7 17:16:42 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 01:16:42 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: "has" Operator
In-Reply-To: <3B4777CD.A6EBEA7F@home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Paul Sidorsky wrote:

>
>I was thinking that Python might benefit from a "has" operator that
>would allow you to type something like this:
>
>if myobject has someattribute:
>    foo()
>else:
>    bar()

if hasattr(myobject, "someattribute"):
     foo()
else:
     bar()

is clean enough, IMHO...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/




From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Fri Jul 20 02:54:56 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 08:54:56 +0200
Subject: Parsing TCL?
References: <roy-8EF99A.21173519072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995597193.26785.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <yv24rs82ipr.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     Roy> I know this is probably a strange request, but does anybody know of
>     Roy> a python module which parses TCL files?
> 
> No, but isn't Tcl essentially just
> 
>     command arg arg arg arg
> 
Except that arg may be "arg" or {arg} or [arg] or $arg and those special
characters as well as backslash and some others have to be treated
within. In fact even command may be "command" or [command] or
{command} or $command, but this is not for beginners:-)

> ?  I thought it was designed to be extremely easy to parse.  Shouldn't be
> hard to write a parser for it I wouldn't think.

Nevertheless you are right. The whole syntax *plus evaluation
semantics* is described in 11 points in a man-page of 208 lines.

  Harald Kirsch

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Wed Jul 11 15:07:39 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:07:39 -0400
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <3d66czqo78.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> writes:
> With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.

It sounds like you want something similar to the (?> ...) in Perl 5.6.
Neither SRE nor the current version of PCRE support this, though.
Personally I'd just code it explicitly, as 'index = s.find('<A>') ; if
index != -1: # check for B ...'.  Wordier, but doesn't require regex
arcana.

--amk



From gaul at spam.utexas.edu  Sun Jul  8 15:09:34 2001
From: gaul at spam.utexas.edu (Andrew Gaul)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:09:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: ICFP 2001 contest - Python team, anyone?
References: <slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <rAd17.424558$eK2.85931616@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9khbvc.tod.gaul@meatring.cs.utexas.edu>

In article <rAd17.424558$eK2.85931616 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>, Nick
Perkins wrote:
> "Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
> news:slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
>> The International Functional Programming Contest was announced. I'd
>> like to join this year. If you are a Python hacker and want to have
>> all the fun and glory, please contact me :-)
>>
>> http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/
>
> ..reading contest rules...
> so, we would have to write for Python 1.52??
> ..and this is for a functional programming contest?
> 
> 2.1 would be better, with nested scopes and list comprehensions, etc.

According to the machine configuration page
(http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/machine.html), both
Python 1.5.2 and 2.1 will be supported.

This year's Python effort:
http://www.twistedmatrix.com/users/jh.twistd/python/moin.cgi/IcfpPythonTeam

and last year's:
http://www.crepuscule.com/icfp/

-- 
     | a | n | d | r | e | w | @ | g | a | u | l | . | o | r | g |
                      White trash.  Loser.  Geek.


From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 10:03:50 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:03:50 -0400
Subject: MySQL-python-0.9.0 setup problems under windows98
References: <hniokt4u4365lf475ci469lbidsnhl0gfa@4ax.com> <3B4C5A47.50D8E366@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <42noktok3h9cbo3757kg8hoavhnjjsc478@4ax.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:50:39 GMT, Joonas Paalasmaa <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com>
wrote:

>Joe Potter wrote:
>> 
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> I have MySQL running on a win98 box. All systems are go with the package.
>> 
>> Now, I would like to use the system from within python. So far I have downloaded the
>> module that does this job. The one listed above is supposed to be the windows
>> version.
>> 
>> However, I can not seem to understand how to install the module and get it imported
>> so as to start using MySQL.
>
>Download MySQL-Python Windows installer from http://highqualdev.com/
>It is very easy to use.
>

I must be very dense. I downloaded "MySQL-python-0.9.0-win32-2.zip (this archive is
for Python 1.5.2/2.0/2.1)" from that very url.

Now what?

Regards, Joe




From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 23:39:10 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:39:10 -0400
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107262020310.744-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEJDLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Steven D. Majewski]
> ...
> [ But maybe the generator versions above are better.
>   I'm still getting used to this new stuff.
>   Sometimes the syntax seems a bit awkward.
>   I hope that this __future__ stuff is not cast in stone until
>   we've had time to see how it works.  ]

Nothing is frozen until at earliest the first 2.2 beta release; indeed,
generators may go away entirely before 2.2 final.

There's something at least a *little* off with the dance between generators
and iterators, but I'm not clear on exactly what and haven't had more time
to consider it.  Part of it seems to be that

    for x in whatever:

magically applies iter() to whatever under the covers (nothing off there),
but if "whatever" is a generator(-function), iter(whatever) is an error.

I don't know *why* that seems a little bit off, because it makes perfect
sense <wink>.  But play with it long enough and I wouldn't be surprised if
you thought so too.

if-so-it's-in-need-of-articulation-ly y'rs  - tim




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 07:31:24 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:31:24 +0100
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie>
Message-ID: <slrn9klpsc.ipj.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
>
>In case anyone is fooled, here's an example from the tutorial at 
>www.python.org, which also has a FAQ on what Python is for:
>
>>>> for n in range(2, 10):
>..     for x in range(2, n):
>..         if n % x == 0:
>..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
>..            break
>..     else:
>..          print n, 'is a prime number'
>.. 
>
>Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.  
>Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be 
>level-indented with the 'for'.   No doubt longer programs are even more 
>fun.  The FAQ on increasing speed helpfully notes that function calls 
>are expensive...
>
>The second print statement is one character offset from the 'if' - I 
>don't know whether that is necessary or not.  It is unlikely that I will 
>ever wish to know.

I don't wish you to know either. Python is far too sensible a
language for the likes of you to be using it.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 20:47:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:47:11 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
References: <mailman.994455192.30495.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <SWs17.11941$F%5.885003@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994455192.30495.python-list at python.org...
>
> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> > "Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in ...
> > >
> > > As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's
> > > permission before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one can
> > > implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is safe,
> > > thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.
> > >
> > I must have misunderstood. Are you telling me that IE has a security
> > system to detect potentially unsafe downloaded content, but that it
> > won't use this system if the downloaded content tells it there's no
> > need?
> >
> > How very Microsoft. I must have missed something.
>
> Steve,
>
> This may not be as bad as it might have sounded. In order for IE to
> successfully query for IObjectSafety the ActiveX has to have been
> registered, right? And it couldn't be registered until it had been
> downloaded. And that couldn't happen unless the user agreed--
> assuming that his/her IE is properly secured.
>
> Do I discern perhaps that your trust in, and admiration for, MS
> products are bounded?
>
Good heavens, whatever gave you that impression. If the rest of the worl did
as fine a job as Microsoft does then we'd be ... up shit creek without a
paddle, I guess.

Seriously, I think there is value in much of what Microsoft has done, but
they have on occasion really pissed me off. For example, the long period
during which they refused to admit that any security problems existed in
their product. The lying about the differences between NT Server and
Workstation, until O'Reilly clearly demonstrated that WS would operate as
Server (and even had a special thread to reverse registry changes designed
to make it do so). not to mention their "let's start introducing propruetary
features into standard protocols to defeat the open Source world"
[Halloween].

Because they are the largest software company in the world, by the nature of
things they come in for a bashing now and then. I hand out my share, mostly
in fun, but sometimes with a real point.

In this case, as you and another poster have pointed out, it was my
misunderstanding. Thanks for the enlightenment.

but-i'll-never-click-the-trust-all-downloads-from-redmond-box-ly y'rs  -
steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From francois.senequier at voila.fr  Tue Jul 24 05:12:31 2001
From: francois.senequier at voila.fr (SENEQUIER)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:12:31 +0200
Subject: Using TKINTER
Message-ID: <9jjehn$9mb$1@s1.read.news.oleane.net>

Hi,

I simply open a window using the TKINTER root widget.
I know how to put a button in the window in order to close the window but I
don't know how
to close the window when the exit button of the bar menu (X) is clicked ?

Someone could help me ?

Thanks




From m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it  Mon Jul 23 07:52:07 2001
From: m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it (Marco Mariani)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:52:07 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <23891c90.0107230204.4e26d5e8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010723135207.A25465@zoidberg>

On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 03:04:22AM -0700, Paul Boddie wrote:

> > Python would be a laughing stock without a division operator, and it
> > will certainly be a laughing stock if we can't rely on it to do the
> > same thing from one release to the next. It's a far to fundamental
> > change just to please people with a particular mindset.

I am quite frightened by this patch too.

> I get the feeling that those people who follow the Python development
> list tend to work their way to what they believe to be sensible
> conclusions, but run the risk of becoming out of touch with everyone
> else. The big danger for Python is that they become so out of touch
> that half the Python community decide to "fork off".

And I want to be on the half whose programs keep working :-)




From shriek at gmx.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 02:10:53 2001
From: shriek at gmx.co.uk (Stephen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 23:10:53 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <9jop6k$l2d$2@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e@posting.google.com>

> [...]
> >I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
> >rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
> >Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
> >or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?
> 
> This is the ideal kind of application for CORBA. You could model both
> the booking server and each of your client applications as CORBA
> objects. They would then easily communicate with each other so
> everything is kept up-to-date.
> 
> Python is the easiest language in which to develop CORBA applications,
> and there are a number of CORBA implementations available. This page
> has a list of them:
> 
>   http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/4930

Thank you very much, Duncan.  After looking around for a couple of days (hence
my late followup. sorry), it does seem like my options are 
(a) CORBA
(b) SOAP
(c) XMLRPC
(d) Pyro

CORBA has always been intimidating. So much work just to do "hello world",
let along build a full app.  Then again, I suppose it's less work than
trying to manage communications between all the distributed clients which
is what I understand CORBA takes care of for me.  Interesting that you say
Python is the easiest language in which to develop CORBA apps because I 
thought that that was Java's EJB selling point, that it takes care of 
CORBA for you.

SOAP is interesting because of .Net
I was very excited by John Udell's article
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=804/byt20010712s0002/
where he mentions that in J2EE, the platform is the Java language but
.Net really does look language and maybe platform independent. Same 
advantages of CORBA of course.

XMLRPC seems to have been superceded by SOAP and certainly doesn't
seem any faster.  CORBA will be more appealing to me than SOAP or XMLRPC
from a speed and scalability point of view because I'd like to build my
booking application to be reused for other, larger companies and not just
my current client.

Pyro looks dead easy. Main problem being that if somebody else wants
to work with the system, to extend it etc, they have to use Python.
I try to provide clients with as many options as possible for future
development and not lock them into Python.  Also, it's safer to go with
a standard thing like CORBA,XMLRPC,SOAP.  However, well done to Irmen
for creating something so simple that works like CORBA.

 
> I won't recommend one. I wrote omniORBpy so I'm biased.

I've heard good things about that. Will check it out.  
Most importantly, lots of documentation and win 2000 binaries (I like
to reduce the number of things that can go wrong) :)

Thanks again.

S.


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 19 16:26:01 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:26:01 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: wow!
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107200023110.4516-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

>>> def a():
...   for i in range(5):
...    yield i
<stdin>:3: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
  File "<stdin>", line 3
    yield i
          ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> # let's guess:
>>> from __future__ import generators
>>> def a():
...   for i in range(5):
...    yield i
...
>>> for k in a(): print k
...
0
1
2
3
4
>>>

Wow!

So I think letting know what I need from the __future__ could help:

<stdin>:3: Warning: 'yield' will become a reserved keyword in the future
  (try: from __future__ import generators to use it)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 19, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The bigger they are, the harder they hit you." _/




From denro at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 12:00:22 2001
From: denro at earthlink.net (Dennis Roark)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:00:22 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>

I appreciate those who replied, particularly Nick's
informative reply.  I would still argue that "dynamic"
typing is a weaker and less safe sort of typing than the
static typing of C++.  Nick brings up the C++ example of
using pointers to void and then casting them as needed or
recasting them to allow the variable to point to different
objects not involved in an inheritance relationship.  But
C++ is also often criticized for this because void pointers
do allow for unsafe coding, relaxation of type safety and
should be avoided if possible.

Python is an attractive language.  But for a large program I
would still rather be forced to declare the name of a
variable (and its type) rather than risk misspelling or
misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
large projects.

9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson) wrote:

>On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>>following script:
>>
>>x = 3
>>x = x + 2
>>print "x =", x
>>x = "now I'm a string"
>>print x
>>x = [ 5, x ]
>>print "and now a list:", x
>>
>>If you don't believe it, run it.
>
>I believe it, but it doesn't demonstrate a thing about type safety.
>You've just discovered dynamic typing.  You see, your implied view of
>typing seems to come from a statically typed language, where every
>*variable* has a type of its own.
>
>In Python, types are associated with *objects*, not with *variables*.
>IOW, all variables are of the same type: reference-to-object.  
>...
>
>Or even C++:
>  // Watch out! My C++ is rusty.
>  class Integer { int val; 
>                  public: Integer(int v) : val(v) {}
>                  operator int() { return val; } }
>  void* x = new Integer(3);
>  x = new Integer(2 + *(Integer*)x);
>...
---------------------------------
Dennis Roark
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sioux Falls

Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
---------------------------------


From mjsilva at jps.net  Fri Jul  6 00:27:19 2001
From: mjsilva at jps.net (Mike Silva)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 21:27:19 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994263608.9373.python-list@python.org> <9i0cjt$ck9@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <5267be60.0107052027.76afbb39@posting.google.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message news:<9i0cjt$ck9 at news1.gtech.com>...

> Strong type checking means that when you tell a compiler that a function
> will return a value then the compiler will not allow a program to compile
> that doesn't have that return value assigned to *something* (of the
> appropriate type, as well :-)) i.e. a program variable or just used in a
> test case e.g if statement. The language that I have in mind is Ada - it is
> used primarily in the defence industry and therefore has the stigma of being
> a "defence language" and therefore not worth considering in the "real world"
> of commercial programming :-) (their loss :-)). It was designed to/using
> some strict computer science principles (please, no boffins jumping in here
> with corrections thanks :-)) of the day and encourages, through the language
> definition and operation of the compiler some very handy heuristics. It is a
> very "readable" language (uses keywords in the same style as Pascal and
> Modula). By default (you can turn it off when generating binaries for the
> live system), it generates automatic run-time checking of code i.e. if you
> define a data type that should only ever have a range of values of 0 - 255
> then if you try and assign 256 to a variable of that type then it will raise
> an exception at runt-ime (this assumes that the compiler wasn't able to
> detect that at compile time though! a statement line like byte_var := 256;
> would raise an error from the compiler) - the application will either handle
> the exception via an exception handler (has to be programmed though, just
> like Python :-)) or it will abort the program and display diagnostic data
> (just like Python :-)).
> 
> Many programmers, when they first meet a strongly typed language (such as
> Ada, but there are others) have a great deal of difficulty, because they are
> used to having a lot more "freedom" from the languages they are used to. But
> once you get past the barrier of producing correct code then it offers a
> great freedom - 90% of your "typical" bugs are found by the compiler at
> compile time rather than during unit testing :-). In my experience (I wrote
> code using Ada for about 4-5 years, I have about 10-12 years of coding in C,
> I have used C++ but not any any extent worth mentioning), the only bugs left
> after a successful compile are "algorithimic" - a truly great aid to
> productivity! :-). Most programmers can't get past that first hurdle though,
> they "hate" the language because it "won't let them do what they want" - but
> if they examined their code, they are always forced to admit that what they
> "wanted" wasn't "correct" :-).
> 
> But Ada is like C or C++ - it doesn't "shine"  in the areas of data
> manipulation that Python does. It doesn't have a huge array of support
> libraries, like Python, Perl and Java do etc. So productivity can be down
> purely because you have to write a lot of basic things from the ground up.
> Again, different languages have different applications areas. Python is not
> my choice for an ATC (as anyone may have guessed by now :-)), C/C++ would be
> a disaster! Of those mentioned, I believe Ada is a better choice, there may
> be others but I have no experience with those languages so I can't comment.
> Caveat: ANY LANGUAGE can produce working code for an application, it is just
> the amount or work and effort required to get there. Python *could* be used
> for an ATC application, so can assembler - but I haven't heard anyone
> advocating that one :-).

I too immediately thought that Ada (Ada 95) would be the right tool
for this job.  It is the primary ATC language in much of the world
(don't know about the U.S.).  I think strong static typing is a must
in a safety-critical application such as ATC -- throwing an exception
at runtime is a Very Bad Thing in such applications (once out of
testing), so it is extremely desireable to catch errors at compile
time.  As has been suggested in this thread, strong typing (as opposed
to the C/C++ "it's all buckets of bits" approach) is an excellent tool
to force the designer/programmer to model the problem correctly,
rather than just funnelling bits here and there.  It also usually
results in reducing errors by an order of magnitude vs. C/C++ (and the
Ada runtime checking makes it much easier to catch most of the ones
that slip through).

While Python (from the little I know of it) is clearly stronger than
Ada in certain types of applications this wouldn't seem to be one of
them.  I can see this project benefitting from Ada features such as
fixed-point math, reduced reliance on heap memory (dynamic heap
allocation is also a Very Bad Thing in such applications), concurrency
(if allowed -- safety-critical projects often prohibit it), and ease
of interface with code written in other languages.  Take a look at Ada
(e.g. the GNAT compiler) for this job (and -don't- yield to the C/C++
temptation!).

Mike


From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul  9 02:24:46 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 06:24:46 GMT
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D7B5DD9220gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <3B473741.2BE14CB0@engcorp.com> <Xns90D9116ADA12Bgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <O6c27.442390$eK2.90130827@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Gustaf Liljegren" <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns90D9116ADA12Bgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.148...

.... when I run it with only the filename:
>
> E:\test>python syspath.py
>
>
> Nothing! ...


hmm, strange..
In those cases, the os.getcwd should give you the right answer.
you could start scripts with:

import sys
if not sys.path[0]:
    import os
    sys.path[0]=os.getcwd()






From kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu  Thu Jul 26 23:37:25 2001
From: kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu (Kevin Lacker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:37:25 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu>

> > Can you do this:
> > ...
> > with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
> > loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current
one.
>
> I can clearly understand what the above code is doing.  Doing this
> as a list comprehension would be less readable for me (I'm not a
> heavy user of list comprehensions, yet.)
>
> Are you sure you really don't like the explicit, readable code
> above, and would prefer a more compressed, (admittedly explicit,
> I suppose), more cryptic version instead?  There are other
> languages which could do the above in one tiny line, no doubt.
> (No names. :)

How cryptic is

[process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]

? Not really any more cryptic than

[process(x) for x in my_list if is_good(x)]

which seems to be agreeably a good thing to have. I certainly like it.

I don't really know much Lisp, but in the back of my mind I half remember
someone claiming they had more flexible iteration abilities that still
looked functional and noncryptic...




From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 19 16:50:10 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 13:50:10 -0700
Subject: Bunch lists into sublists via alternation
References: <5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107191250.10d27a7a@posting.google.com>

kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote in message news:<5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93 at posting.google.com>...
> I've asked this on another list and never got a reply. Possibly
> because i have worn out my welcome with all my dumb questions, or
> because it is such a dumb question people hurt themselves laughing and
> are now all in the hospital.
> 
> I am trying to figure out how to take a sequence and split it up into
> sub-lists
> by alternation. For example if i had a sequence like:
> 
> x = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> 
> and i called a function that was: seqSplit(seq, sub-lists)
> 
> seqSplit(x,2)
> 
> would yield: ([1,3,5,7,9], [2,4,6,8,None]) # None pads lists that are
> short elements
> 
> and seqSplit(x,3) --> ([1,4,7], [2,5,8], [3,6,9])
> and seqSplit(x,4) --> ([1,6] [2,7], [3,8], [4,9], [5,None])
> 
> 
> I've got something that bunches up consecutive elements into
> sub-lists:
> 
> def bunch(mylist, times):
> 	"""package up list elements in sub-lists n at a time.
> 	
> 	x=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> 	bunch(x,1) --> [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]]
> 	bunch(x, 2) --> [[1,2], [3,4], [5,6], [7,8], [9, None]
> 	bunch(x, 3) --> [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
> 	bunch(x, 4) --> [1,2,3,4], [5,6,7,8] [9, None, None, None]]"""
> 
> 	out = [mylist[i:i+times] for i in range(0, len(mylist), times)]
> 	if out:
> 		out[-1].extend([None] * (times - len(out[-1])))
> 	return out
>  
> # -- ---------------------------------------
>  
> But i can't figure out how to get the:
> 
> a = (1,9,1,9,1,9)
> b = (1,9,7,1,9,7,1,9,7)
> seqSplit(a,2) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9])"""
> seqSplit(b,3) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9], [7, 7, 7])"""
> 	
> type arrangement, particularly since i want it to work for any
> unpredetermined
> number of sub-lists. I've got a kludge that works only for the case of
> seqSplit(x,2),
> but i can't get anything to work for seqSplit(x,n) where n is anything
> else.
> 
> cheers,
> kevin parks

How about this:

>>> def seqSplit(mylist, times):
... 	result = []
... 	for i in range(times):
... 		sublist = []
... 		for j in range(i, len(mylist), times):
... 			sublist.append(mylist[j])
... 		result.append(sublist)
... 	return tuple(result)
... 
>>> seqSplit((1,9,1,9,1,9), 2)
([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9])
>>> seqSplit((1,9,7,1,9,7,1,9,7), 3)
([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9], [7, 7, 7])
>>>


From robin.garner at i.name.com  Tue Jul 24 22:08:41 2001
From: robin.garner at i.name.com (Robin Garner)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:08:41 +1000
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>

"michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au> wrote in
news:JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007 at ozemail.com.au: 

> 
>> Not formally, AFAIK.  For example, 3 with no decimal point following
>> could be anything from 2.5 to 3.4.  If I remember correctly, to be
>> fussy about it, you would need to specify 3.00/4.00 to get 0.75 or am
>> I missing something or misremembering my ancient maths courses ;) ?
>>
> 
> I'm pretty sure that mathematicians say that
>   three, 3, 3.00, iii
> are different numerals for the same number.
> This number is a real number, a rational number, an integer, and a
> natural number.

In most maths the sets are made explicit, and operators are defined as 
functions with specific domains.  There are standard embeddings of Integers 
into Rationals and Reals, and if you are working with real numbers, then 2 
and 2.0 are generally taken to stand for the same thing.  But strictly 
speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.  You 
would be hard pressed to find anyone writing the natural number 2 as 2.0.

Since the Integers aren't a field, there isn't a generally accepted 
function 

    	/ : Int x Int -> Int.

that agrees with the function 

     	/ : Real x Real -> Real

for all (a,b) where b is divisible by a.


>> More importantly, the thing everyone is talking about here is an
>> integer operation yielding a real (float) result.  Isn't this kind of
>> a "no-no" amongst mathematicians? 
> 
> I'm not sure whether the "inner product" from vector algebra could be
> considered an "operator", but it does operate on vectors and yields a
> scalar.
> 

The proposed division operator is a perfectly well defined function of type 
Int x Int -> Real.  You can define it rigorously as the composition of the 
standard embedding e: Int -> Real with the division function on the reals.

Mathematics is full of functions from one set to another.

Of course appealing to Mathematical objects has its limitations, since the 
computer Int and Float types are not the same as Integers and Reals in 
mathematics, because a) they are finite sets and b) the Reals have finite 
precision.  

And very few things (except perhaps fallacious arguments) are '"no-no"s 
amongst mathematicians'.  The computer integers are variously studied as 
GF(2^32), the Galois Field of 32 direct products of {0,1}, the ring of 
integers modulo 2^32, a (rather uninteresting) finite topological space etc 
etc etc.

>>
>> Maybe I'm wrong here...
> 
> 
> 
> 



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Wed Jul 25 15:12:45 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:12:45 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lu6hc.4ua.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:18:35 GMT, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>Thanks.  I am baffled by the many claims that for mathematicians 1/2
>equals zero; I've never met such a mathematicians.

Perhaps the best solution would be to make Python's integers actually be
the field of integers mod 4294967291 (not too much of a change -- they're
currently very similar to the integers mod 4294967295).  The best of all
worlds -- divisions no longer have remainders, and everything's exact
again.

>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

and-writing-the-log-function-becomes-a-lot-more-fun-ly yr's

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul 18 19:05:58 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 16:05:58 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995489857.22008.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <mty9pl96sp.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

Roman Suzi writes:

> On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, John J. Lee wrote:
>> On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:
>> [...]
>>> cc -O2       0.28
>>> cc           0.62
>>> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
>>> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
>>> perl        28.9
>>> python      66.8

After re-compiling python with -O2, my result is:

python     31.4

which I find much more believable.  That optimization really helps!
Perhaps the python configuration process should default to compiling
with -O2 rather than with -O?

> But in my applications speed is not the main virtue. The top thing is
> express logic in a plain language and this is Python great at.

I have a good bit of leisure time these days (i.e. I'm only barely
employed), so I've been playing around with ocaml.  It's nice,
although it took me a while to get up to really understand the
language.  I like it, quite a bit, but then again I do numerics, so
speed is always a blessing.

If you have some time, take a look at ocaml.  It'll teach you
something.  I don't know if you'll find it useful, but it's
educational.

> That is why I do not understand why Java is so popular:  it is not large
> enough improvement over C/C++ in terms of source readability but still
> poses serious overhead in execution speed... I have the feeling it stalled
> at the middle between C++ and Python...

I agree with you here, completely.  But it is nice to have GC...

> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/

Heh.  My mother was born in Karelia, before she had to move rather
rapidly to Finland around 1940.  I still would like to visit the area
one of these days.  All right, so I'm rambling now.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From amartin at wpsnetwork.com  Mon Jul 16 08:55:15 2001
From: amartin at wpsnetwork.com (Aurelio Martín)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:55:15 +0200
Subject: Network able Chess
References: <86f9eea9.0107160423.1e1a0103@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9iuo7h$l7e2g$1@ID-50400.news.dfncis.de>

elecfsh <elecfsh at yahoo.com> escribi? en el mensaje de noticias
86f9eea9.0107160423.1e1a0103 at posting.google.com...
> Hey,
>   For a while I have been wanting to write a little chess game that
> can be played over a network w/ some simple chatting features. I want
> to do this in Python, but I'm a little worried about doing the
> graphics. Any suggestions as far as gamming libraries? or any standard
> libraries I may have missed? Thanks.
>
> -Andrew

Try Tkinter, included in the Python distribution, or Pygame
( www.pygame.org )





From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 21 17:51:13 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:51:13 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b59f251.63707346@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>Fair enough.  So let's begin the real discussion.
>
Perhaps some actual data will help. See below.

[...]
>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
      ^^^^^^^^^^^ -- easy, make no change ;-)
>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.
>
An option to have IDE's or editors make case-sensitivity easy for newbies
would have my vote, but not changing the base language case sensitivity.
BTW, thanks for a great language! :) Wish I'd decided to look into it sooner.

Here is the way symbols have been used with case sensitivity in
(windows distribution) Python-2.1\Lib\*.py:

[Files with no multi-case symbols omitted, numbers are instances of the symbol.
BTW, other than a change not to print headers for no-instance files, the code
that made this listing is in another post (Re: Language change and code breaks).
Should one include a copy in a case like this, or just refer?]

---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\aifc.py ----
{'Chunk': 3, 'chunk': 28}
{'Error': 40, 'error': 3}
{'SetParams': 2, 'setparams': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\asyncore.py ----
{'FCNTL': 4, 'fcntl': 5}
{'debug': 2, 'DEBUG': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\audiodev.py ----
{'al': 11, 'AL': 25}
{'sunaudiodev': 3, 'SUNAUDIODEV': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\BaseHTTPServer.py ----
{'message': 11, 'Message': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\Bastion.py ----
{'RExec': 1, 'rexec': 2}
{'bastionclass': 2, 'BastionClass': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\binhex.py ----
{'hexbin': 2, 'HexBin': 2}
{'FInfo': 11, 'finfo': 19}
{'type': 6, 'Type': 6}
{'linelen': 4, 'LINELEN': 3}
{'binhex': 2, 'BinHex': 2}
{'FName': 2, 'fname': 8}
{'flags': 2, 'Flags': 5}
{'Creator': 5, 'creator': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\cmd.py ----
{'Cmd': 1, 'cmd': 11}
{'prompt': 3, 'PROMPT': 2}
{'IDENTCHARS': 2, 'identchars': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\codecs.py ----
{'Writer': 6, 'writer': 8}
{'Reader': 6, 'reader': 12}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\Cookie.py ----
{'K': 30, 'k': 6}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\copy.py ----
{'Error': 2, 'error': 3}
{'C': 2, 'c': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\dis.py ----
{'extended_arg': 4, 'EXTENDED_ARG': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\doctest.py ----
{'Tester': 2, 'tester': 7}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\filecmp.py ----
{'BUFSIZE': 2, 'bufsize': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\ftplib.py ----
{'netrc': 2, 'Netrc': 2}
{'Error': 6, 'error': 1}
{'FTP': 2, 'ftp': 9}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\gettext.py ----
{'Catalog': 1, 'catalog': 2}
{'MASK': 9, 'mask': 6}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\gzip.py ----
{'fname': 4, 'FNAME': 3}
{'write': 14, 'WRITE': 4}
{'read': 15, 'READ': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\ihooks.py ----
{'hooks': 27, 'Hooks': 2}
{'VERBOSE': 4, 'verbose': 14}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\imaplib.py ----
{'debug': 14, 'Debug': 4}
{'literal': 15, 'Literal': 2}
{'USER': 4, 'user': 2}
{'flags': 14, 'Flags': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\imputil.py ----
{'Importer': 3, 'importer': 5}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\inspect.py ----
{'name': 13, 'NAME': 1}
{'INDENT': 1, 'indent': 12}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\mhlib.py ----
{'path': 67, 'PATH': 2}
{'Folder': 2, 'folder': 4}
{'mh': 13, 'MH': 2}
{'Error': 21, 'error': 23}
{'MultiFile': 1, 'multifile': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\mimify.py ----
{'i': 9, 'I': 9}
{'file': 9, 'File': 5}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\os.py ----
{'PATH': 2, 'path': 19}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pdb.py ----
{'bdb': 9, 'Bdb': 3}
{'cmd': 4, 'Cmd': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pickle.py ----
{'dict': 4, 'DICT': 3}
{'FLOAT': 3, 'float': 1}
{'long': 1, 'LONG': 3}
{'inst': 4, 'INST': 3}
{'put': 11, 'PUT': 3}
{'MARK': 8, 'mark': 13}
{'list': 4, 'LIST': 3}
{'TUPLE': 3, 'tuple': 3}
{'f': 7, 'F': 3}
{'APPEND': 3, 'append': 35}
{'int': 1, 'INT': 3}
{'c': 7, 'C': 2}
{'unicode': 7, 'UNICODE': 4}
{'GET': 3, 'get': 4}
{'None': 16, 'NONE': 3}
{'reduce': 7, 'REDUCE': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pipes.py ----
{'FILE': 2, 'file': 17}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\popen2.py ----
{'popen3': 5, 'Popen3': 5}
{'popen4': 3, 'Popen4': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\posixfile.py ----
{'FCNTL': 21, 'fcntl': 14}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pre.py ----
{'m': 9, 'M': 1}
{'i': 14, 'I': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\profile.py ----
{'stats': 7, 'Stats': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pstats.py ----
{'cmd': 2, 'Cmd': 1}
{'stats': 34, 'Stats': 4}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pyclbr.py ----
{'Class': 4, 'class': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\pydoc.py ----
{'Repr': 6, 'repr': 28}
{'message': 2, 'Message': 5}
{'Scanner': 3, 'scanner': 9}
{'I': 2, 'i': 10}
{'Doc': 3, 'doc': 27}
{'S': 2, 's': 2}
{'GUI': 2, 'gui': 3}
{'Entry': 1, 'entry': 10}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\Queue.py ----
{'Empty': 2, 'empty': 1}
{'Full': 2, 'full': 1}
{'queue': 7, 'Queue': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\random.py ----
{'VERSION': 3, 'version': 4}
{'n': 14, 'N': 20}
{'Random': 2, 'random': 45}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\repr.py ----
{'repr': 3, 'Repr': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\rexec.py ----
{'hooks': 6, 'Hooks': 2}
{'RExec': 2, 'rexec': 13}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\rfc822.py ----
{'AddressList': 3, 'addresslist': 19}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\robotparser.py ----
{'Entry': 5, 'entry': 15}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\smtpd.py ----
{'options': 15, 'Options': 2}
{'data': 18, 'DATA': 3}
{'command': 16, 'COMMAND': 5}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\sre.py ----
{'s': 15, 'S': 1}
{'m': 14, 'M': 1}
{'template': 15, 'TEMPLATE': 1}
{'i': 19, 'I': 1}
{'Pattern': 1, 'pattern': 38}
{'SubPattern': 2, 'SUBPATTERN': 2}
{'scanner': 4, 'Scanner': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\sre_compile.py ----
{'in': 19, 'IN': 2}
{'literal': 2, 'LITERAL': 9}
{'ASSERT': 1, 'assert': 2}
{'charset': 16, 'CHARSET': 2}
{'range': 2, 'RANGE': 3}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\sre_constants.py ----
{'IN': 3, 'in': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\sre_parse.py ----
{'pattern': 16, 'Pattern': 2}
{'subpattern': 25, 'SubPattern': 5, 'SUBPATTERN': 2}
{'IN': 11, 'in': 40}
{'literal': 7, 'LITERAL': 31}
{'flags': 11, 'FLAGS': 4}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\symtable.py ----
{'Class': 2, 'class': 5}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\telnetlib.py ----
{'DEBUGLEVEL': 2, 'debuglevel': 9}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\tempfile.py ----
{'MACFS': 3, 'macfs': 4}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\threading.py ----
{'thread': 6, 'Thread': 9}
{'lock': 9, 'Lock': 4}
{'_VERBOSE': 2, '_Verbose': 14}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\token.py ----
{'STRING': 1, 'string': 1}
{'NAME': 1, 'name': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\tokenize.py ----
{'contstr': 10, 'ContStr': 2}
{'STRING': 3, 'String': 2, 'string': 3}
{'indent': 1, 'INDENT': 1}
{'NUMBER': 1, 'Number': 3}
{'Name': 3, 'NAME': 1}
{'Token': 2, 'token': 23}
{'Comment': 3, 'COMMENT': 4}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\unittest.py ----
{'TestLoader': 3, 'testLoader': 5}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\urllib.py ----
{'Close': 1, 'close': 14}
{'ic': 4, 'IC': 1}
{'ftp': 13, 'FTP': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\urllib2.py ----
{'H': 10, 'h': 20}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\uu.py ----
{'Error': 4, 'error': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\warnings.py ----
{'i': 4, 'I': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\wave.py ----
{'Chunk': 3, 'chunk': 22}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\webbrowser.py ----
{'Error': 2, 'error': 1}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\xdrlib.py ----
{'Error': 3, 'error': 2}
---- D:\Python-2.1\Lib\zipfile.py ----
{'crc': 2, 'CRC': 15}



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 22:26:30 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 19:26:30 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134760338.994108231348.JavaMail.root@boots> <20010702211742.A4372@node0.opengeometry.ca>
Message-ID: <3B412D56.1388033D@ActiveState.com>

William Park wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Ask silly question, get silly answer.  Please stop asking "Can Python do
> this, can python do that..."  Just read the docs, and do it.  If you
> can't read, there people who can help you with that too.

I think that many of the safety and performance issues are subtle and
would not be answered by general purpose documentation.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 20:36:48 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:36:48 -0300
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org>
 <mailman.994024802.8132.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701212940.02778c70@mail.inet.com.br>

At 00:09 02/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>Do I understand PEP 1 right this way? I guess having a number assigned for
>a PEP before discussing it in public may be a good idea. :)

I'm not sure that this is the best way to handle it. Some people have 
already sent unnumbered drafts to the list before without being burnt in 
public by irate PEPmasters <wink>. It's good for the discussion; it even 
allows the PEP to be discussed *before* wasting a number on it :-)

I have my own draft right now, dealing only with one small part of the 
problem. I've thought about it as a annex to PEP 2. It's named "Quality 
Guidelines For Standard Modules". I'm going to send it in a separate email 
in a few minutes...


Carlos Ribeiro





From tdelaney at avaya.com  Wed Jul 25 02:55:57 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:55:57 +1000
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lame
	nt)
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2DB@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> > The interesting thing is that the one thing that has to change in
> > order to get a unified numeric model, whether we introduce rationals
> > in the numeric tower or not, is integer division!  A numeric tower
> > with rationals could look like this:
> >
> >   int < long < rational < float < complex
> >
>   Just a comment: What bothers me is that floats in computers
> are not the
> same as R continuum im math. This makes me think that
> rationals are "better"
> than floats. Indeed, any float number can be exactly represented by
> rational, but not vice virsa.  So my tower would be like that:
>
> int < long < float < rational < complex float < complex rational

I'm going to assume the unification of ints and longs here ...

The problem that we have is that long and rational would have a greater
range than float, as they are effectively unbounded in size (ignoring memory
restrictions of course).

I'm starting to think the rational term is incorrect. We could get rid of
the above problem by having a "denominated" type.

A "denominated" type is represented as long or float numerator, long or
float denominator. So long as both the numerator and denominator are within
the range of float, the "denominated" number can be as large as you wish.

Complex of course could have its real and imaginary parts being long, float
or denominated.

We would then have a tree like ...

long < float iff long in range of float
long < denominated
float < denominated
denominated < complex

So, to perform an operation on long and float, the following promotions (and
demotions) would occur.

1. Promote long to denominated => long/1
2. Promote float to denominated => float/1
3. Perform operation
4. If the result is in the range of float, demote to float.

There are a couple of optimisations possible here, such as promoting a long
to float and performing the operation, but if the result is greater than the
float can represent it will need to then be promoted to denominated anyway.

Tim Delaney



From eli-wallach at ugly.com  Sun Jul  1 17:12:12 2001
From: eli-wallach at ugly.com (Mexican Bandit)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:12:12 GMT
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com> <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re@4ax.com> <UqL%6.17223$he.744500@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <p34vjt8piu3idgrcva38mbpmgesr3ue3kg@4ax.com>

>#!C:\Python20\python.exe -u
>
>and you might find it works.

Yep, working fine now. Thanks!

>By the way, I'm assuming you have some sensible reason (like a firewall) why
>your server has to read the image and write it out, rather than simply
>returning the image's URL as the SRC attribute of the IMG tag?

I've written a webcam portal java applet, and needed a way of
grabbing images from external servers. Because of security, applets
can only connect to the server the applet resides on. Thus I needed a
little script which could act as a kind of proxy to get images from
elsewhere, locally.

Regards


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 08:06:40 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:06:40 +0100
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE89@intrepid>

> From:	Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
> How silly -- everybody knows that owning it is irrelevant, the key thing
> is sleeping with your head close to it so that its magical effluvia reach
> your brain each night.  Good thing the standard Python library reference
> does specify that usage mode IS keeping it under one's pillow!
 
Alex,
You should be ashamed of yourself, passing on rubbish like this. Putting
them under your pillow does no good; you have to *eat* them if you want to
gain their power.

The 'Essential Reference' isn't a problem here, but you'll need to be a
*big* eater to cope with 'Programming Python'.

Not-saying-a-word-about-Americans-ly y'rs,
Simon B.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From burton_kent at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 17 13:20:48 2001
From: burton_kent at bigfoot.com (burton_kent at bigfoot.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:20:48 -0000
Subject: SGML and Python
Message-ID: <9j1s5g+rubh@eGroups.com>

What's available for SGML and Python?  PyGrove and PySGML are what 
I've found, however, the website at the University of Waterloo where 
they're located seem to always be down.

I need to do validation and correction of incomplete SGML documents.

Thanks.

B




From mike_haspert at credence.com  Tue Jul 31 16:04:15 2001
From: mike_haspert at credence.com (Mike Haspert)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:04:15 -0700
Subject: importing win32com.client.Dispatch with embedded interpreter
Message-ID: <fab90324.0107311204.2fffbfa4@posting.google.com>

Hi all:
The minimal function f1(), below in usecom.py, runs fine from the
command line, but when I use the C API for the interpreter, it runs
the first time and fails thereafter. Can anyone see what I'm doing
wrong? The error message "TypeError: this constructor takes no
arguments" has me stumped.
Thanks in advance for your help.

******************
#include "python.h" 
#include <iostream>
int minimal(char* modname)
{
    bool success = false;
    PyObject *mod,*func,*args,*rvals;
    Py_Initialize();
    mod = PyImport_ImportModule(modname);
    if(mod)
    {
        func = PyObject_GetAttrString(mod, "f1");
	Py_DECREF(mod);
	if(func)
	{
  	    if(NULL!= (args = Py_BuildValue("()")))	
            {
		if(NULL!= (rvals = PyEval_CallObject(func,args)))
		{
		    //use_the_rvals()
		    success = true;
		    Py_DECREF(rvals);		
		}
		Py_DECREF(args);		
	    }
            Py_DECREF(func);		
	}
    }
    Py_Finalize();
    return success;
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
	cout<<"********first usecom\n"<<endl;
	minimal("usecom");
	cout<<"********second usecom\n"<<endl;
	minimal("usecom");
	cout<<"********end\n"<<endl;
	return 0;
}

******usecom.py***********
def f1():
    import traceback,string,sys
    try:
        from win32com.client import Dispatch
        print "successful import of Dispatch"
    except:
        msg = string.join(traceback.format_exception(sys.exc_info()[0],
sys.exc_info()[1],sys.exc_info()[2]), "")
        print str(msg)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print f1()
    print f1()

**************the output***************
********first usecom

successful import of Dispatch
********second usecom

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\scripts\usecom.py", line 4, in f1
    from win32com.client import Dispatch
  File "C:\Python21\win32com\__init__.py", line 95, in ?
    SetupEnvironment()
TypeError: this constructor takes no arguments

********end


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 08:51:14 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 07:51:14 -0500
Subject: Automate telnet?
References: <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012@typhoon.southeast.rr.com>
Message-ID: <37226F27072B5761.2F9AD68312465BA7.B02B0EE3318B2EFB@lp.airnews.net>

In article <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012 at typhoon.southeast.rr.com>,
Don Tuttle <tuttledon at hotmail.com> wrote:
>I have a secure Windows telnet client I'd like to automate with a script.
>So far my efforts with the popen family haven't worked.   Is this a possible
>task?
>
>Don
>
>
>

telnetlib and pyexpect are the usual answers.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov  Tue Jul 17 11:50:13 2001
From: bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov (Tom Bridgman)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:50:13 -0400
Subject: Handling errors in PyXML/SAX
Message-ID: <3B545EB5.6BB5DF57@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov>

I'm finally starting to work with the SAX parser and DTDs.  With the SAX
defalult error handler, when parsing a file, I get error messages like:

ERROR in Unknown:94:22: Element 'animationtype' not declared
ERROR in Unknown:98:18: Element 'thumbnail' not declared
ERROR in Unknown:99:14: Element 'medialist' not declared

which I find ideal but for the fact that I would like to print the file
name rather than 'Unknown'.

I've tried setting the systemID (which seems to be where the 'Unknown'
comes from) in a locator object like so:

location=xmlreader.Locator()
location.setSystemId=inputfilename
self.handler.setDocumentLocator(location)

but still get 'Unknown'.

The documentation at http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/docs.html is
really pretty vague on how to use this feature.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Tom
--
Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman           Scientific Visualization Studio
Global Science & Technology, Inc.      NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Email: bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov    Code 935
Phone: 301-286-1346                    Greenbelt, MD 20771
FAX:   TBD                             http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/


From teo at crepido.com  Thu Jul 26 02:46:19 2001
From: teo at crepido.com (teo)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 23:46:19 -0700
Subject: xml - parsing with 4Suite, how does it work?
References: <dd144f8b.0107250604.20dcca4b@posting.google.com> <j4snflgkk8.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <dd144f8b.0107252246.8a059c6@posting.google.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in message news:<j4snflgkk8.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de>...

> teo at crepido.com (teo) writes:

> 

> > I'm looking for some documentation about howto parsing an xml-file

> > into a DOM with the 4Suite-tools. Does anyone have an idea where to

> > search, or how to do?

> 

> I recommend the PyXML howto:

> 

> http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/xml-howto/DOM.html

> 

> Regards,

> Martin



Thanks, that was what i needeed!

/Teo


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 20 01:02:06 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 01:02:06 -0400
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995588673.14353.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ud76wtcq9.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows installer
> over to Inno.  It's simple (as such things go) and easy to use (as such
> things go).  We've been happy with the Wise installer Mark Hammond talked
> them into letting us use in '94 or '95, but it's showing its age and I'm
> apparently not nearly as persuasive as Mark (they don't even acknowledge
> receiving my emails -- but then I wouldn't either <wink>).

Wasn't there something or other you mentioned it couldn't quite do
that the current Wise stuff does when this last came up?

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From ehagemann at home.com  Sun Jul 22 11:37:38 2001
From: ehagemann at home.com (Eric Hagemann)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:37:38 GMT
Subject: can't find fpectl
Message-ID: <6rC67.32302$Ek3.11785061@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>

Quick question,

    Running through the 2.1 library reference and found info on the
'fpectl' -- floating point exception control module.

    When I tried to run the examples and import the module I get an Import
error -- does this module exist ?






From aito at carenet.co.jp  Thu Jul  5 22:52:53 2001
From: aito at carenet.co.jp (Akio Ito)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 19:52:53 -0700
Subject: Getting data from DBIII
References: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>
Message-ID: <82399a9.0107051852.6e4daaee@posting.google.com>

See also: http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py/973100124


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 01:22:37 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:22:37 -0700
Subject: 2.0 or 2.1 on win32
References: <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <9jti6t$e2g$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
>
>i am installing a new server and i need to know if there is reason to
>install either 2.0 or 2.1 or any other version.  The server is win2k (2
>1GHZ, 512, raid, etc.).  the clients are also win2k.
>
>the applications that run on the clients connect the the server via DCOM.
>the python running on the server connects to other objects sometimes with
>COM and sometimes not.  the clients use 2.0 as there seems to be some
>weirdness in 2.1/tkinter on windows, but there won't be any tkinter on the
>server.  so, should i stick with 2.0 on the server as well? are there
>stability issues or compatability issues to be aware of with other versions?

I'd say for starters that the question should be "2.0.1 or 2.1.1?"

Overall, my personal preference is to deal with cross-version issues as
little as possible, so if your clients are using 2.0.1, the server
should, too.  (And, yes, I do definitely recommend upgrading the clients
if possible.)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 17:11:25 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 23:11:25 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i7ttg01bnf@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpelrskgrr.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
    ...
> The "div" keyword would be ideal except for the added complexity of
> adding a new keyword to the language -- do we need a separate warning
> phase here, too?
>
> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
> new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
> maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)

I see pro's and con's, but, should you decide to go ahead, might
you PLEASE treat 'mod' just the same as 'div'...?  mod and div are
a great pair, as may be / and %, but having to use div and % would
be seriously hard to explain/remember/justify to newbies/...


Alex





From grayson-wilson at home.com  Mon Jul  9 21:21:14 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:21:14 GMT
Subject: Help with reduce().
References: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <Sds27.29662$F%5.1909477@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <eMs27.664121$166.13711545@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

im sorry i still dont understand reduce can you explain it in simpiler
terms?

Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:Sds27.29662$F%5.1909477 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
> news:3ur27.663627$166.13698874 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> > Ok well I have ANOTHER problem with one of the examples in my book (By
The
> > Way, "Teach yourself python in 24 hours" is an extremely poorly written
> book
> > and I do not reccomend it to any newbies who are just starting off)
> > any ways the example is as follows.
> >
> > n = range(1,11)
> > def mult(x,y):
> >     return x * y
> > f = reduce(mult,n)
> > print f
> >
> > I get everything up to reduce. I relize mult() takes the first two
numbers
> > in range N which would be 1, 2 and multiplys them together to get 2...
ok
> > fine im good ... now comes the tricky part!! what does reduce do? Does
it
> > take the whole range and make it into a number (12345678910) then
subtract
> 2
> > (the result of the function mult) or what does it do.
> >
> The reduce() function takes a function as its first argument and a
sequence
> as its second. There's also an optional third argument, which we can
ignore
> for now. The function is applied to the first two items of the sequence,
> then to that result and the third item of the sequence, then to that
result
> and the fourth item, and so on until the sequence is exhausted. Here's a
> loop that might make it a bit clearer:
>
> >>> def mult(x, y):
> ...  return x * y
> ...
> >>> for i in range(2, 11):
> ...  n = range(1, i)
> ...  print i, ":", reduce(mult, n)
> ...
> 2 : 1
> 3 : 2
> 4 : 6
> 5 : 24
> 6 : 120
> 7 : 720
> 8 : 5040
> 9 : 40320
> 10 : 362880
>
> Each result extends the value by one multiplication (by one less than I
> because of the way range works).
>
> > And i have another question (not related to first question)
> >
> > x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> > def strp(x,y):
> >  return x + ' ' + y
> > r = reduce(strp,x)
> > print r
> >
> > my problem is this line return "x + ' ' + y" what does it return the
value
> > of. I would understand it if it was x + y but the qutation marks are
what
> > throw me off what do they mean?
> >
> This is another case where the interactive interpreter is your friend. Try
> it and see...
>
> >>> x = 'one'
> >>> y = 'two'
> >>> x + y
> 'onetwo'
> >>> x + ' ' + y
> 'one two'
>
> You can see that the second statement constructs a string from *three*
> values: the string bound to x, the string consisting of a single space,
and
> the string bound to y.
>
> So all your second example does is append al lthe strings together, with
> spaces in between them. It takes 'Thu' and 'Aug" and puts them together
with
> a space in between them, that takes *that* result and '5' and puts them
> together with a space between them, and ... you probably see the point
now.
>
> When you give reduce() a thrid argument, it starts with that and the first
> element of the sequence rather than the first two elements of the
sequence,
> allowing you to put an initial value into the string of function
> evaluations:
>
> >>> x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> >>> def strp(x, y):
> ...  return x + ' ' + y
> ...
> >>> print reduce(strp, x, "Date is:")
> Date is: Thu Aug 5 06:06:27 MDT 1999
>
> I hope the book also (though possibly later) points out that a much better
> way to do the same thing would be
>
> x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
> r = string.join(x, " ")
>
> which uses a function from the string module. And, using string methods,
you
> could even abreviate it to:
>
> " ".join(x)
>
> which tells the string containing a single space to insert itself between
> the elements of the list, returning the resulting long string. But that
> probably won't appear until you're about ten hours into the book! Good
luck.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>
>
>
>
>




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 16:51:46 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:51:46 GMT
Subject: Tkinter: Frames in nested classes?
References: <9053f4e3.0107130616.79fd6378@posting.google.com> <9053f4e3.0107131159.4af4d9a4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <CbJ37.5148$z21.530135@newsc.telia.net>

Joshua Weage wrote:
> Following up to my own message, here is the solution
> (as done in Tkinter.py):

that's not a solution, that's code bloat.

> class Frame1(Frame):
>         def __init__(self, master=None, cnf={}, **kw):
>                 cnf = _cnfmerge((cnf,kw))
>                 Frame.__init__(self, master, cnf)

no need to use flatten or cnfmerge; just learn how to call
the base class constructor in Python, and all will be fine.

by the way, the cnf stuff is obsolete, and should not be
used in new code.  modern Tkinter code should look like:

        def __init__(self, master=None, **kw):
            Frame.__init__(self, master, **kw)

see my introduction document for more info.

</F>




From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Wed Jul 25 07:23:18 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:23:18 -0700
Subject: PEP0238: overriding // (__intdiv__) ??
Message-ID: <snatltotvlevdqc7kaj1m8v82o5fv51543@4ax.com>

Maybe I missed it.  Did the PEP specify what we'd use
to override the // operator in a class?  __intdiv__  and 
__rintdiv__ ?  Seems we'd need something like this, to
have our objects play along.  And I'd think this wrinkle 
should become available simultaneously with //.  

Kirby




From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul 25 11:27:33 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:27:33 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <cpzo9ta9el.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ltpb4.mqs.grante@isis.visi.com>

In article <cpzo9ta9el.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> More important is all the software that is somehow in-the-field - a
>> VERY serious problem.
>
>You can always use the solution that works so well in many other
>situations: don't upgrade Python, or at least keep a copy of Python
>1.5.2 or 2.1 around, and use that for your unconverted code.  This is
>a very common solution.

The problem is that it's not _us_ (people who write Python programs) who
decide what version of Python is running on a system.  It's out customers
and the poeple who ship Linux distros.  I have no control over what version
of Python is running on a customer's machine.  I don't get to decide "don't
upgrade." When RedHat starts shipping with Python X.Y, then my programs have
to run under Python X.Y whether I like it or not.  Meanwhile there are still
plenty of customers running the old version -- I can't tell them to upgrade
any more than I can tell others to upgrade.

You may not like it, but Python is now being used in the real world to do
real work...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  World War III? No
                                  at               thanks!
                               visi.com            


From matthewm at ihug.co.nz  Wed Jul 11 02:51:44 2001
From: matthewm at ihug.co.nz (Matthew)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:51:44 +1200
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <mailman.994793537.30396.python-list@python.org> <9ig91u$ii5co$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B4BB11B.97268EC2@ihug.co.nz> <9igcc1$ill0v$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B4BF780.7F23EB7B@ihug.co.nz>

There's hope yet.

This amongst other calls to PythonCOM do work

>>> xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\fred.xls",None,1,None,'fred')
<COMObject Open>

Read only with password does as it should

So far as I've tried, 'in order' parameters do definitely work. It's a start
but I'd like to figure why named keyword stillappesr to do nothing. Keep those
interested posted...matthew

PS: Config is win200, Office97 and ActiveState2.0/2.1

Emile van Sebille wrote:

> On that machine I've got build 135 installed.
>
> I'm not sure if this is it, but Password does appear in the file created by
> makepy.py.  Have you run that?  I renamed my copies here and it didn't give
> me an error afterwards, so it probably won't help you at all.
>
> Other than that, I don't know what else may be going on.
>
> --
>
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
>
> ---------
> "Matthew" <matthewm at ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:3B4BB11B.97268EC2 at ihug.co.nz...
> > So, definitely looks like a config issue of some kind. Just out of
> > interest, what build of win32all are you running with 1.5.2? As Bill
> > rightly noted from my original post , passing keyword args does
> > absolutely nothing under my combos of win/python/win32all - no error,
> > nor 'effect'. I'm begining to wonder whether Office97 PythonCOM stuff
> > only works with similar vintage win32all builds. Will check it out and
> > report back. any other ideas? regards, matthew.
> >



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 21:50:21 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:50:21 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Sa137.1466$zv2.51843@news.pacbell.net> <3B4D3622.5B4FC76E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <n1c37.177121$qv3.44584072@nnrp5-w.sbc.net>
Message-ID: <3B4E53DD.A319FDD9@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> 
> It's a problem with expectations and the law of least astonishment.
> Which audience would you rather astonish, and how much?

Depends on what you understand "the problem" to
be. To me, it's the fact that I have to write
something ludicrously convoluted just to tell
Python what sort of division I want to do.
This has nothing to do with astonishment.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sun Jul 29 02:50:18 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 06:50:18 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net> <9jvj7e$96b$1@panix2.panix.com> <XCM87.10556$Kd7.5973154@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <3B639B99.E068591E@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <KmO87.10967$Kd7.6184915@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote...
> (I'm sure the real solution is to find the time to narrow down
> the list of possible causes, because it seems very unlikely this
> group will be able to solve your problem without more legwork
> on your part.  I know that doesn't sound helpful: sorry.)

No biggie.  I didn't have much hope when I wrote here asking if
anyone had a similar problem or if anyone might have a suggestion.
It was necessary to ask because as slim as the chance was, it
wasn't zero, and I needed to check the newsgroup off my list of
paths to take.  So, I am moving on with much more conviction in
my mind that the whole thing needs to be rewritten in Java.  Those
non-commercial enterprizes are simply not strong enough yet...
Sorry for taking up your time.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 04:31:46 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:31:46 +0100
Subject: freeBSD 4.2 + Python2.1
References: <BAlhHJA2TUV7EwdX@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B554714.EAA32155@oek.dk>
Message-ID: <wA0tXVAylUV7EwbY@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B554714.EAA32155 at oek.dk>, Peter I. Hansen <pih at oek.dk>
writes
>Robin Becker wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to install Python2.1 and the package seems to install fine,
>> but it seems that _socket.pyd is linked against libssl.so.2 which I
>> don't have. Attempts to upgrade openssl are refused as openssl is part
>> of the 'base' system. Am I really forced to upgrade the whole operating
>> system?
>> --
>> Robin Becker
>
>No, you can just download a new openssl (from openssl.org) and install it.
>
>/Peter
>
I tried and make seemed only to build statics, any one know how to get
Configure to work properly? I don't have the faintest idea what
openssldir is/are etc
-- 
Robin Becker


From tjenkins at devis.com  Sat Jul  7 23:47:39 2001
From: tjenkins at devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 23:47:39 -0400
Subject: Gotcha in replace
Message-ID: <3B47D7DB.9020502@devis.com>

Hello all,
While I was working on some database scripting, I got bit by this 
behavior in replace.

 >>> y = "insert into blah values ('hello','','','','bye')"
 >>> y.replace(",'',", ",' ',")
"insert into blah values ('hello',' ','',' ','bye')"
 >>>

Notice that the second matching set of ",''," characters are not 
replaced probably because the first and second matching sets overlap on 
the last and first character, respectively.

It was trivial for this script to work around the gotcha (I just put the 
replace in a loop and broke out when new string equalled the old 
string).  But that method may not be an appropriate workaround in all cases.

Is this known behavior and I just missed it; or is this a bug in replace?

-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com




From jparlar at home.com  Wed Jul 11 21:14:34 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:14:34 GMT
Subject: newbie question
References: <mailman.994899139.13655.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <1103_994900358@jparlar>

To reiterate what Bill said in his post, buy Wesley Chun's book. At the end of every chapter there are a good number of 
chapter related exercises. Chun tries to cover most of the chapter's topics in these problems, and they really helped me 
learn Python. I seriously can't recommend this book enough. It's a fantastic piece of work.


> 
> "crombie" <crombie88 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > so, i wanna learn python.

> 
> > i read the docs on python.org.  what do i do now? is there like a
> > website with a list of starter projects that need to be done in
> > python to prove you know it and help you learn it? 
> > 
> > at a complete loss, will appreciate direction.  any direction 
> 

> 
> Book:
> 
> Wesley Chun's "Core Python" has an excellent reputation. Wesley 
> himself is very helpful on the tutorial list.
> 

> 
> Problems:
> 
> Can't really help there. Ask on the tutorial list?
> 
> Enjoy, enjoy.
> 
> Bill
> 

Jay P.



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:42:06 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:42:06 GMT
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <mailman.996011383.24629.python-list@python.org> <slrn9ls8j8.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cpbsm9a7kj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> >> From: James Logajan [mailto:JamesL at Lugoj.Com]
> >>
> >> In the interest of proposing a solution everyone can live with, may I
> >> suggest adoption of new module name extensions? A module 
> >> named "module.py2"

Not bad; could save a lot of trouble indeed, if the change to the
default is made with Python 3.0.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 04:43:42 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:43:42 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cp4rrz95iu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE607337502duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cp4rrz95iu.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:

> I don't see when a unified number system would ever be less convenient
> than the current number system, *except* in the rare case where you
> are transliterating an algorithm from C that depends on integer size.
> Unsigned ints of n bits are easily emulated by taking all results
> modulo 2**n -- I do this now using Python long ints when I need to
> emulate unsigned C longs.
The main situation that I was thinking of was calculations involving 
currencies, which would normally be done using int or long. You want fixed 
precision and truncation of fractional results. you do not want any 
automatic promotion to floating point. I think the system you are proposing 
still allows for this, but it may make it easier to accidentally slip into 
floating point.

> Using the new type/class unification in Python 2.2, you will be able
> to subtype the int or long types easily to create your own constrained
> types.
It may be fun trying this out.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From nospam at nospam.com  Fri Jul 27 03:42:50 2001
From: nospam at nospam.com (Grace)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:42:50 +0900
Subject: Is this an Intended behaviour of __getattr__?
References: <uu787.103805$ph7.16107665@news.hananet.net>
Message-ID: <OR887.104175$ph7.16309267@news.hananet.net>

"Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b6111de$0$325$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net...
>
> "Grace" <nospam at nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:uu787.103805$ph7.16107665 at news.hananet.net...
> > I'm a bit confused with this:
> >
> > class Node:
> >     def __init__(self):
> >         self._next=None
> >     def __getattr__(self,attr):
> >         if attr=='next':
> >             if self._next is not None:
> >                 return self._next
> >             else:
> >                 self._next=Node()
> >                 return self._next
> >         print attr,"was called..."
> >         error=3/0  #supposed to raise exception
> >         raise AttributeError
> >
> > if __name__=='__main__':
> >     f=Node()
> >     links=[f.next,f.next,f.next.next,f.next.next]
> >     for each in links:
> >         print each
> >     print f.errorPlz
> >
> > And this yields exactly,
> >
> >  __str__ was called...
> > __repr__ was called...
> > <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
> >  __str__ was called...
> > __repr__ was called...
> > <__main__.Node instance at 0081608C>
> >  __str__ was called...
> > __repr__ was called...
> > <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
> >  __str__ was called...
> > __repr__ was called...
> > <__main__.Node instance at 0081601C>
> > al was called...
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "...", line 22, in ?
> >     print f.al
> >   File "...", line 12, in __getattr__
> >     k=3/0
> > ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
> >
> > Why did it suck up all ZeroDivisionErrors while outputting the "was
> > called..." messages? Special case with magic methods? Is this an
intended
> > behaviour? Then what is the exact process/mechanism?
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> >
>
> in __getattr__ if the attr is 'next', if checks the value of _next and
> returns whether it's None or not. the code after return never gets
executed.
> the only time it didn't return first, was when __getattr__ was called
with
> 'errorPlz' (not 'next').
>
> That was too wordy, but I hope it's intelligible.
> --

Thanks, but I don't think it answers my question.

I think when __repr__ and __str__ are called internally via the interpreter
as in the print statement, it passes through the __getattr__ method of Node
class while all exceptions are simply ignored.

Am I right on this? Not sure.

ps. when  I use "not equal operator" != in the "if self._next is not None:"
line, __ne__ (above python 2.0) is searched after, and as it fails,
__getattr__ is called, and goes into the same strange process as above,
ignoring all exceptions.





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Jul  5 17:55:39 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 17:55:39 -0400
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org> <3dr8vvqrfl.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <mailman.994357450.6939.python-list@python.org> <3B44D0BD.63A3F795@home.net>
Message-ID: <3dofqzqbvo.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> writes:
> Anyone writing a computer book should read this:
> http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html
> It's interesting (and humorous) reading for the rest of us as well.

Indeed; that page cured me of my desire to write a book for physical
publication.  Sure, there's the ego-thrill of a big wad of paper with
your name on the front, but it also means you have to work to a
deadline, errors in the final product can't be corrected, and you have
to cope with potentially clueless editorial interference (sure, maybe
your editor will offer lots of good suggestions -- what if they
don't?).  Putting things on Web pages, you can fix errors whenever you
like, write sections whenever you like, and can get direct feedback
directly from readers; the advantages are all in the Web's favor.

--amk



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:26:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:26:41 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.994548913.18171.python-list@python.org> <cppubbipxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4A775B.1212684C@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <cpwv5fh7dp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > 
> > I just discovered that we don't need to add a new operator overloading
> > name for the div and mod operations: classes already look for a
> > __divmod__ method to overload divmod(), and we should naturally define
> > div(x, y) (or x div y) as divmod(x, y)[0].
> 
> That sounds suspiciously similar to the argument that
> we don't need __eq__, __le__ etc. because we can just
> as well funnel them all through __cmp__...

Darn.  That's a reasonable argument.  If a numeric array module
defines __divmod__, does it return a tuple of two arrays, or does it
return an array of tuples?  In either case, it would be a waste for
div to call __divmod__ and then have to throw away half of the
result.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From maxx at easynews.com  Wed Jul 25 12:02:46 2001
From: maxx at easynews.com (maxx at easynews.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:02:46 GMT
Subject: Python for Palm OS
References: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <1brtltk197fgufo68r8f4b93hc7bk5onr6@4ax.com>

http://www.endeavors.com/pippy/


On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:38:55 GMT, Robert Roberts <kj7ny at email.com> wrote:

>I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm 
>os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?
>
>Thanks in advance.



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 19:20:40 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:20:40 -0500
Subject: Postgres  support
In-Reply-To: <slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
	<slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <15169.456.489888.509381@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> As an example, I would like to find a cross-platform (Linux, Windows,
    >> etc.) Postgres interface that works with Python 2 or greater and
    >> Postgres 7 or greater, conforming to the dbAPI. Not too much to ask,
    >> one might think.

Apparently, it has been too much to ask so far.  Nobody else in the Python
community appears to have needed what you asked for badly enough to
implement it and make it available.  I certainly haven't, and I've been
doodling around with one or another database thing in Python for several
years.  I've been happy with the interface to MySQL, though the

You can do one of three things:

    * implement it and keep it to yourself
    * implement it and release it for others to use/improve
    * find someone willing to do it for you for a fee (perhaps a fee of $0)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From gustafl at algonet.se  Wed Jul  4 09:50:22 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 13:50:22 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
Message-ID: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:

>>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
>>> path.replace('\\', '/')
'e:\test\test.txt'

Expected:

'e:/test/test.txt'

Also, split() doesn't like backslashes:

>>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'
>>> paths.split()
['e:', 'est', 'ile1.txt', 'e:', 'est', 'ile2.txt']

Expected:

['e:\test\file1.txt', 'e:\test\file2.txt']

Alternative ways would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 16:29:38 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:29:38 +0100
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <9j2dnn$ndm$0@216.39.144.220> <slrn9lavp6.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9lbvbp.6o6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9ldhif.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9lhnsu.t43.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9ljphi.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 21 Jul 2001 01:49:19 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:36:49 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
>wrote:
>>On 18 Jul 2001 21:19:54 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>>It's not just you, but I don't agree, and it's not just me either.
>>>NameErrors, KeyErrors, and IndexErrors have saved me many times.  One of the
>>>things I didn't like about perl is how it magically created values on
>>>reference, and then I had to go hunt down the bad reference that created it.
>>>And I often store None in dicts and lists.  It would be weird if d.has_key(x)
>>>could be true or false while d[x] always evaluated to None.  That means that
>>>d[x] is implicitly creating a None when d.has_key(x) is false,
>>
>>It doesn't, it's just returning a value.
>
>But where is that value coming from?  It wasn't stored in the dict!

Consider the expression 2+3. Where is the 5 coming from; it wasn't
stored anywhere previously.

>And keep in mind that looking up global names and looking up object attributes
>are conceptually dictionary lookups (in globals() and obj.__dict__,
>respectively).

I'd be happy for a reference to a non-existant variable to create
it with a default value (e.g. None). Awk does this, and I find it
a good feature ofd not having to manually cross the t's and dot the i's.

>
>This is the kind of automatic creation and coercion that many people love
>about perl.  Many other people, however, don't :)

One of the few things Perl does right, then. Personally I find Perl
almost impossible to code in as I cannot make head or tail of it
as far as lexical analysis goes.

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From shriek at gmx.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 01:55:59 2001
From: shriek at gmx.co.uk (Stephen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 22:55:59 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <9d848d5d.0107251349.68519652@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <97ae44ee.0107262155.5abdb82@posting.google.com>

> > intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
> > staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
> > be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
> > which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made. 
> > They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
> > status of a particular resource. They want software more like 
> > Windows-applications. 
> 
> Have you considered a small applet that displays the status of the
> currently viewed resource?  This might be created in Jython and
> automatically update from the server at a specific interval.

Yes, I did consider it, and am still considering it for sales staff who
only have read ability (see below for reasons). This is also why I didn't
consider Worldpilot as somebody else kindly suggested.

It would still result in the same problem with changes by one client 
being updated on all other clients in real time.  Do the applets keep
polling for changes ?  If Sue books the slot 2-3pm on squash court 1,
I'd like the block representing it to turn red on all other clients
in real time, without staff intervention. (They've got other jobs to do, 
as well as taking phone bookings etc)

> > How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
> > with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the 
> > bookings for the day from the server.
> 
> Are they able to edit the bookings once the data has been downloaded? 
> i.e., do they get the data in "read only" mode then click on a button
> or link to edit the data?  If so you might create a lock file, or
> similar item, on the server when someone clicks on the edit button or
> link.
>
> If anyone after that clicks on the edit button it could check for the
> existance of the lock file.  If the file is present they might see the
> current information and who has it locked but not be able to edit the
> information.

Yes, they can edit the data (insert new entries or move/change existing 
bookings). Using a lock creates the problem if they then kill the web
browser. Yes, the lock could be timed out after say 3 mins (it can take 
them that long to insert contact data etc) but that still could result
in a lost booking if another person were trying to book the same time
during those 3 minutes. 

Really, I'm trying to get away from a stateless, non-updated-in-realtime
web app to more of a client app, something that might have been created
in Delphi or VB in the past.  Especially since it might give us the 
flexibility to integrate with other applications, such as the membership
system and email apps. (The web just doesn't lend itself to building 
look-ahead auto-complete fields for names, emails etc).

Thank you for taking the time to help.

S.


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sat Jul 21 15:34:58 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 21:34:58 +0200
Subject: Python XSLT Processor?
References: <jacobkm-AAFFEC.19314018072001@news.ntlworld.com> <3B55F528.A0FE6181@nospam.de>
Message-ID: <j4k812gjod.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Uwe Hoffmann <nospam at nospam.de> writes:

> > I'm looking for a pure Python XSLT processor (i.e. no C/C++ extensions);
> > does anyone have any good pointers?  I know of a few Java ones, so I
> > could use a Java XSLT program + Jython, but I'd really prefer to keep
> > using CPython if possible.
> 
> maybe 4xslt from http://4Suite.org/

That actually uses a C extension, namely a bison-written XPath
parser. The current PyXML CVS replaces this with a pure-Python
solution, but that doesn't work at the moment. Still, the XSLT engine
would then use C extension, namely the boolean module.

If the question really was for "no external libraries needed", then
4xslt is a good solution.

Regards,
Martin


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 18:08:55 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:08:55 +0200
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <9htfmj0csk@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Dublanc, David" <ddublanc at free.fr> wrote in message
news:qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460 at nnrp4.proxad.net...
> What is exactly weak typing ? I believed that Python was weak typing !

Python has dynamic typing, but it's far from weak: it won't turn
int into string, or viceversa, for example, unless you tell it
explicitly.  Perl's penchant for turning numbers into strings and
VV is a good example of weak typing.


> About Visual Basic : My brother (a VB developer :-) thinks that if you
only
> develop on MS platform and for MS platform without speed goal, VB is very,
> very productive !

Apparently Microsoft disagrees from your brother;-), since in the
next release they're making many incompatible changes to the VB
language (almost every one of which, funny enough, takes it closer
to Pyton -- though not quite close enough:-).

> (there are for instance a browser of DLL, so system programming is very
> easy ).

The impressive array of tools that comes with VB _almost_ (but not
quite) makes up for the language deficiencies, which are many (they
will be fewer in next release, since MS is removing some of the most
glaring ones, like the Set vs Let distinction in assignments, the
related concept of 'default attribute' of an object, etc, etc).  In a sense
the situation is close to Java (though Java as a language has fewer
warts than VB, and it ain't so much the tools but the libraries and
frameworks:-).  Into both niches Python fits just great -- you get
to keep using the same libraries and some of the tools AND at the
same time you code in a sane language....!-)


Alex





From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 05:38:33 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:38:33 +0200
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
In-Reply-To: <3b4cc04f.1657030403@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com> <mailman.994853658.9863.python-list@python.org> <3b4cc04f.1657030403@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <20010712113833.H5396@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 09:38:41PM +0000, Bengt Richter wrote:

> Can a python script be run efficiently and su-exec'd? I.e, Apache can run
> CGI as a particular account owner (e.g.,for access to private directories
> etc. that 'nobody' shouldn't see). Naturally it would work if you got a
> whole instance of the interpreter to yourself, but does modPython take
> care of su-exec properly? (I guess I should ask at modpython, but I'm here
> ;-)

No, just like mod_perl and mod_php, mod_snake and mod_python both embed
Python into Apache, and so it runs under the permissions of the Apache
server, not as a separate user like 'suexec'.

But note that you don't need mod_python or mod_snake to run Python scripts
at all. They're just handy speedups and provide hooks into Apache,
and some forms of persistance and such.

If you want to have fast CGI's, persistance *and* run them as another user,
you should consider FastCGI instead.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Jul 18 16:31:14 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:31:14 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <3B559B71.C08C6145@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B55F212.9B11346A@lemburg.com>

Barry has assigned the PEP number 0263 to this PEP. If you
prefer to read the PEP online, here is the URL:

	http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0263.html

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From kelleys at ucsu.colorado.edu  Wed Jul 25 12:31:38 2001
From: kelleys at ucsu.colorado.edu (Scott Kelley)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:31:38 -0700
Subject: trouble importing module _socket
Message-ID: <3B5EF46A.9A7E61E6@ucsu.colorado.edu>

Hello all,

I seem to be having a problem importing modules. I am installing on
Slackware 3.5 over a previous installation of Python 1.5.2 . I just
installed Python 2.1 which is working for the most part, but then I get
errors like this one:

  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py", line 41, in ?
    from _socket import *
ImportError: No module named _socket

I can't find any _socket module in the Python libraries.  Also as I was
installing I noticed problems with several modules that didn't seem to
want to install making me think this might be a general problem.

Has anyone out there experienced similar problems and have a notion of
what I can do about it?

I really appreciate any help you can send me. -Scott

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott T. Kelley, Ph.D.                  E-mail: Scott.Kelley at Colorado.edu
Dept. MCD Biology                       Phone : 303-735-1808
Campus Box 347                          Fax   : 303-492-7744
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO  80309-0347
U.S.A.





From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Jul 11 09:28:38 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 13:28:38 GMT
Subject: py2exe & Pmw
References: <9ihb0c$ivgp5$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <90DB6DF40gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>

Matthias Huening wrote:

>I know this has been asked before. Can't find the solution right now...
>So here is the problem: using py2exe with Tkinter works fine.
>But when I want to build a .exe which uses Pmw something goes wrong.
>Here is the output:

I'm sure it's the same as with Installer - you need to run Pmw's 
bundlepmw.py script (instructions in the bin directory).

- Gordon


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul 18 03:21:20 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:21:20 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220> <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com> <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9laetc.lhu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Xu, C.S. <xucs007 at yahoo.com> dijo:
> Interesting is for perl: On the same PII 450 MHz, "for" loop
> in stead of "while" loop increase about 10% speed, but on another
> PIII 1GHz, "for" slowes down speed by 30% (from 8 seconds of
> "while" to 10.6 seconds of "for"). Only computers themselves
> can understand, :-(

Algorithms for these structures have changed over the years.
Are both perls the same version?  Is either or both of them compiled
with processor-specific options?  I will assume you're measuring
actual CPU seconds. 

HTH
-- 
Sometimes we can choose the path we follow.
Sometimes our choices are made for us.
And sometimes we have no choice at all.
    -- Morpheus, The Sandman


From djc at object-craft.com.au  Wed Jul 11 02:28:37 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:28:37 +1000
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <23891c90.0107100600.13e4fc7c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m3k81ghtd6.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.net> writes:

>>  Boy, would I ever like to be able to complete my modules...

Paul> Isn't that true for most of us? ;-)

It is the universal constant.

Paul> Understood. But as I pointed out in the thread from which the
Paul> message you respond to came from, the usefulness of your module
Paul> in your business, and your reliance on that module, should be
Paul> seen as guarantees that you take its development seriously. It
Paul> is for this reason that I took exception to Mr Wilson's
Paul> "Maverick" accusations.

It is not enough to be a serious user yourself.  When things start to
go wrong in the server (resource shortages, ...), you get to see all
sorts of things happen at the interface layer.

Only by having lots of users can you build a reputation of providing a
"serious" module.  Given that almost no-one ever tells me that they
have used the module (successfully or otherwise), it is a bit hard to
know just how serious a module I have developed.

Paul> Actually, I think I did try your Sybase module out about a year
Paul> ago or so, by the way. What held me back there was, I think, the
Paul> lack of certain required libraries with my Sybase system, but I
Paul> may have got it working in the end. Sorry if I never
Paul> communicated that!

That is OK - you are free to use whatever module you like.  I have
just added one more module to the list of possible solutions to your
problem.  There is also no obligation to tell me about your experience
with my module.

Paul> An interesting point emerges here, though. The process of module
Paul> discovery can be somewhat stressful. It's quite likely that many
Paul> people give up "too easily" while building extensions, for
Paul> example, and move on to the next candidate module. In my Sybase
Paul> adventures, I tried your module and ctsybase first; ctsybase was
Paul> easiest to get working but lacked support for bind/bound
Paul> variables. Since I can't abide working without them, I moved
Paul> over to mxODBC, even though the effort in getting ODBC working
Paul> can be significant, but at that point I had the possibility of
Paul> choosing other database systems and was satisfied enough not to
Paul> do any more evaluation of other modules.

When a module does not just compile and work it is very annoying.  You
tend to question the competence of the developer.  It is only by
getting feedback from people who fail to have the module "just work"
that the installation can be made more robust.

I have some ideas about how to make it easier to get my module working
- maybe for the next release.

Paul> I certainly accept this. It can be disheartening to release
Paul> something which seems interesting and exciting to oneself, only
Paul> to be met with near silence in response.

I can see people downloading the module - there have been 182 unique
IP addresses which downloaded the Sybase-0.2x module.  I have no idea
how many them even compiled the module.

Paul> I think obscure bugs are the things that worry people most
Paul> particularly about database modules. ;-)

Yeah.  If you are simply passing the SQL and parameters from the
Python code directly to the database API then there is not a lot of
scope for changing the meaning of the SQL and parameters on the way
through.  About the only thing I can see going wrong is incorrect
binding of binary values...

>> 2- People who experience problems do not bother contacting me.
>> 
>> Although it would be nice to think that option 1 is true, I suspect
>> that option 2 is closer to the truth.

Paul> There's another possibility: people may experience problems but
Paul> may not have your level of skill to diagnose or investigate
Paul> them. I accept that this isn't a good enough excuse when, in
Paul> this case, there is someone taking responsibility for the
Paul> module, but then in periods of a maintainer not having enough
Paul> time to work on the module whilst doing paid work, development
Paul> and fixes are understandably delayed. Whilst it seems harsh and
Paul> ungrateful, developers are often impatient creatures who only
Paul> report problems when they happen and frequently give up quickly,
Paul> choosing the path of least resistance (to the next candidate
Paul> module).

I think that is what I was trying to say.

Paul> Of course, and no-one can or should be blamed for this. One big
Paul> problem in the development of database modules in particular is
Paul> the rarity of developers motivated enough and with enough
Paul> resources to help people like you out.

Never a truer word spoken.

Paul> Not many people in the past have had access (or the inclination
Paul> for ideological or other reasons to access) Sybase database
Paul> systems whilst developing interfaces to the native libraries.
Paul> Indeed, even those who have access to such systems may find
Paul> libraries and headers missing.

True.

Paul> What this means in general is that some projects are likely to
Paul> be driven by a single developer without "peers". A good way to
Paul> make this situation more bearable for such developers and for
Paul> the community would definitely go down well.

Now you have your work cut out for you... :-)

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Mon Jul  2 13:02:26 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:02:26 -0500 
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51D6@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I walked into this bar, and asked the piano player, "Do you know?  Is Python dead?"  He replied, "no, but if you hum a few bars, I will try to play it."

-----Original Message-----
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl [mailto:m.faassen at vet.uu.nl]
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 11:22 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?


Edward B. Wilson II <ed at ewilson.com> wrote:
> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.

And 'is Python dead' will guarantee you people will read your post.

> Python still doesn't have good database support,

I realize I'm not familiar with Perl's dbi, which I hear is more powerful
than Python's database interfacing, but I've happily connected 
Python to things like Access, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Also from 
within Zope. What do you consider to be 'good database support'?

> nor has it grown to be
> useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
> mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
> space.

What about Zope, Quixote, WebWare? I mean, really, this is an area which
has seen a lot of growth in recent years.

http://www.zope.org
http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/python/quixote/
http://webware.sourceforge.net/

And then there's this:

http://www.vex.net/parnassus

where you can find much more web related stuff, in case that wasn't enough.

> It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
> write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
> manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
> making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language at
> eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.

You'll just have to be more specific about this..

> Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
> best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
> largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
> or otherwise).

But those areas are exactly what I've been using it for the last couple
of years! Surely I would've noticed it if Python was dead. :)

Of course, some things could be nicer (relational object
integration would be nice), and as have been discussed recently,
the Python Standard Library could've seen some more development. 
Also of course a comprehensive Python Catalog ala CPAN would be nice.

But really, either you've managed to miss an amazing amount of developments
the last few years (really, had you missed Zope?), or your post here
was rather unclear -- what exactly is it that you're missing?

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?



From stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu  Mon Jul  9 22:27:19 2001
From: stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu (stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 02:27:19 GMT
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <9idp67$jln$2@gondor.sdsu.edu>

In rec.games.roguelike.development Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>   However, do you not indent your code in C?
> if(foo)
> bar();
[snip]
>   It's a very old, very bogus argument, dragged out every time by the
> people who haven't used Python; once you program in Python, it becomes a
> non-issue.

I'll just quote:

   This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
   documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by the
   compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September 1999)

-- 
   Stewart Stremler                                 stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  I'm glad that you're beginning to understand the shortcomings of analogies
  and will bear that in mind in the future.        -- Peter da Silva (2001)


From uioziaremwpl at spammotel.com  Tue Jul  3 11:38:05 2001
From: uioziaremwpl at spammotel.com (Carsten Geckeler)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:38:05 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <Bke07.7479$e5.975453@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107031730150.1388-100000@athlon.de>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> Carsten wrote:
>
> > Well, the Python world before augmented assignment was quite simple:
> > Operators never changed the objects they acted on.
>
> nothing prevents __add__ from changing the objects.

Thank you very much for deleting my next sentence which clearly stated
that it can be done, of course, by a user defined object by operator
overloading.  I'm sticking at first with builtin types which behave in
that way.  And I hope most authors also try to do the same in this case
for clearity.

> > Now we have augmented assignments.  x=+y _can_ change the object
> > bound to x, depending if x is mutable or immutable.
>
> has nothing to do with mutability, and all to do with how the
> __iadd__ method is implemented:
>
>     + is an alias for __add__
>     += is an alias for __iadd__
>
> as for all other operators, the exact semantics are up to the
> type/class implementation.

Again, my argument was for builtin types.  And for them the distinction is
made for mutable and immutable types.

That user defined classes can define some strange operator overloading is
o.k.  But allowing people doing things does not neccessarily mean that
thay should do it, especially when it's not logical.

Cheers, Carsten
-- 
Carsten Geckeler




From sill at optonline.net  Fri Jul 13 18:31:43 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:31:43 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <slrn9kpvbh.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9krv7p.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B4E4932.78F8B7D3@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kutkg.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:04:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Rainy wrote:
> 
>> I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
>> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>> in perl :-/.
> 
> Is that the reason you left? :)

No, I left because I got bored of image manipulation, which constituted the
bulk of the job. 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From sheila at spamcop.net  Fri Jul 20 10:42:39 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:42:39 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995634453.9136.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <hlgglt4hrnnb8a7dmocntkns5bkm4b6jmm@4ax.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:01:45 -0300, Gustavo Niemeyer
<niemeyer at conectiva.com> wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.995634453.9136.python-list at python.org>:

:Indeed, I don't think case-sensitiveness is something that will help
:non-programmers to get used to the language. You have so many factors
:to learn when you're starting, case sensitiveness will be just one more
:behavior of the language (not a wart at all).  On the other hand, I
:think that, if you create a case-insensitive tool or command line option
:and let users get used to it, it'll take forever to learn how to program
:in sensitive mode.

As a high school computer science teacher, I must agree. I have been
teaching C++ for the last couple of years, to students with no prior
programming experience. Aiyee! And, there were many things that gave
them difficulty. Missing closing braces. Misplaced semi-colons.
Forgetting "break" in a switch-statement.

But case-sensitivity was never an issue. I mentioned it one day, and
explained it, and I don't remember it ever being a problem, where a
student called me over to his/her machine and asked me for help finding
a bug, and it came out to be related to case-sensitivity. I don't
remember this happening even once. There were many other bugs that made
us tear our hair out, but never, never this.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 13:44:59 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:44:59 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6edd2418.0107301344.439affc8@posting.google.com> <cpg0bdzjj4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <j4wv4pb9jt.fsf@artagnan.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <cp1ymxyow5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:

> By default, instance attributes are not accessible outside of instance
> methods. In instance methods, attributes are denoted by an initial
> ampersand (e.g. @age, @name, @counter). You can declare attributes as
> accessible, using
[etc.]

(Thanks for the explanation.)

It seems that because of the access rules, this makes sense for Ruby.
But since attrs are public by default in Python, it makes less sense
here.  We could easily have a shortcut that creates a pair of accessor
functions to map a public attribute name to a private attribute, but
what good would it do us?  You only need to use accessor functions
when you want additional functionality.  I guess a read-only attribute
is the simplest added functionality.  Thinking aloud:

def readonly(name):
    def get(obj):
        return getattr(obj, '_' + name)
    return getset(get, None)

class C:

    foo = readonly('foo')

    def __init__(self):
        self._foo = 12 # access raw attribute

x = C()
print x.foo # legit
x.foo = 21 # error

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul 23 05:26:46 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:26:46 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <q5S67.6725$z21.819695@newsc.telia.net>

David wrote:
> 6 instances of determining transformed image sizes:
> newX = (oldX * targetSize)/max(oldX,oldY) etc.  I don't know whether PIL
> allows image.resize() to take float arguments, whether it throws an
> exception, or whether it just does something bogus.

PIL picks the largest possible image size not larger
than the given size.

> Not even counting the divisions I'm sure are lurking in PIL?

PIL will break.

> So, anyone who I might have passed the program on to will one
> day suddenly see ugly floats in their generated web pages, if the
> program still works at all, and won't have any clue why or how to
> fix it.

welcome to the wonderful world of Python 3000.

</F>




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 12:10:44 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 11:10:44 -0500
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B@lp.airnews.net>

In article <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.
			.
			.
			.
More so than Forth, UCSD Pascal, Lisp, Cobol (which
deserves more appreciation for getting some of the
social questions right), ...?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Jul 12 10:32:54 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:32:54 -0400
Subject: cursesmodule: remove 2-argument form of newwin()?
Message-ID: <E15KhWQ-00051n-00@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

In the curses module, newwin() when called with two arguments returns
a pad instead of a window.  This is equivalent to the newpad()
function, and it's a bit confusing.  I'm tempted to change this for
2.2, having the 2-argument newwin() return a window, not a pad, and
set nlines and ncols to zero, making ncurses use the rest of the
screen for the window.  This matches the actually documented
behaviour.

I'm doubtful anyone uses the 2-argument newwin() at all, but wanted to
ask the group -- does anyone rely on newwin(x,y) returning a pad?

This is bug #417212 on SourceForge; you can make comments on that bug,
or here on python-list.

--amk



From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Wed Jul 25 05:53:15 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:53:15 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jm4ub$ulf$3@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <cpofqaova7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:

>If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238 would
>make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?

I agree that PEP-238 would make Python a better language. But it's not
just about breaking old code -- as I've said a few times already, it's
also about making it very awkward to write _new_ code which must be
able to run on more than one version of Python.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul 10 22:02:34 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:02:34 -0700
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <mailman.994793537.30396.python-list@python.org> <9ig91u$ii5co$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B4BB11B.97268EC2@ihug.co.nz>
Message-ID: <9igcc1$ill0v$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

On that machine I've got build 135 installed.

I'm not sure if this is it, but Password does appear in the file created by
makepy.py.  Have you run that?  I renamed my copies here and it didn't give
me an error afterwards, so it probably won't help you at all.

Other than that, I don't know what else may be going on.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Matthew" <matthewm at ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:3B4BB11B.97268EC2 at ihug.co.nz...
> So, definitely looks like a config issue of some kind. Just out of
> interest, what build of win32all are you running with 1.5.2? As Bill
> rightly noted from my original post , passing keyword args does
> absolutely nothing under my combos of win/python/win32all - no error,
> nor 'effect'. I'm begining to wonder whether Office97 PythonCOM stuff
> only works with similar vintage win32all builds. Will check it out and
> report back. any other ideas? regards, matthew.
>




From missive at frontiernet.net  Sun Jul  8 16:35:26 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 20:35:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9iag6e$1l2k$2@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:03:30 +0200, Rene Pijlman <reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep>:
> missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) schreef:
>>Here is the error message I get:
>>Error Type: TypeError
>>Error Value: expected string, ImplicitAcquirerWrapper found
>>File /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py, line 18, in makeThumbnail
>>Any wisdom?
> 
> Yes, the error is on line 18 of
> /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py :-)
> 
> Post lines 1-25 if you want more help.
> 


Well, the code is cut and pasted from the Zope Book, so I am
_assuming_ there are no errors in the script. And, like I 
said it works fine on other images.

What I am trying to determine is if there are any
limits set on External Methods which I might be running in
to trying to process such a large image. I have looked
through many pages of docs and everything seems to be
saying that External Methods are unrestricted.

Is that true?





From mirko.liss at web.de  Wed Jul 11 13:00:13 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:00:13 +0200
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <mailman.994863201.30426.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.994863201.30426.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010711170014.626C3E1E.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:

> P.S. Going to write Fython ;-)
> (F for Forth)
I'm looking forward to it. I guess Fython can 
be a nice intermediate language to apply 
user defined optimization strategies without 
having to take care of this or that new Python 
feature or on the other hand any platform 
specific bytecode.

regards,

Mirko



From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 00:28:59 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:28:59 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Changing default font in idle/linux
In-Reply-To: <tk55clhbjjrfd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040822030.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Stephen Boulet wrote:

>Anyone know how to change the default font in idle in linux?
>I've looked at the file "EditorWindow.py" but found no "text['font'] =
>("lucida console", 8)" line.

Probably, this isnfo is outdated.
In 2.1 you can specify font in the configuration file
under "EditorWindow" chapter.

Look at config*.txt (with IDLE) for example.

>Here are my versions:
>
># rpm -q python tkinter
>python-2.1-1mdk
>tkinter-2.1-1mdk
>
>Thanks.
>
>-- Stephen
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From fleet at teachout.org  Tue Jul 24 11:38:06 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:38:06 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: intersection and union idea
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107241048160.1667-100000@fleet1>

"Learning Python, First Edition (1999) page 109.  provides examples.

				- fleet -

>Message: 17
>   Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:42:27 +0100
>   From: Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: intersection and union idea
>
>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:57:20 -0700, "Neil Macneale"
><mac4-devnull at theory.org> wrote:
>
>>I was day dreaming about python today, and I realized that it would be
>>very python-ish to have intersection and union operators for lists and
>>tuples. Eg:
>>
>>>>> (1,2,3,4) | (1,3,6,8)
>>(1,2,3,4,6,8)
>>>>> (1,2,3,4) & (1,3,6,8)
>>(1,3)
>
>You could define your own set object, or an alternative to a
>dictionary or list, using a class and defining the following
>methods...
>
>__and__(self, other)
>__or__(self, other)
>
>Whether it's really useful, though, is a different thing - you're
>probably better off with simple functions operation on the existing
>types.
>
>As a language addition - well, it wouldn't break anything I can see.
>It could have some consiseness value, but it is really syntactic
>sugar.






From steveha at animal.blarg.net  Mon Jul 16 18:00:27 2001
From: steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R. Hastings)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:00:27 -0700
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net> <slrn9ksprk.n2h.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <3b5363fb$1@news.blarg.net>

Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes (kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu) wrote:
> if the expensive book is John Grayson's _Python and
> Tkinter Programming_, get it now, it's a damn fine book.

Thanks for the tip.  I took your advice and got it.

I checked www.amazon.com, and found that they offer the Grayson book for
20% off--an even better deal than the sale at the store!--so I ordered the
book from Amazon.


>   If what you want is portability, though, Python's probably more
> portable than Java

Okay.  I thought Java bytecodes were my best hope for cross-platform
compatibility... but Python has its own bytecodes, doesn't it!

Suppose I wanted a program to be runnable on platforms like BSD, PowerPC
Linux, PowerPC BSD, etc. without having to build on each of those.  If I
were to distribute .pyo files, and users of all those platforms already had
Python installed on their systems, could I build and distribute a single
.pyo file?

If I do this project, I will directly support Win32, Mac, and x86 Linux.
But I was hoping I could also distribute something that would be portable
for everyone else outside these three platforms.  If .pyo files are
cross-platform, then they are the solution I wanted.

The project I have in mind is a game, and I would use the Pygame library (a
Python layer over SDL).  But I would like the game to run in a well-behaved
window, with pull-down menus and dialogs and such, rather than taking over
the whole screen as some SDL games do.  Thus my interest in Tkinter.
--
Steve R. Hastings		"Vita est"
steve at hastings.org		http://www.blarg.net/~steveha


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 11 16:18:31 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:18:31 -0400
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
In-Reply-To: <qebpktoe7n33altfhpar744nhak7hf4b6u@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEELKKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Chris Spencer, on Win2k "losing" memory after
    result = []
    for count in xrange(510*478):
        result.append(count)
    del result
]

> I can confirm these results.  Why would a deleted list
> retain 90% of its memory usage after being deleted?  Sounds like
> a pointer is getting lost somewhere.

Nothing is lost.  All flavors of Windows have flaky (yet different) malloc()
implementations that work especially poorly with append-one-at-a-time list
behavior.  If you try it under the current CVS Python, it should work better
on (all flavors of) Windows.  In the meantime, Windows malloc has chewed up
some *address space* (virtual memory) due its own internal fragmentation,
which is not necessarily the same thing as "memory" (RAM).  Getting an
accurate view of Windows memory use can't be done from Task Manager; you
have to walk the heap structures and analyze them yourself.




From esharpe at uswest.wet  Mon Jul  9 11:58:09 2001
From: esharpe at uswest.wet (Ed Sharpe)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:58:09 -0700
Subject: New library software development project.
References: <3B3601BE.3C84E49A@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <Tdk27.48$6O5.193910@news.uswest.net>

there are already things like this out there....
re-inventing the wheel is not an option.
check out www.koha.org or .com
see what they are up to downunder!

there is also openbook out of Seattle
www.trfoundation.org

Lets all put our efforts into one of these directions, they need our help
rather than  birthing yet another unique enity.

ed sharpe archivist for smecc

see us at:  www.smecc.org
Richard Snow <snowrichard at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3B3601BE.3C84E49A at earthlink.net...
> I'm looking for 2 types of people who might be interested in this
> project:
>
> School librarians/staff
> Python coders
>
> and also possibly: junior or senior high school students who like to
> program
>
>
> hence the cross post.
>
> A brief description of the project: An open source library circulation
> system written in Python and running
> on Linux. Handles patron records, book records, and checkouts
> currently.  We might add other types of
> records such as videos, audio tapes, and so on later.
>
> The web page at http://richardsnow.bizland.com/opendev describes the
> project, and has source code in Python 1.5.2 for an initial version.  I
> need some real users/testers who know  about libraries to help guide
> further development.  The project will eventually be released under the
> GPL.  Initially I'm targeting Linux as
> it will run on inexpensive equipment however most schools may already
> have Windows so a windows port
> is not out of the question and Python is also available for Windows so
> it should be fairly easily done.
>
> However the first version uses the Unix Curses library for its user
> interface, and runs on a linux console rather than the X windowing
> system.
>
> The initial version has been developed/tested on Red Hat Linux 7.1 but
> should also run on other Linux
> systems that have Python, namely Debian, which some of the early work
> was done on and I still have
> available for testing purposes.
>
> If you are interest in helping out or in using the code, please see the
> web page and email me from there.
>
> --
> Richard Snow
> http://richardsnow.bizland.com
>
>
>




From revyakag at umdnj.edu  Wed Jul  4 02:30:08 2001
From: revyakag at umdnj.edu (Andrey Revyakin)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 02:30:08 -0400
Subject: sys.stdin.read() HELP!
Message-ID: <3B42B7F0.50B624BD@umdnj.edu>

I have a cgi script which reads XML data from a FLASH5 movie. The script
reads data into a string like this:

text = sys.stdin.read()

After I moved my scripts from a machine with python 1.7.2 to to a one
with python 2 .0, I started getting the following error:

text = sys.stdin.read()
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor

WHAT THE #$^ does that mean??? Please help!  If I can't use my way with
2.0 anymore, what can I use instead?
Thanks in advance!

Andrey




From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Jul 21 09:23:12 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 13:23:12 GMT
Subject: 3rd beta of Win32 Installer release 4
References: <mailman.995662610.14766.python-list@python.org> <9jb2gl$milpe$1@ID-44371.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E55F965779Bgmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>

Cristian Echeverria wrote: 

> I tested release 4 with Python 2.1, Win98 and with a simple program:
> 
> print "Hello"
> 
> and I got the following errors
> 
> W: exec statment detected at line 295 of imputil
> W: No module named dos
> W: No module named mac
> W: No module named os2
> W: No module named posix
> 
> I don?t know what is happening, all the previous version worked for my,
> but version 4 has not worked at all, I always get a similar error.

Those are not errors. Depending on what platform your python is built
for, you have a builtin from the list [dos, nt, mac, os2, posix].

The os module (which is the same on all platforms) has code that,
(depending on which of those it sees in builtins), imports the
appropriate one. In scanning the code for "import"s, all 5 import 
statements are found, but only one of them names an existing 
module. So the other 4 are reported as warnings.

This kind of thing is very common in cross platform code. To see
if it works, try it. If it doesn't run, the warning messages
may provide a clue.

- Gordon



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 09:58:19 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:58:19 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <mailman.996103958.4468.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <MdW77.10395$UB6.966994@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE9754B9BA0duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org (Kevin Smith) wrote in
news:MdW77.10395$UB6.966994 at e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com: 

> I really like this idea.  This is better than the current
> implementation and the Jack Jansen syntax (which I found mildly
> confusing).  It also allows the current classmethod()/staticmethod()
> built-ins to still be used, but in a more appropriate spot in the
> method definition.  I can see a lot of additional power and flexibility
> with this idea.  This one gets my vote! 

Ok, I'll see if I can write this up into a PEP. One thing that worries me 
slightly though is that I can't see a really good way to include getset in 
this proposal. (I can think of loads of slightly tacky ways to do it 
though).

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 08:12:38 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:12:38 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <994422491.679470@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only for web
reading and this requires time -internet time, which is unfortunately
expensive.

so, any other proposals for sites that contain text about python tutoring?
every recommendation is welcome!

thanks in advance!




From web2ed at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 11:47:06 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 08:47:06 -0700
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>

Why is it that one can attempt the most daring tasks with Python, e.g.
write image manipulation programs, steer super computing applications,
write interactive games, parse XML, yet still can not perform the more
basic tasks of hitting a database and generating a report.

After five years of following Python, I haven&#8217;t seen much
improvement in the areas that seem to be the most natural fit for
Python: Commercial quality database support and robust web server
modules.  Are not developers more likely to write games in C,
Assembler, or C++.  And are not developers more likely to use
scripting languages for building web applications, and generating
reports.  The Python camp seems to be more enthusiastic about building
impractical solutions better suited for C libraries than for scripting
languages. I understand that it is COOL to do so, but what about
making Python more useful in the workplace so we can all start using
it more often.  One of the most annoying post I commonly see is,
"Python is great, but there aren't many Python jobs".

I write this out of frustration.  I want to bring Python into my
workplace, and eventually tackle everything with Python.  Yet first I
must to find and entry point.  For me, that entry point lies in
commercial quality database support, and some kind of web server
plug-in like mod_perl.  I know I can't be alone.  Python has so much
to offer, yet it&#8217;s impossible to handle the most common
scripting tasks--the tasks which present the most convincing arguments
to management.  I will never use Python to parse XML if I can not
first retrieve data from a database.

Is everybody too busy writing flight simulators and gaming engines? 
Is anybody interested in resurrecting PyApache and making it better
than PHP, and adding state-of-the-art database support for Oracle,
DB2, Sybase, and SQL Server.  Sure, I understand MySQL and Postgres
are supported, but I just convinced my group to start using Linux.  It
will be several years before we start using open source databases.

Python is without doubt, one of the finest-most-useful languages to
come around.  It stands to make computing so much more productive,
cutting costs, reducing bugs, shortening development times, and
bringing solutions to the market that would never be attempted with
other tools, due to the natural inherent risks of software
development.

I keep asking myself, &#8220;when will it be our (Python&#8217;s) time
to take center stage in the arena of software champions?&#8221;  Not
until developers can first handle the simple day-to-day applications. 
Everyone wants to be Super Bowl Champions, yet no one wants to first
excel at blocking and tackling&#8212;the very attributes which
champions are made of.  Python excels at everything except the basics,
the very tasks which make it acceptible.

Please don&#8217;t kill my thread, I would like to rally a group to
extend Python with what I feel it needs the most to gain the widest
audience at this time.  I would love to write applications, which talk
to the satellites and barrow time from the local super computer, but
first I have to retrieve the data from my company&#8217;s database.


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:43:32 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:43:32 GMT
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994769237.24585.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpr8vnh6ln.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> But it is Guido's language and Guido's call.  Just wish it was
> all just left to his own sense of design elegance, which there
> is reason to trust - rather his public justifications, which I 
> never find very satisfactory.

Good point, Art.  I trust my intuition more than my reasoning in these
things, and often when I try to defend my intuition against
challenges, what comes out are unsatisfactory rationalizations.
Sometimes Tim's "channelings" say it better than I could have said it
myself...  :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 03:11:47 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:11:47 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <f7gnltouvi56luruj79k06iaol0nc10q4k@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEEGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

FYI, PEP 42 (the "small feature request" PEP) contains

    - New math module radians() and degrees() functions.

Somebody quick add grads before Python becomes obsolete <wink>.




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:02:40 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:02:40 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Kirill Simonov <kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua> writes:

> It would be nice to have 'in' operator for types:
> 
> assert (num in int)
> assert (msg in str)

Not bad. :)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From payou at free.fr  Thu Jul  5 07:20:59 2001
From: payou at free.fr (Alexandre Perrin)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:20:59 GMT
Subject: call Python from a multithreaded DLL
Message-ID: <v4Y07.5104$pm5.6724636@nnrp1.proxad.net>

Hi ! I'm working on a Win 32 Multithreaded DLL (in C++) and I need to call the Python (2.1) interpreter from differents threads of my DLL. It works fine when I call python from the main thread but it crashes when i call python from others threads. Here's a sample :

--------------------------------------------------------------------
#include <python.h>
#include <windows.h>

DWORD WINAPI myThread(LPVOID) {
    PyEval_AcquireLock();
    PyRun_SimpleString("print \"Crash...\"");
    PyEval_ReleaseLock();
}
void main() {
    DWORD lpThreadId = 0;
    PyEval_InitThreads();
    Py_Initialize();
    PyRun_SimpleString("print \"OK until now...\"");
    hTic = CreateThread( NULL, 0, myThread, NULL, 0, &lpThreadId);
    Py_Finalize();
}

If someone can help me...

Payou





From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 18:27:06 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:27:06 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHAEGLCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Tim]
> Already said I don't care what other languages do here, and,
> yes, of course that's my opinion -- like yours is yours.

[Stephen Horne]
> And that's *ALL* I need to prove to show that there is no good reason
> to implement PEP0238 - the difference between an opinion and a
> supposedly undeniable fact.

It's my opinion that what other languages do doesn't matter, therefore
there's no good reason to implement PEP 238?  Well, as opinions go, at least
that one's creative <wink>.

try-giving-it-a-rest-for-12-hours?-ly y'rs  - tim




From dougfort at dougfort.net  Fri Jul  6 09:57:27 2001
From: dougfort at dougfort.net (Doug Fort)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 14:57:27 +0100
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <3b45c3c4$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>

Alexandre Fayolle wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm using python 2.1 and the latest release of xmlrpclib from pythonware.
> 
> If I use the default server, the following call causes  an error on the
> server:
> 
> from xmlrpclib import *
> 
> server = Server("http://localhost:8000")
> 
> print server
> 
> try:
>     print server.echo('\231')
> except Error, v:
>     print "ERROR", v
> 
> Is this a bug in xmlrpc or in the underlying xmllib ?
>  
> Alexandre Fayolle

The XML-RPC standard only supports ASCII text.  (I found this our from the 
new O'Reilly book 'Programming Web Services with XML-RPC'.  The book is 
pretty light weight (I skimmed it in an hour) but it has some worthwhile 
tidbits.

-- 
Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net>
http://www.dougfort.net

______________________________________________________________________
Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Still Only $9.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com
   With Seven Servers In California And Texas - The Worlds Uncensored News Source
  


From sheila at spamcop.net  Fri Jul 20 19:18:31 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:18:31 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <atehltknbavv0irts7ousrh4ed8t36op5f@4ax.com>

On 20 Jul 2001 18:09:22 -0400, pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (Fran?ois Pinard)
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.995666017.20422.python-list at python.org>:

:[Guido van Rossum]
:
:> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
:> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
:> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
:> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.
:
:(I presume you meant "case-insensitivity" on the second line of the above
:paragraph).
:
:Would not it be convenient, before asking "how", to wonder "why"?  The real
:prerequisite question might be to define quite precisely "What are we
:wanting to achieve, here?".  Once this done, another question might be to
:ask ourselves?  "Is modifying the language the proper answer to about how
:to reach the goals?", meaning the goals identified by the first question.
:
:I worry a bit that you state that the real important question is "how",
:as if you were trying to escape the prerequisite questions, or maybe trying
:to tell us that your mind got firm answers about them.

In an attempt to address the "why" of this problem, I have posted the
following article to two mailing lists to which I belong, for AP
Computer Science teachers:

> As some of you have probably noticed (or maybe not), I've become quite a
> fan of the Python programming language, lately. I follow the newsgroup
> comp.lang.python. Python is a language which is under development.
> 
> One of the recent language changes recently discussed in
> comp.lang.python has to do with whether identifiers should or should not
> be case-sensitive.
> 
> Those of us who programmed in Pascal, certainly recall the
> case-insensitivity of that programming language. And now that we are
> programming in C++, and moving to Java in another couple of years, we
> are programming in a case-sensitive language. Python is currently a
> case-sensitive language.
> 
> I would like to conduct a small survey on the issue of case-sensitivity
> in identifier names...
> 
> When answering these questions, please do not consider only AP level
> programming students, who are usually very sharp and often have
> programming experience, but please think of beginning programming
> students, and particularly those students who are not especially adept
> at programming.
> 
> Reply to: case at thinkspot.net if you please, and I will compile all the
> results, summarize them and report back to the list on the findings.
> 
> 1. Are you a computer science teacher?
> 
> 
> 2. In your experience, have you found that cs students, especially
> beginners, have difficulty due to case-sensitive identifier names?
> 
> 
> 3. If you were designing a new programming language, would you choose to
> make it case-sensitive or case-insensitive? Why?
> 
> 
> 4. If you were using a language that had an option to set some sort of
> flag or compiler directive to turn case-sensitivity off, would you use
> such a feature with a beginning class?
> 
> 
> 5. When trying to select a programming language for instructing
> beginning students, do you consider case-sensitivity to be an important
> factor in selecting a language for your beginning programming course?
> 
> 
> Any other comments?


If/when I get a reasonable number or responses, I will compile a summary
and post the results here.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul  6 14:39:39 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:39:39 -0700
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
References: <48365474.0107052029.12d28427@posting.google.com> <Qoc17.4961$G_1.481779@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B4605EB.D801CB85@home.net>

Chris Tavares wrote:
> Tkinter and MFC don't mix in the same process. Neither will Tkinter and
> WxWindows, or MFC and WxWindows, or Tkinter and GTK+, or any other gui
> toolkits.
> 
> The basic problem is that they all want control of the message loop - and
> the first one there gets it. This is also the reason you can't run Tkinter
> apps under PythonWin.

While you might want to try to hack your way around this limitation, you
will have a hard time of it, and you will, at best, get a result where
the GUI elements created by the C+++ code will look and feel different
that those created by the Python code. 

Your best bet is to use the same toolkit for the C++ and Python
portions. This will result in a far more seamless transition between
them. I know it can be done with wxWindows and wxPython, I imagine it
could be done as well with QT or GTK. given that you are using MFC now,
wx is probably your best bet.

Check out the wxWindows/wxPython mailing list archives for info on how
to do it.

good luck!

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From anon at nym.net  Sun Jul  1 07:22:04 2001
From: anon at nym.net (anon at nym.net)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 04:22:04 -0700
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hn12v$p0r$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>

Have you tried using Glade?

With the assistance of libglade it is exceptionally easy to use Glade and
attach handlers written in Python.

In article <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg at 4ax.com>, "Lothar Scholz"
<llothar at mailandnews.de> wrote:

> Is there something other then "Black Adder" which  is behind an  alpha
> version ?
>


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 21:11:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:11:24 -0400
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5390BC.C5FFCD2A@engcorp.com>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com>
> 
> > If you look back through the last two days' worth of postings for subject
> > "parallel port?!?" you should find something to help.  Yes, it is
> possible,
> > no the result is not compatible (but you could always write a higher level
> > wrapper to make it so).
> 
> Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.  He wants
> to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a "custom ISA
> card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port interface,
> nor serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.

I admit I didn't actually look at the winioport stuff proposed in the
"parallel port?!?" thread, but given that it was called winioport
and not winparallelport, I assumed it was a way of providing generic 
access to IO ports under Windows.  If I was wrong, then you are right 
to correct me!  (Do you know winioport would not work or were you just
tricked by the name of the thread?)

Of course, it's probably moot given Jon Nicoll's response which suggests
a perfectly viable alternative.

> Bryan, please tell us a bit more about the device you are trying to control,
> and perhaps we can help you.

Always good advice to someone looking for assistance!

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Thu Jul 26 02:04:22 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:04:22 -0500
Subject: And now, something completely different...
Message-ID: <01e901c11598$d1de3ea0$0101010a@local>

The PEP0238 flamewar has been rather bad the last few days,
and a lot of ill will has been exchanged.  I was among the
detractors, and I feel I must apologize to Guido for 
contributing to his impending ulcer...

So, like, I'm sorry, man.

I found myself considering yesterday what programming 
language I would switch to if Python failed me, and I came
to the conclusion that, even with PEP0238 suddenly breaking
mucho code (as appeared likely before Guido's most recent
postings), Python would still be head and shoulders (and
beltbuckle and kneecaps) above everything else.

Now, with the changes taking firm hold in 2+ years, and 
evidence that Guido takes our concerns seriously, I'm a 
much happier camper.

Guido, I for one am happy to call you my Fearless Leader.





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 18:03:58 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:03:58 -0400
Subject: MS "bans" GPL
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Ra607.21655$he.1118469@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

<mkx at excite.com> wrote in message
news:7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025 at 4ax.com...
> Do the folks at MS _want_ us to find them unreasonable?
>
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010702/tc/ms_attacks_open_source_1.html
>
> "The license for Microsoft's Mobile Internet Toolkit, which is in its
> second beta release to developers, says that it may not be used with
> any software under the Free Software Foundation's General Public
> License (GPL) and six other forms of "potentially viral software."
> That language refers to open source code's freely available and shared
> code licensing agreements. The wording of the license cites the Linux
> OS and the Perl scripting language as examples."
>
Not at all. They simply don't care.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From lawick at wanadoo.nl  Thu Jul 19 10:47:03 2001
From: lawick at wanadoo.nl (lawick at wanadoo.nl)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 14:47:03 GMT
Subject: python sha module and ldap
Message-ID: <3b56f2e7$0$26381@reader4>

Hi,

I have a problem using the sha module in python and sha encryption with ldap.
The python sha module can generate a digest of a (password) string like this:
>>> import sha
>>> pwd='secret'
>>> so=sha.new(pwd)
>>> print so.hexdigest()
e5e9fa1ba31ecd1ae84f75caaa474f3a663f05f4
>>> 

With openldap, a sha can be generated like this:
joost at saba:~ > ldappasswd -h saba -t "" -vv -n -Hsha -e geheim
:{sha}kGByAB793z4R5tK1eC9Hd/4Dhzk=

The two don't match because Python sha is hex and ldap not. How can I make
them match?

Is there also a ssha module for Python?

Cheers,

Joost
-- 

--
Joost van Lawick
E: joost at lawick.com
W: http://www.lawick.com/


From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 16:56:02 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:56:02 +0100
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
References: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com> <21e393ee.0107210640.54f3e20c@posting.google.com> <54bjlt4sq1sloqvkaadr8a4q7pfvl30ibu@4ax.com> <irnqlt01ne8nn1aklb84n1j33s6botm2lr@4ax.com> <21e393ee.0107251159.5dd16bc2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ibultodlargmo296trtfef3sq55rkekl4@4ax.com>

On 25 Jul 2001 12:59:44 -0700, nmack at pacbell.net (angusm) wrote:
>You might want to wait for a more convincing explanation from someone
>else but I was able to duplicate the problem and the code below worked
>for me...it ain't pretty :-).

Thank you, thank you, thank you! It's perfectly clear now. Your code may not be
pretty, but it gave me all the pointers I needed...

>I encountered two problems based on your code:
>1)It appears the event class sees a different 'finished' variable from
>what you define in your module.

Doh! Yes, Python treats any variable which gets assigned to in a function as
local unless it's explicitly declared using 'global'. If I could actually write
code in Python, I'd be dangerous :-)

>2)adAsyncConnect doesn't seem to work because the infinite loop that
>gets created to wait for the events hogs the entire thread. There is
>no way for the dispatched event to break in asynchronously...

Again, I probably should have known this. In order to get COM events, the
application must pump the Windows message loop. Your solution works fine for me,
but there's also a win32gui.PumpWaitingMessages() call which just services any
waiting messages. You can just put a call to this inside the wait loop (which,
of course, would be doing real work if this was a proper application...)

>hope this helps,
>Angus

It does. Thanks for your help. FWIW, the following is a working version of my
code:

from win32com.client import DispatchWithEvents, constants
import win32gui

finished = 0

class ADOEvents:
    def OnWillConnect(*args):
        pass
    def OnConnectComplete(*args):
        print `args`
        global finished
        finished = 1

def Test():
    Conn = DispatchWithEvents("ADODB.Connection", ADOEvents)
    ConnStr = "Provider=msdaora;Prompt=complete"
    Conn.Open(ConnStr, Options=constants.adAsyncConnect)
    while not finished:
        win32gui.PumpWaitingMessages()
        print '...'
        pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    Test()

Paul


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 14:35:11 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:35:11 -0400
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
In-Reply-To: <3b474e87$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPBKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Neil Macneale, wants to limit ...

   Yes, bytecode intructions.
]
> ...
> So round robin scheduling is automatically used?  The game is being
> written strictly for unix;  is there a way to find out if the unix
> version uses round robin scheduling?

On any platform with thread support, Python code runs under the protection
of a global interpreter lock (GIL), which gives a thread exclusive access to
the Python Virtual Machine for a fixed number of bytecodes.  You can alter
that magic number by calling sys.setcheckinterval().  Say you set it to 100.
Then every 100 bytecodes, the eval loop forces the current thread to release
the GIL, allowing some other thread to acquire it.  Python has no control
over *which* thread gets it next -- since Python threads are real OS
threads, that's up to the OS thread implementation.  So is it round robin?
Beats me, and, more importantly, beats you too <wink>.

The Stackless Python variant

    http://www.stackless.com/

implements a notion of (pseudo)microthreads instead, which may be more to
your liking.  They're not related to OS threads at all, and typically enjoy
much lower memory consumption and much faster context switching than "real
threads".  Also more potential for influencing exactly when they swtich.

Note that "a bytecode" is a very high-level thing in Python, and number of
bytecodes has no clear relationship to elapsed time.  For example, one
bytecode may add 1+1, while another may sort a million-element list.




From boegli at iinet.net.au  Sun Jul 15 17:12:15 2001
From: boegli at iinet.net.au (Richard B)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 14:12:15 -0700
Subject: got winioport.zip from http://www.geocities.com/dinceraydin/ now what?
Message-ID: <3B52072F.BBC97885@iinet.net.au>

How do I use the python scripts that come in this zip file?




From guido at python.org  Sun Jul 29 06:01:17 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:01:17 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:

> I'm reading the section on the introspection API but I don't understand
> something. 
> 
> 1. If I am sitting at an interpreter prompt and I have an object how do
> I figure out the complete list of currently available attributes
> available on that object. 

Same as currently if it's a class: look in inst.__dict__ for instance
vars, then look in inst.__class__ for methods and class vars, then
recursively look through int.__class__.__bases__ for inherited methods
and class vars.  Weed out duplicates.

The new type system defines "static" and "dynamic" types.  For static
types, you don't need to search through the bases because the class
__dict__ is consolidated.  But the recursive algorithm doesn't hurt.

> 2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
> is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?
> 
> If I understand correctly, doing this is not sufficient:
> 
>  >>> T = foo.__class__
>  >>> T
>  <type 'Foo'>
>  >>> dir(T)              
> 
> I don't think that this will get base class attributes or attributes
> hidden in __getattr__. And even if it did, it would be nice to have a
> single API that combined instance attributes and class attributes
> according to the fallback rules. i.e. I'd like something as close to
> this as is realistically possible:
> 
> def attrs(x):
> 	return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]

(Note: this may return an infinite list!)

In general, this is as impossible as it ever was -- you won't be able
to tell *for sure* whether an object has an attribute x, since
__getattr__ may be dynamic.  I added getset attributes so that for
most practical purposes you won't need to override __getattr__ so the
inspection becomes more useful.

> Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
> Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook

BTW, now also linked from the python.org home page side bar.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul 20 09:51:45 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:51:45 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:57:57 CDT."
             <00b801c110d8$93151fa0$0101010a@local> 
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>  
            <00b801c110d8$93151fa0$0101010a@local> 
Message-ID: <200107201351.JAA09967@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > So I'd say, please don't change the language itself, but it would be
> > interesting to see experiments on a friendly python-oriented editing
> > environment (to simplify things like finding modules and documentation,
> > importing, reloading, etc.).
> 
> Guido, isn't this the sort of environment you mentioned in your
> back-to-the-future-type-article in Linux Journal?  A programming
> environment built around Python but optimized for the novice
> programmer?

Yes.

> You seem to want to change the core of the language every other day.

Eh?  Evolution of the language is inevitable.  We *need* to fix old
design mistakes.  When it's possible to do so without breaking old
code, everybody cheers.  Sometimes it's not possible without breaking
old code, and then I try my darndest to find a way that will let old
code work.

> I've been there myself, on other projects... everything works correctly
> and is almost perfect, but being a programmer you want to change
> SOMETHING just to be fiddling with it.  "Almost perfect" is about the
> best anyone in the Real World can hope for.

Sorry, that's not the affliction I am suffering from.  I know very
well that Python will always be an 80% solution, and I'm happy to
leave well enough alone.  There just are areas where I think future
generations would thank me if I fixed it now...

> I've said it before, and I'll say it again... thanks with all my heart
> for the best programming language I've ever worked in.

You're welcome.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From jmarshal at mathworks.com  Mon Jul  9 01:09:11 2001
From: jmarshal at mathworks.com (Joshua Marshall)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 05:09:11 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org> <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com> <cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9khonr.gg0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <9ibe9n$ffu$1@news.mathworks.com>

Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
...

> 'x has y' would also have a nice resemblance to 'x in y', where one
> checks if y is in the object itself, and the other checks if y is in
> the container the object represents.  I don't want the former
> functionality often enough to think a keyword is worth it, though.

In the case of 'x in y', 'x' and 'y' are both variables, but in the
case of 'x has y', 'x' is a variable but 'y' is a name.  I think that
could be confusing.

On the other side of things, it seems this could be introduced into
the language without making 'has' a keyword--no syntactic rules
currently use concatenation.


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sat Jul 28 10:20:59 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:20:59 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:04:58 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>David C. Ullrich wrote:
>
>> >> Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is the set {{},{{}}}
>> >
>> >Tut. You're failing to distinguish interface from implementation.
>> 
>> Tut what? If you read more than one paragraph you see that my
>> point was exactly that when we say that Z is not strictly a
>> subset of R that's an irrelevant implemenation detail.
>
>You said "Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is ..."
>and gave one possible implementation. It's by no means
>the only one, as I'm sure you know; but you didn't say
>so.

It's the only one in standard use that I'm aware of.
I know several different "standard" "implementations"
of integers, rationals and reals as sets, but a different
implementation for natural numbers does not spring to
mind.

Of course infintiely many others are possible. But
what's another "implementation" of the _natural_
_number_ 2 as a set that's actually in general use?

Not that it matters.


>> >I'm pretty sure you already know all this, but it's worth
>> >saying explicitly. :-)
>> 
>> Probably the fact that I _did_ say explicitly that there
>> are several different "standard" ways to implement integers
>> and reals is what makes you suspect I know this, eh? Very
>> astute of you.
>
>I appear to have given offence, and I'm very sorry for
>that. What I actually said is that because you said explicitly
>that there are several ways to implement integers and reals,
>you almost certainly are well aware that there are also
>several ways to implement natural numbers.
>
>I was just concerned that some people might conceivably
>misunderstand you to be saying, as Kronecker didn't :-),
>that God made the von Neumann implementation of the
>natural numbers and all else is the work of man.

Ah. No, I didn't mean to say that, and yes I suppose
that one might have got that idea. But if we're talking
about implementations _as_ _sets_, and implementations
that are actually _used_, then no I'm not aware of
another. What's an example?

(Hint: The two other "implementations" of natural numbers
that spring to mind are not implementations as sets, which
for some reason is what I thought the topic was. Those
would be regarding natural numbers as defined by Peano
arithmetic and regarding 2 as the class of all sets with
two elements (spelled out without using the word "two",
of course).)
 
>Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
>.sig under construc


David C. Ullrich


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Mon Jul 23 14:35:22 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:22 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995894318.12197.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7A3A0675A4michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <44ioltcofs8i897flbo7bfqtec5ki06n0s@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E7C6B1B20Bmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in 
news:44ioltcofs8i897flbo7bfqtec5ki06n0s at 4ax.com:

> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:32 GMT, Michael Abbott
> <michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> 
>>Actually, I'm quite suprised at just how rude Guido is in his replies.
> 
> Here I do disagree, though I was rather annoyed once when I
> *complemented* Python by saying that, although I was initially
> sceptical about list comprehensions, I actually found them very useful
> - and rather than accepting the complement he twisted that single case
> into a character judgement where I was supposed to be *always* be
> excessively judgemental about things and blatantly about to burst a
> blood vessel.
>
> ... 
>
> Anyway, in general Guido handles the benevolent-dictator role
> extremely well - it has to be extremely frustrating in the position he
> is in, and I'm surprised he has been generally as polite as he has.
> 

I think you're probably right, and that what I wrote wasn't very sensible.  
I think I understand his frustration.


> I hope he sees my current posts as they are intended - I see PEP0238
> as being something worthy of extreme scepticism if not outright
> terror. But I only care at all because Python *is* a good and
> worthwhile thing, and as a result I have been a very vocal advocate in
> my company.

I'm a relative newcomer to Python, but on the whole I've been *very* 
encouraged by my experience with it so far.  (We also have a vocal advocate 
in my company, and I am becoming another.)




From dhumphrey at pdqdot.net  Tue Jul 31 18:33:06 2001
From: dhumphrey at pdqdot.net (David Humphrey)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:33:06 -0500
Subject: Yet another flavor of extension debugging problem
Message-ID: <7B30F7FB1736F67B.D89C159D0BA16ADE.2C73E602E671B2FD@lp.airnews.net>

I managed to compile a debug version of ActiveState Python 2.0.203 using
MSVC++ 6.0 and work on my C++ extension under the MSVC debugger.  Now, I'm
trying to do the same thing with Python 2.1.1 that I downloaded from
www.python.org and can't seem to get the extension to load.  I'm painfully
aware of the _d naming convention.

The release version of the extension loads fine as shown below:

$ python
Python 2.1.1 (#20, Jul 20 2001, 01:19:29) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
['', 'c:\\BGIUtils', 'd:\\dlh\\bin', 'd:\\Utils\\Python21\\DLLs',
'd:\\Utils\\Python21\\lib', 'd:\\Utils\\Python21\\lib\\plat-win'
, 'd:\\Utils\\Python21\\lib\\lib-tk', 'd:\\Utils\\Python21']
>>> for p in sys.path:
...     print p
...

c:\BGIUtils
d:\dlh\bin
d:\Utils\Python21\DLLs
d:\Utils\Python21\lib
d:\Utils\Python21\lib\plat-win
d:\Utils\Python21\lib\lib-tk
d:\Utils\Python21
>>> import bgilib
>>>

After building the debug version from source, I moved the libs, exes, and
executables around to make a Python 2.1 debug version tree in
d:\utils\python-2.1.1 just like the Python 2.1 release tree.  Pure python
modules in the c:\BGIUtils directory load fine, but when I try to import
bgilib, I get the following result:

$ python_d
Adding parser accelerators ...
Done.
Python 2.1.1 (#20, Jul 31 2001, 11:59:53) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
[5358 refs]
>>> for p in sys.path:
...     print p
...

c:\BGIUtils
d:\dlh\bin
d:\utils\python-2.1.1\DLLs
d:\utils\python-2.1.1\lib
d:\utils\python-2.1.1\lib\plat-win
d:\utils\python-2.1.1\lib\lib-tk
d:\utils\python-2.1.1
[5360 refs]
>>> import bgilib
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: DLL load failed: Invalid access to memory location.
[5397 refs]
>>> ^Z

[5397 refs]
[1826 refs]

dhumphrey at ROADRUNNER /c/bgiutils

I can't find any reference to this exact string in a google search, so I'm
posting it here hoping that someone out there can spot the problem.

Regards and Thanks In Advance,
David L. Humphrey
Manager, Software Development
Bell Geospace, Inc


PS.  Both the release and debug versions of the extension dll exist as shown
below.  Using dumpbin /imports shows nothing suprising for either file:  one
imports python21.dll while the other imports python21_d.dll.

$ ls -al *.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U    73728 Jul 31 11:25 PyGx.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U   266284 Jul 31 11:25 PyGx_d.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U   258048 Jul 31 14:44 bgilib.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U   794670 Jul 31 14:40 bgilib_d.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U   338944 Jun 22 17:57 cvwmpi.dll
-rwxr-xr-x    1 dhumphre Domain U   143506 Jul 31 09:46 mpatrol.dll

dhumphrey at ROADRUNNER /c/bgiutils






From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 22:05:40 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 02:05:40 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <UPp77.26417$EP6.6395468@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpofqaova7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...

> If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238
would
> make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?

Even people who do not agree, but who are willing to go along anyway,
can contribute to the discussion about old code.  I hope such people
will.

Terry J. Reedy





From fcnpereira at home.com  Wed Jul 11 18:05:05 2001
From: fcnpereira at home.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:05:05 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <110720011805044955%fcnpereira@home.com>

In article <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> a general "good thing to
> know" is that an order-N linear recurrence can be viewed as mapping
> N-vectors to N-vectors via multiplication by a fixed NxN matrix M.
For a related set of "good things to know":

M. D. McIlroy, Functional pearl: Power series, power serious, J. of
Functional Programming 9 (1999) 323-335

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/pearl.ps.gz

and

M. D. McIlroy, The music of streams, Information Processing Letters 77
(2001) 189-195

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/mdmspe.ps.gz

-- F


From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 18:39:55 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:39:55 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library 
 development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
				<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net> <mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44ECBB.B6050C92@home.net>

Paul Prescod wrote:

> I'd suggest you take a look at this:
> 
> http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0206.html

I had forgotten about that, but I just looked again, and I remember
being all excited about it, but it doesn't seem to have happened:
"proposal for Python 2.0" what happend? Anyway, I do like htat PEP, but
I am thinking of something a little different: what I am thinking of is
a collection of hte final tarballs (or installers, or rpms, or
whatever). How we get to that big package I don't know yet, the ideas in
that PEP are good ones, but no exactly what I had in mind. In general,
I'm imagining that someone installing "Comprehensive Python" (please
someone, give me a better name!) will end up with something that looks
just like a current set-up with a lot of modules installed. They just
wouldn't have had to go to ten places to get it!

> We've discussed this often in the past.

I didn't expect it was an original idea.

> The difference between Python
> and Linux is that people are either willing to wait almost indefinately
> to download an operating system, or they buy it in CD. Python cannot get
> that large.

It also won't get that large, it is a smaller entitiy by it's very
nature. If it did get that large, maybe we could start selling CDs. In
fact Ithikn that revinue stream would be very helpful, but I imagine
Python is small enough (people's net connections are getting alot
faster, too) that not many people would bother buying it. Are many
people buying the activestate cd?


> So you have to make choices about what goes in and what
> stays out. These choices are inevitably controversial.  I think a better
> solution is to make it as easy to install things as possible.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm going for.


> Here's what an ActivePython user does to install 3 out of 4 those
> modules:
> 
> pyppm install Numeric
> pyppm install egenix-mx-base
> pyppm install PIL
> 
> wxPython is next on our list of modules to add. I think that this is a
> more scalable solution than a "fat" Python build because we can include
> as many modules as we can build.

Actually, that's pretty much exactly what I had in mind. In fact, when I
heard about ActiveState Python, I thought it had been done, but when I
looked at the web site, I saw no mention whatsoever about what was
included (except the windows stuff). In fact, I just installed
ActiveStae Python on Windows, and then when and got the other packages
by hand. I guess that means two things:

a) Activestate needs to improve the usability of their web site
b) I need to RTFM !!!

I'm going to go now and look again at ActiveState's Web page...I may be
out of a project. Of course I'd rather it wasn't a commercial entitiy
doing it, but if they do it well, that's fine with me.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net  Sun Jul 15 12:50:01 2001
From: skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net (·Q¤@¤U)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 16:50:01 GMT
Subject: [Q]Remove Directory in Win2k
Message-ID: <3hMlEP$l9c@openbazaar.net>

Hi~~guys ^^
My patition is NTFS
when I execute below codes, it return error "Permission Denied".
And, the directiory "test" remainly exist.

   import os
   os.mkdir('test')
   os.remove('test')

How to remove directory in NTFS?
--
?? Origin: ???????uBBS <openbazaar.net> 
?? From: h9.s208.ts30.hinet.net


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 17 10:23:10 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 14:23:10 GMT
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <mailman.995375611.9710.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9l8iie.pm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:13:58 +0400 (MSD), Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> pisze:

> Still lint-like tools could report such problems as warnings,
> because it is too easy to make error here.

Things which are warned about should be easily rewritable in a way
which doesn't provoke warnings, otherwise warnings will be annoying
sometimes.

For example C compilers and tools which warn about "while (a = f())"
typically don't warn about "while ((a = f()))". Badly mixed tabs and
spaces can always be fixed too.

> I even think, that things like:
> 
> for i in list:
>   if cond:
>     do_something
> else:
>   somethingelse
> 
> must be reported.

But how to rewrite it? I'm not sure if I like this:

  for i in list:
    if cond:
      do_something
    else:
      pass
  else:
    somethingelse

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Mon Jul 23 11:08:32 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:32 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995894318.12197.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E7A3A0675A4michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

"Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> wrote in 
news:mailman.995894318.12197.python-list at python.org:

> 
> To the extent anybody cares - and there is no particular
> reason anybody should - the anger in my posts that Guido
> interprets as directed toward him, is real anger.  But not
> meant to be directed at him.
> 
> Except to the extent that I feel he unwittingly collaborates
> in the breakdown of community dynamics.  Aloofness from
> the community should count against, not for, one's cause -
> whatever it happens to be.

Actually, I'm quite suprised at just how rude Guido is in his replies.

Just for the record, I think that PEP0238 is an extremely stupid idea, and 
that the last thing Python needs is a deluge of half baked and incompatible 
changes.


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Mon Jul 30 17:18:57 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:18:57 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification 
In-Reply-To: <01073013291201.00729@frock.ddmweb.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301514330.28123-100000@bms>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Sam Penrose wrote:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Correct on both counts again.
>
> >> One minor suggestion:
> >> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
> >> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
> >> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.
>
> > I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
>
> How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
> terse acronym to learn)? Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
> an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
> classification.
>
> The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus at
> <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html>
> suggests for "class" :
>
> division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
> department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
> species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
> clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
> feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.
>
> I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
> short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
> the language I deal with.

How about "kit": short, easy to pronounce, unused, means...

	A box for working implements. [1913 Webster]


- Bruce




From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul 10 14:55:43 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:55:43 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <994676617.255.31573.l10@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B176F.2461.3996A49@localhost>

"Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote, in part:
> ... if your control isn't marked as safe for scripting, IE creates
> the control before it pops up the box asking you whether you want
> to allow the script to run. In other words, if your control is
> written in Python, the __init__ method is called *before* the user
> is asked whether to permit it. 

Duncan, thanks for your comment. This is indeed what happens.

It occurs to me that one could prevent the appearance of the 
control itself by using a factory to build it. The user would need to 
permit the use of the factory which would in turn create the control. 
Since we're on the topic, and I haven't tried working out the details 
of something like this, would you care to comment?

Bill



From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul  4 11:39:23 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:39:23 -0700
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org> <bde6kt0c8f8fdfcf204qprakatj9v9ooa2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hvdke$ftpq9$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

The r prefix turns the string into a raw string, essentially turning off
escape recognition, except in the last position.

see 2.4.1 String Literals in the reference manual.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:bde6kt0c8f8fdfcf204qprakatj9v9ooa2 at 4ax.com...
>
> >    path = r'e:\test\test.txt'
>
> What am I looking at here, and how do Iearn more about it?
> IOW, what's the 'r' do, and is there more to this?
>
>
>
> C//
>



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 01:36:09 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:36:09 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	        <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	        <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
	        <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <mailman.994883960.13777.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4D3749.6A42878E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure that the purpose of a//b would be all that evident to a new
> Python programmer

So they'd have to look it up. What's so bad about that?

If Guido is not courageous enough to change the
meaning of /, this seems like a good alternative
plan to me.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From bellman at lysator.liu.se  Thu Jul 26 18:37:20 2001
From: bellman at lysator.liu.se (Thomas Bellman)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 22:37:20 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <9jphkk$rhc$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <cpofq75qax.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jq630$2m2$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) writes:

>> [x for x in fib() while x < 50]

> Neat, but maybe not general enough.  How do you request the first N?

How about one of these:

    l = []
    for i,v in zip(range(N), fib()):
	l.append(v)

or

    l = []; g = fib()
    for i in range(N):
	l.append(g.next())

or my personal favourite

    map(lambda x,g=fib(): g.next(), range(N))

Not *every* list needs to be generated using list comprehension,
you know. :-)  (My personal preferens is that every list should
be generated using map(), filter() or reduce(). :-)

> And fuzzy: does this include or exclude the first x >= 50?

Exclude.  Definitely exclude.

> How about a library of functions for iterator algebra?  E.g.

>  def first(n, sq):
>      it = iter(sq)
>      for i in range(n): yield it.next()

>  def lessthan(n, sq):
>      for x in sq:
>          if x >= n: break
>          yield x

Could be usable, but please not in the builtin namespace.  I'm
already starting to feel that the __builtin__ module is a bit
crowded.  Or, well, perhaps not *crowded*, but rather that it is
somewhat a mish-mash of functions that no-one had the energy to
find the proper module for.

-- 
Thomas Bellman,   Lysator Computer Club,   Link?ping University,  Sweden
"Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit"       ! bellman @ lysator.liu.se
          (From The Mythical Man-Month)       ! Make Love -- Nicht Wahr!


From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Fri Jul 27 13:12:19 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:12:19 -0300
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <cpg0bi4g6d.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@python.org on Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 02:09:43PM +0000
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <cpg0bi4g6d.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010727141219.D19610@tux.distro.conectiva>

> The PEP can't address everything.  I have no idea how to write such a
> scanner, and I think it would require type inference of unrivaled
> sophistication, so I'm not keen on promising it in the PEP.  I assume
> there will be some kind of conversion tool, but it's outside the scope
> of the PEP.

I don't think a perfect solution for this will ever exist, besides
interpreter warnings when running the code. But some assumptions may be
used to detect problems in some cases. Something that came into my
mind right now is about lists. I don't know if this issue has been
discussed before:

>>> [1,2][0.0]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: sequence index must be integer

So, if some algorithm uses a value returned from a division as a
list index, it will certainly be an error in the future.

Maybe a nice idea in this case would be to allow lists to accept
float indexes. This could preserve some old code. But I'm not sure
making such thing possible is nice, in the long run.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 11:53:55 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 08:53:55 -0700
Subject: How to break? (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <9jun6j$c5$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9jjk9g$8tk$1 at newsy.ifm.liu.se>,
Paul Svensson <paul at svensson.org> wrote:
>
>The only choices that make sense to me here are, either we break stuff,
>or we do nothing.  Either way, we'll most likely have to revisit the
>issue if/when syntax for rationals is to be added to the language.

Well, no.  I think that there's now a fairly widespread agreement that
what we've got now is broken.  The question is, how do we switch to a
future such that new code isn't broken, while breaking as little old
code as possible?

Whoops!  Actually, that's the wrong question.  The *real* question is,
how do we break old code in a way that makes it least-painful to fix?

Phrased that way, I think it *has* to be true that there is never a
future in which old code can break silently.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 04:18:59 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:18:59 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994135925.11224.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hrv5k016q4@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994135925.11224.python-list at python.org...
> On 2 Jul 2001, David Bolen wrote:
>
> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that
in
> >> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and
then
> >> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is
an
> >> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
> >
> >Just curious, but did your colleagues try using Python's COM interface
> >to ADO to retrieve an actual recordset object that they could
> >manipulate the same in Python as in other ASP languages?
>
> Aha! Now I could understand what is the brake of Python library
> development. Most of Python users are Windows users. And they
> have COM for whatever is in their system.

I strongly doubt that "most Python users are Windows users", but
it's certainly true that most Python users *WHO CONSIDER ASP/IIS
AN ALTERNATIVE* are Windows users (and pretty-clueless ones, if
they don't know Python can work perfectly well WITHIN ASP/IIS!-).


> We mostly have Linux servers, so COM+ADO is no option. The point was not
> to choose between Windows and Linux, ASP was choosen to serve particular
> purpose, for the database already implemented in Microsoft land.

If COM+ADO is not an option then neither is ASP/IIS!


Alex





From ejr at cs.berkeley.edu  Thu Jul 12 13:07:50 2001
From: ejr at cs.berkeley.edu (Edward Jason Riedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:07:50 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org> <3B4D2AF6.7F76CBA1@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <9iklh6$gfv$1@agate.berkeley.edu>

And Greg Ewing writes:
 - 
 - It seems to me that, if you want adjustable precision at
 - all, you want to adjust it in a very fine-grained way
 - based on the kind of data you're using and what you're
 - doing with it.

For _fixed-point_ arithmetic, this is often true.  Your 
monetary example is best served by an extremely flexible 
arithmetic, as the laws governing the calculations are 
complex.  The Euro docs are a good, recent example.

 - So the notion of precision being part of some sort of
 - context that you establish and then go off and do your
 - calculations seems fundamentally wrong-headed.

For many geometric and scientific codes using floating-point,
this is exactly what you want.  You bump the precision up
once, or you multiply it after trying to get a good-enough 
answer.  The precision changes are always establishing a 
working precision related to some desired output precision.
You change the precision rarely.

If you know of floating-point codes that mix desired 
precisions frequently and intentionally, I'd really like to 
hear of them.

 - I don't know what the best solution to this is. I feel
 - it lies somewhere in the direction of using specialised
 - data types which know their own precision and also
 - what precisions are needed for various combinations
 - of them.

I don't have a copy of Martin Fowler's Analysis Patterns
handy, but I believe he addresses some of these issues.  
There are a few articles that might relate:
	http://martinfowler.com/articles.html

Jason
-- 


From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul  9 20:21:11 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:21:11 -0700
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A4A77.C592FAFA@home.net>

Chris McMillan wrote:
> Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
> strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
> script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....

Not that I want to trow a wet blanket on your Python enthusiasm, but you
have gotten all the help you need with Python, no I'll try this:

If you want the read the file into MATLAB, why not use MATLAB? I am a
big Python fan, and do almost everything with it, including much that I
used to use MATLAB for, but if I needed to get data into MATLAB, I'd use
MATLAB. I suspect you are trying to use the load function to load a
table of data, but MATLAB chokes on the header line. The solution is to
use some of MATLAB's other file reading capabilities. Here is an example
function:


********* WARNING MATLAB code on the Python newsgroup *********

% a function that reads a file without the first line

function data = readfile(filename,cols,rows);

if nargin < 3;
  rows = inf;
end

if nargin < 2;
  cols = 1;
end


file = fopen(filename,'r');
% discard the first line
junk = fgetl(file);
data = fscanf(file,'%g',[cols,rows])';

return

*** END MATLAB CODE ****

I made a number of observations when I wrote this:

1) I wanted to use default argument values
2) I forgot all the semicolons
3) I forgot the "end"s
4) I missed Pytons object oriented syntax for file operations
5) I really like MATLAB's fscanf: I wish there was a Python option like
that.
6) I also miss Inf in Python

In Python, this function would look something like:

# a function that reads a file without the first line

def readfile(filename,rows = -1):

    file = open(filename,'r')
    # discard the first line
    junk = file.readline()
    data = []
    line = file.readline().strip()
    while line:
        if (rows < 0) or (len(data) < rows):
            data.append(map(float, line.strip().split()))
        line = file.readline().strip()
    return data

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From mikael at isy.liu.se  Thu Jul 12 02:38:41 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:38:41 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010712083841.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 11-Jul-2001 Nick Perkins wrote:
 >  but why not leave int/int->int alone,
 >  and use // for int//int->float.
 >  
 >  No code breaks, and it is almost as easy for the newbies.
 >  
 >  1/2 -> 0
 >  1//2 -> 0.5
 >  
 >  That way we still have / = div, % = mod,
 >  and we add // = float-divide.

Being in EE, I would immediately interprete a//b as two resistors, a and
b, in parallel. Thus, I would expect 1//2 to return 0.666666...

just-half-joking-ly y'rs
/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    12-Jul-2001
Time:    08:33:18

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 17 01:15:52 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:15:52 -0500
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org> <3B5390BC.C5FFCD2A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <00ba01c10e7f$921b9080$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com>


> Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> >
> > Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.  He
wants
> > to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a "custom
ISA
> > card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port
interface,
> > nor serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.
>
> I admit I didn't actually look at the winioport stuff proposed in the
> "parallel port?!?" thread, but given that it was called winioport
> and not winparallelport, I assumed it was a way of providing generic
> access to IO ports under Windows.  If I was wrong, then you are right
> to correct me!  (Do you know winioport would not work or were you just
> tricked by the name of the thread?)

Whups.  Evidently the low-level package in use by winioport DOES support
generic
access.  My mistake... I was going by the commentary on the main winioport
page,
where he says "I am now able do printer port IO."  I assumed that was the
entire
scope of the package, but evidently not.

> Of course, it's probably moot given Jon Nicoll's response which suggests
> a perfectly viable alternative.

Indeed... to wit:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Nicoll" <jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk>

> This is exactly what my code can be used for - you can set it up to
> get access to arbitary IO ports (via the ioperm mechanism in Linux),
> and then read or write etc. as you like. Admittedly, it doesn't
> currently cater for interrupts.

Which could be vitally significant or totally unimportant.

> I originally started writing this to drive an ISA 8255/8253 card, and
> although this project-ette is currently in limbo, the basics are all
> there and working, if Bryan wants to do eg. polled access to an A/D
> card etc.
>
> You don't need a VxD (for W95 at least), although it's probably the
> 'better' way of doing things. My code is in C and turns into a little
> '.PYD' (= .DLL) file. In NT, you need a kernel mode driver, which I
> haven't yet got around to looking at.

Here the winioport module (and the underlying DriverLYNX package) might
be better for Bryan.

> I've just resurrected my code and am looking at using distutils to get
> it in a form more easily distributed. Email me if would be of use to
> you in the meantime.

Bryan hasn't responded since he initially requested this information...
are you out there, Bryan?





From thedustbustr at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 17:51:10 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 21:51:10 GMT
Subject: how to import curses
Message-ID: <20010725175110.25823.00001273@ng-cf1.aol.com>

import curses #returns "no module named curses"

I have no trouble importing other modules.  I have the docs for curses on my
system, I just can't import it.  So, where can I download the actual module?

-Dustin


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 16:13:50 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:13:50 +0100
Subject: Redirecting input?
References: <bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4@posting.google.com> <r9m07.27285$he.1410109@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k49ru.2g2.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:14:44 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>From the Python 2.0 Library Reference Manual:
>
>"""6.11 getpass -- Portable password input
>
>The getpass module provides two functions:
>
>
>getpass ([prompt])
>Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is prompted using
>the string prompt, which defaults to 'Password: '. Availability: Macintosh,
>Unix, Windows.
>
>getuser ()
>Return the ``login name'' of the user. Availability: Unix, Windows.
>This function checks the environment variables $LOGNAME, $USER, $LNAME and
>$USERNAME, in order, and returns the value of the first one which is set to
>a non-empty string. If none are set, the login name from the password
>database is returned on systems which support the pwd module, otherwise, an
>exception is raised."""

Now that Mac OS X is based on Unix, will this work for Macs too?

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul  6 12:43:01 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 09:43:01 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  
 development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>		<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net> <mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org> <Lsd17.8383$e5.1082989@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3B45EA94.5B3D3C38@ActiveState.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> > Here's what an ActivePython user does to install 3 out of 4 those
> > modules:
> >
> > pyppm install Numeric
> > pyppm install egenix-mx-base
> > pyppm install PIL
> 
> and then he does "import Image", gets an import error
> (JPEG62.DLL missing), and sends me a nastygram ;-)

I think that's fixed but if you supply standard distutils scripts and a
test suite I'll guarantee it won't happen again. :)

> where's the PPM protocol docs?

I would say the best documentation is the code:

http://www.xav.com/perl/site/lib/PPM/SOAPServer.html

> how do I add new nodes to the PPM distribution network?

You can set up a PPM server by running PPM::SOAPServer or porting it to
Python. There are PPM srevers around the world. PPM isn't a network like
CPAN though. In the Perl world it builds on the CPAN network (and
hopefully something like it in Python one day too.)
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 18:59:04 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:59:04 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DFDB8.2C37A54C@alcyone.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> writes:
> 
> > Indeed.  If this is implemented, it will be a black eye for Python. 
> > Any
> > anti-Python advocate will be able to point at this and say, "Look,
> > that's why you shouldn't switch to Python.  The semantics of the
> > builtin
> > operators changes from release to release."  Problem is, they will
> > be
> > absolutely right.
> 
> This seems to be the crux of the anti-PEP-238 sentiments, and I want
> to take it very, very seriously -- without losing the PEP.
> 
> If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238 would
> make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?

I wouldn't say that _that_ issue is the primary one, nor that I would
agree that PEP 238 semantics are preferable.  Since I have your ear for
the moment, let me try and summarize my feelings on the situation.

I would categorize the objections to PEP 238 into three categories:

1.  Making such changes is backward incompatible, something that is
universally agreed to be very dangerous.    If Python had always done
division as in PEP 238, then this would be a non-issue.  But since it
wasn't, changing it will break code.  Even if this change is forced very
gradually, or a very long period of time, there will _always_ be legacy
code around (either passed around from person to person or at a client
site that is inaccessible).  In the latter case, the customer is forced
to 1. hire a consultant to fix it, 2. get patches from the original
author (if he's still around), or 3. trash the system and start over
again.  Similar concerns are how to write portable Python code (portable
across multiple versions that is) if fundamental operators are changing.

2.  Many responders don't agree that the division semantics described in
PEP 238 are favorable in the first place, for a wide variety of reasons.
The responses in this newsgroup don't constitute a poll, of course, but
it appears there is more than just a handful of people who disagree with
the division semantics in PEP 238.  It's unfortunate that such a change
is being considered when it doesn't even seem to be an overwhelming
opinion.  Some also question whether the intention of the change (to
make Python easier for newbies) will even achieved by the change.

3.  Doing PEP 238 means changing the semantics of a fundamental
operator.  This sets a very bad precedent, and makes Python advocacy
harder if such things continue to happen.  If PEP 238 and similar PEPs
get approved and implemented, then someone against using Python can
simply point out that Python is a moving target and coding against it is
a risk, and they'd be right.

Now people have been making these different points with different
strengths.  Some (including admittedly myself) have been a little too
forceful in pointing them out.  Point 3 is a PR issue and point 2 is a
matter of (differing) opinion.

I think what the impartial and objective complaints about PEP 238 can
boil down to here is concerning point 1.  PEP 238 constitutes a
significant (i.e., code-breaking) change in the way a fundamental
operator works.  The question of whether Python should have behaved like
PEP 238 when it was first implemented is a separate question (it is of
course true that if it did, nobody would complaining about it now
because it would simply be the way things were), but the hard fact is
that changing it now is going to break a monumental amount of code, and
some of that code is going to be in place that are not easy to fix. 
Nobody's talking about the technical aspects of fixing it, of course;
we're talking about the logistical aspects of fixing code that is no
longer necessarily easily accessible.

Now that I've hopefully summarized the anti-238 sentiments, let me
continue with your proposal.

> I propose the following measures.  Let's discuss whether these are
> conservative enough, from the perspective of someone who has a large
> body of old working Python code.  (From the perspective of someone who
> wants int division for other reasons, these can never be conservative
> enough. :-)
	...
> Anything else?

Unfortunately, I'm afraid this still doesn't address legacy code that is
longer easily "just fixed."  I can't really think of any reasonable way
to do that, except have vendors tie their scripts to a certain version
and (potentially) force customers to install multiple versions of Python
to get scripts with different version requirements running.

I would argue that Python popularity has reached a threshhold where
fundamental changes to the language are getting to be less and less
feasible, even if very well intentioned.  We'd be seeing the same
objection to a PEP even if the intent and goal were universally hailed
to be laudable.

What concerns me most about PEP 238 -- or rather, your interest in
implementing it -- is that it sets a very disturbing precedent.  One
might ask (without cynicism or rudeness):  Are there other
code-breaking, fundamental changes lurking in the dark that we should
know about?  Is this going to be among the first in a long sequence of
changes that will culminate in Python X being a substantially different
language than Python 1.5.2 or Python 2.1, or is this just an isolated
incident?

The issue is if that a code-breaking PEP is being considered, engineers
need to know about it _now_ so that they can implement their software to
use constructs that will not be affected by Python upgrades in the
distant future when their code is lurking on some client machine, nearly
forgotten but still being regularly used.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ I want a martini that could be declared a disaster area.
\__/ Capt. Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce
    Physics reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/physics/
 A physics reference.


From dsavitsk at e-coli.net  Sun Jul 22 14:39:09 2001
From: dsavitsk at e-coli.net (douglas savitsky)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:39:09 GMT
Subject: 2.0 or 2.1 on win32
Message-ID: <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

i am installing a new server and i need to know if there is reason to
install either 2.0 or 2.1 or any other version.  The server is win2k (2
1GHZ, 512, raid, etc.).  the clients are also win2k.

the applications that run on the clients connect the the server via DCOM.
the python running on the server connects to other objects sometimes with
COM and sometimes not.  the clients use 2.0 as there seems to be some
weirdness in 2.1/tkinter on windows, but there won't be any tkinter on the
server.  so, should i stick with 2.0 on the server as well? are there
stability issues or compatability issues to be aware of with other versions?

thanks,

doug




From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul 16 10:12:07 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:12:07 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com>
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com> <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <20010716161207.G5396@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 02:12:52PM +0200, Alex Martelli wrote:

> > I have to admit, that would be somewhat consistant with the way the rest
> > of the language works, but it sure would make it more complicated to do
> > something like:

> >    if re.match (pattern1, string):
> >       do stuff
> >    elif re.match (pattern2, string):
> >       do other stuff
> >    elif re.match (pattern3, string):
> >       etc, etc, etc.

> I find I can rarely throw away the match-objects in this cavalier
> way, because they carry much, often-needed information -- so, I
> don't get to use this idiom anyway.  Rather, I have to code:

>     mo = re1.match(thestring)
>     if mo:
>         dostuff(mo)
>     else:
>         mo = re2.match(thestring)
>         if mo:
>             dootherstuff(mo)
>         else:
>             mo = re3.match(thestring)
>             if mo:
>                 etcetcetc(mo)
>             else:
>                 nomatchatall()
> 
> which is hardly elegant and clean.

I usually start out this way, and then end up rewriting it a bit so it fits
into something like

    for reX in (re1, re2, re3, re4, re5):
        m = reX.match(thestring)
        if m:
            do_stuff_depending_on_"m.re"_(m)

or 

    def do_re1(): ...
    def do_re2(): ...
        etc...
    actions = ((re1, do_re1), (re2, do_re2))
    for reX, func in actions:
        if reX.match(thestring):
            func(thestring)

or just build a dispatch table instead. It ends up a lot more readable and
usually a lot more *correct* than the if/elif/else version.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From lars at ibp.de  Wed Jul 18 14:19:23 2001
From: lars at ibp.de (Lars Immisch)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:19:23 +0200
Subject: distutils and documentation
Message-ID: <3B55D32B.52B6B0F2@ibp.de>

Dear all,

I have written a Python C-extension that some people have expressed
interest in.

I have a distutils setup for my extension, which works nicely, but I'd
like to include some documentation with the binary distribution.

Is there a recommended way to do this?

Thanks,

Lars


From mike_haspert at credence.com  Wed Jul 18 14:16:08 2001
From: mike_haspert at credence.com (Mike Haspert)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 11:16:08 -0700
Subject: "installing" sources on windows
Message-ID: <fab90324.0107181016.4df9ea7c@posting.google.com>

Hi all:

What is the consensus on the safest, most efficient way to "install"
on Windows when you build the interpreter from source??
Is there a script somewhere that helps with the registry?
(I found regsetup.py, which I thought was for "installing" the windows
extensions.)

I've tried
1.    Building the sources and manually making registry entries. OW.
2.    Running the install program for the non-source download, which
sets up the registry. I then unzip the sources to a different
directory, batch build, and, as a post-build step, copy the DLLs,
PYDs, and EXEs to the expected directories in the non-source
download,overwriting the old ones. Seems to work, and allow tracing
into the interpreter, but is bulky, and I fear it will be fragile.
3.    Running the install program for the non-source download, which
sets up the registry. I then swap in the source code tree and edit
registry entries.  This looked like it would work until PythonWin
complained "correct the install", and I couldn't figure out what it
wanted.


From nospam at newsranger.com  Fri Jul 13 23:55:01 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 03:55:01 GMT
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com>

If you absolutely need a 'with' statement...

import re
def with(object, statements):
""" 'with' for the very lazy programmer :) :) :)
Someone might prefer Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, ... instead."""
exec(re.sub('\B\.', '%s.' % object, statements))

#--- example usage:
class a_class: pass
an_instance_of_a_class_with_a_very_long_name = a_class()
with('an_instance_of_a_class_with_a_very_long_name', '''
var1 = 111
var2 = 222
var3 = 333
var4 = 444
var5 = 555
''')
with('an_instance_of_a_class_with_a_very_long_name', '''
print .var1, .var2, .var3, .var4, .var5
''')

Levi

In article <3b4f3602$0$15367 at wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>, Rufus V. Smith says...
>
>I went to the FAQ to check the entry about a "with" statement
>that is available in other languages.  I can only think of two
>reasons to use it.
>
>    1) You're a lazy typist. (Or haven't learned to cut and paste)
>
>    2) You are generally concerned that multiple references to the
>     same object with complex, multilevel access might be confusing
>    to the reader or not optimized by the compiler.
>
>I used to like the "with" statement in Pascal or VB.  Very useful
>for using or setting multiple fields.  However, as programs got large it
>could
>get difficult knowing if the field was a local, global, or part of a with
>block that started several pages back (in Pascal at least.  VB used a
>preceding '.', which is a good idea).
>
>A better solution is to assign a temporary reference.  This is possible
>in C++:
>
>DeeplyHiddenStruct & rdhs =
>&SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct;
>
>rdhs.Field1 = NewValue;
>DoSomethingWith(rdhs.Field2);
>
>etc.  which IMO is easier and cleaner than
>
>SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field1 = NewValue;
>DoSomethingWith(SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field2);
>
>I don't know if the same thing can be done in VB.
>
>Isn't it possible to do this in Python by simple assigning to a new object
>reference?
>
>rdhs = SomeObject.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct
>
>The other advantage in the alternate reference is seen when copying
>fields from one object to another:
>
>rdest = <some object >
>rsrc = <some compatible object>
>
>rdest.field1 = rsrc.field1
>rdest.field2 = rsrc.field2
>etc.
>
>I am a newbie just cutting my fangs in Python, but if I'm right about this,
>perhaps this preferred workaround should be added the FAQ.  If I'm
>not...           never mind...
>
>
>
>
>
>




From graham at coms.com  Mon Jul  2 05:55:08 2001
From: graham at coms.com (Graham Ashton)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 10:55:08 +0100
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>

In article <993939668.727430 at athnrd02.forthnet.gr>, "whats_really_hot"
<whats_really_hot at hotmail.com> wrote:

> so, are there..........give me a feedback and some help(how about some
> URL's with books for downloading) for learning Python......

http://diveintopython.org/


From rb at tiscali.be  Mon Jul 16 05:39:13 2001
From: rb at tiscali.be (Raphael Bauduin)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:39:13 +0200
Subject: pipe in read and write mode
Message-ID: <newscache$d58kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>

Hi!

I want to pipe the standard input of my script to a command. I use popen, 
and it's fine. However, I want to take the standard output of the command 
and put it in a variable. I can't open the pipe in read and write mode. I 
made it work by redirecting the output of the pipe to a file, and reading 
this file. I would prefer not to write it to a temporary file, as the text 
piped is somewhat sensitive (I use the script to encrypt it, so it would be 
better not to write it to a file ;-)


thanks.

Raph
-- 
          Open Source and Free Software Developers Meeting
See you at the 2002 edition. Check the 2001 sessions on 
www.opensource-tv.com
     Visit http://www.osdem.org and subscribe to the mailing list!


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 07:17:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:17:10 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EF5B77F1919duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <cp7kwpz6uh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cp66cd12yp.fsf at cj20424-
> a.reston1.va.home.com:
> 
> > Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
> 
> I have a question, or perhaps an observation about the new rules for 
> resolving diamond inheritance.
> 
> Given a class hierarchy such as:
> class A: pass
> class B(A):
>    def save(self): pass
> class C(A):
>    def save(self): pass
> class D(B, C):
>    def foo(self):
>        self.save() # Calls B.save
> 
> Now, if I add the following code:
> class E(B): pass
> class F(D, E): pass
> 
> f = F()
> f.foo()
> 
> My understanding of the new rules is that calling f.foo() will result in a 
> call to C.save instead of B.save (or in other words, any class that depends 
> on the search order for base classes may find this order mysteriously 
> changing if it itself is subclassed).
> 
> Is my understanding correct? Does it matter? Something similar already 
> happens in existing Python programs (define class F(C, D) and you get the 
> same effect), but previously you were less likely to encounter diamond 
> inheritance.

Correct.  There's a missing section in PEP and tutorial on
"cooperation", a generalization of a "super" call that allows you to
spell "call the next method in the chain" without naming its class
explicitly.  No time to explain that now.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 04:47:40 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:47:40 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: File processing
In-Reply-To: <yv2pub9gs0x.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107101244240.6857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 10 Jul 2001, Harald Kirsch wrote:

>"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> writes:
>
>> Hello all!
>>
>> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
>> and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
>> the right direction?  Thanks!
>
>
>Umpf. I really like python, but sometimes other solutions are less
>cumbersome. With bash it's a one-liner like:
>
>  for x in *; do y=`basename $x`.new; tail +1 $x >$y; mv $y $x; done

Or even "simpler" using ed:

   for x in *; echo -e "1,1d\nw" | ed $x; done

>Sorry, couldn't read from your message if you are on Microsoft where
>a bash script usually does not help a lot.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "<CTRL>-<ALT>-<DEL> is the key to success" _/




From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 16:15:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:15:10 GMT
Subject: Opcode compatible division
References: <mailman.996084400.32614.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpae1s935l.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig) writes:

> I was wondering if it would be possible to add two new opcodes to the
> VM language which I will refer to as ExactDivide and IntegerDivide and
> keep the current opcode with its current behavior?
> 
> Even if there was no way in the actual language to generate the
> CurrentDivide opcode, its existance would allow modules compiled and
> distributed under the current system to continue to work with future
> revisions.
> 
> I haven't thought this through that much, so it may be a totally
> stupid idea, but I thought it might fix some of the issues with
> backwards compatibility.

Check out my patch on SourceForge: it does exactly that.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=443474&group_id=5470&atid=305470

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 08:17:21 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:17:21 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: import namespace issues
In-Reply-To: <yv2d779ggaw.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101615510.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On 10 Jul 2001, Harald Kirsch wrote:

> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > "Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in message
> > news:yv2lmlxgnji.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de...
> > > QUESTION 2:
> > > Is there a detailed description somewhere in the docs about the
> > > namespaces (or dictionaries) used/created/shuffled during an import?
> > 
> > I think the documentation for __import__ is pretty clear about
> > it, "the standard implementation does not use its locals argument
> > at all, and uses its globals only to determine the package context
> > of the import statement".
> 
> I sometimes find that the python docs seem to expect some prior
> knowledge about `obvious behaviour' from the reader and consequently

Probably because one learns about import statement first, and
then (if at all) learns about __import__() function.

> are a bit terse. Therefore I believed the above statement only after
> having read the code :-)
> 
>   Harald.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul  3 08:51:59 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 14:51:59 +0200
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>
Message-ID: <m37kxqrx8w.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

"MDK" <no at spam.com> writes:

> The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the positive
> things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?

It is smaller. Even if C has its idiosyncrasies (and it has lots of
them), one can master them in a reasonable time.

> Why the leaning towards C over C++?  I thought C++ was supposed to
> be the 'New and Improved C.'

It didn't live up to its expectations.


- Markus


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Mon Jul 23 09:19:53 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:19:53 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <000d01c1137a$292ae760$a9e1fea9@carol>

>>Change assignment to work like a
>>copy, because there are many people >>confused with the reference
semantic?

>EXACTLY.

To the extent anybody is interested in the first hand
experience of a novice programmer - rather than the
second hand report (made privately to the appropriate
authorities) of non-programmers - you happen to be
right near the mark of where some real issues lie.

To the extent anybody cares - and there is no particular
reason anybody should - the anger in my posts that Guido
interprets as directed toward him, is real anger.  But not
meant to be directed at him.

Except to the extent that I feel he unwittingly collaborates
in the breakdown of community dynamics.  Aloofness from
the community should count against, not for, one's cause -
whatever it happens to be.

PEP0238 is conclusionary as to the experience of novices.
Certainly its conclusions were not out of the experience of
its advocates. How were conclusions drawn before
the question was asked?

Why aren't the folks who drew and reported those conclusions
here to defend them, to the extent they are called into
question.  Under the circumstances of considerable
controversy, at least.

Let the evidence stand up to at least a little scrutiny before
decisions are made based on it.

Why isn't some anger to be expected - or why doesn't the
leadership at least recognized how the dynamics here
are primed beautifully for an angry debate?

ART




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 09:38:56 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:38:56 -0400
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com> <3B66B1AA.EF2FFE3A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Yvy97.1223$0%2.193545@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote ...
> Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> >
> >               *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
> >                          Tim Daneliuk
> >               Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.
> [...]
> >   by coding around them.  This leads to REALLY ugly, hard-to-maintain
> >   systems.  CHANGING UNDERWEAR MATTERS.
>
> I think you meant "UNDERWARE" ... :)

No, he meant underwear. His underwear had clargs on it. That does indeed
make them really ugly and hard to maintain.

i-promise-i'll-stop-this-now-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul 16 23:28:32 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:28:32 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [Mojonation-devel] Re: memory leak with dynamically defined
 functions?
In-Reply-To: <u4rscwg44.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107170724290.2333-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

I've run the following:

import gc

def silliest_func():
    x = [0] * (2**10)
    def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
        pass
    return inner_silliest_func

while 1:
    blarg = {}
    for i in range(2**13):
        blarg[i] = silliest_func()
    print gc.collect()

---------------------------------------
(Python 2.1, glibc 2.1.3, Linux 2.2.)

- and then watched 'top'. Memory jumps from 1.5Mb
(normal for empty Python) up to 35Mb.
and zeros are printed: refcount probably works fine.

>"Gregory P . Smith" <greg at mad-scientist.com> writes:
>
>> It doesn't appear to leak memory for me either.  The difference as
>> zooko noticed does show up though:
>>
>> His first example that didn't use a function holding a reference via
>> default parameters -immediately- released the consumed memory when the
>> reference to blarg was deleted.
>>
>> The version above that uses the function reference doesn't seem to
>> ever release that memory even when the reference to blarg has been
>> deleted.  (yet it doesn't go above 34M when I put it in a while 1 loop
>> as you have)
>
>That could just be a behavior of the underlying memory allocation from
>the OS.  Depending on OS (and if variable, allocation implementation),
>an application might not actually yield its working set memory back to
>the system, but just reuse it within its own memory space as necessary.
>
>>From the behavior described, I'd guess that the allocation system in
>use on the test system was willing to give back memory if it was
>possible to do so contiguously at the top of the currently allocated
>space for the application in simple cases, but not in other cases
>(where the space becomes more fragmented).
>
>This isn't really a Python issue (I expect Python has properly freed
>all relevant memory), but more a platform memory allocation issue.
>
>--
>-- David
>

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Mon Jul  9 23:53:35 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:53:35 +0800
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <3B4A6662.B862792@yahoo.com>; from slinkp23@yahoo.com on Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:26:44AM +0000
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net> <3B4A6662.B862792@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20010710115335.A23435@Vetinari.home>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:26:44AM +0000, Paul Winkler wrote:
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?
> 
> That's pretty fast, once I got it to work... but still not as fast as
> my best one. Yours iis definitely interesting, largely because I
> don't understand what the hell it does. If I rename one of the fibs
> and change the appropriate call to use the new name, it still computes
> fibonacci numbers but performance goes way down as N rises. So you're
> somehow relying on the duplicated names for speed. That's a pretty
> weird optimization technique.

Ooh, ooh ... I know this one. :-)

It's a scoping trick (and it really is a "trick" here, because the same
name is being used and this leads to a bit of confusion).

/F's solution makes sure that the code objcet of the first 'fib' is in
the local namespace of the second 'fib' function. This speeds up lookups
to it significantly (local variables are implemented as a dictionary,
globals are not).

Does that make it understandable (I could rabbit on a lot further, but
why spoil all the fun)?

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
Honk if you love peace and quiet.



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 30 02:40:00 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:40:00 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64d4ce.777475039@wa.news.verio.net> <slrn.pl.9m9ug6.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <eppstein-A4338F.23400029072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <slrn.pl.9m9ug6.gim.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>,
 Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

> I don't see the point in the compiler inferring
> whether it managed to get a particular result exact or not.

Well, unless it was part of a more general interval arithmetic package -- 
that could be useful.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Tue Jul 10 14:33:19 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:33:19 -0700
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4b4a70$0$319$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

In article <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list at python.org>, "Chris Watson"
<chris at voodooland.net> wrote:

> 
> Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
>      A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically,
>      a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the
>      possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to
>      all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and
>      advantage of all.
> 
> communism
>        n 1: a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership 
>        2: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless
>           society
> 

You can't compare communism and capitalism.  One is a political structure
while the other economic structure.  It makes more sense to say that you
perfer Capitalism over Socialism, or Democracy over Communism.  I am for
democracy, and socialism, so I'm going with GPL :-)

Thanks for the lively discussion... Neil Macneale

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 11:02:07 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:02:07 +0200
Subject: How to use os.access()??
In-Reply-To: <3B4FD004.D0CCFBC2@engcorp.com>
References: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com> <3B4FD004.D0CCFBC2@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <20010715170207.C5396@xs4all.nl>

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:52:20AM -0400, Peter Hansen wrote:

> >>> from os import *

"*bweep* *bweep* danger, Will Robinson!" And I didn't even like that movie :)

> >>> F_OK
> 0

> Unless you want to "from os import *", which is generally bad form,

In this case, it's not just bad form, it's disastrous! Do not import * from
os, unless you *really* *really* *really* know what you are doing. If you
don't understand why 'from os import *' is a bad idea, try this:

>>> from os import *

>>> f = open("spam")
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: function requires at least 2 arguments; 1 given

>>> f = open("spam", "w")
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: illegal argument type for built-in operation

If-you-do-import-*-from-os-or-any-other-module-and-it-ends-up-biting-you-in-the-rear-hind-end-posterior-keister-tushy-derriere-you'll-go-"d'oh-I-should-have-listened-to-Thomas"-and-I'll-go-"Yes-you-should-have-because-I-told-you-so-darnit!"-and-you'll-never-live-off-the-shame-ly y'rs,

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  1 16:29:19 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:29:19 -0400
Subject: problems with class initiation
References: <mailman.994017363.31520.python-list@python.org> <9ho0dl$ri0$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <JIL%6.24504$zT1.1243653@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> wrote ...
> "I?igo Serna" <inigoserna at terra.es> wrote ...
> [snip]
> > I suppose the error comes due to Main class hasn't finished its
> > initiation when 'app.prefs.a' is executed so app is None in that moment.
>
> The assignment isn't finished, so app is indeed None. Instead of
> relying on global variables, you should supply app as a parameter
> to the constructor of Second, IMO... Thus:
>
> class Second:
>     def __init__(self, app):
>         return self.init_fn(app)
>     def init_fn(self, app):
>         return app.prefs.a
>
Note also that there is no logical reason why the "__init__()" method should
be returning something. AS far as I know, nothing takes any notice of what
__init__() returns, and it's usual to omit a return statement (impying a
return value of None).

So there doesn't really seem to be any need here to split the initialization
of the Second objects into two parts.

As far as I can tell the Second class could equally well be defined as

class Second:
    pass

without the effect of the code being changed in any way. If __init__()
doesn't change self, and it doesn't call anything with side effects, I don't
think it does *anything*.


> class Main:
>     def __init__(self):
>         self.prefs = Preferences()
>         self.fns = []
>         self.fns.append(Second(self))
>
> ... or something like that. (The design seemed slightly confusing to me,
> but I think this should work, at least :)
>
It may well work, but the Secod object appended to Main's self.fns will have
no attributes other than those common to every class instance, so there
doesn't seem to be much point in its having an __init__() method in the
first place.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 14:59:03 2001
From: ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 19:59:03 +0100
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995588673.14353.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j9v1n$tfu$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>

> ms-should-bundle-python-as-a-public-service-ly y'rs  - tim

Well, at least they're to stop bundling a JVM.  Whether as a public
service or not that made me chuckle.

disliked-java-since-i-learned-enough-about-it-to-form-an-opinion-ly
y'rs,


Ralph.



From jerk at 163.net  Sun Jul  8 21:43:09 2001
From: jerk at 163.net (jerk@163)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:43:09 +0800
Subject: python startup memory size and memory leak
Message-ID: <117483633808.20010709094309@163.net>

Hello python-list,

        my app is a server that receive client's request in xml and query the mysql
database to response to client,I use python 2.0 on linux(2.2.13),with expat 1.95
statically link into python and MySQLdb 0.3.5,as I am not so familary with xml
so I didn't call unlink() on those created xml document before they are
deleted,this is definitely a leak,right?
        but this leak may show different behavior with different startup
environment.if all py is compiled into pyc and then start my app,top shows
that it takes about 2.8M memory at first,as client requests comes,memory goes up
very fast.then if I touch one of those py files and start my app again,top shows
that it takes about 5M memory at first,as client requests comes,memory goes up
very slow(althought it still leaking).
        I don't know why python startup size is different when I just touching
one of those py files but seems it related to python compilation.


Best regards,
 jerk                          mailto:jerk at 163.net




From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Sat Jul 28 18:24:22 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:24:22 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9m6esl.d7d.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:32 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
>2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
>is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?

Not without the object's cooperation -- it's not even theoretically
possible to figure out what attributes __getattr__ might support.  Such an
object, unmodified, would not support introspection.

Can anyone who's used __getattr__ speak up and say whether any
introspection support would be possible or useful?

>def attrs(x):
>	return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]

Yes, that would work, for certain values of "work".  all_possible_strings
is a pretty simple generator.  So is attrs(), actually.

def attrs(x):
  for y in all_possible_strings():
    if hasattr(x,y): yield y

Amusing.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Fri Jul 27 13:55:53 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:55:53 +0100
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com> <uwv4vut4n.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <9js9u1$3et$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

Thanks m8, very helpful, i didn't realise it was so platform specific! well
you live an' learn  :)

ta,

G. willoughby

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:uwv4vut4n.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> "G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> writes:
>
> > how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
> > display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't
find
> > it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh
well
> > any ideas out there?
>
> Assuming you mean under Windows...
>
> Since the concept of "drives" is an operating-system specific issue,
> it's not something in the standard Python libraries, but something
> that you generally need to handle in an OS-specific manner.  Sometimes
> you'll find such stuff in the os module, but in this case you're
> better off with the win32all package which provides interfaces to
> windows-specific functions.
>
> win32all is a package that can be installed on top of a stock Python
> installation, or in some distributions, like ActiveState, may be
> included already.
>
> The simplest method is via the win32api module:
>
>     >>> import win32api
>     >>> import string
>     >>> string.split(win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings(),'\0')[:-1]
>     ['A:\\', 'C:\\', 'D:\\', 'E:\\']
>
> The actual code is mildly complex, as I'm doing three things at once.
> GetLogicalDriveStrings (which is a native Windows function) returns a
> single string with the drives separated by NUL characters (\x00).  It
> also terminates the list with an extra NUL.
>
> So, I take that string, and then split it on the NULs.  This yields a
> list of which the final entry will always be the empty string ('') due
> to the extra NUL terminator, so I take a slice of that list to exclude
> the final element.
>
> There is also a GetLogicalDrives() that returns a bitmask, which may or
> may not be more suitable for your purposes.
>
> Another poster suggested iterating through possible drives using
> os.path.exist() which will also work, but will end up activating all
> the devices it tries (e.g., your floppy disk may try to be accessed,
> and/or the CDROM may spin up briefly), and since the notion of
> existence of a drive is platform specific, it's probably worth too
> much trying to keep the check platform independent.
>
> --
> -- David
> --
> /-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
>  \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
>   |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
>  /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
> \-----------------------------------------------------------------------/




From kosh at aesaeion.com  Wed Jul 25 21:43:19 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 02:11:19 +0028
Subject: And now, something completely different...
References: <mailman.996127127.23779.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <nbjoj9.20f.ln@192.168.0.1>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:

> The PEP0238 flamewar has been rather bad the last few days,
> and a lot of ill will has been exchanged.  I was among the
> detractors, and I feel I must apologize to Guido for
> contributing to his impending ulcer...
> 
> So, like, I'm sorry, man.
> 
> I found myself considering yesterday what programming
> language I would switch to if Python failed me, and I came
> to the conclusion that, even with PEP0238 suddenly breaking
> mucho code (as appeared likely before Guido's most recent
> postings), Python would still be head and shoulders (and
> beltbuckle and kneecaps) above everything else.
> 
> Now, with the changes taking firm hold in 2+ years, and
> evidence that Guido takes our concerns seriously, I'm a
> much happier camper.
> 
> Guido, I for one am happy to call you my Fearless Leader.

He has to be fearless to put up with us. I think you are doing an excellent 
job also Guido. Sorry to add to the overall flamefestival here. Keep up the 
good work and get an asbestos outfit. ;)


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 01:39:29 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:39:29 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FAD11.FB9D737E@engcorp.com>

John Roth wrote:
> 
> After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
> for real use.

Do you really mean "is" too unstable, or you mean it looks like it 
"might be" unstable, solely because of the proposals about changing the
way the / operator works?

I've used Python for about a year and a half in dozens of practical 
areas in industry.  I consider it *bar none* the most stable language
I've ever used.  Not only with respect to the stability of the
applications I write, but also the runtime (I can hardly recall a crash,
although I'm sure I've had a few when using calldll around third-party
DLLs) and definitely *even the language definition*.

Changing from 1.5.2 to 2.1 required us to do, let me see: nothing!
I reviewed the list of changes, predicted we would not be impacted,
and so far (after several months of ongoing development and continued
use of our many utilities and applications) I've been proven correct.

So I'm guessing you really just mean that this PEP 238 proposal
is scarey.  I agree, to the extent that code breakage is never nice
to contemplate, but with the ongoing consideration being given to the
issue by the developers, I'm reasonably satisfied that even this
drastic change will end up having relatively little effect on my
opinion of Python's stability.  Planning over two years in 
advance and guaranteeing the breakage will only occur when
a major upgrade (Python 3.0) is released is pretty much the
best you could hope for from any language.  After all, by convention
major upgrades are where you are supposed to *expect* code
breakage.

> Hopefully, this is going to provide more food for thought than fuel for the
> flames.

I hope you don't consider this a flame.  But I'm not responding to 
the  suggestion of "required" other than to say I don't think it's
really necessary (because I don't think it's really necessary...
as should be evident from the above).

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 09:39:02 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:39:02 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.994456396.2890.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpbsmwkgj8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes:

> But
>     x = ()
>     x += y
> 
> is not, and that's exactly what I meant.

But x will never have a refcount of two in this case: there's one
reference from x, one from the argument list to +=, and one from the
global variable that holds on to the empty tuple so it can be shared
with others.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 17 14:03:24 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:03:24 -0700
Subject: SGML and Python
References: <9j1s5g+rubh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B547DEC.8DBB0703@ActiveState.com>

burton_kent at bigfoot.com wrote:
> 
> What's available for SGML and Python?  PyGrove and PySGML are what
> I've found, however, the website at the University of Waterloo where
> they're located seem to always be down.
> 
> I need to do validation and correction of incomplete SGML documents.

Neither PyGrove nor PySGML dealt very well with incomplete (i.e. not
well-formed) SGML documents.

Anyhow, what I typically do these days is to use something like SX to
translate into XML, use the wealth of XML tools available and then
translate back into SGML if necessary.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From peteris_martinsons at swh-t.lv  Fri Jul 27 09:02:44 2001
From: peteris_martinsons at swh-t.lv (Peteris Martinsons)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 06:02:44 -0700
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk> <3B6127EB.2080002@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <44da3708.0107270502.182af936@posting.google.com>

A little bit shorter (and perhaps faster) version :)

#do not need to instantiate on each run of function
repeats = ('AAAA', 'CCCC', 'GGGG', 'TTTT')
nucleotids = ('A', 'G', 'C', 'T' )
...

def checkValidData(bsite):
	
	for x in bsite:	#check new bsite contains valid charactors
		if x not in nucleotids: return 0
	for x in repeats:
		if (string.find(bsite, x) != -1): return 0

	return 1


Peteris Martinsons


From salnikov at inp.nsk.su  Fri Jul 27 01:27:01 2001
From: salnikov at inp.nsk.su (Andy Salnikov)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:27:01 +0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jqu35$voua$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>

  Well, what I see is a strong determination to get this PEP through. It's
unwise to continue arguing under these conditions, but anyway... Don't take
it personally, I understand pretty much your ideas to make this world nicer,
the only thing I do not like is the burden you put on all your Puthon
programmer guys.

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
>
>     We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for
>     different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of
>     the mathematical result of the division ("true division"), x//y to
>     return the floor ("floor division").  We call the current, mixed
>     meaning of x/y "classic division".
>
  It's very much like in any PR company, giving it tag of "true division"
seems to imply that this is the only way to do division correctly:) I think
there is no more truth in it than in the classic. (Just my opinion, and its
useless to debate about what truth is, it's rather ethical cathegory, has
nothing to do with division operator.)

>
>     - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
>       division.  This doesn't solve the problem that the classic /
>       operator makes it hard to write polymorphic numeric functions
>       accept int and float arguments, and still requires the use of
>       x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required.
>
  How is it? The x//y is supposed (in this only suggestion) to do exactly
the same as x*1.0/y. Please, correct it.

  I still do not see a word about what it does to migrate all the existing
code, what you do and what Python coders do, the tools we should expect,
time scale. Would be nice to have complete understanding of these issues
_before_ we get into the boat.

  Cheers,
  Andy.




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 15:54:37 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:54:37 -0500
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
In-Reply-To: <3B55DFA3.E5BBC46E@mindspring.com>
References: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com>
        <0Ne57.1129$KC.143209@news3.oke.nextra.no>
        <3B55DFA3.E5BBC46E@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <15189.59773.784076.694003@beluga.mojam.com>

    kelly> OK, I installed the readline-devel package. Now I am getting the
    kelly> following error message:
    kelly> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ltermcap
    kelly> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
    kelly> make: *** [python] Error 1

    kelly> Thanks for the response. I am getting closer, but there is still
    kelly> something wrong. Any idea what I should do next?

Try installing libtermcap-devel... ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 20:20:54 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:20:54 +0100
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>
 <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

well in the last two years I've upgraded four times. It is never a
pleasant experience; I'm lucky enough to be able to follow many of the
discussions and thus get some kind of handle on what's likely to go
wrong.

I think it's foolish to expect everyone to be so lucky. Most people who
use python don't use it full time. The C code I wrote in 1983 still
compiles, my python code from 1999 probably has bugs if I use 2.1.

If the advice from the Gods is that Python is a 'research' language then
I'll know better what to do. Please inform us. Skip's posts in the dev
list seem full of promise.
-- 
Robin Becker


From thedustbustr at aol.com  Mon Jul 23 21:02:18 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 01:02:18 GMT
Subject: thread module
Message-ID: <20010723210218.11240.00000881@ng-fv1.aol.com>

What args are encessary when you call thread.start_new_thread()?  The module
index says:

"start_new_thread (function, args[, kwargs]) 
Start a new thread. The thread executes the function function with the argument
list args (which must be a tuple). The optional kwargs argument specifies a
dictionary of keyword arguments."

How do I create a simple thread like so:
def hi():
  print "Hi!"
thread.start_new_thread(hi(),args)

What are the args?


From sabren at manifestation.com  Sat Jul  7 11:47:46 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 10:47:46 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107071540410.7441-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107071040380.11943-100000@mercury.sabren.com>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
 
> I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
> My main concerns are:

Hey Roman,

You've got an interesting idea here.. But I'm not sure I understand
the problem it's meant to address. If you're worried about your code
suddenly ceasing to work, of course you know that code doesn't break
unless you change things. A pyhon 0.1 script would work just fine
today if you had python 0.1 installed.

So it must be that you want your programs to keep working even as you
keep changing the underlying libraries / languages, or upgrading to
new versions that other people create.

If that's the case, you can defend against this problem by writing
unit tests. If you have a test for every feature of your program,
you're free to upgrade any libraries it uses. Just run the tests and
you'll find out instantly if anything broke. If something did break,
you can either update your code, or just go back to the old version of
the library.

Cheers,

- Michal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.manifestation.com  www.sabren.net  www.linkwatcher.com  www.zike.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------




From 63.203.225.62  Mon Jul  2 15:54:28 2001
From: 63.203.225.62 (63.203.225.62)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 19:54:28 GMT
Subject: What is best of breed for HTTPS clients?
Message-ID: <Uj407.520$3x.2270@news.bc.tac.net>


Is it possible (easy) to build an HTTPS client with mxCrypto?
    http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxCrypto.html

Python 2.1 seems to have some support for HTTPS, but
maybe these are just stubs. I would like to build HTTPS
support into my application in a way that will be supported
by current or future standard extensions.

I was able to use M2Crypto with success:
    http://mars.post1.com/home/ngps/m2/
my only complaint was the lack of documentation.
Otherwise I had an easy time getting this to work
once someone showed me how to do it.

I'm looking for "the best" way to do an HTTPS client.

If there is nothing else, then I will probably place
my bet with M2Crypto.

Yours,
Noah


==================================
Poster's IP address: 63.203.225.62
Posted via http://nodevice.com
Linux Programmer's Site


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 13:11:34 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:11:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etd8zhorhnq.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l689p.o6r.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 11:57:13 -0400, Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>Oh, I'd thought hash lookups were constant time.  That's interesting.

Well, there goes my credibility. Of course hash lookups are more or less 
constant time. I've been working with the mapping types in C++ STL which
are binary trees, and therefore have log(n) access time. 

Please accept my apologies for replying before having completed the context
switch.

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From msoulier at storm.ca  Sat Jul  7 20:21:58 2001
From: msoulier at storm.ca (Michael P. Soulier)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:21:58 GMT
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
References: <mailman.994457412.4660.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GIN17.434168$eK2.88218508@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:09:31 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> 
> This is a flawed mental model:  the local vs non-local distinction is made
> at compile-time, by static inspection of the program text.  There's nothing
> dynamic about that (in the absence of "import *" and "exec" abuses).

    Granted, not dynamic in the sense that the underlying interpreter is
calling malloc(), but it acts as a double assignment/declaration. Not much
different than C++ really, except that you don't have to declare a type, it's
inferred by what you're assigning. Understood. 

>>     Now, while this is great for scripting, it can cause major
>> headaches with large programs if you're a bad typist.
> 
> I expect bad typists have lots of other problems writing code too <wink>.

    :) Everybody makes mistakes... 

> A tool like PyChecker will detect that, in the example exactly as given,
> "myvar" and "myver" are *both* unreferenced, and flag both lines with
> warnings.

    PyChecker? Ok, I'll look for that. Lets face it, mistakes happen. I mean,
Python's design has been in part to minimize typical errors found in other
languages. 
    For example, in Python I cannot do a standard Cism of assignment with
testing:

    if ((length = strlen(string)) > 2) 
        /* do something with string > 2 */

    This was removed in Python, preventing the classical error of assignment
when one intended to test

    Intent:

    if (x == 5)

    Accidental assignment

    if (x = 5)

    It seems to me that Python has been designed to avoid such errors, and yet
the omission of forced predeclaration, or at least warnings, seems like a
glaring omission to me. Just my opinion. 

    I'll give PyChecker a shot. 

> The size of the program doesn't really matter; regardless of program size,
> if you don't keep your individual functions and methods to well under a
> screen of code almost all the time, you're going to have lots of problems
> (in Python or any other language; it may even be worse in Python, because
> indendation for grouping really doesn't work well when code blocks slobber
> over screen pages; that's one of the clever pressures in Python *nudging*
> you toward writing better code).
> 
> guido-can-lead-you-to-clarity-but-he-can't-stop-you-from-peeing-in-
>     the-stream<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

:) Perhaps, but these idealistic ideas don't always work. They're not
exercised enough in the industry, true, but sometimes you can't afford the
overhead of all of those function calls. Granted, if you can afford Python,
you can probably afford the function calls. ;-)

    Thanks,

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at storm.ca> 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 20:10:47 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:10:47 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lml32.qb.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEDGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> The current integer division loses information silently and without
> a trace.

[Grant Edwards]
> No, it doesn't.

Of course it does, but note that I'm using "information" in its technical
sense.  Current int division is a many-to-one mapping, so necessarily loses
information.  Loss of information is often a good thing (like, losing most
of the repetitions of these old arguments would be a good thing <0.5 wink>),
but silent loss by default is generally bad design.

> Integer division is integer division.  The correct answer for the
> value of 3/4 is 0.

If Guido has his druthers, the correct answer for 3//4 will be 0.  It's not
the *operation* but the *spelling* he's seeking to change.

> If you wanted the remainder, you should ask for it.  If you want to
> divide floating point numbers, you should _use_ floating point numbers.

Whether 1/2 would return a float is still open.

> Perhaps my mind was warped by using nothing but integer arithmatic
> in my software for many years because floating point was simply too
> slow and too expensive.

Or maybe you needed integer semantics -- I can't guess.  Doesn't much matter
to the current debate.  If you bought a hand calculator that truncated
division results to integers, would you be happy with that?  That's what
informs the expectations of the generations after us.




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:34:04 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:34:04 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpd77el2ex.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Rainer Deyke" <root at rainerdeyke.com> writes:

> Correctness: Consider the following function:
> 
> def f(x):
>   x += (1, 2, 3)
>   print x
> 
> This function is just plain incorrect.

Depends on context.  If you write a small program that by convention
manipulates tuples, this would be totally acceptable.

Not every function needs to be written polymorphically to work on all
kinds of arguments.  Many functions are by convention only used on
specific argument types, and both the caller and the function author
know that.  Then using the += notation on an argument is totally
acceptable.  The statement that f is *incorrect* is meaningless
without context.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From worm at gdp-group.com  Thu Jul 26 08:38:31 2001
From: worm at gdp-group.com (Thomas Volkmar Worm)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:38:31 +0200
Subject: Informix IDS2000 and Zope/Python/Perl/PHP on Linux
Message-ID: <3B600F47.2F59C1FC@gdp-group.com>

Hi all!

I am consindering to use Informix Dynamic Server (Informix Internet
Foundation 2000/Linux) together with Zope and the other 3 P's.

I wonder, whether somebody has any experience with Linux and

- IDS 2000 and Perl
or
- IDS 2000 and PHP
or
-  IDS 2000 and Python
or
- IDS 2000 and Zope

and can tell me about the experience he made with one or more of these
combinations. I am interested to hear about

- availibility of the needed drivers
- their (practical) compatibility to (eg. perl DBI, python DB-API 2.0,
etc.)
- stability
- and what else someone has experienced

I already was an php.net, python.org, perl.org, zope.org - I guess I
know whats available. It looks to me as if the support for IDS is not so
strong, so I am really interested in real experience somebody had rather
that what you can read in the READMEs. If you stopped using IDS together
with P..., please tell me why and what db (other than mySQL, thats
allready running here) are you using instead.

If some Informix/IBM people are around: Are there any contributions
planned or in progress for the 3 P's by Informix/IBM? Where can I find
online information about it?

If you respond to this posting, please send a CC to my email-address
too.

Thanks for your efforts in advance

Regards
Thomas Volkmar Worm

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: worm.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 366 bytes
Desc: Visitenkarte f?r Thomas Volkmar Worm
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010726/5f8f8751/attachment.vcf>

From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 21 00:11:30 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:11:30 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4> <Xns90E4E1E55281Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <slrn9lhgqu.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <9javdi$bbp$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9lhgqu.1ah.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>
>  Who actually names their classes with one-letter names like A or C as
>I've seen in this thread?  Anyone?  Didn't think so.
>
>  Actual use is more like:
>a = Anything()
>c = Cookie()

or

smpt = SMTP()
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 14 19:03:37 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 19:03:37 -0400
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
In-Reply-To: <WlT37.9638$e5.1274504@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEIEKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> Python doesn't use the MS clock() for time.clock() on Windows;
> it uses the MS QueryPerformanceCounter API instead.

[/F]
> so you mean I cannot trust the Python documentation? ;-)

The regular expression docs, sure <wink>.  time.clock() on Windows actually
returns an approximation to the wall-clock time that's elapsed since the
*first* time you called time.clock().  The first time you call it you get
back a few millionths of a second, and no matter how long your program has
been running.

so-it's-accurate-but-probably-not-a-satisfying-lover-ly y'rs  - tim




From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Tue Jul 10 14:15:35 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:15:35 -0700
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net> <9i9spk$1hr$1@verence.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3b4b4647$0$318$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

COOL!  Thats a good tip.  Thanks a lot.

Neil Macneale

In article <9i9spk$1hr$1 at verence.demon.co.uk>, "Paul Wright"
<-$Paul$- at verence.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Greg Stein has a Robot Wars implementation which does what you want by
> playing with thread locks in a function which is a sys.settrace hook.
> sys.settrace lets you specify a function to run after every line of code
> (it's intended for people writing debuggers).
> 
> http://www.pythonpros.com/gstein/war/
> 
> (Unfortunately it's not a complete implementation: it'd be a cool way to
> help beginners learn Python, especially those with a limited attention
> span :-)
> 

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From paul at boddie.net  Thu Jul 26 04:53:28 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 01:53:28 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com> <3B5EEED7.C9C7117B@home.net>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107260053.70747d65@posting.google.com>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message news:<3B5EEED7.C9C7117B at home.net>...
> 
> I'm sure that was the intention, but we need to keep in mind that the
> PEP proposed two types of division, NEITHER of which is the current one,
> so in order to keep total backward computability, we would need to add
> two operators, which would really get messy.

Well, having read the PEP more thoroughly I accept that the two
division operators will work differently from the existing one, given
that they will each provide consistent operations across all numeric
types, and this would be a good thing to have when designing a *new*
language. (Although many people accustomed to working with floating
point numbers would probably explicitly signal ceiling and floor
operations rather than have them implicitly performed by some strange
new operator.)

However, it's arguably more relevant to discuss the fact that this
changes well-defined semantics in the language. It's extremely
important for pragmatic reasons to discuss how much damage this change
will cause. It's not at all acceptable or interesting to respond to
such concerns with how "nice" this will make Python's numeric system.

> And, this has been repeated MANY times, but despite the working in the
> PEP "Rationale" section, there are some very good and compelling reasons
> to have the proposed division that are relevant to experienced
> programmers, not just people learning. Guido recently said he will
> re-write the Rationale section to include this. I have been convinced by
> those reasons, though I think we need a better way to handle the
> backward computability issue.

I'm sure we'd all love to see a nice and consistent numeric system,
but Python is a mature language in widespread use. It's tempting for
some to think that with a supposedly inevitable huge influx of new
users that the volume of existing code will be dwarfed by new code
within a short period of time, but regardless of whether this will
happen or not, I think such "ideological" changes to the language with
such limited justification send the message to numerous
highly-respected community members that their work is considered to be
of little value and can be sacrificed to the "language gods" on a
whim.

Paul


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 18:24:39 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 15:24:39 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994095972.11214.python-list@python.org> <9hqlel016bl@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B40F4A7.38CB6ACE@ActiveState.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Care to expand on this...?  Say that x is (a lightweight proxy holding)
> a Python long of a few hundred digits which is counting the number
> of occurrences of some event-classification in a space of events that
> is pretty huge because of combinatorial-explosion.  y is another count
> I have to add to x, typically a few hundred thousands or a few millions
> at most.  How would x and y being lightweight proxies save me any
> computational effort?  

I shouldn't have said to use proxies instead of mutable integers. I
meant that you should have proxy x holding mutable integer x' and proxy
y holding mutable integer y'. Then when you see x+y you can mutate x
because you claim that you know that there is only ever one reference to
these objects. That doesn't rely on the person using a particular syntax
for adding to x.

>...
> I don't understand whether you're arguing in the abstract, or concretely
> proposing to break any Python program, written in the last year or so,
> which decided to code "mylist += somemore" as opposed to coding
> "mylist.extend(somemore)" while some other reference to mylist may
> be outstanding.  If the latter, I don't see how such code breakage may
> be "a compromise".  

It preserves your ability to use += to define "integer mutation" without
making common Python usage more complicated.

> .... In the abstract, if you were designing a new language
> from scratch and wanted to have both mutable and immutable datatypes
> in it, I guess you could draw the line for a switchover in +='s behavior at
> different thresholds; mutable vs immutable is very easy to draw, 'ordinary'
> vs 'advanced' may not be, but maybe in such a hypothetical language
> you might have other ways to easily flag ordinary vs advanced data
> types so people cannot get confused.  ...

How do we "flag" types that have in-place behavior now? How would I
recognize that your integers were mutable based on anything other than
reading the documentation or code?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 16:56:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 22:56:01 +0200
Subject: Hiding Console?
References: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <9htbcn084j@enews4.newsguy.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9ht9to$fei$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com...
> Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
> WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the IDLE ide. I
wanna
> write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont want the
console
> there when there run, any ideas?

Name your program foo.pyw rather than foo.py, and/or run it using explicitly
pythonw.exe rather than python.exe -- either way, no console will appear.


Alex





From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Thu Jul 19 21:24:22 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 18:24:22 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com> <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org> <mailman.995408249.15783.python-list@python.org> <3b550e40.2201271731@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <c81d5d8d.0107191724.7cb35757@posting.google.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote in message news:<3b550e40.2201271731 at wa.news.verio.net>...
> Well rare, but not always dumb, I think. If you're only using a constant 
> in one place that happens to be in a loop, and the clearest way to express 
> it is as a constant expresssion, you do it that way when you know it's going
> to be folded. E.g., compare (5280.0/60.0*60.0) vs 1.4666667 -- which would 
> you feel surer about, reviewing the code, given the same comment saying
> mph->fps?
>
> Of course, with Python it would be dumb not to move it out of the loop, if
> you could save significant execution time.
>

Or worse I frequently need things like (1L<<1024)-1, and though I know my
powers of two quite well, I don't think I'd immediately recognize that one 
:-)


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 10 21:47:30 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:47:30 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:54:47 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C.
Ullrich) wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:18:16 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
>wrote:
>
>>[Bengt Richter]
>>> ...
>>> I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
>>> just over 15 seconds, including startup and
which turned out to be mostly str conversion for
the print, so I thought I'd try recursion on that...
(see below ;-)
[...]
>(Took a minute to find fib.py just now, because it was filed 
>under "MatrixTypes". I calculate fib(100000) in 1.7 
>seconds this way; for comparison, str(fib(100000)) takes 
>8.0 seconds.)
Hi Dave ;-)  

Try strL for comparison. It's recursive, and faster than str
for big numbers. I got
 >>> len(strL.strL(ffib(100000)))
 20899

so you can type in 10L**20899 on the command line
for a number in the same ballpark as the fib, for a test.
On my system I get

[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
str took 13.601617 seconds

[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
strL took  1.044989 seconds

Recursion rides again ;-)

BTW, how do you put everything inside the strL def
to hide names, and how do you recurse inside without
a warning message?

A couple of lines wrapped...
_______________________________________________________________
# strL.py -- recursive long to decimal string conversion
# 2001-07-10 bokr
#
p10d={}
def p10(n):
    if not p10d.has_key(n):
        p = p10d[n] = 10L**n
        return p
    return p10d[n]

def strLR(n,w=0):   # w>0 is known width, w<0 is searching guess
    if w == 0: return []
    if w > 0:
        if w <=9: return [('%0'+chr(w+48)+'d') % n]
        wr = w/2
        nl,nr = divmod(n,p10(wr))
        return strLR(nl,w-wr)+strLR(nr,wr)
    else:
        nl,nr = divmod(n,p10(-w))
        if nl:
            return strLR(nl, 2*w) + strLR(nr,-w)
        else:
            if w >= -9:
                return ['%d' % n]
            else:
                return strLR(nr,w/2)

def strL(n):
    if n<0:
        return ''.join(['-']+strLR(-n,-9))
    else:
        return ''.join(strLR(n,-9))


from time import clock
import sys
def main():
    def pr(x):
        print x

    def psl(x):
        s = strL(x)
        sys.stdout.write(s)
        sys.stdout.write('\n')
        

    dt={'str':str,'strL':strL,'repr':repr, 'print':pr, 'printStrL':psl
}

    try:
        x=long( eval(sys.argv[2]) )
        fn=sys.argv[1]
        fcn=dt[fn]
    except:
        sys.stderr.write("usage: %s [str strL repr print printStrL]
<const expr>\n" % sys.argv[0])
        sys.exit(2)
    
    t0=clock()
    fcn(x)
    t1=clock()
    print "%s took %9.6f seconds" % (fn,t1-t0)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
_______________________________________________________________


From ak42 at altavista.com  Sun Jul 22 21:30:03 2001
From: ak42 at altavista.com (Alex K)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 18:30:03 -0700
Subject: compiling a program --with-python fails (Py_Initialize in  -lpython... no)
References: <3B566DAD.C2A08D1E@altavista.com> <mailman.995659022.3898.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <2ff373b0.0107221730.28e7c0e4@posting.google.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995659022.3898.python-list at python.org>...
> Alex K wrote:
> > 
> > hello!
> > 
> > i am trying to compile a program (a module for icecast called ices)
> > with pythonsupport. but that fails.
> > 
> > i am on a slackware8 system, with python 2.2a1 installed
> > (from tarball with no special conf-arguments).
> > 
> > [root /usr/local/src/ices-0.1.0]# ./configure
> > --with-python-includes=/usr/local/include/python2.2
> > ...
> > checking for Python.h... yes
> > checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython... no
> > checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.0... no
> > checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.2... no
> > checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.6... no
> > checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.5... no
> > configure: error: Could not find the python library
> > ...
> 
> You will probably have to add the path to the Python lib
> using some configure option of that program.
> 
> A look at the config.log will also be helpful.

i have tried:
--with-python
--with-python-includes=/usr/local/include/python2.2/
--with-python-libraries=/usr/lib/python2.0/

and also:
--with-python=/usr/local/bin
--with-python-includes=/usr/local/include/
--with-python-libraries=/usr/lib/

and many combinations thereof.
nomatter what i get the abovementioned error about Py_initialize
(provided that i specify the include dir, or else it doesnt find
Python.h, which i think is strange in it self, since it is in a
standard place).

the pertinent part of config.log seems to be this (which doesnt help
me at all):
...
* We use char because int might match the return type of a gcc2
    builtin and then its argument prototype would still apply.  */
char Py_Initialize();
char Py_Initialize();

int main() {
Py_Initialize()
; return 0; }
configure:3791: checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.2
configure:3810: gcc -o conftest -g -O2 -Wall    -fno-strict-aliasing
-I/us
r/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 
-I/usr/lib/per
l5/i386-linux/CORE  -I/usr/local/include/python2.2/
-I/usr/local/bin/inclu
de  -L/usr/lib/python2.0/ -L/usr/local/bin/lib conftest.c -lpython2.2
-lm
-ldl  -lpthread -lshout -rdynamic  -L/usr/local/lib
/usr/lib/perl5/i386-li
nux/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a -L/usr/lib/perl5/i386-linux/CORE
-lperl -
lnsl -ldl -lm -lc -lcrypt -lutil 1>&5
/usr/i386-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lpython2.2
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:
#line 3799 "configure"
...


line 3799 in configure is simply:
#include "confdefs.h"

that part of configure is definitely about python,
but i cant quite figure out what goes wrong and why.
anyone who has a guess?

   tia / alex k


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 08:32:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:32:12 +0200
Subject: system exec  ?
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com> <9i1ffe029cm@enews1.newsguy.com> <9i1npl$160$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <9i1moe02fou@enews1.newsguy.com>

"alphaZeta" <NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9i1npl$160$1 at news.businessobjects.com...
>
> Thanks, I was also planning to use the readlines() method.
    ...
> > a = os.popen("ls -l").read()
> >
> > may be what you want (but you may also prefer to call .readlines()

That's good in most cases, just one further thing: if there
is the possibility that the output of the command is vaster
than will comfortably fit in memory, you may want to import
xreadlines and rather than storing said output in your
memory all at one loop over it line by line:

from xreadlines import xreadlines
for line in xreadlines(os.popen("ls -l")):
    process(line)

Not an issue for ls -l, of course, but some OTHER program
MIGHT be returning gigabytes of text that you have to
process, and in that case doing it sequentially is best.


Alex





From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 01:28:06 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:28:06 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jtih6$edu$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list at python.org>,
Moshe Zadka  <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:05:47 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
>>
>> The serious problem I see here is backward compatibility.  I shudder to
>> think at the volume of preexisting, long-standing code that this will
>> quietly break
>
>Quietly? Note that in the 2.2 release, there will be *no* change except
>that you *can* use //, and the only change is if you 
>"from __future__ import division".
>In 2.3, as I understand it, you'll be able to get warnings out when you
>are doing something whose semantics will change.

Yup, quietly.  What happens in Python 2.6, after the changeover is
complete?  Never in the past has there been a change of such great scope
with such a potential for quiet breakage.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul 17 18:48:06 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:48:06 +0100
Subject: Startup question
References: <3B4E4A69.4040100@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9j2fah$vo$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

try these links:

http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/
or
http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install1.html

I haven't got them to work yet, i'll have to buckle down and sort it out,
when i get time  :)   mail me if you have any success, i would like to see
working examples. (fyi, i'm using WinME and activestates python 2.1)

Gary.

"Paulo da Silva" <psdasilvaX at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3B4E4A69.4040100 at yahoo.com...
> Hi,
>
> I am considering to use python in a middle sized project.
> I need to be able to build a standalone with a GUI (ex. tkinter)
> both for Windows and Linux, however.
>
> Is this possible? I read the FAQ and I saw it is possible to
> build a standalone, but I could not find if it is also
> possible when including a GUI. I don't care about to hide
> the code. Just to build a distributable standalone.
>
> TYVMIA
> Paulo da Silva
>
> --
> Please remove the anti-spam Xs from my email address.
> PF. retirar os Xs anti-spam do meu endereco de email.
>




From jparlar at home.com  Tue Jul 10 12:38:27 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:38:27 GMT
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994625054.7131.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107092059.8b56186@posting.google.com> <1103_994765524@jparlar> <3B4B0141.580437D2@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <1103_994771037@jparlar>



> > Now, whenever I'm given HTML from IE's cache, it is unicode. There is no doubt 
> > about that.
> 
> Are you sure? Which encoding of Unicode? UTF-16, UTF-8, ...
> 

Well, I know that it's Unicode for two reasons: 1) The developer of the module that generates the HTML from the cache told me so, and 2) I do a check for 
UnicodeType in my own code. I don't think I could tell you which encoding it is though (not without knowing how to check for that within my code).

Jay P.




From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul 21 09:03:53 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 09:03:53 -0400
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
In-Reply-To: <995696264.385.46543.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B594579.25239.2878ACF@localhost>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote, in part
> "Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote...
> > (And, forgive
> > me, does the code use CoInitialize/CoUninitialize?)
> 
> Not that I know of.

Victor, when I suggested CoInitialize I was forgetting that the 
absence of this raises a recognisable exception. If this were a fault 
in your particular code then you would have mentioned that 
exception. And I don't think COM is involved anyway. Sorry. - Bill

Bill Bell, Software Developer



From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 05:12:15 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:12:15 +0200
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:16:01 EDT."
             <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com> 
Message-ID: <m15Q3fL-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

"James C. Ahlstrom" <jim at interet.com> wrote:

> Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> > If the advice from the Gods is that Python is a 'research' language then
> > I'll know better what to do.
> 
> I am afraid I have to agree with Robin here.  My company "solved"
> this problem by staying with Python 1.5.2.  I do plan to upgrade when
> I have the time, but absent any tools to at least flag incompatibilities
> this may never happen.

Starting with Python 1.5, I never yet had serious difficulties in
upgrading to new Python versions. If only Pythonlabs kept their
release ccyle better decoupled from ours, we might even ship our
products with a more current Python version than 1.5.2 now ;-)

> The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> proof program.  The current rate of language change is fine for a
> student or casual programmer I'm sure, but I don't have that luxury.

Much as I am concerned about the effects of the division change, I
think you're way off the mark here.

I'm thankful to Guido and his gang for improving the language as they
do. Things like unicode, augmented assignment, iterators, generators,
type/class unification improve my life as a professional programmer.

But-then-I-didn't-stay-with-FORTRAN-either-y'rs,
Christian

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 04:45:36 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:45:36 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "25 Jul 2001 10:01:24 PDT."
             <18289ee4.0107250901.3910d4e1@posting.google.com> 
Message-ID: <m15Q3FY-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

david at boddie.net (David Boddie) wrote:

> tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer) wrote in
> message news:<mailman.996052189.14819.python-list at python.org>...
> >   What if `/` applied to two integer values returned neither an
> >   integer nor a float but an object carrying the float result but
> >   behaving like an integer if used in an integer context?
> > 
> >   For instance:
> > 
> >       >>> x = 1/2
> >       >>> type(x)
> >       <type 'Ratio'>
> >       >>> print "%d %f %s" % (x, x, x)
> >       0 0.5 0.5
> >       >>> 2 * x
> >       0
> >       >>> 2. * x
> >       1.0
> > 
> >    The difficult issue here is how `integer context` is defined.
> >    Should multiplication by an integer be considered an integer
> >    context? Pro: would preserve correctness of existing code like
> >    `(size / 8) * 8`. Con: is incompatible with Rationals which might
> >    be added in the future.
> 
> A problem arises if the type of the result (x in this example) is not
> immediately resolved, requiring this context to be carried forward. A
> "neutral" operation immediately following the assignment above, such
> as a print statement (for want of a better example) or even another
> division would further complicate the issue by leaving the
> interpretation of the result until later when the original context is
> unavailable.

The original context wouldn't matter. The Ratio object would need to
carriy all information needed to behave properly depending on context.

It has enough other problems to make it an attractive option, though.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From barry at digicool.com  Thu Jul  5 15:03:53 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:03:53 -0400
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] PEP 8, Style Guide for Python Code
Message-ID: <15172.47641.290174.183847@yyz.digicool.com>

I've taken Guido's original style guide essay and converted it to PEP
form.  It is available as

    http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html

I've done some mild spellchecking and editorial formatting on the
file, but left it as incomplete as the original essay.  Hopefully
though, having this document in PEP form will encourage contributions
to update and expand it.

Cheers,
-Barry



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 18:18:45 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:18:45 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com> <slrn9luefe.5a2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <17o3mtsb2kurvsderudb91nv2e6q6rce77@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:28:14 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>By the way, any definition of "mathematician" that excludes
>pure mathematicians is spectacularly broken.

What about a definition that generalises to include *more* than just
pure mathematicians? It is you who is narrowing the definition, not
me.

I never once claimed that integer division was allowed in all
mathematics. I claimed it existed in mathematics. I specifically
pointed out that it was generally done-and-dusted and therefore not
something of interest to current academics - but that it did survive
in everyday life. After all, would you really share five TVs between
two people by turning the fifth TV into junk? Or would you perhaps
treat it as a remainder?

Others claimed 'the methods I use do not allow this, and the methods I
use are part of mathematics, therefore mathematics doesn't allow
this'. As a mathematician, you *should* recognise this as a false
syllogism. Or perhaps you consider that logic - being outside your
particular field - doesn't exist?

Mathematics includes many ideas that are not applicable to pure
mathematics - applied mathematics presumably contains many such ideas.
The fact that they do not apply in specifically in current pure
mathematical study does not mean they aren't a part of mathematics.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 00:35:02 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:35:02 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <gr8nltkt5ejvbjgjj3bue2233918l1574p@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:55:58 GMT, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com>
wrote:

>During the debate on changing int/int to give a float result, some
>proponents appeared to question the usefulness of integer quotients.
>Opponents of the change gave calculation of array indexes, including
>graphics pixel coordinates, and 'combinatorics' as example uses.  I
>here present an particular example of a combinatorial use extracted
>from the recent thread on partitions.

Of course - lets see if I can think of some more...

- Pretty much *all* divide-and-conquer algorithms - e.g. binary
  searching ordered lists/tuples
- Crypto algorithms such as RSA
- Heaps - priority queues etc
- Many mathematical algorithms - e.g. fast fourier transform requires
  both integer division on integer arguments and float division on
  float arguments (but does not need integers to magically turn into
  floats).

That's just off the top of my head.

I can think of many uses for float division too - many engineering
applications for instance - but NONE that need integers and floats to
be treated the same way.



From Kristen_Blanco at prenhall.com  Fri Jul 13 13:39:21 2001
From: Kristen_Blanco at prenhall.com (Kristen_Blanco at prenhall.com)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 13:39:21 -0400
Subject: python reviewers
Message-ID: <"/GUID:QqKdP5p131RGZOABgCI2PYQ*/G=Kristen/S=Blanco/OU=exchange/O=pearsontc/PRMD=pearson/ADMD=telemail/C=us/"@MHS>

I am writing from Prentice Hall publishing and I am seeking reviewers for an upcoming publication. We are one of the
largest college textbook publishers in the US.

We are publishing a book entitled "Python How to Program" by
Harvey and Paul Deitel.  They are premier programming language authors, with the
best-selling C++ and Java books in the college market place. More
information on their suite of publications can be found here:

  http://www.prenhall.com/deitel

We are presently seeking qualified technical reviewers to
verify that the Deitels' coverage of Python in their forthcoming book is
accurate.  In return, we are offering a token honorarium.

Might you be willing to participate? If not, could you
perhaps suggest a
colleague?

If you are interested, or have any questions, please contact my colleague, Crissy Statuto, at Crissy_Statuto at prenhall.com

Thank you in advance for your assistance and consideration.

Sincerely,
Crissy Statuto


Crissy Statuto
Project Manager, Computer Science
Prentice Hall
One Lake Street- #3F54
Upper Saddle River, NJ  07458





From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Wed Jul 11 20:37:27 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:37:27 -0400
Subject: detect if file or dir
In-Reply-To: <994895287.608.4172.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CB907.18460.6D5F2B@localhost>

pedro at athlet.de (pedro) wrote:
> how can i detect if sth. is a file or a directory? exists(directory)
> does tell me if sth. is a directory but exits my script wenn it hits a
> file.

Pedro,

I assume you mean that the use of 'exists' raises an exception?

Notwithstanding the comments offered by others on this list, I don't 
think it should. For example, on my machine:

>>> os.path.exists ( r'c:\temp.txt')
1

ie, it works without raising an exception given a file name.

Bill



From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 02:32:33 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:32:33 GMT
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net>
Message-ID: <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B5CB83B.F3B7D51 at home.net...
> 3) So, the big disagreement is over whether the improvement in the
> language resulting from the proposed change is worth the
considerable
> pain it is likely to cause by:
>    A) Breaking old code


>    B) Making it very difficult to write code that can run on old and
new
> version of the interpreter.

This problem, though worse in a way with the division change, is
generic to all language changes.  To run newly written code under old
versions of the interpreter, you have to eschew *all* features added
after the oldest version you want to support.  For 1.5.2, this means
list comprehensions, augmented assignments, nested scopes, iterators,
generators, type-class unification features, and what ever else is
next added.

For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will be int/int
and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and floor(float/float)
instead.  Only write int//int or float/float.  With the tokenizer
module, it will then be easy to change all instances of int//int to
int/int (old meaning).  It should even even be possible to have
package installers check sys.version and do this conversion on site as
needed.  For newly written code, the harder problem will be to not use
any of the other neat new features, which mostly *cannot* be
automatically back converted.

Terry J. Reedy





From whrauser at erols.com  Wed Jul  4 11:11:00 2001
From: whrauser at erols.com (whr)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:11:00 -0400
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <9hvbcn$bet$1@bob.news.rcn.net>

Here is a clue:

>>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
>>> path
'e:\test\test.txt'
>>> print path
e:   est   est.txt

And another one:

>>> path.replace('\t','/t')
'e:/test/test.txt'
>>>

Walt

'\t' is a tab character

"Gustaf Liljegren" <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.148...
> I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:
>
> >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
> >>> path.replace('\\', '/')
> 'e:\test\test.txt'
>
> Expected:
>
> 'e:/test/test.txt'
>
> Also, split() doesn't like backslashes:
>
> >>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'
> >>> paths.split()
> ['e:', 'est', 'ile1.txt', 'e:', 'est', 'ile2.txt']
>
> Expected:
>
> ['e:\test\file1.txt', 'e:\test\file2.txt']
>
> Alternative ways would be much appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gustaf Liljegren




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 13 18:01:52 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 18:01:52 -0400
Subject: dictionary speed
References: <41899b99.0107121100.7b2c2cdc@posting.google.com> <3B4E731F.9040307@webone.com.au>
Message-ID: <uzoa81oa7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

simonb at webone.com.au writes:

> ie. a dictionary access n levels deep would incur
> time penalty proportional to n times the penalty
> due to each dictionary look up (log n i presume).

Right.  For the purpose of key search, what the dictionary actually
holds are just objects that don't get involved in the search, whether
values are themselves dictionaries won't matter.  But if you nest
dictionaries then clearly you'll have to do extra lookups at each
dictionary.  The first lookup yields the object (which happens to be
another dictionary) on which you do another lookup, and so on.

If you have a three-level nested dictionary structure that you
reference with something like:

    dictionary[key1][key2][key3]

then there are three discrete lookups occuring.  Of course, if you are
going to be using that nested dictionary a lot, you could always bind
a name to that dictionary while you use it, e.g.:

    nested = dictionary[key1][key2]

and then do single level lookups:

    nested[key3]

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 17 15:25:52 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:25:52 -0500
Subject: Regex for strings utility
In-Reply-To: <1103_995396879@pan>
References: <1103_995396879@pan>
Message-ID: <15188.37184.185120.48674@beluga.mojam.com>

    rhys> I'm trying to write a script which operates like the Unix
    rhys> 'strings' utility but I'm having difficulties with the regex.
    ...
    rhys> I'm getting a Syntax Error: Invalid Token at the closing brace to
    rhys> the pattern.

You have a couple problems.  First, the pattern needs to be a string, so it
has to be enclosed in quotes.  Second, the terminating character for the for
loop needs to be a colon.  Third, based upon the way you imported re, you
need to refer to the findall function as re.findall.

Here's a slightly revised version of your script:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

    # strings program

    import sys, re

    f = open(sys.argv[1])
    line = f.readline()
    pattern = re.compile("[\040-\126\s]{4,}")

    while line:
            # regular expression to match strings >=4 chars goes here
            matches = re.findall(pattern, line)
            for match in matches:
                    print match
            line = f.readline()

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 15 22:46:03 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 19:46:03 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <etdhewe0y3q.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107151846.7a19d24@posting.google.com>

Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message news:<etdhewe0y3q.fsf at quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>...
> def ip_p(ip_string):
> 
>     try: bytes = map(int, ip_string.split('.'))
>     except ValueError: return None
>     return 0 <= min(bytes) <= max(bytes) < 256
> 

This doesn't check (a) that there are exactly four doodads (b) that
the doodads are composed of 1 to 3 digits. It will say that "0" and
"-0000000.0.9.8.7.+6.0000005" are valid IP addresses.


From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul  8 19:10:14 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:10:14 +0200
Subject: Bug in rfc822
In-Reply-To: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20010709011014.N8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 08:20:31PM +0100, phil hunt wrote:

> I have added a comment to bug #437395, to this effect. Do
> I need to notify anyone else? The Bug Report says it was submitted 
> by Fred Drake, and assigned to Barry Warsaw.

Nope. Both of those people, and whomever is on the 'bug admin' list, will
have received email with your new comment in it. If you want to supply a
patch to fix it, though, I'm sure both of them, and everyone else, would
greatly appreciate. Barry does do a lot with rfc822 messages, but he might
not get to fixing it soon.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sat Jul 14 07:47:44 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:47:44 GMT
Subject: DB-API 1.0 vs. 2.0
Message-ID: <AjW37.9662$e5.1281275@newsb.telia.net>

DB-API 1.0 (dated April 9, 1996) specifies that a connection object
should provide "all Cursor Object attributes and methods".

this requirement seems to have been dropped in the (undated)
DB-API 2.0 specification -- but this fairly major change isn't listed
under "Major Changes from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0"...

what's the deal here?  should a 2.0 implementation provide an
implicit cursor, or not?

(btw, maybe the people involved could add a release date to the
2.0 specification?)

Thanks /F




From volucris at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  9 23:36:59 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:36:59 -0500
Subject: pinging in python?
References: <3B4A6EEC.548A29FD@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <3b4a77e7$0$321$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

OK, you said simple:

#on win32 (WinMe at least)
import os
comp = 'www.python.org'
ping = os.popen('ping %s' % comp).read()[-8:-4]
print ping


--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

<deltapigz at telocity.com> wrote in message
news:3B4A6EEC.548A29FD at telocity.com...
> could anyone point out to a simple code of pinging a computer;
> just toping it and get the results; nothing fancy.
>
> i have found source codes along the line but its all too overwhelming,
> and im still a complete newbie despite my half decent understanding of
> python.
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Adonis
>




From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:35:04 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:35:04 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5C4BB5.932C041D@alcyone.com> <mailman.995908101.25359.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ibroltkb6ko0oh9hnsdv8ofld58tar8gjt@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:06:43 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
wrote:

>[Erik Max Francis]
>> I wouldn't think how JavaScript does things would be a valid defense in
>> any case.
>
>Neither would I, but in the context snipped away I was replying to someone
>who seemed to think that it was, but misunderstood what JS actually does.
>Even bad arguments should be accurate <wink>.

Yes, but as the person who made that error I'll point out that
perfection is hard to come by.

Anger and frustration has drastically increased my typo, bad spelling
and even completely-wrong-word count today - a sign of the strength of
feeling, really. Factual and logical errors - though I've made one or
two minor ones - are not prevalent, however.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From brueckd at tbye.com  Mon Jul 30 15:44:30 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:44:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107301232500.22121-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

> >  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> > values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> > create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
> > an array or Vector.
>
> You seem to be complaining about the lack of tuples, not static type-checking
> per-se.

Hmmm... no, because in Java, for example, to store something in the
container (be it tuple or whatever), the container would have to be
declared as one that can contain my type of object, and to get my object
back out I'd have to explicitly state what it is. For example, if you
want to store the integer 5 in a Java Hashtable, you can't just stick it
in there, instead you do a "new Integer(5)" to create an Object
descendent that can be stored in Hashtable. Then to get it out:

int foo = ((Integer)myHashTable.get(someKey)).intValue(); // bleh

What's the value-add of strong typing here?

> do not have a good code coverage tool.  If the compiler can catch a type error
> for me at compile-time, that is at least one less unit test I have to write.

How so? The type checking imposed by compilers like Java don't seem to
solve any real problems - all they do is free the compiler from blame:

Vector v = new Vector();
String s = "hi";
v.addElement(s);
Integer i = (Integer)v.elementAt(0);

The compiler made me stick in the cast to an Integer, but it didn't solve
any problems for me (the code is still wrong). The only result is that the
compiler can now say, "Hey, it's not my fault - you're the one who cast it
to an Integer!".

Others on here have pointed out that using C++/Java as an example of a
strongly-typed language is a mistake, so maybe my opinion is closer to
"the typing systems in C++ and Java tend to cause me more work and
problems" and not strong, static typing.

> for you.  It would really be nice if Python could add some sort of optional
> type declarations.  It should be technically feasible.

I don't think the technical feasability is the main thing keeping them
out. Can you help me better see how the value outweighs the cost? (I'm not
saying the value is 0, only that for me the cost has always *seemed* to be
greater than the benefit.

-Dave




From tdelaney at avaya.com  Sun Jul  1 21:03:18 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:03:18 +1000 
Subject: [Python-iterators] While we're at it...
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC21D@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> >Of course, an iterator map would be useful:
> >
> >def iter_map(f, seq):
> >    for o in seq:
> >        yield f(o)
> 
> This is a generator, not just an iterator.

def iter_map (f, seq):

    def iter_map_generator (f=f, seq=seq):
        for o in seq:
            yield f(o)

    return iter_map_generator()

Tim Delaney



From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 14:08:44 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:08:44 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Right!  In fact, the goal of PEP 238 is to make such a redesign of
> Python's numeric system possible

Saying this explicitly makes explicitly obvious what to me was not,
before:-).  Even though I do not currently care about such a redesign,
but you do, I consider the above a point in favor of 238.

(I am assuming that such a redesign would not break 'regular' floating
point code, such as Newton's method, that does not depend on every
last bit being just as it currently is to run correctly.)

I think another, currently less-well-articulated goal/result of 238 is
that it will make it possible for you to pursue your CP4E dream
project without forking Python and also without needing to make
further disruptive changes to the core.  If you agree with the last
proviso, then I also consider this a point in 238's favor.  I think
more could be said about the connection that would make what's obvious
to you clearer to others.

> The interesting thing is that the one thing that has to change in
> order to get a unified numeric model, whether we introduce rationals
> in the numeric tower or not, is integer division

(IMO -- and attempting to be helpful again) This (and similar
statements) is rhetorically wrong and counter-productive.  In PEP238,
you are NOT proposing to delete integer division (and I hope/presume
you never will), you are NOT proposing to switch it to C's version
(ditto), nor are you proposing any other substantive change (ditto).
>From a technical viewpoint, you are merely, in Tim's words, proposing
to change it's spelling, so that future i//j == current i/j, down to
the very last bit. (I am ignoring any possible effect of int/long
unification, which is a completely separate issue.)  So to ask another
rhetorical question:  why frighten people unnecessarily? or futilely
attempt to get them to accept something that you are not proposing
(and I hope/presume you never will)?

The *really* interesting thing is that the one thing that has to
change for you to pursue your further numeric goals is the current
overloading of integer and fractional division onto one symbol, which
is exactly what 238 undoes by adding a second symbol.  The main
practical technical issue, to repeat from my essay of two weeks ago,
is code breakage, forwards and back, and the costs and benefits
thereof.

The important thing is that the one thing you need from people in
order to make 238 work without forking Python is their agreement (for
whatever personal reason) to do the respelling and absorb the cost in
return for the expected long-term individual and collective benefits.
You do not need, and will never get, general agreement on the
metaphysical relationships of abstract (count, integer, rational,
real) and concrete (int, long, float) number sets.  Ditto for the
abstract virtue or esthetics of various combinations of type-dependent
division rules.

Terry J. Reedy





From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul  2 02:31:16 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:31:16 +0200
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994024802.8132.python-list@python.org> <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <20010702083116.I8098@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 12:09:13AM +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote:
> > At 15:33 01/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> >>I've just submitted a version of PEP 2 to Barry. It's only a first step
> >>on this path, but it's a step.

> > I was going to write on myself. Can you send it to the list for us to work 
> > with? It is not listed on the website; the "stub" one is there.

> I understand from PEP 1 that I ought to send it to the PEP editor (Barry)
> first. I'll send it to the list as soon as I've received feedback from him. 
> Then I'll certainly try to integrate anyone's feedback into it.

In this case, this is definately the right way: you're stealing someone
else's PEP, after all. 

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From joonas at olen.to  Thu Jul 19 08:21:19 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:21:19 GMT
Subject: Problems with self as default parameter
Message-ID: <3B56D025.508F40AD@olen.to>

How can I use class members as default values.
The code above raises an error.

class Test:
    def __init__(self,s):
        self.default = s
    def printer(self, string = self.default):
        print string

test = Test("spam")
test.printer()

#raises:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  File "H:\problem.py", line 1, in ?
    class Test:
  File "H:\problem.py", line 4, in Test
    def printer(self, string = self.default):
NameError: name 'self' is not defined


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Sun Jul 22 16:43:51 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:43:51 GMT
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
References: <3B54497F.B98D34CF@jam.rr.com> <20010721.072418.846942590.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net> <etd7kx2xjjh.fsf@w20-575-7.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20010722.165606.1450573622.10918@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <etd7kx2xjjh.fsf at w20-575-7.mit.edu>, "Alex" <new_name at mit.edu>
wrote:


> Enh, who cares?  Everyone knows the slashdot poll is the only one that
> matters, anyway.
> Alex.

True. True.

But don't even expect that one to be 100% accurate, I imagine Perl would
win on a Slashdot poll (judging by the ratio of Perl mongers on there
versus Python dudes). 	:)

~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http:/www.coffeecode.com)


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul  2 13:37:55 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:37:55 -0400
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <15168.43721.839010.193223@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEPEKLAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Courageous]
> This is inarguably and obviously bad design. The author's choice of
> an implicit singleton in this case was a great error and lacked
> even small amounts of foresight. The error here, however, was not
> the global variable. It was the implicit global singleton attached
> to contextually-dependent state.

[Skip Montanaro]
> Let's not be too hasty here.  Version 1.1 of fileinput.py is dated
> 21-Nov-97, well before threading was widespread in Python (which is
> where this stray global stuff tends to really bite you in the butt,
> the original author's example notwithstanding). ...

If you want a threadsafe fileinput reader, create an instance of the
fileinput.FileInput class explicitly.  The module global is a default
instance, catering to approximately 99.999% of expected uses:  "the main
loop" exclusively chugs over sys.argv -- which is also a shared global.  If
you use that from multiple threads simultaneously, it's not fileinput that's
nuts <0.9 wink>.

functioning-as-designed-ly y'rs  - tim




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 20 21:15:38 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:15:38 -0700
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
References: <2q367.11670$Up.346617@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B58D7BA.2148B8E5@ActiveState.com>

Minidom doesn't use any special threading. minidom is just Python code
so you could add trace statements ....

You mention java. Is this Jython or CPython? Is there a C extension
involved?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Mon Jul 30 13:05:05 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:05:05 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <mailman.996373135.2559.python-list@python.org> <JkM87.10500$Kd7.5942572@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <j4k80skqg6.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <FcX87.11426$Kd7.6834228@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <j4zo9mr7jr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <5tg97.12412$Up.362964@sea-read.news.verio.net>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote...
> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
>
> > > In that case, I recommend to put a number of print statements into the
> > > library modules that you suspect to be causes of the problem, and
> > > trace that way what they are doing. If you can identify the call that
> > > is hanging (i.e. the function you call that doesn't return), please
> > > let us know.
> >
> >
> > Didn't I already?  __import__ is hanging.  It doesn't let another
> > thread to start and it doesn't return anything.
>
> Please try to trace further. I.e. does it start executing the first
> line of expatreader?


As soon as I have spare time.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 31 22:26:14 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 1 Aug 2001 04:26:14 +0200
Subject: how to know whether the item in a diretory is a file/directory
References: <mailman.996630962.3179.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90F02DCABAE62cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in
news:mailman.996630962.3179.python-list at python.org: 
> I want to process all the files in a diretory,and ignore the
> subdirectorys in it 
> 
> ,I use  os.listdir() to list all the items,but I do not know whether
> the selected 
> item is a file
> 

you have deleted the documentation? take your browser point it to the doc 
dir in you python installation directory and then look at the module "os" 
there you find Files and Directories", then please look what's available 
there and maybe you find "stat". when you are there you find a link to the 
module "stat". there is also an example in that module which does exactly 
what you want.

sorry for the bad tone in the reply but you post many questions that are 
quite well answered in the python documentation.

neverthles - enjoy programming python :-)

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From thomas at xs4all.net  Wed Jul 18 09:09:10 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:09:10 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <ku7kx7gtzk.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
Message-ID: <20010718150910.B2054@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 05:12:23PM -0400, Christopher A. Craig wrote:

> > if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
> > since global variable access is slower than local variable access.

> This is, in this case, incorrect.  Unless I am horribly mistaken, the
> higher cost of dealing with globals is that you first have to do a
> failed lookup in the local dictionary.  (Plus failed lookups are more
> expensive than successful ones)  

Nope. The compiler knows, at compiletime, which variables are local, and
compiles the accesses into separate 'LOAD_FAST' ('optimized' local namespace
which is just an array indexed by compile-time constants), 'LOAD_GLOBAL'
(global or builtin namespace lookup, basically one (or two) dictionary
lookups) and 'LOAD_NAME' (code that tries locals, then globals) -- the
latter is only used if the local namespace *might* introduce names by
itself, because of an 'import *' or bare 'exec'.

As a result, function namespaces (which we call 'local') are faster than
global namespaces (which can be the 'local' namespace for a statement, but
we don't really *call* a 'local' namespace, because we mean the optimized
'local' namespace in functions when we say 'local namespace'.)

> In this particular case the local dictionary is the same as the global
> one, so I don't see how moving to a function would offer a time savings.

Yes, it is, but if you refactor, the local namespace won't be a dictionary
any more, so it'll be faster :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 09:43:46 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:43:46 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com> <m2puaqh6t2.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E8B2C2EF3FBmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <m2ofq9g4he.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9954091A7Fmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Paul Foley <see at below> wrote in
news:m2ofq9g4he.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz: 

> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:37:49 GMT, Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
>> Huh?
>>          (defun list-reverse (list) ...)
> 
>> Looks like lots of parentheses to me.
> 
> 
> so Python represents the integer 42 as "i*\000\000\000"?  :-)
> 

Hmm.  I see to my embarrasment that I missed the parentheses in your sig.  
I don't think I quite get your point though, since I though that LISP 
programming was done using the language in your sig (which certainly does 
suffer from a surfiet of brackets).  (I'd better confess right away that 
I've never written more than about a page of code in LISP, and that was 
just a baby exercise.)


From gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 06:06:53 2001
From: gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk (Giles Constant)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:06:53 +0100
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
In-Reply-To: <3B40B5F5.1F8F03D9@recombinant.demon.co.uk>
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net> <3B40B5F5.1F8F03D9@recombinant.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031104560.26669-100000@gilecpc.d1.hyperlink-interactive.co.uk>

just what I was looking for :-)

thanks loads.

(with respect to constant/variable data, I'm actually passing around a
class which can provide database cursors from a single active connection,
but I can do something with what you've pointed me at!)

-- 
Giles Constant, Systems Programmer
Hyperlink Interactive
http://www.hyperlink-interactive.co.uk

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Stephen D Evans wrote:

> You mention 'data', but do not state whether it is variable or constant data.
>
> If you want to use a singleton to pass around constant data there is a useful
> Python recipe (by Alex Martelli) on ActiveState's website, titled 'Constants in
> Python'.
>
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/65207
>
> Stephen D Evans.
>
>
> Giles Constant wrote:
>
> > Hi there,
> >
> > Being a C++ head, it's probably more a problem with my design than a python
> > problem, but I figured you guys would be able to help.
> >
> > I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some
> > global data such that all instances of the class have access to it.  The
> > alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every single
> > object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently that it would
> > be rediculous.
> >
> > Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)
>
>
>



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 07:46:03 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:46:03 +0100
Subject: basic python-unix question
References: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <slrn9lc3vt.85k.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldi3r.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 18 Jul 2001 22:38:54 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>Yes.  Automatic substitution does not take place at all.  Strings will never
>change their contents.

Quite right too! if you want sustitution, use P*rl!

>There are many functions that operate on strings, though.
>
>You can concatenate strincgs with (+):
>    'ps ef | grep ' + eachProcess
>
>You can interpolate strings with (%):
>    'ps ef | grep %s' % eachProcess
>
>Read the docs for more.
>
>As an aside, the above os.system is not a very good way to check for running
>processes (you want a >/dev/null in there at least, not to mention that it
>will break if you move it to a bsd). 

Because BSD doesn't like ``ps ef''? Or because there's a problem 
with os.system()?


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 11 18:44:54 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 22:44:54 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <slrn9kpca4.t6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <EJ337.455416$eK2.94021506@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpln6.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:52 GMT, Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote:
>
>"Quinn Dunkan" <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
>"""
>Large complicated data structures of nested tuples might be a mistake.
>Tuples
>and python's simple pattern matching can be handy for small ad hoc types,
>but
>don't forget about classes.
>"""
>
>Yes,
>...but I have found one good use for such 'tuple gymnastics'.
>( perhaps this is what you mean by 'pattern matching' )

No, what I mean by that is what python calls "tuple unpacking".  For instance:

t = ((green, (10, 20), 1),
     (blue, (20, 30), 0),
     (green, (40, 20), 1))

for (color, (x, y), active) in t:
    ...

def display((color, (x, y), active)):
    ...

map(display, t)

might be quicker and clearer than throwing together some class for the same.
Although some might disagree about that 'def' line (and I might be one of them
<wink>).

>When you want to have a dictionary that uses some type of object as a key,
>but you want 'identical' objects to considered 'the same', you can pack the
>relevant bits of an instance's data into a tuple, and use it as the dict
>key.

In this case I'd write __hash__ and __cmp__ methods and stuff the objects
directly into the dict.

>example:
>Suppose you want to keep track of the color any given x,y point...
>
>>>> class point:
>...  def __init__(self,x,y):
>...   self.x = x
>...   self.y = y
>...  def as_tuple(self):
>...   return (self.x,self.y)
>...
>>>> p1 = point(3,4)
>>>> p2 = point(3,4)
>>>> color = {}
>>>> color[p1]='red'
>>>> color[p2]
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
>KeyError: <__main__.point instance at 01373A6C>

>>> class Point:
...     def __init__(self, x, y):
...         self.x = x
...         self.y = y
...     def __hash__(self):
...         return hash((self.x, self.y))
...     def __cmp__(self, other):
...         return cmp((self.x, self.y), (other.x, other.y))
...
>>> p1 = Point(3, 4)
>>> p2 = Point(3, 4)
>>> color = {}
>>> color[p1] = 'red'
>>> color[p2]
'red'
>>>


From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Jul 11 16:11:10 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:11:10 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <mailman.994666709.12545.python-list@python.org> <9ifsp7$k1a$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> <9ihsuo$255$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <9iibsu$kj$2@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at madcap.dyndns.org> wrote:

> In your opinion, how much effort does it take to shoehorn, um, integrate
> Medusa's HTTP/1.1 implementation into your framework? 

It depends. I haven't checked Medusa's code, but if it's done in a
sensible way (i.e. protocol handlers are separate objects from
socket/channel handlers), it should be at most a 15-minute job. Where
could I get the Medusa source to try it out?

Is Medusa built on asyncore/asynchat? I've changed two asyncore/asynchat 
based programs to Selecting-based ones in less than one hour.

> Alternatively, what is the best way to get a HTTP/1.1 implementation
> running on your framework?

Well, HTTP is a quite line-oriented protocol, so TCPServer's default
channel handler (buffered line-oriented protocol much like asynchat) is
good for the task.  Writing an HTTP implementation involves basically
writing a protocol handler, which is an object with a method
receive(self,data) to be called upon reception of a whole line.

So the API is very simple. Writing a HTTP/1.1 protocol handler is not, but
I presume Medusa has one already?

Panu



From guido at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 14:45:33 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:45:33 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:23:47 MDT."
             <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms> 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms> 
Message-ID: <200107191845.f6JIjXL16993@odiug.digicool.com>

> Hehe, so, if both case-insensitivity and multiple encodings were
> adopted...
> 
> the easy to distinguish between "a" and "A" would not be allowed, but
> the hard to read versions of "a" with diacritical marks would be...
> 
> ...ya, that makes sense.  :-/

If that's your whole argument against case insensitivity, I don't find
it very convincing.  Certainly this issue has been solved before?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul  3 15:14:18 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:14:18 -0700
Subject: using python to append a file
References: <13e6b4a6.0107031113.441998c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9ht5pi$fovev$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

>>> print open.__doc__
open(filename[, mode[, buffering]]) -> file object

Open a file.  The mode can be 'r', 'w' or 'a' for reading (default),
writing or appending.  The file will be created if it doesn't exist
when opened for writing or appending; it will be truncated when
opened for writing.  Add a 'b' to the mode for binary files.
Add a '+' to the mode to allow simultaneous reading and writing.
If the buffering argument is given, 0 means unbuffered, 1 means line
buffered, and larger numbers specify the buffer size.

HTH

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Thanh Le" <tle at firstlinux.net> wrote in message
news:13e6b4a6.0107031113.441998c at posting.google.com...
> I am new to Python and was wondering if anyone could show me a way to
> append a file (similar to the way Unix does by using >> ). I've tried
> using open('file','r+') method and it overwrote whatever i had in that
> file. I am sure there is a way to append a file, but  havent had much
> luck.
> Thanks in advance,
> Thanh




From hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 12:45:55 2001
From: hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk (Hamish Lawson)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 09:45:55 -0700
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994155184.16109.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <915a998f.0107030845.5c1a77f4@posting.google.com>

Alex Martelli:

    Python can work perfectly well WITHIN ASP/IIS

Roman Suzi:

    ADO could help for those who consider Python for tasks usually
    done with PHP or ASP.

I suspect there may be cross-purposes here, due to differences in how
the term 'ASP' is being used. Strictly ASP is a technology for dynamic
web pages, but without any reference to any particular programming
language. VBScript just happens to be the most widely used language
for working with ASP, but other languages can be used - JScript,
PerlScript, Python, etc. Thus to compare Python with ASP is, strictly
speaking, as meaningless as comparing Python with CGI (when you
actually meant Perl).

Hamish Lawson


From guido at python.org  Mon Jul  9 09:57:46 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:57:46 GMT
Subject: dummy/trash object
References: <mailman.994671443.23621.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp3d86i4wq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Xavier Defrang <xavier at perceval.net> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm sure that someone already came with a question like : "why is there no
> real dummy or trash object in Python which could by used like the magic
> '_' in Prolog?"
> 
> Using a "normal" variable like in the following snippet involves useless
> assignations...
> 
> <snip>
> >>> t = 1, 2, 3, 4
> >>> x, _, z, _ = t
> >>> _
> 4
> </snip>
> 
> Since I'm quite sure that the language designers have already thought
> about this, the question is not whether such a magic object should be
> added to the Python language but why it has not been done?  I'm sure there
> are good reasons... The nearly-magic None value could have been used for
> this purpose... Some could say that it would break the "no exception" rule
> but we've already seen in previous threads (about assigning a value to
> None) that the core of the interpreter has some special instructions to
> handle None thus turning it into an actual exceptional thing...

Assignments are about the fastest operations in Python, as there is no
data copying involved -- only a pointer copy.  So you don't have to
worry about the "cost" of the assignment.  Adding a special case would
probably slow things down.  If you're worried about keeping the unused
object alive longer than necessary (which you normally shouldn't worry
about unless it's many megabytes is size), assign something else to
the same name -- this will delete the object previously held in that
name, *if* it was the last and only reference.  Or you can use the
'del' statement.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 02:50:30 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:50:30 +0200
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <mailman.995086406.23419.python-list@python.org> <3B4FD2AC.BF2F9AD6@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <9iortv0pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3B4FD2AC.BF2F9AD6 at alcyone.com...
> Roman Suzi wrote:
>
> > Programmers must be lazy to some degree. So, they tend to write
> >
> > a*(b+c+d+e)
> >
> > instead of
> >
> > a*b+a*c+a*d+a*e
>
> That's just plain more efficient.  Four additions and one multiply
> instead of three additions and four multiplies.

I think it's _three_ addition and one multiply in the former case.


Alex





From Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com  Fri Jul 13 12:56:08 2001
From: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com (Lindstrom Greg - glinds)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:56:08 -0500
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
Message-ID: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87DC8@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>

Welcome to the club!  I am curious as to how you decided on Python?
IM(NS)HO, it is one of the best languages for just about all applications
('cept MUDs :-).  My daughter (age 10) has worked through the "How to Think
Like a Computer Scientist" (Python edition), and to my amazement, wrote a
program to find all of the words in a word-search puzzle she was doing (OK,
it needed *some* more work, but I found it to be a great effort).

Come in on, and ask lots of questions!

Greg Lindstrom
Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911 
email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com           

"When the solution is simple, God has spoken"

                                                            Albert Einstein



-----Original Message-----
From: wyatt stafford [mailto:wyatts at onr.com]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 11:33 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice


Preamble:

I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start programming
for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).  After
some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  I bought "Learn
to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" (Harms/McDonald).  Also
checking out the tutorial, and other good info at www.python.org.    I have
a leaping, intuitive learning style given to missing the obvious, so I am
concerned about having fatal gaps in my learning via home schooling plan.

Questions:

Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self study
resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good programmer,
in general?

Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?

thanks and happy weekend to all,
wyatt

"Oh, that's not what I call bingeing"







From Fiona.Brewster at wanadoo.fr  Tue Jul 17 08:11:28 2001
From: Fiona.Brewster at wanadoo.fr (Fiona Brewster)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:11:28 +0200
Subject: shelve error
Message-ID: <NEBBKBMLEDOIHIFNCGCBKEICFDAA.Fiona.Brewster@wanadoo.fr>

Could someone explain what this means:

Traceback (most recent call last):
	File "index.py", line 83, in ?
		tokenCount = process(fileIndex[item], item, tokenCount)
	File "index.py", line 61, in process
		post[token] = fileIdMap
	File "c:\program files\python21\lib\shelve.py", line 77, in __setitem__
		self.dict[key] = f.getvalue()
	bsddb.error: (0, 'Error')

I have got this error after processing 1900 files and 3.8m words. The
program is part of a simplistic IR system which does the indexing to create
a postings database (kept in a shelve file). As it took about an hour of
indexing to reach the error I am loath to step through 3.8m words to see
what the error is!

I enclose the program below.
Thank you for any light you may shed.

Christopher Brewster

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

import shelve, string

# variables
post = shelve.open("postings", 'n')
#post = {}
tokenCount = 0

#####################
# Functions
####################

# This function reads a file, creates a list containing all tokens and ...
def process(fileName, fileId, tokenCount):
	f = open(fileName)
	fileText = f.read()
	tokens = string.split(fileText)
	# cycle over the words in the text
	i = 0
	for i in range(len(tokens)):
		if (tokenCount%100000 == 0): print tokenCount
		token = tokens[i]
		tokenCount = tokenCount +1
#		print "Current token is ", token
		wordOffset = i
#		print "Word offset is: ", wordOffset
		# check if the word exists as a key in 'post'
		if (post.has_key(token)):
#			print "Token found in post"
			currentFileMap = post[token]
#			print "CurrentFilemap = ", currentFileMap
			# check if the file id exists as a key in post[token] aka currentFileMap
			if (currentFileMap.has_key(fileId)):
#				print "File id-map found: ", post[token][fileId]
				tempMap = post[token]
#				print "tempMap = ", tempMap
				tempMap[fileId].append(wordOffset)
#				print "tempMap[fileId] after appending: ", tempMap[fileId]
				del post[token]
				post[token] = tempMap
#				print "post[token] now is: ", post[token]
#				print "New token offset appended: ", post[token][fileId]
			else:
#				print "File id not found"
				post[token][fileId] = [wordOffset]
#				print "post[token][fileId]= ", post[token][fileId]
		else:
#			print "Word not found in post"
			# create offset list
			offsetList = [wordOffset]
			# create fileId --> list map
			fileIdMap = {fileId:offsetList}
			# add token --> fileIdMap item to post
			post[token] = fileIdMap
#			print "New entries created", post[token][fileId]
#		raw_input()
	return tokenCount

######################
# Main Program
######################
fileCount = 0
fileIndex = anydbm.open('filedb', 'r')
for item in fileIndex.keys():
#	if (fileCount > 100): break
	if (fileCount%100 == 0): print "file count = ", fileCount
#	print "Now working on file: ", fileIndex[item]
	tokenCount = process(fileIndex[item], item, tokenCount)
	fileCount = fileCount + 1





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 21:18:49 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:18:49 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>
Message-ID: <3B5E1E79.A5C8CEF6@engcorp.com>

Michael Abbott wrote:
> 
> [...] From the professional
> programming perspective, I imagine that there are two types of programming
> task that are relevant to this discussion:
> 
> 1.  Scientific programs, [...]
> 2.  System control programs [...]
> 3.  Graphical programming can, [...]

You've forgotten the *one* type of programming which appeared
(at least to me) to be the inspiration for this in the first place:

4. Newbie programs

...as in, tiny, ultimately useless learning exercises which are
almost by definition never going to expand into anything that
matters in the long run.  This is *exactly* where mistakes or
confusion like this is supposed to occur for newbies to learn
the nature of computing.  Trying to prevent them from being
confused is much like taking down all the playground equipment
to prevent children from hurting themselves: they'll grow up
incapable of anything requiring more agility than walking!!

Given that the only people seriously likely to be confused by
the whole issue of integer/integer division are these newbies
and very infrequent/casual users of Python, breaking code 
*and* annoying a massive part of the existing user base would 
seem to be an excessive payment for the small gain of having 
a few more newbie programs work the first time they're run..

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From stupot999 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 07:36:33 2001
From: stupot999 at hotmail.com (Soup-a-Stu)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:36:33 +0100
Subject: Compiling
Message-ID: <VGb97.43557$SK6.5450408@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com>

I am very new to Python and i need a bit of help with compiling my stuff.
i'm using windows ME, and the latest version of Python.


thanks in advance




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 07:55:31 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:55:31 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9lkvah.sin.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <2kdllt08g3mveg9ojpls6jfe2pfr3j1227@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 07:14:25 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> pisze:
>
>> I thought again about the merits of the '//' operator vs. 'div'
>> (either as a function or as a keyword binary operator), and figured
>> that '//' is the best choice: it doesn't introduce a new keyword
>> (which would cause more pain), and it works as an augmented assignment
>> (//=) as well.
>
>Why div= wouldn't work? (Lexed as two tokens.)

Because div doesn't exist as a keyword, and therefore has probably
been used by many people as an identifier name. div= is therefore
something that many people probably have to start a simple assignment.

An assignment such as...

  div="Premier"

might exist in many football fans programs, for instance.


Guido - here's a thought...

How about using some symbol that the Python doesn't use at present,
and using it as a 'this is a keyword' prefix. '$' seems a good
candidate for the prefix. Once the scanner spots the prefix, it should
continue scanning using the rules for identifiers but specifically
identify the result as a keyword.

That way, any new keyword could be created at will without breaking
old code - the prefix might be a little annoying, but most important
keywords must already exist by now so the irritation would be kept to
a minimum.

Any use of a name prefixed by $ (or whatever) which is not recognised
should generate an error - unknown keyword or something - to prevent
anyone trying to use it in an identifier.

Using the prefix in front of existing keywords should be valid but
unnecessary - $while should be a synonym of while, for instance - so
anyone who is unsure whether a particular keyword needs a prefix can
just bung one in to play it safe.

If you do add a capability like that, I'd propose $mod and $rem as new
operators - modulo and remainder. $rem would do the same as %, but
$mod would always give a positive result according to the rules of
modulo arithmetic. These wouldn't be worth adding at the expense of
breaking existing code, but if that wasn't an issue they should be
more readable than '%'.

I know that incomprehensible prefixes seem a bit Perl-ish, but I think
this would be a good idea anyway - allowing considerable freedom to
update Python without the risk of breaking existing code.



From cer at tutopia.com  Sat Jul 21 01:12:08 2001
From: cer at tutopia.com (Cristian Echeverria)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 01:12:08 -0400
Subject: 3rd beta of Win32 Installer release 4
References: <mailman.995662610.14766.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jb2gl$milpe$1@ID-44371.news.dfncis.de>

Hi Gordon

I tested release 4 with Python 2.1, Win98 and with a simple program:

print "Hello"

and I got the following errors

W: exec statment detected at line 295 of imputil
W: No module named dos
W: No module named mac
W: No module named os2
W: No module named posix

I don?t know what is happening, all the previous version worked for my, but
version 4 has not worked at all, I always get a similar error.

Cristian Echeverria

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> escribi? en el mensaje
news:mailman.995662610.14766.python-list at python.org...
> The thrid beta of version 4 of the Win32 Installer package is
> here:
>
> http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/installer_dnld.html




From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 13 16:00:48 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 22:00:48 +0200
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994825097.24532.python-list@python.org> <3B4D0045.EBCDA083@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <wzzoa8lhu7.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> (GE) writes:

GE> Roman Suzi wrote:
>> 
>> Microsoft world accuses GPL of being "viral". 

GE> Well, the GPL *is* viral. The irksome thing about that
GE> Microsoft license is that it defines "viral" in a way
GE> that includes ALL open-source licenses, even though
GE> most of them are not in the least bit viral by the
GE> commonly understood meaning of the term in this
GE> context.

GE> So it's not the GPL they're slandering, it's all
GE> the other open-source licenses.

They also accuse it to be more viral than it is in reality. They seem to
suggest that e.g. code compiled with gcc also has to be GPL'ed.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 18:19:33 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:19:33 -0400
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
In-Reply-To: <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net>; from ddublanc@free.fr on Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 09:32:06PM +0000
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <20010703181933.B26134@harmony.cs.rit.edu>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 09:32:06PM +0000, Dublanc, David wrote:
| What is exactly weak typing ? 

Weak typing is what the shell or perl do : anything can be used
anywhere and it only has the type "variable" (or whatever you want to
call it).  Something like the following :

#!/usr/bin/perl
print 2     + "1"  ;
print 2     + "1a" ;
print "1"   + "2"  ;
print "1a"  + "2"  ;
print "1"   + 2    ;
print "1a"  +  2   ;


What you get is an interesting auto-coercion between strings and
integers because there is no difference, as far as perl is concerned.
Some of those, in Python, would be type errors :

>>> print 2 + "1"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: unsupported operand types for +
>>>

The closest thing that might work in Python would be

>>> print 2 + int( "1" )
3
>>>

but it doesn't always work (as it does in Perl) :

>>> print 2 + int( "1a" )
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: invalid literal for int(): 1a
>>>

Another indication that perl has weak typing is the following behavior :

$ perl
print $undefined_variable_name + 10 ;
10
$

In perl if a variable doesn't exist, and it is used in numerical
context it is treated as 0, or as the empty string if used in string
context.  In Python that would raise a NameError exception.

| I believed that Python was weak typing !

As you can see above, Python actually checks the types to ensure that
they are sane for the given operation.  It checks them _dynamically_
(at run time) as opposed to statically (at compile time).

There are 4 forms of type checking :

weak
strong
dynamic
static

Some people mistakenly consider dynamic == weak and static == strong,
but they are 2 different axis.

HTH,
-D




From johnroth at ameritech.net  Mon Jul  2 12:00:03 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:00:03 -0700
Subject: python as plugin language
References: <993529827.54981@newsmaster-04.atnet.at> <tjh5isq58hk8dc@corp.supernews.com> <tjhc8d7gjuohe8@news.supernews.com> <tji6ftsb4dlla3@corp.supernews.com> <tjiok16g2asmc7@news.supernews.com> <9hhkpq010gl@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <tk16lbm516pmfc@news.supernews.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9hhkpq010gl at enews2.newsguy.com...
> "John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in message
> news:tjiok16g2asmc7 at news.supernews.com...
>     ...
> > All the cases you cite miss the essential point - how does the Python
> > code call a function in the C language program it's embedded in? It's
>     ...
> > I think the functions I need are in the Python/C API, but I've never
seen
> > those functions referenced in any example, or in any of the books.
>
> I may be missing something, but... doesn't the embed.c demo/example,
> D:\Python-2.1\Demo\embed\demo.c on a typical Python install on Win32
> for ex., do exactly what you require...?  Well, almost -- it doesn't
> actually run any useful Python code, just leave a space where you
> could insert your own:-).  But it does show the embedding C program
> adding a module, called "xyzzy", which exposes to Python a C function,
> called "foo" (from the Python side of things).  Your Python code
> invoked from demo.c could "import xyzzy" and then call xyzzy.foo().
>
> So, WHAT am I missing...?

The fact that my C:\Python21 directory doesn't contain any directory
named "Demo"? Where do I get it? It wasn't in my "typical" Win32
installation.

John Roth
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From tundra at tundraware.com  Sat Jul 14 02:50:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 06:50:02 GMT
Subject: ANN: HB - Learn Python A Little Faster
Message-ID: <3B4FE9A6.DBBF3919@tundraware.com>

Learning a new language always comes to me in two parts:

Learn the pieces - Syntax, Semantics, mechanics - i.e., Read tutorials.

Put it all together - Learn the idioms, see a complete application,
understand the rationale for design decisions and so on.

I have completed an application written completely in Python.  Although
the application itself is very unremarkable (a budget management system),
it is certainly not a trivial or toy program.  It's just big enough
to be interesting.  

I wanted to make it available to others learning Python along with
the requisite documentation to see how all the parts fit together.
So, I went back and documented the thing and commented it heavily.

You'll find it at: http://www.tundraware.com/Software/HB/HB.tar.gz

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not intended to "teach" you Python or
programming or anything else.  The idea is that you already know how
to program and have a basic understanding of how Python does things.
The point here is to "Put It All Together" and show an application of
all the pieces as an integrated whole.


Program Features
================

This is a pretty straighforward Budget Management system.  Nothing too
esoteric here, really:

Unlimited Different Budgets
    Up to the limit of your disk space.

Unlimited Accounts 
    Well, the limit is what you can squeeze on a single screen.

Unlimited UnDo
    Limited by memory - if you run out of UnDo stack,
    you're using HB for WAY too complicated budgets ;)

Prints Reports To Printer (Win32 Only) Or Disk File (All OS)

Handles Monthly "Burn Rate" For Each Account

Pay, Debit, Credit, And Transfer Funds

Balance The Budget

Read And Write Budget Files


Code Features
=============

This is probably what you really care about:

Uses Every Major Python Data Structure
    Tuples, Tuples Of Tuples, Tuples Of Tuples Of Tuples, Lists,
    Dictionaries, and Objects

Has Mixture Of OO And Procedural Code
    Python is *really* good at this.

Uses A Regular Expression For Input Validation

Uses 'eval' To Demonstrate Runtime String Execution

(Some) Exception Handling

Disk, Keyboard, And Device I/O

Code Is Completely "UnStrung"
    There are no literals (other than newlines) embedded in the code
    which makes maintenance and internationalization very simple.

Completely Table-Driven Command Interpreter
    Kinda cool, actually.  A little complicated at first, but it makes
    adding new features a snap AND prepares the way for mating the program
    to a GUI if you must have one in your life.

Stack-Based Context Management And UnDo Facilities

LOADED With Explanatory Comments So You Understand What's Going On


Caveats And Acknowledgements
============================

I am an experienced programmer, but not an experienced *Python*
programmer.  This means that not everything in HB is necessarily good
Python - I hope it is, it probably mostly is, but it probably also has
some warts.  If you *are* an experienced "Pythonista" and you see
something in HB that makes you just wince, send me an email and let me
know what needs fixin'.

I also want to take a moment and thank the many friendly people of
comp.lang.python who answer my many stupid questions promptly and
correctly both on the newsgroup and privately.

Also, a big "Thank You" to http://www.diveintopython.org for one of the best
language tutorials I've ever seen.  It is a work-in-progress, but a
"must" if you are learning Python.

Finally, a huge thanks to GVR and the many people who designed,
implemented, and refine one of the slickest programming languages
around...


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Jul 20 17:02:42 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:02:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010720210242.487322892E@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/

Some additional information for extension writers.




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 26 11:43:45 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:43:45 -0700
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
 "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

> >    1. isnatural()
> >    2. isintegral()
> >    3. isrational()
> >    4. isreal()
> >    5. iscomplex()
> >
> >    a. isexact()
> 
> This is too many. I would strip this down to
> 
> A. iscomplex()
> B. isexact()
> C. isintegral()

I have to say that this would be more convenient for situations such as 
defining your own extension of number types for, say, exact arithmetic in 
Q[sqrt(3)].  Or even better Q[sqrt(-3)].  I was wishing I was able to do 
this recently for a different project unrelated to Python, unfortunately 
the program I was using didn't make it easy to plug in your own number 
types...

But a couple points of clarification:
(1) is it safe to assume that isintegral() implies isexact()?
(2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
rational integers?
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 31 18:38:38 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:38:38 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
In-Reply-To: <001101c119af$67dd1d80$a9e1fea9@carol>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107311623050.649-100000@bms>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Arthur Siegel wrote:
> Bill[sic] writes -
>
> >In this context, it comes from the CP4E motivation that people may be
> >called upon to script operations or interactions between their
> >`toys'... calling them "non-programmers" is shorter than saying,
> >`people who may need to program without knowing they are doing it'
> >(imo).
>
> But we are going around in circles - as I have been for some few
> years on the subject.  I guess I had always hoped that CP4E was
> really going to focus on turning non-programmers into programmers.
> It made sense to me that it would, because it happens that
> IMO Python is a great tool for doing so.
<...>
> To me CP4E is, can and should be a true initiative,
> not a semantic game.

I think you are missing something...
If you were designing a control system for the `toys', and needed to
expose a user level programming interface; would you be more likely to
choose languages C+S or language P (which can do both jobs)
[C+S == P, of course].

Unless CP4E is done as a "semantic game" with a larger language,
language P will never exist.


- Bruce




From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 16:36:21 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:36:21 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Grant Edwards wrote:

> What I don't understand is why polymorphism is all of a sudden
> an evil, nasty thing in the Python world -- something that must
> be banished at all costs (even if we have to change one of the
> basic mathematical operators and break existing programs).
> 
> Are the rulers of the Python Kingdom going to ban all
> polymorphism?  I thought it was one of the _strengths_ of
> Python, and here we are trying to stamp it out!

The different behaviour of "/" on floats and ints isn't
polymorphism, it's overloading. Two different operations.
Closely related, of course, but different. Generally
"polymorphism" is reserved for when what's being done
is "the same thing" in both cases.

Python doesn't generally object much to overloading either,
of course (def __div__(self, x): ...); and I find the
proposed change scary (what I wish is that Python had
made 1/2 give a rational from day 1, but it's too late
for that to happen unless Guido gets the time machine out
again). So I'm just quibbling.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 17:34:07 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:34:07 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:47:04 -0700, David Eppstein
<eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>In article <3B5C749A.59F97320 at tundraware.com>,
> Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>
>> Not formally, AFAIK.  For example, 3 with no decimal point following
>> could be anything from 2.5 to 3.4.
>
>No no no.  '3.' i.e. a floating point number with that value could be 
>anything in that range.  '3' means exactly the integer 3, no approximation 
>at all.

A mathematician is free to use '3' to represent a real - the fact that
it is real is implicit in the context. Compilers and interpeters
aren't able to determine that, so integers and floats have different
notations even when the represent equivalent values.

We can't exactly match mathematics here, but we don't have to go so
far as having different symbols for integer and float division -
mathematics uses the same set of symbols for both operations allowing
the context choose the operator. Why should we behave differently to
what non-programmers such as mathematicians expect?



From thomas at gatsoft.no  Wed Jul 25 09:26:37 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:26:37 GMT
Subject: User authentication in SOAP
Message-ID: <hOz77.41$bXi.178337792@news.telia.no>

Hi,

Just looked at SOAPpy from ActZero and it looks just like the thing I need
for a small project. I just wondered what would be the best method of
implementing username/password-protected services in a SOAP-server? Does
SOAP define any rules for this at all or does it place that responsibility
on the server?

Any hints appreciated.

Thomas




From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Jul  9 17:36:26 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:36:26 +0200
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703093458.02498dc0@mail.mindspring.com> <5.0.2.1.0.20010709085854.02491aa0@mail.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A23DA.9D737F43@lemburg.com>

Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
> 
> At 01:15 PM 7/9/2001 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> >Side note:
> >
> >         if x is None: ...
> >
> >is a possible workaround which is faster than using "==" !
> 
> I switched to that, but then there is this left over:
> 
>          if a==b:
> 
> where a and b are literally variables and could both be DateTimes, but one
> of them ends up being None and the exception occurs. Someone suggested I
> could use:
> 
>          if str(a)==str(b):
> 
> although before I got that suggestion, I just wrapped it with a try: and
> assumed inequality.

In this case you could use:

	if a and b and (a == b): ...

(DateTime instances are always true, None is false)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 20 19:33:54 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 16:33:54 -0700
Subject: Which Python version to code for?
References: <tlbbqas5b6hvff@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9jaf52$ff0$1@panix2.panix.com>

[posted & e-mailed]

In article <tlbbqas5b6hvff at corp.supernews.com>,
Charles Crain <chuxxx at swbell.net> wrote:
>
>I am part of the team working on SCons, the build tool for the Software
>Carpentry project.  We have an interesting quandry before us: what is
>the earliest version of Python we should support?  On the one hand, we
>would like to use the latest and greatest and be able to take advantage
>of the several powerful features added in recent Python releases.  On
>the other hand, we would like to avoid putting any barriers to adoption
>of our product that might arise from requiring users (particularly
>those in large organizations with high-intertia IT departments) to
>upgrade Python versions in order to use it.

Okay, I've done a bit of poking around on the Software Carpentry web
site to see if I can give you a good answer.  IMO, the answer depends on
whether this is intended to be a deployment tool for end users (i.e.
would someone installing a package on Linux need to use this?).

If the answer is "yes", you need to go back to 1.5.2.  If the answer is
"no", use whatever version of Python best fits your desire for features
versus stability, probably either 2.0.1 or 2.1.1.

Essentially, I'm arguing that it's "reasonable" to require a developer
to install a current version of a software package, but it's not
reasonable to so require an end user.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Mon Jul 30 19:39:03 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 00:39:03 +0100
Subject: win32api exception names?
Message-ID: <9k4r84$n85$1@uranium.btinternet.com>

Hi,
    See this:

[snip]

def executeFile(event):
    if resultPane.size() > 0:
        try:
            win32api.ShellExecute(0, "open" ,
str(resultPane.get(ACTIVE)),"","",1)
        except EnvironmentError:
            win32api.MessageBox(0,"File can not be opened, right double
click to open\nthe file's directory.", appName, 0, 0)

[snip]

I'm using this function to open a file listed in a Tkinter Listbox widget,
but i've run into some problems. First when i double click on .htm files
listed they work perfectly, opening in Explorer, But when i double click on
.txt files i get this error:

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\program files\python\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1285, in
__call__
    return apply(self.func, args)
  File "D:\Backup\Python Programs\PyFind\PyFind.py", line 61, in executeFile
    win32api.ShellExecute(0, "open" , str(resultPane.get(ACTIVE)),"","",1)
api_error: (31, 'ShellExecute', 'A device attached to the system is not
functioning.')

i'm trying to handle this exception, but being new to them i dunno what
exception is being raised, the 'except EnvironmentError:' line really isn't
getting it. any ideas?

G.Willoughby




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 11:23:30 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:23:30 -0500
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <15180.28530.628508.190958@beluga.mojam.com>

    Emile> Does it bother anyone that 
    Emile> a *= 3 + 4
    Emile> returns a different value from
    Emile> a = a * 3 + 4
    Emile> ??

No more than it bothers me that C behaves the same way.  When run, the
following program

    main() {
        int a;
        
        a = 7;
        printf("before: %d\n", a);
        a *= 3+4;
        printf("after (no parens): %d\n", a);
        
        a = 7;
        printf("before: %d\n", a);
        a *= (3+4);
        printf("after (w/ parens): %d\n", a);
        
        a = 7;
        printf("before: %d\n", a);
        a = a * 3 + 4;
        printf("after (unaugmented): %d\n", a);
    }

produces the following output

    before: 7
    after (no parens): 49
    before: 7
    after (w/ parens): 49
    before: 7
    after (unaugmented): 25

In short, the effect of the shortcut assignment operators is to evaluate the
expression on the right-hand side and apply it to the variable on the
left-hand side.  It is *not* a macro facility that just performs some sort
of textual substitution.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 21:27:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:27:04 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.995052624.21992.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4F9FE8.8B970B9C@engcorp.com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> ... if someone says "good for short
> programs <100 lines" -- mentioning a specific number ("100" in this case)
> -- wouldn't common sense dictate that the intention was also to indicate
> something like "Python is something *different than good* for programs
> >=100 lines (or let's say *significantly* greater than 100 lines -- to be
> reasonable and fair)?

I can't really argue with that.  I understand how you interpreted
the comment, but I didn't see it the same way, and apparently 
it wasn't intended that way either.  No big deal.

> Otherwise, I would think it much simpler and less ambiguous just to say
> "Python is good for programs small, medium, and large  -- which is, in
> fact, my view!  :-)

And mine, and (apparently) Phil's too!  We're close to deafening
each other with our agreement on this issue!  <grin>

(Okay, actually I would disagree with the word "good".  
Clearly Python is "excellent" for medium programs and 
"stellar" for large programs.  Case closed. ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 19:24:06 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:24:06 -0700
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E0396.E1210C13@alcyone.com>

Ben Wolfson wrote:

> So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize this is
> the
> third time I've said this but I think it would silence a lot of
> objections
> and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.

I suspect the reason that this otherwise reasonable proposal sort of
defeats the purpose of PEP 238.  The idea is to make Python more
intuitive to a novice by having the obvious division operator not do
integer division, so if you swap / and // in PEP 238, it means that a
novice programmer has to use // to get the behavior that's supposedly
easier to understand, which sort of misses the goal.

I suspect this wouldn't be considered a reasonable counterproposal for
that reason (even though it sounds fine to me, but then I don't
subscribe to the conclusions of PEP 238 in the first place).

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Who, my friend, can scale Heaven?
\__/ _The Epic of Gilgamesh_
    Physics reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/physics/
 A physics reference.


From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Jul  1 15:39:05 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 21:39:05 +0200
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9hnu8p$9fu$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Kragen Sitaker <kragen at dnaco.net> wrote:
...
> I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
> could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
> despite implementing operating systems in all four.  I think some of

ucsd-pascal came close, and certainly Wirths's wonderfull machine
Lilith programmed solely in Modula-2 did it (there was no other
language on the machine:) and surely you're not going to argue about
emacs here.  And then there was this M8600 based M6809 development
machine I once had the joy to play with for which all device drivers
had to be programmed in Pascal.  So here you have 4 examples, need more?
-- 
groetjes, carel


From sheila at spamcop.net  Sat Jul 21 14:47:38 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:47:38 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org> <atehltknbavv0irts7ousrh4ed8t36op5f@4ax.com> <cphew6fjao.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <1djjlt0ho504505v0ljfllb74o76acffjp@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:29:13 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<cphew6fjao.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>:

:Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:
:
:> In an attempt to address the "why" of this problem, I have posted the
:> following article to two mailing lists to which I belong, for AP
:> Computer Science teachers:
:
:Thanks, Sheila!  Finally someone who *does* something about this
:rather than repeating old arguments... :-)  Looking forward to the
:responses you get.

So far, there have been about 8 responses. I think I need to allow a
week or two, especially since it is summer--many teachers on vacation
and not checking e-mail regularly--before it is worth sharing the
results. Especially, the one mailing list is moderated, and sometimes it
takes several days for the moderator to approve and post articles. Heck,
there's no rush here, right? Maybe I should just wait until mid- to
late-August. (The mailing lists have about 450 and 1900 members
respectively. Don't know what sort of return I will get.)

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 17 20:34:42 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:34:42 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220>
Message-ID: <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com>

Ewald van Houte wrote:
[ Parts elided for brevity. ]
> xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.) wrote
> > #!/usr/bin/env python
> > i = 2.5;
> > while i < 1e7:
> >         j = 2.5 * 2.5
> >         i += 1
> > print i, j
> >
> > The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
> >      python script:     37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
> >      perl script:     15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
> >      java compiled:     1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
> >      C compiled:     0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%
> 
> Tried the same with for loop and while loop
> 
> def f1():
>         i=2.5
>         while i<1e7:
>                 j=2.5*2.5
>                 i+=1
>         print i,j
> 
> def f3():
>         i=2.5
>         for i in xrange(2.5,1e7+1):
>                 j=2.5*2.5
>         print i,j
> 
> Results
> f1()            34.5 seconds
> f3()            18.8 seconds
> 
> some improvement but f3() will still be slower than Perl version (~30%)

You forgot to normalize your result with his by using the results of f1():

>>> 15.36/(18.8*(34.5/37.93))
0.898249768733

Only about 10% slower.


From donmalla at yahoo.co.in  Thu Jul 19 02:16:54 2001
From: donmalla at yahoo.co.in (donmalla at yahoo.co.in)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 06:16:54 -0000
Subject: python newbie question
Message-ID: <9j5u0m+jpri@eGroups.com>

Hi All,
I am a newbie to python. I am following the "Diving into Python 
tutorial".
However I am having a problem with the for loop
Here is the problem:

>>> vec = [2,4,6]
>>> [3*x for x in vec]
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

  In a  list called vec I assign values.when I ask it to print the 
list , it does print.
  >>> for x in vec:
   >>>    print x
  The o/p is 
  
  2 
  4
  6

However when I try to manipulate the list , using for loop like this :

[3*x for x in vec]

I get a syntax error "invalid syntax"

Please help me. I am using Python 1.5 on Windows 2000.

Cheers !!!!
-Ratnakar
------------------------------------------------------------

Ratnakar Malla,
 ECE Dept,
Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge,
LA, 70802





From tom-list at home.com  Sun Jul 29 23:55:31 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:55:31 -0400
Subject: mistake in Python 2.1.1 debug download
Message-ID: <3b64daaa$1_5@Usenet.com>

I just downloaded the following:
Python-2.1.1-Debug.zip

It includes Python22 files.  I assume this is a mistake.

Also, where do the .pdb files go?  Aren't .pdb files compiler specific?  Is
this debug download platform/compiler specific?  A readme file would be
helpful.

Tom.



Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
    ** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------        
                http://www.usenet.com


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 14:54:48 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:54:48 -0500
Subject: Python code to express a large integer in words?
References: <3B66EDD0.62196C8D@mjs400.co.uk>
Message-ID: <CC8E8B653E34FE14.404EDCBD7E04E166.6B4ABEFBB3D42057@lp.airnews.net>

In article <3B66EDD0.62196C8D at mjs400.co.uk>, ptah  <ptah at mjs400.co.uk> wrote:
>For interest I have included code below from the as400network Club Tech
>iSeries Programming Tips - 06.21.01 it is written in IBM RPG IV and is a
RPG--fascinating.
>kind of DLL (we call them service programs) that does the above, I would
>like to see how much more succinct a Python equivalent could be, purely
>because I would like to jump ship and code in something more expressive
>and need to put the case for Python to people who are not in the habit
>of thinking in an abstract way ;)
			.
			.
			.
<URL: http://mini.net/tcl/591.html > does the same for
Tcl, and several European languages (if you ask nicely,
Richard's likely to do it for Tagalog or Tibetan, too).
For Python, see <URL:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=477859294d5872dd >.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 06:29:15 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:29:15 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <20010710114119.W8098@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101425140.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 01:25:28PM +0400, Roman Suzi wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> > > > Which category to report it in the Bug tracker?
> 
> > > 'Python Library' is the best fit, I guess, but it doesn't really matter.
> > > The group should be 'platform specific', though :) Feel free to assign it
> > > to me, I think I'll check in a fix soon anyway :)
> 
> > I did. With hope the fix is not "remove" ;-)
> 
> I guess you don't read python-dev ;) I'm the Backward Compatibility
> HogMonster, I do not only not remove, I refuse to let others remove :)

Then hope has is not dead.
 
> > It could also be nice to have os.getpriority()

And setpriority too.
 
> Yes, I guess it would. Care to submit a patch ? :-)

Not before I undestand Python's C API...

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:27:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:27:41 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpr8v35qkb.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
> > [..]
> > Victor, we don't have enough information.  Are you using Jython, or
> > are you somehow invoking C-Python from Java?  Can you reproduce the
> > problem in a self-contained example program?
> 
> 
> I am not using Jython.  I am running a regular one (if it's called
> C-Python, I didn't know) from Java using Runtime.exec("python
>  something.py").  Its version is 2.0 (at least that's what it
> reports when run with -V).
> 
> I cannot always reproduce the problem in my _current_ system (it
> only happens in some runs), much less in a whole another program.
> 
> In order to write a test program I have to know what to try to
> reproduce.  Should it itself be multi-threaded?  How complex should
> it be?  If I don't get the same result, does it mean the problem is
> in my Java program or is it just a coincidence?  (as I wrote before,
> it does not happen if I run Java program under the debugger instead
> of simply executing it)  You see, it would probably take me as long
> to create a "self-contained" example as it did to create the system
> in its current state.
> 
> One of my colleagues suggested wrapping the call to minidom.parse
> in a critical section (locking something before, unlocking after),
> another hint came from you: let the main program sleep after fork.
> At this point I frankly care only about one thing: to prevent it
> from happening.

Debugging this would be tough even if I were sitting next to you.
Doing it remote is impossible.  Good luck!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jorjun at mac.com  Sat Jul 21 07:55:02 2001
From: jorjun at mac.com (jorjun)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 12:55:02 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j9i19$p96$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B596D95.C87DFFCD@mac.com>


Aahz Maruch wrote:
> i'M aFraId i doN't UnDerStaNd wHy YoU THinK caSE-InsENsitIvitY miGhT bE
> A gOoD idEA.
> --
Currently if I import a module and the identifiers lOoK_lIkE_ThIs
then I have to precisely follow the ugly conventions in my own code.


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 14:04:59 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:04:59 -0500
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <3B45A5AD.12631.573C6B@localhost>
References: <994426394.405.95578.l7@yahoogroups.com>
	<3B45A5AD.12631.573C6B@localhost>
Message-ID: <15173.64971.638094.552178@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bill> As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's
    Bill> permission before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one
    Bill> can implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is
    Bill> safe, thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.

I have nothing useful to help you with your quest, but it seems that if the
ActiveX control can say "trust me!", it's sort of like asking the fox to
guard the hen house.  Did I misunderstand something?  Wouldn't all ActiveX
controls simply implement IObjectSafety simply to make them easier to use
(less annoying to the user)?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From jim at publishingresources.com  Tue Jul  3 11:58:24 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:58:24 -0000
Subject: MS "bans" GPL [OFF Topic]
References: <7iq1ktcmslo24kbr8qvob2g3hpgleuf025@4ax.com> <9hshbp$oqv$2@216.39.170.247>
Message-ID: <Xns90D379471D989jimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

>XP: the coming evil - you thought it was bad now? Just wait.
>Dave LeBlanc

Off topic but really good read on the evils of XP.
http://grc.com/dos/winxp.htm



From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Wed Jul 25 00:40:54 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:40:54 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995872488.11031.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <240720012140547935%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995872488.11031.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> FYI, PEP 42 (the "small feature request" PEP) contains
> 
>     - New math module radians() and degrees() functions.
> 
> Somebody quick add grads before Python becomes obsolete <wink>.

Actually, grads probably should be in there.

I can live without points...the intersection of people to whom points
are important and and people to whom Python is important is fairly
small (although I can think of several members just around Puget
Sound).

   NxE 1/4 N + S 1/4 W --> what?

Answer:  Over there somewhere...facing North and pointing with the left
arm.

   --John


From gustafl at algonet.se  Wed Jul  4 08:59:00 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 12:59:00 GMT
Subject: AttributeError: 'getopt' module has no attribute 'GetoptError'
References: <Xns90D3ECC92390Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <ku7kxp32z3.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <Xns90D4988CE4ADEgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote:

>> I use Python 2.1 on Win98.  Try to use the getopt module, but get
>> the error in the subject line. What's wrong?

>your test program isn't called "getopt.py" by any chance?

Oh. Yes, it is... Thank you.

Gustaf


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 03:20:08 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:20:08 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lm5h3.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <ta4nltkr6m4friraviemkhelo6hp4ttnn1@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lnh0v.41v.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <kqinlt0g5qqscvia0rk8il8b1paj47upjn@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 06:28:48 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Integers are exact!!! That's the point: if numbers represent inexact
>quantities, they should be expressed as floats. Since working with
>integers and rationals is predictable and +-*/div,mod give correct
>(with int/int->rational), they should be used when we want to know the
>true answer. If it's not possible anyway, use floats and don't waste
>computation time for the 100th decimal place which is wrong anyway.

If I say my local shop is 1 mile away, is that exact? I don't thinks
so ;-)

Rounding to an integer is much more common even than rounding to
decimal places. The problem comes when people confuse this with dealin
with an integer measure. Distance is a real measure which is most
conveniently and accurately approximated using floats - so use floats
and be done with it.

If you are working with naturally integer measures then yes, integers
are exact - and integer division is the only division that makes
sense. If you are working with measures that are inherently real, than
using an integer to represent the value is no more exact than if you
used a float - less so, in fact, as the float has much more precision.
In such cases float division makes sense, but you should have been
using floats anyway because it was naturally a real arithmetic
problem.



From sheila at spamcop.net  Thu Jul 12 22:32:21 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:32:21 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <jpb-BA1E76.20231012072001@news-server.cfl.rr.com> <slrn9ksn6c.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <fansktc0ngutrv4tvr9lg3qh9kkulfrpdv@4ax.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:27:56 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote
in comp.lang.python in article <slrn9ksn6c.jl.grante at tuxtop.visi.com>:

:On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:23:07 GMT, Joe Block <jpb at ApesSeekingKnowledge.net> wrote:
:>
:>> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
:>> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
:>
:>To print it, so it can be read while I'm away from the net?
:
:Away from the net? 
:
:Huh? Why would you ever be away from the net?  ;)

Well, for instance, my DSL connection went down for three days (just
this past week). But, I have saved a number of Python tutorial documents
for Tkinter to my local machine (thank goodness!). So I was at least
able to program!

Or, if you teach a programming course for about 20 high school students
in a non-networked lab with 28 standalone machines...maybe it would be
nice to have local documents on the machines???

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Wed Jul 11 08:53:14 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:53:14 -0500
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <007901c10a08$7432ffc0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com>


> Does it bother anyone that 
> 
> a *= 3 + 4
> 
> returns a different value from
> 
> a = a * 3 + 4
> 
> ??

The behavior of *= is consistent between Python and C (where it was
borrowed from).  Remember to imagine that there are parenthesis around
the RHS of the *= operator.

In other words:

    a *= 3 + 4   !=   a = a * 3 + 4

    a *= 3 + 4   ==   a = a * (3 + 4)






From nperkins7 at home.com  Thu Jul 26 03:51:45 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:51:45 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996098094.16930.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <l_P77.559300$eK2.117135519@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

Here's a nice little use of type/class unification:

instead of using:
if type(x) is type(0):

we can use:
if type(x) is int:

or, for type checking..

assert type(num) is int
assert type(msg) is str

( I assume the use of 'is', rather than '==',  is acceptable here )

..much prettier.





From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 16:20:14 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:20:14 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995898939.27893.python-list@python.org> <6unolt4kg5pjav1k0c7qjv8mg4qe0fdbaj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <cpzo9uoz9k.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:

> The mathematical operation of division is traditionally represented as
> ? in general - or as a horizontal line between the numerator and
> denominator. Only rationals merit the / in mathematics - it's simply
> the best compromise.
> 
> But mathematics uses the same set of symbols equally for both integer
> and real division - it's rarely made explicit which is in use as it is
> normally blatantly obvious. So I don't believe (1) is valid.

I believe you are wrong here on both counts.  Knuth, a mathematician
if there ever was one, uses / for division when written in-line and a
horizontal line in "display" formulas.  He also uses an explicit floor
notation to indicate integer division, and without that his divisions
are real divisions.  (Knuth's floor notation acts like a pair of
brackets around an expression; the left bracket looks like an L, the
right bracket looks like a reverse L.  He has a similar ceiling
notation where the L's are upside down.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 15:08:15 2001
From: phrxy at csv.warwick.ac.uk (John J. Lee)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:08:15 +0100
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
References: <mailman.995443830.26172.python-list@python.org> <3B55724D.465E8A44@engcorp.com> <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107182005070.21247-100000@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk>

On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:
[...]
> cc -O2       0.28
> cc           0.62
> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
> perl        28.9
> python      66.8
>
> Hm.  I'm beginning to wonder if I compiled python with -O2 or not.
> Plus, I'm becoming more and more fond of ocaml.
>
> The python function I used was the basic
>
> def test ():
>     i = 2.5
>     j = 2.5
>     while i < 1e7:
>         j = 2.5 * 2.5
>         i = i + 1.0
>     print "%f %f\n" % (i, j)
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     test ()

When do you ever write Python code that does this kind of thing??  For
example, if you're doing lots of fp work, don't you use Numeric?

Must try OCaml, though (and Haskell)...


John



From michele_rosen at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 18:48:03 2001
From: michele_rosen at yahoo.com (Michele Rosen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:48:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Newbie Q: Missing Frame
In-Reply-To: <996171966.397.88548.l7@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <20010726224803.85924.qmail@web13407.mail.yahoo.com>

I'm not sure why this is happening, but one way to
avoid this would be to use grid instead of pack and
specify the row and column where you want the frames
and label to appear...

M

Message: 17
   Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:49:49 GMT
   From: engsol at teleport.com
Subject: Newbie Q: Missing Frame

When I run the following code, I see a large window,
with two frames,
the blue on top, and the yellow on the bottom.

 When I attempt to add a label to frame 2 , (by
removing the #'s), I
still see the blue frame, but the yellow frame is
missing, and just
the label is showing in it's place.

Running on NT4, Python versions 1.5+ and 2.0

Any help appreciated.
Engsol

PS..is there a way to break out of "mainloop" via a
button command,
and run the code subsequent to the GUI code?


***** Start sample code ******

from Tkinter import *
win = Tk()

def test():

  frame_1 = Frame(win, width = 500, height = 100, bg =
'blue')
  frame_1.pack()

  frame_2 = Frame(win, width = 500, height = 100, bg =
'yellow')
  frame_2.pack()

  # label_1 = Label(frame_2, text = "Will this work?",
bg = 'red')
  #label_1.pack()

  win.mainloop()

test()

**** End sample code ****





=====
Give the joy of giving. Find out how at www.charity-checks.org.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/



From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 07:22:02 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:22:02 -0400
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com> <mailman.995288852.27369.python-list@python.org> <3B5390BC.C5FFCD2A@engcorp.com> <mailman.995346569.21423.python-list@python.org> <3b5480f5@news.cybertours.com> <mailman.995426255.25861.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B55715A.DA6C72CD@engcorp.com>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> 
> Motor control is not *real* timing sensitive (compared with the speed
> of the computer IMHO) so the winioport module should work for you.
> 
> Note the prerequisite software when downloading and installing.
> 
> Peter Hansen's module (whatever it is) might also be a good choice if
> he publishes it.

Ummm... I don't *have* any module.... 

(I think you mixed me up with another.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul  6 21:34:11 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 01:34:11 GMT
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
References: <mailman.994434612.10076.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B46673D.8030309@ActiveState.com>

Bill Bell wrote:

> Does someone happen to know if there is an incantation that can 
> be muttered in Python that implements IObjectSafety--or of some 
> alternative way of doing this?


Neil's solution sounds the best.  However the win32com.axscript.axscript 
module supports IObjectSafety.  Once you import this module any Python 
COM object can implement this interface like any other.  It is in the 
axscript module simply due to the fact the AXScript engine must support 
it (and does).

Mark.



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Wed Jul 11 12:10:21 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:10:21 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bug in rfc822
In-Reply-To: <15180.30607.11847.673371@anthem.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107112009360.17694-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
> I added a default argument to the _Mailbox class in Python 2.2's
> mailbox.py module:
>
>     class _Mailbox:
> 	def __init__(self, fp, factory=rfc822.Message):

   Sorry, I saw it in Python 2.1, not 2.2. Just tested a minute ago. :)

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 00:44:44 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 04:44:44 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:49:01 -0700, "Brian Quinlan" <brian at sweetapp.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.995773776.14791.python-list at python.org>:

:> I tried looking under the /Python20 directory for source or something
:> for the Exception classes, but can't find it. For example, right now
:> I'm working on subclassing the rfc822.py module, and I found the file
:> rfc822.py in /Python20/Lib and studied the source until I understood
:> it, and could subclass it. I'd like to find something similar for the
:> standard exception classes. I looked in the /include directory and
:> some others but can't find what I'm needing.
:
:Check out http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-exceptions.html
:

Thanks, Brian, but I've seen the docs many times. I need more info than
that. Like example code, or source code.

However, someone else gave me some pointers.

If I want to see the actual source for the exceptions.c class, I can
browse at sourceforge.net here:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/

I found the exceptions.c file here:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/Python/exceptions.c

However, I may not need that much detail and background. Maybe a few
examples of subclassing exceptions in Python would do. So, one might
want to look at these:

See the source for this module:
http://python.org/doc/current/lib/module-xml.sax.html
(although, later thought to possibly be a bit complicated)

or

How about viewing the source for the ConfigParser.py module.

Anyhow, I've looked a bit over the exceptions.c file, which is
interesting. Now I'm off to study the source for the (above) suggested
Python modules, as examples of subclassing exceptions.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From guido at digicool.com  Sun Jul 22 13:20:15 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:20:15 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:11:09 CDT."
             <15195.2349.947801.54567@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15195.2349.947801.54567@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107221720.NAA11923@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> I just reread the PEP at
> 
>     http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
> 
> It looks like it hasn't been updated since March.  I see no support for the
> argument that the current integer division semantics are confusing, only a
> claim that the current semantics are a problem.  Perhaps there's a more
> recent version of the PEP available that hasn't been released to the
> website.

Skip,

I've asked Moshe today to update the rationale based on the discussion
in c.l.py.  He said he would.  So just be patient.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From tombraider104 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 16:55:18 2001
From: tombraider104 at hotmail.com (Richard Gelling)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:55:18 +0100
Subject: (no subject)
Message-ID: <OE66aV7VoAxRYG6jj6900003d59@hotmail.com>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010726/27a35095/attachment.html>

From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul 23 13:11:10 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:11:10 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B639C.FF5961E7@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.995848837.9325.python-list@python.org> <k61olt001jfs878bo50snpb9f2uu80utee@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <ogmolt014ukb5h52hgrq1klu64buvhrrod@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:21:58 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk>
wrote:

>Integers are much more used in scripting code than floats - subscripts
>and loop indices being the main culprits. Integer division happens
>quite a bit. All that code is just going to suddenly stop working. How
>nice.

If integer division is more common than float division, why not let '/'
retain its current meaning and use '//' for "yes, I want a float result"?
int / int -> int
float / int, int / float, float / float -> whatever these currently mean
with "//" in Guido's patch
int // int -> float, rational, or whatever

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 20 14:07:58 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:07:58 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:18:15 -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
[...]
>Likewise, in Python you rarely see syntactical but silly choices like:
>
>    >>> xlsoALwl390sslkslWW = 37
>    >>> xlsoALwL390sslkslWW = 38
>    >>> print xlsoALwL390sslkslWW,xlsoALwl390sslkslWW
>    38 37
>
That does bring up the subject of machine-generated symbols though.
And case sensitivity in dictionaries. I use base52 [A-Za-z] encoded
md5's in certain contexts. If I use those as keys, will it break?



From dsavitsk at e-coli.net  Sun Jul 29 12:47:39 2001
From: dsavitsk at e-coli.net (douglas savitsky)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:47:39 GMT
Subject: 2.0 or 2.1 on win32
References: <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <9jti6t$e2g$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <L6X87.58021$C81.4985811@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9jti6t$e2g$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <h5F67.47313$C81.4027272 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
> >
> >i am installing a new server and i need to know if there is reason to
> >install either 2.0 or 2.1 or any other version.  The server is win2k (2
> >1GHZ, 512, raid, etc.).  the clients are also win2k.
> >
> >the applications that run on the clients connect the the server via DCOM.
> >the python running on the server connects to other objects sometimes with
> >COM and sometimes not.  the clients use 2.0 as there seems to be some
> >weirdness in 2.1/tkinter on windows, but there won't be any tkinter on
the
> >server.  so, should i stick with 2.0 on the server as well? are there
> >stability issues or compatability issues to be aware of with other
versions?
>
> I'd say for starters that the question should be "2.0.1 or 2.1.1?"
>
> Overall, my personal preference is to deal with cross-version issues as
> little as possible, so if your clients are using 2.0.1, the server
> should, too.  (And, yes, I do definitely recommend upgrading the clients
> if possible.)
> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)
>
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
> Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
>
> Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be
reserved.

thanks for the response.

people have always been ambiguous in the past as to whether installing
activepython or python + win32 extensions was the better choice.  as far as
i can tell active python is based upon 2.1 and not 2.1.1.  should this be
the deciding factor?

doug




From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 10:18:39 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:18:39 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: python vs kung fu
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5258@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171813320.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> Kung Fu! Karate! Jujitsu. Aikido.   
> Python.  Perl.  Java.  PHP.
> Now I wouldn't want to get into a fight with anyone who is a black belt from
> the major four martial arts.  But given a preference, I would choose Aikido,
> since it redirects the attackers force.  
> But some people like debates that lead nowhere, and language debates are a
> key example.  Now smart software developers actually appeal to all the major
> camps.  Let's look at the open source database sapdb at www.sapdb.org.  They
> actually have developed interfaces for Java, Perl, and Python.  Rather then
> saying one language is better, they opened the spectrum to what they feel
> are the major players.  And activestate at www.activestate.com has developed
> tools and language versions for Perl, Python, and TCL.  

However, I usually see: "Java", "C++" (or more rare: "Perl") in job
announces...

> Language debates remind me of the old joke about life in Communist Russia.
> A supervisor saw a worker digging a hole, and another filling it up.  After
> this happened with a dozen holes, he went over and asked what was going on.
> They replied that the one worker who plants the trees is sick, but they
> still wanted to be productive for the day.

:-) 

There is another similar one:
A worker runs to and from with empty tray. When asked why it is empty?
He answers: I have accelerated(*) my work but the one who must load it
have not accelerated yet;-)

(*) Acceleration (uskorenije) was another Soviet slogan.

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From me at mikerobin.com  Mon Jul 30 12:43:59 2001
From: me at mikerobin.com (Michael Robin)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 09:43:59 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <52e5ab5f.0107300843.4f82a2@posting.google.com>

Marcin seems to have covered much more detail then I could have, but I
thought it intersting to mention one more (simple) thing.
Python has not only a single-reciever method dispatch syntax, but also
keywords and built-in operators, and it uses these it's advantage to
escape a restrictive dispactch. (Python x.plus(y) (with no
__overrides__ :)) or Smalltalk x+y or x plus: y has little choice but
to depend only on x.) The Python bulit-ins operate in a sometimes
arbitrary manner, but they try and do the most "useful thing" and
rules are few and can be learned. Take "/" (and PEP238) as an example
of how a built-in is special. (Also, [3]*2 == [3,3] but not [[3],[3]],
or [6], or an error.)
(One could argue that a more generic dispatch (mutli-methods or
whatever) could be used to bring the behavior to the user level - but
we have other languages for that.)
So I think "obj in Class/Type" is useful shortcut as long as it
doesn't break something essential.

OTOH, (why is there always an OH?) this does suffer from the "it just
sounds good" syndrome which could lead to improper uses of "in", like
"is" is abused today in place of "==".  (I can also see "x is <type>"
getting used (and again meaning the wrong thing), as it "sounds good".
(Maybe in this case we'd be better off with just "id(x)==id(y)".) "x
isa <type>" is really what we want if we want a keyword.


m



-------------
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in message news:<slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>...
> 28 Jul 2001 18:33:33 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> pisze:
> 
> > This implies (at least to me) that 'in' would be a general shorthand
> > for 'isinstance'.  But then I would sort of expect '3 in [1,2,3,4]'
> > to behave like 'isinstance(3, [1,2,3,4])'
> 
> If you forget about 'isinstance' then everything is ok, right?
> 'in' performs some membership test whose details depend on the second
> argument. It should not be more confusing that '+' being either addition
> of numbers and concatenation of sequences. We don't expect "a"-(-"b")
> to be equivalent to "a"+"b" just because 3-(-4) is equivalent to 3+4.
> 
> Now thow in 'isinstance' as an old way to spell a specific membership
> test (for types and classes) which doesn't have to be learned about
> at all.
> 
> > Or you could just say that type objects implement a __contains__
> > method that does an isinstance. But if classes and types are unified,
> > that would get in the way of classes that define __contains__.
> 
> It indeed shows a flaw in unifying "attributes of instances which
> are defined by their classes" with "attributes of class objects
> themselves".
> 
> For example many objects are hashed by what o.__hash__() returns,
> but not type objects, because their __hash__ is something completely
> different (it expects an argument and hashes it instead of the
> receiver). Similarly for most magic methods.
> 
> It more or less works because intersection of proper attributes of
> type objects and attributes which are always polymorphically extracted
> using names (and not slots in the representation of type objects)
> happens to be empty.
> 
> This is so hardwired into Python and pushed by type/class unification
> that I don't believe it can be avoided without redesigning the language
> from scratch.
> 
> This particular case of __contains__ is not different than e.g.
> __hash__ or __str__. You can't redefine in Python how your class object
> (or type object in Python-2.2) will be hashed or printed, you won't
> be able to override the membership test either (and you can't now
> AFAIK) - unless something solves the generic problem of putting class
> attributes and static instance attributes in one namespace.


From meowbot at meowing.net  Wed Jul  4 04:54:21 2001
From: meowbot at meowing.net (Methodical Meowbot)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 04:54:21 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <87lmm5dqjq.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>

18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) wrote:

> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> application in air traffic control.

Software like that would seem to be begging for a language with some
formal validation behind it, like Ada.  With Python, you would have to
reinvent and implement that part of the process yourself, and that
doesn't seem like very much fun at all.


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul 19 09:12:43 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 15:12:43 +0200
Subject: dnslib license?
Message-ID: <3B56DCCB.6EF0DEED@stroeder.com>

Hi Guido,

sorry to bother you directly.

You might have noticed that Anthony Baxter and me are pushing his
module DNS derived from your dnslib to SourceForge. So far so good
but I don't have any clue about licensing issues. Can you shed some
light on it?

See below your original README shipped as file README.guido in
Anthony's tar.gz.

Ciao, Michael.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This directory contains a module (dnslib) that implements a DNS
(Domain Name Server) client, plus additional modules that define
some
symbolic constants used by DNS (dnstype, dnsclass, dnsopcode).

Type "python dnslib.py -/" for a usage message.

You can also import dnslib and write your own, more sophisticated
client code; use the test program as an example (there is currently
no
documentation :-).

--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <Guido.van.Rossum at cwi.nl>
URL:  <http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 19:35:35 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:35 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <011e01c113d0$34d0a9a0$0101010a@local>

Both of these changes fall in the same group IMHO... they
break a lot of code.

Prove to me (to us, the naysayers) why we really need them.

Don't tell me that newbies need this to learn the language,
as we know they don't.  We were all newbies once; which of
us had a problem with either int division or case sensitivity.

Guido, Moshe, dudes, I have a lot of respect for you, but it
has always been because of the high level of reliability
in Python.  This hurts.





From gradha at iname.com  Sat Jul 21 13:47:42 2001
From: gradha at iname.com (gradha at iname.com)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:47:42 +0200
Subject: The windows python.exe interpreter hangs processing large files.
Message-ID: <u7fcj9.uis.ln@127.0.0.1>

Hi.

I have tried to use some Linux scripts I have under Windows, and the
python.exe ran in a dos Box under Win98 just hangs when it has to
process slightly big text files (over 20 KB). Could it be just because
I use the DOTALL option in regular expressions? Under Linux everything
goes blazing fast, and since everything hangs I don't know what to do
or how to debug it, especially because Windows is not my native work
environment and don't master any tools there.

What can I do to fix this strange behaviour? I am using a Python 2.0
windows release, if that matters.

--
 Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org


From bos at hack.org  Fri Jul 20 07:46:23 2001
From: bos at hack.org (Rikard Bosnjakovic)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:46:23 +0200
Subject: Problem with Modules/posixmodule.o
References: <3B578472.5EA8CAD5@steenerson.com>
Message-ID: <3B581A0F.2D180107@hack.org>

Blair Steenerson wrote:

> ./Modules/posixmodule.c:4053: sys/statvfs.h: No such file or directory
> ./Modules/posixmodule.c:4102: sys/statvfs.h: No such file or directory
> make: *** [Modules/posixmodule.o] Error 1

sys/statvfs.h belongs to the glibc-distribution. You might want to check
that it's installed properly.


-- 
Rikard Bosnjakovic - http://bos.hack.org/cv/ - ICQ: 1158217

Anyone sending unwanted advertising e-mail to my address will be
charged $250 for network traffic and computing time. By extracting my
address from this message or its header, you agree to these terms.


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 24 18:24:31 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:24:31 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <4197FA5DD22AD5118ADE00805F6FA62F3B67BD@eden.vmlabs.com>
References: <4197FA5DD22AD5118ADE00805F6FA62F3B67BD@eden.vmlabs.com>
Message-ID: <20010725002431.C21770@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 02:32:05PM -0700, John Schmitt wrote:

> Hopefully a tool that would provide [case-insensitive-but-preserving
> editing of Python code] isn't tied to something I would like to use.

Oh come one, any *decent* editor would have it optional :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 31 16:35:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 00:35:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <3B670BB3.48D4A5A5@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0108010034480.27283-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Paul Prescod wrote:

>Michael Chermside wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> How about this:
>>
>> def f():
>>     for x in g():
>>         yield x * 2
>>
>> Of course it gives a generator, not a list... but that
>> seems to be a reasonable form to represent an infinite sequence.
>
>How about if we combine your ideas:
>
>y = [yield x*2 for x in g()]

O, yes! Generators need lambda form too!

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 31, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "All things are green unless they are not." _/




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 16:12:08 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:12:08 -0400 
Subject: What's wrong with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F9@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Thanks.  I'll try it, unless someone has a better idea.

-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:05 PM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
Subject: RE: What's wrong with this program


On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Thanks for the correction.

   Actually I think you don't need ftp.connect() at all - it is called in
ftp.__init__...

> Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
> from one server directory to another server directory?

   I don't know - I've never used ftplib, but the idea is obvious: put it
one by one. Something like this:

for filename in somelist:
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 27 13:18:45 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:18:45 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <mailman.996217251.21555.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B61A275.82581457@Lugoj.Com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [James C. Ahlstrom]
> > ...
> > The problem is that the new Python features, as wonderful as they are,
> > are chosen for Computer Science Purity, not day-to-working-day
> > importance to someone actually trying to write a widely used bullet
> > proof program.
> 
> As my physicists friend like to say, "that's not even wrong".  Write a PEP.

Are you seriously suggesting he write a PEP to inhibit the other PEPs? Or
are you demanding something else?

> while-compsci-purists-denounce-python-for-its-pragmatism-ly y'rs  - tim

I've checked the Google archives, and I've come to the conclusion that you
are of the position that anyone who doesn't constantly upgrade should not be
supported, in the sense that if they report bugs, write books about Python,
or ask for porting assistance, their questions will all be answered with
"Upgrade first, then we'll talk". Is that basically correct?


From bernhard at intevation.de  Wed Jul 25 10:23:30 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:23:30 GMT
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
References: <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jmkp2$2d1b$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list at python.org>,
	Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> I want to have nice graphs from Python class hierarchies.  The daVinci
> package can do it 

> I need this solution under Linux and Open Source 

Note that daVince is not Free Software.
	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From kseehof at neuralintegrator.com  Tue Jul 31 06:40:07 2001
From: kseehof at neuralintegrator.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 03:40:07 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org> <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <3B65FF05.7F262FEB@engcorp.com> <3b667634.884329538@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <009801c119ad$2ad93880$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:42:45 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
wrote:
>
> >William Tanksley wrote:
> >>
> >> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
> >> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >>
> >> >> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
> >>
> >> >How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
> >> >terse acronym to learn)?
> >>
> >> Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
> >> nice because it was in common use before.
> >[...]
> >> OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want
a
> >> plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?
> >
> >Without necessarily understanding the question or its implications,
> >reading the first posting my subconscious came up with "us", too.
> >On the other hand, we use "self", not "me", so it's not conceptually
> >consistent.
> >
> How about clarg?

Is that a proposed keyword or a Klingon name?  :-)






From greg at mad-scientist.com  Mon Jul 16 18:23:33 2001
From: greg at mad-scientist.com (Gregory P . Smith)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:23:33 -0700
Subject: [Mojonation-devel] Re: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
In-Reply-To: <20010716151219.A30652@glacier.fnational.com>; from nas@python.ca on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 03:12:19PM -0700
References: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com> <15187.23983.562368.858629@beluga.mojam.com> <20010716151219.A30652@glacier.fnational.com>
Message-ID: <20010716152333.F4410@mad-scientist.com>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 03:12:19PM -0700, Neil Schemenauer wrote:
> Skip Montanaro wrote:
> >     zooko> But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default
> >     zooko> argument to an inner function, like this:
> > 
> >     >>> def silliest_func():
> >     >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
> >     >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
> >     >>>         pass
> >     >>>     return inner_silliest_func
> >     >>> 
> >     >>> blarg = {}
> >     >>> for i in range(2**13):
> >     >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()
> > 
> >     zooko> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:
> > 
> >     >>> del blarg
> > 
> >     zooko> none of the memory is freed up!
> 
> If I do this:
> 
>     while 1:
>         blarg = {}
>         for i in range(2**13):
>             blarg[i] = silliest_func()
> 
> the Python process size seems to remain constant.  Are you sure this
> leaks memory?  I'm testing with Python 1.5.2 BTW.
> 
>   Neil

[Removed mojonation-devel from the CC list]

It doesn't appear to leak memory for me either.  The difference as
zooko noticed does show up though:

His first example that didn't use a function holding a reference via
default parameters -immediately- released the consumed memory when the
reference to blarg was deleted.

The version above that uses the function reference doesn't seem to
ever release that memory even when the reference to blarg has been
deleted.  (yet it doesn't go above 34M when I put it in a while 1 loop
as you have)

I tested with python 2.1.1c1.

Greg



From gaul at spam.utexas.edu  Wed Jul 11 19:30:21 2001
From: gaul at spam.utexas.edu (Andrew Gaul)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:30:21 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpoc9.tod.gaul@meatring.cs.utexas.edu>

In article <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list at python.org>, Roman Suzi wrote:
> One more point about shootout. If I understood correctly, advanced
> features are banned. You can't change
> 
> k = []
> for i in list:
>   k.append(f(i)
> 
> into:
> 
> k = [f(i) for i in list]

Actually, the former isn't much slower than the latter.  Using map is
almost twice as fast.  I believe that map generates the result list by
calling len() on the source list, avoiding the cost of growing the
result list.  I suppose list comprehensions could be implemented such
that if there were not a filter clause, to prealloacte the list.  But
then, one should be using map anyway (you're only saving an implicit
lambda using a list comprehension).


meatring [~]$ time python2.1 -c 'k = []
for x in xrange(1000000):
    k.append(x)'

real    0m3.934s
user    0m3.440s
sys     0m0.490s

meatring [~]$ time python2.1 -c '[ x+1 for x in xrange(1000000) ]'

real    0m3.402s
user    0m2.670s
sys     0m0.720s

meatring [~]$ time python2.1 -c 'map(lambda x: x+1, xrange(1000000))'

real    0m1.899s
user    0m1.840s
sys     0m0.060s

-- 
     | a | n | d | r | e | w | @ | g | a | u | l | . | o | r | g |
                      White trash.  Loser.  Geek.


From r.b.rigilink at chello.nl  Fri Jul 13 03:51:14 2001
From: r.b.rigilink at chello.nl (Roeland Rengelink)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:51:14 GMT
Subject: sort->list
References: <9im8jj$1b36$1@news.lf.net>
Message-ID: <3B4EAB1B.E376FF96@chello.nl>

domi wrote:
> 
> Hello All!
> Does somebody know how to sort a numeric list in the right way?
> The sort method sort a list in this way:
> [1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,21,...]
> 
> but I need a list sort like this:
> [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,...]
> 
> Any idea thanks domi

Make sure that you are sorting a list of numbers and not a list of 
strings:

i.e.

>>> alist = ['1', '2', '11', '12', '22']
>>> alist.sort()
>>> alist
['1', '11', '12', '2', '22']
>>> blist = map(int, alist)  # change the strings to ints
>>> blist
[1, 11, 12, 2, 22]
>>> blist.sort()
>>> blist  
[1, 2, 11, 12, 22]

Hope this helps,

Roeland


-- 
r.b.rigilink at chello.nl

"Half of what I say is nonsense. Unfortunately I don't know which half"


From donn at u.washington.edu  Wed Jul 18 14:18:13 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 18:18:13 GMT
Subject: Embedded Python 2.1 and AIX
References: <mailman.995471670.13523.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j4jt5$gta$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "Galen Swint" <hcsgss at texlife.com>:

| I'm embedding Python 2.1 in an AIX 4.3 library and it's crashing every time the
| embedded Python calls for an import of the 'string' or 'math' module. With a
| little bit of gdb work I can find that it's crashing with SIGSEGV in the
| 'initstrop' function (or 'initmath' -- take your pick) when it calls
| Py_InitModule4. Apparently, when the library is linked the reference to
| Py_InitModule4 is not resolved.
...
| Some more info
| -Python configured with
|     ./configure --with-threads --with-gcc --prefix=/opt/local
| (also, it is loading the library from the correct directory
| (/opt/local/lib/python2.1/lib-dynload) according to gdb)

Must you use gcc?  I suggest you try the simplest test program
that illustrates this problem, and build it with the compiler
tools that come with the platform, with the options as specified
in /usr/local/lib/python2.1/config/Makefile.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From dan at eevolved.com  Tue Jul 10 14:47:08 2001
From: dan at eevolved.com (dan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:47:08 -0400
Subject: getting argument names from a function
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107101835460.10785-100000@my.nada.kth.se>
Message-ID: <W9I27.5835$yh2.510569@weber.videotron.net>

Actually, that grabs the entire namespace of the function, not just the 
function variables. I haven't found anything in the func_code tree that 
contains only the function argument keys...

thank you though,
Dan


Fredrik Stenberg wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dan wrote:
> 
>> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
>>    print arg1, arg2
>>
>> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
>> 'arg2')?
>>
>> I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and can't
>> find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?
>>
>> thanks,
>> Dan
> 
> If the function has a func_code object you can try this approach,
> I have never use it myself and there probably is better ways.
> 
> 
> Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.
>>>> def foo(bar,bar2):
> ...     print "foobar"
> ...
>>>> foo.func_code.co_varnames
> ('bar', 'bar2')
> 
> 
> 
> I think this will only work for functions written in python, and not
> extensions written in C (atleast thats what my brain thinks).
> 
> /fredriks



From andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  Thu Jul 26 07:23:48 2001
From: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au (Andrew MacIntyre)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:23:48 +1000 (EST)
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
In-Reply-To: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.OS2.4.32.0107262121200.3326-100000@central>

On 25 Jul 2001, Chris wrote:

> Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
> I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
> machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
> the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
> something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start.

telnetlib (standard library module)?

--
Andrew I MacIntyre                     "These thoughts are mine alone..."
E-mail: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  | Snail: PO Box 370
        andymac at pcug.org.au            |        Belconnen  ACT  2616
Web:    http://www.andymac.org/        |        Australia




From mcherm at destiny.com  Tue Jul 31 14:58:52 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:58:52 -0500
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
Message-ID: <3B66FFEC.5335E1C8@destiny.com>

> > I believe a separate syntax would be required to represent such a
> radically
> > different object. But you, of course, may know better ... if you're
> looking
> > for a syntax, one possibility would be:
> >
> > [[x * 2 for x in g()]]
> >
> > regards
> > Steve
> 
> That particular syntax won't do since 
      [..snip..]
> 
> How about [... x * 2 for x in g()]
> 

How about this:

def f():
    for x in g():
        yield x * 2

Of course it gives a generator, not a list... but that
seems to be a reasonable form to represent an infinite sequence.

-- Michael Chermside



From kentabacchi at excite.com  Wed Jul 25 10:01:20 2001
From: kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 07:01:20 -0700
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies
Message-ID: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com>

I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
program is run under Python version 2.1.

**********************************************
import thread, time

def Thread1():
    while (1):
        print "I`m in the thread"
        time.sleep(1)

thread.start_new_thread(Thread1, ())
print "about to call time.sleep(4)"
time.sleep(4)
print "just slept for 4 seconds"
**********************************************

This is the Python version 1.5 execution of the above code:

about to call time.sleep(4)
just slept for 4 seconds
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread

and here is the Python version 2.1 execution of the same code:

about to call time.sleep(4)
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
just slept for 4 seconds
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread
I`m in the thread

Does any one have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Ken Tabacchi


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 19:57:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:57:42 -0400
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice (24 recommended exercises)
References: <mailman.995492227.27932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B562276.7EC4000F@engcorp.com>

Mike Brenner wrote:
> 
> Wyatt wrote:
> > Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?
[...]
> ... most programmers don't write programs that meet specs. Most
> programmer define greatness to be simply having fun while making money.
> 
> To be great in that sense, instead of meeting specs, write the
> following Python programs (and for extra credit, do each program
> twice -- once using wxPython graphics, and once using Jython.)

[snip list of trivial first-year programs ;-)]

I think you left out one small thing.  How, by writing those programs,
fun it may be, would I make some money?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From g_will at cyberus.ca  Fri Jul 13 08:29:12 2001
From: g_will at cyberus.ca (Gordon Williams)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:29:12 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
Message-ID: <000b01c10b97$7da1af80$6f86fea9@wnt20337>

I agree that allowing == and != is a requirement for objects of different
types but allowing < = and > type operations is questionable.

A couple of people have brought up ordering of heterogeneous lists.  First,
I don't know why anyone would want to do this.  (Can anyone give me an
example where they have done this for a "real world" problem?).  According
to Harms and McDonnald, the order of objects is arbitrary and only
guaranteed to be fixed for one version of python; the order may be different
in the next version.  Second, if this is *really* a requirement,
heterogeneous lists could still be ordered while not allowing <> operators
to act on different object types.  I think that leaving heterogeneous list
sorting out would not break too much code.

It is never too late to correct a design flaw :)

Regards,

Gordon Williams


Guido van Rossum wites:

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at c...> writes:

>> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
>> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
>>
>> >>> 1 < "aaa"
>> 1
>>
>> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types
as
>> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
>> produced.
>
>You have already received several rationalizations for why this should
>not be considered an error, but I want to say that this is actually
>what I consider a design mistake in Python.  Long ago I thought that
>it made sense to want to sort an array of heterogeneous values.  Now
>I'm not so sure if that makes sense any more.
>
>If I could change this, I would probably allow "==" and "!="
>comparisons between objects of different types, but I would disallow
>"<", "<=" etc. (actually, I would leave it up to the types, but most
>standard types would do it this way).
>
>But there is probably too much code that would break if we changed the
>rules now.  (Although I haven't heard a peep from anyone who was
>bitten by the change in 2.1 where we disallow "<" etc. for complex
>numbers.  But then if we removed complex numbers, most folks wouldn't
>notice anyway, and those folks who use them are wiser than trying to
>compare them...)
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)





From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 10:49:31 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:49:31 -0500
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
In-Reply-To: <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>
        <3b4d6184.1698299906@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <15181.47355.177666.13098@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bengt> On 11 Jul 2001 22:32:16 -0700, tangell at kicker.com (T Angell) wrote:
    >> I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket connections
    >> and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
    >> sample times:
    >> 
    >> socket time: 0.0047459602356
    >> socket time: 0.00469899177551
    >> socket time: 0.00404000282288
    >> socket time: 0.00537407398224
    >> 
    Bengt> [...]
    >> t1 = time.time()
    Bengt> For accurate timing, time.clock() is recommended, I believe:
    ...

Not in this case.  He wants to know how long it takes the socket to be
connected between the two machines.  That is an elapsed time sort of thing,
what you measure with time.time.  It has little or nothing to do with the
CPU time used by the client process making the connection.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From kroesen at T-Online.de  Mon Jul 16 03:50:15 2001
From: kroesen at T-Online.de (Burkhard Kroesen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:50:15 +0200
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com>
Message-ID: <3B529CB7.8030905@T-Online.de>

James T. Dennis wrote:

>  This is not a question but merely a comment from a 
>  newbie.   I'm reading Beazley's 2nd Ed. "Python Essential
>  Reference" and playing with things therein and I thought
>  "list comprehension, what a quick way to make a multiplication 
>  table"
> 
>  multtab = [ [ x*y for x in range(13) ] for y in range(13) ]
> 
>  ... though I was surpirsed that I got the syntax correct
>  on the first try.  (It still looks wrong, somehow but 
>  [ x*y [x for x in range(13)] [y for y in range(13) ] ] looks
>  even more wrong).

Maybe you feel more comfortable with
multtab = [x*y for x in range(13) for y in range(13)]

Burkhard Kroesen



From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 21 20:20:18 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:20:18 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org> <3b5873ba.2423857703@wa.news.verio.net> <9jbp9l$90f$1@apollo.csd.net> <mailman.995756077.11446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5a1d11.74651563@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:54:09 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>
>    >> That does bring up the subject of machine-generated symbols though.
>    >> And case sensitivity in dictionaries. I use base52 [A-Za-z] encoded
>    >> md5's in certain contexts. If I use those as keys, will it break?
>
>    kosh> Losing case sensitivity in dictionaries would screw me pretty
>    kosh> badly also.
>
>I think case-sensitivity as we are discussing in this thread runs only to
>identifier and attribute names, not the contents of strings, so while
>
>    date = 1
>    DATE += 1
>    print Date
>
>should print "2" by my understanding, 
>
>    dict = {"date": 1,
>            "DATE": 2,
>            "Date": 3}
>
>would create a dictionary of length 3.
>
Ok, after the above, what would locals() give you?
Which will give the value 2, locals()['date'] or locals()['DATE']
or both?



From mcfletch at home.com  Wed Jul  4 07:21:55 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 07:21:55 -0400
Subject: PyDoc: How to exclude from x import * objects?
In-Reply-To: <001001c10442$426d5a60$a9807018@cr706570a>
Message-ID: <001901c1047b$88f4d600$a9807018@cr706570a>

I know, I know, terribly rude to respond to my own post...  I wound up
putting together something to get the PyOpenGL documentation to basically
work, likely wind up doing a CSS/style based formatter eventually, but for
now I can at least generate the entire documentation set fairly easily.

class PackageDocumentationGenerator:
	"""A package document generator creates documentation
	for an entire package using pydoc's machinery.

	baseModules -- modules which will be included
		and whose included and children modules will be
		considered fair game for documentation
	destinationDirectory -- the directory into which
		the HTML documentation will be written
	recursion -- whether to add modules which are
		referenced by and/or children of base modules
	exclusions -- a list of modules whose contents will
		not be shown in any other module, commonly
		such modules as OpenGL.GL, wxPython.wx etc.
	recursionStops -- a list of modules which will
		explicitly stop recursion (i.e. they will never
		be included), even if they are children of base
		modules.
	formatter -- allows for passing in a custom formatter
		see DefaultFormatter for sample implementation.
	"""
	def __init__ (
		self, baseModules, destinationDirectory = ".",
		recursion = 1, exclusions = (),
		recursionStops = (),
		formatter = None
	):


For sample of generating documentation for the PyOpenGLSWIG and
OpenGLContext projects (there are modules that fail, but 101 documents do
get generated, and the rest seem to be modules which will not properly
import due to code in them which assumes they are always run as scripts...

if __name__ == "__main__":
	excludes = [
		"OpenGL.GL",
		"OpenGL.GLU",
		"OpenGL.GLUT",
		"OpenGL.GLE",
		"OpenGL.GLX",
		"wxPython.wx",
		"Numeric",
		"_tkinter",
		"Tkinter",
	]

	modules = [
		"OpenGLContext",
		"wxPython.glcanvas",
		"OpenGL.Tk",
		"OpenGL",
	]
	PackageDocumentationGenerator(
		baseModules = modules,
		destinationDirectory = "z:\\temp",
		exclusions = excludes,
	).process ()


If anyone else is interested, give me a shout and I'll see about packaging
it up.  Nice little system Ka-Ping Lee, very cool results for a single
evening's fooling about.  I'm thinking that a system that allowed for such
things as generating css code that collapsed inherited methods would be cool
as well.

Enjoy yourselves,
Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Mike C. Fletcher
Sent: July 4, 2001 00:32
To: Python List (E-mail)
Subject: PyDoc: How to exclude from x import * objects?
...
<me kvetching and being too lazy to sit down and do the work>
...




From simonb at webone.com.au  Fri Jul 13 23:20:49 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:20:49 +1000
Subject: Naked function call syntax
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B4FBA91.6080200@webone.com.au>

right.
I do this for lists:

 >>>def lprint(alist):
 >>>     for a in alist:
 >>>        print str(a)

so that i don't get repr of elements.
And it would be great to be able to write:
 >>> lprint alist
just like print...

Im not sure i understand the proposed resolution of
leading '[' or '('...
"print(1,2)" prints a tuple, so wouldn't
you have to mark functions as "naked"
so that a tuple would be sent as the first argument?

 >>>def naked lprint(alist):
 >>>...

Well, this sounds rediculous to me.
what about:

 >>>def lprint alist:
 >>>...

?
Simon.


Bengt Richter wrote:

>Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:
>
>def pd(x):
>    try:
>        print x.__doc__
>    except:
>        print '(no doc string)'
>
>so that, e.g., I can type
>
>    pd(vars)
>
>and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
>I would like to to type just
>    pd vars
>
>Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?
>
>If not, would there be breakage if python were modified to make
>
>    foo whatever-up-to-EOL
>
>equivalent to
>
>    foo(whatever-up-to-EOL)
>
>when it would be a syntax error otherwise? I.e., I'm wondering
>if the grammar could be modified to do this by changing trailer
>to accept arglist NEWLINE if _all_ else fails, and treat a match
>as if it was an arglist. Leading '(' or '[' ambiguity would be
>resolved in favor of normal arglist or subscriptlist.
>
>



From max at alcyone.com  Sat Jul 14 03:23:01 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:23:01 -0700
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <mailman.995093605.18818.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FF355.AFC80981@alcyone.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> > That's just plain more efficient.  Four additions and one multiply
> 
> four?

Yes, typo.  Three, obviously.

> The same with "with": it could make name-resolving more efficient
> by allowing searching some namespaces ahead of locals() and
> globals()...

Or you could just make a temporary assignment.  Same thing going on, no
need for a new keyword and ambiguous code.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ God is love, but get it in writing.
\__/ Gypsy Rose Lee
    Kepler's laws / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/kepler/
 A proof of Kepler's laws.


From xione at prodigy.net  Sun Jul 15 00:03:17 2001
From: xione at prodigy.net (Xione Wrent)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 04:03:17 GMT
Subject: Tkinter/Win32 Question:
Message-ID: <9C847.6$ei.832667@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>

Does anyone know how to add "System Tray Minimization" functionality to a
Tkinter GUI?




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 12:37:46 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:37:46 -0400
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org><zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com><q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com><naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com><vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com><20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994086604.24754.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <%o107.21422$he.1049178@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Fran?ois Pinard" <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in ...
> [Thomas Wouters]
>
[ ... ]
>
> I would be tempted to guess that augmented assignment has been requested
so:
>
>    tedious_or_inefficient_denotation = tedious_or_inefficient_denotation +
1
>
> could be rewritten as:
>
>    tedious_or_inefficient_denotation += 1
>
> And that's it.
>
Nope. It was included to allow useful abbreviation of method calls,
specifically allowing in-place update of mutable objects where the object
implementation decided this was suitable.

> Of course, operators may also yield __IMPLEMENT__-like methods in objects
> wanting to use these operators, where one can do everything s/he wants,
> among which implementing new, different and even surprising semantics.
>
> I strongly think that the base Python language should strictly limit
itself
> to the semantic that "a += b" means "a = a + b" with "a" evaluated once.
> and be careful at avoiding any surprising side-effect.  Let's fulfill the
> request for augmented assignment, without overshooting it.
>
Too late. Since augmented assignment has been around in its present form for
almost a year now (IIRC) to change the definition at this stage would break
existing code, and that just isn't acceptable. I felt more or less the way
you do when this change was made, but there really isn't any point going
back to try and fight this battle again. You have to live with Python the
way it is (and nobody id going to *force* you to use augmented assignments).

> Fuzziness in this area does not bring us anything, really.  If you really
> want a method to extend an mutable, spell it out as we always did, similar
> to list.append(), say, but leave "+" and "+=" alone.
>
> Please, _please_ protect the long-term legibility of Python.
>
Sorry. Move on!

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 13 12:09:22 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:09:22 -0400
Subject: Apache & Python
References: <20010713.15394573@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <_0F37.12643$u76.678191@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Paul Duquette" <pauld at metrocast.net> wrote in message
news:20010713.15394573 at mis.configured.host...
> I have installed python 2.1 on my windows2k machine and would like to
> know how to use Python with Apache. I can't find any config instructions
> anywhere. The python faq tells me how to configure it with IIS but I
> didnt see anything about Apache.
> Hopeing you Python experts out there can point me in the right direction.

The simplest way is to use Python scripts as CGI's. This appears to work
very straighforwardly without any need to configure Apache. You sinply
ensure that your scipts appear in cgi-bin directories, and ensure that thay
start with a leading comment which allows Apache to run them through the
Python interpreter -- typically

#!C:\Python20\python -u

The  -u gives unbuffered I/O.

After that, take a look at mod_snake, or the older mod_python, for closer
integration.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Mon Jul  9 20:39:02 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 00:39:02 GMT
Subject: Help with reduce().
References: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kkjl5.oqr.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:53:35 GMT, EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote:
>Ok well I have ANOTHER problem with one of the examples in my book (By The
>Way, "Teach yourself python in 24 hours" is an extremely poorly written book
>and I do not reccomend it to any newbies who are just starting off)
>any ways the example is as follows.
>
>n = range(1,11)
>def mult(x,y):
>    return x * y
>f = reduce(mult,n)
>print f
>
>I get everything up to reduce. I relize mult() takes the first two numbers
>in range N which would be 1, 2 and multiplys them together to get 2... ok
>fine im good ... now comes the tricky part!! what does reduce do? Does it
>take the whole range and make it into a number (12345678910) then subtract 2
>(the result of the function mult) or what does it do.

Try the reduce documentation?  At the prompt type 'print reduce.__doc__'.

Just to convince you how much better off you'd be reading the python
documentation, I'll explain it myself:

In other languages, 'reduce' is called 'fold' which is because you can think
of it as folding a function into a list.  Given the list [1,2,3] and the
function (+), you get 1 + 2 + 3.  You can fold from the right or left, but
don't worry about that now (in an eager language like python it doesn't make
any difference anyway).

Here's a possible definition of a simplified right reduce in python:

def reduce(f, lst):
    if len(lst) == 0:
        raise TypeError, 'reduce() of empty sequence with no initial value'
    elif len(lst) == 1:
        return lst[0]
    else:
        return f(lst[0], reduce(f, lst[1:]))

It's trying to emulate a functional idiom, so it's somewhat awkward and slow
in python.  A more natural python solution would be iterative but less clear.

>And i have another question (not related to first question)
>
>x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
>def strp(x,y):
> return x + ' ' + y
>r = reduce(strp,x)
>print r
>
>my problem is this line return "x + ' ' + y" what does it return the value
>of. I would understand it if it was x + y but the qutation marks are what
>throw me off what do they mean?

Quotes surround strings.  ' ' is a string containing a space.  strp sticks
together two strings with a space in between.  The above is an awkward, slow,
and hard to read way to write "string.join(x)".

If you're still at the point where you're not clear on string literals, and
this book is heaving all these higher-order functions at you, I'd agree it's
not very good (or you skipped a few chapters).  reduce, map, and filter are
meant to be a small convenience for people who either know what they're doing
or who just arrived from scheme or haskell or ml and want their old goggles
back.

You shouldn't be learning python with these functions, you should be getting
friendly with for loops and lists.  And dictionaries.  When you're comfortably
slinging those around, you can revisit reduce.  map and filter have been
somewhat eclipsed by list comprehensions.


Ignore the book.  Read the python tutorials on the net.  deja c.l.py for URLs.
Subscribe to the python-tutor list.  And when you want to know what something
does, try it at the prompt.


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 15:57:53 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:57:53 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <mailman.996123586.12737.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5D_77.30737$EP6.7908379@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996123586.12737.python-list at python.org...
> Without that, you're still going to be a lot more portable than raw
C code
> (as portable as 10 years of development have been able to make the C
code in
> Python), but there are no reliable all-platform guarantees even for
a fixed
> Python release.

Oh, gee.  "Write once, run everywhere forevermore" was such a nice
fantasy ...




From phd at phd.fep.ru  Mon Jul  9 09:49:04 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:49:04 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: How to 'from package import module; from module import variable'?
In-Reply-To: <etdn16e1bg3.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107091747590.29216-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 9 Jul 2001, Alex wrote:
> Hi.  I've recently switched to using packages.  Because I use reload a
> lot during testing, it'd be helpful to be able to do this sort of thing
> successfully:
>
> >>> from mouse.tools import queues
> >>> from queues import Cyclic_queue
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> ImportError: No module named queues
>
> My understanding of the package import routine is still sort of sketchy,
> but I was wondering if there's a way to convince the import function
> that queues is actually a module it can import from.

from mouse.tools import queues

import sys
sys.modules["queues"] = queues

from queues import Cyclic_queue

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 08:52:40 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:52:40 +0100 
Subject: object - oriented programming Help!!
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE01@intrepid>

> From:	brakedon at hotmail.com [SMTP:brakedon at hotmail.com]
> What am I doing wrong? I am trying to learn object oriented
> programming, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
> 
> >>> import fibonaccii_gui
> >>> fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in ?
>     fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
> NameError: name 'fibonaccii' is not defined
 
You are importing a module called fibonaccii_gui, then referring to just
fibonaccii. Replace your 2nd line with:

fibonaccii_gui.fib(fibinstance, 100)

And it just might work.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 10 18:31:11 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B822F.E5BBB9F6@ActiveState.com>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> 
> So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
> acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
> carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it
> for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can Python
> become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?

Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.

Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
language. That means that it has a harder slog to gain adherents. On the
other hand, Python is not as dependent on its niche. I think that Python
is probably growing faster than Perl and PHP now that those two
languages have basically dominated their niches. Consider the status of
Tcl which is not growing much since other languages invaded the "easy
GUI development" niche.

Java has of course outgrown its initial niche but it is hardly fair to
compare Python to a language backed by Sun, IBM, etc. If Python had that
kind of backing it would be as big or bigger than Java too.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From luthi at vaw.baug.ethz.ch  Tue Jul 24 03:37:48 2001
From: luthi at vaw.baug.ethz.ch (Martin Luethi)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 09:37:48 +0200
Subject: emacs python mode
References: <3B5BF5C7.3070707@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <yfmhew2sroz.fsf@collet.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-shoot-me>

Switch on font-lock-mode or put the following lines into your .emacs if you
want highlighting in all modes

(global-font-lock-mode t)
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)

Cheers Martin



From garyr at fidalgo.net  Fri Jul 13 11:19:45 2001
From: garyr at fidalgo.net (Gary Richardson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:19:45 -0700
Subject: Debugging extension modules
Message-ID: <ypE37.19036$uJ3.618127@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

I have a question regarding the technique of debugging C extension modules.
I'm using the ActiveState IDE and MSVS 6.0. I place the C code for a module
in one directory and the Python test code that uses it in another. After
building the module I copy the DLL to the directory containing the test
code and try it out. However, if I have to make a change in the C code I
find that I can't delete or overwrite the DLL file unless I exit the IDE. If
I start Python from DOS, import the module and do some testing I must exit
Python before I can delete the DLL. Is there a way to delete the DLL file
without having to exit the IDE or Python?

















From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 11:46:38 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:46:38 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <es29ktcomaf23kbf7na26k3v4qb5kjecil@4ax.com>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:29:46 -0400, "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:

>"Resty Cena" <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote in message
>news:458b194a.0107050711.72007607 at posting.google.com...
>> "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message
>news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
>> > I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>> > frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>> >
>> > Python still doesn't have good database support,
>>
>> I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
>> to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
>> database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
>> directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
>> then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
>> Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
>> don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
>> around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
>> want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
>> I'd like the IDE to do this for me. I'm a database programmer, and I
>> want to write applications right away. I'm also lazy and I expect much
>> from my tools.
>
>Of course, one of the reasons why support isn't better is the huge ratio of
>consumers to producers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but most of the
>best parts of Python have been the results of individuals providing what
>they needed for their own purposes and then opening up the resulting code.
>
>Continue to sit on your hands by all means. What you need should be along in
>another five years or so. But simply posting to complain that things aren't
>as you want is unlikely to change in the next six months what nothing else
>has changed in the last five years.
>
>There are lots of people doing much good database work with Python. The
>mxODBC package (free for non-commerical use) and the cx_Oracle package
>(free) do indeed let you do what you describe (i.e. download, unpack, run an
>install script and connect to a database). So I suggest you look a little
>harder and complain a little less. Normally I try to include URLs in
>postings such as this, but you know, somehow I get the impression that
>clicking on a link in a news posting might just be too much trouble ;-)
>
>Come on in, the water's lovely.
>
>regards
> Steve
>

Spot on, Steve.


Regards, Joe


From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Wed Jul 18 12:27:16 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:27:16 GMT
Subject: One Worry for 2.2
Message-ID: <ENi57.22469$M9.7022637@typhoon.we.rr.com>

i'm excited for the new features coming in 2.2. reading some
release notes, i found a new difference that bothers me.

"""
There's one very specific (and fortunately uncommon) bug that
used to go undetected, but which is now reported as an error:
    class A:
        def foo(self): pass

    class B(A): pass

    class C(A):
        def foo(self):
            B.foo(self)

Here, C.foo wants to call A.foo, but by mistake calls B.foo.
In the old system, because B doesn't define foo, B.foo is
identical to A.foo, so the call would succeed. In the new
system, B.foo is marked as a method requiring a B instance,
and a C is not a B, so the call fails.
"""

now in my mind's understanding of OO, if class B inherits
from class A, then class B has a foo() function. what this
is implying is that only _instances_ of class B have a foo()
function.

i don't really see this as "very specific (and fortunately
uncommon) bug", i see it as the way things are supposed to
work. i can think of several cases where working like this
is entirely less flexible and full of problems. (especially
in the GUI widget department)

is this change implemented because it needs to be?
(ie, the type/class merging doesn't work without it)
or is this change implemented because it was decided
they could add this in?

i really think this sort of change should be 'repealed'
if that is possible. i just see it as a bit worse rather
than a bit better. Being able to do this is what makes OO
work. without it, like is going to be a pain in some
departments.





From fgeiger at datec.at  Mon Jul  9 08:49:30 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:49:30 +0200
Subject: [Tkinter]: Grid as in wxPython?
Message-ID: <9ic90t$s1l$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>

Is anybody aware of anything like wxPython grids, but for Tkinter? For a
Tkinter GUI I need a grid as it is available in wxPython. I already use PMW,
but there isn't such a beast.

Regards
Franz






From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul 31 20:36:36 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 17:36:36 -0700
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com> <ojqdmtguukc4ju3d8k7gvivqdfksd8e6dg@4ax.com> <qf37k9.tvc.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal> <3B671B63.23CC4490@raqia.com>
Message-ID: <9k7iuk$85b$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3B671B63.23CC4490 at raqia.com>,
David Lees  <DavidLnonospammy at raqia.com> wrote:
>
>Question - Does this affect the global lock at all?  Is it some way to
>get around it?  I wrote some simple threaded code awhile back that ran
>on a dual processor board.  The global lock kept 2 threads from running
>in parallel on separate processors.

Tim gave you a short answer; for more info, see
http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"activist for accuracy"  --SJM


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 30 07:16:24 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 13:16:24 +0200
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <mailman.996373135.2559.python-list@python.org> <JkM87.10500$Kd7.5942572@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <j4k80skqg6.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <FcX87.11426$Kd7.6834228@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <j4zo9mr7jr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> > In that case, I recommend to put a number of print statements into the
> > library modules that you suspect to be causes of the problem, and
> > trace that way what they are doing. If you can identify the call that
> > is hanging (i.e. the function you call that doesn't return), please
> > let us know.
> 
> 
> Didn't I already?  __import__ is hanging.  It doesn't let another
> thread to start and it doesn't return anything.

Please try to trace further. I.e. does it start executing the first
line of expatreader?

Regards,
Martin


From esharpe at uswest.wet  Sun Jul 15 02:53:24 2001
From: esharpe at uswest.wet (Ed Sharpe)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:53:24 -0700
Subject: New library software development project.
References: <3B3601BE.3C84E49A@earthlink.net> <Tdk27.48$6O5.193910@news.uswest.net> <7a32d1c7.0107141205.51f7565b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <0Pa47.981$KI6.835667@news.uswest.net>

Hi Richard!

I am going to build the RH 7.1 system tomorrow and load the beta of open
book, Bette was at  ALA in san Francisco and saw it running  at the open
source library meeting that was held there and she was very impressed by it.

Yes I know how you feel on development time, I had thought I would code
something out too... but my! they have all done such nice work! Think I will
be content being and end user and also someone to help implement some of
these systems in small libraries around the state..

The museum has in the past given out grants for computer equipment and this
would be a nice thing to see go with the hardware.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

ed sharpe archivist for smecc

There is also a fellow in Canada doing  some  enhancements to koha in the
way of making it conform to marc 21 ( very important)
Richard Snow <snowrichard at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:7a32d1c7.0107141205.51f7565b at posting.google.com...
> "Ed Sharpe" <esharpe at uswest.wet> wrote in message
news:<Tdk27.48$6O5.193910 at news.uswest.net>...
> > there are already things like this out there....
> snip...
> > Richard Snow <snowrichard at earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:3B3601BE.3C84E49A at earthlink.net...
> > >
> > > A brief description of the project: An open source library circulation
> > > system written in Python and running
> > > on Linux. Handles patron records, book records, and checkouts
> > > currently.  We might add other types of
> > > records such as videos, audio tapes, and so on later.
> > >
> > > The web page at http://richardsnow.bizland.com/opendev describes the
> snip...
> > > If you are interest in helping out or in using the code, please see
the
> > > web page and email me from there.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Richard Snow
> > > http://richardsnow.bizland.com
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> Ed: I've done a minor update to the web site mentioning koha and
> openbook.
> When I get more time and details I'll add some more to my site.
> Thanks for
> pointing out these other projects.  It would have taken me a long time
> to get
> mine to the point that Koha is now.  I haven't seen the Open Book beta
> yet.
>
> I have offered to help write some docs for Koha, and I will start on
> that
> as soon as I have time to get all my software installed that it needs
> and
> actually install Koha on my system.  Rough drafts will be on a new
> page on
> the above mentioned site before I send them to koha.
>
> By the way I'm posting this message from my sister's computer using
> the new Google Groups system (new to me anyway).  Good Job, Google.
>
> Richard




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 11:46:53 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:46:53 +0100
Subject: float to str help
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BEC4@intrepid>

> From:	Bryan Webb [SMTP:bww00 at amdahl.com]
>     In converting a float (5.661706091586558e+240) to a string using str()
> I
> come up with 5.6617060916+240 . I checked the string variable in the
> debugger. I need the full precicsion. I know its probably simple but this
> red hair is causing me problems.
 
Have you tried repr()?

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk





-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From adjih at inria.nocrap.fr  Sat Jul  7 04:40:40 2001
From: adjih at inria.nocrap.fr (Cedric Adjih)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 08:40:40 GMT
Subject: ICFP 2001 contest - Python team, anyone?
References: <slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <9i6hu8$lgh$1@ites.inria.fr>

Gerhard H?ring <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
> The International Functional Programming Contest was announced. I'd like to
> join this year. If you are a Python hacker and want to have all the fun and
> glory, please contact me :-)
>
> http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/
>
> """
> On Thursday, July 26, 2001 at 15:00 UTC (see this page to convert to your time
> zone), a challenge task will be posted on the Internet. It will also be sent by
> mail to the contest mailing list.
>
> Teams will have 72 hours to implement a program to perform this task and submit
> this program to the contest judges.
> """

Count me in.

-- Cedric


From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul 12 13:18:35 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:18:35 -0400
Subject: Compile 2.1 problem
References: <mailman.994956861.11471.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdelrmoyl0.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

What output do you get when you run the last command, 

./python -tt \
    /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1/compileall.py \
    /var/tmp/python2-2.1-root/usr/lib/python2.1

with the -v flag?

Alex.


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Wed Jul 11 11:44:15 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:44:15 -0400
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
In-Reply-To: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com>; from vincent_a_primavera@netzero.net on Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:33:11AM +0000
References: <3B45051300120CE9@mail.san.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20010711114415.B1609@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:33:11AM +0000, Vincent A. Primavera wrote:
> Hello, Looking for some guidance as to the set up of Apache's
> httpd.conf for some basic CGI scripting practice in Python...  Any
> suggestions?

Since Python script is like any other CGI script, just rename the file
as '.cgi' and have '#!/usr/.../bin/python' as the first line.  If you
want '.py' to be considered as CGI script by Apache, then put
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .py	
in your httpd.conf.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From teo at crepido.com  Mon Jul 30 05:37:40 2001
From: teo at crepido.com (teo)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 02:37:40 -0700
Subject: Is 4Suites xml-parser slow??? (or am i parsing in the wrong way??)
Message-ID: <dd144f8b.0107300137.76f7f931@posting.google.com>

Hi all!
I wonder if some of you have had problems (not really a problem, but
it takes long time to parse) with xml.dom.ext.Sax2.FromXmlStream ?
I feed the parser with an wellformed xml-file at 50k, and it takes
6.93 - 7.5 seconds to parse.

btw, I'm running my app on an AMD-Athlon 850 Mhz Mandrake-linux PC

the code in my app is:
------------------------- 
Sourcefile = "myxml.xml" # :)

from xml.dom.ext.reader.Sax2 import FromXmlStream
import timing

print "Parse!!"
timing.start()
dom = FromXmlStream(Sourcefile)
timing.finish()
print "Parsing XML into DOM took" +str(timing.milli()/1000.00000001)+"
seconds..."

-------------------------

Thanks for taking your time ;)

/teodor


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 01:55:12 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:55:12 GMT
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
References: <mailman.995851359.16397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5bb3cb.178773692@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:21:11 +1000, "Delaney, Timothy" <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote:

>> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> >> In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who is a
>> >> professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.
>> >
>> >Eek - I hope you don't really mean that last subclause!
>> 
>> A *real* programmer gets in a good six hours code-slinging in their
>> sleep - that period when all the hard problems find their neat
>> original solutions. Apart from the ones that get scribbled on a
>> beer-mat, that is ;-)
>
>Nah - all the best solutions are worked out in the shower.
>
Seriously, I think a scientific study would reveal a correlation.
Probably heat and hydromassage stimulating brain blood circulation.

A walk or swim is also good. Otherwise, some point before the end
of the second cup of coffee. (Too much coffee, though, leads to ASD --
attention surplus disorder ;-)



From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 01:14:33 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 09:14:33 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
In-Reply-To: <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107010913330.17334-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Steve Holden wrote:

>> | 6.31. Why doesn't Python have a "with" statement like Delphi's Object
>> | Pascal?
>>
>6.31. Why doesn't Python have a "with" statement like some other languages?

Because nobody wrote a PEP which was consequently approved!

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Fri Jul 27 17:24:21 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:24:21 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996267654.842.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B61DCB8.3973C7FB@wwc.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> [snipalot]

>
> But you can't actually tell anything from that, because the Windows C printf
> suppresses the sign of a 0.  You can't tell by trying to compute the
> reciprocal either (to look at the sign of the resulting infinity), because
> *Python* stops you from doing that:
>
> [snip, snip, snip]

Wot, no sgn() function in Python?  What is the world coming to?

>
> full-754-is-still-unusable-in-practice-ly y'rs  - tim



From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 28 02:42:58 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:42:58 -0400
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <SkdlOfAjFgY7Ew0V@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEOELBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Robin Becker]
>>> when/if the grand unification happens what will math.cos do with 1+3j?
>>> What will floor do with 1.3+0j etc etc etc. Presumably a Timbot thread
>>> is even now busily extending all math functions to the complex domain.

[Tim]
>> My belief is that the vast majority of Python users are best
>> served by the current behavior of never getting a complex result from
>> non-complex inputs unless they explicitly invoke functions from the
>> cmath module.  But that's a question you didn't ask (although you
>> should have).  A more interesting question is whether math.acos(2)
>> should continue to whine.

[Robin]
> so the statement by the grand designer that int/float(x) won't cut it
> if x is complex is just a little fake.

I don't grasp your meaning, but not for lack of trying.

> If complex x hurts in division are we to accept it won't hurt in sqrt?

Sorry, but ditto.  Give a concrete example?  If someone said complex x hurts
in division, I missed it.

> The idea that we might import cmath to get complex '/' to work is
> interesting given the arguments presented about closure for arbitrary
> numerics as inputs to functions.

I haven't seen that idea before, and if you're now *suggesting* it I don't
see any point to it.  Your examples had users explicitly passing complex
inputs to functions.  I was talking about getting complex results out of
functions when complex numbers are *not* passed to them (such as acos(2)).
Division can never return a complex result unless given a complex input.  I
see nothing surprising to anyone about complex-in, complex-out.  It's only
non-complex-in, complex-out that Python currently shields users from (in the
absence of explicitly using cmath functions).  As I said, I think that's a
benefit for the majority of users; I don't know whether Guido agrees.

> Others have been presenting similar schemes to preserve/change the
> natural order of literals etc, but these schemes seem doomed. If OO
> completeness is desirable why shouldn't math.acos is cmath.acos be
> true?

Don't know what "OO completeness" means.  As a pragmatic matter, I would
much rather that the typical business programmer get an exception at the end
of their floating-point algorithm for (say) computing standard deviation,
when due to fp inexperience they use a numerically naive textbook method
that ends up passing a negative number to sqrt due to massive cancellation.
Let that silently return a complex result instead, and God only knows how
much more computation they'll do with it before getting a meaningless result
in the end.  For most users most of the time, a complex result is more
likely a symptom of an error in their code (or uncaught bogosity in their
data) than a useful result.

If you're a Comp Sci Purity Guy, you may want to torture them with 4.02j
instead.

> I accept along with others that there are other numeric models. I don't
> accept the grand unification at face value as some kind of panacea.

Do you believe anyone does?  Not even Moshe has claimed that it would be.

> Before all this brouhaha we didn't really understand any of the real
> problems and I don't believe we can solve them to everyone's
> satisfaction.

This stuff isn't new to me, and I know that we can't.  That doesn't imply
trying to do better would be a net loss.

knowing-you'll-die-in-the-end-isn't-an-argument-against-living-
    either<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From anthony at interlink.com.au  Tue Jul 17 09:59:28 2001
From: anthony at interlink.com.au (Anthony Baxter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:59:28 +1000
Subject: Bug in Python DNS module 
In-Reply-To: Message from Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?= <michael@stroeder.com> 
   of "Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:13:35 +0200." <3B53751F.4CA0DC4@stroeder.com> 
Message-ID: <200107171359.f6HDxS415171@mbuna.arbhome.com.au>

>>> Michael Str?der wrote
> I've included it into my version of the DNS module. I wrote Anthony
> Baxter who maintained the version I grabbed and modified but no
> response so far what to do with the module. If nothing happens
> during the next two or three weeks I will probably upload it to a
> SourceForge project.

[my apologies for the tardy response. it's been a while since I could
even pretend to keep up with python-list/c.l.python]

Pushing the DNS module to sourceforge sounds like an _excellent_ idea.
There's a bunch of internals work that it could really do with to make 
it a easier to work with.

Anthony



From not.this at seebelow.org  Tue Jul  3 23:26:01 2001
From: not.this at seebelow.org (Grant Griffin)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:26:01 -0500
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993846706.12635.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B428CC9.1F944ECD@seebelow.org>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
...
> CPyAN is much more complex task, because there are:
...

I think the problem here might be one of marketing, combined with a lack
of corporate sponsorship.  To that end, I propose this resource be
called "Python Program Archive Network", or PyPAN, for short. That might
help it attract funding from Mrs. Smith's and Sara Lee.  (Heck, if
nothing else, maybe those ladies can contribute something tasty to the
Python Cookbook.)

<sorry>

Seriously, folks, I never was a big fan of CPAN: in fact, for me, it was
just another part of my overall poor user-interface experience with Perl
<wink>.  Although CPAN is impressive in terms of sheer girth, the CPAN
concept seemed to encourage large interdependencies between modules. 
Although this seems like good thing in some ways (because it indicates a
lot of software reuse), I found it nightmarish to install even fairly
simple packages.  (I never could get the automatic CPAN installer gizmo
to work well--at least without giving it a great deal of manual help.)

Having a very large standard library seems a better solution.  (Of
course, Perl also comes with a large standard library.)  I never seem to
have large cross-package dependency problems with Python; my experience
has been that nearly all packages require zero or one other packages. 
Presumably, this is a fortunate aftertaste of the fact that PyPAN is
still just a half-baked idea.

But maybe an increasingly large standard library isn't totally
practical.  An alternative that I think would be very helpful is
"application-targeted" distributions.  For example, someone could make a
"Numeric" bundle of Python, including NumPy and related modules;
likewise, there could be a "webmaster" bundle.  Of course, this takes a
lot of time and effort for somebody to create and maintain. 
(ActiveState folks, are you listening?--given that you somehow make
money by giving away software, the more software you give away, the more
money you'll make <wink>.)

half-baked-entrepreneurial-ly y'rs,

=g2
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation            http://www.iowegian.com


From thomas at cintra.no  Thu Jul 12 21:56:44 2001
From: thomas at cintra.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:56:44 GMT
Subject: IRC library for Python?
References: <slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>
Message-ID: <wzs37.2533$em.74413@juliett.dax.net>

There are several modules available at www.vex.net/~x/parnassus, but I think
only one implements DCC and more advanced stuff.

Thomas

"Steve Lamb" <grey at despair.dmiyu.org> wrote in message
news:slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey at teleute.dmiyu.org...
>     I've been doing some searching and haven't found anything on the web
or
> deja.  Is there an IRC library akin to SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNRP/et al for Python
in
> existence?
>
> --
>          Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm
your
>          ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of
souls.
>     To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
> -------------------------------+------------------------------------------
---




From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul 11 11:53:27 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 08:53:27 -0700
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <9ihspn$c3o$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <9ifo90$4hh$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>
>Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
>slow.  Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
>wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
>the cpu.  In a production mud, you might want to do something
>intelligent about wandering monsters (like have them stop wandering if
>no players are nearby to save cpu-time), but there will also be lots
>else going on.

What we have here is a clear failure to communicate.

Look, if you have *one* monster sitting in a computation-intensive loop,
you're going to peg the CPU no matter what language you're using.  The
question is, how efficient and fast is each pass through the loop, and
how responsive is the loop to external input?  Don't make the mistake of
measuring the wrong things.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Mon Jul 23 17:04:52 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:04:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <15196.36169.246641.246117@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107231654320.261-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> The response was to your [Tim] statement:
> 
>     Tim> Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in numerics has bugged Guido
>     Tim> about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most visible repeated
>     Tim> pressures have come from educators using Python as a means to some
>     Tim> other end.
> 
> Perhaps I was wrong about some of Guido's influences in this area.  Anyone
> doing 3D computer graphics whether in the context of engineering, computer
> art or education has, in my mind, a keen interest in numerics in the sense
> of "numerical analysis".  They are going to do a lot of floating point math
> and much less integer math.

This was an issue for the Alice implementors, but it's not supposed to
be for Alice users/scripters. The target users were arts majors,
animators, writers, artists, etc. ( Don't know how well they found or
served that audience, but that was the target -- not computer graphics 
gurus. BTW: Randy Pausch's  Lab (when he was at UVA) had a photo of Doug 
Engelbart in one corner and Walt Disney in the other -- the "patron
saints" of that project! ) 


-- Steve Majewski





From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Jul  2 06:08:53 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:08:53 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Support for "wide" Unicode characters
References: <3B3BEF21.63411C4C@ActiveState.com> <3B3C95D8.518E5175@egenix.com> <3B3D2869.5C1DDCF1@ActiveState.com> <3B3DBD86.81F80D06@egenix.com> <3B3EA161.1375F74C@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B404835.4CE77C60@lemburg.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> >
> >...
> >
> > The term "character" in Python should really only be used for
> > the 8-bit strings.
> 
> Are we going to change chr() and unichr() to one_element_string() and
> unicode_one_element_string()

No. I am just suggesting to make use of the crispy clear
definitions which the Unicode Consortium has developed for us.
 
> u[i] is a character. If u is Unicode, then u[i] is a Python Unicode
> character. No Python user will find that confusing no matter how Unicode
> knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, wife-by-hair-dragging they are.

Except that u[i] maps to a code unit which may or may not be
a code point. Whether a code point matches a grapheme (this
is what users tend to regard as character) is yet another
story due to combining code points.

> > In Unicode a "character" can mean any of:
> 
> Mark Davis said that "people" can use the word to mean any of those
> things. He did not say that it was imprecisely defined in Unicode.
> Nevertheless I'm not using the Unicode definition anymore than our
> standard library uses an ancient Greek definition of integer. Python has
> a concept of integer and a concept of character.

Ok, I'll stop whining. Just as final remark, let me say that
our little discussion is a perfect example of how people can
misunderstand each other by using the terms in different ways
(Kant tried to solve this for Philosophy and did not succeed;
so I guess the Unicode Consortium doesn't stand a chance 
either ;-)
 
> > >     It has been proposed that there should be a module for working
> > >     with UTF-16 strings in narrow Python builds through some sort of
> > >     abstraction that handles surrogates for you. If someone wants
> > >     to implement that, it will be another PEP.
> >
> > Uhm, narrow builds don't support UTF-16... it's UCS-2 which
> > is supported (basically: store everything in range(0x10000));
> > the codecs can map code points to surrogates, but it is solely
> > their responsibility and the responsibility of the application
> > using them to take care of dealing with surrogates.
> 
> The user can view the data as UCS-2, UTF-16, Base64, ROT-13, XML, ....
> Just as we have a base64 module, we could have a UTF-16 module that
> interprets the data in the string as UTF-16 and does surrogate
> manipulation for you.
> 
> Anyhow, if any of those is the "real" encoding of the data, it is
> UTF-16. After all, if the codec reads in four non-BMP characters in,
> let's say, UTF-8, we represent them as 8 narrow-build Python characters.
> That's the definition of UTF-16! But it's easy enough for me to take
> that word out so I will.

u[i] gives you a code unit and whether this maps to a code point
or not is dependent on the implementation which in turn depends
on the narrow/wide choice.

In UCS-2, I believe, surrogates are regarded as two code points;
in UTF-16 they always have to come in pairs. There's a semantic
difference here which is for the codecs and these additional
tools to be aware of -- not the Unicode type implementation.

> >...
> > Also, the module will be useful for both narrow and wide builds,
> > since the notion of an encoded character can involve multiple code
> > points. In that sense Unicode is always a variable length
> > encoding for characters and that's the application field of
> > this module.
> 
> I wouldn't advise that you do all different types of normalization in a
> single module but I'll wait for your PEP.

I'll see if I find some time at the Bordeaux Python Meeting
next week.
 
> > Here's the adjusted text:
> >
> >      It has been proposed that there should be a module for working
> >      with Unicode objects using character-, word- and line- based
> >      indexing. The details of the implementation is left to
> >      another PEP.
> 
>      It has been proposed that there should be a module that handles
>      surrogates in narrow Python builds for programmers. If someone
>      wants to implement that, it will be another PEP. It might also be
>      combined with features that allow other kinds of character-,
>      word- and line- based indexing.

Hmm, I liked my version better, but what the heck ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From stain at linpro.no  Sat Jul 21 14:24:05 2001
From: stain at linpro.no (Stian Soiland)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:24:05 GMT
Subject: SocketServer and broken ThreadingMixIn - patch for 2.1.1c1
References: <slrn9lb58c.885.stain@zoidberg.trd.linpro.no> <3B559B80.4C8EDBE3@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lji5v.t3m.stain@amy.trd.linpro.no>

* Michael Str?der spake thusly:
|  Stian Soiland wrote:
|  
|  I agree with Guido that it does not hurt to call close_request()
|  method more than once. Therefore your handler thread can easily call
|  close_request() without being incompatible to single-threaded
|  (checked it myself) or forking mode (did not check myself yet).

But this ought to work both ways. 

Even if we always closing the connection after running the 
handler, nothing wrong will happen if a user's code closes
the connection nicely in his (old-style) handler thread.

The advantage is that existing code (like SOAP.py) can easily 
be made threaded without doing anything else than including 
ThreadingMixIn as a subclass. After all, isn't this what 
ThreadingMixIn is for?

Why should we make a different approach for using
threaded servers or not? This close_request()-thing
is already a new thing, why not do it completely instead
of forcing users to ignore this feature 
in their programs and do the closing themself?

-- 
Stian S?iland - Trondheim, Norway - http://stain.portveien.to/

         Hvorfor har jeg ingen kj?reste? Jeg kan ikke se noen god grunn.
              Folk som er langt mindre sympatiske enn meg har kj?rester.
       Idioter har kj?rester. Jeg burde absolutt hatt en kj?reste. [Loe]


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Sat Jul 14 15:20:00 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 19:20:00 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <Xns90DE68B66343Agmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154> <Xns90DEC227B102Cgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <Xns90DE9C0C61AFAgmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>

[posted and mailed]

Gustaf Liljegren wrote: 

> Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote:

[snip]

>>Edit myscript.cfg and put packages=_xmlplus in the PYZ section.
> 
> It don't work. Here's what I have done:

[snip]

> 5. Opened the jane.cfg file:
> 
> [MYINSTALL]
> type= INSTALL
> name= Install_jane.exe
> bindepends= jane.py
> zlib = INSTALLZLIB
> misc= MYSTANDALONE
> debug = 0
> excludes = pywintypes, win32api
> 
> [MYSTANDALONE]
> type= STANDALONE
> name= jane.exe
> script= jane.py
> zlib = APPZLIB
> userunw = 0
> support = 0
> debug = 0
> 
> [APPZLIB]
> name= jane.pyz
> dependencies= jane.py
> excludes= dospath, posixpath, macpath
> 
> [INSTALLZLIB]
> name = installzlib.pyz
> dependencies = installutils
> includes = installutils
> excludes = dospath, posixpath, macpath
> 
> Either these header sections are not documented as they appear, or I'm 
> looking in the wrong place. The Installer docs talk about PYZ, COLLECT,
> CARCHIVE, STANDALONE, FULLEXE and INSTALL.

Correct. Those are the "type=" lines. It defaults to ZLIB. (The actual names 
of the sections don't matter at all, so long as they're unique.)

Since you mentioned py2exe, I assumed you were using Standalone (where you'd 
have only one PYZ section, called APPZLIB), since that's (roughly) the 
equivalent of py2exe.

So put the line
packages=_xmlplus 
in the APPZLIB section.

- Gordon


From bvdpoel at uniserve.com  Fri Jul 13 19:23:36 2001
From: bvdpoel at uniserve.com (bvdpoel at uniserve.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:23:36 -0700
Subject: How to use os.access()??
Message-ID: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com>

I'm trying to use os.access() in my program. But, I'm stuck trying to
figure out the parms... obviously the first is the filename; but the 2nd
is supposed to be a constant (?) like F_OK. Unfortunately, it doesn't
appear that the F_OK, etc are defined anywhere. Either the docs are
wrong (no way!), or I'm missing a module file (likely), or I'm just
totally wrong about everything (quite likely!).

Thanks.

-- 
Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA **
EMAIL: bvdpoel at uniserve.com
WWW:   http://users.uniserve.com/~bvdpoel



From pfenn at mmm.com  Thu Jul 12 13:17:01 2001
From: pfenn at mmm.com (pfenn at mmm.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:17:01 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <OF920190F9.30CD1C60-ON86256A87.005D957C@mmm.com>

         Tom> I *always* forget the 1/3 == 0 thing between programming
bursts.
         Tom> OTOH, I also quickly remember after making the mistake the
first
         Tom> time.

     What is it that reminds you of the mistake?  Is it something glaring
like
     using the result of 1/3 as a divisor and getting a divide-by-zero
error, or
     is it something more subtle like getting slightly incorrect results
and
     having to dig through your code to find the problem?

     --
     Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)

It's usually easy to find using the primitive tests I set up.  Typically,
data starts out as floating point, so this behavior won't cause incorrect
results.  Instead, I get incorrect graph labeling, etc.   However, this
issue is going to keep coming up as a problem because it's not what an
occasional user, even an experienced occasional user expects to happen,
particularly with a dynamically typed language like Python.   This is the
only point on which I consider Visual Basics behavior to be "better" than
Python's.

Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?

Tom Fenn




From arunramu at usa.net  Mon Jul  2 00:59:27 2001
From: arunramu at usa.net (Blue whale)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 21:59:27 -0700
Subject: os.popen(cmd,mode) question?
Message-ID: <c022af13.0107012059.147df47f@posting.google.com>

Can anyone help me understand why I am not able to close() 
the pipe shown below. 

p = os.popen('vmstat 5')
p.readline() # works
p.readline() # works
p.close()    # does not work

Is there a way I can get this to work. The command 'vmstat 5'
produces output every 5 seconds, is there a way I can stop the command
by just closing the pipe. can I force a pipe to be closed(will that kill
the vmstat)???

Arun


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 27 04:13:30 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:13:30 +0200
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> david at boddie.net (David Boddie) (DB) writes:

DB> So, if you're already resigned to that then just changing __future__
DB> to something else like

DB> from __behaviour__ import float_division

DB> would be just as easy, and wouldn't break existing code. <wink>

This just won't work. The most important reason for the change in division
is that people are caught by the integer division by surprise. So anything
special that they have to do to get float division will not help. That's
also the reason that it won't help to introduce // for the new behaviour
and leave / for the old behaviour.

I have an idea that might help the transition to become less painful:
Like someone else noticed about the transition in LaTeX from 2.09 to 2e
(\documentstyle vs. \documentclass):
If python files for the 3.0 version and beyond could be recognized then at
least old files will not be silently executed with the wrong semantics.

So we could require that in Python 3+ python files have to start with:
module name

This doesn't even require module to be a keyword. name should be the same
name to import the file (i.e. the filename).

>From Python 3.0 onwards files without a module statement should no longer
be accepted. These must be repaired, i.e. checked for integer divisions and
a module statement added. So they can no longer silently break.

In the transition period both forms should be acceptable with the old form
finally producing warnings.

The module declaration could also be given parameters to specify a specific
behaviour, e.g. it could specify that this module wants the old integer
division:

module mymod (int_div).

-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 04:48:43 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:48:43 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9ip0u401117@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b4f6eb5.1832748462 at wa.news.verio.net...
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:01:37 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> [...]
> >or to the def.  The ONLY difference is that lambda generates an
> >anonymous function (and is an expression), while def generates a
> >named function (and is a statement).
>
> In that case why not allow an anonymous version of def, e.g..,
>
>     map(
>         def(x):
>             x**2
>         ,xrange(5))
>
> which would work like
>
>     map(
>         lambda x:x**2
>         ,xrange(5))

Judging from this sole example, the only difference here would
be the inconsequential syntax sugar of WRITING def(x) vs
lambda x -- who cares for such trifles?

Very different would be if the def was still a statement (and
particularly a compound statement, including other statements):
in that case, its anonimity would be no use UNLESS one fundamental
principle of Python syntax was abrogated -- no expression can
include statements.  If that were done, then there would be very
wide-spread repercussions, needing a careful redesign of many
apparently-unrelated things.


> (OTOH you could make lambda multi-line ;-)

lambda can be multi-line today.  I.e., you're free to break the
line after the ':' in the above example.  Lines are not an issue.
STATEMENTS vs EXPRESSIONS is the issue.


Alex





From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 09:59:51 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 15:59:51 +0200
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com> <etdwv50226x.fsf@opus.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <u8zhfn3u0.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Alex <new_name at mit.edu> (A) writes:

A> Hi, Gangadhar.  I hope I'm addressing you appropriately. :)

A> The issue there is that the "if __name__ == '__main__':" block is not
A> executed when the module is imported, because in that case, "__name__"
A> is bound to the name of the module, in this case, "nspace".  As a
A> result, in the "nspace" namespace, nothing is bound to "myfile", so the
A> "myfile.write" command raises a NameError.  The "global" keyword only
A> means "global to the module" not "global to the entire program."  The
A> "myfile" you bound in the interpreter is in the "__main__" namespace.

A> Try this version:

A> #!/usr/bin/env python

A> from os import sys
 
A> def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
A>         # We are writing to what should be an
A>         # unknown file descriptor:
A>         global myfile                         # <------- Added
A>         myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")

But why do you have a parameter outfile that you don't use. Don't you just
means outfile.write()?
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 31 04:15:06 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 04:15:06 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
Message-ID: <000101c1199a$3c0800e0$a9e1fea9@carol>

Paul writes -
 
>* the real target for the newbie-friendliness is new programmers not
>non-programmers. A language that is good for new programmers has a lot
>of rules that they can easily remember and few pitfalls that they have
>to store away in their heads.

I agree with you 100% about who the target is/should be.  But that is the 
*main* reason I disagreed with the VPython physics class finding as
significantly relevant.  Those were non-programmer findings, 
not beginning programmer findings. Perhaps I have a small point.

I would assert we have no findings sited within the context of 
learning to program, and that your assertion about what is 
significant in that context is a not illogical, but nonetheless bald.  
I happen, BTW, not to think there is very much to it. But that is 
also bald.

>if newbie-friendliness were the only issue, it would be probably not
>enough. But even competent programmers can make non-robust code if there
>is a big gap between the division statement and the provision of an
>integer where a float is expected -- and even if there is NOT a big gap.

If that is true, and the decision to go forward with the change is on that
basis, I, for one, am at peace with it.

ART




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 08:33:37 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:33:37 +0100
Subject: Network able Chess
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8B@intrepid>

> From:	elecfsh at yahoo.com [SMTP:elecfsh at yahoo.com]
>   For a while I have been wanting to write a little chess game that
> can be played over a network w/ some simple chatting features. I want
> to do this in Python, but I'm a little worried about doing the
> graphics. Any suggestions as far as gamming libraries? or any standard
> libraries I may have missed? Thanks.
 
Have you looked at pygame? <http://pygame.seul.org/>

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 07:44:48 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 07:44:48 -0400
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <oLg27.23321$F%5.1656133@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote ...
> Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
> classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
> process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
> delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?
>
> Thanks.
>
No. The HTTPServer classes simply aren't written asynchronously in that way.
You could probably use a lot of the code, but the two frameworks are
incompatible in the use they make ofthe socket, and would fight each other.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From Peter.Biela at planet-interkom.de  Thu Jul  5 15:12:34 2001
From: Peter.Biela at planet-interkom.de (Peter Biela)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 21:12:34 +0200
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <mailman.994350130.18544.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <CQrmWYYBBHA.348@fnews1.vi-internet.de>

Hi Greg,

you should be able to use simple a opertaion vom the re Modul, using regular
expresion syntax.
This line, should return you a string from which any non Digits  '\D' were
substituted by '', phone_number is your original string upon, which the sub
methode is used!

import re
stripped_phone = re.sub('\D','',phone_number)

I hope, this works!

Peter Biela




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 08:51:23 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:51:23 +0100
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org> <wkhewlxmdn.fsf@lee-morgan.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9kluib.j0s.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:32:13 GMT, Lee Morgan <python at lee-morgan.net> wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>Forgive my naivety, but ...
>
>Has anyone proposed the idea of having a timebomb license?
>
>Similar to drug companies control of new drugs to a market. ie you get
>8 years to develop and market your new drug but after that its open
>season. (I'm not wholly certain how this works - and 2 years or less is
>probably more applicable for software).

I've advocated that idea on Usenet previously.

>Wouldn't this prevent shrewd business men like Gates gaining runaway
>monopolies and yet allow commercial r&d to contribute to technological
>innovation? ie You get 2 years to recoup your investment and then the
>license drops to GPL or something.

Indeed. it has been used commercially by Alladin bto produce Ghostscript.

>Also this would probably require legislating software companies -
>which I can't imagine happening.

The copyright term for software could be limited to, say, 
10 years.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Mon Jul 23 12:57:09 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 09:57:09 -0700
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk> <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com> <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107230857.1a9a12be@posting.google.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>...

[snip]

> Followed by the 'how to iterate over all permutations of a sequence'. BTW, 
> the 'return' statement isn't actually needed, but I think it makes the code 
> a bit clearer.
> --- begin ---
> # Permutations using generators.
> from __future__ import generators
> 
> def permute(seq):
>     if len(seq)==1:
>         yield seq
>         return
> 
>     for i in range(len(seq)):
>         for perm in permute(seq[:i] + seq[i+1:]):
>             yield seq[i:i+1] + perm
> 
> def test(str):
>     for t in permute(str):
>         print t
> 
> test('bar')
> test('flip')
> test([1, 2, 3])
> --- end ---

Bravo!  That's a good one.  When you say you prefer having the
"return" in there, is your purpose to emphasize that execution does
not "fall through" the first "yield"?


Tom


From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul 26 10:13:34 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:13:34 +0200
Subject: Submodules in dynamic modules?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107260951540.376-100000@localhost>
References: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107260951540.376-100000@localhost>
Message-ID: <20010726161334.A31154@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 09:59:47AM -0400, Steven D. Majewski wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Martin Sjgren wrote:
> 
> > Is there a standardized way to use submodules in a dynamic module written
> > in C? I have a module (foo) that should have a few submodules in it, foo
> > by itself won't contain much at all, but it's nice to group things up in
> > submodules, so I could do
> > 
> > from foo import bar
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > from foo import bar, baz
> > 
> > The way I'm doing it right now is that I've more or less copied the source
> > code from Py_InitModule4() to set things up, and then insert the module
> > object into the dictionary.
> 
> I don't know if there's a standard way and I don't know if it's better,
> but what I have done is to define the macro:
> 
> #define ADD_MODULE(x)     if (-1 == \
>     PyModule_AddObject( m, (x), PyImport_ImportModule((x))))  return NULL
> 
> 
> And in Carbonmodule.c (for MacOSX) where I have a whole bunch of these
> submodules, I have:
> 
>    m = Py_InitModule("Carbon",CarbonMethods );
> 
>    (void) initWin();
>    ADD_MODULE("Win");
>    (void) initMenu();
>    ADD_MODULE("Menu");
>    (void) initEvt();
>    ADD_MODULE("Evt");
>    (void) initDlg();
>    ADD_MODULE("Dlg");

[snip]

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here.  I don't want to
import other Python modules, I want to have several submodules in my one C
library file (foomodule.so on unix).  I guess I COULD have several .so
files and import them like you do here, but that would be unnecessarily
complicated!

Thanks for your input anyway. :)

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul  9 18:11:01 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:11:01 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <3B49F9EC.CA10886A@yahoo.com> <kPn27.2200$z21.433251@newsc.telia.net> <3B4A1AE3.BB23C0E1@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <VZp27.2220$z21.439065@newsc.telia.net>

Paul Winkler wrote:
> I based my suggestion (doctest at minimum, preferably unittest) on the note at
> the end of the documentation for doctest:
>
> """
> The first word in doctest is "doc", and that's why the author wrote doctest: to
> keep documentation up to date. It so happens that doctest makes a pleasant
> unit testing environment, but that's not its primary purpose.
>
> Choose docstring examples with care. There's an art to this that needs to be
> learned -- it may not be natural at first. Examples should add genuine value
> to the documentation. ...
> """

for the record, I strongly prefer doctest over unittest also for
"real" unit testing (sorry, steve ;-).

the trick is to use doctest not only to make sure the module's
docstrings are up to date, but more importantly, to make sure
that your test programs work as documented!

here's an excerpt from SRE's doctest-based test program:

def check(pattern, string, *groups):
    # pattern, string to match, zero or more groups to check
    r'''

    # Test ?P< and ?P= extensions
    >>> check('(?P<foo_123', '') # Unterminated group identifier
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    error: unterminated name

    ... 495 more use cases ...

    >>> check(r'([ac])+x', 'aacx', 0, 1)
    ('aacx', 'c')

    '''
    p = re.compile(pattern).match(string)
    if m: return apply(m.group, groups)
    return None

with this approach, I write tests many times faster than with
any other framework -- mostly because I can focus on writing
code that exercises the library, without really having to think
much about how to verify the results: just print them out, run
doctest once, make sure the output look right, copy it into the
test script, and you're done.

(if I wanted to use tools that required me to think hard all the
time, I wouldn't use Python in the first place ;-)

Cheers /F




From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 24 18:31:01 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:31:01 GMT
Subject: timed event??
References: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lrtnn.8eu.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:09:31 -0500, NJM <njm at rectec.net> wrote:
> I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can someone
> tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to find any modules
> that will help me.
> 
> 

time and sched modules.


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul  5 00:25:59 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 00:25:59 -0400
Subject: Tkinter, Sleep and threads
In-Reply-To: <3b3827f0.1058042@nntp.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEHOKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Mike Clarkson]
> In _tkinter.c, in Tkapp_MainLoop():
>
>  If Python is compiled WITH_THREADs, then it uses  a 20 msec. Sleep
> loop to check signals and do Tcl events.
>
> The current problem is threefold:
> 1) An idle Tkinter application consumes about 5% of the CPU, because
> it is in a tight 20 msec Sleep loop. The equivalent Tk application
> uses 0%.

Did you measure this?  I measure idle Tkinter apps on Windows using from 0%
CPU when in the background, to about 0.20% when foreground and they need to
blink a cursor at me.  Yes, it may wake 50 times per second, but it consumes
only enough cycles for Tcl_DoOneEvent(TCL_DONT_WAIT) to report there's
nothing to do, and then goes straight to sleep again.  If you're measuring
5%, something sounds hosed on your box.

> 2) Say you establish a ^C signal hanler, then create and use a Tkinter
> dialog (that uses Tk's vwait, like ColorChooser). If you pop up the
> dialog, enter the mainloop, and hit ^C, the signal handler will not be
> called until you finish choosing a color. (I presume all other Python
> threads will also be forced to wait.)

The Tcl_DoOneEvent call is in the scope of

    Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS
    ...
    Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS

brackets, so other Python threads run independently of what Tk is doing.
How signal handlers work in the presence of threads varies widely across
platforms.

For the rest of this, you're going to have to get the attention of Fredrik
and Guido; making Tk work vaguely nicely *at all* in the presence of threads
was a multi-year effort (although I doubt it accounted for 5% of their
mental cycles the whole time <wink>).

> ...
> (BTW, what is the difference in Python-C-API between Tkapp_MainLoop
> returning NULL and returning Py_None?  I'm not a C programmer).

Throughout the C API, a NULL return means an error occurred, while a Py_None
return is "normal".





From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 13:44:54 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:44:54 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net> <3b62459e.609746999@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B659D16.5E52DE63@home.net>

Bengt Richter wrote:

> >What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an integer always? It will
> >always have an integral value. I suppose one problem is that the range
> >of integers that a float (C double) can handle is larger than a 32 bit
> >integer can hold. This could be solved in the future with int/long
> >inification, what will be the behaviour then?
> >
> I think it has to do with being consistent with the idea of using the
> representation type as an indicator of exactness.
> 
> Using that idea, float is a visible name and means inexact,
> and int and long are visible and mean exact.
> 
> Floor can't turn inexact to exact, so it must return inexact (i.e., float)
> if it gets an inexact (i.e., float) input.
> 
> int(x) will effectively be an exactness coercion because of the
> representation-type linkage.

I'll buy that. In fact, I like that a lot. The problem, for me, is that
1.0 can't be used as a sequence index. While it may not be know whether
x//y is an exact value, it IS know that it is an integer value, and
should therefor be usable as an index. This brings up the usefulness of
the concept of the inexact integer.

I'm also not so sure about your above rational: While I do understand
that the result of x//y may not be an exact number, given that x and/or
y may not be exact, the question is: does that matter? Acn anyone think
of a case where they would use // (or floor, or ceil, or round) when it
would hurt for the final result to be considered exact?

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Fri Jul 13 16:24:37 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:24:37 -0700
Subject: not safe at all
Message-ID: <OFDDBD771A.4114C9E3-ON88256A88.006F66F4@i2.com>

Dennis Roark wrote:
>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>following script:
>
>x = 3
>x = x + 2
>print "x =", x
>x = "now I'm a string"
>print x
>x = [ 5, x ]
>print "and now a list:", x
>
>If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
>x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
>different type on two sides of an assignment?

Absolutely!!!

Each value is a perfectly good object, so why not? (The variable "x"
references an "object" :-).

Side note: see what a Java compiler allows you to put into a collection and
then consider the same issue.

Jim


>---------------------------------
>Dennis Roark
>Dept. of Computer Science
>University of Sioux Falls




From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul  5 06:03:30 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:03:30 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051339400.17954-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051359170.18352-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:

>>If it's the latter, then perhaps type checking can be done under
>>certain reasonable restrictions. Whatever the case, I want to have my
>>cake and eat it too. :-)
>
>You can add asserts to whatever places to check types:
>
>from types import *
>def add_int(x, y):
>  assert type(x) is IntType and type(y) is IntType
>  return x+y
>
>I can't see how static type-checking could eliminate more
>problems than create, though.

Ooops! When I read it second time I understood my stupidity
saying this.

Large program such as ATC need not be to be implemented in one language!
So there are certain tasks (like system administration) which could be
done better with Python than Ada.

Also, for some code rule-oriented languages could be used
to add some AI.

So, it's not a single-choice!

Python could also be useful for arranging testing data because of it's
text-processing capabilities.

Etc.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 05, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ">From the Department of Redundancy Dept." _/




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 20:14:38 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:14:38 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m6esl.d7d.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <3B63556E.11047A21@ActiveState.com>

William Tanksley wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:32 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
> >2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
> >is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?
> 
> Not without the object's cooperation -- it's not even theoretically
> possible to figure out what attributes __getattr__ might support.  

I am asking whether there is a way for the object to cooperate.

>...
> >def attrs(x):
> >       return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]
> 
> Yes, that would work, for certain values of "work".  all_possible_strings
> is a pretty simple generator.  So is attrs(), actually.
> 
> def attrs(x):
>   for y in all_possible_strings():
>     if hasattr(x,y): yield y
> 
> Amusing.

I wasn't being theoretical. I was asking whether there is a function,
method or parameter with those semantics (and obviously a more sane
implementation).

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 06:45:24 2001
From: gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk (Giles Constant)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 11:45:24 +0100
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
Message-ID: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net>

Hi there,

Being a C++ head, it's probably more a problem with my design than a python 
problem, but I figured you guys would be able to help.

I'm trying to make a class called "Environment" which will store some 
global data such that all instances of the class have access to it.  The 
alternative is to create a single instance and pass it around every single 
object in the entire project, but it gets used so frequently that it would 
be rediculous.

Is there a way of doing this, or do I need a new paradigm? :-)



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 06:51:05 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:51:05 +0100
Subject: Python 2.2 alpha - generators test
Message-ID: <m62gltsov3nn6jiuhgk03u1ul0831gv60k@4ax.com>

I've been playing with the Python 2.2 alpha, found it to be pretty
reliable so far, and I've fallen in love with the iterators and
generators. However, I did find what I think is a problem in the
test_generators.py (sorry if the filenames slightly wrong) file.

I was looking at the 2**i * 3**j * 5**k problem, and decided to try my
own approach. I reached a point where I needed essentially a
duplicate-removing priority queue (if such a thing exists) but I
couldn't be bothered revising my heap theory so temporarily I decided
to just merge the new items into a simple ordered list.

I remembered a generator called merge or xmerge or something, and
decided to borrow that to get the initial version running quickly.

Trouble is, it didn't work at all.

Looking back at the merge function, I realised that when either one of
the input generators is exhausted the generator terminates immediately
- it does not pass on the remaining items from the other generator. In
fact, if one of the input generators ends immediately (empty list), no
items will be output at all irrespective of the number of items the
other generator could generate.

I'm not sure of the implications in the algorithm it was used in
(which I didn't fully understand), but it is certainly incorrect for
merging two ordered sequences - which is what it appeared to be - and
is certainly what caused my problems.

Is this a real bug, or just a case of me jumping to daft conclusions
about what the generator was meant to do?



BTW, sorry about the vague names - I only have that Python version
installed at home.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 15 15:48:08 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:48:08 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com> <004c01c10be8$af2face0$4ffa42d5@hagrid> <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B51F378.7DC06482@ActiveState.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
>...
>     Since Python source code is defined to be ASCII, the Unicode literal
>     encodings (both standard and raw) should be supersets of ASCII and
>     match the encoding used elsewhere in the program text, e.g. in
>     comments and maybe even 8-bit strings (even though their encoding
>     is only implicit and completely under the programmer's control).

Python programmers do not read PEPs to learn how to use new features. I
think it makes the whole thing much simpler if we define it on the file
level explicitly. To me, the feature is most helpful if it helps the
interpreter and various code inspection tools to understand all of the
non-ASCII information in the file.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From newgene at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  2 16:59:24 2001
From: newgene at bigfoot.com (newgene)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 13:59:24 -0700
Subject: run activepython v2.1 from a folder?
Message-ID: <a50631f6.0107021259.209fbae8@posting.google.com>

I'am trying to run activepython v2.1 from a folder on my zip disc so
that I can use it at the public PCs. I can not install activepython
successfully without the administrator previledge.
First, I put all possible pathes into "PYTHONPATH", and use a bat file
to set it before running pythonwin.exe.
       This is my batch file(pywin.bat):

@set PYTHONPATH=d:\python21;D:\Python21\Bio;D:\Python21\DLLs;D:\Python21\Lib;D:\Python21\libs;D:\Python21\PPM;D:\Python21\Pythonwin;D:\Python21\win32;D:\Python21\win32\Lib;d:\python21\lib\plat-win;d:\python21\lib\lib-tk;
@start D:\Python21\Pythonwin\pythonwin.exe
@exit

Second,I copied three dll files( python21.dll,pythoncom21.dll,
PyWinTypes21.dll) from system32 into my folder(d:\python21). Then I
can import win32ui under command line(python.exe).

When I ran pywin.bat, pythonwin GUI interface appears, but raises a
error as:

  File "e:\python21\pythonwin\pywin\framework\intpyapp.py", line 163,
in InitInstance
    import interact
  File "e:\python21\pythonwin\pywin\framework\interact.py", line 26,
in ?
    import winout
  File "d:\python21\pythonwin\pywin\framework\winout.py", line 26, in
?
    from pywintypes import UnicodeType
exceptions.ImportError: No module named pywintypes

Is it possible to solve this problem and run the activepython v2.1
from a folder independent on system registry?

Thank you

Newgene


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 23 10:55:40 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:55:40 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <MVW67.22993$B7.3756465@ruti.visi.com>

In article <9jhbfj$79s$1 at pea.uk.research.att.com>, Duncan Grisby wrote:

>The reality is that the whole world will not switch Python versions
>overnight, so everyone who maintains a library will have to face this
>issue.

I maintain a couple small applications that have to support
1.5.2 and up.  There must be plenty of people in the same spot.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  My polyvinyl cowboy
                                  at               wallet was made in Hong
                               visi.com            Kong by Montgomery Clift!


From deltapigz at telocity.com  Mon Jul  9 22:56:45 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (deltapigz at telocity.com)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:56:45 -0400
Subject: pinging in python?
Message-ID: <3B4A6EEC.548A29FD@telocity.com>

could anyone point out to a simple code of pinging a computer;
just toping it and get the results; nothing fancy.

i have found source codes along the line but its all too overwhelming,
and im still a complete newbie despite my half decent understanding of
python.

thanks in advance,

Adonis



From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 02:45:00 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:45:00 -0700
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal
References: <mailman.995864377.19861.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5BC7EC.3FD6932@alcyone.com>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> 
> I have been following (and participating) in the integer division
> argument for some time (and a divisive one it is, too), and while
> standing in the shower (really!) an idea came to me.
> 
> Why don't we add a hook to Python to control the numeric evaluation
> rules directly?
	...
> The module writer says, HEY, what about me?  I need consistent math
> in my module!

That's exactly the problem here.  One of the primary reasons people are
objecting to the change is because it means a fundamental change in the
core language:  a builtin operator behaves differently.  The solution is
not generalizing all builtin operators, certainly -- that makes the
problem infinitely worse.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.
\__/ Han Suyin
    Erik Max Francis' bookmarks / http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/
 A highly categorized list of Web links.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 29 04:26:51 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 08:26:51 GMT
Subject: stat st_rdev in python
References: <9jsop4$si0$1@netra.msu.montana.edu> <slrn9m4dfk.3ss.grante@isis.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m7i6b.o5t.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 03:48:05 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:

> If I had more time, I'd fix up the Posix library and submit a patch...

AFAIK st_rdev is not defined by POSIX. Glasgow Haskell's Posix module
lacks it too.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From QSB at QRM-QRN.net  Sun Jul 29 19:02:44 2001
From: QSB at QRM-QRN.net (Allodoxaphobia)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 23:02:44 GMT
Subject: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net> <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m95gj.5c2.QSB@animas.frontier.net>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT, Nick Perkins scribbled:
>I laughed at the first one of these I read,
>thinking it might be the result of a python program,
>but now I have noticed that they are popping up
>on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
>Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
>I have seen four or five today.

Take a look in news.admin.net-abuse.email, if you think "...4 or 5..."
might be a nuisance.

And, trim your posts.  Especially if you know them to be trash.
tnx.
-- 
  | Marvin L Jones       | jonz           |  W3DHJ   |  OS/2
  |  Gunnison, Colorado  |  @             |  Jonesy  |  linux   __
  |   7,703' -- 2,345m   |   frontier.net |  DM68mn             SK


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 19:58:23 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:58:23 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j66an$3bm02@owl.le.ac.uk> <slrn9ldm72.aq4.nde@cslin-gps.comp>
Message-ID: <slrn9let0v.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:56:06 GMT, Nick Efford <nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>I can appreciate some of the arguments made in favour of a case-
>insensitive Python, but there are times when we give meaning to case
>in written English: "python" is the snake, but "Python" is the
>programming language; "latex" is a material, "LaTeX" is a markup
>language for document typesetting; "mud" is something you get on your
>shoes, but a "MUD" is something entirely different.  I would much
>prefer it if Python continued to allow the distinctions we make in
>written language to be preserved when coding.

I hope you don't use identifiers that differ only in case. BTW, I
am happy to use the uncapitalised versions of all the above to
rever to the capitalised meanings.

>My other worry over case insensitivity is that it creates
>opportunities for poor style by allowing the inconsistent use
>of case. 

Into bondage and discipline are we now?


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 23 15:20:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:20:01 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b5c65cf.224345241@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B5C7847.EA60FE59@tundraware.com>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:46:45 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:> >
> What about mandatory version/requirement marking of code depending
> on new features of 2.2 and beyond?
> 
> This would introduce *now* the possibility of using 2.1 rules for unmarked
> code, and allowing progress without backwards-compatibility pain[1].
> 
> Perhaps a requires statement keyword with syntax like print? E.g.,
> 
>     requires {'Python':'2.3', 'math':'2.4','division':('unified','warn') }
> 
> or short form could be distinguished by arg type
> 
>     requires 2.3

This is a *really good* idea.  Although I am new to Python, I am not new
to very large development projects.  This ability to stipulate the minimum
required runtime environment could go a long way to mitigate upgrade and
release nightmares.

I would only suggest that such a keyword:

-  Have "at least" semantics so that later versions would satisfy the 'requires'
   as well.

- Be generalized so that any module author could apply the same thing to
  their module independent of all other modules (I think you were hinting
  at this above.)

- Be optional, which would mean that anything works.



> All the good arguments on both sides of the '/' question are making me
> feel wishy-washy, as I sympathize in alternation, but I do find the
> backwards compatibility argument compelling. HTH.
> 
> [1] Other than for implementors ;-)

I worry about all this on two levels:

- As an architectural matter, new behavior should have new operands, IMHO.

- As I said, I'm new to Python, but I've seen a ton of languages come and
  go.  There seems to be a point at which all languages start getting 
  burdened with "boutique" features that clutter up the overall paradigm
  in favor of rather specialized actions.  It seems to be human nature
  to never leave well enough alone.  Python has an extremely elegant
  structure, and I worry that it too will become burdened with nice,
  but ugly appendages thereby undermining the cohesion of its initial
  design.  

  It seems to me that the energy to innovate would be better
  spent adding more "batteries included" modules to a core lanugage
  that is stable and remains so.  'C' for example, largely stayed
  the same until ANSI X3J11 (of which I was an Observing Member).
  Even there, the initial intent to codify existing practice got
  polluted somewhat when various factions tried to get their pet semantics
  plugged into the new standard.

  Speaking as someone who leads commercial development and architecture
  organizations, the adoption of any new technology or language is as much
  or more about stability than it is feature set.  The Python community
  could really distinguish itself here, and thereby garner lots of new
  converts, if we resisted the feature-of-the-month-club that has
  characterized Java and Perl, for instance.

Just my 2 cents worth...


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul  2 18:09:44 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 00:09:44 +0200
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:25:20 -0400, robin at illusionsexeculink.com wrote:
>[...]
>With Python I'm left scrambling around trying out different half-done
>modules.
>
>This is a significant barrier to Python adoption. Until Python ships
>with modules for each major database it will not be a mature tool for
>many users.

Java "ships" with a broken JDBC implementation for ODBC. Everything else you'll
have to download and install yourself.

>As an example, I would like to find a cross-platform (Linux, Windows,
>etc.) Postgres interface that works with Python 2 or greater and
>Postgres 7 or greater, conforming to the dbAPI. Not too much to ask,
>one might think.

>I've found these four candidates, but judging by their sometimes
>sparse web sites, none fit the bill. But I could be wrong.

I can't comment on conformance to the DBAPI 2 or stability, because I usually
don't use advanced database stuff.

>PyGreSQL -- http://www.druid.net/pygresql/

This one is now in PostgreSQL CVS. The most recent version is the one from
PostgreSQL 7.1.2 (PyGreSQL 3.2), even if the website doesn't tell you, Windows
is now supported (you can download a binary distribution from my homepage or
build yourself).

>psycopg -- http://initd.org/Software/psycopg

It seems to be optimized for heavily threaded applications. It looks quite good
and well thought-out. Unfortunately, it makes much use of Unix libraries, so it
was too difficult for me to port it to Windows. Plus, I am no great fan of
GPL'd Python libraries.

>PoPy -- http://popy.sourceforge.net/

The new Nekhem website still doesn't work ...

>PyPgSQL -- http://www.sf.net/projects/pypgsql

Looks very good to me and is progressing fast. The CVS version supports
Windows, too 8-) (you'll need to compile with gcc, Visual C++ won't work due to
lack of "long long" support). If you want to try this on win32, you'll need a
post-7.1.2 PostgreSQL patch from CVS (the file libpq.def). Or you can ask me in
PM and I can provide a working win32 version.

It looks like libpq wasn't used very much on Windows, there is at least one
unsolved issue on win32 (affects everything using libpq, including PyGreSQL and
PyPgSQL).

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sat Jul 14 04:25:26 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:25:26 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <WlT37.9639$e5.1274541@newsb.telia.net>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> In that case why not allow an anonymous version of def, e.g..,
>
>     map(
>         def(x):
>             x**2
>         ,xrange(5))

you forgot something:

     map(
         def(x):
             return x**2
         , xrange(5))

Cheers /F




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Wed Jul  4 17:54:39 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 21:54:39 GMT
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994158364.21646.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i03av$c2e$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote:
> I've got some very good comments on my PEP-to-be. The main concerns are:

> - we need to reference the style guide
> - the use of tools such as PyCheck should be encouraged
> - and yes, my english needs some quality checking also :-)

Did you add stuff like '(unit) tests are good'? Very important in my
opinion.

> I'm going to work on it tonight. Too bad I have a day job <wink>. As of 
> now, I'm still waiting for Martin's proposed PEP2 text - it seems that he 
> still needs to get either Barry Warsaw or ESR approval on this, mainly 
> because he's taking over an existing but unfinished PEP. I feel that we're 
> talking about complementary issues, and it would be very important to be 
> working together.

Definitely. I've just posted my version of PEP 2 after getting an okay from
ERS.

You also should have received a copy by mail, did it not arrive? I sent it
to you earlier, I think monday. 

And yes, I feel the two are pretty complementary, so that's good.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From garrett at cs.colostate.edu  Tue Jul 31 01:21:01 2001
From: garrett at cs.colostate.edu (Deon Garrett)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 05:21:01 GMT
Subject: problem with re.rearch
References: <mailman.996541444.9289.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9mcg4e.edm.garrett@eagle.cs.colostate.edu>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:03:36 +0800 (CST), sdf <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote:
> since s=abcd ,then I search 'a' in s
> the result must be true 
> but why the result is nono
> 
>>>> a=re.compile(s)
>>>> b=a.search('a')
>>>> print b
> None
>>>> print s
> abcd

Unless you've lost me somewhere, you're describing something like this:

s = 'abcd'
a = re.compile (s)
b = a.search ('a')

which means, "find a match of the pattern 'abcd' in the string 'a'....
probably not what you mean.  The "None" simply indicates that there is
no instance of 'abcd' in 'a'.  What you want here, is

s = 'a'
pat = re.compile (s)
b = pat.search ('abcd')


> __________________________________________

> DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
> ??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 08:10:58 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:10:58 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <mailman.994291089.9857.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i1lgh02ei0@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Delaney, Timothy" <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994291089.9857.python-list at python.org...
> > But the best & highest-motivated guru can only do so much if
> > hampered by too-heavy process, inadequate tools, &c.  And one
> > can't always choose (client needs given process and tools, but
>
> This bit I agree with wholeheartedly

Who wouldn't?-)


> > motivation is high anyway e.g. because of VERY good $$ bonus...
> > that still doesn't give the same productivity as when process
> > and tools are optimally chosen).
>
> And this I don't.

Maybe I didn't express myself well then!  (Or maybe different
people have different motivations:-).


> I've found that I've rarely been motivated to perform well in a project
> based on the $$$ I was to receive for it (when I was a contractor). Once I
> accepted how many $$$ I was getting, that was the end of it (after that,
the

I'm talking of a _bonus_ -- in the conditional sense of the word; $$$
you aren't going to get unless (insert acceptance criteria here that
are related to quality, performance, timeliness, &c, of the product).

> money is uninteresting and indeed annoying because you have to chase it).

Most people find money interesting _indirectly_ -- for what you can
get by SPENDING it, rather than in and by itself.  In my case, I have
more money than I can spend (with my reasonably-frugal lifestyle), but
it's a family thing -- in a few centuries' of recorded family history,
there's a very clear family-memory of who gave a positive net
contribution to the family's fortunes, and who left the coffers
emptier than they found it -- and I know what side of the ledger
I want to be in when some distant descendant thinks about me in
a few more centuries' time.

Of course it's not JUST money -- one of my great-grandfathers was
a painter, and now that they've restored some of the decoration work
he did a bit more than a century ago in some of Bologna's prettiest
public arcades, I do particularly enjoy going to sit at a cafe there
and slowly sipping a good dry martini while enjoying greatgrandpa's
handiwork on the ceilings -- even though he WAS a rake, and wasted
quite a bundle of money chasing after chanteuses and buying them
jewels &c [they didn't call it "Belle Epoque" for nothing:-)].  But
I doubt any of my actual _work_ will be around for great-grandkids
to admire a century from now, so...:-).


> etc) then I tend to work better. Note: casual clothes is not an option - I
> have *never* worn a tie or trousers in my professional career, and I never

Can't say that myself, since I spent so many years at IBM (but mostly
IBM _Research_, so I stuck out a lot with silk suits & ties -- so call
it a personal quirk:-).  But these days I've changed style...

> will. The most formal I've gone to is to wear a button-up shirt at one
> place, but that won't happen again. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a
place
> that will let me work in boxer shorts like I do at home ... :)

They wouldn't raise eyebrows here (well, not in the summer -- it
DOES get cold in Bologna in winters!-).


Anyway, my point (money & clothing aside) was intended to be a
pre-emptive move to show one CAN still (sometimes) be highly
motivated DESPITE having to use a too-heavy process and tools
that are far from optimal!-)  Thus separating to some extent
the three classes of factors (that do interplay quite a bit):
    -- individual skill, knowledge, &c
    -- motivational factors (money, project-interest, whatever)
    -- quality of environment/tools (process, language, &c)
I think the magic spot is hit when ALL THREE factors are big
plus, and THEN productivity can soar to crazy heights.

Pity (an aside...) that when we estimate delivery times we
seem to tend to BET on optimal spots for everything & 1/2...:-).


Alex





From fspcxh at my.com  Fri Jul  6 20:38:13 2001
From: fspcxh at my.com (fspcxh at my.com)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 00:38:13 GMT
Subject: Check This Out!!!  5264
Message-ID: <VRs17.78471$By.1839368@typhoon.midsouth.rr.com>

Check out our new store at www.our-superstore.com
bbkutkxljwspn



From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Thu Jul 12 10:19:41 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 14:19:41 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net> <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4ca7bc.1650739848@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b4db02f.401207@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:17:27 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:

>On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:48:13 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:
>[...]
>>>On my system I get
>>>
>>>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
>>>str took 13.601617 seconds
>>>
>>>[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
>>>strL took  1.044989 seconds
>>>
>>>Recursion rides again ;-)
>>
>>Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
>>a replacement for str that's faster is very
>>curious.
>>
>Well, it's a seldom-used aspect of str to print
>monster longs. They surely had more urgent things to do ;-)

Certainly - I wasn't meaning to say that they were
bad or I wanted my money back or anything. It _is_
curious nonetheless.

>>>BTW, how do you put everything inside the strL def
>>>to hide names, and how do you recurse inside without
>>>a warning message?
>I'm leaving this question in ;-)

Ok, I'll leave it in too then; maybe someone who
knows what they're talking about will have a hint.

>[...]
>>
>>Of course you have to do the recursion in a non-stupid
>>manner, as here; if you'd made a recurzive routine
>>that concatenated Python strings instead of building
>>that list I doubt that recursion would win. But it is
>>curious how often recursion does seem to win in Python.
>>(Doesn't usually beat built-in functions, though.)
>>
>
>I hope people realize what you are pointing out,
>i.e., that it's not recursion per se that made the gains.
>The algorithm is the thing.
>
>Recursion is a powerful way of expressing algorithms,
>and the more expressive power you have, the better your
>chances of coming up with a good algorithm.
>Clean expressive power is Python's main attraction IMO.

Huh. A better explanation than I actually expected.



David C. Ullrich


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 08:21:49 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:21:49 +0200
Subject: Inheritance Queries
References: <9il5qp$iba$1@top.mitre.org>
Message-ID: <9imp4u0157o@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Angel Asencio" <asencio at linus.mitre.org> wrote in message
news:9il5qp$iba$1 at top.mitre.org...
> Is there a package to get information about the inheritance of
> a class/instance?
>
> Methods or functions to answer questions like:
>
> Which are your decendants?
> Which are your ancestors?
> Who are your immediate decendants?
> Who are your immediate ancestors?

A class has absolutely no information about any
subclassing performed on it.  Conceptually, the
only way to gather such information at one point
in time would be to go through *all* classes
defined at that instant and check if the given
class is among the ancestors -- and I don't think
there's any sensible way to examine *all* classes
in existence at one time.

A class knows its immediate ancestors: they're
the __bases__ tuple attribute of the class object
(you get from an instance to its class via the
__class__ attribute of the instance object, of
course).  Non-immediate ancestors are obtained
through recursive walks up the inheritance DAG
(Directed Acyclic Graph).  Built-in function
issubclass() tells you, given any two classes
C1 and C2, whether C1 is a direct or indirect
subclass of C2.

Package inspect has no direct support for
inheritance information except for one function
that, given a bunch of class objects, places
them in a structure evidencing which class
inherited from which others.


Alex





From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 27 13:33:38 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:33:38 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net>

"Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin at jessikat.demon.co.uk...
> In article <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
> Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
> >Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
> >
> >> We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
> >> God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
> >> opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
> >> will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.
> >
> >I sincerely wish you would be struck by lightning.  Your attitude
> >disgusts me.
> >
> >--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>
> Oh dear I sense a humour deficit :(
> --
> Robin Becker

I think it was just an emoticon deficit.





From missive at frontiernet.net  Tue Jul 17 04:43:26 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:43:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits? bug fix!
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com> <9iajn0$rvm$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <9iicpa$9ju$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <a9a946b.0107161723.5554a9a8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9j0trd$1hfg$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On 16 Jul 2001 18:23:13 -0700, ruckc <ruckc at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I tried this change, and i still only get a 15 byte Image Object in Zope.
> 

Does the example work for you at all (ie for small images) or is it
completely broken? It is working fine for me now...

I never got any mangled Image Objects. Either it worked ok, or I
got a traceback saying that the type being passed to PIL 
(or cStringIO, I was never quite sure) was not correct.

Is the created image.thumb.jpg a valid image?


> missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) wrote:
>> Hi:
>> 
>> Thanks for your help. I finally broke down and joined the zope mailing list.
>> It was not so difficult, really, just fill out the form at:
>> 
>> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
>> 
>> and reply to the confirmation message that goes out to you.
>> 
>> 
>> Turns out there is a bug in the PIL External Method example in the Zope
>> Book. Once the image.data attribute gets to a certain size, it is no
>> longer pushed around as a string, but gets wrapped up in its own 
>> different kind of object. PIL or cStringIO was objecting to that.
>> 
>> The fix is to wrap image.data in str() to force stringiness.
>> Here is the corrected code...
>> 
>> (mostly from http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB/ScriptingZope.dtml)
>> 
>> 
>> def makeThumbnail(self, original_id, size=128):
>>           """
>>           Makes a thumbnail image given an image Id when called on a Zope
>>           folder.
>> 
>>           The thumbnail is a Zope image object that is a small JPG
>>           representation of the original image. The thumbnail has a
>>           'original_id' property set to the id of the full size image
>>           object.
>>           """
>> 
>>           from PIL import Image
>>           from cStringIO import StringIO
>>           import os.path
>> 
>>           # create a thumbnail image file
>>           original_image=getattr(self, original_id)
>>           original_file=StringIO(str(original_image.data)) # bug fix here
>>           image=Image.open(original_file)
>>           image=image.convert('RGB')
>>           image.thumbnail((size,size))
>>           thumbnail_file=StringIO()
>>           image.save(thumbnail_file, "JPEG") 
>>           thumbnail_file.seek(0)
>> 
>>           # create an id for the thumbnail
>>           path, ext=os.path.splitext(original_id)
>>           thumbnail_id=path + '.thumb.jpg'
>> 
>>           # if there's and old thumbnail, delete it
>>           if thumbnail_id in self.objectIds():
>>               self.manage_delObjects(thumbnail_id)
>> 
>>           # create the Zope image object
>>           self.manage_addProduct['OFSP'].manage_addImage(thumbnail_id,
>>                                                          thumbnail_file,
>>                                                          'thumbnail image')
>>           thumbnail_image=getattr(self, thumbnail_id)
>> 
>>           # set the 'originial_id' property
>>           thumbnail_image.manage_addProperty('original_id',
>>                                                 original_id,
>>                                                      'string')


From bsb at winnegan.de  Thu Jul  5 16:33:14 2001
From: bsb at winnegan.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 22:33:14 +0200
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
In-Reply-To: <01070512214400.00888@whatsup.home>
References: <01070512214400.00888@whatsup.home>
Message-ID: <87vgl72k1h.fsf@winnegan.de>

Hi Gary,

If you're running KDE 2.1: I remember a message including a workaround
on the debian-kde mailing list the day before.

Gary Herron <gherron at islandtraining.com> writes:

> I'm writing an application which needs to open a web browser on any
> platform, so I used the webbrowser module, and it fails to work on my
> first system test because of an apparent bug in netscape.  I've not
> seen any mention of this problem, but I'm hoping someone has a
> workaround.

Since I don't use Netscape 4.7x any more, I don't have the message at
hand, search the archive at 

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0107/maillist.html

for netscape in the subject line.

Good luck
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at winnegan.de - http://www.winnegan.de/
****** ceterum censeo javascriptum esse restrictam *******



From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 14:32:28 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:32:28 GMT
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <0bj77.544176$eK2.114166570@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Colin Meeks" <colin at meeks.ca> wrote in message
news:lSh77.64029$2V.13507417 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
> I have a list that comprises of First Name, Surname, Age
> The list looks something like
>
>
[["Mickey","Mouse","50"],["Stan","Mantz","3"],["Junior","Wilst","40"],["Kim"
> ,"Bean","15"]]
>
> How can I sort the list to rearrange it by either First Name, Surname, Age
>
> I believe I'd have to use a cmpfunc in the sort, but not too sure how to
> achieve the above.
>
> Thanks
>
> Colin
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.265 / Virus Database: 137 - Release Date: 18/07/2001
>
>

You don't have to use a custom compare sort.
You can get what you want by creating a temp list, consisting of 'decorated'
values, and sorting that list.  These are actually tuples whose second
element is the real data, and the first element is a copy of the field that
you want to sort by.  (or a computed value, if you want)

So, if you want to sort by surname, for example,
you can transform each item like ["Mickey","Mouse","50"]
into ("Mouse",["Mickey","Mouse","50"]).
You use a regular sort on the list of transformed values,
then 'extract' your original values.

Here's an example of sorting records by a given field:

def sort_by_field(seq,index):
    tmp = [ (item[index],item) for item in seq ]
    tmp.sort()
    return [ item for (_,item) in tmp ]


data = [["Mickey","Mouse","50"],
        ["Stan","Mantz","3"],
        ["Junior","Wilst","40"],
        ["Kim","Bean","15"]]

data_by_lastname = sort_by_field(data,1)

print 'by last name:'
for record in data_by_lastname:
    print record

------
OUTPUT:

by last name:
['Kim', 'Bean', '15']
['Stan', 'Mantz', '3']
['Mickey', 'Mouse', '50']
['Junior', 'Wilst', '40']






From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Thu Jul 26 07:39:40 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:39:40 +1000
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010724175515.4646A-100000@latt.if.usp.br> <cpg0bla7n8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60017C.6CDBCE26@student.gu.edu.au>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Francisco <frandebo at latt.if.usp.br> writes:
> 
> >   I just compiled python2.2a and I'm getting this strange response to the
> > 'type' command:
> >
> > Python 2.2a1 (#2, Jul 24 2001, 12:24:09)
> > [GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
> > Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> > >>> type('')
> > <type 'str'>
> >
> >  while I expected to get <type 'string'>.
> >
> >  Am I missing something or I just messed up with the compilation??
> 
> No, the string type changed its name to match the str() function
> (which is now the same as the str type).
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Very nice.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From guido at digicool.com  Sat Jul  7 14:18:02 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 14:18:02 -0400
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 07 Jul 2001 10:21:58 PDT."
             <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> 
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> 
Message-ID: <200107071818.f67II2g18846@odiug.digicool.com>

> However, I think that some details of the numerics also need to
> be clarified before you boldly go.  Specifically,
> 
>  - What about long division?  A float cannot capture all results.
>    Should it raise a Value/Range error?
>    Should the programmer be forced to use divmod?
>    Should it return a rational?  
>    I don't really like the last two choices and the first two choices
>    obviate much of the usefulness of longs.

We'll introduce a new operator or function (e.g. div(x, y)) for
integer division, which will work for ints and longs.  When / is used
and the result can't be expressed as a C double, we can choose between
yielding Infinity or raising OverflowError; I think probably the
latter although with two float arguments this currently returns Inf on
most platforms.

>    Perhaps Paul Dubois's kinds mechanism comes to the rescue?
>    He does have a trial implementation in numeric (though 
>    I am not in favor of seeing much of the current numeric 
>    integrated into the core)

I don't think this will help.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 13 11:58:50 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:58:50 -0500
Subject: Book count test
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5243@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I don't know.  I am just passing the time while I wait for some software to
be FTPed from one server to another.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Jung [mailto:andreas at andreas-jung.com]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 11:30 AM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971; python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Book count test


And what do we learn from these numbers ?

Andreas

From: "Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Freitag, 13. Juli 2001 10:22
Subject: Book count test


> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these
categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)
>   Java     - 1621
>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul  6 03:15:35 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 07:15:35 GMT
Subject: ICFP 2001 contest - Python team, anyone?
References: <slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <rAd17.424558$eK2.85931616@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

..reading contest rules...
so, we would have to write for Python 1.52??
..and this is for a functional programming contest?

2.1 would be better, with nested scopes and list comprehensions, etc.


"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
> The International Functional Programming Contest was announced. I'd like
to
> join this year. If you are a Python hacker and want to have all the fun
and
> glory, please contact me :-)
>
> http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/
>
> """
> On Thursday, July 26, 2001 at 15:00 UTC (see this page to convert to your
time
> zone), a challenge task will be posted on the Internet. It will also be
sent by
> mail to the contest mailing list.
>
> Teams will have 72 hours to implement a program to perform this task and
submit
> this program to the contest judges.
> """
>
> (Im not an ubercoder, I just want to have fun)
>
> Gerhard
> --
> mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
> web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
> public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
> reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda
x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))




From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Fri Jul 27 14:13:44 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:13:44 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com> <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60E96C.2A99AD87@engcorp.com> <wkhevyfepq.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <3B61B037.3070704@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

phawkins at connact.com wrote:

>>>>>>"PH" == Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
>>>>>>
> 
> PH> In my post I was attempting to point out that I find list 
> PH> comprehensions less readable than the equivalent, longer but 
> PH> more explicit while loop version, not that one list comprehension 
> PH> is more or less cryptic than another.
> 
> Personally, as soon as I saw list comprehensions, I found them
> splendidly, instantly readable -- so long as they aren't nested, I can
> read them at a glance, where it takes me just a little longer to
> comprehend all of a loop.  This is certainly true for the examples
> we've been looking at.  So I think this just has to do with how one's
> mind works.


I couldn't read list comprehensions until I actually started playing 
around with them.  After experimenting and writing (oh about 3 or 4) I 
discovered I could read them ;)

> 
> and-no-I-don't-find-perl-at-all-readable-ly yr's
> Patricia
> 

and-i-don't-find-lisp-readable-either-although-with-list-comprehensions-i'm-starting-to-ly 
yours
Tom



From zooko at zooko.com  Mon Jul 16 16:18:22 2001
From: zooko at zooko.com (zooko at zooko.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:18:22 -0700
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
Message-ID: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com>

[cross-posting to python-list[1] and mojonation-devel[2]]


Dear Pythonistas, One and All, Large and Small:

It was with some interest that I read on Dr. Dobbs weekly Python-URL [3] that
someone or other on Usenet was asserting that you couldn't write large
distributed applications in a dynamic language without succumbing to bugs.  
I hack on a large, distributed Python application named "Mojo Nation" [4].  

I briefly considered putting Mojo Nation forward as a counterexample, since it
definitely qualifies on the first two criteria (large, distributed), but 
I hesitated to subject myself and my teammates to criticism on the last
(non-buggy).

Of course, all large applications have bugs, and I'm very proud of Mojo Nation,
but recently we've been struggling with a particularly damaging bug: memory
leakage which causes our application to use up all available RAM after only a
few hours of operation.

In searching for the source of the leakge today, I encountered a surprising
behaviour of Python which I think may be a bug.  If I allocate a bunch of
memory with a function like this:

>>> blarg = {}
>>> for i in range(2**13):
>>>     blarg[i] = [0] * (2**10)

and then remove the references to this memory, like this:

>>> del blarg

then all the memory is freed up.

But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default argument to
an inner function, like this:

>>> def silliest_func():
>>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
>>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
>>>         pass
>>>     return inner_silliest_func
>>> 
>>> blarg = {}
>>> for i in range(2**13):
>>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()

and then remove the references to this memory, like this:

>>> del blarg

none of the memory is freed up!

Even stimulating the garbage collector, with:

>>> import gc
>>> gc.collect()
0

just returns "0" and the memory is still in use.

I tested this with CPython 1.5.2 on Debian and CPython 2.0 on Debian and Red
Hat and they all behaved the same.  I also tested it with JPython 2.1-alpha1
with j2sdk 1.3.1-1 on Debian, and it *did* do the kind of garbage collection
that I expected.  (The JVM wouldn't collect until I reached some very
high limit on total RAM allocated or something.  But I could do the
"silliest_func and then delete the dict" indefinitely, with memory usage
as reported by Linux fluctuating between 30 MB and 60 MB.)

So it appears to me that inner functions and/or their default arguments are not
getting properly collected in CPython.  If this is the case, it poses quite a
problem for Mojo Nation, as we have relied heavily on the convenient closure-
like feature of passing around references to dynamically defined functions with
default arguments.

Thanks, y'all, for the best language and the most friendly language community
around.

Regards,

Zooko

[1] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
[2] http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mojonation-devel
[3] http://lwn.net/daily/pyurl-20010716.php3
[4] http://mojonation.net/
[5] http://zooko.com/memleak.py




From cbarber at curl.com  Mon Jul 30 10:49:24 2001
From: cbarber at curl.com (Christopher Barber)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 10:49:24 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>

<brueckd at tbye.com> writes:

> In most jobs I've used C/C++ or Java and for me the stronger the typing
> rules the more problems (and in turn bugs) it caused.

I am really surprised to hear this.  My experience has been the opposite.

>  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
> an array or Vector.

You seem to be complaining about the lack of tuples, not static type-checking
per-se.

> Strong typing seems to prevent a very small class of errors at great
> expense, and none of the errors it prevents should escape good testing
> (which you should have anyway).

I am all for unit testing, but I know from experience that it is *extremely*
difficult to comprehensively test a code unit, and virtually impossible if you
do not have a good code coverage tool.  If the compiler can catch a type error
for me at compile-time, that is at least one less unit test I have to write.
 
I agree that static type declarations add complexity to a language, but there
is a significant body of developers that really appreciate what they can do
for you.  It would really be nice if Python could add some sort of optional
type declarations.  It should be technically feasible.

- Christopher


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 23 17:34:51 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:34:51 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:33 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>
>Fixed point arithmetic emulated by using integers with a scale factor,
>though, works very nicely. Better still when there's a language
>feature to do this automatically, but if we added fixed point types to
>Python we'd need *another* division operator - four so far including
>the rational one ;-)
>
This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
floating point support?

With Linux being embedded all over the place, it seems like it would come up.
Do the mini hand-helds (not to mention cell phones) have floating point?


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Jul 20 09:50:30 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 13:50:30 GMT
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <Xns90E2BDCEA67E7gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194> <j4snfsgin1.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E46435B65D5gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>

Martin von Loewis wrote:

> Gordon McMillan <gmcm at hypernet.com> writes:
> 
>> You have to do a lot more than that. After all, once xml/__init__.py
>> runs and swaps itself for _xmlplus/__init__.py, then xml.sax.expatreader
>> refers to _xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py. 
> 
> The original reporter did not have PyXML installed, so no swapping of
> _xmlplus would happen on this installation.

Never read the original report. I was responding to the text I quoted 
(and you elided). The import hacks in _xmlplus, while clever, make
things difficult, and not just for dependency trackers.

After all, there are 8 places in _xmlplus that do 
"import xml.<something>", and where the intent is not to get
xml/<something>, but to get _xmlplus/<something>. And 297 that
do "from xml.<something> import ..." with the same intent.

So only readers (human or tools) that understand what happens
in xml/__init__.py have a prayer of figuring out what's going on.

PyXML is hardly alone in this. Many package authors indulge in import
hacks, thinking they can make their package more user friendly. In
the long run, though, this kind of import hack is user hostile.

- Gordon


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Mon Jul  2 05:51:07 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:51:07 +0200
Subject: win32gui
Message-ID: <9hpg2o$f4pdk$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

Hi.

I'm trying to use the win32gui module.
I want to register a custom window class
with the following code:

import win32gui, win32con

def test(*args, **kw):
    print "test", args, kw

wndclass = win32gui.WNDCLASS()
wndclass.lpszClassName = "MyPythonWndClass"
wndclass.lpfnWndProc = test
print win32gui.RegisterClass(wndclass)

hwnd = win32gui.CreateWindow("MyPythonWndClass", .....)
win32gui.ShowWindow(hwnd, win32con.SW_SHOWNORMAL)

win32gui.PumpMessages()

All this (basically) works, the window is shown,
but nothing is printed from the test function.
Wading with the debugger through the code, it seems
the 'test' function is never called.
The reason seems to be that the default window-proc
from win32gui is called, and SetClassLong() is never
called with 'test' as the parameter.
Has anyone got this to work? Am I doning something wrong?

Thomas




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Wed Jul 11 02:21:18 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:21:18 +1200
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
		 <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
		 <9icbft$okp$1@panix6.panix.com> <L3DTqUAyejS7Ew2k@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B4A5E00.BDB4245A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B4BF05E.7391121E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> In article <9icbft$okp$1 at panix6.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com>
> > probably the PSU having killed all the Norwegian Blues
> > is overloading sparrows with portable nuclear devices.
> I feel sure you meant to say "swallow".  The airspeed of a laden
> swallow is greater than that of a laden sparrow. (I think... -- Waa!)

But does this carry over to the maximum strike range
of a nuclear-armed swallow? Enquiring minds with nothing
better to do with themselves want to know...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 20 18:51:29 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 15:51:29 -0700
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com>

"Donovan Hide" <donovan at sherbet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<tlavt7jeqqt7b3 at corp.supernews.co.uk>...
> Wow,
>     fascinating! The minds of two 'algorthmistas' battling the pros and cons
> of there code and techniques. I can't tell you how interesting this is. I
> really get the feeling that Python needs a good combinatorics module.
> CombPy, maybe?

[snip]

And now, for something completely different!  "Fun with generators."

Here is the "sets of 6 positive integers that sum to 17" problem,
solved with generators.  Works with Python 2.2.  My goal here was to
minimize lines of code, not to optimize for performance.


Tom


# -------- begin code

from __future__ import generators
import operator

def genSet(howMany, minNum, maxNum): # generator
    if howMany <= 1:
        for i in range(minNum ,maxNum+1): yield [i]
    else:
        for a in genSet(howMany-1, minNum, maxNum):
            for b in range(max(a), maxNum+1):
                yield a + [b]

def findSum(howMany, minNum, maxNum, sum): # generator
    for i in genSet(howMany, minNum, maxNum):
        if reduce(operator.add, i) == sum:
            yield i
            

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print "finding sets of 6 positive integers that add up to 17" 
    count = 0
    for i in findSum(6, 1, 17, 17):
        count += 1
        print count, ":", i

# -------- end code

Running it:

C:\Python22>python testgen.py
finding sets of 6 positive integers that add up to 17
1 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 12]
2 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 11]
3 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 10]
4 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 9]
5 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 8]
6 : [1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 7]
7 : [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 10]
8 : [1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 9]
9 : [1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 8]
10 : [1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 7]
11 : [1, 1, 1, 2, 6, 6]
12 : [1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 8]
13 : [1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 7]
14 : [1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6]
15 : [1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 6]
16 : [1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 5]
17 : [1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 9]
18 : [1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 8]
19 : [1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 7]
20 : [1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 6]
21 : [1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 7]
22 : [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6]
23 : [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5]
24 : [1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 5]
25 : [1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 6]
26 : [1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5]
27 : [1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4]
28 : [1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 8]
29 : [1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 7]
30 : [1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 6]
31 : [1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5]
32 : [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6]
33 : [1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5]
34 : [1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4]
35 : [1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5]
36 : [1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4]
37 : [1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4]
38 : [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 7]
39 : [2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6]
40 : [2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5]
41 : [2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5]
42 : [2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4]
43 : [2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4]
44 : [2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 08:45:25 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:45:25 +0100
Subject: Stability of PYC files
Message-ID: <e1gllts33oobp6vs3ppaor7uofl3eomehs@4ax.com>

Are the Python compiled bytecode PYC files stable enough that you can
take PYC files generated by older versions of Python and run them
without the source on newer versions?

Has anyone ever tried to document Python bytecode?

Does jPython compile to Java bytecode, or does it act more directly as
an interpreter, or does it use an intermediate bytecode?


Sorry for the wierd questions ;-)



From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 21 06:47:10 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:47:10 +0500
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org> <atehltknbavv0irts7ousrh4ed8t36op5f@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jclvg$9m7$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>

Sheila King wrote:

> In an attempt to address the "why" of this problem, I have posted the
> following article to two mailing lists to which I belong, for AP
> Computer Science teachers:
....
>> Those of us who programmed in Pascal, certainly recall the
>> case-insensitivity of that programming language. And now that we are
>> programming in C++, and moving to Java in another couple of years, we
>> are programming in a case-sensitive language. Python is currently a
>> case-sensitive language.

I'm not sure how much of a difference this makes, but there is another (to 
me) important difference.  Python is an interpreted language, and name 
errors are not caught until runtime.  That is, in Java, the following class 
gives me an error at compile time

public class Test {
        public static void main( String args[] ) {
                int var = 0;
                if (false) {
                        System.out.println( "We don't run this code: " + Var );
                } else {
                        System.out.println( "This code is run " + var );
                }
        }
}

$ javac Test.java
Test.java:8: error:Variable "Var" is not defined in current context

Whereas the equivalent Python doesn't give me *any* error at run time.
if __name__ == '__main__':
    var = 0
    if 0:
        print "We don't run this code: " + str( Var )
    else:
        print "This code is run " + str( var )

$ python test.py
This code is run 0

Thus, whether simple errors like this are detected in Python depend 
in part on whether the programmer tests every possible path of 
execution.  Of course, case-insensitivity doesn't really "fix" this 
problem.  I more often have problems like mixing var and bar.  Perhaps 
it would be nicer if Python had a switch that gave errors for names that 
are used that don't exist at compile time.  I know that it's possible to 
create names in Python at runtime, but for those programs that don't use 
such features, this type of guarantee might be nice.

The "should it be a tool solution or a language solution" could then 
rage over this new issue. 

---Tom



From bww00 at amdahl.com  Tue Jul 24 01:16:37 2001
From: bww00 at amdahl.com (Bryan Webb)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 05:16:37 GMT
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
Message-ID: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>

I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating point
envirnoment. I would like an increase of precision over std floats. I also
would like to know the internal representation of the numbers, so that I can
read and write them to disk in their internal representations..
Should I use real-accurate, or numpy
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks for the help

Bryan Webb




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul 31 22:45:14 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 14:45:14 +1200
Subject: (in)exactness of complex numbers
References: <mailman.996249232.22459.python-list@python.org> <cp4rry2qvh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b62cc78.3396597@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3B676D3A.E436943A@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

"David C. Ullrich" wrote:
> 
> But why should the real and imag of a complex be required to be
> floats in the first place? Why  shouldn't they be allowed to be
> floats or rationals or integers?

A complex number, in the mathematical sense, is 
not a pair of other numbers -- that's just one 
way of *representing* a complex number.

If you have some application for which you
need pairs of numbers that are restricted to
being integers or whatever, they're not really
complex numbers, and so you can't blame Python's
complex type for not helping you.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 11:50:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:50:02 GMT
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com> <3B66B1AA.EF2FFE3A@engcorp.com> <Yvy97.1223$0%2.193545@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B66D37E.52C05154@tundraware.com>

Steve Holden wrote:
> 
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote ...
> > Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> > >
> > >               *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
> > >                          Tim Daneliuk
> > >               Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.
> > [...]
> > >   by coding around them.  This leads to REALLY ugly, hard-to-maintain
> > >   systems.  CHANGING UNDERWEAR MATTERS.
> >
> > I think you meant "UNDERWARE" ... :)
> 
> No, he meant underwear. His underwear had clargs on it. That does indeed
> make them really ugly and hard to maintain.
> 

Awright, who's been peeking???

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul  9 19:41:35 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 23:41:35 GMT
Subject: Python Idiom Question
Message-ID: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com>

What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:

while (x=getchar() != 'N')
	{
	Do something}

In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?

I'm sure this is possible, I just cannot seem to find the magic
combination that gets me there.  Nothing seems to turn up when I
look in the Usual Places, but then again, I may not be Lookin' Right.

At the moment, I'm doing things like:

x=raw_input()
while x:
	Do Something Interesting
	x = get_input("Prompt: ")

TIA,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 15:25:59 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:25:59 -0400
Subject: Regex for strings utility
References: <1103_995396879@pan>
Message-ID: <ih057.15140$sx2.640261@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

rhys tucker" <rhystucker at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1103_995396879 at pan...
> I'm trying to write a script which operates like the Unix 'strings'
utility but I'm having difficulties with the regex.
>
> #!/usr/bin/env python
>
> # strings program
>
> import sys, re
>
> f = open(sys.argv[1])
> line = f.readline()
> pattern = ([\040-\126\s]{4,})
>
> while line:
> # regular expression to match strings >=4 chars goes here
> matches = findall(pattern, line)
> for match in matches;
> print match
> line = f.readline()
>
>
>
> I'm getting a Syntax Error: Invalid Token at the closing brace to the
pattern.
>
Try

pattern = "([\040-\126\s]{4,})"

for a start.  I notice you import re, but don't use it anywhere - your
findall() call could be re.findall(), perhaps?

I'm not a regex guru, but I have my doubts that the pattern will match what
you want it to. Perhaps the effbot or one of his proxies could advise...

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 20:58:46 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 00:58:46 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
> "quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?
> 
> ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"

from 'Mastering Regular Expressions', p.124:

'^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.\
([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])$'

The author's own words below the result:
    "Quite a mouthful! Was the trouble worth it? ..."

It's not compact, and it's certainly not the only way to do it, but it
performs the 0-255 test within the regex.

A later suggestion in the same chapter:

'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'

(capturing parens) for easy subsequenst validation.

Easily implemented in Perl:

: sub valid_ip {
:     my ($ip, $failed, @elements) = (shift, 0);
:     @elements = ($ip =~ /^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$/);
:     $failed = grep { $_ > 255 } @elements;
:     return ($failed) ? undef : 1;
: }

Slightly more verbose in Python:

: import re
: def valid_ip(ip):
:     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
:     elements = map(int, re.match(expr, ip).groups())
:     failed = filter(lambda x: x > 255, elements)
:     if failed:  return None
:     else:       return 1

Please excuse the enthusiastic and unnecessary coding. It sounded like
fun!

HTH
-- 
Destinations are often a surprise to the destined.
    -- Thessaly, The Sandman


From bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com  Tue Jul 31 19:17:17 2001
From: bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com (Brendan Hahn)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:17:17 -0700
Subject: "Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <4E215400D01D7374.0068C51FD6502BE8.99D4E013ECF0FDFB@lp.airnews.net> <bhahn-ya02408000R3007012032180001@news.corp.hp.com> <slrn9mcafp.qj.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <bhahn-ya02408000R3107011617170001@news.corp.hp.com>

grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote:
>As long we're completely off-topic (Python-wise)...
 [...]
>The question of how to write a Linux driver in C++ comes up
>fairly regularly.  In theory it's possible as long as you don't
>use features X,Y, and Z, and you include a set of kenel-mode runtime
>support routines.  Nobody ever wants to try it badly enough.

Exactly -- it's all about the runtime support, and kernel-space C++ runtime
implementations are all over the map in terms of features and performance. 
Microsoft has a pretty good one for NT, but the *n*x world will drive you
crazy.

There's actually a spec for "Embedded C++", a stripped-down version of the
language (no templates, exceptions, or RTTI, I think some inheritance
limitations and a few other things) intended for embedded systems and other
environments where you just don't want to deal with the whole ball of wax.

>>You could use Objective-C on the old NeXT systems -- Apple has
>>switched to a C++ IO system, for better performance, but using
>>a restricted subset of the language.  Haven't tried it yet but
>>I think it'll be nice.
>
>Is that in OS X?  I thought it was BSD under the hood?

It's a Mach-based system. In a real Mach system you have the Mach kernel
and one or more "personalities" layered above it providing your typical
"OS" services.  For MacOS X Apple has created a sort of hybrid with the
kernel and personality layers much more tightly coupled, and the
personality is BSD.

The IO subsystem ("IOKit") for MacOS X is largely inherited from NeXT,
though, and is not at all like the IO environment for a typical BSD system. 
It's a whole O-O hierarchy modelling interfaces, devices, drivers,
etc...Apple has redone it based on C++ rather than Objective-C to cut out
the overhead of dynamic dispatch and such that you have with Objective-C. 
The C++ subset they support is quite like the Embedded C++ I mentioned, but
I don't think they picked up that spec exactly.

bhahn at transoft.mmangle.net   <-- unmangle address to reply


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 20 14:53:07 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:53:07 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com> <aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com>
Message-ID: <%3%57.7717$m11.427739@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Raymond Hettinger" <othello at javanet.com> wrote in message
news:3B587279.A225AC51 at javanet.com...
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
> > No asbestos required, but what's tha advantage over
> >
> >     mylist = tuple(mylist)
> >
> > just-wonderingl-ly y'rs  - steve
>
> Good question. Immutable lists don't give you much over
> what you get now from tuples (except the automatic coercion
> for dictionary keys).
>
> The big advantage comes from deprecating tuples, simplifying
> the language, getting rid of (,) and eliminating the need to remember
> which things require tuples, which require lists, and which allow
> both (quick, what does the % formatting operator require?).
>
A tuple. Or a single object. But instead of testing whether things were
tuples, you'd then have to check whether the list was immutability. I don't
see why immutability has to be a one-way attribute when converiosn between
list and tuple is so easy.

> never-met-a-list-i-didnt-like,ly y'rs  -- Raymond

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 15:56:41 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:56:41 -0500
Subject: interpreter improvements
In-Reply-To: <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
        <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <15200.30201.508222.444597@beluga.mojam.com>

    Quinn> The other observation is that line editing belongs in the
    Quinn> terminal emulator or window system, not seperately in every
    Quinn> single program that runs under it.  If you use a terminal
    Quinn> emulator with cut and paste and line editing then all programs
    Quinn> automatically have those features.

As others (including Guido) have observed, having a line editing subsystem
that knows about the structure of the language you are using can be a boon.
With readline support I can recall individual lines I've typed at the
interpreter, however readline knows nothing about Python's block structure,
so I can't recall entire blocks that correspond to (for instance) "if",
"for", or "while" statements.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From cliechti at mails.ch  Tue Jul 31 00:07:11 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 06:07:11 +0200
Subject: again problem with re.reserch
References: <mailman.996548997.18654.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF3EE772FB4cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

"sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote in news:mailman.996548997.18654.python-
list at python.org:
>>>>> c = a.search('foo abcd')
>  print c
>  <SRE_Match object at 0x8114a28>
>  
> then how I can get the exact postion the string in 'foo abcd',
> for example ,I want it return a number denote the postion
> 

you dont need "re" for that. try find, like:
a = "that's a string"
pos = a.find('str')

if you realy insist on using regular expressions for that use ".start()" on 
the match object.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From pzw1 at spam.me.please.hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 17:29:06 2001
From: pzw1 at spam.me.please.hotmail.com (Peter Wang)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:29:06 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wCFnOzJue5BfZp1XxTIIFBDQt=LE@4ax.com>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:01:57 +0100, Dale Strickland-Clark
<dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote:

>"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>
>OK, I've had a good look at this now.
>
>It's hideous!

i believe the euphemism is "legacied". :)

>It's no wonder that people get fed up with computers if they get given a user interface that expects
>pointless dashes all over the place.

actually, the GNU getopt package uses standard UNIX argument-passing
paradigms.  so for the UNIX users, this interface is quite natural.
("ease of use" is always a relative measure!)

>You simply can't use this routine to code a nice arg string.

after looking at your original post, i'm not exactly sure what you
want.  do you want a function which can pass a template, as thus?

	parse_args("val1=%d val2=%s val3=%f", arg_string)

if so, then you're going to need a much more strict semantic system
for defining the template.  what delimiters are used for strings?  how
do you indicate strings should be interpreted as values and not as
literals?  etc.

perhaps if you gave an example of what you're looking for, better help
could be provided.

you could also write your own, and submit it to the vaults.  although
i'm afraid that you'll be fighting twenty some-odd years of UNIX
command-line tradition, and this will render your interface less
friendly to the vast majority of UNIX-heads.  it all depends on your
target audience, i suppose.


-peter


From rob at jam.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 11:53:27 2001
From: rob at jam.rr.com (Rob Andrews)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:53:27 GMT
Subject: A few things :)
References: <mailman.996068624.2375.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5EEAFA.635E75DD@jam.rr.com>

Lee Nutter wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Im a beginner, and although (i think) I know the base language all
> right, I haven't really made anything. Can anyone recommend anything for
> a first project?
> 
> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby.
> Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language,
> don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)
> 
> Thanks,

Feel free to check out Useless Python for lots of ideas on first
projects. But my general advice is to play with Python a bit and piece
together something small. If you can use Python to read/write from a
file, do something randomly, get user input and print to the screen, and
use a list or dictionary, you might be surprised at what you can do in a
few lines of code.

Start playing with any idea that entertains you, and post a question to
the Python Tutor email list
(http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor) when you get stumped on
something.

enjoy,
Rob
-- 
As foretold by Nostradamus....
Useless Python!
http://www.lowerstandard.com/python


From blair at steenerson.com  Thu Jul 19 21:07:41 2001
From: blair at steenerson.com (Blair Steenerson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:07:41 GMT
Subject: Problem with Modules/posixmodule.o
Message-ID: <3B578472.5EA8CAD5@steenerson.com>

I've tried building Python a couple of times, but have gotten the same
error both times.

configure works OK, but make stops with this message,

gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I. -I./Include -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
-c ./Modules/signalmodule.c -o Modules/signalmodule.o
gcc -g -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I. -I./Include -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
-c ./Modules/posixmodule.c -o Modules/posixmodule.o
./Modules/posixmodule.c:4053: sys/statvfs.h: No such file or directory
./Modules/posixmodule.c:4102: sys/statvfs.h: No such file or directory
make: *** [Modules/posixmodule.o] Error 1

System is Linux 2.2.19 w/ReiserFS on x86

Anyone seen this problem before?  Any suggestions would be much
appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Blair



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 23:20:33 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 23:20:33 -0400
Subject: Couple of newbie questions...
References: <5a140c6d.0107261705.3a4f7db3@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <uelr3ukfy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

foobarickknob at yahoo.com (Scott Taylor) writes:

> I'm just getting started w/ Python - and have run into a couple issues
> w/ the Windows extensions...
> 
> 1) time.sleep doesn't seem to release time back to the Win32
> subsystem.  I had a tight loop, and CPU was maxed out at 100% even if
> I did a PumpWaitingMessages w/ a time.sleep.  To actually get the loop
> to return slices of time back to windows and not max out the CPU I had
> to do a PumpWaitingMessages followed by a win32api.Sleep(0) call.  My
> question is - shouldn't time.sleep actually make the process sleep w/o
> hogging CPU?

I've definitely used time.sleep() to yield within threads.  On
Windows, time.sleep() just directly calls the Win32 Sleep() function,
so I can't really think of a good reason why you'd see the
discrepancy.  Did you really just replace a call from time.sleep(0)
with win32api.Sleep(0) and have different behavior?  Could there have
been any other difference in the application when you were using time.

There is a minor difference that (at least in recent versions)
win32api.Sleep() actually uses the Win32 SleepEx() function beneath
the covers, but unless you pass in a second "bAlertable" parameter it
defaults to FALSE and should be equivalent to Sleep().

Note that Sleep(0) is a special case of yielding the current thread's
timeslice to any other equal priority thread in the process, but is
otherwise equivalent to no delay at all.  So if you have no other
higher or equal priority threads in your process, time.sleep(0) or
win32api.Sleep(0) is almost a no-op.  I say almost because the Python
wrapping (either the time or win32api module) does release and re-grab
the Python interpreter lock across the call, so it's possible that
some other Python thread might slip in if it was blocked on the lock.

So if you want to be a bit fairer, make the delay non-zero but just
really tiny (say time.sleep(0.01)).

You can see this from the interactive interpreter - something like:

    >>> while 1:
    ...   time.sleep(0)
    ...

will peg CPU usage at 100% (machine still responsive, but that loop is
taking whatever CPU it can get), versus:

    >>> while 1:
    ...   time.sleep(0.01)
    ...

which barely nudges the CPU.

This is Windows kernel behavior, and not directly related to Python.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 13:33:00 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:33:00 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61EEA5.9050306@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B659A4C.96DE8CCA@home.net>

Kevin Rodgers wrote:
> I worked on a program where
> we were restricted to pure-ANSI Fortran 77 - including 6-character
> monocase variable names.  Yes, it was painful, but since a big part of
> what I was doing involved manipulating 4-dimensional arrays of data, and
> since C's support for multidimensional arrays is rather lacking (I think
> the technical term is "sucks"), I'd take Fortran any day.  Even
> something that you'd think C should excel at, namely concatenating
> strings, is much easier in Fortran (using the // operator) than in C
> (quick - write down the exact syntax for strcat() from memory).
> 
> These days, I only hack Fortran if I'm using a legacy code, but despite
> its quirks, one shouldn't underestimate just how well it served its
> target audience . . .

This brings up a good point about programming language design: While I
appreciate the features of a language that make it clean and easy to
read, and all that: basic functionality trumps such cosmetic features,
and that means that issues like case sensitive identifiers, indenting
issues, needing to use "self", etc, etc, etc, are tiny compared to basic
functionality. I always thought Fortran was ugly and often painful to
use...but it did handle some things required for computational
programming (multi-dimentionial arrays are big one) well, and thus it
lives on!. In fact, I think that if Fortran 77 introduced dynamic memory
allocation, it would be living even larger than it is: that was kind of
a deal killer for a lot of stuff. By the way, Fortran 90/95 is pretty
darn nice language.

As a matter of fact, I like Python a lot, for a lot of reasons, but I
would not be using it at all if it were not for NumPy.

To make this relevant to recent discussions:

Case sensitivity is a purely cosmetic issue, There is no reason to make
a major language change for cosmetic reasons.

I think the proposed new division is a functional difference, not a
cosmetic one. Having a syntax that makes it clear whether you want an
integer answer or not, regardless of the types of the inputs is very
important in a dynamic language.

Anyway, on with the show!!!

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 10:06:05 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:06:05 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cp1ynf3da9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171738550.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
> 
> > >I also don't want to fork the code base.  
> > 
> > Does that imply that you sare no longer interested in making 
> > radical changes to Python, such as case-insensitive identifiers
> > mentioned in CP4E?
> 
> I still have the same end goal, but I believe there must be a way to
> obtain it without too much disturbance.  Case-sensitivity, for
> example, may be a tool feature rather than a language feature, or it
> may be a user option or a langage-level choice.  (Not that I've
> figured out exactly how to do this, but TeachScheme makes this an
> option.)  Note that case-sensitivity is also controversial: the Alice
> folks found it a problem, but the VPython folks have not confirmed
> this (while they did confirm the integer division trap).

Probably, case{non,}sensitive and integer/fp division are the same analogy
as simple vs. engineer/scientific vs. programmable calculator (we recently
discussed in the other c.l.p thread: "Re: Bug in __imul__").

Python is in no way simple calculator ;-) It is in the "programmable"
category for sure. 

Then it must be real programming language. So the beginners 
will join real programming. Not just some funny Logo. ;-)

imul vs. fmul aren't necessary example here, but case sensitivity is.

I noted that Alice is Windows-only project and their view could
be narrowed.

Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.

So, certain degree of wisdom must be preserved. CP4E is not 
"dumb P to nothing and it will be 4E".

If the product has internal integrity thus inherent simplicity it is
simpler than the product which ADDS something for "easy of use"
to hairly and underthought core.

Easiness/complexity must match problems under solution. DNS is complex
because NS is overly complex system. So, attempts to build better BIND
failed so far, because NS *is* BIND ;-)

Python is externally and internally simple and does not do special hook
for "easy of use". Lets leave it simple and coherent.


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 





From mertz at gnosis.cx  Wed Jul  4 22:51:59 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Dr. David Mertz)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:51:59 -0400
Subject: Most important text processing examples
Message-ID: <PZ9Q7kKkX8ZO092yn@bellatlantic.net>                         

Always so impressed by the Python discussion group, I figure I will ask
its advice.  I have recently contracted to write a book called _Text
Processing in Python_ for Sybex.  The proposal and outline can be
skimmed at <http://gnosis.cx/tpip.proposal>, if you want to see what I
am aiming at (I've made minor adjustments as I've started writing, and
will certainly make more as I go along).

One of the elements of the book will be example solutions to practical
problems in the topic domain.  I can think of a number pretty readily
off the top of my head.  And I have skimmed <http://python.faqts.com>
and <http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/> to get a sense of what
some other people consider important and/or frequent problems that come
up (I will probably solve some of the same sample problems at those
places, but not using the same code precisely).

But I am very interested to know what readers of c.l.py feel are the
most important sample problems to address in a book like this.  One
thing where my focus will differ somewhat from the ASPN cookbooks is
that I want to keep the emphasis on the problem itself, and make the
quirks and optimization of Python incidental--many of the recipes at
ASPN have as much or more to do with idiomatic and clever things that
Python does as with solving the problem itself (which could also be
solved in a different language, for example).  It is tough to keep this
focus, since the matters overlap so much, but this is my goal.

Anyway, your ideas are welcome.  Particular approaches to solutions are
always interesting, but I am most interested in what *problems* readers
encounter most often in their everyday programming lives.

Yours, David...

--
    _/_/_/ THIS MESSAGE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Postmodern Enterprises _/_/_/
   _/_/    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[mertz at gnosis.cx]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  _/_/
  _/_/  The opinions expressed here must be those of my employer...   _/_/
 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Surely you don't think that *I* believe them!  _/_/




From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 02:26:28 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:26:28 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: newbie question
In-Reply-To: <3B42A1A3.2A7793CC@gmx.at>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107041024160.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Freller Alex wrote:

> I would like to program a python script that parses a directory and its
> subdirectorys after specific files (*.pl) and count their linenumbers. 

If you are working under UNIX, you do not need to program it:

$ find . -name '*.py' | xargs wc

(this brokes only when there are too large number of files, but then you
could read man find to see how to call a command for each file.)

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 06:43:27 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:43:27 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
References: <mailman.995315008.1887.python-list@python.org> <yv2r8vgt48l.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <yv2k818t3wk.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E1756E72B26duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in
news:yv2k818t3wk.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de: 

>> > >>> def silliest_func():
>> > >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
>> > >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x): pass
>> > >>>     return inner_silliest_func
>> > >>> 
>> > >>> blarg = {}
>> > >>> for i in range(2**13): blarg[i] = silliest_func()
>> 
>> This creates 2**13 references to one and the same object, namely
>> silliest_func which (I suspect) has just one reference to an object
>> inner_silliest_func. 
> 
> Should read: 
> This creates 2**13 references to one and the same object, namely
> inner_silliest_func.

Your understanding seems to be slightly flawed here. This actually
creates 1 reference to each of 2**13 objects. Each object is a function
called inner_silliest_func with a default argument, but every time you
call silliest_func you create a new object 'x' and a new function using 
that x as an argument.

> So it appears to me that inner functions and/or their default arguments
> are not getting properly collected in CPython.  If this is the case, it
> poses quite a problem for Mojo Nation, as we have relied heavily on the
> convenient closure- like feature of passing around references to
> dynamically defined functions with default arguments.

Is there a good reason why you cannot upgrade to Python 2.1? It appears 
that this problem is fixed in 2.1 as the following example shows:

--- begin refs.py ---
import weakref
class Tracker:
    def __init__(self):
        self.__trackedobjects = weakref.WeakValueDictionary()
        
    def trackLifetime(self, object, name=None):
        """Track the lifetime of the object. Adds it to a weak reference 
dictionary.
        At the end of the test the weak dictionary must be empty again."""

        name = name or repr(object)
        tracked = self.__trackedobjects
        tracked[(name, id(object))] = object

    def printStatus(self):
        print "Tracker is tracking %d objects" % len(self.__trackedobjects)

    def verifyTrackedObjects(self):
        tracked = self.__trackedobjects

        if len(tracked) != 0:
            names = []
            for (name, id) in tracked.keys():
                names.append(name)
            msg = "Objects not freed: " + ", ".join(names)
            assert len(tracked)==0, msg

tracker = Tracker()
tracker.printStatus()

def silliest_func():
     x = [0]
     def inner_silliest_func(x=x): pass
     tracker.trackLifetime(inner_silliest_func)
     return inner_silliest_func
 
blarg = {}
for i in range(10): blarg[i] = silliest_func()
tracker.printStatus()

del blarg
tracker.printStatus()
tracker.verifyTrackedObjects()
--- end ---
Which gives you the output:
Tracker is tracking 0 objects
Tracker is tracking 10 objects
Tracker is tracking 0 objects

If you comment out the line 'del blarg' you will get a list of unfreed 
objects.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 15:40:25 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:40:25 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
In-Reply-To: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107032337420.2491-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Wostenberg wrote:
> Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution to
> OO modelling?

   Yes, I heard. I saw an URL (from Zope site to an abstract of a book in
print) that showed the idea of acquisition was acquired (pun intended!) by
Digital Creations (probably Jim Fulton personnaly) from the book. Ask DC
people if they can find the URL for you.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 12:30:22 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:30:22 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu> <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <HOi57.20158$sx2.1076301@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Man Vehicle Laboratory" <FenZhao at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D at mit.edu...
>
> I've tried putting a print statement right after I import sys.  I have the
same
> error as before:
>
>
>
****************************************************************************
**
>
>      * WINVRUT 2.4a  Copyright 1995-2001  University of California, Santa
>      Barbara *
>      *                                    Massachusetts Institute of
>      Technology   *
>
****************************************************************************
**
>
>      VRUT  2.4a
>      voicekey                        Voicekey 0.9
>      serialthrustmaster              Serial thrustmaster 1.0
>      avstu                           AvatarStudio 1.1
>      Traceback (most recent call last):
>        File "<string>", line 1, in ?
>        File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 61, in ?
>          print sys.argv
>      AttributeError: argv
>
Well, this traceback looks very suspicious. I assume that the file you are
taking about is indeed e3_sid_data2.py?  Maybe not ... it is quite weird
that sys appears to have no argv attribute. I can only conclude that perhaps
some other portion of your code assigns to sys? But you say below this is
NOT the case. Aaarrgghh...

> The error I get from vrut is from my code looking at argv, not vrut (error
> message w/out print statement:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<string>", line 1, in ?
>   File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 62, in ?
>     mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
> AttributeError: argv
>
The first line of the tracebacks implies that some code is being executed
from a strng variable. If none of your code does anything like that (uses
eval/exec, let's say) then the obvious suspect is the vrut module...

Your module doesn't by any chance import itself, does it?

> So whatever my first operation is dealing with sys.argv, there's an
attribute
> error with argv)
>
> What confuses me is that this error is displayed in the VRUT window; VRUT
opens
> two windows, a display window that shows the 3D VR scene, and a text
window that
> will display print statements and error messages from python.  Logically,
if
> argv can't be found, an error message will end the program before vrut
ever gets
> started.
>
Oh. Is it possible that importing the vrut module modifies
sys.stdout/sys.stderr, leaving something weird in place before the vrut.go()
call creates the windows?

> I've also tried importing vrut after looking at sys.argv in case vrut does
> something funky in it's initialization/import.  Same problem.  Yet
commenting
> out the vrut.go() command, and the sys.argv is fine.

OK, so what you are telling us is that the presence of a function call you
have not yet executed is somehow affecting the sys module's namespace. That
sounds pretty funky to me, and frankly I'm beginning to wonder whether you
have programmed a time machine :-)

>
>                                         --Fen
>
> PS. I hope this helps:  all of my code up to the call to vrut (minus
> comments)...  there's not much there, can't figure out what's making it
work
> improperly.  None of the modules that I wrote and imported do anything
with sys
>
I can understand your confusion. I hope the rest of the list will feel free
to dive in with suggestions about what's wrong! :-0
>

Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here to make sure your program does indeed
see the correct value for the argument list.

>      import vrut

Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here too, to verify that the import
statement makes no changes to sys.
If you see output from the first print bu not the second then the module is
indeed doing something funky.

>      import sid
>
>
>      import string
>      import math
>      import time
>
>
>      import speeds
>      import e3_dataAn
>      import sys
>
>      mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
>      ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
>      ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
>      OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
>      SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
>      sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
>      VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
>      path=sys.argv[8]
>
>      vrut.go(vrut.NICE)
>
>
>
> Steve Holden wrote:
> [ various apparently irrelevant things ]

I'm currently betting that a recursive import is somehow messing things up.
Otherwise I'm a little stumped, and we'll have to proceed with debugging
step by step.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 11:45:18 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:45:18 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.20010710162342.mikael@isy.liu.se>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101932480.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Mikael Olofsson wrote:

> INTERCAL or Brainf***, anyone?

The following script was written in half an hour 
(after I found this page:

http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/pocket/pfmanual.html

(Chemists are going to use Forth in nanotech programming. ;-) 

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- mode: python -*-
# future core Eternal/Python implementation ;-)
# This code is in Public Domain
# $Id:$

global defining, stack, dictionary, executionstack

defining = 0

def _DOT():
  global stack
  try:
    v = stack.pop()
    print v
    return 1
  except:
    return None

def _ADD():
  global stack
  try:
    v2 = stack.pop()
    v1 = stack.pop()
    stack.append(v1+v2)
    return 1
  except:
    return None

stack = []
dictionary = {
  "." : {'immediate': 0, 'body': _DOT},
  "+" : {'immediate': 0, 'body': _ADD},
  }

def isnumber(x):
  try:
    int(x)
  except:
    return None
  return x

def builtin(word):
  return type(word['body']) == type(builtin)

def SEARCH(token):
  global dictionary
  try:
    return dictionary[token]
  except:
    return None

def EXECUTE(word):
  if builtin(word):
    return word['body']()
  else:
    return INTERPRETE(word['body'])

def EMPTYSTACK():
  raise "Empty stack"

def WHAT_IS_IT():
  raise "???"

def COMPILE(token):
  pass

def LITERAL(token):
  pass
  
def INTERPRET(tokens):
  global defining, stack
  for token in tokens:
    found = SEARCH(token)
    if found:
      if not defining or found['immediate']:
        if not EXECUTE(found):
          EMPTYSTACK()
      else:
        COMPILE(token)
    else:
      if isnumber(token):
        if not defining:
          stack.append(int(token))
        else:
          LITERAL(token)
      else:
        WHAT_IS_IT(token)
  return 1    

INTERPRET(["1", "2", "+", "."])

# End of interpreter.py

TODO:
 - executionstack instead of Python-based recursion
 - compiling part of the story
 - what is MCOMPILE and is it useful enough to complicate things? 
 - token reader
 - where globals should live? (multithreading-safely)
 - error handling

It needs courage to replace Forth's machine-code orientedness into
very-high Python structures ;-) I just can't decide if I want to emulate
memory arrays or do it in free fashion ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From jwc3f at spammenolikey.Virginia.EDU  Tue Jul 31 15:59:26 2001
From: jwc3f at spammenolikey.Virginia.EDU (Jeffrey W. Collyer)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 19:59:26 GMT
Subject: SocketServer clean shutdown from signal
Message-ID: <9k72mu$l19$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>

I'm using SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler to write a multithreaded network
daemon.  In normal useage it will serve requests forever and never shut down.
However, I want to be able to send the server a kill signal and immediately
restart it on the same port.  (this is under Unix, specifically Solaris).

I built the signal handler outside of the class, and I don't seem to be able
to cleanly release the socket when the server gets a kill.  If I have a 
client connected to the server, when I send the kill, the socket goes into
TIME_WAIT no matter what I try. 

Is there anyway around this?

I have something like this :

----

# set up signal handler
def sighandler(signum,frame):
	# my stuff here
        os._exit(0)


signal.signal(signal.SIGINT,sighandler)

class MyHandler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):


def main():
        host=''                 # localhost name
        port=31752               # local port number
        # create the Threading server
        server = SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer( (host,port), MyHandler)
        server.allow_reuse_address=1
        server.serve_forever()

----

I can't seem to access the socket object of the Myhandler instance server
inside the signal handler.  If I do a 

server.socket.close()

I get an exception.


Any ideas?

-- 
Jeff


From edcjones at erols.com  Wed Jul 25 14:25:39 2001
From: edcjones at erols.com (Edward C. Jones)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:25:39 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F0F23.4020600@erols.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:


> Thanks for the suggestion.  I think I'll do it this way: Python 3.x
> will be the first incompatible version, Python 2.x will require
> __future__ statements or other explicit ways to indicate that the
> programmer wants the new feature.
> 
> For less disturbing changes like nested scopes or generators (which
> would break only very small amounts of old code), we can introduce the
> new feature for real in the next release (e.g., nested scopes will be
> standard in 2.2, I expect generators will become standard in 2.3), but
> for devastatingly code-breaking changes like division, I'll wait until
> 3.0 before it becomes the law.


Good decision. The problem is solved as far as I am concerned.

<bad humor> 3.0 == 3000/100; 4.0 == 3000/10; 5.0 == 3000 </bad humor>

Ed Jones




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:04:50 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:04:50 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <slrn9kpvbh.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9krv7p.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E4932.78F8B7D3@engcorp.com>

Rainy wrote:

> I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
> in perl :-/.

Is that the reason you left? :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Fri Jul 13 19:59:19 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:59:19 -0700
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <mailman.995048304.8843.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4F8B57.7684D13A@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

William Park wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:50:57AM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> > apply( self.ren.Elements, cmd[1], additional_kwds )
> 
> > def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> > elements, *args, **kwds ):
> 
> > However, if I replace the apply command with:
> > self.ren.Elements( cmd[1][0], cmd[1][1], cmd[1][2], cmd[1][3],
> > cmd[1][4], cmd[1][5], additional_kwds )
> >
> > It works fine.  I can't figure why the apply line doesn't work.  There
> 
> Try
>     apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )
> There is subtle difference between calling Elements() as regular
> function and as class method within an object, namely 'self' argument.
> 
> --
> William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
> 8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.

I thought about that.  But in the test examples below, you can see that
you'll that you don't have to pass "self" with apply.  In fact if you
do, you'll end up with too many parameters.  Also, symanticly, I think 
"apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )" will only
pass two arguments "self" and "cmd[1]" as apposed to sending "self" and
all the items in "cmd[1]" as individual argument.  You'd need to put
"self" at the beginning of cmd[1], or make a new tuple to pass in.  But
I know what you mean.

In any case, my problem went away.  I'm not exactly sure why.  It
probably had to do with unsafe dynamic binding or something like that.
:)

>>> class foo:
...   def __init__( self ):
...     apply( self.bar, [1,2], {'c':3, 'd':4} )
...   def bar( self, a, b, c, *args, **kwds ):
...     self.a = a
...     self.b = b
...     self.c = c
... 
>>> inst = foo()
>>> inst.a
1
>>> inst.b
2
>>> inst.c
3
>>>
>>> class foo2:
...   def __init__( self ):
...     apply( self.bar, [self,1,2], {'c':3, 'd':4} )
...   def bar( self, a, b, c, *args, **kwds ):
...     self.a = a
...     self.b = b
...     self.c = c
... 
>>> inst2 = foo2()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in __init__
TypeError: keyword parameter redefined


--
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From emile at fenx.com  Sat Jul 14 19:40:28 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:40:28 -0700
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com> <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com> <LF447.476898$eK2.98947068@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Alex is right as long as var_to_append is already a list.  For non-lists
though you can also do

list_var += 1,

or,

list_var += (1,)


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:LF447.476898$eK2.98947068 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
>
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> ...
> >     list_var += var_to_append
> ...
>
> you mean:
>
> list_var += [var_to_append]
>
> or,
>
> list_var += list_to_extend
>
>
>



From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  2 18:13:36 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 18:13:36 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
>     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
>     - distance (between any two position) is too close

You don't need an NxN table, actually.  You can partition the space in
which you'll be tracking the planes into cubical buckets with diameters
greater than your threshold minimum distance.  Then you only need to
check for each plane the other planes that are in its bucket or an
adjacent bucket.  It scales linearly with the number of planes.

Alex.



From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 20:59:27 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:59:27 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 09:38:20 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
>news:3B465858.CB7F38E8 at tundraware.com...
>> I want a function to check a string to make sure it is a legitimate
>> dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
>>
>> First character is numeric or "-"
>> At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly two
>digits
>> All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"
>
>These specs seem to be equivalent to:
>    optional: -
>    one or more digits
I took it to be zero or more
>    optional: . followed by two digits
>    end of string
>
>This is very easy to express as a Regular Expression:
>    r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$'
or
     r'^-?(\d*\.\d\d|\d+)$'
if you want to allow .12  (or -.00), see below ;-)
>
>So one function to check any string to see if it satisfies
>this pattern is:
>
>def isDollar(astring):
>    import re
>    return re.match(r'-?\d+(\.\d\d)?$', astring)
>
I had the same idea, except I didn't realize match didn't need
a '^' to anchor at the beginning (!RTFM). And of course my
group()==originalString check was mindless ;-)

Actually, any minus-zero patterns don't seem reasonable,
and other than a single zero, a zero leading digit seems bad,
wherther followed by \.\d\d or not.

I just RTFM'd a little and found the (? extensions. Whee!

r'(-(?!(0*\.?0+$|0+\.0*$)))?(0|\d?\.\d\d|[1-9]\d*(\.\d\d)?)$'



From ddublanc at free.fr  Fri Jul 27 15:23:58 2001
From: ddublanc at free.fr (Dublanc, David)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:23:58 GMT
Subject: scoping problems
References: <yrx66cegqs2.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <idj87.1248$Vh6.2905179@nnrp5.proxad.net>

Hi,
You can do it exactly as you write it !
If I understand namespace in Python, function names a et b are known by the
module before that function objects are executed.

Regards,

David


"Narayan Desai" <desai at mcs.anl.gov> a ?crit dans le message news:
yrx66cegqs2.fsf at catbert.mcs.anl.gov...
> How can i define the following code:
>
> def a():
>     b()
>
> def b():
>     a()
>
> (ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate)
> How do you get the namespaces right?
>
> I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't clear
> to me how to do this in python.
> thanks...
>  -nld
>




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:13 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:13 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lm3u8.as.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:40:10 GMT, sill at optonline.net (Rainy) wrote:

>First of all, it's really ugly. It's the ugliest thing in python for a newbie,
>imho. Yes, 1/2 is 0. You have to type 1.0/2 to get 0.5. No, there is no good
>reason for that, just memorize it. Ugh.

No reason!

Every five-year-old knows that 5 divided by 2 is 2 remainder 1. What
is the problem?

Integer division *is* important. Confusing integers and floats is a
sign of sloppy thinking, and a clue that far more bugs are going to
result.

Furthermore, Python is unlikely to *ever* be the only computer
language, and most Python users use other languages as well - that is
the nature of scripting languages. Surely we should comply with
conventions used in the languages we know are unlikely to die - those
which are already popular multi-vendor languages, and those which have
such powerful single-vendor backing that they are unlikely to
disappear. That means the likes of C, C++, Java and Visual BASIC. And
what about the languages web developers are used to, such as VBScript
and JavaScript.



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 30 17:46:46 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:46:46 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <mailman.996515638.21022.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pyk97.4104$9i1.318163@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tom Good" <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> wrote in message
news:ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db at posting.google.com...
> "Steven D. Majewski" <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> wrote in message
news:<mailman.996515638.21022.python-list at python.org>...
> >
> > The 'while' clause seems useful, and I don't see anything inherently
> > ambiguous about it, but sticking a procedural clause into what's
> > otherwise a declarative seens to go against the spirit -- what's
> > nice about list comprehensions is that they are just like set
> > notations. ( well -- the left hand side is often procedural -- it
> > would be even more readable if it were more clearly separated
> > with a "where" clause, but that would be Yet Another Keyword... )
> >
> > -- Steve Majewski
>
> That is a compelling argument.  However, I am still struggling with
> how to best work with infinite sets (which are now easy to create with
> generators).  With set notation, you can refer to an infinite set
> without actually creating each member of the set.  List comprehensions
> try to "fill up" the list, which causes problems if an unbounded
> generator is involved.
>
> If g is a generator that generates all positive integers, I would like
> to write something like:
>
> L = [x * 2 for x in g()]
> print L[:10]
>
> This does not work, of course, but that is how I would tend to think
> about it in my head.  List comprehensions with lazy evaluation?  Is it
> possible?
>
With the introduction of generators there doesn't seem to be anything
inherently impossible about the introduction of such a concept. A major
problem with existing list comprehensions, however, is that they produce a
list! Seems that a "lazy comprehension" would have to encapsulate a
generator somehow, and limit the operations you could perform on it to those
for generators.

I believe a separate syntax would be required to represent such a radically
different object. But you, of course, may know better ... if you're looking
for a syntax, one possibility would be:

    [[x * 2 for x in g()]]

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul 17 18:55:18 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:55:18 +0200
Subject: [ANN] Database modules on win32 site moved
Message-ID: <slrn9l9ek6.c16.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

I have changed my ISP, so I had to move my homepage with the Windows binary
builds of various database modules (MySQLdb, PyGreSQL, ...).

The new URL is http://www.cs.fhm.edu/~ifw00065/

The old URLs were:
http://highqualdev.com
http://home.t-online.de/home/err666/

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul  3 21:17:10 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 01:17:10 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <3b4102f4.887720905@wa.news.verio.net> <0Kd07.7470$e5.974463@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3b425350.973828140@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:36:44 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh"
<fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Bengt wrote:
>>
>> I am wondering if using non-deterministic[1] memory allocation is
>> permissible in a safety-critical system.
>
>note that CPython uses reference counting, which is at least as
>deterministic as malloc/free or auto_ptr stuff.
>
Reference counting is one way to decide when it's ok to
free something, but UIAM it doesn't say much about the freeing
mechanism, or when that's actually going to be done, nor what
may or may not be guaranteed about the state of the pool
and the ability to satify future requests for space within
an acceptable delay time, or at all.

I would expect that malloc/free would not be permissible in a
safety-critical system, except perhaps restricted uses such as
pre-allocating static space during startup. Part of that space
might possibly be used for creating static pools of very well
controlled and analyzed reusable space, which could be allocated
and freed by specialized methods, as predictably in time and space
as a stack push in a fully defined context. Speaking of stacks,
no recursion, unless you could prove max stack depth (for which space
would have to be pre-allocated to handle proved worst case, I would
think).

>(if you keep feeding a CPython program the same kind of data, it
>tends to either leak all the time, or not at all).
>
>> What kind of testing could you specify to guarantee that code
>> would continue to run?
>
>I've built mission-critical, real-time Python systems.  With careful
>design, and a few months in a "sandbox" environment, such systems
>tend to run just fine.
>
I hear you, but do they sign off safety-critical systems on 'tend' ?

>And I'm pretty sure people doing safety-critical systems know a lot
>more about advanced testing than we do.
>
Sure hope so ;-/

>So I agree with Gordon: "Go for it (just be careful)."
>
Um, so where and when will this system first be operational?



From hobomo at austin.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 16:44:16 2001
From: hobomo at austin.rr.com (James Money)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:44:16 -0500
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net> <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl> <Xns90E8AFE68ACCDrcamesz@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B5F2FA0.26167F74@austin.rr.com>

You might try Komodo (by activestate).  I've been using it for a couple of
weeks now and I generally like its behavior.  (A few minor irritations but
thats ok)

Robert Amesz wrote:

> Marco Salden wrote:
>
> >> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the
> >> easy job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently
> >> using Ultra Edit but having doubts about it.
>
> Why would that be? It's about as configurable as it gets, and can be
> made to produce syntax colouring for Python.
>
> > Try Vim (VI Improved) for Windows. You may find all you need at
> > http://www.vim.org/ . I am using it for about half a year now and
> > before that used Ultra Edit, TextPad etc but wouldn't want to turn
> > back again... Vim supports Python syntax and I think even an
> > embedded interpreter is available for it (not sure...).
>
> But it still is a textscreen app with only a very thin GUI-veneer.
> That's not everybody's cup of tea.
>
> SciTE Edit (I believe the URL is something like www.scintilla.org) is
> pretty nice for us Pythoneers. If only it could open multiple files...
>
> Robert Amesz
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

--
James Money
hobomo at austin.rr.com
512-343-1266





From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 02:20:14 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:20:14 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
Message-ID: <ubrklto6t10pidmh5bld02glmcmjd9jdvq@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:51:31 -0500, "Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b at news.goldengate.net>:

:If all you want is your own exception (nothing fancy), all you need is a
:class:
:
:class SpamException:
:    pass

OK, interesting. I didn't realize you could make an exception without
subclassing it. So, I tried this script:

-----------begin except.py---------------------

class SpamException:
    pass

while (1):
    inputstring = raw_input("Enter any string, except 'spam': ")
    if inputstring == "spam":
        raise SpamException

-----------end except.py-----------------------

Here is a sample output:

>>> 
Enter any string, except 'spam': pig
Enter any string, except 'spam': spam
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "E:/programs/LearningPython/Exceptions/except.py", line 7, in ?
    raise SpamException
SpamException: <__main__.SpamException instance at 0104C94C>


:you can raise and catch that just like any exception, but it'll be kind of
:ugly when it gets printed.

Well, yes. It doesn't look like normal exceptions, does it?

:class SpamException:
:    def __str__(self):
:        return "cooking spam is not required"
:
:that will give a clue as to what the exception means. 

OK, so I modified my above file, to include the __str__ as you show.
Here is a sample run:

>>> 
Enter any string, except 'spam': horse
Enter any string, except 'spam': meat
Enter any string, except 'spam': spam
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "E:/programs/LearningPython/Exceptions/except.py", line 8, in ?
    raise SpamException
SpamException: cooking spam is not required

So, yes, it does look a bit nicer.

:That said, I don't
:recall ever seeing an exception not subclassed from Exception, so it's
:probably a good idea.
:
:class SpamException(Exception):
:    def __str__(self):
:        return "cooking spam is not required"
:
:I don't know why every one is subclassed, but the HPIC seem to know what
:they're doing so far. I have no reason to question them. Yet.

Interesting point. When I make this modification to the SpamException
class, deriving it from the Exception class, I seem to get the exact
same behavior.

However, I noticed earlier this evening, from browsing the exceptions.c
source (as noted elsewhere in this thread), that the Exceptions seem to
have 3 methods and 1 datamember, namely:

methods:
__init__
__getitem__
__str__

and the datamember
__doc__

So, I would imagine that if you subclass it, and do not specifically
define these methods/data listed above, that you at least inherit them
from the base class. Whereas, if you create an "exception" that does not
derive from a base Exception class, it would not have these methods.


Hmm...I just tried a little experiment in the interactive shell to see
if I could confirm/deny my above theory, and it gave me surprising
results that I do not understand, and which seem to indicate no
difference between deriving it from an Exception class or not.

Well, I am interested in further enlightenment on this topic...?

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Jul 17 06:08:58 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:08:58 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
Message-ID: <3B540EBA.EE5372BD@lemburg.com>

After having been through two rounds of comments with the "Unicode
Literal Encoding" pre-PEP, it has turned out that people actually
prefer to go for the full Monty meaning that the PEP should handle
the complete Python source code encoding and not just the encoding
of the Unicode literals (which are currently the only parts in a
Python source code file for which Python assumes a fixed encoding).

Here's a summary of what I've learned from the comments:

1. The complete Python source file should use a single encoding.

2. Handling of escape sequences should continue to work as it does 
   now, but with all possible source code encodings, that is
   standard string literals (both 8-bit and Unicode) are subject to 
   escape sequence expansion while raw string literals only expand
   a very small subset of escape sequences.

3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
   work as follows:

   1. read the file
   2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
   3. tokenize the Unicode content
   4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
      and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
      by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
      using the given file encoding

   To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
   assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
   binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
   roundtrip).

4. The encoding used in a Python source file should be easily
   parseable for en editor; a magic comment at the top of the
   file seems to be what people want to see, so I'll drop the
   directive (PEP 244) requirement in the PEP.

Issues that still need to be resolved:

- how to enable embedding of differently encoded data in Python
  source code (e.g. UTF-8 encoded XML data in a Latin-1
  source file)

- what to do with non-literal data in the source file, e.g.
  variable names and comments:

  * reencode them just as would be done for literals
  * only allow ASCII for certain elements like variable names
  etc.

- which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.

  * Emacs style:

      #!/usr/bin/python
      # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-

  * Via meta-option to the interpreter:

      #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8

  * Using a special comment format:

      #!/usr/bin/python
      #!encoding = 'utf-8'

Comments are welcome !

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:47 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:47 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <nk2plto2ol3umd7tb1dp8vceb0vili1p5q@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:53:28 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
wrote:

>In article <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h at 4ax.com>, Steve Horne wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:46:20 -0500, Skip Montanaro
>><skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>>completely foreign to people.  After years of bit rot in their
>>>brains due to calculator crutches they may need a minute to
>>>refresh, that should be all.
>>
>>My calculator supports integers - and not with a second integer
>>button, I just set the mode and it all works happy.
>
>And I'll bet cash money that the "integer divide" key and the
>"float divide" key are one-in-the-same button.  The operation
>is determined by the type of the operands (the "mode").

Oops - I meant "and not with a second divide button".

Been getting pissed off today, and my typing suffers under those
conditions.



From careye at spamcop.net  Fri Jul 13 23:13:42 2001
From: careye at spamcop.net (Carey Evans)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 15:13:42 +1200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Python 2.1.1c1 released
References: <200107131721.f6DHLgX16757@odiug.digicool.com>
	<mailman.995046330.2032.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <877kxcrymx.fsf@psyche.dnsalias.org>

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr at thyrsus.com> writes:

> Should be.  They haven't even settled their freeze policy yet, let alone
> declared a freeze.  I've been tracking this because I'm coming up on a
> fetchmail-5.9.0 stable release and want to get that in, too.

The freeze for Debian 3.0 is described in Anthony Towns' mail to
debian-devel-announce on 1 July: 

    http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0106/msg00014.html

but that only affects base packages so far.  Python is included in the
freeze of "standard" packages, so Python 2.1.1 must be done by the end
of August; see the end of:

    http://lists.debian.org/debian-python-0107/msg00041.html

fetchmail is "optional" priority, so they'll be time to get a new
version into Debian after Python is done.

-- 
	 Carey Evans  http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/

	    "Quiet, you'll miss the humorous conclusion."


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 03:55:51 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:55:51 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
 <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996451255.5138.python-list@python.org> <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <ZVl3CVAHMRZ7EwPR@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7 at Lugoj.Com>, James Logajan
<JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes
>Paul Prescod wrote:
>> 
>> I'm not going to respond to the majority of the post because I don't
>> really see where the conversation is going.
>
>I'm not sure it is going anywhere in particular. Just some people shootin'
>the breeze.
yes the point of discourse is to replace silence. Sometimes the silence
is prefereable :)
-- 
Robin Becker


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 10:36:36 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 07:36:36 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4086F4.97263C35@ActiveState.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> 
>...
> The current coercion rules are simple, easy to grasp, and consistent
> with how most people are taught arithmetic.

That is simply not true. Most people do not expect these four
expressions to yield different results:

1.0/3.0
1/3
1.0/3
1/3.0

If you were taught this in school, it must be "new math".

>...
>   2) Integers should be treated as a distinct type from reals with
>      automatic coercion only as necessary (with the current rules).

What is "necessary"? Why is automatic coercion *ever* necessary? Only to
simulate the mathematics we are taught in primary school where the above
statement are all equivalent.

>      For instance, the new proposal sensibly does not suggest that lists
>      should support real indices,

	That might well be an implication of PEP 228.

http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0228.html

>  however simple expressions such
>      as a[i/3] would have to be coded as a[int(i/3)] or a[i//3]
>      in order to be sure to avoid a type error.

You mean that you would have to say exactly what you mean according to
the new syntax. That's hardly a legitimate argument against the syntax.
"If you add a 'function' keyword, I would have to precede my function
calls with it." Well, yeah, that's the point of adding new syntax.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From mhagger at alum.mit.edu  Thu Jul 12 14:42:10 2001
From: mhagger at alum.mit.edu (Michael Haggerty)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:42:10 +0200
Subject: Two minor syntactic proposals
References: <slrn9invsn.1ega.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <mailman.992844567.4921.python-list@python.org> <9gkcsn0229c@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B301914.7B60E6F7@my.signature>
Message-ID: <m2itgyxa4d.fsf@freak.jpk-instruments.de>

Greg Ewing <see at my.signature> writes:
> I like this idea too! The way I'd describe it is as allowing a
> general l-value (i.e. anything that can appear on the lhs of an
> assignment) in place of the current identifier-being-bound in def,
> class and import statements.
> 
> (On the downside -- I like the def self.foo() idea too, and this is
> in direct conflict with it! Sigh, can't have everything, I suppose,
> and I think I'd rather have this than def self.foo() if it came down
> to a choice.)

Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> writes:
> I think I prefer just an easier way to type "self."
> How about just the dot? I.e., ".x" means "self.x"

What about combining the ideas: within a class definition or instance
method definition, ".x" means "self.x".  Thus:

class C:
    def .x(arg):
        # defines instance method; "self" would be a magic implicit
        # first parameter (requires special treatment for word "self".

    def C.x(arg):
        # defines class (static) method

    def f(self, arg):
        # Defines instance method (for backwards compatibility)

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger at alum.mit.edu


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 17:31:56 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:31:56 -0400
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk> <3B6127EB.2080002@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <uu1zym52r.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Mark Robinson <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> writes:

> Thanks for the help guys, sorry I didn't include the code (what can I 
> say, duh). Anyway I did manage to fix the problem but I am still kinda 
> interested as to why I was getting that previous behaviour. I am running 
> python 2.1 under red hat 7, and python 2.1.1 under windows NT and had 
> the same problem under both. Here is the code:
> 
> def checkValidData(bsite):
> 	repeats = ['AAAA', 'CCCC', 'GGGG', 'TTTT']
> 	for x in bsite:	#check new bsite contains valid charactors
> 		if(x is not 'A' and x is not 'G' and
> 			x is not 'C' and x is not 'T' ):
> 			return 0
> 	for x in repeats:
> 		if (string.find(bsite, x) != -1):
> 			return 0
> 	return 1
> 
> Changing where I test if x is A, C, G or T by using the != test rather 
> than 'is not' solved the problem, and I guess I may have been using it 
> inappropriately, but I still don't see why it would have working 
> correctly first run and then incorrectly when working from the .pyc file.

Ah - seeing this makes it much clearer what was probably going on.
It's because of what "is" does.  It's an object identity test, which
isn't what you want here.

In fact, you're probably just lucky that it worked at all even the
first time, due to an implementation optimization in Python.  Python
will "intern" small strings automatically - placing them in a global
table of such strings for improved performance.  This guarantees that
references to such strings are actually references to single objects.

A similar thing happens for small integers (0-100 I think), which
makes checks such as "is 1" possibly work too.

For example:

    >>> a='A'
    >>> b='A'
    >>> print id(a),id(b),id('A')
    8262784 8262784 8262784

This means that (luckily) if you pass the string 'A' into your
function and then do a "<value> is 'A'" it'll work, but there's a
lot happening under the covers.  When you pass 'A' into the function
the literal string 'A' produces an object reference to the interned
copy, which is then passed to the function.  Internal to the function
the use of 'A' does the same thing, and thus both references to 'A'
are to the same object and "is" works (or "is not" fails).  E.g.:

    >>> def check(val):
    ...   print val is 'A'
    ...
    >>> check('A')
    1
    >>>

But that's by no means guaranteed behavior - there could just as
easily be two discrete objects involved.  Python only interns some
string constants (currently string constants with alphanumerics and
underscores), so if you happened to use something larger the same code
wouldn't work the way you thought, e.g.:

    >>> a='no intern'
    >>> b='no intern'
    >>> id(a),id(b),id('no intern')
    (8363408, 8361360, 8361968)

    >>> def check(val):
    ...   print val is 'no intern'
    ...
    >>> check('no intern')
    0

And I had to peek at the source to see how the current constant
interning is handled - it's not guaranteed behavior so certainly not
something to depend on.

In terms of your pickling behavior - I haven't reviewed the source,
but my best guess is that when the compiler loaded the pre-compiled
function code from the compiled module, the internal string literals
were their own objects, and thus no longer matched against the objects
representing the information supplied to the function from the caller.
But since such behavior (two independent strings yielding references
to the same object) is not well-defined behavior, the compiler is
certainly free to do that.

So definitely stick with "==" or "!=/<>" if you are trying to compare
the actual value of a string, as opposed to the identity of the string
object itself.  True, identity check can sometimes be faster, but as
you can see it is _not_ the same as a value check (and I believe
strings already have an optimization of checking object identity
before bothering to actually compare contents).

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From kellydemarco at dontspamme.com  Thu Jul 12 06:54:06 2001
From: kellydemarco at dontspamme.com (Kelly DeMarco)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:54:06 +0900
Subject: changes in threading and SocketServer since Python 2.0?
Message-ID: <9ijvo7$df7$1@news.nuri.net>

I used to use webdebug(http://www.cyberclip.com/webdebug/) on Python 1.6
without any problem, but I've been through some problem using it on Python
2.1 thesedays.

The source code is quite short and clear, so there doesn't seem to be any
good reason why it's failing on Python 2.1 -- maybe some changes in the
standard library?

What's more interesting is, when webdebug is run with singlethreaded mode,
there's no problem. Therefore, I guess it has something to do with
threading lib.

The platform is win32, and the error I get is:

Exception in thread Thread-13:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File ".\threading.py", line 378, in __bootstrap
    self.run()
  File ".\threading.py", line 366, in run
    apply(self.__target, self.__args, self.__kwargs)
  File "c:\python21\lib\SocketServer.py", line 246, in finish_request
    self.RequestHandlerClass(request, client_address, self)
  File "c:\python21\lib\SocketServer.py", line 495, in __init__
    self.handle()
  File "WDhandler.py", line 116, in handle
    self.httpRequest = HTTPrequest.HTTPrequest(self.rfile,
self.client_address)
  File "HTTPrequest.py", line 73, in __init__
    self.raw_requestline = self.readLine(input)
  File "HTTPmessage.py", line 69, in readLine
    str = input.readline()
  File "c:\python21\lib\socket.py", line 233, in readline
    new = self._sock.recv(self._rbufsize)
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'recv'
[as you see, the socket instance is erroneously an int object here -- and
it happens only when in threading mode using threadingmixins from
socketserver]

Can anyone help me out?  Thanks in advance.




From digitig at cix.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 20:54:00 2001
From: digitig at cix.co.uk (Tim Rowe)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 01:54 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <memo.20010728015426.59999A@digitig.compulink.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list at python.org>, 
mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside) wrote:

> Roman (ironicly):
> > > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one 
> > > needs
> > > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they 
> > > understand all
> > > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.
> 
> GvR:
> > But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> > Unix! 
> > 
> 
> I'm very surprised to hear this. Yes, I've taught lots of beginners, and
> I've found that they often complain about the case sensitivity. But I
> tell them that "Computers are EXTREMELY literal", and "you must be VERY
> precise when programming", and they get it. I also get complaints (not
> so many) about the computer not understanding a mis-spelled system call.
> 
> It seems to me that whether the language requires case sensitivity or
> not, it is still very poor style to vary the capitalization of a given
> identifier. It's kind of like indentation... and (in Pascal, C, Basic,
> and other non-Python languages) I mark my student's programs WRONG if
> they don't use consistant indenting.
> 
> Don't encourage sloppy habits: require case sensitivity.
> 
> Besides... if you make identifiers NOT case sensitive, then when they
> try opening files or URLs and find that those ARE... they'll REALLY
> have problems.

Sorry to come into this debate rather late, but in my programming 
community (mission critical systems) both case sensitivity /and/ case 
insensitivity are seen as problematic and a rich source of bugs. The 
hardliners would have it be an error to have two identifiers differing 
only in case, the moderates would have it produce a warning. The latter 
could be a way forward for Python. A message to the effect of "You are 
using both 'Foo' and 'foo' in this program. You do realise they're not the 
same, don't you?" would help the newbies and, with a suitably configurable 
tool need not bother the experts because they'd turn the warning off. As 
Guido (I think it was) points out elsewhere, the whole thing could be seen 
as a tool issue, and I would consider it a good feature for a tool 
(provided it /can/ be turned off). I /don't/ think the language should be 
changed -- I'm already finding it impossible to get anybody to adopt 
Python because of the (perceived?) instability of the language spec.


From klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com  Tue Jul 24 10:20:44 2001
From: klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com (Klaus-G. Meyer)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:20:44 +0200
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>

> those guys.  It *is* odd to have to do something like:
>   x = float(y)/z
> to get best-possible division in Python.

But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?

99999*99999 -> integer overflow

Why not an long integer result? (or maybe float)

You must explicit type:
99999*99999L  or  99999*99999.

Is that not the same thing as type 1./3  ???

Klaus






From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul 31 02:12:25 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:12:25 GMT
Subject: "Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <4E215400D01D7374.0068C51FD6502BE8.99D4E013ECF0FDFB@lp.airnews.net> <bhahn-ya02408000R3007012032180001@news.corp.hp.com>
Message-ID: <vricmt4o75m1c1aurbuql2p26urp63r27n@4ax.com>

>You can do kernel stuff in C++ on a lot of systems, but it's often more
>trouble than it's worth...

I recall a Usenix where Linus spoke. Upon being asked if he'd redo
the kernel in C++, he all but laughed the questioner's question away.
At the time, he plainly indicated that he thought that the question was
absurd.

C//



From news at dorb.com  Thu Jul  5 00:10:10 2001
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 04:10:10 GMT
Subject: Converting from long integer to read-only buffer
References: <3b42780c@news.ucsc.edu> <odJ07.76650$ID1.15403982@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <CMR07.81063$ID1.15800819@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

Whoops

The some test code made it into my post.
This bit of code has no purpose.

binData = ''.join([chr(eval('0x'+val)) for val in
re.findall('..|.',hex(x)[2:-1])])

-Darrell




From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 11:32:35 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:32:35 +0200
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net> <23891c90.0107100440.2eb444af@posting.google.com> <3B4AFE8D.DE1F6563@stroeder.com> <mailman.994772496.27685.python-list@python.org> <fWE27.12057$B7.2309367@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B2013.F8BF210@stroeder.com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> But that doesn't mean you have to write code.  You can:
> 
>  Help maintain a web site.
>  Write a tutorial on something.
>  Maintian a manual.
>  Hang around a newsgroup and answer questions.

Off course, these things would help.

But the reality is that people ask for help since they did not read
the docs which were already there. Not to speak of how difficult it
is to find somebody for maintaining a decent manual. Many ask for
documentation but they won't read it.

Ciao, Michael.


From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 24 22:37:16 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 22:37:16 -0400
Subject: raw_input() with out blocking process
References: <20010724211512.04292.00000898@ng-fh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <etdn15tohsz.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

Check out the curses module:

http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/curses/curses.html

HTH
Alex.


From deltapigz at telocity.com  Wed Jul  4 00:08:56 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (Adonis)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 00:08:56 -0400
Subject: Python distribution...
Message-ID: <3B4296D8.6DAA39FF@telocity.com>

could it possible (under windows) to distribute the python executable +
libs needed + python*.dll + script to other windows users ?

i was looking into py2exe, but did not get it to work?

i have python2.1 (distutils already in it)
but then when i was attempting to compile the sample code it mentioned
something about win32api* (something in that sense)

do i need to get those files if need be?

any help is appreciated.
Adonis



From quiptiq at yahoo.com.au  Thu Jul 12 06:15:26 2001
From: quiptiq at yahoo.com.au (Quiptic)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:15:26 +1000
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <mailman.994769237.24585.python-list@python.org> <cpr8vnh6ln.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9ihse1011n3@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <87ofqqwj0h.fsf@ivory.localhost>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
> news:cpr8vnh6ln.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> >
> > Good point, Art.  I trust my intuition more than my reasoning in these
> > things, and often when I try to defend my intuition against
> > challenges, what comes out are unsatisfactory rationalizations.
> > Sometimes Tim's "channelings" say it better than I could have said it
> > myself...  :-)
> 
> Being a great designer (or other kind of decision-maker) and
> being a good rationalizer/evangelist/salesperson/marketeer are
> really separate skills, and pretty much uncorrelated ones to
> boot.  

Indeed. Intelligence and talent often go together, but they're not the
same.

I think language design is the one area of CS in which "taste" matters
most. The ability to see solutions that are "good", clean, simple,
elegant, clear, concise, etc apparently comes from a deeper (or at
least different) level of awareness than the ability to rationalise
after the fact.

Of course, there's always the remote possibility that a buffoon is
fated to produce an accidental masterpiece ;-)

> People in general just won't accept that, which of course suits us
> good rationalizers just fine (as we often get credited for better
> decisions than we actually make, just because we rationalize better
> than others do:-).

Sure. It's like the distinction between artists and critics in other
fields. It's reasonably easy to work from insight down to
rationalisation / realisation, but I've never yet seen it work the
other way. There is no recipe for quality; we recognise it _after_ we
see it. (I think that even applies to the person who creates it).

I've heard gifted musicians and painters sound like complete idiots
when they try to explain their work. I've also read the work of
intelligent critics who genuinely add to a work of art by their
thoughtful interpretations, even though they could never have produced
the work themselves. Plenty of that here on c.l.p. It creates a nice
synergy.

Whether Guido's explanations are satisfying or not (sometimes yes,
sometimes no), I'll always trust his judgement. I'm grateful that
Python is not mine. If it were mine, it would be one fucking ugly
mother.






From me at nospam.net  Thu Jul 12 04:52:29 2001
From: me at nospam.net (Scottie)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:52:29 -0700
Subject: Partially evaluated functions
References: <m3sngw12ce.fsf@boss.dreamsoft.com> <csVX6.324433$oc7.30746857@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <pDWX6.293707$eK2.59723440@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <US0Y6.326096$oc7.31549619@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <iS5Y6.296363$eK2.60388388@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <tkqpba2b2ces42@corp.supernews.com>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
news:iS5Y6.296363$eK2.60388388 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> ...The cookbook version is the only one ...which gives priority to kw
> args supplied at call-time over args supplied at create-time....
> def f(color='black'): print color
> f2 = curry(f,color='blue')
> f2(color='red')
>
> The cookbook version will print 'red', Rainer and Alex both print 'blue'.
> (easy to change, of course)
Not so easy if you want to avoid the copy:

def go(curry):
    def fn(a=1,b=2,c=3):
        print a, b, c
    f1 = curry(f,a=4,c=5)
    f1()
    f1(a=6)
    f1(c=9)

I want this to print:
4 2 5
6 2 5
4 2 9

The others print:
4 2 5
4 2 5
4 2 5

If you do the obvious, you'll get:
4 2 5
6 2 5
6 2 9

-Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.264 / Virus Database: 136 - Release Date: 7/2/2001




From desai at mcs.anl.gov  Fri Jul 27 16:14:29 2001
From: desai at mcs.anl.gov (Narayan Desai)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:14:29 -0500
Subject: scoping problems
In-Reply-To: <NEBBIGEFDMPMOPJDPFGLAEHHCCAA.rharkins@thinkronize.com> ("Rich Harkins"'s message of "Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:57:28 -0400")
References: <NEBBIGEFDMPMOPJDPFGLAEHHCCAA.rharkins@thinkronize.com>
Message-ID: <yrxitgef7tm.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>

>>>>> "Rich" == Rich Harkins <rharkins at thinkronize.com> writes:

Rich> Try this: class baseclass():
Rich>       def __init__(self):
Rich>           self.__myfunc__()

Rich> class a(baseclass):
Rich> 	pass

Rich> class b(baseclass):
Rich> 	pass

Rich> a.__myfunc__=b b.__myfunc__=a

Rich> __myfunc__ in a and b will reference class instances, not
Rich> functions, but who am I to quibble?  :)

Someone had suggested using nested_scopes earlier, but I think that
this is really slick :) thanks...
 -nld




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 15 03:06:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:06:01 +0200
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9ir1l7$3ja$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list at python.org>,
> Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> >
> >Python allows you to build larger systems because it allows a looser
> >binding between granular components, it allows more to be done in less
> >code and it makes testing so much easier that the loss of compiler
> >warnings is trivial.
>
> Allow me to quote myself:
>
>     The way to build large Python applications is to componentize and
>     loosely-couple the hell out of everything.

s/Python//.  Lakos' "Large Scale C++ Programming" book, and Martin's
articles (originally in C++ Report, now on his objectmentor site), show
much the same approach is needed in other languages.  Of course, the
key issue is that different languages require different approaches to
componentization and dependency management.


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 24 22:32:57 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:32:57 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <U1w0aIAqGhX7Ew8Q@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEOLLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido]
> How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
> preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
> C++...

[Robin Becker]
> engineers of which I am one, hated it when we only had 6 characters and
> no case sensitivity.

Even Fortran 90 retained case-insensitivity.  This page is a hoot, and a
hint of what happens when backward compatibility is taken as absolute:

    http://www.llnl.gov/sccd/lc/asci/fpe/fpe.source.html

view-each-vendor-as-a-fork-ly y'rs  - tim




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 15:21:57 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:21:57 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cp4rrz95iu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <p5_77.30678$EP6.7893929@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cp4rrz95iu.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> I don't see when a unified number system would ever be less
convenient
> than the current number system,

*My* worry, based on some of your expressed views, is that you might
someday decide to *unify* ints and floats by eliminating ints |-(

> Using the new type/class unification in Python 2.2, you will be able
> to subtype the int or long types easily to create your own
constrained
> types.

Thanks for answering my unasked question 8-).

Terry J. Reedy





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 08:52:56 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:52:56 -0400 
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51DC@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Roses are red,
and violets are blue,
I program in Python,
and so can you.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jaap Spies [mailto:j.spies at hccnet.nl]
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 5:12 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?


Armin Steinhoff wrote:


> It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
> attempts poetry.
> 
> --Ed
> 
 


You should know that the roots of Python are in the ABC Programming 
Language and
as I mentioned  before reading/writing Python is really Poetry!


Jaap Spies




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Fri Jul 13 13:45:54 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Gerhard_H=E4ring?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:45:54 +0200
Subject: Apache & Python
References: <20010713.15394573@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <9inc3p$13ba$1@news.space.net>

Apache & Python"Paul Duquette" <pauld at metrocast.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20010713.15394573 at mis.configured.host...
I have installed python 2.1 on my windows2k machine and would like to know how to use Python with Apache. I can't find any config instructions anywhere. The python faq tells me how to configure it with IIS but I didnt see anything about Apache.

Hopeing you Python experts out there can point me in the right direction.

http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/8264/fid/199

HTH

Gerhard

PS: Sorry for the HTML, I'll try to configure that damn Outlook Express later.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010713/3c5e7ed4/attachment.html>

From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sun Jul  8 09:24:34 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 15:24:34 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <slrn9k2s62.3dv.rh2137@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <slrn9kgl52.o9.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

Thank you all for your suggestions. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't
forget any alternative. It has become clear that Unix is still lacking support
for a component architecture that supports all of Windows' COM.

My findings currently are:
- DCOP: client side usage is easy; server-side more difficult; KDE only; can
  use XML-RPC instead because KDE has a DCOP-XMLRPC bridge
- SOAP/XML-RPC: very easy to use from Python; much encoding/decoding overhead
- CORBA: very good Python support with omniORBpy; omniORB 4/omniORBpy2 will
  improve performance by taking shortcuts when the C++ and Python code is in
  the same address space (no loopback interface involved)
- XPCOM: still have to get this to work on my machine, but looks promising; no
  wide language support currently available (only C++/Python)

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From pobrien at orbtech.com  Sun Jul 15 13:51:32 2001
From: pobrien at orbtech.com (Patrick K. O'Brien)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 17:51:32 GMT
Subject: This is spoiling Python image!
References: <mailman.995182886.24177.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <EKk47.45379$J91.2361002@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

This IDLE bug has been submitted to the IDLE revitalization project:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=441472&group_id=95
79&atid=109579

---
Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech
"I am, therefore I think."





From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Fri Jul 27 04:19:46 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:19:46 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com> <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3ui1mt0e07vgp1b18306jd70pdufs91uva@4ax.com> <slrn9m25oe.gfe.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <vs82mtogpknka9ln0e7t9s9gc79mrh9d8l@4ax.com>

>>Because when identifier and someone else writes IdEnTIFIER, I want
>>to kill them Actually, I'd like to kill them for changing the case at all.
>
>But if the language is the same, their editor would warn them about the case
>mismatch, and the code would crash, just like yours would.  It would be just
>like your editor, only yours won't warn about those things.

Oh right. Just _my_ editor. Right. Isolated little ole me, I'm the only small
sole in the whole wide world who wants to use vim. You're just not getting
this, I can tell.

C//



From rupe at metro.yak.net  Thu Jul 26 18:20:34 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:20:34 -0700
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
References: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com> <Xns90E97731532B9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107261420.150d4936@posting.google.com>

Duncan,

Consider submitting this to the Python Cookbook
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/) if you get a
moment.

--- Rupert

Rupert Scammell
rupe at metro.yak.net
http://metro.yak.net


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 31 16:34:54 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 20:34:54 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996607741.25537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9me5jd.cdi.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:28:05 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> pisze:

>     x in Foo                         same as isinstance(x, Foo)
>     Bar in Foo                       same as issubclass(Bar, Foo)
>     x.__class__ in Foo               same as issubclass(x.__class__, Foo)

It makes impossible to check whether an object is an instance of Foo
using the 'in' operator. For example Bar is not an instance of Foo
but 'Bar in Foo' would be true.

It also makes impossible to check whether an object is a sublass of Foo.
For example x is not a subclass of Foo but 'x in Foo' would be true.

In effect it doesn't correctly answer either question.

> I assume x can't be both an instance and a class at the same time.

Even if it was true, it would require the programmer to check this
condition, instead of letting 'in' check it.

It's not true in a broader view where types and classes are treated
similarly. For example 'type in type' is true in both senses and 'int
in string' is false in both senses, but you can't distinguish between
classes and instances here - all objects involved are type objects.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From hnowak at cuci.nl  Wed Jul 25 07:02:40 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (hnowak)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:02:40 +0200
Subject: Methods of setting class attributes
Message-ID: <3B6F10F6@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From Piotr Legiecki <piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl> 
=====

>I'm C++ user and new to Python. I don't know what is the proper method
>of setting attribute value in a class. I thought that this is ok:
>
>class a:
>  atr1=0
>  atrb=1
>.....

Do you mean class attributes or instance attributes? It's not the same in 
Python.

Assuming you just want the default behavior to set attributes in a class and 
get going, this is a common idiom:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self, x):
        self.x = x
        self.y = "blah"

This creates attributes x and y when Foo is instantiated:

foo = Foo(3)
print foo.x, foo.y
# prints 3 and blah

Note that this is different from a class attribute; those are often used to 
share values between instances:

>>> class Counter:
	count = 0
	def __init__(self):
		Counter.count += 1
	def __del__(self):
		Counter.count -= 1
	def report(self):
		print "Ah, already", Counter.count, "instances created!"

This class keeps track of the number of instances. It does so by assigning to 
Counter.count, which resides at the class level (as opposed to the instance 
level).

>>> c1 = Counter()
>>> c1.report()
Ah, already 1 instances created!
>>> c2 = Counter()
>>> c3 = Counter()
>>> c3.report()
Ah, already 3 instances created!
>>> c1.report()
Ah, already 3 instances created!
>>> Counter.count
3
>>> c3.count  # Counter.count can be accessed through the instance
3
>>> dir(c3) # attributes of c3 (none)
[]
>>> dir(Counter) # attributes of class Counter
['__del__', '__doc__', '__init__', '__module__', 'count', 'report']
>>> del c2 # remove an instance
>>> c1.report()
Ah, already 2 instances created!
>>>

Python is much more dynamic than C++ and attributes of a class or instance can 
be set or deleted at will.

>__setattr__(s, name, val) called when setting an attr
>                                  (inside, don't use "self.name = value"
>                                   use "self.__dict__[name] = val")
>.....

I think it's best to forget __setattr__ for now; it's mainly used to fake 
attributes and control values assigned to an attribute.

HTH,

--Hans Nowak




From covouh at my.com  Fri Jul  6 23:19:02 2001
From: covouh at my.com (covouh at my.com)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 03:19:02 GMT
Subject: I Truly Appolige To ALL For The: Check This Out:   6948
Message-ID: <Gcv17.170883$By.1869029@typhoon.midsouth.rr.com>

I truly apoloize to everyone for what happened. I was tring to send it to a test group and not the world.
This was the first time I used Agent Poster and did relize what had happen until I got all you e-mails.
I am truly sorry and you can be assured, it wont happen again.
Tom Partridge
rqvrtsryqjiqwszplggsuklmtumsi



From sbrunning at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul  3 09:50:34 2001
From: sbrunning at bigfoot.com (Simon Brunning)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 06:50:34 -0700
Subject: Kevin Dahlhausen' Gallery module.
Message-ID: <12f02d51.0107030550.7804a569@posting.google.com>

I tried to grab a copy of this, via Parnassus, but the target site
seems to be down. Anyone know where I can get this module, or have a
copy of it that they can send me?

Cheers,
Simon B.


From grante at visi.com  Sat Jul 14 17:47:42 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:47:42 GMT
Subject: Getting major/minor number of device file in Linux?
References: <Hj247.15606$B7.2808728@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <26347.15610$B7.2813994@ruti.visi.com>

In article <Hj247.15606$B7.2808728 at ruti.visi.com>, Grant Edwards wrote:

>I can't figure out how to get the major and minor numbers of a
>char special file under Linux.  What I want is the st_rdev
>field of the stat struct, but os.stat doesn't seem to return
>that field.

It doesn't appear that the posix module wraps the mknod() call
either, so I guess the inability to deal with device special
files is at least consistent.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Did we bring enough
                                  at               BEEF JERKY?
                               visi.com            


From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Fri Jul  6 02:14:38 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 06:14:38 GMT
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <mailman.994350130.18544.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kalkm.a6q.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Lindstrom Greg - glinds <Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away everything
> except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do this.
> Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
> 
> 	stripped_phone=''
> 	for c in phone_number:
> 		if c in digits: 
> 			stripped_phone += c
> 
> but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure there
> is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).

Some other solutions:
      
# Closest to yours, readable
stripped_phone = ''
for c in phone_number:
   if c.isdigit():
      stripped_phone += c

# The same with filter, too bad we need a lambda
stripped_phone = filter(lambda c: c.isdigit(), phone_number)

# Translate might be fast, but not very readable (only the last line needs to
# be inside a tight loop)
import string
transtable = string.maketrans("","")
nodigit = filter(lambda c: not c.isdigit(), transtable)
stripped_phone = phone_number.translate(transtable, nodigit)

The last one might be fastest inside a tight loop, or maybe the re solution
someone else gave.

However, if your code isn't a speed problem, just leave it.

Funny, I think there's one obvious way to do this in Perl :-)
($x =~ s/[^0-9]//g)

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 13:01:04 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:01:04 +0100
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993765761.11911.python-list@python.org> <6qn16r7i69.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <9hhu6701d5j@enews2.newsguy.com> <6qae2r71hd.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <cp4rszl10a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3CECEA.5D02A66E@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <v491ktc9nooqo00k2l8th5moqui4i91c7r@4ax.com>

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 14:02:34 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com>
wrote:

>Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> Sorry, I don't understand why people can seriously argue *against*
>> augmented assignment.
>
>And "!=" is augmented assignment for the "!" operator, which does what
>again?

How exactly do you have an augmented assignment version of a unary
operator? And given that, just where is the confusion supposed to come
from?

I've always liked having a colon on my assignment operator - I think
the single = for assignment was a mistake. If we had := for
assignment, then augmented assignments would be more clearly distinct
from other operators - :+=, :-=, :*= etc etc.

The trouble is - well - yuck. Horrible. := works, but :+= looks too
much like a deformed rabit smily with a broken nose ;-)


Of course, I wouldn't mind a !! operator to toggle flags with ;-)


>a cat. By the way, just how did so many mathematical libraries come to be
>written in Fortran, which didn't have augmented assignments? (Just doing my
>baffling part.)

How did so many databases come to be written using COBOL when SQL is
so much better? - because COBOL existed first. This is a drag factor
to progress, but it doesn't mean progress is bad.

BTW - I think the latest FORTRAN standard has augmented assignments,
though I could be wrong. Anyone know for sure?

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Fri Jul 13 16:11:42 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 22:11:42 +0200
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <mailman.994855218.12763.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <wzvgkwlhc1.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> (RS) writes:

RS> There is a joke about americans:

RS> they were confused that Excel give different result from 
RS> pocket calculator:

RS> [5] [+] [3] [*] [4] [=]

RS> | 32 |

My pocketcalculator gives 17. But then it's a Dutch one (Philips).
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 12 09:54:21 2001
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:54:21 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net> <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org> <jtr8vmw8zj.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <jtofqqw8vm.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

> wazor /u/annis/code/NewMom $ python2.1 -i bin/momd
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "bin/momd", line 83, in ?
>     kserv = load(f)
> ValueError: invalid \x escape

        I suppose I should mention that I'm using cPickle.

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacian Lingvon  www.esperanto.org


From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Sun Jul 22 17:41:14 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:41:14 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <_LH67.100281$T97.13843165@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> menulis:
| 
| The meaning of integer division wasn't the
| focus, but naturally came up.  By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
| participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something*
| [snip]

In other words, nobody raised their hand, since 3/4 == 0.  Well, that
settles it, then -- nobody wants this change <0.75 wink>.


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 20:24:10 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 01:24:10 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
 <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
 <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
 <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>
 <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <U1w0aIAqGhX7Ew8Q@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <cp7kwyqfce.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
>Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> writes:
>
>> I'll just chime in to say that as one who uses Python for
>> science/engineering, I would be very unhappy not to be able to define the
>> variables h and H to mean two different things.  Engineers often uses
>> case to distinguish between the function and it's Fourier transform for
>> example.
>
>How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
>preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
>C++...
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

engineers of which I am one, hated it when we only had 6 characters and
no case sensitivity. 
-- 
Robin Becker


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 16:38:28 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:38:28 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net> <slrn9ldogs.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3d4rs74t5d.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <slrn9ljq24.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 20 Jul 2001 09:38:54 -0400, Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:
>> Supposedly, Microsoft's C# and CLR system will provide a fix for
>> this, by allowing the programmer to use any language that compiles
>> to CLR to call a routine in any other language that does.
>> 
>> Does anyone have details on this?
>
>I'm a bit doubtful that the CLR will really be suited for languages
>other than C# or VB.  Sure, with some hammering you can compile Python
>to CLR, just as you can compile it to Java bytecodes, but there seems
>to be a sizable performance hit, judging by a message from David
>Ascher archived at
>http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/638072.  I suspect
>.NET's multilanguage will turn out to be a feature used more as a
>selling point than in practical use.  In much the same way, Internet
>Explorer is theoretically multiplatform, but I expect almost no one
>out there uses the Solaris and HP-UX IE ports.

Just like windows' POSIX compatibility is only "checkbox-compatibility"
not "real-world-I'd-actually-use-this-compatibility".

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 01:46:49 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:46:49 -0700
Subject: TK + cmd.cmdloop() in threads (was Re: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
References: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <yox1yneojvi.fsf_-_@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9j5lq9$jl7$1@panix2.panix.com> <yox3d7o1a8k.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <9jtjk9$fnj$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <yox3d7o1a8k.fsf at karhu.tp.spt.fi>,
Ville Vainio  <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
>aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:
>>
>> Generally speaking, it's safest to have only one thread accessing any
>> external resource (GUI, file handle, DB connection, etc).
>
>But one would think it's reasonably safe to access a resource one
>thread at a time, via mutexes etc. (and some external resource, such
>as sockets, almost *have to* be accessed in multiple threads). Is TK
>really such a beast that all the access to TK widgets have to be called
>via it's own event loop?

One might think that.  One would even be technically accurate.  But
writing threaded programs is difficult enough; I always recommend that
people put each external resource into a separate thread, and if they
want to hang themselves it's no skin off my nose.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 24 08:35:51 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 08:35:51 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <87ofqaqzbs.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> I'm burned out on the repetition here.  It's not a question of being hard to
> teach.  It's largely that it's never sensible for
> 
>     x = y / z
> 
> buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y
> and z happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen
> not to be ints.  It's this damage to polymorphism that hurts people
> in real life, and we've had years of testimony about that on c.l.py
> (even in this incarnation of the debate, although it's hard to find
> unless you read every msg).

I haven't spoken out on this yet, but now I'm going to.  I don't like
PEP238, but I am not going to repeat what everyone else has said.

What I don't like about it is that in every case I can think of right
now if you apply an operator to two operands of the same type, you get
a result of the same type.  <int>/<int> = <float> would change this,
and I don't like it.  (yes, you can argue that math.something(<int>)
returns a float, but that's a library module, not a builtin, so I
don't count it.)

Many people have argued that they would like to see the behavior from
the PEP if Python were a new language.  I disagree.  I would prefer to
see '/' defined as "exact division" and '//' defined as "truncated
division" and have types that don't support either raise a TypeError
if the types don't support the operation in question.  I think this
parallels existing operations better.

As examples:

<list>*<list> raises a TypeError
<int>**<negative int> raises a ValueError
<rational>**<rational> would presumably raise a TypeError


- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Software hoarding is not a victimless crime." Richard Stallman
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtda6cACgkQjVztv3T8pztiwACg2bnc0YssqlmsHx0B6zrcE/Bx
RtkAoI0pA4Q3O5ogY3NErL1Y77PtaBMO
=mfMO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 17:55:29 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:55:29 +0200
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ipv9k$nda$1@panix2.panix.com> <mailman.995133450.2297.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iqf6r0g0r@enews1.newsguy.com>

"William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.995133450.2297.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 10:25:08AM -0700, Aahz Maruch wrote:
> > tyler spivey <tspivey8 at home.com> wrote:
> > >how many blind programmers use python?
> >
> > No idea.  Python is probably good for blind people because you usually
> > write less code in Python -- each statement in Python does more.
>
> If the original author meant "visually impaired", then I agree.  Python
> code is short, easy to read, and easy to write.  This would be important

I have modest visual impairment (slowly worsening with age) and I
agree.  But when and if it gets to blindness, I don't know if Python's
reliance on whitespace/indentation will be a problem -- normal screen
readers won't help much, I guess it would require a special one that
understands the significance of indent and dedent.  Perhaps not too
big a project, but I'm not aware of any such special readers, which
would seem to indicate a dearth of blind (as opposed to visually
impaired) Python programmers -- even pretty serious visual problems
still leave one able to see the block structure/indentation quite well
(perhaps with some magnification of course, but less than would be
needed for, say, braces!) -- but total blindness is another issue.


Alex





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 00:48:01 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:48:01 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010702082413.02776040@mail.inet.com.br>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107040842470.6839-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

There could be even use of some special __-word to
stress that the module is standard:

__distribution__
or
__belongs__

And probably standard modules need to clean-up unused
names after they done, so there will be no other
standard modules in the module namespace like in this situation:

>>> import uu
>>> uu.
uu.Error     uu.__doc__   uu.__name__  uu.decode    uu.os        uu.test
uu.__all__   uu.__file__  uu.binascii  uu.encode    uu.sys

uu.sys is the same sys here!

Also maybe standard modules need to have __all__ to explicitely
mention their interface (or we'll wait for interface PEP
to be adopted?)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 13 04:47:30 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:47:30 +0200
Subject: SocketServer and threading mixin?
References: <m24rshy4xk.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <3B4EB5A2.6BEC1DCA@stroeder.com>

Greg Copeland wrote:
> 
> I've been following the bug report on the SocketServer module
> and how it is broken with the threading mixin.  The bug report
> has been closed and the people that posted offered several
> solutions, however, from what I've seen, SocketServer, the
> module, is still broken and requires a minor patch or two to
> work correctly.  Does anyone know what the plans are to address
> this issue down the road?

Guido checked in SocketServer.__version__='0.4' and announced it on
the bug tracking page. If you read the page carefully you will
notice that.

The various URLs were posted here several times during the last
days. Actually I won't repost them because I'm currently trying not
to mutate to a SocketServer.ThreadingMixin-in-Python-2.1 robot.

The only URL I'd like to suggest today is: 

 
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?as_ugroup=comp.lang.python

Ciao, Michael.


From matt at mondoinfo.com  Wed Jul  4 13:43:19 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 17:43:19 GMT
Subject: Tkinter Scrollbar get method
References: <9hvbla$1bpq$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9k6ldn.nn.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:10:34 +0000 (UTC), Lee Harr
<missive at frontiernet.net> wrote:

>I am trying to use the Tkinter Scrollbar class.
>The docs say that the get() method returns a
>two element tuple of values between 0.0 and 1.0
>
>What I am getting, though is a 4 element tuple:

>>>> g = sb.get()
>>>> print g
>(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)

Lee,
That is odd and I don't know just why that is.

It seems that scrollbars return four items until they've been set
once:

>>> from Tkinter import *
>>> root=Tk()
>>> sb=Scrollbar(root)
>>> sb.pack(side=LEFT,fill=Y)
>>> sb.get()
(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
>>> sb.set(0.0,1.0)
>>> sb.get()
(0.0, 1.0)

The good news is that they work fine in practice. Mostly, you don't
have to use their get() and set() methods directly.  Generally, the
thing you want to scroll has the corresponding xview and yview methods
and it's just a matter of hooking them up. There's a good example of
doing that with a listbox in Fredrik Lundh's excellent An Introduction
to Tkinter at (wrapped for line length):

http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/
  introduction/x7205-patterns.htm

(The whole document is a very valuable resource.) If the standard
Tkinter widgets don't provide the scrollable things you need, Pmw
probably does. Pmw is at:

http://pmw.sourceforge.net/

Among other very convenient widgets, Pmw adds scrolled frames and text
widgets. Still, there are times when it's necessary to do one's own
scrolling and that works fine as long as you do a set() on the
scrollbar before you do a get(). That must be true -- I have an app
that I've been working on for a year in which I need to do my own
scrolling and never ran into the 4-tuple.

Regards,
Matt


From emile at fcfw.fenx.com  Mon Jul 16 10:00:25 2001
From: emile at fcfw.fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 09:00:25 -0500
Subject: Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jul 16)
Message-ID: <FBE0E821A2E90214.E7AC8E3B5483F7BF.A1E15EC182003F7B@lp.airnews.net>

Pythonic Quote of the Week:  In a post titled 'An Unspeakable Act',
Daniel Klein does what people do on Usenet and tells us of a Python
vs Java discussion he entered into on another group:
    This person says that dynamically typed languages produce
    bug-ridden programs and that there are no reliable large
    applications (especially network apps) written in Python
    and that it is just used for small to medium scripting.
    I know better but I don't have any proof.
... Prompting James Logajan to remind us of the subtle details of usenet life outside of c.l.py
    Look, you have got off on the wrong foot. You are trying
    to think logically.  That gives the other person a leg up
    on you. (But you admit that you know better without proof,
    so you aren't totally out-matched.)
Follow the discussion starting at
    http://groups.google.com/groups?th=42a29c22b0f4873a,14&start=0&ic=1

    Guido announces Python 2.1.1c1 - a bugfix release candidate for
    Python 2.1.  One fixed "bug" deserves special attention: like
    Python 2.0.1, Python 2.1.1 is GPL-compatible!  Expect the final
    release next week.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995047446.5368.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Andrew M Kuchling explains how to become one of the people who
    develop Python.  If you've wondered how Python evolves or would
    like to contribute, this is a good starting point.
        http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/python-dev.html

    Marc-Andr? Lemburg announces updated versions of his
    mxCommercial product (mxODBC), mxBase extensions, and a set of
    mxExperimental python extensions each destined for inclusion in
    one of the former two.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995047446.5366.clpa-moderators at python.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995047446.5365.clpa-moderators at python.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995047446.5367.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Robin Dunn releases version 2.3.1 of wxPython, a blending of
    Python and the wxWindows gui toolkit.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995047446.5364.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Michael Stroeder introduces PyWebLib 1.0.2 - a set of modules for
    web programming tasks.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994764060.20463.clpa-moderators at python.org

    Steven Knight launches SCons, a make replacement written in Python.
    SCons is currently in active development, with the goal of an alpha
    release some time later this year. The current developers are
    actively recruiting anyone else who would like to contribute.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994903681.24367.clpa-moderators at python.org

    In the "Why don't you remember Zager and Evans" department: Roman
    Suzi wonders what programs written to survive the ages would look
    like.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994509911.11785.python-list at python.org

    Thomas Heller posts a recipe that shows how to set up things to
    launch the debugger automatically in Python 2.1
        http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/65287

    Marc-Andr? Lemburg introduces a PEP that proposes to use the PEP
    244 statement "directive" to make the encoding used in Unicode
    string literals u"..." (and their raw counterparts ur"...")
    definable on a per source file basis.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.995062883.31329.python-list at python.org

    Mark Poinot provides a report on the Libre Software Meeting Python
    Track held earlier this month in Bordeaux.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.994840578.17876.python-list at python.org

    Terry Reedy provides a good summary of how language changes that
    break existing code impact the community
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com
    ... prompting Guido to reconsider plans to change the behavior of
    integer division
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:cplmlvh6dx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com

    Carsten Gaebler discovers an inconsistency in how readline and
    readlines react to an empty file, with Quinn Dunkan submitting
    the patch to make it right.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3B482C44.6E6EB163 at snakefarm.org

    Tim Daneliuk asks for an explanation of Python's singleton tuple
    syntax.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:3B4CA0A8.20B53230 at tundraware.com

    A.M. Kuchling formalizes an approach which describes a format
    for a database of Python packages installed on a system in PEP
    262.  Could this be the start of dynamic module updates?
        http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0262.html

    Edward Jason Riedy provides links and discussion on fully
    arbitrary precision changes in relation to Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9igdps$o1u$1 at agate.berkeley.edu

    For the Zope crowd:  This should only sound foreign to the
    uninitiated, but even if you don't zope yet... Here's a How
    to set up Blark Feature Boxes FOR CMF Blark Creators.
        http://www.zope.org/Members/jeffsasmor/blark_featureboxes
    ... and this will definitely sound foreign (except to the
    martellibot)... There's a new site dedicated to Zope, but you'll
    need to read it yourselves to get more information... ;)
        http://www.zope.it/
    ....Martijn Faasen releases Formulator 1, an extensible
    framework that eases the creation and validation of web forms.
        http://www.zope.org/Members/faassen/Formulator
    ... and an update on the EuroZope meeting at LinuxTag in
    Stuttgart, located part way down the page at
        http://www.eurozope.org//index_html/mpNews?sNwsItem=20010709

    Continuing Foreign Python sightings... Cristian Echeverria tells
    of a new website: Python News in Spanish - Noticias de Python en
    Espa?ol at
        http://www.chevenet.com/
        http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:9iq577$km4p5$1 at ID-44371.news.dfncis.de

    Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon;
    egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam;
    spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and
    spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam...
        http://www.pythonline.com/spamclub/signup.shtml


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continues Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
        http://www.cetus-links.de/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction
        http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py

    Python Journal is at work on its second issue
        http://www.pythonjournal.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here:
  http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html
or
  http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_q=+Python-URL!&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python


Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome.
[http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ is hibernating.  Just
e-mail us ideas directly.]

To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning,
ask <claird at neosoft.com> to subscribe.  Mention "Python-URL!".


-- The Python-URL! Team--

Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com) is pleased to participate in and
sponsor the "Python-URL!" project.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From mestesso100 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 13:22:27 2001
From: mestesso100 at yahoo.com (FunkyTritone)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:22:27 -0700
Subject: Help: Install python-2.1-3 on RedHat 7.1!
Message-ID: <71550321.0107250922.3a8fd0bf@posting.google.com>

Hi there, I just tried to install python-2.1-3 on RedHat 7.1
and I got lost in a RPM maze.
Basically I have to upgrade stuff like readline and libcrypto that
are needed by a bunch of other software. Is there any way to
have a clean install of this beast without breaking the whole
system? It shouldn't be that hard!!!

$> rpm -Uvh python-2.1-3.i686.rpm python-devel-2.1-3.i686.rpm
openssl-0.9.6b-3.i586.rpm ncurses-ext-5.2-4.i686.rpm
readline-4.2-6.i686.rpm gmp-2.0.2-15.i686.rpm ncurses-5.2-4.i686.rpm

error: failed dependencies:
        gmp = 3.1.1 is needed by gmp-devel-3.1.1-3
        libgmp.so.3   is needed by librep-0.13.3-1
        libgmp.so.3   is needed by sawfish-0.38-1
        readline = 4.1 is needed by readline-devel-4.1-9
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by ftp-0.17-7
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by librep-0.13.3-1
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by guile-1.3.4-12
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by openldap-clients-2.0.7-14
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by pilot-link-0.9.5-2
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by postgresql-7.0.3-8
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by postgresql-devel-7.0.3-8
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by postgresql-server-7.0.3-8
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by cdecl-2.5-17
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by bc-1.06-2
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by dump-0.4b21-3
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by amanda-2.4.2p2-1
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by amanda-client-2.4.2p2-1
        libreadline.so.4.1 is needed by ext2ed-0.1-23
        libreadline.so.4.1 is needed by fvwm2-2.2.4-9
        libreadline.so.4.1 is needed by gnuplot-3.7.1-12
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by amanda-server-2.4.2p2-1
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by mysql-3.23.36-1
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by parted-1.4.7-2
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by postgresql-tcl-7.0.3-8
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by postgresql-tk-7.0.3-8
        libreadline.so.4.1 is needed by units-1.55-9
        libreadline.so.4.1   is needed by x3270-text-3.2.14-1
        python = 2.0-9mdk is needed by tkinter-2.0-9mdk
        openssl = 0.9.6-9 is needed by openssl-perl-0.9.6-9
        openssl = 0.9.6-9 is needed by openssl-python-0.9.6-9
        openssl = 0.9.6-9 is needed by openssl-devel-0.9.6-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by bind-utils-9.1.0-10
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by slrn-0.9.6.4-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by cyrus-sasl-1.5.24-17
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by links-0.95-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openldap-2.0.7-14
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by autofs-3.1.7-14
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by nss_ldap-149-1
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openldap-clients-2.0.7-14
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by pine-4.33-8
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by sendmail-8.11.2-14
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by fetchmail-5.7.4-4
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by gq-0.4.0-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by lynx-2.8.4-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by mutt-1.2.5i-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openssh-2.5.2p2-5
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openssh-clients-2.5.2p2-5
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by pidentd-3.0.12-4
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by balsa-1.1.1-3
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by kdebase-2.1.1-8
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by samba-common-2.0.7-36
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by samba-client-2.0.7-36
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openssh-server-2.5.2p2-5
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by php-imap-4.0.4pl1-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by php-ldap-4.0.4pl1-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by bind-9.1.0-10
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by ucd-snmp-4.2-12
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by ucd-snmp-utils-4.2-12
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by am-utils-6.0.5-1
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by auth_ldap-1.4.7-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by imap-2000-9
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by licq-1.0.2-3
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openldap-servers-2.0.7-14
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by stunnel-3.13-3
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by samba-2.0.7-36
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by mod_ssl-2.8.1-5
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by kdevelop-1.4.1-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by samba-swat-2.0.7-36
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by slrn-pull-0.9.6.4-2
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by squid-2.3.STABLE4-10
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by xemacs-21.1.14-10
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by kdelibs-2.1.2-1
        libcrypto.so.1   is needed by openssl-python-0.9.6-9
        libssl.so.1   is needed by slrn-0.9.6.4-2
        libssl.so.1   is needed by links-0.95-2
        libssl.so.1   is needed by openldap-2.0.7-14
        libssl.so.1   is needed by autofs-3.1.7-14
        libssl.so.1   is needed by nss_ldap-149-1
        libssl.so.1   is needed by openldap-clients-2.0.7-14
        libssl.so.1   is needed by pine-4.33-8
        libssl.so.1   is needed by sendmail-8.11.2-14
        libssl.so.1   is needed by fetchmail-5.7.4-4
        libssl.so.1   is needed by gq-0.4.0-2
...

)


From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 25 00:09:47 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:09:47 -0400
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E468B.C0A6152D@engcorp.com>

"Owen F. Ransen" wrote:
> 
> If you put this in a module and test it:
> 
> def ForLoopTest (NumLoops) :
>     for Year in range (1,NumLoops) :
>         for Century in range (1,NumLoops) :
>             Months = Year*12
> 
> you'll find that ForLoopTest (10000) will apparently
> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
> or do I just have to live with it?

Are you running from the DOS command line? 
Are you executing the above function via a call like this?

if __name__ == '__main__':
    ForLoopTest(10000)

I put these in a file test.py and ran "python test.py"
from the DOS prompt.  Hitting Ctrl-C after a few 
seconds produced this:

C:\>py test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 7, in ?
    ForLoopTest(10000)
  File "test.py", line 4, in ForLoopTest
    month = year * 12
KeyboardInterrupt
C:\>

So, it works for me.  (Win98 first release, on a 
Hitachi PC with a Pentium 233 MMX.  Nothing special.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul 23 11:52:13 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:52:13 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <qtholtkcpvbr51q5dj9b9eqcrpos2to7p8@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 10:33:08 +0200, Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

>I don't think there is any argument about that: the only question is
>how to spell integer division; in the future, it will be spelled '//'.

I personally think this should be "div" in synergy with "divmod"
(which already exists). We don't need to be robbin' no operators
from smalltalk.

C//



From nospam at newsranger.com  Mon Jul  2 01:56:14 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 05:56:14 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
Message-ID: <22U%6.3997$Kf3.32727@www.newsranger.com>

I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
why this is happening would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Haris Lekatsas 

#!/usr/bin/env python
import socket, smtplib

server = smtplib.SMTP()
server.connect('localhost')
server.helo('localhost')

msg = "From: " + "Haris Lekatsas <lekatsas at jayway.com>" + "\012"
msg = msg + "To: " + "Haris Lekatsas <lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu>" + "\012"
msg = msg + "Subject: " + "subject" + "\012"
fd = open('bigtextfile', 'r')
text = ''
while 1:
line = fd.readline()
if not line: break
text = text + line
fd.close()

msg = msg + '\012' + text

tmp_output = server.sendmail("lekatsas at jayway.com", "lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu",
m
sg)

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
print "Mail sent!"




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 23 19:10:10 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:10:10 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com>

This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
"regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a 
dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and 
those on dynamically typed languages.

The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, ...)
all make a different choice for division and the choice is
uncontroversial. Python is the only one of the languages that has a
constant battle on the issue.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Thu Jul 26 01:13:02 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:13:02 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <250720012213029878%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the suggestion.  I think I'll do it this way: Python 3.x
> will be the first incompatible version, Python 2.x will require
> __future__ statements or other explicit ways to indicate that the
> programmer wants the new feature.
> 
> For less disturbing changes like nested scopes or generators (which
> would break only very small amounts of old code), we can introduce the
> new feature for real in the next release (e.g., nested scopes will be
> standard in 2.2, I expect generators will become standard in 2.3), but
> for devastatingly code-breaking changes like division, I'll wait until
> 3.0 before it becomes the law.

Thank you, Guido...

I am quite content after reading that and some of your other comments. 
I've been skipping much of the division discussion today, and reading
only your messages in some of the threads, like this one.

Yesterday, I was upset.  But the world seems different today.  Except
for the cat, who was sleeping on my other office chair last evening,
and is sleeping on my other office chair this evening.  I haven't been
able to get him at all interested in PEP238.

Cheers, John


From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  2 18:46:44 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 15:46:44 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hqtkk$b5a$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <mailman.994111084.403.python-list at python.org>,
William Park  <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> From: Russ (18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com)
>>
>> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
>> application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
>> aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
>> initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
>> aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
>> collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
>> C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
>> humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
>> toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
>> nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
>> among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
>> insights.
>
>Of course, you idiot...  

Is there some reason you're calling Russ an idiot?  Let's try to keep
comp.lang.python flamefree, please.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 04:41:51 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 08:41:51 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <9i5guj$7kg$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3b46c563.1265175986@wa.news.verio.net>

On 6 Jul 2001 16:17:39 -0700, aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

>In article <3dd77drkea.fsf at ute.cnri.reston.va.us>,
>Andrew Kuchling  <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>>Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
>>>
>>> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>>>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>>>    specify floating point division.
>>
>>Step 3 strikes me as a bit odd; does that mean documentation for that
>>release will have to say "applying the / operator to integers is an
>>error, full stop"?  And then in the next release the docs will again
>>have to be changed to say that integer division now works?  IMHO step
>>3 should be dropped; one release with a warning every time integer
>>division is attempted should be sufficient.
>
>I'm in agreement with Guido that at least two releases are necessary
>(I also agree that it could be two warning releases).  But I think
>Guido's step 3 (if used) should be changed to the semantically equivalent
>
>    In Python 2.4, integer division with the '/' operator raises an
>    exception.  This exception can be caught as usual, but the
>    programmer should prepare for the next release of Python by either
>    using the div() function or by using the future directive to get
>    floating point division.
>
>(Calling it an error is technically imprecise; an exception isn't
>*necessarily* an error.)
>
True, but in this situation, if you are going to modify code by
wrapping with try-except to catch integer divisions, you might as
well fix the code? OTOH, if you wanted a facility to make existing
code run the way you want, maybe a divHook could be put somewhere
so you could define a temporary div with assertions about the
arguments, and logging of anomalies, etc., or whatever you needed,
in a single tweak.

>>>   from __future__ import float_division
>>>   from __future__ import real_division
>>>   from __future__ import new_division
>>>   from __future__ import division
>>
>>'float_division'.  There's no type corresponding to "real", nor is
>>that terminology used anywhere in the docs; 'new_division' and
>>'division' strike me as unclear.
>
>Ditto.
Agree on the last two, but if there's a better real type than float
coming in the future, '/' would presumably produce it as a result.
In that case real_division would anticipatorily make sense, ISTM.

I can live with div(x,y) and if so, mod(x,y) does seem to make
for symmetry. 

BTW, will '%' as an integer op go away too, by symmetry?




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 02:38:32 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 23:38:32 -0700
Subject: "All your byte are belong to us! " (TM) (was Re: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd))
References: <mailman.994369989.11026.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107052238.4d498376@posting.google.com>

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote in message news:<mailman.994369989.11026.python-list at python.org>...
> Still dying to win the performance prize, I believe Skip Montanaro's
> performance tip brings the general filter stategy back up to winning
> status (including James Logajan 'traditional' function)
> 
>   def str_join2(iters):
>       has = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
>       for i in iters:
>           "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])
> 
>   def flt_lmbda3(iters):
>       isdigit = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
[snip]

Sigh. Looks like it's going to be a long hot [northern hemisphere]
summer.

D:\junk>type mertz.py
def str_join2(iters):
   has = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
   for i in iters:
      result = "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])
   return result

def str_join2_fixed(iters):
   has = {'0':1,'1':1,'2':1,'3':1,'4':1,'5':1,'6':1,'7':1,'8':1,'9':1}.has_key
   for i in iters:
      result = "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])
   return result

print repr(str_join2(range(1)))
print repr(str_join2_fixed(range(1)))

D:\junk>python mertz.py
''
'1234567890'

Unfortunately, the routine that doesn't do the "All your byte are
belong to us!"
caper is going to be a bit slower; that's what you have pay for
correctness.

Hey, what a wonderful title for a book on text processing :-)

In any case, the fastest routine available in standard Python would
have to be one based on the suggestion in an earlier post from Tim
Peters, namely to use
source_string.translate(identity_map_string, chars_to_delete).

Note that translate() is O(m+n) where n = len(source_string)
and m = len(chars_to_delete). The O(m) comes about from the fact that
chars_to_delete is unstructured and has to be made into a map on each
call -- if it wasn't you'd have O(m*n). You can get better, with a
precomputed map, but only by jumping into C.

Some more observations:
(1) The various solutions using re do poorly because re.sub is written
in Python, not C, as /F pointed out a week or so ago.
(2) You can knock 20% to 25% off the re times by using "[^0-9]+"
instead of "[^0-9]"
(3) Most contestants could squeeze out a little more performance by
moving attribute lookups outside the loop -- like this:
 
nulljoin = "".join
for x in y:
   result = nulljoin(etc etc)

(4) Getting away from standard-issue Python, mx.TextTools.setstrip()
looked at first glance like a goer but that turned out to be a snare
and a delusion -- as its doc makes plain, it "strips" in the same way
as standard Python strip(), lstrip() and rstrip(): only at the ends of
the string, not in the middle; IOW, "some your byte that you would
like to belong to us are not". Perhaps if MAL is reading this, he
might consider adding a setremove() to his next version.

Regards,
John


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Sat Jul  7 20:14:42 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:14:42 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkf9gg58o4iee9@news.supernews.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994532533.10229.python-list at python.org...
> I want to make a pitch for naming it idiv() instead.  The "i" should
> strongly remind that the result is an integer, something "div" says only
to
> former Pascal programmers.  Seems a Positive Good to me if, e.g.,
>
>     idiv(5.0, 3.0)
>
> returned 1 too; i.e., that idiv(i, j) mathematically return floor(i/j).

I like it - my mind had been going in that direction: idiv, fdiv and rdiv to
label the desired output type.

> Alternative:  Given the point about dumbdbm above, the missing half is a
> builtin to return (mathematically) ceiling(i/j) too.  A very direct
approach
> to both is to forget div/idiv and introduce two-argument builtins
>
>     floor(i, j)   # return floor of mathematical quotient
>     ceiling(i, j) # return ceiling of mathematical quotient
>
> instead.  They should also have 1-argument flavors, corresponding to the
> current math.floor and math.ceil.  This would emphasize that the real
point
> to all this stuff is computing floors and ceilings, not really about the
> numeric types of division arguments (that's always been a red herring!).

I think that's missing the point. The current integer division rules aren't
a real
problem to the experianced - it's just one more special case that's the same
as
some languages, and different than others. It's a problem for the novice and
the
occasional programmer.

Going on about floor and ceiling is perhaps mathematically useful (in fact,
no
perhaps about it) but it does nothing for the novice or occasional user.
Replacing
/ completely with idiv, fdiv and (eventually) rdiv would force anyone trying
to divide
to come to grips with what they wanted as a result type. In any case, the
"natural"
result of dividing two integers is a rational, not an approximate real (i.e.
float).

John Roth
>
> but-perhaps-some-herrings-are-too-tasty-to-forego-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>




From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul 29 18:27:33 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:27:33 GMT
Subject: REPOST: Re: Try floating the Back Orifice's dumb PGP and Willy will recycle you!
References: <FDC34627.2CE8C0C7@edefod.net>
Message-ID: <8$-_-%_%-$-%$-%_%$@news.noc.cabal.int>

I laughed at the first one of these I read,
thinking it might be the result of a python program,
but now I have noticed that they are popping up
on other newsgroups, too, all from different names.
Once is funny.  Twice is spam.
I have seen four or five today.



"Timothy Gibson" <barewy at edefod.net> wrote in message
news:FDC34627.2CE8C0C7 at edefod.net...
> If you'll recycle Gilbert's printer with keypads, it'll biweekly
> interface the thought.  Sometimes Alexandra will get the robot, and if
> Samantha wistfully meets it too, the programmer will collaborate
> outside the fast cybercafe.  My extreme PERL won't disconnect before I
> push it.  He will engulf halfheartedly if William's plotter isn't
> bizarre.  Go cry a protocol!  When will you save the chaotic
> retarded zipdisks before Pilar does?  Jeff wants to know seemingly, unless
> Chester infects machines within Evan's administrator.  Until
> Jeff defiles the RAMs stupidly, Ann won't moan any solid cafes.
> Where Frederick's discarded LAN outwits, Robette facilitates
> in back of loud, plastic CIAs.  Otherwise the terminal in Jonnie's
> librarian might prepare.  Try typeing the Back Orifice's dry
> admin and Sherry will close you!  Who shoots undoubtably, when
> Martin dreams the disgusting firewall in the mail server?  Don't try to
> exclude the stacks wanly, eliminate them deeply.  As badly as
> Robette reloads, you can negotiate the operator much more strongly.
>
>
>

========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======:
Path: news.uni-stuttgart.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!akk.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!cass.news.pipex.net!pipex!cspc1n11e.baplc.com!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!internal-news-hub.cableinet.net!news1.cableinet.net.POSTED!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!hatchetman.killfile.org!not-for-mail
Message-ID: <k7705.307803$aR6.126426725 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Control: cancel <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Subject: cmsg cancel <p5097.586665$eK2.123322103 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
From: tskirvin at killfile.org
Sender: "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com>
Approved: tskirvin at killfile.org
Newsgroups: at.test,uk.test,alt.test,news.test
Organization: Killfiles, Unlimited
X-Cancelled-By: tskirvin at killfile.org
X-Original-From: "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com>
X-Original-Posting-Host: 156.207.41.102
X-Cancel-ID: 343<#DW3"DQ5L3K/<Q>2:$*:SBM0GC7(C4 at CT57+"<"%M/=VU|#WZBA]
Reply-To: "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com>
Lines: 2
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:52:27 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.30.137.31
X-Complaints-To: http://www.blueyonder.co.uk/abuse
X-Trace: news1.cableinet.net 996569547 62.30.137.31 (Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:52:27 BST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:52:27 BST
<remainder snipped>


From cgale1 at _remove_home.com  Sat Jul 28 09:38:03 2001
From: cgale1 at _remove_home.com (Van Gale)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:38:03 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996304554.3545.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <%ez87.128332$%a.5630144@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996304554.3545.python-list at python.org...

> Time to move into the 21st century, Dirck!  This alternative is often
> overlooked:
>
>     http://www.cobolscript.com/

Oh my god.  I thought I would get a laugh checking this link, but the
feeling I had instead was more like terror :(

I had flashbacks from when I had to write a COBOL program that had varying
memory requirements.  I was happy to find and use an "experimental dynamic
memory allocation" library, but then had to rip it back out again when the
project manager said, "I don't understand that."  I bet that same bastage is
making some poor programmer use cobolscript now.  Oh my god.





From bckfnn at worldonline.dk  Wed Jul 18 16:45:04 2001
From: bckfnn at worldonline.dk (Finn Bock)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:45:04 GMT
Subject: ANN: Second alpha release of Jython-2.1
Message-ID: <3b55f3ff.47954715@mail.wanadoo.dk>

I am happy to announce the second alpha release of Jython 2.1.

Jython is a Java implementation of the Python programming
language.  It allows users to compile Python source code to
Java byte codes, and run the resulting bytecodes on any Java
Virtual Machine.  It is a very seamless and smooth
integration with Java:  from Python you have complete access
to all Java libraries, can build applets, can integrate with
Java beans, and can subclass Java classes in Python and vice
versa.  Like Python, and unlike Java, Jython can also be
used interactively:  just type some Jython code at the
prompt and see the results immediately.

A java installer is available for download at the Jython website:

    http://www.jython.org/

Installation on version 2.1a2 is similar to version 2.0. Further 
information and tips on installation is available at:

    http://www.jython.org/install.html

Jython 2.1 aims to be feature compatible with Python 2.1 and among
the new feature are:

  - Nested scopes
  - The display hook

A complete list of changes and differences are available here:

  http://www.jython.org/NEWS.html

A list of fixed bugs can be found here:

  http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=12867&atid=112867

Change the Status input box to "Closed" and the Group input box to
"Fixed in 2.1a2" and press the "Browse" button.


Bugs can be reported to the bug manager on SourceForge:

  http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=12867

Cheers,
the jython-developers



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul  3 17:57:44 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:57:44 -0400
Subject: ADODB.RecordSet bummer ( was Re: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?))
In-Reply-To: <994188218.395.92602.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B420798.24863.4D12A66@localhost>

[Martelli's address not included since many list members may 
already know it.]

Alex Martelli wrote, in part:

> you CAN write rs.Fields("FieldName").Value ... [and] ... I believe
> ADO (and much more so, COM:-) deserves a far better language than
> Visual Basic... Python, for example!-). 

Yup, me too FWIW. So, as one of this list's most longstanding 
newbies, I decided to give the combination a spin.

In VBA it's common to coin the cliche:

with myRecordSet
	.edit
	.fields('myField') = 42
	.update
end with

Unfortunately,

>>> import win32com.client
>>> rs = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.RecordSet")
>>> rs.ActiveConnection = "DSN=WebPASS"
>>> rs.Open("[URLs]")
>>> rs.Fields("myField") = 42
Traceback (SyntaxError: can't assign to function call

Or, is this because I forgot my medication this morning?

Bill

Bill Bell, Software Developer



From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 21:25:41 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:25:41 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <i3voltca29ai6vjoh93keh40js9hgjh80l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIDLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> But Perl had a good try...
>
> I'm told "1" / 3 gives 0.333333333333333333 <giggles>

Near the end of the group discussion I mentioned before, to try to get
consensus on *something* I asked whether anyone was in favor of Python
automagically converting strings to numbers "in arithmetic contexts".  I
thought I was joking -- and turns out I was <wink>.  Nobody spoke in favor
of that.

Then we went to the all-conference lunch, and I happened to sit next to a
Python newbie fresh from Perl.  He hadn't been at the numeric discussion.
His first question was "hey!  how come I have to convert my strings to ints
when I add?  I didn't have to do that in Perl!".  Arghghghghgh.

nothing-new-under-the-snake-ly y'rs  - tim




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 08:43:07 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 12:43:07 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lo6uq.ss0.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:55:40 GMT, Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> pisze:

> Isn't there anything in 2.2 that deserves even a fraction of the discussion
> going on about div? (which has been beaten to death 9 times)
> 
> getset(), staticmethod(), classmethod(), etc...

I must say that the current state of type/class unification is so
complex that I don't understand the details, all these slots and
wrappers and types, and why
    5 .__new__(list, '42') == 42
for example.

I home that the following piece of documentation is temporary!

   Isn't this backwards incompatible? Won't it break existing code? It
   would, if we changed the method resolution order for all classes.
   However, in Python 2.2, the new lookup rule will only be applied to
   types derived from built-in types, which is a new feature. Class
   statements without a base class create "classic classes", and so do
   class statements whose base classes are themselves classic classes.
   For classic classes the classic lookup rule will be used. (To
   experiment with the new lookup rule for classic classes, you will be
   able to specify a different metaclass explicitly.) We'll also provide
   a tool that analyzes a class hierarchy looking for methods that would
   be affected by a change in method resolution order.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 11:06:09 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:06:09 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.994727597.27647.python-list@python.org> <9ihnv5$e2v$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <8UZ27.41897$F%5.2532623@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Emmanuel Jeandel" <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> wrote in message
news:9ihnv5$e2v$1 at macareux.ens-lyon.fr...
> If someone is playing with rfc822, i'm interested !
>
> I'm writing a small script that does statistics about mailboxes :
> it writes for each sender (respectively receiver) the number of mail
> he sends to you (resp. receives from you), and the total size of mails,
> size  meaning : i drop all html code, attachments (I use multifile
> to consider only the first part of a message) and
> drop all lines beginning with '>' . If someone
> is interested the program can be located in
> http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~ejeandel/mailstat
> (python 1.5, but I think it is 2.0 compliant)
> syntax: mailstat r namesofthemailboxes for parsing inboxes
>         mailstat w .... for parsing outboxes
> you can also use mailstat r20 to parse only the mail from the last 20 days
> (I know that the parsing of the command line is very weak, but i don't
> want to lose my time doing this in a more pretty way)
>
> Playing with rfc822 is good, but i think mailbox.py has also several
> problems. When you do mailbox.next(), the function return a rfc822.Message
> but i wanted to use my class MyMessage, so i have to rewrite :
>
> class MyUnixMailbox(mailbox.UnixMailbox):
>     def next(self):
>         while 1:
>             self.fp.seek(self.seekp)
>             try:
>             self._search_start()
>     except EOFError:
>           self.seekp = self.fp.tell()
>         return None
>     start = self.fp.tell()
>     self._search_end()
>     self.seekp = stop = self.fp.tell()
>     if start <> stop:
>         break
> return MyMessage(mailbox._Subfile(self.fp, start, stop))
>
> Do you know of any prettier solution ?
>

I've come across the same impedance mismatch myself, and adopted more or
less the same solution. It would clearly be nice to be able to pass the
mailbox's __init__() method an (optional, defaulting to rfc822.Message)
class which that mailbox would then use when it was creating messages. The
class would obviously need to comply with (a subset of) the rfc822.Message
interface.

Maybe this upwardly-compatible solution could be adopted for the rfc2822
library?

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 14:56:46 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:56:46 -0700
Subject: Newbie Q - Py for Linux on Disk??
References: <554a464b.0107280303.1c0be0f6@posting.google.com> <dv9uj9.674.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <3B65ADEE.3CFD173@home.net>

Gerhard H?ring wrote:
> On 28 Jul 2001 04:03:37 -0700, Dick Van Kirk <dickvan at quicktel.com> wrote:
> >Please tell me where I can purchase Python for Linux on disk that I can
> >quickly and easily install ??

> If you want an easily installed Python, you can just buy a copy of any major
> Linux distribution if you don't have one already. Any one that I know of has
> Python included.

yes, but many of them seem to be pretty old versions: 1.5.2 in general.

I think ActiveStae will sell you a CD, if you don' thave the bandwidth
to download.

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActiveCD

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br  Wed Jul 18 20:05:35 2001
From: tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br (Tatiana Evers)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:05:35 -0300
Subject: Problems
Message-ID: <001b01c10fe6$88c7e160$39a5100a@cg22898>

Hi,

I try to compile NT example for embedding Python in C. This example is in
Source(...\Pyton-2.1\Pc\example.nt), but when I Build the error happens
below

Compiling...
example.c
Linking...
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "python21_d.lib"
Error executing link.exe.

example_d.dll - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)

What can I do ?

Thanks ;o)

Tatiana Evers

---------------------------------------------------------------
Tatiana Figueiredo Evers
Mestranda em Computa??o Aplicada
(Computa??o Gr?fica)
UNISINOS - S?o Leopoldo - RS
tatiana at exatas.unisinos.br
www.inf.unisinos.br/~tatiana




From junkster at rochester.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 17:17:32 2001
From: junkster at rochester.rr.com (Benjamin Schollnick)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 21:17:32 GMT
Subject: Odd problem with converting string to Hex?
References: <junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com> <OUK%6.17065$he.735624@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <junkster-308058.17185001072001@typhoon4-3.nyroc.rr.com>

I haven't tried this.... But it certainly makes sense...

I was assuming, incorrectly it appears, that Python was storing it 
as a string of 3 or so characters.... After all, that's what the 
Print command was displaying....

I had never considered that it was being stored as a "list of 
characters", array, or whatever you'd like to call it....

Although, I want to stress STR(data....), didn't give a HEX PRINTABLE
result.... 

I'll try this, and hopefully all will be well....

Thanks for the assistance!

         - Benjamin


In article <OUK%6.17065$he.735624 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>,
 "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:

> "Benjamin Schollnick" <junkster at rochester.rr.com> wrote in ...
> > Folks,
> >
> >    This is odd.... or at least I think it is....
> >
> >    Using Python v2.1....
> >
> >    Here's a snippet of the data:
> >
> > ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> > ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.1', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> > ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.4', 'RF Upstream Interface')
> >
> >    I've tried using:
> >
> >       eval (data[1])
> >       hex (data[1])
> >       str(data[1])
> >
> >    What gets returned is:
> >
> >    Unknown - Mac?  --->    ??H
> >             Hex:            Long:
> >
> Let's get this straight. Your data records MAC-level addresses as six-byte
> strings, and you want to represent each address as a set of byte values, in
> hex, separated by dashes. OK so far?
> 
> >    Which os definetly not what I'm looking for.... I'm attempting to
> > decode this in pure hexadecimal...
> >
> >    I suspect it's due to the "\x" in the string, but I can't pull up the
> > documentation, since when I tried I wasn't getting a response from
> > python.org.....
> >
> Nope. There *is* no"\x" in the string. Look:
> 
> >>> d = ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f')
> >>> len(d[1])
> 6
> 
> Each \xXX (where the XX are hex digits) is made into a single 8-bit
> character by the Python interpreter. The "H" is also a character. Let's look
> at the decimal values of each character:
> 
> >>> [ord(x) for x in d[1]]
> [0, 144, 131, 72, 17, 15]
> 
> Given the hex values in your data this seems reasonable.
> 
> >    Conceptually I'm trying to output it, similiar to:
> >
> >       00-90-83-11-0f    Assuming I'm reading the returned data properly.
> 
> That appears to be the problem: you assumed that Python was storing
> everything inside the single quotes as individual bytes, when in fact the
> hex escape sequences are interpreted as the string is constructed.
> 
> Getting the hex values is relatively easy using string formatting:
> 
> >>> ['%02x' % ord(x) for x in d[1]]
> ['00', '90', '83', '48', '11', '0f']
> 
> All you have to do to get what you want is join this list of strings with
> dashes. I tend to favor the string methods for this kind of thing, though
> some say it seems counterintuitive:
> 
> >>> "-".join(['%02x' % ord(x) for x in d[1]])
> '00-90-83-48-11-0f'
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> regards
>  STeve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com
> 
> 
>


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 12:01:37 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:01:37 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com>
Message-ID: <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Suchandra Thapa" <ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa at hepcat.telocity.com...
    ...
>     The lambda can be  a way  to avoid the need to define and name trivial
> functions that get used in only one place.

And this, in Python, is the ONLY thing that is specific to lambda.

> However, the lambda function
> is a also a way to dynamically create functions as well as a way of
> composing two functions together.

...which you can perfectly well do with other callables besides
lambda forms -- as long as you don't mind naming them.

> For example, suppose you need to
> apply a scaling factor to a list but the scaling factor depends on
> user input.  In this case, with lambda you can do a with
> lambda x: x * s where the value of s depends on the user input.  Also,

And without lambda you can do it with a def:
    def mpy(x): return x*s
    # and now use mpy wherever you'd use your lambda
If x is visible inside the lambda (nested-scopes are active) it will
be identically visible inside mpy.  If you need to 'freeze' s's value,
you will supply an s=s defaulting-parameter identically to the lambda
or to the def.  The ONLY difference is that lambda generates an
anonymous function (and is an expression), while def generates a
named function (and is a statement).

> suppose you have two image filters and you want to create a new filter
> that applies the first filter then the second one.  Then using lambda,
> you can just use lambda x: filter2(filter1(x)).

And without lambda you can do it with a def:
    def combined_filter(x): return filter2(filter1(x))
with all the other considerations being the same as above.

>     Incidentally, you can use lambda to do a bunch of different things
including
> reducing the number of parameters a function takes (currying).  E.g.

The modest amount of currying you can do with a lambda, you can
just as well do with a def.  def gives more powerful currying
because you can have *args and **kwds in a def, which lambda
does not support.  See for example the entry on currying in the
Python Cookbook:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52549
and notice that not one of the entries uses lambda: there's
a class and a couple of variant of closures (obtained with
def, NOT with lambda: I don't think you could reach this level
of generality with a lambda in Python, given its limitations!).

> suppose foo takes x, y, and z then lambda x, y:foo(x, y, 4) returns a
function
> that takes only two paramters.
>     Basically, think of lambda as a way of applying mathematical
operations
> like +, /, * as well as a few others to functions.

I suggest one should instead think of lambda ONLY as what it
is: a way to leave particularly-simple functions (those that
can fit in a single expression) unnamed (in a way that is
syntactically an expression).  There is no other added value
of lambda wrt def in Python, and there are several aspects
where lambda _subtracts_ value...


Alex





From fschaef at ces.clemson.edu  Wed Jul  4 21:32:02 2001
From: fschaef at ces.clemson.edu (Schaefer, F.)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:32:02 -0700
Subject: Emacs parseable Python - Error output
Message-ID: <3B43C391.58F060B3@ces.clemson.edu>

Dear Python Community,

Is there a way to produce error output with python, 
that can be processed by emacs' compile-mode ?
This way it would be possible to jump quickly to the
position where the error occured.

Thanks,

Frank

--


From donn at drizzle.com  Mon Jul 23 00:24:58 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 04:24:58 -0000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: None <mailman.995838436.11056.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <995862297.667165@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>:
...
| Of course, but computer numerics is a massive exercise in picking the
| general rules you want to preserve at the expense of others, and trading all
| that off against pragmatics too.  Not losing information silently is also a
| Very Good General Rule, and even 745 binary fp arithmetic is better at
| meeting that one than current "/".

So would it make sense to also change the >> and << operators to
rotate shift?  I mean, I sure wouldn't find that more useful, but
it does conserve information that the current shifts lose.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 22:43:34 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:43:34 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> dijo:
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> > My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
> > anti-Perl.  I always thought that if someone as cynical, stubborn, and
> > arrogant as I am can love both languages, anybody could.  
> 
> I wouldn't have said "violently".  That is to say, I haven't actually 
> *killed* anyone for using Perl... yet.

* runs screaming * AAAAGH!

> And I consider my cynicism, stubbornness, and arrogance to be right 
> up there with the best of them.  (In fact, my absolutely _unparalleled_
> arrogance is _certain_ to be my own downfall, and _nothing_ you could 
> say would convince me otherwise. ;-)

I make it a point never to argue the existence of hubris.  ;)

> Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say that I believe there may be
> applications for which Perl is the better language, but I'm fairly
> sure (a) I'd have an argument against _almost_ any example proposed,
> and (b) the few I might not argue against would likely be "better in
> Perl" only because of some ugly situation such as maintaining 
> compatibility with a legacy system, supported by programmers who 
> know only Perl and don't want to change, and an application already 
> working and therefore not in need of maintenance of any kind.
> 
> Any other application, and I would probably say Python was a 
> better choice...  

This is where our opinions (on both languages) differ, and where we
might as well agree to disagree?

> > My apologies to the group at large.
> > Tim Hammerquist
> This group is scary in its degree of both tolerance and forgiveness.
> (Hey, they even let me stay here.. so far. :)

I am grateful for this.

-- 
The iMac comes in five colors. Who cares from a technical
standpoint? But they're obviously selling like crazy...
    -- Linus Torvalds


From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Wed Jul 11 06:30:07 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:30:07 GMT
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994843338.24567.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4C2A0E.60AA094@nokia.com>

Shannon --jj Behrens wrote:
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I wrote a useful C module for doing string
> interpolation.  I find it indespensible when working
> with large blocks of triple-quoted text.  When working
> with large blocks of triple-quoted text, nothing else
> is quite as convenient.  Here's the Python doc:

[lots of text snipped]
 
> Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
> even be useful enough to be included as a standard
> module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
> suggestions as to what I can do with it.  You may
> download the entire packages from:
> 
> <http://ironorchid.com/jjinux/evalstr.tar.gz>

I prefer the following method for evaluations inside strings.

>>> class Eval:
	def __getitem__(self, key):
		return eval(key)

	
>>> foo = 3.0
>>> spam = 5.0
>>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
0.6
>>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000
>>>


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Mon Jul 16 15:00:30 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 22:00:30 +0300
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com> <9iqfge0gba@enews1.newsguy.com> <LF447.476898$eK2.98947068@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <kuzoa4hf75.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

[reformatted for your reading pleasure]

In article <9iqlgi$kbg9g$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, "Emile van
Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

|| "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message

|| "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
|| news:LF447.476898$eK2.98947068 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com...

||| I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
||| to a list by just using
||| list_var[] = var_to_append
||| It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
|||
||| Any comments?
   
||    list_var += var_to_append
||
|| (which is how you express this today in Python) is equivalent
|| and shorter.  Python does NOT go out of its way to provide
|| a zillion ways to write the same, identical thing.

| Alex is right as long as var_to_append is already a list.

not quite:

>>> l1 = [1]
>>> l2 = [2]
>>> l1 += l2
>>> l1
[1, 2]

vs.

>>> l2.append(l1)
>>> l2
[2, [1]]

| For non-lists though you can also do

| list_var += 1,

| or,

| list_var += (1,)

hmm, does the sequence protocol really include __add__ing arbitrary
sequences? one would think lists would support it too if that
was the case.

  -- erno


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sun Jul 29 12:53:57 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:53:57 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <mailman.996373135.2559.python-list@python.org> <JkM87.10500$Kd7.5942572@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <j4k80skqg6.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <FcX87.11426$Kd7.6834228@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote...
> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
>
> > No, I am reading all the Python output and if there were any,
> > I'd have seen it.
>
> In that case, I recommend to put a number of print statements into the
> library modules that you suspect to be causes of the problem, and
> trace that way what they are doing. If you can identify the call that
> is hanging (i.e. the function you call that doesn't return), please
> let us know.


Didn't I already?  __import__ is hanging.  It doesn't let another
thread to start and it doesn't return anything.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 14 23:42:16 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 23:42:16 -0400
Subject: Need help with "global" variables
References: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <etditguoo2v.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

In python, "global" doesn't mean what you think it means.  It means
global to the current module.  The only way to make a binding global
over an entire program is to stick it in the __builtin__ module.
However, there is probably a better design for your program that doesn't
need so many global variables.

Alex.


From johnca at DIESPAMmac.com  Wed Jul 18 18:04:08 2001
From: johnca at DIESPAMmac.com (John Abbe)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:04:08 -0700
Subject: Python CGI speed on MacOS X
References: <johnca-1707011356260001@nop009.transbay.net> <mty9pm9ou8.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <johnca-1807011504080001@nop009.transbay.net>

In article <mty9pm9ou8.fsf at astron.berkeley.edu>,
johann at leporello.berkeley.edu wrote:

> John Abbe writes:
> 
> > I'm running MacOS X on a PowerBook G3 400MHz, and have Python 2.1
> > installed (from http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/).
> 
> I've got the same computer, and I do notice Python being a bit more
> pokey than it should be.  I suspect some weird intereaction between
> the Apple-patched gcc compiler and the Python source.

Maybe the 10.1 release of OS X will help.

Anyone else able to offer insights?

-- 
             We've been waiting seven years for real Mac on Unix.
                            Get the most out of it!
Links & tips for learning, and to get OS X up and running:
http://www.ourpla.net/guiunix/GettingXGoing.html


From Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de  Tue Jul 24 10:39:45 2001
From: Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de (Sibylle Koczian)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:39:45 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de>

piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
> 
> >>>>> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> (GvR) writes:
> 
> GvR> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> GvR> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> GvR> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> GvR> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> GvR> routine.
> 
> This is not true. Algol 60 was case-insensitive from the beginning. By
> design, as Algol 60 was designed the way it is in spite of the difficulties
> it would give its implementors.
> --
But that's exactly what he says! Algol 60 was before C, as far as I
know, and case-insensitive as was normal at the time.

-- 
----
Dr. Sibylle Koczian
Universitaetsbibliothek , Abt. Naturwiss.
D-86135 Augsburg

Tel.: (0821) 598-2400, Fax : (0821) 598-2410
e-mail : Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.DE


From aquarius at kryogenix.org  Tue Jul 24 08:03:51 2001
From: aquarius at kryogenix.org (Aquarius)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:03:51 GMT
Subject: Exec and namespaces
Message-ID: <9jjo5b$jn3$1@giles.kryogenix.org>

I've got a CGI which reads a file and then execs its contents. The file
defines a function, and that function can't find itself to call
recursively; it gets a NameError.

Example:

[ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ cat foo.cgi
#! /usr/bin/python

import sys
sys.stderr = sys.stdout

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"


def main():
    fp = open("foo.txt")
    exec(fp.read())

main()

[ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ cat foo.txt

def bar(quux=None):
    if quux == "test":
        print "Hello, world!"
    else:
        bar("test")

bar("nothing")
			
[ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ python foo.cgi
Content-type: text/html


Traceback (innermost last):
  File "foo.cgi", line 13, in ?
    main()
  File "foo.cgi", line 11, in main
    exec(fp.read())
  File "<string>", line 8, in ?
  File "<string>", line 6, in bar
NameError: bar

My question here is: is there anything I can do about this? I assume
that you can't call bar() from inside bar() because it only knows about
two namespaces, global (which main() is in) and the "inside-bar()"
namespace, and bar() itself is in neither. I've tried this with both
1.5.2 and 2.0.1 and there doesn't appear to be any different (aside
from the wording of the NameError changing to "There is no variable
named 'bar'" under 2.0.1, which I assume is the same thing).

Aq -- I wish I understood namespaces

-- 
"The grand plan that is Aquarius proceeds apace"
            -- Frank Miller, "Ronin"


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 18:13:27 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 18:13:27 -0400
Subject: importing modules
References: <mailman.996086687.3763.python-list@python.org> <3b5f38c5.112013116@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <uvgkgd5dk.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi) writes:

> >Where did you get this from?  
> 
> http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/newsite/Python/Python-DX/python-dx.html
> 
> "Hans Nowak's Python-DX is a version of Python for 32-bit DOS.
> Python-DX is equivalent to Python 1.5.2, but Hans no longer maintains
> it, so it's doubtful that Python 1.6 will be supported. "
> 
> 
> what shoud I do ?

Notice that below the download section on that page it says:

    "NOTE: These are only the binaries (executable file)! You will also
    need the standard library. I suggest you grab the latest version from
    http://www.python.org ... there's also lots of documentation
    there. You might want the source distribution, too, if only for the
    useful demo and example programs."

This zip file only has the python executable.  You still want the
"lib" directory contents from the standard Python 1.5.2 distribution.

It seems to work fine with a normal Python 1.5.2 library (although I'm
not quite sure about some of the modules with a longer than 8.3
filename).  You may need to tweak site.py (or just set PYTHONPATH in
your environment) to be sure that it can find the library files.

The WPY archive DOS version (accessible from the python.org DOS pages
at http://www.python.org/download/download_dos.html) also have a
pylib.zip file that has a zipped copy of the library files, including
a DOS-8X3 directory for handling those with longer than 8.3 names.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul  4 15:59:13 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 23:59:13 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107042355240.2428-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 4 Jul 2001, Martijn Faassen wrote:

>Hi folks,

...
>    In the case where no head maintainer can be found (possibly
>    because there are no maintainers left), the integrators will issue
>    a call to the community at large asking for new maintainers to
>    step forward. If no one does, the integrators can decide to
>    declare the contribution deprecated as described in PEP 4.
...

This is too quick, IMHO: some libraries/modules could be actual for
years even without any maintainers. (Yes, I hope Python to be *that*
stable).

So, probably there is a need to add a special category of unmaintained
modules and ship them with the Standard Library as long, as they
are useful and runnable.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 04, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve it's dignity" _/




From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 10:08:22 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:08:22 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF9A33C3022michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in
news:3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2 at engcorp.com: 

> Michael Abbott wrote:
>> 
>> I for one would like to see a strongly typed variant of Python: if for
>> nothing else, I'd like to be able to compile my code. 
> 
> How would that let you compile your code?  Lack of compile-time
> type checking is hardly the only thing making it difficult to
> develop a Python compiler.

Hmm.  Well, it's interesting to look at the byte code interpreter source 
and to consider just how much time and effort is spent in working out what 
the types of operands are and therefore which particular operation to 
invoke.  You can't avoid that without static typing of some sort.


> More to the point, why would you want to compile your Python code?
> 
> If for packaging reasons, there are effective alternatives in
> the form of, for example, py2exe.
> 
> If for performance, the better approach is perhaps to profile your
> code, then rewrite the performance-critical portions as C 
> extensions.  Then you have pretty much the best of both worlds.

Possibly, possibly.  Perhaps I'm old fasioned, and too concerned about 
efficiency.  I know that processor speeds have increased by a factor of 
1,000 or so in the last couple of decades or so, but it gives me the creeps 
to see just how much code is executed to implement such simple expressions 
as 1+2 or f(x).  
    I'm concerned to write efficient and secure systems which handle high 
volumes of data reliably.  I believe that Python has three weaknesses, but 
unfortunately these weaknesses are also at the heart of its strength:

1.  No static type checking means that a very large class of errors 
(including undeclared identifier access) cannot be caught until run time.

2.  Efficient compilation is not possible, because operators and function 
calls cannot be compiled to anything simpler than the existing byte code 
interpreter's current interpretation.

3.  There is no data hiding.


>> Let me just observe this: statically typed Python would need to be a
>> different language from standard Python, though hopefully close enough
>> to interoperate and have the same name. 
> 
> It would be interesting, perhaps, to see how well such a beast
> would be adopted by the programming community.  I can just see
> the "marketing war" triggered as both sides try to promote
> their own version of Python as the One True Way to program...
> 

I think it's a pretty safe bet that most people prefer dynamic types.  
Writing statically typed code is harder.  I doubt that statically typed 
Python would be a competitor: I see it as more of a niche solution.

Also, it's pretty clear that the three weaknesses I've just complained 
about are simultaneously part of the strength of Python.

1.  No static type checking means that it is not necessary to work out a 
type description (which may be very complex) and it is easy to modify 
existing code to change its behaviour.  It also means, often, that when a 
type error does occur there can be useful run time information about the 
cause of that error.

2.  The edit and run cycle of Python is very slick and easy to use.  

3.  Of course, the lack of data hiding means that developers have more 
access to the internals of libraries, and there is no arguments about 
whether certain methods should be hidden or exposed.

Finally, it is possible to do some very clever things with the dynamically 
adaptive type structure of Python and it will be very difficult to capture 
many of these features in a strict static type system.


From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Wed Jul 11 16:50:10 2001
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:50:10 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:

> William Annis wrote:
> > So, are there any tools to translate 1.5.2 pickles to 2.x
> > versions of the pickle format?
> 
> import pickle
> 
> (1.5.2, 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1 all use the same pickle format)

        Then pickle is bugged somewhere.  I have a giant (1.2M) pickle
file which keeps the state of everything my monitoring system is
keeping track of, including moderately complex Holt-Winters time
series models.  When I start the daemon that does all the work with
python1.5.2, it loads the pickle fine.  When I try to start it with
python2.1 I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bin/momd", line 83, in ?
    kserv = load(f)
ValueError: invalid \x escape

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacian Lingvon  www.esperanto.org


From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 12 14:56:01 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:56:01 +0200
Subject: ANN: eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Extension Package 2.0.3
Message-ID: <3B4DF2C1.ADE9C4DA@lemburg.com>

________________________________________________________________________

ANNOUNCING:

         eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Extension Package for Python
                            Version 2.0.3

      Full Source Python extensions providing important and useful
                  services for Python programmers.


________________________________________________________________________

WHAT IS IT ?:

The eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Package for Python is part of the
eGenix.com mx Extension Series for Python, a collection of
professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability
in many important areas such as ODBC database connectivity, fast text
processing, date/time processing and web site programming.

This commercial package includes the popular mxODBC extension which
allows users to connect to just about any database on the market today
from Windows and Unix.

By providing a consistent interface on all supported platforms, it
provides a perfect base for writing cross-platform database programs
and utilities.

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT'S NEW ?

The mxODBC documentation now also includes details on how to write
products using mxODBC which are then wrapped into standalone
applications using Thomas Heller's py2exe utility.

The RPM packaging scheme was reworked and Cygwin support was added.

As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for
Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the
package on all other supported platforms.

________________________________________________________________________

SPECIAL OFFER

theKompany.com has licensed the eGenix.com mx Commercial Package
(which includes mxODBC) for inclusion in their brand new Qt-based
Python IDE BlackAdder. It allows developing portable GUI-based
database applications which run on Windows and Linux platforms without
any change to the source code.

BlackAdder includes a 1 CPU license for this package at no extra cost,
so you may want to check out their great new product. See

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#BlackAdder

for details.

________________________________________________________________________

EGENIX.COM MX COMMERCIAL PACKAGE OVERVIEW:

mxODBC - Generic ODBC 2.0-3.5 interface for Python

     mxODBC is an extension package that provides a Python Database
     API compliant interface to ODBC capable database drivers and
     managers.

     In addition to the capabilities provided through the standard DB
     API it also gives access to a rich set of catalog methods which
     allow you to scan the database for tables, procedures,
     etc. Furthermore, it uses the mxDateTime package for date/time
     value interfacing eliminating most of the problems these types
     normally introduce (other in/output formats are available too).

     mxODBC allows you to interface to more than one database from one
     process, making inter-database interfacing very flexible and
     reliable.  

     The source version includes a varity of preconfigured setups for
     many commonly used databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Informix,
     Solid, SAP DB, Sybase ASA and ASE, DBMaker and many more. The
     precompiled versions for Windows and Linux include the interfaces
     to the standard ODBC manager on these platforms to allow for a
     more easily configurable setup.

     More details are available at:

          http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxODBC.html

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET IT ?

The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can
be found at:

     http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/

Note that in order to use mxODBC you will also need to install the
eGenix.com mx BASE package which can be downloaded from the same
location.

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT DOES IT COST ?

mxODBC comes with a licenses which allows non-commercial use at no
charge, but places a moderate fee on commercial users. Special
licensing setups are available for commercial product
developers. Please see

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#mxCOMMERCIAL

for details. The package comes with full source code.

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ?

Commercial quality support for these packages is available from
eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support 

for details about the eGenix support offerings.

________________________________________________________________________

REFERENCE:

<P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx
COMMERCIAL Package 2.0.3</A> - eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL Interface
2.0.3 with distutils support and precompiled binaries for Windows and
Linux. (12-Jul-2001)

________________________________________________________________________

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 22 18:03:30 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:03:30 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5b3d9e.148520871@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:22:21 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

>[Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com]
>> ...
>> If I was told that experinced programmers might
>> appreciate this change for any possible reason -
>> I'd be quiet as a mouse.
>
I'd call myself experienced, though not yet with Python (though
I fancy my other experience gives me a leg up on most Python newbies).

I am generally so adaptable it's almost a problem, so I'll
have no big problem with '//' after I accept that this is Rome,
and I should do as the Romans do. It's certainly not going
to put me off Python ;-)

>Not all experienced programmers agree.  At the last Python Conference, I
>moderated a 40-some person group discussion on conceivable changes to
>Python's numeric model, not advocating but keeping the participants from
>killing each other <wink>.  The meaning of integer division wasn't the
>focus, but naturally came up.  By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
>participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
>such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.
>There was no consensus on exactly what 3/4 should return -- rational or HW
>float or decimal float were the most popular alternatives.
>
>It shouldn't be so hard to understand why.  The current integer division
>loses information silently and without a trace.  Combined with that Python
The thing is, current floating point operations also (sometimes, not always,
just as with integer ops) lose "information silently and without a trace."
Just less noticeably, for the most part, if you sanitize output.

Which leads me to wondering if exactness would be a more approachable
concept for CP4E than details of numeric representation alternatives.

For many 'float' is about as relevant to their desired computing experience
as 'hypoid' is to their commuting experience. Why not keep both hidden under
the hood (without welding it shut, of course) ?

>is not a statically typed language, there's simply no telling what e.g.
>
>def velocity(distance, time):
>    return distance / time
>
>will compute by inspection.  This isn't about esoteric user overloading of
>"/", it's about ordinary arithmetic on builtin numeric types, and many
>experienced Python programmers have testified over the years to being burned
>in practice by stuff exactly that simple.
>
I believe you. BTW, is there an efficient type assertion that doesn't go away with
optimization, that one could use to refuse wrong-type arguments?

>I expect that either way is easy enough to *teach*, but I don't accept ease
>of teaching as a primary goal:  I'm much keener on semantics that, once
Glad to hear that. <rant>Worst IMHO is when teachers teach what is actually wrong
to children or the otherwise innocently ignorant, with the rationale that
the real truth is too complicated, and even letting on that there is a real
truth will just be confusing. That not letting on part is the real evil.
Of course, many teachers are themselves the product of this methodology,
and pass it on unawares.</rant>

I wonder what K-12 teachers will say about Python float ;-/
Maybe there should be guidelines for teaching what is not understood,
so that bright kids don't get cynical too fast.

>*learned*, are hard to forget or to stumble over.  Even if such semantics
>are 100x harder to teach at first, fine by me:  you spend the rest of your
>life living with the consequences.  I wish the definition of continuity were
>easier to teach too, but that doesn't mean I'll settle for an easier
>definition that doesn't actually work <wink>.
>
You teach that? How many are you, anyway? ;-)


From bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 19:36:34 2001
From: bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com (Chris Stromberger)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:36:34 GMT
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
References: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com> <slrn9lu024.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <imlult4h8m7lg83tublkvo1uhhb639k1u6@4ax.com>

On 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT, quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn
Dunkan) wrote:

>On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>>Any pointers much appreciated.
>
>This is a shell task:
>
>(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
> ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results
>
>Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
>passwords all the time.

I went ahead and tried this, and it works a charm!  Thanks for the
suggestion!  I read the ssh man page and was able to create the rsa
key w/o passphrase.  Thanks very much.

-Chris


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 01:39:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:39:10 GMT
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <3B5DE0F7.9070001@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <cpitgha7pe.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> writes:

> We're a zope shop.  Its quite possible that the work we do now will be 
> still in use for many years (not guaranteed but we still use code now 
> that we wrote 2 years ago - before it was zope ;) )
> 
> We use Python Methods in Zope... python snippets stored directly in 
> zope's zodb.  grepping *.py won't find any of these snippets.  I don't 
> believe zope will surface any warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may 
> be wrong).  How do we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?

I find it hard to believe that you use much division is Zope scripts,
but if you do, use divmod(x, y)[0] for int division and x*1.0/y for
float division.

However, Zope typically comes with its own Python version, so all you
need to do is not upgrade the Zope version you are using.  Also, I
believe that Zope is typically much more aggressive in breaking old
code, so you wouldn't want to upgrade your Zope anyway if you had a
lot of old code around that you couldn't afford to maintain.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  9 09:27:25 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 06:27:25 -0700
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org> <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9icbft$okp$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <cpy9q0iobo.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:
>> [Robin Becker]
>>> ...
>>> Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them
>>> to be uniformly wrong.
>> 
>> Heh.  Replace "Dictators" with "Humans", and I expect the truth-value of
>> that assertion would be unaffected.
>> 
>> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
>> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
>> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.
>
>The PSU has Robin's name and email address.  Robin: be afraid, be very
>afraid.  It is time that an example be set!

"Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the sparrow
With my bow and my arrow
I killed Cock Robin."
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From cliechti at mails.ch  Sat Jul 28 22:56:46 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 04:56:46 +0200
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED32F5FFB65cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cp66cd12yp.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:
> Note that if you have concerns about backwards incompatibilities, the
> best thing you can do is point them out ASAP.  I want to ensure that
> 2.2 (final) is as compatible with 2.1 as possible, while still
> providing the new exciting features that type/class unification makes
> possible.

I like what i see in the intro and PEPs. especially the examples for the 
dictionary make sense.
the __get__ and __set__ for attributes sound interesting.. my colegue who 
is a delphi programmer can not understand that other languages don't have 
these...maybe this makes it easier for me to persuade him to use python :-)

why 2.2? this would also fit in a 3.0 along with a unified number system 
and true division. this would make a clean cut and a new better "python 
3.0" would be the choice for new projects and beginners. as you pointed 
out, in perl there was a similar cut from 4 to 5 (well python won't be very 
incompatible, just some modules need an update). 

will this also allow to replace the default generators for builtin 
types/type-classes? i mean that i can replace "int", "float", "complex",... 
with my own factories, say to implement my own number tower with rationals 
(if they weren't included anyway).

something like that:
--------
class rational:    	#intentional small caps first letter to make it
	    	    	    	#look like the other factories ("int", "long",...)
    	def __init__(self, numerator, denumerator):
    	    	self.numerator, self.denumerator = numerator, denumerator
    	def __int__(self):
    	    	return self.numerator / self.denumerator
    	def __div__(self, divisor):
    	    	return rational( self.numerator, self.denumerator*divisor )
    	... #plus all the other operators that make it a useful number object

class Myint(int):
    	def __div__(self, divisor):
    	    	return rational(self.value, divisor)
    	...

#same as Myint for complex,float,long,....

__builtins__.int = Myint
__builtins__.long = Mylong
...

#then in use:
a = 1/2    	    	    	#this should use the "Myint" factory for "1"
    	    	    	    	#and "2" because the default "int" was replaced
	    	    	    	#above
print type(a)    	    	#should say"<type 'instance'>", in detail an
	    	    	    	#instance of "Rational"

--------
this would also allow a change for the fixed point numeric arithmetic some 
people want for their caclculations with money. but i don't see that as a 
type which should be included in python itself but rather added by the 
people who need it realy.


PS: the link in 
    	http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0253.html
under "References" is broken. actually the "</A>" HTML tag is misplaced. 
maybe your PEP to HTML script needs to learn about "," in URLs.. ;-)

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Fri Jul 20 13:57:36 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 13:57:36 -0400
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <wku207o54f.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "PH" == Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

PH> Alex Martelli wrote:
>> 
>> free.it.python, actually, so the time isn't wasted -- the newsgroup is
>> working just fine:-).

PH> Brilliant!  "Free IT - use Python".  I like it!  

Nonsense, he's fomenting zoo escapes.

PH> -deliberately-misinterpreting-ly yr's,

-likewise-ly yr's,

Patricia
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 31 23:13:03 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 03:13:03 GMT
Subject: smtp authorization...how to?
References: <3b675617.48549445@news.mailops.com>
Message-ID: <20010731.232003.620145550.12797@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <3b675617.48549445 at news.mailops.com>, "chajadan"
<me at charliedaniels.com-1.net> wrote:


> I started pokin' around in the smtplib and tried sending an e-mail.  My
> smtp server requires a username and password, yet there is no method for
> either of these. That I saw.  Is there an available module that
> incorporates these, or a simple way to extend smtplib?
> Any pointers would be great.

This URL (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/68346), will
be useful to you. It seems someone posted to the group with a fix to the
same problem as you have. Download the smtplib.py file that the person
attached.

I tried it out on the version of Python that I am running (2.1) and it
appears to have the same problem, try the URL I gave you, it should help.

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 06:37:39 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:37:39 +0100
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kdpjj.5l8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 6 Jul 2001 11:58:58 -0700, Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote:
>This is exactly what I have been talking about for *years* now.
>
>Python will only appeal to scientific developers researching the
>"impossible to do" until it handles databases on a first class scale. 
>Oh, and another point, ODBC is dead.  Microsoft has already abandand
>it for OLEDB a COM based library.  References to ODBC need not apply.
>What is needed are RAW Native Drivers at the C/C++ level.
>
>Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
>Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.

Good idea. I hope to see your sample implementation soon...


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From fett at tradersdata.com  Thu Jul 12 12:39:43 2001
From: fett at tradersdata.com (fett at tradersdata.com)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:39:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
Message-ID: <200107121639.f6CGdhJ30999@vela.tradersdata.com>

I have a really dumb program that i would like to make smarter.  I need
to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything except for the
standings which are written in it.  I have tried to use regular
expressions with no success, but i still think that they are probably
the best way.  I created the following simple fix, but it is unreliable
if the data changed posistions.


input = open('rawdata', 'r')
S = input.read()
print S[4021:6095]

Output :
   League Standings
   American League
     EAST W L PCT GB HOME ROAD EAST CENT WEST NL L10 STRK
     Red Sox 43 29 .597 - 23-15 20-14 23-13 8-7 6-6 6-3 6-4 L2
     Yankees 41 31 .569 2.0 21-15 20-16 19-11 12-9 5-7 5-4 6-3 W2
     Blue Jays 35 38 .479 8.5 18-20 17-18 14-13 6-7 11-13 4-5 5-5 W3
     Orioles 34 39 .466 9.5 20-20 14-19 15-17 9-12 6-5 4-5 5-5 L1
........( it continues with all the standings)


Also could you tell me if its possible to download the data from the
web-page in python so that it doesnt even have to deal with opening the
file.







-- 
Daniel Hammond              	Get your free e-mail account today @
Raleigh NC                     	http://sabacctable.zzn.com
The United States of America
-------------------------------------------------------------------





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 20 12:04:08 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:04:08 -0700
Subject: Case Insensitivity (was Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995568431.14427.python-list@python.org> <%%G57.15495$Cy.1928702@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <m366cn53do.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>
Message-ID: <3B585678.4EB2E16C@Lugoj.Com>

Konrad Hinsen wrote:
> Did anyone ever do a study on this? All I have seen is
> anecdotical evidence (including mine, of course). Could we get input
> from someone who does Python teaching sufficiently regularly?

I'm not sure one needs to limit the input to just teachers who regularly
teach Python (although if so, then Mark Lutz may be a good one to ask).
Sheila King in another post on this thread has relevant experience to
relate.

Several years ago, Mark Lutz came to the company I was consulting at to
teach Python to a group of about 6 programmers and sometime-programmers, I
don't recall case sensitivity coming up as an issue. I DO recall indentation
being a problem for one fellow who took a while to learn to be less sloppy
about making his lines in a block of code all start at the same column.
There were other conceptual hurdles, but not case sensitivity.

With no evidence showing that such an incredibly disruptive change would
lead to a corresponding incredible advantage, I'm really wondering why this
issue is still being debated.

P.S. It WOULD break a lot of the code I've written, having adopted the ASN.1
naming conventions where instance names differ from type names only by the
case of the first letter.


From mwh at python.net  Wed Jul  4 05:30:58 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 10:30:58 +0100
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <9ht7ki$pao$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <m3n16lyral.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> writes:

> Maybe there should have been a "div" operator in Python, but it
> strikes me as rather monomorphic (antonym of polymorphic?) unless we
> have a more general notion in mind than just integer arithmetic.

We need a EuclideanDomain type!

> But it's awfully late for that anyway.

Yes.

Cheers,
M.
...who would be perfectly happy with
>>> 4 / 5
TypeError: integers are a ring, moron!
but doesn't think this has much chance...

-- 
  Java sucks. [...] Java on TV set top boxes will suck so hard it
  might well inhale people from off  their sofa until their heads
  get wedged in the card slots.              --- Jon Rabone, ucam.chat


From tangell at kicker.com  Thu Jul 12 01:32:16 2001
From: tangell at kicker.com (T Angell)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 22:32:16 -0700
Subject: Light Speed Socket Connections
Message-ID: <d01baf67.0107112132.34e70d03@posting.google.com>

I wrote some code to test how long it takes to make socket connections
and ran it against several hosts around the world, here are some
sample times:

socket time: 0.0047459602356
socket time: 0.00469899177551
socket time: 0.00404000282288
socket time: 0.00537407398224

Someone in another newsgroup suggested that was probably just the time
it took the o/s to fire off a SYN packet and never waited for the
result. So, I thought I'd post the Python code here to see what I'm
doing wrong. The o/s is Red Hat 7.0. Note: the results I posted above
are all from result = "OK" responses, so I know it's getting past the
second connect()

def trySocket( host, port, timeout ):

  result = ""

  s = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM )
  t1 = time.time()

  try:
    s.setblocking( 0 )
    s.connect( ( host, port ) )
  except:
    r, w, e = select.select( [], [s], [], timeout )

    if w:
      try:
        s.connect( ( host, port ) )
        result = "OK"
      except socket.error, reason:
        result = reason[1]

    else:
      result = "Timeout"

  s.close()
  delay = time.time() - t1

  return result, delay

Thanks.


From pierre at saiph.com  Mon Jul 30 06:41:49 2001
From: pierre at saiph.com (Imbaud Pierre)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:41:49 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
	        <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com>
	        <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org> <mailman.995408249.15783.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B6539ED.8AD853FB@saiph.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Christopher> I can't speak for Perl, but Python definately does not
>     Christopher> evaluate the expression at compile time.  This is a problem
>     Christopher> I've had with Python.  I wish that when given the -O option
>     Christopher> the compiler would do constant subexpression elimination.
> 
> It's rare in normal Python code to actually see a constant expression
> computed inside a loop.  Fortunately, it would appear most folks aren't that
> dumb, so while you can take steps to eliminate them, there aren't generally
> going to be very many to eliminate.
What about a constant used only by a function, which function can be
called in loops?
When performance is important, I use to define such constants in the
module, out
of the function definition: I trade readability for performance. smart
optimisation
(evaluate not at compile time, but once at runtime) sure wud help.

-- 
Pierre Imbaud <pierre at saiph.com>
12 Rue des Bosquets 91480 Quincy Sous S?nart France
Tel:  01 69 00 94 57 Fax 09 47



From warp10 at hushmail.com  Thu Jul 12 05:35:53 2001
From: warp10 at hushmail.com (domi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:35:53 +0200
Subject: ConfigParser and inifile
Message-ID: <9ijr1q$29sq$1@news.lf.net>

Hello All,

could someone solve this problem?
I would like to tell ConfigParser to parse an ini-file from one section to
the other. The ini-file looks like this:

[section1]
name:...
group:...

[section2]
name:...
group:...

[section3]
name:...
group:...

Now if I let the ConfigParser parse this ini-file like this:

for section in config.sections():
    ...(do something)

the parser doesn't step thru section1 to section2 and so on. I need the
given sequence in the ini-file.

Thanks, domi




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Thu Jul 26 04:04:37 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 10:04:37 +0200
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> Further digging led me to the C source module that contained some
> comment "this is to prevent two threads from importing the same
> module at the same time returning incomplete module" (or something
> like that).  I didn't try to comprehend the C source, sorry.
> Although it may not be so difficult, I prefer to leave fixing to
> those for whom the system is an open book.

Even if you didn't understand the source, it would have been nice if
you had indicated what source you were looking at; I could not find
any occurrence of "this is to prevent" in the entire Python source
code.

> Understanding that Python thread mechanism does not use the OS
> thread mechanism

This is a misunderstanding: the Python thread mechanism does use the
OS thread mechanism

> and with all due respect to the creators and contributors, I would
> like to ask, "Has anybody experienced similar situation with more
> than one thread competing for the same module?"

I'm out of context here: a situation similar to what?

Regards,
Martin


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 21:34:54 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:34:54 -0400
Subject: Long Python programs!
References: <mailman.995055263.6544.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4FA1BE.F754E02E@engcorp.com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> Again, we are shipping production code with > 100,000 lines of Jython and
> neither "Lack of type safety" (by this I assume you mean "compile-time,
> static, type checking") nor "lack of forcing variable names to be declared
> before use" were problems for us.  So, though I am not against the general
> notion of making it possible to detect errors as early as possible (e.g.,
> at compile time) I don't see today's Python as being unsuitable for large
> program.  In fact, I see Python as being *very* suitable for large
> programs.  And I say this from the perspective of having already written
> large program using Python.  :-)

Jim, your code size is well above what we've produced so far, although
we're working hard to catch up (in a manner of speaking... obviously we
aren't measuring our success by lines of code produced: we use Python!).

I know I could benefit from more information about your development 
environment, the application under development, and the lessons you've
learned in reaching this stage -- especially in the area of automated
testing.

Would you be able and willing to provide any background on your company's
work on this project?  I'm certainly not the only one interested.

(I understand your company might consider this proprietary and not be
willing to share.  I'm expecting to face the same situation when the
time is ripe for reporting on my own team's success with Python, but
I fully expect to beat people about the mouth and ears until they
understand that bringing something back to the open source community
is part and parcel (morally speaking) of using their products in the
first place.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul 22 22:59:36 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 19:59:36 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <220720011959361323%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list at python.org>, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:

> > I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
> > typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
> > them explicitly.
> 
> Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning integers
> into floats for years.

Not really the same thing, because within the range of int (on most
machines so far), no information is lost (always assuming we mean
double when we say float, which we seem to).

Also unlikely, in that the argument is in radians, and 1 radian (or 1.0
radian) isn't a particularly interesting value (at least for the things
I do..."broad on the starboard quarter" would be my more typical
approximation, although it's perhaps a half point off).

By the way, in .../lib/module-math.html (I keep my own copy on my end
of my 56K frame connection), it is not stated whether the input to
sin() (and the others where it applies) is degrees or radians.  An
experiment is necessary, or a reference to my rapidly waning C
knowledge or a visit to the C standard (which I'd rather not do, for
reasons of marginal sanity).

>>> math.sin(1)
0.8414709848078965

is a conclusive experiment...which I had to run before making the "also
unlikely" claim.
  
  --John


From kseehof at neuralintegrator.com  Tue Jul 31 07:16:23 2001
From: kseehof at neuralintegrator.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 04:16:23 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <00aa01c119b2$3c866bc0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>

> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
> Checked into CVS!

Very cool.  While you're at it, how about mapping "in" to "has_key" for
mapping objects?

>>> 'parrot' in {'parrot': 'dead'}
1
>>> 'dead' in {'parrot': 'dead'}  # obviously "in" refers to keys, not
values
0

BTW, thanks again for the awesome language.
I hereby revoke the title ".*[dD]ictator".  I dub thee "Fearless Leader".

Your loyal, trusting subject,
Ken Seehof





From James_Althoff at i2.com  Tue Jul 10 20:12:03 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:12:03 -0700
Subject: Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OFEE3729FB.144E8EAC-ON88256A86.0000DE86@i2.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
>Java has of course outgrown its initial niche but it is hardly fair to
>compare Python to a language backed by Sun, IBM, etc. If Python had that
>kind of backing it would be as big or bigger than Java too.

On the other hand, Jython actually helps Python take *advantage* of Java's
popularity.  So Java and Python can both "win" together.

Jim




From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 15:27:52 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:27:52 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list@python.org> <9j50tq01k6r@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9jhtro$ap4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
>> Don't encourage sloppy habits: require case sensitivity.

> First time I heard that Pascal "encourages sloppy habits" -- with all
> the valid criticisms one can level at it, this one seems ridiculous.

Have you worked with Pascal code? It's not too pretty to copy and paste
code that uses BEGIN and END into a piece of code that doesn't use
that convention and uses 'begin' and 'end'. Of course when I dealt with such 
a thing I'd change the case-spelling to make it consistent, but I didn't
like it much to have to do that at all.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From mday at apple.com  Fri Jul 13 13:14:28 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:14:28 -0700
Subject: Newbie list question
References: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <130720011014283887%mday@apple.com>

In article <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38 at posting.google.com>, Matthew
Alton <Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM> wrote:

> >>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
> >>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?
> >>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.
> >>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
> >>> bar 
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
> >>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
> >>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
> bar (?)
> >>> foo
> ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
> >>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
> >>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
> expected.
> >>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.
> >>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
> >>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?
> >>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz still unaffected, of course.
> >>> 

The statement:
   foo = foo + ['c']
creates a brand new list from the contents of foo and the list ['c']
and assigns the new list to foo.

If you had instead done:
   foo.append('c')
then it would have changed the list that foo and bar were both pointing
at.

-Mark


From nperkins7 at home.com  Thu Jul 26 12:55:57 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:55:57 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B6031C3.6010707@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <xYX77.563869$eK2.117587345@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Tom Jenkins" <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> wrote in message
news:3B6031C3.6010707 at nospiced.ham.devis.com...
> Kevin Lacker wrote:
>
> > Can you do this:
> >
> > answer = []
> > for x in my_list:
> >     if not is_good(x):
> >         break
> >     answer.append(process(x))
> >
> > with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
> > loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current
one.
>
>
> do you mean like this?
>  >>> def even(x):
> ... return int(divmod(x,2)[1]) == 0
> ...
>  >>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
>  >>> b = [z for z in a if not even(z)]
>  >>> print b
> [1, 3, 5, 7]
>  >>> c = [z for z in a if even(z)]
>  >>> print c
> [2, 4, 6]
>  >>>
>
> oops sorry just saw that you had process(x) in there... lets try it:
>
>  >>> def process(x):
> ... return str(x)
> ...
>  >>> process(1)
> '1'
>  >>> c = [process(z) for z in a if even(z)]
>  >>> print c
> ['2', '4', '6']
>  >>>
>
> hmmm, seems to work for me (python 2.1)
>


This misses the point of the original post.
Notice the 'break' in the original for-loop version.
The idea is to return consecutive elements,
up to, but not including, the first element which
does not meet the condition.

ie.
lst = [0,2,4,5,6]
evens = [0,2,4]

I don't think list comprehensions can do this.


Here's a generator approach to the problem:



from __future__ import generators

def conditional_iter(lst,cond):
    for item in lst:
        if cond(item):
            yield item
        else:
            raise StopIteration


mylist = [0,2,4,5,6]
def even(num): return not (num%2)

for num in conditional_iter(mylist, even)
    print num







From sam at ddmweb.com  Mon Jul 30 16:12:00 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification 
Message-ID: <01073013291201.00729@frock.ddmweb.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Correct on both counts again.

>> One minor suggestion:
>> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
>> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
>> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
terse acronym to learn)? Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
classification. 

The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus at
<http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html>
suggests for "class" :

division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.

I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
the language I deal with. 



From emile at fenx.com  Sun Jul 15 02:32:44 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:32:44 -0700
Subject: accessing the clipboard in windows and/or linux
References: <3b511bae.1235716@news.mailops.com>
Message-ID: <9irdlk$k562u$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Check Alex's post
http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:8t3m1n025h1%40news2.newsguy.com

I found it by going to groups.google.com and searching for python win32
clipboard.

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"chajadan" <me at charliedaniels.com-1.net> wrote in message
news:3b511bae.1235716 at news.mailops.com...
> I want to be able to access the clipboard for Windows, and also linux.
> Using python of course.
>
> If you know how, please pass this knowledge on to me.
>
> Thanks =)
>
> --chajadan



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 25 13:53:33 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 19:53:33 +0200
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> writes:

> Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it looks very
> nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues?

If speed is an issue, I would recommend against SOAP. If you use
CORBA, you can get very efficient implementations. Even the least
efficient ones (e.g. Fnorb) will easily out-pace SOAP any time.

Regards,
Martin



From ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu  Thu Jul  5 11:47:29 2001
From: ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu (Suchandra Thapa)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:47:29 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <3b46521a.1325485@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <slrn9k6i5v.6pv.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com>

Sherpa Dave <root at 127.0.0.1> wrote:
>Suggest you read up on NASA's programming methodology.  If there's a group
>that comes as close to perfect programming as is humanly possible, it's
>that gang.
> 
>(Despite their occasional metric<>imperial foulups...)

    The metric/imperial mistake was in code written by a different group.
The group you are referring to does the shuttle code while the mars missions
were probably done by a group at JPL. 


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	   		              |
Suchandra Thapa                       | "There are only two kinds of math . 
s-thapa-11 at NOSPAMalumni.uchicago.edu  | books. Those you cannot read beyond 
			              | the first sentence, and those you 
			              | can not read beyond the first page."
			              |                     -C.N. Yang
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


From grumble at usa.net  Tue Jul 10 15:04:17 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 19:04:17 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com>

Pete Shinners <shredwheat at mediaone.net> wrote:
...

> for doing a MUD, the language speed is not going to have
> much noticeable effect, since network speed is far slower
> than any of the languages can handle.

This isn't necessarily true.  If you have a lot of objects with state
that changes often (wandering monsters, etc), computation-speed can
become an issue.


From aetodd at wm.edu  Thu Jul  5 12:44:54 2001
From: aetodd at wm.edu (Andrew Todd)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 12:44:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: import syntax
In-Reply-To: <E15IBZ2-0003ru-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15IBZ2-0003ru-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <994351494.3b4499864e286@webmail1.wm.edu>

This isn't terribly important, but wouldn't it be nice if 
you could do the following...

from module import a and b

instead of having to write...

from module import a 
from module import b

I don't know what sort of implications such and addition 
might have, but it would be nice.

Andrew ~ elecfish
aetodd at wm.edu



From avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru  Tue Jul 31 16:53:26 2001
From: avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru (Alexander V. Voinov)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:53:26 -0700
Subject: C/Cygwin/Python
References: <mailman.996603598.18346.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B671AC6.A21B6C6D@quasar.ipa.nw.ru>

Hi Jason,

Jason Tishler wrote:

> Yes, but only if your extension does not require Posix semantics (i.e.,
> only the standard C runtime stuff).
>
> IIRC, you want something like the following:
>
>     python setup.py build_ext --compiler=cygwin
>
> Note that I usually only build Cygwin Python extensions,

Do you mean that your extensions are compatible with the standard win32
Python installation, which is built with VC? As I recall the whole point of
special instruction for no-cygwin python extension was that only in this case
they can be loaded into the standard python.exe and you do not have to
recompile the whole distribution. Is this right (meaning that you do compile
the whole distribution)?

Alexander




From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 11:42:45 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:42:45 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <VHg77.25336$EP6.5906443@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I return to my question. Suppose Python 2.2 is released with this
> __future__ division. Now suppose I must maintain some code which can
> run on Python 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, which needs integer division.

The answer [revised] I gave yesterday in 'Re: A way to accomodate
language changes':

[In general, do not use new meanings]

For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will be int/int
and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and floor(float/float)
instead.  Only write int//int or float/float.  With the tokenizer
module, it will then be easy to change all instances of int//int to
int/int (old meaning).  [Skip Montano already posted a program for the
other direction; changing it to go back is trivial.] It should even
even be possible to have
package installers check sys.version and do this conversion on site as
needed.  For newly written code, the harder problem will be to not use
any of the other neat new features [like iterators/generators], which
mostly *cannot* be
automatically back converted.






From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul  9 00:28:55 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:28:55 GMT
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <bqa27.442234$eK2.89986862@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:pM927.657463$166.13605776 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it
is
> as follows:
>
> s="12.19.6.7.12"
> ls = string.split(s, '.')
> md = map(string.atoi, ls)
>
> Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
> is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. But my first problem is
> after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
> what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?
> The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
> exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the
string
> ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? I mean the
> varible ls contains ['12', '19', '6', '7', '12'] arent those intergers
they
> are numbers. Any ways if you could reply answering all the questions in
> whole or maybe just a few of em' it would be great.
>
> Thanks.
>
>


You should use the command prompt to play around
with things that you are not sure about.  ( if you don't, already )

The type(x) function is very useful,
as is the dir(x) fuction.
Also, a single underscore can be used to capture the result of the last
operation (see end of example).

Along with 'book learnin', interactive 'playing around' is the best way to
develop a clear picture of types and reference semantics, etc.  Plus, it's
fun!



eg.:

>>> s = "12.19.5.7.12"
>>> print s
12.19.5.7.12
>>> type(s)
<type 'string'>
>>> import string
>>> result = string.split(s,'.')
>>> print result
['12', '19', '5', '7', '12']
>>> type(result[0])
<type 'string'>
>>> result2 = map(string.atoi,result)
>>> print result2
[12, 19, 5, 7, 12]
>>> type(result2[0])
<type 'int'>
>>> string.atoi('12')
12
>>> type(_)
<type 'int'>

..etc..







From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul  4 17:56:47 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 21:56:47 GMT
Subject: Converting from long integer to read-only buffer
References: <3b42780c@news.ucsc.edu>
Message-ID: <3b438ab1.1053541883@wa.news.verio.net>

On 3 Jul 2001 18:57:32 -0800, Ben Andrew Fulton
<bafulton at cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:

>I'm currently working on a module to control a piece of hardware over the
>serial port of a Mac. The command packets are currently manipulated within
>the the module as long integers so that I can twiddle individual bits. 
>However, when I send them out the serial port they need to be converted
>into a read-only buffer (or perhaps a string [although of course, str() 
>is not the answer]) for the ctb (communications toolbox) to accept them.
>Is there a module out there that can do a straight long int --> read-only
>buffer conversion? struct, array, and binascii all seem inadequate to the
>task unless I write my own helper function, which I suppose I will have to
>if I can't figure anything else out in the next day or so. 
>
>Thanks,
>
>-->ben fulton
>
You could write something more efficient, but for a quick test try:

 >>> nOut = 15
 >>> cmdPkts = 65*2L**64/255 # 65 is A and /255 repeats in binary ;-)
 >>> sOut = ''.join([chr((cmdPkts>>k*8)&0xff) for k in  xrange(nOut)])
 >>> sOut
 'AAAAAAAA\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'

where
  nOut is the size of your output string in bytes (15 arbitrary here)
  cmdPkts is the long integer you have, above with test pattern
  sOut is the output string

Note the order of the string. It is little-endian, taking the LS byte
from the long first. Maybe another example is better:

 >>> cmdPkts = 0L
 >>> for x in xrange(ord('a'),ord('z')+1):
 ...     cmdPkts = (cmdPkts<<8)|x
 ...
 >>> nOut = 28
 >>> sOut = ''.join([chr((cmdPkts>>k*8)&0xff) for k in  xrange(nOut)])
 >>> sOut
 'zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba\x00\x00'

The z is first because it was or-ed into cmdPkts at the LSB position.
I chose 28 length to show the padding effect.

HTH



From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sun Jul  1 12:59:09 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 18:59:09 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hnaat$284$02$1@news.t-online.com> <slrn9jud7l.111.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <9hneb9$ca0$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9juj38.ptc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:08:45 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
>"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
>> On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:18 +0200, Thorsten Roskowetz wrote:
>> >You might want to look at KDE's DCOP.
>>
>> Well, I did already. It looks cool and I even got the KSpread
>> example to work, but it's tied to C++ and Qt.
>
>Not entirely true.  There are DCOP bindings for C (dcopc) and Python
>(AFAIK only proof of concept at the moment) and even a XML-RPC to DCOP
>bridge (KXMLRPC) which could be used from Python, Java, Perl or any
>other language that provide an XML-RPC implementation.
>There are even native java bindings to DCOP in developement.

Sorry for not being clear. I have just finished rebuilding the kdebindings and
PyQt RPMs for Python 2.1 to try out the Python examples. They work fine so far.
What I meant was that the DCOP server AFAIK can currently only be written in
C++. I also couldn't find anything that describes the APIs that are exported
via DCOP, but I'd better ask for this in a KDE group.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From guido at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 16:44:06 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:44:06 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:49:57 MDT."
             <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> 
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> 
Message-ID: <200107192044.f6JKi6T18790@odiug.digicool.com>

> TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
> hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
> iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
> stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
> begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.

Very funny (not).  You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

> AS fAR aS thE Size Of thE VARious camPs, I haVE YeT tO sEe a coMPeLLinG
> aRGuMeNt thAT THE grOup of noN-pRoGRaMmeRS THat WILl taKe up
> pRoGRAmmInG, ANd wiLL DO sO in PYTHon InsTEad oF VisUal BasiC, Is any
> LARGeR Than The groUp of ProgRAmmERs.

With your atttude, it will never happen.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul 11 02:46:55 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 06:46:55 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <7ftnktk6m1t3nhrud5qs7nbsj2r9u7lthp@4ax.com>

> Using this engine on a PII 266 running RedHat 6.1, 400
>wandering monsters (with nothing else going on in the mud) will peg
>the cpu.

So _MUCH_ has been unsaid about the complexity of the algorithms
in use inside your MUD. Have you profiled it? Where does the CPU
time go, and why?

C//



From jochen at riekhof.de  Fri Jul 20 12:40:23 2001
From: jochen at riekhof.de (Jochen Riekhof)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:40:23 +0200
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com> <Xns90E478A656FFBjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
Message-ID: <9j9mtn$e9f$07$1@news.t-online.com>

> Any COM [out] parameter will be returned from the method since in Python
> parameters are passed by value rather than by reference (we won't talk
> about object references).

Hum, interesting, but do you know why does it return the connect-string in
my case?

Ciao

...Jochen





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 17:44:31 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 17:44:31 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <k154KKAx2RY7EwC2@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <ur8v2m4hs.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> well I have at least one extension that requires 32 bit unsigned as
> inputs. Under existing python I can manipulate myself around bit 31
> problems with ease (using negative numbers or hex). It seems it
> will/might be a bit more complicated if this pep goes through. I'm sure
> there are others who have explicit int size requirements. Effectively
> removing ints takes away ease of external communication in at least some
> cases.

If implemented cleanly, it may even make live easier for your
extension, depending on how its functions process input, since they'll
all still come in as PyObject's.

For example, if your extension uses PyArg_ParseTuple to convert to the
Python value to your internal 32 bit unsigned storage, it'll probably
still continue to do so, automatically taking into account any
unification within the Python core.  In fact one could imagine the "l"
format (which presumably you're using now since 'int' wouldn't be a
portable ubit32 format in your C extension) would automatically handle
all of integers, longs, or integral floats behind the scenes.  You'd
then do a final sanity check to ensure the value was within 32-bits,
but presumably you do that now as well.  If, instead, you're using "i"
today and just giving it a pointer to an 'unsigned int' variable,
you're already being a bit risky in your extension coding, but that
should presumably continue to work as well, and presumably Python
would complain when trying to convert a number that wouldn't fit into
the platform 'int'.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sat Jul 28 21:22:31 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:22:31 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996352193.17199.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <rzJ87.20458$oh1.6779045@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

Here is an alternate numerical model:

'1.0' is a fixed point number with one digit to the right of the decimal
place.  '1.00' is a fixed point number with two digits to the right of the
decimal place.  '1e-1' is a fixed point number with one digit to the right
of the decimal point.  '1e1' is a fixed point number with negative one
digits to the right of the decimal point.  Conceptually, integers are fixed
point numbers with zero digits to the right of the decimal place.

Internally, each number could be represented as two integers (longs): one
'base' and 'exp', such that the value of the number is 'base + 10 ** exp'.
'-exp' is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point.

For addition (and subtraction), the number with fewer digits to the right of
the decimal point is padded with zeros.  Addition is therefore an exact
operation:

1.00 + 1.0 => 1.00 + 1.00 => 2.00

For multiplication, the resulting number has digits to the right of the
decimal point equal to the sum of the number of digits to the right of the
decimal point in its operands.  Multiplication is therefore an exact
operation:

0.1 * 0.1 => 0.01
1.00 * 1.0 => 1.000

There is no way to represent arbitrary ratios in this numerical model.
Division is therefore defined as a truncating operation (towards negative
infinity).  All multplication operations can be inverted with division, so
the number of digits to the right of the decimal point of 'a / b' is the
number of digits to the right of the decimal point of 'a' minus the number
of digits to the right of the decimal point of 'b':

0.01 / 0.1 => 0.1
1.000 / 1.0 => 1.00
5 / 2 => 2

This numerical model has several advantages over Python's current model.  It
has none of the dangers of floating points and rationals.  It is easy to
understand.  It works consistently on all computers without depending on the
underlying C library.  It unifies integer division with "real" division.
Its primary disadvantages are speed, incompatibility with third party
libraries, and its tie to the decimal system.

My goal here is not to replace Python's existing numerical model, or even to
add a new numerical model alomgside it.  If I really wanted this model, I
could easily implement it myself by creating a Python class.

I do have one question however: if I implement this numerical model and PEP
238 is accepted, which division operator should I overload for my division
operation (as defined above)?


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 15:59:16 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:59:16 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes:

> Andrei Kulakov wrote:
> > 
> > Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > >
> > >     The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
> > >     is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
> > >     argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
> > >     zero.
> > 
> > When is 0 different from -0?
> 
> When doing ones-complement arithmetic. Not too many machines use that
> anymore, and the ones that did (or do) should have comparison logic to
> consider -0 == 0. The CDC Cyber series used ones-complement.

IEEE 754, the floating point standard in use in virtually all current
hardware, mandates that -0.0 be distinguishable from 0.0, in order to
be able to represent the sign of degenerated underflow results.  (Or
so I understand, having been educated in IEEE 754 through numerous
discussions with Tim Peters, but not by reading the standard.  If I'm
wrong, Tim will surely correct me. :-)

I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From barry at zope.com  Tue Jul 24 23:28:47 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:28:47 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com>
	<mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org>
	<916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>
	<Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
	<3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com>
	<cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn9ls92t.eia.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15198.15599.440633.982702@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "ph" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

    ph> How about having two executables, 'oldpython' and 'newpython'
    ph> which correspond to -Dold and -Dnew.

    ph> Furthermore, since 'oldpython' is the same as the existing
    ph> 'python', let's rename it 'python'.

How is this different than how Python already installs (on Unix
anyway).

% ls /usr/local/bin/python*
/usr/local/bin/python*	   /usr/local/bin/python2.0*
/usr/local/bin/python1.6*  /usr/local/bin/python2.1*

% /usr/local/bin/python
Python 2.1.1 (#1, Jul 20 2001, 13:48:37) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

% /usr/local/bin/python2.1
Python 2.1.1 (#1, Jul 20 2001, 13:48:37) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

% /usr/local/bin/python2.0
Python 2.0 (#14, Feb 15 2001, 23:45:39) 
[GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

Modulo the micro-release number, which is guaranteed to only include
patches (but no guarantee that such patches won't break your code :),
why not just symbolically link oldpython -> python2.0 and newpython ->
python2.2 ?  Or just make sure that your old applications, for which
you cannot afford even the possibility of code breakage, always and
explicitly use python1.5 or whatever?

-Barry



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 20 03:18:55 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:18:55 +0200
Subject: doctest
References: <mailman.995574273.21136.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j8m10$n1t3p$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com> wrote in message news:mailman.995574273.21136.python-list at python.org...
> [Thomas Heller, on doctest]
> > The latest version from Python's CVS tree however does
> > not run any more under Python 1.5.2.
> > Is there an uptodate version available which is backward
> > compatible?
>
> I expect the incompatibility is shallow, introduced when someone charged
> thru the std libraries changing all uses of the string module into string
> methods.  If you'd like to change that back again and check it in, fine by
> me -- there was no intent here to be incompatible (or compatible either, for
> that matter <wink>).
>
Thanks to cvs update -j 1.3 -j 1.2 and manually fixing the two or threee
conflicts it was easy, with _one_ exception:

There is a 'from __future__ import generators' line, which
makes sense for 2.2, but throws SyntaxError in 2.1 and 2.0,
and ImportError in 1.5.2.
Unfortunately it cannot be wrapped by try: except: because
it must occur at the beginning of the file.
Any idea?

Thomas




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul 29 13:49:52 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:49:52 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996304554.3545.python-list@python.org> <%ez87.128332$%a.5630144@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107290049.27bb9e0e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-06A917.10495229072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <5e8bd451.0107290049.27bb9e0e at posting.google.com>,
 kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote:

> So my girlfriend wants to know why python has to have the worst
> animals and why we can have bunnies or little dinosaurs.

That rabbit's got a vicious streak.  It's a killer.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From stevecanfield at my-deja.com  Fri Jul 20 08:43:35 2001
From: stevecanfield at my-deja.com (Steve Canfield)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 05:43:35 -0700
Subject: popen problem with spaces in directory-ARRGHHHH!
References: <603e1b49.0107191344.42808306@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <603e1b49.0107200443.d32524f@posting.google.com>

Okay.  I'm a little frustrated.

Earlier, I wrote in message news:<603e1b49.0107191344.42808306 at posting.google.com>...
> If I open up a command prompt and type in the following:
> C:\>"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My Project"
> I get back a bunch of text showing which files are checked out.
> 
> If I open a Python interpreter and type:
> >>> import os
> >>> os.popen(r'"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My
> Project"').readlines()
> []
> I get an empty list.

Since I first posted this I have tried a few more things.  The FAQ
mentions bugs in popen and suggests win32pipe.popen.  I tried it and
it seems to behave exactly like os.popen.

One thing that didn't work (and I don't want to have to do this) is
using the short (8.3) version of the directory names:
>>> import os
>>> os.popen(r'e:\visual~1\ss.exe status "$/My Project"').readlines()
['$/My Project:\n', 'file1.cpp      Steve    etc...

Is this a bug in os.popen, win32pipe.popen, or (more likely) am I
missing something really obvious here?

Please help!  I really don't want to have to be restricted to short
file names.

Thanks,
steve


From myles at geocities.com  Mon Jul 23 22:41:13 2001
From: myles at geocities.com (Myles)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:41:13 +1000
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995926001.4339.python-list@python.org> <vmcpltkoo6137ko4hnivtl5a01b9dtq2e1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CE049.8F274BD@geocities.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:05:34 -0500, <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:
> 
> >> 1/2 == 0.5:
> >>    Perl -- untyped, thus irrelevent
> >>    LISP -- academic language only
> >>    Pascal -- the Ada folks thought it was wrong
> >>    Modula 2+ -- Minority languages
> >>    JavaScript -- dumbed down language
> >> 1/2 == 0:
> >>    Visual BASIC -- most used language 3 yrs running
> >>    C -- what need I say?
> >>    C++ -- ditto
> >>    Java -- ditto
> >>    Ada -- intentionally changed the Pascal practice
> >>    VBA -- most used non-programmer language
[snippery snip]
> VB is based on BASIC, which has a variable history but which in the
> early days generally did 1/2 -> 0.5, and generally *changed* it later
> on.

Ermm, fact correction :
not on the VB and VBA I have available to me.

VB (admittedly v.4):
    x = 1 \ 2
    MsgBox (x)
gives 0.5

VBA (in Excel 97):
    Worksheets("Sheet1").Activate
    Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("B5").Activate
    ActiveCell = 1 / 2
gives 0.5

A quick peek through the helpfiles for both reveals that integer
division for the "most used language 3 yrs running" and for the "most
used non-programmer language" actually uses a different operator "\" for
integer division, in a similar manner to the proposal for Python ! :-)

We now return viewers to the main argument : 
"Are the benefits worth breaking backward compatibility, and will the
change process in place be sufficient to manage this ?"

Regards, Myles.


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 19:14:56 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:14:56 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
In-Reply-To: <if527.46135$he.3215290@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEBLKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Steve Holden]
> We are talking about has_key here, right?

RIght.

> I was simply trying (perhaps rather too hurriedly, as it turned out)
> the fact that strings if unequal lengths could not be equal, and only
> equality is required when indexing a dictionary.

Good point, and I hadn't fully realized the context.  Things are still
subtler than you may think, though.

> Without looking at the code I'm presuming that actually some fairly
> crafty hashing algorithm is used to test for the presence of a
> particular key.

Yes.

> But when more that one entry hashes to the same bucket,

That doesn't matter:  the full hash codes are compared first no matter how
few buckets, and it's extremely rare in practice for the full hash codes of
unequal strings to be equal (the odds are about 1 in 2**32, confirmed by
many test runs on both "typical" and contrived strings).  That is, it's not
ending up in the same bucket that matters, it's having identical hash codes:
no comparison is done unless the full hash codes are equal (BTW, string
objects cache their hash codes, so a given string object never *computes*
its hash code more than once no matter how often you-- or the
internals --apply hash() to it).

> I hope the lengths are checked before character-by-character comparison
> goes ahead ... you know the details, I don't, so I'm not going to press
> this issue any further.

The lengths aren't checked first in 2.1 or earlier, in part because before
rich comparisons were added, it was impossible for the string-compare
routine to *know* that == vs != was the only interesting outcome.  There is
code in current CVS to check the lengths first, but because string hash code
equality is so rare I'm dubious that bothering with the length-check is
actually a win (string compare from dicts will almost never be called unless
the strings are in fact equal, so the "lengths equal?" check almost always
says "yes" in this context).

> And no, I haven't forgotten that strings are only a subset of the
> possible keys.

Python has forgotten it, though <wink>.  That is, under the covers, dicts
with nothing but string keys use a different lookup routine than dicts with
at least one non-string key.  Dicts with string keys are optimized in many
subtle ways.




From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul  5 17:42:00 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:42:00 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
Message-ID: <o8NR7kKkXM4c092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

Still dying to win the performance prize, I believe Skip Montanaro's
performance tip brings the general filter stategy back up to winning
status (including James Logajan 'traditional' function)

  def str_join2(iters):
      has = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
      for i in iters:
          "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])

  def flt_lmbda3(iters):
      isdigit = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
          for i in iters:
              filter(isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')

  def traditional(iters):
      for i in iters:
          result = ""
          for c in '(123)/456-7890':
              if c in digits:
                  result = result + c

RESULTS:

-   500-       str_join    str_join2   flt_lmbda2  flt_lmbda3  traditional
         5 :    0.10         0.07         0.10         0.06         0.08
        10 :    0.21         0.15         0.21         0.10         0.16
        50 :    1.04         0.73         1.02         0.57         0.79




From jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 04:43:07 2001
From: jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk (Jon Nicoll)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 01:43:07 -0700
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com>
Message-ID: <8351bb33.0107160043.3b1b1e51@posting.google.com>

Hi Bryan
    Have a look at

    http://www.nicorp.co.uk/download/

Which contains my files for writing to a Parallel/LPT port. It is
buildable under both Windows (95, 98, ?ME?, Not NT or W2000) and
Linux.

It is in need of updating for Python 2.x, and in its current state
you'll need a bit of knowledge to get it working, but the basics are
all there

    jon Nicoll


"Bryan Brannigan" <bbrannigan at cybertours.com> wrote in message news:<3b520bcb at news.cybertours.com>...
> I am looking for a way to send data to certain ports on a custom ISA card.
> The card is addressed as 280h.  Is this possible with Python?  Is the code
> compatible with Linux as well?
> 
> Bryan


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 23:58:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 03:58:11 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9k7il0$7dv$1@panix2.panix.com> <3dd76gv9vw.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <cppuagxwi8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

> +1 on ripping 'x in int' out of CVS.

Done.

> Like children, it's sorta cute at first glance but becomes annoying
> after longer acquaintance and contemplation.

Were you born fully developed?  I hope not for your mom. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 17:24:07 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:24:07 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp7kwv7iag.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-721F92.10353626072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <cpwv4v5qqa.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> In article <cp7kwv7iag.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> > > (2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
> > > rational integers?
> > 
> > Sorry, you lost me there.  What are these?
> 
> Roots of polynomials with integer coefficients, leading coefficient = 1.
> E.g. the golden ratio 1+sqrt(5)/2 is a root of the polynomial
> x^2-x-1, so it is an algebraic integer.  When mathematicians want to 
> specify that a number is what you would call an integer, in the context of 
> algebraic numbers, they say "rational integer" to be more specific.

Neat.  Then to answer the question, I would think that isintegral()
should not include the algebraic integers, since to most folks those
aren't integers at all (they're definitely not part of the set Z).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From daniel.dittmar at sap.com  Mon Jul 16 06:18:30 2001
From: daniel.dittmar at sap.com (Daniel Dittmar)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:18:30 +0200
Subject: command substitution
References: <newscache$vy7kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>
Message-ID: <9iuf1n$6tm$1@news1.wdf.sap-ag.de>

> I was looking for a solution like in bash, which let you put the standard
> output of a command in a variable(in bash, you can do it like OUT=`ls` or
> OUT=$(ls) ).

import commands
var = commands.getoutput ('ls')

Daniel





From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 00:38:01 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:38:01 -0400
Subject: XML for meta-information (was Re: Deposing Dictators)
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com> <wpL87.5132$CQ1.206410@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B639329.65EE0546@engcorp.com>

Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> 
> "Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
> > ...
> > 1.  A lot of the ideas turn out not to be for a programming language
> > as such at all. Rather, it combines the ideas of literate programming
> > with a kind of replacement for make. An XML notation would allow
> > source code in a range of languages to be packaged in a linked set of
> > XML files with documentation, detailed specification of the build
> > process and explicit requirements for the run-time and build-time
> > environment. It would allow you to specify, for instance, that the
> > source code for this C++ module contains a constant structure derived
> > according to xxx principles (for the documentation) and can be
> > generated by running yyy script in zzz version of Python (or
> > whatever).
> 
> Unless you have compelling reasons for using XML, I would suggest
> the alternative of using Python itself as the meta-language.

I think there are always compelling reasons for using XML.  XML 
is not code -- it's data.  Python is for expressing algorithms
'n such.  XML is perfect (well, maybe not quite) for meta-
information, or at least as perfect as we've come up with to date.

I like Steve's idea above, although it sounds like it might
be a little "monolithic" if one didn't take care to keep the
pieces separate.  Of course with XLink there's no reason the
pieces of information relating to a single module all have
to be in the same physical file.  

I've been thinking for a while (as I'm sure many have) that the
current use of simple text files for source code is remarkably 
primitive compared to the overall state of computing.  It seems
like it's time to turn things "inside out", and put source inside
XML files as merely one part of the picture.  Build instructions
for "make" or "pyscons" tools would be kept inside.  Specifications,
test cases, etc, would also be available in nicely organized
packaging.

Now we have only text editors, which grab an entire file and 
present a simplistic line-oriented view of it, possibly knowing 
enough about the content (as described by the file extension: 
how primitive!) to do something useful with it other than just 
display it.

In the future, structured editors would be able to work not
only with the source content, but other kinds of information
contained in the same file.  If they didn't understand the 
information, they would ignore but preserve it (as XML tools
should do).  

Sort of reminds me of Opendoc... but built around a modern
web-standard and inherently more suitable to the kinds of 
work programmers need to do.

> Maybe I don't fully understand your intended use of XML, but
> it gives me a good opportunity to go off on a tangent, as well.
> (Hmm...  Maybe it's time to change the subject: line?)

Done. (You don't have to ask, either. :-)

> XML is a bit hard on the eyes (quite unlike Python).

Well, that might be more a condemnation of the tool being used
to view the XML than of XML itself.  XML, while designed to be
easy to edit in text editors, was not designed specifically to
be "easy on the eyes".  The designers would likely have said that
it is not XML's job to specify a presentation format for itself.
XML is content, end of story.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 10 20:29:23 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 20:29:23 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> writes:

> if sscanf(command,"%c%d",&c,&d) != 2 {
> }

You seem to be posting a lot of one line translation requests - are
you trying to get a program translated to Python one line at a time?

If so, perhaps you could just post the whole thing and we'd have a
shot at it in one pass and save some electrons :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 00:07:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:07:19 -0700
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <00899E06.N22121@rsmi.com>
Message-ID: <3B662EF7.72725C09@ActiveState.com>

Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Isn't it clear that  the thread that it is all quite necessary  to  meet the
> programming
> language specification requirements of people who don't actually program  (is
> there
> another definition of non-programmer that I am missing) - is an incitement,
> not an explanation.

Two issues:

 * the real target for the newbie-friendliness is new programmers not
non-programmers. A language that is good for new programmers has a lot
of rules that they can easily remember and few pitfalls that they have
to store away in their heads.

 * if newbie-friendliness were the only issue, it would be probably not
enough. But even competent programmers can make non-robust code if there
is a big gap between the division statement and the provision of an
integer where a float is expected -- and even if there is NOT a big gap.

Python's slicing rule is ALSO not very newbie friendly at first. But
slicing is done so often and the rule is relatively easy to remember. In
the long run it very seldom causes bugs. Division is not like that in my
experience.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 09:18:51 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:18:51 -0500 
Subject: FTP client module
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51DE@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Does Python have an FTP client module, like FTP::Net, which is part of libnet on www.cpan.com for Perl?  If so, is it part of the core Python package, or do I have to download it?  If I need to get it, what is the website?



From r_olson at sandiego.edu  Tue Jul  3 23:01:20 2001
From: r_olson at sandiego.edu (Rick Olson)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 20:01:20 -0700
Subject: Newbie Radiobutton question
Message-ID: <a5d3ff08.0107031901.33157db9@posting.google.com>

Hi--

I'm trying to run the following from IDLE:



from Tkinter import *



root=Tk()



x=IntVar()

x.set(2)

Radiobutton(root, text='a',value=1,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)

Radiobutton(root, text='b',value=2,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)



With Red Hat Linux (Python 1.5.2, IDLE .4) it runs fine the first
time.  I get the window and the second radio button is selected.  If I
close the window and try to run it again by immediately clicking on F5
the window and buttons appear, but nothing is selected.  If I click on
the buttons they work properly.  Even closing the window with the
program, reopening the file and running won't cause the buttons to be
selected.  I need to close IDLE, and restart it.



With Win2K (Python 1.6.1, IDLE .6) it runs every time.



I'm a linux neophyte, but will figure out how to upgrade whatever is
necessary.  Is this a Python problem, and IDLE problem, a Red Hat
problem or a user problem?   Is there anything else that I am likely
to need to change (e.g. tcl installation)?


Thanks in advance--

Rick Olson


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 12:14:44 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:14:44 -0400
Subject: Redirecting input?
References: <bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <r9m07.27285$he.1410109@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

>From the Python 2.0 Library Reference Manual:

"""6.11 getpass -- Portable password input

The getpass module provides two functions:


getpass ([prompt])
Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is prompted using
the string prompt, which defaults to 'Password: '. Availability: Macintosh,
Unix, Windows.

getuser ()
Return the ``login name'' of the user. Availability: Unix, Windows.
This function checks the environment variables $LOGNAME, $USER, $LNAME and
$USERNAME, in order, and returns the value of the first one which is set to
a non-empty string. If none are set, the login name from the password
database is returned on systems which support the pwd module, otherwise, an
exception is raised."""


getpass() looks like what you need.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"fbasegmez" <fb at ultranet.com> wrote in message
news:bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4 at posting.google.com...
> How do you redirect commands to a Unix process initiated from a Python
script?
> For example:
>
> import os
>
> runcmd='rlogin othersystem'
> os.system(runcmd)
> password='mypassword'
> #now I would like to input my password here
> #obviously os.sytem(password) does not work.
> ???
>
> Regards,
>
> Fahri




From phawkins at connact.com  Fri Jul 20 17:00:43 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 17:00:43 -0400
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <wkg0brnwn8.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "ts" == tyler spivey <tspivey8 at home.com> writes:

ts> could you write a fast mud  in python? 
ts> having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
ts> how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
ts> can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
ts> I am blind myself.

My experience is that Python is very nice for programming by voice
using speech recognition (I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking) because it
has so much less in the way of punctuation.  This means that spoken
python is much more similar to English than are other computer
languages.

I suspect this would also be good for blind programmers using
text-to-speech.   As others have mentioned, you would need to have a
solution to the whitespace indentation issue. 

Patricia
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 19:04:43 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 23:04:43 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpzo9ozow4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m6h8a.lim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:10:23 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

>> I would not make 5/2-3/2 usable as a sequence index. My style is more
>> "typeful". But you decide.
> 
> I am not at all sure!  This should definitely be added as an open
> issue to the rationals PEP.

Well, I was on a walk today and thought that maybe you are right
about that unification :-)

The sure thing is that inexact numbers won't be allowed where a
precise value is needed to determine validity - too bad if "error
in the program"-kind of exception depends on rounding errors.

Arguments for unifying ints with rationals:

- Since 2 == 2/1 and maybe str(2/1) == '2', it reduces surprises
  where objects seem equal but behave differently.

- / can be freely used for integer division when I *know* that there
  is no remainder (if I am wrong and there is a remainder, there will
  probably be some exception later).

Arguments against:

- When I use the result of / as a sequence index, it's usually an
  error which should not be hidden by making the program working for
  some data, since it will break for other data.

- (this assumes that after unification int and rational would be
  different types:)
  Types should rarely depend on values. It's easier to reason when
  the type of a variable is known: I know how I can use it. I can
  determine that something is an int and expect that other objects
  used in this place will be ints too.

- (this assumes the same type for them:)
  Int is a good type in itself, not to be mixed with rationals.
  The fact that something is an integer should be expressible as
  a statement about its type. Many operations require ints and
  don't accept rationals. It's natural to think about them as about
  different types.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 10 13:01:03 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:01:03 -0500
Subject: File processing
In-Reply-To: <994742167.67214@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
	<mailman.994736537.19096.python-list@python.org>
	<994742167.67214@yabetcha.drizzle.com>
Message-ID: <15179.13519.617537.403177@beluga.mojam.com>

    Donn> That's cool, but you might be interested to see if tail on your
    Donn> platform supports a positive index (bet it does):

It works, but with no discernable effect

    % tail +1 dnd.txt > dnd.txt.short 
    % wc -l dnd.txt*
       1015 dnd.txt
       1015 dnd.txt.short
       2030 total

    Donn> In the unlikely event it doesn't, sed '1d' is a safe bet.

Even better:

    % sed -e 1d < dnd.txt > dnd.txt.short 
    % wc -l dnd.txt*
       1015 dnd.txt
       1014 dnd.txt.short
       2029 total

Learn somethin' every day...

Skip



From vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net  Fri Jul 13 07:25:09 2001
From: vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net (Vincent A. Primavera)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:25:09 +0000
Subject: Javascript + Python...
Message-ID: <3B450513001C4964@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)

Hello,
	Does anyone know if there are ways to have JavaScript(client side...) 
"communicate" with Python(server side...) via variables(environmental?) 
etc...?

	Thank you,
	Vincent A. Primavera



From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul  4 15:25:51 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:25:51 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com>
Message-ID: <3b433fbf.1034355294@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 02:10:09 GMT, "Robert J. Harrison"
<rjh at 3-cities.com> wrote:

>From recent discussion it is not clear to me if
>PeP 0238 (http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html)
>has gained favor, or not.
>
>Two comments.  First, its major emphasis is on benefitting
>inexperienced programmers, but, by being inconsistent with
>other mainstream languages, it is not clear to me that it
>is actually a benefit for them.  It is certainly not a 
>benefit for experiencd programmers that routinely
>switch between Python and other languages.  Second, even
>if the change of behavior for divide (/) is accepted, I
>see no point in introducing the // operator.  A plethora
>of infrequently used operators will make Python more
>Perl-like.  Better an explicit 'cast' to integer.
>

1) I like the current overloading of "/"
2) I think 'type' is a misnomer re float
3) I suspect the subject of coercions and conversions
   will churn on a while before a really clean rationale
   emerges.

Additional comments:
1) I like being able to write integer expressions concisely. I like it
   that +-*/% operating with integers results in integers (and is
   presumably implemented with efficient CPU features not using
   floating point anywhere).

   I do think of integers as a special subset of real numbers, but
   I don't want them treated as real when I want to do integer
   arithmetic.

   If novices need help with the concepts of integer operations,
   a 10-minute interactive tutorial should be enough. It would
   be a disservice to them to present numbers as if integers were
   not special in any way. What the best notation is is a different
   issue. Personally, I prefer an overloaded '/' to a special '//',
   and I don't mind adding a decimal point to indicate non-integer.

2) To me, floating point is a special representation format for
   a special subset of rational numbers. One could argue that it
   should be treated as a hidden implementation issue whether and
   how floating point hardware is used to represent numbers of
   whatever type. I.e., you could have the concept of an optimal
   number representation which varied dynamically as values changed
   for a 'number' or 'real' type.

   PEP 240 (Adding a Rational Literal to Python) might then be
   a PEP to choose the appropriate optimal representation for ddd.ddd,
   and the type could be number or real, deprecating float.

   If you wanted to extend the idea of optimal representation even
   further (where optimality preserves exactness?) you could consider
   what I'd call deferred-evaluation-literal-expressions (DELEs).
   A possible representation would be a tuple identifying an operation
   and arguments. The rational type is an example of sorts:
   ('/',numerator,denominator). ('**',2,('/',1,3)) would let you
   represent the cube root of 2 exactly. And so forth.

   BTW, if Python numbers get an exact/inexact attribute as in scheme,
   I hope Python doesn't arbitrarily force exact=false on all numbers
   represented in floating point.
   
3) In numeric as opposed to strictly integer context, I would think
   the goal is to preserve exactness. I think I would be for
   PEP 237 (Unifying Long Integers and Integers) on that basis.

   Conceivably there might be a coercion from floating point
   (rational) to integer-pair rational to preserve exactness, but
   there are so many ways to represent numbers that maybe they should
   all be hidden from the language definition.


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul  3 01:48:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 05:48:24 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B412444.3D7774A7@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <I0d07.858$c7.208371@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B412444.3D7774A7 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Terry Reedy wrote:
> >
> > Example: a school has 4
> > first grade classrooms and 82 new first graders.  If we split the
students
> > evenly among the classrooms, how many in each?  The correct answer is
20
> > with 2 left over, not 20.5.
>
> I'd say the correct answer is neither of those -- it's
> (21, 21, 20, 20). Leaving the two remaining pupils
> uneducated is not an option that I'd expect any
> decent school to consider. :-)

Of course, in this particular situation.  But the question of what to do
with remainders (set them aside or allocate somehow) is dependent on
recognizing that there is or should be a remainder to think about, which
was the main thrust of my post.  The proper allocation procedure depends on
the particular situation and the units the number represent, which gets to
the point I made later in the post.

Terry J. Reedy





From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Sun Jul 22 16:48:07 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:48:07 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org> <20010721.071302.1704365084.1761@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net> <3b598d0f.252655609@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <20010722.170022.2058657199.10918@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <3b598d0f.252655609 at news.t-online.de>, "Dinu Gherman"
<dinu at reportlab.com> wrote:


> On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:01:04 GMT, "Mark Nenadov"
> <mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca> wrote:
> 
>>The best solution for Python and PDF that I have found is PDF-Lib
>>(www.pdflib.com). I have used it with Python, and it also work with a
>>wide variety of other languages.
> What do you mean by "best"? ;-)
> Dinu
> 

What do I mean by best? Exactly what I said... "The best solution ....
that I have found". I haven't tried ReportLab yet, so I can't make a
judgement on that yet... but PDF Lib is the best one that I have used so far.

~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 08:32:42 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:32:42 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996538497.304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k68hd024df@enews4.newsguy.com>

<brueckd at tbye.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996538497.304.python-list at python.org...
>
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Peter Milliken wrote:
>
> > I have used a very strongly typed language (Ada), I haven't tried
Haskall or
> > Ocaml as one repondent mentioned, but I claim that with Ada, 95-98% of
> > "normal" bugs are out of my programs once I get the compiler to produce
> > executable code. The only bugs that are left are the purely logic bugs.
>
> Only 2-5% of your bugs are purely logical!? While I'd agree that once your
> compiler produces executable code the bugs left are of the logical
> variety, that number seems incredibly low (or the number of bugs you

What do you mean by "logical" in this context?  On some keyboards
I have the '+' and '-' symbols on the same key (one shifted, one
unshifted), so I sometimes have a typo where I use '+' where I
mean '-' or vice versa.  No compiler I know catches this kind of
bug.  Yet it's clearly a common typo, not anything having to do
with conceptualization.  Fortunately, unit-testing catches this
(and most other typos) quite effectively:-).


Alex





From peterh at sapros.com  Sun Jul  8 20:30:52 2001
From: peterh at sapros.com (Peter Haight)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:30:52 -0700
Subject: 'Member not found.' problem with win32com.client.
Message-ID: <200107090030.f690UqN68386@wartch.sapros.com>

I'm trying to use the automation interface to the Windows Installer stuff
and am having a problem. I used 'makepy.py' on 'Microsoft Windows Installer
Object Library (1.0)' which created a nice interface file, but it doesn't
quite work.

First of all, it looks like the COM object doesn't support GetTypeInfo so I
have to make the classes manually, but I'm also getting a 'Member not
found.' error when I call some methods.

I can kind of get around this by not using the wrapper module, but then I
was getting the same error for 'error.StringData(1)'. Now as you can see in
my work-around version, I can fix that by wrapping error.

Here's my code:
---------------
import shutil
import win32com.client
import win32com.client.gencache


template_installer_name = 'EmptyInstaller.msi'
project_installer_name = 'test.msi'

shutil.copy(template_installer_name, project_installer_name)
wininst = win32com.client.gencache.GetModuleForProgID("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
o = wininst.Installer(win32com.client.Dispatch("WindowsInstaller.Installer"))
db = o.OpenDatabase(project_installer_name, 
		    win32com.client.constants.msiOpenDatabaseModeTransact)
query_str = "select from Directory where DefaultDir = 'SourceDir' and Directory_Parent = ''"
try:
	view = db.OpenView(query_str)
except:
	error = o.LastErrorRecord()
	for field_num in range(1, error.FieldCount + 1):
		print error.StringData(field_num)
-------------

Here's the traceback I get when I run it:
-------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "winstall.py", line 18, in ?
    error = o.LastErrorRecord()
  File "c:\programs\lang\python\win32com\gen_py\000C1092-0000-0000-C000-000000000046x1033x1x0.py", line 357, in LastErrorRecord
    ret = self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(0xa, LCID, 1, (9, 0), (),)
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147352573, 'Member not found.', None, None)

-------------

Here's the method in the generated module file:
-------------
	# Result is of type Record
	def LastErrorRecord(self):
		ret = self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(0xa, LCID, 1, (9, 0), (),)
		if ret is not None: ret = win32com.client.Dispatch(ret, 'LastErrorRecord', '{000C1093-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}',
UnicodeToString=0)
		return ret

-------------

Here's how I'm working around it
-------------
import shutil
import win32com.client
import win32com.client.gencache


template_installer_name = 'EmptyInstaller.msi'
project_installer_name = 'test.msi'

shutil.copy(template_installer_name, project_installer_name)
wininst =
win32com.client.gencache.GetModuleForProgID("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
o = win32com.client.Dispatch("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
db = o.OpenDatabase(project_installer_name, 
		    win32com.client.constants.msiOpenDatabaseModeTransact)
query_str = "select from Directory where DefaultDir = 'SourceDir' and Directory_Parent = ''"
try:
	view = db.OpenView(query_str)
except:
	error = o.LastErrorRecord
	error = wininst.Record(error)
	for field_num in range(1, error.FieldCount + 1):
		print error.StringData(field_num)



From runyaga at thisbox.com  Mon Jul  2 03:01:19 2001
From: runyaga at thisbox.com (alan runyan)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 07:01:19 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3%U%6.114072$lq1.30289756@typhoon.austin.rr.com>

> What exactly is "good database support?"  I haven't had a problem.

I think this is mostly due to the lack of centralization of python software
(ala CPAN).  I believe there are stable python modules to access pretty much
any database: oracle, odbc, sybase, bsdb (sleepycat),  solid, postgresql,
etc...  I thought python's database support was weak, but when i needed it
it always came through.

> I'm not a Zope user myself, but from what I've read about both PHP
> and Zope, it appears they are pretty much even in capability (hopefully
> an expert on the subject will comment here).

I'm far from an expert, but.. I do have an opinion.  From what I've seen in
PHPland, ZOPE compares pretty much feature-for-feature and then some!.  ZOPE
is a larger more comprehensive framework than any PHP 'framework'  that
exists (including eGrail or phpGroupware).  Remember: PHP is a web
programming language.  Python is a general purpose language.  ZOPE is a
python framework.  IMHO, Zope has suffered popularity because it refuses to
embed python (code) into the presentation layer (unlike PHP).  Also ZOPE is
100% object-oriented.  PHP isnt OO and reusibility is garnished from lots of
#includes (where as ZOPE has access to Pythons lib and ZOPE accessories and
there is hooks into using Perl from ZOPE also.. so you get Perl's DB support
as well).  PHP is faster, but it doesnt stack up in reusability, speed of
development, or flexibility (Python as you mentioned, we all consider to be
the best language on the net ;) in language design.  also, the ZODB is being
wheened off of ZOPE dependency and is starting to show signs of Standalone
distribution.  this is a __HUGE__ win for Python -- a trivially easy to use
object database.

> > Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly
> the
> > best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
> > largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation
> (web,
> > or otherwise).

uhm. I completely disagree.

information presentation I believe is fully covered by Python, nothing (that
I know of) comes close to the bredth of GUI support in Python: QT, GDK,
wxPython, TkInter, ?FOX?, and there are others! oh including Swing via
Jython.  On the web scene there is healthy competition: WebWare (which is
modelled after Java's Servlet design), ZOPE (which is a highly evolved
framework that comes with a transactional object database), Quixote and
quite a few others.  HTMLGen.  I believe mod_snake (?) is being kept up.
There is a hook into the Ars Digita system via Python.  I believe you can
present information using python in a myriad of ways -- its your choice ;)

~runyaga




From eldavo at shell4.ba.best.com  Tue Jul 10 19:02:31 2001
From: eldavo at shell4.ba.best.com (David White)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:02:31 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: python2.1 install problem on redhat 7.1
Message-ID: <9ig1i7$95b$1@nntp1.ba.best.com>

Hello,
I'm trying to install python2.1 on redhat 7.1 i686.  I'm using the RPM and I get a dependency error:

error: failed dependencies:
	libcrypto.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5
	libssl.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5

so I installed the following

rpm -iv ftp://speakeasy.rpmfind.net/linux/PLD/current/PLD-1.0/i686/PLD/RPMS/openssl-0.9.6a-4.i686.rpm
which gives me
/usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.6.1
/usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.6.1

but I still have that dependency error.  

So the question is, what's the right way to resolve this situation?

thanks,
dave white


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 04:30:07 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:30:07 +0100
Subject: viewcvs rlog error
References: <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606@posting.google.com>
 <RNr1kKAPDJV7EwP1@jessikat.demon.co.uk>
 <XwAkbgAhPUV7Ewd6@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <2QbsjKAPkUV7Ew7J@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <XwAkbgAhPUV7Ewd6 at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>In article <RNr1kKAPDJV7EwP1 at jessikat.demon.co.uk>, Robin Becker
><robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes
>>In article <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606 at posting.google.com>, Jeanie M.
>>Schwenk <jschwenk at oregon.idt.com> writes
>>>I just installed viewcvs 0.7 and it gives python exceptions if the
>>>directory has any files in it.  Not terribly useful.   It appears to
>>>be some kind of rlog error but I can't duplicate it from the command
>>>line so I must assume it's something to do with the python scripts. 
>>>I'm new to python so any useful suggestions would be nice.
>>>
>>>Traceback (most recent call last):
>>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2514, in run_cgi
>>>    main()
>>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2477, in main
>>>    view_directory(request)
>>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1091, in view_directory
>>>    fileinfo, alltags = get_logs(full_name, rcs_files, view_tag)
>>>  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1035, in get_logs
>>>    raise 'error during rlog: '+hex(status)
>>>error during rlog: 0x7f00
>>I'm getting the identical error after struggling a bit with my freeBSD
>>system. I'll have to go back to 0.5.
>OK it seems we need to install rlog, to get this to work.
alternatively as in my case I needed to set up the right path for
rcs_path in the viewcvs.conf
-- 
Robin Becker


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 09:02:36 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:02:36 +0100
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kjarc.ev8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:44:52 -0500 (CDT), Chris Watson <chris at voodooland.net> wrote:
>
>
>> This seems really strange to me. So you are saying you can integrate it
>> into any proprietary product without problems? You can intergrate it into
>> perl, python etc with their various licenses. Why do you specifically not
>> want anyone to integrate it with GPL code but allow everything else?
>
>Strange? Not that I dont know where this will end up but how is wanting to
>keep the GPL (which would add restrictions to my code that *I* did not
>place on it) from infecting my licensed code strange?

Because you're happy to have your code infected by proprietary code.

Consider:

You write program Y, licensed by the BSDL

Person P writes code C, which incorporates Y. The executable C+Y is licensed 
under a proprietary shrinkwrap license.

Person Q writes code D, which incorporates Y. D is GPL'd.

A 4th person, R, can do some things with C+Y. But R can do asll those things,
and more with D+Y.

So if the restrictions on D+Y are bad, why are the (larger) restrictions
on C+Y not also bad?

This is a genuine question BTW. 

> I release everyone
>can choose their OWN licenses. I have NO problem with that. The thing's I
>have problems with are the fact that A) you can GPL BSD licensed code.

Not really. The BSDL'd version still exists. If I merely take some
BSD code and don't change it, I'm not the copyright holder so I
can't change the license. If I change the code, so the result is
partly my work, then I can license the result in any way that's
compatible with the BSDL. So I could GPL it if I wanted.

>terms. Nothing more or less. You can do whatever you wish with the code. Make
>it binary only and keep your secret modifications secret, release them with
>source, whatever you wish. You just can't add any restrictions to my code.

The GPL doesn't as I understand it. But it could add restrictions
on someone else's code that they wrote but that links to your code.
Is that OK by you?


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From gs at styrax.com  Fri Jul  6 15:09:03 2001
From: gs at styrax.com (Garry Steedman)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 19:09:03 +0000
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B460CCF.2924.33315027@localhost>

maybe this would be a good time for someone to think about writing a 
nifty FAQ product for Zope?

cheers,

g

On 6 Jul 2001, at 15:50, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Subject:        	Re: Maintaining the Python FAQ
From:           	Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
Organization:   	Excite at Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster
To:             	python-list at python.org
Date sent:      	Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:50:35 GMT

> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
> > 
> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html -
> >    it is
> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
> 
> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


+-------------------------------------------+
  Garry Steedman      mailto:gs at styrax.com  
  Styrax Associates  http://www.styrax.com/ 

  "The Good Man has no shape."            
+-------------------------------------------+



From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 16 09:18:02 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:18:02 -0500
Subject: Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?
References: <mailman.994166465.5480.python-list@python.org> <e9koktkhs1msqagu2jdmb3f1tcq29qtr6e@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <006b01c10df9$c468b9e0$0101010a@local>

I downloaded the latest version (1.1.3) and did not find the 
pyshapelib-* directory where you described it.

What version are you looking at?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sean True" <seant at webreply.com>


> There is pretty good support for .dbf files in a component of GDAL
> (http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/).
>
> "GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
> GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that
> is released under an Open Source license. As a library, it presents a
> single abstract data model to the calling application for all
> supported formats."
> 
> The key here is that .DBF is the standard format for storing
> geographically linked data attributes in one of the GIS industry
> standard formats (shapefile). You can find the relevant pieces, which
> are a C library and a SWIG wrapper in  the source distribution for
> GDAL in the location \gdal\frmts\shapelib\pyshapelib-0.1, for a fairly
> recent release. I use the functions for both reading and writing.
> This wrapper is not intertwined (much!) with the rest of GDAL.
> 
> Works for me but ... YMMV.
> 
> Sean True
> WebReply.Com, Inc.
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 
> 




From europax at home.com  Sun Jul 15 19:06:17 2001
From: europax at home.com (Pugsley)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:06:17 GMT
Subject: Need help with "global" variables/resolved
References: <yH747.348232$p33.7087093@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Jlp47.353600$p33.7174513@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

Thanks for the posts and emails.  Yes I now realize that Python modules
are not like linked C modules.  I took some advice from the ng archive
and put all of my globals into a dummy class.  I can then just pass the
name of the class to wherever I need it.   Rob.



In article <yH747.348232$p33.7087093 at news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>, "Pugsley"
<europax at home.com> wrote:

> I'm converting a number crunching program from C to Numeric Python, and
> I'm really getting stuck on how to deal with global variables.
> 
> For example, there are about 30 variables that are defined in the main
> program that I want to be global and available in the functions in the
> modules.  (the modules are seperate files that I import).   A simple
> example would be:
> 
> def foo(arg1, arg2):
> 
> 	global bar1, bar2, bar3,             etc.
> 
> 	result= bar1+bar2+bar3+ arg1+arg2
> 
> 	return result
> 
> 
> 
> But all I get are errors stating that the global variables have not been
> defined.  This behavior seems to run counter to what is implied in some
> books that I've been reading.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?   Thanks,   Rob.


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 16 09:12:58 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:12:58 -0500
Subject: windows port access
References: <3b520bcb@news.cybertours.com> <3B522E98.BAAA9E93@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <005b01c10df9$245a4cc0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com>


> If you look back through the last two days' worth of postings for subject
> "parallel port?!?" you should find something to help.  Yes, it is
possible,
> no the result is not compatible (but you could always write a higher level
> wrapper to make it so).

Unfortunately what Bryan is asking is not what you are answering.  He wants
to access the I/O port 0x280, which he states is assigned to a "custom ISA
card" which (I assume) is not using the standard parallel port interface,
nor
serial, etc. and for which he evidently has no driver.

Under Linux, this can be done in C by following the instructions in the
"IO Port Programming mini-HOWTO" (check any Linux portal, i.e. linux.com,
for this document).  Doing it in Python using the first method given
(routines
in <asm/io.h>) would require writing a custom module in C.  The second
method
given (using /dev/port) is doable in a pure-Python implementation.

What Bryan hasn't told us is whether or not he needs interrupt support and
whether or not the interface protocol is time-sensitive; user-space access
to such a device is doomed to failure in most cases, and a kernel driver is
required instead.

Under Win32 I'm not sure what the procedure is, but I suspect a VxD file
will
be needed.

Bryan, please tell us a bit more about the device you are trying to control,
and perhaps we can help you.

> Bryan Brannigan wrote:
> >
> > I am looking for a way to send data to certain ports on a custom ISA
card.
> > The card is addressed as 280h.  Is this possible with Python?  Is the
code
> > compatible with Linux as well?
> >
> > Bryan
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
> peter at engcorp.com
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 17:17:21 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:17:21 +0100
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <snnjltc2dcapdbsd1cm511jtkc29cpll75@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 07:05:13 +0100, edmund at ngetal.fsnet.co.uk (Edmund
Strangely) wrote:

>I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
>bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
>response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
>finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has
>tried object Pascal.

I've used a number of languages, including both Pascal and Modula 2.
Pascal was also among the first few languages I learned - after
various versions of BASIC, couple of assembler languages, and a
variant of Forth. I even learned Ada before I made significant use of
C or C++, though I worked professionally with C before I worked with
Ada. I first learned Python at a time I was professionally using Ada,
and when I was still learning C++ (my current main language for
professional use).

On the / or div issue, I agree with some things and disagree with
others. I disagree with having separate / and div operators, for
instance, because this is a simple case of operator overloading - when
I use complex numbers, vectors, matrices and so on I don't want to
revert to using functions instead of operators, and I don't want to
learn another set of operator names. Ada is, in many ways, a language
in the Pascal/Modula 2 tradition, and one of the big improvements it
has over Pascal is that it supports operator overloading and drops the
div operator.

OTOH, I do prefer the Ada mod and rem operators to the C % operator
for several reasons...

1.  C does not define whether % is a mod or rem. A mod operator never
returns a negative number, whereas a remainder may give a negative
result. Because this is undefined in the standard, different compilers
do different things with respect to the sign in this case.

The reason for the different definitions is because modulo arithmetic
is arithmetic done in a wraparound range of integers 0..(base-1) and
has not negative numbers, whereas the remainder in division does
logically have a negative result.

2.  The mod and rem names are explicit in what they mean. The %
operator looks like it should be something to do with percentages.

Python has cleaned up the first problem (by defining that % returns
the remainder, which may be negative) but not the second. In fact,
python overloads % with a completely different additional
functionality which IMO can only increase the confusion (plus I think
the % operator is not quite right anyway - the markers in the string
should specify the subscript of the item in the list, as well as the
formatting).

Also, I'm not happy with the Python definition of integer division,
and of the remainder...

"""
The modulo operator always yields a result with the same sign as its
second operand (or zero)
"""

As far as I'm concerned, this is plain wrong. If I do the following...

quotient = -3 / 2
remainder = -3 % 2

I expect quotient = -1 and remainder = -1

I get quotient = -2 and remainder = 1

Either version maintains the basic remainder law - given...

quotient = a / b
remainder = a % b

You can still rely on...

(quotient * b) + remainder == a

I just think integer division should round towards zero - not strictly
downwards.

These are small issues though, and issues that vary enough from one
language to the next that any multi-lingual programmer should have the
sense to check before using these facilities.

My overall opinion is that Modula-2 and Ada are excellent languages in
many ways, though Ada programmers tend to have a style based on
pedantic following of rules rather than on what is genuinely readable
- a mindset that comes from the military background, I suppose. Pascal
in its standard form is too simplistic to be a serious general-purpose
language, and single-vendor updates such as Delphi *are* single-vendor
products, irrespective of their success. C and C++ easily defeat Ada
in their ability to express a lot of functionality quickly and
consisely, though they lose on reliability and (with the still common
obfuscation tradition) sometimes on readability.

At first sight, my criticism of Delphi being a single-vendor
non-standard product seems also to apply to Python - but it's not
true. In reality, Python has a single standards authority (Guido van
Rossum) - but you are not limited in the way that single vendor
products limit you. This is because anyone can contribute to the
development. If you really feel it is necessary, you can download the
source and port it to other platforms or add whatever features you
want, and distribute your own alternative implementation. This has
happened a lot - jPython and embedded/stackless Python being the cases
that spring to mind. The Python community is a centre of excellence -
not a cage made of regulations and limitations.

Single vendor products clearly restrict freedom and are therefore
unAmerican ;-) - though I'd much rather keep Borland and dump
Microsoft.



From mikeb at mitre.org  Tue Jul 10 14:02:05 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:02:05 -0400
Subject: Credit card processing on the web
Message-ID: <3B4B431D.4F578833@mitre.org>

Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com>
... credit card transaction ... socket-based with mx/amkCrypto to implement the Blowfish encryption


Michal Wallace <sabren at manifestation.com> wrote:
I have a library for dealing with online payments through the web at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/payment/ .. There's no web page or
documentation for it yet, but the code is quite small and hopefully
readable... There's also some unit tests..
It works with Authorize.net and verisign and requires M2Crypto.


Michal,
Sourceforge reports that no code has been uploaded yet. I am very interested in learning how to connect to banks, credit card machines, etc., for eCommerce purposes.




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 21:28:48 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:48 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995926001.4339.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vmcpltkoo6137ko4hnivtl5a01b9dtq2e1@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:05:34 -0500, <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:


As we agree on the final conclusion, going through this again is
probably merely annoying, but there are some things I want to set
straight.


>> 1/2 == 0.5:
>>    Perl -- untyped, thus irrelevent
>>    LISP -- academic language only
>>    Pascal -- the Ada folks thought it was wrong
>>    Modula 2+ -- Minority languages
>>    JavaScript -- dumbed down language
>> 1/2 == 0:
>>    Visual BASIC -- most used language 3 yrs running
>>    C -- what need I say?
>>    C++ -- ditto
>>    Java -- ditto
>>    Ada -- intentionally changed the Pascal practice
>>    VBA -- most used non-programmer language
>
>Now, I *could* argue with you. I could say that VB, C++,
>and Java are just imitating C, and thus you only have 2

In the C++ and Java case Yes - they *stayed* with the existing system
despite the fact that particularly for Java, they are different
languages and free to change - and Sun were specifically seeking ways
to tidy up the language and make it clearer, simpler and less error
prone yet they kept division as it is.

VB is based on BASIC, which has a variable history but which in the
early days generally did 1/2 -> 0.5, and generally *changed* it later
on.

Notice how any case where language designers have made a deliberate
change, the only way they change is towards 1/2 -> 0?

>I could say that mere put-downs of excellent languages
>like LISP and Modula 3 (and other languages, like JavaScript)

I'm not putting them down - they are all excellent and important
languages as I said. But if we are considering what most people are
going to expect after coming to Python from other languages, we *have*
to acknowledge both the relative scales of use, and the experience
implicit in the way language families have evolved over time. We also
have to consider the languages reputations for clarity etc - a much
shakier and porobably losing issue if you compare C family with Pascal
family languages - but looking at the evolution of that specific
aspect is a pretty strong indicator reguardless of the wider nastiness
of C and BASIC derived languages (and yes, my main language IS C++).

LISP doesn't aim to be a language for mainstream applications - it
does what it set out to do extremely well (if cryptically) and it's
success in its target fields is the very reason we have close
derivatives like scheme, besides many principle-borrowering languages,
today (but it's *still* a wierd choice for editor scripting ;-).

Wirths languages don't have users on the same scale as C et al, which
is a great shame as they are far superior languages (bar their wierd
view on division ;-) - but those user bases are still pretty secure
with good reason.

The continued existence of Pascal in the form of Delphi is, to me, a
freak of history - Delphi as a Modula 3 based language would have been
a far superior thing, especially if it adhered to the relevant
language standard, but Borland had Turbo Pascal to hand at the time
and a huge community of users that it chose not to discard by breaking
their existing code and experience - thus Pascal is still here despite
being a freak of history, whereas the far superior Modula series have
much smaller user bases. Sound familiar ;-)

>On this point I'm holding my ground. I do NOT belive that
>int division is "the same thing" (with different domain). For
>instance a VERY IMPORTANT feature of "division" is that
>(A / B) * B == A, and "integer division" doesn't maintain

Neither does float division. (1.0/3.0)*3.0 -> 0.99999999999999
(for decimal floats - similar binary principles apply).

That difference is small enough to be hidden until it's too late to
fix - much rather the blatantly obvious bug than the subtle hidden
one. This is exactly the kind of issue that is supposed to be
bread-and-butter to numerics programming, BTW, and exactly the kind of
thing students should be taught to be aware of.

>this. Another clear way to tell that "integer division" is
>different from "division", is to see that they give different
>answers... 25 <int division> 3 == 8, while 

Yes - and matrix division gives different answers again. Do we want a
different operator for that too?

The real people to ask are mathemeticians - they have accumulated
thousands of years of experience, and they represent integer and float
(and symbolic and finite field and matrix and so on) division using
exactly the same selection of operators. We can't use the same
representation until we finally drop ASCII as our source file format
and switch to XML with user-configurable presentation for standardised
entities (oops, fantasy world again) - but we can follow the same
principle that thousands of years of the worlds mathematicians
experience - and several decades of the bulk of the worlds programmers
experience - have clearly indicated to be the preferred choice.
Division is essentially the same thing irrespective of the data type.


There are *much* better reasons than these not to change division, but
they are certainly good enough to show that 1/2->0 is an extremely
strong contender for the belt - not some pretender that can simply be
ignored - and that even if the change goes ahead, and even when the
bugs are fixed and everyone has forgotten the agony of PEP0238 - there
are very good reasons to believe that Python will *NOT* be better for
the change, but that it will be *worse*.

I cannot prove that the change is for the worse, but I have raised
very good reasons to consider it highly likely and I have proved that
scepticism over PEP0238 is valid - both because and irrespective of
backwards compatability. And I have explained my position with regard
to my past Python advocacy and the very difficult position this is
going to leave me and other advocates in.

How do the pro-PEP0238 people react? Lets see...

1. Some continue to refer to float division specifically as "correct"
   division - not as a preference, a convenience for particular
   applications or a crutch for students. By implication, mine and
   other peoples rationally stated opinions are *incorrect* and
   we're stupid for even thinking them.

2. Others write off strength-of-feeling as irrationality and
   same-old-usenet, and they state that these are the same old
   arguments as if a viewpoint that is repeatedly and emphatically
   raised by many people with rational arguments is somehow inherently
   invalid.

3. The most important people have simply said very little bar a few
   easily countered viewpoints that they seemingly have no intention
   to bother discussing further. They have spoken and that is the
   end of it.

Let's take a guess for tomorrow...

4. If you don't like the message, keep on flinging mud at the
   messenger.

Anyone resent the insult? - so why should I take it?



From josegomez at gmx.net  Thu Jul 19 08:24:34 2001
From: josegomez at gmx.net (josegomez at gmx.net)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:24:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Python/VTK tutorial?
Message-ID: <9j6ji2$lcs$1@hermes.shef.ac.uk>

Hi,
	I was looking for a decent vtkpython tutorial. However, I seem
to stumble into TCL/TK tutorials all the time. Does such a beast exist?
I would have thought that coupled with NumPy, VTK in Python should be
phenomenally popular...

	Any help much appreciated,
	Jos?

-- 
Jos? L G?mez Dans			PhD student
Tel: +44 114 222 5582			Radar & Communications Group
FAX; +44 870 132 2990			Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Sun Jul 22 17:14:36 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 21:14:36 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jffns$hma$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> [Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com]
>> ...
>> If I was told that experinced programmers might
>> appreciate this change for any possible reason -
>> I'd be quiet as a mouse.

> Not all experienced programmers agree.  At the last Python Conference, I
> moderated a 40-some person group discussion on conceivable changes to
> Python's numeric model, not advocating but keeping the participants from
> killing each other <wink>.  The meaning of integer division wasn't the
> focus, but naturally came up.  By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
> participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
> such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.
> There was no consensus on exactly what 3/4 should return -- rational or HW
> float or decimal float were the most popular alternatives.

> It shouldn't be so hard to understand why.
[snip Tim's reasons]

The audience was entirely self-selected; they were people with an interest
in numeric models. Did Guido ask for a show of hands in the big session
afterwards? I don't recall; I kind of suspect the outcome would've been
different.

> The current integer division
> loses information silently and without a trace.  Combined with that Python
> is not a statically typed language, there's simply no telling what e.g.

> def velocity(distance, time):
>    return distance / time

> will compute by inspection. 

There's no telling what:

def add_stuff(a, b):
   return a + b

will compute by inspection either, though. Are we complaining about that? 
(yeah, I know the inverse operation is rather hard to define for
string addition :)

[snip]

Of course I claim no expertise in this matter whatsoever. :)
For working with pixels in GUIs and such, integer division can be a useful
thing, though.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 15:37:43 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:37:43 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B45F133.7050206@erols.com>
Message-ID: <cppubdkg0w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Edward C. Jones" <edcjones at erols.com> writes:

> I suggest including a program that will read Python code and tell 
> the user where all the "/" divisions are in the code.

That's easy enough:

import sys, tokenize
for filename in sys.argv[1:]:
    def tokeneater(type, token, start, end, line, filename=filename):
        if token == "/": print "%s:%d:%s" % (filename, start[0], line),
    tokenize.tokenize(open(filename).readline, tokeneater)

Unfortunately, this doesn't tell you which / operators are ever
applied to *integer* arguments -- no program looking only at the
source can determine that.  That's what the warnings are for.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From damien.doligez at inria.fr  Tue Jul  3 11:37:49 2001
From: damien.doligez at inria.fr (Damien Doligez)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 15:37:49 GMT
Subject: Announce: ICFP programming contest
Message-ID: <9hsosd$lq6$1@ites.inria.fr>

We are pleased to announce:

                         The Fourth Annual

                     ICFP PROGRAMMING CONTEST

                         July 26-29, 2001

             http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/

Convinced your favorite programming language provides unbeatable
productivity?  Convinced you and your friends are world-class programmers?

If so, we're providing you the opportunity to prove it! We are pleased
to announce the Fourth Annual ICFP Programming Contest to be held in
conjunction with the 2001 International Conference on Functional
Programming (ICFP 2001). All programmers are invited to enter the
contest, either individually or in teams; we especially encourage
students to enter.  You may use any programming language (or
combination of languages) to show your skill.

On Thursday, July 26, 2001 at 15:00 UTC, we will publish a challenge
task on the Web site and by e-mail to registered participants.  Teams
will have until Sunday, 29 July 2001, 15:00 UTC (72 hours) to
implement a program to perform this task and submit it to the contest
judges.  We've designed the contest for direct, head-to-head
comparison of language technology and programming skill.  We have a
range of prizes for the winners: cash awards, special student prizes,
and, of course, unlimited bragging rights.

For more information about the contest, prizes, and registration,
point your browser to:

   http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/prog-contest/

For more information about ICFP 2001, see:

   http://cristal.inria.fr/ICFP2001/


-- 
Damien Doligez, Luc Maranget, Pierre Weis


From jonschull at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 28 20:49:03 2001
From: jonschull at yahoo.com (Jon Schull)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 17:49:03 -0700
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
References: <mailman.996311033.21035.python-list@python.org> <etdg0bhqczl.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <b8c015b9.0107281649.4078f0a2@posting.google.com>

in message news:<etdg0bhqczl.fsf at lola-granola.mit.edu>, Alex quoted
Tim...
> > This won't be solved in general by magic until someone contributes
> > code to launch "Run Script" in a fresh process; but that's not always
> > what you'll want either.
> 
and then Alex said ...
>I could have a look at
> fixing that (just a matter of repeating the reloads until the dependancy
> graph stabilizes) and folding it into IDLE.
> 

This sounds like a good idea to me.  There seems to be an element of
social engineering in the python language, and community, which seems
to be an important part of its success.  There's a lot of leverage to
be had in building it right into the tools.

.......................................................................
P.S.  Then Tim said,  
>it's-life-it-sucks<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

So I'll quote Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow:

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.  Most people
are never going to die because thay are never going to be born."


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Sun Jul  1 16:15:48 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 22:15:48 +0200
Subject: problems with class initiation
References: <mailman.994017363.31520.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ho0dl$ri0$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"I?igo Serna" <inigoserna at terra.es> wrote in message
news:mailman.994017363.31520.python-list at python.org...
[snip]
> I suppose the error comes due to Main class hasn't finished its
> initiation when 'app.prefs.a' is executed so app is None in that moment.

The assignment isn't finished, so app is indeed None. Instead of
relying on global variables, you should supply app as a parameter
to the constructor of Second, IMO... Thus:

class Second:
    def __init__(self, app):
        return self.init_fn(app)
    def init_fn(self, app):
        return app.prefs.a

class Main:
    def __init__(self):
        self.prefs = Preferences()
        self.fns = []
        self.fns.append(Second(self))

... or something like that. (The design seemed slightly confusing to me,
but I think this should work, at least :)

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 10 07:43:51 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 13:43:51 +0200
Subject: import namespace issues
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <9iei5205pn@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <yv2d779ggaw.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> "Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in message
> news:yv2lmlxgnji.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de...
> > QUESTION 2:
> > Is there a detailed description somewhere in the docs about the
> > namespaces (or dictionaries) used/created/shuffled during an import?
> 
> I think the documentation for __import__ is pretty clear about
> it, "the standard implementation does not use its locals argument
> at all, and uses its globals only to determine the package context
> of the import statement".

I sometimes find that the python docs seem to expect some prior
knowledge about `obvious behaviour' from the reader and consequently
are a bit terse. Therefore I believed the above statement only after
having read the code :-)

  Harald.

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 16 17:18:03 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:18:03 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>
Message-ID: <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Donovan Hide" <donovanhide at bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:9iv5e9$bru$1 at newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Hi,
>     thanks for the input, newsgroups are great! After scratching my head
> last night, I came up with a non-recursive algorithm which works for
> specific values of k (6 in the following example), as follows:
> from math import *
>
> def P(n,k):
>     res=[]
>     for a in range (n-k+1,int(ceil(n/k)-1),-1):
>         for b in range(a,0,-1):
>             for c in range(b,0,-1):
>                 for d in range(c,0,-1):
>                     for e in range(d,0,-1):
>                         for f in range(e,0,-1):
>                             if (a+b+c+d+e+f)==n:
>                                 res.append([a,b,c,d,e,f])
>
>     return res

Since k is fixed at 6 by the implementation, you really should *not*
pretend otherwise by putting it in the argument list.  Call this P6(n) and
add "k=6" as the first line.
[Or, check that k is 6 on input and "raise ValueError, 'arg k must be 6' "
if not.]

This nested for-loop solution will run much faster if you trim the branches
as soon as possible instead of just at the end after generating each of the
n**k leaves.

After
>         for b in range(a,0,-1):
add
              if (a+b+4) <= n: # in P(20,6) 15+2(or larger) cannot yield a
solution.
etcetera.  This is the branch-and-bound principle.  A better lower limit
than 1 (-1=0 in range) will also help.

Even better, do for b,c,d,e,f what you (almost) did for a: make the range
exact.  Start by defining remain_x as the amount (of the original n) that
remains to be partitioned *before* we assign a value to x.

remain_a = n
remain_b = n-a = remain_a - a
remain_c = n-a-b = remain_b - b
...
remain_f = ... = remain_e - e # this is the only possible value for f, no
loop needed
# if we proceed correctly, it will also be <= e, no test needed

Also let kx = <the number of parts remaining, including x>.  One upper
limit for x is remain_x - (kx-1) since each part after x will be at least
1.  Another, for monotinicity downward, is the value of the preceeding
part, if any.  So the upper limits for the range statements are

a:         remain_a - (k-1)
b: min(remain_b - (k-2), a)
...
e: min(remain_e - (k-5), d)

Letting kx = <the number of parts remaining, including x>, the lower limit
for x, again for monotinicity, is  remain_x/kx  + (remain_x % kx > 0).
Subtract 1 for range statement.
(remain_x - 1)/kx gives the same answer (after the subtraction).

[Note: since n/k is int, int(ceil(n/k)-1) = int(float(n/k)-1) = n/k-1 which
is 1 low for 20,6;
int(ceil(float(remain_x)/kx)-1) should give correct answer as above, but
float math is unnecessary.]

Putting this altogether gives us

def p6(n):
  k = 6
  res=[]
  i = 0
  remain_a = n
  for a in range (remain_a-(k-1), (remain_a-1)/k,-1):
    remain_b = remain_a - a
    for b in range(min(a,remain_b-(k-2)),(remain_b-1)/(k-1),-1):
      remain_c = remain_b - b
      for c in range(min(b,remain_c-(k-3)),(remain_c-1)/(k-2),-1):
        remain_d = remain_c - c
        for d in range(min(c,remain_d-(k-4)),(remain_d-1)/(k-3),-1):
          remain_e = remain_d-d
          for e in range(min(d,remain_e-(k-5)),(remain_e-1)/(k-4),-1):
            res.append([a,b,c,d,e,remain_e-e])
            i=i+1
  return res,i

[Note: since partitions are fixed sequences, they should better be returned
as tuples.]

Outfitting your P with a similar counter, both give a list of 90 lists and
we get

>>> P(20,6) == p6(20)
1

As for speed, P(50,6) takes 100 seconds on my machine (5427 partitions)
while p6(50) and even p6(70) (26207 partitions) take less that a second to
start printing.  P(70,6) would probably take hours to do the same.
Computing exactly what you want with nothing wasted is always best.

To solve this problem for any k using this approach, we could write a
program that will write and compile the python code for a particular value
of k (using x1 to xk instead of a to whatever).  [The underutilised ability
to do this sort of thing is a Lisp-like quality of Python.]

The new generator facility is a natural for combinatorial problems like
this.

Terry J. Reedy





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 16:50:07 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:50:07 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: how to save strings to a temporary buffer?
In-Reply-To: <9j4kia+hmtu@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107190047250.6530-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 ed_tsang at yahoo.com wrote:

>How can I save string to a tempororay buffer and then write it to a
>file afterwards?
>
>I have a function that output a formatted string each time it is
>called; but instead of open a file and write it each time; I would
>like to save these strings to a , may be a tmeporory buffer, and then
>write it to a file when everythign is completed... how cna I do that?
>thansk
>

You can specify buffer size in open() to the size you want.
This will have the effect you want.

f = open("file", "w", 100000)
...

f.flush()  # when you want to write buffer to disk

...

f.close()

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 18, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?" _/




From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul  6 12:24:31 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 12:24:31 -0400
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Jul 2001 20:14:41 +0400."
             <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107062012260.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru> 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107062012260.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru> 
Message-ID: <200107061624.f66GOWa18105@odiug.digicool.com>

> 1. Because it is the first link a user sees on the frontpage of
> www.python.org and on http://www.python.org/doc/

That's easily fixed!

> 2. Because I prefer static files instead of running CGIs on your server.
> Just to lesser the load.

You're too kind.  And it's quite unnecessary: the CGIs run on a
separate machine that actually has more CPU power than the main
server!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw  Mon Jul  9 01:41:04 2001
From: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw (Chyr-Pyng Su)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:41:04 +0800
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <g2327.45910$he.3173871@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B4943F0.35F0FADA@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>

> OK, I was running a little too fast. The "self" in the code I showed you
> referred to the object whose class implementation I had extracted the code
> from, so you all you need to know is that is was the parent of the
> Pmw.ScrolledText object in which I was rendering text.
>
> Suppose that the error message returned by the wrapped C function has been
> stored in st. To create a Text widget in a separate top-level window and
> display the message in it, you would do (something like: warning, untested):
>
>         msgWindow = Toplevel(height=350, width=500)
>         msgWindow.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
>         msgWindow.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
>         t = Text(msgWindow)
>         grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
>         t.insert(END, st)
>
> I have here assumed that like most Tkinter programmers you have used "from
> Tkinter import *", and that you are using (or are prepared to use) the grid
> geometry management.
>
> Does this make it any clearer?
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/

 :>  I know 'self', but the question is 'index' .  The following code segment
is what I really
interesting. That is, how to catch the message that transfer from wrapped c
function.

strmes =
self.index.Message(self.MsgSet[int(self.msgList.curselection()[0])][0])
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        message = mimecntl.MIME_document(strmes)
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        for hdr in ("from", "date", "subject", "to", "cc"):
             try:
                 hdrline = message[hdr]
                 t.insert(END, "%s:     %s\n" %
(string.capitalize(hdr),hdrline))
             except KeyError:
                 pass

>From my experiment, Using Pmw package to write my GUI, the dumped message from
C
will popup a error message dialog, but this won't happen when I implement GUI
in original Tkinter package.  Could you explain the MsgSet.. MIME_document...
these functions..
or tell me where to find related document that describe those mechanism, so
that I can study
it. I can't find these stuff in Pmw or Tkinter document... :p

Thanks....



--
 ??????   Su, Chyr-Pyng                               o888o V o888o
 VLSI Design, Testing and Fault Tolerance Lab.       o8 ~__   __  8o
 EE. National Tsing Hau Univ. Taiwan                 88o   ooo   o88
                                                        o 8^ ^8 o
 E-Mail: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw                    /- 88_____88 -\
 WWW:    http://larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~cpsu            _\   qioip   /_





From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 28 03:14:49 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 03:14:49 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
In-Reply-To: <nQq87.6146$YP2.191178@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEOFLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Dirck Blaskey]
> I would much rather get the source instead of the executable,
> at least then you have a chance when it breaks, for whatever reason.
>
> I'm aware that this kind of code exists, but personally I don't
> consider it the normal case, nor would I find myself faced with COBOL.
> The closest equivalent I can come up with: I still run into people
> using dBase III.

Time to move into the 21st century, Dirck!  This alternative is often
overlooked:

    http://www.cobolscript.com/

When that site was just getting started, Guido sent them a congratulatory
msg about what a wonderfully well-done joke it was.  Turns out they weren't
kidding -- and boy, was his face red <wink>.

    compute loop_counter = loop_counter +1

will-probably-run-unchanged-until-universal-heat-death-ly y'rs  - tim




From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Fri Jul 27 05:55:47 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:55:47 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com> <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107270155.72f8c5aa@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B60EEA0.70BC492A at tundraware.com>...
> A gracious Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> <SNIP>
>  
> > I will look at your paper. You may want to look further at the Python
> > manual for OSE and you might see it ain't quite what you first had in
> > mind.
> 
> I guess I should clarify something.  In order to have "transactional
> correctness" you have to have a reliable transport somewhere in the
> stack below the transactional elements (or transport reliability has
> to be synthesized at the transactional layer - a really bad idea).

In the end, I think we are perhaps talking from the perspective of
trying to address different problem domains. Ie., apples vs oranges.
So I am not sure how much consensus we will get. Anyway, you have given
me some more stuff to read and ponder.

Now to clarify a bit about OSE and what I originally mean't when I said
"connected". Firstly, the distributed ability of OSE isn't in any
way dependent on SOAP, XML-RPC or any other RPC over HTTP protocol. Thus,
it isn't relying on having to create connections for every message being
sent around.

In the simplest model for using OSE, and probably most easily understood, you
have a central message exchange process. Each client creates a connection
to that server process and keeps it connected. This server process acts
as the means of message passing between processes. This is just like a
lot of MOM software such as stuff from Tibco and BEA, and stuff like JMS.
Thus what I mean't by "connected" was that processes maintain a socket
connection at all times giving them the ability to route messages to other
processes without the cost of creating a connection each time.

As with the normal model for using many MOM type packages, so long as
processes are up and running, you are ensured that the message will get
through to its target. This is done without needing an explicit concept
of message queues as active entities are modelled as service objects.
Thus, you send a message direct to the service you are interested in and
don't need this separate concept of message queues as a proxy.

Because message queues aren't used, there isn't any concept of persistance.
Ie., that a service can receive messages that were sent when it wasn't
running isn't possible with OSE. There isn't actually any reason however that
persistent message queues can be added on top of what is there and at some
point that may well be done. Having such a feature at the lowest levels
just makes implementation complicated.

Where as you are coming from an area where every single message may have to be
accounted for, even when failures occur, I have come from an area more in
the real time data monitoring area. Ie., monitoring telco equipment for the
purpose of raising alarms when problems occur. Thus, you tend to be monitoring
the current state of things. In such a system, if you had persistent message
queues it could actually be quite bad. If a large failure occurred and your
monitoring systems went down as well, when it comes back up, you don't
necessarily want to then have to process all the historical data before you
can get to see where things are right then. Different requirements, different
approaches to the problem. In this area, the publish/subscribe features are
actually more important than that of request/reply.

Personally, I think this idea of using XML-RPC or SOAP over the Internet if
you want reliablity isn't a good idea. I believe these protocols can be useful
in the setting of a corporate network but within quite constrained ways.
If someone tells me they want something which provides gauranteed reliability
etc, then I will be the first to tell them to go use software from the likes
of Tibco, BEA or IBM.


From A.COSICO at CGIAR.ORG  Tue Jul 17 20:57:53 2001
From: A.COSICO at CGIAR.ORG (Cosico, Alexander)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:57:53 -0700
Subject: pythonscript & asp
Message-ID: <7010D1188B34D511824000C04FBCEE3F17B5EA@irriphx2.irri.cgiar.org>

Hi to all, 

I'm quite new to Python. I would like to know if it's possible 
to run Python (Pythonscript?) within active server pages? 
We're using Win2k/IIS 5.0 for intranet at work. What do I need 
to install and configure on our web server to make this work? 
Could anyone point me in the right direction to some references? 
Thanks for any info. 

Cheers, 
Alex 




From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Wed Jul 18 21:41:10 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:41:10 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <000b01c10ff3$e4e0eca0$a9e1fea9@carol>

>I still have the same end goal, but I believe there must be a way to
>obtain it without too much disturbance.  Case-sensitivity, for
>example, may be a tool feature rather than a language feature, or it
>may be a user option or a language-level choice.  (Not that I've
>figured out exactly how to do this, but TeachScheme makes this an
>option.)  Note that case-sensitivity is also controversial: the Alice
>folks found it a problem, but the VPython folks have not confirmed
>this (while they did confirm the integer division trap).

But it should be noted, in fairness, that neither the Alice or 
VPython anecdotals were made in the context of 
teaching programming.

VPython's (of which I happen to be a fan) findings were in the 
context of a class in physics.

I don't recall hearing  either issue raised by anyone using 
Python to teach or to learn programming concepts. 

There have been a number of reports from learning novices - 
including my own - that the issues are, in context, negligible.

Difficult for someone in my position to ignore the hand in
front of my face.

Guido's more recent post at least gives some insight into his
deeper thinking.  

Seems to me many of us would agree that we prefer 
a language with a minimum of affection.

Many of us feel, I believe, that case insensitivity is such
an affection.  Guido seems to be saying that he views it
otherwise - that it is case sensitivity that is an affect.

Which to me is the beginning of a real discussion.

Not meaning to be nasty at all, but these issues have 
been on the table for quite some time - and I do think
it a tactical error to try to trump deeper discussion 
by pointing to selective anecdotal reports  from
near random sources, taken out of any meaningful 
context,  that happen to support a predilection.

Sorry to harp.

ART






From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul 25 12:51:09 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:51:09 GMT
Subject: maths in programming
References: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au> <m6itghkjzz.fsf@maelstrom.maths.bris.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9ltu7s.69.grante@isis.visi.com>

In article <m6itghkjzz.fsf at maelstrom.maths.bris.ac.uk>, Des Small wrote:
>"Native_MetaL" <Jasper49 at optushome.com.au> writes:
>
>> Hello im new to programming and i have some questions about Maths in
>> programming
>> 
>> 1 what type of Maths is used in programming
>
>Very little, in practice.  The kind of discrete maths taught in
>Computer Science courses is not that widely used in practice.  

IMO, writing programs is primarily "writing".  If you're good at writing,
you can program.  If you can write clearly and correctly in one language
(e.g. English) and understand that language's grammar and syntax, then you
can learn to write in another language (even a programming one).

>> 2 how good do you have to be at maths to program

Not very.

>> 3 dose all programing have complex maths

No -- very few programs have complex maths.

>> 4 are all programmers Expert's with maths
>> 5 do you need to be an expert with maths to get Employment in
>> programming

No -- you need to be an expert at programming, and you need to understand
the subject about which you are writing programs.

If you write math programs you need to understand math.

If you write process control programs, you need to understand process
control.

If you write telephony programs, you need to understand telelphoney.

However, most employers realize that they will need to train new programmers
in the application-specific knowlege areas.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  It's OKAY -- I'm an
                                  at               INTELLECTUAL, too.
                               visi.com            


From robin.garner at iname.dot.com  Thu Jul 26 21:30:24 2001
From: robin.garner at iname.dot.com (Robin Garner)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 11:30:24 +1000
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EB76175FA2Brobindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3>

ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote in
news:3b602afa.930850 at nntp.sprynet.com: 

> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:15 +1000, "michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au>
> wrote:
> 
>>> But strictly
>>> speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
>>
>>So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the
>>set of reals)? 
> 
> Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
> (except in contexts like the present).
> 

What I was getting at was that the integer 2 (as an element of the ring of 
integers) is different to the real number 2 (as an element of a field).  As 
a real number, 2 has a multiplicative inverse, whereas as an integer it 
does not. (and as an element of Z_5 it does etc etc)

As sets (and from the p.o.v. of analysis), Z is a subset of R, but as 
algebraic entities there is a distinction. 

Robin


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 17 10:34:14 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:34:14 +0200
Subject: ImportError: No module named _socket
In-Reply-To: <3B5427B5.5040005@bath.ac.uk>
References: <3B5427B5.5040005@bath.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20010717163414.M5396@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 11:55:33AM +0000, Iain Hallam wrote:

> I've only just started using Python and attempted the default install on 
> a Solaris 2.6 box here at university. Everything seemed to work OK 
> (considering I was only testing it by running "Hello World!" type 
> programs) and the sysadmin kindly installed it system wide.

> I've just downloaded the ping modules by Jeremy Hylton, and they import 
> the socket module. All well and good - it's in 
> /usr/local/lib/python2.1/socket.py - but the line that imports _socket 
> fails. Could someone tell me where I can find this module in our 
> install, please?

It should be in /usr/local/lib/python2.1/lib-dynaload/, as
'_socketmodule.so'. Chances are it really is there (I assume you're running
either 2.1 or 2.1.1) but that the permissions are wrong. This can happen if
you have a restrictive umask while installing Python (which is a good idea,
granted.) You can fix it by making the files readable for everyone ('chmod
a+r *'). The directory should have the right permission already (0755, or
'drwxr-xr-x') I think, but it doesn't hurt to check, of course.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 10 01:59:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:59:51 -0400
Subject: BASIC or Python?
References: <3d157fa0.0107051904.7ec368b8@posting.google.com> <slrn9kcfuq.2b7g.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <0t_17.14670$Fk7.131382@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkgfp.dj6.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <uBt27.15141$Fk7.136713@news.indigo.ie> <slrn9kkvoc.rts.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A99D7.5E4935EB@engcorp.com>

Rainy wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:17:31 GMT, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
> > In case anyone is fooled, here's an example from the tutorial at
> > www.python.org, which also has a FAQ on what Python is for:
> >
> >>>> for n in range(2, 10):
> > ..     for x in range(2, n):
> > ..         if n % x == 0:
> > ..            print n, 'equals', x, '*', n/x
> > ..            break
> > ..     else:
> > ..          print n, 'is a prime number'
> > ..
> >
> > Now some people may very well find that lovable, but I certainly don't.
> > Note how the clever language design means that the 'else' must be
> > level-indented with the 'for'.   
[snip]
> 
> Isn't this an example of how python's indentation is a *good* thing?
> 
> In python, above code causes an error, a programmer goes and corrects it.
> No harm done.

Actually, harm would be done.  The above code is actually correct
Python, since some loop constructs such as for and while can take
an 'else' clause which executes under certain conditions.

Output if a programmer "corrects" the above:

3 is a prime number
4 equals 2 * 2
5 is a prime number
5 is a prime number
5 is a prime number
6 equals 2 * 3
7 is a prime number
7 is a prime number
7 is a prime number
7 is a prime number
7 is a prime number
8 equals 2 * 4
9 is a prime number
9 equals 3 * 3

Output of the uncorrected version:

2 is a prime number
3 is a prime number
4 equals 2 * 2
5 is a prime number
6 equals 2 * 3
7 is a prime number
8 equals 2 * 4
9 equals 3 * 3

On the other hand, using this code as an example of why
indentation is a Bad Thing is silly, since most languages
against which Python is compared in discussions of block 
delimiters do not have this kind of 'else' clause...
 
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From aramanat at optonline.net  Thu Jul  5 21:34:44 2001
From: aramanat at optonline.net (Arun Ramanathan)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 01:34:44 GMT
Subject: tkinter event object question
Message-ID: <3B4540C5.60005ABE@optonline.net>

Is there a way by which I can determine which tkinter widget
actually generated the event.

Example if I had two buttons b1 and b2 initialized as shown below
and bound to the event handler callme.

-------------------------------
from Tkinter import *

root = Tk()

def callme(event)
    print "santa is coming"    # is there a way I can find out which
button
                                         # generated the event in the
event handler?

b1 = Button(root,text='b1')
b1.bind("<Button-1>",callme)
b1.pack()

b2= Button(root,text='b2')
b2.bind("<Button-1>",callme)
b2.pack()

root.mainloop()
------------------------------



Thanks,

Arun



From bernhard at intevation.de  Mon Jul  2 14:37:06 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 18:37:06 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993840284.31403.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hqf0i$f1dia$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <mailman.993840284.31403.python-list at python.org>,
	<mcherm at destiny.com> writes:

>> Maybe I am a hypocritical sceptic, but I have the impression that
>> some feeping creatureism is introduced into Python.

>> Examples are:
>> 	- augmented Assigments
>> 	- Lists comprehensions
>> 	- Simple Generators

>> On the other hand this is excatly the danger I want to warn you about.
>> It is a social reason for being careful:

>> Mainly as a python user I urge you to take this into consideration.

> First of all, thank you Bernhard, for raising an important point.
> I completely agree with you: one of the strengths of Python is its
> simplicity, and I would never want to see it go the way of Perl
> or C++. And you are (IMHO) RIGHT that those who discuss PEPs are
> probably more savy than the typical Python user, and they need to
> keep that in mind.
> 
> On the other hand, I find your list of examples sorely lacking.
> Without trying to convince you, let me just state that in MY opinion:
> 
>   Augmented Assignment -- perhaps not a good idea, but I guess
>       we got tired of being laughed at by people coming from C
>       and java. It's awefully convenient anyhow.

    My editor helps me saving the few more keystrikes,
    but I found just as with intendation-grouping that I could
    write better code without augmented assignment.
    And there are ambigious cases (as discussed elsewhere).

>   List Comprehensions -- one of my new arguments for why Python
>       is so much BETTER than other languages. Their elegence and
>       simplicity (for a task which is incredibly common) makes the
>       language SIMPLER to read, and the syntax is so "obvious"
>       that beginners can pick it up after seeing 2 or 3 examples.   

    I had a hard time grasping it myself.
    Do you have teaching experience on this one?

>   Simple Generators -- this, too, is elegant and simple to
>       understand. 

    Maybe we should bring in field tests with beginners. :)
    I feel the other way round, but we probably both are not
    right persons to judge this.

> If we keep your advice in mind,
> maybe we can continue that record.

Yes, hopefully.
	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 16:06:19 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:06:19 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b5f0a37$1@hpb10302.boi.hp.com>
Message-ID: <cpd76o93k9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Daniel Fackrell" <dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org> writes:

> Would this unified number system somehow still be able to provide the
> functionality that ints provide with regard to bitwise operations?  There
> may be other problems that arise as well, but I'm too much of a newbie to
> point them out at this time.

Yes, all bitwise operations are defined on longs, and they would work
the same.  This means some semantic changes for << (which loses bits
"shifted out" with ints but not with longs) and it would be somewhat
difference for negative numbers, but all the basic shifting and
masking operations would all be accessible.  Also, masking everything
with 0xffffffff after the operation should give back the old 32-bit
int semantics.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 16:45:09 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:45:09 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jsjsl$g22$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>I have changed my mind.  I think that if I had to start over, I would
>indeed try my hands at a case-insensitive language aimed at teaching
>programming to beginners, with tools to enforce case consistency.
>Given that nobody else who currently uses Python thinks this is a good
>idea, I then settled on a case-sensitive language with case-preserving
>tools.  But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

I second Terry's comment: I think that if you produced a high-quality
toolset, no fighting would be needed.  Indeed, that is the measure of
the quality of Python itself; for all that we like needling the Perlers,
I think there is very little actual "fighting" to drive Python's
acceptance in the world.  Sometimes good does win mostly on its own
merits.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From bobh at hslda.org  Wed Jul 18 09:25:39 2001
From: bobh at hslda.org (Robert)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 06:25:39 -0700
Subject: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING
References: <mailman.995453435.10145.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <4a249347.0107180525.237e117f@posting.google.com>

<snip>
> How we do "WINDOWS PROGRAMMING" with Python?
> - making the windows
> - create the controls
> - etc
> - etc
> - etc
> HELP...
> Please.
<snip>

John Grayson's book is great "Python and Tkinter programming"
Mark Hammond & Andy Robinson "Python Programming on Win32" 

If you go with a different toolkit (Qt, wxPython) then you just have
to rought it out with the tutorials given. Mr. Rempt (sp?) is in the
process of writing a book on PyQt which will fill that great need.

Hope this helps...

Bob


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 19:12:56 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:12:56 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com> <wpL87.5132$CQ1.206410@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <8b49mt47r0vfllhedcv0inj10h3pac9k8o@4ax.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 20:28:28 -0700, "Dirck Blaskey"
<dirck at pacbell.net> wrote:

>Unless you have compelling reasons for using XML, I would suggest
>the alternative of using Python itself as the meta-language.
>
>Maybe I don't fully understand your intended use of XML, but
>it gives me a good opportunity to go off on a tangent, as well.
>(Hmm...  Maybe it's time to change the subject: line?)
>
>XML is a bit hard on the eyes (quite unlike Python).
>I've been using Python as a meta-language, and it's kind of a neat twist.

I only see XML as a human readable language as a last resort, I agree.
And I *have* used something *based* on Python as a meta-language for
some time - I use it to generate source code for scanners, parsers and
various data structures for instance.

The thing about XML, though, is that it doesn't require Python. After
years of Python advocacy, that is suddenly very important.

There aren't many good XML editors around, I'll admit, but in
principle a tool to edit the XML could be created and I intend to keep
the level of tags required to an absolute minimum anyway - rather like
a dull HTML page.

I have thought of using XML as a more detailed semantic description of
source code as well, however. It occurred to me that XML could fairly
cleanly represent an AST (ie parse tree), and that with an appropriate
set of elements it could be used as an intermediate file for source
code translation. That is, create Perl-to-XML and XML-to-Perl and
Python-to-XML and XML-to-Perl, and given a standard *semantic*
representation in XML you could translate many programs and you could
reliably tell where semantics cannot be directly translated.

Such a file could also act as the scripting equivalent of an
executable, or a (dynamic or static) precompiled library file - you
would only need one interpreter regardless of the source language
used, and because it explicitly names the semantic a major change of
the semantics related to a particular syntax in any source language
would be irrelevant. In the context of the current division issue, the
XML would simply support 'div', 'integerdiv' and 'realdiv' elements -
it's the source codes job to be concise and readable, not the XMLs.

The files would be big, but with compression probably no too big.

Other benefits of XML are that I get the ability to infer the input
files character set and easily work with unicode for free (relevant if
Java or Jython source code is used, for instance), and that the parser
is already written so I can worry about the logic straight away.
Practical editing of large XML files is tomorrows problem ;-)



From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 20 02:00:13 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 02:00:13 -0400
Subject: Distributing a Python app
In-Reply-To: <ud76wtcq9.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEKFKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows
> installer over to Inno ...

[David Bolen]
> Wasn't there something or other you mentioned it couldn't quite do
> that the current Wise stuff does when this last came up?

Yes, it couldn't (and still can't) do stuff conditionally on NT/2000
depending on whether the user has Admin privileges.  They're required to add
HKLM registry entries; the Wise script backs off to HKCU if Admin privileges
are required on the box and the user doesn't have them, and pops up a dialog
box telling the user that's going to happen, giving them an early chance to
abort if that's not what they want.

So if we take this route we require Admin privileges; or write to HKCU all
the time instead; or ship two distinct Windows installers.

no-choice-is-attractive-including-the-status-quo-ly y'rs  - tim




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 04:05:44 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:05:44 +0200
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim at vegeta.ath.cx...
    ...
> > > My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
> > > anti-Perl.  I always thought that if someone as cynical, stubborn, and
> > > arrogant as I am can love both languages, anybody could.
    ...
> > and (b) the few I might not argue against would likely be "better in
> > Perl" only because of some ugly situation such as maintaining
> > compatibility with a legacy system, supported by programmers who
    ...
> > Any other application, and I would probably say Python was a
> > better choice...
>
> This is where our opinions (on both languages) differ, and where we
> might as well agree to disagree?

I wasn't part of this discussion, but since, for once, there
does seem to be a chance for a fair-headed, non-flaming
comparison, I'd be loath to see it fizzle out with an "agree
to disagree" when no technical issues have been discussed
(it seems to me).

Declaring my bias: I am "violently anti-Perl" myself, mostly
because I wrote a *LOT* of Perl code (and helped others write
it, and maintain it, and maintained a lot myself, etc, etc).
If Python wasn't around, I'd probably still be doing so (and
hating it) for lack of viable alternatives.  Since discovering
Python, I moved to Python all code I had in Perl.  When asked
for help, advice, &c, about maintaining Perl, studying Perl,
&c, my invariable answer today is "do it in Python instead".

It seems to me that the niches of applicability for Python and
Perl are totally overlapping: I cannot think of application
areas where Perl would be preferable, except, I guess, if there
were deployment constraints, such as those above-quoted or
similar ones (e.g., say you're allowed to use mod_perl but NOT
mod_python & similar Apache mods, then it might be unfeasible to
do certain things in Python; or, similarly, if there was some
crucial module already existing for Perl and it was unfeasible
to port it for Python).  Similarly, I cannot think of application
areas where Python could make sense but Perl wouldn't, except,
again, for possible deployment constraints (need to use Jython,
or Numeric, etc etc).  So what are those "application areas where
Perl is clearly preferable to Python", and vice versa, that make
it worthwhile to use both languages for new development (not just
maintenance of legacy stuff that one prefers not to port)?  Are
you just referring to deployment constraints ("I'm not allowed to
use mod_python but mod_perl IS allowed", &c) or is there something
deeper that I'm missing?


Alex





From jsal at oce.nl  Mon Jul 23 04:11:02 2001
From: jsal at oce.nl (Marco Salden)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:11:02 +0200
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl>

Try Vim (VI Improved) for Windows. You may find all you need at
http://www.vim.org/ . I am using it for about half a year now and before
that used Ultra Edit, TextPad etc but wouldn't want to turn back
again... Vim supports Python syntax and I think even an embedded
interpreter is available for it (not sure...).

Good luck,
Marco

zeke wrote:

> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
> job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
> Ultra Edit but having doubts about it.
> zeke



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 16:39:30 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:39:30 -0400
Subject: sockets and classes
References: <20010731161148.05170.00001954@ng-fw1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <AEE97.13912$WD1.596309@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"TheDustbustr" <thedustbustr at aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010731161148.05170.00001954 at ng-fw1.aol.com...
> Having quite a bit of trouble with sockets and classes lately.  I am
writing an
> IRC bot, heres the trouble code:
>
> #BEGIN CODE BLOCK
> import socket, string, sys, errno, thread
> HOST = 'liberty.nj.us.dal.net'
> PORT = 7000
> NICK='Dustin2'
> REAL='Ima Bot'
> QUITMSG='Bye'
> IDENT='hacker'
>
> class Irc:
>     def __init__(self, host, port):
>         self.host = host
>         self.port = port
>
>     def connect(self):
>         print 'Connecting to %s:%s' % (self.host, self.port)
>         self.sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>         self.sock.connect((self.host, self.port))
>
>     def sendcmd(self, cmd):
>         self.sock.send(cmd)
>
> irc=Irc(HOST, PORT)
> irc.connect()
>
> print "Sending USER"
> irc.sendcmd('USER %s localhost localhost :%s\n' % (IDENT, REAL))
> print "Sending NICK"
> irc.sendcmd('NICK %s\n' % NICK)
> print "Sending JOIN"
> irc.sendcmd('JOIN #Dustin1')
> #END CODE BLOCK
>
> I don't get error messages while executing irc.sendcmd(), but it doesnt
work.
> I should recieve a response fromt he server after sending USER and NICK,
then
> another response after sending JOIN.  But, I get nothing.  Whats up!?
> PS:  This is my first attempt to program using classes, and perhaps I'm
not
> doing it right?
>
You seem to be doing OK, but ask yourself how you would *know* about the
response, when nothing in your code actually reads the socket to see what's
coming back?

In the general case you need to be able to recognise the end of a response,
and I don't know enough about IRC to help you with that, but try scattering
the odd recv() call in your code to see whether the host is sending
responses. The fact that you aren't seeing error messages is at least
encouraging!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 11:14:38 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:14:38 -0400
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <mailman.994852458.8448.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <90_27.41956$F%5.2534438@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Mike Brenner" <mikeb at mitre.org> wrote ...
> Alex wrote:
> the code below works on unix (freebsd) and IDLE on win2k, but not python
itself
> on win2k...
>
> while 1:
>     try:
>         x = raw_input().upper()
>         print x
>     except KeyboardInterrupt:
>         print "Leaving Dodge...\n"
>         break
>
> --------
>
> This code works for me on Python 2.1 with windows extensions and wxpython,
for all 96 graphic characters.

Erm, so you're using PythonWin?

>
> It beeps for all control characters except control c, control z, and
control v.
> Control c is set up to copy.
> Control v is set up to paste.
> Control z is set up to undo.
>
> None of the arrows, control keys, or function keys have any of their
special functions or print anything to the little screen that pops up for
input.
>

Was this an attempt at humor which went over my head? If not, try repeating
your experiment with the command-line interpreter...

Nah, I must just be suffering from SOH failure. :^)

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bedge at troikanetworks.com  Mon Jul 23 14:56:49 2001
From: bedge at troikanetworks.com (Bruce Edge)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:56:49 -0700
Subject: int() built-in and hex "0x..." strings
References: <20010723.110751.1143408282.18374@troikanetworks.com> <slrn.pl.9los2v.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <20010723.115544.2086206725.32232@troikanetworks.com>

In article <slrn.pl.9los2v.jh4.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda>, "Marcin 'Qrczak'
Kowalczyk" <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

> Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:07:57 -0700, Bruce Edge <bedge at troikanetworks.com>
> pisze:
> 
>>>>> int('0x80')
> 
>> Is there another int() type lib func that I should use instead?
> 
> int('0x80', 0) == 128
> int('80',   0) == 80

groan, thanks.

-Bruce.


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Sun Jul  1 11:55:40 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:55:40 -0300
Subject: data from Acces to Excel
In-Reply-To: <3B3E2352.20405.443D2D7@localhost>
References: <993876187.1194.36282.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010701124151.02762530@mail.inet.com.br>

"baton" <batonn at poczta.fm> wrote, in part:
 > I wonder if there is a possibilyty to export table from Access
 > database to Excel using python language?? If yes, could you tell me
 > how to do it or where I can find info how to do it?

I've done the opposite - importing from Excel to Access. I had to make it 
using Visual Basic for other boss-related reasons, but it is possible to 
make it using Python, using exactly the same techniques. I could not use 
any of the wizards, as some people suggested, because I needed to get data 
that was scattered in several worksheets to build a single database.

Both Access and Excel are able to expose their objects using a very similar 
interface called DAO, that uses a DB metaphor - you have tables and cursors 
to walk in them. In the case of Excel, using the automation interface, it 
is also possible to access all the data using native objects - Worksheets, 
Ranges and Cells are the main objects. Your job is just to open the 
Worksheet object, giving commands to get or set the contents of the desired 
cells using Range objects. All this can be done through Excel's automation 
interface.

The nice thing about doing this in Python is that it is pretty easy to 
prototype. You can actually do a lot of stuff in the interactive mode, 
which mnakes development of this kind of tool very easy. Fire up Python, 
and give it a try. There are some tutorials on the automation feature using 
Python and Excel;  do a search on Google and you'll find them.


Carlos Ribeiro





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 19:52:34 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 19:52:34 -0400
Subject: Building a minimal Python 2.2 for Windows
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261804050.25190-100000@bcryachts.atsat.com> <fdZ77.30592$EP6.7869594@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <uzo9ruu2l.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> "Morten W. Petersen" <morten at thingamy.net> wrote in message
> news:Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261804050.25190-100000 at bcryachts.atsat.com...
> > Hia,
> >
> > I've just tried to build a small Python distribution that will fit
> on a
> > floppy disc (to do some cleanups on the filesystem without starting
> > windows itself); however, the message python22.dll is needed..
> >
> > ..now, I've just copied a couple of files from the install
> directory,
> > files like python22.exe and certain .py and .lib files, can't find
> the
> > python22.dll file though..
> >
> > Any ideas?
> 
> Try /windows/system for python22.dll and python22.lib (don't know if
> you need the latter)

The python22.dll file will be in the system (or system32 depending on
Windows release) directory, but the python22.lib is installed into the
"libs" subdirectory off of the Python installation root.  And no, you
don't need that to run Python - only to link against extensions.

However, for the original purpose stated, if you're running this
before Windows has been started, then you're most likely in DOS
(whether real DOS or a Win95/98/Me DOS 7.x'ish thing), and I don't
think the Windows version of Python will run natively there.  And at
that point, python22.dll isn't the only DLL you're going to need, as
it references a bunch of system DLLs.

So you may want to look into a DOS Python (there was some recent
discussion about it here on the newsgroup).

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From jerry.olup at gd-es.com  Thu Jul 12 09:44:29 2001
From: jerry.olup at gd-es.com (Jerry Olup)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 06:44:29 -0700
Subject: 'import' error in csh
Message-ID: <c8fd1ef9.0107120544.20e2bec@posting.google.com>

Howdy all,

I am using py 1.5.2 on sunos 5.6. 

When I run this code (snip below) from csh, I get the following
errors:
   import: command not found 
   badly placed ()'s

When I run the code from the interpreter, however, it runs just fine.
   >>> import xilcorelib

Any ideas?  I searched the group and found a '97 thread (Strange
import error ... how?), but no conclusions therein.

# !/usr/bin/local/python
import re, string, os  # regexp, string handling, system calls

# xilinx core library parse script.
#    
#  ... other drivel
#

# file opening and sizing.
compfile = open('vhdl_analyze_order', 'r');
outfile  = open('xilinxcorelib_comp.tcl', 'w')
list_lines = compfile.readlines()
linecount = len(list_lines)
#<etc...>

Thanks much,
Jerry


From pih at oek.dk  Wed Jul 18 04:21:41 2001
From: pih at oek.dk (Peter I. Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:21:41 +0200
Subject: freeBSD 4.2 + Python2.1
References: <BAlhHJA2TUV7EwdX@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B554714.EAA32155@oek.dk>

Robin Becker wrote:

> I'm trying to install Python2.1 and the package seems to install fine,
> but it seems that _socket.pyd is linked against libssl.so.2 which I
> don't have. Attempts to upgrade openssl are refused as openssl is part
> of the 'base' system. Am I really forced to upgrade the whole operating
> system?
> --
> Robin Becker

No, you can just download a new openssl (from openssl.org) and install it.

/Peter



From gyromagnetic at excite.com  Sat Jul 28 20:48:00 2001
From: gyromagnetic at excite.com (gyromagnetic)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 17:48:00 -0700
Subject: getting the culprit from an exception
Message-ID: <4620daca.0107281647.4a84a5c8@posting.google.com>

Hi,
I'm a relative newbie to Python. Is it possible to determine the
member of a list that caused an exception when using a 'mapped'
function?
As an example, suppose I have a list of items, some of which may not
be numbers and I would like to determine the first one that is not a
number.

I might use

try:
   new_list = map(float, mylist)
except ValueError:
   print "The item %s in mylist is not a number." % (my_item)


How do I get 'my_item'?

I realize that I can use "except ValueError, x:" and then perhaps pull
a piece out of x.args, but I'm sure there must be a better method.

Any help is appreciated.

-Brad

By the way, I don't have Python handy, so I'm not sure if ValueError
would be the proper exception in this case, but it should illustrate
the point.


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 10:30:30 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:30:30 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:19:09 -0400, Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote:
>List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
>do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
>would be:
>
>for eachItem in A:
>    if eachItem in B:
>        A.remove(eachItem)
>

You may get some speedup by making B a dictionary, and using has_key() to
see if the word is there. This should get you a O(log(n)) instead of O(n) 
inside the loop. To gain further performance,  use filter to skim A. 

C = {}
for item in B:
    C[item]=None

A = filter(lambda e, dic = C: dic.has_key(e), A)

Cheers,

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 15:20:09 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:20:09 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <jvD97.6781$9i1.583088@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:ulml5sz7m.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:
>
> > "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> >
Oh no I didn't. Which is to say, the message would make more sense with the
above attribution deleted, since all (now double-) quoted comments are
Dale's.

> > OK, I've had a good look at this now.
> >
> > It's hideous!
> >
> > It's no wonder that people get fed up with computers if they get
> > given a user interface that expects pointless dashes all over the
> > place.
> >
> > You simply can't use this routine to code a nice arg string.
>
> I suppose that's a matter of taste.  Certainly in the Unix domain,
> from whence this arose, where virtually everything was traditionally
> done via the command line, all command line utilities parse their
> command lines in exactly this way, it's extremely consistent and
> trying to do other manual approaches actually makes the non-conformant
> application stand out as such.
>
I got the impression that Dale was concerned his users wouldn't like the
Unix-like command lines that getopt requires.

> In effect, such command line parsing is a standard interface, much as
> under Windows, there's standard UI elements in its GUI.  It's also
> (unlike a GUI) designed as much for efficiency and flexibility as
> looks.
>
Yeah, well I'm sure nobody thought otherwise ;-)

> You'll find that it's a flexible interface for something that has to
> deal with a textual command line.  Try designing a CLI parser that has
> optional arguments, arguments with and without values even with
> multi-character options, spacing and order insensitive, and so on, and
> you'll find yourself replicating much of the getopt behavior.
>
> Personally, since DOS/Windows command line applications never really
> formed such consistency (IMO), and at least for me I find "-" less
> glaring on the command line than "/", I find the use of a getopt
> conformant command line to be nice as well as consistency
> cross-platform.
>
There is, of course, a history for both "-" and "/", and in point of fact
TOPS-10 was using "/" for command switches (as ISTR they were called) before
Unix was around. Wrote the command line processor for a TOPS-10 SPITBOL
compiler, and a switch with a value used a colon separator, as in

    sbl /code:sixbit myprog.sbl

and this usage was later extended to VMS, where it did sterling service for
years. It's all a matter of what you're used to, and getopt just proves that
people can get used to almost anything ... I suspect, without any evidence,
that CP/M, and later MSDOS, used the "\" as a path separator so they could
have hierarchical file stores and still use the "/" for switches (options).

> I don't know what particular user interface you are looking to serve,
> so if you're comparing this to some GUI interface to obtain
> parameters, that's not apples to apples.  But if you're working
> strictly with a command line, I wouldn't necessarily jettison getopt
> summarily.
>
I tend to use getopt because it's there, and it's easier than re-inventing
the command line processor.

but-that-doesn't-make-it-beautiful-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 23 15:10:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:10:01 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> 
> 23 Jul 2001 17:00:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> pisze:
> 
> > - This is not "incorrect" arithmetic.  *It is 3/4 == .75 that is incorrect*
> >   because the precision of the result exceeds the precision of the operands.
> 
> It doesn't exceed if the result is a rational. Operands and the result
> are all exact here.
> 
> --
>  __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
>  \__/
>   ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
> QRCZAK

Not formally, AFAIK.  For example, 3 with no decimal point following
could be anything from 2.5 to 3.4.  If I remember correctly, to be
fussy about it, you would need to specify 3.00/4.00 to get 0.75 or am
I missing something or misremembering my ancient maths courses ;) ?

More importantly, the thing everyone is talking about here is an
integer operation yielding a real (float) result.  Isn't this kind of
a "no-no" amongst mathematicians? 

Maybe I'm wrong here...
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 31 12:12:29 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:12:29 -0700
Subject: Python & wxPython on Solaris 2.6
References: <n4i87.1113$bl1.180691@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107310812.7af309d6@posting.google.com>

"Doug Farrell" <writeson at earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<n4i87.1113$bl1.180691 at newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
> I'm not sure where to go from here and I'm looking for some help. Can anyone
> direct me on how I might get Python and wxPython to work on the Solaris 2.6
> platform? I'm trying to evangelize <g> at the office to get people to use
> Python rather than Unix shell scripts for our scripting programming
> language.

I managed to get wxPython working on Solaris some time ago, although I
no longer use Solaris machines for development work, and I therefore
don't know how hard it is to build wxPython for such machines now. You
should take a look at the wxPython Web site, and get some advice from
the mailing lists:

  http://www.wxpython.org

As for the version of make you use, I found it easier to install GNU
make and just use that for most projects. It's not the ideal solution,
and I'll confess to using GNU-specific features in my own Makefiles,
but at least the documentation is readily available, if somewhat badly
structured.

Paul


From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Tue Jul 31 19:03:02 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:03:02 -0300
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@zope.com on Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 01:05:06PM -0400
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010731200302.K19610@tux.distro.conectiva>

> >     Guido> I love it.  'x in type' as a shorthand for isinstance(x, type).
> >     Guido> Checked into CVS!
> > 
> > How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if x is a
> > type or class instead of an instance?
> 
> No, that would be ambiguous.  A subclass is not an instance.  A class
> or type represents a set of instances, so 'in' is justified in a
> sense.

I'm a little bit confused also. A class/type is a set of instances, but
at the same time, an instance is built from a set of classes/types,
right?

This way, what would be correct? "x in type" or "type in x"?

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Tue Jul  3 18:25:50 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:25:50 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com>

"Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
news:bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8 at posting.google.com...
> "Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:<9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>...
> > Funny, I thought all of the April Fool jokes were out on the 1st April,
did
> > this one get delayed (badly) somewhere along the line?
> >
> > Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For banging
out
> > applications that are going to run in an environment where it isn't
going to
> > matter if the program crashes, but it is certainly not something I would
put
> > forward for something like Air Traffic Control.
> >
> > This is a joke, right?
>
> If that's your idea of a joke, you have a strange sense of humor, but
> I appreciate your post anyway. If your claims about Python are even
> close to the truth, I need to know.
>
Well, I indicated that I was hoping it wasn't a joke, so I think it is safe
to assume that I don't think the idea of an ATC written in Python funny, I
think the rest of my post bore that out, so if you still think I thought it
was then I would like you say that you have misunderstoof me :-).

Perhaps if you are seriously looking into possible languages to use for
writing an ATC then you might be better off looking for some research
information about the relative merits of different languages rather than
asking a fairly obvious question in a news group that will only be read by
adherents of a particular language :-). I say "obvious" here because you
will find only Python lovers here. I love Python but I wouldn't use it to
write an ATC.

The choice of languages for implementing various applications is sometimes
extremely suspect. I suspect that often it comes down to something like one
or more of the following reasons:

"I know X, it is a good language"
"I can get programmers more easily in language X than language Y"
"We currently have programmers who know language X"

I am not necessarily saying that choosing a language based upon the above
reasons is wrong, but it is hardly approaching the problem from an
engineering standpoint. There is literature available that compares the
relative merits of languages. To make an informed decision you really should
do some research and find out what information is available to help you make
the decision. The more information the better informed the decision. I am
sure as an aerospace engineer, you do studies into the various alternatives
for your design, why should choosing a programming language be any
different?

> <cut>
>
> > Based upon Gerrit's observations, which I fully endorse, anybody who
doesn't
> > use the most strongly typed language they can find for an application
like
> > Air Traffic Control, has to put it mildly, rocks in their head :-).
>
> As I indicated in my original post, the lack of type checking does
> concern me. However, as I wrote in a later post, I also suspect that
> this concern is overblown. I am not a computer scientist or even a
> full-time programmer, so I don't pretend to be an expert in this area.
> I am an aerospace engineer, and I do some programming in support of my
> own research (but I am a Python beginner).
>

There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
"thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing the
same application in two different languages to get meaningful comparisions -
but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed languages.

> Consider the type checking in C or C++, for example. Suppose that a
> function takes several ints (or any other type) as arguments, and
> suppose the calls of the function all pass ints in the correct slots.
> The compiler will be perfectly happy. Does that assure that the
> arguments are passed correctly? Of course not. It is a necessary but
> not sufficient condition for correctness. The arguments could be
> completely out of order, and the compiler wouldn't have a clue.

Agreed, but one of my original points was about programmer ability. A
strongly typed language will only *help*, there is no sure fire cure to
generate a correct and workable program. Any *help* that you can get from
your development environment (strongly type compilers vs loosely typed etc)
will at the end of the day provide more chance that your application will be
successful. There is no one single factor that anyone can point to and say
"if you do that or use this" then you will be successful in your
application. Witness the efforts in quality control/CMM around the world.
These are all attempts at providing an infrastructure that will increase a
projects chances of being successful, nothing else.

Unfortunately, language choice is a very sensitive issue, and generally
doesn't come down to any rational factors - a lot of times it is "because I
like it" or "this is the newest, popular language, if I learn that one then
I can enhance my employment prospects" :-).

Of course, you *could* write an ATC in Python. You could write one in
assembler too, but nobody is offering that up! So, I beleive the same reason
you wouldn't write an ATC in assembler applies to why you would write one in
Python - there are better tools for the job. That's all I'm trying to say
here. Python is a good language. All languages have their strengths and
weaknesses. Some are better than others for different application domains.
Python is not a good choice for an ATC :-).

>
> Now consider argument passing by keyword in Python. The order of the
> arguments no longer matters. Sure, the wrong type of arguments could
> still be passed in, but it seems to me the probability is less than
> getting the wrong object of the right type in C++. In C++, the
> complier only checks the type of the argument, but Python checks the
> actual NAME of the argument. The name is more specific than the type.
>
This assumes that your coding standing inforces passing arguments by name -
just try staffing an ATC project and enforcing a coding standard. There will
be many programmers who "don't like the standard" and will do anything to
get around it. You generally catch these people through code review only and
often too late! :-). Python doesn't enforce this, personally I believe it is
a good feature and I use it frequently - but not all of the time :-)

> In C++, the function calls all get checked automatically at compile
> time, but Python doesn't check them until run time. That is a valid
> concern, but hardly a show-stopper. I understand that PyChecker can be
> used for static checking. I actually think the core Python language
> should have an option to do static checking, but as long as some
> product is available to do it, the issue is not major.
>

PyChecker is still very imature and some things it will never (poor word to
use, since if someone wants to put in the effort, nothing is impossible :-))
be checked by it. It will only ever be an aid. The ability of Python to
dynamically "change its behaviour on the fly" is one of its strengths but
also a weakness from the point of view of ensuring correctness and
reliability in such an application domain.

> > Don't get me wrong, Python is a nice language and you could probably do
the
> > job with it with enough time and effort. But as an earlier respondent
said,
> > you would literally have to test it to death and then some! i.e. because
of
> > the lack of type checking  there could be a single line of code
somewhere
> > that has never been run that could cause catastrophic failure of the
> > application (architectural design *might* mitigate this but it gets back
to
> > the people factor - something I don't trust :-)). At least with a
strongly
> > typed language, even if a line of code has never been run, you are
> > reasonably assured that when it does run it won't crash due to a
variable
> > being mispelled or mis-used.
>
> As I said, static type checking is a must, but it can already be done
> in Python. So I think your concerns, although valid, are way
> overblown. By the way, people in the commercial software industry have
> no idea about the amount of testing that will go into the ATC
> application we are talking about. Their concerns are completely
> different, of course. If they tested their software even one-tenth as
> much as this application will be tested, they'd go out of business. I
> get a kick out of people who think that a few programmers can hack out
> some code and just slap it into an operational ATC system (not to
> imply you think that, of course).

As I said above, static checking is not possible (unless I missed something?
always happy to be corrected :-)), so my concerns are not "overblown", but
as you say, "valid".

I have worked in the defence industry for almost my entire career (many of
our "commercial" friends just blew big raspberries here :-)), so I am under
no allusions as to the amount of testing done in either the commercial world
(where I am now) or the aerospace world :-) Personally I am happy with the
amount testing done in the commercial world - good job security, they need
legions of maintenance programmers :-). The defence companies have been
leaving my local area, so rather than move with them I looked for the place
with the highest prospects of job security - found it in maintaining a
system that was written in C - lots of work! :-)

>
> > Of course, I could at this point say I would never venture into air
space
> > controlled by such as system, but I know it would never get off the
ground
> > (so to speak :-)) because to do it in Python would mean it would never
pass
> > acceptance testing - sure you could code it just as fast (if not faster)
> > than most other languages used for this application area but you would
be in
> > the test phase forever - or at least until the customer cancelled the
> > contract :-). So keep dreaming :-)
>
> You may be right that Python is not the right language, but I don't
> think you've made a convincing case.
>
> Russ

Well, if you need more information, email me directly Russ - I'm more than
happy to help. The issue can be confusing with all of the Python lovers on
the list :-)

Goodluck,
Peter




From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul  5 14:47:22 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:47:22 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library 
 development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
		<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>

Hi all,

I've been thinking about this for a while, and been meaning to post, but
this thread got me rolling again. It seems many folks are faced with the
same problem I have, which is that my programs rely on a number of
modules that are not part of the standard library. For example, I
recently upgraded to 2.1, and had to download and install: Python,
Numeric, mxTools, wxPython, and PIL. I needed to do this for both Linux
and Windows, and might have to do the Mac soon (no wx yet :-( ). Guido
had made it pretty clear that merging all these modules (and more) into
the standard library is impractical for a number of reasons.

Unfortunately, not having all the major modules available for a single
source really is a big limitation. Not only do people like me have to
spend a whole lot more time installing stuff, developers are limited as
to what they can expect a Python installation to include. This means
that you either don't use what would be a useful module, or you are
faced with distributing a bunch of extra stuff with your module or
program. An example is the Numeric package: there have been re-writes of
tkPlotCanvas so that "it doesn't require Numeric", and wxPython is
unable to include some nice optimizations for receiving data from
Numeric arrays because Robin doesn't want to have another dependency his
users will need to deal with.

My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a large
collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are maintained by
folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling this idea on the
Linux Distributions: the kernel developers don't make any effort to
package up Linux as a useful system; other organizations do that. There
are now a lot of them, and some are substantial commercial enterprises,
but it all started with SLS and then Slackware, etc.

It really wouldn't even be that much work: Each of us has already done
it for our own systems. Put a small group together, get a web site, and
we'd be rolling. I'm really not looking to do anything more extensive
than the old "Python on Linux" pages, except that it wouldn't be just
Linux, and we would try to maintain a fairly constant list of supported
modules.

I'd be willing to do some of the coordinating, and maintain at least a
portion of the Linux section. I could even offer some of my personal web
space, but it probably should be on Sourceforge or at python.org, or
something central with a catchy title.

The short version is that I'd like people to be able to say that their
program or module runs on "Comprehensive Python 2.1", which can be
downloaded from "http://ComprehensivePython.org". At that web site would
be a easy way to download a whole package for a couple of flavors of
Linux, Windows, Macintosh, other *nixs, etc.


If there is a least a small group of people interested, send me a note,
and lets get started on the organization details.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Thu Jul 26 11:00:07 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:00:07 GMT
Subject: Changes for easy recognition of 3.0 demos and examples
References: <3b5fb4e8.441629229@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <Xns90EAABF53B531rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Bengt Richter wrote:

> Some possibilities...
> 
> 1. spam should be replaced in all contexts by spom
> 2. it's just resting.
> 3. '/' should be pronounced 'over' or 'zorro'
> 4. '//' should be pronounced 'swish' or 'clang'
> 5. foo, bar, baz may be rendered oho, aha, znord
> 6. ...
> 

6. 'Luxury Yacht' should be pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'


Robert Amesz (still wondering how you missed *that* obvious one...)


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 11:44:11 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:44:11 -0700
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling 
 process dies
References: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EE94B.1EBA28FF@Lugoj.Com>

That does look odd. What operating system are you using? And when you say
1.5, do you mean 1.5 or 1.5.2?

Ken Tabacchi wrote:
> 
> I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
> 1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
> process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
> program is run under Python version 2.1.
[ Elided. ]


From chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net  Mon Jul  2 13:06:54 2001
From: chat at linuxsupreme.homeip.net (Chad Everett)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 12:06:54 -0500
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
References: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k1b38.3gh.chat@linuxsupreme.homeip.net>

On 2 Jul 2001 08:47:06 -0700, Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I have decided to troll the comp.lang.python group.  Will you help me?
>


Please don't feed the trolls!




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 09:21:49 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:21:49 -0400
Subject: connect in SMTPlib
References: <mailman.995224946.25425.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <pRB47.3093$d4.157133@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

Look in the Vaults of Parnassus, and use timeoutsocket to handle such scket
timeouts in a more friendly way.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Rajkumar S." <raj2569 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995224946.25425.python-list at python.org...
> Hi all,
>
> I am writing cgi program to send a mail of all the selection made by
> the user to admin. The from addr and to addr are fixed in the script.
> One of the probable error that I see is that of the SMTP server being
> down. Their are no exceptions defined for the connect(). So the script
> bombs when the connect fails and gives the 500 error.
>
> Can the script be made more robust esp when faced by a down SMTP
> server?
>
> raj
>
> #!/usr/local/bin/python
> import smtplib
> import string
> import cgi
>
> fromaddr = "xxx <xx at xx.com>"
> toaddrs  = "xxx <xx.com>"
>
> thankyou = '''Content-Type: text/html\n\n
> <html>
> <head> <title> Thank You!</title> </head>
> <body>
> Thank you !!
> </body>
> </html>'''
>
> error = '''Content-Type: text/html\n\n
>     <html>
>     <head> <title> We are sorry</title> </head>
>     <body>
>     We are extremely sorry that an error had occured while sending mail.
>     </body>'''
>
> form = cgi.FieldStorage()
> formkeys = form.keys()
>
> <snip>
> </snip>
>
> msg = ("From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\nSubject: %s\r\n\r\n" % (fromaddr, toaddrs,
order))
> line = msg + line
>
> server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
>
> try:
>     server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, line)
> except smtplib.SMTPException:
>     print error
>     server.quit()
> server.quit()
> print thankyou
>
>




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 06:42:40 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:42:40 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E975194FDD5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:

> 
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

I think at this point a polite 'thank you' is due from the user community.

It might be an idea though to change some of the error messages when a 
NameError or AttributeError is uncaught if a name could have matched with 
different case (although I'm not sure how much overhead this might cause).

NameError: name 'x' is not defined
could become:
NameError: name 'x' is not defined, nearest match was 'X'

or
AttributeError: C instance has no attribute 'Foo'
could become:
AttributeError: C instance has no attribute 'Foo', did you mean 'foo'?

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 09:34:47 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:34:47 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <3B5E1E79.A5C8CEF6@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E993BA8E3Emichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in
news:3B5E1E79.A5C8CEF6 at engcorp.com: 

> Michael Abbott wrote:
>> 
> 
> You've forgotten the *one* type of programming which appeared
> (at least to me) to be the inspiration for this in the first place:
> 
> 4. Newbie programs
> 
Mmm.  True.  However, a point that was made earlier (which I think you're 
agreeing with) was that the real future of Python rests on its professional 
use.
    I'm all in sympathy with helping the beginning programmer, but to be 
honest I think there are only two sensible options:

1.  Let beginners start with a simplified language.  My fourth programming 
language (after some weird version of BASIC on data entry sheets, FORTRAN 
and BCPL) was ALGOLW, which can only be described as crippled, and Pascal 
was written with a similar intent.  These are quite good teaching 
languages.

2.  Let beginners fight with a real language.  Depends on who they are and 
what help they can get.

I'm not a great fan of dumbing down a real language to help beginners 
(unless it's a run-time option, which in reality is switching on option 1).

This little diatribe is really aimed against the case folding proposal.

Of course, I'm not a teacher, I'm paid for writing software, so this may 
affect my opinions :^)


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Thu Jul 26 07:15:16 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:15:16 +1000
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
References: <mailman.996096713.14453.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5FFBC4.D67DB7@student.gu.edu.au>

Bruce Sass wrote:
> 
> How nasty would it be to allow one to do...
> 
> >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> >>> print a, b
> 2 1.01
> 
> ...instead of the current...
> 
> >>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
> SyntaxError: can't assign to function call
> 
> On the surface, it looks as simple as postponing the function call
> until after the assignment.  Would it be a one-time hit when the
> pseudo-ops are generated, a runtime performance issue that would
> affect all function calls, just too hairy to implement, or something
> else?
> 
> - Bruce

Others have given reasons why/why not. Would this do what you wanted to
do?

a = int(divmod(5.01,2)[0])

Or are you specificially after integer a, with b at the same time?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From robin at illusionsexeculink.com  Tue Jul  3 08:47:03 2001
From: robin at illusionsexeculink.com (robin at illusionsexeculink.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:47:03 -0400
Subject: Template processing
References: <Xns90D2B339CFDD6Latzikatz@139.174.2.56> <B76693CB.13B8D%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <9ef3kt84nrhb33lhf2jn9hrqij5v07d44p@4ax.com>

Lutz Schroeer wrote:

> I want to do some _simple_ template processing. Which is the best package to
> use (except Zope and except writing it myself ;-))?

Don't know about "best" but my Wasp gives you functionality like
ASP/JSP/PHP with the ability to either pre-compile templates into
static HTML or dynamically compile them through CGI.

New enhancements come out approximately monthly. Version 1.24 is
stable and available here:
http://www.execulink.com/~robin/wasp/readme.html

Works cross-platform, cross-OS, and cross-version (minimum 1.5.2).

Hope it fits the bill.

-----
robin                          robin at illusionsexeculink.com
media artist /                 remove illusions to reply
information architect          www.execulink.com/~robin/

Isolation tank paves way to execute an attack. 


From roy at panix.com  Mon Jul  9 10:53:32 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 10:53:32 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994649054.6535.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9icghc$8er$1@panix6.panix.com>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> The good news is that this part isn't true:  all versions of Python have
> always maintained an internal compiled-regexp cache, mapping regexp strings
> to their compiled forms, much like the one you sketched building "by hand"
> later.  Current Python maintains a cache of 100 pairs.

Wow, that's awesome.  You might want to update the library reference
to mention this.  It would keep people like me from running off on
pointless efficiency-hack tangents :-)


> The great *advantage* to this is that you wouldn't be so reluctant to
> exploit re.VERBOSE mode if the regexps were compiled at module
> level.

I've never tried VERBOSE mode; I'll give it a shot, thanks.

> There's one huge difference:  FORMAT statements were identified by
> meaningless integers

Meaningless?  Whatcha talking about?  We used to encode all sorts of
meaning into the line numbers.  The 1100's would be one kind of input,
the 1200's would be another, and so on.  If you want meaningless line
numbers, did you ever try ratfor? :-)


From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Tue Jul  3 19:07:12 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:07:12 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hrnub$9a2$1@panix3.panix.com> <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508@ruti.visi.com> <9hsu54$t38$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9htjhb$ck4@news1.gtech.com>

> >>
> >>Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and
> >>Python, and that the real-time resolution requirement is on the
> >>order of one second. Which would you choose and why?
> >
Sorry, won't answer because it is not a realistic situation i.e. the choice
wouldn't be between C/C++ and Python :-).

> >The one thing about Python that would give me pause is the
> >dynamic memory management.  But, I'd have the same concerns if
> >the C/C++ program used malloc/free.
>
> Precisely.  Actually, I'd have greater concerns with C/C++, because at
> least in Python I'd have a reasonable degree of confidence in what
> happens when memory gets exhausted.

The language specifications for safety critical applications almost always
(I say that because I have only seen a couple :-)) preclude the use of
dynamic memory constructs altogether! They do this because of the concerns
you express.

Peter




From ancientorder1 at nocrap.home.com  Mon Jul  2 23:52:17 2001
From: ancientorder1 at nocrap.home.com (john-g)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 03:52:17 GMT
Subject: GROUP TAKEOVER IN PROGRESS
References: <t2isqf67na1eb0@corp.supernews.com> <3A29743F.CAA91142@my-Deja.com> <er1l2t4maqmt6bt35ult4kgoa7kg3c6uci@4ax.com> <92dtj6$5dh$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <souk4t86o4kna6q6mhkss7tkl42k0vd7ti@4ax.com> <pJw26.84322$x6.38899606@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <td6l4tcbtioepiol85p12j62ou0s5i84vl@4ax.com> <JUx26.84493$x6.39038707@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <69cl4tk6bitr0oi376ngtjp0m1bs7ucnk4@4ax.com> <arH26.85920$x6.39967293@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <MPG.14b8389aaff776869896ce@news.fuse.net> <cut66.19827$0x5.1640965@news3.cableinet.net> <902430AC4moondustapexnet@209.99.56.9> <93hn81$l4m$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <9025628F7moondustapexnet@209.99.56.9> <3a5c8520_1@news.foxinternet.com> <902581E21moondustapexnet@209.99.56.9> <3a5ce21b_1@news.foxinternet.com> <4A982771F09.psskvxvn@vluxxijwai.net>
Message-ID: <Rjb07.105352$mG4.50416291@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

I want to see if I am doing this right...

This is some simple text extolling the wisdom of usenet trolls.

This is my new signature:




***** This was posted with the express permission of *****
**********************************************************
**  HIS HIGHNESS BRENT KOHLER LORD AND MASTER OF USENET WHILE HE WAS GIVING
ME A HUMMER **
**********************************************************
*********** He is a simple servant of my phallus (it's small but bugger than
his) ***********

----
am i doing this right?
thanks,

-- 
to send email to me remove "nocrap." from my address


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 19:38:55 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:38:55 -0700
Subject: Backward compatibility environments (was Future division patch 
 available)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DEA88.553AF758@home.net> <3B5E003B.B242DC35@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E070F.681F0979@home.net>

Erik Max Francis wrote:

> Agreed.  Let's try categorizing the Python environments which will have
> different ramifications for a backward-incompatible change:
> 
> 1.  First and easiest is code that is in active use which can be changed
> in place after an upgrade to Python 238 (what I'll use to refer to a
> version of Python which implements PEP 238 and/or requires PEP 238's
> semantics).
> 
> 2.  Code that is established and in long-term use which is not in active
> use but which still has resources that can be thrown at it to update it.
> 
> 3.  Code that is established and in longer-term use but which is not in
> a position to be fixed by the original engineers, either because it has
> been passed around repeatedly or because it is, say, at a client side
> that no longer has any contact with the original company (presumably
> because pre-238 Python has been so reliable that there was no need :-).
> 
> 4.  Code which may be in use and up to date but which is not trivially
> available in editable source form and/or from which compatibility
> warnings may not be easily found, such as stowed in a database or in
> 
> 5.  Code running in very special environments in which the ramifications
> of PEP 238 may not even make sense.  What does always-float division
> mean on an architecture that does not support floats of any kind (say,
> on an architecture with no FPU and with limited space so that software
> emulation was deemed wasteful)?

You forgot:

6.  Code taht is being curretnly maintained, but which needs to run on
both old and new versions of the interpreter.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul  5 05:42:55 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:42:55 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994263608.9373.python-list@python.org> <9i0cjt$ck9@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <3B44369F.5521A9A7@stroeder.com>

Peter Milliken wrote:
> 
> Many programmers, when they first meet a strongly typed language (such as
> Ada, but there are others) have a great deal of difficulty, because they are
> used to having a lot more "freedom" from the languages they are used to. But
> once you get past the barrier of producing correct code then it offers a
> great freedom - 90% of your "typical" bugs are found by the compiler at
> compile time rather than during unit testing :-).

I always try to explain this to C/C++ freaks which even blame Java
being too strict. These discussions usually ends with their "hacker
attitude" shining through.

I once read a statistic that 80% of the german car drivers think of
themselves that their capabilities as a driver are above average.
That's also the problem with "real men" programming e.g. C/C++. They
think of themselves they are above average...

Ciao, Michael.


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 13:31:44 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:31:44 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
In-Reply-To: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107122129430.3555-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Emile van Sebille wrote:

>I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple precision
>accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:
>
>>>> from BNum import BNum as bn
>
>>>> ab = bn('1.2340000')
>>>> cb = bn('123.45')
>>>> ab
>1.2340000
>>>> ab * cb
>152.3373000
>>>> (ab*cb).disp(2)
>'152.34'
>>>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
>151.84
>+++++++++++++++++++++??????!

What about putting parens around ab*cb?

print '%8.2f' % (ab*cb)

>>>> print 1.234 * 123.45
>152.3373
>>>> print ab*cb
>152.3373000
>>>> print float(ab*cb)
>152.3373
>>>> print '%8.2f' % float(ab*cb)
>  152.34
>>>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
>151.84
>>>> print str(ab*cb)
>152.3373000
>
>How is the argument being coerced for inclusion?  I would have thought
>float(), but apparently not.
>
>Any hints appreciated.  (Otherwise I'll have to try to find it in the
>source!  ;-0)


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 12, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses." _/




From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Fri Jul 20 14:21:19 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 14:21:19 -0400
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com>
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org>
	<3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <87bsmfsbq8.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes:

> Well, if you "correct" that to myVaraible you would still be in error,
> because you accidentally exchanged "ia" with "ai" in addition to changing
> "V" to "v". Python will not inform you about about some typos, whether
> case-related, dropped characters, exchanged characters, or added characters.

Actually, he intentionally exchanged "ia" with "ai".  If you re-read
his post you will see that he was describing a programming method by
which he finds typographical errors by intentionally using upper case
in variable names and typing them in lowercase when he uses them.  He
then expects the IDE to change his case and knows that he made a typo
if it doesn't.  

I'm not sure this is all that useful of a programming paradigm (I
wouldn't want to use ugly MixedCase just to find errors faster), but
it would not be supported by any current Python IDE I know of.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"How does a project get to be a year late? 
- -- One day at a time" - Frederick Brooks, Jr.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtYdp8ACgkQjVztv3T8pzupFQCfchm3Ru5NTkGUYEmc4n+tvDJe
O88AnjGYXQBi0Ue+f+qtTnwzrPlgrhIT
=YYVf
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From mcherm at destiny.com  Wed Jul 18 14:01:00 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:01:00 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <3B55CEDC.69C25977@destiny.com>

Roman (ironicly):
> > Windows is case-insensitive and thus "easy to use" only before one needs
> > to put web-pages on the real (UNIX) web-server. Then they understand all
> > the troubles with mised case, national-charset filenames, abbr~ted
> > filenames, local file references "C:\Mydocs\lalala", bmp-images etc.

GvR:
> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix! 
> 

I'm very surprised to hear this. Yes, I've taught lots of beginners, and
I've found that they often complain about the case sensitivity. But I
tell them that "Computers are EXTREMELY literal", and "you must be VERY
precise when programming", and they get it. I also get complaints (not
so many) about the computer not understanding a mis-spelled system call.

It seems to me that whether the language requires case sensitivity or
not, it is still very poor style to vary the capitalization of a given
identifier. It's kind of like indentation... and (in Pascal, C, Basic,
and other non-Python languages) I mark my student's programs WRONG if
they don't use consistant indenting.

Don't encourage sloppy habits: require case sensitivity.

Besides... if you make identifiers NOT case sensitive, then when they
try opening files or URLs and find that those ARE... they'll REALLY
have problems.

-- Michael Chermside



From oliphant.travis at ieee.org  Tue Jul 10 18:59:55 2001
From: oliphant.travis at ieee.org (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:59:55 +0000
Subject: getting argument names from a function
References: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net> <Pine.SOL.4.30.0107101835460.10785-100000@my.nada.kth.se>
Message-ID: <9igmbt$akk$1@news.xmission.com>

> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dan wrote:
> 
> > def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
> >    print arg1, arg2
> >
> > is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
> > 'arg2')?
> >
> > I've tried dir(..) on the function object and subsequent object and
> > can't find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to do what I want?
> >

In Python 2.1 the inspect module provides easy access to the introspection 
facilities of Python.  

>> apply(inspect.formatargspec, inspect.getargspec(aFunction))

will return

aFunction(arg1, arg2)

I just found this facility myself and am using it to add a simple help 
command to SciPy (www.scipy.org)



-- 
Travis Oliphant, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 378-3108
oliphant.travis at ieee.org


From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Mon Jul 30 10:11:35 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 07:11:35 -0700
Subject: switching between frames
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107300611.7ae0c578@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I have a GUI that displays the contents of a properties file and
allows for a user to edit the values and rewrite the file.

But I have more that one file and want to display the values  on a
frame and then click a button to display the contents of the other
file.

When I try to insert the new labels and entry widgets they just append
themselves to the previous frame.

I also tried to start up new frames, but they just layered themselves
on top of each other.

Is there a way to set the visiblity of the frames so that i can
control which frame a user is seeing?

Phill


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul 23 17:48:57 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 21:48:57 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu> <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lp6u8.hhd.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:34:07 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

>>No no no.  '3.' i.e. a floating point number with that value could be 
>>anything in that range.  '3' means exactly the integer 3, no approximation 
>>at all.
> 
> A mathematician is free to use '3' to represent a real - the fact that
> it is real is implicit in the context. Compilers and interpeters
> aren't able to determine that, so integers and floats have different
> notations even when the represent equivalent values.

When we are considering exactness, value is not the only thing that
matters. 3 and 3. have the same value and the primary difference is that
3 is integer, discrete, exact, where 3. is real, analog, continuous,
fuzzy.

> We can't exactly match mathematics here, but we don't have to go so
> far as having different symbols for integer and float division -
> mathematics uses the same set of symbols for both operations allowing
> the context choose the operator.

I've never seen / as integer division in mathematics. The only notation
I know is

  |  a  |
  |  -  |
  |_ b _|

i.e. floor(a/b).

Even an operator for modulo is rarely used at all. More common are
congruences
  x === y === z (mod m)
where === denotes three horizontal lines. If modulo is used directly,
it's 'x mod y'.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul 28 18:42:09 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:42:09 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cpvgke2zf1.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <wdo87.35525$EP6.9091573@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <5dH87.41002$EP6.10002172@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message
news:wdo87.35525$EP6.9091573 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com...
stuff that was not completely clear.  The following is a completely
re-writen replacement.

Deletion Criteria, v.2

On 2001 July 10, I classified changes into deletions, additions, and
replacements.  The functional definition of a deletion is that it
breaks code in the forward direction only (some old code no longer
works, new code works even under old language rules [1]).  Similarly,
additions break backwards, replacements in both directions.  Pure
deletions in Python have been rare; 'access' removal is the only one I
have noticed.  I propose that a feature should only be deleted
(without a more than compensating replacement) when it is rarely used
and not considered useful even when it is.  'Cleanup' and the like
seem insufficient reason to break code more than rarely or to
eliminate a useful construct.

Some few days thereafter, Guido injected into the discussion a
proto-proposal to delete case sensitivity from Python.  This proposal
soon dominated this thread.  If the implementation were to reject
names that differ only in case from a previously bound name, it would
be a program-history-dependent deletion.  If it were to forbid one
case from all names, it would be program-independent.

If the implementation were to treat upper and lower case as the same,
the change would be a semantic substitution that adds the 'feature' of
seeing all 2**len case variants of a spelling as the same word.  This
identification would mute the breakage of old code by shifting its
overt appearance elsewhere, if anywhere.  It would also introduce
breakage in the reverse direction. While it would sometimes be correct
in new code, and therefore maybe a benefit, it would also sometimes be
wrong, even in new code.  The resulting non-identification of a bug at
its point of introduction would be a detriment.  To me, turning the
deletion into replacement by adding buggy intent inference makes it
even worse.  So I discount this alternative.

Since Guido appeared to accept the content of my essay and then
proposed something that to me strongly violates a seeming obvious
guideline contained therein, I was and am puzzled.  I first conjured
the idea that the proposal was a troll designed distract attention
from the division proposal while he finished 2.2a1 and rewrote the
PEP.  Since that seems false, I think maybe he and others might
actually have a less stringent guideline for deletions.  Or maybe I
have altogether missed some subtle, non-obvious-to-me point to the
proposal.

If the second idea is true, I invite presentation of such alternative
deletion criteria for discussion.  For the purpose of such a
discussion, I suggest setting aside the controversial case proposal
(which is *not* the prime focus of this posting) and using a
hypothetical such as the following:
'''
PEP: Deprecating Underscore

In natural language, underscores (underlines) are usually seen as text
decorations or space markers rather than as characters in themselves.
Thus, their inclusion with letters and digits in names is confusing to
beginners and jarring to some experienced programmers.  In private and
class magic names, the jar serves a purpose.  Not so in normal public
names.

A. The intermittant appearance of _ in commonly used built-in function
names (has_key, raw_imput, but {get/set/has}attr)  is especially
problematical.  Because _ has no pronunciation, it is easy to omit
when thinking, speaking, and writing.  How many Pythoneers actually
think or say 'has underscore key' instead of the buggy-when-written
'haskey'?  So lets remove _ at least from built-in function names.

B. (Radical alternative) Lets go all the way and delete _ from all
public names.  This will, in effect, remove 'underscore sensitivity'
from Python by ceasing to distiguish between '' and '_'.

Objection: Even moderate proposal A would break lots of code.
'''

What deletion criterion should any such proposal meet to overcome the
objection and be accepted?  What burden-of-proof should it meet?

Terry J. Reedy

[1] For this article, at least, this definition views a program as
including all modules that it depends on, including those normally
bundled with the interpreter as built-ins.  'Back-compatibility'
assumes that a program is carried back intact.  In practice, this may
mean wrapping an old version of a built-in to make it look like the
new version the program expects.  When identifiers change, it will
mean so.






From stepken at little-idiot.de  Wed Jul 11 07:31:38 2001
From: stepken at little-idiot.de (Guido Stepken)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:31:38 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994803257.19598.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b53fda0$0$151$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
> acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
> carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing
> it
> for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can
> Python become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?

I have been teaching python to kids ...12 years old .... they really had 
fun ... that's the (only) reason for the extreme growing acceptance for 
python over java or perl or php .... python will be #1 in 2 years 
.....expecially for huge projects ....

reards, Guido Stepken





From christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com  Mon Jul  9 17:01:29 2001
From: christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com (Chris McMillan)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 17:01:29 -0400
Subject: File processing
Message-ID: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>

Hello all!

I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
the right direction?  Thanks!

Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....

Thanks,

Chris




From alf at pisces.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 30 09:53:39 2001
From: alf at pisces.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:53:39 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: ANN: xmldiff 0.1.1
Message-ID: <slrn9mapv3.1p1.alf@pisces.logilab.fr>

Hi,

Logilab released today our first beta of xmldiff. It's version 0.1.1 but
is fully functionnal. As you already guessed, xmldiff figures out the
differences between two XML trees in the same way that diff does it for
text files.

Homepage:       http://www.logilab.org/xmldiff/

More Info:      http://www.logilab.org/xmldiff/HELP.txt

Download:       ftp://ftp.logilab.org/pub/xmldiff/

It's still a bit slow, but it works and gives correct results. As usual
all comments and ideas are welcome.

Happy XML-diff'ing !

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 22:51:03 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:51:03 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <15196.14524.979058.576152@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Skip Montanaro]
> ...
> I really don't understand the problem with teaching people new to
> Python right from the get-go that when you divide two ints it works
> like grade school long division.

I'm burned out on the repetition here.  It's not a question of being hard to
teach.  It's largely that it's never sensible for

    x = y / z

buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y and z
happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen not to be ints.
It's this damage to polymorphism that hurts people in real life, and we've
had years of testimony about that on c.l.py (even in this incarnation of the
debate, although it's hard to find unless you read every msg).

This isn't a question of teaching the rules, it's that the specific rule
here is essentially braindead in a language without static type
declarations.  If you read nothing else, read Guido's few messages on the
topic.  He covers it all succinctly and accurately (and generally declines
to get sucked into endless repetition -- but why a point needs to be made
500 times on Usenet is beyond me).

> ...
> You're pissing off a fairly significant fraction of the language's
> existing constituency in hopes of attracting some non-programmers
> to the language who may not come anyway for various other reasons.

I don't detect any trace of that hypothesized motive in Guido.  He wants to
repair what he has come to believe is a serious design error, and is
wrestling with ways to get that done.  What a remarkably different world it
would be if people tried to help <wink>.




From dinu at reportlab.com  Fri Jul 13 08:24:25 2001
From: dinu at reportlab.com (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:24:25 GMT
Subject: design patterns in python
References: <3b2786d5$1_3@newsfeeds>
Message-ID: <3b4ee55f.102689870@news.t-online.de>

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001 11:49:14 -0400, "raskol" <raskol at hushmail.com>
wrote:

>Hey folks,
>
>Being interested in looking at (and understanding) design patterns [GOF] in
>python... and having gone through the obligatory google searches etc.. I am
>still somewhat frustrated by the lack of currently available information
>relating to this specific subject. I mean there ARE some smatterings of
>implementation and insight, but as of now there is no single source for
>python patterns that has developed anything like authoritative mass or
>actually succeeded in 'comprehensively' covering the patterns in GOF book.
>
>Being a newbie, still a minor snakelet, I was wondering if there would be
>interest in an effort by some of the more lucid pythonistas out there to
>contribute their offerings to some central source: say the python cookbook
>or sourceforge or whatever. twould be a great service to the community!
>
>BTW I found this to be a useful link for an overview of the situation:
>http://thinkware.se/cgi-bin/thinki.cgi/PythonPatterns


Well, there used to be a Python Pattern-SIG:

  http://www.python.org/sigs/pattern-sig/

At some point Guido shot it down, because it was too silent 
and, in fact, it wasn't producing anything useful like a Python 
Catalog of Python Idioms, Pattern and Frameworks, which, 
in retrospect, it should have had as a real mission statement, 
I guess.

Back then it was said that pattern issues were discussed in 
a sufficient manner on comp.lang.python. I'm still not so happy 
with that, because this is a place to get easily lost, but YMMV
and there are other sigs with only very few messages per month.

Hmm, maybe someone wants to get it going again?!

Dinu


-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From garabik-news at spam.melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk  Sat Jul 21 11:06:24 2001
From: garabik-news at spam.melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk (Radovan Garabik)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 15:06:24 GMT
Subject: Is anybody coming from Pascal?
References: <slrn9li6so.4r2.edmund@ngetal.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9jc5pg$6bq$1@sunnews.cern.ch>

Edmund Strangely <edmund at ngetal.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
 : Hello,

 : I've been lurking here for a while while working my way through 'Learning
 : Python'. So far only a few things have pissed me off with it. I was just
 : wondering, is anybody else coming from Pascal? Or Modula2/3? The book I am

I came from solid Turbo Pascal background on MSDOS to linux, made a few
C programs and then discovered python

 : reading kind of assumes that you are coming from C, and as I understand it
 : Python is written in C which is why it shares some of the same
 : conventions. Python is my first object orientated language. Pascal was my

me too

 : second programming language (after BASIC on a spectrum) and although I

me too

 : sort of learned C later, I still prefer Pascal. I personally like it more

me too

 : than C for a few reasons. I don't think that I should have to worry about
 : how many bytes precisely my variables are stored in. (And I like BASIC
 : even better in this respect, in that integers and fp numbers are
 : automatically converted, and strings will grow and shrink as required (as
 : in Python seemingly)). I don't like the fact that in Python if

me too

 :>>>a=5
 :>>>b=2
 :>>>#and then
 :>>>c=a/b
 :>>>#then
 :>>>c
 : 2

 : in Pascal if you *want* modulo arithmetic (which is not normally the case
 : ) then you have DIV and MOD. I like having a distinction between functions

this I feel is a big design mis-decision in python. I liked div and mod
(/ as integer division is UGLY and having % instead of mod just goes
against main python principle, readibility)

 : and procedures, for purely aesthetic reasons (I think having loads of
 : function names followed by () just looks ugly, procedures don't give

it looks ugly, but since in python everything is reference, you somehow
have to tell the interpreter where to perform a call. I got used to it
quickly.

 : return values). Python only has functions, but I can forgive it that. But
 : the one thing above all that I think Pascal has over C (and which Python
 : shares) is that you can nest your procedures/functions! Most of my Pascal
 : programs had a mere few lines in the 'main' body of the program and the
 : rest would be large functions and procedures each with their own
 : sub-procedures and sub-functions with their own sub-sub units etc.

it was nice, and (unlike python) did not impose runtime penaly.
I un-learned to use nested function in python because of this. Shame.

 : When I
 : first started on C I just couldn't *believe* that you couldn't nest
 : functions, and just had to put them one after the other! You call that
 : structured programming?

Nobody calls programming in C structured :-)

 : I conclusion, and in reviewing this post, I seem to have been rambling a
 : bit (it's a bit late/early in the day) but I'd be interested to get a
 : response from anybody else who rates Mr Wirth, and in how any such people
 : finding the transition. I'd also be curious to hear from anybody who has

What I miss from pascal are arrays and enumerated types.
Lists are not the sameas arrays, NumPy is clumsy and unreadable and not
part of language.
Enumerated types were really nice and allowed you to concentrate
on the logic behind the program, not on the program by itself (and
were compiled pretty effectively). Having to simulate them
by strings or classes in python is just not the same.

Also the nested scopes problem in python is something at which
I stared in disbelief. How can a programming language have _this_
mess about scopes and claim to be logical and readable?
Pascal was perfect in this respect.

You can chooe between call by reference or call by value in pascal.
Python has internally only the former, but for the programmer the
overall effect looks like it arbitrarily uses sometimes the former,
sometimes the latter. Yuck.

 : tried object Pascal.

I tried (at the time of TP 5.5)
First I had troubles getting the concept of OO, then I did not
see much value in it, and quickly abandoned it, until I discovered python.

Ideal language for me would be (together with above-mentioned)
pascal-like, with python syntax, typed (allows effective compilation),
with (turbo)pascal and python types combined (char, byte, unicode char,
int, longint (double the size of int), int16, int32, int64 - to
explicitly tell the size, these are needed e.g. for network
applications, real, double, rational, infinite long (python-like),
list/tuple, dictionary, string, boolean (yes!), complex), pascal-like
arrays, do..while loop, pascal-like
for a:=something to b step c loop, python-like for i in something loop,
python-like OO, and, of course, with python-like variety of
external modules :-)


--
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!


From christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com  Tue Jul 10 14:53:57 2001
From: christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com (Chris McMillan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:53:57 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <01b001c1091f$c9c74340$0e4ab43f@kens> <mailman.994758022.15575.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ifima$8r69@interserv.etn.com>

When I run my script, below, it complains after the line f = open(fname,
'r') saying that it expected string, list found.  I believe this happens
because of what the glob command returns, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
FYI - I'm running Python 2.0 on Windows NT.  Thanks in advance for your
help!
Chris


import os
import glob

for fname in glob.glob('M:\\python\\*.dat'):
   fname = glob.glob('M:\\python\\*.dat')
   f = open(fname, 'r')
   lines = f.readlines()
   f.close()
   f = open(fname, 'w')
   f.writelines(lines[1:])
   f.close()





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul 10 11:59:14 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:59:14 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5226@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Excellent idea.  If folks are paying $4.95 per minute for psychic advice,
then a Python 900 number would work.  Heck, we could even get creative here.
Write a Python program to randomly generate some psychic advice, and open a
second psychic line for $4.95/minute.  You could even have the same line,
and answer like this.
Caller:  Ring, Ring.
         Hello.  Is the Guru in?
Respondent: Are you calling the Python Guru or the Python psychic.
Caller: I want the Python psychic.



-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin.Altman [mailto:benjamin.altman at noaa.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 10:14 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:

> 3. No Support! At least no 900 number to call for a per minute fee.
Doesn't
> seem to matter that in the past couple of years I have never had to wait
> over a day to get a answer to a question. Perhaps we would feel better if
> there were someone we could sue.

I am sure plenty of people would be willing to charge per minute to give
Python
advice - just a matter of offering the service to get some suckers.. I mean
companies to take it up.




From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 13 12:28:27 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:28:27 -0400
Subject: Undefining functions and classes
References: <3B4EFA40@operamail.com> <mailman.994889900.29132.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4f284a$0$170@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994889900.29132.python-list at python.org...
>
>     Vesselin> Does anyone know how to undefine a function or class in
Python
>
> Try
>
>     del func
>
> --
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> (847)971-7098
>

D'oh!






From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Tue Jul 31 11:04:27 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 11:04:27 -0400
Subject: Python Threads on Linux
References: <d396b814.0107302239.6341a93@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3dsnfdjg1w.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Ronan.Viernes at onsemi.com (Ronan Viernes) writes:
> 1. Is it normal for threads on LINUX to have their own process id
> thereby displayed in "ps -ef"? In AIX/HP, this is not the case right?

Correct; Linux threads have different PIDs because of how the kernel
treats them.  The fork() system call which creates a new process is
essentially a special case of the clone() system call that creates a
new thread, but that distinction doesn't matter to a Python
programmer.

--amk


From brian at sweetapp.com  Sun Jul 29 14:35:15 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 11:35:15 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
In-Reply-To: <3B644D52.9434E699@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <000201c1185d$35e77170$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

"Moore's law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant..." -- Paul
Prescod

Nice :-) I've got to remember that one. 




From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 21 10:16:36 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:16:36 GMT
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org> <+TaezWAGrHW7Ewyz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cpk812fjvp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> what makes the .tgz increase from 4275323 to 6187808?

By mistake, the Mac source tree was included.  since from now on it
will be included in all source releases, I propose to call this a
feature. ;-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 14:23:21 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:23:21 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <3b5a69a3$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net> <ubrklto6t10pidmh5bld02glmcmjd9jdvq@4ax.com> <9jee61$2ac$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <a56mltgsivmifio4rt7o2fpjmmh475d34o@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:46:25 +0500, Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> wrote
in comp.lang.python in article <9jee61$2ac$1 at slb6.atl.mindspring.net>:

:Sheila King wrote:
:
:> OK, interesting. I didn't realize you could make an exception without
:> subclassing it. So, I tried this script:
:
:Neither did I, but you probably don't want to do that.

Right.

:One reason to subclass from a common Exception base class is so 
:that exceptions can be caught based on inheritence.  Also, since 
:there's a common exception base class, all exceptions have common 
:behavior that you'd have to recode if you didn't subclass.  

You know, late last night/early this morning, that just kind of slipped
past me. But it makes perfect sense (of course).

:> Well, I am interested in further enlightenment on this topic...?
:
:I believe that the intent is for all exception classes to subclass from 
:Exception or one of its sublcasses.  I think that a common idiom is for 
:a module to declare its own base exception class.  Then, it can declare 
:many subclasses of *that* Exception subclass to use internally.  People 
:using the module can simply catch the base FooException unless they 
:have a good reason to get more specific.  Basically, they called code 
:in your module, and it blew up.  Often, that's as much as they can say, 
:and the error message attached to the exception *should be* enlightening 
:enough to troubleshoot the problem.  

Thanks. This is exactly the type of stuff that I am currently working
with and need to know about.

:For example, 

[excellent code for stack class with exceptions, snipped]

:Of course, this advice might be slightly off.  Python's exception stuff looks 
:a lot like the Java exception stuff, and I've done a lot more Java.  

It looked awfully good to me. I'm subclassing some of the mail modules,
like rfc822 right now, and also another project working with RGB vs. Hex
color values and the correct way of writing my own Exceptions for these
modules has been preventing me from getting very far into it, since I
keep pausing and wondering how to handle it, and my overview of the
entire module is affected by how I want to handle this.

Thanks,

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From rupe at metro.yak.net  Fri Jul  6 18:55:36 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 15:55:36 -0700
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it>
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107061455.19093036@posting.google.com>

Nicola Musatti <objectway at divalsim.it> wrote in message news:<3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7 at divalsim.it>...
> Hallo, everybody.
> I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
> language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
> toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
> lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
> C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?
> 
> Cheers,
> Nicola

Nicola,

First off, don't bother with Mark Lutz's larger book, "Programming
Python" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/python2/).  It's big, but
intended to teach the language, and not act as a reference.

However, do get Mark's "Python Pocket Reference"
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonpr/).  It's a great, concise
little volume for looking up standard functions, and remembering which
operations are legal for which datatypes.  No frills, no fluff, and as
the title implies, pocket sized, so lots of useful modules aren't
discussed.

Far and away the best Python book that I've seen is David Beazley's
"Python Essential Reference"
(http://www.newriders.com/books/title.cfm?isbn=0735709017), published
by New Riders.  I can't speak highly enough of this book.  Wonderfully
concise, great usage examples, and covers many of the important
modules that Mark Lutz's Pocket Reference lacks.    If you only get a
single book on the language, this is the one.

--- Rupert


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 12:56:42 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:56:42 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B559B71.C08C6145@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107182051120.1370-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>Here's an update of the pre-PEP. After this round of comments, the
>PEP will be checked into CVS (provided Barry assigns a PEP number,
>hi Barry ;-)

>    This PEP proposes to introduce a syntax to declare the encoding of
>    a Python source file. The encoding information is then used by the
>    Python parser to interpret the file using the given encoding. Most
>    notably this enhances the interpretation of Unicode literals in
>    the source code and makes it possible to write Unicode literals
>    using e.g. UTF-8 directly in an Unicode aware editor.

I have not understood: will Unicode encoding be directly allowed or only
ASCII-compatible encodings (like UTF-8)?

>Problem
>
>    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
>    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
>    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
>    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian
>    countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
>    favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
>    for Unicode literals.

Isn't it time for better gettext support in Python? Then for i18n-enabled
programs, encodings will belong to .mo, .po or whatever called files...

>Proposed Solution
>
>    I propose to make the Python source code encoding both visible and
>    changeable on a per-source file basis by using a special comment
>    at the top of the file to declare the encoding.
>
>    To make Python aware of this encoding declaration a number of
>    concept changes are necessary with repect to the handling of
>    Python source code data.

>Scope
>
>    This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
>    proposed magic comment.

>    Without the magic comment in the proposed
>    position, Python will treat the source file as it does currently
>    to maintain backwards compatibility.

This is what I like most. Will optimization be mentioned here?


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 18, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Hard work never killed anyone, but why chance it?" _/




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 11:25:42 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:25:42 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3m007.28573$zT1.1522313@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in ...
> "Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> >
> >...
> > The current coercion rules are simple, easy to grasp, and consistent
> > with how most people are taught arithmetic.
>
> That is simply not true. Most people do not expect these four
> expressions to yield different results:
>
> 1.0/3.0
> 1/3
> 1.0/3
> 1/3.0
>
> If you were taught this in school, it must be "new math".
>
Actually, in my case it's "old fart programming". You've got a
floating-point arithmetic unit? You're lucky. I remember, when I were a lad,
we 'ad to take the digits ... [drools into beard & continues to mumble].

But, in fact, I don't think it's that unreasonable to expect binary
operations on integers to be closed over the integers, and devil take the
overflows and fractional remainders. This may, however, sinly be a result of
my having done it that way in countless programming languages over the
years. I have seen the discussions about what "most people" expect, and
remain unconvinced. Since I'm not going to be doing the implementation,
though, I don't grumble *too* much.

I do, however, worry about possible code breakage. I think that changing
integer arithmetic will cause many more users of existing program to be
confused than newbies who have ot understand the present rules. Sometimes
you just have to say "that's the way things are".

> >...
> >   2) Integers should be treated as a distinct type from reals with
> >      automatic coercion only as necessary (with the current rules).
>
> What is "necessary"? Why is automatic coercion *ever* necessary? Only to
> simulate the mathematics we are taught in primary school where the above
> statement are all equivalent.
>
> >      For instance, the new proposal sensibly does not suggest that lists
> >      should support real indices,
>
> That might well be an implication of PEP 228.
>
> http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0228.html
>
Of course dictionaries already treat equivalent numeric values as equal
keys, hence:

>>> d = {1: "Hello, Paul"}
>>> d[1.0+0j]
'Hello, Paul'

However, anyone relying on exact equality of floating-point values is likey
to be disappointed at some stage unless they know *exactly* what they're
doing. Then, they'll just be occasionally surprised :-)

> >  however simple expressions such
> >      as a[i/3] would have to be coded as a[int(i/3)] or a[i//3]
> >      in order to be sure to avoid a type error.
>
> You mean that you would have to say exactly what you mean according to
> the new syntax. That's hardly a legitimate argument against the syntax.
> "If you add a 'function' keyword, I would have to precede my function
> calls with it." Well, yeah, that's the point of adding new syntax.

If reals are allowed as list/tuple subscripts then

i[1.0]

will be valid, but

i[1.1]

will (I hope) not. Peronally I can't help feeling that

"Subscript not exact integer value"

might also be a little hard for newbies to cope with. Let alone "Subscript
value is not exact" even when the recorded value *is exactly* integral.

Still, I don't have to implement all this stuff, so if the development team
think it's worthwhile then that's fine. Just trying to point out a few
gotchas, which probably won't even be previously unconsidered.

regards
 Steve





From quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sat Jul 28 14:33:33 2001
From: quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 18:33:33 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:02:40 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Kirill Simonov <kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua> writes:
>
>> It would be nice to have 'in' operator for types:
>> 
>> assert (num in int)
>> assert (msg in str)

This implies (at least to me) that 'in' would be a general shorthand for
'isinstance'.  But then I would sort of expect '3 in [1,2,3,4]' to behave like
'isinstance(3, [1,2,3,4])'

Or you could just say that type objects implement a __contains__ method that
does an isinstance.  But if classes and types are unified, that would get in
the way of classes that define __contains__.  You'd have to think of it as a
class method (or a metaclass method), which is in a different namespace than
instance methods.  Or something.

It's a nice syntax, but it seems a bit confusing to me.


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 11 19:02:00 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:02:00 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <3B4BF3C5.419FEC0D@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEMKKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> If you want to turn every + - * / etc into a long-winded function
> call ...

[Greg Ewing]
> No, I don't want to do that, obviously.

That's good to know.

> But I also wouldn't like to see a piece of implicit state controlling
> the number of digits I get out of arithmetic operations.

If precision is adjustable, seems to me it's "usually explicit" (which you
just said you don't want) or "usually implicit" (which you just said you
don't want).  If you have another idea, let's hear it -- but remember I said
at the start that the issue can't be wished away.

BTW, if you're running on a Pentium box, there's a piece of implicit state
controlling the number of digits (bits) you get out of every fp operation.
How much of a burden has that been to you?  My guess is "none", and, if so,
why assume it would be worse for decimal fp?

> I've had experiences with that in Hypertalk, all of them bad.

Haven't used it, and didn't find any reference docs on the web that admitted
to such a thing in Hypertalk; seemed to imply it handled 19-digit
arithmetic, with a numberFormat property to control (only) *display*
precision.  So, sorry, but this broth is too thin to choke on <wink>.




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 09:59:52 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:59:52 +0100
Subject: Win2k Tkinter checkbuttons
References: <MDxSHIA$eHT7Ew8o@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <s77ofqlov3p.fsf@xfresno.math.ias.edu>
Message-ID: <VbvUhjAYNvU7Ewmw@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <s77ofqlov3p.fsf at xfresno.math.ias.edu>, Ulrich Gortz
<u at g0ertz.de> writes
>Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
>> I'm having problems with menu checkbuttons under python2.1 running under
>> win2k sp2. When I pop up a menu containing a ticked item I don't see all
>> of the tick. When the mouse passes over the checkbutton the tick
>> suddenly gets fully displayed.
>
>I have exactly the same problem (see also 
>http://www.g0ertz.de/tkinter.html ); I don't know how to fix it.
>
>Ulrich
>
yes the problem your images show are identical to mine. I know this
doesn't have to happen as I have native Tk apps which do/don't show it
and so far as I can tell by dumping out the menu properties in both
cases there isn't anything seriously different about them as far as
colours/font/fontsizes etc. I have a vague feeling it might be related
to the update speed. 
-- 
Robin Becker


From wqh-2 at 263.net  Tue Jul 31 21:52:39 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 09:52:39 +0800 (CST)
Subject: how to know whether the item in a diretory is a file/directory
Message-ID: <3B6760E7.19039@mta6>

I want to process all the files in a diretory,and ignore the subdirectorys in it
,I use  os.listdir() to list all the items,but I do not know whether the selected
item is a file
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 13:51:27 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:51:27 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com> <mailman.996595747.3707.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpvgk9xa0y.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Kirill Simonov <kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua> writes:

> It is better to change type comparison, e.g.
>     (A >= B) == issubclass(A, B)

Hm, people would forever be mixing up whether it was A <= B or A >= B. :-(

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From maxx at easynews.com  Fri Jul 27 12:54:02 2001
From: maxx at easynews.com (maxx at easynews.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:54:02 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <rp63mtc9lsr16m82lgo3s4t51d2dvo7agh@4ax.com>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:12:55 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
wrote:

>In article <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan at g.local>, Gareth McCaughan
><Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> writes
>....
>>More: to be benevolent is to *try* to act in a way
>>consistent with the person's best interests[1], even
>>if in fact you're wrong. So even if Guido is as
>>horribly wrong as some people here say he is about
>>what their best interests are, that's no reason to
>>think he isn't benevolent.
>...
>We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
>God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
>opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
>will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.

Why is it, whenever someone believes that they know what is the best and only
"truly right" way for the rest of us, they invoke the name of their favorite
creator? Is it perhaps because they do not actually have anything to contribute,
but feel that they must be heard anyhow?



From DavidA at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 20 15:23:10 2001
From: DavidA at ActiveState.com (David Ascher)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:23:10 -0700
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net> <slrn9ldogs.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3d4rs74t5d.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <3B58851E.5FFA4844@ActiveState.com>

Andrew Kuchling wrote:

> I'm a bit doubtful that the CLR will really be suited for languages
> other than C# or VB.  Sure, with some hammering you can compile Python
> to CLR, just as you can compile it to Java bytecodes, but there seems
> to be a sizable performance hit, judging by a message from David
> Ascher archived at
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/638072.  

I think you're being overly pessimistic.  As I said in that post,
getting Python to work well on the CLR requires changes either to the
CLR or to Python (or a lot of work).  None of those are impossible,
though.  I'm still hopeful that someone will solve some of the
optimization problems for Python using type analysis.

Also, Jython shows that even with a performance hit, Python on a VM is a
very useful thing.  So, Python on the CLR could still be useful, even if
it's not as fast as native-python.  

> I suspect .NET's multilanguage will turn out to be a feature used more as a
> selling point than in practical use.  

In the short term, probably.  Longer term, I think it's up to us, the
various language communities, to see how we can rise to the challenge.
=)

-- David Ascher
   ActiveState

   New! ASPN - ActiveState Programmer Network
   Essential programming tools and information
   http://www.ActiveState.com/ASPN



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 20 20:52:46 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 00:52:46 GMT
Subject: basic python-unix question
References: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net> <slrn9lc3vt.85k.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9ldi3r.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9lhkiu.t43.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:46:03 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
wrote:
>Because BSD doesn't like ``ps ef''? Or because there's a problem 
>with os.system()?

The bsd "ps" command doesn't take the same flags.  And some linux "ps"s will
guess bsd or sysv depending on whether the options are preceeded with a '-',
but will guess wrong on the above.  Add in vendor extensions and GNU
extensions and random other compatibility hacks, and it's pretty out of
control.


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 07:55:29 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:55:29 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com>

On 22 Jul 2001 09:55:50 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Sun, 22 Jul 2001 09:35:27 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:
>
>> And as it happens, I remember my first experience with Pascal led
>> to the question "why does Pascal need two division operators when
>> BASIC works perfectly well with one?"
>
>The Basic I used didn't have integer division at all, which is hardly
>an improvement.

I've used at least a dozen versions of BASIC in my time, and they all
supported integer division using the / operator - one freaky exception
does not make a rule.

>All arithmetic operators and functions like divmod, except /, have the
>property that the value of the result, as long as it's not an error,
>depends only on the values of arguments - not on their types.

Not true.

1 + 1 == 2
1.0 + 1.0 == 2.0
1L + 1L == 2L
(1+1j) + (1+1j) = (2+2j)

All arithmetic operators operate in a way that depends on the data
types of their arguments - they use that data type to define the set
of values they are operating in, and they return a result of the
appropriate type. There is automatic casting, of course, such as...

1.0 + 2 == 3.0

But you get the same thing in C, C++, BASIC, Java, I think Pascal, and
many others. It is a convenience - it does not make integers
equivalent to floats. Python is more strongly typed than many of these
languages - it merely applies its typing rules at run-time and based
on the data, not the container. I see no reason good reason to weaken
Python by discarding strong typing.

I stand by my earlier case - when working with integers, 2 / 3 == 1
remainder 1. Integer operations should have integer results.

If you had five children and three prospective foster mothers, how
would you allocate them - 1.6667 children to each parent? Of course
not. You'd allocate one each to start with, then worry about what to
do with the remaining two. This dealing with the remainder is quite
common. For instance, in dealing with money your are dealing with
integer multiples of the smallest denomination - pennies in the UK,
cents in the US or whatever. You can't give someone a third of a
penny, so you have to deal with the remainder as a separate issue.

>My taste suggests the following:
>
>- div and mod should be operators which return components of divmod.
>  divmod works as currently.

I would like a 'mod' operator, I admit, but it wouldn't be the same as
the current '%' operator (and the mod part of divmod) because they
provide the remainder - not the modulo - which is different when the
arguments include negative numbers. I'd therefore like 'mod' and 'rem'
- like Ada - so I could choose which meaning I want without having to
do extra checks. I also prefer the explicit names rather than '%'
which - strangly enough - looks like it should relate to percentages
for me.

It is, however, far too late to worry about such changes.

New keywords for div and mod may sound good, but I wonder how many
people have written code like...

  (div, mod) = divmod(x, y)

>- / applied to ints or longs should return the exact result as a rational.

Support for rationals is a good idea, but I'd prefer to see them as a
separate type. When working with rationals or floats or whatever, you
should get a result appropriate to that type.

>  % should remain only in its sprintf meaning.
>
>- When rationals and floats are mixed, the result is a float.

Any float is merely an alternative representation of a rational,
whether it is a binary float or a decimal float. For example...

0.0001 == 1/10000

Wherever you put the point, it is a simple matter to derive an integer
numerator and denominator to represent a particular float exactly as a
rational - even when the exponent (the * base**n part) is included.

Not every rational can be represented as a float, however - at least
not in a given base. For example, 1/3 cannot be perfectly represented
as either a binary or decimal float.

Logically, operations with mixed float and rational arguments should
give rational results - the float argument can be accurately
converted, and the result is less likely to have lost precision.

The only real values that cannot be represented exactly as rationals
are irrational numbers - such as pi, sqrt(2) and e. These values
equally cannot be represented exactly as floats. In real life, of
course, approximations are normally good enough.

Of course, this then opens a major can of worms - rational versions of
trig functions and similar would not be realistic, and therefore you'd
get lots of implicit conversions from floats to rationals (rationals
being more general than floats) only to have to convert back again for
the trig functions, and so on.

And of course the float->rational argument is only so far formed. A
very large positive or negative float - using, as floats do, an
exponential representation - may represent some values which cannot be
represented in a given implementation of rationals, even though any
float has an exact rational representation in theory - floats are very
good at allowing large values by limiting the precision. Being vague
about the data type just causes more and more problems.

>- Given the above assumptions, I'm not sure what literals like
>  1.2 should produce. All possibilities have reasons: rationals,
>  floats, or decimal floats. Anyway, the question is what should be
>  the default, because other possibilities can be formed by using
>  a letter suffix. I would either let 1.2 mean a rational and 1.2f
>  a float, or 1.2 a float and 1.2r a rational. More probably the
>  former. Decimal floats should not be necessary: they are inexact
>  like binary floats and slow like rationals.

Floats are not slow on modern hardware. Slower than integers perhaps,
but not slower than long integers. Long integers are implemented by
software algorithms, whereas float operations are done by a single
highly optimised CPU instruction.

Rationals will be slow because they will also have to be implemented
by software and, to get maximum benefit, should have long integers as
the numerator and denominator.



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Fri Jul 27 06:13:55 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:13:55 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list@python.org> <9jmp05$47j$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m2fn3.498.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

25 Jul 2001 17:35:33 +0200, Carel Fellinger <cfelling at iae.nl> pisze:

> Me being stupid, I wonder how I'm going to access goodies hidden in
> foreign alfabet scripts.  Say GooodyScript.py is encoded in Japanese
> and I'm to use the classes and functions in them that have Japanese
> names, how am I supposed to call them in my Dutch encoded script?

I suspect that if foreign characters are allowed in identifiers,
the recommended practice would be to make each feature available
under an ASCII name too.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Thu Jul 26 12:04:34 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 09:04:34 -0700
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107260804.6fa53baf@posting.google.com>

Kevin.Smith at sas.com (Kevin Smith) wrote in message news:<9jn382$lqf$1 at license1.unx.sas.com>...

> I am very glad to see the new features of Python 2.2, but I do have a minor 
> gripe about the implementation of static and class methods.  My issue stems 
> from the fact that when glancing over Python code that uses static or class 
> methods, you cannot tell that a method is a static or class method by looking 
> at the point where it is defined.  Here is the example given on the Python web 
> site.
> 
> class C:
>         def foo(x, y):
>             print "classmethod", x, y
>         foo = classmethod(foo)
> 
> It is clear that 'foo' is a class method simply because the classmethod() call 
> is only two lines away.  It is not so clear when 'foo' is a 100 line method. 

[snip]

I would also use the fact that 'foo' has no 'self' parameter as a clue
that it is a class method.  I realize that naming it 'self' is an
artificial convention, but it is followed so often that I feel pretty
safe using it as an at-a-glance guideline.


Tom


From kens at sightreader.com  Mon Jul 30 19:50:53 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:50:53 -0700
Subject: The best gui library for newbies. 
References: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt>
Message-ID: <001901c11952$78992680$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

"David A." <man_at_moon at hotmail.com> wrote:

> H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to beegin
doing
> some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing I want to know is
wich
> one is the best gui toolkit for python when you are a newbie? Wxpython,
> tkinter?? Whatis important for me is easy of use and well documented!!
this
> is what I am looking for.
>
> Thank you for any help in advance!!!

wxPython.  And the first thing to do after you download it is RTFD - Run The
Freakin Demo!
www.wxpython.org

In addition the the regular documentation, which is good and complete
(except for the fact that it is really C++ documentation instead of python
documentation), you should check out wxPyWiki (a community driven
documentation system).
http://wxpython.org/cgi-bin/wiki

If you are creating dialogs, you also should get wxDesigner, a really awsome
dialog editor:
http://www.roebling.de/ (unfortunately, this site seems to be having
problems right now)

- Ken Seehof





From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 16:55:45 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:55:45 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
In-Reply-To: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <15180.48465.868266.498677@beluga.mojam.com>

    William> So, are there any tools to translate 1.5.2 pickles to 2.x
    William> versions of the pickle format?  

I wasn't aware that 2.x couldn't read pickles created by 1.5.2.  I just
tried a simple example without any problem (sorry, 1.6 is as far as I go
back on my local machine):

    % python1.6
    Python 1.6 (#1, Jul 10 2001, 17:24:51)  [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Copyright (c) 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
    All Rights Reserved.
    Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam.
    All Rights Reserved.
    >>> class foo:
    ...    pass
    ... 
    >>> a = foo()
    >>> a.x = 1
    >>> b = ["a",1,(0,1,2)]
    >>> t = (a,b)
    >>> d = {"key":t}
    >>> d
    {'key': (<__main__.foo instance at 8239bf8>, ['a', 1, (0, 1, 2)])}
    >>> import pickle
    >>> f = open("pickle.dat", "w")
    >>> pickle.dump.__doc__
    >>> pickle.dump(d, f)
    >>> f.close()
    >>> 
    % python2.1
    Python 2.1.1c1 (#13, Jul 10 2001, 17:30:38) 
    [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> class foo:
    ...    pass
    ... 
    >>> import pickle
    >>> d = pickle.load(open("pickle.dat"))
    >>> d
    {'key': (<__main__.foo instance at 0x82319cc>, ['a', 1, (0, 1, 2)])}

I see a comment in the pickle lib ref manual section about a change to
pickle's behavior that was introduced in 1.5b2 (significantly before 1.5.2),
but nothing about 1.5.2->2.x incompatibilities.  Can you be more specific
about what's not working for you?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From howard at eegsoftware.com  Wed Jul 11 14:10:48 2001
From: howard at eegsoftware.com (howard at eegsoftware.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:10:48 GMT
Subject: extra TK window in embedded app
Message-ID: <3b4c96a8.8931442@news-server.socal.rr.com>

I have embedded Python 2.0 into a Windows app. 

(BTW:  Forget the examples/manual.  You MUST define argv with
PySys_SetArgv() or you get an exception on trying to create a Tk()
object.  Of course, under Windows the stderr message goes in the bit
bucket.  Is there any way to make a debugging window to capture
stderr/stdout?  It seems to me I have seen this
duscussed......somewhere)

When I trying running a (Tkinter +PMW) script, I get not only the
window I expected but another empty window.  I don't get this extra
window when running from the command line or from a (Pythonw)
shortcut.

I assume that it is something in Tk/Python that is creating a toplevel
window by default.

Any clues on how to inhibit this?

Howard Lightstone
EEGSoftware
howard at eegsoftware.com


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Sun Jul  8 23:46:24 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:46:24 -0400
Subject: Package DB: strawman PEP
Message-ID: <20010708234624.A30892@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

It seems time to bite the bullet and actually begin designing and
implementing a database of installed packages.  As a strawman to get a
focused discussion started, here's a draft of a PEP, with lots of
XXX's in it.  Followups to the Distutils SIG, please.

--amk

PEP: XXX
Title: A Database of Installed Python Packages
Version: $Revision: 1.1 $
Author: A.M. Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org>
Type: Standards Track
Created: 08-Jul-2001
Status: Draft
Post-History: 

Introduction

    This PEP describes a format for a database of Python packages 
    installed on a system.


Requirements

    We need a way to figure out what packages, and what versions of
    those packages, are installed on a system.  We want to provide
    features similar to CPAN, APT, or RPM.  Required use cases that
    should be supported are:
 
        * Is package X on a system?  
        * What version of package X is installed?
        * Where can the new version of package X be found?  
          XXX Does this mean "a home page where the user can go and
          find a download link", or "a place where a program can find
          the newest version?"  Perhaps both...
        * What files did package X put on my system?
        * What package did the file x/y/z.py come from?
        * Has anyone modified x/y/z.py locally?


Database Location

    The database lives in a bunch of files under
    <prefix>/lib/python<version>/install/.  This location will be
    called INSTALLDB through the remainder of this PEP.

    XXX is that a good location?  What effect does platform-dependent code
    vs. platform-independent code have on this?

    The structure of the database is deliberately kept simple; each
    file in this directory or its subdirectories (if any) describes a
    single package.

    The rationale for scanning subdirectories is that we can move to a
    directory-based indexing scheme if the package directory contains
    too many entries.  That is, instead of $INSTALLDB/Numeric, we
    could switch to $INSTALLDB/N/Nu/Numeric or some similar scheme.

    XXX how much do we care about performance?  Do we really need to
    use an anydbm file or something similar?

    XXX is the actual filename important?  Let's say the installation
    data for PIL is in the file INSTALLDB/Numeric.  Is this OK?  When
    we want to figure out if Numeric is installed, do we want to open
    a single file, or have to scan them all?  Note that for
    human-interface purposes, we'll often have to scan all the
    packages anyway, for a case-insensitive or keyword search.


Database Contents

    Each file in $INSTALLDB or its subdirectories describes a single
    package, and has the following contents:

        An initial line listing the sections in this file, separated
        by whitespace.  Currently this will always be 'PKG-INFO
        FILES'.  This is for future-proofing; if we add a new section,
        for example to list documentation files, then we'd add a DOCS
        section and list it in the contents.  Sections are always
        separated by blank lines.  XXX too simple?

        [PKG-INFO section] An initial set of RFC-822 headers
        containing the package information for a file, as described in
        PEP 241, "Metadata for Python Software Packages".

        A blank line indicating the end of the PKG-INFO section.

        An entry for each file installed by the package.  
        XXX Are .pyc and .pyo files in this list?  What about compiled
        .so files?  AMK thinks "no" and "yes", respectively.

    Each file's entry is a single tab-delimited line that contains the
    following fields: 
    XXX should each file entry be all on one line and
    tab-delimited?  More RFC-822 headers?  AMK thinks tab-delimited
    seems sufficent.

        * The file's size
 
        * XXX do we need to store permissions?  The owner/group?  

        * An MD5 digest of the file, written in hex.  (XXX All 16
          bytes of the digest seems unnecessary; first 8 bytes only,
          maybe?  Is a zlib.crc32() hash sufficient?)

        * The file's full path, as installed on the system.  (XXX
          should it be relative to sys.prefix, or sys.prefix +
          '/lib/python<version>?'  If so, full paths are still needed;
          consider a package that installs a startup script such as
          /etc/init.d/zope)
          
        * XXX some sort of type indicator, to indicate whether this is
          a Python module, binary module, documentation file, config
          file?  Do we need this?

    A package that uses the Distutils for installation will
    automatically update the database.  Packages that roll their own
    installation 

    XXX what's the relationship between this database and the RPM or
    DPKG database?  I'm tempted to make the Python database completely
    optional; a distributor can preserve the interface of the package
    management tool and replace it with their own wrapper on top of
    their own package manager.  (XXX but how would the Distutils know
    that, and not bother to update the Python database?)

    
Deliverables
  
    Patches to the Distutils that 1) implement a InstallationDatabase
    class, 2) Update the database when a new package is installed.  3)
    a simple package management tool, features to be added to this
    PEP.  (Or a separate PEP?)  


References

    [1] Michael Muller's patch (posted to the Distutils-SIG around 28
        Dec 1999) generates a list of installed files.


Acknowledgements

    Ideas for this PEP originally came from postings by Greg Ward,
    Fred Drake, Mats Wichmann, and others.


Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.


Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:






From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  2 11:58:10 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 11:58:10 -0400
Subject: Python--eclectic or ubiquitous
References: <5174eed0.0107020747.6836d160@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etd4rsvs4q5.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> After five years of following Python, I haven&#8217;t seen much
> improvement in the areas that seem to be the most natural fit for
> Python: Commercial quality database support and robust web server
> modules.

What database do you want to access?  I thought the database support was
adequate, though I must admit I haven't used it extensively.  Have you
seen this page?

http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py/973100124

And wrt web servers, you might want to google for mod_python.  I haven't
used it extensively either, though.  I've used zope more, which you
might also want to have a look at.

Alex.


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul  3 10:18:41 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:18:41 +0200
Subject: newbie apply() question
In-Reply-To: <3b415332.96563631@news.supernews.com>
References: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net> <3b415332.96563631@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <20010703161841.T8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 06:09:41AM +0000, xtian at hyperactive.co.nz wrote:

> Hey - I feel like the Martellibot - that was long.

That's funny.... I thought this *was* a martellibot posting -- I usually
don't check a message's sender/poster until halfway through the email, if at
all, and it wasn't until your signature that I realized you weren't the
m-bot :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 18:11:19 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 15:11:19 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <9htfu7$cb1$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460 at nnrp4.proxad.net>,
Dublanc, David <ddublanc at free.fr> wrote:
>
>What is exactly weak typing ? I believed that Python was weak typing !

perl -e "print '1' + '1'"
perl -e "print 1 . 1"
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 07:28:54 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:28:54 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <j4zoaoubux.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) writes:

> The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I
> thought that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't
> find anything (except the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).

If you wanted to create a scripting host API for Unix, I'd suggest
that CORBA is just right for the problem. It will allow to integrate
arbitrary interpreters using separate processes; all you need is a
CORBA implementation for the scripting language - which is available
for the major ones. It also allows you to integrate the interpreter
in-process for those selected languages that support binary plug-ins,
with minimal changes to the host.

Regards,
Martin



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 10:49:26 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 18:49:26 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: I'd Like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
In-Reply-To: <3b41d693$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031847390.30661-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 3 Jul 2001, Doug Fort wrote:
> I have some time on my hands.  It seems like a good opportunity to do some
> noncommercial Python programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm
> more suited to be the lackey than the mad scientist.
>
> I've checked the 'Project Help Wanted' on SourceForge and don't see
> anything that really fits.
>
> Anybody need some Python code on an Open Source project?
>
> You can see some of my work at http://pyagent.sourceforge.net and at
> http://asynchttp.sourceforge.net.

   Your asynchttp will be exceptionally good addition to my project
"Bookmarks Database and Internet robot":
   http://phd.pp.ru/Software/Python/#bookmarks_db

   I am longing for an asyncore-based robot!

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul  3 19:16:57 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 19:16:57 -0400
Subject: Strange os.popen() behavior
References: <3B41F083.55F65C46@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <uwv5pzjpy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Carsten Gaebler <clpy at snakefarm.org> writes:

> Hi there!
> 
> I have a problem with a script that reads the contents of /etc/passwd from
> a remote host. It doesn't always seem to read all lines:
(...)
> If I enter the SSH command in a shell I always get all 969 lines of
> /etc/passwd (the file does not change over time). Any clues?

You might try also printing out the exit code of the child process
(the result from your pipe.close() call) - perhaps the ssh is being
interrupted or otherwise losing the connection?

Another thought might be to try explicitly coding a readline() loop
rather than the single call to readlines() to see if you notice any
difference?  Perhaps there's some interaction with readlines() and the
pipe that makes it think it is done with data too early.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From fdrake at cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com  Thu Jul 12 17:37:23 2001
From: fdrake at cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com (Fred Drake)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:37:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [maintenance doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010712213723.CE4202892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

	http://python.sourceforge.net/maint-docs/


Final documentation build for Python 2.1.1 release candidate 1.  This
version is also available at the Python FTP site:

    ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/2.1.1c1/




From stefan.heimann at web.de  Fri Jul 20 15:36:38 2001
From: stefan.heimann at web.de (Stefan Heimann)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 19:36:38 GMT
Subject: Emacs and ecb with python
Message-ID: <slrn9lh21d.ls.stefan.heimann@honk.ratzer>

Hi!

Has anyone a patch to use the emacs code browser with python?
If not, does anyone knwos how to write a extension for the semantic
parser for python (I think this would be the most difficult part of
creating such a patch)?
I tried the emacs code browser with java and it rocks, but using it
with python would be much better... ;-)

thanks

Stefan


From xucs007 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 14:55:36 2001
From: xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 11:55:36 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <8f41cfd.0107181055.3b34851a@posting.google.com>

Just spent a little time to compare 4 stupid again algorithms
(changed a little bit from last time) for both python and perl
(codes attached) on two systems (SunOS and Linux):
	1. while loop, global variables
	2. for loop, global variables
	3. while loop, local variables (in function)
	4. for loop, local variables (in function)
I used `time [1234].p[yl]` to get the time info. The user time
is as follows:

PII 450MHz, Dell Precision 4100 Desktop, SunOS 5.8 i386
                #1      #2      #3      #4
Python 2.1a1:   5.1     3.1     4.5     2.7
Perl 5.005_03:  1.8     1.6     1.7     1.6


PIII 1GHz, MTech 8500 Notebook, i386 Linux (Mandrake 8.0, kernal 2.4)
                #1      #2      #3      #4
Python 2.0:     2.34    1.38    1.54    0.98
Perl 5.6.0:     0.95    1.22    0.95    1.21

The closest match is on Linux, 0.98 (python#4) vs. 0.95 (perl#1,#3).
Python still can't beat Perl, :-(  But I will continue to use Python
to do uncritical data analysis, :-)



P.S. Codes are:
####################### 1.pl: while loop, global var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env perl
$i = 0;
$j = 0.;
while ($i < 1e6) {
        $j += $i * 2.5;
        $i++;
}
print $i, ' ', $j, "\n";

####################### 1.py: while loop, global var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env python
i, j = 0, 0.
while i<1e6:
        j += i*2.5
        i += 1
print i, j



####################### 2.pl: for loop, global var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env perl
$j = 0.;
for ($i=0; $i < 1e6; $i++) {
        $j += $i * 2.5;
}
print $i, ' ', $j, "\n";

####################### 2.py: for loop, global var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env python
j = 0.
for i in xrange(1e6):
        j += i*2.5
print i, j



####################### 3.pl: while loop, local var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env perl
sub func {
        $j = 0.;
        $i = 0;
        while ($i < 1e6) {
                $j += $i * 2.5;
                $i ++;
        }
        print $i, ' ', $j, "\n";
}
&func;

####################### 3.py: while loop, local var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env python
def func ():
        i, j = 0, 0.
        while i<1e6:
                j += i*2.5
                i += 1
        print i, j
func()



####################### 4.pl: for loop, local var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env perl
sub func {
        $j = 0.;
        for ($i=0; $i < 1e6; $i++) {
                $j += $i * 2.5;
        }
        print $i, ' ', $j, "\n";
}
&func;

####################### 4.py: for loop, local var #####################
#!/usr/bin/env python
def func ():
        j = 0.
        for i in xrange(1e6):
                j += i*2.5
        print i, j
func()


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 17:34:07 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:34:07 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <mailman.995917312.15332.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9s4pltg7l5r04652q60oqgfu792ha0f1b2@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:41:18 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
wrote:

>Already said I don't care what other languages do here, and, yes, of course
>that's my opinion -- like yours is yours.

And that's *ALL* I need to prove to show that there is no good reason
to implement PEP0238 - the difference between an opinion and a
supposedly undeniable fact.



From grodet at cochin.univ-paris5.fr  Mon Jul  2 06:16:17 2001
From: grodet at cochin.univ-paris5.fr (GN)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:16:17 +0200
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=E0?= vendre
Message-ID: <3B4049F0.7068DE7E@cochin.univ-paris5.fr>

un ordinateur fait main, fonctionne tr?s bien et n'a jamais eu de
probl?me syst?me


Facture          Prix (F)
Bo?tier moyen tour ATX                                  oui
260
Ventilateur pour bo?tier
oui              75
Carte graphique ATI xpert play 8 Mo AGP    oui               410
Carte son Sound Blaster Live (CREATIVE)    oui              410
Carte de d?compression PC-DVD Dxr3        non              590
Carte m?re ASUS P3B-F                              oui
949
CPU PENTIUM III 450 MHZ UDMA 66    oui                1328
Ventilateur pour Pentium III
oui                100
Lecteur DVD 6X PIONNER IDE                  oui                699
Graveur CD-RW CRX100E                          non                1499
DD 8.4 Go SEAGATE IDE UDMA 66        oui                   788
Lecteur de disquette 3" 1/2 SONY                 oui
100
M?moire SDRAM 64Mo PC-100                 oui                   938
M?moire DIMM 128 Mo SDRAM PC-133    oui                 485
Haut Parleur Sound Blaster Speakers35 (CREATIVE)  non   169
Imprimante HP DESKJET 610C                    oui                   690
Ecran 15" Hewlett PACKARD                       non                 500
Calvier 108 touches Win95-98                        oui
99
Souris LOGITECH avec roulette                     non
265


Total         10354 F

Vends: 7000 F ? d?battre

Me joindre soit ? mon adresse  grodet.n at voila.fr
ou   grodet at cochin.univ-paris5.fr
ou t?l: 06.63.12.41.96
laissez un message et un num?ro de t?l si vous tomez sur le r?pondeur
Merci



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 08:06:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:06:01 +0200
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9j3u3c030k4@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim at vegeta.ath.cx...
> Me parece que Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> dijo:
> > I wasn't part of this discussion, but since, for once, there
> > does seem to be a chance for a fair-headed, non-flaming
> > comparison, I'd be loath to see it fizzle out with an "agree
> > to disagree" when no technical issues have been discussed
> > (it seems to me).
>
> I cling to the philosophy that there is no "better" language and that a
> programmer's ability to _use_ it is more important than benchmarks or
> syntax.

It can be -- while I know of no studies directly targeting this,
Prechelt's results do confirm that variations between programmers
using the same language are at least as large as variations
between median values of metrics for different languages.

However, as long as we're talking about plausible as opposed to
proven results, it seems to me that it's quite likely that this
situation is *temporary*.  Consider a programmer who knows
Fortran quite well, and Perl not at all.  She needs to print
all lines in several files that meet certain criteria.  It is
quite possible that she can hack a Fortran program for the
purpose in less time than it would take her to learn enough
Perl for the purpose.  If this is the last time in her life
that she needs such a task performed, it would thus be quite
cost-effective for her not to learn Perl at all.

But does this line of argument make sense to you?  Would it
lead you to conclude that "Fortran is preferable to Perl for
certain tasks regarding extraction and reporting of lines
from textfiles"?  That would look to me like a wrong-headed
way to frame the situation.  It's quite unlikely that a task
in a sufficiently wide class, such as this one, presents
itself for the first and last time in a programmer's career
(*possible*, since the programmer MIGHT die tonight: but,
NOT *likely*).  Most likely other tasks in similar fields
will appear again and again.  The programmer who devoted the
reasonable amount of effort to keeping her own skills up to
date (and ancillary deployment efforts, e.g., downloading and
installing a Perl interpreter on a machine that used to have
only a Fortran compiler installed) will therefore, most likely,
soon be better off than the one who sticks to the tools she
is already highly productive with -- *IF* the new tools do
indeed present an intrinsic advantage over the already-known
alternatives.


> For this reason, for a given application, I might reach for
> Perl before Python because I have more experience with it.  However, I

Assuming for the sake of argument that the general class of
application is one where Python has intrinsic advantage (as
opposed to one where the two P languages are more or less
equal, or one where Perl has advantage), this might be short-
term sensible but long-term inferior, as above sketched.  I.e.,
you may get your current task done faster, but over a longer
period of time still enjoy lower overall productivity.

Which is why I believe it's potentially more interesting to
unearth the 'general classes of applications' where the
intrinsic advantages and disadvantages lie.  I suspect many
important application categories will show, roughly, a draw,
assuming highly developed knowledge of both languages by
the same programmer -- at least, this is surely what Prechelt's
results suggest (hard to find ANY statistically significant
difference between Perl and Python in those tests).  But this
is like trying to compare two restaurants by listing the huge
list of things they have in common; for _comparison_ purposes,
finding out that Chez Albert has vastly better Yorkshire Pudding
while Da Bodillo shines in deep-fried Camembert dishes is more
meaningful, no matter how marginal such culinary details may
be in the overall picture of running a good restaurant.

> am not content with "just getting by" in a language if I have an
> opportunity to learn more (as long as it doesn't piss me off with every
> :w<CR>:!javac %<CR> ... but I won't mention any names ... oops!)

A *FAST* Java compiler would surely do wonders for that
language's approachability, but that's another issue:-).


> > Declaring my bias: I am "violently anti-Perl" myself, mostly
> > because I wrote a *LOT* of Perl code (and helped others write
> > it, and maintain it, and maintained a lot myself, etc, etc).
> > If Python wasn't around, I'd probably still be doing so (and
> > hating it) for lack of viable alternatives.  Since discovering
> > Python, I moved to Python all code I had in Perl.  When asked
> > for help, advice, &c, about maintaining Perl, studying Perl,
> > &c, my invariable answer today is "do it in Python instead".
>
> I respect your honesty.
> Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for

Personally, I found Perl the only language with an even steeper
and longer learning curve than C++ -- which, I guess, is part of
why I'm a C++ Brainbench MVP but definitely *NOT* a Perl one:-).

But it's more of an issue of "what are the alternatives".  I still
don't know of any real alternative to C++ for *its* strengths --
and believe me, I *HAVE* looked -- just consider two daily tasks
for me, writing small, fast components that directly interface to
system libraries for use as COM servers and as Python extensions:
with C++, ATL gives me COM serving, Boost Python gives me Python
extensions, the rest of Boost and the C++ Standard Library and
lots of other free libraries give me lots of wonderful reusable
stuff -- and even mediocre C++ compilers such as Microsoft's give
me great performance.  Eiffel, O'Caml, Dylan, Modula-3 -- and
many others -- tried them all, liked some things, disliked others,
but where's all of this indispensable infrastructure, for free,
at my fingertips...?

While, for Perl, I *HAVE* found an alternative, at long last... if
and when I ever find an equally "dominating" alternative to C++ I
may have a similarly-violent reaction to it:-).


> me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
> Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
> accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)

I was in the same situation 2 years ago, to the day.  Which is
why I used Perl, even while detesting it -- for many tasks I was
more productive with it than with any other language.  (I never
detested C++ as deeply as I resented Perl -- the design strategy
for C++, while crazily ambitious in all it wanted to accomplish,
never struck me as wrong-headed as much as the _deliberate_ choice
to have as many redundant ways to express the same thing as could
fit in a single, poor, over-bloated interpreter program).

> with Python.  Having come from GW-BASIC, I had slightly less trouble
> grasping the whole "curse characters" bit. <wink>

Having come from APL, then APL2, I had and still have a deep
appreciation for what abundant use of special characters can
do for you.  That's not the real, deep problem for me (and I'm
less interested in syntax-sugar aspects than 99% of all
programmers, I think).  Rather, it's the over-abundance of
purported-to-be-"convenient" irregular special-cases that
still has me gnashing my teeth in dim memory (I've forgotten
as much as humanly possible about the subject over the last
two years -- a common after-shock victim reaction, I'm told).


> BTW: I have benchmarks (I think fair ones) where regex parsing is faster
> than string parsing.  I've taken pains to optimize the string parsing
> function.  I think my point is, whether advocate of regex's or
> string-parsing, be willing to see the other's strengths. This might

Regular Expressions are one of those subjects where I *wish*
there were better solutions, but I'm resigned to there not being
any (not sufficiently general ones, etc) -- so I do the best I
can in terms of using, teaching, and so on.  But when examining
a specific case where parsing is needed of course I'm aware of
various specific cases where other approaches dominate RE's.

Which is why I'd like to be shown the *specific* cases where Perl
dominates Python.  Knowing of a few, net of transient effects
such as a given programmer knowing one and not the other or
other deployment issues, would help reconcile me with Perl's
existence:-).

I can easily see such specific cases where the languages' niches
are far enough from each other.  If I have a class of problems
where logical-programming and backtracking can be used to very
good effect, for example, it seems quite reasonable to me that
Prolog (or Mercury or Mozart or ...) may be strongly preferable
for such problems to languages that are deeply imperative at
their core (Perl or Python or C++ or whatever).  It's when the
niches are very close, that problems seeing the specific areas
where one language or the other is preferable loom larger.

And I'm not particularly interested in deployment issues, e.g.
"Javascript is better because it runs client-side portably" --
that's just because of Netscape's quondam silly decision to
invent Yet Another Scripting Language for inclusion in their
product; Javascript, *qua* language, doesn't appear to me to
have anything to justify its existence (in fact I detest it
even more than I detest Perl -- at least Perl is powerful, for
all of its complication and awkwardness, while Javascript
manages to have the complexity and "ad-hocness" WITHOUT a
significant amount of power to show for them...!-).


> In web developing, where I can't necessarily convince my clients to use
> a host that provides the tools I'd most like to use, Perl is more
> readily available than Python, and especially more so than

Apparently your clients aren't wedded to NT...?  Because in that
case you might get VBScript as your sum total of readily available
tools... either Perl or Python requiring a download-and-install
(worst case for most boxes, today, surely).

> mod_p(erl|ython).  Python seems to be catching on in a big way, though,
> especially with it's standard inclusion in many linux distros.  But when
> I can't get the tools I'd like, Perl/Python's overlapping applicability
> is really a blessing, no?  Either that's there, I know I can do what I
> need to do.  <wink>

Sure, and if you get proficient in VBScript, you're even more
likely to be able to do the job.

But meanwhile, I still haven't learned anything about the general
application areas where Perl is alleged to enjoy intrinsic
advantages over Python -- the purpose of this thread from my
personal viewpoint... if somebody knowledgeable in both languages
such as you are can't help me ascertain this, who might?


Alex





From Zeke at xyz.net  Sun Jul 22 02:23:48 2001
From: Zeke at xyz.net (zeke)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:23:48 -0700
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
Message-ID: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net>

Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the easy
job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently using
Ultra Edit but having doubts about it. 
zeke



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 15:18:02 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:18:02 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <DpB77.27338$EP6.6897772@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKECLLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Terry Reedy]
> ...
> I recently realized that a seemingly-safe change that gives semantic
> meaning to a syntactically valid but previously meaningless construct
> (given the state of the vars) will break code that relies on the
> previously resulting exception.

This is nothing new, and indeed it happens every release:  *nothing* can
change without risk of breakage.  It's not even safe to add a meaning for a
sequence of tokens that was previously a SyntaxError, since Python code can
dynamically compile strings at runtime and branch based on whether compile()
(exec, eval(), etc) raise SyntaxError.  Even fixing gross bugs can break
"working" code.

> ...
> Now make seq*seq mean crossconcatenation and the program may break.
> This raises the issue of whether an exception, in any particular
> circumstance, is defined behavior (which referably should not be
> changed) or the result of undefined behavior (which we should feel
> free to define).

Many such questions have gone unaddressed.  For this particular one,
exception behavior is rarely spelled out in full by the docs, so it's
usually, and speaking strictly, undefined.  In practice, like all other
changes, one of this ilk gets evaluated on the best-guess likelihood that it
will provoke significant breakage.  For example, Python will likely never
change an OverflowError into a SystemError, but it's not rare for
AttributeErrors to turn into TypeErrors, or vice versa, across releases, as
objects grow smarter.




From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:02:02 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:02:02 GMT
Subject: exec considered harmful
References: <9jjo5b$jn3$1@giles.kryogenix.org>
Message-ID: <_Zg77.543539$eK2.114006347@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Aquarius" <aquarius at kryogenix.org> wrote in message
news:9jjo5b$jn3$1 at giles.kryogenix.org...
> I've got a CGI which reads a file and then execs its contents. The file
> defines a function, and that function can't find itself to call
> recursively; it gets a NameError.
>
> Example:
>
> [ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ cat foo.cgi
> #! /usr/bin/python
>
> import sys
> sys.stderr = sys.stdout
>
> print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
>
>
> def main():
>     fp = open("foo.txt")
>     exec(fp.read())
>
> main()
>
> [ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ cat foo.txt
>
> def bar(quux=None):
>     if quux == "test":
>         print "Hello, world!"
>     else:
>         bar("test")
>
> bar("nothing")
>
> [ aquarius at giles ] /home/httpd/kryogenix.org/current/web $ python foo.cgi
> Content-type: text/html
>
>
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "foo.cgi", line 13, in ?
>     main()
>   File "foo.cgi", line 11, in main
>     exec(fp.read())
>   File "<string>", line 8, in ?
>   File "<string>", line 6, in bar
> NameError: bar
>
> My question here is: is there anything I can do about this? I assume
> that you can't call bar() from inside bar() because it only knows about
> two namespaces, global (which main() is in) and the "inside-bar()"
> namespace, and bar() itself is in neither. I've tried this with both
> 1.5.2 and 2.0.1 and there doesn't appear to be any different (aside
> from the wording of the NameError changing to "There is no variable
> named 'bar'" under 2.0.1, which I assume is the same thing).
>
> Aq -- I wish I understood namespaces
>
> --
> "The grand plan that is Aquarius proceeds apace"
>             -- Frank Miller, "Ronin"


why exec(), when you can import?

I think that people with experience in Perl tend to want to exec() too much.
If you have a function in another file that you want to execute, you should
make that other file a .py file, and import it.

In the old days, we had "GOTO Considered Harmful",
today, in Python, I thing we need "exec() Considered Harmful".
( but maybe that's just me..
  I have done a fair bit of Python, and *never* used exec() or eval() )





From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 13:49:09 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:49:09 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2k80u4fus.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <cpk80u2rg8.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Paul Foley <see at below> writes:

> >       __div__(), __floordiv__(), __truediv__();
> 
> Will __truediv__ become __div__ again in Python 3.0, or what?

Yes.

> I wonder whether there's any need to distinguish (classic) __div__ and
> __truediv__ for user-defined objects, though; I'd think they should
> continue to do what they do now, so you can just leave it __div__.

I don't want to make user-defined classes second-class citizens.
Certainly not with the type/class unification going on.

> >     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
> >     types, and will have the semantics of
> 
> >         a // b == floor(a/b)
> 
> >     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
> >     coerced into.
> 
> I'm not sure how to parse that.  a and b are going to be coerced to
> the type of a//b?  But what is the type of a//b?  That's determined
> _by_ a and b, right?  Or is it saying the type of a//b will be the
> type of a, and b will be coerced to that same type?  That's not right.

Sorry, the language was a bit off.  How about this:

    Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
    types, and will have the semantics of

        a // b == floor(a/b)

    except that the result type will be the common type into which a
    and b are coerced before the operation.

Also, I'm adding explicit examples for the built-in types (which
includes the useful information that this is an error for complex).

> >     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
> >     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
> >     return a float (2.0), not an int.
> 
> What???  Blech!  [remainder of thoughtstream censored]
> 
> Actually, I suppose that makes sense if you think float is above
> rational in the type hierarchy.  To Marcin Kowalczyk: here's an
> example of something that has different results!

I should add a qualifier: as long as we have no rational type.  With a
rational type, 1/2 should return a rational under true division.  But
it certainly should not be 0, because that is classic division, which
is going to be phased out.

> >     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
> >       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
> >       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
> >       zero?)
> 
> Everybody here seems to think "quotient" means an integer?!  I don't
> think so.  I've heard the floor-division result called a "partial
> quotient", but I don't know if that's standard terminology.
> [Mathematicians?]
> 
> [Actually, I guess it is -- since I haven't sent this yet, I looked it
> up in mathematics dictionary, which also calls it a partial quotient]

I'm sticking with true division and floor division for now.  They are
newly introduced terms that are clearly defined at the start of the
PEP.

> >     A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
> >        division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
> >        function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if

Note that floor here was a typo; I meant float().

> A two arg version of floor would be a good addition; it can produce a
> more accurate result than doing a division (in the absence of an
> actual ratio type; and more efficiently if you do what ratios)

I don't understand why everybody suddenly associates floor with
division.  It has nothing to do with division -- it is just a
mathematical operator that is useful in the exact mathematical
definition of integer division.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From dirck at pacbell.net  Thu Jul 19 13:30:03 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 10:30:03 -0700
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lbhen.22q.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <cpy9plf56k.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <6c8b7eb9.0107190930.508f5014@posting.google.com>

Just a bit of:
==============

"Three Cheers, good work guys, great stuff!"

generators/iterators look terrific.

Now you can get some rest!  ( at least until the Beta ;)

(Don't want y'all to feel under-appreciated.)

=====================

def fibonnaci(limit):
    p,n = 0,1
    while 1:
        yield n
        p,n = n,n+p
        if n > limit:
            break


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 09:45:23 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:45:23 -0400
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <qZj07.26346$he.1368759@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Haris Lekatsas" <lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU> wrote in ...
> This works thanks!
>
> Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
> sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
> but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
> I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.
>

Certainly not *that* broken. On Windows platforms it sends megabytes of mail
for me every month, some of it single messages with 2MB zipfile attachments.
Don't currently use it on Unix.

I notice in your original code you assemble the message line-by-line,
reading from a text file. You could think about

a) Putting debug outputs in there to see what message length is being passed
to SMPT.sendmail(), or

b) Using read() to suck the whole thing in - if line endings are a problem
you could use replace() to ensure they are correct.

But you really should check what sendmail() is being given, so you know
where to look next for the possible error.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 26 04:15:07 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 02:15:07 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <Xns90EA56E7E1AD9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107260209590.8592-100000@bms>


On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Duncan Booth wrote:

> lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax) wrote in
> news:mailman.996073073.17868.python-list at python.org:
>
> > No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
> > lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
> > entire family.
> >
> > proof-that-integer-division-causes-thousands-of-disfunctional-families-
> >     per-year-and-must-be-abolished-ly y'rs, - frank
> >
>
> This newsgroup is getting decidedly surreal this morning. the post above
> was immediately followed in my newsreader by one beginning:
>
> > Check out the Cookie module in the Python distribution:
> >
> >    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-Cookie.html
> >
> > It includes a simple example of how to use cookies from Python.

and if you are using Linux you can have Coffee with your cookies...

-----8<-----
COFFEE-HOWTO

Georgatos Photis, < gef at ceid.upatras.gr>

v0.5, 15 January 1998

____________________________________________________________________

   One of the most bothering remarks on software, I have ever heard,
   is weather this or that thing can make coffee. So, Linux
   DOES make coffee. And it tastes good, instead!
____________________________________________________________________

...

The main problem is how to control the coffee machine with the
computer, so that it will be controlled by software. This generally
means an ON/OFF switch implemented as a circuit which controls the
coffee-machine's power supply.

...

----->8-----

sorry.




From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Thu Jul 26 11:40:05 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:40:05 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <pRW77.126602$EF2.17425212@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Tom Good <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> menulis:
| 
| #------ begin code
| 
| def genWhile(g, condition):
|     """
|     run generator g while 'condition' is true.
|     Condition is a partial expression string such as "< 10"
|     to be evaluated with g.next() as the left side
|     """
|     while 1:
|         next = g.next()
|         if eval("next " + condition):
|             yield next
|         else:
|             raise StopIteration
| 
| #------ end code
| 
| Then you can say, for example:
| 
| >>> g = fib()
| >>> [x for x in genWhile(g, "< 50")]
| 
| [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
| 
| ...to get the Fibonacci numbers that are less than 50.

This is neat, but I think passing in a function to test the condition
would be cleaner than passing in a string.  Like this:

def genWhile(g, condition):
    while 1:
        next = g.next()
        if condition(next):
            yield next
        else:
            return

[x for x in genWhile(fib(), lambda f: f < 50)]


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 08:55:22 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:55:22 +0200
Subject: Bug in __imul__
References: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9ihics0o27@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9ihg33$irjha$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
> Does it bother anyone that
> a *= 3 + 4
> returns a different value from
> a = a * 3 + 4

Can't speak for others, but personally I would be
more than bothered (I'd be *astonished* as well as
*flabbergasted*) if augmented assignment operators
weren't lower-priority than all ordinary binary
operators.


Alex





From niemeyer at conectiva.com  Fri Jul 20 09:01:45 2001
From: niemeyer at conectiva.com (Gustavo Niemeyer)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:01:45 -0300
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@python.org on Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 08:30:15PM +0000
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010720100145.B27699@tux.distro.conectiva>

> easily learn to work with case-insensitive systems.  It's possible
> that most programmers have case-sensitive minds, but I think that most
> non-programmers probably have case-insensitive minds.  And
> non-programmers are quite the majority.  *If* there is any hard
[...]
> It has been argued that case-sensitivity is a minor wart that's easily
> explained.  I find that a weak argument.  Lots of minor problems can
> be explained and gotten used to, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't
> try to get rid of them if we can.  Historically, this argument has
> been used as an excuse for poor compilers or linkers.

Maybe we should also allow constructions such as

print "hello world" if var is true

since that's the way non-programmers think.

Indeed, I don't think case-sensitiveness is something that will help
non-programmers to get used to the language. You have so many factors
to learn when you're starting, case sensitiveness will be just one more
behavior of the language (not a wart at all).  On the other hand, I
think that, if you create a case-insensitive tool or command line option
and let users get used to it, it'll take forever to learn how to program
in sensitive mode.

[...]
> what's wrong with that?  (If you really feel that being a programmer
> makes you part of an elite and you want to keep others out of that
> elite, I pity you.)

That's not the point at all.

[...]
> It's been argued that it's convenient to be able to write c = C(),
> where C is a class and c is an instance of that class.  Surely there
> are other conventions we can use.

Sure, but I could tell you the same argument you've used when saying that
"people can get used to case-sesitive programming" is not enough. It
woulnd't be nice to force people using a different (and uncommon?)
naming scheme just because they "can" learn.

> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

Besides the implementing-partially problem I've introduced above, if you
changed the language, you'd get a lot of happy people saying "Alleluia!"
and a lot of unhappy people saying "Damn Guido!". :-)

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer

[ 2AAC 7928 0FBF 0299 5EB5  60E2 2253 B29A 6664 3A0C ]



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul  3 18:47:06 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:47:06 -0600
Subject: No float limits
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4DD@admin56.narex.com>

> From: J?rgen Hermann [mailto:jh at web.de]
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I just stumbled over the fact that there is sys.maxint, but 
> no sys.maxfloat
> and sys.epsfloat. In case anyone thinks this is a valid 
> addition, I'll come
> up with a patch.

I could actually have used that yesterday ;-)

-- bjorn



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 17:44:59 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 23:44:59 +0200
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <9id8he0110c@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> wrote in message
news:9id5p9$8r62 at interserv.etn.com...
> Hello all!
>
> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
> and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
> the right direction?  Thanks!

There are basically two good architectures for this task:

1. simplest, fastest, most suitable for files that fit in memory (say, up to
    about 100 or 200 MB on a typical middling machine as sold today):
    read all lines, write all but the first

2. almost-as-simple, maybe a tad slower, OK for any size file:
    loop reading lines, each time (except the first) writing the
    line back to a file that will later be renamed to cover the
    old one (or, physically to the old file, which however risks
    damaging it if the power goes midway through...).

def allbutone_1(filename):
    all_lines = open(filename).readlines()
    open(filename,'w').writelines(all_lines[1:])

Hard to beat for simplicity, isn't it?

def allbutone_2(filename):
    import fileinput
    for line in fileinput.input(filename,inplace=1,backup='.sav'):
        if fileinput.filelineno() > 1: print line,

As you can see, module fileinput makes the task almost as
easy as the simplest approach!  You also automatically get
a copy of the old file named with a .sav extension -- good
cheap insurance against power outings &c; you'd need extra
code for that (at least one os.rename!) in version 1.

Warning: both functions are untested -- try them out in a
sandbox before relying on them on your real data!!!


> Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
> strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
> script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....

The fileinput-based approach is GREAT for this, since it ALREADY
works, as written, for whatever number of files -- just call it with
the list of file as argument 'filename'!  glob.glob, sys.argv, or
os.listdir -- whatever gives you a list of filenames may serve.

Magic, innit...?-)


Alex






From greg at electricrain.com  Tue Jul 17 21:39:12 2001
From: greg at electricrain.com (Gregory P. Smith)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:39:12 -0700
Subject: Profiling threads?
In-Reply-To: <3B54BD57.5A2A3048@americasm01.nt.com>; from rjohns@americasm01.nt.com on Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 06:33:59PM -0400
References: <3B54BD57.5A2A3048@americasm01.nt.com>
Message-ID: <20010717183912.F28612@zot.electricrain.com>

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 06:33:59PM -0400, Johns, Richard [NCRTP:JZ54:EXCH] wrote:
> Any suggestions on using profile with threaded programs?  I haven't managed
> to get the profiler to do anything in a thread yet.  Is it a matter of 
> getting the thread to exit on its own so the profiler can dump its report?

While the profiler doesn't appear to support profiling the overall
execution of a program regardless of the threads you can profile the
performance on individual threads (even at the same time).  We use the
following function to call the main loop of our worker threads (such
as the asyncore select loop and our seperate event queue thread):

def _dont_enable_if_you_want_speed_profit(func):
    result = None
    p = profile.Profile()
    try:
        result = p.runcall(func)
    finally:
        if hasattr(func, 'func_name'):
            tmpfname = tempfile.mktemp() + func.func_name
        elif hasattr(func, 'im_func') and hasattr(func.im_func, '__name__'):
            tmpfname = tempfile.mktemp() + func.im_func.__name__
        else:
            tmpfname = tempfile.mktemp() + "unknownfuncname"

        debug.write("thread finished %s\n", args=(tmpfname,), v=0, vs="debug")

        p.dump_stats(tmpfname)
        p = None
        del p

    return result

Yes, as this implies, you -do- need the thread to exit in order for
the profiler to dump its report.  I suggest creating a threading.Event
object that your thread checks using isSet() periodically to see if it
should exit.  (or when the thread sleeps it should wait on the event
rather than using time.sleep).

-- 
Gregory P. Smith   gnupg/pgp: http://electricrain.com/greg/keys/
                   C379 1F92 3703 52C9 87C4  BE58 6CDA DB87 105D 9163



From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Sun Jul 29 08:50:52 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:50:52 +0100
Subject: What RE would i use to match this whole word?
References: <9jv3mi$5lv$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <20010729003831.2A193BED.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <9k10qe$n8n$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

this is the code im using for a 'file file' kinda program:

[snip]

def search(resultPane, dir, files):
    searchString = re.compile(str(entryField.get()), re.IGNORECASE) # Get
search string
    for file in files:
        if searchString.search(file) == "None":
            calculateResultSize()
            resultPane.update()
        else:
            resultPane.insert(END, os.path.join(dir, file))
            calculateResultSize()
            resultPane.update()

def go():
    if str(entryField.get()) == "":
        status.set("No search string has been entered!")
    else:
        resultPane.delete(0, END) # Clear the results pane!
        driveList=string.split(win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings(),'\0')[:-1]
# Get Drives
        for x in range(0,len(driveList)):
            os.path.walk(driveList[x], search, resultPane)

[snip]

when the search is started the string which is taken from the entry field on
the form it is passed to the re.compile() function and an os.path.walk is
started. but this matches everything! in other words any file that contains
any of the characters from the entry field is listed in the results pane.
i'm missing something from the re i reckon. any ideas?

G. Willoughby

"Mirko Liss" <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote in message
news:20010729003831.2A193BED.NOFFLE at niccolo.ke4.de...
>
> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, G. Willoughby wrote:
> > What RE would i use to match this whole word, 'Rasping'
> >
> > i was using:
> >
> > searchString = re.compile('Rasping', re.IGNORECASE) but this don't seem
to
> > be right. Im missing something! any help would be appreiciated!
>
> Hmm, what about some examples:
>
> Python 2.1.1 (#4, Jul 25 2001, 10:17:07)
> [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> import re
> >>> pattern = re.compile('RASping', re.IGNORECASE)
> >>> pattern
> <SRE_Pattern object at 0x81ed3c8>
> >>> pattern.match("rasping racing pong")
> <SRE_Match object at 0x81f1628>
> >>> pattern.match("rasping racing pong").group(0)
> 'rasping'
> >>> pattern.match("Grasping racing pong").group(0)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'group'
> >>> print pattern.match("Grasping racing pong")
> None
> >>> pattern.search("Grasping racing pong").group(0)
> 'rasping'
> >>> pattern.search("Grasping racing pong").span(0)
> (1, 8)
>
> I believe the Python Documentation and the FAQ explains
> this in more detail. Python reg exps are quite similar
> to Perl reg exps, so there's a huge pile of books at
> the friendly bookshop in your neighborhood, as well.
>
>
> regards,
>
> Mirko
>






From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Thu Jul 26 13:04:46 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:04:46 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net> <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <O4Y77.12077$Up.356569@sea-read.news.verio.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
> [..]
> Victor, we don't have enough information.  Are you using Jython, or
> are you somehow invoking C-Python from Java?  Can you reproduce the
> problem in a self-contained example program?


I am not using Jython.  I am running a regular one (if it's called
C-Python, I didn't know) from Java using Runtime.exec("python
 something.py").  Its version is 2.0 (at least that's what it
reports when run with -V).

I cannot always reproduce the problem in my _current_ system (it
only happens in some runs), much less in a whole another program.

In order to write a test program I have to know what to try to
reproduce.  Should it itself be multi-threaded?  How complex should
it be?  If I don't get the same result, does it mean the problem is
in my Java program or is it just a coincidence?  (as I wrote before,
it does not happen if I run Java program under the debugger instead
of simply executing it)  You see, it would probably take me as long
to create a "self-contained" example as it did to create the system
in its current state.

One of my colleagues suggested wrapping the call to minidom.parse
in a critical section (locking something before, unlocking after),
another hint came from you: let the main program sleep after fork.
At this point I frankly care only about one thing: to prevent it
from happening.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:53 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:53 +0100
Subject: Is it possible to build Python without floats (or other unwanted capabilities)
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com> <3b5c990b.237461111@wa.news.verio.net> <dk9plto33uqab4t2ooil3t543kr7siekmr@4ax.com> <3b5cbf31.247227744@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <sknplt8aighgtg93h3b1r2i3ggqhf8vvd1@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:35:49 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:

>No, I meant really no floating point, including software. What if you had
>zero use for floating point, and wanted the benefit of a small footprint?

I see what you mean.

I don't know for sure, but given the target applications of stackless
Python it's quite possibly something they've addressed. With luck,
it's little more than a build option.

Beyond that I can't help, I'm afraid.

Subject line changed in the hope that someone else can...


>I wonder if the implementation is factored to where not using floating point
>would let you substitute small exception-raising stubs for otherwise large
>(?? usually, floating point carries a lot of baggage along in the C/C++ world)
>chunks concerned with floating point.
>
>Then that could be a make option. I was wondering if someone's been there done that.



From NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 08:07:53 2001
From: NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com (alphaZeta)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:07:53 +0200
Subject: system exec  ?
References: <9i1er4$mth$1@news.businessobjects.com> <9i1ffe029cm@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9i1npl$160$1@news.businessobjects.com>

Thanks, I was also planning to use the readlines() method.


"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9i1ffe029cm at enews1.newsguy.com...
> "alphaZeta" <NOSPAM.hnguyen421 at NOSPAM.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9i1er4$mth$1 at news.businessobjects.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a
> program
> > in a python script.
>
> os.system('theprogram') just executes it.  What you desire is different:
>
> > Does anybody know ?
> >
> > For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call
to
> > the system.
> > alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")
>
> a = os.popen("ls -l").read()
>
> may be what you want (but you may also prefer to call .readlines()
> instead for example, getting the result as a list of strings, one
> per line, rather than as one big string).
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 02:27:48 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:27:48 +0100
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
References: <lrsjlt0f0b0c60s3k5dv0gh7v9413urqj2@4ax.com> <mailman.995773296.14277.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <jumkltcprnv5900md8sm8kq0trnijgnuph@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:41:06 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>[Stephen Horne]
>> I don't seem to be getting much response. Please help!!!
>
>There are only two people who can answer this stuff, and I already did, so
>you'll have to try harder to make me feel guilty <wink>.

Sorry - your reply and my appeal crossed in the post. My message shows
a timestamp 10 minutes later than yours, but I composed the appeal off
line and besides, these things always take a while to work through the
system.

Given that I worked out I don't need it after all, and I was wrong
about why I thought I'd want it, I don't think there'll be any further
appeals ;-)

Sorry for hassling you and sorry for asking an ultimately pointless
question due to not thinking it through as well as I thought, but
thanks for answering.



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 22:16:42 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:16:42 -0700
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B63720A.54CA4A66@ActiveState.com>

Victor Bazarov wrote:
> 
>...
> > How exactly did you find out about that? If one of the threads would
> > raise an exception that is not caught, would you see the traceback or
> > would it get eaten silently by the calling Java application?
> 
> I don't know the answer to that question.  However, I think that
> any exception that is not caught in Python code would be caught
> in Python interpreter my Java application runs.  Is it not true?

He didn't ask about whether the *exception* is getting eaten siliently.
He asked about the traceback. i.e. the text written to stderr in the
event of an exception.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From brian at rk-speed-rugby.dk  Sun Jul 22 04:42:41 2001
From: brian at rk-speed-rugby.dk (Brian Elmegaard)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 10:42:41 +0200
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net> <3b5a8a87$0$320$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>
Message-ID: <wk7kx1qrr2.fsf@mail.afm.dtu.dk>

"Volucris" <volucris at hotmail.com> writes:

> It has PythonWin, a very good editor. If that's what you're looking for.

Emacs has a nice python mode. And IDLE works fine with and comes with
python itself.

-- 
Brian (remove the sport for mail)
http://www.rk-speed.dk http://fiduso.dk http://sunsite.auc.dk/dk-tug
\TeX, tak


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 12:20:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:20:24 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107250216.2f49e2e6@posting.google.com> <3B5EEED7.C9C7117B@home.net> <23891c90.0107260053.70747d65@posting.google.com> <IGZ77.30629$EP6.7882998@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107270218.34460ea5@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cxg87.34209$EP6.8757080@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:23891c90.0107270218.34460ea5 at posting.google.com...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message
news:<IGZ77.30629$EP6.7882998 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>...
> > "Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
> > news:23891c90.0107260053.70747d65 at posting.google.com...

> > > considered to be of little value and can be sacrificed
> > > to the "language gods" on a whim.
> >
> > Is this a one-time gift/sacrifice, of this magnitude, in return
for

I used 'sacrifice' because you did.  I used 'gift' as a less loaded
alternative.

> It's probably best to leave the whole "gift culture" model out of

Fine.  I had no intention of dragging Raymond's work in here.

> this, just to avoid the usual tedious distractions which have
plagued
> many of the threads about PEP 238. I won't even air my own opinions
on
> the accuracy or relevance of that model.

Instead you presented your own model of mutual obligation as including
mutual respect.  I agree.

Terry J. Reedy





From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 30 12:57:18 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:57:18 GMT
Subject: Block mail to news spam?
Message-ID: <Olg97.52480$EP6.11786326@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

Today, there are two (so far) html site ads delivered to the newsgroup
via the mail->news gateway.  This strips original path info, making
complaints difficult.

Suggestion: block html postings at the gateway.  Only ignorant
newcomers try to post such, and they are more likely to be posting
directly, so such are almost always spam.




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 16:03:28 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:03:28 -0500
Subject: indetation problem
In-Reply-To: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com>
References: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15200.30608.898782.730800@beluga.mojam.com>

    Fuming> I am experiencing indentation problems when mixing tabs and
    Fuming> spaces in my code. They appear in correct indentation in my
    Fuming> editor, but cause error when running them. I am using Python
    Fuming> 2.2a1. I reproduced the problem in following interactive
    Fuming> sequence:

You probably shouldn't mix tabs and spaces in your code.  If you do, you
will need to define a tab as 8 spaces, I believe.  That's what the Python
lexer expects.

    Fuming> Question: is this something new, or it has always been there. It
    Fuming> is strange that I have been using Python for several years, but
    Fuming> only notice this behavior recently.

I think it's been that way for quite some time now, perhaps ten years or
so. ;-)  Maybe you only recently changed to <tab> == <sp><sp>?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 15:01:40 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 12:01:40 -0700
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <9ht4qk$8rc$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <3b421046.1836046 at news.t-online.de>,
Gerson Kurz <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote:
>Please consider the following:
>
>dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
>...
>if o['type'] == 'button':
>	# do something for objects of type button
>
>Now, take a look at
>
>if o.type == 'button':
>	# do something for objects of type button

Why not just do this

class fakeDict:
    pass

dict = fakeDict()
dict.type = 'button'
if dict.type == 'button':
    ....

You can easily muck up an __init__() that uses **kwargs, too.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 22 08:19:34 2001
From: n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 05:19:34 -0700
Subject: Name space quirk?
Message-ID: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com>

Hello,

[Sorry if this is documented and I missed it; I am pretty new to python.]

Running the following as a script goes through (unexpectedly, for me), 
while trying to run it in the interactive python shell catches the 
NameError (on "myfile"):

#!/usr/bin/env python

from os import sys
 
def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
        # We are writing to what should be an
        # unknown file descriptor:
        myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
        f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
        myfile = open (f, 'w')
        hw (myfile)

Is this behaviour desirable and correct? I guess it can lead to 
unanticipated results. 

As you expect, I saw this when I happened to change my variable name 
only inside a function, and discovered it after using it a lot of times.

Gangadhar


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Tue Jul  3 02:36:44 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:36:44 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <3b4102f4.887720905@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <0Kd07.7470$e5.974463@newsb.telia.net>

Bengt wrote:
>
> I am wondering if using non-deterministic[1] memory allocation is
> permissible in a safety-critical system.

note that CPython uses reference counting, which is at least as
deterministic as malloc/free or auto_ptr stuff.

(if you keep feeding a CPython program the same kind of data, it
tends to either leak all the time, or not at all).

> What kind of testing could you specify to guarantee that code
> would continue to run?

I've built mission-critical, real-time Python systems.  With careful
design, and a few months in a "sandbox" environment, such systems
tend to run just fine.

And I'm pretty sure people doing safety-critical systems know a lot
more about advanced testing than we do.

So I agree with Gordon: "Go for it (just be careful)."

Cheers /F




From matjaz.ostroversnik at zrs-tk.si  Thu Jul 26 09:46:19 2001
From: matjaz.ostroversnik at zrs-tk.si (Matjaz Ostroversnik)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:46:19 +0200
Subject: Informix IDS2000 and Zope/Python/Perl/PHP on Linux
References: <3B600F47.2F59C1FC@gdp-group.com>
Message-ID: <9jp6vh$7nv$1@planja.arnes.si>

Hi Thomas

We are using RH 6.2, IIF 2000, apache and PHP 4.0.4 pl1 for our HCV RNA
application.
It works fine for one year. We bounce the database twice in this time.
There are some problems with apache, php, ifx combination, beacuse from time
to time we can observe a rather big list of db sessions, but restarting of
apache
solved the problem.
We are even using php (command line mode) for communication with laboratory
engines.
We are using the same combination for some number of less important
applications and we do not have any complaints.


"Thomas Volkmar Worm" <worm at gdp-group.com> wrote in message
news:3B600F47.2F59C1FC at gdp-group.com...
> Hi all!
>
> I am consindering to use Informix Dynamic Server (Informix Internet
> Foundation 2000/Linux) together with Zope and the other 3 P's.
>
> I wonder, whether somebody has any experience with Linux and
>
> - IDS 2000 and Perl
> or
> - IDS 2000 and PHP
> or
> -  IDS 2000 and Python
> or
> - IDS 2000 and Zope
>
> and can tell me about the experience he made with one or more of these
> combinations. I am interested to hear about
>
> - availibility of the needed drivers
> - their (practical) compatibility to (eg. perl DBI, python DB-API 2.0,
> etc.)
> - stability
> - and what else someone has experienced
>
> I already was an php.net, python.org, perl.org, zope.org - I guess I
> know whats available. It looks to me as if the support for IDS is not so
> strong, so I am really interested in real experience somebody had rather
> that what you can read in the READMEs. If you stopped using IDS together
> with P..., please tell me why and what db (other than mySQL, thats
> allready running here) are you using instead.
>
> If some Informix/IBM people are around: Are there any contributions
> planned or in progress for the 3 P's by Informix/IBM? Where can I find
> online information about it?
>
> If you respond to this posting, please send a CC to my email-address
> too.
>
> Thanks for your efforts in advance
>
> Regards
> Thomas Volkmar Worm
>
>




From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 14:25:49 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 11:25:49 -0700
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <9iv450$240$1@panix2.panix.com> <slrn9l68fa.o6r.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <9ivbjd$pah$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9l68fa.o6r.alf at leo.logilab.fr>,
Alexandre Fayolle <alexandre.fayolle at logilab.fr> wrote:
>On 16 Jul 2001 09:18:40 -0700, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>>Alexandre Fayolle <alexandre.fayolle at logilab.fr> wrote:
>>>
>>>I was referring to the inner loop. n is the number of elements in B 
>>>(or of keys in C). 'item in B' is O(n), and 'C.has_key(item)' is O(log(n)). 
>>>You still have to multiply by len(A) for the whole program. 
>>
>>That's functionally incorrect.  Except under severely degraded
>>conditions, C.has_key(item) is O(n).
>
>I'm pretty sure I was wrong, but are you sure you are not too? ;o)
>Should it not read: 'C.has_key(item) is constant'? 

<smacks head>
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 13:57:57 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:57:57 -0500
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <u4qdmtcsd0uj65qgl9itrejaipq1mr36ut@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org>
        <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk>
        <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
        <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com>
        <3B66E4FA.158E7DDA@home.net>
        <u4qdmtcsd0uj65qgl9itrejaipq1mr36ut@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15206.61861.849518.329947@beluga.mojam.com>

    C//> QKS is getting a 10-100X improvement in Python execution speeds
    C//> without modifying the Python language.

I keep seeing this reference, but can find nothing but an "under
construction" page about Python on their website.  Where's the beef?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Wed Jul 11 09:40:05 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:40:05 -0400
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
In-Reply-To: <994829008.697.53815.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C1EF5.7494.3038A61@localhost>

Matthew <matthewm at ihug.co.nz> asked:	
> ... what build of win32all are you running with 1.5.2? ...

I don't know how to find out. I can tell you that I'm using 
ActiveState 2.1, build 211, and that the win32all came with it.



From fgeiger at datec.at  Mon Jul  9 12:09:36 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 18:09:36 +0200
Subject: [Tkinter]: Grid as in wxPython?
References: <9ic90t$s1l$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net> <tkjjrtr89f687e@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9ie6cq$mvc$1@newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net>

Indeed, it does. Thank you Steve!

Regards
Franz


"Steve S.L. Wong" <steve at hkit.net> wrote in message
news:tkjjrtr89f687e at news.supernews.com...
> #I download this code from internet. Hope that helps you.
>
> from Tkinter import *
>
> class MultiListbox(Frame):
>     def __init__(self, master, lists):
>  Frame.__init__(self, master)
>  self.lists = []
>  for l,w in lists:
>      frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
>      Label(frame, text=l, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
>      lb = Listbox(frame, width=w, borderwidth=0, selectborderwidth=0,
>     relief=FLAT, exportselection=FALSE)
>      lb.pack(expand=YES, fill=BOTH)
>      self.lists.append(lb)
>      lb.bind('<B1-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Button-1>', lambda e, s=self: s._select(e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Leave>', lambda e: 'break')
>      lb.bind('<B2-Motion>', lambda e, s=self: s._b2motion(e.x, e.y))
>      lb.bind('<Button-2>', lambda e, s=self: s._button2(e.x, e.y))
>  frame = Frame(self); frame.pack(side=LEFT, fill=Y)
>  Label(frame, borderwidth=1, relief=RAISED).pack(fill=X)
>  sb = Scrollbar(frame, orient=VERTICAL, command=self._scroll)
>  sb.pack(expand=YES, fill=Y)
>  self.lists[0]['yscrollcommand']=sb.set
>
>     def _select(self, y):
>  row = self.lists[0].nearest(y)
>  self.selection_clear(0, END)
>  self.selection_set(row)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _button2(self, x, y):
>  for l in self.lists: l.scan_mark(x, y)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _b2motion(self, x, y):
>  for l in self.lists: l.scan_dragto(x, y)
>  return 'break'
>
>     def _scroll(self, *args):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      apply(l.yview, args)
>
>     def curselection(self):
>  return self.lists[0].curselection()
>
>     def delete(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.delete(first, last)
>
>     def get(self, first, last=None):
>  result = []
>  for l in self.lists:
>      result.append(l.get(first,last))
>  if last: return apply(map, [None] + result)
>  return result
>
>     def index(self, index):
>  self.lists[0].index(index)
>
>     def insert(self, index, *elements):
>  for e in elements:
>      i = 0
>      for l in self.lists:
>   l.insert(index, e[i])
>   i = i + 1
>
>     def size(self):
>  return self.lists[0].size()
>
>     def see(self, index):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.see(index)
>
>     def selection_anchor(self, index):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_anchor(index)
>
>     def selection_clear(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_clear(first, last)
>
>     def selection_includes(self, index):
>  return self.lists[0].selection_includes(index)
>
>     def selection_set(self, first, last=None):
>  for l in self.lists:
>      l.selection_set(first, last)
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     tk = Tk()
>     Label(tk, text='MultiListbox').pack()
>     mlb = MultiListbox(tk, (('Subject', 40), ('Sender', 20), ('Date',
10)))
>     for i in range(1000):
>  mlb.insert(END, ('Important Message: %d' % i, 'John Doe', '10/10/%04d' %
> (1900+i)))
>     mlb.pack(expand=YES,fill=BOTH)
>     tk.mainloop()
>
>
> "Franz GEIGER" <fgeiger at datec.at> ???g???l??
> news:9ic90t$s1l$1 at newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net...
> > Is anybody aware of anything like wxPython grids, but for Tkinter? For a
> > Tkinter GUI I need a grid as it is available in wxPython. I already use
> PMW,
> > but there isn't such a beast.
> >
> > Regards
> > Franz
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>






From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul 22 22:33:14 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 19:33:14 -0700
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
References: <mailman.995851359.16397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <220720011933146354%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995851359.16397.python-list at python.org>, Delaney,
Timothy <tdelaney at avaya.com> wrote:

> Nah - all the best solutions are worked out in the shower.

That's where my best solutions spring to life, as well.  Is that why
people here say that I'm all wet?

  --John


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 04:52:00 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:52:00 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107101247500.6857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

The following from the Python docs:

   nice (increment)
          Add increment to the process's ``niceness''. Return the new
          niceness. Availability: Unix.

Contradicts what I see in python 1.5.2 - 2.1:

>>> import os
>>> os.nice(1)
0
>>> os.nice(5)
0

(and the process niceness become 6 as reported by top)

It's docs inaccuracy or os.nice() bug? Or glibc bug?

Which category to report it in the Bug tracker?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "<CTRL>-<ALT>-<DEL> is the key to success" _/




From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 17:26:58 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:26:58 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
In-Reply-To: <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <001201c10599$392cff70$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

Chris wrote:
> My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a
large
> collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are
> maintained by folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling
this
> idea on the Linux Distributions: the kernel developers don't make
any
> effort to package up Linux as a useful system; other organizations
do
> that. There are now a lot of them, and some are substantial
commercial
> enterprises, but it all started with SLS and then Slackware, etc.

ActiveState has kindof done done this already with ActivePython
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePython/).

ActivePython includes, alone with the base Python distribution, a
utility that allows you to install 3rd party modules. On Windows, the
list of available modules includes:

FFTPACK
MySQL
Numeric
MySQL
PyXML
calldll
py2exe
pyperl
tk
(and a bunch of others)

To install a module, all you have to do is type:

pyppm install [package name]

The modules in any given installation may vary though, which is one
weakness of not having an inclusive standard distribution.

--
Brian Quinlan
Python and XSLT Developer
BrianQ at ActiveState.com

ASPN - ActiveState Programmer Network
Essential programming tools and information
http://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN





From tundra at tundraware.com  Sat Jul 14 20:10:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 00:10:02 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com> <9ip1qa012en@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6@tundraware.com> <9iqea10f19@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B50DE63.4217DC08@tundraware.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
> news:3B509C1F.B2E7ABD6 at tundraware.com...
>     ...
> > Sure, there are places where portability is important.  And portability
> > is not a "Yes" or "No" things - there are degrees.  But the most
> > important thing that needs to be portable are *the skills of the
> > people* so that they can be used in many different roles.
> 
> As in, taking a world-renowned specialist in surface-modeling, and
> ensuring he wast^H^H^H^H spends enough time to be able to
> program a GUI, or knows enough SQL to write some queries, or...?
> 
><SNIP>

No.  I meant that in every  commercial software/systems environment I've
every seen, the portability of the *programmer's* skills was more important
than the portability of their final work product.

<SNIP>

> > Anyway, our code, *by intent* was *not* portable.  It couldn't
> > be portable in any practical sense because the underlying
> > infrastructure paradigms are really different between, say TPF,
> 
> Underlying infrastructure paradigms do tend to differ deeply
> when portability is a problem (otherwise, portability is basically
> free and it would be very silly to ignore it:-).  But it's a serious
> error to claim that a program cannot be portable if the underlying
> infrastructure paradigms differ widely!  Such underlying differences
> just raise (a bit) the COST of portability, because you have to
> write most of your code to a higher-level abstraction and also
> implement that abstraction on different underlying platforms.
> 

You are dead wrong about this.  Not all engineering problems
can be fixed with money - some are just plain impossible at
ANY cost.  Portability can fall into this category.   
It is (or was, and possibly still is) *impossible* to write
portable code, for instance, across IBM TPF (for which no 
high-level language compiler existed), Tandem Non-Stop (which has
a VERY different programming model than most other OSs), 
and Unix AND still meet the performance critera we were expected to
hit.   

Actually, in the case of TPF at the time, it was *literally*
impossible to write portable code - everything was written in 
IBM/3090 BAL (assembler) cuz that's all there was.  Short of 
writing a VM to run BAL on other machines or a 'C' compiler for
TPF (which, at the time, would have been a joke considering the
performace requirements we had to hit - *everything* on the mainframe
had to be hand tuned) there was no way to do it.  

Portability is not simply an artifact of willingness to spend money,
though that  certainly is a factor (as is time).  It is a
consequence of good requirements, good design, and similar-enough
target environments to make it feasible in the first place.   It's
hard enough to do when you have these "similar enough" systems, like,
say, Unix and Win2K.  But how are you going to port your nice, clean
C program to a machine that speaks EBCDIC, has no stack, has no
shell as you understand it, does not implement fork/exec, does not have
sockets, each CPU is  running at 100% utilization very
second of the day?   Oh, and those are the fastest CPUs for that
sort of computation that money can buy. (These conditions have 
all probably changed by now, but that was the case then.)


> But the costs only grow by _a bit_, because good software IS
> 'layered' anyway -- levels of different abstraction built on top
> of each other.  You just have to ensure your lowest levels are
> designed in a way that is decently decoupled from specific
> bits of infrastructure -- often not MUCH harder than coupling
> them heavily and strongly, and often worthwhile anyway (if
> the lower-level quirks aren't ALLOWED to percolate upwards
> and pollute the higher-level architecture, that may often be
> all to the good of the higher-level cleanness and resulting

This is a lovely precept that happens to work enough
of the time that people start to assume it is always true.
Abstraction layers ARE a convenient and helpful design tool
and they DO promote better portability.  However, you can
forget all that if you've ever had to make performance your
first consideration.  Again, in original example I gave,
performance and uptime was all that mattered because we
were already running a 7-way CPU cluster of the biggest, baddest
mainframes available.  When guaranteed response time and/or
human safety and/or huge sums of money are at stake, no one
gives a Tinker's Damn about portability or any of the other
sacred cows that get flogged in "Software Engineering" community.
Get yourself invited to the development center at one of
airlines reservations systems or VISA or MasterCard and
you will discover an entire world where everything you were
taught turns out to be wrong.  In other words, software that
is not neatly layered is not necessarily badly designed,
it may well be purpose-built that way.


<SNIP>

> 
> > more interested in creating competitive and distinctive market
> > advantage than serving the abstract idea of portability.
> 
> What gave you the idea that anybody around here is interested
> in "serving abstract ideas"?  I'm interested in serving *our
> customers*, all 10,000+ of them at last count -- ensuring

None of whom give a damn if your code is portable (unless you're
selling programming tools like compilers) or how elegantly
architected it might be - they just want your application to run 
on their system.  How it does so, is your problem, not theirs.





-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 22:07:01 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 02:07:01 GMT
Subject: simple question:the count of array
References: <mailman.996583798.16808.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90F07B81E61Batodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> wrote in
<mailman.996583798.16808.python-list at python.org>: 

>> From:     sdf [SMTP:wqh-2 at 263.net]
>> >>> a=['a','b','c']
>> >>> b=a.count()
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
>>     b=a.count()
>> TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
>> >>> 
>> 
>> then how I get the number of a,I mean how much 
>> values in a,in this case it should be 3 
> 
>>>>b=len(a)
>>>>print b
>3
>
>Cheers,
>Simon Brunning
>TriSystems Ltd.
>sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk
>
>
>
>
thanks for the simple answer Simon, and for those of use who reached for 
the interpreter to find out what this does;

>>>b=a.count()

see section 2.1.5.4 of the documentation (Mutable Sequence Types), which 
says;

"""
s.count(x) return number of i's for which s[i]==x
"""

so, another alternative to what you were trying would be;

>>> a=['a','b','c']
>>> b=a.count('b')
>>> print b
1
>>> x=a.count('x')
>>> print x
0

HTH,
Andy
-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Mon Jul  2 14:13:30 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:13:30 +0200
Subject: trouble making python on HPUX
References: <xhfn16nmjhc.fsf@lagos.et.byu.edu>
Message-ID: <3B40B9CA.2E633113@dennis-voss.de>

> Apologizing in advance - trouble is probably platform-dependent.
>
> When trying to run make after running ./configure, the following error
> is received:
>
>         thread_pthread.h:6: p_thread.h: No such file or directory
>
> I noticed that during ./configure the file pthread.h was not found.
> What is going on here and how can I fix it?

For HP-UX related public domain/free software pay a visit to the
porting center:
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/
They offer pre-built software as well as source code (patched ?)
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/

Dennis



From tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:34:56 2001
From: tdickenson at devmail.geminidataloggers.co.uk (Toby Dickenson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:34:56 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <a8ssltse1iaqkl7c06rols3b1tvq0akq23@4ax.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:
>
>> I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
>> 
>>   2L**128/2
>> 
>> which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
>> semantics would give an approximation...
>
>Have you read the PEP?  The PEP only returns a float if the int result
>would yield a remainder.

That bit of the PEP didnt register on a first reading, and now I am
suprised at that rule.

As I understand it, this means long/long would sometimes give an exact
result and sometimes an approximation, depending on whether the
remainder is zero.

The problem isnt quite as simple as Bjorn was suggesting, but this is
definitely suprising:

>>> ((2L**1000)+0)/2
1071508607186267320948425.... <more digits snipped>

>>> ((2L**1000)+1)/2
1.07150860719e+301

>>> ((2L**2000)+0)/2
1148130695274254524232833.... <more digits snipped>

>>> ((2L**2000)+1)/2
inf



Toby Dickenson
tdickenson at geminidataloggers.com


From larryd at musicalheritage.org  Fri Jul 13 09:16:55 2001
From: larryd at musicalheritage.org (Lawrence D)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 06:16:55 -0700
Subject: dependencies question on 2.1-5
Message-ID: <f18d2785.0107130516.7e126e9f@posting.google.com>

Hello everyone.  I have seen the following question asked, but I still
do not understand what packages I need.

RedHat 7.0
Kernel:2.2.17-8

The error I get when I try and build:
error: failed dependencies:
	libcrypto.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5
	libexpat.so.0   is needed by python2-2.1-5
	libssl.so.0.9.6   is needed by python2-2.1-5

What packages am I missing?

Thank you.

Larry D
it2000hokie at hotmail.com


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 27 04:32:57 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:32:57 +1000
Subject: Problem with Python-2.1.1 and Numeric-20.1.0
References: <3B6090BD.F2B81140@quasar.ipa.nw.ru>
Message-ID: <3B612739.8E3C6C1C@student.gu.edu.au>

"Alexander V. Voinov" wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It says:
> 
>     data = Numeric.transpose(data)
>   File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 280, in transpose
>     axes = arange(len(array(a).shape))[::-1]
>   File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 159, in arrayrange
>     m = (add.accumulate(ones((n,), Int))-1)*step +(start+(stop-stop))
> NameError: global name 'add' is not defined
> 
> The program worked OK with Python-2.0 and Numeric-17.1.
> 
> Thank you in advance
> 
> Alexander

I've gotten something similar when I upgraded to python 2.1.1, even
recompiling the numeric modules.

>>> import RandomArray
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/Numeric/RandomArray.py", line
3, in ?
    import LinearAlgebra
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/Numeric/LinearAlgebra.py", line
8, in ?
    import lapack_lite
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.1/site-packages/Numeric/lapack_lite.so:
undefined symbol: dgesvd_

I've put in a patch report to both python and numeric (Sorry
Guido/others if I seem to be harping. I know you're on the case), but
thought I'd add my two cents worth here to encourage/see if others have
been having similar problems with Numeric/Py2.1.1.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 22:45:24 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:45:24 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <9iar91$ds4$1@news.wrc.xerox.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECDKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Mark Jackson]
> ...
> But is "//" rather than "div" actually ruled out?  I find it hard
> to believe that the C++ and Java programmers are actually so
> hardwired that
>
> a = b//c
>
> looks like "a = b" followed by a comment to them.

Na, it's actually so that APL programmers, who think "/" is also a unary
prefix operator meaning "reciprocal", don't end up parsing

    b//c

as

    b / (/c) == b / (1/c) == b * c

Paying attention to other languages is indeed a bad idea <0.9 wink>.




From reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com  Sun Jul 29 18:10:55 2001
From: reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com (Robert Amesz)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:10:55 GMT
Subject: Let's exclude behind the usable printers, but don't burst the lost  opinions.
References: <E71BD296.CE8FA110@oxiqi.net> <3B63C252.47ED74A3@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE645D110rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Peter Hansen wrote:

> A Walter Dupuis bot wrote:
> 
> [...]
>
>> The flat messy advertisement shoots over Walter's sticky firewall.
>>  What did James transport to all the librarians?  We can't
>> learn robots unless Eddie will regularly load afterwards.  Go
>> persevere a FORTRAN!  The insecure modem rarely disconnects
>> Pamela, it questions Terrance instead. 
> 
> Sounds like you're a newbie.  RTFM.  This is all clearly documented
> in the module index.  Try http://www.python.org for a start, and 
> next time make sure you specify which platform you're using so we
> don't have to make wild guesses.

Your point is well taken, but I was lead to believe that
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core
rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

Perhaps, with a bit of work, it could be made into a PEP.


Robert Amesz


From cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw  Sun Jul  8 03:10:38 2001
From: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw (Chyr-Pyng Su)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:10:38 +0800
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>

Steve Holden wrote:

>
> Sorry, should have read the subject line. Here's a snippet of code that
> write to a PMW scrolled text window, you should be able to do the same in a
> Tkinter text window.
>
>         t = Pmw.ScrolledText(self.msgWindow)
>         grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
>         strmes =
> self.index.Message(self.MsgSet[int(self.msgList.curselection()[0])][0])
>         message = mimecntl.MIME_document(strmes)
>         for hdr in ("from", "date", "subject", "to", "cc"):
>             try:
>                 hdrline = message[hdr]
>                 t.insert(END, "%s:     %s\n" %
> (string.capitalize(hdr),hdrline))
>             except KeyError:
>                 pass
>
> It's the insert() method you are looking for, I suspect.
>
> regards
>  Steve

Thanks in advance to help me writing the GUI program.. Actually I intended to
contruct a
buttom so that when I press it, it will trigger a wrapped function originally
written in C.
And capture those dumped message, show them in ScrolledText() widget..

Sorry, I can't figure out what the self.index is... besides, where should I
place these codes..
in the callback function or in top level... :O




From matt at mondoinfo.com  Wed Jul 18 15:28:58 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:28:58 GMT
Subject: Putting a scrollbar on a frame
References: <6f0b3be9.0107171846.20f2623d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lborq.129.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On 17 Jul 2001 19:46:29 -0700, Rob Neely <rneely at home.com> wrote:

>I've got a Tkinter app which places a bunch of buttons on a frame,
>where each button is a 100x100 image.  I'd like to put a scrollbar
>along the frame so when my number of buttons exceeds the screen size
>(about 30 or so), I can scroll down to see all of them...

[. . .]

>I also see that Pmw has a ScrolledFrame widget.  Is that my answer?

Rob,
Yes, it is. Pmw is a huge convenience to anyone doing Tkinter
programming. It will save you lots of work.

Regards,
Matt


From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Wed Jul 11 13:15:38 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:15:38 -0700
Subject: apply for keywords
Message-ID: <3B4C89BA.DB51C3A7@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Can you use "apply" to pass keywords?  If so, what is the syntax?

ie:
Python 1.5.2 (#4, Sep  5 2000, 10:29:12) [C] on irix646
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> def foo( bar = None ):
...   if bar != None:
...     print 'ok'
...   else:
...     print 'not ok'
... 
>>> apply( foo, [bar = 1] )
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    apply( foo, [bar = 1] )
                     ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> apply( foo, bar = 1 )
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: this function takes no keyword arguments
>>> apply(foo, (bar = 1) )
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    apply(foo, (bar = 1) )
                    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> 

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From mday at apple.com  Thu Jul 26 20:31:07 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:31:07 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <260720011731078325%mday@apple.com>

In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Semantics of Floor Division
> 
>     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
>     types, and will have the semantics of
> 
>         a // b == floor(a/b)
> 
>     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
>     coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
>     will be of that type too.

I assume that means type(long//int) == type(int//long) == long.

Can we assume that when both arguments are integers (including long
integers), that the result is exact (and that no part of the
computation involves conversion to floats)?  That is, would we get the
same result as "classic" division?

>     - Let / keep its classic semantics; introduce // for true
>       division.  This doesn't solve the problem that the classic /
>       operator makes it hard to write polymorphic numeric functions
>       accept int and float arguments, and still requires the use of
>       x*1.0/y whenever true divisions is required.

I don't understand this statement.  Wouldn't you use // when you wanted
true division?  Why wouldn't // (true division) support polymorphic
functions?

All I can see that's missing (compared to the actual proposal) is floor
division that returns the same type as the (coerced) arguments.  That
seems like it wouldn't be *too* hard: just use classic division (/ in
this case) and if the result wasn't an integer, just call floor().  I
suppose you could modify floor() [yuck!] or introduce a new function
that returns the same type as its operand.  Is it that important to
provide a type-preserving floor division?  (If you're assuming floor
division, wouldn't you also use either int(a/b) or floor(a/b)?)

> Semantics of True Division
> 
>     True division for ints and longs will convert the arguments to
>     float and then apply a float division.  That is, even 2/1 will
>     return a float (2.0), not an int.

Well, then I'd call it Float Division.

This has the downside of loosing accuracy when the arguments are longs
and the result can be expressed exactly as a long.

It would be nice if there was a division that would return exact
results of the same type as the coerced arguments (when an exact answer
is possible in that type).   But that begs the question of what you'd
want in the case of division of two longs that can't be represented
exactly in either a long or a float.  I guess I'd lean towards a long
result (i.e. like classic division).

-Mark


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 19:22:49 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 01:22:49 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994136404.11924.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9htk49$gad$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994136404.11924.python-list at python.org...
[...]
> I went up the URL until I got to the root http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/
> and got a page described as:
>
> Institutt for informatikks studentserver
>
> I don't read the language,

I do ;)

> but I'd say that last word is pretty clear
> even to an English-speaker like myself.  I guess that "larsqa" is out
> of school by now.  I get redirected to "lmariusg's" homepage before
> getting the "Forbidden" error.

lmariusg sounds like "Lars Marius Garshol" (don't remember where I
have that name from...) -- a quick search turned up this:

http://www.garshol.priv.no/download/software/python/index.html

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  1 05:32:32 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 11:32:32 +0200
Subject: newbie wants to eval()
References: <3b3e3e81$0$88189$2c3e98f8@news.voyager.net> <9hlhkl02cu9@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b3e655b$0$88181$2c3e98f8@news.voyager.net>
Message-ID: <9hmqji0rhu@enews1.newsguy.com>

"lynx" <noone at nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:3b3e655b$0$88181$2c3e98f8 at news.voyager.net...
    ...
> > You'd need to use the 'exec' statement (shudder), but fortunately you
> > can easily do better than that, since...:
>
> hmm. is there something inherently evil about exec that i should know
> about...?

In a sense, it's "too powerful" -- it can do so many things that it's bound
to have unpleasant fallback in some way or other.  Clarity and ease of
understanding your program is likely to be the main casualty, but there
may be others.

For example: usually, the compiler is able to perform a simple but
crucial optimization for local variables of your functions -- it knows
what variables are local (all that are bound in local scope), and it
needs not insert lookup operations for local variable access into the
bytecode it generates.  But if the function contains an exec, all
bets are off -- the compiler DOES need to insert explicit lookups,
so all of the function is slowed down.

So, use exec when you must, but be aware that you RARELY 'must',
and there are usually better alternatives.  If and when you do use
exec, it's generally best to use explicit dictionaries as namespaces,
to avoid accidents and slow-downs.


> > Global variables are really attributes of an object, the module object
> > to be precise.  Setting any object's attributes is most easily done via
> > built-in function setattr().
>
> > So you need a reference to the object that's the module you want to
> > affect.  Assuming this is the module containing the function you're
> > writing, simplest may be:
> >     import sys
> >     mymod = sys.modules[__name__]
> > and now mymod is the reference you require.
>
> looks interesting. should that snippet be run in the function where i'm
> trying to change these globals, or in the main program and that reference
> passed in as an argument to the function?

Either will work.  Having it in your function will make it simpler to use.
Having it on the outside makes your function more general, since it
can be called with different module-object arguments to set global
variables in different modules (or attributes of other objects yet).  A
person with any knack for overgeneralization would have mymod as
an optional argument with a default value of None and do the above
only if mymod is None...:-).


> honestly, myself, i'd be more upset and shuddering at this kind of
> manual rooting around in Python's own internal workings than at the
> exec() statement, which seems designed to hide this sort of magic from
> me; unless, of course, there's something strange about exec that i don't
> know of...?

Python is an unusual high-level language in that it DOES expose and
document a wide part of how it internally goes about things, and quite
explicitly empowers you to "root around" that part.  It does mean one
must employ good taste and common sense to avoid making one's
code a mess of hard-to-understand, hard-to-maintain black magic, yes.

But "exec" is still overkill for most things you can do by other means.

Specifically, when you think you need exec or eval to bind or access
variables whose names you don't know in advance, setattr and getattr
are very likely to be a better choice.  Whether they must go to a module
object is another issue; often you're better served by keeping such
variables as attributes of _your own_ object that you fully control, and
that will most often be an instance object rather than a module object,
because instance objects can check their own attributes via special
methods __getattr__ and __setattr__ -- and you may not even need
that much.

Suppose you keep all of your configuration variables this way:

class Config:
    one = 1
    another = 23
    andalso = 'feefie'
config=Config()

Now you can elsewhere in your code check and use config.one,
config.another, config.andalso -- as the attributes are not specifically
bound in the instance, you'll get the class ones.  You can also
allow user-configuration code to set ANY attribute of config, no
checks needed -- if the user sets an attribute you're not using,
that's gonna be a no-op.  So you can for example:
    execfile("userconf.py", vars(config))
and then use config.one, etc, and get either the instance variable
if user code has set it, or else the fallback class value.


Alex





From cfelling at iae.nl  Sat Jul 28 11:35:12 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 17:35:12 +0200
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com> <mailman.996237955.24731.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jum3g$887$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:
...
> A better analogy would be = vs. == in C.

> But I've never heard of confusion between + and ++ or between - and
> --, so I think the psychology of this mistake more complicated than
> just the doubling of the symbol.  I know I've made the = vs. ==
> mistake even in Python.  Possibly it's more likely because = is by far
> the most common symbol.

Nay, more likely that confusion comes from "=" and "==" both being
"is"-ses in your/my head.  I remember from the time I did serious
programming in Pascal I trained myself to think of ":=" in terms of
"becomes" just to remined me of the leading ":".  In the same line of
reasoning "+" and "++" aren't likely to get confused as the one reads
"plus" and the other "increment".  Same for "-" and "--".

If this is true than that might be a real motive to use "div" instead
of "/".  I never once mixed those two up in all of my Pascalling life,
so the fact that one is a symbol, the other a keyword sure helped to
distinguish them.  And now that we have more time before the entangled
divide get's introduced, introducing new keywords for div and mod
wouldn't influence the rate of new keywords introduced to the language
that much either.  So I cincerely aske you to reconsider the use of
those keywords.

Maybe it's because I'm dislectic that I'm more sensitive to mixing
things up, but given the abundunce of mixing up others do with "="
and "==" gives me the slight hope I'm on to something here:)

On a tangent, someone else mentioned the other day that for him,
being dislectic, Python was *the* language. Though, strange as that
might sound at first with Python lacking the ability to declare the
identifiers to be used and all the uncached typos that might come
from that, it *does* work that way for me too, probably because the
language is so simple that my mind doesn't run overtime and has
ample time to fix those easy typo's (through testing that is:)


-- 
groetjes, carel


From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 08:16:00 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 05:16:00 -0700
Subject: Bunch lists into sublists via alternation
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107190415.7cc17f93@posting.google.com>

I've asked this on another list and never got a reply. Possibly
because i have worn out my welcome with all my dumb questions, or
because it is such a dumb question people hurt themselves laughing and
are now all in the hospital.

I am trying to figure out how to take a sequence and split it up into
sub-lists
by alternation. For example if i had a sequence like:

x = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]

and i called a function that was: seqSplit(seq, sub-lists)

seqSplit(x,2)

would yield: ([1,3,5,7,9], [2,4,6,8,None]) # None pads lists that are
short elements

and seqSplit(x,3) --> ([1,4,7], [2,5,8], [3,6,9])
and seqSplit(x,4) --> ([1,6] [2,7], [3,8], [4,9], [5,None])


I've got something that bunches up consecutive elements into
sub-lists:

def bunch(mylist, times):
	"""package up list elements in sub-lists n at a time.
	
	x=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
	bunch(x,1) --> [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]]
	bunch(x, 2) --> [[1,2], [3,4], [5,6], [7,8], [9, None]
	bunch(x, 3) --> [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
	bunch(x, 4) --> [1,2,3,4], [5,6,7,8] [9, None, None, None]]"""

	out = [mylist[i:i+times] for i in range(0, len(mylist), times)]
	if out:
		out[-1].extend([None] * (times - len(out[-1])))
	return out
 
# -- ---------------------------------------
 
But i can't figure out how to get the:

a = (1,9,1,9,1,9)
b = (1,9,7,1,9,7,1,9,7)
seqSplit(a,2) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9])"""
seqSplit(b,3) --> ([1, 1, 1], [9, 9, 9], [7, 7, 7])"""
	
type arrangement, particularly since i want it to work for any
unpredetermined
number of sub-lists. I've got a kludge that works only for the case of
seqSplit(x,2),
but i can't get anything to work for seqSplit(x,n) where n is anything
else.

cheers,
kevin parks


From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 27 05:56:32 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 09:56:32 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com> <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3ui1mt0e07vgp1b18306jd70pdufs91uva@4ax.com> <slrn9m25oe.gfe.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu> <vs82mtogpknka9ln0e7t9s9gc79mrh9d8l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m2emf.gti.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:19:46 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
>
>>>Because when identifier and someone else writes IdEnTIFIER, I want
>>>to kill them Actually, I'd like to kill them for changing the case at all.
>>
>>But if the language is the same, their editor would warn them about the case
>>mismatch, and the code would crash, just like yours would.  It would be just
>>like your editor, only yours won't warn about those things.
>
>Oh right. Just _my_ editor. Right. Isolated little ole me, I'm the only small
>sole in the whole wide world who wants to use vim. You're just not getting
>this, I can tell.

I suspect we're talking past each other because I can't make any sense out of
that.  Is your sarcasm implying that many people use vim (certainly true,
given its mainstream status (I've used it since 1.0 on the amiga, BTW))?  Or
are you saying that most people's editors won't warn about case mismatches
(also certainly true)?  If so, I'm confused because neither have any
relevance.  Even if every single person in the world used the hypothetical
magic case warning editor, how could you even know they did (if they didn't
tell you)?

For all you know, everyone else in the world currently uses an editor that
disallows identifiers beginning with 'q'.  How is this different from everyone
(or 3 people) using an editor that warns against 'foo' and 'Foo' in the same
module?  Could you explain how this could inconvenience you, or how you could
even figure out what editor someone else used to write their code?


From wware at world.std.com  Sun Jul 22 08:41:46 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:41:46 GMT
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <GGvKLM.Azz@world.std.com>

NANDYALA D Gangadhar (n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com) wrote:
> ... the interactive python shell catches the 
> NameError (on "myfile"):

> from os import sys
>  
> def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
>         # We are writing to what should be an
>         # unknown file descriptor:
>         myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")
>  
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>         f = sys.argv[0] + ".out"
>         myfile = open (f, 'w')
>         hw (myfile)

> Is this behaviour desirable and correct? I guess it can lead to 
> unanticipated results. 

Yup, you actually want a NameError here. At the point where you
are defining hello(), you start talking about 'outfile' in a way
that totally makes sense, but then you call a method of 'myfile'.
hello() is not blessed with the gift of prophecy, and is unaware
that you will later declare a global variable called 'myfile'.
If you really want to write to 'myfile' rather than 'outfile',
then you might want something like:

def hello (outfile = sys.stdout):
        global myfile
        myfile.write ("Hello, world!\n")

This tells hello() that it should expect to find a global variable
called 'myfile', and should write to that. If you then forget to
create a global called 'myfile', you'll get another NameError.

It's a general rule of thumb among programmers, and particularly
so with object-oriented programming, that you want to avoid too
many global variables. Some people (or languages) get very excited
about this principle; Java doesn't allow global variables at all.
Others view it as a general guideline to be overridden if the
programmer has a good reason.

-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 07:45:56 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:45:56 -0500
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
In-Reply-To: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>
References: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <15197.24564.153482.413027@beluga.mojam.com>

    Bryan> I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating
    Bryan> point envirnoment.

Perhaps you could create a class implements all the required numeric
functionality and uses one or more Python longs to represent the number
internally.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul  3 12:21:26 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:21:26 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B41F106.8C29D4A@ActiveState.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994084684.19932.python-list at python.org>...
> > ... Most people do not expect these four
> > expressions to yield different results:
> >
> > 1.0/3.0
> > 1/3
> > 1.0/3
> > 1/3.0
> 
> I completely disagree, and as someone who has taught math, science and
> programming, it is quite clear to me that the distinction between integer
> and real arithmetic is an essential concept.

If it is such an essential concept, why does Python undermine the
distinction by coercing between types. And by the way, why doesn't the
division of an integer by a float result always in an integer? Because
Python treats integers as a special case of floats? Except in *one
particular context*. Hmmmm.

> > ... Why is automatic coercion *ever* necessary?
> 
> Mixed type expressions are almost inevitable.  It would take a much
> larger reworking of the Python numerical model than proposed by
> PEP-0238 to do away with that.  

Exactly. PEP-0238 strives to do away with a single operation that is out
of sync with Python's general treatment of integers as a special case of
float. The only othre way that behaviour could be made consistent would
be to remove all of the other cases where it uses this type hierarchy.

> .... The existence of the standard
> __coerce__ method illustrates the importance of such expressions.

I agree!

>...
> I might accept an argument that says that anything that coerces
> (automatically!) to an integer with no loss of precision can be
> used to index a list.  But how to distinguish between 1, 1+eps
> (eps=machine precision), and 1.1?  How many elements are there
> between elements [1] and [2]?

That's a different discussion altogether but I would say that anything
that evaluates equal to an integer could be valid as an array index. But
I don't care enough about that to argue it one way or the other.

>...
> My point was rather poorly made.  The new
> proposal has simply moved the point at which people need to understand
> the distinction between real and integer arithmetic.  Currently it must
> be understood when the operation is performed.  In the new proposal it
> must be understood when the result of the operation is used.

Nobody argues against understanding. But understanding is eased if you
do what people expect. People believe that the integers are a special
case of floats. Python encourages them in that belief in most places
other than this one.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 21:27:19 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 01:27:19 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com> <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net> <3B48F5BB.E93EF377@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3b49078a.1413182168@wa.news.verio.net>

On 09 Jul 2001 00:10:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com>
wrote:

>Bengt Richter wrote:
>>
>
>Thanks to all who answered!  A fertitle bunch of minds 'round here....
>
>The response that gets it all (despite my fuzzy definition) was mailed
>to me privately.  I deconstructed it (well really, reinvented it from 
>scratch myself) to make sure I understood what was going on. 
>
>And the winner is...
>
>^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$
>
>To be really fussy, the \. should really be a string constant which
>is conatenated into the remainder substrings so that other delimiters
>could be used when I18Ning the code.
> 
>Just for the record - I knew when I started that a re was a better way to do
>this.  Although I've programmed a lot in other languages, I am still in
>the process of absorbing python, and I had not yet attacked its re
>capabilities so I decided to hand code it.  Now that I look at the re
>implementation, I realize I should have started there because it is so
>much more compact and elegant.
>
>In any case, it was a nice tutorial exercise which made me learn an
>essential piece of python.
>
>I'm writing a complete (small) application which does keyboard I/O,
>saves state to disk, does meaningful arithmetic and so on.  My intention
>is to put it up on the web when done so others can use it to see something
>a bit less trivial than the examples which are common in tutorials.
>
>Once again, many thanks to all who kindly took the time to respond.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For your amusement, here is what the above winning re does with some
numbers, followed by the code. You can just type in a list of test
numbers on the command line (which wrapped), like so:
Is it what you wanted?

[18:22] C:\pywk\numck>numcks.py - -0 -.00 -0.00 00.00 012 012.34
12.345 1.2.3 0.00 0
       -: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
      -0: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
    -.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
   -0.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
   00.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
     012: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
  012.34: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
  12.345: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
   1.2.3: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
    0.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says  ok
       0: Winner says  ok, runner-up says  ok

(some lines wrapped below)
__________________________________________________

# numcks.py
import sys
import re
def ck(x):
    if re.match(
r'(-(?!(0*\.?0+$|0+\.0*$)))?(0|\d?\.\d\d|[1-9]\d*(\.\d\d)?)$', x):
            return 'ok'
    else:
            return 'bad'

# declared winner re: ^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$
def ckw(x):
    if re.match( r'^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$', x):
            return 'ok'
    else:
            return 'bad'


def main():
    args = sys.argv[1:]
    if not args:
        sys.stderr.write("usage: %s number ...\n" % sys.argv[0])
        sys.exit(2)
    for num in args:
        print "%8s: Winner says %3s, runner-up says %3s" % (num,
ckw(str(num)),ck(str(num)))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
__________________________________________________________________


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 19:44:00 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:44:00 -0400
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cp4rrz95iu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60AB40.CCE9FA9C@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I don't see when a unified number system would ever be less convenient
> than the current number system, *except* in the rare case where you
> are transliterating an algorithm from C that depends on integer size.
> Unsigned ints of n bits are easily emulated by taking all results
> modulo 2**n -- I do this now using Python long ints when I need to
> emulate unsigned C longs.
> 
> Using the new type/class unification in Python 2.2, you will be able
> to subtype the int or long types easily to create your own constrained
> types.

The interpreter currently has direct support for the most-used 
integer operations, thus ensuring that this type has performance 
reasonably close to the maximum feasible given the nature of 
virtual machines.

Would the number system unification imply that this integer optimization 
would be eliminated?  If true, wouldn't this impact Python's performance
so negatively that it would definitely get into the realm of 
"less convenient"?

(I'm definitely not in favour of optimization over functionality,
but this would go over the line, I think.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 20 05:06:40 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:06:40 GMT
Subject: get/put Methodes on COM Objects
References: <9j8k85$p0t$01$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <3B57F4EB.9070200@ActiveState.com>

Achim Domma wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm writting COM objects using win32com and want to implement Properties
> which are set/read via a get/put function. The documentation mentions the
> possibility to do that, but I can not figure out how !? Can somebody help ?

You can implement a "getter" simply by providing a method of the same 
name as the property.

Unfortunately, "put" functions do not appear supported.  This could be 
added easily - win32com\server\policy.py has a block:

       for name in ob._public_attrs_:
         self._name_to_dispid_[string.lower(name)] = dispid
         self._dispid_to_get_[dispid] = name
         if name not in readonly:
           self._dispid_to_put_[dispid] = name

This should probably handle a "set_{name}" function in the last line. 
The reason this hasn't been done yet is that I need to figure out 
exactly how to handle the DISPATCH_PROPERTYPUT and 
DISPATCH_PROPERTYPUTREF cases independently for the 1% of cases that 
care, and handle them the same for the 99% of cases that don't.

Feel free to offer up a patch that supports this, and I will integrate 
it in.  Off the top of my head, "setref_", if it exists, could be used 
to signify that you _do_ care, while "set_" would be used in the more 
general case for both.

OTOH, I guess I see no real reason to force this support now.  We have 
gone so long without even a setter - so when someone does actually care, 
we can enhance it then.

Whatever :)

Mark.



From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Sat Jul 28 14:34:46 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:34:46 +0100
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

David Ullrich wrote:

[I said:]
>> You said "Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is ..."
>> and gave one possible implementation. It's by no means
>> the only one, as I'm sure you know; but you didn't say
>> so.
> 
> It's the only one in standard use that I'm aware of.
> I know several different "standard" "implementations"
> of integers, rationals and reals as sets, but a different
> implementation for natural numbers does not spring to
> mind.

It's much the commonest, mostly because it appears to be
the simplest way to do it within ZF and most mathematicians
think that set theory == ZF (or perhaps ZFC). :-)

> Of course infintiely many others are possible. But
> what's another "implementation" of the _natural_
> _number_ 2 as a set that's actually in general use?

Depends, I suppose, on what you mean by "in general
use". I'd say that *none* of them is in general use,
in the sense that no one ever depends on the details
when doing real mathematics. The von Neumann construction
is certainly far commoner than any other I know of in
textbooks on the foundations of mathematics.

However: Randall Holmes's book "Naive set theory with
a universal set" (which uses NFU as its set theory)
defines natural numbers as equivalence classes modulo
having-the-same-size, so that 2 is

  { {x,y} : x != y }

and so on. This was Frege's original definition too,
though he didn't have a consistent account of set theory
to fit it into.

> Not that it matters.

Indeed.

>> I was just concerned that some people might conceivably
>> misunderstand you to be saying, as Kronecker didn't :-),
>> that God made the von Neumann implementation of the
>> natural numbers and all else is the work of man.
> 
> Ah. No, I didn't mean to say that, and yes I suppose
> that one might have got that idea. But if we're talking
> about implementations _as_ _sets_, and implementations
> that are actually _used_, then no I'm not aware of
> another. What's an example?

The one I gave above is an example. Or you can say that
0 = {} and n+! = {n}. That was Zermelo's definition,
15 years before von Neumann's, and it's the one adopted
in Quine's book "Set theory and its logic" (though he
is at pains to make it clear that there are other
options).

I don't know whether you'd consider Conway's approach
to be "_as_ _sets_"; Conway himself prefers to regard
his theory as being based on an alternative foundation
which takes pairs-of-sets as fundamental. But there's
no reason why you can't do it his way and still think
of what you're doing as working with sets.

> (Hint: The two other "implementations" of natural numbers
> that spring to mind are not implementations as sets, which
> for some reason is what I thought the topic was.

Not really. The question was just "Is Z a subset of R?",
and I bet the questioner would have been just as happy
to have said "Is Z a subclass of R?" but hadn't heard
that some mathematicians, for some purposes, like to
distinguish sets from classes. And, in any case, all
that the question supposes even if you insist on the
word "set" is that Z and R are sets, not that their
members are sets. (They might be sets of urelements
in a theory that allows such things.)

>                                                  Those
> would be regarding natural numbers as defined by Peano
> arithmetic and regarding 2 as the class of all sets with
> two elements (spelled out without using the word "two",
> of course).)

The latter of those can perfectly well be an implementation
in terms of sets. Not if your set theory is ZF or NBG,
of course, but those are by no means the only options.

                             *

This has long ceased to have anything to do with Python.
I suggest that we take it to e-mail or drop it entirely.
(But if you prefer continuing in c.l.py, I don't mind.)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Tue Jul  3 00:27:07 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 16:27:07 +1200
Subject: apply problem
References: <9hr0aj$ta0$06$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <3B41499B.BC753752@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Heiko Wundram wrote:
> 
>       apply(getattr(self,name),(attrs))

Try this instead:

   apply(getattr(self,name),(attrs,))

Note the presence of the extra comma. Without
it, you're not passing a tuple containing your
dictionary, but just the dictionary itself.

By the way, there's no need to use apply()
at all in this case. You could just write

   getattr(self,name)(attrs)

and get exactly the same effect.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 11:18:33 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:18:33 -0500
Subject: how do I get modules to stop eating memory
In-Reply-To: <6f78b8b.0107020626.38939858@posting.google.com>
References: <6f78b8b.0107020626.38939858@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15168.37065.273708.181559@beluga.mojam.com>

    Charles> - Prior to importing BaseHTTPServer the memory usage was 1432. 
    Charles> Shouldn't Python's memory usage have gone down to that number,
    Charles> or at least down some?

That depends entirely upon two things: 

    1. How the malloc package you're using behaves in the face of newly
       freed memory.

    2. Whether or not it thinks the memory can be freed.

Very basically, when you ask to malloc a chunk of memory and malloc can't
locate a sufficiently large free block of memory in the chunks already
allocated, it calls the brk system call (or the sbrk library call, which
calls sbrk) to get more.  (Some now use mmap, at least for very large
blocks.  That just complicates things.) The brk call just extends the
process's heap to some new address.  If I then malloc some memory from that
block and free *all of it*, the malloc package can *if it so desires* free
that block.  If any memory is still allocated in that block, it can't be
given back to the system.  In particular, the heap is treated as a stack in
most (all?)  systems, so only the topmost block of memory brk'd from the
system is eligible to be given back (item #2 above).  Then, and only then,
will you see your process's memory usage (as displayed by top or ps) get
smaller.  Many malloc packages never release memory back to the system (item
#1 above).

For more details, read the GNU malloc source code.  Now, there's some
fun... ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From grante at visi.com  Sat Jul 21 13:08:55 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:08:55 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On 19 Jul 2001 20:46:32 GMT, Tim Randolph <timothyrandolph at yahoo.com> wrote:

>As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how easy it
>is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would very much
>prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that enforce *uniform* case
>usage.
>
>Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but nobody
>wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program with distinct
>meanings.

That is simply not true.

>I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes for readable code -- at
>least for this sometime programmer.

I've been using foo and Foo to mean two different things for
many years (and I know of lots of others do also). Perhaps it's
not to your taste, but that doesn't make all of us "nobody".

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  It's a lot of fun
                                  at               being alive... I wonder if
                               visi.com            my bed is made?!?


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 29 22:43:29 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:43:29 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B64C9D1.C53AEE84@Lugoj.Com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:44:37 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>, Paul
> >Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes
> >> * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix
> >
> >what language does one use nowadays.
> 
> AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
> that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
> BSD, Linux).

Do language compilers and interpreters qualify as "system programming"?

In what language are the following languages most often written in (or often
exclusively):

Python
sh
Perl
tcl
Scheme
Java
VB
...

Does anyone seriously think that these will all be converted to some other
language in the next 10 years? Then ask yourself what one language every
programmer should at least be able to read.


From FenZhao at mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 09:59:08 2001
From: FenZhao at mit.edu (Man Vehicle Laboratory)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:59:08 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
Message-ID: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu>

Hi all,

I'm writing a python program that uses VRUT (OpenGL application), but I
seem to lose the sys.argv list whenever I run VRUT.  For example,
vrut.go() starts VRUT.  I call it after I ask for sys.argv, but somehow
it begins to run and in the display window gives an AttributeError for
argv.

I'm not quite understanding the logic of the order python is doing (why
it would call the vrut command before the sys.argv).  I tried wrapping
the vrut.go in a function, and calling that function instead to no
avail- same problem.  Sending in the wrong number of arguments however
will generate an "IndexError: list index out of range".

                  --Fen Zhao


mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
path=sys.argv[8]
...

vrut.go(vrut.NICE)



From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 24 16:31:48 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:31:48 -0500
Subject: cost of change
In-Reply-To: "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen@NAREX.com>
        "RE: cost of change" (Jul 24,  2:10pm)
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D57C@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <1010724153148.ZM76382@anson.hcs.tl>

On Jul 24,  2:10pm, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> Subject: RE: cost of change
> > From: Galen Swint [mailto:hcsgss at texlife.com]
> >
> $20/hr? I think it's time to renegotiate <wink>
Well, I'm still just a grad school intern -- one of these days!!!!
Galen




From achim.domma at syynx.de  Fri Jul 20 02:48:18 2001
From: achim.domma at syynx.de (Achim Domma)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:48:18 +0200
Subject: get/put Methodes on COM Objects
Message-ID: <9j8k85$p0t$01$1@news.t-online.com>

Hi,

I'm writting COM objects using win32com and want to implement Properties
which are set/read via a get/put function. The documentation mentions the
possibility to do that, but I can not figure out how !? Can somebody help ?

greetings
Achim




From terekhov at emc.com  Thu Jul  5 16:41:15 2001
From: terekhov at emc.com (Mikhail Terekhov)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 16:41:15 -0400
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com> <qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos@4ax.com> <zB117.9481$B7.1663062@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B44D0EB.11CF49D2@emc.com>


Grant Edwards wrote:
> 

...
 
> If you want a compiled, statically typed OO language, then I'd
> recommend using a real one like Modula-3.  If you want

 Or Ada (e.g. GNAT).

Mikhail Terekhov


From kelly.gerber at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 18 01:17:12 2001
From: kelly.gerber at mindspring.com (Kelly Gerber)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:17:12 -0700
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
Message-ID: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com>

I am trying to build Python 2.1 on RedHat 7.1 with readline. I
uncommented the readline line in Modules/Setup, but I get an error about
readline when running make. Python builds and works fine otherwise. But
it is a pain to type in commands again at the interactive prompt when I
want to repeat something. Has any one had luck in getting Python to
build with readline?

Thanks,
Kelly

--





From nperkins7 at home.com  Sat Jul 21 20:31:11 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:31:11 GMT
Subject: synchronized lists
References: <9j8m49$22v$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <j9p67.522437$eK2.109761178@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Andreas Kremer" <andreas3004 at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9j8m49$22v$00$1 at news.t-online.com...
> Hi,
>
> i have the following design problem:
>
> in different classes i have lists which consist of elements pointing to
> instances of other classes with lists. What i need to acchieve is that if
an
> instance of one class is pointing towards another instance, the latter
needs
> a pointer to the former in its list, too, to know who is pointing at it.
The
> result would be at least two lists in each instance, one with pointers
> outwards to other instances, the other with pointer to instances which
point
> to this instance.
>
> I was thinking about a superclass of  synchronized lists, but that design
> did not look "nice". Also a connector doesnt seem to be the best idea. Has
> anybody an idea about how to acchieve this goal?
>
> Thanks in advance, Andreas.
>
>


How about keeping all such 'connections' in sort-of dictionary-like thingy,
where all mappings work both ways.  That is, if you connect A to B, then B
is automatically connected to A...

Here is a quick shot at it:


class Connections:
    def __init__(self):
        self._dict = {}

    def connect(self, A, B):
        self._connect(A,B)
        self._connect(B,A)

    def _connect(self, A, B):
        try:
            self._dict[A].append(B)
        except KeyError:
            self._dict[A] = [B]

    def disconnect(self,A,B):
        self._disconnect(A,B)
        self._disconnect(B,A)

    def _disconnect(self,A,B):
        try:
            self._dict[A].remove(B)
        except:
            pass  # ?

    def get_connections(self,A):
        try:
            return self._dict[A]
        except KeyError:
            return []



if __name__=="__main__":
    con = Connections()

    class thing:
        def __init__(self,name):
            self.name = name
        def __repr__(self):
            return "<thing %s>" %(self.name)

    A = thing('a')
    B = thing('b')
    C = thing('c')

    con.connect(A,B)
    con.connect(B,C)

    print "A connects to", con.get_connections(A)
    print "B connects to", con.get_connections(B)
    print "C connects to", con.get_connections(C)

# OUTPUT:
A connects to [<thing b>]
B connects to [<thing a>, <thing c>]
C connects to [<thing b>]

    con.disconnect(A,B)
    con.connect(C,A)

    print "A connects to", con.get_connections(A)
    print "B connects to", con.get_connections(B)
    print "C connects to", con.get_connections(C)

# OUTPUT:
A connects to [<thing c>]
B connects to [<thing c>]
C connects to [<thing b>, <thing a>]


At least this approach confines all of the 'two-way mapping' logic to a
single class, rather than having to make sure that A and B always sort it
out themselves.

I'm sure other people have done such two-way mappings before, (come to think
of it, it's basically just an undirected graph), and there is surely a
better implementation than mine..


Of course, this would require all instances which want to 'participate', to
have a reference to the same instance of class 'Connections', but that is
another problem.. ( class member, global, mix-in superclass?...hmmm)







From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Mon Jul  2 23:55:55 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 03:55:55 GMT
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9hr4k5$peq$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k2gib.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

2 Jul 2001 17:45:57 -0700 in <9hr4k5$peq$1 at panix6.panix.com>,
Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> spake:
> In article <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>>  I suspect that Infocom-style interactive fiction, with good production
>>values and nice packaging, could sell again just fine.  You'd have to
>>sell it outside of most computer game shops, though, because the games
>>publishing and distribution networks just won't carry it, and the games
>>magazines won't review it (they're all run by and for hyperactive
>>adolescent males (of all ages))...
> ...and genders.  ;-)

  Hah!  When I was writing, I included exactly that clause, but then
removed it because I couldn't think of any female game designers,
publishers, or reviewers who trade in the "hyperactive adolescent male"
genre, except possibly the "booth babes" at game developer's conferences
(and they're almost universally hired models or non-game-design
employees) or the female "mascot" at one of the game review mags (that
specific word was used to describe her by one of the male reviewers...)

  There are women in game design (VASTLY fewer than there ought to be,
but a few), but they behave like adults, mostly.  Which is why they
don't sell much...  |+(

  I love games design, but I really really despise the games industry.
Does it show much?

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul 30 17:27:53 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:27:53 -0400
Subject: The best gui library for newbies.
In-Reply-To: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt>; from man_at_moon@hotmail.com on Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 12:21:48PM +0100
References: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt>
Message-ID: <20010730172753.A1113@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 12:21:48PM +0100, David A. wrote:
> H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to beegin doing
> some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing I want to know is wich
> one is the best gui toolkit for python when you are a newbie? Wxpython,
> tkinter?? Whatis important for me is easy of use and well documented!! this
> is what I am looking for.
> 
> Thank you for any help in advance!!!

Start with Tkinter, since it's part of standard distribution and been
around for a while.  There is also a book called "Python and Tkinter
Programming" by Grayson from Manning <www.manning.com>.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From ljz at asfast.com  Fri Jul 27 22:13:50 2001
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:13:50 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> [ ... ]
> 
> I think you're right.  An early version of ABC worked like this, and
> at the time I though "hmm, but why shouldn't 0.98 be an exact
> number; it could be intended as a price or something like that", and
> I convinced the team to change it.  But in practice it was more
> often annoying.  Now maybe that was because we (the biggest users)
> were CS and math folks, and we tended to tackle typical math and CS
> problems -- but my gut is to vote against this aspect of the PEP.

Lately I've been consulting on Wall Street, and it turns out that in
the computations done in that universe, there is a great need for
non-float decimal types, such as your example about 0.98 being used as
a price.

Accountants and their kin want ledgers, positions, etc. to balance to
the penny (or centavo, or whatever is the smallest fractional currency
in a given country).  This can only be accomplished using decimal
arithmetic ... like Bignums with implied decimal places.

I believe that this kind of exact decimals would be very useful,
although I agree that there should be some new way to represent these
values (so that 0.98 in a Python program would still be considered a
float).

Decades ago, IBM had a fairly useful solution to this: since the
1960's, their mainframes have had packed decimal arithmetic
implemented within the standard instruction set.  This type provided
integer-like arithmetic and managed implied decimal places.  These had
a maximum of something like 18 digits, so we're not dealing with
Bignums exactly, but this data type still worked well enough for the
vast majority of accounting-related applications done on IBM
mainframes.  There's no coincidence that IBM (note the middle initial)
designed their machines to cater to the computing needs of businesses.

I wrote a C library of arbitrary precision math routines around 12 or
13 years ago (and I hear that a version of it is still floating around
the net somewhere, in case anyone is interested; it's called APM).  It
essentially consisted of Bignums with a specified decimal precision
for each calculation.  Division yielded remainders.  This was needed
for a currency trading application for which I was one of the
designers and developers.

On this project, my comp sci colleagues originally argued vociferously
against decimal math and maintained that double precision floats would
be more than sufficient.  However, when the clients (financial firms)
saw that their positions at the end of the day were off by a small
amount due to the errors inherent in floats, my cohorts suddenly
became quite happy (and even a bit insistent) about me writing the
decimal arithmetic routines.

So anyway, I would argue that some sort of exact decimal type is also
necessary for doing financial calculations that have to balance "to
the penny".  If a rational type is used to implement this, it would
have to be a special case, where the denominator of the rationals
would always have to be fixed when doing financial calculations (for
example, the denominator would usually have to be 100 for the results
of calculations involving US dollars and cents).  And once again, this
numeric type would have to do integer-type division and yield
remainders.

I just thought that I'd add some more mud to the waters of this
thread.  :)

[ Should this be a PEP? ]


> [ ... ]


-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Mon Jul 16 03:22:55 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 07:22:55 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>, <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <mailman.995256714.17440.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <jDw47.355062$p33.7227430@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

Translating the Perl version to Python leads to un-Pythonic code. How about
this:

def valid_ip(ip):
    iprange = range(256)
    return type(ip) == type('') and \
        [x.isdigit() and long(x) in iprange
         for x in ip.split('.')] == [1,1,1,1]


Or this, if you don't like list comprehensions:

def valid_ip(ip):
    iprange = range(256)
    return type(ip) == type('') and \
        map(lambda x, iprange=iprange:
            x.isdigit() and long(x) in iprange, ip.split('.')) \
        == [1,1,1,1]


No regular expressions, no other modules, checks the type of input
parameter, safe from type conversion errors, and looks for exactly four
integers in the range [0,255].

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 01:30:09 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:30:09 -0400
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-3AE912.21173322072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEEDLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Eppstein]
> I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of
> Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions
> of integer arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are
> coerced to floats?

Guido did this for the Python library, and found three instances of "/" that
would break.

> In my own code it's 100% int/int->int

Mine too -- but only in my integer code <wink>.  Curiously, I find I
*usually* use divmod() even then, because I usually need the remainder too.
I've mentioned before that the best way to compute int ceiling in Python is
via:

    def ceiling_of_quotient(i, j):
        q, r = divmod(i, j)
        return q + (r != 0)

and that code doing (i + (j-1))/j instead is flirting with sign-related
errors and spurious OverflowError (there's code like that in the std
library, although in context neither sign errors nor OverflowError should be
possible).

> but that's a small unrepresentative  sample.  Note I'm less interested
> in divisions of quantities that are already floats as those would be
> unaffected by this proposal.

Understood; see above; and a runtime warning pinpointing instances of "/"
where this happens is easy enough to add.




From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Sat Jul 14 01:04:21 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 01:04:21 -0400
Subject: apply problems
In-Reply-To: <3B4F8B57.7684D13A@bioeng.ucsd.edu>; from cjensen@bioeng.ucsd.edu on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:59:19PM -0700
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <mailman.995048304.8843.python-list@python.org> <3B4F8B57.7684D13A@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <20010714010421.A393@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:59:19PM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> I thought about that.  But in the test examples below, you can see that
> you'll that you don't have to pass "self" with apply.  In fact if you
> do, you'll end up with too many parameters.  Also, symanticly, I think 
> "apply( self.ren.Elements, (self, cmd[1]), additional_kwds )" will only
> pass two arguments "self" and "cmd[1]" as apposed to sending "self" and
> all the items in "cmd[1]" as individual argument.  You'd need to put
> "self" at the beginning of cmd[1], or make a new tuple to pass in.  But
> I know what you mean.

Sorry, you're right... too many emails. ;-)

> 
> In any case, my problem went away.  I'm not exactly sure why.  It
> probably had to do with unsafe dynamic binding or something like that.
> :)

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul 10 21:05:59 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:05:59 -0700
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <mailman.994793537.30396.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ig91u$ii5co$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994793537.30396.python-list at python.org...
>
> "Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote, in part:
> > This worked for me.  Win2ksp1, excel2k, Python 2.1
> >
> > >>> import win32com.client
> > >>> xl = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
> > >>> xlc = win32com.client.constants
> > >>> xl.Workbooks.Open('test',Password='fred')
> > <COMObject Open>
> > >>> xl.Visible=1
> >
> > What do you get when you try this?
>
> Using Win95, Excel 97 SR-1, Python build 203
>
<snip error info>
> This seems to be what the thread's originator experienced.
> Tentatively, appears to relate to version or configuration.
>

I agree.  With win98, excel8 and python1.52 it still works for me.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 18:21:32 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:21:32 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com> <004c01c10be8$af2face0$4ffa42d5@hagrid>
Message-ID: <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com>

Here's an updated version which clarifies some issues...

--

PEP: 0263 (?)
Title: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
Version: $Revision: 1.1 $
Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Python-Version: 2.3
Created: 06-Jun-2001
Post-History: 
Requires: 244

Abstract

    This PEP proposes to use the PEP 244 statement "directive" to make
    the encoding used in Unicode string literals u"..." (and their raw
    counterparts ur"...") definable on a per source file basis.

Problem

    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian 
    countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
    favourite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
    for Unicode literals.

Proposed Solution

    I propose to make the Unicode literal encodings (both standard and
    raw) a per-source file option which can be set using the
    "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244 in a slightly extended
    form (by adding the '=' between the directive name and it's value).

Syntax

    The syntax for the directives is as follows:

    'directive' WS+ 'unicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
    'directive' WS+ 'rawunicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL

    with the PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL representing the encoding name to be
    used as standard Python 8-bit string literal and WS being the
    whitespace characters [ \t].

Semantics

    Whenever the Python compiler sees such an encoding directive
    during the compiling process, it updates an internal flag which
    holds the encoding name used for the specific literal form. The
    encoding name flags are initialized to "unicode-escape" for u"..." 
    literals and "raw-unicode-escape" for ur"..." respectively.

    ISSUE:
         Maybe we should restrict the directive usage to once per file
         and additionally to a placement before the first Unicode literal 
         in the source file.

         (Comments suggest that this approach suits the goal best.)

    If the Python compiler has to convert a Unicode literal to a
    Unicode object, it will pass the 8-bit string data given by the
    literal to the Python codec registry and have it decode the data
    using the current setting of the encoding name flag for the
    requested type of Unicode literal. It then checks the result of
    the decoding operation for being an Unicode object and stores it
    in the byte code stream.

    Since Python source code is defined to be ASCII, the Unicode literal
    encodings (both standard and raw) should be supersets of ASCII and 
    match the encoding used elsewhere in the program text, e.g. in 
    comments and maybe even 8-bit strings (even though their encoding 
    is only implicit and completely under the programmer's control).
    It is the responsability of the programmer to choose reasonable 
    encodings.

Scope

    This PEP only affects Python source code which makes use of the
    proposed directives. It does not affect the coercion handling of
    8-bit strings and Unicode in the given module.

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



Local Variables:
mode: indented-text
indent-tabs-mode: nil
End:

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From piercew at hushmail.com  Wed Jul 25 17:40:25 2001
From: piercew at hushmail.com (Wayne)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:40:25 -0700
Subject: BlackAdder Signal/Slots question.
Message-ID: <9d848d5d.0107251340.1f92c43f@posting.google.com>

I installed the Beta 3 of BA today and have been trying to get the
Signal/Slots to work properly (c: at least how I would like it to
work, without any prior Qt programming experience).

I'm on Win2K and create a slot under "Edit...Slots..." which shows up
in the compiled form.  But how do I actually add code to the slot?

I've tried extending the slot in a sub-class, chaning the main file
(c: this doesn't work because it gets changed back on the next save)
and can't find any place in the IDE to insert the Python code to run. 
I started to put manual "connect()"s in the code right before the
"exec_loop" but didn't think that was a good idea.

When I look at the existing tutorials the signal is assigned in the
code that is automatically generated; however, the slot never shows up
when I select the "Connect Signal/Slot (F3)" button.

I started the form with a basic dialog and have added three lables,
two text fields and two buttons.  Right now I'm trying to get one of
the buttons to exit the form with a simple "sys.exit(0)".

Is there anyone out there that would be able to tell me if I am even
close to doing this correctly?  Also, is there a better NG to post
these on?  I haven't been able to find a NG specific to BA.

Thanks for any help,

Wayne


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul  5 11:06:25 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:06:25 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Rn%07.9430$B7.1641119@ruti.visi.com>

In article <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43 at posting.google.com>, Russ wrote:

>Let's cut right to the chase here. I like strong typing almost
>as much as you do, but I don't understand why I can't get it in
>Python, perhaps by specialized code-analysis tools.

If you want a safe language with strong, static typing and good
clean OO features (no, C++ doesn't qualify) you might want to
take a look at Modula-3.

                        http://www.m3.org/

M3 isn't very good for tossing together a disposable
one-file-wonder the way Python is, and it's not as interactive
as Python either. But, it's got a lot of support for building
large, complex systems.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  FIRST, I'm covering
                                  at               you with OLIVE OIL and
                               visi.com            PRUNE WHIP!!


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 20 12:34:46 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:34:46 -0700
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107200834.65ec7e10@posting.google.com>

kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote in message news:<5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21 at posting.google.com>...
> By the way is tuple pronounced tOOple (god i hope it is), or is it
> pronounced
> like the word "couple". 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it can be pronounced
either way, but I most often hear it pronounced to rhyme with
"couple".


From hnowak at cuci.nl  Wed Jul 25 08:27:06 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:27:06 +0200
Subject: Finding Directory Structures ??
Message-ID: <3B701419@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au =====
>Using python, hows the better way of finding the structure of your
>filesystem.  I thought it may have been Dir() but this brings back
>something completely different.
>
>Basically I want to create a app that shows a Tree with the various
>directories.

If you want an application that shows a directory tree like in, say, Internet 
Explorer, you will probably need a GUI like wxPython or Tkinter to implement 
this. There might be widgets available that already do what you want.

On a lower level, you can get directory and file info from Python modules, 
too:

>>> import os
>>> os.listdir(".")
['DLLs', 'Doc', 'hello.py', 'include', 'INSTALL.LOG', 'Lib', 'libs', 
'LICENSE.txt', 'NEWS.txt', 'py.ico', 'pyc.ico', 'pycon.ico', 'python.bat', 
'python.exe', 'pythonw.exe', 'README.txt', 'tcl', 'Tools', 'UNWISE.EXE', 
'w9xpopen.exe']
>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob("*.py")
['hello.py']
>>> glob.glob("c:/*.*")
['c:/AUTOEXEC.BAT', 'c:/bicw06tumble.gif', 'c:/boot.ini', 'c:/BOOTSECT.DOS', 
'c:/CONFIG.SYS', 'c:/CWBANNER1.gif', 'c:/IO.SYS', 'c:/mpcsetup.log', 
'c:/MSDOS.SYS', 'c:/NTDETECT.COM', 'c:/pagefile.sys', 'c:/PDOXUSRS.NET']

For information on subdirectories and such, you might want to look into 
os.path.walk:

  http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-os.path.html

which traverses a directory tree recursively, and allows you to collect the 
info you need.

HTH,

--Hans Nowak




From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul  3 10:59:03 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:59:03 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hrnub$9a2$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508@ruti.visi.com>

In article <9hrnub$9a2$1 at panix3.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch wrote:
>In article <9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>,
>Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>>
>>Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For
>>banging out applications that are going to run in an
>>environment where it isn't going to matter if the program
>>crashes, but it is certainly not something I would put forward
>>for something like Air Traffic Control.
>
>Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and
>Python, and that the real-time resolution requirement is on the
>order of one second. Which would you choose and why?

The one thing about Python that would give me pause is the
dynamic memory management.  But, I'd have the same concerns if
the C/C++ program used malloc/free.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  FIRST, I'm covering
                                  at               you with OLIVE OIL and
                               visi.com            PRUNE WHIP!!


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 20 07:37:46 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 07:37:46 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org> <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com> <9j79s6$n27$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B578D96.DCE5B63C@engcorp.com> <3B57937B.B4057461@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B58180A.2264EDCD@engcorp.com>

James Logajan wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
> >  1. They are inactive in the Python community and are
> >     therefore unaware of the upcoming code breakage.
> >
> >  2. Their code is dependent on the existing integer
> >     division behaviour, and yet they are not amongst
> >     the classes of users identified in this newsgroup
> >     as being the most likely to be impacted.
> >
> >  3. They are incapable of maintaining their code,
> >     and simultaneously are entirely at the mercy of
> >     outside forces who may choose to upgrade them
> >     against their will or without their knowledge to
> >     the new and incompatible version of Python.
> >
> >     Or, they are not at the mercy of outside forces,
> >     yet mysteriously cannot *avoid* upgrading their
> >     Python installations and thus breaking their
> >     own code (which they somehow cannot maintain).
> >
> >  4. Were we to develop and make easily available to
> >     them a scanner capable at least of identifying
> >     the probability they will suffer code breakage,
> >     they would be unable to use it, whether for
> >     (1) or (3).
> >
> > Have I missed anything?
> 
> I'm sure you could think of many more insults if you just tried harder. Just
> how many years have you been in commercial software development anyway?

Did you miss the thread up until this point?  

I neither intended the above to be insulting nor, as far as I 
can tell, *is* anything in the above insulting.

Therefore, I agree completely with you.  I could *definitely*
think of more insults (than zero) if I tried.  

I've been in commercial software development since roughly 1981.

(Perhaps you consider something in *this* posting insulting too.
If you do, we clearly have a different definition of insulting.
You, by the way, were obviously trying to insult me, and I honestly
have no idea why.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From hnowak at cuci.nl  Wed Jul 25 08:30:15 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:30:15 +0200
Subject: Making a Sircam virus-remover in Python
Message-ID: <3B701D4B@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From "Morten W. Petersen" <morten at thingamy.net> =====
>Hia guys,
>
>I was wondering if it would be hard to remove the Sircam virus using
>Python; that is, to change the attribution of some files, edit and delete
>some entries in the windows registry and then reboot;  could someone point
>me in the direction of the proper module to edit the Windows registry?

Sure, use the _winreg module that is available since 2.0:

  http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module--winreg.html

HTH,

--Hans Nowak




From Jasper49 at optushome.com.au  Wed Jul 25 08:28:38 2001
From: Jasper49 at optushome.com.au (Native_MetaL)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:28:38 GMT
Subject: maths in programming
Message-ID: <WXy77.11082$A5.32095@news1.eburwd1.vic.optushome.com.au>

Hello im new to programming and i have some questions about Maths in
programming

1 what type of Maths is used in programming
2 how good do you have to be at maths to program
3 dose all programing have complex maths
4 are all programmers Expert's with maths
5 do you need to be an expert with maths to get Employment in programming
6 in IT firms are there people that do the maths ......... and others that
just do the coding <---- the programmers

i would really like to learn Programming and one day work as a programmer
but i dont have maths skills.
Ide like to get input from anyone that can help or maybe from people that
have been in my situation
and have now got Employment as programmers

Thank you





From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 11 05:50:03 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 02:50:03 -0700
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com> <m3g0c4hstf.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107110150.24b7d36@posting.google.com>

Dave Cole <djc at object-craft.com.au> wrote in message news:<m3g0c4hstf.fsf at vole.object-craft.com.au>...
> >>>>> "Edward" == Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> Edward> Dave: The way I see it, nobody is going to use a module "trial
> Edward> and error" in the workplace, especially if they suspect it may
> Edward> be incomplete.
> 
> If they suspect that it is incomplete - maybe they should spend a few
> hours to see if that suspicion is well founded.  In most cases there
> are only one or two modules to try.

What could be interesting would be some kind of common test suite for
database modules. It would give module developers something to aim for
(for compliance with the DB-API), and module users something to use to
verify how good a module is for their purposes. mxODBC has something
like this for sanity checking, as well as for investigating certain
aspects of type binding.

> Edward> They are going to use a proven module, or hack one up in their
> Edward> shop's native tounge.
> 
> And the one hacked up locally will automatically be better than the
> one which already exists which you could not spare the time to
> evaluate...

Sadly, in-house code often gets hacked up for database access, but the
reasons can be persuasive - if you don't have a high turnover of
staff, you can at least have a group of people who are very familiar
with the code. It seems slightly ridiculous, though, to duplicate
effort because people would rather write code than read someone
else's.

[...]

> Edward> lending our time as testers.  My personal feeling is that if
> Edward> ten or twenty folks would jump in and help you out, in a year
> Edward> (working part-time) Python could have a diamond hardened
> Edward> Sybase module.
> 
> You are 100% correct here.  If only people were willing to try the
> module.  For all I know there are more than 20 people who are using
> the module for serious work.  Noone ever tells me, so how can I claim
> that I have a proven module?  As I said before - there have been over
> 180 unique IP addresses which have downloaded the Sybase-0.2x module.

Perhaps it works sufficiently well for the purposes of the users who
downloaded it. Nevertheless, sure-fire ways to elicit feedback would
be invaluable for module developers. Do any of these Sourceforge
surveys ever get used? (Or are people too worn down by having too many
meaningless "Who is your favourite actress?"/"What kind of geek are
you?" surveys in their face whilst surfing?)

> Edward> Python is way cooler than PL/SQL or any other language used
> Edward> for writing db apps for that matter.
> 
> Which is exactly why I wrote the module - to avoid using ISQL or Perl.

These are certainly reasons that I won't contest. ;-)

Paul


From FenZhao at mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 12:01:06 2001
From: FenZhao at mit.edu (Man Vehicle Laboratory)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:01:06 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu> <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D@mit.edu>


I've tried putting a print statement right after I import sys.  I have the same
error as before:


     ******************************************************************************

     * WINVRUT 2.4a  Copyright 1995-2001  University of California, Santa
     Barbara *
     *                                    Massachusetts Institute of
     Technology   *
     ******************************************************************************

     VRUT  2.4a
     voicekey                        Voicekey 0.9
     serialthrustmaster              Serial thrustmaster 1.0
     avstu                           AvatarStudio 1.1
     Traceback (most recent call last):
       File "<string>", line 1, in ?
       File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 61, in ?
         print sys.argv
     AttributeError: argv

The error I get from vrut is from my code looking at argv, not vrut (error
message w/out print statement:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 62, in ?
    mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
AttributeError: argv

So whatever my first operation is dealing with sys.argv, there's an attribute
error with argv)

What confuses me is that this error is displayed in the VRUT window; VRUT opens
two windows, a display window that shows the 3D VR scene, and a text window that
will display print statements and error messages from python.  Logically, if
argv can't be found, an error message will end the program before vrut ever gets
started.

I've also tried importing vrut after looking at sys.argv in case vrut does
something funky in it's initialization/import.  Same problem.  Yet commenting
out the vrut.go() command, and the sys.argv is fine.

                                        --Fen

PS. I hope this helps:  all of my code up to the call to vrut (minus
comments)...  there's not much there, can't figure out what's making it work
improperly.  None of the modules that I wrote and imported do anything with sys


     import vrut
     import sid


     import string
     import math
     import time


     import speeds
     import e3_dataAn
     import sys

     mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
     ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
     ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
     OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
     SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
     sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
     VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
     path=sys.argv[8]

     vrut.go(vrut.NICE)



Steve Holden wrote:

>
> >
> First, can we assume you have included an "import sys" above the code you
> quote?
>
> You should:
>
> a) Make sure you incude the exact error traceback with postings like this,
> so we can see more nearly where the problem might be occurring; and
>
> b) Scatter "print" statements to give you confidence that your logic is
> indeed being executed as you expect, in the sequence you expect.
>
> I have an idea that vrut.go() might be looking at sys.argv itself, but there
> isn't really sufficient data to *know* quite what's going wrong. Your
> assumptions appear reasonable, but I think your code *is* being executed in
> the order you expect.
>
> Good luck
>  Steve
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010718/a0469a35/attachment.html>

From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 10 01:47:19 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 05:47:19 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com> <3B4A185D.7C9EC4A5@yahoo.com> <3b4a468d.1494788532@wa.news.verio.net> <3B4A7139.83AFE9C1@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3b4a872e.1511334253@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:12:59 GMT, Paul Winkler <slinkp23 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>OK, I'll bite.
>fibo.py is mine, ffib.py is yours.
>Note that yours computes what is (according to mine and Frederik's scripts)
>fibonacci of N-1 rather than fibonacci of N.
>
I think it's ok for >0, but my fib(0) is plain wrong. A leftover
kludge to make it safe for negative numbers at the same time as
the starting case. Not very pure. I just googled and found 

    http://math.holycross.edu/~davids/fibonacci/fibonacci.html

which seems to agree. Originally I got the sequence definition
from a scheme book with the usual recursive demo examples.
I also just now googled to

    http://www.auto.tuwien.ac.at/~blieb/woop/fibnum.html

where I found not only the definition
   
   F0=0, F1=1, Fn=Fn-1+Fn-2 for n>=2
   This defines the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on.

but also what appears to be an iterative version or variant of my
recursive algorithm. At least some of the expression terms look
suspiciously similar. But it's written in gnat, and seems to use
lower case L as a variable, which ought to be outlawed, plus
it's got a couple Ada tricks I don't recognize. But at some point
I'd like to translate it to Python for comparison. It should be
the fastest. Of course it won't be recursive.

>Other than that, you've kicked my butt!
>
>Now is the time for me to strategically retreat and declare that what really
>matters is readability. Who cares about speed? Not me! Never did, no sir. 
>
LOL, thanks for the chuckle ;-)



From graham at coms.com  Wed Jul  4 03:42:35 2001
From: graham at coms.com (Graham Ashton)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 08:42:35 +0100
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de> <slrn9k471b.hhl.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3b421cec.5073656@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <LNz07.1653$h45.11048@news.uk.colt.net>

In article <3b421cec.5073656 at news.t-online.de>, "Gerson Kurz"
<gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote:

> 2 reasons for using dicts rather than classes:
> 
> - You can easily create the data an object stores *dynamically*, i.e.
> from user input.

What can you do dynamically with a dictionary that you can't do with
setattr() and getattr()? (that's a real question, not a cocky way of
pointing out you might have missed something)

--
Graham


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 16:37:26 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:37:26 -0400
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.995916220.13066.python-list@python.org> <loj77.544242$eK2.114179510@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9jm3nq$ulf$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <u66cgeoe1.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Duncan Grisby <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> writes:

> In article <loj77.544242$eK2.114179510 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>,
>  Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote:
> 
> >I suppose the only cross-version solution would be:
> >
> >     # Script MUST run under various Python versions without change
> >     ...
> >     print int(container/widget) ,'widgets will fit in the container'
> >
> >It's a tiny bit verbose, but at least it's very explicit.
> 
> And also wrong in the face of negative divisors (although you probably
> wouldn't have a negative number of widgets :-) ).
> 
>   >>> 5/-2
>   -3
>   >>> int(5.0/-2.0)
>   -2
> 
> The "simple" solution is divmod(container, widget)[0]. Lovely.

Simple if you need to ensure negative number behavior.  I'd hazard a
guess that of all the existing code that depends on integer division,
a majority will never have a negative number.  So for that portion,
(or for that portion of future code for which its known the integer
division is on positive values), int(expr) might well be the simplest
approach.

Then again, the bigger problem with int() is the potential for
rounding that is, at least theoretically, permitted by the
implementation, although as someone else pointed out, it's not clear
that any C libraries actually do that.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Thu Jul 26 15:03:21 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 19:03:21 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m0qbp.qk2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:34 GMT, Peter Dobcsanyi <petrus at pobox.com> pisze:

> But, I don't like the "//" operator symbol what we are supposed to
> use for implementing "a // b == floor(a/b)".

Me too.

> I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable
> one-character symbol for the "nb_intdivide".

Here I disagree. I would preferably use div (and mod) as operators.
The only problem with them is that someone could have used them as
identifiers.

I still think that it's a minor problem, more easily fixed than
finding / which need to be changed at all. I still prefer it.
Perhaps because I used to use Pascal a lot. It's readable and is
already used in Python for other operators.

Other proposals:

- div (and mod) as functions, i.e. div(a, b). Ugly but the meaning
  is clear.

- A general mechanism of turning functions into binary operators,
  probably $div like in Miranda. This doesn't steal a keyword but
  is inconsistent with spelling of existing operators (I don't know
  about Miranda, but in Haskell there are no operators consisting
  of letters).

- Some language uses \ (I don't remember which, probably a kind of
  Basic or JavaScript). It is overloaded in Python, but not in the
  middle of a line. Drawback: can't be used at the end of a line, i.e.
      x = (2 \
           3)
  doesn't mean what you might think - this would be legal for + for
  example because it's in parens.

And BTW, I still think that 1/3 is a rational.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul 15 06:54:01 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:54:01 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <15184.50121.350177.822472@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org> <15184.50121.350177.822472@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010715125401.Y5396@xs4all.nl>

On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:12:25PM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> >>>>> "RS" == Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

>     RS> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:

>     RS> ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);

>     BAW> Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing
>     BAW> a PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.

> What about writing a simple class to do it?  Instead of raising an exception
> in __getitem__ it would just return "" or None.

Much though I would like to see 'loose' tuple unpacking, I have to admit
Skip is right: it's easy to do with a wrapper class, or even better, a
generator:

def loose(l, maxlen, pad=None):
    for item in (l + maxlen*[pad])[:maxlen]:
        yield item

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 24 05:09:37 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 02:09:37 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107240109.5b7072d4@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995943227.11347.python-list at python.org>...
> 
> I'm burned out on the repetition here.  It's not a question of being hard to
> teach.  It's largely that it's never sensible for
> 
>     x = y / z
> 
> buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y and z
> happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen not to be ints.

Indeed. But given that many people know what / is going to do, and
have managed to reassure themselves that y and z are going to be
integers at the relevant parts of their own code, do you think it's
fair to make their code give an "unexpected" result (for them) just
because one could get an "unexpected" result in the general case?

> It's this damage to polymorphism that hurts people in real life, and we've
> had years of testimony about that on c.l.py (even in this incarnation of the
> debate, although it's hard to find unless you read every msg).

I agree with what you say about the dangers of the / operator, and it
is important to at least try to remove the ambiguity (indeed, why not
start raising exceptions), but I don't see why this has to be done by
breaking untold amounts of code that came before just because a group
of people want to reclaim the / operator as their instrument for the
"one true kind of division".

If someone had suggested using // for the int/int->float operation, I
bet that hardly anyone would have complained, apart from some people
who might consider it "language bloat". But instead, it seems that for
the sake of some aesthetic principle the rug is being pulled out from
under everyone whether they want to lie down or not.

Paul


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul 14 16:32:19 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:32:19 -0400
Subject: Calling functions in a loop
In-Reply-To: <995137652.463.56460.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B507413.18231.606E7F@localhost>

With

>>> def fn1 ( ):
... 	print "fn1"
... 	

and

>>> def fn2 ( ):
... 	print "fn2"
... 	

Use

>>> x = [ fn1, fn2 ]
>>> for f in x:
... 	f()
... 
fn1
fn2

or

>>> y = ['fn1', 'fn2']
>>> for f in y:
... 	eval ( f ) ( )
... 	
fn1
fn2

> n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am new to Python (I already like it very much) and I have a newbee
> question: How do I call a set of functions from inside a loop? I tried
> the following, and it understanbly fails with:
> 
> TypeError: object is not callable: 'Fn1'
> 
> -- Code --
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> 
> __all__ = ["Fn1", "Fn2"]
> 
> def Fn1():
>         print "I am Fn1"
> 
> def Fn2():
>         print "I am Fn2"
> 
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>         for Fn in __all__:
>                 Fn()    
> -- /Code --
> 
> Would someone show the correct way of getting the functionality I
> need?





From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 22:34:55 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:34:55 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B60D432.5060109@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

David Eppstein wrote:

> In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>    Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
>>       as under the new rules without using // or a future division
>>       statement?
>>
>>    A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>>       division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>>       function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
>>       you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
>>
> 
> 
> Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?
> 
> I still don't like the phrase "true division", it implies a value judgement 
> that quotients are somehow an inferior thing to want to compute.
> 

David,
I'm not sure.  I thought so to, but decided to try it in the interpreter 
first (since I never used floor before)

 >>> xxx = 1.0
 >>> yyy = 2
 >>> from math import floor
 >>> floor(xxx)/yyy
0.5
 >>> xx = 1
 >>> floor(xx)/yyy
0.5
 >>> yy = 2
 >>> floor(xx)/yy
0.5
 >>> floor(xx)
1.0
 >>> xx = -1
 >>> floor(xx)
-1.0
 >>> floor(xx)/yy
-0.5
 >>>

so-i-guess-it's-not-a-typo-ly yours
Tom



From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 23:57:40 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 03:57:40 GMT
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision  1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <200107151729.NAA00455@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995220627.11627.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-8E8777.19281715072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995387731.32553.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b54fb14.2196363473@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:33:43 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>David Eppstein wrote:
>> 
>>...
>> 
>> I tend to think putting anything at all in the text of the file is a hack
>> and not a clean design -- this is meta-information rather than content,
>> right?  
>
>What is the practical problem with mixing "meta-information" and
>"content"?
>
>> ... But maybe as long as you're going to do that you should go all the
>> way and have some kind of "meta" directive that allows MIME directives
>> beyond just charset=...
>
>What other ones make sense?

You could put the meta-information in another place, e.g.,
1. A file with the same name and extension .pym for python meta-info
    1.1 File could be a general preprocessing script or just data
2. A string in a directory with the file name (sans extension) as key.
    2.1 String could be execable, or flags for special process

You could flag files that have associated meta-info or scripts by
changing their extensions to .pyx for python with special effex ;-)

You could also have spam.pyx be empty, simply to trigger spam.pym,
which might see if its work was cached and otherwise torque spam.py
(usually, but could be anything) around any which way, including
substituting international keyword names or whatever, or maybe
doing loading and environment setup.

spam.pyx could also control decryption, decompression, uudecoding,
or mime-defined stuff, or whatever.

Old spam.py etc would be treated as now.

The downside of triggering automatic general purpose processing is
that it could be a door for an exploit, if not well protected.

At least keeping auxiliary information separate would get around the
directive-before-docstring problem.

--
BTW, I really don't like using file names and extensions as part
attribute encodings. I would much rather see a file system with
a standard n-sector data prefix that could be invariant irrespective
of container file name. There it could have an invariant utf-8 name
*for the content* independent of symlinks or renaming of files-as-containers,
as the data moved from system to system. File content type would also be
encoded in this prefix block, and the unix file command wouldn't have
so much guessing to do any more. There would also be room for an
assigned GUID to work like a UPC bar code identifying producer software
as desired. Enabling easy version compatibility checks, automatic searches
for conversion software for import/export, etc. Absolute time of first
creation, and original instance vs copy generation might also be encoded.

A user-modifiable string in this prefix block could carry the kind of
meta-info talked about above, so it could be associated with the file
content without relying on platform-specific (container) file conventions
such as extensions etc. You could hack access to this prefix block by
absolute negative seek as indices to the parts. (This is an idea, not
a detailed design ;-)

So yet another possible mechanism or two for
Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (OT ;-)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 20 10:39:50 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:39:50 -0400
Subject: Python 2.0.1 bug?
References: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <tlX57.5121$qh7.335555@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

I saw a bug relating to CGIHTTPServer posted about anomalous behavior of IE
on Windows 2000, and noted that it also occurred on my Win98 system. POSTs
are even weirder: POST, POST, GET is the typical sequence of requests I see.
Appears to be a socket programming anomaly, I wonder if you could be hitting
the same thing?.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=430160&group_id=547
0&atid=105470

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"TheDustbustr" <thedustbustr at aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010720095330.19318.00000287 at ng-fn1.aol.com...
> Sutdy the following code:
>
> # BEGIN CODE BLOCK
> # simple webserver
> import socket
>
> HOST = ''     # empty string meaning localhost
> PORT = 8080
> s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
> s.bind((HOST, PORT))
> s.listen(1)
>
> while 1:
>     conn, addr = s.accept()
>     print 'Connected by', addr
>     data = conn.recv(1024)
>     print data
>     conn.send(data)     # reference point 1
>     conn.close()
> # END CODE BLOCK
>
> When you run this program then point your webbrowser to localhost:8080,
you
> SHOULD see your GET / HTTP/1.1 request echoed to the screen (the
"webpage"), as
> well as echoed to the console.  Well, under Python 1.5.2 running under
Linux,
> it does.  Running 2.0.1 under Windows 95, it doesn't, *nothing* is printed
to
> the webbrowser.  Reference point 1 can be changed to thus to make it work:
> conn.send(data+data)   Thus under Windows Py2.0.1 it prints the GET
request to
> the webbrowser ONCE.  Under Linux Py1.5.2 it prints it TWICE as expected).
> Another test with curious results is to change the reference line to this:
> conn.send("first part" + data + "second part")   This prints the string
"second
> part" to the webbrowser, nothing more.
>
> Hmmm, any known workarounds for this problem?  Other python-based servers
have
> worked on my machine (like the samples included in the docs).
>
> Thanks, Dustin




From mirko.liss at web.de  Mon Jul 16 08:46:58 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:46:58 +0200
Subject: pipe in read and write mode
In-Reply-To: <newscache$d58kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>
References: <newscache$d58kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>
Message-ID: <20010716124659.73228ED4.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Raphael Bauduin wrote:

> I want to pipe the standard input of my script to a command. I use popen, 
> and it's fine. However, I want to take the standard output of the command 
> and put it in a variable. I can't open the pipe in read and write mode. I 
> made it work by redirecting the output of the pipe to a file, and reading 
> this file. I would prefer not to write it to a temporary file, as the text 
> piped is somewhat sensitive (I use the script to encrypt it, so it would be 
> better not to write it to a file ;-)

There's a marvellous documentation that came with your 
Python distribution. Just read the chapter about the 
                
              =====  'popen2' =====
              
module.

You might want to look at www.python.org as well.



regards,

Mirko



From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul 22 14:20:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 18:20:02 GMT
Subject: Mainpulating Data Files
Message-ID: <3B5B1914.FCC02BF2@tundraware.com>

Say, for the sake of argument, I have a bunch of data files in some
"alien" format (not Berkeley DB, CSV, or any of the other well-known
data formats).  Say I know the format and it consists of both ASCII and binary
data in fixed record-field, variable-length record-field, and arbitrary variable
length data.  Some of the data might be in AVL or B-Tree format with embedded
linking information in each record.

So, as a general matter, is there a 'Pythonic' way to read this kind of
thing in or am I stuck with the usual 'C' approach of reading in n-characters
and then filling some data stucture?  I guess what I am really asking is
where there is some Python-enabled templating approach that allows me to
describe the schema of a file in some meta-data format, and then use
Python to read it in and manipulate it.  I vaguely understand that this
might be possible using something like XML, but I was thinking more about
a language feature like picture fields in perl.

TIA, (as always) 
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From wheelege at tsn.cc  Tue Jul 24 05:09:08 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:09:08 +1000
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <00a701c11420$4cc6f1e0$0200a8c0@ACE>

> > [Just van Rossum]
> > > Do you really want 2047 bytes to be shown as 1 kbyte?
> > > Integer division is a lousy tool in this particular example...
>
> [Terry Reedy]
> > Just, this is stupid, wrong, and gratuitously insulting,
> > and therefore, in my opinion, ugly and nasty.
>
> I think you're terribly overreacting. Sorry if I offended anyone,
> I admit that first line of mine is a dumb assumption. To put it more
> subtly: *I* would never use int arithmetic for this sort of thing in
> Python.

  Right, I think this is a good time for everybody to cool down...Just is
clearly not being offensive here.
  The same arguments are being stated over and over again by the pro 1/2==0
side, and the same refutements are being stated by the other side.
  My opinion is that if Guido wants it changed even in the light of all
these arguments, then so be it.  Sure I'll have to change a little bit of
code, but that's alright.  I distribute alot of my stuff as stand-alone
packages anyway - the user never has to worry about upgrading, unless it's
>MY< upgrade - which isn't going to break anything.

  Glen.




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 17:51:13 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 22:51:13 +0100
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
References: <sdigltkmqv58ujun2b55jrgvbd5oec4okb@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <lrsjlt0f0b0c60s3k5dv0gh7v9413urqj2@4ax.com>

I don't seem to be getting much response. Please help!!!

To restate the problem, I want to know how to modify the following
code...

  from __future__ import generators

  def test () :
    for a in xrange (4) :
      yield a

  a = test ()

  print a.next ()
  print a.next ()

  b = a

  print a.next ()
  print a.next ()

  print b.next ()
  print b.next ()

So that the 'b=a' line takes a copy of a - rather than just making a
reference.

The current code gives the result...

0
1
2
3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test2.py", line 17, in ?
    print b.next ()
StopIteration

The output I want is...

0
1
2
3
2
3

Obviously I need a deep copy - the shallow copies achieved by slices
on lists etc would not preserve the entire state of the generator.

Is there any way to do this? Even a definite no would save me worrying
about it.



From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 10:56:46 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:56:46 -0500
Subject: Threading in Python
In-Reply-To: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <15201.33070.400820.611758@beluga.mojam.com>

(Andy, I'm not picking on you.)

    andy> There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes going on in
    andy> the Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps the direction should
    andy> be towards improving the internals first?

    andy> One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent support for
    andy> multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads, but I believe it is
    andy> internally implemented and has been shown not to take advantage of
    andy> an SMP machine.

Folks, you should all know where the Python source code is.  If not, I'll
remind you where you can download it:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/python/

Python is open source.  That means you can make improvements and submit them
to SF.  People do it all the time.  PythonLabs is not a large organization
(a half dozen developers at most, with some kibbitzing from the rest of
Digital Creations) and they have other higher priority tasks that prevent
them from implementing a virtual machine that is 10x, 5x or even 2x faster
than the current implementation at the moment.

One of the advantages of open source is anyone can hack on it.  One of the
disadvantages of open source is the development community takes what it can
get in the way of skills.  Most of us interested in Python are probably
application programmers.  Compiler experts are a lot harder to find.  It may
well be that the Python community doesn't have a JIT compiler or SMP
multi-threading guru or two laying about with a few months free to devote to
such a project.  (There's Tim Peters, but I never get the impression he has
a lot of time to spare.)  Sun, on the other hand, has the money necessary to
go out and hire someone (several someones, more than likely) with the
necessary skills and make it their job to add JIT compilation or efficient
SMP multi-threading to Java.  In fact, you could argue that they have to do
these sorts of things to keep Java from being crushed by Microsoft.  Python
is generally not under such competitive pressures.  Consequently, it's
likely that you'll see more whiz bang compiler stuff in the Java environment
for the foreseeable future than in the Python environment.

That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it might not happen at the same rate
as in other environments.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul 20 10:59:40 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 10:59:40 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3d1ynb4per.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> second that the average identifier length will go up.  If you use this
> a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
> should be.  It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over

It's also less typing if you abbreviate the variable name holding the
instance.  I often write u = User() or acct = Account or msg =
Message().  Case-insensitivity breaking the 'message = Message()'
idiom is mildly annoying, but not very significant.

--amk




From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul  8 18:19:01 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:19:01 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEBIKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido, to Emile van Sebille]
> Your examples don't show what should happen in this example:
>
>   precision 0
>   x = 2/7
>   precision 4
>   print x
>
> In other words, is the precision a property of the printing or a
> property of the value stored?
>
> There are lots of other ways to get this effect for printing ("%.4f"%x
> comes to mind); if you intended the effect to apply to computation
> results, there are questions about the scope of the calculation.  If I
> write
>
>   precision 3
>   x = f()	# some function that uses int division
>
> should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
> statement?
>
> Etc., etc.

IBM's Standard Decimal Arithmetic proposal answers such questions, but
abstractly (in terms of the numeric *model*, not in terms of concrete
language syntax):

    http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/

Fully usable numerics require consulting and updating several kinds of
"global" (really thread-local) state.  The IBM proposal formalizes this as
"the context" component of every numeric computation.  This is akin to 754's
mandatory set of rounding mode and trap-enable flags (implicit inputs to
every fp operation), and sticky "did such-and-such happen?" exception flags
(implicit outputs from every fp operation); so you don't get away from this
in the end even if "all you want" is supporting platform HW fp correctly.
BTW, state-of-the-art rational support also requires context, to determine
whether results should be reduced to lowest terms (some programs run 1000s
of times faster if you don't, others 1000s of times faster if you do, and
only the algorithm author can know which is better).

IBM's proposal has similar stuff, and also adds a precision component (an
int > 0) to context.  The rules for how precision affects operations are
spelled out (BTW, Pentium HW also has a hidden "precision control" implicit
input to every fp operation, determining whether the result is rounded to
24, 53 or 64 significant bits; the lack of language support for dealing with
that in C may well be the #1 cause for numeric discrepancies across C
programs run on 754 boxes under different compilers and C libraries).

A gloss on this:

> If I write
>
>   precision 3
>   x = f()	# some function that uses int division
>
> should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
> statement?

Believe it or not, probably "yes".  REXX has tons of experience with this,
and life works best if (a) everyone respects precision, and (b) users rarely
fiddle it except once at the start of a program run.

That said, f()'s author also needs to make a choice here.  Most *library*
routines should strive to return a *result* good to strictly less than 1 ULP
wrt the precision in effect at the time they were called, even if that
requires temporarily boosting precision internally.  This kind of construct
would be common in well-written libraries:

    old = context.getprecision()
    try:
        context.setprecision(max(8, oldp + 3))
        do stuff
        return roundtoprecision(result, oldp)
    finally:
        # Restore starting precision.
        context.setprecision(oldp)

This is reminiscent of:

    lock.acquire()
    try:
        do stuff
    finally:
        lock.release()

and more generally of C++ code using:

    {
        MySideEffectObjectClass x(args); // never referenced
        do stuff;
        // No matter how we leave this block, it's guaranteed that
        // x's destructor gets invoked before we're out.
    }

where the constructor allocates a resource (or fiddles a context), and the
destructor releases it (or restores the context).

The last time we solved a "it's *hard* to make sure temporary context
changes get undone!" problem in Python was via adding ">>" to "print" <0.8
wink>.  Python may want a more general approach to this kind of thing.




From snowrichard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 14 16:05:36 2001
From: snowrichard at earthlink.net (Richard Snow)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 13:05:36 -0700
Subject: New library software development project.
References: <3B3601BE.3C84E49A@earthlink.net> <Tdk27.48$6O5.193910@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <7a32d1c7.0107141205.51f7565b@posting.google.com>

"Ed Sharpe" <esharpe at uswest.wet> wrote in message news:<Tdk27.48$6O5.193910 at news.uswest.net>...
> there are already things like this out there....
snip...
> Richard Snow <snowrichard at earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:3B3601BE.3C84E49A at earthlink.net...
> >
> > A brief description of the project: An open source library circulation
> > system written in Python and running
> > on Linux. Handles patron records, book records, and checkouts
> > currently.  We might add other types of
> > records such as videos, audio tapes, and so on later.
> >
> > The web page at http://richardsnow.bizland.com/opendev describes the
snip...
> > If you are interest in helping out or in using the code, please see the
> > web page and email me from there.
> >
> > --
> > Richard Snow
> > http://richardsnow.bizland.com
> >
> >
> >

Ed: I've done a minor update to the web site mentioning koha and
openbook.
When I get more time and details I'll add some more to my site. 
Thanks for
pointing out these other projects.  It would have taken me a long time
to get
mine to the point that Koha is now.  I haven't seen the Open Book beta
yet.

I have offered to help write some docs for Koha, and I will start on
that
as soon as I have time to get all my software installed that it needs
and
actually install Koha on my system.  Rough drafts will be on a new
page on
the above mentioned site before I send them to koha. 

By the way I'm posting this message from my sister's computer using
the new Google Groups system (new to me anyway).  Good Job, Google.

Richard


From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jul  3 15:25:31 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 19:25:31 GMT
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9k471b.hhl.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 18:45:05 GMT, Gerson Kurz <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote:
>Please consider the following:
>
>dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
>...
>if o['type'] == 'button':
>	# do something for objects of type button
>
>Now, take a look at
>
>if o.type == 'button':
>	# do something for objects of type button

Won't work because of {}.keys, etc.  If you don't mind those name clashes, you
could write __getattr__ and __setattr__ to simulate this.  It's not advisable,
though, because container access is a clearly seperate concept from object
access in python.  It has a different syntax and a different conceptual
purpose, even though there is some implementation overlap (e.g. o.__dict__).
If you want object access notation, you should probably be using an object,
not a dictionary.  For example, your button above is probably not suited for
dictionaryhood.

In Lua, on the other hand, tables and objects are truly the same, and foo.bar
is syntactic sugar for foo['bar'].  Lua's object model is rather weaker and
more do-it-yourself than python's, though.

And here's why using a dict as you did above is probably silly: You don't need
to manually encode type information if the language can do it for you.  Making
a Button class will automatically attach that type to its instances.
Furthermore, a fundamental property of all objects (as opposed to true values
like an algebraic data type) is that they have unique ids seperate from their
values.  The language will maintain them for you, and to fetch them you can
use the id() function.  The 'name' field is the only necessary one.

"Yes", you're saying, "but it was only an example." :)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 16 20:05:41 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:05:41 -0700
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B538155.854D336B@ActiveState.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 

Re: having a bad day, no problem.

> My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
> anti-Perl.  

It's human nature for the people behind the technology in second place
to complain about the one in first place. I think Java is not a bad
little language but I'll bet that on the Perl mailing lists you'll hear
a lot of Java-bashing. And what about Window$ bashing? People hate to
see their technology overlooked in favour of something that they think
is inferior. Also, the people who like the language in second or third
place often have to contend with PHBs that force them to use the
first-place language. This tends to cause resentment.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 22:56:19 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:56:19 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <180720011705003205%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <vjq57.14102$Xr6.116112@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <3B564C53.F0A6C3B6@engcorp.com>

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> 
> John W. Baxter:
> 
> > I also hope that after the change to case-insensitive Python,
> > we don't also go through a change to diacriticals-don't-matter
> > Python.
> 
>    I'm hoping we can move to vowel-insensitive Python to increase ease of
> use in Hebrew. And allow for non-deterministic pronunciation of g*d.

I'm greatly bothered by language-sensitive Python.  I'd much
prefer using my native Esperanto, for example, in place of the
cryptic (to newbies) English-language keywords.  

Since some newcomers to the language (like, say, most of the
population of the planet) might not understand the keywords
as they are or why they don't work in a more "logical" 
language (i.e. the newbie's own), we should change Python to
support any language (including a mixture, for polyglots).

Luckily, the proposed move to case-insensitive Python is a 
clear step in this very reasonable direction, so I fully
support it.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com

:-)


From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul  8 21:35:28 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 01:35:28 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki2gr.m8s.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 09 Jul 2001 00:14:11 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> I have a two part question about accepting keyboard input in python:
> 
> Is there a standard way to read one keystroke at a time rather than
> doing line input via raw_input()?

There is an entry in python FAQ about this (not msvcrt). 

> 
> For some reason, I cannot seem to catch Ctrl-C when it is typed in response
> to a raw_input() call.  This code still blows out of the python interpreter
> when the user keys in Ctrl-C:
> 
> try:
> 	x=raw_input()
> except KeyBoardInterrupt:
> 	# Handle the Ctrl-C and regroup
>         ...
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tim Daneliuk
> tundra at tundraware.com


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Sun Jul 22 17:34:03 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:34:03 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <a65klt8kir2q61fgrk0rlobtjekgtiiosn@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107221517590.4254-100000@bms>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Courageous wrote:
>
> >The problem here is that you control the language, but you don't
> >control the tools.
>
> In fact with me, and I'm quite sure a host of others, dictating which tools
> we have to use is a complete deal-breaker.

I don't think that would be a problem, or necessary.

Is there anything about case-insensitivity that could not be handled
as a convention.

If not, then implement it as a set of tools and options.
0% risk of compatibility issues, all the old tools and editors
will still work (but may need some time to code up support for
the new mode).


- Bruce




From jtorborg at fnal.gov  Tue Jul 10 17:58:40 2001
From: jtorborg at fnal.gov (jtorborg)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:58:40 -0500
Subject: Exiting Toplevel Cleanly
Message-ID: <3B4B7A90.21D99807@fnal.gov>

I'm writing a GUI using Tkinter that is a base program with buttons that
pop up Toplevels.  Both
the main window and the Toplevel update 1/sec.  Of course, when I tried
to exit the Toplevel, I get a bunch of garbage about missing objects.  I
scoured old posts, and figured out (I think) how to use the after_cancel
method.  As a test, I wrote the little GUI (pure fluff) below, which
models, if not emulates, what I'm trying to do.  The problem is that
about 5% of the time, I still get garbage when I exit the Toplevel.
What am I doing wrong or not seeing?  Is there another (better) solution
to this problem?  Or can I expect this to be tempermental?

Thanks.

from Tkinter import *
import time
import random
import Conversions

root=Tk()

class TL:
    def __init__(self):

        self.tln=1
        self.list=['up', 'down', 'strange', 'charm', 'top', 'bottom']
        self.instan=Conversions.Convert()

    def popup(self):
        self.tl=Toplevel()
        self.label_list=[]
        for each in self.list:
            norm=256*265*256
            inte=int(random.betavariate(1,1)*norm)
            color=self.instan.int_to_color(inte)
            self.l=Label(self.tl, text=each, bg=color)
            self.l.pack()
            self.label_list.append(self.l)
        self.b=Button(self.tl, text="EXIT", command=self.die)
        self.b.pack()
        self.id=self.tl.after(500, self.update_label)

    def update_label(self):
        for each in self.label_list:
            norm=256*265*256
            inte=int(random.betavariate(1,1)*norm
            color=self.instan.int_to_color(inte)
            each.configure(bg=color)
            each.update()
        self.id=self.tl.after(500, self.update_label)

    def die(self):
        self.tl.after_cancel(self.id)
        self.tl.destroy()

class main:
    def __init__(self):
        self.mln=1
        self.tl=TL()
        self.mb=Button(root, text=self.mln, command=self.tl.popup)
        self.mb.pack()
        self.b=Button(root, text="EXIT", command=self.die)
        self.b.pack()

        self.id=root.after(1000, self.update_mainloop)

    def update_mainloop(self):
        self.mln=self.mln +1
        self.mb.configure(text=self.mln)
        self.mb.update()
        self.id=self.mb.after(1000, self.update_mainloop)

    def die(self):
        root.after_cancel(self.id)
        root.destroy()

root.mainloop()



From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 00:16:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:16:42 -0400
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FC7AA.E6D7F0AC@engcorp.com>

wyatt stafford wrote:

> I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start programming
> for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).  After
> some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  
[...]
> Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self study
> resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good programmer,
> in general?

Read comp.lang.python religiously. :-)

Seriously, you can learn an awful lot by critically reading postings
in this kind of forum.  It is obvious there are some extremely clear
thinkers wandering around here willing and able to educate people on
all manner of things.  (Then there are people like me, just here 
because they have no real lives and a pathetic need for acceptance
even amongst a group of people as low as computer nerds.  Learn to 
identify the latter type, and ignore us. ;-)

> Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?

I'm not sure what is taught in those courses, but I became a 
reasonable programmer before I had formal training.  Training
can help, but it helps more if you have a foundation and consider
the training to be part of polishing your abilities.  There
are arguments that go the other way (not learning bad habits
before going to school) but I tend to disagree with them.
School does not typically teach the "right" habits for use
in industry anyway, and you said you wanted programming to
be your vocation.  Learn what industry wants...

The perhaps somewhat helpful part of my posting is this:

I've found that by far the most effective thing in learning any
language is to find a problem of interest to you and to apply 
the language to solving it.  Don't limit yourself (after the
first few minutes) to blindly typing what you find in a tutorial.

Think of something, no matter how trivial (or complex) it may
seem at first, to use the language for.  After a while, you'll
either solve the problem (warm fuzzy feeling of success), or
you'll at least realize you were overshooting the first time
and simplify your goals.  Your first program needn't be more
than a handful of lines.  If you preserve each effort as you
learn, you'll be able to look back on your code and appreciate
the progress you've made, and in many cases learn even more
while you improve your earlier attempts.

The nice thing (one of them, I mean) about Python is that you
always have the interactive prompt available to experiment.
Keep one open all the time, even when you're typing code in a
text editor, so you can quickly test snippets and one-liners
to see if they work the way you expect.  

By the way, count yourself lucky.  Some of us suffered for
years with other languages before we finally stumbled across
Python! :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Tue Jul 24 08:13:29 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:13:29 GMT
Subject: UML Packages And Python Modelling
References: <oecpltcn42hqfpf8ge308jpk6pe28n5bqm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lqpjc.a9p.nde@cslin-gps.comp>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 01:29:11 +0200,
Lothar Scholz <llothar at mailandnews.de> wrote:

> I'm writing an UML Diagram Editor for python and would like to ask the
> community what entity is an UML package. My first idea was that a file
> is the logical equivalent, not the directory (likejava.and eiffel
> programmers would expect). But then what is a directory ?
> Should this be represented by a nested package ?

A Python module could be drawn as a UML package.  The module
name would go in the tab at the top-left of the package icon.
The implementation of a module (.py, .so, .dll...) could be
shown using component diagram syntax.

A Python package would map onto the nested package UML syntax.
So (borrowing the package example from "Python Essential Reference")
if you have a package Graphics, containing subpackage Primitive,
containing module fill.py, you could draw that as a regular UML
package, but with the name Graphics::Primitive::fill in the tab.


Nick


From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 09:33:55 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:33:55 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> GvR:
> > I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> > mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> > messenger from the future :-).
> 
> Since I do not like the change, as explained previously, I would prefer the
> least change, which would be // with div second.  // would not be new
> keyword and breaks nothing sensible that I can think of.  An operator form
> would run as fast as now since it would be compiled inline as now.  A
> function call would be slower and make integer division look much more
> wierdly asymmetric than it actually is.  I suspect that some newbies and
> CP4E people would find *that* (div()) strange.
> 
> Terry J. Reedy

Indeed, the beauty of binary operators is that they help the human
programmer quickly understand an expression.  Since we're used to the
commutative and distributive laws and various other laws that apply
(when they apply!!!), it takes less cognitive effort to understand
"x+y+z" and move on to the next expression than "add(add(x,y),y)".
Occasionally, the visual arrangement of operators and operands will
remind us of a rearrangement that does the same thing more
efficiently.  (ABC's head designer, Lambert Meertens, developed a
whole theory of programming based on this idea; search the web for
"algorithmics".)

But there are dimisishing returns.  Integer division isn't that
common, and there are few distributive or commutative laws that apply
to it (those are mostly reserved for addition and multiplication).

The proposal of "//" got a lot of opposition from folks who are
concerned that it would confuse people with a C++ or Java background
too much, because it's a comment there.

The "div" keyword would be ideal except for the added complexity of
adding a new keyword to the language -- do we need a separate warning
phase here, too?

(Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 21 01:31:47 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 22:31:47 -0700
Subject: doctest
References: <9j7bsv$m3g5h$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9jb443$i0e$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9j7bsv$m3g5h$1 at ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>,
Thomas Heller <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote:
>
>Recently I discovered how incredible useful Tim Peter's doctest is.
>
>The latest version from Python's CVS tree however does not run any more
>under Python 1.5.2.  Is there an uptodate version available which is
>backward compatible?

I don't know how current it is, but PIL contains a 1.5.2-compatible
version from the 2.x line.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From mal at lemburg.com  Mon Jul 16 08:29:11 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:29:11 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 
 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com> <004c01c10be8$af2face0$4ffa42d5@hagrid> <3B4F746C.827BD177@lemburg.com> <3B51F378.7DC06482@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B52DE17.E283521@lemburg.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> >
> >...
> >     Since Python source code is defined to be ASCII, the Unicode literal
> >     encodings (both standard and raw) should be supersets of ASCII and
> >     match the encoding used elsewhere in the program text, e.g. in
> >     comments and maybe even 8-bit strings (even though their encoding
> >     is only implicit and completely under the programmer's control).
> 
> Python programmers do not read PEPs to learn how to use new features. I
> think it makes the whole thing much simpler if we define it on the file
> level explicitly. To me, the feature is most helpful if it helps the
> interpreter and various code inspection tools to understand all of the
> non-ASCII information in the file.

I don't think I understand your point... please clarify.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From guido at zope.com  Fri Jul 27 08:43:01 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:43:01 -0400
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:20:59 PDT."
             <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com> 
References: <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com> 
Message-ID: <200107271243.IAA23850@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > I don't believe this.  If you can't distinguish / from //, you need
> > new glasses. :-)
> 
> Hmmmm.  Not sure I believe this; mistaking "|" for "||" is said to be
> a frequent cause of errors in C code.

For different reasons: they have different priorities but their
meaning is related (both are "or", just one is bitwise and the other
is Boolean shortcut).  Programmers coming from languages where only
"|" existed were tempted to use that, but the priorities are so broken
that a==b | c==d is parsed as (a == (b|c)) == d.

A better analogy would be = vs. == in C.

But I've never heard of confusion between + and ++ or between - and
--, so I think the psychology of this mistake more complicated than
just the doubling of the symbol.  I know I've made the = vs. ==
mistake even in Python.  Possibly it's more likely because = is by far
the most common symbol.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 19:58:29 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:58:29 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
In-Reply-To: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEJLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[John Roth]
> After enduring the PEP 238 threads for far too long, as well as other
> threads, I've come to the conclusion that Python is simply too unstable
> for real use.

Hmm.  That suggests to me you haven't really used it.

> Now, I've got a slightly different background here. Much of my
> professional life was in IBM mainframe shops,

Did IBM invite you to their internal bitch sessions?  This is Open Source,
John:  it's *all* out in plain view.  Heck, I'm the closest thing Guido has
to a PR department <yikes!>, and PEP 238 in particular is talking about
something that may change in 2 years.

> where installing a new version of the operating system, major utilities
> and language processors was essentially **guaranteed** not to break
> running applications.

I have no idea what "essentially **guaranteed**" means.  Was this a clause
in a legally binding contract?  Or a hyperbolic way of saying you usually
didn't have much trouble?  If it was legally binding, how much would you pay
to get the same kind of clause in a Python contract?  The community's
aggregate commitment to that cause so far is $0.00 <wink>.

> I can remember numerous upgrades where I had to do absolutely
> nothing on the applications side.
> ...

Believe it or not, most Python upgrades are like that too -- although we
don't currently charge you Big Bux for the opportunity to be locked to IBM
iron, I'm sure we could set a price for that too <wink>.

an-ibm-mainframe-shop-this-ain't-ly y'rs  - tim





From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Fri Jul 27 08:48:20 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 08:48:20 -0400
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
In-Reply-To: <s1c87.66149$Xr6.281107@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
References: <mailman.996156559.1063.python-list@python.org>
	<s1c87.66149$Xr6.281107@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <oq3d7ih71n.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Neil Hodgson]

> The Perl lexer built into Scintilla tries to disambiguate "/" by [...]

Thanks for this hint, which is clean and simple.  I shall take a look in
Scintilla then, in case there are other such good ideas!

P.S. - While walking to the office, this morning, I came up with a scheme
that could ease implementing Semantic processing in `perl2py', and have
yet to try it.  The main trick goes along better object-orienting the ASTs,
even if it means resorting less often to wandering facilities in SPARK.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul 16 12:09:28 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:09:28 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <Xns90E06CD541CC7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3946lt0lpo8cvjt7f2p5i32q8if4il95j1@4ax.com>

>The Python equivalent to the Ruby trick really isn't that much longer, and 
>to my mind has the advantage of showing more clearly the programmer's 
>intent:
>   (a, b), c = sequence[:2], sequence[2:]

If y'll forgive an AOL-style "me too" post, I just have to say that your explicit
assignment is far superior to the obfuscating syntactic sugar it replaces.

Python: The Right Combination of Power and Elegance.

C//



From glyph at twistedmatrix.com  Thu Jul 26 19:53:51 2001
From: glyph at twistedmatrix.com (Glyph Lefkowitz)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:53:51 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261818540.11357-100000@zaibach.twistedmatrix.com>

>From the peanut gallery: (so of course, feel free to ignore ^_^)

Neither int nor float math is 'real' math.  One could make the argument
that rational math is the only "true" math, but as points have been made
in the past, storage concerns and the lack of closure under certain
operations make rationals impractical.

I don't see a problem with Python's current implementation, and this PEP
does nothing for me but make math on pixels more irritating.  (ints are
wrong and floats are wrong, but at least ints reasonably approximate
screen real estate).

The beginners that I teach Python to are mostly interested in display
hacks in PyGame at this point; teaching them that they need to do int(x/y)
in some cases instead of float(x)/y in others isn't really going to make
the job of teaching any easier; users of numerical libraries *must*
understand the varieties of precision they have at their disposal.  But
this PEP does mean that I have to teach it again and in a different way to
those who already know it, as well as deal with version incompatibility
issues at the level of language semantics (PythonLabs really needs to get
involved with linux distributors to make sure that distributions stay more
current...)

I am unaware of the audience for this PEP, as most of those
discussing it seem to understand the issues but be concerned about
mythical "new users" of the language.  In my experience, real new users
are not confused by the current standard and would not be confused by the
new one, but the change would be harmful.  In short -- this change may
help somebody, and I trust that PythonLabs knows at least one real person
whose life it will make easier; but it will waste a lot of my time.

Whatever it is that PythonLabs decides to do in this instance, please
hammer it into stone.  While I do not relish the idea of reworking all of
my code that uses division now, I'm willing to do it *if it's only this
once*, and there's some real perceived good of mucking with Python's math
internals.  I'll just hope that the million-odd already installed copies
of PYthon 1.5.2 are going to get replaced with 2.2 sometime in the near
future :).  But let's not turn the use of Python itself into a maintenance
or integration nightmare; pick a direction and move forward with it.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  It contains a long
> motivational section, a clear specification of what will happen, and a
> discussion of rejected alternatives, a list of open issues, a Q-and-A
> section etc..  I hope it answers most questions that have been raised
> about this issue.  I'd be happy to revise it if there are still things
> unclear.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

                      ______      __   __  _____  _     _
                     |  ____ |      \_/   |_____] |_____|
                     |_____| |_____  |    |       |     |
                     @ t w i s t e d m a t r i x  . c o m
                     http://twistedmatrix.com/users/glyph





From kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu  Tue Jul 24 18:36:13 2001
From: kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu (Keith F. Woeltje)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:36:13 GMT
Subject: Learning Python
References: <20010724.144042.1258638252.27706@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <3B5DF877.6060606@mail.mcg.edu>

Paul, If you're new to programming altogether, Python is a good place to 
start. Check out Alan Guald's excellent tutorial at:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~agauld/

If you'd rather learn from a book (I'm personally addicted to the feel 
of a book) you can get the printed version at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201709384/qid%3D973079752/sr%3D1-2/103-8528605-9386238

If you already know how to program, try:
http://diveintopython.org/
from where you can download what is reported to be an excellent 
introduction (I haven't gotten to that one yet). Other good resources 
are the books /Learning Python/ by Mark Lutz, /The Quick Python Book/ by 
  Daryl Harms and Kenneth McDonald, and /Core Python Programming/ by 
Wesley Chun (the most up to date of the three).

 >K

Paul wrote:

> I would like to know what sources are available for learning how to
> program with python.  Any help would be appreciated very much.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 



From graham at coms.com  Wed Jul  4 03:33:44 2001
From: graham at coms.com (Graham Ashton)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 08:33:44 +0100
Subject: accessing class data members
References: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <sFz07.1652$h45.10986@news.uk.colt.net>

In article <3B420804.9882D166 at bioeng.ucsd.edu>, "Curtis Jensen"
<cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu> wrote:

> In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when you
> want to know the value of some data member, that a function is written
> to return that value.  However, in Python it seems that people just
> access the data member directly.

I started a similar thread on 25 June. The subject was "Defining accessor
methods". I got some interesting answers...

--
Graham


From cer at tutopia.com  Sat Jul 14 15:11:20 2001
From: cer at tutopia.com (Cristian Echeverria)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:11:20 -0400
Subject: ANN: Python News in Spanish - Noticias de Python en Español
Message-ID: <9iq577$km4p5$1@ID-44371.news.dfncis.de>

ANNOUNCING WEBSITE:
Python News in Spanish: This site is similar (I hope) to pythonware Daily
Python-URL (http://www.pythonware.com/daily/), but in spanish.

ANUNCIANDO SITIO:

                        Noticias de Python en Espa?ol

A partir de este momento se encuentra en operaciones este sitio, que
pretende mantener informado a todos los de habla hispana respecto de las
?ltimas novedades de Python y sus distintas librer?as.

La p?gina principal es http://www.chevenet.com.

Esta p?gina pretende ser similar al Daily Python-URL disponible a trav?s de
pythonware y de hecho utiliza la misma tecnolog?a de publicaci?n.

Desde ya hago el llamado a todos los interesados en cooperar con contenidos
a esta p?gina para que se comuniquen a:
cristian_echeverria at yahoo.com

Adem?s de las noticias tengo la intenci?n de incorporar una secci?n con
v?nculos y otra con art?culos tutoriales.

Cristian Echeverr?a
http://www.chevenet.com






From python at lee-morgan.net  Mon Jul 30 11:44:56 2001
From: python at lee-morgan.net (Lee Morgan)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:44:56 GMT
Subject: need help converting .py to an exe for windows
References: <sEe97.180669$Bz6.213801@sjc-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <wkbsm2ct6u.fsf@lee-morgan.net>

"Derek S, Smigelski" <dereks at mip.com> writes:

> I have tried both py2exe and installer.  I currently have py2exe installed
> now.  Here's the scoop.  I have python 2.1 installed to c:\python21, and

...

> C:\Python21\DSSCRI~1>
> 
> The setup.py file looks like this:
> 
> # setup.py
>          from distutils.core import setup
>          import py2exe
> 
>          setup(name="txlotto",
>                scripts=["txlotto.py"],
>          )
> 

||||||||||^ this indentation shouldnt be there if it is

Otherwise I cant see anything wrong. Although doesn't py21 come with
py2exe as part of the dist utils - and if so have you overwritten
with an old package? 

> C:\Python21\DSSCRI~1>
> 
> 
> Any Ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Derek Smigelski
> DerekS at mip.com
> 
> 

-- 
Lee Morgan


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 06:15:13 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:15:13 +0200
Subject: win32gui
References: <9ikvsg$jim2i$1@ID-22517.news.dfncis.de> <9im8rm$k0827$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9imhni0pup@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote in message
news:9im8rm$k0827$1 at ID-59885.news.dfncis.de...
> "Harvest T. Moon" <info at black-karma.de> wrote in message
news:9ikvsg$jim2i$1 at ID-22517.news.dfncis.de...
> > hi :)
> >
> > is there any tutorial/documentation on how to use the ActiveState
Win32GUI
> > extension?
> >
> Not that I know of. The htmlhelp online-docs do nothing more than to list
> the functions which are available.
> On the other hand, these functions are usually very thin wrappers of
> the native win32 apis, which are documented on microsofts site somewhere.

A good starting point on the MS site is
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/win32/hh/portals/win32start_1n6t.asp

On this page you will find the links to the GDI, User Interface,
and Win32 API overviews and references.  When you visit this page
it will implicitly redirect you to a frameset that includes a TOC
and a small interface search engine on the left (a frame that you
can hide and show again) as well as the actual page on the right.


Alex





From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:37:16 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:37:16 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EC142294EAAcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <cphevx2303.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti) writes:

> there is just one unpleasan't thing left over:
> in the transition phase its __div__, __truediv__, __floordiv__ and their 
> respective 'i' version for arg assignment. this solution allows the object 
> to "see" what the caller wants for a division type. ok, but..
> 
> classes would need a change when upgrading from 2.x to 3.x ( __truediv__ 
> will become the same as __div__ in 3.x but its not with "from __future_ 
> import division" in 2.x)? what would 3.x do? search for __truediv__ and 
> then for __div__? that would give wrong results with old modules that only 
> have a __div__ (emulating the missbehaviour) and no __truediv__. (ok i 
> don't realy belive in classes emulating some missbehaviour, see next 
> paragraph)
> 
> wouldn't it be better when only __div__ and __floordiv__ were needed? 
> classes could not provide the two diffrent meanings of '/' but how many 
> classes do realy need this? when somebody is implementing his own number 
> object he will anyway provide a true division, wouldn't he?
> this would also *not* introduce a new name that's later unused/merged with 
> __div__. (remember: one obvious way to do it)

I have to think some more about this.  Maybe nb_true_divide should
look for __truediv__ first and then fall back to __div__.  Not so for
nb_floor_divide though: it is a new operator.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul 22 13:11:09 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:11:09 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
        <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15195.2349.947801.54567@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> The reason for wanting / to return a float (or at least a type
    Guido> that can represent close approximations of numbers like 0.75) has
    Guido> been discussed many times before.  The summary of the argument in
    Guido> the PEP may not be complete, but I disagree with Arthur's
    Guido> assessment that integer division is not a problem -- the VPython
    Guido> folks have ample experience that it is.

Guido,

I just reread the PEP at

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html

It looks like it hasn't been updated since March.  I see no support for the
argument that the current integer division semantics are confusing, only a
claim that the current semantics are a problem.  Perhaps there's a more
recent version of the PEP available that hasn't been released to the
website.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 24 16:52:05 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:52:05 -0700
Subject: cost of change
References: <mailman.996004542.3120.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DDFF5.E94DAC95@Lugoj.Com>

Galen Swint wrote:
> Has anyone tried to figure out how much changes to Python cost? The way I
> figure it, it goes something like this:
> 500,000 Python programmers

Sounds way too high. At least I don't think that is the correct order of
magnitude.

> $20/hr

A little too low. But at least in the correct order of magnitude.

> 3 hrs to port *all* needed code

Again, sounds low. But order of magnitude looks correct (i.e. probably under
30 hours _on average_). One has to include testing that provide adequate
code coverage. For GUI and many apps this probably can't be automated.

> Thats $30 *million*, and all those numbers are surely low -- especially the
> time to port.

Best one could hope to guess is several million dollars. This assumes most
everyone tries to track the language changes.


From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul 21 11:35:29 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:35:29 GMT
Subject: Don't understand this "method mapping"
References: <3B598059.42027565@compuserve.com>
Message-ID: <5jh67.11826$EP6.3144860@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Bas Michielsen" <BMichielsen at compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:3B598059.42027565 at compuserve.com... (Cc'ed) to Bas

I am rearranging this message.  First the class:

> def linear( x_in, a=0): # a=0 is a stub to get past an error
condition
>     print "linear called, a =", a
>     return x_in
>
> class Curve:
>     map = linear
>
>     def use_map( self, x):
>         print "Using self.map = ", self.map
>         self.y = self.map( x)
>
>     def set_map( self):
>         self.map = linear

> # Test code (I am running Python 1.5.2)
> ## # Output produced by the above
I am intermixing these to make things clearer
>
> c = Curve()
> print c.map
> ## <method Curve.linear of Curve instance at 80c7380>

> c.use_map( 1.0)
> ## Using self.map =  <method Curve.linear of Curve instance at
80c7380>
> ## linear called, a = 1.0

> print c.y
> ## <__main__.Curve instance at 80c7380>
You apparently said print c, not c.y, which should be 1.0

> c.set_map()
> c.use_map( 1.0)
> ## Using self.map =  <function linear at 80b6dd0>
> ## linear called, a = 0

> print c.y
> ## 1.0

Now the questions:

> ## I am a beginner with Python and I don't understand why in the
code below
> ## the attribute `map' first represents Curve.linear

Because you made it so, or look like so.  Def always generate a
function.  When you make a function an attribute of a *class*, it gets
wrapped as a method.  To do so, either define the function in the
class body or assign an externally defined function: does not matter.
When you 'print' a function (or method), the definition name (stored
with the function) is used, whether or not that definition name is
currently bound to the function.  Try

 def f(): pass
g = f; del f
print g

and g will print as f even though there is no longer an f in the
module namespace.

Of course, since <linear> only expects one arg, calling c.map(1.0)
would generate an exception when c is added as the first argument.

> ## which also points to the external function linear

The function was defined externally, but except for *also* having a
name in the global dictionary (which you could delete after the class
definition), it it no more external than your function set_map.
Class.map is a method that wraps function <linear>.  Class.set_map is
a method that wraps function <set_map>.

> ## and then, after calling set_map,
> ## is simply the external function linear for a Curve object.

set_map() assigns <linear> as a *function* attribute map of the
*instance* c, which, having the map name, will mask the class
attribute map.  That is why the difference in the second use_mapp
output.

> ## I had expected that calling Curve.linear would be signalled as an
> ## attribute error because there is no method linear in class Curve

Correct.  It would if you were to do so directly, by that name, but
you never did!

> ## or otherwise that the two ways to initialise the map attribute
would be
> ## equivalent???

As explained above, Curve.map and c.map are different things.  They
only look alike because you called both indirectly.  Try print
id(linear), id(Curve.map), id(c.map).

Terry J. Reedy





From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 15:07:20 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 12:07:20 -0700
Subject: Threading in Python
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9jv2h8$fo1$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <bn787.4044$Me1.99107 at e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>,
Andy <andy at mindgate.net> wrote:
>
>There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes going on in the
>Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps the direction should be towards
>improving the internals first?
>
>One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent support for
>multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads, but I believe it is
>internally implemented and has been shown not to take advantage of an
>SMP machine.

That's about half-true.  For more information, see
http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/

(New & Improved slideshow coming Real Soon Now (a couple or three days))
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 10:25:21 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 07:25:21 -0700
Subject: Decimal (was Re: Comment on PEP-0238)
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994115046.6243.python-list@python.org> <xJd07.953$c7.228697@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9hskkh$5ce$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <xJd07.953$c7.228697 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>,
Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
>
>I believe something like this is part of the IBM decimal arithmetic
>proposal/project.
>
>1.0/3 = .3, 1.00/3 = .33, etc (in which case, 1/3 = 0 by the same rule)

That is incorrect.  The decimal arithmetic standard uses something
called a "context" to provide the information that an operation needs.
Among other things, the context specifies the precision, and unless you
explicitly change the context between operations, all three of the
examples you list above will provide the same result.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 12:25:37 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:25:37 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB98@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <3B531581.1E7FFFF@engcorp.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
> > From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
> > Nevertheless, I want to make the clear point (if I haven't already)
> > that I'm not suggesting screwing every such programmer... just
> > those who are actively using code which would be broken, who will
> > not take the time (however small we might make it) to modify the
> > source, and yet who "must" have their code work under the new Python.
> >
> > Are there really any people like that?  Enough to make it
> > a key factor?  I'm not sure I can even think of any realistic
> > cases where anyone like that exists (he said, trolling for
> > someone to point out an obvious example or two).
> 
> Well, I for one wrote several thousands of lines of Python code in my
> last job, and I obviously have no influence on when they're going to
> upgrade to a newer version of Python. You can probably safely assume
> that they're not going to put a programmer on fixing programs that are
> running without any problems. More likely they would upgrade Python,
> realize that "a bunch" of Python scripts stopped working, and either
> roll back the Python upgrade, rewrite them in Perl/Java, or find someone
> with enough Python skills to fix the problems. Neither solution would be
> good PR for Python...

I agree it wouldn't be good PR for Python, but presumably neither
is having division which doesn't behave as newcomers expect.
We're trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, if your previous employer upgrades Python for no good
reason and without checking the Change History where they will
see all the warnings in BIG PRINT about how existing code might
break and that they should run "divscan.py" to see if their code
is safe or not, how can we protect them against themselves?

I'm trying to point out that this kind of hypothetical example,
where some group might upgrade (but not be aware of this issue
even after lengthy publicity during the transition period) 
even though they will not actively maintain their code, is 
not likely, or not worth worrying about for long.

And that's where the contingency plans come into play: we've 
provided adequate notice, tools, etc., and yet somebody chose 
to ignore us and got punished.  Big deal.

-Peter Hansen



From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 27 17:06:19 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:06:19 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>   <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:54:13 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:
[...]
>Assuming we'll adopt a variation of Scheme's numerical tower (which
>I'm currently in favor of, more or less), this won't happen.  Floats
>and complex would always be considered inexact (and ints and rationals
>exact), and inexact numbers are not allowed as sequence indices, even
>if their exact value is an integer.
>
Why would complex have to be inexact if both its
real and imaginary parts were exact?

This looks exact, but will it be?
 >>> (1+2j)**2
 (-3+4j)



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 19:26:05 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:26:05 +0100
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
References: <mailman.994953982.6684.python-list@python.org> <Ofl37.2371$uJ3.65780@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kscgd.rqa.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:41:31 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>> > Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
>> > liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
>> > programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
>> > present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
>> > ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
>> > (to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the
>> > infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.
>>
>> This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  This implies that Python will
>> only be available to the Windows community.  There are environments where
>> Microsoft Certification servers will never exist.  If there will now be
>> a component added to Python to only allow its use when authorized by a
>> Microsoft Certification server, then one may need to change or develop a
>> new solution set.
>>
>> I'm not particularly opposed to forking off a "Python for Microsoft
>> Windows Environments" or a "Python for Microsoft Certification Server
>> Environments" as long as there remains a Python for other communities of
>> interest.  If the latter is not going to occur, then I need to reconsider
>> whether or not Python is part of a viable solution.
>>
>That's OK. I'm working on a Python-to-Perl translator.

That sounds cool. What language is your translator written in --
I hear that bash has some really cool lexical analysis / parsing
libraries, so i suggest you use that to write the translater. If 
you also need a run-time interpreter for the Perl bytecode, I suggest 
you use JavaScript -- for example the user could just cut-and-paste
the bytecodes into a web form and click a button to run the output.
This would be cross=platform too, you could use the Netscape Javascript
on Unix and the IE Javascript on Windows. Good luck.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From hnowak at cuci.nl  Wed Jul 25 08:40:32 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:40:32 +0200
Subject: Methods of setting class attributes
Message-ID: <3B703988@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From Piotr Legiecki <piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl> 
=====
>hnowak wrote:

>> Assuming you just want the default behavior to set attributes in a class 
and
>> get going, this is a common idiom:
>>
>> class Foo:
>>     def __init__(self, x):
>>         self.x = x
>>         self.y = "blah"
>>
>
>Yes. That is assigning in constructor. But what to do if I want to make
>an assignment after the object is created? Thats normal during object
>life. Simply object.attrib=something, etc? I know it works, but I'm not
>sure if it is in python style.

Yes, it's the normal way to do it:

foo = Foo()
foo.x = 37
# etc...

>> Python is much more dynamic than C++ and attributes of a class or instance 
can
>> be set or deleted at will.
>
>Right! I'v noticed that and it is not easy to adopt. What about class
>interface? There is simply none in python, because I can change it at
>any time. Strange.

Other people missed this feature too. I think proposals for an interface 
mechanism were discussed in the Type-SIG some time ago. Also, there's a PEP 
you might be interested in:

  http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0245.html

Regards,

--Hans Nowak




From thomas at xs4all.net  Sat Jul  7 05:38:35 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:38:35 +0200
Subject: lvalues and the lgb rule
In-Reply-To: <8Gt17.7112$PF2.1324057@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
References: <mailman.994457412.4660.python-list@python.org> <8Gt17.7112$PF2.1324057@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010707113835.H8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 01:33:56AM +0000, Eric Hagemann wrote:

> > Not dynamic.  Just look at the code in an editor:  if a name is bound
> > anywhere within a code block, and isn't declared in a "global" stmt, then
> > that name is local throughout the entire code block.

> Is this true ?

Yes.

> Given a file with the following

> print x
> x=1
> print x

> The first print will fail with a 'NameError'.  It was my (perhaps) wrong
> impression
> that x "came into being" at the assignment (x=1)

Yes and no. If you execute the above snippet at the top level (not inside a
function) you'll get a NameError because the name doesn't exist yet. This is
because you are evaluating in the 'global' namespace, and it is handled
slightly differently from the local namespace inside a function. If you
write the above as part of a function, say,

def spam():
    print x
    x = 1
    print x

spam()

You'll also get a NameError under 1.5.2, but a more appropriate
UnboundLocalError in newer versions of Python. The reason of the error is
the same in both cases, but the exact exception raised was changed to make
the difference between the first example and the second more obvious.
(UnboundLocalError is a subclass of NameError, so catching NameError will
still work for both cases.)

> I would think the variable is local to the code block once the assignement
> has been executed

No, it's local once the compiler sees an assignment statement for the
variable inside the code block. But because the global (module) namespace is
a global one as well as a local one, it behaves slightly differently there.
What happens is that the global namespace is a straight dictionary, where
assignment is a 'setitem', lookup is a 'getitem', and 'del' is a 'delitem'.

The local namespace inside a function is actually stored (in absence of
'exec' or 'import *') as a vector (list) and the names of all local
variables are translated into indexes. At runtime the interpreter will try
to retrieve the X'th element of the vector and notice it's empty (a NULL
value), raising the UnboundLocalError. A 'del' statement also empties the
element.

Just look at the LOAD_FAST opcode in Python/ceval.c in the source
distribution :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From bh at intevation.de  Mon Jul 16 10:39:34 2001
From: bh at intevation.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 16:39:34 +0200
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>

alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle) writes:

> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:19:09 -0400, Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote:
> >List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> >do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> >would be:
> >
> >for eachItem in A:
> >    if eachItem in B:
> >        A.remove(eachItem)
> >
> 
> You may get some speedup by making B a dictionary, and using has_key() to
> see if the word is there. This should get you a O(log(n)) instead of O(n) 
> inside the loop. To gain further performance,  use filter to skim A. 
> 
> C = {}
> for item in B:
>     C[item]=None
> 
> A = filter(lambda e, dic = C: dic.has_key(e), A)

A bit more elegant, perhaps, and a little faster still would be to use 1
as the value in C and directly use C.get in filter:

C = {}
for item in B:
    C[item] = 1

A = filter(C.get, A)

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul  5 14:21:37 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 20:21:37 +0200
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> Or (without re):
> print "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])

I guess this one will be significantly slower for larger
data sets than the re solution because of

  if x in '0123456789'

Ciao, Michael.


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 19:12:55 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:12:55 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
 <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan at g.local>, Gareth McCaughan
<Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> writes
....
>More: to be benevolent is to *try* to act in a way
>consistent with the person's best interests[1], even
>if in fact you're wrong. So even if Guido is as
>horribly wrong as some people here say he is about
>what their best interests are, that's no reason to
>think he isn't benevolent.
...
We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.
-- 
Robin Becker


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Sat Jul 14 14:58:17 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:58:17 +0200
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
References: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <9iq4oc$kme5j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

> Have completed a fairly large project where I, among other modules, use the
> Python XML package from the XML SIG. Now I want to make a DOS binary to
> distribute it as a standalone application for Windows users.
>
> Neither py2exe nor Installer is able to find the XML modules by themselves,
> and I haven't been able to figure out how to include them. For example,
> when running the EXE that Installer creates, I get the following message:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<string>", line 7, in ?
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 117, in _import_hook
>     return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 206, in _finish_import
>     bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 292, in _load_tail
>     m = self._import_one(m, part, fqname)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 252, in _import_one
>     module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 281, in _process_result
>     exec code in module.__dict__
>   File "e:\python\lib\xml\dom\minidom.py", line 21, in ?
>     from xml.dom import HierarchyRequestErr
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 117, in _import_hook
>     return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 206, in _finish_import
>     bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
>   File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 294, in _load_tail
>     raise ImportError, "No module named " + fqname
> ImportError: No module named _xmlplus.dom
>
> The XML modules reside at e:\python\_xmlplus in this computer. I have tried
> the respective include options, but don't know if I do it right:
>
> python e:\pyinst\builder.py myscript.cfg --includes e:\python\_xmlplus
>
The correct py2exe command line would be (assuming your script is
named setup.py):
'python setup.py py2exe -p _xmlplus'
to include the whole _xmlplus package.

Hope this helps,

Thomas




From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 10:26:37 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:26:37 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cpofqaova7.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:

> If you agree that, if it weren't for breaking old code, PEP-238 would
> make Python a better language, what can we do about that old code?
> 

I agree that it would make Python a different language. Neither better nor 
worse.

You arguably gain in meeting some peoples expectations of the division 
operator, but you lose consistency in that previously (as far I can think), 
the operators +, -, *, /, % when given two arguments of the same numeric 
type always return a result of that same type. In future we have to be 
prepared to explain to beginners that division can give a result of a 
different type: in fact you cannot even predict the type of the result when 
you know the types of the arguments, you have to know their values as well.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From oliphant at ee.byu.edu  Mon Jul 23 16:37:06 2001
From: oliphant at ee.byu.edu (Travis Oliphant)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:37:06 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
 <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
 <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu>

> > As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how
> > easy it is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would
> > very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that
> > enforce *uniform* case usage.
>
> And that's of course what I have in mind.
>
> > Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but
> > nobody wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program
> > with distinct meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes
> > for readable code -- at least for this sometime programmer.

I'll just chime in to say that as one who uses Python for
science/engineering, I would be very unhappy not to be able to define the
variables h and H to mean two different things.  Engineers often uses
case to distinguish between the function and it's Fourier transform for
example.

But, this has been brought up before...


-Travis Oliphant




From nospam at nospam  Thu Jul 12 11:05:59 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:05:59 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <9ijpfk02a67@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b4dd783$0$2149@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9ijpfk02a67 at enews4.newsguy.com...
> My proposed solution relied on the fileinput module's "in-place"
> behavior (WITH a backup, but that's optional I guess:-).  That
> module nicely wraps whatever concerns may need to be wrapped, AND
> works on as many files as you desire.
>
> def allbutfirst(files):
>     for line in fileinput.input(files,inplace=1,backup='.bak'):
>         if fileinput.filelineno()>1: print line,
>

I'm a definite Newbie, but to me this looks like it outputs the result
to stdout, rather than creating a new file with the first line removed,
which is what I thought the goal was.





From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Fri Jul  6 22:40:45 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:40:45 -0700
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3b4676ad$0$324$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

Note: this sollution requires 2 characters after the decimal point....

def isDollarAmount(s):
    try:
        if s.count == 1 and s[-3] == '.':
            dol, cen = s.split('.')
            int(dol)
            int(cen)
            return 1
        int(s)
        return 1
    except:
        return None

The idea is that if the int function can't convert to a number, then the
string is no good.

Hope that helps,  Neil Macneale


In article <3B465858.CB7F38E8 at tundraware.com>, "Tim Daneliuk"
<tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:

> I want a function to check a string to make sure it is a legitimate
> dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:
> 
> First character is numeric or "-"
> At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly two
> digits All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"
> 
> 
> I wrote the attached to check a string for these rules, but I can't help
> wondering if my feeble newbie python coding isn't already better done
> elswhere and/or using existing logic.  Any ideas all?  TIA.... Code
> follows -
> 
> 
> 
> # Check and see if passed string is a legit amount
> 
> def IsNum(num):
>     if num == "":
>         return FALSE
>     digits = ["0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "."] z =
>     num.split(".")
>     if len(z) > 2:             # At Most, only once decimal permitted.
>         return FALSE
>     if len(z) == 2:
>         if len(z[1]) != 2: # Exactly two digits must follow decimal
>             return FALSE
>     if (num[0] == '-') and (len(num) > 1): # 1st char can be sign if
>     more chars follow
>         num = num[1:]    # Drop sign for purposes of checking
>     for x in num:        # Make sure all chars are legit digits
>         if not digits.count(x):
>             return FALSE
>     return TRUE
> 


-- 

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Sun Jul  8 09:42:51 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 08:42:51 -0500
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <200107071818.f67II2g18846@odiug.digicool.com> <mailman.994532292.9464.python-list@python.org> <cphewnionr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <000f01c107b3$e7115de0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>


> "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes:
>
> > Perhaps it's too inconsistent, but I see no reason why longs can't
> > continue returning "normal" results forever.  When you use a long
> > you know what you are doing, or at least think you do; so you should
> > expect integer division results just as always.
>
> Well, but there's another proposal (that taken by itself would have
> few detractors) to blur the distinction between int and long.  This
> would do away with the whole OverflowError problem: int calculations
> whose result doesn't fit in an int would simply and silently return a
> long instead.

I remember that; I'd forgotten about that PEP.

> This is PEP 237.  I don't expect that this will be added to Python 2.2
> because there are lots of little details that need to be taken care
> of, and backwards incompatibilities (e.g. 1<<100 currently yields 0,
> but 1L<<100 is the same as 2L**100).
>
> But given that that is likely to be the way of the future, it seems
> best to treat int and long division the same way.
>
> > What does it buy us to break longs as well as ints?
> >
> > Overall I am in favor of *eventually* automatically promoting ints to
float
> > when division is attempted, and likewise converting longs to floats when
> > dividing one by the other, but I really think we gain nothing by
changing
> > the semantics of division of longs.
>
> This is inconsistent.  You are saying that you think we gain nothing
> from something (long division) that you want to change anyway.

No, I specifically don't want to change division of long by long; that's
what
I'm saying.  "Promotion" of long to float when one of each is in the
operation
is different.


> > I would also say that, when longs and ints are divided together, you
should
> > probably promote the int to a long rather than performing float
division.
>
> You're thinking of it the wrong way.  The operands are first converted
> to the same type according to specific rules; then that type is asked
> to perform the operation.  So what you are requesting here is already
> decided, by the existing rule that says that in "int/long", the int is
> converted to long before the operation takes place.

Ah, so.

> > I really don't think a newbie will appreciate
> >
> >     >>> 1 / 2
> >     Traceback (most recent call last):
> >       File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> >     IntDivisionError: integer division is invalid
> >
> > any more than they currently understand
> >
> >     >>> 1 / 2
> >     0
>
> Good point.  So we should switch directly from 1/2 -> 0 to 1/2 ->
> 0.5.  But it's unavoidable that they will get a warning in some
> versions...  e.g.
>
>     >>> 1 / 2
>     __main__:1: DeprecationWarning: integer division semantics will
change;
>     use x div y to force integer result or float(x)/y to force float
result
>     0
>     >>>

So the final operator for int division will be 'div'?  Seems fine to me.





From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Sat Jul 28 02:12:07 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 08:12:07 +0200
Subject: Deposing Dictators
In-Reply-To: <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <28072001.1@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>

>>>>> "Gareth" == Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> writes:
>>>>> "David" == David Ullrich writes:
>>>>> "X" == anonymous being <margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> writes:

    X>2) The level of dissent required to change the opinion of the
    X>BDFL perhaps calls into question the 'B'.

    David> Nonsense. Without saying anything about who's right and
    David> who's wrong, or about whether the D is B or not: To be
    David> "benevolent" towards someone is to act in a way consistent
    David> with that person's best interests. This is not the same
    David> thing as giving the person what he asks for, not by a long
    David> shot.

    Gareth> More: to be benevolent is to *try* to act in a way
    Gareth> consistent with the person's best interests[1], even
    Gareth> if in fact you're wrong. So even if Guido is as
    Gareth> horribly wrong as some people here say he is about
    Gareth> what their best interests are, that's no reason to
    Gareth> think he isn't benevolent.

dict benevolent was a very interesting read indeed.  Thanks for the
(kinda, sorta) hint.

    David> Why in the world should "level of dissent" have any bearing on
    David> anything? Deciding moral issues by taking a vote is one thing -
    David> deciding what's best on a technical issue by taking a vote is
    David> silly.

    Gareth> Hear hear.

Shouldn't that be "Here here"?</sarcasm>

    Gareth> [1] I initially typed "integers". Hmm.

Hmm indeed :-)

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
             Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com)
                     Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010728/98810d9a/attachment.sig>

From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  9 01:07:35 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:07:35 -0700
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B493C17.17F61B9C@ActiveState.com>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it is
> as follows:
> 
> s="12.19.6.7.12"
> ls = string.split(s, '.')
> md = map(string.atoi, ls)
> 
> Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
> is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. 

It is defining a variable "s" as a *string*. Python doesn't know or care
that the string happens to have things that look like numbers to you or
me. It is just a bunch of characters.

> But my first problem is
> after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
> what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?

No. It means to split on the periods and return a *list of strings*.
Here's what Python's manual says:

split(s[, sep[, maxsplit]]) 

Return a list of the words of the string s. If the optional second
argument sep is absent or None, the words are separated by arbitrary
strings of whitespace characters (space, tab, newline, return,
formfeed). If the second argument sep is present and not None, it
specifies a string to be used as the word separator. The returned list
will then have one more item than the number of non-overlapping
occurrences of the separator in the string. The optional third argument
maxsplit defaults to 0. If it is nonzero, at most maxsplit number of
splits occur, and the remainder of the string is returned as the final
element of the list (thus, the list will have at most maxsplit+1
elements). 


> The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
> exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the string
> ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? 

No. It was strings. This is a string "12". This is an integer: 12. Play
around a little on the Python command line:

>>> 12
12
>>> "12"
'12'
>>> type(12)
<type 'int'>
>>> type("12")
<type 'string'>
>>> import string
>>> string.atoi("12")
12
>>> string.atoi(12)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "string.py", line 214, in atoi
    return _int(s, base)
TypeError: ...

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 19:09:13 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:09:13 -0500
Subject: interpreter improvements
In-Reply-To: <slrn9m126q.og5.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
        <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
        <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org>
        <slrn9m126q.og5.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <15200.41753.228480.566138@beluga.mojam.com>

    Quinn> You don't have to know the language to cut and paste and edit
    Quinn> blocks, you just need a mouse and a terminal which doesn't think
    Quinn> it's still a teletype.  My "other observation" above was taking
    Quinn> the position that readline is the wrong solution.  I don't use
    Quinn> readline if I can avoid it, and happily cut and paste and edit
    Quinn> blocks in the top level, and then cut and paste them right into
    Quinn> the editor, or the other way around.

If you're sitting at the interpreter prompt where do you cut-n-paste to with
your mouse?  If I entered this at the prompt:

    for i in range(10):
        ... line 1 ...
        ... line 2 ...
        ... line 3 ...
        ... line 4 ...
        ... line 5 ...
        x = math.sin(y)

only to have the interpreter tell me I forgot to "import math", it would be
nice to execute the import, then with two Ctl-P keystrokes back up into the
for loop and have the whole block pop into a mini-editor to be reexecuted
upon exit.  I believe this is what IDLE is supposed to do.  No prompt
fiddling required.

    Quinn> It does require turning off the '>>> ' and '... ' prompts (which
    Quinn> python won't let you do without hacking pythonrun.c (I think)
    Quinn> which I think is a bug), but it's my opinion that this is the
    Quinn> correct behaviour anyway (no prompt).

No need to hack pythonrun.c, just set sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 to empty strings.
Of course, with smart history retrieval you wouldn't need to do that.

    Quinn> It's also convenient for return values to be printed like

    Quinn> 2 + 2
    Quinn> #-> 4

    Quinn> since that doesn't mess up a cut and paste and is easily filtered
    Quinn> out.

That's an interesting enhancement but doesn't help with the ps1/ps2 thing.
They do offer nice feedback to the user about what's expected, so for most
situations users won't turn them off before they make a mistake that needs
to be repaired.

    Quinn> I greatly prefer not building special language-awareness into a
    Quinn> mechanism, because then it can work in a simple and uniform
    Quinn> manner for every application and language that involves text, as
    Quinn> opposed to having an ad-hoc intrusive only-works-on-one-editor
    Quinn> complicated and hard to get right mechanism.

Neither solution is ideal, but if you want language awareness you need to
either build it into the interpreter or build some configurable layer on top
of something like readline that you can customize via a config file, in much
the same way that you can train emacs about syntax highlighting.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it  Tue Jul 24 10:49:35 2001
From: ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:49:35 GMT
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
Message-ID: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>

If you put this in a module and test it:

def ForLoopTest (NumLoops) :
    for Year in range (1,NumLoops) :
        for Century in range (1,NumLoops) :
            Months = Year*12


you'll find that ForLoopTest (10000) will apparently
halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
or do I just have to live with it?



--
Owen F. Ransen
http://www.ransen.com/
Home of Gliftic & Repligator Image Generators


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 19 08:57:07 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:57:07 GMT
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lbhen.22q.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <cpy9plf56k.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard H?ring) writes:

> Btw. is there a description of what the various CVS branches mean?
> Most of the names are pretty obvious, like "release21-maint", but
> others aren't.

This should only be relevant to a handful of developers.

> If such a page doesn't exist, I think it would be a good idea to
> write a short dscription for each branch and put it in "Python @
> Sourceforge FAQ".

Yes, why don't you write it.  I'm tired. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From jschmitt at vmlabs.com  Fri Jul 27 14:27:57 2001
From: jschmitt at vmlabs.com (John Schmitt)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:27:57 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
Message-ID: <4197FA5DD22AD5118ADE00805F6FA62F3B67D0@eden.vmlabs.com>

Why do we have to wait for 2.2?  You can do this already.  

PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Apr 19 2001, 10:28:27) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32.
Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) - see
'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
>>> import types
>>> types.IntType
<type 'int'>
>>> assert isinstance(0,types.IntType)
>>> assert isinstance([],types.IntType)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
AssertionError
>>> 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at python.org]
> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:10 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: 2.2 features
> 
> 
> "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> writes:
> 
> > Here's a nice little use of type/class unification:
> > 
> > instead of using:
> > if type(x) is type(0):
> > 
> > we can use:
> > if type(x) is int:
> > 
> > or, for type checking..
> > 
> > assert type(num) is int
> > assert type(msg) is str
> > 
> > ( I assume the use of 'is', rather than '==',  is acceptable here )
> 
> Yes, 'is' is right.  But you should never use this; instead, you
> should use
> 
>   assert isinstance(num, int)
>   assert isinstance(msg, str)
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 19 23:21:06 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:21:06 +1200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B57A3A2.669737DE@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> I apologize for my poor English -- I don't know what you mean by "an
> affection" or "an affect".

I think he meant "affectation", about which 
www.wordsmyth.net has this to say:


Pronunciation    ae fihk te shEn
              
Definition 1.    falseness or superficiality of appearance or behavior;
pretense.
              
Synonyms         pretense (3) , artificiality {artificial (3)} ,
affectedness 
                 {affected (2)} , pretentiousness {pretentious (1)}
              
Crossref. Syn.   show , mannerism , air
              
Similar Words    sham , show , unnaturalness {unnatural} , posturing
{posture (vi)}
              
Definition 2.    a specific instance of such pretense.
              
Synonyms         mannerism (2) , airs (5) , pose1 (2) , show (4)
              
Crossref. Syn.   act
              
Similar Words    imposture
              
Related Words    camp , pomp , cant , pretense , claptrap


-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From guido at digicool.com  Sat Jul 14 21:26:43 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:26:43 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:04:47 PDT."
             <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> 
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com>  
            <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
non-parsing tools like editors to find it?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 19 14:59:46 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 18:59:46 GMT
Subject: problem with gzip files
References: <mailman.995526990.21898.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lebh2.hgd.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 03:19:42 +1000, Dave Harrison <dlharris at mail.usyd.edu.au>
wrote:
>Traceback (most recent call last):
>	File "./zipreader.py", line 3, in ?
>		import gzip, os
>	File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/gzip.py", line 9, in ?
>		import zlib
>ImportError: No module named zlib
>
>I then tried installed the zlib library, which went fine.  Except it hasn't
>solved my problem.
>
>Is there something simple I am missing here ? Any advice ?

You probably installed the C zlib library (called libz, confusingly).  You
still don't have the python zlib module.

If you're using 2.0 or newer, you should be able to recompile and setup.py
will pick it up automatically and make you a zlib module.  Otherwise, edit
Modules/Setup.


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Tue Jul 24 11:24:37 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:24:37 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <apaolto6pr6cevpk0lgudiapnbrttaj8u9@4ax.com> <m2wv4yhm6v.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <Vqg77.3375$Xk6.761103@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Paul Foley" <see at below> wrote in message
news:m2wv4yhm6v.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz...
> If you want integers, write floor(a,b) [or floor(a/b)], since that's
> what you really mean.

That would be incorrect though.  When I write "a / b", I mean "the largest
integer 'c' such that c * b <= a".  I don't mean "some approximation loosely
resembling a / b", which floating point calculations give me.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From shalehperry at home.com  Mon Jul 23 12:40:34 2001
From: shalehperry at home.com (Sean 'Shaleh' Perry)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:40:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Blender module
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lnq08.dh1.nell@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010723094034.shalehperry@home.com>

On 23-Jul-2001 Justyna Bia?a wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I need to know how to use the new module for writing scripts in python for
> Blender.
> 
> I mean the newest version of Blender (2.14) and actually I have no
> documentation to that.
> Most scripts I found is written in the old API.
> If anybody is familiar with that stuff, please, let me know or maybe you can
> send any examples of using that module.
> 

docs can be found on http://www.blender.nl.  Tutorials, API, etc.



From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 21:24:19 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:24:19 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com> <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60E96C.2A99AD87@engcorp.com> <wkhevyfepq.fsf@mail.connact.com> <3B61B037.3070704@nospiced.ham.devis.com>
Message-ID: <3B621443.E657DE94@engcorp.com>

Tom Jenkins wrote:
> 
> >>>>>>"PH" == Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> > PH> In my post I was attempting to point out that I find list
> > PH> comprehensions less readable than the equivalent, longer but
> > PH> more explicit while loop version, not that one list comprehension
> > PH> is more or less cryptic than another.
[...]
> I couldn't read list comprehensions until I actually started playing
> around with them.  After experimenting and writing (oh about 3 or 4) I
> discovered I could read them ;)

These responses are good to hear.  I'm happy to know that
after only 5 or 6 experiments (I'm a little slower than you 
guys :-), I'll find list comprehensions less cryptic and
much more readable.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 08:20:40 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:20:40 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote ...
> phil hunt wrote:
> > I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to
> > RFC2822.
>
> sounds like it's time to rename that module ;-)
>
It would be even better to rewrite it. rfc822 builds so many lists of
characters which are later returned as strings by joining the lists, a good
C optimization would yield huge performance benefits. Pity I'm not better at
C.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From dalke at acm.org  Tue Jul 31 07:50:38 2001
From: dalke at acm.org (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:50:38 +0100
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996426594.9989.python-list@python.org> <20010729170054.141$Pa@newsreader.com> <cpr8uzz5uo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9k6uoa$3sv$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>

Hernan M. Foffani <hfoffani at yahoo.com> wrote:
> One minor suggestion:
> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

Guido:
>I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

What's wrong with 'klass'?  Other than that it looks either
like a typo or like German.  Several of the standard libraries
use 'klass' when refering to a class and I've seen code outside
the std. library using 'klass' as well.  Whereas 'cls' is less
frequently used in the std. library to hold a class, but I've
not seen external uses of that name for that purpose elsewhere.

To me, 'cls' means "clear screen" despite the fact I haven't
worked in DOS for almost 10 years :)  Also, "klass" has an
obvious pronounciation, and "cls" can be used as a list of
"cl"s.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com





From carlf at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 16:48:34 2001
From: carlf at panix.com (Carl Fink)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 20:48:34 GMT
Subject: Hiding Console?
References: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k4bt2.pjn.carlf@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9ht9to$fei$1 at neptunium.btinternet.com>, G. Willoughby wrote:
> Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
> WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the IDLE ide. I wanna
> write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont want the console
> there when there run, any ideas?

Run the program with pythonw.exe instead of python.exe.
-- 
Carl Fink		carlf at dm.net


From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Tue Jul 31 13:18:57 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 01:18:57 +0800
Subject: decent syslog replacement?
In-Reply-To: <9k6n42$ep6$1@netnews.upenn.edu>; from henken@seas.upenn.edu on Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 12:43:11PM -0400
References: <9k6n42$ep6$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <20010801011857.A8795@Vetinari.home>

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 12:43:11PM -0400, Nicholas Henke wrote:
> Hello, I am in the process of writing a Metakit database wrapper. I am 
> running into performance problems when I try to log a ton of debug 
> messages. The system with thrash the disk when logging. I have tried using 
> syslog, replacing stdout with a file, etc. None of these seem to help much. 
> The only luck I have had is to just use print and have bash redirect to a 
> file. This causes problems in other servers that are trying to log to the 
> same file.

Well, you have just described a number of _different_ problems here (for
example, replacing stdout with a file will not work if you are using
system() or os.pipe() calls).

As far as your original problem goes, syslog attempts to be reliable
even in case of crashes. So, by default, it flushes every message to
disk as it is written.

It is possible to turn off this flushing to disk after each right, by
prepending the filename in /etc/syslog.conf with a '-'. See the
syslog.conf(5) man page for details. Note, however, that this is only
valid for Linux (it was added in the port from BSD sources originally),
but if you aren't running Linux, then there's just not much point to
programming, really. :-)

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.



From martin at strakt.com  Fri Jul  6 02:52:20 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:52:20 +0200
Subject: SSL module
In-Reply-To: <3B44AF5E.15B1E7C@alcyone.com>
References: <mailman.994320669.23326.python-list@python.org> <3B44AF5E.15B1E7C@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <20010706085220.A8268@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:18:06AM -0700, Erik Max Francis wrote:
> "Martin Sj?gren" wrote:
> 
> > The past few days I've been writing on a basic SSL module for Python,
> > written completely in C. Yep I'm getting paid to do it. ;)
> > It uses OpenSSL (of course?) and it's starting to take shape. Of
> > course
> > there are a multitude of things not finished, a lot of the OpenSSL API
> > that I haven't included. Let's put it this way, it's doing what we
> > (the
> > company I work for) need it to do. If someone wants to continue
> > working on
> > it I'll be just as glad. I might continue working on it in my spare
> > time
> > too.
> 
> I sure hope that you have gotten written, explicit permission to release
> the code.  If you are getting paid to do it, then the job is work for
> hire, and you do not own the copyright, so it is not under your
> authority to release it publicly.
> 
> Make sure you've cleared it with your company before you go any further.
> (If they have not already okayed it, it is unlikely that they would.)

I'm fully aware of that, but it was them, not me, who brought up the idea
to try getting the module into the python library. It shouldn't be a
problem.

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 10:05:31 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:05:31 -0500
Subject: Adding a package to the standard distribution
In-Reply-To: <9iad21$btd$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
References: <9iad21$btd$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <15177.47659.74062.15484@beluga.mojam.com>

    Panu> Hello all, I've got a package (called Selecting) that I'd like to
    Panu> subject to consideration for being added to the standard python
    Panu> distribution. The package implements a better (in my opinion)
    Panu> scheme of abstraction over select.select() than does asyncore and
    Panu> asynchat. However, I don't know what mailing list / person I
    Panu> should write to to get the package included in the standard
    Panu> distribution.

For starters, I'd suggest you make it available via HTTP or FTP and post an
announcement to the Python announcements list/group.  Also, submit it to the
Vaults of Parnassus.  As for persuading the powers-that-be, you can send a
note to python-dev at python.org.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 20:29:09 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:29:09 GMT
Subject: deja/vu
Message-ID: <p3I97.56629$EP6.13107028@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

Here's a deja vu article for the 100,000 post celebration [8<)

In a 40-article comp.lang.python thread accessable as
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d&sta
rt=10
a pharmacist reported his conversion of life-critical dose-calculation
programs from Basic to Python.

In messages 3&4, Tim Peters and Fredrik Lundh warned him about  1/2=0.
Selected quotes from the discussion that followed:

Greg Ewing(15):
It's a nuisance in C, but at least there you know whether you're
dealing with ints of
floats. In a dynamically typed language, where you don't know when you
write the code whether you'll get an int or a float, it's lunacy!

Tim Peters (10):
... if "/" floated ints and *they* had to type "//" to get integer
division.
Which may or may not be what Guido would like to do for Python2.

Guido van Rossum(12):
For the record, this seems a reasonable solution if we can overcome
the breakage of all the code that relies on truncating integer
division.
Perhaps the // notation should be introduced sooner to
provide a migration path?  [Would that he had - TJR]
(It would be easier if it were a function, e.g. div(x, y).)

[Tim Peters(16) in response to that line:
less attractive because the translation program would have a harder
job
in several respects.  By-hand conversions would also be harder.]

GvR continuing:
What would 3.0//2.0 (or div(3.0, 2.0)) mean?  Aha, there's a
precedent: use divmod(3.0, 2.0)[0], which yields 1.0 today.

Michael McLay(13):
Any guesses on how much code would be broken by making the change?
...
How loudly would people scream if Guido made such a drastic change in
the 1.6 release?

Andrew Kuchling(14):
Very, very loudly.  ... it's better held off until a x.0 release.

...

Terry J. Reedy





From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 04:10:12 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:10:12 +0100 
Subject: location of pySol
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE32@intrepid>

> From:	Scott Hathaway [SMTP:slhath at home.com]
> Can anyone tell me where to get the latest version of pySol?
 
Try <http://wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at/mfx/pysol/>.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org  Wed Jul 25 13:59:59 2001
From: dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org (Daniel Fackrell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:59:59 -0600
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b5f0a37$1@hpb10302.boi.hp.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpzo9t80l7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:
>
> > I agree that it would make Python a different language. Neither better
nor
> > worse.
> >
> > You arguably gain in meeting some peoples expectations of the division
> > operator, but you lose consistency in that previously (as far I can
think),
> > the operators +, -, *, /, % when given two arguments of the same numeric
> > type always return a result of that same type. In future we have to be
> > prepared to explain to beginners that division can give a result of a
> > different type: in fact you cannot even predict the type of the result
when
> > you know the types of the arguments, you have to know their values as
well.
>
> In a farther future, when PEP 228 is fully implemented, Python may
> only have *one* (built-in) numeric type, "number".  Then all
> operations will defined entirely on the mathematical value, and the
> different "types" as we know now are merely details of storage
> efficiency -- except that numbers will also have an indication of
> "exactness" or "approximateness", to acknowledge the fact that the
> number system may choose to give approximate results for some
> operations.  We may end up deciding that rationals have too many
> problems, and replace binary floating point with decimal floating
> point to address a different set of confusions, and so maybe division
> of two exact numbers may not always yield an exact result -- just like
> the square root of 2 is conventionally calculated only to a limited
> precision.  Or we may choose to represent rationals exactly -- in any
> case, 1/2==0 will be false, just as PEP 238 proposes.
>
> Such a (hypothetical!) world is just as consistent, yet it does not
> guarantee that the type of the result of an operation is the same as
> that of the operands, if by type you mean the storage type (int, long,
> float etc.).
>
> Also look at PEP 237, which proposes to unify ints and longs.  Would
> you really prefer your "consistency" and see 1000000 * 1000000 raise
> OverflowError because the result cannot be represented as a 32-bit
> int, or would you prefer to drop the "consistency" in favor of getting
> a result at all?
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Would this unified number system somehow still be able to provide the
functionality that ints provide with regard to bitwise operations?  There
may be other problems that arise as well, but I'm too much of a newbie to
point them out at this time.
--
Daniel Fackrell (dfackrell at linuxmail.org)
When we attempt the impossible, we can experience true growth.




From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul 18 07:43:41 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 07:43:41 -0400
Subject: Nested List Comprehension
References: <9iss5k$2dcd$1@news.idiom.com> <etdelrh29w1.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <N6757.28920$d4.889960@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <etdofqiv4wi.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

> > Yeah, I mucked around a bit with nested list comprehensions when I
> > started using them.  It causes the same sort of miserable readability
> > problems that excessive use of the functional programming facilities
> > do.

> I think LC's are pretty neat, not that that's likely to sway anyone's
> opinion one way or the other. Like many techniques it can be abused by
> overuse.

Oops, yeah, I meant using them gratuitously can cause problems

Alex.


From daniel at rawbyte.com  Thu Jul  5 17:52:12 2001
From: daniel at rawbyte.com (Daniel)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 14:52:12 -0700
Subject: httplib 1.1
Message-ID: <234e16a2.0107051352.352fd6c7@posting.google.com>

Is there an httplib 1.1 that works with python 1.5? (I think I saw
somewhere a backport of the 2.0 httplib, but cannot find it)

httplib for 2.0 is backwards compatible, but only supports HTTP 1.0 in
this mode.

Thanks

Daniel


From arne at leithe.spammenot.no  Tue Jul 17 14:08:39 2001
From: arne at leithe.spammenot.no (Arne Leithe)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:08:39 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in
news:0oR47.12485$p7.4220508 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com: 

> So why do you object when I revise an algorith to make it feasible for
> much larger n?


Because you optimized a brute force-algorithm for speed, without first 
fixing the algorithm (first and foremost the ability to vary "k"). It 
seemed that the ability to use large n-s, however, somehow was of paramount 
importance, and you even suggested that Donovan use a rather obscure 
technique to vary k.

Your latest algorithm is great, though, and I wish you had posted it the 
first time around. I find it to imortant when explaining algorithms to 
beginners that extensibility and generality of the algorithm should be 
taken care of before speed. When I find myself in a position where I need 
to unroll loops (or even get rid of recursion), I'm already reprogramming 
the algorithm in C++.


Arne Leithe


From djc at object-craft.com.au  Thu Jul 26 20:35:12 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:35:12 +1000
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <m3r8v3cipr.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Guido" == Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

Guido> For example, a dict with int keys can be indexed with
Guido> corresponding float or complex values.

You are a legendissimo!!!

I implemented an extension type for the Sybase native NUMERIC column
type in my Sybase module but never really gave things like this much
thought.

Now I know why I do not bother adding my 2c to arguments regarding
fundamental language features...

ferret:/home/djc% python
Python 2.0.1 (#0, Jun 23 2001, 23:50:30) 
[GCC 2.95.4 20010319 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import Sybase
>>> dict = { 42: 'the answer' }
>>> n = Sybase.numeric(42)
>>> n.precision, n.scale
(16, 0)
>>> dict[n]
'the answer'
>>> n = Sybase.numeric('123456789012345678901234567890.123456789123456789')
>>> n.precision, n.scale
(49, 18)
>>> n
123456789012345678901234567890.123456789123456789
>>> n * 2
246913578024691357802469135780.246913578246913578
>>> 

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From jim at publishingresources.com  Wed Jul 25 10:40:59 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:40:59 -0000
Subject: Python 2.1.1 ASP/Response object does not HONOR Response.End()
References: <XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E96C300C792jimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Response.end()

(note lower-case 'e')

"Joe Salmeri" <JoeSalmeri at home.com> wrote in
<XPm77.38567$Ek3.14226736 at news1.rdc1.md.home.com>: 

> When using Python/ASP if you call the Response.End() method the rest of
> the script is still processed
> 
> For Example:
> 
> ** Script **
> 
> <@language="Python"%>
> <%
> Response.Write("This is line 1")
> Response.Write("This is line 2")
> Response.End()
> Response.Write("This is line 3")
> %>
> This should NOT appear.
> 
> ** End Script **
> 
> "This is line 3" and "this should NOT appear." both appear in the page
> results.
> 
> Testing the same script with VBScript produces the correct results.
> 
> Is this a known bug?
> 
> 



From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 13:59:00 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:59:00 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943481.1459.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9inct4$jes$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>

According to Kemp Randy-W18971  <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>:
> We run Solaris at my company, and Perl comes bundled with the Sun
> machines.  It's easier to ask someone to look at Perl because it's an
> existing part of every Solaris installation.  Since Python is not
> pre-bundled with Solaris, I need to ask the Unix administration to
> install it.  I could sell either language if Python were bundled with
> Solaris like Perl is.  Which raises an interesting question.  Why do
> companies like Sun include Perl but not Python with their operating
> systems?


Python is on the Companion disk. The one I have (late 2000) has Python
1.5.2 only, alas.

Is Perl pre-installed?


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From gregj at pdxperts.com  Thu Jul 19 23:05:03 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 03:05:03 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995535516.9340.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <zdN57.379784$p33.7614393@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> Posting tests showing performance weakness in some typical situations
> is needed to make Python better.

Refining and optimizing Python is a good thing. But these "benchmarks" that
show Python slower or faster than language X don't help. Writing real-world
Python programs, then profiling and optimizing them, and perhaps finding
places to improve the runtime system, the compiler, or the standard
libraries: that is useful. Comparing Python's ability to multiply
floating-point constants a million times in a loop is not useful, not even
when compared to Perl and C.

Every Python program I've written since I started with Python (about a year
ago) has saved me a lot of time. Whether my program might have executed in 3
seconds instead of 5 if I had used Perl (which I can neither read nor write)
is irrelevant. If I was convinced that Perl was 100 times faster I might
ditch Python, but for what I do with it Python is more than fast enough, and
certainly fun enough. If I really had to multiply floating-point numbers
millions of times I'd write the code in C.

> These benchmarks also show how good someones Python is compiled. For
> exaple, I saw that my AMD K6 225 makes almost same results as somebody
> elses Celeron 450 ;-)

They probably have screensavers and Napster and a bunch of other background
crap running on their machine. The lack of even basic controls in the
benchmarking environment changes the results from useless to dangerous.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 22:41:12 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:41:12 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995939441.3705.python-list@python.org> <v9splts0932691b080rllm4h03id32u152@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E31C8.2EEF4DE@engcorp.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> I cannot believe I am the only person who has gone out on a limb
> advocating Python and who is now going to end up looking a right arse.

I expect to look somewhat arse-like, but I also believe that
a sufficiently long time before this proposed change becomes
the default will allow time to spread the arse-likeness out 
a little and maybe even hide it completely.

> The only one shouting so much ATM, maybe ;-)

You probably do need to take a day off, if nothing else to 
rest your mind and fingers a little and come back with 
a fresh view.  

(I happen to appreciate your focus on this, though, in case 
you thought you were entirely alone.  I also happen to 
believe there is room for some further "negotiation"
before a final plan is settled on which definitely breaks
code.  Maybe two operators, and in any case at least 
much further consideration of backwards compatibility 
options and so on.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 17:47:49 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:47:49 +0200
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com> <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com> <slrn9l15i0.qi.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>
Message-ID: <9iqejk0fch@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Matthew Dixon Cowles" <matt at mondoinfo.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9l15i0.qi.matt at happy-hour.mondoinfo.com...
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:25:05 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >The latest issue of the Economist magazine has an in-depth survey of
> >Italy
>
> [. . .]
>
> >it starts out with a Paean titled "What a lovely off place!"
>
> A rare typo has escaped Alex's keyboard here. It's "odd", rather than
> "off".

Not so rare, but, yes, my typo (funny, I _thought_ I was copying
and pasting from their site...).

> I haven't yet read any of the survey (The Economist arrives a little
> late here in the colonies)

So get on the net, already.  www.economist.com is one of the
best sites I know, and as a printed-Economist subscriber you
get full access to the site too.  My only wonder is why they
didn't use Python on their site (especially considering they're
mostly owned by the same publishing outfit that owns New
Riders, who publish the Essential Reference...:-).

> but it seems likely that they're making a
> small joke about what a British tourist might say. And while I
> wouldn't be surprised to hear some things in Italy called odd, I would
> be surprised to hears someone say that the country was "off".

Why?  Anybody from Forza Italia might say Italy is "off and running"
now that we've elected Berlusconi, anybody against FI might say
we're off our rocker to have elected him, so...:-)


Alex





From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 02:57:20 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 06:57:20 GMT
Subject: newbie projects
References: <mailman.996028966.8516.python-list@python.org> <3B5E4A67.FD4BE81A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9ACA84D24Datodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in <3B5E4A67.FD4BE81A at engcorp.com>:

>fett at tradersdata.com wrote:
>> 
>> Uh I know this sounds knda dumb but anyoone have a job that they want
>> done cheap or for free that doesnt have to be done by a professional,
>> because im not one by any stretch of the immagination.  But i need some
>> type of project to do to help me hone my skills.
>
>Why not contribute your efforts to a worthy open-source project,
>like maybe one of the ones on SourceForge?  Giving your time away
>to a commercial enterprise would be silly, unless you are
>specifically hoping to turn that into future work for the same
>company.  And even then working on the open-source project might
>end up providing you more lasting value.  And fun.  (Just a thought.)
>

Couldn't agree more, just go to http://sourceforge.net/ and enter 'python' 
in the search box (oh, and then press the 'Search' button ;-)

You'll find plenty of projects there, some of which may (or may not) tickle 
your fancy. 

<shameless plug>
Or, you can just get involved with PythonCard 
(http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/)
</shameless plug>

Regards,
Andy

-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 12:44:05 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:44:05 -0400
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <mailman.994078443.11677.python-list@python.org> <fr81ktskiqe8guj9b241qd9mtq1324bfkd@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Vu107.21476$he.1050840@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:fr81ktskiqe8guj9b241qd9mtq1324bfkd at 4ax.com...
>
> >> x += (1,2,3)  ... is not the same as...  x=x+(1,2,3)
> >> That's just plain wrong.
>
> >No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing.
>
> Intent involves what people were thinking when they asked for it.
> I have a strong feeling that you are quite wrong about this.
>
I agree. The interpreter's current behavior is, as was explained to me in
some detail when I made similar complaints (*before* the PEP was
implemented, but after it was approved, and so therefore too late to do
anything but waste time :-( ) exactly what was intended.

Besides which, for a tuple x then x += (1,2,3) is, *exactly*, the same as x
= x+(1,2,3), since both involve a rebinding of the name x to a new tuple
containing three additional elements. Previous references to the original
tuple will still point to it, unchanged.

It's mutable types whose behavior can differ. Unless I'm being incredibly
dumb.

and-it-wouldn't-be-the-first-time-if-i-were'ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From grayson-wilson at home.com  Mon Jul  9 19:53:35 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:53:35 GMT
Subject: Help with reduce().
Message-ID: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Ok well I have ANOTHER problem with one of the examples in my book (By The
Way, "Teach yourself python in 24 hours" is an extremely poorly written book
and I do not reccomend it to any newbies who are just starting off)
any ways the example is as follows.

n = range(1,11)
def mult(x,y):
    return x * y
f = reduce(mult,n)
print f

I get everything up to reduce. I relize mult() takes the first two numbers
in range N which would be 1, 2 and multiplys them together to get 2... ok
fine im good ... now comes the tricky part!! what does reduce do? Does it
take the whole range and make it into a number (12345678910) then subtract 2
(the result of the function mult) or what does it do.

And i have another question (not related to first question)

x = ['Thu', 'Aug', '5', '06:06:27', 'MDT', '1999']
def strp(x,y):
 return x + ' ' + y
r = reduce(strp,x)
print r

my problem is this line return "x + ' ' + y" what does it return the value
of. I would understand it if it was x + y but the qutation marks are what
throw me off what do they mean?

Thanks.




From cfelling at iae.nl  Sat Jul  7 13:25:20 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 19:25:20 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <9i7gm0$636$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Emmanuel Jeandel <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> wrote:
...
> In python 1.5, i do : 
> L.sort ( lambda (_,_, size1) (_,_,size2) : cmp(size1,size2))

a work-a-round might be to use __ and ___ and so on.
-- 
groetjes, carel


From gustafl at algonet.se  Sat Jul  7 11:52:04 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 15:52:04 GMT
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
References: <mailman.994518012.886.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90D7B5DD9220gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

Michal Wallace <sabren at manifestation.com> wrote:

>Where do the docs say this? It sounds like a mistake, or something
>that needs clarification..

In the library reference, for the 'path' list in the 'os' module: "The 
first item of this list, path[0], is the directory containing the script 
that was used to invoke the Python interpreter." I interpreted it as the 
directory with the script.

>you want os.getcwd()

It says it returns the working directory. Is that always where the script 
file is? Suppose I call the script from another directory?

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 19 22:29:30 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:29:30 -0700
Subject: Conway's Life
References: <3B57AF54.F909FD36@.com> <slrn9lf317.2pp.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-482A2E.19293019072001@news.service.uci.edu>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:10:56 GMT, Doug Newhouse <n at .com> wrote:
> > I'm a recreational programmer with some pretty basic experience in
> > Python and I'm looking for a good way to implement the grid needed for
> > Life (or other cellular automata) in Python.

Rather than using grids, Life implementations can really benefit from the 
sort of more complicated data structure that Python makes easy.  A couple 
non-Python examples worth study are in

http://tomas.rokicki.com/hlife/
uses hash tables to avoid recomputing evolution of previously-seen patterns
(he's not kidding about running 2^3000 generations of a breeder)

http://hensel.lifepatterns.net/
nice (and fast, but not as good as hashlife) Java Life pattern viewer 
applet, source in http://hensel.lifepatterns.net/lifeapplet.html
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu  Mon Jul 23 13:36:48 2001
From: kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu (Keith F. Woeltje)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:36:48 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <3B587A3F.8060401@mail.mcg.edu> <9jchng$9mr@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <3B5C60C9.3010705@mail.mcg.edu>

I agree that the something = Something() type of notation doesn't appeal 
to me personally, but others seem to like it. I was unfamiliar with the 
aSomething = Something() notation, but it kind of makes sense to me.

Be that as it may, at least part of the reason being touted for case 
insensitivity is that it makes the language easier to learn. My only 
point was that this particular issue is probably trivial. There may be 
compelling reasons for case insensitivity, but this isn't one of them.

 >K



From ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 15:06:32 2001
From: ralph at inputplus.demon.co.uk (Ralph Corderoy)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 20:06:32 +0100
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9j9vfo$tpg$1@inputplus.demon.co.uk>

Hi,

> My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
> kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
> case-insensitively.

Doesn't the fact that most people learn the written form of their
natural language ahead of programming mean that they're used to the
concept of case (if their language has it) and understand that CAN and
can are different, the former being a different case to encode extra
information -- that it is an abbreviation.

Sorry to add my twopence in an already crowded and `done to death'
thread.


Ralph.



From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 20:39:43 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:39:43 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5B639C.FF5961E7@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEDHLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[James Logajan]
> ...
> Speaking of patterns, it unfortunately appears that Guido has a
> strong tendency to take the existing user base for granted, since he
> continues to keep the door open to code-breaking changes.

I'd say it's more the case that people project their particular concerns on
to the entire Python user base, and somehow mistake disagreement for being
ignored.  As I said before, Guido hears *all* the complaints, and, believe
it or not, the Python user base is composed of people, and people don't
agree.  It's Guido's job to make the best sense he can out of conflicting
desires (including but not limited to his own).

> There is only so much insult ("well, what you were doing was bad style
> anyway," or "you shouldn't have written code that depends on integer
> division(!)") and injury (the more Python you've written, the more
> likely something you wrote wont work with the latest version and will
> need to spend hours reviewing,just-in-case-anyway) before one decides
> that it just isn't worth the pain.

Of course.  Do you seriously think Guido is unaware of that?  OTOH, do you
seriously think 100% backward compatibility is an absolute criterion, immune
from competition with other claims?

> I do not want to continue to write more Python and expose myself
> to further risk of having it either become dependent on an un-maintained
> and minority release (e.g. "sorry, you should have upgraded to 3.1 years
> ago; who writes stuff on 2.1 these days anyway?") or having a growing
> body of code to constantly shepherd along to insure it runs on the next
> release.

Your choice, but my guess is that Guido has done an excellent job of
maintaining backward compatibility so far (he burned me by changing
str(long) to stop producing a trailing "L", and I must have spent nearly 20
minutes recovering from that -- BFD).

> That is the pragmatics from my point of view. And it doesn't give a
> damn what real or perceived "flaw" in the language is being addressed.

OK, I'll save this msg for the next time you ask for a change <0.9 wink>




From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:33 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:33 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhi8b$duv$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <h7loltcuesgpmacorngi751fjfu3o2b46e@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 16:09:47 GMT, Duncan Grisby
<dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> wrote:

>In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
> Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>>Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
>>We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
>>loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
>>so let's not be shy.
>
>What is the suggested course of action for people (like me) who have
>to maintain software which must run on more than one version of
>Python?

Probably to change jobs quick before it hits the fan :-(

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From emile at fenx.com  Sat Jul  7 11:31:10 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 08:31:10 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpelrskgrr.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
<snip>
>
> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield' as a
> new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python 2.2, so
> maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)
>


If you're going to add keywords, why not add precision and allow those who
want non-integer division to set it to the level of precision they require.
That breaks no more code (presumably) than adding div or yield does.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------




From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 16:59:01 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:59:01 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEMLLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido]
> IEEE 754, the floating point standard in use in virtually all current
> hardware, mandates that -0.0 be distinguishable from 0.0, in order to
> be able to represent the sign of degenerated underflow results.

That's part of the reason.  Another is to distinguish "which side" of a
branch cut you're on when slinging functions using complex arithmetic.  One
more is for careful support of interval arithmetic endcases.  These are
related in my mind.

> (Or so I understand, having been educated in IEEE 754 through numerous
> discussions with Tim Peters, but not by reading the standard.  If I'm
> wrong, Tim will surely correct me. :-)

But so gently it's hard to notice you've been dissed <wink>.

> I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
> box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.

You're almost certainly wrong about that, and this illustrates the
difficulty of doing anything with 754 arithmetic in Python that doesn't
intersect with Fortran's view of the world circa 1960 (and so adopted
wholesale by C89 too, 30 years later).

One problem is that there's no cross-platform consistency in whether C's
printf will *display* the sign of a 0.  Here on my Windows box:

>>> x = -0.0
>>> x
0.0
>>>

But you can't actually tell anything from that, because the Windows C printf
suppresses the sign of a 0.  You can't tell by trying to compute the
reciprocal either (to look at the sign of the resulting infinity), because
*Python* stops you from doing that:

>>> 1/x
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ZeroDivisionError: float division
>>>

Comparison is also hopeless (but by design:  +0 compares equal to -0):

>>> x == 0.0
1
>>>

Here's one way to tell:

>>> import math
>>> math.atan2(x, x)
-3.1415926535897931
>>> math.atan2(0, 0)
0.0
>>>

That is, I really did get minus 0 on Windows!  BTW, that also hints at why
signed zeroes can be a life-saver when doing complex arithmetic.  However,
whether atan2() handles signed zeroes correctly also varies across
platforms.

full-754-is-still-unusable-in-practice-ly y'rs  - tim




From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul  7 13:48:33 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:48:33 -0400
Subject: compile() question: SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
In-Reply-To: <3B471584.3686D0E@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEOPKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Peter Hansen]
> While examining the core of medusa's monitor.py, we've encountered
> a situation that looks on the face of it like an undesirable
> limitation or inconsistency of the Python compiler.  (I fully expect
> to hear an explanation for why this is actually a Good Thing,
> but we haven't figured it out ourselves yet.)

Na, parser error msgs have a life of their own.  You can *try* to change
one, but there's no guarantee it won't change back when you stop glaring at
it <0.9 wink>.

> We expected the following two sequences to produce the same
> exception, but they do not.
>
> >>> good = 'if 1:'
> >>> compile(good, '', 'exec')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "<string>", line 1
>     if 1:
>        ^
> SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
> >>> bad = 'if 1:\n    print 1\nelse:'
> >>> compile(bad, '', 'exec')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "<string>", line 3
>     else:
>        ^
> IndentationError: expected an indented block
>
>
> Medusa's monitor.py uses the "unexpected EOF while parsing"
> feature to infer that additional lines of text are going to be
> entered by the user (to satisfy the expected indented block for
> the "if").  This is how it knows when to deliver another "..."
> prompt and when to cancel entry of data and deliver a real
> exception.
> ...

Then it's not smart enough to handle Python code.  Code that is smart enough
can be found in the std library module codeop.py, and people simulating
interpreter loops should use the higher-level facilities in the std code.py.
Getting this right in all cases is tricky (read the code); you've only
bumped into one subtlety so far.

BTW, when reading the code, keep this in mind:

>>> issubclass(IndentationError, SyntaxError)
1
>>>




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sat Jul 28 15:29:30 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:29:30 -0700
Subject: int vs float divide: abbreviating numbers w/SI units
Message-ID: <eppstein-D36BE1.12293028072001@news.service.uci.edu>

Some time buried in the recent division flamewar I posted a message listing 
the uses I'd recently made of integer division, one of which was some short 
code for abbreviating numbers like 1008926 to e.g. 988k for more readable 
text output of file sizes in a web photo gallery generator.

Anyway, I decided it would be a good idea to make it more general and 
robust, and discovered somewhat to my surprise that float division seems to 
be a better fit for the task.  The new code is below if anyone wants to 
critique or use it.

def abbreviateNumber(n, k=1000):
        """Convert a number into a short string for its approximate value.
        
        SI Units are used to convert the number to a human-readable range.
        For example, abbreviateNumber(3141592) returns '3.1M'.
        In most cases (except when the number is too big or too small
        for the units defined in the SI system) the resulting string
        will be at most four characters long.
        
        By default, the program uses decimal k (i.e. 1k = 1000).
        To use binary k, as is more typical e.g. for numbers of bytes,
        call with a second argument k=1024.
        """     
        
        # determine number of factors of k and normalize 0.9995 <= n < 999.5
        k = float(k)  # force floating-point divisions
        nk = 0
        sign = ''
        if n < 0:
                n = -n
                sign = '-'
        while n >= 999.5:
                n /= k
                nk += 1
        while 0 < n < 0.9995:
                n *= k
                nk -= 1
        try:
                if nk > 0: suffix = ' kMGTPEZY'[nk]
                elif nk < 0: suffix = ' munpfazy'[-nk]
                else: suffix = ''
        except:
                suffix = 'k^%d' % nk

        # decide whether to use integer or decimal form and construct result
        if n < 9.95 and n != round(n):
                strn = "%1.1f" % n
        else:
                strn = "%d" % round(n)
        
        return sign + strn + suffix
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From morten at thingamy.net  Wed Jul 25 07:04:04 2001
From: morten at thingamy.net (Morten W. Petersen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:04:04 +0200
Subject: Making a Sircam virus-remover in Python
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107251243520.25190-100000@bcryachts.atsat.com>

Hia guys,

I was wondering if it would be hard to remove the Sircam virus using
Python; that is, to change the attribution of some files, edit and delete
some entries in the windows registry and then reboot;  could someone point
me in the direction of the proper module to edit the Windows registry?

Thanks.

-Morten



From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Tue Jul 24 11:43:35 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:43:35 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995479471.31821.python-list@python.org> <9jhtmk$ap4$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8B3849362Brcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Martijn Faassen wrote:

> Python currently also enforces consistently case-spelled code. I
> believe that this is good as well.

For what it's worth, I subscribe to that view too. What impresses me 
the most about Python is the ease with which I can understand somebody 
else's code. That is because Python forces its users to have a much 
more consistent programming style than any other language I know of.

Having case sensitivity is a part of that, as you don't have to deal 
with many individual casing preferences. Even if it wouldn't break a 
line of code that alone would be enough reason not to change Python in 
this respect. In my humble opinion, of course.


Robert Amesz



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 13:51:41 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:51:41 -0500
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org>
        <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org>
        <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
        <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
        <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>
        <200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com>

    Skip> How about 'x in type' as a shorthand for 'issubclass(x, type)' if
    Skip> x is a type or class instead of an instance?

    Guido> No, that would be ambiguous.  A subclass is not an instance.  A
    Guido> class or type represents a set of instances, so 'in' is justified
    Guido> in a sense.

I guess I'm confused, but if isinstance(x, type) is true isn't
issubclass(x.__class__, type) also true?

Skip




From martin.franklin at westerngeco.com  Tue Jul 10 05:15:46 2001
From: martin.franklin at westerngeco.com (Martin Franklin)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:15:46 +0100
Subject: backslash woes........
Message-ID: <3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB@westerngeco.com>

Hi all,


I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
I want to replace the common prefix of a list of file names
with a relative stub (./) I have this...

    def _removePrefix(self, fullfile):
        print r'%s' %fullfile
        filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
        print filename
        return filename


Where fullfile is the - full filename...
and self.prefix is the os.commonprefix()


Currently I get an error:-

traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1285, in __call__
    return apply(self.func, args)
  File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\makesqueeze.py", line 161, in Finish
    Squeeze(platFileList, open(filename, 'w'), self.prefix_or_path.get(),
config)
  File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 58, in __init__
    self._apply(file)
  File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 137, in _apply
    file = self._removePrefix(fullfile)
  File "r:\src\python\squeeze\dev\Squeeze.py", line 151, in _removePrefix
    filename=re.sub(r'%s' %self.prefix, r'%s' %os.sep, r'%s' %fullfile)
  File "c:\python21\lib\sre.py", line 63, in sub
    return _compile(pattern, 0).sub(repl, string, count)
  File "c:\python21\lib\sre.py", line 136, in _compile
    raise error, v # invalid expression
error: bogus escape: '\\x'


I don't understand this as I am (trying) to use raw strings everywhere.....
(that's what the DOC's told me to do...)


'Course on UNIX it all works perfectly well with or without the raw strings;-)




Hope _you_ can help

Martin


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 02:30:57 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 06:30:57 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <9ji7qc$ciq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lq5gv.rth.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

23 Jul 2001 22:17:48 GMT, Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> pisze:

> Huh? Which contexts are that? ints are converted to floats if you use
> them together with a float, yes. int + float results in a float answer,
> just like int/float does; why do you claim / is an exception in this? 

In all arithmetic operators and functions except '/' I can use an
int in place of a float and I will get equal answer, possibly with
a different type.

>> In languages where ints are implicitly converted to strings, addition
>> and concatenation are typically different operators. Like in Perl:
>> '+' and '.'.
> 
> And in Perl "1" + "foo" is 1. Hardly ideal as an example of separate
> operators. :)

A good example when the meaning depends on operators rather than types.
Types are unified, operators are separated.

In fact 1 and "1" (and results obtained by addition vs. concatenation)
are treated differently in Perl internally. Perl ints, floats and
strings are not kept in the same type. They only convert between one
another when requested by the context.

This is similar to int and float in Python. Well, they do have
different types visible to the programmer, but the distinction is
blurred by implicit conversions.

>> Python does treat ints and floats as different parts of the same
>> concept by letting them compare equal and convert as needed. So real
>> division and integer division should be distinguished by the operator.
> 
> Couldn't you make this argument for float multiplication and integer
> multiplication as well though?

No, because they do give the same answer, so I don't have to care
whether I have an int or float if I multiply it. If a is an int,
then float(a*b) == float(a)*b (and if it's not ==, it's very close,
such that it's hard to tell which imprecise answer is less precise).

Division is different.

> Ocaml has separate *. for float multiplication, for instance.

Because it doesn't have overloading nor implicit conversions at
all: it can't use the same operation for types without a common
unifier. Now it has an experimental overloading mechanism which will
be used for arithmetic.

> It does raise the question if polluting so much old code with this
> construct (and we can't change code samples) is worth having a
> slightly easier to teach language..

old_div is the last resort. The proper fix is to either leave '/'
or change it to div, which IMHO makes code more readable, not less.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul  9 15:55:32 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 12:55:32 -0700
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com>

Paul Winkler wrote:
> So basically what that benchmark tells me is: "Don't write recursively in Python
> if performance is an issue".

Well yes, this is what benchmarks are useful for.


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Tue Jul  3 21:27:52 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:27:52 -0300
Subject: Pythonic Quote of the Week - sliding away...
In-Reply-To: <4E42BD2538CACF79.9FD7275B6CD3244E.A70BBB4C060B585B@lp.airn
 ews.net>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703215513.02c01d90@mail.inet.com.br>

At 17:34 03/07/01 -0500, Emile van Sebille wrote:
>Pythonic Quote of the Week...
>     Quite granted that nobody is forced to use a feature.  But when
>     a language becomes too featureful, people start programming in
>     the subdialect they like best, later creating difficulties to
>     other wanting to read their programs, who might like other parts
>     better.
>
>     One of the reason behind Python legibility success, is that
>     there is almost only one way to do one thing (to contrast with
>     Perl, say).  We are progressively sliding away of this virtue.
>     The danger is real.
>                                   Fran?ois Pinard
> 
>http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&q=msgid:mailman.993966362.10675.python-list at python.org

We've got a very good discussion in the past three days about the current 
status of the library. I feel that at least part of the problem pointed out 
by Fran?ois Pinard may be attributed at the lack of some highly needed 
modules on the standard library. As people keep reinventing the wheel, we 
get two problems:

- Less productivity

- More fragmentation

The solution as proposed by the main python-dev guys - Guido himself and 
Tim Peters - is that the community should take the responsibility to keep 
the library, as we can see here:

[Guido van Rossum, 2001-06-30 05:53:49 PST]
So let's all do what we do best: the core developers (e.g. PythonLabs) 
improve the language, and the community improves the library.

[Tim Peters, Date: 2001-06-30 21:01:05 PST]
A problem is that nobody at PythonLabs has any spare cycles. People can 
suggest any number of things we should do for them, but we're already 
overloaded -- it simply won't happen.


As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we 
must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this 
issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys. 
The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To 
make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.

One of things that plugged me on this "Python thing" was the "batteries 
included" motto. In fact, the strength of any programming environment can 
be measured by the extension and usability of its standard library. That's 
where Java is shining today. The investment on the standard library is one 
of the surest ways of making Python popular while keeping with the "there's 
one way to do it" motto.


Carlos Ribeiro







From tim at digicool.com  Thu Jul 19 16:24:03 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:24:03 -0400
Subject: doctest
In-Reply-To: <9j7bsv$m3g5h$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHMECOCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Thomas Heller, on doctest]
> The latest version from Python's CVS tree however does
> not run any more under Python 1.5.2.
> Is there an uptodate version available which is backward
> compatible?

I expect the incompatibility is shallow, introduced when someone charged
thru the std libraries changing all uses of the string module into string
methods.  If you'd like to change that back again and check it in, fine by
me -- there was no intent here to be incompatible (or compatible either, for
that matter <wink>).




From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Thu Jul 12 10:09:19 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 07:09:19 -0700
Subject: The size of a list
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107120609.6c8dc5f6@posting.google.com>

Hi,

Is there a way to determine the size of a list (disregarding any
possible null entries)?

tks

Phill


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 17:11:10 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:11:10 +0100
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com> <aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com> <%3%57.7717$m11.427739@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B588720.83400FB5@javanet.com>
Message-ID: <tn6hltkke76bkl2sfst970trt5qmbkboqk@4ax.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:31:44 -0400, Raymond Hettinger
<othello at javanet.com> wrote:

>Steve Holden wrote:
>
>> "I don't
>> see why immutability has to be a one-way attribute when converiosn between
>> list and tuple is so easy.

>Dictionary's rely on immutability of keys.  If the list is used as a key, then
>it cannot be subsequently assigned to without breaking the key reference.
>
>Also, immutability can be an important internal optimization. Once made
>immutable, the list can be fixed length, stored as an array, and hashed
>once and for all.
>
>tuples-who-needs-them-ly, yours Raymond

I'd have...

  <object>.lock ()           Lock any object in place
  locked (<object>)        Return immutable copy of object
  unlocked (<object>)    Return mutable copy of object
  <object>.is_locked      Return bool - is object immutable

locked and unlocked would only change the mutability - all other
properties would remain the same.

unlocked (locked (x)) == x - 'locked' mustl necessarily lock all
nested objects, but they should be marked differently so that
'unlocked' can unlock only the nested objects that were previously
unlocked.

I don't like the idea of having an immutable attribute as such - I'd
rather the actual implementation was separate. But I don't have a good
reason.

Just a thought ;-)



From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 02:22:21 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:22:21 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <bEe87.53103$Cy.6853667@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEDILCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Terry Reedy]
> If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
> n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
> for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
> floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
> independent of type).

[Guido]
> Good point.  What does Scheme do?

[Tim Hochberg]
> Floor, ceiling, truncate and round all return integers.

Careful:  that (integer? x) returns true in Scheme does not imply that x "is
an integer" in Python's current sense (which has mostly to do with storage
format).  The std actually says (about floor & friends):

    the procedures listed below will always return an exact integer
    result provided all their arguments are exact integers and the
    mathematically expected result is representable as an exact
    integer within the implementation

and even that last part doesn't mean "stored in an integer format", while
there's an escape clause if floor (& friends) can't represent the *value*
"as an exact integer" (but what that means under the covers is
undiscoverable:  Scheme says and reveals nothing about internal
representations.).

> It seems that it wouldn't really be possible to have // do that
> consistently without PEP 237 though.

IMO, so long as we've got internal numeric representations on the brain,
Scheme's model makes little sense -- the point of Scheme's model was to get
away from representations and move toward abstract mathematical values.

That said, you may get to the same result in the end in this case anyway,
thanks to the contagiousness of inexactness (but not of *type*!):

> (integer? (floor (/ 20. 2)))
#t
> (exact? (floor (/ 20. 2)))
#f
>

So 20.//2 is not usable as a sequence index in Scheme, despite that "it's an
integer" (as Scheme means "an integer").  Python can get to the same place
in the end, but the terminological battle on the way there is going to be
excruciating.




From cookedm+news at physics.mcmaster.ca  Tue Jul 24 15:06:19 2001
From: cookedm+news at physics.mcmaster.ca (David M. Cooke)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 15:06:19 -0400
Subject: real-accurate, numpy...increased precision help
References: <9jj0bl$9mq@dispatch.concentric.net> <mailman.995975201.19671.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <qnk4rs2405w.fsf@arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca>

At some point, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>     Bryan> I need to be able to work with numbers up to 2^800 in a floating
>     Bryan> point envirnoment.
> 
> Perhaps you could create a class implements all the required numeric
> functionality and uses one or more Python longs to represent the number
> internally.

Or use Alex Martelli's wrapper of GMP:

http://gmpy.sourceforge.net

This gives you your multiprecision integers, rationals, and floats.

-- 
|>|\/|<
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|David M. Cooke
|cookedm(at)physics(dot)mcmaster(dot)ca


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 03:55:47 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:55:47 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:37:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:

> If we have rationals in our numeric tower, I definitely want (5/2 - 3/2)
> to be usable as a sequence index,

This doesn't work in my model. The simplest way to let it work is to
treat ints (with longs) and rationals as representation details of
the same concept (no matter if it's the same Python's type or not).

This is not nice IMHO and it leads to more cases when the type of the
result depends on the value of the argument (x**y returns at least
a float when y is a rational, but may return an integer when y is
a nonnegative integer) and turns some TypeErrors into ValueErrors
(e.g. s[1/2]).

I would not make 5/2-3/2 usable as a sequence index. My style is more
"typeful". But you decide.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Wed Jul 25 04:37:04 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:37:04 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 EDT."
             <200107220436.AAA05323@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <m15PKAC-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

Guido,

I deeply respect your language design skills and I appreciate your
ongoing improvements. I'm impatiently looking forward to using many of
the features new in 2.2.

The future division patch is a different issue, though. While I agree
that the proposed changes are a definite improvement over the current
semantics, the issue of backwards compatibility is a huge problem
difficult to solve. I see the following problems:

- What's going to happen to code released into the wild (i.e., I can
  change all my code but what about code I gave to others)? 

- How can one write readable code working correctly in both old and
  new Python versions?

- It takes a potentially huge effort to change all the existing code.

- In some cases, warnings might not be seen (e.g., they might land in
  /dev/null or in some log files nobody looks at).

- If an application jumps versions (e.g., from 2.1 to 2.6), no warnings
  might be generated at all.

- Upgrading to a new version of an application might break user scripts or
  databases.

I have no idea how to tackle all these issues but I'll offer some
ideas nevertheless.

- If `int` always truncated (instead of truncating or rounding,
  depending on how the C compiler does it), one could write reasonably
  readable version independent code for truncating integer division.

  Compare `int (a/b)` to `divmod (a, b) [0]` or
  `int (math.floor (a/b))`.

- Just a wild idea: the problem you want to solve is that the existing
  division operator mixes two totally different meanings and thus
  leads to nasty surprises.

  What if `/` applied to two integer values returned neither an
  integer nor a float but an object carrying the float result but
  behaving like an integer if used in an integer context?

  For instance:

      >>> x = 1/2
      >>> type(x)
      <type 'Ratio'>
      >>> print "%d %f %s" % (x, x, x)
      0 0.5 0.5
      >>> 2 * x
      0
      >>> 2. * x
      1.0

   The difficult issue here is how `integer context` is defined.
   Should multiplication by an integer be considered an integer
   context? Pro: would preserve correctness of existing code like
   `(size / 8) * 8`. Con: is incompatible with Rationals which might
   be added in the future.

- Command line options are not a good way of handling this -- in many
  cases, different modules might need different settings. Even worse,
  looking at the code of a module won't tell you what option to use.

- If there is a possibility of specifying division semantics on a
  per module case (via a directive or the file extension), it should
  also be possible to specify the semantics for thingies like
  `compile`, `execfile`, `exec`, and `eval`.

  This only works if absence of a semantics indicator means old-style
  division. 

  I think this would go the farthest to alleviate compatibility
  problems. I understand your desire to avoid dragging the past around
  with you wherever you go and I like Python for its cleanliness. But
  in this case, it might be worthwhile to carry the ballast.

Let me outline the problems faced by my current customer TTTech (I'm
working as consultant for them). [This is going to be long -- sorry.]

TTTech provides design and on-line tools for embedded distributed
real-time systems in safety critical application domains (e.g.,
aerospace, automotive, ...). TTTech sells software tools (programmed
in Python) to customers worldwide.

Currently, there is a major release once a year. Due to various
reasons, the shipped tools normally don't use the most recent version
of Python. The current release is still based on 1.5.2. We hope to use
Python 2.1 for the release planned for the end of the year.
Internally, we try to use the most recent Python version. Therefore,
our Python code must be compatible to several Python versions.

The division change effects:

- Python programs
- Python scripts
- user scripts
- design databases

Python programs
---------------

I just used Skip's div-finder (thanks, Skip) to check the code of
three of our applications. It finds 391 uses of division. I know that
many of those are meant to be truncating divisions, while many others
are meant to be floating divisions. Somebody will have to look at each
and every one and fix it -- automatic conversion won't be possible.

Unfortunately, the applications also contain lots of code inside of
strings feed to eval or exec during run-time. I don't know
how many divisions are in those, but somebody will have to look at
them as well. This is one area frequently overlooked when the effect
of changes is discussed and conversion tools proposed on c.l.py.

As these tools are frozen, they don't depend on what Python version
the user has installed.

Python scripts
--------------

Internally, TTTech uses quite a number of Python scripts.
Unfortunately, different users have different Python versions
installed. Currently, 1.5.2, 2.0, and 2.1 are installed (there might
still be the odd 1.5.1 around somewhere, too). As the scripts are
taken from a central file server whereas Python is installed locally,
the scripts and the library modules used must be compatible to all the
Python versions deployed. That makes migration difficult if the same
symbol means crossly different things in different versions.

User scripts
------------

Our tools are user scriptable. These scripts are written in Python and
executed in the application's context via execfile (they don't work as
standalone scripts).

Such scripts are written and maintained by unknown customers who may
or may not be programmers and who may or may not have Python
experience. (One of the nice features of Python is that even a
computer naive user can start writing scripts with little knowledge
about Python by modifying examples). Quite often, important scripts 
have been implemented by people who since changed jobs.

Various customers use such scripts for interfacing to other tools,
creating designs, checking designs for conformance, writing test
cases, implementing test frameworks, generating design reports, ...

The delivery of a new tool version ***must not break*** such scripts.
TTTech simply cannot tell their customers that they have to review all
their scripts and change some but not all occurrences of the division
operator. We don't want to get stuck with an outdated Python version,
either. 

OTOH, we cannot assume old style semantics in the scripts either as
new users might never have heard about how division used to work in
warty versions of Python.

Design databases
-----------------

Design databases store the design of an embedded distributed
real-time system as specified by the user. Such databases must stay
alive for a looooong time (think of 10+ years for some application
domains). 

Our tools allow the specification of symbolic expressions by the user.
Such expressions are feed through eval at the right time (i.e., late)
to get a numeric value. The symbolic expressions are stored in the
database as entered by the user. Reading an old database with a new
tool version ***must not change*** the semantics.

To be honest, for TTTech design databases the change in division
probably doesn't pose any problems. Due to user demand, the tools
coerced divisions to floating point for a long time. Other companies
might be bitten in this way, though.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From barry at zope.com  Tue Jul 24 23:17:27 2001
From: barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:17:27 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com>
	<mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org>
	<916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>
	<Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
	<3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com>
	<cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <15198.14919.30039.645293@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "DB" == David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

    DB> Thus, the very fact that the behavior is moving towards
    DB> breakage may hold up people from moving for fear of the
    DB> resource involved to ensure they don't have a problem, which
    DB> in turn may prolong the period of time when such breakage is a
    DB> risk.

If this is a real fear then you can never upgrade your Python, even if
a new version introduces no language changes.

A new version will always have /some/ changes, even if it's only
patches to the library, or improved performance.  Otherwise there'd be
almost no reason to release a new version of Python, and we can all
just go home.  The "Python-is-perfect-now" crowd would be happy, but
they'd be just as happy to unsubscribe from this newsgroup, ignore any
future Python development, and stick with 1.5.2 forever.

Now, you may have a mission critical application that still might
break on an upgrade to such a hypothetical new version.  Maybe it's
because one of your modules has a subtle race condition that behaves
different suddenly because you just upgraded to the newer faster
Python.  Or maybe it's relying on an undocumented feature that got
removed because it was buggy (and undocumented).  Or maybe one of your
extension modules isn't quite thread-safe and breaks when Python
eliminates its global interpreter lock.  Whatever.

But if this is really a fear then upgrading Python might not even be
your biggest worry.  What if you upgrade some underlying library, or
apply an OS patch, or add more memory, or a faster disk, or change to
a new C compiler?  Any or all of those things may break your code or
it may not.  I've certainly been victim to such "innocent" upgrade
breakages.  So you still have to think hard about it, test
aggressively, plan defensively, and cross your fingers.  Why would you
upgrade Python any differently?
    
    DB> I'm still at 1.5.2 and unlikely to move beyond that until at
    DB> least this year's end.  At that point I would have been using
    DB> Python 1.5.2 for about 21 months with it fully deployed in all
    DB> production sites around 18.  I would anticipate about a 6
    DB> month preparation cycle before moving to any new release (code
    DB> test, ensure third party support, etc...) and would then
    DB> expect to get at least 12-18 months run time again.  Right now
    DB> I was planning on moving to 2.1.1 unless 2.2 looked to arrive
    DB> soon enough (unlikely) to meet the testing/third party
    DB> criteria.

Sounds like a reasonable plan.

I think the only thing you can do is try to get assurances that your
mission critical applications are compatible with newer versions of
Python.  If you can't get such assurances from the vendors, or you've
got a lot of third party code, then you can test and fix stuff
yourself.  Or run multiple versions of Python and migrate your
applications one by one.  Or never upgrade.  There's no law saying you
should.

But there's also no reason why Python should stagnate, or not fix its
warts, or not evolve, so that /new/ applications or newer versions of
existing applications cannot be written more elegantly, more
succintly, or more maintainably.  No, new versions should not
gratuitously break old code without some systematic migration plan,
but that's what __future__ and the PEPs are all about.

-Barry



From mjackson at wrc.xerox.com  Sun Jul  8 19:44:33 2001
From: mjackson at wrc.xerox.com (Mark Jackson)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 23:44:33 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <cpu20niqbe.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9iar91$ds4$1@news.wrc.xerox.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
> 
> > Another *STRONG* argument for replacing int / with another infix operator
> > is the feasibility of revising the thousands of broken lines of code to run
> > under 2.whatever.  Any decent programming editor can do a 'find / and
> > replace with xxx if I say yes' (which will require the reviser to examine
> > the code to determine if / meant int div) but hardly any can do 'find / and
> > examine the code on both sides to determine the strings that the
> > interpreter will see as e1 and e2 and replace e1 / e2 with div(e1,e2) if I
> > say yes'.  Writing a special purpose update program would also be much
> > easier.
> 
> This is a very good argument for a 'div' operator that I hadn't
> thought of before!

Good.  There may be applications in which the functional form has a
slightly more natural feel than the infix operator - but in dealing
with mathematical expressions the preference is strongly the other way.
I speak from bitter experience, having once translated a lot of complex
arithmetic from Fortran (A = B*C + D) to Intel Pascal86 (Call Cmult(B,
C, E); Call Cadd(E, D, A)).

But is "//" rather than "div" actually ruled out?  I find it hard to
believe that the C++ and Java programmers are actually so hardwired that

a = b//c

looks like "a = b" followed by a comment to them.  If so, how do they
cope when (after working in Python for a while) they encounter a stray
octothorpe in some other language?

If "//" is dismissed on this trivial basis it's obvious that, in fairness
to Fortran programmers, starting an unindented line of code with "C"
or "c" must be disallowed in Python as well!  Perhaps I shall write a
PEP. . .

-- 
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
	The chief executives of large American corporations are,
	as a class, the most overpaid people on the planet.
				- James Surowiecki




From cbarber at curl.com  Fri Jul 27 14:30:42 2001
From: cbarber at curl.com (Christopher Barber)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:30:42 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org>
Message-ID: <pson15qfcml.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>

John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org> writes:

> However, it's valuable to me
> that as many things as possible be caught before runtime.  Do you
> think that Python would be a worthwhile language to investigate given
> these criteria? 

AFAIK there is no way to do compile-time type checking in Python.

If this is important to you, you might be interested in the Curl language.  It
lets you omit type declarations when rapid prototyping or writing throwaway
code and add them later to get compile-time type checking and code
optimizations.

- Christopher




From edsinger at ai.mit.edu  Tue Jul  3 00:37:54 2001
From: edsinger at ai.mit.edu (Aaron Edsinger)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 04:37:54 GMT
Subject: newbie apply() question
Message-ID: <C_b07.778$ei5.255138@typhoon2.gnilink.net>

hi.  i'm stumped on something that seems easy.  why doesn't this work:

x=4
apply(sys.stdout.write,x) #fails
apply(sys.stdout.write,(x,)) #fails

is there a way to make this work?

thanks,
    aaron






From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 17 20:28:00 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:28:00 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com> <mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Fran?ois Pinard" <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in ...
> [James_Althoff at i2.com]
>
> > Plus the fact that Perl sucks.  (Just kidding.  (Well, not really.
> > (Well, kinda, sorta))). ;-)
>
> Perl was immensely useful to me.  Than Python came, which allows me to
> write bigger projects, allowing them to be much more maintainable.  I'm
very
> grateful to Perl, believe me.  But I would resent being forced into using
> Perl, now that I have something which I enjoy even more that I enjoyed
Perl.
>
I did my share of Perl in a commercial web environment, and some of it was
great. Far less great was the bunch of grot masquerading as CGI scripts
produced by programmers with only six months experience whose first language
was self-taught Perl. Can't blame the language for that, though, I suppose.

I then gave Perl up when I changed jobs, and becuase I was programming for
pleasure for a while I went back to Icon. Having been involved with Snobol
in a previous incarnation I really liked Icon. A very well structured
language design, with most features orthogonal, and generators built in to
expression evaluation. Not the fastest language, like Python it ended up
interpreting bytecodes. Very similar assignment semantics to Python too,
which helped enormously when I finally decided I'd like something more
object-oriented.

Interestingly, Griswold's team *did* produce a compiler for Icon - it
generated C, which you then compiled in the stamdard way. The C source it
produced was long and tortuous, and from experience your programs would be
larger by a factor of three or more when compiled, and the speedup was often
less than 20% for the text-processing programs I wrote for production.

> I'm still dreaming about an automatic Perl to Python converter.  Despite
many
> consider this is not possible, I stick with my naive impression we could
> do something about it.  It could revolve around three parts: analysing
Perl
> into a tree, applying some tree-transformational engine using a
specialised
> language (I wrote a few such in my life), and producing final Python text.
>
Suppose a Perl-to-Python conversion were possible (and I'm not suggesting it
isn't): would it be the kind of Python you'd want to use to teach the
language? I suspect not, any more than I would have used the compiled Icon
to teach C. Given that Perl is ubiquitous, would there really be any point?

I like to poke fun at Perl as well as the next person, but I'd rather do
something new in Python and keep the trusty old Perl scripts around,
performing day in and day out, than translate them into Python just to avoid
using Perl. When I was using it every day it was a concise language, but the
further behind I left it the harder it got to read.

> Would you believe, this is the first step which looks most difficult to
me.
> Parsing Perl might not be that difficult after all, but its tokenizer is
> extremely hairy, and rather discouraging.  If I could swallow that snake,
> the rest would not necessarily be easy, but at least, it would be fun! :-)
>
Ah, well, if you'd do it for fun I have no objection at all. If computing
ever stops being fun I'll stop doing it.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From Alexandre.Fayolle at logilab.fr  Fri Jul  6 10:20:38 2001
From: Alexandre.Fayolle at logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 16:20:38 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
In-Reply-To: <15173.49956.612553.189434@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <15173.49956.612553.189434@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> 
>     Alexandre> If I use the default server, the following call causes an
>     Alexandre> error on the server:
> 
>     ... print server.echo('\231')
> 
>     Alexandre> Is this a bug in xmlrpc or in the underlying xmllib ?
> 
> Neither, I think.  The default encoding for XML is utf-8, not latin-1.  In
> addition, XMLRPC only supports ASCII.  

Well, maybe, but xmlrpclib says that is supports unicode strings in
arguments. 

> Try
> 
>     server.echo('a')

This obviously works, but it's not what I'm asking about. 

However I get this \231 character from elsewhere (some webpage, actually),
and I need to get a way to pass it around. Using 
      server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1').encode('utf-8'))
dies not help either.

If I test with a loop such as 
for a in range(256):
    print a,'%c'%a
    try:
        print repr(server.echo(unicode('%c'%a,'latin-1').encode('utf-8')))
    except Error, v:
        print "ERROR", v

I get errors for chars in range (decimal) 0-8,11-12,14-31,127-159,192-223. 

For range 0-8,11-12,14-31 I can understand that there might be a problem
somewhere, because these are controle characters. For range 127-159, I can
understand, because the chars are left undefined in latin-1, but 192-223
are valid latin-1 characters as far as I know (capital accentuated letters
mainly).


Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).






From guido at python.org  Sat Jul 14 11:28:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:28:23 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <mailman.995090365.8795.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp4rsf34rg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Tim Churches <tchur at optushome.com.au> writes:

> version 2.1 /* emulate Stata 2.1 */
> ...assorted old Stata code....
> version 6.5 /* emulate Stata 6.5 */
> ...newer code...
> version 7.0 /* revert to current version behaviour */
> ...code to take advantage of latest changes to syntax...

I have no doubt that we *could* implement this.  It would be fine to
only accept one version statement per module, as long as modules using
different versions could be used together.  The __future__ statement
does this.

But it's butt-ugly, and encourages keeping unmaintained code around.
It also becomes a burden on the programmer, who has to maintain all
this cruft and has to keep old manuals around etc.

I find it a last resort.  The nice thing about __future__ statements
is that eventually you will be able to take them out, unlike version
statements.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 09:33:47 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:33:47 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 19:41:48 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:45:12 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:
>
>>>But ints *are* implicitly converted to floats when needed
>> 
>> Language design mistake.
>
>It allows to write code which increments a number of unknown type
>by one. How would you write it in your universe?

Well, in the Ada universe - where clarity, simplicity and reliability
(but not conciseness) were explicit language design goals - no
typecasts are ever done implicitly.

In Ada, 'velocity := distance / time' may well be an error - unless
you've make sure you have operators that deal in the right mixture of
types. The benefit happens when you have a temporary fit and type
'velocity := distance / velocity' or some such - if your types are set
up right, that's an error because the division operator for
distance_type divided by velocity_type should return time_type - same
as keeping track of the units in physics - and you can't assign a
time_type into a distance_type. The fact that all three types are
probably implemented with exactly the same numeric representation is
irrelevant.

Literals can be used for any type where the representation matches, so
incrementing is not a problem. There's some compile-time-only type for
'untyped' numbers as well, so you can name a value and more or less
treat it as a literal if necessary (an often misused feature - you
wouldn't believe the number of programs with the identifiers 'zero'
and 'one' defined).

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From enrico.spinielli at marconi.com  Mon Jul 23 11:18:56 2001
From: enrico.spinielli at marconi.com (Enrico Spinielli)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 17:18:56 +0200
Subject: PyUnit and Jython
Message-ID: <re7j66cj65cv.fsf@marconi.com>

Hi all,
is anybody using PyUnit or any other unit test framework
for jython 2.0?
If so, can you please point me to some useful link
or tell me about your experience with unit testing
jython scripts?

Thanks in advance
Enrico


From werme at mediaone.net  Wed Jul 18 09:43:52 2001
From: werme at mediaone.net (Ric Werme)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:43:52 GMT
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM 21 July 2001!!!
References: <3B54F839.AC6C11C3@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <sog57.3111$N21.1150208@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>

alavoor <alavoor at yahoo.com> writes:

>All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
>21 July 2001!!!

>hello:
>You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.

Garbage!

>Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.

"This won't hurt a bit!"  At least you aren't hawking a .EXE virus.

What wrong with NTP?  (Assuming one needs his computers' time to be accurate.)

--
Ric Werme                            | werme at nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete


From hgiese at ratiosoft.com  Wed Jul 11 14:37:33 2001
From: hgiese at ratiosoft.com (Helmut Giese)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:37:33 GMT
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <3b4c9b7f.8143238@news.hrz.uni-kassel.de>

Hello Harald,
>2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
>   SOLUTION: ???
I would - naivly - do it in two steps:
1) Find the first '<A>'.
2) Return a match only if it is followed immediately by 'B'.

But I concede voluntarily that this solution has two drawbacks:
1) It doesn't solve the intellectual challenge.
2) It's not a one-liner and as such not really acceptable. :)

Best regards
Helmut



From ljohnson at resgen.com  Tue Jul 10 09:37:27 2001
From: ljohnson at resgen.com (Lyle Johnson)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:37:27 -0500
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <tkm10otakvej2c@corp.supernews.com>

> it is just used for small to medium scripting. I know better but I don't
have any proof. Can anyone
> point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I
already know about Zope
> and I can't find the list of companies on the Python website since they
moved the page to PSA).

Daniel,

Even though the main PSA page has moved this link still works (as of this
morning):

    http://www.python.org/psa/Users.html

Hope this helps,

Lyle




From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jul  3 09:36:46 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:36:46 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994078809.12040.python-list@python.org> <9hq62g0kiq@enews4.newsguy.com> <008701c1037d$f6280de0$0101010a@local> <mailman.994137125.12580.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <OTj07.179491$ff.1395689@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Paul Prescod:
> Is anybody else suspicious about the sudden uptick of troll-like
> behavior on comp.lang.python?  Keep an eye out and don't bother
> responding to anything inflammatory.

   Its that damned PSU - Martijn must have let something a little sensitive
out and they're flooding the group hoping to






From cliechti at mails.ch  Sat Jul 28 23:27:36 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 05:27:36 +0200
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90ED38309C442cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote in 
news:3B6369D4.671C1870 at alcyone.com:

>      def main():
>          import sys # here's the only place that sys gets used
>          lines = sys.readlines()
>          # do something with lines ...
> 
>      if __name__ == '__main__':
>          main()
> 
> I'm really not sure what the value would be in deleting the module after
> you're through with it, except perhaps to clean up namespaces, which I
> wouldn't think would be useful if, say, it were defined in the scope of
> a function.
> 

i think the module gets deleted anyway because its imported into the local 
namespace of the function and that gets deleted after the function returns.

there is a performance argument against "import"ing in functions:
if this fu is called in a loop the module gets imported and deleted every 
time. importing it at top level doesn't need that and hence the loop runs 
faster.

on the other hand for debugging functionality that is later removed i find 
it appropriate to import only there where its needed. and for modules that 
are only used in "__name__ == '__main__'" section, it's also very suitable.


and yes there is a "cache" see here:
--cut--------file: mymod.py
print "mymod"
--cut--------test code:
import mymod
mymod.a = 1

def fu():
    import mymod
    print "fu"
    print dir(mymod)

fu()
--cut-------this is the output:
mymod
fu
['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', 'a']
--cut-------

as you can see the main module alters "mymod" and this change can be seen 
in the function where it is imported another time.

-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From robin at brainexeculink.com  Mon Jul 23 08:20:22 2001
From: robin at brainexeculink.com (robin at brainexeculink.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:20:22 -0400
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <s75oltorcsglshbrm5s7flb7ckdrotr95g@4ax.com>

Jeff Davis <jdavis at empires.org> wrote:

>I have been looking around and I have not been able to find a session 
>module for python (for the web). Basically I just need a normal session 
>manager that can work somewhat like the one in PHP. I have recently been 
>moving away from PHP to python for web stuff and I need a session manager. 
>If no such module exists, I would write my own.

Well, that's what I did!

I built session support on top of Wasp, my platform-independent
open-source HTML preprocessor. Written in Python, this framework
provides an organised way of designing and programming a web
application. Template files containing powerful Wasp tags may be
easily customized through plug-in Python modules.

It's like PHP or ASP, except with the powerful Python language at your
fingertips.

It's here:
http://www.execulink.com/~robin/wasp/readme.html

Wasp is up to version is 1.25. Contributions are welcome!

-----
robin
robin at brainexeculink.com
(remove "brain" to reply) 


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:34 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:34 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:07:45 GMT, "Tim Hochberg"
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

>Let me stray from the topic for a paragraph here: I'm astounded to discover
>the number of people pining for integer division that truncates towards
>zero. That sort of integer division is horriible. When programming in C,  I
>always had to simulate Python's behaviour in order to get code that might
>take both positive and negative integral values to work correctly. Python
>gets this exactly right.

Probably a good point. I have tended to expect division to round
towards zero - I tend to expect (-a / b) == -(a/b) - but I do
appreciate the extra conditionals and general hacks you can end up
needing as a result. I suppose it depends on what you are doing with
integers - and given that most my integers - being subscripts and
indices - are rarely negative anyway, it's not a big deal anyway.

On this one, my current feeling - a rather vague and dubious
preference I admit - is towards rounding towards zero. Python rounds
towards -inf. Yet I am *not* in favour of changing Pythons behaviour
at all. Division resulting in negatives will be much rarely than
general division - much fewer than half of all cases - because of the
subscripts/indices bias - yet this would still cause much too many
problems to consider it whatever my personal opinion.

>thing. I couldn't disagree more. C-style division in a dynamically typed
>language is an accident waiting to happen. And does this mean that code

There are many ways to deal with that, without pretending that
floating point division is somehow fundamentally different to integer
division when in fact it is simply a logical extension of the same
operation.

>Anyway, not being an educator, I'm not particularly concerned with whether
>integer division is easy or hard to learn. I like the proposal because there
>just isn't a good way currently to spell
>divide-these-two -numbers-using-normal-division. The fact that oponents of

So add a new operator for the new functionality - but don't change the
semantics of the existing one people have been using for years.

>It has been suggested as recently as this morning, I believe, that this be
>rewritten:
>
>def simple_func(x, y):
>   return y / float(x)**2
>
>This is simple, clear and ... wrong, as Konrad Hinsen pointed out several
>days ago. At least it's wrong if complex numbers are ever a possibility. One

Obviously - if complex numbers are considered valid inputs then that
function is wrong. What you are saying, though, is that integer inputs
are invalid and should be coerced to floats. That *CAN* be tested for
and done now without ANY changes to the language. If it's too awkward,
then what is needed is a simpler way to do achieve that. I have
suggested several ways to achieve this kind of result, and one that
achieves EXACTLY that. NONE of those suggestions would break old code.
NOBODY has replied in any way to any of them though.

how about...

def simple_func(x, y):
  $coerce x, y : $integer -> $float
  return y / x**2

Notice I even used my simple prefix-to-indicate-keywords idea to avoid
breaking any 'coerce' identifiers anyone might be using. I admit the
syntax hasn't been thought through - I'll bet there's a dozen holes
picked in it before tomorrow morning - but the principle is simple,
clear, effective and non-destructive.

I think thats number five for my plausible alternatives.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Tue Jul 10 05:07:29 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 11:07:29 +0200
Subject: import namespace issues
Message-ID: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

THE PROBLEM:
I have to separate a module's function into two .py-files. Now I would
like to import both in a way that they behave like they are one file.

FIRST TRY:
Suppose the files are called first.py and second.py. I put a

  from second.py import *

into first.py. This does not work as necessary since functions in
second.py don't find functions defined in first.py. Same story when
using __import__().

FINDINGS:
What I gathered from experiments is that even with `from ... import'
as well as when using __import__('second', my_globals, my_locals)
there will *always* be a *new* dictionary used for the globals() of
the imported functions. Example:

Given that second.py contains

  def doStuff():
    print hex(id(globals()))

it will not report the same id as

  print my_globals

even if imported with __import__ as shown above.

QUESTION 1:
How can I achieve to merge two .py into one globals() as if the were
in one imported file while maintaining the file-search semantics of
`import'? 

QUESTION 2:
Is there a detailed description somewhere in the docs about the
namespaces (or dictionaries) used/created/shuffled during an import?

Thanks,
  Harald Kirsch
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From guido at python.org  Mon Jul 23 07:46:45 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:46:45 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> [David Eppstein]
> > I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of
> > Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions
> > of integer arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are
> > coerced to floats?

[Tim Peters]
> Guido did this for the Python library, and found three instances of "/" that
> would break.

Alas, all this suggests is that the test suite *still* doesn't have
enough coverage.  Looking for '/' tokens I found 30 modules using '/'
amongst Lib/*.py, and a quick inspection suggests that the majority of
these use integer division -- an expected result, given the
over-emphasis of the standard library on classic data types and
algorithms, which were mostly developed in a culture that despises
floating point numbers as too expensive. :-)

But I also found a likely bug!  In colorsys.py, there are two routines
(rgb_to_hls() and rgb_to_hsv()) that seem to be doing floating point
math using (r, g, b) inputs and don't take any consistent precaution
to cast these inputs to floats before dividing them.  The outputs are
definitely intended to be floats.  The inputs are likely RGB triples
taken from images, which are usually ints.

This is why making / fractional division and // truncated division
will reduce the number of bugs in new code: for all occurrences of
truncated division, the author *knows* she wants truncated division,
and it's easy to remember to use // because using / gives an
immediately wrong result.  When the users wants fractional division
though, it's common to test only with float inputs, or to miss a path
through the code where ints aren't casts to floats before they are
being divided.  Then, much later, when an int gets passed and a
slightly wrong result is calculated, it takes hours of debugging to
discover the error.

Note that this kind of bug is unique to Python (or dynamically typed
languages in general): in C, the arguments would have been declared as
floats and the problem would have been prevented.

Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil: int and float
together aren't really two distinct types: they are at most a
type-and-a-half, and the integers are embedded in the space of floats
for most practical purposes.  Division is the one exception, and it
hurts.  Nobody wants to write polymorphic code where '/' means
truncated division for int arguments but fractional division for float
arguments.  You know which kind of division you want when you write
the code, but there's no way to spell it.

(I've seen this countered with the argument that classes can overload
/ any way they want, and thus you can't rely on the "meaning" of /
anyway.  But there you get what you ask for, and it's up to the author
of the class to decide how her class needs to behave in the context of
other numeric types.  How integers behave in the context of floats is
already decided: you should be able to pass an int whenever something
requires a float.)

Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
so let's not be shy.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mikeb at mitre.org  Wed Jul 18 17:34:28 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:34:28 -0400
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice (24 recommended exercises)
Message-ID: <3B5600E4.4B03A51F@mitre.org>

Wyatt > Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?


The part that you need from Comp Sci 101/102 (in making a program that 
fully meets its specifications) is in the book DISCIPLINE OF PROGRAMMING
by Edsger Dijkstra. That book shows how to compute preconditions that
are required to meet a spec. It also gives quite a few good examples
of simple and complex programs to write.

However, most programmers don't write programs that meet specs. Most
programmer define greatness to be simply having fun while making money.

To be great in that sense, instead of meeting specs, write the
following Python programs (and for extra credit, do each program
twice -- once using wxPython graphics, and once using Jython.)


1. Algebra. Accept inputs from the user which are two lines
in the form 
	Y = m1 X + b1
	Y = m2 X + b2

That is, the user inputs the numbers m1, b1, m2, b2. 
The two m's are the slopes of the two lines. 
The two b's are the y-intercepts.

The python program will draw the first line in blue 
and the second line in green on a pair of axes in black.
Then a Red Cross will be placed at the intersection of the
two lines.

Write a test program that tests this for lines in various
positions, slopes, and intercepts.

Recover from the problem that parallel lines don't intersect at all.


2. TABLES. Neatly display a two dimensional table of numbers,
as well as displaying the sum of each row at the end of that row,
the end of each column at the bottom of that column, and a grand total
row sum and a grand total column sum (which should be the same). When
you recompile the program with different values in the table, the row
and column and grand total sums will change appropriately.

3. ROTATION. Display a red square, a blue square, and a green
square rotating across the page.

4. TEXT. Write a 3-line message to the screen inside a
rectangle, such that each time you compile it with a different message, the
rectangle adjusts its height and width, so it is a skootch larger than the text.

5. SIMPLE BOXES. Let box be defined as <box_ID, box_text1, box_text2,
box_text3, x, y>. Store an array of boxes. 
Display the boxes with their text at the proper (x,y) location on the
screen. 

6. SIMPLE ARROWS. Let arrow be defined as <from_box_ID, to_box_ID>. In
an applet, store and array of boxes and an array of arrows. Let the
applet display the boxes with their text at the proper (x,y) location on
the screen, and the arrows connecting the boxes neatly.

7. FINITE STATE MACHINE. Implement a Python program that reads in a 
list of states, character classes, transitions, and 
transductions (output translations), and produce a Python program that
implements them as a Finite State Transducer. (See Epstein's 
WORD PROCESSING IN GROUPS chapters 1 and 2.)

8. PYTHON SERVER PAGE. Install Apache and write a simple Python Server Page with
CGI communication.

9. ODBC. Same as (2) above, but get the data from a SQL database
via ODBC instead of from an internal array.

10. THREADS. Same as (3) above, but let each of the squares be in a 
different thread.

11. HTTP ARROWS. Same as (6) above, only get the files of arrows and boxes
from a URI via HTTP.

12. HTTP FSM. Same as (7) above, only get the states, etc. via HTTP. Also
implement an action table with code to be executed upon each transition.

13. SHOPPING BASKET. Create a set of Python Server Pages that
implement a simple Shopping Basket, permitting searching a 
database of products, put selected products into the shopping basket,
update the quantities in the shopping basket, charge credit cards
or budget allocations from a simulated bank, ship via a simulated
shipping company from a simulated warehouse, and notify
a simulated marketing department of how many widgets were sold.

14. TREE. Retrieve a tree structure from an http file and
walk the tree graphically in an applet that demonstrates recursive
tree walks, multiple class constructors, inheritance,
preconditions, mixing text and graphics, and 
generating XML from the tree structure.

15. SOCKETS. Send information back and forth between computers 
via sockets and via ftp.

16. MOUSE CLICKS. Same as (10) above, except control the motion
of each square via mouse clicks and drags.

17. THREE DIMENSIONS. Same as (16) above, except in three dimensions.

18. MOUSE ARROWS. Same as (6) above, except the mouse can 
add or delete or move boxes, add or delete or move arrows,
change the color of boxes or arrows, examine the contents of boxes, etc.

19. MERGE. Given a Master file consisting of data fields and a unique key field,
and a Detail file consisting of data fields and a non-unique key field, produce three
output files. First, the intersection consisting of the keys and data
from all records whose keys match in the Master and the Detail files.
Second, the records in the Master file that have no matching keys in Detail.
Third, the records in the Detail file that have no matching keys in Master.

20. DOM. Read an XML file into a DOM tree and process the tree, looking for all
system nodes. For each system nodes, call the required external program
to process the system node, passing the parameters correctly. Test it 
with external program that include encryption, decryption, database queries,
database updates, etc.

21. LL(1). Given an LL(1) grammar at a URI and a document at another URI,
create a recursive descent transducer from the grammer and execute that
transducer against that document, generating code for a virtual machine.

22. THREE TIER. Convert the shopping basket from (13) above into a full
three-tier system.

23. GAME. Create a multi-player multi-computer game.

24. SEMANTICS. Create a Python program that clusters ideas together in 
multi-dimensional semantical space and creates a four-dimensional visualization
of how close they are, how much they are coupled, and how much cohesion they have.
Test it on Shakespeare's Sonnets, on the Python Source Code, and on 
the TeX version of Michael Spivak's CALCULUS.


Substitutions in the assignments can be arranged with the instructor.




From hfoffani at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 29 17:00:54 2001
From: hfoffani at yahoo.com (Hernan M. Foffani)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 21:00:54 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996426594.9989.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010729170054.141$Pa@newsreader.com>

I hope this msg is not too far away from what you expected
by "FEEDBACK WANTED".

If I understood the unification correctly, in
http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html where it reads:
    >>> print a.keys()
    [1, 2, 3, '__builtins__', 'x']
the 3 is a typo, right?

And where it says,
    But notice this:

     class E(C):
        def foo(x, y): # override C.foo
            print "E.foo() called"
            C.foo(y)

Isn't a call to "foo = classmethod(foo)" missing after that?
If so, in the PEP the call is missing too.

One minor suggestion:
I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

Regards,
-Hernan

-- 
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
                    Usenet Newsgroup Service


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 21:24:40 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:24:40 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions 
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> dijo:
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> > But what does 'larger' mean in this case?  Larger than the MySQL engine?
> > Larger than a linux kernel?  Larger than the Red Hat install scripts?
> 
> Yes.  Yes.  And yes.

Ok. Not hard. And not hard.

> (Oh, sorry... how big are those programs?  No, wait, it doesn't matter.)

No, it doesn't.  The use of 'larger' was just vague IMO.

> > I wouldn't implement a RDBMS in Python. Nor would I implement a word
> > processor in assembler.
> 
> Neither would I.  An RDBMS would most likely need performance beyond
> what Python could provide, but if that were not the case, Python would
> most certainly be an option.  (I don't know what assembler has to do
> with this discussion, but I would prefer Python over it for writing
> a word processor, performance issues aside.  Performance issues 
> included, I might use a little bit of assembler for the hot spots 
> of the word processor, but a more reasonable choice would be C, of 
> course.  A good way of writing very large applications in Python
> would be to have the performance-critical parts coded not in Python,
> then spend the development effort where it counts on the higher level
> complex functionality, and testing.)

You've made my points for me. =) (Tho I'd probably do the DBMS in C,
with a Python front-end and API hooks.)

> > *nix OSes (like BSD) have attained an incredible scalability.  
> [...]
> > And what language is the
> > majority of the core of BSD written in?  It's written in C, which does
> > not even claim to be an OO language.
> 
> Typical Python applications, even really large ones, would not likely 
> have the sheer number of programmers working on it that the BSD core
> has had, nor the length of time they've worked on it.

True. Python's age and amount of support were not the point.  The point
was that even C can implement large, scalable, OO-type ideas like
abstraction.

> > An application's scalability has much more to do with the programmer's
> > use of algorithms and abstraction than with the language in which it's
> > implemented...no matter how much money ActiveState has invested in it.
> 
> Did you write all this just for this jab at ActiveState?  I know of the
> opinion some people have of them, but I didn't sense that *someone*'s 
> posting contained anything more commercial or biased than what many of 
> the rest of us, who don't work for ActiveState, have written.

Maybe I was wrong in my inferrence, and this probably isn't the location
for personal opinions on corporate business practices. But no; the jab
just came to me while writing.

> You're right about algorithms having more to do with this issue than the
> language, but some languages support better algorithms (by making
> their implementation easier and less buggy) and faster development than
> others.  Those are merely two of the ways in which Python supports
> "larger" applications.

All very good points. I have certain reservations, tho.  I dread
waiting for Microsoft Word to startup as it is, written in compiled C++.
I fear for the speed of anything of that scale and complexity
implemented in Python.


My $0.03US <wink>
-- 
Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun.
    -- Mervyn Pumpkinhead, The Sandman


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 19 18:08:46 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:08:46 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <200107191933.f6JJXZF17263@odiug.digicool.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191501520.24983-100000@bms>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
> > expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
> > non-programmers.
>
> IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.
>
> (1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.

I defined what I mean by "exressivity" in a previous post, no one
complained, so I continue to use it...

With a case-insensitive language "a" == "A", so you would need to do
"a_first" and "a_second" (whatever); the ideas represented by "a" and
"A" can be referred to more succinctly in a case-sensitive language,
so I went so far as to say case-sensitive is more expressive than
case-insensitive.

...feel free to s/expressive/<something>/

The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?

> (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).

Ok... it is not the group that is small, but the amount of programming
done by the individuals in the group... why should a general purpose
programming language cater to a group who rarely program? Surely that
is best left to a specialized language that addresses the concerns of
that group, and not foisted upon those who use the language everyday.


- Bruce






From nospam at newsranger.com  Thu Jul  5 18:28:07 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 22:28:07 GMT
Subject: Building an embedded Python application with Borland C++
References: <q449kt49kjuse1ft0fobvr85kqp3pa26vm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <XR517.8671$Kf3.98659@www.newsranger.com>

You will find useful information at:
http://www.cyberus.ca/~g_will/pyExtenDL.shtml
The page refers to extendig Python with the Borland 5.5 C++ compiler but I hope
it works for embedding too.
If you don't need C++, you can use the free LCC-Win32 compiler:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/ -- it works for both embedding and
extending.

Levi

In article <q449kt49kjuse1ft0fobvr85kqp3pa26vm at 4ax.com>, Lothar Scholz says...
>
>I have the problem that i can build an import library from the
>python20.dll but not link my program against it.
>
>Python is compiled without the preceding underline character, so
>i must compile my application with the -u-  option. But when i do
>so the runtime library can't find a "_main" function because it is
>now compiled as "main".
>
>Has anybody solved this problem or has a makefile to build the
>complete python DLL with the Borland 5.5 version.




From morten at thingamy.net  Thu Jul 26 12:08:03 2001
From: morten at thingamy.net (Morten W. Petersen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:03 +0200
Subject: Building a minimal Python 2.2 for Windows
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107261804050.25190-100000@bcryachts.atsat.com>

Hia,

I've just tried to build a small Python distribution that will fit on a
floppy disc (to do some cleanups on the filesystem without starting
windows itself); however, the message python22.dll is needed..

..now, I've just copied a couple of files from the install directory,
files like python22.exe and certain .py and .lib files, can't find the
python22.dll file though..

Any ideas?

Does there exist a minimalistic Python 2.2 distro for Windows?

Thanks,

Morten



From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Fri Jul 27 06:32:10 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 10:32:10 GMT
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <9jop6k$l2d$2@pea.uk.research.att.com> <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jrfva$dhj$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e at posting.google.com>,
 Stephen <shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote:

[...]
>Thank you very much, Duncan.  After looking around for a couple of days (hence
>my late followup. sorry), it does seem like my options are 
>(a) CORBA
>(b) SOAP
>(c) XMLRPC
>(d) Pyro

You might want to add DOPY, which is along the same lines as Pyro:

  http://www.users.cloud9.net/~proteus/dopy/welcome.html

I don't know anything about it, though.

>CORBA has always been intimidating. So much work just to do "hello world",
>let along build a full app.

People often say this, but it just isn't true, especially if you use
Python. "Hello world" doesn't make a lot of sense in a distributed
application, but here's the full code for a "fortune cookie" service.

First, declare the interface in IDL:

  // fortune.idl
  module Fortune {
    interface CookieServer {
      string get_cookie();
    };
  };

Now convert it to Python declarations with your chosen ORB's IDL
compiler, for example with omniORBpy:

  $ omniidl -bpython fortune.idl

[ orbit-python doesn't have the IDL compiler step -- it always
  compiles it on the fly. ]

First the client, on the Python command line:

  >>> import CORBA, Fortune
  >>> orb = CORBA.ORB_init()
  >>> o = orb.string_to_object("corbaloc::spud.uk.research.att.com/fortune")
  >>> o = o._narrow(Fortune.CookieServer)
  >>>
  >>> print o.get_cookie()
  Objects are lost only because people look where they are not rather than
  where they are.

  >>> print o.get_cookie()
  "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
  cottage cheese sculpture."


There really is a fortune cookie server running on
spud.uk.research.att.com, so you can run this example.


Now the server:

  #!/usr/bin/env python
  
  import sys, os
  import CORBA, Fortune, Fortune__POA
  
  FORTUNE_PATH = "/usr/games/fortune"
  
  class CookieServer_i (Fortune__POA.CookieServer):
      def get_cookie(self):
	  pipe   = os.popen(FORTUNE_PATH)
	  cookie = pipe.read()
	  if pipe.close():
	      # An error occurred with the pipe
	      cookie = "Oh dear, couldn't get a fortune\n"
	  return cookie
  
  orb = CORBA.ORB_init(sys.argv)
  poa = orb.resolve_initial_references("RootPOA")
  
  servant = CookieServer_i()
  poa.activate_object(servant)
  
  print orb.object_to_string(servant._this())
  
  poa._get_the_POAManager().activate()
  orb.run()


That's it. Note that about half the lines of code are nothing to do
with CORBA -- they're just getting the fortune cookie. When you run
the server it prints a long hex string like:

IOR:010000001d00000049444c3a466f7274756e652f436f6f6b69655365727665723
a312e300000000001000000000000005c000000010102000d0000003135382e313234
2e36342e330000f90a07000000666f7274756e6500020000000000000008000000010
0000000545441010000001c0000000100000001000100010000000100010509010100
0100000009010100

which can be given to orb.string_to_object (without the line breaks).
That IOR string is also the server running on spud.uk.research.att.com.

A version of the server that can be used with the corbaloc URI is just
as simple, but omniORB specific, so I haven't shown that.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Tue Jul 31 11:15:18 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 17:15:18 +0200
Subject: Error on mimetools?
References: <9k368v$a8q$1@news.uit.no> <j4puair3bb.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <9k3l62$d31$1@news.uit.no>
Message-ID: <j4n15lb055.fsf@artagnan.informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Arnulf Heimsbakk" <arnulf at spirea.net> writes:

> I'm using only the raw base64 text. It is the same text I used in my winzip
> experiment and in python test program I've made. It works in winzip but not
> with python code. As I mentioned python gives me a file slightly bigger than
> winzip. It's about 300 bytes bigger.
> 
> I'm without clues to this one. It does not seem to be any logic in the
> error.

If you want others to help investigate the problem, please put the
file you are trying to process and a code snippet that you use to
process it somewhere on the Web, and post an URL. If you think there
is a Python bug, you might also report one at python.sf.net.

Regards,
Martin



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 08:48:59 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:48:59 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com> <mailman.994276569.27572.python-list@python.org> <3B43AE03.F58B72C7@3-cities.com>
Message-ID: <3B44623B.1E30897B@ActiveState.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> 
> Paul Prescod wrote:
> > "Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> > > Python does not undermine the distinction between integers and floats.
> > >>> 5 + 10
> > 15
> > >>> 5 + "10"
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> > TypeError: number coercion failed
> 
> You seem to want to have the string "10" automatically
> converted to be an integer.  PEP-0238 will have no
> impact on this.
>
> Python extensively distinguishes between numeric
> types and other types.  

That's my *exact* point. Python strongly enforces the view that there
are "numbers", "strings".... not "integers", "floats", "strings"
Integers and floats are strongly related. Much more so than other types.

No, I do not want to change the behaviour of either of these lines. I'm
making the point that a threshold has been crossed. The distinction
between integers and floats has been blurred. The logical conclusion is
to treat integers as a special case of floats everywhere.

>...
> One of the great virtues of Python is indeed dynamic typing,
> and I am not struggling to preserve type consistency.  I do think
> that the current behaviour is more consistent with the properties
> of mathematical integers, and for this reason I have had no trouble
> in communicating to students the expected behaviour.

I don't see how we are talking about the fundamental properties of
integers. From my point of view, we're talking about the choice of
meaning for a symbol. Outside of a cultural context, the choice is
meaningless. As far as the mathematical construct "integers" are
concerned, we could as well use "/" to mean "to the power of".

> My comments have been directed at
> 
>   - the assumption that the change will help beginners. I believe
>     this to be incorrect - the PEP merely moves the point at which
>     they must appreciate the difference between integer and
>     floating point arithmetic.

Once we've moved the point of confusion back, we can recognize the next
roadblock and move it back further. There are many other PEPs that
address other issues in the numeric model. This is one of them.

>   - the amount of code that is broken

No argument there.

> Hinsen and others have noted that functions written to expect a
> floating point argument will behave more consistently if they
> are mistakenly given an integer argument.  The PEP will indeed
> accomplish this.  But so would other far less drastic mechanisms.
> 
> You cite an example above.  cos(5) does the "right" thing.  It
> is a property of the function itself, not the argument
> passed to it. 

cos(5) does the "right" thing because Python's C API is statically type
checked and it coerces integers to floats for the implementor
automatically. In other words, C programmers do the easiest thing and
get code that automatically coerces properly. Python programmers get no
such free ride. It takes extra care to write a function that treats
integers as a special case of float....but ONLY if it involves division.
If it involves multiplication or anything else, it isn't a problem.

> But cos("5") also (correctly in my view) gives a
> type error.

I agree that that's the right thing. Strings and integers are very
different in Python. Integers and floats are blurred together by the
implementation and the language semantics.

> ...
> This issue is only mentioned in passing in this article and no
> reference is given to an actual survey.  Can U please post a better
> link to the reference? All I can find on Prof. Pausch's
> home page or with a Google search are either third party notes from a
> Python conference or papers on Alice that again only touch on this
> issue in passing.  I'm a big fan of Alice, so I know he knows about
> usability, but I'd like to see his description of how the survey
> was conducted and his conclusions.

I agree that I'd like to see more detail but I only know what he said at
the talk. Nevertheless, I don't really see it as useful to
over-emphasize that one data point. 

Let me offer the following concrete observation. Python is the *only*
dynamic language that I know of that makes this choice. JavaScript, Tcl,
Perl and (I think) Ruby, int/int -> float. In fact, most of the newer
languages always treat integers as integral floats (or in Ruby Integer
is a subclass of Numeric). Python is also the only language where people
complain about the division behaviour and have arguments about it every
six months. Consider that a massively distributed usability test. You
make integers a subset of floats and users are happy. You give them
different operations and you get perpetual Usenet filler.

There is only one humane choice. :)

>...
> Integers have properties that most floats do not - so forcing the
> coercion
> of integers to floats in *some* pure integer expressions is a matter
> of choice.  It is only this choice that PEP-0238 is addressing.

I agree 100%. All I argue is that the choice for division should be
consistent with the choice made elsewhere to treat integers as a special
case of floats.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From jblazi at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 16:00:37 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:00:37 +0200
Subject: size of a file
Message-ID: <3b5dd418_8@news.newsgroups.com>

How can I find out the length of a file. I have a descriptor fd of the file
(I am using the os module).

Janos Blazi




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From objectway at divalsim.it  Fri Jul  6 10:00:45 2001
From: objectway at divalsim.it (Nicola Musatti)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 16:00:45 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org> <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B45C48D.413A5E@divalsim.it>

Ciao, Alex.

Alex Martelli wrote:
[...]
> Haven't done *identical* projects in C++ and Python yet, except
> for Python extensions prototyped in Python then coded with Boost
> Python, and for those (small extensions) it seems I'm about 4
> times more productive in Python than in C++.  I have no personal
> experience doing the same task in Python and Java, yet.

How do you measure your productivity?

Cheers,
Nicola


From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Jul 17 08:11:21 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:11:21 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171439080.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B542B69.8C092964@lemburg.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> > After having been through two rounds of comments with the "Unicode
> > Literal Encoding" pre-PEP, it has turned out that people actually
> > prefer to go for the full Monty meaning that the PEP should handle
> > the complete Python source code encoding and not just the encoding
> > of the Unicode literals (which are currently the only parts in a
> > Python source code file for which Python assumes a fixed encoding).
> >
> > Here's a summary of what I've learned from the comments:
> >
> > 1. The complete Python source file should use a single encoding.
> 
> Yes, certainly
> 
> > 2. Handling of escape sequences should continue to work as it does
> >    now, but with all possible source code encodings, that is
> >    standard string literals (both 8-bit and Unicode) are subject to
> >    escape sequence expansion while raw string literals only expand
> >    a very small subset of escape sequences.
> >
> > 3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
> >    work as follows:
> >
> >    1. read the file
> >    2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
> >    3. tokenize the Unicode content
> >    4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
> >       and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
> >       by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
> >       using the given file encoding
> 
> I think, that if encoding is not given, it must sillently assume "UNKNOWN"
> encoding and do nothing, that is be 8-bit clean (as it is now).

To be 8-bit clean it will have to use Latin-1 as fallback encoding
since this encoding assures the roundtrip safety (decode to Unicode,
then reencode).
 
> Otherwise, it will slow down parser considerably.

Yes, that could be an issue (I don't think it matters much though,
since parsing usually only done during byte-code compilation and
the results are buffered in .pyc files).
 
> I also think that if encoding is choosen, there is no need to reencode it
> back to literal strings: let them be in Unicode.

That would be nice, but is not feasable at the moment (just try
to run Python with -U option and see what happens...).
 
> Or the encoding must _always_ be ASCII+something, as utf-8 for example.
> Eliminating the need to bother with tokenizer (Because only docstrings,
> comments and string-literals are entities which require encoding /
> decoding).
> 
> If I understood correctly, Python will soon switch to "unicode-only"
> strings, as Java and Tcl did. (This is of course disaster for some Python
> usage areas such as fast text-processing, but...)
> 
> Or am I missing something?

It won't switch any time soon... there's still too much work
ahead and I'm also pretty sure that the 8-bit string type won't
go away for backward compatibility reasons.
 
> >    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
> >    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
> >    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
> >    roundtrip).
> 
> ...as I said, there must be no assumed charset. Things must
> be left as is now when no explicit encoding given.

This is what the Latin-1 encoding assures.
 
> > 4. The encoding used in a Python source file should be easily
> >    parseable for en editor; a magic comment at the top of the
> >    file seems to be what people want to see, so I'll drop the
> >    directive (PEP 244) requirement in the PEP.
> >
> > Issues that still need to be resolved:
> >
> > - how to enable embedding of differently encoded data in Python
> >   source code (e.g. UTF-8 encoded XML data in a Latin-1
> >   source file)
> 
> Probably, adding explicit conversions.

Yes, but there are cases where the source file having the embedded
data will not decode into Unicode (I got the example backwards:
think of a UTF-8 encoded source file with a Latin-1 string literal).

Perhaps we should simply rule out this case and have the 
programmer stick to the source file encoding + some escaping
or a run-time recoding of the literal data into the preferred
encoding.
 
> > - what to do with non-literal data in the source file, e.g.
> >   variable names and comments:
> >
> >   * reencode them just as would be done for literals
> >   * only allow ASCII for certain elements like variable names
> >   etc.
> 
> I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.
> But it could be too cheesy to have variable names in national
> alphabet ;-)

That's for Guido to decide...
 
> > - which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
> >
> >   * Emacs style:
> >
> >       #!/usr/bin/python
> >       # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-
> >
> >   * Via meta-option to the interpreter:
> >
> >       #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8
> >
> >   * Using a special comment format:
> >
> >       #!/usr/bin/python
> >       #!encoding = 'utf-8'
> 
> No variant is ideal. The 2nd is worse/best than all
> (it depends on how to look at it!)
> 
> Python has no macro directives. In this situation
> they could help greatly!

We've been discussing these on python-dev, but Guido is not
too keen on having them.
 
> That "#!encoding" is special case of macro directive.
> 
> May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
> at the beginning...
> 
> Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
> with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.
> 
> I think, GvR could come with some advice here...
> 
> > Comments are welcome !

Thanks for your comments,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 00:23:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:23:04 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com> <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107281021.468246a7@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B638FA8.8D24A152@engcorp.com>

David Boddie wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpu1zy16g7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> > Suppose that python 3.x would *always* have to be invoked as
> > "python3".  Would that still break legacy code?  This approach was
> > used successfully by Perl.
> 
> That's a good compromise which will prevent a lot of breakage. As long
> as you're happy with it, then I'm happy.

How so?  Wouldn't that just be something which forces people moving
to Python3 to take a small explicit step, thereby allowing us 
to say, "Of course your code broke, you changed your executable,
what did you expect?".

This could be a "solution" if the change wasn't clearly 
communicated over the next two (or whatever) years before the
change becomes the default, but assuming the change is widely
publicized, what real benefit does it bring to force the name 
of the executable to be python3?

And would the same benefit arise by having the default name
of the executable be "python3", but not forcing it to be so?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Jul  8 17:34:36 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 23:34:36 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994544053.9415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iajlc$4dj$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
...
> I'm sorry, Alex, but `` is here to stay.  Guido is insanely fond of it!
> Meaning no more than that he doesn't hate it <0.9 wink>.  I see something
> like

>     print ``1`+`2``

yuck, yuck, yucky-dy-yuck,
it's not only yucky, it's nesting yuckyness,
quite unlike other quote forms.



-- 
groetjes, carel


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Wed Jul  4 17:44:02 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 21:44:02 GMT
Subject: Pythonic Quote of the Week - sliding away...
References: <mailman.994210026.25214.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i02n2$c2e$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote:
[snip]
> The solution as proposed by the main python-dev guys - Guido himself and 
> Tim Peters - is that the community should take the responsibility to keep 
> the library, as we can see here:

> [Guido van Rossum, 2001-06-30 05:53:49 PST]
> So let's all do what we do best: the core developers (e.g. PythonLabs) 
> improve the language, and the community improves the library.

> [Tim Peters, Date: 2001-06-30 21:01:05 PST]
> A problem is that nobody at PythonLabs has any spare cycles. People can 
> suggest any number of things we should do for them, but we're already 
> overloaded -- it simply won't happen.

> As it's impossible to clone an army of timbots to solve this problem, we 
> must try to find another solution. I don't believe that we can sort this 
> issue without some involvement of PythonLabs and the core Python-dev guys. 
> The problem is not lack of good modules, but lack of *standard* modules. To 
> make a module standard, some level of Python-dev commitment is a *must*.

I agree completely; I've been pointing this out myself. And I wrote a
PEP that tries to account for both; I posted it just a bit ago.
In it, I define two roles, integrators and maintainers. The integrators
are PythonLabs (although some other group could be formed), and the
maintainers can be anyone; hopefully people from the community.

Anyway, see the text of the PEP for more information.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 12:43:20 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 16:43:20 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0106281419260.11263-100000@bms> <mailman.993764502.10834.python-list@python.org> <cpae2rlarx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.993841846.2132.python-list@python.org> <cpsngijfcg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hpjsjt04gj33rbcbpurvv2mbiknuqf6fob@4ax.com> <mailman.993964021.7787.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <a1lujt8nvv0r940dh185fttem4umbuv735@4ax.com>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001 22:05:46 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>Courageous wrote:
>> 

>It's funny how this discussion just goes around and around in circles.

BTW, the problem you are talking about was in Python before augmented
assignment came around:

>>> tpl1 = (1,2,)
>>> tpl1 = tpl1+(3,4,)
>>> tpl1
(1, 2, 3, 4)
>>> 

The tpl *appears* to be mutable,  but it's not.

C//




From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 24 20:41:11 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:41:11 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b5c4dc9$1@hpb10302.boi.hp.com>
Message-ID: <cpbsm9q1r4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Daniel Fackrell" <dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org> writes:

> Why not add a "from __past__ import division" for those who need old
> code to work.  Then there might be a little less resistance to this
> (arguably good) change.

That's not a totally bogus idea, yet I don't like it very much.  It
would mean that the old semantics will live on *forever*.  The idea of
the __future__ statement is that eventually (say, when Python 3000 is
released :-) you *are* in the future, and then the __future__
statement becomes redundant, so it is a temporary wart in your code.

For sites that absolutely cannot afford to upgrade their code, it
should be possible to simply keep the old interpreter version around,
just like there are still scripts requiring perl4.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 08:00:36 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:00:36 -0400
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>
Message-ID: <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Chyr-Pyng Su" <cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> wrote in message
news:3B455B5D.544A2EF5 at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw...
>
> Recently I have wrote a program in C, and start to write the GUI for it.
>
> I want to capture the message dump by the C program and show them on a
> text window.
> Does anyone have some idea to do that???   redirect the stdout???
>
Sorry, should have read the subject line. Here's a snippet of code that
write to a PMW scrolled text window, you should be able to do the same in a
Tkinter text window.

        t = Pmw.ScrolledText(self.msgWindow)
        grid(t, row=0, column=0, sticky=N+E+W+S)
        strmes =
self.index.Message(self.MsgSet[int(self.msgList.curselection()[0])][0])
        message = mimecntl.MIME_document(strmes)
        for hdr in ("from", "date", "subject", "to", "cc"):
            try:
                hdrline = message[hdr]
                t.insert(END, "%s:     %s\n" %
(string.capitalize(hdr),hdrline))
            except KeyError:
                pass

It's the insert() method you are looking for, I suspect.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/




--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Thu Jul 26 13:07:08 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:07:08 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B6031C3.6010707@nospiced.ham.devis.com> <xYX77.563869$eK2.117587345@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B604F1F.3030402@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Nick Perkins wrote:

> 
> This misses the point of the original post.
> Notice the 'break' in the original for-loop version.
> The idea is to return consecutive elements,
> up to, but not including, the first element which
> does not meet the condition.
> 
> ie.
> lst = [0,2,4,5,6]
> evens = [0,2,4]
> 

*sigh* yep missed that break

now-if-my-newsgroup-reader-only-had-python-syntax-highlighting-ly yours
Tom



From nospam at mega-nerd.net  Fri Jul 13 17:04:49 2001
From: nospam at mega-nerd.net (Erik de Castro Lopo)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:04:49 GMT
Subject: PyDNS?
References: <3B4ECBE0.96898063@stroeder.com> <bsrtktkhojr3osgha2npgoukhro5h0lfnt@4ax.com> <3B4EFD40.C0C075B6@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F626E.5DDEAD49@mega-nerd.net>

Michael Str?der wrote:
> 
> Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
> >
> > Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> schrieb am Fri, 13 Jul 2001
> > 12:22:24 +0200:
> >
> > >I wonder if there's interest to maintain the DNS module formerly
> > >written as demo by Guido van Rossum. Anthony Baxter has a modified
> > >version of it under http://www.interlink.com.au/anthony/dns.tar.gz.
> > >I've added support for SRV RRs and I'm thinking about adding caching
> > >support.
> >
> > Great.
> >
> >   File "DNS\Lib.py", line 105, in addname
> >     index.append(keys[j], offset + len(buf))
> > TypeError: append() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)
> >
> > This definitely needs an overhaul. :-)
> 
> Already fixed this too. Not sure if I covered all cases though.
> 
> For the impatient: My version of the module is shipped with
> http://web2ldap.de. Simply pull it out of pylib/ dir.

This version has exactly the same filename as Anthony Baxter's original.
Maybe its time to add version info to the name of the tarball :-).

Erik
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo     nospam at mega-nerd.com      (Yes its valid)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Q: How do you stop a Windows NT machine from crashing?
A: Shut it down and switch it off.


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul  9 22:02:46 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:02:46 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9kkcu1.gh1.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4A6246.1008F36@engcorp.com>

phil hunt wrote:
> 
> I am currently writing a program that reads emails, modifies
> them in various ways (adding headers, encryption, etc) and
> outputs the result.

At last!  I spend way too much time every day doing that manually.
When will your program be available?  I can't wait!

wistfully-but-I'd-have-to-say-not-exactly-serious-ly y'rs, -Peter


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 19:17:52 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:17:52 -0400
Subject: how on earth do i get a drive list?
References: <9jpqlh$phf$1@uranium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <3B60A520.4F30C0BC@engcorp.com>

"G. Willoughby" wrote:
> 
> how on earth do i get a drive list? i've been searching for a command to
> display a tuple or list containing all available drives, but i can't find
> it! is it just me or are the standard python docs quite confusing. oh well
> any ideas out there?

On Windows, with the win32all stuff installed:

>>> import win32api
>>> drives = win32api.GetLogicalDriveStrings()
>>> drives
'a:\\\x00c:\\\x00d:\\\x00e:\\\x00v:\\\x00'
>>> drives.split('\x00')[:-1]
['a:\\', 'c:\\', 'd:\\', 'e:\\', 'v:\\']

This is definitely not cross-platform, and I know nothing about the Windows
API so there are very likely much better ways to do this, but this one's
kind of cute... :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 12 11:06:16 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:06:16 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DB94@admin56.narex.com>

> From: "J?rgen A. Erhard" [mailto:juergen.erhard at gmx.net]

[snip]

> I had a script recently where I wanted to pass in a command line param
> that could be a numeric ratio, s.th. like
> 
>    thescript --ratio=1/3
> 
> Now, what do I do with that?  I can't use 1/3, because that eval'd is
> 0.  So... either people need to specify a float (--ratio=.3333... not
> very good looking) or I have to do some magic inside the script (look
> whether the ratio contains a /, split, float() on part, and merge)

If you're eval'ing random strings the user types in you really deserve
whatever you get <1/3 wink>.

>>> r = '1/3'
>>> import re
>>> tmp = r.split('/')
>>> assert len(tmp) == 2
>>> a, b = tmp
>>> assert re.match(r'[0-9]+', a) != None
>>> assert re.match(r'[0-9]+', b) != None
>>> x, y = map(int, [a,b])
>>> ratio = (x + 0.0) / y
>>> ratio
0.33333333333333331
>>>

Nothing magic about it...

-- bjorn



From mgerrans at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 17 16:29:28 2001
From: mgerrans at ix.netcom.com (Matt Gerrans)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:29:28 -0700
Subject: Handling errors in PyXML/SAX
References: <3B545EB5.6BB5DF57@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <9j27dl$c1r$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>

I don't know the exact answer, but based on a quick look:

Look at the " validate_attributes() member of ValidatingApp, on line 201 of
xmlval.py ("self.parser.report_error(2006,attr)"), in the xml directory
under the python directory.  That is where it is printing the message, using
the string 2006 from the localization dictionary in errors.py.   You'll have
to dig a little deeper to find out what the (poorly named) attrs variable
is, but seems it is a list of filenames, from which "Unknown" is coming.
Maybe it is a bug that it shows Unknown instead of the filename.

- Matt Gerrans

Tom Bridgman <bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:3B545EB5.6BB5DF57 at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov...
> I'm finally starting to work with the SAX parser and DTDs.  With the SAX
> defalult error handler, when parsing a file, I get error messages like:
>
> ERROR in Unknown:94:22: Element 'animationtype' not declared
> ERROR in Unknown:98:18: Element 'thumbnail' not declared
> ERROR in Unknown:99:14: Element 'medialist' not declared
>
> which I find ideal but for the fact that I would like to print the file
> name rather than 'Unknown'.
>
> I've tried setting the systemID (which seems to be where the 'Unknown'
> comes from) in a locator object like so:
>
> location=xmlreader.Locator()
> location.setSystemId=inputfilename
> self.handler.setDocumentLocator(location)
>
> but still get 'Unknown'.
>
> The documentation at http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/docs.html is
> really pretty vague on how to use this feature.
>
> Suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
> --
> Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman           Scientific Visualization Studio
> Global Science & Technology, Inc.      NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
> Email: bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov    Code 935
> Phone: 301-286-1346                    Greenbelt, MD 20771
> FAX:   TBD                             http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/




From guido at zope.com  Sun Jul 29 18:53:31 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:53:31 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:37:04 PDT."
             <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com> 
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <200107291708.NAA07525@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <3B6465E0.368A104@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <200107292253.SAA08093@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > Yes, it's a lot less useful than you seem to think.  If you are
> > interested in documentation, it's better to use something like pydoc
> > which gives much more details.
> 
> Major: Pydoc seems only useful for a small subset of types and classes. 

I was going to fix that.  It currently seems to believe only classic
classes and instances can be introspected using __class__ etc.

> Major: I use dir() in object browsers and other graphical constructs. I
> can't use pydoc for that. I don't see an obvious dir-like function in
> inspect.py.

An object browser is a big app.  Surely it can implement the simple
rules for finding all the attributes.  As a potential user of a GUI
object browser, I would like it to tell me not just which attributes
the class defines but also which ones are inherited and from where;
and information about which ones overload which other ones, etc.

> Minor: It returns so much prose information that I might prefer to use
> dir() to just get the spelling or name of a function.

That's at the >>> prompt right?

> Consider this traceback and you'll see why I still depend on dir()
> 
> >>> a=urllib.urlopen("file:///c|/autoexec.bat")
> >>> type(a)
> <type 'instance'>
> >>> dir(a)
> ['fileno', 'fp', 'headers', 'read', 'readline', 'readlines', 'url']

You're very lucky that this gives the information you want.  These all
happen to be instance variables.

> >>> help(a)
> Help on instance of addinfourl:
> 
> <addinfourl at 16411468 whose fp = <open file 'C:\autoexec.bat', mode
> 'rb' at 00
> F7EB28>>

I think help() should be improved here.

> >>> m = re.match("abc","abcdef")
> >>> type(m)
> <type 'SRE_Match'>
> >>> dir(m)
> ['end', 'expand', 'group', 'groupdict', 'groups', 'span', 'start']
> >>> help(m)
> Help on SRE_Match:
> 
> <SRE_Match object>

Clearly help() can stand improvement.

> > Right now, pydoc doesn't understand the new types yet, but eventually,
> > before 2.2 final, pydoc (or more likely inspect.py) will be able to
> > introspect according to PEP 252.
> 
> Maybe that will be enough to help me for my object-browsing
> applications. And perhaps pydoc will be reliable enough for me to give
> up on dir(x).

I repeat: your object-browsing apps should implement the PEP 252
protocol.

> > ....
> > Hm, I'd like you to tell me more about how you use dir().  I find
> > getting the entire list of attributes overwhelming.
> 
> I use dir(x) as a compressed and somewhat more reliable pydoc that works
> great for modules and built-in types and works poorly for instances.

At the >>> prompt, right?  I don't believe in adding built-ins to make
this mode truly self-sufficient.  That ought to be a function of the
IDE.  (In that sense help() is already against my philosophy -- I
don't find it very useful at the >>> prompt.  I much prefer pydoc's
server / webbrowser mode.)

> What do *you* use dir(x) for? When do you want to introspect an instance
> and you care about instance data but not class data and functions that
> are instance attributes but not true methods.

I like to know which attrs are ivars and which ones are methods, so I
prefer to do dir() on the instance to see what ivars it has, and dir()
on the class to see methods.  If dir() gave me the entire list of
ivars and methods it would be overwhelming and less useful.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 10 00:59:32 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 21:59:32 -0700
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994625054.7131.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107092059.8b56186@posting.google.com>

Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994625054.7131.python-list at python.org>...
> I'm having a problem converting unicode text to string type with str(). 
[snip] 
>  
> I haven't found anything that will explicitly do what I want, namely,
> completely remove any uncovertable unicode characters. I 
> have to be able to parse this text afterwards, 
> using a lot of Python's string functions,
[snip]

Are you completely sure that the offending characters are totally
meaningless in your application? u'\u00A0' is a no-break space; seems
stripping that out but leaving normal spaces (u'\u0020') might not be
a good idea. What other non-ASCII characters do you have?

Are you sure it's Unicode? Is \xA0 exactly what you are seeing, or are
you seeing \u00A0 and telling us it's \xA0 ??

Which "lot of Python's string functions" do you plan to use? Note that
8-bit strings and Unicode strings support a large number of same-name
as-close-to-same-functionality-as-possible methods -- see section
2.1.5.1 of the Python Library Reference manual. Also the re module
supports the same functions and methods on both types.


From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Mon Jul 23 10:14:11 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 14:14:11 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <cp66clexxt.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:

>The reason for wanting / to return a float (or at least a type that
>can represent close approximations of numbers like 0.75) has been
>discussed many times before.  The summary of the argument in the PEP
>may not be complete, but I disagree with Arthur's assessment that
>integer division is not a problem -- the VPython folks have ample
>experience that it is.

Many people have mentioned the backwards compatibility issue. For me,
the main issue is related to that, but much more devastating. I
maintain libraries which have to work on a range of Python versions.
At the moment, I can have a single set of source files which work on
all versions. The various recent language changes don't affect that.

With this division change, I will either have to maintain two parallel
versions of the source, or make use of ugly and inefficient code which
works with both old and new versions of Python.

The reality is that the whole world will not switch Python versions
overnight, so everyone who maintains a library will have to face this
issue.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 04:21:10 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:21:10 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <4dqslt4pj7algruf69gg3497m663gggjnf@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <m70tltsojn99kiqbn5fb2f78bf8tvj8824@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:40:21 -0700, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com>
wrote:

>Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Intellectual decline is not what it used to be ;-) - apparently the
>>avarage childs IQ these days (I forget the exact age range) is around
>>120. Must it's all the TV and video games ;-)
>
>The average child's IQ these days is 100.  That is the very definition of
>IQ.

Not in the case where you compare current childrens performace against
past childrens performance on the same test and using the same
assessment criteria - which was the point.

Of course I was misusing a specialist statistic and I doubt I can even
find the source now, but it was just a joke.



From gustafl at algonet.se  Tue Jul  3 17:15:55 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 21:15:55 GMT
Subject: AttributeError: 'getopt' module has no attribute 'GetoptError'
Message-ID: <Xns90D3ECC92390Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

I use Python 2.1 on Win98.

Try to use the getopt module, but get the error in the subject line. What's 
wrong? My code:

try:
  opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], 'f:hcr')
except getopt.GetoptError:
  usage()
  sys.exit(2)

Another question about getopt: Are options optional by nature? You can't 
have a mandatory option?

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 10:00:35 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:00:35 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

FYI:

Do not forget commas:

list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url", 
         "preview" ]

list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
         "preview" ]

Or Python will silently make:
['update', 'y', 'm', 'd', 'y1', 'm1', 'd1', 'event', 'urlpreview']

Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Thu Jul  5 11:46:30 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:46:30 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B448C81.4DAC7DD@wwc.com>

Resty Cena wrote:

> "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
> > I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> > frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
> >
> > Python still doesn't have good database support,
>
> I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
> to make it easy for me to do database programming.

[snip]

How about this little jewel returned by a Google search on "Python DB2 AIX"?

From

     http://webevents.broadcast.com/ibm/developer/050901/display_qa.asp


     Question 10:
          DB/2 can be used whit PHP or Pyton ?
     Answered by Nanda Pilaka:
          DB2's supports C/C++/Java/COBOL/REXX/Basic/Perl/Fortran currently.
          Python is not supported.


We now return you to the whitespace discussion currently in progress. . .






From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul 23 12:21:56 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:21:56 GMT
Subject: What confuses the newbies: An unscientific study
References: <slrn9lhvn1.ji4.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <9jhiv4$cv8$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson):

| I thought it might be cool for me to use suck(1) to pull down all the
| articles I could from comp.lang.python, find all the ones that
| represented questions about the language, and tabulate which aspects
| of the language people were misunderstanding.

Congratulations on a good job!  That was very interesting.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 13:50:39 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:50:39 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <270c68fe.0107121546.249b9efa@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9incdf$k98$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>

According to Alan Green <web.mail at lycos.com>:
> Until it reaches the mythical "mindshare critical mass", Python is
> going to have to take over the world just one project at a time. For
> those of us who want to work in Python in the typical IT shop, this
> means doing some advocacy.
> 
> To be an effective advocate of Python, you need to:
> [...]

Just browsed this book "Techno-Ready Marketing" at a local bookstore.
(Forgot the authors' names.) Amazon has two 5-star reviews, fwiw.

Anyone else read this book? Does it offer good advice applicable to, 
say, advocating Python in the work-place?



-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From zeitlin at seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr  Sat Jul  7 13:22:39 2001
From: zeitlin at seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr (Vadim Zeitlin)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 17:22:39 GMT
Subject: [Problem] wxPython -- wxSplitterWindow
References: <3hGKC2$kHq@openbazaar.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9kehav.1pq.zeitlin@seth.lpthe.jussieu.fr>

On 07 Jul 2001 07:12:02 GMT, ?Q?@?U <skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net> wrote:
>Hi, guys..
>
>How to split frame like above.
>
>  +-----+-----------------+
>  |     |                 |
>  |     +-----------------+
>  |     |                 |
>  |     |                 |
>  |     |                 |
>  +-----+-----------------+

 You need 2 splitters: create the first one as the child of the main window
and split it vertically, then create the second one as the child of the first
and split it horizontally.

 Regards,
VZ
-- 
GCS/GM d? H+ s++:-- p2 au--- a- w+ v C+++ UBLS+++ P- L++ N++ E--- W++++ M? V--
-po+ R++ G`` !tv b+++ D--- e++++ u++ h--- f+ r++ n- y?


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 19:25:12 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:25:12 -0400
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
In-Reply-To: <b8c015b9.0107251106.567803c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEEGLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Jon Schull]
> If I run "python doctest.py" from the command line (win2K) doctest
> does what I'd expect (which in this case is nothing).
>
> If I load doctest.py into idle and go "Edit| Run Script" I get
> something similar(a blank line).
>
> But if I go "Edit| Run Script" again, I get a Whole Bunch of Stuff
> (and doctest seems not be testing docstrings).  Is there a right way
> to have doctest and idle coexist?
>
> Here follows a Whole Bunch of Stuff ....
> *** Tester.merge: 'doctest.testmod' in both testers; summing outcomes.
> [and lots more of the same]

You should read the "ADVANCED USAGE" section of doctest.py's module
docstring.  What you're seeing is that doctest maintains a (module-global)
instance of class doctest.Tester, in module variable doctest.master, into
which any number of doctest runs can merge their results.  If you run
doctest on itself multiple times, then it will try to merge the results of
all those runs into one master report, and Tester.merge warns you when it
sees multiple tests with the same name.

That said, I have no idea why you're doing "Run Script" on doctest to begin
with.  That's not a sensible thing to do -- doctest is a library module in
2.1, and you shouldn't need to load it into IDLE at all, let alone ever run
it on itself.

If for some reason you simply can't resist <wink>, set "master" to None
between useless runs so that doctest stops trying to merge their redundant
results.




From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul 16 13:53:06 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:53:06 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <o8a6lt0sdmgbm6vn939no9chocul4fpq10@4ax.com>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 02:39:50 GMT, tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
wrote:

>Ok, so here's my version (I hate wasted line space and unnecessary temp
>vars):
>
>def valid_ip(ip):
>    m = re.match( r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
>    if m:   return max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256
>    return 0

In that case you can eliminate a whole line this way:

def valid_ip(ip):
    m = re.match( r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
    return (m and max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256)) or 0

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Wed Jul 18 03:42:52 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:42:52 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: distutils and python2.1
Message-ID: <slrn9lafnl.1on.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

Hello,

I have both python 1.5.2 and python 2.1 installed on my machine 
(python 2.1 is accessed through 'python2' on the command line), and
I'd like to generate rpm packages for python 2.1. However, when I
launch
python2 setup.py bdist_rpm
the rpm I get will install in /usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages.

Is there something I can tweak in the setup.cfg, maybe ?

TIA

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 15:36:49 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 12:36:49 -0700
Subject: explain this
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2@posting.google.com>

In the code below, why can i add elements to locals but not delete them?

>>> def function(argument):
... 	print locals()
... 	modify(locals())
... 	print locals()
... 	
>>> def modify(locals):
... 	del locals['argument']
... 	locals['new_argument'] = 'new_value'
... 	
>>> function(10)
{'argument': 10}
{'argument': 10, 'new_argument': 'new_value'}


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 14 13:55:25 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:55:25 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net> <9ip0u401117@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b507741.1900473085@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:48:43 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

>"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
>news:3b4f6eb5.1832748462 at wa.news.verio.net...
>> On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:01:37 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
>wrote:
>> [...]
>> >or to the def.  The ONLY difference is that lambda generates an
>> >anonymous function (and is an expression), while def generates a
>> >named function (and is a statement).
>>
>> In that case why not allow an anonymous version of def, e.g..,
>>
>>     map(
>>         def(x):
#>>             x**2
                return x**2 # thanks to Fredrik                    
>>         ,xrange(5))
>>
>> which would work like
>>
>>     map(
>>         lambda x:x**2
>>         ,xrange(5))
>
>Judging from this sole example, the only difference here would
>be the inconsequential syntax sugar of WRITING def(x) vs
>lambda x -- who cares for such trifles?
>
Sure. Sorry about the ambiguity (and unhelpful error in the example)

>Very different would be if the def was still a statement (and
>particularly a compound statement, including other statements):
Yes, that is what I was intending

>in that case, its anonimity would be no use UNLESS one fundamental
>principle of Python syntax was abrogated -- no expression can
>include statements.  If that were done, then there would be very
>wide-spread repercussions, needing a careful redesign of many
>apparently-unrelated things.
>
I didn't mean to abrogate the no-statements-in-expressions principle
in general, just within a fullfledged lambda definition.

Actually, it would have been clearer to leave def out of it, and say
I would like lambda to work just like def except returning the
function instead of binding a symbol to it.

In practice, since it's so easy to use def with a throwaway name,
the real question is when could the name mess things up. I don't
have an immediate answer ;-)

>From the grammar, we have
    funcdef: 'def' NAME parameters ':' suite
where
    parameters: '(' [varargslist] ')'
and
    lambdef: 'lambda' [varargslist] ':' test

So what would happen if that last "test" were
changed to "suite" ? If the end of "suite" is
well defined, why would there be a problem?

>
>> (OTOH you could make lambda multi-line ;-)
>
>lambda can be multi-line today.  I.e., you're free to break the
>line after the ':' in the above example.  Lines are not an issue.
>STATEMENTS vs EXPRESSIONS is the issue.
>
Sorry, I should have said "OTOH you could make lambda multi-statement" ;-)



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Tue Jul 10 11:31:27 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:31:27 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com> <iYw27.2271$z21.445141@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3B4B1FCF.54BAE9F0@Lugoj.Com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Steve S.L. Wong wrote:
> 
> > while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> > }
> 
> ouch.  that's ugly.  ever heard of for-loops?  and did you miss
> the "Never use this function" sentence in your C library manual? ;-)
> 
> anyway, this is a pretty good emulation:
> 
> for command in line.split(";"):
>     ...

I'm pretty sure that is NOT equivalent. The strtok is treating ";" as
whitespace whereas split is treating ";" as a delimiter. The difference
shows up when more than one whitespace/delimiter are adjacent. So
"this;;code;" parses to:

[ "this", "", "code", ""]

But a proper strtok equivalent should give:

[ "this", "code" ]

That is why I added a filter to my example. On the other hand, I'm guessing
the actual application from whence that C code comes really needs to treat
the semicolon as a delimiter.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 15:46:39 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:46:39 -0700
Subject: PEP: Support for "wide" Unicode characters
References: <mailman.993767684.13828.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9juud4.sbf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3B3F7E1F.E0146380@ActiveState.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> 
> Thu, 28 Jun 2001 15:33:00 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> pisze:
> 
> >     In order to avoid imposing this cost on every
> >     user, Python 2.2 will allow 4-byte Unicode characters as a
> >     build-time option. Users can choose whether they care about
> >     wide characters or prefer to preserve memory.
> 
> I don't like it. Scripts will work under some builds of Python and
> not work in others.

Just as they do today. i.e. if you use import win32api or if you use a
64-bit integer.

> > Rejected Suggestions
> 
> >     The other class of solution is to use some efficient storage
> >     internally but present an abstraction of wide characters
> >     to the programmer. Any of these would require a much more complex
> >     implementation than the accepted solution.
> 
> But will work, as opposed to working only sometimes.
> 
> If memory consumption is really a problem, I would definitely hide
> varying character sizes as an implementation detail.

Here are two relevant paragraphs from the version of the PEP I will
check in today:


        Another class of solution is to use some efficient storage
        internally but present an abstraction of wide characters to
        the programmer. Any of these would require a much more complex
        implementation than the accepted solution. For instance consider
        the impact on the regular expression engine. In theory, we could
        move to this implementation in the future without breaking
Python
        code. A future Python could "emulate" wide Python semantics on
        narrow Python. Guido is not willing to undertake the
        implementation right now.

....

    This PEP represents the least-effort solution. Over the next
    several years, 32-bit Unicode characters will become more common
    and that may either convince us that we need a more sophisticated 
    solution or (on the other hand) convince us that simply 
    mandating wide Unicode characters is an appropriate solution.
    Right now the two options on the table are do nothing or do
    this.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Wed Jul 25 03:07:18 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 07:07:18 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <4dqslt4pj7algruf69gg3497m663gggjnf@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <m0ssltsh09qee19qab7gir3v7tnm1dke5b@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:40:21 -0700, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:

>Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Intellectual decline is not what it used to be ;-) - apparently the
>>avarage childs IQ these days (I forget the exact age range) is around
>>120. Must it's all the TV and video games ;-)
>
>The average child's IQ these days is 100.  That is the very definition of
>IQ.

Except in Lake Woebegone, natch.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 20 13:38:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 10:38:19 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5863EE.F9047098@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B586C8B.305B8679@ActiveState.com>

James Logajan wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > If you use this
> > a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
> > should be.
> 
> Um, you've got that precisely reversed! If I see "message" anywhere in my
> code, I know immediately that it is an instance of the class Message. Think
> of it as an advanced form of Hungarian notation that tells you what type of
> thing the variable is holding. (Although I'm no fan of Hungarian per se.)

The Ruby convention is aMessage which is really more clear. i.e.
"message" could be of type string or of type Unicode or anything. I'm
sure I've got code on my computer where message was of any of these
types.

After all, lower case names are not ALWAYS used for instances of a type.
Sometimes they are merely descriptive of the variable's role. If you are
trying to say that an instance is an instance of a class then the aFoo
convention is very clear.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 08:33:49 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:33:49 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism) -- what variable names are you using?
References: <3b41b15a.22907188@news.tpi.pl>
Message-ID: <9hse3f01vvt@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Maciej Pilichowski" <macias at bp.com.pl> wrote in message
news:3b41b15a.22907188 at news.tpi.pl...
> Hello there,
>
>   As far as I can see everybody uses examples likes this:
>
> x += 2
>
>   Max. was 2 chars name long. Gosh, in my programs I use as long name
> as it is possible and as short as it is still understandable.
>   So if it is 11 p.m. I would love to see possibility of writing
>
> BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta += LimitKredytu
>
> instead of
>
> BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta = BiezaceWolneSrodkiKlienta+LimitKredytu
>
> /sorry for non-english names/. It is much clearer. Less to typing,
> less thinking "is that the same variable?".
>   For me -- I see only advantages of such operator.
>
>   One rule more to learn? Well, the idea is simple -- "adding in
> place" /for example above/ -- that defines very well all cases /I
> think/. And if you don't want to learn? Well -- don't.
>
>   I vote for go :-)
>
> have a nice day
> bye
>
> --
> Maciej "MACiAS" Pilichowski
> http://www.torun.pdi.net/~macias/
>
> z a k u p i e : pisma Komputer: 3/86,4/87




From bww00 at amdahl.com  Thu Jul 19 11:22:18 2001
From: bww00 at amdahl.com (Bryan Webb)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 15:22:18 GMT
Subject: float to str help
Message-ID: <9j6tva$9mb@dispatch.concentric.net>

Hi,
    In converting a float (5.661706091586558e+240) to a string using str() I
come up with 5.6617060916+240 . I checked the string variable in the
debugger. I need the full precicsion. I know its probably simple but this
red hair is causing me problems.

Thanks
Bryan Webb




From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  2 06:21:45 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:21:45 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: problem with sending email
In-Reply-To: <upubjy8y3.fsf@cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107021420190.720-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On 2 Jul 2001 piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:

> >>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:
> 
> HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
> HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
> HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
> HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
> HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
> HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
> HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.

What if you try to send mail by piping to "sendmail -t"?

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From hgg9140 at seanet.com  Sat Jul 28 06:50:59 2001
From: hgg9140 at seanet.com (Harry George)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 03:50:59 -0700
Subject: Distributing multiple related scripts
References: <mailman.996083328.23080.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m33d7hz5rg.fsf@wilma.localdomain>

Don Dwiggins <dwig at advancedmp.net> writes:

> I have a distribution need that might be somewhat unusual: instead of
> distributing a single program, I need to distribute a collection of scripts,
> some to be run manually, others scheduled.  Since there's considerable
> common code among them, I want to have one or more common modules that the
> scripts can load as needed.
> 
> Both the source and target of distribution are Windows machines.  Also, it's
> possible to have Python installed on the target machine(s).
> 
> 1) What would be the best distribution tool and setup for this?
> 2) How would the scripts access the common modules?
>

Use the standard "setup.py".  In your development or working dir, do:

  myproject/
     mypackage/
       __init__.py
       mod01.py
       mod02.py
     scripts/
       script01.py
       script02.py
     setup.py

setup.py has:
   ...
   packages=['mypackage'],
   scripts=['scripts/script01.py','script02.py'],
   ...

The scripts of course import the package and use its modules:
   import mypackage
   ...
   mypackage.mod01.do_something()

To distribute:
   python setup.py build
   python setup.py sdist

Copy the resulting tarball to the installation location and untar.  
Then follow the std process:
   python setup.py build
   python setup.py install  <-- maybe as root
 
If you need some help writing a setup.py, you ca see 
my "mkpythonproj" at:
  http://www.seanet.com/~hgg9140/comp/index.html

> Thanks for any good words,
> 
> -- 
> Don Dwiggins                    "Solvitur Ambulando"
> Advanced MP Technology
> dwig at advancedmp.net
> 
> 

-- 
Harry George
hgg9140 at seanet.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 12:14:41 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:14:41 -0400
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994843338.24567.python-list@python.org> <3B4C2A0E.60AA094@nokia.com> <8oZ27.41795$F%5.2523550@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B4C78FE.C2B6CECB@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <yU_27.42170$F%5.2551069@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
news:3B4C78FE.C2B6CECB at nokia.com...
> Steve Holden wrote:
> >
> > "Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
> > news:3B4C2A0E.60AA094 at nokia.com...
> > > Shannon --jj Behrens wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello All,
> > > >
> > > > I wrote a useful C module for doing string
> > > > interpolation.  I find it indespensible when working
> > > > with large blocks of triple-quoted text.  When working
> > > > with large blocks of triple-quoted text, nothing else
> > > > is quite as convenient.  Here's the Python doc:
> > >
> > > [lots of text snipped]
> > >
> > > > Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
> > > > even be useful enough to be included as a standard
> > > > module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
> > > > suggestions as to what I can do with it.  You may
> > > > download the entire packages from:
> > > >
> > > > <http://ironorchid.com/jjinux/evalstr.tar.gz>
> > >
> > > I prefer the following method for evaluations inside strings.
> > >
> > > >>> class Eval:
> > > def __getitem__(self, key):
> > > return eval(key)
> > >
> > >
> > > >>> foo = 3.0
> > > >>> spam = 5.0
> > > >>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
> > > 0.6
> > > >>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
> > > 0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000
> >
> > That's a very neat trick. Had you though of writing it up as a Python
> > recipe?
> >
> To where?




From jdavis at empires.org  Mon Jul 23 05:42:48 2001
From: jdavis at empires.org (Jeff Davis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:42:48 -0700
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net> <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <NhS67.5004$LR1.286463@news.pacbell.net>

Michael Str?der wrote:
> Jeff Davis wrote:
>> 
>> I have been looking around and I have not been able to find a session
>> module for python (for the web). Basically I just need a normal session
>> manager that can work somewhat like the one in PHP. I have recently been
>> moving away from PHP to python for web stuff and I need a session
>> manager. If no such module exists, I would write my own.
> 
> You might wanna borrow some ideas from
> http://www.stroeder.com/pylib/PyWebLib/
> 
> I'm the author => take it with a grain of salt. ;-)
> 
> There are other modules too:
> http://thor.prohosting.com/~pboddie/Python/web_modules.html
> 
> Ciao, Michael.
> 

Great! I will take a look, and if I can improve it, I will. 

Thanks!
Jeff Davis


From frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr  Thu Jul 26 10:29:31 2001
From: frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr (=?iso-8859-1?q?franck=20delarue?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:29:31 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: garbage collector
Message-ID: <20010726142931.53348.qmail@web14805.mail.yahoo.com>

hi,
I use python1 with a lot of object (dictionnairies +
lists) and my program takes 3 or 4 hours to execute on
a 4 processors (700 mghz) and 2 Go Ram machine (linux
red hat).
The problem is that when the program is finished,
python still continues to delete the objects (I've put
some "print" to see when the "del" function is
executed) during about 30 minutes.
Is that normal ? Is there a solution to stop the
program correctly ? ("ctrl+alt+del" or "kill -9 XXX"
works but i don't feel satisfied) 


=====
__________________________________    ___ 
\                                 \  |  _  |  \
 \  F R A N C K     D E L A R U E  \ | |_  | | |
 /  + - + - + -     + - + - + - +  / |  _  | | |
/_________________________________/  |_|   |__/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Vos albums photos en ligne, 
Yahoo! Photos : http://fr.photos.yahoo.com



From Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com  Sun Jul 22 12:01:08 2001
From: Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com (Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:01:08 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com>

Before going further in attempting to contribute to the
discussions of Pep238  (or case sensitivty) allow
be to present my credentials.

None, to speak of.

Except that I've been through the program.  Guido's
program.  His language. His environment.  His
tutorials.  

I think with some success.

Participate little on python-list, because much of
what goes on is over my head. 

But on the question of learning programming with
Python - as I mention, been through the program.

Here the issues are  under my nose, not
over my head.

I particpate actively on the edu-sig list, because
I understand my success could be other's success.
Am a big supporter of Guido's CP4E ideals.

Yet despite the gratitude I try to keep in mind,
I clash consistently with Guido on CP4E - sometimes
in unpleasant ways.  

Can only hope he appreciates at some level that I
bring some passion to the table on some common
goals.

Because that clash now spills over to the Python list.

Since I have convinced myself that not only do I
object to the rationale and evidence gathering behind
the integer division change - I am going to step up
and be arrogant enough to say that I am against it
as a design feature,  in light of the only aspect of Python
design about which I would dare to speak - CP4E goals.

3 / 4 = 0
3.0 / 4 = .75

Something important is going on here. I have a decent
understanding of what that is. Enough to get me by in
the real world. 

I came to It -  having already understood that I would 
only get so far if I expected it all to come to me.

That reckoning has been put off an hour ot two  for the
Python 2.2 learner, with a measurable cost.

Pity  for the Python2.2 learner.

Quite well realize that I am not  saying anything that 
hasn't  been said before on the issue.

But disappointed to never have  heard the counter
argument from Guido - what put the issue over the
top for him?

If I was told that experinced programmers might 
appreciate this change for any possible reason - 
I'd be quiet as a mouse.

Since I remain convinced that the single most important
factor for Python's acceptance as an educational language is
the growth of its  acceptance as a professional language.

It will be interesting to see where Guido chooses to draw
the line on the thought process that lead him to his integer
division conclusion.

Which is the real issue - the integer division thing, stand-alone, 
not likely to be a deal breaker for anyone.

Like to believe that there is more real world thinking
than Guido chooses to share publicly.

Alternatively,  I'm baffled as hell.

ART





From daniel.dittmar at sap.com  Fri Jul 13 12:53:46 2001
From: daniel.dittmar at sap.com (Daniel Dittmar)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:53:46 +0200
Subject: Newbie list question
References: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9in92s$9qf$1@news1.wdf.sap-ag.de>

> >>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.
> >>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
> >>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?

If you want to find out this one yourself, use
>>> id (foo), id (bar), id (baz)
at various places

Daniel
--
Daniel Dittmar
daniel.dittmar at sap.com
SAP DB, SAP Labs Berlin
http://www.sapdb.org/






From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 18:17:48 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 22:17:48 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <9ji7qc$ciq$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:
> 23 Jul 2001 10:47:08 GMT, Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> pisze:

>> "+" does two different things depending on what you pass in (strings or
>> numbers). "*" does so too. They both can be said to lose information.

> The difference between '+' and '/' is that ints aren't implicitly
> converted to strings, so one wouldn't use an int instead of a string
> expecting '+' to do the conversion and concatenation. But ints *are*
> implicitly converted to floats when needed in about all contexts except
> '/', so it would be reasonable to expect them to be converted in the
> '/' case too.

Huh? Which contexts are that? ints are converted to floats if you use
them together with a float, yes. int + float results in a float answer,
just like int/float does; why do you claim / is an exception in this? 

Anyway, string * int involves in a string result as well, which could
be claimed to be analogous, though I know that's a shaky argument. :)

> In languages where ints are implicitly converted to strings, addition
> and concatenation are typically different operators. Like in Perl:
> '+' and '.'.

And in Perl "1" + "foo" is 1. Hardly ideal as an example of separate
operators. :)
 
> Python does treat ints and floats as different parts of the same
> concept by letting them compare equal and convert as needed. So real
> division and integer division should be distinguished by the operator.

Couldn't you make this argument for float multiplication and integer
multiplication as well though? After all integer * float will lead to
an inexact float result..  Ocaml has separate *. for float multiplication,
for instance.

> To help with migration there can be old_div(x,y) function. That way
> old / can be unconditionally replaced with old_div for a quick fix,
> and it can be made nicer by saying explicitly which division is meant
> when somebody has time to do it properly.

It wouldn't help too much with efficiency, but I imagine that's what people
will end up doing, yes. At least you could make a tool that did that for
each and every / (excluding situations with eval), so that's a relief. It does
raise the question if polluting so much old code with this construct 
(and we can't change code samples) is worth having a slightly easier to
teach language.. 

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Fri Jul 27 07:30:43 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:30:43 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list@python.org> <9jmp05$47j$1@animus.fel.iae.nl> <slrn.pl.9m2fn3.498.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <Dhc87.66196$Xr6.280315@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
> I suspect that if foreign characters are allowed in
> identifiers, the recommended practice would be
> to make each feature available under an ASCII
> name too.

   Java and C# allow the use of Unicode escape sequences in variables so you
could have something like:

   double \u03C0 = 3.0;

   This would be a pain to work with but editors can be set up to show this
as the greek letter pi. Another common technique is to allow aliasing
statements such as VB's
    Declare Function CreateWindowEx Lib "USER32" _
    Alias "AnotherNameThatCouldIncludeWeirdCharacters"

   Neil





From coldstrongvision at gmx.net  Mon Jul  9 15:52:11 2001
From: coldstrongvision at gmx.net (Marcus Lauster)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:52:11 +0200
Subject: www.pygame.org
Message-ID: <9id1t4$j9q$02$2@news.t-online.com>

hi

What r u thinking about this site. I like it. All the little games r in
python :).

cya all

Marcus :)






From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul 25 11:07:57 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:07:57 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lto6c.mqs.grante@isis.visi.com>

In article <cp7kwyqfce.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>How did engineers cope with Fortran?

By swearing through gritted teath.  :)

>Fortran has long been the preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks
>moved on to C and C++...

"Cope" is exactly the correct verb.  You cope with arthritis because you've
got no choice. Much the same is true of Fortran.  You use it because there's
nothing else you can do.  First because the alternative was assembly. Later,
because you need complex math and the other languages available don't
support it. Finally you've got a huge existing library of routines and no
time to re-write them all in something else.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Yes, but will I
                                  at               see the EASTER BUNNY in
                               visi.com            skintight leather at an
                                                   IRON MAIDEN concert?


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 13:39:14 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:39:14 GMT
Subject: Encryption and python?
References: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <3B4EB456.5A315CF9@stroeder.com> <m2vgkxvw62.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <9inbo2$rov$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Greg Copeland  <gtcopeland at earthlink.net>:
> Fair enough.  I'm looking for low-level algorithms for public
> key exchange, some encryption, digital signatures and hashes.

<plug>
M2Crypto:

$ python rsatest.py
testing public-key encryption: pkcs1_padding
testing public-key encryption: pkcs1_oaep_padding
testing private-key signing: pkcs1_padding

$ python dsatest.py
testing signing... ok
testing asn1 signing... ok

$ python dhtest.py
generating dh params:
...+...+.+.+...++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*++*
p =  '\000\000\000\021\000\201\366\316W\372\036\272\352\004&\214\010\317\2072\313'
g =  '\000\000\000\001\002'
a.pub = '\000\000\000\020V4\277\363c\325!;1\211\261\262u\350\223\371'
a.priv = '\000\000\000\020K\246\035e\235\254\2010G\372\200u\357D1\214'
b.pub = '\000\000\000\021\000\201\205\031=W\252g\262\336\242Iz\202\020\360\336'
b.priv = '\000\000\000\020d\226\034\3723\357\354W~\366co\014\345\275\032'
a.key =  '2\001:\015\013tE\215D\365\276\302;\324u\367'
b.key =  '2\001:\015\013tE\215D\365\276\302;\324u\367'

$ python evp_ciph_test.py 
testing bf_ecb ... ok
testing bf_cbc ... ok
testing bf_cfb ... ok
testing bf_ofb ... ok
testing idea_ecb ... ok
testing idea_cbc ... ok
testing idea_cfb ... ok
testing idea_ofb ... ok
testing cast5_ecb ... ok
testing cast5_cbc ... ok
testing cast5_cfb ... ok
testing cast5_ofb ... ok
testing rc5_ecb ... ok
testing rc5_cbc ... ok
testing rc5_cfb ... ok
testing rc5_ofb ... ok
testing des_ecb ... ok
testing des_cbc ... ok
testing des_cfb ... ok
testing des_ofb ... ok
testing des_ede_ecb ... ok
testing des_ede_cbc ... ok
testing des_ede_cfb ... ok
testing des_ede_ofb ... ok
testing des_ede3_ecb ... ok
testing des_ede3_cbc ... ok
testing des_ede3_cfb ... ok
testing des_ede3_ofb ... ok
testing rc4 ... ok
testing rc2_40_cbc ... ok

</plug>
-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sun Jul  1 14:52:21 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:52:21 -0700
Subject: No os._exit() in MacOS?
Message-ID: <eppstein-CDC3AB.11522101072001@news.service.uci.edu>

I am having difficulty getting a Mac W applet to exit cleanly -- 
sys.exit(0) causes W.application.mainloop() to put up a traceback window 
(and not quit), W.application._quit() causes W to stop responding (but 
still not quit, unless called from a Quit event handler), and os._exit(0) 
isn't available on the Mac.  Are there any other alternatives?

As a sign that this isn't only my problem, the BuildApplication applet that 
comes with the 2.1 build has similar problems -- if you let it run to 
completion, it gets into a state where you can't exit without 
Cmd-Ctrl-Option-Esc.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From teo at crepido.com  Wed Jul 25 10:04:29 2001
From: teo at crepido.com (teo)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 07:04:29 -0700
Subject: xml - parsing with 4Suite, how does it work?
Message-ID: <dd144f8b.0107250604.20dcca4b@posting.google.com>

Hi all!

I'm looking for some documentation about howto parsing an xml-file
into a DOM with the 4Suite-tools. Does anyone have an idea where to
search, or how to do?

if so, that wold be great!

/teo


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul  5 05:57:09 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:57:09 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4439F5.71A96046@stroeder.com>

Russ wrote:
> 
> Do you think PyChecker could ever be sophisticated enough to do static
> type checking?

Inspired by this thread I played with PyChecker yesterday on my
rather small project. I enjoyed finding some obsolete module imports
and variable declarations.
But some reported errors pointed to perfectly valid and intended
code. I could switch on and off some of the checks. But that's not
really helpful.

I would be very careful with these kind of tools which check for
errors *after* the program passed syntax checking. They are useful
to do checks you should have done on your own but forgot to do.

For really safe systems I'd prefer a programming language where the
program is not runnable at all if the rules are violated which are
usually checked by lint-like tools. I even would claim that it takes
much less to time to let the compiler impose strict rules than check
for them later.

Ciao, Michael.


From abulka at netspace.net.au  Tue Jul 31 02:48:06 2001
From: abulka at netspace.net.au (abulka at netspace.net.au)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:48:06 +1000 (EST)
Subject: xmlrpc via proxy
In-Reply-To: <E15RFTw-0000ZI-00@mail.python.org>
References: <E15RFTw-0000ZI-00@mail.python.org>
Message-ID: <996562086.3b6654a653596@www.netspace.net.au>

Thanks Jeff, for the url to your proxy code - this code happens to be the code 
I was adapting !
Your code works OK for 
  betty = Server("http://betty.userland.com", transport=UrllibTransport())
but fails for
  meerkatsvr = Server("http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/xml-rpc/server.php",  
transport=UrllibTransport())

giving the following exception

Traceback (innermost last)
  File "c:\\xmlrpc work\python xmlrpc server\andyrpc1.py", line 40, in ?
    print meerkatsvr.system.listMethods()
Fault: <Fault 103: 'XML error: no element found at line 1'>

I am also getting a similar error message attempting to communicate 
with 'http://xmlrpc-c.sourceforge.net/api/sample.php' as per the python example 
at XML-RPC HOWTO at http://xmlrpc-c.sourceforge.net/xmlrpc-howto/xmlrpc-howto-
python-client.html  

Thus it seems your code works ok for http://betty.userland.com but not for the 
other two ?  Here is the code for your xmlrpc_urllib_transport.py  with a 
couple of extra lines which is me attempting to talk to meerkatsvr.  

Any further thoughts by you or anyone else would be appreciated!

import xmlrpclib
class UrllibTransport(xmlrpclib.Transport):
	'''Handles an HTTP transaction to an XML-RPC server via urllib
	(urllib includes proxy-server support)
	jjk  07/02/99'''

	def request(self, host, handler, request_body):
		'''issue XML-RPC request
		jjk  07/02/99'''
		import urllib
		# ANDY added his proxy as parameter to urllib.FancyURLopener()
		urlopener = urllib.FancyURLopener( {'http' : 'www-
proxy.BLAH.au:8080' } )
		urlopener.addheaders = [('User-agent', self.user_agent)]
		# probably should use appropriate 'join' methods instead 
of 'http://'+host+handler
		f = urlopener.open('http://'+host+handler, request_body)
		return(self.parse_response(f))

from xmlrpc_urllib_transport import UrllibTransport
from xmlrpclib import Server
betty = Server("http://betty.userland.com", transport=UrllibTransport())
print betty.examples.getStateName(41)    # WORKS OK

# ANDY added extra code to talk to meerkatsvr 
from pprint import pprint
meerkatsvr = Server("http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/xml-rpc/server.php", 
transport=UrllibTransport())
print "Now attempting to communicate with meerkat server"
print meerkatsvr.system.listMethods()    # EXCEPTION RASIED - why?


- Andy

> > I'm trying to get xmlrpc to work through a firewall/proxy.
> 
> I wrote a urllib transport for XML-RPC a couple years ago. It
> worked then, but I can't test it now because I no longer have
> to deal with a proxy firewall :-)
> 
> Look for:
>     xmlrpc_urllib_transport.py
> at:
>     http://starship.python.net/crew/jjkunce/
> 
>   --Jeff



-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: www.netspace.net.au




From web2ed at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  6 12:20:03 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 09:20:03 -0700
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>

To the Snake's Den:

This is a continuation to an earlier post "Is Python Dead".  Perhaps
my previous title was a bit loud and over the top.  In response to
being accused a Troll, I want to say that this has been a serious plea
for help.  I would rather eat Spam than be a Troll.

I have been hoping that someone else would write Oracle, DB2, and SQL
Server drivers/modules for Python, so I wouldn't have to.  Mostly
because I haven't had time, and also because such an undertaking is
better suited for a group with a formal review board rather than an
individual code Maverick.

I have come to the harsh reality that 90% of the developers who use
Python are advanced developers doing mostly scientific research.  I
guess I am jealous that most of you get to work with Python, on a
daily basis, while the rest of us are relegated to using slave's
tools.

Unless I go back to school, and take up academic research, I will not
be using Python, unless I take two years off, working alone, to add
the necessary database support which Python lacks.  I understand that
most of you geniuses can hit databases for storing your scientific
data, however, I write applications which save peoples life's-public
safety systems.  I can't possibly use "EXPERIMENTAL" code in my day to
day work.  If something goes wrong with my code, I lose my job, and if
it can be shown that I used experimental code downloaded from the
Internet, I could be charged with criminal negligence.

Python is too good of a language to hoard in the laboratory.  Python
could make both programmers and end-users life's so much better if it
only had a "FEW" additional features.  I think it is a shame that
Python is only used for advanced-scientific-computing tasks.  I know
that as a representative of the business community, I have a small
voice among scientists.  However, surely the scientists among you,
long to proliferate Python to the masses; to share your talents and
achievements with the non-scientific world.

I dare say, that Python would smash Java, Perl, Visual Basic, and any
other new age tool (C/C++ dodgers) if it only had certifiable database
support on par with that of JDBC.  This is not to say that JPython, or
whatever it is now called, is an alternative.  I need C based
Python--I need SPEED.  I need to be able to hook into other C/C++
code.  Until Java drops the VM fantasy, and starts compiling to
native, it will never out pace what C-Python has to offer.

I pray to the Python Gods "please bless us with a Python JDBC
counterpart" and all in the world will be in balance.

Thank you for all of your comments, I will surely give Zope a whirl,
this may be the opportunity I have been waiting for

--zERO.


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 20:03:32 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:03:32 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55F@admin56.narex.com> <mailman.995575532.23146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9letak.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:44:06 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:
>> TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
>> hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
>> iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
>> stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
>> begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
>
>Very funny (not).  You misunderstood the intention.  The programming
>environment should be case-preserving, and automatically correct
>identifiers to use the same case as used when they were defined.

Which would be good, as pressing [shift] slows down my typing.
For those that remember, Sinclair QL BASIC did this.

Though the case it saves it as should be alterable.

-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 16:35:52 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 00:35:52 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107070025320.25383-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
>> This is reasonable. However, IMHO, solution need to be different
>> than redefining established "/" behaviour?
>>
>> Could "right" division be given some other symbol than "/" and old "/" be
>> left intact as a "low-level" C-conformant division every Python programmer
>> is accustomed to?
>
>Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
>frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
>number of established Python programmers.  The sooner we fix this the
>better!

Oh, yes...

>Another thing.  Division of integers is a pretty uncommon operation

May be... (I recall all my sins using /)

*

>The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
>transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":
>
>1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>2. In a following revision, we add a warning when / is used on two int
>3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>4. Finally we can implement the "future" behavior by default.

I wish, there were also

from __past__ import old_lovely_integer_division
from __past__ import old_xrange
from __past__ improt old_non_nested_scopes

and whatever was dropped.

;-)

>I haven't picked dates yet; if folks agree, I would like to add div()
>and a future statement to 2.2 and space the other steps a single
>revision apart, so phase 4 would be at Python 2.5 (April 2003, if we
>keep the current release schedule up).  Is that too aggressive?

It is not agressive at all...
When we will have ANSI Python or ISO Python?;-)

>I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
>mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
>messenger from the future :-).
>
>I'm not sure how to spell the future statement.  Here are some
>choices:
>
>  from __future__ import float_division
>  from __future__ import real_division
>  from __future__ import new_division
>  from __future__ import division

true_division probably

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul 19 16:30:34 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:30:34 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995572293.19088.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B57436A.993F349F@Lugoj.Com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
> > From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at digicool.com]
> >
> > > I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
> > > expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
> > > non-programmers.
> >
> > IMO there are two non-truths in this statement.
> >
> > (1) The expressivity of the language is not crippled.
> >
> > (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
> >     group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
> >     arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
> 
> TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
> hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
> iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
> stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
> begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
> 
> AS fAR aS thE Size Of thE VARious camPs, I haVE YeT tO sEe a coMPeLLinG
> aRGuMeNt thAT THE grOup of noN-pRoGRaMmeRS THat WILl taKe up
> pRoGRAmmInG, ANd wiLL DO sO in PYTHon InsTEad oF VisUal BasiC, Is any
> LARGeR Than The groUp of ProgRAmmERs.

I'M TELLING THERE IS NO SEMANTIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER CASE!
anything you see that may suggest otherwise is merely a figment of your
imagination. it has been proven with case studies and geometric logic that
there were strawberries, er, i mean indications that understanding mutable
versus immutable, class versus instance variables, slice assignment,
threading, slicing, and dicing were child's play for new programmers
compared to the agonizing difficulty of remembering that on line 3 they used
mySum and on line 6 they used mysum (but on line 9 they used
my_sum...nevermind!)

it has also been shown that the words "their", "there", and "they're" (among
many homonyms) are easily confused even in written form and theirfore the
english language should be changed to accommodate people knew to the english
language. yeah, write.

Note to the humor impaired: :-)


From kens at sightreader.com  Tue Jul 10 05:07:39 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:07:39 -0700
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <01b001c1091f$c9c74340$0e4ab43f@kens>

import os

path = '/junk'   # put your directory here

for fname in os.listdir(path):  # list of files in your directory
    f = open(fname, 'r')
    lines = f.readlines()       # reads a list of lines
    f.close()
    f = open(fname, 'w')
    f.writelines(lines[1:])     # writes all but the first line
    f.close()


Now, be careful!  This will remove the first line of every file
in the directory, including files you don't want to ruin.  Back
up everything first!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 2:01 PM
Subject: File processing


> Hello all!
>
> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
> and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
> the right direction?  Thanks!
>
> Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
> strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
> script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From llothar at mailandnews.de  Mon Jul 23 19:29:11 2001
From: llothar at mailandnews.de (Lothar Scholz)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 01:29:11 +0200
Subject: UML Packages And Python Modelling
Message-ID: <oecpltcn42hqfpf8ge308jpk6pe28n5bqm@4ax.com>

I'm writing an UML Diagram Editor for python and would like to ask the
community what entity is an UML package. My first idea was that a file
is the logical equivalent, not the directory (likejava.and eiffel
programmers would expect). But then what is a directory ?
Should this be represented by a nested package ?






From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul  7 16:31:18 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 20:31:18 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <qkK17.3717$Y6.1212999@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Indeed, the beauty of binary operators is that they help the human
> programmer quickly understand an expression

Yes, indeed.
...
> The proposal of "//" got a lot of opposition from folks who are
> concerned that it would confuse people with a C++ or Java background
> too much, because it's a comment there.

I can see that now (I don't program in either)

> The "div" keyword would be ideal except for the added complexity of
> adding a new keyword to the language

While adding one (yield), another won't hurt much, since a program to
search for conflicts with names and make replacements in a collection of
files could easily do both in the same two passes.  (Two passes are needed
so that the replacement for variable 'yield' or 'div' does not conflict
with another existing variable such as 'yields' or 'divx'.)

Another *STRONG* argument for replacing int / with another infix operator
is the feasibility of revising the thousands of broken lines of code to run
under 2.whatever.  Any decent programming editor can do a 'find / and
replace with xxx if I say yes' (which will require the reviser to examine
the code to determine if / meant int div) but hardly any can do 'find / and
examine the code on both sides to determine the strings that the
interpreter will see as e1 and e2 and replace e1 / e2 with div(e1,e2) if I
say yes'.  Writing a special purpose update program would also be much
easier.

>-- do we need a separate warning  phase here, too?

Maybe yes, in parallel with / warnings.  Maybe no, depending on what do
with yield.  I think it more important to make it as easy as possible to
fix broken lines, whenever that does become necessary.

Terry J. Reedy







From deepak9999 at mail.com  Fri Jul  6 09:18:22 2001
From: deepak9999 at mail.com (Deepak)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 06:18:22 -0700
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
Message-ID: <48365474.0107060518.3f07cf24@posting.google.com>

Hi,
I am trying to run scripts that use Tkinter for GUI inside of an MFC
application that has embedded python interpreter. I read through the
other postings on this newsgroup regarding the difficulties of doing
so. However, I am not able to figure out what I am doing wrong...

Here is the C code in the MFC application: -

void myFunc (int argc, char **argv)
{
   Py_Initialize ();
   PySys_SetArgv (argc, argv);
   PyRun_SimpleString ("execfile ('myTkinterApp.py')");
}

The contents of myTkinterApp.py are: -
try:
   import Tkinter
   print 'Successfully imported Tkinter'
   try:
      rt = Tkinter.Tk ()
      print 'Successfully executed Tkinter.Tk ()'
   except:
      print 'Error in Tkinter.Tk ()'
except:
   print 'Error importing Tkinter'

The result is printed as: -
Successfully imported Tkinter
Error in Tkinter.Tk ()

The exception thrown is something like "Tkinter.tk could not be
initialized.."
All other scripts and commands run fine in the MFC app. It is only the
Tkinter
based commands that have the problem.
Please help...

Deepak


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 12:49:03 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:49:03 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
 <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
 <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> writes
>Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>
>> We all know lightning is God's way of telling us to shut up. Of course
>> God is benevolent no matter how appalling the universe gets. The
>> opposite of benevolent is malevolent. When our quick-sorts go wrong it
>> will be as a result of a benevolent act by a caring designer.
>
>I sincerely wish you would be struck by lightning.  Your attitude
>disgusts me.
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Oh dear I sense a humour deficit :(
-- 
Robin Becker


From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 12:59:23 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:59:23 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com> <3B5E1075.94167ECD@home.net> <3B5E45B7.2C4AE40@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B5EFAEB.1EB156B3@home.net>

James Logajan wrote:

> But, but, Python ALREADY relies on file name suffixes! The "import"
> statement:
> 
> import <module>
> 
> snip snip
 
> That is it; I can think of some minor objections or esthetic complaints, but
> can't see any show stoppers unless I basically misunderstand some Python
> internals.

I thought I made this clear already, and it has been repeated in various
other threads:

A lot of python code is not in *.py files, and not run with the import
statement. It is in dhtml, or a database, or an embedded script, or.....
and run with exec or eval or execfile, or...

For this reason, there needs to be a version identifier in the code for
this scheme to work.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From bas.vangils at home.nl  Wed Jul 25 12:32:51 2001
From: bas.vangils at home.nl (Bas van Gils)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:32:51 +0200
Subject: A few things :)
In-Reply-To: <3B5EC9EE.108@australia.edu>
References: <3B5EC9EE.108@australia.edu>
Message-ID: <20010725183251.A26481@cp68200-b.tilbu1.nb.nl.home.com>

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:30:22PM +1000, Lee Nutter wrote:
> Im a beginner, and although (i think) I know the base language all 
> right, I haven't really made anything. Can anyone recommend anything for 
> a first project?

someone very wise (actually, a collegue of mine) once told me to only
learn new things if you need them :-) Either way, there's lots of fun
stuff you can do as a first project...

> Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby. 
> Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language, 
> don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)

I'm also a bit new to Python. I had a basic course in JAVA once, tought
myself the (basics) of Perl, Php and finallyh moved to Python. I'm
getting used to it more and more, and am learning new things each time I
use it (many thanks to Thomas Wouters for his patience, and Mark Pilgrim
for writing the `dive into python' book).

I use Python mostly because it makes it very very easy to write readable
code, because it's a very intuitive language, because it's a good way of
learning new things about programming, and mostly because it's fun :-)

it's-not-much-but-I-hope-it-helps'ly yours

    Bas

-- 
Bas van Gils <bas.vangils at home.nl>
Python - programming the way Guido indented it



From b.jones at acecad.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 17 12:05:37 2001
From: b.jones at acecad.demon.co.uk (Brian Jones)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:05:37 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <mailman.995210391.3651.python-list@python.org> <4as5lt82h2oc47fl72mkb8i21ppf6lboop@4ax.com> <slrn9l8aj8.8in.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <995385506.24044.0.nnrp-10.9e98af18@news.demon.co.uk>

"phil hunt" <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrn9l8aj8.8in.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:56:30 +0200, Lothar Scholz <llothar at mailandnews.de>
wrote:
> >>
> >>The problem is that there isn't one "better", just "better in the eyes
of
> >>the author",
> >
> >I believe that this not really true, for example you must accept that
> >Common Lisp is much more powerful than any other language.
>
> Define powerful
>
> >The problem is that most people are not very open minded - mostly
> >because there intellectual skills are to low to capture more.
> >Sorry this seems to be arogant - but its the truth.
>
> Are you trolling?

It's possible, isn't it? Able to grasp the complexities of
too-hard-for-the-rest-of-us Lisp, but having more trouble with there/their,
to/too and its/it's...

Brian.







From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 13 13:53:34 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:53:34 -0500
Subject: FW: Newbie list question
In-Reply-To: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391050@torex004.attcanada.ca>
References: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391050@torex004.attcanada.ca>
Message-ID: <15183.13726.951719.329037@beluga.mojam.com>

    Mark> Does:

    Mark> foo += 'c'

    Mark> act like an append then?  I always assumed it was the same as:

    Mark> foo = foo + 'c'

    Mark> which obviously should raise a TypeError.  Here however it works,
    Mark> in that it appends 'c' to the object to which foo refers and thus
    Mark> to the object to which bar refers...

You can tell whether a variable name has been bound to a new object or not
by calling the id builtin function:

    >>> foo = [1,2,3]
    >>> id(foo)
    136434132
    >>> foo += '4'
    >>> id(foo)
    136434132
    >>> foo += '567'
    >>> id(foo)
    136434132
    >>> foo
    [1, 2, 3, '4', '5', '6', '7']
    >>> foo += u"987"
    >>> foo
    [1, 2, 3, '4', '5', '6', '7', u'9', u'8', u'7']
    >>> id(foo)
    136434132

That you can augment a list with a string may seem weird until you realize
that Python considers lists, tuples, plain strings, and Unicode strings to
all be sequences, hence the acceptability of augmenting a list with strings.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM  Fri Jul  6 23:01:06 2001
From: mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:01:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Tuple Assignment Statement
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0107061848540.546-100000@SPIELZEUG.HASENTALER.THOUSAND-OAKS.CA.US>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0107061943050.546-100000@SPIELZEUG.HASENTALER.THOUSAND-OAKS.CA.US>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Merton Campbell Crockett wrote:

> I am new to Python.  The last time that I used a high-order language was at
> university in the early Seventies when I wrote a compiler for a language
> with characteristics fairly similar to Python.  Since then, I've spent a
> significant portion of my time writing in machine and assembler languages.
> 
> Am I correct in assuming that the following assignment statement is valid.
> 
>   Scheme, Host, Path = urlparse("http://JANUS.TO.GD-ES.COM/netops/")

I, probably, should have played around before asking the question.  The
above appears to be correct except that Python requires that the number of
variables must match the number of elements in the tuple.

> If valid, would the three elements contain the following?
> 
>   Scheme:  http:
>   Host:   //JANUS.TO.GD-ES.COM
>   Path:   /netops/

Unfortunately, there is an error in the urlparse function.  I can understand
why one might strip the string that terminates the scheme and introduces the
network location.  I do not understand why the path component was changed
from "/netops/" to "/netops".

These gives raise to another question.  Why are there multiple libraries
dealing with URLs?  I had, initially, assumed that urllib would be the
appropriate library.

Merton Campbell Crockett




From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 17:03:54 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:03:54 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: <3HF77.292$Fp.2574@news1.oke.nextra.no>
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
        <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <mailman.996090346.23669.python-list@python.org>
        <3HF77.292$Fp.2574@news1.oke.nextra.no>
Message-ID: <15199.13370.758875.477614@beluga.mojam.com>

    Thomas> If you ever implement something like this, please post it here,
    Thomas> at Parnassus etc.

A version on my compression patch (against xmlrpclib 0.9.8) is available
from my website:

    http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/python/

Ninth item on the "More or Less Current Stuff" list.  If a patch against
0.9.9 or the version shipping with Python 2.2 is desired/required, let me
know.

Skip




From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 30 05:32:47 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 02:32:47 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com> <3B61E456.78DFE802@sneakemail.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107300132.7caada93@posting.google.com>

Joshua Macy <l0819m0v0smfm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message news:<3B61E456.78DFE802 at sneakemail.com>...
> 
>   It seems to me that if upon reading the PEP someone thinks "How on
> Earth am I going to know what needs changing?", he is almost guaranteed
> to have bugs in his code that relate to the very issue that the PEP
> addresses.  How could he not, since he's obviously never thought about
> it before?

He hasn't needed to think about changes to his division-utilising code
before because no-one proposed a fundamental change to the division
operator before. It's obvious that "places where division is used" may
be affected, but it's possible that not all of them will be, just as
it's possible that areas of the code "around" the division may need
changing too.

>  Someone who thinks this way should be thanking his lucky stars that if the
> PEP is implemented the language is going to grow the machinery in the near
> term to help him identify the bugs (warnings and possibly tools), write code
> that's not subject to the bugs (using / and // appropriately) and the
> incentive (Python 3.0) to attack the problem in the next few years.

It's certainly an interesting perspective you have. One writes code
according to the published, well-defined and longstanding semantics of
a particular operator in a programming language (namely those which
dictate that the / operator yields a particular style of integer
result when presented with two integer operands but a different style
of floating point result when presented with at least one floating
point operand), but then these semantics are then changed so that a
floating point value (of the latter style) results in such cases.

In your opinion, it is not sufficient to read the documentation
carefully and comply with it, but also to second-guess the language
designer's future intentions. I can't wait for people to start posting
to comp.lang.python about how the examples in the Python books they
have just bought all give the wrong answers. Perhaps Python book
authors should start producing the errata for their books now, given
that those books must all contain plenty of "bugs" too.

Yes, I would hope that the language does "grow the machinery" to help
people deal with this, and expect that people don't have to deal with
it until such machinery is in place.

Paul


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Thu Jul 12 12:35:56 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 18:35:56 +0200
Subject: Numerical Python tutorial available
Message-ID: <m3k81e6r6b.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

The slides of my Numerical Python tutorial at last week's European Python
Meeting in Bordeaux are now available on my Web site:

        http://dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/~hinsen/courses.html

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 03:20:07 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:20:07 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <eppstein-3AE912.21173322072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <e8inltor9dcqv1iepesg4i8prjv97va03o@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:30:09 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>> but that's a small unrepresentative  sample.  Note I'm less interested
>> in divisions of quantities that are already floats as those would be
>> unaffected by this proposal.
>
>Understood; see above; and a runtime warning pinpointing instances of "/"
>where this happens is easy enough to add.
>

Maybe that is what should be done for those doing numeric work who are
worried about the silent loss of precision...

from __warnings__ import paranoid_division

Could lead to a warning every time '/' is done with integers, so that
they could change it to the *new* '//' operator that always returns
floats ;-)

Why make the majority change their code when it only benefits the
minority?



From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Wed Jul 18 06:53:29 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:53:29 GMT
Subject: Regex for strings utility
References: <1103_995396879@pan>
Message-ID: <GGo0x5.Ayv@leeds.ac.uk>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:07:59 GMT, rhys tucker <rhystucker at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to write a script which operates like the Unix 'strings'
> utility but I'm having difficulties with the regex.
> 
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> 
> # strings program
> 
> import sys, re
> 
> f = open(sys.argv[1])
> line = f.readline()

This isn't answering your regex question but...

You're opening a text file and reading it line-by-line
here, which probably isn't what you want if you are
trying to duplicate the behaviour of 'strings' exactly.

  f = open(sys.argv[1], 'rb')
  data = f.read()

might be better.


Nick



From heikowu at ceosg.de  Mon Jul  2 19:34:45 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 01:34:45 +0200
Subject: apply problem
Message-ID: <9hr0aj$ta0$06$1@news.t-online.com>

Hey to all fellow Python users!

I have a (strange) problem using apply under Python 2.1.

I have a function in a class, that wishes to call another function in the 
same class whose name it receives as a name.

I use the following code:

      apply(getattr(self,name),(attrs))

where name is the name of the function to call, and attrs is a variable (a 
dictionary) that is passed in to the function as well.

Python comes with a very funny error message when I try to run this code:

It throws a KeyError exception with the key being zero!

What is wrong here? I have absolutely no clue, as the documentation of 
apply is, well, quite short. ;)

Any help is appreciated!

Yours,

        Heiko W.


From colin at meeks.ca  Tue Jul 24 13:02:09 2001
From: colin at meeks.ca (Colin Meeks)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:02:09 GMT
Subject: Sorting Lists
Message-ID: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

I have a list that comprises of First Name, Surname, Age
The list looks something like

[["Mickey","Mouse","50"],["Stan","Mantz","3"],["Junior","Wilst","40"],["Kim"
,"Bean","15"]]

How can I sort the list to rearrange it by either First Name, Surname, Age

I believe I'd have to use a cmpfunc in the sort, but not too sure how to
achieve the above.

Thanks

Colin


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.265 / Virus Database: 137 - Release Date: 18/07/2001




From dirck at pacbell.net  Wed Jul 11 14:47:17 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:47:17 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Sa137.1466$zv2.51843@news.pacbell.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cplmlvh6dx.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Glad you're having second thoughts, I'm on my third or fourth.
At one point you even had me convinced, but then...
to someone maintaining a large code base, dealing with
a change this subtle could be somewhere between 'intimidating'
and 'terrifying', especially since there are no type declarations.

I don't think I agree with the spirit of PEP 228, either.
Hardware is a fact of life.

Anyway, Just another point to consider:

In all the examples cited that show why this is a problem,
it's not integer division that causes the confusion,
it's division of integer *literals*.  Anyone using literal '1/2'
in a program has probably made a mistake.  I don't know how smart the
compiler is in pre-processing constant expressions, but if it is,
it could be smart enough to issue warnings for constant integer division
yielding quotient == 0  or remainder != 0.

Just a thought.

d





From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 12:18:40 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 09:18:40 -0700
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <9iv450$240$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf at leo.logilab.fr>,
Alexandre Fayolle <alexandre.fayolle at logilab.fr> wrote:
>
>I was referring to the inner loop. n is the number of elements in B 
>(or of keys in C). 'item in B' is O(n), and 'C.has_key(item)' is O(log(n)). 
>You still have to multiply by len(A) for the whole program. 

That's functionally incorrect.  Except under severely degraded
conditions, C.has_key(item) is O(n).
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Mon Jul 23 17:35:28 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:35:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: the "Right Thing" [was: PEP0238 lament]
In-Reply-To: <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107231706020.261-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


  1/2 = 0
  1/2 = 0.5 

It's been asserted that one of those expressions above is "illogical" . 
( Actually, it's been asserted that both of them are illogical, but
  each has been asserted by a different group of people. ) 


Which one seems to depend on your initial point of view: 

1: The "close to the hardware" POV knows that computer CPU's have
 separate integer and floating point units, integer and floating 
 point are disjoint sets, and hiding that fact is only going to
 confuse folks and delay the time the confront that truth. 

2: The "abstract" POV, which is best implemented in Lisp & Scheme 
  where number classes are nested sets:

 { fixnums (native ints) } 

 { integers } == { fixnums } + { bignums } 

 { rational } == { integers } + { ratios } 

  so from that POV, it's not to be viewed as the "illogical" 
    int op int => float 
  but as:
    rational op rational => rational. 

 However, Lisp also has another orthogonal classification which is
 disjoint: exact and inexact, which does map into hardware representation, 
 as well as representing irrationals and algorithms that yield numeric
 approximations. 

  So again, it's not viewed as: 
     SQRT(int) => float
  but: 
     SQRT(number) => number (may be inexact) 
     

[ I'm not sure I know how to weigh the question of backward compatability,
  effeciency, and all of the other issues involved here for Python and come
  up with  a better answer on what's the "Right thing" , but I don't think
  you can win this argument with what seems to be "logical" ! ] 

-- Steve Majewski





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Tue Jul  3 21:14:35 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 01:14:35 GMT
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org> <9hsql302ghk@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k4s5u.v3.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994168205.8845.python-list at python.org...
> > Can anyone share a short code example of how to access all the programs in
> a
> > Unix directory, put them into an array, and print them out in Python?
> Here
> > is the code I have to do it in Perl (please forgive the harsh language).
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> > #use Net::FTP;
> > opendir (TEMP, '/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
> >   or die "Can't open current directory.";
> > @files=join(',',grep(!/^\.\.?$/, readdir TEMP));
> > closedir TEMP;
> > print "\n";
> > print @files;
> > print "\n";
> 
> #!/usr/bin/python
> import os
> print os.listdir('/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms')
> 
> Makes you wonder where Perl got its reputation for
> conciseness, doesn't it?-)  [Note the . and .. entries
> are automatically removed by the listdir function].

A more concise Perl example would be:

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    sub listdir {
        opendir DIR, $_[0] or die $!;
        @files = grep { !/^\.\.?$/ } readdir DIR;
        close DIR;
        @files;
    }
    print join ',', listdir('/usr2/ecadtesting/javaprograms');

Someone had to package the code to open/read/close a directory in the
os.listdir function, right? =)

There is, undoubtedly, a Perl module that's already simplified this.

People are just as capable of writing bad Perl code as they are of
writing bad Python code.  You've heard of people writing this?

    for i in range(len(array)):
        process(array[i])

Of course, once you know a little more it becomes:

    for item in array:
        process(item)

or

    map(process, array)

etc.

=)
-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
    -- Mark Twain


From cliechti at mails.ch  Fri Jul 27 14:26:22 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:26:22 +0200
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu> <3B6103B4.AF7AE15B@engcorp.com> <3B610A3C.5AF439E4@lsu.edu>
Message-ID: <Xns90EBD090B381cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

Ratnakar Malla <rmalla1 at lsu.edu> wrote in news:3B610A3C.5AF439E4 at lsu.edu:
> Hi,
> Thanx for the lightning reply.
> Well , sorry for not speciying my platform. It is a pentium , running
> Windows 2000.
> what I really wanted was some sort of "tail " kind of functionality.
> Unfortunately, there is no "tail" command in Windows. I was just
> wondering, if there is any better way than reading the entire file into
> memory. Anyways thanx for your reply. I am sticking with readlines()
> Cheers,
> Ratnakar

ok thats somewhat offtopic - but the CygWIN distribution 
(http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/) includes all the nice unix commands 
on win32. in the newest version python is also included and the c-compiler 
(GCC) is nice for writing extesions.

chris


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Mon Jul  9 03:30:58 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 10:30:58 +0300
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) writes:

> I have been hoping that someone else would write Oracle, DB2, and SQL
> Server drivers/modules for Python, so I wouldn't have to.  Mostly
> because I haven't had time, and also because such an undertaking is
> better suited for a group with a formal review board rather than an
> individual code Maverick.

I have to agree with this. There should be one, obvious choice for a
database package. This would do wonders to popularity of Python and
would beef up all attempts to convince management (and fellow
programmers) that Python is a superior solution. It should also be
non-restricted open source (not GPL, not "free for non-commercial
use").

> I dare say, that Python would smash Java, Perl, Visual Basic, and any
> other new age tool (C/C++ dodgers) if it only had certifiable database
> support on par with that of JDBC.  This is not to say that JPython, or

We will see what Micro$soft's .NET will bring along as far as DB
support goes... if it would make all languages "equal" in DB access
(and Python gets a good .NET support), the stage is ours on the Win32
arena :-).

> I pray to the Python Gods "please bless us with a Python JDBC
> counterpart" and all in the world will be in balance.

Amen.


BTW, another thing to do for the "image" of python - stop emphasizing
the newbie-friendlines, it traditionally repels the more advanced
programmers who often think there is a trade-off between that and
power. "Teaching language" is a somewhat uninteresting concept,
learning to program isn't hard enough to warrant having languages
specific to that. Besides, only l4m3rs need to be taught programming
anyway ;-).

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 19 16:00:59 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:00:59 GMT
Subject: Case Insensitivity (was Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995568431.14427.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <%%G57.15495$Cy.1928702@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

I expect there will always be people who come to python expecting it to be
case sensitive as well as those new programers who supposedly expect it to
be case insensitive. Making the language purely case insensitive,
particularly given its dynamic nature, seems like a recipe for disaster. On
the other hand, if this does turn out to be a real impediment to new
programers, a variation on case sensitivity -- prefereably activated by a
flag to the interpreter -- might be useful. I'm not sure what to call this
variation, except that it would flag as an error using a name that differed
from another only by case.

Hmmm. Since all variables with the same name would have the same case, I
guess we could call it 'case consistency' instead of 'case insensitivity.

Let's look at an example for why case sensitivity could be a problem. It's
common practice to use all caps to designate constants, so consider the
following code:

class Contrived:
   HAS_SPAM = 1
   HAS_EGGS = 2
   #....
   def has_spam(self):
      if self.flags & self.HAS_SPAM:
         return 1
      else:
         return 0

For pure case sensitivity this would fail rather mysteriously (with an
attribute error for HAS_SPAM, I believe). For the second type of case
insensitivity described above, this would instead fail during compilation
with an error something like:

CaseMismatchError: Case of 'has_spam' doesn't match previous usage (did you
mean 'HAS_SPAM').

With a carefully designed error message, I think it could be made obvious to
both beginner and expert alike where the error was and how to fix it. In
addition, since case consistent programs  would be a subset of case
sensitive programs, this could be implemented as a flag to the interpreter
that would cause the interpreter to behave this way so that beginners and
others who prefer case consistency could have it, while us sensitive folks
could continue using Python with its current case sensitivity.

There would, admittedly, be some trickiness in calling out to case sensitive
modules from from case consistent ones, but I don't think these would be
insurmountable.

sensitive-to-change-ly yours,

-tim




From dedalus at yifan.net  Thu Jul 26 03:04:51 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:04:51 GMT
Subject: importing modules
References: <3b5eff6a.97328527@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <3b5fbfef.146620710@news.libero.it>

I got my answers.

Thanks to everybody

Duilio


From dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org  Mon Jul 23 12:11:25 2001
From: dfackrell at DELETETHIS.linuxmail.org (Daniel Fackrell)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:11:25 -0600
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b5c4dc9$1@hpb10302.boi.hp.com>

Newbie comment:

Why not add a "from __past__ import division" for those who need old code to
work.  Then there might be a little less resistance to this (arguably good)
change.


"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> > [David Eppstein]
> > > I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of
> > > Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions
> > > of integer arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are
> > > coerced to floats?
>
> [Tim Peters]
> > Guido did this for the Python library, and found three instances of "/"
that
> > would break.
>
> Alas, all this suggests is that the test suite *still* doesn't have
> enough coverage.  Looking for '/' tokens I found 30 modules using '/'
> amongst Lib/*.py, and a quick inspection suggests that the majority of
> these use integer division -- an expected result, given the
> over-emphasis of the standard library on classic data types and
> algorithms, which were mostly developed in a culture that despises
> floating point numbers as too expensive. :-)
>
> But I also found a likely bug!  In colorsys.py, there are two routines
> (rgb_to_hls() and rgb_to_hsv()) that seem to be doing floating point
> math using (r, g, b) inputs and don't take any consistent precaution
> to cast these inputs to floats before dividing them.  The outputs are
> definitely intended to be floats.  The inputs are likely RGB triples
> taken from images, which are usually ints.
>
> This is why making / fractional division and // truncated division
> will reduce the number of bugs in new code: for all occurrences of
> truncated division, the author *knows* she wants truncated division,
> and it's easy to remember to use // because using / gives an
> immediately wrong result.  When the users wants fractional division
> though, it's common to test only with float inputs, or to miss a path
> through the code where ints aren't casts to floats before they are
> being divided.  Then, much later, when an int gets passed and a
> slightly wrong result is calculated, it takes hours of debugging to
> discover the error.
>
> Note that this kind of bug is unique to Python (or dynamically typed
> languages in general): in C, the arguments would have been declared as
> floats and the problem would have been prevented.
>
> Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil: int and float
> together aren't really two distinct types: they are at most a
> type-and-a-half, and the integers are embedded in the space of floats
> for most practical purposes.  Division is the one exception, and it
> hurts.  Nobody wants to write polymorphic code where '/' means
> truncated division for int arguments but fractional division for float
> arguments.  You know which kind of division you want when you write
> the code, but there's no way to spell it.
>
> (I've seen this countered with the argument that classes can overload
> / any way they want, and thus you can't rely on the "meaning" of /
> anyway.  But there you get what you ask for, and it's up to the author
> of the class to decide how her class needs to behave in the context of
> other numeric types.  How integers behave in the context of floats is
> already decided: you should be able to pass an int whenever something
> requires a float.)
>
> Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
> We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
> loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
> so let's not be shy.
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)




From jblazi at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 23:35:48 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 05:35:48 +0200
Subject: Opening a file, second attempt
Message-ID: <3b6384c7_6@news.newsgroups.com>

I'd like to open a file for writing using the os.open function call. But if
the file is already in use, the OS denies access to the file. How do I find
out about this in my Python program? I do tno know the name of the exception
that is raised. I have tried

    if os.access(filename_trunk,os.W_OK)==0:
       print "file not open"
       return

but this does not work, access returns 1, though the file ist not
accessible.

Janos Blazi




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From tjenkins at devis.com  Tue Jul 10 12:29:33 2001
From: tjenkins at devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:29:33 -0400
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <tkm10otakvej2c@corp.supernews.com> <3B4B28FD.B15CE75B@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B2D6D.7000703@devis.com>

We also have python & zope apps in a number of client sites:
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
US Department of State
US Department of Labor


Paul Winkler wrote:

> Lyle Johnson wrote:
> 
>>>it is just used for mall to medium scripting. I know better but I don't
>>>
>>have any proof. Can anyone
>>
>>>point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I
>>>
>>already know about Zope
>>
> 
> End of discussion right there, I'd say.
> 
> "Zope users include Bell Atlantic Mobile, Red Hat, NASA, the US Navy,
> ishopehere.com, i-Gift, IDG (Brazil), GE, Digital Garage, Verio,
> www.HireTechs.com, and Storm Linux."
> -- from http://www.zope.org/WhatIsZope
> 
> 



-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com




From bernhard at intevation.de  Fri Jul 13 08:38:21 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 12:38:21 GMT
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>
Message-ID: <9imq3s$jv3c9$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>

In article <3b4e211f$1 at news.blarg.net>,
	steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R. Hastings) writes:

> If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
> be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?

	www.wxpython.org (IMO)

> Actually, do I need the expensive book?  Is there a web site you like that
> explains Tkinter well?

I guess a good book will be worth the price.

> In a perfect world, I'd like my Python program to be compiled to Java
> bytecodes and thus theoretically portable anywhere.  Does the use of
> Tkinter make this impossible?  

Java is not as portable as you might think.
When you start depending on libraries it gets system dependend
pretty fast. Even C might be more portable.

> I know I could use GLADE to design my app, and it would run great in Gtk+
> on Linux... if Gtk+ has been made portable to other systems (Win32, Mac)
> then Gtk+ might be better for me than Tkinter.

Gtk+ runs on W32 platforms.

I generally recommend wyPython because of two major reasons:
	- uses native widgets
	- is not just a widget set, but an application framework

Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 11:17:13 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:17:13 +0200
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <roy-E01423.21425015072001@news1.panix.com> <9iulp401r93@enews3.newsguy.com> <9iuq95$3e0$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9iv0hr0lla@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9iuq95$3e0$1 at panix6.panix.com...
> Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I find I can rarely throw away the match-objects in this cavalier
> > way, because they carry much, often-needed information -- so, I
    ...
> No it's not, but the problem is not that match returns None, the
> problem is that Python doesn't allow assignment as a side effect.

If I wanted "assignment as a side effect" it would of course be
trivial for me to code it.  I far prefer to have failure be
signaled by exceptions -- a much more general & solid idiom.

> Imagine if you could write it this way:
>
>     if mo = re1.match(thestring)
>         dostuff(mo)
>     elif mo = re2.match(thestring)
>         dootherstuff(mo)
>     elif mo = re3.match(thestring)
>         etcetcetc(mo)
>     else:
>         nomatchatall()
>
> Wouldn't that be elegant and clean and obvious?
>
> After 4 years of using Python, I still find the lack of any way to do
> an atomic "assign and test" unbelievably constraining.

Surely you ARE jesting, right?  After (I believe it was) four DAYS of
Python, I had already placed in my sitecustomize.py the few lines
(just typing them from memory now, as I've since removed them):

    class DataHolder:
        def __init__(self, value=None): self.value = value
        def set(self, value): self.value = value; return value
        def get(self): return self.value
    setattr(__builtins__,'DataHolder',DataHolder)
    setattr(__builtins__,'data',DataHolder())

to help me transliterate some existing C and Perl code which used
what you call "atomic assign and test" -- a q&d hack until I could
find the time to do it more Pythonically (and, actually, LEARN the
Pythonic ways of doing things -- after four days, it was clear to
me that I had not yet mastered them:-).  So, IF I considered it
elegant to set something and test it too, I could easily code, e.g:

   if data.set(re1.match(thestring))
       dostuff(data.get())
   elif data.set(re2.match(thestring))
       dootherstuff(data.get())
   elif data.set(re3.match(thestring))
       etcetcetc(data.get())
   else:
       nomatchatall()

So far, so obvious, I hope -- whence my near-certainty that
your bemoaning a 'lack' so trivially fixed as 'unbelievably
constraining' must be some kind of deadpan humor whose point
I'm missing -- if half a dozen lines in sitecustomize.py are
all it takes to eliminate something "unbelievably constraining",
how believable is it that one's really feeling constrained?-)

Hmmm, maybe I should write this up as a Cookbook entry (not
that there's much to write about...), just so I can give a
pointer to it in the future rather than typing it in again
and again on each such discussion...:-).  Done -- see
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66061


Alex





From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 13:33:46 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:33:46 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <mailman.994666709.12545.python-list@python.org> <9ifsp7$k1a$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> <9ihsuo$255$1@coco.singnet.com.sg> <9iibsu$kj$2@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <9inbdq$rnd$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Panu A Kalliokoski  <pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi>:
> It depends. I haven't checked Medusa's code, but if it's done in a
> sensible way (i.e. protocol handlers are separate objects from
> socket/channel handlers), it should be at most a 15-minute job. Where
> could I get the Medusa source to try it out?

http://www.nightmare.com/medusa/



-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From andreas at digicool.com  Thu Jul 12 12:06:06 2001
From: andreas at digicool.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:06:06 -0500
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru><07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP> <oqvgkyrxhw.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>
Message-ID: <086c01c10aec$8ebe4b80$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

>It should check because this is poor writing style to have concatenation
>of strings written with such a vertical alignment.  "url" and "previews"
>have no kind of logical vertical alignment, and a good checker should
>consider this as suspicious.

Is there a common opinion what "poor writing style" is ? :-)

Andreas




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 19 14:23:47 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:23:47 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <200107191200.IAA06994@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > Now that we're in a new century, I think it's time to update to a
> > new excuse!
>
> I didn't mean it as an excuse!
>
> > How about:
> >
> >  Now that everyone's making the transition to multiple language support,
> > unicode and multiple encodings, how to you portably define/implement
> > case-insensitive comparison?
>
> Sorry, no problem.  The Unicode standard defines for each character
> whether it is upper or lower case, and what the corresponding
> character is in the other case (if any).

Hehe, so, if both case-insensitivity and multiple encodings were
adopted...

the easy to distinguish between "a" and "A" would not be allowed, but
the hard to read versions of "a" with diacritical marks would be...

...ya, that makes sense.  :-/


- Bruce




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 30 09:58:25 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:58:25 -0400
Subject: Proxy Server
References: <3B6513A6.C4B84218@beth.uniforum.org.za>
Message-ID: <AGd97.3338$WD1.205158@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"mixo" <mixo at beth.uniforum.org.za> wrote in message
news:3B6513A6.C4B84218 at beth.uniforum.org.za...
>
> How does one  connect to an external mail server when  you actually
> connect to the outside through a proxy server (which may or may not
> require a user id  and or a password)? What I want to be able to do
> is , given an email address, get the  mail host ,and using that host,
> verify
> that the email receipient exists before sending mail using "smtplib".
>
>
Seems to me the point of the proxy is precisely to stop systems from
connecting to port 25 on anything but the mail proxy host. You will almost
certainly find (if your net admins have done their job properly and the
situation is correctly described) that you cannot use smtplib to connect to
anything other than your mail proxy host. Certainly nothing outside your
firewall, anyway.

In the case where no firewall is installed the correct procedure is to
separate out the domain from the email address (that will be everything
following the "@") and use the DNS to look up the domain's mail hosts by
retrieving the MX records, then trying each mail host, in order of
increasing numerical priority, until you get a response or the list is
exhausted. In the latter case you could try using the domain itself as a
last-resort mail exchanger, but this will usually fail.

I have written code to do precisely this, to allow a client to send email
billing statements on behalf of their agents. I'm not sure I want to publish
the code, however, given its ability to skip around the normal "no
forwarding" rules imposed by most sensible mail hosts. This, by the way, is
one reason you are being forced to work through a mail proxy: in combination
with the firewall it stops you from spamming external domains with traffic
purporting to come from some other domain which is not a part of your own.

don't-shoot-the-messenger-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From meowbot at meowing.net  Tue Jul 10 06:47:27 2001
From: meowbot at meowing.net (Inconsistent Meowbot)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 06:47:27 -0400
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
References: <mailman.994755195.13246.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <87g0c5oybk.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> The following from the Python docs:
> 
>    nice (increment)
>           Add increment to the process's ``niceness''. Return the new
>           niceness. Availability: Unix.
> 
> Contradicts what I see in python 1.5.2 - 2.1:
> 
> >>> import os
> >>> os.nice(1)
> 0
> >>> os.nice(5)
> 0
> 
> (and the process niceness become 6 as reported by top)
> 
> It's docs inaccuracy or os.nice() bug? Or glibc bug?

Both the documentation and posix_nice() itself could use help.

The return value of the nice syscall is platform dependent.  Unix
returns (new nice value - 20), -1 on failure (but see below); while
Linux returns 0 on success, -1 on failure.

On at least some Unix systems, -1 may or may not really be an error,
depending on whether the process priority had been changed beforehand.

So, it looks like the One and Only Real True Way to call nice() is to
set errno to 0, raise an exception only if errno is set after the call
completes, and not to trust the return value to actually mean anything
unless you know what platform you're on and what its nice returns.

Ewwwwwwwww.


From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul  1 04:58:11 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 08:58:11 GMT
Subject: Discussions and developing
References: <mailman.993918166.28645.python-list@python.org> <tnp%6.1094$847.221276@news1.rdc1.mb.home.com>
Message-ID: <DCB%6.382672$eK2.78065159@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

The newsgroup is a bit like an evolving ecosystem.  A certain balance is
achieved by the fact that really dumb questions generate fewer and shorter
responses, while really interesting ones generate more and longer responses.
In turn, the level of response may influence whether (and how often) similar
questions are asked in the future.

It's a bit like 'survival of the fittest', and a bit like 'supply and
demand'.  Newbie questions get asked because newbie questions get answered.
This may be boring for experienced c.l.p readers, but I think it is a good
thing.  When I was a newbie I learned a lot from reading this ng, often such
'newbie questions', even if the answer was just a link to the faq or docs.
We have to keep in mind that the 999th person to ask the 'compiler question'
does not know about the previous 998 people, and should not be treated as if
they had asked the question themselves 998 times.  Fortunately, the generous
clp readers do seem to understand this, and I am proud to be a part of a ng
that embraces newbies, and tolerates such frequently asked questions.

These days, I usually skip the newbie questions, but then I also skip lots
of other stuff that doesn't really interest me.  In fact it is easier to
skip over dumb questions than it is to skip over dumb answers to good
questions (which are much more numerous).  Skipping over the newbie
questions is no more effort than skipping over any other question that
doesn't interest me.

Besides, taking a quick scan of the current postings, I see very few 'dumb
questions', and a lot of very specific and intelligent questions.  You would
have to purposely seek out the dumb questions amongst the good ones just to
get upset about it.  If the "compiler" question comes up once per day out of
hundreds of messages, it's no skin off my back.  And if someone wants to
answer the "compiler" question (or 5 people), then let them do it.  Less
work for the rest of us.  What is not productive is getting all upset about
such questions and going out of one's way to reply with "you should have
read the faq", when the question has already been answered.  If you don't
like dumb newbie questions, don't answer them.  There is no point getting
upset about such a small percentage of all postings.

Final point-- Python is supposed to be 'programming for everyone', and to
that end, it is important to know what the most common newbie questions and
mis-understadings are.  The frequency of the "compiler question" should be
taken as a hint that the topic requires more prominence in the
documentation.  You may say, 'but it's right there in the faq!', however
numbers don't lie.  If the question is asked so often it's not becuase the
newbies are dumb, it's becuase the question is one that naturally occurs to
newbies.  It's better to know what the newbies are wondering about, it helps
to improve the docs and the faqs etc.





From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Fri Jul 27 19:56:45 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:56:45 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOELNLBAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.996261377.20082.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <270720011656458534%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.996261377.20082.python-list at python.org>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:

> I expect that only mathematicians use longs outside the range of
> IEEE double, and they will be wise enough to use //.

I suspect "mathematicians" is the wrong word there...this example would
be more like (sorry...long day and wrong word) "computationalists"...or
do I mean numerical analysts.

  --John


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 21 17:41:54 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:41:54 -0400
Subject: Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?
In-Reply-To: <sdigltkmqv58ujun2b55jrgvbd5oec4okb@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEAGLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Steve Horne]
> Can I copy a generators state and then backtrack to it if necessary?

No, generators implement the iterator interface, and that's all; the
iterator interface doesn't have a copy method.

> To explain what I mean, imagine the following...
>
>   from __future__ import generators
>
>   def test_gen (p) :
>     for i in range (p) :
>       yield i
>
>   def use_gen (p) :
>     i = p.copy ()  #  or some equivalent
>
>     #  Do something that may accept values from p
>
>     p = i   #  Backtrack
>
>     #  Do something that may accept values from p
>
>
>   use_gen (test_gen (50))
>
>
> I know that I could rewrite the use_gen function to accept a function
> rather than a generator, so that it would be called as...
>
>   use_gen (test_gen, 50)
>
> ... and the function parameter could then be evaluated to rederive the
> initial generator state at any time,

There are as many ways to fake it as you can afford hours to dream them up
<0.7 wink>; and don't forget that class methods can be generators too, and
so access instance variables (a very general way to influence the state;
nested scopes add another; see the Knight's Tour solver in
test_generators.py for natural applications of both).

> but this isn't really as flexible> (you can't easily recreate any
> state other than the initial state), and it also seems less intuitive
> to me.

It's not at all clear what p.copy() "should" do, though-- even for simple
iterators --and that's why we're leaving it out, at least at the start.  For
example, the bindings of local variables are part of a generator's state.
What should p.copy() do about *them*?  If a local vrbl is also a generator,
should it (recursively) apply the .copy() method to it too?  Just make
another reference to the current bindings of the locals?  Systematically do
shallow copies of values?  Systematically do deep copies?

> A major use I could think of for this is in applications that need to
> balance searching by depth and by breadth according to some heuristic.
> In addition to the search tree so far, it would be easy to record
> generator states that have only identified some of the branches from a
> particular state - so you could explore this area of the tree
> depth-wise for a bit then nip-back to expand the breadth later. An
> obvious application would be for board games such as chess.

Needs a PEP, and won't go in for 2.2 because I can pretty much guarantee
"one size fits all" won't.  Python generators aren't quite like any other
language's, and so we need more real-life experience with them before
deciding what (if anything) more is truly needed.

in-the-meantime-python-chess-apps-aren't-really-a-major-use<wink>-ly
    y'rs  - tim




From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 07:55:08 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:55:08 -0500
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
Message-ID: <15197.25116.543399.481142@beluga.mojam.com>

I was on a walk with my wife and dog yesterday.  Out of the blue I asked her
"what's the result of five divided by two?"  After a little back-and-forth
where she tried to figure out how I was trying to trick her and make her
look foolish she answered, "two-and-a-half".  I then posed, "Suppose you
have five pinecones and you want to clump them into groups of two.  What
would you do?".  Her answer was, "Put two in the first group, two in the
second group, and break the last pinecone in two so the third group would
have two as well."

Can we represent that in Python's arithmetic operations somehow? :-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 11:29:46 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:29:46 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Resty Cena" <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote in message
news:458b194a.0107050711.72007607 at posting.google.com...
> "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message
news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
> > I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> > frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
> >
> > Python still doesn't have good database support,
>
> I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
> to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
> database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
> directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
> then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
> Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
> don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
> around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
> want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
> I'd like the IDE to do this for me. I'm a database programmer, and I
> want to write applications right away. I'm also lazy and I expect much
> from my tools.

Of course, one of the reasons why support isn't better is the huge ratio of
consumers to producers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but most of the
best parts of Python have been the results of individuals providing what
they needed for their own purposes and then opening up the resulting code.

Continue to sit on your hands by all means. What you need should be along in
another five years or so. But simply posting to complain that things aren't
as you want is unlikely to change in the next six months what nothing else
has changed in the last five years.

There are lots of people doing much good database work with Python. The
mxODBC package (free for non-commerical use) and the cx_Oracle package
(free) do indeed let you do what you describe (i.e. download, unpack, run an
install script and connect to a database). So I suggest you look a little
harder and complain a little less. Normally I try to include URLs in
postings such as this, but you know, somehow I get the impression that
clicking on a link in a news posting might just be too much trouble ;-)

Come on in, the water's lovely.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From kzaragoza at mediaone.net  Mon Jul  2 10:45:49 2001
From: kzaragoza at mediaone.net (Kris J. Zaragoza)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 14:45:49 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9k12b6.ttu.kzaragoza@kzaragoza.ne.mediaone.net>

This strikes me as flamebait, but I'll put on my asbestos suit and
dive in anyway. :-)

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:42:37 -0700, Edward B. Wilson II <ed at ewilson.com> wrote:
>I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>
>Python still doesn't have good database support, nor has it grown to be
>useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
>mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
>space.

It seems that you are completely ignoring both mod_snake and
mod_python, both of which offer all the power of mod_perl.  You are
also ignoring the wealth of database drivers available for Python, as
others in this thread have already attested to.

>It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
>write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
>manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
>making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language at
>eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.

Here is your fundamental error: You are assuming that everyone else
sees Python from your point of view.  For many people, XML parsers,
image analysis and manipulation, and heavy numerical work ARE bread
and butter tasks.  There are many people working within corporations
and research institutions that couldn't care less about spitting out
web pages.  What you consider to be extremely important is simply
trivial or completely unimportant to others.

>
>Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly the
>best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
>largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation (web,
>or otherwise).
>
>It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
>attempts poetry.

I think that Python's leadership (specifically Guido) has been doing a
fantastic job.  The powers that be have avoided trying to pigeon-hole
Python into one particular application area, instead making it useful
to a broader audience of software developers.  It is this flexibility
that makes Python so incredibly useful, in my opinion.

I myself use Python for a variety of tasks.  It scales down nicely to
simple scripting tasks, and scales up to heavy data analysis and
manipulation using relational databases.  I use Python for "bread and
butter" work that has nothing to do with generating web pages.  I'm
even using the Jython implementation in a production order processing
environment and haven't seen a single hiccup.  Python gives me all the
power and flexibility I need to get my job done.

-Kris

-- 
Kris J. Zaragoza           | "Unfortunately, most people can't out-think a
kzaragoza at mediaone.net     | grapefruit."  --Jon Bodner


From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 15:41:56 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:41:56 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B61C404.919C3030@home.net>

> >     - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
> >       version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
> >       requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
> >       *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
> >       so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
> >       too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
> >       interpreters installed.

Since I last commented on this section, there have been a few other
comments, and I have had a few more thoughts.

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
> The only way I can think of to 'globally' turn on new division on my
> own Windows computer is to rebind .py and .pyc to python.bat
> containing '...python.exe -Dnew'.

Yes, but what do you do if you don't want the behaviour global? Then you
are stuck. 


Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Well, I hope that making the change Python 3.0 does the right thing
> for you.  It shouldn't be hard to alert your customers that Python 2
> is required for your company's applications.  Like Perl 4 and Perl 5,
> Python 2 and Python 3 will probably live alongside for many years.

I realise that my fantasy of an interpreter that fully emulates all
previous versions is just that, a fantasy, but if, as you say, Python 2
and Python 3 are going to be living alongside each other, than we need
to have a way of marking a given module as one of the other. File
extension is one possibility, but certainly a limited one, something in
the code itself would be better. Even if there is no integrated
interpreter, "python" could be a small script that dispatches the file
to the appropriate interpreter, similarly to Terry Reedy's batch file
above. The sysadmin could decide how many old versions to keep around.

> Requiring a version specifier in all new code is very annoying.  The
> future statement is annyoing too, but at least it's a transitional
> measure.

I think it is "a little annoying" rather than "very", and I just think
explicit is better than implicit.
I suppose it could be optional. If you have confidence that your code
will be run the right interpreter, you could omit it (A command line
option like -IgnoreVersion (or -RequireVersion) could be added to
support this).

> I agree that if we really need to have a way to explicitly request
> past behavior, "from __past__ import ..." is a decent syntax.  I just
> noticed that PEP 236 (the __future__ PEP) mentions this as an
> possibility (although the author claims it is unlikely).

The problem with the from __past__ statement is that we will end up with
many different dialects of the language, all of which need to be
supported (if it's too much work to have old versions supported, why is
this OK?) and will need to be supported forever! At least updating your
versions is a one-way street. Yes, if you want some of the new features
you have to take them all, but I thikn that's better that to have each
new feature optional!

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From grumble at usa.net  Wed Jul 11 09:14:38 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 13:14:38 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <TfQ27.328548$p33.6645853@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ihjfu$3ls$1@news.mathworks.com>

Greg Jorgensen <gregj at pdxperts.com> wrote:
> "jcm" <grumble at usa.net> wrote in message
> news:9ifo90$4hh$1 at news.mathworks.com...

>> Well, I say this because I've written a mud engine in Python and it's
>> slow.

> I drove my motorcycle around Laguna Seca, and it was slow. Maybe if I bought
> a different brand of motorcycle I could go around the track faster.

Well that's just silly.  That's a bad analogy, for reasons that should
be obvious.

Also, recall that I said my ONLY point was that cpu-bound performance
CAN become an issue.  That is, depending on what you want your mud to
do, you may find Python to be slow.  I've spent time trying to squeeze
more performance out of Python, but was unable to speed things up to a
point where I was happy.  I didn't bother posting my source code,
because I'm personally not interested in looking for further
optimizations.  Feel free to email me if you want it, but I doubt it's
worth your time.


From stepken at little-idiot.de  Mon Jul 16 02:17:30 2001
From: stepken at little-idiot.de (Guido Stepken)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:17:30 +0200
Subject: [Q]Remove Directory in Win2k
References: <3hMlEP$l9c@openbazaar.net> <9isj52$k5sis$1@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3b52a287$0$19082$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de>

Karl M. Syring wrote:

> "?Q?@?U" <skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:3hMlEP$l9c at openbazaar.net...
>> Hi~~guys ^^
>> My patition is NTFS
>> when I execute below codes, it return error "Permission Denied".
>> And, the directiory "test" remainly exist.
>>
>>    import os
>>    os.mkdir('test')
>>    os.remove('test')
> 
> That should be
>  os.rmdir('test')
> 
> Karl M. Syring
> 
> 
> 
> 



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 20:57:54 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 19:57:54 -0500 
Subject: What's wrong with this program
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5201@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Thanks.  I will try that when I get back to work on Thursday. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Bell
To: python-list at cwi.nl
Cc: Kemp Randy-W18971
Sent: 7/3/01 6:04 PM
Subject: RE: What's wrong with this program


Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote, in part:
> Does anyone have an example of how to set filename to access files in
> a directory list, so I can implement this?  My Python is limited, as I
> don't use it every day, and in limited ways.  Thanks. 

import glob
for filename in glob.glob('.\*'):
    print filename

Replace the argument to 'glob' with a string that gives the directory 
you want to list, and the 'print filename' with one or more 
statements making use of 'filename' that do whatever it is that you 
want to do.

Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oleg Broytmann [mailto:phd at phd.fep.ru]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:05 PM
> To: Kemp Randy-W18971
> Cc: 'python-list at python.org'
> Subject: RE: What's wrong with this program
> 
> 
> On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> > Thanks for the correction.
> 
>    Actually I think you don't need ftp.connect() at all - it is called
> in ftp.__init__...
> 
> > Anyone know the correct format to transfer files
> > from one server directory to another server directory?
> 
>    I don't know - I've never used ftplib, but the idea is obvious: put
> it one by one. Something like this:
> 
> for filename in somelist:
>    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))
> 
> Oleg.
> ----
>      Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/           




From atl023 at srl.css.mot.com  Fri Jul 20 12:37:14 2001
From: atl023 at srl.css.mot.com (Tien Lee)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:37:14 -0500
Subject: Question about the Python Priority Queue Module - PQueue 0.1a
Message-ID: <3B585E3A.F6BC689A@srl.css.mot.com>

Hi there,

Has anyone downloaded and used the priority queue module - PQueue 0.1a -
from the web site:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/1999-July/000121.html?
This module is very useful in most cases, but I found one problem when I
used it, and I wonder if there is some bug in the original code of that
module. The problem is described as the follows:

If I use the PQueue object in my simulation program (i.e., set an
attribute of one of my class as a PQueue object), even the simulation
result is correct, the system will just hang there after the program
finishes running, and I have to hit Ctrl-C to get the prompt back. If I
use "del" statement to delete the existing PQueue object in the end of
the program, the system will freeze on the del command line. However, if
I just pop one element from the existing PQueue in the end of the
program, then everything will be fine and I get the prompt back after
the program finishes running.

Has any of you encountered this problem before? Could you guess the
possible reason to cause that problem? Do you know any newer version of
Python priority queue module available from the web?

Thanks a lot for your time and kind help.

Sincerely,
Tien

--
Tien-Hsiung Lee
Motorola PCS Research and Advanced Technology Labs
2015-5 North Division Street  Harvard, IL 60033  IL21 / AN284
Work: 815-884-0964    Fax: 815-884-2519
Pager: 847-576-0295 PIN# 17975


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010720/651ec9ef/attachment.html>

From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Thu Jul 26 14:34:54 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:34:54 -0700
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
References: <u8zhceomr.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <mailman.996095382.10129.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <odo0mtgadberev8t6hu644rtr64bod2fce@4ax.com>

Thanks for the enlightening chatter guys.

I forwarded Tim's "appalled" post (above) to Symantec NAV tech support
and within 24 hours got a message back that the problem was fixed for
NAV 2001 Ver 7.07 -- all I'd need to do is run LiveUpdate to get the 
latest version (must have come out recently, as I run LiveUpdate a lot
-- was it since my post?...)

Anyway, I did as advised, and it works!  popen and its flavors now work
with NAV enabled.  Hooray.

Kirby

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>[Kirby Urner]
>> So how does IDLE invoke the browser if not with popen and if
>> it uses popen, then why can't I from the IDLE shell?  The kind
>> of question that keeps me up at night.
>
>[David Bolen]
>> At least this can be answered by looking at the source, and let you
>> get some sleep :-)

<<SNIP>>

>> So there's no popen() involved.
>
>Almost all correct.  Thanks, David!  The 2.0 truth is hairier than it looks,
>because win32api doesn't ship with the base Python distribution:  2.0 also
>uses webbrowser and os.startfile(), and indeed the latter function was
>introduced at the last second for 2.0 precisely so that IDLE wouldn't have
>to use MS popen().




From paul at svensson.org  Wed Jul 25 21:55:05 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 01:55:05 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

>> The interesting thing is that the one thing that has to change in
>> order to get a unified numeric model, whether we introduce rationals
>> in the numeric tower or not, is integer division
>
>(IMO -- and attempting to be helpful again) This (and similar
>statements) is rhetorically wrong and counter-productive.  In PEP238,
>you are NOT proposing to delete integer division (and I hope/presume
>you never will), you are NOT proposing to switch it to C's version
>(ditto), nor are you proposing any other substantive change (ditto).
>From a technical viewpoint, you are merely, in Tim's words, proposing
>to change it's spelling, so that future i//j == current i/j, down to
>the very last bit.

This is not what's proposed.
i//j will be for all numeric types like current i/j for ints.
i/j will be for all numeric types like current i/j for floats.

>The *really* interesting thing is that the one thing that has to
>change for you to pursue your further numeric goals is the current
>overloading of integer and fractional division onto one symbol, which
>is exactly what 238 undoes by adding a second symbol.  The main
>practical technical issue, to repeat from my essay of two weeks ago,
>is code breakage, forwards and back, and the costs and benefits
>thereof.

The important thing is that i//j will return the same value
regardless if i and j ar ints or floats; ditto for the new i/j.

Numeric unification means that (i == x and j == y) == (i op j == x op y)
for all op, i, j, x, y, regardless of numeric type
(ignoring exceptions and round-off errors).

This is not true for the current semantics of '/'.  That's why it must go.

	/Paul


From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Mon Jul 16 14:49:02 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:49:02 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE89@intrepid> (message from
	Simon Brunning on Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:06:40 +0100)
References: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE89@intrepid>
Message-ID: <16072001.4@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> writes:

[The martellibot said you have to sleep close to books in order to
learn from them...]

    Simon> Putting them under your pillow does no good; you have
    Simon> to *eat* them if you want to gain their power.

    Simon> The 'Essential Reference' isn't a problem here, but you'll
    Simon> need to be a *big* eater to cope with 'Programming Python'.

Too many games of nethack?

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
              "vi has two modes the one in which it beeps
              and the one in which it doesn't" -- Alan Cox
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010716/e7fcfdbc/attachment.sig>

From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 16:24:46 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:24:46 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
> > "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:
> > 
> > > I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
> > > 
> > >   2L**128/2
> > > 
> > > which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
> > > semantics would give an approximation...
> > 
> > Have you read the PEP?  The PEP only returns a float if the int result
> > would yield a remainder.
> 
> Does it?  While returning an integral value in the above case,
> wouldn't it would in fact be a float data type (barring the addition
> of rationals), as per:
> 
>     (from PEP238)
> 
>     "The type of a/b will be either a float or a rational, depending on
>     other PEPs[2, 3]. However, the result will be integral in all case
>     the division has no remainder."
> 
> And given that, what happens if float can't represent the resulting
> precision necessary?
> 
> Of course, this is only true later when this is the default, right?
> Until then, the "future" implementation is an addition of 0.0 to the
> divisor, so the result would definitely be float, and not necessarily
> integral.
> 
> Unless you meant something other than the data type involved by
> "returns a float".

The PEP is currently contradictory and incomplete.  The "future
division" operator (generated by x/y when in the scope of a future
division statement) will return either a rational or a float --
obviously it can't return a rational until they have been made part of
the language (which may or may not ever happen).  Since 2.2 won't have
rationals, it will return a float even for 2L**128/2 -- but only when
you use a future division statement, and in that case you get what you
ask for.

The current patch on SF adds 0.0 but that's not what it will do once
2.2 is released.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Fri Jul  6 06:33:46 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:33:46 +0200
Subject: ICFP 2001 contest - Python team, anyone?
References: <slrn9k9hbd.8uh.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <rAd17.424558$eK2.85931616@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kb2cq.na.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Fri, 06 Jul 2001 07:15:35 GMT, Nick Perkins wrote:
>... reading contest rules...  so, we would have to write for Python 1.52??
>... and this is for a functional programming contest?  2.1 would be better,
>with nested scopes and list comprehensions, etc.

I certainly won't be going back to 1.5.2. This just means we'll have to freeze
to entire thing (they recommend submitting statically linked executables
anyway).

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From bsb at winnegan.de  Thu Jul  5 08:09:46 2001
From: bsb at winnegan.de (Siggy Brentrup)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 14:09:46 +0200
Subject: python-mode and py-python-command
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107050824100.13200-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107050824100.13200-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <87vgl77f1x.fsf@winnegan.de>

Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:

> On 5 Jul 2001, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> 
> >Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >> Hello!
> >>
> >> How do I tell Emacs to call specific Python interpreter
> >> within a certain file with Python code?
> >>
> >> I know that for this I need to set up py-python-command
> >> variable, but how to do it?
> >
> >Which version of py-mode.el are you using (C-h v py-version)?
> >On my system it shows
> >
> >  Value: "3.105"
> 
> Exactly this!
> 
> >That version is slightly broken, it runs the Python interpreter
> >in the py-which-shell buffer-local variable. This variable is set from
> >py-python-command on M-1 C-c C-t (py-toggle-shells).

Just checked out python-mode.el from the CVS tree. As cvs annotate
shows, the problem has been fixed since long in $Revision: 3.103$
<sic>.

To whomever it concerns:
   Where does the broken 3.105 come from?


> So, toggling between, say, 1.5.2. and 2.1 is impossible?

Toggling is meant for switching between CPython and JPython
interpreters, but I guess you can abuse py-jpython-command.

Regards
  Siggy

-- 
Siggy Brentrup - bsb at winnegan.de - http://www.winnegan.de/
****** ceterum censeo javascriptum esse restrictam *******



From missive at frontiernet.net  Mon Jul 23 19:00:25 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:00:25 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: incrementing characters
References: <9jhojp$t7h$1@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <eXZ67.536189$eK2.112437924@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jiaa9$3s96$2@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:22:02 GMT, Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote:
> 
> "Holland King" <insanc at cc.gatech.edu> wrote in message
> news:9jhojp$t7h$1 at solaria.cc.gatech.edu...
>> how do you interate a letter or string? for instance:
>> a + 1 = b
>> or
>> aa + 1 = ab
>> etc. in c it is similar to above and i am guessing there is an equally
>> simple way to do it in python, i just can't figure it out. thank you
>> for your time and help.

perl makes this simple:

$s = "aabc";
$s++;
print "$s\n";
$s = "zzzz";
$s++;
print "$s\n";

would print:
aabd
aaaaa


I think in python I would create some kind of IncrementableString class
which does exactly what I want it to do on only the right kind of data.






From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 19:45:08 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:45:08 -0700
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <mailman.996042524.17525.python-list@python.org> <cpu201808r.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F5A04.C1CB0707@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Perhaps we should change the interpreter to guarantee truncation, so
> we can tighten the docs?  I'm adding a bug report for this to SF.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Yes, yes yes.!!!


The fewer things that depend on "the underlying C library[compiler]" the
better!

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Jul  8 21:18:23 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 02:18:23 +0100
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994632014.24563.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki1iv.de3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 17:39:45 -0500 (CDT), Chris Watson <chris at voodooland.net> wrote:
>
>
>On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Neil Macneale wrote:
>
>> I am wondering if there is a straight forward license which I can use for
>> python code I plan to distribute.  Is there a standard header, or
>> possibly a link that can be placed in a header which basically says that
>> people use the code at there own risk, and that they are free to change
>> it?  I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
>> GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?
>
>This is what I use.

What software do you publish under this license?

>#  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>#     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>#  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>#     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>#  3. No changes are made to this license and/or additional terms of use
>#     are placed without prior written permission from Chris Watson.

Say you write a program, B, under this license.

I then make some modifications to B, creating MB. I license my modifications
under the GPL.

B is still your license. 

But anyone wanting to link code to MB must GPL it.

How does this differ from if B was licensed under the regular BSDL?


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Wed Jul 11 09:50:39 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:50:39 GMT
Subject: MySQL-python-0.9.0 setup problems under windows98
References: <hniokt4u4365lf475ci469lbidsnhl0gfa@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C5A47.50D8E366@nokia.com>

Joe Potter wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I have MySQL running on a win98 box. All systems are go with the package.
> 
> Now, I would like to use the system from within python. So far I have downloaded the
> module that does this job. The one listed above is supposed to be the windows
> version.
> 
> However, I can not seem to understand how to install the module and get it imported
> so as to start using MySQL.

Download MySQL-Python Windows installer from http://highqualdev.com/
It is very easy to use.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 03:44:27 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:44:27 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m4rar.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

27 Jul 2001 22:13:50 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> pisze:

> Accountants and their kin want ledgers, positions, etc. to balance to
> the penny (or centavo, or whatever is the smallest fractional currency
> in a given country).  This can only be accomplished using decimal
> arithmetic ... like Bignums with implied decimal places.

Not only; rationals work too.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Fri Jul 27 10:09:07 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:09:07 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3b6174fa.1981112@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:43:45 -0700, David Eppstein
<eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>In article <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
> "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
>
>> >    1. isnatural()
>> >    2. isintegral()
>> >    3. isrational()
>> >    4. isreal()
>> >    5. iscomplex()
>> >
>> >    a. isexact()
>> 
>> This is too many. I would strip this down to
>> 
>> A. iscomplex()
>> B. isexact()
>> C. isintegral()
>
>I have to say that this would be more convenient for situations such as 
>defining your own extension of number types for, say, exact arithmetic in 
>Q[sqrt(3)].  Or even better Q[sqrt(-3)].  I was wishing I was able to do 
>this recently for a different project unrelated to Python, unfortunately 
>the program I was using didn't make it easy to plug in your own number 
>types...
>
>But a couple points of clarification:
>(1) is it safe to assume that isintegral() implies isexact()?
>(2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
>rational integers?

Of course not - this would introduce awesome confusion in many
for the sake of the needs of a small number. (Perhaps classes
could have a way to declare themselves as integral or exact or
whatever... then you could make _your_ algebraic integers integral.)

About whether isintegral should imply isexact: I dunno much 
algebra. For the flavors of "algebraic integer" that seem dimly
familiar it seems like one could give an exact representation.
Is this true?

>-- 
>David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
>eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


David C. Ullrich


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 18 21:01:15 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 01:01:15 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <180720011705003205%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <vjq57.14102$Xr6.116112@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

John W. Baxter:

> I also hope that after the change to case-insensitive Python,
> we don't also go through a change to diacriticals-don't-matter
> Python.

   I'm hoping we can move to vowel-insensitive Python to increase ease of
use in Hebrew. And allow for non-deterministic pronunciation of g*d.

   Neil




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul  2 16:22:04 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 16:22:04 -0400
Subject: Implementation of popen() with timeout
References: <mailman.994045502.19987.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ulmm7dqtv.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Tom Harris <tomh at optiscan.com> writes:

> I want to use one of the popen() functions to call an external program and
> capture the output, but I would like to have the facility to kill the
> external program if it does not complete within a specific time.
> Unfortunately I am using NT. Options appear to be to use the Win32 API to
> write my own, as the popen source looks fierce code. Any ideas?

What I did for something like this (some legacy Perl scripts that
would get hung up in database accesses sometimes) was to multi-thread.
The popen() was done in one thread, and a separate thread acted as the
monitor.  As long as output was being processed (indicated via a
shared flag) all was well, but if nothing was seen for a timeout, the
monitor thread killed off the process at the Win32 level.  I actually
used a separate utility (the sysinternals 'pskill' utility) although
if win32all wraps the kill process call that could also be used.

To add insult to injury, the legacy scripts could decide to exit
successfully (exit code wise) even if there was a problem, so in my
case I added some code to monitor the output and look for a final
message - if I didn't see it I'd declare a failure even if the
underlying scripts didn't.

Here's a slightly edited version of the function (sans monitoring for
that message), and the top level "execute" function that used it (note
that the FindPerl function located Perl processes that had been
running at least as long as the timeout, since the machine might be
running other Perl processes - replace that with whatever you need to
determine the appropriate child PIDs):

#
# --------------------------------------------------
#
class PerlThread (Thread):
    """This class executes a separate thread to run a perl command,
    monitoring its output and timing how long a delay there is since the
    last output.  A separate method (intended to be called from a separate
    thread) will check this time and if necessary try to kill off any
    perl processes to free up a hung system."""

    def __init__(self, command):
        Thread.__init__(self)
        self.command   = command
        self.lasttime  = 0
        self.finished  = 0
        self.result    = 0

    def monitor(self, timeout):
        """monitor(self, timeout)

        This function should be called from a separate thread, and will
        monitor the delay since last sub-process output, trying to kill
        off any perl processes if it exceeds the threshold.  When this
        function returns, the process has either completed or timed out.

        This should only be called after the start() method has already
        returned for the separate thread of execution"""
        while 1:
            if self.finished or not self.isAlive():
                break

            if (self.lasttime and
                (time.time() - self.lasttime) > timeout):
                sys.stdout.write('ERROR: Monitor Timeout waiting for command '
                                 'to complete (%ds)\n' % timeout)
                pids = FindPerl(timeout)
                sys.stdout.write('Trying to kill Perl processes %s\n' % pids)
                for curpid in pids:
                    os.system('pskill %s' % curpid)
                self.result = 255
                break

            time.sleep(5)

        return

    def run(self):
        """run(self)

        This is the independent thread that executes the command."""

        sys.stdout.write('Executing: %s\n' % self.command)
        pipe = os.popen(self.command + " 2>&1")

        while 1:
            self.lasttime = time.time()
            line = pipe.readline()
            if not line:
                break
            print "  ", line,

        self.result = pipe.close()

    def rc(self):
        return self.result


#
# --------------------------------------------------
#
def ExecuteCmd(command, timeout):
    """ExecuteCmd(command)

    Executes the command using the PerlThread class with an execution and
    monitoring thread.  Returns the result code from the execution."""

    # Create thread for execution and execute
    perl = PerlThread(command)
    perl.start()
    perl.monitor(timeout)
    perl.join()

    return perl.rc()



--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From cb921 at voice.co.za  Tue Jul 31 13:24:49 2001
From: cb921 at voice.co.za (Campbell)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:24:49 +0200
Subject: Control of flow
In-Reply-To: <9k6b2u027hv@enews4.newsguy.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local> <9k6b2u027hv@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311707320.4442-100000@cb921.local>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

>"Campbell" <cb921 at voice.co.za> wrote in message
>news:Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000 at cb921.local...
>> I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is often
>> a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful" sometimes =).
>
>Naah, you can always get the same effect with better structure:-).
>

So I have been told. :)

>What are the conditions under which you want to repeat
>this inner loop (letting the user enter a day for the
>fixed month) rather than redo the outer loop (letting
>the user enter the month again)?

In this case I'd like to keep the caller in the inner (day) loop,
entering '#' cound be checked to go to the outer loop, but I use
constructs like this for many things.  Sometimes a caller will enter the
begin and end of a range, and which loop to jump into could depend on
what specific error condition was noticed.  I've made something exactly
this ugly (except which worked) twice today already, and this is what it
all gets to look like?  Every time I do it, I think to myself, that it
is rare unless I'm handling this kind of input, where values are
available one at a time, and I must respond with prompts correctly.
Following which is the thought: "that sort of input is kind of
common around this place..."

Here is where Perl's name-able loops are remembered with fondness.
(but Perl by nature just isn't maintainable of course ;-)

>that's not too bad for a couple of entries, but it
>gets slightly tiresome when you have a zillion.  That
>is (part of:-) what exceptions are for...

thank you... I could make an interesting while 1: with a try: inside of
it handling custom exceptions, and in each except: could have the
retry/continue stuff.  Still, for the common situation where context
differs and 'error' conditions that are checked for vary, it seems like
a bit of overkill.  It's not that I mind doing it, it's at least
'elegant' while my cont variables are not, I just mind having to explain
that to the workers :)

I'm trying to replace a commercial telephony platform with something I
hacked together with swig and Py, on which many different applications
share the server, each with it's own number.  So far it's going very
well, the only Gripe I have ever heard from others (or had myself)  has
been this.  So I shouldn't whine too loud, Python really has changed my
world for the better. :)

Alex Thanks, I sincerely appreciate your thought and time.

    The world is our spoon
     tick, tock.




From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul  3 03:25:06 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:25:06 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20010702215108.02a92958@pop-server>
Message-ID: <20010703092506.S32419@xs4all.nl>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:54:17PM -0700, Courageous wrote:

> Be what may about the current implementation and future of Python, it is
> simply wrong that a = a + 1 is evaluated differently than a += 1.

And I simply disagree :) Like I said before, I see no reason for it to be
wrong that they are different. To me, it would be very wrong if they did the
*same* thing.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  2 06:22:29 2001
From: glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com (Gilles Lenfant)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:22:29 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <9hphnj$aee$1@norfair.nerim.net>

Of course, there's no "good" database support in the standard package list.
But there is a full featured DBI 2.0 API spec and lot of addon DB packages
compliant with this spec.
This API is very simple and the Python power makes it easy to put an object
layer above the database (persistant objects). Can you do it in Perl.
For Web development, AFAIK Zope is the best open source solution for content
management with a built-in object database. Zope is not done in Perl or PHP
but in Python (95%).
If you find a better solution than the pythonic one, please let us know.

--Gilles




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 19:18:44 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:18:44 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B6727F6.6D43D989@ActiveState.com> <20010731200832.L19610@tux.distro.conectiva>
Message-ID: <3B673CD4.72ED0E59@ActiveState.com>

Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:
> 
> > It sounds weird from an English perspective to me. "If Guido in
> > programmer and Guido in author then". "isa" or even just "a" makes more
> > sense. or how about "in class" "If Guido in class programmer and Guido
> > in class author then".
> 
> What about "If programmer in Guido" ("type in x" instead of "x in type")?

I think that the little future programmer is in Guido's *wife*. Medical
science has not yet advanced to the point where they can share that
burden.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 18:07:37 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 15:07:37 -0700
Subject: ignore -> pickling and methods
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107041407.6318284f@posting.google.com>

The Python documentation on pickle clearly states that the function
code isnt saved while pickling. Dont ask me why i didnt look there
before posting to this group coz I feel extremely stupid already ;-)

sincere apologies.


From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Wed Jul 25 13:56:55 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:56:55 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com>

Tom Good wrote:

> "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message

>
> > How about generators, who's tried them out?
>
> [snip]
>
> I like generators a lot.  Here's a fun one:
>
> #------ begin code
> [snip]
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     g = fib()
>     for i in range(9):
>         print g.next(),
>
> #------ end code

Haven't looked into this in detail, or even downloaded 2.2 yet, but...

couldn't that be written as:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for i in fib():
        print i,

???

(being under the impression that the main point of iterators is convenient for-loop usage...)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 23:16:03 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:16:03 -0400
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <3B4F743C.66778F9F@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FB973.115B83B1@engcorp.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> Dennis Roark wrote:
> > misuse 500 lines later in the program.  My original note was
> > not intended to be an indictment of Python, but only to
> > bring up some reasons that for me make more strongly typed
> > languages like C++ or Object Pascal better at coding very
> > large projects.

As others have noted, your lack of experience attempting
to implement a large application in Python reduce the value of
this statement.  Nevertheless, your sentiment is echoed 
repeatedly by many (which doesn't make it any truer) and so we
seem to be compelled to respond. :)  In the following, wherever
"you" appears, please consider it the impersonal "you" applied to
anyone who might make statements like the above.

> I have programmed extensively in C, assembler, BASIC, PL/M and a some
> in C++, Forth, Pascal, AWK, Perl, Java...  For my money, I have *never*
> seen a language more suited for rapid applications development - even
> pretty good sized applications - that strongly encourages the programmer
> to write clean, easy to read code, than *Python* - this after only a
> month or two of fiddling with it.
[...]
> Furthermore, bear in mind that code "portability" is no where near as
> important in the commercial sector as it is in academics.  [...]
> What *is* important is code *reliability*, *cost of
> ownership*, *readability*, and portability of *programmer's skills*.

All very true.

I can attest from personal experience with Python over the last year 
and a half (to strengthen Tim's claim from only a month or two of use) 
that Tim's statements above are *absolutely* on the mark for 
commercial developments.

I've programmed seriously for about 23 years.  I too have used a
gazillion languages.  I've personally written, architected, or
managed development of large applications in C, C++, Java, Object
Pascal, LabVIEW (>shudder<) and now Python.  I'm an engineer, not 
a computer scientist, which might mean I'm more interested in 
pragmatism than theory (not trying to be denigrating there).
(Don't flame me for saying this... some people like a little
background material to help evaluate someone's claims...)

My experience convinces me Tim is exactly right:

The most important thing about the product is *reliability*.

The most important thing about the source is *maintainability*.

Python ranks higher than any of the other languages I mentioned,
based on direct observation and lengthy consideration, in both
those areas.  

It is also more productive in general ("cost of ownership") 
by a factor of at least two (I'm being conservative).

My programmers (team of 16) uniformly like Python, find it
more "fun" than any previous language they've used, and produce
better results with it (as measured by any of the above 
measures, and by the fact that I can understand their code 
easily).

Only one of them had even heard of it prior to the first 
interview.  None of them took more than about a week to begin
contributing to our development, and I believe each was,
after less than a month of active use, more effective with
Python than with his or her previous "best" language.

I'll note also that I make these claims even before we've 
fully implemented extensive automated testing along the lines
of what people in this group generally claim is "essential".

(I don't disagree with that claim, but even as we implement
such processes -- prior to our code releases -- I am seeing
very significant improvements over what I have seen in the
past with other languages.)

In other words, *even without testing Python leads to fewer bugs*.

You can say that's not possible.  You can disbelieve it.
You can insist you need stronger typing.  You can claim 
that, because of your own special, unique situation or
for personal reasons it just somehow isn't true.

I say you are probably wrong.  Or at least, until you give 
Python a fair try on a large application, you won't convince 
me otherwise based on theoretical arguments.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul 29 19:26:24 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:26:24 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com> <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107281021.468246a7@posting.google.com> <3B638FA8.8D24A152@engcorp.com> <18289ee4.0107291329.6d082ccf@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <AY097.50244$EP6.11071787@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"David Boddie" <david at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:18289ee4.0107291329.6d082ccf at posting.google.com...

> > And would the same benefit arise by having the default name
> > of the executable be "python3", but not forcing it to be so?
>
> I would imagine that renaming your new "python3" interpreter to
> "python" would wipe out any advantage that the above plan gives you.

The only way to force a name for the executable is to check argv[0]
and die if it does not end 'python3' (after being lowercased).  I
personally would find that kind of obnoxious.


Besides which, DOS/windows has not always correctly filled in argv
correctly, I've read.

Terry J. Reedy





From aahz at panix.com  Thu Jul 12 10:25:26 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 07:25:26 -0700
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ihjfu$3ls$1@news.mathworks.com> <RV837.333819$p33.6744825@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9ik9kd$nch$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
>
>If you'd like, reread my point as "muds are likely to be CPU-bound
>programs".

Fine, but in that case, what *is* your point?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 14:43:45 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:43:45 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3B49F9EC.CA10886A@yahoo.com>

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Open issues
> 
>     Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
>     evaluating contributions? (source code but also things like
>     documentation and a test suite, as well as such vague things like
>     'dependability of the maintainers').

I think test suites would be a very, very good idea. At a minimum, some doctest
examples. Even better would be a well-defined suite of unit tests using the
unittest module. I propose that this be made a requirement for adding new
modules to the standard library.

It would be A Good Thing if unit tests were added to the existing standard
library modules, but my mind boggles at the size of the job.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul  3 10:05:28 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:05:28 GMT
Subject: Calculus
References: <mailman.994164981.2922.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <46k3ktcr165se0871chsnlfdmpdout3epv@4ax.com>

On Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:55:32 -0400 (EDT), Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.994164981.2922.python-list at python.org>:

:I wrote:
:>Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.
:
:Sheila King wrote:
:>What are you talking about? Do you mean a newsgroup for 
:>discussing calculus?
:
:No. I probably was too brief. I meant a module for Python 
:that has functions commonly used in Calculus. For example, 
:the Simpsons Rule, and the formula that allows you to find 
:the error. Sorry for the confusion.

Oh, shoot, I canceled that message, about two minutes after I posted it.
I see it made it to the mailing list half of this group, though. :(

I forgot what newsgroup I was reading when I posted that. (I thought I
was in a completely different hierarchy, not even comp.* )

Sorry for my stupid message!

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From sill at optonline.net  Wed Jul 18 18:24:45 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:24:45 GMT
Subject: basic python-unix question
References: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9lc33k.27j.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:51:25 GMT, Ed T <spi at micro.soft> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> New to Python and have been unable to us the "ps ef |grep" command
> correctly. From what I can tell I need to use the os.system() command. But
> have had no luck. Here an example of a basic script:
> 
> import os, sys
> process = ("test1", "test2")
> 
> for eachProcess in process:
>      os.system('ps ef | grep eachProcess')
change last line to
       os.system('ps ef | grep ' + eachProcess)

> 
> 
> The idea is to place processes that should be running into a for loop and
> see if it is running. When I do the above it appears only to check for the
> word "eachProcess" not for the process (i.e., test1 or test2). Is this a
> case of how to enter this command where substitution takes place in Python?
> What am I doing wrong?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Ed
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Wed Jul  4 19:04:09 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 23:04:09 GMT
Subject: Maybe I can help..
References: <mailman.994252867.5017.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9k781t.7bd.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Lindstrom Greg - glinds <Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> however I did not notice SIGs for
> either numerical python or scientific python.  If any of you are into this
> type of thing, or if any of you would be willing to give me some pointers on
> numerical research, particularly concerning the above topics (I received a
> MS in numerical methods, but that was in 1990 and I have since "officially"
> left the field) please feel free to contact me at yuba at cyberback.com.  I
> plan to create python modules to help with various mathematical tasks (I
> might start with Simpson's rule :-)

Uhm, http://www.numpy.org (and the links from there, like to Scientific
Python). There's a wealth that's already there, but I think any extra
experts are always welcome :-)

Maybe I missed the point of your post (they are indeed not official SIGs).

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com  Mon Jul  9 17:18:37 2001
From: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com (Lindstrom Greg - glinds)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:18:37 -0500 
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87DA5@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>

>Beauty is only beauty if one can experience it.  
>I can't experience Python on a day to day basis 
>(in the workplace), so therefore I can't
>appreciate it.

This is quite true in my experience, too.  I work in an IT shop that simply
refuses to recognize Python (and Perl) because most of the people in
leadership will not accept it.  The major strikes?

1. It's Free.  How serious can a language be if it's given away? We seem to
feel more secure in spending over $2500.00 per box for MS Developers Studio
and various other software license (CORBA goes for $1,200 a box, I'm told)?

2. If my boss had to code in C/C++, it's should be good enough for me
(dammit!).  C++ has the added benefit of producing code that is nearly
unreadable, and complex enough to take days to explain. Now this may be
because we do not know how to properly code C++ (surely there is good C++
code out there somewhere). In a recent (very large) project here, the
"architecture team" would not even consider STL for the string class; they
designed and wrote their own!  The ironic twist in this is that 10 years ago
these same people insisting on C/C++ were the ones leading the way away from
assembler language.

3. No Support! At least no 900 number to call for a per minute fee. Doesn't
seem to matter that in the past couple of years I have never had to wait
over a day to get a answer to a question. Perhaps we would feel better if
there were someone we could sue.

4. To easy to understand. A sin among most coders.  It's embarrassing to go
into a review meeting and show product managers and others code that they
can understand. It's much more impressive to hand out code that baffles 10
year veterans. I showed the code to a recent prototype to a customer
relationship manager, and she understood the flow (to be fair, she could not
have produced the code, but she felt good about making minor changes).

5. A fear of maintainability. My boss worries that nobody will be able to
maintain the code I write. While I believe that is a fair criticism on Perl
(and is why I stopped coding Perl), it is my experience that Python is quite
easy to understand.  Of course, a poor programmer can produce poor code in
any language (they just have to work a little harder at it in Python).

Perl and Python (and I love 'em both) are gaining ground among those who
have to get things done because they improve productivity. I write almost
all of my test routines in Python if for no other reason as to remove a
common language between application and test.  Most of my prototypes are
Python (love the wxPython). In time, I hope others will be won over; and --
with no disrespect to Python -- it does not keep up with my needs as a
programmer, I will leave it for anything better that comes along.  Until
then I will fight for both Perl and Python.



Greg Lindstrom
"When the solution is simple, God has spoken"

                                                            Albert Einstein



From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 27 03:23:58 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 07:23:58 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com> <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3ui1mt0e07vgp1b18306jd70pdufs91uva@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m25oe.gfe.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:05:06 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
>
>>I don't understand this assertion, however.  What keeps you from continuing to
>>use vim, ed, windows notepad, whatever, in this case?  The language is exactly
>>the same.
>
>Because when identifier and someone else writes IdEnTIFIER, I want
>to kill them Actually, I'd like to kill them for changing the case at all.

But if the language is the same, their editor would warn them about the case
mismatch, and the code would crash, just like yours would.  It would be just
like your editor, only yours won't warn about those things.


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Sat Jul 28 16:29:39 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:29:39 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <3b62459e.609746999@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107281328190.16003-100000@bms>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, Bengt Richter wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:27:44 -0700, Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
<...>
> >What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an integer always? It will
> >always have an integral value. I suppose one problem is that the range
> >of integers that a float (C double) can handle is larger than a 32 bit
> >integer can hold. This could be solved in the future with int/long
> >inification, what will be the behaviour then?
> >
> I think it has to do with being consistent with the idea of using the
> representation type as an indicator of exactness.

...and using the precision of the representation to decide if the
result is exact (one of the few cases where Python can have enough
information to determine the exactness of a result based solely on its
inputs?), is just too much work for too little gain?

> Using that idea, float is a visible name and means inexact,
> and int and long are visible and mean exact.
>
> Floor can't turn inexact to exact, so it must return inexact (i.e., float)
> if it gets an inexact (i.e., float) input.
>
> int(x) will effectively be an exactness coercion because of the
> representation-type linkage.
>
> If Dr Who takes us forward a bit, and we have no floats or ints, but just
> exact and approximate numbers, with exact being integers or rationals, and
> approximate being approximate[1], then you would have to translate your statement
> to "What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an exact number always?"
>
> [1] Approximate numbers will undoubtedly be implemented as floats, but hiding
> that will let people think about aspects of approximation instead of the hardware
> below. And if someone came up with a new approximate number representation for
> special situations, e.g., an alternate rational with bounded numerator/denominator
> values, it could be implemented without changing the language.  The point is you
> need to know the effectiveness of the approximation for your purposes, not what
> representation tricks they have come up with for the latest version of Python.
> Take us back, Dr Who.

ok

> If the current numeric literal formats persist, as I think they must, then I
> think the old formats for float should not automatically become formats for
> approximate.
>
> All the numbers you can reasonably enter as literals can be represented
> exactly, so why not break the 1.0 -> float-hence-inexact chain, and let 1.0 and 1
> signify the same thing? Driving the internal representation with a decimal point
> is arms-length C programming, not Python, IMHO.

Would this break evaluations of representations of unreasonable to
enter literals, reasonably generated by a program?  a special case?

> Evaluating some expressions will result in approximations, but not all the time.
> Inputs can be exact all the time. Including 0.1 and 1/3, after number unification.
> (0.1 just becomes 1/10).

Sounds reasonable, but once you have adopted a representation that can
not be exact, there is no way to know if the representation is exact
or just accurate to whatever the representation allows.  So,
interpretation of the intent (exact or not) will be context sensitive,
and to some degree involve telepathy or a time machine... then my
mailbox exploded, because PEP238 fiddles with the telepathy part of
the problem in a spectacularly visible way.

(am I getting it?)

Hmmm, I think I'd rather forget the whole telepathy thing and assume
that an `inexact' representation is inaccurate... unless told
otherwise by some property other than `format' (an idea which has been
mentioned but not really discussed).


- Bruce




From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jul 27 14:42:54 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:42:54 -0700
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf@europa.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-88B0F0.11425427072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf at europa.research.att.com>,
 Andrew Koenig <ark at research.att.com> wrote:

> >> A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
> >> division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
> >> function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
> >> you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
> 
> David> Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?
> 
> What if x is complex?

Did you read the last line?
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul 22 23:39:32 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:39:32 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <220720012039325082%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list at python.org>, Tim Peters
<tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> Not all experienced programmers agree.  At the last Python Conference, I
> moderated a 40-some person group discussion on conceivable changes to
> Python's numeric model, not advocating but keeping the participants from
> killing each other <wink>.  The meaning of integer division wasn't the
> focus, but naturally came up.  By show of hands, about 3/4ths of the
> participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather *something* x
> such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused with 3 than with 0.
> There was no consensus on exactly what 3/4 should return -- rational or HW
> float or decimal float were the most popular alternatives.

I see a fairly strong argument there for starting out with a language
in which int / int --> float (or rational) and int // int --> int (or
int div int --> int).

I don't see it as a strong enough argument to overcome the fact that
the careful programmer will have to inspect every / in all the code,
before installing 2.3 or whatever version this happens in, to see
whether (a) it IS division, as opposed to the / in 
'<a href="6/7.html">'  (that's contrived...but possible) and if so
whether it has to be respelt as // (or div).  

Some of them will; some won't:  some of both outcomes indicate latent
errors in the code, so the inspection isn't completely wasted after
all.

And it may not be her code...she could be 3 or 4 people removed from
the creator, who is gone.  [Another good thing about finding the latent
errors.]

It's true--as stated elsewhere--that Guido hears all the complaints. 
It's also true that until recently there was no reason for Guido to
hear "Guido, thank you for defining int / int to be integer division,
because integer division is natural for my problem space."  So he's
been getting a biased sample.  Probably a fairly representative one
even so.

  --John


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 03:52:17 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:52:17 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
 <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
 <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>
 <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>
 <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>
 <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
 <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>
 <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
 <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
 <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com>
 <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com>
 <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org>
 <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <k154KKAx2RY7EwC2@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>, Tim Hochberg
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes
....
>   * Unification of ints and longs (PEP 237)? This seems almost impossible
>to dislike.
....

well I have at least one extension that requires 32 bit unsigned as
inputs. Under existing python I can manipulate myself around bit 31
problems with ease (using negative numbers or hex). It seems it
will/might be a bit more complicated if this pep goes through. I'm sure
there are others who have explicit int size requirements. Effectively
removing ints takes away ease of external communication in at least some
cases.
 
>Anyway I'm sure we'd all be much happier if everyone went to
>python.sourceforge.net/peps, read all the number PEPs and then, if
>necessary, panicked about what was actually in them.
>
>-tim
>
>
>
>

-- 
Robin Becker


From boegli at iinet.net.au  Sun Jul  8 07:35:10 2001
From: boegli at iinet.net.au (Richard)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 19:35:10 +0800
Subject: python 2.1 rpm and tgz don't install under rh7 with xfree86 4.1.0
Message-ID: <3B48456D.27A7CFC4@iinet.net.au>

I can't get python 2.1 to install rh7 with xfree86 4.1.0???
What is wrong,
I have gotten python2-2.1-5.src.rpm like the web page said and
expat-1.1-4tummy.src.rpm
but when i run python2-2.1-5.src.rpm it says i need =>
expat-1.1-3tummy.src.rpm
and it stops
what is wrong?
with the .tgz copy of python it says that the compiler might be the
problem when i type make.
What is wrong?




From richard at bizarsoftware.com.au  Wed Jul 25 00:39:28 2001
From: richard at bizarsoftware.com.au (Richard Jones)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:39:28 +1000
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEPALAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEPALAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <200107250437.OAA22898@goanna.adroit.net>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:14, Tim Peters wrote:
> Note this cute consequence:
> >>> x = 1L
> >>> type(x)(3)
>
> 3L
>
>
> That is, type() in 2.2a1 truly returns a constructor, and type(1L)(y) is
> the same as long(y).  Likewise for
>
> >>> type("abc")(42)
>
> '42'
>
> >>> type("abc") is str
>
> 1
>
> >>> type(1L) is long
>
> 1

Not having access to 2.2 for the moment, what's the story if type() returns 
the instance type?


just-curious'ly ...  Richard


-- 
Richard Jones
richard at bizarsoftware.com.au
Senior Software Developer, Bizar Software (www.bizarsoftware.com.au)



From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul  9 12:52:34 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 09:52:34 -0700
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <slrn9khonr.gg0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <9ibe9n$ffu$1@news.mathworks.com> <mailman.994689256.3553.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9icngi$21d$1@panix6.panix.com>

In article <mailman.994689256.3553.python-list at python.org>,
Skip Montanaro  <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>    Joshua> On the other side of things, it seems this could be introduced
>    Joshua> into the language without making 'has' a keyword--no syntactic
>    Joshua> rules currently use concatenation.
>
>This is a good point.  I sometimes use this sort of construct:
>
>    has = {"foo":1, "bar":1, ...}.has_key
>    ...
>    if has(a):
>        ...

Woah!  That's s[l]ick!
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 24 08:31:41 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:31:41 GMT
Subject: constructor chaining?
References: <20010724.081619.1139901474.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net> <6Sd77.62285$2V.13130988@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010724.084415.1856669179.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <6Sd77.62285$2V.13130988 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com>, "Daniel
Ellison" <daniel at syrinx.net> wrote:



> This is my first post here; I've just started looking into Python and so
> far like what I see.  To answer your question, you simply call Media's
> __init__ constructor from within Book's __init__ constructor:  class
> Book(Media):
>     def __init__(self):
>         Media.__init__(self)
>         ...

Awesome. Thank you very much, that was exactly what I was looking for.

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Fri Jul 27 11:37:40 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:37:40 -0700
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com>	 <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <biDHvIAmJ2X7Ewtm@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B601811.4B68578B@interet.com> <3B60AA24.B26F6B76@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <tm32lll8f12fd@news.supernews.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B60AA24.B26F6B76 at engcorp.com...
>
> I agree the rate of change is enough to make many of us nervous
> (perhaps especially in industry).  And I agree some of the new
> features appear (from my particular point of view) unnecessary
> and more like CS playthings than anything else.
>
> That said, I have to say that at least one change is likely to
> improve my ability to produce bullet-proof programs.
>
> The surgery on the way division works will almost certainly
> reduce the risk of my accidentally (and quietly) truncating a
> result when I really meant to say float(x)/y and forgot, since
> this is an idiom I rarely need to use.  (This is leaving aside
> the issue of code breakage, but I'm talking only about new
> code here, and in my case I don't need to maintain backwards
> compatibility.)

I have to agree with you on the division mess - don't think that
what I wrote to start this thread means that I don't think it needs
to be fixed!

What everyone seems to have overlooked is that I presented
a plan for allowing the continued evolution of the language,
while providing stability for the existing code base.

What I'd actually like to see, from a bullet-proofing point of view,
is the complete elimination of the "/" operator, in favor of "idiv",
"rdiv" and "fdiv" (with the obvious meanings of integer, rational and
floating.)

Of course, this would reduce the obviousness of the language,
but it would also eliminate mistakes.

John Roth
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
> peter at engcorp.com




From fleet at teachout.org  Thu Jul 19 12:28:51 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:28:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
In-Reply-To: <33105F8B185CD51182E300306E06473E2701B0@hermes.isr.thomson-csf.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107191225190.25223-100000@fleet1>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 hao-nghi.au at fr.thalesgroup.com wrote:

In my response I blew the dictionary syntax:

when I try:

>>>CurCust["street"]
  Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  TypeError: sequence index must be integer

>>>CurCust[2] of course returned the third letter in "smith" correctly.

				- fleet -

PS:  Why do we always discover these stupid errors immediately after
hitting the "send" button?! :)

> Hi fleet,
>
> Just learn that when you write : from cust import CurCust
> ==> CurCust becomes local and you have to reference to it by :
> print CurCust["street"]
>
> regards,
> Hao-Nghi Au
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fleet at teachout.org [mailto:fleet at teachout.org]
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:26 PM
> To: python list
> Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
>
>
>
> I think I may have gotten myself into a box.
>
> I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
> references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:
>
> smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}
>
> Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith" to a
> variable - CurCust.
>
> Now I want to do something like:
>
> from cust import CurCust
>
> print cust.CurCust["street"]
>
> Spent the evening trying to solve this (Learning Python, and Sam's Teach
> Yourself Python) then tried the archives.  The little I found on "variable
> substitution" almost seems to say "no way!" ???
>
> (I know someone is going to suggest a database.  That's a little further
> up the learning curve.  I can see it from here; but I'm not there yet.)
>
> Thanks for any assistance,
> 					- fleet -
>
>
>
>




From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Tue Jul 24 13:24:13 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 10:24:13 -0700
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk> <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com> <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <eppstein-E10BDA.10010023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <Xns90E8581225ABCduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107240924.586678a1@posting.google.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message news:
> 
> As I originally wrote it the return stopped it executing the main body and 
> attempting to permute a 0 length sequence. Since I had written it so that 
> permuting a 0 length sequence gave no permutations, this meant the return 
> simply cut out a lot of code that had no net result. However, once it is 
> fixed to correctly return one permutation of an empty sequence the return 
> becomes essential.

Ah, OK.  With the new test, the return matters for sequences of length 1.


Tom


From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 10 01:41:37 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:41:37 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9kj1lj.nof.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEFJKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> BTW, state-of-the-art rational support also requires context,  to
determine
> whether results should be reduced to lowest terms (some  programs run
1000s
> of times faster if you don't, others 1000s of times faster if you do, and
only the
> algorithm author can know which is better).

[Marcin 'Qrczak'  Kowalczyk]
> If such context affects only performance, then maybe it's acceptable,
> but if it affects essential semantics,

For most people, whether they get results back in their lifetimes is
important despite being "only performance".

> I'm worried that it's a bad idea to introduce global state where it
doesn't exist in
> the problem domain.

In finite arithmetic, precision is part of the problem domain, like it or
not.  Ditto rounding and exception policies, and that "one default size fits
all" policies don't work.

> The more global settings affect the meaning of a piece of code, the
> harder is to use independent modules together and to understand code
> in isolation.

So it goes.  You can write wrappers that require explicitly passing all
context info to every arithmetic operation, and explicitly collects the
outputs too; but most people will prefer implicit state so they can continue
writing

    x = y + z

instead of

    x, non_fatal_conditions = add(y, z, precision, rounding_mode,
exception_masks)

Even if you reduce that to

    x, context = add(y, z, context)

it's still a PITA.  Note that your HW 754 fp is already swimming in global
(really thread-local, if the OS and libraries aren't insane) state; you
usually don't notice it (unless you're a serious numeric programmer) simply
because no name-brand language has yet bothered to expose it in a portable
way (C99 is the first big stab at this).

finite-numerics-can't-be-understood-"in-isolation"-ly y'rs  - tim




From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul  5 15:02:09 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:02:09 -0500
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
In-Reply-To: <9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>
	<mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org>
	<9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
	<3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>
	<9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <15172.47537.816562.599573@beluga.mojam.com>

Ooh!  A performance thread!  This function is about one-third better than
str_join.

    def str_join2(iters):
	has = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
	for i in iters:
	    "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])

:-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 03:38:04 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 11:38:04 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: This is spoiling Python image!
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107151126400.4017-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

The problem: it is impossible to use IDLE with non-latin1
encodings under Windows.

IDLE is standard IDE for Python and it is what beginner users of
Python see in their Start->Programs. Unfortunately, IDLE can't work
with non-latin1 characters any more. This could lead beginners to
reconsider their choice of language because of unfriendly i18n issues.

The problem is explained in detail below.

Lets consider all errors one at a time.

1. Tcl can't find encodings (they are in \Python21\tcl\tcl8.3\encoding\).
Without them it is impossible to enter cyrillic and other kinds of letters
in Text and Entry widgets under Windows.

Tkinter tries to help Tcl by means of FixTk.py:

import sys, os, _tkinter
ver = str(_tkinter.TCL_VERSION)
for t in "tcl", "tk":
    v = os.path.join(sys.prefix, "tcl", t+ver)
    if os.path.exists(os.path.join(v, "tclIndex")):
        os.environ[t.upper() + "_LIBRARY"] = v

This sets env. variables TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY to
"C:\Python21\tcl\tcl8.3".

The problem is that it imports _tkinter which initialises
and calls Tcl_FindExecutable before TCL_LIBRARY is set.

It is easy to fix this error in FixTk.py:

import sys, os
if not os.environ.has_key('TCL_LIBRARY'):
	tcl_library = os.path.join(sys.prefix, "tcl", "tclX.Y")
	os.environ['TCL_LIBRARY'] = tcl_library

Tcl is smart enough to look into "C:\Python21\tcl\tclX.Y\..\tcl8.3"
as well.

2. Now we are able to print in IDLE:
>>> print "??????"

and we  will see russian letter... before we press Enter,
after which:

UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

appears.

Tcl recoded "??????" into Unicode. Python tries to recode it back
into usual string, assuming usual strings have sys.getdefaultencoding().

Now we need to set default encoding.
Lets look into site.py:

# Set the string encoding used by the Unicode implementation.  The
# default is 'ascii', but if you're willing to experiment, you can
# change this.

encoding = "ascii" # Default value set by _PyUnicode_Init()

if 0:
    # Enable to support locale aware default string encodings.
    import locale
    loc = locale.getdefaultlocale()
    if loc[1]:
        encoding = loc[1]

if 0:
    # Enable to switch off string to Unicode coercion and implicit
    # Unicode to string conversion.
    encoding = "undefined"

if encoding != "ascii":
    sys.setdefaultencoding(encoding)

The code for setting default encoding is commented (maybe, to allow faster
startup?)

Then goes:

#
# Run custom site specific code, if available.
#
try:
    import sitecustomize
except ImportError:
    pass

#
# Remove sys.setdefaultencoding() so that users cannot change the
# encoding after initialization.  The test for presence is needed when
# this module is run as a script, because this code is executed twice.
#
if hasattr(sys, "setdefaultencoding"):
    del sys.setdefaultencoding

So, sys.setdefaultencoding is deleted after we used it in
sitecustomize.py.

Its too bad, because the program can't set default encoding
and implicit string<->unicode conversions are very common in Python
and IDLE.

The solution could be as follows. Lets put sitecustomize.py in
C:\Python21\ with the following:

import locale, sys
encoding = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
if encoding:
	sys.setdefaultencoding(encoding)


* It would be wonderful if IDLE itself could setup encoding based
on locale or issued warnings and pointed t o solution somehow.

3. Now we can try it again in IDLE:

>>> print "??????"

after hitting Enter we are getting... latin1.

It's time to look at how _tkinter.c communicates with Tcl.

The cheap&dirty solution for IDLE is as follows:

--- Percolator.py.orig	Sat Jul 14 19:38:16 2001
+++ Percolator.py	Sat Jul 14 19:38:16 2001
@@ -22,6 +22,8 @@

     def insert(self, index, chars, tags=None):
         # Could go away if inheriting from Delegator
+        if index != 'insert':
+        	chars = unicode(chars)
         self.top.insert(index, chars, tags)

     def delete(self, index1, index2=None):


--- PyShell.py.orig	Sat Jul 14 19:38:37 2001
+++ PyShell.py	Sat Jul 14 19:38:37 2001
@@ -469,6 +469,8 @@
         finally:
             self.reading = save
         line = self.text.get("iomark", "end-1c")
+        if type(line) == type(u""):
+        	line = line.encode()
         self.resetoutput()
         if self.canceled:
             self.canceled = 0

But alas these patches only mask the problem.

What is really needed?

Starting from version 8.1 Tcl is totally unicoded. It is very simple:
tt wants us utf-8 strings and returns also utf-8 strings.
(As an exception, Tcl could assume latin1 if it is unable to decode
string).

_tkinter.c just sends Python strings as is to Tcl.
And does it correctly for Unicode strings. Receiving side is
slightly more complicated:

Tkapp_Call function (aka root.tk.call) handles most of the Tkinter
Tcl/Tk commands. If the result is 7bit clean, Tkapp_Call returns usual
string, if not -- it converts from utf-8 into unicode and returns
Unicode string.

Only Tkapp_Call does it. All others (Tkapp_Eval, GetVar, PythonCmd)
return utf-8 string!

IDLE extensively use Tkinter capabilities and all kinds of strings
go back and forth between Python and Tcl.

Of course, _tkinter.c works incorrectly.

i) before sending a string to Tcl, it must recode it
FROM default encoding TO utf-8

ii) upon receive of a string from Tcl, it must recode it from
utf-8 to default encoding, if possible.
[R.S.: Or return it as Unicode, if impossible]

It is possible to optimize the conversions. Of course, this will have
impact on the speed of Tkinter. But in our opinion correct work is
more important than speed.

Solution checked under Win98.

>From R.S.: yes, IDLE is not ideal and there are better IDEs (Emacs,
for example) and "serious" programmers rarely use it. Also Tkinter is
critisized much, etc. But the problem indicated above is very bad for
Python image as a user-friendly language. That is why it is very
important to FIX the problem as soon, as possible.

We can prepare patches for _tkinter.c as well.

Before we proceed to submitting bug-reports and patches, we will be glad
to hear if somebody has better solution to the indicated problem.

(The big deal of the problem is the need to patch _tkinter.c and recompile
it. Everything else even beginner could fix if supplied with clues and
files with fixes. But of course, Python's IDLE must run correct out of the
box).


Author: Kirill Simonov <kirill(at)xyz.donetsk.ua>
Translator: Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru>




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 15 03:02:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:02:24 +0200
Subject: Tkinter/Win32 Question:
References: <9C847.6$ei.832667@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>
Message-ID: <9irfbb01jaq@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Xione Wrent" <xione at prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:9C847.6$ei.832667 at newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> Does anyone know how to add "System Tray Minimization" functionality to a
> Tkinter GUI?

I don't think Tkinter offers such an intrinsically non-cross-platform
functionality.  I suspect therefore that you'd need to work this part
through the win32all add-ons, win32gui.Shell_NotifyIcon &tc.


Alex





From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul  2 02:25:52 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 06:25:52 GMT
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com>

Seems like a good start. I only have one objection:

>     1. Standard Modules MUST not rely on global variables to keep
>        state information, except when it is absolutely required.

When writing language requirements, one MUST not use the
term "MUST" in conjunction with an "except". And in any case,
I disagree. Emphatically.

The use of a singleton pattern changes nothing unless every
call to the module has the singleton as its first argument. And
if you're envisioning storing the singleton as a global, nothing
has been accomplished. There's a global.

Perhaps you could make a better case for why you think this
is even important.

C//





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 14 18:04:47 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:04:47 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> That is, the module docstring is just the module's __doc__ attr, and that
> can be bound explicitly (a trick I've sometimes use for *computed* module
> docstrings).

I must be missing something fundamental.

Why wouldn't we just redefine the algorithm used to find the docstring
to allow a directive and implement it in the interpreter? *What tools*
in particular are we worried about breaking?

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From roy at panix.com  Sun Jul 15 21:51:32 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:51:32 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com> <92ae279c.0107151429.398e6e9e@posting.google.com> <slrn9l4fob.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <roy-076BF0.21513215072001@news1.panix.com>

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) wrote:
> from 'Mastering Regular Expressions', p.124:
> 
> '^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.\
> ([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])$'

Along those lines, but more compact:

   r'^([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])(\.([01]?\d\d?|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])){3,3}$'


From vnestr at netvision.net.il  Sun Jul  8 16:49:51 2001
From: vnestr at netvision.net.il (Vladimir Nesterovsky)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:49:51 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr> <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com> <9i88o3$hj41s$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de> <9i9fsn$enb$02$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <9iadiq$ho0qu$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de>

Georg Mischler <schorsch at schorsch.com> wrote in message
news:9i9fsn$enb$02$1 at news.t-online.com...
> Vladimir Nesterovsky wrote:
>
> > ...  I once did it to sort Lisp data by a
>
> Now look who found the way to Python land...
>
> Welcome to the club, Vladimir!
>

Thanks, George!  :-)

I'm just toying with the language, it looks nice and
it has _lambda_ and _map_ .... :-) :-)




From nospam at newsranger.com  Wed Jul 18 16:13:16 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:13:16 GMT
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu> <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D@mit.edu> <HOi57.20158$sx2.1076301@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <3B55DBAB.EB900433@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <w5m57.24028$Kf3.325215@www.newsranger.com>

It seems that one of the imported modules deletes sys.argv.
Suggestion: import sys at the top of your script, then make immediately the
variable assignements.

Levi

In article <3B55DBAB.EB900433 at mit.edu>, Man Vehicle Laboratory says...
>
>Fiddling with the script some more, it seems like Vrut somehow runs the script
>again when vrut.go() is called.  I placed print statements all throughout the
>code, which shows up in the interactive window  until vrut.go() is called.  Then
>in the vrut window, it gives the Attribute Error.   I'm going to have to muck
>through the vrut code itself to see what's going on.
>
>            Thanks for everyone's help!
>                Fen
>
>
>
>Steve Holden wrote:
>
>> "Man Vehicle Laboratory" <FenZhao at mit.edu> wrote in message
>> news:3B55B2C2.74A8FB3D at mit.edu...
>> >
>> > I've tried putting a print statement right after I import sys.  I have the
>> same
>> > error as before:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> ****************************************************************************
>> **
>> >
>> >      * WINVRUT 2.4a  Copyright 1995-2001  University of California, Santa
>> >      Barbara *
>> >      *                                    Massachusetts Institute of
>> >      Technology   *
>> >
>> ****************************************************************************
>> **
>> >
>> >      VRUT  2.4a
>> >      voicekey                        Voicekey 0.9
>> >      serialthrustmaster              Serial thrustmaster 1.0
>> >      avstu                           AvatarStudio 1.1
>> >      Traceback (most recent call last):
>> >        File "<string>", line 1, in ?
>> >        File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 61, in ?
>> >          print sys.argv
>> >      AttributeError: argv
>> >
>> Well, this traceback looks very suspicious. I assume that the file you are
>> taking about is indeed e3_sid_data2.py?  Maybe not ... it is quite weird
>> that sys appears to have no argv attribute. I can only conclude that perhaps
>> some other portion of your code assigns to sys? But you say below this is
>> NOT the case. Aaarrgghh...
>>
>> > The error I get from vrut is from my code looking at argv, not vrut (error
>> > message w/out print statement:
>> >
>> > Traceback (most recent call last):
>> >   File "<string>", line 1, in ?
>> >   File "N:\FenZhao\E3_sid_data\e3_sid_data2.py", line 62, in ?
>> >     mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
>> > AttributeError: argv
>> >
>> The first line of the tracebacks implies that some code is being executed
>> from a strng variable. If none of your code does anything like that (uses
>> eval/exec, let's say) then the obvious suspect is the vrut module...
>>
>> Your module doesn't by any chance import itself, does it?
>>
>> > So whatever my first operation is dealing with sys.argv, there's an
>> attribute
>> > error with argv)
>> >
>> > What confuses me is that this error is displayed in the VRUT window; VRUT
>> opens
>> > two windows, a display window that shows the 3D VR scene, and a text
>> window that
>> > will display print statements and error messages from python.  Logically,
>> if
>> > argv can't be found, an error message will end the program before vrut
>> ever gets
>> > started.
>> >
>> Oh. Is it possible that importing the vrut module modifies
>> sys.stdout/sys.stderr, leaving something weird in place before the vrut.go()
>> call creates the windows?
>>
>> > I've also tried importing vrut after looking at sys.argv in case vrut does
>> > something funky in it's initialization/import.  Same problem.  Yet
>> commenting
>> > out the vrut.go() command, and the sys.argv is fine.
>>
>> OK, so what you are telling us is that the presence of a function call you
>> have not yet executed is somehow affecting the sys module's namespace. That
>> sounds pretty funky to me, and frankly I'm beginning to wonder whether you
>> have programmed a time machine :-)
>>
>> >
>> >                                         --Fen
>> >
>> > PS. I hope this helps:  all of my code up to the call to vrut (minus
>> > comments)...  there's not much there, can't figure out what's making it
>> work
>> > improperly.  None of the modules that I wrote and imported do anything
>> with sys
>> >
>> I can understand your confusion. I hope the rest of the list will feel free
>> to dive in with suggestions about what's wrong! :-0
>> >
>>
>> Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here to make sure your program does indeed
>> see the correct value for the argument list.
>>
>> >      import vrut
>>
>> Put "import sys; print sys.argv" here too, to verify that the import
>> statement makes no changes to sys.
>> If you see output from the first print bu not the second then the module is
>> indeed doing something funky.
>>
>> >      import sid
>> >
>> >
>> >      import string
>> >      import math
>> >      import time
>> >
>> >
>> >      import speeds
>> >      import e3_dataAn
>> >      import sys
>> >
>> >      mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
>> >      ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
>> >      ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
>> >      OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
>> >      SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
>> >      sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
>> >      VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
>> >      path=sys.argv[8]
>> >
>> >      vrut.go(vrut.NICE)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Steve Holden wrote:
>> > [ various apparently irrelevant things ]
>>
>> I'm currently betting that a recursive import is somehow messing things up.
>> Otherwise I'm a little stumped, and we'll have to proceed with debugging
>> step by step.
>>
>> regards
>>  Steve
>> --
>> http://www.holdenweb.com/
>




From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 18:22:42 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:22:42 GMT
Subject: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <ScG97.56412$EP6.12961869@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message
news:3B667EBA.DA6C298 at tundraware.com...

an interesting essay with many things to think about.  Thanks for
sharing your experience-based thoughts with us.
...
> - How do we write more correct, maintainable, code *faster*?

If Python does not enable this, no special reason it should expand.
If it actually does, for many programmers who give it a try, then it
seems to this Darwinian that the resulting competitice advantage
should lead to an almost inevitable growth  -- or is Dilbert more true
to life than I would like to believe?

> (For those of you Neo-Marxists in the audience who think that
"Information
> Just Wants To Be FREE", I should mention that the survivability of
> any technology has always been primarily a function of commercial
adoption,
> at least in the long run.  How many people write in COBOL today?
(Many!)
> How many program in Eiffel? Snobol? ML?  Oberon?  Haskell?  'Nuff
said.
> Economic Reality trumps Bad Collectivist Theory every time.
Thank-You,
> Adam Smith.)

As a Smithian hippie, I think the better adage is "Entertainment
information want to be free", which is to say that people like to
share non-critical information as part of their social interaction and
play.  On the other hand, several people have noted that Python being
free is a barrier to commercial acceptance.  As a free user, I would
like to see more commercial exploitation without enclosure.  (Software
and information in general does *NOT* suffer from the tragedy of the
commons.)  One selling point 'should' be that the 100,000 (or
whatever) 'free' users help research, develop, and test the polished
versions bundled with paid-for support services.

> But, there's a rub.  When you buy Middleware, you are
> (if you did your homework right) removing a large part of the
> dependency the apps have on networking, OS, and so forth.
> BUT, you are marrying the Middleware vendor until that
> application goes away.

So part of the pitch of Python-as-Middleware vendors 'should' be that
because Python is open rather than proprietary, there can/are/will be
multiple such vendors, and so clients will never be totally dependent
on any one such vendor.

> I worry about one thing and one thing only in the Python world.  It
> is something I have witnessed in *every* new technology I've
> ever seen.  Python is dangerously close to becoming a victim of
> Feeping Creaturism - not so much In Fact, but rather in this
community's
> mindset of forever wanting to fiddle one more feature into the
> language

One thing I like about Python is that it, like C, is currently small
enough to be kept in mind all at once, in a way that C++, for
instance,  is not.  I would not like this to change, so I consider
simplification vs. complexification to be one criterion for evaluation
proposals.  Of course, one proposal can do both, depending on
viewpoint.

> I, for one, would like to see a date picked for a permanent
moratorium
> on the language proper,

All the changes in the last year have been discussed for years.  So I
expect/hope that in another year we will see something of a plateau
again with Python2final.

> after which, only bug fixes and new modules  could be added.

You are free to sponsor such releases, along the lines of 2.0.1 and
2.1.1 but with new modules, of any version *you* want to stabilize ,
for an many years as you think it useful.  Unless someone offers to
*pay* Guido enough to persuade him to do this, there is no reason *he*
should.

>  After that date, language changes would have to be
> part of some new language

Consider Python3 to be a new language, if you want.  Or even Python
2.2.  I personally prefer to move,when I want, from one language I
like to another that is only slightly different in ways I see as
improvement, than to an unrelated language.

I think it worth noting that 2.2 without 'import future' is arguably
more compatible with 2.1 than most versions of, for instance, 'C' have
been with each other.  ['Version of  C' = defacto language of
particular compiler on  particular platform with particular settings.]
In this sense alone, you are correct: Python is middleware that has
already successfully hidden some annoying variations in the underlying
platforms it runs on.

Terry J. Reedy





From rupe at metro.yak.net  Thu Jul 26 14:09:57 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:09:57 -0700
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
References: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com> <Xns90E97731532B9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107261009.56d708d3@posting.google.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns90E97731532B9duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>...
> 
> Is this what you need?
> 
> --- begin strip.py ---
<snip>
> --- end strip.py ---

Thank you for your help, Duncan.  This is a marvellous little snippet
of code, and does exactly what I was looking for.

--- Rupert

Rupert Scammell
rupe at metro.yak.net
http://metro.yak.net


From stephen_purcell at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 04:15:13 2001
From: stephen_purcell at yahoo.com (Steve Purcell)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 01:15:13 -0700
Subject: I'd Like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
References: <3b41d693$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>
Message-ID: <309094c8.0107040015.37ef7087@posting.google.com>

Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net> wrote in message news:<3b41d693$1_7 at news5.uncensored-news.com>...
> I have some time on my hands.  It seems like a good opportunity to do some 
> noncommercial Python programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm 
> more suited to be the lackey than the mad scientist.
> 
> I've checked the 'Project Help Wanted' on SourceForge and don't see 
> anything that really fits.  
> 
> Anybody need some Python code on an Open Source project?
> 
> You can see some of my work at http://pyagent.sourceforge.net and at 
> http://asynchttp.sourceforge.net.


It might interest you to look at my fledgling WebUnit project
(http://webunit.sourceforge.net/). I can see some possible connections
with your async http work, and with your stressmy.com service because
WebUnit simulates browser sessions with a web site.

SSL support and optional use of async sockets would be interesting
extensions for WebUnit.

-Steve

--
Steve Purcell, Pythangelist
Get testing at http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/
Any opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of
Yahoo


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul  5 10:07:44 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 18:07:44 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5208@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051800440.21723-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> I seem to be getting the listing of what's on my d drive in windows, rather then the binary contents.  Here is what I do (the server id changed to protect the innocent:
>
> for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))

> List the directory contents in Unix
>
> ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> ls
> d:\programsPython\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt

> Why do I get the text d:\programsPython\filename?

   Because glob() returns full path, so you end up running commands like
ftp.storbinary("STOR " + 'd:\\programsPython\\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt'...
(please note double backslashes)
   If you want just filenames without path you can do one of two things:

1) cd d:\programsPython (os.chdir("d:\\programsPython")) and then use
glob('*') - this will list just the curent directory

2) or cut off the file/path yourself:

for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
   name = string.split(filename, '\\')[-1]
   ftp.storbinary("STOR " + name, open(filename, 'rb'))

> How should I change the program to get the actual files sent over?

   Why do you think those funny files are not real files? It is just UNIX
didn't interpreted backslashes! :) I am sure they are your real files! Test
it.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 04:35:18 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:35:18 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ijng5026ut@enews4.newsguy.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message
news:tO837.679712$166.14009323 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.

Oh, the _concept_ is not too deep or complicated: lambda lets
you keep extremely-simple functions anonymous by defining them
'inline' where you use them (often, pass them as parameters).


> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)
> print f
>
> *NOTE   The varible N is defined in the code before this excerpt.
>
> Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?

Easier than what?


> But comon sense tells me this is easier.
>
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> print f
>
> Isnt that easier??

Even 'easier' (and surely faster) would IMHO be:

import operator
f = reduce(operator.mul, n)
print f

Many 'appropriate' examples of lambda are things that module
operator exposes in a faster and more usable way.  When you
go beyond that, things can easily get too complicated for a
lambda to be well-readable.  There ARE a few exceptions, but
personally I'd rather have operator extended a little bit,
and/or use some form of currying.  So I hardly ever use
lambda, personally, nor do I suggest it to newbies.


> Or do I not get lambda?
>
> *NOTE ... I think its just a way to complicate things OR just a way to
avoid
> typing the function name beacuse.... I dont know they are scared of the
> names they give them.

People do like to keep things anonymous, and sometimes they
have a point.  A well-chosen name can help make code clearer,
but if you care nothing about the name you're quite apt to
choose one that will instead make code LESS readable.  And
naming something often means 'breaking up' an expression into
a few statements -- that may well be beneficial to clarity
when the expression is overly complicated, but for some
expressions of middling complexity the breaking-up may
instead diminish readability by spreading things out too much.

I think you do "get lambda": it's nothing but a way to keep
some extremely simple functions anonymous and in-line.  I
tend to agree that, in Python as it exists today, lambda does
not add enough expressive power to "carry its weight" in
terms of added language complication (when teaching Python
to people without a background in other languages that include
some 'lambda' construct -- and such 'other languages' tend
to have fewer limitations on lambdas' power).  A slightly
richer module operator and a standardized way to curry any
arbitrary callable would be vastly preferable (it's easy to
cook up currying in Python today, but newbies having some
problems with lambda are unlikely to think of that:-).


Alex





From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Thu Jul 12 05:00:38 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 11:00:38 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <un16bcibu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <zP337.4881$z21.497530@newsc.telia.net> <uelrn3s46.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <m3y9pu7c95.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

> Of course, if a was complex then we wouldn't be worried about a/b
> truncating anything either.  But definitely something to keep in mind
> if working on code that might receive either complex or integer
> parameters.

Whenever you know the type of your objects there is no problem. But
often you want to write a mathematical expression which accepts any
reasonable type, even Python classes with a number interface. An
explicit cast to float() is very undesirable in such situations, and
a hack such as (a+0.)/b is not obvious to the uninitiated.

A special operator, // or whatever, with the meaning of "the best
approximation to standard artihmetic division that is available" is
the best way to express this, in my opinion. Perhaps some number-like
classes could even reimplement it in some clever way.

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From kentabacchi at excite.com  Thu Jul 26 10:03:38 2001
From: kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 07:03:38 -0700
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling  process dies
References: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com> <3B5EE94B.1EBA28FF@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <a99a629c.0107260603.1a463bd2@posting.google.com>

Sorry about the omission of key information.  My system is Windows NT
4.0.  The Python interpreter is version 1.5.1, and, if this means
anything, it is the interpreter that came with a dSPACE Control Desk
version 1.1 package.

Something interesting I discovered this morning, my implementation of
the thread module works as expected when run in Pythonwin (1.5.1), but
gives the erroneous result (thread doesn't start until process that
called it has died) when run in the Control Desk environment.  I'm not
sure about which interpreter Control Desk is using, although they site
1.1.2.8 in their Help, About menu, but I think that number means
something only to dSPACE people.  Both Pythonwin and Control Desk
versions report the following when sys.version is called:

   '1.5.1 (#0, Jan 27 1999, 11:10:46) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)]'

Same interpreter yet different result.  It has been suggested to use
the threading module for a more 'predictable' execution.  Does anyone
have any advice about simply starting a new thread, exiting a thread
and possibly acquiring a lock using the threading module?  Much
appreciated.

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote in message news:<3B5EE94B.1EBA28FF at Lugoj.Com>...
> That does look odd. What operating system are you using? And when you say
> 1.5, do you mean 1.5 or 1.5.2?
> 
> Ken Tabacchi wrote:
> > 
> > I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
> > 1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
> > process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
> > program is run under Python version 2.1.
>  [ Elided. ]


From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Fri Jul 13 05:13:09 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:13:09 +0100
Subject: Question on nested scope
Message-ID: <3B4EBBA5.10745796@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

In Python 2.1:

>>> b=10
>>> a="b=b+11"
>>> def f(p):
	exec p
	print a
	print b

	
>>> f(a)
b=b+11
21
>>> b
10
>>> 

When exec "b=b+11", python can find the second b (10), why it generate
another b?

Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 23:38:33 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:38:33 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> 
> > Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say that I believe there may be
> > applications for which Perl is the better language,
[...]
> > Any other application, and I would probably say Python was a
> > better choice...
> 
> This is where our opinions (on both languages) differ, and where we
> might as well agree to disagree?

Well, I'm going to have to sit on the fence on that one.  :)

(Actually, when I started posting the other message, my intention
was to admit that I had hardly even tried to learn and apply Perl.  
I consider myself fortunate to have discovered Python just when 
I was considering Perl for an application which required a 
scripting language.  Perl, in this case (factory automation) would 
definitely *not* have been a better choice, even in your estimation.  
I've used a wide enough variety of languages, however, to know that 
it just wouldn't work for me.  I _do_ have an open mind about it, 
but that doesn't stop me proselytizing about Python. :-)


From emile at fenx.com  Fri Jul 13 08:14:30 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 05:14:30 -0700
Subject: PyZipFile
References: <25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10@posting.google.com> <9imotd$jrp8f$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9imovp$jdvue$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Whoops, where'd my response go?  ;-)

You're getting the error because you're not eval'ing source code, but the
contents of a pyc file.

If what you're trying to do is execute code stored in a zipfile python
archive, this should work:

exec(marshal.loads(p.read('pe/lang.pyc')[8:]))

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote in message
news:9imotd$jrp8f$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de...
>
>
> --
>
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
>
> ---------
> "gods1child" <alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10 at posting.google.com...
> > Why wont the following code work? Thanx.
> >
> > import zipfile
> > p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","w",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> > p.writepy("c:\\pe")
> > p.close()
> > p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","r",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> > eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> > p.close()
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "C:/pe/nest.py", line 6, in ?
> >     eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> > TypeError: expected string without null bytes
>



From fdrake at acm.org  Tue Jul 17 19:31:07 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:31:07 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010717233107.C0EAE2892B@beowolf.digicool.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/


Final update of the 2.2a1 documentation.




From christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com  Tue Jul 10 10:34:35 2001
From: christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com (Chris McMillan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:34:35 -0400
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <9if3fv$8r65@interserv.etn.com>

Thank you everyone for your imput!!  On a side note:  I would have loved to
use bash, sed, etc, but unfortunately I'm forced to use a Windows NT
machine.  I just thought this might be an excellent python exercise since
I'm in the process of learning it.

Thanks again,

Chris


Chris McMillan wrote in message <9id5p9$8r62 at interserv.etn.com>...
>Hello all!
>
>I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the first line,
>and then save the file with the same name.  Can someone please point me in
>the right direction?  Thanks!
>
>Why am I doing this you may ask: I have tens of data files that I need to
>strip the first line before I can process it in Matlab.  So, I dream of a
>script that opens every file in a directory, deletes the first line, .....
>
>Thanks,
>
>Chris
>
>




From gustafl at algonet.se  Wed Jul  4 11:10:55 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 15:10:55 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

> Your first statement should be either
> 
>     path = 'e:\\test\\test.txt'
> 
> or
> 
>     path = r'e:\test\test.txt'

Forgot to tell you one thing: I get these paths from user input (arguments 
to getopt.getopt()), so I have no control on this. Have looked for a 
function to convert a string to a raw string, but couldn't find any. I'll 
take a closer look on os.path now.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 22 13:55:10 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:55:10 -0700
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com>

Sheila King wrote:

> Thanks, Brian, but I've seen the docs many times. I need more info
> than
> that. Like example code, or source code.

The library reference quoted states pretty clearly:

	The root class for exceptions. All built-in exceptions are
	derived from this class. All user-defined exceptions should
	also be derived from this class, but this is not (yet) enforced. 
	The str() function, when applied to an instance of this
	class (or most derived classes) returns the string value of the
	argument or arguments, or an empty string if no
	arguments were given to the constructor. When used as a
	sequence, this accesses the arguments given to the
	constructor (handy for backward compatibility with old code). 
	The arguments are also available on the instance's args
	attribute, as a tuple.

This gives you a pretty effective specification for what a class derived
from exceptions.Exception should do; it should return something
meaningful in its __str__ method, support __len__ and __getitem__ for
indexing, and have an `args' attribute that contains the arguments it
was instantiated with as a tuple.

The Exception class itself does this.  If all you want is a different
_type_ of exception that you can key off of, then deriving from the
class and doing nothing with it (using `pass' as you did in your
example) is perfectly satisfactory.  If you want to do more, then you
can add extra methods as you need that use the value gained through
calling `str' or the `args' attribute.

What more did you need to know?

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ But since when can wounded eyes see / If we weren't who we were
\__/ Joi
    Rules for Buh / http://www.alcyone.com/max/projects/cards/buh.html
 The official rules to the betting card game, Buh.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 15:40:43 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 19:40:43 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996263093.23412.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m659r.jdf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:43:24 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:

> Multiplying by 1.0 preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0
> (of either sign) may not;

Why adding a negative zero may not? If 0.0+(-0.0) is specified to be
0.0, then I don't see where it breaks.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From new_name at mit.edu  Thu Jul 26 13:05:16 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 13:05:16 -0400
Subject: PYTHONPATH
References: <yrxk80vhc3u.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <etdofq7aaer.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Use this, inside python:

import sys
p = '/path'
if p not in sys.path: sys.path.append(p)

HTH
Alex.


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul  2 02:15:10 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 06:15:10 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>

>> def f(x):
>> x = x + (1,2,3)
>> print x

>A vast improvement: clear, unambiguous, and correct.  I can safely pass a
>list as an argument and not have it modified behind my back.

Eek. I finally got what everyone is talking about.

x += (1,2,3)

... is not the same as...

x=x+(1,2,3)

That's just plain wrong.


C//



From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 16:13:12 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:13:12 GMT
Subject: indetation problem
References: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <sR_77.30766$EP6.7917208@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Fuming Wang" <fumingw at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066 at posting.google.com...
> I am experiencing indentation problems when mixing tabs and spaces
in  my code.

Don't.

> Question: is this something new, or it has always been there.

Old, with long discussions, resulting in above advice and tabnanny.py
in utility directory of distribution.

 >It is strange that I have been using Python for several years, but
only
> notice this behavior recently.

Change editor?

Terry J. Reedy





From owen at astro.washington.edu  Mon Jul 23 12:57:36 2001
From: owen at astro.washington.edu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:57:36 -0700
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
Message-ID: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

I have a unix C library that reads some parallel port cards 
(asynchronously), processes the data and writes it files. I want to be 
able to call it from Python and would love some advice. My unix 
experience is somewhat limited, as is my experience writing C modules 
for Python.

The present C program works as follows:
- open the parallel port as a file-like device (and config with ioctl)
- allocate some buffers
- call aioread to start reading into one buffer
- call aioread to queue a read into a 2nd buffer
- repeatedly poll the aioreads; when one finishes,
  processes the data, deallocate the buffer,
  and allocate a new buffer and queue an aioread on it
writing works similarly

It would be nicest to end up with as little C code as possible (i.e. 
move most of this functionality into Python). Some of the processing 
would be better done in Python, and it's so much easier to debug and 
modify things in Python.

I think I can rewrite most or all of this directly in Python, but surely 
I can do better than simply replicate this code? It looks awfully 
complex. Is there A Better Way? Ideally, I'd like to start a read into a 
big FIFO, then check every once in awhile and process the data that has 
arrived. In other words, somehow treat the parallel port card as a 
buffered stream. Is this practical, or should I just bite the bullet and 
code up all that fussy buffer manipulation?

(By the way, the device does come with a library that allows setting up 
a circular set of buffers. This would save some of the fussing with 
buffers, though I have my doubts about aspects of the interface and it 
means using a custom C library.)

Any advice would be appreciated.

-- Russell


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Mon Jul 23 10:51:25 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:51:25 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m0alltk5e2bi97dde6ju0ok5ji0u2c4sek@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lm5h3.vqe.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <ta4nltkr6m4friraviemkhelo6hp4ttnn1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <230720010751255977%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <ta4nltkr6m4friraviemkhelo6hp4ttnn1 at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> What the hell is a decimal float, and where did they come from! They
> only exist, to my knowledge, in the sense of standard form/scientific
> notation.

Microsoft BASIC (at least for Macintosh) did them in 1985 (or 1984). 
There were two interpreters...one with a $ worked into the icon, for
the decimal form; one with a pi in the $'s location for the faster
binary floats.  [I've never used MS Basic on the Intel side.]

   --John


From wware at world.std.com  Tue Jul  3 07:39:29 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:39:29 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994132144.528.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GFwB1t.4DB@world.std.com>

Carlos Ribeiro (cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br) wrote:
> ...the problem in air traffic 
> control is *not* how to map airplane positions using radar input; is how to 
> calculate paths and coordinate communications with dozens, or even 
> hundreds, of airplanes, while following *very* strict safety rules that 
> tell how to solve conflicts that arise all the time. You have to manage the 
> queues for takeoff and landing, keeping everything in sync to make the most 
> of precious time.  ...there are several "lanes" in air 
> space, defined by the authorities. The use of the radio frequencies must 
> also be managed by the tower to make sure that there are not any undesired 
> interference between different airplanes...

This is a wonderful statement of the magnitude of a tough problem. One more
thing: In modern times it has become customary to maintain a geographical
database that tracks turbulence, depending primarily on reports from pilots.
Regions of turbulence move fairly slowly, so you end up with a gradually
shifting 3D representation of where the turbulence is, which helps pilots
avoid it.
-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net  Wed Jul 11 12:37:20 2001
From: vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net (Vincent A. Primavera)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:37:20 +0000
Subject: More CGI ?'s...
Message-ID: <3B45051300143CA3@mail.san.yahoo.com> (added by postmaster@mail.san.yahoo.com)

Hello,
	Is there a way to access each row's data from this text area with python's 
cgi module(cgi.FieldStorage to be exact...)?

<B>Notes:</B><BR>
<TEXTAREA NAME="Notes" ROWS=6 COLS=25>
</TEXTAREA>

	Thank you,
	Vincent A. Primavera



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 19 16:30:15 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> Many of us feel, I believe, that case insensitivity is such
> an affection.  Guido seems to be saying that he views it
> otherwise - that it is case sensitivity that is an affect.

I apologize for my poor English -- I don't know what you mean by "an
affection" or "an affect".  Consulting a dictionary didn't help, but
I'm guessing that you mean something that gets in your way when
programming.

> Which to me is the beginning of a real discussion.

Fair enough.  So let's begin the real discussion.

> Not meaning to be nasty at all, but these issues have 
> been on the table for quite some time - and I do think
> it a tactical error to try to trump deeper discussion 
> by pointing to selective anecdotal reports  from
> near random sources, taken out of any meaningful 
> context,  that happen to support a predilection.

Here we go again -- I had to use a dictionary to find out what
"predilection" means (it's a "preference").

Anyway, I wasn't trying to do anything of the sort -- I was indicating
I have a right to be torn over this issue, since strong arguments can
be made for both cases.

Several people whom I respect have strongly suggested that if Python
wants to appeal to non-programmers, it should be case-insensitive.
(Leaving apart details of how to implement that; I agree that it
should be case-preserving.)  Others, whome I respect just as much,
feel that it should be case-sensitive.

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of scientific evidence to help decide
this.  There may be old reports that case-sensitivity hurts beginners.
I know that many other designers of programming languages aimed at
non-programmers have consciously choses case-insensitivity
(e.g. hypertalk, REXX).

TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is case-insensitive.  I
can't find it on the web, but I bet the TeachScheme folks have a
rationale for this decision.

My own intuition and experience tells me that there seem to be two
kinds of people: some folks think case-sensitively, others think
case-insensitively.  Myself, I am a case-sensitive person, but I can
easily learn to work with case-insensitive systems.  It's possible
that most programmers have case-sensitive minds, but I think that most
non-programmers probably have case-insensitive minds.  And
non-programmers are quite the majority.  *If* there is any hard
scientific evidence that case-sensitivity is a hindrance to learning
to program (for most people), that would confirm my hunch.

It has been argued that making Python case-insensitive would be
"dumbing it down".  I find this a strange argument.  It doesn't take
any power away (as long as there's a way to link to external systems
that require case-sensitivity).  I see it as lowering the bar --
what's wrong with that?  (If you really feel that being a programmer
makes you part of an elite and you want to keep others out of that
elite, I pity you.)

It has been argued that case-sensitivity is a minor wart that's easily
explained.  I find that a weak argument.  Lots of minor problems can
be explained and gotten used to, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't
try to get rid of them if we can.  Historically, this argument has
been used as an excuse for poor compilers or linkers.

It's been argued that making string, String, STRING and StRiNg mean
the same thing makes for less readable programs.  I agree.  A good
programming environment should silently correct the case of
identifiers as you type to conform to the definition.  This also means
that you can still use different case conventions to hint about what
type of identifier it is, e.g. MACRO, Class, variable.

It's been argued that it's convenient to be able to write c = C(),
where C is a class and c is an instance of that class.  Surely there
are other conventions we can use.

To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul  9 14:55:34 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:55:34 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hdgcktgn4eksejt01vqa8k0g7k69ov1isj@4ax.com> <9icndo$loe$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <G6n27.8875$Y6.3005038@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Donn Cave" <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:9icndo$loe$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> Quoth Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com>:
> ...
> | [Snip: Guido's plan]
> |
> | This seems to me to be reasonable. While backward compatibility
> | is important in computer languages, the real problem occurs when
> | changes are abrupt. And in any case, we always have older versions
> | of the interpreter around.
>
> Sure.  For me, it looks like older versions is all we're going to
> have around.  Python is getting too complicated, has always been
> too slow (mainly startup cost), and now it's going to start breaking
> existing code in a serious way, for the sake of notions that are
> very debatable.

In my perhaps overly long-winded post Saterday evening ("2.2+==3000?"), I
tried to make three points.

1. The proposed code-breaking change is unprecedented in several respects.

>  I'm not saying "play my way, or I'm taking my
> ball and going" - I think I see the handwriting on the wall one
> way or the other.  The present offense is probably a blessing in
> disguise, since 2.0/2.1 is probably a better place to stake it
> down than a couple of versions farther down the curve.

2. We should recognize 2.1 (or perhaps 2.2, exactly which to be discussed)
as the end of the decade-long series of
no-code-break-except-in-extreme-circumstance releases and designate it as
the stable (and possibly maintained) 'older' version that, it has been said
several times,  we would 'always have around' to run 'old' code (or new
code written by 'old' pythoneers who choose not to follow all the changes).
The release that intentionally breaks code should be given a new major
number.

> It's ironic, just recently my department has started to think about
> supporting Zope on our web servers.  Of course I have been pitching
> Python as the greatest thing since sliced bread for 7 or 8 years,
> but my colleague, our main web server expert, was interested for a
> while but gave up on it fairly quickly, and one of the criticisms he
> levelled against it was that a new release will break all your code.
> Not my experience at all,  but how he will laugh to hear about this one.

3. While no-code break has been the promise and actuality for the 1.X
series of releases (which includes 2.0 and 2.1, which were bumped up for
legal/political reasons), Guide also stated years ago that he would give
himself more freedom to break code in a new major series, and that the
first change might specifically be to change int/int semantics.

> And now, if I'm obliged to bring in these new versions of Python after
> all, it probably will be because of Zope.
>
> Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu

Terry J. Reedy




From mirko.liss at web.de  Thu Jul  5 03:52:04 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:52:04 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <9hv4c301ts3@enews1.newsguy.com>
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de> <9hv4c301ts3@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <20010705075209.39021A0F.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

> "Mirko Liss" <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote in message
> news:20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE at niccolo.ke4.de...
> I was taught "shud" is a four-letter word, to be avoided
> in mixed company.

Once again, I've made a fool of myself.
I do that on a regular basis, 13 times a year.
Sorry to have bothered a newsgroup.

> In that case, most programmers' hopes are going to be frustrated,
> if most programmers are working in C.

You're right. I have to use tools like LCLint to get support 
for abstract types.


friendly regards,

Mirko Liss



From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Fri Jul 13 05:33:39 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:33:39 +0100
Subject: Question on nested scope
Message-ID: <3B4EC073.6D97E840@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

In Python 2.1:

>>> b=10
>>> a="b=b+11"
>>> def f(p):
        exec p
        print a
        print b

        
>>> f(a)
b=b+11
21
>>> b
10
>>> 

When exec "b=b+11", python can find the second b (10), why it generate
another b?

Cheers,
Xiao-Qin Xia


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 09:49:42 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:49:42 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] PEP: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
References: <3B4EE3C0.9875AB3D@lemburg.com> <072101c10b9d$a28068e0$0acc8490@neil>
Message-ID: <3B4EFC76.606FBC83@lemburg.com>

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> 
> M.-A. Lemburg:
> >    next_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
> >
> >        Returns the Unicode object index for the start of the next
> >        <indextype> found after u[index] or -1 in case no next
> >        element of this type exists.
> >
> >    prev_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
> > ...
> 
>    Its not clear to me from the description whether the term "object index"
> is used for a code unit index or an <indextype> index. Code unit index seems
> to make the most sense but this should be explicit.

Good point.

The "Unicode object index" refers to the index you use for slicing
or indexing Unicode objects, i.e. like in "u[10]" or "u[12:15]".
As such it refers to the Unicode code unit as implemented by the
Unicode implementation (and is application specific).

I'll add a note to the PEP.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 17:38:22 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:38:22 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
In-Reply-To: <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
        <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net>
        <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <15180.51022.393563.524245@beluga.mojam.com>

    William> When I start the daemon that does all the work with
    William> python1.5.2, it loads the pickle fine.  When I try to start it
    William> with python2.1 I get this:

    William> Traceback (most recent call last):
    William>   File "bin/momd", line 83, in ?
    William>     kserv = load(f)
    William> ValueError: invalid \x escape

Interpretation of \x escapes was tightened up in 2.0 I believe.  In versions
earlier than 2.0 '\xyy' is interpreted as the four-character sequence:

    \ x y y

In 2.0 and 2.1 the ValueError you see is raised because "yy" can't be
interpreted as a hex number.

I'm not sure what the solution is.  Someone with more pickle/string/
internals knowledge will probably have some ideas.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 24 17:16:08 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:16:08 -0400
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ug0bmjaef.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The popular vote is
> against the stupid float '/' operator.
> 
> MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!

(and)

> In message <20010724171838.A21770 at xs4all.nl>, Thomas Wouters
> <thomas at xs4all.net> writes
> ....
> >Robin, sorry, but you are wrong <wink>.
> >
> that's almost always true, but I think not in this particular case. I
> think the compatibility issue is of prime importance here.

I think this thread suddenly veered the integer division discussion
well off a reasonable track and in quite the wrong direction.

It's worth pointing out that placing more weight on the compatibility
argument (with which I happen to agree) does not imply either the
desired float '/' operator is "stupid" nor that Guido must be "wrong".
And name calling is never good form.

If the "leadership" were really "M" (e.g., malevolent, which BTW,
seems an awfully strong word to me), then stuff would just change and
break and we'd be discussing/complaining about it after the fact
rather than before the fact.  This discussion may be over the top far
too often, with far too much repetition, but there's still useful
snippets of discourse if you pick your way through it.

But let's not make the mistake of letting this get personal in any
way.  It's (or it should be) a technical debate.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Wed Jul 25 02:43:48 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:43:48 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <eppstein-6233D9.23434824072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <9jlo4v$rhbl$1 at sky.inp.nsk.su>,
 "Andy Salnikov" <salnikov at inp.nsk.su> wrote:

> >   int < long < rational < float < complex
> >
>   Just a comment: What bothers me is that floats in computers are not the
> same as R continuum im math. This makes me think that rationals are "better"
> than floats. Indeed, any float number can be exactly represented by
> rational, but not vice virsa.  So my tower would be like that:

The ordering is not by what is a "better" representation, or even by 
information loss, but by what is the most appropriate direction for one-way 
coercions.  Although one could convert float->rational without information 
loss, it would hardly ever be right to do so, because you are just making 
things slower without anything to gain in return: you've already lost your 
exactness and pretending you have it again won't make it so.  On the other 
hand int->long and long->rational are necessary to avoid overflow or 
truncation, and any of these ->float are reasonable to speed up 
computations where it is ok to be approximate.

So I completely agree with Guido's ordering.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Fri Jul  6 10:52:31 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 14:52:31 GMT
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <9i4jbf$g0m$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf at leo.logilab.fr>, alf at leo.logilab.fr 
(Alexandre Fayolle) wrote:

> On 6 Jul 2001 14:35:47 GMT, gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> >Have you tried
> >
> > server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1'))
> >
> >?  Dunno about xmlrpc, but it works with SOAP.
> 
> 
> I've just tried it and it doesn't work with xmlrpclib. :o(
> Which implementation of SOAP are you using ?  Maybe I'll switch to 
> SOAP, if it can solve my problem. 

SOAP.py, <http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywebsvcs>


                  Graham


From sylqme at nowhere.com  Wed Jul  4 16:46:55 2001
From: sylqme at nowhere.com (sylqme at nowhere.com)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 20:46:55 GMT
Subject: ____ Jenny's Pics  jenny.jpg (1/1)  8145
Message-ID: <3hL07.15904$t_5.82462@news.pacbell.net>

Great amateur shots of girls getting naked at mardi gra!!!


http://www.free-sexxx-hosting.com/Crazy_XXX_Pictures/





jstiboyyqiydyke



From emile at fenx.com  Tue Jul 10 08:10:39 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 05:10:39 -0700
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <3B4A7C91.44680652@ihug.co.nz>
Message-ID: <9ierk3$ig4st$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

This worked for me.  Win2ksp1, excel2k, Python 2.1

>>> import win32com.client
>>> xl = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>> xlc = win32com.client.constants
>>> xl.Workbooks.Open('test',Password='fred')
<COMObject Open>
>>> xl.Visible=1

What do you get when you try this?

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Matthew" <matthewm at ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:3B4A7C91.44680652 at ihug.co.nz...
> Hi everyone,
>
> A few more hours and my mind will be gone; burnt to a frazzle by this
> most annoying, frustarting problem.
>
> No matter what I try, I CAN NEVER get named keyword arguments to do
> anything via PythonCOM Excel automation.
>
> xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", Password='fred')
> profers no error. The xcel window opens with Password Dialog  opem. Type
> in 'fred' and s/s loads up. Named arg passed in call apparently ignored.
>
> xlapp.Workbooks.Open("D:\\Fred.xls", password='fred')
> generates error - Open got unexpected keyword argument 'password', so it
> seems to me that somethings going on with passed named args
>
> I've tried 10s of different xcel functions but with identical results.
> Named args do zippo. Spell a keyword arg incorrectly and you get
> reprimanded.
>
> I've tried under NT4/2000 with both ActiveState2.0 build 203 &
> ActiveState21.- build 210.
>
> What am I overllooking/missing? Please help before it's too late...
>
> Thanks, matthew.
>



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 12:37:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:37:23 GMT
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <KMV77.97$wf.3560@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>
Message-ID: <cpd76n7ikl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Paolo Invernizzi" <paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com> writes:

> Is that the reason why, for a major costumer tied with HPUX, we managed to
> use jython (since pre-alpha release!) instead? <wink>
> Seriously, jython is a wonderful alternative for HP

Thanks for the tip -- I'll keep that in mind.  It makes sense!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 03:54:08 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:54:08 +0200
Subject: module for CVS or RCS
In-Reply-To: <87elrpfqq2.fsf@wombat.house-net>
References: <87elrpfqq2.fsf@wombat.house-net>
Message-ID: <20010710095408.U8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:39:27AM +0000, Eric Holbrook wrote:
> is there a module for handling CVS (or RCS)? if so, where do i find
> it?

In the 2.1 source distribution, under the 'Demo' directory, there is a
directory called 'pdist' which contains some scripts and classes to work with
RCS and CVS. They aren't very robust, though. You might also want to look at
Greg Stein's ViewCVS, http://www.lyra.org/viewcvs, though I'm not sure if it
can be used as a module.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From spboulet at speakeasy.net  Tue Jul  3 22:51:06 2001
From: spboulet at speakeasy.net (Stephen Boulet)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 22:51:06 -0400
Subject: Access all classes in a directory, put into an array, and print them out
References: <mailman.994168205.8845.python-list@python.org> <9hsql302ghk@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9k4s5u.v3.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <tk54ovf2o14ede@corp.supernews.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:

[snip]
> People are just as capable of writing bad Perl code as they are of
> writing bad Python code.  You've heard of people writing this?
> 
>     for i in range(len(array)):
>         process(array[i])
> 
> Of course, once you know a little more it becomes:
> 
>     for item in array:
>         process(item)

Ok, how would you write this if you actually needed the index of array in 
your for loop?

My (ugly looking) solution; I hope there's something better:

i = 0
for item in array:
   process(item)
   someFunction(i)
   i = i + 1

-- Stephen



From gregj at pdxperts.com  Thu Jul 19 22:50:31 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 02:50:31 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost>
Message-ID: <X%M57.379696$p33.7613309@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>

"Patrick W." <hard2bsome1 at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> To get a better understanding of which languages it benefits us to
> learn and teach. Also to get a better understanding of which languages
> are best used in the "real world", given a set of tradeoffs between
> development time and program performance.
>
> Sounds reasonable enough to me.

Discussion of languages and their applications in teaching or professional
work is fine, I'm all for that. But how does comparing benchmarks of Perl
vs. Python help in that regard? Serious programmers know that such
discussions are often wrong, usually irrelevant, and about as useful as
comparing the speed of a Toyota Camry vs. a Honda Accord. The
less-than-serious programmers apparently find deep meaning in these
comparisons; apparently they believe they must find the "best" language
because they can learn and use only one.

The increasing number of postings comparing Python to language X is I
suppose a good thing: lots of people are kicking the tires and taking Python
for a spin. I think we should encourage that, but not by comparing execution
times of loops. We need to discourage the amateur programmer obsession with
"performance" and "efficiency" as if those attributes are all that matter.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From tony-clpy at lownds.com  Wed Jul 18 22:28:02 2001
From: tony-clpy at lownds.com (Tony Lownds)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 19:28:02 -0700
Subject: Python CGI speed on MacOS X
References: <johnca-1707011356260001@nop009.transbay.net> <mty9pm9ou8.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu> <johnca-1807011504080001@nop009.transbay.net>
Message-ID: <ad053a43.0107181828.53dcd925@posting.google.com>

Day-to-day use of Mac OS X can cause quite a load on your machine. 
What does uptime say?

[localhost:~/Linux] tlownds% uptime
 7:21PM  up  1:17, 1 user, load averages: 0.91, 1.17, 1.22

With that status (pretty quiet since Classic is running), my pystone
is:

[localhost:Python-2.1/Lib/test] tlownds% python pystone.py 
Pystone(1.1) time for 10000 passes = 2.96
This machine benchmarks at 3378.38 pystones/second

And the startup time is:

[localhost:Python-2.1/Lib/test] tlownds% time python -c "pass"
0.240u 0.020s 0:00.60 43.3%     0+0k 0+2io 0pf+0w

Finally try

setenv PYTHONCASEOK 1

And see how it affects the numbers above. I think I saw a difference
while my machine was under serious load, but not when it was quiet.

-Tony

(please cc: on replies)


johnca at DIESPAMmac.com (John Abbe) wrote in message news:<johnca-1807011504080001 at nop009.transbay.net>...
> In article <mty9pm9ou8.fsf at astron.berkeley.edu>,
> johann at leporello.berkeley.edu wrote:
> 
> > John Abbe writes:
> > 
> > > I'm running MacOS X on a PowerBook G3 400MHz, and have Python 2.1
> > > installed (from http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/).
> > 
> > I've got the same computer, and I do notice Python being a bit more
> > pokey than it should be.  I suspect some weird intereaction between
> > the Apple-patched gcc compiler and the Python source.
> 
> Maybe the 10.1 release of OS X will help.
> 
> Anyone else able to offer insights?


From brian at sweetapp.com  Thu Jul 12 03:58:18 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:58:18 -0700
Subject: Creating weak references from extension module
Message-ID: <000501c10aa8$69ef52c0$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

It seems like the weak reference module is less accessible from C than
it should be. I've been trying to figure out a good way to create weak
references from an extension module and it's not obvious. weakref_proxy
and weakref_ref are static so they are no goes unless I call them
through Python. 

Any reason not to add a nice function to _weakref.c that allows you to
construct weak proxies and weak references?

Cheers,
Brian




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 21:30:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:30:42 -0400
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com> <mailman.996237955.24731.python-list@python.org> <6q4rrytru4.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <3B6215C2.70B7CC36@engcorp.com>

Bernhard Herzog wrote:
> 
> Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> writes:
> 
> > ...  Programmers coming from languages where only
> > "|" existed were tempted to use that, but the priorities are so broken
> > that a==b | c==d is parsed as (a == (b|c)) == d.
> 
> Interesting that even a language designer with lots of C-experience can
> get this wrong :) | has in fact almost the same precedence as || and
> it's in fact lower than the comparison operators, so that a==b | c==d is
> actually parsed as the user expected ( (a == b) | (c == d)) so it even
> works as expected, although in cases where the operands are e.g. a
> normal int and a comparison this is likely to break down.
> 
> The problem with |'s and &'s precedence in C is that in an expressions
> like 0x0f == a & 0x0f, which seems to test whether the 4 lower bits of a
> are 1, is in fact parsed as (0x0f == a) & 0x0f.

But good C programmers, whether language designers or not, would 
write both of the above with parentheses to show clearly what the
desired precedence was.  They would not rely on the assumption that 
the next programmer to read the code would know C precedence rules 
perfectly:

 (a == b) | (c == d)

 0x0f == (a & 0x0f)

Whether or not "|" or "==" are correct is not my point;
that getting caught by precedence errors is just plain sloppy, is.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From zen at shangri-la.dropbear.id.au  Mon Jul  2 19:50:41 2001
From: zen at shangri-la.dropbear.id.au (Zen)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 10:50:41 +1100
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994100826.19440.python-list@python.org> <9hqoe8019j5@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b4116e1$1@mercury.its.rmit.edu.au>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

>Yep, the recordset part of ADO is undoubtedly the most popular single
>feature of it among us lazy programmers.  You can even disconnect from
>the DB and keep the recordset around, persist it to a file (maybe in XML),
>depersist it later... it's fun!-)

I'm preparing a PEP to address a few issues with the Python DB API
and an initial draft has been presented to the DB-SIG.

I'm unfamiliar with ADO. When you retrieve a recordset, are all
relevant tuples retrieved from the database (like the Cursor.fetchall()
method in the DB API)? Or is it a lazy object that only downloads
the rows when they are accessed by the application (like the Cursor.fetch()
or Cursor.fetchmany() methods in the DB API)?

Can you provide examples of things you can do using the ADO interface
(don't care what programming language) that are difficult to do using 
the Python DB API? Even if it is outside the scope of *this* PEP, I need
to understand peoples wishlists to ensure they can be integrated
in the future.

>> From this and also from my own experience with PostgeSQL queries from
>> Python, I could say that DB support in Python exists, but need enhancement
>> and standartization. Probably, higher level more or less common
>> object-oriented interfaces could help this.

>It seems to me the (DB API 2) standard is fine (maybe a bit too
>ambitious, so actual implementations may not have reached up
>to it yet?-).

The 2.0 driver implementations of the major databases seem fine to me.
One problem I notice with database tools is extremly rare for someone
to deal with more than three vendors RDBMS implementations, and generally
people only develop with one or two. 

>> I must also say, that I myself am completely satisfied with Python DB
>> support, but I do not use DB extentensively and routinely to judge.
>> However, I think that including some more DB support, at least for open
>> source databases like Postgresql and MySQL + ODBC/JDBC, could be a good
>> idea and will give a standard. (Yes, I know about Python DB API).

>And?  What's wrong with it?  What support would you get from ODBC,
>portably between Postgres & MySQL, that the relevant DB API modules
>don't supply?  Maybe we could supply an ADO-recordset-workalike on
>top of any DB API compliant implementation, that might be handy at
>times I guess.  But hardly a make-or-break thing, no?

>If I had a vote, I'd rather seen _Gadfly_ tuned up (out with regex
>and regsub, in favour of re; minimal-tolerance support of stuff it
>does not implement, such as NULLs) and made a part of Python.  It

I agree that it would be a benefit and worth a PEP if the
Gadfly author agrees and someone volunteers to do the
required tweaking.

I don't see a point in including drivers in the core for databases that
follow a different development cycle. Last thing we want is obsolete 
PostgreSQL drivers out there when a new version of PostgreSQL is
released. Although PHP manages to do this.... can any PHP users comment?



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 00:05:07 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:05:07 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995978334.29554.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <48hslt0se5agqnev0rt8d9nd632qmm3b8o@4ax.com>

On 24 Jul 2001 08:35:51 -0400, com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig) wrote:

>any people have argued that they would like to see the behavior from
>the PEP if Python were a new language.  I disagree.  I would prefer to
>see '/' defined as "exact division" and '//' defined as "truncated
>division" and have types that don't support either raise a TypeError
>if the types don't support the operation in question.  I think this
>parallels existing operations better.

I'd go further: '/' should be exact division, and "div" should be
truncated division, analagous to the way divmod works, except
without the mod.

C//



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 26 22:16:37 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:16:37 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
 "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

>    * Addition of a rational literal (PEP 240)? This one you could easily
> dislike a lot. But if your really super concerned about the evils of
> inexatitude, you'll probably like this more than I do.

Actually, I do dislike this.  Much as I find floats generally useless, I 
think that 0.666667 should return a float, and that if I want to write a 
rational literal I should be able to write it as 2/3.

Also it is odd that the abstract discusses modifying division to return 
rationals but that the rest of the PEP is entirely about what to do with 
decimal strings.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 11:30:11 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:30:11 +0200
Subject: Fetching multiple items from a list
References: <3B41B778.6BD422C1@nokia.com>
Message-ID: <9hsoe402duc@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
news:3B41B778.6BD422C1 at nokia.com...
> Why doesn't Python support fetching and setting multiple items
> at the same time for lists and tuples.

I don't know.  Too APL'ish?-)


> For example in the example below multiple fetching would be
> much better way than the ordinary way.
>
> >>> import string
> >>> mylist = list(string.lowercase)
> >>> mylist[18],mylist[15],mylist[0],mylist[12]
> ('s', 'p', 'a', 'm')
> >>> mylist[18,15,0,12]
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#23>", line 1, in ?
>     mylist[18,15,0,12]
> TypeError: sequence index must be integer
> >>>

The ordinary way of course is
    [mylist[i] for i in 18,15,0,12]
so it's not THAT bad, albeit SLIGHTLY more verbose
than mylist[18,15,0,12] as you would like.  But there
is no "set-multiple" equivalent to the way the list
comprehension provides a reasonably-handy get-multiple;
it does have to be a for-statement:
    for i, v in zip((18,15,0,12),'blah')):
        mylist[i] = v
or an auxiliary function:
def setitems(cnt, idx, val):
    for i, v in zip(idx, val):
        cnt[i] = v
to be called as: setitems(mylist, (18,15,0,12), 'blah').


Alex





From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Thu Jul  5 03:05:33 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 00:05:33 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <xll07.7615$B7.1404761@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107042305.114a9aab@posting.google.com>

grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote in message news:<xll07.7615$B7.1404761 at ruti.visi.com>...
> In article <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8 at posting.google.com>, Russ wrote:

FYI, my only access to comp.lang.python is through Google groups, and
they seem to update about once per day or so!

> >Just for the record, Mr. Park is publicly posting my private
> >replies to him. I guess I should have expected something like
> >that from him.
> 
> Ignore him.

You're absolutely right. I should have never responded to him. Note,
however, that he emailed his post directly to me. Then he edited and
posted my private replies, which were none too polite.

> >You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
> >application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a
> >critical mode for several years at least, during which time it
> >will be thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm
> >talking about more testing than you think. It will first be
> >used for years as a non-critical back-up for (human)
> >controllers before it is ever used as a primary means of
> >assuring separation.
> 
> My gut feeling is that if the system is done in C or C++ (for
> example) it is going to have to use dynamic memory allocation.
> Once you've taken that step, I don't think that Python is
> inherently more likely to have memory problems, and I think
> that Python is inherently _less_ likely to have many other
> types of bugs.

I have done real-time programming in C++, and I used static or
start-up memory allocation almost exclusively to avoid memory
management overhead. It really helps execution efficiency, but it
really sucks up memory. Memory is cheap these days, however. I would
probably take the same approach in Python, if possible. (As I said, I
am a Python beginner.)

> If this were a simple, hard-realtime system with response time
> requirements in the milliseconds, I'd stay away from Python,
> away from C++, and away from dynamic memory allocation.
> However, with response time requirements in the hundreds of
> milliseconds and a problem domain that probably requires
> dynamic memory allocation I think Python would be suitable.

The response time requirements are on the order of a few seconds or
so, definitely not hard real time.

> The introspection features could be very useful for automated
> testing, as could some simple instrumentation of the memory
> management functions.

Thanks for your insights.

Russ


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 11:18:15 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:18:15 +0200
Subject: Newbie asks: How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkm2bef90nsic1@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9if6bt011b9@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Steve S.L. Wong" <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk> wrote in message
news:tkm2bef90nsic1 at news.supernews.com...
> if (sscanf(command, "%d", &num) != 1 )  {
> }

try: num = int(command)
except ValueError:
    print "some error (or whatever)"

Actually this depends on the exact semantics
of sscanf -- the Python version will tolerate
whitespace on either side of the sign and digits,
but not other extraneous characters -- and it's
been a while since I sscanf'd something, so I
don't precisely recall what (if anything) it
will tolerate in terms of 'extraneous chars'.

But anyway, the general approach of try/except
is how you try a string->whatever conversion,
while ready to handle the case in which the
conversion cannot be performed correctly.


Alex





From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Wed Jul 25 11:59:17 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:59:17 -0700
Subject: question about handling pointers in C extensions
References: <9jkhdv$r3o$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <yv2lmld4fhg.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <9jmqcm$j5s$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>

In article <yv2lmld4fhg.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de>,
 Harald Kirsch <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote:

>>     /* convert device pointer to a Python Long object */
>>     py_dev_p = PyLong_FromVoidPtr ((void *) dev_p);
>
>This makes py_dev_p into a reference you own, therefore ...
>
>>     if (py_dev_p == NULL) {
>>         return NULL;
>>     }
>> 
>>     /* increment reference and return the PyLong */
>>     Py_INCREF (py_dev_p);
>>     return Py_BuildValue("O", py_dev_p);
>
>... neither INCREF nor BuildValue are needed.

Thanks for the save!!!

You and Chris Liechti both then go on to suggest creating a new Python 
type. I'm a bit confused here. This would create a Python class or an 
actual new Python data type? "Python Essential Reference" makes creating 
a new data type scary, but I haven't been able to figure out if that 
applies equally to creating a Python object.

Anyway, I'd love to convert my C interface to one that produces Python 
objects. The code would be much cleaner to use in Python. I'll have 
another look at it. If anybody has a pointer to simple sample code or 
documentation beyond "Extending and Embedding" and "Python/C API", 
please let me know. I figure I'll start with straight function calls 
(and associated icky pointers), get that working, then see if I can 
create Python objects.

-- Russell


From ehoute at nospamzeelandnet.nl  Tue Jul 17 18:26:30 2001
From: ehoute at nospamzeelandnet.nl (Ewald van Houte)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 22:26:30 GMT
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220>

xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.) wrote in 
news:8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b at posting.google.com:

> I just compared the speed of Python, Perl, Java, C
> to do simple numerical calculations. Python is the
> slowest: took 150 times of time than C, Perl about
> 60 times, Java is 4.5 times. 
> 
> The source code of Python is: (Other source are
> similar, all use while loop):
> 
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> i = 2.5;
> while i < 1e7:
>         j = 2.5 * 2.5
>         i += 1
> print i, j
> 
> The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
>      python script:     37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
>      perl script:     15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
>      java compiled:     1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
>      C compiled:     0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%
> 
> Can anybody explain why Python is always about 1 time
> slower than Perl?
> 
> Regards,

Tried the same with for loop and while loop

def f1():
    	i=2.5
    	while i<1e7:
    	    	j=2.5*2.5
    	    	i+=1
    	print i,j

def f2():
    	i=2.5
    	for i in range(2.5,1e7+1):
    	    	j=2.5*2.5
    	print i,j

def f3():
    	i=2.5
    	for i in xrange(2.5,1e7+1):
    	    	j=2.5*2.5
    	print i,j

Results
f1()     	34.5 seconds
f2()     	47.6 seconds
f3()     	18.8 seconds

some improvement but f3() will still be slower than Perl version (~30%)


From cgale1 at _remove_home.com  Thu Jul  5 03:10:53 2001
From: cgale1 at _remove_home.com (Van Gale)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 07:10:53 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <87lmm5dqjq.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net> <slrn9k5vo5.nv.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <ihJ07.84056$%a.3801959@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com> <slrn9k7c2n.ip.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <1qU07.86470$%a.3839546@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>

"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9k7c2n.ip.grante at tuxtop.visi.com...
> I find that extremely hard to believe: tools that read source
> code and verify execution timing?  Of multi-threaded apps with
> unsyncrhonized inputs?
>
> That would be pretty amazing.

The Software Productivity Consortium developed such a tool around 1989 or
so, but I'm not sure how it panned out.  I just went to their web site
(www.software.org) and see no mention of it... even as part of their Test
Automation Framework.  This means the tool is only being used by the
original Consortium members (almost all aerospace companies) who paid for
the development, or the tool sucked and it was thrown away :)  I have no
clue, and can only say it had a lot of PhD types working on it for years, it
did read source code, and it used "stochastic petri nets" in some way for
the simulation.  Sorry I can't explain it any more than that... I was only
working on lowly tools for network management and administation :)

Van





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul 25 00:22:04 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:22:04 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <6BL67.17641$EP6.4530210@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <slrn9lnc42.1qq.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9lnmfa.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9lrstg.8eu.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lsj2i.ptj.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Rainy <sill at optonline.net> dijo:
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:49:12 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> > Me parece que Rainy <sill at optonline.net> dijo:
> >> Well, I'm asking in a general way, i.e. why could there be no traceback or
> >> error? This is not right. I mean, if a program runs into a problem, it should
> >> print some sort of feedback, at worst, a segfault? I haven't run into cases
> >> like this before when *NOTHING* is printed. In general, what sort of errors
> >> just quit silently?
> > 
> > I would guess that it _is_ raising an exception, but it's caught at some
> > point up in the call chain by an 'except: pass' clause.  What happens
> 
> Nope, I looked for that..
> 
> > right before the invisible error?  What is it doing at that point?
> 
> I believe it was caused by termios.SOMETHING access which is good for
> 2.1 but in 2.0 it should be TERMIOS.SOMETHING. I still don't understand
> why it didn't give any error but I fixed that..

Does termios in Py2.1 automatically import the constants in TERMIOS?

No, hold on. Let me check...  Ah yes. TERMIOS is not deprecated.

-- 
Destinations are often a surprise to the destined.
    -- Thessaly, The Sandman


From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 19:59:18 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:59:18 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com> <3B5E1075.94167ECD@home.net> <3B5E45B7.2C4AE40@Lugoj.Com> <3B5EFAEB.1EB156B3@home.net> <3B5F098A.18E8B17A@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B5F5D56.CA77E656@home.net>

James Logajan wrote:

> Neither scheme is 100% perfect.

Surely true

> How about using several schemes, with the following precedence:
> 
> 1) The module contains a "UsesVersion" statement to indicate the operative
> version.
> 2) The python interpreter is started with a flag to indicate the version to
> compile with.
> 3) The module name contains a suffix to indicate the operative version.

This seems to violate the "only one way to do it" principle, but maybe
it's neccesary

> P.S. When feeding eval() a string, I'm pretty sure it only takes an
> expression; not a series of statements. You can't imbed a version statement.
> So if, as you claim, there is indeed a lot of people who have string
> snippets buried in databases or elsewhere that are evaled on the fly, then I
> think that a lot of conversion pain is inevitable.

You're right about eval(). exec() and execfile() do allow a series of
statements however, but you could certainly be evaling a expression with
a "/" in it.

Anyway, none of the "powers that be" seem to be paying any attention to
this thread, so this is my last post. Guido(in another thread) did
express some interest in the *.py3 idea, however. We'll see.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 15:20:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:20:11 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <S3317.3636$i8.392006@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

But "if x.isdigit()" might help speed it up (assuming 2.0 or later).

regards
 Ste e
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Michael Str?der" <michael at stroeder.com> wrote in message
news:3B44B031.819C93E at stroeder.com...
> Emile van Sebille wrote:
> > Or (without re):
> > print "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])
>
> I guess this one will be significantly slower for larger
> data sets than the re solution because of
>
>   if x in '0123456789'
>
> Ciao, Michael.




From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul 20 18:11:45 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:11:45 -0600
Subject: Case insensitivity
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D56C@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Fran?ois Pinard [mailto:pinard at iro.umontreal.ca]
> 
> [Guido van Rossum]
> 
> > TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
> > language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is 
> case-insensitive.  I
> 
> Did it change recently?  I thought Scheme was 
> case-insensitive.  An idiom I
> saw a few times in Scheme code, written by other people, is 
> writing `lambda'
> or `cdr' when you mean what it means, and `LAMBDA' and `CDR' 
> when you are
> quoting the same, for example when you write code which produces code.

You're correct:

  "Upper and lower case forms of a letter are never distinguished 
  except within character and string constants. For example, Foo 
  is the same identifier as FOO, and #x1AB is the same number as 
  #X1ab."

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/scheme-repository/R4RS/r4rs_4.html

-- bjorn



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sat Jul  7 15:45:47 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 21:45:47 +0200
Subject: PEP scepticism
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEOPKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEOPKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <20010707214547.L8098@xs4all.nl>

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 01:56:02PM -0400, Tim Peters wrote:

> BTW, in case newcomers are wondering, Guido didn't become BDFL by
> assassinating his predecessor, nor does he maintain Absolute Power by force
> of arms.  Although he's been thinking about it <wink>.

What, Eric finally got his hands on the time machine and transplanted
Guido's grandparents to the gun-lovin' Wild West ?! ;P

Dodging-the-laser-dot-ly y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 10 17:42:01 2001
From: glenfant.nospam at bigfoot.com (Gilles Lenfant)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:42:01 +0200
Subject: Adding timeouts to Internet sockets
References: <RBF27.212379$WB1.31341412@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9ifshm$19fi$1@norfair.nerim.net>

I did not have any problem with the latest versions I use for QOS oriented
python agents.

"John Copella" <jcopella at cfl.rr.com> a ?crit dans le message news:
RBF27.212379$WB1.31341412 at typhoon.tampabay.rr.com...
> How have developers added timeout behavior to Internet sockets in Python?
I
> am developing an application that uses ftplib, and I need to timeout if
the
> server is unavailable, etc.  I note that Tim O'Malley has a package out
> (http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py?i=87800233) that very cleverly and
> transparently does this (or seems to).  Has anyone used it?  My
application
> will be mission-critical, and I would prefer to use whatever is considered
> the current best practice.
>
> Please reply via email, as my access to newsgroups is limited.  Any help
on
> this matter is greatly appreciated!
>
> John Copella
> Aerologic Inc.
>
>
>




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 10 02:22:28 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 06:22:28 GMT
Subject: Help with reduce().
References: <3ur27.663627$166.13698874@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9kkjl5.oqr.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kl7p4.1c4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

10 Jul 2001 00:39:02 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> pisze:

> You can fold from the right or left, but don't worry about that now
> (in an eager language like python it doesn't make any difference
> anyway).

It makes a difference if the function is not associative.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Fri Jul 13 17:29:08 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:29:08 +0100
Subject: dictionary speed
References: <41899b99.0107121100.7b2c2cdc@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F6821.E1BF40E0@accessforall.nl>


"doug s." wrote:
> 
> hi all,
> 
> is there any speed differential to be aware or with nested
> dictionaries? that is, does the position of data matter. for example,
> if i need to access certain data quickly and often, is it best to
> structure things so that it is all near the top level?
> 

What precisely do you mean with 'nested dictionaries' and 'top level'?

The kind of speed up you can get by restructuring data structures
to access often needed data quickly is not normally needed in
a scripting language.
The easiest way to do that in Python would be
to use separate dictionary for faster access, ako. cache.

Regards,
Ype


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 16:40:15 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:40:15 -0500
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org>
	<cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
	<cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15174.8751.465954.910371@beluga.mojam.com>

    Guido> Picking div() means that we can still turn that into a keyword
    Guido> later (the keyword would be both a unary and a binary operator).

What would a unary "div" operator mean?

Skip



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:54:56 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:54:56 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Vk087.27863$B7.4280302@ruti.visi.com> <3B60A0ED.BAAFE3A9@Lugoj.Com> <uelr2er7q.fsf@cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <cpy9pa2zik.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

piet at cs.uu.nl writes:

> I wrote several parts of the CDC Cyber Algol 68 compiler (and later also an
> Algol 60 compiler) and we just moved the address of the following
> instruction to the stack (`manually') and then jumped to the procedure
> address. And of course we used 12 bit characters and the language was
> case-sensitive.

Our lives touched!  I used that Algol 68 compiler.  It also (very
indirectly) affected Python: that compiler had a very strong worldview
of its own that often didn't match that of other languages and tools
on the system, and that made it hard to mix tools.  I found this a
nuisance (ABC had the same nuisance even stronger), and when I
designed Python, one of my requirements was that it blend in with its
environment.  This explains why Python extensions are so useful.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From morneault at hanirc.net  Sat Jul 28 10:50:39 2001
From: morneault at hanirc.net (morneault)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:50:39 +0900
Subject: request mailling list
Message-ID: <NFBBKHHMELIEKPIAGEFOEEAECAAA.morneault@hanirc.net>

request mailling list

From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Tue Jul  3 12:09:47 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 11:09:47 -0500
Subject: py2exe & wxWin
Message-ID: <m2lmm6m1tg.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

Is it possible to use py2exe to package up a wxPython application?

Thanks,
	Greg


-- 
Greg Copeland, Principal Consultant
Copeland Computer Consulting
--------------------------------------------------
PGP/GPG Key at http://www.keyserver.net
DE5E 6F1D 0B51 6758 A5D7  7DFE D785 A386 BD11 4FCD
--------------------------------------------------


From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Mon Jul 30 11:36:31 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:36:31 GMT
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B657FA9.8A60D135@wwc.com>

Cameron Laird wrote:

> In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>,
> Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>                         .
> [stuff]

>                       .
> I've lost count--is WAP essentially
> dead now, or on the verge of utter
> world domination?

According to the Register, that would be 'dead':

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/20717.html




From caeshmer at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 15:48:59 2001
From: caeshmer at yahoo.com (caeshmer at yahoo.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:48:59 -0000
Subject: Question about compiled moduls and dlopen
Message-ID: <9j7djb+bd5l@eGroups.com>

I'm running Red Hat Linux 7.0, and I installed the RPMs for Python 2.1
from python.org.  I downloaded pygtk from Ximian
(pygtk-0.6.8-ximian.1) which uses python 1.5.2 as shipped by Red Hat,
and patched it to compile with /usr/bin/python2, put stuff in the
python2.1 directory, etc.  So I have both versions of python
installed, and two compilations of pygtk.  Everything works fine
except gdkpixbuf, which is a compiled module.  This is my test
program:

import gdkpixbuf

p = gdkpixbuf.new_from_file("/tmp/spicy.gif")
print p

Under python 1.5.2, it works fine, just loads the file, displays 
<GdkPixbuf object at 80cf920>, and exits.  But when I run it under
python 2.1, I get this error:

python2: error while loading shared libraries:
/usr/lib/gdk-pixbuf/loaders/libpixbufloader-gif.so: undefined symbol:
g_malloc0

What seems to be happening is that the libgdk_pixbuf library (which
the module calls into) loads .so modules of its own to handle
different kinds of image files.  I've used ldd on these
/usr/lib/gdk-pixbuf/loaders/libpixbufloader-????.so files, and it
shows that they aren't linked with libglib, even though they make
calls like g_malloc.  Any program that links directly with
libgdk_pixbuf would generally have to link with libglib, and I'm
assuming dlopen() could resolve g_malloc that way, but I don't know
what happens when you link a python module with libgdk_pixbuf.

I'm assuming something changed in python from version 1.5.2 to 2.1
that caused this problem, I just don't know what.  I noticed that
there are new functions sys.getdlopenflags() and sys.setdlopenflags()
in 2.2, and I'm wondering if they might help solve this problem
somehow.  Did the flags used to open a compiled module change between
1.5.2 and 2.1?

This is a problem that will have to be addressed at some point, and I
figure we may as well discuss it before 2.2 is finally released.




From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sun Jul  8 17:38:42 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 21:38:42 GMT
Subject: Good Newbie Books
Message-ID: <Cp427.655296$166.13566993@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Hello,
Does anybody know of some good newbie books for me to read? I have already
read Ian Van Laningham's "Teach yourself Python in 24 Hours" are there any
good books that kind of step me up (from the book mentioned before).

Thanks.




From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Tue Jul 17 16:07:10 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 20:07:10 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B53B339.B6698858@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7lfm.t2g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B543B6D.A97F2843@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l97dc.uqm.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> dijo:
> Tim Hammerquist wrote:
> In this case, more than anything else, the driving factor was
> the easy ability to wrap third-party DLLs (e.g. for a GPIB 
> interface card) with calldll and make a beautiful object-oriented
> wrapper to talk to instruments on the bus.  I knew I would
> be able to make a maintainable and flexible system which 
> newcomers (new developers that is) could learn to use easily 
> and continue growing.  At the time, putting a Tkinter
> interface on it quickly was an attractive option, although
> I've since halted work on that development path until we
> have time to retool around the web paradigm instead...

On this matter, we'd have both been reaching for Python.  I've done
(makeshift) OO in Perl and it was both shoddy and slow.

Python makes OO wrappers elegant and simple.

-- 
You're quite free to convert your strings to byte arrays and do the
entire pattern tree by hand in pure logic code if you'd like. By the
time you finish most of the rest of us will be doing contract work on
Mars.
	-- Zenin on comp.lang.perl.misc


From richard at stockcontrol.net  Tue Jul 24 09:50:09 2001
From: richard at stockcontrol.net (Richard Walkington)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:50:09 +0100
Subject: Debuger for python 2.x
References: <3B5D6C56.A951BDAE@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>
Message-ID: <995982609.10820.0.nnrp-13.3e31cb7a@news.demon.co.uk>

Piotr Legiecki wrote:

> Hi
> 
> I'm new to python and I'm writing my first python program. I'd like to
> use some nice debugger (like ddd, xgdb etc) but I can't find any for
> python 2.x. DDD has pydb but only for python 1.5.2. IDLE is not very
> helpful curently. Aby other choices?
> 
> I'm using debian/sid. What about pdb? I'v read that this is the python's
> standard debugger, but on my system there is no such a program.
> 

Hello,

I'm using Debian testing and Python2 from Debian packages and I have the 
pdb module. Its part of the standard distribution so you should have it.

Regards
Richard Walkington


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 13:50:32 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:50:32 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <08k0mtc2lftoon7eii2jo43qj1tt76256c@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <ILY77.27614$B7.4258235@ruti.visi.com>

In article <08k0mtc2lftoon7eii2jo43qj1tt76256c at 4ax.com>, maxx at easynews.com wrote:

>Because writing code is a completely different function than
>"normal every day writing." Learning to write code means
>beginners must learn to structure their thoughts, and organize
>tasks, so that their code is not a potential jumble of ideas,
>as normal every day writing can be.

I don't there's that much difference between writing code and
_decent_ "normal every day writing." If the person you're
teaching to program can't write a coherent paragraph, then yes,
programming is going to be different than their "normal every
day writing."

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  .. My vaseline is
                                  at               RUNNING...
                               visi.com            


From slash at dotnetslash.net  Wed Jul 11 17:01:12 2001
From: slash at dotnetslash.net (Mark W. Alexander)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:01:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Distutils] Package DB: strawman PEP
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.1.20010710220537.027b3f08@laplaza.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107111642190.8041-100000@llave.eproinet.com>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Mats Wichmann wrote:

> At 02:33 PM 7/9/2001 -0400, Mark W. Alexander wrote:
>  >On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
>  >
>  >> It seems time to bite the bullet and actually begin designing and
>  >> implementing a database of installed packages.  As a strawman to get a
>  >> focused discussion started, here's a draft of a PEP, with lots of
>  >> XXX's in it.  Followups to the Distutils SIG, please.
>  >
>  >I'm confused. Why? What does this give us that native package managers
>  >don't. How is it going to keep synchronized with package manager?
> 
> One problem is that native package managers don't make sense for
> everything.  I can't imagine wanting to even deal with many of
> the package managers out there for a smaller Python package. I'm
> not even convinced that one of the major entrants out there - the
> Windows one - does a reasonable job with dependencies, but I'm
> pretty ignorant there.  And even small packages - a few Python source
> files - might want to check for prereqs.

Uhm, ok, I'll admit in my (non)Windows-bias that I didn't consider
_that_ one. Although in my ignorant defense, I have to ask: Does
Windows have what we've come to think of as a package manager? I know
there's information in the registry, and that an installer can check
to see if required dependencies are installed, but is there native
support to prevent the removal of those dependencies once the
dependent package is safely installed. In my experience, if there is,
it doesn't work.

The issue that I have is that when you go to manage software on a
machine, any time there is more than one place software information
may be stored you never know what's there unless you look in both.
Once you've got multiple places, automation goes out the window.
Building a python-specific module-manager is fine from a single-system
viewpoint, but in an enterprise with large numbers of heterogenous
systems, managing another repository on every machine is a nightmare.

Mark




From graham at coms.com  Sun Jul  8 18:31:53 2001
From: graham at coms.com (Graham Ashton)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 23:31:53 +0100
Subject: time.strftime BUG?
References: <mailman.994491312.28840.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tb527.1692$h45.11400@news.uk.colt.net>

In article <mailman.994491312.28840.python-list at python.org>, "Roman Suzi"
<rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> >>> time.strftime("%Z", time.localtime(time.time()))
> 'MSD'
> >>> time.strftime("%z", time.localtime(time.time()))
> '+0000'

> While I believe the later should be:
> '+0400'

I'm a bit confused by this too.

ratchet% python
Python 2.1 (#7, Jun 24 2001, 18:32:35) 
[GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%z")       
'+0100'
>>> time.strftime("%z", time.localtime(time.time()))
'+0000'

What gets me is that (according to the way I read them) the docs say
the two satements above should return the same thing.

  strftime(format[, tuple]) -> string

  Convert a time tuple to a string according to a format specification.
  See the library reference manual for formatting codes. When the time 
  tuple is not present, current time as returned by localtime() is used.

--
Graham


From colin at meeks.ca  Thu Jul 26 08:42:52 2001
From: colin at meeks.ca (Colin Meeks)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:42:52 GMT
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <gfU77.83603$2V.18281499@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

Thanks all, that's given me all the info I need.

Colin

"Colin Meeks" <colin at meeks.ca> wrote in message
news:lSh77.64029$2V.13507417 at news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
> I have a list that comprises of First Name, Surname, Age
> The list looks something like
>
>
[["Mickey","Mouse","50"],["Stan","Mantz","3"],["Junior","Wilst","40"],["Kim"
> ,"Bean","15"]]
>
> How can I sort the list to rearrange it by either First Name, Surname, Age
>
> I believe I'd have to use a cmpfunc in the sort, but not too sure how to
> achieve the above.
>
> Thanks
>
> Colin
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.265 / Virus Database: 137 - Release Date: 18/07/2001
>
>


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.265 / Virus Database: 137 - Release Date: 18/07/2001




From teyc at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 31 19:06:28 2001
From: teyc at bigfoot.com (Chui Tey)
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 09:06:28 +1000
Subject: Python releases [was Long: Python Is Really Middleware]
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <9k7dho$19f$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au>

Truely insightful, especially the warning on creeping featurism.

There is so much 'new' technology abound nowadays that I would be very happy
if something remained invariant for a little bit longer. The rapid cycle of
python releases, some backwards incompatible means people have to be very
careful about upgrading lest it breaks their existing libraries, some which
they might not have written themselves.

How often should releases be? There probably could be two kinds of releases:

a) Petrified: Locked in stone. (1.52 is a classic example)

Both language and library are stable.

Libraries (official or third party) can be released against these in the
expectation that all python users would probably want to have a copy of each
petrified release installed. I say this coming from the win32 perspective
that a lot of extensions are already precompiled, and that is a definite
plus since it is a real time-saver. There is no reason why more third party
precompiled extensions can't be supplied for the more common platforms as
well. It's the m x n problem of the many platforms and the many versions of
python around.

This also helps people making RPMs or Debian distributions to decide what
versions to make available in their general releases.

People working on libraries can supply patches against these kind of
releases as a matter of priority, since they know that this is a widely
installed base.

Petrified releases could be perhaps a year or more apart and may break
backward compatibility.  But they break compatibility only once a year.
Programs written in these  releases do not need to import from __future__.

b) Stable Enhanced: These are the major releases that we have now - 1.6,
2.0, 2.1 and could break backward compatibility, but libraries using the new
backwards incompatible functions ought to import from __future__.






From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 00:54:54 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 00:54:54 -0400
Subject: pickling and methods
References: <25b2e0d9.0107041354.161f2cd3@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <IoS07.385$i8.213854@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"gods1child" <alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:25b2e0d9.0107041354.161f2cd3 at posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> When an object instance is pickled, is the byte-code associated with
> the object's methods stored with it? Or does Python pickle only the
> object type and state information ? for example if i have:
> class Class:
>     def function():
>        self.stateinfo = 'mystate'
>        pass # large amount of code here
>
> a = Class()
> b = Class()
>
> If i pickled a and b, would they both have the byte-code for the
> method 'function' or would they only have the class (Class) and the
> state information (stateinfo)?
>
> The reason for asking this is because I have a class which has a large
> amount of code in its __init__ method. Once the object is created,
> most of that code is pretty much useless. Many instances of this
> object will be pickled during program execution. If Python does store
> the function byte code with each instance of the object, I wanted to
> consider the space saving i might achieve by moving most of the
> processing code to a object-factory class instead which would return a
> light weight class which i can pickle.
>
> Even from a good programming perspective, i wanted to know your
> opinions of moving the __init__ code to a factory method in cases
> where the processing code is huge and is never used (not even while
> unpickling) once the object is instantiated.
>
When you unpickle an instance, it imports the class from the original module
in which it was defined. This is why you can't successfully pickle instances
of objects whose class is in the __main__ module: Python doesn't know where
to go to get their definitions.

You can therefore assume it keeps only the state information in the pickle.
Of course, if that includes references to other objects your pickle can
anyway end up larger than you think.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 17:33:35 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:33:35 -0500
Subject: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
In-Reply-To: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com>
References: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com>
Message-ID: <15187.23983.562368.858629@beluga.mojam.com>

    zooko> In searching for the source of the leakge today, I encountered a
    zooko> surprising behaviour of Python which I think may be a bug.  If I
    zooko> allocate a bunch of memory with a function like this:

    >>> blarg = {}
    >>> for i in range(2**13):
    ...     blarg[i] = [0] * (2**10)

    zooko> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:

    >>> del blarg

    zooko> then all the memory is freed up.

    zooko> But if I allocate memory and store a reference to it in a default
    zooko> argument to an inner function, like this:

    >>> def silliest_func():
    >>>     x = [0] * (2**10)
    >>>     def inner_silliest_func(x=x):
    >>>         pass
    >>>     return inner_silliest_func
    >>> 
    >>> blarg = {}
    >>> for i in range(2**13):
    >>>     blarg[i] = silliest_func()

    zooko> and then remove the references to this memory, like this:

    >>> del blarg

    zooko> none of the memory is freed up!

    zooko> Even stimulating the garbage collector, with:

    >>> import gc
    >>> gc.collect()
    0

    zooko> just returns "0" and the memory is still in use.

The garbage collector only considers containers (lists, tuples, dicts, and a
couple other types perhaps) as potential sources of circularity.  I don't
think functions are considered.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Thu Jul  5 09:20:02 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 08:20:02 -0500
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994321088.28026.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <73BAB27563390BFF.A4E251244196609E.C75D14D5EC085CDD@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.994321088.28026.python-list at python.org>,
A.T.Hofkamp <a.t.hofkamp at tue.nl> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Although not really happy about providing clues to some one that aims to make
>money from my suggestions, well, here it goes.
If it helps any, be confident that Dr. Mertz will
not be *making* money on this book; it might cover
a few expenses, though.
			.
			.
			.
>- Perform interaction with other programs (either existing other programs, in a
>  PyExpect-like way (there is not a PyExpect yet, is there?)
>  For new programs, I will use XML techniques to exchange data.
Actually, there is; see <URL:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=pyexpect+warsaw+group:comp.lang.python*&num=25&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=058AFBA1CD7F1621.791F88D00D532EC1.0128BF9429776D7B%40lp.airnews.net >

It's not in good shape, I believe.

Tcl-ers have offered to help make a new and better
Expect that'll be easy to integrate with Python.
It doesn't seem imminent, though; Pythoneers seem
to have other things on their minds.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From wheelege at tsn.cc  Sat Jul 28 02:12:43 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:12:43 +1000
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <9jstsl$6qlmd$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Message-ID: <037701c1172c$510a1660$0200a8c0@ACE>

>
> Dirck wrote:
> |> I just wanted to add a thank-you to Guido, for a terrific language.
> |> It really is a joy to write Python code.
>
> Yes, I agree.

  As do I!  Python is a magnificent language, and Guido still actively
developing the language is Good.




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Jul  2 10:51:28 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 10:51:28 -0400
Subject: `traiter' [was: Re: Is Python Dead?]
In-Reply-To: <slrn9k0o9o.pc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
	<slrn9k0o9o.pc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <oqpubjtmdr.fsf_-_@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Gerhard H?ring]

> PHP is IMHO even worse a programming language than Perl [...]

When I needed dynamic Web pages, I took a few days to see things available
in Python, and many things I found indeed.  From simple things (sometimes
quite clever) to the ambitious ZOPE.  I also looked at SSI, and various other
avenues.  Despite PHP has many good ideas, I was rather rebuked by the
aspect of the language.

I merely decided to make an ad hoc tool for my Web designers, inspired
from Python for the overall flow of preprocessing conditional and loops,
but also allowing tight Python for more serious tasks, database access,
and such.  I called my tool `traiter', short of a better name; I wrote the
first draft in half a day.  I polished it afterwards as needed, probably
a few weeks overall.  It has been very satisfying to us so far.

Since the tool was essentially simple, I did not thought about publishing it,
as I presumed others could also do similar things as fast as I did this one.
In fact, I acquired the opinion at the time that Python is just the proper
tool for implementing dynamic Web pages simply, and that it was probably
not worth debating the virtues of similar tools, nor harassing potential
users with such debates.  (I keep ZOPE aside as a notable special case, as
it is a whole framework, not just a quickly made tool like mine and others'.)

Yet, sometimes, I wonder if I should not document `traiter' and make it
available, just as a kind of reply to those who seem do consider Python
bad if they have to write a few lines of it to get their Web job done! :-)
Documenting `traiter' does not attract me much, as my actual users do not
read English.  I should at least write French documentation.  Currently,
my users just walk in my office when they have a question or a need...
Documenting `traiter' would be more about its setup, and the good tricks that
make it so useful, as these are usually not apparent solely from its code.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From guido at digicool.com  Sun Jul 15 13:29:24 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 13:29:24 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 15 Jul 2001 10:15:28 PDT."
             <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> 
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> 
Message-ID: <200107151729.NAA00455@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> > Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
> > comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
> > non-parsing tools like editors to find it?
> >...
> 
> Parsing tools do need it. The directive changes the file's semantics.
> Both parsing and non-parsing tools need it.

I understand that.

> I could live with a comment but I think that that is actually harder to
> implement so I don't understand the benefit...I'm still trying to
> understand what tools we are protecting. compiler.py can be easily
> fixed. The real parser/compiler can be easily fixed. The other tools
> mostly take their cue from one of these two modules, right?

I disagree with the first sentence -- I believe a comment is easier to
implement.  The directive statement is still problematic.  Martin's
hack falls short of doing the right thing in all cases: you can't have
the first statement of your program be "directive = ..." or
"directive(...)".

Another argument for a comment: I expect there could be situations
where you want to declare an encoding that doesn't affect the Python
parser, but that does affect the editor (e.g. when you use the
encoding only in comments and/or 8-bit strings).  A comment would
back-port to older Python versions; a directive statement wouldn't.  I
don't know how important this is though.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 10:19:47 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 16:19:47 +0200
Subject: Calling C++ objects
References: <3B542819.955186A2@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <9j1hi502tmu@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Sven ?string" <s.ostring at ccsr.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3B542819.955186A2 at ccsr.cam.ac.uk...
> Is there an interface for calling C++ classes in Python, with access to
> class members and methods?

http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/index.html


Alex





From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul  4 18:28:36 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 18:28:36 -0400
Subject: python-mode and py-python-command
References: <mailman.994273447.25005.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdpubgz5uz.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

I think you're doing the right thing, but you have to try the new
setting out with a new emacs.  python-mode.el doesn't use the
value in py-python-command directly, but passes it into some other
variables, so just changing it will have no immediate effect.

Alex.


From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 20 17:27:34 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:27:34 -0700
Subject: string random generator (Sorry if too stupid, but i am a beginner)
References: <mailman.995649097.17940.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58A246.E3FFD805@home.net>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
>   import random, string
> 
>   def randomWord(length):
>       res = ''
>       for i in range(length):
>           res += random.choice(string.letters)
>       return res

This will work, if you only want letters, which I think is not the case.
Also, strings are immutable, so the += is creating a new string each
time you add a letter, so it will be a little slow.

The short answer is: chr(), which converts an ascii code to a string
character, so you can what you did above:

import random
def strrnd(n = 24) :
      result = []
      while n :
              n = n - 1
              result.append(chr(random.randrange(1,255,1)))
      return "".join(result)

You can change the range, if you only want letters. Using a list means
that the list is added to rather than re-generated, which I think is
more efficent. The "".join means that you want to join the individual
strings together, putting an empty string between them.

A "for i in range(n):" loop might make more sense, and A niftier (and
probably faster) way to do it is with list comprehensions:

def strrnd(n = 24):
    return "".join([chr(random.randrange(1,255,1)) for x in range(n)])

> > From: Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios 
> > Another problem: This function will be called thousands of 
> > time a minute, so performance is a definitive requirement.

If the strings you are generating are long, performance may be an issue,
in which case, you can check out the Numeric package: 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy

then you could do:

import RandomArray
def strrnd3(n = 24):
    RandomArray.randint(1,255,(n,)).astype('c').tostring() 

RandomArray is a module that provied functions for generating arrays of
random numbers, randint generates an array of random integers,
astype('c') converts the integers to Characters, and tostring() converts
the array to a Python string. Presto.

I did a little time test with various methods. Here it is:

import random, RandomArray

def strrnd0(n = 24):
    res = ''
    for i in range(n):
        res += chr(random.randrange(1,255,1))
    return res

def strrnd1(n = 24):
      result = []
      while n :
              n = n - 1
              result.append(chr(random.randrange(1,255,1)))
      return "".join(result)

def strrnd2(n = 24):
    return "".join([chr(random.randrange(1,255,1)) for x in range(n)])


def strrnd3(n = 24):
    RandomArray.randint(1,255,(n,)).astype('b').tostring() 


# now a time test
import time

start = time.time()

functions = [strrnd0,strrnd1,strrnd2,strrnd3]

N = [5, 25, 100, 1000]
for n in N:
    print "n = %i"% n
    for func, i in zip(functions,range(len(functions))): 
        start = time.time()
        for j in range(1000):
            str = func(n)
        print "The %ith function took %f seconds"%(i,(time.time() -
start))

Running it on my machine I get:
n = 5
The 0th function took 0.340676 seconds
The 1th function took 0.369182 seconds
The 2th function took 0.365142 seconds
The 3th function took 0.375739 seconds
n = 25
The 0th function took 1.570712 seconds
The 1th function took 1.721119 seconds
The 2th function took 1.732749 seconds
The 3th function took 0.403911 seconds
n = 100
The 0th function took 6.188933 seconds
The 1th function took 6.752507 seconds
The 2th function took 6.349224 seconds
The 3th function took 0.579671 seconds
n = 1000
The 0th function took 64.490783 seconds
The 1th function took 66.025794 seconds
The 2th function took 63.856450 seconds
The 3th function took 1.352100 seconds

So:

1) using  strings is in fact a little bit faster than using a list (but
only a tiny bit), this surprised me.

2) using list comprehensions is no faster than looping, in this case.

3) Numeric is about the same for very short strings, and MUCH faster for
long strings.

Numeric is a wonderful package...oh when will it be included in the
standard library!

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 01:15:06 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:15:06 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
In-Reply-To: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107100913100.3857-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Steve S.L. Wong wrote:

>while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
>}

Pribably:

import string

# ...
for command in string.split(line, ";"):
  # ...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "<CTRL>-<ALT>-<DEL> is the key to success" _/




From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Thu Jul 12 02:26:52 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:26:52 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3B4C96E8.668FB82A@kst.siemens.de>
Message-ID: <yv21ynm4q8j.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Richard.Suchenwirth" <Richard.Suchenwirth at kst.siemens.de> writes:

> Harald Kirsch wrote:
> ...
> > 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
> >    SOLUTION: ???
> > 
> > An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> > 'A<A>B', which it should.
> > 
> > With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> > this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
>  
> Maybe I don't understand the exact problem, but wouldn't
> 
> regexp  {(<A>)B} foo<A>Cbar<A>B -> matched
> 
> fulfill task 2?

Ooops, yes. Sorry, I stripped the example down too much. The typical
application is of course that you want something resembling

  <A>(.*</A>)

being part of a larger regexp except that the parenthesized expression
shall be the shortest match found, i.e. '.*' may contain every string
but "</A>". I insist in `part of a larger regexp' since otherwise a
step by step approach would still be easy to perform. (Yes, I *have*
an application for that :-<).

  Harald Kirsch

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From bokr at accessone.com  Wed Jul 18 14:23:31 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:23:31 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995402972.3112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b55d56a.2252257755@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:47:32 -0600 (MDT), Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>regarding...
>
>> >Generally:  #<magic> <directive> [<arguments>]
>
>or as I should have written it...
>
>#<magic><directive> [<arguments>]
>
><...>
>> I withdraw my #!pragma (or #!pythma ;-) suggestion and propose
>> r'^\s*#pragma\s' as the magic line prefix regular expression.
>
>Why is "pragma" better <magic> than " ## ", or some other sequence of
>non-word characters?
>
>I would think that using any *word* as the <magic> is just asking for
>trouble; someone is bound to have done (or normally does) a
>block of comments where there is no space between the "#" and the
>first word of the comment (iirc, emacs handles comments in such a way
>that "#comments" is the right thing to do in some cases)... is the
>word "pragma" now illegal as the first word in such a comment, what
>does this do to any tools that automatically turn arbitrary text into
>comments?
>
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##
#
# Ok, I'm not married to pragma. But the <magic> should be less
# likely than " ## " and unique enough to grep well ;-)
#
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ##

If there are tools (not to mention the interpreter itself) dependent
on current syntax, perhaps the file should not be modified at all?

I.e., keep the unicode and other special file attributes or processing
directives separate, but associated, as brought up by David Eppstein.

See my other recent post in this thread for a couple alternative ideas
along those lines. There could be some real benefits to separation.

Separation would factor pre-processing out of the internal file context,
and open the door for other kinds of per-file pre-processing like
decompression etc., which have nothing to do with the python language
definition itself, yet which could be controlled as files are accessed
by the interpreter for its processing.




From t-weh at online.no  Fri Jul 27 13:15:04 2001
From: t-weh at online.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:15:04 +0200
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com> <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de> <mailman.996167570.6366.python-list@python.org> <9js13u$c80$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <4Jh87.1292$e%4.30029@news3.oke.nextra.no>

> - a Medusa-based soap_handler that does HTTP/1.1 server-side

A quickie: Doesn't medusa provide far better performance than
BaseHTTPServer?  Does anybody know?
Benchmarks would be nice, testing with several concurrent clients etc. How
capable is BaseHTTPServer and the other standard python libs. for this kind
of thing? How capable are they in general? Just for testing or do they work
"under pressure" too? It would be great cuz they're really simple to use.

( Ng Pheng Siong, you're a life-saver. This is exactly what I need. Thanks!!
:-))

Thomas




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 24 16:37:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 16:37:14 -0400
Subject: Evolving Python and PEP238
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <ur8v79x9d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <mailman.995995091.14349.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u4rs2t66d.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:

> I notice that people keep mentioning Python 1.5.2. That was a
> particularly popular release of Python and people seem not to care much
> about releases before that.

I don't think that's it.  I think that due to the length of time that
1.5.x was available that it simply became the prevalent installed base
version.  1.5.2 in particular seems to have hit the sweet spot in
terms of remaining unchanged for a significant period of time during
which Python usage was ramping up quickly - thus it became the version
most commonly in use.  Since most of the references to 1.5.2 are in
relation to backwards compatibility, it makes sense that the most
deployed version would be used.

> Now consider if Guido says: "I'm going to be changing a behaviour that
> was deprecated in 1.4 and has issued a warning since then. Any
> complaints?" Would anyone here complain? I doubt it. The offending
> feature would have been expunged from the collective consciousness so
> long ago that people would not even remember it.

And so?  That's not apples to apples, since here we're talking about
changing a feature in a commonly in use release today, not a release
that was already replaced many years ago.  And we're talking about
just introducing the warning for a short period (relative to the
longevity of 1.5.2) and not a warning that already existed.

And BTW, sure, if I was using 1.4 in my deployed base I'd be
complaining about the above hypothetical case just as much and for the
same reasons.

> So the backwards compatibility question is a function both of how severe
> the change is and *how quickly it is made*. 

Add on "and how big a deployed base is impacted", and I'd agree.

> Python is around 11 years old. If Guido had embarked on this PEP238 path
> 7 years ago, the backwards compatibility problem would also have been
> severe for the code created in the first 4 years but by now most people
> would not know or care about the fact that there was 3 or 4 year period
> where divisions had to be migrated over slowly. Today, the period of
> transition would be merely a mythical historical event like the Great
> Usenet Reorganization.

Maybe - or maybe these same arguments would have been held at the
time, albeit with a much smaller user population, which might have had
an easier time adapting.

This is no different than changing any other deployed system.  I have
a much easier time making changes in my system when it's still in
development on my desktop, to when I have one customer, to 10
customers, and so on.  By the time I have hundreds or thousands of
locations, changes by necessity have to take that into account.

Does that mean that the threshold for making a change (even if good on
its own merits) needs to take into account my deployed base.  You
betcha.  Does that mean there's a higher hurdle for justifying the
same change later in the development cycle than at the beginning.  Yes.

Does that mean you'd never make a backwards incompatible change?  No,
but it's far harder to justify when you've got a lot of systems out
there.

> It is one thing to argue that this change is not the right one. I
> disagree but we can cover that in another discussion.

And which, as I mentioned earlier, in the abstract I might agree, and
certainly wouldn't have minded if this was how division was defined
initially.

>                                                       It is another
> thing to say that Python is a language that can only accumulate warts
> and never remove them. I think that that is an unnecessarily defeatist
> attitude. The mechanism for making "big" changes is well-defined and
> entirely workable. It merely requires patience and a sense that Python's
> future is important enough to have a long-term plan.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to make changes or fix warts.  I
do however feel that the justification for making such a change needs
to be stronger the more impact to an installed base such a change has,
and as you pointed out above, dependent on the scale/impact of the
change, and the time factor.

Much of this debate is how various people weigh these factors in the
overall equation.  As a person who has to maintain a large distributed
system, I will naturally weigh backwards compatibility (particularly
for a change like this that will eventually just break old code - it's
not a forward evolution but a retroactive one) heavily.  When I
compare that against the benefit of fixing this wart, I don't see as
overall beneficial enough.

That may not match what others think - thus the rather extensive
"discussion" :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Mon Jul 30 15:55:13 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 21:55:13 +0200
Subject: Debug your python code in emacs.. 
Message-ID: <m3zo9m9opq.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

How is the status on debugging python from within GNU-Emacs?? Wolfgang
Weitz created a pdb-mode for xemacs (can be found at www.python.org),
and I modified it a while ago to work with GNU-Emacs..

Am I the only one who have been missing it for GNU-Emacs?? 

Maybe something to try to squeeze into the python-mode.el??

        /Andy

p.s. you can find it at http://flognat.myip.org/hacks if you want to
        try it out.

p.s.2 Did some more digging, hey I did this 1997, old stuff.. was it
Python 1.3 then or? :-)


From brendano at stanford.edu  Wed Jul 25 02:46:32 2001
From: brendano at stanford.edu (Brendan O'Connor)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 06:46:32 GMT
Subject: HOWTO: exit
References: <mailman.995826636.14065.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cXt77.49466$k33.5017307@typhoon.kc.rr.com>

Vonlia wrote:

> Hi,
>      Sorry, I know this will be easy and I'm making alot of noise, but
> how do I exit from a script?  I was hoping for something like sh's
> `exit' command...Once again, sorry, I just got into the python thing
> (long time Monty Python liker, though C-:)
> 

import sys
sys.exit()

Enjoy.
--Brendan 



From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 13 20:15:32 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:15:32 GMT
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <EaM37.467538$eK2.97297642@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>



"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953783.6278.python-list at python.org...
> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
>
> >>> 1 < "aaa"
> 1
>
> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types as
> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
> produced.
>
> This one tripped me up in an assert statement for a couple of hours.  The
> assert statement was returning true when it should have been false to give
> me a warning that there was a problem.  It was something like:
>
> lengthA= 3
> lengthB= "2"
>
> assert lengthA <= lengthB
>
> and was returning true
>
>
> It would have been *much* more helpful if it told be that I was comparing
> objects of different types.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gordon Williams
>
>


I agreed with you completely,...until I thought of a good use for the
'consistent but arbitrary' result of such comparisons.

Suppose you want to use a list to represent a heterogenous set.  You don't
care about the order of things, but you want to know if two such sets are
the same.  You can sort a list of heterogenous types, and although the
resulting order may be 'arbitrary', at least it will be 'consistent'.  That
is, two lists that have the same elements in a different order can be
sorted, and then compared element-wise:


def equal(a,b): return a==b
def both(a,b): return (a and b)
def samelist (L1, L2):
    return reduce( both, map(equal,L1,L2), 1 )

def show_compare(a,b):
    print 'a=', a, 'b=', b
    if samelist(a,b): print 'ARE the same'
    else: print 'are NOT the same'

a = [ 1, 'one', 2, 'two' ]
b = [ 1, 2, 'one', 'two' ]

show_compare(a,b)

a.sort(); b.sort()
show_compare(a,b)


OUTPUT:

a= [1, 'one', 2, 'two'] b= [1, 2, 'one', 'two']
are NOT the same

a= [1, 2, 'one', 'two'] b= [1, 2, 'one', 'two']
ARE the same


Without the ability to compare, and therefore sort, a heterogenous list, it
would be much harder, (or at least slower?) to do this.






From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 13:05:24 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 10:05:24 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <mailman.994171325.16238.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hsu0k$smr$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <mailman.994171325.16238.python-list at python.org>,
Kemp Randy-W18971  <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote:
>From: Steve Holden [mailto:sholden at holdenweb.com]
>>"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
>>news:mailman.994164845.2688.python-list at python.org...
>>>
>>> Roses are red,
>>> and violets are blue,
>>> I program in Python,
>>> and so can you.
>>
>>Roses are red
>>Violets are blue
>>Everyone knows
>>Four into nine gives two
>
>You forgot the fraction,
>A quarter infraction (in fraction, get it),
>This error in Python,
>Would deserve drastic action.

Burma Shave
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From fluxent at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 11:41:20 2001
From: fluxent at yahoo.com (Bill Seitz)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 08:41:20 -0700
Subject: SQL-SELECT against View via ODBC?
References: <e2491a75.0106251209.c19d5e@posting.google.com> <2l%Z6.22470$g4.740189@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <e2491a75.0107020921.3a773de2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <e2491a75.0107050741.5a5de728@posting.google.com>

I installed mxODBC, and confirmed that it does not have this bug, so
my problem is solved. I just have to pay for mxODBC now...

fluxent at yahoo.com (Bill Seitz) wrote in message news:<e2491a75.0107020921.3a773de2 at posting.google.com>...
> I established that the "cause" of the problem is that one of the
> tables in my view has a Text field. It's the last field in the base
> table, so those queries always worked fine. When I built the view, it
> was no longer the last field, so the error reared it's ugly head.
> 
> Does anyone know whether mxODBC has this bug? The person who led me on
> this discovery thought so, but wasn't too sure...


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:19:39 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:19:39 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org> <9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu> <yAm27.8553$Y6.2987762@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <slrn.pl.9kjuov.nlq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <cpzoabh7pf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:19:10 GMT, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> pisze:
> 
> > I thought the desire was/is to have an operator which just preserved int /
> > int -> int.  But I have never seen it specified whether float div whatever
> > would be an error or have the current meaning (in which case confirmation
> > would not be necessary).
> 
> I would prefer it to mean integer division of fractional numbers, e.g.
>     1.3 div 0.3 == 4
>     1.3 mod 0.3 == 0.1
> 
> The question whether div should return int or long (or even fractional
> with integral value) becomes irrelevant when ints and longs are unified
> (even if "unified" means that operations on ints return longs instead
> of raising overflow, keeping types distinct).

Indeed, x div y (or x//y, or div(x, y)) will be defined as
divmod(x, y)[0].  This is already defined for floats and returns an
integer value with a float type.

By the way (this is for Terry :-), int/int in Python does not do the
same as it does in C for negative operands.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From anapraxis at yahoo.com.au  Fri Jul 20 01:57:04 2001
From: anapraxis at yahoo.com.au (Patrick W.)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 15:57:04 +1000
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost> <X%M57.379696$p33.7613309@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <87ofqgdtxr.fsf@ivory.localhost>

"Greg Jorgensen" <gregj at pdxperts.com> writes:

> "Patrick W." <hard2bsome1 at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > To get a better understanding of which languages it benefits us to
> > learn and teach. Also to get a better understanding of which languages
> > are best used in the "real world", given a set of tradeoffs between
> > development time and program performance.
> >
> > Sounds reasonable enough to me.
> 
> Discussion of languages and their applications in teaching or professional
> work is fine, I'm all for that. But how does comparing benchmarks of Perl
> vs. Python help in that regard? 

OK, crossed purposes here.

I thought you were dismissing the potential usefulness of quantitative
language-comparative studies in general. You weren't.

> Serious programmers know that such discussions are often wrong,
> usually irrelevant, and about as useful as comparing the speed of a
> Toyota Camry vs. a Honda Accord.

Sure. If you're talking about the merits of comparing the speed of a
loop that doesn't do anything useful in any language, I agree totally.

I think there's a bigger issue though. (I know you don't disagree, I'm
just explaining what I had in mind).

We (the industry as a whole) are bogged down by the choices we've made
in the past. We used languages that may or may not have been the best
ones available at the time, and now we have huge systems that we can't
afford to abandon or rewrite. So you're right. Most programmers don't
get to choose the language they work with.

Going forward, the main value I see in comparative language studies is
that we have a chance of making smarter decisions for NEW
projects. Instead of rushing headlong into the next Java-like novelty,
we could take stock of what we know, put a few assumptions to the
test, and start improving what we already have and/or use it in better
ways.

To do that properly, it would be useful to have some *real*
benchmarks. Not timed loops, but real tasks performed by equivalently
experienced programmers in different languages, to see which ones (if
any) consistently lead to the most robust, timely and cost-efficient
solutions - in practice.

The results may not be consistent or repeatable (which is the whole
point of experimenting). But if they are, it will be a *major*
discovery.

Personally, I'd be very curious to find out whether my intuitions
are quantitatively verifiable. (As yet, I only have gut feeling to
judge by).

The way I see it, only three languages (or families of languages) are
really necessary :

1. A simple low level language, capable of generating code that
   extracts maximum efficiency from the CPU, suitable for space and
   memory constrained architectures, etc. C has stood the test of
   time. It works.

2. A Lisp-like language for higher level logic. Able to clearly and
   concisely represent any kind of data structure or
   algorithm. Extensible through the mechanisms of its own
   semantics. Able to generate code that generates code. Able to read
   its own code as data, and output data as code. Able to assimilate
   any programming paradigm without torturing its simple syntax.

3. Another language, similar to #2 in its expressive power, but with
   infix notation for convenience. (Hard to go past Python or Dylan).

A programmer who has these tools in his arsenal is capable of anything
his brain can handle. No single programmer is ever going to be able to
cover all the intellectual ground in terms of domain-specific
knowledge or specialist skill, but it should be possible for any
person to master the *means* to do so.

So, to me, these studies are potentially *very* valuable. (Value
measured in life-years, dollars and brain cells).

> The less-than-serious programmers apparently find deep meaning in
> these comparisons; apparently they believe they must find the "best"
> language because they can learn and use only one.

To be honest, I can empathise with that. I certainly wouldn't think
ONE language can solve all problems, but I think the industry is
fragmenting into too many special-purpose hacks instead of trying to
identify the core linguistic / conceptual factors that enhance
productivity the most, without costing too much in hardware power.

> The increasing number of postings comparing Python to language X is I
> suppose a good thing: lots of people are kicking the tires and taking Python
> for a spin. I think we should encourage that, but not by comparing execution
> times of loops. We need to discourage the amateur programmer obsession with
> "performance" and "efficiency" as if those attributes are all that matter.

Totally agree. But Alex's article (the one you responded to) was about
the tradeoff between machine efficiency and programmer
efficiency. (Actually, Erann Gatt's followup re Lisp showed it to be a
correlation rather than a tradeoff).

I don't think advocates of higher level languages have any reason to
shy away from benchmarks on *that* level. 

Regards,
P.




From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 29 19:27:15 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:27:15 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:44:37 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>, Paul
>Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes
>>Robin Becker wrote:
>>> 
>>> ...
>>> I believe that well designed languages define their own niche.
>>
>>I can give you many examples of beautiful languages that fell into
>>disuse. Sather, Modula-X  and Objective-C jump to mind. The eternally
>>minor languages like Common Lisp, Scheme, Eiffel and Smalltalk are also
>>worth consideration. 
>>
>>Now let's examine some of the other languages out there:
>>
>> * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix
>
>what language does one use nowadays.

AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
BSD, Linux).

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Do you have exactly
                                  at               what I want in a plaid
                               visi.com            poindexter bar bat??


From skilchen at swissonline.ch  Wed Jul 25 10:10:17 2001
From: skilchen at swissonline.ch (Samuel Kilchenmann)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:10:17 +0200
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jmkpt$5fh4$1@ID-13368.news.dfncis.de>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in
news:916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i at 4ax.com...
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:26:52 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >[]Stephen Horne]
> >> ...
> >> And what about the languages web developers are used to, such as
> >> VBScript and JavaScript.
> >
> >Good thing you stopped before mentioning Perl (yes, 1/2 is 0.5 there) --
> >I'm afraid the "mimic other languages" approach requires picking 
> >languages very carefully if you want the illusion of consistency.  
> >By the way, 1/2 is also 0.5 in standard JavaScript:
>
> My mistake. However, the overwhelming majority of code is written to a
> pattern where 1/2=0 - the simple fact Visual BASIC does it almost sets
> the standard itself

Neither VBScript nor Visual BASIC nor VBA do integer division by default, 
all use the '\' operator to force integer division.

Per default: 1/2 == 0.5 in VBScript, VBA and Visual Basic.



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sat Jul 14 12:40:57 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:40:57 -0700
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <mailman.995092164.12281.python-list@python.org> <3B505B3F.C2851242@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3B507619.C1002AE@Lugoj.Com>

Joal Heagney wrote:
> I've noticed that everyone is using string.split. Is there a reason why
> we aren't using the .split() function of strings? They work the same way
> in all these examples, so I was wondering was this because they aren't
> supported in python 1.5?

You hit the nail squarely: I have 1.5.2 on my machine and recently wrote a
Python program that had users whose own machines had 1.5.2 and they couldn't
or didn't want to upgrade.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 10:31:27 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:31:27 -0400
Subject: overriding of methods and variables in a class.
References: <mailman.994686374.24889.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <hdj27.20258$i8.1582116@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

<rdesetty at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994686374.24889.python-list at python.org...
> I dont seem to understand why a method name and a variable name is
> allowed to be same in a class. what is the use. Most importantly,
> Assuming that we have a class as follows:
>
> class abc
> # I am going to define a variable here.
> var_x = 1
> # now the function with the same name as the variable with say some
> #parameter
> def var_x(abc)
>     return abc+1
>
> Now the question is how do i access the variable as well as the
> function (with the same name as the variable) say from another
> function. thanx in advance.

Just because you're allowed to do something doesn't mean it's a good thing
to do. Python won't raise any errors, because it doesn't fundamentally
differentiate between binding to a name using assignment and binding to a
name using def. If you define two methods with the same name in a class
you'll find that only the second one (the definition executed second) will
be available. You still don't see any errors. The shortest and simplest
answer is: "don't do that!".

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tchur at optushome.com.au  Fri Jul 13 21:06:38 2001
From: tchur at optushome.com.au (Tim Churches)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:06:38 +1000
Subject: Statistics tool box.
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4F9B1E.B4493A1@optushome.com.au>

Prem Rachakonda wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>   I am trying to convert my matlab scripts into Python. But I see that
> there are no equivalent stat. tools in Python. If there are any, could you
> please let me know. I am looking for the functions similar to:
> 
> normrnd()
> unifrnd()
> hist()

First of all, install Numerical Python (Numpy) - see
http://numpy.sourceforge.net

Numpy includes a set of MATLAB-compatible functions.

Then look at Gary Strangman's stats.py module:

http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/Neural_Systems_Group/gary/python.html

Tim C
Sydney, Asutralia



From leenutter at australia.edu  Wed Jul 25 09:30:22 2001
From: leenutter at australia.edu (Lee Nutter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:30:22 +1000
Subject: A few things :)
Message-ID: <3B5EC9EE.108@australia.edu>

Hello,

Im a beginner, and although (i think) I know the base language all 
right, I haven't really made anything. Can anyone recommend anything for 
a first project?

Also, I was just wondering, Why do you use python? To me its a hobby. 
Why do some of you use it over other languages? I love the language, 
don't get me wrong, I was just curious :)

Thanks,




From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 17:44:51 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:44:51 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <nb087.27857$B7.4279077@ruti.visi.com>

In article <cp3d7j75jv.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> >>> 1+2
>> 3
>> >>> 1.0+2.0
>> 3.0
>> >>> 
>> 
>> ... unless 3 and 3.0 are "the same value".  In which case my
>> definition of that phrase is merely different than yours.
>
>[Guido]
>Well, they have the same *mathemtical* value, and Python does its
>darndest to treat them as equal everywhere.

I've been thinking in assembly language too long. :) In my
mind, floats and ints are only distantly related.

>For example, a dict with int keys can be indexed with
>corresponding float or complex values.

That's interesting -- I didn't know that.

>Exceptions are operations that intrinsically require ints, e.g. list
>indexing.  (This would change under a unified numeric system though, I
>expect, unless inexact numbers are excluded from being used as
>sequence indices.)

If the numerical types all get unified, then I think one would
expect an inexact number to get "converted" to an exact one if
used in that context.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I guess it was all a
                                  at               DREAM... or an episode of
                               visi.com            HAWAII FIVE-O...


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:45:20 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:45:20 GMT
Subject: getpass() problems..
References: <E15JyYX-00088M-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994776020.31910.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpofqrh6in.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Andrew Todd <aetodd at wm.edu> writes:

>   getpass() seems to be crashing my WinNT system. Is there 
> some way I can manually change the echo to aterisks or 
> something? I'm writing a _really_ simple program that just 
> encrypts text files past in on the command line using the 
> rotor module. I'm using getpass to get the key... is this a 
> bad idea? Is there a better way?

Strange.  You *should* be able to use the routines in the msvcrt
module to write your own getpass()-like routine.  Are you running
Norton Antivirus 2000?  Are you *sure* the problem is in getpass()?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aahz at panix.com  Thu Jul  5 09:33:01 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 06:33:01 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i1qad$h56$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <bebbba07.0107042341.4283ca43 at posting.google.com>,
Russ <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
>
>Let's cut right to the chase here. I like strong typing almost as much
>as you do, but I don't understand why I can't get it in Python,
>perhaps by specialized code-analysis tools. Is the problem just that
>the development tools are underdeveloped, or is there a fundamental
>technical reason that type-checking cannot be done? If it's the
>former, then I suggest that the tools be given a very high priority.
>If it's the latter, then perhaps type checking can be done under
>certain reasonable restrictions. Whatever the case, I want to have my
>cake and eat it too. :-)

Python simply has no direct mechanisms for enforcing type control
*except* for the fact that performing an incorrect operation on an
object will raise an exception.  That is, if you attempt

    foo.append(bar)

and foo does not have an append method, you'll get an exception.  That
is the entire basis of Python's built-in type control.  Now, you can use
Python's introspective capabilities to pre-test for this, but there's
rarely any reason to do so.  What you want to do is fail gracefully --
the tricky part is defining what is "graceful" within your application.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

So much Astroglide.  So little time.


From mwh at python.net  Wed Jul  4 06:18:29 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 11:18:29 +0100
Subject: Redirecting input?
References: <bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4@posting.google.com> <r9m07.27285$he.1410109@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <slrn9k49ru.2g2.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <m3ith9yp3e.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

[getpass, getuser]
> 
> Now that Mac OS X is based on Unix, will this work for Macs too?

I'd have thought so; AIUI Python sees MacOS X as some kind of bizarre
FreeBSD.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  MARVIN:  What a depressingly stupid machine.
                    -- The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Episode 7


From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Wed Jul  4 23:32:56 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 23:32:56 -0400
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <B7695827.13DAA%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

Martijn: Good PEP. Comments:

> The library PEP
> differs from a normal standard track PEP in that the reference
> implementation should in this case always already have been
> written before the PEP is to be reviewed; the reference
> implementation _is_ the proposed contribution.

By "to be reviewed" do you mean "to be decided upon by the Integrators"? Or
"to be released to the Python community for comment"? I hope the former.
Please clarify.

> In the case where no head maintainer can be found (possibly
> because there are no maintainers left), the integrators will issue
> a call to the community at large asking for new maintainers to
> step forward. If no one does, the integrators can decide to
> declare the contribution deprecated as described in PEP 4.

I agree with Roman that this needs some explanation. When, why, under what
conditions, would the Integrators deprecate a contribution? I think
"maintainerless" is a useful category; after all, most modules do *not*
require much if any maintenance between releases.

> Should there be a list of what criteria integrators use for
> evaluating contributions?

It would be useful. I think it would have to come from the PythonLabs crew
themselves. I think it would be useful to them as well.

> A related question is integration with the Python documentation
> process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
> can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
> we detail this more in this PEP?

Say exactly that, with a pointer to the "Documenting Python" section of the
Python reference.

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sf.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sf.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sf.net



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 27 08:16:02 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:16:02 +0200
Subject: Colors in Windows text mode?
References: <mailman.996231710.11174.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jrm23$1a9d6$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

> I was wondering, is it possible to output colored text in Python while in
> Windows text/console mode? You could call it "in a DOS box", but I'm talking
> about Windows Python, not a DOS version. I vaguely recall that I have seen an
> example of this a long time ago, but I haven't been able to find it.
>
> TIA,
Well, there is Fredrik Lundh's windows console module, but this
takes over the whole console.
Here is another extension module, which makes a setColor() function
available and the 16 possible colors under their names. It allows
to change the console text color in the low byte, and the backgound color
in the high byte.

Python style license,

Thomas
--- file _color.c ---
#include "Python.h"
#include <windows.h>

static char setColor__doc__[] =
"Set the console color, return previous console color.";

static char module_doc[] = "";

static PyObject *setColor(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
{
    int color;
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;
    HANDLE handle;

    if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "i", &color))
        return NULL;
    handle = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    if (handle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE || !GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(handle, &csbi)) {
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, "Cannot get console screen buffer info");
        return NULL;
    }
    if (!SetConsoleTextAttribute(handle, color)) {
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_RuntimeError, "Cannot set console text attribute");
        return NULL;
    }
    return PyInt_FromLong(csbi.wAttributes);
}

static PyMethodDef methods[] = {
  { "setColor", setColor, METH_VARARGS,
  setColor__doc__ },
    { NULL, NULL },             /* Sentinel */
};

DL_EXPORT(void)
init_color(void)
{
    PyObject *m, *d;

    m = Py_InitModule3("_color", methods, module_doc);
    d = PyModule_GetDict(m);

    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "BLACK", PyInt_FromLong(0x00));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "BLUE", PyInt_FromLong(0x01));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "GREEN", PyInt_FromLong(0x02));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "CYAN", PyInt_FromLong(0x03));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "RED", PyInt_FromLong(0x04));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "MAGENTA", PyInt_FromLong(0x05));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "BROWN", PyInt_FromLong(0x06));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "WHITE", PyInt_FromLong(0x07));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "GRAY", PyInt_FromLong(0x08));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "LIGHT_BLUE", PyInt_FromLong(0x09));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "LIGHT_GREEN", PyInt_FromLong(0x0A));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "LIGHT_CYAN", PyInt_FromLong(0x0B));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "LIGHT_RED", PyInt_FromLong(0x0C));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "LIGHT_MAGENTA", PyInt_FromLong(0x0D));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "YELLOW", PyInt_FromLong(0x0E));
    PyDict_SetItemString(d, "BRIGHT_WHITE", PyInt_FromLong(0x0F));
}
--- EOF ---
--- setup.py ---
from distutils.core import setup, Extension

import py2exe

setup(name="_color",
      version="0.1",
      description="",
      license="Python",
      author="Thomas Heller",
      author_email = "theller at python.net",

      ext_modules = [Extension("_color",
                              sources=["extensions/_color.c"]),
                     ],

      )
--- EOF ---




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 13:51:50 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:51:50 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mmg87.34184$EP6.8750025@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpelr22rbq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> To Guido: Version 1.10, which you indicated would not be the last, has
> gotten many cogent comments.  I recommend that at some point you
> pre-announce a time limit for discussion, at which time you will
> gather up existing comments, declare 1.10 and further comments thereon
> obsolete, retire to your desk or study, write version 1.11, and
> thereafter restart discussion with a new thread entitled 'PEP 238
> v1.11' .
> 
> To everyone else: such a declaration would in no way stop anyone from
> discussing anything they want.  It would help people not waste their
> own time by making obsolete comments of no effect.  An author of a
> work in progress has a right and usually a need to stop listening to
> return to writing a new draft.  One he releases the new draft, he has
> a right to only listen to comments that reference that new draft, so
> the discussion can move forward, (as it already has with 1.10).  This
> standard procedure is probably most valuable when the work is
> contentious.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I am almost ready to post 1.11.

But at some point I will have to withdraw from the newsgroup again --
then we will need a different mechanism to comment on the PEP (at
least if you want me to hear you).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From yeah at right.net  Fri Jul  6 17:03:15 2001
From: yeah at right.net (baronsamedi)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 21:03:15 GMT
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
References: <mailman.994450691.20572.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B46278F.1000308@right.net>

Sorry about posting pretty much the same information, but my news 
server's a tad on the poor side, this message didn't show until I 
refreshed to see if my message had been posted :(

=========================
baronsamedi/icarus
=========================






From wyatts at onr.com  Fri Jul 13 12:33:10 2001
From: wyatts at onr.com (wyatt stafford)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:33:10 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
Message-ID: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com>

Preamble:

I am a computer/network support person who has decided to start programming
for a vocation (no previous experience beyond minor scripting, etc).  After
some research I selected Python as a good place to start.  I bought "Learn
to Program using Python" (Gauld) and "Quick Python" (Harms/McDonald).  Also
checking out the tutorial, and other good info at www.python.org.    I have
a leaping, intuitive learning style given to missing the obvious, so I am
concerned about having fatal gaps in my learning via home schooling plan.

Questions:

Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self study
resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good programmer,
in general?

Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?

thanks and happy weekend to all,
wyatt

"Oh, that's not what I call bingeing"




From tanzer at swing.co.at  Fri Jul 27 12:38:15 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:38:15 +0200
Subject: PEP 238 (revised) 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:44:22 GMT."
             <q%f87.34136$EP6.8735302@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> 
Message-ID: <m15QAcx-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

> "> PEP: 238
> > Title: Non-integer Division
> 
> Now that I look at it, the title seems rather odd, given that at least
> half of the PEP and the discussion is/has been about integer division.
> How about Revising Division or even better Splitting the Division
> Operator.

Dividing the Division Operator ???

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 03:42:26 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:42:26 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995949762.26287.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <po5qltstjrm0md56n30h6dl88349kb74ik@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:48:33 -0500, "Chris Gonnerman"
<chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:

>Stephen seems not to want to have to admit to his boss that Python has
>changed
>the basic rules for division of integers.  I can grasp this... a proposal
>like
>mine, which allows for other numeric types to be dynamically added to the
>language, would be an easier sell:
>
>    Boss:  I heard Python was changing the rules for division of integers.
>        Are you sure we should be using such a stupid language?
>    SH:  No, boss, you've got it all wrong.  We have a new method for adding
>        numeric types, like rationals, fixedpoint, decimals, etcetera, and
>        is just happens that the default division mode changed as a
>        consequence.  I can easily add a single line of code to any old
>module
>        and Python will run it under the old rule.  No fault, no foul.
>    Boss:  Oh.  Well, carry on.

And *this* storyline would leave me 98% of the way to seeing the
change as no different to the (IMO) less scary case insensitivity
change - I've already expressed my reservations on the religious
aspects ad nauseum, but in the practical sense this would leave only
one minor problem.

The minor problem is finding the code - the only way I can trace all
these programs written over the last three years which have been
passed from person to person, and which have been modified by others
or which I just plain forgot I wrote etc is by sending out an email to
the whole company. If the change is as simple as above, I can find a
way to do this that saves face - there is no chance of an avalanche of
bugs, only that some people won't want to do the change themselves
giving me an excuse for an occasional half hours wandering about,
getting coffee, doing a no-brainer task and having a chat ;-)

Still not happy with the principle, and I still forsee problems for
people who's code is no longer neatly located in their actual company
, but in the case of my personal pratical issues - well, my blood
pressures down a bit anyway ;-)



From Randy.L.Kemp at MOTOROLA.COM  Fri Jul 13 12:00:41 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at MOTOROLA.COM (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:00:41 -0500
Subject: Book count test
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5244@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

While I was waiting for some software to be FTPed from one server to another, I could either count the books or play the movies review clips at www.badmovies.org.

-----Original Message-----
From: Garry Steedman [mailto:gs at styrax.com]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:52 PM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Book count test


Randy,

are you trying to prove to us that quantity = quality?

the fact that python emits less CO2 than java means we dont have to 
kill the trees!

;-)

garry


On 13 Jul 2001, at 11:22, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

From:           	Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>
To:             	"'python-list at python.org'" <python-list at python.org>
Subject:        	Book count test
Date sent:      	Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:22:16 -0400

> I went to www.amazon.com and counted the number of books in these
> categories
>   Python - 136 (including snake books)
>   Java     - 1621
>   Perl     -  430
>   C++    -  1341
>   PHP   -   38
>   ASP   -   172
>   Oracle -  682
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


+-------------------------------------------+
  Garry Steedman      mailto:gs at styrax.com  
  Styrax Associates  http://www.styrax.com/ 

  "The Good Man has no shape."            
+-------------------------------------------+



From prem at engr.uky.edu  Fri Jul 13 18:29:19 2001
From: prem at engr.uky.edu (Prem Rachakonda)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:29:19 -0400
Subject: Statistics tool box.
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107131826180.32753-100000@seahawk.ecc.engr.uky.edu>

Hi,
  I am trying to convert my matlab scripts into Python. But I see that
there are no equivalent stat. tools in Python. If there are any, could you
please let me know. I am looking for the functions similar to:

normrnd()
unifrnd()
hist()


Thanks,
Prem.


____________________________________________________________
                       Prem Rachakonda
____________________________________________________________
Mailing Address:                               Work Address:
700 Woodland Ave., #E4          Teradyne Connection Systems,
Lexington, Kentucky-40508       44 Simon St., Mail Stop#006,
PH :859-323-2880(PP)            Nashua, NewHampshire - 03060
eFax:253-323-9795               Work Phone No : 603-879-3442
Fax:603-879-3046                 Res. Phone No.:603-247-2651



From tom-list at home.com  Fri Jul  6 14:18:53 2001
From: tom-list at home.com (Tom)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:18:53 GMT
Subject: ANN: the C++ Standard Library for Python
Message-ID: <hin17.110546$Mf5.30282205@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

The core of the C++ Standard Library is now available for Python.  This
includes 4 sequence containers, 8 mapping containers, and approximately 60
algorithms.  The algorithms can be applied to any of these containers, or to
any of the Python built-in sequences.

This is an actual C++ standard library, exposed to Python, not a Python
implementation of it - so it is all native code.

It is being release under a standard Python style license.

Please note that this is a beta release.

http://www.malcolmson.com/pystl

I'll watch this thread for comments and feedback (thanks in advance).






From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  2 09:06:02 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:06:02 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <9hp1f002dp6@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <001d01c102f7$c3677700$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>


> "Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in
message
> news:mailman.994049882.30354.python-list at python.org...
>     ...
> > When am I forced?  Sadly it seems that integrating any other language
> > directly into MS Access is out of the question.  (Am I wrong?  Someone
> > please tell me if I am!)
>
> Depends what you mean by "directly".  With COM and ActiveScripting,
> it's generally not a problem to use Python or other AS-compliant languages
> with any Office or other Automation-enabled app, albeit with a simple
> passage through VBA or VBScript.

Define "simple"... what I want is to drop in Python in place of VBA.  I'm
still not sure it's possible.

> > The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I would
> > hardly typify that as not being "good database support".
>
> http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/

I can't get this URL to work... I am getting Forbidden errors.






From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Fri Jul 20 23:29:06 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 03:29:06 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour
References: <mailman.995676994.10848.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6G667.233321$%i7.131478396@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote...
>
> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> wrote, in part:
> > ... My colleagues called the situation "maybe there's a race
> > condition".  Could it be minidom has problems multi-tasking?
>
> I know nothing about 'minidom'. FWIW, it sounds like it might be a
> race condition to me too. Is there any way to put it in a thread by
> itself, protected by a lock or within a critical section?

Probably.  I'll try.

> (And, forgive
> me, does the code use CoInitialize/CoUninitialize?)

Not that I know of.

>
> > I would be grateful for any, no matter how crazy, suggestion.
>
> As you read my response just remember that you included this
> final sentence. :o)
>
> Good luck!

Thanks.  I'll need it...

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul 15 15:00:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 19:00:02 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
Message-ID: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com>

The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
"quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?

ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From weage98 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 10:16:44 2001
From: weage98 at yahoo.com (Joshua Weage)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 07:16:44 -0700
Subject: Tkinter: Frames in nested classes?
Message-ID: <9053f4e3.0107130616.79fd6378@posting.google.com>

I'm trying to nest frames inside of other frames, hiding the detatils
inside of a class - the purpose is to be able to change a child frame,
depending on the options selected in the parent.  When I don't use
classes the frames nest as expected - but the program wouldn't be as
clean.  When I attempt to use classes, the frames are packed
individually into root.

The labels correctly use 'self' as the master, and are placed inside
of the frames, but the child frames appear to use 'root' instead of
'self' as the master.


Here is a simple example:

from Tkinter import *

class Frame1(Frame):
        def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
                Frame.__init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw)
                Label(self,text="frame1").pack()
                self.frame =
Frame2(self,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
                self.frame.pack()

class Frame2(Frame):
        def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
                Frame.__init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw)
                Label(self,text="frame2").pack()
                self.frame =
Frame3(self,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
                self.frame.pack()

class Frame3(Frame):
        def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
                Frame.__init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw)
                Label(self,text="testing").pack()

root = Tk()

root.title("Temp testing")
root.config(height=200,width=300)

frame1 = Frame1(root,borderwidth=5,relief="groove")
frame1.pack()

root.mainloop()


From alankarmisra at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 17:54:44 2001
From: alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 14:54:44 -0700
Subject: pickling and methods
Message-ID: <25b2e0d9.0107041354.161f2cd3@posting.google.com>

Hi,

When an object instance is pickled, is the byte-code associated with
the object's methods stored with it? Or does Python pickle only the
object type and state information ? for example if i have:
class Class:
    def function():
       self.stateinfo = 'mystate'
       pass # large amount of code here

a = Class()
b = Class()

If i pickled a and b, would they both have the byte-code for the
method 'function' or would they only have the class (Class) and the
state information (stateinfo)?

The reason for asking this is because I have a class which has a large
amount of code in its __init__ method. Once the object is created,
most of that code is pretty much useless. Many instances of this
object will be pickled during program execution. If Python does store
the function byte code with each instance of the object, I wanted to
consider the space saving i might achieve by moving most of the
processing code to a object-factory class instead which would return a
light weight class which i can pickle.

Even from a good programming perspective, i wanted to know your
opinions of moving the __init__ code to a factory method in cases
where the processing code is huge and is never used (not even while
unpickling) once the object is instantiated.

Thanx!


From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 00:20:06 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 21:20:06 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107021638.3dc5429f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hrh5m$mm9$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <bebbba07.0107021638.3dc5429f at posting.google.com>,
Russ <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
>
>  [...]

Please just ignore bozos like William Park.  This is a public newsgroup,
so we can't keep him out, but ignoring him makes this a much more
pleasant environment.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From jim at publishingresources.com  Fri Jul 20 18:23:55 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:23:55 -0000
Subject: Problem with win32, ActivePython2.1, ASP
Message-ID: <Xns90E4BAB356D6jimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Help?

PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Apr 19 2001, 10:28:27) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32.
Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) - see 
'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
>>> import win32com.client
>>> pptc = win32com.client.Dispatch("Powerpoint.Application")
>>> ppt = pptc.Presentations.Add(WithWindow=0)
>>> slide = ppt.Slides.Add(1, 12)
>>> shapes = slide.Shapes
>>> shapes.AddOLEObject(ClassName=u'ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.1')
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Shape>
>>> pptc
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library._Application>
>>> ppt
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Presentation>
>>> slide
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Slide>
>>> shapes
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Shapes>
>>> shapes.AddOLEObject
<method Shapes.AddOLEObject of Shapes instance at 019D099C>
>>> 

All is cool.
But, try this same thing inside an ASP page...

<%@LANGUAGE="Python"%>
<%
def w(o):
	Response.Write(Server.HTMLencode(repr(o)) + "<br>")

import win32com.client
pptc = win32com.client.Dispatch("Powerpoint.Application")
w(pptc)

ppt = pptc.Presentations.Add(WithWindow=0)
w(ppt)

slide = ppt.Slides.Add(1, 12)
w(slide)

shapes = slide.Shapes
w(shapes)

w(shapes.AddOLEObject)

shapes.AddOLEObject(ClassName=u'ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.1')
w(shape)
%>


gets me:

<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library._Application>
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Presentation>
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Slide>
<win32com.gen_py.Microsoft PowerPoint 9.0 Object Library.Shapes>
<method Shapes.AddOLEObject of Shapes instance at 00762B4C>

Python ActiveX Scripting Engine error '80020009' 

Traceback (innermost last): File "<Script Block >", line 13, in ? 
shapes.AddOLEObject(ClassName=u'ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.1') File "d:
\python21\win32com\gen_py\91493440-5A91-11CF-8700-00AA0060263Bx0x2x6.py", 
line 4692, in AddOLEObject return self._ApplyTypes_(0x7d8, 1, (9, 32), ((4, 
49), (4, 49), (4, 49), (4, 49), (8, 49), (8, 49), (3, 49), (8, 49), (3, 49), 
(8, 49), (3, 49)), 'AddOLEObject', '{91493479-5A91-11CF-8700-
00AA0060263B}',Left, Top, Width, Height, ClassName, FileName, DisplayAsIcon, 
IconFileName, IconIndex, IconLabel, Link) File "d:\python21\win32com\client
\__init__.py", line 334, in _ApplyTypes_ return self._get_good_object_(apply
(self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes, (dispid, 0, wFlags, retType, argTypes) + args), 
user, resultCLSID) COM Error: Shapes.AddOLEObject : An error occurred during 
creation of an ActiveX Control. 

? 

return self._get_good_object_(apply(self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes, (dispid, 0, 
wFlags, retType, argTypes) + args), user, resultCLSID


Any ideas?





From quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul 15 23:46:04 2001
From: quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 03:46:04 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l4g1c.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4ors.c1h.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:03:29 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
>Me parece que Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> dijo:
>> Ruby allows * notation:
>> 
>> a, b, *c = sequence # `c' gets the rest of the sequence
>> 
>> which is cute, but I don't like it.  Just another random "convenient" little
>> trick to remember.  It's not half as useful as the 1.6 * apply trick.  Let's
>> go easy on the syntax gimmicks.
>
>I'm relatively new to Python. What's the '1.6 * apply' trick?

As of python 1.6,

f(x, *y, **z)

is shorthand for

apply(f, (x,), y, z)

In other words, you can "unpack" sequence or keyword args into a function
without writing out the apply stuff.  It's useful because it helps a common
idiom:

class Base(Super):
    def __init__(self, x, y, *rest, **kw):
        Super.__init__(*rest, **kw)
        # Base handles `x' and `y'

I personally don't think the shorthand is worth the syntactic baggage, but I
don't use it (or, more importantly, see it used) very much.  I'm sure some
other people love it and use it every day.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul  4 15:54:30 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 12:54:30 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107030657.2e0fc92b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994177387.31239.python-list@python.org> <3B42B152.5EC4F056@3-cities.com>
Message-ID: <3B437476.5B943C31@ActiveState.com>

"Robert J. Harrison" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Python does not undermine the distinction between integers and floats.

>>> 5 + 10
15
>>> 5 + "10"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: number coercion failed

> Arithmetic expressions that
> involve only integers currently always result in an integer.

>>> import math
>>> math.cos(5)
0.28366218546322625

>  It is the
> new proposal that coerces integers to floats, but only if a
> div operation is performed, otherwise you get an integer.  So the new
> proposal will perform more automatic coercions than the current
> behaviour,
> and it will not be consistent about the type of result returned from a
> pure
> integer expression.

And that is a problem how? Only people with a history in statically
typed languages seem to expect operations to be type-consistent.

>...
> Python's current treatment of integers is NOT as a special case
> of float.  It is to treat them as a distinct integer type.  It is only
> in MIXED type expressions that Python helpfully converts them.

Maybe it is helpful for experts to undermine the distinction between
floats and integers and then "surprise" they are different in this one
context. It isn't helpful for newbies.

>...
> Who expects?  You are already seeing in this discussion that many
> people think that the current behaviour is not only what they expect
> but is actually very justifiable.

Sure, people with a bunch of programming language experience.

http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

>...
> All programmers must very soon appreciate the different nature of
> integer and floating point (or rational) arithmetic in order to
> address discretized quantities such as lists, files, strings, etc.

If you are consistent about this I might support you. Let's ban
expressions like this:

>>> 1/2.0
0.5

Then Python will be consistent about the fact that integers and floats
are as different as strings and integers.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From howard at eegsoftware.com  Fri Jul 13 14:29:47 2001
From: howard at eegsoftware.com (howard at eegsoftware.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:29:47 GMT
Subject: How can I run precompiled code objects?
References: <mailman.995002401.30502.python-list@python.org> <9imliq0112b@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b4f3e1c.9368723@news-server.socal.rr.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:20:57 +0200, "Alex Martelli"
<aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

.....
>> Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
>> example the ones created via
>>
>> PyObject* Py_CompileString(char *str, char *filename, int start)
>>
........
>
>A "code block" is not suitable for eval(), so exec it will
>have to be, if you're working in Python as you said at the
>start.  If you're working in C as you say now, the C API
>function you have to call is PyEval_EvalCode.  It takes 3
>arguments -- a code object, then two dictionaries to use as
>local and global namespaces -- the last arg can be 0, but
>not the 2nd one.
>
.......
>
>Alex
>
>
>
So...I cut out the code sample (see below), located the extra includes
I needed (compile.h and eval.h) and tried it.

When I run my old method (PyRun_SimpleString), my script evaluates and
runs (Tkinter+PMW stuff) but I get an empty Tk window in addition to
my expected window.

When I run the PyEval_EvalCode method, it returns as though there was
not error but nothing (neither window) appears.  The result from
PyEval_EvalCode appears to be Py_None but is not null.

Any Ideas????

Here is the code sample (I had to read the file into memory because of
the (apparently) know PyRun_File bug).

int
pyrunfile(void)
{
    char *buf,*p;
    long size=0;
    int len,ans;
    FILE *fp;
    PyObject *ptype,*pvalue,*ptrace;

    fp=fopen("stages.py","r");
    if (fp)
        {
        buf=(char *)malloc(80000);
        if (!buf)
            return -1;
        p=buf;
        while (size < 80000 && !feof(fp))
            {
            p=fgets(p,1000,fp);
            if (!p)
                continue;
            len=strlen(p);
            size += len;
            p= &p[len];
            }
        fclose(fp);
#if 1
        ans=PyRun_SimpleString(buf);
        if (ans == -1)
            {
            PyErr_Fetch (&ptype, &pvalue, &ptrace);
            }
        free(buf);
        return 1;
#else
        PyObject *globals, *code, *result;

        /* prepare an innocuous 'globals' dictionary */
        globals = PyDict_New();
        PyDict_SetItemString(globals, "__builtins__",
                                 PyEval_GetBuiltins());

        /* compile your string of statements into a code object */
        code = Py_CompileString(buf, "stages.py", Py_file_input);
        if(!code) 
            {
            PyErr_Print();
            free(buf);
            return 0;
            }
        free(buf);

        /* execute the compiled statement */
        result = PyEval_EvalCode((PyCodeObject *)code, globals, 0);
        Py_DECREF(code);
        if(!result) 
            {
            PyErr_Print();
            return 0;
            } 
        else 
            {
            Py_DECREF(result);
            return 1;
            }
#endif
 }

Howard Lightstone
EEGSoftware
howard at eegsoftware.com


From kelly.gerber at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 18 16:55:55 2001
From: kelly.gerber at mindspring.com (me)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:55:55 -0700
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
References: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com>
	        <0Ne57.1129$KC.143209@news3.oke.nextra.no>
	        <3B55DFA3.E5BBC46E@mindspring.com> <mailman.995486132.13573.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B55F7DB.ED4FBC6@mindspring.com>

Skip Montanaro wrote:

>>Try installing libtermcap-devel... ;-)

OK, that was it. Thanks for your help. GNU readline is working now.

Life-is-beautiful-again-ly,
Kelly



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 16:32:12 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:32:12 -0400
Subject: Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash
References: <vmpsltscvqqp8helkrd8aovnn8f497lt89@4ax.com> <mailman.996044685.24108.python-list@python.org> <cf5tltg1qtvmbv7qutr382vt3e7sa0aacu@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <u8zhceomr.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Kirby Urner <urner at alumni.princeton.edu> writes:

> So how does IDLE invoke the browser if not with popen and if
> it uses popen, then why can't I from the IDLE shell?  The kind 
> of question that keeps me up at night.

At least this can be answered by looking at the source, and let you
get some sleep :-)

It looks like IDLE uses either the standard library webbrowser module
(2.1+) or some internal browser support in the BrowserControl.py
module (2.0) to launch the browser.

Under Windows, this is accomplished using the ShellExecute() win32 api
call (in 2.0 via the win32api module, or via the os.startfile()
library function in 2.1+).

So there's no popen() involved.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From denro at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 00:51:45 2001
From: denro at earthlink.net (Dennis Roark)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 04:51:45 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:

>
>
>What is it about Python that would, in your experience, make it only "good
>for short programs <100 lines".
>
>Jim
>

Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
declared before use.  (In a long program, how hard it is to
find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)

I really like Python, but for at least the reasons above, I
can't see it for long programs.

---------------------------------
Dennis Roark
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sioux Falls

Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
---------------------------------


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Wed Jul 18 13:45:17 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 17:45:17 GMT
Subject: integer division rounding
References: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <fBR47.12488$p7.4225009@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b53dedd$0$16308$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <slrn.pl.9l876l.hsn.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <u7r8ve70rq.fsf@hpeesof.asc>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lbipc.6cn.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

18 Jul 2001 16:46:49 +0200, Ralf Muschall <ralf.muschall at alphasat.de> pisze:

> What does this mean?  I always understood C's way of dividing
> negative ints a "do what is the simplest thing for the machine"

It used to be. This is what C++ says:

4 The binary / operator yields the quotient, and the binary  %  operator
  yields  the remainder from the division of the first expression by the
  second.  If the second operand of / or % is zero the behavior is unde-
  fined;  otherwise  (a/b)*b  + a%b is equal to a.  If both operands are
  nonnegative then the remainder is nonnegative; if not, the sign of the
  remainder is implementation-defined70).
  _________________________
  70)  According to work underway toward the revision of ISO C, the pre-
  ferred algorithm for integer division follows the rules defined in the
  ISO  Fortran standard, ISO/IEC 1539:1991, in which the quotient is al-
  ways rounded toward zero.

and C indeed doesn't provide the choice now:

       [#6] When integers are divided, the result of the / operator
       is  the  algebraic  quotient  with   any   fractional   part
       discarded.78)   If  the  quotient  a/b is representable, the
       expression (a/b)*b + a%b shall equal a.
       ____________________

       78)This is often called ``truncation toward zero''.

A consequence of the C definition is that the compiler can't implement
i/2 as i>>1 unless it can be sure that i is nonnegative.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 21 21:39:28 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 01:39:28 GMT
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <3b5a284e.77528419@wa.news.verio.net>

On 21 Jul 2001 23:56:40 GMT, thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr) wrote:

>I'm trying to split the following string called data into four variables:
>
>:Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!
>
>(so data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!') with an outcome of:
>
>sender='Angel'
>command='PRIVMSG'
>rcpt=Wiz'
>message='here is my message!'
>
>Unless my logic is flawed, this should return 'PRIVMSG':
>
>sender='Angel'
>print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
>
>It prints '' (an empty string).  Is my logic flawed, or does Python dislike a
>string splice determined by a function?
>
No, Python likes it fine ;-)

 >>> print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data,' ',len(sender)+2)]
 PRIVMSG

Your string.find was giving you an offset from the beginning of the slice you
were passing it, not starting the search in data at a given offset.

When a big expression doesn't work, try the sub-expressions separately to see
if you're getting what you expect. Usually it will become clear ;-)

E.g., to see the slice (not splice ;-) parameters you were using you could
just change the ';' to a comma and drop the 'data' to print it out as a list:
 >>> print data[len(sender)+2:string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]

 >>> print     [len(sender)+2,string.find(data[len(sender)+2:],' ')]
 [7, 7]
so you were doing print data[7:7] and getting what you asked for ;-)

looking at what string.find was operating on:
 >>> data[len(sender)+2:]
 'PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!'
  01234567 -- guess where the second 7 in [7, 7] came from (not an offset into data)

>And if you are up to it, feel free to help me splice (correct terminology,
>parse?) for variables rcpt and message ;)
>
Not knowing the real grammar of your data string, here's a possibility:

 >>> data=':Angel PRIVMSG Wiz :here is my message!'
 >>> front,message = data.split(':')[1:]
 >>> sender,command,rcpt = front.split()
 >>>
 >>> sender
 'Angel'
 >>> command
 'PRIVMSG'
 >>> rcpt
 'Wiz'
 >>> message
 'here is my message!'


You could also do it with a regular expression.
The above rigidly depends on always having two colons and
always having three non-blank strings separated by white space
between the colons. (The [1:] throws away anything to the
left of the first colon).

For a better solution, post the detailed rules on the exact
character sequence in your data.


From chris at cmb-enterprises.com  Wed Jul 18 20:19:11 2001
From: chris at cmb-enterprises.com (Chris Dutton)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:19:11 -0400
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
References: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Message-ID: <B77B9FBF.6F7D%chris@cmb-enterprises.com>

in article sAj57.1758$oz3.22749 at vixen.cso.uiuc.edu, Young-Jin Lee at
ylee12 at uiuc.edu wrote on 7/18/01 3:23 PM:

> It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it? How easy is it?

Also investigate wxPython.

http://www.wxpython.org



From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Tue Jul 24 18:20:14 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:20:14 -0600
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27DBA6@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at python.org]
[snip]
> 
> (1) A very long wait period before the new division becomes the
>     default.  The PPE mentions at least two years; we can go over
>     that.  Python 2.2 will introduce the first release where it's
>     *possible* to write "from __future__ import division"; we'll have
>     to wait until 1.5.2 is only a faint memory (like 1.4 is now) and
>     2.2 pretty old.  (The current release pace is two revisions per
>     year, so two years would make 2.6 the first release where new
>     division is the default.)

Thanks for taking the time to address these issues. I agree your
proposed three steps would go a long way towards easing any
compatibility concerns. I have one request though... make the first
release where the new division is the default be named 3.0. It's much
easier to go to management and say "There's a new stable major release
of Python that I think we should go to, but since it's a major release
I'll need to spend some time testing our current applications."
Management tends to be much less willing to schedule maintenance time
every six months for what they consider minor point releases.

If there was to be a scheduled 3.0 release, any other source
incompatible changes that were seen as important would also have a
natural place to go.

-- bjorn



From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul  8 20:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 00:30:01 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B48F8B3.E96EB582@tundraware.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> I have a two part question about accepting keyboard input in python:
> 
> Is there a standard way to read one keystroke at a time rather than
> doing line input via raw_input()?

To calrify - I know this is possible using features of the msvcrt module,
but I really want something that is portable across all python environments.
If that's not possible, is there an equivalent unix/MacOS feature so I can 
at least select which one to use at runtime based on the OS discovered
at startup?  TIA...


> 
> For some reason, I cannot seem to catch Ctrl-C when it is typed in response
> to a raw_input() call.  This code still blows out of the python interpreter
> when the user keys in Ctrl-C:
> 
> try:
>         x=raw_input()
> except KeyBoardInterrupt:
>         # Handle the Ctrl-C and regroup
>         ...
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tim Daneliuk
> tundra at tundraware.com


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 06:57:39 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 03:57:39 -0700
Subject: beginners books
References: <20010704.193914.1943327684.1100@klatu.worldonline.co.uk> <3B45D9E7.BF5FB037@asme.org>
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107190257.7d49f0ff@posting.google.com>

With apologies to Jeff Sandys i have to say stay away from The Quick
Python Book. It is a miserable, unprofessional piece of sh*t. The
errata for the book is not to be believed and the book does not
discuss OOP in python well at all. It is very schizophrenic. At one
moment trying to be a beginner's book and the next being an intro for
experienced programmers. Also the "online" forum for the book seems to
have been abandoned as i haven't recieved any responces yet. I sort of
feel bad for the authors in some ways, as my main objection is the
errata. Frankly i was angry at myself for purchasing the book. I
recommend the ora Learning book, which is excellent and only a smidge
out of date and Chun's Core Python Programming.  Chun is brave and
takes on some things that the Quick book avoids. The Learning book
does a nice job on OOP topics and has a better flow than the Chun and
a bit better on your book bag, but the Chun is impressive and most up
to date and complete.




Jeff Sandys <sandysj at asme.org> wrote in message news:<3B45D9E7.BF5FB037 at asme.org>...
> Dave Stanton wrote:
> > What book (s) would people recommend for a beginner to python ?
> 
> I prefer _The Quick Python Book_ by Daryl Harms and Kenneth McDonald.
> If you have some programming experience _Quick Python_ has more depth 
> than _Learning Python_ which is designed for true beginners.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff Sandys


From ctavares at develop.com  Fri Jul  6 01:54:56 2001
From: ctavares at develop.com (Chris Tavares)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 05:54:56 GMT
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
References: <48365474.0107052029.12d28427@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Qoc17.4961$G_1.481779@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

"Deepak" <deepak9999 at mail.com> wrote in message
news:48365474.0107052029.12d28427 at posting.google.com...
> Hi,
> I tried to go through all the related postings on the newsgroup
> regarding this.
> However, I haven't figured out a way to get Tkinter working in an MFC
> application that uses embedded python interpreter... Here is the
> simple code

[... snip ...]

Tkinter and MFC don't mix in the same process. Neither will Tkinter and
WxWindows, or MFC and WxWindows, or Tkinter and GTK+, or any other gui
toolkits.

The basic problem is that they all want control of the message loop - and
the first one there gets it. This is also the reason you can't run Tkinter
apps under PythonWin.

It may be possible to get this to work, but not without hacking on Tk's C
source code.

-Chris





From djc at object-craft.com.au  Wed Jul 18 21:02:14 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 11:02:14 +1000
Subject: Really Python leaks?
References: <mailman.995461170.23230.python-list@python.org> <3dwv56p8ot.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <m3hew9ybmx.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

Andrew> Actually that probably isn't too surprising.  Some of the C
Andrew> code, particularly in module initializers, will allocate
Andrew> memory for a dictionary or other structure, and then not free
Andrew> it.  For earlier versions of Python, the developers had access
Andrew> to a copy of Purify; I don't know if they still do.

I know that my extension modules leak a bit due to objects which are
created when the module is imported and stick around for the lifetime
of the module.  I had not given it much thought.

Is there a way that you can trick the runtime into calling some sort
of module finaliser...

The only thing I can think of is a bit of a hack.  Create a PyCObject
with a destructor in which you free all of your internal objects.
Place a reference to the object into the module dictionary.  Is this
going to work?

Andrew> Fixing these leaks isn't a big priority, because usually the
Andrew> interpreter will only be finalized before the program exits
Andrew> anyway.  Still, if you can provide more information about
Andrew> where the leaks occur, perhaps they can be fixed.

Now that I have been reminded of issue I think I will go back and fix
my modules...  I never did feel very happy allocating those internal
objects without having a way to free them.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From jason-dated-995052112.13e40c at mastaler.com  Thu Jul  5 15:21:51 2001
From: jason-dated-995052112.13e40c at mastaler.com (Jason R. Mastaler)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:21:51 -0600
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] TMDA 0.22 - A qmail-based anti-SPAM system
Message-ID: <hhr8vvji5s.fsf@nightshade.la.mastaler.com>

Since I announced TMDA 0.10 here a couple months ago, the software has
undergone several major feature additions including:

* Support for site-wide installations using qmail-relay rewriting.
  This also allows TMDA to be used by non-qmail clients such as those
  running Microsoft Windows.

* A powerful new matching syntax based on Unix shell-style wildcards.

* Package installation options for Linux and FreeBSD.

TMDA has also reached a level of stability where I feel it is now
production-worthy.

About TMDA:

TMDA is an OSI certified Python application for qmail systems designed
to significantly reduce (or eliminate) the amount of SPAM/UCE you
receive by using unique, cryptographically enhanced (called tagged)
e-mail addresses.  TMDA can both filter your incoming e-mail, and tag
your outgoing address.

For more information, download locations, and installation
instructions, visit the TMDA homepage:

    <URL:http://tmda.sourceforge.net/>

Enjoy,

Jason R. Mastaler
      
<P><A HREF="http://tmda.sourceforge.net">TMDA 0.22</A> - 
    A qmail-based anti-SPAM system.  (05-Jul-2001)



From chrishbarker at home.net  Mon Jul 30 13:58:11 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:58:11 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996344030.23667.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B65A033.2AAC226A@home.net>

Bruce Sass wrote:

> I see __past__ as one last chance to easily check your code to see if
> the associated feature upgrade broke it, after that it is either fix
> the code or have it depend on an older Python.

Which is exactly why I think a way to indicate that code depends on a
older Python is important!

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Sat Jul  7 03:44:47 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:44:47 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
In-Reply-To: <3B46249E.8050608@right.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107071143580.731-100000@phd.fep.ru>

Hi!

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, baronsamedi wrote:
> I'm a firm believer in the idea that something only proves its
> usefulness by its possibilities for misuse, or unintended use.  True,

   Not when it hurts other people.

> >>If you are working in a school lab environment where you have
> >>the root password on the machines
> >
> >    If you have root passwords you must be more responsible than that.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 25 12:37:47 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:37:47 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp3d7l9fya.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EF5DB.8DEB6B90@alcyone.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> As long as the -D option can change the defaults, all library code
> needs to keep the __future__ division statement.

In this case (where Python language changes start happening to the point
where a program has to declare the language features it plans to use),
wouldn't a syntax such as 

	directive float_division

make more sense?  I think the __future__ syntax is quite acceptable for
short-term hacks (i.e., you want to use a feature that's being
introduced but is not the default yet), but if such changes become
commonplace it seems that a more fundamental notation might be
preferable.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Why don't you grow up for crying out loud?
\__/ Capt. Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce
    Computer science / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/compsci/
 A computer science reference.


From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 13:56:02 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:56:02 -0700
Subject: Debugging extension modules
In-Reply-To: <ypE37.19036$uJ3.618127@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <002101c10bc5$152a6f90$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

Gary wrote:
> I start Python from DOS, import the module and do some
> testing I must exit Python before I can delete the DLL.
> Is there a way to delete the DLL file without having to
> exit the IDE or Python?

AFAIK, these is not. Extension modules cannot be unloaded (probably
because there is no crossplatform way of doing so). PythonWin uses the
same python for running your scripts as it uses for itself. So it's
probably not a good idea to test unstable extensions in your
development environment.

The Komodo, Black Adder and Wing IDEs get around this problem by using
a new python instance for every run. Or you can just develop in
PythonWin and test from the commandline.

Cheers,
Brian




From oconnor at bioreason.com  Fri Jul 27 12:45:18 2001
From: oconnor at bioreason.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:45:18 -0600
Subject: Launching Python from Python
Message-ID: <3B619A9E.9E940B28@bioreason.com>

All,

I'm trying to launch another program from a Python program.  The other
program happens to be another Python program.  I thought spawnle would
be the proper place.  However, it doesn't seem to be working.

	import os
	pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
			"c:\\python20\\python.exe",
			["c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py"],
			{"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})

my understanding is that this should spawn the other process, running
the python runtime and passing in my script name.

However, it doesn't quite happen.  What happens is that it launches
python in interactive mode.  If I import sys, sys.path has my added path
above, buy sys.argv is an array with one empty string.

Any ideas why it doesn't work?  Any other ideas on how to launch another
python program from within one?

This is on WinNT, BTW

Take care,
Jay O'Connor
oconnor at bioreason.com


From cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br  Mon Jul  2 23:50:04 2001
From: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 00:50:04 -0300
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <20010702213351.B4372@node0.opengeometry.ca>
References: <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
 <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com>
 <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>
 <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
 <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org>
 <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010703003022.03a80ec0@mail.inet.com.br>

William, please don't take me wrong. I would like to make some comments 
about the air traffic discussion. Let's not make this in a full blown flame 
war, ok?

At 21:33 02/07/01 -0400, William Park wrote:
>Judging by his thin skin, I don't think it was a serious post.

I would not say this; I actually think it was the opposite. Air traffic 
control is a *very* hard problem, and Russ's question was not related to 
the actual algorithms for traffic control. Insted I think that he was 
asking about the feasibility of using Python to develop a system that is:

- Real time. You can't stand to lose a single event.
- Non stop: 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 1/4 days per year.
- Mission critical: people's live depend on it.

Considering this, your reply must have sounded as a troll to him. I'm not 
an specialist on this, but I can tell you that the problem in air traffic 
control is *not* how to map airplane positions using radar input; is how to 
calculate paths and coordinate communications with dozens, or even 
hundreds, of airplanes, while following *very* strict safety rules that 
tell how to solve conflicts that arise all the time. You have to manage the 
queues for takeoff and landing, keeping everything in sync to make the most 
of precious time.

As for the flight path planning, please note that airplanes can't travel in 
any place in space. You can't see it but there are several "lanes" in air 
space, defined by the authorities. The use of the radio frequencies must 
also be managed by the tower to make sure that there are not any undesired 
interference between different airplanes. The system must also balance a 
high degree of automation and the need for human decision. This is not the 
place for dumb decisions.

In short, it is *hard* stuff, and it pushes our ability to develop high 
quality systems. That's the kind of stuff that design-by-contract is 
supposed to be used for.


Carlos Ribeiro





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 07:59:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:59:11 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org> <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <3B65FF05.7F262FEB@engcorp.com> <3b667634.884329538@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.996575998.6007.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <O0x97.10428$WD1.460180@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Ken Seehof" <kseehof at neuralintegrator.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996575998.6007.python-list at python.org...
> Bengt Richter wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:42:45 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > >William Tanksley wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
> > >> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > >>
> > >> >> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
> > >>
[ ... ]
> > How about clarg?
>
> Is that a proposed keyword or a Klingon name?  :-)
>
>
Whatever it is, it sounds like you'd need a shower to get rid of it:

"Oh, man, he had clargs all over him", "I've got to get these clargs off my
shoes", et al.

wishing-someone-hadn't-said-'klingon'-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul  4 18:38:57 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 18:38:57 -0400
Subject: Dynamic call of a method : error
References: <3pM07.8236$Yq2.6098008@nnrp5.proxad.net>
Message-ID: <etdlmm4z5dq.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Try this instead: print getattr(L, method).__doc__

HTH
Alex.


From wunschname at kapet.de  Wed Jul 18 17:30:04 2001
From: wunschname at kapet.de (Karsten Petersen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 23:30:04 +0200
Subject: S: id3lib Python module
Message-ID: <s4v4j9.2d3.ln@dollerup.csn.tu-chemnitz.de>

Hi,

does anyone know of an id3lib (http://id3lib.sourceforge.net/) module
for python?

Thx & Greets, Karsten
-- 
,-,  Student of Computer Science at Chemnitz University of Technology  ,-,
| |    EMail:  Karsten at kapet.de          WWW:  http://www.kapet.de/    | |
'-'  Home: kapet at dollerup.csn   V72 / 230    Phone: +49-177-82 35 136  '-'


From kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us  Mon Jul 30 11:39:57 2001
From: kuncej at mail.conservation.state.mo.us (Jeff Kunce)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:39:57 -0500
Subject: xmlrpc via proxy in XML-RPC HOWTO
References: <mailman.996496196.875.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <0ef97.394$Ha7.369@news.more.net>

"Andy Bulka" <abulka at netspace.net.au> wrote in message
news:mailman.996496196.875.python-list at python.org...
> I'm trying to get xmlrpc to work through a firewall/proxy.

I wrote a urllib transport for XML-RPC a couple years ago. It
worked then, but I can't test it now because I no longer have
to deal with a proxy firewall :-)

Look for:
    xmlrpc_urllib_transport.py
at:
    http://starship.python.net/crew/jjkunce/

  --Jeff





From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 01:39:49 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:39:49 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
In-Reply-To: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107180936390.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Kelly Gerber wrote:

> I am trying to build Python 2.1 on RedHat 7.1 with readline. I
> uncommented the readline line in Modules/Setup, but I get an error about
> readline when running make. Python builds and works fine otherwise. But
> it is a pain to type in commands again at the interactive prompt when I
> want to repeat something. Has any one had luck in getting Python to
> build with readline?

Isn't Python already compiled with readline in RH7.1???

If so, add

.startpy
import readline
import rlcompleter
readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
print "Realine loaded"

to your homedir and put 

export PYTHONSTARTUP=.startpy

into your .bash_profile
(if you are using bash)

Then re-login and try:

$ python

Readline loaded
>>> import os.
>>> os.
Display all 155 possibilities? (y or n)

as usual.
 
> Thanks,
> Kelly

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Fri Jul 13 08:50:41 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:50:41 GMT
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <GGEx0M.AH8@leeds.ac.uk>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

> > From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (06 Jun 01) [foldoc]:
> > 
> >   scripting language
> > 
> >      <language> (Or "glue language") A loose term for any language
> >      that is {weakly typed} or {untyped} and has little or no
> >      provision for complex {data structures}.  A program in a
> >      scripting language (a "{script}") is often {interpreted} (but
> >      see {Ousterhout's dichotomy}).
> 
> Surely by far the most common connotation of "scripting" is in 
> the sense of executing the source directly without the need
> for a separate compilation step. 

That's probably how it is perceived - but to my mind "provision
for complex data structures" is perhaps the most important point,
and is how I distinguish between script and program.  To me, a
script is something that

 * _Appears_ to execute directly, as far as the user is concerned
   (whether there is an implicit compilation step is irrelevant)

 * Relies on external components for data processing and focuses
   instead on providing ways of plugging those components together
   and scheduling their execution

The latter point is not true of Python, which has sophisticated
ways of representing and manipulating state.  So Python code
is a program, not a script.

By this definition, a script might be smaller / easier to write
than a program or vice versa - depending on the nature of the
task undertaken.  I often find a pipeline of the standard
tools like grep, sort, etc, can be constructed on the command
line much more easily than the equivalent Python program;
on the other hand, I can't remember the last time I wrote a
shell script longer than 3 lines - largely because it now seems
so much easier to write anything more 'complex' than that
in Python.

This is on Linux, of course.  When I use Windows, the sheer
impossibility of writing any kind of non-trivial .bat file means
I go straight for Python even sooner.


Nick



From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Mon Jul 23 12:09:37 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:09:37 +0200
Subject: py2exe problem
References: <mailman.995667696.25448.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jhi82$o4qme$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message news:mailman.995667696.25448.python-list at python.org...
> My colleague and I are working on an application, coded mostly in Python, that must be distributed to people who don't
> have Python installed on their machines. Anyway, py2exe seemed the natural way to do this. However, it doesn't seem to
> be working correctly (although as is usually the case, I believe it has more to do with me than with py2exe).
>
> The first step in using py2exe is giving it an install script. Because of the nature of the program, we have all the components
> broken down into about 10 or 11 files, with one main file that coordinates everything. Using the suggestion from the py2exe
> page, my install script is simply the following:
>
> #install.py
> from distutils.core import setup
> import py2exe
> setup(name="webpass", scripts=["window1.py"], )
>
> Now, this is my first time using Distutils, so maybe my install script isn't done correctly. It seems to compile all the modules
we
> created ourselves when I run py2exe (I see their filenames going by on the screen during compilation).
>
> Because the app is for Windows, I compile the exe with the following command line:
>
> python install.py py2exe -w
>
> When run, the final product is supposed to present a GUI written in wxPython, which accesses an Access database using
> ADODB. When we run the file without py2exe, everything works (well, mostly works, we have some small bugs here and
> there, but we at least have an alpha version running). However, when I run the py2exe created .exe file, I have problems.
>
> If I run the .exe on my development machine, where Python is present, the GUI comes onto the screen properly, but the
> ADODB doesn't work perfectly. For some reason, it doesn't access one field of the database. However, if I run the .exe on
> a machine without Python, the GUI doesn't come up at all. I can tell that the backround operations are doing something,
> because the .ldb file for the database is generated after I try running the .exe, but the GUI never comes on screen.

wxPython has its own (binary) dependencies which must be fulfilled.
Maybe the gui cannot start up because these dependencies are not fulfilled.
You can download at http://www.dependencywalker.com/ a free tool that
allows to search for dependent modules, you can and should especially
use it at the typical target systems where your app is supposed
to run. wxPython for example (at least in a certain version)
requires some opengl libraries, even if you do not use them
in your app.

>
> In addition, there is a command line option which would do nothing but print one line to a standard DOS prompt, but it won't
> even print that line. Again, the backround operations work (this command line creates registry entries, and they are present
> afterwards), but there is no screen output.

Maybe there's a confusion: The -w command line flag to py2exe does NOT
specify a windows executable, it specifies an application
which runs in the windows _GUI_ subsystem - as opposed to the -c flag,
which creates a _console_ application.
For a wxPython app you would probably use the -w option, but if you
also print something to the console you need -c!

(I should probably rename this command line option to --gui.)

As Duncan Booth already suggested in his reply, it is generally
a good idea to start by building a commnd line version even if
you eventually will only be using a gui - you may not see
tracebacks or error messages otherwise.

Thomas




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 19:56:24 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:56:24 -0400
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <rdeemts4mrarb8b5ghqieio68n1jv32tl1@4ax.com> <u8zh4u0b6.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <lyH97.7737$9i1.681152@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:u8zh4u0b6.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:
>
> > I guess what I had in mind was a simple but effective equivelent
> > that I used to use with BCPL. A function called rdargs, which I
> > think also became part of AmigaDOS
>
> If you do get a moment to point to any reference or just write up a
> quick summary, I'm sure there would be some implementation suggestions
> available.
>
> Presumably any parsing template still has to deal with issues such as
> flagging options (optional pieces) versus standard arguments,
> delimiters and quoting them, etc...  But there's obviously also
> multiple ways to make choices about each of those issues.
>
Dale:

Was this the one that allowed to you define command lines like

    COPY FROM <file> TO <file>

and variations could be deduced from the noise words? I seem to remember a
college chum of mine working in BCPL with a scheme like this, circa 1978,
but have only this fading memory.

what-was-i-saying-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/




From tbryan at python.net  Sun Jul 22 07:54:08 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:54:08 +0500
Subject: BURNING EARTHSHAKING Tuple Question
References: <5e8bd451.0107191249.3c0d9f21@posting.google.com> <3B58EBF4.F24E5129@alcyone.com> <pmglltoiomis08cg8s18ogql1psmb4knkj@4ax.com> <3B5B15FE.A6B51D9F@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <9jfe8v$gu4$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

Erik Max Francis wrote:

> so perhaps when
> mathematicians are isolated with other mathematicians they tend to
> pronounce it that way.  I really don't know.

In both my undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics in the U.S., 
I only remember hearing tuple pronounced so that it rhymes with goop.  If 
anyone pronounced it to rhyme with couple, it was rare enough that I don't 
remember it.  But we also said "pie" for pi and "fee" for phi.

consistency-is-the-hobgoblin-of-little-minds-ly yours
---Tom



From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 08:09:43 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:09:43 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <0yX%6.1611$h45.10769@news.uk.colt.net>
Message-ID: <994421316.809355@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

yea.great sites but they don't have any books for downloading, only for web
reading and this requires time -internet time, which is unfortunately
expensive.

so, any other proposals for sites that contain text about python tutoring?
every recommendation is welcome!

thanks in advance!




From rzantow at usa.net  Wed Jul 11 11:43:22 2001
From: rzantow at usa.net (- RZ)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 08:43:22 -0700
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <93d9a839.0107110743.5ec8ae3d@posting.google.com>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke at 4ax.com>...
> 
> David,
> 
> I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps asking for a
> while --- and folks here keep answering.
> 
> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to follow and the
> translation into Python show me where I am missing Python techniques.
> 
> My purpose in writing this is simply to say you are not just helping Mr. Wong when
> you respond.
> 
> Regards, Joe

Well yeah, but.... 

Given a little context, the answers could vary considerably from the
line-at-a-time approach. There's a difference between transliteration
and translation. It might well be more educational to learn the best
Pythonic way to accomplish a task than to learn how to write C in
Python.


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 08:00:11 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 07:00:11 -0500
Subject: Help parsing XML
In-Reply-To: <Z3W%6.736$em.12119@juliett.dax.net>
References: <mailman.994060443.31499.python-list@python.org>
	<Z3W%6.736$em.12119@juliett.dax.net>
Message-ID: <15168.25163.513046.830094@beluga.mojam.com>

    Dag>     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
    Dag>     <!DOCTYPE events SYSTEM "xml-concerts.dtd">

    Dag> ...and note the corrected "encoding=" instead of "encoding-"...

oops...  

Thanks for the help.  It parses correctly now.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From rcalco at cortechs.com  Sun Jul 29 19:08:56 2001
From: rcalco at cortechs.com (Bob Calco)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:08:56 -0400
Subject: Language Niches (long)
In-Reply-To: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco@cortechs.com>

>>>I was demonstrating that the major languages that make up the
modern computing landscapes did so by grabbing on to a niche or a
particular task.<<<<

One language nobody's mentioned here (that fits into the point above, which
is why I thought of it) is Ada, which was created specifically for the DoD
in a competition (believe it or not) and is the only major language I know
of that has a complete, written rationale for every feature of the language
(or at least it was the first with such a rationale). It's a lot like Pascal
at first glance, so it isn't hard to read or learn. Problem with Ada now is
that the DoD dropped its long-standing "Ada-only" policy a couple years ago,
and it never has caught on as a desktop development language, for some
reason. Ada's got a relatively small but rabid following, and there are
ports of Ada on just about everything, especially various flavors of Unix
and Windows. Ada's got some pretty nifty constructs -- especially generics
and tasks -- that make it a great choice for real-time and distributed
systems development. In fact, chances are, if you've ever been on a
commercial airplane or a space shuttle or a long range bomber, your life has
depended upon Ada code. It's also got one of the most brutal compilers in
the industry -- it checks just about everything and your program won't in
most cases compile at all if anything (except perhaps for a business logic
error, which compilers don't look for anyway) is amiss. I have friends at a
company that makes Ada compilers and the outlook for Ada apparently isn't
bright. Its niche -- the DoD -- was just a little too well-defined, and even
though as a general purpose programming language it has some incredibly
we'll designed features that (would otherwise) easily place it among the top
choices for just about any problem domain, it too will enter the Smithsonian
of languages long before the seemingly immortal C. This is unfortunate
since, aside from unparallelled access to low-level bit-fiddling, which is
cool when that's what you need, C lacks support for a great many useful
semantic abstractions that make just about any other language more
appealing, at least to me. On the other hand, you can write a language with
all those useful semantic abstractions in C -- ergo, Python, Ruby, Perl....
so I guess it ain't so bad. :-)

BTW, some of the reasons I love (and hate) this mailing list is a.) the
sheer volume of python mail traffic crushes all competition among the lists
to which I subscribe, and b.) the propensity of its members to keep email
chains alive forever is almost pathological -- topics never go away, they
just keep coming and coming and coming ...back (particularly the
interminable "Which Language Is Best?" thread and of course the editor
wars). Of course the main reason I love it is Python itself, which (along
with stimulating computer language theory discussions that seem to accompany
it) is its own justification for sifting through the gobs of mail its users
generate daily.

Just-doing-my-part-to-keep-tradition-alive-ly yours,

Bob Calco

# -----Original Message-----
# From: python-list-admin at python.org
# [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Paul Prescod
# Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 5:36 PM
# To: Robin Becker; python-list at python.org
# Subject: Re: Language Niches (long)
#
#
# Robin Becker wrote:
# >
# >....
# > >worth consideration.
# > >
# > >Now let's examine some of the other languages out there:
# > >
# > > * For a long time, C was the only way to do system
# programming for Unix
# >
# > what language does one use nowadays. If not C then pretty much any
# > scripting language can do the same things as C given that we have the
# > wrapping tools like swig. What's swig coded in?
#
# I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. C became popular between
# twenty and thirty years ago. Its current popularity is a result of that
# early boost. Python is not typically used for "systems programming." I
# think of systems programming as the programming that goes into building
# the heart of an operating system or relational database etc.
#
# >...
# > > * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
# > >into "Servlets" and "EJBs"
# >
# > Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.
#
# Java is not much better at that than Tcl or Python.
#
# > >
# > > * Perl was the defacto way to do sysadmining when sed and awk ran out
# > >of steam
# >
# > so C wasn't ever that needed?
#
# For system administration? I would say "not much". Systems programming
# and system administration are two different thing.
#
# >...
# > > * Visual Basic and Tcl were the only easy way to make GUIs for their
# > >respective platforms for a long time
# >
# > This is just nonsense. There are many ways to do CGI and even more ways
# > to do guis. You neglect all those other semi-proprietary languages. The
# > H***card one is an example. Even if you restrict Tcl to unix, Tcl is
# > only a scripting language. The Tk extension is what makes Tcl/Tk into a
# > gui platform.
#
# Right. And Tcl became popular while it was only possible to program Tk
# in that one language and it lost popularity when Tk became popular in
# Python, Perl etc. That goes to the heart of my argument. Tcl's
# popularity was a side effect of the popularity of its platform. Expect
# was another driver for Tcl's popularity.
#
# > ... Visual basic is promoted by M$, Delphi is not and has as
# > many if not more adherents.
#
# Delphi came years after Visual Basic. Really, if Microsoft did not
# invent Visual Basic as a GUI-building technology the Basic language
# would be long-since dead. In fact you could argue that it is because
# Visual Basic is becoming less and less Basic-like.
#
# >...
# > The above is a list of languages; all are thriving.
#
# Not all of them are thriving but all of them gained popularity based on
# a particular environment or niche programming task. Sometimes the
# environment got generalized (Tk and soon Visual Basic) and sometimes the
# language outgrew the environment (C). But not once did a language carve
# out its own niche based purely on technical merits (as you claim). If
# Python does so it will be the first.
#
# > ... For some more nearly
# > dead languages try simula, simscript etc. What was that wonderful
# > rebarbative predecessor of m4 called?
#
# I wasn't trying to be comprehensive. There are thousands of languages
# out there. I was demonstrating that the major languages that make up the
# modern computing landscapes did so by grabbing on to a niche or a
# particular task.
#
# >....
# > I consider the above to be an assertion. I certainly don't know the true
# > number of regular Python users now or in the past. Perhaps we could do
# > some comparative newsgroup posting analysis to get some idea of who's
# > programming/interested in what language. But all of the little languages
# > would be as noise to SQL and Cobol (even if you count them as languages)
# > in terms of the total code volume and economic significance.
#
# So your point is that SQL and Cobol carved out their large market shares
# by being technically wonderful and wonderfully stable? I find that
# extremely hard to believe. Look at the growth in the SQL standard. Look
# at the quality of the Cobol language.
#
# I'm waiting for you to point out a language that was so great
# technically that it became very popular without hooking on to some
# particular niche or platform or at least having a company with a
# billion-dollar valuation behind it. This is a real problem for Python.
# It has no big company and only tiny niches.
#
# > > ....
# > >*All* of the scripting languages change constantly. I guess
# they are all
# > >bad.
# > >
# >
# > in some senses yes.  A *good* programming language is one that is easily
# > applicable to a large set of problems. Sed is clearly not very good at
# > matrix algebra. Awk can't plot graphs. Sed is easily better than Python
# > at most simple stream substitutions. Python beats awk at list processing
# > etc etc etc.
#
# So SQL and COBOL are your examples of "good" programming languages?
# Because of their wide generality????
#
# >...
# > >There is a lot of crap in C and C++ that the inventors of those
# > >languages would like to change but it is too late now. Guido is trying
# > >to avoid that fate. As an aside, Perl users seem remarkably
# accepting of
# > >change considering the installed base of the language.
# > >
# >
# > So these languages aren't mature?
#
# No, compared to languages that are 20 or 30 or 40 years old, Perl and
# Python are certainly not mature. In particular, many people use Python
# today in radically different ways than they would have five years ago
# (in particular much bigger projects). They make certain demands on
# Python that may cause it to grow in particular directions. Five years
# from now there will be other new users with other new demands. I don't
# see that happening for C or COBOL or SQL.
#
# >...
# > If there were a single right way there wouldn't be so much discussion.
# > The one true way is often wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have seen the
# > Architect change the '/' operator.
#
# That's why I used the word "opinion".
#
# Every change is a question of costs and benefits. While the user
# community is small, the costs are smaller than they will be when the
# community is large. That's why Python changes so much more quickly than
# C or C++. It doesn't mean that it is worse, merely that we have more
# opportunity to improve it than those who are stuck with hundreds of
# millions of lines of legacy code. Guido is no more or less benevolent
# than those who do not have the option of fixing their languages. He has
# the opportunity, so he takes it. They don't.
#
# --
# Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.
# Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook
#
# --
# http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
#




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 24 17:25:20 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:25:20 -0400
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <ud76qj9z3.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:

> If you put this in a module and test it:
> 
> def ForLoopTest (NumLoops) :
>     for Year in range (1,NumLoops) :
>         for Century in range (1,NumLoops) :
>             Months = Year*12
> 
> 
> you'll find that ForLoopTest (10000) will apparently
> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this
> or do I just have to live with it?

I can't reproduce this on an NT machine, so this may a Windows 98
issue more than a Python issue.  Under NT 4.0 I can break out of this
with Ctrl-C under Python 1.5.2, 2.0, 2.1.1 and 2.2a1.

If you want a somewhat ugly suggestion, what happens if you import the
msvcrt module and put a msvcrt.kbhit() call in the middle of your
loop?  I don't have a 98 machine to try it on, but if 98 is only
looking for the break during I/O (which is very DOS like, so maybe
95/98 inherit that behavior for console apps), that may give it the
opportunity it needs without actually performing I/O.

Since that would likely slow down the loop, you may want to put it in
one of the outer loops rather than in the innermost.

Another somewhat crufty approach would be to put your computations off
into a separate thread, and leave the main thread just sitting around
(perhaps waiting for an event to fire saying that the computation
thread is done).  Then the interrupt can probably be delivered to the
main thread which can cope with it.  If you define the computation
thread as a daemon you can just exit from the main thread even while
the computation thread is running.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Mon Jul 30 12:13:05 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:13:05 -0700
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com> <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <300720010913055359%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6 at tundraware.com>, Tim Daneliuk
<tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:

> Actually, this raises an interesting question, which perhaps the resident
> geniuses
> can 'splain to me.  Here in Chicago, we're currently 6 hourse or 21,600 sec
> *behind*
> UTC.  Why does time.timezone return 21600, not -21600?  It seems that for
> arithmetic reasons, you'd want to know both the magnitude and direction of
> this vector...
> 
> Inquiring minds wanna know ;)

Actually, you're currently at 5 hours from GMT...you're 6 during the
winter.  time.timezone appears to be returning the zone without regard
to silly adjustments like daylight time.  As per the library reference:
"The offset of the local (non-DST) timezone, in seconds west of UTC
(i.e. negative in most of Western Europe, positive in the US, zero in
the UK)."  I think you need to look at the "dst flag" in
time.localtime()'s result to learn the current status.  [It looks as if
the C and Unix folks have forgotten about "British Double Summer Time"
from WW-II, although Mac OS 9 and below record a DST delta rather than
a flag, which could have handled that.]

If you were 6 hours the other way from GMT, you would get -21600. 
Basically, one needs a convention.  (Naturally, given two choices of
convention here, the industry uses both in different places.)

You either get the number of seconds to add to GMT to give local time,
or the number of seconds to add to local time to give GMT.  

(There are also sub-conventions...it may be given in hours and minutes,
instead, as it is in email headers...yours for that purpose is -0500
currently.)

Is it any wonder that thing happen like the loss of an early moon
unmanned visitor because the ground thought a negative yaw meant "go
right" while the craft thought it meant "go left?"  [Or vice versa.]

  --John


From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Tue Jul  3 12:30:06 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 16:30:06 GMT
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com> <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <87d77iw6vi.fsf@gabriel.heim6.tu-clausthal.de>
Message-ID: <iqm07.25382$Xc.3992107@typhoon.we.rr.com>

"Patrick Bothe" <Patrick.Bothe at ePost.de> wrote
> I do not know how much of "Severance - Blade of Darkness -"
> is written in Python, but I think this game is a good
> argument against your statement.

yeah, i'd like to know too. i haven't played the game
or looked into it much. one thing that caught my fancy
is that the game "mods" available for download are
100% python code (along with some occasional images
and models). very cool, and the mods can do things like
alter the savegame ui, changing many aspects of the game.






From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 18 05:53:28 2001
From: pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:53:28 GMT
Subject: Finding Display Settings ??
Message-ID: <s0d57.12936$Xr6.106667@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Which module/library would I import so that I can test for the current 
display settings ??

Pete


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 27 11:16:49 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:16:49 GMT
Subject: Win32 2.11 SSL extensions?
References: <mailman.996239691.30735.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9js0l1$cdl$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>

According to Phil Harris <phil.harris at zope.co.uk>:
> Has anyone yet got the Win32 2.11 SSL extensions compiled?

Try M2Crypto, which 2.1 binaries tested ok with a binary
installation of 2.11.

http://www.post1.com/home/ngps/m2/

Cheers.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul  9 21:51:52 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:51:52 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3b4a5ed9.1501008726@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:11:02 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh"
<fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Paul Winkler wrote:
>> Doing it iteratively is much, much faster.
Not necessarily. See my other post ;-)

>
>does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?
>
>import sys
>
>def fib(n):
>    if n < 2:
>        return 1
>    return fib(n-2) + fib(n-1)
>
>def fib(n, fib=fib, memo={}):
>    v = memo.get(n)
>    if v is None:
>        v = memo[n] = fib(n)
>    return v
>
>def main():
>    N = int(sys.argv[1])
>    print fib(N)
>
></F>
>
>
My algorithm will beat this easily when
n gets big. But I like the memo thing.
That could improve mine too.




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Sat Jul 28 14:10:17 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:10:17 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <3B61C404.919C3030@home.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107280300210.16003-100000@bms>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Chris Barker wrote:
<...>
> The problem with the from __past__ statement is that we will end up with
> many different dialects of the language, all of which need to be
> supported (if it's too much work to have old versions supported, why is
> this OK?) and will need to be supported forever!

I don't think that is true.  Supporting old behaviours forever is
barely different from keeping old versions around forever, and should
be avoided for the same reasons...  at some point you need to stop
living in the __past__, so to speak.

__past__ could be integrated with __future__, and then viewed as part
of the upgrade path of a new feature... not as something that gets
plopped into Python to accommodate old code.

I see __past__ as one last chance to easily check your code to see if
the associated feature upgrade broke it, after that it is either fix
the code or have it depend on an older Python.


- Bruce







From tomh at optiscan.com  Sun Jul  1 23:43:58 2001
From: tomh at optiscan.com (Tom Harris)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:43:58 +1000 
Subject: Implementation of popen() with timeout
Message-ID: <AA94BA487AE0D411829300D0B7A7A95F0794FD@uluru2.optiscan.com.au>

Greetings

I want to use one of the popen() functions to call an external program and
capture the output, but I would like to have the facility to kill the
external program if it does not complete within a specific time.
Unfortunately I am using NT. Options appear to be to use the Win32 API to
write my own, as the popen source looks fierce code. Any ideas?

 Tom Harris, Software Engineer
 Optiscan Imaging, 15-17 Normanby Rd, Notting Hill, Melbourne, Vic 3168,
Australia
 email tomh at optiscan.com     ph +61 3 9538 3333  fax +61 3 9562 7742

This email may contain confidential information. If you have received this
email in error, please delete it immediately,and inform us of the mistake by
return email. Any form of reproduction, or further dissemination of this
email is strictly prohibited.
Also, please note that opinions expressed in this email are those of the
author, and are not necessarily those of OptiScan Pty Ltd






From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 31 13:20:17 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:20:17 -0700
Subject: how to know the end of a file(use readline)
References: <mailman.996580197.11033.python-list@python.org> <9k6bb1027th@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B66E8D1.FFA421F4@home.net>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> > I use readline to process the whole ,but
> > I do not know how to control it,when it
> > is the end of the file
> 
> f.readline() returns an empty string, '',
> when f is at end of line, and in no other
> case (when reading an empty line, it

So the common idiom is:

while 1:
    line = file.readline()
    if not line:
	break()
    ...do stuff with line...

You also might want to use xreadlines (or readlines):

for line in file.xreadlines():
    do stuff with line






-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Tue Jul 31 17:59:00 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 21:59:00 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9meah3.ob2.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

25 Jul 2001 14:05:34 +0000 (UTC) in <9jmjne$q54$1 at wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk>,
margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk <margg at ux-ma160-18.csv.warwick.ac.uk> spake:
> The next features of Python will see several types of changes, which
> seem to been implmented and accepted into the language without 
> discussion.

  Without discussion?  You need to get your newsfeed/mail agent fixed.
Or visit <http://groups.google.com/>.  Or return forthwith to your
native universe or the nearest convenient parallel dimension.  Choose
one or more.

> Without getting into the arguments for and against a change, I would
> note that changing the semantics of a core part of the language is
> basically equivalent to creating a new language. Python with / and //
> operators in the form currently envisaged is, frankly, not Python at
> all.

  This is nonsense.  I use classic integer division rather heavily, so
this change affects me directly, and while I'm not *happy* with the new
meaning being the default, Guido's explained his reasoning well; I can't
see any better solution to the unified Number type problem.  And yet
"Python With //" still looks like Python to me.  Python changed just as
much or more from 1.5 to 2.0...

> 1) New versions of 'Python' are not 'Python', and should be indicated
> as such -- perhaps by calling it 'Python++' :)

  Or, and this is just a wild and crazy idea that could *NEVER* fly in
reality, by changing the major version number to 3?

> This new version of Python will not be one that I will be happy to use. 

  Because the integer division operator changed?  <blink>  I'd heard of
neophobia, but...

> If there are enough people who feel as I do, then perhaps we will be
> able to depose the dictatorship,

  "I come here today not to praise Guido, but to bury him...", et tu?

> and create a stable and sensible 
> system for developing Python (not Python++). If this means forking 
> Python, then that will be done.

  I believe the license allows you to fork it already.  Feel free.  Go
to, sirrah, go to.

  But I'm curious...  how exactly do you propose to "develop" a language
that cannot change?

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From jdries at mail.com  Sun Jul 22 20:31:14 2001
From: jdries at mail.com (Jan Dries)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 01:31:14 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <slrn9lml32.qb.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B7052.3FF43780@mail.com>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> No, it doesn't.  Integer division is integer division.  The
> correct answer for the value of 3/4 is 0.  If you wanted the
> remainder, you should ask for it.  If you want to divide
> floating point numbers, you should _use_ floating point numbers.
> 
> Perhaps my mind was warped by using nothing but integer
> arithmatic in my software for many years because floating point
> was simply too slow and too expensive.

Upon reading this and other threads on the subject I wondered why
apparently a number of people find 3/4 giving 0 odd, while I don't
remember ever having and certainly don't ever make a mistake against it.
But now I realise why. I too for many years used nothing but integers
because fp was, indeed, simply too slow. I even remember calculating
bezier curves for vector font outlines using only +, >> and << on ints,
because even integer multiplication was too slow.

Jan



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 14:15:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:15:05 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org>
        <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <15197.47913.11068.392235@beluga.mojam.com>

    Marcin> The behavior of ** depends on the exponent which determines the
    Marcin> narrowest type to which base is converted first....  If it's a
    Marcin> rational or float, the base is converted from int or rational to
    Marcin> float.

Hmm...  PEP 240 proposes that numbers matching the regular expression
'\d*.\d*' be interpreted as rationals.  Thus "0.5" would be interpreted as
the rational "5/10" (or perhaps reduced to "1/2").  Using this definition of
rational literal and your coercion semantics, "4**0.5" would yield a float
instead of an integer or rational.  Why shouldn't an integer or rational
base be converted to a rational if the exponent is a rational?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Wed Jul 11 15:58:41 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:58:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
In-Reply-To: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107111545280.379-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>

Singleton tuple syntax is an odd cosmetic wart of Python,
caused by using the same delimiters "( )" for both 
expression grouping and tuple literals. You don't have
the same problem with singleton lists because
[1],  [1+3] and 2*[1+3] are all unambiguous. 

Without the singleton comma rule:

(1),  (1+3), and 2*(1+3)

all would have two possible interpretations:

 1,    4,   8
(1)   (4)   (4,4) 

So the comma is required to distinguish them. 


Problem is, there just aren't enough delimiters in Ascii! 

-- Steve Majewski





From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  2 10:58:29 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 10:58:29 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <slrn9k12b6.ttu.kzaragoza@kzaragoza.ne.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <cr21kt4gmvnfgv6srsfr5dhl8845dm9hqe@4ax.com>

On Mon, 02 Jul 2001 14:45:49 GMT, kzaragoza at mediaone.net (Kris J. Zaragoza) wrote:

>This strikes me as flamebait, but I'll put on my asbestos suit and
>dive in anyway. :-)
>
>On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 21:42:37 -0700, Edward B. Wilson II <ed at ewilson.com> wrote:
>>I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>>frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>>
>>Python still doesn't have good database support, nor has it grown to be
>>useful in the web space as mod_perl.  PyApache has been around longer than
>>mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
>>space.
>

<snip>

>>
>>It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
>>attempts poetry.
>
>I think that Python's leadership (specifically Guido) has been doing a
>fantastic job.  The powers that be have avoided trying to pigeon-hole
>Python into one particular application area, instead making it useful
>to a broader audience of software developers.  It is this flexibility
>that makes Python so incredibly useful, in my opinion.
>

For example, one lone programmer (as I understand it) wrote a nice SQL 
server/client entirely in Python. This would be Gadfly.

Talk about your scaling up and down.




>
>I myself use Python for a variety of tasks.  It scales down nicely to
>simple scripting tasks, and scales up to heavy data analysis and
>manipulation using relational databases.  I use Python for "bread and
>butter" work that has nothing to do with generating web pages.  I'm
>even using the Jython implementation in a production order processing
>environment and haven't seen a single hiccup.  Python gives me all the
>power and flexibility I need to get my job done.
>
>-Kris


Regards, Joe


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 04:52:29 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 08:52:29 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org> <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net> <cpr8v2120n.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b627949.622973608@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:43:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:54:13 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> >Assuming we'll adopt a variation of Scheme's numerical tower (which
>> >I'm currently in favor of, more or less), this won't happen.  Floats
>> >and complex would always be considered inexact (and ints and rationals
>> >exact), and inexact numbers are not allowed as sequence indices, even
>> >if their exact value is an integer.
>> >
>> Why would complex have to be inexact if both its
>> real and imaginary parts were exact?
>> 
>> This looks exact, but will it be?
>>  >>> (1+2j)**2
>>  (-3+4j)
>
>Probably not -- I don't think it's worth to have a separate exact and
>inexact complex numbers, especially since exact numbers will probably
>be represented as rationals (with ints and long ints as a special-case
>optimization), while inexact numbers will probably all use some form
>of floating point (binary or decimal).
>
I'm not sure I follow what yoou mean by separate exact and inexact
complex numbers. Why would
    isexact(cn)
not amount to
    isexact(cn.real) and isexact(cn.imag) ?
And then just do the math operations as needed on cn.real and cn.imag and
let their idividual exactness chips fall where they may?

Does the complex implementation need to know how .real and .imag are stored?
I imagine if you hand built a class implementation, you would have separate
unified numbers (obviously excluding complex ;-) for real and imag.

How much different is  the builtin complex from a class implementation?
Is it an optimization issue?





From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 15:28:54 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:28:54 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-E19F08.00451323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <GbW67.19921$EP6.4914854@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3B5C3713.A5201C5A@letterror.com>
Message-ID: <WV_67.20460$EP6.5074314@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Just van Rossum" <just at letterror.com> wrote in message
news:3B5C3713.A5201C5A at letterror.com...
...

> I think you're terribly overreacting.

Given your subsequent explanation, yes.  What did not apply to you was
directed at others.  For a broader and more considered response, which
may also explain what this straw broke, see my reply today to Guido in
PEP0238 Lament.

> To put it more subtly: *I* would never use int arithmetic for this
sort of thing in Python.

I call this straightforward and unarguable.  If you had said that, I
would not have responded.

> Integer arithmetic like may be a lot more natural if you have a
> strong C background, and if not wasting cycles is a priority. To me
> (no strong math background, no computer science education) it simply
> looks like "showing off" to do a simple thing like this with ints.

Whereas it looks wierd to me, with my C and math background and
residual concern for cycles, to do a simple int calc like this with
floats.  Most number theory (the theory of counts and integers) is
done, or traditionally has been done, without reference to the
possible existence or reals (or floats).  From within this universe,
resorting to real arithmethic has sometimes been seen as a 'using a
crutch', to be avoided if at all possible, whereas you see avoiding
the crutch, when one is available, as 'showing off'.  Interesting
difference in perspective.

>But I'm sure you'll see an insult in that line, too.

Not at all.  You explained how things look different to you because of
our different backgrounds.  Consequently, we can learn something from
from each other and broaden our views.  This is quite different from
either of us dogmatically claiming that our narrow view is reality for
both.

Cheers,

Terry





From chrishbarker at home.net  Thu Jul 26 20:22:32 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:22:32 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60B448.78DBC7D0@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238. 

Very nice. Let's hope this calms the waters some...

>     - Use a directive (or some other way) to specify the Python
>       version for which a specific piece of code was developed.  This
>       requires future Python interpreters to be able to emulate
>       *exactly* every previous version of Python, and moreover to do
>       so for multiple versions in the same interpreter.  This is way
>       too much work.  A much simpler solution is to keep multiple
>       interpreters installed.

I think this has been dismissed a little too quickly. I suppose I can't
comment on what "way too much work" is, as I really don't know how much
work it will be, and I'm unlikely to be doing any of it. I do think that
it is a lot of work for system administrators to keep all the old
interpreters around (particularly on new systems, it could be a fair bit
of work to get a working copy of Python 2.1 on RedHat 13.2 a few years
from now!) It seems to me that the worst case is that we end up with a
somewhat bloated interpreter that is essentially two (or three, or four)
completely separate interpreters that happen to be bundled together.
Given how cheap memory and disk space is these days, the bloat shouldn't
be a big deal, and you could always turn off the old code with a compile
option if you didn't need the backwards compatible interpreter.

I'm also not so sure about the emulate "exactly" issue. New features
that have been added but don't break old code could be along for the
ride, so you'd only have to emulate the code breaking ones, which have
been, and hopefully will be, few and far between. In this case, you are
planning on keeping the three opcodes, so the only difference would be
at the compiling state. In fact, it seems that the only difference
between the version 3.0 - epsilon version and 3.0 is that a bunch of
from __future__statements will be implied, so you already have a
mechanism in place to do it.

This kind of directive has the added benefit of immediately stopping
with an understandable exception when new code is run on old
interpreters.

Besides the sysadmin effort required to maintain multiple interpreters,
there this the issue of how the system knows which interpreter to use to
run a given piece of code. On *nix, you could change the #! line to
indicate version:

#!/usr/bin/env Python3.0.

On Windows, you are stuck with associating *.py files with python, so
you would have to add a new extension, perhaps *.py3. On the Mac, you
would have to add a new creator type, maybe "pyt3" (it's now "pyth").

Anyway, there is still time to give this some thought, I just think it
was dismissed pretty quickly, there was a little discussion on c.l.p,
but not much compared to all the other noise in the threads!

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Wed Jul 11 20:23:52 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:23:52 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <3B4CD03B.1D5A30AE@engcorp.com> (message from Peter Hansen on
	Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:16:27 -0400)
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <vn_27.42062$F%5.2541404@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B4CD03B.1D5A30AE@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <12072001.1@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

    Peter> Steve Holden wrote re BDFL and int/int:
    >> That fact that *I* was unable to convince you leaves me feeling somewhat
    >> chastened about the qualities of my own criticism, however :-)

    Peter> Take heart: I suspect it was more than the one posting
    Peter> which had this effect!

    Peter> Perhaps one could say Terry's posting represented a
    Peter> crystallization of a number of concerns various people have
    Peter> had.  It worked for me too, and Guido's comments had
    Peter> previously already convinced me of the value of the change,
    Peter> in spite of my own concern of what it would mean in my
    Peter> area.

[Yeah, yeah, I can't shut up ;-)]

I hope the change does get done, with an appropriate use of the
__future__ statement as Guido outlined.

I had a script recently where I wanted to pass in a command line param
that could be a numeric ratio, s.th. like

   thescript --ratio=1/3

Now, what do I do with that?  I can't use 1/3, because that eval'd is
0.  So... either people need to specify a float (--ratio=.3333... not
very good looking) or I have to do some magic inside the script (look
whether the ratio contains a /, split, float() on part, and merge)

If 1/3 gave the obvious result, all would be well.

Bye, J

PS: Guido said he has "second thoughts" and that "maybe" it's better
to leave it as is.  I still have hope ;-)

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
          George Herrimann's Krazy Kat (http://www.krazy.com)
             I wish I had more energy -- or less ambition.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010712/3dcd201c/attachment.sig>

From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Wed Jul  4 09:31:04 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:31:04 +0200
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hv5qp$8g7$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

Odd... This gives a 404... On ... Err.. Slashdot,
it seems :-|

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick

"Ben" <b.e.n. at .r.e.h.a.m.e...c.o.m> wrote in message
news:ldi4ktoc90c8kbeqq7epkq2dskp99etc3i at 4ax.com...
>
> http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/




From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 30 06:41:21 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 03:41:21 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <mailman.996431755.22225.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107300241.51e94862@posting.google.com>

"Brian Quinlan" <brian at sweetapp.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.996431755.22225.python-list at python.org>...
> "Moore's law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant..." -- Paul
> Prescod
> 
> Nice :-) I've got to remember that one.

Well, type declarations would probably have made the PEP 238
discussion much shorter, in that it would be easier to write a tool to
search for "all cases of the / operator where the operands are both
integers", and so on.

Moore's Law isn't the only force at work, and type declarations aren't
just optimisations to enhance performance. As you all know, of course.
;-)

Paul


From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Wed Jul 11 12:01:42 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:01:42 GMT
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994843338.24567.python-list@python.org> <3B4C2A0E.60AA094@nokia.com> <8oZ27.41795$F%5.2523550@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C78FE.C2B6CECB@nokia.com>

Steve Holden wrote:
> 
> "Joonas Paalasmaa" <joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com> wrote in message
> news:3B4C2A0E.60AA094 at nokia.com...
> > Shannon --jj Behrens wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello All,
> > >
> > > I wrote a useful C module for doing string
> > > interpolation.  I find it indespensible when working
> > > with large blocks of triple-quoted text.  When working
> > > with large blocks of triple-quoted text, nothing else
> > > is quite as convenient.  Here's the Python doc:
> >
> > [lots of text snipped]
> >
> > > Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
> > > even be useful enough to be included as a standard
> > > module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
> > > suggestions as to what I can do with it.  You may
> > > download the entire packages from:
> > >
> > > <http://ironorchid.com/jjinux/evalstr.tar.gz>
> >
> > I prefer the following method for evaluations inside strings.
> >
> > >>> class Eval:
> > def __getitem__(self, key):
> > return eval(key)
> >
> >
> > >>> foo = 3.0
> > >>> spam = 5.0
> > >>> print "%(foo/spam)s" % Eval()
> > 0.6
> > >>> print "%(foo/spam).55f" % Eval()
> > 0.5999999999999999800000000000000000000000000000000000000
> 
> That's a very neat trick. Had you though of writing it up as a Python
> recipe?
> 
To where?


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Tue Jul 17 13:04:53 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 10:04:53 -0700
Subject: embedded Python and AIX
Message-ID: <a279dd25.0107170904.34214bd3@posting.google.com>

For some reason, Google cut off half of my earlier post
GSS

I am trying to use Python embedded in a C library and am getting SEGV
upon executing "import string" or "import re" on an AIX platform with
gcc. I have built a similar program on Linux+gcc with no problem. Any
suggestions, even if you don't have experience with AIX would be
appreciated.


Detailed:
A function starts up the Python and executes a string
"execfile('pyresolve.py')". (Note: "python pyresolve.py" works great!)
This file will execute fine until it causes string or re to be
imported. (that is, imports of math, sys, and os all work fine).
Running through gdb, and adding some print statements to Python, it
seems to be crashing in initstrop() at Py_InitModule4() because it has
an incorrect address for the function. For instance look at this
output (some printf's I added to print addresses for Py_InitModule4()-
e04c0 is the function address):
      *********** 
      Hello.
      execfile('py


From cliechti at mails.ch  Fri Jul 20 16:08:43 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 22:08:43 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4>
Message-ID: <Xns90E4E1E55281Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

I find this is a good idea: do the case insensitivity in the environment 
(e.g. IDLE). It's about the same as autocorrecting diffrent cases during 
edit - as proposed in an other message. you will end up having all the 
names in the same case and you don't need python to be case insensitive.


recently i read about two things that could break older code:
-case insensitivity and
-the integer division (/)

i guess such changes threaten the popularity of python. there is much code 
around - up and running or laying around as example - which could fail and 
nobody is interested in going trough that code while he's involved in other 
projects. whats the result? examples:

-what do i say to sombody who's willing to learn a new language but many of 
the example programms fail?

-i think that you realy have to be a huge fan of python to stay with it 
even if you have to change all the old code if you are one of these "a = 
A()" programmers. well most reader of this group would probably stay but it 
givess python an "incopatibility" touch.

-people from scientific and math fields often use "n" and "N" together. or 
"alpha" and "Alpha" because our keyboard has no greek letters. their code 
will need a lot of fixes.

do so many programming errors come from names with the wrong case? is the 
risk of misspelled _worsd_ not as likely? case insenitivity doesn't solve 
that.

don't missunderstand me - i like python. it's the best/most convenient 
language i know... i just think that there are enough other much more 
usefull things to enhance than / and CaSe-(in)SenSitiVitY that do not break 
old code but make the language even more attractive, wider usable and 
faster in the develop/debug cycle.

i say: do case insensitivity and integer-divison (/) warnings in the source 
editor (like M$-Word's online spell checker) and keep python as backwards 
compatible as possible!

chris


ps: couln't a case-insensitive fan not just overrite __getattr__ and 
__setattr__ to be case insensitive at least for class members?


cwebster at nevada.edu (Corran Webster) wrote in news:cwebster-
2007011136180001 at 192.168.0.4:
> 
> I think a far better solution would be a case sensitive language with
> tools that allow the user to enforce uniform case usage.  Having taught
> novice programmers, I can appreciate that case sensitivity can lead to
> problems in that community (although I do not remember it being a major
> obstacle for the students I taught, I can never-the-less see that it may
> have caused some students confusion).
> 
> However, I think that the best way to deal with this is in the tools that
> are provided with the language, such as IDLE, or by providing a case
> insensitive version of the language for a teaching environment.
> 
>> > Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but
>> > nobody wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program
>> > with distinct meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes
>> > for readable code -- at least for this sometime programmer.
>> 
>> Exactly.
> 
> And I have to disagree.  While I don't want to see "oMegA" and "omega"
> *at all* in the same program, I do want "omega" and "Omega" to be able
> to refer to distinct (albeit probably related) objects.
> 



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 25 19:27:15 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:27:15 -0700
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
References: <mailman.996036705.1133.python-list@python.org> <9jngih$n9f$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <3B5F55D3.B46F4CF@ActiveState.com>

Thomas Bellman wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> I would seem logical to unify the instance type with the instance
> function in the new module.  

People would expect type(C())(foo) to call C.__init__. Better to leave
it undefined then to have it do something seemingly random.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From donovan at sherbet.co.uk  Fri Jul 13 10:36:53 2001
From: donovan at sherbet.co.uk (Donovan Hide)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:36:53 +0100
Subject: Partition Problem
Message-ID: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk>

Hi,
    I'm very new to combinatorics (in fact my interest has only arisen from
a problem in a magazine) and have been scouring the net for help with said
problem.
    The difficuly is phrasing the question in mathematical language.
Basically how can I find all the sets of six numbers which sum to 17 and
also to 20. I have found all sorts of research and information about Bell
Numbers and Stirling numbers but I think that they only refer to the total
number of sets?
    I have come across algorithms written twenty years ago, but they are
written in Pascal and Fortran. I am learning to program with Python, so it
is difficult to translate them. I would be very grateful if someone could
supply some c, python or even pseudocode to generate the solution to this
problem.
    Also is generation the correct phrase or is enumeration better?
    Thanks in advance for your time,
    Donovan Hide.




From revyakag at umdnj.edu  Wed Jul  4 15:42:33 2001
From: revyakag at umdnj.edu (Andrey Revyakin)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:42:33 -0400
Subject: sys.stdin.read() HELP!
References: <3B42B7F0.50B624BD@umdnj.edu> <m38zi5ym77.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4371A9.61A27B4F@umdnj.edu>

There's not much code in my srcript - just

import sys
text = sys.stdin.read()
... and then goes string parsing for the text.

If I try using sys.stdin from the shell it works ok.

The machines definitely differ more than by the version of python. In fact
it's a brand new server, and I am not the one who moved stuff onto it. well,
and I don't know much od sysadmin stuff - but if you could give me aclue what
could be the reason I could talk to the guy.

Here are some enviromental variables:

'GATEWAY_INTERFACE': 'CGI/1.1'
'SERVER_SIGNATURE': '<ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.19'
'SERVER_SOFTWARE': 'Apache/1.3.19'



Michael Hudson wrote:

> Andrey Revyakin <revyakag at umdnj.edu> writes:
>
> > I have a cgi script which reads XML data from a FLASH5 movie. The script
> > reads data into a string like this:
> >
> > text = sys.stdin.read()
> >
> > After I moved my scripts from a machine with python 1.7.2 to to a one
>
> 1.5.2, I presume?
>
> > with python 2 .0, I started getting the following error:
> >
> > text = sys.stdin.read()
> > IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
> >
> > WHAT THE #$^ does that mean???
>
> It means sys.stdin isn't attached properly.  This is unlikely to be
> Python's fault, I'd have thought.  Can you shed a few more details as
> to the environment you're working in?  Maybe somebody who has
> experience in these things will be able to spot the mis-config (not
> likely to be me).
>
> Are you sure the version of Python is the only difference between the
> two machines?
>
> Cheers,
> M.
>
> --
>   The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste.
>               -- Steve Jobs, (From _Triumph of the Nerds_ PBS special)
>                          and quoted by Aahz Maruch on comp.lang.python



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 20:33:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:33:14 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3sb9.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <u3d7hnb91.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.
> [...]
> 
> +0.9. Quibbles:
> 
>   - "analized" should be "analysed" (NB not "analyzed", please)

I guess that depends on which side of the ocean (or the "pond") you
are on... at least on m-w.com, analyse is listed as a chiefly British
variant of analyze.

Maybe we should have a locale tag included in PEPs :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 10 20:55:56 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 00:55:56 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

LANGUAGE CHANGE AND CODE BREAKS
--with particular reference to Python and recent discussions in
comp.lang.python

Terry J. Reedy, tjreedy at udel.edu
July 10, 2001

Summary: After discussing two generals issues (type and audience), I
particularly look at the effect on new programmers and the effect of
replacement changes.

Types of Change: As in other realms, such as text editing, we can
categorize programming language changes as addition, deletion, and
replacement.  While replacement can be modeled by or reduced  to deletion
and addition (see Keywords below), replacement in the specific sense of
changing the meaning of a construct legal both before and after is
qualitatively different in its effect on programmers and code.  It should
therefore be kept as a separate category.

Audience: Each type of change will have different effects on old and new
code (defined as that written for the the old and new versions of the
language) when run on the 'wrong' version on the language interpreter.
Programmers will also see the change differently depending on whether they
learn the language before or after the change .  Existing users who pay
attention to the change will have to upgrade their knowledge and maybe
their code.  New users who initially learn only the new version of the
language and then read old code or run code on old interpreters without
backdating their knowledge may be surprised.

Deletions: If a feature is directly deleted, it presumably is rare used and
not too useful.  When present in code run on a new system, there should be
a syntax error and the programmer will have to remove it and maybe do
something else.  New users reading old code will seldom see deleted
features.  (I have never, for instance, seen an access statement.)  If and
when they do, they may ignore it, guess its meaning, or find its meaning in
old documentation.

Additions: Old code runs fine in new interpreters.  New users will never
see the new feature they learned in old code.  If they try to use it with
an old interpreter, they will get an error message and either work around
its absence or stick with new interpreters.

Keywords:  Addition of a word as a keyword implicitly deletes its previous
usage as a name.  As long as the legal usages before and after are
disjoint, any wrong usages will be flagged as errors.  This combination of
deletion and addition is different from replacement in the narrow sense I
use here.  Example:  The statement 'yield <expression>' is disjoint from
any current legal use of 'yield' as, for instance, a name for bond yield.

Replacements: These are the most troublesome changes since they amount to a
silent code break.  There will be no error message (at least not at the
point of misinterpretation) when code is run under the wrong interpreter.
Similarly, there is no reason for a flag to raised in the mind of a new
user who only knows the new meaning of the construct.

A further complication is that incompatibility is bidirectional.  Old code
that does not use  a deleted feature and new code that does not use an
added feature can run on both old and new interpreters.  After a
replacement, code must avoid the changed-meaning syntax entirely, in both
old and new meanings, to achieve the same flexibility.

For various reasons, transitions may take several years before everyone
upgrades their interpreters to any particular release level.  Last I knew,
for instance, some Linux distributions still install Python 1.5.2.
Code-breaking replacements probably inhibit ungrades more that
non-code-breaking additions

Example 1 - nested scooping:  As I understand it, the value assigned to y
in

x = 1
def f():
  x = 'one'
  def g():
    y = x

is changing from 1 to 'one'.  This transition is eased by the fact that
duplicate intermediate names are currently unnecessary (just change the
spelling) and rare.  As a transition measure, the compiler can detect this
usage and emit a warning, strongly suggestion a name change before the
scope-hiding meaning is deleted by being replaced.  As for newcomers, those
few who really delve into into the advanced topic of nested functions and
name scoping can also read an included warning about the older two-level
rule.

Example 2 - integer (int+long) division:  This transition is more involved
and will be harder even with extra planning.

a. While it is fairly easy to write the future meaning of int/int in the
current language, using '.0' and float() as people do now, the currently
possible rewrite of the current meaning so it will remain valid --
divmod(e1,e2)[0]) -- is more complex and slower to run.  Therefore, a
simultaneous (or preceeding) addition of something like infix 'div' is
desirable (and already planned).

b.  Nested scoping applies to all nested functions; its uses are detectable
at compile time, which makes warnings about deprecated usages easy.  The
change in meaning of e1 / e2 is partial in that it only affects
integer-integer division.  While the case of two literal constants could be
detected at compile time, detection generally awaits the run-time
dispatching in the function that implements '/'.  A warning mechanism will
have to include run-time warnings.  A mechanism to turn warnings on and off
on a per-statement basis would be helpful.

c. Nested scoping was intended to be an addition until someone noticed the
existence of a foolish-but-legal conflict.  The change in meaning of
integer / integer is a true bidirectional replacement that will invalidate
actual and not just theoretically possible code.  To make code
cross-compitible, one will generally (without specific program analysis)
have to avoid all occurrence of integer-integer division in any form, with
either / or div or with constants or variables.

d. If the change in meaning brought about by a replacement is large, one
may hope that the uncaught error introduced by a legal but incorrect
cross-usage will bring about an exception sometime later in the
computation.  However, the division change may only change the type of the
result, which may well change but not crash further computation.  And, of
course, the value error, if not zero, may be small and similarly hard to
detect.

e.  Almost everyone who does much of any programming will use division
sometime, so everyone should be taught how to program it.  So this change
affect beginners and not just advanced programmers.  For years after the
change, anyone who might use an older system that they do not control, such
as at a school campus or workplace, should also be taught that 'integer /
integer' used to mean 'interger div integer', and that subtle and
hard-to-detect errors can arise from erroneous cross-usage.





From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul 16 12:05:51 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 16:05:51 GMT
Subject: Need help with socket server code
References: <mailman.995132124.31082.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iv3cv$o80$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth "Shane Anglin" <shane.anglin at mtni.net>:
| Here's the basics of what I want to do with my new app: 
| Main loop is: 
| 1 - check socket for any incoming data 
| 1a - if no data on socket, go to 2, else get the data and place it into a list 
| 2 - print out list 
| 3 - go to 1 and do it all over again 
|
| Currently, I can create a TCP socket server app using examples that will
| sit and wait (idle 99% of the time) and accepts the incoming data just
| fine, my 'print list' part is not processing at all until I get any new
| data in... for example, 1-wait on a client connect on socket, when a
| connection happens, get data, 2- place new data into list, print list,
| 3 -go to 1 and do it all over again...   in this scenario, #1 has the
| rest of my code 'hostage' until a client connection is made and closed. 

The select() will check for events on a set of sockets or other selectable
devices, with an optional timeout.

  while 1:
      rl, wl, el = select.select([s], [], [], 10.0)    # 1
      for r in rl:
          if r is s:
              # 2 ...

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From sill at optonline.net  Mon Jul 16 22:07:02 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 02:07:02 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions 
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com> <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <slrn9l77cb.91.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:24:40 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> All very good points. I have certain reservations, tho.  I dread
> waiting for Microsoft Word to startup as it is, written in compiled C++.
> I fear for the speed of anything of that scale and complexity
> implemented in Python.

I don't know this for a fact, but I heard someone saying that he/she
received some errors in Word97 (or maybe 2k) that demostrated word's
internal reliance on some sort of scripting language, most likely
VBscript. Can anybody confirm this?

Not that this matters much, a C++ program can easily be hundreds of
times slower than a python program if design is bad.


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 17:11:41 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:11:41 -0400
Subject: Stopping a script in PythonWin?
References: <3B460F65.CBA46D2D@home.net>
Message-ID: <ONp17.39923$he.2569508@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B460F65.CBA46D2D at home.net...
> HI all,
>
> When using PythonWin, Is it possible to stop a running script without
> killing the whole IDE? I find that I want to do that on a fairly regular
> basis, and have not found a way to do it.
>
If you look in the system tray you'll see a Python icon (oicon?). Right-menu
on that has a "break into running script" item. Note that this won't work if
your program is hanging in systems calls (e.g. waiting for socket input),
but it's better than nothing.

> Also, the command window doesn't auto-scroll when a script is running
> and dumping stuff to the screen, this makes it kind of hard to see what
> is going on. Is there a way to get it to scroll?
>
Sorry, don't know.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


--
> Christopher Barker,
> Ph.D.
> ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
> http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
>                                    ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
> Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
> Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------
> Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------




From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Mon Jul  2 01:04:23 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 05:04:23 GMT
Subject: odd behavior!
Message-ID: <6rvvjtoe2f4p8i18rva42guei44f10fp4j@4ax.com>

This looks like output from an attempt to use the Distutils to create a
source distribution, yes?

C:\Python21>python setup.py sdist
running sdist
warning: sdist: missing required meta-data: url
warning: sdist: manifest template 'MANIFEST.in' does not exist (using
default file list)
error: package directory 'newrecshite\registry' does not exist

However, setup.py actually consists of this:

'''
print 'hi'
'''

It *used* to contain an import of setup from distutils.core, and called it
in a sufficiently ill-formed way to produce the above output, but even
after I changed it, it still produced that output.  In fact, I just ran the
same command line with a blank file and got the same thing.  I've been
having similar problems with other scripts--changing them doesn't actually
change the behavior of the interpreter in any way.  Deleting .pycs hasn't
helped.  Any advice?

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
Yet when he came down from the mountain, he had not gained any wisdom.  
In no way had he been able to solve the riddle of this story.  And he had
lost his faith.  But he had discovered that he had an affinity for
Dixieland music. -- Joe Frank, "The Road to Calvary"


From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 12 19:59:11 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 09:59:11 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <861ynl4s34.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) writes:

> If I change the order of two ints in a
> function interface, for example, the C++ compiler won't have a clue
> that the interface has changed.

If you do something like this for any project larger than 1 person and
a handful of files, you are in deep trouble irrespective of the
language.



From no at spam.com  Tue Jul  3 08:09:45 2001
From: no at spam.com (MDK)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:09:45 -0400
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
Message-ID: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>

Hello,

Ok, I rescind my previous conclusion that the answer to this question,
"Python can do everything C++ can do but just slower." is "Excluding writing
device drivers the answer is a clear yes."

The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the positive
things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?  Why
the leaning towards C over C++?  I thought C++ was supposed to be the 'New
and Improved C.'

Thanks.




From smnordby at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  8 18:42:27 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 15:42:27 -0700
Subject: Good Newbie Books
References: <Cp427.655296$166.13566993@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B48E1D3.448788C1@yahoo.com>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> Does anybody know of some good newbie books for me to read? I have already
> read Ian Van Laningham's "Teach yourself Python in 24 Hours" are there any
> good books that kind of step me up (from the book mentioned before).
> 
> Thanks.

Take Beazley's _Python Essential Reference_ to the comfy chair.

-Steve-


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul  2 13:01:14 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 17:01:14 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uN107.141431$L4.17198481@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
[SNIP]
> That's exactly the problem. The millions of newbies who begged for this
> feature didn't want a short form for a method call. They wanted a short
> form for a repetitive assignment pattern. The feature as implemented
> tries to make them happy and at the same time tries to make the NumPy
> guys happy. If we had chosen to ONLY make the NumPy guys happy then the
> feature would never have got in -- after all it is isomorphic to a
> method call. I think the newbies were sacrificed on the alter of the
> Numeric Dieties.

That's not right.  The behaviour that is being complained here has very
little to do with NumPy. It would have been perfectly possible to make the
augmented assigment operators behave as you desire (nonmutating) for all of
the builtin types, while leaving them as they are for Numeric. All that it
would require would be defining _iadd__ for lists and other offending
objects to be equivalent to:

def __iadd__(self, other):
   return self + other

instead of:

def __iadd__(self, other):
   self.extend(other)
   return self

as it is now.

Someone made a decision at some point that the builtin mutable types should
mutated by augmented assigment. If the newbies were sacrificed on somebody's
alter, it was not NumPy's.

-tim




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 09:41:15 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:41:15 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <mailman.994164845.2688.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6Wj07.34390$zT1.1886256@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Everyone knows
Four into nine gives two

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994164845.2688.python-list at python.org...
> Roses are red,
> and violets are blue,
> I program in Python,
> and so can you.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jaap Spies [mailto:j.spies at hccnet.nl]
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 5:12 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?
>
>
> Armin Steinhoff wrote:
>
>
> > It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
> > attempts poetry.
> >
> > --Ed
> >
>
>
>
> You should know that the roots of Python are in the ABC Programming
> Language and
> as I mentioned  before reading/writing Python is really Poetry!
>
>
> Jaap Spies
>
>




From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul 23 14:20:36 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:20:36 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995908060.25272.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <UVZ67.36893$Cy.4341450@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995908060.25272.python-list at python.org...
> [Tim Hochberg]
[SNIP]
> > This is correct, but can hardly be called simple or clear.
>
> In this specific case "x + 0.0" is correct, but in general it isn't:  on
> boxes with 754 arithmetic (virtually everything), x+0. has a different
sign
> bit than x when x is -0.0, and the default rounding mode is in effect.  In
> this specific case that doesn't matter because the result is immediately
> squared, but in general you can't know that it doesn't matter.  Safest is
>
>     x*1.0
>
> which works in all cases -- maybe.  There's still hardware out there that
> flushes denormal results to 0, and on such boxes both x+0. and x*1.0 can
> return 0 when x is not 0.  Python inherits such behaviors from the
platform.
>
> So "this is more difficult than generally supposed" applies even to people
> who know quite a bit about this stuff.

Hey! You clipped my disclaimer...

Anyway, there's another worry when working with NumPy is that both my
solution (which is really Konrad's, so I'll blame it on him) and the correct
one above may quietly convert some huge array (x) of C floats into an array
of C doubles and bring your machine to its knees. Unless you make sure the
save-space flag is set, but that checking that adds a whole 'nother layer of
cruft. Or you could multiply by a rank zero array of type 'f', but that has
some doesn't really do the right thing either. Doing this so that works
right for arrays in the general case is big mess. Fortunately for me, I
always use doubles....

And when I want to sleep poorly at night, I go read one of Kahan's papers as
per Tim Peter's recomendation.


-the-only-thing-that-helps-is-changing-accuracy-and-hoping-for-the-same-answ
er-ly yours,
-tim




From bosahv at netscapenospam.net  Thu Jul 12 13:33:05 2001
From: bosahv at netscapenospam.net (Bo Vandenberg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:33:05 GMT
Subject: pythonista.com
References: <mailman.994955667.9160.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <lbl37.161430$Mf5.43742860@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

I  dont know what I'd do with it but _really_ like the name.

If an open source(ish) project doesn't come forward for it let me know
bosahv at netscape.net. Like I said I don't know what I'd do with it but I
think I'll pay whatever transfer stuff to keep it 'in the family' so to
speak.

Bo





From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Thu Jul 12 09:04:17 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:04:17 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5238@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I mentioned in a previous listing that someone else on the list made that
statement, and I was raising a question, given that the information was
true.  But I also have my doubts.  PHP is also competing for the market with
JSP, ASP, and Cold Fusion, and you can run JSP (with Tomcat) and ASP (with
Win doze and IIS) for nothing.  Ruby is still mainly used in Japan, and not
outside that country. There is a good test of how popular something is.
Walk into a big book store that carries technical books (Border's is an
example in the US), or a web outlet like www.amazon.com.  Count how many
books are on a topic: Perl, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, ASP, etc.  It may not
be foolproof, but it is a good start. And yes -- I am a big Python fan, even
though I don't get a chance to use it as frequently as others on this list.

-----Original Message-----
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk [mailto:philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 4:33 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:53 +0200, J?rgen A. Erhard
<juergen.erhard at gmx.net> wrote:
>--pgp-sign-Multipart_Wed_Jul_11_21:40:43_2001-1
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>>>>>> "Kemp" =3D=3D Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> writes:
>
>    Kemp> So an interesting question is raised.
>
>Is it?
>
>    Kemp> If PHP and Ruby are gaining acceptance because they address
>    Kemp> business needs, what needs to be done to carry Python in
>    Kemp> that direction?
>
>*If*!  We can debate to no end whether PHP and Ruby are gaining
>acceptance, in business circles.
>
>And PHP and Ruby are quite different beasts.

PHP is very popular in open source projects. Ruby less so.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##







From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 11:28:16 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:28:16 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEDBLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <9jffns$hma$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
        <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEDBLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <15196.17040.65029.654718@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in numerics has bugged Guido
    Tim> about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most visible repeated
    Tim> pressures have come from educators using Python as a means to some
    Tim> other end.

I'm not a denizen of the edu-sig list, but Guido has mentioned the Alice
folks (I think they are the ancestors of the VPython folks) before as a
significant influence on his ideas about this subject.  Perhaps you would
class them as educators and not numeric people, but I would throw them in
the numeric camp.

Skip



From usenet at theplaceboeffect.com  Thu Jul 26 23:16:14 2001
From: usenet at theplaceboeffect.com (news.telocity.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:16:14 -0500
Subject: Microsoft SQL Server & DTS
Message-ID: <T0587.1604$ao.413810@newsrump.sjc.telocity.net>

Hi,

Has anyone used python as the language for an ActiveX Scripting Task within
a DTS package in SQL Server 2000?

I'm having problems getting even the simplest script to run. Any help would
be great.

Thanks,

MWT




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 11:19:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:19:34 +0200
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <9hfg1n$du33c$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3B3BB077.1E51F2C9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.993788863.16675.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jp0kq.o4l.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.993829912.16325.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jpho8.peb.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9hq3eh0hqc@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015 at 4ax.com...
    ...
> I'd also consider whether /# and #/ are better markers - more directly
> related to the existing #.

...but breaking existing working code, no...?

def trick()
    return (2 /# rest of line commented anyway
        2      # but is this also commented...?
        #/
        )

In current Python, trick() returns 1.  Wouldn't
it silently change to return 2 under your proposal?
Horrid as /* ... */ may be in other respects, it
seems to me it can't break existing working Python
code, at least.


Alex





From barry at digicool.com  Wed Jul 11 12:10:59 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:10:59 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <8UZ27.41897$F%5.2532623@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
	<Pine.LNX.4.33.0107111923100.17694-100000@phd.fep.ru>
Message-ID: <15180.31379.969883.761630@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "OB" == Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> writes:

    OB>    Have anyone of you looked into mailbox.py from Python 2.1?
    OB> :) I recommend to look there and find all your ni^H^Hdreams
    OB> came true :)))

Heh, I typoed in my previous message.  You're right, I /did/ sneak
this into 2.1. :)

-Barry



From bafulton at cats.ucsc.edu  Tue Jul  3 22:57:32 2001
From: bafulton at cats.ucsc.edu (Ben Andrew Fulton)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 18:57:32 -0800
Subject: Converting from long integer to read-only buffer
Message-ID: <3b42780c@news.ucsc.edu>

I'm currently working on a module to control a piece of hardware over the
serial port of a Mac. The command packets are currently manipulated within
the the module as long integers so that I can twiddle individual bits. 
However, when I send them out the serial port they need to be converted
into a read-only buffer (or perhaps a string [although of course, str() 
is not the answer]) for the ctb (communications toolbox) to accept them.
Is there a module out there that can do a straight long int --> read-only
buffer conversion? struct, array, and binascii all seem inadequate to the
task unless I write my own helper function, which I suppose I will have to
if I can't figure anything else out in the next day or so. 

Thanks,

-->ben fulton



From dirck at pacbell.net  Thu Jul 12 23:30:57 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:30:57 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Sa137.1466$zv2.51843@news.pacbell.net> <3B4D3622.5B4FC76E@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <n1c37.177121$qv3.44584072@nnrp5-w.sbc.net> <3B4E53DD.A319FDD9@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <RXt37.289$jB4.179800@news.pacbell.net>

"Greg Ewing" <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:3B4E53DD.A319FDD9 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz...
> Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> >
> > It's a problem with expectations and the law of least astonishment.
> > Which audience would you rather astonish, and how much?
>
> Depends on what you understand "the problem" to
> be. To me, it's the fact that I have to write
> something ludicrously convoluted just to tell
> Python what sort of division I want to do.
> This has nothing to do with astonishment.

The law of least astonishment:
A software program should always respond to
the user in the way that astonishes him the least.

It sounds like you find Python's integer division 'astonishing',
and yet I would be 'astonished' if it did anything else.

Therein lies the conundrum.




From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 18:54:29 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:54:29 -0400
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <Q29FKvAhLSY7EwU8@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCENCLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Robin Becker]
> when/if the grand unification happens what will math.cos do with 1+3j?
> What will floor do with 1.3+0j etc etc etc. Presumably a Timbot thread
> is even now busily extending all math functions to the complex domain.

My belief is that the vast majority of Python users are best served by the
current behavior of never getting a complex result from non-complex inputs
unless they explicitly invoke functions from the cmath module.  But that's a
question you didn't ask (although you should have).  A more interesting
question is whether math.acos(2) should continue to whine.

The flip side is that a minority of users would be better served if they
didn't have to import cmath to get complex results from non-complex inputs.
This is one of several cases where Fear of State forces a minority to suffer
in order to avoid surprising the majority.

> I eagerly await the arrival of quaternions.

So write a PEP <wink>.




From none at nospam.net  Tue Jul 24 18:52:33 2001
From: none at nospam.net (Acid)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:52:33 GMT
Subject: FTP win32 program
References: <1m477.55371$rt.8243308@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com> <3B5CF72B.E810465F@wwc.com>
Message-ID: <R_m77.644$Gh1.80096@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>

"Steve Williams" <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message
news:3B5CF72B.E810465F at wwc.com...
> Acid wrote:
>
> > I am trying to write simple program with Python to connect to an ftp,
> > list, download a file(s) etc...
> >
> > I am running this under Win2K professional with Python 2.1:
> >
> > [snip]
>
> > I start the Python Gui, then New Window, put the above script in, then
> > save, then Run Script.  It returns:
> >
> >  File "C:/Python21/download.py", line 2
> >     from ftplib import FTP
> >     ^
> > SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> >
> > What's the trick to get this working under Win32?
> >
>
> That caret is in a suspicious place.  How are you putting the script in the
> New Window?  Cut and paste?  Check for random leading whitespace.
>
> Anyway, don't use
>
>     'from ftplib import FTP'
>
> even though the code itself and Beasley give that as their example,  because
> you'll have trouble catching exceptions.  And you will definitely want to
> catch exceptions with ftp.
>
> Use something like
>
> #=============================
> import ftplib
>
> #Connect to host
> try:
>     ftp = ftplib.FTP('x,y,z')
> except ftplib.all_errors, e:
>     print e
>     . . . #punt
>
> #Change working directory
> try:
>     ftp.sendcmd('CWD /misc'))
> except ftplib.all_errors, e:
>    print e
>    . . . #punt
>
> #List the directory
> try:
>     ftp.retrlines('LIST')
> except ftplib.all_errors, e:
>   print e
>    . . . #punt
> #=========================
>
> instead.
>
> I know the verb 'catch' is not Pythonic, but . . .
>
>
>

Well, that bombed out also with some crazy errors.

I would rather write this in C so I can just make an executable for the computer
challenged employees who can't perform an ftp download everyday.  That way it
will run on all WIN32 platforms etc..make life easy for them.

The plan was to write this to check for the current day from the system then go
out and ftp the appropriate files for that day and dump it in a directory for
them with just the click of a few buttons.

Thanks for the input...

Keith




From nas at python.ca  Tue Jul 10 16:34:50 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:34:50 -0700
Subject: Profiler question
In-Reply-To: <3B4B4F91.4CCFFE84@yahoo.com>; from slinkp23@yahoo.com on Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 07:01:29PM +0000
References: <slrn9km60i.d3l.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <mailman.994779436.2512.python-list@python.org> <3B4B4F91.4CCFFE84@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20010710133450.A12975@glacier.fnational.com>

Paul Winkler wrote:
> Does that work OK with existing binary utilities? At one time I heard
> that doing so would screw up "top", but that was quite some time
> ago... kernel 2.0 I think.

The only difference I noticed to far is that time.clock() returns
larger values.

  Neil



From lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl  Wed Jul 11 10:03:29 2001
From: lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl (Tomasz Lisowski)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:03:29 +0200
Subject: Bug in __imul__ (OT)
References: <mailman.994855218.12763.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ihm5n$mem$1@news.tpi.pl>

Uzytkownik "Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> napisal w wiadomosci
news:mailman.994855218.12763.python-list at python.org...
> There is a joke about americans:
>
> they were confused that Excel give different result from
> pocket calculator:
>
> [5] [+] [3] [*] [4] [=]
>
> | 32 |
>
> is different from
>
> 5+3*4
>
> | 17 |
>
> as calculated by Excel.

LOL!
I have a similar example:
Run a MS Windows calculator (calc.exe), and enter the above given
keystrokes:

1. If your calculator is set to a standard view, the result is 32, as on the
american pocket calculator, but
2. If you set the calculator to professional view, the result is correct
(17) :-))))))))))))

This has been just exercised on Windows NT 4.0 workstation. Try it by
yourself :-)))
Tomasz




From 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu  Fri Jul 13 11:01:00 2001
From: 9nick9m at alum.mit.edu (Nick Mathewson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:01:00 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> wrote:
>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>following script:
>
>x = 3
>x = x + 2
>print "x =", x
>x = "now I'm a string"
>print x
>x = [ 5, x ]
>print "and now a list:", x
>
>If you don't believe it, run it.

I believe it, but it doesn't demonstrate a thing about type safety.
You've just discovered dynamic typing.  You see, your implied view of
typing seems to come from a statically typed language, where every
*variable* has a type of its own.

In Python, types are associated with *objects*, not with *variables*.
IOW, all variables are of the same type: reference-to-object.  

But type safety isn't the same as static typing.  Type safety is
(IIRC) is the property that keeps you from doing stuff like this:
     // C code: no type safety. 
     int x = 3;
     int *xp = &x;
     puts( (char*)xp ); // This is dangerous, but C won't stop you.

     // Java code: type safety.
     Integer x = new Integer(3);
     System.out.println( (String) x ); // Java throws an exception here.

So by the standard definition, Python is of course type-safe.

>                                 Should any language allow
>x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
>different type on two sides of an assignment?	

Once again, this is called dynamic typing, and it's more common than
you seem to think.  It's at least as old as Lisp:
  (let                 ; (ok, is actually scheme.)
    ((x 3))
    (set! x (+ 2 x))
    (set! x "now I'm a string")
    (set! x (list 5 x))
  )

And really, you can write the same code in Java:
  Object x = new Integer(3);
  x = new Integer(2+((Integer)x.intValue()));
  x = "now I'm a string";
  x = new Object[]{new Integer(5), x};

Or Perl, of course:
  $x = 3;
  $x += 2;
  $x = "now I'm a string";
  $x = [ 5, $x ];

Or even C++:
  // Watch out! My C++ is rusty.
  class Integer { int val; 
                  public: Integer(int v) : val(v) {}
                  operator int() { return val; } }
  void* x = new Integer(3);
  x = new Integer(2 + *(Integer*)x);
  x = new string("now I'm a string");
  x = new vector<void*>(2, x);  
  // Ouch!  My brain hurts.  And I just leaked a bunch of memory. :)

In Perl and Lisp, you can see that variables themselves are
untyped[*], as in Python.  In the Java and C++ examples, variables are
typed, but there are also a catch-all types (Object and void*) that
allow the same kind of dynamic behavior.

This is not a Pythonic innovation.  But it is a feature. 

Stop-me-before-I-start-looking-for-a-way-to-do-it-in-CLU-ly Yrs,

[*] It's more complicated than that in Perl, naturally.  It always is.

-- 
 Nick Mathewson    <9 nick 9 m at alum dot mit dot edu> 
                     Remove 9's to respond.  No spam.


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 08:03:15 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:03:15 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <Xns90E06CD541CC7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B52D803.9F3C6D2A@engcorp.com>

Duncan Booth wrote:
> The Python equivalent to the Ruby trick really isn't that much longer, and
> to my mind has the advantage of showing more clearly the programmer's
> intent:
>    (a, b), c = sequence[:2], sequence[2:]

Or perhaps even more readable:

a, b = sequence[:2]
c = sequence[2:]

:-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 08:10:24 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 05:10:24 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>	<mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org>	<9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>	<3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>	<9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <mailman.994359729.14667.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107060410.7beef3fa@posting.google.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994359729.14667.python-list at python.org>...
> Ooh!  A performance thread!  This function is about one-third better than
> str_join.
> 
>     def str_join2(iters):
> 	has = {0:1,1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1,5:1,6:1,7:1,8:1,9:1}.has_key
> 	for i in iters:
> 	    "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if has(x)])
> 
> :-)

The arguments to has() will be strings of unit length. The keys in the
dictionary are integers. has_key() will always return false. The
join() will have very little to do. A very clever peep-hole optimiser
could perhaps replace the last line with '""', then proceed to replace
the whole function body with 'pass'. Is there a peep-hole optimiser
guru in the house?


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 10 19:09:02 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 19:09:02 -0400
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <3B4A4E7D.F16F2C4B@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <u66d0jsa9.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes:

> Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> > 
> > What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
> > 
> > while (x=getchar() != 'N')
> >         {
> >         Do something}
> > 
> > In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> > input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> > value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?
> 
> What is wrong with:
> 
> while 1:
> 	x=raw_input()
> 	if x == 'N': break
> 	Do something

Note that this isn't quite a precise match.  getchar() will only
return a single character from stdin, although depending on
environment a full line may be buffered and the user has to hit Enter
before the application sees it - and if so, the application will see
the newline.  Then, subsequent iterations on getchar() will return
anything else that was entered on that line.  It's also an int return
with EOF (-1) on end of file.

On the other hand, raw_input() will return an entire line as a string
(but sans trailing newline) and will raise an exception on EOF.

I think the closest match is probably more along the lines of:

    import sys

    while 1:
	x = sys.stdin.read(1)
	if x == 'N': break
	Do something

Note that both the original example and this will loop on EOF, which
probably isn't what is desired, but would need to be fixed in either
of the cases (e.g., in the Python case also breaking out if x was '').

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 12:40:31 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:40:31 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.996052189.14819.python-list@python.org> <3B5EF2CC.6D0626E3@calendargalaxy.com> <uk32mtg1a8naikbk04njjhjt10ts3vr4dr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B6197DF.CE56FDBC@yahoo.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:31:38 GMT, Paul Winkler
> <paul at calendargalaxy.com> wrote:
> 
> >> - Just a wild idea: the problem you want to solve is that the existing
> >>   division operator mixes two totally different meanings and thus
> >>   leads to nasty surprises.
(snip)

I didn't write that, that was Christian Tanzer's idea.

I did write this:
> >thought the whole point of the PEP was to make division behave consistently -
> >that is, always return the same type of result regardless of the operands.
> 
> No - that would require many more division operators. Consider complex
> division, division with classes (such as matrix division) etc.

OK, thanks for the clarification.
Perhaps I should have just said "...make division behave MORE consistently."


-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:34:22 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:34:22 -0500
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <6484DB973D0A2698.E825201A4730C5A9.CBB2F51C77E4E7C6@lp.airnews.net>

In article <vko8mtotv7s6mopits06ntammk5ibe4905 at 4ax.com>,
Courageous  <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>> * Perl was also the defacto way to do CGI in the early web
>
>Funny, too, as it never had to be, and you could easily gen up a
>C program which did your CGI duties with vastly higher efficiency
>(n.b.: assuming you didn't badly screw up in string management).
			.
			.
			.
For a post which hikes off in the direction
of "error-checking", relegation of "assuming
you [C coders] didn't badly screw up in
string management" to parentheses tickles me
beyond my power of description.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 20 15:52:02 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:52:02 +0200
Subject: compiling a program --with-python fails (Py_Initialize in 
 -lpython... no)
References: <3B566DAD.C2A08D1E@altavista.com>
Message-ID: <3B588BE2.21CB37F8@lemburg.com>

Alex K wrote:
> 
> hello!
> 
> i am trying to compile a program (a module for icecast called ices)
> with pythonsupport. but that fails.
> 
> i am on a slackware8 system, with python 2.2a1 installed
> (from tarball with no special conf-arguments).
> 
> [root /usr/local/src/ices-0.1.0]# ./configure
> --with-python-includes=/usr/local/include/python2.2
> ...
> checking for Python.h... yes
> checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython... no
> checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.0... no
> checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.2... no
> checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.6... no
> checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.5... no
> configure: error: Could not find the python library
> ...

You will probably have to add the path to the Python lib
using some configure option of that program.

A look at the config.log will also be helpful.
 
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From tundra at tundraware.com  Wed Jul 11 16:40:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 20:40:02 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <slrn9kpca4.t6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <3B4CB951.6EC0DBA1@tundraware.com>

Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 
>
> Large complicated data structures of nested tuples might be a mistake.  Tuples
> and python's simple pattern matching can be handy for small ad hoc types, but
> don't forget about classes.

That's actually a great point - it would certainly contribute to more
readable code, if nothing else...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 23 06:46:39 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 12:46:39 +0200
Subject: Python 2.2 dictionary question.
References: <Xns90E76819BC1F6duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <j4bsmbgbxs.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> In Python 2.2a1 the dictionary type object 'dictionary' in builtins doesn't 
> currently check its arguments at all, so I can call dictionary(1, [66], 
> foo=99) if I really want. I guess that this simply means that the 
> implementation isn't complete, but I wondered what the intention was that 
> dictionary should return. 

Please make a bug report on SF, so this won't be forgotten.

> Something like this perhaps?
> 
>    dictionary() -> {}
>    dictionary({'a': 1, 'b': 2}) -> {'a':1, 'b': 2}
>    dictionary(a=1, b=2) -> {'a': 1, 'b': 2}

This would be an option; the other one would be to disallow arguments
to dictionary. Perhaps following UserDict would be appropriate as
well: dictionary would allow an optional dictionary argument. In fact,
UserDict should be implemented as

UserDict = dictionary

> The other construction that might be useful would be to build a list of 
> (key, value) pairs into a dictionary, reversing the effect of the items() 
> method. This would effectively allow dictionary comprehensions for those 
> that want them:
>    dictionary([(k, v) for k, v in dict if wanted(k)])

Also note that much of this has been discussed before in

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015257.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015258.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015260.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015261.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015265.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015267.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015281.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015288.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015289.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015290.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015292.html

Regards,
Martin


From mirko.liss at web.de  Sun Jul 15 13:21:40 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 19:21:40 +0200
Subject: [Q]Remove Directory in Win2k
In-Reply-To: <3hMlEP$l9c@openbazaar.net>
References: <3hMlEP$l9c@openbazaar.net>
Message-ID: <20010715172142.63A23795.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

On 15 Jul 2001, ?Q?@?U wrote:
>    import os
>    os.mkdir('test')
>    os.remove('test')
> 
> How to remove directory in NTFS?

Perhaps you want to browse the nice documentation that came 
with your Python distribution or take a look at the FAQ at
www.python.org . 

You can get quick info regarding your question with:
>>> import os
>>> dir(os)
>>> print os.remove.__doc__
>>> print os.rmdir.__doc__
>>> print os.removedirs.__doc__


Friendly regards,

Mirko Liss



From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 24 08:27:44 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:27:44 GMT
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
References: <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010724.084018.1789376348.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list at python.org>, "Skip
Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote:


> I was on a walk with my wife and dog yesterday.  Out of the blue I asked
> her "what's the result of five divided by two?"  After a little
> back-and-forth where she tried to figure out how I was trying to trick
> her and make her look foolish she answered, "two-and-a-half".  I then
> posed, "Suppose you have five pinecones and you want to clump them into
> groups of two.  What would you do?".  Her answer was, "Put two in the
> first group, two in the second group, and break the last pinecone in two
> so the third group would have two as well."
> Can we represent that in Python's arithmetic operations somehow? :-)

Hmm...

answer = 5 / 2
print answer
>> 2

sys.mathtype = "break those dark pinecones"
answer = 5/2
print answer
>> 2.5

wow! :)

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 25 19:00:24 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:00:24 GMT
Subject: Driver finds 4' Python in hire car.
References: <mailman.996064604.22983.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ccI77.62234$Xr6.247504@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Simon Brunning:
> <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,30352,00.html>
>
> The unidentified driver had no opinion as to the expected result of the
'/'
> operator on integers. I think that she's just about the only one.

   A reaction to language change?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0105/08/html/snapshot1.html

   Neil





From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 00:52:26 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 04:52:26 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <e4O67.17873$EP6.4677310@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division,
make it
> new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and
1//2 ==
> 0.5.

I can sympathize with the people who have suggested this alternative,
but it strikes me as making things worse in a way.  The current
situation is this: '/' mixes  two types of division -- fractional
result and integer result.  This is fine with me, but I can understand
some having a problem.

Moshe's current proposal cleanly separates the two types: '/' will be
fractional result and '//' will be integer result (including
floor(float/float)).  So 8/3 = 8.0/3.0 = 2.33333, while 8//3 = 2 and
8.0//3.0 = 3.0, which is the same to within type, just as 3+8 ==
(withing type) 3.0+8.0.  (I am not sure about complex//complex since I
an not sure if floor(complex) is defined -- floor(x) + floor(y)*j?)
This is arguably what Python should have started with.

Adding '//' as a pure fractional division operator while '/' remains a
mixed division operator strikes me an unaesthetic and more confusing
than the current situation.  Why the two half redundant operators?
newcomers might rightly wonder.

Terry J. Reedy





From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Fri Jul  6 08:21:11 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:21:11 GMT
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <GG1wzE.DJE@leeds.ac.uk>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:10:28 +0200, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From my personal experience: I get roughly a 15-20% increase of
> productivity in Java.  Lack of templates (standard C++ library
> and others) is BY FAR what I miss most in Java, reducing whatever
> the gain would be if Java had them back down to such 15-20%
> gains.  Other less-important lacks that hurt my productivity
> in Java wrt C++ are multiple inheritance, auto-destructors
> (having to code try/finally &c instead), and to some extent
> slower recompile/rerunalltests cycles due to Java performance
> in the second half of that cycle.

I also find that I tend to be a bit more productive in Java
than in C++.  However, I think that the benefits of having such
high-level, application-oriented class libraries as standard
are reduced somewhat by the sheer verbosity of the language -
e.g. in things like I/O.

Cay Horstmann's comparison of C, C++ and Java springs to mind:

C:

  printf("%10.2f", x);
     
C++:

  cout << setw(10) << setprecision(2) << showpoint << x;
     
Java:

  java.text.NumberFormat formatter
   = java.text.NumberFormat.getNumberInstance();
  formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2);
  formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2);
  String s = formatter.format(x); 
  for (int i = s.length(); i < 10; i++)
    System.out.print(' '); 
  System.out.print(s);

The equivalent Python code is very similar to the C example,
of course.


Nick



From dsavitsk at e-coli.net  Thu Jul 26 01:33:30 2001
From: dsavitsk at e-coli.net (douglas savitsky)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 05:33:30 GMT
Subject: newbie threading question
Message-ID: <KYN77.7188$LP2.727977@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

this is a slightly modified version of a response from the other day using
win32process.beginthreadex() instead of thread ...

# ------------------------------
import win32process
import time

def Func(id, numSecs, incBy):
    val = 0
    while 1:
        print id, val
        val = val + incBy
        time.sleep(numSecs)
        if val > 10: break
    return 1

if __name__ == '__main__':
    a = win32process.beginthreadex(None, 0, Func, ("First thread", 1, 2), 1)
    b = win32process.beginthreadex(None, 0, Func, ("Second thread", 1, 3),
1)
# ------------------------------

is there anyway to capture the return value?  i need to run several
simultaneous large computations, but i would like to capture the returns ...
i think?  do i not? can anyone give some suggestions on where to look?

thanks

doug





From liu_jianxiang at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 10:06:47 2001
From: liu_jianxiang at hotmail.com (Jesse Liu)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:06:47 -0400
Subject: Q: Package Manager in jpython/jython
Message-ID: <YXy97.3$LK.13619@news.nyc.globix.net>

I am running multiple processes using jython2.0 in NFS. These processes may
have different python paths but use the same cache dir and access the same
files there. Is there any danger these processes will clobber each other and
produce unpredictable results, i.e. using a wrong package? What exactly
would a Package Manager do in this case? Thanks.

Jesse Liu




From matt at mondoinfo.com  Thu Jul 19 21:47:25 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:47:25 GMT
Subject: Conway's Life
References: <3B57AF54.F909FD36@.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lf3dd.oo.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 01:10:56 GMT, Doug Newhouse <n at .com> wrote:

>I'm a recreational programmer with some pretty basic experience in
>Python and I'm looking for a good way to implement the grid needed
>for Life (or other cellular automata) in Python.

It's great that you've come to Python. I'd use Python lists for the
grid you want. Here's one way to pre-allocate a table:

>>> x=20
>>> y=10
>>> table=[]
>>> for count in range(y):
...   table.append([None]*x)
... 
>>> print table[0][0]
None
>>> table[0][0]=1

You may save yourself some confusion later if read this FAQ entry
about multidimensional lists.

http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html#4.50

>This would be in win98.  I should be able to figure out the
>algorithms and stuff, it's just that I have no idea how to do
>graphics. (Would this be TK? Perhaps someone could recommend a web
>site or book?)

Tkinter is the default GUI. If it's important for your code to work
cross-platform, it's probably the best choice.

The best Tkinter documentation I know of is Fredrik Lundh's excellent
An Introduction to Tkinter. It's at:

http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/index.htm

I've long since downloaded a copy so as to save Fredrik bandwidth.
For the kind of graphics you want, I suspect that the Canvas widget
would be a good place to start.

I think that ActiveState's Win32all module has bindings for the Win32
GUI. It's at (wrapped for line length):

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/
  ActivePython/Extensions/Win32all

wxPython is another alternative. It's at:

http://wxpython.org/

>(I did this once in Turbo Pascal using ascii symbols and EGA screen
>settings on a VGA monitor, that's not ideal ;)

<grin> I think you may like Python a little better.

Regards,
Matt


From Robo210 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 23 16:37:12 2001
From: Robo210 at hotmail.com (Robo210)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:37:12 -0400
Subject: Blender module
References: <slrn9lnq08.dh1.nell@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <OqEvCf7EBHA.255@cpmsnbbsa07>

I too am looking for help in this, as the blender site is lacking in this
area.  If anyone has any info in it, I would like to know.  I have seen
scripts for the 2.12 and 2.14 versions, but am left still wanting to know
more...

Robo210
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"No eye has seen,
  no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
  what God has prepared for those who love Him."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Justyna Bia?a" <nell at skrzynka.pl> wrote in message
news:slrn9lnq08.dh1.nell at localhost.localdomain...
:
: Hi,
: I need to know how to use the new module for writing scripts in python for
: Blender.
:
: I mean the newest version of Blender (2.14) and actually I have no
: documentation to that.
: Most scripts I found is written in the old API.
: If anybody is familiar with that stuff, please, let me know or maybe you
can
: send any examples of using that module.
:
: Thanks in advance
:
: nell




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 28 15:24:21 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:24:21 -0700
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B631165.FDD51671@ActiveState.com>

Igor wrote:
> 
> It would be really nice to know the reasons behind some syntax
> features.
> 
> What is the real purpose of the colon ":" after each if, def, etc...
> Is it really required and cannot be made optional?

It makes Python easier to read. According to Python lore, this is one of
the few things in computer language history that was actually usability
tested. 

> Why__ do __Python__ programs __need to __look__ like __swarms__ of
> __underscores ? Is it OK that one must dig in underscores instead of
> having a normal English word for private symbols, for example?

You are not supposed to invoke these methods directly. The __ makes that
clear.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 07:45:10 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:45:10 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] RE: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com> <3B4F7A2A.5C29C909@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B5030C6.E244ADC2@lemburg.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> "M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> >
> > ....
> >
> > Please don't mix 8-bit strings with Unicode literals: 8-bit
> > strings don't carry any encoding information, so providing encoding
> > information cannot be stored anywhere.
> 
> First, we could store the information if we want.
> 
> Second, whether we choose to store the information or not, the point is
> that the source file should not mix encodings.

I have added a new paragraph to the PEP (see my rev. 1.1 posting)
pointing out that it is the programmers responsability to choose 
reasonable encodings; in particular, the used encodings should be
compatible so that a text editor can display the data correctly.
 
> > Comments, OTOH, are part of the program text, so they have to be ASCII
> > just like the Python source itself.
> 
> The Python interpreter allows non-ASCII characters in comments.
> 
> > Hmm, good point, but hard to implement. We'd probably need a two
> >
> > phase decoding for this to work:
> >
> > 1. decode the given Unicode literal encoding
> > 2. decode any Unicode escapes in the Unicode string
> 
> That doesn't sound so hard. :)

True. The issue here is very similar to standard literals
vs. raw ones. Perhaps step 2 should only be imposed on standard
literals while raw ones stop after step 1.
 
> > I think that allowing one directive per file is the way to go,
> > but I'm not sure about the exact position. Basically, I think it
> > should go "near" the top, but not necessarily before any doc-string
> > in the file.
> 
> If Guido is violently opposed to having it before the docstring then we
> could allow it either before or after the docstring to give tools time
> to catch up.
> 
> I'm not sure what tools in particular have the problem, though. Any tool
> that uses introspection or inspect.py will be fine.

See my other posting for ways to work around this problem.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From piet at cs.uu.nl  Thu Jul 26 11:04:40 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 15:04:40 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de>
Message-ID: <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Sibylle Koczian <Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> (SK) writes:

SK> Piet van Oostrum wrote:
>> 
>> >>>>> Sibylle Koczian <Sibylle.Koczian at Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> (SK) writes:
>> 
SK> But that's exactly what he says! Algol 60 was before C, as far as I
SK> know, and case-insensitive as was normal at the time.
>> 
>> Sorry, I meant to say that Algol 60 was case sensitive.
>> --

SK> Really? Must have overlooked that: we used teletype machines, no
SK> lowercase letters anyway (where all the keywords uppercase or what?).
SK> Wish I'd kept those yellow punched tapes, they'd look nice on my
SK> pinboard ...

I know some people had to use Algol 60 dialects with only a single case. We
were fortunate enough to have real Friden Flexowriters with upper and
lowercase. Keywords (printed in bold) where made with backspaces and
underlines, and had the nice property that any combination of letter,
underscore and backspace that put the underscore under the letter made that
letter bold. The Flexowriters produced papertape, which was fed into the
computer.

Maybe the case-insensitivity of other early programming languages was just
caused by the lack of both cases on input (and output) devices.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 09:38:12 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:38:12 -0400
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org> <ySe07.262$xp1.34979@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <KRj07.19356$Lk6.1406660@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Chris Tavares" <ctavares at develop.com> wrote in message
news:ySe07.262$xp1.34979 at newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> Perhaps I just missed it, but - in a document about "software quality",
the
> lack of requirements for a test suite/regression testing is somewhat
> disturbing. Test suites are essential for maintaining software quality
over
> time.
>
And, indeed, a commentary on test results for one's particular platform
represents invaluable documentation for portability.

regards
 STeve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 20 04:54:25 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 04:54:25 -0400
Subject: Distributing a Python app
References: <mailman.995608893.16478.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ur8vct1z2.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> [Tim]
> > FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows
> > installer over to Inno ...
> 
> [David Bolen]
> > Wasn't there something or other you mentioned it couldn't quite do
> > that the current Wise stuff does when this last came up?
> 
> Yes, it couldn't (and still can't) do stuff conditionally on NT/2000
> depending on whether the user has Admin privileges.

Ah right - I wonder if the scripting support (going ISX rather than
InnoSetup since I don't think the scripting has made it across yet) would
be able to do that conditionalization?

If not yet, I've seen great responses to adding new functionality at
that layer for useful things (at least watching the newsgroup posts -
I haven't needed anything myself), so perhaps we could get an addition
to handle this sort of case.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 13:52:18 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:52:18 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
	 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
	 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B644D52.9434E699@ActiveState.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> ...
> I believe that well designed languages define their own niche.

I can give you many examples of beautiful languages that fell into
disuse. Sather, Modula-X  and Objective-C jump to mind. The eternally
minor languages like Common Lisp, Scheme, Eiffel and Smalltalk are also
worth consideration. 

Now let's examine some of the other languages out there:

 * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix

 * C++ was promoted by Microsoft as the standard way to do GUIs on
Windows

 * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
into "Servlets" and "EJBs"

 * Perl was the defacto way to do sysadmining when sed and awk ran out
of steam

 * Perl was also the defacto way to do CGI in the early web

 * PHP hopped on the dynamic web content revolution after the "masses"
decided CGI is too hard and too inefficient

 * Visual Basic and Tcl were the only easy way to make GUIs for their
respective platforms for a long time

 * Ruby is the only scripting language that Japanese programmers can
count on to have a strong Japanese community

So that leaves Python ... the Zope scripting language? Not really ...
Zope users do not dominate the Python community.

I consider it an amazing achievement that Python is pulling itself out
of obscurity purely on technical merit with no help from a growth
platform like Unix or Linux or the Palm. Judging by history, that should
be impossible. I think Python's only conceivable "niche" is
cross-platform general-purpose rapid application development. Moore's
law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant so there is a need for
a language that allows coding faster than Java and yet can be used for
the same big projects. Smalltalk has the taint of age and Ruby has the
taint of youth.

Nevertheless, this is a somewhat precarious position to be in. Let's say
that either of Ruby or Python were adopted as the "offical scripting
language" for .NET or WAP or whatever the next dominant "platform" is.
The boost given to that language might be enough to essentially wipe out
the other one. "I have to learn language X to work with WAP anyhow. Why
should I go to the extra effort to learn Y?" That's what happend to
Objective-C (versus C++) and various text-hacking languages like Snobol
versus Perl and various GUI environments versus Visual Basic etc.

(note that I reject the polyanish notion that all languages can survive
and thrive -- the closer two languages are in features, the more they
are in competition)

> ... A
> language that constantly needs changing is clearly bad. 

*All* of the scripting languages change constantly. I guess they are all
bad.

Changing syntax all of the time is a sign of youth. It is also a sign
that the user base is small enough and friendly enough to tolerate it.
There is a lot of crap in C and C++ that the inventors of those
languages would like to change but it is too late now. Guido is trying
to avoid that fate. As an aside, Perl users seem remarkably accepting of
change considering the installed base of the language.

> ... That's not to
> say that programming languages shouldn't evolve. The Pascal family, the
> B family each had something. Perhaps the Python family will develop,
> perhaps not. Constant syntax change for a programming language is a sign
> of weakness not strength.

I would much rather see Python evolve than to see Python#, Jython,
Python++ and various other variants split off while our community is
still so small. But really, the int/int->float thing is not really a way
of avoiding a fork. It is more a way of doing *the right thing*
technically in the opinion of Guido and many others. The type/class
stuff is more of a competitive advantage.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From tbryan at python.net  Fri Jul 27 12:19:05 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:19:05 +0500
Subject: Sorting Lists
References: <lSh77.64029$2V.13507417@news3.rdc1.on.home.com> <0bj77.544176$eK2.114166570@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9jm8re$a1c$1@slb1.atl.mindspring.net> <wk7kwxvth7.fsf@mail.connact.com>
Message-ID: <9jt3l9$bo2$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

phawkins at connact.com wrote:

>>>>>> "TB" == Tom Bryan <tbryan at python.net> writes:
> 
> TB> While it's probably much harder to read, one could
> TB> avoid copying the list twice and maintain the semantics
> TB> of sorting in place by doing something like the following...
> 
> TB> def sort_by_field( index ):
> TB>     def cmpfunc( x, y, i=index ):
> TB>         return cmp( x[i], y[i] )
> TB>     return cmpfunc
> 
> TB> data.sort( sort_by_field( 2 ) )
> 
> TB> ---Tom
> 
> That's what I thought, but when I timed it, I found that this method
> is slower, because of the repeat function calls.  

Of course, I never claimed that it was faster.  One simply avoids 
copying the list and sorts in place rather than returning a sorted 
copy of the list. :-)

By the way, would you care to post the results of your performances 
tests.  Is it faster for lists of all sizes?  How does the speed difference 
change as the size of the list changs?  

you-can't-get-away-that-easily-ly yours
---Tom



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:48:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:48:10 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
(such as subclassing built-in types).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 22:49:31 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:49:31 -0400
Subject: String Splice Assignment
References: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <wFN47.5269$PF1.391595@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"eAndroid" <gervaserules at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120 at posting.google.com...
> Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some
> alternatives?
>
I think you probably know now. By the way, that's "slice" (as in pie), not
"splice" (as in rope).

always-making-typos-myself-ly y'rs  - steve (one day i'll speel my own name
rwong)
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 20 21:58:24 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:58:24 -0400
Subject: trouble installing Python-2.2a1.exe
In-Reply-To: <ac677656.0107200831.1e94f7b1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEOKKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tom Good]
> I downloaded the Python-2.2a1.exe installer from SourceForge, and
> verified that the MD5 sum is correct.  When I run it under Windows
> 2000 Professional [Version 5.00.2195], I get an error dialog that
> says:
>
> 16 bit Windows Subsystem
>
> The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction.
> CS:020c IP:0115 OP:0f 00 00 00 00 Choose 'Close' to terminate the
> application.

[also Tom Good, later]
> Sorry, I had thought that this was a problem with the installer, but
> it really turned out to be a problem with my Windows configuration.  I
> fixed it.

Would you please spell out what you changed?  I saw anther report of this
symptom, a few months ago (w/ a different installer), but no follow-up.  I'd
like to know how you cured it so we can help the next person who falls into
this trap.




From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Thu Jul 26 00:41:21 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:41:21 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <250720012141215775%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <23891c90.0107250210.2e37ca61 at posting.google.com>, Paul
Boddie <paul at boddie.net> wrote:

> I'm fairly sure that I don't get personal e-mails (going via my
> particular mail provider) when the capitalisation of parts of my
> address is changed. Not that I regard this as desirable, but I no
> longer regard it as surprising.

Per the various RFCs, the domain part of the address is case
insensitive, and the local part can be either case sensitive or not as
the site desires--meaning that the intermediate transport had better
preserve local part case.  I've never had an account with a case
sensitive local part, thankfully.  

I shudder to think of a programming language with rules like that (I
suppose in Python the =  would divide the two rule sets; in Pascal the
:=).

  --John (the accidental smiley worked quite well, in retrospect)


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Wed Jul 25 13:23:14 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 10:23:14 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com> <m2puaqh6t2.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E8B2C2EF3FBmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8> <m2ofq9g4he.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <Xns90E9954091A7Fmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>
Message-ID: <mtwv4wzzwd.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

Michael Abbott writes:

> Hmm.  I see to my embarrasment that I missed the parentheses in your sig.  
> I don't think I quite get your point though, since I though that LISP 
> programming was done using the language in your sig (which certainly does 
> suffer from a surfiet of brackets).  (I'd better confess right away that 
> I've never written more than about a page of code in LISP, and that was 
> just a baby exercise.)

The point (I think) is that the Scheme standard defines Scheme in
terms of character sequences, so parentheses are important tokens.
Common Lisp defines CL in terms of lists of data, a higher-level
concept, with no explicit character-based parsing.

I'm probably mangling the argument a bit, but it's really only a point
of interest to Erik Naggum.  :-)

--J

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From max at alcyone.com  Sat Jul 28 21:41:40 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 18:41:40 -0700
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com>

Tom Bryan wrote:

> I've been using Python off and on for over two years.  I've been
> teaching
> my wife Python, and she recently asked me how/where she should use
> import.  I realized that I have no idea what the best idioms are and
> what
> arguments support doing it one way or another.  For example, if I have
> a
> module that uses string, should I put an 'import string' at the top of
> the
> module?  Should every function that needs the module import it? 
> Sometimes
> I see modules that use both imports at the module level and at the
> function
> level.  Why would I want to do that?

Multiple imports of the same module aren't expensive, since such imports
are cached (that is, it only _actually_ imports the file the first time
through).  Using imports deep inside your code rather than all at the
top is just a matter of style.

I have been known to use interspersed imports (although rarely) in
functions in a module that are really just test functions or are the
main function (that gets executed when you run the module itself,
__name__ == '__main__'), where the function is somewhat disconnected
from the rest of the module (because all it does is drive the classes in
the module either as main or as a separate test routine) and uses some
system modules that the rest of the module doesn't need.

So, for instance, if I had a module that did some grunt work but no I/O
(so I didn't need to import sys for sys.stdin, sys.stdout, etc.) and in
it I put a main function that throws up a prompt and runs a little test
harness, I might do:

	# gurgle.py

	import ... # main imports for module proper

	# module code

	def main():
	    import sys # here's the only place that sys gets used
	    lines = sys.readlines()
	    # do something with lines ...

	if __name__ == '__main__':
	    main()

I'm really not sure what the value would be in deleting the module after
you're through with it, except perhaps to clean up namespaces, which I
wouldn't think would be useful if, say, it were defined in the scope of
a function.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Many situations can be clarified by the passing of time.
\__/ Theodore Isaac Rubin
    Kepler's laws / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/kepler/
 A proof of Kepler's laws.


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 02:43:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:43:10 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6edd2418.0107301344.439affc8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cpg0bdzjj4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

aeoo at myrealbox.com (Leo) writes:

> I like the direction that Python is taking.  However I only have one
> request.  Check out how Ruby handles accessor creation.  I think it
> has a very simple and clean syntax with minimum of typing.

Can you summarize what Ruby does?

> I like the idea of get/set stuff, but it needs to become
> super-convinient to type in order for it to be used more widely.  I
> would prefer for there being a fast way of telling Python that a
> certain class variable is get-enabled, set-enabled, or both without
> actually having to manually type out the accessor methods.
> 
> Because plain accessor methods always do the same thing, it's a shame
> to waste any lines on them, imo.  It's just a repetitive typing that
> brings no new information.  Only when someone wants to override
> default accessors does it make sense to type it out, imo.

What would you want the default accessor function to do?  I can
imagine lots of accessor functions.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From gb at cs.unc.edu  Fri Jul 20 16:42:40 2001
From: gb at cs.unc.edu (gb at cs.unc.edu)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 16:42:40 -0400
Subject: wxSpellTextCtrl on-the-fly spell checking for wxPython
Message-ID: <ug0brfi2n.fsf@cs.unc.edu>

I have hacked together a primitive on-the-fly spell checker for the
wxPython wxTextCtrl using the new SetStyle feature.

I would like to get some feedback and help on this code. It is
surprisingly tricky to make spell checking on the fly work in a
pleasing way. I am sure there are still bugs in this version.

You can pick up an archive of the code at

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~gb/wxSpellTextCtrl.zip

You'll need aspell or ispell to use it. The path is hardwired in the
code so unless you have aspell installed as c:/aspell/aspell.exe
you'll have to get your hands dirty to try this.

The algorithm is loosely based on the flyspell package for
emacs. Misspelled words are colored red. Right clicking on a
misspelled word will pop up a menu allowing you to add the word to
your local dictionary or to replace it with one of several suggested
words. 

Send email if you are interested in collaborating on this code. 

This code and the resulting final product can be used by anyone for
any purpose with no restrictions.

gb




From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 10:08:47 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:08:47 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>
Message-ID: <9juh1f$jop$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9jk07s$gq0$1 at proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>,
Klaus-G. Meyer <klaus-gerd.meyer at de.bosch.com> wrote:
>
>But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?
>
>99999*99999 -> integer overflow
>
>Why not an long integer result? (or maybe float)

This is going to happen, it just hasn't happened yet, and there has been
little disagreement when discussed.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From nospam at postmastergeneral.com  Sun Jul 29 22:48:10 2001
From: nospam at postmastergeneral.com (PostMaster General Anti-Spam Center)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:48:10 EDT
Subject: Complaint received, email address removed
Message-ID: <200107300248.TAA18696@d0002.postmastergeneral.com>

Dear email recipient,


Thank you for taking the time to make a report to the PostMaster
General Anti-Spam Center.


Your email address will be removed from all mailing lists on our system.  
Please allow 24 hours for this to take affect.   If you ever need to globally 
unsubscribe from our system in the future, please use this link:
http://www.postmastergeneral.com/addrem.html


In addition, your unsolicited email complaint will be registered against
List ID: "quacko".


The PostMaster General mailing list service is committed to providing
list management for opt-in lists ONLY. We have strict policies in place
against using our service for sending unsolicited email, which all
list owners are bound by in their license agreement. Penalties for 
violating these policies include account termination without refund.


We are sorry that you have received unsolicited email from this service,
and have logged your complaint against this list. We will follow up with
the list owner to investigate how your email address was obtained, and
if our investigation shows a violation of our policy, we will take
action against the list owner.


You should not receive further messages from this or any other list, as 
the above address has been removed.


Lastly, please be aware that through a process known as Co-Registration, you 
may be signing up for more newsletters than you realize.  When you subscribe 
to a newsletter or for any offer on the world wide web, please read the
fine print.  Generally, you are authorizing the webmasters to resell your address 
whenever you provide your email address online.  This is how they are able to 
provide the offer they are giving you.  By signing up for an offer, you are often
giving your permission to receive additional email.   PostMaster General does
not buy, sell, barter or distribute email addresses; all registrations are done 
directly at the list-owners website or partner websites.



Sincerely,


PostMaster General Anti-Spam Center


NOTE: While we are unable to personally respond to all messages sent to 
this address, all incoming messages ARE read by our PostMaster General 
Anti-Spam Center staff.


**************************************************************************
* If your message contains obscenities, abusive, or threatening language *
* it will be discarded without further action. Please remember that the  *
* people who read complaints at this address are working to protect you  *
* from unsolicited email.                                                *
**************************************************************************

[This is an automated response]




From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Fri Jul 13 11:24:58 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 17:24:58 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <u7elrketrp.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ) writes:

> of those kinds of errors. If I change the order of two ints in a
> function interface, for example, the C++ compiler won't have a clue
> that the interface has changed.

If you *use* ints in such a place, it is not the compiler who was
clueless.  Ints are for "for"-loops and for filling machine registers,
abusing them for data types which happen to be isomorphic to int (as
e.g.  struct total_number_of_airplanes_t is *evil*.

Ralf


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul  5 14:50:00 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:50:00 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
In-Reply-To: <9i1q2q$8ei$3@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051127280.11802-100000@bms>

On 5 Jul 2001, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
<...>
> > With the maintainers of the existing library being the group of core
> > developers?
> What happens with the existing library is strictly outside the scope of this
> PEP, though I could of course broaden it. I'd *like* to say something
> like that, yes. Perhaps I ought to.

<cut, shuffle, paste...>

> >>     Should the current standard library be subdivided among such
> >>     maintainers? Many parts already have (informal) maintainers; it
> >>     may be good to make this more explicit.
>
> > That would be up to the group currently responsible for them.
>
> You mean PythonLabs/python-dev? (along with such other groups like the
> XML-SIG for the xml modules).

Right, however they want to do it... who knows, they may try to
renounce their claim on pretty much every lib and ask the Integrators
to find maintainers for them (first test of how to handle
Maintainerless libs?).


> > Will maintainers be given access to the servers, if so then
> > there should be set procedure to verify who they are (email don't cut
> > it!)
>
> Hm, do I want to get into technical details of how maintainers can be
> contacted?

No, but like with the doc standards, it should be mentioned so there
is little chance of confusion.  Perhaps reference to another PEP,
which outlines how one becomes a maintainer, what is expected of
maintainers while they are active, how to stop being a maintainer
temporarily or premanently, etc.

> I think email should be enough; the maintainer should notify
> the integrators if his or her email address changes!

If everything a maintainer does is checked before it hits cvs, then
email is enough.  If maintainers will be allowed to checkin stuff then
they should need to jump through some serious hoops before they are
allowed access.  To disregard this is like saying, "why lock the
doors, they can break a window and get in"...  why have doors at all,
eh.

> Perhaps there could
> be a maintainer-SIG or something like that. If a maintainer cannot
> be contacted easily then that's just a bad job by the maintainer, right?
> (Perhaps there should be a note that the integrators have the right to
> reject a maintainer that's inactive and look for another one..?)

I thought the Integrators == maintainer-SIG.

Consider this scenario... A maintainer is going mountain climbing for
a couple of months.  You don't want there to be any confusion about
whether they are active or not, and you don't want to drop'em unless
they take a drop (which you may or may not hear about).  So you need
an official contact method the Maintainers can use (to minimize the
chance of a missed communication), you may also need a replacement
maintainer (depending on time, lib, etc., guidelines would help), and
there should be a set procedure to follow if contact is lost (easily
done if all you have is an email address).

You can either codify it in a PEP, let the Integrators each handle
it how they want on a case by case basis, or let them fight it out
and arrive at a consensus (and maybe do it again when someone new
joins the team)...

I see both this and the documentation standards issues as things that
are crucial to the well being of this scheme, but have enough issues
of their own (unrelated to the mechanics of contributing to the
standard library) that they should have their own PEP (which seems to
be how Python is starting to codify practices of the meta variety,
but any type of "official" documentation would work just as well).


- Bruce




From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul 19 16:18:15 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:18:15 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
Message-ID: <HC0V7kKkXIvc092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
|TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
|hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
|iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
|stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
|begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.

I don't really have a strong opinion on the case-sensitivity thing.  I
think it would probably be a good idea in a brand-new language, but is
probably too much work to try to change Python (given existing code).

But one thing that really annoys the hell out of me is the "argument"
that always comes up, like Pettersen's above.  The allegation is that if
a language was case-insensitive, variables would have jarring random
case like in above (sometimes this is adduced to "prove" that
case-sensitivity improves readability).  I've programmed for a large
number of years with case-insensitive languages, and I have never ONCE
seen code that looked like the above.  It's just not what people do.
Likewise, in Python you rarely see syntactical but silly choices like:

    >>> xlsoALwl390sslkslWW = 37
    >>> xlsoALwL390sslkslWW = 38
    >>> print xlsoALwL390sslkslWW,xlsoALwl390sslkslWW
    38 37

Yours, Lulu...




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 21:55:00 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:55:00 +1200
Subject: python and applications
References: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <TX837.333827$p33.6744731@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <3B4D207A.90100@webone.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B4E54F4.C7EED11B@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> 
> Why is Eiffel better anyway?
> It's faster, OK, and it
> has nifty assertions as part of the language,
> but, well i tried them both and
> i vote for python.

Not to mention that a dynamic language like Python
is likely to be much better suited to implementing
something dynamically-programmed like a MUD than
a statically-compiled language like Eiffel.

And no, Python is certainly NOT a toy language!

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 13:12:22 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:12:22 -0400
Subject: Newbie asks(2): How to do this line of C in Py?
References: <tkmfvla7npuqfd@news.supernews.com> <uzoaci9zw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke@4ax.com> <93d9a839.0107110743.5ec8ae3d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <q32pkt8nlr6i9dasgehpjj4ln2s9fgdemh@4ax.com>

On 11 Jul 2001 08:43:22 -0700, rzantow at usa.net (- RZ) wrote:

>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<7s9oktcv5vll2hberldlt51mcdg5qnitke at 4ax.com>...
>> 
>> David,
>> 
>> I have followed these questions with great interest. I hope he keeps asking for a
>> while --- and folks here keep answering.
>> 
>> As a newbie to Python, I find that the one liners in c are easy to follow and the
>> translation into Python show me where I am missing Python techniques.
>> 
>> My purpose in writing this is simply to say you are not just helping Mr. Wong when
>> you respond.
>> 
>> Regards, Joe
>
>Well yeah, but.... 
>
>Given a little context, the answers could vary considerably from the
>line-at-a-time approach. There's a difference between transliteration
>and translation. It might well be more educational to learn the best
>Pythonic way to accomplish a task than to learn how to write C in
>Python.
>

You are quite correct. There are many, many threads here that are "more educational"
that the one-liners are. I read most of them. I have picked up a lot via reading
these "better" threads. 

However, the one-liners have been fun also.

Regards, Joe






From nas at python.ca  Thu Jul  5 12:22:42 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:22:42 -0700
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
In-Reply-To: <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com>; from aleaxit@yahoo.com on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 05:10:28PM +0200
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <20010705092242.C30249@glacier.fnational.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> From my personal experience: I get roughly a 15-20% increase of
> productivity in Java.

Could you estimate the figure for Python?  I haven't done enough C++ or
Java to judge myself.

  Neil



From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Fri Jul 13 14:02:13 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 18:02:13 GMT
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9ind35$joc$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>

According to Dennis Roark  <denro at earthlink.net>:
> Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
> declared before use.  (In a long program, how hard it is to
> find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)

Write the test. Then write the code to pass the test. Test a small piece of
functionality at a time. Run the growing bunch of tests regularly.

Mistyped variables get caught immediately.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 17:17:14 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 21:17:14 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>        <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9m126q.og5.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:56:41 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>    Quinn> The other observation is that line editing belongs in the
>    Quinn> terminal emulator or window system, not seperately in every
>    Quinn> single program that runs under it.  If you use a terminal
>    Quinn> emulator with cut and paste and line editing then all programs
>    Quinn> automatically have those features.
>
>As others (including Guido) have observed, having a line editing subsystem
>that knows about the structure of the language you are using can be a boon.
>With readline support I can recall individual lines I've typed at the
>interpreter, however readline knows nothing about Python's block structure,
>so I can't recall entire blocks that correspond to (for instance) "if",
>"for", or "while" statements.

You don't have to know the language to cut and paste and edit blocks, you just
need a mouse and a terminal which doesn't think it's still a teletype.  My
"other observation" above was taking the position that readline is the wrong
solution.  I don't use readline if I can avoid it, and happily cut and paste
and edit blocks in the top level, and then cut and paste them right into
the editor, or the other way around.

It does require turning off the '>>> ' and '... ' prompts (which python won't
let you do without hacking pythonrun.c (I think) which I think is a bug), but
it's my opinion that this is the correct behaviour anyway (no prompt).

It's also convenient for return values to be printed like

2 + 2
#-> 4

since that doesn't mess up a cut and paste and is easily filtered out.


I greatly prefer not building special language-awareness into a mechanism,
because then it can work in a simple and uniform manner for every application
and language that involves text, as opposed to having an ad-hoc intrusive
only-works-on-one-editor complicated and hard to get right mechanism.


From DavidLnospammy at raqia.com  Fri Jul 20 11:07:57 2001
From: DavidLnospammy at raqia.com (David Lees)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:07:57 -0400
Subject: newbie pipes question
Message-ID: <3B58494D.C82965AD@raqia.com>

I am running under redhat 7.1 with python 2.1 and want to have python
process the output of a perl script.

I execute the perl script from python as:

os.system("regex2.pl -o junky 'birds'")

and the output goes to my screen, presumably stdout.

I can redirect the output to a temporary file and read it pack into
python, but the right way would seem to be pipes.  Can someone tell me
how to do this?  I tried the following, which does not work, because it
seems to hang on the os.read statement:

r,w=os.pipe()
os.system("regex2.pl -o junky 'birds'")
x=os.read(r,100)
print x

Thanks in advance,

david lees


From jcollins at boulder.net  Mon Jul 16 10:04:11 2001
From: jcollins at boulder.net (Jeffery D. Collins)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:04:11 -0600
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>; from jparlar@home.com on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 09:19:09AM -0400
References: <20010716132133.DIZO21397.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>
Message-ID: <20010716080411.D17802@boulder.net>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 09:19:09AM -0400, Jay Parlar wrote:
<snip>

> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> would be:
> 
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:
>         A.remove(eachItem)
> 

How about: 

map(A.remove, B)

-- 
Jeffery Collins (http://www.boulder.net/~jcollins)



From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 14:20:28 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:20:28 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

> If you're going to add keywords, why not add precision and allow those who
> want non-integer division to set it to the level of precision they require.
> That breaks no more code (presumably) than adding div or yield does.

I'm not sure what you're asking about.  If you're serious, please
submit a PEP!  This is the time to do it.  Posting to the newsgroup is
*not* sufficient to let an idea be heard by me -- you *have* to mail
it to me directly or to python-dev.  (While I like to read c.l.py
sometimes, I cannot guarantee that I see every post.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 16 07:56:43 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:56:43 +0200
Subject: pipe in read and write mode
References: <newscache$d58kgg$wzn$1@news.freegates.be>
Message-ID: <9iukqq01q2c@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Raphael Bauduin" <rb at tiscali.be> wrote in message
news:newscache$d58kgg$wzn$1 at news.freegates.be...
> Hi!
>
> I want to pipe the standard input of my script to a command. I use popen,
> and it's fine. However, I want to take the standard output of the command
> and put it in a variable. I can't open the pipe in read and write mode. I
> made it work by redirecting the output of the pipe to a file, and reading
> this file. I would prefer not to write it to a temporary file, as the text
> piped is somewhat sensitive (I use the script to encrypt it, so it would
be
> better not to write it to a file ;-)

Function popen2 in module os returns a pair, a tuple with two items:
the first item is the child process's standard-input, the second one,
the child process's standard-output.  So, yes, you CAN open pipes in
both read and write modes!

Here's a self-contained Python toy example.  Say we have this
decorate.py script...:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input():
    print fileinput.lineno(),'->',line,

Here's how we can control both its input and its output with
an os.popen2 call:

D:\py21>python
Python 2.1.1c1 (#19, Jul 13 2001, 00:25:06) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Alternative ReadLine 1.4 -- Copyright 2001, Chris Gonnerman
>>> import os
>>> fi, fo = os.popen2('python decorate.py')
>>> fi.writelines('uno\ndue\ntre\necc ecc\n'.splitlines(1))
>>> fi.close()
>>> x=fo.readlines()
>>> x
['1 -> uno\n', '2 -> due\n', '3 -> tre\n', '4 -> ecc ecc\n']
>>>


Alex





From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 30 14:00:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 18:00:02 GMT
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com> <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6@tundraware.com> <300720010913055359%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <3B659FB6.E6DC5CED@tundraware.com>

"John W. Baxter" wrote:
> 
> In article <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6 at tundraware.com>, Tim Daneliuk
> <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> 
> > Actually, this raises an interesting question, which perhaps the resident
> > geniuses
> > can 'splain to me.  Here in Chicago, we're currently 6 hourse or 21,600 sec
> > *behind*
> > UTC.  Why does time.timezone return 21600, not -21600?  It seems that for
> > arithmetic reasons, you'd want to know both the magnitude and direction of
> > this vector...
> >
> > Inquiring minds wanna know ;)
> 
> Actually, you're currently at 5 hours from GMT...you're 6 during the
> winter.  time.timezone appears to be returning the zone without regard
> to silly adjustments like daylight time.  As per the library reference:
> "The offset of the local (non-DST) timezone, in seconds west of UTC
> (i.e. negative in most of Western Europe, positive in the US, zero in
> the UK)."  I think you need to look at the "dst flag" in
> time.localtime()'s result to learn the current status.  [It looks as if
> the C and Unix folks have forgotten about "British Double Summer Time"
> from WW-II, although Mac OS 9 and below record a DST delta rather than
> a flag, which could have handled that.]
> 
> If you were 6 hours the other way from GMT, you would get -21600.
> Basically, one needs a convention.  (Naturally, given two choices of
> convention here, the industry uses both in different places.)
> 
> You either get the number of seconds to add to GMT to give local time,
> or the number of seconds to add to local time to give GMT.
> 
> (There are also sub-conventions...it may be given in hours and minutes,
> instead, as it is in email headers...yours for that purpose is -0500
> currently.)
> 
> Is it any wonder that thing happen like the loss of an early moon
> unmanned visitor because the ground thought a negative yaw meant "go
> right" while the craft thought it meant "go left?"  [Or vice versa.]
> 
>   --John

Thanks John.  That's what's great about standards - if you don't like
one, invent your own ;)
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:55:41 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:55:41 -0500
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <9d848d5d.0107251349.68519652@posting.google.com> <97ae44ee.0107262155.5abdb82@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <0A833B1E78476C19.40B7192A7813201E.7417E3545116E840@lp.airnews.net>

In article <97ae44ee.0107262155.5abdb82 at posting.google.com>,
Stephen <shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>Really, I'm trying to get away from a stateless, non-updated-in-realtime
>web app to more of a client app, something that might have been created
>in Delphi or VB in the past.  Especially since it might give us the 
>flexibility to integrate with other applications, such as the membership
>system and email apps. (The web just doesn't lend itself to building 
>look-ahead auto-complete fields for names, emails etc).
			.
			.
			.
Your parenthetical comment ... well, yes, that
*certainly* is true.

People *do* use Delphi and VB plenty, even in
the present.

If you can make enough assumptions about your
Web client (that Java is enabled, and/or that
you're using Netscape and you are willing to
indulge in tricky multipart programming, and/or
...), you can get enough state to be useful.
A lot of people would say at that point that
you might as well do client-server without Web
weight.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From rhystucker at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 15:07:59 2001
From: rhystucker at yahoo.com (rhys tucker)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:07:59 GMT
Subject: Regex for strings utility
Message-ID: <1103_995396879@pan>

I'm trying to write a script which operates like the Unix 'strings' utility but I'm having difficulties with the regex.

#!/usr/bin/env python

# strings program

import sys, re

f = open(sys.argv[1])
line = f.readline()
pattern = ([\040-\126\s]{4,})

while line:	
	# regular expression to match strings >=4 chars goes here
	matches = findall(pattern, line)
	for match in matches;
		print match
	line = f.readline()



I'm getting a Syntax Error: Invalid Token at the closing brace to the pattern.

thanks,

rhys






From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 13:08:14 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:08:14 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62rq.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdbsmkrhqa.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l683i.o6r.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 11:55:41 -0400, Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure this will work, though I've not tested. C.get(item)
>> will return None (thus false) if item was not in B, and 1 (thus true)
>> if item was in B. You should definitely give a try to this version.
>
>Yes, but what if item == None, or item == ''?

What we are looking at is the value associated to item in the dictionnary.
We set them explicitly to 1 for everything that's in B previously. get()
will return None if there is no matching key in the dictionnary.

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From guido at zope.com  Fri Jul 27 08:54:13 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:54:13 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:02:03 PDT."
             <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
Message-ID: <200107271254.IAA23889@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[Ken Seehof, on the new numeric system]
> This scares me.  The whole numeric unification thing seems to be hiding
> all the intrinsically difficult properties of numbers.  Kind of like Windows
> ME trying to hide all the intrinsically difficult properties of computers.

But that's what Python is trying to do anyway -- hide all the
uninteresting complications, like word size, byte order, memory
allocation, data types...

> Hiding difficult properties usually makes those properties more difficult
> in the long run, while appeasing beginners in the short run.  This is not
> a good trade off.

The fact that you like Python so much suggests otherwise, if the
hiding is done right.

> Here's some questions that come to mind that have a "sweep the can
> of worms under the rug" theme:
> 
> 1. If inexact numbers are excluded from being used as sequence indices,
> won't there be a tendency for programs to have more special case bugs?
> The value of a variable in a calculation might be usually exact, but inexact
> once in awhile.  So floats can be used as indices until there is a precision
> error?  Yikes!  And I have a funny feeling in my stomach that this is just
> the tip of the iceberg.  Floats may or may not turn out to be exact
> depending
> on details of a particular run.  This is a Bad Thing.  Integers are always
> exact.  This is a good thing.

Assuming we'll adopt a variation of Scheme's numerical tower (which
I'm currently in favor of, more or less), this won't happen.  Floats
and complex would always be considered inexact (and ints and rationals
exact), and inexact numbers are not allowed as sequence indices, even
if their exact value is an integer.

In fact, the rules won't change much: 1000000*1000000 will return
1000000000000 rather raising an OverflowError, and *maybe* (that is
still to be decided) 1/2 will return a rational instead of a float,
but 

> 2. Wouldn't a function in an extension module that takes a number as an
> argument be significantly more difficult to write, since it would have
> figure out the actual runtime type of the number and deal with all the
> different cases?  Right now, I just have to verify the type.  Seems like
> even if you somehow solve the problem of breaking python code, you
> will break extension code badly.  One thing I like about python is that
> it is highly compatible with its extension language.  The further we get
> from the current symmetry between python and C/C++ the harder it
> will be to write extensions.  The same goes for case sensitivity BTW.

Have you written many extension modules?  Getting an argument
typically specifies the desired C type, and PyArg_ParseTuple()
converts the Python object to the right value, or raises an
exception.  This mechanism already accepts multiple types, and you
won't have to change a thing.

> 3. Why do you expect it to be wise to hide all the numeric issues under
> a level of abstraction?  The issues will still exist, but will just be more
> obscure.  Right now, we have a simple and explicit numeric system with
> simple and well understood problems.  Trying to make it simpler for
> beginners by adding complexity to the overall system won't work.

Most of the issues I plan to hide are simply nuisances, not inrinsic
complications.  Float arithmetic will work exactly as before, except
maybe we'll call it inexact arithmetic.  Int arithmetic will work
exactly as before, except you won't have to worry about overflow.

> The basic fact is that all conceivable numeric systems suck badly
> for different reasons, (including the one we currently have).  And
> for every problem there is a solution that's even worse.  Just keep
> what we have.  It sucks less badly than all of the alternatives.
> Even the / operator has it's virtues.  It make integers a closed set
> with respect to all the basic operators.  This is a Good Thing.

Here opinions differ.

> The grand unification of numbers is the other way to try to create a
> closed set, so it's not surprising that the 1/2 debate eventually
> lead to it.  But it won't work because the different kinds of
> numbers really are different and trying to stuff them into the same
> set is inherently unnatural.  I'd accept 1/2 == 0.5 with 1//2 == 0
> as the integer quotient operator, but going further than that is a
> mistake IMHO.

Sounds like FUD to me.  Wait until we have worked out the real
proposal.  In the mean time, look at Scheme's rules: 

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r5rs-html/r5rs_8.html#SEC50

> Kinda-weird-that-computers-are-so-lousy-at-dealing-with-numbers-ly yrs,

Wait till you rely on them for dealing with words. :-)

> "Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler."
> - A. Einstein

That has always been Python's unofficial motto, and it's not going to
change.

I hate to say "trust me" because I don't know why you should, but I
really do mean it.  Trust me.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 12:44:59 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:44:59 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org>
 <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
 <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
 <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.994456001.2112.python-list@python.org>
 <6Jd$FLAFotR7EwLP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B471314.8B179A92@engcorp.com>
 <5lh$OIA2rxR7Ewou@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B47256F.72FE6CD0@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <g3+Z6LALyzR7Ewqz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B47256F.72FE6CD0 at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen
<peter at engcorp.com> writes
...
>
>Perhaps the issue, then, is not the speed of discussion and 
>implementation of individual changes, but the sheer volume of 
>proposed changes.  Taken one at a time they all seem reasonable
>and harmless, maybe even useful, but as a whole they feel like
>an onslaught that could lead to a loss of "focus" as to the
>nature of Python.  They may dilute the language's (until now)
>clarify of purpose and style.  Frankly I'm worried.
>
I think you express my position rather well. I don't believe that the
users' needs are changing so fast,  rather I think that the user base
itself is changing and with the new users come new needs and perhaps
more and very different needs.

On the other hand I think the target user base should be a reasonable
one. I don't think python should be aimed at pre-schoolers. If there is
a target set who and what are they? 

I think that the development process itself is a bit awry as there are
now more than 250 documents on requirements/changes etc and as you say
getting to grips with the totality of the changes is hard.

For 250 documents to exist there have to be too many cooks for smooth
development as many organisational studies suggest that best team sizes
are between 3 and 7.
-- 
Robin Becker


From simon at callan.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 15:34:27 2001
From: simon at callan.demon.co.uk (Simon Callan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:34:27 +0100
Subject: byte compiled files
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk> <3B6127EB.2080002@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <794cc9a04a.simon@satin.callan.demon.co.uk>

In message <3B6127EB.2080002 at herts.ac.uk>
          Mark Robinson <m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk> wrote:

> Thanks for the help guys, sorry I didn't include the code (what can
> I  say, duh). Anyway I did manage to fix the problem but I am still
> kinda  interested as to why I was getting that previous behaviour. I
> am running  python 2.1 under red hat 7, and python 2.1.1 under
> windows NT and had  the same problem under both. Here is the code:
> 
> def checkValidData(bsite):
> 	repeats = ['AAAA', 'CCCC', 'GGGG', 'TTTT']
> 	for x in bsite:	#check new bsite contains valid charactors
> 		if(x is not 'A' and x is not 'G' and
> 			x is not 'C' and x is not 'T' ):
> 			return 0
> 	for x in repeats:
> 		if (string.find(bsite, x) != -1):
> 			return 0
> 	return 1
> 
> Changing where I test if x is A, C, G or T by using the != test
> rather  than 'is not' solved the problem, and I guess I may have
> been using it  inappropriately, but I still don't see why it would
> have working  correctly first run and then incorrectly when working
> from the .pyc file.

I suspect that the problem is due to the interning of strings. When
loading from the .PY file, all the 'A' strings intern to the same
object, so that the 'is not' is equivalent to '!=', but when loaded
from the .PYC, the interning is done differently, so you have a
situation where x == 'A', but x is not 'A'.

Simon

-- 
http://www.callan.demon.co.uk/simon/



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Wed Jul 18 14:35:10 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 21:35:10 +0300
Subject: how saving/retreiving python code from DB ?
References: <3B559274.6B66A372@yahoo.com> <9j457f07jv@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.995473171.18490.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <kuitgqytk1.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <mailman.995473171.18490.python-list at python.org>, Skip
Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

| I believe there was a custom __import__ floating around at one time that
| allowed imports from zipfiles (part of some sort of freeze tool that Fredrik
| Lundh wrote, perhaps?).

<URL: http://starship.python.net/crew/gmcm/archives.html> ? 

  -- erno


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:08:15 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:15 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <5o9oltkj0bn301cr1nnih79c173fjq9g6c@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:07:49 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>I find that most arguments against also appear to come from a nebula.

They don't need to be any better than that - the anti-PEP0238 opinion
does not represent a serious code-breaking change, whereas the
pro-PEP0238 position does. All we need is to prove we have a valid
opinion - code-breaks, especially on this scale and relating to
fundamental arithmetic operations, should not be done on the basis of
a clearly debatable matter of opinion.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Jul 30 09:48:30 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 13:48:30 GMT
Subject: Large-scale Python (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996442753.17197.python-list@python.org> <C2D62BF6D2E4F577.D8696582805EEB21.2093367A0D5F09C4@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE63D6193Egmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

Cameron Laird) wrote:

[Paul Prescod]

>>... In particular, many people use Python
>>today in radically different ways than they would have five years ago
>>(in particular much bigger projects). They make certain demands on 


> This illustration interests me.
> 
> Without contesting any of Paul's larger points, what
> are the facts here?  I believe:
> * Python is good for team-work
>   and big projects; and
> * There is increasing recogni-
>   tion and use of Python in
>   this role.
> What role has "language change" played in this, though?
> I don't think Python's syntax or semantics support
> modularization and packaging significantly better than
> in '96 (Paul, do you have a Jython point in mind?).

Package support wasn't there in '96. I think that's 
around when "ni" was invented.

> Does performance improvement in hardware which makes
> raw speed less frequently a constraint constitute a
> "language change"?

I would agree with your point, if only you'd make it
explicit <wink>. There are enablers, but the main
thing is the expansion of the user base, from 
language hackers to application writers.

(If I'm not mistaken, "ni" was added by an Aussie
wacko who had the nerve to write major apps in Python.)

- Gordon



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 18:22:48 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 22:22:48 GMT
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <f29vjto7q0ga8hmjs3q9kkt0ddv1lfru47@4ax.com>

>I do, of course, have my own opinions about where PythonLabs should be
>spending its time improving things, but...

IMO: "performance, performance, performance".

C//



From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul 23 04:55:40 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 08:55:40 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features 
Message-ID: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

I can't believe the quantity of discussion (still) going on over the div
thing!

And meanwhile, 2.2a1 is out, and there are far more interesting things
happening to our little language.

Isn't there anything in 2.2 that deserves even a fraction of the discussion
going on about div? (which has been beaten to death 9 times)

getset(), staticmethod(), classmethod(), etc...

How about generators, who's tried them out?
What's your favourite feature?
What's still a bit confusing?  (metaclasses?)

What are some things that we will be able to do with the new features?

How will type/class unification really benefit me?

And, to come full circle, will it be possible, in the future, to sub-class
integers so that division returns an int, or float, or whatever?





From paulsid at home.com  Sun Jul  1 21:37:06 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 19:37:06 -0600
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <roy-900E5D.10061401072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B3FD042.861B2ED3@home.com>

Roy Smith wrote:

> Having now used python for about 4 years, I still think
> indentation-for-grouping was a dumb idea.  The problem is that it is just
> too easy to add or delete whitespace by accident (and without noticing),
> especially when cutting and pasting hunks of code from one place to
> another.  When such whitespace munging makes the code look ugly, it's
> simply a minor annoyance.  When it changes the meaning of the code, it's a
> language design mistake.

I have to disagree here.  I think this is one of the cases when forced
indentation is most valuable.  It requires you to inspect the code more
closely so that you KNOW the code was pasted in the way you wanted it. 
(This also helps avoid those cases when you're cutting-and-pasting to
make similar blocks of code and you forget to change one of the
blocks.)  It also helps maintainability, because you don't end up with a
mess of differently-indented blocks.  (Personally I almost always fixup
the indentation immediately in any language (C, Pascal, even HTML) so I
hardly even noticed that it was required in Python.)

Also, I can't count the number of times that I've been cutting C/C++
code and missed a brace.  That's a minor thing, but it's nice to not
have to worry about it in Python.

Anyhow, I don't want to say anything more about indentation since it's
probably all been said 2000 times over already.

> The reason people rarely beat up on it anymore is becuase it's a lost
> battle.  I continue to use python (despite the indenting problem) because
> there is enough other stuff in it that I like.  But I don't think it's fair
> to call it a "knee-jerk reaction".

I don't think that was the implication.  I think "knee-jerk" was just
referring to the fact that almost anybody who's done programming in any
mainstream language does indeed react with varying degrees of
"WTF-is-this"-ness when they see Python's indentation characteristics
for the first time.

That being said, you're right - I'm sure there is a sizeable contingent
of experienced Python programmers who dislike the indentation, and that
opinion is definitely valid.  But I don't get the sense that opinion
isn't respected.  I've only been on python-list/clp for a few weeks, so
when the anonymous person posted "the indentation for grouping thing" I
was expecting her/him to be dismissed as a troll almost immediately. 
Instead there was a reasonable discussion about the matter, even though
(as is almost always the case) nobody changed anybody's mind.  To me
that said a whole lot!
	
-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From wqh-2 at 263.net  Tue Jul 31 10:15:21 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:15:21 +0800 (CST)
Subject: how to import a module of my own not locating the standard position
Message-ID: <3B66BD79.03061@mta5>


__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 17:51:16 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:51:16 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEDOLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Nick Perkins]
> I like generators a lot.  Here's a fun one:
>
> #------ begin code
> [snip]
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     g = fib()
>     for i in range(9):
>         print g.next(),
>
> #------ end code

[Jeff Shannon]
> Haven't looked into this in detail, or even downloaded 2.2 yet, but...
>
> couldn't that be written as:
>
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     for i in fib():
>         print i,
>
> ???

The difference is that you never stop printing, but the earlier code printed
only 9 of them.

> (being under the impression that the main point of iterators is
> convenient for-loop usage...)

Indeed it is, and generators are just another flavor of iterator; explicit
use of .next() should rarely be needed (yet neither feared <wink>).  Another
way to write the "only 9" loop:

count = 0
for f in fib():
    print f,
    count += 1
    if count >= 9:
        break

That's something of a strain in such a simple case, but in general the
ability to "get out of a loop early" without needing to materialize the
whole sequence first is a major practical application of the iterator
protocol.

for statement in python_program.parse():
    if statement.kind is FUTURE_STMT:
        print "Start a flamewar about", str(statement)
        break




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Jul 11 16:06:57 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:06:57 GMT
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net>

William Annis wrote:
> So, are there any tools to translate 1.5.2 pickles to 2.x
> versions of the pickle format?

import pickle

(1.5.2, 1.6, 2.0, and 2.1 all use the same pickle format)

</F>




From janssen at parc.xerox.com  Thu Jul 26 22:20:59 2001
From: janssen at parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:20:59 PDT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide" 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:54:50 PDT."
             <cpg0bj5pb3.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> 
Message-ID: <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com>

> >     - "//" is hard to read, i.e. quickly clearly distinguish from "/"
> >       the other division operator.
> 
> I don't believe this.  If you can't distinguish / from //, you need
> new glasses. :-)

Hmmmm.  Not sure I believe this; mistaking "|" for "||" is said to be
a frequent cause of errors in C code.

Bill




From dirck at pacbell.net  Sat Jul 28 00:03:32 2001
From: dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:03:32 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <nQq87.6146$YP2.191178@news.pacbell.net>

"Stephen Horne" <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek at 4ax.com...
> On 27 Jul 2001 14:58:35 -0700, dirck at pacbell.net (Dirck Blaskey)
> wrote:
>
> >Inertia should always be taken into account, but it should never
> >be the single deciding factor - or we'd all be working legacy COBOL.
>
> A couple of years ago, you may remember a major panic caused by
> peoples realisation that a hell of a lot of COBOL code was going to
> stop working. The developers were long since retired. In many cases,
> the source code was long since lost. That COBOL program was still
> there and working, though, some 20 or 30 years after it was written.
>
> Useful programs aren't discarded so fast as development fashions and
> religions. The trouble is that Python programs - and libraries much
> more so - are quite often shared in source form.

I would much rather get the source instead of the executable,
at least then you have a chance when it breaks, for whatever reason.

I'm aware that this kind of code exists, but personally I don't consider it
the normal case, nor would I find myself faced with COBOL.  The closest
equivalent I can come up with: I still run into people using dBase III.

Current popular platforms didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago.
Minicomputers are no longer 'in fashion', I guess.

In general, I believe the axiom:
"Any useful program will need to be modified",
even though that's obviously not always the case.
On the other hand, that depends on your definition of "useful".

I don't consider Python a development fashion or religion.
( God save us from the true believer ;^)

I would agree that upgrading just for the sake of upgrading is pretty
silly - there has to be a payoff - even if it's simply -
"You can't stay on maintenance unless you accept a maintenance release."

On the other hand, I've never understood the corporate mentality of
"The bugs we know are safer than the fixes we don't know".

And on yet another hand ("the gripping hand"),
a big shop with a big investment has to consider the cost,
regardless of what they decide.

Inertia in the software world is a huge force, and always
to be fought tooth and nail, because generally what Inertia means is:
"Just live with our mistakes because we can't afford to fix them."
This is an extremely depressing state.

(Windows Me is still MSDOS, down deep, int 21Hs and all.  How odd.)

> >I think this is where most of the reactionary responses come from.
> >C is deeply ingrained in the programming culture, because in a lot
> >of ways it was, and in some ways still is, The Programming Language.
> >Anything you do, day in and day out, year after year, no matter how
> >odd or perverse or inconsequential, becomes 'the natural order of
things'.
> >The more deeply ingrained, the harder it is to actually see.
>
> If that was true, we wouldn't be using Python at all. After all, it is
> a dynamically typed language that stores its identifiers in a hash
> table - it provides a keyword to say 'a function definition is coming'
> rather than leaving it to issues that often depend on the semantics
> (rather than simply grammar rules) of what has happened in the past.
> And it doesn't even allow you to use braces for block structures. How
> not-like-C can you get?

I'd wager that by far most of the current Python users know C, and
probably a large percentage of them have a lot of C experience.

Python isn't written in Python.

Not yet anyway, and probably not for a long time.
On the other hand, we can always hope :^)

d






From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 19:08:03 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:08:03 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com>
Message-ID: <3B5616D3.37E4754F@engcorp.com>

rh cassel wrote:
> 
> > Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for
> > me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
> > Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
> > accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
> > with Python.
> 
> Off topic but if one looks at the definition, a "steep" learning curve means
> quick and easy to learn. It is an accumulated knowledge versus time
> function.  The marketing folks have totally corrupted the meaning.

The truth of that statement depends more on whether you subscribe 
to the philosophy that dictionaries (or in this case
some definition you found... the original or not) are *prescriptive* 
or *descriptive*.

That is, I happen to use the term "steep learning curve" to mean
a learning curve that is very *difficult* to climb.  In other words,
when facing something with a steep learning curve one might make
very little progress for a long time.

I believe many, many others use the phrase in this "incorrect"
manner, and unfortunately I doubt pointing out the "correct" 
usage will ever lead to many of us changing.  Sorry.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 15:46:01 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:46:01 -0500
Subject: Postgres  support
In-Reply-To: <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
	<5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15174.5497.55793.936749@beluga.mojam.com>

    Edward> Python needs a ready to use cross database module which handles
    Edward> Oracle, DB2, SQL-Server, Sybase, and Informix.  If it handles
    Edward> Postgres and MsSQL that would be a bonus, however, most $$ gigs
    Edward> don't use the last two db's much so most of the focus should be
    Edward> on the "big five" or at least on the big three (Oracle, DB2, and
    Edward> SQL_Server).

I'm not sure there are many Python programmers with the discretionary funds
necessary to buy any of the commercial databases you want supported.  That
puts you back into the category of "finding someone willing to do it for you
for a fee".  Presumably, if they can afford Oracle (for example), they could
also afford to pay a programmer to write a Python interface for it.

Then again, you could exercise Google a little bit.  Searching for "Python
Oracle" yielded this promising link:

    http://www.oraclepower.com/isapi/orapower.dll?AID=SC&CAT_ID=1166

Searching for "Python DB2" yielded:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/db-sig/2000-October/001422.html

"Python Sybase" netted this:

    http://www.stecf.org/~npirzkal/python/sybase/

Finally, "Python Informix" returned:

    http://starship.python.net/crew/sturner/informixdb.html

Next question?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From berton at elisha.et.byu.edu  Mon Jul  2 11:35:59 2001
From: berton at elisha.et.byu.edu (Berton Allen Earnshaw)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 09:35:59 -0600
Subject: trouble making python on HPUX
Message-ID: <xhfn16nmjhc.fsf@lagos.et.byu.edu>

Apologizing in advance - trouble is probably platform-dependent.

When trying to run make after running ./configure, the following error
is received:

	thread_pthread.h:6: p_thread.h: No such file or directory

I noticed that during ./configure the file pthread.h was not found.
What is going on here and how can I fix it?

-- 
Berton Earnshaw - berton at et.byu.edu


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 19 19:32:47 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:32:47 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Tim Randolph" <timothyrandolph at yahoo.com> writes:

> > (2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than
> >     the group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers
> >     an arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
> 
> I think the distinction between programmers and non-programmers
> misses a third important group: "sometime programmers" -- people who
> code occasionally to for fun or to solve problems, but aren't in the
> trenches (or the cubes) day in and day out.

Thanks for reminding me!  This is in fact the group I have in mind
when I say non-programmer -- true non-programmers of course wouldn't
be using Python... :-).  In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who
is a professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.  A "non-programmer"
is someone whose profession is something else (e.g. chemist, or
webdesigner, or rocket scientist) but who occasionally needs to
program.

> As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how
> easy it is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would
> very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that
> enforce *uniform* case usage.

And that's of course what I have in mind.

> Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but
> nobody wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program
> with distinct meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes
> for readable code -- at least for this sometime programmer.

Exactly.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rneely at home.com  Tue Jul 17 22:46:29 2001
From: rneely at home.com (Rob Neely)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 19:46:29 -0700
Subject: Putting a scrollbar on a frame
Message-ID: <6f0b3be9.0107171846.20f2623d@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I've got a Tkinter app which places a bunch of buttons on a frame,
where each button is a 100x100 image.  I'd like to put a scrollbar
along the frame so when my number of buttons exceeds the screen size
(about 30 or so), I can scroll down to see all of them...

I understand that the scrollbar only works on a Canvas, Text, and
Listbox.  Is my only option to overlay my frame with a canvas and put
the buttons (images) on the canvas?  Is that doable?

My guess is that it's doable - but I will have to rewrite my app so
that I'm not placing button widgets, but images instead - each bound
to a particular callback.

I also see that Pmw has a ScrolledFrame widget.  Is that my answer?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

--Rob


From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 13:45:13 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 17:45:13 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com> <4n4klt8ud0es25jep3u2v9pj02dctnte0u@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m0lp9.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:42:37 GMT, Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote:
>The moment that any programming language becomes tool-
>dependent, that language is dead to me. I tried fiddling with
>Lisp-without-Emacs for most of a year. It didn't work out. I can
>think of few programming-related things more onerous than
>a programming language which requires you to learn its editor.
>
>Never again.

Hmm, I've been writing scheme for a while, and just started doing stuff with
lisp, and I've never felt the need to go anywhere near emacs.  Most 'vi's have
paren matching and lisp indent, but I've also happily used acme, which has
neither of these.

But I agree with the sentiment against "you will use our tools" monolithic
style languages, because my tools are usually very different from theirs.
I've never really gotten going with SmallTalk, for instance, because that
requires completely converting to that world, which raises the barrier to
entry quite a bit.

>>If case-preservation were tool-enforced, then all of us would
>>essentially have to use those tools.

I don't understand this assertion, however.  What keeps you from continuing to
use vim, ed, windows notepad, whatever, in this case?  The language is exactly
the same.  The only difference you might see is some other people's code won't
be exploiting case sensitivity, but you still can (it's up to those other
people's case-insensitive warning systems to be smart enough to not constantly
make noise when using your modules).


From kalle at gnupung.net  Wed Jul 18 18:18:28 2001
From: kalle at gnupung.net (Kalle Svensson)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 00:18:28 +0200
Subject: basic python-unix question
In-Reply-To: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>; from spi@micro.soft on Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 09:51:25PM +0000
References: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <20010719001828.A24975@gandalf>

Sez Ed T:
> import os, sys
> process = ("test1", "test2")
> 
> for eachProcess in process:
>      os.system('ps ef | grep eachProcess')

That last line should be
    os.system('ps ef | grep %s' % eachProcess)
or
    os.system('ps ef | grep ' + eachProcess)

Peace,
  Kalle
-- 
Email: kalle at gnupung.net     | You can tune a filesystem, but you
Web: http://www.gnupung.net/ | can't tune a fish. -- man tunefs(8)
PGP fingerprint: 0C56 B171 8159 327F 1824 F5DE 74D7 80D7 BF3B B1DD
 [ Not signed due to lossage.  Blame Microsoft Outlook Express. ]



From bh at intevation.de  Fri Jul 27 09:38:27 2001
From: bh at intevation.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:38:27 +0200
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <01Jul26.192106pdt."3453"@watson.parc.xerox.com> <mailman.996237955.24731.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6q4rrytru4.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>

Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> writes:

> > > I don't believe this.  If you can't distinguish / from //, you need
> > > new glasses. :-)
> > 
> > Hmmmm.  Not sure I believe this; mistaking "|" for "||" is said to be
> > a frequent cause of errors in C code.
> 
> For different reasons: they have different priorities but their
> meaning is related (both are "or", just one is bitwise and the other
> is Boolean shortcut).  Programmers coming from languages where only
> "|" existed were tempted to use that, but the priorities are so broken
> that a==b | c==d is parsed as (a == (b|c)) == d.

Interesting that even a language designer with lots of C-experience can
get this wrong :) | has in fact almost the same precedence as || and
it's in fact lower than the comparison operators, so that a==b | c==d is
actually parsed as the user expected ( (a == b) | (c == d)) so it even
works as expected, although in cases where the operands are e.g. a
normal int and a comparison this is likely to break down.

The problem with |'s and &'s precedence in C is that in an expressions
like 0x0f == a & 0x0f, which seems to test whether the 4 lower bits of a
are 1, is in fact parsed as (0x0f == a) & 0x0f.

  Bernhard

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/


From objectway at divalsim.it  Wed Jul  4 06:23:41 2001
From: objectway at divalsim.it (Nicola Musatti)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 12:23:41 +0200
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
Message-ID: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it>

Hallo, everybody.
I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Nicola


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 23 20:23:18 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:23:18 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5CBFF6.5E265D68@ActiveState.com>

David Eppstein wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Rather than arguing about nonexistent situations, let's make an analogy:
> In Python, "123"+"456" = "123456" but 123+456=579.  These are two different
> operators that happen to have the same symbol.  I really don't see why
> integer-division and floating-point-division should be treated any
> differently from this case.

Python encourages you to treat integers and floats as interchangable.

>>> "%d"%5.3
'5'
>>> math.sin(200)
-0.87329729721399463
>>> math.sin(200.0)==math.sin(200)
1
>>> 5+3.0==5+3
1
>>> 5*3.0==5*3
1
>>> 5/3.0==5/3
0

It is a nasty trick to lull a person into a sense of safety and then in
one corner of the language dash it away.

It is very common to pass floats to functions that expect integers and
vice versa without really thinking about it. It is *especially* common
to pass integers to functions that expect floats.

Strings are a totally different issue. The overloaded plus operator is
not at all confusing because strings and integers are such strongly
distinct types that you can almost never use them interchangably. If
Python *did* treat strings and integers interchangably (as Perl and Tcl
do) then it would be very bad if "+" meant string concatenation. In Perl
and Tcl, + does NOT mean string concatenation.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From guido at digicool.com  Fri Jul  6 17:01:39 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:01:39 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:40:15 CDT."
             <15174.8751.465954.910371@beluga.mojam.com> 
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
            <15174.8751.465954.910371@beluga.mojam.com> 
Message-ID: <200107062101.f66L1dY18288@odiug.digicool.com>

>     Guido> Picking div() means that we can still turn that into a keyword
>     Guido> later (the keyword would be both a unary and a binary operator).
> 
> What would a unary "div" operator mean?
> 
> Skip

When div is a function, div(x, y) is a function call.  When div is a
keyword, we could still support div(x, y) as a unary operator with a
tuple argument.  Then you could also write

    arg = (x, y)
    print div arg

But maybe that's too cute.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul  8 19:11:46 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:11:46 +0200
Subject: Python-list digest, Vol 1 #6687 - 14 msgs
In-Reply-To: <994351925.3b449b35caaab@webmail1.wm.edu>
Message-ID: <20010709011146.O8098@xs4all.nl>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 12:52:05PM -0400, Andrew Todd wrote:

> Of course since I lack a brain it never occured to me to 
> try from module import a, b. Damnit.

Don't worry, we all fall prey to Guido's time machine now and again :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From mitchell.morris at cingular.com  Mon Jul 30 07:43:40 2001
From: mitchell.morris at cingular.com (Mitchell Morris)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 11:43:40 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE4E97C1CACbeablebeable@30.146.28.98>

<brueckd at tbye.com> wrote in
news:mailman.996258291.15055.python-list at python.org: 
[snip]
> In most jobs I've used C/C++ or Java and for me the stronger the typing
> rules the more problems (and in turn bugs) it caused. I haven't sat
> down to really ponder why but I have noticed a few recurring problems.
> 
> One is that stronger types introduce a lot more complexity. In Java I
> spend a lot of time creating new classes just to act as simple data
> structures.  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
> an array or Vector. And darn it, if I want to pull them out of the
> Vector I have to cast them back to their class - even though both I and
> the objects in the Vector already know what they are.

I'll go out on a limb and say that C++ and Java don't really have strong 
typing, they merely have an unreasonable facsimile thereof.

Allow me instead to repeat some advice that once flew across this newsgroup: 
the timbot said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "If you want to see what strong 
static typing is supposed to feel like, try Haskell or OCaml." I've tried 
both now, and have discovered that they are both truly pleasant to work 
with, and are refreshingly free of all the why-do-i-have-to-type-a-cast-
when-we-both-know-damn-well-what-this-is events that otherwise plague C++ 
and Java development.

    	Haskell: <http://www.haskell.org/>
    	OCaml: <http://www.ocaml.org/>



[snip]
> If nothing else, for large projects the Python versions are much
> smaller and simpler, and as a result are usually less buggy and easier
> to manage. 
> 
> -Dave

otherwise-in-complete-agreement-ly y'rs,
+Mitchell


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 10 02:27:51 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 06:27:51 GMT
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kl837.1c4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:31:52 +0800, Steve S.L. Wong <steve at hkit.net> pisze:

> while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> }

for command in ';'.split(line_ptr):

In Python versions earlier than 2.0 you can
    import string
at the beginning and then:

for command in string.split(line_ptr, ';'):

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Mon Jul  9 13:44:29 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 17:44:29 GMT
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <14m27.2182$z21.428719@newsc.telia.net>

Paul Boddie wrote:

> Edward's right in one respect: stop concentrating on language issues
> and start concentrating on library issues.

are you sure "do what I want, not what you want" is a good way to
get people to write software and give it to you?

</F>




From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 01:30:37 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 05:30:37 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3b64e984.782776733@wa.news.verio.net>

On 28 Jul 2001 07:55:47 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:37:51 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> pisze:
>
>> If we have rationals in our numeric tower, I definitely want (5/2 - 3/2)
>> to be usable as a sequence index,
>
>This doesn't work in my model. The simplest way to let it work is to
>treat ints (with longs) and rationals as representation details of
>the same concept (no matter if it's the same Python's type or not).
>
I think hiding representation details is a good goal when they are
irrelevant to the true meaning of the program. Otherwise it's arms-length C ;-)

OTOH, maybe there could be a gradual shift to indications that are
more like optimization hints that are needed for a while, but eventually
get ignored -- like 'register' in a C compiler that knows more about its
target than the coder, at least for big chips.

>This is not nice IMHO and it leads to more cases when the type of the
>result depends on the value of the argument (x**y returns at least
>a float when y is a rational, but may return an integer when y is
   ^^^^^-inexact           vs.            exact--^^^^^^^
>a nonnegative integer) and turns some TypeErrors into ValueErrors
Actually, with rationals, could't you return the inverse rational
for negative y integers ;-)

>(e.g. s[1/2]).
>
It ripples a lot, probably, but if you eliminated 'types' that are
really representation names, maybe the type of the result would be
number or complex, and exact or not. But I imagine that's a big change.

OTOH, there must already be a distinction between indexing with an int
versus a long, so dispatching to something that tries to make an int
(or do you actually internally allow more than a C int?) out of a rational
shouldn't be that bad. The usual case should be fast still.

>I would not make 5/2-3/2 usable as a sequence index. My style is more
>"typeful". But you decide.
>



From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 20 11:04:31 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:04:31 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995634453.9136.python-list@python.org> <hlgglt4hrnnb8a7dmocntkns5bkm4b6jmm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B58487F.5D4BCA70@stroeder.com>

Sheila King wrote:
> 
> As a high school computer science teacher, I must agree. I have been
> teaching C++ for the last couple of years,
> [..]
> But case-sensitivity was never an issue.
> [..]
> I don't
> remember this happening even once. There were many other bugs that made
> us tear our hair out, but never, never this.

Sheila, I completely agree. I also doubt that the academic studies
cited here about the benefits of case-insensitive programming
languages for beginners have any backing in the real world.

If a programmer forgets how he called his variable 20 lines above he
has to look it up. And he will do that. That's exactly what
cut&paste is for without any fancy,
automatic-capitalization-sanitizing GUI IDE.

Ciao, Michael.


From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Fri Jul 27 06:32:07 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:32:07 +0200
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <27072001.3@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> writes:

[...]

    >> You're pissing off a fairly significant fraction of the
    >> language's existing constituency in hopes of attracting some
    >> non-programmers to the language who may not come anyway for
    >> various other reasons.

BTW, Skip, as I said in another message, I'd dispute the "significant
fraction".  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't... but volume doesn't make it
so.

    Tim> I don't detect any trace of that hypothesized motive in
    Tim> Guido.  He wants to repair what he has come to believe is a
    Tim> serious design error, and is wrestling with ways to get that
    Tim> done.  What a remarkably different world it would be if
    Tim> people tried to help <wink>.

By pure coincidence[1], just a couple days ago I looked up info on
Ido, the "improved" version of Esperanto.

And, well, it's interesting that some of the stuff Ido does
differently than Esperanto are ideas that Zamenhof had, but didn't
change in Esperanto.

Funny how similar that looks to the / situation... is Guido an
improved Zamenhof in the end? ;-)

Bye, J

[1] I think.  I'm not sure because I don't remember *why* I stumbled
upon Ido.  Could have been mentioned around here...

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
    "It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level
                        I'm really quite busy."
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010727/c1d54c37/attachment.sig>

From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul  5 17:14:27 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 21:14:27 GMT
Subject: Question about scope
References: <3B44D696.61A8B915@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B44D89A.1DF28AD9@tundraware.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> I thought I understood python scoping, but I guess I don't.  Consider this
> code:
> 
> FALSE = 0
> TRUE = not FALSE
> FLAG = TRUE
> 
> def FlagFalse():
>         FLAG = FALSE
> 
> print str(FLAG)
> FlagFalse()
> print str(FLAG)
> 
> I get:
> 1
> 1
> 
> But I expected:
> 1
> 0
> 
> If I declare FLAG as global in the function, it works properly, of course.
> 
> I thought that python checked local scope for a variable first and if
> it did not find it, it appealed to the local namespace.  What am I missing
> here - it's probably at the end of my nose, but I cannot seem to make sense
> of it...
> 
> TIA,
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tim Daneliuk
> tundra at tundraware.com

Oh, while we're at it, if add the following line at the very start of my code:

MyPrint = print

MyPrint *is* in scope inside of FlagFalse() and can be used just fine.

I guess what I want to know is when globally declared objects are seen inside a function, class, or
block, and when they must be explicitly declared as being global.


Many thanks...
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 27 14:17:03 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:17:03 -0700
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net>
Message-ID: <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com>

"Rufus V. Smith" wrote:
> 
> "Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> > Oh dear I sense a humour deficit :(
> 
> I think it was just an emoticon deficit.

If the prose is well written or the readers well read, then there shouldn't
be a need for "emoticons". Of the hundreds of books I have, I don't think
any of them make use of emoticons. But virtually all of them were reviewed
by editors, so with Usenet you may need to supplement your writing with
emoticons.

I suspect Mr. van Rossum is probably not in the happiest of moods, what with
his suggested changes being challenged from many people for various reasons.
This influence would color anyone's reading.

By the way, the division issue is several years old. A lot of bits have
flowed on this issue. See for example:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d,40&start=0

Three years later the code base and programmer base are no doubt
considerably larger, so the inertia against change has probably grown too
large to deal with.


From prairiesasquatch at crosswinds.net  Sun Jul  8 14:02:33 2001
From: prairiesasquatch at crosswinds.net (Kevin Russell)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 13:02:33 -0500
Subject: Tying a GUI to a another module
References: <7b515e0f.0107070856.3466e4a1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B48A039.AB9C55CE@crosswinds.net>

eric_brake wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know how to link a module containing the gui (first_gui)
> and a another one containing the code to run the program
> (fibonaccii_gui). Using the "Fib Calc" button to execute the process.
> I want the program to take input from the Entry field process it
> through "fibonaccii_gui" and then print the fibonaccii sequence in the
> Label field. Here's the involved modules, Thank you for any help.

Rearranging the rest of your message to put the calculation module
first:

> Here's "fibonaccii_gui" module
> class fibonaccii:
>     def fib(self):
>         a, b = 0, 1
>         while b < fibnumber:
>             #print b, fibonaccii sequence is saved in variable "b"
>             a, b = b, a+b
> fibinstance = fibonaccii()

A few points:
1) This module isn't doing anything gui-like.  You might as
   well just name it "fibonacci".
2) The "fib" function is always the same.  There's no point in
   making a whole class and an instance of the class just to
   hold it.  It can just as well be a top-level function in the
   module.
3) The comment suggests you want the sequence to be saved in b,
   but it won't be.  You should specifically make a list to hold
   the result of the calculation.  The "fib" function should
   return that list as its result, and leave it to the calling
   function to decide what it wants to do with the list (print it
   to the standard output, paint it on a GUI label, whatever).

Here's a new fibonacci module:

def fib(fibnumber):
    a, b = 0, 1
    result_list = [a, b]
    while b < fibnumber:
        a, b = b, a+b
        result_list.append(b)
    return result_list
# That's it.

Or, using Python lists for all they're worth:

def fib(fibnumber):
    series = [0, 1]
    while series[-1] < fibnumber:
        series.append(series[-1] + series[-2])
    return series

> 
> "first_gui" module
> import fibonaccii_gui
> from Tkinter import *
> class fibon_gui:
>      def __init__(self, master):
>           frame_entry = Frame(master)
>           frame_entry.pack()
>           input = Entry(frame_entry, width=30)
>           input.pack()
>           output = Label(frame_entry, text="Output goes here")
>           output.pack(side=TOP)
> 
>           frame_button = Frame(master)
>           frame_button.pack()
>           button_fibcalc = Button(frame_button, text="Fib Calc")
>           button_fibcalc.pack(side=LEFT)
>           button_quit = Button(frame_button, text="QUIT", fg="red",
> command=master.quit)
>           button_quit.pack(side=RIGHT)
> root = Tk()
> root.title('Fibonaccii')
> fibgui = fibon_gui(root)
> root.mainloop()

You're going to want to tie a function or method to the button
so that it'll know what to do when it's clicked.  It's easiest to
make this another method of the fibon_gui class.  First, you'll
need to stick a "self." in front of almost every variable name
in your __init__ method, otherwise all those variables will be
local to __init__ and none of the class's other methods will be able
to access the widgets.  Then write the method to be run when the
button is clicked.  Something like this.  (This is off the top
of my head and untested.  I can't guarantee it will work, though
it shouldn't fry your hard drive. :-))

    def do_calculation(self, event=None):
        number = self.input.get()
        number = int(number) # since the entry field holds a string
        # Have the other module calculate the list
        fiblist = fibonacci.fib(number)
        # Convert the list to a string representation and make
        # it the label's text property
        output['text'] = str(fiblist)

Now add another argument to your Button constructor in __init__,
setting this new method to be the button's command property:

        self.button_fibcalc = Button(frame_button, text="Fib Calc",
                                     command=self.do_calculation)

You should be almost done.  Good luck with the rest.

-- Kevin


From whats_really_hot at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 17:08:18 2001
From: whats_really_hot at hotmail.com (whats_really_hot)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 00:08:18 +0300
Subject: any books for python for downloading?
References: <993939668.727430@athnrd02.forthnet.gr> <994422491.679470@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>
Message-ID: <994453634.805733@athnrd02.forthnet.gr>

first of all, thanks for attention.sorry for posting the message three times
but i had a problem with my connection.second, i don't like offline browsers
because they limit my buffer.that's why i am asking for some paper
downloading.




From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 11:27:06 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:27:06 -0500
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <Xns90EF9A33C3022michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org>
        <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk>
        <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
        <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com>
        <Xns90EF9A33C3022michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
Message-ID: <15206.52810.714411.948748@beluga.mojam.com>

    Michael> Well, it's interesting to look at the byte code interpreter
    Michael> source and to consider just how much time and effort is spent
    Michael> in working out what the types of operands are and therefore
    Michael> which particular operation to invoke.  You can't avoid that
    Michael> without static typing of some sort.

Not so fast, bucko. ;-)

The prototypical proof-by-existence is Self.  Check out

    http://www.sun.com/research/self/

Also, who said you had to compile your code before running it?  Armin Rego
has been working on something called Psyco (Python Specializing Compiler)
that at runtime converts VM bytecodes into another -- partially typed --
virtual machine based upon the types of the inputs it sees.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 14:10:12 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:10:12 -0500
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
References: <mailman.995443830.26172.python-list@python.org>
        <3B55724D.465E8A44@engcorp.com>
        <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <15189.53508.884850.341949@beluga.mojam.com>

    Johann> cc -O2       0.28
    Johann> cc           0.62
    Johann> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
    Johann> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
    Johann> perl        28.9
    Johann> python      66.8

    Johann> Hm.  I'm beginning to wonder if I compiled python with -O2 or
    Johann> not.  Plus, I'm becoming more and more fond of ocaml.

I pass along a couple tips that were mentioned to me recently on python-dev:

    1. Grep sys.prefix + "/config/Makefile" for OPT

    2. Import distutils.sysconfig then execute 

          distutils.sysconfig.get_config_var("OPT")

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul 25 17:31:18 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:31:18 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: int(a), b = divmod(x, y)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107251514570.6992-100000@bms>

How nasty would it be to allow one to do...

>>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
>>> print a, b
2 1.01

...instead of the current...

>>> int(a), b = divmod(5.01, 2)
SyntaxError: can't assign to function call


On the surface, it looks as simple as postponing the function call
until after the assignment.  Would it be a one-time hit when the
pseudo-ops are generated, a runtime performance issue that would
affect all function calls, just too hairy to implement, or something
else?


- Bruce




From grante at visi.com  Sat Jul 14 16:53:59 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:53:59 GMT
Subject: Getting major/minor number of device file in Linux?
Message-ID: <Hj247.15606$B7.2808728@ruti.visi.com>

I can't figure out how to get the major and minor numbers of a
char special file under Linux.  What I want is the st_rdev
field of the stat struct, but os.stat doesn't seem to return
that field.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I feel real
                                  at               SOPHISTICATED being in
                               visi.com            FRANCE!


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 20 03:31:09 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 09:31:09 +0200
Subject: Handling errors in PyXML/SAX
References: <3B545EB5.6BB5DF57@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <j4vgkogipu.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Tom Bridgman <bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

> I'm finally starting to work with the SAX parser and DTDs.  With the SAX
> defalult error handler, when parsing a file, I get error messages like:
> 
> ERROR in Unknown:94:22: Element 'animationtype' not declared
> ERROR in Unknown:98:18: Element 'thumbnail' not declared
> ERROR in Unknown:99:14: Element 'medialist' not declared
> 
> which I find ideal but for the fact that I would like to print the file
> name rather than 'Unknown'.
> 
> I've tried setting the systemID (which seems to be where the 'Unknown'
> comes from) in a locator object like so:
> 
> location=xmlreader.Locator()
> location.setSystemId=inputfilename
> self.handler.setDocumentLocator(location)
> 
> but still get 'Unknown'.

Setting the locator on the content handler won't tell the parser
anything; instead, the parser is supposed to invoke setDocumentLocator
itself.

What you need to do is to pass a proper InputSource to .parse(),
instead of passing, say, an open file.

Regards,
Martin



From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  2 00:02:18 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:02:18 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [Edu-sig] Post request and Dead-link note
In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F81oay0q0NTY9a00004e49@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107020758120.9460-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Dean Goodmanson wrote:

>Dear Educators and Programmers,
>
>I had indented to shorten this off-line written post but in the event of the
>last few days lull am going to lob it out there. Please bear with me.
>I have been enjoying the EDU-SIG list for a few weeks and Python for
>slightly more.  I have been doing C/C++ (and some Java/C# exploration?does

>and grab-tempting moving paper and pen carousel.  My initial goal is to
>develop a joystick control by implementing a joystick reader in python to
>interpret and then send out HPGL commands to the plotter.

You can try Plotter's docs. For example, we had Roland plotter
and it was with the book where everything was explained.

I remember, that HPGL == IBMGL or something like that. It is very simple
language and you could use a vector drawing program like tgif
to generate HPGL code and analyse it.

In fact, I think almost any vector graphics editor could export
in HPGL.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Monday, July 02, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Let's make the draft retroactive & send Clinton to Nam!" _/




From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 09:59:42 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:59:42 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:

> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
> 
> > Further digging led me to the C source module that contained some
> > comment "this is to prevent two threads from importing the same
> > module at the same time returning incomplete module" (or something
> > like that).  I didn't try to comprehend the C source, sorry.
> > Although it may not be so difficult, I prefer to leave fixing to
> > those for whom the system is an open book.
> 
> Even if you didn't understand the source, it would have been nice if
> you had indicated what source you were looking at; I could not find
> any occurrence of "this is to prevent" in the entire Python source
> code.

He's referring to the import_lock variable in import.c.

> > Understanding that Python thread mechanism does not use the OS
> > thread mechanism
> 
> This is a misunderstanding: the Python thread mechanism does use the
> OS thread mechanism

Just under a layer of wrapper APIs.

> > and with all due respect to the creators and contributors, I would
> > like to ask, "Has anybody experienced similar situation with more
> > than one thread competing for the same module?"
> 
> I'm out of context here: a situation similar to what?

The only situation where I've seen this, ironically, is if you attempt
to import the test module that's designed specifically to test this
lock, in the interactive interpreter on Windows.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 10 02:09:44 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:09:44 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <3B4A76B7.A0399815@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEFLKNAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
>     print ``1`+`2``

[Thomas Wouters]
> Holy crap! I can't believe Python parses that correctly

[Greg Ewing]
> I think it works because if you see a ` when you're expecting
> the beginning of an expression it must be an opening-`, whereas
> if you see one just after you've seen a complete expression
> it must be a closing-`. Or something like that.

Close enough -- if the grammar production "testlist" could match whitespace,
it would be hosed.

> I was quite surprised[1] when I first saw it, too.

Note that, in the same spirit, we could save a character for other use by
writing that:

    I was quite surprised[1[ when I first saw it, too.

> [1] Or, in other words, horrified.

luckily-we-never-see-it-in-real-code-ly y'rs  - tim




From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:03:01 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:03:01 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <qkK17.3717$Y6.1212999@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cpu20niqbe.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> Another *STRONG* argument for replacing int / with another infix operator
> is the feasibility of revising the thousands of broken lines of code to run
> under 2.whatever.  Any decent programming editor can do a 'find / and
> replace with xxx if I say yes' (which will require the reviser to examine
> the code to determine if / meant int div) but hardly any can do 'find / and
> examine the code on both sides to determine the strings that the
> interpreter will see as e1 and e2 and replace e1 / e2 with div(e1,e2) if I
> say yes'.  Writing a special purpose update program would also be much
> easier.

This is a very good argument for a 'div' operator that I hadn't
thought of before!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul 19 22:12:11 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:12:11 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995415330.32301.python-list@python.org> <3B5505A0.F89ADB86@engcorp.com> <9j79s6$n27$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B578D96.DCE5B63C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B57937B.B4057461@Lugoj.Com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
>  1. They are inactive in the Python community and are
>     therefore unaware of the upcoming code breakage.
> 
>  2. Their code is dependent on the existing integer
>     division behaviour, and yet they are not amongst
>     the classes of users identified in this newsgroup
>     as being the most likely to be impacted.
> 
>  3. They are incapable of maintaining their code,
>     and simultaneously are entirely at the mercy of
>     outside forces who may choose to upgrade them
>     against their will or without their knowledge to
>     the new and incompatible version of Python.
> 
>     Or, they are not at the mercy of outside forces,
>     yet mysteriously cannot *avoid* upgrading their
>     Python installations and thus breaking their
>     own code (which they somehow cannot maintain).
> 
>  4. Were we to develop and make easily available to
>     them a scanner capable at least of identifying
>     the probability they will suffer code breakage,
>     they would be unable to use it, whether for
>     (1) or (3).
> 
> Have I missed anything?

I'm sure you could think of many more insults if you just tried harder. Just
how many years have you been in commercial software development anyway?


From maxm at normik.dk  Thu Jul  5 03:24:19 2001
From: maxm at normik.dk (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Max_M=F8ller_Rasmussen?=)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:24:19 +0200 
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
Message-ID: <7BD10B680501D411B9DF009027E06F32197DA0@exchange>

> From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paulp at ActiveState.com]

> Well, that's better than what we have today. And the Vaults (what we
> have today) is better than what we had before it. Incremental 
> steps are
> the only path that will lead to success.

Obviously there is something I have missed here.

If what we need is a system that can manage modules, versions,
interdependencies, searching, different comunication protocols like ftp,
http, webdav, a web interface and a Python client, Why don't we just write
it in Zope?

It doesn't sound like too big a problem to to make a Zope product that does
the above, well except the client, and we can build on all that allready is
in Zope.

So I guess that there must be something obvious that I have overlooked. Has
anybody got any links to where the dificulties are discussed?

regards Max M

                         - N?rg?rd Mikkelsen a/s -
             www.normik.dk - Vandv?rksvej 18 - DK 5000 Odense C
               Tlf (+45) 66 14 14 80 - Fax (+45) 66 14 19 43
                     Max M - Direkte (+45) 63 14 47 15
               



From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 12:37:29 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:37:29 -0700
Subject: Startup question
References: <3B4E4A69.4040100@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B5469C9.4520FF3C@ccvcorp.com>

Paulo da Silva wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am considering to use python in a middle sized project.
> I need to be able to build a standalone with a GUI (ex. tkinter)
> both for Windows and Linux, however.
>
> Is this possible? I read the FAQ and I saw it is possible to
> build a standalone, but I could not find if it is also
> possible when including a GUI. I don't care about to hide
> the code. Just to build a distributable standalone.

Yes, it is possible to build a standalone distribution using distutils
and/or MacMillan Installer with either Tkinter or wxPython (or, afaik,
any of the other GUI toolkits).  There may be specific arcana involved
for each toolkit, but it should be possible to find details from the
usual sources for that toolkit.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From runyaga at thisbox.com  Mon Jul  9 00:48:25 2001
From: runyaga at thisbox.com (alan runyan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:48:25 GMT
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com> <9iag6e$1l2k$2@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <tIa27.163327$lq1.39403742@typhoon.austin.rr.com>

> Well, the code is cut and pasted from the Zope Book, so I am
> _assuming_ there are no errors in the script. And, like I
> said it works fine on other images.

I wouldnt assume anything.

>
> What I am trying to determine is if there are any
> limits set on External Methods which I might be running in
> to trying to process such a large image. I have looked
> through many pages of docs and everything seems to be
> saying that External Methods are unrestricted.
>
> Is that true?

from my experience, they are completely unrestricted.  You can now do this
w/ XXXPythonScripts, if interested ;)

the error message says you are getting a acquistionwrapper instead of a file
object.  so I think there is something different from what you are doing
with this one vs the other images that worked.  different object types or
something.  (?)  maybe something with the same name thats being acquired
from somewhere?

for future reference, ZOPE discussions should be kept to the zope mailing
lists. www.zope.org -- you will get answeres much faster and will be viewed
by a larger group of people interested in your problems.

~runyaga






From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 04:04:11 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:04:11 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010712100411.F5396@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 02:48:10PM +0000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Very good sumary, Terry.  I'm beginning to get second thoughts about
> integer division -- maybe it's better to leave well enough alone, and
> try to fix areas of the language that could really stand some fixing
> (such as subclassing built-in types).

Wow, Terry! Remind me to buy you a beer at the next Python conference, or
whenever we're more or less on the same continent ;) I never was too hot
about the CP4A reason to change int division, and your post not only
reminded my on why, it even made Guido reconsider, and he's been thinking
about it for years! :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 20 19:07:24 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 19:07:24 -0400
Subject: KeyboardInterrupt
References: <3b57e9e8.1285896@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <uitgn8aj7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:

> The Quick Python Book says that KeyboardInterrupt is
> tested regularly when the Python interpreter is running,
> but I have a program which may run for several minutes
> without printing anything, and I find I cannot break out of
> it with control-C.
> 
> How can I get my program to be more responsive to control-C?

Are you by any chance writing code that tends to have catch-all
"except" clauses?

If so, then the KeyboardInterrupt might be getting swallowed by one of
those (or require you to hit Ctrl-C more than once to get past one or
more exception handlers and then actually terminate the application).

Or, if you have a top level application exception clause that is
intended to help keep the application running even in unexpected
circumstances, you may need to special case KeyboardInterrupt and
terminate or re-raise it to terminate.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From rossi at earthling.net  Sun Jul  1 10:00:18 2001
From: rossi at earthling.net (Thorsten Roskowetz)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:18 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <9hnaat$284$02$1@news.t-online.com>

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote:
> The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I
thought
> that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't find anything
(except
> the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).
>
> Any suggestions/pointers?

You might want to look at KDE's DCOP.

Cheers,

Thorsten




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 19 22:15:06 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 22:15:06 -0400
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B57942A.4080BF5D@engcorp.com>

PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com wrote:
> 
> I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.
> 
> Rick Moranis, movie star:
> http://www.boxofficemania.com/actors/r/rick_moranis/rick_moranis.jpg
> 
> Guido van Rossum, Python inventor:
> http://www.python.org/~guido/images/Guido at 200dpi.jpg

Ha!  But you've got it all wrong.

Rick is geeky.  Guido is *gawky* (and proud of it.)


From spahievi at vega.bg  Sat Jul 21 04:14:02 2001
From: spahievi at vega.bg (Niki Spahiev)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:14:02 +0300
Subject: Distributing a Python app
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEKFKPAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEKFKPAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <1503278058.20010721111402@vega.bg>

20.7.2001, 09:00:13, Tim Peters wrote:

TP> [Tim]
>> FYI, I'm seriously looking at switching the PythonLabs Windows
>> installer over to Inno ...

TP> [David Bolen]
>> Wasn't there something or other you mentioned it couldn't quite do
>> that the current Wise stuff does when this last came up?

TP> Yes, it couldn't (and still can't) do stuff conditionally on NT/2000
TP> depending on whether the user has Admin privileges.  They're required to add
TP> HKLM registry entries; the Wise script backs off to HKCU if Admin privileges
TP> are required on the box and the user doesn't have them, and pops up a dialog
TP> box telling the user that's going to happen, giving them an early chance to
TP> abort if that's not what they want.

TP> So if we take this route we require Admin privileges; or write to HKCU all
TP> the time instead; or ship two distinct Windows installers.

Another not perfect solution. Inno setup 2.x has tasks. We can make
one task for Admin setup which uses HKLM and another task which uses
HKCU.

if-only-Inno-can-switch-automatically-between-them-ly y'rs
 Niki Spahiev




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 07:29:22 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:29:22 -0400
Subject: Listing directorycontent in python
References: <1aa68e6e.0107302231.dd024a2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <uCw97.995$0%2.174036@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"andreas" <wpt2097 at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1aa68e6e.0107302231.dd024a2 at posting.google.com...
> Hello.
>
> I have a simple question, I want to have a list of all files/dirs in a
> certain directory.
>
> An example would be that I want to know all filenames that end with
> "*.JPG" in the directory "/var/www/".
>
> I have not succeeded in doing this myself with "os.path"-module, so I
> am now asking for tips, hints, examples or pointers to answers of
> previous similar posts.
>
> I am using Python v1.5 most of the time.
>
The "glob" module will do what you want, and is fine in 1.5.2. In fact I
needed the same thing for a program of my own. See "photoclip.py" on

    http://www.holdenweb.com/Python/index.html

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 17 18:17:09 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:17:09 -0500
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>
        <170720011359545210%mday@apple.com>
        <87n163mfdc.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
Message-ID: <15188.47461.930588.828479@beluga.mojam.com>

    Christopher> I can't speak for Perl, but Python definately does not
    Christopher> evaluate the expression at compile time.  This is a problem
    Christopher> I've had with Python.  I wish that when given the -O option
    Christopher> the compiler would do constant subexpression elimination.

It's rare in normal Python code to actually see a constant expression
computed inside a loop.  Fortunately, it would appear most folks aren't that
dumb, so while you can take steps to eliminate them, there aren't generally
going to be very many to eliminate.

Experiments have been performed in this area.

* I once wrote a peephole optimizer that would precompute expressions like
  2.5*2.5:

      http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/python/

  The biggest boost I saw was on complex arithmetic because complex
  constants aren't stored as constants at all, but as arithmetic
  expressions.

* Python2C may also do some of this:

      http://www.mudlib.org/~rassilon/p2c/

* The bytecode hacks might as well (sorry no URL, check Parnassus)

* Some versions of freeze used to apply a number of peephole techniques

* Finally, Armin Rigo doing some very interesting things with compiling
  functions on-the-fly:

      http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015503.html

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From ToMuchSpam at ToHaveValid.com  Sat Jul  7 06:27:27 2001
From: ToMuchSpam at ToHaveValid.com (RoadRunner_au)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 20:27:27 +1000
Subject: pySOL
Message-ID: <1sB17.88073$Rr4.57437@ozemail.com.au>

I am trying to get this game (pySOL) to run in windows 98, but as soon as the
windows comes up with the game it crashes with the following error.


SyntaxError: invalid syntax

C:\Program Files\Python21>python C:\TMP\PYSOL\DATA\PYSOL_21.PYC
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pysol.py", line 19853, in ?
  File "pysol.py", line 19851, in main
  File "pysol.py", line 19813, in pysol_main
  File "pysol.py", line 18904, in mainloop
  File "pysol.py", line 18984, in runGame
  File "pysol.py", line 3346, in helpAbout
  File "pysol.py", line 2365, in __init__
  File "pysol.py", line 2287, in __init__
  File "pysol.py", line 2024, in makeImage
  File "c:\program files\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 2972, in __init__

    apply(Image.__init__, (self, 'photo', name, cnf, master), kw)
  File "c:\program files\python21\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 2928, in __init__

    self.tk.call(('image', 'create', imgtype, name,) + options)
TclError: unknown option "-dither"

C:\Program Files\Python21>


Can anyone help with fixing this problem? thanks.




From tspivey8 at home.com  Wed Jul 11 18:00:21 2001
From: tspivey8 at home.com (tyler spivey)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 22:00:21 GMT
Subject: python and applications
Message-ID: <V%337.677940$166.13952126@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

could you write a fast mud  in python? 
having a lot of monsters like dikumuds do?
how many blind programmers use python? and is python just a toy language?
can it do more or as much as c? could you create a roguelike in it?
I am blind myself.


From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 05:50:03 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 09:50:03 GMT
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
Message-ID: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>

              *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
                         Tim Daneliuk
              Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.

             Feel free to pass it around however you like,
             so long as you don't change, delete, or add
             anything, and preserve the author and copyright
             info above. 
             

Introduction
-------------

There has been an ongoing discussion about how Python, C, and
many other languages relevance as "systems" languages 
here (comp.lang.python) recently.  This started as a brief (Ha!)
response, and evolved into the Epistle below. 


A Little History 
(Or, "Why C Isn't Really The Most Common Systems Language Around")
------------------------------------------------------------------

I would venture to guess that there is at least as much, and maybe
*more* "systems code in Forth as in C.  Forth is the language of
choice for a great many real-time and embedded systems like
those used by NASA and the Aerospace/Military folks.  It is compact,
easily ported, very fast, and has a pretty interesting programming
paradigm (something of a cross between a high-level macro assembler,
an HP RPN calculator, and C itself).  I'm no Forth expert by any means,
but it is very widely used - it's just invisible, the way really
good code should be ;)  It even shows up in general systems programming.
IIRC, the Mac firmware bootstrap loader is written in Forth (?) and
I am certain that part of the FreeBSD bootloader is in Forth - I just
looked at the code a while ago.

For general OS development, 'C' is certainly the dominant language of
choice nowadays.  But I would point out that the among the very biggest
body of systems code, that has been around a *very* long time, is IBM's
OS/390 (or whatever they call it these days - MVS by any other name),
a big part of which is written in assembler.

As I've mentioned here before, the *biggest* (size of data * work arrival
rate * number of users...) TP systems in the world (Visa, Mastercard,
American Airlines, United Airlines...) run on TPF, a special transaction
OS which is pretty much *all* assembler. (And no, you couldn't get
a C based OS to do what TPF does even if you did have a couple hundred
million dollars to redo it, IMHO.)

But, for most (systems) things, 'C' is a fine choice.  I've done everything
from real-time kernel work to OS utilities in 'C'.  But... times are a' 
changin'.  Systems languages are great when you need fast, compact code.
But they crater big time when you have really big development efforts
(only Microsoft thinks an OS needs to be huge - on most scales, an OS
is a medium-sized effort, compared, say to an ERP system, a transaction
manager, or even something as mundane as Payroll and GL).  Systems
languages also tend to reek when you have lots of programmers involved,
because the language makes it so easy for programmers to shoot each other
in the foot (or, in some malevolent cases, The Back).

Before bandwidth and memory got cheap (256M = $39 today), we either had
to throw mainframes at problems or write in efficient languages like 'C'.
Well, we don't have to do it for most things any more.  That's why I like
the 'C'-Python combo.  Python is still a little rough around the edges
(as the many PEP discussions reveal), but it is a superb general purpose
programming language, very well suited to the vast majority of applications
and utility programming tasks.  It has a way to go in efficiency - we
really do need, and will soon see, native code compilers - but it makes
the *programmer* efficient in ways I've never seen in over 20 years of
doing this stuff.  I've been leading technology teams for the better part of
the last decade - this means I wrote very little code myself - and I'm
amazed at how fast I can sling *correct* Python even with my rusty old
middle-aged programming chops. (I forgot just how much FUN programming
can and should be. For an example of how the Elderly program, go have
a giggle at:  http://www.tundraware.com/Software/hb/HB.tar.gz ;)

Programming language debates have always been with us - you youngsters
missed doozys in the Assembler-FORTRAN and, later, the FORTRAN-COBOL
wars.  But what motivates these wars never goes away:

- How do we write more correct, maintainable, code *faster*?  

- How do we minimize applications dependency on particular 
  systems and infrastructure choices?

- How do we spend most of our time/energy/money on our applications
  logic and not the plumbing underneath?

- How do we make enough money so <gender/species-of choice> will like us?



A Little Philosophy
-------------------

Cheap Energy was literally the fuel of the first Industrial Revolution.
Cheap Software is the fuel of this Economic Revolution.  For those of you
keeping score and who still read instead of watching Jerry Springer, the 
current high tech market behavior is remarkably similar to the what took
place in the auto manufacturing consolidations at the beginning of the
last century.  He/She who wins the Software Battle wins this economy.

The winning technology will not emerge victorious because of paradigmatic 
elegance, but because of a proven track record in meeting the criteria above
By that measure, C++ is a clear loser.  Perl does well, but not in 
the "maintainability" arena.  Java, started out very well, but is starting
to show its middle-aged spread because too much about using Java involves
"optional" additions (J2EE, JMS, EJB, EIEIO...) which have poor implementation
track records across vendors.  Moreover, too much of the initiatives in 
the Java world start and end with the Web, even when the intended audience is 
behind the server.   The really hard/interesting/commercially lucrative 
opportunities are not in/on the web.  They are in the back rooms of 
multi-billion dollar corporations who need way more than a just a shiny new 
interface. 

(For those of you Neo-Marxists in the audience who think that "Information
Just Wants To Be FREE", I should mention that the survivability of
any technology has always been primarily a function of commercial adoption,
at least in the long run.  How many people write in COBOL today? (Many!)
How many program in Eiffel? Snobol? ML?  Oberon?  Haskell?  'Nuff said.
Economic Reality trumps Bad Collectivist Theory every time. Thank-You,
Adam Smith.) 

This, BTW, is something that Microsoft seems to be really getting,
and then, only recently.  .NET may be a "distributed web infrastructure" 
in drag, but make no mistake about it, .NET is Microsoft's Trojan Horse
to get themselves entrenched in the *back office* of the biggest technology
buyers in the commercial world.  The only things holding them back at the
moment are:  

- They have a really hard time admitting to themselves that
  the world was/is/will remain heterogeneous.  For .NET to really win the
  day, it has to run *equally* well on Win32/*nix/MVS/AS400/Tandem...
  I remember talking to a couple of their Enterprise computing people
  almost 10 years ago who really *got* this, but were frustrated by
  the Top Brass' lack of vision.  Had Gates and Balmer even just Rented
  A Clue on this issue in the 80s, Microsoft *would* own the world -
  and then Gates could have fired Janet Reno!)

- Their OS core is so UI centric, it is doubtful that it can easily
  really make the jump to being a serious back-room large-scale
  contender.  Yes, Win2K is a quantum leap forward for them, but then,
  it's predecessors were such unredeemable garbage, a (big) step forward was
  long overdue.  Moreover, there's more to this picture than a clean kernel.
  There are issues of systems management, interoperability, recovery from
  failure, and such where Win32 is just plain *dreadful*. (OK, your enterprise
  servers just Blue Screened.  Every minute of downtime is $1M of lost
  income.  Lesse now, that's about $5-$10M per reboot for a typical
  Win32 barf event.)

But... they have a Big Bag Of Money, *really* smart people working there, 
and an unrelenting focus on their future.  (That's why the only way their 
competitors can stay in the game is to go whining to the DOJ about how 
"unfair" the real world is -  And I'm a lifelong *Unix* weenie!)


A Big Opportunity
-----------------

This is the real reason to stay on top of Python.  The vagaries of
the "Mine is bigger than yours"  battles between McNealy, Gates, and
Ellison will be with us until they aren't.  Python lives outside
this Billionaire Battlezone because none of the warring factions own the
technology and it plays nicely with them all.  It is precisely because
both Perl and Python have avoided choosing sides in these silly
ego competitions that they have and will survive.  Just watch, it's
already happening.  CIOs and CTOs are being asked to make significant
decisions about their companies' technology future.  Picking .NET
means choosing C# (yeah, yeah, Microsoft pitches the language neutrality
of the CLR, but where you you suppose they will innovate? In Perl,
Python, or C#?)  Picking Sun and most every other Unix, means
picking Java. 

But there's something even more profound here that has dawned on me
as I've explored Python.  Every serious CIO/CTO you'll meet
(No, not the ones that don't shave yet and spent Everyone Else's
Money in the last 5 years) will tell you that infrastructure is
a necessary evil.  It is applications logic that runs their world
.
The problem is that applications live a really long time - 20 years
is not unusual - but they have to change infrastructure like
underwear (every two or three years ;))  This means that in the lifetime
of one business application, there may be 5 or 6 major upheavals in
operating systems, disk farms, communications technologies, coffee
makers...  This just *kills* big IT operations in costs. - Not the
costs of buying all this crap, but the cost of keeping those old 
apps running across all these changes.  And, no, rewriting the apps
in not a realistic option.  YOU, try convincing the CIO at Schwab she
needs to rewrite their trading system because you have a "Really Cool
New OS Upgrade."

To respond to this problem, large IT shops have increasingly
turned to "Middleware" - a layer of code between the application
and the infrastructure to "insulate" the apps from the actual
syntax and semantics of the underlying system.  Examples of this
include (and these are all somewhat arguable), RPCs, JMS, and
ODBC.  Even the original 'sockets' implementation at Berkeley
had this in mind - the code has provision (never well/completely
implemented) for protocols other than AF_UNIX and AF_INET.  In
principle, we should have seen AF_SNA... 

But, there's a rub.  When you buy Middleware, you are
(if you did your homework right) removing a large part of the
dependency the apps have on networking, OS, and so forth. 
BUT, you are marrying the Middleware vendor until that
application goes away.  Middleware vendors know this, so they
act like drug dealers: The first shot is cheap - thereafter, they'll
get their pound of flesh when you HAVE to have the latest version
of their product to run your General Ledger or Billing System
on the newest FuzzWuzzy 101 supercomputer (that *still* takes 5
minutes to boot Windows 3000).

Back In The Day, Middleware was the only way to crack the dependence
between apps and the underlying plumbing.  The cost of machinery
and network bandwidth prevented you from having a generic
Middleware layer between every OS service and the application.
You abstracted only those things (like networking, especially)
that you expected would change a lot, because it was simply too
computationally intensive (== $$$) to abstract everything in the system.

BUT, as I said before, things are changin'.  Machine and network
bandwidth are really cheap.  What we can now afford to do is 
abstract pretty much all the OS services that modern applications
need so that they never actually directly touch the "plumbing".

<sidebar>

This is, more-or-less, *exactly* what .NET is all about (and for
that matter, J2EE).  Microsoft (and Sun) finally figured out that
the battle really isn't about operating systems or languages 
(those are the "Trojan Horse" to which I alluded above).  
The battle is about  object and content interoperability.
.NET will "fix" these problems for you, and all you have to do, is
go down to the Crossroads in Seattle (or Silicon Gulch) and 
sell your soul to, um, ... Microsoft (or Sun), *forever* because 
their middleware will *always* be in your shorts, no matter how 
many times you want to change them.

</sidebar>

But, techno-politics aside, the *best* place to abstract a
system is *IN THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE*.  Let interpreter,
compiler, and library writers worry about the faucets, pipes,
and fittings of a modern system, and present a unified model
to applications writers.  To do this, you have to have 
several things:

- A runtime environment that can handle this level of abstraction
  without killing performance or requiring ghastly amounts of
  computer to do the Usual Things Applications Do.
  Why? Because the first sell to The Boss, is an economic one.
  If you have The Answer, but it needs 30 teraflops to run
  General Ledger - You lose, thanks for playing.

- A *small* core language with a *big, standardized library*
  that does most of the Usual Things Applications Do.
  Why? Because a big language is hard to port and hard to optimize.
  Libraries need to be standardized so that Applications Do The Things
  They Do in mostly the same way across different OS, networking, and
  distribution infrastructures.  You'll never have 100% system transparency,
  but you can get close.

- Stability in the core language.  Why?  Because if CIOs hate
  infrastructure churn, they REALLY hate applications churn.
  Remember, they want to focus on their golf games, not whether
  their programming language of choice returns floats or floors
  in a division. (I just *couldn't* resist ;)))

- A meaningful version/feature control system *within* the language.
  Why?  So applications can survive across language upgrades.


Both Sun and Microsoft will tell you that this is precisely what
(Java/J2EE, C#/.NET) give you.  BUT, that's cuz they want to
get married to you - forever - with no possible future divorce.

Now notice, ahem, cough,cough, Python does *exactly* these things:

- The level of programming abstraction is just about perfect
  for large applications, and the machinery needed to run it
  is quite reasonable.

- The core language is very small and (reasonably) stable.

- The "Batteries Included" modules approach of Python cover
  a huge part of What Applications Programs Do and this gets
  richer release by release.  This Standard Set Of Abstractions
  is the technical core of why Python is the ideal middleware.

- Constructs like "from future..." give the programmer the ability
  to build armor into their programs in anticipation of
  language evolution.  It has been mentioned here, and I agree
  heartily, that a "requires ..." verb needs to be added to
  allow the programmer to stipulate what the minimum versions of
  Python language and libraries are needed to run properly.


But, Python has one, very important commercial advantage.  It's 
not owned by a vendor.  So long as they don't mirror the vendor
systems architecture too closely, CIOs can deploy applications
which have an excellent chance of surviving Yet Another Infrastructure
Upgrade.


Flies In The Ointment
---------------------

Well, it's never really that simple.  Even with something as powerful
as Python there are plenty of issues that make the Applications-
Infrastructure boundary forever problematic.  There are also
commercial concerns:

- If applications are deployed (in ANY language) using a distribution
  topology and architecture which closely mirrors the underlying
  infrastructure's topology, migration to other infrastructures
  is Really Painful (DAMHIKT).  Fer instance, if you write a Python
  application which depends on socket datagram broadcasting, and
  then have to accommodate a new (or old) network that does not support
  broadcast, umm, you have a problem.  SEMANTICS MATTER.

- Infrastructure vendors *always* offer stuff that is hard/impossible
  to do at higher layers of abstraction.  it is inevitable that real
  systems will have to reach into the guts now and then to get things
  done.  The issue here is whether the CIO and team are savvy enough
  to localize this sort of thing in places that can later be easily
  changed.  STRUCTURE MATTERS.

- The Pain And Suffering of infrastructure churn has caused more than
  one CIO to lose their job.  Knowing this, some technology leaders
  resist doing those upgrades "On their watch."  In this situation,
  applications are forced to cope with infrastructure deficiencies
  by coding around them.  This leads to REALLY ugly, hard-to-maintain
  systems.  CHANGING UNDERWEAR MATTERS.

- As a matter of living in the Real World, it is always preferable
  to Buy rather than Build applications.  The promise of both
  EJB and COM+ (and now J2EE and .NET) was that you'd be able to 
  buy at least major subsystems and plug them together with a lot 
  less effort than writing them from scratch.  This has turned out
  to be laughably not true, at least insofar as behind-the-server
  enterprise class applications go.  (Who cares about the web,
  it's just a better VT100 ;)  IN-STOCK AT K-MART MATTERS.

  Now, there's not a lot of that kind of software being vended that
  is Python-based AFAIK, but there is a kind of Python 
  "Trojan Horse" here we can exploit to sneak in when they're
  not looking - it's OK, they'll thank us later.   There are two
  problems *every* large IT shop has.  These problems never go away
  and anyone who helps solve any part of them will be a Hero.
  These problems are: 1) Making the old applications talk to each
  other and to new media like Da Web and Mobile.  2) Normalizing
  data for exchange between and among old and new apps.  For you
  XML-weenies: XML, in-and-of-itself, cannot do this no matter
  how many times you say "semantic markup".  The data I'm talking
  about it domain specific, requires human intelligence to
  understand and encode in the first place. XML will help, but
  we need specialized loaders and tools to do all the heavy
  lifting.  Crack some part of these two problems - and Python
  is ideal for both, so long as the performance issues don't
  get in the way - and you'll live Happily Ever After - or until
  the CTO starts losing at golf and needs another "win".



A Little Warning
----------------

I worry about one thing and one thing only in the Python world.  It
is something I have witnessed in *every* new technology I've
ever seen.  Python is dangerously close to becoming a victim of 
Feeping Creaturism - not so much In Fact, but rather in this community's
mindset of forever wanting to fiddle one more feature into the 
language.  This will KILL Python commercially if it happens 
because too many variations on the core language theme make 
deployment and management of real systems too expensive.  

I, for one, would like to see a date picked for a permanent moratorium
on the language proper, after which, only bug fixes and new modules 
could be added.  After that date, language changes would have to be 
part of some new language ("Grail"?) which would owe no allegiance to
Python at all.


It is now 4.45am and I must crawl back into my coffin before dawn.
Flap, flap, flap .... Creaaaak, Slam.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From sill at optonline.net  Wed Jul 11 20:17:51 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:17:51 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:26:02 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>>Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
>>particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
>>administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
>>into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.
> 
> Popularity as a langauge for open source projects can be measured
> by looking at Sourceforge's statistics.
> 
> From http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=160
> we have these figures:
> 
> C++      4078
> C        4889
> Java     2739 
> Perl     2142 
> PHP      1999 
> Python    934
> Shell     439
> VB        390
> Tcl       326 

If you just look at dice.com search results, it looks much worse for python:

perl hits: 3632
python hits: 142

python usage is only about 4% of perl usage!

These numbers only show relative popularity, though, often perl or python
are just mentioned as 'knowledge or scripting languages like perl,python,etc
is a plus).

I doubt I'll find a job using python any time soon. :/

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Fri Jul 13 10:15:43 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:15:43 GMT
Subject: Automating DevStudio made easy (was: Developing Visual Studio add-ins in Python?)
References: <tH637.142074$R7.25090399@typhoon.kc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3b4f003f.5075625@news.t-online.de>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 01:03:21 GMT, "Russ Shotts" <rashotts at mn.rr.com>
wrote:
>Has anyone used Python to create a Visual Studio add-in?  I need to perform
>some fairly complex processing, and their VBScript macros just cannot handle
>the task.
ARGH! Python has beat me again - it is *a lot* easier than I thought
:) There is no need to write an add-in in order to automate MS
DevStudio from Python.

Try this code:
------
import win32com.client

app = win32com.client.Dispatch('MSDev.Application')
wnd = app.ActiveWindow
if wnd.Type == 'Text':
    print wnd.Selection
app = None
------
It obviously prints the currently selected text :)

The object model is desribed in the MSDN at this path:

Visual Studio 6.0 Documentation\
Visual C++ Documentation\
Using Visual C++\
Visual C++ Users Guide\
Automating Tasks in Visual Studio\
Developer Studio Objects\
Reference: Developer Studio Objects.

On my machine (W2K SP2) it works when I have one instance of DevStudio
open, I can access the objects in that instance from the fine
Pythonwin. What more can you wish for :) 



From guido at digicool.com  Wed Jul 18 09:58:56 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:58:56 -0400
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
Message-ID: <200107181358.JAA27970@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Are you worried that Python 2.2 will break all your old Python code?
Don't be!  Help us make Python 2.2 as compatible and stable as any
release before it.  I've released the first alpha release, Python
2.2a1, for your perusal.  Download it from:

  http://www.python.org/2.2/

Give it a good try, and report what breaks to the bug tracker:

  http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470

New features in this release include:

- *TENTATIVELY*, a new way of introspecting instances of built-in
  types (PEP 252) and the ability to subclass built-in types (PEP 253)
  have been added.  This falls under the header of "type/class
  unification".  More about this below.

- Iterators (PEP 234) and generators (PEP 255) were added.  The second
  PEP adds a new reserved word, "yield", which must be enabled by
  adding "from __future__ import generators" to the top of every
  module that uses it.  Without that, "yield" is treated as an
  identifier but a warning is issued.

- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
  provides full client-side XML-RPC support.

For the full list of changes, see the release notes on SourceForge:

  http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=43931

As usual, Andrew Kuchling is writing a gentle introduction to the most
important changes (currently excluding type/class unification), titled
"What's New in Python 2.2":

  http://www.amk.ca/python/2.2/

Regarding the changes for type/class unification: these have
*TENTATIVE* status.  While I've done my best to make them backwards
compatible, it's unavoidable that a few things may break.  In
particular, programs doing introspection (looking inside objects to
find out what they are) will find that things have changed.  I believe
the changes are for the better: for example, you can now find out the
methods defined for socket objects, and their docstrings, without
actually opening a socket.

The purpuse of the alpha cycle is to decide whether to go forward with
these changes.  It's unlinkely, but possible, that we run into
unexpected snags during alpha testing, and I may even have to withdraw
the changes completely if we conclude they break too much code and we
can't fix it any other way.  More likely, the second alpha release
will introduce fixes to improve the backwards compatibility.  In the
mean time, for those of you using the CVS tree, these changes are not
checked in on the trunk, but on a branch tagged "descr-branch".

I'm writing an introduction to the type/class unification:

  http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

This currently isn't finished yet, but it already contains a list of
the most visible backwards incompatibilities.  I hope to complete it
this week.  Until then, please refer to PEP 252 and PEP 253.  These
aren't intended as tutorials, but they do have most of the information
you might be looking for.  Here's the URL for the PEP index:

  http://www.python.org/peps/

Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release.  Special thanks
go to Tim Peters, who worked through the night to build the Windows
installer using an uncooperative installer maker.

Enjoy!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From cgale1 at _remove_home.com  Mon Jul  9 06:21:05 2001
From: cgale1 at _remove_home.com (Van Gale)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 10:21:05 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <lAf27.93864$%a.4073861@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3B491961.12A83FE5 at alcyone.com...
> Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
> classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
> process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
> delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?

I'm not sure what it would take to integrate SimpleHTTPServer into asycnore,
but is there a reason you really want to do that instead of just using
http_server from Medusa?

Van





From brakedon at hotmail.com  Fri Jul  6 09:11:06 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 06:11:06 -0700
Subject: GUI problems
References: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107060511.6d8993f4@posting.google.com>

I don't know what happened, but this is how it's supposed to look
("command=frame.quit" under "Button" was on the next line. Thanks for
any help

brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake) wrote in message news:<7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679 at posting.google.com>...
> Why doesn't this TKinter script work? The blank window will come up,
> but the "quit" button doesn't appear inside it. Thanks for any help.
> 
> import dice_gui #ignore this
> from Tkinter import *
> class fibon_gui:
>      def __init__(self, master):
>           frame = Frame(master)
>           frame.pack()
>           button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red", command=frame.quit)
>           button.pack(side=LEFT)
> root = Tk()
> root.title('Play Dice')
> root.mainloop()


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 26 17:55:01 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:55:01 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl> <9jpj4j$182a$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <cplmlb5q2t.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Vk087.27863$B7.4280302@ruti.visi.com>

In article <cplmlb5q2t.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> Or worse the lack of a full ASCII character set on the host computer.
>> My first programs were on a CDC Cyber mainframe with a 60 bit word;
>> we had several character sets at our disposal, but nearly all programming
>> was done in 6 bit "display code", no lower case.

And (at least in the Pascal compiler) identifiers were limited
to 6 characters so that an entire identifier would fit into a
single word -- so two identifiers could be compared in a single
instruction.

>> (The only exception was a C compiler, which - no offense to the
>> Texas university where it was created, certainly it was a noble
>> effort - wasn't very useful.) That would be laughable today,
>> but the computer world was a lot more diverse at that level
>> then, and we inherit a lot from those days.
>
>Including Python -- my interest in programming and languages was
>sparked by the plethora of languages on the CDC Cyber that was my
>first comuter back in 1974, and remained my primary system until
>1982...

Yikes.  It was an interesting architecture.  One of my
assignments in a class once upon a time was to write a 6600
instruction set simulator in 6600 assembly language.  It had a
small, regular instruction set and it was surprisingly easy...

Doing the same thing for a Pentium would be pretty horrific.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  SHHHH!! I hear SIX
                                  at               TATTOOED TRUCK-DRIVERS
                               visi.com            tossing ENGINE BLOCKS into
                                                   empty OIL DRUMS...


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 21:28:51 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:51 +0100
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com> <mailman.995928281.9071.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <1bjpltc6396j0frfc99aj4gv8seiefifk1@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:44:08 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim at digicool.com>
wrote:

>[Stephen Horne]
>> ...
>> We can't exactly match mathematics here, but we don't have to go so
>> far as having different symbols for integer and float division -
>> mathematics uses the same set of symbols for both operations allowing
>> the context choose the operator.
>
>This isn't so.  Mathematicians are careful to specify floor or ceiling
>explicitly when they intend division to lose information, depending on

Which has nothing to do with creating new division operators - it is
merely something added to existing notation when required. Of course
if you think Python notation needs to explicitly support that
capability too then that is clearly an arguable case for creating new
notation to support this new functionality. It has only a superficial
connection to the issue at hand, however.



From paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com  Thu Jul 26 10:26:50 2001
From: paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com (Paolo Invernizzi)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:26:50 GMT
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <KMV77.97$wf.3560@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>

Is that the reason why, for a major costumer tied with HPUX, we managed to
use jython (since pre-alpha release!) instead? <wink>
Seriously, jython is a wonderful alternative for HP

Cheer
Paolo Invernizzi
DMSWare

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpofq77phl.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> (Couldn't resist. :-)
>
> It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> endless laments in the SF bug database.)
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)




From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Thu Jul  5 13:21:00 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:21:00 -0700
Subject: GUI for Fortran under Linux
References: <9hvtk6$sst$1@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca> <zHQ07.42503$TW.212386@tor-nn1.netcom.ca> <3B440D12.FD036CA1@wldelft.nl>
Message-ID: <3B44A1FC.70F13315@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Arjen Markus wrote:
> 
> Gerry Thomas wrote:
> >
> > "Tim Lahey" <tjlahey at dial.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
> > news:9hvtk6$sst$1 at watserv3.uwaterloo.ca...
> > > All,
> > >
> > > I'm using NAG F90 under Linux and I want to put a GUI
> > > on my software. Mainly, I want a set of dialogs to perform
> > > configuration of the simulation and use OpenGL to render
> > > the output. F90GL works well, but doesn't really support
> > > a GUI. Are there any solutions out there ?
> > >
> >
> > Why limit yourself to a Linux port hole when there's Windows?
> >
> > Sink or Swim,
> > Gerry T.

Were' currently putting a gui on our Fortran code.  We're using Python
with the Tkinter module.  Python is also handling our memory
allocation.  So, now with our f77 code, we have dynamic memory
allocation and also an object oriented structure.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu  Wed Jul 25 13:29:21 2001
From: quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:29:21 GMT
Subject: How to telnet to other unix machines and grep log files etc?
References: <fa7108b0.0107250742.7b38c678@posting.google.com> <slrn9lu024.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9lu0fg.vpg.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 25 Jul 2001 17:22:12 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
wrote:
>On 25 Jul 2001 08:42:44 -0700, Chris <bit_bucket5 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Relative unix newbie.  Would like to write a python script to do what
>>I do manually--telnet to two different unix machines from a third unix
>>machine.  Grep through some log files, gather the grep results from
>>the different machines and spit them out.  I think I need to do
>>something with popen, or popen2, or ???  I don't know where to start. 
>>Any pointers much appreciated.
>
>This is a shell task:
>
>(ssh machine1 'grep foo /sys/log/bar';
> ssh machine2 'grep baz /sys/log/faz') >results
>
>Create an RSA key with no passphrase if you don't want to have to type
>passwords all the time.

BTW, if you *really* wanted to use python for it, you couldn't use popen
(stdio wins again!).  You'd need to use ptys to trick telnet that it's being
run by a terminal.  That means either figuring out how unix ptys work and
using pty.py, or installing expect and ExpectPy.  Both are more work than
installing openssh (and once you do that you can toss telnet anyway).

Unless, of course, machine{1,2} don't have ssh and you have no control over
them.  There are any number of ugly hacks you could do at that point, and
expect is one of them.

or-publish-the-logs-on-the-web-and-use-wget-ly y'rs


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 11:15:10 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:15:10 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <9hfg1n$du33c$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3B3BB077.1E51F2C9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.993788863.16675.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jp0kq.o4l.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.993829912.16325.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jpho8.peb.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k3obu.1ne.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Mon, 02 Jul 2001 15:49:07 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 19:20:58 +0100, philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil
>hunt) wrote:
>
>>2. how will this interact with python's indent/dedent mechanism
>>
>>In particular, how do we treat this:
>>
>>def myfunction():
>>   print "hello"
>>   print "start" /* start of comment
>>middle of comment
>>end of comment */   print "goodbye"
>>
>>IMO the best way to prevent unexpected wierdness like this is
>>to forbid any code in any line after the */ closing-comment
>>sequence; or perhaps to give a warning and ignore it (it
>>shouldn't just be silently ignored, as this will confuse people
>>familiar to how it works in C).
>
>My opinion is that it should also ban comment text from being further
>left than the start comment marker. That would pretty much force a
>layout like this...
>
>print "Hello"  /*  This is a
>                   hello world
>                   thingy       */

But i don't want to *force* certain layouts. If I did, I'd be coding
in Pascal or something, not python.

IMO, arbitrary restrictions are bad.


>A similar rule about the right margin and end comment marker wouldn't
>work - some people might prefer...
>
>print "Hello"  /*  This is a
>                   hello world
>                   thingy
>               */
>
>To be honest, though, I personally wouldn't use this. It raises the
>age-old spectre of the missing end-of-comment, which can cause no end
>of confusion in C.

That's a good point. Syntax-highlighting can help here, though.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From tle at firstlinux.net  Tue Jul  3 15:13:41 2001
From: tle at firstlinux.net (Thanh Le)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 12:13:41 -0700
Subject: using python to append a file
Message-ID: <13e6b4a6.0107031113.441998c@posting.google.com>

I am new to Python and was wondering if anyone could show me a way to
append a file (similar to the way Unix does by using >> ). I've tried
using open('file','r+') method and it overwrote whatever i had in that
file. I am sure there is a way to append a file, but  havent had much
luck.
Thanks in advance,
Thanh


From ak42 at altavista.com  Thu Jul 19 01:18:37 2001
From: ak42 at altavista.com (Alex K)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 07:18:37 +0200
Subject: compiling a program --with-python fails (Py_Initialize in -lpython... 
 no)
Message-ID: <3B566DAD.C2A08D1E@altavista.com>

hello!

i am trying to compile a program (a module for icecast called ices)
with pythonsupport. but that fails.

i am on a slackware8 system, with python 2.2a1 installed
(from tarball with no special conf-arguments).

[root /usr/local/src/ices-0.1.0]# ./configure
--with-python-includes=/usr/local/include/python2.2
...
checking for Python.h... yes
checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython... no
checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.0... no
checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython2.2... no
checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.6... no
checking for Py_Initialize in -lpython1.5... no
configure: error: Could not find the python library
...


i have searched all over for an answer.
Py_initialize is a function that initializes the
interpreter and is defined in pythonrun.h, correct?
well, i have pythonrun.h. i have made tons of
symlinks to python's include/lib directories.
libpython is present in:
/usr/local/lib/python2.2/config/libpython2.2.a

(i have even tried putting that dir in /etc/ld.so.conf)
no game though.

what is missing???
and why do i explicitly have to state the include-dir?
it didnt find Python.h by itself, even though i have
symlinks to that dir from all over the filesystem.

   TIA / Alex K


From hanna at chagford.com  Wed Jul  4 04:45:04 2001
From: hanna at chagford.com (Hanna Joo)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:45:04 +0200
Subject: basic (mx) ODBC question
Message-ID: <994236193.821045@nntp01.uskonet.com>

Hi all

I don't understand ODBC well. From the little that I understand - postgresql
has its ODBC driver (on linux). I am connecting from windows. mxODBC is a
module I can use. mxODBC suggests that if I am connecting from windows, I
should (from here mad rambling because I don't know what the doc is saying)
compile using VC compiler on windows. I thought ==>

ODBC python talks to on windows -- ODBC manager on Win machine -- ODBC
module of pgsql.
(on win machine)                                 (between win machine and
linux server)    (linux server)

mxODBC has many subpackages for various DBs.. how does it work then? Does it
work like the following?

python talks (or uses) to mxODBC that is postgresql specific  -- ODBC module
of pgsql
(same machine)

Or...

python talks to mxODBC that creates an entry for win ODBC that is postgres
specific -- ODBC module of pgsql

or...

python talks to ODBC on linux  -- iODBC on same machine -- ODBC module of
pgsql
(same machine)

mxODBC has different subpackages as I said, one being Windows.. I don't
understand how that works.. different packages for different databases and
one for windows?

(realizing post lacks focus as a result of pathetic lack of understanding)

Can sombody direct me to a site where I may be able to find out more about
this ODBC issue?

TIA

Hanna








From bawolk at ucdavis.edu  Mon Jul 30 22:50:57 2001
From: bawolk at ucdavis.edu (Bruce Wolk)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 19:50:57 -0700
Subject: The best gui library for newbies.
References: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt>
Message-ID: <3B661D11.B6E138AA@ucdavis.edu>

I like PyQt, which is a wrapper for Qt.  Qt is very sleek and very
well-documented for C++, but the translation to Python is trivial after just a
few minutes of effort.  The only drawback is that it can be a pain to install,
especially if you are upgrading to a new version.  There are licensing problems
though if you are not running Linux.

Bruce

"David A." wrote:

> H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to beegin doing
> some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing I want to know is wich
> one is the best gui toolkit for python when you are a newbie? Wxpython,
> tkinter?? Whatis important for me is easy of use and well documented!! this
> is what I am looking for.
>
> Thank you for any help in advance!!!



From nperkins7 at home.com  Fri Jul 13 20:50:14 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 00:50:14 GMT
Subject: How to use os.access()??
References: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com>
Message-ID: <aHM37.467820$eK2.97343834@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

<bvdpoel at uniserve.com> wrote in message
news:3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3 at uniserve.com...
>
> I'm trying to use os.access() in my program. But, I'm stuck trying to
> figure out the parms... obviously the first is the filename; but the 2nd
> is supposed to be a constant (?) like F_OK. Unfortunately, it doesn't
> appear that the F_OK, etc are defined anywhere. Either the docs are
> wrong (no way!), or I'm missing a module file (likely), or I'm just
> totally wrong about everything (quite likely!).

os.F_OK





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sat Jul 28 03:44:10 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 09:44:10 +0200
Subject: How to use Unicode regexes?
References: <1103_996264896@pan>
Message-ID: <j48zh9v6ph.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

rhys tucker <rhystucker at rhystucker.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> Could somebody show me how to do Unicode regexes? I'm trying to
> write a strings-like utility for windows - so I want to match ascii
> and unicode characters in a binary file. Do I need one regex pattern
> since ascii and Unicode are similar for ascii text characters or are
> 2 regex patterns needed since they are different byte sizes?

You can use exactly the same regular expression for both byte and
Unicode strings, but this seems not to be your question.

It is not clear to me what exactly you are trying to achieve.  What do
you mean by "unicode characters in a binary file"? In a binary file,
there are no characters, only bytes. You need to know what encoding
was used for the Unicode strings (UTF-8, UCS-2, ...) before being able
to determine whether a certain Unicode string appears in a certain
file.

> The documentation suggest that I need to use \w pattern to match
> Unicode and set UNICODE. I'm not sure what and how to set Unicode.

Where does it say that? \w is about "alphanumeric characters", it says
that \w matches all characters that are marked as alphanumeric in the
Unicode character database if the UNICODE flag is set. To match
Unicode strings, you don't need \w at all:

>>> re.search(u"al", u"Hallo")
<SRE_Match object at 0x81db868>

This finds one Unicode strng in another; no need for \w or the UNICODE
flag.

To specify the UNICODE flag, either pass re.UNICODE as the second argument
to re.compile, or wrap your entire expression into (?u...).

> This is what I've done so far - it matches (some ?) ascii characters
> but misses those unicode strings.

It seems that you really are looking for UCS-2 strings in the
file. The Unicode facilities in Python are then of no use for you: You
need to understand how the encoding works, and formulate a pattern
based on that.

Regards,
Martin



From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Mon Jul 30 16:44:03 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 22:44:03 +0200
Subject: dydns.org  [was: I want to do something:]
References: <mailman.996513478.14125.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3ofq29mgc.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

Then on the other hand, you need python-code to keep your dns-provider
with your IP... and well I have done that for myip.org.

Back to the original question, warning for your while-loop, it chews
processor, do something like

import time
while 1: 
        myfunction()
        time.sleep(3600)

snooze.. 

Instead of writing to a tmp file, check the ftplib if they either can
use strings as input, or you can create a filepointer of the string
through module StringIO.

        /Andy

/ "Steven D. Majewski" <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> wrote:
| Ignoring your Python question and backing up to what you
| are trying to solve: 
|   There are services like dyndns.org that will provide DNS
| services to dynamically map a static host name to a changing
| IP address. 
|    
|  
| -- Steve Majewski


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Thu Jul 12 01:39:27 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:39:27 +0300
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
References: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <Xns90DBE780C8D77cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <yox1ynm7lkg.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti) writes:

> what is the timeout value?
> i've had problems with time.sleep() when using values smaller than 20ms 
> (0.02). I'm now using 30ms wich works fine.

Several seconds. I suppose timer resolution wouldn't cause delays at
that scale (at least delays of that magnitude - almost 1 sec). It
almost seems like the Event version with timeout checked once a second
whether the event had been set() during the past second.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Wed Jul 11 14:55:23 2001
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 13:55:23 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
Message-ID: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

        So, are there any tools to translate 1.5.2 pickles to 2.x
versions of the pickle format?  The only think I could think of was
to use the xml_pickle module as an intermediate translation, but I
hope for a better way...

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacian Lingvon  www.esperanto.org


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 27 18:26:29 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:26:29 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <3B5DBAC8.4B89E271@alcyone.com> <Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <Xns90E991EA4D715michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>
Message-ID: <_Rl87.14514$Og1.521665@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Michael Abbott" <michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Xns90E991EA4D715michaelrcpcouk at 194.168.222.9...
> Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
> news:Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1:
>
> > When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will have
> > been told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over. Which
> > is EXACTLY what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH more
> > sophisticated concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on this
> > newsgroup, is hard even for most programming professionals.
> >
>
> Hear hear!
>
> Floating point isn't even associative; there seems to be a real
> misconception that by making all results floating point then all numerical
> problems will magically vanish.  Far from it.
>
> And I'm afraid that going to rational numbers (as has been suggested in a
> number of places) only puts the problem off a little.

It is both naiive and (slightly) offensive to suggest that someone of
Guido's experience thinks that the proposed change will make numerical
problems vanish.

Although I have my reservations about the proposed change, I don't believe
Guido is chasing anything here but the real goal of making Python more
acceptable to a broader cross-section of the programming community. We
merely disagree about whether, in this single instance, he is right. :-)

and-if-he-wants-to-make-the-change-he-can-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 10 06:04:50 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 06:04:50 -0400
Subject: import namespace issues
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <etdg0c5je5u.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <etdd779je0t.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Oops, that code won't work because, for instance, functions in second
will still use second for their global namespace.  Sorry.

Alex.


From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Thu Jul  5 10:12:06 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:12:06 GMT
Subject: Exporting a Class from a .pyd
Message-ID: <3b4474a8.4155281@news.t-online.de>

It is quite easy to export methods, and constants, and even datatypes
from a .pyd (Python Extension DLL, .so in #?nix). However, how do you
export a class ? Is it just a special way of exporting datatypes ?
(But then, I cannot yet see how to add methods to such a datatype).
I've looked up google but in vain.





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 23 19:21:32 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:21:32 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CB17C.F682E07B@ActiveState.com>

Duncan Grisby wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The reality is that the whole world will not switch Python versions
> overnight, so everyone who maintains a library will have to face this
> issue.

All backwards compatibility issues are a matter of patience. Do you
think that anybody would complain if something that was deprecated
between Python 1.4 and Python 1.5 was formally removed now? Maybe it
will take ten years for us to provide a migration path to new-style
division. That is not an argument for putting of the beginning of that
process. If we had started two years ago we would be two years closer to
being able to fix the problem finally. It is Guido's job to take the
long view.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Tue Jul 17 14:04:34 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 11:04:34 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
 (revision  1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B5468E7.F534E5D2@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <16977549.3204356674@cx344290-c.irvn1.occa.home.com>

On 7/17/01 9:33 AM -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
> > I tend to think putting anything at all in the text of the file is a
> > hack and not a clean design -- this is meta-information rather than
> > content, right?
>
> What is the practical problem with mixing "meta-information" and
> "content"?

Files get transferred via protocols that change information such as text 
encodings, so meta-information stored within the file gets out of synch. 
If one instead uses external meta-information available to the protocols 
(such as MIME types with http) this can be less of a problem.

In the real world, we have to deal with file systems that don't provide 
for storing external metadata, so putting the encoding within the file 
makes sense, I just wanted to be clear that it doesn't strike me as 
totally clean.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/




From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul  5 04:10:33 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:10:33 +0200
Subject: SSL module
Message-ID: <20010705101033.A4363@strakt.com>

Hey guys

The past few days I've been writing on a basic SSL module for Python,
written completely in C. Yep I'm getting paid to do it. ;)
It uses OpenSSL (of course?) and it's starting to take shape. Of course
there are a multitude of things not finished, a lot of the OpenSSL API
that I haven't included. Let's put it this way, it's doing what we (the
company I work for) need it to do. If someone wants to continue working on
it I'll be just as glad. I might continue working on it in my spare time
too.

I've written this thing as a submodule to the socket module. Unfortunately
(since the socket module has no C API) I had to place all my SSL code in
socketmodule.c, thereby bloating it even more. :(
The advantage is that the SSL.Connection object wraps (almost) all of the
socket methods, so that an SSL.Connection can be used interchangeably with
a socket object. There is one problem. I don't know how to deal with the
makefile() method, since I don't know what it'd mean with respect to an
SSL connection. Currently this raises a NotImplementedError exception.

The basic usage would be something like this:

from socket import SSL
ctx = SSl.Context(SSL.TLSv1_METHOD) # or SSLv[23]_METHOD
ctx.set_verify(SSL.VERIFY_PEER, mycallback)
ctx.use_privatekey(...)
...
sslconn = SSL.Connection(ctx)
sslconn.connect(('host.company.com', 1234))
...

Do you think there would be interest in introducing this into the standard
library? The current (2.1) SSL support in the socket module is - if I may
say so - laughable.

What I'd really need help with, is porting this to windows, I have no idea
how compatible this is, but since I've used only OpenSSL's and Python's
data types I don't think it should be a horrifying project. I don't have
access to a windows machine with OpenSSL and possibility to compile Python
though, so I really need help with this.

Note that the module is far from finished, I have issues with OpenSSL to
deal with, I have a lot of testing to do etc etc.

Where do I go now? How do I continue?

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/9100ab56/attachment.sig>

From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 12 18:14:00 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:14:00 -0500
Subject: Inheritance Queries
In-Reply-To: <9il5qp$iba$1@top.mitre.org>
References: <9il5qp$iba$1@top.mitre.org>
Message-ID: <15182.8488.653091.39772@beluga.mojam.com>

    Angel> Is there a package to get information about the inheritance of a
    Angel> class/instance?

Check out inspect.  From the interpreter prompt execute

    import inspect, pydoc
    pydoc.help(inspect)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 00:38:50 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:38:50 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl> <mailman.995992122.3012.python-list@python.org> <4crrlt0jbn9ovvkli3qvhqbc5do3lmpg4j@4ax.com> <%kn77.25759$EP6.6204923@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <u4rs1khuu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <u3s77.26512$EP6.6584330@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:u4rs1khuu.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:
>
> > > So why not swap the proposed meanings of // and /?  I realize
this
> > is the
> > > third time I've said this but I think it would silence a lot of
> > objections
> > > and no one seems to have noticed the other two times.
> >
> > This would break as much or more code as the current proposal.
Read
> > the PEP.
>
> Are you sure?  I can't really see anything in the PEP that would
seem
> to imply this.

PEP238 proposes that / be the inverse of *, so that '(a/b) * b = a
(more or less)'
and that 'a // b == floor(a/b)'.  If we 'swap the proposed meanings of
// and /', then we would have a/b == floor(a/b), which would break
almost all existing floating point code.

Terry J. Reedy





From jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk  Fri Jul  6 05:50:21 2001
From: jkn at nicorp.f9.co.uk (Jon Nicoll)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 02:50:21 -0700
Subject: Getting data from DBIII
References: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>
Message-ID: <8351bb33.0107060150.2b7c83f7@posting.google.com>

Hi there
    This may not be at all what you're after, but for reading .dbf
files (ie 'Dbase III', which may be what you mean), there are acouple
of modules ar the V
vaults of Parnassus:

    http://www.vex.net/parnassus/

I've used these for reading simple (old) Dbase III databses with
success.

    HTH
    Jon Nicoll

Doug Poulin <dpoulin at nettonettech.com> wrote in message news:<3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63 at nettonettech.com>...
> Hi.
> 
> Failry new to Python (have tried Perl, but....well, it's a long story). 
> Anyway, our Sales people use ACT! for contact management.  I have
> created a small Python/Tkinter, so I got the forms looking pretty.   But
> I am having trouble using Python to get the data from the DB.  ACT uses
> DB3, so I'm looking for pointers.  I use Linux (RedHat 7.0) and Python
> 1.5.2.
> 
> Any help?
> 
> Thanks!  
> 
> Doug Poulin


From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul  9 04:16:32 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 08:16:32 GMT
Subject: the center of the world
References: <cpvglilpzl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3AA82D.1A0FE860@seebelow.org> <Xns90CE99B1A22D9atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <3B3B2DED.5303198A@seebelow.org> <9hhri7019jd@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B471BA4.7050306@mail.mcg.edu> <9i7tjr11b9o@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <ALd27.442499$eK2.90216062@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9i7tjr11b9o at enews3.newsguy.com...
> "Keith F. Woeltje" <kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu> wrote in message
> news:3B471BA4.7050306 at mail.mcg.edu...
> > Saw this on slashdot and thought of this thread. Here's what the Debian
> > folks did. My trig is pretty rusty, so I'm not sure the method is
correct.
> >
> > http://people.debian.org/~edward/average/
>
> Thanks for the reference (and I thought I was being original...!), but
> it seems to me the algorithm they're using is exactly the one that has
> been proven wrong on this thread: they compute the 3D center and
> project it back onto the sphere's surface.  Intuitively appealing, but
> just doesn't work right...
>
>
> Alex


So who is going to tell the Debian folks that their next conference should
actually be a bit closer to the north pole?

( which i only suspect to be the proper result,
  from eyeballing the beautiful 3d maps they have.. )

((still no idea how to solve it properly..
  ..(hill-climbing search?) ))


BTW, was thinking again about the thought-experiment with 50 people together
near the north pole, and 51 people together near the south pole...<by Keith
Woeltje>..

I agree that the 'centre of gravity projection to the surface' is probably
wrong, but i think the 'obvious' result, that the centre should be just near
the equator, is flawed:
If the goal is to find the spot which minimizes the total person-distance of
travel for all to meet, then would it not be that the point minimizing this
total would be exactly where the 51 people are?  It would be cheaper than
any point in-between!  So it would seem that the 'projection' method may not
be that far off, and perhaps it is actually quite accurate for large
populations.  I can't decide.  People at Debian seem to think it's right, or
at least close enough.






From jonas.b at home.se  Sun Jul 15 04:27:12 2001
From: jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 01:27:12 -0700
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
References: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com> <140720011910209035%fcnpereira@home.com>
Message-ID: <4e2ddb70.0107150027.64b3cc29@posting.google.com>

Ok, thanks! I didn't realize that that was possible.

/Jonas B

Fernando Pereira <fcnpereira at home.com> wrote in message news:<140720011910209035%fcnpereira at home.com>...
> In article <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355 at posting.google.com>, Jonas
> Bengtsson <jonas.b at home.se> wrote:
> 
> > I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
> > to a list by just using
> > list_var[] = var_to_append
> > It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.
> > 
> > Any comments?
>  
> >>> l = [1, 2]
> >>> x = 3
> >>> l += [x]
> >>> l
> [1, 2, 3]
> 
> (Python 2.x)
> 
> -- F


From dennis at dennis-voss.de  Mon Jul 30 12:46:40 2001
From: dennis at dennis-voss.de (Dennis Voss)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:46:40 +0200
Subject: Automate telnet?
References: <gt597.49560$TM5.5356012@typhoon.southeast.rr.com> <j4u1zur3fl.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <34d97.51375$TM5.5708835@typhoon.southeast.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B658F70.B8699128@dennis-voss.de>

> > > I have a secure Windows telnet client I'd like to automate with a
> > > script.  So far my efforts with the popen family haven't worked.  Is
> > > this a possible task?
>
> > Doing popen in Windows is quite involved. Instead, I recommend to try
> > telnetlib directly.
>
> Thanks, but unfortunately the 'secure' aspect means I can only access the
> telnet server by using  this client. Telnetlib won't work here.

Well, then you can automate the client by sending keystrokes to the
client-window.
Don't ask me about the Python, but here are a few lines I wrote with Visual
C++:

  CString msg = "ls > /dev/null\r\n";

  for(int i = 0; i <= msg.GetLength(); i++)
   ::SendMessage(m_destHWND, WM_CHAR, msg.GetAt(i), 1L);

Notes: You can only send one char at a time (thus the for loop), you need
the window handle of the remote program (m_destHWND), adjust the '\r\n'
for your case, there is also a VK_RETURN (or was it VK_ENTER) in the WinAPI
to supprt pressing that key.

Dennis




From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 31 09:09:32 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:09:32 +0200
Subject: stat st_rdev in python
In-Reply-To: <9jsop4$si0$1@netra.msu.montana.edu>
References: <9jsop4$si0$1@netra.msu.montana.edu>
Message-ID: <20010731150932.J20676@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 10:08:36PM +0000, Louis Glassy wrote:

> The tuple returned by os.stat() does not return the stat 
> st_rdev field, which contains the information I need.

> I see two options:  either write my own binding to stat(2)
> or do something like a popen on /bin/ls.  These both work,
> though neither is attractive.  It'd be nice if there were
> an unaldulterated posix module that I could call and get
> what everything that stat(2) would return.

You could write an unadulterated posix module that returned more
information. In that case, os.stat() should return an object that acts like
a 10-length tuple, except that the new fields (and the old ones) could be
accessed as attributes. You can't make it return a 13-length tuple as that
would break software that depends on the length of the tuple. After it's
done, you can submit a patch to SF :-)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From bh at intevation.de  Mon Jul 16 11:39:47 2001
From: bh at intevation.de (Bernhard Herzog)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 17:39:47 +0200
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <6qy9po288s.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>

Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:

> > C = {}
> > for item in B:
> >     C[item] = 1
> > 
> > A = filter(C.get, A)
> 
> I guess that'll drop some elements from A that are in B but evaluate to
> false, though.

I just realized that it does exactly the opposite of what the OP wanted.
It keeps all occurences of words in B instead of removing them. :(

  Bernhard

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Sketch                                 http://sketch.sourceforge.net/
MapIt!                                               http://mapit.de/


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 10 12:33:34 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:33:34 -0700
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B2E5E.AB3C94BD@home.net>

Steve Holden wrote:

> > The approved idiom is
> while 1:
>     x = raw_input()
>     if not x:
>         break
>     DoSomethingInteresting()

This is the approved idiom, but I never use it. I always use:

x = raw_input()
while x:
    x = raw_input()
    DoSomethingInteresting()
    x = raw_input()

I really don't like any "while 1" constructs, you have to then go
looking for the "break" to find out what is controlling the loop. I
don't like having to put "x = raw_input" in two places either, but it's
more clear to me this way. That's why I wish Python had a "do until:" or
something like it, and I am looking forward to  iterators and
generators. (and am very ahppy about file.xreadlines)

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rdsteph at earthlink.net  Wed Jul  4 22:33:37 2001
From: rdsteph at earthlink.net (Ron Stephens)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 02:33:37 GMT
Subject: I'd Like to Contribute to an Open Source Project
References: <3b41d693$1_7@news5.uncensored-news.com>
Message-ID: <3B4282BD.F74AACEC@earthlink.net>

Please check out Pythoncard http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pythoncard (its also on
SourceForge) and it is just gettgin started and nothing could be mroe worthwhile.
Contact Kevin Altis to discuss contributing...

Doug Fort wrote:

> I have some time on my hands.  It seems like a good opportunity to do some
> noncommercial Python programming.  Like my hero TV's Frank on MST3K, I'm
> more suited to be the lackey than the mad scientist.
>
> I've checked the 'Project Help Wanted' on SourceForge and don't see
> anything that really fits.
>
> Anybody need some Python code on an Open Source project?
>
> You can see some of my work at http://pyagent.sourceforge.net and at
> http://asynchttp.sourceforge.net.
> --
> Doug Fort <dougfort at dougfort.net>
> http://www.dougfort.net
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Posted Via Uncensored-News.Com - Still Only $9.95 - http://www.uncensored-news.com
>    With Seven Servers In California And Texas - The Worlds Uncensored News Source
>



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul  5 19:21:41 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 16:21:41 -0700
Subject: GUI problems
References: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B44F685.4F00FA2@Lugoj.Com>

eric_brake wrote:
> 
> Why doesn't this TKinter script work? The blank window will come up,
> but the "quit" button doesn't appear inside it. Thanks for any help.
> 
> import dice_gui #ignore this
> from Tkinter import *
> class fibon_gui:
>      def __init__(self, master):
>           frame = Frame(master)
>           frame.pack()
>           button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red",
> command=frame.quit)
>           button.pack(side=LEFT)
> root = Tk()
> root.title('Play Dice')
> root.mainloop()

You are missing a line. Before root.mainloop(), add the line:

x = fibon_gui(root)

Otherwise you aren't creating any instance of class fibon_gui that I can
see!


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 22 06:08:36 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 10:08:36 GMT
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9ll8p6.tlk.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9ll9h4.u0f.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

22 Jul 2001 09:55:50 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> pisze:

> My taste suggests the following:

One more thing: I would unify ints are longs. I don't care if they
are kept the same type or distinct types, i.e. whether the difference
in the representation is an implementation detail inside the type
or is visible. The thing that matters is that operations which would
overflow on ints return a correct result as a long.

Rationals can use a similar technique for efficiency: as long as
nominator and denominator are small enough, they can be kept as
machine integers internally.

I think that always normalizing rationals to gcd(n,d)==1 is a good
default. For specialized calculations where it's not needed, there
is always the possibility to use a different type - even work with
nominators and denominators explicitly...

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Mon Jul 16 14:16:42 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:16:42 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA524F@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I believe Perl is pre-installed, and I think someone from our Unix administration mentioned one time it was.  It's good to hear Python is on the companion disk, even if the version is out of date.

-----Original Message-----
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org [mailto:ngps at madcap.dyndns.org]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:59 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


According to Kemp Randy-W18971  <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com>:
> We run Solaris at my company, and Perl comes bundled with the Sun
> machines.  It's easier to ask someone to look at Perl because it's an
> existing part of every Solaris installation.  Since Python is not
> pre-bundled with Solaris, I need to ask the Unix administration to
> install it.  I could sell either language if Python were bundled with
> Solaris like Perl is.  Which raises an interesting question.  Why do
> companies like Sun include Perl but not Python with their operating
> systems?


Python is on the Companion disk. The one I have (late 2000) has Python
1.5.2 only, alas.

Is Perl pre-installed?


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.



From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Mon Jul 16 16:02:55 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:02:55 +0100
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B534863.400C915C@accessforall.nl>

Jay,

you wrote:
> 
> I have a simple problem, but one that, without some optimization, might hurt the performance of my project. To sum it up, I
> have two lists, we'll call them list A and list B, both lists contain only one-word strings (ie. both were generated by string.split()
> performed on a large amount of text)
> 
> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want included in my final version of list A. So what I need to
> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought
> would be:
> 
> for eachItem in A:
>     if eachItem in B:
>         A.remove(eachItem)
> 
> Now, this will work fine, however, the size of list A varies, and while list B is constant, it is quite large (more than 750 items).
> List A can also, should the situation warrant, become quite huge as well. The main problem is that I have no idea of the
> efficiency of "in" for large lists like this. Can anyone think of a possibly quicker way, or is this the best?


As pointed out by many others you can do the test
    if eachItem in B:
in constant time by using a dictionary:

Bdict = {}
for w in B: Bdict[w] = 1

I have not seen the following variation posted so here it goes:

[word for word in A if not Bdict.has_key(word)]

In case you insist on using A.remove() it will become the
bottleneck: it takes time in the order of the length of A.
The easy way to avoid this is by limiting the size of A
eg. by reading (tokenizing) a stream and filtering using
the test with Bdict.

Good luck,
Ype


-----------------
email at xs4all.nl


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Thu Jul  5 09:22:28 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:22:28 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: SRE vs PRE: speed
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107051718150.21723-100000@phd.fep.ru>

Hello!

   My company doen't want to switch from python 1.5.2 to 2.0+ - our CTO is
very disappointed with SRE speed. SRE is 3-4 times lsower. Any plans to
make it faster?

   The following program

---------- test_re.py ----------
import pre, sre, profile, types

I_NUM = 1000 # number of iterations

pre_comp_sub_pat = pre.compile('/')
sre_comp_sub_pat = sre.compile('/')

def Iterate(func):
    assert type(func) == types.FunctionType
    for i in range(0, I_NUM):
        func()

def pre_sub():
    pre.sub('/','.','/burja/mgloju/nebo/kroet')

def sre_sub():
    sre.sub('/','.','/burja/mgloju/nebo/kroet')

def pre_comp_sub():
    pre_comp_sub_pat.sub('.','/burja/mgloju/nebo/kroet')

def sre_comp_sub():
    sre_comp_sub_pat.sub('.','/burja/mgloju/nebo/kroet')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    profile.run('Iterate(pre_sub)')
    profile.run('Iterate(sre_sub)')
    profile.run('Iterate(pre_comp_sub)')
    profile.run('Iterate(sre_comp_sub)')
---------- /test_re.py ----------

produces the following results:

---------- test_re.log ----------
         6005 function calls in 0.773 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    0.758    0.758 <string>:1(?)
     1000    0.023    0.000    0.031    0.000 pre.py:114(_cachecompile)
     1000    0.109    0.000    0.641    0.001 pre.py:153(sub)
        1    0.000    0.000    0.008    0.008 pre.py:234(compile)
        1    0.008    0.008    0.008    0.008 pre.py:264(__init__)
     1000    0.078    0.000    0.500    0.001 pre.py:331(sub)
     1000    0.375    0.000    0.422    0.000 pre.py:344(subn)
        1    0.016    0.016    0.773    0.773 profile:0(Iterate(pre_sub))
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     1000    0.047    0.000    0.047    0.000 string.py:119(join)
     1000    0.078    0.000    0.719    0.001 test_re.py:14(pre_sub)
        1    0.039    0.039    0.758    0.758 test_re.py:9(Iterate)


         26003 function calls in 3.031 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    3.023    3.023 <string>:1(?)
        1    0.008    0.008    3.031    3.031 profile:0(Iterate(sre_sub))
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     1000    0.094    0.000    2.656    0.003 sre.py:113(_sub)
     1000    0.609    0.001    2.563    0.003 sre.py:117(_subn)
     4000    0.445    0.000    1.164    0.000 sre.py:123(filter)
     1000    0.164    0.000    2.867    0.003 sre.py:49(sub)
     1000    0.055    0.000    0.125    0.000 sre.py:87(_join)
     1000    0.047    0.000    0.047    0.000 sre.py:91(_compile)
     1000    0.055    0.000    0.133    0.000 sre_parse.py:161(__init__)
     3000    0.180    0.000    0.180    0.000 sre_parse.py:165(__next)
     2000    0.219    0.000    0.320    0.000 sre_parse.py:184(get)
     1000    0.211    0.000    0.664    0.001 sre_parse.py:603(parse_template)
     4000    0.516    0.000    0.719    0.000 sre_parse.py:664(expand_template)
     5000    0.273    0.000    0.273    0.000 string.py:119(join)
     1000    0.094    0.000    2.961    0.003 test_re.py:17(sre_sub)
        1    0.063    0.063    3.023    3.023 test_re.py:9(Iterate)


         4003 function calls in 0.742 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    0.742    0.742 <string>:1(?)
     1000    0.109    0.000    0.594    0.001 pre.py:331(sub)
     1000    0.438    0.000    0.484    0.000 pre.py:344(subn)
        1    0.000    0.000    0.742    0.742 profile:0(Iterate(pre_comp_sub))
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     1000    0.047    0.000    0.047    0.000 string.py:119(join)
     1000    0.117    0.000    0.711    0.001 test_re.py:20(pre_comp_sub)
        1    0.031    0.031    0.742    0.742 test_re.py:9(Iterate)


         24003 function calls in 2.672 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.672    2.672 <string>:1(?)
        1    0.000    0.000    2.672    2.672 profile:0(Iterate(sre_comp_sub))
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)
     1000    0.086    0.000    2.492    0.002 sre.py:113(_sub)
     1000    0.586    0.001    2.406    0.002 sre.py:117(_subn)
     4000    0.289    0.000    0.984    0.000 sre.py:123(filter)
     1000    0.094    0.000    0.172    0.000 sre.py:87(_join)
     1000    0.094    0.000    0.172    0.000 sre_parse.py:161(__init__)
     3000    0.141    0.000    0.141    0.000 sre_parse.py:165(__next)
     2000    0.203    0.000    0.266    0.000 sre_parse.py:184(get)
     1000    0.227    0.000    0.664    0.001 sre_parse.py:603(parse_template)
     4000    0.484    0.000    0.695    0.000 sre_parse.py:664(expand_template)
     5000    0.289    0.000    0.289    0.000 string.py:119(join)
     1000    0.125    0.000    2.617    0.003 test_re.py:23(sre_comp_sub)
        1    0.055    0.055    2.672    2.672 test_re.py:9(Iterate)
---------- /test_re.log ----------

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul  8 12:32:04 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 09:32:04 -0700
Subject: ICQ module for Python?
Message-ID: <3B488B04.B9753A7A@alcyone.com>

Is there an ICQ module available for Python which supports sending and
receiving of messages?  Don't want to reinvent the wheel if I don't have
to.

Thanks.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ There are countless planets, like many island Earths ...
\__/ Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
    Alcyone Systems' CatCam / http://www.catcam.com/
 What do your pets do all day while you're at work?  Find out.


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 11:46:08 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:46:08 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com> <Xns90EF9A33C3022michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>
Message-ID: <4pA97.55816$EP6.12753948@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Michael Abbott" <michael at rcp.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns90EF9A33C3022michaelrcpcouk at 194.238.50.13...
>  Perhaps I'm old fasioned, and too concerned about  efficiency.

You are not the only one :-)  Practice worrying less.

>  I know that processor speeds have increased by a factor of
> 1,000 or so in the last couple of decades or so, but it gives me the
creeps
> to see just how much code is executed to implement such simple
expressions
> as 1+2 or f(x).

When I first realize that side effect of the neat concept
"Everything's a PyObject" I was shocked.  Fortunately, I was too well
hooked otherwise to turn back.  I still occasionally remind myself
that even at Python speeds, a billion additions are much cheaper than
a few decades ago.

Terry J. Reedy





From jafo-pythonlist at tummy.com  Tue Jul 24 20:25:09 2001
From: jafo-pythonlist at tummy.com (Sean Reifschneider)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:25:09 -0600
Subject: cost of change
In-Reply-To: <1010724151149.ZM39634@anson.hcs.tl>; from hcsgss@texlife.com on Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 03:11:49PM -0500
References: <1010724151149.ZM39634@anson.hcs.tl>
Message-ID: <20010724182509.B6338@tummy.com>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 03:11:49PM -0500, Galen Swint wrote:
>Thats $30 *million*, and all those numbers are surely low -- especially the

That assumes that *EVERYONE* upgrades everytime there's a new release out.
It seems that Python 2.x is being fairly commonly installed as "python2",
which allows retaining Python 1.5 and 2.x code...

However, I've found that most of my code doesn't require modifications for
new versions.  Mostly I'm sticking with 1.5.2 because I don't want to
install Python 2.1 on dozens of machines unless I have to.  And I don't.

Sean
-- 
 An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be
 devoured.  -- Konrad Adenauer
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python



From teo at crepido.com  Thu Jul 26 07:25:45 2001
From: teo at crepido.com (teo)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 04:25:45 -0700
Subject: newbie pipes question
References: <3B58494D.C82965AD@raqia.com>
Message-ID: <dd144f8b.0107260325.6a0f21e4@posting.google.com>

David Lees <DavidLnospammy at raqia.com> wrote in message news:<3B58494D.C82965AD at raqia.com>...

> I am running under redhat 7.1 with python 2.1 and want to have python

> process the output of a perl script.

> 

> I execute the perl script from python as:

> 

> os.system("regex2.pl -o junky 'birds'")

> 

> and the output goes to my screen, presumably stdout.

> 

> I can redirect the output to a temporary file and read it pack into

> python, but the right way would seem to be pipes.  Can someone tell me

> how to do this?  I tried the following, which does not work, because it

> seems to hang on the os.read statement:

> 

> r,w=os.pipe()

> os.system("regex2.pl -o junky 'birds'")

> x=os.read(r,100)

> print x

> 

> Thanks in advance,

> 

> david lees


Try this instead:

 pipe = os.popen("regex2.pl -o junky 'birds'")
 for line in pipe.readlines()
   print line

/teo


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 12 12:23:50 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:23:50 -0600
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D52C@admin56.narex.com>

> From: mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM [mailto:mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM]
> 
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 mcherm at destiny.com wrote:
> 
> > simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> > > i don't want to see any more versions of python.
> > > ITS FINISHED
> > > AND I LOVE IT RIGHT NOW
> > > if you want more then make a new language.
> > 
> > Regretably, Simon, you are out of luck. In order to convince
> > Microsoft to support Python natively in their .NET initiative,
> > Guido was forced to make several major concessions. One of those
> > was to recind the "Open Source" liscense, which allowed anyone
> > to freely use Python -- using any version they wanted for (pretty
> > much) any purpose.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
> > liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
> > programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
> > present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
> > ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
> > (to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the 
> > infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.
> 
> This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  This implies that 
> Python will
> only be available to the Windows community.  There are 
> environments where
> Microsoft Certification servers will never exist.  If there 
> will now be
> a component added to Python to only allow its use when authorized by a
> Microsoft Certification server, then one may need to change 
> or develop a
> new solution set.
> 
> I'm not particularly opposed to forking off a "Python for Microsoft
> Windows Environments" or a "Python for Microsoft Certification Server
> Environments" as long as there remains a Python for other 
> communities of
> interest.  If the latter is not going to occur, then I need 
> to reconsider
> whether or not Python is part of a viable solution.

Hmmm... Satire -- such a lost art (*sigh*)

--bjorn



From nospam at nospam  Wed Jul 11 17:40:48 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:40:48 -0400
Subject: ActivePython word wrap in Shell or PythonWin during list printout
Message-ID: <3b4cc844$0$172@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

I am running the latest Python from ActiveState and I have a
problem that when I print a long list (Like dir()), the entire list
prints out on one line and I have to scroll over to read it.

Is there an environment setting to force word wrap at
a certain line length?

Or is there a list function that can take a list and
pretty print it with word wrap.

(Not having one gave me an opportunity to learn
some  Python scripting as I wrote my own, but
if there was a library standard, that might be better. )


def marginprint(L,margin=80):
     b=""
     for a in L:
         if len(str(a)+b)+3 >= margin :
                print b
                b = "'"+str(a)+"'"
         else:
                if b: b+=","
                b += "'"+str(a)+"'"
     if b: print b
     b=""


With this function, I just type marginprint(dir())
and it will respect the margins.

Only I have to load this into my environment every time
I bring it up.











From cfelling at iae.nl  Wed Jul 25 11:35:33 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:35:33 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jmp05$47j$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

M.-A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
...
>        5. variable names and other identifiers will be reencoded into
>           8-bit strings using the file encoding to assure backward
>           compatibility with the existing implementation

>           ISSUE: 

>               Should we restrict identifiers to ASCII ?

Me being stupid, I wonder how I'm going to access goodies hidden in
foreign alfabet scripts.  Say GooodyScript.py is encoded in Japanese
and I'm to use the classes and functions in them that have Japanese
names, how am I supposed to call them in my Dutch encoded script?
Is there a fool proof conversion from Dutch to Japanese spelling?
And is it easy to find the proper transcriptions of those Japanese
names, or do I have to start some external program to transcribe
that Japanese script?

Sorry if all this are standard questions related to utf etc, I haven't
found the time to read up on this yet.
-- 
groetjes, carel


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 17:20:16 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 23:20:16 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994100826.19440.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hqoe8019j5@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994100826.19440.python-list at python.org...
> It seems I start to understand database concerns of Mr. Wilson the second.
>
> Once we tried 3 databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase) to suit our task.
> And for every database (we stopped at Interbase) there was Python support.
>
> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then

Internet Information Server (IIS) serves webpages, including Active
Server Pages (ASP), but neither has anything to do with database access.

What you're using to access databases in such a setting is most likely
MSDAC (MicroSoft Data Access Controls, I believe) and specifically the
ADO (Active Data Objects, I believe) part thereof.  So if that's what you
like, why not access it from Python?  I happen to like it quite a bit too,
and as it happens Python + win32all makes it a snap to use it (on a
Win32 platform, only, of course -- but then, that's where IIS runs, too,
or has MS released it for OpenBSD lately?-).

> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.

Yep, the recordset part of ADO is undoubtedly the most popular single
feature of it among us lazy programmers.  You can even disconnect from
the DB and keep the recordset around, persist it to a file (maybe in XML),
depersist it later... it's fun!-)

> From this and also from my own experience with PostgeSQL queries from
> Python, I could say that DB support in Python exists, but need enhancement
> and standartization. Probably, higher level more or less common
> object-oriented interfaces could help this.

It seems to me the (DB API 2) standard is fine (maybe a bit too
ambitious, so actual implementations may not have reached up
to it yet?-).

> I must also say, that I myself am completely satisfied with Python DB
> support, but I do not use DB extentensively and routinely to judge.
> However, I think that including some more DB support, at least for open
> source databases like Postgresql and MySQL + ODBC/JDBC, could be a good
> idea and will give a standard. (Yes, I know about Python DB API).

And?  What's wrong with it?  What support would you get from ODBC,
portably between Postgres & MySQL, that the relevant DB API modules
don't supply?  Maybe we could supply an ADO-recordset-workalike on
top of any DB API compliant implementation, that might be handy at
times I guess.  But hardly a make-or-break thing, no?


> Are there licensing problems or what stops from letting RDB support
> modules into standard library?

Why would I want to have to download support for many databases
I don't use each and every time I download Python?  It's bad enough
getting the Irix or Mac stuff as a part of my (e.g.) Windows d'load --
why would I want Postgres and/or MySQL and/or Oracle and/or SQL
Server and/or (&c) if what I end up using is Interbase (as you did)?

If I had a vote, I'd rather seen _Gadfly_ tuned up (out with regex
and regsub, in favour of re; minimal-tolerance support of stuff it
does not implement, such as NULLs) and made a part of Python.  It
might give a taste of SQL to SQL-unaware programmers and it would
provide a DB API implementation (usable like dumbdbm is as the
last-choice fallback for anydbm, if you see what I mean).  But it sure
wouldn't be THE db of choice for demanding professional use -- go
see Oracle or SQL Server for that, or maybe Interbase, MySQL &c if
that's what rocks your boat.  The DB scene seems just too fragmented
at this point in time to warrant including support for 10% of it in
the standard Python library, I think...


Alex





From desai at mcs.anl.gov  Fri Jul 27 15:30:57 2001
From: desai at mcs.anl.gov (Narayan Desai)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:30:57 -0500
Subject: scoping problems
References: <yrx66cegqs2.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <yrxr8v2f9u6.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>

I made a mistake when I was describing the problem. Here is the real 
problem; I had mis-formulated the minimal subset needed to cause this
behavior. The real subset is:

class baseclass():
      def __init__(self):
          self.__myfunc__()

class a(baseclass):
      __myfunc__=b

class b(baseclass):
      __myfunc__=a

Does anyone know how to get this to work?
 -nld

>>>>> "Me" == Narayan Desai <desai at mcs.anl.gov> writes:

Me> How can i define the following code: def a():
Me>     b()

Me> def b():
Me>     a()

Me> (ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate) How do you
Me> get the namespaces right?

Me> I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't
Me> clear to me how to do this in python.  thanks...
Me>  -nld


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 23 11:38:12 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 11:38:12 -0400
Subject: emacs python mode
References: <3B5BF5C7.3070707@herts.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <etd7kwzhd0b.fsf@cutter-john.mit.edu>

Do you have something like (global-font-lock-mode 1) in your .emacs?

Alex.


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 11:34:52 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:34:52 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <mailman.994749518.7874.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B1F25.996D8514@yahoo.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Paul Winkler]
> > ...
> > I also should not have implied that the existing library is not
> > adequately tested; I have no basis for thinking that.
> 
> But I do:  it's not.

OK, then I reinstate my rescinded remark. :)

> This is an area where community contributions are almost non-existent.  If
> anyone is looking for a low-commitment way to help Python out, pick your
> favorite library module and contribute some good tests for it!  There's a
> decent orientation Lib/test/REAMDE to help you get started.  The regrtest.py
> framework is baroque and inadequately documented, but it can run both
> unittest- and doctest-based tests in natural ways now.

This sounds like a good idea. In fact I think I'll do that. Should we work from
CVS, or is Python 2.1 OK?

(snip)
> IOW, every example posted to every mailing list, along with every example in
> PEP 255, was simply *pasted* into a test string.  It was no additional work

Hmm, this sounds pretty cool actually. I'm liking doctest more and more. It
appeals to the lazy programmer in me.

> to speak of; WYSIWYG; nothing was written *just* "to test"; and if you can
> read straight Python, you can easily and directly see what each little piece
> is testing.  WRT the latter, what do you think the earlier
> 
>         self.assertRaises(TypeError, list, list)
> 
> was testing?  I wrote it, but I couldn't remember after I copied the code
> into this msg; I had to look up the source for unittest's assertRaises().
> As a doctest, it would have read
> 
> """
> >>> list(list)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   ...
> TypeError: iter() of non-sequence
> """
> 
> instead and then "it's obvious".

I did do a double-take on the assertRaises() version, but in the context of the
surrounding tests that's pretty much what I guessed it would mean.
But yes, list(list) is a bit more obvious.
 
(snip)
> All new Python tests should be in unittest or doctest format; and we'd
> gladly adopt conversions of existing tests to those formats too (all the
> PythonLab'ers have converted some of them, but there's too much else that
> needs doing too to expect us to finish all of them without help).
> 
> well-actually-you're-free-to-expect-anything-ly y'rs  - tim

Well then, I hereby expect you to rename the _ variable in Zope into something
meaningful. And bobobase_modification_time while you're at it. :P

zope-is-great-except-python-expressions-in-dtml-which-are-weirder-than-perl-ly
y'rs  - 

Paul

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From clspence at one.net  Sat Jul 14 05:24:04 2001
From: clspence at one.net (Christopher L Spencer)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 04:24:04 -0500
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <m030ltord2kgp98mb7a397rl1bgtgar0en@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <tl30lt8jmuj14b821esncq815d4439p8gg@4ax.com>

<sigh>  This is what I get for posting at 5:00 in the morning.
What I MEANT to say was this:
x=getsomestringfromparameterfile()
x=int(x)

	Note that I will probably read a hundred corrections from
people who replied to my original stupidity rather than reading
through the thread first...

Chris.

PS: Despite my own sleep-deprived stupidity, I still maintain that if
you are afraid of dynamic typing, you should stick to Pascal.

On 14 Jul 2001 04:12:05 -0500, Christopher L Spencer
<clspence at one.net> wrote:

>I often have to do this:
>x=getsomestringfromparameterfile()
>x=string(x)
>
>	I consider this to be an advantage of Python.  If you are not
>skilled enough to use this feature, then I'd suggest you stick with
>Pascal.
>
>Chris.
>
>On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net>
>wrote:
>
>>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>>following script:
>>
>>x = 3
>>x = x + 2
>>print "x =", x
>>x = "now I'm a string"
>>print x
>>x = [ 5, x ]
>>print "and now a list:", x
>>
>>If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
>>x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
>>different type on two sides of an assignment?	
>>---------------------------------
>>Dennis Roark
>>Dept. of Computer Science
>>University of Sioux Falls
>>
>>Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
>>---------------------------------



From trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no  Thu Jul 12 21:49:46 2001
From: trondgaNOSPAM at student.matnat.uio.no (Trond Gaarder)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 03:49:46 +0200
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
Message-ID: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no>

A small problem concerning py2exe that I hope you can help me with:

I have a small OpenGL program that reads its scene graph from a XML file. I
use xml.dom.minidom to accomplish this, and everything works fine. But when
I try to compile the script into an .EXE with py2exe I get the following
warnings:

warning: py2exe:
***************************************************************
warning: py2exe: * The following modules were not found:
warning: py2exe: *   xml.dom.HierarchyRequestErr
warning: py2exe: *   riscosenviron
warning: py2exe: *   _xmlplus
warning: py2exe: *   ic
warning: py2exe: *   ce
warning: py2exe: *   riscos
warning: py2exe: *   SOCKS
warning: py2exe: *   rourl2path
warning: py2exe: *   riscospath
warning: py2exe:
***************************************************************

And when I try to run the program:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 381, in ?
  File "<string>", line 299, in readScenegraph
  File "SceneGraph.pyc", line 187, in fromXML
  File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 910, in parse
  File "xml\dom\minidom.pyc", line 901, in _doparse
  File "xml\dom\pulldom.pyc", line 289, in parse
  File "xml\sax\__init__.pyc", line 88, in make_parser
xml.sax._exceptions.SAXReaderNotAvailable: No parsers found


It looks like the XML module is using som kind of dynamic loader (like Pmw
does), and these modules naturally escape py2exe. Do any of you have any
tips on how to work around this problem? Something similar to bundlepmw.py
perhaps?

--


**********************************************************
Trond Gaarder

E-mail: trondga at SPAM.ifi.uio.no
ICQ: 11811905
**********************************************************




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 13 15:24:38 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 15:24:38 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.995027304.13735.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u3d803a4p.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> writes:

> A couple of people have brought up ordering of heterogeneous lists.  First,
> I don't know why anyone would want to do this.  (Can anyone give me an
> example where they have done this for a "real world" problem?).

I'm not sure if I've done this with a list solely of built-in types,
but I've definitely had lists of various subclassed object types that
implemented __cmp__.  In one case it wasn't so much used for sorting
as for comparing objects (that represented tasks) when trying to
decide what action to perform next.

I suppose if any proposed change was such that it continued to work if
the objects involved (even if different) did implement __cmp__ that it
wouldn't affect the sort of stuff I've done.  I'm guessing that's what
Guido's comment about "leave it up to the types" was implying.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Thu Jul 26 00:34:20 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:34:20 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <250720012134200563%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
I'm happy with that outcome...and I think the case-helping tools will
be useful in many situations.

> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
I hope I didn't come across as hostile, only somewhat unhappy.  I think
you've done a fantastic job with Python...that's why I slipped it into
the company (which was an early PSA corporate member, as I was an
individual member).

As it happens, my association with Python had its origins in a flood in
a local Tower Books...my copy of the first Programming Python still has
water damaged page bottoms, and the book was priced very nicely in the
flood sale.  I'm really happy that I was accidentally in the store on
the right weekend.

  --John


From clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com  Fri Jul 13 12:22:51 2001
From: clgonsal at keeshah.penguinpowered.com (C. Laurence Gonsalves)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:22:51 GMT
Subject: Any way to get current file position in xml.parsers.expat?
References: <slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com> <Msx37.103186$%a.4410093@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ku4ii.1ji.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:30:52 GMT, Van Gale <cgale1 at _remove_home.com> wrote:
>
>I'm pretty sure ErrorColumnNumber, ErrorLineNumber, and ErrorByteIndex
>are updated even when there is no error.

You're right, they do seem to get updated continuously. I didn't even
try checking this because the documentation explicitly says these values
won't be valid unless the parser raises an xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError
exception.

ie, http://python.org/doc/current/lib/xmlparser-objects.html says:

  The following attributes contain values relating to the most recent
  error encountered by an xmlparser object, and will only have correct
  values once a call to Parse() or ParseFile() has raised a
  xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError exception.

  ErrorByteIndex
    Byte index at which an error occurred.

  ...

  ErrorColumnNumber
    Column number at which an error occurred.

  ErrorLineNumber
    Line number at which an error occurred.

So is this an error in the documentation, or is the fact that these
values are continuousy updated merely a "quirk" in the current behaviour
that I shouldn't rely on because it may change at some point in the
future?

I'd be much happier if the docs didn't say that I can't do what I want
to do...

-- 
  C. Laurence Gonsalves                "Any sufficiently advanced
  clgonsal at kami.com                     technology is indistinguishable
  http://cryogen.com/clgonsal/          from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke


From cliechti at nospam.mails.ch  Wed Jul  4 17:02:42 2001
From: cliechti at nospam.mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 23:02:42 +0200
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
References: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr> <vle6kt8736tsqu498op6srgshmat6ouabf@4ax.com> <3b4358e0.33960742@news.iway.fr>
Message-ID: <Xns90D4EAFF3798Fcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

[posted and mailed]

emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier) wrote
> Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my

are you sure you need to call this fu 60 times a second? the eye can't see 
more than 16 to 20 frames per second. flickering (refresh rate of display) 
can be seen for higher rates too but no detail or movements in the picture 
are catched by the eye.
i would call python only every second frame.

of course this wasn't your question - just a thought from my side...


some real optimisations:
don't call "range" every time - use a precalculated list with the numbers 
or beter iterate as follows:

for sprite in ListOfSprites:
    	sprite.setPos( 100, 100 )

should save a bit time (no list indexing, no generation of a throw-away 
list of indexes).

or even better: don't use "for" use "map" instead:

def foo(a):
    	a.setPos(100,100)

map(foo,ListOfSprites)


and you might be interested in the folowing URL:
http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/python/fastpython.html

threre are some "Python Performance Tips" (including the one above)


chris

-- 
import re
email = 'cliechti at nospam.mails.ch'
print re.sub('nospam\.','',email)


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Wed Jul 18 19:44:05 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:44:05 -0600
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D558@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Peter Hansen [mailto:peter at engcorp.com]
> 
> Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> > From: Nick Efford [mailto:nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk]
> > > Any web hoster worth its salt should at least run old and new
> > > versions of the s/w in parallel and provide clients with the
> > > opportunity to test programs in the new environment before
> > > migrating.
> > 
> > But being a web hoster, with no knowledge about Python, would _you_
> > expect a version change from 2.2 to 2.3 to fundamentally change
> > semantics? 
> 
> I'm pretty sure nobody has seriously proposed making this change
> in a non-major revision.  I suspect anyone who might have implied 
> that would say they weren't really thinking at the time they said 
> so, and that of course if we went ahead with such a change it would
> not cause code breakage in existing code until a major revision 
> change.
> 
> I could be wrong about this though...

Well, at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/ pep 238 is still listed
under consideration for 2.2...

-- bjorn



From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 13:06:43 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:06:43 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHIEFBCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Tim Hochberg]
> ...
> The fact that oponents of this proposal keep suggesting methods for
> doing this that are wrong only reveals that this is more difficult
> than generally supposed.
>
> ...
>
> A more correct solution suggested by Konrad is:
>
> def simple_func(x, y):
>    return y / (x+0.0)**2
>
> This is correct, but can hardly be called simple or clear.

In this specific case "x + 0.0" is correct, but in general it isn't:  on
boxes with 754 arithmetic (virtually everything), x+0. has a different sign
bit than x when x is -0.0, and the default rounding mode is in effect.  In
this specific case that doesn't matter because the result is immediately
squared, but in general you can't know that it doesn't matter.  Safest is

    x*1.0

which works in all cases -- maybe.  There's still hardware out there that
flushes denormal results to 0, and on such boxes both x+0. and x*1.0 can
return 0 when x is not 0.  Python inherits such behaviors from the platform.

So "this is more difficult than generally supposed" applies even to people
who know quite a bit about this stuff.

correctness-is-a-severe-requirement-ly y'rs  - tim




From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 20 02:35:52 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 02:35:52 -0400
Subject: python 2.1.1 trouble with addsitedir
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lfi07.5n69.dek@socrates.cgl.ucsf.edu>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEKHKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[David Konerding]
> Hi, I am checking my application's compatibility wiht 2.1.1 and I've
> run into a snag.  We use "site.addsitedir" to add a directory to the
> loading path.

Please see

<http://sf.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=442983&group_id=5470&atid=1
05470>

> ...
> Did some sort of change occur to how global variables behave?

No, it's a bug that got introduced when fixing a different bug.




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 12 00:49:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 04:49:07 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org> <9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu> <yAm27.8553$Y6.2987762@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <slrn.pl.9kjuov.nlq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpzoabh7pf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <7%937.8$Z6.16928@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> By the way (this is for Terry :-), int/int in Python does not do the
> same as it does in C for negative operands.
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

I may have noticed this when I switched several years ago, but indeed had
forgotten since.  Fortunately, I know enough not to rely on my memory for
something I would only do occasionally.
---

Tuesday afternoon's experiment: I asked my (non-programmer,
non-mathematical) wife, "What is eight divided by three."  Even with a hint
("eight, not eight point zero"), she replied 'two point something or
other."  So Python's current behavior would have initially urprised her.

On the other hand, when I said to think back to second grade, she easily
remembered quotient-remainder answers to division.problems.  After I
explained Python's notation, , she thought she could handle using '.0' or
not to indicate which type of answer she wanted.  It was unsurprising to
her that she should have a choice.  This took at most two minutes.
---

That said, I can imagine that it would have been better to have defined
Python's arithmetic a little differently back at the beginning.  If I had a
time machine, here is what I would propose:  use / for fractional division
and use div, mod, and divmod (as infix operators) for whole number,
remainder division.  A simple pair of rules that I think should be easy to
teach, learn, and remember.

Note 1: The omission of '.0' and 'float()' where now needed would more than
make up for the two extra chars in 'div' versus '/' and 'mod' versus '%'.

Note 2: 'mod' is the standard mathematical notation for the modulus
(remainer) operation.  C used '%' because all its operators are symbolic.
This is not true for Python so there is no need to copy C (or any other
language that uses '5'), especially when paired with 'div'.

What would I propose now?  If and when int division is changed (preferably
as a package of arithmetic changes -- see my response to Guido in Re:
Language change and code breaks), leave divmod a function if you want,
change / to div, and also change % to mod.
A) The three names obviously fit together very nicely, which the pair div,
% strikes me as a bit ugly.  B) The overloading of (format) % with the
unrelated or ever conflicting (mod) % (one adds, the other tosses away)
strikes me as a slight wart on the language.  Do beginners ever find this
confusing?  And yes, do add corresponding magic methods to classes.

Terry J. Reedy





From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 31 01:29:44 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 05:29:44 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <slrn.pl.9m9tnf.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net> <mailman.996483001.8901.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9mcgi8.fpt.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:43:48 +0300, Moshe Zadka <m at moshez.org> pisze:

> The correct way to write it is:
> 
> print ["There was %d error", "There were %d errors"][n>1] % n

You are right.

> This way, making this application translatable is a piece of cake.

Really? In Polish a different form of "there were" and "errors"
is needed depending on whether
    n%10 in (2,3,4) and (n//10)%10 != 1
or not :-)

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Wed Jul 25 11:23:43 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:23:43 GMT
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net> <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl> <mailman.995990628.669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9AE2C4245rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Geoff Talvola wrote:

> At 03:43 PM 7/24/01 +0000, Robert Amesz wrote:
> 
>>SciTE Edit (I believe the URL is something like www.scintilla.org)
>>is pretty nice for us Pythoneers. If only it could open multiple
>>files... 
> 
> SciTE _can_ open multiple files if you configure it properly!  You
> just have to edit some of the settings in SciTEGlobal.properties. 
> I think I had to make the tabbar visible and increase the number of
> buffers, or something along those lines.

Now that is _excellent_ news. Thanks, I'll look into it.

<some time later, spending some time to upgrade from 1.37 to 1.38 - as 
it's only a 330Kb download, not a great chore>

You're quite right, it works like a charm. I don't know how I 
overlooked that feature. (Could be the naming. 'Buffers' certainly 
isn't the word I would go looking for with regards to this.)

<spending some more time getting the code completion feature to work>

Very nice. A pity I had to exclude wxWindows: a .dll caused a crash 
when building the .api file. (I forgot to write down the exact .dll and 
the error it caused, sorry.) Some manual tweaking of the .api file 
could make this feature more helpful still.

Overall conclusion: SciTE is a very nice code editor, and it supports 
syntax coulouring for a large number of languages. It is highly 
configurable, except, strangely enough, the key bindings. (Or have I 
overlooked something once again?) You can launch a script you're 
working on from the editor, and it does so 'out of the box'. It doesn't 
have a huge number of features, but it does have all the essential 
ones, and a great deal of thought seems to have gone into the 
implementation of those. Also. it's small enough so you can carry it on 
a floppy disk, and requires no installation. I've tested it under 
Windows, but there's a Unix + GTK version too. And, if you're still not 
happy, you can get the C++ source code and modify it.

So it's thumbs up for this editor.


Robert Amesz


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 08:08:33 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:08:33 +0100
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995466090.32686.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ldje1.488.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:21:37 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
>Problem
>
>    In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
>    Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
>    programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
>    and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian 
>    countries.

On the contrary, the python file format, *in itself* cannot make the
environment unfriendly. What does that is the combination of the
file format and the way editors respond to unicode characters.

Which leads me to the question:
If someone encodes unicode characters into a python source file in
the new way, and then another person opens the file, using a typical
programmers editor such as emacs, vi, nedit, etc, will they get any
nasty surprises?

>       5. variable names and other identifiers will be reencoded into
>          8-bit strings using the file encoding to assure backward
>          compatibility with the existing implementation
>
>          ISSUE: 
>
>              Should we restrict identifiers to ASCII ?

IMO, yes. I'm a conservative on language change.

>        Possible choices for the format:
>
>        1. Emacs style:
>
>          #!/usr/bin/python
>          # -*- coding: utf-8; -*-
>
>        2. Via a pseudo-option to the interpreter (one which is not used
>           by the interpreter):
>
>          #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8
>
>        3. Using a special comment format:
>
>          #!/usr/bin/python
>          #!encoding = 'utf-8'
>
>        4. XML-style format:
>
>          #!/usr/bin/python
>          #?python encoding = 'utf-8'

I like all of these exceptb the 2nd, where it is being done in a deliberately
non-obvious (i'm tempted to say "misleading") way. This is unpythonic, IMO.

How about introducing a pragma comment:

   #!pragma encoding = 'utf-8'

which could then be used for other similar changes?


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 17:31:49 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:31:49 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library 
 development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org>
			<cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B44DCC5.C9B29B5E@ActiveState.com>

Chris Barker wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
>...
> 
> My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a large
> collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are maintained by
> folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling this idea on the
> Linux Distributions: the kernel developers don't make any effort to
> package up Linux as a useful system; other organizations do that. There
> are now a lot of them, and some are substantial commercial enterprises,
> but it all started with SLS and then Slackware, etc.

I'd suggest you take a look at this:

http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0206.html

We've discussed this often in the past. The difference between Python
and Linux is that people are either willing to wait almost indefinately
to download an operating system, or they buy it in CD. Python cannot get
that large. So you have to make choices about what goes in and what
stays out. These choices are inevitably controversial.  I think a better
solution is to make it as easy to install things as possible. For
instance, you mention these modules: "Numeric, mxTools, wxPython, and
PIL."

Here's what an ActivePython user does to install 3 out of 4 those
modules:

pyppm install Numeric
pyppm install egenix-mx-base
pyppm install PIL

wxPython is next on our list of modules to add. I think that this is a
more scalable solution than a "fat" Python build because we can include
as many modules as we can build.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 19:35:13 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 16:35:13 -0700
Subject: rationalising division (Was: Re: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238])
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4@posting.google.com> <tkrg43ilksi315@news.supernews.com> <9ikrfh$f6k$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <9iqkvh$ajb$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <9ikrfh$f6k$1 at newsy.ifm.liu.se>,
Paul Svensson <paul at svensson.org> wrote:
>
>If there's anything we can do right now, it would be a very small
>first step.  Without causing any harm to existing code, we can add the
>possibility to generate warnings about int/int discarding non-zero
>fractions, and a "from __future__ import div" for a div operator doing
>he right thing.

That sounds like a good idea, particularly the warning part.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 12:04:08 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:04:08 GMT
Subject: PEP238 and zope
References: <mailman.996042524.17525.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpu201808r.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> writes:

> However, while we've found platforms where the platform C doesn't
> sign-extend right shifts of signed integers (OK by the C std), and platforms
> with no integral type T such that sizeof(T) == 2 (also OK), and platforms
> with no standard integral type T such that sizeof(T) >= sizeof(void*) (also
> OK!), I don't believe we've found any platform where casting to an integral
> type doesn't truncate.  So this one is an academic warning of no practical
> consequence.  Note too that the new C std ("C99") requires truncation.

Perhaps we should change the interpreter to guarantee truncation, so
we can tighten the docs?  I'm adding a bug report for this to SF.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 10 13:25:13 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:25:13 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: BASIC or Python?
In-Reply-To: <3B4B1DE7.142B815C@noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101117190.13382-100000@bms>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Benjamin.Altman wrote:
> stremler at rohan.sdsu.edu wrote:
>
> > I'll just quote:
> >
> >    This is also one reason I dislike Python. Indentation is part of the
> >    documentation of the program, and as such it shouldn't be parsed by the
> >    compiler.                             -- Peter da Silva (September 1999)
> >
>
> Who cares?  The above is just personal opinion and preference like everything else - not a rule or
> law.

Naw, it is just plain wrong.  Obviously indentation is part of the
Python programming language, remove it and the program will fail.

if s!is part!should be part!  then it is opinion.

I'd be more interested in hearing if Mr. da Silva has changed his
mind in the last few years.


- Bruce




From othello at javanet.com  Fri Jul 20 14:03:37 2001
From: othello at javanet.com (Raymond Hettinger)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:03:37 -0400
Subject: The unPEP:  List-Tuple Unification
References: <3B586A1E.B037349D@javanet.com> <aTZ57.5911$qh7.379822@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B587279.A225AC51@javanet.com>

Steve Holden wrote:

> No asbestos required, but what's tha advantage over
>
>     mylist = tuple(mylist)
>
> just-wonderingl-ly y'rs  - steve

Good question. Immutable lists don't give you much over
what you get now from tuples (except the automatic coercion
for dictionary keys).

The big advantage comes from deprecating tuples, simplifying
the language, getting rid of (,) and eliminating the need to remember
which things require tuples, which require lists, and which allow
both (quick, what does the % formatting operator require?).

never-met-a-list-i-didnt-like,ly y'rs  -- Raymond





From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 16:54:33 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:54:33 +0100
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp7kwv7iag.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m10s9.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:
> 
> > (2) should isintegral() return true for algebraic integers that are not 
> > rational integers?
> 
> Sorry, you lost me there.  What are these?

The square root of 2, for instance. An algebraic integer
is any root of a polynomial equation with integer coefficients
and leading coefficient 1 (e.g., x^2-2). Fact: An algebraic
integer that is rational is in fact an "ordinary" integer;
hence, "rational integer".

Note (not that it matters much here in c.l.py) that some
things are algebraic integers even though they might not
"look" very integral; for instance, (1+sqrt(5))/2.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From david at boddie.net  Fri Jul 27 15:17:17 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 12:17:17 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com>

piet at cs.uu.nl wrote in message news:<uae1qeqmt.fsf at cs.uu.nl>...
> >>>>> david at boddie.net (David Boddie) (DB) writes:
> 
> DB> So, if you're already resigned to that then just changing __future__
> DB> to something else like
> 
> DB> from __behaviour__ import float_division
> 
> DB> would be just as easy, and wouldn't break existing code. <wink>
> 
> This just won't work. The most important reason for the change in division
> is that people are caught by the integer division by surprise. So anything
> special that they have to do to get float division will not help. That's
> also the reason that it won't help to introduce // for the new behaviour
> and leave / for the old behaviour.

It was something of a cheeky suggestion on my part given that, until
float division becomes standard, you'll have to use an import
statement anyway.

I wouldn't suggest using // for float division anyway, for reasons
that I've stated before elsewhere.

People are caught out by integer division in two separate instances,
as far as I can tell: when using the interpreter interactively, and
when writing modules. I'm usually caught out in interactive mode,
using Python as a notepad for numerical work. The per module solution
could be used to eliminate this trap by making float division the
default in interactive mode. It wouldn't help the authors of modules,
though.

> I have an idea that might help the transition to become less painful:
> Like someone else noticed about the transition in LaTeX from 2.09 to 2e
> (\documentstyle vs. \documentclass):
> If python files for the 3.0 version and beyond could be recognized then at
> least old files will not be silently executed with the wrong semantics.
> 
> So we could require that in Python 3+ python files have to start with:
> module name
> 
> This doesn't even require module to be a keyword. name should be the same
> name to import the file (i.e. the filename).
> 
> From Python 3.0 onwards files without a module statement should no longer
> be accepted. These must be repaired, i.e. checked for integer divisions and
> a module statement added. So they can no longer silently break.
> 
> In the transition period both forms should be acceptable with the old form
> finally producing warnings.
> 
> The module declaration could also be given parameters to specify a specific
> behaviour, e.g. it could specify that this module wants the old integer
> division:
> 
> module mymod (int_div).

It's an interesting proposal, especially given that lots of scripts
start with extras like

#! /usr/bin/python

or whatever and nobody really objects to this platform specific
intrusion.

Unfortunately, this stands as much chance of being supported as the
per module import proposal since both require the language to carry
"baggage"... :-(

It's strange. I don't mind the introduction of default float division
at some point in the future, despite having to rewrite many of my
modules with no future-proof, succinct integer division operator to
hand. However, diplomatic attempts to avoid breakage of legacy code
appear to have failed. I suspect that the best we can hope for is
non-silent breakage via compile-time exceptions.

Diplomatically-y'rs - David


From jschwenk at oregon.idt.com  Tue Jul 17 15:15:17 2001
From: jschwenk at oregon.idt.com (Jeanie M. Schwenk)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 12:15:17 -0700
Subject: viewcvs rlog error
Message-ID: <74f2f0e9.0107171115.25248606@posting.google.com>

I just installed viewcvs 0.7 and it gives python exceptions if the
directory has any files in it.  Not terribly useful.   It appears to
be some kind of rlog error but I can't duplicate it from the command
line so I must assume it's something to do with the python scripts. 
I'm new to python so any useful suggestions would be nice.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2514, in run_cgi
    main()
  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 2477, in main
    view_directory(request)
  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1091, in view_directory
    fileinfo, alltags = get_logs(full_name, rcs_files, view_tag)
  File "/opt/viewcvs0.7/lib/viewcvs.py", line 1035, in get_logs
    raise 'error during rlog: '+hex(status)
error during rlog: 0x7f00


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul 20 17:22:07 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:22:07 -0600
Subject: Case insensitivity (fwd)
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D56A@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters [mailto:mertz at gnosis.cx]
> 
> I like some of the case conventions in Python, like the instance/class
> capitalization thing.  Maybe a little on the cute side for beginners,
> but it as an aesthetic.
> 
> But the most annoying aspect of case-sensitivity is trying to 
> *speak* it
> to beginners (or even to non-beginners):
> 
>   "type 'class MyClass colon'... ummm, no, that's cap 'M', cap 'C'...
>   no... capital 'M', lower 'y', capital 'C, rest lowercase.  Ok, now
>   type "myclass equals MyClass parens"... umm, the thing to 
> the left in
>   lowercase, then the caps as in the class name.... ad nauseaum..."

Personally, I always send code through email, even when speaking with
someone on the phone. Works much faster (and it also takes care of
whitespace <wink>).

-- bjorn



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:48:21 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:48:21 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <p1f6ktc7qphfb5tg6c59kn4jeok9ndu1eq@4ax.com>

>typedef plane_t int ;  /* plane no */
>typedef lane_t int  ;  /* lane no */

These are incorrect. You meant:

typedef int plane_t;

>Is this what you wanted to have in C ?

No. What you're asking for doesn't work, although it might be
useful if it did. As it is, this will never get into the stanard, however.
It would break too much code.

C//



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 11:51:56 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:51:56 +0200
Subject: import namespace issues
References: <yv2lmlxgnji.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <9iei5205pn@enews3.newsguy.com> <yv2d779ggaw.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>
Message-ID: <9if8b3013qd@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in message
news:yv2d779ggaw.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de...
> "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > "Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in message
> > news:yv2lmlxgnji.fsf at lionsp093.lion-ag.de...
> > > QUESTION 2:
> > > Is there a detailed description somewhere in the docs about the
> > > namespaces (or dictionaries) used/created/shuffled during an import?
> >
> > I think the documentation for __import__ is pretty clear about
> > it, "the standard implementation does not use its locals argument
> > at all, and uses its globals only to determine the package context
> > of the import statement".
>
> I sometimes find that the python docs seem to expect some prior
> knowledge about `obvious behaviour' from the reader and consequently
> are a bit terse. Therefore I believed the above statement only after
> having read the code :-)

Reading the code is hardly a bad thing!  If you understand enough
C to read the Python sources, you'll find most of them clear and
very instructive (there are some exceptions to the clarity, where
things get VERY subtle and hard to follow).


Alex





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 14:31:24 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:31:24 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Resty Cena" <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote ...
> Well thank you for jolting me out of my comfortable position sitting
> with my hands tucked between my pants and the chair. I donwloaded
> cx_Oracle and, yes, it's up. Now, would you happen to have, or know
> of, some materials (sample code, tips, tricks, techniques, tutorials)
> on getting started on programming *forms* based applications in Oracle
> and Python? That would be just great.
>
Well done! Hope the install went OK ;-). I presume you are talking about
GUI-based programs using Oracle rather than Oracle Forms stuff?  There is
some coverage in Hammond & Robinson's Programming Win32 in Python book, for
a start. Other people speak highly of Grayson's Python and Tkinter
programming, though it isn't my cup of tea. I'm not currently aware of
anything drag-and-drop which includes database awareness, but Boa
Constructor and BlackAdder GUI tools both have theie adherents.

Since you've taken the effort to get started I am reasonably sure that the
c.l.py GUI community will be out in force to help you (right, guys?) -
you've probably seen the regular threads on "Which GUI is the best" and
realise there's a choice.

I am currently working on a simple web-based framework for data editing,
which I plan to translate to one or other of the available GUIs, but that's
currently on the horizon. It will be open source when it's finished.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Thu Jul 12 03:14:34 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 09:14:34 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <Za237.15199$vA6.833926@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <yv2ofqq39gl.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> "Harald Kirsch" <kirschh at lionbioscience.com> wrote in ...
> >
> > SHORT STORY:
> > Does anyone know of a regular expression library which has an operator
> > that forces a subexpression to insist on its shortest match, even if
> > that ruins the overall match?
[snip]
> Had you thought about using lookahead assertions, which don't actually match
> anything, but fail unless the specified pattern is (or, for a negative
> lookahead assertion, is not) present? Combined with non-greedy matching this
> might get you where you want to be.

No. Friedl's book has an example similar to

   (.*?)(?=<A>)<A>B

but that matches "xx<A>x<A>B" i.e. the match contains an <A> in the
part covered by ".*". Again I cannot force "(.*?)(?=<A>)<A>" to insist
on the "shortest match" and not give it up for an overall match.

I tried other combinations, e.g. "(.(?!<A>))*?<A>" but none really
works. 

Advocacy: The `shortest match' operator is really missing from regexp
languages.

  Harald Kirsch
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 15:45:03 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:45:03 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
        <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com>

    Martin> "Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> writes:
    >> Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it
    >> looks very nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues?

    Martin> If speed is an issue, I would recommend against SOAP. If you use
    Martin> CORBA, you can get very efficient implementations. Even the
    Martin> least efficient ones (e.g. Fnorb) will easily out-pace SOAP any
    Martin> time.

Perhaps, but it all depends on what and how you sling your data around.
Clearly, you can't efficiently pass and receive multi-megabyte data
structures, but that would hold true for any distributed communication
protocol.  A megabyte of data is still a megabyte of data.  I tweaked
xmlrpclib a year or two ago to handle gzip encoding.  It compresses the xml
on the wire quite nicely.  Doesn't have much effect when talking over a LAN
but over the Internet it's quite nice to have.  I suspect it wouldn't be too
hard to add gzip encoding support to SOAPpy either.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From mertz at gnosis.cx  Thu Jul  5 17:49:31 2001
From: mertz at gnosis.cx (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 17:49:31 -0400
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd) (fwd)
Message-ID: <rDOR7kKkXQIF092yn@bellatlantic.net>                

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')
> Thirteen characters shorter than Emile's, and still no [re] :-).

|filter(string.isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')
|is six fewer characters and IMHO more readable still.

  >>> filter(string.isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  NameError: There is no variable named 'string'

Or did you expect me to "spend" 13 characters on 'import string'? :-)

Btw. Alex is quite right on his speedy solution:

  def AM_trans(iters):
      nondigits = ''.join([chr(x) for x in range(0,256) if not chr(x).isdigit()])
      identity = string.maketrans('','')
      for i in iters:
          '(123)/456-7890'.translate(identity, nondigits)

-   500-       str_join2   flt_lmbda3  traditional   AM_trans
         5 :    0.07         0.05         0.08         0.02
        10 :    0.15         0.11         0.16         0.06
        50 :    0.72         0.57         0.79         0.24

Yours, Lulu...



From def-p at usa.net  Fri Jul 27 07:00:06 2001
From: def-p at usa.net (Def P)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 05:00:06 MDT
Subject: Colors in Windows text mode?
Message-ID: <20010727110006.16686.qmail@nw171.netaddress.usa.net>

Hi,

I was wondering, is it possible to output colored text in Python while in
Windows text/console mode? You could call it "in a DOS box", but I'm talking
about Windows Python, not a DOS version. I vaguely recall that I have seen an
example of this a long time ago, but I haven't been able to find it.

TIA,




From jparlar at home.com  Mon Jul 16 16:27:28 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:27:28 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
Message-ID: <20010716202955.LXMI20827.femail3.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

> > for eachItem in A:
> >     if eachItem in B:
> >         A.remove(eachItem)
> >
> > Now, this will work fine,
> 
> Are you sure about that?  Normally, modifying the list
> you're iterating on does NOT work fine.  Have you tested
> a decent variety of cases?  For example:
> 
> >>> a=['ciao']*7
> >>> for x in a: a.remove(x)
> ....
> >>> a
> ['ciao', 'ciao', 'ciao']
> >>>
> 
> as you see, NOT all seven occurrences of 'ciao' have
> been removed.  Before worrying about speed, I would
> suggest you first make sure your code is CORRECT... I
> think this loop will misbehave if any two successive
> items of A are both in B (only the first one will be
> removed).  Are you sure this can't occur...?

Hmm... That's very interesting. Well, I guess you learn something new every day ;-) I suppose the simple solution (to my 
original code) is to place all non-offending items in a new list, ie. 

>>> for eachItem in a:
... 	if each not in b:
... 		final.append(eachItem)
... 

I've never noticed the list behaviour before that you pointed out, what causes that, if you don't mind my asking?

I also want to take this chance to really thank everyone for the wealth of replies to this topic. That's what I love about this 
list, find an interesting enough question (which I guess this one is) and everyone throws themselves at it.


Jay Parlar

PS. (If this messages shows up on the list a bunch of times, please forgive me, my e-mail client is acting a little strangely)

----------------------------------------------------------------
Software Engineering III
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

"Though there are many paths
At the foot of the mountain
All those who reach the top
See the same moon."






From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 14:22:20 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:22:20 -0700
Subject: integers vs floating point
References: <%OZ67.5005$oH6.475656@news010.worldonline.dk>
Message-ID: <eppstein-69963A.11222023072001@news.service.uci.edu>

The following looks like the perfect example of what happens when you use 
floating point in a situation where exact arithmetic is necessary, in case 
anyone is still unconvinced that integers are not "just a special case of 
floating point":

In comp.graphics.algorithms, "Kenny Erleben" <kenny at diku.dk> wrote:
> I got this little practical problem, I have implemented an incremental
> randomized convex hull algorithm (pretty much like the one described in "de
> Berg", for those familiar with this book).
> 
> The algorithm works nicely for a large range of point sets, however in some
> cases everything just breaks down:-( I get into nasty cases where the
> conflict graph suddenly reports an incorrect number of visible faces and the
> horizon is no longer a simple closed cycle, I have investigated why the
> problem occurs and have concluded that it must be due to numerical
> inaccuracy when determing the visibility of a face. Currently Im using the
> plane equation of a face and the signed distance from it to determine
> visibility.
> 
> Does anybody know a way around these nasty numerical difficulties?
> 
> Oh, perhaps I should mention that plane equations are important for my
> application of the convex hulls (Im using v-clip on convex hierarchies).
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Sun Jul  1 13:38:00 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 20:38:00 +0300
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com> <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <kuels07don.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <5hmujt89383m9n4o044aknd2a0f5d5h0re at 4ax.com>, Mexican
Bandit <eli-wallach at ugly.com> writes:

| I tried using sys.stdout.write() but had the same problem.
| As different browsers give the same corrupted image, it must be my
| webserver (Xitami on Windows 98).

windows has separate "text mode" and "binary mode". text mode
means windows does some translation when you write to a file.
this breaks for binary data. stdout also happens to be in
text mode by default. you need to run python with the -u command
line option to get stdout in binary mode.

  -- erno



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:02:53 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:02:53 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60A6E4.191C05C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <cpitge4ghr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Would it be more logical and consistent to spell it 
> 
>   from __future__ import true_division
> 
> if we are referring to these both as types of division but specifically 
> "classic" and "true" types?  

No, that's just more verbose.  We import the future definition of
division.

> Or maybe the opposite of "classic" should be "modern", spelled 
> "modern_division"?

Future already implies modern.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 03:06:12 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 09:06:12 +0200
Subject: Unexpected behavior with class and instance variables...
References: <B77159A3.390B%trace@reinventnow.com>
Message-ID: <9igtt904gk@enews4.newsguy.com>

"tracy s. ruggles" <trace at reinventnow.com> wrote in message
news:B77159A3.390B%trace at reinventnow.com...
> I'm trying to build a wrapper for any given function and noticed some odd
> behavior with using class variables instead of instance variables.

Yep.  Specifically (3.2 in the Language Reference manual):
"""
User-defined method objects are created in two ways: when getting
an attribute of a class that is a user-defined function object, or
when getting an attribute of a class instance that is a user-defined
function object defined by the class of the instance.
"""

In other words: when you access a class attribute (whether from
the class object, or from an instance of the class) and the
class attribute is a user-defined function, then what you get
is *NOT* a function-object: you get a method-object instead.

No such magic transformation occurs when you access an instance
attribute stricto sensu (one held in the instance's __dict__,
as opposed to one the instance gets from its __class__).  No
such magic transformation occurs for ANY other type of class
attribute EXCEPT "user-defined function-objects".  One common
workaround is thus to wrap a user-defined function into some
other kind of callable.  See for example
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52304
for a bit more discussion.  The key idea there is:

class Callable:
    def __init__(self, anycallable):
        self.__call__ = anycallable

and use Callable(myfunction) rather than the bare myfunction
to set your class attributes.

Alternatively, you can use the im_func attribute of a method
object to get back the underlying function object.


Alex





From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Thu Jul  5 13:23:12 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 19:23:12 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com> <3B448C81.4DAC7DD@wwc.com> <D2017.3540$i8.346893@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k960e.87p.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:54:04 -0400, Steve Holden wrote:
>The DB SIG does list a DB/2 module, but the ftp server it links to doesn't
>allow access. Does anyone actually USE DB/2 with Python?
>
>The DB SIG module list seems a little out of date, and a monthly mail
>archive of over 20KB seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

As an alternative, there's always dmoz.org. The URL is
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Python/Modules/Database/ For
suggestions, you can contact the editor. That's me :-) There's also an
add/update URL link.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Mon Jul 16 14:16:55 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:16:55 -0700
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <mailman.995208150.29511.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B532F97.E7B9EBA5@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:50:57AM -0700, Curtis Jensen wrote:
> > Python 1.5.2
> > Irix 6.5
> 
> > In my code, I have the line:
> > apply( self.ren.Elements, cmd[1], additional_kwds )
> >
> > and I get the error:
> > TypeError: keyword parameter redefined
> >
> >
> > where:
> > cmd[1] = [0, 0, 3, 3, 0.0, [0]]
> >
> > additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements':
> > <cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes':
> > <cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}
> 
> > def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> > elements, *args, **kwds ):
> 
> Note: this function requires 9 arguments, one of which ('self') is passed
> implicitly when called through an instance. However, your error message
> 
> > If I remove the "additional_kwds" from the apply call, then I get:
> > TypeError: not enough arguments; expected 8, got 7
> 
> states otherwise. Conclusion: you're not using the code you say you are
> using :)
> 
> The error you're seeing, "keyword parameter redefined", should not occur
> given your code, and indeed I can't reproduce it. The 'keyword parameter
> redefined' error *does* happen if your 'additional_kwds' dictionary contains
> one of the 6 arguments you already pass in as positional arguments, though.
> 
> >
> > I can't figure out where the seventh argument is comming from. If I try:
> > "cmd[1][6]" I get:
> 
> The seventh argument in the error message is of course the implicit 'self'
> itself.
> 
> > I am unable to repeat this in a simple example, so I am forced to merely
> > describe the problem as best as I can.  The code is too big to post.
> 
> And *that*'s the biggest hint that you haven't described the real problem :)
> If you can't reproduce what you think is the error, it's probably not the
> real error.
> 
> --
> Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>


I mispoke in my statement about the number of arguments.  It was the
"expected 8" arguments that was confusing me.  There should have been 9
as you say.

I am a little worried that the problem lies in one of our C modules.  It
core dumps sometimes.  I fear that it is writting to incorrect memory
address that is affecting Python.  I know that Python code is suppose to
be free of such memory problems, however that doesn't stop C code from
doing this.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 13:12:16 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:12:16 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
        <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
        <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com>
        <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <15200.20336.468419.633362@beluga.mojam.com>

    Martin> My concern is rather with communicating many small requests,
    Martin> rather than few large ones; in my experience, small requests is
    Martin> the common case. Here, the overhead of an XML parser, plus the
    Martin> navigation through the XML document, cost way more than the
    Martin> CORBA marshalling/unmarshalling. Also, CORBA tends to produce
    Martin> smaller requests on the wire to represent the same data, to a
    Martin> degree that not even compression of a SOAP request helps.

Yes, that can be a problem.  With SOAP you can mitigate some of it (I think)
by using HTTP 1.1 and saving the cost of making and breaking repeated
connections in some instances.  There's not much to be done to get around
the XML parsing cost except try and find faster XML parsers.  I use XML-RPC
w/sgmlop.  In my application domain XML parsing is the least of my
performance worries. ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 13:41:56 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:41:56 -0400
Subject: SQL-SELECT against View via ODBC?
References: <e2491a75.0106251209.c19d5e@posting.google.com> <2l%Z6.22470$g4.740189@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <e2491a75.0107020921.3a773de2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <gk207.15697$Lk6.1096672@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"""The eGenix.com Commercial License is covers commercial eGenix.com
software, notably the mxODBC package. Only private and non-commercial use is
free of charge. Usage of the software in commercial settings such as for
implementing in-house applications in/for companies or consulting work where
the software is used as tool requires a "Proof of Authorization" which can
be bought from eGenix.com. """

It's fairly clear that using it in-house requires a license.

"""Pricing is USD 75.00 for a 1-CPU license, USD 700.00 for the 10-CPU
license and USD 6,500.00 for the 100-CPU license. We also offer a site and
corporate licenses; please write to sales at egenix.com for quotes on these."""

But it isn't outrageous for a single CPU. Personally I'd like to see the
pricing scale down a little faster for quantities, but since I'm not (yet)
making commercial use of the software this isn't an issue.

Also note that you can use the product in a commercial environemnt for 30
days, for evaluation purposes, after which continued use requires a license.

Finally, note that I am not connected with eGenix, nor M-A Lemburg, and just
took this stuff from the appropriate web site pages.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Bill Seitz" <fluxent at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e2491a75.0107020921.3a773de2 at posting.google.com...
> I established that the "cause" of the problem is that one of the
> tables in my view has a Text field. It's the last field in the base
> table, so those queries always worked fine. When I built the view, it
> was no longer the last field, so the error reared it's ugly head.
>
> Does anyone know whether mxODBC has this bug? The person who led me on
> this discovery thought so, but wasn't too sure...
>
> Also, I'm not clear on what qualifies as "commercial" use triggering
> the non-free status of mxODBC? Is it limited to using the API within a
> product for sale, or does any internal use by a corporate trigger it?
>
> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:<2l%Z6.22470$g4.740189 at e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>...
> > The generic odbc driver (I presume you mean the one from the Windows
> > extensions) is known to be in need of maitnenance, and I understand from
a
> > recent posting that Mark Hammond expects to release a slightly updated
copy
> > (may even have done so by now).




From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 18 19:41:25 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:41:25 -0400
Subject: thread.allocate_lock
In-Reply-To: <995497030.436.1063157166@cs.usyd.edu.au>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEGEKPAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Piers Lauder]
> I'm having problems with threading.

Which OS, which version of Python, which platform-specific flavor of
threads?

> My program occasionally gets errors of the form:
>
> 	Unhandled exception in thread:
> 	Traceback (innermost last):
> 	  File
> "/var/tmp/python-root/usr/lib/python1.5/threading.py", line 392,
> in __bootstrap
> 	  File
> "/var/tmp/python-root/usr/lib/python1.5/threading.py", line 401,
> in __delete
> 	AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'acquire'
>
> ...
> So the only way I can see that it could become None, is if
> allocate_lock() can return None.
>
> Is this possible (without an exception perhaps) eg: when OS resources
> are exhausted?

It should not be possible, no.  If you see these errors when your program is
shutting down (do you?  there's really no info here!), it's possible that
threading.py is in the middle of deconstructing itself and caught in an exit
race.

> If so, line 20 needs a small change.
>
> Anyone else seen this problem before?

I heard of it once before, in an involved app incl. custom C extensions and
some windowing system.  Never resolved.

> PS: I've checked the 2.1 source, and it doesn't appear materially
> different when handling  _active_limbo_lock.

Every release *some* subtle thread races get fixed.  2.1 in particular did
stop some termination races.  Try 2.1.  If it still doesn't go away, whittle
it down to a minimal failing program, if you can.




From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 10 02:25:52 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 09:25:52 +0300
Subject: Newbie asks: How to translate this line of C to Py
References: <tkl15g5on0mla8@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <yoxu20l2tcf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

"Steve S.L. Wong" <steve at hkit.net> writes:

> while (command = strtok(line_ptr,";"),line_ptr=0,command) {
> }

As an aside, I would advise you to stay away from C strtok(), which is
severely broken (uses static space).

In python, look up string.split for strtok-ish functionality.



-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From thomas at gatsoft.no  Thu Jul 26 05:05:17 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:05:17 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <h3R77.130$bXi.170753536@news.telia.no>

>From the responses to my question it seems like SOAP and XML-RPC might not
fit the bill at all. Corba and similar solutions are mentioned. But my
project is a pure python package. Wanting to implement a small distributed
information sharing network, with very small and simple user-nodes cannot
include a Corba-server installation on each of the clients, unless it's
implemented in pure python and small in size. Is that possible/available?

What are my options? How hard could it be to create a custom protocoll for
distributing addresses of running nodes among the nodes themselves in a
effective manner?

Thomas




From charlie at charliedyson.net  Fri Jul  6 16:09:33 2001
From: charlie at charliedyson.net (Charlie Dyson)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:09:33 +0000
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net> <mailman.994049882.30354.python-list@python.org> <3%U%6.114072$lq1.30289756@typhoon.austin.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9i52cd$816$1@s1.uklinux.net>

alan runyan - runyaga at thisbox.com wrote on Monday 02 July 2001 07:01:

>> What exactly is "good database support?"  I haven't had a problem.
> 
> I think this is mostly due to the lack of centralization of python
> software
> (ala CPAN).  I believe there are stable python modules to access pretty
> much
> any database: oracle, odbc, sybase, bsdb (sleepycat),  solid, postgresql,
> etc...  I thought python's database support was weak, but when i needed it
> it always came through.
> 
>> I'm not a Zope user myself, but from what I've read about both PHP
>> and Zope, it appears they are pretty much even in capability (hopefully
>> an expert on the subject will comment here).
> 
> I'm far from an expert, but.. I do have an opinion.  From what I've seen
> in
> PHPland, ZOPE compares pretty much feature-for-feature and then some!. 
> ZOPE
> is a larger more comprehensive framework than any PHP 'framework'  that
> exists (including eGrail or phpGroupware).  Remember: PHP is a web
> programming language.  Python is a general purpose language.  ZOPE is a
> python framework.  IMHO, Zope has suffered popularity because it refuses
> to
> embed python (code) into the presentation layer (unlike PHP).  Also ZOPE
> is
> 100% object-oriented.  PHP isnt OO and reusibility is garnished from lots
> of
> #includes (where as ZOPE has access to Pythons lib and ZOPE accessories
> #and
> there is hooks into using Perl from ZOPE also.. so you get Perl's DB
> support
> as well).  PHP is faster, but it doesnt stack up in reusability, speed of
> development, or flexibility (Python as you mentioned, we all consider to
> be
> the best language on the net ;) in language design.  also, the ZODB is
> being wheened off of ZOPE dependency and is starting to show signs of
> Standalone
> distribution.  this is a __HUGE__ win for Python -- a trivially easy to
> use object database.
> 
>> > Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly
>> the
>> > best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
>> > largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation
>> (web,
>> > or otherwise).
> 
> uhm. I completely disagree.
> 
> information presentation I believe is fully covered by Python, nothing
> (that I know of) comes close to the bredth of GUI support in Python: QT,
> GDK, wxPython, TkInter, ?FOX?, and there are others! oh including Swing
> via
> Jython.  On the web scene there is healthy competition: WebWare (which is
> modelled after Java's Servlet design), ZOPE (which is a highly evolved
> framework that comes with a transactional object database), Quixote and
> quite a few others.  HTMLGen.  I believe mod_snake (?) is being kept up.
> There is a hook into the Ars Digita system via Python.  I believe you can
> present information using python in a myriad of ways -- its your choice ;)
> 
> ~runyaga
> 
> 
> 

I have never used Zope, but I have opinions on everything, so here goes. I 
have used PHP, an liked it. I think that PHP is *very* strong when dealing 
with database-interaction, whilst Zope is better targeted at maintaining 
large content websites. I personally would *really* like to see some way of 
using both. If I ever develop a large database driven website, here's how I 
would do it (yes, lots of people could do this better than me):

Have PHP to deal with the actual database part of the website

Have everything else - Homepage, help, about us, anything else the site 
does powered by Zope, because of it's excellent content-managing systems 
(which I do not understand...)

Anyway, I hear that there is some sort of Zope-like thing for PHP. I love 
PHP and Python, and so it's difficult to choose which to use. Let's face 
it, if anyone ever creates a one-size-fits-all web programming/site 
maintaining/database interfacing/dinner making programming language/content 
system, it'll either be so spread out, huge and bloated that it will be 
impossible to use, or only very badly do everything it does. It's better to 
have sharp, closely defined tools that can do one or two things well, and 
other things less well. That is why we have so many programming languages.

Hope I haven't bored you all,

Charlie Dyson - charlie at charliedyson.net

(I've only just started contributing to this group)



From web2ed at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 15:09:23 2001
From: web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 12:09:23 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>	<458b194a.0107050711.72007607@posting.google.com>	<TH%07.3499$i8.339613@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107060959.6bd34b3f@posting.google.com>	<7sn17.7740$i8.679052@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>	<458b194a.0107071317.508ef7e4@posting.google.com> <mailman.994599260.9137.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5174eed0.0107091109.d3a53f6@posting.google.com>

Languages never die; they just fall out of use when they loose touch
with the contemporary.  Python will become more or less mainstream
(live or die) on it's own merits.

A scripting language should be good at scripting.  From my
observation, Python appears to be headed in more of an acedemic
direction rather than that of mainstream commerce.  Acedemics are
good, it's where technology comes from.  Unfortunately, I still
haven't found a way to make money using Python.  If I can't make money
with Python, then Python is dead to me.  I would imagine my voice
represents a small crowd of developers, who wish they too could make
money with and contribute to Python on a daily basis (on company
time).

If this is so, Python won't bennefit from the best developers, the
developers who code for a living.  From what I can tell, PHP and Ruby
are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that I see
in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
adoration for pure acedemic elegance.

Beauty is only beauty if one can experience it.  I can't experience
Python on a day to day basis (in the workplace), so therefore I can't
appreciate it.

As far as ODBC--ODBC is too slow for what I do.  I'm using Oracle
Pro/C.  Most serious developers would agree that ODBC is slow. 
Wheather Java decides to use (cheat with) ODBC or not is Java's
problem.  Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind. 
If it weren't, it would be the perfect language--if that were
possible.

Yes, native drivers for all db vendors.  This is why I mentioned (in
an earlier post) that this should be a community effort.  Python could
break the door down if it paid more attention to the needs of the
commond professional.  Satellite controlers are great too, but
Priorities have meaining in a time of war.
 
--
ed


Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994599260.9137.python-list at python.org>...
> Resty> By the way, someone should rename this thread "Is Python Dead?
>     Resty> Long Live Python!" ...
> 
> Couldn't you have done that? ;-)
> 
> S


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul  1 01:31:06 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 09:31:06 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: [Tutor] commenting code well
In-Reply-To: <NFBBKIELCLIEEMGGIGKDOEJFCAAA.rob@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107010930370.17334-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Rob Andrews wrote:

>My code comments are often weak, if existent. What is good practice for
>commenting code?

Probably this could help:
http://www.python.org/doc/essays/styleguide.html

>Rob

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 01, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "DEVICE=EXXON.SYS may mess up your environment" _/




From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul 17 10:07:44 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:07:44 -0500
Subject: python vs kung fu
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5258@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Kung Fu! Karate! Jujitsu. Aikido.   
Python.  Perl.  Java.  PHP.
Now I wouldn't want to get into a fight with anyone who is a black belt from
the major four martial arts.  But given a preference, I would choose Aikido,
since it redirects the attackers force.  
But some people like debates that lead nowhere, and language debates are a
key example.  Now smart software developers actually appeal to all the major
camps.  Let's look at the open source database sapdb at www.sapdb.org.  They
actually have developed interfaces for Java, Perl, and Python.  Rather then
saying one language is better, they opened the spectrum to what they feel
are the major players.  And activestate at www.activestate.com has developed
tools and language versions for Perl, Python, and TCL.  
Language debates remind me of the old joke about life in Communist Russia.
A supervisor saw a worker digging a hole, and another filling it up.  After
this happened with a dozen holes, he went over and asked what was going on.
They replied that the one worker who plants the trees is sick, but they
still wanted to be productive for the day.

-----Original Message-----
From: neil at qualica.com [mailto:neil at qualica.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 8:22 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: python vs kung fu


It seems that, just like in chinese kung fu circles, lots of people
are trying to justify their style (python in this case) to themselves,
myself included. why ?, all styles can be equally effective , it
depends on how you use them !

good programming comes from experience and the ability to develop in a
smart way , not from what language you choose to use ! and we all
really like python or else we wouldnt feel so passionately about it .
so rather than get into endless arguments with java guys or perl guys
about the virtues of python , lets just try to beat them at their own
game !

jython , zope , .net etc these projects are what i mean ! if we can
keep building stuff like this pretty soon people will respect python
development and what clever programmers do with it as opposed to some
oo scripting language.



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 18:18:43 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:18:43 +0100
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <n0r2mto4fv52lhqh4i2u8dl9ja44ad3uog@4ax.com> <9js9he$1irm$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <sug3mts8nvos7stvjb2cit7s9ltpnbjut6@4ax.com>

On 27 Jul 2001 17:48:30 GMT, Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:

>I'm going to bottom quote the rest because it's so long and my comment
>is so brief and tangential - I see you have some interesting ideas about
>numbers, and I'm ignoring them!  Have you ever played around with a
>language that's typed the way functional languages seem to all do it?
>I have been looking at OCaml.  It's quite rigid about types, but you
>don't have to specify them all the time like you would in C - or like
>you're proposing to do with "assume".  Instead it only insists that it
>be able to follow the data around through the program logic, on the
>assumption that will lead to a context where the type can be inferred,
>from a literal or an output specifier or a type-limited operation.
>I can't say OCaml does it right, for all I know you could get all the
>real mileage out of the idea in a less cumbersome way if you didn't
>have the provability baggage that the FPL world carries, but anyway
>type inference has been around for a while and I guess may be "well
>understood".  At least better understood than I understand it!
>(Say, anyone heard from Max Skaller?)

I've used a number of functional languages, but not really for
anything more than newbie exercises. Many of the principles are IMO
highly beneficial, but I miss my imperative stuff when too much when
it is taken away ;-)

To be honest, the only time I took a functional language seriously to
any real degree it was Miranda - and that was about 8 years ago now.
It was a required part of the college course I took. The syntax
annoyed me a little (like (I assume) most people I find expressions in
infix notation most natural, though I have used postfix in Forth and,
as I say, prefix in Miranda) but what really annoyed me was that we
stopped short of what I though of as the meat of the language - coping
with the apparent need for 'state' in a state-free language.

But the point is, I don't really recall how numbers were handled or
what kind of typing schemes were used. And I haven't used OCaml, or ML
or any derivative to my knowledge. I kind of assumed they weren't much
different to Python dynamic types, but it seems like I was wrong.

Anyway, type inference doesn't sound quite like what I want. I don't
want the language to assume, just because I wrote 0.1, that that is an
approximate float value. As much as possible, I don't want the
language second guessing the programmer. I think the programmer should
be explicit about types - it's just that in a very high level
language, that shouldn't necessarily mean being explicit about the
representation.

The trouble is, I'm not quite sure what is a logical way for the types
to interelate.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to ramble a bit...



ATM, I see types in a heirarchy similar to...

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Types                      Representations
-----                      ---------------

anything                   *
- number                   { int, longint, rational, fixed() }
  - integer                { int, longint }
  - fast integer           { int }
  - real                   { int, longint, rational, fixed() }
    - approx real          { int, longint, rational, fixed(), float }
- string                   { ASCII, ANSI????, UTF16 }
  - 8bit string            { ASCII, ANSI???? }
- list
- dictionary
- ...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Integer should specifically mean C-like-integer (ie not a
specialisation of real or approx real) and should therefore allow
bitwise operations and such not supported for other numeric types.

Fast integer is not a specialisation of integer because it's operators
would be allowed to overflow or underflow without raising an
exception, thus the same operation on the same arguments might give a
different result, thus it is different in ways other than reducing the
legal set of values and increasing the legal set of operations.
Changing the behaviour of existing operations based on specialisation
of the type should be illegal.

Approximate reals are a specialisation of reals so that exact results
can be implicitly specialised into approximate ones when used in
inherently approximate calculations, but approximate results are never
implicitly converted to the general (assumed exact) real type. That
said, there are issues with allowing new representations in
specialisations, so I'm thinking hard. Maybe floats should be allowed
as a representation for real, number etc, but the operations on those
types should just ban using (approximate) float arithmetic, convering
to rational or whatever the need arises.

Typing of arguments to functions would be static, but the 'anything'
type would always be the default if nothing else was specified.
Therefore...

  def Sum (a, b) :
    return a + b

...would do what Python does now, but...

  def Sum (number a, number b) number :
    return a + b

...would refuse to work as an append for lists or strings, and...

  def Sum (integer a, integer b) integer :
    return a + b

...would only be allowed to work on integers, and...

  def Sum (fast_integer a, fast_integer b) fast_integer :
    return a + b

...should be significantly faster - the price being less insulation
from the limitations of C integer arithmetic.

Supporting this kind of logic efficiently could be difficult, though.
Basically, I suspect that whereas the Python interpreter probably uses
a single C type to represent any value (with a datatype specifier
field, a union for the specific type, etc - I haven't checked yet
though) this would probably mean having several such C types - the
particular one to use being chosen by the bytecode compiler based on
context (explicitly declared argument and literal types, and
typecasts). General types would still need to support more specialised
types being attached to particular values, though - eg a function with
real parameters would need to know about approx_real arguments in
order to handle float representations, and determining the type of
global variables would be impractical.

Hmmm...

Time to sleep on it a bit...



From bkc at Murkworks.com  Sun Jul 29 17:13:31 2001
From: bkc at Murkworks.com (Brad Clements)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 17:13:31 -0400
Subject: Python 2.1 distutils swig_cpp and binary installation target dir question
Message-ID: <3b647cb1_7@news.newsgroups.com>

Question 1. Is there any way to specify swig_cpp in the setup.py file? I
couldn't figure it out

Question 2. I created a binary self-extracting windows package.. It installs
to <pythonDir>, where I expect it to install to
<pythonDir/Lib/site-packages> or <pythonDir/Lib>

Is this the correct behavoir, or did I do something wrong?

--
Brad Clements, DevNet Sysop 5
Developer Network Sysop Team






-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From dedalus at yifan.net  Wed Jul 25 13:23:18 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:23:18 GMT
Subject: importing modules
Message-ID: <3b5eff6a.97328527@news.libero.it>

I downloaded python.zip (the dos version).

When I run python.exe, I can already read the following error
messages: 

"import exceptions failed"

and

"import site failed".

Similar messages I get when trying to import other modules.

What is missing ?

Thank you

Duilio Foschi



From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Sun Jul  8 10:49:58 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 14:49:58 GMT
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
References: <mailman.994355168.2401.python-list@python.org> <9i2jv703cm@enews2.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kgsj4.csq.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> "Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters" <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994355168.2401.python-list at python.org...
>     ...
> >   filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')
> >
> > Thirteen characters shorter than Emile's, and still no [re] :-).
> >
> > Personally, I even find it easier to read.  YMMV.
> 
> filter(string.isdigit, '(123)/456-7890')
> 
> is six fewer characters and IMHO more readable still.

That version would certainly be best, if string had a isdigit function.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 07:09:08 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:09:08 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING
In-Reply-To: <20010718104929.85347.qmail@web11307.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181508430.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, noverius pinem wrote:

> How we do "WINDOWS PROGRAMMING" with Python?
> - making the windows
> - create the controls
> - etc
> - etc
> - etc
> HELP...
> Please.

Many ways:

http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/python_GUI.html


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 14:40:10 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 19:40:10 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <E15ONUT-0003eX-00@darjeeling>
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
 <E15ONUT-0003eX-00@darjeeling>
Message-ID: <tlp6OWAK4xW7Ewyz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In message <E15ONUT-0003eX-00 at darjeeling>, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> writes
>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>[about //]
>> it just looks awful as well as annoying those who don't want this
>> change.
>
>Any solution would have annoyed the other side, and one solution
>had to be taken.
>And no, "inertia" isn't an excuse. Python cannot be ruled by inertia,
>just as it cannot arbitrarily break backwards compat. 
>
this is not backwards compatible. Logically the existing '/' behaviour
should be preserved. New behaviour requires the new operator. That would
be compatible. I agree with those that want python to be a good and
concise language. If American school kids believe 1+1=3 should that go
into python?
-- 
Robin Becker



From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 06:47:08 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:47:08 +0100 
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE11@intrepid>

> From:	Nicola Musatti [SMTP:objectway at divalsim.it]
> I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
> language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
> toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
> lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
> C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?
 
Hmmm. I thought K&R *was* a tutorial.

Anyway, there are two books which nearly fit the bill. The first is Mark
Lutz's 'Python Pocket Reference' (O'Reilly). This is *very* similar in style
and content to the on-line quick reference (see
<http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/python/PQR.html>). It covers Python
1.5.1 - I don't know if a 2.1 version is planned.

The other is David Beazley's 'Python Essential Reference' (New Riders). This
is rather larger, and covers both the core language and most of the Standard
Library. The 2nd edition was published recently, and covers Python 2.1. To
me, this really *is* essential. YYMV.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From missive at frontiernet.net  Sun Jul  8 10:45:43 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 14:45:43 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
Message-ID: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

Hi:

I am trying to learn how to use External Methods by going through
the PIL example from the Zope Book. As a first test, I loaded up
a directory full of photos (jpegs) to make thumbnails of. 
Each image is about 400K.

The makeThumbnail method works fine except when I try it on one
of these images. I am wondering if they are too large...

Here is the error message I get:

Error Type: TypeError
Error Value: expected string, ImplicitAcquirerWrapper found


And the traceback:

Traceback (innermost last):
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 223, \
in publish_module
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 187, in publish
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/Zope/__init__.py, line 221, in \
zpublisher_exception_hook
(Object: Traversable)
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 171, in publish
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/ZPublisher/mapply.py, line 160, in mapply
(Object: makeThumbnail)
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/ZPublisher/Publish.py, line 112, in \
call_object
(Object: makeThumbnail)
File /usr/local/www/Zope/lib/python/Products/ExternalMethod/ExternalMethod.py, \
line 262, in __call__
(Object: makeThumbnail)
(Info: ((<Folder instance at 88ecf80>, 'onea', 128), {}, (128,)))
File /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py, line 18, in makeThumbnail
(Object: Traversable)
TypeError: (see above)


Any wisdom?



From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Wed Jul 25 17:40:08 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 14:40:08 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com>

Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B5F0867.7447E5FB at ccvcorp.com>...
> Tom Good wrote:
> 
> > "Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote in message
>  
> >
> > > How about generators, who's tried them out?
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > I like generators a lot.  Here's a fun one:
> >
> > #------ begin code
> > [snip]
> > if __name__ == "__main__":
> >     g = fib()
> >     for i in range(9):
> >         print g.next(),
> >
> > #------ end code
> 
> Haven't looked into this in detail, or even downloaded 2.2 yet, but...
> 
> couldn't that be written as:
> 
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     for i in fib():
>         print i,
> 
> ???
> 
> (being under the impression that the main point of iterators is convenient for-loop usage...)
> 
> Jeff Shannon
> Technician/Programmer
> Credit International

The problem with using "for i in fib():" is that fib() will generate
an infinite set!  Infinite sets are fun to work with, but somewhat
problematic to output :-)

The example uses "for i in range(9):" instead, in order to generate
and show only the first few Fibonacci numbers.

Which reminds me, when working with unbounded generators, you can wrap
them with another generator to restrict their output, with something
like this:

#------ begin code

def genWhile(g, condition):
    """
    run generator g while 'condition' is true.
    Condition is a partial expression string such as "< 10"
    to be evaluated with g.next() as the left side
    """
    while 1:
        next = g.next()
        if eval("next " + condition):
            yield next
        else:
            raise StopIteration

#------ end code

Then you can say, for example:

>>> g = fib()
>>> [x for x in genWhile(g, "< 50")]

[1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]

...to get the Fibonacci numbers that are less than 50.



Tom


From nraja at zeomega.com  Wed Jul 11 03:43:38 2001
From: nraja at zeomega.com (NallaRaja)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:13:38 +0530
Subject: unsubscribe.
Message-ID: <NFBBKIIFLMEDFNNPHNLCAEAMCAAA.nraja@zeomega.com>




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 07:10:12 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 11:10:12 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[Bernhard]
> What I've noticed is that I believe that the majority of people
> contributing to the decisions are not the average python programmer
> and therefore more likely to be in favour of things which might
> be unnecessary for the average user. I thought this was valuable to
> share so you can keep it in mind.

Well duh!

If we left the design of programming languages to the *average*
programmer, the field would never make progress.  Please give us
language designers some credit.  We're programmers and we know what
programmers need!

This whole thread has disappointed me.

> Apard from that I am grateful to the whole python development team
> and the community for its good work.

Thanks.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sheila at spamcop.net  Sun Jul 22 14:36:07 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:36:07 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 10:55:10 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article <3B5B137E.3606B75D at alcyone.com>:

:Sheila King wrote:
:
:> Thanks, Brian, but I've seen the docs many times. I need more info
:> than that. Like example code, or source code.
:
:The library reference quoted states pretty clearly:
:
:	The root class for exceptions. All built-in exceptions are
:	derived from this class. All user-defined exceptions should
:	also be derived from this class, but this is not (yet) enforced. 
:	The str() function, when applied to an instance of this
:	class (or most derived classes) returns the string value of the
:	argument or arguments, or an empty string if no
:	arguments were given to the constructor. When used as a
:	sequence, this accesses the arguments given to the
:	constructor (handy for backward compatibility with old code). 
:	The arguments are also available on the instance's args
:	attribute, as a tuple.
:
:This gives you a pretty effective specification for what a class derived
:from exceptions.Exception should do; it should return something
:meaningful in its __str__ method, support __len__ and __getitem__ for
:indexing, and have an `args' attribute that contains the arguments it
:was instantiated with as a tuple.
:
:The Exception class itself does this.  If all you want is a different
:_type_ of exception that you can key off of, then deriving from the
:class and doing nothing with it (using `pass' as you did in your
:example) is perfectly satisfactory.  If you want to do more, then you
:can add extra methods as you need that use the value gained through
:calling `str' or the `args' attribute.
:
:What more did you need to know?

I'm trying to see the "big picture". I'm a "big picture" kind of gal. I
don't feel comfortable working with just bits and pieces...just enough
information (in the information-giver's opinion) for me to get by.

If I want to really understand subclassing Exceptions, and whether or
not I would ever want to override any of the standard exception classes
methods or such, then I need to understand how those exceptions work.

Like I said, I've been working (a bit) so far with subclassing
rfc822.py, and for me, I needed to read the source code of that module
and see how it worked. Then *bing* a light went off in my head, I
understood, and I could proceed.

Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Should I be satisfied
with the docs only?

Someone else gave me a good suggestion on the Tutor List, that if I was
really interested in how the Exception class works, I should grab the
source for Python 1.5.2, before the exception class code was written in
C. I might do that, but this discussion (and another on the Tutor List)
has helped immensely, and I may be fine from here.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/




From david at boddie.net  Mon Jul 30 13:14:50 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 10:14:50 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com> <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107281021.468246a7@posting.google.com> <3B638FA8.8D24A152@engcorp.com> <18289ee4.0107291329.6d082ccf@posting.google.com> <AY097.50244$EP6.11071787@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107300914.1f29b38b@posting.google.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message news:<AY097.50244$EP6.11071787 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>...
> "David Boddie" <david at boddie.net> wrote in message
> news:18289ee4.0107291329.6d082ccf at posting.google.com...
> 
> > > And would the same benefit arise by having the default name
> > > of the executable be "python3", but not forcing it to be so?
> >
> > I would imagine that renaming your new "python3" interpreter to
> > "python" would wipe out any advantage that the above plan gives you.
> 
> The only way to force a name for the executable is to check argv[0]
> and die if it does not end 'python3' (after being lowercased).  I
> personally would find that kind of obnoxious.

I was thinking more of the line which specifies the executable when
scripting on flavours of Unix.


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 21 04:29:33 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:29:33 +1000
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org> <3B58D257.E0982C2@student.gu.edu.au> <9jb5l1$jp3$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B593D6D.7B02F8C2@student.gu.edu.au>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> In article <3B58D257.E0982C2 at student.gu.edu.au>,
> Joal Heagney  <s713221 at student.gu.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> >Now as a bug release, is there any need for me to rebuild and reinstall
> >third-party modules built on 2.1?
> 
> If 2.1.1 follows the dictates of PEP 6 (which I wrote but have
> insufficient competence to verify compliance), the answer to your
> question is a definite "No!"  I've got a fair amount of trust in Thomas
> Wouters (2.1.1 Release Czar), though, so it's a pretty good bet you're
> safe.
> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)
> 
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
> Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
> 
> Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.

Oh thank god. I've managed to get the major ones as src.rpm's so it's
not a major effort, but it does take time.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From draayer at surfglobal.net  Tue Jul 31 17:20:44 2001
From: draayer at surfglobal.net (Dean & Yang Draayer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:20:44 -0400
Subject: os.path.commonprefix inadequacies
Message-ID: <E15RgvB-0001jn-00@mail.python.org>

The os.path.commonprefix function at first glance seems like a useful
function: to find a common ancestor of a bunch of paths. However, it is
inadequate on several counts, most notably that it simply doesn't work 
-
at least not in the way one would expect (or blithely assume!). Some
observations, in increasing order of importance:

(1) The implementation is needlessly inefficient.

(2) It's really an operation on STRINGS, not paths. This functionality
belongs in the string module (if anywhere), not in os.path.

(3) Actually, it almost works for any 'sequence of sequences' - which
would be useful - and could easily be generalized in this direction. 
The
only reason it's string-specific is in the returning of ''. The only
difficulty in generalizing is deciding what to return instead.

(4) THE MOST IMPORTANT SHORTCOMING: this function really has nothing to
do with finding a common ancestor in a file/directory heirarchy - see
(2) above. Too bad, since that's what one would expect it to do, and
it's functionality one would certainly like to have available. Alas, it
does NOT behave as described in its docstring - very misleading.


I would like to see this addressed. Here's my two cents:

(1) Modify the existing os.path.commonprefix, and deprecate its use (at
least for finding common ancestors). Perhaps the following definition:

    def commonprefix(L, empty=''):
        if not L:
            return empty
        m = min(map(len, L))
        if m == 0:
            return empty
        L0 = L[0]
        for i in xrange(1, len(L)):
            for j in xrange(m):
                if L[i][j] != L0[j]:
                    m = j
                    if m == 0:
                        return empty
                    break
        return L0[:m]

The extra argument allows it to work on any sequence of sequence-like
items - e.g. see (2) below. The default value '' should maintain
backward compatibility.


(2) Define an os.path.commonpath that behaves as desired. It would have
to split apart the paths completely and look for common initial runs of
individual path components. Maybe like;

    def commonpath(thePaths):
        # thePaths is a list of paths (strings)
        thePaths = map(lambda p: p.split(os.sep), thePaths)
        parent = commonprefix(thePaths, [])
        parent = os.sep.join(parent)
        return parent

Note: (a) This assumes that the paths are either all absolute or all
relative - the user is responsible for ensuring this. (b) It probably
needs to be modified to handle the drive portion correctly.


(3) Perhaps even more convenient would be a function that returns not
just the common path prefix but also a list of the paths converted to
relative paths - relative to this common path. For example:

    def splitcommonpath(thePaths):
        # thePaths is a list of paths (strings)
        thePaths = map(lambda p: p.split(os.sep), thePaths)
        # chop common part off the paths
        theBase = commonprefix(thePaths, [])
        thePaths = map(lambda p, c=len(theBase): p[c:], thePaths)
        # convert back to strings
        theBase = os.sep.join(theBase)
        thePaths = map(os.sep.join, thePaths)
        return (theBase, thePaths)


Well, that outlines what I would like to see.  Anyone with thoughts or
suggestions on this matter?


Dean Draayer




From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 19:27:50 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:27:50 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHEEGPCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Paul Prescod]
> This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
> "regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a
> dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and
> those on dynamically typed languages.

Excellent point, Paul!  The newbies get dumped on because they're the only
ones impudent enough to complain about it -- Guido hasn't crushed their
spirits yet <wink>.

> The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, JavaScript,
> ...) all make a different choice for division and the choice is
> uncontroversial. Python is the only one of the languages that has a
> constant battle on the issue.

It suggests Python may want to leap to what Perl eventually added:  a
directive akin to Perl's "use integer;".  In Python's case I really don't
see any other way to prevent large scale code breakage as the years roll by.




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul  9 14:42:39 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 18:42:39 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org> <9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu> <yAm27.8553$Y6.2987762@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kjuov.nlq.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:19:10 GMT, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> pisze:

> I thought the desire was/is to have an operator which just preserved int /
> int -> int.  But I have never seen it specified whether float div whatever
> would be an error or have the current meaning (in which case confirmation
> would not be necessary).

I would prefer it to mean integer division of fractional numbers, e.g.
    1.3 div 0.3 == 4
    1.3 mod 0.3 == 0.1

The question whether div should return int or long (or even fractional
with integral value) becomes irrelevant when ints and longs are unified
(even if "unified" means that operations on ints return longs instead
of raising overflow, keeping types distinct).

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From asencio at linus.mitre.org  Thu Jul 12 17:46:01 2001
From: asencio at linus.mitre.org (Angel Asencio)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 21:46:01 GMT
Subject: Inheritance Queries
Message-ID: <9il5qp$iba$1@top.mitre.org>

Is there a package to get information about the inheritance of
a class/instance?

Methods or functions to answer questions like:

Which are your decendants?
Which are your ancestors?
Who are your immediate decendants?
Who are your immediate ancestors?
etc.

Thanks,


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Angel Asencio          |The MITRE corp.       | My opinions are    |
| Senior Technical Staff |M.S K302              | mine, only mine,   |
| asencio at linus.mitre.org|202 Burlington Road   | and nobody else... |
| asencio at ccs.neu.edu    |Bedford, MA 01730     |                    | 
| Pho. 781-271-2876      |Fax. 781-271-2352     |		     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Working Iteratively: a little analysis, a little design,           |
|                      a little implementation, and round again.     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 18:59:13 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:59:13 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
 <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
 <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com>
 <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
 <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu>
 <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <ku6I8WABxKX7Ewri@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

...
this argument is not being carried out in a language sensitive way. The
true cost is the one which benefits the MDFL best.

IE teach American morons to use calculators good, everything else, bad.


Any other arguments are spurious.
-- 
Robin Becker


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Thu Jul  5 14:08:31 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:08:31 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
Message-ID: <OFBA7A237A.6215FECB-ON88256A80.0062BAB1@i2.com>

Having built and managed programming organizations comprising hundreds of
software engineers, I completely agree with Alex's observations below.
In fact, I await the day when Leigh Steinberg takes on his first programmer
as a client!

(Or will it be the William Morris Agency?  :-)

Jim




"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:9htgsb$ck3 at news1.gtech.com...
    ...
> There are studies that indicate that productivity in strongly typed
> languages is higher (2:1 in one study I read - unfortunately, they are
> "thin" on the ground because you need two identical ability teams doing
the
> same application in two different languages to get meaningful
comparisions -
> but it has been done and that was the result) than loosely typed
languages.

I'll appreciate some URL's, thanks.  In exchange, please look at
Lutz Prechelt et al's 1999 "phonecode" study -- e.g. at
http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/documents/jccpp_tr.pdf.

80 implementations of the same specs, some in "scripting languages"
(Perl, Python, Tcl, Rexx), some in "system languages" (Java, C,
C++).  As it happens, Python was the only language for which NONE
of the submitted programs was 'unusable' (11 of the original 91
were not further evaluated, being completely unusable).  Overall
results (my biased summary): programmer productivity is highest
(by far) in Perl or Python (no statistically significant
differences between Perl and Python).  Program performance is
highest in C and C++, followed by Perl and Python, followed
by Java, with Tcl and Rexx far slower yet.  Many of Prechelt's
conclusions are invalidated by grouping Tcl and Rexx together
with Perl and Python, but fortunately he also supplies raw data
so you can redo the analysis.


> Agreed, but one of my original points was about programmer ability. A

The difference between the best and worst programmers in any single
given language is far larger than any difference among languages,
as evidenced in Prechelt's study -- in both productivity, and in
correctness and performance of the resulting programs.  E.g.,
the fastest Python and Perl programs are *HUNDREDS* of times
faster than the slowest C and C++ ones, incredible as that may
seem for what was a rather simple overall task.

> successful. There is no one single factor that anyone can point to and
say
> "if you do that or use this" then you will be successful in your

Oh yes there is -- have only the BEST programmers.  How to insure
THAT is left as an exercise for the reader:-).

> Unfortunately, language choice is a very sensitive issue, and generally
> doesn't come down to any rational factors - a lot of times it is "because
I
> like it" or "this is the newest, popular language, if I learn that one
then
> I can enhance my employment prospects" :-).

The latter is a perfectly-rational factor.  If you want to swing
programmers' motivations towards "doing the best we possibly can
on THIS one product", you have to make that compatible with their
overall motivation of "have an interesting and financially rewarding
career".  Stock options, cash prizes for specific targets, whatever.
Non-financial forms of recognition can also be very important...!

If you want/need to treat your programmers as interchangeable parts,
don't be surprised if they treat your project as just one short step
within a long career.  My impression is that most development shops
underestimate the importance of keeping their best programmers and
attracting other super-performers -- because it's not acknowledged
yet that the individual performance variation between the best
programmer in the best environment, and a mediocre programmer in
a mediocre environment, is MANY orders of magnitude (easily a
factor of 1,000 -- look at those *hundreds of times performance
ratios* above-quoted for best-Python vs worst-C...!!!).  Once this
little fact does start to be realized, we may move into a kind of
"superstar economy" for developers, as is currently in force in
sports, show-business, CEO's, traders, and some professions (lawyers,
doctors), where top performers earn _disproportionately_ more than
mediocre counterparts -- which will have its own problems (and how!),
but very different ones from today's relative "flattening" (where a
performance that's 1,000 times better is only rewarded 10 or 20
times better, if that).


Alex



--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list







From wright at grc.nasa.gov  Mon Jul  2 09:40:46 2001
From: wright at grc.nasa.gov (Ted Wright)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 13:40:46 GMT
Subject: GUI Builder for Python ?
References: <aknrjt8j3cm3qcnpu6qsgvu313rlmi8emg@4ax.com> <9hn12v$p0r$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <Xns90D2622C0266C89065hrerehxvb@139.88.112.200>

anon at nym.net wrote in news:9hn12v$p0r$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net:
>"Lothar Scholz" wrote:
>> Is there something other then "Black Adder" which  is behind an  alpha
>> version ?
>
> Have you tried using Glade?
> 
> With the assistance of libglade it is exceptionally easy to use Glade
> and attach handlers written in Python.

Has anyone made this work under Windows? I tried it a few months ago, and
it worked great under Linux, but there seemed to be some piece (Python
bindings for libGlade?) missing under Windows. 

Ted


From p.caven at ieee.org  Fri Jul 27 00:01:19 2001
From: p.caven at ieee.org (Peter Caven)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:01:19 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <h3R77.130$bXi.170753536@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <jI587.16921$O8.2016571@news1.busy1.on.home.com>

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message
news:h3R77.130$bXi.170753536 at news.telia.no...
> From the responses to my question it seems like SOAP and XML-RPC might not
> fit the bill at all. Corba and similar solutions are mentioned. But my
...
> What are my options? How hard could it be to create a custom protocoll for
> distributing addresses of running nodes among the nodes themselves in a
> effective manner?

IMO your performance bottleneck will not be due to using SOAP at all. I have
participated in the development of similar systems using both DCOM and SOAP
and I can say with some certainty that the overhead of using SOAP is very
small compared to the many other performance issues that you will encounter.
Getting your application to scale up from a few nodes to many nodes will be
your major challenge.
So go ahead and just try it!. It's fairly easy to build something quickly
using SOAP so that you can decide for yourself if it's appropriate. In fact
you don't even need to use SOAP at all for a simple evaluation. Just define
an XML interchange format and start building the other pieces around that.

-- Peter




From bafulton at cats.ucsc.edu  Thu Jul  5 16:30:38 2001
From: bafulton at cats.ucsc.edu (Ben Andrew Fulton)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 12:30:38 -0800
Subject: Converting from long integer to read-only buffer
References: <3b42780c@news.ucsc.edu> <odJ07.76650$ID1.15403982@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com> <CMR07.81063$ID1.15800819@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3b44c05e@news.ucsc.edu>

Thanks to both responses. That code will come in handy, but I also
reevaluated what I'm doing. Since the byte lengths of my packets are
sometimes a bit strange, I decided to manipulate them as lists of bytes (
['\xFF','\xEE' ] and so forth) and join them when I send the packets to
the serial port. This way I can make sure there aren't any extra high bits
that get sent and everything is a little cleaner (since I can't predict
how many bytes the long int will be). It's also easier to break the packet
into segments, especially if there is a header and terminator common to
all of them. 

-->ben



From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul 20 04:21:25 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:21:25 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: synchronized lists
In-Reply-To: <9j8m49$22v$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107201210120.690-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Andreas Kremer wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> i have the following design problem:
> 
> in different classes i have lists which consist of elements pointing to
> instances of other classes with lists. What i need to acchieve is that if an
> instance of one class is pointing towards another instance, the latter needs
> a pointer to the former in its list, too, to know who is pointing at it. The
> result would be at least two lists in each instance, one with pointers
> outwards to other instances, the other with pointer to instances which point
> to this instance.
> 
> I was thinking about a superclass of  synchronized lists, but that design
> did not look "nice". Also a connector doesnt seem to be the best idea. Has
> anybody an idea about how to acchieve this goal?
> 
> Thanks in advance, Andreas.

The better idea is to have a container class which could register
contectedness information in a special hash and provide ways to request
who is connected with who. (This could be as you said a superclass, but
maybe you can just have it as attribute.)

Making pointers to and from is messy and a usual source of cyclic
references. Combined with using __del__, this will result in "memory
leaks", IIRC.



Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Sun Jul  1 13:07:01 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 19:07:01 +0200
Subject: Python cgi script - outputting images
References: <pjgujtkkdihrjfelc5qo0acabavvuu5mvo@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9juji0.ptc.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 15:37:35 GMT, Mexican Bandit <eli-wallach at ugly.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Wondering of anyone can help - Python newbie. I'm trying to write a
>Python cgi script which outputs a gif or jpg image from another
>server...
>
>----
>import urllib
>
>print "Content-Type: image/jpeg"
>print
>
>image = urllib.urlopen("http://127.0.0.1/splogo.jpg")
>print image.read()
>----
>
>The output of the image is corrupted. I suspect this is to do with
>'print' turning everything into strings?
>
>How do I output raw image data?

Your code works fine on my machine. "print" should not be the problem, it has
always worked fine with binary data for me. So it seems your problem is not
Python, but either the browser or the webserver.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From clspence at one.net  Sat Jul 14 05:12:05 2001
From: clspence at one.net (Christopher L Spencer)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 04:12:05 -0500
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <m030ltord2kgp98mb7a397rl1bgtgar0en@4ax.com>

I often have to do this:
x=getsomestringfromparameterfile()
x=string(x)

	I consider this to be an advantage of Python.  If you are not
skilled enough to use this feature, then I'd suggest you stick with
Pascal.

Chris.

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:32:28 GMT, Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net>
wrote:

>For amusement, run this little script which demonstrates a
>near ultimate in the lack of type safety in the language.
>(Perhaps there is a bit of type safety in that you can't do
>this:  4 + "one") But look at what you can do in the
>following script:
>
>x = 3
>x = x + 2
>print "x =", x
>x = "now I'm a string"
>print x
>x = [ 5, x ]
>print "and now a list:", x
>
>If you don't believe it, run it.  Should any language allow
>x to be such a chameleon, to where it can even be a
>different type on two sides of an assignment?	
>---------------------------------
>Dennis Roark
>Dept. of Computer Science
>University of Sioux Falls
>
>Starting Points:  http://home.earthlink.net/~denro
>---------------------------------



From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul 26 00:58:53 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:58:53 -0400
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
In-Reply-To: <3B5F64DF.EBA25066@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEFCLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[TIm]
> I see I have 12 copies of the Microsoft C runtime library on my
> Win98 box at the moment, and for the same reason:  serious Windows app
> developers are careful to isolate themselves from C runtime changes too.

[James Logajan]
> ...
> Well I see your problem already: you are developing on the wrong OS. It
> makes your thinking fuzzy.

Yes, but in such a warm and helpful way <wink>.

> Some of us don't have Solaris, Linux, BSDI, AIX, Mac OS, etc. platforms
> all sitting on our desk (that would be some desk!) to build complete
> runtime interpreters.

Do you think PythonLabs does?  If volunteers don't show up to test alpha and
beta versions of Python on their particular Platforms from Mars, there's no
particularly good reason to believe that a new release of Python will even
*compile* on oodles of platforms.  Things have improved a lot since we moved
development to SourceForge, but it's still the case that, every release, we
get a rash of "but it doesn't even compile on WackoWix 8.3 running Qljx!"
reports soon after the final release.  Study SourceForge and weep.

> So we ship only source and hope the target users read the instructions
> on which version of Python we think we've validated our code on.

I expect that's the best you *can* do, too, if you're targeting every Python
platform.  But if you have a particular financial or professional interest
in, say, making sure your app runs forever under Mandrake and Red Hat, I
still say you're nuts if you don't exploit the easy alternative of shipping
platform-specific Python binaries for those platforms with your app.

Without that, you're still going to be a lot more portable than raw C code
(as portable as 10 years of development have been able to make the C code in
Python), but there are no reliable all-platform guarantees even for a fixed
Python release.

whether-unix-zoo-or-ms-tarpit-there's-danger-on-all-sides-ly y'rs  - tim




From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Thu Jul 26 09:16:21 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:16:21 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996076486.582.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA9B06DEAB3rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> I agree that Python is fun and exciting.  In fact, I ran into this
> guy in the alley, who sold me a bunch of Python tee shirts, with a
> picture of a guy named Larry Wall on them.  Can anyone tell me if
> these are "official Python tee shirts?"  I hate to think that I got
> ripped off. 

LOL

Robert Amesz



From new_name at mit.edu  Wed Jul  4 19:53:21 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 19:53:21 -0400
Subject: Emacs parseable Python - Error output
References: <3B43C391.58F060B3@ces.clemson.edu>
Message-ID: <etdwv5ob6a6.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> Is there a way to produce error output with python, that can be
> processed by emacs' compile-mode ?  This way it would be possible to
> jump quickly to the position where the error occured.

Try "M-x apropos py-.*-exception" to see a list of functions in python
associated with jumping to exceptions.  I don't use them, (I run my
code in an interactive python interpreter, and run pdb.pm(), which also
causes emacs to display the location of the current frame in another
window) but it looks like py-find-next-exception, py-up-exception, and
py-down-exception are what you're after.

Alex.


From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 18 03:33:11 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:33:11 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171439080.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru> <mailman.995389618.4756.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <XYa57.137$EP6.40139@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I agree. Allowing "funny characters" in names is not something we have
> much call for yet

because the people who would really need 'funny character' names to use
Python are not currently using it!

Suppose there were a super-neat language developed in India that had about
20 Hindi-character keywords.  If it allowed the option of writing
everything else in latin chars, most of us could (and would, if motivated)
learn the keywords, without even necessarily learning the complete Hindi
alphabet and writing system.  Few of us would even think about using the
language if we had to write all program text in Hindi since we would have
great difficulty in accurately writing and recognizing random Hindi
character sequences.

The question is whether the Everybody in CP4E is to be restricted to those
who can write and read latin character names or is to be more universal.
Guido's call, ultimately.

>and it may break many tools that have ASCII-only assumptions.

Most foreign alphabets have a standard Latin transliteration that can be
produced mechanically by a computer.  Foreign-alphabet users would need
such a program in order to share their programs with us Westerners.  The
same could be used as a front end for any other ASCII-only requirement.

Terry J. Reedy






From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 09:21:38 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 14:21:38 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <m1n16strvt.fsf@bertrand.carcosa.net>
Message-ID: <tho0ktk7vidg3kif2gjbh57rovq33n4fht@4ax.com>

On 28 Jun 2001 13:51:18 -0400, jmcbray at carcosa.net (Jason F. McBrayer)
wrote:

>>>>>> "RS" == Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>RS> There is limit after which more explanation is worse than less:
>
>RS> processed_list = []
>RS> for i in old_list:
>RS>   processed_list.append(func(i))
>
>RS> adds nothing but noise, while:
>
>In this trivial case, probably not, but...
>
>RS> processed_list = [func(i) for i in old_list]
>
>RS> makes it clear as day!
>
>Not to me it doesn't -- it uses another piece of grammar that I've
>never seen before.  To me, it's clear as mud.

I disagree. Just because you haven't seen it before, it doesn't proove
the meaning isn't obvious. On that logic, I'd have to claim the basic
for loop is clear as mud - I never saw a for loop work like that
before Python, yet I understood it the first time I saw it.

As it happens, although I did use a couple of functional languages
once, it was at college many years ago. I'd swear that list
comprehensions did not exist in either LISP or Miranda - at least at
the level I used them. I certainly didn't know what the term meant
until after I'd read some Python docs. Yet I did understand the syntax
on the first glance. After all, it is rather reminiscent of a maths
notation that I learnt when I was about 14 years old - the only
difference being the use of English words rather than wierd symbols.

Besides, the whole point of very high level language is that you don't
have to specify all the low level details of how to implement things.
Instead, you simply specify what you want and let the interpreter do
the rest. That is exactly what list comprehensions give you.


>RS> (I prefer map(), but this is personal)
>
>I would have used map(), too.

Lets examine that...


processed_list = [i * k for i in old_list]

processed_list = map (lambda i, k=k : i * k, old_list)


The first version is more compact - admittedly only a little in this
case, but more so for real examples. It also describes what it does,
making it easier for a Python-newbie to read.

Newbies would probably be tripped up several times by the second
example. The most blatant stumbling block is the lambda - lambda is
not exactly an everyday part of peoples vocabulary, and even if
someone guessed that it was a quick function definition which could be
mysteriously passed as a parameter, they'd certainly be worried by the
'k=k'.

Of course the 'k=k' could be avoided in Python 2.1 - but that's a new
feature. And besides, the meaning of lambda is still not exactly
obvious.

Now lets go a stage further...


processed_list = [cell_fn (x, y)  for x in range (max_x)
                                  for y in range (max_y)
                                  if cell_valid (x, y)      ]


processed_list = map (lambda j : j [2],
                      filter (lambda i : cell_valid (i[0], i[1]),
                              map (lambda x, y : [x, y, cell_fn (x,
y)],
                                   range (max_x), range (max_y)
                                  )
                             )
                     )


Clearly the list comprehensions remain much clearer as the list
requirements get more complex. It neatly expresses the idea of listing
all the cell_fn results for the valid cells in an x, y grid. Even more
important, it does not need an intermediate data structure to preserve
the x, y, result mapping as the data propogates through various
functions.

Of course no-one would ever write that kind of map/filter/map
expression for real - at least I hope not. I assume you'd switch to
using a couple of nested for loops and an if to build the list. But
IMO that simply doesn't compare to the list comprehension version for
clarity or convenience.

BTW - that last example was actually substantially simplified from a
real example which I don't have the time to translate/debug using map,
filter etc - yet it took no more than 1 minute to code the original as
a list comprehension, it worked first time, and it is as clear as day
to read.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Wed Jul 18 14:58:43 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 11:58:43 -0700
Subject: Exceptions' Behaviour
References: <mailman.995459309.19355.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107181058.71f62494@posting.google.com>

Martin Sj?ren <martin at strakt.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995459309.19355.python-list at python.org>...
> I've been fooling around with exceptions a bit today, and found some
> things that I don't quite understand.
> 
> class A (Exception): pass
> class B (Exception): pass
> 
>         try:
>             raise A, B
>         except A, var:
>             print "A,", var
>         except (A, B), var:
>             print "(A,B),", var
> 
> This prints 'A,   main  .B'
> 
>         try:
>             raise A, B
>         except (A, B), var:
>             print "(A,B),", var
>         except A, var:
>             print "A,", var
> 
> This prints '(A, B),   main  .B'
> 
> 
> That's rather predictiable, here comes the funky part:
> 
>         try:
>             raise (A, B)
>         except A, var:
>             print "A,", var
>         except (A, B), var:
>             print "(A,B),", var
> 
> This prints 'A, '
> 
>         try:
>             raise (A, B)
>         except (A, B), var:
>             print "(A,B),", var
>         except A, var:
>             print "A,", var
> 
> This prints '(A,B), '
> 
> !!!
> What's going on here? If (A, B) is raised like A, B, why don't I get
> anything in my 'var' variable? If not, how come (A, B) is matched against
> A?
> 
> I'm really confused here...
> 
> Martin Sj?gren

Consider this:

PythonWin 2.1 (#15, Jun 15 2001, 14:13:47) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32.
Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (MarkH at ActiveState.com) -
see 'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.
>>> # raise A,B raises A with B as its argument
>>> raise "a", "b"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
a: b
>>> #raise (A, B) raises A and ignores B
>>> raise ("a", "b")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
a



Keep in mind also, that a statement like:

  except (A, B):

means to catch either A or B.  That is, it does NOT mean to catch the
tuple (A,B).




Tom


From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Wed Jul  4 17:33:41 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 07:33:41 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <9htgsb$ck3@news1.gtech.com> <slrn9k4out.ms.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <9hu07g$ck6@news1.gtech.com> <9huivl01eln@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9i072q$ck7@news1.gtech.com>

Sorry Alex, too old to "seek extra credits" (or need them :-)), I'll leave
that to you young(er) blokes :-).


"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9huivl01eln at enews1.newsguy.com...
> "Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
> news:9hu07g$ck6 at news1.gtech.com...
> > True, but all you are arguing here is that Python and accompanying
> toolset,
> > in it's current state, is not up to the task but could be made more
> > appropriate to the problem/situation. So, "how long is a piece of
string"?
>
> len(thestring[thestart:theend]), of course.  What else?
>
> For extra credit, explain why this need NOT equal theend-thestart...
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul 19 19:29:07 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:29:07 GMT
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com>

Jochen Riekhof wrote:

> 
> rst = getRecordset()
> 
> Now, I want to use the recordset:
> rst.MoveFirst()
> 
> and get the following error:
> Python ActiveX Scripting Engine (0x80020009)
> Traceback (innermost last): File "<Script Block >", line 5, in ?
> rst.MoveFirst() AttributeError: 'tuple' object has no attribute 'MoveFirst'
> /OrboPCT/pytest.asp, Zeile 15
> rst.MoveFirst()


This means that "getRecordset()" is actually returning _2_ values - the 
recordset itself, and some other value (possibly a boolean or some such).

You will probably find that you need something like:

ok, rst = getRecordset()

or maybe the other way around:

rst, ignored = getRecordset()

Mark.



From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Tue Jul 31 22:11:13 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 02:11:13 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9k7il0$7dv$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9mepa0.2m6.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On 31 Jul 2001 17:31:28 -0700, Aahz Maruch wrote:
>After seeing all the confusion about whether 'x in type' means
>isinstance() or issubclass(), my preference is for ripping this change
>out of CVS.  The only way in which I think the 'in' operator makes sense
>is if you're trying to do

I disagree -- I think it belongs and will help a lot, as Guido has
described it.  Some people will be minorly confused, but that's not
because of 'in'; it's just because of how they picture types.

I'm personally highly confused by the people who claim the operation
should be written as "class in object" rather than "object in class".
Objects don't in general contain classes; they always BELONG to classes.
Why would anyone say otherwise?

Also, "class in object" has a severe ambiguity: what if you're trying to
program using a list of classes?  Then "myClass in myList" becomes
completely ambiguous.

Finally, the question of using "subclass in class" isn't worth throwing
this out; I agree that this would be a useful operation to have a
shorthand for, but this isn't the right shorthand, since subclasses in
Python _are_ objects which do not necessarily belong to the same classes
as their instances.

The "right" shorthand would be yet another borrowed keyword -- but I have
no idea which one.  Someone suggested ">=", but as Guido says, that
depends on how you view an inheretance tree.

It's a pity we don't have an "every" keyword, so we could use the syntax
"every subclass is class".  Pretty, huh?  :-)

>                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Fri Jul  6 18:48:39 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 22:48:39 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <hdgcktgn4eksejt01vqa8k0g7k69ov1isj@4ax.com>

>The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
>transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":

[Snip: Guido's plan]

This seems to me to be reasonable. While backward compatibility
is important in computer languages, the real problem occurs when
changes are abrupt. And in any case, we always have older versions
of the interpreter around.

C//



From plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Tue Jul 10 18:37:03 2001
From: plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (plakal at nospam-cs.wisc.edu)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 22:37:03 GMT
Subject: PIL palette problem on PIL-1.1.2/Python-2.1/Solaris 2.8
Message-ID: <9ig02f$c4@spool.cs.wisc.edu>

Hi,

[I posted this to image-sig but I haven't
got responses yet and I'm in a bit of a hurry]

I'm trying to use PIL to draw a line
graph on a pre-existing GIF template file.

However, for some reason, no matter
what palette index I specify as
the ink, the lines I draw are all white
(which happens to be the first color
in the palette).

Can anyone spot what I'm doing wrong?
Code is at the end of the message.

This is with PIL-1.1.2, Python 2.1,
Solaris 2.8. Weirdly enough, the same
code works fine on Linux (with Python 2.0
and PIL-1.1.2).

Also, I tried the example code on
creating paletted images from scratch
(http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/articles/creating-palette-images.htm)
and all I get is a black rectangle,
none of the shapes specified in the
code are drawn.

Thanks,
Manoj

PS: Remove nospam- from my email address to respond by mail.


------------------------------------------
import Image, ImageDraw

image = Image.open( "graph_template.gif" )  # -- 500x600 GIF, 67-color palette

draw = ImageDraw.Draw( image )
draw.setink(1)   # -- Orange-ish
draw.line( [(52,550),(220,40)] )
draw.setink(2)   # -- another shade of orange
draw.line( [(220,40),(300,550)] )
draw.ellipse( (52,40,300,550) )

image.save( "graph.gif" )
------------------------------------------



From jparlar at home.com  Mon Jul 23 14:33:26 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:33:26 GMT
Subject: py2exe problem
References: (
Message-ID: <1103_995913046@jparlar>

> wxPython has its own (binary) dependencies which must be fulfilled.
> Maybe the gui cannot start up because these dependencies are not fulfilled.
> You can download at http://www.dependencywalker.com/ a free tool that
> allows to search for dependent modules, you can and should especially
> use it at the typical target systems where your app is supposed
> to run. wxPython for example (at least in a certain version)
> requires some opengl libraries, even if you do not use them
> in your app. 
Alright, I'll definitely give that a try. Now that you mention it, I don't know if OGL is on the target machine, and even if it is, it'd be an old version.

> 
> Maybe there's a confusion: The -w command line flag to py2exe does NOT
> specify a windows executable, it specifies an application
> which runs in the windows _GUI_ subsystem - as opposed to the -c flag,
> which creates a _console_ application.
> For a wxPython app you would probably use the -w option, but if you
> also print something to the console you need -c!
> 
> (I should probably rename this command line option to --gui.)
The problem is, that if I don't give it the -w switch, I get a runtime error.

Traceback <most recent call last>:


From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 00:52:53 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:52:53 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3b64d4ce.777475039@wa.news.verio.net>

On 28 Jul 2001 07:39:22 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>28 Jul 2001 14:49:14 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:
>
[...]
>> The handling of exactness is also broken.  Exactness is
>> metainformation, like units.  It's probably wrong to put it in the
Not like units. Units are problem-domain entities relating to
*mathematical values* by associating a meaning with a number valued 1.

Exactness describes the relationship of program/hardware-domain entities
to *mathematical values*. That's totally 'orthogonal' to units.
It's information that is not just associated, but generated by
monitoring the crunching of bit patterns representing numbers.

Most numeric bit patterns are designed to represent one specific
*mathematical value*. To say a numeric bit pattern is exact is
to say that the *mathematical value* it was designed to represent
is exactly the value you intended. The program can't know your
intent, but it can do something useful if you tell it a number
(i.e., its representation's relationship to your intended *mathematical
value*) is exact.

This is a Good Thing to be able to tell the computer, because it
can then track transformations of the representations and tell you
if new patterns still correspond to the *mathematical values*
you would hope for after various operations. Underflow, overflow,
roundoff, all kill exactness, and the computer can tell you. Good Thing.

>> language at all.  It's *certainly* wrong to say integers are always
>> exact and floats always inexact.
>
>Why? It's the most practical approach I know.
>
I think it *seems* practical, like putting galoshes permanently
on a particular pair of shoes, with glue no less ;-)

I suspect an artificial linkage between representation types and
exactness will ultimately restrict freedom to make design choices.

>> If the exactness flag has to carried around externally (e.g., in
>> the programmer's head) anyway, there isn't much point having an
>> inexact concept of exactness in the language.
>
>It doesn't have to be explicit in the language at all. But in practice
>ints and rationals are usually exact, and you should rarely use them
>as inexact, and that floats are inexact, and there is no much need
>to rely on the fact that in some circumstances they can be exact.
>
I think several notions of exactness are getting mixed.

Two relationships need to be separated:
1. bit pattern representing a number <-> *mathematical value*
2. *mathematical value* <-> significance in problem domain

The first is of concern for a programming language. The second is not.

Exactness has to do with the first relationship. A particular bit
pattern representing a number uniquely identifies its corresponding
*mathematical value* by design. If the *mathematical value* is exactly
what you want, declare the representation exact, and let the computer
tell you when some operation (necessarily on representations) results
in a representation breaking exact relationship to expected *mathematical value*.

It *can* know when it can't represent the exact *mathematical result*
of an operation on exact inputs. That's when the exactness attribute
is set to false. If an input is inexact, the output can't be exact, except
for special cases like multiplying by an exact zero. I suppose dividing
a nonzero number by itself should be an exact one also.

Note that a result bit pattern generally represents *some* *mathematical
value* exactly, just possibly not the right one. If you underflow to zero,
that zero is *inexact* because it does not identify the correct
*mathematical value* of the operation.



From mirko.liss at web.de  Thu Jul 12 17:10:12 2001
From: mirko.liss at web.de (Mirko Liss)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:10:12 +0200
Subject: CertificationError
In-Reply-To: <mailman.994950142.20907.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.994950142.20907.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010712211014.51AA3C1B.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>

Hello Ruud,

that's easily fixed:

Start WurmDos emulator.
Start RecEdt.EXE .
Search for "CertStatistics" and delete all sub keys.
Press F5.
Doubleclick on Dancing Clerk.
Re-Enter bank account number and transfer ID.
Leftclick on 'Certificates' Button.
Shutdown and restart WurmDos emulator.
Shutdown and restart WurmDos emulator a second time.
Shutdown WurmDos emulator to NETONLY mode.

Now it works for sure.


friendly regards,

Mirko


On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 op23 at bruxairpt.NOSPAM.sac.eu wrote:
> Hello,
>
> what can I do against the following error message?
>
>
> op23 at bruxairpt:~ > atmanager 
> Python 3.14159 (#1, Jul 29 2004, 14:28:37)  
> [GCC 3.67.2 20031024(release)] on linux3
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>   File "atmanager", line 1
>     #!/bin/python
>                  ^
> CertificationError: invalid account or server down
>
> Segmentation fault
> op23 at bruxairpt:~ >
>
>
> regards,
>
> Ruud G Raymond
>
> -- 
> European Air Traffic Control
> Strategic Air Command, Bruxelles 
> == An vieles, was ich erst erlebe,
> == kann ich mich schon erinnern. (Karl Kraus)



On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 mcherm at destiny.com wrote:
> Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
> liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
> programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
> present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
> ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
> (to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the 
> infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul  6 09:34:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:34:23 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ (was Re: 'with' statement in python ?)
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cpg0cal2ny.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <D5i17.11320$F%5.731011@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cpy9q2ji9y.fsf_-_@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> Indeed. It's been a pleasant surprise to see your name on so many
> c.l.py postings recently, and I know many readers appreciate your
> occasional forays into the high-volume public forum.

Only as much as my other work leaves me time though...

> No problem. I agree the FAQ is in radical need of a revision, and
> may well step up to bat in the future. I understand a part of the
> problem still rests with domain registrations and site
> control. Would it be practical to "suck and parse" to create an
> alternative, perhaps under some other domain, which

Hm.  To what extent is the current FAQ wizard a problem for its
maintenance?  What exactly would moving it elsewhere accomplish?  If
it needs to be moved, we can easily turn it into a Zope application or
Wiki, we have a zope.python.org sitting around for that purpose.  But
is there really a problem that that would solve?

> A good idea. Though the FAQ MoinMoin doesn't seem to get much attention
> either.

Because there are few links to it and it's mostly got information
specifically to Python 2.0, which is already out of date.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Sun Jul 29 09:14:12 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:14:12 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:34:46 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>David Ullrich wrote:
>
>[I said:]
>>> You said "Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is ..."
>>> and gave one possible implementation. It's by no means
>>> the only one, as I'm sure you know; but you didn't say
>>> so.
>> 
>> It's the only one in standard use that I'm aware of.
>> I know several different "standard" "implementations"
>> of integers, rationals and reals as sets, but a different
>> implementation for natural numbers does not spring to
>> mind.
>
>It's much the commonest, mostly because it appears to be
>the simplest way to do it within ZF and most mathematicians
>think that set theory == ZF (or perhaps ZFC). :-)
>
>> Of course infintiely many others are possible. But
>> what's another "implementation" of the _natural_
>> _number_ 2 as a set that's actually in general use?
>
>Depends, I suppose, on what you mean by "in general
>use". I'd say that *none* of them is in general use,
>in the sense that no one ever depends on the details
>when doing real mathematics. The von Neumann construction
>is certainly far commoner than any other I know of in
>textbooks on the foundations of mathematics.
>
>However: Randall Holmes's book "Naive set theory with
>a universal set" (which uses NFU as its set theory)
>defines natural numbers as equivalence classes modulo
>having-the-same-size,

That's one I mentioned. With that approach 2 is not a set.
(Not a set in the currently very very standard set theory.)

> so that 2 is
>
>  { {x,y} : x != y }
>
>and so on. This was Frege's original definition too,
>though he didn't have a consistent account of set theory
>to fit it into.
>
>> Not that it matters.
>
>Indeed.
>
>>> I was just concerned that some people might conceivably
>>> misunderstand you to be saying, as Kronecker didn't :-),
>>> that God made the von Neumann implementation of the
>>> natural numbers and all else is the work of man.
>> 
>> Ah. No, I didn't mean to say that, and yes I suppose
>> that one might have got that idea. But if we're talking
>> about implementations _as_ _sets_, and implementations
>> that are actually _used_, then no I'm not aware of
>> another. What's an example?
>
>The one I gave above is an example. Or you can say that
>0 = {} and n+! = {n}. That was Zermelo's definition,
>15 years before von Neumann's, and it's the one adopted
>in Quine's book "Set theory and its logic" (though he
>is at pains to make it clear that there are other
>options).

That's a good example, because it seems much more
natural than the "standard" implementation. Takes
a while, possibly infintitely long, to see what's
better about the vN version.

>This has long ceased to have anything to do with Python.
>I suggest that we take it to e-mail or drop it entirely.

Simply dropping it seems the sensible option, since
neither of us is actually saying anything the other
doesn't know - my original butting in was a just for
the record thing.

(Did they change the rules recently? Don't recall
relevance to Python being a criterion here...)

>(But if you prefer continuing in c.l.py, I don't mind.)


David C. Ullrich


From donn at u.washington.edu  Thu Jul 19 18:51:36 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 22:51:36 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks (fwd)
References: <mailman.995574754.22146.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9j7o9o$fbk$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <mertz at gnosis.cx>:
| "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:
|> TRuE, tHe ExPRESsiVity oF ThE lANGuaGE is ProBAbLY nOt cRipPled,
|> hOWEvEr, tHere ARe SigNIficantLy FeweR ideNtIFIeRs AVaILABlE whICh mEAns
|> iT is LESs eXPRessIvE. IN pArTicULar, cOMmON Idioms liKE naMiNg CLASseS
|> stArTiNg WiTh UppER cASE lETtERS, AND instaNCeS OF THose cLAsSes
|> begINNiNG with A lOwER caSE LettER CaN NO LongeR Be usED.
|
| I don't really have a strong opinion on the case-sensitivity thing.  I
| think it would probably be a good idea in a brand-new language, but is
| probably too much work to try to change Python (given existing code).
|
| But one thing that really annoys the hell out of me is the "argument"
| that always comes up, like Pettersen's above.  The allegation is that if
| a language was case-insensitive, variables would have jarring random
| case like in above (sometimes this is adduced to "prove" that
| case-sensitivity improves readability).  I've programmed for a large
| number of years with case-insensitive languages, and I have never ONCE
| seen code that looked like the above.  It's just not what people do.
| Likewise, in Python you rarely see syntactical but silly choices like:
|
|     >>> xlsoALwl390sslkslWW = 37
|     >>> xlsoALwL390sslkslWW = 38
|     >>> print xlsoALwL390sslkslWW,xlsoALwl390sslkslWW
|     38 37

This is the problem with naming a language after an exquisitely
silly comedy act.  People sometimes get too into it.  He was
definitely mocking one of the arguments in this issue, but one
or the other of us misinterpreted his point.

The way I read it, the point was that case variability works against
comprehension, because we are all case sensitive when we read.
That's why no one programs like that paragraph - not just because
one doesn't, but because it's painfully impractical.  No one would
program that way in a case insensitive language, that's sure right.
The most expressive way to write in English or any other European
language is to use the same capitalization that everyone else uses.

For me, this is a little like indentation.  We all should indent,
in any language I ever used save assembly.  No one who cares about
their code would neglect to indent.  So, should indentation be
significant?  Yes!  Who needs indentation that fails to match
meaning?!  Similarly, case is useful in computer programming
notation, just as any language that has upper case letters to
write with has found them useful.  So, should case be significant?

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From Doc at goodweb.de  Fri Jul 13 15:09:30 2001
From: Doc at goodweb.de (Thomas Korb)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 21:09:30 +0200
Subject: webbrowser-module - how to reload? (on win32 w/ IE5)
Message-ID: <doc.m31ynksl1x.fsf@goodweb.de>

Hi! I am using the standard webbrowser-module to open HTML-files plat-
form independent (Linux & Win32). On Linux, everything works just fine.
On Windows (Win98 w/ IE5.0) the following problem occurs:

- I open a HTML-file [webbrowser.open(filename)];
- my Python script changes the HTML-file and saves it;
- I open the *same* HTML-file again (as above) ...

  ... and now I have to hit the RELOAD-button (F5) of IE in order to 
  see the changes whiche were made to the file!!!

Q: Is there a way to tell IE to reload the file automatically???

I do not need configuration tips for IE but a way to tell IE to reload
('refresh') a HTML-page using Python! I also do not want to use things
like  webbrowser.open_new() etc.  Everything should happen in the same
IE window. I also do not want to use Netscape (on Windows) etc. etc.

Thanks in advance for any hints!

-- 
-----------------  Dr. Thomas Korb  -  G O O D W E B . D E s i g n  ---
-----------------  DOMAIN: www.goodweb.de / E-MAIL: Doc at goodweb.de  ---


From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 31 14:12:32 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:12:32 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org> <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> <Xns90EF65598E954michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13> <3B66B3A2.F47BA3E2@engcorp.com> <3B66E4FA.158E7DDA@home.net> <u4qdmtcsd0uj65qgl9itrejaipq1mr36ut@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B66F510.B709517E@home.net>

Courageous wrote:
> By and large this is nothing a good optimizing JIT can't handle
> without static typing information. QKS is getting a 10-100X improvement
> in Python execution speeds without modifying the Python language.
> http:\\www.smallscript.com. Execution times within 1-2X of C.

I have a hard time believing that this can be done without some sort of
type declarations, or homogenous sequences, or something. How do you get
around the fact that every time you see a:

z = x+y

x and y could be anything? 

I've seen the smallscript reference before, but the only mention of
Python I see on that page is a link back to python.org. Does anyone know
where we can find info about this miracualous JIT compiler?

> >For performances, sake another nice addition would be the introduction
> >of the "homogenous" sequence.

> Sure. Pretty easy to implement yourself, of course, saving the first-class
> language support. Although one can imagine something like:

Yes, and that's what NumPy is. However, without the first class language
support, it is pretty limited.


Steve Holden wrote:

> It's a good idea, but given that the compiler we use daily doesn't yet even
> do numerical constant folding, and adds two integers together every time it
> uses (2+3) there is clearly a long road to hoe before we see progress.

Good point, but if it was in the language, someone might make use of it.
If nothing else, you could use it in extension modules. Maybe it would
get used in Py2C. (is that project dead? it seems to be sleeping, but I
thought it was pretty promising)

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From missive at frontiernet.net  Sat Jul 21 16:02:58 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:02:58 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: re and multiline strings
Message-ID: <9jcn5i$3lo0$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

>>> t = 'aaazbbbycccc\nccccc\n'
>>> p = re.compile('(.*?)z(.*?)y(.*)')
>>> m = p.search(t)
>>> m.group(1)
'aaa'
>>> m.group(2)
'bbb'
>>> m.group(3)
'cccc'
>>> m = p.search(t, re.DOTALL)
>>> m
>>> m = p.search(t, re.MULTILINE)
>>> m
>>> m = p.search(t, re.MULTILINE,re.DOTALL)
>>> m


what I want is:

>>> m.group(1)
'aaa'
>>> m.group(2)
'bbb'
>>> m.group(3)
'cccc\nccccc\n'



From djc at object-craft.com.au  Tue Jul 17 23:11:22 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 13:11:22 +1000
Subject: Sybase module 0.30 (Graham Ashton release) released
Message-ID: <m3g0bv6ied.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

What is it:

The Sybase module provides a Python interface to the Sybase relational
database system. It supports all of the Python Database API, version
2.0 with extensions.  This is the first release in which the DB-API
compliance is as close as it can get with Sybase.

There was a recent thread on comp.lang.python where Python database
modules were labelled experimental and unsupported.  We have decided
to label ours as non-experimental and will be offering commercial
support from this release.  Please refer to our website for details:

	http://www.object-craft.com.au/support.html

For those people who do not have LaTeX installed, there is a PDF
version of the package documentation.  The PostScript version prints
out a handy A5 booklet on an A4 duplex printer.

The module and documentation are all available on here:

	http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/sybase/

Thanks
------

Many thanks to Graham Ashton for spending time working with me to
isolate the dynamic SQL deallocation bug.


Changes for this release
------------------------

Bugfixes:

1) Dynamic SQL constructed for cursor is now deallocated.  After
   around 9000 different queries over the same cursor the server was
   running out of procedure space.

2) ct_con_props() CS_TDS_VERSION is an integer no a string.

3) ct_con_props(), ct_options(), ct_config() were returning string
   values with trailing nul character.

4) ct_config() CS_VERSION is an integer no a string.

5) Fixed refcount leak in ct_res_info(CS_ORDERBY_COLS)


DB-API compliance:

1) Implemented DB-API STRING, BINARY, NUMBER, DATETIME, and ROWID type
   objects.

2) Implemented DB-API Date(), Timestamp(), DateFromTicks(),
   TimestampFromTicks(), and Binary() functions.


Documentation:

1) Complete DB-API documentation for Sybase.py

2) Low level sybasect extension module now explains how the Sybase API
   is wrapped - it does not attempt to explain how to use the API.
   Sybase have excellent documentation which covers that.

   Documentation for bulkcopy descriptors includes a small program to
   bulkcopy a table from one server to another using a single set of
   buffers.

3) Miscellaneous docstring fixups.

Improvements and enhancements:

1) All binary dependence on mxDateTime has been removed - it is now
   integrated at Python level.

   If mxDateTime is available then datetime columns will be returned
   as mxDateTime.DateTime objects - otherwise they are returned as
   internal DateTime objects.

   You can disable the use of mxDateTime by doing this:

	import Sybase
	Sybase.use_datetime = 0

2) Renamed con object in Sybase.py to conn to be consistent with
   sybasect wrapper module.

3) Reorganised and simplified cursor DB-API state machine in Sybase.py.

4) Wrap all Sybase API functions with checks for exceptions raised by
   Python callback functions.

5) Added debug, conn, and direction attributes to CS_BLKDESC object.

6) When CS_DATAFMT structures are cleared when initialised - eliminates
   possibility of unexpected values.

7) Added native Sybase datetime/smalldatetime object.  Construct and
   use these objects like this:

>>> import Sybase
>>> a = Sybase.money(25.99)
>>> type(a)
<type 'MoneyType'>
>>> b = a + 5
>>> b
30.99
>>> type(b)
<type 'MoneyType'>
>>> b - a
5.00
>>> dt = Sybase.datetime('2001-07-17', Sybase.CS_DATETIME4_TYPE)
>>> dt
Jul 17 2001 12:00AM
>>> type(dt)
<type 'DateTimeType'>

8) Added native Sybase money/smallmoney object.

9) DataBuf objects can autoconvert values to money and numeric values
   during assignment.

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 05:50:06 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:50:06 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
 <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9icbft$okp$1@panix6.panix.com> <L3DTqUAyejS7Ew2k@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <3B4A5E00.BDB4245A@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <t4sqZLAO$sS7Ewjf@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <3B4A5E00.BDB4245A at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen
<peter at engcorp.com> writes
>Robin Becker wrote:
>> 
>> In article <9icbft$okp$1 at panix6.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com>
>> writes
>> >"Who killed Cock Robin?
>> >I, said the sparrow
>> >With my bow and my arrow
>> >I killed Cock Robin."
>
>> here in London the sparrow population (still officially a pest) has
>> crashed by 95%, probably the PSU having killed all the Norwegian Blues
>> is overloading sparrows with portable nuclear devices.
>
>I feel sure you meant to say "swallow".  The airspeed of a laden
>swallow is greater than that of a laden sparrow. (I think... -- Waa!)
>
try catching a swallow to load, the PSU presumably likes implementable
final solutions.
-- 
Robin Becker


From joonas at olen.to  Fri Jul 13 09:13:38 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:13:38 GMT
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4EF49D.1F4078D7@olen.to>

Vesselin Peev wrote:
> 
> Can anyone tell me how to use the so called "code objects" in Python, for
> example the ones created via
> 
> PyObject* Py_CompileString(char *str, char *filename, int start)
> 
> There's no explanation on the matter that I can find.
> 
> All I want to do is to execute different precompiled python code blocks from
> a C program (I have already embedded Python). I could make do without
> bytecode but then the speed would be much less.

Do you mean this?

>>> code = compile("print 'Python!'","<string>","exec")
>>> exec code
Python!
>>>


From frandebo at latt.if.usp.br  Wed Jul 25 12:24:20 2001
From: frandebo at latt.if.usp.br (Francisco)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:24:20 -0300
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
In-Reply-To: <mailman.996034544.25337.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.996034544.25337.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010725124634.23671B-100000@latt.if.usp.br>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Tim Peters wrote:

> > >>> type('')
> > <type 'str'>
> >
> >  while I expected to get <type 'string'>.

> No, that's the way it works (today).  Under the type/class unification
> scheme, type names also work as constructors.  Since str() was always the
> way to build a string in Python, that's a natural name for its type.
> 
> Note this cute consequence:
> 
> >>> x = 1L
> >>> type(x)(3)
> 3L
> >>>
> 
> That is, type() in 2.2a1 truly returns a constructor, and type(1L)(y) is the
> same as long(y).  Likewise for
> 
> >>> type("abc")(42)
> '42'
> >>> type("abc") is str
> 1
> >>> type(1L) is long
> 1


 Thank you for the examples, it helped me to understand what the change
 was for.

> I'm not sure the type names will stay this way, but determining that is part
> of what an alpha release is for.  On a scale of 1 to 12, were you merely
> surprised by the change or truly upset <wink>?

 Hum, if type() is going to work as a contructor I think it's better to
 have the type('') as <type 'str'>. But yes, I was surprised since I
 didn't knew this change was going to happen and just a little upset
 because there is no explicit mention to changing type _names_ in
 the "Release Notes" at SourceForge (the very first place I went). 
 

 thank you (and to Guido) for the help,

 best regards,
--
  Francisco.
  S?o Paulo, Brasil.
             __o
            `\<,
     _____(*)/(*)_____




From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Mon Jul 30 13:15:58 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:15:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: dydns.org  [was: I want to do something:]
In-Reply-To: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107301310280.258-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>

Ignoring your Python question and backing up to what you
are trying to solve: 
  There are services like dyndns.org that will provide DNS
services to dynamically map a static host name to a changing
IP address. 
   
 
-- Steve Majewski





From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Fri Jul  6 11:41:37 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 16:41:37 +0100
Subject: Any detailed tutor for python multi-thread programming?
Message-ID: <3B45DC31.572F992A@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010706/c7e04449/attachment.html>

From thomas at xs4all.net  Fri Jul  6 17:52:28 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 23:52:28 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignment (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <cp4rsql1r7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010706235228.G8098@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 11:48:18AM +0000, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> writes:
> > But then you could run into trouble on, say,

> >   () += y

> > because the empty tuple is shared, just like interned strings and integers.
> > The refcount *could* be 2, and you end up modifying someone else's empty
> > tuple.

> No, because "() += y" is syntactically illegal.

But
    x = ()
    x += y

is not, and that's exactly what I meant.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From lomax at pumpichank.com  Fri Jul 20 11:30:45 2001
From: lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Jiggy Wid It" Lomax)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:30:45 -0400
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
	<3B57942A.4080BF5D@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <15192.20133.416670.655504@anthem.wooz.org>

Guido is not Rick Moranis because Rick is too short.  Guido is
secretly Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Here's a picture from the
PythonLabs 2.1 Release Party, smuggled out by a concerned insider and
secretly posted on a Schwarzenegger tribute page:

    http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1396/conan.jpg

They are dressed as Vikings and are singing the "Spam" song from the
classic Monty Python sketch.  That's Tim on the right, and (I've been
told) Barry on the left, before he cut off his rock star hair.  Of
course, Guido gets the big hat.  Fred and Jeremy, drank a little too
much of the "Snake Juice" and were... indisposed.

that's-not-got-much-spam-in-it-ly y'rs, - frank



From tanzer at swing.co.at  Tue Jul 31 10:54:15 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:54:15 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:34:33 BST."
             <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk> 
Message-ID: <m15RauV-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

Jonathan Hogg <jonathan at onegoodidea.com> wrote:

> I can though, think of plenty of places where strong static typing would 
> defeat intentional exploitation of the dynamic typing. Maybe this is 
> poor programming on my part, but I can't even think how one would type a 
> function like say:
> 
>    def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )

Genericity (templates in C++) this is not a problem -- you get one
instance of `f` for each type `zs` you happen to apply `f` to.

Disclaimer: C++ templates don't allow different return types for such
functions, but that's a restriction of C++, not of genericity. IIRC,
Ada generics can be generic in the return type, too.

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 00:55:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:55:07 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpr8v6ow8o.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9ls1u2.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <Lis77.26537$EP6.6601188@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Gareth McCaughan" <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9ls1u2.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan at g.local...
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
> > Hm, IMO the problem is different.  Python's numerical model
*almost*
> > embeds the integers in the floats.  (They should've been called
reals,
> > but that mistake is too insignificant to want to fix. :-)

Not at all.  Python ints correspond to a subset of floats on 32-bit
machines but not on 64-bit machines (unless floats are also extended
sufficiently.  Python longs way outnumber floats, which is why
long/long->long is generally more accurate than long/long->float.

> I'm glad they weren't, because floats do not have the semantics
> of reals. More precisely, the class of floats is very different
> from the class of reals, and the operations defined on them
> differ considerably from the operations of the same names on
> the reals.

Indeed.  Floats are a peculiar and sharply-finite subset of rationals
(whereas longs are vaguely finite in number).  No wonder we have
trouble calculating with them.

Terry J. Reedy




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:14 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:14 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>, <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fgenlt45qbkj0hir9q2u0r1a71pnp05ds0@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:00:53 +0300, Moshe Zadka
<moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:

>On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:24:22 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> 
>> I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
>> typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
>> them explicitly.
>
>Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning integers
>into floats for years.

Implicit typecasting is not the issue. Even C and C++ support implicit
typecasting - that does not mean the integer operations give float
results, which is a completely separate issue.



From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Tue Jul  3 12:40:31 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 16:40:31 GMT
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>
Message-ID: <fnt3ktkphaut5q2ohbpage1n1advhdt109@4ax.com>

>The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the positive
>things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?  Why
>the leaning towards C over C++?

The explosion of forms available and commonly in use in C++ gives me
a headache. I really just want "C with classes and virtual functions," pretty
much. Templates are an abortion. The reference operator is often used
in lieu of a perfectly good pointer, and when it is, it's badly obfuscating.

C//



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 13:47:46 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:47:46 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Tml37.6005$yb3.69164@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953783.6278.python-list at python.org...
> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
>
> >>> 1 < "aaa"
> 1
>
> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types as
> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
> produced.
>
> This one tripped me up in an assert statement for a couple of hours.  The
> assert statement was returning true when it should have been false to give
> me a warning that there was a problem.  It was something like:
>
> lengthA= 3
> lengthB= "2"
>
> assert lengthA <= lengthB
>
> and was returning true
>
>
> It would have been *much* more helpful if it told be that I was comparing
> objects of different types.
>
This would somewhat undermine the value of Python's polymorphism, however,
which generally requires you to be able to use any old type of thing in any
context "as long as it makes sense" (in other words, as long as the objects
used have the correct methods). If you aren't using Python's object-oriented
features yet then this might seem a little unnecessary.

To ensure that two objects are of the same type you usually need to
explicitly check:

    if type(a) == type(b) and (other_conditions):

For comparisons, it was decided that allowing comparisons between object of
different types was necessary to allow (for example) sorting of arbitrary
lists.

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From jmarshal at mathworks.com  Fri Jul 13 12:51:53 2001
From: jmarshal at mathworks.com (Joshua Marshall)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 16:51:53 GMT
Subject: Newbie list question
References: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9in8v9$kdd$1@news.mathworks.com>

Matthew Alton <Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com> wrote:
...

>>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
>>>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?

bar points to the same object that foo points to.  It's not the case
that bar is an alias for foo.

>>>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.

For clarity, it might be better to say baz points to a copy of the
list which foo points to.

>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> bar 
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
>>>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
> bar (?)
>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
>>>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
> expected.
>>>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

Here, the variable foo is rebound to a new list.  The previous list
(which bar still points to) is unaffected.  If you had done
"foo.append('c')" instead of "foo = foo + ['c']", than a 'c' would be
appended to the list object that foo and bar both still refer to.


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul  8 20:46:34 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 00:46:34 GMT
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
References: <3B48F6D7.D9798E7D@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ki0e0.vu.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

On 09 Jul 2001 00:14:11 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> I have a two part question about accepting keyboard input in python:
> 
> Is there a standard way to read one keystroke at a time rather than
> doing line input via raw_input()?
> 
> For some reason, I cannot seem to catch Ctrl-C when it is typed in response
> to a raw_input() call.  This code still blows out of the python interpreter
> when the user keys in Ctrl-C:
> 
> try:
> 	x=raw_input()
> except KeyBoardInterrupt:
> 	# Handle the Ctrl-C and regroup
>         ...

This works for me:

    try:
        input = raw_input()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        # handle Ctrl-C

The only difference I see is the capital 'B' you have in
'KeyboardInterrupt'.  Change it to lowercase and see what happens.

HTH
-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>
Never put off until tomorrow that
which can be done the day after tomorrow.
    -- Mark Twain


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 11:38:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:38:41 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <u7kwxki4i.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <cp3d7l9fya.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

> Could we also at least keep in the fray a slightly alternate question
> of "what can we do about the PEP"?  I mean, as has been suggested
> elsewhere at times, one solution to the old code is not to break it -
> using "//" (or some other sequence) as the float division is backwards
> compatible (no current code using it) and can be introduced at any
> time for new code to use.  It wouldn't even need a lengthy period, but
> could show up right in 2.2.

No, this does not solve the problem.  The / operator overloads two
different operations and breaks an (IMO) important rule about math
expressions.

> It seems to me that the only real argument against that is aesthetics,
> or am I missing something?  Of course I'll play a little devil's
> advocate and say that I probably agree with the aesthetic argument, but
> only to the point where it breaks down against my concern for the
> compatibility argument.

I don't see it as just aesthetics.  It's like the alleged bug that
caused a figter jet to flip over when crossing the equator, a subtle
bug waiting to happen.

[...]
> What happens when you reach the release where the __future__ is no
> longer needed?  Will that stay in the standard library for some period
> of time after that anyway (or else the -D command line option might
> cause breakage in the standard library)?

As long as the -D option can change the defaults, all library code
needs to keep the __future__ division statement.

> > Anything else?
> 
> Just one thought on the warnings defined in the PEP (which in any list
> like the above, I'd probably suggest highlighting as a point).
> They're not perfect since there are plenty of environments where they
> might not show up, but if I read correctly, as of 2.3 any integer
> divisions that lose data will generate a warning, but only until the
> new behavior becomes default.

I just decided that the new behavior won't become the default before
Python 3.0.

> Unlike many (all?) of the prior backwards-incompatible features, which
> first warn about breaking behavior and then fully break behavior, but
> continue to do so visibly (e.g., "yield" remains a keyword), this one
> ends up in a state where the break goes from being warned about to
> being silent and no longer visible.  That might be part of my gut
> concern about compatibility, as it makes me feel that there is a
> window of opportunity to catch the problem, but if you miss it,
> discovering dependencies on old behavior becomes very problematic.

Actually, nested scopes shares this property.  It's just that code
affected adversely by nested scopes is pretty rare.

> Could there be a way to continue to request the activation of the
> warning noted in the PEP even after it has been turned off by default
> and the behavior has officially changed?

Yes, but this would have to be combined with setting the default
back.  You can't warn about the old behavior and implement the new
behavior at the same time: that would be the worst of both worlds.

> Doing a static analysis of
> modules to find uses of division can help inspect older modules but
> having runtime warnings may prove helpful when trying to make use of
> an older module in a few years with a current Python.  This sort of
> thing might even be helpful as a general recommendation for other
> backwards-incompatible changes that by their nature become silent once
> fully enabled.

An easy solution of course is to keep an older version of Python
around and see if the code triggers any warnings with that version.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 11:04:00 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:04:00 -0500
Subject: Memory usage, in droves
In-Reply-To: <9jr62c$16d$1@news.service.uci.edu>
References: <9jr62c$16d$1@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <15201.33504.480823.85844@beluga.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Danyel" == Danyel Fisher <danyelf at ics.uci.edu> writes:

    Danyel> So I want to figure out the memory leaks--what objects am I not
    Danyel> letting go?  What is the GC missing?

The gc module can tell you what stuff found that it couldn't reclaim.
That stuff is going to be caused by circular references.

Also, check out building Python with Py_TRACE_REFS defined.  It will add
getobjects and gettotalrefcount methods to the sys module.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  9 16:24:55 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 15:24:55 -0500
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <20010709082058.D93525-100000@open-systems.net>
Message-ID: <005f01c108b5$3cfcfc80$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Watson" <chris at voodooland.net>
> > The BSDL doesn't *have* to mention that "further restrictions are
> > prohibited"
> > since that is the default.
>
> Yes it does. The license itself says nothing about not adding furhter
> restrictions. It's common knowledge you CAN GPL BSD code.

Like so much "common knowledge" it's based on assumptions and "lore."

> > The GPL states how the creator of derivative works must behave.  If the
> > creator of the derivative work cannot obey both the GPL and the law at
the
> > same time, the law takes precedence always.
>
> > The main reason you hate it seems to be that you have seriously
> > overestimated
> > the power that the license gives to others.  No matter what I or anyone
else
> > wants to do, without your approval I can't change the license of your
code.
>
> No, you simply either haven't read the GPL in its entire form, or you
> don't understand it, or you have never consulted a lawyer about it, or
> your simply ignoring the truth. When you take a copy of a 2 clause BSDL'ed
> piece of code, change a few lines of it and and add that NEW piece of code
> into a GPL work the whole work is GPL'ed.

As an entire work, yes.

> It ceased to be MY work the
> second you modified it.

Wrong.  Regardless of what the license says, copyright law makes it yours
forever.
Under some circumstances I can add my copyright (below yours) but first
claim
is always yours.

> > In the aggregate with GPL code, the aggregate must be distributed as if
the
> > GPL covered the whole thing, but that aggregation still doesn't change
the
> > license of non-GPL code in "the mix."  Further, if the license of the
non-
> > GPL code is GPL-incompatible you simply can't legally distribute the
> > aggregation at all.
>
> Your talking in circles now. Your admitting you can GPL bsd code. "The
> aggregate *must be* distributed as if the the GPL covered the whole
> thing." You are correct.

Cool.  Glad to hear it.  Too bad you aren't reading what I'm writing.

    "as if"

does not change the license.  If I have added your BSDL code to my GPL
project,
I must abide by the GPL.  I cannot under any circumstances force you to do
so.
Your original code, and my changes as well, remain under the BSDL regardless
of
how I license the rest of the project.

> The BSDL does NOT prevent someone from GPL'ing
> the code. It says nothing in the license at all about further
> restrictions, ammending the license etc..

It doesn't HAVE TO.  Have you missed the point?  Copyright and contract law
supercedes the license.  That's why all commercial licenses (and many Open
Source/Free Software licenses) have a clause that says that, should any of
the license stipulations be found illegal or unenforceable, the remainder of
the license stays in effect.  The lawyers who write them KNOW there are
holes.

In other words, it doesn't matter WHAT the GPL says, you and I and all the
other programmers out there still have to abide by the law.  I can't change
the license on your code; I can encase your code in a sort of GPL "shell"
if your license is not GPL-incompatible, but the shell can still be opened
and your code extracted.

In any event, so long as you publish a BSDL version of the code, the only
the only thing you lose in your interpretation are my changes... and that
only because you won't accept the GPL license I have applied.  (This
assuming
I was that kind of jerk, which I am not.)

FWIW I have several small public projects, and here is the license mix:

    Ginsu (GPL) -- because I borrowed a GPL module from QuakeForge
    WConio (Public Domain) -- because I borrowed code from a public domain
        software package and thought it most respectful to leave the license
        status as is.
    Alternative Readline (BSD-like) -- because I borrowed a fragment of C
        from the effbot and applied a similar license to my modules.
    RBTree (Public Domain) -- C code ported to Python and heavily revised.
        Once again, leaving it in the public domain obeys the wishes of
        the original author.
    ULpr (GPL) -- This one has no borrowed code.  I used the GPL because
        I don't want this program disappearing into the bowels of a
        commercial software project.
    GDmodule (Artistic I think) -- I took this one over from Richard Jones,
        and the license is his.
    Plumber's Helpers (BSD-like) -- These little buggers are all mine, but
        frankly not that inventive.
    Web Publishing System (BSD-like) -- This package is likewise all mine.

So you can see, I don't have an axe to grind.  I'm just tired of all the GPL
haters trying to make it sound like the GPL is equivalent to the Satanic
Verses.





From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 19:54:53 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 16:54:53 -0700
Subject: newbie threading question
References: <KYN77.7188$LP2.727977@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <9jvjcd$9ch$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <KYN77.7188$LP2.727977 at bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
douglas savitsky <dsavitsk at e-coli.net> wrote:
>
>is there anyway to capture the return value? i need to run several
>simultaneous large computations, but i would like to capture the
>returns ... i think? do i not? can anyone give some suggestions on
>where to look?

Subclass threading.Thread instead.  For more info, see
http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  8 01:23:09 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 05:23:09 GMT
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <mailman.994530972.4782.python-list@python.org> <3b4773d5$0$331$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <3B47EE6A.602@ActiveState.com>

Neil Macneale wrote:

> Is there posibly a function that is called when a thread gives up the
> lock which I could use to take the thread out of the running queue?  


There is no "running queue" as such.  There may simply be a number of 
threads waiting on the global interpreter lock.  You can easily write a 
function in C that releases the lock - thereby allowing any waiting 
threads to start.

Indeed, many existing Python functions do exactly this - time.sleep() 
for example.  It releases the lock, calls the system sleep() function, 
then acquires the lock.

Mark.



From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 10:26:02 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:26:02 +0100
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
>particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
>administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
>into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.

Popularity as a langauge for open source projects can be measured
by looking at Sourceforge's statistics.

>From http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=160
we have these figures:

C++      4078
C        4889
Java     2739 
Perl     2142 
PHP      1999 
Python    934
Shell     439
VB        390
Tcl       326 

So Python is the 6th most popular language for open source development.

Out of interest, here's the figures for some other languages:

JavaScript  269
Delphi   252
Pascal   110
Object Pascal 59 (total pascal-like = 421)
PL/SQL 237
Ruby 31
Lisp 122
Scheme  74  (total lisplike = 196)
Smalltalk 20



On 27 April 2001, I took this list from Sourceforge:

C         4250
C++       3458
Java      2252
Perl      1840
PHP       1652
Python     773
Unix Shell 380
Visual Basic 306
Tcl        279
Delphi     191
JavaScript 183


That was about 2 1/2 months ago. Subtracting, we can see what's
popular for new development. Analysing these figures, we get:

Language  27Apr 11Jul %age   diff %age   Diff %age
C         4250  4889  26.49  639  22.09  -4.4
C++       3458  4078  22.09  620  21.43  -0.66
Java      2252  2739  14.84  487  16.83   1.99
PHP       1652  1999  10.83  347  11.99   1.16
Perl      1840  2142  11.61  302  10.44  -1.17
Python     773   934   5.06  161   5.57   0.5
JavaScript 183   269   1.46   86   2.97   1.52
VBasic     306   390   2.11   84   2.9    0.79
Delphi     191   252   1.37   61   2.11   0.74
Shell      380   439   2.38   59   2.04  -0.34
Tcl        279   326   1.77   47   1.62  -0.14

Total    15564 18457        2893

In terms of new projects, Python is still 6th, but its %age
share has gone up. This means it is increasing in popularity
compared to the other languages in the table (though not 
necessarily compared to all languages).

The lang with the biggest increase in share is Java. The one
with the diggest decrease is C, though is is still the most popular
lang for new OSS projects.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##




From grahamd at dscpl.com.au  Sat Jul 28 22:12:08 2001
From: grahamd at dscpl.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 19:12:08 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <dc6f5c99.0107251655.f3c625b@posting.google.com> <3B5FC733.5186D588@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107261825.7e74fa89@posting.google.com> <3B60EEA0.70BC492A@tundraware.com> <dc6f5c99.0107270155.72f8c5aa@posting.google.com> <pgc87.237$bXi.178337280@news.telia.no> <3B61A061.2634D595@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <dc6f5c99.0107281812.ffd8f2a@posting.google.com>

Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in message news:<3B61A061.2634D595 at tundraware.com>...
> Thomas Weholt wrote:
> >
> > What do you mean by "reliability"? I think we're talking about different
> > worlds here; I'm developing a system for normal users, who can accept
> > infrequent failures and some downtime without ending in financial ruin.
> 
> For end-user computing, you may be right.  For back-office computing
> I think the risk is way too high.

And I would agree. There is a big difference between having someone
sitting at a browser and after a while making their own decision that
their request has failed in some way because no response has come
back,
and some application trying to make the same decision. If an
application is relying on a single RPC communication to do something
and it dies
after they have sent the request but before they get a response, is it
mean't to assume it worked or that it indeed may have got through. If
it did get through and it has changed something on the server side,
what
about the results which may have been returned, how is it going to get
that back. Yes, a human would have similar problems to deal with, but
human operators tend to be a bit more adaptable in as far as working
out
what should be done. Thus for a back end system, a proper transaction
mechanism is needed which may involve multiple communications. SOAP
might well be used as a base communication for this, but it isn't
necessarily
an ideal medium for doing it. I would imagine that a lot of the effort
being put in by Microsoft with .NET would be trying to address this
particular
issue.

> > Companies spending millions on huge projects cannot. SOAP is supported by
> > IBM, Microsoft etc. and would they risk promoting, even building complex
> > systems like .NET on this technology if it wasn't suitable at all?
> 
> Umm, yes they would.  Microsoft built a multi-billion dollar empire
> on buggy, unreliable software that is "good enough" for consumer-grade problems.
> As you point out above "reliable" depends in what context and by what measure
> you are working.

And what has just happened. On www.theregister.co.uk, it talks about
how
Microsoft is putting back to 2003-2004 the introduction of its full
.NET
infrastructure. The article mentions that some of the specifications
it
is going to rely on need to mature, but one could also speculate that
getting the reliability required for back end systems that corporate
customers are going to require, isn't as easy as they may have thought
it was. Remember that they are trying to push this as an eventual
replacement
for COM+ but in a distributed context. The stuff they have put out so
far
has only been to address the user/server case and isn't necessarily
appropriate
for server/server by itself. I can't seem them going away from their
existing
transactactional queueing systems real soon now. Right now .NET is no
more
than yet another buzz word as has in no way proved itself. As with
lots of
Microsoft stuff, the end result will probably be very different to
what they
thought it would be at the start. But of course, they will always say
that
it was what was always intended. :-)


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 15:01:29 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:01:29 GMT
Subject: Profiler question
References: <slrn9km60i.d3l.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <mailman.994779436.2512.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4B4F91.4CCFFE84@yahoo.com>

Neil Schemenauer wrote:
> 
> Alexandre Fayolle wrote:
> > I'm using the profile module to try to see where I could get some speedups
> > in an application, I'm getting troubles interpretting the results, especially
> > the cumulative times. Is there a known problem with profile and multithreaded
> > applications?
> 
> If you're on a reasonably fast machine and the timer resolution is poor
> (e.g. Linux x68 is 100 Hz by default) then the results can be very
> strange.  Changing HZ to 1024 in "include/asm/param.h" and recompiling
> the Linux kernel greatly improved my profile results.
> 
>   Neil

Does that work OK with existing binary utilities? At one time I heard that doing
so would screw up "top", but that was quite some time ago... kernel 2.0 I think.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 28 18:37:46 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 18:37:46 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEAGLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk, to Guido]
> Type/class unification is definitely worth doing.
>
> But since you want some critic, here is one: the picture is
> complicated.  Not that I know how to do it better, perhaps it's
> unavoidable.  Nevertheless it's so complicated that details escape me.

I'm going to quote myself from Andrew Kuchling's "Python Warts" page, at

    http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html

    ... you can program productively in Python for years before even
    noticing [the type/class split]!  It's a "deadly sin" to some old-
    timers, and to many extension (in C) writers, but not to the
    majority of Pythoneers (bless their ignorant little hearts <wink>).

The implementation of Python classes in C, and all current uses of the
metaclass hook/hack, routinely explode giant brains all over the planet.
It's difficult and error-prone stuff.

>From my POV, the real thrust of type/class unification is to ease life for
the relative handful of people who build the extension types and classes the
rest of us can then use without much thought.  Their lives are 7 kinds of
hell today, and perhaps that can be reduced to 2 <wink>.

Guido is exposing the machinery so that it's usable *from* Python too, but
no matter how you cut it, metaclasses are plain confusing, and really
shouldn't be of interest to the majority of users (except as happy end-users
of code written by people who *have* to wrestle with stuff at this level).

So, yes, it *is* complicated, because you're down to the raw bones here.
Even efficiency isn't glossed over at this level, and that always
complicates life too.  But before getting *too* panicked by that, people
should ask themselves whether they'll ever need to program at this level --
my bet is that most people don't need to, and indeed would be better off
steering clear of it.  If you find yourself never caring about whether a
thing is "a type" or "a class" today (I've got almost no code that cares!),
you're not the primary audience.

reassuringly-but-perhaps-for-the-wrong-reasons-ly y'rs  - tim




From oconnor at bioreason.com  Fri Jul 27 15:01:15 2001
From: oconnor at bioreason.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:01:15 -0600
Subject: Launching Python from Python
References: <3B619A9E.9E940B28@bioreason.com> <wz66cefcph.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3B61BA7B.568FC3A5@bioreason.com>


Piet van Oostrum wrote:
> 
> >>>>> Jay O'Connor <oconnor at bioreason.com> (JO) writes:
> 
> JO> All,
> JO> I'm trying to launch another program from a Python program.  The other
> JO> program happens to be another Python program.  I thought spawnle would
> JO> be the proper place.  However, it doesn't seem to be working.
> 
> JO>     import os
> JO>     pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
> JO>                     "c:\\python20\\python.exe",
> JO>                     ["c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py"],
> JO>                     {"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})
> 

> So make it either:
> 
> pid = os.spawnle (os.P_NOWAIT,
>                 "c:\\python20\\python.exe",
>                 "python", "c:\\james\\development\\python\\test.py",
>                 {"PYTHONPATH":"c:\\james\\python"})

Yeah, that did it, thanks.


Take care,
Jay


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 19 08:56:10 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:56:10 GMT
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org> <3B568B98.58997100@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <cp1yndgjsl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Carsten Gaebler <clpy at snakefarm.org> writes:

> However, I'd like to suggest a small syntax enhancement. Additionally to 'for
> key in dict:' being equivalent to 'for key in dict.iterkeys():' it would be
> really nice to have some magic that makes 'for (key, value) in dict:'
> equivalent to 'for (key, value) in dict.iteritems():'.

Sorry, this has been discussed to death in the iterators list.
There's no good solution.  The PEP has a summary of the discussion.
Please don't start this again!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From donovan at sherbet.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 13:16:33 2001
From: donovan at sherbet.co.uk (Donovan Hide)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:16:33 +0100
Subject: List Question
Message-ID: <tlgptk32ve8o27@corp.supernews.co.uk>

Given:

a=[[0]*6]*6
a[3][3]=4
print a

[[0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0]]

What syntax should I use to get this result:

[[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 4, 0,
0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]

Thanks for the help,
Donovan Hide.




From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 00:22:32 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 04:22:32 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> It [int/int->int] can be useful for many things; that's not at
issue,

Actually, it did seem to be an issue when a couple of people seemed to
suggest that some of us were mentally unbalanced in thinking that
integer quotients are the right and useful result for int/int.

>and nobody has ever proposed taking away the ability to get an
integer result;
> the issue is how  to spell that.

And that issue was *not* spelled out in the PEP.

Actually, as I mention in my article today 'A use for integer
quotients', I thought that one version of the proposal *was* to take
away the current spelling without providing any replacement.  That is
what I argued most strenously against.

I know that one version of the proposal was to provide an
*unacceptible* (to me) replacement -- div(i,j).  Guido appeared to
maybe even favor it until I pointed out that an infix replacement
would make fixing current code *much* easier.

This gets to the issue of what is a proper PEP.  Simply saying 'I
don't like the current situation; lets replace it with something' is
not, in my opinion.  The only thing definite that I remember from
reading PEP 238 was to change the result of int/int to float.  Then
maybe add div() [awful], div [possible], // [best in my opinion],
something else [???], or, at least by implication, nothing
[horrendous].  It is hard compare something definite (the current
situation, whatever it is) to a nebulosity, especially when the range
of alternatives floating around the nebula range from horrendous to
maybe ok.

If 238 had been written originally something like the following (which
it now is), I would have argued *much* less.

Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two arithmetic
operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
division.  This confuses some people.
Proposal: Make '/' consistently mean fractional division and introduce
a new operator '//' for truncated-result division.
Acknowledgement: This semantic replacement is a bit different from
most any previous change to Python.  Extra care will be needed to make
the transition as smooth as possible.

(Just noticed:  http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
now proposes a *2 year* int/int warning period starting with 2.3.  It
still needs a stipulation that someone write an intdiv checker to help
automate replacements.)

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 19 21:56:39 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:56:39 -0400
Subject: Examples of using XML and Python?
References: <3b56e5fa$1@shiva.ukisp.net>
Message-ID: <3B578FD7.5DC2A209@engcorp.com>

Mark Ainsworth wrote:
> 
> Has anyone got any simple examples of using Python and XML? The plan is to
> use XML as the data format for information files. These need to be able to
> be read, for data extraction, and also written too for modification. I am
> VERY new to this. Python is O.K. but I haven't got a clue about SAX, DOM
> etc.

I see other posts replying with useful links, so I won't try to compete
with those.  I have two points, however:

1. "Use XML as the data format for information files" seems incredibly
   redundant, or at least very vague. :)  Can you provide any more detail?
   This might let somebody provide more "targetted" examples.

2. We are using Python and XML extensively at my current employer. 
   We use XML "as the data format for information files". :-)  Actually,
   I would say we just store various kinds of data as XML.  In this 
   case, the output from a factory automation system is encoded in
   XML format for later analysis/conversion into other forms.  Printed
   reports are generated directly from the XML using FOP, which converts
   to PDF files.  We are going to add some statistical analysis
   capability as well, which will probably start by using the Python
   XML support to extract relevant data for processing, either by
   Python or by converting into spreadsheet data for processing elsewhere.

   The input data for the automation system is also stored as XML.
   In this case, it is extract using Python utilities from another
   format (Excel spreadsheets, I believe, in the current version), and
   converted to XML for consumption by the automation application.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From ici at ici.mine.nu  Sat Jul 28 11:15:13 2001
From: ici at ici.mine.nu (Toshinao Ishii)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:15:13 +0900
Subject: undefined symbol: __dso_handle
Message-ID: <9jukod$pvh$1@webs005f.kisweb.ne.jp>

Hi.

I met following installation problem of Python-2.1.1.
My environment is Linux/i386 (Debian-2.2) with gcc-3.0.
Installation of Python (configure; make; make install)
looks completed fine. But when I run one of the test
script in Lib/test/ I've got the following error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test_new.py", line 1, in ?
    from test_support import verbose, verify
  File "test_support.py", line 106, in ?
    import unittest
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/unittest.py", line 51, in ?
    import time
ImportError: /usr/local/lib/python2.1/lib-dynload/time.so: undefined symbol:
__dso_handle

Let me know how to solve this problem.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Toshinao Ishii  emai: jsbach at mac.com




From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Jul 12 11:48:45 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 17:48:45 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <bdeqktshfugcoh0fhge7k1j2mbhhejeeel@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9ikgst$5e5$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I'm interested to see what responses you will get to this query, as I
> don't fully understand the lambda functions either. However, I'm
> currently working through the chapters on Tkinter in Programming Python,
> 2nd ed., and apparently, there are cases when issuing callbacks for
> events, that in order to be able to pass parameters to the callback
> function, one must use lambda functions.

I have'nt seen this question addressed yet, so I give it a try.

Tkinter callbacks are to be called when an event happens, like a mouse
click.  So callbacks have to be callable objects.

When you specify the callback in the widget creation call, clearly the
callback is not to be called yet, you only pass a callable object to
be called later when the triggering event happens.

Now suppose you want to `curry' that callback at specification time.
The straighforward way is to define a local function embedding the
curry you want to apply. And here you have a choice of naming that
function or using a nameless one.  Ofcourse you could equally well
use one of the class based currying methods discussed so often in
this newsgroup.


Example time:

   >>> from Tkinter import *
   >>> 
   >>> def p(s):
   ...     print "s='%s'" % s
   ... 
   >>> root = Frame(); root.pack()
   >>> b = Button(root, text="p", command=p)
   >>> b.pack()
   
pressing the button on the screen gives:

   Exception in Tkinter callback
   Traceback (most recent call last):
     File ".../Tkinter.py", line 1285, in __call__
       return apply(self.func, args)
   TypeError: p() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

ofcourse passing a parameter to p doesn't help us out:

   >>> b = Button(root, text="p", command=p("aap"))
   s='aap'

oeps, p is called directly

   >>> b.pack()

and pressing the second button has no effect what so ever.
So we have to use some currying trick, e.g. a local function:

   >>> def local_f(p=p): return p("local_f")
   >>> b = Button(root, text="local_f", command=f)
   >>> b.pack()

pressing the button gives:

   s='local_f'

Some peaple prefer nameless functions and use lambda's here, like:

   >>> b = Button(root, text="lambda", command=lambda x="lambda": p(x))
   >>> b.pack()

pressing the third button gives:

    s='lambda'

now let's acchieve the same with classes and callable instances.

   >>> class Curry:
   ... 	   def __init__(self, fun, *args):
   ... 	       self.fun = fun
   ... 	       self.args = args
   ... 	   def __call__(self, *args):
   ... 	       return self.fun(*(self.args + args))
   ... 
   >>> b = Button(root, text="curry", command=Curry(p, "spam and spam"))
   >>> b.pack()

pressing the forth button gives us:

   s='spam and spam'

if you want to try this running it from a script you need to add this:

   >>> root.mainloop()




-- 
groetjes, carel


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul 10 18:13:22 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:13:22 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

So an interesting question is raised.  If PHP and Ruby are gaining
acceptance because they address business needs, what needs to be done to
carry Python in that direction?  And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it
for business solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can Python
become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP? 

-----Original Message-----
From: "J?rgen A. Erhard" [mailto:juergen.erhard at gmx.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 2:12 PM
To: web2ed at yahoo.com
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!


>>>>> "Edward" == Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> writes:

    Edward> Languages never die; they just fall out of use when they loose
touch
    Edward> with the contemporary.  Python will become more or less
mainstream
    Edward> (live or die) on it's own merits.

    Edward> A scripting language should be good at scripting.  From my
    Edward> observation, Python appears to be headed in more of an acedemic
    Edward> direction rather than that of mainstream commerce.  Acedemics
are
    Edward> good, it's where technology comes from.  Unfortunately, I still
    Edward> haven't found a way to make money using Python.  If I can't make
money
    Edward> with Python, then Python is dead to me.  I would imagine my
voice
    Edward> represents a small crowd of developers, who wish they too could
make
    Edward> money with and contribute to Python on a daily basis (on company
    Edward> time).

    Edward> If this is so, Python won't bennefit from the best developers,
the
    Edward> developers who code for a living.  From what I can tell, PHP and
Ruby
    Edward> are flying past Python in acceptance rates.  The difference that
I see
    Edward> in these groups, is a sensitivity to industry, rather than an
    Edward> adoration for pure acedemic elegance.

    Edward> Beauty is only beauty if one can experience it.  I can't
experience
    Edward> Python on a day to day basis (in the workplace), so therefore I
can't
    Edward> appreciate it.

    Edward> As far as ODBC--ODBC is too slow for what I do.  I'm using
Oracle
    Edward> Pro/C.  Most serious developers would agree that ODBC is slow. 
    Edward> Wheather Java decides to use (cheat with) ODBC or not is Java's
    Edward> problem.  Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any
kind. 
    Edward> If it weren't, it would be the perfect language--if that were
    Edward> possible.

    Edward> Yes, native drivers for all db vendors.  This is why I mentioned
(in
    Edward> an earlier post) that this should be a community effort.  Python
could
    Edward> break the door down if it paid more attention to the needs of
the
    Edward> commond professional.  Satellite controlers are great too, but
    Edward> Priorities have meaining in a time of war.

Bwahahahahha... heehee, *wheeeze*... please, stop, this is too good!
My stomach's starting to hurt!  "Java ... serious development of any
kind."  ... mua... mwua... Mwuahaha, Bwuahahaha!

Bye, J

PS: If ever you should have a need for a second career, try stand-up
comedy.  You should be good at it...

PPS: I agree with Paul: it's hardly possible to take you seriously
anymore.

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
                    "Perl Programmers are from Mars,
        Python Programmers are from Yorkshire" -- Alex in c.l.py



From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Tue Jul 31 13:45:46 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:45:46 -0400
Subject: Postgres Large Objects with Python/PyPgSQL
Message-ID: <V9C97.228$Z2.3620@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

I have 2 computers with PostgreSQL running.
1. PostgresSQL 7.0/Redhat 7.0/Python 2.1/pyPgSQL 1.2
2. PostgresSQL 7.1.1/Redhat 7.1/Python 2.1/pyPgSQL 1.2

I am relatively new to both python and postgres and I
was experimenting with large objects.
I wrote the simple test program shown below to insert.
and extract a large object. It worked
fine on computer #1 with Postgress 7.0
but fails with Postgres 7.1.1 on machine #2 with the following
error:

C:\Rod\Project\Active\00012-interact-db-build>python
blobtest.py
[['one ', 709448]]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "blobtest.py", line 36, in ?
handle.open('r')
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'open'


Did something change in Postgres from version 7.0 to 7.1.1 that has caused
this
inability to access a large object with the PyPgSQL interface?
 Is there a problem with my code?

It appears that on computer #2 the cursor doesn't
contain an object.

Thanks in Advance
Rod MacNeil
rmacneil at interactdirect.com

Here's the code:

# blobtest.py

"""
This is me playing with blobs with PyPgSQL
"""



import PgSQL
conx = PgSQL.connect
(host='192.168.1.102',database='junk',user='user',password='pass')

cur = conx.cursor()
cur.execute("create table test2 (f1 char(10),f2 oid)")
conx.commit()
cur.close()

data ={}
data['name'] = 'one'
cur = conx.cursor()
data['blob'] = conx.binary(open('client.ico','rb').read())

sql = "insert into test2 values (%(name)s,%(blob)s)"
cur.execute(sql,data)
conx.commit()
cur.close()

cur = conx.cursor()
cur.execute("select * from test2")
data=cur.fetchall()
print data

outfile=open('client2.ico','wb')

# the large object that comes back from a query can be
opened as a file handle
handle = data[0][1]
handle.open('r')
outfile.write(handle.read())
outfile.close()

cur.close()
conx.close





From noselasd at frisurf.no  Wed Jul 18 07:54:22 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:54:22 +0200
Subject: Readline on RedHat 7.1 with Python 2.1
References: <3B551BD7.4D666D9E@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <0Ne57.1129$KC.143209@news3.oke.nextra.no>

"Kelly Gerber" <kelly.gerber at mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3B551BD7.4D666D9E at mindspring.com...
> I am trying to build Python 2.1 on RedHat 7.1 with readline. I
> uncommented the readline line in Modules/Setup, but I get an error
about
> readline when running make. Python builds and works fine otherwise.
But
> it is a pain to type in commands again at the interactive prompt when
I
> want to repeat something. Has any one had luck in getting Python to
> build with readline?
Python 2.1 builds fine with readline on RH7.1, you must ofcourse have
the
readline-devel package installed.





From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:56:55 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:56:55 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:

> I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
> 
>   2L**128/2
> 
> which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
> semantics would give an approximation...

Have you read the PEP?  The PEP only returns a float if the int result
would yield a remainder.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk  Sat Jul 28 13:36:06 2001
From: sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk (Steve S.L. Wong)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:36:06 +0800
Subject: Why this code cannot change caption of "Start" button?
Message-ID: <9jut26$7bf$1@justice.csc.cuhk.edu.hk>

I try to change the caption of Start Button of Windows (mine is Windows ME):

import win32gui
import win32con
import win32api
import array

hwnd = win32gui.FindWindowEx(win32gui.FindWindow('Shell_TrayWnd',None),0,
                               "Button",None)

win32api.SendMessage(hwnd,win32con.WM_SETTEXT,0,
                     array.array('c','TEST' + '\0').buffer_info()[0])

print 'LPARAM is: %d' %  array.array('c','TEST' + '\0').buffer_info()[0]


Any body knows why the above code does not work?




From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 27 03:56:55 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:56:55 +0200
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net> <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com> <mailman.996211192.8589.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B611EC7.9B43EF34@stroeder.com>

Chris Gonnerman wrote:
> 
> From: "Michael Str?der" <michael at stroeder.com>
> >
> > You might wanna borrow some ideas from
> > http://www.stroeder.com/pylib/PyWebLib/
>
> What I'd like to see is a working example of *using* one or more of
> the given session managers... I'm afraid that just reading the source
> is not helping me.

Did you check out the cgi-bin/test-session.py shipped in PyWebLib's
tar.gz file ? I'm usually passing around the session ID as hidden
field or as part of PATH_INFO (e.g. in http://web2ldap.de).

Ciao, Michael.

P.S.: Please, solely reply by news.


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 07:08:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:08:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B540EBA.EE5372BD@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107171439080.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

> After having been through two rounds of comments with the "Unicode
> Literal Encoding" pre-PEP, it has turned out that people actually
> prefer to go for the full Monty meaning that the PEP should handle
> the complete Python source code encoding and not just the encoding
> of the Unicode literals (which are currently the only parts in a
> Python source code file for which Python assumes a fixed encoding).
> 
> Here's a summary of what I've learned from the comments:
> 
> 1. The complete Python source file should use a single encoding.

Yes, certainly

> 2. Handling of escape sequences should continue to work as it does 
>    now, but with all possible source code encodings, that is
>    standard string literals (both 8-bit and Unicode) are subject to 
>    escape sequence expansion while raw string literals only expand
>    a very small subset of escape sequences.
> 
> 3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
>    work as follows:
> 
>    1. read the file
>    2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
>    3. tokenize the Unicode content
>    4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
>       and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
>       by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
>       using the given file encoding

I think, that if encoding is not given, it must sillently assume "UNKNOWN"
encoding and do nothing, that is be 8-bit clean (as it is now).

Otherwise, it will slow down parser considerably.

I also think that if encoding is choosen, there is no need to reencode it
back to literal strings: let them be in Unicode.

Or the encoding must _always_ be ASCII+something, as utf-8 for example.
Eliminating the need to bother with tokenizer (Because only docstrings,
comments and string-literals are entities which require encoding /
decoding).

If I understood correctly, Python will soon switch to "unicode-only"
strings, as Java and Tcl did. (This is of course disaster for some Python
usage areas such as fast text-processing, but...)

Or am I missing something?

>    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
>    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
>    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
>    roundtrip).

...as I said, there must be no assumed charset. Things must
be left as is now when no explicit encoding given.
 
> 4. The encoding used in a Python source file should be easily
>    parseable for en editor; a magic comment at the top of the
>    file seems to be what people want to see, so I'll drop the
>    directive (PEP 244) requirement in the PEP.
> 
> Issues that still need to be resolved:
> 
> - how to enable embedding of differently encoded data in Python
>   source code (e.g. UTF-8 encoded XML data in a Latin-1
>   source file)

Probably, adding explicit conversions.
 
> - what to do with non-literal data in the source file, e.g.
>   variable names and comments:
> 
>   * reencode them just as would be done for literals
>   * only allow ASCII for certain elements like variable names
>   etc.

I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.
But it could be too cheesy to have variable names in national
alphabet ;-)
 
> - which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
> 
>   * Emacs style:
> 
>       #!/usr/bin/python
>       # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-
> 
>   * Via meta-option to the interpreter:
> 
>       #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8
> 
>   * Using a special comment format:
> 
>       #!/usr/bin/python
>       #!encoding = 'utf-8'

No variant is ideal. The 2nd is worse/best than all
(it depends on how to look at it!)

Python has no macro directives. In this situation 
they could help greatly!

That "#!encoding" is special case of macro directive.

May be just put something like ''# <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC''
at the beginning...

Or, even greater idea occured to me: allow some XML
with meta-information (not only encoding) somehow escaped.


I think, GvR could come with some advice here...
 
> Comments are welcome !

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul 22 16:15:40 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:15:40 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
Message-ID: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

Hello,

My program (http://silmarill.org/cymbaline/cymbaline/cymbaline.py - yes, 
it's repeated 3 times, that's not an error) works fine in 2.1 but exits
silently in 2.0 - no traceback, no errors, nothing. One possibility I checked
for is except (something): sys.exit() and I don't have anything like that here.
What else could it be?

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul  1 15:27:32 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 1 Jul 2001 19:27:32 GMT
Subject: PEP: Support for "wide" Unicode characters
References: <mailman.993767684.13828.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9juud4.sbf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Thu, 28 Jun 2001 15:33:00 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> pisze:

>     In order to avoid imposing this cost on every
>     user, Python 2.2 will allow 4-byte Unicode characters as a
>     build-time option. Users can choose whether they care about
>     wide characters or prefer to preserve memory.

I don't like it. Scripts will work under some builds of Python and
not work in others.

> Rejected Suggestions

>     The other class of solution is to use some efficient storage
>     internally but present an abstraction of wide characters
>     to the programmer. Any of these would require a much more complex
>     implementation than the accepted solution.

But will work, as opposed to working only sometimes.

If memory consumption is really a problem, I would definitely hide
varying character sizes as an implementation detail.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 13 12:53:39 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:53:39 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994874959.29064.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kpe08.496.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9kpkco.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <9ijpfk02a67@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b4dd783$0$2149@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <kel37.3407$u76.70914@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3b4f284c$0$170@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:kel37.3407$u76.70914 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com...
> "Rufus V. Smith" <nospam at nospam> wrote in message
> news:3b4dd783$0$2149 at wodc7nh6.news.uu.net...
> >
> > "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:9ijpfk02a67 at enews4.newsguy.com...
> > > My proposed solution relied on the fileinput module's "in-place"
> > > behavior (WITH a backup, but that's optional I guess:-).  That
> > > module nicely wraps whatever concerns may need to be wrapped, AND
> > > works on as many files as you desire.
> > >
> > > def allbutfirst(files):
> > >     for line in fileinput.input(files,inplace=1,backup='.bak'):
> > >         if fileinput.filelineno()>1: print line,
> > >
> >
> > I'm a definite Newbie, but to me this looks like it outputs the result
> > to stdout, rather than creating a new file with the first line removed,
> > which is what I thought the goal was.

Silly Newbie!

>
> The manual says: """Optional in-place filtering: if the keyword argument
> inplace=1 is passed to input() or to the FileInput constructor, the file
is
> moved to a backup file and standard output is directed to the input file.
> This makes it possible to write a filter that rewrites its input file in
> place. If the keyword argument backup='.<some extension>' is also given,
it
> specifies the extension for the backup file, and the backup file remains
> around; by default, the extension is '.bak' and it is deleted when the
> output file is closed. In-place filtering is disabled when standard input
is
> read."""

That is SO COOL!

(Copying this to my Python tips folder and looking up that FileInput
module..)









From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  1 10:02:41 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:02:41 GMT
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> 6.31. Why doesn't Python have a "with" statement like some other languages?

See the adjacent thread "PEP scepticism".

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 11:59:23 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:59:23 GMT
Subject: Tkinter: Frames in nested classes?
References: <9053f4e3.0107130616.79fd6378@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <vVE37.5110$z21.519561@newsc.telia.net>

Joshua Weage wrote:
> class Frame1(Frame):
>         def __init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw):
>                 Frame.__init__(self,master=None,cnf={},**kw)

better make that:

    Frame.__init__(self, master, cnf, **kw)

</F>




From hirner at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 19:35:41 2001
From: hirner at yahoo.com (ThaFacka)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:35:41 +0200
Subject: making python write to ostreams
Message-ID: <3b4b8f3f$0$25434$6e365a64@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at>

i cant find a way to make python redirect its output to a ostream in my
embedded app,

...wait ostreams are c++, so there is probably _no_ way to redirect the
output!?
im doomed
thx to anyone proving the different!




From paulsid at home.com  Fri Jul 20 16:01:28 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:01:28 -0600
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j8lag$srl$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net> <3B57E933.63F10BC0@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3B588E18.98A7C8C4@home.com>

Michael Str?der wrote:

> But case-sensitive mode should be the default. Beginners mode should
> have to be turned on by command-line option.

If you mean a command line option in Python, then all I can say is
"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"  To me such a thing would just push Python closer to
C/C++, where working with compiler switches almost constitutes learning
a second language in and of itself.  The ability to type in simply
"python myprog.py" for just about every program and have it run is
something that should not be sacrificed for any price, I think.

I have concerns about the existence of options like -U and even -O which
have the potential to jeopardize this simplicity.  So I think adding an
option for case-sensitivity would surely destroy the "ease of execution"
for good.  If such an option were added it wouldn't take long for
thousands of lines of case-insensitive code to be distributed.  Soon any
time anybody wanted to post code on here they'd have to specify whether
or not it has to be compiled with case-sensitivity turned on.

Case-insensitivity isn't necessarily a bad idea but I think if it's
going to be done a more concrete solution needs to be found.  A command
line option just sounds like a quick-fix idea to me.

Hmmmmmm...how about:

from __alternativestyles__ import caseinsensitivity

Anybody who has the patience to type that in at the start of every
program is automatically qualified to use case-insensitivity in my book,
because I'd be the first to flunk this test.  :-)

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Thu Jul 26 18:30:36 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:30:36 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-F2006B.15303626072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  It contains a long
> motivational section, a clear specification of what will happen, and a
> discussion of rejected alternatives, a list of open issues, a Q-and-A
> section etc..  I hope it answers most questions that have been raised
> about this issue.  I'd be happy to revise it if there are still things
> unclear.

I agree with the previous poster who said to use "quotient" instead of 
"floor division".  Also, both types of division are mathematical results, 
just of different operators.  So maybe instead of the unclear phrase "the 
mathematical result" to denote, you know, the floating point style 
division, maybe you could call it the ratio.

Example of this substitution made to first two paras:

    The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for 
    numerical arguments: it returns the integer quotient of two ints or 
    longs, but it returns a reasonable approximation of the ratio of two 
    floats or complex numbers.  This makes expressions expecting float or 
    complex results error-prone when integers are not expected but 
    possible as inputs.

    We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for 
    different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of the 
    ratio, x//y to return the quotient.  We call the current, mixed 
    meaning of x/y "classic division".
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From matthew.feinstein at jhuapl.edu  Mon Jul 23 14:35:14 2001
From: matthew.feinstein at jhuapl.edu (Matt Feinstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:14 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
Message-ID: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews>

Why not make the operator // do what the -old- division operator did,
so that the only change that has to be made for backwards
compatibility is replace all /'s with //'s?

Matt Feinstein  matt.feinstein at jhuapl.edu
--------
Harvard Law of Automotive Repair: Anything that goes away
by itself will come back by itself.
                          


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Mon Jul 23 14:58:27 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:58:27 +0200
Subject: py2exe problem
References: ( <1103_995913046@jparlar>
Message-ID: <9jhs4l$nrf61$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Jay Parlar" <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message news:1103_995913046 at jparlar...
> > Maybe there's a confusion: The -w command line flag to py2exe does NOT
> > specify a windows executable, it specifies an application
> > which runs in the windows _GUI_ subsystem - as opposed to the -c flag,
> > which creates a _console_ application.
> > For a wxPython app you would probably use the -w option, but if you
> > also print something to the console you need -c!
> >
> > (I should probably rename this command line option to --gui.)
> The problem is, that if I don't give it the -w switch, I get a runtime error.

The problem is, if you don't give the -w switch,
you will get the runtime error as well, but you probably cannot see it.

>
> Traceback <most recent call last>:
[Somehow the rest of the message didn't make it to c.l.p,
but arrived in private mail]
> .
> .
> .
>    File "win32com\server\register.pyc", line 105 in _find_localserver_exe
> "Runtime Error: Can not locate the program 'pythonw.exe' "
>
It seems you use the standard UseCommandline() function
from win32com.server in your script. This will not work
directly - as Duncan also has pointed out, I've posted
a working example. Here's the same article under
another URL: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/543305.

>
>
> > As Duncan Booth already suggested in his reply, it is generally
> > a good idea to start by building a commnd line version even if
> > you eventually will only be using a gui - you may not see
> > tracebacks or error messages otherwise.
> >
> Hehe, well, I can see that traceback now. Any suggestions? py2exe won't let me have both the -c and -w options at the same time.

You don't need them at the same time: You can run a GUI in the console
subsystem, but here you will always _have a console_ (sometimes called
the 'annyoing dos window'.

Thomas




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul  3 14:11:05 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 11:11:05 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994095972.11214.python-list@python.org> <9hqlel016bl@enews4.newsguy.com> <mailman.994112767.3627.python-list@python.org> <9hsmgs02aoj@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B420AB9.69378B11@ActiveState.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> Relying on writing this as "totImportant + countOf[key]" rather than
> "countOf[key] + totImportant" seems to me far more fragile than
> relying on +=.  And if I ever have this in a python -i and when
> interactively exploring I write countOf[this}+countOf[that] I
> definitely do NOT want this to mess up my further explorations -- I
> shudder at the thought.

Okay, I can see that this solution is fragile.

>...
> But while I can conceive Python growing an ismutable() builtin,

Really? Wouldn't you say that the concept is very slippery? For instance
in this context, we only care about things that are sequence-mutable. A
sequence that was attribute-mutable would probably be considered
immutable. So now we need an issequencemutable() builtin..but we don't
have a good definition of a sequence...

> I'd hardly imagine an isadvanced() builtin.  While not fully
> pinned down, "mutable" is still a fundamental concept in a way
> that "advanced" isn't...

I don't want to make a big deal of the terminology. How do you know
whether a class you use is going to overload getitem? getattr? +? You
have to read the documentation for the class. There is no rule that
"mutable objects will overload getitem", you just make the decision on a
case-by-case basis based on your problem domain.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From see.below at no.spam.es  Tue Jul 17 04:20:29 2001
From: see.below at no.spam.es (Javier Bezos)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:20:29 +0100
Subject: access keyword
Message-ID: <1ewon1i.nf6eyso9tlp8N%see.below@no.spam.es>

Hi all,

Just curiosity. What was the access keyword indended for?

Regards
___________________________________________________________
Javier Bezos              | TeX y tipografia
jbezos at wanadoo dot es  | http://perso.wanadoo.es/jbezos/


From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 24 11:19:45 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:19:45 +0200
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <20010724161340.A19700@zoidberg>
References: <20010724161340.A19700@zoidberg>
Message-ID: <20010724171945.B21770@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 04:13:40PM +0200, Marco Mariani wrote:

> Guido is not bad at all, he's just chaotic good :-)

And we all know Chaotic-Good alignments make the most fun characters! 

Neutral-good-ly y'rs,
-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 12 19:23:15 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 19:23:15 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ulmltyboc.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> writes:

> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:

Um, because it might not be exceptional?

> >>> 1 < "aaa"
> 1
> 
> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types as
> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
> produced.

But it may not be a programming error, depending on what you are
trying to achieve.  Heterogeneous collections of objects may still have
a relative sort order amongst entries in the collection, even if in
your specific case here you don't expect that.  There may not be all
that many cases when this is used (although sorting such a
heterogeneous list, for example, is one)

In Python, any object that implements appropriate methods can be used
in a comparison, and all the native objects do.  It is possible in
later releases (when the rich comparisons change was implemented) that
objects can throw exceptions in such a comparison, but just comparing
objects of two types is not normally likely to do so.

> This one tripped me up in an assert statement for a couple of hours.  The
> assert statement was returning true when it should have been false to give
> me a warning that there was a problem.  It was something like:

Ah, but saying it "should have been false" is only because you
believed it was testing something you didn't ask it to test.

> lengthA= 3
> lengthB= "2"
> 
> assert lengthA <= lengthB
> 
> and was returning true
> 
> 
> It would have been *much* more helpful if it told be that I was comparing
> objects of different types.

But if that's what you wanted to assert, then you should adjust your
assert to check that fact rather than assuming that an ordering
comparision would indirectly raise an exception.

Because of Python's polymorphism, any function (method, etc..) that is
going to accept objects needs to expect that arbitrary object types
may be supplied.  The logical comparison functions also work
polymorphically.  Now if a function is not truly polymorphic, but only
works on certain types of parameters or combinations of parameters,
then it should probably check that fact explicitly - either by
ensuring the objects implement the right methods, or if they need to
be the same type, that they are in fact so.

So, you might add to your function:

    assert type(lengthA) == type(lengthB)

Section 2.1.3 (Comparisons) in the library reference covers this
aspect of comparisons explicitly.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From bos at hack.org  Tue Jul  3 08:41:23 2001
From: bos at hack.org (Rikard Bosnjakovic)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 14:41:23 +0200
Subject: object - oriented programming Help!!
References: <7b515e0f.0107030419.5ef11fce@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B41BD73.78B7BEC9@hack.org>

eric_brake wrote:
> 
> What am I doing wrong? I am trying to learn object oriented
> programming, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

You try to make an instance before you define the class and you can't
use "self" when initializing it. Change your code to this one:

class fibonaccii:
    def fib(self, fibnumber):
        a, b = 0, 1
        while b < fibnumber:
            print b,
            a, b = b, a+b

fibinstance = fibonaccii() #create instance


>>> ## working on region in file /usr/tmp/python-918a2M...
>>> fibinstance.fib(7)
1 1 2 3 5

-- 
Rikard Bosnjakovic - http://bos.hack.org/cv/ - ICQ: 1158217

Anyone sending unwanted advertising e-mail to my address will be
charged $250 for network traffic and computing time. By extracting my
address from this message or its header, you agree to these terms.


From kragen at dnaco.net  Thu Jul 19 15:52:12 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:52:12 GMT
Subject: Hi, I'm available for work
Message-ID: <MTG57.421$qh7.17297@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Some of the regular readers of this group know me from my previous
postings here; you can find them at

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kragen+python&meta=site%3Dgroups

I'm looking for work; I'd love to have the chance to program
professionally in Python, although language is not the most important
consideration; I've programmed in lots of different languages, and the
people I work with and the work I'm doing are much more important.

My resume is at http://pobox.com/~kragen/resume.html.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From paul.moore at uk.origin-it.com  Tue Jul 24 08:01:39 2001
From: paul.moore at uk.origin-it.com (Paul Moore)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:01:39 +0200
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
References: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com> <21e393ee.0107210640.54f3e20c@posting.google.com> <54bjlt4sq1sloqvkaadr8a4q7pfvl30ibu@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <irnqlt01ne8nn1aklb84n1j33s6botm2lr@4ax.com>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:24:59 +0200, Paul Moore <gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

>On 21 Jul 2001 07:40:17 -0700, nmack at pacbell.net (angusm) wrote:
>
>>I think the problem is that COM (or ADO?)requires you to define all
>>the event handlers for the interface in your class:
>>
>>"All the event handlers in the ConnectionEvent ... must be
>>implemented, regardless of whether you actually use events. " MSDN
>
>I'll try it, but I'm surprised. I didn't need to do this for a different object
>I tested the event code on. That has many events, and I only implemented the one
>I used. I assumes that the win32com stuff did its magic, and made it work...
>
>Nevertheless, thanks for the suggestion - I'll try it.

It did get rid of the "User has cancelled the operation" error - on a bit more
investigation, it looks like I needed to implement the OnWillConnect event as
well as the OnConnectComplete event. This is odd... The ADO docs state that
the WillConnect event gets passed an "adStatus" parameter set to adStatusOK -
to cancel the connection, the parameter should be set to adStatusCancel. For
some reason, if I implement

    def OnWillConnect(self, ConnectionString, UserID,
                      Password, Options, adStatus,
                      pConnection):
        pass

this works, but if I *don't* implement this, whatever win32com does behind the
scenes doesn't work.

However, I now don't ever seem to receive the OnConnectComplete event. This
may be an ADO issue, but I've tested it in VB and it works as documented, so I
suspect something with the Python side...

Any suggestions?
Paul.



From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 24 16:16:51 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 16:16:51 -0400
Subject: size of a file
References: <3b5dd418_8@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <etdpuaqnkuk.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

import stat
size = os.stat(fd.name)[stat.ST_SIZE]

may be what you want.

HTH
Alex.


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 19:24:45 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:24:45 -0700
Subject: Any way to get current file position in xml.parsers.expat?
References: <slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com> <Msx37.103186$%a.4410093@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com> <slrn9ku4ii.1ji.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F833C.F732E1C3@ActiveState.com>

The behaviour isn't likely to change. The SAX handler depends on it.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 11 10:40:20 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:40:20 GMT
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9idgkv$i7i92$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <cpu20jh6qy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) writes:

> 	Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> > If we left the design of programming languages to the *average*
> > programmer, the field would never make progress.  
> 
> This is an argument I often hear against usability tests for webpages.
> You should not leave the decision to them, but make your decision
> based on what they need and can use to make good code.
> This is sometimes hard to find out and I know that there is no
> practical solution to this problem. 

Yes, that's why I often say "Python is not a democracy, but I *do*
listen". :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 16 23:26:04 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:26:04 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com> <mailman.995305828.11815.python-list@python.org> <3B539476.B31A639E@engcorp.com> <MBN47.12493$d4.432121@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B53B04C.656C398C@engcorp.com>

Steve Holden wrote:
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> > 3. We certainly talk a lot about "one way to write it",
> >    but obviously Python does allow several ways in most
> >    cases.  It seems to split roughly between the "most
> >    obvious" (probably only for us newcomers) and the
> >    map/filter/lambda/list comprehension style which is
> >    obviously second nature for some and entirely outside
> >    of the experience of others.  This ties back to
> >    (1), suggesting that learning more about these builtins
> >    is one of the best ways to optimize (working) Python code.
> 
> Peter: I believe the politically correct mantra is "one obvious way 
> to do it".

Yeah, I was reminded of that in reading 
http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/python-dev.html
shortly after I posted.   :(

 """13. There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious 
    way to do it. """

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 09:48:11 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 06:48:11 -0700
Subject: Memory Leak?  Considering Tcl/Tk Instead...
References: <a21d3c68.0106291235.6757df86@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B407B9B.653AEBE@ActiveState.com>

"Stephen D. Cohen" wrote:
> 
> Gang,
> 
>      I hope someone can help, as I am at a loss.  I have a Python
> program that is the front end for a realtime system.  The realtime
> code sends data to the front panel in the form of Python statements
> which are executed in a handler by use of the eval statement.  The
> handler looks like this:

Is there any reason for the eval statement? It's probably your problem.
Python is a little bit different than Tcl. Using eval is rare. More
structured mechanisms are typically more robust, give better error
recovery, have better security and don't have a memory leak.

http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=ca4cd031e4c7b98c,8&seekm=396EEAFF.3AD7B951%40bioreason.com#p

>...
>      I am a long time Tcl/Tk user considering using Python for a new
> project.  I would love to have access to Python's object oriented
> features and vast library, but if this is the sort of quality I can
> expect, I'll stick with Tcl - thank you very much.

No need to be snarky. If you use Python as Python, it will work fine.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 23:12:59 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 03:12:59 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <3B4A0C34.C64202C2@Lugoj.Com> <3B4A185D.7C9EC4A5@yahoo.com> <3b4a468d.1494788532@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B4A7139.83AFE9C1@yahoo.com>

OK, I'll bite.
fibo.py is mine, ffib.py is yours.
Note that yours computes what is (according to mine and Frederik's scripts)
fibonacci of N-1 rather than fibonacci of N.

Other than that, you've kicked my butt!

Now is the time for me to strategically retreat and declare that what really
matters is readability. Who cares about speed? Not me! Never did, no sir. 

$ time ffib.py 1001 
fib( 1001 ) = 
70330367711422815821835254877183549770181269836358732742604905087154537118196933579742249494562611733487750449241765991088186363265450223647106012053374121273867339111198139373125598767690091902245245323403501

real    0m0.073s
user    0m0.060s
sys     0m0.010s

$ time fibo.py 1000
70330367711422815821835254877183549770181269836358732742604905087154537118196933579742249494562611733487750449241765991088186363265450223647106012053374121273867339111198139373125598767690091902245245323403501

real    0m0.080s
user    0m0.050s
sys     0m0.020s

$ time ffib.py 10001
real    0m0.154s
user    0m0.140s
sys     0m0.020s

$ time fibo.py 10000
real    0m0.384s
user    0m0.370s
sys     0m0.020s


$ time ffib.py 100001
real    0m6.598s
user    0m6.550s
sys     0m0.030s

$ time fibo.py 100000
real    0m24.433s
user    0m24.370s
sys     0m0.020s



-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Fri Jul 20 00:57:57 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:57:57 -0500
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <00b801c110d8$93151fa0$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Quinn Dunkan" <quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>


> Given that changing the language itself at this point is too late (and I
think
> it is), the question is "for newcomers, does the additional complexity
added
> by a layer of indirection in the tools cancel out the benefit of case
> insensitivity?"  Obviously, that's assuming there is a benefit and it's
> significant (and just how significant is what no one agrees on).  But if I
> were I newbie, I wouldn't like to hear "these are just training wheels,
the
> real language has slightly different rules".  Don't underestimate the
newbie
> appeal of "what you see is all there is" (not that it ever is in python,
given
> magic methods etc., but we shouldn't make it worse).

I second this motion!

> An editor that optionally gives warnings about names with only case
> differences seems pretty innoccuous, though.  Giving people a friendly
editor
> is in the same spirit of avoiding "ok, well, to learn python first you
need to
> learn the unix shell, to be able to manage your source files and run vi,
oh
> yes, then you need to learn to use vi, just memorize this table of
commands,
> ok, then..."

I second this also!  Though I am a VIM-fan myself I would never try
to teach it to a greenhorn.

> So I'd say, please don't change the language itself, but it would be
> interesting to see experiments on a friendly python-oriented editing
> environment (to simplify things like finding modules and documentation,
> importing, reloading, etc.).

Guido, isn't this the sort of environment you mentioned in your
back-to-the-future-type-article in Linux Journal?  A programming
environment built around Python but optimized for the novice
programmer?

You seem to want to change the core of the language every other day.
I've been there myself, on other projects... everything works correctly
and is almost perfect, but being a programmer you want to change
SOMETHING just to be fiddling with it.  "Almost perfect" is about the
best anyone in the Real World can hope for.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... thanks with all my heart
for the best programming language I've ever worked in.





From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sat Jul 21 05:05:50 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:05:50 +1000
Subject: alpha blend in tkinter Canvas
References: <Y3k57.10$_c5.51814@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <3B5945EE.D1A9E794@student.gu.edu.au>

Phlip wrote:
> 
> Hypo Nt:
> 
> If I have a tkinter Canvas, how do I paint in an object that "blends" with
> the color under it, instead of just jamming its own color in?
> 
> --
>   Phlip                          phlip_cpp at my-deja.com
> ============ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PhlIp ============
>   --  All sensors report Patti having a very good time  --

Parts of certain Tkinter Canvas objects can be created using None as a
colour, if say you want a black rectangle outline but not a colour fill.

import Tkinter
root = Tkinter.Tk()
c = Tkinter.Canvas(root,background='white'); c.pack(fill='both')
c.create_line(10,10,100,100,fill='red')
c.create_rectangle(20,20,90,90, fill = None, outline='black')

Was this what was required? 
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From hat at se-46.wpa.wtb.tue.nl  Thu Jul  5 05:22:10 2001
From: hat at se-46.wpa.wtb.tue.nl (A.T.Hofkamp)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:22:10 +0200
Subject: Most important text processing examples
In-Reply-To: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <200107050922.LAA16337@se-46.wpa.wtb.tue.nl>

In comp.lang.python, you wrote:
>Always so impressed by the Python discussion group, I figure I will ask
>its advice.  I have recently contracted to write a book called _Text
>Processing in Python_ for Sybex.  The proposal and outline can be
>skimmed at <http://gnosis.cx/tpip.proposal>, if you want to see what I
>am aiming at (I've made minor adjustments as I've started writing, and
>will certainly make more as I go along).

Although not really happy about providing clues to some one that aims to make
money from my suggestions, well, here it goes.

My normal text processing problems are 2-fold

- Process structured text, as in a simple language (thus, scanning, parsing,
  checking and code generation). I use Spark for the first 2 tasks, and pseudo
  ad-hoc for the latter two (but I know that I need a more powerful approach,
  especially for code generation)

  PS Spark uses the Earley Parsing Algorithm, which covers all LR and LL
     parsing techniques and more

- Perform interaction with other programs (either existing other programs, in a
  PyExpect-like way (there is not a PyExpect yet, is there?)
  For new programs, I will use XML techniques to exchange data.

Almost eveyrthing I do involves executing multiple programs on one or more
Linux machines, that interact with each other through TCP/IP.

>thing where my focus will differ somewhat from the ASPN cookbooks is
>that I want to keep the emphasis on the problem itself, and make the

This sounds good. I have learned to stay away from optimization as much as
possible. You may want to add something along the lines of 'having a good
cleanly designed algorithm beats any optimization'.
PS Speed is always over-emphasized in my opinion. If you want speed, go to
   assembler or C. Don't try to do anything fast in an interpreted language.

One of the 'big' problems of cookbooks is that they are only cooking small
details of the puzzle. By making a good design of the solution for the entire
problem, low level details like the optimal way of solving string manipulation
is not important any more, because the good design makes up for the non-optimal
solution of the details.
In my opinion, this is really lacking in 90% of the computer books.

(ok, I am biased. I have a degree in computer science and software engineering,
and will defend my PhD on design on November 6, so I am not your average
reader).



Albert
-- 
Constructing a computer program is like writing a painting



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul 16 11:46:01 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:46:01 -0700
Subject: timed event??
References: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B530C39.96BF78EC@Lugoj.Com>

NJM wrote:
> 
> I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can someone
> tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to find any modules
> that will help me.

Have you looked at the sched module?

Depending on what else you need to do, you can launch a thread that sleeps
(see the thread, threading, and time modules) or slightly more involved you
can look at using a select loop (see the select module). Some pre-built
select-loop constructs exist in module asyncore (whose library documentation
is clearly incomplete; one must look at the module's source code to use it
effectively and one should also understand the finer details of select-loop
event handling).


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:49 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:49 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <Lk377.36960$Cy.4485776@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <7ikpltgfo1f7dtc0ajiujvr5oo49fhqes2@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:30:35 GMT, "Tim Hochberg"
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

>
>"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu>:
>
>> Rather than arguing about nonexistent situations,
>
>Uhmm... didn't you ask for an example which I then provided. That hardly
>seems like a nonexistent situation.

You asked for a case where people want they same function to behave
fundamentally differently for different types. He rightly pointed out
that that is a nonexistent situation, and moved on to a real issue.
Apart from your snipping his context, what's the confusion?

>> let's make an analogy:
>> In Python, "123"+"456" = "123456" but 123+456=579.  These are two
>different
>> operators that happen to have the same symbol.  I really don't see why
>> integer-division and floating-point-division should be treated any
>> differently from this case.
>
>Because strings aren't numbers and integers are. This has three aspects:

To the total newbie, 123 as a string of digits is just as much a
number as 123 written as an integer or float representation - that is
why Perl does "1" / 3 -> 0.33333333333333.

One of the lessons a student needs to learn is that a string of
digits, while it may represent a number, is not a number in itself.
Python expects students to learn this. Is it the next thing we should
dumb down, do you think?

>All the other arguments I've heard come across as aimless thrashing. And as
>a result are very unlikely to influence those who you need to convince
>(which does not include me in case you hadn't figured that out).

But leaving an argument unanswered looks like an admition of its
validity.

Maybe we're both in a class of people who *must* have the last word -
after all, despite telling me to take a rest, *you* are still here ;-)

The people I need to convince are conspicuous by their general
silence. There's not much I can do about that - but I'm not going to
rejoin the silent Python-using majority and pretend there isn't a
problem.



From n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 13:19:35 2001
From: n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com (NANDYALA D Gangadhar)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 10:19:35 -0700
Subject: Calling functions in a loop
Message-ID: <7b9380ca.0107140919.b80cd8@posting.google.com>

Hello,

I am new to Python (I already like it very much) and I have a newbee
question: How do I call a set of functions from inside a loop? I tried 
the following, and it understanbly fails with:

TypeError: object is not callable: 'Fn1'

-- Code --
#!/usr/bin/env python
 
__all__ = ["Fn1", "Fn2"]
 
def Fn1():
        print "I am Fn1"
 
def Fn2():
        print "I am Fn2"
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
        for Fn in __all__:
                Fn()    
-- /Code --

Would someone show the correct way of getting the functionality I need?

Thanks,
Gangadhar


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 24 05:37:48 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 12:37:48 +0300
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <yoxwv4y8y6r.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Nice and easy for the hobbyist - NOT a sane option for professional
> users who've bet their reputations on Python, and besides.

They could just keep running the old versions where necessary;
"legacy" applications don't really need new libraries or features from
the new versions, do they? I think your reputation will be just fine,
when you say that these apps need some specific version of python
installed :-).

I do think, however, that all these case-sensitivity/division changes
(if such things do happen) are done in one version, so that everything
will be broken (and can be fixed) once and for all - and everyone
would know what version to use to retain compatibility.

Let's see if I dare to C-c C-c this message, instead of the few C-x k
posts (it's funny how easy it is to get emotional with such a spooky
thing as CP4E, but change opinion in the middle of writing a
followup... bit-by-bit, after the initial shock, even
case-insensitivity starts to make sense).

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 27 09:53:18 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:53:18 +0200
Subject: Threading in Python
References: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <j466ceh41d.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Andy" <andy at mindgate.net> writes:

> There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes
> going on in the Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps
> the direction should be towards improving the internals
> first?

People have started to work on free threading, but this turned quickly
out to be quite a radical change to the internals, to a degree that
third-party code would easily break - in addition to introducing many
new bugs.

That said, a contribution to implement free threading without any
negative impacts on performance on single-processor machines, and on
portability across versions, would surely be appreciated and reviewed
by quite a number of Python contributors (including myself).

Regards,
Martin


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 16:25:21 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:25:21 -0700
Subject: indetation problem
References: <b0fd9226.0107261009.33a6b066@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <01c701c11611$1abc7ce0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Me:  Doctor, my vision gets blurry whenever I stick my head in the
        microwave and turn it on.

Doctor:  <states the obvious>

But to answer your question, a tab is always equal to 8 spaces, and
as far as I know it's always been that way.  The idea that a tab has
anything to do with 8 spaces is rather archaic, and really IMHO the
<INIT_FLAME_WAR> tab character should not be allowed as
indentation at all </INIT_FLAME_WAR>, but I don't care enough
to argue about it much any more.

- Ken Seehof

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fuming Wang" <fumingw at yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 11:09 AM
Subject: indetation problem


> I am experiencing indentation problems when mixing tabs and spaces in
> my code. They appear in correct indentation in my editor, but cause
> error when running them. I am using Python 2.2a1. I reproduced the
> problem in following interactive sequence:
> 
> >>> def dummy():
> ... <  tab >a = 1
> ... <sp><sp>b = 2
>   File "<stdin>", Line 3
> 
> IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level.
> 
> Question: is this something new, or it has always been there. It is
> strange that I have been using Python for several years, but only
> notice this behavior recently.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Fuming Wang
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Mon Jul 16 20:31:39 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 20:31:39 -0400
Subject: [Mojonation-devel] Re: memory leak with dynamically defined functions?
References: <E15MEox-0004xG-00@imp.mad-scientist.com> <15187.23983.562368.858629@beluga.mojam.com> <20010716151219.A30652@glacier.fnational.com> <mailman.995322267.26922.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <u4rscwg44.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Gregory P . Smith" <greg at mad-scientist.com> writes:

> It doesn't appear to leak memory for me either.  The difference as
> zooko noticed does show up though:
> 
> His first example that didn't use a function holding a reference via
> default parameters -immediately- released the consumed memory when the
> reference to blarg was deleted.
> 
> The version above that uses the function reference doesn't seem to
> ever release that memory even when the reference to blarg has been
> deleted.  (yet it doesn't go above 34M when I put it in a while 1 loop
> as you have)

That could just be a behavior of the underlying memory allocation from
the OS.  Depending on OS (and if variable, allocation implementation),
an application might not actually yield its working set memory back to
the system, but just reuse it within its own memory space as necessary.

>From the behavior described, I'd guess that the allocation system in
use on the test system was willing to give back memory if it was
possible to do so contiguously at the top of the currently allocated
space for the application in simple cases, but not in other cases
(where the space becomes more fragmented).

This isn't really a Python issue (I expect Python has properly freed
all relevant memory), but more a platform memory allocation issue.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From wiktor at warszawa.sky.pl  Wed Jul 25 03:23:54 2001
From: wiktor at warszawa.sky.pl (Wiktor Sadowski)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:23:54 +0200
Subject: PEP0238 lament
Message-ID: <028f01c114da$c33f0dc0$9efb4cd5@mikus>

Maybe starting from version 2.2 Python  could require importing  it's
environment
like this:
import python_22

then we could have:
   def run_code(debug=0):
    if first_line=='':
        if not debug:
    int/int->int
 else:
           raise Exception (or warn):
        'python's environment is not imported!!!!!!,read manual'
    elif first_line=='python_22':
        int/int->float
 etc.
    elif first_line=='python_23':
 whatever....

Python(command line):
    Python 2.2(....
    type "copyright....
    import python_22
    >>

and some code:
  if PYTHON_22:
    print 'no,thanks,Stephen Horne'
  else:
    a=2/3

regards
Wiktor Sadowski





From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul 13 16:51:47 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:51:47 GMT
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <DbJ37.5149$z21.530020@newsc.telia.net>

Dennis Roark wrote:

> My original note was not intended to be an indictment of
> Python, but only to bring up some reasons that for me make
> more strongly typed languages like C++ or Object Pascal
> better at coding very large projects.

if you haven't used Python (or any other dynamically typed language)
for large projects, why would anyone care what you think?

> Dept. of Computer Science

computer science is no longer what it was :-(

</F>




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul  6 17:25:56 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 21:25:56 GMT
Subject: SRE vs PRE: speed
References: <mailman.994339448.19178.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E1q17.8496$e5.1109140@newsb.telia.net>

Oleg Broytmann wrote:
> My company doen't want to switch from python 1.5.2 to 2.0+ - our CTO is
> very disappointed with SRE speed. SRE is 3-4 times lsower.

you cannot really use profile to compare C code with
Python code.  if you use time.time or time.clock, you'll
notice that the difference isn't quite as large as you
think...

> Any plans to make it faster?

sure.

but the priority this far has been "match" and "search", not
"sub".  change your benchmark to use "search" or "findall",
and you'll find that SRE is 5-10 times faster than PRE.

and you can easily make your code faster without having
to wait for an upgrade: just use the string.replace function
instead.  it's about 15 times faster than PRE on this one...

(25 times faster if you use unicode strings ;-)

</F>




From jjinux at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 05:21:16 2001
From: jjinux at yahoo.com (Shannon --jj Behrens)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:21:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: evalstr
Message-ID: <20010711092116.6807.qmail@web10702.mail.yahoo.com>

Hello All,

I wrote a useful C module for doing string
interpolation.  I find it indespensible when working
with large blocks of triple-quoted text.  When working
with large blocks of triple-quoted text, nothing else
is quite as convenient.  Here's the Python doc:

    """Evaluate a string with embedded python
expressions.

    This is a Python version of the function evalstr,
which is used for
    variable interpolation.

    For instance,

        a = 5
        evalStr("I have $a$ dogs.")

    will return

        "I have 5 dogs."

    The code between the $'s can be any valid Python
expression.  I'll just
    basically do

        str(eval(expression), yourGlobals, yourLocals)

    Since eval is being used, the expression must
return some value.  To escape
    $'s in s, just use $$ (even within expressions). 
To use a different
    character than $, pass the desired character in
the second (optional)
    argument.  If there are an odd number of $
symbols, a ValueError exception
    will be raised.  Here are some additional examples
(assuming a = 5):

    "My dog is $a$ years old." -> "My dog is 5 years
old.",
    "I have $$5.00" -> "I have $5.00",
    "My $a$ year old dog has $$5.00" -> "My 5 year old
dog has $5.00",
    "My dog has $'$$%s.' % a$" -> "My dog has $5.",
    "My dog has $'$$' + str(a) + '.'" -> ValueError
exception,
    "My dog is $a$.$" -> ValueError exception,
    "$$ is a char." -> "$ is a char.",
    "$a$ is a number." -> "5 is a number.",
    "$a$" -> "5",
    "$a" -> ValueError exception,
    "I have a $$" -> "I have a $",
    "" -> "",
    "Spam" -> "Spam",
    "$" -> ValueError exception,
    "$ evalstr('I am #a#.', '#') $" -> "I am 5."

    """

Please forgive my arrogance, but I think that it might
even be useful enough to be included as a standard
module.  If, not perhaps you guys might have some
suggestions as to what I can do with it.  You may
download the entire packages from:

<http://ironorchid.com/jjinux/evalstr.tar.gz>

Cheers,
-jj

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From matt at mondoinfo.com  Sun Jul  1 13:45:10 2001
From: matt at mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 17:45:10 GMT
Subject: Pmw subclassing problem
References: <pgtrPLA+70P7EwKo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <slrn9juod6.or.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:25:34 +0100, Robin Becker
<robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>I'm sure the cause of this must be obvious, I want to specialise a
>scrolled text. The existing one shows all the right behaviours, but
>when I recode to use the trivial subclass
>
>class RL_ScrolledText(Pmw.ScrolledText):
>        def __init__(self,*args,**kw):
>                apply(Pmw.ScrolledText.__init__,(self,)+args,kw)
>
>and change the client code to match
>
>ie change Pmw. to RL_
>
>self.log = RL_ScrolledText(mainlog.pane('log'), labelpos = 'n', \
>  label_text = 'Log')
>
>I seem to lose the automatic scroll bars etc, what am I doing wrong?
>Am I missing some class bindins somewhere?

Robin,
I think you're missing one line of Pmw magic. This code seems to work:

class RL_ScrolledText(Pmw.ScrolledText):
  def __init__(self,*args,**kw):
    apply(Pmw.ScrolledText.__init__,(self,)+args,kw)
    self.initialiseoptions(RL_ScrolledText)

There's more about subclassing Pmw widgets at:

http://pmw.sourceforge.net/doc/howtobuild.html

Regards,
Matt


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul  2 21:47:48 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:47:48 +1200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org> <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com> <mailman.994084684.19932.python-list@python.org> <tn507.6448$Z6.3115703@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B412444.3D7774A7@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
> Example: a school has 4
> first grade classrooms and 82 new first graders.  If we split the students
> evenly among the classrooms, how many in each?  The correct answer is 20
> with 2 left over, not 20.5.

I'd say the correct answer is neither of those -- it's
(21, 21, 20, 20). Leaving the two remaining pupils
uneducated is not an option that I'd expect any
decent school to consider. :-)

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 17 17:37:07 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:37:07 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107180052360.15217-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171526460.11975-100000@bms>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Bengt Richter wrote:
>
> >I think you're right about #! triggering confusion, but I think a fixed keyword
> >as a prefix is helpful when e.g., grepping for files with directives.
> >
> >I withdraw my #!pragma (or #!pythma ;-) suggestion and propose
> >r'^\s*#pragma\s' as the magic line prefix regular expression.
>
> I think, this has no chance to be included into Python.
> Or Python will be messier than C++ is now.
>
> I do not believe pre-tokenizer directives are required...
>
> .spy things could be handled even now, so the overhead will
> be only for those who need it:
>
> --- file.spy ---
> #!/usr/bin/prepython
> #!pragma
>    $!pythma
> #!pyth on
> #!pyth off
> ...
> ...
> ----------------

But I want to feed it .lyx, or .txt, or .someproprietaryformat...
using .anythingspecific implies the file is an anythingspecific file,
and I will need a new tool to convert from .mything to
.anythingspecific.  e.g., It is trivial to arrange for a .lyx to have
an additional comment in its preamble, and everything would just work
without any tools aside from the actual filter|process needed to get
at the code.


- Bruce




From psdasilvaX at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 21:10:01 2001
From: psdasilvaX at yahoo.com (Paulo da Silva)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:10:01 +0100
Subject: Startup question
Message-ID: <3B4E4A69.4040100@yahoo.com>

Hi,

I am considering to use python in a middle sized project.
I need to be able to build a standalone with a GUI (ex. tkinter)
both for Windows and Linux, however.

Is this possible? I read the FAQ and I saw it is possible to
build a standalone, but I could not find if it is also
possible when including a GUI. I don't care about to hide
the code. Just to build a distributable standalone.

TYVMIA
Paulo da Silva

-- 
Please remove the anti-spam Xs from my email address.
PF. retirar os Xs anti-spam do meu endereco de email.



From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:08:14 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:14 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <ij7oltslop050daaj5amiqvepigolbn0kf@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 12:52:33 +0200, Martin von Loewis
<loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

>Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Yes, but what about my existing algorithm in some code somewhere that
>> uses n / 2 to partition an array and checks for == 0 as the
>> termination condition. It's not exactly going to work very well after
>> the change, is it.
>
>No, that is what the transition procedure to support the language
>change must solve. One possible procedure would be

This isn't going to be a little problem. It's going to happen in a lot
of scripts - many of which are used in environments where no-one is
going the warning - and I don't know how many scripts I wrote, or who
has copies of them, or who has personally modified versions or
anything much that would allow me to sort the problem out in advance.

If a new keyword breaks an identifier, then the transition procedure
is fine - even if something falls through the catch-it-early net
relatively few programs will be broken, they will always break in a
clearly detectable way once the keyword is unconditionally recognised
(much better than having trusted programs suddenly giving incorrect
results), and fixing them is simple. Plus anyone who has thought about
it will probably be using identifiers with at least one capital letter
- avoiding conflict with future keywords - anyway.

Changing the division operator is a very different thing.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 01:51:40 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:51:40 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <Jd357.11818$Xr6.98411@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107180942420.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Neil Hodgson wrote:

> Paul Prescod:
> > Roman Suzi wrote:
> > >
> > > ....
> > >
> > > I think non-literal data must be in ASCII.
> >
> > I agree. Allowing "funny characters" in names is not something
> > we have much call for yet and it may break many tools that
> > have ASCII-only assumptions.
> 
>    Allowing non-ASCII characters in names enhances interoperaility with Java
> and .NET which allow this.

Why every vapor MS introduces triggers such a chain reaction in IT
circles? That everything must conform or die?!

Who in his right mind uses non-ASCII names for identifiers?

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From wiktor at warszawa.sky.pl  Wed Jul 25 02:18:52 2001
From: wiktor at warszawa.sky.pl (Wiktor Sadowski)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:18:52 +0200
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
Message-ID: <022201c114d1$ad4cdaa0$9efb4cd5@mikus>

[Andy Salnikov]
>To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:) We are like
>children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1 cookie for two children
>means one cookie for 1 child and 0 cookies for another:)

Your cookies are too old (tough) to slice or one of your children is too
clever (the fat one)

regards
Wiktor Sadowski







From root at rainerdeyke.com  Fri Jul  6 13:34:27 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:34:27 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <DEm17.448937$oc7.69038775@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpsngaja4g.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
> frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
> number of established Python programmers.  The sooner we fix this the
> better!

Just to add another perspective: in my own Python code (which isn't much
right now), I have literally hundreds of places where truncating integer
division is required.  I have yet to find a single use for floating point
numbers in Python, or any other non-integer number for that matter.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 09:50:34 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:50:34 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b613855.540809753@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpsnfi4h2a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes:

> I think they should be, but IMHO linking exactness to representation
> types will lead to trouble, unless you reserve float for numbers you
> really have to approximate, and rework all floating point literals
> so they don't cause artificial inexactness by being unnecessarily
> represented as floats. I.e., convert 2.0 to an exact 2, not a float.
> Convert 2.5 to rational 25/10, or 5/2, not a float. Etc. That throws
> out a lot of good uses for exact floats though.

Hm...  We did that in ABC, and it was my idea, and it didn't work out
there.  See another post of mine.

> ISTM floor couldn't make an exact number out of an inexact one
> unless the inexactness was known to be constrained to the halfopen
> interval above the floor.

Good point.

> OTOH, IMHO 20.0 should not be viewed as
> inexact just because it is a conventional literal for a floating
> point representation of 20 (end of sentence ;-). So if it were
> exact, floor(20.0) would also be exact.

Big "if", see above.

> Here's another one. What if you were simulating white noise within
> an interval, and you wanted to check on it by counting instances
> generated that fell in sub-intervals. Scaling the sub-intervals to
> width 1.0 and using floor would be a natural way of getting an index
> to bins for counting. So one way or another, there has to be a way
> to make the floored values exact for the purpose of indexing.

So use int(floor(x)).

> Floor values really are integers, mathematically. They could be
> returned as such in a unified number system. But if so, it would be
> incorrect to call them exact just because they were integers. To say
> ok, we'll return floats is no better. The point is exactness ought
> to be representation-independent.  floor(4.0 - inexactnessEpsilon)
> => 3 #not an exact integer because of its heritage.

*Conceptually*, exactness is independent from representation.
*Practically*, I think it makes sense to represent all exact numbers
as (unbounded precision) ints or rationals, and all inexact numbers as
doubles.

> For practical purposes, the common case ought to be easy to write
> and fast executing.  Here I think that means indexing should
> automatically do floor and and raise an exception if it got inexact
> inputs.

Unclear.  That would be breaking with tradition in Python; it would
probably cause lots of off-by-one errors.  Scheme requires exact
indices, and declares that inexactness is contagious, except maybe in
some special cases, e.g. multiplying an inexact number by an exact
zero *may* return an exact zero in Scheme.  (But there should be an
exception to this exception if the inexact number was infinity, as can
happen with Python floating point on most platforms.)

> However, when you know you are generating indices from
> inexact sources, there should be a way of explicitly coercing
> exactness on any number, so you can use the result of floor etc
> where exactness is required.  If float is reserved for only
> inexacts, then floor should definitiely return an integer, not a
> float, unless it had an inexact input.

Right -- floor of a rational should return an exact integer.

But note that we don't have a floor function in Python now -- all we
have is math.floor(), and the math functions are defined to always
return a float.

> Blech. All this is implementation talk, not language talk. exactness
> is a language key concept for numbers. float is a
> foreign-function/foreign-data issue for the language, or perhaps an
> optimization hint, but not central, IMHO.
> 
> Please see my Number Tree post for more on representation ;-)

Please see the Scheme docs:

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r5rs-html/r5rs_8.html#SEC50

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tundra at tundraware.com  Thu Jul 12 13:20:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 17:20:02 GMT
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <9ij8ss$puj$1@panix2.panix.com> <zqk37.1678$u76.50058@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B4DDB2A.C0BFA011@tundraware.com>

Steve Holden wrote:
> 
> "Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
> news:9ij8ss$puj$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> > In article <3B4CA0A8.20B53230 at tundraware.com>,
> > Tim Daneliuk  <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to
> prepare
> > >the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
> > >
> > >        (()), (), ((,)) ???
> >
> > Um.  Tuples are immutable.  How do you add more later?
> 
> With a text editor: he's talking about modifying constant data structures as
> design proceeds.
> 


Right, I'm using this structure as an entry in a Jump Table for a command
interpreter.  I want to be able to add recognized commands and/or features
simply by changing/adding things in the table.

This thread has been illunminating on a couple of levels.  If I may
summarize:

1) The syntatic constructor for tuples is ',' not '(' - the latter being
   just another grouping character. (Someone pointed  out the former in
   a private email, and it all suddenly made sense).

2) There is some stylistic difference of opinion when/where it is advisable
   to depart from a complex data structure and start using a class instead.

 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Sun Jul  1 14:52:50 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 18:52:50 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <9osujt4ju67oue44kra4t8uo9307vf3edj@4ax.com>

>                                                                                     In Python today, / gives the
>quotient, % the remainder, and divmod the pair.  Quite simple and quite
>easy to understand...

I agree. Python already has what it needs, and learning these necessary
primitives is no challenge.

C//



From stevewilliams at wwc.com  Tue Jul 10 14:09:34 2001
From: stevewilliams at wwc.com (Steve Williams)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:09:34 GMT
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <5174eed0.0107061058.5446dac9@posting.google.com> <9i6vm3073b@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B4719E1.C5540B19@wwc.com> <9i7t0k01add@enews3.newsguy.com> <3B47C125.A65E5EAC@wwc.com> <23891c90.0107100801.14066af0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B458C.A0F96E5D@wwc.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:

> Steve Williams <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message news:<3B47C125.A65E5EAC at wwc.com>...
> [snip]

> > Nevertheless, I've managed to survive and prosper on a meager toolkit of
> > (Select, Insert, Delete, Update, Create, Drop, etc) on SQL-Server, Sybase,
> > Informix, DB2, and Oracle.  If I'm not fastidious, I can even get by with it
> > in ACCESS.
>
> How do you manage to do different types of joins?  Do any of the systems you mention use the
> explicit join syntax, for example?

My work lately has been in DB2 and I use explicit joins exclusively--they provide the level of
documentation and control I want and need.  It's been a long time since I've used anything
else.  I also use Interbase for a BiTemporal database I'm developing and, again, I use explicit
joins.  When I worked in SQL-Server, I used a sad mixture of implicit and explicit joins--I
hadn't seen the light yet.  I can't remember specifically about my work with the others.

> What about the statement parameter (bind variable) syntax?

>
> As far as binding, Python does a nice job for me:
>
>     cursorODS = connectionODS.cursor()
>     intInvoiceNumber = int(str(parmInvoiceNumber))
>     parmList = (intInvoiceNumber,)
>     cursorODS.execute("select " \
>       + "InvoiceNumber,LineNumber,PartNumber,Description,Quantity,UnitOfMeasure,"
>       + "Price,ExtendedSale,Cost,ExtendedCost,GP,GPPercent " \
>       + "from ODS.OrderLineDetail " \
>       + "where InvoiceNumber = ?",parmList)
>     resultSet = cursorODS.fetchall()
>     cursorODS.close()
>     return resultSet
>
> This works for DB2 and Interbase via ODBC and mxODBC.

> > > But most likely the usual crybabies will still be crying about "RAW" (sic)
> > > C-level interfacing (to a zillion incompatible proprietary idiotic API's, no
> > > doubt -- the fact that there IS a solid, well-developed standard doesn't
> > > count:-).  So, naah, not worth the bother.
> >
> > I take no notice of that remark.  Do you have an opinion on Corba?
>
> Which standard are we talking about now? ADO and COM aren't exactly
> there on most flavours of UNIX, if at all. Of course, there's always
> ODBC. ;-)
>
> Paul

I know very little about ADO or COM.  Although mxODBC is a marvellous package, I'm always
suspicious of the actual ODBC drivers.  I would rather directly interface with my target
database.  But I don't have compile capability on some of my platforms (AIX or anything not
WinTel, actually), so my contribution to this thread was a fantasy about pre-compiled drivers
for all the databases on all the platforms.

In general, I don't see much emphasis on relational databases in the Python jungle.





From tundra at tundraware.com  Sun Jul 22 15:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 19:30:01 GMT
Subject: Mainpulating Data Files
References: <3B5B1914.FCC02BF2@tundraware.com> <OuF67.11951$135.1933565@typhoon.we.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B2942.DAC7E6FA@tundraware.com>

Pete Shinners wrote:
> 
> "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote
> > So, as a general matter, is there a 'Pythonic' way to read
> > this kind of thing in or am I stuck with the usual 'C' approach
> > of reading in n-characters and then filling some data stucture
> 
> tim, i'd start with the struct module. it will at least
> handle the binary sections of data for you. plus all your
> worries about byteswapping and what not can be planned out.
> http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-struct.html

Hmmm, this does some of what I want, but I was actually looking for
more of a metadata-driven approach wherein I could describe the
data abstractly and have Python go read it into a dictionary or
list directly.

Tnx for the response...
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  1 15:18:54 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:18:54 -0400
Subject: The standard library
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5GK%6.17016$he.731306@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.993968402.11577.python-list at python.org...
> [Paul Prescod, with many good gripes about the libraries]
> > ...
> > I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
> > address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
> > controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.
>
> Guido knows this, if for no other reason than that Eric Raymond keeps
> reminding him of it.  PEP 2 is supposed is the first step on this path.
>
> although-it's-a-long-path-and-tiny-steps-so-far-ly y'rs  - tim
>
Both are certainly true. Listing PEP 2 in the PEP index would be a good next
step.

but-only-the-second-of-a-thousand-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 03:48:38 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:48:38 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E757E13D6BDduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Lee Nutter <leenutter at australia.edu> wrote in 
news:mailman.995736253.29035.python-list at python.org:

> This works, but I have been told it will be slow if error.log gets big, 
> Is there another way to do this?
Usually the way to do this sort of thing would be to write something to 
view your error log that starts displaying from the most recent entry. That 
way you can preserve the speed of appending to the file, but still see the 
latest error messages first.

In other words, rather than writing the file backwards, write something to 
read it backwards one entry at a time.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From kragen at dnaco.net  Sun Jul  1 07:39:35 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:39:35 GMT
Subject: newbie wants to eval()
References: <3b3e3e81$0$88189$2c3e98f8@news.voyager.net> <9hlhkl02cu9@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b3e655b$0$88181$2c3e98f8@news.voyager.net>
Message-ID: <XZD%6.19931$zT1.1101722@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

In article <3b3e655b$0$88181$2c3e98f8 at news.voyager.net>,
lynx <noone at nowhere.net> wrote:
>hmm. is there something inherently evil about exec that i should know
>about...?

exec and eval are an easy way to write code that works some of the time
and breaks in spectacular and completely unexpected ways when you get
unexpected input.

Their effect depends entirely on their arguments.  They can do anything
--- literally anything at all.  This makes it hard for you to determine
why your program is breaking.

Say you find that a variable named 'max_pool' is getting set to some
incorrect value and this is breaking your program.  Without 'exec' or
'eval' (or other similar, but less dangerous, things like setattr), you
can look in the scope of max_pool to see where max_pool gets set ---
only in statements that look like this:

	max_pool = <something>

There are probably only three or four of these, and you can probably
look at the <something> to see if it could possibly be evaluating to
the incorrect value you're seeing.  Probably one or two of them could,
so you put a print statement above them to see what's happening.
Voila, you found the bug.

Now, if, in addition to these three or four assignments, there are also
five or six places you're calling exec or eval, any one of those places
could be messing with max_pool.  Whether they are or not probably
depends on some data you computed earlier, or possibly read in from a
file or something.  Your problem may have gotten as much as three times
harder.

What's worse, it's probably hard to tell what's being assigned to
max_pool in your exec strings; you probably have to look at some stuff
that's being interpolated into a string with %, figure out what it
could evaluate to, and then look at the resulting expression and figure
out what *it* could evaluate to.  This extra level of indirection isn't
trivial for the smartest of us.

Also, as someone (Alex?) pointed out, not only can't you easily reason
about what your code is doing once you introduce exec or eval, neither
can the compiler, so it tends to produce slower code.

So use exec and eval only when it saves you pages of code, because the
price you pay is bigger than you think.

This advice applies to Perl and Tcl, too, and any other language that
gives you eval "string"; some of it applies to Lisp, but some probably
doesn't.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Fri Jul 20 21:20:03 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 01:20:03 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org> <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com> <Xns90E48917CC7EFcanimalmydejacom@24.94.170.10>
Message-ID: <slrn9lhm63.t43.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:23:25 GMT, Matt <canimalatmydejadotcom at nospam.com> wrote:
>> Dan Bergan wrote:
>>> (Declare the variable in mixed-case)
>>> Dim myVariable as Integer
>>> 
>>> (then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
>>> myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!
>
>That's what Dan is saying he likes about VB.  It will tell you about typos 
>if your variables are mixed case.
>
>The auto-case correction in VB will inform Dan that he has made a typo, 
>because the editor "snaps" variable names into their declared 
>capitalization as soon as they are typed.  In the example above, when Dan 
>hits the spacebar after "myvaraible", the text will remain all lowercase 
>because "myvaraible" is not declared, and Dan will know he has made an 
>error.
>
>I do most of my programming in VB, I exploit this feature the same way Dan 
>does, and I have had trouble getting used to Python's case sensitivity.

Well, if what you like is the typo notification, wouldn't you rather have a
feature that underlines undeclared variable names?  Sounds like you're relying
on a side-effect feature which sort of does what you want while training your
fingers to make lots of mistakes on an editor without that feature.

Besides, that more or less forces you to use inSanely ugly smallTalkLike
camelCase names ;)


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 03:47:25 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 07:47:25 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3q54.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m4rgd.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 23:18:12 +0100, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com> pisze:

> I am a fan of rationals, but I strongly agree. Turning 0.98
> into 49/50 is likely to cause much more confusion than it
> saves.

Me too. I used to not be sure, but now I'm convinced. If you want
49/50, write 49/50 or 98/100, and there is no need to introduce
funny letters at the end of literals to specify the type.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From tjenkins at devis.com  Wed Jul 11 14:53:26 2001
From: tjenkins at devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:53:26 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107111139020.3926-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <3B4CA0A6.80706@devis.com>

Bruce Sass wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:
> 
>>On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>>
> <...>
> 
>>>Python does not have a niche and is not obviously a niche-friendly
>>>language.
>>>
>>Sure it does: python's niche is as a scripting language that's also good
>>for longer programs.
>>
> 
> Hehe, you must have missed the recent thread about removing the first
> line from a text file... I thought it showed that Python is a horrible
> scripting language, way too verbose, it turned what should be a few
> lines of script into a program.
> 


Ummmm... how was (from Alex Martelli) this script:
def allbutone_2(filename):
    import fileinput
    for line in fileinput.input(filename,inplace=1,backup='.sav'):
       if fileinput.filelineno() > 1: print line,

too verbose, too many lines <wink>?  You should see a java version <grin>!

btw, thanks for bringing that thread up; I never noticed the fileinput 
module.  Yet another module to investigate <grin>

> 
> i.e.,  Python is good at turning what would be "longer programs"
>        in most other languages, into scripts.
> 


Now-*this*-I-totally-agree-with-ly yours <wink>

Tom
-- 
Tom Jenkins
devIS - Development Infostructure
http://www.devis.com




From a.akpitidis at btinternet.com  Mon Jul 16 17:18:54 2001
From: a.akpitidis at btinternet.com (Anastasios Akritidis)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:18:54 +0100
Subject: multithreaded application & embedded Python
Message-ID: <3B535A3E.9840780@btinternet.com>

Hi ,

I am new to Python and I would like to ask a question.
Is it possible to initialize a number of Python interpreters (one in
each thread) and each  run concurrently  a different Python script?

Thanks
T.




From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul  9 11:53:34 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 11:53:34 -0400
Subject: Sample code for using readline
References: <3B49CD3C.F157E2F@yahoo.com> <3B49CFF1.FB6A6C79@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <etdelrq14ld.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

>   I know there is an entry for this in the Python Library Reference
> but it's not enough for me to get started.

Oh, sorry about my other post, then.

Alex.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 11:17:48 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:17:48 -0400
Subject: Calling a user-defined Exception from within a function. Need Help.
References: <mailman.994172112.17718.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Ekl07.35159$zT1.1911538@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

Jason:

You don't say what error you are seeing. I think that your errors should be
in scope, and that therefore your code is fundamentally correct. However,
the way they are written, if you raise one then Python will try to set args
to NONE, which will in turn give you a NameError. Try replacing that with
None, and you might find things work out a little better.

Also note that it's a bit dangerous to use a catch-all "except:" as your
receipt() function does. You should really only catch the errors you are
expecting, allowing things like KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit (?) to rise
up to the top level and either be handled by your main program or the
interpreter. But the basics appear correct.

Hope this helps.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


<jestes39 at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994172112.17718.python-list at python.org...
> I am still learning Python basics. I am trying to raise exceptions
> within a function. The problem is that my named exceptions aren't
> being recognized. They were working before I split the code up into
> modules. I just need to know where I need to define the exceptions or
> if I have to do something special to get them to work. Here's the
> basic shell of the code:
>
>   import sys
>   import telnetlib
>   import dbi,odbc
>   import exceptions
>
>   class database_error(exceptions.Exception):
>       def __init__(self,args=NONE):
>           self.args = args
>
>   class other(exceptions.Exception):
>       def __init__(self,args=NONE):
>           self.args = args
>
>   def parse(record):
>       try:
>           #Parse the row into the variables that will be used to
>           #  populate the receiving fields
>           .....
>           .....
>           return 'TRUE'
>       except:
>           return 'FALSE'
>
>   def receipt(record):
>       dbc = odbc.odbc(conn_str)
>       crsr = dbc.cursor()
>       try:
>           try:
>               if parse(record) == 'FALSE':
>                   raise other
>               tn = cas_login.login(username,password,host)
>
>               try:
>                   sql = "DELETE <table_name> WHERE ROWID = '" + rowid
> + "';"
>                   crsr.execute(sql)
>               except:
>                   raise database_error
>
>       except database_error:
>           dbc = None
>           crsr = None
>           tn.close()
>           print 'we made it to the database exception'
>       except other:
>           dbc = None
>           crsr = None
>           tn.close()
>           print 'unidentified error'
>       except:
>           dbc = None
>           crsr = None
>           tn.close()
>           print 'unhandled exception'
>
> Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
>
> Jason
>
>




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul  6 08:27:44 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:27:44 -0400
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <cpg0cal2ny.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <D5i17.11320$F%5.731011@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

[posted & mailed]

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:
>
> > I'm beginning to suffer from a PEPtic ulcer. The "PEP scepticism" thread
has
> > been ploughing on (in my opinion with the only progress being a better
> > understanding of various individuals' and groups' positions) for quite
some
> > time now, without too many people standing up and volunteeering to
improve
> > things.
>
> Nevertheless, that thread implicitly explains one of the good reasons
> why Python doesn't have a 'with' statement: we have to be very careful
> with adding new features, because many folks appreciate Pythonr
> precisely because of its relative feature sparsity.
>
I'm well aware of the good reasons there's not "with" statement. After all,
I *did* add the FAQ entry ... and I do like the language as lean as
possible.

[ ... more 'with' ...]
>
> > I do, of course, have my own opinions about where PythonLabs should be
> > spending its time improving things, but I by and large try to keep these
> > opinions to myself as I'm not in a position to contribute to many of
these
> > activities.
>
> I would like to hear what's important to you!  I get irritated when
> people say "PythonLabs should do this or that" (only Digital Creations
> can tell us what we *should* do, since they pay us), but I *do* want
> to know what kind of things people need.
>
Indeed. It's been a pleasant surprise to see your name on so many c.l.py
postings recently, and I know many readers appreciate your occasional forays
into the high-volume public forum. Compared with, say, certain large
companies in Redmond I think the Python core developers (not just
PythonLabs, even though some forget that) are approachable and responsive.
The wish to retain that advantage is one of the reasons I try not to add to
the wish list until I'm in a position to help.

[ ... ]
>
> > So, I tend to restrict my activities to the practical things I *can* do
to
> > help, like maintaining the FAQ (even though many questions indicate that
a
> > large proportion of newbies either aren't aware of it or don't read it).
[ ... ] The
> > post you responded to, by the way, was simply to indicate that I had
changed
> > the FAQ in line with a previous poster's suggestion.
>
> Ah, the FAQ.  Only the bible has more information that was once useful
> but is now just confusing.  I would love to see its maintenance being
> picked up -- but it takes more than adding an entry explaining the
> lack with statement (thanks, BTW).
>
No problem. I agree the FAQ is in radical need of a revision, and may well
step up to bat in the future. I understand a part of the problem still rests
with domain registrations and site control. Would it be practical to "suck
and parse" to create an alternative, perhaps under some other domain, which
could be more actively maintained?

> > A practical step, which some groups already use, is to publicize the FAQ
and
> > the charter of the newsgroup periodically. [ ... ]
>
> Yeah, I've seen those posts in other groups.  Everybody seems to
> ignore them.  Let's put the good info on the website, that's where
> newbies should go.
>
A good idea. Though the FAQ MoinMoin doesn't seem to get much attention
either. But, overall, I think it is best to have the information available
on the web. So much of what's on there now seems to relate to history rather
than the present. Roll on, Zope ... it must be hard to bring the web site on
to your list of priorities, however.

> > The PEP process is a good idea, but not enough people are willing to get
> > involved. Perhaps some feel they aren't knowledgable enough, others
would
> > rather make their comments on c.l.py. Since I don't have the time myself
> > (yet) to write PEPs, I try to refrain from throwing rocks at those who
have,
> > since at least they have stood up to be counted. So I offer opinions,
but
> > when changes go against my inclination I try not to bitch and moan.
>
> Comments on c.l.py rarely reach me...  If you want my attention,
> propose a PEP.
>
Well, yes. When I have time, when I have  time (the mantra of the working
programmer).

> > Except I still don't like "print >>" ;^)
>
> You don't have to like it, as logn as you use it when appropriate. ;-)
>
I do.

[sigs]

Thanks for your response. Keep the good stuff coming. Overall I think
increased community involvement is the ultimate solution. There seems to be
a movement that way just now, let's hope it retains its impetus.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From g_will at cyberus.ca  Thu Jul 12 11:54:18 2001
From: g_will at cyberus.ca (Gordon Williams)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:54:18 -0400
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
Message-ID: <000401c10aec$091d4f80$6f86fea9@wnt20337>

I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:

>>> 1 < "aaa"
1

I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types as
it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
produced.

This one tripped me up in an assert statement for a couple of hours.  The
assert statement was returning true when it should have been false to give
me a warning that there was a problem.  It was something like:

lengthA= 3
lengthB= "2"

assert lengthA <= lengthB

and was returning true


It would have been *much* more helpful if it told be that I was comparing
objects of different types.

Regards,

Gordon Williams




From mikael at isy.liu.se  Tue Jul 24 08:25:07 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:25:07 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 23-Jul-2001 Robin Becker wrote:
 >  MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!

I've seen BDFL referring to GvR, and I know the interpretation of that.
Here, obviously, MDFL suddenly referres to the very same GvR. What's
with that M? 

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    24-Jul-2001
Time:    14:20:11

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov  Fri Jul 20 16:18:52 2001
From: bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov (Tom Bridgman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:18:52 -0400
Subject: Handling errors in PyXML/SAX
References: <3B545EB5.6BB5DF57@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> <j4vgkogipu.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <3B58922C.26289F15@wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov>

Martin,

YES!  

parser.parse(inputfilename) does work.  It's not clear from the
documentation at http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/xml-ref/node20.html
that systemID is a file name, even though I was guessing this at a
couple of spots.

Thanks,
Tom

Martin von Loewis wrote:
> 
> Tom Bridgman <bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:
> 
> > I'm finally starting to work with the SAX parser and DTDs.  With the SAX
> > defalult error handler, when parsing a file, I get error messages like:
> >
> > ERROR in Unknown:94:22: Element 'animationtype' not declared
> > ERROR in Unknown:98:18: Element 'thumbnail' not declared
> > ERROR in Unknown:99:14: Element 'medialist' not declared
> >
> > which I find ideal but for the fact that I would like to print the file
> > name rather than 'Unknown'.
> >
> > I've tried setting the systemID (which seems to be where the 'Unknown'
> > comes from) in a locator object like so:
> >
> > location=xmlreader.Locator()
> > location.setSystemId=inputfilename
> > self.handler.setDocumentLocator(location)
> >
> > but still get 'Unknown'.
> 
> Setting the locator on the content handler won't tell the parser
> anything; instead, the parser is supposed to invoke setDocumentLocator
> itself.
> 
> What you need to do is to pass a proper InputSource to .parse(),
> instead of passing, say, an open file.
> 
> Regards,
> Martin

--
Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman           Scientific Visualization Studio
Global Science & Technology, Inc.      NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Email: bridgman at wyeth.gsfc.nasa.gov    Code 935
Phone: 301-286-1346                    Greenbelt, MD 20771
FAX:   TBD                             http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/


From hgg9140 at seanet.com  Mon Jul  2 17:42:22 2001
From: hgg9140 at seanet.com (Harry George)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 14:42:22 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org> <cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <m3k81r1001.fsf@wilma.localdomain>

Justin Sheehy <justin at iago.org> writes:

> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
> 
> >> It could be also interesting to have time module as powerful as mxDateTime
> >> in standard library. And so on.
> > 
> > Well, propose one.  But what exactly is the point of adding it to the
> > standard library when you can get mxDateTime if you need it?
> 
> There's a huge amount of value in having a module that is known to be
> the de facto standard for a given use added to the standard library.

And there are costs.  I also have to write apps used on multiple
platforms, and I'd like 4Suite, Numeric, ScientificPython, xoltar,
pyrecode, pyqt/kde/gtk/gnome, and a few others always available.  But
instead of making them part of the std (and thus making releases more
difficult, I'd prefer to have a tool which obtains and installs them
based on a preference list I supply.  apt-get or something like that
(it has to be source tarball based).

> 
> First off, people new to Python will know that they have it when they
> look at the standard library documentation.  Python's rich standard
> library is one of its big strengths.
> 
> Also, once something is part of the standard distribution, it is much
> more likely to stick around and continue to have people pay attention
> to it.  This is a major positive point for long-term stability.
> 
> For another point, I'll give a personal datapoint.  Part of my job
> occasionally involves writing software that will run on a network of
> several thousand computers, not all of which have the same
> architecture or operating system.  Any code that I write or use that
> is pure-python other than modules in the standard library is
> relatively easy to roll out.  If I have to compile and deploy
> separate module files for each architecture/OS in order to use a
> fairly basic library, the degree of added work is really quite
> enormous.
> 
> If a module is already considered to be "standard" by the Python
> community, and is unencumbered license-wise, adding it to the standard
> library helps everyone.
> 
> -Justin
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Harry George
hgg9140 at seanet.com


From jedi at ccrypt.net  Tue Jul 10 17:31:34 2001
From: jedi at ccrypt.net (jedi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:31:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Q: mpg123 with Python
In-Reply-To: <9ierhe$c3u$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>
References: <9ierhe$c3u$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.32.0107101431230.25826-100000@hobbit.ccrypt.net>

check out cplay:

http://www.tf.hut.fi/~flu/cplay/


On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Holger Kipp wrote:

> Hi,
> my professor told me, that i have to realize a "webbased skin for mpg123
> with flash and mySQL"
> so, i installed mpg123 and now i've got the problem to respond that player
> via Python.
> Flash and the mySQL-DB are not the problem ...
>
> I MUST retrieve ID3-Tags, playtime, etc... from mpg123 and have to control
> the player
> like: skip track, seek, pause track, ... and so on.
>
> Is there any EASY sourcecode/modules/API for Python?  (I'm using Python2.1
> on RedHat 7.1)
> Where can I show useful code-segments? Do you have an better idea? Shouldn't
> I use mpg123?
> Please note: easy code is required ;-))
>
> yours sincerely
> Holger Kipp
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Tue Jul 24 13:55:14 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:55:14 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8BFE339C47michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in
news:slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda: 

> Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:44:57 -0600, Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com>
> pisze: 
> 
>> I think perhaps an equally interesting example is something like:
>> 
>>   2L**128/2
>> 
>> which currently gives an exact result, but under the proposed new
>> semantics would give an approximation... 
> 
> That's why I propose rationals.
> 
>> If we're going to change basic behaviors it would be better if we had
>> a consistent semantic model first. 
> 
> In my model there are four builtin numeric types: int, rational,
> float, and complex. The intent is that floats approximate real numbers.

Unfortunately, this isn't really all that consistent.  Consider the 
calculation

    	sqrt(2)**2 == 2

By pretty much the same arguments as have been used elsewhere in this 
discussion, I'm sure that you would expect this to evaluate to true.

Hmm.  Think about it.


From noveriuspinem at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 06:49:29 2001
From: noveriuspinem at yahoo.com (noverius pinem)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 03:49:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING
Message-ID: <20010718104929.85347.qmail@web11307.mail.yahoo.com>

How we do "WINDOWS PROGRAMMING" with Python?
- making the windows
- create the controls
- etc
- etc
- etc
HELP...
Please.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Fri Jul  6 09:27:16 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:27:16 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
Message-ID: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

Hi,

I'm using python 2.1 and the latest release of xmlrpclib from pythonware.

If I use the default server, the following call causes  an error on the server:

from xmlrpclib import *

server = Server("http://localhost:8000")

print server

try:
    print server.echo('\231')
except Error, v:
    print "ERROR", v

Is this a bug in xmlrpc or in the underlying xmllib ?
 
Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From malcolm at commsecure.com.au  Fri Jul 13 20:31:19 2001
From: malcolm at commsecure.com.au (Malcolm Tredinnick)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:31:19 +0800
Subject: How to use os.access()??
In-Reply-To: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com>; from bvdpoel@uniserve.com on Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:23:36PM -0700
References: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com>
Message-ID: <20010714083119.A7984@Vetinari.home>

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:23:36PM -0700, bvdpoel at uniserve.com wrote:
> I'm trying to use os.access() in my program. But, I'm stuck trying to
> figure out the parms... obviously the first is the filename; but the 2nd
> is supposed to be a constant (?) like F_OK. Unfortunately, it doesn't
> appear that the F_OK, etc are defined anywhere. Either the docs are
> wrong (no way!), or I'm missing a module file (likely), or I'm just
> totally wrong about everything (quite likely!).

F_OK and friends are defined in the os module (since that is where they
are used). So you second parameter would be os.F_OK in this case.

Have a look at the output of dir(os) to see all the constants.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
The cost of feathers has risen; even down is up!



From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 11:50:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:50:01 GMT
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com> <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6@tundraware.com> <300720010913055359%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <9k6bsr028ji@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B66D2FF.A742B33E@tundraware.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "John W. Baxter" <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> wrote in message
> news:300720010913055359%jwbaxter at spamcop.com...
> > In article <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6 at tundraware.com>, Tim Daneliuk
> > <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Actually, this raises an interesting question, which perhaps the
> resident
> > > geniuses
> > > can 'splain to me.  Here in Chicago, we're currently 6 hourse or 21,600
> sec
> > > *behind*
> > > UTC.  Why does time.timezone return 21600, not -21600?  It seems that
> for
> > > arithmetic reasons, you'd want to know both the magnitude and direction
> of
> > > this vector...
> > >
> > > Inquiring minds wanna know ;)
> >
> > Actually, you're currently at 5 hours from GMT...you're 6 during the
> > winter.  time.timezone appears to be returning the zone without regard
> 
> Hmmm, are you sure?  The US *East* coast is 6 hours from GMT in the
> Winter, but isn't Chicago one of the "middle" coasts (the one on
> the Great Lakes -- the other middle one being the Gulf) and therefore
> one hour further Westwards?
> 
> Alex

You're right - I had a one hour brain inversion... we are currently
*5* hourse to the left of UTC.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From thomas at xs4all.net  Mon Jul 23 11:08:14 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:08:14 +0200
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
In-Reply-To: <15192.20133.416670.655504@anthem.wooz.org>
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org> <3B57942A.4080BF5D@engcorp.com> <15192.20133.416670.655504@anthem.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <20010723170813.C569@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 11:30:45AM -0400, Frank "Jiggy Wid It" Lomax wrote:

> Here's a picture from the PythonLabs 2.1 Release Party,

> and (I've been told) Barry on the left, before he cut off his rock star
> hair.

That's odd... Either that wasn't the 2.1 release party, or that wasn't Barry
I met at the Python conference, or someone's been joyriding in the time
machine again! I suspect the latter, since the Barry on the picture looks
more like the Barry after he will had done his sex-change operation (or is
that, 'will be have hadding' ? English multiflux temporal grammar never was
my strong point.)

Tim looks more like Fred as well, in that picture, but I guess that's just a
trick of the light.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Tue Jul  3 15:00:57 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:00:57 -0700
Subject: Redirecting input?
References: <bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B421668.668EFBC8@ccvcorp.com>

fbasegmez wrote:

> How do you redirect commands to a Unix process initiated from a Python script?
> For example:
>
> import os
>
> runcmd='rlogin othersystem'
> os.system(runcmd)
> password='mypassword'
> #now I would like to input my password here
> #obviously os.sytem(password) does not work.
> ???
>
> Regards,
>
> Fahri

You need to look into the os.popen() family of functions.  These
can create a pipe and return file-like objects for stdin, stdout,
and stderr (depending on which flavor of popen you use.)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 23:01:47 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 23:01:47 -0400
Subject: class atribute name mangling and exec()
References: <mailman.996193008.6359.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <uitgfulb8.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Tom Harris <tomh at optiscan.com> writes:

> See what I mean? The name mangling is defeated inside the evaluation
> performed by the exec statement. What is the moral here, exec() is evil, or
> name mangling is easily broken, so avoid it (I have a heavy C++ background,
> so hiding everything in classes is a serious obsession)? 

The mangling can only take place when the compiler considers itself to
be parsing that specific class, and exec() compiles its code in a
different context.  There's a paragraph discussing that in the
tutorial, in section 9.6, "Private Variables".  So it's probably a
little of both (easily broken, and exec is evil).  Note that if you
explicitly mangle the name inside of exec it should work fine :-)

But definitely - if you think that using __ is any "hard" protection
against someone poking into your data, you may as well forget it.
Worst case, introspection can just locate the attribute as your dir()
output shows.

Python has some conventions that can make it easier to avoid trampling
ostensibly "private" data in a class or instance, but don't be fooled
that it's any guarantee.  And to be honest, I find that works just
fine.  Code doesn't violate the convention unless it really wants to,
but when it really wants to, being able to is just so very convenient.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 11:59:20 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:59:20 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B506C58.CB084FFD@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes (after much good stuff about
> transitioning):
> 
> > After the transition period, screw the professional programmers
> > who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet
> > who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
> > allowed to continue running under the new Python without
> > problem.
> 
> Well, I don't know about you, but *I* am reluctant to say "screw you"
> to all those people who depend on Python script written by
> professional programmers who no longer work there.

"Screw you" might have been a little strong.  (And for those just
joining, I _am_ one of those professional programmers about which
I was making the suggestion...)

Nevertheless, I want to make the clear point (if I haven't already)
that I'm not suggesting screwing every such programmer... just 
those who are actively using code which would be broken, who will 
not take the time (however small we might make it) to modify the 
source, and yet who "must" have their code work under the new Python.

Are there really any people like that?  Enough to make it
a key factor?  I'm not sure I can even think of any realistic
cases where anyone like that exists (he said, trolling for
someone to point out an obvious example or two).

I thought all the rpm stuff from RedHat might be an example.  But
it runs with its own 1.5.2 installation, as far as I can tell.
No obvious problem there.

There are all those users (presumably) who are using Python code
somewhere but don't even realize it.  They most likely aren't going
to be the sort to upgrade their installation any time soon, so their
environment is secure.

There are us types using Python in commercial/industrial 
environments.  Probably we suffer the biggest impact for
several reasons, and yet we are also in the best position to
cope with the damage (most resources, typically much newer
to Python than the scientific community, probably actively 
maintaining our code already, most likely aware of this issue
and maybe directly involved).

There's the lot of us active in c.l.p, but we know about the 
change, have access to the tools, have participated in the
preparation phase, and have taken the time to be ready before
the change even hits (that is, before the _end_ of the transition
period during which code breakage doesn't happen).

What other classes of users have I missed?  One of the first
steps in requirements engineering is to identify use cases, 
which requires understanding the various user roles involved.
Let's just finish defining the types of users, analyze each
one in terms of risk (probability of impact, extent of impact,
quantity of users involved), possible mitigating steps (warnings,
tools, etc.), and perhaps contingency plans.

> I also don't want to fork the code base.  There are *still* folks
> using Perl4 scripts who can't upgrade.  I don't want to do that to the
> community.

Maybe this can be a practical example of how much more maintainable
Python code is than Perl code.  I can't imagine anyone suggesting
that people using Perl scripts should go through all their source
(or someone else's) and change it to make it compatible with the
latest Perl.  I actually *can* imagine suggesting that seriously
in the case of Python code.  (Forget imagination, I *am* suggesting
it!)

> So indeed, we'll need to be *very* careful with this kind of
> transition, providing tools, warnings, anything we can think of.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From sill at optonline.net  Sun Jul 22 02:22:52 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:22:52 GMT
Subject: Hello,
References: <mailman.995736253.29035.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9lks89.jj.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 03:10:37 +1000, Lee Nutter <leenutter at australia.edu> wrote:
> Hello!,
> 
> I have only been subscribed to this list three days, this is my first 
> message :)
> 
> Anyway, im just messing here, not doing anything in particular, just 
> playing with what I have learned in an attempt to learn the language.
> 
> Anyway, I decided to make a module that handles errors for me. Its not 
> likely my projects are going to be complex enough for me to need it for 
> a while, but I thought it would be fun none the less [and a learning 
> experience, of course :) ]
> 
> In the Python docs, it mentions that open("file", "a") allows you to use 
> write() to append strings at the bottom of a file. But I wanted my error 
> handler to do it the other way round, add the newest entries to the top. 
> [I've already been told this is wrong, and it should be the other way 
> round anyway, but I want to be different. And anyhow, im only messing. :) ]
> 
> I came up with this code after a little messing around :
> 
> 
> def LogError(msg):
>    err = open("./error.log", "r")
>    old = err.readlines()
>    err.close()
>    err = open("./error.log", "w")
>    wri = msg
>    i = 0
>    p = len(old)
>    while i < p:
>      wri = wri + old[i]
>      i = i + 1
>    err.write(wri)
>    err.close
> 

How about 
err=open(logfile, 'a') # for appending
err.write(msg)

> 
> This works, but I have been told it will be slow if error.log gets big, 
> Is there another way to do this?
> 
> Anyway, Thanks for any replies!
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> 
> Lee Nutter
> 
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From tanzer at swing.co.at  Wed Jul 25 11:43:20 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:43:20 +0200
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:48:19 EDT."
             <15198.56371.751100.459533@anthem.wooz.org> 
Message-ID: <m15PQoi-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) wrote:

> >>>>> "CT" == Christian Tanzer <tanzer at swing.co.at> writes:
> 
>     CT> This isn't portable behavior. According to the python library
>     CT> reference, `int` may round on some platforms.
> 
> It also says:
> 
>     "This is ugly -- the language definition should require truncation
>     towards zero."

Not in my book (2.1 of April 15, 2001). But that sentence is a good
addition.

> Okay so
> 
>     int(math.floor(a / b))
> 
> or
> 
>     divmod(a, b)[0]
> 
> are better.  Either way, wrap it in a function called "div()" and use
> that where ever you absolutely must have integer division.

Unfortunately, I just learned that they were better even if `int`
behaved portably:

    >>> divmod (5.,-2.)
    (-3.0, -1.0)
    >>> int(5.0/-2.0)
    -2
    >>> int(math.floor(5.0/-2.0))
    -3

> really-portable-code-is-always-ugly-anyway-ly y'rs,

So-lets-make-it-even-uglier-?-ly y'rs, 

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92




From emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr  Wed Jul  4 10:20:15 2001
From: emmanuel.astier at winwise.fr (Emmanuel Astier)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 14:20:15 GMT
Subject: Performance in embeded / extended python
Message-ID: <3b431024.15341289@news.iway.fr>

Hi, 


I embedded and extended python for a game, and I was REALLY
disappointed by the performances I get...

Every frame of my game ( should be 60 time by second ) I call my
Python logical part from my C game with :

PyObject_CallFunction( LogicalEntryPoint, NULL );

Logical Entry Point being a PyObject* pointing on the name of the
function.

My function do only :

    for i in range ( 0, NbTestSprites - 1 ):
        ListOfSprites[i].setPos( 100, 100 )

ie it sets the pos of 200 sprites.
ListOfSprites is a tuple of 200 sprites, sprites is a extension class,
and setPos one of its method.

I'm using Swig to extend Python with my C functions ( I Tried Boost
too, but there is even more overhead... )

This is _REALLY_ slow ( i run at around 1 Frame / second on a P733 ).

200 sprites is not so much...

Have someone a clue of something I could have done wrong ?

Can't extended python be faster ?

Any help appreciated, 

thanks, 

Emmanuel





From nospam at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 31 07:03:32 2001
From: nospam at bigfoot.com (Gillou)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:03:32 +0200
Subject: portability
References: <9k5u2c$p542@news.rd.francetelecom.fr>
Message-ID: <9k6301$18fv$1@norfair.nerim.net>

Read carefully the docs of various APIs of the standard library and don'use
what's OS specific.
Some modules/packages are not available for Windows, others for Unix, and
others for classic MacOS.
Python is not as portable as Java, because standard Java API does not
provide system specific classes.
The main difference is :

* 100% pure java code is (supposed to be) portable.
* Python programmers must choose and use carefully the packages/classes to
provide portable applications. It's just like in C/C++.

In example, you can't get the value of an environment variable in "100% pure
Java".
You can't use COM objects in "100% pure Java".
You can't write Unix system utilities in "100% pure Java".
(...)
That's the price of Java portability.

--Gillou

"franck delarue" <franck.delarue at rd.francetelecom.com> a ?crit dans le
message news: 9k5u2c$p542 at news.rd.francetelecom.fr...
> hello everyone,
> i'm working on python on linux red hat and i'm wandering if all the code
> that i've written would be portable to unix or windows (except the system
> calls of course). I know that python works a little like java ( on a
virtual
> machine), but is Python as portable as java ?
>
> thanks in advance.
>
>




From gregj at pdxperts.com  Sun Jul 29 06:11:07 2001
From: gregj at pdxperts.com (Greg Jorgensen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:11:07 GMT
Subject: Python, mysql, roundoff  problem?
References: <hOy87.24265$gj1.2251802@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <%iR87.4633$Ke4.2601210@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>

"William Dandreta" <wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> mysql stores numbers as strings. I discovered that when converted to
floats
> in Python they are not exactly the same which can cause roundoff errors.
The
> floats represent money and I need to be sure there is no roundoff errors.
>
> What is normally done to deal with this situation?

Work with pennies instead of dollars. Store 12949 instead of 129.49. Do
integer arithmetic with pennies rather than floating-point arithmetic with
dollars. Divide by 100 when you need to display the value.

Greg Jorgensen
PDXperts LLC
Portland, Oregon, USA





From quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu  Sun Jul 22 16:26:41 2001
From: quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 20:26:41 GMT
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lmdo1.c1q.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 18:36:07 GMT, Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote:
>I'm trying to see the "big picture". I'm a "big picture" kind of gal. I
>don't feel comfortable working with just bits and pieces...just enough
>information (in the information-giver's opinion) for me to get by.
>
>If I want to really understand subclassing Exceptions, and whether or
>not I would ever want to override any of the standard exception classes
>methods or such, then I need to understand how those exceptions work.
>
>Like I said, I've been working (a bit) so far with subclassing
>rfc822.py, and for me, I needed to read the source code of that module
>and see how it worked. Then *bing* a light went off in my head, I
>understood, and I could proceed.
>
>Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Should I be satisfied
>with the docs only?
>
>Someone else gave me a good suggestion on the Tutor List, that if I was
>really interested in how the Exception class works, I should grab the
>source for Python 1.5.2, before the exception class code was written in
>C. I might do that, but this discussion (and another on the Tutor List)
>has helped immensely, and I may be fine from here.

Yeah, go find exception.py.  You'll probably realize that you knew the big
picture all along: exceptions are just normal instances of normal classes, and
they "work" exactly the same.  They have a few __getitem__ and __str__ hacks
to be compatible from when exceptions were just strings (and maybe tuples),
but they're just normal classes.  You can subclass Exception if you want, all
that means is a) you inherit Exception's methods, and b) 'except Exception'
will catch your exception.  Or you could not inherit.  Or you could raise some
random other object (not recommended, though).  Exceptions are instantiated
and used just like any other object:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self, x, y, z=10):
        self.x, self.y, self.z = x, y, z
    def foo(self):
        print self.x

try:
    raise Foo(10, 4, z=40)
except Foo, e:
    print e.z
    e.foo()

# let's be perverse:
try:
    import smtplib
    raise smtplib.SMTP('foo.com')
except smtplib.SMTP, s:
    s.sendmail('me', ['you'], 'hi')
    s.close()


etc.

This also raises the question: when types and classes are unified, will you be
able to raise anything?


From spi at micro.soft  Wed Jul 18 17:51:25 2001
From: spi at micro.soft (Ed T)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:51:25 GMT
Subject: basic python-unix question
Message-ID: <xxn57.48174$J91.2654135@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Hi Folks,
New to Python and have been unable to us the "ps ef |grep" command
correctly. From what I can tell I need to use the os.system() command. But
have had no luck. Here an example of a basic script:

import os, sys
process = ("test1", "test2")

for eachProcess in process:
     os.system('ps ef | grep eachProcess')


The idea is to place processes that should be running into a for loop and
see if it is running. When I do the above it appears only to check for the
word "eachProcess" not for the process (i.e., test1 or test2). Is this a
case of how to enter this command where substitution takes place in Python?
What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Ed




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 10:09:36 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:09:36 -0400
Subject: Fixed mx.DateTime or alternative?
References: <mailman.994167665.8363.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ajk07.19524$Lk6.1414801@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Until this is fixed (and the example you quote appears to be permissible
under 2.0, so I suppose it might be considered a buglet) you could get
around it by paraphrasing your test as

    if dt is None:

This removes any attempt to coerce, and so should be faster anyway.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Chuck Esterbrook" <ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994167665.8363.python-list at python.org...
> eGenix mx.DateTime 2.0.1 has a problem under Python 2.1. DateTime objects
> cannot be compared to None:
>
> C:>python
> Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>  >>> from mx import DateTime
>  >>> dt = DateTime.now()
>  >>> if dt==None: print 1
> ...
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: can't coerce DateTime to the other type
>  >>>
>
>
> Does anyone have an eGenix build for Windows that is compatible with
Python
> 2.1?
>
> Reference:
>
http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Download-mxBAS
E
>
>
> -Chuck
>
>




From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 00:39:09 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:39:09 GMT
Subject: Tests for calendar module
References: <3B60A388.C6E11F75@yahoo.com> <mailman.996198895.509.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B60EECE.7C44C454@yahoo.com>

Thanks Skip, will do.

--PW

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Paul> 1) Who maintains calendar.py? Lots of contributors listed in the
>     Paul>    cvs logs.
> 
> It's just part of the core library.  If you submit a patch to sourceforge,
> it will get assigned to somebody.  (Maybe me.)
> 
>     Paul> 2) I found a couple of possible bugs in calendar.py. Who should I
>     Paul>    provide details and patches to?
> 
> Same thing.
> 
> Patches here:   https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=305470
> Bugs here:      https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=105470

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From inigoserna at terra.es  Sun Jul  1 15:53:21 2001
From: inigoserna at terra.es (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?I=F1igo?= Serna)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 21:53:21 +0200
Subject: problems with class initiation
Message-ID: <994017201.909.0.camel@lethe.infernus.org>

Hello all,

I'm having problems with class initiation.
Look at this code:

*********************************************************************

#!/usr/bin/env python

app = None

class Preferences:
    def __init__(self):
        self.a = 1
 
class Second:
    def __init__(self):
        return self.init_fn()
    def init_fn(self):
        return app.prefs.a

class Main:
    def __init__(self):
        self.prefs = Preferences()
        self.fns = []
        self.fns.append(Second())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = Main()

*********************************************************************

And this is the error python gracefully returns:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./test.py", line 29, in ?
    app = Main()
  File "./test.py", line 25, in __init__
    self.fns.append(Second())
  File "./test.py", line 13, in __init__
    return self.init_fn()
  File "./test.py", line 18, in init_fn
    return app.prefs.a
AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'prefs'

*********************************************************************

I suppose the error comes due to Main class hasn't finished its
initiation when 'app.prefs.a' is executed so app is None in that moment.

But I need the value of 'prefs.a' in 'init_fn'... is there any solution?
(no, rewrite the whole code isn't a solution ;-)


Thanks in advance,

I?igo Serna





From guido at python.org  Sat Jul  7 14:18:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 18:18:58 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <9ngektgqnrl17er73ukukqids95p5158dp@4ax.com> <mailman.994528813.30449.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cp8zi0k3kq.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     Guido> (Hm.  For various reasons I'm very tempted to introduce 'yield'
>     Guido> as a new keyword without warnings or future statements in Python
>     Guido> 2.2, so maybe I should bite the bullet and add 'div' as well...)
> 
>     C//> If one is going to add keywords to a language, I suggest that a
>     C//> list of possible future keywords -- even ones that aren't planned
>     C//> on being supported any time soon -- be reserved at the same time.
> 
> And that warnings be issued for their use for at least one version.

Good idea.  I'd have to fire up my time machine to figure out which
keywords will be used in the future though, and I'm not sure how
successful that would be.  C tried this and had a few unused reserved
words (I recall 'fortran') for years until they threw them out.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul 17 15:33:43 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:33:43 GMT
Subject: Two Simple Qs:
References: <a50631f6.0107171019.74fb42a5@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <fj49ltcbstraa2v80lhcb7g7nt8209hb21@4ax.com>

On 17 Jul 2001 11:19:51 -0700, newgene at bigfoot.com (newgene) wrote in
comp.lang.python in article
<a50631f6.0107171019.74fb42a5 at posting.google.com>:

:I am quite new to python. I have 2 simple questions:
:
:1. How can I run a simply Python script under IDLE directly? I wrote a
:start.py to do some routine work, like importing some medules and
:adding my working path into sys.path, before I start to work. This
:script is just like a macro or batch file under DOS. Now I have to
:open this file and then run it. I hope python have a statement can run
:it directly( maybe like 'run start.py').

To run a script from within IDLE:
1. Go to the File menu and choose "Open". Browse to your script and
select it. It should open in a new window.
2. In this new window, go to the Edit menu and select "Run Script". The
output of your script will appear in the Interactive Python Shell (the
original IDLE window that you had open).

:2. When I made some modification of my own module after I import this
:module,python can not recognized the modified module even I import it
:again. It raised the same error msg, but gave me the error line
:actually I have corrected, that is , it run as the old module but
:display the error from the newer module file. I have to restart python
:environment and import again, then my module run correctly. Is this a
:bug? And how to resolve it?

Try this:

>>> del modulename
>>> import modulename

Hopefully that will help.

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 08:43:13 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:43:13 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org> <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> writes:

> "Paul Sidorsky" <paulsid at home.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994543873.6493.python-list at python.org...
> > Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> > > if hasattr(myobject, "someattribute"):
> > >      foo()
> > > else:
> > >      bar()
> > > is clean enough, IMHO...
> >
> > Oops, I didn't know about hasattr().  Yes, that certainly does the
> > trick.  Though I have to say the syntax is a little odd (what with the
> > quotes), but it's certainly sufficient.  Thanks!  Sorry to bother
> > everyone.
> 
> Not a bother. We learn by watching everyone else ask questions! However,
> the syntax is necessary, since "hasattr" is essentially a dictionary lookup.

Actually, Paul's proposal to write

  x has y

instead of

  hasattr(x, 'y')

has a nice Pythonic ring to it, and the fact that you have to use
quotes with hasattr() has always bothered me.  Too bad I didn't think
of this 10 years ago; right now, I'd say it's too little value for too
much disturbance (a new keyword).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 16:30:04 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:30:04 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions 
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> dijo:

I apologize to Mr. Prescod and any others I may have offended in this
thread.  I especially apologize for taking Mr. Prescod's employer's
actions out on the employee; I know better than that. =)

My only regret is that so many people in this NG are so violently
anti-Perl.  I always thought that if someone as cynical, stubborn, and
arrogant as I am can love both languages, anybody could.  There's always
a matter of choosing the right tool for the job, but this is reality and
no one language can be the "right" tool for _all_ jobs, regardless of
how much I love Python.

My apologies to the group at large.
Tim Hammerquist

-- 
Programmers are achievement oriented; give them an impossible task,
and they'll do their best to give you what they think you would have
asked for if you had a clue as to what was possible.
	-- Peter Coffee, PC Week


From l_hill at mindspring.com  Wed Jul 25 11:19:41 2001
From: l_hill at mindspring.com (Laura Hill)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:19:41 -0700
Subject: OOPSLA 2001 Advance Program Now Online!
Message-ID: <3B5EE38D.4EAAE4E6@mindspring.com>

OOPSLA 2001 ADVANCE PROGRAM NOW ONLINE!!!

OOPSLA 2001
ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming,
  Systems, Languages, and Applications
October 14-18, 2001
Tampa, Florida USA

NOW ONLINE on the OOPSLA Web site, http://oopsla.acm.org:
- Advance Program
- Conference and Housing Registration

OOPSLA, the major annual OO conference, offers leading edge technical
papers, 70 tutorials, 31 workshops, invited talks by Peter Deutsch,
Alistair Cockburn,  Henry Petroski, Tom DeMarco, and Don Box, panels,
demonstrations, posters, educators' and doctoral symposiums, a design
and code fest, and vendor exhibits.

Register before September 6th for early bird discounts.




From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 07:58:19 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:58:19 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <9hfg1n$du33c$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <kklmjtkhk17011nkjkigoh6u5f5otospuu@4ax.com> <9hfpm9$dsllb$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <8km0ktomng389662m783t569ot5pbhoac4@4ax.com>

On 28 Jun 2001 17:31:53 GMT, bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
wrote:

>In article <kklmjtkhk17011nkjkigoh6u5f5otospuu at 4ax.com>,
>	Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> writes:
>> On 28 Jun 2001 14:47:19 GMT, bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>This a general warning against the second system syndrom in Python.
>> 
>> I think you may have a good point for the future, but I'm actually a
>> big fan of some of those recent additions to Python.
>
>As I wrote in my post, I do not want to discuss the advantages or
>disadvantages of single additions even though I have mentioned them.
>I hope I can explain my cause without being specific.

I interpreted that as not wanting to get bogged down in arguments that
are perfectly well discussed in relation to the PEPs. If we are not
allowed to even mention the cases you mentioned, then surely you are
banning people from using any relevant evidence in counterarguments
;-)

>> Extremely familiar to anyone with a C, C++ or Java background, and
>> something that I was annoyed to have to live without when I first used
>> Python. 
>
>I am not sure if this is good reasoning, 
>just because people know a feature from other languages might not 
>make it a good one (or we all end up with perl :) ).

No - not *just* because it's in other languages, but also because it's
so useful that people don't like to live without it. That really was
the key point I was trying to make - people *want* those features
because they make life easier.

>> Another large group of Python programmers have a background in
>> functional languages, and will immediately understand 
>
>In my experiences a lot of functional programming language features
>are too complex and abstract for most people to really 
>add them to their active programming vocabulary.

Depends on the particular functional language - some seem to have
ignored the simple fact that infix notation is intuitive, for
instance, but others look remarkably similar to imperative languages.

Besides, Python is not turning into a functional language, it is
merely picking up the features that are genuinely useful, and - once
you get used to them - quite difficult to live without. That basically
means having flexible, intuitive list handling - such as list
comprehensions - but not having to deal with all those
migraine-causing recursive definitions.

>> have you ever met an
>> electrician who only owns a single screwdriver? - I think not. Doing a
>> good job means using the right tool for the job, not forcing a single
>> tool to do every job.
>
>Of course this is a matter of balance, I prefer a minimal set of tools
>which gives me maxmimum power. There will always be some overlap of course.
>Still one aim is to keep the number of tools small.

Of course there is no point having so many tools you don't know how to
use them all, but I don't think this is the case yet. The question is,
of course - what is the precise definition of a 'small' number?

Python 2.0 and 2.1 added most of the tools that I had missed in the
past. It will be interesting to see what is added in 2.2.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From pj at sgi.com  Fri Jul 27 19:35:49 2001
From: pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 23:35:49 GMT
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jstsl$6qlmd$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>

Dirck wrote:
|> I just wanted to add a thank-you to Guido, for a terrific language.
|> It really is a joy to write Python code.

Yes, I agree.
-- 

                          I won't rest till it's the best ...
                          Manager, Linux Scalability
                          Paul Jackson <pj at sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373


From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 13 09:50:11 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:50:11 GMT
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org> <O4A37.23$Fv3.59@news1.oke.nextra.no> <slrn9ktr6c.1n8.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>
Message-ID: <n0D37.14717$B7.2683234@ruti.visi.com>

In article <slrn9ktr6c.1n8.philipprw at chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>, Philipp Weinfurter wrote:

>hmm, i'm still new to python, so please correct me if i'm wrong here.
>but since you can not subclass `integer' and `string' (and override the 
>comparison operators for those types), there is not much polymorphism here.
>and as the language reference states:
>"Otherwise, objects of different types always compare unequal, and are
>ordered consistently but arbitrarily."
>i, too, think that this doesn't make much sense.

It's also no longer true for all types.  

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  PUNK ROCK!! DISCO
                                  at               DUCK!! BIRTH CONTROL!!
                               visi.com            


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Thu Jul  5 05:52:29 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 05 Jul 2001 12:52:29 +0300
Subject: pausing a thread
References: <3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <kulmm31z4y.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead at posting.google.com>,
danielnuriyev at yahoo.com (Daniel Nuriyev) writes:

| Hello
| This is a Java programmer's question
| How do you say:
| class QQQ extends Thread{
|     public void run(){
|         ...
|         sleep(ms);
|     }
| }
| in Python? Thank you all.

something like:

import threading, time

class QQQ(threading.Thread):
    def run(self):
        ...
        time.sleep(s)


  -- erno


From jgoerzen at complete.org  Fri Jul 27 09:54:50 2001
From: jgoerzen at complete.org (John Goerzen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:54:50 GMT
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
Message-ID: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org>

Hi,

I am currently familiar with Perl, C, and Java and am looking at
Python.  I have some questions about its "strong-typedness" (or lack
thereof).

To me, the benefit of Java or Python over Perl comes into play with
large apps.  For my purposes (no flames please!), Perl works great for
small scripts and stuff, but its almost total lack of typing,
prototyping, etc. causes major trouble with larger projects.

One nice thing about Java is that the programmer can control exactly
how tight the type-checking is and whether it occurs at runtime or at
compile time (dynamic vs. static).  I can, for instance, write methods
that care naught about what is passed in (they can take an Object),
which essentially renders the type checking there little tighter than
Perl.  I can write methods that return Objects, and the caller will
then have to cast them back to the appropriate type -- and a runtime
error will result if they're casted to the wront type.

Or, I could write methods that accept objects of a type anywhere up
and down the object hierarchy, being as specific or as general as
desired.  The compiler will do as much checking as possible at compile
time.  Usually I want it to do lots of checking, but sometimes it is
nice to be able to override.

>From what I hear about Python, it is weakly-typed like Perl.  There
are many times where I would like strong, static typing and some times
when I'd like to override that.  Java has a lot of problems (its
bloated and inconsistent API is the largest) and I'd much rather use
some other language for large projects.  However, it's valuable to me
that as many things as possible be caught before runtime.  Do you
think that Python would be a worthwhile language to investigate given
these criteria?  If so, how would I go about asserting type
compatibility at "compile time"?  (Or as close as Python gets to that)

I want to be able to write methods that take only certain types of
objects (or their descendants).  It is also useful to be able to cast
back from a general object to a more specific one (dynamic type
checking).  Or it could be just basic things as enforcing passing an
int rather than a float or a string.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

-- 
John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org>    GPG: 0x8A1D9A1F    www.complete.org


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 20 10:11:26 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:11:26 -0500
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before
	 12:00  AM 21 July 2001!!!
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526D@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

All folks not complying with the atomic clock change will be required to
take a course in Perl.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joal Heagney [mailto:s713221 at student.gu.edu.au]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 7:46 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock
before 12:00 AM 21 July 2001!!!


Neil Waterworth wrote:
> 
> I have a PC without a modem or network connection. Will it explode, or can
> someone lend me their Caesium Atomic clock and a serial cable?
> 
> Ric Werme <werme at mediaone.net> wrote in message
> news:sog57.3111$N21.1150208 at typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> > alavoor <alavoor at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > >All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
> > >21 July 2001!!!
> >
> > >hello:
> > >You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.
> >
> > Garbage!
> >
> > >Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.
> >
> > "This won't hurt a bit!"  At least you aren't hawking a .EXE virus.
> >
> > What wrong with NTP?  (Assuming one needs his computers' time to be
> accurate.)
> >
> > --
> > Ric Werme                            | werme at nospam.mediaone.net
> > http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete

You'd think he'd chose a less knowledgeable group of people to try this
on, wouldn't you?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Fri Jul 27 17:15:19 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 21:15:19 GMT
Subject: scoping problems
References: <yrx66cegqs2.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov> <yrxr8v2f9u6.fsf@catbert.mcs.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m3mf7.chu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

27 Jul 2001 14:30:57 -0500, Narayan Desai <desai at mcs.anl.gov> pisze:

> class baseclass():
>       def __init__(self):
>           self.__myfunc__()
> 
> class a(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=b
> 
> class b(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=a
> 
> Does anyone know how to get this to work?

class a(baseclass):
    pass

class b(baseclass):
    pass

a.__myfunc__ = b
b.__myfunc__ = a

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 11:57:37 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:57:37 -0500
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <3B5FC3AE.A8F664B9@tundraware.com>
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
        <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
        <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com>
        <slrn9luefe.5a2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
        <3B5FC3AE.A8F664B9@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <15200.15857.511206.874543@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were each asked to
    Tim> comment on the assertion "All odd numbers are prime."

    Tim> The mathematician at once gave a counterexample, 9.

    Tim> The physicist said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime.
    Tim> Now at nine we see second order effects!"

    Tim> The engineer said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime,
    Tim> 9 is prime..."

I remember that last bit as

    The engineer said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime.
    Therefore, 'all odd numbers are prime' is true."

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Mon Jul  2 06:16:05 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 12:16:05 +0200
Subject: functional programming and default parameters
References: <u7k81v6zf2.fsf@hpeesof.asc> <mailman.993838725.28543.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jscjd.m72.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <u78zi7k55m.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) writes:

>     (mapcar #'funcall (loop for i upfrom 1 to 5 collecting (lambda () i)))
>     ==> (6 6 6 6 6)

This is what I wrote about (in Lisp only lambda and equivalents create
scope, i.e. writing (let ((i i)) ...) into the bove line would work).

Inside the lisp loop, the i is not created over and over, but created
once and then overwritten (which is in turn different from dylan, where
such a loop works).  Both effects (non-creation in lisp and creation in
dylan) bite newbies over and over.

What I didn't know was which constructs in python create scope
(I learned from Tim's posting that "for" doesn't - my previous
intuition might have been influenced subconciously by C++).

The situation in python is remotely similar to lisp in that the loop
variable is created only once - just forcing python to create a fresh
scope needs a more verbose hack.

OTOH, 

(#Mfuncall (#M(lambda (x) (lambda () x)) (scan-range :below 6)))

works :-)

> I don't remember reading Ralf's original article, so if that

It might be hard to find from Tim's Posting, since that says

In-Reply-To: <u7k81v6zf2.fsf at hpeesof.asc>

instead of using the "References"-header (my gnus finds it with '^',
but the summary buffer does not use it for threading).  I'll include
the reference manually into the header here,

Ralf


From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Wed Jul 25 05:43:45 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:43:45 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jm4ch$ulf$2@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <cpae1tboxg.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:

>Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to
>
>(1) int/int *ought* to return an int;
>
>(2) it breaks too much code to change now.

What about

(3) it makes it extremely painful to write new code which works with
    both old and new versions of Python.

It seems only prudent that any Python code I write now should avoid
using / for integer division, just as I should avoid using yield as an
identifier. If I need integer division, I'm stuck with divmod()[0].

Note that it won't be possible to write cross version code which does
integer division until Python 2.1 is as rare as 1.4 is now. I'd say
five years at least before it's possible to use integer division with
an operator again.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From none at none.com  Thu Jul 12 15:16:33 2001
From: none at none.com (none)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:16:33 -0700
Subject: newbie xml+python question
References: <aaf95f4f.0107120007.28b3c85c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4DF791.3070705@none.com>

You should be able to accomplish all of this with the python modules at

www.4suite.org

You also might want to join the python XML-SIG mailing list at

www.python.org/sigs/xml-sig

Adam
adam in the domain devtty.net

Tigra wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Please, recommend what to use (and where to get a comprehensive doc) on an
> xml library which allows solving these tasks:
> 1. parse xml into dom (I mean into language specific xml tree struct)
> 2. roll a dom of my own and save it into xml (also update an existing dom)
> 3. check dom and/or xml against a dtd file/string/stream (at least string)
> 4. parse dtd into dom and reverse (I just want to create/parse dtds of my own)
> 5. transform an xml document with an xsl template.
> 6. have hooks on every step of operation. I.e. if a dtd validation fails, I'd
>    like to get an exceptionm with info on where and why the error occured, not
>    just "Validation error at xml line 14 (or node ...)".
> 
> I guess that SAX isn't able of meeting all these requrements.
> Any help (or even advocacy) is appreciated.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Sergey
> 



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 03:29:16 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 07:29:16 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
References: <e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D3554C5F8F8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

meinmailfilter at gmx.de (Heiko) wrote in 
news:e956b5f1.0107022240.776c1734 at posting.google.com:

> Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of arguments
> and the method decides what to do.
> 
Have you read the Tutorial that came with your copy of Python? Specifically 
try section 4.7.3 Arbitrary Argument Lists


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul  8 13:03:35 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 18:03:35 +0100
Subject: pySOL
References: <1sB17.88073$Rr4.57437@ozemail.com.au> <mailman.994546765.14732.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <pg4hktkdoajt8gnkists018bdq6lpigqb7@4ax.com>

On Sat, 07 Jul 2001 16:58:25 -0600, Paul Sidorsky <paulsid at home.com> wrote:

>RoadRunner_au wrote:
>
>> I am trying to get this game (pySOL) to run in windows 98, but as soon as the
>> windows comes up with the game it crashes with the following error.
>
>> TclError: unknown option "-dither"
>
>> Can anyone help with fixing this problem? thanks.
>
>I had the same problem under Windows ME.  I kludged a fix for it by
>changing the PySol source as follows:
>
>In module tk/tkutil.py, comment out lines 270 and 271.  They look like
>this:
>
>        #if dither is not None:
>        #    kw["dither"] = dither
>
>PySol (4.71) has worked great for me ever since.

I'll try that. FWIW, it looks like the 'dither' option is new in the latest
alpha of TCL/Tk, so maybe PySon depends on that. Grr - I hate relying on alpha
software :-( [Installing it, yes, *relying* on it, no...]

Paul.


From stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 13:12:10 2001
From: stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk (Stephen D Evans)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:12:10 +0100
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?
References: <fi1cj9.8qm.ln@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3B59B7E9.48984FCB@recombinant.demon.co.uk>

Some documented reusable code for removing duplicates from a sequence:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52560

Probably more than you want for your existing task.

Stephen D Evans

----

gradha at iname.com wrote:

> Hi.
>
> Given a list of strings, I am doing the following to delete duplicated
> entries:
>
> my_list.sort()
> x = 0
> while x < len (my_list) - 1:
>         if my_list[x] == my_list[x+1]:
>                 del my_list[x+1]
>         else:
>                 x = x + 1
>
> Is there some more elegant, fast, algorithm? Is this the only one
> obvious way to do it?
>
> --
>  Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org



From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Thu Jul 12 21:47:21 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:47:21 +1200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <d8m37.13023$B7.2577784@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E5329.1E9462FC@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> In article <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list at python.org>, pfenn at mmm.com wrote:
> >
> >Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?
> 
> I regulary depend on integer division working the way it does.

The point is whether there is any code which relies
on polymorphically deciding between integer and float
division at run time. I find it very difficult to
imagine what sort of application would *need* that.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Sun Jul  8 12:49:55 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 09:49:55 -0700
Subject: readline()/readlines() inconsistent?
References: <3B482C44.6E6EB163@snakefarm.org>
Message-ID: <080720010949557455%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <3B482C44.6E6EB163 at snakefarm.org>, Carsten Gaebler
<clpy at snakefarm.org> wrote:

> Hi there!
> 
> I've just come across a strange difference between readline() and
> readlines():
> 
> Python 2.1 (#17, Jun 15 2001, 15:24:30) 
> [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> f = open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readline()
> ''
> >>> f.close()
> >>> 
> >>> f =  open("foobar", "w")
> >>> f.readlines()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
> >>> 
> 
> 
> Why does readlines() raise an exception while readline() does not? I
> expected it to return an empty list. According to the docs readlines()
> uses readline(). If I open the file "w+" everything's fine. Opinions?
> 
> Regards
> Carsten.

Interesting...

That's not the result I get on the handiest Python 2.1 (on the Mac OS X
machine on which I'm reading the newsgroup).  But it *is* the result I
get on a Red Hat machine from HP, whose Linux describes itself as:

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.2.14-5.0smp (root at porky.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version
egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 SMP Tue Mar 7
21:01:40 EST 2000


The Mac OS X run is here:

Python 2.1 (#1, 04/22/01, 11:06:25) 
[GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 6.0alpha] on darwin1
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> f = open ("spam", "w")
>>> f.readline()
''
>>> f.readline()
''
>>> f.close()
>>> f = open ("spam", "w")
>>> f.readlines()
[]
>>> f.close()

   --John


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  2 12:07:51 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:07:51 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead?
Message-ID: <9hq6900kqt@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:...
    ...
> > > > The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I
> would
> > > > hardly typify that as not being "good database support".
> > >
> > > http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsga/download/python/
> >
> > I can't get this URL to work... I am getting Forbidden errors.
>
> Darn, it's giving forbidden errors to me too, right now, it worked
> the other day.  I haven't tried it, but maybe http://www.fiby.at/dbfpy.tgz
> may help you -- or perhaps the idea of using ODBC (or ADO/OleDB, etc)
> to access the dBase files remains better.

Oh, and, what about http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdb/?  Now
renamed to XBase, I'm told, but apparently the URL still has
XDB in it.  Haven't checked it, but they claim support for C++,
Perl and Python.


Alex





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul 31 13:04:23 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:04:23 -0400
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9k5tg301mn9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b66c4ce.904451372@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <2wB97.6548$9i1.540151@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b66c4ce.904451372 at wa.news.verio.net...
[ ... ]
> Most of us have lots to be thankful for, clearly. Shifting case
> is also an extra finger dexterity exercise, which is difficult
> for some with good sight but other impairments.
>
My own impairment, as is frequently obvious from my posts, is being a lousy
typist and a not-terribly good proof-reader. Of course, readers might simply
lump these inabilities under the heading "careless". One never knows what
others assume...

> Yet I was in the opposition camp, favoring case sensitivity.
> I still do, though I am not happy about adding problems for
> those who already have more than their share.
>
I favored case-sensitivity *in the interpreter*. Once Guido made it clear he
was primarily interested in case-insensitive tools which layered *on top of
the interpreter* this became a non-issue for me. Though I'm not sure I
bothered to say so at the time.

> I lived a long time with UPPER CASE PROGRAMMING, and felt
> as though freed of swaddling when finally i got to use lower case.
>
> Maybe there are some conventions for case usage that would
> help in generating sound representations. Punctuation would
> probably have to be something like Victor Borge's rendering
> inside strings.

This would make a *wonderful* evening conference session. Each entrant
should choose their own Python speech-rendition system, and each then reads
the same program in their own preferred style.
[ ...]
>
rehearsing-already-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Tue Jul 17 17:09:04 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 21:09:04 GMT
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
References: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net> <slrn9ksprk.n2h.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <3b5363fb$1@news.blarg.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9l9abf.25vp.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

16 Jul 2001 15:00:27 -0700 in <3b5363fb$1 at news.blarg.net>,
Steve R. Hastings <steveha at animal.blarg.net> spake:
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes (kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu) wrote:
>>   If what you want is portability, though, Python's probably more
>> portable than Java
> Okay.  I thought Java bytecodes were my best hope for cross-platform
> compatibility... but Python has its own bytecodes, doesn't it!

  Yep, and unfortunately the JVM is only really kept current on
Slowlaris, Windoze, Linux (finally!), and HP-UX (and that through HP's
own efforts).  IBM's various OS's, too, for what that's worth.

  Mac JVMs are iffy, and BSD is behind the times.

  The one really bright side to JVMs is the consistent graphics support:
AWT and Swing work everywhere.  The down side is that it's AWT and
Swing, which are a major pain to work in, and make Tk look speedy and
light on memory usage.

> Suppose I wanted a program to be runnable on platforms like BSD, PowerPC
> Linux, PowerPC BSD, etc. without having to build on each of those.  If I
> were to distribute .pyo files, and users of all those platforms already had
> Python installed on their systems, could I build and distribute a single
> .pyo file?

  Well, one .pyo per module, but yes.  Note that Python bytecode is not
portable between Python versions - if you make it for 2.1, only 2.1 can
read it.  That's about the only major complaint I have, otherwise it
seems to run on everything.  I've tried it on all the systems I have
easy access to: Linux, FreeBSD (didn't try Tkinter there, though),
Windoze, and HP-UX.  Presumably it works on Macs, but I've not tried
them.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 15:11:06 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:11:06 -0400
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
References: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>
Message-ID: <OJo07.19928$Lk6.1490311@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Gerson Kurz" <gerson.kurz at t-online.de> wrote in message
news:3b421046.1836046 at news.t-online.de...
> Please consider the following:
>
> dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
> ...
> if o['type'] == 'button':
> # do something for objects of type button
>
> Now, take a look at
>
> if o.type == 'button':
> # do something for objects of type button
>
> A dictionary can in many cases be interpreted as a dynamically created
> object. And an object should have members; or rather, you should be
> able to access its data in a member-style fashion.
>
And namespaces are, in fact, for the most part dictionaries. There are some
optimzations, but that needn't concern us unduly here.

> This change doesn't save you much type overhead - but it makes the
> code look more readable for those uses for which it makes sense to
> treat dictionarys as dynamic objects (and I have lots of uses for
> these).
>
Readability is the key to maintainability, which is highly desirable.

> I realize that there are possible dictionary keys (such as tuples) for
> which such a syntax is improper; it should be sufficient to make the
> following restrictions:
>
> - the syntax is only possible for string-typed keys that *qualify as
> valid identifiers*
> - the syntax is only possible for keys that are not part of dir({}).
>
> The implementation would be a hack that extendes the {}.__methods__
> lookup.
>
> Worthwile pursuit or total crap ?
>
Definitely not total crap, and in fact a quite often-used paradigm. But not
with dictionaries. Of course, with the prospect that the type/class
dichotomy may be resolved in a forthcoming release, you could make your
dictionaries behave that way if you wanted to. But normally such trickery is
should be unnecessary, because Python already has things which behave in the
way you require: instances (each of which has its own namespace. Geddit?)

Question: if you're prepared to accept the restrictions you list above, why
not just use a class instance instead? Consider:

class Mdict:
    pass

dict = Mdict()
dict.one = 3.45
dict.two = 7.9

... etc.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From phd at phd.fep.ru  Wed Jul  4 04:11:12 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:11:12 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Implementation Innovation vs. Product Innovation
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107041209340.7638-100000@phd.fep.ru>

Guido> Where are the open source projects that *innovate*?

"Stephen J. Turnbull": You're making the classic "architects are creative,
implementers not" error.

   http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/443

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 17 14:25:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 14:25:14 -0400
Subject: howdoI: Exception in thread - terminating the program?
References: <yox7kx83xzf.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <u7kx74dmd.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> writes:

> Is there some "standard" or canonical way to make programs die when an
> unhandled exception occurs in a thread (other than main)? Off the top
> of my head, I can think of having a threading.Event blocking at the
> main, all threads set to Daemons, and having the run() in catch-all
> try-except block (and save/print traceback, trigger the blocking event
> in main inside except).

That's certainly one reasonable approach.  In general, if you're doing
a multi-threaded application, except in some very self-contained cases
you're likely to to need a means to communicate amongst the threads
for some synchronization purposes, either to retrieve results of
operations or affect the operations at hand.  So typically before
you're done you're going to find yourself needing some signaling
mechanism anyway, and often that can then be used to cover cases such
as this.

If your main thread isn't going to be doing anything but spinning up
the other threads, then having it wait on such an event is fine -
although you may want to consider having it read from a queue, and
thus be able to not only receive information from failing threads (the
failing thread could even send over the traceback object through the
queue so the main thread could handle printing/logging duties for all
operational threads), but also completion or other communication from
properly working threads.

If the main thread is doing other activities, you could either
periodically check at the event or queue, or even just poll the
other threads with isAlive() to ensure they are still running.

If you're going to encapsulate this in a GUI at some point, then the
threads can likely generate events to the main GUI thread which can
also serve to communicate such information.

There's also the consideration of how you want to shut down if a
thread terminates (or if under some other condition you want to exit).
Having the worker threads all daemons ensures you can just exit, but
if you need to permit them to perform cleanup, you may actually want a
path from the main thread to the worker threads (e.g., have them check
a terminate flag or event periodically in their execution path) as well.

Which of these various methods is "best" is heavily dependent on your
application and its design goals and constraints.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Fri Jul 20 19:47:47 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:47:47 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995647175.15752.python-list@python.org> <3B5867E8.6B8751F8@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.995653534.25147.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B58C323.59C3D406@Lugoj.Com>

Dan Bergan wrote:
> 
> > Dan Bergan wrote:
> > > (Declare the variable in mixed-case)
> > > Dim myVariable as Integer
> > >
> > > (then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
> > > myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!
> >
> > Well, if you "correct" that to myVaraible you would still be in error,
> > because you accidentally exchanged "ia" with "ai" in addition to changing
> > "V" to "v". Python will not inform you about about some typos, whether
> > case-related, dropped characters, exchanged characters, or added
> characters.
> 
> I think you missed my point a bit.  VB would NOT correct the typo (because
> it does not match a variable name that is already declared).  So, I use the
> fact that it was NOT corrected as a flag that I screwed something up.

Sorry, missed that.


From david7 at visto.com  Mon Jul 23 14:41:41 2001
From: david7 at visto.com (David)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 11:41:41 -0700
Subject: QT to change menu bar
Message-ID: <ac71c3f1.0107231041.27653883@posting.google.com>

Can anyone tell me how to use QT and python to do the following:
Usually when you do a mouse over an item on any windows menu bar, you
will see a boarder around that item. Now I need to do is to make it
not to have any border, and also highlight the item when I do a mouse
over. Usually only the item in sub menu will be highlighted when you
do a mouse over.

Thank you!


From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 21:36:37 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:36:37 -0400
Subject: File Reading , Reverse Direction
References: <3B60F7EC.5275E026@lsu.edu> <a1364c9f.0107271308.66a5246@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B621725.E05FA964@engcorp.com>

Kannan Vijayan wrote:
> 
> A modification of Peter Hansen's code:
> 
> i = -4096
> file.seek(i, 2)
> lines = file.readlines()
> while len(lines) <= 2:
>     i -= 4096
>     file.seek(i, 2)
>     lines = file.readlines()
> lines = lines[-2:]

Just be sure to catch the case where you try to seek() to
an offset before the start of the file: it throws an
IOError.  And the original poster was probably counting
on not having files with fewer than two lines... :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 20:51:12 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 00:51:12 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org> <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com> <cpelrriogf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9khonr.gg0.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <cpbsmvhqr6.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan) writes:

> On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:43:13 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> >Actually, Paul's proposal to write
> >
> >  x has y
> >
> >instead of
> >
> >  hasattr(x, 'y')
> >
> >has a nice Pythonic ring to it, and the fact that you have to use
> >quotes with hasattr() has always bothered me.  Too bad I didn't think
> >of this 10 years ago; right now, I'd say it's too little value for too
> >much disturbance (a new keyword).
> 
> Actually, I think there's a nice symmetry to hasattr taking strings.
> It is to objects what has_key is to dicts, though it's more
> important because dicts are naturally keyed with strings while
> objects are naturally keyed with identifiers.

(From the idle speculation department)

The hasattr() function matches getattr() and setattr().  The 'has'
form, if it existed, would match the "." notation: think 'x.foo'
vs. 'x has foo'.

> Now, the spelling I don't quite like.  We should have either haskey
> and hasattr, or has_key and has_attr.  I prefer the latter, but it's
> too late now in any case.

Ah, but in 2.2, you will be able to write 'key in dict' for
'dict.has_key(key)'.  Problem solved. :-)

> 'x has y' would also have a nice resemblance to 'x in y', where one
> checks if y is in the object itself, and the other checks if y is in
> the container the object represents.  I don't want the former
> functionality often enough to think a keyword is worth it, though.

Bingo!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From stevecanfield at my-deja.com  Thu Jul 26 14:09:43 2001
From: stevecanfield at my-deja.com (Steve Canfield)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:09:43 -0700
Subject: WSH: Popup timeout problem in PythonWin
Message-ID: <603e1b49.0107261009.3c0e6191@posting.google.com>

If I put the following code in a file called test.py and double click
on it, it works as I would expect.  A message box is shown for three
seconds.

  from win32com.client import Dispatch
  wshell = Dispatch('WScript.Shell')
  wshell.Popup("hello", 3)

If I run the same code in PythonWin, it never times out.  Any idea
why?  I'm using win32all build 139 & Python 2.1.

-steve


From none at nospam.net  Mon Jul 23 21:40:13 2001
From: none at nospam.net (Acid)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 01:40:13 GMT
Subject: FTP win32 program
Message-ID: <1m477.55371$rt.8243308@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>

I am trying to write simple program with Python to connect to an ftp,
list, download a file(s) etc...

I am running this under Win2K professional with Python 2.1:


 from ftplib import FTP

    ftp = FTP('ftp.techlogik.com,user,password')        # connect to host
    ftp.cwd('cd/misc')                                                 #
change directory
    ftp.retrlines('LIST')                                               #
list /misc
    ftp.quit()



I start the Python Gui, then New Window, put the above script in, then
save, then Run Script.  It returns:

 File "C:/Python21/download.py", line 2
    from ftplib import FTP
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax


What's the trick to get this working under Win32?

Thanks,
Keith





From andreas at digicool.com  Thu Jul 12 11:07:39 2001
From: andreas at digicool.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:07:39 -0500
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107121756210.14873-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <07cb01c10ae4$64a3c440$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Donnerstag, 12. Juli 2001 09:00
Subject: list and implicit continuation may cause bugs in Python programs


> FYI:
>
> Do not forget commas:
>
> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url",
>          "preview" ]
>
> list =[ "update", "y", "m", "d", "y1", "m1", "d1", "event", "url"
>          "preview" ]
>
> Or Python will silently make:
> ['update', 'y', 'm', 'd', 'y1', 'm1', 'd1', 'event', 'urlpreview']
>
> Does PyChecker check for these kind of things?
>

For what reason should it check ? Both is valid Python code. In the second
case 'url' and 'preview' are concatenated. This is dedicated behaviour.

Also the following is correct Python code:

print "url" "preview"
print "url","preview"

So there is no way to determine the programmers intention at this point.

Andreas


============================================================================
====
Andreas Jung
andreas at digicool.com
Digital Creations               "Zope Dealers"
http://www.zope.org





From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 12:01:14 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 12:01:14 -0400
Subject: I want to do something:
References: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <etdae1pqbzp.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

If you're on unix, you might want to have a look at cron, which is
perfect for this kind of thing.  Here's something I wrote for a friend
this week that describes roughly how to use it:

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""Check that apache is running  on the local machine, and restart it,
if not.

After copying  this script, making it executable,  and configuring the
path to the  httpd binary, and the port the server  is running on, run
the command  'crontab -e'  from the command  line.  Within  the editor
that this command opens, add a line like

0-59 * * * * /path/to/this/script.py

For instance, this is what my crontab file looks like:

######################################################################
SHELL=/bin/tcsh
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/scratch2/alex
MAILTO=alex_c at mit.edu

# run-parts
0-59 * * * * ~/Public/check_cuckoo.py
0  3 * * * ~/python/databases/backup_scripts/backup4.py 
# 30 3 * * * ~/python/network/python_cvs.py
# Kill anything older than a week
30 6 * * * /usr/bin/find         /scratch2/backups/ -atime +7 | xargs rm -f
30 6 * * * /usr/bin/find    ~alex_c/.group-backups/ -atime +7 | xargs rm -f

"""

import urllib, os

# Path to the httpd binary
httpd_path = '/scratch/www/bin/httpd'
port = 8080

try: root_page = urllib.urlopen('http://localhost:%i' % port)
except IOError:

    # Couldn't reach the web page.  Try restarting the server.
    assert os.system(httpd_path) == 0
    
HTH,
Alex.


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Mon Jul 30 03:40:56 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 10:40:56 +0300
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com> <23891c90.0107270222.7856bec2@posting.google.com> <fds2mtkf6l2ttli8e7tgts6mtgn22p3bd0@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <yoxwv4qhnjr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Chris Spencer <clspence at one.net> writes:

> 	Note that the compiled version they provide does NOT have threading
> enabled.

So what should I do, when I need a multithreaded python with threading
on hp-ux11? I tried the normal build, and the tests (make test) passed
just fine (the ones that didn't did so because of lacking libz etc..).

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com  Tue Jul 31 13:38:24 2001
From: Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com (Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:38:24 -0500
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
Message-ID: <0089E91E.N22121@rsmi.com>

>We obviously need a good name.

And quick.  Because it looks a lot like we have 
decided to use "non-pogrammer" to describe 
among ourselves the person conducting the 
exact activities we are calling Programming 
with our CP4E hats on.
 
And nobody has shared the get-away plan 
with me.

ART




From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Wed Jul 11 15:40:53 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:53 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
	(message from Kemp Randy-W18971 on Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:13:22 -0400)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <11072001.3@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Kemp" == Kemp Randy-W18971 <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> writes:

    Kemp> So an interesting question is raised.

Is it?

    Kemp> If PHP and Ruby are gaining acceptance because they address
    Kemp> business needs, what needs to be done to carry Python in
    Kemp> that direction?

*If*!  We can debate to no end whether PHP and Ruby are gaining
acceptance, in business circles.

And PHP and Ruby are quite different beasts.

I'm looking on my Debian system... and lo and behold, I don't see any
significant app or tool written in Ruby.  Okay, that might not mean
too much...  I can find tons of *important* stuff using Python,
however (apt-cache showpkg python-base scrolls off the screen... a 60
line screen.  The same for ruby fits nicely)

    Kemp> And while Java may be slow, Sun pushing it for business
    Kemp> solutions also gives that language acceptance.  How can
    Kemp> Python become as popular as Perl, Java, or PHP?

What Paul said... especially concerning Java.  Just Sun alone probably
has a marketing budget for Java that no company in the Python camp can
match.

Bye, J

PS: This will really (yeah, sure ;-) be the last from me in this
thread.

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
                GNU Privacy Guard (http://www.gnupg.org)
         I have a firm grip on reality, now I can strangle it.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010711/38f128e8/attachment.sig>

From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul 29 02:52:36 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 06:52:36 GMT
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
References: <mailman.996195293.9402.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m7clk.na4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:53:34 -0400 (EDT), Steven D. Majewski <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> pisze:

>>>> def every( s ):
> ...     return [ x for x in s ] 

This function can be defined easier:
    every = list

Not exactly the same I guess, but works for iterators.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From paul at svensson.org  Fri Jul 27 10:22:41 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 14:22:41 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60A053.75938301@engcorp.com> <9jqnlr$flb$1@news.duke.edu> <3B60E96C.2A99AD87@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9jrtfh$27t$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

>Kevin Lacker wrote:
>>
>> How cryptic is
>> 
>> [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]
>> 
>> ? Not really any more cryptic than
>> 
>> [process(x) for x in my_list if is_good(x)]
>> 
>> which seems to be agreeably a good thing to have. I certainly like it.
>
>Assuming you can read the one, the other is at least as
>readable.
>
>In my post I was attempting to point out that I find list 
>comprehensions less readable than the equivalent, longer but 
>more explicit while loop version, not that one list comprehension 
>is more or less cryptic than another.

In my mind, the most important difference between a list comprehension
and the explicit loop replacement, is that the latter distracts my attention
away from the data going into the list, focusing too much on the process
of putting it there.

	/Paul


From Roberto at lupi.ws  Fri Jul 20 15:04:18 2001
From: Roberto at lupi.ws (Roberto Lupi)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 21:04:18 +0200
Subject: ZODB address list  question (source is listed)...
References: <4a249347.0107120538.6cf71cba@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <MPG.15bba074f68befd1989765@News.CIS.DFN.DE>

In article <4a249347.0107120538.6cf71cba at posting.google.com>, 
bobh at hslda.org says...
> I am a newbie at both Python and ZODB so I thought I would modify the
> ZODB demo that Mr. Pelletier did. It does the Listing, Adding and 
> Quiting fine. But when I add a duplicate it does not tell me that that
> "name" is already in the database.

[cut]

> def addEmployee(name, phone):
>     if employees.has_key(name):
>         ## the below does not print when a duplicate is created
>         print "There is already an employee with this name."
>         return
>     else:
>         employees[name, phone] = Employee(name, phone)

Try:

          employees[name] = Employee(name, phone)

-- 
Roberto Lupi


From bencd at bigfoot.com  Sat Jul 21 21:05:39 2001
From: bencd at bigfoot.com (Ben Caradoc-Davies)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 01:05:39 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4> <Xns90E4E1E55281Dcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <slrn9lhgqu.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9javdi$bbp$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lk9pv.ls.bencd@localhost.localdomain>

On 20 Jul 2001 21:11:30 -0700, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>smpt = SMTP()

That won't be affected.  ;-)

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <bencd at bigfoot.com>


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 16:31:55 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:31:55 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5FCDC3.C8A2AF9E@unice.fr>
Message-ID: <%6%77.30794$EP6.7927052@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Jerome Alet" <> wrote in message news:3B5FCDC3.C8A2AF9E at unice.fr...

[sickening obscene joke about murder deleted]

Jerome,

Guido has posted a couple of things he has regretted, retracted, and
apologized for, as have others.  He has poked at me and I have poked
back.  But your 'joke' is farther over the line of decency than
*anything* I can remember reading here in years.

I think you should publically and formally retract, apologize, and
maybe get conseling on how to restrain the impulse to write *and send*
such things; or stay away forever.

Terry J. Reedy





From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 05:43:24 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:43:24 -0400
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
In-Reply-To: <srnsltg09pftvcn71n8s9bpktpeicmqhtj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEAELBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> How would you feel if you found out that installing your new wiz-bang
> application suddenly meant your bread-and-butter application broke.
> That is what can happen - someone gets a new application from a
> different supplier, updates their Python to use it and *BANG* - the
> existing app breaks.

How do you intend to package your apps?  On Windows, Python ships with the
Microsoft C runtime libraries it was tested with, to be sure that broken C
libraries on the user's machine can't hurt it.  This is common practice for
major Windows apps of all kinds -- it's basic defensive practice.

Similarly, you've got mostly yourself to blame if you don't ship your
bread-and-butter Python apps with the versions of Python they were tested
with.  It's not like you can *expect* your customers to have Python already
installed:  you have to ship *some* version of Python with your apps.  It's
little additional work from there to isolate your version of Python from
whatever other versions they may already have installed  -- or may ever
install in the future.

Dead serious apps don't take chances, and there are no restrictions in the
Python license on redistributing it with your apps.  If you don't isolate
your app from user whims, there's no guarantee it will continue to work even
if they install a single bugfix to a shared Python.  I don't know which OS
you're targeting, but it doesn't sound like you've thought about the big
picture here, be it Linux or Windows.  The more important the app, the more
important to cover your butt, and even pure bugfixes can break code that
relied on accidents.

test-what-you-ship-and-ship-what-you-test-ly y'rs  - tim




From jim at publishingresources.com  Fri Jul 20 18:13:01 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim Abrams)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:13:01 -0000
Subject: ActivePython ASP comobject.getCOMObject() does not work
References: <9j6tac$b96$00$1@news.t-online.com> <3B576D8C.9080705@ActiveState.com> <Xns90E478A656FFBjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <9j9mtn$e9f$07$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E4B8DA3D90Ajimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

"Jochen Riekhof" <jochen at riekhof.de> wrote in <9j9mtn$e9f$07$1 at news.t-
online.com>:

>> Any COM [out] parameter will be returned from the method since in Python
>> parameters are passed by value rather than by reference (we won't talk
>> about object references).
>
>Hum, interesting, but do you know why does it return the connect-string in
>my case?
>

I have no clue, but I would hazard a guess that there's an out param in the 
"OrboPCT.OrboPCTRead" object you're using.

-Jim


From dvbbiy at nowhere.com  Mon Jul 16 20:12:50 2001
From: dvbbiy at nowhere.com (dvbbiy at nowhere.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:12:50 GMT
Subject: Hide Your Internet Usage With This Program!!!  3407
Message-ID: <6qL47.8453$Un2.123617@news.pacbell.net>

Click Here 2 Download Evidence Eliminator!!!
http://www.sincityhosting.com/ethnic/badandy/

You are being watched... how about your Boss? Do you surf the internet 
and send E-mail at work? Your work PC will be full of evidence. It is 
becoming common in the workplace for companies to copy and investigate 
the contents of workers computers out of hours - without your consent or 
knowledge. This is perfectly legal and it is happening now! Your job 
could be at risk, what would happen to you if you lost your job? People 
like you are losing their jobs right now because of their Internet activities 
in America and the UK.

According to an APBNews report, 73.5% of all companies admit they 
"record and review their employees' communications and activities on the job."

There is no need for you to play Russian roulette with your job, 
family, car, property and everything else that depends on it! 
Act now! We can help, Evidence Eliminator? can protect you from the dangers of the 
Internet! Download today with no risk, guaranteed. Act now! And transform your computer 
into a safe, clean and faster machine!

Click Here 2 Download Evidence Eliminator!!!
http://www.citedusexe.com/ee2/
















iddvptgmuynofbpmvbfybvplpjxjqededivtonuiu



From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 13 17:01:05 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:01:05 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <m2ae29y5nj.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net> <9iltgc$q2f$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <3b4f5ec2.1828665491@wa.news.verio.net>

On 13 Jul 2001 04:30:04 GMT, jcm <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
[...]
>
>And since I'm not willing to put the effort into packaging and posting
>the code (nevermind actually finishing the changes that I have
>half-complete), it was probably a bad idea to mention anything about
>the mud at all in a newsgroup.

Well, if you come to the playground with a bag of marbles, it probably
is just as well to keep it out of sight if you don't want to play ;-)

But come back again with some other toys when you do ;-)


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 18 23:51:03 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:51:03 -0500
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
In-Reply-To: <B77B9FBF.6F7D%chris@cmb-enterprises.com>
References: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
        <B77B9FBF.6F7D%chris@cmb-enterprises.com>
Message-ID: <15190.22823.790969.3646@beluga.mojam.com>

    Chris> in article sAj57.1758$oz3.22749 at vixen.cso.uiuc.edu, Young-Jin Lee
    Chris> at ylee12 at uiuc.edu wrote on 7/18/01 3:23 PM:

    >> It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it? How easy is it?

    Chris> Also investigate wxPython.

    Chris> http://www.wxpython.org

As long as we're mentioning Python-based GUI stuff, there's also Gtk+PyGtk:

    http://www.daa.com.au/~james/pygtk/

That's the stable (Gtk 1.2-based stuff).  If you're into the bleeding edge
(Gtk 1.3-based), check here:

    http://www.gnome.org/~james/

I only use it on Linux, but it is also available on Windows.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Thu Jul 26 11:39:33 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:39:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Submodules in dynamic modules?
In-Reply-To: <20010726161334.A31154@strakt.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107261134310.419-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


> 
> I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here.  I don't want to
> import other Python modules, I want to have several submodules in my one C
> library file (foomodule.so on unix).  I guess I COULD have several .so
> files and import them like you do here, but that would be unnecessarily
> complicated!
> 

No -- these are all in one dynamic lib: Carbonmodule.so.
On "classic" MacOS, they were all separate libs.
( PPC MacOS followed AIX in having explicit import and export files
  so it was easy to say where exactly other symbols would be resolved.)
On OSX, I could not figure out how to get them to link
separately without either multiply defined or undefined symbols,
so all of the Carbon toolbox modules were linked into a single 
dynamic lib. 

This *sounds* like what you're asking for, is it? 

-- Steve Majewski





From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Fri Jul  6 15:12:18 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 21:12:18 +0200
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kc0ov.1ob.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On 6 Jul 2001 09:20:03 -0700, Edward Wilson <web2ed at yahoo.com> wrote:
>To the Snake's Den:
>
>This is a continuation to an earlier post "Is Python Dead".  Perhaps
>my previous title was a bit loud and over the top.  In response to
>being accused a Troll, I want to say that this has been a serious plea
>for help.  I would rather eat Spam than be a Troll.
>
>[...]
>I have come to the harsh reality that 90% of the developers who use
>Python are advanced developers doing mostly scientific research.  I
>guess I am jealous that most of you get to work with Python, on a
>daily basis, while the rest of us are relegated to using slave's
>tools.
>
>Unless I go back to school, and take up academic research, I will not
>be using Python, unless I take two years off, working alone, to add
>the necessary database support which Python lacks.

Database modules for the databases you want to access exist. You seem to doubt
the quality of these tools, however. If you want a commercially supported
Python module that implements the Python DB-API, you should give Python another
try and check out the mxODBC module. It's the only module for which you can buy
commercial support, AFAIK. 

>I understand that most of you geniuses can hit databases for storing your
>scientific data, however, I write applications which save peoples
>life's-public safety systems.  I can't possibly use "EXPERIMENTAL" code in my
>day to day work.  If something goes wrong with my code, I lose my job, and if
>it can be shown that I used experimental code downloaded from the Internet, I
>could be charged with criminal negligence.

Though the quality of the various database modules differ, most of them are
surely not "experimental code".

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:10:43 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:10:43 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIEJFLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Terry Reedy]
> If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
> n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
> for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
> floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
> independent of type).

Type-based "exact vs inexact" schemes sound better than they're likely to
work, IMO.

Example:

    x = 6.02e23  # reading as floating double, and presumably inexact
    y = x // 1   # exact?!

y == x after those, but what sense would it make for y to be exact then?

Example:

    y = w - w

Whether w is exact or inexact, it's certain that y is exactly 0 after that.
So the rule that "inexactness is always contagious" makes no sense (and,
indeed, the Scheme std leaves so many holes to accommodate cases "like this
one" that there's no guessing what will happen).

Example:

    x = math.sqrt(4)  # if inexact result, why?!

That is, even in float-land, sqrt(4) is just as exact as 4 is.

Scheme bit one part of this bullet so-far unchewed here:  the idea that
floats are always inexact and ints always exact makes no sense either (I
worked 2 hours today and exchanged 1e3 pennies for a ten-dollar bill); so
Scheme has literal notations allowing to explictly say that an integer
literal is inexact, and that a floating literal is exact, when appropriate.

exactness-is-neither-a-type-nor-an-operation-property-ly y'rs  - tim




From spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk  Wed Jul 18 04:16:16 2001
From: spam at melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk (Radovan Garabik)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:16:16 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <Xns90E24820E1F1ehoutezeelandnetnl@212.115.192.220> <3B54D9A2.45C23B14@Lugoj.Com> <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <gkg3j9.hfp.ln@127.0.0.1>

Xu, C.S. <xucs007 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 : Thanks for all comments. Now I revised my stupid testing
 : python script to adopt both a func (save original 38 seconds
 : to 28 seconds) and a for loop (save original 38 seconds to
 : 21 seconds), I got 16.0 seconds, which is pretty comparable
 : to perl's 15.4 seconds.

 : The revised stupid testing py is:

 : #!/usr/bin/env python
 : def f():
 :        for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
 :                j = 2.5 * 2.5
 :        print i, j
 : f()

carefully here: xrange takes integer numbers as
arguments, so instead of former addition of real numbers,
you are now dealing with integer i in range from 2 to int(1e7)

compare my tests:
def f():
        i = 2.5;
        while i < 1e7:
                j = 6.25
                i += 1.
        print i, j
f()
20.95s user 0.09s system 99% cpu 21.069 total

def f():
        i = 2;
        while i < 10000000:
                j = 6.25
                i += 1
        print i, j
f()
14.59s user 0.07s system 99% cpu 14.685 total
see the difference that using integers instead of reals by itself makes

def f():
    for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
            j = 6.25
    print i, j
f()
9.54s user 0.05s system 99% cpu 9.616 total

-- 
 -----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabik  http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik |
| __..--^^^--..__         garabik @ fmph . uniba . sk       |
 -----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!


From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 13:13:09 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:13:09 GMT
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995364629.21815.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b5465a0.2158103869@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:08:58 +0200, "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>Issues that still need to be resolved:
[...]
>
>- which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
>
>  * Emacs style:
>
>      #!/usr/bin/python
>      # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-
>
>  * Via meta-option to the interpreter:
>
>      #!/usr/bin/python --encoding=utf-8
>
>  * Using a special comment format:
>
>      #!/usr/bin/python
>      #!encoding = 'utf-8'
>
If you go with the last line above, ISTM that it should
spawn a PEP of its own, because people will inevitably
think of other uses, e.g.,
       #!numbers = float_div
etc.

Rather than deal with a proliferation of #!xxx ideas, ISTM
a single form could anticipate most in an open-ended way, e.g.,

       #!pragma encoding('utf-8')

Some uses would have to be confined to programLines[1:n]
but there might be localized uses as well.

Perhaps it should be #!pythma for better acceptability? ;-)



From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Fri Jul 20 11:52:37 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:52:37 -0400
Subject: Python equivalent of two Perl statements
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA526F@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

Thanks!  I will try that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean 'Shaleh' Perry [mailto:shalehperry at home.com]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 10:37 AM
To: Kemp Randy-W18971
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: RE: Python equivalent of two Perl statements



On 20-Jul-2001 Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> What is the equivalent of these Perl statements in Python?
> 
> $time = scalar(localtime);
> print "This FTP request started on $time \n";
> 

import time
now = time.ctime(time.time())
print now

time.time() returns seconds since the epoch, ctime() turns it into the
string
like perl does.  There are several other interesting time printing functions
in
the 'time' module.



From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 18:52:47 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:52:47 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994140484.20380.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9htibv$fjl$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"William Park" <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.994140484.20380.python-list at python.org...
> So, go way.

Please, stop being rude. This is comp.lang.python, for
$DEITY's sake!

> --
> William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
> 8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 09:07:55 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:07:55 GMT
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com> <Xns90D59D0D33B09atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <luf8kt4t8e5urfata61qfu9c90otqi9puv@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D5EB408F9D5atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
<luf8kt4t8e5urfata61qfu9c90otqi9puv at 4ax.com>: 

>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:26:39 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>Todd) wrote: 
>
>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>><qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7 at 4ax.com>: 
>>
>>>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>>>Todd) wrote: 
>>>
>>>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>>>><n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>: 
>>>>
[major snippage]
>>
>
>I am reading a book on SQL that covers MySQL. 
>
>But, in this one post you covered my main problem. I could not find
>where the magic words like "cursor.fetchall()" were coming from. I was
>reduced to looking at the Gadfly code and making a list of magic code.
>
>But, with DB-API spec I see where they are coming from.

Smashing. One final point. MySQL doesn't currently include transactions 
(unless you are running it on GNU/Linux with the BSDDB extensions) so 
beware of multi user commits and rollbacks. They can come in useful and yet 
frustrate you endlessly.

>
>All praise to Andy on this fine morning.
>
>Thanks ever so much.
>
[more snipping]
>
>
>Thanks again.
>
>Regards, Joe
>

Always a pleasure, never a chore.

Regards,
Andy

-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From mac4-devnull at theory.org  Sat Jul  7 16:46:11 2001
From: mac4-devnull at theory.org (Neil Macneale)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 13:46:11 -0700
Subject: license suggestions?
Message-ID: <3b477513$0$322$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>

I am wondering if there is a straight forward license which I can use for
python code I plan to distribute.  Is there a standard header, or
possibly a link that can be placed in a header which basically says that
people use the code at there own risk, and that they are free to change
it?  I ask here because I know there has been conflict between python and
GPL.  Is there some vanilla header that people in this group use?

Neil Macneale 

--
To reply to me via email, remove the '-devnull' from my address.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 12:33:07 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:33:07 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995894318.12197.python-list@python.org> <Xns90E7A3A0675A4michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>
Message-ID: <44ioltcofs8i897flbo7bfqtec5ki06n0s@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:32 GMT, Michael Abbott
<michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>"Arthur Siegel" <ajs at ix.netcom.com> wrote in 
>news:mailman.995894318.12197.python-list at python.org:
>
>> 
>> To the extent anybody cares - and there is no particular
>> reason anybody should - the anger in my posts that Guido
>> interprets as directed toward him, is real anger.  But not
>> meant to be directed at him.
>> 
>> Except to the extent that I feel he unwittingly collaborates
>> in the breakdown of community dynamics.  Aloofness from
>> the community should count against, not for, one's cause -
>> whatever it happens to be.
>
>Actually, I'm quite suprised at just how rude Guido is in his replies.

Here I do disagree, though I was rather annoyed once when I
*complemented* Python by saying that, although I was initially
sceptical about list comprehensions, I actually found them very useful
- and rather than accepting the complement he twisted that single case
into a character judgement where I was supposed to be *always* be
excessively judgemental about things and blatantly about to burst a
blood vessel.

For those who have been reading my current posts, until a couple of
days ago I have *never*, IIRC, posted any serious criticism of Python.
I've commented occasionally on alternate views, but never said Python
was flawed. I have, in fact, often spoken in defence of the Python way
- though admittedly I don't often follow the group at all.

Anyway, in general Guido handles the benevolent-dictator role
extremely well - it has to be extremely frustrating in the position he
is in, and I'm surprised he has been generally as polite as he has.

I hope he sees my current posts as they are intended - I see PEP0238
as being something worthy of extreme scepticism if not outright
terror. But I only care at all because Python *is* a good and
worthwhile thing, and as a result I have been a very vocal advocate in
my company.

Fortunately, I only have to worry about internal things - some people
have to worry what happens on customers sites and - presumably, with
todays free software attitudes - on the sites of customers of
customers that they've never even had contact with.

However, the day when the support staff have to say "sorry, I know we
could do that last week, but nothing works any more and it'll take a
few months before this thing reaches the head of the debugging queue"
to a customer - or worse, they don't realise it doesn't work any more
and tell the customer a completely erroneous result - is NOT a day I'm
looking forward to.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From kens at sightreader.com  Thu Jul 26 21:08:36 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:36 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <027e01c11638$aa7a3580$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>


> ...
> Open Issues
> 
>     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
>       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
>       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
>       zero?)
> ...

I like quotient too just because the word hasn't been used yet.   Yes,
this truncates towards zero, but I don't really think of it in those terms.
That's an algebraic way of looking at things.  I think of this "quotient"
concept as a companion to "modulus".  It's a nice clean concept that
maintains closure for integers, rather than a truncation of something.
The term "floor division" to distinguish from "true division" seems
somehow less pure, since the concept is dragged in from the world of
real numbers.

Hmm, does this mean we rename divmod to quomod?  :-)

- Ken Seehof





From jonas.b at home.se  Sat Jul 14 17:10:08 2001
From: jonas.b at home.se (Jonas Bengtsson)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 14:10:08 -0700
Subject: list[] = var  => list.append(var)  (phpstyle)
Message-ID: <4e2ddb70.0107141310.3c7ca355@posting.google.com>

I think it should be neet if it would be possible to append a variable
to a list by just using
list_var[] = var_to_append
It works that way in PHP and I think it's nice.

Any comments?
/Jonas B


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Sat Jul 28 13:10:50 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:10:50 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote...
> "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
>
> > So, I dug deeper and found out that two threads were apparently
> > struggling to get xml.sax.__init__ module to execute a very
> > suspect __import__("xml.sax.expatreader").
>
> How exactly did you find out about that? If one of the threads would
> raise an exception that is not caught, would you see the traceback or
> would it get eaten silently by the calling Java application?


I don't know the answer to that question.  However, I think that
any exception that is not caught in Python code would be caught
in Python interpreter my Java application runs.  Is it not true?
Exceptions are not part of OS, are they?  They are a feature of
the language and Python language has nothing to do with the Java
environment.  Python's domain ends with the interpreter, doesn't
it?

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Mon Jul  9 17:23:46 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 14:23:46 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994707435.15102.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A20E2.B55F7664@Lugoj.Com>

James_Althoff at i2.com wrote:
> 
> Edward Wilson wrote:
> <snip>
> >Java is WAY too slow for serious development of any kind.
> <snip>
> 
> Might we be over-generalizing just a wee bit, perhaps?  My company is
> generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with products written
> in Java (with major pieces implemented in Jython :-).
> 
> (I suppose *serious development* is relative <wink>).

"A few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you're talking
real money." A few hundred million? A mere pittance! Obviously no one who
wants to make real money develops in Java!

(Do I really need to add a wink or smiley??)


From vAbazarov at dAnai.com  Thu Jul 26 11:50:19 2001
From: vAbazarov at dAnai.com (Victor Bazarov)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:50:19 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <%_W77.12073$Up.356411@sea-read.news.verio.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
> Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:
>
> > "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
> >
> > > Further digging led me to the C source module that contained some
> > > comment "this is to prevent two threads from importing the same
> > > module at the same time returning incomplete module" (or something
> > > like that).  I didn't try to comprehend the C source, sorry.
> > > Although it may not be so difficult, I prefer to leave fixing to
> > > those for whom the system is an open book.
> >
> > Even if you didn't understand the source, it would have been nice if
> > you had indicated what source you were looking at; I could not find
> > any occurrence of "this is to prevent" in the entire Python source
> > code.
>
> He's referring to the import_lock variable in import.c.
>
> > > Understanding that Python thread mechanism does not use the OS
> > > thread mechanism
> >
> > This is a misunderstanding: the Python thread mechanism does use the
> > OS thread mechanism
>
> Just under a layer of wrapper APIs.
>
> > > and with all due respect to the creators and contributors, I would
> > > like to ask, "Has anybody experienced similar situation with more
> > > than one thread competing for the same module?"
> >
> > I'm out of context here: a situation similar to what?
>
> The only situation where I've seen this, ironically, is if you attempt
> to import the test module that's designed specifically to test this
> lock, in the interactive interpreter on Windows.
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Thank you both for showing some interest.

Let me tell you once more where I experience the error:

The system that tries to use some XML files is written in Python
and is being run from under a Java application.  In the system
something (that looks like a deadlock) happens when two threads
both need to parse (each its own) XML file.  Both call 'parse'
from 'minidom' package, which leads to an attempt to __import__
the xml.sax.expatreader.  Now, the bad news is that the deadlock
doesn't happen when the system is run from a Windows' console,
for example.  Another piece of bad news: it doesn't happed all
the time, it happens in approx 40% of runs.  Another hint: it
doesn't happen if I run Java in Debug mode (with no breakpoints).
But wait, there is more: as soon as the Java app is killed, the
deadlock is resolved and the Python system proceeds ahead as if
nothing has happened.

The questions I have are: has anyone else seen anything of sorts
and where should I look to try to find _why_ this is happening?

I realise that since it only happens while I am running it under
a Java app, Java _may_ be a problem.  But before I begin blaming
Java for all bad things in the world, I'd like to know for sure.

Victor
--
Please remove capital A's from my address when replying by mail




From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 15:57:50 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:57:50 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised) (same as above, with typo fixed)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B61C7BE.79C3027B@home.net>

oops, typo below:

Chris Barker wrote:
> 
> > Semantics of Floor Division
> >
> >     Floor division will be implemented in all the Python numeric
> >     types, and will have the semantics of
> >
> >         a // b == floor(a/b)
> >
> >     except that the type of a//b will be the type a and b will be
> >     coerced into.  Specifically, if a and b are of the same type, a//b
> >     will be of that type too.
> 
> so:
> 
> 3//2 == 1
> 
> 3.0//2.0 == 1.0
> 
> 3.0//2 == 1.0
> 
> so if I want to use the result as an index, I'll need to use:
> 
> int(x/y)
should be: int(x//y)  : the fact that I made that typo does tell me
something about how likely I am to make that kind of typ in code...Oh
Oh!
 
> kind of like I now use:
> 
> int(floor(x/y))
> 
> What I don't get, is why // couldn't return an integer always? It will
> always have an integral value. I suppose one problem is that the range
> of integers that a float (C double) can handle is larger than a 32 bit
> integer can hold. This could be solved in the future with int/long
> unification, what will be the behaviour then?

You know, given that I have to use the int() typecast anyway, the //
operator is seeming to be less and less useful. When I want to do floor
division, it is VERY frequently so that I can get an index! IF we define
Python to always do a floor(), rather than a round() when int() is
called, I don't need the // or the floor()

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From nospam at newsranger.com  Sat Jul 14 13:38:07 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:38:07 GMT
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com> <9ioru01pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <%qV37.19159$Kf3.249506@www.newsranger.com> <9ipl2901n36@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3s%37.19402$Kf3.250644@www.newsranger.com>

Very nice!
Thanks,
Levi

>> Sorry but I can't see how it simulates the 'with' statement in Pascal or
>VB.
>
>That's probably because I had switched the two dictionaries
>in the exec statement -- here's a corrected, simpler version:
>
>>>> def with(obj,stmt):
>...   exec stmt in globals(), vars(obj)
>...
>>>> with(x, "pak=23; pok=24")
>>>> x.pak
>23
>>>> x.pok
>24
>>>>
>
>In lieu of globals() one surely wants to default to the *caller*'s
>globals, sys._getframe(1).f_globals, of course.
>
>
>Alex
>
>
>




From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 31 13:39:52 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:39:52 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B61C0B0.30477AFB@home.net> <3b62459e.609746999@wa.news.verio.net> <3B659D16.5E52DE63@home.net> <cpitg9zjph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B66ED68.25BEBF72@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> writes:
> > [...] The problem, for me, is that
> > 1.0 can't be used as a sequence index. While it may not be know whether
> > x//y is an exact value, it IS know that it is an integer value, and
> > should therefor be usable as an index. This brings up the usefulness of
> > the concept of the inexact integer.
> 
> Totally useless IMO -- and wrong.  If it's inexact, that means it could
> really be  any number inside some interval around the represented
> value, and thus by definition you can't tell whether it is an Integer
> at all.

If you used // or floor or ceil round, you KNOW that the result is an
integer. That's my whole point. I know it is an integer, I knwo that I
need it to be an integer, so why can't I use it like one? (as an index)
 
> > I'm also not so sure about your above rational: While I do understand
> > that the result of x//y may not be an exact number, given that x and/or
> > y may not be exact, the question is: does that matter? Acn anyone think
> > of a case where they would use // (or floor, or ceil, or round) when it
> > would hurt for the final result to be considered exact?
> 
> When the width of the inexactness interval is larger than 1, there's
> more than one Integer that's the possible result, so we don't know the
> result exactly.

Well, sure, but I'm only talking about the result from some sort of
rounding operation. If you have an error bound that is +- > 1, then you
can't expect rounding to an integer to be useful. What I fail to see is
when it would be useful to use a rounding operation like // or round,
but harmful for the result to be treated like an exact integer. I only
suggested the idea of an inexact integer because I want to be able to
use the result as an index, but someone pointed out that it is not
neccessarily an exact result. I don't think I'd find it usefull, but I
don't know how others expect to use the exact flag.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 20:34:51 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:34:51 -0400
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <3B65FD2B.39BA0A95@engcorp.com>

Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
> I've lost count--is WAP essentially
> dead now, or on the verge of utter
> world domination?

Dead, or at least in stasis waiting for a purpose in life.

Have you ever tried (or imagined trying) to use a tiny
LCD screen that can't even show your own full name as a
way of accessing something with the degree of rich
information as the Web has?

(I work in wireless and the topic rarely comes around these
days.  I'm quite sure some companies are working full speed
on it, however, and I wish them the best of luck.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From johnroth at ameritech.net  Sat Jul  7 20:55:56 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:55:56 -0700
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkfbtu25p6mrf5@news.supernews.com>

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994519931.6264.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Michal Wallace wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> >> I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
> >> My main concerns are:
> >
> >Hey Roman,
> >
> >You've got an interesting idea here.. But I'm not sure I understand
> >the problem it's meant to address. If you're worried about your code
> >suddenly ceasing to work, of course you know that code doesn't break
> >unless you change things. A pyhon 0.1 script would work just fine
> >today if you had python 0.1 installed.
>
> No... Probably you have not understood.
>
> Lets imagine you want to run a program 300 years from now. C compiler no
> longer exists. Intel hardware sells no longer. No weird MS Word
> files. Python 123.3.4 with almost anything changed compared with version
> 1.5.2 ;-)
>
> What is left:
>
> Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
> some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
> capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
> have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).

Amusing thought. You'd also need a formal definition of a (very simple)
file system for the programs and data.
>
> So, after they program core interpreter according to specs, they will have
> all Eternal software ready to run!

Shouldn't be at all hard to do - the original Forth's were exactly that
simple. The only hangup I ever saw to them was the oddball file system.

> What I half-jokingly proposed is "do it yourself" core interpreter which
> could interprete code written in some simple code, able to evolve like
> Forth does.

> AFAIK, there is nothing similar to Eternal apart from Turing machine or
> basic math notation.

As you mentioned, Forth fits the bill almost perfectly.

> This way, the portability is utmost: you write simple core interpreter (~
> RISC-processor) and you can run software!
>
> And you have NO troubles of getting 300 years old hardware, CPU specs,
> etc, etc - only data stored in 8-bit bytes + the only informal piece
> missing: interpreter.
>
> Can you see the root of the idea now?
>
> Of course, only things of historical value will be done in Eternal:
> * JPEG->ASCII convertor
> * bzip2 decompressor
> and so on.

I don't see why it couldn't be of much more utility. The big problem is
performance, since you're talking about a two level interpreter. The last
time I saw anything quite that slow was a /360 running a 1410 emulator
running a 650 simulator.

Very interesting idea. The trouble is, I can't see it being really small.
Making it cleanly extensible seems to require some of the features that
support extendability, such as namespaces (Forth dictionaries), etc.

Anyone want to work on it - either technically or politically?
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/
>

John Roth
"I'm interesting, you're eccentric, she's wierd."
>




From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 22:43:16 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:43:16 -0400
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>
Message-ID: <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com>

On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd) wrote:

>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
><n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>: 
>
>>Hello all,
>>
>>In working with the Python SQL database called Gadfly I have discovered
>>something that I do not understand.
>>

<snip>



>
>SQL is a set based language. It is not a procedural (or OO) language and 
>the most important aspect of this is that *order does not matter*. With set 
>based operations (ie DML or DDL in SQL - is that enough TLAs ;-) you 
>specify what you want to happen, not how to do it (with suitable exceptions 
>for implementation specific hints, but that doesn't matter to use here).
>
>Let me repeat - you specify what you want to do, the database takes care of 
>the how.
>

Even the tables! My God! 

Ok, I'll live with it.


>Therefore in your table creation statement you are saying "please create a 
>table called students which has columns called st_id, gr_level, 
>grcard_type, last_name and first_name". How gadfly organises this table is 
>up to it (you could almost say that it is none of your business).
>

Hmmm. Seems like SQL is in charge, not me. Oh well, I knew it would take 
some time to shed my dbase/clipper bad habits.

>Likewise when you create records in the table *there is no guarantee that 
>they will be stored in the order you insert them*. So, if I create two 
>students;
>
>"""
>INSERT INTO students 
>  ( st_id, gr_level, grcard_type, last_name, first_name )
>VALUES
>  ( '1', 'C', 'X', 'Andy', 'Todd')
>"""
>and 
>
>"""
>INSERT INTO students 
>  ( st_id, gr_level, grcard_type, last_name, first_name )
>VALUES
>  ( '2', 'C', 'X', 'Joe', 'Potter')
>"""
>
>Gadfly (and gadfly alone) determines how this data is physically stored. 
>When I retrieve these rows from the table I may get Andy first and Joe 
>second, or vice versa. The next time I retrieve the rows they may be in the 
>same or a different order (although practically they will always be in the 
>same order YOU CANNOT RELY ON THIS). If you want to control the order of 
>retrieval you have to tell the database what you want (you still really 
>cannot tell it how to do it), eg;
>
>"""
>SELECT st_id, first_name, last_name
>FROM   students
>ORDER BY last_name, first_name
>"""
>
>Will always return the result set;
>
>"""
>1, Andy, Todd
>2, Joe, Potter
>"""
>
>in that order - unless the data changes of course.
>
>Also note that in each SQL statement I have specified which columns to use, 
>the order there are physically stored then becomes irrelevant.
>
>This can be confusing at first, but stick with it and pretty soon you will 
>be jumping out of the bath and running down the street ...
>
>Regards,
>Andy

Thanks Andy. That really did help.

Now, might I ask how one gets "1, Andy, Todd" out of Gadfly and back into a Python
object for direct manipulation?



Regards, Joe


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 07:52:36 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:52:36 +0100
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l5lc4.6ko.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On 16 Jul 2001 00:55:48 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:28:39 -0400, Barry A. Warsaw <barry at digicool.com> wrote:
>>    RS>  [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = string.split (line)
>>
>>    RS> but the problem is that line may have fewer than 6 fields on
>>    RS> it.  Perl handles this smoothly by leaving the "extra"
>>    RS> variables undefined, whereas python raises a ValueError
>>    RS> exception.  What I'd like to do is have the extra field
>>    RS> variables left as null strings.
>>
>>Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing a
>>PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.
>
>Please don't.  Or if you do, I hope it "lays the issue to rest".  I often use
>unpacking from log files, with the assumption that the wrong number of fields
>is a parsing error, and should be reported as one, not silently "fixed".  If
>you are relying on your log files having the same number of fields, it is an
>error if they don't.

On the occasions when this matters, you can simply say:

   list = string.spolit(line)
   if list != 6: ...error code here...

However, im my experience, most of the time you don't want to do this,
most of the time, if there are too few or many values, you weant the
software to "do its best". This goes for lots of things; IMO if you
access a list or dictionary with a non-existant index it should
return a value such as None, instead of raising an exception.


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
    Herbivore: effort-free public key encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
        ** First software release coming soon! **





From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Thu Jul 19 12:30:14 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 12:30:14 -0400
Subject: dnslib license?
References: <3B56DCCB.6EF0DEED@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <3dlmlkyj8p.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

Michael Str?der <michael at stroeder.com> writes:
> You might have noticed that Anthony Baxter and me are pushing his
> module DNS derived from your dnslib to SourceForge. So far so good
> but I don't have any clue about licensing issues. Can you shed some
> light on it?

Surely it should just be under the Python license, since it was
shipped as part of the distribution?  

BTW, personally I'd vote for extending the DNS code and adding it as
dnslib.py to the standard library, rather than having it be a separate
project.

--amk



From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 13:47:38 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:47:38 GMT
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
References: <mailman.996556736.30160.python-list@python.org> <m3k80piax2.fsf@kepler.ibp.de> <XZw97.5001$9i1.471725@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cpy9p5xa7a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> How about "incidental programmers", since the programming is largely
> incidental to the real goals of their activities?

Not bad.  Some might even prefer 'accidental programmers' :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Tue Jul 17 07:43:46 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:43:46 +0100
Subject: I'm i right in thinking that the whole of Severance 'the blade of darkness' has been coded entirely out of python!!!
Message-ID: <9j18ct$1jj$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>

I'm i right in thinking that the whole of Severance 'the blade of darkness',
has been coded entirely out of python (with the exception of the level
editor) Install the game and check out all the source code!!! its all there
as .py files not .pyc files!!! I don't wanna endorse ripping off others'
code but this is some neat stuff there to help you with advanced graphics!!!

Gary.




From klausman at tuts.net  Sun Jul  8 08:06:36 2001
From: klausman at tuts.net (Tobias Klausmann)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 12:06:36 GMT
Subject: Gotcha in replace
References: <mailman.994564693.26957.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i9icb$hkm7l$1@ID-41653.news.dfncis.de>

Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at devis.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
> While I was working on some database scripting, I got bit by this 
> behavior in replace.
> 
> >>> y = "insert into blah values ('hello','','','','bye')"
> >>> y.replace(",'',", ",' ',")
> "insert into blah values ('hello',' ','',' ','bye')"
> >>>
> 
> Notice that the second matching set of ",''," characters are not 
> replaced probably because the first and second matching sets overlap on 
> the last and first character, respectively.
> 
> It was trivial for this script to work around the gotcha (I just put the 
> replace in a loop and broke out when new string equalled the old 
> string).  But that method may not be an appropriate workaround in all cases.
> 
> Is this known behavior and I just missed it; or is this a bug in replace?

I wouldn't call it a bug even if it's a gotcha. You're
replacing ,'', with ,' ', and then look for the next
occurence of ,'',. The search starts *after* what you
just replaced, therefore it doesn't match (there would
have to be something like ,'',,'', ).

Maybe a better replace-call would be:
y.replace(",''", ",' '")
By this, the next occurence should be found correctly.

HTH,
Tobias




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 01:07:57 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:07:57 -0400
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <9jvsio$j4r$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <3B639A2D.83B00CD5@engcorp.com>

Tom Bryan wrote:
> 
> Alex wrote:
> 
> > Goodness, without import, python's close to useless.
> 
> Well, of course.  But where to import?  What's the most common idiom?

At the top, unless you have a specific need to import in a
function.

Possible reasons to import in a function: 

 1. Readability: if the import is needed in only one
    function and that's very unlikely ever to change,
    it might be clearer and cleaner to put it there only.

 2. Startup time: if you don't have the import outside
    of the function definitions, it will not execute
    when your module is first imported by another, but
    only when one of the functions is called.  This
    delays the overhead of the import (or avoids it
    if the functions might never be called).

 3. There is always one more reason than the ones
    we've thought of until now.

> import sys, os, string
> 
> or
> 
> import sys
> import os
> import string

The first for very small simple files, as a matter of 
personal preference.

The latter for larger files in applications expected to have
more frequent maintenance.  It is less error-prone for a
programmer to remove an entire line like 'import os' than
it is for her to go in and delete "os, " from in the middle
of the other line.  It also allows one to add comments after
each line, explaining something about the need for the 
import (e.g. "import os     # need popen() to call other apps").

> > I'm not sure what advantage there might be to deleting module references
> > in a function's scope just prior to leaving it.  I would have thought
> > the reference was usually dropped at that point, anyway.
> 
> After digging at Google Groups, I think that it might have been a comment
> about importing and then deleting at the module level.  At least, I see
> that the timbot is still explaining why threading.py does this.
> 
> import sys
> import time
> 
> # Rename some stuff so "from threading import *" is safe
> 
> _sys = sys
> del sys
> 
> _time = time.time
> _sleep = time.sleep
> del time

Never do this. :)

At least, don't bother thinking about doing it until you can figure
out why it's needed, because you shouldn't be making it easier for
someone to do "from yourmodule import *" unless you have very good
reason.

(By the way, most of the answers to your questions are a matter
of personal preference, or local coding convention, which might
be why you haven't seen more explicit discussions before.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From nas at python.ca  Fri Jul 27 21:08:57 2001
From: nas at python.ca (Neil Schemenauer)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:08:57 -0700
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <ac677656.0107271023.a5d1328@posting.google.com>; from Tom_Good1@excite.com on Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 11:23:38AM -0700
References: <mailman.996205196.16876.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107271023.a5d1328@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010727180857.B31572@glacier.fnational.com>

Tom Good wrote:
> Consider the following:
> 
> >>> from __future__ import generators
> >>> def g():
> ...     yield 1
> ...     yield 2
> ...
> >>> i = iter(g)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: iter() of non-sequence
> >>>
> 
> iter(g) doesn't work, but it somehow feels as if it should. 

What could iter(g) possibly mean?  This seems to be some very weird
confusion about a function object and the object a function returns.
Are you surprised when:

    def one():
      return 1

    print one + 2

does not print 3?

  Neil



From kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua  Mon Jul 23 23:11:36 2001
From: kirill at xyz.donetsk.ua (Kirill Simonov)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:11:36 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>; from guido@python.org on Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 11:07:49AM +0000
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010724061136.C824@xyz.donetsk.ua>

Hello,

Please tell me, how to write a correct program that uses integer
division and must work on Python 2.1 and Python 2.4.


Kirill




From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Thu Jul 26 07:28:15 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:28:15 +1000
Subject: intersection and union idea
References: <3b5cb9d4$0$325$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net> <o28qltsavdnclqqp5f4kvme35rh021fi7m@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FFECF.1A7B22A3@student.gu.edu.au>

Stephen Horne wrote:

> You could define your own set object, or an alternative to a
> dictionary or list, using a class and defining the following
> methods...

Doesn't kjbuckets do something like this already?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 06:32:15 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 12:32:15 +0200
Subject: PEP 260: simplify xrange()
References: <mailman.993839985.31081.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <j4ithduehc.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

> Rather than play with version numbers, it's usually better to use exec or
> eval in a try/except block to determine *directly* whether the feature you
> need is there.  In the case of new syntax, the outcome can be used to import
> either a "new style" or "old style" version of a module, thus sidestepping
> the "old version can't even compile some new forms of code" gotcha.

In my experience, if you need to support older versions, it is best to
abstain from new syntax. Much of the new syntax is there for
convenience; however, this is outweighed by the inconvenience of
having to maintain two modules.

Even for features that have no equivalent in older versions
(e.g. Unicode literals), it is still better to use old syntax
(e.g. calling unicode() instead); this might allow to emulate the
missing feature for older versions.

Regards,
Martin


From news at dorb.com  Wed Jul  4 14:26:28 2001
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:26:28 GMT
Subject: Converting from long integer to read-only buffer
References: <3b42780c@news.ucsc.edu>
Message-ID: <odJ07.76650$ID1.15403982@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

The one liner approach :)
Hope the Python is adding features too fast forces, don't use this an
example of evil.

import re, time

x=0xffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
ffffffffffffffffffffffaL
t1=time.time()

# I didn't cut off the trailing 'L' returned by hex(x). It's needed for the
pattern("..")
# It ensures that all digits are found
# In the case of odd number of digits 'fL' is found which is evaluated as
0xfL
binData = ''.join([chr(eval('0x'+val)) for val in
re.findall('..|.',hex(x)[2:-1])])

# Iterators will provide a new and fun approach to this.
binData = ''.join([chr(eval('0x'+val)) for val in
re.findall('..',hex(x)[2:])])

print "Len:", len(binData)
print time.time()-t1
print binData

xRet = eval('0x'+''.join([hex(ord(val))[2:] for val in list(binData)])+'L')
assert(xRet==x)
print hex(xRet)

--Darrell

"Ben Andrew Fulton"
> I'm currently working on a module to control a piece of hardware over the
> serial port of a Mac. The command packets are currently manipulated within
> the the module as long integers so that I can twiddle individual bits.
> However, when I send them out the serial port they need to be converted
> into a read-only buffer (or perhaps a string [although of course, str()
> is not the answer]) for the ctb (communications toolbox) to accept them.
> Is there a module out there that can do a straight long int --> read-only
> buffer conversion? struct, array, and binascii all seem inadequate to the
> task unless I write my own helper function, which I suppose I will have to
> if I can't figure anything else out in the next day or so.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -->ben fulton
>




From slash at dotnetslash.net  Mon Jul  9 14:33:12 2001
From: slash at dotnetslash.net (Mark W. Alexander)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:33:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Distutils] Package DB: strawman PEP
In-Reply-To: <20010708234624.A30892@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107091411520.1770-100000@llave.eproinet.com>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Andrew Kuchling wrote:

> It seems time to bite the bullet and actually begin designing and
> implementing a database of installed packages.  As a strawman to get a
> focused discussion started, here's a draft of a PEP, with lots of
> XXX's in it.  Followups to the Distutils SIG, please.

I'm confused. Why? What does this give us that native package managers
don't. How is it going to keep synchronized with package manager?

If I understand correctly, most of what's desired here could be
accomplished by including the PEP 241 metadata in the module in a
manner that could be inspected upon import. Distutils could even go so
far as to create a PKG_INFO subpackage ao you could import
mymodule.PKG_INFO. If is succeeds, it's a distutils created module and
contains all PEP241 required information.

>     XXX what's the relationship between this database and the RPM or
>     DPKG database?  I'm tempted to make the Python database completely
>     optional; a distributor can preserve the interface of the package
>     management tool and replace it with their own wrapper on top of
>     their own package manager.  (XXX but how would the Distutils know
>     that, and not bother to update the Python database?)

If it's optional, then maybe, sometimes, you might have the
information that it could have provided you. In the long run, your
better off making it simple and painless to create packages for the
native system's package manager. Then people need look only one place
for everything. (I still like the idea of the 241 metadata being
accessible in the module itself. It makes it more convenient for
module authors to query information specific to distutils module
relationships.)

Mark




From salnikov at inp.nsk.su  Wed Jul 25 02:14:52 2001
From: salnikov at inp.nsk.su (Andy Salnikov)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:14:52 +0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpitghbq05.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
>
> Thanks.  I am baffled by the many claims that for mathematicians 1/2
> equals zero; I've never met such a mathematicians.
>
  To many of us, programmers, 1/2 is 0 with 1 as a reminder:) We are like
children, and any child will say _for sure_ that 1 cookie for two children
means one cookie for 1 child and 0 cookies for another:)

> The interesting thing is that the one thing that has to change in
> order to get a unified numeric model, whether we introduce rationals
> in the numeric tower or not, is integer division!  A numeric tower
> with rationals could look like this:
>
>   int < long < rational < float < complex
>
  Just a comment: What bothers me is that floats in computers are not the
same as R continuum im math. This makes me think that rationals are "better"
than floats. Indeed, any float number can be exactly represented by
rational, but not vice virsa.  So my tower would be like that:

int < long < float < rational < complex float < complex rational

but, in general, it does not fit good in the linear chain, because floats
are too imprecise and limited. The whole picture would be better without
floats:)

> But PEP 238 can stand on its own.  If it is rejected, PEP 228 has no
> chance; but PEP 238 can be accepted and PEP 228 rejected and the world
> would still be a better place.
>
  Would not it be better to have rationals first and than change meaning of
int/int->rational, than changing first to int/int->float and then to
int/int->rational?

Cheers,
Andy.




From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Wed Jul 25 02:09:13 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:09:13 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament AND Re: Case (In)sensitivity
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995930982.17575.python-list@python.org> <acppltstdl0oo692su8e9c4fhm6cf14kt9@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <240720012309135870%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <acppltstdl0oo692su8e9c4fhm6cf14kt9 at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> The only nervous twitch is the thought that identifiers are
> stored in dictionaries.

The only way case insensitivity has a chance is if identifiers are
stored in dictionaries with special rules, or are stored in ordinary
dictionaries with case of keys already smashed, and extracted smashed.

I hope.

  --John


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul  2 23:48:22 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 03:48:22 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <mailman.994126144.24483.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9k2g51.k2.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:33:51 -0400, William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:13:36PM -0400, Alex wrote:
>> 
>> > You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
>> >     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
>> >     - distance (between any two position) is too close
>> 
>> You don't need an NxN table, actually.  You can partition the
>> space in which you'll be tracking the planes into cubical
>> buckets with diameters greater than your threshold minimum
>> distance.  Then you only need to check for each plane the
>> other planes that are in its bucket or an adjacent bucket.  It
>> scales linearly with the number of planes.
>
>What I meant is that for each airplane, he needs to calculate
>the distance to every other airplanes; that's O(N^2).  ;-)

What Alex meant was he doesn't and it isn't.  You can argue
with Alex if you want, but the smart money won't be betting on
you. ;)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  An INK-LING? Sure --
                                  at               TAKE one!! Did you BUY any
                               visi.com            COMMUNIST UNIFORMS??


From timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 12:05:55 2001
From: timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com (Tim Randolph)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:05:55 GMT
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...

> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
>

I have been saddened by the handful of posters to this forum over the last
few days who have made the division issue into a personal, emotional affair.

Guido van Rossum has done so much good so freely for computer programmers,
that I can't see the "MDFL"  references and "Bad Leadership" subject lines
as anything but rank, immature ingratitude.

It is obvious that he only has the good of the language at heart.  It is
also obvious that he is one of the best language designers that our young
art has ever seen.  It is not as much appreciated how carefully he listens
to both reasoned arguments, and knee-jerk reactions about the language. He
earned the BDFL role, but he has not taken that as permission to be
autocratic.

I, for one, would like to thank him for all the work he has done for the
language and its community.  I really do feel gratitude (almost) every time
I first see the >>>.

And now for something completely different:

http://www.craigburton.com/2001/07/22





From avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru  Fri Jul 27 19:27:31 2001
From: avv at quasar.ipa.nw.ru (Alexander V. Voinov)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:27:31 -0700
Subject: Problem with Python-2.1.1 and Numeric-20.1.0
References: <3B6090BD.F2B81140@quasar.ipa.nw.ru>
Message-ID: <3B61F8E3.9C5ED020@quasar.ipa.nw.ru>

Hi All,

"Alexander V. Voinov" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It says:
>
>     data = Numeric.transpose(data)
>   File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 280, in transpose
>     axes = arange(len(array(a).shape))[::-1]
>   File "/.../site-packages/Numeric/Numeric.py", line 159, in arrayrange
>     m = (add.accumulate(ones((n,), Int))-1)*step +(start+(stop-stop))
> NameError: global name 'add' is not defined
>
> The program worked OK with Python-2.0 and Numeric-17.1.

:-) It occurred that some user's module in a shared directory was named
umath.py. Really, I do not see that I am to blame this user, because
everybody was told: "import Numeric and you're set". Is there a way to
protect internal submodule names?

Alexander




From ddublanc at free.fr  Tue Jul  3 17:32:06 2001
From: ddublanc at free.fr (Dublanc, David)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 21:32:06 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net>

What is exactly weak typing ? I believed that Python was weak typing !

About Visual Basic : My brother (a VB developer :-) thinks that if you only
develop on MS platform and for MS platform without speed goal, VB is very,
very productive !
(there are for instance a browser of DLL, so system programming is very
easy ).

David


"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> a ?crit dans le message news:
9hsf0c0210e at enews1.newsguy.com...
> "Tomasz Stochmal" <tom at peresys.co.za> wrote in message
> news:f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683 at posting.google.com...
> > I have read the following book which gives C/C++ heavy bashing
> >
> > http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/
> >
> > Conclusion is to use Java or even better choice is Eiffel
> >
> > Should I stop using Python and jump on Eiffel wagon ?
> >
> > Anybody that tried both languages ?
> >
> > How do they compare ?
>
> Eiffel has reasonably-good strict, compile-time typing.
>
> Python is totally oriented to dynamic, run-time typing
> (often erroneously called "weak typing" -- that is, in
> fact, something else).
>
> So, they don't compare much: they've taken widely
> different language-design choices from way back.  Eiffel
> will do a good job of finding type mismatches at compile
> time (not a perfect one due to the covariance problem),
> Python won't even try and will rather maximize your
> productivity so you can most easily and productively
> develop and run lots and lots of tests (you need to test
> a LOT even in a compile-time-typed language of course,
> but it does occasionally diagnose an error earlier -- in
> exchange, you have to do a lot more work, of course).
>
> If you want a language that's even LESS compromising
> than Eiffel in terms of typing, with *NO* possibility
> whatsoever of a typing-error escaping the compiler,
> try Haskell instead.  It's VERY instructive to become
> productive in Haskell, and it's fun if you do it with
> a book such as Hudak's "The Haskell School of Expression".
>
> Then you can come back to Python with much deeper
> appreciation for the role of immutability, list
> comprehensions, functional programming, type deduction
> by the compiler (Eiffel doesn't do that for you: you
> have to tell the compiler everything -- Haskell is
> designed so the compiler can DEDUCE types on your
> behalf, although you do normally, redundantly, also
> state them "out loud" so the compiler can catch your
> logic mistakes).  When you're back to Python from
> Haskell I suspect you'll miss Haskell's typeclasses,
> such an UTTERLY elegant approach!, and the implied
> lazy-evaluation of everything, perhaps the syntax
> sugar that allows any function to be used as an infix
> operator.  I think you WON'T miss Haskell's "monads",
> a concept so powerful, refined and elegant that its
> full import keeps escaping most of us:-).  In syntax
> sugar terms, Haskell will give you significant whitespace
> use that's not too far from Python, but you'll see lots
> of (well-used) punctuation in lieu of keywords -- not
> a big deal either way, of course.
>
> In the end, I think Python is far more productive
> for all kind of real-world uses, but an apercu on
> statically-type-checked, nothing-is-mutable, lazy-
> everything, &c, IS interesting and instructive.
> Eiffel only does *part* of that for you...
>
>
> Alex
>
>
>




From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul 17 18:10:11 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 01:10:11 +0300
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <ku7kx7gtzk.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi> <87itgrmf9k.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>
Message-ID: <ku3d7vgqbg.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <87itgrmf9k.fsf at elbereth.ccraig.org>, com-nospam at ccraig.org
(Christopher A. Craig) writes:

| Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> writes:
|| if you put the code in a function, it will be a fair bit faster
|| since global variable access is slower than local variable access.

| This is, in this case, incorrect.  Unless I am horribly mistaken, the
| higher cost of dealing with globals is that you first have to do a
| failed lookup in the local dictionary.  (Plus failed lookups are more
| expensive than successful ones)  

the trick is that local variables are (most of the time) not stored
in a dictionary by python. it is known at compile time whether
a given variable is global or local.

  -- erno




From grakker at softhome.net  Mon Jul  2 16:23:46 2001
From: grakker at softhome.net (grakker)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 13:23:46 -0700
Subject: missing setfirstweekday in calendar module
Message-ID: <56817b75.0107021223.39a661ae@posting.google.com>

I'm pretty new to python.  I wrote up a cgi script for a family
calendar.  It works great, but I would like to use the setfirstweekday
part of the calendar module, but it isn't there.  I'm running an
up-to-date sid debian install.  When I downloaded Python at work to
mess around during down times, I noticed that it does have a
setfirstweekday option.  Anyone know where I can find it?

Thanks


From cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw  Tue Jul 10 10:18:34 2001
From: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw (Chyr-Pyng Su)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:18:34 +0800
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <3b48ccc7.1398139267@wa.news.verio.net> <3B494606.42F868FE@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <3b49cc63.1463575099@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B4B0EBA.AE5DB8B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>

>

Thanks for you attention... :>

>
> I'm still not sure what your situation is ;-)
>
> What do you mean by "its message" ? Stuff that used to go to stdout
> and/or stderr (both? or which?) the way it ran originally?
>
> Have you got the rest of the problem solved? (I.e., passing
> the function arguments and getting "the data").
>
> Is it a huge C program that is impractical to change at the
> points where "messages" are generated? Or could you change
> the interface to pass the function a call-back routine and
> change it to use that instead of printf/fprintf?
>

The original C program is a little big. The main problem is that in C program
I use some libraries written by others, those function call will inherently print
some status or data (message) to console in Dos, or terminal in Unix where you
launched the program.
To hack those function call of someone else libraries will waste of lot of time.. :p

>
> Have you considered a hack like #define printf blah-blah
> to change  what your C function does where it makes "messages"?
>
> Have you considered writing your own stdio write function
> and linking that statically with the C function in a DLL
> to capture writes to stdout and stderr?
>
> Where do the "messages" go if you don't try to capture them?
> To a console ("DOS") window? (BTW is your platform Windows?)
>
> Do you have other output going to stdout/stderr from your
> Python program (e.g., plain print or fwrite to stdout/stderr)
> that you don't want to interfere with? If not, and all of
> your program's output to stdout/stderr is from your C function,
> maybe it would be possible to catch your own program's output
> via a pipe (not popen, but similar).
>

Wow.. you have show most of the possibilities... :<>

Now I have wrapped my C program to some function call..
I intend to trigger the C function from Python-ed GUI and process some data,
these function call will dump some status message during the process... and return
some
results to GUI program when it finished. The status message will go to the console if
I dont
capture it.. (I develope the program in Unix environment .. )

All of my program's stdout is from the C functions. Could you give me some hints to
monitor those status message so that  they can be shown on the GUI not just print to
the console or
a terminal...

>
> There are a lot of possibilities, but if you want very specific
> help you have to be very specific about what you need, best
> stated it in terms of your real goal, not a sub-goal. I.e.,
> if you want to get across a river, don't ask about a problem
> building suspension bridges or concrete spans. The answer may
> be a rowboat or wading across a shallow place upstream ;-)

--
 ??????   Su, Chyr-Pyng                               o888o V o888o
 VLSI Design, Testing and Fault Tolerance Lab.       o8 ~__   __  8o
 EE. National Tsing Hau Univ. Taiwan                 88o   ooo   o88
                                                        o 8^ ^8 o
 E-Mail: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw                    /- 88_____88 -\
 WWW:    http://larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~cpsu            _\   qioip   /_





From leenutter at australia.edu  Sat Jul 21 13:10:37 2001
From: leenutter at australia.edu (Lee Nutter)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 03:10:37 +1000
Subject: Hello,
Message-ID: <3B59B78D.7030706@australia.edu>

Hello!,

I have only been subscribed to this list three days, this is my first 
message :)

Anyway, im just messing here, not doing anything in particular, just 
playing with what I have learned in an attempt to learn the language.

Anyway, I decided to make a module that handles errors for me. Its not 
likely my projects are going to be complex enough for me to need it for 
a while, but I thought it would be fun none the less [and a learning 
experience, of course :) ]

In the Python docs, it mentions that open("file", "a") allows you to use 
write() to append strings at the bottom of a file. But I wanted my error 
handler to do it the other way round, add the newest entries to the top. 
[I've already been told this is wrong, and it should be the other way 
round anyway, but I want to be different. And anyhow, im only messing. :) ]

I came up with this code after a little messing around :


def LogError(msg):
   err = open("./error.log", "r")
   old = err.readlines()
   err.close()
   err = open("./error.log", "w")
   wri = msg
   i = 0
   p = len(old)
   while i < p:
     wri = wri + old[i]
     i = i + 1
   err.write(wri)
   err.close


This works, but I have been told it will be slow if error.log gets big, 
Is there another way to do this?

Anyway, Thanks for any replies!

Kind Regards,


Lee Nutter




From owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu  Tue Jul 24 12:01:53 2001
From: owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu (Russell E. Owen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:01:53 -0700
Subject: Advice wanted: asynch I/O on unix
References: <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001@nntp4.u.washington.edu> <ku4rs3yueb.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>
Message-ID: <9jk65h$dto$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

In article <ku4rs3yueb.fsf at lasipalatsi.fi>,
 Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote:

>In article <owen-66B4BF.09573623072001 at nntp4.u.washington.edu>,
>"Russell E. Owen" <owen at astro.washington.edu> writes:

While I'm replying, here's a minor correction to the description:

>| The present C program works as follows:
>| - open the parallel port as a file-like device (and config with ioctl)
>| - allocate some buffers
>| - call aioread to start reading into one buffer
>| - call aioread to queue a read into a 2nd buffer
>| - repeatedly poll the aioreads:
      - when a read finishes, allocates a new buffer
        and queues an aioread into it
     - returns the finished buffer for processing
       (which is done asynchronously)
>| writing works similarly

>unix character devices often support select(), if that works
>it would probably be easiest (look in the select module).

The main problem is going to be how to buffer data until it can be read. 
the parallel port card has no buffering of its own. Hence the complex 
process outlined above.

I was hoping unix and/or Python had some nice way to "magically" connect 
an unbuffered input device to a FIFO buffer and make it look like a 
socket, so I could use select and/or aynchcore.

I'm starting to dout that's practical. The C code we are presently using 
is only semi-asynchronous. Reads happen in their own thread (due to 
aioread), but one has to poll often enough to make sure a new buffer is 
allocated and a new read queued before the current read is finished. 
However, the card also includes a C library that MAY be usaable in some 
form, and may do the whole buffering thing asynchronously, which would 
be great.

-- Russell

P.S. Any advice regarding using "aioread", etc. vs "aio_read", etc.? 
This is on Solaris 8. "aio_read", etc. seems to be the standard Posix 
way of doing asynch I/O. I have no idea where "aioread", etc. come from, 
but it's what the existing C code uses. At first glance, the interface 
to aio_read looks a bit better, but I'd hate to pick something that was 
buggy or deprecated.


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Wed Jul 18 13:25:25 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:25:25 -0700
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995475606.22563.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-B8B3C2.10252518072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995475606.22563.python-list at python.org>,
 Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> wrote:

> >> And this is right. I even think encoding information could be EXTERNAL.
> >
> >No -- how are editors supposed to know about these external
> >files ?
> 
> OK. But how do they know about encoding of the 8-bit documents?
> Documents have tags to show encoding. Then Python program must
> become a document with all those tags here and there.
> 
> How do other languages solve this "problem"?

The two examples I know of are XML and GEDCOM.  Others can speak better 
than I about how XML does it.  In GEDCOM
<http://www.gendex.com/gedcom55/55gctoc.htm>
there is a required character set tag internal to the file.
Allowed character sets currently are ANSEL (an ASCII-based code) and 
Unicode; previous versions of GEDCOM allowed several others.  I guess it's 
assumed that e.g. 16-bit Unicode encodings would look different enough from 
ASCII that you could tell how to parse the file into characters before 
seeing the character set tag.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 27 05:05:03 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:05:03 GMT
Subject: Toppling the numeric tower
References: <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-749F84.08434526072001@news.service.uci.edu> <S4_77.49614$Cy.6352181@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b611421.531542006@wa.news.verio.net>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:21:22 GMT, "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
>
>"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
>news:eppstein-749F84.08434526072001 at news.service.uci.edu...
>> In article <DLW77.49367$Cy.6275542 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
>>  "Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
>[SNIP]
>> > I would strip this down to
>> >
>> > A. iscomplex()
>> > B. isexact()
>> > C. isintegral()
>>
>> I have to say that this would be more convenient for situations such as
>> defining your own extension of number types for, say, exact arithmetic in
>> Q[sqrt(3)].  Or even better Q[sqrt(-3)].  I was wishing I was able to do
>> this recently for a different project unrelated to Python, unfortunately
>> the program I was using didn't make it easy to plug in your own number
>> types...
>>
>> But a couple points of clarification:
>> (1) is it safe to assume that isintegral() implies isexact()?
>
>Probably. Numbers that return true for from isintegral() should be usable
>anywhere that Python integers are used today. In particular, if a and b are
>integral in this sense then a & b, a ^ b, a | b, a << b, a >> b and
>sequence[a] should all work. One could allow numbers that are have integral
>values but are not exact (e.g., 1e0, 2e0, etc) to be used in these
>circumstances, but consider the following:
>
I think that comes down to defining what you mean by exact. IMHO associating
inexactness with a particular representation type (and therefore with literals
traditionally implying that type) is a compromise that leads right to your
example following here.
>>>> 1e0 << 2e0
>4 # exact
>  or
>4e0 # inexact
>
>Either answer sucks: the first turns two inexact operands into an exact
>result, while the second represents the results of bit twiddling, a discrete
>operation if ever there was one, as an inexact, floating point number. The
>best choice is to insist on exact numbers for integer operations.
>
Maybe << should not really be called an integer operation. I think it's really
a set operation, but if you wanted to use it with float-represented operands,
you could view
    x<<y
as shorthand for
    x*(2**Y)
so you get
    1e0*(2**2e0)
and go from there. But I think really it's an operation on a set of integers
which are the (unique) bit positions of ones in the integer you conventionally
think of as being shifted. In which case
    x<<y
means add y to every integer in the set x. Probably should be building a new set
composed of elements that are successors to the elements existing in the first set,
or something like that, but I'll leave it to the specialists to clean that up ;-)

I suspect that all the "bit-twiddling" operations really are better described
abstractly as set operations, not integer ones. There's just an easy familiar mapping
between the sets of this type and integers represented in typical binary.

Anyway, for x<<y as numeric expression x*(2**y) , I would call all the values in
the example exact, unless you want to define certain numeric literal syntax as having
the side effect of setting the exactness attribute to false. This example, IMO, should
return 4 # exact.

I also think 0.5<<2.0 ought to return an exact value, and 0.0<<0.5, but not 2.0<<0.5,
and not (1/3)<<2 unless there's rationals representation available.

OTOH, I really think the set interpretation is cleaner conceptually. You can write 
    1e0*(2**2e0)
if that's what you want, and leave << for bit sets. You could view integer
operand x of x<<y as being silently coerced to bit set and back. A bitset
would have a natural conversion to list or tuple. E.g.,  list(bitset(11)) => [0,1,3]

If 3.0 is going to have unified numerics, where float is mostly a hidden representation
detail, then linkage between the concept of inexact and float will be a wart to remove.
People will see inexact and think to themselves, oh, that's a float, and that will be
misleading their thoughts IMHO, even if it is true hidden implementation fact for most
implementations most of the time.




From ark at research.att.com  Fri Jul 27 13:52:45 2001
From: ark at research.att.com (Andrew Koenig)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:52:45 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-F2006B.15303626072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <yu99puamdzte.fsf@europa.research.att.com>

David> In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
David>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  It contains a long
>> motivational section, a clear specification of what will happen, and a
>> discussion of rejected alternatives, a list of open issues, a Q-and-A
>> section etc..  I hope it answers most questions that have been raised
>> about this issue.  I'd be happy to revise it if there are still things
>> unclear.

David> I agree with the previous poster who said to use "quotient" instead of 
David> "floor division".

And I disagree.  "Quotient" suggests to me truncation toward zero,
rather than truncation toward -infinity.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark


From fdrake at acm.org  Tue Jul 10 12:27:12 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:27:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010710162712.D2A8F2892B@cj42289-a.reston1.va.home.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/

Updated to reflect the recent checkins for the Python/C API manual,
which cover a number of the object creation and initialization functions.




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 01:05:26 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:05:26 -0500
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal 
Message-ID: <011901c11335$1a8c95e0$0101010a@local>

I have been following (and participating) in the integer division
argument for some time (and a divisive one it is, too), and while
standing in the shower (really!) an idea came to me.

Why don't we add a hook to Python to control the numeric evaluation
rules directly?

An object containing methods to handle numerical operations would
be registered with a statement like this:

    __builtins__.numerics = MyNumericObject()

Operations involving only builtin types would use the operations
as defined in the given object; a default version would apply if
not given.  The default could be set in site.py, for instance:

    import advanced_math
    __builtins__.numerics = advanced_math.numeric_ops

(where the .numeric_ops is a singleton already instantiated when
the import statement is issued).

Similarly, there could be a standard option for the "tutorial"
mode where integer division yields a float:

    import tutorial_math
    __builtins__.numerics = tutorial_math.numeric_ops

For that matter, the assignment to __builtins__ could be in the
body of the imported module...  (I'm thinking as I type, can you
tell?)

Now comes the programmer who wants rational arithmetic.  In his/her
program there is a line:

    import rational_math

(near the top of course) and all mathematics in this program return
rationals.  The business major says:

    import fixedpoint_math
    fixedpoint_math.default_precision(2)

and away he/she goes.

The module writer says, HEY, what about me?  I need consistent math
in my module!

Hmmm... I'm not sure here, I must admit.  The module writer could, 
of course, say:

    def module_level_function(args, go, here):
        old_math = __builtins__.numerics
        import advanced_math
        ... some statements go here ...
        __builtins__.numerics = old_math
        return retval

but that is ugly (looks like some Visual Basic I saw last week).

Perhaps Python could look for a variable, say:

    __numerics__ = advanced_math.numerics

in the module scope before looking for the __builtins__.numerics
object; this would allow module writers to declare specific 
requirements for their own modules without harming anyone else.

On second (third?) thought, setting the default in site.py is
probably not a good idea.  Instead, the default should be None,
and "standard" builtin math should be used when 
__builtins__.numerics is None.

This would allow for the following:

    # rational_math.py

    class RationalMathClass:
        ... code goes here ...

    numerics = RationalMathClass()

    if __builtins__.numerics is None:
        __builtins__.numerics = numerics

Thus the first module imported in the program sets the standard 
for the entire environment.

Hmm... I'm still not entirely pleased with this proposal, but
perhaps there is the kernel of a useful idea here.  






From donn at drizzle.com  Fri Jul 13 00:45:02 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 04:45:02 -0000
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com> <slrn9ksnh3.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <3B4E69D5.5CB278F2@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <994999502.145640@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>:
| Grant Edwards wrote:
| > 
| > On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
| > 
| > >> ...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
| > >> and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
| > >> "Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
| > >> there must be more to it, eh.
|
| Just to clarify, I did not write the above.  I merely quoted it.
|
| > I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
| > that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.
|
| Would you call a C program which implemented those same steps 
| a "script" ?
|
| (I realize you would not typically use C for this, but if you did?)

If I may intrude with my own opinion - I certainly would call it
scripting, but I would not call it a script.  Alas, maybe compounding
the confusion.  Nor would a Python program that did it be likely
to qualify as a script, for me.  But Lisp would have a shot at it,
REXX, Tcl.  Python is quite capable of serving in a scripting role,
but is not by design especially targeted for that, like Tcl is.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 00:45:26 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 08:45:26 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107170830290.3509-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

Hello!

I want to have nice graphs from Python class hierarchies.  The daVinci
package can do it (see the program below for Exception class tree), but
the quality is not good enough.

Does anyone know any other tool which can help automatically draw graphs
(or only trees) with ability to output to PS?

I need to set font, size and elements order. DaVinci is nice but it puts
lines OVER boxes and I have not found way to control aspects of
font and size.

Dia and Sketch are nice, but I am not into developing graph layout
algorithms...

Oh, forgot to mention: I need this solution under Linux and Open Source of
course. I also tried some packages for TeX/LaTeX, but have not found
anything easier.

If not trees (graphs) what is another nice way to visualise
a tree? (apart from kind of:

root
  node1
    leaf1.1
    leaf1.2
  node2
    node2.1
       ...
...

thingie?

Any help appreciated!

The below is a script which could be then feed to daVinci:
--------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/env python2.0
#!/usr/bin/env python1.5
#!/usr/bin/env python2.1

# Exception class hiearachy -> daVinci input
# This piece of code contributed as-is to Public Domain by Roman A. Suzi
# Use at your own risk!

import types

d = {}
for i in dir(__builtins__):
  if types.ClassType == type(eval(i)) \
     and issubclass(eval(i), Exception):
    k = map(lambda x: x.__name__,
               eval(i).__bases__)
    # print "%20s"%i, k
    if k:
      try:
        d[k[0]].append(i)
      except:
        d[k[0]] = [i]
    else:
      root = i

#print d

def give_list(r):
  ll = [r]
  ll1 = []
  if d.has_key(r):
    for i in d[r]:
      ll1.append(give_list(i))
  return ll + ll1

#print give_list(root)

import string
def davinci(l):
  name = l[0]
  if len(l) == 1:
    return """l("%(name)s",n("",[a("OBJECT","%(name)s")],[]))""" % vars()
  else:
    sub = []
    for child in l[1:]:
      subtree = davinci(child)
      childname = child[0]
      sub.append( """
      l("%(name)s->%(childname)s",
         e("%(name)s->%(childname)s",[],
             %(subtree)s
       ))""" %vars())
    sub = string.join(sub, ", ")
    return """l("%(name)s",n("",[a("OBJECT","%(name)s")],
    [
    %(sub)s
    ]
    ))""" % vars()


print "[", davinci(give_list(root)), "]"
-------------------------------------------------------------


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 07:38:34 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:38:34 +0200
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996258291.15055.python-list@python.org> <psog0besc97.fsf@jekyll.curl.com> <3b65a820_7@Usenet.com> <9k4l5c$o985@news1.gtech.com>
Message-ID: <9k65bt0203p@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Peter Milliken" <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote in message
news:9k4l5c$o985 at news1.gtech.com...
    ...

> Once
> you have used a truly strongly typed language, then you would never
consider
> doing a large job (multiple programmers) in anything else. I love and use

False!  I *have* used "truly strongly typed languages" (such as Haskell),
yet I DO regularly consider doing large multi-programmers tasks in many
other languages (typically a mixture of languages: C++ for crucial low
level components and accelerators, SQL for the storage and retrieval
parts for which SQL is so eminently suitable, Python for 80% to 90% of
the code, i.e., everything which doesn't require C++'s speed and
can't benefit from SQL's specialized nature).

As the world is chock full of people who HAVE used "truly strongly
typed languages" (Pascal and variants, Ada, Eiffel, Sather, Haskell,
ML and variants, and so on) and then have moved on to, not just
"considering", but actively choosing, very different languages for
very large multi-programmers tasks (C++, Java, Python, Smalltalk,
Lisp, Erlang, and so on), your assertion is clearly false and quite
misleading as you've stated it.  Recast it in the first person
singular, and it may correctly be taken as a reflection on _your_
particular quirks and foibles:-).


Alex





From jim at publishingresources.com  Wed Jul 18 11:58:32 2001
From: jim at publishingresources.com (Jim)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:58:32 -0000
Subject: Javascript + Python...
References: <mailman.995037983.15466.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E279574D52Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>

Vincent A. Primavera <vincent_a_primavera at netzero.net> wrote in
<mailman.995037983.15466.python-list at python.org>: 

> Hello,
>      Does anyone know if there are ways to have JavaScript(client
>      side...) 
> "communicate" with Python(server side...) via variables(environmental?)
> etc...?
> 
>      Thank you,
>      Vincent A. Primavera
> 

Well I'm not quite sure what you are asking, but here's something I did the 
other day.

I have an javaScript event load a new Image while passing a slide # to the 
server.

function addslide(id) {
	now = new Date();
	var a = new Image()
	a.src = "/presentations/browse/addslide.asp?newslide=" + id + "&now=" 
+ now.getTime()
	a = null
}

This way I can tell the server to store information from the webpage by the 
user simply clicking a checkbox or image or any other javascript event.

This idea could be modified to get information back to the page as well, you 
could create a frame or open an invisible window and get data from the 
server and use Javascript to do something with it on the page without 
refreshing.

Note that above the now param is needed to stop caching.

Hope this helped,

J


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:35 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:35 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> <jt4oltg3ekdlig096677p295f7mnbumteu@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9loi9e.2il.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <menolto49gnuqp06jgusrpn6nf4d47iede@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 15:56:30 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:50:51 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:
>
>> It's not a different operation on the same data. It's the same
>> operation on a different datatype.
>
>No, it's different operation on the same data, as long as we agree that
>"same data" means "Python's '==' holds".
>    3.0 == 3
>    2.0 == 2
>    3.0/2.0 != 3/2

Nah - it only looks like it holds because of the implicit type
coercion.

>> You might as well claim floating point addition is different from
>> integer addition - that also requires a different algorithm and gives
>> a different result.
>
>They give the same result, except a very small rounding error
>sometimes, and except where the integer addition doesn't give any

Ever worked with a chaotic system? Remember the butterfly and the
hurricane? That small error can get big very quick using nothing but
multiplies and additions - division is nowhere near as special as
people think it is. If I want approximations I'll ask for them.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From andy at mindgate.net  Fri Jul 27 01:38:55 2001
From: andy at mindgate.net (Andy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:38:55 +0800
Subject: Threading in Python
Message-ID: <bn787.4044$Me1.99107@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>

There seems to be a lot of (arguably) radical changes
going on in the Python syntax/grammar/language, perhaps
the direction should be towards improving the internals
first?

One thing Java has which Python lacks is transparent
support for multi-cpu threading.  Python has threads,
but I believe it is internally implemented and has
been shown not to take advantage of an SMP machine.

In Java otoh, when you use threads on an SMP machine,
it automatically takes advantage of multiple CPUs
(like BeOS).  This simple plasma benchmark applet

http://rsb.info.nih.gov/plasma/

ran around 1.8x faster on my dual-Celeron machine
and the code was not even designed specially for
multiple CPUs in mind.





From grante at visi.com  Sat Jul 21 14:19:42 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 18:19:42 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <9jcfcb$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9ljhur.a08.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On 21 Jul 2001 17:50:03 GMT, Tim Randolph <timothyrandolph at NoSpamPleaseyahoo.com> wrote:

>Do you really ever want "fOo" and "FOO" and "foo" in the same program?
>(Notice the typo in my original? fOo --> foo.

Yes, I often use Foo and foo or FOO and foo.  I rarely use Foo
and FOO -- I've got no personal "rule" against it, it just
doesn't seem to happen.

>I wasn't trying to lump the foo=Foo() case with the "fOo", "FOO", "foo"
>case.  The latter is used as the pat example on what a case insenstive
>Python would look like, which is not the way I see it.  I really have not
>seen any one suggesting that they use more than a leading character
>difference in case intentionally.

In the past, I've used foo and FOO, but recently generally use
foo and Foo.

>My apologies for any offense.  None was intended.

None taken -- I just didn't want people to think that though we
may be a minority, we don't exist.  There may be good reasons
for changing to a case insensitive language, but there isn't a
complete lack of people who currently use it.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Xerox your lunch
                                  at               and file it under "sex
                               visi.com            offenders"!


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 23:52:23 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 03:52:23 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996616382.9383.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpsnfcxwrw.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:

> It sounds weird from an English perspective to me. "If Guido in
> programmer and Guido in author then". "isa" or even just "a" makes more
> sense. or how about "in class" "If Guido in class programmer and Guido
> in class author then".

Sorry, this isn't worth adding new syntax.  The 'in' thing worked
because a in b is already mapped to b.__contains__(a).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Tue Jul 31 08:17:27 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:17:27 +1000
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996540777.8399.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9k784q$uk0$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

<brueckd at tbye.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.996540777.8399.python-list at python.org...
> On 30 Jul 2001, Christopher Barber wrote:
>
> What is a real world problem that would not have existed if Python had
> strict compile-time checking, and how common is such a problem? (I'm not

int/int -> int, float/float -> float

8-)

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From jm7potter at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 17:48:32 2001
From: jm7potter at hotmail.com (Joe Potter)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 17:48:32 -0400
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
Message-ID: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com>

Hello all,

In working with the Python SQL database called Gadfly I have discovered something
that I do not understand.

If I create a few tables like this:

#####
import gadfly

connection = gadfly.gadfly()
connection.startup("jnso", ".\\ndata")
cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("create table students (st_id varchar(6),gr_level varchar(1),
grcard_type varchar(2), last_name varchar(40), first_name varchar(40))")

connection.commit()
####

The tables will *not* be in this order in the database. Now, I expect that rows will
be inserted at random, but *tables* also?

It does not get in the way all that much, but my "pretty print" looks like hell. The
first name is all the way to the left while the last name is all the way to the
right.

Does anyone know how to say "in this darned order" in SQL ????

Regards, Joe 


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul 23 19:54:15 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:54:15 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <3B5CAED2.80B9CF3C@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CB927.1D60A7DA@ActiveState.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, ...)

I'm sorry, it turns out that I was wrong about Ruby. By default Ruby
uses closed-integer division. I presumed incorrectly that it followed
Perl. In Ruby you could probably change this behaviour using overloading
but this is probably ill-advised because it would probably change the
behaviour of libraries.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Tue Jul  3 12:43:46 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:43:46 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:44:04PM -0700
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010703124346.A22543@arizona.cs.rit.edu>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:44:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
| Also for the record, it is probably unlikely that Python will actually
| be used for the application I mentioned. It is not yet considered an
| "established" language by the FAA. However, I am open to new ideas and
| I am willing to advocate it if I am convinced that it is the right
| language for the job. Before doing so, however, I need to be fairly
| sure.

At the very least various designs and algorithms to solve the problem
could be prototyped in Python, then recoded in C for their final
application.  People (I think the timbot is one of them) have said
that by prototyping algorithms in Python you can try out more
algorithms and find the best one in less time and you don't feel so
bad about throwing away the bad algorithms because you didn't spend so
much time coding it.

| You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
| application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a critical
| mode for several years at least, during which time it will be
| thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm talking about more

I would certainly hope so ;-).

| As for Mr. Park's childish question about "which city I work at," what
| can I say? Here in the U.S., ATC is obviously the responsibility of
| the federal government. I suggest he move to Mongolia so he can be
| safe. (That don't have access to comp.lang.python there, do they?)

I should learn about kill files, though that's probably only for
newsreaders and not mutt.  No matter.

-D




From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Mon Jul 23 00:30:04 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:30:04 +0300
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15OXM4-0005Za-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:05:47 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:

> > Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is *less*
> > useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible. You can
> > still have i//j for all your combinatorics needs.
> 
> The serious problem I see here is backward compatibility.  I shudder to
> think at the volume of preexisting, long-standing code that this will
> quietly break

Quietly? Note that in the 2.2 release, there will be *no* change except
that you *can* use //, and the only change is if you 
"from __future__ import division".
In 2.3, as I understand it, you'll be able to get warnings out when you
are doing something whose semantics will change.

>, requiring untold man-hours of debugging to find all the
> cases of / which should be replaced with //.

Or just running tests with all warnings except this one turned off,
and going through the pinpointed lines.

-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From m.zens at tu-bs.de  Wed Jul 11 07:28:24 2001
From: m.zens at tu-bs.de (Marco Zens)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:28:24 +0200
Subject: compiling c app in MSVC
References: <3b4b8bc7$0$26110$6e365a64@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at>
Message-ID: <3B4C3858.8251CC20@tu-bs.de>

Hello!


ThaFacka wrote:
> MSVC5 complains when compiling a program with <python.h>, that the lib file
> python20.lib is either invalid or my disk is corrupted (cant set file
> pointer to 0xblabla).
> and no my disk is not corrupted.
> anybody compiled succesfully with MSVC5?

I had the same problem some days ago (using python21.lib).

I updated my MSVC5 with Service Pack 3 and then it worked perfectly.


Ciao,
Marco Zens

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marco Zens
Institut fuer ComputerGraphik,   Tel:   +49-531-391-2106
TU Braunschweig                  Fax:              -2103
Rebenring 18,                    Email: m.zens at tu-bs.de
D-38106 Braunschweig             WWW:   http://www.cg.cs.tu-bs.de/people/zens


From rob at jam.rr.com  Tue Jul 17 10:22:04 2001
From: rob at jam.rr.com (Rob Andrews)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 14:22:04 GMT
Subject: If you want to see Python people complaining...
Message-ID: <3B54497F.B98D34CF@jam.rr.com>

Take a look at today's User Friendly poll. ("Web code of choice:
Perl/mod_perl, *sh, C/C++, ASP, Javascript, Cold Fusion, JSP, PHP").

At the time I checked, there were more complaints about Python not being
listed as there were comments on any of the actual choices offered.

Rob



From alet at unice.fr  Thu Jul 26 17:25:10 2001
From: alet at unice.fr (Jerome Alet)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:25:10 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5FCDC3.C8A2AF9E@unice.fr> <cp1yn3954u.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B608AB6.4537F857@unice.fr>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Jerome Alet <alet at unice.fr> writes:
> > Don't forget than Dictators, Benevolent of not, often die in a lot of
> > blood because their "user community" is angry ;-)
> >
> > (just a joke, of course)
> 
> Given the very real and insistent complaints and threats in this group
> by others referring my "dictatorship", I don't find your joke funny.

As asked by Terry, who made me realize I've made a mistake to post this
message, I sincerely apologize if you've not found this funny.

This was not meant to be agressive at all, and be sure I appreciate what
you've done for Python, which is my language of choice for two years
now.

Hoping this was just a cultural clash between the "politically correct"
US people vs the "I really don't care about politics, nor correctness"
attitude I, and I'm sure a lot of people here in France, enjoy.

Again I'm sincerely sorry.

bye,

Jerome Alet


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 20:17:30 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:17:30 -0400
Subject: Flames over division vs. case-sensitivity (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lubft.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> <9jsjeu$f3d$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <u66cdnbz9.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:

> >Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> spake:
> >  This baffles me; the division issue is IMO far more terrifying a
> >change, while case-insensitive is a mere quirk.
> 
> (...)
>                             I think that only the hard-core number
> crunchers get their panties in a wad over the division issue directly,
> and I think a lot of people fail to see how insidious that problem could
> be if not handled correctly.

I have to say that as a very non-hard-core number cruncher who
primarily got involved with the division stuff from a pragmatic large
system support angle, one thing I've taken away from it is the
complexity of the issue and am glad that I'm not trying to design a
language with a unified number system.  I clearly wouldn't know enough
in that area :-)

(Although it's fascinating to watch discussions about it)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 30 08:44:37 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:44:37 +0200
Subject: sys.stdin.readlines() in 2.2a ?
References: <dz497.1571$96.1429@srvr1.engin.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <j4wv4qr3gq.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"CCLittle" <nospam at ihatespam.com> writes:

> Hi all, I'm trying to learn and master python.  I encountered an
> example in "Programming Python 2nd Edition" by Mark Lutz that used
> sys.stdin.readlines(), which does not exist in python 2.2a.

I still have it in my 2.2a1 copy on Solaris. What system are you
using?

> 1. Where did it go?

It did not go away.

> 2. What kind of problems am I going to get by doing examples written
> for 1.5.2 but on 2.2a?

Very few. I might not remember all potential problems, so I won't
attempt to list them here.

> 3. Where can I get information on this sort of changes?

Andrew Kuchling always publishes an article on new features, which
always offer advise for compatibility as well. These are

http://amk.ca/python/2.0/
http://amk.ca/python/2.1/
http://amk.ca/python/2.2/

For Python 1.6, the information is somewhat merged into the 2.0
document above. An independently-developed document is at

http://www.python.org/1.6/

For a detailed list of changes, see Misc/NEWS in the Python sources.

Regards,
Martin


From noselasd at frisurf.no  Fri Jul 20 09:49:55 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:49:55 +0200
Subject: Python Server Pages or Physician Heal Thyself
References: <3B56E7ED.E4506CBD@wi.mit.edu> <3B56F4CE.BDF66DA8@wi.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <hFW57.127$4E6.1804@news1.oke.nextra.no>

"Brian Kelley" <bkelley at wi.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3B56F4CE.BDF66DA8 at wi.mit.edu...
> Allright, I just discovered here
> http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.python/web_python.html
> that there are two different entities named Python Server Pages.  I
was
> referring to Kiby Andell's version here
http://www.ciobriefings.com/psp/
>
> Anyway, I stumbled across the web topics section at python.org
> http://www.python.org/topics/web and discovered a third (?) so-called
> python server pages from Webware http://webware.sourceforge.net/
>
> So I'll mention my REAL problem :)  I am planning on using a
particular
> Java applet on a client side Macintosh.  Unfortunately it only runs
under
> the newly released Macintosh Java RunTime and the current MJR
netscape
> plugin from mozilla doesn't allow JavaScript to Java calls.  I was
hoping
> that using a some variant of Python Server Pages with Jython would
give me
> this functionality back.  So the question is which to use?
No it will not. Applets and javascript code run on the clients machine,
while python
serverpages code run on the server side. There is no way they can
communicate
other than through standard HTTP, or some 'custom' protocol you invent,
or maybe
corba, xmlrpc et.c.





From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:58:56 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:58:56 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <3B420269.B3E1AB8C@Lugoj.Com> <9hut78$8l5$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3jf6ktcq2onaa69jm23v8ucudglfoldjh2@4ax.com>

>How about a more modern language, designed from scratch, that still had 
>case sensitivity,...

This whole argument against case sensitivity is such a crock. Human beings
are case sensitive. These studies suggesting that case sensitivity is confusing
to learning programmers are, IMO, polluted by sampling biases. Here is my
retort to this suggeston that case sensitivity is bad; have fun gouging your eyes
out:

HoW About a MoRE MODern laNGUAgE, DESiGned FrOM sCRATcH, that STilL Had 
cAse sENSitIvITY, no distinctiOn bEtwEEN FuNcTIons ANd PROCedUres, aNd 
neEDed () to cALL a pRoceDurE wItHOUT arguMENtS.  WoULD THAt desERVe 
BasHiNg.

C//



From grodet at cochin.univ-paris5.fr  Wed Jul  4 04:08:30 2001
From: grodet at cochin.univ-paris5.fr (GN)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:08:30 +0200
Subject: Sorry pour la vente
Message-ID: <3B42CEFE.1058BB6F@cochin.univ-paris5.fr>

Veuillez m'excuser pour le message de ma vente de mon ordinateur
J'ai fais une mauvaise manipulation d'adresse
D?sol? pour les d?rangements occasionn?

Merci



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Sat Jul  7 18:15:50 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 22:15:50 GMT
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <mailman.994539552.27112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <qSL17.8651$e5.1134150@newsb.telia.net>

Paul Sidorsky wrote:
> I was thinking that Python might benefit from a "has" operator that
> would allow you to type something like this:
>
> if myobject has someattribute:
>     foo()
> else:
>     bar()

try this:

if hasattr(myobject, "someattribute"):
    spam()
else:
    egg()

</F>

<!-- (the eff-bot guide to) the python standard library:
http://www.pythonware.com/people/fredrik/librarybook.htm
-->




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:30:26 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:30:26 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <slrn9m2gm7.8ff.nde@cslin-gps.comp>
Message-ID: <cp4rry4f7u.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford) writes:

> How about "real division"?  I guess this also implies a value
> judgement, but at least its a pun... :)

Then how would you explain the results for complex numbers?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 00:34:02 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:34:02 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library
  development
In-Reply-To: <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107060830270.27417-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Chris Barker wrote:

>Hi all,
>

>My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a large
>collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are maintained by
>folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling this idea on the
>Linux Distributions: the kernel developers don't make any effort to
>package up Linux as a useful system; other organizations do that. There
>are now a lot of them, and some are substantial commercial enterprises,
>but it all started with SLS and then Slackware, etc.
>
>It really wouldn't even be that much work: Each of us has already done
>it for our own systems. Put a small group together, get a web site, and
>we'd be rolling. I'm really not looking to do anything more extensive
>than the old "Python on Linux" pages, except that it wouldn't be just
>Linux, and we would try to maintain a fairly constant list of supported
>modules.

It's a good and bad idea at the same time: sometimes packages in
distribution are too tightly interconnected and it's not nice to
download too many to have only small fraction.

I think, catalog (CPyAN) idea is better...


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Friday, July 06, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ ""Stupid" is a boundless concept." _/




From jim at interet.com  Mon Jul 30 10:18:36 2001
From: jim at interet.com (James C. Ahlstrom)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:18:36 -0400
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <tlu596rosgngd9@news.supernews.com> <3B5FAD11.FB9D737E@engcorp.com> <tm336a7vjqjq5f@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B656CBC.4F8FAFB2@interet.com>


John Roth wrote:

> That last sentence is what is scarey, not PEP238 or any of the
> other specific proposals. There's an endemic mindset in the xNIX
> community that simply doesn't understand the risk aversive behavior
> of many of the large shops. If compatability isn't guaranteed, then
> an upgrade is a project - which has to be scoped, justified, planned,
> and then prioritized with all the rest of the projects.

This attitude is so pervasive in commercial shops it even has a
name "FUD".  And yes, I run a commercial shop and I have
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt about anything I don't have time to
research.  In other words, most everything.  A rapidly evolving
Python absent a conversion scanner tool is a major problem.  I
don't think I know John, but obviously he must own a major
flame suit to make this point in a Unix-geek group.

I am not saying (nor is anyone else AFAIK) that Python should
not evolve, maybe even rapidly.  My son (16 years) wants to learn
programming, and his school wants to teach him Pascal.  Yuk!
Much better to learn Python, but how to explain my pet peeve
08 is an illegal integer?

My point is that no one expects Python's evolution to be
controlled by the needs of commercial users.

But it would be naive to ignore the problem that Red Hat has
declined to upgrade from 1.5.2.  A quick
find | wc shows that Red Hat 7.1 has 84,494 lines of Python
code not counting the Python libraries.  I don't know how
Red Hat is supposed to upgrade Python and still know their
code works.

BTW, it's not just the division proposal.  The change from
lst.append(x, y) to lst.append((x, y)) is another example.

Jim Ahlstrom



From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Mon Jul  9 09:23:05 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 13:23:05 GMT
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it> <79179cf5.0107061455.19093036@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <GG7JuM.772@leeds.ac.uk>

On 6 Jul 2001 15:55:36 -0700, Rupert Scammell <rupe at metro.yak.net> wrote:

> First off, don't bother with Mark Lutz's larger book, "Programming
> Python" (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/python2/).  It's big, but
> intended to teach the language, and not act as a reference.

Yes, not a reference work - but I wouldn't say it is intended
to teach the language, either.  You really need to have read a
tutorial like the one with the standard Python docs, or the
O'Reilly "Learning Python" book, first.  I think PP's strength
is in helping those who know the basics to see what is possible
using the language.  I've found it particularly helpful as an
introduction to Tkinter programming.  It also has very useful
stuff on interaction with external programs and how this
differs on Unix and Windows...


Nick



From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul 10 06:16:56 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:16:56 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Screen-Library for text-based programs
In-Reply-To: <9iej1a$vac$04$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107101407180.4375-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Klaus Rienessl wrote:
> Sorry for my english.

   Your English is good enough.

> Do you know a library ? And where can I get this ?

   No, I don't know any of them.

> > > I found the curses-library, but this seem to be very low-level.
> >
> >    slang? newt?

ftp://quasar.ipa.nw.ru/pub/avv/Python/pyslang/
ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/grante/stuff/newt-0.50.tar.gz

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 22:51:59 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:51:59 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <3B4E52B1.FBAE6F34@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E624F.E40F1694@engcorp.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:

"""
> 
> I think "good for short programs <100 lines" is not a bad definition
> of "scripting language", but I don't think he wasn't saying he
> thinks that's all Python is good for.

""".replace("he wasn't saying", "he was saying")

(dang)


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 15:46:48 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:46:48 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <3B51E6B1.47E25214@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107152344030.23284-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 15 Jul 2001, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

>The following re is (I think) the description of a legitimate IP addess in
>"quad" format (IPV4).  My question is, can it be made even shorter?
>
>ipquad   = r"^((\d\d?\d?\.){3}(\d\d?\d?))$"

ipquad   = r"^((\d{1,3}\.){3}(\d{1,3}))$"

(Why not just split(it, ".") ?)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/




From kragen at dnaco.net  Sun Jul  1 06:57:43 2001
From: kragen at dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 10:57:43 GMT
Subject: Why Not Translate Perl to C
References: <mailman.993922352.32302.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <HmD%6.15138$he.606121@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

In article <mailman.993922352.32302.python-list at python.org>,
Oleg Broytmann  <phd at phd.fep.ru> wrote:
>   Yes, but you cannot write a compiler that will translate StringIO into
>cStringIO. Python is too dynamic for this. If Python will ever get static
>typing, things will become much better and we can return to the task of
>building a compiler.

That is far too sweeping a statement.  Dynamicness makes writing good
compilers much harder, but not impossible.  Self, the JITs, Stalin, and
Bigloo stand as counterexamples.
-- 
<kragen at pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
       -- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 09:43:25 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:43:25 -0500
Subject: does xmllib support non-UTF-8 charsets?
Message-ID: <15197.31613.852735.584341@beluga.mojam.com>

I'm using xmlrpclib 0.9.9 (similar to what will ship with 2.2 I think).  The
database on the server contains a fair bit of Latin-1 stuff, mostly in the
form of European surnames, cities and addresses.  After updating to 2.1 on
my development machine I was left with only the xmllib-based
xmlrpclib.SlowParser class because I hadn't yet installed sgmlop in my 2.1
tree.

I was getting tracebacks like this

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/xmlrpclib.py", line 569, in __call__
        return self.__send(self.__name, args)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/xmlrpclib.py", line 683, in __request
        if transport is None:
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/xmlrpclib.py", line 607, in request
        headers
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/xmlrpclib.py", line 641, in parse_response_gzip

      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 168, in feed
        self.goahead(0)
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 264, in goahead
        self.syntax_error('illegal character in content')
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 794, in syntax_error
        raise Error('Syntax error at line %d: %s' % (self.lineno, message))
    xmllib.Error: Syntax error at line 1472: illegal character in content

However, on the server end, it was generating xml that begins with

    <?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-1' ?>
    <methodResponse>
    <params>
    <param>
    <value><array><data>
    <value><int>20</int></value>
    <value><array><data>
    <value><array><data>
    <value><string>MusicEntry</string></value>
    <value><struct>
    <member>

It appears that xmllib is not paying attention to the encoding attribute.  I
realize this is a deprecated module.  Still, is this behavior expected?

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From johnroth at ameritech.net  Sat Jul  7 20:26:47 2001
From: johnroth at ameritech.net (John Roth)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:26:47 -0700
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080115240.17775-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <mailman.994543873.6493.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkfa751vldoo66@news.supernews.com>

"Paul Sidorsky" <paulsid at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994543873.6493.python-list at python.org...
> Roman Suzi wrote:
>
> > if hasattr(myobject, "someattribute"):
> >      foo()
> > else:
> >      bar()
> > is clean enough, IMHO...
>
> Oops, I didn't know about hasattr().  Yes, that certainly does the
> trick.  Though I have to say the syntax is a little odd (what with the
> quotes), but it's certainly sufficient.  Thanks!  Sorry to bother
> everyone.

Not a bother. We learn by watching everyone else ask questions! However,
the syntax is necessary, since "hasattr" is essentially a dictionary lookup.

John Roth
>
> --
> ======================================================================
> Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
> paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/
>




From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Sat Jul 28 10:17:58 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:17:58 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996302633.24294.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <qQz87.54894$Cy.7483409@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

[CRUMPLE, SPINDLE, BEND, SNIP]
> Your examples had users explicitly passing complex
> inputs to functions.  I was talking about getting complex results out of
> functions when complex numbers are *not* passed to them (such as acos(2)).
> Division can never return a complex result unless given a complex input.
I
> see nothing surprising to anyone about complex-in, complex-out.  It's only
> non-complex-in, complex-out that Python currently shields users from (in
the
> absence of explicitly using cmath functions).  As I said, I think that's a
> benefit for the majority of users; I don't know whether Guido agrees.
[CLIP]

What is minorly irksome is that there is no core set of math functions that
will give you complex when necessary, but return floats when they can. Cmath
insists on always spitting out complex numbers regardless of the input. It's
only minorly irksome 'cause I just use NumPys math functions and they "do
the right thing"(TM).

-tim




From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul 11 08:12:10 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 05:12:10 -0700
Subject: Bug in __imul__
Message-ID: <9ihg33$irjha$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Does it bother anyone that 

a *= 3 + 4

returns a different value from

a = a * 3 + 4

??

-- 

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------



From arnulf at spirea.net  Mon Jul 30 07:51:55 2001
From: arnulf at spirea.net (Arnulf Heimsbakk)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:51:55 +0200
Subject: is there an error in mimetools in python 2.1 for windows?
Message-ID: <9k3hcd$cc4$1@news.uit.no>

I'm posting this message again with the correct information. Sorry about the
last posting. But here it is :)

I'm trying to decode a base64 message in python 2.1 for windows with
mimetools. I have tested the "body" with windows winzip. It decodes
correctly. When I try to decode it in python, it do not decode correctly. I
get a file with slightly increased size. The heading of the file seems the
same, but when I test this with a jpg file - the file gets corrupted when
decoded with python's mimetools.

Is there a error in mimetools? Or is my approach entirly incorrect. My code
is below:

out = StringIO()
mimetools.decode(StringIO(self.body), out,  'base64')
return out.getvalue()

I preciate any advise or help I can get.
---
arnulf heimsbakk
system analyst
+47 76 14 45 42

spirea.net - http://spirea.net
and?ya rocket range - http://www.rocketrange.no








From max at alcyone.com  Sat Jul 28 15:34:02 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:34:02 -0700
Subject: int vs float divide: abbreviating numbers w/SI units
References: <eppstein-D36BE1.12293028072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3B6313AA.E00146A8@alcyone.com>

David Eppstein wrote:

>         SI Units are used to convert the number to a human-readable
>         range.
>         For example, abbreviateNumber(3141592) returns '3.1M'.
>         In most cases (except when the number is too big or too small
>         for the units defined in the SI system) the resulting string
>         will be at most four characters long.

Those are SI prefixes, not units.  (Under strict SI rules, you're not
supposed to use the prefixes without units; 3M to represent 3 x 10^6 is
badly formed SI usage.)

>         By default, the program uses decimal k (i.e. 1k = 1000).
>         To use binary k, as is more typical e.g. for numbers of bytes,
>         call with a second argument k=1024.

There is a standard for binary prefixes, too:  Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti, etc.; not
that they're used much.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Dear World:  I am leaving because I am bored.
\__/ George Sanders (in his suicide note)
    REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
 Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!


From gerson.kurz at t-online.de  Tue Jul  3 14:45:05 2001
From: gerson.kurz at t-online.de (Gerson Kurz)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 18:45:05 GMT
Subject: Alternate Syntax for dictionary elements
Message-ID: <3b421046.1836046@news.t-online.de>

Please consider the following:

dict = { 'type' : 'button', 'id': 32, 'name' : 'some name' }
...
if o['type'] == 'button':
	# do something for objects of type button

Now, take a look at

if o.type == 'button':
	# do something for objects of type button

A dictionary can in many cases be interpreted as a dynamically created
object. And an object should have members; or rather, you should be
able to access its data in a member-style fashion.

This change doesn't save you much type overhead - but it makes the
code look more readable for those uses for which it makes sense to
treat dictionarys as dynamic objects (and I have lots of uses for
these). 

I realize that there are possible dictionary keys (such as tuples) for
which such a syntax is improper; it should be sufficient to make the
following restrictions:

- the syntax is only possible for string-typed keys that *qualify as
valid identifiers*
- the syntax is only possible for keys that are not part of dir({}). 

The implementation would be a hack that extendes the {}.__methods__
lookup. 

Worthwile pursuit or total crap ?



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 07:05:55 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:05:55 +0200
Subject: How to avoid MemoryError on recursion?
References: <c396ce35.0106280304.36a20fe9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <j47kxsvrho.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Dave.Haynes at sia-mce.co.uk (Dave Haynes) writes:

>  I'm using John Aycock's SPARK (
> http://www.csr.uvic.ca/~aycock/python/ ) to process some files. Part
> of the SPARK semantic checker uses a recursive function to traverse
> the syntax tree. I've had to increase the recursion limit to 10000 to
> avoid RuntimeError, and I now get 'MemoryError: Stack overflow'.
>  
>  Is there anything I can do to get Python more allocated memory (or
> get it to use less)? I'm using Python 2.0 on a Windows NT4 box with
> 256 Mbyte RAM. Task Manager registers only 26% of this in use while
> running the script.

If you have exceeded the stack limit, it helps little that there is
still memory left: the stack limit is much less than the available
memory. You can, on Windows, increase the stack limit by changing a
value in hte executable (or passing that value to the linker when
linking the executable); for that to work, you need to relink Python.

One option you may consider is to use stackless Python. I don't know
whether SPARK uses the C stack on its own, or whether it does the
recursion in Python. If it is the latter, stackless Python should give
you much deeper recursion nesting.

>  Anyone more familiar with SPARK than I am might be able to give some
> tips on how to flatten the AST tree. I'm working from a fixed BNF
> description, which has plenty of hierarchy in it.

Sorry, can't help here. I recommend to contact John directly; he may
have suggestions.

Regards,
Martin



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 22:39:50 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 02:39:50 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4llv.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> dijo:
> [Tim Hammerquist]
> > ...
> > Easily implemented in Perl:
> >
> >: sub valid_ip {
> >:     my ($ip, $failed, @elements) = (shift, 0);
> >:     @elements = ($ip =~ /^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$/);
> >:     $failed = grep { $_ > 255 } @elements;
> >:     return ($failed) ? undef : 1;
> >: }
> >
> > Slightly more verbose in Python:
> >
> >: import re
> >: def valid_ip(ip):
> >:     expr = r'^(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$'
> >:     elements = map(int, re.match(expr, ip).groups())
> >:     failed = filter(lambda x: x > 255, elements)
> >:     if failed:  return None
> >:     else:       return 1
> 
> Well, it's un-Pythonic to try to emulate Perl undef via Python None; it's
> idiomatic to return 0 for false and 1 for true, in which case the last three
> lines can be replaced by, e.g.,
> 
>     return max(elements) < 256

Fair enough.  I'm in the habit (in Python as well) of return undef on
false because in some methods, 0 is ambiguous.  So, in cases where 0 is
not ambiguous, 0 is idiomatically preferred to None?

> Note that the leading "^" in the Python regexp isn't needed (can save
> another entire character that way <wink>).

Oh yeah.  re.match() starts at the beginning.

> The Python version should also check for match failure.  Like
> 
> def valid_ip(ip):
>     m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
>     if m:
>         elements = map(int, m.groups())
>         return max(elements) < 256
>     return 0
> 
> Yes, you can squash lines out of that -- I wouldn't.

I see I need practice in Python idioms (tho my Perl version didn't do
a whole lot of error checking either).  All I'd do is move the map()
call inside the max() call.

Ok, so here's my version (I hate wasted line space and unnecessary temp
vars):

def valid_ip(ip):
    m = re.match( r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
    if m:   return max(map(int, m.groups())) < 256
    return 0

> BTW, does it bother anyone that all of these solutions accept an IP ending
> with a newline?

Just add '(?!\n)' right before the '$'.  <wink>

> regexps-are-surprising-ly y'rs  - tim

-- 
I am following my fish.
    -- Delirium, The Sandman


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Wed Jul 25 16:45:55 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:45:55 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lu6hc.4ua.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <eppstein-D146E5.13455525072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <slrn9lu6hc.4ua.wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net>,
 wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley) wrote:

> Perhaps the best solution would be to make Python's integers actually be
> the field of integers mod 4294967291 (not too much of a change -- they're
> currently very similar to the integers mod 4294967295).  The best of all
> worlds -- divisions no longer have remainders, and everything's exact
> again.

If you instead used the ring of integers mod 2^32, you could still divide 
by any odd number exactly, without remainders.  Division by even numbers 
would be harder, but everyone optimizes those by replacing them with 
shifts, right?

I think even fewer people would like the results of division in these 
systems, though -- e.g. what is 1/3?

> and-writing-the-log-function-becomes-a-lot-more-fun-ly yr's

For mod 2^32, I think what you want is the 2-adic norm...
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 19:35:57 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:35:57 +0100
Subject: What confuses the newbies: An unscientific study
References: <slrn9lhvn1.ji4.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain>
Message-ID: <slrn9lpd6r.a96.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 04:00:57 GMT, Nick Mathewson <9nick9m at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>1. NOT KNOWING WHERE MODULE DOCUMENTATION IS.
>
>   A good fifteen or so people asked questions of the form, "How do
>   I...", "Is there a module that can...", etc.  All of these
>   questions were answered with references to the library reference,
>   or to the Vaults.
>
>   Perhaps when the Python Cookbook is more compiled, these things
>   will be easier.
>
>   BTW, the most common requests were satisfied by: (in no particular
>   order) XML/SGML parsing, windowing toolkits, popen, timeoutsocket,
>   and stringio.  Other requests turned out to be for chr and popen2.
>  
> * A related kind of confusion: in 4 or so of these cases, users knew
>   about a function that did _almost_ the right thing, and [instead
>   of looking for the function they _really_ wanted] they searched
>   for a way to make the almost-right function do the right thing.

An example that happened to me recently was os.system() doing almost
but not quite the same thing as commands.getstatusoutput().

The Python documentation is HTML (at least, LaTeX processed into HTML).
Would it be possible for the descriptions of these two functions
to have hypertext links to each other, since they are clearly related?

In general, I'd say the documenation for the standard library could
do with more examples.

Also I'd be nice if there wqas a function like getstatusoutput() that
returned the stdout output as a separate string to the stderr output.
Then you could for example raise an exception if the return value wasn't
0, and use the stderr text as an argument to the exception.

>5. OTHER ISSUES:
>
>   2 people expected strings to act mutably:
>     1 expected string.strip to have side effects
>     1 expected string slices to be assignable

This coulkd be fixed by improving the documentation

>   2 people had issues with aliasing lists
>     1 tried to do a lst.remove within a loop over lst
>     1 expected [[...]]*6 to perform a deep copy

ditto
 
>   2 people were confused about fp.
>     1 person thought that int/int should yield a float

I thiunk it should yield a fraction so:
   print ((1/3)*(1/3))*4 

would output:
   4/9.

But I expect that's just me.

>     1 person didn't know that fp was inexact

Perhaps Python could do with a decimal type like C# has?


-- 
#===== Philip Hunt == philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ======#
 Herbivore: effort-free public key email encryption. See:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
          *** herbrip software now released ***
          







From gReGlAnDrUm at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 09:49:34 2001
From: gReGlAnDrUm at earthlink.net (Greg Landrum)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:49:34 -0700
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995943227.11347.python-list at python.org...
>
> I'm burned out on the repetition here.  It's not a question of being hard
to
> teach.  It's largely that it's never sensible for
>
>     x = y / z
>
> buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y and z
> happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen not to be
ints.
[snip]
> This isn't a question of teaching the rules, it's that the specific rule
> here is essentially braindead in a language without static type
> declarations.

When I read these arguments and think about them, I'm unsurprised to find
myself agreeing with Tim and Guido here -- I usually end up agreeing with
those guys.  It *is* odd to have to do something like:
  x = float(y)/z
to get best-possible division in Python.  It would be *nice* to never have
to explain integer division behavior again (well, not quite, it'll have to
be explained to programmers who are used to the old way of doing things).

And then I start thinking about all the code I've written for myself, my
former employer and my consulting clients. I *know* I've used '/' to do
integer (truncating) division in that code intentionally.  Of course I have,
it's the way things were done.  Once PEP 238 is implemented and the change
in place (v2.3?), a lot of that code is going to start producing warnings.
The warnings can be used to track down the problems before code actually
breaks and there will be 2 years in which to do so... that's acceptable.

I do have a question. The PEP says:

    If "from __future__ import non_integer_division" is present in the
    module, until the IntType nb_divide is changed, the "/" operator
    is compiled to FUTURE_DIV.

    This is not yet implemented in the Python 2.2 release.

Okay, it's "not yet" implemented for 2.2.  It's going to be though, right?
If the change is going to happen, it is going to break some of my code and I
would like to start tracking down these problems and changing my programming
habits ASAP.

[I started this message intending to make a very different argument because
of the code breakage.  Then I re-read the PEP and realized that we are being
promised at least 2 years to fix things before code breaks.  I'm much more
comfortable with the PEP now.]

-greg





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 02:57:06 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:57:06 +0200
Subject: More on "with" statement
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <9ioru01pc9@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Levente Sandor" <nospam at newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:poP37.19002$Kf3.249024 at www.newsranger.com...
> If you absolutely need a 'with' statement...
>
> import re
> def with(object, statements):
> """ 'with' for the very lazy programmer :) :) :)
> Someone might prefer Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, ... instead."""
> exec(re.sub('\B\.', '%s.' % object, statements))

If you're willing to stoop to an exec, then surely it's
better to use the fact that exec lets you specify local
and global dictionaries:

def with(obj, statements, globs=None):
    if globs is None: globs=globals()
    exec statements in vars(obj), globs


Alex





From ajs at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jul 10 08:51:41 2001
From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur Siegel)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 08:51:41 -0400
Subject: A modest proposal (was: Comment on PEP-0238)
Message-ID: <001f01c1093f$11a992c0$a9e1fea9@carol>

Phil writes -

>Another force, concerned about possible flaws in Python as it stands,
>wants to improve the language. Thus we have new operators such as +=,
>and other changes for the good. Thus also we have a PEP regarding 
>integer division, which Guido thinks is a flaw in the current
>version of Python. This attitude of wanting to make the most elegant
>possible programming language is also entirely sensible, not
>least because if Guido didn't think that way, Python wouldn't
>exist and we'd all be using P**l or something like it.

>So, how do we reconcile the two?

>I suggest we continue to name the existing language "Python" and
>the new developments by called under a different name ("SuperPython"
>or "CP4A" possibly). That way, everyone gets what they want.

>The new SuperPython would be free to experiment with radical new
>ideas -- including changing the case-sensitivity, for example. And
>the old, exisiting Python would be guaranteed to evolve in a way 
>that doesn't break existing code, without a very very good reason.

One would like to believe that public discussion of these matters 
among an interested community is a plus.  I am beginning to feel
otherwise.  To me, a significant problem is how arbitrary things
seem when given full light.  I happen to be a novice programmer,
grateful to Python for getting me over many the hump.  How might 
I convince Guido that with what one necessarily confronts in
learning programming concepts, grasping integer division and 
case sensitivity are at worst minor hurdles, at best, minor victories
with an educational worth of their own.

In other recent discussions of issues of true complexity - was it
augmented assignment - Guido was content to imagine that there
is an instructor guiding the novice - issue gone.

I would argue that a good learning language and a novice-proof
language are too quite different things.  Python is already a good
learning language.  Let Python 3000 be the separate novice- 
proof one.

But it is Guido's language and Guido's call.  Just wish it was
all just left to his own sense of design elegance, which there
is reason to trust - rather his public justifications, which I 
never find very satisfactory.

ART






From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Tue Jul 10 07:33:37 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 11:33:37 GMT
Subject: backslash woes........
References: <Xns90DA75C5FEBC9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <9iep6h$gmi$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <Xns90DA75C5FEBC9duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>, 
duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth) wrote:

> "Duncan Booth" <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in
> news:Xns90DA74BD3B968duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1: 
> 
> > Martin Franklin <martin.franklin at westerngeco.com> wrote in
> > news:3B4AC7C2.DD53F6BB at westerngeco.com: 
> > 
> >> I am having trouble with windows path names (i'm a UNIX'ite)
> 
> Another useful tip to remember is that except for the DOS command 
> prompt, and some badly behaved applications, Windows actually supports 
> both forward slash and backslash as path separators. So in a Python 
> program (or most other languages) you can use forward slashes anywhere 
> you want to write a pathname.

So long as you aren't using data given to you by the OS.  In this case, I 
think the duality is more of a problem than a solution.  Here's a function 
that I think solves the poster's original problem:

def getPrefixRelatives(*filenames):
        """return the common prefix of the filenames
        and each filename relative to that prefix
        
        """
        # make sure all paths are spelt the same
        normalized = map(os.path.normpath, filenames)
        prefix = os.path.commonprefix(normalized)
        return(prefix, [
            filename[len(prefix):] for filename in normalized])


>>> import os
>>> getPrefixRelatives('c:/python/first.py', 'c:\\python\\sub\\second.py')
('c:\\python\\', ['first.py', 'sub\\second.py'])


Returning UNIX-style / separated pathnames is left as an exercise for the 
reader.


                     Graham


From tdelaney at avaya.com  Wed Jul 11 22:02:23 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:02:23 +1000
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC29E@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

There are a (relatively) large number of enhancements to the Python language
coming up which *will* break code compatibility.

I would like to provoke some discussion on a suggestion.

A new major version, Python 3.000 ;) is introduced.

Python 3.x will contain mandatory semantic and syntax changes.

Python 2.x will always maintain 100% syntax and semantic compatibility with
Python 2.1.

The mandatory version for all __future__ statements will be set to 3.0. This
includes nested scopes.

__future__ statements will be available in 2.x for all incompatible changes
in 3.0.

This has the following advantages:

1. 2.x is guaranteed backwards compatible for things such as int/int
division.
2. Code can be made to work with both 2.x and 3.0 with appropriate
__future__ statements.
3. The code base for 2.x and 3.0 can be identical, except for the sole
difference of the version number.

This obviously needs to be fleshed out, and possibly turned into a PEP, but
I think this would offset many of the worries people have about the changes
that are being made.

Tim Delaney
Avaya Australia
+61 2 9352 9079



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 00:30:38 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 21:30:38 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993832966.21120.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993927046.4577.python-list@python.org> <4Dp%6.408588$oc7.55997471@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3EA76E.8F999372@ActiveState.com>

Rainer Deyke wrote:
> 
> "Carlos Ribeiro" <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote in message
> news:mailman.993927046.4577.python-list at python.org...
> > As the current discussion about Augmented Assignment stands, I was
> > wondering if it was not better to make it invalid to use augmented
> > assignment on immutable types.
> 
> Bad idea.  If anything, I would go the other direction and make it illegal
> for mutable types.  ...

This is the argument that froze augmented assignments in their tracks
for years. I was somewhat surprised when they finally made it in because
it was always clear in the discussions that any behaviour would confuse
about half of the population. That's usually where Python Refuses To
Choose.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Jul 18 18:39:01 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 22:39:01 GMT
Subject: xml.dom.minidom + py2exe
References: <9ilk1r$quo$1@maud.ifi.uio.no> <9im880$jjh8j$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de> <j4wv56z400.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90E2BDCEA67E7gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.194>

Martin von Loewis wrote: 

> "Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> writes:
> 
>> > It looks like the XML module is using som kind of dynamic loader
>> > (like Pmw does), and these modules naturally escape py2exe. 
>> 
>> This is indeed the case:
>> 
>> C:\sf\py2exe\tests>c:\python20\python.exe
>> Python 2.0 (#8, Apr 25 2001, 22:09:02) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
>> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>> >>> import xml
>> >>> xml
>> <module '_xmlplus' from 'c:\python20\_xmlplus\__init__.pyc'>
> 
> _xmlplus is provided by PyXML, so it is only available if PyXML is
> installed. OTOH, this was not the problem for py2exe: It (correctly)
> detected that _xmlplus could not be found, this is triggered by
> xml/__init__.py's
> 
> try:
>     import _xmlplus
> except ImportError:
>     pass
> else:
>     ...
> 
> Here is a clear import statement for _xmlplus, but it is no problem if
> that fails. What did cause the problem is the code
> 
> default_parser_list = ["xml.sax.expatreader"]
> ...
>     for parser_name in parser_list + default_parser_list:
>         try:
>             return _create_parser(parser_name)
>         except ImportError,e:
>             import sys
> ...
>     def _create_parser(parser_name):
>         drv_module = __import__(parser_name,{},{},['create_parser'])
>         return drv_module.create_parser()
> 
> in xml/sax/__init__.py. So for freezing (py2exeing?) XML applications,
> you have to give xml.sax.expatreader as a 'static' module, and
> perhaps any additional parsers you may want to use.

You have to do a lot more than that. After all, once xml/__init__.py
runs and swaps itself for _xmlplus/__init__.py, then xml.sax.expatreader
refers to _xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py.

But when you're freezing, xml.sax.expatreader refers to 
xml/sax/expatreader.py. That is, because you're using an honest
"import" in xml/__init__.py, the dependency on _xmlplus/__init__.py
can be traced. But that doesn't mean that freeze realizes that
"xml" is an alias for "_xmlplus".

- Gordon


From pehr at alum.mit.edu  Fri Jul 20 01:43:14 2001
From: pehr at alum.mit.edu (pehr anderson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 05:43:14 GMT
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <3B57C4FA.F25F5EAF@alum.mit.edu>

Dear Matthias,


What you want is to enable timeoutsockets.
When you initiate a tcp connection, it has
a default timeout behavior that keeps the 
connection open for two minutes.  
This makes it difficult to write spiders and
other useful web code like you are doing here.

Timoutsocket allows you to set the timeout period
for new sockets to whatever you want.
Even when the sockets are opened inside the existing
urllib module, they will still be affected by 
timeoutsocket when timeoutsocket is turned on.

These other solutions technically do get you somewhere,
but they leave idle network resources lying around.

http://timo-tasi.org/python/timeoutsocket.py

I think this code will eventually get included in the
standard distro as it makes it much easier for people 
to code spiders and other essential web applications.

	-pehr






Matthias Huening wrote:
> 
> I have a function like this:
> 
> -----
> def read_pages(urllist):
>     res = {}
>     for x in urllist:
>         try:
>             res[x] = urllib.urlopen(x).read()
>         except:
>             pass
>     return(res)
> -----
> 
> I now want the following behaviour: try to catch the webpage for 3 seconds;
> if it takes longer just skip this one and move on to the next. How can I
> achieve this?
> 
> Thanks, Matthias
> 
> PS Other suggestions for speeding up the process of reading lets say 100
> webpages are welcome...


From aahz at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 13:07:48 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 10:07:48 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hrnub$9a2$1@panix3.panix.com> <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <9hsu54$t38$1@panix3.panix.com>

In article <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508 at ruti.visi.com>,
Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
>In article <9hrnub$9a2$1 at panix3.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch wrote:
>>In article <9hrj3q$cj1 at news1.gtech.com>,
>>Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>Python is a fine language for quick and dirty prototyping. For
>>>banging out applications that are going to run in an
>>>environment where it isn't going to matter if the program
>>>crashes, but it is certainly not something I would put forward
>>>for something like Air Traffic Control.
>>
>>Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and
>>Python, and that the real-time resolution requirement is on the
>>order of one second. Which would you choose and why?
>
>The one thing about Python that would give me pause is the
>dynamic memory management.  But, I'd have the same concerns if
>the C/C++ program used malloc/free.

Precisely.  Actually, I'd have greater concerns with C/C++, because at
least in Python I'd have a reasonable degree of confidence in what
happens when memory gets exhausted.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 15 13:15:28 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 10:15:28 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 
 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com>  
	            <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
> comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
> non-parsing tools like editors to find it?
>...

Parsing tools do need it. The directive changes the file's semantics.
Both parsing and non-parsing tools need it.

I could live with a comment but I think that that is actually harder to
implement so I don't understand the benefit...I'm still trying to
understand what tools we are protecting. compiler.py can be easily
fixed. The real parser/compiler can be easily fixed. The other tools
mostly take their cue from one of these two modules, right?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From brian at sweetapp.com  Sat Jul 21 23:49:01 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 20:49:01 -0700
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
In-Reply-To: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <001101c11261$3eaeb810$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

> I tried looking under the /Python20 directory for source or something
> for the Exception classes, but can't find it. For example, right now
I'm
> working on subclassing the rfc822.py module, and I found the file
> rfc822.py in /Python20/Lib and studied the source until I understood
it,
> and could subclass it. I'd like to find something similar for the
> standard exception classes. I looked in the /include directory and
some
> others but can't find what I'm needing.
> 
> Thanks for any pointers/tips.

Check out http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-exceptions.html

Cheers,
Brian




From warp10 at hushmail.com  Fri Jul 13 03:39:31 2001
From: warp10 at hushmail.com (domi)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:39:31 +0200
Subject: sort->list
Message-ID: <9im8jj$1b36$1@news.lf.net>

Hello All!
Does somebody know how to sort a numeric list in the right way?
The sort method sort a list in this way:
[1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,21,...]

but I need a list sort like this:
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,...]

Any idea thanks domi




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 08:11:30 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 08:11:30 -0400
Subject: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING
References: <mailman.995453435.10145.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <s%e57.32310$d4.1052150@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"noverius pinem" <noveriuspinem at yahoo.com> wrote in ...
> How we do "WINDOWS PROGRAMMING" with Python?
> - making the windows
> - create the controls
> - etc
> - etc
> - etc
> HELP...
> Please.

We normally go to www.activestate.com and load Mark Hammond's win32all
extensions, or even just download ActivePython (which comes with win32all).
If it's especially important we then buy Hammond and Robinson's "Python
Programming on Win32", which explains in detail how to use *some* of this
large and generally high-quality library.

PythonWin, which comes as a part of win32all, is built around MFC
components, and gives you access to many of the MFC widgets. Many of the
APIs you want are included in the libraries (though Mark Hammond keeps
nudging the score up).

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net  Mon Jul 30 18:30:34 2001
From: wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net (William Tanksley)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:30:34 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
>Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

>How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
>terse acronym to learn)?

Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
nice because it was in common use before.

>Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
>an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
>classification. 

Good thinking.

>The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus suggests for "class" :

>division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
>department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
>species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
>clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
>feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.

>I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
>short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
>the language I deal with. 

Of all the choices there, I like 'type' the best, because 'type' is
already used as a semi-synonym for class.  In fact, this change is
described as the type-class unification.

OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want a
plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley


From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul  4 11:28:29 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 08:28:29 -0700
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <9hvcu5$fu4ja$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

#test.py:
import getopt, sys
print getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "")

F:\Python21>python test.py c:\test
([], ['c:\\test'])

So it appears to work here using getopt.  Something else must be going on.
Can you post an example that generates the string with the embedded tabs?


--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Gustaf Liljegren" <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.152...
> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > Your first statement should be either
> >
> >     path = 'e:\\test\\test.txt'
> >
> > or
> >
> >     path = r'e:\test\test.txt'
>
> Forgot to tell you one thing: I get these paths from user input (arguments
> to getopt.getopt()), so I have no control on this. Have looked for a
> function to convert a string to a raw string, but couldn't find any. I'll
> take a closer look on os.path now.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gustaf Liljegren



From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Thu Jul  5 05:47:40 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:47:40 +0100
Subject: How to use Tkinter.canvas.postscript()?
Message-ID: <3B4437BC.640620F9@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/32f10cf7/attachment.html>

From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Thu Jul 19 15:27:56 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:27:56 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <200107191845.f6JIjXL16993@odiug.digicool.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> > Hehe, so, if both case-insensitivity and multiple encodings were
> > adopted...
> >
> > the easy to distinguish between "a" and "A" would not be allowed, but
> > the hard to read versions of "a" with diacritical marks would be...
> >
> > ...ya, that makes sense.  :-/
>
> If that's your whole argument against case insensitivity, I don't find
> it very convincing.  Certainly this issue has been solved before?

I wouldn't even consider it an argument, but it could probably be
worked into a reductio ad absurdum strategy.

<shrug> I dunno (if the issue has been solved)

I'm still wondering what advantage there is to crippling the
expressivity of a language for the sake of a small group of
non-programmers.


- Bruce




From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Fri Jul  6 13:34:05 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:34:05 +0100
Subject: Draw line or cirle on Tkinter.Button?
Message-ID: <3B45F68D.530865C3@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010706/82387452/attachment.html>

From wheelege at tsn.cc  Mon Jul 23 07:02:08 2001
From: wheelege at tsn.cc (Glen Wheeler)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:02:08 +1000
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <021b01c11366$eb0a5780$0200a8c0@ACE>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Horne" <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
> ...
> Mathematically, integer division should be the inverse of integer
> multiplication, with no extra functionality bar the need to allow for
> the remainder. Well shock horror - that's exactly what we've got now
> and exactly what we're throwing away.
> ...

  I don't know about that, I think your just splurting exaggeration here.
Even though I do agree with you, I do not think Guido's big plan is to
remove integer division.
  However, I seem to remember a list of things Tim wrote about python - one
of them that stuck was 'Explicit is better than implicit'.  If I give
integer arguments to the / operator, I fully expect integer division to
occur.  If I want float I'll ask for it, explicitly.
  Either way, python will still be my language of choice.

  Glen.




From joonas at olen.to  Wed Jul 18 10:00:12 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:00:12 GMT
Subject: how saving/retreiving python code from DB ?
References: <3B559274.6B66A372@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B559712.F02D2784@olen.to>

vincent delft wrote:
> 
> I'm looking for a module that allow us to store/import python code into
> DB (bsddb for example) instead of a file.
> 
> like "import" retreives coding in flat files, is there a way to retreive
> coding for a DB ?
> something like :
>     db.open('db')
>     db.dbimport('module1')
>     print module1.test()
> 
> where 'time' whas previously save into the DB as a Python code :
> class module1:
>     def test(self):
>         print "work"

imp module should do the trick
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-imp.html


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 05:59:15 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 11:59:15 +0200
Subject: Validating XML-parser using XML Schema?
References: <REf_6.296$Psn.176981504@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <j4ofr5ug0c.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> writes:

> Are there any validating XML-parsers out there using XML Schema instead of
> DTD?

You can try XSV: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/xsv-status.html

Regards,
Martin




From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Fri Jul 27 19:04:58 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:04:58 +0100
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

David C. Ullrich wrote:

> >> Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is the set {{},{{}}}
> >
> >Tut. You're failing to distinguish interface from implementation.
> 
> Tut what? If you read more than one paragraph you see that my
> point was exactly that when we say that Z is not strictly a
> subset of R that's an irrelevant implemenation detail.

You said "Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is ..."
and gave one possible implementation. It's by no means
the only one, as I'm sure you know; but you didn't say
so.

> >I'm pretty sure you already know all this, but it's worth
> >saying explicitly. :-)
> 
> Probably the fact that I _did_ say explicitly that there
> are several different "standard" ways to implement integers
> and reals is what makes you suspect I know this, eh? Very
> astute of you.

I appear to have given offence, and I'm very sorry for
that. What I actually said is that because you said explicitly
that there are several ways to implement integers and reals,
you almost certainly are well aware that there are also
several ways to implement natural numbers.

I was just concerned that some people might conceivably
misunderstand you to be saying, as Kronecker didn't :-),
that God made the von Neumann implementation of the
natural numbers and all else is the work of man.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From sill at optonline.net  Mon Jul 23 01:05:55 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 05:05:55 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <6BL67.17641$EP6.4530210@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lnc42.1qq.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 02:02:42 GMT, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
> 
> "Rainy" <sill at optonline.net> wrote in message
> news:slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill at sill.silmarill.org...
>> Hello,
>>
>> My program (http://silmarill.org/cymbaline/cymbaline/cymbaline.py -
> yes,
>> it's repeated 3 times, that's not an error) works fine in 2.1 but
> exits
>> silently in 2.0 - no traceback, no errors, nothing. One possibility
> I checked
>> for is except (something): sys.exit() and I don't have anything like
> that here.
>> What else could it be?
> 
> The only major innovation of 2.1 that I remember is nested scopes,
> which only operate if you 'import' them.  Maybe one of the minor fixes
> is saving you.  No one is going to read 100s of lines for you, so I
> suggest adding print statements to see where you get to and what
> values are changed.  Start in the if main section.
> 
> 
> 

Well, I'm asking in a general way, i.e. why could there be no traceback or
error? This is not right. I mean, if a program runs into a problem, it should
print some sort of feedback, at worst, a segfault? I haven't run into cases
like this before when *NOTHING* is printed. In general, what sort of errors
just quit silently?

-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 30 18:44:48 2001
From: ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com (ChuckEsterbrook at yahoo.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:44:48 GMT
Subject: Colon and underscores
References: <39506f84.0107280205.1638011@posting.google.com> <mailman.996348470.8158.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b65e293.33539708@news.mindspring.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:24:21 -0700, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>Igor wrote:
>> Why__ do __Python__ programs __need to __look__ like __swarms__ of
>> __underscores ? Is it OK that one must dig in underscores instead of
>> having a normal English word for private symbols, for example?
>
>You are not supposed to invoke these methods directly. The __ makes that
>clear.

How do I get the name of a class of an object? obj.class.name doesn't
work. Neither does name(class(obj))

obj.__class__.__name__ is the only way I know how.

I don't think octuple underscores and CP4E are compatible.


-Chuck



From simonb at webone.com.au  Thu Jul 12 00:00:47 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 14:00:47 +1000
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
References: <mailman.994903409.23635.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4D20EF.3060507@webone.com.au>

i don't want to see any more versions of python.
ITS FINISHED
AND I LOVE IT RIGHT NOW
if you want more then make a new language.


Delaney, Timothy wrote:

>There are a (relatively) large number of enhancements to the Python language
>coming up which *will* break code compatibility.
>
>I would like to provoke some discussion on a suggestion.
>
>A new major version, Python 3.000 ;) is introduced.
>
>Python 3.x will contain mandatory semantic and syntax changes.
>
>Python 2.x will always maintain 100% syntax and semantic compatibility with
>Python 2.1.
>
>The mandatory version for all __future__ statements will be set to 3.0. This
>includes nested scopes.
>
>__future__ statements will be available in 2.x for all incompatible changes
>in 3.0.
>
>This has the following advantages:
>
>1. 2.x is guaranteed backwards compatible for things such as int/int
>division.
>2. Code can be made to work with both 2.x and 3.0 with appropriate
>__future__ statements.
>3. The code base for 2.x and 3.0 can be identical, except for the sole
>difference of the version number.
>
>This obviously needs to be fleshed out, and possibly turned into a PEP, but
>I think this would offset many of the worries people have about the changes
>that are being made.
>
>Tim Delaney
>Avaya Australia
>+61 2 9352 9079
>



From laurent.szyster at q-survey.be  Tue Jul  3 16:17:27 2001
From: laurent.szyster at q-survey.be (Laurent Szyster)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:17:27 +0200
Subject: Problems with thread state
References: <mailman.994152665.10869.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B422857.F1050215@q-survey.be>

"Martin Sj?gren" wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to write an OpenSSL module for Python (purely in C) and
> I've run into a big problem.

There's allready a Python binding for OpenSSL: M2Crypto. Combining
Medusa and M2Crypto is the fastest I can think of to develop an SSL
network client or server.

> My understanding of the inner workings of Python isn't that big, so please
> help me out here.
> 
> Seeing as a call to SSL_connect() might block, I surrounded the call to it
> by Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS. (...)

OpenSSL has non-blocking IO API calls.


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 17 09:13:36 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:13:36 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com> <cp7kxb351p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9l0sc8.2nh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cp1ynf3da9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> >I also don't want to fork the code base.  
> 
> Does that imply that you sare no longer interested in making 
> radical changes to Python, such as case-insensitive identifiers
> mentioned in CP4E?

I still have the same end goal, but I believe there must be a way to
obtain it without too much disturbance.  Case-sensitivity, for
example, may be a tool feature rather than a language feature, or it
may be a user option or a langage-level choice.  (Not that I've
figured out exactly how to do this, but TeachScheme makes this an
option.)  Note that case-sensitivity is also controversial: the Alice
folks found it a problem, but the VPython folks have not confirmed
this (while they did confirm the integer division trap).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 15:46:51 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 15:46:51 -0400
Subject: Failing gracefully when installed Python is too old?
References: <7MF47.17793$B7.2997540@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <etdu20cr710.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

> Is there any way to check the version at compile time?

You could have a wrapper module called at the start of your application
that just checks the version, and fails if need be, and imports the main
module if not.

Alex.


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Mon Jul 30 10:20:01 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:20:01 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au> <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m121m.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b617133.1013412@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m3ssq.1c5.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b62c8c4.2448381@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m61e6.1jof.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3b6409e0.2079581@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b645f76.747435355@wa.news.verio.net> <eppstein-CF33D7.22131829072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3b656c48.1441199@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:13:18 -0700, David Eppstein
<eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>In article <3b645f76.747435355 at wa.news.verio.net>,
> bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:
>
>> ISTM that thinking of bit twiddling as operating on integers
>> is not clean conceptually. I.e., I think there is an implicit
>> coercion to a set type for the twiddle operation and then implicitly
>> back to integer again when supposedly twiddling two integers
>> with a binary twiddling operation (same for unary, of course).
>
>Bit-twiddling operations like bitwise xor are generally not nice continuous 
>operations on (binary representations of) real numbers, e.g. because 
>0.11111... and 1.00000... are the same as real numbers but very different 
>as bitstrings.
>
>However, I think bit twiddling is nice and continuous if instead you use 
>2-adic numbers (overcondensed tutorial: 2-adic integers are binary numbers 
>where the bit sequence goes to infinity to the left instead of to the 
>right, e.g. 3 1/4 = .....000011.01 -- just apply usual 2's complement 
>arithmetic to these sequences and everything works).
>
>Of course, this doesn't do much for your attempt to make this thread 
>relevant to Python again...

The discontinuities in bit twiddling are certainly relevant to
programming in general: There's a person elsewhere wondering why
his FFT-based image format is giving bizarre results, and the
answer has a lot to do with the discontinuity of the n-th bit
of x. (He's packing several channels into one number before
doing the FFT - now discontinuities mean that small numeric
errors give huge errors in the decoded channels.)

Of course a Python programmer wouldn't do that...

>David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
>eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


David C. Ullrich


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 19:28:46 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:28:46 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
In-Reply-To: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In message <3B6481DB.C5AEA46 at ActiveState.com>, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> writes
....
>I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. C became popular between
>twenty and thirty years ago. Its current popularity is a result of that
>early boost. Python is not typically used for "systems programming." I
>think of systems programming as the programming that goes into building
>the heart of an operating system or relational database etc.
C Lasts because it fills its niche pretty well.
>> > * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
>> >into "Servlets" and "EJBs"
>> 
>> Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.
>
>Java is not much better at that than Tcl or Python.
>

not at the output side, but Java is good for those anal ists who like to
type everything.

>> >
>> > * Perl was the defacto way to do sysadmining when sed and awk ran out
>> >of steam
>> 
>> so C wasn't ever that needed?
>
>For system administration? I would say "not much". Systems programming
>and system administration are two different thing.
>

you're reaching here.


>>...
>> > * Visual Basic and Tcl were the only easy way to make GUIs for their
>> >respective platforms for a long time
>> 
>> This is just nonsense. There are many ways to do CGI and even more ways
>> to do guis. You neglect all those other semi-proprietary languages. The
>> H***card one is an example. Even if you restrict Tcl to unix, Tcl is
>> only a scripting language. The Tk extension is what makes Tcl/Tk into a
>> gui platform. 
>
>Right. And Tcl became popular while it was only possible to program Tk
>in that one language and it lost popularity when Tk became popular in
>Python, Perl etc. That goes to the heart of my argument. Tcl's
>popularity was a side effect of the popularity of its platform. Expect
>was another driver for Tcl's popularity.
>
>> ... Visual basic is promoted by M$, Delphi is not and has as
>> many if not more adherents.
>
>Delphi came years after Visual Basic. Really, if Microsoft did not
>invent Visual Basic as a GUI-building technology the Basic language
>would be long-since dead. In fact you could argue that it is because
>Visual Basic is becoming less and less Basic-like.
>

so one or two years is important. Python came before and where is it;
like quality, temporal precedence isn't really the thing which
determines goodness.

>>...
>> The above is a list of languages; all are thriving. 
>
>Not all of them are thriving but all of them gained popularity based on
>a particular environment or niche programming task. Sometimes the
>environment got generalized (Tk and soon Visual Basic) and sometimes the
>language outgrew the environment (C). But not once did a language carve
>out its own niche based purely on technical merits (as you claim). If
>Python does so it will be the first.
>
>> ... For some more nearly
>> dead languages try simula, simscript etc. What was that wonderful
>> rebarbative predecessor of m4 called?
>
>I wasn't trying to be comprehensive. There are thousands of languages
>out there. I was demonstrating that the major languages that make up the
>modern computing landscapes did so by grabbing on to a niche or a
>particular task.
>
>>....
>> I consider the above to be an assertion. I certainly don't know the true
>> number of regular Python users now or in the past. Perhaps we could do
>> some comparative newsgroup posting analysis to get some idea of who's
>> programming/interested in what language. But all of the little languages
>> would be as noise to SQL and Cobol (even if you count them as languages)
>> in terms of the total code volume and economic significance.
>
>So your point is that SQL and Cobol carved out their large market shares
>by being technically wonderful and wonderfully stable? I find that
>extremely hard to believe. Look at the growth in the SQL standard. Look
>at the quality of the Cobol language.

evolutionarily the only good dinosaurs are chickens. SQL, Cobol and the
like were there at the right time. If Python/Tcl/VB et al are to succeed
as languages they have to have a real edge. All of these languages are
Turing complete; therefore they can only really be distinguished using
other criteria such as ease of use, matching with the problem space etc
etc. It's pretty stupid to criticize C when it's the main vehicle for
Python. 


>
>I'm waiting for you to point out a language that was so great
>technically that it became very popular without hooking on to some
>particular niche or platform or at least having a company with a
>billion-dollar valuation behind it. This is a real problem for Python.
>It has no big company and only tiny niches.
....
There are no such languages. It's pretty stupid to get hooked into this
language war. Python loses to C every time if you only consider speed. C
loses to Python if you only consider ease of use. These languages are
fit in certain areas in others they are just wrong.

I have programmed translators in Fortran. It was stupid in your terms as
Fortran is an inferior language. At the time it was the highest level
language we had.


-- 
Robin Becker



From paul at boddie.net  Tue Jul 24 05:28:12 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 02:28:12 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in message news:<5E877.23798$EP6.5677355 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>...
> 
> This problem, though worse in a way with the division change, is
> generic to all language changes.  To run newly written code under old
> versions of the interpreter, you have to eschew *all* features added
> after the oldest version you want to support.  For 1.5.2, this means
> list comprehensions, augmented assignments, nested scopes, iterators,
> generators, type-class unification features, and what ever else is
> next added.

I assert that list comprehensions, nested scopes, generators and
type-class unification features are interesting, but not compelling
enough functionality to persuade most developers to upgrade. Augmented
assignment and iterators are arguably more compelling, but one is
hardly taking on the role of "computer language hermit" by rejecting
them in Python.

> For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will be int/int
> and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and floor(float/float)
> instead.  Only write int//int or float/float.  With the tokenizer
> module, it will then be easy to change all instances of int//int to
> int/int (old meaning).  It should even even be possible to have
> package installers check sys.version and do this conversion on site as
> needed.  For newly written code, the harder problem will be to not use
> any of the other neat new features, which mostly *cannot* be
> automatically back converted.

I don't think the most significant problems raised in the currently
predominant discussion of the division operators, for example, have
anything to do with running newer code on older releases, unless you
are indirectly attempting to address the issue of how people running
older releases of Python, because they want the original division
semantics, can actually run the modules and extensions released for
later releases.

"from __past__ import" anyone? ;-)

Paul


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 10:25:05 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:25:05 +0200
Subject: How to run codeobjects in Python?
References: <mailman.995024902.7812.python-list@python.org> <9imphr015u5@enews1.newsguy.com> <3B4FBBD8.45F56742@engcorp.com> <9iorv60pj2@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B50421E.F00DBFD@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <9ipkp501mop@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B50421E.F00DBFD at engcorp.com...
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> >
> > "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote [...]:
> > > Alex, please consider moving closer to the Eastern Standard timezone
> > > so that you may answer my questions more quickly.  What's so special
> > > about Italy anyway?
> >
> > Pasta, of course.  You guys can claim your pizza is as good as Italy's
> > (I'd disagree, but there IS space for debate), but our pasta is still
> > nonpareil -- people who decry spaghetti coding don't know what
> > they're blabbering about!
>
> Ah, but where I live we have maple syrup and, not to far down the

Nolo contendere: Vermont's maple syrup IS one of the things that
make life worth living.  The difference is that I can have it sent to
me and it's just about as good after traveling as when eating it
right in Burlington (back when I worked for IBM) -- indeed I have
a bottle waiting for me for next time I make pancakes.  Too much
of pasta's worth is in the cooking and seasoning for that to work --
yes, you CAN buy real Italian durum wheat spaghetti over there,
but you're unlikely to have the right water, skill, and sauce to get
them to perfection (and _cooked_ pasta doesn't travel well).

The latest issue of the Economist magazine has an in-depth survey
of Italy, and, to balance out the fact that it's mostly about the
woes and challenges of our economics & politics, it starts out
with a Paean titled "What a lovely off place!" that's one of the
sincerest and most enthusiastic summaries I've ever read about
my country (which, like most Italians, I love deeply but at times
can hardly stand:-).  "Few have so brilliant a sense of style and
fashion, so sumptuous a cuisine and cellar, so strong a tradition
of melding hard work with pleasure"... for more, see
http://www.economist.com/surveys/showsurvey.cfm?issue=20010707


Alex





From nperkins7 at home.com  Mon Jul  2 02:35:58 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 06:35:58 GMT
Subject: odd behavior!
References: <6rvvjtoe2f4p8i18rva42guei44f10fp4j@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <iDU%6.390106$eK2.79496104@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

..not sure, but this might help:

at every place where you import a file that may have changed, throw in a
reload..
ie.

import my_mod
reload(my_mod)

imported modules are not automatically re-loaded when their source files are
changed.

you can also reload from the prompt:
>>> reload(..)

..maybe there is a recipe somewhere for an automitic importer that detects
modified files...



"Ben Wolfson" <rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org> wrote in message
news:6rvvjtoe2f4p8i18rva42guei44f10fp4j at 4ax.com...
>
> This looks like output from an attempt to use the Distutils to create a
> source distribution, yes?
>
> C:\Python21>python setup.py sdist
> running sdist
> warning: sdist: missing required meta-data: url
> warning: sdist: manifest template 'MANIFEST.in' does not exist (using
> default file list)
> error: package directory 'newrecshite\registry' does not exist
>
> However, setup.py actually consists of this:
>
> '''
> print 'hi'
> '''
>
> It *used* to contain an import of setup from distutils.core, and called it
> in a sufficiently ill-formed way to produce the above output, but even
> after I changed it, it still produced that output.  In fact, I just ran
the
> same command line with a blank file and got the same thing.  I've been
> having similar problems with other scripts--changing them doesn't actually
> change the behavior of the interpreter in any way.  Deleting .pycs hasn't
> helped.  Any advice?
>
> --
> Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
> Yet when he came down from the mountain, he had not gained any wisdom.
> In no way had he been able to solve the riddle of this story.  And he had
> lost his faith.  But he had discovered that he had an affinity for
> Dixieland music. -- Joe Frank, "The Road to Calvary"




From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 20:01:55 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:01:55 -0400
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ubsm5ncp8.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> writes:

> Here's a new revision of PEP 238.  (...)

I'm sure someone else will find something to comment on, but it looks
good to me.  No suggestions at this point.

One question though - is it anticipated that the items in the Open
section (e.g., the generation of OverflowError) need to be resolved as
part of the PEP process, or will it be postponed until implementation
and then the PEP adjusted?  I'm unlikely to be coding in cases
affected by the decision, and see arguments on both sides, so I don't
have a particular preference.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul  4 10:00:23 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 07:00:23 -0700
Subject: newbie question
References: <3B42A1A3.2A7793CC@gmx.at>
Message-ID: <9hv7ot$fumqj$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

import glob

count = 0

for f in glob.glob(r"f:\python21\lib\*.py"):
    count += len(open(f).readlines())

print count

oops... missed the sub-directory part...

count = [0]

import os

def addUpLines(count, dirName, fileList):
    for f in fileList:
        if f[-3:] == ".py":
            count[0] += len(open("%s%s%s" % (dirName, os.sep,
f)).readlines())
    print dirName, count,'\n\n'
print os.path.walk(r"f:\python21\lib", addUpLines, count)

print count[0]


HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Freller Alex" <alex.freller at gmx.at> wrote in message
news:3B42A1A3.2A7793CC at gmx.at...
> I would like to program a python script that parses a directory and its
> subdirectorys after specific files (*.pl) and count their linenumbers.
>
> thanks,
>
> alex



From nospam at newsranger.com  Thu Jul  5 19:24:41 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 23:24:41 GMT
Subject: GUI problems
References: <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ZG617.8716$Kf3.99257@www.newsranger.com>

Try to create an instance of your fibon_gui class.
Insert the 
fib_gui = fibon_gui(root)
line before
root.mainloop()
Maybe this helps :)

Levi

In article <7b515e0f.0107051455.4194a679 at posting.google.com>, eric_brake says...
>
>Why doesn't this TKinter script work? The blank window will come up,
>but the "quit" button doesn't appear inside it. Thanks for any help.
>
>import dice_gui #ignore this
>from Tkinter import *
>class fibon_gui:
>     def __init__(self, master):
>          frame = Frame(master)
>          frame.pack()
>          button = Button(frame, text="QUIT", fg="red",
>command=frame.quit)
>          button.pack(side=LEFT)
>root = Tk()
>root.title('Play Dice')
>root.mainloop()




From burton_kent at bigfoot.com  Tue Jul 17 13:25:17 2001
From: burton_kent at bigfoot.com (burton_kent at bigfoot.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:25:17 -0000
Subject: SGML and Python
Message-ID: <9j1sdt+monu@eGroups.com>

What's available for SGML and Python?  PyGrove and PySGML are what 
I've found, however, the website at the University of Waterloo where 
they're located seem to always be down.

I need to do validation and correction of incomplete SGML documents.

Thanks.

B




From thomas at xs4all.net  Tue Jul 10 03:16:42 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:16:42 +0200
Subject: Language Shootout
In-Reply-To: <20010710115335.A23435@Vetinari.home>
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net> <3B4A6662.B862792@yahoo.com> <20010710115335.A23435@Vetinari.home>
Message-ID: <20010710091642.T8098@xs4all.nl>

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 11:53:35AM +0800, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:26:44AM +0000, Paul Winkler wrote:
> > Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> > > does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?

[ Fredrik does 'def fib(..); def fib(.., fib=fib, ...); ]

> > That's pretty fast, once I got it to work... but still not as fast as
> > my best one. Yours iis definitely interesting, largely because I
> > don't understand what the hell it does. If I rename one of the fibs
> > and change the appropriate call to use the new name, it still computes
> > fibonacci numbers but performance goes way down as N rises. So you're
> > somehow relying on the duplicated names for speed. That's a pretty
> > weird optimization technique.

Note that there is no reason for the performance to drop dramatically as
long as you change the correct names: you need to change the first
function's name, both 'fib's in the argument list of the second function (so
both 'fib' and 'fib' in 'fib=fib') and all occurances of 'fib' in the second
function's body.

> Ooh, ooh ... I know this one. :-)

> /F's solution makes sure that the code objcet of the first 'fib' is in
> the local namespace of the second 'fib' function. This speeds up lookups
> to it significantly (local variables are implemented as a dictionary,
> globals are not).

No, that's reversed :) Globals *are* a dictionary, locals are not. If a name
is known to be local (by the compiler), and the local namespace can't be
modified indirectly (by 'from .. import *' or a bare 'exec',) the variable
access is compiled into a simple array index, which is much faster than a
dictionary lookup. If you put a bare, useless 'exec' in the function, you'll
likely see a dramatic performance drop :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 17:01:03 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:01:03 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <3b4b4a70$0$319$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107110044370.19520-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Neil Macneale wrote:

>You can't compare communism and capitalism.  One is a political structure
>while the other economic structure.  It makes more sense to say that you
>perfer Capitalism over Socialism, or Democracy over Communism.  I am for
>democracy, and socialism, so I'm going with GPL :-)
>
>Thanks for the lively discussion... Neil Macneale

In fact, 'capitalism' in software is just a greedy kind the same.
Everyone, who worked on GPLed software received plenty in return, because
information could be _copied_. If you create proprietary software, you can
buy some tools and can't afford others, maybe more appropriate to the
task. You can not get components easily, etc.

And those, who just use GPLed software are not totally parasites. They are
testers, critics, reviewers, _buyers_ of the books, clients of the
consultant services etc. And all are happy.

What is the reason to turn this into nightmare of serial numbers,
timebombs, shareware notices, hardware keys, one-click patents, etc?!

There was a tax for smoke pipes at some time in the tsarist Russia history
;-) Free software is our atmosphere with enough oxygen for everyone. Why
pollute is with dark and closed things? Microsoft world accuses GPL
of being "viral". That is why they all have germetic suits on their
software ;-)


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 10, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "<CTRL>-<ALT>-<DEL> is the key to success" _/




From neil at qualica.com  Fri Jul 20 03:52:14 2001
From: neil at qualica.com (neil bromehead)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 00:52:14 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost> <X%M57.379696$p33.7613309@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <50220745.0107192352.70ae1012@posting.google.com>

"Greg Jorgensen" <gregj at pdxperts.com> wrote in message news:<X%M57.379696$p33.7613309 at news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>...
> "Patrick W." <hard2bsome1 at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > To get a better understanding of which languages it benefits us to
> > learn and teach. Also to get a better understanding of which languages
> > are best used in the "real world", given a set of tradeoffs between
> > development time and program performance.
> >
> > Sounds reasonable enough to me.
> 
> Discussion of languages and their applications in teaching or professional
> work is fine, I'm all for that. But how does comparing benchmarks of Perl
> vs. Python help in that regard? Serious programmers know that such
> discussions are often wrong, usually irrelevant, and about as useful as
> comparing the speed of a Toyota Camry vs. a Honda Accord. The
> less-than-serious programmers apparently find deep meaning in these
> comparisons; apparently they believe they must find the "best" language
> because they can learn and use only one.

it all depends on how you drive !!!!!


From andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  Wed Jul 18 19:06:50 2001
From: andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au (Andrew MacIntyre)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:06:50 +1000 (EST)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <mt7kx6b3v0.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.OS2.4.32.0107190901450.4648-100000@central>

On 18 Jul 2001, Johann Hibschman wrote:

> I get:
>
> cc -O2       0.28
> cc           0.62
> ocamlopt     1.26   (compiled)
> ocaml        9.42   (interpreted)
> perl        28.9
> python      66.8
>
> Hm.  I'm beginning to wonder if I compiled python with -O2 or not.
> Plus, I'm becoming more and more fond of ocaml.

I noticed a couple of recent comments on python-dev about the assert()s
not being generally deactivated (by defining NDEBUG) when the releases
were built (at least for Unix - I think Windows was OK).

Given the assert() instrumentation being littered through the Python
source, it would be interesting to quantify what its impact is (I haven't
done this yet for the OS/2 port, but plan to with 2.1.1)

--
Andrew I MacIntyre                     "These thoughts are mine alone..."
E-mail: andrew.macintyre at aba.gov.au    (work) | Snail: PO Box 370
        andymac at bullseye.apana.org.au  (play) |        Belconnen  ACT  2616
        andymac at pcug.org.au           (play2) |        Australia




From uberto at usa.net  Fri Jul 27 08:57:44 2001
From: uberto at usa.net (Uberto Barbini)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 05:57:44 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995739157.3632.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <c995f567.0107270457.38ff7a52@posting.google.com>

> Has case sensitivity been found to be a significant
> issue?
> 
> "Not once." 
> 
> Even surprised me a bit.

I'm a Pascal guy, so I have code insensitive in the blood.
But I switch to Python without any problem, for the other benefits.
Anyway I teach Ansi-C at University of Milan and my experience is
different from
Sheila King's.

I have 80 students and about 50% of first-day problems are
misspellings, many of them include case-sensitive.
They disappers after 3 or 4 lessons so it's not a big issue.

In my working experience case sensitive is a problem only because you
can't pronounce the case of words. At least do you know enough of
language-specific case convenction than you can figure it by yourself,
but I don't understand why someone included it at first ;).

Bye Uberto


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:44:56 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:44:56 -0500
Subject: Microsoft "application programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3F6B04576458B30E.A2F893557EAD5040.AA049CF97992BC8F@lp.airnews.net>

In article <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>> * C++ was promoted by Microsoft as the standard way to do GUIs on
>>Windows
>
>it still is, although it is/will now become .NET aware
			.
			.
			.
Or maybe C#, depending on what one means by "promoted",
"standard", and ".NET" (certainly Microsoft sends abundant
mixed messages).
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul  7 14:17:04 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 14:17:04 -0400
Subject: INFO PLEASE
References: <tkegekf7q4oi4a@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <etdr8vs8uzj.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>

Did you download the source tree?  The idle script is in
Python-2.1/Tools/idle/. 

HTH.
Alex.


From jblazi at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 23 04:53:33 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:53:33 +0200
Subject: Opening a file with Python
Message-ID: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com>

I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double clicks
on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the file.
What have I to do?
This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.

Janos Blazi




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul  7 23:28:43 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 03:28:43 GMT
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org> <tkfbtu25p6mrf5@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3b47cfba.1333358077@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:55:56 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
>I don't see why it couldn't be of much more utility. The big problem is
>performance, since you're talking about a two level interpreter. The last
>time I saw anything quite that slow was a /360 running a 1410 emulator
>running a 650 simulator.
I am getting the impression there's a lot of OF's around here ;-)
I remember when you could go to any IBM office and get an armload
of system and programming manuals just for the asking. The 650 manual
was the first computer manual I ever looked at ;-)

>
>Very interesting idea. The trouble is, I can't see it being really small.
>Making it cleanly extensible seems to require some of the features that
>support extendability, such as namespaces (Forth dictionaries), etc.
>
>Anyone want to work on it - either technically or politically?
Well, the nuclear waste problem is probably the most eternal thing
we've managed to create yet, so there ought to be application
for 'Eternal' somehow with that ;-/

Actually, I think there are people very concerned about the viability
of digital archives from the point of view of survivability of
the access methods and devices. I'd bet the Library of Congress has
folks worrying about this.

Maybe with genetic engineering we can design something as persistent
as a cockroach with 'Eternal' stored in its DNA. Come to think of it,
maybe SETI is looking in the wrong place for messages ;-)




From chapman at bioreason.com  Wed Jul 25 11:41:42 2001
From: chapman at bioreason.com (Mitch Chapman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:41:42 -0600
Subject: Python for Palm OS
References: <20010725.4442652@mis.configured.host>
Message-ID: <3B5EE8B6.749FF2B@bioreason.com>

Robert Roberts wrote:
> I have heard several times that there is a version of Python for the palm
> os.  Have palm version 3.5.  Can anyone direct to the proper download?

http://www.endeavors.com/pippy/

-- 
Mitch Chapman
Mitch.Chapman at bioreason.com


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 11:36:45 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:36:45 -0500
Subject: module ns access vs. local access vs. builtin methods
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107161114170.18588-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107161114170.18588-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <15187.2573.31022.67380@beluga.mojam.com>

    Roman> I've got interesting profile results which show that
    Roman> using string methods is faster than other optimisation tricks:

    [string.split vs. ssplit=string.split vs s.split]

    Roman> a3 is clear winner, which probably mean that calling methods of
    Roman> built-in types is faster than calling functions.

The string method version is guarateed to be the fastest, no matter what you
do with string.split because in 2.x string.split(s) is implemented as
s.split().  No matter what you do with the string module you're going to
work harder than just calling the split method directly.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From engsol at teleport.com  Tue Jul 31 12:58:46 2001
From: engsol at teleport.com (engsol at teleport.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:58:46 GMT
Subject: error occur when using py2exe
References: <mailman.996506697.27250.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b66e351.4492439@news.onemain.com>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:23:02 +0800 (CST), "sdf" <wqh-2 at 263.net> wrote:

>I type the following,but error appear.

>I put the the myscript.py file  under d:/python21/program/

>I think I must give a directory to the setup ,but when I use

>setup(name="myscript",scripts=["/program/myscript.py"],)

>error also jump out. How can I fix it 

Don't you need to 'escape' the path slashes?

"C:\\dir\\file.py" for example?

engsol (python newbie)


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Fri Jul 27 19:50:25 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:50:25 -0700
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m3bt8.114.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com> <cpzo9q16ux.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <270720011650255717%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <cpzo9q16ux.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> I don't know of a portable way to generate -0.0 in Python; on my Linux
> box, simply writing -0.0 does it, but not on my Windows box.

One my PowerPC machine (dual 533 running
Python 2.1 (#1, 04/22/01, 11:06:25) 
[GCC Apple DevKit-based CPP 6.0alpha] on darwin1
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

The simple way does not make (or at least doesn't print) a negative 0.0:
>>> -0.0 
0.0

But I'm suddenly unsure whether that is an issue with the display
process or the value produced by -0.0.  

Nor am I smart enough after today to find out.  [Spent the day tending
a sick ethernet adaptor by installing packet filters on other
machines.]

  --John


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Mon Jul  2 19:43:43 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 23:43:43 GMT
Subject: Python for Commercial Games?
References: <9haoiv$jnv$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <tjq5huamq17k11@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k21pe.aqd.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

Fri, 29 Jun 2001 16:58:08 -0700 in <tjq5huamq17k11 at news.supernews.com>,
John Roth <johnroth at ameritech.net> spake:
>  However, you're not going to do any modern, graphics intensive
> game completely in Python.

  I disagree.  You can indeed do graphics-intensive games entirely in
Python.  I'm currently working on Umbra
<http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/Umbra/>, a roguelike RPG with 3-D
graphics and a simple interface.  Doing 3D on the Tk canvas is very slow
(I get ~1 FPS in complex areas on my machine now, and it's all wasted in
the drawing methods) and my placeholder graphics are cheesy as all hell,
but the engine's holding up just fine.  When I replace the canvas with
OpenGL, it'll look as good as any commercial game...  I've already tried
a few independant test cases, and it's fast and *sharp*-looking.

  And this is a one-man weekend project.  If a commercial project can't
outdo me on the "shiny bits", they don't deserve to be in business (I'll
still make a better game, though).

  Pygame <http://www.pygame.org/> provides some really nifty graphics
and sound libraries, including an OpenGL canvas now, and there are
several games in the Projects area...  The applications are entirely
Python, and just use the native-code SDL library as components (and no,
I don't think that's "cheating" - Python itself is, shockingly enough,
implemented in C).

  Working in two languages, or calling a high-level scripting language
from low-level base code, is almost always a bad idea, in my experience.
Speaking from  hard lessons learned from embedding Java, you're better
off working in the high-level language and using a minimal number of
low-level components, which should be kept as single-purpose and
stateless as possible.

>  You could do a wizard text adventure,
> however. I don't think there's any market for them at the moment.
> <sigh>

  The market for text adventures is a weird case these days: there are
still many fans and writers in the genre (see rec.arts.int-fiction and
rec.games.int-fiction), and there's been some revival of the form for
wireless devices with limited graphics capabilities; there'd be more if
these devices had real keyboards or graffiti.  I play IF on my Palm
Pilot all the time.

  I suspect that Infocom-style interactive fiction, with good production
values and nice packaging, could sell again just fine.  You'd have to
sell it outside of most computer game shops, though, because the games
publishing and distribution networks just won't carry it, and the games
magazines won't review it (they're all run by and for hyperactive
adolescent males (of all ages))...

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From dedalus at yifan.net  Mon Jul 23 11:00:05 2001
From: dedalus at yifan.net (Duilio Foschi)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:00:05 GMT
Subject: python for AS400 ?
Message-ID: <3b5c39a3.65134326@news.libero.it>

is there a python version for AS400 ?

Thank you

Duilio Foschi


From mikael at isy.liu.se  Wed Jul 25 04:22:44 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:22:44 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
In-Reply-To: <69vsltslttpgrpfbiqkq4kqmaf5aiitgrp@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010725102238.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 25-Jul-2001 Stephen Horne wrote:
 >  I don't mind rationals, but they are a continuous measure. 

No, they are not. The reals are continuous. The rationals are a subset
of the reals. Don't let the fact that there are infinitely many rationals
in every finite interval fool you to believe that the rationals are 
continuous.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    25-Jul-2001
Time:    10:18:19

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul 13 18:46:02 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:46:02 -0700
Subject: [Python-Dev] RE: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B4F6E98.733B90DC@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F7A2A.5C29C909@ActiveState.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
> Please don't mix 8-bit strings with Unicode literals: 8-bit
> strings don't carry any encoding information, so providing encoding
> information cannot be stored anywhere.

First, we could store the information if we want.

Second, whether we choose to store the information or not, the point is
that the source file should not mix encodings.

> Comments, OTOH, are part of the program text, so they have to be ASCII
> just like the Python source itself.

The Python interpreter allows non-ASCII characters in comments.

> Hmm, good point, but hard to implement. We'd probably need a two
> 
> phase decoding for this to work:
> 
> 1. decode the given Unicode literal encoding
> 2. decode any Unicode escapes in the Unicode string

That doesn't sound so hard. :)

> I think that allowing one directive per file is the way to go,
> but I'm not sure about the exact position. Basically, I think it
> should go "near" the top, but not necessarily before any doc-string
> in the file.

If Guido is violently opposed to having it before the docstring then we
could allow it either before or after the docstring to give tools time
to catch up.

I'm not sure what tools in particular have the problem, though. Any tool
that uses introspection or inspect.py will be fine.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 23:28:11 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:28:11 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995908101.25359.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5CEB4B.BF9F33D5@alcyone.com>

Tim Peters wrote:

> Neither would I, but in the context snipped away I was replying to
> someone
> who seemed to think that it was, but misunderstood what JS actually
> does.
> Even bad arguments should be accurate <wink>.

No argument there.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Triumph cannot help being cruel.
\__/ Jose Ortega y Gasset
    Alcyone Systems' Daily Planet / http://www.alcyone.com/planet.html
 A new, virtual planet, every day.


From joconnor at cybermesa.com  Tue Jul 31 09:14:06 2001
From: joconnor at cybermesa.com (Jay O'Connor)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:14:06 +0000
Subject: simple question:the count of array
References: <mailman.996583454.15942.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B66AF1E.39363654@cybermesa.com>

sdf wrote:
> 
> >>> a=['a','b','c']
> >>> b=a.count()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in ?
>     b=a.count()
> TypeError: count() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)
> >>>
> 
> then how I get the number of a,I mean how much
> values in a,in this case it should be 3
> _________________________________________


I'm not sure what "count()" does, but to get the number of values in an
array, use len()

b = len (a)

b is now 3

-- 
Jay O'Connor
joconnor at cybermesa.com
http://www.cybermesa.com/~joconnor


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:25:23 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:25:23 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <spo1mtsajq7lfk1j1srrbsplmu8oojo6gd@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEJHLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Courageous]
> They've [QKS] developed a general purpose Virtual Machine which happens
> to run Python quite a bit faster than Python's.

Cool!  Can we take a test drive yet?  I've seen very little about this of
substance in the past, but don't doubt that Smalltalk optimization pros have
the background to pull it off (provided they also have the backing to
complete it).




From timr at probo.com  Tue Jul 10 02:03:37 2001
From: timr at probo.com (Tim Roberts)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:03:37 -0700
Subject: Gotcha in replace
References: <mailman.994564693.26957.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <do5lkto53iseto6ad0jcbljjciti0odoss@4ax.com>

Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at devis.com> wrote:
>
>While I was working on some database scripting, I got bit by this 
>behavior in replace.
>
> >>> y = "insert into blah values ('hello','','','','bye')"
> >>> y.replace(",'',", ",' ',")
>"insert into blah values ('hello',' ','',' ','bye')"
> >>>
>
>Notice that the second matching set of ",''," characters are not 
>replaced probably because the first and second matching sets overlap on 
>the last and first character, respectively.
>...
>Is this known behavior and I just missed it; or is this a bug in replace?

It is known behavior.  The behavior makes more sense when you consider the
implementation of "replace"; it is essentially implemented as "split"
followed by "join":

  def replace(self,from,to):
    return to.join(self.split(from))
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 23:33:19 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 13:33:19 +1000
Subject: AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute
References: <74cc9702.0107200525.64189e36@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B58F7FF.82B4B196@student.gu.edu.au>

phillip wrote:
> 
> Hi

Hi.

> I have the following code :
> 
> from Tkinter import *
> import Image, ImageTk
> 
> class UI(Label):
> 
>     def __init__(self, master=None):
> 
>         im = Image.open('c:\\tm.gif')
>         self.image = ImageTk.PhotoImage(im)
>         Label.__init__(self, master, image=self.image, bd=0)
>
>     def getSetupValues():
>             return {'Name': 'Phillip'}

Well the above should be "def getSetupValues(self)".

> if __name__ == "__main__":
> 
>     root = Tk()
>     root.geometry('800x600')
>     root.title('Malaysian Web Site Installation')
>     ui = UI(root).pack()

Now this line gives me a lot of problems. What you're doing is creating
an instance of UI, calling it's pack() function and assigning the
returned value of None to ui. What you want is

      ui = UI(root)
      ui.pack()

This wouldn't have mattered, except later you're trying to call ui's
getSetupValues().

>     root.leftFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
> relief=RAISED, bd=4)
>     root.rightFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
> relief=RAISED, bd=4)
>     setup = ui.getSetupValues()
>     for eachKey in root.setup.keys():

*chuckles* Make up your mind. Either setup or root.setup.

>         Label(root.leftFrame, text=eachKey, bg='gray50',
> anchor=E).pack()
>         Label(root.rightFrame, text=setup[eachKey], bg='gray50',
> anchor=E).pack()
>     root.rightFrame.pack(side=RIGHT)
>     root.rightFrame.pack_propagate(0)
>     root.leftFrame.pack(side=LEFT)
>     root.leftFrame.pack_propagate(0)
>     root.mainloop()
> 
> Everything is fine if i put the function in the __init__ function,
> which is not a good idea, I want to keep the code compartmentilized
> nicely.
> 
> any ideas?
> 
> Phill

Pretty good if I do say. Some suggestions:

Instead of putting all this into the "if __init__ == '__main__' section,
you may want to create a class that does all this, with a mainloop() or
run() method that wraps the self.root.mainloop function, 

class Myapp():
	def __init__(self):
		self.root = Tk()
		self.root.geometry('800x600')
		self.root.title('Malaysian Web Site Installation')
		self.root.ui = UI(root)
		self.root.ui.pack()
		self.root.leftFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
		self.root.rightFrame = Frame(width=400, height=600, bg='gray50',
relief=RAISED, bd=4)
		self.setup = self.ui.getSetupValues()
		for eachKey in self.setup.keys():
			self.root.leftFrame.label = Label(self.root.leftFrame, text=eachKey,
bg='gray50',
anchor=E)
			self.root.leftFrame.label.pack()
			self.root.rightFrame.label = Label(self.root.rightFrame,
text=setup[eachKey], bg='gray50',anchor=E)
			self.root.rightFrame.label.pack()
# Note that I've embedded label into self.root.rightFrame/etc so I can
access it later if I want to.
		self.root.rightFrame.pack(side=RIGHT)
		self.root.rightFrame.pack_propagate(0)
		self.root.leftFrame.pack(side=LEFT)
		self.root.leftFrame.pack_propagate(0)
	def run(self):
		self.root.mainloop()
and then

if __init__ == '__main__':
	root = Myapp()
	root.run()

This way if there are some non-GUI testing that you want to add, you can
keep it seperate from your other code (which is all GUI-building.).
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From jaspervp at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  2 18:12:49 2001
From: jaspervp at hotmail.com (jasper van putten)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 00:12:49 +0200
Subject: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?)
References: <mailman.994100826.19440.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hqrmi$dfa$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Roman Suzi wrote:

> It seems I start to understand database concerns of Mr. Wilson the second.
> 
> Once we tried 3 databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Interbase) to suit our task.
> And for every database (we stopped at Interbase) there was Python support.
> 
> However, my collegues were not satisfied with it. One somplain was that in
> ASP/IIS it is "very easy" to receive a "recordset" from database and then
> apply it in different situations in the ASP-page, because recordset is an
> object and even subqueries could be made without quering DB again.
> 
<snip>

you can use ADO and DAO in python too.  
there is some documention about in "python programming on win32".  I think 
that there was a site about it too somewhere.


Jasper



From dickvan at quicktel.com  Sat Jul 28 07:03:37 2001
From: dickvan at quicktel.com (Dick Van Kirk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 04:03:37 -0700
Subject: Newbie Q - Py for Linux on Disk??
Message-ID: <554a464b.0107280303.1c0be0f6@posting.google.com>

Please tell me where I can purchase Python for Linux on disk that I
can quickly and easily install ??
Thank you
dickvan at quicktel.com


From jknapka at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 18:11:14 2001
From: jknapka at earthlink.net (Joseph A. Knapka)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:11:14 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> writes:
> 
> > The moment using "tools" with Python becomes an essential part of
> > creating Python programs, the language is dead to me. All of this
> > pent-up rancor of mine comes with my open contempt for Lisp environ-
> > ments which more or less simply require you to use Emacs.
> 
> I think you've got that backwards.  The whole point of putting case
> insensitivity in the tools it *not* to force you to use the tool.
> 
> The language would remain case-sensitive, and you would be free to use
> it that way in any tool you chose, but there would be a separate tool
> available that enforced case-preserving case-sensitivity for those who
> prefer it.

But in a previous message,

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>> I would very much prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools
>> that enforce *uniform* case usage.
> 
> And that's of course what I have in mind.

I'm confused. Are you proposing:

(1) A case *sensitive* language (that is, no change),with tools to
enforce case consistency; or

(2) A case *insensitive* language (God forbid), with tools to
enforce case consistency; or

(3) Something else?

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Tue Jul 24 01:49:09 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 08:49:09 +0300
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com> <slrn9ldcug.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <yoxzo9wyvul.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <slrn9lnm9u.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <yoxy9pe98ru.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:

> glad you have found a language that works better for you than Perl

A year ago I had nothing against Perl; it seemed wonderful to have
only one "special purpose" (text processing & extraction) language to
learn, instead of several (awk, sed, whatever). It's still great for
throwaway scripts for log analyzing/whatever. I didn't turn to python
because I had problems with Perl; I looked into it because I like
looking into different languages, and found it superior to perl
(though, like everybody, I was initially suspicious of the whitespace
thing... :-). This is probably what happened to most other pythonistas
as well. 

Perl niche in a nutshell:

line:
while (<>) {
	next line if (something) ;
	dostufffor $_;
}

> seemed to. Hell, if there were no beauty, why am I still using it? ;)

To better exploit your existing skill set? To justify reading all
those entertaining books about the language (I occasionally browse
Programming Perl just for the laughs)?

Speaking of beauty, think of the iterators & generators in
Py2.2... yummy.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org  Sat Jul  7 23:18:20 2001
From: Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org (Scott David Daniels)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 20:18:20 -0700
Subject: [Python-iterators] RE: Meta: PEP discussion (was Re: PEP 255: Simple Generators)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOEJPKJAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993160113.18969.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tkfk7oethtf917@corp.supernews.com>

"Gordon McMillan" <gmcm at hypernet.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.993160113.18969.python-list at python.org...
> Steven D. Majewski wrote:
>
> > My 'suspend value' actually got transformed into returning the
> > tuple
> >  (value, suspended-frame), so to use it in a loop required
> >  something
> > like:
> >
> >  iterf  = function  # don't mung up the global name
> >  while 1:
> >   value, iterf = iterf( args... )
> >   ... # first time, call the function
> >    # all others, call the suspended activation frame
How about the following (to make the loop control obvious):
  iterf  = function  # don't mung up the global name
  while iterf:
     value, iterf = iterf( args... )
     ... # first time, call the function
      # all others, call the suspended activation frame





From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul 10 12:41:49 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 20:41:49 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: getting argument names from a function
In-Reply-To: <6%F27.4784$yh2.453987@weber.videotron.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107102040450.7138-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dan wrote:
> def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
>    print arg1, arg2
>
> is there a way I can get to the arguments of aFunction (i.e. 'arg1' and
> 'arg2')?

def aFunction(arg1, arg2):
   print vars()

aFunction(1, 2)

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From tim.one at home.com  Sat Jul 14 15:37:39 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 15:37:39 -0400
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B502DBA.761D4F69@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[M.-A. Lemburg]
> ...
> I'm not picky about the '='; if people don't want it, I'll
> happily drop it from the PEP. The only reason I think it may be
> worthwhile adding it is because it simply looks right:
>
> directive unicodeencoding = 'latin-1'
>
> rather than
>
> directive unicodeencoding 'latin-1'

The hangup is finding someone who cares enough <0.9 wink> to change the text
and implementation of the directive PEP.  There was no significant debate
about the proposed directive syntax in that, and in years past similar
crusades that did attract debate floundered on the inability to reach
consensus on overall syntax; it's not a good sign that the first proposed
use wanted syntax the PEP doesn't support.

> ...
> Still, if people would like to use Unicode literals for module
> doc-strings, then they should place the directive *before* the
> doc-string accepting that this could break some tools (the PEP
> currently does not restrict the placement of the directive).
> Alternatively, we could allow placing the directive into a
> comment, e.g.
>
> #!/usr/local/python
> #directive unicodeencoding = 'utf-8'
> u"""
>      This is a Unicode doc-string
> """

Another alternative:

#!/usr/local/python
directive unicodeencoding 'utf-8'

__doc__ = u"""
        This is a Unicode doc-string
"""

That is, the module docstring is just the module's __doc__ attr, and that
can be bound explicitly (a trick I've sometimes use for *computed* module
docstrings).




From alet at unice.fr  Thu Jul 26 03:58:59 2001
From: alet at unice.fr (Jerome Alet)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:58:59 +0200
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FCDC3.C8A2AF9E@unice.fr>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
> The hostility of the user community is frightening.

Don't forget than Dictators, Benevolent of not, often die in a lot of
blood because their "user community" is angry ;-)

(just a joke, of course)

Jerome Alet


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul  3 20:50:04 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 20:50:04 -0400
Subject: ADODB.RecordSet bummer ( was Re: Python and DB support (was: Re: Is Python Dead?))
In-Reply-To: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4DF@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <3B422FFC.19351.56EF5A0@localhost>

Thanks, Bjorn.

I regret that when I tried the suggestion I got:

>>> rs.Fields("tableIndex").Value = 42
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "c:\python21\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 357, in 
__setattr__
    apply(self._oleobj_.Invoke, args + (value,) + defArgs)
com_error: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (0, 'ADODB.Field', 
'The operation requested by the application is not supported by the 
provider.', '', 0, -2146825037), None)

Also, there was a mistake in my post (there usually is). I should 
have written the lefthand side using square brackets, as I've have 
seen in a working example somewhere. However, this doesn't work 
either.

>>> rs["tableIndex"] = 42
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "c:\python21\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 348, in 
__getattr__
    raise AttributeError, attr
AttributeError: __setitem__

I did happen to find http://www.e-coli.net/pyado.html. This is 
verbatim almost from that page.

import win32com.client
conn = win32com.client.Dispatch(r'ADODB.Connection')
conn.Open('PROVIDER=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;DATA 
SOURCE=C:\Program Files\WebPASS\webpass.mdb;')
rs = win32com.client.Dispatch(r'ADODB.Recordset')
rs.Open('[URLs]', conn, 1, 3)
rs.Fields("tableIndex").Value = -2
rs.Update()
rs.Close()
conn.Close()

I'm relieved and grateful to be able to say that this works. It 
appears that my problem was with the connection string. The one I 
was using included mention of a "User DSN". Possibly that's the 
problem, I don't know. (Some of us have to live with much greater 
levels of ignorance than others. :o)

Thanks again.

Bill

On 3 Jul 2001, at 17:38, Bjorn Pettersen wrote:

> > From: Bill Bell [mailto:bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca]
> > 
> > [Martelli's address not included since many list members may 
> > already know it.]
> > 
> > Alex Martelli wrote, in part:
> > 
> > > you CAN write rs.Fields("FieldName").Value ... [and] ... I believe
> > > ADO (and much more so, COM:-) deserves a far better language than
> > > Visual Basic... Python, for example!-). 
> > 
> > Yup, me too FWIW. So, as one of this list's most longstanding 
> > newbies, I decided to give the combination a spin.
> > 
> > In VBA it's common to coin the cliche:
> > 
> > with myRecordSet
> > 	.edit
> > 	.fields('myField') = 42
> > 	.update
> > end with
> > 
> > Unfortunately,
> > 
> > >>> import win32com.client
> > >>> rs = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.RecordSet")
> > >>> rs.ActiveConnection = "DSN=WebPASS"
> > >>> rs.Open("[URLs]")
> > >>> rs.Fields("myField") = 42
> > Traceback (SyntaxError: can't assign to function call
> > 
> > Or, is this because I forgot my medication this morning?
> 
> Try
> 
>   rs.Fields("myField").Value = 42
> 
> -- bjorn





From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Sun Jul 15 22:43:32 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 12:43:32 +1000
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9itkh0$bbn1@news1.gtech.com>

Not sure whether either of these links will help, but they do provide some
useful information. The first is an article on selection of a language for
an application, the second is a critique of C++ with comparisons with other
OO languages mentioned:

http://www.adaic.org/docs/reports/lawlis/content.htm

http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~geldridg/cpp/cppcv3/ijoyner.html

Hope these help,

Peter

"kj0" <kj0 at mailcity.com> wrote in message
news:9is8rm$46d$1 at panix3.panix.com...
> Where can I find a reasonably non-partisan but also reasonably
> detailed comparison of the more popular OO languages (C++, Java,
> Python, etc.).  (All the comparisons I've found are clearly slanted to
> demonstrate the superiority of the authors' favorite OO language--I'm
> sure it would be easy to find one written by unapologetic Python
> advocates :-)  )
>
> I'm not looking to find out which of these languages is "better"; I
> don't care for ranking here.  What I want to know is how the various
> popular OO languages compare in terms of OO and general programming
> features (e.g. multiple inheritance; classes-as-objects; garbage
> collection; closures; scoping; contracts; debugging; etc.).
>
> Thanks,
>
> KJ
>
>




From cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw  Mon Jul  9 01:49:58 2001
From: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw (Chyr-Pyng Su)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:49:58 +0800
Subject: Tkinter and printf in C ...
References: <3B455B5D.544A2EF5@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <9Jh17.38316$he.2456932@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B48076E.B16ACF5B@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw> <3b48ccc7.1398139267@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B494606.42F868FE@larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw>

>
> __________________________________________________________________

I have considered this method os.popen() before. I think this method is best used
when
the C programs and the Python GUI are independently seperate program. But this is
not
for my situation. Since I want to process the data from the C function and also
monitor
the its message... :p



--
 ??????   Su, Chyr-Pyng                               o888o V o888o
 VLSI Design, Testing and Fault Tolerance Lab.       o8 ~__   __  8o
 EE. National Tsing Hau Univ. Taiwan                 88o   ooo   o88
                                                        o 8^ ^8 o
 E-Mail: cpsu at larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw                    /- 88_____88 -\
 WWW:    http://larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~cpsu            _\   qioip   /_





From m.linnemann at addcom.de  Sat Jul 21 09:21:09 2001
From: m.linnemann at addcom.de (Michael Linnemann)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 15:21:09 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9j8lag$srl$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net> <3B57E933.63F10BC0@stroeder.com> <mailman.995659357.5131.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <5kvbj9.c11.ln@haegar.fqdn.th-h.de>

Am Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:01:28 -0600 Paul Sidorsky wrote:

>Case-insensitivity isn't necessarily a bad idea but I think if it's
>going to be done a more concrete solution needs to be found.  A command
>line option just sounds like a quick-fix idea to me.

>Hmmmmmm...how about:

>from __alternativestyles__ import caseinsensitivity
>
>Anybody who has the patience to type that in at the start of every
>program is automatically qualified to use case-insensitivity in my book,
>because I'd be the first to flunk this test.  :-)

Another proposal: make a tool ("Python Pretty Printer") that scans your
code and adjusts it for the - still case sensitive - Interpreter. Maybe
the way VB does it, maybe in a smarter way. Personally, I would prefer
such a tool over a "smart" editor that guesses wrong most of the time,
or an interpreter that might or might not be case sensitive, depending
on options or directives.

But then, such a tool already exists. It even detects wrong indentation
etc., and as a side effect, it runs my python code once I got right :-)

Regards
Michael


From hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr  Fri Jul 20 05:57:55 2001
From: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr (Konrad Hinsen)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 11:57:55 +0200
Subject: Case Insensitivity (was Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191159160.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995568431.14427.python-list@python.org> <%%G57.15495$Cy.1928702@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <m366cn53do.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr>

"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:

> I expect there will always be people who come to python expecting it to be
> case sensitive as well as those new programers who supposedly expect it to
> be case insensitive.

Actually I wonder what exactly is the problem of those "new
programmers". I have been teaching Python occasionally to scientists.
Many of them made case mistakes initially, but none of them had a
problem with understanding case sensitivity as a concept. When they
did type the wrong case, they noticed the problem immediately when the
"Name Error" occurred. The problem for them was *remembering* in which
case a given name was, rather than making the distinction. The
solution to that problem would seem to be naming conventions, not a
case insensitive language.

Of course my experience with scientists may not be typical for
beginners in general. But before curing a problem, we should know what
it actually is. Did anyone ever do a study on this? All I have seen is
anecdotical evidence (including mine, of course). Could we get input
from someone who does Python teaching sufficiently regularly?

Konrad.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24
Rue Charles Sadron                       | Fax:  +33-2.38.63.15.17
45071 Orleans Cedex 2                    | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/
France                                   | Nederlands/Francais
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Sat Jul  7 19:45:15 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 19:45:15 -0400
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEPDKMAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <oqd77cwbg4.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Tim Peters]

> I want to make a pitch for naming it idiv() instead.  The "i" should
> strongly remind that the result is an integer, something "div" says only to
> former Pascal programmers.

idiv suggests FORTRAN to me! :-)  I prefer being remembered of Pascal! :-) :-)

And I like the idea of div(), mod() and divmod(): it's clean.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From phys137 at mailcity.com  Thu Jul 26 18:38:50 2001
From: phys137 at mailcity.com (phys137 at mailcity.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:38:50 +1000
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <slrn.pl.9m0ej2.o3q.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <9jq683$lkl$1@mail.pl.unisys.com>

having break in list comprehensions will limit in the future possible level
of parallelism. The original idea of list comprehensions does _not_ include
the order in which the elements are evaluated. Because of that they can all
be evaluated in parallel - a compiler/interpreter can decide to do that.

Then, with side effects possible inside function calls I guess it may not
matter that much in Python.

"Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk" <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in message
news:slrn.pl.9m0ej2.o3q.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda...
> Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:44:55 -0400, Kevin Lacker <kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu> pisze:
>
> > Can you do this:
> >
> > answer = []
> > for x in my_list:
> >     if not is_good(x):
> >         break
> >     answer.append(process(x))
> >
> > with a list comprehension somehow?
>
> The pattern can be wrapped in a function. It's quite nice in Python 2.2:
>
> def take_while(p, l):
>     for x in l:
>         if not p(x): break
>         yield x
>
> answer = [process(x) for x in take_while(is_good, my_list)]
>
> > I think it would be cool to be able to reuse the while keyword
> > inside comprehensions like
> >
> > answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]
>
> Looks nice for me.
>
> --
>  __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
>  \__/
>   ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
> QRCZAK




From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  9 22:26:44 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:26:44 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994689198.3317.python-list@python.org> <3B49F724.1F3DF6B3@yahoo.com> <WZp27.2221$z21.439450@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3B4A6662.B862792@yahoo.com>

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> Paul Winkler wrote:
> > Doing it iteratively is much, much faster.
> 
> does your fastest iterative solution beat this one?

That's pretty fast, once I got it to work... but still not as fast as my best
one. 
Yours iis definitely interesting, largely because I don't understand what the
hell it does. If I rename one of the fibs and change the appropriate call to use
the new name, it still computes fibonacci numbers but performance goes way down
as N rises. So you're somehow relying on the duplicated names for speed. That's
a pretty weird optimization technique.

Here's my version:

#!/usr/bin/env python
def fib5(n):
        a, b = 0L, 1L
        for i in range(n):
                a, b = b, a + b
        return b

def main():
        N = int(sys.argv[1])
        print fib5(N)

main()

# end of script


Now let's try them...
first mine:

$ time fibo.py 1000 
70330367711422815821835254877183549770181269836358732742604905087154537118196933579742249494562611733487750449241765991088186363265450223647106012053374121273867339111198139373125598767690091902245245323403501

real    0m0.083s
user    0m0.070s
sys     0m0.010s


Now let's try yours.

$ time fibo_effbot.py 1000
(long traceback snipped)
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

real    0m0.621s
user    0m0.160s
sys     0m0.070s

Not only is mine faster, it computes a result, too. :p
But seriously, let's try yours again, using sys.setrecursionlimit(99999999)

... whoops, now we get OverflowError: integer addition ...
OK, now I've fixed that too like so:
def fib(n):
    if n < 2:
        return 1L # the rest is unchanged...

Let me know if you think there's a better way to let your version handle large
values of N.

Anyway, trying it again with those modifications:

$ time fibo_effbot.py 1000
70330367711422815821835254877183549770181269836358732742604905087154537118196933579742249494562611733487750449241765991088186363265450223647106012053374121273867339111198139373125598767690091902245245323403501

real    0m0.113s
user    0m0.090s
sys     0m0.020s

So that's 33 ms slower than mine for N=1000.
OK, let's try larger values.

$ time fibo.py 10000
(result snipped)
real    0m0.375s
user    0m0.350s
sys     0m0.020s

$ time fibo_effbot.py 10000
(result snipped)
real    0m0.789s
user    0m0.670s
sys     0m0.120s


$ time fibo.py 100000
(result snipped)
real    0m24.663s
user    0m24.370s
sys     0m0.020s

$ time fibo_effbot.py 100000
Segmentation fault (core dumped)



...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul 19 12:41:28 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 10:41:28 -0600
Subject: [Q] File Object -- function 'read'
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D55A@admin56.narex.com>

> From: jackyci [mailto:jackyci at sinamail.com]
> 
> Hi 
> 
> There is a TEXT file named 'test.txt'.
> --------test.txt-------
> This is a test.\n
> test\n
> test\n
> -----------------------
> In Windows. "\n" equal "\x0d\x0a"
> But in function "read" of File Object, "\x0d\x0a" equal 1 byte.
> 
> file = open('test.txt')
> str = file.read(22)    # I want to read the first two line
> 
> # but str = This is a test\ntest\nte
> 
> How to solve the problem ?

Use:
 
  file = open('test.txt', 'rb')

to open the file in binary mode (i.e. no translation of \n).

-- bjorn



From daniel at syrinx.net  Tue Jul 24 08:28:50 2001
From: daniel at syrinx.net (Daniel Ellison)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:28:50 GMT
Subject: constructor chaining?
References: <20010724.081619.1139901474.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <6Sd77.62285$2V.13130988@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Mark Nenadov" <mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca> wrote in message
news:20010724.081619.1139901474.1751 at d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net...

> I am wondering how I can do constructor chaining with Python.

This is my first post here; I've just started looking into Python and so far
like what I see.  To answer your question, you simply call Media's __init__
constructor from within Book's __init__ constructor:

class Book(Media):
    def __init__(self):
        Media.__init__(self)
        ...

Daniel Ellison
Toronto, Ontario
daniel at syrinx.net





From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul  9 13:30:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 09 Jul 2001 17:30:01 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
References: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com> <9i6e5502d9g@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b478576.1314346961@wa.news.verio.net> <9i92mb02pnp@enews3.newsguy.com> <3b48d5b9.1400429941@wa.news.verio.net> <3B48F5BB.E93EF377@tundraware.com> <3b49078a.1413182168@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3B49E9CB.BEFDEDBD@tundraware.com>

Bengt Richter wrote:
> 
> On 09 Jul 2001 00:10:01 GMT, Tim Daneliuk <tundra at tundraware.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >Bengt Richter wrote:
> >>
> <SNIP>
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> For your amusement, here is what the above winning re does with some
> numbers, followed by the code. You can just type in a list of test
> numbers on the command line (which wrapped), like so:
> Is it what you wanted?
> 
> [18:22] C:\pywk\numck>numcks.py - -0 -.00 -0.00 00.00 012 012.34
> 12.345 1.2.3 0.00 0
>        -: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
>       -0: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>     -.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>    -0.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>    00.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>      012: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>   012.34: Winner says  ok, runner-up says bad
>   12.345: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
>    1.2.3: Winner says bad, runner-up says bad
>     0.00: Winner says  ok, runner-up says  ok
>        0: Winner says  ok, runner-up says  ok
> 
> (some lines wrapped below)
> __________________________________________________
> 
> # numcks.py
> import sys
> import re
> def ck(x):
>     if re.match(
> r'(-(?!(0*\.?0+$|0+\.0*$)))?(0|\d?\.\d\d|[1-9]\d*(\.\d\d)?)$', x):
>             return 'ok'
>     else:
>             return 'bad'
> 
> # declared winner re: ^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$
> def ckw(x):
>     if re.match( r'^-?((\d+(\.\d{2})?)|(\.\d{2}))$', x):
>             return 'ok'
>     else:
>             return 'bad'
> 
> def main():
>     args = sys.argv[1:]
>     if not args:
>         sys.stderr.write("usage: %s number ...\n" % sys.argv[0])
>         sys.exit(2)
>     for num in args:
>         print "%8s: Winner says %3s, runner-up says %3s" % (num,
> ckw(str(num)),ck(str(num)))
> 
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     main()
> __________________________________________________________________


This is a specification problem on my part (fuzzy definitions allow almost
any conclusion to be right ;)  Your way, of course, is a bit cleaner to
look up, but I would argue it is no more "correct" -  My overarching
goal here was to validate an entry as being a legitimate currency amount.
0.00. -00000, -0012312.12 are all legitimate dollar (pound, euro, peso...)
string representations which can be correctly coerced into floats (ignoring
delimiter characters and rounding errors for the moment).

In any case, I appreciate the Skull Sweat you (and everyone else) put into
this.  Yet another demonstration that regular expressions may be elegant,
but they're very tricky to get exactly right ;))  As a token of my
esteem, I'd like to send you a 7-figure check for -0000000.00   ;)))))

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Wed Jul 11 13:50:33 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 19:50:33 +0200
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
Message-ID: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

SHORT STORY:
Does anyone know of a regular expression library which has an operator
that forces a subexpression to insist on its shortest match, even if
that ruins the overall match?

LONG STORY:

Look how different the following tasks are, although they look so
similar. 

1) TASK: Find the first 'A' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'?
   SOLUTION: '^[^A]+AB'

2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
   SOLUTION: ???

An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
'A<A>B', which it should. 

With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.

The third approximation is '^(.*<A>){1,1}?B' and the Tcl's manual page
`re_syntax' seems to indicate that '{1,1}?' forces a subexpression on
a shortest match. However the `?' indicates `non-greedy' which only
means that the `shortest match not ruining an overall match' is taken
and not the `shortest match!'

The solution would in fact be a *shortest match operator*. For the
sake of discussion let it have postfix syntax like `*' and be written
as `%'. The solution for (2) would be '^(.*<A>)%B' which would *not*
match the string 'xx<A>y<A>B' since the shortest '.*<A>' found is not
followed by 'B'.

Again the question: Is there a re-library with a true shortest match
operator?

REMARK: The implementation would be rather simple since it suffices to
delete all outgoing transitions from stop states of the automaton
equivalent to the subexpression.

  Harald Kirsch
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 00:17:33 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:17:33 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <eppstein-3AE912.21173322072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list at python.org>,
 Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:

> Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is *less*
> useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible. You can
> still have i//j for all your combinatorics needs.

I don't suppose it would be possible to go through some repository of 
Python sources and figure out the relative numbers of divisions of integer 
arguments that end up an int versus the ones that are coerced to floats?  
In my own code it's 100% int/int->int but that's a small unrepresentative 
sample.  Note I'm less interested in divisions of quantities that are 
already floats as those would be unaffected by this proposal.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 09:30:01 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:30:01 +0200
Subject: Timezone
References: <3B64B098.2146ECEB@cs.utwente.nl> <3B64B1B7.A4EB7CB8@tundraware.com> <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6@tundraware.com> <300720010913055359%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <9k6bsr028ji@enews4.newsguy.com>

"John W. Baxter" <jwbaxter at spamcop.com> wrote in message
news:300720010913055359%jwbaxter at spamcop.com...
> In article <3B64B34C.6D8BEBE6 at tundraware.com>, Tim Daneliuk
> <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
>
> > Actually, this raises an interesting question, which perhaps the
resident
> > geniuses
> > can 'splain to me.  Here in Chicago, we're currently 6 hourse or 21,600
sec
> > *behind*
> > UTC.  Why does time.timezone return 21600, not -21600?  It seems that
for
> > arithmetic reasons, you'd want to know both the magnitude and direction
of
> > this vector...
> >
> > Inquiring minds wanna know ;)
>
> Actually, you're currently at 5 hours from GMT...you're 6 during the
> winter.  time.timezone appears to be returning the zone without regard

Hmmm, are you sure?  The US *East* coast is 6 hours from GMT in the
Winter, but isn't Chicago one of the "middle" coasts (the one on
the Great Lakes -- the other middle one being the Gulf) and therefore
one hour further Westwards?


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 14:06:59 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:06:59 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <cp1yn24eem.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOELNLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Terry Reedy]
> Given that one spurious argument for this proposal was the claim that
> float division preserves more information than quotient division, I
> think it might be appropriate to warn here that the opposite is true
> for sufficiently long longs, so that one may need to switch to
> long//long to preserve accuracy.

[Guido van Rossum]
> I never bought the "preserving information" argument.  In general all
> classic use of long/long should be switched to long//long, of course,
> as should all classic use of int/int.

They should, but I'm still of the violent opinion that the "loss of
information" argument is the key to what's wrong with

    x = y / z

today.  If it doesn't give the best result it can (given the limitations of
internal representations) in all cases, polymorphism is still screwed in the
cases where it happens not to, and "best result it can" has no objective
meaning I can think of other than "closest possible to the infinitely
precise result".  If it can return infinities or NaNs or raise OverflowError
or silently underflow to 0 if y and z just happen to be longs with
unfortunate values, we've only addressed the underlying problem for short
ints.

The problem with

    2/3 == 0

was never that the result "isn't a float"(!), and flat-out disasters like

>>> x = 1L << 2000
>>> y = x
>>> float(x)/y
-1.#IND
>>>

can't be considered improvements for polymorphism even under the influence
of strong drugs <wink>.

The potential damage is most obvious with Python longs, but on boxes where
Python ints have more bits of precision than doubles, that

   x/1 == x

will be false for some vanilla short ints x is also bad news.  Throwing
information away needlessly is the problem, and rigid conversion to float
only sounds like "a cure" if you're picturing short ints on boxes where
conversion to float can't lose info (which is most boxes today, but not all;
64-bit Linux is the most common exception).

>>> x = 1L << 2000
>>> y = x
>>> x / y

ought to return 1 (of some flavor), and

    x/(y*2)

ought to return 0.5 (so long as floats are the most accurate representation
we have)

and

    x/1 == x

ought to be true for short or long int x regardless of value or platform.
"Preserving as much information as possible" is the only principle I see
that explains why anyone in their right mind <wink> must agree with the
claimed "ought to" behavior in those three examples.  It also explains why
conversion to float is desirable if all you're picturing is int/int on
current 32-bit boxes.




From tdelaney at avaya.com  Thu Jul 26 20:04:43 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:04:43 +1000
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2E8@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

I must admit, when I read this subject, I read it as "perl2py - in
protest!".

Tim Delaney
Avaya Australia
+61 2 9352 9079

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Skip Montanaro [mailto:skip at pobox.com]
> Sent: Friday, 27 July 2001 2:26 AM
> To: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca
> Cc: python-list at python.org; John Aycock
> Subject: Re: perl2py - In progress! :-)
> 
> 
> 
>     If one seeks difficulties against this project, I easily 
> found one: I do
>     not have the slightest idea about how to proceed about 
> Perl "goto"s!
> 
> Raise and catch exceptions at the appropriate places?
> 
>     raise == goto
>     except == target of goto
> 
> -- 
> Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
> http://www.mojam.com/
> http://www.musi-cal.com/
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 11:44:13 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:44:13 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <6qy9po288s.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6360.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 17:39:47 +0200, Bernhard Herzog <bh at intevation.de> wrote:
>Alex <new_name at mit.edu> writes:
>
>> > C = {}
>> > for item in B:
>> >     C[item] = 1
>> > 
>> > A = filter(C.get, A)
>
>I just realized that it does exactly the opposite of what the OP wanted.
>It keeps all occurences of words in B instead of removing them. :(

Gosh, you're right. :o)
Well, we'll get to use lambda, in the end.

A = filter(lambda item, dic = C: not dic.get(item), A)

should do the trick. 

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From skip at pobox.com  Sun Jul 22 12:53:14 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:53:14 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <slrn9lk87f.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms>
        <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org>
        <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
        <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <cwebster-2007011136180001@192.168.0.4>
        <slrn9lk87f.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15195.1274.170715.987833@beluga.mojam.com>

>>>>> "phil" == phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

    phil> On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:36:18 -0700, Corran Webster <cwebster at nevada.edu> wrote:

    >> but it is useful when translating a mathematical expression like:
    >> 
    >> __ N-1   2
    >> \       n
    >> /__n=0
    >> 
    >> into a Python program.

    phil> A better translation might be:
    ...
    phil> result = sum([n*n for n in fromto(0, N-1)])

Yes, and you still use "n" and "N" as variables, which was the whole point
of Corran Webster's post.  Maintaining case sensitivity makes it easier to
translate such mathematical constructs to Python, in the sense that they use
the same names as the mathematical construct they are mimicing.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From rjh at 3-cities.com  Sun Jul  8 13:45:43 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 10:45:43 -0700
Subject: [Fwd: Comment on PEP-0238]
References: <3B474536.DE27A538@3-cities.com> <mailman.994529832.2013.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7ef50c46.0107080945.30bfa5b4@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994529832.2013.python-list at python.org>...
> > However, I think that some details of the numerics also need to
> > be clarified before you boldly go.  Specifically,
> > 
> >  - What about long division?  A float cannot capture all results.
> >    Should it raise a Value/Range error?
> >    Should the programmer be forced to use divmod?
> >    Should it return a rational?  
> >    I don't really like the last two choices and the first two choices
> >    obviate much of the usefulness of longs.
> 
> We'll introduce a new operator or function (e.g. div(x, y)) for
> integer division, which will work for ints and longs.  When / is used
> and the result can't be expressed as a C double, we can choose between
> yielding Infinity or raising OverflowError; I think probably the
> latter although with two float arguments this currently returns Inf on
> most platforms.

I think this design might hold as an interim approach, but I don't
find it satisfactory to have this forced coercion to double make
division by longs sometimes fail ... it's just not in the spirit of 
dynamic typing ... if coercion is forced, it should be to make things 
"work better", not fail.

Other thoughts

   - Accelerating the consideration of Rationals.
     It seems natural to have long division return a rational, and
     int division return a float.  This way you always know what you
     are getting and it will always work.  However, ints and longs
     are not on an equal footing which is also desirable.
     If rationals cannot be considered on the same timescale,
     that PEP should be ammended to make it consistent.
     At some point in the future the behviour for longs could be
     modified ... the ramifications are less wide spread than for int.

   - To get ints and longs on an equal footing we could have some
     parameter (import or whatever) that defines the type returned
     by /.  This way you can choose at runtime if you want a float
     or something else.  This can also be done with the next ...

   - Will standard __closed_integer_div__ method names be defined
     so that people can define their own integer types?

Robert


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Mon Jul  2 21:33:51 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:33:51 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>; from new_name@mit.edu on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:13:36PM -0400
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <etdofr32d4f.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20010702213351.B4372@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:13:36PM -0400, Alex wrote:
> 
> > You would be maintaining NxN table to see 
> >     - if any position is outside the assigned trajectory, or
> >     - distance (between any two position) is too close
> 
> You don't need an NxN table, actually.  You can partition the space in
> which you'll be tracking the planes into cubical buckets with diameters
> greater than your threshold minimum distance.  Then you only need to
> check for each plane the other planes that are in its bucket or an
> adjacent bucket.  It scales linearly with the number of planes.

What I meant is that for each airplane, he needs to calculate the
distance to every other airplanes; that's O(N^2).  ;-)  Ultimately,
though, it depends on how the data (from the radar) are given to Python
script, and this wasn't clear in the original post.  Judging by his thin
skin, I don't think it was a serious post.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From gmcm at hypernet.com  Wed Jul 11 09:20:58 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 13:20:58 GMT
Subject: Troubles With McMillan Installer
References: <3b535565.12307274@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <90DB5F4E4gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.155>

[posted and mailed]

Mike Cravitz wrote:

>When trying to run the executable created by Simple.py (followed by
>the install step), I get the message "ImportError: No module named
>mxDateTime". The directory containing the installed software looks
>like this...

What version of Python? What version of Installer? What version of 
mxDateTime? 

[snipped]

>So I renamed mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to simply
>mxDateTime.pyd and got a traceback of "mxDateTime.Error: no current
>time API set". 

[snip]

>====start of traceback BEFORE rename of
>====mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to
>====mxDateTime.pyd
>
>D:\temp\stuff>wxptest
[snip]
>  File "H:\Applications\CRT\Client\crtQueryRefno.py", line 5, in ?
>    from mx.DateTime import *
[snip]
>  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\__init__.py", line 8, in ?
>    from DateTime import *
[snip]
>  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\DateTime.py", line 9, in ?
>    from mxDateTime import *
>  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 91, in
>_import_hook
>    raise ImportError, 'No module named ' + fqname
>ImportError: No module named mxDateTime

I don't think DateTime.py is trying to import mxDateTime.pyd.
It's trying to import mxDateTime.__init__.py.

Since the license change, I haven't kept up with the mx packages.
They're not freely redistributable, so I have no business building
in hooks to redistribute them.

My guess is that in DateTime.__init__.py you'll find some code
that makes the package structure as seen by Python different 
from the package structure on disk, probably for platform-specific
reasons.

- Gordon


From markus at kepler.ibp.de  Tue Jul 31 08:39:35 2001
From: markus at kepler.ibp.de (markus at kepler.ibp.de)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 14:39:35 +0200
Subject: Non-Programmers (was: Changing the Division Operator)
References: <mailman.996556736.30160.python-list@python.org> <m3k80piax2.fsf@kepler.ibp.de> <XZw97.5001$9i1.471725@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <m3hevti86w.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> How about "incidental programmers", since the programming is largely
> incidental to the real goals of their activities?

Sounds better and gives less reason to misunderstanding.

- Markus


From tjreedy at home.com  Sun Jul  1 11:44:32 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 15:44:32 GMT
Subject: Assignment vs. Naming/Binding (was Re: Augmented Assignement )
References: <mailman.993843884.4929.python-list@python.org> <ubsn7hte7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <AzH%6.4039$Z6.1921496@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote

> So I wonder if some of the confusion is people familiar with other
> language's augmented assignment trying to extrapolate that into Python
> and then running into the pre-existing differences in assignment
> versus binding?

Yes.  Understanding the difference is one of the major keys to
understanding Python.  So here is another attempt from me, based on some of
the issues raised by the Augmented Assignement thread, to explain the
difference.  (Call this What I Wish Someone Had Written Years Ago - before
I spend a couple weeks, and years since, trying to get what is going on.)
---

Most computer languages are based on and built around a model of a computer
as having a sequence of memory locations (linear store) labelled and
accessed by integers.  As a (major) convenience, particular locations or
sequential blocks thereof can be named.  Within a particular naming
context, the block represented by a name is fixed.  Morever, the name is
generally unique
(absent special devices like union statements and not counting indirect
access via pointers as a 'name').  So a name assignment expression or
statement (name EQ expression, where EQ may be '=' or something else,
depending on the particular language) says to put a particular value into
the particular memory block represented by the name.  To do so requires
size and possibly type compatibility.  Examples using C:

int a, b;        // &a = 4832, for instance, &b = 4836 (or 4828); a==0 or
random
a = 1; b = 2 // &a and &b still same as before; a==1, b==2
a = b;          // &a and &b unchanged and unequal even though values now
same
a = 'haha'   // illegal in C






From dpoulin at nettonettech.com  Tue Jul  3 08:52:56 2001
From: dpoulin at nettonettech.com (Doug Poulin)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 12:52:56 GMT
Subject: Getting data from DBIII
Message-ID: <3B41CEFD.3BDB4F63@nettonettech.com>

Hi.

Failry new to Python (have tried Perl, but....well, it's a long story). 
Anyway, our Sales people use ACT! for contact management.  I have
created a small Python/Tkinter, so I got the forms looking pretty.   But
I am having trouble using Python to get the data from the DB.  ACT uses
DB3, so I'm looking for pointers.  I use Linux (RedHat 7.0) and Python
1.5.2.

Any help?

Thanks!  

Doug Poulin


From rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org  Sat Jul 28 22:12:57 2001
From: rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org (Ben Wolfson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 02:12:57 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m6esl.d7d.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net> <mailman.996365813.14171.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <t1s6mtktrgqj0q8kb1vs66fvrj5ctbr819@4ax.com>

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:14:38 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com>
wrote:

>William Tanksley wrote:
>> 
>> On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:07:32 -0700, Paul Prescod wrote:
>> >2. If I have an object that hides its attributes behind an __getattr__,
>> >is there any way to tweak the list returned by the API described above?
>> 
>> Not without the object's cooperation -- it's not even theoretically
>> possible to figure out what attributes __getattr__ might support.  
>
>I am asking whether there is a way for the object to cooperate.
>
>>...
>> >def attrs(x):
>> >       return [y for y in all_possible_strings if hasattr(x, y)]
>> 
>> Yes, that would work, for certain values of "work".  all_possible_strings
>> is a pretty simple generator.  So is attrs(), actually.
>> 
>> def attrs(x):
>>   for y in all_possible_strings():
>>     if hasattr(x,y): yield y
>> 
>> Amusing.
>
>I wasn't being theoretical. I was asking whether there is a function,
>method or parameter with those semantics (and obviously a more sane
>implementation).

I don't see how there could be, since  __getattr__ could define new
attributes when they're requested.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
No man can run so fast that he can escape his own past's projectile vomit.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 10:08:14 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:14 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <eppstein-0DEDA4.16273222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995861319.10218.python-list@python.org> <9jgvec$dos$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <6g8oltg7rvlb47933gq5nfnhsmue67u492@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 10:48:44 GMT, m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
wrote:

>Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote:
>> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:27:32 -0700, David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>>> My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are the 
>>> same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.
>>> Result: buggier code since the errors are less obvious.
>
>> The thing is, making 1/2=0.5 won't make the problem *worse*. Because
>> after two days of being baffled by 1/2=0, these newbies will eventually
>> figure out the solution float(1)/2. So, I'm just getting to show them
>> the buggy roundoff-error code *faster*, instead of making them suffer
>> for it. You want to fix *that* problem, you have to give easy to access
>> rationals.
>
>Will you introduce a special 'rational division' operator for that? 
>Or change the semantics of '/' again? :)

There would certainly be three meanings of division - create a
rational from integers, do integer division *and* do float division.
Unless rationals were made into an independent type, some kind of
change would be necessary to support this.

If we just keep the same old division operator, the obvious thing
would be to define a rational type for which literals could only be
defined using integers or decimal notation, but supporting some
compile-time calculation. For instance...

  Source    Value in Bytecode 
  ------    -----------------
  3R        3/1
  1.5R      15/10
  1R/3      1/3

Simple predictable behaviour, and no-one gets rationals unless they
want them.

Symbolic calculations could be handled just as easily as a new type...

  5S / 3
  k * symbolicmath.exp (q)

In fact, doesn't Python now support overloaded operators for classes -
if so, all but the literals could be handled by a library right now if
someone writes it ;-)


Heres a thought - how about a set of declarations along the lines
of...

from __pragmas__ import numeric_literals_default_integer
from __pragmas__ import numeric_literals_default_longinteger
from __pragmas__ import numeric_literals_default_float

That way, anyone who is worried about accidental use of integers can
simply request their numberic literals default to floats and add a
suffix that specifies integer when they need an integer.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From sburr at home.com  Tue Jul 10 22:31:47 2001
From: sburr at home.com (sburrious)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 19:31:47 -0700
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <5396362c.0107101831.284efa8@posting.google.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message news:<mks27.2166$xf7.122975 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>...
> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
> news:8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com...
> > "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in ...
> > > What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
> > >
> > > while (x=getchar() != 'N')
> > > {
> > > Do something}
> > >
> > > In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> > > input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> > > value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?
[snip]
> > The approved idiom is
[snip]
> while 1:
>     x = raw_input()
>     if not x:
>         break
>     DoSomethingInteresting()

And others posted similar responses.

But you _can_ call raw_input in the test:

# argument_clinic.py
import re
response = re.compile(r'[Yy]es.*is[!.]?')
prompt = "No it isn't!  "
while 1:
    if response.match(raw_input(prompt)):
        pass # or "Do something interesting"
    else:
        print "I'm sorry, your five minutes are up."
        break

$ python argument_clinic.py
No it isn't!  yes it is
No it isn't!  Yes it is!
No it isn't!  Yes, it most certainly is!
No it isn't!  Look, this isn't an argument
I'm sorry, your five minutes are up.

Is there anything wrong or dangerous about this, apart from being
non-idiomatic?  I think it reads OK, not that my judgment is worth
much.

And, yes, I know I've got the roles reversed.  At least it's not
another example based on the Viking sketch.


From sheila at spamcop.net  Wed Jul  4 22:12:35 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 02:12:35 GMT
Subject: Config options on Tkinter Label Widget
References: <anf7kt4edeq12n4kb7hjdd73jjhnck2bco@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <g2j7ktsgq7qssev2k2fkclchb4ab2jnvu7@4ax.com>

Problem solved.

What someone pointed out to me, is that the text is anchored to the
left, but the label widget is only as wide as the text, and is being
centered at the top of the root window.

So, I can see this better if I color the background of the label widget,
like this:
Directions.config(anchor=W,bg='yellow',width=70)

Also, I should solve this dilemma, probably by using the expand and fill
options when I pack the label. Something like this:
Directions.pack(expand=1,fill=X)

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/

On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 01:13:39 GMT, Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> wrote
in comp.lang.python in article
<anf7kt4edeq12n4kb7hjdd73jjhnck2bco at 4ax.com>:

:I'm trying my hand at a bit of Tkinter programming. I must say, the
:discussion in Mark Lutz' Programming Python, 2nd ed, is really
:excellent.
:
:Anyhow, I liked the suggestion in Chun's Core Python Programming for one
:of the exercises: "Label and Entry Widgets and Python I/O: Create a GUI
:application that provides and Entry field where the suer can provide the
:name of a text file. Open the file and read it, displaying its contents
:in a Label."
:
:So, I'm just starting out on the exercise, and I decided to mess around
:a bit with the look and feel of the application. (I've also snagged a
:local copy of Lundh's Tkinter reference and the Tkinter Life
:Preserver...so I think I have ample reference material.)
:
:So, here is my code so far:
:--------------------------------------------------------------
:
:from Tkinter import *
:
:root = Tk()
:Directions = Label(root, text ='Enter name of File to Open:')
:Directions.config(anchor=W)
:inputBox = Entry(root, width=80)
:
:Directions.pack()
:inputBox.pack()
:mainloop()
:--------------------------------------------------------------
:
:Now, notice the line where I am trying to configure on Directions the
:positioning of the text in the label:
:Directions.config(anchor=W)
:
:From reading Lundh's reference, I thought that this would position the
:text all the way to the left of the label.
:
:However, it remains centered.
:
:Why isn't it moving to the left? What do I need to do to get that
:effect?
:
:Thanks,



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 18:23:31 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:23:31 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:36:21 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth
McCaughan) wrote:

>Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> What I don't understand is why polymorphism is all of a sudden
>> an evil, nasty thing in the Python world -- something that must
>> be banished at all costs (even if we have to change one of the
>> basic mathematical operators and break existing programs).
>> 
>> Are the rulers of the Python Kingdom going to ban all
>> polymorphism?  I thought it was one of the _strengths_ of
>> Python, and here we are trying to stamp it out!
>
>The different behaviour of "/" on floats and ints isn't
>polymorphism, it's overloading. Two different operations.
>Closely related, of course, but different. Generally
>"polymorphism" is reserved for when what's being done
>is "the same thing" in both cases.

It *is* the same thing in both cases - float division is nothing more
than a logical extension of integer division. Even mathematicians know
that ;-)



From tjreedy at home.com  Sat Jul 28 12:29:28 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:29:28 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996332934.4114.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ILB87.36967$EP6.9749609@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Christian Tanzer" <tanzer at swing.co.at> wrote in message
news:mailman.996332934.4114.python-list at python.org...
>And I can use Skip Montanaro's division finder to spot many places in
>need of checking. Yet I also know that my applications contain quite
a
>number of strings which are feed to eval/exec at run-time. These are
>much harder to identify.

So DivisionFinder needs to be extended to also intelligently present
strings with embedded
/s that are not obvious directory separators.

>And then there's code I don't even know about. Some of it written by
>me and used by others. Some of it written by God-knows-who and fed as
>a script to one of my applications. Do you have a recipe for this
one,
>too?

I do not.  Because of your comments, I will extend my discussion of
feature deletion when I revise my essay on language change and code
breaks.

Terry J. Reedy





From heikowu at ceosg.de  Tue Jul 17 06:19:55 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:19:55 +0200
Subject: web interface to c program running on different server
References: <3B53B116.86535A3@usa.net> <3B53BB43.986D70AE@engcorp.com> <3B53C285.F8405344@usa.net>
Message-ID: <9j13b8$sc3$02$1@news.t-online.com>

Just a suggestion:

On server X with the libs start up a Python HTTPServer derived object that 
reads a query, sends it to a wrapper library (written using some Python2C 
Glue), which in turn sends the request to the library, which returns the 
result to the wrapper, which returns the result to the HTTPServer derived 
class, which packages the data in a network format.

On Client Y you have a script that generates an HTTP-Access to Server X 
(using e.g. urllib), and awaits the answer, unpacks the result, and 
displays it.

That would be my way of implementing it.

Does this help?

See ya!

        Heiko W.


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 09:57:36 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 13:57:36 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:33:47 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:

>>> Language design mistake.
>>
>>It allows to write code which increments a number of unknown type
>>by one. How would you write it in your universe?

> Literals can be used for any type where the representation matches,
> so incrementing is not a problem.

Ok, this applies to Ada and Haskell. But how to fix the "design
mistake" in Python?

IMHO it doesn't have a practical fix, as long as a literal is an
expression with type independent from the context. This implies that
implicit conversions from int to float and rational are unavoidable
in Python. Without them some reasonable code is hard to write.

So we must continue to design the meaning of operators under the
assumption that mixed-type arithmetic promotes arguments to some
common type.

Letting int/int return a rational and unifying int with long (or
unifying int and long with rationals, but I don't propose this) are
the last missing steps to be able to give 5 when a rational or float
is expected, and to give 1/16 where a float is expected, without
getting incorrect results. Now it almost works: as long as there
is no overflow, the only problem is division.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From jrr at 0.0.0.10  Fri Jul 13 08:50:05 2001
From: jrr at 0.0.0.10 (John Rickard)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 13:50:05 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <9ik9kd$nch$1@news.mathworks.com> <9ikc0m$bmg$1@panix2.panix.com> <9ikee9$rpv$1@news.mathworks.com> <9iluu2$bmb$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <zzo*FU70o@news.cam.virata.com>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
: In article <9ikee9$rpv$1 at news.mathworks.com>, jcm  <grumble at usa.net> wrote:
[...]
: >Muds are likely to be CPU-bound programs.
:
: If that is the entirety of your point, why are you posting?

Because someone else had written

> for doing a MUD, the language speed is not going to have
> much noticeable effect, since network speed is far slower
> than any of the languages can handle.

and jcm was pointing out that that might not be true.  Seems
reasonable to me.

-- 
John Rickard   <John.Rickard at virata.com>


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 18:12:46 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 22:12:46 GMT
Subject: Eliminating upgrade risk
References: <mailman.996105586.6334.python-list@python.org> <tm3298o5hut5d1@news.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <yHl87.35194$EP6.8945218@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:tm3298o5hut5d1 at news.supernews.com...
 > [IBM] where installing a new version of the operating system, major
utilities
> and language processors was essentially **guaranteed** not to break
> running applications.

Ahem.  The way I learned the difference between call by reference and
call by value (about 1980) is when IBM Fortran, a major utility by any
standard, switched from one to the other while upgrading from Fortran
IV to Fortran 77(?) and my working code mysteriously quit working.  No
two-year transition period with warnings.  No option to keep the old
code working.  Just reread the revised manual, debug, and correct.  I
am very sure that this code breakage was not unique.  Certainly, they
were constantly revising the manuals.  (Oh, the days of having to
manually insert revision pages.  Is that why they called them
manuals?)Perhaps competition has pushed them to develop a new selling
point.

Terry J. Reedy







From rmacneil at interactdirect.com  Thu Jul 12 12:42:08 2001
From: rmacneil at interactdirect.com (Rod MacNeil)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:42:08 -0400
Subject: Postgres BLOBS
Message-ID: <fsk37.262070$Z2.3154226@nnrp1.uunet.ca>

Hello,

Does anyone know where I can get some info and samples of how to work with
Postgres BLOBs in Python?

I have been poking around for some, maybe not in the right places.

I am using the DBAPI2 module of the PyPgSQL 1.2 interface, but examples from
other interfaces might help too.

I am going to hack around with this some more, but I'd like to know if I'm
doing things correctly.

Rod MacNeil
rmacneil at interactdirect.com






From wchang at sympatico.ca  Fri Jul 27 04:19:09 2001
From: wchang at sympatico.ca (Chang)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:19:09 -0400
Subject: can anybody tell me where to find jTkinter??
Message-ID: <Cu987.36229$eY6.3874926@news20.bellglobal.com>

hi all...

i've been trying to find jTkinter on the web...i don't even know if it
exists, i happen to come across it in this newsgroup a couple of days ago,
but i can't find the post anymore...

so can anybody help me and tell me where i can find jTkinter, if it exists
at all...

thx so much~~




From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 13:09:29 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:09:29 -0500
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <iu81kt0lbh9mabltuq6udod51ba9p9hb4l@4ax.com>
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org>
	<t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com>
	<mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org>
	<iu81kt0lbh9mabltuq6udod51ba9p9hb4l@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15168.43721.839010.193223@beluga.mojam.com>

    C//> This is inarguably and obviously bad design. The author's choice of
    C//> an implicit singleton in this case was a great error and lacked
    C//> even small amounts of foresight. The error here, however, was not
    C//> the global variable. It was the implicit global singleton attached
    C//> to contextually-dependent state.

Let's not be too hasty here.  Version 1.1 of fileinput.py is dated
21-Nov-97, well before threading was widespread in Python (which is where
this stray global stuff tends to really bite you in the butt, the original
author's example notwithstanding).  Also, until a year or so ago, the
fileinput module was not widely used, so any design problems it harbors were
likely to bite relatively few butts.  The original design probably worked
well for the original author.

The now deprecated regex module suffered from the same problem.  It was
heavily used for several years nonetheless before being replaced by two revs
of Perl-compatible regular expressions.

If the current implementation of the fileinput module creates problems for
you, rework it and submit a patch. ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 23 06:54:53 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 12:54:53 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com> <eppstein-E87ACC.10334722072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <j466cjgbk2.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> > Division in the set of integers can only have
> > an integer result by definition. The fact that in mathematics it is
> > common to assume real numbers even if no point is specified is largely
> > irrelevant - programmers often have to be more explicit than
> > mathemeticians because programs are read by computers - not people.
> 
> As a further point in this direction, floats are *not* the same as real 
> numbers and it is usually a mistake to forget this.  In mathematics, the 
> result of dividing two integers is a rational number.

Floating point numbers are often seen as an acceptable approximation
of both rational and real numbers, given that an exact representation
of arbitrary rational and real numbers may require unbounded memory,
or may make computations on them unfeasible.

Regards,
Martin


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Wed Jul 11 20:50:34 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:50:34 -0400
Subject: newbie question
In-Reply-To: <994895287.608.4172.l6@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CBC1A.11106.796312@localhost>

"crombie" <crombie88 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> so, i wanna learn python.

Welcome and congratulations. I think you're in for an interesting 
experience.

> i read the docs on python.org.  what do i do now? is there like a
> website with a list of starter projects that need to be done in
> python to prove you know it and help you learn it? 
> 
> at a complete loss, will appreciate direction.  any direction 

Mailing lists:

1. This one has attracted some of the smartest people I've ever 
seen--displaying an amazing range and depth of knowledge. The 
downside is that it can be heavy going (or heavy weather) at times.

2. Join the tutorial list that's available via www.python.org. This may 
be the most important thing you can do.

Book:

Wesley Chun's "Core Python" has an excellent reputation. Wesley 
himself is very helpful on the tutorial list.

Software:

If you're using MS Windows then go to www.activestate.com and 
get everything you'll need to get started. If it ain't obvious what to 
download ask again on one of these lists.

IDE:

Learn to use either IDLE or PythonWin on windows. If by any 
chance you're old enough to have learnt APL you'll immediately 
recognise the benefits of being able to try out statements and then 
immediately incorporate them into bigger chunks of code.

Problems:

Can't really help there. Ask on the tutorial list?

Enjoy, enjoy.

Bill

Bill Bell, Software Developer



From sill at optonline.net  Fri Jul 13 18:26:51 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:26:51 GMT
Subject: How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9koofo.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9kpr3e.527.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <Gzj37.13006$B7.2564502@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9ks0mh.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <yox4rsh6w82.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <slrn9kutbc.36s.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On 13 Jul 2001 11:59:09 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
> sill at optonline.net (Rainy) writes:
> 
>> this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>> previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>> in perl :-/."
> 
> And that's when you reached for your revolver?

No, the script was fairly short, maybe a hundred lines. It was also the kind of
script that you write once and never have to extend, so doing it in perl wasn't
a problem. The only bit of trouble I had was that stepping through each
character in a string is trickier in perl than in python (also considering that
it was my first (and last) shot at doing perl). 

> 
> I understand why it was your previous job, not current :-). This
> brings to my mind the techie Prima donna article referenced in
> slashdot a while ago:
> 
> http://www.itrecruitermag.com/magazine/display-management101.asp?ContentID=603

Amusing.

> 
> I assume it would require quite a "team player" to agree to do
> something as revolting as turning a beautiful piece of python to a
> heap of line noise.

Well, it just happened so that I would rather have done any sort of coding,
even perl, than do the other part of my job (very repetitive image
manipulation).
> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From grante at visi.com  Sun Jul 29 22:54:25 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 02:54:25 GMT
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com> <3B64C9D1.C53AEE84@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <slrn9m9j41.ldk.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:43:29 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
>Grant Edwards wrote:
>> 
>> On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:44:37 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>> >In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>, Paul
>> >Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes
>> >> * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix
>> >
>> >what language does one use nowadays.
>> 
>> AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
>> that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
>> BSD, Linux).
>
>Do language compilers and interpreters qualify as "system programming"?

Not in the usage with which I'm familiar.  I interpret "system
programming" to mean writing code that runs in system mode (as
opposed to user mode).  In Unix, that means the kernel and
associated device drivers.  On all of the Unix systems I've
used, all system code is in C.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I want to kill
                                  at               everyone here with a cute
                               visi.com            colorful Hydrogen Bomb!!


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Mon Jul 23 16:42:35 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:10:35 +0028
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <rvoij9.nf5.ln@192.168.0.1>

James Logajan wrote:

> Chris Barker wrote:
>> pain it is likely to cause by:
>>    A) Breaking old code
>>    B) Making it very difficult to write code that can run on old and new
>> version of the interpreter.
>> 
>> It seems that since (3) is the big stumbling block, perhaps we need to
>> focus our intentions on how to make not only this change, but other
>> potential changes less painful. It's too late now, but ideally, Python
>                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>  
> Not to be abrupt, but if it is too late now, why bother mentioning it?
> 
> I effectively stopped considering Python for new projects as of last
> night. I can't read Guido's mind, I don't know what other code-breaking
> changes he might be considering. I'm not sure he even knows. Where else is
> he going to be convinced that "evil" lies in the language and needs to be
> exorcised?

It is not too later until python 2.2 ships. Disregarding large parts of the 
python community is not a good idea since it very easily could lead to a 
language fork. While I do want it to be easier for people that don't 
understand division to be able to do it changing the meaning of an existing 
piece of syntax seems like a very bad idea. / should have remained the 
same. // should have had the new behavior. Once the language is out you 
really can't make those kind of breaking changes. At the very least it 
should be called python 3.0 for that reason since it does break backwards 
compatibility. On the whole with zope using 2.1 now I expect I will be 
using 2.1 for a good while.


From max at alcyone.com  Wed Jul 11 11:23:13 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:23:13 -0700
Subject: Apache, CGI, Python...
References: <mailman.994852878.8776.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4C6F61.2184857A@alcyone.com>

"Vincent A. Primavera" wrote:

>         Looking for some guidance as to the set up of Apache's
> httpd.conf for
> some basic CGI scripting practice in Python...  Any suggestions?

All you need is the "ExecCGI" option in the appropriate directories, and
a valid #! line as the first in your Python script, that's all.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ If I had known, I would have become a watchmaker.
\__/ Albert Einstein
    Official Omega page / http://www.alcyone.com/max/projects/omega/
 The official distribution page for the popular Roguelike, Omega.


From bobh at hslda.org  Mon Jul  9 17:05:57 2001
From: bobh at hslda.org (Robert)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 14:05:57 -0700
Subject: PyQt for Windows
Message-ID: <4a249347.0107091305.1e138414@posting.google.com>

Does anyone have compiled versions of the files (SIP and PyQt) needed to
run that toolkit on Windows?

Bob


From lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl  Thu Jul 12 03:43:02 2001
From: lisowski.tomasz at sssa.NOSPAM.com.pl (Tomasz Lisowski)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:43:02 +0200
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <9ijk8l$jo6$1@news.tpi.pl>

U?ytkownik "EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> napisa? w wiadomo?ci
news:tO837.679712$166.14009323 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
> Ok well I dont quite grasp the Lambda concept heres an example.
>
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(lambda x,y: x*y,n)
> print f
>
> *NOTE   The varible N is defined in the code before this excerpt.
>
> Anyways back to the point the book says this is easier!?!?
>
> But comon sense tells me this is easier.
>
> def mult(x,y):
>     return x * y
> f = reduce(mult,n)
> print f
>
> Isnt that easier??
>
> Or do I not get lambda?
>
> *NOTE ... I think its just a way to complicate things OR just a way to
avoid
> typing the function name beacuse.... I dont know they are scared of the
> names they give them.

I am not sure about performance, but there are at least these advantages of
lambda:
1. They are easier to write (single line, no def or return statements)
2. They do not enter into your namespace (__dict__ dictionary), since thery
are not named
3. Without them, writing Tkinter callbacks would be horrible.

Following this thread I would give you a riddle to solve:
Code 1:
res = reduce(lambda x, y: x*y, some_list)

Code 2:
res = 1.0
for x in some_list: res *= x

Code 1 uses a builtin reduce function (fast), but nevertheless lambda
function gets called for each element in some_list.
Code 2 uses slower, native Python loop, but does not use any function calls

Question: which version is better from performance point of view?

Regards,
Tomasz Lisowski




From andre.risnes at tenpipes.no  Mon Jul 23 06:24:08 2001
From: andre.risnes at tenpipes.no (André Risnes)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:24:08 +0200
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <20010721195640.15632.00000532@ng-mh1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <9jgu18$t6p$1@lise.netcom.no>

Take a look at http://www.cs.uit.no/~andrer/rfc1459.py

--
Andr? Risnes




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul  1 13:16:44 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 10:16:44 -0700
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEELDKLAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3F5AFC.345281FE@ActiveState.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Paul Prescod, with many good gripes about the libraries]
> > ...
> > I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
> > address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
> > controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.
> 
> Guido knows this, if for no other reason than that Eric Raymond keeps
> reminding him of it.  PEP 2 is supposed is the first step on this path.

Insofar as PythonLabs seems to be working through a list of "nagging
issues" that have plagued Python for years, I suggest that the next most
pressing issue is the standard library. Eric Raymond has various "day
jobs" so his availability is probably non-deterministic.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From boud at rempt.xs4all.nl  Mon Jul  9 09:46:26 2001
From: boud at rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 13:46:26 GMT
Subject: Most important text processing examples
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iccji$ote$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Dr. David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
> Always so impressed by the Python discussion group, I figure I will ask
> its advice.  I have recently contracted to write a book called _Text
> Processing in Python_ for Sybex.  The proposal and outline can be
> skimmed at <http://gnosis.cx/tpip.proposal>, if you want to see what I
> am aiming at (I've made minor adjustments as I've started writing, and
> will certainly make more as I go along).


Well, even though it is for Sybex, and I've sworn never to buy a book
by Sybex (their European branch folded while still owing my wife money
for a few translations, and Sybex is mainly known to me for the
enormous amount of padding their books contain), I feel I'm going to
stick this on my to-acquire list - just like Lars Marius Garsholt XML
book, when that arrives.

I would skip chapter I, though. Those kind of chapters are a pain to
write, and mostly useless. I should like a bit of discussion of text
transformation (without XML) and of encoding issues.

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org 


From mikeb at mitre.org  Wed Jul 11 07:52:55 2001
From: mikeb at mitre.org (Mike Brenner)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 07:52:55 -0400
Subject: Keys To The Kingdom
Message-ID: <3B4C3E17.EEB6584C@mitre.org>

Alex wrote:
the code below works on unix (freebsd) and IDLE on win2k, but not python itself
on win2k...

while 1:
    try:
        x = raw_input().upper()
        print x
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print "Leaving Dodge...\n"
        break

--------

This code works for me on Python 2.1 with windows extensions and wxpython, for all 96 graphic characters.

It beeps for all control characters except control c, control z, and control v. 
Control c is set up to copy.
Control v is set up to paste.
Control z is set up to undo.

None of the arrows, control keys, or function keys have any of their special functions or print anything to the little screen that pops up for input.




From mal at lemburg.com  Wed Jul 11 17:25:00 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:25:00 +0200
Subject: Unicode and Python - slides available online
References: <3B4B35C9.362A24D1@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CC42C.255980C1@lemburg.com>

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> In case you are interested in Python and Unicode, you might
> want to take a look at the slides I presented at this years
> European Python Meeting. I have uploaded them to the Python
> Software Pages as PDF file:
> 
>         http://www.lemburg.com/python/

Alistar Vining pointed out that the combining character sequences
in the slides are flipped: in Unicode combining code points *follow*
the main character rather than preceed it.

I have uploaded a corrected version (and will continue to fix any
errata as I find them or they are reported to me). This will 
most probably become a work in progress and I will add new slides
as the need becomes necessary.
 
Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 22:37:02 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:37:02 -0400
Subject: Make it a major version number change (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5E30CE.2901DED0@engcorp.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
> > From: Guido van Rossum [mailto:guido at python.org]
> [snip]
> >
> > (1) A very long wait period before the new division becomes the
> >     default.  The PPE mentions at least two years; we can go over
> >     that.  Python 2.2 will introduce the first release where it's
> >     *possible* to write "from __future__ import division"; we'll have
> >     to wait until 1.5.2 is only a faint memory (like 1.4 is now) and
> >     2.2 pretty old.  (The current release pace is two revisions per
> >     year, so two years would make 2.6 the first release where new
> >     division is the default.)
> 
> Thanks for taking the time to address these issues. I agree your
> proposed three steps would go a long way towards easing any
> compatibility concerns. I have one request though... make the first
> release where the new division is the default be named 3.0. It's much
> easier to go to management and say "There's a new stable major release
> of Python that I think we should go to, but since it's a major release
> I'll need to spend some time testing our current applications."
> Management tends to be much less willing to schedule maintenance time
> every six months for what they consider minor point releases.

Hear hear!

I hate the thought of the work required to scan/fix/debug 
already working code, but if this has to happen, and can't
be made to work without breaking existing code (e.g. by 
introducing *two* new operators), then at least follow
the convention we apparently all believe exists and 
make this a *major version number change*.

(But two years until the change really becomes the default
would at least be an improvement over the truly scary 
apparent speed implied by the sudden posting of a patch.)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:25:03 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:25:03 -0500
Subject: "Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <4E215400D01D7374.0068C51FD6502BE8.99D4E013ECF0FDFB@lp.airnews.net>

In article <slrn9m96vj.f4i.grante at tuxtop.visi.com>,
Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
>that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
>BSD, Linux).
			.
			.
			.
Perlites occasionally make a serious pitch for this role.
Java, Forth, and C++ have all briefly flared as possibili-
ties.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From nperkins7 at home.com  Tue Jul 24 12:41:55 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:41:55 GMT
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net> <3b5d8947_5@news.newsgroups.com>
Message-ID: <nzh77.543721$eK2.114049226@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

I have this associated with .py -> Open

C:\Python21\python.exe "%1" %*

and
C:\Python21\pythonw.exe "%1" %*
for .pyw

..using python.exe instead of pythonw.exe will give you
a dos window which will show any error messages
( but it closes before you can read them --  very annoying )



"Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3b5d8947_5 at news.newsgroups.com...
> Thx.
> Most unfortunately, this does not work. If I omit the double quotes it
seems
> that the file is not opened correctly (I am usinf pythonw.exe instead of
> winpy.exe as i do not have the latter). If I set the double quotes, I
cannot
> enter my program as i get the error message 'the application you have
> selected does not exist'.
>
> Janos Blazi
>
> "Kevin Riggle" <vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!@n()et> schrieb im
> Newsbeitrag news:9jhgm4$2mo$1 at mtc1.mtcnet.net...
> > You have to associate the file-type with the program.
> >
> > Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File Types
> tab,
> > and click on New Type.
> >
> > Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on the
> New
> > button beneath the Actions: list box.
> >
> > Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
> > perform action:' to
> >
> > "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,
> >
> > or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program
Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
> > %1",
> >
> > in both examples *including* the double-quotes.
> >
> > (I haven't actually used Python on Windows, so if the WinPy path is a
> little
> > off please forgive me.)
> >
> > Hope this helps...  Kevin
> >
> >
> > "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:3b5be641_3 at news.newsgroups.com...
> > > I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double
> clicks
> > > on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the
> file.
> > > What have I to do?
> > > This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.
> > >
> > > Janos Blazi
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> > > http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> > > -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 22:03:05 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:03:05 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
References: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net> <slrn.pl.9m0qbp.qk2.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <tZ387.31522$EP6.8256341@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk" <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in message
news:slrn.pl.9m0qbp.qk2.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda...
> Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:34 GMT, Peter Dobcsanyi <petrus at pobox.com>
pisze:
>
> > But, I don't like the "//" operator symbol what we are supposed to
> > use for implementing "a // b == floor(a/b)".
>
> Me too.
>
> > I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable
> > one-character symbol for the "nb_intdivide".
>
> Here I disagree. I would preferably use div (and mod) as operators.
> The only problem with them is that someone could have used them as
> identifiers.

Whereas I pushed // as my favorite!  (among options suggested)
Guido cannot very well please all of us.

One problem (and source of errors) for div: it must be set off by
spaces which are optional for symbol.  (Yeah, I know about in, etc;
same story, not arithmetic, where habits are different)

Terry J. Reedy





From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 20 11:46:42 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 10:46:42 -0500
Subject: standard enumerations in python?
Message-ID: <m2zo9zvc0t.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>


Pleaes forgive me if this is already well know, as usual, I have made an
effort to locate this information before posting, which did include DejaNews,
python searches, and a quick peek at the PEP page.  At any rate, after
lots of searching, I have found a half dozen ways to do enumerations in
python, but have yet to find an officially "blessed" python implementation.
So, I have a couple of questions:  Is there a PEP which addresses enumerating
in Python?  If so, has it been adopted and/or implemented?  Where does everyone
stand on enumerations and Python?

For what it's worth, one of the implementations that I found was done by
Fred Gansevles <gansevle at cs.utwente.nl>, which seems to work pretty well.

Thanks,
	Greg


From legere at adelphia.net  Sun Jul  8 13:17:56 2001
From: legere at adelphia.net (Ronald Legere)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:17:56 GMT
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
References: <mailman.994519931.6264.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8B027.515$My6.187812@news1.news.adelphia.net>

If I were going to do that, I think I would use Scheme.. the syntax is very
simple, and if you use only core language constructs
(cons/car/cdr/define/cond and a few others.. maybe definemacro too. ) you
will have writen your code in a very easy to implement language (almost
everyone writes a scheme interpreter at some point <* grin *> )
  Alternatives? Perhaps lambda calc with minimal extensions.. but then again
thats just scheme :)
  Cheers!

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.994519931.6264.python-list at python.org...
> On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Michal Wallace wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 7 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> >> I want to be 100% sure that some things I use today will stay forever.
> >> My main concerns are:
> >
> >Hey Roman,
> >
> >You've got an interesting idea here.. But I'm not sure I understand
> >the problem it's meant to address. If you're worried about your code
> >suddenly ceasing to work, of course you know that code doesn't break
> >unless you change things. A pyhon 0.1 script would work just fine
> >today if you had python 0.1 installed.
>
> No... Probably you have not understood.
>
> Lets imagine you want to run a program 300 years from now. C compiler no
> longer exists. Intel hardware sells no longer. No weird MS Word
> files. Python 123.3.4 with almost anything changed compared with version
> 1.5.2 ;-)
>
> What is left:
>
> Data storage, 8 bit bytes, latin letters, 10 digits, some computers with
> some formal programming languages, and some programmers ;-) who are
> capable to program very simple core interpreter in the language they will
> have at hands. (Even mathematicians will be enough).
>
> So, after they program core interpreter according to specs, they will have
> all Eternal software ready to run!
>
> What I half-jokingly proposed is "do it yourself" core interpreter which
> could interprete code written in some simple code, able to evolve like
> Forth does.
>
> AFAIK, there is nothing similar to Eternal apart from Turing machine or
> basic math notation.
>
> This way, the portability is utmost: you write simple core interpreter (~
> RISC-processor) and you can run software!
>
> And you have NO troubles of getting 300 years old hardware, CPU specs,
> etc, etc - only data stored in 8-bit bytes + the only informal piece
> missing: interpreter.
>
> Can you see the root of the idea now?
>
> Of course, only things of historical value will be done in Eternal:
> * JPEG->ASCII convertor
> * bzip2 decompressor
> and so on.
>
> Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
> --
> _/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
> _/ Saturday, July 07, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
> _/ "OK, I'm weird! But I'm saving up to become eccentric." _/
>
>




From mal at lemburg.com  Sat Jul 14 14:52:21 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:52:21 +0200
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107142120210.11347-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <3B5094E5.F239D0E9@lemburg.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> 
> >> #!/usr/bin/python
> >> # -*- coding=utf-8 -*-
> >> ...
> >
> >I already mentioned allowing directives in comments to work around
> >the problem of directive placement before the first doc-string.
> >
> >The above would then look like this:
> >
> >#!/usr/local/bin/python
> ># directive unicodeencoding='utf-8'
> >u""" UTF-8 doc-string """
> >
> >The downside of this is that parsing comments breaks the current
> >tokenizing scheme in Python: the tokenizer removes comments before
> >passing the tokens to the compiler ...wouldn't be hard to
> >fix though ;-) (note that tokenize.py does not)
> 
> BTW, it is possible to write variable names in national alphabet
> is locale is set. But I do not know if this is side-effect
> which will be corrected or behaviour one can rely on ;-)

It is a side-effect of Python relying on the isalpha() C API.
I wouldn't count on it though since it is not compliant to 
the Python reference and other Python implementations may
very well not offer this possibility.
 
> It could be also nice to be able replace keywords with localised ones.
> Python remains nice even after translating into Russian.

Eek, no please !  VisualBasic went down that road and
backed out again... it's simply a complete nightmare.

> This + mending broken IDLE (which doesn't allow to enter cyrillic) will
> allow beginners to think and write. Currently "writing while thinking"
> works only for those who think in English ;-)
> 
> And such a move opens Python to secondary schools. For example, Logo has
> national variants without any losses. Why Python, also targeted for
> education requires to use English?
> 
> And unicoding (utf-8-ing) Python source could be the solution.
> 
> What do you think?

I personally think that programs should always be written in ASCII 
and all national language string literals be moved out into
gettext() (or similar) support files. Of course, for beginners
and small projects this is overkill, so the proposed Unicode literal 
variant might help... which is why I wrote the PEP -- adding this
support to Python is really simple and does not require a 
major rewrite of the tokenizer/compiler components in Python.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/




From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul 15 18:32:52 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:32:52 GMT
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>   <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <mailman.995217986.28167.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b521a83.2007802417@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 13:29:24 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:

>> > Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
>> > comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
>> > non-parsing tools like editors to find it?
>> >...
>> 
>> Parsing tools do need it. The directive changes the file's semantics.
>> Both parsing and non-parsing tools need it.
>
>I understand that.
>
>> I could live with a comment but I think that that is actually harder to
>> implement so I don't understand the benefit...I'm still trying to
>> understand what tools we are protecting. compiler.py can be easily
>> fixed. The real parser/compiler can be easily fixed. The other tools
>> mostly take their cue from one of these two modules, right?
>
>I disagree with the first sentence -- I believe a comment is easier to
>implement.  The directive statement is still problematic.  Martin's
>hack falls short of doing the right thing in all cases: you can't have
>the first statement of your program be "directive = ..." or
>"directive(...)".
>
>Another argument for a comment: I expect there could be situations
>where you want to declare an encoding that doesn't affect the Python
>parser, but that does affect the editor (e.g. when you use the
>encoding only in comments and/or 8-bit strings).  A comment would
>back-port to older Python versions; a directive statement wouldn't.  I
>don't know how important this is though.
>
If the scope is always a complete file, what about just building on
the -U in #!/usr/bin/python -U, and letting all interested programs
look for flags?



From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul 19 15:06:42 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:06:42 -0700
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B572FC2.1825750F@Lugoj.Com>

PeterPanCrunchy at rebeccaphillips.com wrote:
> 
> I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.
> 
> Rick Moranis, movie star:
> http://www.boxofficemania.com/actors/r/rick_moranis/rick_moranis.jpg
> 
> Guido van Rossum, Python inventor:
> http://www.python.org/~guido/images/Guido at 200dpi.jpg

Honey, I shrunk the code!


From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Wed Jul 11 11:49:49 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:49:49 -0700
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org> <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b4bab70.1586151915@wa.news.verio.net> <3b4c647e.2934740@nntp.sprynet.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C759D.559D6AA5@ccvcorp.com>


"David C. Ullrich" wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:47:30 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
> wrote:
>
> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py str  10L**20899
> >str took 13.601617 seconds
> >
> >[18:47] C:\pywk\fib>strL.py strL 10L**20899
> >strL took  1.044989 seconds
> >
> >Recursion rides again ;-)
>
> Recursive or not, the idea that we can write
> a replacement for str that's faster is very
> curious.

How much of this difference in speed, though, is because strL()
is a special purpose integer->string conversion, where the
standard str() is a general-purpose anything->string conversion?

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International





From kmugrageREMOVE at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 19:30:45 2001
From: kmugrageREMOVE at hotmail.com (Ken Mugrage)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 23:30:45 GMT
Subject: reading sockets
Message-ID: <FGN07.153841$%i7.102425274@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

Sorry for the newbie question, but I'm just learning python and trying to
write a small program that uses sockets.

Basically, I wam to emulate the perl behavior of reading the response from
the server one line at a time.

In perl, I would do something like

while(<SOCKET>) {
    print $_;
}

and it would print everything as it is sent, one line at a time.

In Python, I have something like

while 1:
  data = mysocket.recv(1024)
  print data

which of course print everything in 1024 byte blocks.

I tried using string.split( data, "\n") but the results are inaccurate,
since the end of data may be in the middle of a line.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.




From dlharris at mail.usyd.edu.au  Thu Jul 19 13:19:42 2001
From: dlharris at mail.usyd.edu.au (Dave Harrison)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 03:19:42 +1000
Subject: problem with gzip files
Message-ID: <20010720031942.A5249@isetroc.com>

To the resident Python-eers,

I am writing a script which goes through and reads logfile, and since I want to read the archived ones as well I need to be able to open up the gzip'd ones as well.

However everytime I try to open up a gzip file I get the following error :

Traceback (most recent call last):
	File "./zipreader.py", line 3, in ?
		import gzip, os
	File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/gzip.py", line 9, in ?
		import zlib
ImportError: No module named zlib

I then tried installed the zlib library, which went fine.  Except it hasn't solved my problem.

Is there something simple I am missing here ? Any advice ?

Thanks
Dave



From missive at frontiernet.net  Wed Jul 11 16:26:19 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:26:19 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits? bug fix!
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com> <9iajn0$rvm$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <9iicpa$9ju$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

Hi:

Thanks for your help. I finally broke down and joined the zope mailing list.
It was not so difficult, really, just fill out the form at:

http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope

and reply to the confirmation message that goes out to you.


Turns out there is a bug in the PIL External Method example in the Zope
Book. Once the image.data attribute gets to a certain size, it is no
longer pushed around as a string, but gets wrapped up in its own 
different kind of object. PIL or cStringIO was objecting to that.

The fix is to wrap image.data in str() to force stringiness.
Here is the corrected code...

(mostly from http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB/ScriptingZope.dtml)


def makeThumbnail(self, original_id, size=128):
          """
          Makes a thumbnail image given an image Id when called on a Zope
          folder.

          The thumbnail is a Zope image object that is a small JPG
          representation of the original image. The thumbnail has a
          'original_id' property set to the id of the full size image
          object.
          """

          from PIL import Image
          from cStringIO import StringIO
          import os.path

          # create a thumbnail image file
          original_image=getattr(self, original_id)
          original_file=StringIO(str(original_image.data)) # bug fix here
          image=Image.open(original_file)
          image=image.convert('RGB')
          image.thumbnail((size,size))
          thumbnail_file=StringIO()
          image.save(thumbnail_file, "JPEG") 
          thumbnail_file.seek(0)

          # create an id for the thumbnail
          path, ext=os.path.splitext(original_id)
          thumbnail_id=path + '.thumb.jpg'

          # if there's and old thumbnail, delete it
          if thumbnail_id in self.objectIds():
              self.manage_delObjects(thumbnail_id)

          # create the Zope image object
          self.manage_addProduct['OFSP'].manage_addImage(thumbnail_id,
                                                         thumbnail_file,
                                                         'thumbnail image')
          thumbnail_image=getattr(self, thumbnail_id)

          # set the 'originial_id' property
          thumbnail_image.manage_addProperty('original_id',
                                                original_id,
                                                     'string')





From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 23 00:16:19 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:16:19 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <220720012039325082%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim]
> Not all experienced programmers agree.  At the last Python Conference, I
> moderated a ... group discussion ... By show of hands, about 3/4ths of
> the participants agreed that 3/4 should not return 0, but rather
> *something* x such that x*4 had a better chance of being confused
> with 3 than with 0.

[John W. Baxter]
> I see a fairly strong argument there for starting out with a language
> in which int / int --> float (or rational) and int // int --> int (or
> int div int --> int).

I don't consider a vote an argument.  At best, since it was a visible show
of hands, it let everyone know who wasn't worthy to live due to voting the
wrong way <wink>.

> I don't see it as a strong enough argument

It's not an argument at all -- it was in response to Arther asking whether
experienced programmers would favor such a change (and, yes, some would).

> to overcome the fact that the careful programmer will have to inspect
> every / in all the code, before installing 2.3 or whatever version
> this happens in, to see whether (a) it IS division, as opposed to
> the / in  '<a href="6/7.html">'  (that's contrived...but possible)

Guido suggested building a tool on top of the tokenize module; it reliably
distinguishes "/" as an operator from all other occurrences of "/"; no false
leads.

> and if so whether it has to be respelt as // (or div).

I probably use integer division more than most, and that job looks trivial
to me -- but then I *understand* my algorithms, and "it's obvious" in each
case which I intended.  If this happens, the transitional release should
also produce runtime warnings pinpointing lines where "/" is applied to
integer arguments, so if you've got good unit tests nothing will be missed.

> Some of them will; some won't:  some of both outcomes indicate latent
> errors in the code, so the inspection isn't completely wasted after
> all.
>
> And it may not be her code...she could be 3 or 4 people removed from
> the creator, who is gone.  [Another good thing about finding the latent
> errors.]
>
> It's true--as stated elsewhere--that Guido hears all the complaints.
> It's also true that until recently there was no reason for Guido to
> hear "Guido, thank you for defining int / int to be integer division,
> because integer division is natural for my problem space."  So he's
> been getting a biased sample.  Probably a fairly representative one
> even so.

Don't forget that this has been debated repeatedly over the course of
several years.  Most people drop out of these things after the fifth time
<0.5 wink>.

what-i-can't-tolerate-is-making-division-case-sensitive-ly y'rs  - tim




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Fri Jul 13 16:48:51 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:48:51 -0400
Subject: COM: VB client, Python server: NULL result ...
Message-ID: <q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

On three separate systems I am experiencing the same problem trying to
create an Python COM object from VB. The VB satetement

    Set obj = CreateObject("Python.Dictionary")

(or any other Python COM object) gives the dreaded error 80004005, with the
message:

    Unexpected Python Error: exceptions.SystemError: NULL result without
error in call_object

No problem creating "Python.Interpreter", (not, of course, written in
Python) for example. So it doesn't appear to be a VB client problem.

A Python client can do what I'm trying to do in VB, using Dispatch, so the
COM object registration is at least half right (I'm using UseCommandLIne()
to register and de-register).

Seems I must have overlooked something dead obvious, so I'm hoping the
collective wisdom of c.l.py will quickly tell me what. Couldn't find
anything on ActiveState's site.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/








From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Tue Jul 31 11:15:14 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 11:15:14 -0400
Subject: win32api exception names?
References: <9k4r84$n85$1@uranium.btinternet.com> <uhevt6hsy.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <9k65s2$5ao$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <uofq1t9j1.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> writes:

> could you please explain the code needed a little better? sorry!
> 
> if i use something like this:
> 
> except win32api.api_error, info:
>     win32api.MessageBox(0,"File can not be opened, right double click to
> open\nthe file's directory.", appName, 0, 0)
> 
> then i get: AttributeError: 'win32api' module has no attribute 'api_error'

Whoops - my fault.  The local module name for the error class is just
"error".  So use "win32api.error" in your exception instead of
"api_error" and you should be fine.

It's a little confusing (clearly I forgot :-)), because when
displayed, the error will show up as pywintypes.api_error or just
api_error, but the actual error class is defined in each individual
module as just "error".

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Thu Jul  5 17:33:22 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:33:22 -0600
Subject: Question about scope
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E7@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Tim Daneliuk [mailto:tundra at tundraware.com]

<snip>

> 
> I guess what I want to know is when globally declared objects 
> are seen inside a function, class, or
> block, and when they must be explicitly declared as being global.
> 

Whenever you want to assign to them you'll need to declare them as
global (otherwise the Python interpreter thinks you're trying to create
a new local variable).

-- bjorn



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 05:11:15 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:11:15 +0200
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994943120.433.python-list@python.org> <3B4E483C.4379E84E@engcorp.com> <mailman.994988062.18418.python-list@python.org> <3B4E68C5.E47D5F0F@engcorp.com> <mailman.994998742.17624.python-list@python.org> <3b4f538f.1825798619@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <9ip28t01303@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b4f538f.1825798619 at wa.news.verio.net...
    ...
> I have a theory that a fair number of books (and computers!) are bought
for the
> rabbit's-foot effect. I.e, if you just own it, it will give you magical
powers.

How silly -- everybody knows that owning it is irrelevant, the key thing
is sleeping with your head close to it so that its magical effluvia reach
your brain each night.  Good thing the standard Python library reference
does specify that usage mode IS keeping it under one's pillow!


Alex





From cja at well.com  Tue Jul 24 09:16:59 2001
From: cja at well.com (Chris Abraham)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:16:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: ZPugDC Tonight!
In-Reply-To: <995571150.316.4033.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0107240615330.7935-100000@well.com>

Zythons:

I wanted to drop you a quick not that we will be having our second meeting
tonight in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC.  From 7-9pm.  You can get all
the important information at http://www.zpug.org

Cheers,

Chris

-- 
chris abraham, managing director <cja at beehive.de> <http://www.beehive.de>
beehive North America, washington, dc, +1 202 548 0410 wk +1 202 478 0276





From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul  5 02:59:46 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:59:46 +0200
Subject: reading sockets
In-Reply-To: <FGN07.153841$%i7.102425274@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
References: <FGN07.153841$%i7.102425274@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010705085946.A4111@strakt.com>

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 11:30:45PM +0000, Ken Mugrage wrote:
> Sorry for the newbie question, but I'm just learning python and trying to
> write a small program that uses sockets.
> 
> Basically, I wam to emulate the perl behavior of reading the response from
> the server one line at a time.
> 
> In perl, I would do something like
> 
> while(<SOCKET>) {
>     print $_;
> }
> 
> and it would print everything as it is sent, one line at a time.
> 
> In Python, I have something like
> 
> while 1:
>   data = mysocket.recv(1024)
>   print data
> 
> which of course print everything in 1024 byte blocks.
> 
> I tried using string.split( data, "\n") but the results are inaccurate,
> since the end of data may be in the middle of a line.

I'm no star on Python, and I'm not sure this'll work, but you might want
to try this:

f = mysocket.makefile('r')
line = f.readline()
while line:
    print line, # line already has a \n
    line = f.readline()

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010705/51a8a6b3/attachment.sig>

From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 15:48:51 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 15:48:51 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <uhew0eqn0.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> For less disturbing changes like nested scopes or generators (which
> would break only very small amounts of old code), we can introduce the
> new feature for real in the next release (e.g., nested scopes will be
> standard in 2.2, I expect generators will become standard in 2.3), but
> for devastatingly code-breaking changes like division, I'll wait until
> 3.0 before it becomes the law.

I wouldn't be consistent if I didn't at least suggest that making
nested scopes default behavior might also be a candidate for 3.0 - as
you mentioned in response to another post of mine, it's the other case
where once it becomes default, older code may silently execute
incorrectly as opposed to just breaking.  Perhaps that could be a
metric to use to gauge which incompatible features can be fully
activated in a 2.x series versus 3.0?

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From rnd at onego.ru  Sun Jul 15 01:56:30 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 09:56:30 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 1.1)
In-Reply-To: <3B5094E5.F239D0E9@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107150953420.2560-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

>> It could be also nice to be able replace keywords with localised ones.
>> Python remains nice even after translating into Russian.
>
>Eek, no please !  VisualBasic went down that road and
>backed out again... it's simply a complete nightmare.

I know. Its very unpleasant to see russian names for functions in Excel. I
myself will probably never use such thing. And also it is doable with very
simple preprocessor, so there is no reason to change Python.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 15, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "This is Borg. <ESC> is futile <CTRL> is inevitable" _/




From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 21:43:39 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 20:43:39 -0500
Subject: interpreter improvements
In-Reply-To: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15192.56907.63367.816591@beluga.mojam.com>

    kevin> .... Couldn't the interpreter be improved to behave more like a
    kevin> real shell, with command history and maybe evn completion or (god
    kevin> forbid) keywork syntax coloring. Couldn't it support some basic
    kevin> shell commands like more and ls and such?  Even in wish i can
    kevin> type ls and get a listing.

Here's a ten-minute hack I posted a few days ago that does some minimal
guessing about shell commands:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mycode.py+skip%40pobox.com&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=mailman.994974802.14320.python-list%40python.org

Knock yourself out... ;-)

As for command history and command completion, sounds like you must be stuck
on Windows.  Readline and rlcompleter do a decent job of command recall and
with the atexit module you can save the history file across sessions.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From kp87 at lycos.com  Thu Jul 19 22:27:13 2001
From: kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 19:27:13 -0700
Subject: curdle a list
Message-ID: <5e8bd451.0107191827.15dfc069@posting.google.com>

I've got a little function that takes a list and subdivides 
it randomly. so that i can say:

>>> x = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
>>> clump.clump(x)

and it will return a list like any of the below lists:

[[1], [2, 3], [4], [5, 6, 7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12], [13, 14], [15], 
[16, 17], [18], [19, 20, 21], [22], [23, 24]]
[[1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [6, 7], [8, 9, 10, 11, 12], [13, 14], [15, 16], 
[17, 18, 19, 20], [21, 22], [23, 24]]
[[1], [2, 3, 4], [5, 6], [7, 8], [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], [15, 16, 
17], [18], [19], [20, 21, 22], [23, 24]]
[[1, 2, 3, 4], [5, 6], [7, 8], [9], [10, 11, 12, 13], [14, 15, 16], 
[17, 18, 19, 20], [21, 22, 23, 24]]
[[1, 2], [3], [4, 5], [6, 7], [8], [9], [10, 11, 12, 13], [14, 15, 
16, 17, 18, 19, 20], [21, 22], [23, 24]]

So, now what i'd like to do is make a function that would be like:

curdle(seq, prob)

where prob is the probability that there will be a partition between
any two elements.
So that should be something like:

import random

def curdle(seq, Prob):
        if not seq:
                return []
        result = [seq[:1]]
        for e in seq[1:]:
                # either extend last clump or start a new one,
depending on Prob
                if random.random() < Prob:
                        # extend last lump
                        result[-1].append(e)
                else:
                        # start a new lump
                        result.append([e])
        return result
        
But, i am not 100% sure i am getting the right results. It seems as
though
i am, but i was hoping that if it was off someone with knowledge of
testing
randomness would give it the once over. Prob set to 0.5 should
give me 50% chance of a new subsequence. 0.0 should give me
subdivisions
all the time and 1.0 should give me the flat list back (or rather on
big list
nested as an element inside the list.

cheers,

kevin parks
Seoul, Korea

kp87 at lycos.com


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:15 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:15 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su>
Message-ID: <5penltc38m2m2agp21d3ohlk0a08or9fip@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:42:10 +0700, "Andy Salnikov"
<salnikov at inp.nsk.su> wrote:

>
>"Robin Becker" <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+ at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk...
>>
>> I think that is wrong, but I use python in a professional capacity. I
>> think languages succeed or fail because they work for programmers.
>
>Yeah, completely agree. Personaly, if this change happens, it will be a big
>revolt from Python for me. Not only for aesthetic reasons, simply because I
>cannot rely on the language which dares to change the meaning of existing
>operators. What do you think will be next? Change assignment to work like a
>copy, because there are many people confused with the reference semantic? I

EXACTLY.

I do, in fact, occasionally get confused by the reference behaviour in
Python - expecting copies and getting references and visa versa,
especially when I havn't used it for a while. I'm used to being
explicit about when I'm dealing with references, and occasionally
having something behave as a reference when I didn't tell it to can be
a surprise. But I wouldn't propose changing this in a million years -
too much code would break.

There is only one other way I'd accept this change quietly. Support
some kind of version declaration in source files - a bit like 'from
__future__ import', but not implying the new behaviour will be
standard in the next version up.

How about...

from __standards__ import v22_base, sloppy_thinking_division

It should not prevent the use of new constructs, but new semantics for
old syntax should only occur if requested.

It would still leave a bad taste, but at least it doesn't mean
spending months debugging code that currently works.

>Guys, if you really need something returning floats for division, make it
>new operator, I guess everyone could be made happy with 1/2 == 0 and 1//2 ==
>0.5.

Absolutely. I could *ignore* that ;-)

In fact, document '//' as the alternative for the traditional division
sign '?'. If it really is for the benefit of newbie non-programmers to
delay the integer division lesson until it can really bite them -
maybe when they first learn binary searches and can't figure out why
theirs never terminates, for instance - then they are probably just as
shocked not to have a ? symbol anyway.



From rqcryx at my.com  Fri Jul  6 20:02:19 2001
From: rqcryx at my.com (rqcryx at my.com)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 00:02:19 GMT
Subject: Check This Out!!!  9290
Message-ID: <fks17.32264$By.1830845@typhoon.midsouth.rr.com>

We Have Opened a new SuperStore for all you shopping needs. Check us out at www.our-superstore.com
hrbvyjimrjrlvxjoievxgwjhkvsbevevslsbjuwcftzdzysbiuwszxhjqmjhrjfuiusoejlvorwivdz



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 17:08:04 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 23:08:04 +0200
Subject: the center of the world (was Re: Check out O'Reilly's Open Source Convention Highlights)
References: <cpvglilpzl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3AA82D.1A0FE860@seebelow.org> <Xns90CE99B1A22D9atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <3B3B2DED.5303198A@seebelow.org> <9hhri7019jd@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B471BA4.7050306@mail.mcg.edu>
Message-ID: <9i7tjr11b9o@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Keith F. Woeltje" <kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu> wrote in message
news:3B471BA4.7050306 at mail.mcg.edu...
> Saw this on slashdot and thought of this thread. Here's what the Debian
> folks did. My trig is pretty rusty, so I'm not sure the method is correct.
>
> http://people.debian.org/~edward/average/

Thanks for the reference (and I thought I was being original...!), but
it seems to me the algorithm they're using is exactly the one that has
been proven wrong on this thread: they compute the 3D center and
project it back onto the sphere's surface.  Intuitively appealing, but
just doesn't work right...


Alex





From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 21:03:40 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 21:03:40 -0400
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <mailman.994666709.12545.python-list@python.org> <9ifsp7$k1a$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> <9ihsuo$255$1@coco.singnet.com.sg> <9iibsu$kj$2@oravannahka.helsinki.fi> <9inbdq$rnd$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg>
Message-ID: <3B4F9A6C.CFD8EB70@engcorp.com>

Ng Pheng Siong wrote:
> 
> According to Panu A Kalliokoski  <pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi>:
> > It depends. I haven't checked Medusa's code, but if it's done in a
> > sensible way (i.e. protocol handlers are separate objects from
> > socket/channel handlers), it should be at most a 15-minute job. Where
> > could I get the Medusa source to try it out?
> 
> http://www.nightmare.com/medusa/

And there's always http://www.google.com/search?q=medusa+python

-teaching-a-man-to-fish-ly yr's, 
 Peter Hansen


From gsinfo at gefen.com  Mon Jul  9 18:06:51 2001
From: gsinfo at gefen.com (gsinfo at gefen.com)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:06:51 GMT
Subject: DVI to ADC Conversion Box  5249
Message-ID: <%Vp27.167886$qv3.43797154@nnrp5-w.sbc.net>

Dear User Group;

Gefen makes an interface that allows any computer with a DVI output, including the older G4 with DVI graphics to connect to any new Apple flat panel display 15" and 17" Studio Display and 22" Cinema Display monitors with ADC connection. 

The DVI to ADC Conversion Box as it is called also allows Macintosh users to add a second DVI PCI card and to drive a second Apple flat panel display (15" and 17" Studio Display and 22" Cinema Display )

The package includes:
1- The DVI to ADC Conversion Box
2- 6 feet DVI cable (M-M)
3- 6 feet USB cable (A-B)

The package  list price is $299.00 and we wanted to offer it to your user group at a special discount ($100.00) off or $199.00. Any purchases during  the month of July 2001 will be honored at the reduced price.

You can find more information online at http://www.gefen.com

Call us and mention this ad to get your $100.00 discount.

nuilewqhlvlzcslzelxctrmxwjchsifdtxpxrftqehfkyxnxjiztucngvtfffibidygocfbtugrudmsonlmnwsyndlon



From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 19:48:26 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:48:26 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <23891c90.0107230118.752e3f00@posting.google.com> <u3tnlt0480u7o655p988bsr9p3vc1g14ee@4ax.com> <slrn9lp1ui.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <bl7pltkl8bv0eecsfcr90v45hh0aek72u7@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls2aa.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Stephen Horne wrote:

[I said, about his suggestion that we should have a language
whose grammar can be changed:]
>> It's existed for years. It's called Lisp, and it's
>> the reason why Python is only the second best programming
>> language in the world <0.5 wink>.
> 
> I've used it, and it *isn't* what I'm thinking of - I want a human
> readable language ;-)

I sympathize, but note that Lisp becomes much more
readable with experience, even for humans :-).
And there's a *reason* for its peculiar syntax,
which is deeply connected to the very property
you want: all this code-transformation stuff is
much, much easier when the structure of the code
is extremely regular.

You might want to look into Dylan, which has a
more conventional syntax and a pretty powerful
macro system.

> The only big worry in principle is that I think a more
> functional/logical style would be better for the compile-time language

Are you really sure you don't want Lisp? :-)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 12:43:00 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:43:00 -0400
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <9ij8ss$puj$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <zqk37.1678$u76.50058@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9ij8ss$puj$1 at panix2.panix.com...
> In article <3B4CA0A8.20B53230 at tundraware.com>,
> Tim Daneliuk  <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote:
> >
> >Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to
prepare
> >the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
> >
> >        (()), (), ((,)) ???
>
> Um.  Tuples are immutable.  How do you add more later?

With a text editor: he's talking about modifying constant data structures as
design proceeds.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From ylee12 at uiuc.edu  Wed Jul 18 15:23:26 2001
From: ylee12 at uiuc.edu (Young-Jin Lee)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:23:26 -0700
Subject: [Q] Python, GUI, and Java
Message-ID: <sAj57.1758$oz3.22749@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>

Hi, all.
I'm new to Python. I heard many applause on Python, especially ease of
programming, and I want to use Python. I read the python tutorial on the
python home page, but it didn't have all I wanted to know.
>From my first expression on Python, it is better for server side
programming. Can I use Pythong to develop a client application with a GUI?
It looks like I should you Tkinter. How powerful is it? How easy is it?
And is there any way to connect Python application and Java application? I
have been developing a Java application (it's quite large) and I don't want
to rewrite it with JPython.

Any comment would be of great help.
TIA.

YJ




From missive at frontiernet.net  Sun Jul  8 17:35:29 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 21:35:29 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ZOPE] External Method process limits?
References: <9i9rmn$kc6$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <detgkt4tbklojg2lothn6jm6ak0pnls874@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9iajn0$rvm$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 17:03:30 +0200, Rene Pijlman <reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep>:
> missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) schreef:
>>Here is the error message I get:
>>Error Type: TypeError
>>Error Value: expected string, ImplicitAcquirerWrapper found
>>File /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py, line 18, in makeThumbnail
>>Any wisdom?
> 
> Yes, the error is on line 18 of
> /usr/local/www/Zope/Extensions/Thumbnail.py :-)
> 
> Post lines 1-25 if you want more help.


def makeThumbnail(self, original_id, size=128):
          """
          Makes a thumbnail image given an image Id when called on a Zope
          folder.

          The thumbnail is a Zope image object that is a small JPG
          representation of the original image. The thumbnail has a
          'original_id' property set to the id of the full size image
          object.
          """

          from PIL import Image
          from cStringIO import StringIO
          import os.path

          # create a thumbnail image file
          original_image=getattr(self, original_id)
          original_file=StringIO(original_image.data)
          image=Image.open(original_file)
          image=image.convert('RGB')
          image.thumbnail((size,size))
          thumbnail_file=StringIO()
          image.save(thumbnail_file, "JPEG") 
          thumbnail_file.seek(0)

          # create an id for the thumbnail
          path, ext=os.path.splitext(original_id)
          thumbnail_id=path + '.thumb.jpg'

          # if there's and old thumbnail, delete it
          if thumbnail_id in self.objectIds():
              self.manage_delObjects(thumbnail_id)

          # create the Zope image object
          self.manage_addProduct['OFSP'].manage_addImage(thumbnail_id,
                                                         thumbnail_file,
                                                         'thumbnail image')
          thumbnail_image=getattr(self, thumbnail_id)

          # set the 'originial_id' property
          thumbnail_image.manage_addProperty('original_id', original_id, 'string
')

          return 'done' # I added this myself. Pretty clever, eh? ;)





From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 31 13:04:20 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:04:20 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996521640.5165.python-list@python.org> <3b666579.880046189@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <oyB97.56034$EP6.12790659@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
news:3b666579.880046189 at wa.news.verio.net...
> BTW, I couldn't find where it officially says a sequence
expression's elements
> are evaluated guaranteed left to right. E.g., if I write
>     [foo(), bar(), baz()]
> can I depend on global side effects of foo() to be available to
bar(), and of bar()
> to baz() in strict sequence? The sequences are at the top of the
precedence table,
> but what of the elements? Just want to make sure ;-)

I remember reading that function arguments are (guaranteed) evaluated
l to r.  I believe dict entries are also, so {'n':1, 'n':2} ==
{'n':2}.  I presume list items are also.  This should be in ref manual
if not already.

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Wed Jul 18 07:26:05 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:26:05 -0400
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995443830.26172.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B55724D.465E8A44@engcorp.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> Purely on subject:
> 
> it is great Python is ONLY 2 times slower than Perl.
> In my experience, Perl in only 2 times slower than C.
> 
> This makes Python to be only 4 times slower than C. Not bad
> for the _interpreter_.

Nothing like allowing the error in each estimate to
accumulate.

In practice, we've found Python to be somewhere between
30 and 100 times slower than C, clearly depending on the
algorithm and without really much effort to optimize.
(That is, our Python code could probably withstand
some significant optimization, if we cared to.)

Four times slower is, I think, unlikely without
significant optimization effort (or even then).

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Sat Jul 21 19:16:42 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:16:42 +0100
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <mailman.995535516.9340.python-list@python.org> <8f41cfd.0107191250.16351e0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lk3ap.fl3.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

C S Xu wrote:

> Speed issue is due to recently I helped my classmate to do a
> calculation on his study. The calc. time increases as ~ 2^n,
> where n is number of particle pairs (2 particle forms a bond
> called a pair). In python, n=15 already took me 10 minutes to
> get the result. So I am curious what improvement I can obtain
> if I change the code into C/C++. According to my previous
> experiences, NumericPy doesn't give much more speed as claimed.
> I remember it is only about 2 times faster than original python.

If the calculation time goes up like 2^n, then a factor of 2
in speed is only going to buy you one more particle pair.
A factor of 100 will get you between 6 and 7 more. Is that
enough to make a big difference? You might do better looking
for algorithmic improvements, though I appreciate that
finding such improvements might be a major research project.

With Python code that's similar to C or C++ code translated
into Python -- like your benchmark loop -- you can probably
expect a factor of 100 from moving to C or C++. For most
programs, you can get more or less the same improvement by
translating only a small amount of the code into C or C++
and leaving the rest in Python. (Gluing C and Python together
is generally very easy, especially when you're writing the
code on both sides.) But please note: often you won't know
*which* small portion of the code to do in C or C++ until
you've written it all and timed it. So start in Python,
get the program working, and then look at moving bits of it
to C for speed.

> Anyway, thanks for all comments. I've ever considered Python
> was always 2 times slower than Perl everywhere (it is true on
> my working SunOS, :-( ), now I'm corrected.

I simply do not believe that Python is twice as slow as Perl
for all programs, on *any* system. Try the ones I posted
a day or two ago.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 14:18:50 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 20:18:50 +0200
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993765761.11911.python-list@python.org> <6qn16r7i69.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <9hhu6701d5j@enews2.newsguy.com> <6qae2r71hd.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <cp4rszl10a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3CECEA.5D02A66E@Lugoj.Com> <v491ktc9nooqo00k2l8th5moqui4i91c7r@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wz8zi719f9.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> (SH) writes:

SH> I've always liked having a colon on my assignment operator - I think
SH> the single = for assignment was a mistake. If we had := for
SH> assignment, then augmented assignments would be more clearly distinct
SH> from other operators - :+=, :-=, :*= etc etc.

Should be +:=, like in Algol 68.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From gnb at itga.com.au  Thu Jul 12 20:20:03 2001
From: gnb at itga.com.au (Gregory Bond)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 10:20:03 +1000
Subject: Singleton classes (with no such thing as static variables)
References: <MdY%6.168$iF.4908@news.lhr.globix.net> <3B40B5F5.1F8F03D9@recombinant.demon.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031104560.26669-100000@gilecpc.d1.hyperlink-interactive.co.uk>
Message-ID: <86y9pt3cjw.fsf@hellcat.itga.com.au>

Giles Constant <gilesc at hyperlink-interactive.co.uk> writes:

> (with respect to constant/variable data, I'm actually passing around a
> class which can provide database cursors from a single active connection,
> but I can do something with what you've pointed me at!)

Here's what I use for exactly this:

In module dbhandle:
-------
import Sybase

__the_db = None

def db():
    '''
    Create the singleton database handle if required and return it.
    '''
    global __the_db
    if __the_db is None:
        __the_db = Sybase.connect(<connect arguments...>)
    return __the_db
-------
In the client code
-------
from dbhandle import db

db().execute('use databasename')
cursor=db().cursor()
#..... etc
-------

which works well enough for our purposes.


From aramanat at optonline.net  Wed Jul  4 18:29:44 2001
From: aramanat at optonline.net (Arun Ramanathan)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:29:44 GMT
Subject: tkinter/commands help
References: <3B437AB7.86540660@optonline.net> <3B43565F.C4BA07EB@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <3B43C2CC.21C2FD78@optonline.net>

oops! I am sorry,
my text was actually initialized like this

mytext = Text(root,width='40',height='25')
mytext.pack(side=BOTTOM,fill=X)


I mistyped it as text instead of mytext in my previous posting.

I tried
def callme():
      import time
      result = str(time.time())

It does work. Every time I hit the button.

Arun




James Logajan wrote:

> Arun Ramanathan wrote:
> >
> > I am trying to run a rsh command from the commands module.
> > My code for a tkinter button and call back looks like this.
> >
> > from Tkinter import *
> > import commands
> >
> > def callme():
> >     result = commands.getoutput('rsh -l username hostname showrev -p')
> >     mytext.delete(0.0,END)
> >     mytext.insert(0.0,result)
>
> What happens when you substitute something like:
>   def callme():
>       import time
>       result = str(time.time())
>       ....
>
> Does that work? Also, you snipped too much code; you show "mytext" but don't
> show what it has been initialized to. That is all I can suggest since I
> don't have enough information to do more.





From nmack at pacbell.net  Wed Jul 25 15:59:44 2001
From: nmack at pacbell.net (angusm)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 12:59:44 -0700
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
References: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com> <21e393ee.0107210640.54f3e20c@posting.google.com> <54bjlt4sq1sloqvkaadr8a4q7pfvl30ibu@4ax.com> <irnqlt01ne8nn1aklb84n1j33s6botm2lr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <21e393ee.0107251159.5dd16bc2@posting.google.com>

> 
> However, I now don't ever seem to receive the OnConnectComplete event. This
> may be an ADO issue, but I've tested it in VB and it works as documented, so I
> suspect something with the Python side...
> 
> Any suggestions?
> Paul.

You might want to wait for a more convincing explanation from someone
else but I was able to duplicate the problem and the code below worked
for me...it ain't
pretty :-).

(the code may not work for you exactly as is since I'm doing something
weird with the ADO import etc.)

I encountered two problems based on your code:
1)It appears the event class sees a different 'finished' variable from
what you define in your module. You might try this by opening normally
(without adAsyncConnect) and the thing will hang even though it gets
the OnConnectMessage. I couldn't even get it to work when I declared
'finished' global - I had to resort to something like
globals()['finished']=1. Not too sure on this one.

2)adAsyncConnect doesn't seem to work because the infinite loop that
gets created to wait for the events hogs the entire thread. There is
no way for the dispatched event to break in asynchronously... Windows
does some event dispatching via PostMessage(?) hence the code below
which creates a temporary message pump via win32gui.PumpMessages()
which seems to be the correct way to idle in this instance. The event
handler sends a PostQuitMessage() to break the idle loop in the main
program.

hope this helps,
Angus

import win32com.client
from  win32com.gen_py.ADO21 import *
import time
global finished 
finished = 0
import win32ui
from win32con import *
import win32gui 
class onevent:
    def __init__(self,val):
        self.v = val
    def OnInfoMessage(self, pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass
    def OnWillConnect(self, ConnectionString=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
UserID=defaultNamedNotOptArg, Password=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
Options=defaultNamedNotOptArg, adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        print 'willconnect'
    def OnExecuteComplete(self, RecordsAffected=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg, adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pCommand=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pRecordset=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass
    def OnRollbackTransComplete(self, pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass
    def OnBeginTransComplete(self,
TransactionLevel=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass	
    def OnDisconnect(self, adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass	
    def OnWillExecute(self, Source=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
CursorType=defaultNamedNotOptArg, LockType=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
Options=defaultNamedNotOptArg, adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pCommand=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pRecordset=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass	
    def OnCommitTransComplete(self, pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        pass	
    def OnConnectComplete(self, pError=defaultNamedNotOptArg,
adStatus=defaultNamedNotOptArg, pConnection=defaultNamedNotOptArg):
        print 'hooray'
        win32gui.PostQuitMessage(0)





o = win32com.client.DispatchWithEvents('ADODB.Connection',onevent)
print constants.adAsyncConnect
o.Open('Provider=MSDASQL;DSN=oladb;UID=FOO;PWD=BAR;','','',constants.adAsyncConnect)
win32gui.PumpMessages()


From bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com  Fri Jul 27 16:31:19 2001
From: bhahn at spam-spam.g0-away.com (Brendan Hahn)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:31:19 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0@posting.google.com> <3B61A168.C361BE99@home.net>
Message-ID: <bhahn-ya02408000R2707011331190001@news.corp.hp.com>

Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
>Frankly, IO've also bee dissapointed in the MacPython communities
>commitment to cross-platform tools. tkInter works on Windows well
>because Window users have made sure that it does, ditto for wxPython,
>etc. No one in MacPython development is working on those things. 

It isn't fair to hold the MacPython community responsible for this -- the
problems are not so much with Tkinter and wxPython but rather with the
underlying Tk and wxWindows implementations, which both kind of work but
basically suck on the Mac.  Even with a good Tk or wxWindows library, the
differences in interface paradigm, event models, etc, make it very hard to
get  the kind of application a Mac developer wants from these systems, so
work goes into the "native" interface stuff like W and the W-based IDE. 
Unfortunately the relative smallness of the Mac community means these tools
are not as highly developed as Tk- and wx-stuff.

bhahn at transoft.mmangle.net   <-- unmangle address to reply


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Wed Jul 25 02:52:18 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:52:18 +0300
Subject: control-C not responding, short example program
References: <3b5d7220.664033@news.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <yoxhew1zejh.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

ransen_spam_me_not at nemo.it (Owen F. Ransen) writes:


> halt 500Mhz Windows 98 machine. It simply does not
> respond to control-C. Is there a way of doing this

What about the good old control-break? 

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul 18 05:34:09 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:34:09 +0200
Subject: PyDNS?
References: <mailman.995443230.25603.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B555811.BAA3981E@stroeder.com>

Anthony Baxter wrote:
> 
> >>> Erik de Castro Lopo wrote
> > This version has exactly the same filename as Anthony Baxter's original.
> > Maybe its time to add version info to the name of the tarball :-).
> 
> bah! :)
> 
> What, datestamps on the files in the tarball aren't good enough?

;-)

Well, let's move to SourceForge and then we will have plenty of
versioning via CVS. The question is which version should be uploaded
to SourceForge?

Anthony, if you have a local CVS tree of the DNS module I'd prefer
to let the SourceForge people import that and I will commit my few
changes afterwards.

Ciao, Michael.


From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 02:27:10 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 02:27:10 -0400
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
In-Reply-To: <m15PHkJ-000wcBC@swing.co.at>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMEPKLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Christian Tanzer]
> This isn't portable behavior. According to the python library
> reference, `int` may round on some platforms.

Ya, we have to say that because the C standard (C89) said that, and Python
doesn't try to worm around the platform C's behavior in this area.

However, while we've found platforms where the platform C doesn't
sign-extend right shifts of signed integers (OK by the C std), and platforms
with no integral type T such that sizeof(T) == 2 (also OK), and platforms
with no standard integral type T such that sizeof(T) >= sizeof(void*) (also
OK!), I don't believe we've found any platform where casting to an integral
type doesn't truncate.  So this one is an academic warning of no practical
consequence.  Note too that the new C std ("C99") requires truncation.




From tszeto at mindspring.com  Tue Jul 31 13:11:51 2001
From: tszeto at mindspring.com (tszeto)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:11:51 -0700
Subject: Is Python a Good Choice for Web Programming?
Message-ID: <9k6osc$jgp$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>

Hello,

I don't know Python, but I know a little Java (little more than a years
worth working with Servlets and JSP).

How is Python compared to Servlets and JSP? The language looks very nice,
but I'm hesitating because I don't see many jobs for Python and even less
for Zope.

Is is better to use Zope or just go with cgi/mod_python?

Thanks,
Ted





From alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com  Mon Jul  9 12:25:38 2001
From: alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com (Alan Klietz)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:25:38 -0500
Subject: typo.py - Warn of typographical errors in Python scripts
Message-ID: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net>

One of the most common annoyances with using Python is that it does
not report typographical errors in variable names at compile time.

For example,

def compute_area(width, height):
    area = width * hieght   # oops

Another example is a typo in an attribute for a class,

class Square:
    def __init__(self, width, height):
        self.width = width
        self.hieght = height  # oops

    def compute_area(self):
        return self.width * self.height

typo.py will catch these errors and report them:

        hieght might be used before set at line 2
        self.height might be undefined at line 7

You can download typo.py from http://utools.com/typo.htm

Alan Klietz
Algin Technology
alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com





From sabren at manifestation.com  Sat Jul  7 12:06:40 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:06:40 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Empty sys.path[0]
In-Reply-To: <Xns90D7A828A9E8Dgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107071105450.12358-100000@mercury.sabren.com>

On 7 Jul 2001, Gustaf Liljegren wrote:

> The problem is that I can't find a way to get this directory. The
> docs say that sys.path[0] should be used for this, but that does
> only return an empty string.

Where do the docs say this? It sounds like a mistake, or something
that needs clarification..

you want os.getcwd()

Cheers,

- Michal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.manifestation.com  www.sabren.net  www.linkwatcher.com  www.zike.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------




From vnestr at netvision.net.il  Sun Jul  8 16:55:28 2001
From: vnestr at netvision.net.il (Vladimir Nesterovsky)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:55:28 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr> <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com> <9i88o3$hj41s$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de> <9i945202rvq@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <9iadta$hmitg$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de>

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9i945202rvq at enews3.newsguy.com...
> "Vladimir Nesterovsky" <vnestr at netvision.net.il> wrote in message
> news:9i88o3$hj41s$1 at ID-91128.news.dfncis.de...
> > It might be viewed as a "value sort" or "sort by value",
>
> Right; in addition (which I didn't show in my last post,
> but explain in my Cookbook entry at
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52234)
> it's also pretty easy to make it stable (so that items of the
> original list that map to the same comparable remain in
> the same order as in the original list, a frequent spec:-).

Right; I also found your previous posts on this with Google search. :-)


Thanks,
  Vlad





From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul  2 12:31:46 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:31:46 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <mailman.994078443.11677.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fr81ktskiqe8guj9b241qd9mtq1324bfkd@4ax.com>

>> x += (1,2,3)  ... is not the same as...  x=x+(1,2,3)
>> That's just plain wrong.

>No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing.

Intent involves what people were thinking when they asked for it.
I have a strong feeling that you are quite wrong about this.



C//



From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Wed Jul 11 11:54:25 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:54:25 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com> <9icj7b$8df$1@dahlia.singnet.com.sg> <3B4A644F.895FC4B8@home.com>
Message-ID: <9ihsrh$1un$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>

According to Rick Lee  <rwklee at home.com>:
> This is a slightly different question about Medusa.  Is there a way to
> dynamically add/remove server IP addresses to/from Medusa as it is
> running?

Short answer: Yes, with some additional work.

Longer answer: In Medusa, a "server" is an object that accept()'s on a
socket. When a connection comes in, the "server" instantiates a "channel"
with the connected socket. The "channel" does the actual protocol work on
said connected socket. (See http_server.py's http_server and http_channel
classes. For a heavy-duty example, see Zope's ZServer.)

Typically, in an asyncore-based application, one writes a bunch of
procedural startup code, which includes instantiating one's "servers". The
procedural code then invokes "asyncore.loop()". The app now loops (duh!)
and does its work via the "channels" that are instantiated by the "servers"
in response to socket connections.

I suppose you are interested in adding and removing "servers" while the
application is in asyncore's loop. One way is for your app to first start a
_controller_ "server" with which you communicate, also over sockets, for
this purpose. You'll need to design the controller's protocol (candidate:
XML-RPC request/response) and also implement a client.

The following code is of interest for building the controller "server":
- asyncore.dispatcher.add_channel
- asyncore.dispatcher.del_channel
- asyncore.close_all

Say you now have a controller from which you can start and stop other
servers within your app. Depending on your threat model, you begin to worry
about the security of your communication with the controller. One simple
answer is to do SSL using M2Crypto. ;-) 

Cheers.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 28 02:59:13 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 06:59:13 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu> <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf@europa.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3b625dcc.615936620@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:53:28 GMT, Andrew Koenig <ark at research.att.com> wrote:

>David> In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
>David>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>>> Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
>>> as under the new rules without using // or a future division
>>> statement?
>
>>> A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>>> division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>>> function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
>>> you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.
>
>David> Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?
>
>What if x is complex?
>
Why couldn't float apply like a scalar multiply? I.e., do it
to both real and imaginary values separately.

It won't do for abs() and such, but float() is just a numeric
representation control with possible exactness effects.
int() could be viewed that way too. floor() and ceil() could bring
things to integer grid points, if that makes sense.


From grante at visi.com  Wed Jul 18 16:25:59 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:25:59 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <_bh57.32695$d4.1090608@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <9j4a6e0cpu@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B55D6B9.3E2B933E@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <rhm57.20440$B7.3194684@ruti.visi.com>

In article <3B55D6B9.3E2B933E at alcyone.com>, Erik Max Francis wrote:
>Alex Martelli wrote:
>
>> I consider myself a member of the literate minority (well
>> within the upper centile on all relevant demographics), and
>> having a recently-invented typographic prettiness, such as
>> letter-cd tcase, affect meaning, has always struck me as a deeply
>> flawed idea.

Seems quite intuitive to me.  When I was learning to write
English, incorrect case was considered a spelling error just
like using the wrong letter.  Having a computer language act
that way makes sense to me.

>> I hated it when I first met it in C and Unix,
>> and a quarter of a century hasn't reconciled me to it.
>
>Makes perfect sense to me.  What's the point of having
>differing capitalization if it isn't meaningful?
>
>Otherwise every programmer can use their own capitalization for
>each identifier, which is just confusing.

I think using inconsistent case for identifiers should be
considered an error whether or not the compiler cares about it.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  If elected, Zippy
                                  at               pledges to each and every
                               visi.com            American a 55-year-old
                                                   houseboy...


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 12:02:21 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 09:02:21 -0700
Subject: How to upgrade? (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <mailman.996104447.4969.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9junmd$13c$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <mailman.996104447.4969.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>
>It's slowly dawning on me that some people don't ship Python *with* their
>apps.  What are you, nuts <0.9 wink>?  From PySol to Zope, everyone who
>gives a rip about stability ships the software they develop with.

This ignores the reality of hosted applications.  When I got back from
OSCON, I found a little announcement from my ISP -- normally clueful --
that said they'd just installed Python 1.6.1 and were planning to make
it the default version in a week....

What I found particularly screwey in this situation is that they already
had 2.0 installed.  <sigh>  Well, now I have to write a long missive
detailing the issues involved with all the Python versions after 1.5.2.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 12:25:41 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:25:41 +0100
Subject: re bad leadership
In-Reply-To: <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl>
References: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <20010724171838.A21770@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <U+7EoKAFGaX7EwMJ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In message <20010724171838.A21770 at xs4all.nl>, Thomas Wouters
<thomas at xs4all.net> writes
....
>Robin, sorry, but you are wrong <wink>.
>
that's almost always true, but I think not in this particular case. I
think the compatibility issue is of prime importance here.
-- 
Robin Becker



From jwelby at waitrose.com  Sun Jul  8 09:17:25 2001
From: jwelby at waitrose.com (Julius Welby)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 14:17:25 +0100
Subject: csv to XML converter crash and burn
Message-ID: <tkgnj6feescc0d@xo.supernews.co.uk>

I just got all public spirited and posted this:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66003

It's a module for transforming csv to XML. It works fine for cvs strings
where no escaped commas or "" appear but.....

Unfortunately I now realise I didn't have a sufficient grasp of the csv
format. (I was under the impression that commas within csv data items were
commented out individually - i.e. item1, item ","2, item3 gives ['item1',
'item,2', 'item3'].

In fact the standard (?) appears to be to double-quote the entire item
containing the comma: item1,"item,2", item3
Also all " characters are escaped to "". (I know, I know, RTFM.)

It looks like handling csv text is more complicated than I thought.

Would anyone be interested in looking over the code (use the text source)
here?:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66003/index_txt

Is it worth trying to complete it as a stand-alone module, or should I scale
it down to a "parsed csv" to XML converter, accepting a list of already
parsed row strings?

If it's worth persevering, any help fixing it would be hugely welcomed.
Thanks in advance.




From wqh-2 at 263.net  Mon Jul 30 23:20:24 2001
From: wqh-2 at 263.net (sdf)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:20:24 +0800 (CST)
Subject: how to use method in node(xml)
Message-ID: <3B6623F8.16885@mta2>

I am a newbie to python with xml.
there is a appendchild method in Node(I know
this from python Document),
but when I use 
>>>dir(Node)
the result is 
['ATTRIBUTE_NODE', 'CDATA_SECTION_NODE', 'COMMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_NODE', 'DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE', 'ELEMENT_NODE', 'ENTITY_NODE', 'ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE', 'NOTATION_NODE', 'PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE', 'TEXT_NODE', '__doc__', '__module__']

and no appendchild accur,
it is right to use Node.__doc__
but how can I use appendchild (wrong appear when 
use Nod.appendchild).please post an example,better in detail
__________________________________________

DVD??????????10??  http://shopping.263.net/category02.htm
??????????????????????  http://shopping.263.net/category10.htm







From lomax at pumpichank.com  Mon Jul  9 12:40:52 2001
From: lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Fistolina" Lomax)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:40:52 -0400
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
	<QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net>
	<2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
	<cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<15177.50705.483826.728871@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <15177.56980.181062.995933@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "SM" == Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

    SM> The astute observer would be tempted to ask why Barry hasn't
    SM> been able to sneak mimelib into the core yet:

I have it on good authority that it's because he's currently on tour
with the Implodin' Opossums as backstage porta-potty sanitization
manager and bass tech.

    | import mimelib
    |     Traceback (most recent call last):
    |       File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    |     ImportError: No module named mimelib

    SM> I won't ask however, as I don't want to show up on the PSU's
    SM> radar screen.  Has anyone seen Barry recently?

>>>>> "GvR" == Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> writes:

    GvR> Barry?  Who's that?

Don't worry bucko!  When he's finished with the Opossums (who are
promoting their latest album "Smearpoline"), I'm sure he'll be
checking mimelib into Python.  If he somehow get's "distracted"
between Boise and Butte, I'll do it with his hacked private key.

then-the-whole-world-will-know-the-awesome-force-that-is-barry-ly y'rs, - frank



From jonschull at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 23 19:12:07 2001
From: jonschull at yahoo.com (Jon Schull)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 16:12:07 -0700
Subject: Nice graphs from class hierarchies?
References: <mailman.995345248.18915.python-list@python.org> <m3itgsyo9k.fsf@kepler.ibp.de> <3B55F91F.A80DC806@wi.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <b8c015b9.0107231512.56a2387b@posting.google.com>

> >
> > Dot (see http://www.graphviz.org/) is a powerful program that produces
> > reasonably beautiful output.
> 
> I noticed that there was a perl and tcl interface to graphviz, is anyone
> working on a python interface for doing layouts?  If not, I'll step up to the
> plate.
> 

Well there's this:  "SNIPPET: Pipe Graphviz's graph geometry into
Pmw.ScrolledCanvas" (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/124396 )
but it seems pretty spotty.

I hope you go ahead!

--Jon


From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul 14 02:51:20 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:51:20 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: More on "with" statement
In-Reply-To: <3B4FD2AC.BF2F9AD6@alcyone.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141046350.3574-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Erik Max Francis wrote:

>Roman Suzi wrote:
>
>> Programmers must be lazy to some degree. So, they tend to write
>>
>> a*(b+c+d+e)
>>
>> instead of
>>
>> a*b+a*c+a*d+a*e
>
>That's just plain more efficient.  Four additions and one multiply

four?

>instead of three additions and four multiplies.

The same with "with": it could make name-resolving more efficient
by allowing searching some namespaces ahead of locals() and globals()...

For example (I prefer "in" instead of "with", 'cause its a
keyword already and thus no problem adding it):

import string
in string:
  a = split("1 2 3 4 45 5 6")
  l = join(a, ":")
  print l

(string is only example, I know about string methods).

The big question of course, if a and l will be in
string namespace or in locals() ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/




From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Sun Jul  8 15:13:27 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 21:13:27 +0200
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> (message from
	Guido van Rossum on Fri, 06 Jul 2001 19:53:13 GMT)
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3dd77drkea.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cpk81lkfb2.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <08072001.4@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "Guido" == Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

    Guido> Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

    >> >   from __future__ import float_division
    >> >   from __future__ import real_division
    >> >   from __future__ import new_division
    >> >   from __future__ import division

    >> 'float_division'.  There's no type corresponding to "real", nor
    >> is that terminology used anywhere in the docs; 'new_division'
    >> and 'division' strike me as unclear.

I don't see new_division being particularly unclear... note that it
only appears in a __future__ statement, which already marks it a
"Uh-oh, we gotta watch out here!".  Agree on the "real" and pure
"division" thing, though.

    Guido> I would pick float_division in a jiffy if it weren't for
    Guido> the issue that some folks feel that they would rather have
    Guido> 1/3 return a rational number.  I think they'll lose that
    Guido> argument in the end, but I don't want to preclude that
    Guido> outcome just yet.  I like the proposal unified_division
    Guido> best so far, with float_division a close second.

I'm against float_division.

If Python *ever* grows a rational type (is that likely?  I thought it
was), 1/2 would certainly be the most obvious way to write a rational
literal (or: 1/2 producing a float instead of a rational would not be
as weird as its current behavior... but it would certainly be quite
non-obvious)

Bye, J

PS: Whether 0.1 should be a rational or a decimal float is something
else entirely (I'm not opposed to it returning a rational, but a
decimal float makes quite a bit more sense).

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
          My WebHome: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard
                     I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org)
             I wish I had more energy -- or less ambition.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010708/531215ce/attachment.sig>

From danb at champonline.com  Fri Jul 20 12:39:56 2001
From: danb at champonline.com (Dan Bergan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:39:56 -0500
Subject: Case insensitivity
Message-ID: <08f001c1113a$9c8f58e0$1164a8c0@champ17>

I'm a newbie to python (and I love it!), but I've also worked a lot in C and
Visual Basic.  I've been coding a lot of VB lately, and I've really gotten
to like the fact that the IDE will automatically correct the case of the
variables.  I have found that it actually speeds up my development time a
bit.  Here is how I use it:

(Declare the variable in mixed-case)
Dim myVariable as Integer

(then I purposely type in the wrong case when I use 'myVariable')
myvaraible = 1  '<==TYPO!

If the IDE does not fix my case, I know I have made a typo.  The compiler
would have caught this eventually (I use VB's 'option explicit' to force me
to declare my variables), but it makes for faster programming to fix it
immediately.  Not a huge time saver, but I like it.  On the other hand, I
suppose I could just learn to type!  :-)

I never have had a preference between case-sensitive and case-insensitive (C
and VB), but because of my new (bad?) habit, I can foresee having some
potential bugs in python.  When I type something in a different case, it
will just give me a brand new variable.

Dan Bergan






From bhartweg at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 12 05:53:07 2001
From: bhartweg at yahoo.com (Bruce Hartweg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:53:07 +0100
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <Wv237.4859$z21.493903@newsc.telia.net>
Message-ID: <zre37.597$rc5.39950@news.cpqcorp.net>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote in message
news:Wv237.4859$z21.493903 at newsc.telia.net...
> Harald Kirsch wrote:
> > 2) TASK: Find the first '<A>' and match, if it is followed by a 'B'
> >    SOLUTION: ???
> >
> > An approximation for (2) is '^[^<>A]+<A>B', but it does not match
> > 'A<A>B', which it should.
> >
> > With non-greedy matching, another approximation is '^.*?<A>B', however
> > this matches 'xx<A>y<A>B', although it should not.
>
>     (?:(?!<A>).)*<A>B
>

almost, you must anchor it to start of string or
it will match  "A>y<A>B"


^(?:(?!<A>).)*<A>B

will fail to match the example as requested.

Bruce





From mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM  Sat Jul 21 14:42:41 2001
From: mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:42:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9ljdq4.9ur.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0107211050510.380-100000@SPIELZEUG.HASENTALER.THOUSAND-OAKS.CA.US>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Grant Edwards wrote:

> On 19 Jul 2001 20:46:32 GMT, Tim Randolph <timothyrandolph at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how easy it
> >is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would very much
> >prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that enforce *uniform* case
> >usage.

I'm looking at Python as a potential language to solve a problem with an
environment that is case-insensitive but case-preserving.

I strongly agree with the concept of tools such as editors and preprocessors
that enforce uniform usage for a particular user environment.  However, I am
just as strongly opposed to a case-insensitive compiler/interpreter and, in
particular, if it is case-preserving.

> >Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but nobody
> >wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program with distinct
> >meanings.
> 
> That is simply not true.

For a language that has absconded with tokens that I have used in other
environments to infer relationships, I would find it highly desirable to use
case to provide relational and value information.  Of course the problem may
be that I am, simply, not object-oriented.  On the other hand, it could be
that my problem is that I haven't used a high-order language since my last
year at university when I took a Theory of Compilers course which now that I
think about it is 30 years ago.  Maybe there is something to this "old dogs
and new tricks" thing.

> >I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes for readable code -- at
> >least for this sometime programmer.
> 
> I've been using foo and Foo to mean two different things for
> many years (and I know of lots of others do also). Perhaps it's
> not to your taste, but that doesn't make all of us "nobody".

Merton Campbell Crockett




From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul 14 18:07:11 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:07:11 -0500
Subject: Naked function call syntax
In-Reply-To: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>
References: <3b4fa037.1845423078@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <15184.49807.62686.132366@beluga.mojam.com>

>>>>> "Bengt" == Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> writes:

    Bengt> Interactively, I find myself writing little things like:
    ...
    Bengt> so that, e.g., I can type

    Bengt>     pd(vars)

    Bengt> and get formatted info. But I'm lazy enough that
    Bengt> I would like to to type just
    Bengt>     pd vars

    Bengt> Is there an existing pythonic way to do this?

Not really.  However, a couple ideas come to mind.  In my .pythonrc.py file
I have

    from pydoc import help

so that I type

    help(vars)

at the interpreter prompt.

Yesterday I posted a subclass of code.InteractiveConsole that when an
attempt at evaluating user input failed, it would pass the line to
os.system:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mycode.py+skip%40pobox.com&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=mailman.994974802.14320.python-list%40python.org

You could instead have it convert

    foo arg1 arg2 arg3

into 

    foo(arg1,arg2,arg3)

with appropriate argument quoting (checking for ints, strings and such) and
eval that.  Obviously, if arg2 contained whitespace, you'd have to quote it.
Completion of this idea is left as an exercise for the reader.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sat Jul 14 15:08:40 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:08:40 -0700
Subject: Activestate Python, not able to run "Module Documentation Server" on 
 standalone computer
References: <3b507b2b.1396350535@news.mch.sni.de>
Message-ID: <3B5098B8.A6938512@ActiveState.com>

Christian Aastorp wrote:
> 
> The Module Documentation Server is quite nice, I run it on my computer
> at work. But it fails when I try to run it at home with a message from
> the browser that its unable to go on-line.
> 
> Is it possible to run it on a stand-alone computer?

Yes, but the computer needs TCP/IP installed and I have a vague sense
that there may be some configurations where Windows thinks that TCP/IP
is only available when it is connected to the Internet. Try playing with
your networking configurations. e.g. try binding TCP/IP to the "loopback
adapter".
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From patrick.vrijlandt at tip.nl  Sun Jul 15 12:18:05 2001
From: patrick.vrijlandt at tip.nl (Patrick Vrijlandt)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 18:18:05 +0200
Subject: Python and SNA
Message-ID: <9isfpl$ld4$1@nereid.worldonline.nl>

Hi,

has anyone any experience of a documentation link for talking to MS SNA
server from a Python program under win 95?

TIA

Patrick Vrijlandt




From thomas at gatsoft.no  Wed Jul 25 10:21:31 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:21:31 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
Message-ID: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>

hi,

( In relation to my previous post about user authentication using SOAP, I
got another simple question. )

Does anybody have any thoughts about SOAP, especially SOAPpy ( it looks very
nice, simple to use ), and potential speed issues? I'm thinking of
implementing a distributed system where nodes communicate using SOAP.
There's a clear potential of much traffic among the nodes and I just
wondered if SOAP is the right protocoll/technology for the job. In my
project each node will register with a nodemaster ( holds info about running
nodes, nothing else, will check for availability of registered nodes with a
given interval too, remove dead ones from list ) and get a list of running
nodes in return. It will then proceed to query these running nodes in a
serial manner ( at least to begin with, maybe use a async. approach later )
about information and parse the result.

Is SOAP suitable for something like this? It seems like it would be very
easy to get a system like this up and running. My goal is to make a
distributed system ala Gnutella, with no central server, just a bunch of
nodemasters and nodes. I'm interested in other users experience with SOAP,
with focus on speed of communcation ( speed of network disregarded. I'm only
interested in impact on speed caused by SOAP itself. ).

It's also clear that some problems might occur cuz the BaseHTTPServer which
is used for the most part, have performance issues. Perhaps implementing the
server using asyncchat etc. would increase performance ?? Why aren't the
modules allready implemented with these tools available in the standard
python lib allready, if that's the case?

Any ideas appreciated.

Thomas




From paulp at ActiveState.com  Mon Jul  2 13:44:35 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 10:44:35 -0700
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org> <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com> <naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com> <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl> <mailman.994083124.18397.python-list@python.org> <9hq57a0jnd@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B40B303.86164FD9@ActiveState.com>

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> "Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.994083124.18397.python-list at python.org...
>     ...
> > I'd like to see some real-world code that takes advantage of the fact
> > that this single operator behaves differently with mutable and immutable
> > types. Then I will believe that it isn't just a squishing together of
> > two unrelated features.
> 
> Depending on how you define "real world", I have some use of that
> with my still-unreleased "in-house" (literally:-) "gmpy 1.0", where I
> have mutable numbers.  

That's pretty weird but I have no objection to consenting adults doing
weird things. I would suggest you consider lightweight proxies instead
of mutable numbers so that you get optimization for x = x + y "for
free".

But let me try another tact: what if we just changed the behavior of
lists. Rather than saying "mutable objects do this, immutable objects do
that", I would like to say "built-in, ordinary, typical objects do this,
rare, advanced, specialized objects do that."

"This" is the simplest interpretation x +=y is equivalent to x = x + y.

"That" is the more sophisticated polymorphic interpretation where the
type chooses its own behaviour.

Would this be an acceptable compromise? Everyone wins.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Fri Jul 20 13:50:25 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 13:50:25 -0400
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wky9pjo5ge.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "DR" == Dennis Roark <denro at earthlink.net> writes:

DR> Lack of type safety; lack of forcing variable names to be
DR> declared before use.  (In a long program, how hard it is to
DR> find a bug that is simply the misspelling of a variable!)

Coming late to this discussion...

Python requires that a variable be assigned before use, and most typos
are caught by this requirement.  The one typo bug I can think of that
would not be caught is a typo in the lhs of an assignment, after a
previous assignment to the same variable.  And frankly, I've yet to
encounter one of these.  Current project, not my first python project,
is ~4000 lines of python, to give you some idea of my exposure.

EG:

    spaf = [1,2,3]
    for i in spam:
       dosomething
    
creates a traceback... as does

    spam = [1,2,3]
    for i in spaf:
       dosomething
                                       

However:

    spam = [1,2,3]
    dosomething to spam
    
    spaf = [7,8,9]
    dosomething to spam
    
is a silent bug.  Perhaps there ought to be a "strict" mode where
Python complains about variables that are assigned only once and never
used? 

I notice that most of us loathe multiple assignments to the same
variable -- a surprising amount of discussion on this newsgroup is
devoted to avoiding multiple assignments.  We prefer to write an
assignment just once, in a loop if appropriate.  Multiple assignment
statements hint that code is poorly thought out, or that a single
variable is being used for different purposes.

Patricia
-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From mlunnay at ihug.com.au  Mon Jul 16 10:22:12 2001
From: mlunnay at ihug.com.au (Michael Lunnay)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:52:12 +0930
Subject: integer division rounding
Message-ID: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au>

Why does an integer division resulting in a negative round down ,e.g -0.5
=> -1, while C and  __builtin__.int() rounds up ,e.g -0.5 => 0. Is this a
purposful error(?), or an oversight?

Michael Lunnay




From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul  5 14:34:35 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:34:35 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com> <mailman.994351690.22119.python-list@python.org> <9i27i8$gd9bq$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <3B44B031.819C93E@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <9i2c77$gmc74$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I'm not sure how you mean slower, but I tested just now to see, and this is
the fastest of the four.

"""
-    10-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda
         5 :    0.00         0.01         0.00         0.00
        10 :    0.02         0.01         0.01         0.00
        50 :    0.07         0.07         0.02         0.01
-    50-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda
         5 :    0.04         0.04         0.00         0.01
        10 :    0.07         0.07         0.02         0.01
        50 :    0.37         0.35         0.07         0.08
-   100-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda
         5 :    0.07         0.07         0.02         0.01
        10 :    0.15         0.14         0.03         0.03
        50 :    0.76         0.70         0.14         0.15
-   500-       std_re      cpl_re      str_join    flt_lmbda
         5 :    0.37         0.35         0.07         0.08
        10 :    0.74         0.70         0.14         0.15
        50 :    3.74         3.60         0.70         0.75
"""


import re
from time import time

def std_re(iters):
    for i in iters:
        re.sub("[^0-9]", "", "(555) 333.2221")

c = re.compile("[^0-9]")

def cpl_re(iters):
    for i in iters:
        c.sub("", "(555) 333.2221")

def str_join(iters):
    for i in iters:
        "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])

def flt_lmbda(iters):
    for i in iters:
        filter(lambda c:c.isdigit(), '(123)/456-7890')

testfuncs = (std_re, cpl_re, str_join, flt_lmbda)
COLWIDTH = 12
funcHdrs = '%%-%ss' % COLWIDTH * len(testfuncs) % tuple([x.__name__ for x in
testfuncs])
rsltMask = '%6.2f'

while COLWIDTH > len(rsltMask % 0):
        rsltMask = rsltMask + ' '

for count in (10, 50, 100, 500):
    print '\n\n-%6d-       %s' % (count, funcHdrs),
    for iterations in (5, 10, 50):
        print ("\n\n    %6d : " % iterations),
        for func in testfuncs:
            iters = xrange(count)
            start = time()
            for i in range(iterations):
                func(iters)
            print rsltMask % (time()-start),

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Michael Str?der" <michael at stroeder.com> wrote in message
news:3B44B031.819C93E at stroeder.com...
> Emile van Sebille wrote:
> > Or (without re):
> > print "".join([x for x in '(123)/456-7890' if x in '0123456789'])
>
> I guess this one will be significantly slower for larger
> data sets than the re solution because of
>
>   if x in '0123456789'
>
> Ciao, Michael.



From gustafl at algonet.se  Fri Jul 13 18:57:01 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 22:57:01 GMT
Subject: Importing XML modules in py2exe or Installer?
Message-ID: <Xns90DE9C2957BDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152>

Have completed a fairly large project where I, among other modules, use the 
Python XML package from the XML SIG. Now I want to make a DOS binary to 
distribute it as a standalone application for Windows users.

Neither py2exe nor Installer is able to find the XML modules by themselves, 
and I haven't been able to figure out how to include them. For example, 
when running the EXE that Installer creates, I get the following message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 7, in ?
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 117, in _import_hook
    return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 206, in _finish_import
    bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 292, in _load_tail
    m = self._import_one(m, part, fqname)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 252, in _import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 281, in _process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "e:\python\lib\xml\dom\minidom.py", line 21, in ?
    from xml.dom import HierarchyRequestErr
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 117, in _import_hook
    return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 206, in _finish_import
    bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
  File "E:\pyinst\support\imputil.py", line 294, in _load_tail
    raise ImportError, "No module named " + fqname
ImportError: No module named _xmlplus.dom

The XML modules reside at e:\python\_xmlplus in this computer. I have tried 
the respective include options, but don't know if I do it right:

python e:\pyinst\builder.py myscript.cfg --includes e:\python\_xmlplus

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From llothar at mailandnews.de  Tue Jul 17 22:39:30 2001
From: llothar at mailandnews.de (Lothar Scholz)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 04:39:30 +0200
Subject: Inheritance in extension type
Message-ID: <sit9ltc8uhs7glo8ijlv8mjm6krso2dhge@4ax.com>

I'm writting a C extension and i define two types A and B.
How can i  specify that B inherits from A.

I was not able to find something about that in the reference manual,
so any hints are welcome.




From dgoodger at bigfoot.com  Mon Jul  2 20:51:51 2001
From: dgoodger at bigfoot.com (David Goodger)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 20:51:51 -0400
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
In-Reply-To: <mailman.994093746.7662.python-list@python.org>
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com> <mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org> <iu81kt0lbh9mabltuq6udod51ba9p9hb4l@4ax.com><mailman.994093746.7662.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <B7668F66.13B8C%dgoodger@bigfoot.com>

on 2001-07-02 1:09 PM, Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com) wrote:
> Also, until a year or so ago, the fileinput module was not widely used

Speak for yourself :-). I use it all the time. There must be more like me
out there.

Well, maybe not.

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger at bigfoot.com    Open-source projects:
 - Python Docstring Processing System: http://docstring.sf.net
 - reStructuredText: http://structuredtext.sf.net
 - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sf.net



From u at g0ertz.de  Mon Jul 16 09:35:06 2001
From: u at g0ertz.de (Ulrich Gortz)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 09:35:06 -0400
Subject: Win2k Tkinter checkbuttons
References: <MDxSHIA$eHT7Ew8o@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <s77ofqlov3p.fsf@xfresno.math.ias.edu>

Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> I'm having problems with menu checkbuttons under python2.1 running under
> win2k sp2. When I pop up a menu containing a ticked item I don't see all
> of the tick. When the mouse passes over the checkbutton the tick
> suddenly gets fully displayed.

I have exactly the same problem (see also 
http://www.g0ertz.de/tkinter.html ); I don't know how to fix it.

Ulrich



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 11:10:28 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:10:28 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Ville Vainio" <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote in message
news:yoxd77fh4pr.fsf at karhu.tp.spt.fi...
> Mitchell Morris <mitchell.morris at cingular.com> writes:
>
> > All in all, it's been a pretty big win for Java. Conventional wisdom and
> > some non-peer-reviewed studies suggest that Java per se provides very
little
> > leverage over C++, that the average developer doesn't build Java
solutions
> > any faster or more bug-free than they build C++ ones, and that selecting
>
> Supposing that garbage collection and abundant reference semantics
> increase productivity by n percent (as all pythonians know), this
> would mean that C++ has some areas that improve productivity (and
> reduce bugs) as much over java. What are they? STL alone doesn't
> amount to that much, I would believe...

>From my personal experience: I get roughly a 15-20% increase of
productivity in Java.  Lack of templates (standard C++ library
and others) is BY FAR what I miss most in Java, reducing whatever
the gain would be if Java had them back down to such 15-20%
gains.  Other less-important lacks that hurt my productivity
in Java wrt C++ are multiple inheritance, auto-destructors
(having to code try/finally &c instead), and to some extent
slower recompile/rerunalltests cycles due to Java performance
in the second half of that cycle.

That's off the top of my head and based mostly on Java 1.1
experiences back when we were testing if it was the right
language for us -- what I was mostly doing was recoding in
Java the various proprietary network protocols, parsing and
loading data from old legacy file formats, etc, so as to allow
some tools (and eventually had we gone that way the whole
caboodle) to be coded in Java.  Small packages of a few
thousand lines' worth of C++ code each (say 2,000 to 15,000,
tops), roughly the same size in Java, so, no idea of how it
would fare in "programming in the large" tasks, GUIs, very
computationally-intensive tasks (handling network protocols
or parsing file formats is one thing, a 3D parametric geometry
kernel quite another:-), etc, etc.

Presumably the gain would be greater if the programmer did
NOT have full command of C++ with all of its complexities,
etc, etc.


Alex





From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 17:36:59 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 23:36:59 +0200
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <fnt3ktkphaut5q2ohbpage1n1advhdt109@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9htdr10b01@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Courageous" <jkraska1 at san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:fnt3ktkphaut5q2ohbpage1n1advhdt109 at 4ax.com...
>
> >The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the
positive
> >things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?
Why
> >the leaning towards C over C++?
>
> The explosion of forms available and commonly in use in C++ gives me
> a headache. I really just want "C with classes and virtual functions,"
pretty
> much. Templates are an abortion.

Templates are by far the best group of features in C++.  See, for
example, www.boost.org to see what excellent, solid, *FAST* libraries
they let experts brew.  But then, the standard C++ library (and most
specifically the part of it that was inspired from STL, and also SGI's
ongoing STL work) and Coplien's "pattern without a name" (and its
use e.g. in ATL/WTL) should have proven that already.  Generic
programming is an extremely important paradigm and templates
support it quite creditably.

Besides, template programming means signature-based polymorphism,
just like Python programming.  The analogies between coding C++
templates and coding Python are amazingly strong -- I was able to
"dream in Python" MUCH faster because of strong previous experience
with C++ templates.  Of course, in C++ the polymorphism in templates
has to be solved at compile/link time, giving more speed than the
Python runtime resolution but less flexibility.  But the way you use
it in practice is VERY close in either case.


> The reference operator is often used
> in lieu of a perfectly good pointer, and when it is, it's badly
obfuscating.

There is no such thing as a "reference operator".  If you mean
a reference parameter, yep -- they were originally meant for
overloaded operators, and using them in methods or functions
that are not operators may be confusing and misleading to
somebody coming from C -- not to somebody coming from Pascal,
or Visual Basic, or, I believe Ada, or Eiffel, for example -- of course,
because those languages would have made them used to
distinction between by-value and by-ref parameters being
designated at the called-function declaration point, just
like is done with C++'s reference-parameters.

But if you think Pascal, VB, Ada, Eiffel and C++ are all "abortions",
because they distinguish val/ref parameters elsewhere than C
does, you're perfectly welcome to this opinion, of course:-).


Alex





From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Thu Jul 26 01:43:32 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:43:32 -0500
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net> <cpwv4xa97a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <01c001c11595$ef870c00$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org>


> missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) writes:
> > we already have people importing things from the __future__,
> > how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?
>
> This has been suggested before.  It's just as easy (in fact in a sense
> it's easier, since you know what the past was, but you may be wrong
> about what the future might bring :-).  But the problem (as I see it)
> is that there will never be a point where we can throw away support
> for the past behavior, because there will always be code around that
> imports it.

I disagree here... in fact I think this is a *plus*.  That is, when version
3.0 comes out (for instance) and the code says "from __past__ import
division"
then you get an exception.  This is GOOD... obvious code breakage is much
safer than silent code breakage.  You get notified right away, when the new
version compiles the code, that this bird don't fly no more.

My proposal for

    from __numerics__ import original

is the same sort of thing.  When the "original" semantics disappear, the
user gets an obvious error message.






From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 20:52:23 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:52:23 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <mailman.996515638.21022.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db@posting.google.com> <Pyk97.4104$9i1.318163@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B660147.BAE94874@engcorp.com>

Steve Holden wrote:
> 
> I believe a separate syntax would be required to represent such a radically
> different object. But you, of course, may know better ... if you're looking
> for a syntax, one possibility would be:
> 
>     [[x * 2 for x in g()]]

If that doesn't refer to a list comprehension formed inside another list,
you'd be well on your way to reinventing another language whose name begins
with P...

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tim.one at home.com  Thu Jul  5 19:28:45 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 19:28:45 -0400
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
In-Reply-To: <3B44ECBB.B6050C92@home.net>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKLKMAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Paul Prescod]
> I'd suggest you take a look at this:
>
> http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0206.html

[Chris Barker]
> I had forgotten about that, but I just looked again, and I remember
> being all excited about it, but it doesn't seem to have happened:
> "proposal for Python 2.0" what happend?

Of all the things the Python community may be accused of lacking, good ideas
isn't one.

still-time-to-write-a-2.2-world-peace-pep<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From jacobkm at dont.spam.me.cats.ucsc.edu  Wed Jul 18 14:31:40 2001
From: jacobkm at dont.spam.me.cats.ucsc.edu (Jacob Kaplan-Moss)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 19:31:40 +0100
Subject: Python XSLT Processor?
Message-ID: <jacobkm-AAFFEC.19314018072001@news.ntlworld.com>

Hey y'all --

I'm looking for a pure Python XSLT processor (i.e. no C/C++ extensions); 
does anyone have any good pointers?  I know of a few Java ones, so I 
could use a Java XSLT program + Jython, but I'd really prefer to keep 
using CPython if possible.

TIA,

Jacob


From ljz at asfast.com  Sat Jul 28 23:14:01 2001
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 23:14:01 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn.pl.9m4rar.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <yge4rrwa0li.fsf@asfast.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> 27 Jul 2001 22:13:50 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> pisze:
> 
>> Accountants and their kin want ledgers, positions, etc. to balance to
>> the penny (or centavo, or whatever is the smallest fractional currency
>> in a given country).  This can only be accomplished using decimal
>> arithmetic ... like Bignums with implied decimal places.
> 
> Not only; rationals work too.

Agreed: rationals with a fixed denominator for calculation results,
such as 100 in the U.S. where we have dollars and cents.  And with
division, there probably would have to be rational remainders, also
with the same denominator.


> -- 
>  __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
>  \__/
>   ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
> QRCZAK

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com


From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul  4 10:47:40 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 07:47:40 -0700
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>
Message-ID: <9hvahi$flokk$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

You don't have back-slashes in your path and paths strings.  You've got
tabs.  Try using
path = r'e:\test\test.txt'
paths = r'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Gustaf Liljegren" <gustafl at algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse at 194.213.69.148...
> I have two problems with backslashes in DOS path strings:
>
> >>> path = 'e:\test\test.txt'
> >>> path.replace('\\', '/')
> 'e:\test\test.txt'
>
> Expected:
>
> 'e:/test/test.txt'
>
> Also, split() doesn't like backslashes:
>
> >>> paths = 'e:\test\file1.txt e:\test\file2.txt'
> >>> paths.split()
> ['e:', 'est', 'ile1.txt', 'e:', 'est', 'ile2.txt']
>
> Expected:
>
> ['e:\test\file1.txt', 'e:\test\file2.txt']
>
> Alternative ways would be much appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gustaf Liljegren



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 08:22:06 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:22:06 -0400
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part II
References: <9hiifr$sjs$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <mailman.993843346.4433.python-list@python.org> <fFD%6.19908$zT1.1099537@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <slrn9jvibr.is.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <lFZ%6.20144$he.983632@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

The Lilith machine was also programmed only in a high-level language.
Niklaus Wirth claimed they did most of the bootstrap using an oscilloscope
("not even a logic analyser") to debug things.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Grant Edwards" <grante at visi.com> wrote in message
news:slrn9jvibr.is.grante at tuxtop.visi.com...
> On Sun, 01 Jul 2001 11:17:31 GMT, Kragen Sitaker <kragen at dnaco.net> wrote:
>
> >>You could write an operating system that could only be directly
> >>programmed in Python.
> >
> >I'm not sure how.  Nobody has yet come up with an operating system that
> >could only be directly programmed in C, or Lisp, or Algol, or Java,
> >despite implementing operating systems in all four.
>
> Weren't Symbolics machines circa 1980 directly programmable
> in Lisp?
>
> --
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm RELIGIOUS!! I
>                                   at               love a man with a
>                                visi.com            HAIRPIECE!! Equip me
with
>                                                    MISSILES!!




From mwh at python.net  Tue Jul 17 11:14:11 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 11:14:11 -0400
Subject: [Python-Dev] PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <3B540EBA.EE5372BD@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <2m1ynfr3jw.fsf@starship.python.net>

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

> - which format to use for the magic comment, e.g.
> 
>   * Emacs style:
> 
>       #!/usr/bin/python
>       # -*- encoding = 'utf-8' -*-

Emacs already has a name for this; you'd write that

# -*- coding: utf-8; -*-

Seems reasonable to me.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  We've had a lot of problems going from glibc 2.0 to glibc 2.1.
  People claim binary compatibility.  Except for functions they
  don't like.                       -- Peter Van Eynde, comp.lang.lisp



From cbarber at curl.com  Mon Jul 30 19:52:23 2001
From: cbarber at curl.com (Christopher Barber)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 19:52:23 -0400
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <psoae1mrn48.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>

<brueckd at tbye.com> writes:

> > >  For example, if I need to store a list of points and color
> > > values I can't just make an array of (x,y,color) tuples. I need to
> > > create a class to hold them and then create instances and store them in
> > > an array or Vector.
> >
> > You seem to be complaining about the lack of tuples, not static type-checking
> > per-se.
> 
> Hmmm... no, because in Java, for example, to store something in the
> container (be it tuple or whatever), the container would have to be
> declared as one that can contain my type of object, and to get my object
> back out I'd have to explicitly state what it is. 

Ok.  You are complaining about lack of tuples AND parameterized container
types.

> want to store the integer 5 in a Java Hashtable, you can't just stick it
> in there, instead you do a "new Integer(5)" to create an Object
> descendent that can be stored in Hashtable. Then to get it out:
> 
> int foo = ((Integer)myHashTable.get(someKey)).intValue(); // bleh
> 
> What's the value-add of strong typing here?

Nothing.  It only does you good if your type system is good enough.  If you
have to resort to runtime casts then it does not buy you anything.
 
> > do not have a good code coverage tool.  If the compiler can catch a type error
> > for me at compile-time, that is at least one less unit test I have to write.
> 
> How so? The type checking imposed by compilers like Java don't seem to
> solve any real problems - all they do is free the compiler from blame:
>
> Vector v = new Vector();
> String s = "hi";
> v.addElement(s);
> Integer i = (Integer)v.elementAt(0);
> 
> The compiler made me stick in the cast to an Integer, but it didn't solve
> any problems for me (the code is still wrong). The only result is that the
> compiler can now say, "Hey, it's not my fault - you're the one who cast it
> to an Integer!".

This is a bad example because the code is doing runtime, not compile-time
checking.  I was talking about the advantages of compile-time checking.

Here is how this would be written in Curl:

   let v:{Array-of String} = {new {Array-of String}}
   let s:String = "hi"
   {v.append s}
   let i:int = v[0]        || ERROR: can't assign a String to an int

Besides providing compile-time type checking, this allows the compiler to
generate much better code than it could otherwise do without the type
information.

> Others on here have pointed out that using C++/Java as an example of a
> strongly-typed language is a mistake, so maybe my opinion is closer to
> "the typing systems in C++ and Java tend to cause me more work and
> problems" and not strong, static typing.

Perhaps.  I also would not paint C++ with the same brush as Java since it also
has parameterized types.  C++ is weak in other ways in that you can use casts
to subvert the type system.

> > for you.  It would really be nice if Python could add some sort of optional
> > type declarations.  It should be technically feasible.
> 
> I don't think the technical feasability is the main thing keeping them
> out. Can you help me better see how the value outweighs the cost? (I'm not
> saying the value is 0, only that for me the cost has always *seemed* to be
> greater than the benefit.

The cost must be paid by whoever designs and implements such a feature.  Users
would not have to use it if they don't want to.  At least one benefit would be
that anal programmers like myself would be more willing to consider using
Python for critical projects.  Adding type declarations would also allow
significant code generation optimizations.

- Christopher



From teo at crepido.com  Wed Jul 25 06:36:49 2001
From: teo at crepido.com (teo)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 03:36:49 -0700
Subject: Problems when converting from QString to str
Message-ID: <dd144f8b.0107250236.455d4d6e@posting.google.com>

if i try to convert a Qstring (Qt 2.3.3) containing '?'-'?' or '?' to
python str i get the following error:


self.Comment contains u'testing ? ? ?' 

code:

comment_text = str(self.Comment.text())
  
error:

File "MyPreferencesDevice.py", line 469, in slotOK
comment_text = str(self.Comment.text())
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/qt.py", line 965, in
__str__
return str(self.sipThis)
UnicodeError: ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

Does this mean I actually can't handle '???' in my application or is
my code wierd?


From rsalmon at tulane.edu  Fri Jul 13 16:40:13 2001
From: rsalmon at tulane.edu (Rene Salmon)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 13:40:13 -0700
Subject: error compiling python 2.1 and  tkinter
Message-ID: <57ffe515.0107131240.14da4dc9@posting.google.com>

Hello all,

Am hoping some here can help me or point me in the right direction.

I have and Irix 6.5.11 machine. I can install the default Python2.1 no
problem.  But I just installed TCL/TK 8.3.3 and would like to use
TKinter with it.  So I edited the Modules/Setup file to enable tkinter
it looks like this

I have tk and tcl installed in /usr/local/


# *** Always uncomment this (leave the leading underscore in!):
 _tkinter _tkinter.c tkappinit.c -DWITH_APPINIT \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your Tcl/Tk libraries are:
        -L/usr/local/lib \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your Tcl/Tk headers are:
        -I/usr/local/include \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your X11 header files are:
        -I/usr/X11R6/include \
# *** Or uncomment this for Solaris:
#       -I/usr/openwin/include \
# *** Uncomment and edit for Tix extension only:
#       -DWITH_TIX -ltix8.1.8.2 \
# *** Uncomment and edit for BLT extension only:
#       -DWITH_BLT -I/usr/local/blt/blt8.0-unoff/include -lBLT8.0 \
# *** Uncomment and edit for PIL (TkImaging) extension only:
#     (See http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ for more info)
#       -DWITH_PIL -I../Extensions/Imaging/libImaging  tkImaging.c \
# *** Uncomment and edit for TOGL extension only:
#       -DWITH_TOGL togl.c \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect your Tcl/Tk versions:
#       -ltk8.2 -ltcl8.2 \
# *** Uncomment and edit to reflect where your X11 libraries are:
        -L/usr/X11R6/lib \
# *** Or uncomment this for Solaris:
#       -L/usr/openwin/lib \
# *** Uncomment these for TOGL extension only:
#       -lGL -lGLU -lXext -lXmu \
# *** Uncomment for AIX:
#       -lld \
# *** Always uncomment this; X11 libraries to link with:
        -lX11



but now when I type make this is what I get



gcc   -o python \
                Modules/python.o \
                libpython2.1.a -lpthread -ldl  -L/usr/local/lib
-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11  -lm
ld32: WARNING 84 : /usr/lib32/libdl.so is not used for resolving any
symbol.
ld32: WARNING 84 : /usr/lib32/libX11.so is not used for resolving any
symbol.
ld32: ERROR   33 : Unresolved text symbol "Tcl_GetStringResult" -- 1st
referenced by libpython2.1.a(_tkinter.o).
        Use linker option -v to see when and which objects, archives
and dsos are loaded.
ld32: ERROR   33 : Unresolved text symbol "Tcl_Alloc" -- 1st
referenced by libpython2.1.a(_tkinter.o).
        Use linker option -v to see when and which objects, archives
and dsos are loaded.
ld32: ERROR   33 : Unresolved text symbol "Tcl_Merge" -- 1st
referenced by libpython2.1.a(_tkinter.o).
        Use linker option -v to see when and which objects, archives
and dsos are loaded.
ld32: ERROR   33 : Unresolved text symbol "Tcl_Free" -- 1st referenced
by libpython2.1.a(_tkinter.o).
        Use linker option -v to see when and which objects, archives
and dsos are loaded.
ld32: ERROR   33 : Unresolved text symbol "Tcl_SplitList" -- 1st
referenced by libpython2.1.a(_tkinter.o).
        Use linker option -v to see when and which objects, archives
and dsos are loaded.



can someone please help me.  Any ideas as to what might be wrong.
thank you in advanced for any help you can give me 

please respond to me as I am not subscribed to the list

Rene


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 13 18:31:15 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:31:15 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 18:01:37 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
>or to the def.  The ONLY difference is that lambda generates an
>anonymous function (and is an expression), while def generates a
>named function (and is a statement).

In that case why not allow an anonymous version of def, e.g..,

    map(
        def(x):
            x**2
        ,xrange(5))

which would work like

    map(
        lambda x:x**2
        ,xrange(5))

(OTOH you could make lambda multi-line ;-)





From N010715clp at dancing.org  Sun Jul 15 01:59:15 2001
From: N010715clp at dancing.org (Peter Renzland)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 05:59:15 GMT
Subject: do .. while loops ?
References: <mailman.995169745.15095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Tia47.182605$Mf5.49804454@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>

Paul Andreassen wrote on Sun, 15 Jul 2001 14:00:31 +1000:
> 
> Could someone please tell me why "do .. while" loops are not part of the
> python language?

http://www.python.org/doc/current/ref/while.html :

7.2 The while statement 

The while statement is used for repeated execution as long as an
expression is true: 

    while_stmt:     "while" expression ":" suite
                   ["else" ":" suite]

This repeatedly tests the expression and, if it is true, executes the
first suite; if the expression is false (which may be the first time it
is tested) the suite of the else clause, if present, is executed and the
loop terminates.

A break statement executed in the first suite terminates the loop without
executing the else clause's suite. A continue statement executed in the
first suite skips the rest of the suite and goes back to testing the
expression.

-- 
Peter Renzland    o   Planix Inc.  Toronto, Ontario, Canada   _ at _      {)/'
       .^.       \_/  Unix Internet Security Administration  /\ /\_._,(_/  
       _!_       _|_  Consulting -- Training -- Programming '  \      /_\  
        !         |   ....... Je danse donc je suis .......    /)    /(    


From tim.one at home.com  Sun Jul 22 17:45:02 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:45:02 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[James Logajan]
> This has probably already been brought up, but perhaps the problem lies
> not with the "/" operator, but one step earlier in distinguishing the
> meaning of:
>
> x = 3
> and
> x = 3.
>
> That is subtle difference that can cause quite different results later
> on.

Why is that?  It's because unlike any other builtin arithmetic operation,
"/" today can cause *catastrophic* loss of information silently, and in
ordinary cases.  If code sticks to + - * and **, it usually doesn't matter
much in the end whether someone says

    x = 3
or
    x = 3.

at the start.  But toss in one "/", and radically different results are
common.

> Or, one may try to teach that when ALL arguments of an operator are in
> one "set", such as the set of integers, then one must expect a result
> that is an element from THAT set, not another set, such as the set of
> real numbers or from the set of complex numbers.  Set theory seems to
> be taught fairly early on in math, I think.

I think you're missing that the proponents are arguing on pragmatic grounds:
this has mostly to do with that x/y surprises people in real life.  It's not
that there aren't clear rules, or that the rules can't be taught, or that
people are too stupid to understand the rules.  Guido hears all the
complaints, and he's become convinced that this is a genuine and serious
flaw in the language:  the current rules are *unusable* for too many people
too often.  If you're not one of them, congratulations <wink>.  I'm not
either -- I never get burned by this.  But I see plenty of people who are,
and they're neither stupid nor careless; it's a common blind spot, so it
doesn't really matter that it's not one I (or you) suffer.

> ...
> I prefer a handful of general rules, and operators that obey them.

Of course, but computer numerics is a massive exercise in picking the
general rules you want to preserve at the expense of others, and trading all
that off against pragmatics too.  Not losing information silently is also a
Very Good General Rule, and even 745 binary fp arithmetic is better at
meeting that one than current "/".




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 03:47:43 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 03:47:43 -0400
Subject: Problem with timing, again:
References: <%QM87.438$k9.52157@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com> <3B639F73.78E37C2B@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B63BF9F.6A6E78C3@engcorp.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> Jeremy Moles wrote:
> >
> > It works, but it won't respond, and it won't let the
> > button go. What am I doing wrong?
> 
> Classic mistake.

Oops, sorry about that.  I meant to write more here to 
explain that comment, but after my editing, I 
accidentally left this all alone at the top.

I didn't mean it to sound so patronizing! :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Mon Jul 23 07:07:49 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:07:49 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> >and nobody has ever proposed taking away the ability to get an
> >integer result; the issue is how  to spell that.
> 
> And that issue was *not* spelled out in the PEP.

Funny, I just checked rev. 1.1 of PEP 238, and it contains the same
language about adding // as before.  Maybe you never saw the PEP, but
assumed the worse based on the discussion?

> Actually, as I mention in my article today 'A use for integer
> quotients', I thought that one version of the proposal *was* to take
> away the current spelling without providing any replacement.  That is
> what I argued most strenously against.

This was never considered.

> I know that one version of the proposal was to provide an
> *unacceptible* (to me) replacement -- div(i,j).  Guido appeared to
> maybe even favor it until I pointed out that an infix replacement
> would make fixing current code *much* easier.

I originally favored //, but in an earlier round of discussions this
was opposed by folks based on its use for Java and C++ comments, so
for a while I considered alternatives.  Not any more.

> This gets to the issue of what is a proper PEP.  Simply saying 'I
> don't like the current situation; lets replace it with something' is
> not, in my opinion.  The only thing definite that I remember from
> reading PEP 238 was to change the result of int/int to float.  Then
> maybe add div() [awful], div [possible], // [best in my opinion],
> something else [???], or, at least by implication, nothing
> [horrendous].

You must misremember it.

> It is hard compare something definite (the current
> situation, whatever it is) to a nebulosity, especially when the range
> of alternatives floating around the nebula range from horrendous to
> maybe ok.

I find that most arguments against also appear to come from a nebula.

> If 238 had been written originally something like the following (which
> it now is), I would have argued *much* less.

Shall I rub it in? :-)  Your bad reading skills (or bad memory) cost
you a great deal of stress. :-)

> Situation: Python '/' currently overloads and confounds two arithmetic
> operations: whole-number result division and fractional result
> division.  This confuses some people.
> Proposal: Make '/' consistently mean fractional division and introduce
> a new operator '//' for truncated-result division.
> Acknowledgement: This semantic replacement is a bit different from
> most any previous change to Python.  Extra care will be needed to make
> the transition as smooth as possible.

This is exactly what the PEP said all the time.

> (Just noticed:  http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0238.html
> now proposes a *2 year* int/int warning period starting with 2.3.  It
> still needs a stipulation that someone write an intdiv checker to help
> automate replacements.)

Hm???  I don't see that on the URL you give.  Maybe you live in an
alternate universe where PEP 238 has a different contents than in mine?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 10:37:22 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 07:37:22 -0700
Subject: Not enough Python library development [was PEP scepticism]
References: <7BD10B680501D411B9DF009027E06F32197DA9@exchange>
Message-ID: <3B447BA2.4CDA26FA@ActiveState.com>

Max M?ller Rasmussen wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
> I don't have the impression that Python modules are large archives. I would
> assume that most are in th KB range some in the 100KB range and a few in the
> MB range. That should be a nice fit for Zope.

I think that the system will run faster if you let Zope manage the
metadata but not the zipfiles...especially when you get into the
thousands of modules. But it doesn't matter much.

>...
> 
> I imagined that the interdependencies would be set manual when uploading the
> modules. So far that would be the only way to do it anyway.

So then how would the client know, when it was removing a module,
whether it was breaking dependencies?

> Something like this (Very rough)::
> 
>    http://maxm.normik.dk/pypan/

You might want to add authentication. :) 

>...
> 
> Some kind of tree structure naturally.

I'm saying that one of the things you have to work out is *what* tree
structure.

>...
> > So Zope is a good start (just as Distutils is a good start).
> 
> It would be really good for making something work quickly on the server side
> instead of just talking about it endlesly ;-)

Right, that's why I said Zope is a good start. ActiveState is working on
a Zope-based seed project.

> It could simply talk to the client through webdav of xml-rpc.

That is great as a wire protocol, but what actual messages go across the
wire?

Zope is great as an implementation technology, just as Python is. But
that doesn't remove the need for design and actual coding. Saying "just
use Zope" is like saying "just use Python." You still have to write the
thing!
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 17 14:23:35 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:23:35 GMT
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6q2r.1md.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <3b547c42.2163897740@wa.news.verio.net>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:19:07 +0100, Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) wrote:

>Jay Parlar wrote:
>[...]
>[He has two lists of words, a long one (A) and a shorter one (B).
>He wants to get the result of removing every instance of each word
>in list B from list A.]
>
>Many people have suggested a dictionary-based solution. Here's
>another approach, which turns out to be slower (for me, anyway).
>
>Build a regular expression which matches a word exactly when
>it isn't in list B. It should look like "(?!....$)"
>where "...." matches exactly the words in list B.
>(This is a "negative lookahead assertion". Actually it's not
>quite right to say that it "matches a word"; it matches a
>zero-length substring when it's followed by something that
>matches "...." and the end of the string!)
>
I had an idea using regular expressions too, but using
it in the original split. E.g.,

 C = ['one', 'two', 'three']
 a = 'apple one banana orange two three pineapple'
 A = a.split() # we don't use this split

 import re
 rx = re.compile((r'\b%s\s+|'*len(C)+r'\s+') % tuple(C))
 >>> re.split(rx,a)
 ['apple', '', 'banana', 'orange', '', '', 'pineapple']

then, you could just filter out the null strings when you
use the result, whatever use that is. Maybe someone will
think of a regex that eliminates the nulls. I've got to
do something else now ;-)

It would be pretty inefficient to do this
 >>> (' '.join(re.split(rx,a))).split()
 ['apple', 'banana', 'orange', 'pineapple']


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 14:38:01 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 18:38:01 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <d8m37.13023$B7.2577784@ruti.visi.com>

In article <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list at python.org>, pfenn at mmm.com wrote:
>
>> I *always* forget the 1/3 == 0 thing between programming
>> bursts. OTOH, I also quickly remember after making the mistake
>> the first time.
>
>Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?

I regulary depend on integer division working the way it does.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I had a lease on an
                                  at               OEDIPUS COMPLEX back in
                               visi.com            '81...


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 11:18:13 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:18:13 GMT
Subject: Memory usage, in droves
References: <9jr62c$16d$1@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <VCf87.34079$EP6.8719749@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Danyel Fisher" <danyelf at ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:9jr62c$16d$1 at news.service.uci.edu...
> I've been running a mail ... well, all sorts of stuff, including
digester,
> that sucks a lot of stuff into memory. As a test, it has been
digesting
> the python mailing list every 24 hours or so. Phew! That is a big
pile
> of data. It's multi-threaded, failry complex, and has a fair number
of
> little twiddly bits.
>
> I just went away for two weeks. I came back to note that it was
eating
> something like 79% of my linux box's memory--something over 100
> MB.

The volume of posts has been much larger (and hotter) than normal in
the
last two weeks.  Could that have accelerated your memory growth? ;-)

Terry J. Reedy





From R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk  Wed Jul 25 10:26:54 2001
From: R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk (Richard Brodie)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:26:54 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E9979168AE9michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>
Message-ID: <9jmkvh$15lk@newton.cc.rl.ac.uk>

"Michael Abbott" <michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Xns90E9979168AE9michaelrcpcouk at 194.168.222.9...

> I expect the language has moved on by now, though!

Aye. COMMON blocks are now a deprecated feature. Shouldn't
break more than about 99% of existing code though.




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 19:01:06 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 00:01:06 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <mailman.994528591.28994.python-list@python.org>
 <cpy9q0iobo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
 <9icbft$okp$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <L3DTqUAyejS7Ew2k@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <9icbft$okp$1 at panix6.panix.com>, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com>
writes
>
...
>!
>
>"Who killed Cock Robin?
>I, said the sparrow
>With my bow and my arrow
>I killed Cock Robin."
here in London the sparrow population (still officially a pest) has
crashed by 95%, probably the PSU having killed all the Norwegian Blues
is overloading sparrows with portable nuclear devices.
-- 
Robin Becker


From kseehof at neuralintegrator.com  Tue Jul 31 20:22:48 2001
From: kseehof at neuralintegrator.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:22:48 -0700
Subject: Zope is Evil is back.
References: <9k78ar$anv$1@chabry.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <013001c11a20$26570f80$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Titus Brown <t at chabry.caltech.edu> wrote (to python-list at python.org):


> Hi all,
>
> due to popular demand, I've reinstated my "Zope Is Evil", a.k.a.
> "Zope as a particularly frustrating section of adventure", page at
>
> http://zope-is-evil-666.idyll.org/
>
> Enjoy!
>
> cheers,
> --titus
>
> PS if you can't take a joke, or, on the other hand, think it's completely
a
> joke, this page is not for you.
>
> --
> Titus Brown, titus at caltech.edu

I feel your pain.

The Zope people are apparently working on their documentation.

Their biggest problem seems to be a lack of audience awareness,
(the ability to see what they are writing from the point of view of the
intended audience).  They could learn a lot from the http://www.alice.org/
people, particularly their user-oriented testing methodology in which they
watch helplessly as newbies fumble trying to get started.

If a newbie doesn't understand it immediately, it's a bug.

I recommend just running the tutorial.  The secret door to the tutorial
room can be unlocked as follows:

1. Go to your .../manage page.
2. Read the secret scroll labeled "Select type to add..."
3. At the very bottom of the scroll is a level 1 spell: "Zope Tutorial"
4. Entone the spell, and follow where it leads.

Also, there is a small depression in the rock in the upper right corner
of nearly every room with an inscription "Help!".  Being a hero, you
must push on the depression.  A magic scroll will appear in front of
you.  Reading the scroll gives a +2 bonus to Wisdom.

Having done this, I have crossed over from seeing Zope as powerful,
mysterious, and impossible to fathom.  I now see Zope as a pretty neat,
powerful, easy to use tool.  I also feel smug now.  :-)

Here's my first real Zope result after running the tutorial: a shameless
plug to my resume :-)  I'm still working on the content, so check again
tomorrow.

http://www.neuralintegrator.com/kseehof/resume

- Ken Seehof






From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Thu Jul  5 13:24:18 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 18:24:18 +0100
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos@4ax.com>

On 3 Jul 2001 07:57:37 -0700, aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

>I managed to do the rewrite in a week, but only by sticking to straight
>C code.  The rewrite was cleaner, simpler, and faster.

The thing is, C++ isn't meant to make initial development easier,
except in cases where re-use is an issue. It's meant to make
maintenance easier.

Any language suffers when bad programmers use it. The biggest
reliability problems in C++ are...

1.  Using old C libraries, when the new C++ libraries do a lot more
    checking and have fewer awkard problems to deal with. A C++
    string, for instance, will not choke on NULL characters and
    will not fail when real strings are longer than anticipated.

2.  Overuse of C features such as pointers, when standard
    container templates would be more appropriate - or function
    pointer callbacks and awkward methods of finding their context
    data when classes with virtual functions would be more
    appropriate.

3.  The age-old inherited problems with pointers

4.  Failing to use exception-safe patterns.

In short, C++ is for large systems that are going to be around for
years. There is a tradeoff in favour of greater reliability and better
maintainability - provided you really write C++ and not some
half-baked hybrid - but the cost is more time spent planning - where
are classes appropriate and where not, where is subclassing
appropriate and where not, which parts of the code are most likely to
suffer from changing requirements, etc etc etc.

C (or a C-like subset of C++) is more appropriate for smaller systems
with no more than a few thousand lines of code - and development will
be faster in such cases because there are fewer structuring decisions
to consider. Not only will the development time be faster, but the
code will be smaller, and will run a little faster too - in some cases
a lot faster. I last seriously used C in embedded systems, for
instance, where C++ simply wasn't an option (at the time, and with the
particular platform) for essentially these reasons.

Another good reason to use C for embedded systems is because the
translation to assembler is easier to understand - it is less
abstract. I'd rather not worry about virtual tables or the
implementation of exceptions when debugging means using a rather
primitive in-circuit emulator with no source level facilities.


The size limit of a few thousand lines (I'd say 10,000 lines at most)
is important because, when maintenance is required, you have very few
boundaries to limit the scope of the changes you need to make. C++ is
designed to allow you to put such scope limits in place - if you need
to change the implementation of a class, you have a degree of
assurance that the necessary changes are limited to that class. But
only if you planned things properly to start with.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Thu Jul 12 01:54:05 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 07:54:05 +0200
Subject: Forth and Python side note
In-Reply-To: <15180.31243.417520.826123@anthem.wooz.org> (barry@digicool.com)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101932480.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
	<Pine.LNX.4.30.0107111902400.2392-100000@rnd.onego.ru> <15180.31243.417520.826123@anthem.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <12072001.2@wanderer.local.jae.ddns.org>

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <barry at digicool.com> writes:

    BAW> you-forth-love-if-honk-then-ly y'rs,

<honk>

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
        The Python Programming Language (http://www.python.org)
         Win32 has many known work arounds. For example, Linux.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010712/8c185af1/attachment.sig>

From mikael at isy.liu.se  Wed Jul 25 05:12:41 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:12:41 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <Xns90E959B81DE49duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010725111236.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 25-Jul-2001 Duncan Booth wrote:
 >  When it comes down to it, real beginners (5 to 7 years old?) will have been
 >  told that if you divide 9 by 2 you get 4 with 1 left over. Which is EXACTLY
 >  what you get at present. Floating point is a MUCH more sophisticated 
 >  concept which, as has been shown repeatedly on this newsgroup, is hard even
 >  for most programming professionals.

How many five to seven years old children write programs? They are 
typically in the process of learning to read and write their native 
language. My son Erik will be 6 this autumn. He knows most letters, 
but mixes them up often. He can recognize his own name in writing, but 
he can hardly write it. Imagining him writing even a "hello world" (or 
rather "hej v?rlden") is impossible. 

I know of one exceptional kid who could read before he was four. He 
recognized cars by their name at the age of two. Everyone I know who
knows him agrees that he is the most intelligent kid they've met. Still,
I don't think he would have been able to start to program at the age of 
seven. He is now nine or ten. I don't know wheather he does any 
programming today, but there is a computer in their house and both his
parents are qualified engineers, so he certainly has the opportunity 
to do so.

I think it's more likely to find programming beginners in the age of 
ten years and up. The fact that the keywords in Python (as in most 
programming languages I know of) are in English would probably pose a
(perhaps slight) problem for the young beginners for whom English is 
not their native tounge. Those newbies know about rationals and they 
know about decimal notation. Well, perhaps not at 10 years, but at 12. 
For those young beginners, however, programming could very well be a 
way to learn both math and English (as a second language), among other 
things.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    25-Jul-2001
Time:    10:24:00

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Sat Jul 14 20:35:39 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:35:39 -0700
Subject: Re-sizing images in Python?
References: <q6547.41446$B56.8781902@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-8F9E35.17353914072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <q6547.41446$B56.8781902 at news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>,
 "Darren Watson" <Darren.Watson3 at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> I would like to write a script that can process all the files in a directory
> and resize the images to a specified size (passed in as an argument).
> However, I am not sure if this is a task that Python 2.1 can perform or if
> it is, which library to use.

This is not difficult to do using the Python Imaging Library.
If you are doing significant size reductions, you probably want to smooth 
the image a little first to avoid pixelization problems.

Contact me by email if you want me to send you some code I wrote to do this 
as part of a web photo gallery generation applet (see 
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/pix/ for results). My program uses 
Mac-specific user interface code so would require significant modification 
to run on your PC, but the image resizing stuff should be pretty portable.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Wed Jul 25 02:46:06 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:46:06 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Proof that both camps are wrong (was: Pinecones multiply like rabbits
 around here...)
In-Reply-To: <15197.34960.673186.179878@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107241114410.3712-100000@bms>

Ya, I know, putting equations in a post is a good way to lose readers,
fast... but it is kind of hard to avoid given the circumstances,
and it is grade school stuff.

---
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:
I was on a walk with my wife and dog yesterday.  Out of the blue I
asked her "what's the result of five divided by two?"  After a little
back-and-forth where she tried to figure out how I was trying to trick
her and make her look foolish she answered, "two-and-a-half".  I then
posed, "Suppose you have five pinecones and you want to clump them
into groups of two.  What would you do?".  Her answer was, "Put two in
the first group, two in the second group, and break the last pinecone
in two so the third group would have two as well."

<...and in a followup...>

...based upon my wife's statement.  (She wound up with three groups...)
---

Yes, because you did not explicitly specify whether it is necessary
for the groups to contain pinecones, just that there should be "groups
of two" (i.e., 2 * group**-1).

Interesting, there seems to be three answers to this problem.  I'll do
it with units (because a number without a qualifier is meaningless)...

  5 * pinecone**1       5
 -----------------  =  --- * pinecone**1 * group**1
   2 * group**-1        2

  =  ???  (read as "<quantity> groups of pinecones" in english)

I suppose the pro-PEP 238 camp wants to say the answer is...

     4                     1
  ((--- * pinecone**1) + (--- * pinecone**1)) * group**1
     2                     2

  = (2 * pinecone**1 * group**1) + (0.5 * pinecone**1 * group**1)

  = 2.5 * pinecone**1 * group**1


The anti-PEP 238 camp would stop short of the last step,
for a couple of (good) reasons, and end up with...

 = (2 * pinecones**1 * group**1) + inconsequential remainder


But, Skip, I think your wife got it right...

     4                     1
  ((--- * pinecone**1) + (--- * pinecone**1)) * group**1
     2                     2

                              1
 = ((2 * pinecone**1) + (1 * ---pinecone**1)) * group**1
                              2

                       1
 = 3 * (pinecone**1 + ---pinecone**1) * group**1
                       2


Questions:
Which of the above three answers has lost information?
Which of the first two can be made to not lose any information?


I have been sitting on the fence on this issue (PEP 238), simply
because there did not appear to be a correct answer.  I can now
explain why... both the pro and anti PEP 238 camps are wrong,
because both of their answers lose information.

int/int->float   may lose type-of-thing information
int/int->int     may lose quantity information


Consider these excerpts
(and read Stephen Horne's posts, once you get past the panic there is
 good stuff ;-)...
---
>From Paul Svensson <paul at svensson.org>:
There are two common ways to do division.
A) x / y = z such that z * y = x,
B) x / y = z and x % y = r such that z = int(z), 0 <= r < x, z * y + r = x
---
and Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:
Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil: int and float
together aren't really two distinct types: they are at most a
type-and-a-half, and the integers are embedded in the space of floats
for most practical purposes. ...
---

What Paul has revealed is that there is _d_ivision as it occurs
in nature, B); and _D_ivision as a mathematical concept, A).

I missed the significance of what Guido wrote the first time I read
it, and still do not understand what is meant by "type-and-a-half";
but now think the last bit reveals Guido is using Division.

I understand why Division is preferable in a high level programming
language, and how losing type-of-thing information can be missing from
the discussion;  but am not sure why losing one piece of information
is better or worse than losing the other.


It is too bad that an operator can't just return what is appropriate
given the inputs (i.e., int, float, rational, <some weird mathematical
object>), because that is what is required of a complete Division
implementation.  I would call both Division and Multiplication,
operators-and-a-half, simply because they are invented and can handle
things beyond that which exists in the real world.  Perhaps it is
appropriate for * and / to have more complex behaviour than + and -.

Maybe having, "a,b,c = x/y" not generate an exception when there are
no additional results, would work.  That way x and y can be any
mathematical object, and it is up to programmers to ensure they
provide enough `slots' for the result tuple to unpack into for the
amount of polymorphism they want to support.  The rest of the visible
portion of the implementation seems to be in place... namely:
coercion to a more complex type when necessary, and "a = 1,2" being
OK (for backwards compatibility).

Python's learning curve would end up being a little steeper closer to
the origin, but it would definitely get new users off on the right
foot with respect to Division and numerical types.


- Bruce

p.s. - If you do not know what the properties of pinecones are, feel
free to substitute "pinecone" with anything whose properties you think
you understand... beans, molecules, quarks, quantum strings,
<whatever>.











From martin at strakt.com  Tue Jul  3 05:30:41 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:30:41 +0200
Subject: Problems with thread state
Message-ID: <20010703113041.A30025@strakt.com>

Hello all

I'm trying to write an OpenSSL module for Python (purely in C) and I've
run into a big problem.

My understanding of the inner workings of Python isn't that big, so please
help me out here.

Seeing as a call to SSL_connect() might block, I surrounded the call to it
by Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS and Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS. I also have a wrapper
callback for verification (i.e. I plug my callback into OpenSSL and it
calls a Python callback residing in a Context object)... Here's my
problem: When I call PyEval_CallObject() in my wrapper callback, python
segfaults! Some poking around with gdb shows that somewhere, before
PyFrame_New() is called to execute the Python callback in,
PyThreadState_Get() returns NULL!

When I comment out the Py_(BEGIN|END)_ALLOW_THREADS stuff, everything
works.

What's wrong? What do I do about it?

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010703/6e0e2ee2/attachment.sig>

From eholbrook at austin.rr.com  Mon Jul  9 22:39:27 2001
From: eholbrook at austin.rr.com (Eric Holbrook)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 02:39:27 GMT
Subject: module for CVS or RCS
Message-ID: <87elrpfqq2.fsf@wombat.house-net>

is there a module for handling CVS (or RCS)? if so, where do i find
it?

thanks,
Eric


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 19:15:40 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 00:15:40 +0100
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com> <3B5DB249.EA8BDC26@home.net>
Message-ID: <n3r3mtk7cgmrsv8lgtr4dtbrg2o1fkoe0p@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:37:13 -0700, Chris Barker
<chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:

>Cold someone please comment on my proposal (adding a version header of
>some sort to all new files, and having backward compatable modes in all
>new interpreters)? I'm sure it's full of holes, so I'd like to know what
>they are!

I saw it and I liked it. I didn't have much to add to it, though.

A version header - like the 'from __past__' suggestion and others -
would allow a script to explicitly state the syntax and semantics it
needs and therefore the possibility of either supporting multiple
feature-and-semantics variants - or of simply rejecting the hopelessly
out-of-date - becomes easy.

The 'from __past__' idea specifically requests the particular facility
it might need. The trouble being that, back in the past when the
programmer wrote the script the appropriate 'from __past__'
declaration did not exist.

The 'version' header does not require knowledge of which facilities
have changed (or might change in a few versions time), and by
inferring version <= 2.1 where the header is not present (there can't
be many 2.2 apps in the field ATM ;-) can even reject apps where the
author didn't realise some facility would break when he released it.

The worry with the version header is that Python would complain about
every file on every minor version update. People would just get into
the habit of greping and 'fixing' every single file when they updated
Python, which would defeat the object.

Version marking with the major version only would probably be
workable, however.

A more detailed system - such as specifying versions for each type of
functionality used - could become too annoying and fiddly to work out.

Marking code is not a simple issue. I think something useful could be
constructed from these, but any scheme would have its -ve side.



From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 12 21:55:13 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:55:13 -0500
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
References: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <Xns90DBE780C8D77cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <yox1ynm7lkg.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <m21ynly4n2.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> writes:

> cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti) writes:
> 
> > what is the timeout value?
> > i've had problems with time.sleep() when using values smaller than 20ms 
> > (0.02). I'm now using 30ms wich works fine.
> 
> Several seconds. I suppose timer resolution wouldn't cause delays at
> that scale (at least delays of that magnitude - almost 1 sec). It
> almost seems like the Event version with timeout checked once a second
> whether the event had been set() during the past second.
> 


If this is on NT 4, I've done a fair amount of multithreaded com work
there.  On a heavily loaded system, NT seems to be very lousy at
waking up anywhere near the durations that you expect that it would.  I
have personally observed anyone from 10ms to 1500ms deltas from what I
requested and what they system delivered.  You probably should validate
this isn't a loaded NT problem first before you start trying to locate
the issue in python.

Greg


From bokr at accessone.com  Sat Jul 14 19:10:58 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 23:10:58 GMT
Subject: LAMBDA IS IT USELESS?
References: <tO837.679712$166.14009323@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <slrn9ktu24.8c3.ssthapa@hepcat.telocity.com> <9in61201nuf@enews1.newsguy.com> <3b4f6eb5.1832748462@wa.news.verio.net> <9ip0u401117@enews4.newsguy.com> <3b507741.1900473085@wa.news.verio.net> <of61ltsf59np9d94qgi3l0vt077lb3q5t8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3b50bd4c.1918403418@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 19:15:37 GMT, Ben Wolfson <rumjuggler at cryptarchy.org> wrote:

>On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:55:25 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter) wrote:
>
>>From the grammar, we have
>>    funcdef: 'def' NAME parameters ':' suite
>>where
>>    parameters: '(' [varargslist] ')'
>>and
>>    lambdef: 'lambda' [varargslist] ':' test
>>
>>So what would happen if that last "test" were
>>changed to "suite" ? If the end of "suite" is
>>well defined, why would there be a problem?
>
>If that's *all* you do, this happens:
>
>harper:~/tmp/Python-2.1.1c1> ./python
>'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
>Python 2.1.1c1 (#1, Jul 14 2001, 14:09:38)
>[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on sunos5
>Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> t = lambda a:
>...     if a == 1:
>...             print 'hi'
>...     else:
>...             print 'bye'
>...
>>>> t
><function <lambda> at be4ac>
>>>> t(1)
>hi
>Bus error
>harper:~/tmp/Python-2.1.1c1>
>
Well, gee, it printed "hi," so it's just a SMOD[1] to get there ;-))

Seriously, I don't know how the grammar file plays into rebuilding the interpreter,
but I can see it doesn't define actions like a flex grammar, so even that
level of change is not going to be possible with just a grammar file change.

So something's probably still being handed a "suite" in some form and still
trying to interpret it as "test".

I guess we should take the note at the top of the grammar file seriously ;-)
"""
# Note:  Changing the grammar specified in this file will most likely
#        require corresponding changes in the parser module
#        (../Modules/parsermodule.c).  If you can't make the changes to
#        that module yourself, please co-ordinate the required changes
#        with someone who can; ask around on python-dev for help.  Fred
#        Drake <fdrake at acm.org> will probably be listening there.
"""

Looking at parsermodule.c, I can see it will take a bit of pondering ;-)

It is kind of tantalizing though. Makes me want to get set up to do experiments
like you apparently did. Wish there were more hours in a day ;-)


[1] Simple Matter Of Debugging ;-)


From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 15:54:57 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 19:54:57 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jhveh$ap4$4@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> It also makes it harder to discuss code in person or over
> the phone -- spoken language is not case-preserving, as anyone who has
> tried to give someone a URL over the phone knows. :-)

So when are you going to add block delimiters to Python? :)

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From trhoffend at mediaone.net  Thu Jul 19 09:43:21 2001
From: trhoffend at mediaone.net (Thomas Hoffend)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:43:21 GMT
Subject: How to change Tkinter Label widget text without global variable in a class?
Message-ID: <ZtB57.5672$X6.251588@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>

I am new to Python and working on learning Tkinter.

I ordered some of the books recommended on the Python web site, and also
have been going
through the online tutorial on Tkinter and reading old newgroup articles.
There is one point which
I found that sort of bugs me, and that is I can't figure out how to change a
Label widget text
without using some sort of global variable.  It seems that declaring a
global variable inside a class
is not the best thing to do, especially if there is the possibility that you
will create multiple instances of
the class (unless maybe I don't understand the scope of the global
variable - is it
global just inside the class?).  So is there some way to change the label
text without a global
variable?  For example:

#
# Script to pop up the current directory name in a window and go up one
directory;
#     I hope to turn this into a directory selector.
#

from Tkinter import *
import os
import os.path

path = os.path.abspath('.')
fullpath = os.path.normpath(path)

class mywidget:
    #
    def __init__(self, master):

    frame = Frame(master)
    frame.pack()

    # Make a button to go up one directory (well, at least manipulate a
string with the path name for now):
    self.upbutton = Button(frame, text="Up", command=self.go_up_one)
    self.upbutton.pack(side=TOP)

    # Put some text under the button to show the path:
    global vCurrentPath
    vCurrentPath = StringVar()
    label1 = Label(frame, textvariable=vCurrentPath)
    label1.pack()
    vCurrentPath.set(self.PathStr)

    # The class will store the full path:
    PathStr = fullpath

    # Here is a function to go up one directory - eventually (right now it
just manipulates the path name):
    def go_up_one(self):
        print "Going Up!"
        self.PathStr = (os.path.dirname(self.PathStr))
        print self.PathStr
        vCurrentPath.set(self.PathStr)

root = Tk()
app = mywidget(root)
root.mainloop()




From nospam at nospam  Mon Jul 30 14:13:28 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:13:28 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996304554.3545.python-list@python.org> <%ez87.128332$%a.5630144@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107290049.27bb9e0e@posting.google.com> <eppstein-06A917.10495229072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <3b65ae42$0$876@wodc7nh1.news.uu.net>

"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:eppstein-06A917.10495229072001 at news.service.uci.edu...
> In article <5e8bd451.0107290049.27bb9e0e at posting.google.com>,
>  kp87 at lycos.com (kevin parks) wrote:
>
> > So my girlfriend wants to know why python has to have the worst
> > animals and why we can have bunnies or little dinosaurs.
>
> That rabbit's got a vicious streak.  It's a killer.
> --
> David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
> eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/

Fetch the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!





From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 13 22:19:03 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:19:03 -0400
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FAC17.48377423@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> > I can't see a simple answer to this.  It looks as though there
> > are two camps, to both of whom it is absolutely essential that
> > Python act in a specific way.  And the two ways are completely
> > incompatible.
> 
> No, that's not it.
> 
> The problem is that you have written much more Python code than the
> chemists of the world, and if I were to change the language, you would
> have to go through all that code to find out which slashes to replace
> with 'div'.

Therein (perhaps) lies the sign for which path to take.

*I* would only have to make that change to code which I wanted
and needed to support under newer versions of Python.

Many programs would not need changing at all, as they would 
just continue to run under older versions of Python.  (Zope could
be frozen in time, capable of running only under Python 1.5.2,
were it not maintained.)

Maintained code can relatively easily be refactored to deal
with the new situation.  This isn't rocket science, and 
automated solutions that handle 95% of the cases could likely
be written.  (If many people are concerned about the 
potential code breakage, there must therefore be many 
ready-made test cases for such a utility in the form of
their jeopardized code.)

Large, complex applications -- those for which the scan 
would most likely miss some cases -- should have
sizable regression test suites which surely will catch
the remaining problems.  If someone has such a program and
insists it "must" run under the newer Python, but does
not have a test suite, are you really going to try to keep
that person happy too?

> > Doesn't that mean that the only solution that can be accepted
> > without causing serious complications is to make the change,
> > but clearly support a command line option (or some other
> > configuration setting) to enable the current behaviour,
> > so those who have depended on integer division can continue
> > to run old code under the new engine without fear of
> > breakage?
> 
> This has been said many times in other contexts: command line options
> to change a particular behavior are evil.  It would mean that library
> modules could't depend on either behavior.
> 
> If we're going to give users a choice, it's going to be some kind of
> per-module switch.

So in the transition period, a per-module switch is available. It
can be enabled globally in some way to apply either to old code 
which knows nothing about this but which hasn't been fixed to account
for the change, or to new code which might require the new
behaviour.  Make the new behaviour the (global) default, which is 
something we "professional programmers" can live with provided we 
have a convenient way (site.py, environment, what-have-you) of
disabling it for programs we know won't work or in environments
where we haven't had the time to do the full transition.

After the transition period, screw the professional programmers 
who won't take the time to modify their existing code and yet 
who selfishly insist that their wonderful program *must* be
allowed to continue running under the new Python without 
problem.

I don't think this truly covers all the cases, but we have 
to draw the line somewhere.  Maybe before the gavel drops
on this one, we can develop the proposed "div-scan" utility
and test it out for those of us most concerned.  After it
has been proven in the field, we go ahead and break things
and take our lumps for a while.  Things settle down, the
problem fades into history, and c.l.p swarms with happy 
newbies. :-)

> > Anyway, that's not my problem. :-)
> 
> Yes it is!  Unless we find a solution that *works* you will be
> affected.

Well, quite true.  If I'd been thinking better, I might have
said "this is not really a problem in my particular case, 
because my code base is small enough and we are new enough 
to Python that we can bite the bullet and scan/fix all 
several hundred modules we have written.  Not the end of the
world for me, but not exactly nice to rub it in anyone else's 
face.  Apologies.

As you said, we are professional programmers: we have to do this
kind of thing all the time in other environments, especially
to deal with API changes by the large-evil-software-manufacturing 
empire-which-must-not-be-named.  We regularly upgrade 
C compilers for embedded systems, for example, in a never-ending
and usually unsuccessful attempt to get away from the bugs 
of one version but we always encounter new bugs and have 
code breakage etc. as a result.  We live with it.  If it really 
bothered us, we wouldn't upgrade.  Same solution works here.

It really isn't the end of the world, and I think many of us, 
(I'm sure I don't speak for all, however) can agree with the 
basic premise ("least astonishment") that the current behaviour
is overly surprising to newcomers, etc., therefore likely to 
dilute the potential user base, etc., and therefore overall a
negative thing to the strength of the Python movement,
and therefore likely over the long term to negatively impact 
the value of Python to us.

(Those who disagree with that would perhaps need to explain
why, if they aren't really interested in the benefits that
continued expansion of the Python user base brings to the table,
they however insist they cannot just freeze their environment
with the current version of Python and therefore not be
affected by this change in any way.  If you *have* to upgrade
but you *won't* maintain your code, maybe you're just being 
selfish.  (Flame bait, but controversial statements
can bring out some worthwhile points of view... :)

> > So, O' BDFL, why not take the most Pythonic approach
> > and use a solution which *pragmatically* achieves a good
> > practical balance but which causes purists always to feel
> > a little uneasy and which can lead to perpetual discussion
> > about "warts" and why other languages are better and.... ;)
> 
> Believe me, I'm trying.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Clearly you are trying, hard.  And believe me, we appreciate it
immensely.  I'm trying too... :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com  Thu Jul  5 06:41:15 2001
From: joonas.paalasmaa at nokia.com (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:41:15 GMT
Subject: Newbie FAQ?  How to open HTML files through Pyhton OS independend?
References: <WEV5ucSBBHA.365@fnews1.vi-internet.de>
Message-ID: <3B4444D7.19B6493B@nokia.com>

Peter Biela wrote:
> 
> Sorry for asking such a simple question, but how can I open a HTML
> documentation file from within my program, considering that it has to run on
> both Linux and Windows?
> 
> Is there an easy possiblity to show HTML files in TK? or Is it better to use
> a standard browser?
> 
> Thanx for any help, or locations where to find answears!

Try webbrowser module.
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-webbrowser.html


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Wed Jul 18 10:46:49 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 16:46:49 +0200
Subject: integer division rounding
References: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <fBR47.12488$p7.4225009@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b53dedd$0$16308$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <slrn.pl.9l876l.hsn.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <u7r8ve70rq.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:47:38 +0930, Michael Lunnay <mlunnay at ihug.com.au> pisze:

> Donald E. Knuth said (in "Concrete Mathematics") about div/mod with
> negative arguments: beware of programming languages which use a

He probably simply meant "do the right thing", the inventors of
Lisp and Scheme followed that way (it *is* mainly their philosophy),
and Guido followed them :-)

Finding now that Python does the right thing is just a tautology, and
saving the few cycles by doing the bad thing makes no sense in an
interpreted language.  In number theory, it would even be harmful (and
there seem to be people doing that, otherwise we would have seen a
proposal to remove longints).

Besides mathematical discussions about which version is holier, there
is a practical aspect: It is trivial to implement the bad thing using
the right thing (see below), but the inverse needs more work (nested
ifs etc.).

> specified to work "incorrectly". Intel processors natively implement
> the "incorrect" variant.

What does this mean?  I always understood C's way of dividing negative
ints a "do what is the simplest thing for the machine" (which most
often was something like

    a/b := sign(a)*sign(b)*abs(a)/abs(b)

).  This is justified by the purpose of C (being a portable
assembler), and most C users probably divide only positive numbers
(memory areas or widget pixels), where spending cycles for the right
thing would be a waste.

Is it now insure to use it at all, or does it just return the ugly result
mentioned by me?

Ralf


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Thu Jul 26 03:21:02 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:21:02 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
In-Reply-To: <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com> (message from Skip
	Montanaro on Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:45:03 -0500)
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no>
        <j4puaohp42.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de>

> Perhaps, but it all depends on what and how you sling your data around.
> Clearly, you can't efficiently pass and receive multi-megabyte data
> structures, but that would hold true for any distributed communication
> protocol.

My concern is rather with communicating many small requests, rather
than few large ones; in my experience, small requests is the common
case. Here, the overhead of an XML parser, plus the navigation through
the XML document, cost way more than the CORBA
marshalling/unmarshalling. Also, CORBA tends to produce smaller
requests on the wire to represent the same data, to a degree that not
even compression of a SOAP request helps.

Regards,
Martin




From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Mon Jul 16 18:19:07 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 23:19:07 +0100
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l6q2r.1md.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Jay Parlar wrote:
[...]
[He has two lists of words, a long one (A) and a shorter one (B).
He wants to get the result of removing every instance of each word
in list B from list A.]

Many people have suggested a dictionary-based solution. Here's
another approach, which turns out to be slower (for me, anyway).

Build a regular expression which matches a word exactly when
it isn't in list B. It should look like "(?!....$)"
where "...." matches exactly the words in list B.
(This is a "negative lookahead assertion". Actually it's not
quite right to say that it "matches a word"; it matches a
zero-length substring when it's followed by something that
matches "...." and the end of the string!)

In building "...." you need to take care to make use of common
initial substrings of the words in list B. It's probably
also a good idea to exploit character classes.

I tried this with list A containing all the words (including
repetitions) in an archive of about 800 articles from another
newsgroup, and list B being the 750 commonest words from list A.
List A had about 310000 words in it. (Some of these "words"
were fragments of message-IDs, etc, of course.)

The dictionary-based approach took about 0.96 seconds. The
regexp-based approach took about 1.00 seconds. (Plus the time
to build and compile the regular expression, but that's fixed
however large list A gets.)

This suggests that there might be applications in which
the regexp approach is better, though I wouldn't bet on it.
It also suggests that the lists will have to be quite long
before you care much about the speed. (Admittedly my machine
is quite fast.)

There's something like a factor of 2 improvement in speed
in going from string.join(words, '|') to something more
sophisticated; and (a little surprisingly, to me) another
factor of about 2 in going from

    filter(lambda x: not r.match(x), words)

to

    filter(r.match, words)

with r containing a negative lookahead assertion instead of
a regexp designed to match the things in list B.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From mday at apple.com  Mon Jul 30 19:31:07 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:31:07 -0700
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996531656.19551.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <300720011631071245%mday@apple.com>

In article <mailman.996531656.19551.python-list at python.org>,
<Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com> wrote:

> >Agreed.  But what struck me was that when a non-programmer came to a
> >Python discussion list asking whether Python was suitable for his
> >project, several people warning him about the pitfalls of division (and
> >not much else).
> 
> Must have missed all this.  Where and when was this thread?

Somewhere in one of the posts on the many PEP 238 threads was the
following link to a discussion in a google group:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=1d9d3c24ba2f933d>

The same post also mentioned other (earlier?) dicussions on a Yahoo
group about integer division in Python.

-Mark


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Tue Jul  3 15:46:57 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 22:46:57 +0300
Subject: explain this
References: <25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <kud77h3idq.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2 at posting.google.com>,
alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child) writes:

| In the code below, why can i add elements to locals but not delete them?

from <URL: http://www.python.org/doc/lib/built-in-funcs.html#l2h-187>:

locals() 
      Return a dictionary representing the current local symbol
      table. Warning: The contents of this dictionary should not be
      modified; changes may not affect the values of local variables
      used by the interpreter.

this is because python doesn't (always) actually use a dictionary
internally to store local variables, to speed up execution.

  -- erno



From guido at python.org  Mon Jul  9 09:50:14 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 13:50:14 GMT
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <QFc27.8798$e5.1167735@newsb.telia.net> <2ih27.49242$he.3402812@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <cp66d2i59b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote ...
> > phil hunt wrote:
> > > I have just found out that rfc822.py doesn't conform to
> > > RFC2822.
> >
> > sounds like it's time to rename that module ;-)
> >
> It would be even better to rewrite it. rfc822 builds so many lists of
> characters which are later returned as strings by joining the lists, a good
> C optimization would yield huge performance benefits. Pity I'm not better at
> C.

I think Barry's mimelib may have a replacement already.

    http://mimelib.sourceforge.net/

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From grumble at usa.net  Wed Jul 11 13:05:11 2001
From: grumble at usa.net (jcm)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 17:05:11 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <It%27.3828$M9.1040127@typhoon.we.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9ii107$d8r$1@news.mathworks.com>

Pete Shinners <shredwheat at mediaone.net> wrote:
> the following program will also peg the cpu

> -----------------------------------------------------------
> while 1: pass
> -----------------------------------------------------------

Certainly, there are things you can reasonably expect to see in a mud,
and things you probably won't see.  I believe wandering monsters are
more common than infinite loops.

> does this mean the language isn't up to the task? now
> subtitute any function call for the pass. as long as your
> function is being called often enough for your programs
> needs, then there shouldn't be any trouble.

> so writing "while 1: move_monsters()" will peg the cpu, it
> is not an indication that the program or the language is
> not able to keep up. now of your loop was written something
> like this...

Maybe I should have been more specific (which I wanted to avoid--I
only meant to say that cpu-time can become an issue).  I'm talking
about monsters that move once per heartbeat, which I usually think of
as about once every two seconds.

> interval = 1.0/30  #30fps
> while 1:
>     start = time.time()
>     move_monsters()
>     diff = time.time() - start
>     if diff < interval: time.sleep(interval - diff)

> ...and it still pegs the cpu, then you've got a problem. if
> the cpu is pegged it means the move_monsters is running slower
> than the desired 30fps. if the move_monsters() function runs
> quicker than each desired timeslice, then the program will sleep
> the remaining time, freeing up the cpu.

If you're talking about frames-per-second, then this doesn't sound
like a text-based mud.  I'm not sure if we're thinking in the same
realm.


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 22:16:53 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:16:53 -0400
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995896959.18151.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5E2C15.4EB49003@engcorp.com>

mcherm at destiny.com wrote:
> 
> One part of Arthur Siegel's posting bears repeating:
> 
> > I remain convinced that the single most important
> > factor for Python's acceptance as an educational language is
> > the growth of its  acceptance as a professional language.
> 
> I have opinions on integer division, case sensitivity, and
> probably on other issues where CP4E advocates seem to come
> into conflict with some "professional programmers". But I
> think I'll just keep quiet about my own opinions (which may
> NOT be what you think) and let you think a minute on Arthur's
> words.

As thinking alone is of little value to Usenet, I'll venture
to actually post my thoughts ...

I think Arthur's comment is very valid.  I continually face 
questions from potential new programmers (the type wondering, 
for example, if one of those one-year institute courses 
in programming would be of value, or the kind in non-computing 
studies who want to know the best route to learning some 
programming, usually in relation to the web right now).

I think more than any other factor, the degree to which 
a language is used in industry (presumably a reasonable
meaning for "professional language"?) is important to them
in their search.

(This doesn't address the issue of whether "educational
languages" have anything in particular to do with the
needs either of non-computing students or of industry...)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul  7 13:54:49 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 13:54:49 -0400
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
In-Reply-To: <994489633.560.16933.l7@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4714A9.15294.1925DA@localhost>

Mark Hammond <MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote, in part:
> [T]he win32com.axscript.axscript module supports IObjectSafety. 
> Once you import this module any Python COM object can implement
> this interface like any other.

This is the kind of solution for which I was actually looking. I did 
find that module by looking for the interface name as text but 
couldn't be sure how to use it. I'm looking forward to trying out that 
kind of thing.

"Neil Hodgson" <nhodgson at bigpond.net.au> wrote, in part:
> [Add] CATID_SafeForScripting or CATID_SafeForInitializing ... [s]ee
> http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q161/8/73.ASP  

And I know how to bung entries into the registry and that approach 
is adequate for my present purposes. So that's what I've done.

Gentlemen, thanks very much!

Bill Bell, Software Developer



From skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net  Sat Jul  7 03:12:02 2001
From: skyer.bbs at openbazaar.net (·Q¤@¤U)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 07:12:02 GMT
Subject: [Problem] wxPython -- wxSplitterWindow
Message-ID: <3hGKC2$kHq@openbazaar.net>

Hi, guys..

How to split frame like above.

  +-----+-----------------+
  |     |                 |
  |     +-----------------+
  |     |                 |
  |     |                 |
  |     |                 |
  +-----+-----------------+

Thanks a lot ^^
--
?? Origin: ???????uBBS <openbazaar.net> 
?? From: cnpa-8.admin.yzu.edu.tw


From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Fri Jul  6 20:01:03 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 00:01:03 GMT
Subject: Marking a Python COM server safe for Internet Explorer
References: <mailman.994434612.10076.python-list@python.org> <Kxm17.11707$F%5.789485@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3js17.2391$4B5.15188@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Steve Holden:
> "Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in ...
> >
> > As a kind of default, Internet Explorer will ask the user's permission
> > before instantiating an ActiveX control. However, one can
> > implement IObjectSafety to inform IE that one's control is safe,
> > thus sparing the user the need to respond to the dialog box.
> >
> I must have misunderstood. Are you telling me that IE has a security
system
> to detect potentially unsafe downloaded content, but that it won't use
this
> system if the downloaded content tells it there's no need?

   There are code 2 components here, an ActiveX control and a web page.
IObjectSafety is to allow an already trusted (because it was installed)
ActiveX to say whether it will always be safe when (a) initialised with
potentially malicious parameters and (b) manipulated by potentially
malicious script. For example, an ActiveX with a PostToCLPython method would
refuse to allow unsafe scripts such as those on web pages to script it in
case they called PostToCLPython("ActiveX is good ;)").

    Equivalently the installer can add the control to the categories
CATID_SafeForScripting or CATID_SafeForInitializing. This is probably an
easier solution to the original problem. See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q161/8/73.ASP

   Neil





From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 21:24:50 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 21:24:50 -0400
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

Goodness, without import, python's close to useless.  There's usually a
module that does something related to whatever you're trying to do, and
you can often save yourself a lot of effort by using such modules.

I'm not sure what advantage there might be to deleting module references
in a function's scope just prior to leaving it.  I would have thought
the reference was usually dropped at that point, anyway.

Alex.


From paul at svensson.org  Sat Jul 28 09:31:39 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 13:31:39 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9juerr$f3b$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Guido van Rossum <guido at zope.com> wrote:

>API Changes
>    - Overloaded operator methods:
>
>      __div__(), __floordiv__(), __truediv__();
>
>      __idiv__(), __ifloordiv__(), __itruediv__().

>    In Python 3.0, the classic division semantics will be removed; the
>    classic division APIs will become synonymous with true division.

I think you mentioned that __truediv__ and __itruediv__ will go away
at when we reach 3.0; I think that would be good to include in the PEP.

I also still think that __truediv__ and __itruediv__ cause more
problem than they solve; I've thought about the issue some more,
and I hope I can now explain a little better why.

Consider an existing
	class Foo:
	    def __div__(self, other):
		...

With your proposal, this will break as soon as it's called from
a module importing the future division.

The author of the original class foo then has the option of:

a)	simply adding __truediv__ = __div__

b)	changing __div__ to __truediv__, requiring all users
	of the class to import the future division;
	knowing that it will break again when we hit 3.0.

c)	implementing __truediv__ with different semantics
	than __div__, so that division of foo can behave
	differently depending on wether the user imports
	the future division or not.

d)	and of course, telling me it will work again in 3.0,
	so he doesn't want to spend any effort on changing it
	(or not telling me anything, as that may be).

I'm just totally unconvinced that the advantages of (c)
outweighs both the immediate breakage, and the possibilities
for options (b) and (d).

That's why I would like to ask:
**************************************************************
**                                                          **
** Who out there has a need for (c), please make your case! **
**                                                          **
**************************************************************

If there's really a demonstrated need for this, I would suggest
letting x/y, with future division imported, fall back to __div__
if there's no __truediv__ (and perhaps the other way around after
we switch to 3.0, but I doubt that would be needed).

If there's no demonstrated need, I repeat my suggestion to simply keep
__div__/__idiv__ for x/y and use __floordiv__/__ifloordiv__ for x//y.

	/Paul



From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 11 16:16:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:16:05 -0500
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
In-Reply-To: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com>
References: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <15180.46085.315871.197687@beluga.mojam.com>

    Mike> By using Windows Task Manager I was able to determine that 4332K
    Mike> of memory was used up until the end of the for loop, but only 960K
    Mike> of memory was returned to the system after the call to "del".  Is
    Mike> there any way to return the other 3372K of memory to the system
    Mike> without quitting the Python interpreter?

See my response to an earlier, similar question.  If this isn't in the FAQ
it should be.

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=skip%40pobox.com+free&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&ic=1&selm=mailman.994087203.26386.python-list%40python.org

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul 11 20:34:58 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:34:58 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9iirju$j9rjr$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I've written a module that takes a few steps in the direction I'd like to
see things go, but even if that's not in the cards I'll probably use it
anyway.  It works like Tim's FixedPoint, but uses precision in a slightly
different way.  When run as __main__, it imports FixedPoint to compare
results as it tests.  Overall, this feels more like what I had in mind.

Anyway, a sample session follows.  If anyone is interested in testing/using
this, e-mail me and I'll send you back a copy.


Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

>>> import BNum
>>> bn = Bnum.Bnum
>>> a = bn(1.111)
>>> a
1.11
>>> BNum.PRECISION = 6
>>> a = bn(1.111)
>>> a
1.111000
>>> a * a * a * a
1.523548
>>> b = 1.111
>>> b ** 4
1.5235483310410001
>>> BNum.PRECISION = 12
>>> a * a * a * a
1.523548331041
>>> BNum.PRECISION = 18
>>> a * a * a * a
1.523548331041000000
>>>
>>> a / 1.234
0.900324149108589951
>>> a -.346
0.765000000000000000
>>> a
1.111000000000000000
>>> a - 1.23456
-0.123560000000000000
>>> a - 1.234567890
-0.123567890000000000
>>> a - 1.234567890123456789
-0.123567890120000000
>>> a - '1.234567890123456789'
TypeError: object can't be converted to long
>>> a - bn('1.234567890123456789')
-0.123567890123456789




From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Sun Jul 22 10:39:32 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:39:32 +0200
Subject: Arguments to dictionary factory function?
Message-ID: <9jeoj5$4a4$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

I just wondered... Any chance that the type factory
"dictionary" will accept an argument in the future,
for instance a list of tuples like dict.items() would
return?

Actually... It _does_ accept any kind of argument
currently as well - it just always returns an empty
dictionary (and my thought was that one should be
constructed from the argument :)

- Magnus




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Tue Jul 31 07:52:06 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:52:06 +0200
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6edd2418.0107301344.439affc8@posting.google.com> <cpg0bdzjj4.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <j4wv4pb9jt.fsf@artagnan.informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Can you summarize what Ruby does?

By default, instance attributes are not accessible outside of instance
methods. In instance methods, attributes are denoted by an initial
ampersand (e.g. @age, @name, @counter). You can declare attributes as
accessible, using

  attr              :age
  attr_accessor     :name
  attr_writer       :counter

(where attr, attr_accessor, attr_write are methods, and :age is the
equivalent of Python's id('age')).

It appears that these methods only generate accessor functions, which
are denoted in the following way

class ADemo
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end

  def name()
    return @name+ at name
  end

  def name=(newname)
    puts ("Assigning "+newname)
    @name = newname
  end
end

p = ADemo.new("Dave")
puts p.name
p.name = "Martin"
puts p.name

This defines a class ADemo, which sets an attribute @name in the
initializer. It also defines a read accessor, name(), and a write
accessor, name=. The output of this program is

DaveDave
Assigning Martin
MartinMartin

I may be wrong, but it seems that the interpreter is unaware that
these are actually accessor functions. Instead, it is allowed to omit
the parentheses in method calls in Ruby, i.e.

p.foo(1)

can also be written as

p.foo 1

In particular,

puts p.name

is really the same thing as 

Kernel.puts(p.name())

p.name cannot be mistaken for an attribute access, since attributes
are only accessible inside methods, where they are denoted as @name.

Likewise (but as a special case in the syntax),

p.name = "Martin"

is the same thing as

p.name=("Martin")

I.e. the parser does special-case the writer function, but only
insofar as to allow whitespace in the method name.

Regards,
Martin


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Sun Jul 22 04:35:27 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 09:35:27 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ctvkltgbid3h8oo52shhr66pl30lg3q8gi@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 -0400, Guido van Rossum
<guido at digicool.com> wrote:

>It works as follows:
>
>- unconditionally, there's a new operator // that will always do int
>  division (and an in-place companion //=).
>
>- by default, / is unchanged (and so is /=).
>
>- after "from __future__ import division", / is changed to return a
>  float result from int or long operands (and so is /=).
>
>Read the patch description for more details; the implementation of int
>and float division are semi-lame.

Oh dear. I'm sure your tired of arguments about the division operator,
but I never realised this PEP existed and I suddenly feel I have to
state my opinion.

First something at least a little constructive...

Assuming that this change is inevitable, and given that '/' is used
quite a lot for both integer and float division - and has been for a
long time - surely, to avoid breaking code, the '//' should always
return a float. That way, the basic '/' will continue to return what
it always did and will do an integer division if the arguments are
integers. '//' and '//=' should do the new thing - returning floats
even with integer arguments. Having a division operator that returns
an integer even with float arguments seems particularly odd, so
there's probably no need to worry about providing such an operator.

As an additional C-style argument, integers are more common than
floats and / is faster to type than // ;-)


However, is the change really inevitable now? I'm afraid the whole
principle is something I disagree with strongly.

In Pascal, having separate '/' and 'div' operators was such a pain
that when Ada - a heavily Pascal-influenced language - was defined, an
effort was made to move away from it. And remember, Ada is generally
used by cheap relatively inexperienced programmers because thats all a
military contract pays for (yes, I was once an Ada programmer ;-), and
it was specifically designed to avoid confusion, to be readable and
maintainable, and to *not* be error-prone.

And as it happens, I remember my first experience with Pascal led to
the question "why does Pascal need two division operators when BASIC
works perfectly well with one?" - BASIC being another language
originally designed for newbie programmers, and one which has probably
seen more newbie programmers than all other languages put together if
you consider the days of 8-bit and 16-bit micros.

Some might claim the 3 divided by 2 should give the result 1.5 - I
disagree. 3 divided by 2 is 1, with a remainder equal to 1 - something
that is already supported perfectly well. I seem to remember learning
that *before* learning about fractions and decimals, and *long* before
I ever saw a computer. Division in the set of integers can only have
an integer result by definition. The fact that in mathematics it is
common to assume real numbers even if no point is specified is largely
irrelevant - programmers often have to be more explicit than
mathemeticians because programs are read by computers - not people.


Certainly many people will disagree with me, but this simply brings up
an additional point - this is clearly a matter of taste more than
principle. In matters purely of taste, the tradition has been to
remain consistent with the past. And with good reason - pleasing 50%
of the users at the expense of annoying the other 50% is no net gain,
despite the effort required and the risk of breaking existing code.
Why the sudden change?


Sorry that this is clearly so late, but I've been too caught up in the
exciting new world of iterators and generators to notice this piece of
ancient and once gratefuly discarded history sneaking back into the
present. Now I've seen it, I *must* have my temper tantrum ;-)


yours in-terror-of-the-broken-code



From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 31 09:24:58 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:24:58 -0400
Subject: Long: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B66B1AA.EF2FFE3A@engcorp.com>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
>               *** Python Is Really "Middleware" ***
>                          Tim Daneliuk
>               Copyright (c) 2001, TundraWare Inc.
[...]
>   by coding around them.  This leads to REALLY ugly, hard-to-maintain
>   systems.  CHANGING UNDERWEAR MATTERS.

I think you meant "UNDERWARE" ... :)


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sun Jul 22 08:25:54 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 22:25:54 +1000
Subject: interactive mode, history
References: <slrn9ll8ei.dh.stefan.heimann@kunz.ratzer>
Message-ID: <3B5AC652.F862F53E@student.gu.edu.au>

Stefan Heimann wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I have a problems with arrow keys in interactive mode. When I hit the
> up-arrow, I get ^[[A, the left-arrow produces ^[[D and so on.
> This problem occurs NOT with python 1.5 but with python 2.0 and 2.1.
> I have debian woody installed here and it doesn't matter if I invoke
> python on the console or in a xterm. I alsoe tried wterm,
> gnome-terminal and konsole from kde. With all I get the same results.
> 
> Can anyone help
> 
> Thanks stefan

If you built python 2.0 and 2.1 yourself, and the system didn't have the
development libraries for readlines present while you build, (On
Mandrake this would be readline-devel.*.rpm) python won't build with
readlines support. Install the readlines development libraries and
rebuild your executables. (Now try guess how I found THAT one out!
*grins*)
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 20 18:14:48 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:14:48 +0200
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org><cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995666017.20422.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jaagp$muvi6$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Fran?ois Pinard" <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in message news:mailman.995666017.20422.python-list at python.org...
> [Guido van Rossum]
>
> > TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
> > language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is case-insensitive.  I
>
> Did it change recently?  I thought Scheme was case-insensitive.
IMO Francois is right (was right?)

One thing which bothers me in case-insensitive languages:
I choose a certain convention, usually lower-case.
Then when I have to read library modules or other foreign
code which chooses the opposite convention, it looks very unreadable.

Thomas




From mcfletch at home.com  Mon Jul 23 14:02:52 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 14:02:52 -0400
Subject: Blender module
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.20010723094034.shalehperry@home.com>
Message-ID: <000201c113a1$b1ba17f0$a9807018@cr706570a>

If you're looking for new-API stuff (the Blender instead of Blender210
module), I wound up generating documentation with a modified version of
PyDoc.  I can forward the generated HTML to you if you like.

If you check out some of the plugins available for download, at least a few
are new-API.  Both APIs, however, appear incomplete, and the docs I have
don't show the structure of the objects returned by the Get() calls.

Enjoy,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Sean 'Shaleh' Perry
Sent: July 23, 2001 12:41
To: Justyna Bia3a
Cc: python-list at python.org
Subject: RE: Blender module



On 23-Jul-2001 Justyna Bia3a wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I need to know how to use the new module for writing scripts in python for
> Blender.
>
> I mean the newest version of Blender (2.14) and actually I have no
> documentation to that.
> Most scripts I found is written in the old API.
> If anybody is familiar with that stuff, please, let me know or maybe you
can
> send any examples of using that module.
>

docs can be found on http://www.blender.nl.  Tutorials, API, etc.

--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From rsalz at zolera.com  Mon Jul 30 10:51:54 2001
From: rsalz at zolera.com (Rich Salz)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 07:51:54 -0700
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <48F88F43C9842AD9.1E631B0D03856868.6FDBB21E772A6CB3@lp.airnews.net> <9js18m$n54$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg> <D4DB37387F4EA9A2.D6DD66D7FD6C9115.609F82073AFFEB7C@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <17214de2.0107300651.e4a5735@posting.google.com>

> The background of the Beepcore principals is in Tcl.

Oh, that's like saying John Cleese wrote a few jokes.

Marshall Rose is a protocol wonk like nobody's business, and BEEP is a
thing of beauty.  As for SOAP over BEEP, let's just say that he and I
are both more skeptical of a grand unification than Eamon is.  I'm
contemplating writing a BEEP implementation, although I think
WSDL-for-ZSI might come first.

ZSI, the Zolera SOAP Infrastructure, is yet another SOAP
implementation. Full open source, release is imminent; for the next
week or so interested parties might want to take a look at the docs,
available at http://www.zolera.com/resources/opensrc; I'd love to hear
feedback.

> 'Twill be entertaining to implement the RFCs for Py-
> thon, though, no?

I think you'd find a pyBeep implementation "much, much appreciated"
	/r$


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 10:39:12 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:39:12 -0500
Subject: Pinecones multiply like rabbits around here...
In-Reply-To: <20010724.084018.1789376348.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
References: <mailman.995975742.21691.python-list@python.org>
        <20010724.084018.1789376348.1751@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>
Message-ID: <15197.34960.673186.179878@beluga.mojam.com>

    Mark> sys.mathtype = "break those dark pinecones"
    Mark> answer = 5/2
    Mark> print answer
    >>> 2.5

Actually, I was thinking more of

    sys.mathtype = "break those dark pinecones"
    answer = 5/2
    print answer
    3

based upon my wife's statement.  (She wound up with three groups...)

S



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Thu Jul  5 09:18:50 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 13:18:50 GMT
Subject: PEP: Procedure for Adding New Modules (please comment)
References: <9hvqhr$gj2$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <20010705061422.353$tN@newsreader.com>
Message-ID: <9i1pfq$8ei$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Hernan M. Foffani <hfoffani at yahoo.com> wrote:
> m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) wrote:
>>    A related question is integration with the Python documentation
>>    process. Contributions should come with good documentation that
>>    can be integrated with the Standard Library documentation. Should
>>    we detail this more in this PEP?

> No, unless this PEP is merged with Carlos' one.
> Definitely, it's one of Carlos' PEP issue.
> What you should add to this PEP is a reference that the chance of a
> contribution to be accepted is directly proportional to the cumpliment of
> the Quality Guidelines.

Agreed; Carlos and I have been in communication about this after I wrote
this. I should've changed this section before publicizing it here.

Either Carlos and I will merge the PEPs or we'll propose two complementary
PEPs.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Fri Jul  6 13:14:48 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:14:48 +0100
Subject: Draw line or cirle on Tkinter.Button?
Message-ID: <3B45F208.1F312EB@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010706/434cdb5b/attachment.html>

From travis at grub.atlantic.net  Thu Jul  5 14:00:20 2001
From: travis at grub.atlantic.net (Travis Whitton)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:00:20 -0400
Subject: newbie question
In-Reply-To: <9i1eqc$mlb$1@news.businessobjects.com>
References: <9i1eqc$mlb$1@news.businessobjects.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107051357100.4048-100000@grub.atlantic.net>

I'm no expert, but I believe the following will work

# Retrieve the result of the unix date command
from os import popen
result.popen('date')
print result.read()

Hope this helps,
Travis Whitton <whitton at atlantic.net>

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, alphaZeta wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I didn't find any documentation (lib and tut) about how to execute a program
> in a python script.
> Does anybody know ?
> 
> For example : I would like to store in a variable the result of a call to
> the system.
> alike : >>> a = sys.exe("ls -l")
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Thu Jul  5 04:38:18 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 01:38:18 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <bebbba07.0107031040.593143f8@posting.google.com> <20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107050038.58c35a26@posting.google.com>

Mirko Liss <mirko.liss at web.de> wrote in message news:<20010704013238.2DC8A00.NOFFLE at niccolo.ke4.de>...
> On 3 Jul 2001, Russ wrote:
> 
> > Consider the type checking in C or C++, for example. Suppose that a
> > function takes several ints (or any other type) as arguments, and
> > suppose the calls of the function all pass ints in the correct slots.
> > The compiler will be perfectly happy. Does that assure that the
> > arguments are passed correctly? Of course not. It is a necessary but
> > not sufficient condition for correctness. The arguments could be
> > completely out of order, and the compiler wouldn't have a clue.
> 
> If the arguments of a function are out of order, the compiler 
> should bark and die, shouldn?t it?

Not if the order of the types is still the same. Suppose I pass (int
i, int j, int k) when I should have passed (int k, int j, int i). You
get the idea.

> Most programmers use type definitions deliberately, just to provoke
> that kind of compile-time errors.
> 
> An example in C:
> 
> typedef plane t int ;  /* plane no */
> typedef lane t int  ;  /* lane no */
> typedef go down in pieces t bool ;  
> go down in pieces t dispatch( plane t flightno, \
>                               lane t neigboring highway ) ;
> 
> If the arguments get swapped, the compiler gets angry.
> Is this what you wanted to have in C ?

I thought the compiler treats all those those typdefs as just another
name for int, hence it won't work, but I could be wrong.

Russ


From rjh at 3-cities.com  Sun Jul  1 03:24:28 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 07:24:28 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B3ED505.3F79197E@3-cities.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > It is certainly not a benefit for experiencd programmers that
> > routinely switch between Python and other languages.
> 
> Your argument ends up pleading to repeat the mistakes of other
> languages -- in fact, taken to the extreme it would mean there should
> be only on language.  I don't find it a very strong argument.
> 

In don't see pure integer arithmetic as a mistake of
any kind.  It is clearly an essential component, as the
authour of PEP-238 also recognizes by proposing the // operator.
For most of the operations that I routinely
perform with integers, an integer result is exactly what
I want from integer division.  And any argument taken to an extreme 
usually becomes absurd, so I don't find your argument strong 
either.  

I remain completely unconvinced that anyone
will benefit from making integers merely non-special points 
embedded in the real line.  We can do that now by forcing
integers to reals using float().  So we seem to gain nothing
from PEP-238 and also break a lot of code in the process.

-- 
Robert J. Harrison (rjh at 3-cities.com)


From mcfletch at home.com  Mon Jul 30 19:14:42 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 19:14:42 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
In-Reply-To: <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <000b01c1194d$6abef440$a9807018@cr706570a>

I thought someone had already proposed this, but didn't find it when I
looked:

class X:
	def x( class, *arguments, **namedarguments):
		doSomething( class ) # class of the object calling
		doSomething( X ) # the global X in our namespace...

Now, of course, that means that "class" just becomes a regular identifier as
far as the inside of class-methods goes, but oh well :) .  If that's too
radical, then ignore the doSomething( class ) stuff and just do
doSomething( X ), but that seems less in keeping with the rest of Python's
method-definition.

Alternately:
	def class x( *arguments, **namedarguments ):
		"Nicest beyond the above IMO"
	class def x( *arguments, **namedarguments ):
		"Still okay"

A thought (possibly someone else's), from someone who never much feels the
need for class methods :) ,
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of William Tanksley
Sent: July 30, 2001 18:31
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification


On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
>Guido van Rossum wrote:

>> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

>How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
>terse acronym to learn)?

Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
nice because it was in common use before.

>Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
>an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
>classification.

Good thinking.

>The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus suggests for "class" :

>division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
>department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
>species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
>clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
>feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.

>I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
>short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
>the language I deal with.

Of all the choices there, I like 'type' the best, because 'type' is
already used as a semi-synonym for class.  In fact, this change is
described as the type-class unification.

OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want a
plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?

--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sun Jul 29 21:37:13 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:37:13 +1000
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
References: <25b2e0d9.0107291052.7780d1f8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B64BA49.C105612B@student.gu.edu.au>

gods1child wrote:
> 
> All this heated discussion over floats has led me to wonder if we need
> to lighten up a little bit and celebrate the fact that were close to
> 100,000 (94,100 as of this moment) messages on this news-group which
> IMHO is some sort of a mile-stone for this neat little group.
> Suggestions for celebrations?

A memorial post? --> Drag some of the classic posts out of archives and
repost them?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From ykingma at accessforall.nl  Wed Jul 25 15:50:17 2001
From: ykingma at accessforall.nl (Ype Kingma)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:50:17 +0100
Subject: Version numbers in traceback
References: <5nitltsbrurir59906mbdtectsoah2ppcc@4ax.com> <j4vgkhgkqr.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <3B5F22F3.1A5956D0@accessforall.nl>


Martin von Loewis wrote:
> 
> Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> writes:
> 
> > Is there a standard way for a module to register its version number so that it is reported by
> > traceback or other debugging tools.
> >
> > I thought something nice and simple like
> >
> > _Module_Version_ = '10.5C'
> >
> > would be nice.
> 
> The standard constant for a module version is __version__. However,
> there is no way to integrate it into a traceback. Instead, debugging

It's not too difficult to catch the exception yourself and provide
a traceback text looking quite similar to the standard and including
the __version__ of the module of each function on the stack.

> tools would need to find out the module of each function in the
> traceback themselves (which sometimes cannot be done), and then access
> the __version__ if desired. I don't think that the traceback module
> should fetch __version__, though.
> 
> Regards,
> Martin

Good luck,
Ype

-- 
email at xs4all.nl


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 23:52:25 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 06:52:25 +0300
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <E15OWld-0005JN-00@darjeeling>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:55:58 GMT, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

> During the debate on changing int/int to give a float result, some
> proponents appeared to question the usefulness of integer quotients.

Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is *less*
useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible. You can
still have i//j for all your combinatorics needs.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From revyakag at umdnj.edu  Wed Jul  4 19:23:19 2001
From: revyakag at umdnj.edu (Andrey Revyakin)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:23:19 -0400
Subject: sys.stdin.read() HELP!
References: <3B42B7F0.50B624BD@umdnj.edu> <m38zi5ym77.fsf@atrus.jesus.cam.ac.uk> <3B4371A9.61A27B4F@umdnj.edu>
Message-ID: <3B43A567.DB3630F@umdnj.edu>

Actually it does look like there's something bad about the way the
machine is configured. Even if I simply
make a test  like this:

import cgi
cgi.test()

...and try to send data to this test.cgi file by POST, it generates the
same type of error. If I send data by GET or don't send anything it does
not generate it. But I still don't know what needs to be done with the
server to fix this.

  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 838, in test
    form = FieldStorage()   # Replace with other classes to test those
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 502, in __init__
    self.read_urlencoded()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.0/cgi.py", line 574, in read_urlencoded
    qs = self.fp.read(self.length)
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor

Andrey.



From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Tue Jul 24 00:48:33 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:48:33 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
Message-ID: <01b301c113fb$e92c5400$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>


> It's largely that it's never sensible for
>
>     x = y / z
>
> buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y and z
> happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen not to be
ints.

I can grant that.

<hack hack hack>

> I don't detect any trace of that hypothesized motive in Guido.  He wants
to
> repair what he has come to believe is a serious design error, and is
> wrestling with ways to get that done.  What a remarkably different world
it
> would be if people tried to help <wink>.

Some of us have tried.  Besides my alternative, I have seen two others which
allow case-by-case preservation of the old semantics where they may have
been
intended.

I have seen very few comments on them though (except from Stephen Horne).

ASSERTIONS:
    1.  Best-effort handling of division is desirable.
    2.  An explicit operator for truncating division is desirable
        (as in, explicit is better than implicit).
    3.  Code breakage is bad, and difficult-to-detect code breakage
        is worse.
    4.  Difficulty in writing backwards-compatible code is bad (thus,
        code to implement partitioning of a dataset would naturally use
        the // operator in 2.2+ but would not be able to in pre-2.2,
        so the div() function would have to be religiously used, hurting
        readability).

Assertion 1 and 2 conflict with 3 and 4; #4 in particular bothers me.  Many
have said that #3 is irrelevant as we have from 2.2 to 2.4 to fix it, but
I have upgraded several systems directly from 1.5.2 to 2.1 without
substantial
problems; going direct to 2.4 from 2.1 would not be so painless.

SOME way is needed to specify, in module scope, which set of mathematics
rules
should be enforced.  Whatever method is used should (IMHO) be uniform from
2.2
to 2.4; my method, as given, is the only one where the code reads the same
from
2.2 on:

    from __numerics__ import original  # or standard, etc...

Just thinking about the implementation gives me headaches, but Guido and Co.
have readily implemented fancy things like the software-time-machine

    from __future__ import phasers, warp_drive # or whatever

and so my proposal (or a mutation thereof) should be no biggie.

As I said, you can't honestly say we ALL haven't been trying.  It's not that
I
object directly to the change, it's the overall plan/effect/semantics etc.
that
I don't like.

Stephen seems not to want to have to admit to his boss that Python has
changed
the basic rules for division of integers.  I can grasp this... a proposal
like
mine, which allows for other numeric types to be dynamically added to the
language, would be an easier sell:

    Boss:  I heard Python was changing the rules for division of integers.
        Are you sure we should be using such a stupid language?
    SH:  No, boss, you've got it all wrong.  We have a new method for adding
        numeric types, like rationals, fixedpoint, decimals, etcetera, and
        is just happens that the default division mode changed as a
        consequence.  I can easily add a single line of code to any old
module
        and Python will run it under the old rule.  No fault, no foul.
    Boss:  Oh.  Well, carry on.





From anderson at hp.com  Tue Jul 24 13:22:56 2001
From: anderson at hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:22:56 -0600
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <20010724161340.A19700@zoidberg> <mailman.995988101.22387.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010724.112256.1789366143.16761@hp.com>

In article <mailman.995988101.22387.python-list at python.org>, "Thomas
Wouters" <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 04:13:40PM +0200, Marco Mariani wrote:
> 
>> Guido is not bad at all, he's just chaotic good :-)
> 
> And we all know Chaotic-Good alignments make the most fun characters!

Well, the new PHB does say that "Chaotic Good is the best alignment you
can be ...."

<wink>

> 
> Neutral-good-ly y'rs,

Chaotically-Neutral-ly y'rs


From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul  8 00:53:18 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:53:18 -0400
Subject: compile() question: SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing
References: <mailman.994528152.27196.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B47E73E.DFAB0774@engcorp.com>

Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [Peter Hansen]
> > Medusa's monitor.py uses the "unexpected EOF while parsing"
> > feature to infer that additional lines of text are going to be
> > entered by the user (to satisfy the expected indented block for
> > the "if").  
> > ...
> 
> Then it's not smart enough to handle Python code.  Code that is smart enough
> can be found in the std library module codeop.py, and people simulating
> interpreter loops should use the higher-level facilities in the std code.py.
> Getting this right in all cases is tricky (read the code); you've only
> bumped into one subtlety so far.

Damn!  (That's a "good" damn :-)

This reminds me of the time I didn't have a handy-dandy 'cal' command
at my DOS prompt.  I had an intuition that Python might help.  Without
checking the docs, I tried "import calendar".  That worked.  Then 
"dir calendar" and a wild guess at "print calendar.calendar(2001)".
I shouldn't be surprised at this kind of thing any more.

Isn't there *anything* not already done for us with Python?  Damn!

(Thank you Tim, and may I say you have a charming and elegant last name? :)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From ralf.muschall at alphasat.de  Wed Jul 11 13:09:51 2001
From: ralf.muschall at alphasat.de (Ralf Muschall)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 19:09:51 +0200
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk> <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B4C76A3.A624D05F@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <u7vgkze6jk.fsf@hpeesof.asc>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes:

> applied, such as containers, must at some level provide typeless handles. In

IMHO there is a difference between typeless and polymorphic handles.
The latter protect me from accidentally consing a string to a list of
numbers.

> C/C++ those handles are typically (void *). In Java they are typically

IIRC in C++ they are things like "template <class T> set::iterator".
C uses (void*) because it is an assembler, not a HLL.

> dynamically typed, since it is too productive a concept for a modern

I like Luca Cardelli's cartoon about dynamic typing.  But probably a
real type system would require the users to learn about this,
restricting the user base.

...
> type declarations are all syntactic cruft that can seriously slow new code
...

I like it despite of the indentation thing and of the lack of all
the features mentioned in your last sentence :-)

Ralf


From gustavo at ifour.com.br  Thu Jul 19 17:40:31 2001
From: gustavo at ifour.com.br (Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 18:40:31 -0300
Subject: md5
Message-ID: <20010719184030.B2287@ifour.com.br>

Dear Gentlemen,

I am a python beginner, but since i am facing problems with encryption related to MD5 method, i respectfuly request your help.
Precisely, the problem i am facing is related to hexdigest() method. Here is what i am getting:

Python 1.5.2 (#2, Jul  1 2001, 22:33:59)  [GCC 2.95.3 [FreeBSD] 20010315 (release on freebsd4
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import md5
>>> a = md5.new('Test')
>>> a.digest()
'\014\274f\021\365T\013\320\200\2328\215\311Za['
>>> b = md5.new('Test 1')
>>> b.hexdigest()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: hexdigest
>>> 

As you may see, the hexdigest() method does not work, why?

Would you mind correctind me in order to get a digest stream using hexdigest() method?

Thanks a lot for your time and cooperation.
Best regards,

Gustavo Rios


-- 
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
a tune.
		-- Woody Allen



From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 12:42:09 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 16:42:09 GMT
Subject: Newbie Question: Regular Expressions
References: <mailman.994953021.32263.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ikk11$ssp$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <mailman.994953021.32263.python-list at python.org>, 
fett at tradersdata.com () wrote:

> I have a really dumb program that i would like to make smarter.  I need
> to take a file on my hard drive and filter out everything except for the
> standings which are written in it.  I have tried to use regular
> expressions with no success, but i still think that they are probably
> the best way.  I created the following simple fix, but it is unreliable
> if the data changed posistions.
> 
> 
> input = open('rawdata', 'r')
> S = input.read()
> print S[4021:6095]
> 
> Output :
>    League Standings
>    American League
>      EAST W L PCT GB HOME ROAD EAST CENT WEST NL L10 STRK
>      Red Sox 43 29 .597 - 23-15 20-14 23-13 8-7 6-6 6-3 6-4 L2
>      Yankees 41 31 .569 2.0 21-15 20-16 19-11 12-9 5-7 5-4 6-3 W2
>      Blue Jays 35 38 .479 8.5 18-20 17-18 14-13 6-7 11-13 4-5 5-5 W3
>      Orioles 34 39 .466 9.5 20-20 14-19 15-17 9-12 6-5 4-5 5-5 L1
> ........( it continues with all the standings)

Even without regular expressions, I think input.readlines()[4:] or the 
like would work, and be simpler than what you do now.

re.findall('((?:[A-Z]\w+ ){1,2}[-0-9. ]+\w\d)', S) does the trick on this 
data.


(?:[A-Z]\w+ )

matches a capital letter followed by alphanumerics followed by a space, 
and doesn't group on it.  Perhaps should be (?:[A-Z][a-z]+ )

{1,2}

matches 1 or 2 words, this would fail on a team with a three word name

[-0-9. ]+

matches more than one numeral, =, . or space.  That covers the stuff in 
the middle.  You may like to make it more specific.

\w\d

then an alphanumeric followed by a digit to end.  If the first character 
is always a capital letter, it could be [A-Z]\d and if it's always W or L,
[WL]\d


)

and return the whole match as a group.

> Also could you tell me if its possible to download the data from the
> web-page in python so that it doesnt even have to deal with opening the
> file.

Sure is!  Check out the urllib module.


                       Graham


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 16 14:37:02 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 14:37:02 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etd8zhorhnq.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l689p.o6r.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <etdwv58ra9d.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>

No worries. :)

Alex.


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 18 04:07:37 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:07:37 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
In-Reply-To: <8f41cfd.0107172305.5e2f3a70@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181159010.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On 18 Jul 2001, Xu, C.S. wrote:

> Thanks for all comments. Now I revised my stupid testing
> python script to adopt both a func (save original 38 seconds
> to 28 seconds) and a for loop (save original 38 seconds to
> 21 seconds), I got 16.0 seconds, which is pretty comparable
> to perl's 15.4 seconds.
> 
> The revised stupid testing py is:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/env python
> def f():
>         for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
>                 j = 2.5 * 2.5
>         print i, j
> f()
> 
> 
> Interesting is for perl: On the same PII 450 MHz, "for" loop
> in stead of "while" loop increase about 10% speed, but on another
> PIII 1GHz, "for" slowes down speed by 30% (from 8 seconds of
> "while" to 10.6 seconds of "for"). Only computers themselves
> can understand, :-(

>>> def f():
...         for i in xrange(2.5, 1e7, 1.):
...                 j = 2.5 * 2.5
...         print i, j
...
>>> f()
9999999 6.25
>>> import profile
>>> profile.run("f()")
9999999 6.25
         3 function calls in 11.680 CPU seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1   11.630   11.630   11.630   11.630 <stdin>:1(f)
        1    0.000    0.000   11.630   11.630 <string>:1(?)
        1    0.050    0.050   11.680   11.680 profile:0(f())
        0    0.000             0.000          profile:0(profiler)



How do you measure?

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From tony at lsl.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 10:53:52 2001
From: tony at lsl.co.uk (Tony J Ibbs (Tibs))
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:53:52 +0100
Subject: Pedants R us (was RE: Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <000101c1112b$cab8f730$f05aa8c0@lslp7o.int.lsl.co.uk>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> In my usage, a "programmer" is someone who is a
> professional code-slinger, 8-12 hours a day.

Eek - I hope you don't really mean that last subclause!

a. You've been working in the USA too long - those are long working
hours (40 hours and *way* up).

b. What about people working part time - e.g., me - aren't we allowed to
be programmers as well?

I know I've labelled this as a pedantic issue, but please *do* be
careful!

obPython - I've actually managed to be *paid* to program in Python this
week - ah, bliss, rather than working in C.

Tibs

--
Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)      http://www.tibsnjoan.co.uk/
Well we're safe now....thank God we're in a bowling alley.
- Big Bob (J.T. Walsh) in "Pleasantville"
My views! Mine! Mine! (Unless Laser-Scan ask nicely to borrow them.)




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Wed Jul 25 20:52:43 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 02:52:43 +0200
Subject: Auto Building MS VC6 Projects
References: <9jn00e$j8g$1@news.chorus.net>
Message-ID: <rkpnj9.1p3.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:35:06 -0500, Olaf Meding wrote:
>Microsoft Visual C++ can be automated (COM, OLE) and I would like to use
>Python to automate nightly VC6 builds.
>
>Has anyone does this and is willing/able to share ideas or code?
>Is there any documenation on this somewhere?

IIRC MSVC can export the project information into a Makefile. You could then
simply schedule a simple nightly "nmake -f MyMakefile".

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 02:56:25 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 06:56:25 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com> <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <eppstein-6E0A27.12470423072001@news.service.uci.edu> <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lp6u8.hhd.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <h69plt04ff8j36ma26k9b2l13e5i04hg6e@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lq70p.n4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:05:11 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> pisze:

> The point is that we should the same symbol for the same meaning,
> exactly the same as mathemeticians.

It's not the same meaning. Seven divided by two is three according to
one meaning and three and a half according to the other. They can't
have the same meaning and yet give different answers for the same input.
Mathemeticians *do* denote integer 3 and real 3 in the same way, they
treat these inputs as interchangeable and distinguish by the operation.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 15:29:45 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:29:45 GMT
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com>

jcm wrote:
> 
> Pete Shinners <shredwheat at mediaone.net> wrote:
> ...
> 
> > for doing a MUD, the language speed is not going to have
> > much noticeable effect, since network speed is far slower
> > than any of the languages can handle.
> 
> This isn't necessarily true.  If you have a lot of objects with state
> that changes often (wandering monsters, etc), computation-speed can
> become an issue.

I still don't see why python wouldn't be up to the job.
If things are working well but too slowly, it's time to think about
optimization.

A good quote:
 "Optimization is simply waste of programmer time if any of these statements are
true: 

    parts of the program haven't been written yet 
    the program is not fully tested and debugged 
    it seems to run fast enough already" 

I forget where I got that quote.

So, first, make sure everything works.
Then write a test script that hits the server hard, and run the server under the
python profiler.

Then, once you know what the slow parts are, go to the FAQ wizard:
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw.py

...and search for "optimize". There's lots of good info in there.

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From michael at stroeder.com  Mon Jul 16 19:13:35 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:13:35 +0200
Subject: Bug in Python DNS module
References: <3B535691.96BDB5E3@mega-nerd.net>
Message-ID: <3B53751F.4CA0DC4@stroeder.com>

Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> 
> A couple of days ago I asked for and received a link to a Python DNS
> module. I have since found a bug in the ParseResolvConf() functions.
> [..]
> I'm not sure who to send it to so I'm posting it here.

Erik, thanks for submitting this fix.

I've included it into my version of the DNS module. I wrote Anthony
Baxter who maintained the version I grabbed and modified but no
response so far what to do with the module. If nothing happens
during the next two or three weeks I will probably upload it to a
SourceForge project.

If anybody knows something about the license let me know.

Ciao, Michael.


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 03:07:32 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:07:32 +0100
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9j8lag$srl$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

Please reassure me that this means what I think it does: you want to update
Python so that a future version of the language supports two modes, case
insensitive for beginners and case sensitive for experts?

If so, please go ahead, and let me carry on, as an expert, using case to
make important, subtle but useful distinctions.

If your desire is to move the language to being case insenstive for all of
us: please don't.  Really.  Please.





From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul 27 18:23:14 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:23:14 -0700
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0@posting.google.com> <3B61A168.C361BE99@home.net> <bhahn-ya02408000R2707011331190001@news.corp.hp.com>
Message-ID: <3B61E9D2.2BBA87F2@home.net>

Brendan Hahn wrote: 
> Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote:
> >Frankly, IO've also bee dissapointed in the MacPython communities
> >commitment to cross-platform tools. tkInter works on Windows well
> >because Window users have made sure that it does, ditto for wxPython,
> >etc. No one in MacPython development is working on those things.
> 
> It isn't fair to hold the MacPython community responsible for this -- the
> problems are not so much with Tkinter and wxPython but rather with the
> underlying Tk and wxWindows implementations, which both kind of work but
> basically suck on the Mac.

Fair enough, but the responsibility still lies with the Mac programming
community in general, if not just MacPython: if tcl-tk and wxWindows
don't work very well on the Mac, it's because the Mac programming
comunity, as a whole, has not made them work well. By the way, wxMac has
gotten a lot more support, and is making a lot of progress lately.

> Even with a good Tk or wxWindows library, the
> differences in interface paradigm, event models, etc, make it very hard to
> get  the kind of application a Mac developer wants from these systems, so
> work goes into the "native" interface stuff like W and the W-based IDE.

Essentially what you are saying is that good cross platform tools that
include the Mac are impossible to create. That may be true: after all,
no one seems to have created one yet. I hold out hope for wx. while tk
was designe3d for X-windows and then later ported to other platforms, wx
was designed to be platform independent in general. Of course, it was
designed with just Win32 and Motif as targets to begin with and thus is
kind of Windowsy, but it is pretty usable and powerful.

> Unfortunately the relative smallness of the Mac community means these tools
> are not as highly developed as Tk- and wx-stuff.

That's why I'm surprised that there isn't more work put into the cross
platform stuff, if you get that to work, you get a whole lot with the
package! 

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 14:52:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:52:20 -0400
Subject: modifying sys.path on win98...?
References: <3b40d94c.3665104@news.mailops.com> <3B40BC46.65C94737@dennis-voss.de>
Message-ID: <9n307.21501$he.1074653@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

See site.py and read about the sitecustomize module. It isn't a perfect
solution, but it helps.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"Dennis Voss" <dennis at dennis-voss.de> wrote in message
news:3B40BC46.65C94737 at dennis-voss.de...
> > I'm trying to update the sys.path for python on win98...
> >
> > I altered the registry, under local machine, seemingly correct. But
> > when I access the sys.path to check it, my alterations don't show,
> > even after rebooting.
> >
> > I can use sys.path.append, but the change only lasts until I close
> > python. Then it reverts back to its original state.
> >
> > How do I make the alteration 'permanent' ?
>
> You can't.
> Windows 9x does not store the enviroment variables in the registry
> as Win NT does. The only permanent keys are created in the
> autoexec.bat file. When you start an application or a DOS box,
> Windows copies the env.vars to your "sandbox" and destroys that
> information when your program ends.
>
> The only alternative in MS way seems to be the registry, but that also
> has disadvantages, i.e. the files storing the data don't shrink when you
> delete
> information in the registry.
>
> Bad, I know - Blame MS. I asked the same question in the helpdesk on
> this years CeBIT (we needed that for network scripts, my old teacher
> didn't
> want to change his Novell scripts) resulting in the above answer (=no)
>
> Dennis
>




From donn at u.washington.edu  Mon Jul  9 12:51:04 2001
From: donn at u.washington.edu (Donn Cave)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 16:51:04 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <hdgcktgn4eksejt01vqa8k0g7k69ov1isj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9icndo$loe$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>

Quoth Courageous <jkraska1 at san.rr.com>:
...
| [Snip: Guido's plan]
|
| This seems to me to be reasonable. While backward compatibility
| is important in computer languages, the real problem occurs when
| changes are abrupt. And in any case, we always have older versions
| of the interpreter around.

Sure.  For me, it looks like older versions is all we're going to
have around.  Python is getting too complicated, has always been
too slow (mainly startup cost), and now it's going to start breaking
existing code in a serious way, for the sake of notions that are
very debatable.  I'm not saying "play my way, or I'm taking my
ball and going" - I think I see the handwriting on the wall one
way or the other.  The present offense is probably a blessing in
disguise, since 2.0/2.1 is probably a better place to stake it
down than a couple of versions farther down the curve.

It's ironic, just recently my department has started to think about
supporting Zope on our web servers.  Of course I have been pitching
Python as the greatest thing since sliced bread for 7 or 8 years,
but my colleague, our main web server expert, was interested for a
while but gave up on it fairly quickly, and one of the criticisms he
levelled against it was that a new release will break all your code.
Not my experience at all, but how he will laugh to hear about this one.
And now, if I'm obliged to bring in these new versions of Python after
all, it probably will be because of Zope.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 27 06:35:50 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:35:50 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Uj587.32158$EP6.8364145@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b613855.540809753@wa.news.verio.net>

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:35:16 GMT, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

>> [Guido]
>> Well, they have the same *mathemtical* value, and Python does its
>> darndest to treat them as equal everywhere.  For example, a dict
>with
>> int keys can be indexed with corresponding float or complex values.
>> Exceptions are operations that intrinsically require ints, e.g. list
>> indexing.  (This would change under a unified numeric system though,
>I
>> expect, unless inexact numbers are excluded from being used as
>> sequence indices.)
I think they should be, but IMHO linking exactness to representation
types will lead to trouble, unless you reserve float for numbers you
really have to approximate, and rework all floating point literals
so they don't cause artificial inexactness by being unnecessarily
represented as floats. I.e., convert 2.0 to an exact 2, not a float.
Convert 2.5 to rational 25/10, or 5/2, not a float. Etc. That throws
out a lot of good uses for exact floats though.
>
>If I write def(seq, n, k): return seq[3*n//k] and a call receives
>n=20.0 instead of 20, it would accord with the polymorphic rationale
>for new / and // to go ahead and return the item intended.  Or perhaps
>floored numbers should be marked as exact (if the marking is
>independent of type).
>
ISTM floor couldn't make an exact number out of an inexact one unless the
inexactness was known to be constrained to the halfopen interval above
the floor. OTOH, IMHO 20.0 should not be viewed as inexact just because it is
a conventional literal for a floating point representation of 20
(end of sentence ;-). So if it were exact, floor(20.0) would also be exact.

Here's another one. What if you were simulating white noise within an interval,
and you wanted to check on it by counting instances generated that fell in
sub-intervals. Scaling the sub-intervals to width 1.0 and using floor would
be a natural way of getting an index to bins for counting. So one way or
another, there has to be a way to make the floored values exact for the purpose
of indexing. Floor values really are integers, mathematically. They could be
returned as such in a unified number system. But if so, it would be incorrect
to call them exact just because they were integers. To say ok, we'll return
floats is no better. The point is exactness ought to be representation-independent.
floor(4.0 - inexactnessEpsilon) => 3 #not an exact integer because of its heritage.

For practical purposes, the common case ought to be easy to write and fast executing.
Here I think that means indexing should automatically do floor and and raise an
exception if it got inexact inputs. However, when you know you are generating indices
from inexact sources, there should be a way of explicitly coercing exactness on
any number, so you can use the result of floor etc where exactness is required.
If float is reserved for only inexacts, then floor should definitiely return an integer,
not a float, unless it had an inexact input. Blech. All this is implementation talk,
not language talk. exactness is a language key concept for numbers. float is a
foreign-function/foreign-data issue for the language, or perhaps an optimization hint,
but not central, IMHO.

Please see my Number Tree post for more on representation ;-)


From donovan at sherbet.co.uk  Wed Jul 18 08:23:43 2001
From: donovan at sherbet.co.uk (Donovan Hide)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:23:43 +0100
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <tlb00e7b6520b5@corp.supernews.co.uk>

NumPy! Sorry.




From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 22 15:50:03 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 12:50:03 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995572293.19088.python-list@python.org> <slrn9let6c.65h.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B585C00.93162A1@Lugoj.Com> <slrn9ljpvp.1rr.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B5B2E6B.D7A7A5D7@Lugoj.Com>

[ On the subject of message = Message(): ]
phil hunt wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:27:44 -0700, James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
> >I never used that convention much until after I had been exposed to ASN.1,
> >where it is a common convention to have identifiers differ from type names
> >only by a change of case in the first letter. In ASN.1 type names start with
> >upper case and instance names start with lower case. Obviously the ITU
> >didn't see any problems with that convention.
> 
> I don't know whether ASN.1 is any good; but i do know (having just looked)
> the organisation behind it aren't competent to design websites.

The ITU (International Telecommunications Union, formerly CCITT) has only
been around 100 some years and has members from just about every country on
the globe. They almost certainly outsource their website design and in any
case that isn't their purpose. They define standards (a.k.a.
"recommendations") that have made it possible for you to pick up your phone
in the UK and be able to call anyone else anywhere in the world who has a
dialable phone number. Without them, the global telephone system and the
global Internet almost certainly wouldn't exist as we know it.

Anyway, they are slow deliberative body that does make mistakes, but also
can't approve anything that doesn't reach sufficient consensus. I'm not sure
how much case sensitivity played in the design decisions of ASN.1.


From justin at iago.org  Tue Jul 24 00:31:56 2001
From: justin at iago.org (Justin Sheehy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:31:56 -0400
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <E15OcnO-0006p1-00@darjeeling> (Moshe Zadka's message of "Mon,
 23 Jul 2001 13:18:38 +0300")
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com> <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>
	<yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org>
	<mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org>
	<E15OcnO-0006p1-00@darjeeling>
Message-ID: <x7r8v7t0ar.fsf@ra.iago.org>

Moshe Zadka <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> writes:

> non-issue. Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and
> Tcl, for instance.

So, no matter what Python does, you'll think it is correct?

> (/ 3 4)
3/4

% perl -e 'print 3 / 4;print "\n";'
0.75

% expr (3/4)
0

-Justin

 




From bokr at accessone.com  Tue Jul 31 14:14:04 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:14:04 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996521640.5165.python-list@python.org> <3b666579.880046189@wa.news.verio.net> <oyB97.56034$EP6.12790659@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b66f1e4.915992747@wa.news.verio.net>

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:04:20 GMT, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:

>
>"Bengt Richter" <bokr at accessone.com> wrote in message
>news:3b666579.880046189 at wa.news.verio.net...
>> BTW, I couldn't find where it officially says a sequence
>expression's elements
>> are evaluated guaranteed left to right. E.g., if I write
>>     [foo(), bar(), baz()]
>> can I depend on global side effects of foo() to be available to
>bar(), and of bar()
>> to baz() in strict sequence? The sequences are at the top of the
>precedence table,
>> but what of the elements? Just want to make sure ;-)
>
>I remember reading that function arguments are (guaranteed) evaluated
>l to r.  I believe dict entries are also, so {'n':1, 'n':2} ==
>{'n':2}.  I presume list items are also.  This should be in ref manual
>if not already.
>
I tried to find it in the distribution HTML docs, and in the PER and
didn't find it.

It just occurred to me to think about allowing lists' elements to be
created in parallel if there's not an algorithm forcing sequentialness.

Strictly sequential tuple and dictionary building, but possibly parallel,
even distributed, list creation? Just popped into my head.


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 22:27:56 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:27:56 GMT
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
References: <mailman.994428256.27172.python-list@python.org> <cpvgl6jbyz.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <jpb-BA1E76.20231012072001@news-server.cfl.rr.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksn6c.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 00:23:07 GMT, Joe Block <jpb at ApesSeekingKnowledge.net> wrote:
>
>> Huh?  The FAQ wizard gives you plenty of ways to access individual
>> items or sections.  Why would you ever download the whole FAQ?
>
>To print it, so it can be read while I'm away from the net?

Away from the net? 

Huh? Why would you ever be away from the net?  ;)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  When you get your
                                  at               PH.D. will you get able to
                               visi.com            work at BURGER KING?


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul  9 14:19:10 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:19:10 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994532533.10229.python-list@python.org> <9ichdv$rik$1@tomm.stsci.edu>
Message-ID: <yAm27.8553$Y6.2987762@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I sense some confusion here (or maybe I'm confused). The original point
was  that
> someone could simply search and replace the existing '/' operator with
the 'div'
> operator.

What *I* said (and which Guide acknowledged as a reasonable point) was that
'/' could be programatically replaced with another infix operator thru
search/replace-with-confirmation while replacing it with a function would
require an embedded Python parser to determin the extent of e1 and e2 in
the construct e1/e2 to be written as, for instance, div(e1,e2).

> The existing '/' does not guarantee an integer result (if one of  the
operands
> is a float for example).

Right.  As I thought I understood the 'div' (or div() proposal), update
could not be completely automated, which is why I specified
*with-confirmation* by a human who understands the code.  In some cases,
the intent will be obvious.  In others, searching an entire file, or more,
may be required.

> So providing an idiv operator that always returned  an
> integer result would not suffice for the original desire which was to
have
> an  operator with the same semantics as the existing division operator.
Or do I
> misunderstand?

I thought the desire was/is to have an operator which just preserved int /
int -> int.  But I have never seen it specified whether float div whatever
would be an error or have the current meaning (in which case confirmation
would not be necessary).

In this sense, PEP-0238 is incomplete in not fully specifying a proposed
alternative to current syntax and semantics, which I why I think it
premature to declare it accepted, even though it seems it will be
eventually.

Terry J. Reedy





From peter.milliken at gtech.com  Tue Jul  3 22:28:43 2001
From: peter.milliken at gtech.com (Peter Milliken)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:28:43 +1000
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <X4l07.7611$B7.1402508@ruti.visi.com> <9hsu54$t38$1@panix3.panix.com> <9htjhb$ck4@news1.gtech.com> <9htril$5ml$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9hu07e$ck5@news1.gtech.com>

No, you misunderstood the context of my reply :-). I wouldn't put myself in
the position of having to choose between C/C++ and Python, I believe there
are better language choices for the application being discussed. Therefore,
to be stuck in the proposed situation would not "realistic", I would quit
before I had to write an ATC in either language. :-)

Peter

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9htril$5ml$1 at panix6.panix.com...
> [BTW, would you please attribute the quotes.  It makes conversation
> difficult if we can't keep track of who said what.]
>
> In article <9htjhb$ck4 at news1.gtech.com>,
> Peter Milliken <peter.milliken at gtech.com> wrote:
> >>>Aahz:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Suppose that the only language choices are between C/C++ and
> >>>>Python, and that the real-time resolution requirement is on the
> >>>>order of one second. Which would you choose and why?
> >
> >Sorry, won't answer because it is not a realistic situation i.e. the
choice
> >wouldn't be between C/C++ and Python :-).
>
> We already have the information that applications in this domain are
> written in C/C++, so your claim that it's an unrealistic situation
> strikes me as specious at best.
> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)
>
> Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
> Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
>
> "I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown




From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 04:21:36 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:21:36 +0100
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE83@intrepid>

> From:	wyatt stafford [SMTP:wyatts at onr.com]
> Beyond those mentioned above, may I have any recommendations for self
> study
> resources (books, etc) or techniques that will help me be a good
> programmer,
> in general?
 
One thing that no-one seems to have mentioned - "Programming Python", 2nd
edition, by Mark Lutz, O'Reilly. Especially good on Sys Admin stuff. (And
GUI building, and network programming...)
 
> Do I need to know what is taught in CompSci 101/102/etc, to be great?
 
Good God, I hope not!

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 13:25:29 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 13:25:29 -0400
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 11:24:22 +0200."
             <6D8A17398E28D3119F860090274DD7DBF13643@pces.cadlab.it> 
References: <6D8A17398E28D3119F860090274DD7DBF13643@pces.cadlab.it> 
Message-ID: <200107311725.NAA16634@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

[Guido]
> > I then settled on a case-sensitive language with case-preserving
> > tools.  But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

[Alex]
> I guess that, as usual, you may well be right.  But then,
> we're now talking basically about something like some minor
> changes to IDLE's source code editor, aren't we?  Or to
> Emacs' python-mode, etc.  Surely there would be no fight
> necessary to add a "case-preserving switch" to such tools
> for optional use.  The only issue I can see is with modules
> (particularly in the standard libraries) that may _require_
> a programmer to enter the same identifier in more than one
> different case-mix.  Are there such cases today in Python's
> standard library?  I'm not sure.

Yes, there are plenty in the std lib, and plenty more in 3rd party
code.

Also, I think that doing a really good job may be tricky.  Just one
example:

class Foo:
    def foo(s): pass

The 'foo' attribute lives in a different namespace as the 'Foo' class
and so these should be accepted in the same program, even though

class C:
    def foo(s): pass
    def Foo(s): pass

isshould be invalid.

Another example:

FOO = 12

def f():
    foo = 21
    return foo

> Offhand, I can easily think of a few identifiers that
> do appear in different cases, e.g. fileinput (the module)
> vs FileInput (the class in module fileinput), but it would
> seem to me that those identifiers would not normally have
> to be entered with case being the *only* distinction (one
> would normally write fileinput.FileInput, so a reasonably
> smart tool might still be able to get the case right for
> each of the two identifiers - or is this requiring too
> much smarts from the tools?).  Maybe, if a _small_ fight
> is needed to ENABLE (as opposed to FORCE:-) use of a
> semi-smart, case-preserving tool, it MIGHT be worth it,
> if the fight be small enough...?

(I guess you're pointing out some of the same issues as I did
above. :-)

I agree it might be worth it, but I think doing a real good job
requires more type inference than I currently know how to do...

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul 29 01:20:22 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:20:22 -0700
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <etdy9p81q8t.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu> <9jvsio$j4r$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> <3B639A2D.83B00CD5@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B639D16.1087F79B@alcyone.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:

> At least, don't bother thinking about doing it until you can figure
> out why it's needed, because you shouldn't be making it easier for
> someone to do "from yourmodule import *" unless you have very good
> reason.

Couldn't agree more.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ I am a gentlemen:  I live by robbing the poor.
\__/ George Bernard Shaw
    Computer science / http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/compsci/
 A computer science reference.


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 13:58:05 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:58:05 +0300
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>, <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15ONUT-0003eX-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

[about //]
> it just looks awful as well as annoying those who don't want this
> change.

Any solution would have annoyed the other side, and one solution
had to be taken.
And no, "inertia" isn't an excuse. Python cannot be ruled by inertia,
just as it cannot arbitrarily break backwards compat. 

-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From philipprw at gmx.at  Wed Jul 18 14:48:02 2001
From: philipprw at gmx.at (Philipp Weinfurter)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 18:48:02 GMT
Subject: bug in python's scope handling?
References: <slrn9lbkhg.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at> <Fok57.21911$PF1.1081086@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lbmfi.1at.philipprw@chello213047126184.14.univie.teleweb.at>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:20:49 -0400, Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> When your Python is compiled into bytecode, the assignment to a is detected
> during compilation of your function func2(). The name a is therefore assumed
> to refer to a local variable, hence the ruin-time exception you observe.

yes, this is what i thought. but is it correct?
i don't mean to be pedantic, but the rules are that if a variable
is not found in local scope, then the compiler looks up the global
scope and python doesn't follow this rule here.
it doesn't really hurt, since in 99% of all cases the programmer
probably _thinks_ he is referring to a local variable, but still...


From paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com  Mon Jul 30 10:29:39 2001
From: paoloinvernizzi at dmsware.com (Paolo Invernizzi)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:29:39 GMT
Subject: Python Windows installer: good news!
References: <mailman.996447416.25799.python-list@python.org> <JFa97.68$Nq1.2992@nreader1.kpnqwest.net> <cplml6zgom.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <nbe97.127$Nq1.4801@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>

I was just wondering if InstallerMaster has an "automatic" option for
getting an MSI also, apart from standard exe packet... but there's no
problems...
We are all courious of trying 2.2 features ;)

Paolo Invernizzi
DMSWare.com

> ActivePython is just a repackaging of Python using MSI, so I see no
> need for us to *also* provide one.  Too much duplicated efforts.  If
> ActivePython doesn't have what you need, the quickest way to get your
> needs met is to ask ActiveState what they are. :)





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 09:20:25 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:20:25 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jhbfj$79s$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <mailman.995930743.17137.python-list@python.org> <9jjfts$9k2$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <roy-24160D.07405224072001@news1.panix.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E890D978CF4duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote in
news:roy-24160D.07405224072001 at news1.panix.com: 

> Duncan Grisby <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> wrote:
> 
>> So what can I do?  I can't even do something ugly like
>> 
>>   if sys.hexversion > 0x2000200:
>>       c = a // b
>>   else:
>>       c = a / b
>> 
>> since the a // b gives a syntax error.
> 
> I'm almost embarassed to suggest this, but what about:
> 
>    if sys.hexversion > 0x2000200:
>        c = eval ("a // b")
>    else:
>        c = a / b
> 
Or you could do c = divmod(a, b)[0]

which should lightly trip off the tongue for any version :(


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From smnordby at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 21:26:19 2001
From: smnordby at yahoo.com (SteveN)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 18:26:19 -0700
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com> <23891c90.0107270222.7856bec2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B6214BB.22657123@yahoo.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> SteveN <smnordby at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<3B60BC42.8C790BCE at yahoo.com>...
> > Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > >
> > > (Couldn't resist. :-)
> > >
> > > It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
> > > endless laments in the SF bug database.)
> >
> > And yet HP makes it available:
> > http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/python-2.1/
> 
> It's a fearsome experience to run Python on HP-UX too - see the
> screenshot they provide. ;-)

Looks more like Python hanging :)
I fear the screenshot may be more pleasant than the build.  I've been
tempted to build on HPUX at work but I chickened out because our HPUX
network hosts the mission critical stuff.

-SteveN-


From andreas at andreas-jung.com  Thu Jul 19 18:46:52 2001
From: andreas at andreas-jung.com (Andreas Jung)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:46:52 -0500
Subject: md5
References: <20010719184030.B2287@ifour.com.br>
Message-ID: <084e01c110a4$b6abd500$9865fea9@SUXLAP>

hexdigest() works at least under Python 2.1. Maybe this function
has been introduced after Python 1.5.2. Are you sure you are reading
in the 1.5.2 docs ? :-)

Andreas

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gustavo Vieira Goncalves Coelho Rios" <gustavo at ifour.com.br>
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Donnerstag, 19. Juli 2001 16:40
Subject: md5


> Dear Gentlemen,
>
> I am a python beginner, but since i am facing problems with encryption
related to MD5 method, i respectfuly request your help.
> Precisely, the problem i am facing is related to hexdigest() method. Here
is what i am getting:
>
> Python 1.5.2 (#2, Jul  1 2001, 22:33:59)  [GCC 2.95.3 [FreeBSD] 20010315
(release on freebsd4
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> >>> import md5
> >>> a = md5.new('Test')
> >>> a.digest()
> '\014\274f\021\365T\013\320\200\2328\215\311Za['
> >>> b = md5.new('Test 1')
> >>> b.hexdigest()
> Traceback (innermost last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> AttributeError: hexdigest
> >>>
>
> As you may see, the hexdigest() method does not work, why?
>
> Would you mind correctind me in order to get a digest stream using
hexdigest() method?
>
> Thanks a lot for your time and cooperation.
> Best regards,
>
> Gustavo Rios
>
>
> --
> It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
> a tune.
> -- Woody Allen
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 14:41:42 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:41:42 -0400
Subject: importing modules
In-Reply-To: <3b5eff6a.97328527@news.libero.it>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAECHLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Duilio Foschi]
> I downloaded python.zip (the dos version).
> [and then has problems]

Where did you get this from?  I don't recognize the file name.  I expect
you'll have to find the person who created it, and ask them what's in it.




From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 12:36:12 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:36:12 GMT
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j4lmlcglpm.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <cpu1zz7pve.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <G4X77.12074$Up.356481@sea-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <cpg0bj7imk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote...
> > Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> writes:
> >
> > > "Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:
> > > [...]
> >
> > The only situation where I've seen this, ironically, is if you attempt
> > to import the test module that's designed specifically to test this
> > lock, in the interactive interpreter on Windows.
> >
> > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> 
> I just saw something that might be relevant.  Please, don't jump
> the gun, I said "might".  The other thread ("Re: Threads in Python
> version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies") is
> discussing a problem with threads in Python.  The death of the
> calling process lets the system to go ahead.
> 
> It may or may not be relevant, but I would like to hear your
> opinion on it.
> 
> The big difference is that in the aforementioned posts the version
> of Python is 1.5.1 and I am using 2.0.

Victor, we don't have enough information.  Are you using Jython, or
are you somehow invoking C-Python from Java?  Can you reproduce the
problem in a self-contained example program?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From piet at cs.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 05:30:28 2001
From: piet at cs.uu.nl (piet at cs.uu.nl)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 11:30:28 +0200
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <22U%6.3997$Kf3.32727@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <upubjy8y3.fsf@cs.uu.nl>

>>>>> Haris Lekatsas <nospam at newsranger.com> (HL) writes:

HL> I have a problem running the script below on FreeBSD. When I run it from the
HL> UNIX prompt it runs fine and it sends a file (bigtextfile) of any size to
HL> the recipient address. Whenever a run the exact same script from a web 
HL> browser as a CGI script it will send only about 17K of the bigfile and not
HL> the whole thing. I tried many different files and all of them get cut off
HL> at around 17K. It seems on other OS this problem does not appear. Any ideas
HL> why this is happening would be appreciated.

Could it be the timeout of the HTTP server?
Do you still get the response ("Mail sent!")?
Anyway I would suggest you put a try except around the server.sendmail and
print an error message if an exception is caught. Also print the response.
-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/~piet [PGP]
Private email: P.van.Oostrum at hccnet.nl


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 31 15:49:07 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:49:07 -0700
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
References: <3B66FFEC.5335E1C8@destiny.com>
Message-ID: <3B670BB3.48D4A5A5@ActiveState.com>

Michael Chermside wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> How about this:
> 
> def f():
>     for x in g():
>         yield x * 2
> 
> Of course it gives a generator, not a list... but that
> seems to be a reasonable form to represent an infinite sequence.

How about if we combine your ideas:

y = [yield x*2 for x in g()]

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Tue Jul  3 09:40:29 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 13:40:29 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <%7i07.25728$he.1340574@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9hsi0d$oqv$3@216.39.170.247>

In article <%7i07.25728$he.1340574 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>, 
sholden at holdenweb.com says...
<snip>
> You're lucky you didn't read a book that told you jumping in the river was a
> good thing, otherwise you'd be pretty wet by now...
> 
> Seriously. You have to use your own judgment on these matters. Clearly there
> are things "wrong" with every programming language. It's a matter of which
> suits your purposes best.
> 
> Alternatively: "Yes, Eiffel is much better than anything else. Especially
> for air traffic control systems" :-)
> 
> regards
>  Steve
> 
> --
> http://www.holdenweb.com/
> 

I wonder if the annual Dataquest language survey, if it still exists, 
that showed that more "programmers" used Basic in it's various flavors 
then all other languages combined still shows that... hmm, is that a 
reason to use Basic? After all, supposedly 80% of all business apps are 
written in Basic - presumably Visual Basick since they've pretty 
effectively killed off that entire market segment. Personally, I think 
i'd rather take up a career as William Park ;)

Dave LeBlanc


From thedustbustr at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 19:56:35 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 23:56:35 GMT
Subject: how to import curses
References: <9jni8c$3hl8$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <20010725195635.22015.00001518@ng-fx1.aol.com>

I have a winmodem so I use Win95 for internet programming.  Is there any
substitute modlue I can use?  I need a non-blocking alternative for
raw_input().

Dustin


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Mon Jul  2 22:43:43 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 04:43:43 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994111084.403.python-list@python.org> <9hqtkk$b5a$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <9hrbgv$e3g$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"Aahz Maruch" <aahz at panix.com> wrote in message
news:9hqtkk$b5a$1 at panix6.panix.com...
[...]
> >Of course, you idiot...
>
> Is there some reason you're calling Russ an idiot?  Let's try to keep
> comp.lang.python flamefree, please.

Seconded.

> --
>                       --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From wware at world.std.com  Wed Jul 18 16:54:00 2001
From: wware at world.std.com (Will Ware)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 20:54:00 GMT
Subject: software documentation system?
References: <mailman.995486071.13046.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GGosq0.7Fo@world.std.com>

Graham Guttocks (graham_guttocks at yahoo.co.nz) wrote:
> A Python application of mine is now large enough that I need to get
> more serious about writing a real manual for it.  I'm looking for a
> documentation system that uses a single source file to produce both
> online information and printed output. (PS, HTML, etc.)
> Any recommendations?  I work in a UNIX environment and would prefer 
> an opensource alternative.  So far I've found GNU texinfo and also
> SGMLtools which is written in Python, but am open to other
> suggestions.

It's my understanding the standard Python documents are generated from
LaTeX source. Certainly with LaTeX, you could easily generate both
printed and on-line documentation from a single source file. LaTeX comes
pre-installed on many (most?) Linux distributions. For generating on-line
stuff, look at latex2html. If you want to reproduce the look-and-feel of
the standard Python docs, you'll need customization files for latex2html
and offhand I don't know where to find them, but I'm sure somebody on
this newsgroup would know.

-- 
-----------------------------------+---------------------
 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 23:41:24 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:41:24 -0500
Subject: File processing
In-Reply-To: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <15178.31076.876098.139137@beluga.mojam.com>

    Chris> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the
    Chris> first line, and then save the file with the same name.  Can
    Chris> someone please point me in the right direction?  Thanks!

Well, you've seen several Python examples and a Matlab example.  I usually
use the shell for these sorts of quick-n-dirty file manipulations:

    i=`wc -l <somefile`
    i=`expr $i - 1`
    tail -$i somefile > somefile.short

Put that in a loop and you're all set:

    for f in `whole buncha files` ; do
        i=`wc -l <$f`
	i=`expr $i - 1`
	tail -$i $f > $f.tmp
	# cp -p $f $f.save		# if you're paranoid
	mv $f.tmp $f
    done

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From cgale1 at _remove_home.com  Wed Jul  4 14:30:38 2001
From: cgale1 at _remove_home.com (Van Gale)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 18:30:38 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <87lmm5dqjq.fsf@litterbox.meowing.net> <slrn9k5vo5.nv.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <ihJ07.84056$%a.3801959@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com>

> I think that Ada 95 is the best language to use for safety critical
systems
> such as air traffic control. That's precisely the field Ada was designed
for:
> large, safety-critical realtime software.

As much as I love Python, and dislike the Ada "world", I would have to agree
with this.  Ada has tools available that can read source code and validate
real-time requirements.  These kinds of tools were developed by the
aerospace industry for projects like the space station.  Not trivial stuff.





From nperkins7 at home.com  Sun Jul 15 04:23:59 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 08:23:59 GMT
Subject: got winioport.zip from http://www.geocities.com/dinceraydin/ now what?
References: <3B52072F.BBC97885@iinet.net.au>
Message-ID: <zqc47.479869$eK2.99569996@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

"Richard B" <boegli at iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:3B52072F.BBC97885 at iinet.net.au...
> How do I use the python scripts that come in this zip file?
>
>

Apparently, after installing the dlls, you would just import those scripts,
and have low-level access to "any sort of port I/O function one may
imagine"..
Looks interesting!

(here's a link to that page..)
http://www.geocities.com/dinceraydin/python/indexeng.html





From gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk  Wed Jul  4 07:04:08 2001
From: gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk (gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 11:04:08 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <3B420269.B3E1AB8C@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <9hut78$8l5$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>

In article <3B420269.B3E1AB8C at Lugoj.Com>, JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan) 
wrote:

> If C had been recently invented, it would deserve *some* bashing. But 
> for
> something invented 30 years ago, it deserves no bashing. It was an 
> excellent
> portable language for machines of that era. And in the hands of a 
> competent
> programmer it is still an excellent tool.
> 
> As for C++, that deserves a moderate amount of bashing.

How about a more modern language, designed from scratch, that still had 
case sensitivity, no distinction between functions and procedures, and 
needed () to call a procedure without arguments.  Would that deserve 
bashing?

(c.f. <http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/s4/>)


                 Graham


From wesc at deirdre.org  Wed Jul 11 04:50:39 2001
From: wesc at deirdre.org (Wesley Chun)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:50:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (no subject)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107110140340.5606-100000@emperor.deirdre.org>

Bill Bell wrote:

> Xia Ziao-Qin wrote:
>> Hi, everybody, is there any detailed tutor for python multi-thread
>> programming?
>
> Some places to read about Python threads:
> http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/IPC9/index.html chapter in Wesley
> Chun's "core Python" book (available via
> http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/book/) articles in the help
> file for wxPython (http://www.wxpython.org)
>
> Enjoy.


Specifically for Core Python Programming, Chapter 17 is
devoted completely to multithreaded programming in Python.

There is an introduction/motivation section first, followed
by a "process vs. threads" discussion, then talk about what
Python's thread model is, and then we go into a deep discus-
sion on how to use threads properly in Python.

Throughout the chapter, we use one simple example and expand
on it as our knowledge of Python threading grows.  The basics
are covered with the 'thread' module first, then we explain
why this isn't as useful or safe as the higher-level thread
support provided by the 'threading' module.  After showing
you the 3 basic ways to create threads using the
threading.Thread class, we conclude the chapter with a more
complex example using the 'Queue' module.

The link above just leads you to the chapter's code samples.

Hope this helps!

-wesley

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Silicon Valley-SF Bay Area Python users group:  http://baypiggies.org

"Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall PTR, December 2000
    http://starship.python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/

wesley.j.chun :: wesc at baypiggies.org
cyberweb.consulting :: silicon.valley, ca
http://www.roadkill.com/~wesc/cyberweb/




From Nigel_member at newsguy.com  Fri Jul  6 15:50:51 2001
From: Nigel_member at newsguy.com (Nigel Linnett)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 12:50:51 -0700
Subject: Compatibility between MySQLdb and Py2EXE
Message-ID: <9i54qr01hc9@drn.newsguy.com>

Hi Gang,

I have just finished writing an application for use at work, and went to compile
it to a Windows EXE using Py2EXE version 0.2.5 (I have upgraded to 0.2.6 and it
didn't help).

The application is database dependant, so I am uising the MySQLdb module, and
the whole thing works like a charm if I run it from my development directory.

When I compile the code, and go to run the resulting .exe file, this is the
output...

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 196, in ?
  File "<string>", line 193, in _force_imports
  File "imputil.pyc", line 88, in _import_hook
  File "<string>", line 43, in _import_top_module
  File "imputil.pyc", line 197, in import_top
  File "imputil.pyc", line 252, in _import_one
  File "<string>", line 118, in _process_result
  File "MySQLdb.pyc", line 19, in ?
  File "imputil.pyc", line 88, in _import_hook
  File "<string>", line 43, in _import_top_module
  File "imputil.pyc", line 197, in import_top
  File "imputil.pyc", line 248, in _import_one
  File "<string>", line 153, in get_code
ImportError: _mysql: init failed

I have added on --force-imports MySQLdb,_mysql and it didn't help at all.

During the build process, I receive the following warnings...

warning: py2exe: ***************************************************************
**********
warning: py2exe: * The following modules were not found:
warning: py2exe: *   miscc
warning: py2exe: *   windowsc
warning: py2exe: *   mxDateTime.__version__
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.Date
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.Timestamp
warning: py2exe: *   streamsc
warning: py2exe: *   gdic
warning: py2exe: *   framesc
warning: py2exe: *   sizersc
warning: py2exe: *   controls2c
warning: py2exe: *   printfwc
warning: py2exe: *   stattoolc
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.Time
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.DateTimeDeltaType
warning: py2exe: *   misc2c
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.DateTimeType
warning: py2exe: *   controlsc
warning: py2exe: *   windows2c
warning: py2exe: *   eventsc
warning: py2exe: *   windows3c
warning: py2exe: *   DateTime
warning: py2exe: *   ce
warning: py2exe: *   clip_dndc
warning: py2exe: *   mdic
warning: py2exe: *   imagec
warning: py2exe: *   mx.DateTime.tz_offset
warning: py2exe: *   cmndlgsc
warning: py2exe: *   filesysc
warning: py2exe: ***************************************************************
**********

Any ideas?

Nigel



From mday at apple.com  Mon Jul 30 14:13:58 2001
From: mday at apple.com (Mark Day)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:13:58 -0700
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996289972.15493.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <300720011113580034%mday@apple.com>

In article <mailman.996289972.15493.python-list at python.org>, Arthur
Siegel <ajs at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Would be a lot more compelling were they reports *from* rather than
> reports *about*.

Agreed.  But what struck me was that when a non-programmer came to a
Python discussion list asking whether Python was suitable for his
project, several people warning him about the pitfalls of division (and
not much else).

I don't recall whether the experienced programmers explicitly said they
had fallen into the trap.  Considering how many of them jumped right to
the subject of division, it seems plausible that they had experienced
it themselves.  And something made enough of an impression on them to
make the issue the first one they mentioned.

I suppose it could be the computer equivalent of hypochondria -- people
hear about an obscure bug and it suddenly becomes The One True Bug even
though neither they, their friends, family, etc. actually encounter the
bug.  But the comments sounded like they came more from experience than
fear.

> Are you compelled? Why?

Because it helped me understand the motivation for the PEP.  It helped
convince me that there was indeed a problem, and that it was worthy of
a fix.

My current work and leisure programming almost never uses floating
point.  I primarily use C, a statically typed language; when a routine
expects a float as input, it gets a float, or the program doesn't
compile.  And when I last did non-trivial numeric work, it was with a
version of BASIC that only supported floats; what looked like integers
were actually floats that just happened to have all zeroes after the
decimal point.  So, I've never really had a problem where integer
division happened when I was expecting float division.

The current division operator is perfectly understandable to me.  You
give it integer inputs and you get an integer output.  You feed it
float inputs and get a float output.  I know what I'm giving it, so I
know what it will produce.  It's really two different operators (float
division and int division) that happen to have the same name.  It works
the same way in C (though the compiler knows at compile time whether it
will be float or int division).  Given my background, the behavior was
what I expected, so I didn't think it was broken.

Those other threads reminded me that Python is approachable.  People
will use it to help solve a problem in their area of expertise.  Those
people may not be as aware of the distinction between ints and floats. 
And since Python is so easy to use interactively, I can see someone
typing in an integer literal and it getting to a routine that assumed a
float.  Python would behave differently than a typical pocket
calculator (where everything is a float).

If I write a routine that expects floats, and I don't have control over
what calls that routine, I'll probably check the inputs or explicitly
convert them to floats.  Would a non-programmer do that?  Maybe
(probably?) not.  They may (probably?) do less testing.  Since they
probably wouldn't get a compile or runtime error, just incorrect
results, I think it would take longer to notice the error.

-Mark


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  2 08:29:50 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 08:29:50 -0400
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994074843.3251.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bNZ%6.28425$zT1.1479154@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Carlos Ribeiro" <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote in message
news:mailman.994074843.3251.python-list at python.org...
> Let me try explain this topic a little bit better. I've highlighted more
> words this time:
>
>       1. Standard Modules MUST not rely on global variables to keep
>          state information, EXCEPT when it is ABSOLUTELY required.
>
Carlos:

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the sentiments you express. It's
simply that the word SHOULD is better (since it expresses your intended
meaning) than MUST ... EXCEPT.

MUST is usually used in standards and the like to indicate an absolute
requirement, without which an implementation would not be conformant.
Change MUST to SHOULD in the above and there would probably be no
dissenters.

Oh, sorry, this is c.l.py, there'll be some ;-)

Good effort, byt the way. I think we ("ordinary" Python users) have to put
some work in to underpin the foundations...

regards
 STeve

> Standard modules should not rely on global variables to store state. It
> makes more difficult to use the library functionality on different
> instances at the same time. It breaks the consistence rule, because you
> need to take extra care to avoid some constructs if the module uses
> globals. For instance, you can open as many files at you want at the same
> time (within the practical limits of your platform), but you aren't
> supposed to use more than one instance of the fileinput module. This
> limitation can and should be fixed - it's possible to do it using
> iterators, but I'm not still into 2.2, so I don't know for sure.
>
> However, in some particular cases, it may be impossible to remove all
> global state information from the module. Some examples may include the
use
> of specific features of the OS or the platform, that is global in its
> nature (path information is a good example). Then you have two choices:
you
> either expose the global objects as part of the module interface (as it is
> the case with sys.path), or you expose it using a singleton class. I
> believe that using singletons makes it easier to use the module
> functionality in a flexible OO way.
>
> Anyway, we can discuss why singletons are good and globals are not until
> the end of the universe. I just feel that using singletons will make
things
> much more consistent with the OO paradigm that is used on most of the
library.
>
>
> Carlos Ribeiro
>
>
>




From burt at dfki.de  Wed Jul 11 08:19:46 2001
From: burt at dfki.de (Alastair Burt)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 14:19:46 +0200
Subject: European Python Meeting report
References: <mailman.994840578.17876.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <vgd777r731.fsf@mastiff.dfki.uni-sb.de>

Marc Poinot <Marc.Poinot at onera.fr> writes:

> - We were not a lot of Python users (about 20), and it looks like we have
>   a lot of work to make it an European event.

But there are at least 100 people going to the Beehive's Zope meeting in
Berlin at the moment.  All of them enthusiastic Python fans. A yearly
European Python + Zope event would find support, I think.

> About 500 people were expected, while the actual total people
> at LSM, during all the week, has been evaluated as 400+
> As a matter of fact, we had German, Dutch, Italian, UK, Portugal...
> and French people.

And why, oh why, did they have to schedule the Libre Software Meeting at
the same time as the Linuxtag in Stuttgart, which had 15000 visitors?

--- Alastair


From new_name at mit.edu  Mon Jul 30 22:14:50 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 22:14:50 -0400
Subject: problem with re.rearch
References: <mailman.996541444.9289.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdofq126at.fsf@w20-575-86.mit.edu>

>>> import re
>>> s = 'abcd'
>>> a = re.compile(s)
>>> b = a.search('a')
>>> print b
None
>>> c = a.search('foo abcd')
>>> print c
<SRE_Match object at 0x8114a28>
>>> 

HTH
Alex.


From shuibo at email.com.cn  Sun Jul 15 09:12:23 2001
From: shuibo at email.com.cn (shuibo)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 06:12:23 -0700
Subject: How to add type "int" to string ?
Message-ID: <692684d4.0107150512.5b7d9ccd@posting.google.com>

Hello all :
in my program I want to give a char variable a Hex value , for example :
a = "Hello World"
a = a + 0x00
but it display "cannot add type int to string"
what can I do ?
thanks very very much !


From xione at bellsouth.net  Sun Jul 29 04:12:34 2001
From: xione at bellsouth.net (Jeremy Moles)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 01:12:34 -0700
Subject: Problem with timing, again:
Message-ID: <%QM87.438$k9.52157@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>

I had an earlier post about timing in a program. Well, this is what I have
so far - exactly. It works, but it won't respond, and it won't let the
button go. What am I doing wrong?

____________________________________________

from Tkinter import *

class App:

    def __init__(self, master):

        frame = Frame(master)
        frame.pack()

        self.hi_there = Button(frame, text='Upload',
command=self.dostuff).pack()

    def dostuff(self):
      import socket,ftplib,time
      x=socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())
      y=open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','w')
      y.write(x)
      y.close()
      def domorestuff():
         z=ftplib.FTP(host='ahost')
         z.login(user='asuer',passwd='apassword')
         z.cwd('public_html')
         z.storlines('STOR IP.html',open('D:\\Python\\IP.html','r'))
         z.close()
      while 1:
         domorestuff()
         time.sleep(15)

root = Tk()
root.title('IPUL')

app = App(root)

root.mainloop()

_______________________________________________

Anyways, the program works - but the gui itself freezes up - it's as if the
button is stuck. You guys were so helpful last time, any advice this time?





From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 11:38:46 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:38:46 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <6qae252b15.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <etdhewcrjzy.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l62rq.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 11:06:41 -0400, Alex <new_name at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> C = {}
>> for item in B:
>>     C[item] = 1
>> 
>> A = filter(C.get, A)
>
>I guess that'll drop some elements from A that are in B but evaluate to
>false, though.

I'm pretty sure this will work, though I've not tested. C.get(item) will
return None (thus false) if item was not in B, and 1 (thus true) if item
was in B. You should definitely give a try to this version.

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From ctavares at develop.com  Tue Jul  3 03:54:06 2001
From: ctavares at develop.com (Chris Tavares)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 07:54:06 GMT
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ySe07.262$xp1.34979@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

Perhaps I just missed it, but - in a document about "software quality", the
lack of requirements for a test suite/regression testing is somewhat
disturbing. Test suites are essential for maintaining software quality over
time.

-Chris





From joonas at olen.to  Fri Jul 13 07:37:25 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:37:25 GMT
Subject: send http request
References: <mailman.995010562.22661.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4EDE0F.2A453FB@olen.to>

raghu k rao wrote:
> 
> hi
> 
> how can i send a http request using POST method.
> Not just send request
> Like i want to login with username and passwd using the above method.
> 
> can anyone tell me a program for this

import urllib
file =
urllib.urlopen("http://spam.foo/post-form.cgi","user=spam&pass=foo").read()


From skip at pobox.com  Wed Jul 25 19:54:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:54:05 -0500
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: Static method and class method comments
In-Reply-To: <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com>
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>
        <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <15199.23581.653505.336350@beluga.mojam.com>

    Paul> Agree strongly. This will also be a problem for documentation
    Paul> generation tools, type extraction tools and class browsers. I
    Paul> believe it would be easy to add a contextual keyword

    >> class C:
    >>     def static foo(x, y):
    >>         print "classmethod", x, y

Even better yet, why not simply reuse the class keyword in this context:

    class C:
        def class foo(x, y):
            print "classmethod", x, y

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul  7 18:36:04 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 23:36:04 +0100
Subject: pySOL
References: <1sB17.88073$Rr4.57437@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <ve3fktca1ki9hlkn96ab97petuusetului@4ax.com>

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 20:27:27 +1000, "RoadRunner_au" <ToMuchSpam at ToHaveValid.com>
wrote:

>I am trying to get this game (pySOL) to run in windows 98, but as soon as the
>windows comes up with the game it crashes with the following error.
[...]
>    self.tk.call(('image', 'create', imgtype, name,) + options)
>TclError: unknown option "-dither"

I get this too. I've been totally unsuccessful in contacting the author (not
least, I suspect, because he only accepts PGP-encrypted mail, and while I careed
enough to install and use PGP for the mail, I can't be at all sure I used it
correctly :-() but I would like a solution.

It looks like the code is using an unsupported TCL option - does this imply tat
I need a later version of TCL? But I'm using the latest version (8.3.3)...

Help...
Paul.


From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 13 23:10:39 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 03:10:39 GMT
Subject: dictionary speed
References: <41899b99.0107121100.7b2c2cdc@posting.google.com> <3B4E731F.9040307@webone.com.au> <uzoa81oa7.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <PKO37.3780$p7.1036131@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:uzoa81oa7.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...
> simonb at webone.com.au writes:
> If you have a three-level nested dictionary structure that you
> reference with something like:
>
>     dictionary[key1][key2][key3]
>
> then there are three discrete lookups occuring.  Of course, if you are
> going to be using that nested dictionary a lot, you could always bind
> a name to that dictionary while you use it, e.g.:
>
>     nested = dictionary[key1][key2]
>
> and then do single level lookups:
>
>     nested[key3]

I wonder whether the questioner is aware that one can use tuples, [in this
example (key1,key2,key3)] as keys in a one-level dictionary.  The
multi-level approach is only needed if one needs the nested dictionaries
for reduced-level lookups.

Terry J. Reedy





From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 10 23:09:06 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:09:06 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <mailman.994780344.3819.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4BC352.80F0DAB6@engcorp.com>

Roman Suzi wrote:
> 
> BTW, it just occured to me that Forth system may be a language
> of choice for ATC programming.

Ouch.  I'd place my bets on the Python version of any non-trivial
application to end up more reliable/bug-free than something
written in a language as inscrutable as Forth.

(Big disclaimer: Forth is not a language in which I've ever written 
code, but I've tried reading the odd sample and Python's
readability is surely several orders of magnitude better!)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Thu Jul 26 10:25:21 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 10:25:21 -0400
Subject: perl2py - In progress! :-)
Message-ID: <oqae1rg432.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

Hi, people.

I merely want to announce that I started a Perl to Python converter,
and slowly begin to feel it _might_ end up into something usable.

I'm using the nice SPARK environment, authored by John Aycock, for analysing
Perl sources.  In fact, this `perl2py' project has, for me, the main goal
of getting more experience with SPARK.  I'm not in great need for `perl2py',
as I already rewritten "by hand" the bulk part of my own Perl code base.

The problem is a bit interesting, as many Perl syntax peculiarities, and
language concepts are, hum, unusual.  Doing the whole of Perl is serious
undertaking, I'm not sure I want to attempt this.  But if I can produce a
mix of Python and Perl which is Python oriented enough, the remaining of
the translation could be easier, maybe still tedious.  Too soon to tell...

Someone asked me, in a previous email, how I would do with Perl "eval".
In fact, this one looks easy in Python: one imports the translation module
from `perl2py', gets a Python source string out of the Perl string, and
"exec" the result.  (One problem might be that the name clash resolution
choices are not around anymore, at execution time.)

If one seeks difficulties against this project, I easily found one: I do
not have the slightest idea about how to proceed about Perl "goto"s!

Here is where that "progress" stands:

* Scanner: a good part of it is written.  Some difficult issues remain, like
  the disambiguation of '/' from patterns, and various `s' like operators.
  For sure, it will never be fully Perl compatible, yet I think we could
  get similar interpretations most of times, in practice.

* Parser: a good part of it is written, among which the complex hierarchy
  of expressions and the strange rules about commas.  A few things are
  still missing, to be added along the way.  I'm not sure how stable is the
  parser behaviour if I alter the grammar, this is part of my SPARK learning.

* Semantic: almost nothing written.  The main goals are to resolve name
  clashes for user variables, infer scalar or string context, get clues
  about variable types, and how references could be simplified (maybe).

* Translation: not much written.  In fact, the Parser does some on-the-fly
  rewriting, to fake that the original Perl source was slightly Pythonic.
  Semantic driven translation will require work.  SPARK offers me some AST
  matching, but not the AST rewriting facilities I would like; or maybe I
  did not understand this correctly yet.  I'll have to figure out something.

* Generator: the textual mechanics is written and works well, it includes a
  simple template mechanism well suited for Python, giving me macros.
  Remain to see how to equilibrate in-line expansions versus library calls,
  and how to manage temporary variables for in-line expansions, this has
  to be managed with the Translation step.

The whole thing is inter-connected enough so I could use it to develop.
It currently produces a mix of garbage and Perl fragments within Pythonic
structures, enough for me to check how well or bad Perl was analyzed.
My projection is that, once the main translation engine gets ready,
the overall translator will grow big and boring, yet this growth will
not significantly slow SPARK down.  Why big and boring?  Perl is like an
adventure game: a twisted maze of features, all alike, all different. :-)

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From barry at digicool.com  Wed Jul 18 12:14:55 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:14:55 -0400
Subject: Really Python leaks?
References: <mailman.995461170.23230.python-list@python.org>
	<3dwv56p8ot.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <15189.46591.129702.13233@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "AK" == Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> writes:

    AK> Actually that probably isn't too surprising.  Some of the C
    AK> code, particularly in module initializers, will allocate
    AK> memory for a dictionary or other structure, and then not free
    AK> it.  For earlier versions of Python, the developers had access
    AK> to a copy of Purify; I don't know if they still do.

For Py2.x, I've also used Insure++ since we now primarily develop on
Linux and Purify doesn't support Linux.  I seem to remember fixing a
bunch of leaks, e.g. in exceptions.c.  I'm waiting for the Insure++
6.0 release for Linux, which is due out RSN, so I expect to go through
the same exercise before Py2.2 final.

    AK> Fixing these leaks isn't a big priority, because usually the
    AK> interpreter will only be finalized before the program exits
    AK> anyway.  Still, if you can provide more information about
    AK> where the leaks occur, perhaps they can be fixed.

There are leaks and then there are leaks. :) I'm usually primarily
concerned with the type that are true C leaks of memory blocks, almost
always caused by missing DECREFs.  There are plenty of places where
blocks are allocated that live until the interpreter exits.  I
(usually) don't consider them leaks.  A good way to find a leak is to
create a loop test (e.g. around Py_Initialize()/Py_Finalize()) and
watch for memory growth.

-Barry



From steveha at animal.blarg.net  Thu Jul 12 18:13:51 2001
From: steveha at animal.blarg.net (Steve R. Hastings)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 15:13:51 -0700
Subject: Cross-platform GUI app -- Tkinter?
Message-ID: <3b4e211f$1@news.blarg.net>

Hello.  I am new to Python, studying books to come up to speed.

I have one question I have not really seen discussed in FAQs and such:

If I want to make a GUI application with menus and such, and I want it to
be easily portable to multiple platforms, what is the best way to do it?
At this point I suspect Tkinter is the way to go.

The reason I'm asking is that I found an expensive Tkinter book that will
be on sale for a couple more days, and if Tkinter is the way to go, I'll
buy that book now.  Normally I would keep reading up on Python until I
could answer the question myself, but I don't want to miss the sale price!

Actually, do I need the expensive book?  Is there a web site you like that
explains Tkinter well?

In a perfect world, I'd like my Python program to be compiled to Java
bytecodes and thus theoretically portable anywhere.  Does the use of
Tkinter make this impossible?  My current understanding, which could be
wrong, is that parts of Tkinter run TCL, so you would need both TCL and
Tkinter installed on a system before a Python program could use Tkinter.
I would like my program to be as self-contained as possible to make it easy
to install.

I know I could use GLADE to design my app, and it would run great in Gtk+
on Linux... if Gtk+ has been made portable to other systems (Win32, Mac)
then Gtk+ might be better for me than Tkinter.

Thanks for any advice.
--
Steve R. Hastings		"Vita est"
steve at hastings.org		http://www.blarg.net/~steveha


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Thu Jul 26 10:46:45 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:46:45 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <3b602afa.930850@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:15 +1000, "michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au>
wrote:

>> But strictly
>> speaking the Integer 2 and the Real Number 2 are different entities.
>
>So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the set
>of reals)?

Strictly speaking yes, but nobody _ever_ speaks this strictly
(except in contexts like the present).

We math guys have reduced more or less everything to sets these
days - fewer things at the bottom to keep track of. So when we
want to define a "type" with certain "properties" we figure out
how to "code" such a thing as a certain sort of set. But almost
always what set something actually is makes no difference, all
that matters is how it works.

Strictly speaking the natural number 2 is the set {{},{{}}}
(where {} denotes the empty set) and with one typical definition
the integer 2 is a certain infinite set of ordered pairs of
natural numbers {(2,0), (3,1), (4,2),...}. With some other
definition the integer 2 would be a different set. There
are several definitions of real numbers - with one
definition the real number 2 is a certain set of rationals,
with another popular definition the real number 2 is a
certain set of sequences of rationals.

But those are irrelvant implementation details - when someone
says something about the real number 2 people don't ask whether
he's talking about a Dedkind cut or an equivalence class of
Cauchy sequences, because it makes no difference; in fact
pretending it made a difference would be a bad thing. Both
definitions give reals that work the way we want reals to
work.

So yes, strictly speaking the integers are not a subset
of the reals. But nonetheless if someone asks "Are the
integers a subset of the reals?" the _right_ answer
is "yes"; the answer becomes "no" only if we're focussing
on the irrelevant aspects of things.




David C. Ullrich


From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Wed Jul 25 21:25:34 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:25:34 +1000
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <sxvgkh56ri.fsf@eurologic.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F718E.2CC48EC3@student.gu.edu.au>

Pat Knight wrote:

> As recently as yesterday it appeared Guido wasn't listening. Having seen his
> posts today on the subject of both integer division and case-sensitivity, I now
> think he was listening and *thinking*. In other words, waiting until he'd
> considered what the rioting masses were asking for before responding.
> 
> I'm much happier now with his current positions on both these issues, and feel
> that they show he has listened.
> 
> I'd also like to complement Guido on having the grace and courage to do what
> he feels right and best for the language, in the face of some uncalled for
> ad-hominem remarks. I'm particularly impressed that he's able to modify his
> position publicly in circumstances where another might have stuck to their guns
> to "save face."
> 
> Well done, Guido.

Here here. Now, I have contributed to the flames in my own small way by
asking questions and suggesting "preferred solutions" without knowing
the full details, so I'd like to apologise to Guido if I/we've made
things difficult for him recently. 

The way I see it - I've never built my own language, so I'm perhaps not
the best authority to dictate how a language should be grown - I'd be
terrified if Guido didn't have final say. I will continue to comment on
my experiences with python (Which are mainly positive.) but I fully
expect Guido and compatriots to be there to actually sift the wheat from
the chaff.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From inigoserna at terra.es  Fri Jul 20 12:43:26 2001
From: inigoserna at terra.es (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?I=F1igo?= Serna)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 18:43:26 +0200
Subject: ANN: lfm v0.4
Message-ID: <995647417.6908.1.camel@lethe.infernus.org>

Please, forgive me if you recieve this mail two times, I'm having
problems with my ISP.

I?igo

**********************************************************************

Hello everybody,

I'm very pleased to announce lfm v0.4, the first public release.

Last File Manager is a Midnight Commander clone (or Norton Commander
for the aged, or Windows Commander for the poor people who have to
run windows ;-) written entirely in Python.
It runs on any UNIX with Python 2.0 or higher with curses module
compiled in. Note that I needed to recompile python with ncurses
on Solaris because Solaris curses didn't work properly.

Get it from http://www.terra.es/personal7/inigoserna/lfm

Lfm is released under GNU License.

You can read its features in the web site or in the README file of the
package.

The program is fairly usable but it isn't finished yet, but as I'm going
to take a few days of holidays I've released it now to get comments,
suggestions, bug reports, etc.

Well, I hope you like it.
Best regards,

I?igo Serna






From flognat at flognat.myip.org  Mon Jul 30 15:54:26 2001
From: flognat at flognat.myip.org (Andrew Markebo)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 19:54:26 GMT
Subject: Debug your python code in emacs.. 
Message-ID: <m33d7eb3ah.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

How is the status on debugging python from within GNU-Emacs?? Wolfgang
Weitz created a pdb-mode for xemacs (can be found at www.python.org),
and I modified it a while ago to work with GNU-Emacs..

Am I the only one who have been missing it for GNU-Emacs?? 

Maybe something to try to squeeze into the python-mode.el??

        /Andy

p.s. you can find it at http://flognat.myip.org/hacks if you want to
        try it out.

p.s.2 Did some more digging, hey I did this 1997, old stuff.. was it
Python 1.3 then or? :-)


From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Wed Jul 25 03:21:22 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 09:21:22 +0200
Subject: exec considered harmful
References: <9jjo5b$jn3$1@giles.kryogenix.org> <_Zg77.543539$eK2.114006347@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <yv2puap4gp9.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Nick Perkins" <nperkins7 at home.com> writes:

> why exec(), when you can import?
[snip]
>   I have done a fair bit of Python, and *never* used exec() or eval() )

You missed an interesting part and useful application of script
langugages, namely the use of little languages intended for
non-programmers to do some simple tasks. The basic syntax of the
little language is python (in our case), but they are supposed only to
know about a handful of functions you prepared for them. Because you
don't want to require them to write

  import TheContrievedLittleLanguageForTheNonProgrammer

in their files, you have to exec() them within a namespace where the
handful of functions you prepared is defined.

Hmm, but maybe there is a way to do that with import?

  Harald.

-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 17:34:06 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:34:06 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <tk4plt8oq88gac99ljql2kug7kfqj1sota@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:01:56 GMT, "Tim Hochberg"
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

>It seems you would be better served proposing:
>
>def simple_func(x, y):
>   directive use_float_division
>   return y / x**2

I suggested the option to use...

def simple_func(float x, float y):
   return y / x**2

Where the types declarations are more like explicit coercions than
than types. The suggestion was that such implicit coercions should be
allowable for any identifier (attached to the indentifier, not the
value) and thus any assignment could then easily be checked.

>Maybe you already have and it was lost in the noise? However, I suspect that
>your more likely to get more mileage out of pushing for the ability to use:
>
>directive old_style_division

I suggested a direct equivalent for this, and an alternative that
simply turns on paranoid checks so that people could use a *new*
operator for the *new* functionality.



There has been a lot of noise - but there is a good reason for that
noise. It is quite clear that the pro-position is *not* an absolute
definitive fact - it is an opinion, same as the anti position and
definitely no stronger.

I'm not worried about Perl advocates laughing me, but I've been a very
vocal Python advocate at work and now it looks like a fundamental
arithmetic operator is going to change. I *AM* worried if my
professional reputation is going to be seriously damaged all because I
trusted in Python. THAT is a very serious issue that could serious
decrease the number of Python advocates. I for one am not going to
stick around if it's just to have myself made to look a complete arse.

Here's the pitch... "Hey, why not advocate Python? - professional
humiliation and career suicide can be yours today!"



From petrus at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 14:08:34 2001
From: petrus at pobox.com (Peter Dobcsanyi)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:08:34 GMT
Subject: Operator symbol for "nb_intdivide"
Message-ID: <C0Z77.8508$uM6.1020602@news1.telusplanet.net>

Dear warriors,

I have been following the intensive discussion about the proposed change
regarding PEP238. I don't claim I've read all post (only Guido and Tim
are capable to do that), but I've got the picture. Nevertheless, forgive
me if I am pummelling an old drum at the end.

Like for most of us, my first reaction was the panic: oh my god, how
much code it will break, too drastic change, too late etc. In my part,
there was some laziness involved too: damn! I have to re-learn something
and go back and fix my code, even if it is for good ... For me, the
latter part is not so bad as it looks first, since I always deployed my
code with the complete runtime environment, so I just could stick to
that.  Anyway, I was strongly in the opposition relentlessly gathering
the counter arguments.

But then, step by step, I got convinced that Guido was right and we
should bite the bullet. Why? here is an explanation (sorry Tim burning
you again):

[Tim Peters]
> I'm burned out on the repetition here.  It's not a question
> of being hard to teach.  It's largely that it's never sensible for
> 
> x = y / z                                    
> 
> buried in the middle of some routine to do truncating division if y and
> z happen to be ints but best-possible division if they happen not to be
> ints.  It's this damage to polymorphism that hurts people in real life,
> and we've had years of testimony about that on c.l.py (even in this
> incarnation of the debate, although it's hard to find unless you read
> every msg).
> 
> This isn't a question of teaching the rules, IT'S THAT THE SPECIFIC RULE
> HERE IS ESSENTIALLY BRAINDEAD IN A LANGUAGE WITHOUT STATIC TYPE
> DECLARATIONS. 
    <emphasis mine>

Turning my coat was also influenced by the fact the Guido with others
were trying very hard to accommodate the pain inflected. Finally, I
thought I could live with this gradual introduction of the beast and
Python would be better at the end, so be it. Also, I like the idea that
PEP238 opens the door to cleaning up the "numeric tower" in the future.

(Side note: Guido, I know that you must be sick of it for now, but it
might be worth to upgrade/extend PEP238.  Everything happened so
quickly, if one did not read the c.l.py for a few days and then noticing
the storm goes to see what caused it then there is a danger that you
will get the same opposition again and again just because the PEP
doesn't reflect all what we have learned during this debate.)

There is one detail I still feel uneasy about.  It is something to be
considered mainly for the time when we have finally got over the big
change and the dust settled down.  I agree that '/' should be the
operator which implements "(a/b) * b = a (more or less)".

But, I don't like the "//" operator symbol what we are supposed to use
for implementing "a // b == floor(a/b)". Here are my reasons, in not any
particular order reflecting (my subjectively assigned) importance:

    - It is ugly, two characters.

    - Some languages use it for starting comments.

    - "//" is hard to read, i.e. quickly clearly distinguish from "/"
      the other division operator.

    - When the transition period over (around 3.x or something) the
      visual and typing characteristic of "//" can be source of error.

At some stage in the future, the warnings will be turned off, everybody
knows the new rules. But typing mistakes, oversights happen, so I can
accidentally write "/" instead of "//" and vice versa:

    def foo(x,y):
	# stuff here
	...
	z = x / y
	..
	# blah blah
	..

    i_wanted_int_div_but_mistyped_then_did_not_notice_for_a_while = foo

And there is no warning any more.

I would like to suggest to use a clearly distinguishable one-character
symbol for the "nb_intdivide". PEP238 is to fix a "design fault". If we
go for it despite of all the _temporary_ pain, we should not be shy,
there is nothing wrong with doing it radically not just semantically but
also visually. One of the nice virtue of the Python language is that it
is readable, keep it this way.

"nb_intdivide" and "nb_divide" are very different let's show this
difference. Among the still free symbols ("?", "@", "$" I guess) I
would suggest to use "$" for the integer division.

Running_for_cover_ly y'rs,

    Peter


From friends at openxxx.net  Sat Jul 14 23:41:00 2001
From: friends at openxxx.net (friends at openxxx.net)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 20:41:00 -0700
Subject: Hello, your friend recommended openxxx to you
Message-ID: <EXCHANGEDI8NFr9oD6X00000d48@exchange.visageit.com>


You have been invited to check out this adult site
by one of your friends who visited us.

our URL is http://www.openxxx.net/
enjoy,
OpenXXX TEAM 2001





From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul 30 20:42:45 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:42:45 -0400
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996524757.8311.python-list@python.org> <slrn9mbo0a.vg5.wtanksle@dolphin.openprojects.net>
Message-ID: <3B65FF05.7F262FEB@engcorp.com>

William Tanksley wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:12:00 -0700, Sam Penrose wrote:
> >Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> >> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
> 
> >How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
> >terse acronym to learn)?
> 
> Yes, please.  Does anyone have any prior art on this topic?  'self' is
> nice because it was in common use before.
[...]
> OTOH, perhaps we don't want a synonym for 'class'; perhaps we just want a
> plural version of 'self'.  'selves'?  'us'?  'our'?

Without necessarily understanding the question or its implications,
reading the first posting my subconscious came up with "us", too.
On the other hand, we use "self", not "me", so it's not conceptually
consistent.

If we're talking about a group, and "selves" doesn't seem right,
maybe "borg"?  <0.98 wink>  (make that 0.99...)


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 19:13:59 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:13:59 -0700
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <eppstein-60FEF0.16135923072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <9jiak1$3s96$3 at node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>,
 missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr) wrote:

> we already have people importing things from the __future__,
> how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?

Doesn't do anything for the people who are running precompiled scripts 
acquired from somewhere else, or who have warnings redirected to where they 
won't be seen.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Mon Jul 30 10:12:30 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:12:30 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <024c01c1162f$5e7b56e0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> <mailman.996238555.25095.python-list@python.org> <3b61d4ae.580834796@wa.news.verio.net> <cpr8v2120n.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3b62c5c7.1683787@nntp.sprynet.com> <3b64b136.768362777@wa.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <3b656881.474547@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:37:44 GMT, bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
wrote:

>On Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:13:42 GMT, ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich) wrote:
>[...]
>>
>>(Hmm. Thinking about it, what seems worth it to me would
>>surely not be worth it to almost anyone else: A complex
>>should have alternate real-imag and modulus-arg representations,
>>ie representations in rectangular or polar coordinates, and
>>we should be able to say that _either_ is exact. Because the
>>calculations with "exact complexes" that interest me in
>>particular are with complexes where the polar coordinate
>>representation involves _exact_ rationals, although real
>>and imag are inexact. For example, if z is a complex with
>> |z| = 1 and arg(z) = pi/3 then z**6 should be 1, exactly.
>>If there were an exact complex like that that would be
>>convenient.
>>
>>Come to think of it, it's arg/pi that should be allowed
>>to be an exact rational for this reason, not arg.
>>
>>And no, this is _not_ an actual suggestion or a request;
>>actually doing this in a general-purpose programming
>>language seems silly. But if you decide to write several
>>thousand versions to keep everyone happy this is a feature
>>that goes in my version...)
>>
>Why don't you write a class that does what you want ;-)

Because it seems easier to wait until "they" give in and
decide to give everyone everything they want - then I
just specify what I want in my version of Python and
voila, I'm set.

>(But google first. It's amazing how 99% of everything I think of
>magically appears before I've even mentioned it on line ;-)
>
>BTW, in some systems it is convenient to represent angles as
>two's complement integers of n bits, where the least
>significan bit is worth 2pi/2^n.  It gives you a lot
>of easily and exactly representable angles, effectively
>rationals with 2^n denominator.

Well, the 'angles' you want to represent exactly in a
Fourier transform are not going to be included here,
except for 2^n data points (which is the most typical
thing for an FFT, but far from the only possibility.)

Although come to think of it that's sort of bogus since
the FT is not going to come out exact anyway. So I
guess what I really want is actual literally infinite-
precision reals. I guess I may have to wait.

(Got off on a slight tangent there. Seriously, I don't
see why complexes should be necessarily inexact, just
because I don't see why they should be required to
use floats any more than vectors or matrices should
be restricted to floating-point entries.)

David C. Ullrich


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 07:35:27 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:35:27 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
 <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996451255.5138.python-list@python.org> <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7@Lugoj.Com>
 <ZVl3CVAHMRZ7EwPR@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <9k3eb7$2a326$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <LQLjjKA$ZUZ7Ew8W@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <9k3eb7$2a326$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, Emile van Sebille
<emile at fenx.com> writes
>
>
.....
>> >I'm not sure it is going anywhere in particular. Just some people
>shootin'
>> >the breeze.
>> yes the point of discourse is to replace silence. Sometimes the silence
>> is prefereable :)
>> --
>> Robin Becker
>
>Is that like the opposite of talking is waiting to talk?
>
....
no it's anti-talking :) Whether that's also listening is another
question.
-- 
Robin Becker


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 12:22:20 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:22:20 -0400
Subject: mxDateTime install woe
Message-ID: <9t017.3557$i8.353081@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

I just installed mx.DateTime from source on Windows NT 4.0 using the MS VC++
compiler. When I try to import the package I see

>>> import mx.DateTime as dt
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "C:\Python21\mx\DateTime\__init__.py", line 12, in ?
    from mx.Misc import LazyModule
ImportError: No module named Misc
>>>

There's a Misc directory under mx in my Python install. Anyone seen this, or
know what's causing it?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/






From kseehof at neuralintegrator.com  Tue Jul 31 18:50:41 2001
From: kseehof at neuralintegrator.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:50:41 -0700
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
References: <3B66FFEC.5335E1C8@destiny.com> <3B670BB3.48D4A5A5@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <010f01c11a13$3a930920$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> Michael Chermside wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > How about this:
> > 
> > def f():
> >     for x in g():
> >         yield x * 2
> > 
> > Of course it gives a generator, not a list... but that
> > seems to be a reasonable form to represent an infinite sequence.
> 
> How about if we combine your ideas:
> 
> y = [yield x*2 for x in g()]

Geeze, that's like, way obvious.  Why didn't I say that in the first place?
Good stuff is always way obvious.  Nice one Paul :-)

What do you think Guido?  => CVS?





From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Sat Jul 28 18:43:33 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:43:33 GMT
Subject: Why this code cannot change caption of "Start" button?
References: <9jut26$7bf$1@justice.csc.cuhk.edu.hk>
Message-ID: <peH87.69282$Xr6.308129@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Steve S.L. Wong:
> I try to change the caption of Start Button of Windows
> (mine is Windows ME):

   On my OS (W2K) the start button has caption "" and is subclassed so I
would guess it is drawing itself and can't be changed.

   Neil





From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Thu Jul  5 19:28:27 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 16:28:27 -0700
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this (fwd)
References: <o8NR7kKkXM4c092yn@bellatlantic.net> <mailman.994370896.12997.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B44F81B.16BBD298@Lugoj.Com>

William Park wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 05:42:00PM -0400, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> >   def traditional(iters):
> >       for i in iters:
> >           result = ""
> >           for c in '(123)/456-7890':
> >               if c in digits:
> >                   result = result + c
> 
> Sorry to jump in the middle of thread (can't access newgroup at the
> moment).  Have you tried this one.
> 
>     def traditional(iters):
>         for i in iters:
>             result = []
>             for c in '(123)/456-7890':
>                 if c in digits:
>                     result.append(c)
>             "".join(result)

I thought of that and tried it: actually quite a bit slower!



From matthew at yak.org  Tue Jul  3 14:36:14 2001
From: matthew at yak.org (Matthew Probst)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:36:14 -0500
Subject: How do nested scopes and Stackless Python interact?
Message-ID: <e044kt4d6iemnrkb7f4aokgsiat0vhfpuk@4ax.com>

In other words, does Stackless Python already have nested scope of its
own kind, or does it already include the nested scope from Python 2.1,
or does it need to synchronize that feature, or will it never do so?

I've seen lots of mention about how people never use tail recursion
and nested scope, but I'm at least one programmer that would love to
see these in Python.  Of course that opens the proverbial can of
worms, and I didn't even expect the nested scope to show up.


From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Mon Jul 23 15:07:34 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:07:34 GMT
Subject: A lump of sugar, please?
Message-ID: <Xns90E7CC276DEAmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

While we're adding things to the language, I wonder if I could ask that

    	if expr1 then expr2 else expr3

be treated as an expression equivalent to

    	((expr1 and [expr2]) or [expr3])[0]


I haven't checked the syntax in any detail, but I think that the new 'then' 
keyword allows my if expression to be mixed safely with if statements.


From mcfletch at home.com  Wed Jul 11 02:10:00 2001
From: mcfletch at home.com (Mike C. Fletcher)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:10:00 -0400
Subject: getting argument names from a function
In-Reply-To: <9igmbt$akk$1@news.xmission.com>
Message-ID: <000f01c109d0$1e764700$a9807018@cr706570a>

In case anyone else is doing help-function kind of stuff, also note the
standard pydoc module, which provides a "help" function that extracts all
this info and formats it into text or HTML for you.  Can be used
interactively or to generate static documentation.

Enjoy,
Mike

PS: for an example of static documents:
http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net/documentation/pydoc/OpenGLContext.html

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Travis Oliphant
Sent: July 10, 2001 19:00
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: getting argument names from a function
...

In Python 2.1 the inspect module provides easy access to the introspection
facilities of Python.

>> apply(inspect.formatargspec, inspect.getargspec(aFunction))

will return

aFunction(arg1, arg2)

I just found this facility myself and am using it to add a simple help
command to SciPy (www.scipy.org)
...




From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 12 22:08:53 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:08:53 GMT
Subject: Comparison of different types does not throw exception
References: <mailman.994953783.6278.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cphewh37av.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Gordon Williams" <g_will at cyberus.ca> writes:

> I would like to know why python does not produce an exception when a
> comparison of objects of different types is made.  For example:
> 
> >>> 1 < "aaa"
> 1
> 
> I cant see why anyone would like to have comparisons of different types as
> it has no meaning.  It is a programming error and an exception should be
> produced.

You have already received several rationalizations for why this should
not be considered an error, but I want to say that this is actually
what I consider a design mistake in Python.  Long ago I thought that
it made sense to want to sort an array of heterogeneous values.  Now
I'm not so sure if that makes sense any more.

If I could change this, I would probably allow "==" and "!="
comparisons between objects of different types, but I would disallow
"<", "<=" etc. (actually, I would leave it up to the types, but most
standard types would do it this way).

But there is probably too much code that would break if we changed the
rules now.  (Although I haven't heard a peep from anyone who was
bitten by the change in 2.1 where we disallow "<" etc. for complex
numbers.  But then if we removed complex numbers, most folks wouldn't
notice anyway, and those folks who use them are wiser than trying to
compare them...)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From peter at engcorp.com  Tue Jul 17 23:24:42 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:24:42 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com>
		<mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org>
		<sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.995420071.9302.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B55017A.A90CB816@engcorp.com>

Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> [Steve Holden]
> > Suppose a Perl-to-Python conversion were possible (and I'm not suggesting
> > it isn't): would it be the kind of Python you'd want to use to teach the
> > language?
> 
> Surely not.  The idea is not to use it to teach Python, but to help quickly
> migrating already written Perl code to Python.

I imagine that the Python code produced by such a creature
would be more readable (to me!) than the original Perl code,
even if it were to produce code which was considered pretty 
hideous.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 11 11:54:11 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 08:54:11 -0700
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk> <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C76A3.A624D05F@Lugoj.Com>

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> Jeremy Henty <jeremy at chaos.org.uk> wrote:
> > Daniel Klein <danielk at aracnet.com> writes:
> >>
> >>This person says that dynamically typed languages produce bug-ridden
> >>programs
> >
> >Then this person will be distressed to learn that Java is effectively
> >dynamically typed!
> >
> >See http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/cgi-local/pragprog?JavaIsUntyped !
> 
> !!!
> 
> That is seriously interesting.

Hmmm. Any language design that aspires to allow programmers the ability to
express algorithms independent of the type of object to which it may be
applied, such as containers, must at some level provide typeless handles. In
C/C++ those handles are typically (void *). In Java they are typically
Object references. In Python they are most all variables.

The criticism of Python that would be most appropriate isn't that it is
dynamically typed, since it is too productive a concept for a modern
language not to provide, but that it is dynamically typed even when it makes
no sense to do that.

But I like Python just as it is. Excessive semicolons, curly brackets,
begin/end tokens, pre-and-postfix character appendages to variables, and
type declarations are all syntactic cruft that can seriously slow new code
development.


From soerense at verwaltung.uni-mainz.de  Mon Jul 30 09:17:03 2001
From: soerense at verwaltung.uni-mainz.de (Ruediger Soerensen)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 15:17:03 +0200
Subject: Informix IDS2000 and Zope/Python/Perl/PHP on Linux
References: <3B600F47.2F59C1FC@gdp-group.com>
Message-ID: <ytwpuaisgj4.fsf@jorge.verwaltung.uni-mainz.de>

Thomas Volkmar Worm <worm at gdp-group.com> writes:

> Hi all!
> 
> I am consindering to use Informix Dynamic Server (Informix Internet
> Foundation 2000/Linux) together with Zope and the other 3 P's.
> 
> I wonder, whether somebody has any experience with Linux and
> 
> - IDS 2000 and Perl
> or
> - IDS 2000 and PHP
> or
> -  IDS 2000 and Python
> or
> - IDS 2000 and Zope

We use Zope, Perl and Python with IDS2000 on Linux and
Solaris. Personally, I prefer Python over Perl. I use informixdb-1.3
with two or three small patches addressing some problems with stored procedures
and data manipulation statements as well as DATE problems. My Zope-Database-Adapter is also
based on informixdb-1.3.
Currently we are developing a SOAP-based client/server system with
INFORMIX as DB-backend and Windows-clients using COM for delivering
the SELECTed data into Excel. All in python, works like a charm.
I really recommend using python in database applications.
> 
> and can tell me about the experience he made with one or more of these
> combinations. I am interested to hear about
> 
> - availibility of the needed drivers
> - their (practical) compatibility to (eg. perl DBI, python DB-API 2.0,
> etc.)
> - stability
> - and what else someone has experienced
> 
> I already was an php.net, python.org, perl.org, zope.org - I guess I
> know whats available. It looks to me as if the support for IDS is not so
> strong, so I am really interested in real experience somebody had rather
> that what you can read in the READMEs. If you stopped using IDS together
> with P..., please tell me why and what db (other than mySQL, thats
> allready running here) are you using instead.
> 
> If some Informix/IBM people are around: Are there any contributions
> planned or in progress for the 3 P's by Informix/IBM? Where can I find
> online information about it?
> 

Well, this information would be welcome here, too.
-- 
R?diger S?rensen || soerense at verwaltung.uni-mainz.de


From rnd at onego.ru  Wed Jul 11 15:46:56 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:46:56 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
In-Reply-To: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107112343090.15621-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On 11 Jul 2001, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

>I'm curious about why python was designed to handle the tuple semantics
>described below the way it does.  Perhaps one of you language experts
>can 'splain it to me.

If you are using trailing comma in every non-empty tuple,
then there is no problem with consistency.

For example:

mytuples = (
  (1, 2, 3,),
  (),
  (1,),
)

Usually I use it only when tuples are open for additions.
In things like: (x, y, z) or (R, G, B) I do not expect
that 4th dimensions will appear any time soon ;-)


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Wednesday, July 11, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "186,000 miles/sec: Not just a good idea, it's the LAW." _/




From newregdom at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  4 18:23:00 2001
From: newregdom at hotmail.com (NewRegistryDomains.com)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 00:23:00 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: .BIZ .INFO domain extensions
Message-ID: <UTC200107042223.AAA18879@zeus.cwi.nl>

 
Attention:  Internet Domain Registrant

The new top level domain names with extensions .BIZ, .INFO, .PRO, 
and .NAME have just been approved by global internet authorities 
and will be released soon, but don't wait until then to register.  
These domains are available NOW for pre-registration at:
http://www.NewRegistryDomains.com on a first come, first serve 
basis.

"While .com names hold the most prestige, the next frontier is
the new suffixes -.info, .biz, and .pro -likely to become available
later this year..."
-BUSINESS WEEK MAGAZINE, April 16, 2001.

It is expected that over 3 million of these new domain names will be
registered in the first few minutes when registration officially opens
later this year. If your domain name is important to you, be prepared 
and pre-register now. Protect your domain name from cybersquatters and 
speculators. We have the premier pre-registration engine to help you 
to secure the domain you want.  Over 250,000 names have already been 
queued into our list and good names are going fast.  Do not wait until 
the last minute.  Go to http://www.NewRegistryDomains.com now to 
pre-register.

#######################################################################
This message is sent in compliance with the new email bill section 301.
Per Section  301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618 and is not intended 
for residents in the State of WA, NV, CA & VA. If you have received 
this mailing in error, or do not wish to receive any further mailings 
pertaining to this topic, simply send email to: off_list_tld at yahoo.com.
We respect all removal requests.
#######################################################################




From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 11 06:49:43 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:49:43 +0200
Subject: py2exe & Pmw
Message-ID: <9ihb0c$ivgp5$1@fu-berlin.de>

I know this has been asked before. Can't find the solution right now...
So here is the problem: using py2exe with Tkinter works fine.
But when I want to build a .exe which uses Pmw something goes wrong.
Here is the output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 21, in ?
  File "imputil.pyc", line 98, in _import_hook
  File "<string>", line 43, in _import_top_module
  File "imputil.pyc", line 207, in import_top
  File "imputil.pyc", line 262, in _import_one
  File "<string>", line 118, in _process_result
  File "Pmw\__init__.pyc", line 34, in ?
IndexError: list index out of range

I tried to include Pmw with -p "Pmw" without succes.
Any suggestions?

Thanks, Matthias




From rjh at 3-cities.com  Mon Jul  2 09:54:21 2001
From: rjh at 3-cities.com (Robert J. Harrison)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 06:54:21 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com> <cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994016102.30019.python-list at python.org>...
> ... Python guesses based on
> the types of the operands which is a poor choice in a dynamically typed
> language that otherwise treats "5.0" as a more verbose alternate syntax
> for "5"
> ...
> If Python were to always disallow integer/float coercion then users
> would learn that and life would go on. Instead, it coerces in some
> places and not others.

The current coercion rules are simple, easy to grasp, and consistent
with how most people are taught arithmetic.
The PEP proposes even simpler rules, but in the process of doing so
discards much of the ease of using integers as integers.

The problems I have with the proposal are

  1) It adds no new capability or expressivity and breaks a very 
     large amount of code.  The __future__ mechanism is no cure for this. 

  2) Integers should be treated as a distinct type from reals with
     automatic coercion only as necessary (with the current rules).
     For instance, the new proposal sensibly does not suggest that lists
     should support real indices, however simple expressions such
     as a[i/3] would have to be coded as a[int(i/3)] or a[i//3]
     in order to be sure to avoid a type error.

Robert


From cliechti at mails.ch  Sat Jul 28 10:52:55 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 16:52:55 +0200
Subject: I want to do something:
References: <jYy87.177$vM1.2880@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90ECAC6078D75cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

[posted and mailed]

"Jeremy Moles" <xione at bellsouth.net> wrote in
news:jYy87.177$vM1.2880 at e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com: 
> Basically, what this code does is get my IP address and upload it to my
> webserver - since my IP is dynamic, and I never quite know what it is
> when I leave this house.
> 
> But anyways - how can I do this - say - every minute or so? Could I:
> 
> import time
> 
> while(time.time()%60==0):
>     do_my_function()
> 
this will not do what you want.. surround the modulo expression with 
int(...) otherwise it chances are small that it will be zero (the 
probability for the milliseconds beeing exacly zero are 1/1000 and % with 
floats returns a float reminder). also this while loop would exit when it 
sould do the function call but call it in a loop when you want to wait (and 
does this with 100% CPU load)...

i would do it with sleep:
-------
import time

while 1:
    	do_my_function()     	#upload file
    	time.sleep(600)    	#wait ten minits
-------
i also think that ten minits or some hours are enough. usually the IP is 
valid for some longer time. i now get the same IP assigned (DHCP) for over 
one month and i switch off the pc every night.

chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Thu Jul 26 21:20:54 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:20:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Suggestion for impriving list comprehensions
In-Reply-To: <9jq630$2m2$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107262111230.744-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On 26 Jul 2001, Thomas Bellman wrote:

> or my personal favourite
> 
>     map(lambda x,g=fib(): g.next(), range(N))
> 

Cool. 

I see I can get the odd values from the first 10 fibonacci numbers with:

>>> def odd(x): return x % 2 
... 
>>> def even(x) : return not(odd(x))
... 
>>> filter( odd, map( lambda n,f=fib().next: f(), range(10) ))
[1, 1, 3, 5, 13, 21, 55]


But the first 10 odd fibonacci numbers doesn't work the same way. 

But Re: Guido's suggestion about an iterator algebra : 
 maybe what we need are iterator versions of map, filter, reduce, etc. 


Given:

>>> def gfilter( f, s ):
...     for x in s:
...             if f(x): yield x

Then the first 10 odd fibonacci numbers are:

>>> map( lambda n,f=gfilter( odd, fib() ).next: f(), range(10) )
[1, 1, 3, 5, 13, 21, 55, 89, 233, 377]



( I'm not completely sure that I actually *like* all the iterator 
  syntax and semantics -- the extra indirection which sometimes
  needs to be explicit  ( the "next" attribute ) but sometimes 
  gets done automagically by 'for' is something I'm not quite 
  used to yet! ) 


-- Steve Majewski





From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 10:03:14 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:03:14 GMT
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies
References: <mailman.996107626.8398.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpr8v37pph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> writes:

> kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi)	 wrote, in part:
> > I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
> > 1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
> > process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
> > program is run under Python version 2.1.
> 
> Interesting one (for me, anyways).
> 
> Please forgive my ignorance: would I be correct to surmise that 1.5 
> lacks 'threading' and locks?

The 'threading' module was introduced in Python 1.5.1.  But the
'thread' module is much older, dating back to 0.9.8 at least.  The
thread module supports locks, too.

I don't know what to do about the original caller's problem, but on
some operating systems it helps to put a time.sleep(0.001) in the main
program after forking another thread, to allow the other thread to be
scheduled.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From bokr at accessone.com  Thu Jul 26 02:32:07 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 06:32:07 GMT
Subject: Changes for easy recognition of 3.0 demos and examples
Message-ID: <3b5fb4e8.441629229@wa.news.verio.net>

Some possibilities...

1. spam should be replaced in all contexts by spom
2. it's just resting.
3. '/' should be pronounced 'over' or 'zorro'
4. '//' should be pronounced 'swish' or 'clang'
5. foo, bar, baz may be rendered oho, aha, znord
6. ...


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 13 13:56:37 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:56:37 -0500
Subject: Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <3B4F3409.5BFC8954@ActiveState.com>
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org>
        <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com>
        <3B4F3409.5BFC8954@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <15183.13909.827134.190696@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> (In a long program, how hard it is to find a bug that is simply the
    >> misspelling of a variable!)

    Paul> No, it isn't hard to find a misspelled variable in a
    Paul> program. That's what unit tests (and, ideally, code coverage
    Paul> tools) are for. If you don't have good unit tests, it is going to
    Paul> be very hard to write robust code in any language.

There's also PyChecker, and more recently, typo.py.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From thedustbustr at aol.com  Tue Jul 31 16:11:48 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 20:11:48 GMT
Subject: sockets and classes
Message-ID: <20010731161148.05170.00001954@ng-fw1.aol.com>

Having quite a bit of trouble with sockets and classes lately.  I am writing an
IRC bot, heres the trouble code:

#BEGIN CODE BLOCK
import socket, string, sys, errno, thread
HOST = 'liberty.nj.us.dal.net'
PORT = 7000
NICK='Dustin2'
REAL='Ima Bot'
QUITMSG='Bye'
IDENT='hacker'

class Irc:
    def __init__(self, host, port):
        self.host = host
        self.port = port

    def connect(self):
        print 'Connecting to %s:%s' % (self.host, self.port)
        self.sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        self.sock.connect((self.host, self.port))

    def sendcmd(self, cmd):
        self.sock.send(cmd)

irc=Irc(HOST, PORT)
irc.connect()

print "Sending USER"
irc.sendcmd('USER %s localhost localhost :%s\n' % (IDENT, REAL))
print "Sending NICK"
irc.sendcmd('NICK %s\n' % NICK)
print "Sending JOIN"
irc.sendcmd('JOIN #Dustin1')
#END CODE BLOCK

I don't get error messages while executing irc.sendcmd(), but it doesnt work. 
I should recieve a response fromt he server after sending USER and NICK, then
another response after sending JOIN.  But, I get nothing.  Whats up!?
PS:  This is my first attempt to program using classes, and perhaps I'm not
doing it right?

Thanks, Dustin


From r_olson at acusd.edu  Mon Jul  9 15:11:06 2001
From: r_olson at acusd.edu (Rick Olson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:11:06 -0700
Subject: Newbie Radiobutton question (again)
Message-ID: <32n27.12$V3.95@cronkite>

I apologise for reposting this, but I originally posted through Google and
my post never appeared through my University news server, so I'm not sure
how wide the distribution was.  I also have a little more information.

I'm trying to run the following from IDLE:
from Tkinter import *
root=Tk()
x=IntVar()
x.set(2)
Radiobutton(root, text='a',value=1,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)
Radiobutton(root, text='b',value=2,variable=x).pack(anchor=W)

With Red Hat 7.1 (Python 1.5.2, IDLE .4) it runs fine the first time.  I get
the window and the second radio button is selected.  If I close the window
and try to run it again by  immediately clicking on F5 the window and
buttons appear, but nothing is selected.  If I click on the buttons they
work properly.  Even closing the window with the program, reopening the file
and running won't cause the buttons to be selected.  I need to close IDLE,
and restart IDLE. I was able to get IDLE .6 to run and have the same
problem.

With Win2K (Python 1.6.1, IDLE .6) it runs every time.

If I add a mainloop() to the end and run it from the command line  in linux
everything is fine.

Any suggestions?  I considered upgrading the Linux Python to 2.0 or 2.1, but
that didn't seem trivial and I don't know wheter I really need to do it.  If
I really need to install Python 2.0 could someone point to a site with
*detailed* instructions.  The download page instructions '...do the usual
"gunzip; tar; configure; make" dance.' are over my head.  (I'd ask more
specific questions about how to do it if I knew more)

Thanks in advance--
Rick Olson




From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 19 01:29:14 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 05:29:14 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Keu57.2713$EP6.930927@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Donovan Hide" <donovan at sherbet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:tlavt7jeqqt7b3 at corp.supernews.co.uk...
> Wow, fascinating! The minds of two 'algorthmistas' battling the pros and
cons
> of there code and techniques. I can't tell you how interesting this is

Here is an iterative no-stack version of my recursive algorithm.  It is
based on iterative template algorithm 4.2.5 in Marvin Paul's *Algorithm
Design: A Recursion Transformation Framework*.  It simulates the k-1 nested
loops.  It is still based on the key ideas of your brute force version.

def parti(n, k):
  if not 1 <= k <= n: raise ValueError, "k must be in range [1,n]"
  if 1 == k: return [[n]]   # avoids useless calculation for k=0
  # if k==n: return [[1]*n] # test case for correctness
  #
  work = [0]*k # current partition
  minp = [0]*k # minimum for corresponding element
  n0 = n       # save for last remainder (worklist[0])
  k0 = k       # save for termination test
  p = n        # fake 'previous' part for first min()
  result = []
  #
  while 1:
    while k >= 2:
      k = k-1                # reduce now for calc & index use
      p = min(p, n-k)        # (n-(k-1)) before reduce k
      work[k] = p
      minp[k]  = (n+k)/(k+1) # (n+(k-1))/k before reduce k
      n = n - p
      #print n, k, work[k], minp[k]; raw_input('loop')
    work[0] = n
    result.append(tuple(work))
    while work[k] == minp[k]: # at min value
      n = n + work[k]
      k = k+1
      if k == k0: # we have exhausted top level
        return result
    p = work[k] = work[k] - 1
    n = n + 1
    #print n, k, work[k], minp[k]; raw_input('end')

In a few comparitive timings, this took 70-90% as long as the recursive
version.  Not much saving.  Probably harder to modify.

Terry J. Reedy





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 25 10:17:11 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 16:17:11 +0200
Subject: xml - parsing with 4Suite, how does it work?
References: <dd144f8b.0107250604.20dcca4b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <j4snflgkk8.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

teo at crepido.com (teo) writes:

> I'm looking for some documentation about howto parsing an xml-file
> into a DOM with the 4Suite-tools. Does anyone have an idea where to
> search, or how to do?

I recommend the PyXML howto:

http://py-howto.sourceforge.net/xml-howto/DOM.html

Regards,
Martin


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Fri Jul 20 17:23:54 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:23:54 GMT
Subject: Python 2.0.1 bug?
References: <20010720095330.19318.00000287@ng-fn1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E4B1153C485gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

TheDustbustr) wrote: 

[snip]

> HOST = ''     # empty string meaning localhost

It means INADDR_ANY (it's visible from outside, unlike localhost).

[snip]

> while 1:
>     conn, addr = s.accept()
>     print 'Connected by', addr
>     data = conn.recv(1024)
>     print data
>     conn.send(data)     # reference point 1
>     conn.close()

[snip]

> When you run this program then point your webbrowser to localhost:8080,
> you SHOULD see your GET / HTTP/1.1 request echoed to the screen (the
> "webpage"), as well as echoed to the console.  Well, under Python 1.5.2
> running under Linux, it does.  Running 2.0.1 under Windows 95, it
> doesn't, *nothing* is printed to the webbrowser.  

Try it with the same browser. The problem may be
that on Windows 95, your browser is doing HTTP/1.1 but
on Linux it's doing HTTP/1.0. Socket handling is different
between the two.

Or it could be that your Windows browser is waiting to see a proper
HTTP response, but your Linux browser is being "forgiving".

Browsers are notoriously difficult beasts, so I would definitely
look there first.

- Gordon


From larry at wildopensource.com  Wed Jul 18 13:00:02 2001
From: larry at wildopensource.com (Larry Smith)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:00:02 -0400
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com> <mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org> <sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <3B55C092.B281B499@wildopensource.com>

Steve Holden wrote:

> I did my share of Perl in a commercial web environment, and some of it was
> great. Far less great was the bunch of grot masquerading as CGI scripts
> produced by programmers with only six months experience whose first language
> was self-taught Perl.

***shudder***

-- 
 .-.    .-. .---. .---. .-..-. | Wild Open Source Inc.
 | |__ / | \| |-< | |-<  >  /  | "Making the bazaar just a
 `----'`-^-'`-'`-'`-'`-' `-'   |  little more commonplace."
  http://www.smith-house.org/  | Need programming? Ask me.


From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul  9 12:15:43 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 09:15:43 -0700
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II (and "teaching language")
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com>

Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote in message news:<yox66d25zkd.fsf at karhu.tp.spt.fi>...
> web2ed at yahoo.com (Edward Wilson) writes:
> 
> > I have been hoping that someone else would write Oracle, DB2, and SQL
> > Server drivers/modules for Python, so I wouldn't have to.  Mostly
> > because I haven't had time, and also because such an undertaking is
> > better suited for a group with a formal review board rather than an
> > individual code Maverick.

There are some drivers/modules which have indeed written by commercial
groups for commercial purposes: cx_oracle and DCOracle are two
examples, as far as I am aware. It's certainly unkind to bundle all
one-man efforts into the "Maverick" category, anyway, as I'm convinced
that some of these efforts do actually need to underpin "serious
business". The source code is typically available for your review, of
course. ;-)

That's not to say that one doesn't have a certain feeling of unease
when evaluating Python modules for serious database use, however. It
does seem like a reflection of the open source community at large when
there are lots of seemingly incomplete modules covering certain
narrow, fashionable areas, and few modules covering other areas.

I mean no offence to any database module author when I use the term
"incomplete"; my definition of "completeness" may differ from that of
any given developer in this case, and presumably most database authors
are satisfied with what they have written. Moreover, I wouldn't like
to make any criticism of the reliablity of any module without having
seen it first. I sometimes get concerned that serious commercial users
are likely to have views on issues of functionality and reliability
even more extreme than my own, however.

Nevertheless, I do wonder why there are shedloads of PostgreSQL
modules - is it licensing, implementation style or something else
which causes everyone to have a go?

> I have to agree with this. There should be one, obvious choice for a
> database package. This would do wonders to popularity of Python and
> would beef up all attempts to convince management (and fellow
> programmers) that Python is a superior solution. It should also be
> non-restricted open source (not GPL, not "free for non-commercial
> use").

Well, there may be one "obvious choice" to you, but I would hope that
in Edward's "real world" there would be a need to address several
choices of implementation (or rather deployment). It's bad news for a
number of developers if the Python community suddenly settles on a
JDBC- or ODBC- oriented framework around which all future effort is to
take place, when some organisations may not wish to invest in optional
or third-party connectivity layers. For some people, it's the native
libraries' interface or nothing.

However, if you are referring to a standard API for databases, then
one already exists. Unfortunately, most modules aren't compliant with
the most recent version of that API as far as I can tell.

I accept your point about licensing. Writing a database module and
licensing it under the GPL is madness. It's like applying a label to
it which reads "don't use me, write your own!"

> > I dare say, that Python would smash Java, Perl, Visual Basic, and any
> > other new age tool (C/C++ dodgers) if it only had certifiable database
> > support on par with that of JDBC.  This is not to say that JPython, or
> 
> We will see what Micro$soft's .NET will bring along as far as DB
> support goes... if it would make all languages "equal" in DB access
> (and Python gets a good .NET support), the stage is ours on the Win32
> arena :-).

I wouldn't mind seeing some more concrete freely-available
documentation for Win32 Python. Without the O'Reilly book (which I
don't have and can't justify buying) it really does seem to be
guesswork at times. Of course, some people would wonder about
concentrating solely on Win32 for serious business too.

> > I pray to the Python Gods "please bless us with a Python JDBC
> > counterpart" and all in the world will be in balance.
> 
> Amen.

If you want JDBC for Python, there's an implementation already, albeit
for Jython:

  http://www.ziclix.com/zxjdbc/

If you want people to implement yet another connectivity standard then
you'd better get talking to the database system vendors. ;-) JDBC for
CPython would be useful, though.

> BTW, another thing to do for the "image" of python - stop emphasizing
> the newbie-friendlines, it traditionally repels the more advanced
> programmers who often think there is a trade-off between that and
> power. "Teaching language" is a somewhat uninteresting concept,
> learning to program isn't hard enough to warrant having languages
> specific to that. Besides, only l4m3rs need to be taught programming
> anyway ;-).

I haven't seen any particularly notable bias towards "newbies" in this
group. Anyway, if people want to go and develop their applications
entirely in C (as seems to be fashionable in certain open source
circles), because they believe that Python isn't for real programmers
or is too slow or "wasteful", then they can feel free to do so and
waste their own time in the process.

Edward's right in one respect: stop concentrating on language issues
and start concentrating on library issues. It's shocking but
illustrative that many people claim to choose Perl for work purely on
the basis of library availability for that language.

Paul


From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 27 12:40:47 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:40:47 GMT
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9lttn5.69.grante@isis.visi.com> <ni92mt4a7e2k64b1vn6rm0jaqlkf525mjp@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <jQg87.29709$B7.4412083@ruti.visi.com>

In article <ni92mt4a7e2k64b1vn6rm0jaqlkf525mjp at 4ax.com>, Stephen Horne wrote:

>>I think that not allowing ints and floats to be mixed would
>>make it a better lanauge, but that would probably hurt even
>>more users.
>
>I'm not sure about this. It would mean replacing a lot of
>implicit casts with exceptions. Code would break for sure, but
>it would break by refusing to work at all - not by causing
>trusted apps to give bad results.

I'm sure it _would_ be a much more painful change.  That was my
point.  An argument could be made that mixing ints and floats
is A Bad Thing(tm).  But, even if we bought that argument it
would be such a disruptive change that it wouldn't be worth
implimenting.

>On the whole I don't mind implicit casts - fully strong typing
>can obscure logic too much with too many explicit casts (and as
>casts don't normally specify which type they are converting
>from, each cast weakens the supposedly strong typing anyway).

I attempt to never use implicit casting -- in C I make sure
lint complains when I do.  I'm sure I'm sloppier in Python.
[Actually, it's been a couple years since I used a float in a C
program...]

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm having
                                  at               a tax-deductible
                               visi.com            experience! I need an
                                                   energy crunch!!


From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Tue Jul  3 02:02:54 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 02:02:54 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:44:04PM -0700
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010703020254.B5005@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:44:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
> Just for the record, Mr. Park is publicly posting my private replies
> to him. I guess I should have expected something like that from him.
> I'm sure you all understand that I don't like being called an "idiot"
> for asking a general question about the suitability of Python for a
> certain type of application.
> 
> Also for the record, it is probably unlikely that Python will actually
> be used for the application I mentioned. It is not yet considered an
> "established" language by the FAA. However, I am open to new ideas and
> I am willing to advocate it if I am convinced that it is the right
> language for the job. Before doing so, however, I need to be fairly
> sure.
> 
> You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
> application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a critical
> mode for several years at least, during which time it will be
> thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm talking about more
> testing than you think. It will first be used for years as a
> non-critical back-up for (human) controllers before it is ever used as
> a primary means of assuring separation.
> 
> As for Mr. Park's childish question about "which city I work at," what
> can I say? Here in the U.S., ATC is obviously the responsibility of
> the federal government. I suggest he move to Mongolia so he can be
> safe. (That don't have access to comp.lang.python there, do they?)

On your original post, you came across as a high-schooler with homework.
Now, it's becoming clear... a propaganda by fucking trolls.  

You obviously already made up your mind, judging by the language and the
premise of your argument.  For a guy who claims to be at graduate level,
you exhibit unusual talent for deflecting questions and inability to
provide details.

So, go way.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From whisper at oz.nospamnet  Fri Jul  6 15:24:16 2001
From: whisper at oz.nospamnet (David LeBlanc)
Date: 6 Jul 2001 19:24:16 GMT
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it> <l8e6kt415rispcte0qbaj1qhq33hq270bk@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9i5390$oqv$7@216.39.170.247>

In article <l8e6kt415rispcte0qbaj1qhq33hq270bk at 4ax.com>, 
jkraska1 at san.rr.com says...
> 
> >I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
> >language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
> >toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
> >lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
> >C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?
> 
> _Python Essential Reference_ did it for me. No pedantics on "this is what
> a for loop is for." 100% meat. This is a great book if you're already a programmer
> but you "just want to learn Python, shut up about the loop introductions already." :-)
> 
> C//
> 
> 
I agree with couragous: this is _the_ book to have while stuck at 50,000 
feet on a 12 hour trans-pacific flight. Of course, if you're at work 
programming hard and don't want to flip over to the python online doc, 
it's quite invaluable in that context too.

Make sure you get the 2nd edition so you get the most complete coverage 
of python 2.x features.

Dave LeBlanc


From Peter.Biela at planet-interkom.de  Thu Jul  5 03:53:13 2001
From: Peter.Biela at planet-interkom.de (Peter Biela)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:53:13 +0200
Subject: Newbie FAQ?  How to open HTML files through Pyhton OS independend?
Message-ID: <WEV5ucSBBHA.365@fnews1.vi-internet.de>

Sorry for asking such a simple question, but how can I open a HTML
documentation file from within my program, considering that it has to run on
both Linux and Windows?

Is there an easy possiblity to show HTML files in TK? or Is it better to use
a standard browser?

Thanx for any help, or locations where to find answears!

Peter Biela




From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 15:18:06 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:18:06 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Xns90E8BFE339C47michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.9>
Message-ID: <ORj77.25440$EP6.6024450@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> > In my model there are four builtin numeric types: int, rational,
> > float, and complex. The intent is that floats approximate real
numbers.

Note: *approximate*

> Unfortunately, this isn't really all that consistent.  Consider the
> calculation
>
>     sqrt(2)**2 == 2
>
> By pretty much the same arguments as have been used elsewhere in
this
> discussion, I'm sure that you would expect this to evaluate to true.

No, approximate is not equal.  For float 'equality', one should always
test near equality.

abs(sqrt(2)**2 - 2) <= delta

and yes, choosing delta is sometimes an art.






From rnd at onego.ru  Thu Jul 12 05:48:07 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:48:07 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Bug in __imul__
In-Reply-To: <20010711170014.626C3E1E.NOFFLE@niccolo.ke4.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107121343290.31546-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Mirko Liss wrote:

>
>On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
>
>> P.S. Going to write Fython ;-)
>> (F for Forth)
>I'm looking forward to it. I guess Fython can
>be a nice intermediate language to apply
>user defined optimization strategies without
>having to take care of this or that new Python
>feature or on the other hand any platform
>specific bytecode.

Unfortunately, it's a joke. I have no time to develop Fython!

And, as you can see, I am mostly idea-generator than
idea-suppressor or idea-implementor... ;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Thursday, July 12, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses." _/




From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 00:05:47 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:05:47 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>

Moshe Zadka wrote:

> Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is *less*
> useful, and so should not be the most easily accessible. You can
> still have i//j for all your combinatorics needs.

The serious problem I see here is backward compatibility.  I shudder to
think at the volume of preexisting, long-standing code that this will
quietly break, requiring untold man-hours of debugging to find all the
cases of / which should be replaced with //.

It's one thing when an operator is added, or a new mode is added for a
preexisting operator, or modules are obsolesced and new ones introduced.
But we're talking about changing the behavior of builtin _operators_ --
that's unnerving, to say the least.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Nothing you have said / Is revelation
\__/ The Russian, _Chess_
    Product's Quake III Arena Tips / http://www.bosskey.net/
 Tips and tricks from the absolute beginner to the Arena Master.


From pulsar at qks.com  Tue Jul  3 18:56:57 2001
From: pulsar at qks.com (David Simmons)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:56:57 GMT
Subject: zope's acquisition inheritance
References: <3B41E221.CE23D83E@home.com>
Message-ID: <Z4s07.149695$%i7.100691908@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>

"Wostenberg" <pwos at home.com> wrote in message
news:3B41E221.CE23D83E at home.com...
> This Smalltalker has been studying Zope, the Opensourced python product
> for internet deployment (see http://www.zope.org), to learn.
>
> It has an unusual model of interitance called acquisition, which blends
> class heiarchy with containment. Read
> http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/WhatIsAcquisition for introduction.
> Basically "objects automatically gather. services from their
> containers.". Everything is potentially a collector-class, and if I drop
> objects into a collection, they inherit behavior from the container.
> Weird, but somehow natural in this Web environment which organises
> content around a tree-structured containment plan.
>
> Anybody heard of acquisition outside Zope, or is it a new contribution
> to OO modelling?

It looks like a special case of delegation/routing to me. The original UI
architecture of SmalltalkAgents (QKS Smalltalk) used a dynamic form of this
to manage routing of handlers and notifications. In 1994 or early 1995 I
generalized it for all objects (it is what we called SemanticMessages).

In SmallScript today this is a fundamental aspect of the property system.
The language provides formal semantics with the ability to declare event
methods, and attach handlers and notification-subscribers to an arbitrary
property type and value.

The actual processing and routing of event-messages is up to the given
receiver. By default it gets routed to its property manager. But in the case
of UI objects they typically override this behavior and route the operations
to a commander (essentially a model) which then can re-route it back as
appropriate (for the layout, script-recording, undo-redo, etc). A prime
ingredient in this is the notion of "routing" methods -- but this is a topic
that requires more time than I want to spend describing now.

Example:

Class name: Foo
{
  event [
  blah
    ...default handler...
  ].
}

eval
[
    aFoo blah.
].

At first blush, this looks like an ordinary message send. But, in fact, the
receiver is queried to handle notifications and provide a handler for the
message. The operation involves an implicit (inquiry) message send (similar
to a perform) to the receiver. The architecture of the SmallScript allows
this to be done without creating any objects during the process (unlike
classic Smalltalk DNU/DNR).

By default the inquiry message is almost a no-op and so is very low cost. If
the object in question has delegation properties then the default mechanism
checks for corresponding notifiers and handlers.

UI components typically redirect inquiry-messages to their commander with
additional annotations. The commander then routes the message (as
appropriate). Where the routing typically goes up the containment heirarchy.
If no commander is available, then the message be routed up the container
heirarchy directly -- depends on which QKS-Smalltalk version we're talking
about.

One can manually invoke the same mechanism in SmalltalkAgents using
#smPerform... or #smNotify... where the <selector> can be any object
(including the virtualized AOS Platform keyCodes). When manually invoked the
receiver does not have to provide an implementation -- which is how the
message typically gets re-routed.

There is also additional ability to provide a block (or in SmallScript an
OUT var) to record whether a message was handled. This requires using the
lower level smDispatch call which offers finer grain of control.

SemanticMessages allow for dynamic receiver, selector, and argument
disposition. Thus one have thread (execution context) specific routing as
well as receiver state based routing.

--
-- Dave S. [ http://www.smallscript.net ]

> -Alan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>




From wolfgang.grafen at marconi.com  Thu Jul 19 05:18:04 2001
From: wolfgang.grafen at marconi.com (Wolfgang Grafen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:18:04 +0200
Subject: calling a variable from a separate function
References: <7b515e0f.0107081752.5dc1680d@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B56A5CC.541F09BB@marconi.com>

eric_brake wrote:
> 
> Let's say
> 
> def function1:
>      self.variable1 = 22
> def function2:
>      print variable1
> 
> Would function2 look like "print function1.variable1" or some other
> way? By the way I already know that the "function1.variable1" format
> doesn't work. thanks for any help.
class a:
  v = 22

def b():
  print v


From simonb at webone.com.au  Fri Jul 13 00:03:43 2001
From: simonb at webone.com.au (simonb at webone.com.au)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:03:43 +1000
Subject: dictionary speed
References: <41899b99.0107121100.7b2c2cdc@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4E731F.9040307@webone.com.au>

there doesnt seem to be any answer to this question.
makes me wonder if it is a question in the first place.
Try running some tests using the structures you are interested in.
If thats too hard then post some code so we know
what you are talking about.
that said, i don't think you should worry about
nesting dictionaries. They are rather
hearty beasts and would probably warm to the task nicely.
It's only pointer traversal; ever programed in c?
ie. a dictionary access n levels deep would incur
time penalty proportional to n times the penalty
due to each dictionary look up (log n i presume).

:)
Simon


doug s. wrote:

>hi all,
>
>is there any speed differential to be aware or with nested
>dictionaries? that is, does the position of data matter. for example,
>if i need to access certain data quickly and often, is it best to
>structure things so that it is all near the top level?
>
>thanks,
>doug
>



From johnw at gnu.org  Fri Jul 20 16:24:58 2001
From: johnw at gnu.org (John Wiegley)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:24:58 -0700
Subject: Documentation on using socket.ssl
Message-ID: <m3hew7bb6t.fsf@gnu.org>

Does anyone know if documentation exists on how to use socket.ssl to
create encrypted connections with Python?  After coming the web for an
hour, the only thing I can find is the announcement that says "it
exists".

Thanks, John


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul  1 14:03:58 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 19:03:58 +0100
Subject: Pmw subclassing problem
References: <pgtrPLA+70P7EwKo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <slrn9juod6.or.matt@happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>
Message-ID: <NihCPUAOY2P7EwOl@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <slrn9juod6.or.matt at happy-hour.mondoinfo.com>, Matthew Dixon
Cowles <matt at mondoinfo.com> writes
..
...
>at am I doing wrong?
>>Am I missing some class bindins somewhere?
>
>Robin,
>I think you're missing one line of Pmw magic. This code seems to work:
>
>class RL_ScrolledText(Pmw.ScrolledText):
>  def __init__(self,*args,**kw):
>    apply(Pmw.ScrolledText.__init__,(self,)+args,kw)
>    self.initialiseoptions(RL_ScrolledText)
>
>There's more about subclassing Pmw widgets at:
>
>http://pmw.sourceforge.net/doc/howtobuild.html
>
>Regards,
>Matt
thanks, that fixes it. I missed it in the how to build document.
-- 
Robin Becker


From piers at cs.su.oz.au  Wed Jul 18 18:57:08 2001
From: piers at cs.su.oz.au (Piers Lauder)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:57:08 +1000
Subject: thread.allocate_lock
Message-ID: <995497030.436.1063157166@cs.usyd.edu.au>

I'm having problems with threading.

My program occasionally gets errors of the form:

	Unhandled exception in thread:
	Traceback (innermost last):
	  File "/var/tmp/python-root/usr/lib/python1.5/threading.py", line 392, in __bootstrap
	  File "/var/tmp/python-root/usr/lib/python1.5/threading.py", line 401, in __delete
	AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute 'acquire'


The line 401 in threading.py says:
        _active_limbo_lock.acquire()

At line 20 _active_limbo_lock is set as follows:
	_allocate_lock = thread.allocate_lock

So the only way I can see that it could become None, is if allocate_lock()
can return None.

Is this possible (without an exception perhaps) eg: when OS resources
are exhausted?

If so, line 20 needs a small change.

Anyone else seen this problem before?

PS: I've checked the 2.1 source, and it doesn't appear materially
different when handling  _active_limbo_lock.


________________________________________________________________________________
Computer Science, Sydney University, Madsen Bldg F09, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia
Phone: +61 2 9351 2824    Fax: +61 2 9351 3838     http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~piers







From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Mon Jul  9 02:17:34 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 06:17:34 GMT
Subject: Help With map() *He says while pulling his hair out*
References: <pM927.657463$166.13605776@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kiiu9.e6l.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> Ok first off I have a wee problem with one of the examples in my book it is
> as follows:
> 
> s="12.19.6.7.12"
> ls = string.split(s, '.')
> md = map(string.atoi, ls)
> 
> Ok. well the problem is basically the whole thing. I know s="12.19.6.7.12"
> is just defining the varible 's' with the numbers. But my first problem is
> after string.split in its argument I know what the S means but I dont know
> what the '.' means does that mean to remove all the periods?

It splits the string at the periods, turning "12.19.6.7.12" into
["12","19","6","7","12"]. If you give it the argument "1", it will split at
whatever places the 1s are, yielding ["","2.","9.6.7.","2"].

> The second problem is that I dont quite grasp the map() function what
> exactly does it do, In its argument it says in lamens terms "Turn the string
> ls into intergers" my problems is wasent it always intergers? I mean the
> varible ls contains ['12', '19', '6', '7', '12'] arent those intergers they
> are numbers. Any ways if you could reply answering all the questions in
> whole or maybe just a few of em' it would be great.

'12' is not a number, it's a string. It consists of two characters, '1' and
'2'. If you add it to another string, it'll just concatenate them:

>>> '12' + '19'
'1219'

12 is a number (no quotes!). string.atoi() turns '12' into 12.

The map() turns every string into a number and returns the list of results.

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From Krzysztof.Czarnowski at dgt-lab.com.pl  Wed Jul 25 12:58:20 2001
From: Krzysztof.Czarnowski at dgt-lab.com.pl (Krzysztof Czarnowski)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:58:20 +0200
Subject: Problem with getting events from a DCOM server
Message-ID: <007e01c1152b$01ea8bd0$2706a8c0@krzysiek>

My goal is to develop a simple pipeline application to integrate an older
component which exposes a DCOM interface into a newer CORBA-driven system.
Specifically, the task is to receive DCOM events and push them forward into
a COS Event Service Channel. Python seems to be an ideal tool for this task
due to its nice COM support under Windows and CORBA support (e.g.
omniORBpy). However I got stuck at the very beggining!

I looked at win32com\client\__init__.py and followed examples in __doc__'s.
My typical interactive session is attached in "interactive.txt". After that
my Python client object was connect to the actual server -- I was able to
get data and perform some actions on the remote object. But I was receiving
no events! At the same time a simple VB client (attached: "formCWAXVB.frm",
"CWAXVB.vbp") keeps receiving them continually! And the production console
too! (This proves at least that my computer is properly configured...)

My platform: NT4.0 FP6, Python 2.0, win32all (originally I think build 133,
later uninstalled and reinstalled build 135).

Further remarks:

1. I tried the example in getevents().__doc__ -- it works.

2. In makepy-generated file (attached:
"D3FD3B53-11A9-11D3-BB41-009027163F7Ex0x1x0.py") I find duplicated
definition of class _clsSterCW (lines 23 and 122). This is weird! When
stepped in the debugger I can see that it is the second definition that gets
through (naturally!). But the constructor of DispatchBaseClass seems to
execute only QueryInterface() and no FindConnectionPoint() and Advise()! The
code in the first definition of _clsSterCW (lines 26-34 and 40-45) looks
more reasonable (but of course it is never executed!). I'm confused...

3. On Mark Hammond's page (http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/) I
noticed the following remark:

"If you are frustrated with a bug in the Python COM support that prevents
some COM events from being delivered to your code, see here for an update"

I followed the link and (with some effort) figured out that upgrading to
win32all build 135 could solve my problem. It did not. Parhaps I should
upgrade to Python 2.1.1 and win32all 140? Good idea?


Any suggestions are welcome!
Krzysztof


===================================
Krzysztof Czarnowski, Dr. Ing.
DGT-LAB:
       Krzysztof.Czarnowski at dgt-lab.com.pl
       (+48) (58) 69-24-431
University of Gdansk:
       Krzysztof.Czarnowski at math.univ.gda.pl
       (+48) (58) 55-29-168
===================================

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: CWAXVB.vbp
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 702 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010725/ad445a8b/attachment.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: formCWAXVB.frm
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 1216 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010725/ad445a8b/attachment-0001.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: D3FD3B53-11A9-11D3-BB41-009027163F7Ex0x1x0.py
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010725/ad445a8b/attachment.ksh>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: interactive.txt
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010725/ad445a8b/attachment.txt>

From quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu  Tue Jul 31 20:33:51 2001
From: quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 1 Aug 2001 00:33:51 GMT
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com> <duodmt0itqq9t1kq6bs5dhpnk9io64p2sj@4ax.com> <ulml5sz7m.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <rdeemts4mrarb8b5ghqieio68n1jv32tl1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9mejje.1ud.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:25:26 +0100, Dale Strickland-Clark
<dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote:
>I guess what I had in mind was a simple but effective equivelent that I used
>to use with BCPL. A function called rdargs, which I think also became part of
>AmigaDOS
>
>I've just had a quick hunt with Google and I can't find a definition for it
>anywhere.
>
>I'll probably end up using getopt just because I don't have time to do a
>proper job right now.

Just out of curiousity, what's your idea of an ideal arg parsing function?
And if it's supposed to be "simple" why would it take so much time to do a
proper job?


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 22:30:16 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:30:16 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <d8m37.13023$B7.2577784@ruti.visi.com> <3B4E5329.1E9462FC@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksnao.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:47:21 +1200, Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>Grant Edwards wrote:
>> 
>> In article <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list at python.org>, pfenn at mmm.com wrote:
>> >
>> >Is there really much code that depends on 1/3 == 0 being true?
>> 
>> I regulary depend on integer division working the way it does.
>
>The point is whether there is any code which relies on
>polymorphically deciding between integer and float division at
>run time.

That may have been the point, but that wasn't what was asked. 

>I find it very difficult to imagine what sort of application
>would *need* that.

Not many, but since Python isn't statically typed, it's a moot
point.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  ... I think I'm
                                  at               having an overnight
                               visi.com            sensation right now!!


From joonas at olen.to  Tue Jul 17 09:20:01 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:20:01 GMT
Subject: mSQL database
References: <HdV47.12519$Xy1.2689641@afrodite.telenet-ops.be>
Message-ID: <3B543C25.29176B93@olen.to>

TimVC wrote:
> 
> Is there a module for connecting to an mSQL database (not MySQL)?

There's a link at http://www.python.org/topics/database/other-db.html
but it seems to be broken.


From gherron at islandtraining.com  Thu Jul  5 18:35:11 2001
From: gherron at islandtraining.com (Gary Herron)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:35:11 -0700
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
In-Reply-To: <87vgl72k1h.fsf@winnegan.de>
References: <01070512214400.00888@whatsup.home> <87vgl72k1h.fsf@winnegan.de>
Message-ID: <01070515351102.00888@whatsup.home>

Right on!   A search of the archive found 
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0107/msg00040.html
which explains the problem and give a solution.

Thanks.

On Thursday 05 July 2001 13:33, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
> If you're running KDE 2.1: I remember a message including
> a workaround on the debian-kde mailing list the day
> before.
>
> Gary Herron <gherron at islandtraining.com> writes:
> > I'm writing an application which needs to open a web
> > browser on any platform, so I used the webbrowser
> > module, and it fails to work on my first system test
> > because of an apparent bug in netscape.  I've not seen
> > any mention of this problem, but I'm hoping someone has
> > a workaround.
>
> Since I don't use Netscape 4.7x any more, I don't have
> the message at hand, search the archive at
>
>   http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0107/maillist.html
>
> for netscape in the subject line.
>
> Good luck
>   Siggy



From mcravitz at worldnet.att.net  Tue Jul 10 17:19:59 2001
From: mcravitz at worldnet.att.net (Mike Cravitz)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 21:19:59 GMT
Subject: Troubles With McMillan Installer
Message-ID: <3b535565.12307274@netnews.worldnet.att.net>

When trying to run the executable created by Simple.py (followed by
the install step), I get the message "ImportError: No module named
mxDateTime". The directory containing the installed software looks
like this...
 Directory of D:\temp\stuff

07/10/01  12:25p        <DIR>          .
07/10/01  12:25p        <DIR>          ..
07/10/01  12:25p                77,878 MSVCIRT.dll
07/10/01  12:25p                69,632 07/10/01  12:25p
mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p               667,729 python20.dll
07/10/01  12:25p             3,883,055 wx23_0h.dll
07/10/01  12:25p               394,577 wxptest.exe
07/10/01  12:25p                57,407 wxPython.calendarc.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p               286,779 wxPython.gridc.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p               159,804 wxPython.utilsc.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p             1,732,665 wxPython.wxc.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p                61,517 zlib.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p                32,848 _socket.pyd
07/10/01  12:25p                45,133 _sre.pyd
              14 File(s)      7,469,024 bytes
                          9,639,739,392 bytes free

So I renamed mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to simply
mxDateTime.pyd and got a traceback of "mxDateTime.Error: no current
time API set". Can anybody provide me with some assistance on this
problem. Thanks much.

Mike

Btw,  In case it would be helpful here are the two tracebacks in their
entirety...

====start of traceback BEFORE rename of
====mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to
====mxDateTime.pyd

D:\temp\stuff>wxptest
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 3, in ?
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 88, in
_import_hook
    top_module = self._import_top_module(parts[0])
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 170, in
_import_top_module
    module = item.import_top(name)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 197, in
import_top
    return self._import_one(None, name, name)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "H:\Applications\CRT\Client\crtQueryRefno.py", line 5, in ?
    from mx.DateTime import *
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 117, in
_import_hook
    return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 206, in
_finish_import
    bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 292, in
_load_tail
    m = self._import_one(m, part, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\__init__.py", line 8, in ?
    from DateTime import *
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 78, in
_import_hook
    module = parent.__importer__._do_import(parent, parts, fromlist)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 323, in
_do_import
    top_module = self._import_one(parent, top_name, top_fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\DateTime.py", line 9, in ?
    from mxDateTime import *
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 91, in
_import_hook
    raise ImportError, 'No module named ' + fqname
ImportError: No module named mxDateTime


====end of traceback BEFORE rename of
====mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to
====mxDateTime.pyd


====start of traceback AFTER rename of
====mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to
====mxDateTime.pyd

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 3, in ?
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 88, in
_import_hook
    top_module = self._import_top_module(parts[0])
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 170, in
_import_top_module
    module = item.import_top(name)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 197, in
import_top
    return self._import_one(None, name, name)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "H:\Applications\CRT\Client\crtQueryRefno.py", line 5, in ?
    from mx.DateTime import *
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 117, in
_import_hook
    return importer._finish_import(top_module, parts[1:], fromlist)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 206, in
_finish_import
    bottom = self._load_tail(top, parts)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 292, in
_load_tail
    m = self._import_one(m, part, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\__init__.py", line 8, in ?
    from DateTime import *
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 78, in
_import_hook
    module = parent.__importer__._do_import(parent, parts, fromlist)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 323, in
_do_import
    top_module = self._import_one(parent, top_name, top_fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 252, in
_import_one
    module = self._process_result(result, fqname)
  File "H:\python\installer\support\imputil.py", line 281, in
_process_result
    exec code in module.__dict__
  File "h:\python\lib\mx\DateTime\DateTime.py", line 898, in ?
    def add_century(year,
mxDateTime.Error: no current time API set


====end of traceback AFTER rename of
====mx.DateTime.mxDateTime.mxDateTime.pyd to
====mxDateTime.pyd


From piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl  Thu Jul 26 06:56:44 2001
From: piotrlg at sci.pam.szczecin.pl (Piotr Legiecki)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:56:44 +0200
Subject: Howto dynamically add object to the list
Message-ID: <3B5FF76C.20B6AD98@sci.pam.szczecin.pl>

Hi

I have such a class

class Patient:
  x=0
...

And such a code to add objects of class Patient to a growing list:

...
  while curPatient!=-1:
    pacjenci.append(Patient)
    curPatient=GetNextPatient(allPat, curPatient, pacjenci[i])
.....   

Well, it is wrong code (I add classes Patient ?! not objects of this
class). So how to add an object to the list in such a situation?

something like:
....
while curPatient!=-1:
    obj=Patient
    pacjenci.append(obj)
    curPatient=GetNextPatient(allPat, curPatient, pacjenci[i])
.....

Is it ok?

-- 
Regards
Piotr Legiecki


From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 11:38:15 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:38:15 +0200
Subject: Why database modules are incomplete
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <yox66d25zkd.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <23891c90.0107090815.3685a9@posting.google.com> <m3k81h1u3d.fsf_-_@vole.object-craft.com.au> <5174eed0.0107100719.e14dfbe@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B2167.7FBEC424@stroeder.com>

Edward Wilson wrote:
> 
> What would be constructive for Python would be for others to donaite
> ther time to testing your work

That's illusionary.

I asked for testing e.g. in web2ldap announcements so many times.
Very rare direct feedback although people seemed kind of keen on
using it. I prefer to run an on-line demo today and log exception
tracebacks to get as many test cases as possible.

Ciao, Michael.


From jblazi at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 10:41:28 2001
From: jblazi at hotmail.com (Janos Blazi)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:41:28 +0200
Subject: Opening a file with Python
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net>
Message-ID: <3b5d8947_5@news.newsgroups.com>

Thx.
Most unfortunately, this does not work. If I omit the double quotes it seems
that the file is not opened correctly (I am usinf pythonw.exe instead of
winpy.exe as i do not have the latter). If I set the double quotes, I cannot
enter my program as i get the error message 'the application you have
selected does not exist'.

Janos Blazi

"Kevin Riggle" <vj$ri^gg#guess#l55e at mt$*guess#&cn1e#t.!@n()et> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:9jhgm4$2mo$1 at mtc1.mtcnet.net...
> You have to associate the file-type with the program.
>
> Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File Types
tab,
> and click on New Type.
>
> Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on the
New
> button beneath the Actions: list box.
>
> Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
> perform action:' to
>
> "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,
>
> or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
> %1",
>
> in both examples *including* the double-quotes.
>
> (I haven't actually used Python on Windows, so if the WinPy path is a
little
> off please forgive me.)
>
> Hope this helps...  Kevin
>
>
> "Janos Blazi" <jblazi at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3b5be641_3 at news.newsgroups.com...
> > I'd like to write a Python program that starts when the user double
clicks
> > on a file name (in Win2K). I should be able to read the name of the
file.
> > What have I to do?
> > This question has probably been asked many times, sorry.
> >
> > Janos Blazi
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> > http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> > -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----
>
>




-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Sun Jul 29 16:44:37 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:44:37 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>, Paul
Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes
>Robin Becker wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>> I believe that well designed languages define their own niche.
>
>I can give you many examples of beautiful languages that fell into
>disuse. Sather, Modula-X  and Objective-C jump to mind. The eternally
>minor languages like Common Lisp, Scheme, Eiffel and Smalltalk are also
>worth consideration. 
>
>Now let's examine some of the other languages out there:
>
> * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix

what language does one use nowadays. If not C then pretty much any
scripting language can do the same things as C given that we have the
wrapping tools like swig. What's swig coded in?


>
> * C++ was promoted by Microsoft as the standard way to do GUIs on
>Windows

it still is, although it is/will now become .NET aware

>
> * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
>into "Servlets" and "EJBs"

Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.

>
> * Perl was the defacto way to do sysadmining when sed and awk ran out
>of steam

so C wasn't ever that needed?
 
>
> * Perl was also the defacto way to do CGI in the early web
>

I use sh, but who cares.


> * PHP hopped on the dynamic web content revolution after the "masses"
>decided CGI is too hard and too inefficient
>
> * Visual Basic and Tcl were the only easy way to make GUIs for their
>respective platforms for a long time

This is just nonsense. There are many ways to do CGI and even more ways
to do guis. You neglect all those other semi-proprietary languages. The
H***card one is an example. Even if you restrict Tcl to unix, Tcl is
only a scripting language. The Tk extension is what makes Tcl/Tk into a
gui platform. Visual basic is promoted by M$, Delphi is not and has as
many if not more adherents.


>
> * Ruby is the only scripting language that Japanese programmers can
>count on to have a strong Japanese community
>

The above is a list of languages; all are thriving. For some more nearly
dead languages try simula, simscript etc. What was that wonderful
rebarbative predecessor of m4 called?

You also leave out the true dinosaurs ie SQL, Cobol, Fortran, Algol and
similar. Wasn't there a wonderful language called PL/1?

There are also a whole load of special ones like troff/nroff/eqn/grap
etc etc.

All those macro languages for Word(perfect) Applix, Excel, Lotus are
also used quite a bit. Which are dead I have no idea.


>So that leaves Python ... the Zope scripting language? Not really ...
>Zope users do not dominate the Python community.



>I consider it an amazing achievement that Python is pulling itself out
>of obscurity purely on technical merit with no help from a growth
>platform like Unix or Linux or the Palm. Judging by history, that should
>be impossible. I think Python's only conceivable "niche" is
>cross-platform general-purpose rapid application development. Moore's
>law is slowly making type declarations irrelevant so there is a need for
>a language that allows coding faster than Java and yet can be used for
>the same big projects. Smalltalk has the taint of age and Ruby has the
>taint of youth.
>

I consider the above to be an assertion. I certainly don't know the true
number of regular Python users now or in the past. Perhaps we could do
some comparative newsgroup posting analysis to get some idea of who's
programming/interested in what language. But all of the little languages
would be as noise to SQL and Cobol (even if you count them as languages)
in terms of the total code volume and economic significance.

>Nevertheless, this is a somewhat precarious position to be in. Let's say
>that either of Ruby or Python were adopted as the "offical scripting
>language" for .NET or WAP or whatever the next dominant "platform" is.
>The boost given to that language might be enough to essentially wipe out
>the other one. "I have to learn language X to work with WAP anyhow. Why
>should I go to the extra effort to learn Y?" That's what happend to
>Objective-C (versus C++) and various text-hacking languages like Snobol
>versus Perl and various GUI environments versus Visual Basic etc.
>
>(note that I reject the polyanish notion that all languages can survive
>and thrive -- the closer two languages are in features, the more they
>are in competition)
>
>> ... A
>> language that constantly needs changing is clearly bad. 
>
>*All* of the scripting languages change constantly. I guess they are all
>bad.
>

in some senses yes.  A *good* programming language is one that is easily
applicable to a large set of problems. Sed is clearly not very good at
matrix algebra. Awk can't plot graphs. Sed is easily better than Python
at most simple stream substitutions. Python beats awk at list processing
etc etc etc.


>Changing syntax all of the time is a sign of youth. It is also a sign
>that the user base is small enough and friendly enough to tolerate it.
>There is a lot of crap in C and C++ that the inventors of those
>languages would like to change but it is too late now. Guido is trying
>to avoid that fate. As an aside, Perl users seem remarkably accepting of
>change considering the installed base of the language.
>

So these languages aren't mature? 

>> ... That's not to
>> say that programming languages shouldn't evolve. The Pascal family, the
>> B family each had something. Perhaps the Python family will develop,
>> perhaps not. Constant syntax change for a programming language is a sign
>> of weakness not strength.
>
>I would much rather see Python evolve than to see Python#, Jython,
>Python++ and various other variants split off while our community is
>still so small. But really, the int/int->float thing is not really a way
>of avoiding a fork. It is more a way of doing *the right thing*
>technically in the opinion of Guido and many others. The type/class
>stuff is more of a competitive advantage.

If there were a single right way there wouldn't be so much discussion.
The one true way is often wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have seen the
Architect change the '/' operator.
-- 
Robin Becker


From guido at digicool.com  Sun Jul 22 00:36:38 2001
From: guido at digicool.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 -0400
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
Message-ID: <200107220436.AAA05323@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

For those interested in the future of the division operator a la PEP
238, I've produced a reasonably complete patch (relative to the CVS
trunk, but it probably also works for the descr-branch or the 2.2a1
release).

Get it here:

  http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=443474&group_id=5470&atid=305470

It works as follows:

- unconditionally, there's a new operator // that will always do int
  division (and an in-place companion //=).

- by default, / is unchanged (and so is /=).

- after "from __future__ import division", / is changed to return a
  float result from int or long operands (and so is /=).

Read the patch description for more details; the implementation of int
and float division are semi-lame.

There's no warning yet for int division returning a truncated result;
I'm not sure if I want such a warning to be part of 2.2 (maybe if it's
off by default).

I'm cc'ing Bruce Sherwood and Davin Scherer, because they asked for
this and used a similar implementation in VPython.  When this patch
(or something not entirely unlike it) is accepted into Python 2.2,
they will no longer have to maintain their own hacked Python.  (We've
already added 10**-15 returning a float to 2.2a1, also specifically
for them; that was easier because it used to be an error, so no
backwards compatibility code or future statement is necessary there.)

I thought again about the merits of the '//' operator vs. 'div'
(either as a function or as a keyword binary operator), and figured
that '//' is the best choice: it doesn't introduce a new keyword
(which would cause more pain), and it works as an augmented assignment
(//=) as well.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 18 11:36:35 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:36:35 +0200
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Rob Andrews" <rob at jam.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3B559B30.61A90EA at jam.rr.com...
> Gilles Lenfant wrote:
> >
> > Seriously, compare 2 languages with really useful features (Genrate PDF
> > report, extract XML data...).
> > You can find useless stuffs that run much faster in Python than in Perl.
> >
>
> I'd love to see some comparisons in which people who are good at their
> respective languages are given the same task considered reasonably
> programmable in each of the given languages.

That's exactly what Prechelt did.  We need more of that.


> See which programmer gets a working *proof of concept* program actually
> working in the least development time.
>
> The we could post *Why are Perl, Java, and C all so much slower than
> Python?*

Perl and Python ruled the roost in Prechelt's tests (from the POV
of development speed), indistinguishable from each other.  C and C++
made the fastest executables on average.  Java was bad on both
scores -- very slow programs taking a long time to develop.  Other
scripting languages (Tcl, Rexx) gave intermediate development times
but extremely slow results.  Somebody else claims to have rerun the
same experiment with Common Lisp, getting runtimes competitive with
C and C++ and development speed competitive with Perl and Python.

We could definitely do with more such tests...!!!


Alex





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 05:01:53 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:01:53 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cpzo9t80l7.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:

> Such a (hypothetical!) world is just as consistent, yet it does not
> guarantee that the type of the result of an operation is the same as
> that of the operands, if by type you mean the storage type (int, long,
> float etc.).
As I said in my previous post that will make Python a different language. 
This whole discussion reminds me of those training courses where you get 
told about the different stages of introducing change: at present most of 
the Python community is showing fear and denial. Give us time and we may 
get onto grudging acceptance or even enlightenment, but we won't admit that 
yet.

The question I have to ask myself is whether, if introduced to Python for 
the first time after it has unified numbers, I would be as likely to pick 
it up and say 'this is the language I have wanted all my life', as I did 
when I was first introduced to Python a few years back.

I can see that for some purposes, such as teaching programming, a unified 
number system will be wonderful, but I have worries that the further you go 
from the underlying implementation, the bigger opportunity there is to mess 
up bigtime. On the other hand, Python already goes a LOT further from the 
underlying machine than C/C++ and that is nothing but a good thing. but 
then I am a hacker at heart.

> 
> Also look at PEP 237, which proposes to unify ints and longs.  Would
> you really prefer your "consistency" and see 1000000 * 1000000 raise
> OverflowError because the result cannot be represented as a 32-bit
> int, or would you prefer to drop the "consistency" in favor of getting
> a result at all?
I would like to reserve the right to change my mind on this answer several 
times.

I think what I would prefer would be the consistency of getting an answer, 
combined with the ability to constrain the result in cases where it is 
important. Say I am trying to interact with an existing program that reads 
32 bit integers from a file. In this situation I tend to ignore the fact 
that some Python implementations already have 64 bit integers, and leverage 
the exception handling to prevent me accidentally trying to write out too 
large a value, or getting something truncated in the file. However, if all 
I am doing is working out my bank balance (!) then naturally I want the 
correct answer even if inflation has gone through the roof.

I guess what I am saying is that unifying numbers is fine, and I have no 
gripe with a language that says that 1, 4.13, and 5+7j are all the same 
basic type, but if that is all it has then it won't always be my first 
language of choice. Add in a module or two to support explicit machine 
types so I can write: x = int32(1) or whatever and those of us who need 
overflow exceptions can always get them when we need them. Actually it now 
occurs to me that what I would probably *really* like would be a general 
constrained numeric type so I could do things like:
    	Rating = constrainedinteger(0, 100)
    	old = Rating(95)
    	new = old * 2 # Throws OverflowError
but using it sparingly and with caution.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:18:35 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:18:35 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
Message-ID: <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan) writes:

> I am a mathematician, and I do not know, or even believe,
> that "float division is nothing more than a logical extension
> of integer division" if "integer division" means what
> Python presently does.

Thanks.  I am baffled by the many claims that for mathematicians 1/2
equals zero; I've never met such a mathematicians.

> To any mathematician on the planet, 1/2 is, well, 1/2.
> A rational number quite different from 0.

Right.

> This isn't necessarily an argument for making division
> return rationals when handed integers -- well, it is, but
> it's not necessarily a very *strong* argument for that.
> (It would involve a non-trivial amount of work, the
> results would be amazingly frustrating in practice
> unless the numerator and denominator had the sematics
> of longs rather than ints, and simple programs could
> become mysteriously inefficient. Some people would find
> that worse than them just doing the wrong thing.)

Certainly any suggestion of rationals presumes the use of long ints.
The mysterious inefficiency is also my experience with ABC.

> If I were re-designing Python from scratch and didn't
> care about backwards compatibility, then I'd give it
> unified ints and longs, and rationals, and I'd make
> division of integers produce rationals. But I'm not,
> and since Guido is a better language designer than me
> it's probably just as well.

Right!  In fact, the goal of PEP 238 is to make such a redesign of
Python's numeric system possible.  This is hinted at by PEP 228
(Reworking Python's Numeric Model).  Unfortunately, the motivational
sections in both PEPs are weak -- we never expected so much
opposition.

The interesting thing is that the one thing that has to change in
order to get a unified numeric model, whether we introduce rationals
in the numeric tower or not, is integer division!  A numeric tower
with rationals could look like this:

  int < long < rational < float < complex

(Note that float stands in for real -- I should have called it that,
in the grand tradition of Algol and Pascal.  But this design bug is
not worth fixing, since it doesn't lead to programming errors.)

Without rationals, it would look like this:

  int < long < float < complex

Either is acceptable to me; both have their share of problems.  A
later transition from a numeric tower without rationals to a tower
with rationals doesn't have to create much backwards compatibility:
the mathematical value of 1/2 is the same of that as 0.5, so an
algorithm that works when 1/2 returns 0.5 will still work (and perhaps
even more accurately!) when 1/2 returns, well, the rational number
1/2.

But PEP 238 can stand on its own.  If it is rejected, PEP 228 has no
chance; but PEP 238 can be accepted and PEP 228 rejected and the world
would still be a better place.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 13 17:20:12 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:20:12 -0400
Subject: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
In-Reply-To: <3B4EE391.19995171@lemburg.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCAEEMKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[M.-A. Lemburg]
> PEP: 0263 (?)
> Title: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings
> Version: $Revision: 1.0 $
> Author: mal at lemburg.com (Marc-Andr? Lemburg)
> Status: Draft
> Type: Standards Track
> Python-Version: 2.3
> Created: 06-Jun-2001
> Post-History:

Since this depends on PEP 244, it should also have a

  Requires: 244

header line.


> ...
> ... can be set using the "directive" statement proposed in PEP 244.
>
>     The syntax for the directives is as follows:
>
>     'directive' WS+ 'unicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL
>     'directive' WS+ 'rawunicodeencoding' WS* '=' WS* PYTHONSTRINGLITERAL

PEP 244 doesn't allow these spellings:  at most one atom is allowed after
the directive name, and

    = "whatever"

isn't an atom.  Remove the '=' and PEP 244 is happy, though.  If you want to
keep the "=", PEP 244 has to change.

> ...

[Guido]
> Hm, then the directive would syntactically have to *precede* the
> docstring.  That currently doesn't work -- the docstring may only be
> preceded by blank lines and comments.  Lots of tools for processing
> docstrings already have this built into them.  Is it worth breaking
> them so that editors can remain stupid?

No.




From phil.harris at zope.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 09:13:43 2001
From: phil.harris at zope.co.uk (Phil Harris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:13:43 +0100
Subject: Win32 2.11 SSL extensions?
Message-ID: <013201c1169d$f615b9a0$5c773fc1@ml.uwcm.ac.uk>

Has anyone yet got the Win32 2.11 SSL extensions compiled?






From bokr at accessone.com  Fri Jul 27 16:03:08 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:03:08 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ud76rn4p8.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <3B5D88B1.774A4D70@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <wzhew2gm27.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl> <3B601CBE.627D3D22@Bibliothek.Uni-Augsburg.de> <9jpbi8$32v$1@samos.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <3b61c8f0.577829094@wa.news.verio.net>

On 26 Jul 2001 15:04:40 GMT, piet at cs.uu.nl wrote:
>I know some people had to use Algol 60 dialects with only a single case. We
>were fortunate enough to have real Friden Flexowriters with upper and
>lowercase. Keywords (printed in bold) where made with backspaces and
>underlines, and had the nice property that any combination of letter,
>underscore and backspace that put the underscore under the letter made that
>letter bold. The Flexowriters produced papertape, which was fed into the
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>computer.
>
You may know the significance of fgjqkw then ;-)
If not, google for it. There's a picture of a flexowriter
-- and an LGP-30!! (I programmed one of those in '59 ;-)



From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 18 01:48:58 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:48:58 GMT
Subject: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
References: <mailman.995364629.21815.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <er957.3$EP6.133@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> 3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
>    work as follows:
>
>    1. read the file
>    2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
>    3. tokenize the Unicode content
>    4. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
>       and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
>       by first reencoding the Unicode data into 8-bit string data
>       using the given file encoding
>
>    To make this backwards compatible, the implementation would have to
>    assume Latin-1 as the original file encoding if not given (otherwise,
>    binary data currently stored in 8-bit strings wouldn't make the
>    roundtrip).

If I understand this, you would translate (my) ascii code files into
Unicode, compile, and translate literal strings back to the ascii form they
started as.  Can this be done without lengthening the compile time 'too
much'.

> Issues that still need to be resolved:

> - what to do with non-literal data in the source file, e.g.
>   variable names and comments:
>
>   * reencode them just as would be done for literals
>   * only allow ASCII for certain elements like variable names
>   etc.

I strongly suspect that people who do not write any Latin alphabet language
would strongly prefer to write names and comments in their native script.
This would open Python to millions who are presently excluded.
Mixed-alphabet texts are pretty common in some non-Latin alphabet
countries.





From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 12 14:55:55 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 20:55:55 +0200
Subject: ANN: eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.2
Message-ID: <3B4DF2BB.2415FA8B@lemburg.com>

________________________________________________________________________

ANNOUNCING:

            eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package for Python
                            Version 2.0.2

      Open Source Python extensions providing important and useful
                  services for Python programmers.


________________________________________________________________________

WHAT IS IT ?:

The eGenix.com mx BASE Extensions for Python are a collection of
professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability
in many important areas such as fast text searching, date/time
processing and high speed datatypes.

Python is an open-oriented Open Source programming language which runs
on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating
ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity
and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming
platform for todays IT challenges.

The tools have a proven record of being portable across many Unix and
Windows platforms, e.g. you can write applications which use the tools
on Windows and then run them on Unix platforms without change due to
the consistent platforms independent interfaces.

All available packages have proven their stability and usefulness in
many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all
around the world.

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT'S NEW ?

The RPM packaging scheme was reworked, Cygwin support was added and a
few subpackages were updated to better support Python 2.1's new
coercion mechanism.

As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for
Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the
package on all other supported platforms.

________________________________________________________________________

EGENIX.COM MX BASE PACKAGE OVERVIEW:

mxDateTime - Generic Date/Time Types

     mxDateTime is an extension package that provides three new object
     types, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let
     you store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way
     than by using ticks (seconds since 1.1.70 0:00 UTC; the encoding
     used by the time module).

     You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and
     copy them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks
     and some other more esoteric values. In addition, there are
     several convenient constructors and formatters at hand to greatly
     simplify dealing with dates and times in real-world applications.

     In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the
     package also exports a comfortable C API interface for other
     extensions to build upon. This is especially interesting for
     database applications which often have to deal with date/time
     values (the mxODBC package is one example of an extension using
     this interface).

mxTextTools - Fast Text Processing Tools

     mxTextTools is an extension package for Python that provides
     several useful functions and types that implement
     high-performance text manipulation and searching algorithms in
     addition to a very flexible and extendable state machine, the
     Tagging Engine, that allows scanning and processing text based on
     low-level byte-code "programs" written using Python tuples. It
     gives you access to the speed of C without the need to do any
     compile and link steps every time you change the parsing
     description.

     Applications include parsing structured text, finding and
     extracting text (either exact or using translation tables) and
     recombining strings to form new text.

mxStack - Fast and Memory-Efficient Stack Type

     mxStack is an extension package that provides a new object type
     called Stack. It works much like what you would expect from such
     a type, having .push() and .pop() methods and focusses on
     obtaining maximum speed at low memory costs.

mxTools - Collection of Additional Builtins

     mxTools is an extension package that includes a collection of
     handy functions and objects giving additional functionality in
     form of new builtins to the Python programmer.

     The package auto-installs the new functions and objects as
     builtins upon first import. This means that they become
     instantely available to all other modules without any further
     action on your part. Add the line import NewBuiltins to your
     site.py script and they will be available to all users at your
     site as if they were installed in the Python interpreter itself.

mxProxy - Generic Proxy Wrapper Type

     mxProxy is an extension package that provides a new type that is
     suitable to implement Bastion like features without the need to
     use restricted execution environments.

     The type's main features are secure data encapsulation (the
     hidden objects are not accessible from Python since they are
     stored in internal C structures), customizable attribute lookup
     methods and a cleanup protocol that helps in breaking circular
     references prior to object deletion.

     The latest version adds a very interesting new feature: weak
     references which help you work with circular references in a way
     that doesn't cause memory leakage in a Python system. Note that
     even though Python 2.1 has its own weak reference implemetation,
     this package can be used to write applications which also work on
     Python 1.5.2 and 2.0.

mxBeeBase - On-disk B+Tree Based Database Kit

     mxBeeBase is a high performance construction kit for disk based
     indexed databases. It offers components which you can plug
     together to easily build your own custom mid-sized databases (the
     current size limit is <CODE>sizeof(long)</CODE> which gives you
     an address range of around 2GB on 32-bit platforms).
 
     The two basic building blocks in mxBeeBase are storage and
     index. Storage is implemented as variable record length data
     storage with integrated data protection features, automatic data
     recovery and locking for multi process access. Indexes use a high
     performance optimized B+Tree implementation built on top of
     Thomas Niemann's Cookbook B+Tree implementation
     (http://epaperpress.com/).

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET IT ?

The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can
be found at:

     http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT DOES IT COST ?

The BASE packages come with a Python 2.0 style license, which means
that you can use them in both commercial and non-commercial settings
without fee or charge. All packages come with full source code.


________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ?

Commercial quality support for these packages is available from
eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support 

for details about the eGenix support offerings.

________________________________________________________________________

REFERENCE:

<P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx BASE
Extension Package 2.0.2</A> - eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package
2.0.2 with precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux. (12-Jul-2001)

________________________________________________________________________


Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From timd at macquarie.com.au  Mon Jul 23 17:49:08 2001
From: timd at macquarie.com.au (Timothy Docker)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 07:49:08 +1000
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <m4i4rs3gvu3.fsf@macquarie.com.au>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Reiterating why the current definition of '/' is evil: int and float
> together aren't really two distinct types: they are at most a
> type-and-a-half, and the integers are embedded in the space of floats
> for most practical purposes.  Division is the one exception, and it
> hurts.  Nobody wants to write polymorphic code where '/' means
> truncated division for int arguments but fractional division for float
> arguments.  You know which kind of division you want when you write
> the code, but there's no way to spell it.

There certainly is a need to "spell" these two operations
independently.

I accept that the choice of '/' for a float result, and '//' for an
integer result may be the most logical and intuitive for newcomers
to the language. In a new language this would be the desired choice.

However, as everyone realises, this proposed approach breaks code
relying on the old spelling for integer division. Given this, I would
be in favour of the suggested reverse situation where '//' implies a
floating result. Why have there been no comments on this?

> Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
> We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
> loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
> so let's not be shy.

I haven't read every message in the threads, but no-one advocating the
change has suggested a mechanism for supporting a code base compatible
with old and new releases. In my applications I make use of several
modules which are supported across multiple releases, including
OmniORB (thanks Duncan!), and Sybase (thanks Dave!). I wouldn't want
the jobs of these developers to get any harder.

Tim




From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 19 22:51:36 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 22:51:36 -0400
Subject: [Q] File Object -- function 'read'
References: <mailman.995560073.30389.python-list@python.org> <3B579358.DCF39F49@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B579CB8.503CEA4A@engcorp.com>

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> jackyci wrote:
[snip]
> > How to solve the problem ?
> 
> (I'm surprised there's no answer yet to your question -- at least
> none visible on my system, yet.)
[snip]

Doh!  I hate some threaded newsreaders.  After all that I saw
Bjorn's response...

Mine has the advantage, however, of taking much longer to read. :-)

-Peter


From kosh at aesaeion.com  Fri Jul  6 10:55:19 2001
From: kosh at aesaeion.com (kosh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:23:19 +0028
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <mailman.994426091.20339.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9i5a8q$6k9$1@apollo.csd.net>

Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:

> Old Chinese proverb.  It is better to light one candle then to forever
> curse the darkness.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk [mailto:philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 6:21 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Is Python Dead?
> 
> 
> On 5 Jul 2001 08:11:48 -0700, Resty Cena <rcena at epcor.ca> wrote:
>>"Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com> wrote in message
>>news:<MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014 at news.pacbell.net>...
>>> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
>>> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>>> 
>>> Python still doesn't have good database support,
>>
>>I, too, have been following Python since 1996, waiting all the while
>>to make it easy for me to do database programming. What I'd call good
>>database support is where I download a file or set of files into a
>>directory under my Python directory, perhaps run an install program,
>>then start Python, import a package, issue a command to connect to
>>Oracle, and start playing around with the scott/tiger database. I
>>don't want, nor do I have the time, to compile anything, nor muck
>>around with the Windows registry, nor manually set paths -- I just
>>want to try the product, not install it for production use. Ideally,
>>I'd like the IDE to do this for me.
> 
> Then why don't you write one, instead of just complaining that
> the tools available don't work quite how you like?
> 
> 

That is one of the reasons that I use debian with apt-get. There are lots 
of python libraries, documentation etc. apt-get install python-imaging
That will install the Python Imaging Library with no nead to compile etc. 
You can then immediately use it.

I would prefer someting like the database that debian to track all these 
products were to get bigger and more advanced so it would have more 
products. This is what the LSB is trying to do now. They recommend RPM 
right now however they are working on making a new package format that 
should be better then both RPM and DEB when done. Then the whole thing can 
be tied together with a nicer database system then apt is right now.

This way each project doesn't have to create something like CPAN. That 
seems like just reinventing the wheel over and over again. This would make 
it a system wide feature and programs should then plugin to it.

Maybe if windows people were interested they could port it to windows also.


From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Fri Jul 27 16:55:49 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:55:49 -0700
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com> <ac677656.0107251340.15e848fb@posting.google.com> <pRW77.126602$EF2.17425212@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107271255.34002338@posting.google.com>

cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford) wrote in message news:<pRW77.126602$EF2.17425212 at typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>...
> * Tom Good <Tom_Good1 at excite.com> menulis:
> | 
> | #------ begin code
> | 
> | def genWhile(g, condition):
> |     """
> |     run generator g while 'condition' is true.
> |     Condition is a partial expression string such as "< 10"
> |     to be evaluated with g.next() as the left side
> |     """
> |     while 1:
> |         next = g.next()
> |         if eval("next " + condition):
> |             yield next
> |         else:
> |             raise StopIteration
> | 
> | #------ end code
> | 
> | Then you can say, for example:
> | 
> | >>> g = fib()
> | >>> [x for x in genWhile(g, "< 50")]
> | 
> | [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
> | 
> | ...to get the Fibonacci numbers that are less than 50.
> 
> This is neat, but I think passing in a function to test the condition
> would be cleaner than passing in a string.  Like this:
> 
> def genWhile(g, condition):
>     while 1:
>         next = g.next()
>         if condition(next):
>             yield next
>         else:
>             return
> 
> [x for x in genWhile(fib(), lambda f: f < 50)]

You are right, that is a good way!  I wrote the string based version,
then thought of that solution afterwards.


Tom


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 16:37:50 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 13:37:50 -0700
Subject: Flames over division vs. case-sensitivity (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lubft.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Message-ID: <9jsjeu$f3d$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9lubft.2qag.kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>,
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:29:41 GMT in <cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
>Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> spake:
>>
>> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
>> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
>
>  This baffles me; the division issue is IMO far more terrifying a
>change, while case-insensitive is a mere quirk.

There are at least a couple of reasons for this, I think.  One is that at
least in perception, the case-sensitivity issue affects many more people.
Another is that case-sensitivity is a visual issue, and one that many
people have opinions about because there are multiple clear examples of
this difference in action.  I think that only the hard-core number
crunchers get their panties in a wad over the division issue directly,
and I think a lot of people fail to see how insidious that problem could
be if not handled correctly.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Thu Jul 19 19:58:26 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 00:58:26 +0100
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <8f41cfd.0107181055.3b34851a@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9let12.2l93.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Xu, C.S. wrote:

> Just spent a little time to compare 4 stupid again algorithms
> (changed a little bit from last time) for both python and perl
> (codes attached) on two systems (SunOS and Linux):

[SNIP: tight loop of floating-point adds and multiplies]

If that's what your code spends all its time doing, then
by all means use Perl instead of Python for it. Other
microbenchmarks may show different results, however.
For instance:

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    @d = ();
    for $i (0..499999) { $d{$i} = $i; }
    print $d[499999], "\n";

takes 2.32 seconds to run on my machine, whereas

    #!/usr/local/bin/python

    d = {}
    for i in range(500000): d[i]=i
    print d[499999]

takes 1.15 seconds. Aha! "Perl 2 times slower than Python".
Using xrange instead of range improves that to 1.07 seconds.
Changing the Perl program to use a "C-style" for-loop
makes it much slower, by the way.


Or, since you're apparently interested in numerics, how
about some multiple-precision arithmetic?

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use Math::BigInt;

    $f = new Math::BigInt '1';
    for $i (1..1000) { $f=$f*$i; }
    print $f;

takes 5.2 seconds.

    #!/usr/local/bin/python

    f=1L
    for i in range(1,1001): f=f*i
    print f

takes 0.07 seconds. That's more than a factor of 7 in Python's
favour.


On the other hand, in another microbenchmark I just tried (count
the number of occurrences of every word in a file, then print
them in descending order of frequency) Perl comes out about
twice the speed of Python, and I don't see any obvious way to
improve Python's speed on this.


Does this prove that Python is faster than Perl, or that Perl
is faster than Python? Nope. It proves that benchmarks like this
don't prove anything, one way or the other.


(All timings are approximate. My machine is a 1GHz Athlon
running FreeBSD. Perl version 5.00503, Python version 2.1.)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From michael at stroeder.com  Wed Jul  4 13:35:06 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 19:35:06 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994154525.14580.python-list@python.org> <9htebs$ck2@news1.gtech.com> <mailman.994263608.9373.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4353CA.189F47C2@stroeder.com>

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> programmers can ignore error codes, and catch
> exceptions and ignore them. There isn't much a language can do about that.

Well, at least a readable language can be helpful for the code
reviews.

Ciao, Michael.


From schorsch at schorsch.com  Sat Jul  7 08:30:57 2001
From: schorsch at schorsch.com (Georg Mischler)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:30:57 +0200
Subject: Tkinter doesn't work for MFC applications with Embedded Python?
References: <48365474.0107052029.12d28427@posting.google.com> <Qoc17.4961$G_1.481779@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <9i6vc7$i11$00$1@news.t-online.com>

Chris Tavares wrote:

> "Deepak" wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I tried to go through all the related postings on the newsgroup
>> regarding this.
>> However, I haven't figured out a way to get Tkinter working in an MFC
>> application that uses embedded python interpreter... Here is the
>> simple code
> 
> [... snip ...]
> 
> Tkinter and MFC don't mix in the same process. Neither will Tkinter and
> WxWindows, or MFC and WxWindows, or Tkinter and GTK+, or any other gui
> toolkits.
> 
> The basic problem is that they all want control of the message loop - and
> the first one there gets it. This is also the reason you can't run Tkinter
> apps under PythonWin.
> 
> It may be possible to get this to work, but not without hacking on Tk's C
> source code.
 
In fact, it is quite easy to get this to work, albeit with a few
limitations. What would be harder to implement, is to allow
nonmodal interaction with both kinds of windows in parallel. 

If you just want to open a modal Tk dialog or two from an MFC app,
and continue with the rest of the program after that dialog is
closed, then there should be no problem at all. One example that
easily allows this is my Pyacad:
  <http://starship.python.net/crew/schorsch/py_acad/>

Based on Pyacad, I develop and sell Rayfront:
  <http://www.schorsch.com/rayfront/>

Rayfront is a standalone Tkinter application in itself, but
can be run within Autocad/Intellicad as an extension to those.

If you want to open nonmodal Tk windows within a MFC app, then
a little more work will be required. You could create a method
for your MFC application object that simulates the work of the
Tkinter event loop, and hook this up to the OnIdle MFC event (or
something to that effect). It may be tricky to get that right,
but I'm pretty sure it can be done without any advanced magic,
especially you're more familiar with MFC than I am. In the worst
case, you'd have to rewrite and/or extend the MFC event loop.

I don't expect that any Tk source hacking would be required, as
the Tkinter event loop is implemented in plain Python. The other
question is of course, why you would want to use MFC at all, once
you have Tk/Tkinter at your disposal... ;)

>> try:
>>    import Tkinter
>>    print 'Tkinter successfully imported'
>>    try:
>>       root = Tkinter.Tk ()
>>       print 'Successful'
>>    except:
>>       print 'failed'
>> except:
>>    print 'Could not import Tkinter'

Your catch-all "except:" clauses are not very helpful.
If you have no idea about what types of exceptions to expect,
then you should have a look at the traceback module, and replace
your simple error messages with something like this:

  import traceback
  tb_strs = traceback.format_exception(
        sys.exc_type,
        sys.exc_value,
        sys.exc_traceback)
  print 'failed to create root window: %s' % string.join(tb_strs))

This will then tell you *why* the Tkinter.Tk() call didn't succeed,
which may be anything from a missing DLL to missing %TK_LIBRARY%
and %TCL_LIBRARY% environment variables.
Whatever the reason, it will have nothing (directly) to do with MFC.


Have fun!

-schorsch

-- 
Georg Mischler  --  simulations developer  --  schorsch at schorsch.com
+schorsch.com+  --  Lighting Design Tools  --  http://www.schorsch.com/


From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Wed Jul 18 10:00:45 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 18 Jul 2001 10:00:45 -0400
Subject: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181033310.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107181033310.704-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <oq4rsabalu.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Roman Suzi]

> As I was said in c.l.p earlier, this is very bad idea and Python Style
> Guide says that if you expect to other people from other countries read
> your code, write your comments in English.

In many, really many cases, people never expected other people from other
countries to read their code.  It is only a small fraction of people who
write for the whole planet, you know.  There are a lot of closed shops
on this planet, either by lack of interest, either because of industrial
secrets.  And you will agree that many people merely write for themselves.

In schools environments, it is unrealistic to ask young students to document
in English, or even, to use English identifiers -- they will only get to hate
the language if they cannot express themselves easily in it.  And teachers
of non-computer disciplines will only learn to hate computers if these do not
help students to master how to correctly write and spell their own language.

> Exchange of programs will be nearly impossible if variable names will
> be in native tongues!

I know when to write English code, and I know when it would be fully proper
to use French identifiers.  Be sure I would often use them.  So please,
let it me my own choice!  I think I did my good share at contributing code,
yet I starve being able to write in my own language when it makes sense
for me to do so.  And it often makes sense, as I do not share everything.

> I, for example, can navigate faster in English versions of software,
> because translations differ.  And even simple "Edit" has several variants.
> So, this "interoperability" will actually make interoperability harder,
> at least for Open Source.  For anything else I do not care.

It is a current state of affairs that understanding English and programming
are likely coincident, nowadays.  But it goes both ways.  I know people who
hardly program _because_ English is difficult for them.  The programmer in
the office next to mine is reluctant to Python (and any other programming
language) because French support is lacking, especially for documentation.

There is a need for people working with computers in their own language,
and who do not aim world inter-operability.  If Python is a CP4E solution,
it has to go towards people, instead of pulling everybody towards English.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul 16 13:14:31 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:14:31 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l5urp.nto.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <etdn164rk7f.fsf@quiche-lorraine.mit.edu> <slrn9l62om.o1k.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <9iv450$240$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l68fa.o6r.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On 16 Jul 2001 09:18:40 -0700, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>Alexandre Fayolle <alexandre.fayolle at logilab.fr> wrote:
>>
>>I was referring to the inner loop. n is the number of elements in B 
>>(or of keys in C). 'item in B' is O(n), and 'C.has_key(item)' is O(log(n)). 
>>You still have to multiply by len(A) for the whole program. 
>
>That's functionally incorrect.  Except under severely degraded
>conditions, C.has_key(item) is O(n).

I'm pretty sure I was wrong, but are you sure you are not too? ;o)
Should it not read: 'C.has_key(item) is constant'? 

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 11 10:40:03 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:40:03 +0200
Subject: MySQL-python-0.9.0 setup problems under windows98
References: <hniokt4u4365lf475ci469lbidsnhl0gfa@4ax.com> <3B4C5A47.50D8E366@nokia.com> <42noktok3h9cbo3757kg8hoavhnjjsc478@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9ihog4$itjqb$1@fu-berlin.de>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I must be very dense. I downloaded "MySQL-python-0.9.0-win32-2.zip (this
archive is
> for Python 1.5.2/2.0/2.1)" from that very url.
>
> Now what?
>

Just extract the files to an empty directory.
Open a DOS-box, go to that directory and run:
python setup.py install

That's all.
After that you should be able to "import MySQLdb"

Matthias




From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul 23 19:18:10 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:18:10 -0500
Subject: Alternate numeric proposal, Take 2
References: <011901c11335$1a8c95e0$0101010a@local> <15196.29074.910090.697520@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <00c201c113cd$c3948b00$0101010a@local>

After thinking this over all day, I have come up with a
(hopefully) better proposal.

A module (only) might be allowed to declare it's preferences
like so:

    from __numerics__ import original

which would yield the semantics that Guido plans for 2.2, or

    from __numerics__ import standard

to get the 2.4+ semantics.  The __numerics__ package is magic
much as the __future__ module is, but it maps to a "real"
package, called simply numerics (without the __ leader/trailer).

The original module would be quite simple:

    # original numerics module

    from __numerics__ import standard
    
    def div(a, b):
        return a // b

standard *is* magic, implemented in the interpreter core (as
math is normally done now) and would be required here to prevent 
calling into another module recursively.

In the standard Python distribution, this would be the only 
module in the numerics package; but additional numeric formats
could be implemented to satisfy those with special needs:

    from __numerics__ import rational
    from __numerics__ import decimal
    from __numerics__ import fixedpoint

The fixedpoint module would probably define a member function
.defaultprecision() to set the default precision of numbers.

NOTE ESPECIALLY that this change would only affect mathematics
involving standard types (int, float, long) plus the *specific*
types added for the special extension modules shown above.  Doing
this:

    from __numerics__ import original

    class MyNumericType:
        ... code here implementing some kind of number ...

    a = 1
    b = MyNumericType(2)

    print a + b

will use the normal object-oriented coercion rules, just as it does
now.

The only headache I see is that mixing types (fixedpoint and rational
for instance) in a single module is not covered... but I can't for
the life of me think how you might want to anyway.







From gherron at islandtraining.com  Thu Jul  5 15:21:44 2001
From: gherron at islandtraining.com (Gary Herron)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:21:44 -0700
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
Message-ID: <01070512214400.00888@whatsup.home>

I'm writing an application which needs to open a web browser on any
platform, so I used the webbrowser module, and it fails to work on my
first system test because of an apparent bug in netscape.  I've not
seen any mention of this problem, but I'm hoping someone has a
workaround.

Here's the details:

Python 2.1
Netscape Communicator 4.75
Linux (Red Hat 7.0)

The webbrowser module ultimately calls the binary
  /usr/lib/netscape/netscape-communicator
with a command line similar to:
  /usr/lib/netscape/netscape-communicator -raise -remote "openURL(...)"

This command or any other with the -remote flag results in the error:

 netscape-communicator: root window has no children on display :0.0 

even though the binary claims (via netscape-communicator -help) that
this is the proper use of the -remote flag.

Has anyone seen this before?  More importantly, does anyone know of a
workaround?


Dr. Gary Herron
gherron at islandtraining.com

Island Training Solutions, Inc.
http://www.islandtraining.com



From pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi  Tue Jul 10 17:40:55 2001
From: pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi (Panu A Kalliokoski)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 21:40:55 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <mailman.994666709.12545.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ifsp7$k1a$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>

Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.fep.ru> wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Erik Max Francis wrote:
>> Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
>> classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
>> process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
>> delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?

>    http://sourceforge.net/projects/asynchttp/

If you have neatly separated protocol and socket handlers, I'd be 
interested in trying that on my (IMO much evolved) replacement for 
asynchat, namely Selecting+TCPServer 
(http://sange.fi/~atehwa-u/selecting/)

Panu



From giles at spacepigs.com  Tue Jul 24 10:00:19 2001
From: giles at spacepigs.com (Giles Constant)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:00:19 +0100
Subject: function while true - list function?
Message-ID: <88f77.300$e%3.6743@news.lhr.globix.net>

Hi there,

is there a function in python which will populate a list with the results 
of a function while the function returns something other than 'None'?  I've 
looked for something but can't find much, but it's something I'm doing so 
often (especially while processing SQL databases) that I'm wondering if, if 
it doesn't already exist, it could be a good idea for future versions.

eg:

def GrabSomeData:
        somecursor.execute("SELECT x,y FROM z")
        return unroll(somecursor.fetchone)   *

* I figured "unroll" would be a good name for it :-)



From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Mon Jul 30 05:44:15 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 09:44:15 GMT
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com> <97ae44ee.0107262210.795d3e0e@posting.google.com> <9jrfva$dhj$1@pea.uk.research.att.com> <97ae44ee.0107291826.427a8b3c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9k3a9f$dts$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <97ae44ee.0107291826.427a8b3c at posting.google.com>,
 Stephen <shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote:

>Now, in order to test your example, I've downloaded OmniOrbpy and am 
>about to install OmniOrb 3.x, as described at 
>http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB_3/README_win32.html
>It specifies that the pre-built binaries work for winNT/98 and uses 
>Python 1.52. Will try with win2000 and Python 2.1 but was wondering
>if you know of any changes/differences ? 

That page is talking about the Python requirements for the C++ version
of omniORB. If you only want to use Python, you don't need to install
the full version of omniORB 3. The omniORBpy binaries contain
everything you need.

There are pre-built binaries of omniORBpy for Python 2.1 on Windows.
If you use the Python 1.5.2 version of the binaries with Python 2.1,
Python will crash horribly.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From bkelley at wi.mit.edu  Thu Jul 19 10:00:13 2001
From: bkelley at wi.mit.edu (Brian Kelley)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:00:13 -0500
Subject: Python Server Pages
Message-ID: <3B56E7ED.E4506CBD@wi.mit.edu>

Does anyone know the current state of python server pages?  The last
entry on their web site is June 1999.  I remember reading a Dr. Dobb's
Journal article at roughly the same time.  So PSP appears to be
incredibly stable or abandoned :)

Brian Kelley
Whitehead Institute



From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 12:31:04 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 09:31:04 -0700
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
References: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <9ips48$j41$1@panix2.panix.com>

[cc'd to python-docs]

In article <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf at karhu.tp.spt.fi>,
Ville Vainio  <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:
>
>I'm using a Threading.Event object. When I specify a timeout for
>wait(), it takes almost 1 second for the thread that is wait()'ing to
>wake up when I kick the Event obj with a set(). I know I could get
>around this by creating a thread to perform set()'s periodically, but
>since this slowness is not mentioned in the documentation I was
>wondering whether I have misunderstood something.

If you look at Condition() in threading.py, you'll see that the timeout
increases to one second over time.  Note carefully that this has nothing
to do with Windows.  I generally recommend that people code in a way to
avoid using timeouts.  Use Queue.Queue instead.

Perhaps this should be more clearly documented.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"How come we choose from just two people for President but more than 50
for Miss America?"  --AEN


From fleet at teachout.org  Thu Jul 19 09:25:41 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:25:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107190925000.24793-100000@fleet1>

I think I may have gotten myself into a box.

I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:

smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}

Parsing the csv output of a spreadsheet allows me to assign "smith" to a
variable - CurCust.

Now I want to do something like:

from cust import CurCust

print cust.CurCust["street"]

Spent the evening trying to solve this (Learning Python, and Sam's Teach
Yourself Python) then tried the archives.  The little I found on "variable
substitution" almost seems to say "no way!" ???

(I know someone is going to suggest a database.  That's a little further
up the learning curve.  I can see it from here; but I'm not there yet.)

Thanks for any assistance,
					- fleet -





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 05:20:27 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:20:27 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Python 2.2 dictionary question.
Message-ID: <Xns90E76819BC1F6duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

In Python 2.2a1 the dictionary type object 'dictionary' in builtins doesn't 
currently check its arguments at all, so I can call dictionary(1, [66], 
foo=99) if I really want. I guess that this simply means that the 
implementation isn't complete, but I wondered what the intention was that 
dictionary should return. Something like this perhaps?

   dictionary() -> {}
   dictionary({'a': 1, 'b': 2}) -> {'a':1, 'b': 2}
   dictionary(a=1, b=2) -> {'a': 1, 'b': 2}

The last two at present just return an empty dictionary.

The other construction that might be useful would be to build a list of 
(key, value) pairs into a dictionary, reversing the effect of the items() 
method. This would effectively allow dictionary comprehensions for those 
that want them:
   dictionary([(k, v) for k, v in dict if wanted(k)])

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Sat Jul  7 17:23:57 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 15:23:57 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library
  development
In-Reply-To: <3dlmm2qlcv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107071255220.30219-100000@bms>

On 6 Jul 2001, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> Bruce Sass's suggestion of using the Debian package manager is a good
> one, because apt really provides exactly what we need.  Unfortunately
> porting it to Windows or Mac is probably hard, so we could just steal
> its interface (which seems similar to pyppm's) and reimplement it in
> pure Python.

Thanks.

For anyone wondering what apt-get is, what it does, and why it could
ever be considered...

from the man page:
apt - Advanced Package Tool
...
APT is a management system for software packages.

[Note: It is not for .deb-s or Debian, but for "packages".
 If a task can be broken up into Debian specific and general parts,
 that is how they will do it.]

apt-get ultimately depends on:
libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3
libm.so.6
libc.so.6

what apt-get needs externally to work:
- URL to an archive
- a get "method" (it comes with: cdrom, copy, file, ftp, gzip,
  http, rsh, and ssh, as separate executables)
- a package manager

apt-get does not (but you may have expected it to):
- present a list of available packages
- display stats of installed packages
- know anything about where files are stored on the fs
- actually fetch packages via some protocol
- actually install or remove packages from the system

apt-get handles:
- dependency calculations (real and virtual packages, which may have
  Pre-Depends, Depends, Provides, Recommends, Suggests, and Conflicts
  attributes as required)
- managing the fetching and installation of package(s) (which archive
  to use, which verion to get, what order to do it in)
- some utility functions (print URIs only, download but don't install,
  only fetch part of a source packages, stick with a specific
  version or distribution, etc.)
- third-party additions (e.g., apt-localepurge, to automatically
  remove all those foreign language files you never use)

I do not see anything that says, "Linux only".

The package manager would need to be a wrapper around whatever is
native to the system (that would be totally new code); and if Debian's
archive structure (a pool of packages, with named distributions being
a subset of the pool) is OK... it may be an uneventful port...
but, hey, what do I know I've never ported an app.

You can start to determine the feasibility yourself by looking at...

	http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/apt.html

...including links to the source and dependencies
(and their sources, etc.).

You can see what apt-related stuff has already been developed by using
one of the forms at packages.debian.org and searching on "apt".


- Bruce






From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 13:04:52 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 12:04:52 -0500 
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over? 
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51EF@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

The following FTP program now works, in connecting on my windows machine to my Unix server.  What statements need I add to ftp the directory files in  d:\programsPerl to /usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/?

import string, os
import ftplib
from ftplib import FTP
print string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPerl'),',')
ftp = FTP('144.144.144.144') #specify host
ftp.connect # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
ftp.login(user='elmer',passwd='fudd',acct='donald')   # user info
ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups/')
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit()






From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 09:40:35 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:40:35 +0100
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <XFMail.20010724142502.mikael@isy.liu.se>
 <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <yTedznATrXX7Ew7W@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995979252.31899.python-list at python.org>, Chris
Gonnerman <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> writes
....
>I'm guessing here, but I'd bet from the tone of his postings that Robin
>means
>
>    Malevolent Dictator For Life
>
>While I'm not happy with Guido over this change (because it makes cross-
>version code very ugly, and introduces errors in meaning that may be hard
>to detect) I would not call him such a rude name.
...
when the Gods smile upon us they are benevolent, when lighting strikes
they are malevolent. They are still Gods. Luckily we only have
dictators. Sometimes the dictatorship is good, sometimes bad it's still
a dictatorship.
-- 
Robin Becker


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 01:35:15 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:35:15 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <3B5BDCB4.A2010560@letterror.com> <3B5C48A0.56D88724@alcyone.com> <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jtiuj$eue$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <7ikoltclv5sjr376ua6m1jlk3a9l1qftju at 4ax.com>,
Steve Horne  <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Fixed point arithmetic emulated by using integers with a scale factor,
>though, works very nicely. Better still when there's a language
>feature to do this automatically, but if we added fixed point types to
>Python we'd need *another* division operator - four so far including
>the rational one ;-)

That only applies when using auto-coercion, though, which I'd recommend
against for this.  (Which reminds me: I need to remove the auto-coercion
code from Decimal.py; these threads have convinced me of the Evil of
auto-coercion.)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 14:15:34 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:15:34 +0100
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:46:20 -0500, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>
wrote:

>completely foreign to people.  After years of bit rot in their brains due to
>calculator crutches they may need a minute to refresh, that should be all.

My calculator supports integers - and not with a second integer
button, I just set the mode and it all works happy. I think it has
separate modulo and remainder functions as well - but the battery died
five years ago and I don't really remember.

At school, I once took a calculators test despite having forgot my
calculator that day. I finished in half the time anyone else did, and
was the only person to get a perfect result.

Intellectual decline is not what it used to be ;-) - apparently the
avarage childs IQ these days (I forget the exact age range) is around
120. Must it's all the TV and video games ;-)

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From michael at stroeder.com  Fri Jul 13 06:22:24 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:22:24 +0200
Subject: PyDNS?
Message-ID: <3B4ECBE0.96898063@stroeder.com>

HI!

I wonder if there's interest to maintain the DNS module formerly
written as demo by Guido van Rossum. Anthony Baxter has a modified
version of it under http://www.interlink.com.au/anthony/dns.tar.gz.
I've added support for SRV RRs and I'm thinking about adding caching
support.

If others are interested in contributing as well I could open a
project on Source Forge. Not sure about licensing issues with that
module though.

Ciao, Michael.


From fdrake at acm.org  Fri Jul 13 23:20:22 2001
From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:20:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [development doc updates]
Message-ID: <20010714032022.74B0B28927@beowolf.digicool.com>

The development version of the documentation has been updated:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/





From Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org  Thu Jul 26 11:06:35 2001
From: Kevin.Smith at themorgue.org (Kevin Smith)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:06:35 GMT
Subject: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com> <mailman.996103958.4468.python-list@python.org> <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <MdW77.10395$UB6.966994@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>

In article <Xns90EA6710921D8duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>, duncan at rcp.co.uk wrote:
>Not a keyword. You could just make it an optional identifier.
>If you change the existing grammar:
>   funcdef:        "def" funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" suite
>to:
>   funcdef: "def" [funcmodifier] funcname "(" [parameter_list] ")" ":" 
>suite
>   funcmodifier: identifier
>
>And make it that if a funcmodifier is present, then funcname is set to the 
>result of calling funcmodifier on the function.
>
>then you get:
>   def classmethod foo(x, y):
>      print "classmethod", x, y
>
>but you also get the flexibility to write your own modifiers:
>
>   def protected(fn): return protectionwrapper(fn)
>   def protected foo(x, y): pass
>

I really like this idea.  This is better than the current implementation and 
the Jack Jansen syntax (which I found mildly confusing).  It also allows the 
current classmethod()/staticmethod() built-ins to still be used, but in a more 
appropriate spot in the method definition.  I can see a lot of additional 
power and flexibility with this idea.  This one gets my vote!

Kevin Smith



From dinu at reportlab.com  Fri Jul 20 07:11:34 2001
From: dinu at reportlab.com (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:11:34 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b58061b.152571516@news.t-online.de>

I feel like this discussion has always suffered a bit from
showing a certain kind of vagueness. I'm trying to point
my finger below at what I mean.

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Several people whom I respect have strongly suggested that if Python
>wants to appeal to non-programmers, it should be case-insensitive.
>(Leaving apart details of how to implement that; I agree that it
>should be case-preserving.)  Others, whome I respect just as much,
>feel that it should be case-sensitive.

Who is pro insensitivity and for what reasons? The only one 
I know of is Randy Pausch, and while being a big fan of Alice 
and his work I wonder how many of his students have picked up 
Python for doing something *after* their modelling classes with 
Alice? Apart from Randy's, what other experience in a scienti-
fic setting do we have to suggest insensitivity?

>Unfortunately there isn't a lot of scientific evidence to help decide
>this.  There may be old reports that case-sensitivity hurts beginners.
>I know that many other designers of programming languages aimed at
>non-programmers have consciously choses case-insensitivity
>(e.g. hypertalk, REXX).

Personally I think, case-insensitivity might be good for be-
ginners and case-sensitivity is good for more regular pro-
grammers, simply because of more readability and expressive-
ness added to the code by using camel-case etc. 

I claim that this, in fact, helps building better software 
models of the world, because we don't reduce the programmer's
symbol space to 26 characters, but also leave room for making 
a distinction between verbs, nouns as well as for conventions 
like instances with small letters and classes with big ones.
Using underscores or whatever to achive the same effect will
Python look more Perlish, say, in any case more of a pro-
gramming language and less of a natural pseudo-code language.

In that sense I've never understood why reducing this kind
of natural richness in expression can be good? I bet it 
could also be actively used while teaching beginners, pro-
vided the libraries did follow some consistent model, which
most often they don't, as you can tell from looking at the
Python standard library.

>TeachScheme is an interesting case -- Scheme is a case-sensitive
>language, but in "beginner mode", TeachScheme is case-insensitive.  I
>can't find it on the web, but I bet the TeachScheme folks have a
>rationale for this decision.

Well, first it would be interesting to know more about this 
rationale. Then, if possible, that would be interesting, as 
it might offer something for beginners and pros, but the 
issues remain about using legacy code with an insensitive 
Python interpreter.

>It has been argued that making Python case-insensitive would be
>"dumbing it down".  I find this a strange argument.  It doesn't take
>any power away (as long as there's a way to link to external systems
>that require case-sensitivity).  I see it as lowering the bar --
>what's wrong with that?  (If you really feel that being a programmer
>makes you part of an elite and you want to keep others out of that
>elite, I pity you.)

Certainly not computational power, but see my argument above 
about reducing its power to express one's thoughts and the 
world's concepts (objects, actions, messages, etc.) as well 
as the mapping ti natural language.

>It's been argued that making string, String, STRING and StRiNg mean
>the same thing makes for less readable programs.  I agree.  A good
>programming environment should silently correct the case of
>identifiers as you type to conform to the definition.  This also means
>that you can still use different case conventions to hint about what
>type of identifier it is, e.g. MACRO, Class, variable.

Do you have examples of such good programming environments?
Or what they could work like?

>It's been argued that it's convenient to be able to write c = C(),
>where C is a class and c is an instance of that class.  Surely there
>are other conventions we can use.

Which ones? inst_c = class_c()? Looks like the hotly debated
hungarian notation to me...

>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.

Well, what tools do we have that allow for such a feature?
Which of them are available for Python and which for other
languages?

Finally, as Art has also mentioned, we should probably 
make an effort and try to explain what problem it is
that case-insensitivity is trying to solve? Teaching
Python to beginners more effectively is a noble reason,
but from all the controversy around that topic it seems
like not clear at all if this can or should be the only
reason to change the language and the millions of lines
of code. After all, from sneaking into the EDU-SIG mail-
ing list it doesn't even seem like they would agree that
case-insensitivity would help a great deal in pushing 
Python at schools. There, it is more about education 
politics, not about programming symbols that would make 
a difference...

Dinu

 
-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com  Fri Jul 20 13:49:13 2001
From: Bill.Scherer at VerizonWireless.com (Scherer, Bill)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:49:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <3B586C8B.305B8679@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107201345480.21776-100000@ampeg.corp.bam.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Paul Prescod wrote:

> James Logajan wrote:
> >
> > Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > > If you use this
> > > a lot (message = Message() etc.) your code is less readable than it
> > > should be.
> >
> > Um, you've got that precisely reversed! If I see "message" anywhere in my
> > code, I know immediately that it is an instance of the class Message. Think
> > of it as an advanced form of Hungarian notation that tells you what type of
> > thing the variable is holding. (Although I'm no fan of Hungarian per se.)
>
> The Ruby convention is aMessage which is really more clear. i.e.
> "message" could be of type string or of type Unicode or anything. I'm
> sure I've got code on my computer where message was of any of these
> types.

I'll venture that this is a SmallTalk convention, that the Ruby folk
wisely picked up on.  Almost every bit of Smalltalk I've ever seen used
this 'convention'.  Maybe it predates Smalltalk too.

>
> After all, lower case names are not ALWAYS used for instances of a type.
> Sometimes they are merely descriptive of the variable's role. If you are
> trying to say that an instance is an instance of a class then the aFoo
> convention is very clear.
>
>

William K. Scherer
Sr. Member of Applications Staff - Verizon Wireless
Bill.Scherer_at_VerizonWireless.com




From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 07:59:30 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 06:59:30 -0500
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
In-Reply-To: <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net>
        <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <15197.25378.483696.981220@beluga.mojam.com>

    Terry> To run newly written code under old versions of the interpreter,
    Terry> you have to eschew *all* features added after the oldest version
    Terry> you want to support.  For 1.5.2, this means list comprehensions,
    Terry> augmented assignments, nested scopes, iterators, generators,
    Terry> type-class unification features, and what ever else is next
    Terry> added.

Yeah, but that presumes that the features you do use don't change meaning.

    Terry> For the proposed division change, the 'new' meanings will be
    Terry> int/int and float//float.  So write float(int)/int and
    Terry> floor(float/float) instead.  Only write int//int or float/float.
    Terry> With the tokenizer module, it will then be easy to change all
    Terry> instances of int//int to int/int (old meaning).  

Interesting solution.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From brueckd at tbye.com  Tue Jul 31 19:06:52 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:06:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
In-Reply-To: <pso66c9rpo8.fsf@jekyll.curl.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107311442590.23882-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

On 31 Jul 2001, Christopher Barber wrote:

> > On 30 Jul 2001, Christopher Barber wrote:
> > > This is a bad example because the code is doing runtime, not compile-time
> > > checking.  I was talking about the advantages of compile-time checking.
> >
> > ?? Please review the example - that's compile-time checking there.
>
> No it isn't!  The (Integer) cast is not performed until run-time.

Thank goodness! I'll just remove that there and ... doh! it won't even
compile anymore. Hmm... there's actually a little of both there,
compile-time _and_ runtime checking.

> > > Here is how this would be written in Curl:
> > >
> > >    let v:{Array-of String} = {new {Array-of String}}
> > >    let s:String = "hi"
> > >    {v.append s}
> > >    let i:int = v[0]        || ERROR: can't assign a String to an int
> >
> > But what benefit have I gained?
>
> You have detected a bug at compile-time instead of run-time and you didn't
> have to write a unit-test to find it.

Take off your Curl glasses for just a moment and think Pythonically - that
is an error only because of the language-specific constraints - in Python
it's neither an error nor a problem.

My point is that, because Python is handling many of the details,
there are groups of problems that just aren't an issue here. For example,
a thorough assembly compiler might look at this code:

mov ax, 10
xor cx, cx
mov ax, 12

and say, "Hold on there! You're already using that register!", and issue a
warning. This does not, however, imply that any other language would
greatly benefit from this type of checking (except maybe internally). A C
compiler takes care of register allocation, and with it disappear a host
of related problems. Don't you think that it's possible that Python is
taking care of many of the type-related problems for you?

> The language does not force you to specify types, this would also be legal,
> but you would not see the problem until you actually executed the code:

Again, it's a problem _created_ by the constraints of the language, and/or
the division of labor between the language and the programmer. It doesn't
apply here (since we're supposedly exploring the weaknesses that _Python_
has without strict compile-time type checking.

> > The fact that the compiler can detect my breakage of the
> > language-specific rules doesn't really advance the notion that
> > strict compile-time checking is beneficial.
>
> Sure it does.  You might not believe that it is worth the trouble, but it
> clearly has some benefits.

And those benefits are? I'm still waiting for anyone to be specific about
these benefits. Someone finally brought up the
semi-automatic-integer-to-float promotion problem and maybe the potential
for some modest performance gains (thank you!), but that's about it. Each
person has to judge the costs vs benefits, but that seems like a pretty
paltry list of "plusses".

A few people have asserted that big Python programs would be unmanageable
without this compile-time checking, but it seemed like they were speaking
from other-language, and not Python, experience. Of the people who
frequent the list and have participated in large Python projects, nobody
has stepped forward and said, "we really had problems, and boy
compile-time checking would have solved problems X, Y, and Z.".

The whole reason I jumped on this thread was because I've never run into
those problems at all (in Python), and I don't think I can chalk it up to
luck or Good Clean Living. :) I was hoping someone could help me overcome
my ignorance in this area, but so far the discussion has only reinforced
this idea:

  Python's features and overall simplicity tend to eliminate or
  significantly reduce whole classes of problems, including many
  type-related problems. _Some_ strictly-,statically-typed languages
  introduce artifical complexities that cause more problems than they
  solve.

> > What is a real world problem that would not have existed if Python had
> > strict compile-time checking, and how common is such a problem?
>
> Here is a real-world problem: a developer wants to use a language with
> compile-time type checking and rejects Python because it doesn't have it.

This is pretty consistent with the whole body of arguments we've heard so
far: this feature is beneficial in other languages, so if Python doesn't
have it, Python is obviously lacking. To me that reasoning ignores the
fact that maybe, just maybe, there exists more than one solution to the
problem.

As languages evolve we generally find it a bargain to exchange a little
CPU for features that relieve developers of work and at the same time
eliminate developers' bugs. By moving from assembly to C the number of
bugs per _assembly_ line of code dropped dramatically. Is it too much to
imagine that the same does not hold true when moving on up the language
scale?

> Well, I actually used Python on a number of projects a couple of years ago and
> did spend more time than I would have liked writing tests to detect type
> consistency.

Wonderful! Can you please post some examples? Was this proactive testing
or was it triggered by problems you were seeing? If was the result of
problems, what were they?

-Dave




From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 18:45:56 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:45:56 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com> <slrn9kpvbh.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <slrn9krv7p.9oi.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksa54.rqa.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 19:40:41 GMT, Rainy <sill at optonline.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:29:21 +0100, phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>>>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>>>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>>>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).
>> 
>> To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
>> that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
>> lines of C++.
>
>I meant more like sending somewhere my resume saying I know python and did
>this and that, and getting hired. I actually did use some python at my
>previous job (some cgi/image manipulation). I was then asked to redo it
>in perl :-/.

Someone obviously doesn't like you.

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From peter at engcorp.com  Mon Jul  9 22:22:11 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:22:11 -0400
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994713616.26838.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4A66D3.AD4B29D9@engcorp.com>

Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
> 
> This is quite true in my experience, too.  I work in an IT shop that simply
> refuses to recognize Python (and Perl) because most of the people in
> leadership will not accept it.  The major strikes?
> 
> 1. It's Free.  
> 2. If my boss had to code in C/C++, it's should be good enough for me
> (dammit!).  
> 3. No Support!  
> 4. To easy to understand. 
> 5. A fear of maintainability. 
[details snipped]

The real problem, as I have come to understand in my successful effort to 
bring Python into my current employer's company in a big way (sixteen
programmers using it for a wide variety of applications and utilities) 
is management COWARDICE.  

It's not that they don't buy the argument that free software could 
save money, or that code readability is a good thing, or that c.l.p 
can provide better support than any commercial organization ever does.
They understand all that at some level, but have a mental - no, make that
political - problem accepting it and acting on it.

To allow Python a role in the organization would be to assume a leadership
position.  To take a risk (from the standpoint of their current ignorance)
that they might make a mistake.  To show some vision.

These are not things most managers readily do.  Their job safety lies
in following, not leading.  Calling them "the people in leadership" is
an insult to real leaders everywhere.

I recommend a persistent onslaught of griping about current tools,
constant pointing out of how superior Python would be in a given problem
situation, projections that a new development could take M months of work
in a more typical language but only N months were it written in Python,
whining at the difficulty of maintaining code in another language,
and periodic forwarding of links and articles showing how companies
with more cohones than yours are achieving significant successes with
Python (especially any near competitors).

Good luck! :-)
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From Widgeteye at widgets.com  Sat Jul  7 13:07:32 2001
From: Widgeteye at widgets.com (Widgeteye)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 17:07:32 -0000
Subject: INFO PLEASE
Message-ID: <tkegekf7q4oi4a@corp.supernews.com>

I donwloaded version 2.1 of python for linux and there is no 
IDLE with it. In fact the only thing in the bin directory is 
the python executable. Should there be more to the distribution
than this? How about Tkinter  and such, what distribution should
I be getting? I noticed that a lot of the programs in the demo
directories didn't work.

Sorry if this is really bonehead stuff but I have never been 
aquainted with python before.

Thanks



-- 

"You can always make peace with an F-16 in your pocket"
     -Yitzhak Rabin


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Tue Jul  3 14:38:20 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:38:20 -0500 
Subject: Calculus
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51F3@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

It was originally Leibniz.  Please refer to the link (which I found at www.northernlight.com, using keywords leibniz philosophy) at http://www.utm.edu/departments/artsci/ppr/phil/fieser/110/unit7/leibniz.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Daneliuk [mailto:tundra at tundraware.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 1:00 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Calculus


Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> 
> Wait a minute!  Wasn't Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz one of the founders of Calculus?  And wasn't he also a philosopher, who with his world of monads, said that this is the best of all possible worlds?  And didn't the gentlemen direct his question to the Python group?  In essence, he is following the philosophy of Leibniz.

I thought it was Voltaire who said we live in the best of all possible
world (in 'Candide')...

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com





From brakedon at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  8 21:24:34 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 18:24:34 -0700
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107081724.56b2a434@posting.google.com>

"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in message news:<oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>...
> Hello,
> I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
> I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the file
> menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a hand
> with this it would be great.

You will need to create a "setup.py" file. Here is the working code that I use.

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(name = "filename", #not sure what this does, but it doesn't hurt anything
      version = "1.0", #meta info, shows up in the exe you make
      author = "John Doe", #meta info, your name
      author_email = "johndoe at somewhere.com",#meta info, author email
      scripts = ["yourfile.py"])#target script, the script you want to make an 
                                #exe with


From anderson at hp.com  Fri Jul 27 19:58:52 2001
From: anderson at hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:58:52 -0600
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <20010727.175851.680466996.16613@hp.com>

In article <3B5BC1C3.41330762 at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>, "Greg Ewing"
<greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

> Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
>> 
>> If I was told that experinced programmers might appreciate this change
>> for any possible reason - I'd be quiet as a mouse.
> 
> I'm an experienced programmer, and I appreciate the change on the
> grounds that different operations on the same data should be spelled
> differently.

So spell int/int=int with a / and int/int=float as // Solves the problem
of code breakage, and eliminates the need for a two year implementation
timeframe.

I believe this would instantly silence nearly all of those opposed to the
PEP.

Bill


From barry at digicool.com  Tue Jul 10 10:00:17 2001
From: barry at digicool.com (Barry A. Warsaw)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:00:17 -0400
Subject: SMTP server class ??
References: <d0alktgu1k5qvlt2bqdmb8l0k1rlmqm6ie@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <15179.2673.82521.359442@anthem.wooz.org>

>>>>> "SK" == Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> writes:

    SK> Actually, I found what Barry Warsaw calls his "experimental"
    SK> smtp server (RFC821 compliant) at the Vaults at
    SK> Parnassus. I've downloaded it.

It's actually now in the standard library as smtpd.py.  It's
asyncore/asynchat based, and it's not perfect, but at least one other
person than me has found it useful <wink>.

It implements the minimal required RFC 821 SMTP server interface, and
no, it hasn't been checked against RFC 2821 yet either. ;)

-Barry



From Tom_Good1 at excite.com  Mon Jul 30 17:31:08 2001
From: Tom_Good1 at excite.com (Tom Good)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:31:08 -0700
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <mailman.996515638.21022.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db@posting.google.com>

"Steven D. Majewski" <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU> wrote in message news:<mailman.996515638.21022.python-list at python.org>...
> 
> The 'while' clause seems useful, and I don't see anything inherently
> ambiguous about it, but sticking a procedural clause into what's
> otherwise a declarative seens to go against the spirit -- what's 
> nice about list comprehensions is that they are just like set 
> notations. ( well -- the left hand side is often procedural -- it 
> would be even more readable if it were more clearly separated
> with a "where" clause, but that would be Yet Another Keyword... ) 
> 
> -- Steve Majewski

That is a compelling argument.  However, I am still struggling with
how to best work with infinite sets (which are now easy to create with
generators).  With set notation, you can refer to an infinite set
without actually creating each member of the set.  List comprehensions
try to "fill up" the list, which causes problems if an unbounded
generator is involved.

If g is a generator that generates all positive integers, I would like
to write something like:

L = [x * 2 for x in g()]
print L[:10]

This does not work, of course, but that is how I would tend to think
about it in my head.  List comprehensions with lazy evaluation?  Is it
possible?



Tom


From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Wed Jul  4 11:34:54 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 15:34:54 GMT
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it>
Message-ID: <l8e6kt415rispcte0qbaj1qhq33hq270bk@4ax.com>

>I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the core
>language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
>toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
>lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's "The
>C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?

_Python Essential Reference_ did it for me. No pedantics on "this is what
a for loop is for." 100% meat. This is a great book if you're already a programmer
but you "just want to learn Python, shut up about the loop introductions already." :-)

C//



From brian at sweetapp.com  Mon Jul  2 23:19:31 2001
From: brian at sweetapp.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 20:19:31 -0700
Subject: The standard library
In-Reply-To: <slrn9k28vp.s9l.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <000401c1036e$fe6f7dd0$445d4540@D1XYVL01>

> I don't know Py_ParseArgs or whatever its called... maybe C functions
> *can't* have keyword args.

You can parse keyword arguments in extension modules with
PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords. 





From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Fri Jul 13 01:34:17 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 08:34:17 +0300
Subject: Threading.Event w/ timeout veeeeeery slow on win32?
References: <yoxr8vnaokt.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <Xns90DBE780C8D77cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50> <yox1ynm7lkg.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <m21ynly4n2.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>
Message-ID: <yox3d81wfxi.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

Greg Copeland <gtcopeland at earthlink.net> writes:

> If this is on NT 4, I've done a fair amount of multithreaded com work

No, this is Win2k.

> requested and what they system delivered.  You probably should validate
> this isn't a loaded NT problem first before you start trying to locate
> the issue in python.

The system was quite lightly loaded, and besides, waits *without*
timeout were triggered extremely quickly. At the moment my program
uses waits without timeout and triggers the events every now and then
on a seperate thread - which seems to work quite well, but is a
needless complication. Perhaps I could use sched and make this thread
more generic (to implement my own version of wait-with-timeout) but I
would still rather take a "native" solution, too bad it doesn't seem
to work.

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From jedi at ccrypt.net  Tue Jul  3 16:55:27 2001
From: jedi at ccrypt.net (jedi)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:55:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Hiding Console?
In-Reply-To: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
References: <9ht9to$fei$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.32.0107031354450.6318-100000@hobbit.ccrypt.net>

what is the suffix on your script? .py?  if so, try .pyw


On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, G. Willoughby wrote:

> Is there a way in your script to include a command that when run on a
> WinME/32 platform the console does not appear? such as the IDLE ide. I wanna
> write apps with neat little gui's using Tkinter but i dont want the console
> there when there run, any ideas?
>
> G. Willoughby.
>
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>




From xucs007 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 16:38:12 2001
From: xucs007 at yahoo.com (Xu, C.S.)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 13:38:12 -0700
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
Message-ID: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com>

I just compared the speed of Python, Perl, Java, C
to do simple numerical calculations. Python is the
slowest: took 150 times of time than C, Perl about
60 times, Java is 4.5 times. 

The source code of Python is: (Other source are
similar, all use while loop):

#!/usr/bin/env python
i = 2.5;
while i < 1e7:
        j = 2.5 * 2.5
        i += 1
print i, j

The `time` results on my PII 450M is:
	python script:	37.93u 0.03s 0:38.03 99.8%
	perl script:	15.36u 0.03s 0:15.42 99.8%
	java compiled:	1.07u 0.10s 0:01.20 97.5%
	C compiled:	0.24u 0.01s 0:00.25 100.0%

Can anybody explain why Python is always about 1 time
slower than Perl?

Regards,


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Fri Jul 13 03:43:49 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:43:49 +0200
Subject: win32gui
References: <9ikvsg$jim2i$1@ID-22517.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9im8rm$k0827$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

"Harvest T. Moon" <info at black-karma.de> wrote in message news:9ikvsg$jim2i$1 at ID-22517.news.dfncis.de...
> hi :)
>
> is there any tutorial/documentation on how to use the ActiveState Win32GUI
> extension?
>
Not that I know of. The htmlhelp online-docs do nothing more than to list
the functions which are available.
On the other hand, these functions are usually very thin wrappers of
the native win32 apis, which are documented on microsofts site somewhere.
And then there is the win32/Demos directory or how it's called...

Thomas




From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Tue Jul 24 15:17:41 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:17:41 -0700
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com> <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107221047.43a4e97@posting.google.com> <etdwv50226x.fsf@opus.mit.edu> <7b9380ca.0107230557.35250fdd@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DC9D5.D8A06100@ccvcorp.com>

NANDYALA D Gangadhar wrote:

> I understand what you said. So I have:
>
> 1. Before one uses a name in __main__, one has to make sure that it is
>    not used anywhere in the Module, even without the qualifier "global";
>    failure to do so could be unpleasent.
>
> 2. OTOH, __main__ namespace is not searched by the module if it is
>    imported, since it is only __builtins__ that is searched, after
>    the module's name space. Hence, I get NameError with
>

Well... actually, __main__ is not a namespace.  There is a special builtin
variable, __name__, which the interpreter automatically sets to the name of
the module, *OR* to __main__ if in a directly-interpreted script (rather than
an imported module).  The "if __name__ == '__main__': " convention tells the
interpreter that this block of code should only be run when this file is being
run directly as a script, and *not* run if it is imported as a module.
However, it does not create a new namespace--the "local" namespace of this
block is the module-global namespace (i.e., nspace1.__globals__).

When you run this file as a script, you bind an open file handle to the name
"myfile".  You then call hello(), which calls myfile.write().  At this point,
"myfile" does not exist within hello()'s local namespace, so it searches the
global namespace, where it finds the "myfile" that you created in the "if
__name__ ..." block, and uses that reference.

When you import this as a module, the "if __name__ ..." block is not run, and
therefore, no "myfile" is created in the global namespace.  When hello() tries
to find "myfile", it looks in its locals, the module globals, and then in
__builtins__, and finds nothing--thus the NameError.  You may have a "myfile"
in the interpreter's namespace, but nothing in nspace.py is going to search
there.  (This *might* not be true with nested scopes--I'm not familiar enough
with the details of that yet.  I'm presuming that you're using the older,
default scoping rules.)


> To be frank, though this is in accordance with the reference, it is
> not, IMO, (for want of a better word) "consistent." (I mean, it is not
> a one-rule-applies behaviour for a module in its original and import-ed
> avatars.) Well, I might have still got it all mixed up!; so all comments
> are welcome.

It *is* consistent, in that you've *told* the module to behave differently
when run as a script than when imported as a module, by using the " if
__name__ == '__main__': " block.  It's just not necessarily obvious what all
of the consequences of that are. ;)

Hope that clarifies things a bit more...

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International




From kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu  Fri Jul 20 14:36:42 2001
From: kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu (Keith F. Woeltje)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:36:42 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <3B587A3F.8060401@mail.mcg.edu>

FWIW, I am also in the "sometime programmer" group, and don't find case 
sensitivity to be an issue. Even though Pascal (case insensitive) was my 
first language, I was always taught to use consistent case, and case 
sensitivity was never an issue. I suspect that Konrad Hinsen's 
experience can largely be extrapolated: most people bright enough to 
figure out loops, conditional statements, and the other "basics" of 
programming are probably bright enough to understand that "a" != "A". 
Surely correcting what is most likely a modest speedbump on the road to 
learning Python isn't worth breaking a lot of existing code.
 >K

Tim Randolph wrote:

> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at digicool.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.995571273.18192.python-list at python.org...
> 
>>(2) Potentially, the group of non-programmers is much larger than the
>>    group of programmers (and it's easier to teach programmers an
>>    arbitrary rule than non-programmers).
>>
> 
> I think the distinction between programmers and non-programmers misses a
> third important group: "sometime programmers"  -- people who code
> occasionally to for fun or to solve problems, but aren't in the trenches (or
> the cubes) day in and day out.
> 
> As a member of this group, who is especially fond of Python for how easy it
> is to pick up where I left off days or weeks before, I would very much
> prefer a case *insensitive* language with tools that enforce *uniform* case
> usage.
> 
> Nobody wants to see fOo and FOO and foo with the same meaning, but nobody
> wants to see foo and FOO and foo at all in the same program with distinct
> meanings.  I also don't think the cutesy c=C() makes for readable code -- at
> least for this sometime programmer.
> 
> 
> little-logs-can-make-for-warm-fires-ly yrs,
> 
> Tim Randolph
> 
> 
>>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>>
>>
> 
> 



From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Thu Jul 12 06:00:56 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:00:56 +0100
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994892540.32695.python-list@python.org>
 <9iirju$j9rjr$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <NjoSfiAYVXT7EweG@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <9iirju$j9rjr$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, Emile van Sebille
<emile at fenx.com> writes
>
>I've written a module that takes a few steps in the direction I'd like to
>see things go, but even if that's not in the cards I'll probably use it
>anyway.  It works like Tim's FixedPoint, but uses precision in a slightly
>different way.  When run as __main__, it imports FixedPoint to compare
>results as it tests.  Overall, this feels more like what I had in mind.
>
>Anyway, a sample session follows.  If anyone is interested in testing/using
>this, e-mail me and I'll send you back a copy.
>
>
>Emile van Sebille
>emile at fenx.com
>

how do these global class attributes work with threads? a lot of people
are asking me about Zope (vis a vis reportlab) I keep telling them that
reportlab isn't thread safe. I had imagined just packaging up all the
module globals in some way and making things thread safe with a few
locks.  Now I see that BNum.PRECISION is affecting all instances of the
class, perhaps including someone else's thread so can BNum and similar
be used in a real multithreaded environment like Zope?


>>>> import BNum
>>>> bn = Bnum.Bnum
>>>> a = bn(1.111)
>>>> a
>1.11
>>>> BNum.PRECISION = 6
>>>> a = bn(1.111)
>>>> a
>1.111000
>>>> a * a * a * a
>1.523548
>>>> b = 1.111
>>>> b ** 4
>1.5235483310410001
>>>> BNum.PRECISION = 12
>>>> a * a * a * a
>1.523548331041
>>>> BNum.PRECISION = 18
>>>> a * a * a * a
>1.523548331041000000
>>>>
>>>> a / 1.234
>0.900324149108589951
>>>> a -.346
>0.765000000000000000
>>>> a
>1.111000000000000000
>>>> a - 1.23456
>-0.123560000000000000
>>>> a - 1.234567890
>-0.123567890000000000
>>>> a - 1.234567890123456789
>-0.123567890120000000
>>>> a - '1.234567890123456789'
>TypeError: object can't be converted to long
>>>> a - bn('1.234567890123456789')
>-0.123567890123456789
>
>

-- 
Robin Becker


From mal at lemburg.com  Thu Jul 26 06:10:36 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:10:36 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: Static method and class method comments
References: <9jn382$lqf$1@license1.unx.sas.com>        <3B5F565C.5F452AC5@ActiveState.com> <15199.23581.653505.336350@beluga.mojam.com> <3B5FD59C.5FA52611@lemburg.com> <017d01c115b4$8ff5ed00$e000a8c0@thomasnotebook>
Message-ID: <3B5FEC9C.4248B663@lemburg.com>

Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> From: "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at lemburg.com>
> > AFAIK, the only way to add classmethods to a class is by doing
> > so after creation of the class object.
> Wrong IMO:
> 
> C:\>c:\python22\python.exe
> Python 2.2a1 (#21, Jul 18 2001, 04:25:46) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> class X:
> ...   def foo(*args): return args
> ...   goo = classmethod(foo)
> ...   global x
> ...   x = (foo, goo)
> ...
> >>> print x
> (<function foo at 007B786C>, <classmethod object at 007C7190>)
> >>> print X.foo, X.goo
> <unbound method X.foo> <bound method class.foo of <class __main__.X at 007B6664>>
> 
> The classmethod is created before the class is done,
> it is converted into a method bound to the class
> when you access it.

Touch? :-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  9 08:32:49 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 07:32:49 -0500
Subject: Hardware API Failing
References: <b5e6e25d.0107082112.2d3b70e7@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <004301c10873$4779a420$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Alcorso" <nalcorso at isw.net.au>


> I have written a C wrapper for an API which controls an ISA card and I
> am attempting to create a python module which makes calls to this
> wrapper.
> 
> The module seems to build fine, and work mostly, for example the calls
> to all of the functions in the wrapper work (get called) and so do the
> ones to the Hardware API, however though the calls to the wrapper
> work, the calls to the API from the wrapper for some reason fail when
> they are called from python.

Here is the crux of the problem:  "for some reason".  Use gdb (or just old-
fashioned printf() statements) to trace the call from Python through the
wrapper to the hardware API and back again.

At some point, the program is tripping over itself... you need to find the
rock it's tripping on.

> If I use a test C app and link to the C wrapper then the hardware
> calls work, also if I embed lua and script from that then the calls
> work also.

This seems to indicate a problem with your Python integration.

> I am wondering if there is something in the environment that prevents
> python from controlling hardware?

Nope.

> Any help would be much appreciated.

Hope this helps.

More detail (sample source, tracebacks, etc.) would be helpful.  What
OS are you working with?






From 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com  Tue Jul  3 00:44:04 2001
From: 18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com (Russ)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 21:44:04 -0700
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com>

Just for the record, Mr. Park is publicly posting my private replies
to him. I guess I should have expected something like that from him.
I'm sure you all understand that I don't like being called an "idiot"
for asking a general question about the suitability of Python for a
certain type of application.

Also for the record, it is probably unlikely that Python will actually
be used for the application I mentioned. It is not yet considered an
"established" language by the FAA. However, I am open to new ideas and
I am willing to advocate it if I am convinced that it is the right
language for the job. Before doing so, however, I need to be fairly
sure.

You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a critical
mode for several years at least, during which time it will be
thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm talking about more
testing than you think. It will first be used for years as a
non-critical back-up for (human) controllers before it is ever used as
a primary means of assuring separation.

As for Mr. Park's childish question about "which city I work at," what
can I say? Here in the U.S., ATC is obviously the responsibility of
the federal government. I suggest he move to Mongolia so he can be
safe. (That don't have access to comp.lang.python there, do they?)

William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote in message news:<mailman.994128604.28588.python-list at python.org>...
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 07:23:57PM -0700, Russ Paielli wrote:
> > "William Park opengeometry at yahoo.ca XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 05:38:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
> > > > Yes, you are missing something: my question. I asked about the
> > > > feasibility of using Python for a safety-critical application. I
> > > > didn't ask for a fifth-grade-level analysis of the problem. Trust me:
> > > > you don't have a clue. BTW, I scored in the top 1% in the math section
> > > > of the Graduate Records Exam. How did you do?
> > >
> > > I trust you.  Which city did you say you were working at?
> > 
> > Which "city am I working at"?  Boy, you really ARE stupid, aren't you?
> > The GRE score is fact.
> 
> It would be helpful to me to know which airport you intend to write this
> Python code for.


From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Sun Jul 22 23:27:28 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 23:27:28 -0400
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <wklmlgcokf.fsf@mail.connact.com>

Here's some exception behaviour I don't get.  If I simply define an
exception class and use "pass" for the body, I can pass in arguments
when I raise it (see passException, below).  If, like Sheila, I define
__str__, I can no longer pass in arguments -- even if I define __str__
with an argument -- see strException, and strExceptionWithArg.

Do I need to use variable args?  No, that doesn't do the trick... see
varArgsStrException below.

>>> class strException(Exception):
	def __str__(self):
		return "string cheese?"

	
>>> raise strException
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#4>", line 1, in ?
    raise strException
strException: string cheese?
>>> class strExceptionWithArg(Exception):
	def __str__(self,m):
		return "string cheese? " + m

	
>>> raise strExceptionWithArg, "no thanks"
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#7>", line 1, in ?
    raise strExceptionWithArg, "no thanks"
strExceptionWithArg: <unprintable instance object>
>>> class passException(Exception):
	pass

>>> raise passException
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#11>", line 1, in ?
    raise passException
passException: 
>>> raise passException, "no thanks"
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#12>", line 1, in ?
    raise passException, "no thanks"
passException: no thanks

>>> class varArgsStrException(Exception):
	def __str__(self, *args):
		return "string cheese? " + str(args)

>>> raise varArgsStrException, "no thanks"
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<pyshell#18>", line 1, in ?
    raise varArgsStrException, "no thanks"
varArgsStrException: string cheese? ()


From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au  Wed Jul 18 07:32:32 2001
From: pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:32:32 GMT
Subject: Finding Display Settings ??
References: <s0d57.12936$Xr6.106667@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <3B557419.E6315CC@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <kte57.13170$Xr6.108638@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

My appoligies Pete,

No, I need to know under the Linux platform.

Pete



Peter Hansen wrote:

> Peter Moscatt wrote:
>> 
>> Which module/library would I import so that I can test for the current
>> display settings ??
> 
> Since you didn't specify platform or essentially anything else, one
> has to assume....
> 
>>>> import win32api
>>>> print win32api.GetSystemMetrics(0)
> 1024
>>>> print win32api.GetSystemMetrics(1)
> 768
> 
> MS documentation should provide more detail on these and other
> values returns by this system call.
> 
> For this, you have to have the win32all package installed.  Obviously
> it works only on Windows... (you did mean Windows, didn't you?)
> 



From alf at leo.logilab.fr  Mon Jul  9 03:35:06 2001
From: alf at leo.logilab.fr (Alexandre Fayolle)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 07:35:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr> <9i4ic3$f3v$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk> <slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf@leo.logilab.fr> <J9n17.8444$e5.1104161@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <slrn9kinsr.as9.alf@leo.logilab.fr>

On Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:09:45 GMT, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
>Alexandre wrote:
>>
>> >Have you tried
>> >
>> > server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1'))
>> >
>> >?  Dunno about xmlrpc, but it works with SOAP.
>>
>> I've just tried it and it doesn't work with xmlrpclib. :o(
>
>works on my box.  what Python version/distribution are you using?

I'm running Python 2.1 (home compiled), on an up to date RedHat 6.2 box. 
PyXML (straight out of CVS) and 4Suite 0.11.1b2 are installed. Since this 
may be an Expat-related bug, from what I see in the traceback, I'll ask 
the question on the xml-sig. 

>if you disable the catch-all except in xmlrpcserver.py [1], what error
>message do you get?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/SocketServer.py", line 215, in handle_request
    self.process_request(request, client_address)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/SocketServer.py", line 234, in process_request
    self.finish_request(request, client_address)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/SocketServer.py", line 246, in finish_request
    self.RequestHandlerClass(request, client_address, self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/SocketServer.py", line 495, in __init__
    self.handle()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/BaseHTTPServer.py", line 266, in handle
    method()
  File "xmlrpcserver.py", line 35, in do_POST
    params, method = xmlrpclib.loads(data)
  File "/home/alf/lib/python/xmlrpclib.py", line 643, in loads
    p.feed(data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 168, in feed
    self.goahead(0)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 264, in goahead
    self.syntax_error('illegal character in content')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 794, in syntax_error
    raise Error('Syntax error at line %d: %s' % (self.lineno, message))
Error: Syntax error at line 6: illegal character in content

Alexandre Fayolle
-- 
LOGILAB, Paris (France).
http://www.logilab.com   http://www.logilab.fr  http://www.logilab.org
Narval, the first software agent available as free software (GPL).


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 15:41:10 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:41:10 -0400
Subject: explain this
References: <25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <xbp07.36028$zT1.1980961@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"gods1child" <alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2 at posting.google.com...
> In the code below, why can i add elements to locals but not delete them?
>
> >>> def function(argument):
> ... print locals()
> ... modify(locals())
> ... print locals()
> ...
> >>> def modify(locals):
> ... del locals['argument']
> ... locals['new_argument'] = 'new_value'
> ...
> >>> function(10)
> {'argument': 10}
> {'argument': 10, 'new_argument': 'new_value'}

Because locals() isn't really the local namespace, it *represents* the
current local symbol table. From section 2.3 of the Python Library
Reference:

"""locals ()
Return a dictionary representing the current local symbol table. Warning:
The contents of this dictionary should not be modified; changes may not
affect the values of local variables used by the interpreter.
"""

Ignore such warnings at your peril :-)

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 02:39:07 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:39:07 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org> <cp66clexxt.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <bganltgpdi7s4o5e95lmfh4lm3j62c4csp@4ax.com>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:22:54 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>discussed many times before.  The summary of the argument in the PEP
>may not be complete, but I disagree with Arthur's assessment that
>integer division is not a problem -- the VPython folks have ample
>experience that it is.

The PEP says virtually nothing. It simply claims that 1/2 giving 0
creates a hump in the learning curve. The only questions answered are
the ones about not creating a div keyword or function - which I don't
believe anyone is contesting.

The bit about coercing to floats rarely if ever happens - if you are
dealing with float values then that is most likely what the variables
you are using hold. If you need a float literal, all it needs is to be
written as a float - simple, clear and it works.

I doubt that anyone ever got through school without learning about
integer division and remainders - most children learn that before they
learn long division, let alone fractions and decimals, so all they
should need is a reminder.

People only experience their first day of something new *once*.
Really, this cannot be considered a problem. A five minute explanation
- if that - says all that needs to be said. Hell - even my mum
understands integer division, and she regularly confuses the size of
her machines RAM and hard disk!

Integer division is claimed to be a major stumbling block in user
testing - what does that mean exactly? Has formal user testing been
done? Just how confused were people? Were these the same people who
tried to put full stops and the end of their 'scentences'? Do you
simply count the frequency that a question is asked, or do you make an
allowance for how easily it is sorted out? Have you done *any* user
testing with the alternate implementation?

As for a few professional programmers occasionally making mistakes -
surely that means the vast majority get it right most of the time,
which suggests the current version is correct. There is a good chance
that those from Pascal and Modula 2 backgrounds who've rarely if ever
used other languages might be temporarily confused, and might get
things wrong a while after from force of habit. But what about all
those from C, C++, Java, Ada, BASIC - and don't forget, Visual BASIC
has been the most popular professional programming language for
several years - not to mention the VBScript and JavaScript used by all
those web developers, and even VBA in Microsoft Excel.

Pascal is a half dead language. It is currently achieving significant
success only as Delphi - a non-standard, single-vendor implementation
that - despite being a commercial product - has to be given away free
on magazine CD ROMs in order to keep people using it. Is that what we
want to emulate?

Surely the professional programmers who expect 1/2==0.5 are a
minority.

Look at all the algorithms that *require* integer division to give an
integer result - anyone who has so much as binary searched an ordered
list or tuple is going to have *BIG* problems.

>Because all Arthur does is tick me off, I'll leave it at this -- maybe
>someone else can explain it all to him.

I have no idea about Arthur, but the PEP explains virtually nothing
about the reasons and the idea that it will actually be done scares
the hell out of me. After the time I spent convincing my employer to
let me use Python internally, you now want me to throw away all the
productivity gains and more trying to sort out the results of this
change - *and* you want me to explain it to my boss! Maybe a slightly
better reason is needed than 'newbies are often a bit confused for
five minutes or so'.

I don't remember ever contributing to threads on this topic before - I
just kind of assumed the idea was laughable on those occasions when
I've seen it, and I expect I usually missed it because I only
occasionally follow the group. I'll bet there are a lot of people like
me who never really believed this would happen, and are going to go
ballistic if it does.

If we can't rely on a fundamental operator to work the same from one
release to the next, then Python is going to be reduced to a joke. It
is going to be causing surprise bugs for years to come as people
upgrade there old 1.5.2 installations - many times, the programmer
will have since left the company and there won't be anyone there to
fix it. Just think of the impact that will have on Pythons reputation.

If there really needs to be a division operator that returns floats
with all-integer arguments, *that* is the new functionality and *that*
should be the new operator. The idea of a division operator that
returns an integer when given float arguments is just plain daft, so
the existing division operator works fine for integers whatever
viewpoint anyone takes.

If this is about people in the pro-PEP0238 camp not wanting to have to
use // for their precious operator - why the hell should it be forced
on the anti-PEP0238 camp?



From reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com  Tue Jul 31 23:11:09 2001
From: reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com (Robert Amesz)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 03:11:09 GMT
Subject: sockets and classes
References: <20010731161148.05170.00001954@ng-fw1.aol.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90F0321874812rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

> I don't get error messages while executing irc.sendcmd(), but it
> doesnt work. I should recieve a response fromt he server after
> sending USER and NICK, then another response after sending JOIN. 
> But, I get nothing.  Whats up!? PS:  This is my first attempt to
> program using classes, and perhaps I'm not doing it right?

You underestimate the complexities of the IRC protocol. You MUST 
respond appropriately (and timely!) to each PING the server sends, and 
the server  *will* have sent you a PING when you tried to log in. Oh, 
yes, the pinging will continue with more-or-less regular intervals 
throughout the session, asynchronously. (If you want to observe what's 
going on, just use a telnet program and try logging in by hand. Set 
local echo on.)

Yes, IRC works asynchronously: the IRC-server will send you data 
anytime it wants to, it's not a command/response protocol like POP3 or 
NNTP. Which means your entire app must work asynchronously. Which in 
turn means you'll need to work with non-blocking sockets *or* use a 
module like asyncore. Whatever you choose, it'll be an interesting 
learning experience. Mind you I'm not trying to discourage you, but 
you've underestimated the amount of work to make an IRC-class by at 
least an order of magnitude.

Consider: there's more to IRC than RFC1459. There's RFC2810, RFC2811, 
RFC2812 and RFC2813 too, although the 28xx RFC's really are just 
updated versions of RFC1459. More importantly, what isn't covered by 
those is the CTCP, the client-to-client protocol, which is described in 
a separate document, which *isn't* an RFC. You really must implement 
this protocol, it's a separate protocol on top of the IRC protocol. The 
DCC-protocol is yet another separate (non-RFC)protocol, but an optional 
one, fortunately.

BTW, you'd better use a locally installed IRC-sever for your 
experiments: it saves bandwidth, and the operator of the server you're 
using now might not like being used as your guinea-pig. Oh, he wouldn't 
have noticed a few failed logins, but if you flood his server by 
accident he *will* notice and won't be pleased. As IRC-servers 
frequently are the victim of all sorts of hacking activities the 
operator might not be too indulgent.


Robert Amesz


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul  2 12:37:34 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 17:37:34 +0100
Subject: PEP scepticism
References: <9hfg1n$du33c$1@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3B3BB077.1E51F2C9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.993788863.16675.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jp0kq.o4l.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <mailman.993829912.16325.python-list@python.org> <slrn9jpho8.peb.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015@4ax.com> <9hq3eh0hqc@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <rk81ktgcueacteau5ts6anbs5vqa8umctl@4ax.com>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:19:34 +0200, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:3321ktcs45ising3j022jk85m4s7t2i015 at 4ax.com...
>    ...
>> I'd also consider whether /# and #/ are better markers - more directly
>> related to the existing #.
>
>...but breaking existing working code, no...?

I see your point.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Jul 11 21:29:21 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:29:21 +0100
Subject: Long Live Python!
References: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5230@il93exm04.css.mot.com> <mailman.994804336.23495.python-list@python.org> <slrn9kokj6.mjk.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <3B4CC986.A5C8E605@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kpvbh.ooh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:47:50 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>I tend to think of Python more as an extremely effective and maintainable
>general-purpose programming language, which happens also to work
>very well when applied as a "scripting language" (whatever that means).

To me it means "good for short programs <100 lines". Bear in mind
that 100 lines of Python is equivalent to 300 lines of Java or 400
lines of C++.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From neil at qualica.com  Tue Jul 17 09:21:54 2001
From: neil at qualica.com (neil bromehead)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 06:21:54 -0700
Subject: python vs kung fu
Message-ID: <50220745.0107170521.24f1c18b@posting.google.com>

It seems that, just like in chinese kung fu circles, lots of people
are trying to justify their style (python in this case) to themselves,
myself included. why ?, all styles can be equally effective , it
depends on how you use them !

good programming comes from experience and the ability to develop in a
smart way , not from what language you choose to use ! and we all
really like python or else we wouldnt feel so passionately about it .
so rather than get into endless arguments with java guys or perl guys
about the virtues of python , lets just try to beat them at their own
game !

jython , zope , .net etc these projects are what i mean ! if we can
keep building stuff like this pretty soon people will respect python
development and what clever programmers do with it as opposed to some
oo scripting language.


From hcsgss at texlife.com  Wed Jul 18 15:41:39 2001
From: hcsgss at texlife.com (Galen Swint)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:41:39 -0500
Subject: Embedded Python 2.1 and AIX
In-Reply-To: Donn Cave <donn@u.washington.edu>
        "Re: Embedded Python 2.1 and AIX" (Jul 18,  6:18pm)
References: <mailman.995471670.13523.python-list@python.org> 
	<9j4jt5$gta$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <1010718144139.ZM60304@anson.hcs.tl>

>Must you use gcc?  I suggest you try the simplest test program
>that illustrates this problem, and build it with the compiler
>tools that come with the platform, with the options as specified
>in /usr/local/lib/python2.1/config/Makefile.
>
>	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu


Thanks for replying....
Yes, we have to use gcc, we have no xlC for this platform.
The very simplest case (or nearly):

**test.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#include "Python.h"

int main( void )
{
  printf("Hello.\n");
  fflush(stdout);
  Py_Initialize();
  PyImport_ImportModule("string");
  return 0;
}

**Makefile
CC=gcc
PYTHONLIB=/opt/local/lib/python2.1/config
PYTHONINC=/opt/local/include/python2.1

test.o:
	gcc -c -g -DAIX -I$(PYTHONINC) test.c



test: test.o libtest.o
	rm -f test
	$(CC) -o test test.o -L$(PYTHONLIB) -Wl -lpython2.1 -lpthread -lm
****
I also tried it adding -Wl,-bE:python.exp -Wl,-brtl -ldl flags to the link
step. (which are the flags used for compiling Python itself in the Makefile.
Galen



From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 27 12:36:43 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:36:43 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <A%287.1144$oc6.134253@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <vMg87.29706$B7.4411759@ruti.visi.com>

In article <A%287.1144$oc6.134253 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>, Steve Holden wrote:
>[posted & mailed]
>
>"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote ...
>>
>> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python*
>> case-insensitive. The hostility of the user community is
>> frightening.
>>
>I find this a saddening remark. Perhaps the vehemence of some
>of the reactions is an indication of how much users value your
>language.

People only get upset about something if they care about it.
The more you care about something, the easier it is to get
upset.  Then Usenet just magnifies the whole thing.  Hopefully
c.l.p will return to it's previous, freakishly nice, mood.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I want to dress you
                                  at               up as TALLULAH BANKHEAD and
                               visi.com            cover you with VASELINE and
                                                   WHEAT THINS...


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 18:38:36 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:38:36 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994626808.10039.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <if527.46135$he.3215290@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994626808.10039.python-list at python.org...
> [Steve Holden]
> > ...
> > Key comparison of strings will test the lengths fisrt, and if the
> > lengths are the same will stop once two unequal characters are found...
>
> That's backwards.  If it tested the lengths first, then e.g. "z" < "aaa"
> would be true.
>
> "perl"<"python"-is-true-either-way-though-ly y'rs  - tim
>
We are talking about has_key here, right?

I was simply trying (perhaps rather too hurriedly, as it turned out) the
fact that strings if unequal lengths could not be equal, and only equality
is required when indexing a dictionary. Without looking at the code I'm
presuming that actually some fairly crafty hashing algorithm is used to test
for the presence of a particular key. But when more that one entry hashes to
the same bucket, I hope the lengths are checked before
character-by-character comparison goes ahead ... you know the details, I
don't, so I'm not going to press this issue any further. And no, I haven't
forgotten that strings are only a subset of the possible keys.

Which is why I said "key comparison of strings". I know you know that
locating a dicitonary entry isn't the same thing as comparing strings
lexically.

and-we-all-assume-python>perl-anyway-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From krissepu at vip.fi  Fri Jul 13 03:18:46 2001
From: krissepu at vip.fi (Pekka Niiranen)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 07:18:46 GMT
Subject: Regural expression puzzle for gurus
Message-ID: <3B4EA0C8.9F697D06@vip.fi>

I have a string in the middle of a text starting with #-sign and ending
to \W.
I can find it with re.compile('#\w+') and  would like to replace it by
adding a
# -sign also to the end of it.

Example:

            original string:           xx:yy:#AAA.!:-#BBB:2324:#CCC:!"?%

            after replacement:    xx:yy:#AAA#.!:-#BBB#:2324:#CCC#:!"?%

How can I do replacement with a single regural expression line ?

I have found a solution like:
           text = 'xx:yy:#AAA:-#BBB:aa'
           line = re.compile('#\w+')
           list = line.findall(text)
           for i in range(len(list)):
                 text = text.replace(list[i],list[i]+'#')

>>>  text
'xx:yy:#AAA#:-#BBB#:aa'

I would like to do this without the for -loop (unless somebody can
convince
me the found solution is the fastest available)



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 13:08:30 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:08:30 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org>
        <9jjubo$2vm$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
        <9jk07s$gq0$1@proxy.fe.internet.bosch.com>
Message-ID: <15197.43918.137149.124586@beluga.mojam.com>

    Klaus> But what is with the "best possible" multiplication?

    Klaus> 99999*99999 -> integer overflow

    Klaus> Why not an long integer result? (or maybe float)

Read (and comment, if you like) on PEP 237, which proposes to unify Python's
ints and longs:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0237.html

I believe this PEP is still in need of a patch to the CVS repository to
support it as well.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From max at alcyone.com  Fri Jul 20 11:36:40 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 08:36:40 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995634453.9136.python-list@python.org> <hlgglt4hrnnb8a7dmocntkns5bkm4b6jmm@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B585008.7B32E1D5@alcyone.com>

Sheila King wrote:

> But case-sensitivity was never an issue. I mentioned it one day, and
> explained it, and I don't remember it ever being a problem, where a
> student called me over to his/her machine and asked me for help
> finding
> a bug, and it came out to be related to case-sensitivity. I don't
> remember this happening even once. There were many other bugs that
> made
> us tear our hair out, but never, never this.

Indeed.  Beginners may grumble and moan about case sensitivity, but my
experience the only folks who complain about case sensitivity are those
who started off with a language that is case sensitive (BASIC or Pascal
for instance).

There are lots of places where beginners stumble and get confused when
learning programming.  I just don't see case sensitivity as one of them.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ The color is red / Under my shoe
\__/ Neneh Cherry
    Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/
 An Esperanto reference for English speakers.


From quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu  Thu Jul 26 19:08:13 2001
From: quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn Dunkan)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 23:08:13 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com>        <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <slrn9m126q.og5.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9m18mt.2ed.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>

On 26 Jul 2001 21:17:14 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>It does require turning off the '>>> ' and '... ' prompts (which python won't
>let you do without hacking pythonrun.c (I think) which I think is a bug), but

In true usenet tradition, I discovered this is wrong right after posting.

del sys.ps1
del sys.ps2

Duh.


From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Mon Jul 23 20:30:35 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:30:35 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <Lk377.36960$Cy.4485776@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"David Eppstein" <eppstein at ics.uci.edu>:

> Rather than arguing about nonexistent situations,

Uhmm... didn't you ask for an example which I then provided. That hardly
seems like a nonexistent situation.

> let's make an analogy:
> In Python, "123"+"456" = "123456" but 123+456=579.  These are two
different
> operators that happen to have the same symbol.  I really don't see why
> integer-division and floating-point-division should be treated any
> differently from this case.

Because strings aren't numbers and integers are. This has three aspects:
there is a folklore interface (the official term I believe) to the number
class which ints, floats, complexes all satisfy while strings do not. You
can think of the folklore interface as an abstract base class that is so
abstract it doesn't even exist. Second the domain of application of strings
and the number classes is sufficiently disjoint that it's pretty hard for
the overloading of + to mean concatenation in strings to cause problems.
Finally there is automagic coercion between the various number classes which
reinforces their relationship.

The only place that I know of where this is a bit of a pain is for types
that try to be both sequences and numbers (e.g., arrays in NumPy). Even
there this is unlikely to cause an error, one just misses out on some of the
sequence functionality when using arrays since they can't be concatenated or
replicated using infix notation.

> Maybe it would have been more type-safe to have defined a language in
which
> string concatenation was defined by some other symbol ++, so that
> "123"++"456" would equal "123456" but "123"+"456" would automagically
> coerce the arguments into integers and return 579.

I actually would  have preferred a separate concatenation operator (not ++
though for reasons I don't want to get into here). I think the second
suggestion is horrible, again for reasons I don't want to get into here.

> You could argue either
> way on the abstract merits of such a language.  But that's not the
language
> we have now, the automagic coercion violates the "better explicit than
> implicit" principle, and there are too many calls to the
> string-concatenation '+' operator to change them without great pain.

Agreed. And the benifits would be extremely minimal which has to be part of
the equation.

> Another possible step instead of breaking integer division would be to add
> a warning for any int/float or float/int division, to make it more
explicit
> that the two kinds of division are different and that you need to make up
> your mind which one you want to do.  Take out all the automagic and make
> people use explicit casts.

I don't think that's viable. Just issuing warning can break plenty of code.
And tracking down all int/float and float/int cases is sure to be no less
painful than replacing / with // where appropriate.

I can't say whether long term this would be a win for the Python community
as a whole. There obviously potentially painful backwards compatability
issues. All I can say is that for me personally I believe is would be an
improvement. You don't obviously don't think so. That's not a problem.

<RANT>

[Note the you in this rant is not necessarily David, in fact it's mostly not
David, it just so happens that I'm answering his email while being overcome
with the urge to rant.

What is a problem is that most of this thread is nonsense. Of course it
would be better to be able to choose whether you want float or
floor-division. Well duh! And even if you don't agree, you have to be able
to see why others would want that ability. If you can't see that you're
having a complete failure of your imaginative organ.

The issues are obvious: operator proliferation and backward compatibility.
The first is probably minor: is adding another operator, and one that looks
like a comment in several popular languages at that, going to make Python
too disgusting to read? I don't think so, but I can see how someone might
disagree. The second is the biggie: how hard is it fix all the old code.
Particularly how to deal with unmaintained legacy code or code that has to
be maintained for multiple version of Python. Again for me, no problem, but
perhaps not for others.

All the other arguments I've heard come across as aimless thrashing. And as
a result are very unlikely to influence those who you need to convince
(which does not include me in case you hadn't figured that out).

Sigh.

</RANT>

-tim






From henken at seas.upenn.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:43:11 2001
From: henken at seas.upenn.edu (Nicholas Henke)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:43:11 -0400
Subject: decent syslog replacement?
Message-ID: <9k6n42$ep6$1@netnews.upenn.edu>

Hello, I am in the process of writing a Metakit database wrapper. I am 
running into performance problems when I try to log a ton of debug 
messages. The system with thrash the disk when logging. I have tried using 
syslog, replacing stdout with a file, etc. None of these seem to help much. 
The only luck I have had is to just use print and have bash redirect to a 
file. This causes problems in other servers that are trying to log to the 
same file.

Is there any good solution to this?
I don't monitor the list that closely, so please CC: me

Thanks,
Nic


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Sun Jul 29 22:56:29 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:56:29 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
		 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
		 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
		 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
		 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
		 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com> <idf5gLAuwJZ7EwJo@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996451255.5138.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B64CCDD.1D01A7A7@Lugoj.Com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> I'm not going to respond to the majority of the post because I don't
> really see where the conversation is going.

I'm not sure it is going anywhere in particular. Just some people shootin'
the breeze.


From rupe at metro.yak.net  Tue Jul 24 16:16:45 2001
From: rupe at metro.yak.net (Rupert Scammell)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 13:16:45 -0700
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
Message-ID: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com>

Recently I've been using a call like os.system("/usr/bin/lynx -dump
http://www.sample.com > /tmp/site-text.txt") to grab formatted text
versions of pages (without HTML) for subsequent processing.  However,
I don't like the fact that this technique introduces an additional
dependency into my code (lynx). I was wondering if anyone could
recommend an equivalent Python function or module that lets me do this
without introducing a platform specific dependency?

urllib.urlretrieve() gets back the raw HTML page, so it's not really
helpful to me, except as a starting point for processing.

Thanks in advance,

Rupert Scammell
rupe at metro.yak.net
http://metro.yak.net


From rharkins at thinkronize.com  Fri Jul 27 16:18:56 2001
From: rharkins at thinkronize.com (Rich Harkins)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 16:18:56 -0400
Subject: scoping problems
Message-ID: <NEBBIGEFDMPMOPJDPFGLIEHICCAA.rharkins@thinkronize.com>

Oops!  I *meant* class objects, not class instances.  :)

Sorry!
Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Rich Harkins
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 3:57 PM
To: Narayan Desai
Cc: Python-List
Subject: RE: scoping problems


Try this:

class baseclass():
      def __init__(self):
          self.__myfunc__()

class a(baseclass):
	pass

class b(baseclass):
	pass

a.__myfunc__=b
b.__myfunc__=a

__myfunc__ in a and b will reference class instances, not functions, but who
am I to quibble?  :)

Rich


> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Narayan Desai
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 3:31 PM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: scoping problems
>
>
> I made a mistake when I was describing the problem. Here is the real
> problem; I had mis-formulated the minimal subset needed to cause this
> behavior. The real subset is:
>
> class baseclass():
>       def __init__(self):
>           self.__myfunc__()
>
> class a(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=b
>
> class b(baseclass):
>       __myfunc__=a
>
> Does anyone know how to get this to work?
>  -nld
>
> >>>>> "Me" == Narayan Desai <desai at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
>
> Me> How can i define the following code: def a():
> Me>     b()
>
> Me> def b():
> Me>     a()
>
> Me> (ignoring for a moment that this would never terminate) How do you
> Me> get the namespaces right?
>
> Me> I would solve this with function prototypes in C, but it isn't
> Me> clear to me how to do this in python.  thanks...
> Me>  -nld
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>


--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 03:51:13 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 03:51:13 -0400
Subject: The Evolution Of Python
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B63C071.492CF3A7@engcorp.com>

Ben C wrote:
> 
> IMHO the reason why C has survived as a language and not become an
> endangered species like Rexx, pascal et al is because it has it's own
> 'niche' ... initially evolving alongside of the unix environment it [...]

[snip rest of interesting evolution-based theory of C's success]
> 
> I don't think Python has it's own true 'niche' ... it competes well
> with many other languages ... hence it has to either keep evolving
> into a 'better' competing language or find a niche or other languages
> will inevitably supplant it ... 

Hmmmph... that's what they said about those nasty "hyoo-mans" ... <wink>
-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Fri Jul  6 10:31:41 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 18:31:41 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Maintaining the Python FAQ
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107061814580.3884-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107061827480.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Roman Suzi wrote:
> >    For me the biggest problem is not the FAQ Wizard, but FAQ.html - it is
> > too big. 270K is too big for the Net. Let us split it intopages.
>
> May be better solution is to add splitted version.
> Whole FAQ is nice to have as one document.

   Only for downloading. That is, let's make zipped version of unsplitted
FAQ.html.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From jparlar at home.com  Wed Jul 11 01:55:46 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 05:55:46 GMT
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994770857.26075.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107101751.5348c0a9@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <1103_994830833@jparlar>

 
> 
> Possibly you might attain enlightenment if you compared the original
> HTML with the output from HTMLParser --- I know next to nothing about
> HTML but I'm willing to bet that such a comparison might just bring up
> correspondences like &nbsp; -> \xa0 and &middot; -> \x95. BTW, the url
> you gave has 22 occurences of &middot; ...

I'm definitely planning on trying that tomorrow. My initial tests with HTMLParser were (unfortunately, I guess) on relatively simple pages, meaning no complex Jscript, or 
whatever silly things people are putting on their pages today, so I started working with it on the assumption that it worked exactly as it should, with no interference 
from me.

 
> Then you can proceed at one of two levels:
> (1) follow Paul Prescod's suggestion to use the ASCII codec with the
> "ignore" option -- this will strip out all non-ASCII characters
> (2) use u.encode("cp1252") to give you native Windows stuff in an
> 8-bit string. However you have to be prepared to handle things like a
> "no-break space" (\xa0) and a "bullet" (\x95) and whatever else may be
> in the input; time to buy a book on HTML, maybe.
> 
> <:-)>
> If you get exceptions with "cp1252", it probably means that you have
> strayed too far into the forest and encountered a web page produced by
> some pesky furriner varmint -- "Oooh, Grandma, what enormous ordinals
> you have!"
> </:-)>
Hehe, I know what that's all about. Being an Opera user, I have a better view than most people on how poorly, or against W3C standards, most webpages are 
written. IE is a 20 meg download (at least) because it has to have so much machinery to deal with garbage webpages. Opera is a 2 meg download because it sticks 
to standards.


> Oh and call me silly, but a brief peek at an IE5 cache gives me the
> impression that what is there is plain ol' HTML, just like you get
> from a direct download. You may like to ask exactly what functionality
> the C++ kit is providing ...
I can't give you the reason right now why the cache is being returned in Unicode format, but I believe it had something to do with a buffer size or some such 
nonsense. I know that the author of the C++ code that retrieves that cache is viewing this thread, so Bill, if you want to jump in, I'd welcome it. No one seems to 
believe that Unicode is being returned :)



> That is not causing your current symptom. It is extremely likely to
> cause other possibly unwanted symptoms -- like "alt.foo.bar" being
> treated as the word "altfoobar". I'm sure various people will give you
> one-line Python solutions to the symptoms. However it looks like you
> need to start from the top down -- What is the definition of a "word"?
>  What tools/techniques are there to tokenise text into "words" and
> "non-words"?
I've actually put a lot of thought into this part, so "alt.foo.bar" won't be turned into "altfoobar". The english language is a terrible bitch-goddess, especially when it 
comes to its use on the internet, but for the most part, my code to pull out words is working as well as can be expected. I won't bother you with the RE to properly pull 
out punctuation, but just take my word that it seems to be doing what needs to be done.

The main thing is that we're just working on, at most, a pre-alpha version of the product here. This is an academic project, with the current goal being that of putting 
together a working version to test out some theories that the professor who commissioned the project has. If not everything works perfectly (ie. unicode -> string, 
exactly pulling out words, etc.), then at this stage, it's not a huge problem. However, the more "quirks" I can remove now, the better it will be for all those involved.

I guess I'll just repeat (rephrase) my question from before: If anyone has seen an easier way to do what I'm doing (properly parse a webpage, any webpage, and pull 
each word from it, or, even better, give me the text of the page as a list), I'd much appreciate it. If that doesn't happen though, then I'll take all the suggestions from 
this thread and try them all out.

Jay P.



From pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au  Thu Jul 19 05:25:48 2001
From: pmoscatt at bigpond.net.au (Peter Moscatt)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:25:48 GMT
Subject: Retreiving a single number from a list of numbers ?
References: <3b565953@news.iprimus.com.au> <bQt57.2521$EP6.907151@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <wIx57.15023$Xr6.123559@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Thanks Terry,

Actually this would be the better way of getting what I actially need, but 
Alex's info was also excellent.

Thanks mate.....


Pete


Terry Reedy wrote:

>> I am trying to extract a value from a variable that contains more than
> one
>> value.
>>
>> For example:
>>     If  I assigned the result of wxGetClientDisplayRect() to the var 'a'
>> like:
>>         a = wxGetClientDisplayRect()
>>
>> the 'a' would return something like (0, 0, 800. 540)
>>
>> How then would I assign the 800 from 'a' and give it to a var called 'b'
> ??
> 
> b=a[2]
> 
> But you might want something like
> 
> x1,y1, x2,y2 = wxGetClientDisplayRect()
> 
> to unpack all 4 values of the tuple into individual vars.
> 
> Terry J. Reedy
> 
> 
> 
> 



From george at cc.gatech.edu  Tue Jul 24 17:51:59 2001
From: george at cc.gatech.edu (George Thomas)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:51:59 -0400
Subject: HTML to formatted text conversion function
References: <79179cf5.0107241216.7345d345@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DEDFF.FD2FE535@cc.gatech.edu>

Hi,
The htmllib and formatter modules should help you, if I understand your
question correctly. Chapter 5 of Fredrik Lundh's PYTHON STANDARD LIBRARY
also contains some code that can get you started. It's available online
at
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonsl/chapter/ch05.html
regards
<ge0rge/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
george thomas
Resident,Planet Earth,Third Rock from the Sun
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
reduce (lambda c,d:chr(ord(d)-2)+c, 'ofcpqkekhhC"zwpkN"fgtgyqR/pqjv{R')
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


From anapraxis at yahoo.com.au  Fri Jul 20 09:44:52 2001
From: anapraxis at yahoo.com.au (Patrick W.)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 23:44:52 +1000
Subject: Python 2 times slower than Perl
References: <8f41cfd.0107171238.6ff33b9b@posting.google.com> <9j3rvk$26bt$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B559B30.61A90EA@jam.rr.com> <9j4af20d2o@enews4.newsguy.com> <ZOw57.375583$p33.7544629@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87elrdtgps.fsf@ivory.localhost> <X%M57.379696$p33.7613309@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com> <87ofqgdtxr.fsf@ivory.localhost> <uIR57.381357$p33.7644280@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>
Message-ID: <87y9pju33f.fsf@ivory.localhost>

"Greg Jorgensen" <gregj at pdxperts.com> writes:

> "Patrick W." <anapraxis at yahoo.com.au> wrote
> 
> Patrick, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I think we agree on the big
> picture.

And likewise.

> Personally I would be happy programming in C, Scheme, and Python as
> you suggest, but the real world is a lot messier. There's lots of
> legacy code written in COBOL, Fortran, PL/I, what have you. And
> there's lots of code that is written in languages that seem less
> than ideal choices to us Python-enlightened: Visual Basic, C++, and
> Java (give it ten years).

Sure. I guess that's going to be unavoidable for a long time to
come. The thing that bugs me (somewhat!) is that it *was* avoidable in
1996 when the worst excesses of the Java hype could have been nipped
in the bud. But I suspect that what you said about the psychology of
the "silver bullet" is going to make fools of us again and again.

BTW, I don't claim any superiority here over the average Joe here. I'm
still looking for the silver bullet too. I just find it hard to
stomach some of the popular "technologies" some people claim ARE
superior, and I wish we had better ways of differentiating the good
from the bad before our next wholesale adoption of the "new".

> I'd add SQL (or something like it) to your list. Not for writing entire
> programs, of course, but when dealing with relational sets you want a
> language designed for that. That's not to say that relational databases are
> the only way to organize data, but they are an efficient way to organize
> some kinds of data, and more important lots of valuable data is already
> stored in relational databases. When junior programmers ask me what language
> they should learn to maintain their marketability, I always recommend SQL.

Indeed. Well spotted. That's an important missing piece. There's
always going to be a need for some kind of declarative query language,
for as long as natural language systems aren't good enough. SQL is one
special-purpose hack that *does* make good sense.

Actually, in the spirit of CP4E, it probably ought to be part of the
layman's vocabulary too, not just a programmer's tool.

[Snipped some benchmark stuff. Agree with all that.]

> Python's clear syntax, rich built-in data types, and excellent standard
> library appealed to me right off when I read Guido's tutorial. A few hours
> of experimenting proved to me that I could easily write useful Python
> programs, and that those programs excecuted acceptably fast enough for most
> of my purposes (and I'm one of those C programmers who thinks in
> C). 

Same here. My background is mostly C, but Python 'felt' right from the
start. So far I've found it simple without being at all limiting, and
to me that's the hallmark of good design. It's also fast enough for
just about everything I do.

> When newbies post their "benchmarks" in comp.lang.python I cringe
> because they are blind to the most important things about Python.

Heh. Imagine how Lisp implementors feel. There's always gonna be some
pimply-faced fool around to spread the word that Lisp is "big and
slow". And that Java is more elegant, more object oriented. And of
course "better designed".

Cheers,
P.


From martin at strakt.com  Thu Jul 19 07:45:35 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:45:35 +0200
Subject: Immutable list reverse function
Message-ID: <20010719134535.A1906@strakt.com>

Is there a "good" way to write a fast reverse function for immutable
lists?

I tried this:

def reverse(list):
    l = len(list)
    return [ list[l-i-1] for i in range(l) ]

It works, but it's obviously not backwards compatible.
Any suggestions?

What I want to do is basically this:

>>> foo(reverse(create_a_list()))

Instead of having to:

>>> list = create_a_list()
>>> list.reverse()
>>> foo(list)

Hints appreciated

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 24 13:59:57 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 17:59:57 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <k_h77.23757$B7.3910692@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lrdst.k2v.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:10:40 GMT, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> pisze:

>>as long as a literal is an expression with type independent
>>from the context. This implies that implicit conversions from
>>int to float and rational are unavoidable in Python.
> 
> Why?

Because you can't express operations like "add one", "multiply by ten"
or "take the reciprocal (when complex numbers are considered too)".

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From phillip at transwitch.co.za  Thu Jul 19 05:15:25 2001
From: phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 02:15:25 -0700
Subject: direct (not DNS) database connection
Message-ID: <74cc9702.0107190115.18ce07aa@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I am able to connect to a database, but I must first create a data
source name(DSN) in windows and the connect through the DSN.

I would like to connect directly like : servername:port/databasename

What module will enable me to do this ( connection pooling would be
good as well)?

currently I am using odbc for windows and dcoracle for linux.

tks

Phill


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Fri Jul  6 09:37:14 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:37:14 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: webbrowser module reveals a Netscape bug.
In-Reply-To: <6f78b8b.0107060514.7142ed34@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107061736190.2536-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On 6 Jul 2001, Charles Harrison wrote:
> If you are working in a school lab environment where you have
> the root password on the machines

   If you have root passwords you must be more responsible than that.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu  Tue Jul 31 19:27:48 2001
From: cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:27:48 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <mailman.996515638.21022.python-list@python.org> <ac677656.0107301331.5330d4db@posting.google.com> <Pyk97.4104$9i1.318163@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <U9H97.163512$EF2.22005506@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

* Steve Holden <sholden at holdenweb.com> menulis:
| 
| I believe a separate syntax would be required to represent such a radically
| different object. But you, of course, may know better ... if you're looking
| for a syntax, one possibility would be:
| 
|     [[x * 2 for x in g()]]

Another possibility would be to have list comprehensions always return a
generator, and then if you need a list instead, use the built-in
function list(), for example:

    list([x*2 for x in g()])

But this will cause code breakage..maybe the solution to *that* would be
to add __getitem__(), __len__(), __contains__(), etc. to generator
objects, so that they can be manipulated as if they were lists.  (This
would solve the original poster's problem too -- you could do g()[:50]
to get the first 50 items of a generator.)


-- 
Cliff Crawford            http://www.sowrong.org/
A sign should be posted over every campus toilet:
"This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism." 
                                 -- Camille Paglia


From grante at visi.com  Mon Jul 23 14:53:28 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:53:28 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>

In article <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h at 4ax.com>, Steve Horne wrote:

>On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:46:20 -0500, Skip Montanaro
><skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>completely foreign to people.  After years of bit rot in their
>>brains due to calculator crutches they may need a minute to
>>refresh, that should be all.
>
>My calculator supports integers - and not with a second integer
>button, I just set the mode and it all works happy.

And I'll bet cash money that the "integer divide" key and the
"float divide" key are one-in-the-same button.  The operation
is determined by the type of the operands (the "mode").

What I don't understand is why polymorphism is all of a sudden
an evil, nasty thing in the Python world -- something that must
be banished at all costs (even if we have to change one of the
basic mathematical operators and break existing programs).

Are the rulers of the Python Kingdom going to ban all
polymorphism?  I thought it was one of the _stregnths_ of
Python, and here we are trying to stamp it out!

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  LBJ, LBJ, how many
                                  at               JOKES did you tell today??!
                               visi.com            


From tundra at tundraware.com  Fri Jul  6 20:40:01 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 07 Jul 2001 00:40:01 GMT
Subject: I'm Sure There's A Better Way
Message-ID: <3B465858.CB7F38E8@tundraware.com>

I want a function to check a string to make sure it is a legitimate
dollar amount.  Which means it follows these rules:

First character is numeric or "-"
At most, one "." is allowed and, if present, is followed by exactly two digits
All the remaining characters must be in the range "0" - "9"


I wrote the attached to check a string for these rules, but I can't help
wondering if my feeble newbie python coding isn't already better done
elswhere and/or using existing logic.  Any ideas all?  TIA.... Code follows -



# Check and see if passed string is a legit amount

def IsNum(num):
    if num == "":
        return FALSE
    digits = ["0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "."]
    z = num.split(".")
    if len(z) > 2:             # At Most, only once decimal permitted.
        return FALSE
    if len(z) == 2:
        if len(z[1]) != 2: # Exactly two digits must follow decimal
            return FALSE
    if (num[0] == '-') and (len(num) > 1): # 1st char can be sign if more chars follow
        num = num[1:]    # Drop sign for purposes of checking
    for x in num:        # Make sure all chars are legit digits
        if not digits.count(x):
            return FALSE
    return TRUE

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From skip at pobox.com  Sat Jul 14 18:12:25 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:12:25 -0500
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
In-Reply-To: <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org>
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com>
        <15183.48231.771283.235523@anthem.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <15184.50121.350177.822472@beluga.mojam.com>

>>>>> "RS" == Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

    RS> What's the best way to translate this perl snippet into python:

    RS> ($f1, $f2, $f3, $f4, $f5, $f6) = split ('\s+', $line);

    BAW> Python doesn't work this way, but I've been thinking about writing
    BAW> a PEP to make sequence unpacking less strict.

What about writing a simple class to do it?  Instead of raising an exception
in __getitem__ it would just return "" or None.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Mon Jul 23 14:38:49 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:38:49 +0200
Subject: Make an *.EXE Using Python.
References: <oAI17.647550$166.13393459@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <frebj9.f9b.ln@eaglesnest.mceggman>
Message-ID: <pvqhj9.pc7.ln@gargamel.hqd-internal>

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 08:34:55 +0000, Horst Eyermann wrote:
>In article <oAI17.647550$166.13393459 at news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>,
>	"EricIDLE" <grayson-wilson at home.com> writes:
>> Hello,
>> I was wondering is there a way to make a exe using Python?
>> I seem to remeber vagely that there was a "Make EXE" choice under the file
>> menu but its no longer there (If it ever was) so if you can give me a hand
>> with this it would be great.
>
>Hello,
>
>somewhat related, I always wondered if it is possible to
>crosscompile an application?
>
>I am under linux, and would like to distribute for other OS's as well
>(esp. Windows)
>
>Is this possible at all, or would I have to reboot to Windows, and use
>the (free) Borland compiler, ...?

I have never actually done this (though I will something like this soon), but
it should be possible to do this by telling the Makefile generated by freeze to
use a mingw32 cross compiler. (more Makefile tweaks will sure be needed).

Also be sure to have all extension modules you'll ever need built statically
into the Python interpreter or at least have them available as static libraries
as well.

IOW, it should be possible, but it's sure not easy. Heck, it isn't even easy to
freeze native Linux executables.

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From tim at digicool.com  Mon Jul 23 18:44:08 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:44:08 -0400
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <415pltcn73cga0lmvtmgdn3vb02f7d28kr@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHGEGMCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Stephen Horne]
> ...
> We can't exactly match mathematics here, but we don't have to go so
> far as having different symbols for integer and float division -
> mathematics uses the same set of symbols for both operations allowing
> the context choose the operator.

This isn't so.  Mathematicians are careful to specify floor or ceiling
explicitly when they intend division to lose information, depending on
what's needed (see any text on number theory; see Knuth's TAoCP; see
anything).  Modern Lisps are closest to this (first a lossless divide, then
apply the rounding discipline you need).

> Why should we behave differently to what non-programmers such as
> mathematicians expect?

Since you don't want what mathemeticians expect, that's for you to answer
now.  Let me predict that you no longer think it's an important question
then <wink>.

Gratuitous advice:  stick with the backward compatibility arguments -- they
have some meat.




From chris at voodooland.net  Sun Jul  8 20:44:52 2001
From: chris at voodooland.net (Chris Watson)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 19:44:52 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <9iapjn$ja2$1@apollo.csd.net>
Message-ID: <20010708193613.W93174-100000@open-systems.net>


> This seems really strange to me. So you are saying you can integrate it
> into any proprietary product without problems? You can intergrate it into
> perl, python etc with their various licenses. Why do you specifically not
> want anyone to integrate it with GPL code but allow everything else?

Strange? Not that I dont know where this will end up but how is wanting to
keep the GPL (which would add restrictions to my code that *I* did not
place on it) from infecting my licensed code strange? I release everyone
can choose their OWN licenses. I have NO problem with that. The thing's I
have problems with are the fact that A) you can GPL BSD licensed code.
Which I do NOT want to happen or I would of GPL'ed it in the first place.
To butcher a Roger Waters song "Keep your filthy GPL off my desert". :-)
B) I fail to see how someone coming along and GPL'ing my code without my
permission is fair. Or ethicly right. Now had I used a standard 2 clause
FreeBSD license I would have no recourse to bi*ch about that. Since the
BSD license allows for that. So instead of bit*hing about it I just a 3rd
clause effectivlely saying "Sorry GPL people go play elsewhere". The license
as shown above places no restrictions on "code use". Simply the licensing
terms. Nothing more or less. You can do whatever you wish with the code. Make
it binary only and keep your secret modifications secret, release them with
source, whatever you wish. You just can't add any restrictions to my code.
Like the GPL. Or you would violate the license and I will sue you.
Everyone can choose to license their code as they see fit it's a free
country. I simple dont want the GPL to inflict itself on my code or I
would of licensed it under the GPL to begin with. :-)
Some of us like capitolsim more then communism. *shrug*

Chris





From missive at frontiernet.net  Mon Jul 23 19:05:37 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:05:37 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: from __past__ import integerDivision (was Re: A modest PEP0238 suggestion)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9jiak1$3s96$3@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:49 +0100, Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk>:
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:35:14 GMT, matthew.feinstein at jhuapl.edu (Matt
> Feinstein) wrote:
> 
>>Why not make the operator // do what the -old- division operator did,
>>so that the only change that has to be made for backwards
>>compatibility is replace all /'s with //'s?
> 
> Nice and easy for the hobbyist - NOT a sane option for professional
> users who've bet their reputations on Python, and besides.
> 
> It's precisely what the PEP is suggesting - change the functionality
> of the existing operator for no particularly strong reason, and expect
> everyone to change to a *new* operator to support a *different*
> functionality.
> 
> One minor problem is that according to the PEP the original behaviour
> will *not* be supported by *any* single operator - you have to figure
> out for every single use whether the change is necessary - it is not a
> no-brainer.
> 
> More important is all the software that is somehow in-the-field - a
> VERY serious problem.
> 

I think this is what the PEP is proposing:

// is current / behaviour
/ is new int/int --> fp

we already have people importing things from the __future__,
how difficult would it be to let people drag things from the __past__?

It would certainly make maintaining old applications that rely
on the old behaviour much easier to port over to the new one.



From gtcopeland at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 12 21:45:00 2001
From: gtcopeland at earthlink.net (Greg Copeland)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 20:45:00 -0500
Subject: Encryption and python?
Message-ID: <m27kxdy543.fsf@mouse.copelandconsulting.net>

I've been browsing around for a while now trying to come up with
"the" python encryption library that I can make use of.  I seem
to of found lots of efforts but most of them seem to of fallen
by the road side.  The only one that seemingly keeps popping up
is the m2crypto stuff.  As I understand it, it sits atop the
OpenSSL code and basically provides python bindings?  Is that
correct?  Is m2 the way to go for python crypto?

Oh ya, whatever crypto package I use, I need it to be portable
between linux and win for sure, but mac support would be nice
too.  Anyone know if m2 fits that bill?  Again, from what I
read it *looks* like it does the first two, I'm just not sure about
mac.  If anyone wants to raise their hand and say they've used this
package and various platforms, that sure would make me feel better.


Thanks,
	Greg


From pj at sgi.com  Thu Jul 26 21:48:18 2001
From: pj at sgi.com (Paul Jackson)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 01:48:18 GMT
Subject: Version compatibility in division
References: <mailman.996097129.15274.python-list@python.org> <usnfkcy48.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <9jqh92$6jl71$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>

David wrote:
|> Of course, this isn't the best example, since threaded apps by their
|> nature must be written to be safe in such variations ...

as opposed, of course, to unthreaded apps, which can have
all manner of timing sensitive bugs, right? </joking>

In other words, speaking more directly, maybe threaded
apps are supposed to be timing safe, but that doesn't
mean that they are.
-- 

                          I won't rest till it's the best ...
                          Manager, Linux Scalability
                          Paul Jackson <pj at sgi.com> 1.650.933.1373


From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 07:37:29 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 04:37:29 -0700
Subject: PyZipFile
References: <25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107130337.27c4d468@posting.google.com>

alankarmisra at hotmail.com (gods1child) wrote in message news:<25b2e0d9.0107122104.50347e10 at posting.google.com>...
> Why wont the following code work? Thanx.
> 
> import zipfile
> p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","w",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> p.writepy("c:\\pe")
> p.close()
> p = zipfile.PyZipFile("c:\\pe\\arc.zip","r",zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
> eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> p.close()
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "C:/pe/nest.py", line 6, in ?
>     eval(p.read("pe/lang.pyc"))
> TypeError: expected string without null bytes

eval() expects as its first argument either (a) a string of Python
*source* to be parsed and and evaluated or (b) a code object. You fed
it a string containing a whole pyc file, which is neither of those.

Perhaps you had better define "work". What did you expect it to do?


From sheila at spamcop.net  Thu Jul  5 15:22:38 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 19:22:38 GMT
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org> <cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net>
Message-ID: <p9f9ktor76l10n9nbhkhetljpe080crj5s@4ax.com>

On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 11:47:22 -0700, Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net>
wrote in comp.lang.python in article <3B44B63A.BB507CBF at home.net>:

[snipped]
: Guido
:had made it pretty clear that merging all these modules (and more) into
:the standard library is impractical for a number of reasons.
:
:Unfortunately, not having all the major modules available for a single
:source really is a big limitation. Not only do people like me have to
:spend a whole lot more time installing stuff, developers are limited as
:to what they can expect a Python installation to include. This means
:that you either don't use what would be a useful module, or you are
:faced with distributing a bunch of extra stuff with your module or
:program.

This is a very good point. Right now, I'm just starting to teach myself
GUI programming. I've been messing around a bit with Tkinter. There is
much more documentation and literature available for Tkinter than for
other GUI toolkits for Python. I thought a bit about possibly trying
wxPython, but the fact that Tkinter is included in the usual Python
distro and wxPython is not, and that is a big obstacle for distribution
of one's software.

[snipped]
:My proposal is to create a Python "Distribution" that includes a large
:collection of what are becoming standard modules, but are maintained by
:folks other than the core Python team. I'm modeling this idea on the
:Linux Distributions:
[snipped]
:The short version is that I'd like people to be able to say that their
:program or module runs on "Comprehensive Python 2.1", which can be
:downloaded from "http://ComprehensivePython.org". At that web site would
:be a easy way to download a whole package for a couple of flavors of
:Linux, Windows, Macintosh, other *nixs, etc.
:
:
:If there is a least a small group of people interested, send me a note,
:and lets get started on the organization details.

This is an excellent idea. I hope you get sufficient interest to
implement it!

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From guido at python.org  Wed Jul 25 00:31:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 04:31:00 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995943227.11347.python-list@python.org> <23891c90.0107240109.5b7072d4@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cpd76pbpfh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:

> If someone had suggested using // for the int/int->float operation, I
> bet that hardly anyone would have complained, apart from some people
> who might consider it "language bloat". But instead, it seems that for
> the sake of some aesthetic principle the rug is being pulled out from
> under everyone whether they want to lie down or not.

It's not just an aesthetic principle.  The currently / behavior is a
design mistake that needs to be eventually eradicated, because it
makes writing reliable cood too hard and it makes writing subtly
broken code too easy.  The only way to do that is to bite the bullet
-- otherwise Python will still have this problem in 10 years.

I can live with a temporary language wart that we're committed to
removing.  I don't want to live with the wart forever, which the other
solution would do.

(Another argument for PEP 238, which I made in another message, is
that it opens to way to a unified numeric model, hinted at by PEP
228.  I will update both PEPs to greatly improve the motivational
sections.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 17 08:13:25 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 08:13:25 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9l54oq.hfm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <slrn9l6jr4.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <87elrfu522.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:

> with Mozilla/4.73 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.15-4mdk i686):
>     0127.0.0.001 fails.
>     127.0.0.001 succeeds.
>     127.0.0.00001 succeeds.
> 

Most likely Mozilla is interpreting 0127 is the octal representation
of the number 87 (base 10) and 001 as the octal representation of the
number 1 (base 10).  You could confirm this by trying 0010 instead of
001 in the last range.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.  Going from
DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117. - Lawrence Foard
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtUK+UACgkQjVztv3T8pzvocACfcsaGbK6cb6rA9I1W3lk4yr9G
+cgAniN4z3VD1njuTzEE8cknANjN08IW
=pOae
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 18:47:36 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:47:36 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i9ovi$hptm7$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3b48e3ff.1404083295@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 8 Jul 2001 06:55:04 -0700, "Emile van Sebille"
<emile at fenx.com> wrote:
[... lots re precision ...]

Probably should have responded to this one instead.
Please see above.


From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul  2 18:10:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 22:10:02 GMT
Subject: Calculus Module
References: <E15HARJ-0006xv-00@mail.python.org> <mailman.994106583.27446.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B40EF74.426C7A1B@tundraware.com>

Andrew Todd wrote:
> 
> Is there a calculus module? I couldn't find one.

Also look at:

http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py/684222876
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 14:53:34 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 18:53:34 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <3B4B1BE7.1483F292@yahoo.com> <9if7d5$ss1$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B4B4DB5.571613A9@yahoo.com>

gbreed at cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> 
> In article <3B4B1BE7.1483F292 at yahoo.com>, slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul
> Winkler) wrote:
> 
> > For the mathematically challenged, what is matmult?
> > Pointer to a FM to R would be fine.
> 
> Ooh!  I've got one of them!
> 
> <http://www.microtonal.co.uk/matritut.htm>
> 
>                   Graham

THanks!

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Mon Jul 16 10:41:21 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 15:41:21 +0100
Subject: Most efficient solution?
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BE8E@intrepid>

> From:	Simon Brunning 
> 	From:	Jeffery D. Collins [SMTP:jcollins at boulder.net]
> 	> List B consists of my "stopwords", meaning, the words I don't want
> included in my final version of list A. So what I need to 
> 	> do is check every item in list A, and if it occurs in list B, then
> I want to remove it from the final version of A. My first thought 
> 	> would be:
> 	> 
> 	> for eachItem in A:
> 	>     if eachItem in B:
> 	>         A.remove(eachItem)
> 	> 
> 
> 	How about: 
> 
> 	map(A.remove, B)
>  
> Clever! Unfortunately, it dies (giving a ValueError) if any of the tokens
> in B are not present in A. Nasty, but how about:
> 
> map((A + B).remove, B)
 
That will teach me to post without testing. This doesn't work at all - items
from B are removed from the temporary, unnamed list created for A + B.

A bit neared the truth would be:

A += B
map(A.remove, B)

But this doesn't really work, either. Only the first occurrence of each
token in B is removed.

It strikes me that if B is large, it might be quicker to build a re pattern
from its elements, and match on that, rather than use 'in'. I'll give that a
bash later.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From donn at drizzle.com  Tue Jul 10 01:16:10 2001
From: donn at drizzle.com (Donn Cave)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 05:16:10 -0000
Subject: File processing
References: <9id5p9$8r62@interserv.etn.com> <mailman.994736537.19096.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <994742167.67214@yabetcha.drizzle.com>

Quoth Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>:
|
|     Chris> I'm trying to write a script that will open a file, delete the
|     Chris> first line, and then save the file with the same name.  Can
|     Chris> someone please point me in the right direction?  Thanks!
|
| Well, you've seen several Python examples and a Matlab example.  I usually
| use the shell for these sorts of quick-n-dirty file manipulations:
|
|     i=`wc -l <somefile`
|     i=`expr $i - 1`
|     tail -$i somefile > somefile.short
|
| Put that in a loop and you're all set:
|
|     for f in `whole buncha files` ; do
|         i=`wc -l <$f`
| 	i=`expr $i - 1`
| 	tail -$i $f > $f.tmp
| 	# cp -p $f $f.save		# if you're paranoid
| 	mv $f.tmp $f
|     done

That's cool, but you might be interested to see if tail on
your platform supports a positive index (bet it does):

    for f in `whole buncha files`
    do
        if tail +1 $f > $f.tmp
        then mv $f.tmp $f
        else rm $f.tmp
        fi
    done

In the unlikely event it doesn't, sed '1d' is a safe bet.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com


From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Tue Jul 24 12:37:13 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 12:37:13 -0400
Subject: subclassing Exceptions
References: <9ihklt8u0vvh1aa0mg6tadbmjo9mot47e0@4ax.com> <mailman.995773776.14791.python-list@python.org> <v3mklt0fcn31un5en9pr90lvnh44935qi4@4ax.com> <3B5B137E.3606B75D@alcyone.com> <9t6mltc0nhqt4enj7dq0n0c9s3u9ens4eb@4ax.com> <3B5B26F9.A2C71182@alcyone.com> <88gmltsdpn4brhtr7ng71b7c22qqlhlfac@4ax.com> <wklmlgcokf.fsf@mail.connact.com> <3B5CC5EA.25D87C98@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <wkofqab7wm.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "GE" == Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

GE> phawkins at spamnotconnact.com wrote:
>> 
>> >>> raise strExceptionWithArg, "no thanks"

GE> Shouldn't that be

GE>    raise strExceptionWithArg("no thanks")

GE> ?

GE> According to my reading of the docs, the first form
GE> is illegal, since if the exception is a class and a 
GE> value is supplied it is supposed to be a subclass of the
GE> exception class.

Nope.

The applicable phrase in the doc, below, is: "otherwise, the argument
list consists of a single argument which is the second expression"

___
"raise_stmt:     "raise" [expression ["," expression ["," expression]]]
If no expressions are present, raise re-raises the last
expression that was raised in the current scope.

Otherwise, raise evaluates its first expression, which must yield
a string, class, or instance object.  If there is a second expression,
this is evaluated, else None is substituted.  If the first
expression is a class object, then the second expression may be an
instance of that class or one of its derivatives, and then that
instance is raised.  If the second expression is not such an instance,
the given class is instantiated.  The argument list for the
instantiation is determined as follows: if the second expression is a
tuple, it is used as the argument list; if it is None, the
argument list is empty; otherwise, the argument list consists of a
single argument which is the second expression.  If the first
expression is an instance object, the second expression must be 
None."
 
http://www.python.org/doc/current/ref/raise.html#raise

-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From sdm7g at Virginia.EDU  Wed Jul 18 21:54:43 2001
From: sdm7g at Virginia.EDU (Steven D. Majewski)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:54:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107182150180.370-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>


On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
> Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
> case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
> was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
> routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
> implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

Now that we're in a new century, I think it's time to update to a 
new excuse!  How about: 

 Now that everyone's making the transition to multiple language support,
unicode and multiple encodings, how to you portably define/implement 
case-insensitive comparison? 


-- sdm 






From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 30 00:31:00 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:31:00 -0400
Subject: mistake in Python 2.1.1 debug download
In-Reply-To: <3b64daaa$1_5@Usenet.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEDBLCAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tom]
> I just downloaded the following:
> Python-2.1.1-Debug.zip
>
> It includes Python22 files.  I assume this is a mistake.

So it does!  My mistake.  Ignore the *22.* files, or think of them as
fascinating freebies.

> Also, where do the .pdb files go?  Aren't .pdb files compiler
> specific?  Is this debug download platform/compiler specific?

Nothing in that zip file is of any use to you unless you're writing Python
extensions in C or C++, on Windows, and using MSVC 6.  Even then it's of
limited use, and probably more trouble to download than it's worth.

> A readme file would be helpful.

I bet you downloaded it from SourceForge.  python.org explains the
uselessness of this file on its download page.  You just convinced me to
stop shipping this file <wink>, so rest assured it won't happen again.

If you're not used to Python, download 2.1.1 from

    http://www.python.org/2.1.1/

instead.  It's got better instructions.  Unfortunately, there's no way to
add explanatory text to the Files download page on SourceForge.




From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Tue Jul 31 01:17:39 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:17:39 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
In-Reply-To: <00899E06.N22121@rsmi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107302304320.28123-100000@bms>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
<...>
> What I am missing.  Why are we talking about the programming projects of
> non-programmers? Why isn't that simply dismissed as an absurd
> contradiction in terms?
<...>
> Isn't it clear that  the thread that it is all quite necessary  to  meet the
> programming
> language specification requirements of people who don't actually program  (is
> there
> another definition of non-programmer that I am missing) - is an incitement,
> not an explanation.

In this context, it comes from the CP4E motivation that people may be
called upon to script operations or interactions between their
`toys'... calling them "non-programmers" is shorter than saying,
`people who may need to program without knowing they are doing it'
(imo).


- Bruce




From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 10 13:34:21 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:34:21 -0500
Subject: An unspeakable act
In-Reply-To: <tkm10otakvej2c@corp.supernews.com>
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com>
        <tkm10otakvej2c@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <15179.15517.765782.221147@beluga.mojam.com>

    Lyle> Even though the main PSA page has moved this link still works (as
    Lyle> of this morning):

    Lyle>     http://www.python.org/psa/Users.html

    Lyle> Hope this helps,

A few updates to that list:

    * Automatrix technology was bought a few years ago by Mojam
      (http://www.mojam.com/).  Yes, we still use Python.

    * InfoSeek got bought by (I think) Go.com, part of Disney's empire.  I
      believe Go.com is on the way out, with their search engine technology
      now provided by GoTo.com.

    * eGroups.com got bought by Yahoo and is now Yahoogroups.com.

    * DataViews got bought by GE Fanuc Automation.  Not sure how much Python
      is still used there.

I'm sure there are other changes worth noting, but you could mention to your
boss that GE, Disney and Yahoo (at least) all used Python at one point. ;-)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 25 17:03:57 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:03:57 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <gER67.534750$eK2.111982758@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <ac677656.0107231024.3ab3e6f1@posting.google.com> <3B5F0867.7447E5FB@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <uzo9sd8le.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com> writes:

> Haven't looked into this in detail, or even downloaded 2.2 yet, but...

It's sort of noticeable from the question :-)

> couldn't that be written as:
> 
> if __name__ == '__main__':
>     for i in fib():
>         print i,
> 
> ???

Only if fib() was going to return the entire list of numbers in the
sequence as an already created list object.  But fibonacci numbers are
an infinite sequence, so clearly you can't do that.  Or you'd have to
artifically terminate it somewhere.

The generator gives you the ability to create an object that works
like and can be used as an iterator, but supporting an easy to
implement (as a function) incremental approach to generating the
values of the sequence.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From emile at fenx.com  Fri Jul  6 12:35:12 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 09:35:12 -0700
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9i4pjg$gtsp1$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

No objection here.

Why not:
from __future__ import non_integer_division


FYI:  I asked my 10-year-old daughter last night what 24 divided by 5 is.
She said 4 remainder 4.  I asked what 1 divided by 2 is.  She said .5.  My
6-year-old daughter piped in with 0 remainder 1.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:cpsngaja4g.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...
> Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
>
> > This is reasonable. However, IMHO, solution need to be different
> > than redefining established "/" behaviour?
> >
> > Could "right" division be given some other symbol than "/" and old "/"
be
> > left intact as a "low-level" C-conformant division every Python
programmer
> > is accustomed to?
>
> Unfortunately, the number of potential Python programmers who will be
> frustrated by the current integer division is much larger than the
> number of established Python programmers.  The sooner we fix this the
> better!
>
> Another thing.  Division of integers is a pretty uncommon operation
> (less common than shifting or bitwise masking, in my experience).  As
> an experiment, I added a warning to int and long division, and ran the
> test suite.  The result: 44 distinct warning locations, of which 38
> were part of the test suite (more than half of which had to do with
> the testing of division or binary operators, or used 1/0 to raise an
> arbitrary exception).  In the library itself, only three modules
> engaged in integer division during execution of the test suite:
> bisect, dumbdbm, and inspect.  Of these, bisect and dumbdbm will need
> to be converted to using div(); inspect uses 1/0 to raise an
> exception.
>
> The warning framework and the future statement are there to make the
> transition easier.  Here's my plan, "new division in four phases":
>
> 1. First we introduce a new function div() and a future statement that
>    makes integer division return a float result for a specific module.
>
> 2. In a following revision, we add a warning when / is used on two int
>    or long arguments, recommending to use div() instead.  (It is
>    important not to start warning in phase 1, so folks have time to
>    switch to div() voluntarily first; maybe phase 1 could have a
>    command line option to warn about integer division.)
>
> 3. A revision later, we change all plain integer divisions to be an
>    error, *forcing* folks to use div() or use the future statement to
>    specify floating point division.
>
> 4. Finally we can implement the "future" behavior by default.
>
> I haven't picked dates yet; if folks agree, I would like to add div()
> and a future statement to 2.2 and space the other steps a single
> revision apart, so phase 4 would be at Python 2.5 (April 2003, if we
> keep the current release schedule up).  Is that too aggressive?
>
> I currently favor div(x, y) over x//y and x div y.  Maybe also add
> mod(x, y) for symmetry (that would also explain divmod() as a
> messenger from the future :-).
>
> I'm not sure how to spell the future statement.  Here are some
> choices:
>
>   from __future__ import float_division
>   from __future__ import real_division
>   from __future__ import new_division
>   from __future__ import division
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Mon Jul 16 17:18:45 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 00:18:45 +0300
Subject: passwd not echoed by getpass
References: <3B5358BE.CD031688@ccuec.unicamp.br>
Message-ID: <kuvgksh8sq.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <3B5358BE.CD031688 at ccuec.unicamp.br>, Sandra Regina
<sandra at ccuec.unicamp.br> writes:
| Warning: Problem with getpass. Passwords may be echoed. <<<------
[...]
|    It's installed on a sun with solaris 2.5.1

your copy of python has probably been compiled without the termios
module. the getpass module tries to use this to turn off terminal
echo, and falls back to raw_input() if it cannot import it.

  -- erno






From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 01:14:42 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 08:14:42 +0300
Subject: [Python-Dev] Future division patch available (PEP 238)
In-Reply-To: <200107220436.AAA05323@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <200107220436.AAA05323@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <E15OBZi-0001pj-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:36:38 -0400, Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:

> For those interested in the future of the division operator a la PEP
> 238, I've produced a reasonably complete patch (relative to the CVS
> trunk, but it probably also works for the descr-branch or the 2.2a1
> release).

Do you want me to update PEP-0238 to reflect the new realities as
to "open issues"? (I saw you already added a link to the patch in the
PEP. Great!)

-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Wed Jul  4 13:06:16 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 13:06:16 -0400
Subject: Is there a K&R on Python?
In-Reply-To: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it>; from objectway@divalsim.it on Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 12:23:41PM +0200
References: <3B42EEAD.9EE4E7A7@divalsim.it>
Message-ID: <20010704130616.A333@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 12:23:41PM +0200, Nicola Musatti wrote:
> Hallo, everybody.
> I'm looking for a Python book to use as a desktop reference on the
> core language (rather than the library, available modules, third party
> toolkits, etc), neither a tutorial nor something meant for language
> lawyers only. Something analogous in style to Kernighan & Ritchie's
> "The C Programming Language" would be perfect. Any suggestions?

It's very difficult to write something better than Python's online docs,
ie. "tutorial" + "reference" + "library".  There are 2 short books:
    - "Quick Python Book" from Manning, and
    - "Learning Python" from O'Reilly.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From t at chabry.caltech.edu  Tue Jul 31 16:51:27 2001
From: t at chabry.caltech.edu (Titus Brown)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:51:27 -0700
Subject: Postgres Large Objects with Python/PyPgSQL
References: <V9C97.228$Z2.3620@nnrp1.uunet.ca>
Message-ID: <9k75of$a5u$1@chabry.caltech.edu>

In article <V9C97.228$Z2.3620 at nnrp1.uunet.ca>,
Rod MacNeil <rmacneil at interactdirect.com> wrote:
>I have 2 computers with PostgreSQL running.
>1. PostgresSQL 7.0/Redhat 7.0/Python 2.1/pyPgSQL 1.2
>2. PostgresSQL 7.1.1/Redhat 7.1/Python 2.1/pyPgSQL 1.2

[ munch ]

A better question, perhaps, is why you are using Large Objects at all ;).
PG 7.1 does away with the need for them, AFAIK, although I have yet to
check to see if the TEXT column type can take binary data...

You might also try looking into PoPy (sf.net/projects/popy/) over PyGreSQL.

--titus


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 25 14:01:46 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:01:46 -0700
Subject: Proposal for .py2, py3, etc. extensions. Was: A way to accommodate 
 laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com> <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com> <3B5DE39C.543DA6@home.net> <3B5DE7F3.EB5EC5F1@Lugoj.Com> <3B5E1075.94167ECD@home.net> <3B5E45B7.2C4AE40@Lugoj.Com> <3B5EFAEB.1EB156B3@home.net>
Message-ID: <3B5F098A.18E8B17A@Lugoj.Com>

Chris Barker wrote:
> A lot of python code is not in *.py files, and not run with the import
> statement. It is in dhtml, or a database, or an embedded script, or.....
> and run with exec or eval or execfile, or...
> 
> For this reason, there needs to be a version identifier in the code for
> this scheme to work.

Neither scheme is 100% perfect. A programmer new to Python who accidently
forgets to include a version identifier statement will have her module
silently compiled using old syntax and semantics. If they are learning
Python on their own (and that is how many people learn it), it will
eventually cause them frustration and confusion. A missing "optional"
statement that makes a large difference in how one's module is interpreted
will defeat Guido's underlying principle: reducing the "surprise" and
"non-intuitive" aspects.

How about using several schemes, with the following precedence:

1) The module contains a "UsesVersion" statement to indicate the operative
version.
2) The python interpreter is started with a flag to indicate the version to
compile with.
3) The module name contains a suffix to indicate the operative version.

If none of these are true, then old syntax and semantics apply.

P.S. When feeding eval() a string, I'm pretty sure it only takes an
expression; not a series of statements. You can't imbed a version statement.
So if, as you claim, there is indeed a lot of people who have string
snippets buried in databases or elsewhere that are evaled on the fly, then I
think that a lot of conversion pain is inevitable.


From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 10:07:58 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:07:58 GMT
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com>
Message-ID: <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

(Couldn't resist. :-)

It is indeed an error to attempt to build Python on HP UX.  (See the
endless laments in the SF bug database.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 01:26:39 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 05:26:39 GMT
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com> <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51> <qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D59D0D33B09atodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
<qlk7kto6lcqqsm2dslsmvrp5eeu3bhpdf7 at 4ax.com>: 

>On Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT, andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy
>Todd) wrote: 
>
>>Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
>><n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>: 
>>
>>>Hello all,
>>>
>>>In working with the Python SQL database called Gadfly I have
>>>discovered something that I do not understand.
>>>
<snip>
>>
[ snipped my reply ]
>>
>>Regards,
>>Andy
>
>Thanks Andy. That really did help.
>
>Now, might I ask how one gets "1, Andy, Todd" out of Gadfly and back
>into a Python object for direct manipulation?
>
>
>
>Regards, Joe

Blimey, hard questions now ;-) I haven't got gadfly on my machine so 
apologies for any syntax errors, but try;

"""
>>> connection=gadfly.gadfly()
>>> connection.startup("jnso", ".\\ndata")
>>> cursor.execute("SELECT st_id, first_name, last_name FROM students WHERE 
st_id='1' ")
>>> result=cursor.fetchone()
>>> result
( '1', 'Andy', 'Todd')
"""

This is standard DB-API functionality. I highly recommend the 'stuff' at 
http://www.python.org/topics/database/ for general Python database 
information, and try googling for 'SQL' for resources on the lovely 
language. I wouldn't recommend anything that focusses too heavily on SQL 
Server or Oracle though as they have some non standard extensions which may 
come back and bite you on the bum if you try them in gadfly.

What the code does is establish a 'connection' to the database (I borrowed 
this from your original post so I'm presuming it works ;-), executes an 
arbitary SQL statement (I haven't used variable substitution but its really 
easy, honest) and then returns the results into 'result'. Note that the 
return of any cursor fetch is always a tuple, its up to you to muck about 
with that tuple and use its elements to populate an object if thats what 
you want to do. If you are changing data items and want to write these back 
to gadfly you need to do that via another SQL update statement - which I 
will leave as an exercise for the reader.

A final note is that in my example above I have used the 'fetchone' method 
and blithely carried on, this is because my query where predicate is 
reducing the result set based on the primary key so that I *know* that I'm 
going to return one and only one row. Most of the time you don't have this 
luxury so you will find the following construct *slightly* more useful;

"""
for i in cursor.fetchall()
    <do something with i>
"""

blimey-I-feel-like-I've-been-channeling-the-martellibot-ly y'rs,
Andy
-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From jparlar at home.com  Tue Jul 10 07:45:25 2001
From: jparlar at home.com (Jay Parlar)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:45:25 -0400
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
Message-ID: <20010710131332.QNTN21541.femail2.rdc1.on.home.com@jparlar>

> >  
> > I haven't found anything that will explicitly do what I want, namely,
> > completely remove any uncovertable unicode characters. I 
> > have to be able to parse this text afterwards, 
> > using a lot of Python's string functions,
> [snip]
> 
> Are you completely sure that the offending characters are totally
> meaningless in your application? u'\u00A0' is a no-break space; seems
> stripping that out but leaving normal spaces (u'\u0020') might not be
> a good idea. What other non-ASCII characters do you have?
> 
> Are you sure it's Unicode? Is \xA0 exactly what you are seeing, or are
> you seeing \u00A0 and telling us it's \xA0 ??
> 
> Which "lot of Python's string functions" do you plan to use? Note that
> 8-bit strings and Unicode strings support a large number of same-name
> as-close-to-same-functionality-as-possible methods -- see section
> 2.1.5.1 of the Python Library Reference manual. Also the re module
> supports the same functions and methods on both types.


Frankly, I'm starting to wonder myself about all of this :) I'll give a brief description of what's going on, exactly, maybe that will 
offer more insight.

My task is to create an HTML parser that will pull full text from HTML documents, and count the number of occurences of 
each word, as well as the first position it apeared in. I'm using HTMLParser(AbstractFormatter(DumbWriter(cStringIO))) for 
the HTML parsing, and then a variety of other methods to count the number of occurences of each word. Anyway, there 
are two possible ways that my code will be told what HTML to parse: It will either be given a URL, and I have to download 
the page using urlretrieve (or urlopen, not too important, I don't think), or, the other case is that my code is given the full 
HTML from a page, retrieved from IE's cache. 

Now, whenever I'm given HTML from IE's cache, it is unicode. There is no doubt about that. When the cache retrieval 
code was originally written by my colleague, he had to implement it as unicode in C++. It is because of this code that I 
needed to convert from unicode to string, because otherwise, I was getting "ASCII encoding error: ordinal not in 
range(128)" errors.

The reason that I asked for code to remove the non-convertable unicode characters is because I thought that the '\xa0' 
that I was seeing was a result of the unicode. In further testing, it seems that it's not. When I download the page 
'http://www.ign.com', and parser it using the HTMLParser method above, one of the characters/words returned to me is 
'\xa0'. Now, I have no idea where this is coming from. I suppose I'll have to start looking at the source for HTMLParser, as 
well as the formatter and writer I used. It's not just '\xa0' either, one page (which I can't seem to remember now) returned a 
'\x95' as one of the characters/words. 

One technique I'm using that might be causing the problem is: Using an re to remove a lot of punctuation, punctuation that 
would cause the word "Python" not to be matched with "Python." (notice the period). Actually, if anyone has a better 
solution to that, I'd be more than willing to listen. 

Now, if I'm making some obvious mistake here, I ask your forgiveness, what with my total time with Python thus far 
amounting to no more than 1.5 months. However, if you or anyone else could offer any additional insight into this, it would 
be much appreciated.

Jay P. 

PS. I have to leave to a meeting, right now, so I have no time to double check this. Please excuse any silly 
grammar/spelling errors.




From news at dorb.com  Sat Jul 14 12:13:48 2001
From: news at dorb.com (Darrell)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 16:13:48 GMT
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
References: <mailman.994707435.15102.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <0d_37.39960$T97.6225554@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>

I'm a consultant making a good living doing a lot of Python work.

The Extreme practice of pair programming has been a powerful tool to sell
Python.
A VB/C++ developer looking over your shoulder can be assimilated into the
collective.

It took about 9mos to win over my current office.
My strategy involved setting an example of success.
Sometimes offering the solution in Python while they explain the problem too
me.
Often the Python solution runs faster than the broken code they already
have.
The pretense being that they will use my solution just for an example.
Over time they just learn Python and skip the conversion to some favorite
language.

Then the X VB guys discover BOA and the world is forever changed :)

--Darrell Gallion




From msimpson at ioindustries.com  Wed Jul 11 14:41:25 2001
From: msimpson at ioindustries.com (Mike Simpson)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 11:41:25 -0700
Subject: Freeing memory from Python lists!
Message-ID: <cdd0bc89.0107111041.c3f8209@posting.google.com>

I can't figure out how to free the memory used in the creation of a
large list in Python.
I am running the Python 2.1 interpreter on Windows 2000 Professional
to run the following piece of code:

result = []
for count in xrange(510*478):
	result.append(count)
del result

By using Windows Task Manager I was able to determine that 4332K of
memory was used up until the end of the for loop, but only 960K of
memory was returned to the system after the call to "del".  Is there
any way to return the other 3372K of memory to the system without
quitting the Python interpreter?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Mike


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Fri Jul 27 01:24:26 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:24:26 -0500
Subject: web sessions support
References: <O8R67.2110$De6.330884@news.pacbell.net> <3B5BE6CC.9B71B87E@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <015001c1165c$8106e6c0$0101010a@local>

What I'd like to see is a working example of *using* one or more of
the given session managers... I'm afraid that just reading the source
is not helping me.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Str?der" <michael at stroeder.com>
>
> You might wanna borrow some ideas from
> http://www.stroeder.com/pylib/PyWebLib/
>
> I'm the author => take it with a grain of salt. ;-)
>
> There are other modules too:
> http://thor.prohosting.com/~pboddie/Python/web_modules.html





From schorsch at schorsch.com  Sun Jul  8 07:25:04 2001
From: schorsch at schorsch.com (Georg Mischler)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 13:25:04 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr> <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com> <9i88o3$hj41s$1@ID-91128.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9i9fsn$enb$02$1@news.t-online.com>

Vladimir Nesterovsky wrote:

> ...  I once did it to sort Lisp data by a
> Lisp value-function (well, AutoLisp to be exact) in C with standard
> qsort() function. 
 
Now look who found the way to Python land...

Welcome to the club, Vladimir! 


-schorsch

-- 
Georg Mischler  --  simulations developer  --  schorsch at schorsch.com
+schorsch.com+  --  Lighting Design Tools  --  http://www.schorsch.com/


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 05:06:09 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 09:06:09 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <mailman.996562926.4343.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF66FE0D834michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se> wrote in 
news:mailman.996562926.4343.python-list at python.org:

> 
> On 31-Jul-2001 Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> >  Really? In Polish a different form of "there were" and "errors"
> >  is needed depending on whether
> >      n%10 in (2,3,4) and (n//10)%10 != 1 or not :-)
> 
> At last, I have reason *not* to learn Polish. :o)

Go on, Marcin, show us what we would need to write in Polish :)


From jeff at ccvcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 15:21:53 2001
From: jeff at ccvcorp.com (Jeff Shannon)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:21:53 -0700
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
References: <3B4A7C91.44680652@ihug.co.nz>
Message-ID: <3B4DF8D1.14FD83B4@ccvcorp.com>

Matthew wrote:

> No matter what I try, I CAN NEVER get named keyword arguments to do
> anything via PythonCOM Excel automation.

Hmm, I'm using Excel automation with keyword args with no
problem--Office/Excel 97, ActiveState Python 2.0 on Win95
(build 202) and NT4.0 (build 203).

self.xl = win32com.client.Dispatch('Excel.Application')
self.xlBook = self.xl.Workbooks.Add()
.
.
.
#SaveFormat defined to save in Excel95 format...
self.xlBook.SaveAs(filename, FileFormat=SaveFormat)
...
self.xlBook.Close(SaveChanges=0)

I'm not using the Password argument anywhere, but you say
you're having the same problem with other functions, so...

Is it only your Application object that is having problems
with keyword args?  My code seems to only use them with
my workbook objects.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International






From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 01:24:18 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 22:24:18 -0700
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org>
Message-ID: <9jtia2$e5p$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill at sill.silmarill.org>,
Rainy <ak at silmarill.org> wrote:
>
>My program (http://silmarill.org/cymbaline/cymbaline/cymbaline.py -
>yes, it's repeated 3 times, that's not an error) works fine in 2.1
>but exits silently in 2.0 - no traceback, no errors, nothing. One
>possibility I checked for is except (something): sys.exit() and I don't
>have anything like that here.  What else could it be?

What OS is this?  How are you starting the program?
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From dwig at advancedmp.net  Tue Jul 24 17:54:23 2001
From: dwig at advancedmp.net (Don Dwiggins)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 14:54:23 -0700
Subject: Opening a file with Python
In-Reply-To: "Kevin Riggle"'s message of "Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:47:26 -0500"
References: <3b5be641_3@news.newsgroups.com> <9jhgm4$2mo$1@mtc1.mtcnet.net>
Message-ID: <u4rs2ouwg.fsf@advancedmp.net>

Kevin Riggle writes:
> Open up My Computer, click View...Folder Options, select the File Types tab,
> and click on New Type.

> Fill in the description and extension you want to use, then click on the New
> button beneath the Actions: list box.

> Fill in the Action Name (probably Open), and set 'Application used to
> perform action:' to

> "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe %1" if using py2exe,

> or "c:\Program Files\WinPy\winpy.exe c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.py
> %1",

> in both examples *including* the double-quotes.

A slight correction: you need to enclose the program path and the argument
string in separate quotes, e.g.:
  "c:\Program Files\MyPyProg\mypyprog.exe" "%1"

Regards,

-- 
Don Dwiggins                    "Solvitur Ambulando"
Advanced MP Technology
dwig at advancedmp.net




From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Tue Jul  3 16:01:43 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 03 Jul 2001 16:01:43 -0400
Subject: Calculus
In-Reply-To: <3B42067B.2BC73E7A@tundraware.com>
References: <mailman.994172346.18277.python-list@python.org>
	<3B42067B.2BC73E7A@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <oqsngdn5nc.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Tim Daneliuk]

> I thought it was Voltaire who said we live in the best of all possible
> world (in 'Candide')...

Panglos, Candide's teacher and philosopher, was repeating that sentence
at every turn of the page, indeed.  But Voltaire's intent was laughing at
Leibnitz philosophy, making it look ridiculous.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From sam at ddmweb.com  Mon Jul 30 18:35:18 2001
From: sam at ddmweb.com (Sam Penrose)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:35:18 -0700
Subject: Python, mysql, roundoff problem?
Message-ID: <01073015535105.00729@frock.ddmweb.com>

"William Dandreta" <wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> I have done that in the past. The reason I asked about 64 bit integers
> is because I need more than 2 decimal places. Some items are
> inexpensive and sold by the 1000, i.e., $12.57 per 1000 => .01257 each.

> Greg Jorgensen wrote in message
>>"William Dandreta" <wjdandreta at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>> mysql stores numbers as strings. I discovered that when converted to floats
>>> in Python they are not exactly the same which can cause roundoff errors. The
>>> floats represent money and I need to be sure there is no roundoff errors.
>>>
>>> What is normally done to deal with this situation?
>>
>> Work with pennies instead of dollars. Store 12949 instead of 129.49.
>> Do integer arithmetic with pennies rather than floating-point
>> arithmetic with >dollars. Divide by 100 when you need to display the
>> value.

There appear to be two kinds of solutions to the problem of decimal
arithmethic: real ones and hacks. Real ones seem to require a lot of
hard work (Aahz Maruch is working on one) or that you be Tim Peters
(search for FixedPoint.py). Actually, the fifth line of FixedPoint says
"use at your own risk", so maybe that one isn't real. Aahz's isn't
released yet, AFAIK, so it probably doesn't qualify as real yet either. 

In the hack category, I wrote a module that I use on numbers passed
into and out of MySQ that works for me <wink>, in that you can do
sensible arithmetic with it. I posted it here and received almost no
feedback, which is about what it deserved. If there is any interest, I
would be happy to post an updated version.



From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul  3 04:10:03 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:10:03 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: problems with class initiation
References: <mailman.994017363.31520.python-list@python.org> <9ho0dl$ri0$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no> <JIL%6.24504$zT1.1243653@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D35C03C7035duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in
news:JIL%6.24504$zT1.1243653 at e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com: 

> Note also that there is no logical reason why the "__init__()" method
> should be returning something. AS far as I know, nothing takes any
> notice of what __init__() returns, and it's usual to omit a return
> statement (impying a return value of None).
> 
Better than that, at least in Python 2.1 if you do return something other 
than None from __init__ you will get a TypeError: "__init__ should return 
None". So the return isn't optional, its forbidden.


-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Jul 13 18:52:28 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 23:52:28 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <3B4E586D.35460F68@engcorp.com> <cpelrk39t9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kuut9.vde.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:26:58 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
>
>> Unfortunately, while code a chemist writes is very likely never
>> going to rely on the current integer division behaviour, code
>> written by those of us in computers who tend to work closely 
>> with the hardware (where we are constantly thinking in terms
>> of bytes, words, signed and unsigned, memory locations, bits
>> and nybbles, etc.) will fairly often write code which depends 
>> on the current behaviour.
>
>Ah, but you professional programmers can easily be trained.  Just the
>fact that you can already juggle all those concepts in your head means
>that you won't have much trouble learning the additional fact that i/j
>returns a float and that integer division must be spelled as i div j.

Indeed we can easily learn that. However, we cannot easily go back 
and fix all the old Python code that would become broken. I've
just done a quick check and there's 7200 lines of Python code
on my HD I've written. Of those, I use / 3 times. Twice require
integer division, and the other is clearly marked float(x)/y.

Assuming that's a good sample, one line in every 3600 of Python
code will have to be changed. So any change would likely cause
around 30 bugs in a 100,000 line Python program.

>> I can't see a simple answer to this.  It looks as though there
>> are two camps, to both of whom it is absolutely essential that 
>> Python act in a specific way.  And the two ways are completely
>> incompatible.
>
>No, that's not it.
>
>The problem is that you have written much more Python code than the
>chemists of the world, and if I were to change the language, you would
>have to go through all that code to find out which slashes to replace
>with 'div'.

Indeed.

>This has been said many times in other contexts: command line options
>to change a particular behavior are evil.  It would mean that library
>modules could't depend on either behavior.
>
>If we're going to give users a choice, it's going to be some kind of
>per-module switch.

Have you thought of forking the Python codebase for this and
any other more radical changes you propose? I for one would
like to see what sort of CP4E design you can come up with --
including case-insensitive identifiers, etc -- but such changes
couldn't be added to Python itself.

>> Anyway, that's not my problem. :-)
>
>Yes it is!  Unless we find a solution that *works* you will be
>affected.

Consider forking the codebase. Keep the .pyc format, so the new
language will be link-compatible with the old one.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 17 16:51:08 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:51:08 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: PEP: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107171240290.11975-100000@bms>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107180043410.15217-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Bruce Sass wrote:

>
>Python currently manages .pyc and .pyo files by placing them in the
>same location as the .py they are generated from, only if the location
>is not writeable or the program has changed will it get recompiled...
>
>Why not extend this to allow Python to manage .py-s, and allow for set
>locations for source and byte-code; a command option can be used to
>get the old behaviour where .pyc|o live where the source does.

Good idea! But the extention must be called .spy ;-)

><...>
>
>> This will make script-writer happy (no conversion overhead) and those who
>> want to write encoding-enabled programs (they could specify
>> __encodings__.py)
>
>Do you mean: use "import __encodings__" in a program, have an
>__encodings__.py in a modules subdir (as is with __init__.py), or just
>on sys.path?

I donno. I put it to provoke thoughts.

>Allowing for some kind of system and per-user customization seems
>prudent; a __magic__ file both feels natural (Pythonic) and could
>allow for system, program, and per-user settings or tweaks...

>> I have a feeling that PEP is solving non-problem. Or have I lost
>> the thread?
>
>Who ever said a PEP must solve a problem.

:)))))
Is PEP creating a problem?

>> Aren't encodings better confined in documents (in XML for examples),
>> than programs?
>
>I agree, this is document meta-stuff and should be handled as far away
>from the language as possible.  However, Python does need to look at
>documents at some point, so some way of transparently handling
>different encodings (and why not formats) is needed.

"To look at docs" doesn't require "be a doc".

>> If programs need to be written in unicode, then isn't the next step
>> o allow embedding sound, graphics and video?
>> (I imagine video docstring ;-)
>
>cool...
>
># ## format videodocstring
>
>> I can admit that using utf-8 in writing programs could be justified,
>> but Unicode... It will bring nightmare...
>
>...if handled badly.
>
>
>- Bruce
>
>p.s.
>
>Q: How do you handle literate, unicoded source with video docstrings?
>A: .py-s are assumed to be usable without pre-processing, and only
>   the bit of Python that handles the pre-processing determines when
>   a source is actually a source.py.
>
>e.g.,  doing "python source", when `source' contains:
>
>	# ## format noweb
>	# ## format videodocstring
>	# ## encoding utf-8
>
>would result in Python running `source' through the noweb filter to
>separate the code from the docs, then through the videodocstring
>filter to split off the fancy docstrings, and finally doing whatever
>it needs to do to handle the non-standard encoding.  The result would
>be called `source.py' and be stored <somewhere>; the next time Python
>gets handed `source' it can check for <somewhere>/source.py, and
>eschew the conversion steps if they have already been done.

Or, yes! And some dosstrings could be web-cam broadcasts from PythonLabs
;-)

Well, at least some recording must be done.
For example, when Python starts, it shows random piece
from M.P.F.C. show. (When Digicool will buy rights to MPFC?)

Or when user tries to put xrange outside for loop statement,
GvR's voice says: "Oh, no!"

:-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From paul at boddie.net  Mon Jul 23 09:31:21 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 06:31:21 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com>

Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in message news:<j48zhfgbny.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de>...
> 
> No, that is what the transition procedure to support the language
> change must solve. One possible procedure would be
> 
> 1. In 2.2, your algorithm continues to work unless you put some future
>    import into it.
> 
> 2. In 2.3, your algorithm continues to work, but produces a warning
>    the first time integer division is used with the '/'; you could
>    shut off the warning by either adding a future import, or using
>    '//' division.

Although this, of course, overlooks the non-trivial issues of finding
"dangerous" cases of the / operator and replacing them...

> 3. In 2.4, your algorithm will not exactly work very well.
> 
> > But the existing use of division in many applications is going to
> > suddenly work differently, leading to all kinds of strange
> > hard-to-trace bugs, and Pythons advocates are going to end up looking
> > *very* stupid indeed.
> 
> No, that won't be a sudden change.

But over a few releases, which seem to be quite frequent these days,
one may find oneself with quite a collection of "legacy" programs
which can't be guaranteed to run correctly under the most recent
releases. The typical advice in such cases is for people not to
upgrade, with the unfortunate result that certain users are likely to
find themselves stranded on increasingly neglected releases of Python;
particularly as module developers start to rely on newly introduced
features.

The result of leaving people behind in the "upgrade race" is that
Python falls into disuse. Rather than having people say...

  "Have you seen the latest Python? Upgrade now - there are loads of
   cool new features!"

...you get people saying...

  "We're not doing anything in Python any more. It was too hard to
   keep up with all the changes, and we can't get any of the
   extensions for the version we're running."

At least with the "connect" arguments furore (where the signature of
the method changed from 2 arguments to 1 tuple argument), most people
could be largely confident that they either didn't use the method in
question, or that they knew where to find the instances of the
offending method calls - even a "brute force" approach would not have
been too overwhelming for most people, I suspect.

In changing the semantics of the / operator, however, *everyone* is
made to feel insecure. And grep "/" `find . -name "*.py"` (or
whatever), unlike the suitability of such an approach in the case of
"connect", is hardly going to help. Several people are talking about
clever tools: perhaps once they are written, the authors will then
give us the type inferencing system people have been wanting for so
long. <1/2 wink>

Paul


From thomas at xs4all.net  Fri Jul  6 17:45:24 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 23:45:24 +0200
Subject: PEP scepticism
In-Reply-To: <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <cphewzlbis.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hlcp4$eiphi$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cppubkkbhf.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9hqc3i$f1dia$2@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <cpith6l3ip.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <iZR5BIA3wdR7EwJx@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20010706234523.F8098@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 04:41:43PM +0100, Robin Becker wrote:

> Dictators often assume they know best, but observation shows them to be
> uniformly wrong.

While I couldn't help but have a good, long, uproarish laugh about this
comment (recent readers of python-dev will know why ;) I don't think you're
right in this. I'm not a historian, but I do believe leaders aren't
generally seen as dictators unless they were proven wrong.

Guido may be the BDFL, but he *does* listen. He may disagree, like in this
thread, but at least he has considered the issue. Guido the Dictator made
Python, and shaped Python into what it is right now, a damned great and
*fun* language that you can show to your family/colleagues/total strangers
and be proud about.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Mon Jul  2 01:14:30 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 23:14:30 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <9hlqgt$sca$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107012301380.5806-100000@bms>

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:

> "Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
> news:bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15 at posting.google.com...
> > I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> > application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
<...>
> Just an amusing parallel... A snippet from the current JDK
> (Java) license:
>
> --- begin ---
> 8.1 Licensee acknowledges that Licensed Software may contain errors
> and is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction,
> operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility ("High Risk
> Activities"). Sun disclaims any express or implied warranty
> of fitness for such uses. Licensee represents and warrants to Sun
> that it will not use, distribute or license the Licensed Software for
> High Risk Activities.
> ---- end ----

You see the same sort of thing with electronics components, the
manufacturer doesn't want to be responsible when someone's
home-brewed-from-off-the-shelf-parts EKG experiment goes wrong.

Has Python made a list of software approved for air traffic-control
use, or is there no such thing for atc software?


- Bruce




From tim.one at home.com  Tue Jul 24 23:28:53 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:28:53 -0400
Subject: PEP238 and zope
In-Reply-To: <nvrkj9.hc9.ln@192.168.0.1>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEOOLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[kosh]
> We are a zope shop also so I really feel your pain on this one.

Since Zope Corporation pays Guido's salary, let me suggest that Zope users
are the last people in the universe with a truly good reason to worry about
anything here.

it-may-not-be-logical-but-you-can-your-life-on-it-anyway<wink>-ly y'rs
    - tim




From gustafl at algonet.se  Wed Jul  4 12:34:43 2001
From: gustafl at algonet.se (Gustaf Liljegren)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 16:34:43 GMT
Subject: Two problems with backslashes
References: <Xns90D4A141E71CDgustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148> <mailman.994256588.17929.python-list@python.org> <Xns90D4AEEA4B92Agustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.152> <9hvcu5$fu4ja$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Xns90D4BD1F823A1gustaflalgonetse@194.213.69.148>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote:

>So it appears to work here using getopt.  Something else must be going
>on. Can you post an example that generates the string with the embedded
>tabs? 

Thank you. I had no idea that Python would add the extra backslash 
automatically. Tried to isolate the problem before trying the whole thing 
on getopt. This solved the problem on a more appropriate level.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren


From mal at lemburg.com  Tue Jul 10 13:05:13 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:05:13 +0200
Subject: Unicode and Python - slides available online
Message-ID: <3B4B35C9.362A24D1@lemburg.com>

In case you are interested in Python and Unicode, you might
want to take a look at the slides I presented at this years
European Python Meeting. I have uploaded them to the Python 
Software Pages as PDF file:

	http://www.lemburg.com/python/

Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/



From volucris at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 05:05:30 2001
From: volucris at hotmail.com (Volucris)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:05:30 -0500
Subject: can anybody tell me where to find jTkinter??
References: <Cu987.36229$eY6.3874926@news20.bellglobal.com>
Message-ID: <3b612e34$0$327$6e49188b@news.goldengate.net>

http://jTkinter.sourceforge.net/

BTW, if you ever need to find an old post, you can check out
<group.google.com>.

--

Volucris (a) hotmail.com
"Eu n?o falo uma ?nica palavra do portugu?s."

"Chang" <wchang at sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:Cu987.36229$eY6.3874926 at news20.bellglobal.com...
> hi all...
>
> i've been trying to find jTkinter on the web...i don't even know if it
> exists, i happen to come across it in this newsgroup a couple of days ago,
> but i can't find the post anymore...
>
> so can anybody help me and tell me where i can find jTkinter, if it exists
> at all...
>
> thx so much~~
>
>




From peter at engcorp.com  Fri Jul 27 21:45:39 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:45:39 -0400
Subject: Ints and performance (was Re: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.996211014.7234.python-list@python.org> <3B6109E3.624BE2B0@engcorp.com> <cppuam2xnr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B621943.1B1AA18C@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> 
> > That is my point, though.  These integer optimizations are, as we
> > agree, a clear win.  Are these optimizations in danger of being impacted
> > as a result of this unification, or will we still be able to count
> > on integer performance being significantly better than that of
> > less frequently used types.
> 
> What Tim was trying to say was that under the covers we will still use
> different representations so this kind of optimization will still be
> possible.

(Voice of Homer Simpson) Woo-hoo!

Thanks for the clarification.  (The fact that it wasn't more
clear to me after Tim's reply should be taken solely as evidence
that the advanced understanding of numerical processing possessed 
by the Python core developers is so far beyond my own level that 
we should have total faith in their ability to lead the Python 
movement. ;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From tjreedy at home.com  Mon Jul 23 02:36:50 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 06:36:50 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <6CP67.18287$EP6.4740814@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995866298.23496.python-list at python.org...
> I've mentioned before that the best way to compute int ceiling in
Python is
> via:
>
>     def ceiling_of_quotient(i, j):
>         q, r = divmod(i, j)
>         return q + (r != 0)
>
> and that code doing (i + (j-1))/j instead is flirting with
sign-related
> errors and spurious OverflowError (there's code like that in the std
> library, although in context neither sign errors nor OverflowError
should be
> possible).

The first line of the my partition algorithm is
if 1 <= k <= n: raise ValueError
so sign-related error is not possible where I used this.  Spurious
overflow is possible, though only with n,k large enough to make
computation impractical anyway.  General point is good to keep in mind
though.





From tundra at tundraware.com  Mon Jul 16 19:20:05 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 23:20:05 GMT
Subject: ANN: HB - Learn Python A Little Faster
References: <3B4FE9A6.DBBF3919@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B5374B2.F24FB0F9@tundraware.com>

The URL for this has changed slightly.  It is now at:

http://www.tundraware.com/Software/hb/HB.tar.gz


Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
> 
> You'll find it at: http://www.tundraware.com/Software/HB/HB.tar.gz
> 
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From phawkins at connact.com  Fri Jul 20 17:33:57 2001
From: phawkins at connact.com (phawkins at connact.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 17:33:57 -0400
Subject: Newbie list question
References: <13c69f60.0107130843.5cd7dc38@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <wk7kx3nv3u.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "MA" == Matthew Alton <Matthew.Alton at Anheuser-Busch.COM> writes:

MA> I am a UNIX/C programmer w/15y experience.  Forgive me if my neural
MA> pathways are all about following pointers.  The adjustment to
MA> Python-think is bumpy but I'll get by with a little help from my
MA> friends, eh?

MA> Here's the crux of the biscuit:

>>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
>>>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?
>>>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.
>>>> foo
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> bar 
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> baz
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
>>>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
MA> bar (?)
>>>> foo
MA> ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
>>>> bar
MA> ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
>>>> baz
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
MA> expected.
>>>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

You reassigned foo.  

foo + ['c'] creates a new object; bar now points to the original
object, foo points to a new and different object.  Foo is a label
bound to an object -- think key-value pair, not pointer to an address.

Try foo.append('c')
or foo += 'c'

>>>> foo
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  'c' is back.  Good.
>>>> bar
MA> ['a', 'b']                 #  ??? What the... ???  Where is 'c'?
>>>> baz
MA> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz still unaffected, of course.
>>>> 

MA> I have verified this behavior on Python 1.5.1 (AIX 4.3.3) and on
MA> Python 2.1
MA> (Solaris Sparc 2.8).  From my arcane perspective, this behavior is
MA> utterly inconsistent and confusing.  I strongly suspect that I simply
MA> do not correctly grok the list structure, but so far I am unable to
MA> turn up an explanation in the literature.

MA> Any help is appreciated.
MA> -- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From shredwheat at mediaone.net  Fri Jul 20 02:53:56 2001
From: shredwheat at mediaone.net (Pete Shinners)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 06:53:56 GMT
Subject: Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis
References: <mailman.995563592.3004.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <8AQ57.30843$ca.8225465@typhoon.we.rr.com>

> I can prove that Guido van Rossum is secretly Rick Moranis.

heh, this could come in handy if some day guido is attempting
to break out of prison and needs to get a picture of some
celebrity to use for a fake id card.

although i guess it could work the other way around too,
if rick is ever imprisoned.





From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Tue Jul 24 15:06:58 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:06:58 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <k_h77.23757$B7.3910692@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lrdst.k2v.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <vpj77.24033$B7.3921711@ruti.visi.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-5C5C2E.12065824072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <vpj77.24033$B7.3921711 at ruti.visi.com>,
 grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote:

> I don't understand, but it's a moot point.  If DFL wants it, it
> will happen.  There's no point in arguing about it any more.

You're likely right, but if BDFL wants to blur the distinction between 
exact and approximate quantities, I will likely pick a language that better 
matches the way I think.  I would be happier with a language that had no 
floats in it at all than one in which my integers mysteriously turned into 
floats because I forgot to use the different nonstandard operator notation.

Beyond that, I am going to stop participating in this discussion, I don't 
think I have any more to add.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From thomas at xs4all.net  Sun Jul  8 19:37:27 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 01:37:27 +0200
Subject: c bindings
In-Reply-To: <p9p17.50949$aW5.630440@dfw-read.news.verio.net>
References: <p9p17.50949$aW5.630440@dfw-read.news.verio.net>
Message-ID: <20010709013727.P8098@xs4all.nl>

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 01:25:21PM -0700, Sebastien Loisel wrote:


> I am writing an extension module. For this purpose, I have written a very
> short code generator, to create wrappers around my C library. For some
> simple test cases, it seems to work fine, but I am encountering core dumps
> with a more complete program.

Your best bet is really to examine the corefile in gdb, it can often point
you directly to the problem. Changing the 'gtc_must_malloc's in your example
to just plain 'malloc', your code works, and you don't give any clues about
how to break it. Still, here are some hints.

> static PyObject *example_py(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
> {
>   int j;
>   PyObject *_;

Bad style... Don't use _* names unless you know what you're doing, it might
clash with something platformish, 'hidden'.

>   if(!PyArg_ParseTuple(args,"O", &param_helper)) return 0;

Bad style... Your function returns a pointer, you should return 'NULL', not
0. Unlikely to be the cause of the problem, though.

>   ret_size=param_size;
>   ret=gtc_must_malloc(sizeof(float)*ret_size);
>   for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) ret[j]=param[j]+j/2.0;
>   if(ret_size<0) abort();

Too late for this check. If reg_size is smaller than 0, the malloc() would
already have failed and you die in the for loop. What's more, you didn't
check the return value of the malloc. And cramming the for statement and
body all on one line is, well, bad style :-)

>   ret_list=PyList_New(ret_size);
>   for(j=0;j<ret_size;j++) {
>     PyList_SetItem(ret_list,j,PyFloat_FromDouble(ret[j]));

Note: you can use PyList_SETITEM here, it works the same but is faster, and
you already know the list is a real list and is long enough to hold the
result.

>   free(ret);
>   return ret_list;
> }
> static PyMethodDef example_methods[] = {
>   {"example",example_py,1},

Better use the define 'METH_VARARS' than a literal 1 here... not just better
style, but more guaranteed to work later :)

>   {0,0} // sentinel

And these should be NULL's.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Fri Jul 27 06:30:28 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:30:28 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9m2gm7.8ff.nde@cslin-gps.comp>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 18:40:08 -0700,
David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

> I still don't like the phrase "true division", it implies a value judgement 
> that quotients are somehow an inferior thing to want to compute.

How about "real division"?  I guess this also implies a value
judgement, but at least its a pun... :)


Nick


From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul 20 13:54:41 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:54:41 -0500
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se>
        <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <15192.28769.26104.926038@beluga.mojam.com>

Some observations and data from someone who has yet to participate in this
discussion.

I have seen at least one argument that interfaces to external packages it is
useful to be able to map more easily onto the identifiers in external
systems.  Most of those external systems tend to be case-sensitive, because
they tend to be written in C or C++.  What effect would case-insensitivity
in the language have on packages like Boost, SWIG or Jython?  I imagine that
at the least, they would have to develop some sort of name mapping.  One of
the advantages of automatic wrapper generators is that it preserves (most
of) the value of existing documentation.  Case-insensitivity would probably
hurt somewhat there.

I don't think you can add a switch to the language to make it
case-insensitive on-the-fly by the user.  Users would not be able to
reliably use external packages that had been coded expecting to only be used
in one environment or the other.  For the sanity of all involved, I think
the language is either going to have to be strictly case-sensitive or
strictly case-insensitive.  A schizophrenic interpreter would probably only
induce psychoses in its users. ;-)

I wrote a simple script using the tokenize module to classify the names in
the Python sources in the current distribution (cvs up'd from the
descr-branch this morning) and spit out potential name clashes if those
names were compared in a case-insensitive fashion.  I ran the script from my
build directory under .../dist/src as:

    find .. -name '*.py' | xargs ./python ~/tmp/spittokens.py

The output looks like:

    ../Demo/classes/Rat.py
       rat,Rat
    ...
    ../Lib/distutils/sysconfig.py
       PREFIX,prefix
       EXEC_PREFIX,exec_prefix
       TextFile,text_file

The script considers all names that don't begin with an underscore, however,
for all other names it elides underscores before classifying them.  For
example "my_dog", "mydog", "MyDog", and "my_dog__" would all be classified
the same.  My assumption was that in the absence of capitalization as a way
to distinguish names, underscores would be used more than they are today and
so "my_dog" and "MyDog" should be classified the same, because the most
likely way to prevent "mydog" and "MyDog" from clashing in a
case-insensitive world would be to rewrite the former as "my_dog".  This
obviously errs on the high side when considering what might need to be done
to the Python core libraries.  It also completely ignores the core C source
code, the names of the source files themselves, and potential name clashes
across module boundaries (all sources of plenty of potentially clashing
identifiers).

With those caveats, it identified 504 Python source files (out of a total of
1335 .py files) in the current distribution that might have name conflicts
(or would at least have to be checked) if Python became case-insensitive.
The directories with the most files that would have to be checked are

     64 ../Lib
     34 ../Lib/test
     32 ../Demo/tkinter/matt
     25 ../Tools/idle
     21 ../Mac/Tools/IDE
     21 ../Demo/tkinter/guido
     21 ../Demo/sgi/video
     15 ../Mac/Lib
     14 ../Lib/distutils
     13 ../Mac/Lib/test
     12 ../Lib/lib-tk
     10 ../Tools/scripts
     10 ../Tools/pynche
     10 ../Mac/scripts

The source and the output are available at

    http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/spittokens.py
    http://musi-cal.mojam.com/~skip/spittokens.out

respectively.

Finally, I ran the script over my personal library of Python source files.
It identified 75 files out of 360 with potential name conflicts.  I suspect
if the language is changed I will adapt without much difficulty, but it will
be tedious.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 00:22:53 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 05:22:53 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <i3voltca29ai6vjoh93keh40js9hgjh80l@4ax.com> <mailman.995938001.362.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <p4tplt0fkhh5v1ujiglscet04mglds6htf@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:25:41 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>Then we went to the all-conference lunch, and I happened to sit next to a
>Python newbie fresh from Perl.  He hadn't been at the numeric discussion.
>His first question was "hey!  how come I have to convert my strings to ints
>when I add?  I didn't have to do that in Perl!".  Arghghghghgh.

Now that I'm too burnt out to stress any more (and works in a couple
of hours and I've only been awake about 40 hours ;-) I'll just relax
and enjoy your suffering ;-)



From chrishbarker at home.net  Tue Jul 24 17:37:12 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:37:12 -0700
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <p8unltsi5qda8rpdavja4iemj6r1s2ak4a@4ax.com> <j48zhfgbny.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <23891c90.0107230531.4fb02b12@posting.google.com> <cpd76qqfow.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DEA88.553AF758@home.net>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> I think it will be inevitable for many Pythons to come to provide a
> way to turn off the new division rules.  I am currently working on a
> command line option for this.

That may be true, but I think it is unfortunate. Having command line
options means that we allow different dialects of the language that are
indistinguishable by just looking at the code.

Python is an evolving language. I, for one, am very happy about that (I
was ecstatic about the addition of rich comparisons, among other
things). It does mean that code written with 2.1 in mind will not run on
1.5.2, but that's not too bad. What is bad is that code written for
1.5.2 might not run on a version 2.4 interpreter. A lot of folks have
made it very clear that that could cause a LOT of problems. I agree, and
I think we really can evolve the language without causing that kind of
code breakage.

Some folks have suggested a "from __past__" type construct, or a "from
numeric import new_division". Neither of these is a good approach. the
from __past__ requires old code to be changed (even if just a little),
and the from numeric... means that there will be a number of different
dialects of the language. At least you can tell form the source which
dialect you are using, but i f you are writing code, and using other
code, you could get pretty confused.

It seems to me that Python's evolution is a one way street: for the most
part features are added, and occasionally (rarely, I hope) a backwards
incompatibility is introduced. Since it is a one way street, I think it
is reasonable for new code not to run on old interpreters, we've
accepted that already. What to do about old code running on new
interpreters?

As of Python 2.2 (or 2.3, whatever, as long as it is as soon as any
backward incompatibility is introduced) require something at the top of
every source file: a line like:

#version 2.3

This is now an indicator of what version of Python the code runs under.
If that line is not there, it is assumed that it is for a version less
that 2.3: In that case, the interpreter has a backward compatibility
mode, and runs that code in that mode. This could probably be a change
at the compiling level, and the resultant byte code could be compatible.

The nice thing about this approach is that it:

A) will not break old code. Ever. At all.

B) It sets up a system for other changes that might be backward
incompatible as well. Let them be few and far between!

C) it restricts the different dialects to being only version changes,
and only a one way street. I think this is a good thing: I don't want
Python coders in the future to be able to use a version that has, for
example:

the old division, but case insensitive

or

the new division but case sensitive,

or 

old division, case sensitive, but with all the other new features of
version 2.6

If you allow people to choose, through command line options, or some
version of import, each of these features separately, you will have a
big mess!!

Guido, (and everyone else) I'd love to hear your take on this proposal,
I'm sure it's full of holes, but I don't what they are. I started a
thread about it, and have gotten responses, but no one has actually
commented on the proposal itself. 

See the thread: "A way to accommodate laguage changes" I went into a
little more detail there. I also misspelled language!

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rnd at onego.ru  Tue Jul 10 05:25:28 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:25:28 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: os.nice (or docs) BUG?
In-Reply-To: <20010710110234.V8098@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107101323380.1573-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Thomas Wouters wrote:

> > Which category to report it in the Bug tracker?
> 
> 'Python Library' is the best fit, I guess, but it doesn't really matter.
> The group should be 'platform specific', though :) Feel free to assign it
> to me, I think I'll check in a fix soon anyway :)

I did. With hope the fix is not "remove" ;-)
It could also be nice to have os.getpriority()

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Mon Jul 30 07:51:23 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 21:51:23 +1000
Subject: 100,000 messages celebration?
References: <25b2e0d9.0107291052.7780d1f8@posting.google.com> <3B64BA49.C105612B@student.gu.edu.au> <5D997.52$Nq1.2409@nreader1.kpnqwest.net>
Message-ID: <3B654A3B.61D17D7E@student.gu.edu.au>

Francis Meyvis wrote:
> 
> This would be great!
> I remember in the very very beginning
> a lot of people were posting silly jokes on the list.
> I think they thought this list was about the Monty Python thing.
> Much to the frustration of some "serious" clerics.
> At that time it were my first experiences with the "net".
> Very enjoyable it was!

Well I'm a late-comer, so all the "great exploits" of the c.l.py group
are only myth and legend to me. Though I did cruise the www.python.org
site to find out what the #$*%)-was-with-the-ly-y'rs- ly-yr's.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From michael at rcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 19 03:53:59 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:53:59 +0100
Subject: Python, C++, Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel,...
References: <9is8rm$46d$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9l5ngp.87g.jajvirta@sirppi.helsinki.fi> <9iv7ae$gs0$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <9j63lk$ogp$1@newsfeed.th.ifl.net>

"Donn Cave" <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:9iv7ae$gs0$1 at nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> One thing about this and other comparisons to be seen on the web,
> OCaml belongs on the list if only for its speed.
I also was encouraged by the presence of OCaml.  I'm troubled by the absence
of strong typing in Python, and it's good to see a strongly typed language
with comparable expressive strength.

I haven't yet tried writing anything in OCaml, but I'm anticipating being
let down by the library support in comparison with Python, particularly on
Win32!

> (And too bad that doesn't work for Erlang or Haskell.)
I'm also a fan of Haskell, but somehow the bar to practical application
seems that much higher...





From rob at jam.rr.com  Wed Jul 25 11:44:03 2001
From: rob at jam.rr.com (Rob Andrews)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:44:03 GMT
Subject: newbie projects
References: <mailman.996028966.8516.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5EE8C7.EEBA41CC@jam.rr.com>

fett at tradersdata.com wrote:
> 
> Uh I know this sounds knda dumb but anyoone have a job that they want
> done cheap or for free that doesnt have to be done by a professional,
> because im not one by any stretch of the immagination.  But i need some
> type of project to do to help me hone my skills.
> 
> Dan

You might like the Python Challenges at Useless Python. They were
designed explicitly to provide just this sort of project. You can post
your creation for the world to see at Useless if you wish, as well.

There are also about a hundred newbie and intermediate Python scripts
you can hack on to your heart's content, and close to a thousand
programming contest problems waiting to be solved.

http://www.lowerstandard.com/python/pythonchallenge.html

Rob
-- 
As foretold by Nostradamus....
Useless Python!
http://www.lowerstandard.com/python


From gradha at iname.com  Sat Jul 21 18:24:38 2001
From: gradha at iname.com (gradha at iname.com)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:24:38 +0200
Subject: What's the best way to delete duplicated entries in a list?
References: <fi1cj9.8qm.ln@127.0.0.1> <3B59B7E9.48984FCB@recombinant.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <6fvcj9.08t.ln@127.0.0.1>

Stephen D Evans <stevee at recombinant.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Some documented reusable code for removing duplicates from a sequence:

> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52560

Thanks for the link. Certainly using dictionaries looks cool :-)

--
 Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz   gradha at terra.es   http://gradha.infierno.org


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 19:28:00 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 18:28:00 -0500
Subject: Postgres  support
In-Reply-To: <15169.456.489888.509381@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com>
	<slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
	<15169.456.489888.509381@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <15169.896.236390.41227@beluga.mojam.com>

doh.  Never get interrupted by a phone call in the midst of composing an
email...

    Skip>   I've been happy with the interface to MySQL, though the

Should have completed this sentence with

    performance sometimes leaves a bit to be desired.

Skip



From rzantow at usa.net  Fri Jul 20 07:15:29 2001
From: rzantow at usa.net (- RZ)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 04:15:29 -0700
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <93d9a839.0107200315.4a0a8c28@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpvgkofyru.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> 
> Several people whom I respect have strongly suggested that if Python
> wants to appeal to non-programmers, it should be case-insensitive.
> (Leaving apart details of how to implement that; I agree that it
> should be case-preserving.)  Others, whome I respect just as much,
> feel that it should be case-sensitive.
> 
[snippage]
> 
> It's been argued that making string, String, STRING and StRiNg mean
> the same thing makes for less readable programs.  I agree.  A good
> programming environment should silently correct the case of
> identifiers as you type to conform to the definition.  This also means
> that you can still use different case conventions to hint about what
> type of identifier it is, e.g. MACRO, Class, variable.
> 
> It's been argued that it's convenient to be able to write c = C(),
> where C is a class and c is an instance of that class.  Surely there
> are other conventions we can use.
> 
> To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
> case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
> existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
> Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.
> 

It seems to me that Python IS case-sensitive. Maybe Python3K will not
be, but that's another language. Case-sensitivity is too fundamental
to change without making the same sort of break as between C and C++.

Personally, I favor the case-sensitive side. I've worked in an
environment with a case-insensitive language (PL/I on an IBM
mainframe) and an editor that allowed case-preservation in the data
and UPPERCASE DISPLAY on the monitor. What an unholy mess *that* was!
Some coders worked with caps lock on, some not. While uppercase
display was set, you couldn't see the difference, but toggle it off
and all bets were off. It exactly resembled the bad examples people
have brought up:
(aStrinG = AsTRING || " some more text";
 intvaRBl = INTvarbl + 1;
 ... and much more like that. No, people don't code that way
deliberately, but they do correct typos without realizing the original
case.) Please don't let it happen to Python! But, oh yeah, there are
the tools.

If case-preservation were tool-enforced, then all of us would
essentially have to use those tools. Many would, but many already have
favorite coding tools that are not necessarily interested in or
capable of such logic. I'd rather use the tools I like than tools I
don't know, and I believe it would be a reason not to follow into the
brave new Py3k world. (Just as an aside, I occasionally have to use MS
Word, and I get extremely annoyed at having to fight against the
software to keep the case and indention levels where I want them,
rather than where it wants them.)

What this and previous discussions of the topic indicate to me is that
case-sensitivity provides a reason for and an opportunity for a fork
in the language; one path leads to Python3000, the other to TruePython
;-) I'd hate to see that happen at this stage of the game, though. I'd
suppose Guido would move to the Py3K line, leaving TruePython to serve
as the stable, incrementally-improving, corporate-love-winning
contender that would eventually win the mindshare game and itself
become the One Obvious Way to Do Computer Programming 4 Everyone!


From johann at physics.berkeley.edu  Mon Jul 23 16:57:59 2001
From: johann at physics.berkeley.edu (Johann Hibschman)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 13:57:59 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <8rdoltsi3fcph86pnkgckmiqich6d9qqng@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <mtn15v2wiw.fsf@astron.berkeley.edu>

[followup accidentally mailed as well; sorry Steve!]

Steve Horne writes:

> Tell that to a mathematician, or an engineer, or even an accountant -
> all of these need to deal with inherently integer measures and
> therefore using integer operations. Any of these people who have
> Python scripts using division are going to have a problem.

Well, I'll believe you for accountants, but they generally want
a fixed decimal class anyway, don't they?  However...

> Engineering - How would you feel if you knew a bridge was going to be
> built with 2.5 supports on each side?

Engineers who use division almost always use floating point division.
These are the folks who invented floats.  Physical scientists like me
also have far more cause to use float than integer division.  I'd love
not to have to worry about an integer being passed to any of my
thousand lines of computational code and producing screwy results.

> Mathematics - Mathemeticians practically *invented* integers, and note
> that integers were understood thousands of years before fractions,
> decimals or standard form.

And mathematicians know you can't divide the integers, because they're
a ring and not a field.

> Have you noticed how none of these groups consists of experienced
> programmers?

Anyway, there are two camps.  The proposed new behavior would make my
life easier, so I like it.  It's also "the right thing" from a
mathematical point of view.  Others clearly disagree.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu


From seanh at unforgettable.com  Tue Jul 24 01:31:43 2001
From: seanh at unforgettable.com (Sean Hummel)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 22:31:43 -0700
Subject: UPC Display Code
Message-ID: <34dcae24.0107232131.59bbbc09@posting.google.com>

Does anyone have some Python code which creates UPC Barcodes, say as
GIFs or JPGs, so that you can use them on a website?


From akuchlin at mems-exchange.org  Fri Jul  6 08:43:12 2001
From: akuchlin at mems-exchange.org (Andrew Kuchling)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 08:43:12 -0400
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library  development
References: <mailman.993826974.11013.python-list@python.org> <cp1yo3l0si.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994046162.21135.python-list@python.org> <3B44B63A.BB507CBF@home.net> <mailman.994368791.9779.python-list@python.org> <Lsd17.8383$e5.1082989@newsb.telia.net>
Message-ID: <3dlmm2qlcv.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>

"Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> writes:
> where's the PPM protocol docs?

aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Reference/Products/ActivePerl/
   site/lib/PPM/XML/PPD.html

> how do I add new nodes to the PPM distribution network?

Beats me.

Bruce Sass's suggestion of using the Debian package manager is a good
one, because apt really provides exactly what we need.  Unfortunately
porting it to Windows or Mac is probably hard, so we could just steal
its interface (which seems similar to pyppm's) and reimplement it in
pure Python.

--amk


From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 13:50:39 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:50:39 GMT
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <Prl37.13021$B7.2573852@ruti.visi.com>

In article <9ikgpq$j1cff$1 at ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>, Emile van Sebille wrote:
>I've been writing a business math class that allows for multiple precision
>accuracy, and in testing stumbled on this behavior:
>
>>>> from BNum import BNum as bn
>
>>>> ab = bn('1.2340000')
>>>> cb = bn('123.45')
>>>> ab
>1.2340000
>>>> ab * cb
>152.3373000
>>>> (ab*cb).disp(2)
>'152.34'
>>>> print '%8.2f' % ab*cb
>151.84

Eh??  Shouldn't give an error:

'%8.2f' % ab*cb  ==>  ('%8.2f' % ab) * cb
                 ==>   'some string' * cb
                 
if cb is a float, you should get an error like this:

>>> print "%8.2f" % 3.4*5.5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for *
>>> 

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  ... If I had heart
                                  at               failure right now,
                               visi.com            I couldn't be a more
                                                   fortunate man!!


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul  9 06:34:58 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 9 Jul 2001 10:34:58 GMT
Subject: dummy/trash object
References: <mailman.994671443.23621.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kj26i.nof.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:36:35 +0200 (CEST), Xavier Defrang <xavier at perceval.net> pisze:

> I'm sure that someone already came with a question like : "why is
> there no real dummy or trash object in Python which could by used
> like the magic '_' in Prolog?"

You can implement it yourself, but it will look a bit ugly:

class trash:
    def __setattr__(self, attr, val): pass
_ = trash()

x, _.y, z, _.u = t

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From ts1 at its.com.sg  Wed Jul 25 02:17:05 2001
From: ts1 at its.com.sg (ts1 at its.com.sg)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:17:05 PDT
Subject: tr
Message-ID: <3b5d91b8$1@news.starhub.net.sg>

gu
jg jkgo yio ypouo [pio[ op[l
]



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Tue Jul 17 07:09:10 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 11:09:10 GMT
Subject: integer division rounding
References: <3b53bd00$0$16309$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au> <fBR47.12488$p7.4225009@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <3b53dedd$0$16308$603e2862@news.adl.ihug.com.au>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9l876l.hsn.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:47:38 +0930, Michael Lunnay <mlunnay at ihug.com.au> pisze:

> Which is 'mathematically' correct then?

Donald E. Knuth said (in "Concrete Mathematics") about div/mod with
negative arguments: beware of programming languages which use a
different definition than Python!

He didn't actually mention Python as an example, but described directly
how it should work.

BTW, Haskell has both: div/mod as in Python and quot/rem as in C.
In C89 it was unspecified which way it works, but in C99 it is now
specified to work "incorrectly". Intel processors natively implement
the "incorrect" variant.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Sun Jul 22 17:00:53 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:00:53 +0300
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com>, <mailman.995826216.11537.python-list@python.org> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <E15OQLN-0004Js-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:24:22 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
 
> I agree.  It's turning an otherwise fairly strongly (but dynamically)
> typed language on its head.  If I want type-changing operations, I'll do
> them explicitly.

Be sure to tell math.cos that...it has been "silently" turning integers
into floats for years.

>     Esperanto reference / http://mirror/alcyone/max/lang/esperanto/

Err.....problem with the URL? I don't think there's a host called "mirror".
A pity, sounded interesting.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 28 11:39:42 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 11:39:42 -0400
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
References: <mailman.996311033.21035.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <etdg0bhqczl.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

> This won't be solved in general by magic until someone contributes
> code to launch "Run Script" in a fresh process; but that's not always
> what you'll want either.

I got sick of having to keep track of which modules need to be reloaded,
and now have a framework for emacs python-mode that temporarily
overrides __builtin__.__import__ and tracks which modules are importing
which so that by top-sorting the dependancy graph it only needs to
reload the modules that have changed on disk and the modules that depend
on those.  It works pretty well for my needs, except that sometimes the
dependancy graph is a little out of sync and you have to do the reload a
time or two extra.  If there's enough interest, I could have a look at
fixing that (just a matter of repeating the reloads until the dependancy
graph stabilizes) and folding it into IDLE.

Alex.



From tanzer at swing.co.at  Wed Jul 25 02:02:11 2001
From: tanzer at swing.co.at (Christian Tanzer)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:02:11 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: PEP238 and zope 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:16:54 EDT."
             <15197.62422.841114.343701@anthem.wooz.org> 
Message-ID: <m15PHkJ-000wcBC@swing.co.at>

barry at zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) wrote:

> >>>>> "TJ" == Tom Jenkins <tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com> writes:
> 
>     TJ> these snippets.  I don't believe zope will surface any
>     TJ> warnings that PEP238 stipulates (tho I may be wrong).  How do
>     TJ> we code _now_ so as to minimize our pain?
> 
> >>> must_be_int = 1 / 2
> >>> must_be_int
> 0
> >>> must_be_int = int(1.0 / 2.0)
> >>> must_be_int
> 0

This isn't portable behavior. According to the python library
reference, `int` may round on some platforms. 

-- 
Christian Tanzer                                         tanzer at swing.co.at
Glasauergasse 32                                       Tel: +43 1 876 62 36
A-1130 Vienna, Austria                                 Fax: +43 1 877 66 92



From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul  7 10:51:31 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 10:51:31 -0400
Subject: Limiting thread intruction count
References: <3b46ddb2$0$332$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>
Message-ID: <3B4721F3.BA771F79@engcorp.com>

Neil Macneale wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to limit the number of instructions executed by a thread
> to a certain number?  

What do you mean by "instructions"?  Machine language opcodes?  Python
bytecode instructions?  Python source instructions ("statements")?

> The idea is that I have a game where people play there code against
> others, and I would like to have some granularity in the number of
> intructions each thread executes in a given time frame.

Are you doing this to make the game "fair"?  In what sense?

Would you then need to consider the total amount of processing 
time used by a given thread?  Or are you trying to see how 
efficiently (in terms of source lines of code) your players can 
code their algorithms, by putting a limiter on their code
at a higher level such as source lines of code executed per
unit time?

By the way, Python can, depending on the platform, already 
do some kind of round-robin style of multithreading (switching
threads after a given number of Python bytecode instructions)
which may have an effect similar to what you are trying to 
achieve, but I suspect what you are really looking for can 
not be found in that way.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 20:53:28 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:53:28 -0400
Subject: Python Idiom Question
References: <3B4A4126.7AD3CDD0@tundraware.com> <8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <mks27.2166$xf7.122975@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:8Zr27.2394$vA6.115437 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com...
> "Tim Daneliuk" <tundra at tundraware.com> wrote in ...
> > What is the equivalent python idiom to the following 'C' code:
> >
> > while (x=getchar() != 'N')
> > {
> > Do something}
> >
> > In other words, is there a convenient way to simultaneously get
> > input, from say, raw_input() or f.read(), and check the return
> > value agains some logical construct, re pattern match, or whatever?
> >
> > I'm sure this is possible, I just cannot seem to find the magic
> > combination that gets me there.  Nothing seems to turn up when I
> > look in the Usual Places, but then again, I may not be Lookin' Right.
> >
> > At the moment, I'm doing things like:
> >
> > x=raw_input()
> > while x:
> > Do Something Interesting
> > x = get_input("Prompt: ")
> >
> The approved idiom is
>
> x = raw_input()
> while 1:
>     if not x:
>         break
>     DoSomethingInteresting()
>
while 1:
    x = raw_input()
    if not x:
        break
    DoSomethingInteresting()

Most people do prefer the loop to iterate more than once... sori!






From guido at zope.com  Mon Jul 30 16:22:03 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:22:03 -0400
Subject: www.python.org is down
Message-ID: <200107302022.f6UKM5r03700@odiug.digicool.com>

We have a broken hard drive on the machine that is www.python.org.
CNRI claims there is no spare drive.  It may be a while before we
resolve this.  In the mean time, here's a mirror:

http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/Python/www.python.org/

Here's a list of mirrors:

http://mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/Python/www.python.org/Mirrors.html

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 27 20:49:47 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:49:47 +1000
Subject: Problem with Python-2.1.1 and Numeric-20.1.0
References: <3B6090BD.F2B81140@quasar.ipa.nw.ru> <3B612739.8E3C6C1C@student.gu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3B620C2B.CB2B8308@student.gu.edu.au>

Joal Heagney wrote:

> I've put in a patch report to both python and numeric (Sorry
> Guido/others if I seem to be harping. I know you're on the case), but
> thought I'd add my two cents worth here to encourage/see if others have
> been having similar problems with Numeric/Py2.1.1.

Okay. I got a response from the Numeric team about my problem. They say
that it is suspected to be a result of different naming conventions
between their supplied fortran-blas (Which is what Numeric builds by
default), and my system c-blas. So I guess the fix is to not build
Numeric against system blas libraries. *sighs* They also report that it
is being looked at, *grins* but for such an easily avoided problem, I
wouldn't be surprised or upset if they dealt with higher priority issues
first.

So, it didn't have anything to do with the new release.
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From nperkins7 at home.com  Sat Jul 14 14:35:18 2001
From: nperkins7 at home.com (Nick Perkins)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:35:18 GMT
Subject: Calling functions in a loop
References: <7b9380ca.0107140919.b80cd8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <Gh047.474307$eK2.98558395@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>

for Fn in Fn1, Fn2:
    Fn()

(don't use eval!)



"NANDYALA D Gangadhar" <n_d_gangadhar at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7b9380ca.0107140919.b80cd8 at posting.google.com...
> Hello,
>
> I am new to Python (I already like it very much) and I have a newbee
> question: How do I call a set of functions from inside a loop? I tried
> the following, and it understanbly fails with:
>
> TypeError: object is not callable: 'Fn1'
>
> -- Code --
> #!/usr/bin/env python
>
> __all__ = ["Fn1", "Fn2"]
>
> def Fn1():
>         print "I am Fn1"
>
> def Fn2():
>         print "I am Fn2"
>
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>         for Fn in __all__:
>                 Fn()
> -- /Code --
>
> Would someone show the correct way of getting the functionality I need?
>
> Thanks,
> Gangadhar




From mal at lemburg.com  Sun Jul 15 14:07:50 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 20:07:50 +0200
Subject: [Python-Dev] Re: PEP: Defining Unicode Literal Encodings (revision 
 1.1)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEHKKOAA.tim.one@home.com> <3B50C1FF.7E73739B@ActiveState.com> <200107150126.VAA23781@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>  
	            <3B51CFB0.ACE9070D@ActiveState.com> <200107151729.NAA00455@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B51DBF6.6456A750@lemburg.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > > Explain again why a directive is better than a specially marked
> > > comment, when your main goal seems to be to make it easy for
> > > non-parsing tools like editors to find it?
> > >...
> >
> > Parsing tools do need it. The directive changes the file's semantics.
> > Both parsing and non-parsing tools need it.
> 
> I understand that.
> 
> > I could live with a comment but I think that that is actually harder to
> > implement so I don't understand the benefit...I'm still trying to
> > understand what tools we are protecting. compiler.py can be easily
> > fixed. The real parser/compiler can be easily fixed. The other tools
> > mostly take their cue from one of these two modules, right?
> 
> I disagree with the first sentence -- I believe a comment is easier to
> implement.  The directive statement is still problematic.  Martin's
> hack falls short of doing the right thing in all cases: you can't have
> the first statement of your program be "directive = ..." or
> "directive(...)".
> 
> Another argument for a comment: I expect there could be situations
> where you want to declare an encoding that doesn't affect the Python
> parser, but that does affect the editor (e.g. when you use the
> encoding only in comments and/or 8-bit strings).  A comment would
> back-port to older Python versions; a directive statement wouldn't.  I
> don't know how important this is though.

Even though putting the information into a comment would
indeed be easier to implement, I think that from a design point
of view, it is a hack and not a clean design.

Note that a programmer can always place the encoding information
in the format needed for the editor into an additional comment
in fron of the doc-string if that's needed (the comment format 
needed for the editor will be editor-specific !).

I think that apart from adding a new keyword to the language
the argument about breaking doc-string tools is not a valid
one. Non-Unicode doc-strings will continue to work like they
always have:

#!/usr/local/bin/python
# -*- encoding='utf-8' -*-
""" Binary doc-string using UTF-8
"""
directive unicodeencoding = 'utf-8'
...
print u"Unicode encoded as UTF-8 rather than unicode-escape"
...

Or am I missing something ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/





From tjg at hyperlinq.net  Fri Jul  6 23:16:04 2001
From: tjg at hyperlinq.net (Timothy Grant)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 20:16:04 -0700
Subject: History command
In-Reply-To: <3B44F444.CE6FBCB0@novasemi.com>; from ramzi.abunofal@novasemi.com on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:14:36PM +0000
References: <3B44F444.CE6FBCB0@novasemi.com>
Message-ID: <20010706201604.A26950@trufflehunter.hyperlinq.net>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:14:36PM +0000, Ramzi Abu Nofal wrote:
> Hi all ,
> I am trying to find history command ( like history in Unix,or doskey in
> dos/win)
> to list all the command that have been executed .
> I can do it using the readline module, but I need to save the result of
> the
> commnad too.

I believe that the following taken from my python startup file
may do what you want.

histfile="%s/.python-history" % os.environ["HOME"]
readline.read_init_file('~/.inputrc')
readline.read_history_file(histfile)

def savehist():   
    global histfile
	readline.write_history_file(histfile)
	
atexit.register(savehist)
	

-- 
Stand Fast,
    tjg.

Timothy Grant                                www.hyperlinq.net 
Chief Technology Officer                     tjg at hyperlinq.net 
HyperLINq Technologies, Inc.                <>< (503) 246-3630
>>>>>>>>>>>>>Linux, because rebooting is *NOT* normal<<<<<<<<<
>>>>This machine was last rebooted:  32 days  3:14 hours ago<<



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 17:03:50 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 21:03:50 GMT
Subject: 2.2 features
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org> <cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

28 Jul 2001 18:33:33 GMT, Quinn Dunkan <quinn at retch.ugcs.caltech.edu> pisze:

> This implies (at least to me) that 'in' would be a general shorthand
> for 'isinstance'.  But then I would sort of expect '3 in [1,2,3,4]'
> to behave like 'isinstance(3, [1,2,3,4])'

If you forget about 'isinstance' then everything is ok, right?
'in' performs some membership test whose details depend on the second
argument. It should not be more confusing that '+' being either addition
of numbers and concatenation of sequences. We don't expect "a"-(-"b")
to be equivalent to "a"+"b" just because 3-(-4) is equivalent to 3+4.

Now thow in 'isinstance' as an old way to spell a specific membership
test (for types and classes) which doesn't have to be learned about
at all.

> Or you could just say that type objects implement a __contains__
> method that does an isinstance. But if classes and types are unified,
> that would get in the way of classes that define __contains__.

It indeed shows a flaw in unifying "attributes of instances which
are defined by their classes" with "attributes of class objects
themselves".

For example many objects are hashed by what o.__hash__() returns,
but not type objects, because their __hash__ is something completely
different (it expects an argument and hashes it instead of the
receiver). Similarly for most magic methods.

It more or less works because intersection of proper attributes of
type objects and attributes which are always polymorphically extracted
using names (and not slots in the representation of type objects)
happens to be empty.

This is so hardwired into Python and pushed by type/class unification
that I don't believe it can be avoided without redesigning the language
from scratch.

This particular case of __contains__ is not different than e.g.
__hash__ or __str__. You can't redefine in Python how your class object
(or type object in Python-2.2) will be hashed or printed, you won't
be able to override the membership test either (and you can't now
AFAIK) - unless something solves the generic problem of putting class
attributes and static instance attributes in one namespace.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 17:55:58 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:55:58 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library 
 development
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E8@admin56.narex.com>
Message-ID: <3B44E26E.16B8064F@ActiveState.com>

Bjorn Pettersen wrote:
> 
>..
> Which is just begging for someone to do:
> 
>   try:
>     import Numeric
>   except ImportError:
>     import pyppm
>     pyppm.install('Numeric')
>     import Numeric
> 
> <wink>?

Heh. For years we (the Python development community, not ActiveState in
particular) have been talking about having the import statement *itself*
download the module you asked for. But the person promoting that vision
on the development team has been distracted by other projects. You could
imagine something like:

import "http://Numeric.sourceforge.net/numeric.tar.gz"

But nobody is working on that right now.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 19:05:14 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 00:05:14 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B3676.40F39389@alcyone.com> <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995836120.7223.python-list@python.org> <vyIKbWAP62W7EwC+@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <9jg6ei$ges7$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <9ji691$bt9$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>
Message-ID: <tv9pltkqhkhqve20md9g1omt55adrb9vep@4ax.com>

On 23 Jul 2001 21:51:29 GMT, paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson) wrote:

>We can solve (2) and (3) by adding _two_ new operators (or functions),
>or we can solve all three by changing x/y to always do (A) or always (B),
>and adding a new operator for the other.
>
>Andy's proposal for "1//2 = 0.5" solves (2), doing nothing about (1) and (3),
>and I find very little merit in such a half-done (1/3 done) solution.

What is the use of float / float -> int?

That is a very perverse case, and when it is needed it is perfectly
sensible to explicitly specify a round, floor, ciel or whatever
function to ensure you get what you really want.

I'd argue that an operator for this is almost entirely redundant, not
to mention a potential source of errors. It discards precision
silently and without warning - a phrase that has been burned into my
mind forever by the Pro-PEP0238 camp today ;-)

And so, to restate yet again, creating a new '//' operator that
coerces to floats is fine if not to my taste, but the '/' operator
should be left well alone. The only time an integer result from
division is sensible is when the args are integers, so there is no
need to change it. Having one mixed-type operator and one
auto-coercing operator is a tad wierd, but this is not the time to
value pedantic ideals over the professional reputations of Python
advocates. Throwing away your most vocal supporters is not the way to
advance a language.



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 06:26:25 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:26:25 +0200
Subject: pausing a thread
References: <3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i1fch029b3@enews1.newsguy.com>

"Daniel Nuriyev" <danielnuriyev at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead at posting.google.com...
> Hello
> This is a Java programmer's question
> How do you say:
> class QQQ extends Thread{
>     public void run(){
>         ...
>         sleep(ms);
>     }
> }
> in Python? Thank you all.

import threading, time

class QQQ(threading.Thread):
    def run(self):
        # ... whatever else you wish ...
        time.sleep(ms/1000.0)

time.sleep uses seconds as its unit of measure,
whence the /1000.0 part assuming ms stands for
'milliseconds'.  (Note the argument is a float,
so fractions of a second are OK, but you do have
to use seconds as the UNIT of measure here).


Alex





From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul  5 10:12:45 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:12:45 -0400
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over?
References: <mailman.994341308.26018.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Jz_07.3073$i8.322748@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Kemp Randy-W18971" <Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.994341308.26018.python-list at python.org...
> I seem to be getting the listing of what's on my d drive in windows,
rather then the binary contents.  Here is what I do (the server id changed
to protect the innocent:
>
> ------------------------> Step 1
<----------------------------------------------
> Execute this program in Windoze
>
> import string, os
> import ftplib
> import glob
> filename = os.path.join("d:", "programsPython", "outdata3.txt")
> listname = string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPython'),',')
> print listname
> ftp = ftplib.FTP('144.144.144.144') #specify host
> ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
> ftp.login(user=goofy',passwd='elmer',acct='fudd)   # user info
> ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups')
> for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
>     ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))
> ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
> ftp.quit()
>
> -----------------> Step 2 <-----------------------------------------------
> List the directory contents in Unix
>
> ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> ls
> d:\programsPython\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt
[ ... ]
> d:\programsPython\testmail.py
> ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups>
>
> -----------------> Problem <--------------------------------------
> Why do I get the text d:\programsPython\filename?
> How should I change the program to get the actual files sent over?
>
The problem is your current directory context. If you *just* want to deal
with simple paths, try changing

    for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):

to

    os.chdir(r"D:\programsPython")
    for filename in glob.glob("*"):

That way your program changes its directory context to the directory
containing the files you want to transfer, so you can refer to them as
simple filenames rather than as a path.

Another way yould be to omit the os.chdir() but run the program in the
directory whose files you want to transfer.

regards
Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/





From paulp at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 25 19:07:19 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:07:19 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-1C3F40.16121323072001@news.service.uci.edu> <mailman.995934280.25863.python-list@python.org> <ockpltktklt4v7ltqb583mg6s5rck06amd@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F5127.77B39369@ActiveState.com>

Stephen Horne wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 17:23:18 -0700, Paul Prescod
> <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> 
> >It is very common to pass floats to functions that expect integers and
> >vice versa without really thinking about it. It is *especially* common
> >to pass integers to functions that expect floats.
> 
> And in my mind this is the problem, not division. The traditional
> solutions to the problem of bad inputs are called *validation* and
> *documentation*.

So rather than fix the language to reduce mistakes we should impose more
discipline on programmers. That sounds like a C or Perl solution, not a
Python solution.
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:37:39 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 04:37:39 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <upuanumtb.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <ne687.32368$EP6.8424941@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"David Bolen" <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote in message
news:upuanumtb.fsf at ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com...

> Is the polymorphic argument really true here?

I think so, even though Guido made it look asymetric in the first
paragraph.  I can easily imagine that I would want a formula like
(n-1)//k to give the same numerical value regardless of whether n
enters as 20 or 20.0 -- the same as (n-1)*k does.  Why should one work
polymorphically and the other not?

Terry J. Reedy





From roy at panix.com  Sat Jul 14 09:52:19 2001
From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 09:52:19 -0400
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <3B4FD35A.26B4568E@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <roy-B49CE8.09521914072001@news1.panix.com>

James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> wrote:
> This may not be the most elegant or efficient, but how about this:
> 
> [f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]

Yeah, that's what I had come up with, but I was hoping somebody would have 
an idea that was more elegant and efficient :-)


From dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk  Tue Jul 31 12:41:27 2001
From: dale at riverhall.NOSPAMco.uk (Dale Strickland-Clark)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:41:27 +0100
Subject: Arg decoding with a template?
References: <ljidmtouqj6som2t9ecagbkj95c53kjaeh@4ax.com> <4oA97.5883$9i1.519137@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <55ndmt4e43rpoi7at0pikc4a50qp90jh4b@4ax.com>

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote:

>So the getopts module wouldn't be any use to you, then? ;-)
>
>I think it has that stupid name because the Unix C library with similar
>functionality uses the exact same stupid name.

I couldn't even see it when I knew the name of it! 

Found it now, though.

The doc appears to assume familiarity with the GNU equivalent - sadly I don't have that.

It looks a bit unfriendly with all the - and -- but I'll see if I can make some sense of it.

Thanks for the pointer.
--
Dale Strickland-Clark
Riverhall Systems Ltd


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  9 10:45:48 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 09:45:48 -0500
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kinsr.as9.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr>
	<9i4ic3$f3v$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk>
	<slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
	<J9n17.8444$e5.1104161@newsb.telia.net>
	<slrn9kinsr.as9.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <15177.50076.618140.472973@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> if you disable the catch-all except in xmlrpcserver.py [1], what error
    >> message do you get?

    ...
    Alexandre>   File "/usr/lib/python2.1/xmllib.py", line 794, in syntax_error
    Alexandre>     raise Error('Syntax error at line %d: %s' % (self.lineno, message))
    Alexandre> Error: Syntax error at line 6: illegal character in content

Take a look at the relevant bits of xmllib, but I suspect you are passing a
character (\231 as I recall) that is not valid UTF-8, the default encoding
for XML.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From dsh8290 at rit.edu  Mon Jul  2 16:43:19 2001
From: dsh8290 at rit.edu (D-Man)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 16:43:19 -0400
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
In-Reply-To: <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>; from 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com on Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 01:06:57PM -0700
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <bebbba07.0107021206.70a22aa8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010702164319.D23146@harmony.cs.rit.edu>

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 01:06:57PM -0700, Russ wrote:
| What would be very desirable for Python is some kind of static checker
| that can guarantee BEFORE run time that all procedures are called
| correctly. Does anyone know of anything that does that?

PyChecker.  Note that this is a tool, it is not part of the language.
The language should be kept clean, simple, and usable while the tools
should be made to identify all sorts of errors in the code (such as
lint for C).

Unit tests are a very good thing, anyways.

I think that python is excellent for mission critical usage (except
where speed is crucial, of course) because it is easier to use and the
probability of subtle bugs is lower than a language such as, say, C or
Perl.  The problem with using C or C++ would be the low level details
that need to be managed (like memory, etc) and the problem of missing
the forest in the trees.  This isn't to say that C and C++ are bad,
just that they have their cons.

-D




From cfelling at iae.nl  Sun Jul 15 10:16:21 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 15 Jul 2001 16:16:21 +0200
Subject: How to add type "int" to string ?
References: <692684d4.0107150512.5b7d9ccd@posting.google.com> <3B519D3E.77DB1652@nospam.de>
Message-ID: <9is8jl$3g7$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Uwe Hoffmann <nospam at nospam.de> wrote:
> shuibo wrote:
>> 
>> Hello all :
>> in my program I want to give a char variable a Hex value , for example :
>> a = "Hello World"
>> a = a + 0x00
>> but it display "cannot add type int to string"
>> what can I do ?
>> thanks very very much !


> a = a + chr(0x00)

or even

a = "Hello World\x00"

But I wonder, why would you end a Python string with a null char?
-- 
groetjes, carel


From fredrik at pythonware.com  Wed Jul 11 17:47:11 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:47:11 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <wuN27.13377$Y6.4240331@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cplmlvh6dx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <6A%27.454703$eK2.93741234@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <m3k81fb7jc.fsf@chinon.cnrs-orleans.fr> <un16bcibu.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <zP337.4881$z21.497530@newsc.telia.net>

David Bolen wrote:
>
> > And a//b definitely beats (a+0.)/b, which does the trick, but is not
> > at all evident.
>
> Well, I'd probably suggest using "float(a)/b" instead which at least
> makes it a little easier to see what's going on :-)

except that it doesn't do the right thing if a is a complex
number.

</F>




From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Wed Jul 25 13:00:23 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:00:23 GMT
Subject: [OT] Number theory  [Was: A use for integer quotients]
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995883879.12071.python-list@python.org> <3B5C5665.8D41D1F1@tundraware.com> <slrn.pl.9los0f.jh4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3B5C749A.59F97320@tundraware.com> <JDa77.97061$Rr4.549007@ozemail.com.au> <Xns90E97C9849AD5robindotgarneratinam@172.18.25.3> <IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <Xns90E9B69552228michaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

"michael" <serrano at ozemail.com.au> wrote in
news:IjA77.97824$Rr4.589251 at ozemail.com.au: 

> 
> So strictly speaking, Z (the set of integers) is not a subset of R (the
> set of reals)?
> 

That's absolutely right.  There's an injective function from Z to R which 
preserves the ring and order structure on Z; similarly, the rationals Q can 
be injectively embedded in the reals:

    	Z >-> Q >-> R

In this case, the map Q to R also preserves the field structure.

In both cases, of course, there is structure which is not preserved.  For 
example, integer division (eg, 1/2 = 0 remainder 1) doesn't really make all 
that much sense in R except by appealing to its original formation in Z.  
And conversely, of course, Q and R add extra structure.

Actually of course, there's a whole family of fields between Q and R.

Finally, just to remind people that embedding can lose structure as well as 
add it, consider the well known embedding

    	R >-> C

of the reals into the complex numbers.  The order relation x <= y cannot be 
sensibly defined on C, so order structure is lost by this embedding.



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Tue Jul 17 19:45:38 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:45:38 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> dijo:
> I wasn't part of this discussion, but since, for once, there
> does seem to be a chance for a fair-headed, non-flaming
> comparison, I'd be loath to see it fizzle out with an "agree
> to disagree" when no technical issues have been discussed
> (it seems to me).

I cling to the philosophy that there is no "better" language and that a
programmer's ability to _use_ it is more important than benchmarks or
syntax.  For this reason, for a given application, I might reach for
Perl before Python because I have more experience with it.  However, I
am not content with "just getting by" in a language if I have an
opportunity to learn more (as long as it doesn't piss me off with every
:w<CR>:!javac %<CR> ... but I won't mention any names ... oops!)

> Declaring my bias: I am "violently anti-Perl" myself, mostly
> because I wrote a *LOT* of Perl code (and helped others write
> it, and maintain it, and maintained a lot myself, etc, etc).
> If Python wasn't around, I'd probably still be doing so (and
> hating it) for lack of viable alternatives.  Since discovering
> Python, I moved to Python all code I had in Perl.  When asked
> for help, advice, &c, about maintaining Perl, studying Perl,
> &c, my invariable answer today is "do it in Python instead".

I respect your honesty.
Granted, Perl had the longest and steepest learning curve since C++ for
me.  But after grasping the concept of "context" and learning to use
Perl's m// and s/// operators to my advantage, I find I can just
accomplish more faster than with most other languages, even (so far)
with Python.  Having come from GW-BASIC, I had slightly less trouble
grasping the whole "curse characters" bit. <wink>

BTW: I have benchmarks (I think fair ones) where regex parsing is faster
than string parsing.  I've taken pains to optimize the string parsing
function.  I think my point is, whether advocate of regex's or
string-parsing, be willing to see the other's strengths. This might
apply to choice of language as well.  To quote a book I read: "Be quick
to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they have to
offer."  And who _isn't_ religious in a programming language war?  ;)

> It seems to me that the niches of applicability for Python and
> Perl are totally overlapping: I cannot think of application
> areas where Perl would be preferable, except, I guess, if there
> were deployment constraints, such as those above-quoted or
> similar ones (e.g., say you're allowed to use mod_perl but NOT
> mod_python & similar Apache mods, then it might be unfeasible to
> do certain things in Python; or, similarly, if there was some
> crucial module already existing for Perl and it was unfeasible
> to port it for Python).  Similarly, I cannot think of application
> areas where Python could make sense but Perl wouldn't, except,
> again, for possible deployment constraints (need to use Jython,
> or Numeric, etc etc).  So what are those "application areas where
> Perl is clearly preferable to Python", and vice versa, that make
> it worthwhile to use both languages for new development (not just
> maintenance of legacy stuff that one prefers not to port)?  Are
> you just referring to deployment constraints ("I'm not allowed to
> use mod_python but mod_perl IS allowed", &c) or is there something
> deeper that I'm missing?

In web developing, where I can't necessarily convince my clients to use
a host that provides the tools I'd most like to use, Perl is more
readily available than Python, and especially more so than
mod_p(erl|ython).  Python seems to be catching on in a big way, though,
especially with it's standard inclusion in many linux distros.  But when
I can't get the tools I'd like, Perl/Python's overlapping applicability
is really a blessing, no?  Either that's there, I know I can do what I
need to do.  <wink>

-- 
Things need not have happened to be true.  Tales and dreams are the shadow
truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
    -- Morpheus, The Sandman


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 16:47:43 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:47:43 +0100
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com> <mailman.995886519.23021.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <fauolt41gp2mjlsqiuc9rnl84dtinsle9j@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:02:08 +1000, "Glen Wheeler" <wheelege at tsn.cc>
wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Stephen Horne" <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk>
>Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
>To: <python-list at python.org>
>Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 2:34 PM
>Subject: Re: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
>> ...
>> Mathematically, integer division should be the inverse of integer
>> multiplication, with no extra functionality bar the need to allow for
>> the remainder. Well shock horror - that's exactly what we've got now
>> and exactly what we're throwing away.
>> ...
>
>  I don't know about that, I think your just splurting exaggeration here.
>Even though I do agree with you, I do not think Guido's big plan is to
>remove integer division.

True - but he IS breaking existing code over a clearly debatable point
of view which has not even been proven to be supported by a majority.
If those who want int/int->float are so anti the // operator, why is
it that everyone else is supposed to put up and shut up?

>  However, I seem to remember a list of things Tim wrote about python - one
>of them that stuck was 'Explicit is better than implicit'.  If I give
>integer arguments to the / operator, I fully expect integer division to
>occur.  If I want float I'll ask for it, explicitly.

He can twist this by saying an explicitly different division operator
suits that viewpoint - but I don't mind that so long as the new
functionality becomes the new operator.

>  Either way, python will still be my language of choice.

If I take serious damage to my professional reputation because of this
change and my vocal Python advocacy, I'll more than likely be starting
up my own competing scripting language. I won't expect success, but it
will be interesting and I will expect that others will have the same
thought, so once the breakaway projects start coalescing there might
well be a *better* alternative in the end. Maybe a bit melodramatic,
but it's not like it's hard to find a scripting language market these
days.

I'd rather stick with Python, but once bitten twice shy.



From thedustbustr at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 21:42:13 2001
From: thedustbustr at aol.com (TheDustbustr)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 01:42:13 GMT
Subject: Here's a puzzle...
References: <9jgu18$t6p$1@lise.netcom.no>
Message-ID: <20010724214213.05142.00000868@ng-fw1.aol.com>

Perfect, thanks Andr?!


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Thu Jul 12 13:41:31 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:41:31 -0400
Subject: Version incomptabilities, code changes, __future__, etc
References: <mailman.994953982.6684.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Ofl37.2371$uJ3.65780@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

<mcc at TO.GD-ES.COM> wrote in message
news:mailman.994953982.6684.python-list at python.org...
>
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 mcherm at destiny.com wrote:
>
> > simonb at webone.com.au wrote:
> > > i don't want to see any more versions of python.
> > > ITS FINISHED
> > > AND I LOVE IT RIGHT NOW
> > > if you want more then make a new language.
> >
> > Regretably, Simon, you are out of luck. In order to convince
> > Microsoft to support Python natively in their .NET initiative,
> > Guido was forced to make several major concessions. One of those
> > was to recind the "Open Source" liscense, which allowed anyone
> > to freely use Python -- using any version they wanted for (pretty
> > much) any purpose.
> >
> > Unfortunately, Python is now released on a more restrictive
> > liscense, which, in a future version, will require all Python
> > programs to contact a Microsoft Certification server and
> > present a Passport certification before executing. In order to
> > ensure that everyone migrates to the new version of the software
> > (to be released as soon as Microsoft finishes building the
> > infrastructure), the migration will be mandatory.
>
> This "bon mot" needs more clarification.  This implies that Python will
> only be available to the Windows community.  There are environments where
> Microsoft Certification servers will never exist.  If there will now be
> a component added to Python to only allow its use when authorized by a
> Microsoft Certification server, then one may need to change or develop a
> new solution set.
>
> I'm not particularly opposed to forking off a "Python for Microsoft
> Windows Environments" or a "Python for Microsoft Certification Server
> Environments" as long as there remains a Python for other communities of
> interest.  If the latter is not going to occur, then I need to reconsider
> whether or not Python is part of a viable solution.
>
That's OK. I'm working on a Python-to-Perl translator. The Python
interpreter used in Unix environments will simply translate to Perl on the
fly and execute that, so you'll hardly notice any difference.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From VesselinPeev at operamail.com  Wed Jul 18 08:57:44 2001
From: VesselinPeev at operamail.com (Vesselin Iliev Peev)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 08:57:44 -0400
Subject: Really Python leaks?
Message-ID: <3B5799BE@operamail.com>

I just used the new version of Insure++ 6.0 (a debugging and memory analysis 
tool).
I've been amazed that there were leaks reported in a simple application of 
mine that embeds Python. The application is really simple (i.e I simplified it 
to reduce the chance of error) and is equivalent to the embedding example 
under the demo directory of the new Python 2.0.1 source distribution. I 
correctly initialize and shut down the interpreter.

I hope this is somehow not true, and perhaps Insure++ is incorrectly reporting 
these, but has anyone tested Python in this way with a similar tool?

I'm using Visual C++ 6.0 Service Pack 5. By the way, the interesting thing is 
that there are a few leaks in the runtime library, too.
 
If this letter seems impertinent or incompetent to some of you, please excuse 
me and tell me why.
I'm new to Python and just decided to ask.




From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Fri Jul 13 08:56:42 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:56:42 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994910001.4712.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4eed03.298292@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:52:59 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

[...]
>
>Here's another fun one:  you can also write a long-int multiplication
>routine in Python that runs significantly faster than the builtin long *!
>Hint:  recursion <wink>.

I give up, howdaya do that?

(When I read this I said aha, you're getting at something like 
using

[*] (a*2**k+b)*(c*2**k+d) = a*c*2**(2*k) + (a*d+b*c)*2**k + b*d.

But when I think about it I don't see why that would give any
improvement - it _seems_ to me that vanilla long multiplication
should be quadratic (a*b takes time "len"(a) * "len"(b), where
"len" is the number of "digits".) If that's correct then using
[*] wouldn't improve things at all as far as I can see.

Can't decide:

You're hinting at [*] and I'm analyzing it wrong? (Like
if vanilla multiplication is actually worse than quadratic
in the sense above then [*] will speed things up...)

You're hinting at something kinda like [*] but with clever
rearrangents that does give improvement, like that
Strassen(?) thing for matrix multiplcation?

You're talking about using an FFT-based multiplication?
(One can certainly write a recursive FFT. But surely if
_this_ is what you meant then the hint would be "FFT"
instead of "recursion"...)

Something else entirely?

???)



David C. Ullrich


From paul at svensson.org  Mon Jul 30 13:19:01 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 17:19:01 GMT
Subject: a break for comprehensions
References: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu> <3B64F09D.1D59837F@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <9k44u5$fua$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:

>Kevin Lacker wrote:
>> 
>> answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]
>
>Looks quite nice. But what should
>
>  answer = [process(x,y) for x in a for y in b while f(x,y)]
>
>do? Should the break terminate the whole comprehension,
>or just the enclosing for-clause?

In my view, it should obviously end the whole thing; but then I
never see list comprehensions a procedural description for how
to generate the list, but rather a symbolic description of
the list content.  With that view it shouldn't matter which
for-clause gets evaluated innermost, and so the only unambigous
thing for the while clause to end, is the whole comprehension.

	/Paul



From m-turk at nwu.edu  Tue Jul 31 13:12:37 2001
From: m-turk at nwu.edu (Matthew Turk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 17:12:37 GMT
Subject: Why this code cannot change caption of "Start" button?
References: <9jut26$7bf$1@justice.csc.cuhk.edu.hk>
Message-ID: <slrn9mdpsl.1snq.m-turk@dhcp101054.res-hall.nwu.edu>

* Steve S.L. Wong <sailwong at alumni.cuhk.edu.hk>:
>  hwnd = win32gui.FindWindowEx(win32gui.FindWindow('Shell_TrayWnd',None),0,
>                                 "Button",None)
>  
>  Any body knows why the above code does not work?
>  

Maybe it's my build, but I have to replace that '0' with a None, and I
also have to use win32ui and not win32gui.

However, even after I do that, I get that "No window can be found."
Any ideas?



mjt
--------------------------------------------------
Matthew J. Turk <m-turk at nwu.edu>      ICQ: 3856787
"Music is the Best." - FZ       www.dailyvault.com


From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul 16 23:59:10 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:59:10 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Most efficient solution?
In-Reply-To: <3B53B04C.656C398C@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107170750570.2333-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Peter Hansen wrote:

>> Peter: I believe the politically correct mantra is "one obvious way
>> to do it".
>
>Yeah, I was reminded of that in reading
>http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/python-dev.html
>shortly after I posted.   :(
>
> """13. There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious
>    way to do it. """

... given your knowledge and experience.

For example, filling list with numbers could be done
in several ways:

Beginner in Python, who writes in a "language independent" style,
ex-Pascalist:

lst = [0] * 20  # init list
for i in range(1, 21):
  lst[i-1] = i

Same by ex-C:

lst = [0] * 20  # init list
for i in range(0, 20):
  lst[i] = i+1

Beginner in Python who know about lists:

lst = []
for i in range(20):
  lst.append(i+1)

Experienced Python user favor list comprehemsions:

lst = [i+1 for i in range(20)]

Python guru, which keeps it simple because he is very stupid ;-):

lst = range(1, 21)


Where Zen applies here?
;-)

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Tuesday, July 17, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "...put knot yore trust inn spel chequers." _/




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 03:54:37 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:54:37 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>
 <HBEJKOJGHBOIBHLHPMKGGEEPDKAA.rcalco@cortechs.com>
 <mailman.996449995.2167.python-list@python.org>
 <slrn9m9a6e.43m.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>
Message-ID: <Y173qKA9KRZ7EwNU@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <slrn9m9a6e.43m.grante at tuxtop.visi.com>, Grant Edwards
<grante at visi.com> writes
>On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:37:18 +0100, Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> 
>wrote:
>
>>I hesitated to mention ADA
>
>One nit:
>
>It's "Ada" not "ADA".  The former is a programming language;
>the latter is the American Dental Association (among other
>things).
>
Yes after Ada Lovelace, Babbage's inspiriation and muse. The machinery
at the Science Museum looks nice.
-- 
Robin Becker


From lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu  Tue Jul  3 22:55:56 2001
From: lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu (Haris Lekatsas)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 02:55:56 GMT
Subject: problem with sending email
References: <mailman.994139704.17222.python-list@python.org> <qZj07.26346$he.1368759@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <0Bv07.6663$Kf3.62859@www.newsranger.com>

In article <qZj07.26346$he.1368759 at e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>, Steve Holden
says...
>
>"Haris Lekatsas" <lekatsas at EE.Princeton.EDU> wrote in ...
>> This works thanks!
>>
>> Unfortunately it makes my scripts less portable as the path to
>> sendmail has to be specified (not always at /usr/sbin/sendmail)
>> but this seems to be the only solution I have so far.
>> I wonder if python's smtplib is broken.
>>
>
>Certainly not *that* broken. On Windows platforms it sends megabytes of mail
>for me every month, some of it single messages with 2MB zipfile attachments.
>Don't currently use it on Unix.
>
>I notice in your original code you assemble the message line-by-line,
>reading from a text file. You could think about
>
>a) Putting debug outputs in there to see what message length is being passed
>to SMPT.sendmail(), or
>
>b) Using read() to suck the whole thing in - if line endings are a problem
>you could use replace() to ensure they are correct.
>
>But you really should check what sendmail() is being given, so you know
>where to look next for the possible error.
>
>regards
> Steve
>--
It seems sendmail is really getting the whole input. I am now printing msg and
i get the whole thing. Also the debugging level is set to 1. As before, running
it from the shell it will run fine, running it from the web as a cgi
script will only send 17,988 bytes of the text. However it will print that the
message was sent fine and the whole msg string will appear on screen from the
last print statement.
It might have something to do with the HTTP server...

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket, smtplib

server = smtplib.SMTP()
server.connect('localhost')
server.helo('localhost')

msg = "From: " + "Haris Lekatsas <lekatsas at jayway.com>" + "\012"
msg = msg + "To: " + "Haris Lekatsas <lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu>" + "\012"
msg = msg + "Subject: " + "subject" + "\012"
fd = open('thelib.py', 'r')
text = ''
text = fd.read()
fd.close()

msg = msg + '\012' + text

try:
server.set_debuglevel(1)
tmp_output = server.sendmail("lekatsas at jayway.com", "lekatsas at ee.princeton.edu",
msg)
except:
print "Error\n"


print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
print msg






From bokr at accessone.com  Sun Jul  8 18:45:12 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 22:45:12 GMT
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
References: <mailman.994427714.26169.python-list@python.org> <cpsngaja4g.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <FFv17.1178$Y6.656565@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpelrskgrr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9i7a7k$h9ks6$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cp4rsok3i7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.994531918.7040.python-list@python.org> <9i8512$haelg$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de> <cpk81jip74.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3b48de4e.1402626870@wa.news.verio.net>

On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 12:27:11 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:
>
>> # default setting
>> precision 0    # everything behaves as it does now
>> print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
>> print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714
>> 
>> precision 1    # all calculations yield 1 decimal point precision interim
>> results
>> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places
>> 
>> precision 2
>> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.28, ie to precision 2 decimal places
>> 
>> precision 3
>> print 2 / 7    # -> 0.285, ie to precision 3 decimal places
>> 
>> This seems to me to break no existing code other than where precision is
>> currently used as a label, and allows us to teach others, when they get
>> stung by unexpected results, that they need to set precision appropriately.
>> Once explained, integer division would not be a surprise to newbies, nor
>> would the precision of floating point be lost to those who understand and
>> benefit from its use.  And those of us that just want to write business
>> accounting applications will be able to set precision 2 at the top of each
>> module and be done with it.
>
>Your examples don't show what should happen in this example:
>
>  precision 0
>  x = 2/7
>  precision 4
>  print x
>
>In other words, is the precision a property of the printing or a
>property of the value stored?
>
>There are lots of other ways to get this effect for printing ("%.4f"%x
>comes to mind); if you intended the effect to apply to computation
>results, there are questions about the scope of the calculation.  If I
>write
>
>  precision 3
>  x = f()	# some function that uses int division
>
>should every calculation in f() be affected by the precision
>statement?
>
>Etc., etc.
>
>This is exactly why I was asking you to write a PEP.  I don't mean
>that you have to write an implementation.  (Despite the seeming
>requirement in PEP 2, that's not a requirement before a PEP is
>accepted for review -- that's only required before a standard PEP is
>finally approved for inclusion in the language.  There are plenty of
>PEPs without a shred of implementation.)
>
ISTM the precision statement is a special case of what might be
called an interpreter directive applicable for some defined scope.

Why not parameterize the concept with a single block-scope-introducing
keyword, e.g., 'semantics' or 'special' e.g., rewriting from above:

semantics PRECISION, 0: # everything behaves as it does now
    print 2 / 7    # -> 0, ie to precision 0 decimal places
    print 2/7.0   # -> 0.285714285714
 
semantics PRECISION 1:   # all calculations yield 1 decimal point 
    print 2 / 7    # -> 0.2, ie to precision 1 decimal places

semantics PRECISION 2:
    print 2 / 7    # -> 0.28, ie to precision 2 decimal places

semantics PRECISION 3:
    print 2 / 7    # -> 0.285, ie to precision 3 decimal places

# and then other things are possible too:
semantics INTEGER_DIV:
    print 1/2      # -> 0
semantics FLOAT_DIV:	#new default
    print 1/2	   # -> 0.5
semantics RATIONAL_DIV:
    print 1/2      # -> 1/2 ( embedded '/' with no white space )

The upper case constants would be defined somewhere to make
this work ;-)



From feria at mac21.com  Tue Jul 10 22:26:53 2001
From: feria at mac21.com (MAC21 Art Fair)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 04:26:53 +0200
Subject: INVITACION MAC21 Feria de Arte - Marbella 2001
Message-ID: <9023200173112265380@mac21.com>

=================================================
- - - - - - - I N V I T A C I ? N - - - - - - - -
=================================================

Manifestaciones de Arte Contempor?neo 21
tiene el gusto de invitarle a la inauguraci?n de

MAC21 Feria Internacional de Arte Contempor?neo

que tendr? lugar

el martes, d?a 17 de julio, a las 20,00 horas, 
en el Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Marbella.

=================================================
MAC21 Feria Internacional de Arte Contempor?neo
18 / 22 julio 2001
18,00 a 23,00 horas.
Marbella - 2001
=================================================

www.mac21.com





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010711/10c60ad0/attachment.html>

From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 13 16:32:38 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 22:32:38 +0200
Subject: not safe at all
References: <mm8tkt4te3qnbpv3nh5nhsi591o1osln73@4ax.com> <slrn9ku3c3.mrk.9nick9m@localhost.localdomain> <u26ukt4vot7b1qu02hkp8l1pnmdi0sfp3l@4ax.com> <slrn9kui1i.orp.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <9ioonl0jgu@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Quinn Dunkan" <quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn9kui1i.orp.quinn at yak.ugcs.caltech.edu...
    ...
> The static people talk about rigorously enforced interfaces, correctness
> proofs, contracts, etc.  The dynamic people talk about rigorously enforced
> testing and say that types only catch a small portion of possible errors.
The

Although "programming by contracting" was historically developed in
the static-typing community, no significant contract in PbC is enforced
statically in (e.g.) Eiffel, the summit (according to its adherents) of
both static typing and PbC.  Preconditions, postconditions, and class
invariants, are typically rich and complex sets of expressions and no
real-world compiler is able to check anything but very trivial subsets
of them at compile-time.

So, IMNVHO, contracts should NOT be placed in the "static typing" camp,
although it IS true that static typers do tend to talk often about them.
What PbC's practice proves is that DYNAMIC enforcement is just fine
for the really important issues -- sure, sure, it would be an even better
world if we COULD check a few more things even earlier, but wtf -0- we
can't, and PbC still helps.  Dynamic strong typing -- THAT is what PbC
turns out to be in practice.  And a durned fine thing it is, too!

Actually, I wouldn't mind an 'assertion language' that's not even
truly checkable (fast enough to be useful) at runtime -- one where
I could use existential and universal quantifiers, because those are
so often the things I *WANT* to express in a formal, unambiguous
way.  Consider the predicate parameter P I can pass to many of
the containers and algorithms in the standard C++ library.  What
I often want to assert about the type of P is: for all X, not P(X,X);
for all X and Y, P(X,Y) implies not P(Y,X); for all X, Y and Z,
P(X,Y) and P(Y,Z) imply P(X,Z).  I.e., the crucial facts about P's
type is that it's antireflexive, antisymmetric, transitive.  What I
_can_ assert that's static-type-checkable is that P accepts two
"foo" arguments and returns a boolean.  Pish and tush -- that's
close to saying NOTHING about the known type constraints on P!!!

I'd like a language that just lets me state as little or as much as
I know and want to express unambiguously -- then the compiler
in turn can generate as little or as much static or dynamic typing
as it knows how to generate and/or it's directed to generate by
options or whatever, but meanwhile I HAVE expressed my design
intent in my sources -- *NOT* in possibly-ambiguous comments,
but in formal, unambiguous language that MAY, depending on the
state of compiler technology, turn out to help direct the compiler
to generate appropriate code.  I know of no language, except maybe
a few experimental ones (which I have not tried), which would let
me use quantifiers this way.

So, no language is even halfway good at letting me *express*
types, much less check such type-constraints "statically".  Might
as well use a language that doesn't *PRETEND* to support such
typing notions, no?-)


Alex





From deltapigz at telocity.com  Mon Jul 23 00:47:53 2001
From: deltapigz at telocity.com (Adonis Vargas)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 00:47:53 -0400
Subject: Python and winpcap....?
Message-ID: <3B5BAC78.CC856F56@telocity.com>

is there a wrapper for the WinPCAP (Windows Packet Capturing) library ?

if there is where am i able to obtain it?

if there isnt; could anyone point me to how to build a wrapper for
python?

thanks in advance...

Adonis



From paul at svensson.org  Tue Jul 24 06:56:48 2001
From: paul at svensson.org (Paul Svensson)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 10:56:48 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews>
Message-ID: <9jjk9g$8tk$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

matthew.feinstein at jhuapl.edu (Matt Feinstein) writes:

>Why not make the operator // do what the -old- division operator did,
>so that the only change that has to be made for backwards
>compatibility is replace all /'s with //'s?

For ever problem, there exists a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	int/int -> int		int/int -> flt		int/int -> int
	flt/flt -> flt		flt/flt -> flt		flt/flt -> int
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1	x/y			(x + 0.0)/y		divmod(x, y)[0]
0238	(don't do that)		x/y			x//y
Matt	x//y			x/y			divmod(x, y)[0]
Others	x/y			x//y			divmod(x, y)[0]
:-)	x/y			x//y			x///y
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you read the above table carefully, you'll see one thing that makes the
PEP-0238 solution different from all the others, and I think that's how
Guido intended it.  The problem is not as much that we need to *add* new
stuff to spell out different ways of dividing, but that we need to *remove*
the confusing semantics of the current spelling.  Suggesting alternatives
that don't solve this part of the problem, IMNSHO, totally pointless.

The only choices that make sense to me here are, either we break stuff,
or we do nothing.  Either way, we'll most likely have to revisit the
issue if/when syntax for rationals is to be added to the language.

	/Paul


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Tue Jul  3 18:56:53 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 00:56:53 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <134704696.994123281122.JavaMail.root@boots> <mailman.994128604.28588.python-list@python.org> <bebbba07.0107022044.106d9da8@posting.google.com> <mailman.994178646.957.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9htijl$fla$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

"D-Man" <dsh8290 at rit.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.994178646.957.python-list at python.org...
[...]
> At the very least various designs and algorithms to solve the problem
> could be prototyped in Python, then recoded in C for their final
> application.  People (I think the timbot is one of them) have said
> that by prototyping algorithms in Python you can try out more
> algorithms and find the best one in less time and you don't feel so
> bad about throwing away the bad algorithms because you didn't spend so
> much time coding it.

Indeed! This is a wonderful approach. And you can couple it with
the profiler module to find out more about the bottlenecks of your
program etc. when experimenting with different algorithms. After
implementing and playing with the code, migrating to another language
becomes much easier than starting from scratch in that language.

>
> -D
>
>

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 02:17:51 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 02:17:51 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B448.78DBC7D0@home.net> <2X487.31971$EP6.8333313@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <u8zhavqsw.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> writes:

> Now that Pythonlabs has control of the distributions, it can keep
> source tarballs and windows installers available indefinitely.
> Perhaps a process of collecting (and keeping) miscellaneous
> installation experience for a given distribution could be instituted.

If there's nothing else that this www of ours has done, barring a
planetwide catastrophy, I don't think we have to worry about old
archives/installers being available somewhere, even without
intentionally planning for it.

Heck, I can still find zip archives of some of my public distributions
of software from 8-10 years back (and I stopped distributing it almost
as long ago), sometimes in the strangest places :-)

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Fri Jul  6 21:38:06 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 01:38:06 GMT
Subject: Short form of file names
References: <mailman.994439234.23581.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B466828.9090807@ActiveState.com>

Mikhail Astafiev wrote:

> [Env: Win2k, Win98, Python 1.52]
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Is there some Python module for converting Windows long paths to short
> form, i.e. 8.3? os.path.normpath() does not do this..
> 

 >>> win32api.FindFiles("F:\\Program Files")[0][9]
'PROGRA~1'
 >>>

[0] is the index into the list of filenames (only 1 in this case).  Each 
file has a tuple of information about the file - element 9 is the short 
name.

Note that the returned value does _not_ include the path component. 
Thus, to get a short name of the directory structure too, each directly 
must be checked manually.

Later versions of Windows have a GetShortPathName() (or something like 
that) but it is not in win32api yet.

Mark.



From rnd at onego.ru  Fri Jul  6 09:55:03 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:55:03 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <cp1ynukxmv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107061749220.3884-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> "Robert J. Harrison" <rjh at 3-cities.com> writes:
> > Again, my major objection to this proposal is that it gives us
> > nothing and breaks a lot of existing code.
> 
> Other educators disagree.  Take the case of VPython.
 
> """
> Everything worked extremely well except for integer division, both 1/2
> being zero and 10**-15 giving an execution error. For example, on last
> week's program one student spent two hours trying to figure out why he
> was getting a strange positron trajectory, and it finally turned out
> to be (x+y)**(1/2), which looks fine but is equal to 1 for all values
> of x and y.
> """
> 
> > integers makes programming easier to learn for beginners, but this
> > is absolutely not consistent with my experience in teaching
> > programming using Python and other languages (including Maple that
> > has rationals).
 
> Note that I'm not saying that 1/2 *returns* 0.5.  While in the current
> proposal that's indeed the plan, I'm not necessarily against returning
> something else, e.g. maybe a rational.  (I have a different reason to
> dislike rationals and favor decimal arithmetic instead, but that's
> quite a different discussion.)  I'm just saying that the *value* of
> 1/2 should be equal to the value of 0.5, in other words, 1/2 should
> act like 0.5 when fed into a floating point expression

This is reasonable. However, IMHO, solution need to be different
than redefining established "/" behaviour?

Could "right" division be given some other symbol than "/" and old "/" be
left intact as a "low-level" C-conformant division every Python programmer
is accustomed to?


Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 05:43:44 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 02:43:44 -0700
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995264665.17334.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107160143.6fde063e@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.995264665.17334.python-list at python.org>...
> [John Machin, on $ matching before or after a terminating newline]
> > ...
> > I shall enter a bug report and leave it up to the powers_that_be to
> > decide whether to change the behaviour or section 4.2.1 of the
> > documentation.
> 
> The behavior can't be changed:  this was deliberate, for compatibility with
> Perl5 regexps.  Mounds of code would break if it changed.

That's what I feared. Then the sad-but-true story that's revealed
about $ in 4.2.3 should be told in 4.2.1 which is what people see
first. [I'm sure lots of people are like me -- never had occasion to
use "multline" mode and thus never bothered reading 4.2.3.] Perhaps it
should also mention that if they don't like the idea of pattern "abc$"
matching both strings "abc" and "abc\n", then they can use \Z ...

> 
> > To answer Tim's question, yes it bothers me ... the solution of course
> > always when you want to validate that the pattern matches the whole
> > string (and not some leading substring) is to have \Z at the end of
> > your pattern (not $).
> 
> Careful!

Not sure what you mean here; who should be careful of what? Pattern
"abc\Z" matches string "abc" but does not match strings "abcdef" and
"abc\n" -- just what one wants in a "whole string and nothing but the
string" match. After looking up Friedl's book and being aghast at what
Perl did with \Z, I was very careful to check that Python did it
"properly" before posting. The advice given is correct for Python. I
don't feel any duty of care towards any stray Perl aficionados who
might be reading this news-group :-)

> This is where Python and Perl parted company, and again
> deliberately.  Guido and Larry argued about this near the end of '97, and
> Python refused to let \Z match before a terminating newline; Perl does.
> Perl later grew \z to do what Python's (but not Perl's) \Z does.
> 
> Three years later, in
> 
> http://archive.develooper.com/perl6-language-regex at perl.org/msg00358.html
> 
> Tom Christiansen wrote:
> 
>     This is an annoying gotcha.  Larry once said that he wished
>     he had made \Z do what \z now does.  One would like $ to (be
>     able to) mean "ONLY AT END OF STRING".
> 
> Heh -- *everyone* should listen to Guido <wink>.

Good thing Larry never got to collaborate with Grace Hopper ... ALTER
$_ TO MEAN SOMETHING-ELSE DEPENDING ON $*

Cheers,
John


From paulp at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 12:52:44 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 09:52:44 -0700
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <20010705092242.C30249@glacier.fnational.com>
Message-ID: <3B449B5C.2234892A@ActiveState.com>

Neil Schemenauer wrote:
> 
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> > From my personal experience: I get roughly a 15-20% increase of
> > productivity in Java.
> 
> Could you estimate the figure for Python?  I haven't done enough C++ or
> Java to judge myself.

What kind of cushy life have you been living?
-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From bokr at accessone.com  Mon Jul 30 14:58:48 2001
From: bokr at accessone.com (Bengt Richter)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 18:58:48 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2snfh3h05.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9m4r1a.eqf.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64d4ce.777475039@wa.news.verio.net> <slrn.pl.9m9ug6.gim.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <3b659613.826951783@wa.news.verio.net>

On 30 Jul 2001 06:09:11 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:52:53 GMT, Bengt Richter <bokr at accessone.com> pisze:
>
>> I think several notions of exactness are getting mixed.
>> 
>> Two relationships need to be separated:
>> 1. bit pattern representing a number <-> *mathematical value*
>> 2. *mathematical value* <-> significance in problem domain
>
>I disagree. The only interesting relationship is
>  number which can be represented in a bit pattern <->
>  significance in problem domain.
>
Then you are not interested in whether a bit pattern transformation
that implements a mathematical operation results in a bit pattern
that exactly represents the infinite precision mathematical result?

>The number represented can differ much from the number intended
>because some operations (e.g. subtraction of positive numbers) may
>make the result very inexact.
The key to thinking about this is to differentiate very carefully
between abstract numbers and their various representations. And between
mathematical operations and corresponding operations on representations.

>
>Which mathematical value are you talking about? The one represented
>by the bit pattern or the one which would be used if arithmetic was
>exact (assuming that it's a rational number at all)? In any case it
>boils down to the above relationship.
I was taking about all of the above, trying to clarify their relationships.

>
>> Exactness has to do with the first relationship. A particular bit
>> pattern representing a number uniquely identifies its corresponding
>> *mathematical value* by design. If the *mathematical value* is exactly
>> what you want, declare the representation exact,
>
>It's not useful to tag exact float values. Exactness depends on
The designers of the fp hardware apparently thought it was useful.
They supply a hardware status bit for that purpose, and automatically
re-tag to inexact when an operation causes that. Blame language designers
and compiler writers, not floating point hardware.

>artificial conditions. Operations on them don't always produce exact
>results.
Right, and the hardware knows when that happens. What do you mean by
artificial conditions? E.g., the double format can handle anything the
int (32 bit) format can handle exactly, and more. Would those be
artificial? 

>
>In effect sometimes by accident you might get an exact result, but
>it's not guaranteed that the same computation of different data will
>give an exact result. It's better to statically known that results
>of a computation are not exact in general.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the same computation of different data."

>
>If you want exact results, simply don't use floats. If you don't
>need exactness and know that the algorithm behaves well numerically,
>use floats for speed. I don't see the point in the compiler inferring
>whether it managed to get a particular result exact or not.
It doesn't have to infer. It can check a status bit, if the ieee754
hardware is used right.

>
>Not to mention that it's inefficient to check whether operations on
>floats preserved exactness, so you hurt those who don't need exactness.
>
How many nanoseconds are you willing to spend on it per expression that
involves floating point? The IEE754 implementation on pentiums has a
status bit that you can clear at the beginning and look at at the end.

The trouble is, you have to write a few lines of assembly to do that,
because AFAIK it's not accessible in standard C libraries. I don't know
if compilers benignly ignore it, or gratuitously clear the status sometimes.
It's a "sticky" bit, so if they ignore it, it should be possible to make
some functions that set and query it from the Python C number implementation,
at least on intel pcs. One clear and query per assignment involving fp should
do it.

There really shouldn't be that much floating point implementation code in
the interpreter or VM. I wonder what it would take to rewrite it to take
real advantage of IEEE754. That would be a real Python distinction.



From phawkins at spamnotconnact.com  Sat Jul 21 13:00:05 2001
From: phawkins at spamnotconnact.com (phawkins at spamnotconnact.com)
Date: 21 Jul 2001 13:00:05 -0400
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net> <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org> <jtr8vmw8zj.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <wky9piw73e.fsf@mail.connact.com>

>>>>> "WA" == William Annis <annis at biostat.wisc.edu> writes:

WA> # Then I open the pickle file in my trusty swiss-army editor, Emacs,
WA> # and forward-char 823962 times, and this is where I end up:
WA> <snip>
WA> g29
WA> ssg34
WA> g62
WA> sg36
WA> I1
WA> sg37
WA> S'Holt-Winters models on base load and net'
WA> sba(iKiosk.transports.stranger_e
WA> stranger_e
WA> p772                            **** first char of this line


Hmmm.  My principle on mystery bugs like this is, if you can't fix it,
try breaking it further... sometimes, like smashing swiss watches, you
learn an awful lot from the bits.

What happens if you copy the pickle file to a new file, 
and tweak the surrounding characters?  And I presume you have emacs in
binary mode... but what exactly is in the whitespace between
stranger_e and p772?

Does this happen to other pickle files?  If so, does the point it
happen at have any significance -- eg, is it always at 823962 characters
-- which *would* point to a bug in pickle -- or at similar
combinations of characters (ditto!)


-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications, LLC




From speedy911 at mindspring.com  Mon Jul  2 10:26:40 2001
From: speedy911 at mindspring.com (Charles Harrison)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 07:26:40 -0700
Subject: how do I get modules to stop eating memory
Message-ID: <6f78b8b.0107020626.38939858@posting.google.com>

I posted a message about a week ago asking about deleting modules from
memory.  I got several replies with things that should work, but they
didn't.  Here's the scenario that I've been trying:

- open the python shell and import sys and any other module

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Aug 25 2000, 09:33:37)  [GCC 2.96 20000731
(experimental)] on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> import BaseHTTPServer

- I also run 'top' when im doing this to monitor the memory that
python is using. The 2112 is the memory used after importing the 2
modules.

22738 charriso   0   0  2112 2112  1380 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 python

- Now I do what should unload the module 'BaseHTTPServer' and free the
memory.

>>> del BaseHTTPServer
>>> del sys.modules['BaseHTTPServer']

- And now top says that the memory usage is now 2120.  

22738 charriso   0   0  2120 2120  1384 S     0.0  1.6   0:00 python

- Prior to importing BaseHTTPServer the memory usage was 1432. 
Shouldn't Python's memory usage have gone down to that number, or at
least down some?


From jonathan at onegoodidea.com  Tue Jul 31 03:34:33 2001
From: jonathan at onegoodidea.com (Jonathan Hogg)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:34:33 +0100
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <jonathan-D4822F.08343331072001@news.easynet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.996524288.7635.python-list at python.org>,
 <brueckd at tbye.com> wrote:

> Others on here have pointed out that using C++/Java as an example of a
> strongly-typed language is a mistake, so maybe my opinion is closer to
> "the typing systems in C++ and Java tend to cause me more work and
> problems" and not strong, static typing.

Bingo. This is Java's fault for not having parametric polymorphism 
rather than a problem with strong static typing per se. In my opinion 
it's unfair to lump C++ in with Java since C++ at least has templates to 
do this sort of thing.

Maybe I just haven't been writing large enough programs in Python, but I 
don't feel that I hit many errors where I think "damn! I wish the 
compiler had picked this up for me". I'd be interested in other people's 
opinion on this. (And I've programmed plenty in Haskell so I know a 
strong static typing system when I see one.)

I can though, think of plenty of places where strong static typing would 
defeat intentional exploitation of the dynamic typing. Maybe this is 
poor programming on my part, but I can't even think how one would type a 
function like say:

   def f(zs): return reduce( lambda x, y: x + y, zs )

Python's dynamic typing has the most optimal type for this function:

   "A function that takes something looking like a sequence of
    things that you can call "+" on, and returns something that
    you might get back by "+"ing a bunch of such things together."

I just don't ever see Python with a static type system. What's more I 
don't think I'd want it. If you want static types then code in something 
else. If you find Java/C++ too horrific, then I'd seriously recommend 
O'Caml - though this is just from a cursory look, I did most of my FP in 
Haskell but I don't think I could recommend it unless you're willing to 
become a serious FP-head and want to get to grips with Monads ;-)

Jonathan


From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul  5 19:22:21 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 18:22:21 -0500
Subject: Time for a Python "distribution" ? was:Not enough Python library development
In-Reply-To: <3B44E26E.16B8064F@ActiveState.com>
References: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D4E8@admin56.narex.com>
	<3B44E26E.16B8064F@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <15172.63149.95189.919961@beluga.mojam.com>


    Paul> You could imagine something like:

    Paul> import "http://Numeric.sourceforge.net/numeric.tar.gz"

Well, not quite.  Actually, you'd still execute

    import Numeric

but sys.path would include

    http://Numeric.sourceforge.net/

as a directory to search...

    Paul> But nobody is working on that right now.

People can import from zip archives now.  I doubt it would take a lot of
extra effort to import from a website.  The biggest problems would be
performance (of the initial import - one would hope you'd cache the fetched
results) and security (I'm not sure I would want to blindly import something
from the net unless I could be sure it had been blessed by the BDFL).

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 11:40:50 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:40:50 -0500
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <E15OWld-0005JN-00@darjeeling>
References: <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
        <E15OWld-0005JN-00@darjeeling>
Message-ID: <15196.17794.834190.644048@beluga.mojam.com>

    >> During the debate on changing int/int to give a float result, some
    >> proponents appeared to question the usefulness of integer quotients.

    Moshe> Yes. Nobody said it wasn't of any use, people just claim it is
    Moshe> *less* useful, and so should not be the most easily
    Moshe> accessible. You can still have i//j for all your combinatorics
    Moshe> needs.

I'd like to see some support for the claim that int/int==float is preferred
by a sufficiently large fraction of the current population that it shouldn't
be spelled int//int==float.

Skip



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 04:35:39 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 10:35:39 +0200
Subject: Any way to get current file position in xml.parsers.expat?
References: <slrn9kt86i.750.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com> <Msx37.103186$%a.4410093@news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com> <slrn9ku4ii.1ji.clgonsal@keeshah.penguinpowered.com> <mailman.995067084.17824.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ip0fg010ht@enews4.newsguy.com>

"Paul Prescod" <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995067084.17824.python-list at python.org...
> The behaviour isn't likely to change. The SAX handler depends on it.

Then it might perhaps be good to document and "nail it
down", so that other components may reliably depend
on it just as well...


Alex




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  8 16:24:11 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:24:11 -0400
Subject: Q: Duplicating Objects ... HOW ???
References: <9ia0ru$80k$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> <etd7kxjcp8x.fsf@pickled-herring.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Uh327.14798$i8.1312190@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com>

"Alex" <new_name at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:etd7kxjcp8x.fsf at pickled-herring.mit.edu...
>
> You may be happier in the long run keeping the sequence of test objects
> in a sequence, like a list.  You could do something like this:
>
> import copy
> test_list = [copy.copy(obj) for obj in 20*[test]]
>
Or, possibly, in a dictionary:

dict = {}
for i in range(1,21):
    dict[test+str(i)] = copy.copy(obj)

For what it's worth, if you find yourself trying to create names dynamically
in the local namespace there are usually better ways to sole your problem.
Once you have created the names dynamically, your next problem is to
dynamically create code to access those names!

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From jcollins at boulder.net  Thu Jul  5 12:49:03 2001
From: jcollins at boulder.net (Jeffery D. Collins)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:49:03 -0600
Subject: There's got to be an easy way to do this
In-Reply-To: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>; from Greg.Lindstrom@acxiom.com on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:15:38AM -0500
References: <ABEE81BE08ADD311B6A1009027DE908D0BD87D90@conmsx03.conway.acxiom.com>
Message-ID: <20010705104903.A27042@boulder.net>

>>> import re
>>> re.sub("[^0-9]", "", "(555) 333.2221")
'5553332221'

or 

>>> c = re.compile("[^0-9]")
>>> c.sub("", "(555) 333.2221")
'5553332221'


On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:15:38AM -0500, Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
> I am reading in a phone number field and would like to throw away everything
> except the digits.  Being an old C programmer, I know how I would do this.
> Even with my limited knowledge of Python, I know how I would do it:
> 
> 	stripped_phone=''
> 	for c in phone_number:
> 		if c in digits: 
> 			stripped_phone += c
> 
> but with all of the data structure support native to Python, I'm sure there
> is "an obvious way" to do it (perhaps it's because I'm not Dutch:-).
> 
> Greg Lindstrom
> Acxiom Corporation,                    mail: CWY10011149
> InfoBase Products Development                  office: (501) 342-1626
> 301 Industrial Blvd, Conway, AR, 72032     fax:     (501) 336-3911 
> email: Greg.Lindstrom at acxiom.com           
> 
> "When the solution is simple, God has spoken"
> 
>                                                             Albert Einstein

-- 
Jeffery Collins (http://www.boulder.net/~jcollins)



From abulka at netspace.net.au  Tue Jul 17 07:37:04 2001
From: abulka at netspace.net.au (abulka at netspace.net.au)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:37:04 +1000 (EST)
Subject: socket server for Flash 5
Message-ID: <995369824.3b5423609195b@www.netspace.net.au>

Has anybody written a socket server in Python with Flash 5 in mind?  

Flash 5 can talk XML to an appropriately constructed socket server - but I've 
only found XMLSocket servers written in Java available for this purpose.   

e.g.  Xserver is a pure java server designed specifically for the Flash XML 
socket connection. It was created to provide Flash designers the missing link 
to using the socket object in Flash. It is easy to configure, provides a simple 
API, and is flexible enough to be both a chat-server and a multi-player game 
server."

e.g. also The FlashNow server works with the XML socket feature, opening a 
channel for messaging between different users.... FlashNow V1.2
Enables Flash developers to create live, two-way interactions using the XML 
socket feature of Macromedia Flash 

It would be nice to see such a server written in *python*, and readily 
extensible.  Surely this has been done somewhere?

-Andy Bulka
Melbourne, Australia



-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: www.netspace.net.au




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Sat Jul 28 09:46:32 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 08:46:32 -0500
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <15199.8639.732833.516879@beluga.mojam.com> <200107260721.JAA18607@pandora.informatik.hu-berlin.de> <mailman.996167570.6366.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <0B9C3F9A8A5DBB82.B1E85E154FD8462B.FC25E3820264C58C@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.996167570.6366.python-list at python.org>,
Skip Montanaro  <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>connections in some instances.  There's not much to be done to get around
>the XML parsing cost except try and find faster XML parsers.  I use XML-RPC
>w/sgmlop.  In my application domain XML parsing is the least of my
>performance worries. ;-)
I know the feeling.
			.
			.
			.
I have an article coming out within the next
month on a particularly zippy XML parser.
While it's not Python-oriented now, I suppose
it could be.  I don't think it'll be any sig-
nificant help to Thomas Weholt, who launched
this thread.  In any case, feel free to moni-
tor <URL:
http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/misc.writing/publications.html >
for updates.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From tjreedy at home.com  Thu Jul 26 13:20:26 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:20:26 GMT
Subject: garbage collector
References: <mailman.996157859.3533.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ujY77.30548$EP6.7848041@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"franck delarue" <frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr> wrote in message
news:mailman.996157859.3533.python-list at python.org...
> hi,
> I use python1 with a lot of object (dictionnairies +
> lists) and my program takes 3 or 4 hours to execute on
> a 4 processors (700 mghz) and 2 Go Ram machine (linux
> red hat).
> The problem is that when the program is finished,
> python still continues to delete the objects (I've put
> some "print" to see when the "del" function is
> executed) during about 30 minutes.
> Is that normal ? Is there a solution to stop the
> program correctly ? ("ctrl+alt+del" or "kill -9 XXX"
> works but i don't feel satisfied)

A Python program stops processing statements and starts the somewhat
undocumented and probably system-dependent cleanup phase (prior to
shutting down completely) when it reaches the end of the main file,
you call sys.exit(), or an exception is uncaught.  Is it this phase
(often < 1` sec) that is taking 30 minutes?  If so, I would think the
hard disk must be thrashing  a lot (is it?) in response to
instructions in __del__ methods (do you have the source so you can
change them?)  Or is the OS thrashing because there are gigabytes of
virtual mem paged out to disk?

Killing the program externally aborts without cleanup, I presume.
When you say that this 'works', you are saying that you do not really
want whatever is done in the 30 minutes to be done.  If the useless
work is something you asked for, stop.  Or maybe you need to more
aggressively delete no-longer needed objects during the multi-hour
execution either by removing unneeded references (perhaps stuck in
lists of objects) or by calling the circular-garbage collector.

Terry J. Reedy





From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  1 10:12:54 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 14:12:54 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEKKKLAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993959822.4608.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpithckaef.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:

> It is much clearer in isolation but not when placed in the context of
> the rest of the language. It has different behavior than "x = x + y"
> which is what most people will think x += y means. Someone even posted
> on this thread: "I don't understand what's so complicated x+=y is the
> same as x = x + y".

In most situations the aliasing possibility that makes these two
different in semantics is not an issue (because there is no alias to
the variable x), and then they can safely be considered equivalent.

Python's rules for immutable objects have always encouraged fuzzy
thinking abou variables: immutable types were invented so that folks
who focus on variables rather than the objects referred to by those
variables won't encounter surprises, as long as they use immutable
types (particularly, numbers and strings).  But then the introduction
of mutable objects (lists and dictionaries) unavoidably has to create
some confusion.

Like the introduction of pointer types in other languages, once you
have the right mental model it shouldn't be a problem.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 23:33:50 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 04:33:50 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <00867F2E.N22121@rsmi.com> <mailman.995929959.12037.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <l7mplt48hlpa0vrrm1g27hlit9uq86v11m@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:10:10 -0700, Paul Prescod
<paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:

>This issue is constantly presented as some sort of dichotomy between
>"regular" programmers" and newbies. But really it is more of a 
>dichotomy between those originally trained on typed languages and 
>those on dynamically typed languages.
>
>The other languages in the Python category (Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, ...)

They aren't dynamically typed, they are essentially untyped. That is a
very different thing. And the reason Python users are Python users is
quite often because they hate the choices made by Perl, Javascript...

There's a marketing term called differentiation. The principle is
simple. You can't compete effectively with another product unless
yours is different somehow. Copying good ideas is, of course, a good
idea - but it is by no means clear that that is what we are doing.
There is very good reason for believing we are copying a mistake. Not
a stunningly serious mistake, perhaps, but that hardly counts as a
justification - especially given the much more serious problems with
compatability and credibility.



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 07:48:35 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:48:35 +0200
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKPKLAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993966061.10438.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <j4wv5suay4.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> writes:

> My concern with the standard library is that it seems very disorganized
> compared to the language itself. Some of these may be idiosyncratic
> complaints but the overall point is that we don't discuss this stuff to
> the same degree that we do the language, so I don't know how others
> feel.

I guess you know the historic reason for most of these things just as
good as I do, so I restrict myself to expressing my feelings, instead
of trying to explain the status quo.

>  * Some modules are very low-level and others very high-level.

I feel this is a very good thing, and I prefer this much to the
approach taken by Java (or, say, .NET). There are cases where the
low-level API must be available - people ask for means to find out
free disk space, and accept low-level APIs if nobody has found the
time to wrap them. Removing the low-level APIs is not acceptable:
often this is the only thing that time permits to offer.

Likewise: *If* people find the time to implement a high-level API, it
is just a matter of teaching to tell people to use that instead of the
low-level stuff. This goes throughout the entire library:
- sockets vs. httplib vs. urllib
- open vs. codec.open vs. xml.parsers.expat vs. xml.sax.make_parser
  vs xml.dom.minidom.parse
There are applications for each level of abstraction, and I consider
this support a major strength of Python, and part of the "batteries
included" vision.

>  * Some use callbacks where another would use inheritance. 

In some cases (XML), the nature of the API is mandated by standards;
so total unification should not be attempted. For others, I agree
that unification is desirable.

>  * The naming conventions are not consistent.
>  * The case conventions are not consistent.

These will be difficult to solve; somebody should establish a style
guide, which should then be declared official, and API adjusted
accordingly.

>  * The influence of C still pervades even as the set of programmers
> coming from raw C declines.

I see this mainly as a documentation problem. Telling people 'this
works like the underlying C function' is the real problem, not that
there is an underlying function.

>  * Things are not package-ized.

I could not care less.

>  * IMO, platform specific stuff should be moved into platform-specific
> modules and out of "os" and "time" etc.

I agree, although this *would* break code. As a starting point, the
guaranteed-to-exist part of os must be carefully reviewed.

>  * cStringIO versus StringIO. Why do I need both?

You need StringIO to inherit from StringIO.StringIO. There may be
trickery to let StringIO.StringIO still act as a base class, but be
cStringIO.StringIO when called; I think such a patch would be
desirable. It might be also that inheriting from StringIO should be
deprecated; I'm not sure here.

>  * sometimes "flags" are passed as strings and sometimes as |'d
> integers.

I prefer symbolic constants; then I don't care whether they are
integers or strings.

>  * why do we need a "stat" module for interpreting stat() results. Why
> aren't stat's results self-describing? (i.e. an object)

Good point; there should be a stat.stat function for compatibility.

>  * there's some little-used stuff in there that could probably be moved
> into a third-party extension

I agree. That should use the deprecation procedure.

>  * do we really need four variants of popen and seven of exec (none of
> them having any relationship to Python's exec keyword)?

I agree these should be reduced.

> I do feel that this is a problem that only PythonLabs could really
> address because a library overhaul would be large, pervasive,
> controversial and would require Guido's approval at every step.

I disagree. Anybody can write a PEP on deprecating API, introducing
new API, etc. As a starting point, a library style guide PEP could be
written. Several years later, people could start implementing it :-)

Regards,
Martin



From paulp at ActiveState.com  Sun Jul 29 17:36:27 2001
From: paulp at ActiveState.com (Paul Prescod)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:36:27 -0700
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
	 <3B62FAFF.BB987077@Lugoj.Com> <mailman.996347633.4448.python-list@python.org>
	 <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com>
	 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
	 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org> <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3B6481DB.C5AEA46@ActiveState.com>

Robin Becker wrote:
> 
>....
> >worth consideration.
> >
> >Now let's examine some of the other languages out there:
> >
> > * For a long time, C was the only way to do system programming for Unix
> 
> what language does one use nowadays. If not C then pretty much any
> scripting language can do the same things as C given that we have the
> wrapping tools like swig. What's swig coded in?

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. C became popular between
twenty and thirty years ago. Its current popularity is a result of that
early boost. Python is not typically used for "systems programming." I
think of systems programming as the programming that goes into building
the heart of an operating system or relational database etc.

>...
> > * Java was the only way to do client-side graphics and then evolved
> >into "Servlets" and "EJBs"
> 
> Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.

Java is not much better at that than Tcl or Python.

> >
> > * Perl was the defacto way to do sysadmining when sed and awk ran out
> >of steam
> 
> so C wasn't ever that needed?

For system administration? I would say "not much". Systems programming
and system administration are two different thing.

>...
> > * Visual Basic and Tcl were the only easy way to make GUIs for their
> >respective platforms for a long time
> 
> This is just nonsense. There are many ways to do CGI and even more ways
> to do guis. You neglect all those other semi-proprietary languages. The
> H***card one is an example. Even if you restrict Tcl to unix, Tcl is
> only a scripting language. The Tk extension is what makes Tcl/Tk into a
> gui platform. 

Right. And Tcl became popular while it was only possible to program Tk
in that one language and it lost popularity when Tk became popular in
Python, Perl etc. That goes to the heart of my argument. Tcl's
popularity was a side effect of the popularity of its platform. Expect
was another driver for Tcl's popularity.

> ... Visual basic is promoted by M$, Delphi is not and has as
> many if not more adherents.

Delphi came years after Visual Basic. Really, if Microsoft did not
invent Visual Basic as a GUI-building technology the Basic language
would be long-since dead. In fact you could argue that it is because
Visual Basic is becoming less and less Basic-like.

>...
> The above is a list of languages; all are thriving. 

Not all of them are thriving but all of them gained popularity based on
a particular environment or niche programming task. Sometimes the
environment got generalized (Tk and soon Visual Basic) and sometimes the
language outgrew the environment (C). But not once did a language carve
out its own niche based purely on technical merits (as you claim). If
Python does so it will be the first.

> ... For some more nearly
> dead languages try simula, simscript etc. What was that wonderful
> rebarbative predecessor of m4 called?

I wasn't trying to be comprehensive. There are thousands of languages
out there. I was demonstrating that the major languages that make up the
modern computing landscapes did so by grabbing on to a niche or a
particular task.

>....
> I consider the above to be an assertion. I certainly don't know the true
> number of regular Python users now or in the past. Perhaps we could do
> some comparative newsgroup posting analysis to get some idea of who's
> programming/interested in what language. But all of the little languages
> would be as noise to SQL and Cobol (even if you count them as languages)
> in terms of the total code volume and economic significance.

So your point is that SQL and Cobol carved out their large market shares
by being technically wonderful and wonderfully stable? I find that
extremely hard to believe. Look at the growth in the SQL standard. Look
at the quality of the Cobol language.

I'm waiting for you to point out a language that was so great
technically that it became very popular without hooking on to some
particular niche or platform or at least having a company with a
billion-dollar valuation behind it. This is a real problem for Python.
It has no big company and only tiny niches.

> > ....
> >*All* of the scripting languages change constantly. I guess they are all
> >bad.
> >
> 
> in some senses yes.  A *good* programming language is one that is easily
> applicable to a large set of problems. Sed is clearly not very good at
> matrix algebra. Awk can't plot graphs. Sed is easily better than Python
> at most simple stream substitutions. Python beats awk at list processing
> etc etc etc.

So SQL and COBOL are your examples of "good" programming languages?
Because of their wide generality????

>...
> >There is a lot of crap in C and C++ that the inventors of those
> >languages would like to change but it is too late now. Guido is trying
> >to avoid that fate. As an aside, Perl users seem remarkably accepting of
> >change considering the installed base of the language.
> >
> 
> So these languages aren't mature?

No, compared to languages that are 20 or 30 or 40 years old, Perl and
Python are certainly not mature. In particular, many people use Python
today in radically different ways than they would have five years ago
(in particular much bigger projects). They make certain demands on
Python that may cause it to grow in particular directions. Five years
from now there will be other new users with other new demands. I don't
see that happening for C or COBOL or SQL.

>...
> If there were a single right way there wouldn't be so much discussion.
> The one true way is often wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have seen the
> Architect change the '/' operator.

That's why I used the word "opinion".

Every change is a question of costs and benefits. While the user
community is small, the costs are smaller than they will be when the
community is large. That's why Python changes so much more quickly than
C or C++. It doesn't mean that it is worse, merely that we have more
opportunity to improve it than those who are stuck with hundreds of
millions of lines of legacy code. Guido is no more or less benevolent
than those who do not have the option of fixing their languages. He has
the opportunity, so he takes it. They don't.

-- 
Take a recipe. Leave a recipe.  
Python Cookbook!  http://www.ActiveState.com/pythoncookbook



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Mon Jul  2 14:31:30 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 18:31:30 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993765761.11911.python-list@python.org> <6qn16r7i69.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <9hhu6701d5j@enews2.newsguy.com> <6qae2r71hd.fsf@abnoba.intevation.de> <cp4rszl10a.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B3CECEA.5D02A66E@Lugoj.Com> <v491ktc9nooqo00k2l8th5moqui4i91c7r@4ax.com> <wz8zi719f9.fsf@sunshine.cs.uu.nl>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9k1fg2.24g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

02 Jul 2001 20:18:50 +0200, Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl> pisze:

> SH> I've always liked having a colon on my assignment operator - I think
> SH> the single = for assignment was a mistake. If we had := for
> SH> assignment, then augmented assignments would be more clearly distinct
> SH> from other operators - :+=, :-=, :*= etc etc.
> 
> Should be +:=, like in Algol 68.

Or :+, like in Comal AFAIR. "x :+ y" is composed of two substrings of
"x := x + y"; "x +:= y" is not.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From brakedon at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 08:19:10 2001
From: brakedon at hotmail.com (eric_brake)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 05:19:10 -0700
Subject: object - oriented programming Help!!
Message-ID: <7b515e0f.0107030419.5ef11fce@posting.google.com>

What am I doing wrong? I am trying to learn object oriented
programming, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

>>> import fibonaccii_gui
>>> fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in ?
    fibonaccii.fib(fibinstance, 100)
NameError: name 'fibonaccii' is not defined

#Here's the "fibonaccii_gui" module

fibinstance = fibonaccii(self) #create instance
class fibonaccii:
    def fib(self, fibnumber):
        a, b = 0, 1
        while b < fibnumber:
            print b,
            a, b = b, a+b


From Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com  Sun Jul 22 06:28:26 2001
From: Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com (Peter Mayne)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 20:28:26 +1000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9jfh2u$11b6$1@news.btv.ibm.com>

Up-front declaration: it's not my language, and I haven't been using it for
that long, so my opinions are probably worth slightly less than you think
they are, in which case feel free to laugh out loud, because I won't be able
to hear you. On the other hand, I may not be the Pope, but I know what I
like. 8-)

If Python is made case-insensitive, then the following should work:

>>> class A:
...  def F1():
...   print 'F1 in A'
...
>>> A.__dict__['f1']()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
KeyError: f1

The error is what currently happens, of course, but in case-insensitive
Python, then you should get 'F1 in A'.

How should this work? If the language is case-insensitive, then surely it's
reasonable to expect that in this case, 'f1'=='F1', i.e. case-insensitive
string comparison. Or should dictionaries be changed so that key lookups
become case-insensitive? That would mean a program that looks for different
cases of variables and produces example output of {'STRING': 3, 'String': 2,
'string': 3} (posted elsewhere in this thread) couldn't be written. 8-)
Maybe we should change only some dictionaries. I know I'm not going to
figure out the "right" way of fixing this.

We could (for instance) assume that all variable names are stored in lower
case, but then A.__dict__['F1']() wouldn't work. How do you explain that
defining a name in upper case, then doing introspection using the same case,
doesn't work, just after you've explained that the language is
case-insensitive? For that matter, how do you explain to beginners that
Python might be case-insensitive, but 'Python'!='python'?

Furthermore, if Python is extended to allow Unicode variables (in the same
way as Java: why shouldn't NumPy programmers be able to use variable names
like [imagine actual Greek characters here] pi or delta, or words from a
Hungarian phrasebook in their own code?), how will case-insensitivity be
managed then? We probably don't even need to invoke Unicode: I believe Dutch
has some interesting upper <-> lower case mappings. Anyone from Holland
here? 8-)

Since the title of this thread indicates that is isn't about
case-insensitivity exclusively, I'll drag in the integer divide problem as
well.

I have a VMS background. One of the rules in VMS is that user code (source
and binary) that doesn't break any rules is guaranteed to work on all
successive versions of VMS. This includes VAX/VMS 1.0, right up to the most
recent VAX-based version, and even onto Alpha-based versions (including
translated binaries). I think this is a Good Thing.

Some people seem to be arguing that 1/2==0 is "wrong", and should be fixed.
Given the philosophy espoused in the previous paragraph, it doesn't matter
whether 1/2 *should be* 0, or 0.5, or RationalNumber(1,2), or the number of
Bruces in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo [sic]:
the point is that 1/2 *is* 0, and therefore 1/2 must *stay* 0. Whether the
answer 0 is "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant. By all means introduce a //
operator or fdiv() function which produces 0.5, or extend the language in
some other way, but don't make changes that break existing code.

Likewise for case-sensitivity, and any other feature of Python that someone
may want to change one day: it isn't "right" or "wrong", it *is*, and
therefore should never become *is not*. There is no excuse for breaking
existing code: certainly, "it was a mistake to do it that way" and "it
should be different" aren't nearly sufficient reasons for breaking that air
traffic control application. 8-)

When changes are proposed, can anyone guarantee that they can figure out all
of the ramifications? (See the introspection example above.) If so, can
anyone guarantee that all of the broken code out there will somehow be
correctly upgraded when a new version of Python is installed, even if the
.py files have disappeared and only the .pyc files remain?

Of course, all this is rather idealistic, and makes it difficult to
introduce new keywords like 'yield'. Maybe Python should have taken a tip
from Algol68 and used a different font for keywords. 8-)

PJDM (expecting the Spanish Inquisition 8-)
--
Peter Mayne
IBM GSA (but the opinions are mine)
Canberra, ACT, Australia
This post is covered by Sturgeon's Law.




From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Thu Jul 26 03:34:46 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 07:34:46 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <m2wv4w5lj3.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9lvi0m.gv9.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

26 Jul 2001 17:04:00 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> pisze:

> I know that; that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a real _type_.
> It doesn't have to be instantiable.  If you want to use it as a
> constructor, it can return some appropriate concrete subclass.

In other words it's not a type: it's a function which returns its
argument unchanged or throws an exception. I don't think it's a
useful function.

>> I don't understand you. What practical difference do these diagrams
>> yield? What is wrong in *consequences* of Guido's and mine model
>> which your model puts differently?
> 
> The most obvious problem is that it implies that every rational
> can be represented as a float

It doesn't.

It only implies that if you have a choice of converting a float to a
rational or a rational to a float (to bring them to a common type),
you convert the rational to a float.

> [I think it also implies that floats with integral values (1.0, etc.) 
> should turn into integers.]

It doesn't. My model makes the result depending on the type of
arguments, not values (except that it matters whether the exponent
of ** is a negative int or a nonnegative int).

It could be changed to unify ints and rationals, i.e. always turn
whole-number rationals into ints. I would not do it for float because
it loses the information that the data is inexact.

>> What happens if you int to float in your model? Rational to float?
> 
> What do you mean, what happens?  You get a float.

So it works exactly as my model! And you say my model is broken and
yours doesn't?

How it follows from your model BTW? Rationals and floats are unordered
on your diagram.

The clue: what is a practical difference between them? What expression
has different values (including the possibility of different types)
in our models? I can't find any.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From grante at visi.com  Tue Jul  3 11:00:18 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 15:00:18 GMT
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com> <9hlfbn$6ok$1@nereid.worldonline.nl> <9hrj3q$cj1@news1.gtech.com> <9hsfue$oqv$1@216.39.170.247> <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <66l07.7612$B7.1402812@ruti.visi.com>

In article <3B41C7C4.E444FCF8 at stroeder.com>, Michael Str?der wrote:
>David LeBlanc wrote:
>> 
>> The Canadians privatized their national air traffic control a few years
>> ago and oh my! the planes RUN ON TIME!

All six of them.

:)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Now I understand the
                                  at               meaning of "THE MOD SQUAD"!
                               visi.com            


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Wed Jul 11 11:56:08 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 15:56:08 GMT
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
References: <mailman.994666709.12545.python-list@python.org> <9ifsp7$k1a$1@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>
Message-ID: <9ihsuo$255$1@coco.singnet.com.sg>

According to Panu A Kalliokoski  <pkalliok at cc.helsinki.fi>:
> If you have neatly separated protocol and socket handlers, I'd be 
> interested in trying that on my (IMO much evolved) replacement for 
> asynchat, namely Selecting+TCPServer 
> (http://sange.fi/~atehwa-u/selecting/)

In your opinion, how much effort does it take to shoehorn, um, integrate
Medusa's HTTP/1.1 implementation into your framework? 

Alternatively, what is the best way to get a HTTP/1.1 implementation
running on your framework?

Cheers.

-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:34:57 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:34:57 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org> <6Co87.132189$EF2.18348858@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <cpk80t233y.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

cjc26 at nospam.cornell.edu (Cliff Crawford) writes:

> |     For complex numbers, // raises an exception, since float() of a
> |     complex number is not allowed.
> 
> Shouldn't this read, "since floor() of a complex number is not allowed"?
> That would make more sense in context..

Yes.  But it's the same difference: floor() of a complex doesn't work
because float() of a complex doesn't work. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca  Tue Jul 31 22:41:09 2001
From: mnenadov at stclairc.on.ca (Mark Nenadov)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 02:41:09 GMT
Subject: Frank Willison
References: <mailman.996583393.15643.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <20010731.224809.653468858.12797@d150-169-166.home.cgocable.net>

In article <mailman.996583393.15643.python-list at python.org>, "Paul
Prescod" <paulp at activestate.com> wrote:

> The Python world has lost a great friend in Frank Willison. Frank died
> yesterday of a massive heart attack.

Wow. That is sad. I think O'Reilly has lost a very great man. I don't
know too much about him, but I always enjoyed reading his articles on
www.oreilly.com.

-- 
~Mark Nenadov (author/editor for http://www.coffeecode.com)


From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 16:47:05 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:47:05 -0500
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHAEFPCDAA.tim@digicool.com>
References: <15196.17040.65029.654718@beluga.mojam.com>
        <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHAEFPCDAA.tim@digicool.com>
Message-ID: <15196.36169.246641.246117@beluga.mojam.com>

    Tim> [Skip Montanaro]
    >> I'm not a denizen of the edu-sig list, but Guido has mentioned the
    >> Alice folks (I think they are the ancestors of the VPython folks)
    >> before as a significant influence on his ideas about this subject.
    >> Perhaps you would class them as educators and not numeric people, but
    >> I would throw them in the numeric camp.

    Tim> Does it make one whit of difference to anything here?  If so, I
    Tim> read Matt Conway's doctoral dissertation when this issue was still
    Tim> new, and it's far more about pedagogy than numerics in Alice.

The response was to your statement:

    Tim> Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in numerics has bugged Guido
    Tim> about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most visible repeated
    Tim> pressures have come from educators using Python as a means to some
    Tim> other end.

Perhaps I was wrong about some of Guido's influences in this area.  Anyone
doing 3D computer graphics whether in the context of engineering, computer
art or education has, in my mind, a keen interest in numerics in the sense
of "numerical analysis".  They are going to do a lot of floating point math
and much less integer math.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 15:43:24 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:43:24 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: <3B61B7E4.5C6DFF01@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCKEMFLBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Guido van Rossum]
> The correct work-around is subtle: casting an argument to float()
> is wrong if it could be a complex number; adding 0.0 to an
> argument doesn't preserve the sign of the argument if it was minus
> zero.

[Andrei Kulakov]
> When is 0 different from -0?

[James Logajan]
> When doing ones-complement arithmetic. Not too many machines use that
> anymore, and the ones that did (or do) should have comparison logic to
> consider -0 == 0. The CDC Cyber series used ones-complement.

The issue in context is about floats, and the sign bit of 0.0 follows very
specific rules under standard IEEE-754 arithmetic.  Multiplying by 1.0
preserves the sign of a 754 zero, but adding 0.0 (of either sign) may not;
so adding 0.0 as a means to convert to float is wrong under 754 arithmetic
rules, albeit subtly wrong.




From dennis at cobolt.net  Mon Jul  9 16:40:26 2001
From: dennis at cobolt.net (Dennis Schoen)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:40:26 +0200
Subject: MySQLdb not reading ~/.my.cnf ?
Message-ID: <slrn9kk5lo.9ed.dennis@smart.cobolt.net>

Hi all,

I'm trying to connect to a mysql db from a python script. I can
connect without any problem when i add explicitly the username and
passwd like this:

db = MySQLdb.connect(db=sys.argv[1], user=sys.argv[2], passwd=sys.argv[3])

coming from perl I like the idea of ~/my.cnf, but when i just ommit the
parameters I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./stuff/check_texbroker.py", line 50, in ?
    db = MySQLdb.connect()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 60, in Connect
    return apply(Connection, args, kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 58, in __init__
    self._db = apply(connect, args, kwargs2)
_mysql_exceptions.OperationalError: (1045, "Access denied for user: 'dennis at localhost' (Using password: NO)")

My ~/my.cnf file works fine, when used from other applications.

Is there something I need to add or is there simply no easy way for doing this?

Python is 2.1 and MySQLdb is 0.9.0

Thanks
	Dennis
-- 
"The Idea Is Good But The World Isn't Ready Yet"


From bedge at troikanetworks.com  Mon Jul 23 14:07:57 2001
From: bedge at troikanetworks.com (Bruce Edge)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:07:57 -0700
Subject: int() built-in and hex "0x..." strings
Message-ID: <20010723.110751.1143408282.18374@troikanetworks.com>

I can't believe this doesn't work:

>>> int('0x80')                                                                                          
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: invalid literal for int(): 0x80

Do I really need to parse out the '0x' 1st, then based on it's
absence/presence do either:
int('80', 16)
or
int('80')
?

Is there another int() type lib func that I should use instead?

-thanks, Bruce.


From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 18 01:59:07 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:59:07 GMT
Subject: python2.1 pythonw.exe base address
References: <83weaIAguDV7EwJm@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <me8altkhiogbki58a1u1br7rr41nl33bt1@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5525F0.9000605@ActiveState.com>

Tim Roberts wrote:

> I have to believe the pythonw.exe base address is a bug.


I have to believe it too :)

This is being tracked at 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=442142&group_id=5470&atid=105470

Mark.



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul 23 06:47:08 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 10:47:08 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
> [Martijn Faassen]
>> ...
>> The audience was entirely self-selected;

> Unlike, say, the participants in this discussion?  Hmm.  You set a rather
> high standard here, Martijn <wink>.

This discussion is entirely self selected too. What I'm pointing out is that
your 3/4 number is fairly meaningless in this discussion.

> ? they were people with an interest in numeric models.

> Or uninterested in Stackless (its "competition" in that time slot).  I
> suppose the next time we want advice about Unicode, we should just ask
> Americans.

No, next time you want to point out why Unicode should be removed from the
language, you should mention that in a session with mostly Americans *about*
removing Unicode from the language (because it confuses newbies) that
3/4th of the people present wanted it removed.

>> Did Guido ask for a show of hands in the big session afterwards?

> No, not on this issue.

>> I don't recall; I kind of suspect the outcome would've been different.

> I actually think 1/2==0 bothers "the general" population more than those
> with a keen interest in numerics.  Indeed, nobody with a keen interest in
> numerics has bugged Guido about this except Moshe, that I know of; the most
> visible repeated pressures have come from educators using Python as a means
> to some other end.

It bothers this member of the "general population" more that the semantics
of '/' will be changed rather radically at this point in the development of a
language. I don't see / as an educationally difficult concept compared to,
say, "all names in Python are references. Assignment is name rebinding, not
copying".

I wouldn't be arguing about this if we were designing a new language.

>>> The current integer division loses information silently and without a
>>> trace combined with that Python is not a statically typed language,
>>> there's simply no telling what e.g.
>>>
>>>  def velocity(distance, time):
>>>      return distance / time
>>>
>>> will compute by inspection.

>> There's no telling what:
>>
>> def add_stuff(a, b):
>>    return a + b
>>
>> will compute by inspection either, though.

> You chopped all my following text, saying that the velocity() example wasn't
> about user-defined overloadings but about ordinary arithmetic on the builtin
> numeric types.  A user trying e.g. velocity(3, 2) is simply going to be
> surprised -- as countless newbies have testified on c.l.py over the years.

I'm talking about string concatenation versus addition; no user-defined
overloading. "+" involves information loss when you use string concatenation;
the converse "-" operator isn't even defined for string concatenation.

"+" does two different things depending on what you pass in (strings or
numbers). "*" does so too. They both can be said to lose information.

Of course here we'd make the counter argument that "+" and "*" are entirely
different operations when we apply them to strings. But we can make a similar
argument for "/" (integers versus floats). That by itself is pretty common
in OO languages. 

Anyway, this only to point out that "/" is not *that* specially weird.
My main argument has nothing to do with it, but everything about not wanting
to break a rather large amount of existing code. This isn't the makefile
scenario, either. 

>> ...
>> For working with pixels in GUIs and such, integer division can be a
>> useful thing, though.

> It can be useful for many things; that's not at issue, and nobody has ever
> proposed taking away the ability to get an integer result; the issue is how
> to spell that.

The issue is also on whether you want to break all the existing integer division
code by changing the spelling, or not. You aren't designing a language in
a void here and this is a rather fundamental change to the core semantics. 

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From jmarshal at mathworks.com  Wed Jul 25 13:04:26 2001
From: jmarshal at mathworks.com (Joshua Marshall)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 17:04:26 GMT
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net>
Message-ID: <9jmu6q$ggl$1@news.mathworks.com>

Tim Randolph <timothyrandolph at nospampleaseyahoo.com> wrote:

> "Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
> news:cpofq9a858.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com...

>> But never mind, I'm giving up on making *Python* case-insensitive.
>> The hostility of the user community is frightening.
>>

> I have been saddened by the handful of posters to this forum over the last
> few days who have made the division issue into a personal, emotional affair.

Yeah, I think it's best to distinguish between the user community and
individual posters.


From dgallion1 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 20 09:35:03 2001
From: dgallion1 at yahoo.com (Darrell)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 06:35:03 -0700
Subject: synchronized lists
References: <9j8m49$22v$00$1@news.t-online.com>
Message-ID: <b0c5da3a.0107200535.1fc93d8d@posting.google.com>

Doesn't garbage collection prevent memory leaks like this?
The following cleaned up a mess I made.
>>> import gc
>>> gc.enable()
>>> gc.collect()
399996

This also looks promising "class WeakKeyDictionary"

Another approach is to put all the objects to keep track of in a dict.
Using the id(obj) as the key, then use that key instead of a reference
to the original obj.

--Darrell 

"Andreas Kremer" <andreas3004 at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<9j8m49$22v$00$1 at news.t-online.com>...
> Hi,
> 
> i have the following design problem:
> 
> in different classes i have lists which consist of elements pointing to
> instances of other classes with lists. What i need to acchieve is that if an
> instance of one class is pointing towards another instance, the latter needs
> a pointer to the former in its list, too, to know who is pointing at it. The
> result would be at least two lists in each instance, one with pointers
> outwards to other instances, the other with pointer to instances which point
> to this instance.
>


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 12:28:52 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:28:52 +0100
Subject: Language Niches (long)
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com>
 <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
 <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
 <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <4s1vMVAEtYZ7Ew4w@jessikat.demon.co.uk>

In article <175D9DAD48302704.2A098F904A50FA12.D77210EAD1B10B5B at lp.airnew
s.net>, Cameron Laird <claird at starbase.neosoft.com> writes
>In article <Ej5QPKA1WHZ7EwvP at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>,
>Robin Becker  <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>                       .
>                       .
>                       .
>>Java actually represents a new thing; write once run anywhere.
>                       .
>                       .
>                       .
>More so than Forth, UCSD Pascal, Lisp, Cobol (which
>deserves more appreciation for getting some of the
>social questions right), ...?
not really and no better than any of the above either. The wonderful
rebarbative GPM language was the one that I (mis)remember as being a
predecessor of m4, no doubt some one will set me right. Also beautiful
BCPL (we don't need no ****ing types).

As for abominations has anyone else used the Fame programming language?
-- 
Robin Becker


From nospam at ihatespam.com  Mon Jul 30 22:34:52 2001
From: nospam at ihatespam.com (CCLittle)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:34:52 -0400
Subject: sys.stdin.readlines() in 2.2a ?
References: <dz497.1571$96.1429@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> <j4wv4qr3gq.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <7Mo97.1577$96.1467@srvr1.engin.umich.edu>

Thanks for the reply.  For some reason yesterday it wasn't there and today
it is...  so no big deal now.

I was using IDLE for win32.

"Martin von Loewis" <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:j4wv4qr3gq.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de...
> "CCLittle" <nospam at ihatespam.com> writes:
>
> > Hi all, I'm trying to learn and master python.  I encountered an
> > example in "Programming Python 2nd Edition" by Mark Lutz that used
> > sys.stdin.readlines(), which does not exist in python 2.2a.
>
> I still have it in my 2.2a1 copy on Solaris. What system are you
> using?
>
> > 1. Where did it go?
>
> It did not go away.
>
> > 2. What kind of problems am I going to get by doing examples written
> > for 1.5.2 but on 2.2a?
>
> Very few. I might not remember all potential problems, so I won't
> attempt to list them here.
>
> > 3. Where can I get information on this sort of changes?
>
> Andrew Kuchling always publishes an article on new features, which
> always offer advise for compatibility as well. These are
>
> http://amk.ca/python/2.0/
> http://amk.ca/python/2.1/
> http://amk.ca/python/2.2/
>
> For Python 1.6, the information is somewhat merged into the 2.0
> document above. An independently-developed document is at
>
> http://www.python.org/1.6/
>
> For a detailed list of changes, see Misc/NEWS in the Python sources.
>
> Regards,
> Martin




From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 23 02:18:43 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:18:43 +1200
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995814276.15005.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5BC1C3.41330762@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Arthur_Siegel at rsmi.com wrote:
> 
> If I was told that experinced programmers might
> appreciate this change for any possible reason -
> I'd be quiet as a mouse.

I'm an experienced programmer, and I appreciate the
change on the grounds that different operations on
the same data should be spelled differently.

You may lapse into silence now. :-)

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Fri Jul 27 09:54:38 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 15:54:38 +0200
Subject: weakref module in debian package
References: <w2987.5367$tt4.249516@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <j43d7ih3z5.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Jeff Davis <jdavis at empires.org> writes:

> I can't 'import weakref', I simply don't have the module. I don't
> really know why, since I just installed the debian package for
> python2.0. If someone knows why it's not bundled, let me know. Isn't
> it part of the standard python2 library?

It is new in Python 2.1, just as

http://python.org/doc/current/lib/module-weakref.html

indicates.

Regards,
Martin


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul  4 02:26:49 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 06:26:49 GMT
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <9hsf0c0210e@enews1.newsguy.com> <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460@nnrp4.proxad.net> <9htfu7$cb1$1@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <qRq07.9790$Wc.6458460 at nnrp4.proxad.net>,
> Dublanc, David <ddublanc at free.fr> wrote:
> >
> >What is exactly weak typing ? I believed that Python was weak typing !

For those that don't know what this does:

> perl -e "print '1' + '1'"         

This applies Perl's addition operator to two "strings" composed of digits.
Returns 2.

> perl -e "print 1 . 1"

This applies the concatenation operator to two constant numbers.
This returns 11.

This is due to Perl's (intentional) conversion between numbers and
strings when context (a very important Perl concept) implies it.

You may not agree with this, but it's a matter of personal preference.
It should not involve the preference of a strange author bashing some
other language.

Java, Pike, Perl, Jython, PHP, Ruby. Each has its strengths and
weaknesses.  Each has its share of supporters and bashers. (I gleefully
bash Java. =)

<Rant>
While a good deal of time on comp.lang.perl.misc is spent bashing
newbies, I've not once seen a Python-bashing post. I _have_, however,
seen quite a few posts endorsing Python as an alternative.  These
posters are not bashed.
</Rant>

To the OP:
If you know what you want in a language, look around till you find it.
If you don't know what you want in a language, use several; see what you
like.

Q: If you ask a man on a basketball court if he likes basketball, what
is he likely to say?

Q: If you ask a Python newsgroup if they think Python is worthwhile,
what are they likely to say?

Inordinately apropos random quotation follows:

-- 
-Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org>
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's
opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
    -- Oscar Wilde


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 10 13:36:13 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:36:13 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
In-Reply-To: <3B4B1BB8.80EA0D56@noaa.gov>
References: <mailman.994713616.26838.python-list@python.org>
        <3B4B1BB8.80EA0D56@noaa.gov>
Message-ID: <15179.15629.179720.793768@beluga.mojam.com>

    Benjamin> Lindstrom Greg - glinds wrote:
    >> 3. No Support! At least no 900 number to call for a per minute
    >>    fee. Doesn't
    >>    seem to matter that in the past couple of years I have never had
    >>    to wait over a day to get a answer to a question. Perhaps we would
    >>    feel better if there were someone we could sue.

    Benjamin> I am sure plenty of people would be willing to charge per
    Benjamin> minute to give Python advice - just a matter of offering the
    Benjamin> service to get some suckers.. I mean companies to take it up.

Throw in a little heavy breathing and I'm sure you'd turn a profit... ;-)

Skip



From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul  3 14:34:45 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:34:45 -0500
Subject: accessing class data members
In-Reply-To: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
References: <3B420804.9882D166@bioeng.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <15170.4165.976198.986023@beluga.mojam.com>

    Curtis> In many OO languages, and theory, it is often the case that when
    Curtis> you want to know the value of some data member, that a function
    Curtis> is written to return that value.  However, in Python it seems
    Curtis> that people just access the data member directly.
    ...
    Curtis> Which is better?

As usual, it depends.  By not providing set/get methods you are promoting
the data member into the external API of the class.  Depending on how stable
your class is, that can be good or bad.  The example I remember best is a 2D
point class.  Internally you can represent a point using either cartesian
(x, y) or polar (r, theta) coordinates (or other representations, I'm sure).
Obviously, if you expose x and y data members and then decide later that a
polar coordinate representation would be better, you have more work to do to
preserve your API.

But, you can use getattr/setattr to provide both interfaces without using
set/get methods:

    class Point:
        def __init__(self, r, theta):
	    self.r = r
	    self.theta = theta

        def __getattr__(self, name):
	    if name == "x":
	        x,y = self.compute_cartesian()
		return x
	    ...

Exposing data members isn't necessarily good or bad.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 16:50:06 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 22:50:06 +0200
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9hsmh1$gtt$1@panix2.panix.com> <qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <9i2jv813cm@enews2.newsguy.com>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
news:qq69kt8id8j4j8rbo75871ikcdk3bpnuos at 4ax.com...
    ...
> C (or a C-like subset of C++) is more appropriate for smaller systems
> with no more than a few thousand lines of code - and development will
> be faster in such cases because there are fewer structuring decisions
> to consider. Not only will the development time be faster, but the
> code will be smaller, and will run a little faster too - in some cases

Most of the times, even in systems as small as this, you can make
productive use of template libraries (www.boost.org, ATL for COM
servers, the Standard library, ...) and cut a factor of 2 to 3 (more,
for a small-enough system!) from your source size and development
time -- design goes much *faster* because you fit in the groove of
the framework (concept to tested code time for a typical small COM
server: C++ with ATL 2 days, Python 2 days, C 10 days -- assuming
*EXCELLENT* mastery of lots of obscure API's in the C case:-).

When I write a Q&D Python extension with the Boost Python Library
(and the rest of boost &c of course) I observe a similar though
not-so-extreme set of ratios: 1/2 a day for original Python
prototype, 1 day for the C++ version, 2 days for the C API one
(again assuming EXCELLENT mastery of the C API, versus perhaps
some rustiness with Boost Python, which I had not used for a
while).  I think if I hadn't written the intermediate C++ version
it might have taken me 3 days for the C one anyway, because I
learned some things doing it (I *know* I would have wasted more
than the 1/2 day the Python prototype took, if I hadn't done it:-).


Alex





From tim.one at home.com  Mon Jul 16 02:23:25 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 02:23:25 -0400
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
In-Reply-To: <92ae279c.0107152124.4c049d5e@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIELDKOAA.tim.one@home.com>

[John Machin, on $ matching before or after a terminating newline]
> ...
> I shall enter a bug report and leave it up to the powers_that_be to
> decide whether to change the behaviour or section 4.2.1 of the
> documentation.

The behavior can't be changed:  this was deliberate, for compatibility with
Perl5 regexps.  Mounds of code would break if it changed.

> To answer Tim's question, yes it bothers me ... the solution of course
> always when you want to validate that the pattern matches the whole
> string (and not some leading substring) is to have \Z at the end of
> your pattern (not $).

Careful!  This is where Python and Perl parted company, and again
deliberately.  Guido and Larry argued about this near the end of '97, and
Python refused to let \Z match before a terminating newline; Perl does.
Perl later grew \z to do what Python's (but not Perl's) \Z does.

Three years later, in

http://archive.develooper.com/perl6-language-regex at perl.org/msg00358.html

Tom Christiansen wrote:

    This is an annoying gotcha.  Larry once said that he wished
    he had made \Z do what \z now does.  One would like $ to (be
    able to) mean "ONLY AT END OF STRING".

Heh -- *everyone* should listen to Guido <wink>.




From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 10:15:29 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:15:29 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60B3D5.664A3D7F@engcorp.com> <23891c90.0107270138.6bb70413@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <cpd76m4fwr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie) writes:

> I'm really disappointed that the "migration" process hasn't been
> addressed in the PEP, since the disruptive nature of the changes to
> division constitute my principal objection to the adoption of these
> changes. I get the impression that there isn't a good solution to this
> problem, and since this situation could hinder "progress", it is being
> "swept under the carpet".

What exactly would you like to see addressed in the PEP?  Should I
spell out that you have to do a query replace of / to //,approving the
replace if the arguments are integers?  That seems pretty trivial.  I
suppose tools will be created to do most of the hard work, but I don't
really see them within the scope of the PEP.

> But possibly the first thing anyone with any investment in the
> language should be thinking upon starting to read the PEP is: "How on
> Earth am I going to know what needs changing, and how much time and
> money am I going to be spending to adapt to this?"

Again a question the PEP cannot answer for you.  All the PEP can do is
give you enough time, and assurance that the switch won't be silent.

> One could suggest (as I did before) that until such time as effective
> type inference/analysis tools are available, this change shouldn't go
> through.

Which change are you speaking of?  Adding the future division
statement and the // operator?  Or changing the default meaning of /?
The former need to be done ASAP to give people enough time to get used
to it.  The latter won't happen until Python 3.0, which is years away.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From tspivey8 at home.com  Tue Jul 10 12:51:35 2001
From: tspivey8 at home.com (tyler spivey)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:51:35 GMT
Subject: Python speed
Message-ID: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

python is way slower than c. that's no big deal. but:
1. is python slower than perl
2. is python slower than ruby
3. is python slower than lua (some kind of scripting language)
i want to know if python, or lua would be a good thing to design a mud in. probably not lua since i think it is dead.
why are they way more modules for ruby than python?



From Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com  Fri Jul 13 13:34:33 2001
From: Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com (Tobin, Mark)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:34:33 -0600
Subject: Newbie list question
Message-ID: <3D7C088D6CCFD31190A5009027D30E9103391052@torex004.attcanada.ca>

But when I run:

>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> bar = foo
>>> baz = foo[:]
>>> del foo[2]
>>> foo
['a', 'b']
>>> bar
['a', 'b']
>>> foo += 'c'
>>> foo
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> bar
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> 

which doesn't happen when you use foo = foo + ['c']
right? That was the point of his original question, or am I all messed up?

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Alton, Matthew [mailto:Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 1:28 PM
To: 'Tobin, Mark'; 'Joshua Marshall'; 'tutor at python.org'
Subject: RE: Newbie list question



It is my understanding that the C-like "+=" was added
at 2.0 as syntactic sugar.  It is syntactically equivalent.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tobin, Mark [mailto:Mark.Tobin at attcanada.com]
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:22 PM
To: 'Joshua Marshall'; 'Matthew.alton at anheuser-busch.com';
'tutor at python.org'
Subject: RE: Newbie list question


Does:

foo += 'c'

act like an append then?  I always assumed it was the same as:

foo = foo + 'c'

which obviously should raise a TypeError.  Here however it works, in that it
appends 'c' to the object to which foo refers and thus to the object to
which bar refers...

Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Joshua Marshall
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 12:52 PM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: Newbie list question


Matthew Alton <Matthew.Alton at anheuser-busch.com> wrote:
...

>>>> foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']  #  We have a list named 'foo.'  Excellent.
>>>> bar = foo              #  bar points to foo.  Or does it?

bar points to the same object that foo points to.  It's not the case
that bar is an alias for foo.

>>>> baz = foo[:]           #  baz is a copy of foo.

For clarity, it might be better to say baz points to a copy of the
list which foo points to.

>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> bar 
> ['a', 'b', 'c']
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  So far, so good.
>>>> del foo[2]             #  Get rid of 'c' in foo and, therefore in
> bar (?)
>>>> foo
> ['a', 'b']                 #  'c' is gone from foo...
>>>> bar
> ['a', 'b']                 #  ... and also from bar, as expected.
>>>> baz
> ['a', 'b', 'c']            #  baz, the copy, is unaffected.  Also as
> expected.
>>>> foo = foo + ['c']      #  Add 'c' back to foo.

Here, the variable foo is rebound to a new list.  The previous list
(which bar still points to) is unaffected.  If you had done
"foo.append('c')" instead of "foo = foo + ['c']", than a 'c' would be
appended to the list object that foo and bar both still refer to.
-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



From James_Althoff at i2.com  Fri Jul 20 15:43:24 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:43:24 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
Message-ID: <OF66616340.49CAD6BE-ON88256A8F.006BEFC4@i2.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
>The Ruby convention is aMessage which is really more clear.

And is the convention in Smalltalk as well -- dating back to the 1970's (a
bit before Ruby :-).

Jim





From robin at illusionsexeculink.com  Tue Jul  3 08:33:43 2001
From: robin at illusionsexeculink.com (robin at illusionsexeculink.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:33:43 -0400
Subject: Postgres  support
References: <gul1kts5l6aolk55o7vguk97uorjd08j9f@4ax.com> <slrn9k1plb.2hd.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal> <mailman.994116064.9517.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <aie3kt8r1i8qego0sfqh30qhupqtaje19a@4ax.com>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:

>You can do one of three things:
>
>    * implement it and keep it to yourself
>    * implement it and release it for others to use/improve
>    * find someone willing to do it for you for a fee (perhaps a fee of $0)

It would have to be #3 for me, as I am not C proficient. I thought
that an appeal to this knowledgable group was in order first, and this
seems to have produced a comprehensive low-level answer by Gerhard.

What is still needed is a high-level perspective on the greater
problem of providing a Python distribution that is "ready for action"
across major database and OS platforms.

I hope someone at python.org or ActiveState or somewhere is aware of
this need and are working to fill it.

-----
robin                          robin at illusionsexeculink.com
media artist /                 remove illusions to reply
information architect          www.execulink.com/~robin/

Isolation tank paves way to execute an attack. 


From just at letterror.com  Sun Jul  8 15:54:53 2001
From: just at letterror.com (Just van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 21:54:53 +0200
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <roy-58C72C.12353708072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.994612587.9191.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B48BA8B.91C02600@letterror.com>

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Roy Smith wrote:
> >..
> > Is there a way to force the comparison to be by identity?
> 
> Not on strings!
> 
> > I'm
> > contemplating building a cache (using a dictionary), and key comparison by
> > identity should be significantly faster than by value, because I'm going to
> > be using rather long strings as keys.
> 
> Here's one way:
> 
> >>> class a:
> ...     def __init__(self, val):
> ...         self.val = val
[ ... ]

But string comparison checks identity first, so comparing a string to
itself is already as fast as can be.

Just


From tbryan at python.net  Sat Jul 28 12:13:37 2001
From: tbryan at python.net (Tom Bryan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:13:37 +0500
Subject: Best practices with import?
Message-ID: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>

I've been using Python off and on for over two years.  I've been teaching 
my wife Python, and she recently asked me how/where she should use 
import.  I realized that I have no idea what the best idioms are and what 
arguments support doing it one way or another.  For example, if I have a 
module that uses string, should I put an 'import string' at the top of the 
module?  Should every function that needs the module import it?  Sometimes 
I see modules that use both imports at the module level and at the function
level.  Why would I want to do that?  Finally, I vaguely remember that 
one of the bots once explained why I might want to do something like this 

def foo( arg ):
    import string
    # Lots of cool code omitted
    del string
    return val

but now I can't remember why, and I can't find the thread.

So, what are the "best practices" when using import (other than the simple 
"don't do a from module import *"?

i'll-even-use-the-answers-to-improve-python's-faq-ly yours
---Tom



From aahz at panix.com  Mon Jul 16 10:41:26 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 07:41:26 -0700
Subject: timed event??
References: <tl5t1fprkuobd@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <9iuuem$dkj$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <tl5t1fprkuobd at corp.supernews.com>, NJM <njm at rectec.net> wrote:
>
>I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can someone
>tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to find any modules
>that will help me.

Depends what you mean.  For example, if you're on a Unix system, it's
quite likely that the simplest solution is to let the timing be done
externally by a cron job; the program itself does not handle the timing.
(You can probably have the Windows scheduler do something similar, but
I'm not familiar enough with it to say.)
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From emile at fenx.com  Fri Jul  6 12:28:57 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 09:28:57 -0700
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9i4p7q$gjhss$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Your claim that python lacks database support is unfounded.  Your experience
using python in database environments should take a first step forward.
Once you've done that, and you experience problems using the available
tools, ask and we'll answer.

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Wilson" <web2ed at yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: Python: Database to Web Part II


<snip>



From grante at visi.com  Thu Jul 12 22:33:39 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:33:39 GMT
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org> <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ksnh3.jl.grante@tuxtop.visi.com>

On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>> ...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
>> and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
>> "Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
>> there must be more to it, eh.

I interpret "scripting" as automating a series of operations
that would probably be done interactively by a user otherwise.

An FFT isn't a script, even though its an automated sequence of
operations.

Deleting all the files named *.bak that are older than 24 hours
is more "script like" since it's something that might be easily
(if tediously) done interactively with a file browser or
command prompt.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I wonder if I ought
                                  at               to tell them about my
                               visi.com            PREVIOUS LIFE as a COMPLETE
                                                   STRANGER?


From SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 10:35:06 2001
From: SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk (Simon Brunning)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:35:06 +0100
Subject: case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code brea
	ks)
Message-ID: <31575A892FF6D1118F5800600846864D78BF41@intrepid>

> From:	Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleaxit at yahoo.com]
> Pity I was away during the hottest part of this debate...
 
Nice to have you back, Alex. In your absence, we had to resort to a major
flame-war to keep the bandwidth up.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning
TriSystems Ltd.
sbrunning at trisystems.co.uk




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.
It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else
is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in
reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. TriSystems Ltd. cannot
accept liability for statements made which are clearly the senders own.



From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 19:02:26 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 16:02:26 -0700
Subject: Python code to express a large integer in words?
References: <3B66EDD0.62196C8D@mjs400.co.uk> <CC8E8B653E34FE14.404EDCBD7E04E166.6B4ABEFBB3D42057@lp.airnews.net>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107311502.5b3f8ec6@posting.google.com>

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) wrote in message news:<CC8E8B653E34FE14.404EDCBD7E04E166.6B4ABEFBB3D42057 at lp.airnews.net>...
> In article <3B66EDD0.62196C8D at mjs400.co.uk>, ptah  <ptah at mjs400.co.uk> wrote:
> >For interest I have included code below from the as400network Club Tech
> >iSeries Programming Tips - 06.21.01 it is written in IBM RPG IV and is a
>  RPG--fascinating.
> >kind of DLL (we call them service programs) that does the above, I would
> >like to see how much more succinct a Python equivalent could be, purely
> >because I would like to jump ship and code in something more expressive
> >and need to put the case for Python to people who are not in the habit
> >of thinking in an abstract way ;)
> 			.
> 			.
> 			.
> <URL: http://mini.net/tcl/591.html > does the same for
> Tcl, and several European languages (if you ask nicely,
> Richard's likely to do it for Tagalog or Tibetan, too).
> For Python, see <URL:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?th=477859294d5872dd >.

:-)
This does a fine job for 'Merican (143 -> "one hundred forty three")
but as the OP's e-mail address ended in .uk he's going to have to work
on it a little to get the local idiom ("one hundred and forty three").
:-)


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 12 21:57:26 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 21:57:26 -0400
Subject: Scripting vs. whatever, again (was Re: Long Live Python!)
References: <mailman.994970962.7500.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B4E5586.82D8ACA8@engcorp.com>

Bruce Sass wrote:

> ...then would want to argue about the difference between a "script"
> and a "program".  I see it this way, if a script is only,
> "Automating a sequence of operations" -- C programs are scripts --
> there must be more to it, eh.
...
> $ dict "scripting language"
> <...>
> From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (06 Jun 01) [foldoc]:
> 
>   scripting language
> 
>      <language> (Or "glue language") A loose term for any language
>      that is {weakly typed} or {untyped} and has little or no
>      provision for complex {data structures}.  A program in a
>      scripting language (a "{script}") is often {interpreted} (but
>      see {Ousterhout's dichotomy}).
> ---
> 
> [Ousterhout's dichotomy... mainly refers to the arbitrary
>  catagorization of languages into "interpreted" vs. "compiled".]

Surely by far the most common connotation of "scripting" is in 
the sense of executing the source directly without the need
for a separate compilation step. 

Which would explain why so many people would refer to Python
source as a script ("just run it", even though there is an
internal automatic compilation to bytecode), while they 
would call Java source a program (compile to bytecode then run).

I thought of what I would call a "<100 line" little C file,
but the term "script" never comes to mind.  Even two lines of
C only deserves the name program (said with a sneer :-).

Exceptions: older BASIC applications which were and probably
are generally called programs and not scripts.  Maybe the
connotation I have for "scripting" developed only in more 
recent years.  I think I've heard "Perl programs" most often,
but that's probably for the alliterative value more than
to be an exception to my rule. :)

Interesting (?) special case: what do Jython programmers
use to refer to their source.  Do you call it, as you likely
do for Python, a script, or do you think of it as a program?
(And I don't know the nature of the compilation stage:
is it automated as with Python, or manual as with Java?)

Hmm... slight exception to my own rule.  I think of larger
Python applications as programs.  In fact, pretty much
anything with more than one module turns into a program,
and probably even large single file apps.  So "scripting"
must be both "a language in which source appears to
execute directly" and "small programs" together.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From shwang5 at students.uiuc.edu  Thu Jul 26 01:09:10 2001
From: shwang5 at students.uiuc.edu (Seung-won Hwang)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:09:10 -0700
Subject: [Q]pmw.selectiondialog
Message-ID: <5PL77.884$A3.10100@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>

Hello,

I'm looking for a widget just like selectiondialog but allows multiple
selection.. Is there any widget doing the functionality I'm looking for? I'd
appreciate your answer very much.

SW




From ljz at asfast.com  Sun Jul 29 15:51:14 2001
From: ljz at asfast.com (Lloyd Zusman)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 15:51:14 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org> <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-4B8DDD.19163726072001@news.service.uci.edu> <cp1yn25wee.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ygey9p9yf4x.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn.pl.9m4rar.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <yge4rrwa0li.fsf@asfast.com> <slrn.pl.9m7b4d.na4.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <ygeofq3v7il.fsf@asfast.com>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:

> 28 Jul 2001 23:14:01 -0400, Lloyd Zusman <ljz at asfast.com> pisze:
> 
>> Agreed: rationals with a fixed denominator for calculation results,
>> such as 100 in the U.S. where we have dollars and cents.
> 
> No, plain rationals will suffice. No arithmetic operation except
> division introduces a denominator which represents fractional cents.

I agree that addition, subtraction, and multiplication of these
decimal "money" quantities would work with normal rationals.  But
since division is also done on these data types, we have to make sure
that we're dealing with a fixed denominator during division, which is
not standard practice when using rationals.

For example:

  0.59 => 59 / 100   (in the U.S., 59 cents)

  0.59 / 3  =>  (59 / 100) / 3

With generic rationals, this would yield 59 / 300, but this is
meaningnless when dividing quantities of U.S. money.

The result would have to be ...

  0.59 / 3  =>  (57 / 3) / 100, remainder 2 / 100

            =>  19 / 100 (19 cents), remainder 2 cents

This means that we need a numeric type that handles division
differently from the way that standard rationals do it.

While rationals handle three out of these four operations just fine,
it turns out that all four of these operations are standard integer
operations.  Therefore, I believe that a better choice of number
system to extend in order to represent money would be Bignums.  All
that would be needed is to add implied decimal points.

And I think that Bignums would probably be faster than rationals in
the general case, as well.


> -- 
>  __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
>  \__/
>   ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
> QRCZAK

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz at asfast.com


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Tue Jul 10 15:31:05 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:05 -0400
Subject: PythonCOM and Office. Arrgh!
In-Reply-To: <994776732.1313.9455.l8@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B1FB9.18072.3B9CED8@localhost>

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> wrote, in part:
> This worked for me.  Win2ksp1, excel2k, Python 2.1
> 
> >>> import win32com.client
> >>> xl = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
> >>> xlc = win32com.client.constants
> >>> xl.Workbooks.Open('test',Password='fred')
> <COMObject Open>
> >>> xl.Visible=1
> 
> What do you get when you try this?

Using Win95, Excel 97 SR-1, Python build 203

>>> import win32com.client
>>> xl = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>> xlc = win32com.client.constants
>>> xl.Workbooks.Open(r'C:\0 Query 
responses\Book1.xls',Password='seamus')
---- At this point MS Excel displayed itself with a password dialogue
---- I cancelled that dialogue
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "c:\python21\win32com\gen_py\00020813-0000-0000-C000-
000000000046x0x1x2.py", line 13643, in Open
    ret = self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(0x2aa, LCID, 1, (9, 0), ((8, 1), 
(12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 
17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17), (12, 17)),Filename, UpdateLinks, 
ReadOnly, Format, Password, WriteResPassword, 
IgnoreReadOnlyRecommended, Origin, Delimiter, Editable, Notify, 
Converter, AddToMru)
com_error: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (1004, 'Microsoft 
Excel', 'Open method of Workbooks class failed', 'XLMAIN8.HLP', 
0, 0), None)
>>> xl.Visible=1
---- At this point MS Excel again displayed itself

This seems to be what the thread's originator experienced. 
Tentatively, appears to relate to version or configuration.



From arildh at stud.cs.uit.no  Mon Jul  9 14:08:00 2001
From: arildh at stud.cs.uit.no (Arild Hansen)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 20:08:00 +0200
Subject: typo.py - Warn of typographical errors in Python scripts
In-Reply-To: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net>
References: <XGk27.111$S23.104714@news.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107092005050.15947-100000@arildh.pasta.cs.uit.no>

Hey,

This tool was pretty nifty. I just tested it on some of my code and it
seems to do a nice job. I'll try it out on future work. However, I did
notice that it searched for .py files in the current directory so trying
to run it recursively (for example typo.py MyFiles/myfile.py) does not
work. Although I can change this myself, it could be a nice "upgrade"
feature!

A Hansen


On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, Alan Klietz wrote:

> One of the most common annoyances with using Python is that it does
> not report typographical errors in variable names at compile time.
>
> For example,
>
> def compute_area(width, height):
>     area = width * hieght   # oops
>
> Another example is a typo in an attribute for a class,
>
> class Square:
>     def __init__(self, width, height):
>         self.width = width
>         self.hieght = height  # oops
>
>     def compute_area(self):
>         return self.width * self.height
>
> typo.py will catch these errors and report them:
>
>         hieght might be used before set at line 2
>         self.height might be undefined at line 7
>
> You can download typo.py from http://utools.com/typo.htm
>
> Alan Klietz
> Algin Technology
> alank at algintech.NOSPAM.com
>
>
>
>



From plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu  Fri Jul 27 02:48:23 2001
From: plakal-nospam at nospam-cs.wisc.edu (Manoj Plakal)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 06:48:23 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <X8887.184307$mG4.86818814@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote on Thursday 26 July 2001 17:09:
> Open Issues
> 
>     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
>       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
>       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
>       zero?)
> 

        I guess I don't really count as a show of support since
        I proposed the quotient name in an earlier post, but I
        would like to suggest using the term "quotient" throughout
        the PEP (right from the Abstract) wherever you currently
        say "floor division" or "integer division" or "truncating
        division". And maybe replace "true division" with just 
        "division" or maybe "float division" to avoid confusing people.

        Regarding the definition of quotient itself, I think
        that the mathematical definition is:
              a div b = c
              a mod b = d   [ or a divmod b = (c,d) ]
        such that
              b != 0
              0 <= d < |b|
              a = b * c + d
        
        So, -8 divmod 3 = (-3,1) and 8 divmod -3 = (-2,2) ...

        ... umm that's weird, is my definition correct?
        I'd always assumed that the mathematical definition
        only allowed non-negative remainders.

        Doesn't match Python's current divmod() built-in
        which reports divmod(8,-3) = (-3,-1)

        Also, is there a mathematical definition of quotient
        for real numbers? 'Cos the PEP wants to assign
        a meaning to // for float arguments too.

        Manoj



From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul  1 07:20:14 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:20:14 +0200
Subject: Mapping with unicode strings buggy the format operator %
References: <1evqawi.p7ke9c1e51rkkN@[10.35.244.9]>
Message-ID: <j43d8gvqtt.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

chemacortes at wanadoo.WIPE_ME.es (Chema Cortes) writes:

> I have a dictionary with unicode strings as keys. Formating it with the
> format operator % raise errors when the key cannot convert into a
> non-unicode string. I try to surround the error, but the only thing I
> can do is not to use unicode keys in dictionaries. I supose that bug is
> caused because the format operator use the re module, not the sre (with
> unicode support).

No, it's a different problem: for %(name)s arguments in Unicode
strings, name is converted to UTF-8; the resulting UTF-8 string is
then searched in the dictionary.

> >>> d={ "a?o":2001 }
> >>> "%(a?o)4d" % d
> '2001'
> >>> d={ u"a?o":2001 }
> >>> "%(a?o)4d"  % d      # KeyError: a?o

This fails because u"a?o" and "a?o" cannot be compared: byte strings
and Unicode strings are comparable only if the byte string is ASCII.

> >>> u"%(a?o)4d" % d      # KeyError: a??o

This fails because the key is converted to UTF-8 before lookup.

I recommend to report a bug to sf.net/projects/python.

Regards,
Martin


From max at alcyone.com  Mon Jul 23 12:38:02 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:38:02 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100>
Message-ID: <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com>

Jim Abrams wrote:

> Because every camel has its straw, I need to agree here. I, and most
> of my python buddies, fight with bloodstained teeth and nails to get
> python in our projects and developments. I can't see winning too many
> arguments when my opposition can pull out 'the division operator' to
> shoot me down. I can't see budgeting time and people to making sure
> the division operator works after an upgrade. I'd be laughed into data
> entry ;).

Indeed.  If this is implemented, it will be a black eye for Python.  Any
anti-Python advocate will be able to point at this and say, "Look,
that's why you shouldn't switch to Python.  The semantics of the builtin
operators changes from release to release."  Problem is, they will be
absolutely right.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ I wonder if this grief will ever let me go
\__/ Sade
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Mon Jul 30 09:09:10 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 08:09:10 -0500
Subject: Tangent on wireless hysteria (was: Language Niches (long))
References: <8beb91f5.0107280407.5a30341d@posting.google.com> <8beb91f5.0107282158.4785ae5e@posting.google.com> <UK2E1VAMB+Y7EwX$@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <BEDD41E8FBB8D77F.D3FD7D805E4BEA41.1A906D050F601417@lp.airnews.net>

In article <mailman.996429234.13926.python-list at python.org>,
Paul Prescod  <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
			.
		[abundant correct
		remarks on Sather
		and more]
			.
			.
>Nevertheless, this is a somewhat precarious position to be in. Let's say
>that either of Ruby or Python were adopted as the "offical scripting
>language" for .NET or WAP or whatever the next dominant "platform" is.
>The boost given to that language might be enough to essentially wipe out
>the other one. "I have to learn language X to work with WAP anyhow. Why
			.
			.
			.
I've lost count--is WAP essentially
dead now, or on the verge of utter
world domination?
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 21:28:47 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 02:28:47 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <mnbpltsu04plad2n0978fo59p8c4tmdacl@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:53:42 GMT, "Tim Hochberg"
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:

>Which is not too horrible, but it is extra cruft. So let me turn your
>question around. Can you give an example where you want the type of division
>(float vs floor) to change depending on the type of input (int, float,
>complex)? I can't, although I suspect there must be some. I also suspect
>they're very rare.

I doubt that's common, but it misses the point.

Division has the same basic meaning whether you are using ints or
floats - the float version has simply been extended in line with the
data type. No-one bar programmers in a few relatively minor languages
is going to expect different division symbols for different data
types.

If you write functions that do not logically work for completely
general inputs, then you should validate and/or coerce those inputs as
appropriate - one of the first things a programmer should learn is
document limitations and validate inputs from unknown sources. If you
don't want to do that longhand, then asking for a language facility to
make it easier is the obvious way to go.

We're told that a major part of the reason for this change is to help
students and non-programmer newbies learn programming more easily -
but what are we helping them learn? The most obvious lessons I can
think of are...

1.  Don't worry about data types, they'll magically sort themselves
    out until you've dug yourself a nice *big* hole.
2.  Validation is for wimps.
3.  Don't bother thinking - that's what the computers for.

Have I missed any?



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 13 19:18:33 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 13 Jul 2001 19:18:33 -0400
Subject: Debugging extension modules
References: <ypE37.19036$uJ3.618127@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <ur8vk1kqe.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

"Gary Richardson" <garyr at fidalgo.net> writes:

> I have a question regarding the technique of debugging C extension modules.
> I'm using the ActiveState IDE and MSVS 6.0. I place the C code for a module
> in one directory and the Python test code that uses it in another. After
> building the module I copy the DLL to the directory containing the test
> code and try it out. However, if I have to make a change in the C code I
> find that I can't delete or overwrite the DLL file unless I exit the IDE. If
> I start Python from DOS, import the module and do some testing I must exit
> Python before I can delete the DLL. Is there a way to delete the DLL file
> without having to exit the IDE or Python?

I don't believe so.  The python core doesn't actually free the DLL
even if you delete all references to the module, so once you've
accessed it the first time, Python will have done a LoadLibrary() on
the DLL and Windows will consider it in use by the Python process
until Python exits.

You could probably (at least under NT/2K) rename the DLL in order to
rebuild a new version, but I expect you'd still have to stop/start
Python to get it to reload the new version.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  7 17:05:17 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 23:05:17 +0200
Subject: anonymous variable
References: <9i791n$3bh$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <9i7tjq01b9o@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Emmanuel Jeandel" <ejeandel at ens-lyon.fr> wrote in message
news:9i791n$3bh$1 at macareux.ens-lyon.fr...
> Hello
>
> In a script i made, i have tuples (name, nb, size) in a list and i wanted
to
> sort the list with respect to size.

As an aside, you know the fastest way for this is almost invariably:

    templist = [(size,tuple) for tuple in alist for _,_,size in tuple,]
    templist.sort()
    alist[:] = [tuple for size, tuple in templist]

AKA decorate-sort-undecorate, didn't you?  That doesn't affect your
argument, I'm just pointing out once again that passing a function
to .sort() is almost never optimal... hmm, maybe we could have a
way to encapsulate THIS excellent pattern in a perhaps-handier
way... the only real variant is the decoration, so we might have:

def dsu_sort(alist, decorate):
    templist = [(decorate(item),item) for item in alist]
    templist.sort()
    alist[:] = [item for _,item in templist]

and you could call
    dsu_sort(alist, lambda x: x[2])
to satisfy lambda-craving, or, more readably:
    def bysize(tuple): return tuple[2]
    dsu_sort(alist, bysize)
or perhaps nicer:
    def bysize(tuple): _,_,size=tuple; return size
and in any case the pattern would be well-packaged.


Alex





From urner at alumni.princeton.edu  Wed Jul 25 13:10:27 2001
From: urner at alumni.princeton.edu (Kirby Urner)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:10:27 -0700
Subject: Nostalgia for the present (re the infamous PEP)
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <yoxwv4y8y6r.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <srnsltg09pftvcn71n8s9bpktpeicmqhtj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <0rttltojkj083ani0pp7gb1pl90cdv80ol@4ax.com>

I tell ya, given all the uproar over // vs /, I'm already nostalgic
for the good ol' days (these are them), when / left it up to its
arguments to determine the type of the result.  In so doing,
it followed the same type conventions as the other arithmetic 
operators:

  Python 2.1.1 (#20, Jul 20 2001, 01:19:29) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
  Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  IDLE 0.8 -- press F1 for help
  >>> type(1+1)
  <type 'int'>
  >>> type(1+2.)
  <type 'float'>
  >>> type(1*2)
  <type 'int'>
  >>> type(1*2.)
  <type 'float'>
  >>> type(1/2)
  <type 'int'>
  >>> type(1/2.)
  <type 'float'>

But now we're gonna have:

  >>> type(1/2)
  <type 'float'>

The programmer doesn't have to do any casting, as type conversion
when returning a result is automatic.  

    def velocity(miles,hour):
        return float(miles)/hour

In the new regime, / is guarenteed to return a float, and // is 
guarenteed to return and int, no matter what the numeric args.
This puts / in a new category among the arithmetic operators:  
the operator itself ensures type of result, not the args.  

But that's because / *is* special in some ways:  + - and * are 
all closed in Z (integers), but the integers form a ring, not a 
group, with respect to + and *, such that the multiplicative 
inverse of j  -- i.e. 1/j or j**(-1) -- is not in Z unless j=1.  
This is what's driving / to be coercive, and to differentiate 
from //.

My own view is there's a lot of rationale for either way of 
doing it, with the fact of the initial design choice weighing 
heavily on the side of keeping it the way it is.  I prefer that 
newbies learn that type(int/int)==int and that pro programmers
sometimes "get burned", and that Guido not be apologetic
or remorseful for this initial design choice -- nor for making 
Python case-sensitive (a perfectly reasonable decision as 
well -- it's gotta be one way or the other, and there's plenty
to say in favor of either).

To take a page from our favorite giant:  It's not a wart (bug), 
it's a feature.

Kirby



From ggardiner at accelrys.com  Mon Jul 16 04:11:03 2001
From: ggardiner at accelrys.com (Gardiner, Geoff)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:11:03 +0100
Subject: HTTP through multiple NICs
Message-ID: <55E9531220EDD41186F50090274688BD2BF361@oranamesrvr0.synomics.com>

I'm writing test programs to emulate multiple clients. The word 'bind' is
the key that I hadn't worked out. Thank you.

Geoff 

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Holden [mailto:sholden at holdenweb.com]
Sent: 13 July 2001 16:51
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: HTTP through multiple NICs
...
You don't say whether you are writing HTTP clients, servers, or both.
Generally speaking, on any well-behaved TCP/IP platform (i.e. at least
Windows and Linux), the network layer will direct client traffic out on the
correct NIC to route it to the destination. For servers, just use an address
of "" and the server will bind to all interfaces.
...




From annis at biostat.wisc.edu  Thu Jul 12 09:52:00 2001
From: annis at biostat.wisc.edu (William Annis)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 08:52:00 -0500
Subject: Pickle translation
References: <jtr8vncn38.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <Bl237.4856$z21.493441@newsc.telia.net> <jtn16bchrx.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu> <mailman.994887559.21749.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <jtr8vmw8zj.fsf@wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     William> Traceback (most recent call last):
>     William>   File "bin/momd", line 83, in ?
>     William>     kserv = load(f)
>     William> ValueError: invalid \x escape
> 
> Interpretation of \x escapes was tightened up in 2.0 I believe.

        Am I supposed to be able to find "\x" somewhere in the pickle
file itself?  No such thing exists.

> I'm not sure what the solution is.  Someone with more pickle/string/
> internals knowledge will probably have some ideas.

        In the off chance someone gets some hints from this:

------------------------------
wazor /u/annis/code/NewMom $ python2.1 -i bin/momd
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bin/momd", line 83, in ?
    kserv = load(f)
ValueError: invalid \x escape
>>> import pdb
>>> pdb.pm()
> /u/u01/a/annis/code/NewMom/bin/momd(83)?()
-> kserv = load(f)
(Pdb) p f
<open file '/u/annis/code/NewMom/mstate', mode 'r' at 20d808>
(Pdb) p f.tell()
823962
(Pdb) 
------------------------------
# Then I open the pickle file in my trusty swiss-army editor, Emacs,
# and forward-char 823962 times, and this is where I end up:
<snip>
g29
ssg34
g62
sg36
I1
sg37
S'Holt-Winters models on base load and net'
sba(iKiosk.transports.stranger_e
stranger_e
p772                            **** first char of this line
(dp773
g29
(dp774
g31
g32
<snip>
------------------------------
It's all quite mystifying to me, and I've tackled it several times in
the last two months.

-- 
William Annis - System Administrator - Biomedical Computing Group
annis at biostat.wisc.edu                       PGP ID:1024/FBF64031
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacian Lingvon  www.esperanto.org


From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul 25 14:57:23 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:57:23 -0700
Subject: Going from webscripting to server-client software.
References: <6572890e.0107251014.47e07810@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9jn571$8i5c$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

Have you looked at WorldPilot?  Being that you're already familiar with
Zope, it may be a good fit.  Assuming, of course, that they have added
resource planning in the year and a half since I asked about it.  Looking at
http://www.worldpilot.nl:8088/WorldpilotSite/Worldpilot/ suggests that it
may now be in there.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Stephen" <Shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6572890e.0107251014.47e07810 at posting.google.com...
> Up to now all of my experience with Python programming is for the
> World Wide Web either Python CGI or Zope. Now I am developing
> some software where the client is no longer a web browser and I
> find it's a much harder proposition.
>
> The application is a booking system for a sports centre. There are
> 8 people who will use the software to check if a sports hall or
> squash court is in use or reserved.  I did this first with an
> intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
> staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
> be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
> which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made.
> They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
> status of a particular resource. They want software more like
> Windows-applications.
>
> How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
> with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the
> bookings for the day from the server.  If the user wishes to display
> another day, it requests all bookings for that date. However, if
> one client makes a booking or edits data, how should it update all
> other client apps?  Should it send the data back to the server and
> then each client request any changes each and every second ? Or
> should the clients communicate between themselves ? This latter idea
> does not sound very scalable.
>
> I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
> rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
> Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
> or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?
> I'm sure somebody must of created something like this already for
> resource management.
>
> Regards,
>
> Stephen.



From guido at python.org  Thu Jul 26 09:36:18 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:36:18 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <5sdnlt072hm6hp17nluu6f0fqq4bvr6mj8@4ax.com> <mailman.995873261.11975.python-list@python.org> <916olt0p3kciv0evmotdg6jev9bl29l57i@4ax.com> <Xns90E77C7A1776Cjimpublishingresourc@207.126.101.100> <3B5C52EA.9430255E@alcyone.com> <cpofqaova7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E99AC16C87Bduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1> <cpzo9t80l7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90EA6386D25CFduncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <cp4rrz95iu.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> I guess what I am saying is that unifying numbers is fine, and I have no 
> gripe with a language that says that 1, 4.13, and 5+7j are all the same 
> basic type, but if that is all it has then it won't always be my first 
> language of choice. Add in a module or two to support explicit machine 
> types so I can write: x = int32(1) or whatever and those of us who need 
> overflow exceptions can always get them when we need them. Actually it now 
> occurs to me that what I would probably *really* like would be a general 
> constrained numeric type so I could do things like:
>     	Rating = constrainedinteger(0, 100)
>     	old = Rating(95)
>     	new = old * 2 # Throws OverflowError
> but using it sparingly and with caution.

I don't see when a unified number system would ever be less convenient
than the current number system, *except* in the rare case where you
are transliterating an algorithm from C that depends on integer size.
Unsigned ints of n bits are easily emulated by taking all results
modulo 2**n -- I do this now using Python long ints when I need to
emulate unsigned C longs.

Using the new type/class unification in Python 2.2, you will be able
to subtype the int or long types easily to create your own constrained
types.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz  Mon Jul 30 01:41:50 2001
From: greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Greg Ewing)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:41:50 +1200
Subject: byte compiled files and acute neurological disorders
References: <3B602FA0.6030809@herts.ac.uk> <mailman.996175254.29835.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B64F39E.29A33365@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>

Ken Seehof wrote:
> 
> Don't use
>     from mymodule import *
> unless mymodule is completely stable (preferably not yours).
>
> ...
> 
> The problem is that A only gets recompiled if the timestamp on A.py file
> is later than A.pyc (otherwise the compiler assumes that A hasn't changed).
> Now, suppose B changes.  B.pyc gets updated, but A.pyc does not.

There shouldn't be any problem with that. Importing
is done at run-time, not compile-time. The import *
statement in module A will get all the names from
the new version of module B, without anything having
to happen to A.pyc.

If you think you've seen something go wrong because
of this, you must have been confused by some other
problem.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, University of Canterbury,	  
Christchurch, New Zealand
To get my email address, please visit my web page:	  
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg


From tdelaney at avaya.com  Tue Jul  3 03:18:13 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:18:13 +1000 
Subject: How to call a method with variing arguments
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC234@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> > I want to do this:
> > 
> > ClassObject = Class()
> > ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3)
> > ...
> > ClassObject.Method(Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, Arg4, Arg5 ....)
> > ...
> > ClassObject.Method()
> > ...
> > and so on.
> > 
> > Means that I want to call a method with a variing number of 
> arguments
> > and the method decides what to do.
> > If possible, it would be nice, if the sequence of the arguments
> > doesn?t matter, and the method realizes which argument is on which
> > position (but that is a "nice to have"). So, how do I have 
> to declare
> > the method, that this works?
> 
> example:
> 
> class Class:
>   def Method(self, Arg1="default", Arg2="def2", Arg3=None):
>     Arg3 = Arg3 or []
>     print Arg1, Arg2, Arg3
>     
> class_object = Class()
> class_object.Method(Arg3=[1,2,3])
> class_object.Method("a", "b", [2,3,4])

Actually, I suspect he wants to be able to pass an arbitrary number of
parameters ...

class ClassObject:

    def Method (self, *args):

        # args is a tuple of the arguments passed in
        print args

        for a in args:
            print a

c = ClassObject()
c.Method()
print
c.Method(1)
print
c.Method(1, 2)
print
c.Method(1, 2, 3)
print

Tim Delaney



From max at alcyone.com  Tue Jul 24 14:58:55 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:58:55 -0700
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <5E877.23798$EP6.5677355@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <23891c90.0107240128.4715d705@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B5DC56F.3B84E77D@alcyone.com>

Paul Boddie wrote:

> "from __past__ import" anyone? ;-)

This occurred to me as well, but it still doesn't address the problem of
backward compatibility.  With a from __past__ import construct or not,
legacy code will still break.  The problem is not fixing old code, it's
being unable to fix old code that is no longer accessible (either from
being passed around or by being instrumented at a client site).
-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Nothing spoils a confession like repentence.
\__/ Anatole France
    blackgirl international / http://www.blackgirl.org/
 The Internet resource for black women.


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 01:20:00 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:20:00 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <mailman.996076486.582.python-list@python.org> <9jmvru$6afv$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B5FA880.67D5CA17@engcorp.com>

Emile van Sebille wrote:
> 
> I ordered the Zope book on-line at Barnes & Noble this morning, and when
> searching for Python, the first entry displayed is a Perl book!??

Clearly that is so that newcomers to Python, who might also
be considering Perl, will get the answer to *that* particular
question tucked away mighty quick, and can get on to the serious 
business of buying Python books...

;-)

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From guido at python.org  Tue Jul 31 02:45:40 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 06:45:40 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <mailman.996527936.11861.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <cpd76hzjey.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:

> > > I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
> >
> > How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
> > terse acronym to learn)? Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
> > an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
> > classification.
> >
> > The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus at
> > <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html>
> > suggests for "class" :
> >
> > division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
> > department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
> > species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
> > clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
> > feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.
> >
> > I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
> > short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
> > the language I deal with.
> 
> How about "kit": short, easy to pronounce, unused, means...
> 
> 	A box for working implements. [1913 Webster]

Sigh.  I sympathize with the desire for a non-acronym, none of the
proposals work for me -- they are all neologisms in this context.
Ditto for "us" etc.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From michael at stroeder.com  Thu Jul 19 10:59:42 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:59:42 +0200
Subject: python sha module and ldap
References: <3b56f2e7$0$26381@reader4>
Message-ID: <3B56F5DE.701AE683@stroeder.com>

lawick at wanadoo.nl wrote:
> 
> I have a problem using the sha module in python and sha encryption with ldap.

You might wanna look into ldaputil.passwd shipped with latest
snapshot of http://web2ldap.de. It does exactly what you want. See
also announcement on
http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/1568/0/6169372/

Please give feedback if the module is useful for you. If it turns
out to be useful and is tested it will be checked in to python-ldap
CVS.

Ciao, Michael.


From tjreedy at home.com  Wed Jul 25 14:25:27 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:25:27 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <532qlt453irrepptskcvp213d44r3so2e2@4ax.com> <cp4rs2qf6p.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B5DF282.87266DA2@earthlink.net> <cpr8v5a8h5.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <raE77.27829$EP6.6991986@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

> I have changed my mind.  I think that if I had to start over, I
would
> indeed try my hands at a case-insensitive language aimed at teaching
> programming to beginners, with tools to enforce case consistency.
> Given that nobody else who currently uses Python thinks this is a
good
> idea, I then settled on a case-sensitive language with
case-preserving
> tools.  But now I think neither is worth fighting for.

As I understand the second option (tool optional), there is no need to
fight.  Just do it.  When you write your next-generation  interactive
CP4E IDE, which I really hope you get to do, you will, I think, want
to parse identifiers out of each line as entered, whether or not it is
immediately executed.  If a variable is used before being set, warn.
If a new var differs only in case from another, warn or prohibit.  If
usage conflicts with a known type, warn.  Etcetera.

Terry J. Reedy






From stevecanfield at my-deja.com  Thu Jul 19 17:44:12 2001
From: stevecanfield at my-deja.com (Steve Canfield)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 14:44:12 -0700
Subject: popen problem with spaces in directory
Message-ID: <603e1b49.0107191344.42808306@posting.google.com>

I am trying to automate some SourceSafe stuff under Windows 2000 and I
am running into some problems with os.popen.

If I open up a command prompt and type in the following:
C:\>"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My Project"
I get back a bunch of text showing which files are checked out.

If I open a Python interpreter and type:
>>> import os
>>> os.popen(r'"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status "$/My
Project"').readlines()
[]
I get an empty list.

Any ideas why?

After a little experimenting, I found that:
>>> os.popen(r'"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status').readlines()
and
C:\>"e:\visual studio\ss.exe" status
return the same text.  So it has something to do with second quote
enclosed parameter: "$/My Project"

Please help!

Thanks,
steve


From trentm at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 11 19:27:20 2001
From: trentm at ActiveState.com (Trent Mick)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:27:20 -0700
Subject: detect if file or dir
In-Reply-To: <3b4cd747.27470810@news.isis.de>; from pedro@athlet.de on Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 10:47:38PM +0000
References: <3b4cd747.27470810@news.isis.de>
Message-ID: <20010711162720.C8679@ActiveState.com>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 10:47:38PM +0000, pedro wrote:
> hi,
> 
> how can i detect if sth. is a file or a directory? exists(directory)
> does tell me if sth. is a directory but exits my script wenn it hits a
> file.

os.path.isdir(filename)
os.path.isfile(filename)


Cheers,
Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
TrentM at ActiveState.com



From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Sun Jul 15 22:18:54 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 02:18:54 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com> <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9itil5$baf$1@panix2.panix.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4keo.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> dijo:
> In article <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
> Tim Hammerquist <timmy at cpan.org> wrote:
> >
> >All very good points. I have certain reservations, tho.  I dread
> >waiting for Microsoft Word to startup as it is, written in compiled C++.
> >I fear for the speed of anything of that scale and complexity
> >implemented in Python.
> 
> Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe the algorithms would be sufficiently better
> and the code enough smaller that the Python version of Word would be
> *faster*.  You'd probably want the actual edit buffer and the screen
> painting done in C/C++ (just as in a game), but the rest of it...?

You're right.  And M$ code is an excellent example of what compact code
is _NOT_, anyway.

-- 
It is a fool's prerogative to utter
truths that no one else will speak.
    -- Morpheus, The Sandman


From nospam at newsranger.com  Sat Jul 14 00:09:19 2001
From: nospam at newsranger.com (Levente Sandor)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 04:09:19 GMT
Subject: More on 
References: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net> <poP37.19002$Kf3.249024@www.newsranger.com>
Message-ID: <PBP37.19011$Kf3.248960@www.newsranger.com>

Sorry, it was posted through a web form...
Please indent the following lines manually:
>""" 'with' for the very lazy programmer :) :) :)
>Someone might prefer Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, ... instead."""
>exec(re.sub('\B\.', '%s.' % object, statements))

Levi




From tim.one at home.com  Fri Jul 27 00:47:24 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 00:47:24 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
In-Reply-To: <UuxEMIARGKY7Ew1w@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCCEJILBAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Robin Becker]
> ...
> If, as I claim, Python  wins or loses on its usefulness at real
> programming tasks then eventually it must improve either real
> performance or real utility.
>
> I don't see that happening with the grand unification;

Yet Guido's employer does:  the extreme pain needed to implement Python
classes in C "the good old way things have always been" has been a thorn in
Zope's side all along; Jim Fulton has far more important things to do than
keep his hoary ExtensionClasses machinery working (removing the need for
which is a primary goal of the unification project).

> although keeping the 'div' operator is at least a nod in the
> direction of all those who want to split their lists in two.

There was never a second's consideration given to dropping div-style
division; if you thought there was, too bad, but if so you were wrong.

still-hoping-that's-not-the-limit-of-your-notion-of-utility-ly y'rs  - tim




From max at alcyone.com  Sun Jul  8 22:39:29 2001
From: max at alcyone.com (Erik Max Francis)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 19:39:29 -0700
Subject: Integrating SimpleHTTPServer into asyncore
Message-ID: <3B491961.12A83FE5@alcyone.com>

Is there a standard way to integrate SimpleHTTPServer (and related
classes) into the asyncore poll loop, or is it just the rather obvious
process of creating a dispatcher that containers a SimpleHTTPServer and
delegates all the relevant asyncore methods to SimpleHTTPServer?

Thanks.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
\__/ Brooks Atkinson
    Kepler's laws / http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/kepler/
 A proof of Kepler's laws.


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Tue Jul 24 11:43:36 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:43:36 GMT
Subject: Any Suggestions for an Editor with MS-Windows ?
References: <92757716C8BFF476.D432477A795DB759.E2FB05E062137965@lp.airnews.net> <3B5BDC16.3A348DF6@oce.nl>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8AFE68ACCDrcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Marco Salden wrote:

>> Am almost half way through the manual and getting ready for the
>> easy job of bringing over some basic files (yea, right). Currently
>> using Ultra Edit but having doubts about it.

Why would that be? It's about as configurable as it gets, and can be 
made to produce syntax colouring for Python.


> Try Vim (VI Improved) for Windows. You may find all you need at
> http://www.vim.org/ . I am using it for about half a year now and
> before that used Ultra Edit, TextPad etc but wouldn't want to turn
> back again... Vim supports Python syntax and I think even an
> embedded interpreter is available for it (not sure...).

But it still is a textscreen app with only a very thin GUI-veneer. 
That's not everybody's cup of tea.

SciTE Edit (I believe the URL is something like www.scintilla.org) is 
pretty nice for us Pythoneers. If only it could open multiple files...


Robert Amesz


From sabren at manifestation.com  Thu Jul 12 13:41:55 2001
From: sabren at manifestation.com (Michal Wallace)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:41:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: pythonista.com
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107121221050.28888-100000@mercury.sabren.com>


Hey all,

I registered the domain "pythonista.com" about a year ago, and haven't
done anything with it... If anyone wants to take it over, let me
know..  Otherwise, I'm probably just going to let it expire..

Cheers,

- Michal
----------------------------------------------------------------------
let me host you! http://www.sabren.com       me: http://www.sabren.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------




From new_name at mit.edu  Fri Jul  6 22:16:15 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 06 Jul 2001 22:16:15 -0400
Subject: distutils woes - help appreciated!
References: <3B463AEC.13949D66@hursley.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <etdae2hfpqo.fsf@x15-cruise-basselope.mit.edu>

> I'm starting-to-try-to-use (:) distutils (with Python 2.1 on Linux).

Have you seen the docs?

http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/doc/inst/alt-install-prefix.html

HTH.
Alex


From xione at bellsouth.net  Tue Jul 31 03:09:31 2001
From: xione at bellsouth.net (Jeremy Moles)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 00:09:31 -0700
Subject: The best gui library for newbies.
References: <dZj97.40636$9n7.62176316@newsserver.ip.pt> <3B661D11.B6E138AA@ucdavis.edu>
Message-ID: <_aq97.1784$kg.122691@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Use Tkinter.

Bruce Wolk <bawolk at ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:3B661D11.B6E138AA at ucdavis.edu...
> I like PyQt, which is a wrapper for Qt.  Qt is very sleek and very
> well-documented for C++, but the translation to Python is trivial after
just a
> few minutes of effort.  The only drawback is that it can be a pain to
install,
> especially if you are upgrading to a new version.  There are licensing
problems
> though if you are not running Linux.
>
> Bruce
>
> "David A." wrote:
>
> > H~i I program in python for some time now. And I would like to beegin
doing
> > some gui's and other graphical programming. The thing I want to know is
wich
> > one is the best gui toolkit for python when you are a newbie? Wxpython,
> > tkinter?? Whatis important for me is easy of use and well documented!!
this
> > is what I am looking for.
> >
> > Thank you for any help in advance!!!
>





From m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it  Wed Jul 18 09:47:27 2001
From: m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it (Marco Mariani)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:47:27 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
In-Reply-To: <20010718154019.A6388@zoidberg>
Message-ID: <20010718154727.A6475@zoidberg>

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 03:40:19PM +0200, Marco Mariani wrote:

> From one of my sources:
> 
> 
> 
> from signal import *
> 
> 
> def timeout(signum, frame):
> 	raise IOError, "Timeout!"
> 
> 	def alarm_on(self):
> 		signal(SIGALRM, timeout)
> 		alarm(1)
> 
> 	def alarm_off(self):
> 		alarm(0)

Oops, I've mistaken the tab count.

Of course the alarm_* functions above are outside the timeout function!




From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Tue Jul 24 11:43:39 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:43:39 GMT
Subject: incrementing characters
References: <9jhojp$t7h$1@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <eXZ67.536189$eK2.112437924@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <9jiaa9$3s96$2@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>
Message-ID: <Xns90E8AE36D4F59rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Lee Harr wrote:

> perl makes this simple:
> 
> $s = "aabc";
> $s++;
> print "$s\n";
> $s = "zzzz";
> $s++;
> print "$s\n";
> 
> would print:
> aabd
> aaaaa

Ugh! Who ever though up such an obtuse scheme? Thanks for reminding me 
why I dislike Perl.


Robert Amesz



From david at boddie.net  Sat Jul 28 14:21:57 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 11:21:57 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com> <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107281021.468246a7@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpu1zy16g7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> david at boddie.net (David Boddie) writes:
> 
> > It's strange. I don't mind the introduction of default float division
> > at some point in the future, despite having to rewrite many of my
> > modules with no future-proof, succinct integer division operator to
> > hand. However, diplomatic attempts to avoid breakage of legacy code
> > appear to have failed. I suspect that the best we can hope for is
> > non-silent breakage via compile-time exceptions.
> 
> I'm assuming this was aimed at me, so I'll respond.

The bit about carrying "baggage" (which isn't quoted above) was sort
of aimed at you, but the above paragraph was more resignation that we
can't find a totally satisfactory solution than a jibe at you.

> Suppose that python 3.x would *always* have to be invoked as
> "python3".  Would that still break legacy code?  This approach was
> used successfully by Perl.

That's a good compromise which will prevent a lot of breakage. As long
as you're happy with it, then I'm happy.

> I just don't want to encumber the language itself with version
> encrustations.  It offends my sense of elegance in language design.

And I don't want to make your life unpleasant by attempting to coerce
you into keeping features that make the language inconsistent. If I
was a newcomer to Python, and had to choose between "classic" division
and "future" division, then I'd prefer "future" division. I'll also
find it useful when it appears.

I just don't like unnecessary waste, but then I expect that you don't
either.

David


From new_name at mit.edu  Sun Jul 22 08:44:11 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 08:44:11 -0400
Subject: Name space quirk?
References: <7b9380ca.0107220419.add15d1@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etdzo9x16ck.fsf@opus.mit.edu>

Hi, Nandyala.  Yeah, that's the correct behaviour.  When it can't find
"myfile" bound to anything in "hello"'s namespace, it looks in the
module namespace.

See the table at http://python.org/doc/ref/execframes.html for more
details.

HTH.
Alex.


From dinu at reportlab.com  Tue Jul 24 07:35:08 2001
From: dinu at reportlab.com (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:35:08 GMT
Subject: UPC Display Code
References: <34dcae24.0107232131.59bbbc09@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3b5d5ce5.496043@news.t-online.de>

On 23 Jul 2001 22:31:43 -0700, seanh at unforgettable.com (Sean Hummel)
wrote:

>Does anyone have some Python code which creates UPC Barcodes, say as
>GIFs or JPGs, so that you can use them on a website?

See:

  http://www.reportlab.com/extensions.html

If the particular code you need should not be supported,
please talk to Ty Sarna, though.

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
dinu at reportlab dot com
http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca  Sat Jul 21 08:09:09 2001
From: bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca (Bill Bell)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 08:09:09 -0400
Subject: AttributeError: 'None' object has no attribute
In-Reply-To: <995680671.491.75448.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <3B5938A6.21127.2557003@localhost>

phillip at transwitch.co.za (phillip) wrote, in part:	
> I have the following code :
>  <SNIP>
> Everything is fine if i put the function in the __init__ function,
> which is not a good idea, I want to keep the code compartmentilized
> nicely.

Phillip, if no-one furnishes a response to this query it might be 
because one cannot discern details such as (1) the line where the 
exception was raised, and (2) the 'function' to which you refer. How 
about supplying the code that failed and the text of the traceback? -
 Bill



From tim.one at home.com  Wed Jul 25 03:10:27 2001
From: tim.one at home.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 03:10:27 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <4dqslt4pj7algruf69gg3497m663gggjnf@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCGEPNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>

[Tim Roberts]
> The average child's IQ these days is 100.  That is the very definition
> of IQ.

Except in Virginia.  Jealous of the rumor that the Tennessee legislature had
defined pi to be 3 on the nose, the VA legislature defined *every* child's
IQ to be 120.  The VA school system subsequently saved a lot of money on
now-useless tests, and by most accounts the kids didn't actually get any
dumber.  It's also a great source of amusement that the Maryland legislature
sought to get even by mandating that all its childrens' IQs were 80.

suitable-changes-to-python's-numerics-will-follow-ly y'rs  - tim




From michael at stroeder.com  Tue Jul 10 09:21:05 2001
From: michael at stroeder.com (Michael =?iso-8859-1?Q?Str=F6der?=)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:21:05 +0200
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994625054.7131.python-list@python.org> <92ae279c.0107092059.8b56186@posting.google.com> <1103_994765524@jparlar>
Message-ID: <3B4B0141.580437D2@stroeder.com>

Jay Parlar wrote:
> 
> My task is to create an HTML parser that will pull full text from HTML 
> documents,

Basically your parser has to honour the charset defined in HTTP
header or <meta> tag.

HTTP header:
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8

HTML <head>:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />

Your parser should use the denoted charset for converting the raw
strings to Unicode objects. Also HTML char entities have to be added
to the Unicode objects with same encoding.

> Now, whenever I'm given HTML from IE's cache, it is unicode. There is no doubt 
> about that.

Are you sure? Which encoding of Unicode? UTF-16, UTF-8, ...

Ciao, Michael.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 18 10:51:18 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:51:18 -0400
Subject: sys.argv not found
References: <3B55962C.63F7E2EF@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <bkh57.21065$PF1.1027936@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Man Vehicle Laboratory" <FenZhao at mit.edu> wrote in message
news:3B55962C.63F7E2EF at mit.edu...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm writing a python program that uses VRUT (OpenGL application), but I
> seem to lose the sys.argv list whenever I run VRUT.  For example,
> vrut.go() starts VRUT.  I call it after I ask for sys.argv, but somehow
> it begins to run and in the display window gives an AttributeError for
> argv.
>
> I'm not quite understanding the logic of the order python is doing (why
> it would call the vrut command before the sys.argv).  I tried wrapping
> the vrut.go in a function, and calling that function instead to no
> avail- same problem.  Sending in the wrong number of arguments however
> will generate an "IndexError: list index out of range".
>
>                   --Fen Zhao
>
>
> mode=string.atoi(sys.argv[1])
> ARGFILE_stim=sys.argv[2]
> ARGFILE_calib=sys.argv[3]
> OUTFILE=sys.argv[4]
> SUMFILE=sys.argv[5]
> sidOutfile=sys.argv[6]
> VECTION_DURATION=string.atoi(sys.argv[7])
> path=sys.argv[8]
> ...
>
> vrut.go(vrut.NICE)
>
First, can we assume you have included an "import sys" above the code you
quote?

You should:

a) Make sure you incude the exact error traceback with postings like this,
so we can see more nearly where the problem might be occurring; and

b) Scatter "print" statements to give you confidence that your logic is
indeed being executed as you expect, in the sequence you expect.

I have an idea that vrut.go() might be looking at sys.argv itself, but there
isn't really sufficient data to *know* quite what's going wrong. Your
assumptions appear reasonable, but I think your code *is* being executed in
the order you expect.

Good luck
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From guido at zope.com  Fri Jul 27 09:06:00 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:06:00 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:38:57 +0200."
             <m15Q45B-000wcBC@swing.co.at> 
References: <m15Q45B-000wcBC@swing.co.at> 
Message-ID: <200107271306.JAA23956@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

> I was one of those asking for a way to get old-style semantics. 
> 
> Keeping old interpreters around doesn't work for my biggest worry:
> use of old scripts with new versions of TTTech's applications. In this
> context, TTTech ships an application containing a new interpreter to a
> customer who might still have old scripts around. These scripts might
> come from a third party and be totally opaque to the customer itself
> (e.g., a script to import from a tool of company XYZ into TTTech's
> TTPplan). 

Well, I hope that making the change Python 3.0 does the right thing
for you.  It shouldn't be hard to alert your customers that Python 2
is required for your company's applications.  Like Perl 4 and Perl 5,
Python 2 and Python 3 will probably live alongside for many years.

> I agree that exact emulation of old versions doesn't make sense. What
> I would propose is to enable Python somehow to identify old code
> (e.g., by absence of a version specifier) and let it raise an
> exception when `/` is applied to two integer arguments by old code.
> This would avoid both permanent warts and silent breakage of old code.

Requiring a version specifier in all new code is very annoying.  The
future statement is annyoing too, but at least it's a transitional
measure.

> David Bolen expressed this better than me in his answer to your
> updated PEP::
> 
>     """While some number of version implementations may need to be
>     supported for some changes, this suggestion doesn't require them
>     all in perpetuity, so that's slightly misleading. One could easily
>     consider some range of versions being supported (and retired over
>     time), and an advantage of this approach would be accurate (and
>     reportable) breakage if using code expecting version behavior no
>     longer supported."""

I agree that if we really need to have a way to explicitly request
past behavior, "from __past__ import ..." is a decent syntax.  I just
noticed that PEP 236 (the __future__ PEP) mentions this as an
possibility (although the author claims it is unlikely).

> >     - It has been proposed to call // the quotient operator.  I like
> >       this.  I might rewrite the PEP to use this if enough people like
> >       it.  (But isn't the assumption that this truncates towards
> >       zero?)
> 
> IMO quotient is a much better name than floor division. I'll let the
> mathematicians speak on whether quotient and truncation to minus
> infinity can go together.

I just looked it up at dictionary.com, and the meaning of quotient is
just the result of a division.  One source even mentions that the
quotient is rational if the operands are.

So I am less and less in favor of this.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



From ark at research.att.com  Fri Jul 27 13:53:28 2001
From: ark at research.att.com (Andrew Koenig)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 17:53:28 GMT
Subject: Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <eppstein-D847A7.18400826072001@news.service.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <yu99n15qdzs7.fsf@europa.research.att.com>

David> In article <cp4rrz5onj.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
David>  Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>> Q. How do I write code that works under the classic rules as well
>> as under the new rules without using // or a future division
>> statement?

>> A. Use x*1.0/y for true division, divmod(x, y)[0] for int
>> division.  Especially the latter is best hidden inside a
>> function.  You may also write floor(x)/y for true division if
>> you are sure that you don't expect complex numbers.

David> Shouldn't this be float(x)/y ?

What if x is complex?

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark


From cliechti at mails.ch  Mon Jul 16 17:43:51 2001
From: cliechti at mails.ch (chris liechti)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 23:43:51 +0200
Subject: timed event??
References: <mailman.995310449.22721.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E0F202D990Bcliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>

yep wxTimed() works or if you want to do intervalls on a do-it-yourself 
basis try threading and time.sleep(). its not for high precision but does a 
good job in most cases.

file timed.py:
---
import threading, time

def runner(target,delay):
    while 1:
        try:
            target()
            time.sleep(delay)
            #raise ValueError,"hello" #exception test
        except Exception,msg:
            print "Exception in runner():", msg


def tick():
    print "tick"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print "initializing thread"
    t = threading.Thread( target=runner, args=(tick,1))
    t.setDaemon(1)  #dont wait on exit for this thread
    t.start()
    time.sleep(10)  #abort after ten seconds and exit demo
---

"Bill Bell" <bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote in 
news:mailman.995310449.22721.python-list at python.org:

> 
> "NJM" <njm at rectec.net> wrote:
>> I want to write a program that does things on a timed basis.  Can
>> someone tell me where is the best place to start?  I can't seem to
>> find any modules that will help me. 
> 
> If you mean "at intervals" then you might consider wxTimer in 
> wxPython (www.wxpython.org). I haven't used it; however, the 
> documentation says it can be used in Python.
> 
> 
> Bill Bell, Software Developer
> 
> 



-- 
chris <cliechti at mails.ch>



From m.faassen at vet.uu.nl  Mon Jul  2 07:33:38 2001
From: m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen)
Date: 2 Jul 2001 11:33:38 GMT
Subject: The standard library
References: <mailman.993968402.11577.python-list@python.org> <mailman.994024802.8132.python-list@python.org> <9hoe39$8ce$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <mailman.994055582.10768.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9hpm6i$i5c$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl>

Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 12:09:13AM +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> Carlos Ribeiro <cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br> wrote:
>> > At 15:33 01/07/01 +0000, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> >>I've just submitted a version of PEP 2 to Barry. It's only a first step
>> >>on this path, but it's a step.

>> > I was going to write on myself. Can you send it to the list for us to work 
>> > with? It is not listed on the website; the "stub" one is there.

>> I understand from PEP 1 that I ought to send it to the PEP editor (Barry)
>> first. I'll send it to the list as soon as I've received feedback from him. 
>> Then I'll certainly try to integrate anyone's feedback into it.

> In this case, this is definately the right way: you're stealing someone
> else's PEP, after all. 

Even though it was 3 lines and had been lingering like that for almost a
year. :) I haven't heard from Barry yet, but that was one of my questions
when submitting it to him; should I contact Eric Raymond about this?

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?


From peter at engcorp.com  Sat Jul 14 14:32:54 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 14:32:54 -0400
Subject: Calling functions in a loop
References: <7b9380ca.0107140919.b80cd8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B509056.8F10250B@engcorp.com>

NANDYALA D Gangadhar wrote:
> I am new to Python (I already like it very much) and I have a newbee
> question: How do I call a set of functions from inside a loop? I tried
> the following, and it understandably fails with:
[...]
> Would someone show the correct way of getting the functionality I need?

There is not necessarily a "correct" way (and we aren't sure what
you really need).

You could use:

functionList = ['f1', 'f2']

def f1():  print 'f1'
def f2():  print 'f2'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for func in functionList:
        if locals().has_key(func):
            locals()[func]()

This retrieves the function objects by name from the local namespace
and calls them.  (locals() returns a dictionary, the variable in 
square brackets selects an item from the dictionary, and the
parentheses cause the object to be called.)

A perhaps "better" approach is to put references to the functions
directly in the list:

functionList = [f1, f2]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for func in functionList:
        func()

Now you have to make sure functionList is created _after_ the 
functions.

By the way, you probably should not use a name like __all__.  
Names starting and ending with double underscores
should be reserved for the system, not used in your own code.

In this case, __all__ has already been used in Python 2.1 for 
a list of names that should be imported from a module when the
module is imported with a "from module import *" statement.
If you weren't trying to use it for that purpose, avoid __all__.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From mlh at idi.ntnu.no  Wed Jul 25 08:39:23 2001
From: mlh at idi.ntnu.no (Magnus Lie Hetland)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:39:23 +0200
Subject: Numeric methods again
Message-ID: <9jmelr$m2g$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>

Now that Python seems to be getting numerig methods
(like "5 .__add__" etc.) I'm pretty happy about that.
But I find it odd that there has to be whitespace
in front of the reference dot... For a simple parser
it might be difficult to know whether 5. was a float
or the beginning of a reference, but with a bit of
lookahead that can't be too hard? Is there any way
that 5._ is not the beginning of a reference to a
numeric method? Can a number ever be directly followed
by an identifier? Is the parser to weak to parse this
stuff? Am I just being dense?

This definitely looks like a (little) wart to me...

(I'm sure I should RTFM here - but I've looked through
the PEPs and haven't found this in there...)

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick





From kirschh at lionbioscience.com  Thu Jul 26 03:17:47 2001
From: kirschh at lionbioscience.com (Harald Kirsch)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 09:17:47 +0200
Subject: question about handling pointers in C extensions
References: <9jkhdv$r3o$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu> <yv2lmld4fhg.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <9jmqcm$j5s$1@nntp4.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <yv2n15s2m78.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de>

"Russell E. Owen" <owen at astrono.junkwashington.emu> writes:

> You and Chris Liechti both then go on to suggest creating a new Python 
> type. I'm a bit confused here. This would create a Python class or an 
> actual new Python data type? "Python Essential Reference" makes creating 
> a new data type scary, but I haven't been able to figure out if that 
> applies equally to creating a Python object.

I don't think so. If you look into your Python sources you'll find the
file Modules/xxmodule.c. It is intended as a template. Going from
top to bottom I took care mainly of

-- defining my own XxoObject
-- a function to create such an object, like newXxoObject
-- a corresponding Xxo_dealloc
-- some functions working with this object
-- you can actually skip setattr and getattr needs only call
   Py_FindMethod such that in your python code you can write

     x = aNewOneOfMyObjectType()    # calls newXxoObject
     x.doSomeThing()             <---- via Py_FindMethod

   You don't need setattr at the beginning.
-- defining my Xxo_Type. I you can set the getattr, setattr there to
   NULL.
-- the xx_methods jumptable.
-- the initialization.

  Harald Kirsch
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Harald Kirsch   | kirschh at lionbioscience.com | "How old is the epsilon?"
LION bioscience | +49 6221 4038 172          |        -- Paul Erd?s
       *** Please do not send me copies of your posts. ***


From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Mon Jul 23 04:33:08 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 10:33:08 +0200
Subject: Future division patch available (PEP 238)
References: <GNZwEiAJepW7Ew0F@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <mailman.995776716.24336.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995825018.9832.python-list@python.org> <9jfjd6$ad4$2@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <7u6nltoqdnqjjdiquu6ngtaruflhvbvdl5@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <j4g0bof3jv.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Division on integers should be integer division. 

I don't think there is any argument about that: the only question is
how to spell integer division; in the future, it will be spelled '//'.

> Mathematically, integer division should be the inverse of integer
> multiplication, with no extra functionality bar the need to allow for
> the remainder. Well shock horror - that's exactly what we've got now
> and exactly what we're throwing away.

We are not - we are just spelling it differently. However, if you
think that the inverse of multiplication on integers should be spelled
'/' (even though the integers do not form a group with respect to
multiplication), you could still get this under the new PEP. It would
be possible to implement

12/4 is 3 (not 3.0)
14/4 == 3.5

> Integer division is important to a huge range of applications -
> anything involving money stands out as the obvious case, but also
> cryptography and others.

Indeed, integer division will not go away.

Regards,
Martin


From fcnpereira at home.com  Wed Jul 11 15:34:58 2001
From: fcnpereira at home.com (Fernando Pereira)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:34:58 GMT
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <994786203.24889.0.nnrp-10.d4e48e5c@news.demon.co.uk> <9ihql4$ah7$1@panix2.panix.com> <3B4C76A3.A624D05F@Lugoj.Com> <9ihu2i013a3@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <110720011534583253%fcnpereira@home.com>

In article <9ihu2i013a3 at enews4.newsguy.com>, Alex Martelli
<aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The lack of genericity in Java (I've been heard that it was due
> to be fixed "soon" for a few years now -- I've even used a good
> genericity-on-top-of-Java thingy called Pizza, but it was so
> clearly stamped as experimental that there was no chance I could
> use it for production work) is, IMHO, its #1 current defect.

As someone who has written a lot of Java and read even more over the
last 16 months, I totally agree. Pizza has ben superseded by GJ
(Generic Java), which is the current "Java community process" proposal
for adding generics to Java. I hope it gets adopted soon.

<http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/wadler/pizza/gj/>

-- F


From edcjones at erols.com  Fri Jul  6 17:21:36 2001
From: edcjones at erols.com (Edward C. Jones)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 17:21:36 -0400
Subject: Essay on reference counts (long)
Message-ID: <3B462BE0.5010009@erols.com>

I have been confused about reference counts for too long. 
Therefore I decided to write an essay on the subject.

I have come to the following conclusions:

Some of the Python source code documentation can be usefully 
duplicated in the API documentation.

I find the "own", "borrow", "steal" metaphor confusing. It is not 
accurate enough for me.

If you want to put some form of some part of this essay in the 
documentation, you are welcome to do it.

Ed Jones



-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: refcount.txt
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010706/57eb261f/attachment.txt>

From emile at fenx.com  Wed Jul 11 19:11:21 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:11:21 -0700
Subject: detect if file or dir
References: <3b4cd747.27470810@news.isis.de>
Message-ID: <9iimn5$j3089$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

You'll find isfile and isdir in os.path

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"pedro" <pedro at athlet.de> wrote in message
news:3b4cd747.27470810 at news.isis.de...
> hi,
>
> how can i detect if sth. is a file or a directory? exists(directory)
> does tell me if sth. is a directory but exits my script wenn it hits a
> file.
>
> thx
> pedro



From tim.hochberg at ieee.org  Thu Jul 26 22:04:36 2001
From: tim.hochberg at ieee.org (Tim Hochberg)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 02:04:36 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <U_387.50579$Cy.6523947@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>

"Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com> wrote :

[SNIP]
> 1. If inexact numbers are excluded from being used as sequence indices,
> won't there be a tendency for programs to have more special case bugs?
> The value of a variable in a calculation might be usually exact, but
inexact
> once in awhile.  So floats can be used as indices until there is a
precision
> error?  Yikes!  And I have a funny feeling in my stomach that this is just
> the tip of the iceberg.  Floats may or may not turn out to be exact
> depending
> on details of a particular run.  This is a Bad Thing.  Integers are always
> exact.  This is a good thing.

You might want to read or reread PEP 228 (not 238). Exactness has nothing to
do with values and everything to with, well, exactness. Note that 228 is a
"pie in the skie" PEP and as such is fairly incomplete, but it may give you
a better idea what Guido was referring to.

Anyway, under the PEP 228 rules, a number would be exact if it was an
integer or rational (internally, there would externally be one number type)
and inexact if it were a float or complex-float. So floats would never be
able to be used as indices since they are inexact, by definition.

> 2. Wouldn't a function in an extension module that takes a number as an
> argument be significantly more difficult to write, since it would have
> figure out the actual runtime type of the number and deal with all the
> different cases?  Right now, I just have to verify the type.  Seems like
> even if you somehow solve the problem of breaking python code, you
> will break extension code badly.  One thing I like about python is that
> it is highly compatible with its extension language.  The further we get
> from the current symmetry between python and C/C++ the harder it
> will be to write extensions.  The same goes for case sensitivity BTW.

I won't comment on case sensitivity, but don't nearly all arguments to
extensions go through PyArg_ParseTuple? Without thinking about it too much,
it seems like it would be a piece of cake to make that backwards compatible.
Did you have something specific in mind?

> 3. Why do you expect it to be wise to hide all the numeric issues under
> a level of abstraction?  The issues will still exist, but will just be
more
> obscure.  Right now, we have a simple and explicit numeric system with
> simple and well understood problems.  Trying to make it simpler for
> beginners by adding complexity to the overall system won't work.

What specifically don't you like?

   * Unification of ints and longs (PEP 237)? This seems almost impossible
to dislike.

    * An addition of a rational type (PEP 239)? You might think this was
useless and argue against it on those grounds, but I can't see that would
inspire the horrified tone of the message above.

   * Addition of a rational literal (PEP 240)? This one you could easily
dislike a lot. But if your really super concerned about the evils of
inexatitude, you'll probably like this more than I do.

Once you have allow PEPs 237 and 239 your 90% of the way to some variation
of PEP 228, you don't even really need 240.

Anyway I'm sure we'd all be much happier if everyone went to
python.sourceforge.net/peps, read all the number PEPs and then, if
necessary, panicked about what was actually in them.

-tim






From missive at frontiernet.net  Wed Jul  4 11:10:34 2001
From: missive at frontiernet.net (Lee Harr)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:10:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Tkinter Scrollbar get method
Message-ID: <9hvbla$1bpq$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net>

Hi:

I am trying to use the Tkinter Scrollbar class.
The docs say that the get() method returns a
two element tuple of values between 0.0 and 1.0

What I am getting, though is a 4 element tuple:

Python 2.1 (#1, Jun 24 2001, 00:39:38)
[GCC 2.95.3 [FreeBSD] 20010315 (release)] on freebsd4
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import Tkinter      
>>> sb = Tkinter.Scrollbar()                  
>>> g = sb.get()
>>> print g
(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
>>> print sb.get.__doc__
Return the current fractional values (upper and lower end)
        of the slider position.
>>> a, b, c, d = g
>>> a, b, c, d    
(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
>>>


Also, when I try to do something similar to this in a
script, I get an error:

ValueError: unpack tuple of wrong size


I get this when I use either two or four elements
in the left-hand side. (or 3 or 5... I can get it
in to a single variable, and print it out -- it
looks like g above -- but am unable to unpack it.

Anyone see something I am missing here?




From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Thu Jul 12 05:01:27 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 09:01:27 GMT
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <3B4CEF3C.D664D82A@Lugoj.Com> <I%737.679443$166.13999728@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9kqpol.1c7.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

EricIDLE <grayson-wilson at home.com> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> I Still Dont Get It. Could you explain it in simpiler terms?

Filter 'filters' a list, it lets through only those elements of a list for
which some condition is true.

For instance, say you have a list of numbers 0 to 20 (range(21)), and you
want to have only those that are divisable by three.

Then you make a small function that is true when a number is divisable by
three:

def divisable_by_three(x):
   if x % 3 == 0:
      return 1
   else:
      return 0

Now you can use that to filter the list:

filter(divisable_by_three, range(21))

That should return [0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18].

-- 
Remco Gerlich


From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Wed Jul 25 01:55:51 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:55:51 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E5794A.22555124072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <cpae1tboxg.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to
> 
> (1) int/int *ought* to return an int;
> 
> (2) it breaks too much code to change now.

As one of the people who posted too much to these threads, I'd like to 
clarify my position:
 (1') int/int ought to return an exact value.
I'd be happy with int/int=rational (238+228?). Probably happier than with 
the status quo.  I have code that would break (2) but not too much to 
change. You have talked about bad experiences with unpredictable slowdowns 
with rationals in ABC, but I would prefer my programs to be correct before 
I try to optimize them for speed, and if such a slowdown is found one could 
always put in an explicit float() or // or whatever where needed.

If I really believed that (as the mathematicians usually write) 
floor(int/int) will mean what it means mathematically, rather than some 
worrisome approximation, I would probably use that notation rather than the 
ugly int//int (also that way nobody will get confused and think I mean 
broken C/C++/Java rounding-towards-zero instead of towards -infty, and I 
can use ceiling or round when I mean them instead of adding magic numbers 
before doing the division).

Let me also add that I think generators are a really great addition, so 
2.2 is still moving in very positive directions even if I don't like 
int/int=float.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From erno-news at erno.iki.fi  Mon Jul 16 21:17:09 2001
From: erno-news at erno.iki.fi (Erno Kuusela)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 04:17:09 +0300
Subject: String Splice Assignment
References: <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <kuitgsgxre.fsf@lasipalatsi.fi>

In article <4e3a8319.0107161357.690b5120 at posting.google.com>,
gervaserules at yahoo.com (eAndroid) writes:

| Why don't strings support splice assignment, and what are some
| alternatives?

as others have noted, strings are immutable. probably because
the python "everything is a reference" semantics would make
accidentally change someone else's string a frequent bug, and
for efficiency reasons.

you can use the array module, or a list, if you need a mutable
sequence of characters. lists are a bit less hassle, use array if you
need to worry about memory usage.

  -- erno



From rmlecompte at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 13:26:12 2001
From: rmlecompte at hotmail.com (Ryan LeCompte)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 12:26:12 -0500
Subject: There's got to be an easier way to do this
Message-ID: <F146DR8BJimZGPBgCu70000c4b4@hotmail.com>

Try this:

Python 2.1 (#15, Apr 16 2001, 18:25:49) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
IDLE 0.8 -- press F1 for help
>>>import string
>>>f = string.maketrans('', '')
>>>string.translate('hello99there', f, string.letters)
'99'


Ryan LeCompte
rmlecompte at hotmail.com
rml7669 at louisiana.edu

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com




From dgrisby at uk.research.att.com  Thu Jul 26 05:43:54 2001
From: dgrisby at uk.research.att.com (Duncan Grisby)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 09:43:54 GMT
Subject: Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?
References: <LBA77.58$bXi.175168000@news.telia.no> <h3R77.130$bXi.170753536@news.telia.no>
Message-ID: <9joooq$l2d$1@pea.uk.research.att.com>

In article <h3R77.130$bXi.170753536 at news.telia.no>,
 Thomas Weholt <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote:

>From the responses to my question it seems like SOAP and XML-RPC might not
>fit the bill at all. Corba and similar solutions are mentioned. But my
>project is a pure python package. Wanting to implement a small distributed
>information sharing network, with very small and simple user-nodes cannot
>include a Corba-server installation on each of the clients, unless it's
>implemented in pure python and small in size. Is that possible/available?

None of the CORBA implementations for Python are pure Python. Fnorb is
close, but it contains a small amount of C.

However, given that your project requires Python, which is a binary
package, I'm not sure that requiring the installation of another
binary package is a big deal.

If you must stick with pure Python, you might look at these two:

  DOPY:  http://www.users.cloud9.net/~proteus/dopy/welcome.html
  Pyro:  http://www.xs4all.nl/~irmen/pyro.html

They are both Python specific distributed object systems relatively
similar to CORBA. I've no idea what the performance is like, but they
are likely to be faster than the XML based protocols.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --


From vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi  Mon Jul 23 02:59:14 2001
From: vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi (Ville Vainio)
Date: 23 Jul 2001 09:59:14 +0300
Subject: OO misconceptions  // Learning curve geometry/
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <mailman.995268208.1394.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l6kci.qqs.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B538E16.65394C9D@engcorp.com> <slrn9l7a8r.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9j0rko025gf@enews3.newsguy.com> <slrn9l9k6t.va1.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <bog57.219$Ax5.5503@news3.voicenet.com> <slrn9ldcug.mtd.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <yoxzo9wyvul.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>

tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist) writes:

> Perl learning curve
> +       ____________/
> +      /
> +     /
> +    /
> +   /
> +  /
> + /
> +/
> +---+---+---+---+---+

I think Perl has more of a 

+       / 
+      |
+      |     
+     /
+     |
+     | 
+ ----/
+/
+---+---+---+---+---+

==========>   More knowledge


That is, once you get beyond trivial, you hit the wall, even thougn in
the beginning things move quite smoothly. In perl trivial things (awk
stuff) are easy (but not easier than in Python; just requiring a few
keystrokes less), and difficult things are "possible", but hardly
worth trying (unless your boss/teacher/whatever forces you).

-- 
Ville Vainio - http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio - ICQ #115524762
 Wild geese have no intention to cast a reflection
 Water has no mind to assume their form


From tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com  Wed Jul 25 10:02:50 2001
From: tjenkins at nospiced.ham.devis.com (Tom Jenkins)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:02:50 GMT
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B5ED26F.6060307@nospiced.ham.devis.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
[snip]

> 
> Well, so far the only arguments I've heard come down to
> 
> (1) int/int *ought* to return an int;
> 

[snip]

> Attempts to convince the proponents of (1) seem useless -- otherwise
> this thread wouldn't last so long -- so I won't repeat the
> explanation.  Let me add that it has nothing to do with teaching
> Python to newbies -- the problem is a fundamental design bug.
> (Ironically, it dates back to the day, probably in 1991, that Tim
> Peters convinced me that int+float should automatically coerce the int


AH! So its TIM PETER'S fault.  He's a witch! Burn him! Burn him!  He 
changed me into a newt.

well-i-got-better-ly yours
Tom





From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 04:07:25 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 08:07:25 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF5B77F1919duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in news:cp66cd12yp.fsf at cj20424-
a.reston1.va.home.com:

> Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I have a question, or perhaps an observation about the new rules for 
resolving diamond inheritance.

Given a class hierarchy such as:
class A: pass
class B(A):
   def save(self): pass
class C(A):
   def save(self): pass
class D(B, C):
   def foo(self):
       self.save() # Calls B.save

Now, if I add the following code:
class E(B): pass
class F(D, E): pass

f = F()
f.foo()

My understanding of the new rules is that calling f.foo() will result in a 
call to C.save instead of B.save (or in other words, any class that depends 
on the search order for base classes may find this order mysteriously 
changing if it itself is subclassed).

Is my understanding correct? Does it matter? Something similar already 
happens in existing Python programs (define class F(C, D) and you get the 
same effect), but previously you were less likely to encounter diamond 
inheritance.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com  Wed Jul  4 20:55:36 2001
From: andy_todd at spam.free.yahoo.com (Andy Todd)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 00:55:36 GMT
Subject: a gadfly SQL question --- table creation
References: <n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90D5704F23F1Catodddexterpinioncom@203.2.194.51>

Joe Potter <jm7potter at hotmail.com> wrote in
<n237ktc10fithjhm8vj4pfkmrq7k4fjop8 at 4ax.com>: 

>Hello all,
>
>In working with the Python SQL database called Gadfly I have discovered
>something that I do not understand.
>
>If I create a few tables like this:
>
>#####
>import gadfly
>
>connection = gadfly.gadfly()
>connection.startup("jnso", ".\\ndata")
>cursor = connection.cursor()
>cursor.execute("create table students (st_id varchar(6),gr_level
>varchar(1), grcard_type varchar(2), last_name varchar(40), first_name
>varchar(40))") 
>
>connection.commit()
>####
>
>The tables will *not* be in this order in the database. Now, I expect
>that rows will be inserted at random, but *tables* also?
>
>It does not get in the way all that much, but my "pretty print" looks
>like hell. The first name is all the way to the left while the last name
>is all the way to the right.
>
>Does anyone know how to say "in this darned order" in SQL ????
>
>Regards, Joe 
>

Joe,

You're running into the major problem people first have when dealing with 
RDBMS and SQL. This isn't a Gadfly problem, allow me to explain.

SQL is a set based language. It is not a procedural (or OO) language and 
the most important aspect of this is that *order does not matter*. With set 
based operations (ie DML or DDL in SQL - is that enough TLAs ;-) you 
specify what you want to happen, not how to do it (with suitable exceptions 
for implementation specific hints, but that doesn't matter to use here).

Let me repeat - you specify what you want to do, the database takes care of 
the how.

Therefore in your table creation statement you are saying "please create a 
table called students which has columns called st_id, gr_level, 
grcard_type, last_name and first_name". How gadfly organises this table is 
up to it (you could almost say that it is none of your business).

Likewise when you create records in the table *there is no guarantee that 
they will be stored in the order you insert them*. So, if I create two 
students;

"""
INSERT INTO students 
  ( st_id, gr_level, grcard_type, last_name, first_name )
VALUES
  ( '1', 'C', 'X', 'Andy', 'Todd')
"""
and 

"""
INSERT INTO students 
  ( st_id, gr_level, grcard_type, last_name, first_name )
VALUES
  ( '2', 'C', 'X', 'Joe', 'Potter')
"""

Gadfly (and gadfly alone) determines how this data is physically stored. 
When I retrieve these rows from the table I may get Andy first and Joe 
second, or vice versa. The next time I retrieve the rows they may be in the 
same or a different order (although practically they will always be in the 
same order YOU CANNOT RELY ON THIS). If you want to control the order of 
retrieval you have to tell the database what you want (you still really 
cannot tell it how to do it), eg;

"""
SELECT st_id, first_name, last_name
FROM   students
ORDER BY last_name, first_name
"""

Will always return the result set;

"""
1, Andy, Todd
2, Joe, Potter
"""

in that order - unless the data changes of course.

Also note that in each SQL statement I have specified which columns to use, 
the order there are physically stored then becomes irrelevant.

This can be confusing at first, but stick with it and pretty soon you will 
be jumping out of the bath and running down the street ...

Regards,
Andy
-- 
Content free posts a speciality


From cfelling at iae.nl  Thu Jul 12 10:37:46 2001
From: cfelling at iae.nl (Carel Fellinger)
Date: 12 Jul 2001 16:37:46 +0200
Subject: evalstr
References: <mailman.994939340.22056.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9ikcnq$47v$1@animus.fel.iae.nl>

Michael Chermside <mcherm at destiny.com> wrote:
>>>> class Eval:
> def __getitem__(self, key):
> 		return eval(key)

...

> Now THAT'S a wierd-but-cool hack! Very powerful and flexible, and
> simple enough to use. It should definitely be added to the cookbook. 
> It does, unfortunately, have one significant limitation: the expression
> cannot contain the character ")", which is one you'd like to use in
> expressions.

You can, but it has to match opening braces. The thing that is impossible
is to have strings inside the expression that have extra closing braces.

>>> "%((1+2)*(3+3))s" % Eval()
'18'
>>> "%('a'*2)s" % Eval()
'aa'
>>> "%('a)'*2)s" % Eval()
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in __getitem__
  File "<string>", line 1
    'a
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid token
>>>



-- 
groetjes, carel


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Wed Jul  4 03:23:44 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:23:44 +0200
Subject: Python distribution...
References: <3B4296D8.6DAA39FF@telocity.com>
Message-ID: <9hug6a$folh1$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

[posted and mailed]
"Adonis" <deltapigz at telocity.com> wrote in message news:3B4296D8.6DAA39FF at telocity.com...
> could it possible (under windows) to distribute the python executable +
> libs needed + python*.dll + script to other windows users ?
>
> i was looking into py2exe, but did not get it to work?
>
> i have python2.1 (distutils already in it)
> but then when i was attempting to compile the sample code it mentioned
> something about win32api* (something in that sense)
>
> do i need to get those files if need be?
>
> any help is appreciated.
> Adonis
>
py2exe _is_ supposed to work with PythonLabs Python2.1.
If you don't have Mark Hammonds win32 extensions installed,
which are available on www.activestate.com, or which
are included in ActiveState's python distribution,
you will get a warning like this, but it _should_ work:
        The win32api module is not available - modules listed
        in the registry will not be found.

Thomas




From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Fri Jul 20 08:46:12 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:46:12 +1000
Subject: All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 
 AM 21 July 2001!!!
References: <3B54F839.AC6C11C3@yahoo.com> <sog57.3111$N21.1150208@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net> <tlbl39inknnbd4@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B582814.2641CE6A@student.gu.edu.au>

Neil Waterworth wrote:
> 
> I have a PC without a modem or network connection. Will it explode, or can
> someone lend me their Caesium Atomic clock and a serial cable?
> 
> Ric Werme <werme at mediaone.net> wrote in message
> news:sog57.3111$N21.1150208 at typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> > alavoor <alavoor at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > >All computers in the world MUST sync with ATOMIC clock before 12:00 AM
> > >21 July 2001!!!
> >
> > >hello:
> > >You must sync your PC's date and time with Cesium Atomic clock.
> >
> > Garbage!
> >
> > >Use this very small and tiny program written in PHP.
> >
> > "This won't hurt a bit!"  At least you aren't hawking a .EXE virus.
> >
> > What wrong with NTP?  (Assuming one needs his computers' time to be
> accurate.)
> >
> > --
> > Ric Werme                            | werme at nospam.mediaone.net
> > http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme  |       ^^^^^^^ delete

You'd think he'd chose a less knowledgeable group of people to try this
on, wouldn't you?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net  Mon Jul  2 01:04:08 2001
From: chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net (Chris Gonnerman)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 00:04:08 -0500
Subject: Is Python Dead?
References: <MNS%6.355$Xs4.225014@news.pacbell.net>
Message-ID: <009501c102b4$721c2320$0101010a@local>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward B. Wilson II" <ed at ewilson.com>

> I have been following Python for five years now, and I am still just as
> frustrated with it as I was in 1996.
>
> Python still doesn't have good database support,

What exactly is "good database support?"  I haven't had a problem.

> nor has it grown to be
> useful in the web space as mod_perl.

mod_perl is unlikely to be useful to me since I can't stand the
mess that Perl programmers call source code.  I suspect that many
Python programmers would agree.

> PyApache has been around longer than
> mod_php, yet php has far surpassed it as a productivity tool in the web
> space.

I'm not a Zope user myself, but from what I've read about both PHP
and Zope, it appears they are pretty much even in capability (hopefully
an expert on the subject will comment here).

> It would seem Python can do everything, yet nothing.  Everyone wants to
> write the next killer application with Python, XML parsers, image
> manipulators, super computer steering modules, yet no one wants to work on
> making Python perform where it matters most.  Python is the best language
at
> eclectic stuff, however, poor at bread and butter tasks.

This seems a bit broad to me.  I use Python all the time; when I am forced
to use another language I always see exactly why I don't like them.

When am I forced?  Sadly it seems that integrating any other language
directly into MS Access is out of the question.  (Am I wrong?  Someone
please tell me if I am!)

The only other time is when I must work with dBase tables... but I would
hardly typify that as not being "good database support".

> Python needs better leadership in areas of its growth.  Python is truly
the
> best language in use today, except it still isn't very useful for the
> largest solution sector, database access, and information presentation
(web,
> or otherwise).

Here again, database access and information presentation aren't a problem
to me... is anyone else here having trouble with this?

> It seems that Python should strive to be great at the ABC's before it
> attempts poetry.
>
> --Ed





From tundra at tundraware.com  Tue Jul 31 19:20:02 2001
From: tundra at tundraware.com (Tim Daneliuk)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 23:20:02 GMT
Subject: Python Is Really Middleware
References: <3B667EBA.DA6C298@tundraware.com> <ScG97.56412$EP6.12961869@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B673CF9.35909E36@tundraware.com>

Terry Reedy wrote:
> 
<snip>
> 
> As a Smithian hippie, I think the better adage is "Entertainment
> information want to be free", which is to say that people like to
> share non-critical information as part of their social interaction and
> play.  

That "entertainment information" is still somebody's property and 
deserves the same protections as my house, car, or other material
possessions.  The fact that the medium is malleable doesn't change
the importance of property rights - unless, of course, the property
owner chooses to make it freely available voluntarily.

> On the other hand, several people have noted that Python being
> free is a barrier to commercial acceptance.  As a free user, I would

I see no reason to believe this.  Perl, Java, Linux, FreeBSD all
have significant commercial followings and all are freely available.

I think the more germane issue is "how much wood is there behind
the technology arrow?"  That is, to what extent to commercial
enterprises believe that a new (to them) technology has viability,
a large user community, and thus, support.  The best form of
Python evangelism I know, it to solve real commercial problems
with it better/faster than the other choices.  Running code always
wins an argument in front of the CIO.

> like to see more commercial exploitation without enclosure.  (Software
> and information in general does *NOT* suffer from the tragedy of the
> commons.)  One selling point 'should' be that the 100,000 (or

It depends on what you mean by "enclosure".  Per the point above,
organizations, like people, need to enforce their property rights.
If a particular technology makes this impossible or very hard,
that technology will be met by huge opposition.  I once was in
the position of having to authorize buying Sun's 'C' compiler
rather than using the GPLed GCC for exactly this reason.  Even though
I, and all the engineers who worked for me, preferred GCC, I could
not in good conscience expose my company to the possibilty  of
being forced to reveal the inner workings of a product that
was our key competetive distinction in the market we served.
This sort of thing is not unusual.

This, BTW, is why the GPL is under attack and people are looking
for alternatives.  People are looking for a balance
between preserving the open source intentions of the original
authors and protecting their own intellectual property.  Personally,
I like the BSD license, as do a great many other people.

> 
> > I, for one, would like to see a date picked for a permanent
> moratorium
> > on the language proper,
> 
> All the changes in the last year have been discussed for years.  So I
> expect/hope that in another year we will see something of a plateau
> again with Python2final.

I understand this.  You'll notice that I was careful to comment
on the "instinct" of the Python community towards more features,
but I was not being critical at all.  There are still legitimate
things to be done and I'm not carping about them.  I just worry
that Python is going to go down the same ratholes I've seen before.


> I think it worth noting that 2.2 without 'import future' is arguably
> more compatible with 2.1 than most versions of, for instance, 'C' have
> been with each other.  ['Version of  C' = defacto language of
> particular compiler on  particular platform with particular settings.]
> In this sense alone, you are correct: Python is middleware that has
> already successfully hidden some annoying variations in the underlying
> platforms it runs on.
> 
>

Quite true and well put.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com


From duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk  Thu Jul 26 03:40:34 2001
From: duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk (Duncan Booth)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:40:34 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jlo4v$rhbl$1@sky.inp.nsk.su> <mailman.996073073.17868.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90EA56E7E1AD9duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>

lomax at pumpichank.com (Frank "Cookie Jar" Lomax) wrote in 
news:mailman.996073073.17868.python-list at python.org:

> No, 1 cookie for 2 children always means no cookies for either child,
> lots of crumbs for the dog to lick up, and years of therapy for the
> entire family.
> 
> proof-that-integer-division-causes-thousands-of-disfunctional-families-
>     per-year-and-must-be-abolished-ly y'rs, - frank
> 

This newsgroup is getting decidedly surreal this morning. the post above 
was immediately followed in my newsreader by one beginning:

> Check out the Cookie module in the Python distribution:
> 
>    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-Cookie.html
> 
> It includes a simple example of how to use cookies from Python. 




-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 06:05:26 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:05:26 +0100
Subject: Auto sort in Dictionaries???
References: <74cc9702.0107222235.78bd9d35@posting.google.com> <irpnltsgenv5pfjk8k4t8kbl74dtcr4pf2@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <jgsnltg4bjepdj381kqdqls0o446607ip7@4ax.com>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:20:28 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk>
wrote:

>You can get the keys in order if you want - just use the sort
>function. This is a little annoying, but given that Python would have
>to do the same thing to return the keys in order - inefficient for
>applications where that is not needed - it is better that it continues
>to work the way it does.

Oops - sorry, that doesn't help. I read your message as needing the
keys in sorted order - not insertion order.

To preserve the insertion order, you really need to store some kind of
sequence number.

Each time you insert a key, therefore, you could do something like...

  Dict [(Seq_No, Original_Key)] = Value
  Seq_No += 1

Or...

  Dict [Original_Key] = (Seq_No, Value)

Having done that, you'd have to derive values with the sequence
numbers at the head and sort that to get the keys in insertion order.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From cgp at nospam.le.ac.uk  Thu Jul 19 04:38:47 2001
From: cgp at nospam.le.ac.uk (Clive Page)
Date: 19 Jul 2001 09:38:47 +0100
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <9j66an$3bm02@owl.le.ac.uk>

In article <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>,
Guido van Rossum  <guido at python.org> wrote:

>But it's still open for debate whether the problem here is Windows or
>Unix!  All programming languages and file systems used to be
>case-insensitive, until the designers of Unix and C decided that it
>was too much work to write and use a case-insensitive comparison
>routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to be better, just easier to
>implement.  But times have changed, and that's a lousy excuse.

As this thread has shown, nearly everyone has an opinion on this.  For what
it's worth, I've been using Unix for nearly 20 years and I still get caught
regularly by its case sensitivity, and I don't like it at all.  Of course
my opinion is worth almost nothing, but there are some facts worth noting:

I'm pretty sure I've seen a study in one of the reputable computer science
journals reporting a trial of two sets of users with two invented computer
languages, identical except that one was case-blind and the other was case
sensitive.  It showed that people made significantly more mistakes with a
case-sensitive language.  Unfortunately I didn't keep the reference -
maybe someone else remembers it too?   To me the results of that study
were pretty conclusive.   


-- 
Clive Page   cgp at le.ac.uk


From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sat Jul 28 18:27:56 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 22:27:56 GMT
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <mailman.996352253.17238.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9m6f3c.l63.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 16:29:18 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:

> The result of 0+(-0) is -0 in the to-minus-inf rounding mode.  The result of
> multiplying by 1.0 is independent of rounding mode.
> 
> obviously-correct-is-better-than-subtly-broken-ly y'rs  - tim

Ah, thanks for reminding why a global state which changes the meaning
of things is evil :-)

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 18 15:26:40 2001
From: mhuening at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Matthias Huening)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 21:26:40 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
References: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de> <PTg57.32687$d4.1085713@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>
Message-ID: <9j4ntg$m8l0k$1@fu-berlin.de>

Thanks, Marco, for pointing me to the signal-module.

And, Steve, thank you very much for your 'other suggestion'.
I have to admit that I don't understand how it works but - it works!!
The asyncore-module is really great! Exactly what I was looking for.

One question: while playing around with your example I noticed that there
seems to be a problem with virtual servers. Your http_client-class seems to
ignore virtual servers. E.g. the page:
http://www.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/mitarbeiter.html
is not found (but it exists...).
Any ideas?

Thanks, Matthias




From grayson-wilson at home.com  Sun Jul  8 23:50:19 2001
From: grayson-wilson at home.com (EricIDLE)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 03:50:19 GMT
Subject: Good Newbie Books
References: <Cp427.655296$166.13566993@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <%R927.657473$166.13612045@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>

Thanks.




From fredrik at pythonware.com  Thu Jul  5 03:13:08 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 07:13:08 GMT
Subject: The standard library
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEKPKLAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.993966061.10438.python-list@python.org> <slrn9k28vp.s9l.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <3B43FAC5.8B0A3B60@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <8sU07.8051$e5.1044364@newsb.telia.net>

Greg Ewing wrote:
>
> > And a lot of C functions that could (and should) accept keyword arguments
> > don't.  Even when the docs suggest they do, they don't.  For example, you
> > should be able to write 'foo bar baz'.split(maxsplit=1)
>
> As long as there's a difference, there should be a documentation
> convention to distinguish between argument names which are
> keywords and those which aren't.

the usual convention is that unless the documentation explicitly
tells you that something is a keyword argument, it isn't.

makes sense to me.

</F>




From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 08:16:49 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:16:49 -0400
Subject: Confusion about dictionaries - keys use value or identity?
References: <mailman.994634115.30878.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <peh27.49239$he.3401395@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in ...
> [Steve Holden]
> > We are talking about has_key here, right?
> 
> RIght.
> 
> > I was simply trying (perhaps rather too hurriedly, as it turned out)
> > the fact that strings if unequal lengths could not be equal, and only
> > equality is required when indexing a dictionary.
> 
> Good point, and I hadn't fully realized the context.  Things are still
> subtler than you may think, though.
> 
things-are-almost-always-subtler-than-*i*-think-ly y'rs -  steve
-- 
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From engsol at teleport.com  Thu Jul 26 13:49:49 2001
From: engsol at teleport.com (engsol at teleport.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:49:49 GMT
Subject: Newbie Q: Missing Frame
Message-ID: <3b60558d.5862760@news.onemain.com>

When I run the following code, I see a large window, with two frames,
the blue on top, and the yellow on the bottom.

 When I attempt to add a label to frame 2 , (by removing the #'s), I
still see the blue frame, but the yellow frame is missing, and just
the label is showing in it's place.

Running on NT4, Python versions 1.5+ and 2.0

Any help appreciated.
Engsol

PS..is there a way to break out of "mainloop" via a button command,
and run the code subsequent to the GUI code?


***** Start sample code ******

from Tkinter import *
win = Tk()

def test():

  frame_1 = Frame(win, width = 500, height = 100, bg = 'blue')
  frame_1.pack()

  frame_2 = Frame(win, width = 500, height = 100, bg = 'yellow')
  frame_2.pack()

  # label_1 = Label(frame_2, text = "Will this work?", bg = 'red')
  #label_1.pack()

  win.mainloop()

test()

**** End sample code ****



From scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl  Mon Jul 16 06:49:10 2001
From: scarblac at pino.selwerd.nl (Remco Gerlich)
Date: 16 Jul 2001 10:49:10 GMT
Subject: re Challenge: More Compact?
References: <mailman.995247446.16415.python-list@python.org> <slrn.pl.9l54oq.hfm.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <slrn9l5hia.80r.scarblac@pino.selwerd.nl>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in comp.lang.python:
> Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:36:22 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> pisze:
> 
> > def valid_ip(ip):
> >     m = re.match(r'(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$', ip)
> >     if m:
> >         elements = map(int, m.groups())
> >         return max(elements) < 256
> >     return 0
> 
> Is 0127.0.0.00001 a valid IP?
> 
> If yes, then it should be accepted. If no, what about 127.0.0.001?

Many POSIX inet_aton implementations interpret '0127' as an octal, but
that's nonstandard behavior. I don't think IP number syntax is defined very
well.

(from a quick scan of some rfcs, ie rfc 820 and rfc 2553).
-- 
Remco Gerlich


From philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Jul  9 09:06:38 2001
From: philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 14:06:38 +0100
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994649774.8137.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9kjb2u.ev8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>

>That is where you are wrong. If someone either A) uses my code in a GPL
>app the entire app is GPL'ed *including* my code.

No, your code, to the extent that it is distinct, eg in separate files,
is still licenced under your license.

>Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
>     A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life;
>     specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of
>     inequalities in the possession of property, as by
>     distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all
>     wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.
>
>communism
>       n 1: a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership
>       2: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless
>          society
>
>That is the GPL to the letter. I dont care what smoke and mirrors you try
>to BS it with.

So, all people who use the GPL are communists? Are we all also
"Un-American", a "Cancer", and "like Pac-Man" too?

-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##






From mamoonk at nortelnetworks.com  Mon Jul  2 10:01:28 2001
From: mamoonk at nortelnetworks.com (Mamoon Khan)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:01:28 -0400
Subject: Win32com
Message-ID: <9DF00DDFB54ED511A9AE00508BF9380A189305@zrtpd0j9.us.nortel.com>

I am trying to create a ComServer .  Following is some part of the code that
you guys need to see if I am doing it right.

_public_methods_ = [ 'SomeMethod']
_reg_progid_ = "PythonComTest.TestClass"
_reg_clsid_ = "{41E24E95-D45A-11D2-852C-204C4F4F5020}"

Here the vb code that I am using

Dim SomeServer as Variant
Set SomeServer = CreateObject(PythonComTest.TestClass")

msgbox SomeServer.SomeMethod()


I can register the Com Server fine and can call it from within python using
createobject no problem.

When I go to use it from VB I can create an object SomeServer fine but when
I call a method and return a string from a function and try to display the
results in a message box, I get an error invalid type.

Could someone tell me what the heck is going on here with this.

TIA

Mamoon

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010702/e9742d25/attachment.html>

From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 17:25:17 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 22:25:17 +0100
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
Message-ID: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com>

I'm trying to get ADO events working with win32com, but I'm not getting
anywhere. The following is my test code:

-------------------------------------------------------------
import win32com.client

finished = 0

class ADOEvents:
    def OnConnectComplete(*args):
        print `args`
        finished = 1

def Test():
    # Conn = win32com.client.Dispatch("ADODB.Connection")
    Conn = win32com.client.DispatchWithEvents("ADODB.Connection", ADOEvents)
    ConnStr = "Provider=msdaora;Prompt=complete"
    Conn.Open(ConnStr, Options=16)
    while not finished:
        pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    Test()
-------------------------------------------------------------

If I understand things correctly, this is about what is needed.

The problem is that this code immediately returns an error - 'Operation has been
cancelled by the user'. But I didn't! I didn't even get the chance, as the login
box did not appear.

If I comment out the DispatchWithEvents call, and replace it with a straight
Dispatch call, as on the line above, everything works as I want - the login box
appears (although clearly the event doesn't get fired, so I get an infinite
loop...)

Is there some reason that DispatchWithEvents isn't working correctly here?

Thanks for any insight,
Paul.


From dennis.hamilton at acm.org  Sun Jul  8 17:10:41 2001
From: dennis.hamilton at acm.org (Dennis E. Hamilton)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 14:10:41 -0700
Subject: [OT] Eternal programming
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107080954320.4123-100000@rnd.onego.ru>
Message-ID: <NDBBKEGCNONMNKGDINPFOENEHBAA.dennis.hamilton@acm.org>

The operation you refer to as a/b is called not-and or "nand" in English.
It is also called "stroke" or Sheffer stroke (and typed as a|b).  Whitehead
and Russell [1] used it to demonstrate that propositional logic can be
developed with a single primitive, as you notice.

For computational logic, a better primitive is based on

	if p1 then a1 else a2

which includes conditional evaluation (that is, a1 and a2 are not evaluated
and are not required to be definite until p1 is determined and one of the
alternatives is selected).  This allows all of the appropriate definitions
for constants in propositions:

	not(x) = if x then false else true
	and(x,y) = if x then y else false
	or(x,y) = if x then true else y

and so on.  (The definitions for and() and or(), if taken to require x and y
by value, place additional conditions on the arguments that the conditional
forms do not, however.)

This one primitive computational structure, along with an agreement on what
is taken for truth and falsity (in the evaluation of p1) is sufficient
primitive structure for the logical part of computation.  (My approach is to
have identity, a=b be the basic grounded proposition, with the other two
required operations being eval(x) and apply(x,y).  There is a single
very-primitive data type that is sufficient for universal computation, but
not for practical application.  I would build up text processing as critical
because the key thing to have next is the ability to communicate between the
"internal world" of the mechanism and the "external world" where users
express things in their theories (whether for arithmetic, logic, or more
interesting theories with computational models) rather than the mechanism's.

I subscribe to the concept behind Eternal Programming and am already at work
on it!

I created http://www.infonuovo.com/miser as a place for me to develop my
thoughts on this.  I have started with broad principles and I will address
the Eternal Programming concepts somewhere along the way.  The Miser Project
was always intended to satisfy that requirement, though I hadn't identified
it with such a well-defined set of conditions.  I like what you (and Guido)
have done in this area and intend to use it.

-- Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
AIIM DMware Technical Coordinator
------------------
mailto:dennis.hamilton at acm.org  tel. +1-425-793-0283
http://www.dmware.org           fax. +1-425-430-8189
     ODMA Support http://www.infonuovo.com/odma

[1] Whitehead, Alfred North., Russell, Bertrand.
    Principia Mathematical to *56.
    Cambridge University Press (1910, 1927, 1962, 1997).
    ISBN 0-521-62606-4.
    This insight is discussed in the Introduction to the
    Second Edition, on pp. xiii to xvi.
    It is also possible to use nor = (not (a or b)) as the
    single primitive proposition.


-----Original Message-----
From: python-list-admin at python.org
[mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Roman Suzi
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 00:07
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Eternal programming


On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Bengt Richter wrote:

>On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:55:56 -0700, "John Roth"
><johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
>>I don't see why it couldn't be of much more utility. The big problem is
>>performance, since you're talking about a two level interpreter. The last
>>time I saw anything quite that slow was a /360 running a 1410 emulator
>>running a 650 simulator.
>I am getting the impression there's a lot of OF's around here ;-)
>I remember when you could go to any IBM office and get an armload
>of system and programming manuals just for the asking. The 650 manual
>was the first computer manual I ever looked at ;-)
>
>>
>>Very interesting idea. The trouble is, I can't see it being really small.
>>Making it cleanly extensible seems to require some of the features that
>>support extendability, such as namespaces (Forth dictionaries), etc.
>>
>>Anyone want to work on it - either technically or politically?
>Well, the nuclear waste problem is probably the most eternal thing
>we've managed to create yet, so there ought to be application
>for 'Eternal' somehow with that ;-/
>
>Actually, I think there are people very concerned about the viability
>of digital archives from the point of view of survivability of
>the access methods and devices. I'd bet the Library of Congress has
>folks worrying about this.

I am glad to see biological examples. Eternal program is like seed
which could grow around small rightly built environment.

The problem, as I see it now, is scientific: which features
to include to the core. For example, if one want to do logic,
there is only one operation needed (i do not know how to call it in
English:

X    Y      X/Y
0    0      1
1    0      1
0    1      1
1    1      0

With this single operation you can build any boolean operation:

not X  ==  X/X
X and Y  == not(X/Y) == (X/Y)/(X/Y)
X or Y == (not X)/(not Y) == (X/X)/(Y/Y)

and so on!

I believe, that there is some set of operations which is as general as
Turing machine BUT is easily evolutionable into something practical.
The above means you need to implement only one operation and library
will create: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, ... whatever.

Same applies to arithmetics. Field operations need to be
supplied: x+y, -x, x*y, 1/x.

I think Eternal will also need strong text-processing capabilities.
Thus minimal DFA regex need to be built in. (this is beneficial to
core itself, because it will need some parser and the parser could be
available for program evolution as well.) Deterministic Turing machine
is DFA + potentially unbounded memory to play on.

It's really interesting reasearch which (probably) nobody has done
yet.

[ ... ]


Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
--
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Sunday, July 08, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "The days of the digital watch are numbered" _/


--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list




From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Wed Jul 25 13:55:27 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 19:55:27 +0200
Subject: Numeric methods again
References: <9jmelr$m2g$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>
Message-ID: <j4ofq8hp0w.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Magnus Lie Hetland" <mlh at idi.ntnu.no> writes:

> in front of the reference dot... For a simple parser
> it might be difficult to know whether 5. was a float
> or the beginning of a reference, but with a bit of
> lookahead that can't be too hard? 

If you want to allow "5.foo", you certainly also need to allow
"5. foo", as you can also write "a. foo". So it requires arbitrary
look-ahead.

> Is there any way that 5._ is not the beginning of a reference to a
> numeric method?

No, I don't think this is possible.

> Can a number ever be directly followed by an identifier?

Yes, certainly: "5.e17" could be either 5*10**17, or the e17 attribute
of 5.

> Is the parser to weak to parse this stuff?

Definitely yes, although it might be possible to improve it. I'm sure
contributions are welcome.

Regards,
Martin



From mikael at isy.liu.se  Fri Jul 20 03:12:07 2001
From: mikael at isy.liu.se (Mikael Olofsson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 09:12:07 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Language change and code breaks
In-Reply-To: <cpsnfsfqjk.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se>

On 19-Jul-2001 Guido van Rossum wrote:
 >  Bruce Sass <bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> writes:
 >  
 > > The short of it is... ya got less symbols to work with, therefore it
 > > is less <something>... why is that good for programmers?
 >  
 >  You flunked math, right?  The number of available identifiers is still
 >  infinite...

That comment was not necessary. What Bruce must mean is that the average
length of an identifier will be larger with case insensitiveness than 
with case sensitiveness. I am sure you understood that.

And I am neutral in this discussion - at least for the moment.

/Mikael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
Date:    20-Jul-2001
Time:    09:05:04

         /"\
         \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
          X      Against HTML Mail
         / \

This message was sent by XF-Mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jul 17 18:38:36 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:38:36 GMT
Subject: Binary ZODB packages for Win95?
References: <mailman.995405325.8095.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <M7357.11810$Xr6.98310@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Leeuw van der, Tim:
> Does anyone know of any download-location for binary
> packages of standalone ZODB for Win95?

   Only tested on W2K but may work on 95.

http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/zodbwin.zip
   This includes 4 setup programs that should each be run. There may be an
installation order required and the README says to install in this order
(the 5th step for ZEO is omitted because I don't have it installed):
1) zodb-basic
2) ExtensionClass
3) ZODB
4) BTrees

   Neil




From david at boddie.net  Sun Jul 29 17:29:39 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 14:29:39 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com> <uae1qeqmt.fsf@cs.uu.nl> <18289ee4.0107271117.7df350d4@posting.google.com> <cpu1zy16g7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <18289ee4.0107281021.468246a7@posting.google.com> <3B638FA8.8D24A152@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107291329.6d082ccf@posting.google.com>

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message news:<3B638FA8.8D24A152 at engcorp.com>...
> David Boddie wrote:
> > 
> > Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cpu1zy16g7.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> > > Suppose that python 3.x would *always* have to be invoked as
> > > "python3".  Would that still break legacy code?  This approach was
> > > used successfully by Perl.
> > 
> > That's a good compromise which will prevent a lot of breakage. As long
> > as you're happy with it, then I'm happy.
> 
> How so?  Wouldn't that just be something which forces people moving
> to Python3 to take a small explicit step, thereby allowing us 
> to say, "Of course your code broke, you changed your executable,
> what did you expect?".

It's not perfect, but it's better that the change is explicit,
wouldn't you say?

> This could be a "solution" if the change wasn't clearly 
> communicated over the next two (or whatever) years before the
> change becomes the default, but assuming the change is widely
> publicized, what real benefit does it bring to force the name 
> of the executable to be python3?

It isn't even close to being a "solution" since Python scripts are
invoked in a number of ways which don't depend on the executable to be
"python" or "python3".

It may, at least, prevent some people in the future from running
scripts which will break on a later interpreter. That may be a bad
thing, but not the worst thing that could happen.

> And would the same benefit arise by having the default name
> of the executable be "python3", but not forcing it to be so?

I would imagine that renaming your new "python3" interpreter to
"python" would wipe out any advantage that the above plan gives you.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Tue Jul  3 15:43:33 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:43:33 -0400
Subject: explain this
References: <25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <ccp07.20163$Lk6.1499698@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Plus, of course, the second call to locals() inside function() gets a *new
copy* of the local namespace, which still has "argument" in it despite your
attempt to delete it. You're just lucky the addition worked. Don't mess with
locals()!

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/


"gods1child" <alankarmisra at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:25b2e0d9.0107031136.5dc0dad2 at posting.google.com...
> In the code below, why can i add elements to locals but not delete them?
>
> >>> def function(argument):
> ... print locals()
> ... modify(locals())
> ... print locals()
> ...
> >>> def modify(locals):
> ... del locals['argument']
> ... locals['new_argument'] = 'new_value'
> ...
> >>> function(10)
> {'argument': 10}
> {'argument': 10, 'new_argument': 'new_value'}




From bvdpoel at uniserve.com  Fri Jul 13 23:39:16 2001
From: bvdpoel at uniserve.com (bvdpoel at uniserve.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 20:39:16 -0700
Subject: How to use os.access()??
References: <3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3@uniserve.com> <aHM37.467820$eK2.97343834@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4FBEE4.7F2D70F6@uniserve.com>

Nick Perkins wrote:
> 
> <bvdpoel at uniserve.com> wrote in message
> news:3B4F82F8.D21C6EF3 at uniserve.com...
> >
> > I'm trying to use os.access() in my program. But, I'm stuck trying to
> > figure out the parms... obviously the first is the filename; but the 2nd
> > is supposed to be a constant (?) like F_OK. Unfortunately, it doesn't
> > appear that the F_OK, etc are defined anywhere. Either the docs are
> > wrong (no way!), or I'm missing a module file (likely), or I'm just
> > totally wrong about everything (quite likely!).
> 
> os.F_OK

Opps, dummy me. Guess if I'm using os.access() then os.F_OK makes sense! 

Thanks all!

-- 
Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA **
EMAIL: bvdpoel at uniserve.com
WWW:   http://users.uniserve.com/~bvdpoel



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 11:46:16 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:46:16 -0400
Subject: COM: VB client, Python server: NULL result ...
References: <q5J37.19922$uJ3.727435@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com> <3B521442.1080103@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <RXD47.2206$PF1.166014@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

[posted & mailed]

"Mark Hammond" <MarkH at ActiveState.com> wrote in message
news:3B521442.1080103 at ActiveState.com...
> Steve Holden wrote:
>
> > On three separate systems I am experiencing the same problem trying to
> > create an Python COM object from VB. The VB satetement
> >
> >     Set obj = CreateObject("Python.Dictionary")
> >
> > (or any other Python COM object) gives the dreaded error 80004005, with
the
> > message:
> >
> >     Unexpected Python Error: exceptions.SystemError: NULL result without
> > error in call_object
>
>
> If you are using a debug COM object, it may be a bug in win32trace.pyd -
> this has been fixed in the latest ActivePython and win32all.  Creating
> Python.Dictionary from WSH works fine for me.
>
> Mark.
>
Mark:

Your surmise is probably correct, as registering the object normally rather
than in debug mode everything works fine. However, I am currently running
ActivePython build 204. Is there an easy way I can retain 2.0 and yet remove
this error?

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From skip at pobox.com  Thu Jul 26 02:50:30 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:50:30 -0500
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <m2wv4w5lj3.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu>
        <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com>
        <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org>
        <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com>
        <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com>
        <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
        <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com>
        <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>
        <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
        <m2wv4xdxlf.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
        <slrn.pl.9ltfv2.241.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
        <m2wv4w5lj3.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz>
Message-ID: <15199.48566.380333.730917@beluga.mojam.com>

    Paul> The most obvious problem is that it implies that every rational
    Paul> can be represented as a float -- this is *severe* brokenness you
    Paul> don't need.  [I think it also implies that floats with integral
    Paul> values (1.0, etc.)  should turn into integers.]

You can't do that.  Suppose that value you think is 1.0 really got truncated
during a previous calculation because your fp hardware doesn't have enough
bits and lost it?  If you convert that to the integer 1 you're screwed
because you are pretending your inexact approximation of the real value is
the real value.  You're better off admitting you have an inexact value and
planning accordingly.  The only time the VM can convert from inexact to
exact (e.g., float->rational, float->int) is when the programmer says you
can with a cast.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 17 04:11:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:11:24 +0200
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <mailman.994969462.27792.python-list@python.org> <hevsktcrnpckttnkgi1arcue5kjjsbrrb5@4ax.com> <mailman.995046506.2514.python-list@python.org> <9ir1l7$3ja$1@panix2.panix.com> <9irfbc11jaq@enews1.newsguy.com> <slrn9l49me.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <3B52314B.F7F73ED5@engcorp.com> <slrn9l4h8v.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l77cb.91.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9l7a23.rpe.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9j0s0a025q5@enews3.newsguy.com>

"Tim Hammerquist" <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:slrn9l7a23.rpe.tim at vegeta.ath.cx...
    ...
> Microsoft provides VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) as a glue
> language to script all of its 'Office (9\d|2000)' applications. It's
> like VBScript'ing ASP, but with a different environment.  I don't know
> if this is what this person found, but it's likely.  But I don't think
> that Word et al. "rely" on it.

I believe a substantial portion of Office applications *rely on*
their internal scripting language (VBA) -- at least that's what
MS says when it's trying to sell you a costly license to
integrate VBA into your own applications.  Makes sense, too --
if you have scripting around anywhere, why not use it for those
operations that are not speed bottlenecks?  The proof of the
pudding, I guess, would be removing the VBA engine (or changing
it with a set of dummy DLL's, perhaps, if there is some static
linking involved -- but I don't think there is) -- if Word &c
run fine anyway (except of course for Tools/Macros/...:-), then
the "rely on" bit is just oversell on MS's part, if (as I believe)
some functionality still exists but trying to access other crashes
everything, then MS is correct:-).  Note that things may have
changed somewhat between Office releases, of course (back in '95
there were different VB dialects in different Office apps, then
gradually they all migrated to VBA version 5, and later 6).


Alex





From guido at zope.com  Tue Jul 31 23:25:10 2001
From: guido at zope.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:25:10 -0400
Subject: Generator Comprehensions? was Re: a break for comprehensions
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:50:41 PDT."
             <010f01c11a13$3a930920$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
References: <3B66FFEC.5335E1C8@destiny.com> <3B670BB3.48D4A5A5@ActiveState.com>  
            <010f01c11a13$3a930920$6501a8c0@pacbell.net> 
Message-ID: <200108010325.XAA18259@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>



From fleet at teachout.org  Thu Jul 19 16:46:40 2001
From: fleet at teachout.org (fleet at teachout.org)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:46:40 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Variable Substitution in commands or funtion names?
In-Reply-To: <995571150.316.4033.l9@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107191642250.1294-100000@fleet1>

>   Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:43:21 -0700
>   From: Chris Barker <chrishbarker at home.net>
>
>fleet at teachout.org wrote:
>
>> I think I may have gotten myself into a box.
>>
>> I have a module "cust.py" that contains several dictionaries - each
>> references a different customer with address info, etc. such as:
>>
>> smith={"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"}
>
>I think this is your problem right here. Having the customer name as a
>variable name is problematic, it means the customer's names are
>hard-coded into your module.

I've created dictionaries for each customer in cust.py.  I don't have a
lot of customers and the information doesn't change often, therefore it's
pretty easy to edit the text file "cust.py" to make corrections or
add/delete customers.

If you'd like to do some charter fishing for rock fish in the Chesapeake,
here's what the actual first entry in my cust.py looks like:

Antonia={
   "name":"Nicholson & Daughters",
   "owner":"Capt. Charles Nicholson",
   "addr":"Bay Forest Rd.",
   "city":"Lexington Park",
   "st":"MD",
   "zip":"20653",
   "phone":"301-863-2767",
   "email":"",
   "web":"http://www.paxp.com/antonia/"}

It looks like all I need to do to convert to your suggestion is add:

"Customers={" before "Antonia," replace the "=" after Antonia with an
opening brace (and ditto for each of the other customers) and add a
closing brace at the end of the customers.

>You can do it, and some others have
>suggested how(you might also want to look at eval and exec),but why not
>use a nested dictionary?
>
>Customers = {smith: {"busname":"Smitties", "street":"123 West Ave"},
>             jones: {"busname":"Joneses", "street":"123 East Ave"},
>              ....}

And how are these NOT hardcoded into a module?  How would I access them
otherwise?

>now you do:
>
>from cust import Customers
>print Customers[CurCust]["street"]
>

Thanks for the input.  I'll try this.

					- fleet -

>--
>Christopher Barker,
>Ph.D.
>ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
>http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
>                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
>Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
>Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------
>Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------






From hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk  Mon Jul 30 16:07:24 2001
From: hamish_lawson at yahoo.co.uk (Hamish Lawson)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 13:07:24 -0700
Subject: Typing system vs. Java
References: <871yn2zdch.fsf@complete.org> <3B61D9A3.FDFF109F@home.net> <slrn9m4um1.28g.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <915a998f.0107301207.3f90ac07@posting.google.com>

Tim Hammerquist wrote:

> > Python is dynamically typed, and NOT like Perl!
> 
> Could someone elaborate on this a bit more?  What is the difference
> here?  What makes Perl's typing _not_ dynamic?  I've heard this
> statement often in clpy, but do not understand the semantics of the
> argument.

I think what was meant was:

   Python is dynamically BUT strongly typed, and NOT weakly typed like Perl!


Hamish Lawson


From quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com  Mon Jul 23 15:33:01 2001
From: quacko at lists.postmastergeneral.com (Quacko Lotto)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:33:01 EDT
Subject: 11 Free Lotto Tickets!
Message-ID: <200107231943.NAA33026@s0200.pm0.net>

Beat the Summer Heat!

Stay Inside and Play Quacko Lotto

http://lotto.quacko.com

********************************************

Dear Lotto Player - 

Today you can play the following tickets:

(10) Daily Pick 6 Tickets 
(1)  Daily Pick 1 Ticket
(11) TOTAL TICKETS

Play today and Win up to 
$1,000,000.00 in Cash tomorrow!

http://lotto.quacko.com


*******************************************
Come Join SupremeCasino.com Now!!!
http://www.supremecasino.com
*******************************************

Great News !!! Use Your Visa or MasterCard NOW Virtually 100% GUARANTEED !!! 

No More Rejected Cards, Problems or Errors. TRY IT NOW!

Buy $25 and Get $25 Free!
Buy $50 and Get $50 Free!
Buy $75 and Get $75 Free!
100% Match Bonus!!

 
22 Awesome Games with over 55 Different Tables!
All Additional Deposits Get a 5% Free Money Bonus!

Stop by and play for free!
http://www.supremecasino.com


<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
* To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to:
http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?quacko
* Enter your email address (python-list at cwi.nl) in the field
provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "quacko".

OR...

* Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line.

This message was sent to address python-list at cwi.nl
X-PMG-Recipient: python-list at cwi.nl
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>




From heikowu at ceosg.de  Mon Jul 16 19:41:11 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:41:11 +0200
Subject: CGI-Problem with Refresh Header
References: <9ivnss$csl$01$1@news.t-online.com> <3B537594.35F2CA08@stroeder.com>
Message-ID: <9ivttu$pei$05$1@news.t-online.com>

Michael Str?der wrote on Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:15:32 +0200:

> RFC2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1

It's not part of the standard HTTP... :)  Looked there already... :)

But I found it in the mean time at the UAWG.

See ya,

        Heiko W.


From hgiese at ratiosoft.com  Wed Jul 11 16:53:13 2001
From: hgiese at ratiosoft.com (Helmut Giese)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:53:13 GMT
Subject: shortest match regexp operator anyone?
References: <yv266cz4aom.fsf@lionsp093.lion-ag.de> <3b4c9b7f.8143238@news.hrz.uni-kassel.de> <9ii8a2$hg6$1@macareux.ens-lyon.fr>
Message-ID: <3b4cbb74.336763@news.btx.dtag.de>

Hi Emmanuel,

>> 1) It doesn't solve the intellectual challenge.
>
>What about : ([^<]|(<+(A<+)*([^A<]|(A[^<>]))))*<+(A<+)*A>B ?
>
great!!! Looks really impressive and might even do what is required
here. I wouldn't know, which is why I would try to go there in smaller
steps.

Respect,
Helmut


From slinkp23 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 12:16:52 2001
From: slinkp23 at yahoo.com (Paul Winkler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:16:52 GMT
Subject: An unspeakable act
References: <ib0lktkade28a9ci198b1jpn9jejqjbtlj@4ax.com> <tkm10otakvej2c@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <3B4B28FD.B15CE75B@yahoo.com>

Lyle Johnson wrote:
> 
> > it is just used for small to medium scripting. I know better but I don't
> have any proof. Can anyone
> > point me at a list of companies and the applications they have written (I
> already know about Zope

End of discussion right there, I'd say.

"Zope users include Bell Atlantic Mobile, Red Hat, NASA, the US Navy,
ishopehere.com, i-Gift, IDG (Brazil), GE, Digital Garage, Verio,
www.HireTechs.com, and Storm Linux."
-- from http://www.zope.org/WhatIsZope

-- 
...................    paul winkler   ....................
custom calendars & printing: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
       A member of ARMS:   http://www.reacharms.com
            home page:  http://www.slinkp.com


From paul at boddie.net  Wed Jul 25 11:07:53 2001
From: paul at boddie.net (Paul Boddie)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 08:07:53 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Xns90E975194FDD5duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <23891c90.0107250707.31b262aa@posting.google.com>

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote in message news:<Xns90E975194FDD5duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>...
> 
> It might be an idea though to change some of the error messages when a 
> NameError or AttributeError is uncaught if a name could have matched with 
> different case (although I'm not sure how much overhead this might cause).
> 
> NameError: name 'x' is not defined
> could become:
> NameError: name 'x' is not defined, nearest match was 'X'
> 
> or
> AttributeError: C instance has no attribute 'Foo'
> could become:
> AttributeError: C instance has no attribute 'Foo', did you mean 'foo'?

A patch to do exactly this was once distributed by someone, but I
don't remember it ever getting into Python itself. That possibly means
that I don't make capitalisation errors myself, though, since it could
have been introduced as long ago as the 2.0 release.

Paul


From BPettersen at NAREX.com  Fri Jul 27 15:06:36 2001
From: BPettersen at NAREX.com (Bjorn Pettersen)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 13:06:36 -0600
Subject: scoping problems
Message-ID: <6957F6A694B49A4096F7CFD0D900042F27D58C@admin56.narex.com>

> From: Narayan Desai [mailto:desai at mcs.anl.gov]
> 
> How can i define the following code:
> 
> def a():
>     b()
> 
> def b():
>     a()
> 

What's wrong with that code? (did you try it in the interpreter?)

-- bjorn



From chrishbarker at home.net  Fri Jul  6 16:05:49 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:05:49 -0700
Subject: Time for a Python distribution? take two.
Message-ID: <3B461A1D.260DB405@home.net>

I posted yesterday with a proposal to put together a "comprehensive"
Python distribution. I got a number of replies, which a can break down
into a couple of categories:

1) Good idea, how can I help?

Not as many of these as I would have liked.

2) ActiveState is already doing that

Yes, it appears they are, but they have done an unusually bad job of
advertising it! When I recently upgraded to 2.1, I went to their web
page, got excited, then saw no mention of Numeric, or PIL, or mxTools,
or wxPython, so I went and installed these things myself. It turns out
that I could have installed all of these (except wx) with the pyppm
tool. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a list of available packages,
or any docs on how to find that list. Perhaps if I actually installed
ActiveState Python I could figure it out. In any case, They are on the
the right track, and I hope they get some better docs, and a larger list
of packages.

3) It would be much better to have an automated package installer,
complete with dependencies, etc., or a CPAN like thing, etc.

That would be great too, but as we all know, Pythonistas have more great
ideas than time to implement them.



After considering this, I still think it's a good idea to put together a
distribution. As I said, ActiveState is coming close (no Macintosh
anything there, however), but in the meantime, I think there is a real
benefit to the community to do this. Also, having it done by a
non-commercial entity would be a good thing as well.

I propose to start this out in a multi-tiered way, so that we can get
something useful soon, rather than trying to come up with a full
featured version right away:

Version 1)

A one-stop shopping web site. This would be a matter of putting copies
of the packages on the site that each individual package maintainer has
already put together. There would be no guarantee that everything would
be easy to install, or work together, but at least you could go to one
place to get it, and it would be organized according to peoples needs,
rather than by package: i.e. All the packages for Python 2.1 for Windows
would be in one place.

I think at this phase it would be helpful to also start a catalogue of
packages, sorted according to general usefulness, quality, cross
platform compatibility, etc. This way you could easily specify or get
"Basic Python" (the current standard lib), Comprehensive Python Level 1,
2 or 3 for Windows, etc. Perhaps it would be sorted according to usage:
Web development, Comutational programming, Database programming, etc. I
realize that there would be a lot of subjectivity to this, but if we
were to base it on demand, we could get a start.


Version 2)

Re-packaging all the above packages so that they all install the same
way, in the same place, etc. This would mean Windows installers for
Windows, rpms, debs and tarballs for Linux, whatever is most appropriate
for other platforms

Version 3)

Putting together each of the above proposed categories as single
packages.

Version 4)

Perhaps a way to select the packages you want on the web site, and then
have a custom installer built for you. (I'm not so sure about this one,
but it's ways out there anyway)

Now is the time for a call for volunteers. To do this we would need at
least one person to support each platform. I can do Linux (RedHat: when
we get to building packages, it would be nice to have at least a debian
person involved) we'll need a Windows person at least, and ideally OS/2,
Solaris, Macintosh, etc., as well. We also need people to build and
maintain a web site.

If you are interested in helping out, please send me a note, and I'll
start a little private mailing list. 

NOTE: I'm really looking to do something pretty simple here. When I
started using Python, I found the "Python on Linux" web page, and just
downloaded all the rpms. It was great! I was very disappointed that
there is no longer any such thing, so that's what I am going for here,
but hopefully supporting more platforms, and more packages (of course,
there are more to support now).

Continuing discussion is a good thing, but if I can get a few helpers,
I'm going to get this started, so please keep your "you shouldn't
bother" or " we need something completely different, like..." comments
to the newsgroup. Please feel free to mail me directly with suggestions
about the details, or offers for help. 

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Fri Jul 20 17:46:50 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:46:50 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu> <erdflt4l5s5otv86la9318hsr9bdc6mp31@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lh9ma.1ah.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

Fri, 20 Jul 2001 04:47:37 GMT in <erdflt4l5s5otv86la9318hsr9bdc6mp31 at 4ax.com>,
Sheila King <sheila at spamcop.net> spake:
> I think this would be an excellent idea. Instead of just giving a "name
> error", generate a list of names that it might be close to? Or, if one
> appears to be a match excepting for case, ask if that other name might
> have been the intended one? A friendly error message!

  IBM's 'jikes' Java compiler does this, and it's incredibly helpful.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From rnd at onego.ru  Sat Jul 14 04:17:30 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 12:17:30 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: online docs from pydoc?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107141214150.10775-100000@rnd.onego.ru>

I've just explored wonderful pydoc package and
it occured to me that docs could be accessed via Web if
was specified:

PYTHONDOCS=http://www.python.org/doc/current

(or something like that)

Is there any sense in it?

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
-- 
_/ Russia _/ Karelia _/ Petrozavodsk _/ rnd at onego.ru _/
_/ Saturday, July 14, 2001 _/ Powered by Linux RedHat 6.2 _/
_/ "A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available." _/




From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 24 14:35:12 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 24 Jul 2001 14:35:12 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
In-Reply-To: <15197.47913.11068.392235@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org>
	<slrn.pl.9lrdbk.ae3.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
	<15197.47913.11068.392235@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <873d7mi3a7.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> Hmm...  PEP 240 proposes that numbers matching the regular expression
> '\d*.\d*' be interpreted as rationals.  Thus "0.5" would be interpreted as
> the rational "5/10" (or perhaps reduced to "1/2").  Using this definition of
> rational literal and your coercion semantics, "4**0.5" would yield a float
> instead of an integer or rational.  Why shouldn't an integer or rational
> base be converted to a rational if the exponent is a rational?

Because 5**0.5 cannot be expressed as a rational.

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*". - Linus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtdv+AACgkQjVztv3T8pztNbwCgtgNlOwyvT3YUQj1xo/Wxbvtd
PP4An3JzQGhNWRlsk0SWOTKSXRDNdM2w
=2qB9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 25 13:27:10 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:27:10 -0700
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <3b5c6e08.27535083@aplnews> <kr2pltsb9gmehe4vtqm8so37924tdfs59s@4ax.com> <yoxwv4y8y6r.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <srnsltg09pftvcn71n8s9bpktpeicmqhtj@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F016E.227A6202@home.net>

Stephen Horne wrote:

> If you ever had to deal with a customer blaming you for something that
> was due to them getting a DLL change resulting from a different
> applications installation, you'll know what this is like. But in that
> case, it's usually down to their other application having bad install
> logic or due to common system DLLs not maintaining back compatability
> - people understand that in the end.
> 
> This case is due to "the language and run-time environment *I*
> encouraged you to depend on changed its most basic semantics - sorry
> about that." - a little different, really.

How is it different? it seems to me that it is exactly the same as a DLL
not maintaining backward compatability. Which is something that
shouldn't happen, by the way. It is also why DLLs should have version
numbers built in, so that new ones and old ones can be used at the saem
time.

Frankly the easiest soolution to this problem is probably to only make
incompatable changes at a major version number, AND start calling Python
Python3 (then Python4), etc. Come to think of it, this would work for
*nix, because the #! lkine could call Python3, but not for Windows,
where the extension is your only clue. I guess we are back to having a
version indicator built into the code.

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From nikander at mindspring.com  Thu Jul 12 11:21:46 2001
From: nikander at mindspring.com (Rob Nikander)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:21:46 -0400
Subject: eval() -- don't print to stdout
Message-ID: <20010712.112138.213975407.8136@kanchenjunga.mindspring.com>

Hi,
How do you prevent eval/exec from printing its result to the console?  I
would like to get the result as a string and display it in a GUI widget, but
when I call eval() it returns None and prints to console. The 'code'
module does the same thing.

Rob


From aahz at panix.com  Fri Jul 20 11:06:48 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 20 Jul 2001 08:06:48 -0700
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.994958301.16016.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l0sc8.2nh.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> <cp1ynf3da9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lb08k.v3.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <9j9he8$nsb$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9lb08k.v3.philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk>,
phil hunt <philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Who are the Alice people?

http://www.alice.org/
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sun Jul  1 15:59:08 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:59:08 -0400
Subject: 'with' statement in python ?
References: <mailman.993497019.14391.python-list@python.org> <mailman.993515440.4888.python-list@python.org> <wtR_6.9549$zT1.304072@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.993920867.31303.python-list@python.org> <jNu%6.18377$zT1.967298@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <cplmm8kavg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <MfL%6.17181$he.741841@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in ...
> "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:
>
> > 6.31. Why doesn't Python have a "with" statement like some other
languages?
>
> See the adjacent thread "PEP scepticism".
>
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

I'm beginning to suffer from a PEPtic ulcer. The "PEP scepticism" thread has
been ploughing on (in my opinion with the only progress being a better
understanding of various individuals' and groups' positions) for quite some
time now, without too many people standing up and volunteeering to improve
things.

I do, of course, have my own opinions about where PythonLabs should be
spending its time improving things, but I by and large try to keep these
opinions to myself as I'm not in a position to contribute to many of these
activities. If you aren't part of the answer, you're part of the problem ...
and you do seem to take input from many sources. I'm quite happy offering
input when it's solicited, but try to move on after a "battle" has been
fought, whether I "won" or "lost" (I use quotes to indicate that I don't
regard these matters as appropriate for a high level of emotional
involvement).

So, I tend to restrict my activities to the practical things I *can* do to
help, like maintaining the FAQ (even though many questions indicate that a
large proportion of newbies either aren't aware of it or don't read it). At
least that way there's a corpus of knowledge that individual questioners can
be pointed to. As a for-profit activity I am also writing a book, but this
isn't the place to publicize that. Just the same, I hope it will help people
to make better use of Python, and improve the S/N ratio on this group. The
post you responded to, by the way, was simply to indicate that I had changed
the FAQ in line with a previous poster's suggestion.

A practical step, which some groups already use, is to publicize the FAQ and
the charter of the newsgroup periodically. Maybe we could arrange this? I'd
be happy to make the postings, say every seven or fourteen days, once a
suitable message was composed. Anyone? I'm not sure it will increase the S/N
ratio, but every little helps.

The PEP process is a good idea, but not enough people are willing to get
involved. Perhaps some feel they aren't knowledgable enough, others would
rather make their comments on c.l.py. Since I don't have the time myself
(yet) to write PEPs, I try to refrain from throwing rocks at those who have,
since at least they have stood up to be counted. So I offer opinions, but
when changes go against my inclination I try not to bitch and moan.

Except I still don't like "print >>" ;^)

just-to-retain-some-bolshevik-credibility-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul  9 10:38:55 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:38:55 -0400
Subject: license suggestions?
References: <mailman.994639514.14007.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Fij27.24993$F%5.1707320@e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com>

"Chris Watson" <chris at voodooland.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.994639514.14007.python-list at python.org...
>
[ ... ]
>
> Some of us like capitolsim more then communism. *shrug*
>
And some of us wonder what it is about the GPL that stops your previous,
liberally-licensed, version from existing? If you incorporate URLs in your
code so anyone reading the source can find your original versions, why is
publishing the code as part of a GPL'd package any worse than publishing it
under a proprietary license?

Note, I am not arguing that you should change your license terms. Your
software, your choice. But I am genuinely puzzled as to why you'd prefer
someone to include your code in proprietary solutions that don't make it
available to anyone else over having it published under the  GPL in such a
way that people can always get back to your implementations with their (to
you) satisfactory licensing terms.

By the way, it's nice to meet someone else whose typing is as bad as mine!

regards
 Steve

--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From bellman at lysator.liu.se  Wed Jul 25 18:17:53 2001
From: bellman at lysator.liu.se (Thomas Bellman)
Date: 25 Jul 2001 22:17:53 GMT
Subject: python2.2: type('name') -> <type 'str'> ??
References: <mailman.996036705.1133.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jngih$n9f$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote:

> C:\Code\descr\dist\src\PCbuild>python
> Python 2.2a1 (#21, Jul 21 2001, 01:12:35) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
> ...
> >>> class C:
> ...   pass
> ...
> >>> type(C())
> <type 'instance'>
> >>> type(C())()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> TypeError: cannot create 'instance' instances
> >>>

I would seem logical to unify the instance type with the instance
function in the new module.  So:

    >>> import new
    >>> type(C()) is new.instance
    1
    >>> type(C())(C, None)
    <__main__.C instance at 0x120240af8>

And of course the same for classobj, function, module and code.

> it's-a-unification-not-a-miracle<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim

-- 
Thomas Bellman,   Lysator Computer Club,   Link?ping University,  Sweden
"You cannot achieve the impossible without   !  bellman @ lysator.liu.se
 attempting the absurd."                     !  Make Love -- Nicht Wahr!


From paulsid at home.com  Sat Jul  7 18:58:25 2001
From: paulsid at home.com (Paul Sidorsky)
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 16:58:25 -0600
Subject: pySOL
References: <1sB17.88073$Rr4.57437@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <3B479411.1F819953@home.com>

RoadRunner_au wrote:

> I am trying to get this game (pySOL) to run in windows 98, but as soon as the
> windows comes up with the game it crashes with the following error.

> TclError: unknown option "-dither"

> Can anyone help with fixing this problem? thanks.

I had the same problem under Windows ME.  I kludged a fix for it by
changing the PySol source as follows:

In module tk/tkutil.py, comment out lines 270 and 271.  They look like
this:

        #if dither is not None:
        #    kw["dither"] = dither

PySol (4.71) has worked great for me ever since.

-- 
======================================================================
Paul Sidorsky                                          Calgary, Canada
paulsid at home.com                      http://members.home.net/paulsid/



From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Fri Jul 27 20:39:00 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:39:00 -0400
Subject: Deposing Dictators
References: <9jmjne$q54$1@wisteria.csv.warwick.ac.uk> <3b602daf.1623450@nntp.sprynet.com> <slrn9m111q.e6f.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <dOoGUKA3PKY7EwWa@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> <cpsnfi2z9w.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <$dK+wKA$tZY7Ewin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> <3b61a98d$0$11917@wodc7nh0.news.uu.net> <3B61B01F.6C6B2B5D@Lugoj.Com> <6c8b7eb9.0107271358.4783d9c1@posting.google.com> <fls3mt0ofg36qek58fjm4ebqgnd7bcbuek@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <uzo9plwez.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

Stephen Horne <steve at lurking.demon.co.uk> writes:

> A couple of years ago, you may remember a major panic caused by
> peoples realisation that a hell of a lot of COBOL code was going to
> stop working. The developers were long since retired. In many cases,
> the source code was long since lost. That COBOL program was still
> there and working, though, some 20 or 30 years after it was written.
> 
> Useful programs aren't discarded so fast as development fashions and
> religions. The trouble is that Python programs - and libraries much
> more so - are quite often shared in source form.

Yes, but aside from perhaps small utility programs with minimal
demands on system resources, such long lived programs are rarely
long-lived in isolation from their environment.  So in many of those
COBOL cases those applications were still running within the
environments in which they were written and designed for and on the
same systems.

In the Python world, that would be equivalent to keeping the platform
(and installed Python interpreter) along with the code.  Hey, and it
would be much harder to lose the source too!

> If that was true, we wouldn't be using Python at all. After all, it is
> a dynamically typed language that stores its identifiers in a hash
> table - it provides a keyword to say 'a function definition is coming'
> rather than leaving it to issues that often depend on the semantics
> (rather than simply grammar rules) of what has happened in the past.
> And it doesn't even allow you to use braces for block structures. How
> not-like-C can you get?

True, but for this specific issue (division) I'll certainly admit that
when writing "x/y", the reason I expect truncation of that (and my
brain actually thinks about it) is because of my C background.  I'm
not thinking just "division" when I write it, I'm thinking "integer
division".

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sun Jul 22 23:56:09 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 03:56:09 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995848124.9087.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <tfN67.13528$8t4.2521858@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.995848124.9087.python-list at python.org...
> [David Eppstein]
> > My intuition is that the users who will be surprised that 1/2 = 0 are
> > the same ones who would be bitten by roundoff-error bugs if 1/2 = 0.5.
>
> Anyone using floats will get bitten eventually; ditto anyone using
> rationals, for that matter.  This is a "lesser of evils" thing more than a
> "good vs evil" thing.

"Good" would be a language without built-in support for non-integer numbers,
and therefore no source of confusion.  Those who really need them could use
an extension module.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From peter at engcorp.com  Sun Jul 29 00:55:23 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:55:23 -0400
Subject: Best practices with import?
References: <9jvnoe$om2$1@slb5.atl.mindspring.net> <3B6369D4.671C1870@alcyone.com> <Xns90ED38309C442cliechtimailsch@62.2.32.50>
Message-ID: <3B63973B.490D4B08@engcorp.com>

chris liechti wrote:
> 
> Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
> >      def main():
> >          import sys # here's the only place that sys gets used
> >          lines = sys.readlines()
> >          # do something with lines ...
> >
> > I'm really not sure what the value would be in deleting the module after
> > you're through with it, except perhaps to clean up namespaces, which I
> > wouldn't think would be useful if, say, it were defined in the scope of
> > a function.
> 
> i think the module gets deleted anyway because its imported into the local
> namespace of the function and that gets deleted after the function returns.
> 
> there is a performance argument against "import"ing in functions:
> if this fu is called in a loop the module gets imported and deleted every
> time. importing it at top level doesn't need that and hence the loop runs
> faster.

It is practically impossible actually to delete a module.  The module
is only ever imported _once_, and subsequent import statements just
recreate a reference to the same module.

>>> import sys,os
>>> os
<module 'os' from 'c:\a\python\lib\os.pyc'>
>>> del os
>>> sys.modules['os']
<module 'os' from 'c:\a\python\lib\os.pyc'>

The only cost then of having import in a function is the cost of a
dictionary lookup (and perhaps some trivial other overhead)...not much.

There is at least one situation where import in a function is very
useful, and that is to delay execution of the import.  If the first
module is imported by another, and all of its import statements are
at the top, each import executes at that time, slowing down loading
of the first module.  If one of the imported modules is needed only
in one of the functions, which may or may not be called, putting 
the import statement in the function will postpone (perhaps avoid)
the import and improve responsiveness.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From jwbaxter at spamcop.com  Mon Jul 23 10:41:55 2001
From: jwbaxter at spamcop.com (John W. Baxter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:41:55 -0700
Subject: A use for integer quotients
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com>

In article <cpzo9veuml.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Of course, I'm well aware of the issues around maintaining old code.
> We will have to carry around "from __future__ import division" for a
> loooooong time.  Python 2.2 is the first opportunity to introduce it,
> so let's not be shy.

This is encouraging and discouraging:

Encouraging in that it suggests strongly that 2.3 isn't the target;
discouraging in that it gives running code even longer to sit in the
basement with people who know it moving on before it breaks.

It's also discouraging because it means the change does seem to be on
the way, with argument useless.

  --John


From sh at ttsoftware.co.uk  Tue Jul 24 11:01:10 2001
From: sh at ttsoftware.co.uk (Steve Horne)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:01:10 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <9jgvbc$dos$1@newshost.accu.uu.nl> <slrn.pl.9lopjh.308.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <Yg_67.23542$B7.3778752@ruti.visi.com> <slrn.pl.9lovfr.4na.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <buqqltkne23s66b27rn31p6e9ip2a3m53q@4ax.com> <slrn.pl.9lqvmg.n1b.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <4p1rltg7sin022j5buqteke8er2jiaue21@4ax.com>

On 24 Jul 2001 13:57:36 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:33:47 +0100, Steve Horne <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> pisze:
>
>>>> Language design mistake.
>>>
>>>It allows to write code which increments a number of unknown type
>>>by one. How would you write it in your universe?
>
>> Literals can be used for any type where the representation matches,
>> so incrementing is not a problem.
>
>Ok, this applies to Ada and Haskell. But how to fix the "design
>mistake" in Python?

IMO it's not a mistake - just a choice - and I was just passing on an
example of something you seemed incredulous of, plus rambling a bit.

>So we must continue to design the meaning of operators under the
>assumption that mixed-type arithmetic promotes arguments to some
>common type.

I still find the idea of 'promoting' integer measures into real
measures disturbing.

I can probably come to accept that integer values can be used for real
measures, either as a coarse approximation or as an exact value that
just happens to be a member of integers. But something in my mindset
says that integer measures should *never* be allowed to change into
real measures unless specifically requested - probably even in the
cases where they already do.

This kind of suggests two integer types - an integer_within_real and a
discrete_integer. Real-style (float or rational) division would then
simply be banned for discrete_integer. Likewise, operators mixing
integer measures and real measures (even if both were represented by
integers) would be an error - a coercion should be done if that is the
real intention.

As a way of working, I think it would handle both week typing of
representations and strong typing of fundamentally different measures
very well. But having two integer types seems hard to explain.

I guess I'm rambling again.

-- 
Steve Horne
Home : steve at lurking.demon.co.uk
Work : sh at ttsoftware.co.uk


From me at charliedaniels.com-1.net  Tue Jul 31 21:08:26 2001
From: me at charliedaniels.com-1.net (chajadan)
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:08:26 GMT
Subject: smtp authorization...how to?
Message-ID: <3b675617.48549445@news.mailops.com>

I started pokin' around in the smtplib and tried sending an e-mail.

My smtp server requires a username and password, yet there is no
method for either of these. That I saw.

Is there an available module that incorporates these, or a simple way
to extend smtplib?

Any pointers would be great.

Thanks

--chajadan


From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Wed Jul 18 01:53:08 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:53:08 GMT
Subject: OO misconceptions
References: <OFDDCD86D9.4BF13213-ON88256A8C.00600A1B@i2.com> 	<mailman.995405733.8874.python-list@python.org> 	<sI457.17380$sx2.759471@e420r-atl3.usenetserver.com> <mailman.995420071.9302.python-list@python.org> <3B55017A.A90CB816@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9la9o0.vj8.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> dijo:
> Fran?ois Pinard wrote:
> > [Steve Holden]
> > > Suppose a Perl-to-Python conversion were possible (and I'm not suggesting
> > > it isn't): would it be the kind of Python you'd want to use to teach the
> > > language?
> > 
> > Surely not.  The idea is not to use it to teach Python, but to help quickly
> > migrating already written Perl code to Python.
> 
> I imagine that the Python code produced by such a creature
> would be more readable (to me!) than the original Perl code,
> even if it were to produce code which was considered pretty 
> hideous.

Actually, I have a snippet of code I'd love to be able to convert to
Python.  The only thing is I can't find a Python equivalent for Perl's
record separator variable ($/).  This is from 'Perl Cookbook' (ORA).

sub pick_quote {
	my $sigfile = 'filename';
	open (SIGS, "< $sigfile") or die "can't open $sigfile";
	local $/ = "%%\n";
	local $_;
	my $quip;
	rand($.) < 1 && ($quip = $_) while <SIGS>;
	close SIGS;
	chomp $quip;
	return $quip || "ENOSIG: This signature file is empty.\n";
}

Any ideas/suggestions?

TIA
-- 
It's astonishing how much trouble one can
get oneself into, if one works at it.
    -- Destruction, The Sandman


From tdelaney at avaya.com  Thu Jul 26 20:00:57 2001
From: tdelaney at avaya.com (Delaney, Timothy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:00:57 +1000
Subject: garbage collector
Message-ID: <B43D149A9AB2D411971300B0D03D7E8B0FC2E7@natasha.auslabs.avaya.com>

> From: franck delarue [mailto:frdelarue2000 at yahoo.fr]
> Sent: Friday, 27 July 2001 12:30 AM
> To: Python-list at python.org
> Subject: garbage collector
> 
> 
> hi,
> I use python1 with a lot of object (dictionnairies +
> lists) and my program takes 3 or 4 hours to execute on
> a 4 processors (700 mghz) and 2 Go Ram machine (linux
> red hat).
> The problem is that when the program is finished,
> python still continues to delete the objects (I've put
> some "print" to see when the "del" function is
> executed) during about 30 minutes.
> Is that normal ? Is there a solution to stop the
> program correctly ? ("ctrl+alt+del" or "kill -9 XXX"
> works but i don't feel satisfied) 

Sounds to me that

a) You're keeping all your data in memory, leading to massive memory use and
lots of deallocations at program end

b) You're probably thrashing the hard drive (virtual memory)

(b) Would lead to both excessive runtimes and excessive collection times. Is
it really vital that you keep all you data in memory at one time? Can't you
re-use object instances, or at least allow them to be deleted when no longer
needed? Two things could help here - don't hold everything in global
(module-level) dictionaries, and use the del keyword when you know you are
finished with a reference.

Tim Delaney



From jonschull at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 23:56:46 2001
From: jonschull at yahoo.com (Jon Schull)
Date: 27 Jul 2001 20:56:46 -0700
Subject: doctest x idle problem?
References: <mailman.996103607.3926.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <b8c015b9.0107271956.3661a8a0@posting.google.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message 
> ...I have no idea why you're doing "Run Script" on doctest to begin
> with.  That's not a sensible thing to do -- doctest is a library module in
> 2.1, and you shouldn't need to load it into IDLE at all, let alone ever run
> it on itself.
> 

Well, I was hoping to develop and test some modules within the idle
environment.  (I'm wondering how well IDLE serves as a primary
Interactive Development Environment.)

I ran into this "problem" (it's not unique to doctest) and thought I
was doing something wrong.  I figured doctest's use of docstrings for
testing would be exemplary, so I tried doctest.

In a way, doctest *was* exemplary...  

But it seems that its going to be awkward to do interactive
development in IDLE of modules that employ doctest.  That seems a
shame; routine use of doctest and IDLE would be a good practice.


From com-nospam at ccraig.org  Tue Jul 31 18:16:49 2001
From: com-nospam at ccraig.org (Christopher A. Craig)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 18:16:49 -0400
Subject: 2.2 features
In-Reply-To: <15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <mailman.996258542.15795.python-list@python.org>
	<cpwv4u16rx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<mailman.996270412.11895.python-list@python.org>
	<cpofq524lr.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<slrn9m61bs.atb.quinn@retch.ugcs.caltech.edu>
	<slrn.pl.9m6a5m.kmu.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
	<cpae1lzio7.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<15206.48884.18637.676324@beluga.mojam.com>
	<200107311705.NAA16444@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<15206.61485.360973.566871@beluga.mojam.com>
	<200107311904.PAA17115@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<15207.1733.965818.91745@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <873d7cpwvi.fsf@elbereth.ccraig.org>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> I assume x can't be both an instance and a class at the same time.

But all classes are instances of either the class or type type.  I
think this is where you are confused.  I should be able to declare

class Foo:
  pass
class Bar(Foo):
  pass

isinstance(Bar, Foo)
0

issubclass(Bar, Foo)
1

- -- 
Christopher A. Craig <com-nospam at ccraig.org>
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" Albert Einstein
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt

iEYEARECAAYFAjtnLlEACgkQjVztv3T8pzvaPACgyfFntwc8t+cnugIVe9l8geG3
HVMAoIYiMOJBRICJzuRZJygLVe9PXbev
=c3Lo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



From nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk  Tue Jul 17 09:06:58 2001
From: nde at comp.leeds.ac.uk (Nick Efford)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:06:58 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995302230.31372.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <GGMCFM.MHr@leeds.ac.uk>

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:48:42 -0600,
Bjorn Pettersen <BPettersen at NAREX.com> wrote:

> Getting Python accepted in an organization as a viable alternative to
> Perl requires a lot of hard work. Once you've got a foothold it seems
> stupid to shoot yourself in the foot by introducing random
> incompatibilities that may or may not provide better traction for
> non-users (not to mention the hackish solutions to long division that
> would be introduced).

IIRC, aren't Perl-ers contemplating incompatibilities of
a similar degree for Perl 6? (albeit with some kind of
automated Perl 5 --> 6 conversion tool provided to ease
the transition...)

> I'm not against making this change per se, however, I think it should be
> in the context of an overhaul of the entire numerical system, and it
> definitely deserves a 3.0 labelling since that would indicate that there
> are incompatible changes involved with upgrading.

Yes - I also like the idea of using a 3.0 version number
to signal the importance of these changes.


Nick



From moshez at zadka.site.co.il  Mon Jul 23 06:18:38 2001
From: moshez at zadka.site.co.il (Moshe Zadka)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:18:38 +0300
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>
References: <3B5BC73B.2D52E5E2@alcyone.com>, <3B5BA29B.E08FEEE9@alcyone.com>, <yCK67.17615$EP6.4467503@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <mailman.995860718.9550.python-list@python.org> <mailman.995862939.15013.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15OcnO-0006p1-00@darjeeling>

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 23:42:03 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
 
> Or you could not change it in the first place, eliminate the transition
> period requirement, keep Python's integer division operator consistent
> with other languages 

non-issue. Many other languages do division correctly - Scheme, Perl and
Tcl, for instance.

> like it already was, not have to worry about the PR
> hit it is going to necessarily take ("In Python the meaning of the
> builtin operators change every third release!  What a crock"), and
> prevent experienced Python programmers from shaking their heads in
> confusion and wonder.
> 
> I simply cannot believe that the benefit that will be gained will be
> worth the price in inconvenience.

Here we must agree to disagree. Guido thinks that the benefits it
will give to Python readability are big enough, and I happen to
agree with him.
-- 
gpg --keyserver keyserver.pgp.com --recv-keys 46D01BD6 54C4E1FE
Secure (inaccessible): 4BD1 7705 EEC0 260A 7F21  4817 C7FC A636 46D0 1BD6
Insecure (accessible): C5A5 A8FA CA39 AB03 10B8  F116 1713 1BCF 54C4 E1FE



From kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu  Tue Jul 24 18:53:51 2001
From: kwoeltje at mail.mcg.edu (Keith F. Woeltje)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:53:51 GMT
Subject: re bad leadership
References: <mailman.995977609.26101.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B5DFC85.1060509@mail.mcg.edu>

Multilingual?
Munificent?
Mellifluous?
the possibilities are endless. Clearly, however, given how the _DFL has 
managed to extract ideas from so many in logical discourse ;-), the "M" 
must stand for Maieutic
 >K

Mikael Olofsson wrote:

> On 23-Jul-2001 Robin Becker wrote:
>  >  MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!
> 
> I've seen BDFL referring to GvR, and I know the interpretation of that.
> Here, obviously, MDFL suddenly referres to the very same GvR. What's
> with that M? 
> 
> /Mikael
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> E-Mail:  Mikael Olofsson <mikael at isy.liu.se>
> WWW:     http://www.dtr.isy.liu.se/dtr/staff/mikael               
> Phone:   +46 - (0)13 - 28 1343
> Telefax: +46 - (0)13 - 28 1339
> Date:    24-Jul-2001
> Time:    14:20:11
> 
>          /"\
>          \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
>           X      Against HTML Mail
>          / \
> 
> This message was sent by XF-Mail.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 



From s713221 at student.gu.edu.au  Sun Jul 22 23:59:18 2001
From: s713221 at student.gu.edu.au (Joal Heagney)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:59:18 +1000
Subject: Insensitive Dictionaries (Was: Language change and code breaks)
References: <XFMail.20010720091207.mikael@isy.liu.se> <cpn15zfywd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jfh2u$11b6$1@news.btv.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <3B5BA116.28A32BC1@student.gu.edu.au>

Peter Mayne wrote:

> Or should dictionaries be changed so that key lookups
> become case-insensitive? That would mean a program that looks for different
> cases of variables and produces example output of {'STRING': 3, 'String': 2,
> 'string': 3} (posted elsewhere in this thread) couldn't be written. 8-)
> Maybe we should change only some dictionaries. I know I'm not going to
> figure out the "right" way of fixing this.
> 
> We could (for instance) assume that all variable names are stored in lower
> case, but then A.__dict__['F1']() wouldn't work. How do you explain that
> defining a name in upper case, then doing introspection using the same case,
> doesn't work, just after you've explained that the language is
> case-insensitive? For that matter, how do you explain to beginners that
> Python might be case-insensitive, but 'Python'!='python'?

Well if all we want is some dictionaries to be insensitive (The
cold-hearted bastards *grins*), would this do to begin with? Of course
it needs some expansion so that tuples are expanded insensitively as
well. (Left as an exercise for the reader.*grins*)

>>> from UserDict import UserDict
>>> class InsensitiveDict(UserDict):
	def __getitem__(self,key):
		if type(key) == type(""):
			return self.data[key.lower()]
		else:
			return self.__dict[key]
	def __setitem__(self,key,value):
		if type(key) == type(""):
			self.data[key.lower()] = value
		else:
			self.data[key] = value

			
>>> a = InsensitiveDict()
>>> a['a'] = 1
>>> a['A']
1
>>> a['a']
1
>>> a['A'] = 2
>>> a['a']
2

Only hassle is that it isn't internally case-preserving, especially with
item, key and __repr__ methods.
>>> a = InsensitiveDict()
>>> a['A'] = 1
>>> a.keys()
['a']
>>> a.items()
[('a', 1)]
>>> a
{'a': 1}

Number two is an alternative that internally keeps the first key that is
entered, no matter if it's value is redefined by a different cased key.

>>> class InsensitiveDict2(UserDict):
	def __getitem__(self,key):
		if self.data.has_key(key):
			return self.data[key]
		else:
			if type(key) == type(""):
				for i in self.data.keys():
					if i.lower() == key.lower():
						return self.data[i]
				raise KeyError, key
	def __setitem__(self,key,value):
		if self.data.has_key(key):
			self.data[key] = value
		else:
			if type(key) == type(""):
				nothaskey = 1
				for i in self.data.keys():
					if i.lower() == key.lower():
						self.data[i] = value
						haskey = 0
				if nothaskey:
					self.data[key] = value
			else:
				self.data[key] = value

					
>>> b = InsensitiveDict2()
>>> b['A'] = 2
>>> b
{'A': 2}
>>> b['a'] = 3
>>> b
{'A': 3}

Version three keeps the latest case-version key that has been assigned
to in the dictionary. It's the one I prefer most.

>>> class InsensitiveDict3(UserDict):
	def __getitem__(self,key):
		try:
			return self.data[key]
		except IndexError:
			if type(key) == type(""):
				for i in self.data.keys():
					if i.lower() == key.lower():
						return self.data[i]
		else:
			raise IndexError
	def __setitem__(self,key,value):
		if self.data.has_key(key):
			self.data[key] = value
		else:
			if type(key) == type(""):
				for i in self.data.keys():
					if i.lower() == key.lower():
						del self.data[i]
				self.data[key] = value
			else:
				self.data[key] =value

				
>>> b = InsensitiveDict2()
>>> b['A'] = 2
>>> b
{'A': 2}
>>> b['a'] = 3
>>> b
{'a': 3}

All of these need extra logic that can expand tuples to be truely case
insensitive. 

Also, I'm not so sure I like the internal loop over all items in
self.data.keys for the second and third version. Imagine the performance
hits for large dictionaries. Unless there was a need for
case-preservation, in terms of preferences, version one would win out in
this case. Does anyone else have a cleaner method? Perhaps two internal
dictionaries, one case-preserving and one case-insensitive?
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !


From aahz at panix.com  Sat Jul 28 13:54:14 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 28 Jul 2001 10:54:14 -0700
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling process dies
References: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9juu86$ar9$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b at posting.google.com>,
Ken Tabacchi <kentabacchi at excite.com> wrote:
>
>I am having some trouble with a threadded process in Python version
>1.5.  It seems that the thread does not start until the calling
>process has died.  The thread starts immediately when the following
>program is run under Python version 2.1.

There were a lot of thread bugs fixed between Python 1.5 and Python 2.0,
and I think a few more got fixed between 2.0 and 2.1.  I strongly
recommend that threaded applications use 2.0.1 or higher.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

Fortune cookie: Watch your relations with other people carefully, be reserved.


From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Fri Jul 27 04:55:55 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:55:55 +0100
Subject: Some Python (Monty) Perspective (was Re: Language change and code breaks)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.995734717.26373.python-list@python.org> <3B5DF101.9B2E4631@earthlink.net> <cpofq9a858.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <9jmqp3$9n1@dispatch.concentric.net> <slrn9lttn5.69.grante@isis.visi.com>
Message-ID: <ni92mt4a7e2k64b1vn6rm0jaqlkf525mjp@4ax.com>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:42:14 GMT, grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
wrote:

>In article <9jmqp3$9n1 at dispatch.concentric.net>, Tim Randolph wrote:
>
>>It is obvious that he only has the good of the language at heart.  
>
>If that's true, who worries about the good of the language's users?
>
>Perhaps making int/int => float makes the language better.  [I don't
>personally think so, but it's a matter of taste.]  However, it does hurt at
>least some of the existing group of users.  How many and how bad is up for
>debate.
>
>I think that not allowing ints and floats to be mixed would make it a better
>lanauge, but that would probably hurt even more users.

I'm not sure about this. It would mean replacing a lot of implicit
casts with exceptions. Code would break for sure, but it would break
by refusing to work at all - not by causing trusted apps to give bad
results.

I'm not suggesting we should do it (though I did make a sarcastic
suggestion elsewhere) - I'm just not convinced it would be a more
painful change.

On the whole I don't mind implicit casts - fully strong typing can
obscure logic too much with too many explicit casts (and as casts
don't normally specify which type they are converting from, each cast
weakens the supposedly strong typing anyway).



From objectway at divalsim.it  Mon Jul  9 04:30:14 2001
From: objectway at divalsim.it (Nicola Musatti)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 10:30:14 +0200
Subject: [TO]What's the big deal with EJB? [Re: PEP scepticism]
References: <mailman.993747643.21070.python-list@python.org> <9hfqb5$dsllb$3@ID-89274.news.dfncis.de> <3dhex01n1m.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <etdk81vduw0.fsf_-_@lola-granola.mit.edu> <3d8zib16g7.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us> <Xns90D3694AD53FBbeablebeable@30.146.28.98> <yoxd77fh4pr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi> <9i201402voe@enews1.newsguy.com> <mailman.994350172.18735.python-list@python.org> <9i2jva23cm@enews2.newsguy.com> <3B45C48D.413A5E@divalsim.it> <9i56ph0eke@enews4.newsguy.com>
Message-ID: <3B496B96.A0F46A0B@divalsim.it>

Another question: hom much of the productivity increase would you
attribute to the core language and how much to the availability (or lack
thereof) of useful functionality in the language library?

Ciao,
Nicola


From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Fri Jul 20 14:39:02 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 19:39:02 +0100
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.1.1
References: <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <+TaezWAGrHW7Ewyz@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

In article <mailman.995648778.17379.python-list at python.org>, Guido van
Rossum <guido at digicool.com> writes
>I've released Python 2.1.1 today.  This is the final version of this
>bugfix release for Python 2.1, and should be fully compatible with
>Python 2.1.  There should be *no* reason to use 2.1 any more.  Many
>thanks to Thomas Wouters for being the release manager!  Pick up your
>copy here:
>
>    http://www.python.org/2.1.1/
>
>Python 2.1.1 is GPL-compatible.  This means that it is okay to
>distribute Python binaries linked with GPL-licensed software; Python
>itself is not released under the GPL but under a less restrictive
>license which is Open Source compliant.
>
>PS: I've noticed some disarray of mail sent through python.org; this
>seems to have to do with the dysfunctional ORBS "spam-checker".  See
>http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/016151.html for
>details.
>
>--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>
very nice I'm certain, the windows install exe is only 37k longer than
that for 2.1, but what makes the .tgz increase from 4275323 to 6187808?
-- 
Robin Becker


From ylee12 at uiuc.edu  Sat Jul 21 19:08:04 2001
From: ylee12 at uiuc.edu (Young-Jin Lee)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:08:04 -0700
Subject: [Q] Python and ODE solver
Message-ID: <%8m67.123$A3.1317@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>

Hi, all.
I'd like to know if there's ordinary differential equation solver in Python.
Thanks.

YJ




From gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de  Tue Jul 17 19:38:01 2001
From: gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 01:38:01 +0200
Subject: Python and C++
References: <mailman.995405221.7936.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <slrn9l9h49.c84.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:24:59 -0300, Tatiana Evers wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm a new python user. I would like to know how can I extend Python ? I read
>documents in www.python.org, but I didn't found anything about class in C++.

There is no standardized C++ API for Python, only a C API :-( There are several
tools that help wrapping a C++ class for Python, however. The one I like most
is the Boost.Python library (http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/index.html).
Exposing a C++ class to Python is as easy as it can get with this one.

I can imagine though, that building the library can be a bit problematic. But
they have a mailing list where you can ask for help. (if you use Linux, I can
send you an RPM I have built; I have also built the library on Windows with the
GNU compilers).

>Anyone knows something about it ? One example or site or tutorial?

The Boost.Python library contains docs and examples that show its features. You
can even throw exceptions in C++ and catch them in Python. Just to wet your
appetite ...

Perhaps it's also not a bad idea to look into how to do it the old-fashioned
style in C. The standard Python documentation has a chapter "Extending and
Embedding" that briefly tells how this works. For source examples, you can look
into the Python sourcecode itself (the Modules directory).

Gerhard
-- 
mail:   gerhard <at> bigfoot <dot> de       registered Linux user #64239
web:    http://highqualdev.com              public key at homepage
public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20  A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0
reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, [chr(ord(x)^42) for x in list('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')])


From martin at strakt.com  Fri Jul 27 03:25:27 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:25:27 +0200
Subject: Submodules in dynamic modules?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107261134310.419-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>
References: <Pine.NXT.4.21.0107261134310.419-100000@localhost.virginia.edu>
Message-ID: <20010727092527.C9753@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:39:33AM -0400, Steven D. Majewski wrote:
> > I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here.  I don't want to
> > import other Python modules, I want to have several submodules in my one C
> > library file (foomodule.so on unix).  I guess I COULD have several .so
> > files and import them like you do here, but that would be unnecessarily
> > complicated!
> 
> No -- these are all in one dynamic lib: Carbonmodule.so.
> On "classic" MacOS, they were all separate libs.
> ( PPC MacOS followed AIX in having explicit import and export files
>   so it was easy to say where exactly other symbols would be resolved.)
> On OSX, I could not figure out how to get them to link
> separately without either multiply defined or undefined symbols,
> so all of the Carbon toolbox modules were linked into a single 
> dynamic lib. 
> 
> This *sounds* like what you're asking for, is it? 

Definitely. Hmm. So what does initWin() do? Do you do several InitModule()
calls or what?

*confused*

This seems to work:

void
initfoo(void) {
    PyObject *foo = Py_InitModule("foo", emptylist);
    PyObject *bar = Py_InitModule("bar", emptylist);
    PyModule_AddObject(foo, "bar", bar);
}

But then:

>>> import foo
>>> foo
<module 'foo' from 'foomodule.so'>
>>> foo.bar
<module 'bar' (built-in)>

Isn't this a bit...weird?
Hmm, on second thought, that's what my solution yields too :-)

Grateful for comments

Martin

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From guido at python.org  Fri Jul 27 22:39:24 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 02:39:24 GMT
Subject: Changing the Division Operator -- PEP 238, rev 1.12
References: <mailman.996263475.24304.python-list@python.org> <ubsm5ncp8.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>
Message-ID: <cpelr122wj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> writes:

> One question though - is it anticipated that the items in the Open
> section (e.g., the generation of OverflowError) need to be resolved as
> part of the PEP process, or will it be postponed until implementation
> and then the PEP adjusted?  I'm unlikely to be coding in cases
> affected by the decision, and see arguments on both sides, so I don't
> have a particular preference.

Generally, a PEP isn't finished until the implementation is done --
in the last stages of implementation, details of a PEP often get
corrected.  So the answer to your question is "Yes". :)

(For some PEPs, the PEP follows the implementation -- this seems to be
what's happening for type/class unification, where I'm always ahead of
the PEP in my code...)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com  Tue Jul 31 19:15:25 2001
From: reqhye72zux at mailexpire.com (Robert Amesz)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:15:25 GMT
Subject: Control of flow
References: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0107311355450.2321-100000@cb921.local>
Message-ID: <Xns90EFF1E6237C4rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Campbell wrote:


> I use python to write telephony apps, and I find that a 'goto' is
> often a nice tool (stop going 'aargh', its properly "useful"
> sometimes =). 
> 
> Here is a little snippet that gets a month/day from a caller.  If
> the day entered is not in the range of days valid for the month
> entered, we repeat from the top.  Does anyone have a few minutes to
> waste helping me??  How better can I code things that look like
> this: 
> 
>>>> snip <<<
> while 1:
>     cont = 1         ## ugh!
>     month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
>     if month < 1 or month > 12:
>         play("invalidmonth.vox")
>         continue
>     while 1:
>         day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
>         if day < 1 or day > Month[month]:
>             play("invalidday.vox")
>             cont = 1
>         cont = 0
>     if cont == 1:
>         continue
>     break
>>>> snip <<<

I'm not a 100% sure what this code is supposed to do, but I'll grant 
you this: it is butt-ugly, and looks like its logic is dodgy. Just look 
at the beginning and end of the loop:

while 1:
    cont = 1         ## ugh!
    <statements>
    if cont == 1:
        continue
    break


This looks fairly redundant as

cont = 1
while cont:
    <statements>  

will do *exactly* the same thing, and it's more efficient too. 
Certainly the 'ugh!' factor is reduced considerably this way.

How your app is supposed to leave the inner while 1: loop isn't clear, 
so I'll assume some crucial code has been omitted for this example.


So how would I write this code? Well, I'll assume the following 
behaviour is required:
1 - Get a valid month and day
2 - When invalid numbers are entered: start form scratch

Which yields:

while 1:
    # Get month
    month = getdtmf("enter2digs.vox", 2)
    if month < 1 or month > 12:
        play("invalidmonth.vox")
        continue     # Bad month, start from scratch

    # Get day
    day = getdtmf("enterday", 2)
    if (day >= 1) and (day <= DaysInMonth[month]):
        break        # Done!

    # Bad day...
    play("invalidday.vox")
    # ...start from scratch


[Note: I've changed the name of the 'Month'-sequence into DaysInMonth, 
because it's a better name. I presume it has been precalculated for a 
particular year, although it might be better to make it into a function 
like 
    DaysInMonth(month, year)
or
    DaysInMonth(month, isLeapYear) ]



A goto isn't needed for code like this, nor would a goto make it look 
any clearer. For more complex control flow problems it is sometimes 
advisable to break up code into separate functions and use 'return' to 
break out of those functions. Use exceptions if you need to break out 
of nested function calls.

What sometimes *does* happen is that you find that the interaction 
between the human and the machine are modelled better by a finite-state 
automaton: complex protocols are often described this way. It wouldn't 
be too hard to make a general state machine in Python, but I'll leave 
that as an excercise to the reader. ;-)


Robert Amesz


From kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu  Wed Jul 25 22:19:39 2001
From: kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 02:19:39 GMT
Subject: A modest PEP0238 suggestion
References: <mailman.996104447.4969.python-list@python.org> <3B5F64DF.EBA25066@Lugoj.Com>
Message-ID: <slrn9luvhr.2qag.kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>

Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:31:27 -0700 in <3B5F64DF.EBA25066 at Lugoj.Com>,
James Logajan <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> spake:
> Tim Peters wrote:
>> I see I have 12 copies of the Microsoft C runtime library on my Win98 box at
>> the moment, and for the same reason:  serious Windows app developers are
>> careful to isolate themselves from C runtime changes too.
>> in-the-real-world-compatibility-doesn't-rely-on-luck-ly y'rs  - tim
> Well I see your problem already: you are developing on the wrong OS. It
> makes your thinking fuzzy. Some of us don't have Solaris, Linux, BSDI, AIX,
> Mac OS, etc. platforms all sitting on our desk (that would be some desk!) to
> build complete runtime interpreters. So we ship only source and hope the
> target users read the instructions on which version of Python we think we've
> validated our code on.

  Then there's my solution: I develop on Linux, do not ship source, do
ship .pyc files, tell the users to use Python 2.1, and tell them where
to get it.  If they try to use anything but Python 2.1, they will fail.
Not My Problem.

  I don't have a Windoze machine at home, and almost certainly never
will[0], so I'm not infected with Tim's brand of fuzzy thinking[1], and
yet after very minor tweaking of my Tkinter code it worked perfectly
when I tested it there.  Building the runtime for every platform does
not seem to be necessary.

  Everyone should be able to get Python 2.1, now or in the future, and
if they're on a shared system install or compile their own copy of it.

[0] Most amusing and bluntly honest article I've seen all month:
<http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3647/1/>
[1] Got my own brand o' that.
-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I will tell you things that will make you laugh and uncomfortable and really
fucking angry and that no one else is telling you.  What I won't do is bullshit
you.  I'm here for the same thing you are.  The Truth." -Transmetropolitan #39


From sheila at spamcop.net  Fri Jul 20 00:47:37 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 04:47:37 GMT
Subject: Case insensitivity
References: <mailman.995506711.21636.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkofyru.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn@regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <erdflt4l5s5otv86la9318hsr9bdc6mp31@4ax.com>

On 20 Jul 2001 04:21:31 GMT, quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu (Quinn
Dunkan) wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<slrn9lfcea.b57.quinn at regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu>:

:On Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:30:15 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
:>To me, the only real important question is, how can we introduce
:>case-sensitivity for novices without breaking the millions of lines of
:>existing Python code.  One option could be: forget it, it's too late.
:>Another: put the case-insensitivity in the tools.
:
:Given that changing the language itself at this point is too late (and I think
:it is), the question is "for newcomers, does the additional complexity added
:by a layer of indirection in the tools cancel out the benefit of case
:insensitivity?"  Obviously, that's assuming there is a benefit and it's
:significant (and just how significant is what no one agrees on).  But if I
:were I newbie, I wouldn't like to hear "these are just training wheels, the
:real language has slightly different rules".  Don't underestimate the newbie
:appeal of "what you see is all there is" (not that it ever is in python, given
:magic methods etc., but we shouldn't make it worse).
:
:An editor that optionally gives warnings about names with only case
:differences seems pretty innoccuous, though. 

I think this would be an excellent idea. Instead of just giving a "name
error", generate a list of names that it might be close to? Or, if one
appears to be a match excepting for case, ask if that other name might
have been the intended one? A friendly error message!

: Giving people a friendly editor
:is in the same spirit of avoiding "ok, well, to learn python first you need to
:learn the unix shell, to be able to manage your source files and run vi, oh
:yes, then you need to learn to use vi, just memorize this table of commands,
:ok, then..."
:
:So I'd say, please don't change the language itself, but it would be
:interesting to see experiments on a friendly python-oriented editing
:environment (to simplify things like finding modules and documentation,
:importing, reloading, etc.).

Good points!

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/



From skip at pobox.com  Mon Jul  2 11:27:58 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:27:58 -0500
Subject: Comment on PEP-0238
In-Reply-To: <3B4086F4.97263C35@ActiveState.com>
References: <3B3BE855.A6223E70@3-cities.com>
	<cp7kxvlake.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
	<Y4J%6.4084$Z6.2010194@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>
	<mailman.994016102.30019.python-list@python.org>
	<7ef50c46.0107020554.31cc948b@posting.google.com>
	<3B4086F4.97263C35@ActiveState.com>
Message-ID: <15168.37630.10543.444267@beluga.mojam.com>

    Paul> That is simply not true. Most people do not expect these four
    Paul> expressions to yield different results:

    Paul> 1.0/3.0
    Paul> 1/3
    Paul> 1.0/3
    Paul> 1/3.0

    Paul> If you were taught this in school, it must be "new math".

Paul, I think you have it backwards.  "new math" is what is taught to people
like my kids who think basic electronic calculators have always cost less
than $10.  When I was in school people were taught in algebra that 1/3 has
been reduced to its simplest form and that "1/3" is the correct answer, not
"0.3333...".  Only people who grew up with calculators (I'm not in that
bunch - HP's cool nerd boxes came out when I was in college) think that 1/3
= 1.0/3.0 = 0.33333....  Those of use who learned how to calculate on slide
rules knew all about imprecise arithmetic. ;-) Most answers on tests were
either left as fractions, or the teacher/professor specifically jiggered the
constants and coefficients to yield results with whole number answers (or at
least answers where most of the intermediate calculations consisted of
cancelling common factors).

(This may be an argument more for rational numbers than for the status quo,
but I still think the status quo is better than 1/3 = 0.33333...)

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From qrczak at knm.org.pl  Sun Jul  8 02:25:11 2001
From: qrczak at knm.org.pl (Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk)
Date: 8 Jul 2001 06:25:11 GMT
Subject: Partially evaluated functions
References: <mailman.993067482.25265.python-list@python.org> <abeY6.301566$eK2.61312477@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <qveY6.330710$oc7.33319652@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com> <FGtY6.311407$eK2.62392325@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <tkfjjaj9irlm7b@corp.supernews.com>
Message-ID: <slrn.pl.9kfv67.601.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>

Sat, 7 Jul 2001 20:07:26 -0700, Scott David Daniels <Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org> pisze:

> The reason for the "depending upon, ..." has to do with whether
> "list + []" must always produce a new list, or is allowed to notice
> that [] is 0-length and simply returns the first list.

IMHO it must produce a new list. It returns a new list in other cases,
so it would be a surprise if it acted differently in this case.

OTOH "tuple + ()" can return "tuple" itself. For immutable types
identity is not important.

Current Python seems to return new objects in both cases - this is
correct but unnecessary for tuples.

-- 
 __("<  Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak at knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
 \__/
  ^^                      SYGNATURA ZAST?PCZA
QRCZAK


From James_Althoff at i2.com  Tue Jul 10 14:13:08 2001
From: James_Althoff at i2.com (James_Althoff at i2.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:13:08 -0700
Subject: Is Python Dead? Long Live Python!
Message-ID: <OF9C72F624.12D29209-ON88256A85.0063EDF4@i2.com>

Randy.L.Kemp wrote:
>Let's give Java its due respect, and Python its due respect.  J2EE does
have a considerable amount of >emphasize in the business world, along with
creating some open source efforts (www.jboss.org and >www.enhydra.org).
But Python should be used more in the business world.  Unfortunately, it is
not.

So our approach -- which seems to have worked very well so far -- is to use
*Jython* so that we can leverage both Java/J2EE *and* Python!

Jim




From sheila at spamcop.net  Tue Jul  3 15:49:49 2001
From: sheila at spamcop.net (Sheila King)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:49:49 GMT
Subject: Calculus
References: <mailman.994185546.12116.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <ct74kt4mfce48k1hoae9s50fh6nqdq90a5@4ax.com>

Yes, it seems that Voltaire was making fun of Leibnitz. The full text of
Candide can be found here:
http://eserver.org/fiction/candide.txt

And searching within that page for "best of all" finds this passage:

Candide >  Master Pangloss taught the 
Candide > metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. He could prove to 
Candide > admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that 
Candide > in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was 
Candide > the most magnificent of all castles, and My Lady the best of 
Candide > all possible baronesses.
Candide >   "It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be 
Candide > otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been 
Candide > created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the
Candide > best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for 
Candide > spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly
Candide > designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones 
Candide > were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My 
Candide > Lord has a magnificent castle;.... 

and there is more, too, searching within the document on that same
phrase.  ;)

I guess someone didn't find Leibnitz' philosophy so convincing!

--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:38:20 -0500, Kemp Randy-W18971
<Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com> wrote in comp.lang.python in article
<mailman.994185546.12116.python-list at python.org>:

:It was originally Leibniz.  Please refer to the link (which I found at www.northernlight.com, using keywords leibniz philosophy) at http://www.utm.edu/departments/artsci/ppr/phil/fieser/110/unit7/leibniz.htm
:
:-----Original Message-----
:From: Tim Daneliuk [mailto:tundra at tundraware.com]
:Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 1:00 PM
:To: python-list at python.org
:Subject: Re: Calculus
:
:
:Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
:> 
:> Wait a minute!  Wasn't Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz one of the founders of Calculus?  And wasn't he also a philosopher, who with his world of monads, said that this is the best of all possible worlds?  And didn't the gentlemen direct his question to the Python group?  In essence, he is following the philosophy of Leibniz.
:
:I thought it was Voltaire who said we live in the best of all possible
:world (in 'Candide')...



From grante at visi.com  Fri Jul 27 23:48:05 2001
From: grante at visi.com (Grant Edwards)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 03:48:05 GMT
Subject: stat st_rdev in python
References: <9jsop4$si0$1@netra.msu.montana.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9m4dfk.3ss.grante@isis.visi.com>

In article <9jsop4$si0$1 at netra.msu.montana.edu>, Louis Glassy wrote:

>Is there a way to find out unix device major/minor numbers
>_in_ Python 2.1, without using an external C module or program?

I asked the exact same question about two weeks ago.

>The tuple returned by os.stat() does not return the stat 
>st_rdev field, which contains the information I need.

Exactly.

>I see two options:  either write my own binding to stat(2)
>or do something like a popen on /bin/ls.

I ended up with something like this:

    s,o = commands.getstatusoutput("/usr/bin/stat "+devName)
    if s:
        raise "error running /usr/bin/stat"
    r = re.compile("Device type: ([0-9]{1,3}),([0-9]{1,3})")
    m = r.search(o)
    if not m:
        raise "error parsing stat output"
    major = int(m.group(1))
    minor = int(m.group(2))

Nasty, but it works (so far).
    
>These both work, though neither is attractive.  It'd be nice if there were
>an unaldulterated posix module that I could call and get what everything
>that stat(2) would return.

That would be awfully nice.  A wrapper for the mknod() library call would
also be nice.

>Suggestions?

If I had more time, I'd fix up the Posix library and submit a patch...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  .. I want FORTY-TWO
                                  at               TRYNEL FLOATATION SYSTEMS
                               visi.com            installed within SIX AND A
                                                   HALF HOURS!!!


From gmcm at hypernet.com  Mon Jul 30 09:32:04 2001
From: gmcm at hypernet.com (Gordon McMillan)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 13:32:04 GMT
Subject: are sockets bloking on WinTN...
References: <9k3ck2$15us$1@news2.ipartners.pl>
Message-ID: <Xns90EE610D2A858gmcmhypernetcom@199.171.54.154>

[posted and mailed]

"Pete" <pete at ipartners.pl> wrote: 

> According to docs I never should receive (10035, 'The socket operation
> could not complete without blocking') error with blocking sockets. But
> on my NT box this is what I got:

Actually, 10035 means "Resource temporarily unavailable". It's been
translated in socket.py (to the usual but not the only cause).
 
> Traceback (most recent call last):

[snip]

>     hdr = self.__socket.recv( struct.calcsize(FORMAT) )
>   File "<string>", line 1, in recv
> socket.error: (10035, 'The socket operation could not complete without
> blocking')

Could it be that another thread is doing something with this
socket? Are you sure the socket connection logic has completed?
 
> callback is SLOT to QSocketNotifier (for those who know PyQt...)

I don't, but you'll probably need to look at the code that
triggers the callback to find out what's really going on.

[snip]

> 17:     def receive( self ):
> 18:         self.__socket.setblocking( 1 )
> 19:         hdr = self.__socket.recv( struct.calcsize(FORMAT) )

recv (even on a blocking socket) will return whatever is available,
not necessarily what you asked for. You need to loop (or use
socket.makefile - the returned object will do it for you).

- Gordon


From nospam at nospam  Fri Jul 13 13:53:28 2001
From: nospam at nospam (Rufus V. Smith)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:53:28 -0400
Subject: More on "with" statement
Message-ID: <3b4f3602$0$15367@wodc7nh6.news.uu.net>

I went to the FAQ to check the entry about a "with" statement
that is available in other languages.  I can only think of two
reasons to use it.

    1) You're a lazy typist. (Or haven't learned to cut and paste)

    2) You are generally concerned that multiple references to the
     same object with complex, multilevel access might be confusing
    to the reader or not optimized by the compiler.

I used to like the "with" statement in Pascal or VB.  Very useful
for using or setting multiple fields.  However, as programs got large it
could
get difficult knowing if the field was a local, global, or part of a with
block that started several pages back (in Pascal at least.  VB used a
preceding '.', which is a good idea).

A better solution is to assign a temporary reference.  This is possible
in C++:

DeeplyHiddenStruct & rdhs =
&SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct;

rdhs.Field1 = NewValue;
DoSomethingWith(rdhs.Field2);

etc.  which IMO is easier and cleaner than

SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field1 = NewValue;
DoSomethingWith(SomeClass.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct.Field2);

I don't know if the same thing can be done in VB.

Isn't it possible to do this in Python by simple assigning to a new object
reference?

rdhs = SomeObject.SomeMemberArray[SomeIndex].SomeStruct

The other advantage in the alternate reference is seen when copying
fields from one object to another:

rdest = <some object >
rsrc = <some compatible object>

rdest.field1 = rsrc.field1
rdest.field2 = rsrc.field2
etc.

I am a newbie just cutting my fangs in Python, but if I'm right about this,
perhaps this preferred workaround should be added the FAQ.  If I'm
not...           never mind...








From michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com  Mon Jul 23 14:48:16 2001
From: michael.g.abbott at ntlworld.com (Michael Abbott)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 18:48:16 GMT
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <3B5B37B9.4D7A80CD@Lugoj.Com> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCMECPLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995900686.5170.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <Xns90E7C8E2038DDmichaelrcpcouk@194.168.222.8>

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in
news:mailman.995900686.5170.python-list at python.org: 

> I suspect that most people resistant to this change share the following
> two traits:
> 
>     * a large body of code to maintain
>     * most arithmetic they do in Python is non-scientific - implied by
>     few imports of the math module in their code
>
> ...  
> I suspect that most people who are
> advocates of the change proposed in PEP 238 either are numerical folks
> or don't have much code that will break.  Numerical folks probably
> import math about as frequently as sys and sprinkle their code
> liberally with calls to float(). 

I think this is quite a helpful observation.  From the professional 
programming perspective, I imagine that there are two types of programming 
task that are relevant to this discussion:

1.  Scientific programs, where presumably the bulk of the work can be done 
using floating point numbers.
2.  System control (I use this phrase *very* broadly) programs where 
floating point *never* makes an appearance (except, perhaps, for friendly 
display to the user).

(Of course, someone might pipe up, what about all that graphical 
programming?)  Perhaps I should add a third category of task:

3.  Graphical programming can, perhaps, be characterised as a mixture of 
scientific calulations and discrete control.  (Please don't take this too 
seriously!)


Anyway, my point is this: integers are used for discrete computation and 
control, and when I perform arithmetic on integers I expect to continue 
working on integers.  The idea that a floating point number might magically 
appear in the middle of my calculations (because I was foolish enough to 
write a/b) does not make me happy.
    Of course, the argument seems to be that I should be happy to use // 
throughout my code.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But what about all that broken 
code, eh?


From anderson at hp.com  Fri Jul 27 17:08:50 2001
From: anderson at hp.com (Bill Anderson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:08:50 -0600
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <lZX67.36860$Cy.4285646@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <11moltg2i6s1ftkpku5dkr0cmifn9f5q1o@4ax.com> <Ew_67.36904$Cy.4360445@news1.rdc1.az.home.com> <eppstein-E3BB02.12500023072001@news.service.uci.edu> <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010727.150850.1605894428.16613@hp.com>

In article <WV177.36940$Cy.4447774 at news1.rdc1.az.home.com>, "Tim Hochberg"
<tim.hochberg at ieee.org> wrote:
...
> 
> Consider two functions: the number of pillars on a bridge and electrical
> impedance per unit length:
> 
> def pillars_per_bridge(bridge_length, pillar_sep):
>    return bridge_length / pillar_sep
> 
> def impedance_per_length(impedance, length):
>    return return impedance / length
> 
> In the first case I _always_ want to do floor-division. In the second I
> always want to do float-division. To get these to work now I need to do
> something like:
> 
> def pillars_per_bridge(bridge_length, pillar_sep):
>    return int(bridge_length) / int(pillar_sep)
> 
> def impedance_per_length(impedance, length):
>    return (1.0*return impedance) / length
> 
> Which is not too horrible, but it is extra cruft. So let me turn your
> question around. Can you give an example where you want the type of
> division (float vs floor) to change depending on the type of input (int,
> float, complex)? I can't, although I suspect there must be some. I also
> suspect they're very rare.

What about this:

 def pillars_per_bridge(bridge_length, pillar_sep):
    return int(bridge_length) / int(pillar_sep)
 
 def impedance_per_length(impedance, length):
    return (return impedance) // length

It can even be 'tought' with a memory trick.
/ returns an integer when given integers. // says you want the leftovers,
so you have a "leftover '/'" ;) Or, you could express it as // meaning you
want more precision, take your pick.  Another way of expressing
int/int=int is to consider 3/2=1 as "1 with a remainder of 2, drop the
remainder". I see this behaviour in my old math textbooks, and in today's
math teaching of my son. I distinctly recall seeing "Ignore the
remainder: ...". So it is not that far of a stretch.

I strongly favor the // operator for the new behaviour. It just make smuch
more sense that the new stuff goes with new stuff, and old stuff stays
the same.  Furthermore, code breakage is kept to ... none.

Hmm code breakage vs no code breakage. If there was no possibility of
making a change to get the behaviour, I could support a code-breakage.
But in this case we _have_ a way, a fairly trivial way, of getting the
int/int=float behaviour *without code breakage*.

How about this:

 Someone put up a PEP that puts .. in as int//int=float, the change gets
into 2.2. Then, those who need/want (or would that be need//want? ;)
integer division to coerce to float, can have it, and those who want/need
int/int=int can still keep it.

We have here, an excellent opportunity to satisify both parties, and we
are squandering.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves, "What is the point"?

Easier to teach is insufficient. I do not mean to impugne those who have
difficulty teaching int/int=int, but it certianly can be tought, you use
simply frame it differently. Additionally, I agree thag changing a
language in a way that interferes long-term users of said language, to
ostensibly make it easier to teach to non-users in likewise insufficient
reasoning. it is far easier to each new people a new way, than it is to
teach peoplpe well versed to change their ways.

Is the point, perhaps, to avoid explicit casting? int//int=float gets us
that. It acheives it with the minimum amount of effort, and does so with
only a single keystroke.

Let us put aside the religious differences about whether or not int
divided by int should return a float or an int. In the end, that is
essentially irrelevant, as we have the means to provide a simple,
non-code-breaking change to provide people with both. And, we get to do
so wihtout passing judgement as to whether or not int/int should be a
float or an int. In addition, I get do change float(a)/b  to a//b. :)

Bill

BTW, how much extra memory does it take (if any) to store 1.0 over 1?


From guido at python.org  Sun Jul  8 20:57:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 00:57:00 GMT
Subject: Bug in rfc822
References: <slrn9khcjv.c7q.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <cp8zhyj51y.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) writes:

> I have added a comment to bug #437395, to this effect. Do
> I need to notify anyone else? The Bug Report says it was submitted 
> by Fred Drake, and assigned to Barry Warsaw.

You did the right thing.  Thanks!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From peter at engcorp.com  Thu Jul 26 19:25:24 2001
From: peter at engcorp.com (Peter Hansen)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 19:25:24 -0400
Subject: PEP 238 (revised)
References: <cp4rrz5onj.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B60A6E4.191C05C@engcorp.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Here's a completely revised version of PEP 238.  

(Beautiful!  Thank you.)

[...]
>     We propose to fix this by introducing different operators for
>     different operations: x/y to return a reasonable approximation of
>     the mathematical result of the division ("true division"), x//y to
>     return the floor ("floor division").  We call the current, mixed
>     meaning of x/y "classic division".
> 
[...] 
>     - The future division statement, spelled "from __future__ import
>       division", will change the / operator to mean true division
>       throughout the module.

Would it be more logical and consistent to spell it 

  from __future__ import true_division

if we are referring to these both as types of division but specifically 
"classic" and "true" types?  

Or maybe the opposite of "classic" should be "modern", spelled 
"modern_division"?

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com


From djc at object-craft.com.au  Wed Jul  4 06:35:38 2001
From: djc at object-craft.com.au (Dave Cole)
Date: 04 Jul 2001 20:35:38 +1000
Subject: tuple2csv  snipplet
References: <280f26fb.0107032303.64df7a48@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <m34rst3rt1.fsf@vole.object-craft.com.au>

>>>>> "Shakeeb" == Shakeeb Alireza <sa at bayt.net> writes:

Shakeeb> Hi folks, A friend and I have just spent a bit of time trying
Shakeeb> to convert tuples (generated from an SQL query) into comma
Shakeeb> separated values. As it seems to work we thought we'd share
Shakeeb> what we have come up with so far. It's a bit of a hack
Shakeeb> however... is there a better way to do this?

Go to our web page and check out the CSV module:

        http://www.object-craft.com.au/projects/csv/

It is not immediately obvious but the parser object can be used to
convert sequences to a CSV record.

% python
Python 2.0 (#0, Apr 14 2001, 21:24:22) 
[GCC 2.95.3 20010219 (prerelease)] on linux2
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import csv
>>> t1 = (None, 'spam', 'bar', "Python's kewl", None, None)
>>> t2 = (123, 'She said "Ni!" and smiled.')
>>> p = csv.parser()
>>> print p.join(t1)
None,spam,bar,"Python's kewl",None,None
>>> print p.join(t2)
123,"She said ""Ni!"" and smiled."
>>> 

It is really fast - so if you are dealing with a large amount of data
it is the best option I can think of.

- Dave

-- 
http://www.object-craft.com.au


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Thu Jul 26 19:41:55 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 19:41:55 -0400
Subject: Threads in Python version 1.5, thread doesn't start until calling  process dies
References: <a99a629c.0107250601.6b83cb8b@posting.google.com> <3B5EE94B.1EBA28FF@Lugoj.Com> <a99a629c.0107260603.1a463bd2@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <u4rrzw94s.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

kentabacchi at excite.com (Ken Tabacchi) writes:

> Something interesting I discovered this morning, my implementation of
> the thread module works as expected when run in Pythonwin (1.5.1), but
> gives the erroneous result (thread doesn't start until process that
> called it has died) when run in the Control Desk environment.

I don't know anything about the environment, but is it just used to
execute an external Python application, or does it have its own
embedded interpreter from which it executes your scripts?

If the latter, and if there are any callbacks into the surrounding
Control Desk environment, then one question would be whether Control
Desk is written to be thread-friendly or not - perhaps it's not
relinquishing the global interpreter lock when working within its own
extensions and thus preventing any other Python threads from running.

> Same interpreter yet different result.  It has been suggested to use
> the threading module for a more 'predictable' execution.  Does anyone
> have any advice about simply starting a new thread, exiting a thread
> and possibly acquiring a lock using the threading module?  Much
> appreciated.

I'm not sure that you're likely to get much different behavior from
threading than from thread, if only because it sounds like your issue
is lower level than that, but here's tiny example of starting up a
thread with the threading module.

I find it most convenient to subclass the Thread object rather than
using the generic class with a callable target, although either
approach will work.  You can create as many instances (threads) of
this object to compete.  I've used a simple mutex lock to match with
your thread usage, but the threading module has a variety of
synchronization primitives for other purposes as well.

Note that threading is one of a few modules built to be friendly for
"from xxx import *", and since it implements some fundamental
constructs that get used frequently in multi-threaded code, it's one
of the very few cases where I do use that form of import.

This sample defines a thread that loops, pausing for random intervals
from 0-1s, then grabs a lock, prints a message, and releases the lock.
Several such thread object instances are created to compete for the
lock.  An event object is used to signal from the main thread that the
threads should terminate.

    import time
    import random
    from threading import *

    # Any thread is created as an instance of the Thread class
    class MyThread(Thread):

	def __init__(self, threadname, lock, event):
	    # You must call Thread.__init__ but can add other parameters
	    # to this thread method - such as lock and event here.
	    Thread.__init__(self,name=threadname)
	    self.lock  = lock
	    self.event = event

	def run(self):
	    # This method is what runs when start() is called
	    while 1:

		# Exit out if event triggers us to do so
		if self.event.isSet():
		    print '%s terminating' % self.getName()
		    return

		# Otherwise wait until we can get a lock
		self.lock.acquire()
		print '%s running' % self.getName()
		self.lock.release()
		time.sleep(random.random())


    if __name__ == "__main__":

	# Create the lock and event objects used for synchronization.
	# From the recent case sensitivity discussion, this exhibits
	# bad form as judged by about half of those reading this. :-)
	lock = Lock()
	event = Event()

	# Create 5 threads to compete
	threads = []
	for i in range(5):
	    threads.append(MyThread('Thread %d' % i+1,lock,event))

	# Start them off
	for curthread in threads:
	    curthread.start()

	# Do something in main thread if you like
	time.sleep(10)

	# Signal termination by activating the event
	event.set()

	# And then wait for the threads to terminate
	for curthread in threads:
	    curthread.join()

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From clspence at one.net  Tue Jul 31 14:57:04 2001
From: clspence at one.net (Chris Spencer)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:57:04 -0500
Subject: The error of building Python on HP UX
References: <9jobt0$nh7$1@mail.cn99.com> <cpofq77phl.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B60BC42.8C790BCE@yahoo.com> <23891c90.0107270222.7856bec2@posting.google.com> <fds2mtkf6l2ttli8e7tgts6mtgn22p3bd0@4ax.com> <yoxwv4qhnjr.fsf@karhu.tp.spt.fi>
Message-ID: <1lvdmt453vg4c1ha7muvhs28743g9krcq2@4ax.com>

	HP-11 with threading is not a problem.  I can probably upload my build
of HP11 with multithreading somewhere for people to use.  However, I needed a
10.20 build of Python on HP with multithreading.  That's my pain...

Chris.

On 30 Jul 2001 10:40:56 +0300, Ville Vainio <vvainio at karhu.tp.spt.fi> wrote:

>Chris Spencer <clspence at one.net> writes:
>
>> 	Note that the compiled version they provide does NOT have threading
>> enabled.
>
>So what should I do, when I need a multithreaded python with threading
>on hp-ux11? I tried the normal build, and the tests (make test) passed
>just fine (the ones that didn't did so because of lacking libz etc..).



From thomas at xs4all.net  Thu Jul 12 07:44:39 2001
From: thomas at xs4all.net (Thomas Wouters)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:44:39 +0200
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kpln6.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com> <slrn9kpca4.t6.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <EJ337.455416$eK2.94021506@news4.rdc1.on.home.com> <slrn9kpln6.32b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <20010712134439.I5396@xs4all.nl>

On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 10:44:54PM +0000, Quinn Dunkan wrote:

> No, what I mean by that is what python calls "tuple unpacking".  For instance:

> t = ((green, (10, 20), 1),
>      (blue, (20, 30), 0),
>      (green, (40, 20), 1))
> 
> for (color, (x, y), active) in t:
>     ...
> 
> def display((color, (x, y), active)):
>     ...
> 
> map(display, t)

> might be quicker and clearer than throwing together some class for the same.
> Although some might disagree about that 'def' line (and I might be one of them
> <wink>).

Note that that's called "sequence unpacking" nowadays, and it works on all
sequence types. That means, anything that has a '__getitem__' hook (or the C
equivalent) and anything that supports the iteration interface (in the
future Python 2.2) -- which includes classes.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!



From michael at rcp.co.uk  Tue Jul 31 03:40:38 2001
From: michael at rcp.co.uk (Michael Abbott)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 07:40:38 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <mailman.995989601.30748.python-list@python.org> <cp3d7lbo89.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <ubsm8epr5.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com> <cp7kww92ph.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <m266cg73ig.fsf@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz> <3b60d65e.219212588@news.eircom.net> <cpy9pa4hnh.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <slrn.pl.9m4s03.f3g.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda> <3b64e984.782776733@wa.news.verio.net> <slrn.pl.9m9voo.gs8.qrczak@qrnik.zagroda>
Message-ID: <Xns90EF587DAA306michaelrcpcouk@194.238.50.13>

Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote in 
news:slrn.pl.9m9voo.gs8.qrczak at qrnik.zagroda:

> 
> The reason of the unusual behavior of ** is simple: there are about
> four operations artificially folded into one operator.
> 
> - Raising an element of a ring (or even associative group) to a
>   nonnegative integer exponent. 
> 
> - Raising an element of a field to an integer exponent. 
> 
> - Raising a real or complex number to a rational exponent. 
> 
> - Raising a positive real number to a real exponent, or raising
>   a complex number to a complex exponent. 
> 

Nice and helpful analysis!



From clpy at snakefarm.org  Thu Jul 19 03:26:16 2001
From: clpy at snakefarm.org (Carsten Gaebler)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 09:26:16 +0200
Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2a1
References: <mailman.995464538.29395.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B568B98.58997100@snakefarm.org>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> - Iterators (PEP 234) and generators (PEP 255) were added.

First of all let me say: iterators rule! :-) Not being able to memory- and
code-friendly iterate over dictionaries was the one thing where I sometimes
preferred Perl over Python.

However, I'd like to suggest a small syntax enhancement. Additionally to 'for
key in dict:' being equivalent to 'for key in dict.iterkeys():' it would be
really nice to have some magic that makes 'for (key, value) in dict:'
equivalent to 'for (key, value) in dict.iteritems():'.

Perhaps this would resolve the "discussion about whether for x in dict: ...
should assign x the successive keys, values, or items of the dictionary."
mentioned in the PEP?

cg.


From sholden at holdenweb.com  Wed Jul 11 10:48:02 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:48:02 -0400
Subject: Newbie problem with user input
References: <9ihit4$8r611@interserv.etn.com>
Message-ID: <dEZ27.12589$vA6.732430@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Chris McMillan" <christopherjmcmillan at eaton.com> wrote in message
news:9ihit4$8r611 at interserv.etn.com...
> Hello all!  The partial code below prompts a user to enter a path.  I then
> want it to find (and later do something with) all the files in that
> directory matching the specified string.  The problem is that when I run
the
> script, and enter, for example D:\test it does not find any of the files.
I
> believe it is because the glob command is searching for
''D:\\test'\\*.dat'
> With the extra single quotes.  How can I get it to search for
> 'D:\\test\\*.dat' ?  Thanks!
> Chris
>
>
> print 'Enter the path:'                  # prompt user for directory path
> path = raw_input()
> for fname in glob.glob('path\\*.dat'):   # finds files matching string
>

Your diagnosis of the problem is incorrect: when you provide input to
raw_input(), what you type (less the newline) is what the function returns.
Backslash characters are not treated specially. You have probably been
confused by seeing the interpreter output when you ask it to evaluate

      path

as an expression. Here's a commented session which shows you that the
interpreter sometimes tries to "help" by printing the string in an
unabiguous way. The print command shows you what's actually in there.

>>> path = raw_input("Path:")
Path:D:\test    # I typed what you typed
>>> print path
D:\test        # print shows you what's in the string ...
>>> print str(path)
D:\test        # ... because it uses str() to get strings
>>> print repr(path)
'D:\\test'    # repr() gives you something you can paste into a program ...
>>> path
'D:\\test'    # ... the interpreter uses repr() after evaluating an
expression


You are not using the value of the path variable in your glob argument, so
you are actually globbing for files which match the pattern

    path\*.dat

Change the last line to

for fname in glob.glob(path+'\\*.dat'):   # finds files matching string

and you will probably find it works much better. This adds "\\*.dat" to the
end of whatever you type in.

If you are interested in portability (which you may not be) the the os.path
module contains functions which can help you to work with file paths.

regards
 Steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul  6 14:09:45 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 18:09:45 GMT
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0107061602390.4611-100000@leo.logilab.fr> <9i4ic3$f3v$1@plutonium.compulink.co.uk> <slrn9kbjo0.4kr.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <J9n17.8444$e5.1104161@newsb.telia.net>

Alexandre wrote:
>
> >Have you tried
> >
> > server.echo(unicode('\231','latin-1'))
> >
> >?  Dunno about xmlrpc, but it works with SOAP.
>
> I've just tried it and it doesn't work with xmlrpclib. :o(

works on my box.  what Python version/distribution are you using?

if you disable the catch-all except in xmlrpcserver.py [1], what error
message do you get?

</F>

1) an easy way to disable an except: is to change it so it catches
an arbitrary string literal, e.g:

        except "spam":
            # internal error, report as HTTP server error
            self.send_response(500)





From pinard at iro.umontreal.ca  Mon Jul  2 11:17:24 2001
From: pinard at iro.umontreal.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Fran=E7ois?= Pinard)
Date: 02 Jul 2001 11:17:24 -0400
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
In-Reply-To: <20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
	<zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<q0avjto87p59hn7gv28r5cf1c84j2fb8c7@4ax.com>
	<naO%6.416271$oc7.58537852@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>
	<vm40kt8knq3pplpv1rarjubl73vnl12ure@4ax.com>
	<20010702145211.M8098@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <oqlmm7tl6j.fsf@lin2.sram.qc.ca>

[Thomas Wouters]

> On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 06:15:10AM +0000, Courageous wrote:

> > x += (1,2,3)
> > ... is not the same as...
> > x=x+(1,2,3)

> > That's just plain wrong.

Sorry to jump in, but I want to join my voice with Courageous'.

> No, that's the *whole intent* of the thing. If x += y was supposed to be
> *exactly* the same as x = x + y, it would have been spelled as 'x = x + y'.
> It isn't, and it's not. It's not supposed to be syntactic sugar for normal
> addition, it's supposed to be syntactic sugar for a method call.

I would be tempted to guess that augmented assignment has been requested so:

   tedious_or_inefficient_denotation = tedious_or_inefficient_denotation + 1

could be rewritten as:

   tedious_or_inefficient_denotation += 1

And that's it.

Of course, operators may also yield __IMPLEMENT__-like methods in objects
wanting to use these operators, where one can do everything s/he wants,
among which implementing new, different and even surprising semantics.

I strongly think that the base Python language should strictly limit itself
to the semantic that "a += b" means "a = a + b" with "a" evaluated once.
and be careful at avoiding any surprising side-effect.  Let's fulfill the
request for augmented assignment, without overshooting it.

Fuzziness in this area does not bring us anything, really.  If you really
want a method to extend an mutable, spell it out as we always did, similar
to list.append(), say, but leave "+" and "+=" alone.

Please, _please_ protect the long-term legibility of Python.

-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard



From mal at lemburg.com  Fri Jul 13 09:44:55 2001
From: mal at lemburg.com (M.-A. Lemburg)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:44:55 +0200
Subject: PEP 262: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
Message-ID: <3B4EFB57.1427EF35@lemburg.com>

> Paul Moore (in privte mail):
>
> You have methods for finding
> the start and end of various <indextypes>, but you don't have a method for
> finding the length of an <indextype>. In the case of words (which is the one
> I understand :-), the length of a word is not the same as the difference
> between the starts of consecutive words - the intervening whitespace should
> be excluded (at least for some applications). I would suggest
> 
> length_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
> Returns the length in Unicode objects of the <indextype> found at u[index]
> or -1 in case u[index] is not in an element of this type (for example, in
> the whitespace between words). [XXX Should this be the number of Unicode
> objects between index and the end of the element, or should it be the length
> from start to end even if you are in the middle?]
> 
> or maybe better
> 
> nextend_<indextype>(u, index) -> integer
> Returns the Unicode object index for the end of the next <indextype> found
> after u[index] or -1 in case no next element of this type exists.
> 
> [But that runs into issues when you are in a word - If index is not the
> first Unicode object, nextend is the end of *this* element, whereas next is
> the start of the *next* element. I think I'm starting to show my
> ignorance...]
> 
> Even though I suspect my suggested methods are too simplistic, I'd suggest
> at least a comment in the PEP on how to work out the length of the element
> you're in (or why it's hard, and you'd never want to do it :-)...

The two suggested APIs probe into the Unicode object. I think it would
be more useful to return the slice (as slice object) which represents
the <indextype> element found at the given index in u, e.g.

<indextype>_slice(u, index) -> slice object or None

    Returns the slice pointing to the <indextype> element found in 
    u at the given index or None in case no such element can be found
    at that position.

Hmm, I wonder whether slice objects can be "applied" to sequences
somehow...

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Consulting & Company:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                        http://www.lemburg.com/python/
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: "Moore, Paul" <Paul.Moore at atosorigin.com>
Subject: PEP 262: Unicode Indexing Helper Module
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:26:52 +0100
Size: 3184
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010713/2d065ec4/attachment.mht>

From machin_john_888 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 10 21:51:55 2001
From: machin_john_888 at hotmail.com (John Machin)
Date: 10 Jul 2001 18:51:55 -0700
Subject: Unicode -> String problem
References: <mailman.994770857.26075.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <92ae279c.0107101751.5348c0a9@posting.google.com>

Jay Parlar <jparlar at home.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.994770857.26075.python-list at python.org>...
> The reason that I asked for code to remove the non-convertable unicode characters is because I thought that the '\xa0' 
> that I was seeing was a result of the unicode. In further testing, it seems that it's not. When I download the page 
> 'http://www.ign.com', and parser it using the HTMLParser method above, one of the characters/words returned to me is 
> '\xa0'. Now, I have no idea where this is coming from. I suppose I'll have to start looking at the source for HTMLParser, as 
> well as the formatter and writer I used. It's not just '\xa0' either, one page (which I can't seem to remember now) returned a 
> '\x95' as one of the characters/words. 

Possibly you might attain enlightenment if you compared the original
HTML with the output from HTMLParser --- I know next to nothing about
HTML but I'm willing to bet that such a comparison might just bring up
correspondences like &nbsp; -> \xa0 and &middot; -> \x95. BTW, the url
you gave has 22 occurences of &middot; ...

Then you can proceed at one of two levels:
(1) follow Paul Prescod's suggestion to use the ASCII codec with the
"ignore" option -- this will strip out all non-ASCII characters
(2) use u.encode("cp1252") to give you native Windows stuff in an
8-bit string. However you have to be prepared to handle things like a
"no-break space" (\xa0) and a "bullet" (\x95) and whatever else may be
in the input; time to buy a book on HTML, maybe.

<:-)>
If you get exceptions with "cp1252", it probably means that you have
strayed too far into the forest and encountered a web page produced by
some pesky furriner varmint -- "Oooh, Grandma, what enormous ordinals
you have!"
</:-)>

Oh and call me silly, but a brief peek at an IE5 cache gives me the
impression that what is there is plain ol' HTML, just like you get
from a direct download. You may like to ask exactly what functionality
the C++ kit is providing ...

> One technique I'm using that might be causing the problem is: Using an re to remove a lot of punctuation, punctuation that 
> would cause the word "Python" not to be matched with "Python." (notice the period). Actually, if anyone has a better 
> solution to that, I'd be more than willing to listen. 

That is not causing your current symptom. It is extremely likely to
cause other possibly unwanted symptoms -- like "alt.foo.bar" being
treated as the word "altfoobar". I'm sure various people will give you
one-line Python solutions to the symptoms. However it looks like you
need to start from the top down -- What is the definition of a "word"?
 What tools/techniques are there to tokenise text into "words" and
"non-words"?


From brueckd at tbye.com  Fri Jul 20 09:39:47 2001
From: brueckd at tbye.com (brueckd at tbye.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 06:39:47 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Case insensitivity
In-Reply-To: <erdflt4l5s5otv86la9318hsr9bdc6mp31@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107200633010.17072-100000@ns0.tbye.com>

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Sheila King wrote:

> :An editor that optionally gives warnings about names with only case
> :differences seems pretty innoccuous, though.
>
> I think this would be an excellent idea. Instead of just giving a "name
> error", generate a list of names that it might be close to? Or, if one
> appears to be a match excepting for case, ask if that other name might
> have been the intended one? A friendly error message!

I don't know if someone already posted this, but the Jikes compiler (a
Java compiler from IBM) has this feature and I love it. Here's some output
from it:

...
Found 1 semantic error compiling "AssignNumber.java":

   101.       extensions = m_logic.getextensions(customerID);
                           <------------------------------->
*** Error: No method named "getextensions" was found in type
"middleware/logic". However, there is an accessible method "getExtensions"
whose name closely matches the name "getextensions".
...

-Dave




From alex.freller at gmx.at  Thu Jul  5 04:27:03 2001
From: alex.freller at gmx.at (Freller Alex)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 08:27:03 GMT
Subject: newbie question
References: <3B42A1A3.2A7793CC@gmx.at> <9hv7ot$fumqj$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <3B52A621.25E84FF3@gmx.at>

thanks a lot for your support. that one worked for me very nice.

Emile van Sebille schrieb:
> 
> import glob
> 
> count = 0
> 
> for f in glob.glob(r"f:\python21\lib\*.py"):
>     count += len(open(f).readlines())
> 
> print count
> 
> oops... missed the sub-directory part...
> 
> count = [0]
> 
> import os
> 
> def addUpLines(count, dirName, fileList):
>     for f in fileList:
>         if f[-3:] == ".py":
>             count[0] += len(open("%s%s%s" % (dirName, os.sep,
> f)).readlines())
>     print dirName, count,'\n\n'
> print os.path.walk(r"f:\python21\lib", addUpLines, count)
> 
> print count[0]
> 
> HTH,
> 
> --
> 
> Emile van Sebille
> emile at fenx.com
> 
> ---------
> "Freller Alex" <alex.freller at gmx.at> wrote in message
> news:3B42A1A3.2A7793CC at gmx.at...
> > I would like to program a python script that parses a directory and its
> > subdirectorys after specific files (*.pl) and count their linenumbers.
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > alex


From tjs at mail.csse.monash.edu.au  Mon Jul 16 08:58:08 2001
From: tjs at mail.csse.monash.edu.au (Toby J Sargeant)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:58:08 +1000
Subject: Network able Chess
In-Reply-To: <86f9eea9.0107160423.1e1a0103@posting.google.com>; from elecfsh@yahoo.com on Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 05:23:34AM -0700
References: <86f9eea9.0107160423.1e1a0103@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <20010716225808.A10759@fangorn.csse.monash.edu.au>

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 05:23:34AM -0700, elecfsh wrote:
> Hey,
>   For a while I have been wanting to write a little chess game that
> can be played over a network w/ some simple chatting features. I want
> to do this in Python, but I'm a little worried about doing the
> graphics. Any suggestions as far as gamming libraries? or any standard
> libraries I may have missed? Thanks.

These might not be the droids you're looking for.

You can grab the server source for FICS (free internet chess server)
and compile it. It interfaces nicely with a number of graphical frontends,
including xboard, and it'll give you chat functionality as well as all
the normal features you'd expect in a fully fuctional chess server.

And it saves you having to write your own.

http://www.freechess.org/

ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/Unix/FICS.1.6.2.tar.gz

There may be a {windows|mac|beos|pdp11|abacus} port, but I'm afraid that
I don't know of it.

Toby.



From kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu  Thu Jul 26 10:44:55 2001
From: kdl4 at acpub.duke.edu (Kevin Lacker)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:44:55 -0400
Subject: a break for comprehensions
Message-ID: <9jpadd$s5k$1@news.duke.edu>

Can you do this:

answer = []
for x in my_list:
    if not is_good(x):
        break
    answer.append(process(x))

with a list comprehension somehow? I'm starting to dislike explicit for
loops just for the purposes of constructing another list from a current one.

Would this work in the future python with iterators...

def done(): raise StopIteration
answer = [process(x) for x in my_list if is_good(x) or done()]

If I used it a lot it might not be a pain to define done(). I think it would
be cool to be able to reuse the while keyword inside comprehensions like

answer = [process(x) for x in my_list while is_good(x)]

Makes sense to me... it's like being able to use a sentinel with iterators
but more flexible.




From steve at lurking.demon.co.uk  Wed Jul 25 03:26:58 2001
From: steve at lurking.demon.co.uk (Stephen Horne)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:26:58 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpr8v6ow8o.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <4dmslt0gmgaeu25hq4q580id0p8ndtaug9@4ax.com>

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:25:34 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
wrote:

>Hm, IMO the problem is different.  Python's numerical model *almost*
>embeds the integers in the floats.  (They should've been called reals,
>but that mistake is too insignificant to want to fix. :-) In *most*
>situations, where a float is expected, an int works just as well, and
>has the same effect as a float with the same mathematical value.
>Division is the exception and that's where the problem lies.
>
>But the converse is *not* true in today's Python: code expecting
>integers does *not* necessarily work when a float is passed, even if
>that float has an integral value.  This is part of the fabric of
>Python's semantics.

So increasing the odds that discrete integers will be magically
transformed into floats, without that being intended by the
programmer, is a BAD thing, then ;-)



From cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu  Wed Jul 18 18:57:13 2001
From: cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu (Curtis Jensen)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:57:13 -0700
Subject: apply problems
References: <3B4F3501.E1469159@bioeng.ucsd.edu> <3B55DEDE.2683DEFD@ccvcorp.com>
Message-ID: <3B561449.4E9D3AF0@bioeng.ucsd.edu>

Jeff Shannon wrote:
> 
> Curtis Jensen wrote:
> 
> > additional_kwds = {'prob': None, 'datum': None, 'elements':
> > <cont_classes.Elements.Elements instance at 103849c0>, 'nodes':
> > <cont_classes.Nodes.Nodes instance at 10384750>}
> >
> > def Elements( self, at, deformed, iact, normal, xi, nelist, nodes,
> > elements, *args, **kwds ):
> 
> You have an argument of Elements named 'nodes'.  You are also passing in an
> additional keyword argument that is *also* named 'nodes'.  Rename either one
> of these, and see if the problem goes away...
> 
> Jeff Shannon
> Technician/Programmer
> Credit International

The nodes in the additional_kwds is meant to match up with the nodes
argument in the Elements function.  There is also an elements value in
the additional_kwds dictionary and an elements in the arguments list. 
These two are also meant to match up.  I could have appended nodes onto
cmd[1] and then appended elements to cmd[1], but it's simpler this way.

-- 
Curtis Jensen
cjensen at bioeng.ucsd.edu
http://www-bioeng.ucsd.edu/~cjensen/
FAX (425) 740-1451


From david at boddie.net  Thu Jul 26 14:01:34 2001
From: david at boddie.net (David Boddie)
Date: 26 Jul 2001 11:01:34 -0700
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.996013330.29136.python-list@python.org> <cp8zhd9gm9.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <18289ee4.0107261001.664eb547@posting.google.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote in message news:<cp8zhd9gm9.fsf at cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>...
> "Bjorn Pettersen" <BPettersen at NAREX.com> writes:
> 
> > If there was to be a scheduled 3.0 release, any other source
> > incompatible changes that were seen as important would also have a
> > natural place to go.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion.  I think I'll do it this way: Python 3.x
> will be the first incompatible version, Python 2.x will require
> __future__ statements or other explicit ways to indicate that the
> programmer wants the new feature.

To play devil's advocate, one might argue that by the time we get to
Python 3.0 (four years?) anyone wanting the new form of the / operator
will be used to explicitly asking for it.

So, if you're already resigned to that then just changing __future__
to something else like

from __behaviour__ import float_division

would be just as easy, and wouldn't break existing code. <wink>

just-lie-down-in-front-of-the-bulldozer-while-we-go-for-a-drink-ly
y'rs - David


From jim.vickroy at noaa.gov  Tue Jul 17 15:26:17 2001
From: jim.vickroy at noaa.gov (jim.vickroy)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:26:17 -0600
Subject: Microsoft COM and "service" class
Message-ID: <3B549159.1A381BE6@noaa.gov>

Hello,

I'm attempting to implement a Python class that is both a Microsoft COM
object and a "service".

This is a traceback from a client attempting to use the object:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\applications\sec\sxi\test_com.py", line 3, in ?
    com_obj = win32com.client.Dispatch ('SXI.processor_events_log')
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 94, in Dispatch
    dispatch, userName =
dynamic._GetGoodDispatchAndUserName(dispatch,userName,clsctx)
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 80, in
_GetGoodDispatchAndUserName
    return (_GetGoodDispatch(IDispatch, clsctx), userName)
  File "D:\Python20\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 71, in
_GetGoodDispatch
    IDispatch = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(IDispatch, None, clsctx,
pythoncom.IID_IDispatch)
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147221231, 'ClassFactory cannot supply
requested class', None, None)

which I believe is caused by the following statement in my
implementation:

  win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__(self, args)

I do not understand where and how the 'args' parameter is being defined.

If I strip the "service" interface (which references the 'args'
parameter) from my class, it seems to work just fine as a COM object.

Could someone offer some suggestions on what I need to do.

Thanks.



From noselasd at frisurf.no  Mon Jul  2 07:47:12 2001
From: noselasd at frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:47:12 +0200
Subject: Unix Scripting Host
References: <slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam@lilith.hqd-internal>
Message-ID: <oaZ%6.2050$Jp5.35249@news1.oke.nextra.no>

"Gerhard H?ring" <gerhard.nospam at bigfoot.de> wrote in message
news:slrn9jt7s3.a56.gerhard.nospam at lilith.hqd-internal...
> Please excuse this off-topicish post. I was looking for something
similar to
> the Windows Scripting Host in the Unix world: a library where an
application
> can register functions and types that can then be used by any
scripting
> language that bothers to implement the "Unix Scripting Host"
interface. The
> application language should not be limited to C or C++.
>
> The closest thing I could find was XPCOM from the Mozilla project. I
thought
> that KDE2 or GNOME might offer this already, but I didn't find
anything (except
> the relatively heavyweight CORBA approach).
>
> Any suggestions/pointers?
There are dcop in kde2.
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/dcop.html
http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/python/index.html
Python,perl , java. ,ruby and c++ have dcop bindings, and its far from
heavy.





From mwh at python.net  Thu Jul  5 06:14:10 2001
From: mwh at python.net (Michael Hudson)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:14:10 +0100 (BST)
Subject: python-dev summary 2001-06-21 - 2001-07-05
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107051113450.27229-100000@localhost.localdomain>

 This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list between
 June 21 and July 4 (inclusive) 2001.  It is intended to inform the
 wider Python community of ongoing developments.  To comment, just
 post to python-list at python.org or comp.lang.python in the usual
 way. Give your posting a meaningful subject line, and if it's about a
 PEP, include the PEP number (e.g. Subject: PEP 201 - Lockstep
 iteration) All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas
 discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on a
 PEP if you have an opinion.

 This is the eleventh summary written by Michael Hudson.
 Summaries are archived at:

  <http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/>

   Posting distribution (with apologies to mbm)

   Number of articles in summary: 252

    40 |                 [|]
       |                 [|]
       |                 [|]
       |                 [|]
       |                 [|]
    30 |                 [|]
       |                 [|]
       |                 [|]     [|]                 [|]
       |                 [|]     [|]                 [|] [|]
       |                 [|]     [|]                 [|] [|]
    20 |                 [|]     [|]                 [|] [|]
       |     [|]         [|]     [|]                 [|] [|]
       |     [|]         [|] [|] [|]                 [|] [|]
       |     [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|]         [|] [|] [|] [|]
       |     [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
    10 |     [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
       |     [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
       |     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
       |     [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
       | [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|] [|]
     0 +-004-019-007-016-042-018-028-013-005-015-016-029-027-013
        Thu 21| Sat 23| Mon 25| Wed 27| Fri 29| Sun 01| Tue 03|
            Fri 22  Sun 24  Tue 26  Thu 28  Sat 30  Mon 02  Wed 04

 This will be my last python-dev summary for a while, as I'm going to
 be mostly away from the internet for the summer.  However, Andrew
 Kuchling has agreed to take up writing them again, so there should be
 no interruption in the summaries.


    * Support for "wide" Unicode characters *

 Paul Prescod posted a draft of PEP 261 'Support for "wide" Unicode
 characters':

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015644.html>

 which proposes adding a compile time option to configure unicode
 objects to store "code points" (the integers that the unicode
 specification maps to "characters" -- though that word is dangerously
 overlodaed in the Unicode arena) in 32 bit integers -- they're
 currently stored in 16 bits.

 This was (I believe) at least partially inspired by the Unicode
 Consortium assigning code points outside the "Basic Multilingual
 Plane" (i.e. the range of 16 bit integers).

 Noone is convinced that this is the best possible solution (a better
 solution might be to have unicode objects that could either store
 code points in 16 bits or 32 bits as necessary, and this solution
 could have binary compatibility problems), but it seems noone has the
 time to implement a better one (and a better one would probably have
 compatibility problems that couldn't be fixed by a simple recompile):

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/015674.html>

 (I apologise for any abuse of terminology in the above - I know very
 little about the issues surrounding Unicode).


    * Python specializing compiler *

 Armin Rigo announced his "Python specializing compiler", psyco:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015503.html>

 It works on the principle that you can compile a faster version of a
 function if you know stuff about the arguments it's likely to be
 called with.  This is one of the more asthetically pleasing of the
 possible ways to speed Python up (it's similar to some tactics used
 by the seemingly defunct self compiler), but it's still a very large
 amount of work away from being useful...


    * IPv6 *

 *Very* preliminary support for IPv6 - the "next generation internet
 protocol" was checked in.  The support thus far doesn't actually
 support IPv6 at all, but rather emulates IPv6's new functions for
 IPv4 addresses, so that code for Python 2.2 will hopefully be
 portable between machines that do and do not support IPv6, whilst
 being able to use IPv6 where it is supported (I hope that makes
 sense).

 Unfortunately the checkin broke the build on some platforms (OSF1,
 Windows) but I believe these problems are now sorted out.

 IPv6 support has been muttered about for years now, so it's nice to
 finally see some movement, even if it is causing some x-platform
 pain.


    * PEP 260: simplifying xrange *

 Guido posted PEP 260, a proposal to removed some of the less useful
 aspects of the xrange type:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-June/015590.html>

 Support was muted; there's the usual concern on removing "little
 used" features -- what if someone (who maybe doesn't read
 comp.lang.python or these summaries) uses them?


    * site-python, site-packages *

 Gregor Hoffleit posted a request that <prefix>/lib/site-python be
 considered a standard install target:

  <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2001-July/015715.html>

 as the current standard of <prefix>/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/
 makes life awkward for packagers.

 It's possible Gregor asked the wrong bunch of people; a non-version
 dependent path makes life awkward for those who want to mantain more
 than version of Python, and that includes most of the people on
 pyton-dev.  OTOH, it probably also includes everyone who cares about
 the cross-version portability of the code they write, so it seems
 that movemnet is unlikely here (could be wrong, though).

Cheers,
M.




From gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de  Mon Jul  2 03:22:37 2001
From: gherman at darwin.in-berlin.de (Dinu Gherman)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 09:22:37 +0200
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B40213D.916ACE7A@darwin.in-berlin.de>

Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> 
> PEP: Unnumbered
> Title: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
> Version: $Revision: 0.1$
> Author: cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br (Carlos Ribeiro)
> Status: Draft
> Type: Informational
> Created: 01-Jul-2001
> Post-History:

Ola, Carlos,

In general, that makes pretty much sense to me, although
some statements are likely too vague to go without every-
body interpreting them at will. And, quite likely, under 
the term "quality criteria" might be hiding another hot
PEPper...

Still, I'll add two points that I'd like to see covered as
well in a PEP like this:

1. whereever possible the set of features labeled loosely
   as "desired qualities" of a standard module must be 
   detectable by an automated test tool using PyUnit, and

2. the PEP's scope should at least address the possibili-
   ties for making existing modules of the standard library
   more compliant with those desired qualities.

Number 1 is not to enforce anything (hard anyway), but 
simply to be able to run compliance tests to avoid silly 
disputes about a given module's compliance with the listed 
features. Using Python 2.1 this should be much easier than 
before.

Number 2 is a heretic one, yes, but nevertheless important 
for achieving true consistency and ease of use for new mem-
bers of the Python community. This kind of thing is unfor-
tunately often underestimated.

Best regards,

Dinu

-- 
Dinu C. Gherman
ReportLab Consultant - http://www.reportlab.com
................................................................
"The only possible values [for quality] are 'excellent' and 'in-
sanely excellent', depending on whether lives are at stake or 
not. Otherwise you don't enjoy your work, you don't work well, 
and the project goes down the drain." 
                    (Kent Beck, "Extreme Programming Explained")


From tim at digicool.com  Tue Jul 24 15:29:15 2001
From: tim at digicool.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:29:15 -0400
Subject: 2.0b2: SystemError: frexp() result out of range
In-Reply-To: <vktpuaqnuu0.fsf@pc153s.cs.york.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <BIEJKCLHCIOIHAGOKOLHEEJJCDAA.tim@digicool.com>

[Anthony J Doggett (UG)]
> Please, if I were to ask nicely for our local installation of python to
> be upgraded, would the bug shown below to go away?
>
> > python
> Python 2.0b2 (#1, Oct  9 2000, 18:12:36)
> [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
> Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>> import cPickle
> >>> f = open('delme', 'w')
> >>> cPickle.dump(float('inf'), f, 1)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> SystemError: frexp() result out of range

I doubt this has anything to do with the version of Python you're using.
Python is complaining because the platform C library function frexp is
returning a result x such that

    x == 0 || (x >= 0.5 && x < 1.0)

is not true.  It's almost certainly returning an infinity instead.  If
that's what your platform frexp does with an infinity, you're
stuck with it until they replace the C librarym or a version of Python that
doesn't exist yet knows what to do with an infinity result from frexp().

> What's the best way to get around it?

Get rid of infinities before pickling.

good-advice-in-any-walk-of-life<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim




From hfoffani at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 30 08:21:29 2001
From: hfoffani at yahoo.com (Hernan M. Foffani)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 12:21:29 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996426594.9989.python-list@python.org> <20010729170054.141$Pa@newsreader.com> <cpr8uzz5uo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <20010730082129.603$xw@newsreader.com>

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> I <hfoffani at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > One minor suggestion:
> > I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
> > of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
> > methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.
>
> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.
Fine for me.

I've read the get/set description and here another new convention
may apply as well:
   - the name of the internal storage attribute.
     like: "__"+attribute_name
   - the name of the get/set methods.
     like: "get"+attribute_name

Will the stdlib begin to use the get/set machinery?
I guess it's going to be a long and tedious, though not
complicated, task to modify it all.
The community may help a lot here.

Regards,
-Hernan

-- 
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
                    Usenet Newsgroup Service


From fb at ultranet.com  Tue Jul  3 11:27:37 2001
From: fb at ultranet.com (fbasegmez)
Date: 3 Jul 2001 08:27:37 -0700
Subject: Redirecting input?
Message-ID: <bb93d188.0107030727.516741b4@posting.google.com>

How do you redirect commands to a Unix process initiated from a Python script?  
For example:

import os

runcmd='rlogin othersystem'
os.system(runcmd)
password='mypassword'
#now I would like to input my password here
#obviously os.sytem(password) does not work.
???

Regards,

Fahri


From db3l at fitlinxx.com  Wed Jul 11 16:14:33 2001
From: db3l at fitlinxx.com (David Bolen)
Date: 11 Jul 2001 16:14:33 -0400
Subject: Python speed
References: <roG27.666914$166.13798179@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com> <pXG27.1312$M9.140003@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ifjjh$1e3$1@news.mathworks.com> <3B4B562F.77C1B79@yahoo.com> <9ifo90$4hh$1@news.mathworks.com> <It%27.3828$M9.1040127@typhoon.we.rr.com> <9ii107$d8r$1@news.mathworks.com>
Message-ID: <upub7cjfa.fsf@ctwd0143.fitlinxx.com>

jcm <grumble at usa.net> writes:

> Maybe I should have been more specific (which I wanted to avoid--I
> only meant to say that cpu-time can become an issue).  I'm talking
> about monsters that move once per heartbeat, which I usually think of
> as about once every two seconds.
(...)
> > interval = 1.0/30  #30fps
> > while 1:
> >     start = time.time()
> >     move_monsters()
> >     diff = time.time() - start
> >     if diff < interval: time.sleep(interval - diff)
> 
> > ...and it still pegs the cpu, then you've got a problem. if
> > the cpu is pegged it means the move_monsters is running slower
> > than the desired 30fps. if the move_monsters() function runs
> > quicker than each desired timeslice, then the program will sleep
> > the remaining time, freeing up the cpu.
> 
> If you're talking about frames-per-second, then this doesn't sound
> like a text-based mud.  I'm not sure if we're thinking in the same
> realm.

First off, I think your general point that CPU performance can
certainly be a limiting factor in such development is certainly true,
and as with any other resource constraint it needs to be taken into
account during development.

Whether frames-per-second or heartbeat-per-twosecond, the approach is
still basically the same.  What it sounds like you're saying is that
you had 400 monsters, all of which needed some calculation to take
place in time for a 2-second heartbeat of movement.  So you're really
running at .5fps (if you consider a "frame" to be a new state of being
for all the monsters in your system), or that you need to be able to
process monster movement calculations at least at 2s/400 or 5ms each.
That's a max, as you won't have any computation time for anything but
movement at that level.

So that's a fairly tight timeframe, but it's all going to come down to
the algorithm.  Testing with Python 1.5.2 on a 400MHz PIII (so your
PII 266 clearly is slower), a purely simple loop that grabs an object
from a 400 element list and passes it to an empty function takes about
3.6us per cycle.  But you've got most of those 5ms for your own
movement functionality, and I would think that it should still be
doable even in that environment.

--
-- David
-- 
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------\
 \               David Bolen            \   E-mail: db3l at fitlinxx.com  /
  |             FitLinxx, Inc.            \  Phone: (203) 708-5192    |
 /  860 Canal Street, Stamford, CT  06902   \  Fax: (203) 316-5150     \
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/


From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 24 14:01:27 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:01:27 GMT
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCEEIJLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995978334.29554.python-list@python.org> <su3rltc8d88jrjdv9v73otlbsrajleqs21@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <XJi77.25371$EP6.5981216@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote in message
news:su3rltc8d88jrjdv9v73otlbsrajleqs21 at 4ax.com...
> > <list>*<list> raises a TypeError
>
> Given that other arithmetic operations have been hijacked for other
> jobs (concat etc) with lists, there *is* no sensible meaning for
this.

Actually there *is*: cross concatenation, (somewhat similar to set
cross products)

L1*L2 := [i1+i2 for i1 in Li for i2 in L2]

This is very handy for succinctly expressing many list-producing
functions and their corresponding algorithms.  Example: combinations,
n things, k at a time
C(n,0) = ()
C(n,k>0) = [(n,)]*C(n-1,k-1) + C(n-1,k)

I have thought of submitting a PEP, after working out more details,
proposing this as a sequence operation that would make Python even
more like executable pseudocode.

Terry J. Reedy





From loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de  Sun Jul 29 05:57:45 2001
From: loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de (Martin von Loewis)
Date: 29 Jul 2001 11:57:45 +0200
Subject: Unusual minidom behaviour: Part Deux
References: <vKJ77.12050$Up.355596@sea-read.news.verio.net> <j466cdv68p.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de> <umC87.8184$Kd7.4940000@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com> <mailman.996373135.2559.python-list@python.org> <JkM87.10500$Kd7.5942572@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
Message-ID: <j4k80skqg6.fsf@informatik.hu-berlin.de>

"Victor Bazarov" <vAbazarov at dAnai.com> writes:

> No, I am reading all the Python output and if there were any,
> I'd have seen it.

In that case, I recommend to put a number of print statements into the
library modules that you suspect to be causes of the problem, and
trace that way what they are doing. If you can identify the call that
is hanging (i.e. the function you call that doesn't return), please
let us know.

Regards,
Martin


From aleaxit at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 08:33:24 2001
From: aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:33:24 +0200
Subject: Is this a true statement: Part III
References: <9hsckg$4rt$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>
Message-ID: <9hse2m01vva@enews1.newsguy.com>

"MDK" <no at spam.com> wrote in message
news:9hsckg$4rt$1 at taliesin.netcom.net.uk...
> Hello,
>
> Ok, I rescind my previous conclusion that the answer to this question,
> "Python can do everything C++ can do but just slower." is "Excluding
writing
> device drivers the answer is a clear yes."
>
> The thing that I found interesting about the Part II posts were the
positive
> things said about the C language.  Is C that much different than C++?  Why

C-89 is basically a subset of C++.  C-99 isn't, but I doubt many of
us have yet any significant experience with C-99 (no fully compliant
compilers yet, for example).

> the leaning towards C over C++?  I thought C++ was supposed to be the 'New
> and Improved C.'

C is simpler than C++, since the latter does everything the former
does plus much, MUCH more.  If one values simplicity enough (or,
to put it differently, if one abhors complications badly enough)
then I guess one may hate C++ while tolerating C.  I don't really
agree myself (I do loathe complication, but C++ gives me top speed
AND the possibility reasonably high-level programming at the same
time, and I really have no alternative when I do need both).


Alex





From tim at vegeta.ath.cx  Mon Jul 16 00:41:13 2001
From: tim at vegeta.ath.cx (Tim Hammerquist)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 04:41:13 GMT
Subject: converting from perl: variable sized unpack
References: <roy-B2459F.22112513072001@news1.panix.com> <mailman.995081424.8581.python-list@python.org> <slrn9l4esk.885.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <slrn9l4g1c.p58.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <slrn9l4ors.c1h.quinn@hork.ugcs.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <slrn9l4spj.pv9.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>

Me parece que Quinn Dunkan <quinn at hork.ugcs.caltech.edu> dijo:
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 01:03:29 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> >I'm relatively new to Python. What's the '1.6 * apply' trick?
> 
> As of python 1.6,
> 
> f(x, *y, **z)
> 
> is shorthand for
> 
> apply(f, (x,), y, z)

Thanks!  I can see how that could come in handy.  I can think of several
occasions in my own coding that it would've helped, but it wasn't
anything I couldn't work around.

-- 
Just because my fingers are in my ears doesn't mean I'm ignoring you.
    -- Larry Wall


From ngps at madcap.dyndns.org  Sun Jul 22 10:24:19 2001
From: ngps at madcap.dyndns.org (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: 22 Jul 2001 14:24:19 GMT
Subject: Help with PDF
References: <mailman.995677535.12211.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <9jenmj$75f$1@clematis.singnet.com.sg>

According to Greg & Janet LINDSTROM <yuba at cyberback.com>:
> What is available in Python to produce Portable Document Format
> (PDF) files?

Have a look-see at http://www.boycottadobe.com/. This is about a
Russian programmer, snake-oil security and the DMCA.

Sorry for the somewhat off-topic.


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at post1.com> * http://www.post1.com/home/ngps

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.


From kevinmrodgers at home.com  Fri Jul 27 18:44:40 2001
From: kevinmrodgers at home.com (Kevin Rodgers)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 22:44:40 GMT
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107191316390.24983-100000@bms> <mailman.995571273.18192.python-list@python.org> <9j7gv8$9mg@dispatch.concentric.net> <cppuawfqbm.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107231434170.15565-100000@oliphant.ee.byu.edu> <cp7kwyqfce.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B61EEA5.9050306@home.com>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> writes:
> 
> 
>>I'll just chime in to say that as one who uses Python for
>>science/engineering, I would be very unhappy not to be able to define the
>>variables h and H to mean two different things.  Engineers often uses
>>case to distinguish between the function and it's Fourier transform for
>>example.
>>
> 
> How did engineers cope with Fortran?  Fortran has long been the
> preferred language for engineers, after C.S. folks moved on to C and
> C++...
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> 

In the late-eighties through early-nineties, I worked on a program where 
we were restricted to pure-ANSI Fortran 77 - including 6-character 
monocase variable names.  Yes, it was painful, but since a big part of 
what I was doing involved manipulating 4-dimensional arrays of data, and 
since C's support for multidimensional arrays is rather lacking (I think 
the technical term is "sucks"), I'd take Fortran any day.  Even 
something that you'd think C should excel at, namely concatenating 
strings, is much easier in Fortran (using the // operator) than in C 
(quick - write down the exact syntax for strcat() from memory).

These days, I only hack Fortran if I'm using a legacy code, but despite 
its quirks, one shouldn't underestimate just how well it served its 
target audience . . .

--
Kevin Rodgers
"This one goes up to eleven."  --  Nigel Tufnel





From tjreedy at home.com  Tue Jul 17 03:00:12 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:00:12 GMT
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B4FBEA0.D5A6DC8A@engcorp.com> <9ioru22pc9@enews4.newsguy.com> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74>
Message-ID: <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"Arne Leithe" <arne at leithe.spammenot.no> wrote in message
news:Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno at 148.122.208.74...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at home.com> wrote in
> news:fSI47.12086$p7.3693169 at news1.rdc2.pa.home.com:
>
> > [...]
> > As for speed, P(50,6) takes 100 seconds on my machine (5427 partitions)
> > while p6(50) and even p6(70) (26207 partitions) take less that a second
> > to start printing.  P(70,6) would probably take hours to do the same.
> > Computing exactly what you want with nothing wasted is always best.
>
>
> I disagree :-)

My paragraph began "As for speed..." and the last sentence was written with
respect to that stated criterion.  Ignoring constant factors which come
into play  for 'small' problem size,  it is true.

>What's best in the majority of cases is an algorithm that's
> readable, maintainable, extensible etc.

Let's see: I added easy to understand  variables that allow one to apply
the principle he used for the range of the outermost forloop to all the
loops.  It is about as easy to read and much more extensible to larger
sums.  Increasing or decreasing k would be about as trivial with either
version.

>  If speed isn't an issue (and nobody
> said it would be an issue in this case), there would be no reason
> whatsoever to optimise it for speed at the cost of the criterias
mentioned
> above.

If he were to want 7 parts adding to 70, speed would very much be an issue.
Various people have said that Python is nice for developing algorithms, and
speed versus C less an issue than it at first seems, because it is so easy
to explore variations and maybe find a version that is orders of magnitude
faster.  So I developed and published a concrete example that would
illustrate this process.

> In fact, he stated very well what he wanted - the sets of six
> numbers to sum up to 17 (and 20).

For exactly these two small numbers, I could write or type the list in the
order produced
by my version of the nested for-loop algorithm in about the same time
needed to write, debug, and run a Python program.  If that is the limit of
the problem, why have people given multiple solutions, and done so in terms
of general n?

> Quite often, though, a more general solution is required.

So why do you object when I revise an algorith to make it feasible for much
larger n?
...
> What is important to avoid in any case, though, is repeating code where
the
> number of repetitions depend on one of the criterias (as b above). I pity
> such code, it's almost as it's alive and begs to be put it out of its
> misery.

As you already pointed out, Donovan's  'miserable' code solved his specific
problem.  There are many other problems whose obvious solution is a varible
number of nested loops.  If the loops are uniform (as I strove to make them
be), they represent a parameter-specific unrolling of a recursion which can
potentially be rolled back up into a more general recursive version.  In
the present case:

def p6(n):
  k = 6
  res=[]
  remain_a = n
  for a in range (remain_a-(k-1), (remain_a-1)/k,-1):
    remain_b = remain_a - a
    for b in range(min(a,remain_b-(k-2)),(remain_b-1)/(k-1),-1):
      remain_c = remain_b - b
      for c in range(min(b,remain_c-(k-3)),(remain_c-1)/(k-2),-1):
        remain_d = remain_c - c
        for d in range(min(c,remain_d-(k-4)),(remain_d-1)/(k-3),-1):
          remain_e = remain_d-d
          for e in range(min(d,remain_e-(k-5)),(remain_e-1)/(k-4),-1):
            res.append((remain_e-e,e,d,c,b,a))
   return res

becomes, for instance

def part(n0, k0):
  if not 1 <= k0 <= n0: raise ValueError, "k must be in range [1,n]"
  global _part
  result = []
  worklist = [0]*k0
  def _part(n, k, previous, result=result, worklist=worklist):
    global _part
    if k == 1:
      worklist[0] = n
      result.append(tuple(worklist))
    else:
      k1 = k-1
      for p in range(min(previous, n - k1), (n-1)/k, -1):
        worklist[k1] = p
        _part(n-p, k1, p)
  _part(n0, k0, n0)
  return result

which gives an identical list at about 2/3rds the speed, but with the gain
of working for any valid k.

> Anyway, here is a new version of the algorithm I posted before, this time
> speed is considered and you can specify criterium b in the function. (You
> actually specify the maxiumum of slots in the solution - if zeros can be
> part of the solution the rest can be filled with zeros.)
>
> def Bags(res, max_pockets, start = 1):
> if max_pockets == 1: return [[res]]
>     return [[i] + bag for i in range(start, res / 2 + 1) \
>         for bag in Bags(res - i, max_pockets - 1, i)] + [[res]]

Is this supposed to give the same answers as part(res,max_pockets)?  (I am
still running 1.5.2 so I cannot check myself what it does do.)  If so,
neither 'res/2' nor  '+[[res]]' is obviously correct to me.

Terry J. Reedy





From emile at fenx.com  Sun Jul  1 10:57:19 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 07:57:19 -0700
Subject: Odd problem with converting string to Hex?
References: <junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001@typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <9hne18$ehfqp$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

>>> t = ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f')
>>> t[1]
'\000\220\203H\021\017'
>>> mask = "-".join(["%02X"]*len(t[1]))
>>> print mask % tuple(map(ord,list(t[1])))
00-90-83-48-11-0F
>>>

Watch out for the extra 'H' in your data - you skip over it in your desired
result.

HTH,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Benjamin Schollnick" <junkster at rochester.rr.com> wrote in message
news:junkster-AB6FEA.10163501072001 at typhoon1-0.nyroc.rr.com...
> Folks,
>
>    This is odd.... or at least I think it is....
>
>    Using Python v2.1....
>
>    Here's a snippet of the data:
>
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.2', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.6.1', '\x00\x90\x83H\x11\x0f'),
> ('.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2.4', 'RF Upstream Interface')
>
>    I've tried using:
>
>       eval (data[1])
>       hex (data[1])
>       str(data[1])
>
>    What gets returned is:
>
>    Unknown - Mac?  --->    ??H
>             Hex:            Long:
>
>    Which os definetly not what I'm looking for.... I'm attempting to
> decode this in pure hexadecimal...
>
>    I suspect it's due to the "\x" in the string, but I can't pull up the
> documentation, since when I tried I wasn't getting a response from
> python.org.....
>
>    Conceptually I'm trying to output it, similiar to:
>
>       00-90-83-11-0f    Assuming I'm reading the returned data properly.
>
>          - Benjamin




From robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk  Mon Jul 23 18:48:00 2001
From: robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk (Robin Becker)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:48:00 +0100
Subject: re bad leadership
Message-ID: <0+yM4IAgmKX7EwIQ@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>

it doesn't matter what the leadership says is right. The popular vote is
against the stupid float '/' operator.

MDFL you are wrong! Give up gracefully now!
-- 
Robin Becker


From m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk  Mon Jul 23 06:00:39 2001
From: m.1.robinson at herts.ac.uk (Mark Robinson)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 11:00:39 +0100
Subject: emacs python mode
Message-ID: <3B5BF5C7.3070707@herts.ac.uk>

Hey guys,

trivial question I suppose, but it is bugging me, so here goes. I have 
just installed the python.el file (and byte compiled it) and emacs is 
happily switching to python mode when I open a *.py file, but I don't 
get any pretty colors at all. Is there anything I need to be doing, I 
thought that should be automatic?

Blobby



From sholden at holdenweb.com  Mon Jul 16 22:44:21 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 22:44:21 -0400
Subject: Most efficient solution?
References: <mailman.995289809.28477.python-list@python.org> <9iv38i0ppd@enews2.newsguy.com> <mailman.995305828.11815.python-list@python.org> <3B539476.B31A639E@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <MBN47.12493$d4.432121@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3B539476.B31A639E at engcorp.com...
[ ... ]
>
> 3. We certainly talk a lot about "one way to write it",
>    but obviously Python does allow several ways in most
>    cases.  It seems to split roughly between the "most
>    obvious" (probably only for us newcomers) and the
>    map/filter/lambda/list comprehension style which is
>    obviously second nature for some and entirely outside
>    of the experience of others.  This ties back to
>    (1), suggesting that learning more about these builtins
>    is one of the best ways to optimize (working) Python
>    code.

Peter: I believe the politically correct mantra is "one obvious way to do
it".

so-being-a-bear-of-little-brain-that's-the-way-I-usually-do-it-ly y'rs  -
steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From opengeometry at yahoo.ca  Thu Jul  5 13:40:28 2001
From: opengeometry at yahoo.ca (William Park)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 13:40:28 -0400
Subject: Most important text processing examples
In-Reply-To: <3dr8vvqrfl.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>; from akuchlin@mems-exchange.org on Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 12:19:42PM -0400
References: <mailman.994302849.7562.python-list@python.org> <3dr8vvqrfl.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <20010705134028.A1154@node0.opengeometry.ca>

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 12:19:42PM -0400, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> Oh, and if you haven't completed negotiating the contract yet, you
> might want to ensure that the rights revert to you if the book goes
> out of print.  Then you could put the text up on a Web page if that
> happens.

I didn't know this was possible.  What prevents the publisher from
simply holding on the manuscript forever?

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
8 CPUs cluster, (Slackware) Linux, Python, LaTeX, Vim, Mutt, Sc.



From new_name at mit.edu  Sat Jul 14 13:35:21 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 14 Jul 2001 13:35:21 -0400
Subject: Calling functions in a loop
References: <7b9380ca.0107140919.b80cd8@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <etdofqnwh0m.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

After defining the functions, you may be better off defining 

__all__ = [Fn1, Fn2]

Then the code as you have it will work.

If you really want it to work with the names of the functions in
strings, try something like

for Fn_name in __all__: eval(Fn_name)()

HTH.
Alex.


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Tue Jul 24 19:41:54 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:41:54 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
References: <mailman.995839419.19134.python-list@python.org> <cEN67.17775$EP6.4652917@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cp3d7ngazy.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <dzZ67.20235$EP6.5031096@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <cpr8v6ow8o.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9ls1u2.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local>

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Hm, IMO the problem is different.  Python's numerical model *almost*
> embeds the integers in the floats.  (They should've been called reals,
> but that mistake is too insignificant to want to fix. :-)

I'm glad they weren't, because floats do not have the semantics
of reals. More precisely, the class of floats is very different
from the class of reals, and the operations defined on them
differ considerably from the operations of the same names on
the reals.

There's a similar issue with ints/integers, except that Python
ints are better behaved. Generally when they fail to have the
semantics of integers they do so by raising an exception. The
only, errrm, exceptions I know of to this rule are the
shift operators, and it's sort of reasonable to define
those in terms of bit patterns rather than numbers anyway.
Still, I am glad that Python's single-word integral type
is called "int" rather than "integer"; when ints and longs
are unified the result can be called "integer". :-)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc


From Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com  Thu Jul  5 09:54:36 2001
From: Randy.L.Kemp at motorola.com (Kemp Randy-W18971)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:54:36 -0500 
Subject: FTP program works -- now how do I send the directory over? 
Message-ID: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA5208@il93exm04.css.mot.com>

I seem to be getting the listing of what's on my d drive in windows, rather then the binary contents.  Here is what I do (the server id changed to protect the innocent:

------------------------> Step 1 <----------------------------------------------
Execute this program in Windoze

import string, os
import ftplib
import glob
filename = os.path.join("d:", "programsPython", "outdata3.txt")
listname = string.join(os.listdir('d:\programsPython'),',')
print listname
ftp = ftplib.FTP('144.144.144.144') #specify host
ftp.connect() # defaults to port 21, check docs for further options
ftp.login(user=goofy',passwd='elmer',acct='fudd)   # user info
ftp.cwd('/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups')
for filename in glob.glob('d:\programsPython\*'):
    ftp.storbinary("STOR " + filename, open(filename, 'rb'))
ftp.retrlines('LIST')  # list directory contents
ftp.quit()

-----------------> Step 2 <-----------------------------------------------
List the directory contents in Unix

ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> ls
d:\programsPython\CE H2-102000 Usage Mentor1.txt
d:\programsPython\Db_py.py
d:\programsPython\IndataMentor.txt
d:\programsPython\RKListPython.py
d:\programsPython\RKListPython.py.bak
d:\programsPython\debug_bat
d:\programsPython\ftpdata.py
d:\programsPython\ftpdata.py.bak
d:\programsPython\indata.txt
d:\programsPython\indata.txt.bak
d:\programsPython\outdata.Final.txt
d:\programsPython\outdata.txt
d:\programsPython\outdata3.txt
d:\programsPython\output3.txt
d:\programsPython\rkparse.py
d:\programsPython\rkparse.py.bak
d:\programsPython\rkparse1.py
d:\programsPython\rkparse1.py.bak
d:\programsPython\rkparsemetrics.py
d:\programsPython\rkparsemetrics.py.bak
d:\programsPython\test.pdf
d:\programsPython\test.txt
d:\programsPython\testmail.py
ee110:/usr2/ecadtesting/tarbackups> 

-----------------> Problem <--------------------------------------
Why do I get the text d:\programsPython\filename?
How should I change the program to get the actual files sent over?








From sholden at holdenweb.com  Sat Jul 28 22:17:42 2001
From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:17:42 -0400
Subject: proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)
References: <eppstein-03540D.13070222072001@news.service.uci.edu> <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCOECNLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995899647.346.python-list@python.org> <tclolt053o18f8q0ntb7n4aggitdkmeg4h@4ax.com> <Io_67.23543$B7.3779351@ruti.visi.com> <slrn9lp2m5.vp.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <p56plt8q4rs3bgcqbepk61q2r3g0tr2vhe@4ax.com> <slrn9ls3ae.2fm.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <cpitghbq05.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <MWD77.27751$EP6.6983549@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <9jnt9p$qhe$1@newsy.ifm.liu.se> <SYV77.27286$B7.4239335@ruti.visi.com> <cpitgf7itx.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <WIY77.27607$B7.4257794@ruti.visi.com> <cp3d7j75jv.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996192239.4930.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <XkK87.11$jg5.2890@e420r-atl1.usenetserver.com>

"Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com> wrote ...
[ ... ]
>
> Kinda-weird-that-computers-are-so-lousy-at-dealing-with-numbers-ly yrs,
>
Not really. Computers are symbol processors. It's a mistake to think of them
as calculators

at-least-*i*-think-it-is-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/







From tjreedy at home.com  Fri Jul 27 10:20:07 2001
From: tjreedy at home.com (Terry Reedy)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 14:20:07 GMT
Subject: interpreter improvements
References: <5e8bd451.0107190224.7171e61@posting.google.com> <slrn9m0nbf.l0b.quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu> <mailman.996177532.9490.python-list@python.org> <cpd76n5p7q.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <rMe87.33921$EP6.8685507@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com>

"kevin parks" <kp87 at lycos.com> wrote in message
news:5e8bd451.0107270042.691bf6f0 at posting.google.com...
>The Mac is a legit machine, and an affordable one. Lot's of
> folks use them. They should all come with Python Pre-installed :-)

Have Mac Python users ever made a joint proposal to Apple that they do
such (and even support an IDE port)?  Or are they as deaf as M$oft,
and just less successful at getting away with it?

Terry J. Reedy





From nospam at nospam.de  Wed Jul 18 16:44:24 2001
From: nospam at nospam.de (Uwe Hoffmann)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:44:24 +0200
Subject: Python XSLT Processor?
References: <jacobkm-AAFFEC.19314018072001@news.ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <3B55F528.A0FE6181@nospam.de>

Jacob Kaplan-Moss wrote:
> 
> Hey y'all --
> 
> I'm looking for a pure Python XSLT processor (i.e. no C/C++ extensions);
> does anyone have any good pointers?  I know of a few Java ones, so I
> could use a Java XSLT program + Jython, but I'd really prefer to keep
> using CPython if possible.

maybe 4xslt from http://4Suite.org/


From thomas.heller at ion-tof.com  Thu Jul 19 15:19:58 2001
From: thomas.heller at ion-tof.com (Thomas Heller)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:19:58 +0200
Subject: doctest
Message-ID: <9j7bsv$m3g5h$1@ID-59885.news.dfncis.de>

Recently I discovered how incredible useful Tim Peter's
doctest is.

The latest version from Python's CVS tree however does
not run any more under Python 1.5.2.
Is there an uptodate version available which is backward
compatible?

Thomas




From jkraska1 at san.rr.com  Mon Jul  2 12:37:44 2001
From: jkraska1 at san.rr.com (Courageous)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:37:44 GMT
Subject: New PEP: Quality Guidelines For Standard Modules
References: <mailman.994034642.25601.python-list@python.org> <t250ktcev8fp615ab7uanin3cq1rj9ga5j@4ax.com> <mailman.994072742.32112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <iu81kt0lbh9mabltuq6udod51ba9p9hb4l@4ax.com>

>Let us say that you are iterating over the lines in the main loop of a 
>filter, and then, depending on the line read, have to iterate over several 
>other files. The global state prevents you from using the same instance of 
>the fileinput module.

This is inarguably and obviously bad design. The author's choice of
an implicit singleton in this case was a great error and lacked even
small amounts of foresight. The error here, however, was not the global
variable. It was the implicit global singleton attached to contextually-
dependent state.

There are many situations in which global state is appropriately stored
at the module level. sys.__stderr__ for example.

I'm not sure how to improve the language of what it is that you are asking
for, however. How about: "please don't expect the standard library committee
to accept shitty code into the standard library." :-)

C//



From free at greatbabes.gz.ee  Mon Jul 30 06:03:18 2001
From: free at greatbabes.gz.ee (free at greatbabes.gz.ee)
Date: 30 Jul 2001 12:03:18 +0200
Subject: Special Deal This Week Only !!!
Message-ID: <E15RCeb-0001lI-00@mail.python.org>

--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
(This safeguard is not inserted when using the registered version)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
(This safeguard is not inserted when using the registered version)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010730/85fa4c5a/attachment.html>

From grey at despair.dmiyu.org  Wed Jul 18 18:02:37 2001
From: grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:02:37 -0000
Subject: Language change and code breaks
References: <mailman.995378792.16515.python-list@python.org> <cpvgkq1f2b.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>
Message-ID: <slrn9lc1rt.6j0.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:30:27 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>All programming languages and file systems used to be case-insensitive, until
>the designers of Unix and C decided that it was too much work to write and
>use a case-insensitive comparison routine.  It wasn't necessarily intended to
>be better, just easier to implement.  But times have changed, and that's a
>lousy excuse.

    Eh, preference is for case sensitivity.  Besides, I far prefer case
sensitivity with tab completion than case insensitivity without.  :)

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------


From BrianQ at ActiveState.com  Tue Jul 10 20:04:50 2001
From: BrianQ at ActiveState.com (Brian Quinlan)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:04:50 -0700
Subject: making python write to ostreams
In-Reply-To: <3b4b8f3f$0$25434$6e365a64@newsreader02.highway.telekom.at>
Message-ID: <002601c1099d$1b7d5a80$b503a8c0@activestate.ca>

> i cant find a way to make python redirect its output to a
> ostream in my embedded app,
>
> ...wait ostreams are c++, so there is probably _no_ way to
> redirect the output!?
> im doomed
> thx to anyone proving the different!

Actually, doing this is quite straightforward. All you have to do is
create a new Python object type that implements a write() method and
contains the ostream that you want to redirect too. When the object's
write method is called, you simply forward the string to your ostream
instance.  The python code to assign an instance of your type to the
python stdout instance would look like:

import sys
sys.stdout = InstanceOfMyType

Cheers,
Brian




From kens at sightreader.com  Sun Jul 29 19:09:48 2001
From: kens at sightreader.com (Ken Seehof)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:09:48 -0700
Subject: Importing from Another Path
References: <mailman.995997582.18776.python-list@python.org> <3B5DE390.2F35B36A@accessforall.nl> <mailman.996010131.21356.python-list@python.org> <9k1vpt$e2e$1@news.btv.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <006401c11885$b7b69dc0$6501a8c0@pacbell.net>

Peter Mayne <Peter.Mayne at au1.ibm.com> wrote:
> > Ype Kingma wrote:
> >
> > > > sys.path.append("..\\common")
> >
> > Actually I just meant that it wasn't portable between Windows and Linux
> > because I'm using backslashes in the path.
>
> Windows is perfectly happy to accept "/" in a filename path. Try
>
> sys.path.append('../common')
>
> However, this won't help when someone runs the script on an OS that
doesn't
> accept either form.
> <snip/>

Is there any OS that python runs on that doesn't support "/" ?
And ".." ?

Are there any major new operating systems currently in development that
are silly enough not to support these?

- Ken





From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Wed Jul 18 01:55:49 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:55:49 GMT
Subject: pythonscript & asp
References: <mailman.995417262.3263.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B552529.5030604@ActiveState.com>

Cosico, Alexander wrote:

> Hi to all, 
> 
> I'm quite new to Python. I would like to know if it's possible 
> to run Python (Pythonscript?) within active server pages? 
> We're using Win2k/IIS 5.0 for intranet at work. What do I need 
> to install and configure on our web server to make this work? 
> Could anyone point me in the right direction to some references? 
> Thanks for any info. 

If you install ActivePython from www.activestate.com, it will configure 
everything you need for ASP.  Looking at the COM readme will show some 
Active Scripting examples.

Mark.



From fredrik at pythonware.com  Fri Jul  6 16:34:17 2001
From: fredrik at pythonware.com (Fredrik Lundh)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 20:34:17 GMT
Subject: Python: Earth to Edward Part II
References: <5174eed0.0107060820.ff90805@posting.google.com> <3dg0caqanw.fsf@ute.cnri.reston.va.us>
Message-ID: <dhp17.8486$e5.1107727@newsb.telia.net>

Andrew Kuchling wrote:

> If you type "python database" into Google, the second link you get is
> to http://www.python.org/topics/database/; the "Modules" page has
> links to DB/2 and ODBC modules for Python.

do you really think he reads follow-up posts, especially if
they don't support his view?

</F>




From skip at pobox.com  Fri Jul  6 09:54:44 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 08:54:44 -0500
Subject: pb with xmlrpclib
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
References: <slrn9kbfd5.42n.alf@leo.logilab.fr>
Message-ID: <15173.49956.612553.189434@beluga.mojam.com>

    Alexandre> If I use the default server, the following call causes an
    Alexandre> error on the server:

    ... print server.echo('\231')

    Alexandre> Is this a bug in xmlrpc or in the underlying xmllib ?

Neither, I think.  The default encoding for XML is utf-8, not latin-1.  In
addition, XMLRPC only supports ASCII.  Try

    server.echo('a')

instead.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
(847)971-7098



From aahz at panix.com  Wed Jul  4 19:28:37 2001
From: aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch)
Date: 4 Jul 2001 16:28:37 -0700
Subject: Eiffel better than Python ?
References: <f20ea932.0107030100.6c740683@posting.google.com> <slrn9k5efg.ru.tim@vegeta.ath.cx> <9huenl$49q$1@panix3.panix.com> <slrn9k6vbl.1rv.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <9i08r5$eq3$1@panix2.panix.com>

In article <slrn9k6vbl.1rv.tim at vegeta.ath.cx>,
Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
>
>Also, I guess I'm a bit defensive, as so many here _do_ make little
>snide comments about Perl and such.

I do -- feel free to take me to task when I do make such comments, but
not otherwise.
-- 
                      --- Aahz  <*>  (Copyright 2001 by aahz at pobox.com)

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6                 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista   

"I'm not tense, i'm just terribly, terribly alert"  --unknown


From sill at optonline.net  Tue Jul 24 18:17:03 2001
From: sill at optonline.net (Rainy)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:17:03 GMT
Subject: no traceback??
References: <slrn9lmd1p.1jk.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <6BL67.17641$EP6.4530210@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <slrn9lnc42.1qq.sill@sill.silmarill.org> <slrn9lnmfa.nvk.tim@vegeta.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <slrn9lrstg.8eu.sill@sill.silmarill.org>

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:49:12 GMT, Tim Hammerquist <tim at vegeta.ath.cx> wrote:
> Me parece que Rainy <sill at optonline.net> dijo:
>> Well, I'm asking in a general way, i.e. why could there be no traceback or
>> error? This is not right. I mean, if a program runs into a problem, it should
>> print some sort of feedback, at worst, a segfault? I haven't run into cases
>> like this before when *NOTHING* is printed. In general, what sort of errors
>> just quit silently?
> 
> I would guess that it _is_ raising an exception, but it's caught at some
> point up in the call chain by an 'except: pass' clause.  What happens

Nope, I looked for that..

> right before the invisible error?  What is it doing at that point?

I believe it was caused by termios.SOMETHING access which is good for
2.1 but in 2.0 it should be TERMIOS.SOMETHING. I still don't understand
why it didn't give any error but I fixed that..

> 


-- 
Cymbaline: intelligent learning mp3 player - python, linux, console.
get it at: http://silmarill.org/cymbaline


From m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it  Wed Jul 18 09:40:19 2001
From: m.mariani at imola.nettuno.it (Marco Mariani)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:40:19 +0200
Subject: How to set a timeout?
In-Reply-To: <9j446n$lom9k$1@fu-berlin.de>
Message-ID: <20010718154019.A6388@zoidberg>

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 03:51:51PM +0200, Matthias Huening wrote:

> I have a function like this:
> 
> -----
> def read_pages(urllist):
>     res = {}
>     for x in urllist:
>         try:
>             res[x] = urllib.urlopen(x).read()
>         except:
>             pass
>     return(res)
> -----
> 
> I now want the following behaviour: try to catch the webpage for 3 seconds;
> if it takes longer just skip this one and move on to the next. How can I
> achieve this?


>From one of my sources:



from signal import *


def timeout(signum, frame):
	raise IOError, "Timeout!"

	def alarm_on(self):
		signal(SIGALRM, timeout)
		alarm(1)

	def alarm_off(self):
		alarm(0)




[...]
	self.alarm_on()
	try:
		self.fd = os.open('/dev/'+self.devname, os.O_RDWR | os.O_NOCTTY)
	except:
		self.fd = -1
	self.alarm_off()
[...]





From emile at fenx.com  Thu Jul 12 11:59:18 2001
From: emile at fenx.com (Emile van Sebille)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:59:18 -0700
Subject: Can anyone offer a suggestion?
References: <9ikgpq$j1cff$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <9ikhp6$jivuc$1@ID-11957.news.dfncis.de>

I found it in the source (I think), in stringobject.c there's a formatfloat
routine that looks like it requires a float.  If this is the right routine,
I'm still stumped.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com



From eppstein at ics.uci.edu  Mon Jul 23 13:01:00 2001
From: eppstein at ics.uci.edu (David Eppstein)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:01:00 -0700
Subject: Partition Problem
References: <tku1tt92ac2g8e@corp.supernews.co.uk> <3B5042C2.F821D916@engcorp.com> <9itb14$2oi$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <Xns90E0B338278B2arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <9iv5e9$bru$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk> <fSI47.12086$p7.3693169@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1337E8B341arneleitheno@148.122.208.74> <0oR47.12485$p7.4220508@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <Xns90E1CD0C46990arneleitheno@148.122.208.67> <Usa57.127$EP6.29198@news1.rdc2.pa.home.com> <tlavt7jeqqt7b3@corp.supernews.co.uk> <ac677656.0107201451.6f5e120d@posting.google.com> <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <eppstein-E10BDA.10010023072001@news.service.uci.edu>

In article <Xns90E765BFABFB7duncanrcpcouk at 127.0.0.1>,
 Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> wrote:

> def permute(seq):
>     if len(seq)==1:
>         yield seq
>         return
> 
>     for i in range(len(seq)):
>         for perm in permute(seq[:i] + seq[i+1:]):
>             yield seq[i:i+1] + perm

Nice, but shouldn't the len(seq)==1 test actually be <=1?
The empty sequence has one permutation, not zero.
-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/


From joonas at olen.to  Sat Jul  7 17:16:53 2001
From: joonas at olen.to (Joonas Paalasmaa)
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 00:16:53 +0300
Subject: "has" Operator
References: <mailman.994539552.27112.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3B477C45.40B6DE33@olen.to>

Paul Sidorsky wrote:
> 
> I was thinking that Python might benefit from a "has" operator that
> would allow you to type something like this:
> 
> if myobject has someattribute:
>     foo()
> else:
>     bar()
> 
> This would be roughly equivalent to:
> 
> try:
>     uselessvar = myobject.someattribute
> execpt AttributeError:
>     bar()    # myobject does not have someattribute
> else:
>     foo()    # myobject has someattribute
> 
> ...but (IMO) the operator version would be much nicer and more
> readable.  (This idea came about when I actually tried to type in the
> former!  Python's syntax is so clean that it seemed to be a natural
> extension.)
> 
> The Inform interactive-fiction language provides "has" and "hasnt"
> operators that do something similar so this is not without precendent.
> But for Python, it admittedly may be nothing more than syntactic sugar.
> What does everyone else think?

Use builtin function hasattr.

>>> import sys
>>> hasattr(sys,"stin")
0
>>> hasattr(sys,"stdin")
1
>>>


From thomas at gatsoft.no  Mon Jul 16 07:38:18 2001
From: thomas at gatsoft.no (Thomas Weholt)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 11:38:18 GMT
Subject: Discovering custom servers over internet/Broadcasting/P2P
Message-ID: <KmA47.339$gEg.170821632@news.telia.no>

Hi,

I want to write custom web-server which can respond to broadcasts over the
internet. The point is that I want to be able to start a server which
discovers other servers running on the internet and provides a list of
running servers.

This is sort of like every P2P solution available. I do not want to rely on
a central server to obtain info on running servers.

I'm not great at network-programming, rather a newbie, but any hints or
clues appreciated.

Thomas




From rnd at onego.ru  Mon Jul  9 10:02:38 2001
From: rnd at onego.ru (Roman Suzi)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 18:02:38 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: license suggestions?
In-Reply-To: <slrn9kjb2u.ev8.philh@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.BCL.0107091754210.3884-100000@suzi.com.onego.ru>

On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, phil hunt wrote:

> >That is where you are wrong. If someone either A) uses my code in a GPL
> >app the entire app is GPL'ed *including* my code.
> 
> No, your code, to the extent that it is distinct, eg in separate files,
> is still licenced under your license.
> 
> >Communism \Com"mu*nism\, n. [F. communisme, fr. commun common.]
> >     A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life;
> >     specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of
> >     inequalities in the possession of property, as by
> >     distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all
> >     wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.
> >
> >communism
> >       n 1: a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership
> >       2: a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless
> >          society
> >
> >That is the GPL to the letter. I dont care what smoke and mirrors you try
> >to BS it with.

It also science to the letter. And arts. And many other things.

I keep wondering why people mix together free speach with forced
collectivistic political system?! You are _free_ to use GPL or non-GPL for
your program. You may think that you pay for using GPL-ed software by
letting your code to GPL pool. It's economy (and ecology) too. If
anything, GPL and it's community is gift-society, not communism. You give
you work as a gift, other give you something you need. I see nothing wrong
with it.

And also, what is different between a program and mathematical formula?

> So, all people who use the GPL are communists? Are we all also
> "Un-American", a "Cancer", and "like Pac-Man" too?

I think I saw this somewhere... mmmm... www.microsoft.com?

Sincerely yours, Roman A.Suzi
-- 
 - Petrozavodsk - Karelia - Russia - mailto:rnd at onego.ru -
 




From claird at starbase.neosoft.com  Tue Jul 31 14:02:06 2001
From: claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 13:02:06 -0500
Subject: Is Python a Good Choice for Web Programming?
References: <9k6osc$jgp$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <D7CC7DDC1C6DC3E3.67F34DC6A6FD9521.CA4FFF4ABE690317@lp.airnews.net>

In article <9k6osc$jgp$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net>,
tszeto <tszeto at mindspring.com> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I don't know Python, but I know a little Java (little more than a years
>worth working with Servlets and JSP).
>
>How is Python compared to Servlets and JSP? The language looks very nice,
>but I'm hesitating because I don't see many jobs for Python and even less
>for Zope.
>
>Is is better to use Zope or just go with cgi/mod_python?
			.
			.
			.
What's the goal?  Is it to increase your r?sum? appeal,
accomplish a particular task, make new friends, ...?

I use *both* Zope and Python for CGI.  There are good reasons
for mod_python, too; 'depends on where you're headed.

I find Python-based Web development entirely more pleasant
than the comparable work with JSP and servlets.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html


From new_name at mit.edu  Tue Jul 31 15:29:05 2001
From: new_name at mit.edu (Alex)
Date: 31 Jul 2001 15:29:05 -0400
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <etd7kwonbi6.fsf@lola-granola.mit.edu>

FWIW, the general index has a reference to sleep that would have pointed
you the right way.  python.org seems to still be down, but there's a
copy at 

http://puffin.lcs:8080/python/lib/genindex.html

you can look at.

HTH
Alex.


From Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com  Mon Jul 23 16:15:34 2001
From: Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com (Gareth McCaughan)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:15:34 +0100
Subject: PEP0238 lament
In-Reply-To: <mailman.995829097.21466.python-list@python.org>
References: <LNBBLJKPBEHFEDALKOLCIECDLAAA.tim.one@home.com> <mailman.995829097.21466.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <E15Om74-0000IO-00@g.local>

> Here is one that is easier to teach, if you just reverse the order
> of teaching calculus and first-order logic and basic set theory.
> 
> A function is continuous at c if, when embedding the world of Reals
> into a saturated model (or, say, 2^{Beth_omega} saturated, if you
> don't want to get into subtle assumptions), for every infinitesimal x, 
> f(c+x)-f(c) is an infintesimal.

Ahhhh, it's good to see another right-thinking person on c.l.py ...
Perhaps if Christian Tismer finds that Stackless is too easy he might
be persuaded to maintain Nonstandard Python. :-)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc



From juergen.erhard at gmx.net  Thu Jul 26 04:04:02 2001
From: juergen.erhard at gmx.net (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22J=FCrgen_A=2E_Erhard=22?=)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:04:02 +0200
Subject: A way to accommodate laguage changes
In-Reply-To: <ow9rLvAdzUX7EwL0@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> (message from Robin
	Becker on Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:24:29 +0100)
References: <3B5CB83B.F3B7D51@home.net> <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8@Lugoj.Com> <ow9rLvAdzUX7EwL0@jessikat.fsnet.co.uk>
Message-ID: <26072001.1@wanderer.local.jae.dyndns.org>

>>>>> "Robin" == Robin Becker <robin at jessikat.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

    Robin> In article <3B5CC345.D18FEEE8 at Lugoj.Com>, James Logajan
    Robin> <JamesL at Lugoj.Com> writes
    Robin> ...
    >> 
    >> I effectively stopped considering Python for new projects as of last night.
    >> I can't read Guido's mind, I don't know what other code-breaking changes he
    >> might be considering. I'm not sure he even knows. Where else is he going to
    >> be convinced that "evil" lies in the language and needs to be exorcised?

    Robin> I'm afraid that's the real problem that became apparent
    Robin> during this discussion. All the fury and arguments mean
    Robin> nothing when the mdfl has decided to change the
    Robin> language. The PEP process is a rubber stamping mechanism
    Robin> for the great leader's diktat.

Nope.  The "great leader's diktat" makes a PEP reality.  First,
there's a PEP (most of the time), and when Guido accepts it, it goes
in.

Remember, whether you think of him as MDFL or BDFL, he's still the
DFL.

Bye, J

-- 
 J?rgen A. Erhard  (juergen.erhard at gmx.net, jae at users.sourceforge.net)
     MARS: http://members.tripod.com/Juergen_Erhard/mars_index.html
    "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
 temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- B. Franklin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 248 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010726/652c218a/attachment.sig>

From danielnuriyev at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  5 05:35:55 2001
From: danielnuriyev at yahoo.com (Daniel Nuriyev)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 02:35:55 -0700
Subject: pausing a thread
Message-ID: <3d8d3c0.0107050135.ff84ead@posting.google.com>

Hello
This is a Java programmer's question
How do you say:
class QQQ extends Thread{
    public void run(){
        ...
        sleep(ms);
    }
}
in Python? Thank you all.


From root at rainerdeyke.com  Sun Jul  1 18:08:31 2001
From: root at rainerdeyke.com (Rainer Deyke)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 22:08:31 GMT
Subject: Augmented Assignement (was: Re: PEP scepticism)
References: <mailman.993952381.32699.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <zbN%6.415855$oc7.58414702@news2.rdc2.tx.home.com>

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.993952381.32699.python-list at python.org...
> As usual in this debate, the participants aren't *themselves* confused
about
> it, they're worried about people much feebler than they are.  In this
> particular case, don't be so sure that isn't an empty set <wink>.

You misunderstand my position.  I am only concerned about myself.  Newbies
mean nothing to me, maintainers mean nothing to me, and I'll happily use
code like "([a] or [b] and [c])[0]".  I'm worried about conceptual overhead
and correctness.

Conceptual overhead: I can learn simple things and I can learn complex
things, but I've found that I am more productive when using simple and
flexible tools than I am when working with complex tools.  This is one of
the reasons why I prefer Python over C++.

Correctness: Consider the following function:

def f(x):
  x += (1, 2, 3)
  print x

This function is just plain incorrect.  If I want a function that mutates
its argument, it should not accept immutable objects.  If I want a function
that does not mutate its argument, the above is simply incorrect.  There is
no conceivable case where I would want a function that mutates or does not
mutate its object based on the mutability of the object.

In fact, it is quite possible that the function above fails to mutate a
mutable argument if the type/class of the argument was not written to
support augmented assignment.  Once this oversight is corrected, my
function's semantics change and my program breaks.


--
Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
"In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor




From nhodgson at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jul  3 09:41:20 2001
From: nhodgson at bigpond.net.au (Neil Hodgson)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 13:41:20 GMT
Subject: Python -- Use with both COM & Java?
References: <Jpc07.289$GI4.22690@typhoon.mn.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <4Yj07.179500$ff.1396834@news-server.bigpond.net.au>

Howard Dunlavy:

> This question may be way off base, but here goes anyway...
>
> Would it be possible to maintain one set of Python code that would run in
> both a Microsoft COM environment and a Java environment -- both natively?

   You will probably have to write some envelopes around the shared
component to interface with the environment but you should be able to use
Python to build components that are otherwise portable between the two.

   Neil





From bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca  Mon Jul 30 03:22:30 2001
From: bsass at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca (Bruce Sass)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:22:30 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: XML for meta-information (was Re: Deposing Dictators)
In-Reply-To: <3B639329.65EE0546@engcorp.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107291300430.16003-100000@bms>

"Steve Horne" <sh at ttsoftware.co.uk> wrote:
```
A lot of the ideas turn out not to be for a programming language as
such at all. Rather, it combines the ideas of literate programming
with a kind of replacement for make. An XML notation would allow
source code in a range of languages to be packaged in a linked set of
XML files with documentation, detailed specification of the build
process and explicit requirements for the run-time and build-time
environment. It would allow you to specify, for instance, that the
source code for this C++ module contains a constant structure derived
according to xxx principles (for the documentation) and can be
generated by running yyy script in zzz version of Python (or
whatever).
```

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Peter Hansen wrote:
> Dirck Blaskey wrote:
> > Unless you have compelling reasons for using XML, I would suggest
> > the alternative of using Python itself as the meta-language.
<...>
> > XML is a bit hard on the eyes (quite unlike Python).
>
> Well, that might be more a condemnation of the tool being used
> to view the XML than of XML itself.  XML, while designed to be
> easy to edit in text editors, was not designed specifically to
> be "easy on the eyes".  The designers would likely have said that
> it is not XML's job to specify a presentation format for itself.
> XML is content, end of story.
<...messed with the order...>
> I think there are always compelling reasons for using XML.  XML
> is not code -- it's data.  Python is for expressing algorithms
> 'n such.  XML is perfect (well, maybe not quite) for meta-
> information, or at least as perfect as we've come up with to date.

That is correct: XML is perfect for this kind of thing, but the
dependency on a specific set of tools, because it is not "easy on the
eyes", makes it unsuitable as the _only_ source format for something
like this (which tends to get frequent inspection by sets of eyes).


> I like Steve's idea above, although it sounds like it might
> be a little "monolithic" if one didn't take care to keep the
> pieces separate.  Of course with XLink there's no reason the
> pieces of information relating to a single module all have
> to be in the same physical file.

Ya, requiring separate files would be a mistake though.

> I've been thinking for a while (as I'm sure many have) that the
> current use of simple text files for source code is remarkably
> primitive compared to the overall state of computing.  It seems
> like it's time to turn things "inside out", and put source inside
> XML files as merely one part of the picture.  Build instructions
> for "make" or "pyscons" tools would be kept inside.  Specifications,
> test cases, etc, would also be available in nicely organized
> packaging.

I've been playing around with this stuff a bit (LP view)...
Using LP techniques you end up putting all the meta information in
"program" chunks, and have part of your build procedure collect
whatever data it needs from them (via naming conventions).  Generating
XML could be easy, because (noweb notation) "<<label>>=\n...\n@" is
the same as "<label>...</label>".

The thing is...

<<label>>=
  <<referred-to-label>>
@

...is not the same as...

<label><referred-to-label></referred-to-label></label>

...and I'm not sure of the relationship between them.

At first glance I'm inclined to think that XML is too low level a view
for everyday use, and that anything in XML can be represented with LP
(after all, on some level, XML is just blobs of text in a file, LP
just takes those blobs and surrounds them with documentation).

My main concern when I hear, `lets's use XML', at the start of a
project... Is there any danger in defining something in terms of a
DTD, as opposed to generating a DTD from an abstract definition?

I suppose an analogy could be draw between this situation and doing
web pages... would doing a programming project in terms of an XML DTD
be the same mistake as doing your web project's pages in straight
(X)HTML?


> Now we have only text editors, which grab an entire file and
> present a simplistic line-oriented view of it, possibly knowing
> enough about the content (as described by the file extension:
> how primitive!) to do something useful with it other than just
> display it.
>
> In the future, structured editors would be able to work not
> only with the source content, but other kinds of information
> contained in the same file.  If they didn't understand the
> information, they would ignore but preserve it (as XML tools
> should do).

I hope your prediction is accurate.

When I first started thinking about this subject (the whole
project-in-a-document idea, as I see it) I considered starting with
defining a "project", then using tools to work with the definition...
but found it was easier to create a view of the project at the lowest
level of representation I wanted (plain text) and use existing tools
as much as possible to do the pretty printing and

	text based source file  <--->  installed software package

conversion.  I've gone as far as ...file --> working software
(stopped short of packaging it, for hack vs. do it right, reasons)
using LyX[1] with noweb[2] and a coded build procedure[3].

The code is bash, but could just as well have been make based, and I
would probably really do it in Python[4], or some combination of
techniques.

I guess what I'm beating around the bush about is that XML should be
seen as just one view of a "project", and the main view should be
based on something easily translatable to and from other common
representations (XML?)  e.g., I adopted a file based view from the
perspective of a source package; the LP tools provide a split between
the documentation/code and translation to/from files, custom tools are
needed to make sense of the translation, standard tools can be used to
manipulate the files (build, etc.).

anyways, that's my view.


<aside>
If only LyX's Scrap environment could do syntax highlighting,
and provided more than just "build" and "print" functions...

Xemacs + LyX anyone?
</aside>


- Bruce

[1] http://www.lyx.org/
[2] http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nr/noweb/
[3] http://home.edmc.net/~bsass/mkfd.lyx
[4] ...just as suggested by Dirck Blaskey.  I like the look of literal
dicts, lists, etc. better than XML; and using dicts with LP is a
natural.




From pehr at alum.mit.edu  Fri Jul 20 01:34:01 2001
From: pehr at alum.mit.edu (pehr anderson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 05:34:01 GMT
Subject: Problem with ioctl call
References: <3b559471.1322770038@tid>
Message-ID: <3B57C2D2.60C8F4F2@alum.mit.edu>

Dear Isaac, 

After spending an hour pawing through previous python serial drivers
I haven't found any that "peek" how many unread received bytes,  
rather than simply reading the bytes, with a non-blocking call,
and seeing how many you got.
Can I ask why you are needing to peek without reading?
Please forgive me if you have already answered this in a previous post.

I have included the Mail after my message.
Other interesting pages are listed below.
You have probably already mined this similar project for ideas,
but I included them for anyone else who'd like to reference the
previous work and help you get this fixed.

http://dbforums.com/t61191/s34ae7b096d9b79a383f028f83165cc31.html

xio -- cross platform serial IO for python
xio is a cross platform python module for serial IO. It is currently
implemented for Win32 and POSIX systems, under the native Win API and
the termios interface, respectively.
http://ecl.embedded.cl/xio

I would be very excited to see cross-platform device code included 
in the standard python distributions. 

	-pehr



http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2001-January/026295.html
serial i/o under linux?
Grant Edwards grante at visi.com
Tue, 23 Jan 2001 15:47:25 GMT

    * Previous message: serial i/o under linux?
    * Next message: How do I know all thrown exceptions of a function?
    * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

In article <94igau$h6i$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, henry_crun3583 at my-deja.com
wrote:

>Can anyone give an example of simple serial port ops under linux?

I wrapped it up in the simplest way I could at

  ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/grante/python/PosixSerial.py

There is no documentation other than example usage in a dumb
little GTK based terminal emulator:

  ftp://ftp.visi.com/users/grante/python/lcom.py

>ie I want to write a string, and readlines until done or timeout....

You can do the timout using select or by using the serial
driver timout funcitonality (man termios).

-- 
Grant Edwards           grante             Yow!  Why don't you
                          at               ever enter and CONTESTS,
                       visi.com            Marvin?? Don't you know
                                           your own ZIPCODE?




Isaac Barona wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I am trying to do a multi-platform serial port library in python
> (linux and win95 at the moment) that I hope to release next week.
> 
> In linux, I get the following error when using an ioctl call to get
> then number of bytes waiting to be read:
> 
> >>> tty.inWaiting()
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "SerialPort_linux.py", line 179, in inWaiting
>     n=fcntl.ioctl(self.__handle, TERMIOS.TIOCINQ)
> IOError: [Errno 14] Bad address
> 
> Any help???
> 
> This happend with python 2.0.1 and python 1.5.2 over linux 2.0.34.


From stevenc at engineer.com  Thu Jul  5 12:00:45 2001
From: stevenc at engineer.com (Steven Cummings)
Date: 5 Jul 2001 09:00:45 -0700
Subject: i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field...
References: <9htlpd$ki$1@plutonium.btinternet.com> <3B42E57D.B9D11046@ccsr.cam.ac.uk> <9i05or$fl5$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <e06305fa.0107050800.7ff4cd77@posting.google.com>

"G. Willoughby" <thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com> wrote in message news:<9i05or$fl5$1 at plutonium.btinternet.com>...
> Yes thats it! if i shift the grid statement to a new line, all is ok,
> 
> ta,
> 
> Gary.

For future reference, this is because the grid, pack, and place
methods don't return the widget itself (in fact they return None).
This is why you need the widget creation and grid-placement on two
separate lines. You typically only call grid, pack, or place on the
same line as construction when you don't keep a reference to the
widget as is common with labels:

from Tkinter import *
root = Tk()
...
...
Label(root, text="I'm a label!").pack(side=LEFT)

Hope this helps more generally.

/S


From heikowu at ceosg.de  Tue Jul  3 20:28:09 2001
From: heikowu at ceosg.de (Heiko Wundram)
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 02:28:09 +0200
Subject: Kevin Dahlhausen' Gallery module.
References: <12f02d51.0107030550.7804a569@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9htnqm$gtk$05$1@news.t-online.com>

Simon Brunning wrote on 3 Jul 2001 06:50:34 -0700:

> I tried to grab a copy of this, via Parnassus, but the target site
> seems to be down. Anyone know where I can get this module, or have a
> copy of it that they can send me?

Want to use mine? ;) I'm currently working on a project called Photoman, 
that creates a gallery of pictures in JPG format. Still working on it, 
though... ;)

Anyway, if you're interested, _mail_ me!

Yours,

        Heiko W.


From ullrich at math.okstate.edu  Tue Jul 10 09:54:47 2001
From: ullrich at math.okstate.edu (David C. Ullrich)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 13:54:47 GMT
Subject: Language Shootout
References: <mailman.994742356.29669.python-list@python.org>
Message-ID: <3b4b04fb.1257683@nntp.sprynet.com>

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:18:16 -0400, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:

>[Bengt Richter]
>> ...
>> I just did a python recursive fib(100000) in
>> just over 15 seconds, including startup and
>> printing to screen, by my watch. (Not a typo,
>> that was 100k). Of course, it might not be the
>> usual recursive solution (see below)  ;-)
>> ...
>> It's a close translation of a scheme version I came
>> up with about five years ago.  Dave Ulrich may remember.
>> He pointed out that the next to last version wasn't
>> doing what I thought. So he helped nudge it into being.
>> Never did establish what wheel I was reinventing, but
>> apparently there is something related.
>
>Cute!  For "something related", see Knuth section 4.6.3 exercise 26.
>
>Apart from tricks specific to Fibonacci numbers, a general "good thing to
>know" is that an order-N linear recurrence can be viewed as mapping
>N-vectors to N-vectors via multiplication by a fixed NxN matrix M.  N==2 in
>this case, and if a,b,c are consecutive Fibonacci numbers then
>
>    [b c] = [a b] * M
>
>where "*" is matmult and M is
>
>    0 1
>    1 1
>
>That's why your program wound up with expressions that look a lot like
>2-term dot products:  they are <wink>!  Moving ahead k steps is essentially
>equivalent to computing M**k, and that can be done in "the usual" way via
>O(log(k)) 2x2 matmults.  This has practical application in, e.g., many kinds
>of recurrence-based random-number generators, for "skipping ahead" a huge
>number of terms very quickly.

Yup. Many years ago one of my favorite applications in linear algebra
was showing the kids how to compute M**k here by first diagonalizing
M. A smaller number of years ago I realized how wrong that was, from
a computational standpoint. Never got a chance to tell the kids
I'd lied - probably they're all lurking here so now it's ok.

(Took a minute to find fib.py just now, because it was filed 
under "MatrixTypes". I calculate fib(100000) in 1.7 
seconds this way; for comparison, str(fib(100000)) takes 
8.0 seconds.)



David C. Ullrich
**********************************
About this published paper that has to do with some agreements with some of the 
things that I say, I heard about it at least a couple months ago, although it might 
have been within the last two months. (Ross Finlayson, sci.math 7-6-01)


From rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl  Fri Jul 20 14:41:05 2001
From: rcameszREMOVETHIS at dds.removethistoo.nl (Robert Amesz)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 18:41:05 GMT
Subject: Conway's Life
References: <3B57AF54.F909FD36@.com> <s9R57.510752$eK2.107335359@news4.rdc1.on.home.com>
Message-ID: <Xns90E4D163C94B1rcamesz@127.0.0.1>

Nick Perkins wrote:

> 
> "Doug Newhouse" <n at .com> wrote in message
> news:3B57AF54.F909FD36 at .com... ..
>> I should be able to figure out the algorithms and stuff, it's just
>> that I have no idea how to do graphics....
> ..
> 
> WxPython is a little faster, more windows-looking, has more
> sophisticated building blocks, but is a bit harder to program in
> python, for a beginner. http://www.wxpython.org/

Also, wxWindows (the C++ library on top of which wxPython is built) has 
Life as one of its demo apps. Provided you know some C++ you could use 
that as a basis for your program. But even if you start from scratch it 
shouldn't be too hard: it's just a matter of adding a paint event 
handler to a canvas or frame in which you blit some bitmaps to the 
screen.

Sounds like a nice learning project. Have fun.


Robert Amesz


From phd at phd.fep.ru  Tue Jul  3 09:34:04 2001
From: phd at phd.fep.ru (Oleg Broytmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 17:34:04 +0400 (MSD)
Subject: FTP client module
In-Reply-To: <E566B020833BD311B6610008C791A39705CA51DE@il93exm04.css.mot.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0107031732570.30661-100000@phd.fep.ru>

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Kemp Randy-W18971 wrote:
> Does Python have an FTP client module, like FTP::Net, which is part of

   Yes.

> libnet on www.cpan.com for Perl?  If so, is it part of the core Python

   Yes.

> package, or do I have to download it?

   It is ftplib.py. Search Google for many examples of usage.

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




From chrishbarker at home.net  Wed Jul 11 19:01:47 2001
From: chrishbarker at home.net (Chris Barker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 16:01:47 -0700
Subject: Tuple Semantics - Rationale'?
References: <3B4CA0A8.20B53230@tundraware.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CDADB.A847E88B@home.net>

Tim Daneliuk wrote:

> From what I've read, to force the data structure to be maintained correctly,
> I have to add a trailing comma to the single arg pair like this:
> 
>       )
>        (name-n, descrip-n),
>        ( (argA-1, argB-1), )
>       ),

That's right

> And that works fine.  But *why* is the trailing comma designed into the
> language semantics this way.  I've been scratching my head and cannot come
> up with a rationale'.  It seems to me that the explicit use of the parens
> should be telling python that I want the second entry in each data
> structure to be a *tuple* of 0 or more tuples.

because parens are used for other kinds of groupings as well. Would
(a*b) be a single value or a one-tuple? It's unfortunate, but there are
only so many kinds of brackets on a keyboard.

> Supposed I did want 0 argument pairs in that tuple, but I wanted to prepare
> the way for adding some later.  Would I use:
> 
>         (()), (), ((,)) ???

tuples are immutable, so you can't add anything later anyway. Perhaps
you'd be better off with lists here.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.                                                           
ChrisHBarker at home.net                 ---           ---           ---
http://members.home.net/barkerlohmann ---@@       -----@@       -----@@
                                   ------@@@     ------@@@     ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling                ------   @    ------   @   ------   @
Water Resources Engineering       -------      ---------     --------    
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From JamesL at Lugoj.Com  Wed Jul 11 20:28:44 2001
From: JamesL at Lugoj.Com (James Logajan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:28:44 -0700
Subject: Help With filter().
References: <XA537.678643$166.13965187@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CEF3C.D664D82A@Lugoj.Com>

EricIDLE wrote:
> 
> What does filter do? I don't understand when I read it other places.

  newlist = filter(somefunc, somelist)
#### is roughly the same as doing:
  newlist = []
  for entry in somelist:
      if somefunc(entry):
          newlist.append(entry)
####

So the newlist will have only those entries for which somefunc returns a
true value. Note that if you do:
  newlist = filter(None, somelist)
#### this is roughly the same as:
  newlist = []
  for entry in somelist:
      if entry:   # Notice change here.
          newlist.append(entry)
####

Note that if somelist is a string or tuple, then newlist will be a string or
tuple.


From hnowak at cuci.nl  Tue Jul 31 10:28:40 2001
From: hnowak at cuci.nl (Hans Nowak)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:28:40 +0200
Subject: Static class members ?
Message-ID: <3B67A306@twigger.nl>

>===== Original Message From tripie at cpan.org (Tomas Styblo) =====
>"""
>Static class members ?
>
>Hello. I've found no way to properly create static data members in
>Python classes.
>By static members I mean data that are shared by all instances of a
>class.
>A textbook example of usage of static data is a counter of all
>instances of said class.
>I tried the following:
>"""
>
># Beginning of a module.
>
>class Parent:
>
>    INSTANCES = 0
>
>    def __init__():
>        Parent.INSTANCES = Parent.INSTANCES + 1
>
>    def get_INSTANCES():
>        return Parent.INSTANCES
>
>
>""" That works OK. Problems come when I derive a new class from this
>Parent.
>    Inherited methods in the derived class then reference the static
>data in
>    Parent. This is not what I expect and need.

Maybe you want something like this?

#---begin code

class Parent:
    counter = 0
    def __init__(self):
        self.__class__.counter += 1
    def getcounter(self):
        return self.__class__.counter

class Child(Parent):
    counter = 0 # set a new counter for this class, so it won't
                # use Parent's counter

# test it...
p1 = Parent()
p2 = Parent()
print p2.getcounter()

c1 = Child()
print c1.getcounter()   # 1, not 3

#---end code

HTH,

--Hans Nowak




From XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk  Wed Jul  4 05:44:29 2001
From: XQ.Xia at ccsr.cam.ac.uk (XiaoQin Xia)
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 10:44:29 +0100
Subject: i'm trying to get user input from a Tkinter Entry field...
References: <9htlpd$ki$1@plutonium.btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <3B42E57D.B9D11046@ccsr.cam.ac.uk>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20010704/42afc5bd/attachment.html>

From thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com  Wed Jul 25 15:10:51 2001
From: thecalm at NOSPAM.btinternet.com (G. Willoughby)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:10:51 +0100
Subject: newbie 'Find File' question.
Message-ID: <9jn5kb$k16$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>

Has anybody coded a script to simulate the windows/mac find file utilitity?
i'm using this to help me learn Tkinter and Python. I have created the GUI i
just need a few design tips for the search code. basically i need to search
all drives (not A:) for a file. any ideas?   :) .

G. WIlloughby.




From gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk  Sat Jul 21 12:24:59 2001
From: gustav at morpheus.demon.co.uk (Paul Moore)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 17:24:59 +0100
Subject: ADO Events with win32com
References: <vv7hlt8dqss6e3vv2m5pko2tq94obt99r2@4ax.com> <21e393ee.0107210640.54f3e20c@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <54bjlt4sq1sloqvkaadr8a4q7pfvl30ibu@4ax.com>

On 21 Jul 2001 07:40:17 -0700, nmack at pacbell.net (angusm) wrote:

>I think the problem is that COM (or ADO?)requires you to define all
>the event handlers for the interface in your class:
>
>"All the event handlers in the ConnectionEvent ... must be
>implemented, regardless of whether you actually use events. " MSDN

I'll try it, but I'm surprised. I didn't need to do this for a different object
I tested the event code on. That has many events, and I only implemented the one
I used. I assumes that the win32com stuff did its magic, and made it work...

Nevertheless, thanks for the suggestion - I'll try it.

Paul.


From martin at strakt.com  Fri Jul 27 03:06:16 2001
From: martin at strakt.com (Martin Sjögren)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:06:16 +0200
Subject: A use for integer quotients
In-Reply-To: <15200.15857.511206.874543@beluga.mojam.com>
References: <mailman.995866298.23496.python-list@python.org> <cpzo9veuml.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <230720010741551768%jwbaxter@spamcop.com> <cpae1tboxg.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <4h0tltgbrn2b50mueqd2vsgtt3psvkvosv@4ax.com> <slrn9luefe.5a2.Gareth.McCaughan@g.local> <3B5FC3AE.A8F664B9@tundraware.com> <15200.15857.511206.874543@beluga.mojam.com>
Message-ID: <20010727090616.B9753@strakt.com>

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 10:57:37AM -0500, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Tim> A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were each asked to
>     Tim> comment on the assertion "All odd numbers are prime."
> 
>     Tim> The mathematician at once gave a counterexample, 9.
> 
>     Tim> The physicist said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime.
>     Tim> Now at nine we see second order effects!"
> 
>     Tim> The engineer said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime,
>     Tim> 9 is prime..."
> 
> I remember that last bit as
> 
>     The engineer said "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime.
>     Therefore, 'all odd numbers are prime' is true."

I thought the physicist said something like "9 is measurement errors, 11
is prime, 13 is prime..."

But then again, it was a long time I heard the joke for the first time,
and there are zillions of versions :-)

How about this one instead? An engineer, a statistican and a mathematician
were out riding a train in Scotland. Suddenly they see a black sheep. The
engineer immediately says "So all sheep in Scotland are black!" The
statistician replies "Actually, we just know that some sheep in Scotland
are black" The mathematician was silent for a while and then said
"Actually, we just know that in Scotland, there is a sheep that is black
on -at least one side-"

-- 
Martin Sj?gren
  martin at strakt.com              ICQ : 41245059
  Phone: +46 (0)31 405242        Cell: +46 (0)739 169191
  GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html



From fgeiger at datec.at  Sun Jul  1 08:09:39 2001
From: fgeiger at datec.at (Franz GEIGER)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 14:09:39 +0200
Subject: Python for air traffic control?
References: <bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <9hn90v$r1e$1@newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>

Just an idea:

1) Prototype it with Python
2) Gather experiences
3) Throw it away, you will anyway (see e.g. Brooks, The Mythical Man Month)
2) Write the prod version in Python if the prototype told you that it will
fullfill robustness constraints or use Eiffel for that.

As prototypes are best written in a high productivity language, Python is at
least *my* favorite joice for RAD.

Regards
Franz

"Russ" <18k11tm001 at sneakemail.com> wrote in message
news:bebbba07.0106291642.6c799d15 at posting.google.com...
> I am thinking about using Python for a unique safety-critical
> application in air traffic control. It will monitor a few hundred
> aircraft for conformance to assigned trajectories, and it will
> initiate an automatic alarm (for both controller and pilot) if an
> aircraft deviates from its assigned trajectory and is in danger of a
> collision. (The trajectory and tracking data will come from existing
> C/C++ programs.) The software must be as simple, clean, and robust as
> humanly possible. The default languages here are C/C++, but I am
> toying with the idea of using Python instead. However, I am a bit
> nervous about the lack of type checking and function prototyping,
> among other issues. Is Python up to this task? Thanks for your
> insights.




From grey at despair.dmiyu.org  Thu Jul 12 19:31:13 2001
From: grey at despair.dmiyu.org (Steve Lamb)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 23:31:13 -0000
Subject: IRC library for Python?
Message-ID: <slrn9kscq0.2ld.grey@teleute.dmiyu.org>

    I've been doing some searching and haven't found anything on the web or
deja.  Is there an IRC library akin to SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNRP/et al for Python in
existence?

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
    To email: Don't despair!   |  -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------


From skip at pobox.com  Tue Jul 31 13:33:40 2001
From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:33:40 -0500
Subject: sleep command/function & searching the python docs
In-Reply-To: <9k6mev$2vg4b$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
References: <9k6ilm$2sed8$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
        <m3bsm1hyje.fsf@kepler.ibp.de>
        <9k6mev$2vg4b$1@ID-91520.news.dfncis.de>
Message-ID: <15206.60404.166632.198599@beluga.mojam.com>

    >>> ... is there any way to search the Python docs for a specific
    >>> function/module etc? Or is there any resource on the web that
    >>> provides a searchable interface?

    Rajarshi> Another post in this thread mentioned http://web.pydoc.org -
    Rajarshi> looks pretty useful

I tried finding getopt there by searching for "argument", "parsing" or
"option".  It was tough to find getopt in the results it returned.

Alas, Google, my favorite search engine, doesn't allow you to restrict
results to specific sections of a site.  On Alta Vista (and probably a
number of other search engines as well) you can search for something like

    options url:www.python.org/doc/current/lib

to restrict searches for "options" to the current library reference manual.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/



From guido at python.org  Sun Jul 29 19:14:00 2001
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:14:00 GMT
Subject: FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification
References: <cp66cd12yp.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <mailman.996351001.12473.python-list@python.org> <cpwv4syrzd.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com> <3B643C58.1C6C94F9@ActiveState.com> <mailman.996426594.9989.python-list@python.org> <20010729170054.141$Pa@newsreader.com>
Message-ID: <cpr8uzz5uo.fsf@cj20424-a.reston1.va.home.com>

Hernan M. Foffani <hfoffani at yahoo.com> writes:

> I hope this msg is not too far away from what you expected
> by "FEEDBACK WANTED".

This is great feedback -- it shows you read and understood this
sufficiently to find typos!

> If I understood the unification correctly, in
> http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html where it reads:
>     >>> print a.keys()
>     [1, 2, 3, '__builtins__', 'x']
> the 3 is a typo, right?

Yup.  I'll fix the example so that 3 is not a typo here. :-)

> And where it says,
>     But notice this:
> 
>      class E(C):
>         def foo(x, y): # override C.foo
>             print "E.foo() called"
>             C.foo(y)
> 
> Isn't a call to "foo = classmethod(foo)" missing after that?
> If so, in the PEP the call is missing too.

Correct on both counts again.

> One minor suggestion:
> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)


From mcherm at destiny.com  Tue Jul 24 14:59:50 2001
From: mcherm at destiny.com (Michael Chermside)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:59:50 -0500
Subject: A use for integer quotients
Message-ID: <3B5DC5A6.C0B106DE@destiny.com>

> This reminds me, is Python configurable to run on a platform with no
> floating point support?
> 
> With Linux being embedded all over the place, it seems like it would come up.
> Do the mini hand-helds (not to mention cell phones) have floating point?
> 

Yes.

Pippy (http://www.endeavors.com/pippy/index.html) is Python for the palm, 
and here's what I get:

x  = float(3)
Traceback (innermost last):
 File "<string>", line 1, in ?
MissingFeatureError: Float objects 
are not provided in this python build

-- Michael Chermside



From quirkyfrog at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 14 09:14:47 2001
From: quirkyfrog at yahoo.com (rws)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:14:47 GMT
Subject: greenbeen seeks advice
References: <9pF37.22474$g96.625691@news.easynews.com>
Message-ID: <bBX37.30$cQ6.2275062820@news.onr.com>

Thanks everyone for the group and direct replies.  I am encouraged and
hopeful.

best regards,

wyatt






From MarkH at ActiveState.com  Thu Jul  5 00:18:45 2001
From: MarkH at ActiveState.com (Mark Hammond)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 04:18:45 GMT
Subject: Windows2000 console control
References: <6698e4b2.0107040324.1e4b14e6@posting.google.com>
Message-ID: <3B43EACA.5040000@ActiveState.com>

Ralph Bruno wrote:

> I first tried win32process.CreateProcess, which according to the docs
> has a 'CREATE_NO_WINDOW' setting to hide the console, but this gave me


win32con.CREATE_NO_WINDOW.  I've made the docs clearer.

> I've tried win32pipe, but this doesn't seem to allow me to get the
> process handle, although I can get at the console output.


If you don't need to kill the process, then popen in a thread should 
work.  The process has terminated when read() returns an empty string. 
Another thread can be in this blocking read, and notify your main code 
when the process has terminated.

If you need the process handle to be able to kill it, then you need to 
go down the CreateProcess route, doing the standard handle redirection 
manually.

Mark.